Flying into the Flames of Hell : Dramatic first hand accounts of British and Commonwealth airmen in RAF Bomber Command in WW2

406 Pages·2006·4.12 MB·English

by  Martin W. Bowman

First published in
Great Britain in 2006
by Pen & Sword Aviation
an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street, Barnsley
South Yorkshire, S70 2AS

Copyright © Martin W. Bowman, 2006
9781783409341

The right of Martin W. Bowman to be identified as Author of this Work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 1 - Just to Get a Bed
CHAPTER 2 - M for Mother
CHAPTER 3 - The Nursery Slopes
CHAPTER 4 - One Wing
CHAPTER 5 - The Concealing Cloth
CHAPTER 6 - My War
CHAPTER 7 - The Last Op
CHAPTER 8 - A Canadian in Bomber Command
CHAPTER 9 - ‘If We Could Survive That, We Could Survive Anything!’
CHAPTER 10 - Memories of a 218 Squadron Bomb Aimer
CHAPTER 11 - By Chance and Good Fortune
CHAPTER 12 - ‘If Yer Can’t Take a Joke Yer Shouldn’t Have Joined’
CHAPTER 13 - There But for the Grace of God
CHAPTER 14 - ‘The Condemned Men Ate a Hearty Breakfast’
CHAPTER 15 - Low Level to Stettin
CHAPTER 16 - The Tour
CHAPTER 17 - The Shining 10th
CHAPTER 18 - Lady Luck
CHAPTER 19 - Surrounds of Glory
CHAPTER 20 - The Mystery of H-Harry Two
CHAPTER 21 - Dresden
CHAPTER 22 - The Grim Reaper
CHAPTER 23 - Reflections
APPENDIX 1 - RAF Bomber Command Operational Statistics
APPENDIX 2 - RAF slang terms in common everyday use
APPENDIX 3 - Glossary
Index
Phantom bombers on the old airfields
Where do you fly tonight
Are you off to visit Berlin, Hamburg, Nuremberg or Mannheim
Or somewhere in the Ruhr, east of the Rhine

Phantom bombers on the old airfields
Where do you fly tonight
Through a moonless or full moonlit sky
Giving battle as you fly
Returning shrouded, but with your spirits aces high

Ghostly engines, silenced by time
Outlined at dispersal by rings of rime
With ghostly guns of noiseless rattle
Patiently waiting the phantom hours of battle

Phantom bombers on the old airfields
Where do you fly tonight
If you will only wait for me to join you
In the air battles of long ago
It will be in the company of my old aircrew

The Bomber Airman’s Lament (Tune of: Empty Saddles in the Old
Corral), Louis Patrick Wooldridge DFC
Introduction
It was an article of faith in the pre-war RAF that modern twin-engined bombers
like the Hampden, Wellington, Whitley and Blenheim, with revolving machine-
gun turrets and flying in close formation to maximise defensive fire power
against attacking fighter aircraft, were unbeatable: ‘The Bomber Always Gets
Through.’ It was even assumed that these aircraft didn’t need any form of fighter
escort to reach and destroy their assigned targets. In the raw practice of war,
however, this belief was rudely shattered. Bomber operations against elements of
the German fleet at Brunsbüttel and Wilhelmshaven on 4 September 1939 were
met with stiff opposition from both fighters and flak, two Wellingtons and five
Blenheims being lost. The elderly Whitley squadrons in 4 Group were
immediately employed in night leaflet-dropping operations, and made no
appearance in daylight at all.
The 3 Group Wellingtons and 5 Group Hampdens kept searching for the
German navy in daylight during the remainder of September 1939 but the
serious losses inflicted on 29 September, when a complete formation of five 144
Squadron Hampdens were destroyed over the German Bight between Heligoland
and Wangerooge Island by Bf 109 fighters, soon convinced the Air Staff that a
profound change of its daylight policy was necessary. It was two major disasters
in December 1939 that finally persuaded the Air Staff that a radical change in
direction was necessary if future bombing operations were to stand any chance
of success.
After April 1940 Bomber Command decided not to abandon completely the
use of bombers in daylight. Although the Hampden and Wellington units largely
shifted to night-time bombing, someone had to do the daylight offensive
operations unless the RAF was prepared to admit that it had nothing for this
most visible of its tasks. Thus the Bristol Blenheims and Fairey Battles in 2
Group and the AASF (Advanced Air Striking Force) stood forward as the best of
a bad lot.
When Bomber Command took the decision in May 1940 to start strategic
bombing of Germany by night, there was little the Luftwaffe could do to counter
these early raids, as no specialised night-fighting arm existed. The creation of a
true night air defence of the Third Reich was dramatically accelerated when
Göring ordered General Kammhuber on 17 July 1940 to create a night-fighting
arm. By the end of 1940 the infant Nachtjagd had matured into three searchlight
batallions and five night-fighter Gruppen. At least nineteen Bomber Command
aircraft were destroyed in the ‘Kammhuber Line’, as the continuous belt of
searchlights and radar positions between Schleswig-Holstein and northern
France were christened by the British bomber crews. A total of fifty-nine RAF
bombers were shot down by Nachtjagd during May 1942, about half of which
were claimed during the night of 30/31 May when the first Millenium or 1,000
Bomber Raid was made on Cologne. A force of 1,046 aircraft set out and forty
bombers and two Intruders were lost — a 3.8 per cent loss rate. A further 116
aircraft were damaged, twelve so badly that they were written off. The fires
burned for days and 59,100 people were made homeless. The second 1,000
Bomber Raid, against Essen, took place on the night of 1/2 June with a force of
956 bombers. Some bombers returned early with mechanical and engine
problems. Thirty-one aircraft failed to return. A third 1,000 Bomber Raid took
place on the night of 25/26 June when 1,006 aircraft, including 102 Wellingtons
of Coastal Command, attacked Bremen. June 1942 saw a record 147 Bomber
Command aircraft destroyed by Nachtjagd.
During September 1942 eighty-six Bomber Command aircraft were lost. With
the coming of autumn weather and a decrease in Bomber Command activity,
during October 1942, only thirty-eight bombers were destroyed. In January
1943, the acute U-boat danger that threatened to sever the vital lifelines between
the UK and the US pulled Bomber Command away from the strategic area
bombing campaign against German cities and it led to a series of raids against U-
boat bases in France and Northern Germany, which would last until the start of
the Battle of the Ruhr two months later. By early 1943, Kammhuber’s defence
line had been completed and Lichtenstein AI-radar equipped aircraft were now
capable of exacting a maximum toll of 6 per cent bomber casualties on any deep
penetration raid into the Reich. Thus, Bomber Command losses rose rapidly
during the first few months of 1943.
The date 5/6 March has gone into history as the starting point of the Battle of
the Ruhr, Bomber Command’s spring offensive for 1943. Operational statistics
for the period of the Battle of the Ruhr (5/6 March to 23/24 July 1943) reveal
that a staggering 1,000 Bomber Command aircraft were lost from 23,401 sorties
dispatched, or 4.3 per cent. Bomber Command introduced a series of new tactics
during the Battle of Hamburg (24/25 July to 3 August 1943). The massed
bomber stream, new target-finding radar (which permitted the bombers to find
bomber stream, new target-finding radar (which permitted the bombers to find
their targets individually through heavy cloud and in the moonless periods), new
target finding and illuminating tactics that were concentrated in the élite
Pathfinder Force (PFF), and last but not least, the (radar) jamming device code-
named ‘Window’, all resulted in complete chaos in Germany. Unable to obtain a
true picture of the air situation, and unable to control the night-fighters in the air,
at a stroke the German air defence found itself reduced to the bare elementals of
night-fighting. During the Battle of Hamburg Window prevented about 100 to
130 potential Bomber Command losses. Over four nights 3,000 bombers
dropped 10,000 tons of HE (high explosive) and incendiary bombs to devastate
totally half of the city and kill an estimated 42,000 of its inhabitants. After the
fourth raid on the night of 2/3 August, a million inhabitants fled the city. Albert
Speer, Minister of War Production, warned Hitler that Germany would have to
surrender after another six of these bombing raids.
On the night of 30/31 March 1944, Bomber Command suffered its highest
loss of the war on the Nürnburg raid when sixty-four Lancasters and thirty-one
Halifaxes (11.9 per cent of the force dispatched) were lost (and ten bombers
crash-landed in England). The famous Avro Lancaster was the most successful
bomber used by the RAF in the Second World War and in 1944 it established its
superiority over every other type. By March 1945 there were no fewer than fifty-
six squadrons of Lancasters in first-line service with Bomber Command.
From April 1944 Bomber Command became engaged in the preparations of
D-Day, mainly focussing on transportation targets in France. It is a popular
belief that after the Battle of Berlin, Bomber Command crews had it relatively
easy — less deep penetration raids into Germany, more shallow penetration trips
into France to disrupt German communications in preparation for Operation
Overlord, fewer losses to Luftwaffe night-fighters and smaller percentage losses
as Bomber Command grew larger by the month during the spring and summer of
1944.
During the prelude to the invasion of Normandy, Bomber Command had been
controlled by the Supreme Allied Commander. With the Allied armies
advancing into France, in September 1944 the Chief of Air Staff once again
gained control of the Command for a new precision bombing campaign aimed at
oil and transportation targets, and for a resumed area bombing campaign.
Devastating raids by over 1,000 bombers became fairly commonplace, whilst
operational losses began to fall quite dramatically.
The early months of 1945 saw a tremendous increase in Bomber Command’s
operations, both in tempo and number, forty raids being mounted in February