Authors: Martin Bowman
Tags: #Bisac Code 1: HIS027140
On our return we were once again met by the Base Commander, who greeted us with “Well, Goodman, what do you think of this low-level stuff then?” “Not much, Sir,” was Benny’s heartfelt reply. Nevertheless, from then on all our operational flying was at low level. A day or two later we were actually invited to visit Petwood to hear a lecture by Cheshire on Low Level Navigation at Night. “It’s simple,” he said, “You fly along, cross a river and get a pinpoint. Later on you cross another river, get another pinpoint, find the wind between the two and you’ve got it made”. I couldn’t help thinking it was not quite as simple as all that.
Operating from Lossiemouth on 28 April eight Mosquitoes of 627 Squadron crossed the North Sea to Norway to drop their markers on a factory target at Oslo-Kjeller airfield for fifty-one Lancasters of 5 Group. Visibility was clear and notably Flying Officer James Saint-Smith
RAAF DFM
and Flying Officer Geoffrey Heath
RAAF DFM
in O-Orange dropped their markers on the roof from 100ft.
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The bombing was accurate and no aircraft were lost. On 29/30 April sixty-eight Lancasters and five Mosquito markers of 627 Squadron sortied to an explosives factory at St. Médard-en-Jalles near Bordeaux where 24 hours earlier only twenty-six of the eighty-eight Lancasters despatched had bombed because of haze and smoke started by fires in woods nearby. This time the Lancasters carried out concentrated bombing of the factory and all aircraft returned safely. Meanwhile, a further five Mosquitoes of 627 Squadron marked the Michelin tyre factory at Clermont Ferrand for fifty-four Lancasters of 5 Group who bombed accurately and again without loss.
On 1/2 May Bomber Command mounted six major attacks on rail and aviation targets in France and 627 Squadron provided twelve Mosquito markers for two of the raids. Two sets of four Mosquitoes each marked the aircraft assembly factory and an explosives factory at Toulouse for 131 Lancasters of 5 Group and four more Mosquitoes marked another target at Tours. Squadron Leader Norman McKenzie
DFC
, who with his navigator, Pilot Officer Norman Denholm, who led four Mosquitoes against the Tours assembly plant, recalls:
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At Toulouse the Germans were using four large buildings (two pairs at right angles to each other) for the repair and overhaul of tank and aircraft engines, with much of Blagnac airfield having storage dumps dispersed around it. The aiming point for this raid was at the apex of lines drawn from the sides of the main buildings as they met at right angels. Intelligence briefing was ‘Light flak in the area’. That must have been the understatement of the month! Or maybe they hadn’t realised that German forces pulling out of Italy had to go somewhere. Certainly someone had decided that Toulouse was a good place to be at, particularly if you were a flak unit. Arriving over the target, flares from the heavy pathfinders burst over us, as arranged, illuminating the area in almost daylight conditions, to enable us to identify and mark the aiming point. But it also made it very easy for the defences to pick out our squadron aircraft going round in circles just above them. I had gone into the nose of the aircraft to help identify the marking point and, as was our normal practice, the first member of our team to spot the aiming point would call out, “Tally Ho” on VHF to indicate that he was going in to mark. On this occasion it was ourselves. Immediately after locating the target I pulled myself back into my seat, having fused the markers, then to call out the heights to Norman as we went down our dive. I had never experienced so much hostility before! The flak was coming at us from all directions, spiralling around us, when suddenly there was a great crash within the cockpit and within a second I could not see Norman for smoke. We were near the bottom of our dive by this time and before I could ask him if he was OK I could feel that we were pulling out. As we climbed and turned to go round I put my head into the ‘blister’ to see where the marker was for accuracy but it was nowhere to be found. “Norman, I can’t see the marker”, Norman replied, “We’ve still got it. I couldn’t see for smoke to drop it. We’ll have to go round again,” said Norman. One hammering had been sufficient but we had to be gluttons for punishment, or so it seemed. This time we didn’t have to look for the aiming point, we knew where it was. Down we went, for a second time; 3,000ft, 2,500, 2,000, 1,500, 1,000, 900, 800, 700, 600, 500, marker gone! The treatment was as before, they obviously didn’t like us one bit and were throwing everything up to prove it. This time the marker went down and was assessed for accuracy by another of our aircraft and reported to the controller, a pathfinder in the heavy force sitting above us.
The next stage in the procedure was for our squadron aircraft to circle the target during the bombing period in case the markers became covered up or extinguished, or in the event of the Germans lighting a spoof marker some way off. In either of these events, the target would have to be remarked, or backed up. The bombing took some considerable time on this target, but eventually we were able to head for home. When we tried to set course on the repeater compass we discovered that it was totally u/s and we had to revert to the magnetic compass. Smoke was issuing from the rear of the fuselage with a strong electrical insulation odour about it, and we were to find out later that the master compass had received a direct hit, hence no joy from the repeater. Our intercom had also been put out of action. A shell had gone through the port wing between the inner and outer tanks, damaging a rib. Further damage had been done to the fin and various other parts of the aircraft, then when we got back to base we found that whatever had come in through the cockpit had struck the hydraulic control mounting block, severely bending it, and preventing us from lowering the flaps. Since this was a diecast aluminium block we decided that a little encouragement might persuade the control to operate. The axe was the nearest tool to a hammer on board and after a number of well placed strokes the lever started to go down, firstly giving us 15°, then full flap on the final approach. Touching down at Woodhall at 04.35 our flying time from the advance base at Tangmere had been 5 hours and 10 minutes, one of our longest trips.
Benny Goodman continues:
1 May was another first for Bill and me. The target was an engineering works outside Tours: the Usine Lictard works. We air-tested our faithful Wooden Wonder in the morning and then settled down to study maps of the Tours area and photographs of the target itself. The factory had been bombed a few days earlier by 8th Air Force B-17s, but the photographs showed that nearly all the bombs had fallen in the surrounding fields. To drop bombs a few hundred yards from the aiming point might be good enough on a large area, but on a pinpoint target like a factory the bombs had to be ‘on the button’. We took off in the late evening and headed for France, climbing rapidly to 25,000ft. The PFF Lancasters of 83 and 97 Squadrons had taken off about an hour before us and were to drop a yellow target indicator 10 miles from Tours, from which the four low-level marker aircraft would set course accurately for the target area. Having dropped the yellow indicator for us, the Lancasters would head directly to the target, identify it on H
2
S and discharge hundreds of illuminating flares above it. As Bill and I approached the final turning point, losing height steadily, the yellow TI suddenly cascaded down ahead of us. So far, so good. We flew over the TI and headed for the target. Approaching Tours a great carpet of light suddenly spread out in front of us; we lost more height and soon we were under the marker at 1,500ft and it was as bright as day. If a fighter appeared now, we would be dead ducks and if there was light flak in the area we would certainly have a very tough time. Nothing happened. We circled around and suddenly I saw the factory close by. I immediately pressed the transmit button on my VHF and called “Pen-nib Three Seven, Tally Ho”. This was the laid-down method of informing the other marker pilots that the target had been found; they now withdrew from the illuminated area to give me room to manoeuvre and make my dive onto the factory.
I circled around the works, losing speed and positioning the Mosquito for the dive, then opened the bomb doors and pressed the control column gently forward. Our speed increased and the target leapt up towards us, filling the windscreen. At about 500ft I pressed the bomb release button and there was a slight jerk as the four spot-fires left their slips. I continued in the dive for another couple of seconds, selected bomb doors closed and turned sharply to the left in order to cheek our results. There was a red glow among the factory buildings and in fact the spots had fallen through the glass roof of a machine shop. This was splendid from my point of view, I had marked the target accurately, but as the spot fires were inside the machine shop they could not be seen clearly by the Main Force crews, now trundling towards Tours. Marker Leader (Roy Elliott) flew over the works and called in the next marker pilot to lay his red indicators in the yard alongside the machine shop. This was done. Marker Leader then called the Controller and told him that the target had been marked successfully. The Controller broadcast to the Main Force on W/T and VHF to bomb the clump of red spots and this was done. The marking had taken less than five minutes, from my ‘Tally Ho’ to Roy Elliott’s confirmation to the Controller that the target was ready for Main Force action. The low-level marking technique had been vindicated once more and the target was flattened.
During May-June Bomber Command was, apart from three major raids against German cities towards the end of May, fully committed to destroying the
Wehrmacht
’s infrastructure in France and bomber losses were relatively light. One exception, however, was on 3/4 May when Bomber Command attacked a Panzer depot and training centre at Mailly-le-Camp near Epernay to the east of Paris, about 50 miles south of Rheims, which was reported to house up to 10,000 Wehrmacht troops.
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A total of 346 Lancasters and fourteen Mosquitoes of 1 and 5 Groups and two Pathfinder Mosquitoes of 617 Squadron (one flown by Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire, the ‘Marker Leader’) were despatched. Flight Lieutenant Benny Goodman
DFC
and Flight Lieutenant Bill Hickox
DFC
of 627 Squadron flew on the Mailly Le Camp operation. Goodman recalls:
Cheshire was to lead the low-level marker aircraft and eight Mosquitoes of 627 Squadron were to be at a slightly higher level and were to dive bomb the light-flak positions which were known to be around this depot. The raid was timed to begin at 0001 hours, when all good troops should be in bed. The Mosquito force arrived over Mailly, 5 minutes before zero hour as briefed. Although the target was marked accurately and Cheshire passed the order to bomb, confusion occurred. The first wave did not receive instructions and began to orbit the target. This was fatal and the German night-fighters moved in and began to shoot down the Lancasters. Eventually the situation was sorted out and bombs began to crash down unto the depot. From our worm’s eye view, Bill and I could see bomber after bomber coming down in flames towards us. We had a scary time as we dived on the light-flak batteries, dropped our bombs singly on them, avoided light flak and burning Lancasters and contrived to keep ourselves out of harm’s way. When our fourth bomb had gone I called Marker Leader and was told to go home. Bill gave me a course to steer for the French coast and I should have climbed to 25,000ft but because of the mayhem in the target area I stayed at low level. All went well for a few minutes and then a searchlight shone directly on us, followed immediately by two or three more. Light-flak batteries opened up and the pretty blue, red, green and white tracery associated with light AA fire came shooting up the beams and exploded all around us.
We were at 500ft and I did not dare to lose height, nor could I climb because this would have been a ‘gift’ to the German gunners. With Bill’s exhortation ‘watch your instruments’ ringing in my ears I turned steeply to port through 30°, levelled out for a few seconds, then rolled into a steep turn to starboard and repeated the performance. Although we were in searchlights and flak for quite a long time, we were not being held by any one light or being shot at by any one gun for very long and we zig-zagged our way steadily towards the coast. It was a tense time for us and we did not speak. We could hear the explosions around us from light AA shells but incredibly, were not hit. Deliverance came eventually as we breasted a low hill and ahead of us lay the sea. Now we were treated to a rare sight. The final group of searchlights was shining through the trees on top of the hill we had just passed and the beams were actually above and lighting us on our way. We roared along a river estuary, below the level of the lighthouse at Le Treport and then were away over the ‘drink’ and climbing to safety,
home and bed.
The Mosquito crew had been lucky. For the heavies it was a different story.
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On the night of 9/10 May bombing attacks were carried out on coastal gun batteries in the Pas de Calais area and a small ball-bearing factory at Annecy while fifty-six Lancasters and Mosquitoes of 5 Group attacked the Gnome & Rhône factory and another factory nearby at Gennevilliers in Paris. No.627 Squadron despatched four Mosquito markers on the Annecy operation and four more to Gennevilliers. Flying Officer James Saint-Smith
RAAF DFM
and Flying Officer Geoffrey Heath
RAAF DFM
in O-Orange dive bombed from 5,800ft to 1,000ft to release spot flares, which were assessed at 300 yards south of the aiming point. O-Orange returned with bricks from the works chimney embedded in the starboard wing-tip, much to the delight of the two Australians who claimed them as souvenirs, leaving the ground crew to replace the wingtip. A month later, on 29 June, O-Orange and Saint-Smith and Heath failed to return from the Squadron’s first daylight operation, to Beauvoir. While flying over a V-1 site a newly launched V-1 exploded prematurely and destroyed the Mosquito.
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