Early last month I had just published my 467 PostblogPart LXXVI which covered an attack on a munitions dump outside the French town of Sable-sur-Sarthe on 6 May seventy years ago. I was subsequently contacted over Twitter by a journalist from “Les Nouvelles de Sablé”, a weekly newspaper based the town. Lucile Ageron was her name, and she was wondering how someone all the way over here in Australia might be sufficiently interested in her little town to write about it.
Truth be told, I’d never heard of the place until I saw its name in Phil Smith’s logbook (it’s not even in Jack’s – he mistakenly entered the target in his own logbook as Louaille, a nearby town, and he got the date wrong too). But it was a highly siccessful raid and some rather spectacular film footage of the raid has survived.
Having read my posts, Lucile sent me a list of questions, I answered them, and now she’s written an article for her newspaper. Particularly with the anniversary of the D-Day landings coming up tomorrow, it’s great to get a bit of media coverage for my little website – and of course for getting the story of the seven airmen in the crew of B for Baker out there once more.
If you can read French (or even if you can’t), an online version of the article can be found here.
As I headed north up the Hume Highway from Melbourne early on Saturday morning, thin mist was still settled in low valleys and smoke rose directly upwards from the chimneys of roadside homesteads. It was an atmospheric start to my journey to Canberra for the annual Bomber Command Commemoration weekend.
This was the seventh time that the first weekend in June saw Bomber Command veterans, families, researchers, authors and assorted hangers-on converge on the national capital for a weekend of remembrance and reminiscing.
My base for the weekend is no longer called the Rydges Lakeside. It’s been turned into a slick, shiny and slightly pricier hotel called “QT Canberra”, full of odd political references and surprise images of photographers in the lifts. But I digress. On arrival at the hotel I quickly found my first veteran for the weekend, a man named Kevin Dennis. He was wearing, amongst the more usual service medals, an unfamiliar decoration hanging from a light blue ribbon – a Conspicuous Gallantry Medal. More about him later.
Off to the weekend’s first organised event, then: the Meet & Greet function in the shadows of Lancaster G for George at the Australian War Memorial.
The crowd under G for GeorgeAilsa and Don McDonaldThe two Toms KnoxTommy Knox
It was an excellent function. There was a good-sized crowd present, the speeches were (like a good skirt) short enough to be interesting but long enough to cover everything, the food was good and there were some very interesting people to talk to. At one point, down near George’s tail I was talking to Tom Hopkinson, a 463 Squadron veteran mid-upper gunner. Two ladies approached: Lorna Archer and her daughter Rowena. Lorna’s husband Ken was a 460 Squadron bomb aimer. He is still alive but, at 90, is now too frail to travel and stayed at home in Melbourne this weekend. Lorna wanted to know, if Ken was in a Lancaster and it was hit and he had to bail out, how would he do it?
A fair question. I had a pretty good idea of the answer, but, well, we were standing under a Lancaster and we were talking to a man who used to fly in the things and so… well… why not? I asked Tom if he would like to do the honours. So we weaved our way through the crowd to the nose of the great big black bomber. Tom pointed up. And there, under the nose was the big square escape hatch through which the bomb aimer would have, if the circumstances dictated, been the first out. Which answered the question in a most satisfying manner.
Tom Hopkinson explaining how a bomb aimer would evacuate a Lancaster
Towards the end of the event, I spied an old man sitting down surrounded by family under (of all things) the German 88mm flak gun that’s on display next to George. His name badge said Alan Finch, 467 Squadron. Good enough for me, I thought. So I sat down and introduced myself. When Alan said he had done his first operation in August 1943 and had remained with the squadron throughout 1944 his name suddenly sounded strangely familiar.
I love modern technology. I pulled out my phone and searched for his name on this website. And there it was: I’d used two of his interrogation reports in my 467 Postblog series. I asked Alan, “Where were you on 24 February 1944?” He responded, “In the air!” Correct! Specifically, Schweinfurt. “Oh yes”, he said, “that was a bad one.”
Alan Finch, 467 Squadron pilot
No kidding. As I wrote here, his aircraft was coned over the target by some 24 searchlights. “Target more formidable than briefed,” he reported nonchalantly on return to Waddington.
This is why I come to these events. I’ve become quite familiar over the last few months with the names of the aircrew who were operating at 463 and 467 Squadrons between January and May 1944. I never suspected that I might run into one of them, sitting under the wing of a Lancaster at the War Memorial.
Laurie Woods talking to Alan Finch
Following the function, a fair sized group of those who were staying at the QT met in the hotel bar for a wee nightcap. What followed was one of the better sessions I can remember in some time. Holding court in the corner near the fire was, yes, Don Huxtable. Gathered around him, most of the younger crowd (that is, those under about 60…). Over beers, scotch and sodas the night passed quickly with many, many line shoots.
Don Huxtable, Nikki Harris and Don SouthwellHux and Nikki
Numbers dropped off as the night got later but, still there as the bar staff called last drinks, were an old pilot and his entranced audience.
Dawn broke in Canberra the next day with cloud, mist and rain. Telecom Tower was disappearing into the grey skies.
Where’s Black Mountain Tower going?!??
This did not bode well for the morning’s ceremony, planned for the lawn in front of the Bomber Command sculpture at the War Memorial. The decision was made early to move the ceremony to the Commemorative Area, with rows of chairs placed in the cloisters under the names on the Roll of Honour.
At the back of the crowd, personnel of the current iteration of 460 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, lined up under the leaden skies.
The Director of the Australian War Memorial, Dr Brendan Nelson, opened the service, delivering a moving tribute to the aircrew of Bomber Command. Speaking without notes, he quoted a letter written by Colin Flockhart, a 619 Squadron pilot, for delivery in the event of his death:
I love you all very dearly. Please don’t think I’m pessimistic but I do realise what the odds are and I have seen too many of my friends pass on without leaving any words of hope or encouragement behind. Cheerio and keep smiling though your hearts are breaking.
Flockhart was killed on the way home from Munich on 7 January 1945.[1]
Attending the ceremony was His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK, MC (Ret’d), Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, who spoke about how Australians in particular traveled so far from home to fly in Bomber Command. The veterans present were invited to move to the inside of the Hall of Memory to view the wreathlaying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Ross Pearson delivered the Reflections address, paying tribute to those unsung support staff who also served: the armourers, the WAAFs, the parachute packers, the cooks (who worked miracles to make Spam palatable), the briefing officers. He also spoke eloquently on the unique “spirit of aircrew,” reading the citation for the award of the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal to Kevin Dennis, the veteran I had met at the hotel the previous evening. Kevin was a wireless operator who, badly injured by flak during an operation in March 1945, refused to leave his post until the damaged aircraft landed safely. In considerable pain with one foot almost severed from the explosion he had continued to carry out his duties, receiving the critical weather message which resulted in a successful diversion to an emergency airfield. For this, in the process saving his entire crew, he was awarded the CGM, one small step below a Victoria Cross.
This led to the most moving, unplanned, part of the service. After the notes of the bugler’s Rouse echoed off the stone cloisters, Brendan Nelson made his move. It was a breach in protocol, he said, “but we’re Australian and we can breach protocol occasionally.” He invited Kevin to come to the front while he explained why. Kevin is one of just ten RAAF personnel to be awarded the decoration during WWII. But because he required an extended hospital stay to recover, he missed the investiture and instead received his medal in the post. It had never been properly presented to him. Since we had the Governor-General present, Dr Nelson reasoned, it offered a good opportunity to fix that. Kevin came forward, shook Sir Peter’s hand and occupied a position of honour amongst the official party for the remainder of the ceremony.
This was one of those things which have become typical of Dr Nelson’s time at the helm of the War Memorial. I may not have agreed with him while he was in politics but it’s clear he has a sense of history and a sense of occasion and is a good fit in his current role. This was an inspired moment and it was fantastic to see Kevin being honoured in this very special way.
Kevin Dennis in the media scrum post-ceremony
ABC Canberra had sent a camera crew and, following the ceremony, they interviewed a number of veterans, including Don Huxtable. Given the weather, Hux was wearing a long blue greatcoat.
Believe it or not, it’s part of his original RAAF-issue uniform.
Further photos from the ceremony:
Tom Hopkinson and Angus CameronDon HuxtableAngus Cameron (214 Sqn wireless operator)The Group Photograph with the Governor-GeneralKevin Dennis amongst the groupDr Brendan Nelson speaking with Don Southwell
Back to the hotel, afterwards, for the lunch. As well as catching up with some of the usual suspects (the McDonalds, the Toms Knox, Knox and Hopkinson, and various assorted Dons) I met a few new people. Stories were shared with Richard Munro, who is the man to contact for 460 Squadron queries. I had a good chat with Wing Commander Tony Bull, the outgoing air attache at the British High Commission in Canberra. And I met Tony Buckland, who was the son of a camera operator with the 463 Squadron film crew, and was carrying his father’s logbook and a spectacular album containing a collection of still photographs from operations.
Bob Buckland operated with 463 Squadron from June 1944. Among the pilot’s names listed I recognised that of Freddy Merrill, who was another one of the skippers I mentioned in my Postblog. Tony had seen on the guest list that a Merrill was present at the lunch, and wondered if it was the same person.
I thought it probably wouldn’t be. I’d earlier been speaking to Ray Merrill, who is on the right here:
Ray was a 218 Squadron rear gunner and he is pictured here with Jim Clayton, a wireless operator from the same unit.
As he was not on 463 Squadron at any stage, Ray would not be the Pilot Officer Merrill in Bob’s logbook. But, amazingly, he was connected.
It turned out that Freddy was Ray’s brother. Here’s a photo of Ray pointing his brother’s name in the logbook:
Ray Merrill pointing out his brother’s name
A good lunch, then – good food, good conversation and good conversation. It was an enjoyable finish to a fantastic weekend. There were many highlights over the two days. Catching up with many good friends. Meeting new contacts. Drinking with Hux late into Saturday night. Kevin Dennis’ CGM. The Merrill coincidence.
Ross Pearson, Wing Commander Tony Bull, Don Southwell and Pete RyanDon McDonald, Don Southwell (background) and Angus Cameron
But the main purpose of the weekend, of course, was commemoration and remembrance for and of the men of Bomber Command. In this it was most successful. One of the more poignant moments happened at the Meet & Greet on Saturday evening.
After the speeches the lights dimmed and the sound and light show centred around G for George began. I was talking to Don Huxtable at the time. At the end of the presentation Hux was suddenly quiet for a moment.
“I don’t know how the hell I flew straight and level through all that,” he whispered.
The idea of writing a ‘real time’ project following the crew of B for Baker first came to me in late 2012. I’d realised the significance of 2014 as the 70th anniversary of the loss of the crew, and wanted to mark it in an appropriate way. A few weeks later I took the first steps in sorting through and assessing what information I had.
A year and a half, 102 posts and more than 81,000 words later, what has come out of the project? In pure blogging terms, I’ve seen a 50% increase in traffic – average daily views – since this series began. This is not to say that my traffic has ever been particularly high to begin with (let’s face it, it is a fairly niche subject), but I’ve been happy to see the level of interest increase as I’ve gone deeper into the story. Comments received through the blog have also been excellent and have produced some good contacts. It turns out there are more people interested in the Lille raid than I previously thought!
As I said right at the beginning, digital publishing is ideally suited to a project of this nature. 80,000 words is almost a book in itself, but I wouldn’t want to read all of these posts in one hit. Each post, by design, is really a stand-alone article (though it helps to have some idea of the back story to follow the thread). Publishing the story in chunks spreads out the effort of reading all that detail at once and, I hope, keeps the interest going.
The other advantage of digital publishing, of course, is that revisions can be made if and when new information becomes known. My copy of the ORBs in particular is sometimes not very clear to read and there are errors dotted throughout the original documents… and sometimes I’ve simply mistyped in either transcription or writing. In particular I am indebted to Graham Wallace of the Bomber Command History Forum who sent numerous corrections through as the project progressed. Thanks are also due to Chris Dean of the RAF Waddington Heritage Centre, who reminded me of the existence of the excellent ‘Waddington Collection’ of photos that follow the history of the squadrons on that airfield. Among others, the highly atmospheric photo of the bombers taking off from Waddington for Munich on 24 April 1944 came from that collection.
All in all, I think this was a very worthwhile exercise. I’ve researched and produced what is probably the biggest single piece of work I’ve ever written. I’ve gained a reasonably detailed knowledge of what those seven men were doing while they were on the squadron. I’ve been able to share the story of the crew, seven decades to the day since the events described, with a whole host of interested people, from all around the world.
And that was the main aim. While people know about them, the memory of those seven men will live on. If I’ve contributed to that in some way, I’ve achieved what I set out to achieve.
Phil Smith’s safe return to the United Kingdom was arguably the final direct act in the story of the crew of B for Baker, and hence is where we leave this 467 Postblog series. Before we sign off however, there are a few loose threads to tie up.
After Lille and Mailly-le-Camp it was becoming clear that French targets could be just as heavily defended as the big German cities. As we saw on 20 April and 3 May, the aircrew had begun to protest in their post-raid interrogations after some of the ‘hotter’ operations such as La Chapelle and Mailly-le-Camp about being credited with just one-third of an operation for French trips. In early May someone at Bomber Command Headquarters evidently realised that the policy was perhaps a little unreasonable. There is a document at the Australian War Memorial[1] which, while it is incomplete, comes from the 467 Squadron Orderly Room and contains aircrew names against a list of their operations. Critically, it includes a ‘running total’ of operational sorties against each trip. While the longer flights to French targets like St-Medard-en-Jalles and Toulouse were awarded a full trip from the outset, the operations to Tours on 10 April and La Chapelle on 20 April were each been credited with only one-third of a sortie. But from 8 May, French targets (like Brest on the 8th, Lille on the 10th and Tours on the 19th) were given full sorties. So somewhere in May, the policy evidently changed.
What is interesting, however, is that some of the records show evidence of having been changed retrospectively. The trips to Mailly-le-Camp on 3 May, Louailles on 6 May and Tours on 7 May were all originally given only one-third credit each, but at some stage these were all amended to full trips. And it appears that Mailly-le-Camp was the catalyst. The airmen got their wish and, finally, French operations from the beginning of May 1944 onwards were given the credit they deserved.
[After Mailly-le-Camp and Lille] there was no more talk of French targets counting a third of an ‘op’. These were two exceptionally bad nights, but they were a tough reminder of what the Luftwaffe could still do, give the chance. Lingering around a target for accurate visual marking could be fatal.[2]
Between 1 January and 11 May 1944 a total of 1091 operational sorties were flown from Waddington. The Squadrons operated on 40 out of 132 nights, attacking 26 different targets. In the course of these operations 38 bombers were lost, seventeen from 467 Squadron and 21 from 463. One Lancaster failed to return to Waddington approximately every 29 sorties. 268 airmen failed to return with the missing aircraft. The majority of these – 241 airmen – were killed in action. Twenty were taken prisoner of war and just seven became evaders.[3] If you were on one of the aircraft that went missing, you had an almost 90% chance of being killed.
Five aircraft were lost on the 30 January 1944 raid on Berlin, and this number of missing aircraft would be seen again after the period covered by the 467 Postblog on Prouville, 25 June 1944, and Konigsberg, 29 August 1944. But the Lille raid, with six missing aircraft, remained the worst night of the war for 463 and 467 Squadrons. The Battle of Berlin period is generally considered one of the more dangerous times to have been flying in Bomber Command – of course the Nuremberg raid also fell in this period, with a total of 94 losses across Bomber Command (467 Squadron lost two) – and there is no doubt that losses dropped off as French targets became the norm throughout April and May. But, as graphically demonstrated at both Mailly-le-Camp and Lille, on occasion things for the attackers could go very, very wrong and loss rates could climb dramatically.
And so the crew of B for Baker found themselves flying to Lille on 10 May 1944. They were just seven out of an estimated 125,000 airmen who flew in Bomber Command. Just six out of 55,573 killed. Just one out of some 2,500 evaders. Their stories are of entirely ordinary men, living an extraordinary existence and doing extraordinary things. I can only hope that, over the last four and a half months, 102 posts and more than 81,000 words, I’ve managed to capture and convey a little of what it was like for these seven men as they played their parts in the most dramatic period of 20th Century history.
Bill Purcell, one of Jack’s nephews, used to stay at his aunt Clare’s place near Wollongong after school every day. He remembered well the day that news arrived that his uncle Jack – Clare’s brother – had been posted missing. The whole family, he said, had gathered at Clare’s and were huddled around the kitchen table.[1]
Everyone was almost whispering.
Official telegrams contained so few clues about what had happened besides the stark fact that the airman concerned had been posted missing and, though Bill Brill’s letters were on the way with a little more detail, these would not reach the families in Australia until the middle of July. In the meantime there was little definite information available. Don Smith, therefore, sprang into action. He wrote to the Air Force at the end of May to request addresses of the other Australian next-of-kin, which the Air Force then provided. He also sent letters to the Air Force for onwards delivery to the three British next-of-kin.[2] So developed a significant body of correspondence between the families. Happily, Mr Smith was a careful type who neatly filed almost all of the letters in three big folders, all of which have survived. Similar, if not quite so comprehensive, archives also survive for Jerry Parker and Gilbert Pate. Hence we know that the families exchanged many letters over the course of the next few years. Mr Smith would carefully transcribe anything of note on his typewriter. Photographs and newspaper articles were also shared, and commiserations expressed when news broke on 4 August that first Gilbert Pate and then, three days later, Jerry Parker had been declared dead based on information from the International Red Cross.[3] “Regret no news of your son Squadron Leader Donald Philip Smeed Smith D.F.C. or remainder of crew,” said the telegram sent to the Smith home in Sydney.
Sadly, as we now know most of the rest of the crew had also been killed when B for Baker came down. But Phil Smith was most definitely still alive, being sheltered by the Mely family in Caudry. And in early September the town was liberated when invasion forces reached it. On 3 September, Monsieur Mely took Phil to the Town Hall where he was received and celebrated by members of the Resistance and the local population.[4] Some time over the next couple of days he made himself known to Allied military authorities so that, on 5 September, he hitchhiked[5] to Beauvais, north of Paris, and was flown back to Northolt in England in a DC-3 via the Normandy beachhead.[6]
The Air Force notification system ground its way into action once more, but on this occasion it was beaten by private means. The news was broken unwittingly by Cis Smith in a telegram, which was telephoned through to the Smiths at 4.45pm on 8 September:[7]
THANK HEAVEN PHILIPS IN ENGLAND
CIS SMITH
A day later came an equally short and cryptic message from the man himself:
SAFE AND SOUND
PHILIP SMITH
Finally, on 11 September came official confirmation from the Air Force, who also sent telegrams to the three other Australian next-of-kin. Messages immediately flew between the families:[8]
GLAD TO HEAR OF YOUR GOOD NEWS
GRACE PATE
HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SONS SAFE RETURN TO BASE
JOHNSON [sic]
What a relief to you!
Sydney Pate
Phil was given a complete medical (which “confimed that I am as fit as I feel – my only trouble being my teeth”[9]), then sent on three weeks’ survivor’s leave. He spent some time with his uncle Jack and then to his uncle Harold in March, Cambridgeshire, which is where Cis caught up with him. Her airgraph to his parents, written on 13 September,[10] contained the first real account of what actually happened to Phil on the night of the Lille raid.
…he must have had a miraculous escape as he doesn’t know if another plane hit them or if their own bombs exploded as directly their own bombs were released he remembers a terrific flash of light – but felt absolutely nothing. Then he found himself below the fierce flames + took a risk + pulled his rip cord…
From his uncle’s house, Phil set out to find the addresses of the next-of-kin of the three English members of the crew, and then went to visit them. This must have been one of his toughest missions during his time in the Air Force.
After his survivor’s leave, Phil spent a further month in the UK before embarking for home, via the US. He arrived back in Australia on 16 January 1945, having been overseas for three and a half years. The Lille raid was his 51st operation and he returned having received a Mention in Dispatches in 1943 and a Distinguished Flying Cross in 1944. (News of the latter came through while he was evading in France). Following a stint in an RAAF hospital in Sydney while recovering from a bad case of peritonitis, Phil was posted to RAAF Bundaberg, Queensland, where he commanded 88 Operational Base Unit while awaiting demobilisation. He was finally discharged from the Royal Australian Air Force on 13 December 1945.
[1] Purcell, Bill, in interview with Kerry Tarleton, approx. 2001
[2] Correspondence on these matters is in A705, 166/38/524
[3] Telegram advising the Johnstons of these facts are in NAA: A705, 166/20/131, encl. 16a and 18a
[4] Grand Outidien du Nord de la France, 22MAY47. Translated transcript, in the collection of Mollie Smith
[5] Related in a letter, Cis Smith to Don Smith, 13SEP44. Part of the collection of Mollie Smith.
[6] This flight is in Phil’s logbook as a passenger.
[7] Original telegrams are part of the collection of Mollie Smith
[8] Telegrams from Grace Pate (12 September) and Charles Johnston (14 September) and letter from Sydney Pate (13 September), all part of the collection of Mollie Smith
[9] Smith, Phil, letter to father, 09SEP44. Part of the collection of Mollie Smith
[10] This letter forms part of the collection of Mollie Smith
NOTE: This post contains detail which some readers may find distressing.
In the days after the Lille raid, while Phil Smith was attempting to put as much distance between himself and the crash site as possible, the burials of his comrades were taking place. As we saw on the 11th, 22 bodies were buried at Forest-sur-Marque on the night of 11-12 May. One more would be found and buried there a few days later. Meanwhile it appears that the wreck of B for Baker was found in Lezennes on 11 May with the bodies of Jerry Parker, Eric Hill and Jack Purcell nearby. Ken Tabor and Dale Johnston were found under the wreck of the aircraft itself a short time later.[1] It is unclear where or when the body of Gilbert Pate was found. Three more bodies of 467 Squadron airmen were also found in Lezennes – those of Pilot Officer Bill Felstead and his flight engineer, Sergeant Cyril Duthoit, and navigator, Sergeant John Mellor. The nine airmen were buried in the Lezennes cemetery on 12 May 1944, though at this early stage Tabor and Johnston had not yet been identified. Amazingly, a French civilian took clandestine photographs of the funeral procession (though he is reported to have said that he needed to be careful that the Germans did not see him).[2] In time these would be sent via the Air Force to various next-of-kin of the crew. This copy, reproduced here courtesy Gil Thew, was sent to Gilbert Pate’s family:
Funeral Procession, Lezennes, 12 May 1944
Felstead’s aircraft – LL788 – exploded over the target and crashed on the road separating the communes of Annappes and Hellemmes. Elements of the crew were therefore buried in three distinct cemeteries. While three were interred at Lezennes three other members of his crew – Flight Sergeants Bill Ferguson, Brian Grasby and Bill Hancock – were among the 25 airmen buried at nearby Hellemmes on 15 May. This burial, the Missing Research and Enquiry Service (MRES) reported in their Casualty Inquiry No. 157[3], was attended by large numbers of civilians who left the graves covered in flowers. Testament to the violence of the explosion which had brought down their aircraft, the sole remaining airman from Felstead’s crew – mid-upper gunner Sergeant Charlie Nash – had apparently been dismembered and remains were buried in graves in both Hellemmes and Forest-sur-Marque. The MRES would eventually re-inter both at the latter.
At the time of the funerals seven of the bodies at Hellemmes were unidentified. By July 1947[4] MRES had exhumed and examined the questionable ones and all bar one had been matched with missing airmen. The identity of the airman buried in this single grave remains unknown today.
When he took command of 467 Squadron on 12 May 1944, of course, all Wing Commander Bill Brill – or anyone else in England for that matter – knew was that seventeen Lancasters had taken off from Waddington for Lille two nights ago, but only fourteen came back. Officially a signal needed to be sent from the Squadrons to the Air Ministry when an aircraft was one hour overdue.[5] For units based in the UK it was then the responsibility of the unit’s Commanding Officer to ensure a telegram was sent to notify next-of-kin resident in that country that their airman had been posted missing. Jerry Parker’s wife, Ethel, for example, lived in Leyland in Lancashire. She would have been among the first to be told that B for Baker and her crew failed to return from Lille. The telegram she received is dated 11 May 1944 and, as such, would have been one of the last things that Wing Commander Balmer organised before he took part in the Bourg Leopold raid from which he himself failed to return.
Like these things are, the hand-written telegram is brutally simple and to the point:[6]
Regret to inform you that your husband Sgt Jeremiah Parker is missing as the result of air operations on the night of 10/11 May 44 letter follows. Any further information received will be immediately communicated to you pending receipt of written notification from the Air Ministry. No information should be given to the press. O.C. 467 Squadron R.A.A.F.
The letter Balmer referred to was dated 12 May and as such was signed by Bill Brill. It would have been one of his first duties on taking over the squadron. Similar letters of condolence were sent to the next of kin of a total of 28 aircrew: 21 resulting from the Lille raid and seven more from Bourg Leopold (one of whom was Balmer, the man Brill had replaced).
Notifying the next of kin of the Australians on the crew, however, was a longer process. On receipt of the first signal from Waddington, the British Air Ministry in turn advised RAAF Headquarters in Melbourne. Copies of this signal, dated 12 May 1944, survive in the casualty files of all four of the Australians[7] who were on board B for Baker when it went missing, including the names of recorded next of kin and whether they had been informed yet or not. The distance to Australia meant that it took longer for the information to reach the families. It would appear that late on 15 May the Air Force dispatched telegrams to all four families. At 09:20 the next morning, the delivery boy knocked on the door at 25 Victory Street, Belmore. Grace Pate – Gilbert’s wife – was not available so the telegram was given to her mother instead.[8] At 09:40, Eustace Purcell, Jack’s brother, received a similar message in nearby Enfield, and ten minutes after that the news reached Jack’s eldest brother, Edward, in Thirroul.[9] An attempted delivery to the Smiths in Mosman failed at 10:00 and Phil’s father, Don, needed to go to the post office later in the afternoon to receive the message.[10] It is likely that at the same time he picked up another telegram, one from his brother Jack Smeed. Living in England (and indeed Phil had spent some of his leaves from the Squadron staying with his uncle at Denham) meant that Jack had received notification earlier than the Australians. “HAD THE NEWS YESTERDAY”, he wrote on May 13. “MAKING ENQUIRIES WILL LET YOU KNOW ANY RESULT LOVE TO ALL JACK SMEED”[11] The telegram is stamped 15 May and Don Smith’s handwriting next to the stamp notes that he received it on the 16th.
Meanwhile, notifying Dale Johnston’s family was taking a little longer still.[12] It appears they had moved from Proston, north of Toowoomba in Queensland, to Dayboro, 100 miles away near Brisbane, without telling the Air Force. The Proston Postmaster sent a return telegram notifying the Air Force of this on 16 May, and they forwarded another copy of the casualty notification to Dayboro. Charles Johnston – Dale’s father – received it at 10:15 the next day.
Phil Smith spent a little over a week attempting to walk to Switzerland. He walked mostly at night, hiding during the day in either fields or farmers’ barns. In the early morning two days after his aeroplane crashed, Phil made it to a town called Orchies (some eleven miles south of Lezennes as the crow flies), but he was running out of food and still had no boots. He knew he now needed to seek help from local civilians. An elderly woman he approached could be of no direct assistance but pointed him towards a farmhouse not far away, whose inhabitants provided food but asked that he hide in the fields during the day and come back after dark. This he did and, after being well fed he was shown to a hayloft where he could sleep for the night.
I did not volunteer to leave and the next 24 hours followed the same pattern.[1]
After a few days hiding in the hayloft in Orchies, his shelterers told Phil that, as a German garrison was about to be billeted in the area it was too dangerous for him to stay. They gave Phil food, drink, an old pair of sandshoes and a hessian sack for a blanket and sent him on his way. In turn Phil wrote his Australian address on the back of one of the spare passport photos carried by aircrew on operations and left it with the family.
For the next few hours Phil avoided roads, walking cross-country to minimise the chances of encountering people. But it was hard going with a number of drains – mostly dry but some not – to be crossed. So when he stumbled onto a road going in roughly the right direction later in the night, Phil abandoned his cross-country policy. Following the road, he passed several small cemeteries which he thought probably contained graves from the Great War.
I saw a faint light in the distance at the side of the road. I assumed it to be a guard post and approached the area with the utmost caution. However my caution was quite unnecessary as the light turned out to be a glow-worm, the only one I saw in my night walking.
Phil kept walking by night and hiding by day. At one stage he saw a Spitfire making several low passes nearby. “I had fantasies of being seen and picked up and flown home which made me feel a little homesick,” he would later write. Apart from an incident where he was asked for the time by a group of young men and responded with the British Double Summer Time to which his watch was still set, the most dangerous encounter he had occurred when crossing a bridge one night over a large canal, possibly the Canal de la Sensee a few miles north of Cambrai. Exhausted after about a week on foot he was trudging slowly on when, about half-way across, he was challenged from a guard post which he had just passed without noticing.
I did not understand what was said but was able to respond immediately with a tired “bon soir’ and walked slowly on with no hesitation. The guard must have taken me for a drunk as he took no action…
The timeline in his Recollections document is somewhat vague but it was probably around 19 or 20 May when Phil walked through Cambrai itself and, seven or eight miles further east, came to the small village of Caudry. Just after that he could see some big farming establishments in a settlement called Audencourt and he decided to hide for the approaching day in one of the big sheds.
So ended my attempt to walk across France.
The Allied invasion of the Continent was imminent and, because it was considered too dangerous for Phil to continue on his own because of his lack of fluency in French, for the next three and a half months he was looked after by locals:
With the absolute need for secrecy, hiding in the small town of Caudry was, in some aspects, like being in prison. However, in all other ways I was cared for as a member of a husband and wife family.
Waddington awoke in shock. Last night, 31 Lancasters had taken off for a ‘milk run’ operation to Lille. This morning, though, there were six empty spaces at the dispersals – and 42 empty beds.
But war waits for no man. Ops were on again tonight. Preparations were put into place for 25 Lancasters to attack a military camp at Bourg Leopold in Belgium. They began taking off just before 22:00.[1] But incorrect forecast winds delayed the marking over the target and thick haze compounded the issue so, after about half the bombers had bombed the leader called the attack off and ordered remaining crews to take their bombs home.
The Bourg Leopold raid was the biggest of the night, with 190 Lancasters and three Mosquitos taking part. Elsewhere marshalling yards were attacked at Hasselt (north-eastern Belgium), Louvain (near Rennes) and Boulogne. Coastal batteries were hit at Trouville (south of Le Havre) and Colline Beaumont (near Le Touquet). “Only at Louvain was any widespread damage caused,” said the Night Raid report.[2]
There was some excitement on arrival at Waddington involving Flight Sergeant John Waugh and crew, flying DV277. One of those crews who had not bombed, they were crossing the enemy coast on the way home when they became involved in a combat with a “fighter and Lancaster.” Jettisoning the 4,000lb ‘cookie’ to reduce weight they successfully escaped but not without damage: when they were ordered to dump their remaining bombs in the sea, the bomb bay doors would not open. When it was also discovered that their undercarriage would not lock down and a crash landing with most of the bomb load still on board was now inevitable, the entire crew except for the pilot and flight engineer baled out a few miles south of Waddington. Then Waugh began his approach. Hearts were in mouths as he bounced high on his first attempt but the undercarriage held and Waugh heard the emergency air system activate, locking the wheels down. The second touchdown was much more controlled and all ended well. “The Officer i/c Night Flying,” notes the Operational Record Book dryly, “then had a cross-country trip in a car trying to locate the members who had baled out.”[3]
But in a cruel blow to 467 Squadron, a night after losing a Flight Commander (Phil Smith) and two other pilots and all of their crews, another bomber failed to return from operations. And amongst this crew were some extremely experienced and capable men. LL792 was being flown by Sam Balmer, the 467 Squadron Commanding Officer who was on his final trip with the Squadron before going to a new posting and who (though apparently he did not know it) had just been promoted to Wing Commander. Among his ‘scratch crew’ was navigator Flying Officer Peter Hammond, a second-tour man who had arrived at Waddington five days ago with the new ‘B’ Flight Commander, Squadron Leader Lloyd Deignan. And on the final trip of his first tour was Flight Lieutenant WR Norden-Hare, the Squadron’s Gunnery Leader. Along with four other RAF men, all were killed when the aircraft crashed near Antwerp after being attacked by a nightfighter on their bombing run.[4]
In happier news for 467 Squadron, though, it had been calculated that their venerable Lancaster R5868 S for Sugar achieved on the Bourg Leopold trip its 100th operational sortie. But not without a scare. Flown for the occasion by Pilot Officer Tom Scholefield, the crew were continuously attacked by a pair of Ju 88s for nearly ten minutes. But some good cooperation between the gunners and the wireless operator, who was directing them via the Monica early warning system, managed to drive off “9 or 10 determined and skilful attacks.”[5] They did not bomb – jettisoning their ‘cookie’ over the sea on the way home – and returned safely.
Tom Scholefield (far left) with his crew after what was reputedly S-Sugar’s 100th operation. From the Waddington Collection, courtesy RAF Waddington Heritage Centre
The next day photographers and press appeared “from everywhere”, according to the Operational Record Book. “I think the B.B.C. even asked the aircraft to say a few words.”
Meanwhile in and around Lille French civilians and the German occupiers were discovering the extent of the damage wrought by the previous night’s chaos. The railways were clearly out of commission for the time being. But the bombing had also spread east of the target and residential property was badly damaged in that area. More than one thousand houses were destroyed, many by fire, and about 150 French civilians were killed with some 57 injuries recorded.[6] Adding to the destruction was the wreckage of ten Lancasters which had crashed in and around the target area. And those ten Lancasters contained ten crews, a total of seventy men.
During the day on 11 May bodies of airmen were discovered in and around the target area. Some were found close to where their aircraft had crashed. At least one was stuck up a tree.[7] Late in the evening of 11 May the burials began. Around 9pm 22 bodies were brought to Forest-sur-Marque, near where at least three Lancasters are thought to have crashed. The burials were carried out under difficult conditions. The Germans ordered the townspeople to dig one long common grave and that the dead were to be buried “by 8am.”[8] The Germans supplied no crosses or coffins.
Burials would continue throughout the area over the next few days. But unknown to anyone else, one of the 70 men shot down near Lille was still alive. Phil Smith had passed the day hiding out in a wood in northern France, sleeping on and off and hearing no sound bar the occasional train passing some distance away.
In the dawn hours it was pretty cold and I missed the raincoat which I had worn on all recent operations – this one was to be pretty short and the weather was warming up.[9]
Sustenance came from some malted milk tablets and a small tube of condensed milk from his escape kit, but though there was a plastic pouch and some water sterilising tablets there was nothing to drink. “It was clear,” he wrote later, “that I would have to get help from French people by next dawn as I would need food and drink if I were to make any further progress.”
When it became dark, Phil began to walk again. Along the way he found an animal trough with which to fill his water pouch and, with the aid of the sterilising tablets he was able to get all the drink he needed.
Phil continued on towards the south-east and, he hoped, Switzerland.
[3] Waugh’s story related in the 467 Squadron Operational Record Book
[4] Storr, 2006
[5] 467 Squadron Operational Record Book
[6] LeClercq, J 2002; citing several files from the Archives Départementales du Nord in Lille
[7] This was Sergeant Roland Becherel, the wireless operator in the Mason crew of 50 Squadron. Info from Joss le Clercq and NAA: A705, 166/33/163 encl. 56 and 57
[8] Ibid.
[9]This section relies heavily on Smith, Phil, Recollections of 1939-1945 War, p.26
He was still strapped into the pilot’s seat of B for Baker, having a moment ago been preparing for the jolt that usually accompanied the release of the bomb load from a Lancaster. But then something extraordinarily and suddenly violent had happened, and now he could feel no aeroplane around him.
He quickly came to the obvious conclusion:
I immediately released my seat belts and then my parachute. It seemed to open immediately.[1]
Looking up, he could see that one of the two risers from which he was hanging had been half cut through in the blast, so he hung on above the break with both hands until he landed on a large grassy field.
I seemed to be all in one piece but my flying helmet and one flying boot had gone. There was no indication that I had been seen.
His left wrist and hand were somewhat sore but otherwise he felt unharmed. Gathering up his parachute, he crept off in a direction away from some nearby houses in order to find somewhere to hide it.
Apart from the two Lancasters which came down in Flanders on the way home, there is little surviving evidence to show exactly which fate befell the remaining ten aircraft that failed to return from Lille that night. Richard Jozefiak shows that all ten crashed within about five miles of the target. Out of these, the night raid report suggests that four had been seen to go down in combat with fighters and two had collided. There was perhaps one more victim of a collision (the aircraft which hit Pilot Officer Dear in ND896), which leaves three lost to entirely unknown causes. It appears unlikely, however, that sufficient evidence has or will ever come to light to be able to make a determination, with any degree of confidence, of what happened to these aircraft, and by extension, of what exactly caused the crash of B for Baker. Even Phil Smith himself never knew for certain. “All I can say about the accident is that I was extremely lucky to get away with it,” he wrote to his parents shortly following his liberation a few months later.[2] Theories abounded. “He must have had a miraculous escape,” wrote his aunt Cis to her brother, Phil’s father Don Smith.[3] “He didn’t know if another plane hit them or if their own bombs exploded, as directly their own bombs were released he remembers a terrific flash of light – but felt absolutely nothing.” In November 1944 the Air Force sent an extract from Phil’s official evasion report to the family of his rear gunner, Gilbert Pate:[4]
…while bombs were falling from the aircraft it was hit either by flak or by enemy aircraft and exploded in mid air
Later still, Phil wrote a letter which he sent to the Air Force for onwards transmission to the family of his wireless operator, Dale Johnston:[5]
We had a straightforward trip up to the time when the bombs were falling away from the aircraft when something hit us and the aero-plane exploded. I have no idea what happened to the rest of the crew or the remains of the aircraft – after seeing flame in front of my eyes I did not see or feel anything solid until my parachute opened.
And three years after the Lille raid, Phil’s father told him of a letter received from Fannie Johnston. She had been to France, it seems, and spoke to a local who suggested the aircraft had been involved in a collision. “I suppose they found the remains of two aircraft together”, Phil guessed[6]. “A collision is as likely as any other cause…”
Collision? Own bombs? Flak? Nightfighter? Even when my own family spoke with Phil a few years before he died, he was still unclear on exactly what caused the loss of his aeroplane.
All that was some time off, though. Right now he had far more pressing matters to deal with. Squadron Leader Phil Smith was on the ground, alone, in enemy-occupied territory. He did not know it yet, but out of the 84 aircrew on board the twelve Lancasters which had failed to return from Lille, he was the only man still alive. After gathering up his parachute, Phil began heading roughly south-east, navigating roughly by the North Star.[7] His vague plan was to walk to Switzerland, which he considered a better prospect than trying to escape via Spain. He hid his parachute and mae-west lifevest in a pile of roadbuilding stones and carried on, soon coming to a big barbed wire fence. This, he supposed, was probably the Luftwaffe airfield which he knew was south-east of the target. He decided that walking across the airfield would be easier than going around it and looked for a gap in the wire. But then he heard gun shots.
I had not been challenged but felt sure that they were meant for me. I changed my mind and immediately crept off as quietly as possible in a North-Easterly direction.
Planning to avoid contact with any people and to get as far from the crash site as he could on the first night, Phil walked on. Having lost one fur-lined flying boot in the explosion, he now found his remaining boot soaking up dew from the ground. It became too heavy and he was forced to abandon it.
I was then committed to walking cross-country in my socks.
After wading across a narrow canal of some sort (”an unpleasant process”, he wrote in his usual understated way), he found himself walking up steadily rising, wooded ground.
By this time I was tiring, there were signs of dawn and the cover seemed quite good for lying up during daylight.
Phil picked a likely-looking spot, hid himself as best he could, and fell into a fitful sleep.
On the night of 10 May, 1944, more than eighty heavy bombers of RAF Bomber Command were attacking railway yards at Lille in France. A new offset target marking technique had failed to work as planned and instead of overshooting onto the aiming point the early bombing fell on top of the red spot fires and obscured or extinguished them. Shortly after 23:40 the Director of the main force, Wing Commander Anthony Heward of 50 Squadron, fired two red Verey cartridges in quick succession and called a halt to the raid to allow the target to be re-marked.
Aircraft that had not yet bombed now began to orbit to the south or east of the target. Heward himself orbited for some sixteen minutes.[1] With more than fifty aircraft milling around the target waiting for new markers to be dropped, things began to feel uncomfortably reminiscent of the disastrous Mailly-le-Camp raidof a week ago.
There is evidence for perhaps two collisions over the target. One 61 Squadron crew – that of Flight Lieutenant HH Farmiloe – reported visually identifying the railway yards in the “light of [an] explosion from [the] collision of two aircraft”.[2] And Pilot Officer RA Dear, also of 61 Squadron, hit another Lancaster that crossed his path from port to starboard, “shearing off about 2 ft of port rudder and holing port elevator.”[3] We do not know which aircraft it was that Dear hit. There are no further reports in the various Operational Record Books of surviving crews being involved in a collision, so it is quite likely that whoever it was failed to return to base – which, if added to the two presumed destroyed in the earlier collision seen by Farmiloe, gives us three potential victims of collisions on this night.
And worse was to come. Nightfighters found the bombers as they orbited and shot down at least four of them. Arnold Easton recorded in his logbook being chased by a twin-engined aircraft. Then another bomber went down in flames. “One chute seen to open”, Easton wrote. His aircraft, DV372 Old Fred, had orbited the target for 23 minutes, finally bombing at midnight.
A number of crews reported seeing so-called ‘scarecrows’ over the target:
Before bombing two dummy runs were made and on a second run two scarecrows burst above and a third scarecrow burst just below aircraft.
-Squadron Leader HR Foley, 9 Squadron
Given that post-war it was established that there were in fact no such things as ‘scarecrows’,[4] it is most likely that what Foley witnessed actually were the sudden ends of three aircraft and crews. His crew bombed at 23:54, one of the first to do so after the order to resume the attack had been broadcast and the ‘green-green’ Verey cartridges had been fired.
The second phase of the bombing, it seems, went appreciably better than the first. Much smoke was again generated and now and again the new markers were obscured by it but most crews thought there was little or no scatter in the bombing that followed. Some crews reported seeing fires but many others did not. Shortly before midnight there were several large explosions. But once again it appears that the bombing was concentrated around the spot fires themselves, against the intent of the offset marking technique. Some crews, like that of Pilot Officer E Berry of 50 Squadron, noted that the bombs were falling on the marker “instead of on overshoot”, and others saw bombs overshooting the markers by 100 yards as planned, but many more, on the face of the limited evidence from the operational record books, thought there was a good concentration of bombing around the spot fires. This suggests that the new technique was not quite working as planned and perhaps showed a lack of understanding among some of the crews.
There is no doubt however that the bombing was effective. The Night Raid Report described a “great concentration” on and around the railways and sidings, and a repair workshop and two locomotive sheds were destroyed. And of course, the cost to the attackers had also been high. As the bombers turned back to the west and then the north-west towards the coast, they were followed by nightfighters which claimed perhaps two more victims on the way home. Flak also destroyed a bomber near Ypres, and crossing the coast a 97 Squadron aircraft was hit by heavy flak. It severely damaged the mid-upper turret and the gunner who was in it at the time, Flying Officer Henry Ward, was badly injured. His crewmates removed Ward from his turret but sadly he died shortly afterwards.[5] The aircraft landed safely.
In all twelve aircraft failed to return from Lille.[6] Three squadrons lost two aircraft each. From 50 Squadron, LM429 was probably the aircraft that was claimed by flak near Ypres and NN694 crashed near the suburb of Forest-sur-Marque, a suburb some five miles east of the target. 9 Squadron lost LM520 which also crashed near Forest-sur-Marque and LM528, which came down near what used to be called Annappes, now part of the community of Villeneuve d’Ascq, some three miles to the east of the marshalling yards. 97 Squadron lost the raid’s Deputy Controller, Flight Lieutenant John Smith, when JB708 crashed just north of the Lille-Sud, or flugplatz Vendeville Luftwaffe airfield. The other aircraft to go down from this squadron was ND813 which crashed in Lezennes, another suburb of Lille a couple of miles to the south-east of the target.
For Waddington, however, it had been, in the words of Pilot Officer Arnold Easton, a “grim trip”.[7] The two Australian squadrons lost three aircraft each and it would remain their worst night of the war. From 463 Squadron, LL882, captained by Squadron Leader Merv Powell, crashed in a brick pit near Langemark in western Flanders, likely one of the two reported victims of nightfighters on the return leg. LL881, flown by Flying Officer Dud Ward, who had been told just yesterday that he had been awarded a DFC, crashed at Lezennes. HK535, flown by Flight Lieutenant Eric Scott, crashed at Annappes.
467 Squadron, meanwhile, lost LL788 with Flying Officer Bill Felstead and crew, who also crashed at Annappes. Pilot Officer Doug Hislop was flying EE143 – the aircraft that until very recently had not flown straight – when it crashed between Lezennes and neighbouring Ronchin. And the final Lancaster that failed to return from the Lille operation crashed in the north-eastern corner of Lezennes, near what is now a no-frills motel and petrol station.
It was B for Baker.
The last known fact is that at 23:45, around the time the bombing was stopped to allow the target to be re-marked, Dale Johnston was heard to send a signal on his T1154 wireless telegraphy transmitter.[8]
Sometime after that, just as Jerry Parker was at the point of pushing the switch that would send B for Baker’s bombs falling into the smoke below, something catastrophic happened.
Perhaps the aeroplane was hit by flak.
Perhaps a nightfighter attacked.
Perhaps they collided with another aeroplane.
We simply do not know. But whatever the proximate cause was, some time after 23:45, everything on B for Baker suddenly went very hot, and dry, and red.[9]
[1] Wing Commander Heward in 50 Squadron Operational Record Book
[2] Flight Lieutenant HH Farmiloe, reporting in the 61 Squadron Operational Record Book
[3] Pilot Officer Dear in the 61 Squadron Operational Record Book
[4] Hastings, Max 1979, p.197
[5] Ward’s story is mentioned in the 97 Squadron Operational Record Book. He is buried in Cambridge City Cemetery.
[6] Locations of crashes sourced from Jozefiak, 1995 and Storr, 2006. This section also draws from Night Raid Report No. 602 and the various Operational Record Books.
[7] Easton, AR. Flying Log Book
[8] As recorded in the 467 Squadron Operational Record Book, this was one of two signals heard from B for Baker. The other had been sent at the beginning of the attack, at 23:30.
[9] Smith, Phil. Recollections of 1939-1945 War. p. 24
Something Very Big 