A Special Duty (8 page)

From February onwards, it is noticeable from the records that the Storey crew went from flying almost exclusively in Halifax JN888 (Rita) to flying a variety of different aircraft. This may have been organisational as the Squadron now came under 334 Wing, but it is also likely that with a limited number of aircraft, pressure was put on the available crews to man whichever aircraft was serviceable for that night’s operations.
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typical crew’s day, provided they had not been flying that night, would be to rise at 0700, have breakfast, maybe do a bit of laundry and then go to the flight office to see if your crew was down for an operation that night. Engineer Charlie Keen and Wireless Operator Walter Davis usually went out to the aircraft in the morning; Charlie to check everything with the efficient and friendly ground crew, and Walter to conduct his daily inspection, calling on the wireless mechanics if required. These ground crews worked miracles to keep the aircraft fit to fly. After the aircraft checks there would then be time to kill, with perhaps a game of cards, or letters to write home, lunch, and then to the briefing at 1600 to find out the target for that night. The pace would then quicken with flight plans to make, gear to collect and, finally, the walk out to the aircraft. Take-off would be around 1900 and, all being well, the crews would be back at the base between 0230 and 0400 the next morning. Debrief was at 0500, followed by breakfast of poached egg and bread and then the men went to bed, exhausted, at 0600. Another crew would be just waking up and would fly the same aircraft that night.

So it was not in JN888 ‘Rita’, but Halifax BB381 that the Storey crew made their first flight to the northern Italian Alps, with supplies and four agents.
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This was the first night that the Squadron were to operate on Italian targets and they were joined at the briefing by a number of Americans from 62 Squadron, who were about to start supply dropping themselves. The met forecast had given fair spells for northern Italy, but ‘much vicious cloud to get through en-route’. Tom took off at 2020 and flew over the Adriatic at 2000ft. A couple of hours later he started to climb in order to cross the coast, but at 9000ft heavy icing forced him back down to 2000ft. He spotted a break in the cloud and began to climb again but found that icing made it impossible to get above 9000ft. All but two of the ten aircraft that had set out for Italian targets found similar conditions and returned to base with their loads. The crews were not yet familiar with the run up to the Italian Alps, which was tricky from a navigational point of view because of the long haul up the coast over water, and then, once over land, the mountain terrain generated dangerous up currents which threw the aircraft around violently and made the dropping grounds very difficult to spot. Only a small number of operations on Italian targets were successful in the first month, and bad weather hampered operations more generally, meaning many ‘grounded’ days for the Squadron.

Then news came through on the 24
^th
February that they were to operate for the first time over Polish targets, and the competition amongst the crews, who all wanted to be selected for the job, was keen. One of the old Liberators, AL530, piloted by Flight Sergeant Horwood, was dug out of temporary retirement and six aircraft were fitted with overload tanks for the long round-trip to Poland. Eddie Elkington-Smith, ‘pinpoint Elk’, was aboard the Liberator as bomb aimer that night, and, although they reached their target, they were unable to see the ground, even from 2000ft. All the effort of that night – a round trip of ten hours – was for nothing, and Eddie hated the Liberator. “I don’t know why but whenever the Liberator flew they plonked me in as bomb-aimer. I didn’t like it. I hated the damn thing. No operation that I did in the Liberator was successful.”
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In fact all the Polish and Balkan operations failed that night because of bad weather.

Patrick Stradling

(Photo courtesy of Stradling family)

Twenty-three year old Air Gunner Patrick Stradling, from County Clare in Ireland, joined the Storey crew at the end of February, having flown 300 hours since joining 148 Squadron, most of it with Cyril Fortune. He would have continued flying with him except that Fortune had completed his tour of duty and was due some well-earned leave.
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So, at the end of February 1944, the final Storey crew of Tom, Hap, Eddie, Walter and Jim was joined by ‘the last despatcher on Fortune’s Coleen’, Patrick Stradling.

¹
Operations Record Book. Every Squadron kept a record log and a summary log of operations

²
Elevator flaps control the aircraft’s orientation by changing the pitch of the aircraft, i.e. they make the aircraft nose-up or nose-down.

³
Sheared reduction gear.

⁴
Medical Officer 148 Squadron, History of the War for February 1944 (AIR49/223)

⁵
Flight Sergeant Roy Moller and Flight Sergeant Jim Rosebottom.

⁶
MACMIS.

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Mission attached to Tito’s partisans in the Vojvodina region of Yugoslavia (bordering Hungary)

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Albanian Mission headed by Squadron Leader Arthur ‘Andy’ Hands, based (in December 1943) in hills above the northern bank of the River Drin.

⁹
Head of Albanian SLENDER Mission

¹⁰
Let the Rest of the World go by. Music by Ernest R. Ball; lyrics by J. Keirn Brennan, M. Witmark & Sons publisher, 1919.

¹¹
ACOMB, VITAL and FUNNY (dropping grounds in northern Italy)

T
he merciless winter conditions that had arrived over the Balkans in December, and persisted throughout January and February, continued to disrupt Squadron operations into early March. Things would improve in coming months, particularly once the American Dakotas began air-dropping operations, but weather and shortage of aircraft in the spring of 1944 made it difficult for the Squadron to maintain regular supply deliveries. Some areas had higher priority than others and signals from the field were getting tetchy; this from Basil Davidson’s SAVANNA Mission in Yugoslavia: “Now two days since you advised delivery loads in reply to urgent call for support – STOP – Understand your difficulties but am relying on you to send loads on highest – REPEAT – highest priority”, and, “Try show some understanding of workings here and not just keep sending excuses”.
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In northern Greece, the LAPWORTH Mission received no air drops for 115 days between February and June, and Head of Station Major McAdam
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reported that they had been snowed-in for days on end during those harsh months and, despite preparing for reception of aircraft every night with 150 mules standing by, none came, and so eventually stores were ferried to them by mule over the mountains from the GEOFFREY Mission station.
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The Storey crew delivered one of those GEOFFREY loads in early March and the difficulties they had to overcome that night gives some idea of the problem, from both delivery and reception angles. They were in Halifax BB318, one of the older aircraft on the Squadron, their own being unserviceable, and the Daskhori dropping ground was in a deep valley. Tom thought his approach a bit too high and used full flaps to increase the rate of descent, bringing the aircraft down for a successful first run over the target. And then the unthinkable happened. Flying close to stall speed, wheels down and bomb doors open, the hydraulics failed and he couldn’t raise the undercarriage, flaps, or close the bomb doors. The ground was looking awfully close. “Guide me!” Tom called out to the bomb aimer, and Eddie helped him to steer through the pitch-black valley; “Raise your port wing Tommy – there’s a steeple coming up”, while flight engineer Charlie Keen rushed to the emergency hand pump and gradually managed to restore hydraulic pressure.
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They gained height and climbed out of danger, but they still had supplies on board, and so returned to the valley where they found that the reception group, thinking the full load had been dropped, had put out the fires and gone. Mechanical failure at such a critical point forced the crew to confront their worst fears, but each had gained reassurance from the steadiness of his comrades and the dependable conduct of the skipper, whose insistence on procedure and discipline had paid dividends. Walking away from the plane that night, one of the crew turned to Walter, who had a dry sense of humour and never took offence at the jokes, and said: “So, God not quite ready for you yet, Walter?”

It had been a bad night for the crew, but for the Squadron as a whole, poor weather, mechanical failures and the loss of an aircraft had led the wing commander to declare it a “calamitous” one
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. Only three of the twelve crews on operations that night were successful, and before these returning crews could land in the early hours, the runway had to be cleared of debris left behind by a Polish aircraft which had crashed on take-off.
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The worst news of all was that the Botham crew, in Halifax HR660, had failed to return from northern Italy, and although Spitfires from 1435 Squadron were scrambled to do a sea-search up the coast in case they had ditched, no trace was found. When news did begin to come in, it wasn’t good. The aircraft had been hit by flak over Ancona and, with an engine on fire, Flight Lieutenant Botham had turned inland, reached his target, and then baled out the crew, leaving himself and Flying Officer Henry Lancaster, who was on his first operational flight, to stay with the aircraft to the end. Ten airmen had been on board that night; the crew of seven, plus three crew members fresh out from England who had joined the flight to gain operational experience as observers. Five of the crew perished and five survived, becoming prisoners of war.

The only encouraging news to come out of the night was that Flight Lieutenant Reynolds’ Halifax JN896, which had been fitted with the new Rebecca/Eureka ground-to-air-radar system, managed to drop to the GEOFFREY Mission despite no signals having been seen. The Rebecca part of the system was the direction-finding equipment in the aircraft, and the Eureka part a portable ground-based beacon. Delighted with this first success, the Reynolds aircraft headed back to Greece the following night for another trial of the system, but this time the weather and severe icing forced them back early. Nevertheless, it had been shown to work, and this augured well for the success rate of future operations. There was little patience or understanding on the ground for the failure of supply operations over this bleak winter, though, to be fair, much of this was directed at those who ordered and prioritized the air drops rather than the crews themselves. John Mulgan, a British liaison officer with the KIRKSTONE Mission in Greece recalled this period in early 1944, when the men on the ground felt abandoned by those who had sent them into the field with inadequate support, but who nevertheless remained grateful to the crews who tried hard to deliver.

“One night a plane came overhead and circled trying to find us through the cloud, but mist thickened to rain and, finally, we could hear the plane flying away westward. Later, in March, a plane found us. The weather was still dirty with clouds blowing across the moon, but they saw our fires and came down, then lost them again before they could drop the stores. There were high peaks around there and the ground was dangerous. So we waited in the mist and wind, listening to the drone of the plane above the cloud and knowing that they would not leave if possible without finding us again. We waited there for a quarter of an hour hearing the noise of the engine coming close and then disappearing, and thinking each time that perhaps it had been unable to stay and had left, until finally, there was a brief rift in the clouds and out of them down on to the fires came this Halifax, like a friend, and dropped all its stores in two brief circles and then flashed its lamp in farewell. In better times and weather, later on, aeroplanes with stores were more commonplace. This first one was salvation. We knew that we could be all right after this for a month or so, and could stop feeling like forgotten men.”
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It was the Edwards crew who had made that successful drop, stubbornly remaining over the target, a particularly hazardous one in mountain terrain, until a window in the clouds opened up and made a drop possible, but the perseverance and commitment of the Edwards crew was typical. The Storey crew had dropped at the same dropping ground back in December and encountered almost identical conditions of thick cloud right up to the target. Engineer Charlie Keen had taken an astrofix
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two hours in to the flight, and they arrived over the dropping ground at Anatoli on time, but received no reply to the flashed letter of the day and so headed back to the coast to get an accurate pinpoint before returning to try again. This time their flashed signal was answered and, just as the cloud cover began to close in, they spotted the nine fires in a square, as briefed, and swept down through the mist to drop the supplies in three runs. As they roared off into the night, the cloud closed in leaving the area completely obscured once again. John Mulgan wrote his words about the Halifax: “arriving like a friend” in a handwritten memoir that he posted to his wife for safekeeping in March 1945. A clever, sensitive and decent man, he died in an Athens hotel room the following month from a deliberate overdose of morphine. Not all the casualties of war appeared on the official statistics; there were some, like John Mulgan, whose peace of mind was not restored when the struggle drew to a close.