Voices in Flight: Daylight Bombing Operations 1939-1942

339 Pages·2015·12.13 MB·English

by  Bowman

First Published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS
Copyright © Martin W Bowman, 2014
ISBN: 9781783831777
EPUB ISBN: 9781473861107
PRC ISBN: 9781473861091
The right of Martin W Bowman to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
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Contents
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1 ‘Bombers Alone Provide The Means of Victory’
Chapter 2 The Blackpool Front
Chapter 3 Blenheim Beats
Chapter 4 Malta Story
Chapter 5 ‘The Year of the Circus’
Chapter 6 The Blockade of Brest
Chapter 7 Boeing Boys In Blue
Chapter 8 Strange Assignment - Leslie Kark
Chapter 9 Boston Boys
Chapter 10 Operation ‘Oyster’
Chapter 11 When Frenchmen Bombed Paris - Paul Lambermont
Chapter 12 Invasion Days
Chapter 13 They Flew Mosquitoes
Introduction
From the outbreak of the Second World War to the eve of VE Day, the medium
bomber crews of 2 Group RAF and 2nd Tactical Air Force flew vital operations
over Europe. Here their story is told, in thirteen independent chapters, many of
them featuring the airmen and war correspondents who took part. Often the
stories run in parallel and sometimes, overlap, because of the nature of these
exploits and the aircraft types that entered service and were replaced by newer
types as losses mounted and tactics changed. The first chapters concern the
‘Blenheim Boys’, who more than most suffered appalling losses attacking
invasion barges on ‘The Blackpool Front’, the power stations at Cologne and the
largely suicidal ‘Blenheim Beats’ in the cruel North Sea against enemy shipping
in a forlorn attempt to reduce German operations in the east. Recounted also are
the ‘days of carnage’ flying from East Anglia and Malta, ‘The Year of the
Circus’ and the ‘Blockade of Brest’ when Stirling, Halifax, Wellington and
Hampden heavy bombers used in daylight were found wanting and soon
switched to attacks at night.
Blenheims too were gradually replaced, by aircraft such as the American-built
Douglas Boston and the Lockheed Ventura and the North American B-25
Mitchell and of course, the de Havilland Mosquito, which proved the most
successful of all. But the part played by the Boston and the Ventura and to a
lesser extent, the B-25 Mitchell, is not overlooked. In 1942-43 these squadrons
formed the spearhead of the raids by 2 Group on enemy ports and inland targets
and on low-level pinpoint attacks against key targets in occupied Europe. The
bringing together of such disparate aircraft culminated in Operation ‘Oyster’ on
Sunday 6th December 1942 when Bostons, Venturas and Mosquitoes bombed
the Philips works at Eindhoven in Holland. RAF Bostons, Mitchells and
Mosquitoes also helped to provide air cover for the Allied armies in the build-up
to D-Day and beyond.
One of the reasons the American daylight bombing offensive from East
Anglia ultimately proved so successful was because of the Boeing B-17’s
combat debut on 90 Squadron RAF against German warships in French harbours
and in Scandinavia. Daylight raids using Fortress Is were largely unsuccessful
and proved to be a costly experiment but improvements introduced by the RAF
crews led to better oxygen systems, greater armament and self-sealing fuel tanks
and armoured protection that was sadly lacking when the aircraft left the
assembly lines in California. These innovations appeared on the late model B-
17s and B-24s sent to the 8th Air Force in East Anglia which, in concert with the
RAF by day and largely by night culminated in the ‘round the clock bombing’
offensive which helped destroy ‘Festung Europa’ and pave the way for the
Allied invasion in June 1944.
Of course no book on RAF daylight raids on occupied Europe would be
complete without the involvement of the incomparable Mosquito and the final
chapter is largely a retrospective look at the daring daylight pinpoint operations
in 2nd TAF, which together with the RAF Bostons and Mitchells (and the US
9th Air Force medium bombers) contributed so much to the successful
conclusion of the war in Europe.
Martin Bowman
Norwich 2014.
Prologue
Torquay 21/8/40
Dear Daddy,
As this letter will only be read after my death, it may seem a somewhat macabre
document, but I do not want you to look on it in that way. I have always had a
feeling that our stay on earth, that thing we call ‘Life’, is but a transistory stage
in our development and that the dreaded monosyllable ‘Death’ ought not to
indicate anything to be feared. I have had my fling and must now pass on to the
next stage, the consummation of all earthly experience. So don’t worry about
me; I shall be all right.
I would like to pay tribute to the courage which you and mother have shown,
and will continue to show in these tragic times. It is easy to meet an enemy face
to face, and to laugh him to scorn, but the unseen enemies Hardship, Anxiety
and Despair are very different problems. You have held the family together as
few could have done, and I take off my hat to you.
Now for a bit about myself. You know how I hated the idea of War, and that
hate will remain with me forever. What has kept me going is the spiritual force
to be derived from Music, its reflection of my own feelings, and the power it has
to uplift the soul above earthly things. Mark has the same experiences as I have
in this, though his medium of encouragement is Poetry. Now I am off to the
source of Music, and can fulfil the vague longings of my soul in becoming part of
the fountain whence all good comes. I have no belief in a personal God, but I do
believe most strongly in a spiritual force which was the source of our being, and
which will be our ultimate goal. If there is anything worth fighting for, it is the
right to follow our own paths to this goal and to prevent our children from
having their souls sterilized by Nazi doctrines. The most horrible aspect of
Nazism is its system of education, of driving instead of leading out, and of
putting State above all things spiritual. And so I have been fighting.
All I can do now is to voice my faith that this war will end in Victory, and that
you will have many years before you in which to resume normal civil life. Good
luck to you!
Pilot Officer Michael A. Scott’s farewell letter to his father. Pilot Officer
Scott RAFVR, B. A. Hons (Oxon), who was from Chester, was the pilot of
Blenheim IV V5426 on 110 Squadron on 24 May 1941, which took off from
Wattisham at 11.10 for a shipping sweep to Nordeney. He and his two
crewmembers, Pilot Officer Julian Gill RAFVR, aged 32, married, of
Teddington, Middlesex and WOp/AG, Sergeant Raymond A. Hewlett
RAFVR of Taunton, Somerset, were shot down and killed by Leutnant Karl
Rung of 2./JG 52 flying a Bf 109 at 14.30 hours, 120 kilometres NW of Texel
after an attack on a convoy off Borkum. Scott was 25 years old when he
died. Mr. Scott had three serving sons. Michael’s brother Mark was lost at
sea in January 1942.
Chapter 1
‘Bombers Alone Provide The Means Of
Victory’
‘The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. Therefore our
supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the air. The Fighters
are our salvation but the Bombers alone provide the means of victory. We must
therefore develop the power to carry an ever-increasing volume of explosives to
Germany, so as to pulverize the entire industry and scientific structure on which
the war effort and economic life of the enemy depend, while holding him at
arm’s length from our Island. In no other way at present visible can we hope to
overcome the immense military power of Germany…’
Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the War Cabinet on the first
anniversary of the outbreak of war.
In the autumn of 1939 and the winter of 1940 operations on land were almost
suspended, but the war at sea began in earnest and Bomber Command had a
most important part to play in it, though even so, because it was impossible to
bomb naval bases, there was still a severe restriction on the use of the bomber as
an instrument of naval warfare. The bombers and seaplanes of Coastal
Command were mostly engaged in, protecting convoys, but to aircraft of the
Bomber Command a more directly offensive role was given. Their immediate
and most obvious task was to bomb German surface warships and as a matter of
fact Blenheims and Wellingtons went out to bomb units of the German navy on
the second day of the war. These ships had been sighted during a reconnaissance
flight by a single Blenheim which had left its base within an hour of the
declaration of war. Here again, in the war at sea, the power of the bomber
against warships was much in dispute and even now the matter has certainly not
been tested in all possible circumstances. But Bomber Command began to make
the test at once and in doing so learnt much else about the strategy and tactics of
war in the air. Enemy ships were the first things to be bombed by the RAF in this
war - apart from one accidental bomb on a gun-post in Germany - until the
attack on Sylt which followed the German attack on the Orkneys; since these
attacks on shipping were the first bombing attacks made by aircraft of the
Bomber Command in the war.
The order for the attack on the German fleet on 4 September said definitely
that the fleet and the fleet alone was to be bombed. ‘There is no alternative
target’ ran the written instructions. The same precise orders were given in
several later attacks; this meant that if a ship was too close to land-against a quay
for example - it could not be bombed for fear that the bombs might miss and
injure civilians on shore. And so for several months it became the task of our
bombers to patrol and reconnoitre the North Sea and the naval bases of north-
west Germany in search of warships. Against warships heavily defended by their
own massed batteries of antiaircraft guns, in areas where fighters, warned of the
approach of bombers by reports from ships, came out in swarms to meet them,
bomber crews had to work out the technique of a new kind of attack, solve new
problems of warfare and learn how to add prudence to bravery. Naturally there
could be no question of attacking a warship without expecting heavy casualties,
but some kinds of attack were found to be quite unnecessarily dangerous and at
the same time of little use. For example, it had to he learnt that it was of no use
to attack a warship from a very low level; a bomb dropped from under 1,000 feet
travels too slow to have much chance of penetrating an armoured deck. And
since against warships armour-piercing bombs are used, which are designed to
penetrate some way into the ship before they explode, there was the risk that
they might bounce off a turret or outwork and so into the sea.
No fighters came out to protect the Von Scheer, lying in the Schillig Roads
and the other German warships which were attacked on September 4. The
danger was from antiaircraft fire. The attacks were made from a very low level,
probably too low to have done more than surface damage to the warships
encountered. A Blenheim blew to pieces the Von Scheer’s catapult, which was
used to launch aircraft from the deck of the ship, but no other definite damage
was observed. The attack took the Von Scheer’s crew by complete surprise, but
as the bombers flew off the Germans had got to their action stations and a hail of
bullets filled the air. The casualties from this attack and from an almost