A “sticky” trip. Weather poor over base, bags of light over parts of the route and had microphone trouble. – Phil Smith’s logbook

In the very early hours of Sunday morning, thirty five Lancasters droned from Waddington eastwards across the North Sea, flying through light snow and low stratus cloud.[1] They were part of an overall force of 816 heavy bombers and seven Mosquitos en route to Leipzig.

The tactic, to keep the German fighter controllers guessing, was to approach the enemy coast at low level, climbing sharply just before the island of Texel.[2] But because of cloud conditions at the start of the outward route[3] and incorrect wind forecasts[4] many crews found themselves approaching the coast early. They needed to fly ‘doglegs’ to lose time, a dangerous practice in such crowded skies. At least one collision was seen and “it [was] wondered if the concentration [was] not becoming too heavy.”[5]

To further confuse the enemy fighter controllers, other aircraft were heading for a spoof attack on Berlin, a diversionary minelaying operation in Kiel Harbour and attacks on nightfighter airfields in Holland. While the Kiel operation attracted some of the fighters, the remainder were held in reserve probably as a result of the Mosquitos attacking the airfields – and so by what the Night Raid Report[6] called “unlucky chance” they were airborne and not very far away when the bomber stream crossed the coast. Consequently the bombers fought a running battle all the way to Leipzig and not less than twenty bombers were seen to be destroyed on the route out to the target.[7]

Many crews found themselves reaching turning points early, necessitating doglegs and orbits enroute (and even over the target) to try and lose time. This was a difficult trip for the navigators, and the Operational Record Books for both 463 Squadron and 467 Squadron are full of crews complaining about timing and flight planning for the raid:

Considerable inconvenience caused due to flight planning timing being too early. Numerous doglegs. – Flying Officer Dan Conway in LM450

Many aircraft seen doing doglegs up to Posn A, necessitating nav lights on. – Pilot Officer Milton Smith in LL788

Good trip spoilt by very bad timing over whole route, causing orbiting both en route and in target area. – Flying Officer Alan Finch in DV373

Bad trip. Timing all wrong. Had to orbit for 10 minutes to bomb in correct wave. – Flight Lieutenant Alex Vowels in HK356

Winds favourable but arrived 13 minutes too early. – Flight Lieutenant Ron Mortimer in LL740

Despite the best efforts of the navigators, many aircraft arrived over the target early and were forced to circle around the city until the first Pathfinder flares went down (themselves six minutes early, just before four o’clock in the morning), over solid cloud. The attack started in a fairly concentrated fashion but later on became scattered as subsequent marking accuracy reduced. When Phil Smith and crew arrived over the target area, it was quite a sight: there were “fighter flares of all types and TIs of all types spread over a large area” and a “red and white glow showed against [the] cloud.”[8] A heavy flak barrage was being fired at the bombers and though the searchlights themselves could not penetrate the cloud they illuminated its base to silhouette the bombers against it for the nightfighters, which claimed at least another three victims over the city.[9] There were several minutes during which no target indicator flares were burning (from 04.11 to 04.15). It was at the tail end of this period that Jerry Parker released the bombs from EE143.[10] Then they turned tail and dived out of the target area.

The return journey was just a little bit easier than the outbound one. Having initially been sent towards the diversionary mining force, the nightfighters had been in the air for a long time and were running short of fuel. Consequently they “pursued the bombers with less than their usual persistency,” and only four more bombers are known to have fallen victim to them on the way home.[11]

It had, however, been an expensive night. The nightfighters claimed at least 27 bombers and flak at least another twenty. The full toll was much higher. “When we heard 79 were missing we couldn’t believe it” wrote Flying Officer McDonald in the 467 Squadron Operational Record Book.

LONDON, Sunday.- The R.A.F. lost 79 bombers last night in massive air strikes at central and western Germany, France and Holland. The loss is the heaviest the Allies have suffered in any single day or night operation in the war. – The Daily Telegraph, 21FEB44

Though crews began arriving back at Waddington safely from about 06.40 on Sunday morning, there was to be a little bit more excitement before the raid was over. Pilot Officer Noel McDonald encountered difficulties while landing, when his flaps would not go all the way down – until the airspeed bled right back in the flare to land, whereupon they extended suddenly. The nose came up, the aircraft ‘pancaked’ violently, a tyre burst and the undercarriage collapsed. This pulled the Lancaster sideways and the aircraft (LM448) finished up off the runway with damage to its port wing, both port propellers and both fins. Pilot Officer Freddy Merrill, of 463 Squadron, diverted to Leconfield and was the last of the Waddington aircraft to land, at 08.15, perhaps as a result of this crash. Though all crews walked away, when combined with the ground collision before take-off 467 Squadron had badly damaged three aircraft in accidents in a single night. The news was worse for 463 Squadron, however, with one of their aircraft – DV338 with Flying Officer Ernie Fayle and crew – failing to return. It disappeared without trace.[12]

Despite the early morning arrival home from Leipzig today, there was little rest for most of the Waddington crews, with both Squadrons sending aircraft and crews on an operation to Stuttgart. In all 30 aircraft were detailed, though one was not serviceable in time and there were two early returns, both due to engine failures. Phil Smith and his crew were not on the battle order for this trip.

Visibility was excellent over the target (with individual blocks of buildings visible) and the crews considered this “quite a good prang.”[13] Later reconnaissance revealed that the bombing was somewhat scattered, perhaps caused by heavy cloud over much of the target area (except for the clear patch that the 467 Squadron crews reported) but considerable damage was caused to factories and suburbs in Stuttgart. Bomber Command sent almost 600 aircraft on this raid for a relatively light loss of just nine bombers, but the trip was not entirely without its dramas. One 467 Squadron crew (that of Flight Sergeant Ed Dearnaley) had an oxygen failure and needed to evacuate their rear gunner from his turret. Noel McDonald (who, you will remember, had crashed on landing on return from Leipzig earlier that day!) was attacked twice by nightfighters but successfully evaded, with the mid-upper gunner opening fire on the attacking aircraft (though without noticeable result). And Pilot Officer Clive Quartermaine was also chased by a Messerschmitt but corkscrewed immediately and the fighter disappeared into the blackness. All returned safely to Waddington.

Elsewhere tonight, 156 aircraft from both training units and operational squadrons made ‘Bullseye’ flights across the North Sea in a “preliminary feint” which likely distracted the German fighter controllers and contributed to the lower than usual casualty rate for the main Stuttgart stream. Mosquitos raided Munich and attacked Dutch airfields, several Serrate patrols were flown and other aircraft dropped mines in French waters for the loss of one Wellington.

And in welcome news, Phil Smith’s navigator, Jack Purcell, received a promotion to Warrant Officer effective today.[14]

This post is part of a series called 467 Postblog, posted in real time to mark the 70th anniversary of the crew of B for Baker while they were on operational service with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. See this link for an in-depth explanation of the series, and this one for full citations of sources used throughout it. © 2014 Adam Purcell

On a cold, cloudy and slightly snowy day[1] both Waddington squadrons briefed for a maximum effort operation for the coming evening. And for once, it was not to Berlin. The main force was bound for Leipzig, Germany’s fifth-largest industrial city at the time,[2] situated some 100 miles south west of the capital. Every available aircraft and crew – eighteen in all from 463 Squadron and nineteen from 467 – geared up for a take-off scheduled for just before midnight.

It was not, however, an entirely uneventful preparation. The great hulking bombers started their engines and began trundling from their dispersals and onto the perimeter track some time after 23.00 hours. But then, in the words of the ORB, “one aircraft didn’t like the look of another and ran into it.” The two aircraft – both from 467 Squadron – were not severely damaged but it was enough to ground them for the night and both crews (those of Flying Officer Doug Harvey and Flight Lieutenant David Symonds) had to sit out the trip.

The first aircraft rolled down the runway at 23.25. Phil Smith, in EE143 (the same aircraft he had taken to Berlin four nights ago), took off at 23.47, and the last Lancaster disappeared into the cloud just under half an hour later.[3]

 

This post is part of a series called 467 Postblog, posted in real time to mark the 70th anniversary of the crew of B for Baker while they were on operational service with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. See this link for an in-depth explanation of the series, and this one for full citations of sources used throughout it. © 2014 Adam Purcell

The crews at Waddington awoke to find that operations were on, for the first time in sixteen days. This was particularly significant for two members of Phil Smith’s crew: navigator Jack Purcell and bomb aimer Jerry Parker would make their operational debuts on this night.

Not having flown in so long, Phil decided to take his aircraft on an air test during the day. He flew for 25 minutes in EE143, one of the veteran aircraft belonging to his flight, though it is not clear which of his crew came with him.[1]

Seventeen aircraft from 463 Squadron and eighteen from 467 were, once again, detailed for an attack on Berlin.[2] It would be the biggest attack of the war on the German capital in terms of numbers sent, with 891 aircraft despatched. At the same time, a small force of Lancasters “carried out a diversionary attack on the marshalling yards at Frankfurt-on-Oder, beyond Berlin, while Mosquitoes bombed Aachen and airfields in the Low Countries.”[3] Mine laying took place in Kiel Harbour and the Bay of Biscay and some Mosquitos carried out intruder patrols.

Squadron Leader Arthur Doubleday led the crews from Waddington off in LL746, at two minutes past five o’clock in the evening. The last Lancaster roared over the fence at 17.36. 35 aircraft had departed at a rate better than one a minute.

Phil Smith in EE143 opened the four throttles at 17.25.[4] But all was not well on the take-off roll. Well after the war, Phil wrote about what happened: [5]

When we were about two thirds way down the runway with a full load of petrol and bombs, I glanced down at the airspeed indicator to check that we were at about the right speed to float off the ground. I was horrified to find that the instrument was not working. I decided immediately that it would be impossible to stop before the end of the runway and that we would have to proceed with the take-off. I climbed away at a much smaller angle than usual. I remember wondering if anybody on the ground noticed our unusual take-off and wondered if we were in trouble.

They were able to climb away flying on recommended power settings, and decided to jettison their bomb load before returning. This required going well out to sea to avoid endangering lives on the ground. Once over the water though, and after attempts by both Phil and flight engineer Ken Tabor to fix the problem behind the instrument panel, they were well on their way towards Denmark and could feel the slipstreams of other aircraft around them.

“Clearly,” Phil wrote, “we were on track and with the mob going to the target.”

And having got that far, he thought, why not keep going?

I put it to the crew who came to agree with me, so we carried on and dropped our bombs somewhere in the Berlin area.

A long way in front of Phil Smith and his crew, the first Pathfinders arrived at Berlin and began marking the target, a little early, at 21.11. The planned ground-marking was once again foiled by cloud, but the skymarking attack that developed appeared to most crews to be well concentrated.

Jerry Parker, in the bomb aimer’s position in the nose of EE143, could see no skymarker flares in the early stages of the run-up to bomb,[6] but just in time some fresh ones were dropped by a preceding Pathfinder aircraft and he pressed the ‘tit’ that sent the bombs tumbling from their hangers at 21.31, twenty minutes after the first flares went down.[7] The attack was scheduled to finish four minutes later but there were some stragglers. The final aircraft from Waddington bombed at 21.45. Pilot Officer Freddy Merrill and crew, of 463 Squadron, would have felt quite lonely, having the defences of Berlin more or less to themselves by that time.

Having completed the entire operation without an airspeed indicator, Phil Smith was becoming a little concerned as he neared home about how a landing would go without such a vital instrument. But in the end it was a non-event.

Following the usual settings and techniques and with much help from the glide path indicators we landed reasonably with only a slight bump. What a tremendous relief it was to be safely on the ground and taxying back to our dispersal.

They landed at 00.40 hours having logged seven and a quarter hours in the air. Thirteen minutes behind them was Pilot Officer Clive Quartermaine and crew in LM338, who had arrived back overhead the airfield at the same time as a big bunch of other aircraft They were delayed in the air, and Quartermaine felt compelled to note his frustrations in his interrogation report:

Had to circle base for 40 minutes before landing. Quick Landing Scheme disappointing.

Though Quartermaine may have found it ‘disappointing’, it was still an impressive display of safely recovering many aircraft in a reasonably efficient manner. Between midnight and 1am, 30 aircraft landed at Waddington – including three in a single minute at 00.15.[8] All Waddington aircraft returned safely, though there had been a couple of early returns due to oxygen problems in one aircraft and an overheating engine on another.

It was not as successful a night elsewhere however. In all, 42 aircraft were missing. Of these, fourteen were observed to fall victim to flak (eight on the way out, two over the target and four on the way home), and seventeen were lost to fighters, the German controllers failing to fall for the spoof raid on Frankfurt-on-Oder. A further seven aircraft were destroyed in landing accidents.

Against this cost, German broadcasts reported some damage to “residential districts, cultural monuments and hospitals.” The bombers left the target burning steadily with a column of smoke later reported rising to 20,000 feet.[9]

This post is part of a series called 467 Postblog, posted in real time to mark the 70th anniversary of the crew of B for Baker while they were on operational service with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. See this link for an in-depth explanation of the series, and this one for full citations of sources used throughout it. © 2014 Adam Purcell

It was just after midnight last night that the Lancasters of 463 and 467 Squadron roared into the air, en route once more for the German capital, Berlin. There were three early returns. Pilot Officer Thomas Foster, in DV229, encountered icing that he couldn’t climb above, landing back at base just after 03.30 hours. Pilot Officer Lindsay Fairclough, in ED545, had the same problem, returning some two hours later. And an embarrassing navigational error saw Pilot Officer John McManus boomerang early in JA901, when he misinterpreted a new course passed to him by the navigator and inadvertently flew its reciprocal instead. By the time the error was realised, they had lost about half an hour and did not relish the prospect of having all of Berlin’s defences to themselves after the rest of the force had left the target area, so they set course for home, arriving a quarter of an hour before Fairclough.[1]

The outbound route took the bombers out over Denmark, before they turned south east towards the target. Defences were fairly active, with six bombers shot down by flak on the outbound route and at least twelve by nightfighters before the target was reached.[2]

Once again Berlin was covered in broken cloud, and though some groundmarking was possible the attack eventually required the less accurate ‘Wanganui’ skymarking technique. Despite this, most crews thought that this appeared to be one of the best attacks on Berlin yet. Phil Smith reported “three distinct areas of fire glow on clouds; good fires must have been below.”[3] The defences, he wrote in his logbook, “seemed weak”. His impression was later confirmed when it was determined that flak probably destroyed only one aircraft over the target itself. There was a moderate barrage of heavy flak and some intense light flak near the marker flares, but the searchlights were much hampered by the heavy cloud cover.

Fighters were however very active. Over the target at least 150 were sighted – including one which followed DV372, with Gil Pate and Eric Hill keeping a very close eye on it from their turrets until it sidled off into the darkness once more.[4] “Altho’ the place was lit up by the fires like the worlds fair”, wrote Dale Johnston,[5] “we never saw another kite. Bar a Jerry, but we gave him the slip and he disappeared in the clouds.” Some 27 combats were reported over Berlin and six more heavies were shot down there.

In all, 43 aircraft were reported missing, or some 6.3% of the attacking force. Seven were known to have been lost to flak and 21 to fighters. The rest, thought the scientists of Bomber Command’s Operational Research Service, were “almost certainly due to fighters”.[6]

Despite Phil’s later recollection of this as a “straightforward”[7] trip, it was not entirely without trouble. After dropping their load of 4000lb high explosives and 5000lb incendiaries towards the end of the attack at 03.30hrs (only one of Waddington’s aircraft bombed after them, at 03.32), they were on the homeward journey when Gilbert Pate’s oxygen failed in the rear turret. Wireless operator Dale Johnston went back to give some help, but his portable oxygen also failed. When flight engineer Ken Tabor went to help and suffered the same fate, Phil needed to descend to about 15,000 feet to bring everyone around again.[8] They eventually arrived back at Waddington  at 08.30 on the morning of the 29^th – the third last aircraft to return.

Sadly each Waddington squadron lost a crew on this operation. Flight Lieutenant Norm Cooper, flying HK537, and Ivan Durston, in ED867, both disappeared without message or signal being received. Post-war it was discovered that Cooper’s aircraft had collided with an 83 Squadron bomber, crashing on the Danish island of Als. All on board died. Durston, who had been the last to depart Waddington last night and was “one of our most popular pilots and an excellent crew,”[9] had been on his 27^th trip. His aircraft crashed at Schmachtenhagen, three miles east of Oranienberg and approximately 25 miles north of Berlin. All seven members of the crew are buried in the Berlin 1939-1945 War Cemetery.[10]

Because of the very late return this morning from the Berlin operation, there was much sleeping during the day and the squadrons were stood down for the afternoon. There was “the usual Saturday night dance” but very little else happened.

Elsewhere, Bomber Command sent small forces of Mosquitos to attack a steelworks on Duisburg and a flying bomb site at Herbouville in France tonight, and a small group of Whitleys dropped leaflets over Northern France.[11] A force of enemy aircraft was seen on radar heading towards the English coast during the night. Bombs were dropped across Hampshire, the Thames Estuary and Suffolk. It’s thought that one of the raiders was shot down by a Beaufighter of 68 Squadron.[12]

This post is part of a series called 467 Postblog, posted in real time to mark the 70th anniversary of the crew of B for Baker while they were on operational service with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. See this link for an in-depth explanation of the series, and this one for full citations of sources used throughout it. © 2014 Adam Purcell

For the first time since joining 467 Squadron, Phil Smith’s name was on the Battle Order tonight as captain of his own aircraft. The target – as if anyone expected anything different – was, once again, Berlin, now being attacked for the thirteenth time this winter. Two members of Phil’s normal crew did not take part in this raid. Navigator Jack Purcell, who was still off sick, and bomb aimer Jerry Parker were replaced by Flight Sergeants Leonard Connolly and F.G. Craven respectively.[1] In any case, twelve aircraft were detailed from 463 Squadron, and fourteen from 467. They joined a total of 679 heavies and four Mosquitos sent to the German capital.

In an effort to support the force attacking Berlin, Bomber Command also sent a mining force to Kiel Harbour and several Mosquitos to harass Hannover and to bomb Berlin a full four hours before the main attack was due.[2] On the other side, sixteen Messerschmitt Me410s and ten Focke-Wulf Fw190s made a small incursion into East Anglia, Kent and Sussex. A Mosquito nightfighter accounted for one of the raiders but a defending fighter was also shot down.[3]

At Waddington, take off was scheduled for midnight. The first Lancaster – ED949 of 463 Squadron, under the command of Flying Officer Doug Dunn – roared down the runway at two minutes past the hour, and most were away by 00.36. Flight Lieutenant Ivan Durston was somewhat delayed, departing in ED867 thirteen minutes after the previous aircraft, and Pilot Officer Noel McDonald encountered engine trouble on the takeoff roll and aborted the mission on the runway. Phil Smith and his crew, meanwhile, were in Lancaster DV372, the nineteenth aircraft to depart. They left the ground at 00.28, climbed away and set course eastwards.[4]

 

This post is part of a series called 467 Postblog, posted in real time to mark the 70th anniversary of the crew of B for Baker while they were on operational service with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. See this link for an in-depth explanation of the series, and this one for full citations of sources used throughout it. © 2014 Adam Purcell