Authors: Martin Bowman
Tags: #Bisac Code 1: HIS027140
On 11/12 May 429 bombers of the Main Force made attacks on Bourg-Leopold, Hasselt and Louvain in Belgium. The target for 190 Lancasters and eight Mosquitoes of 5 Group was a former Belgian
Gendarmerie
barracks at Leopoldsburg (Flemish)/Bourg-Leopold (French), which was being used to accommodate 10,000 SS
Panzer
troops who awaited the Allied invasion forces. The weather was bad with low cloud and poor visibility and a serious error was made with the broadcast winds. As a result, the aircraft were late over the target area and consequently flare-dropping was scattered and provided no adequate illumination. An Oboe Mosquito flown by Flight Lieutenants Burt and Curtis of 109 Squadron dropped a yellow marker. The Mosquito marking force of 627 Squadron arrived late over the target with the result that the Oboe proximity marker was seen by only one of the marking aircraft and the proximity marker, unfortunately, seemed to burn out very quickly. Flare dropping was scattered and did not provide adequate illumination of the target. Haze and up to 3/10ths cloud conditions hampered the marking of the target. The ‘Marking Leader’ then asked the ‘Master Bomber’ if he could drop ‘Red Spot Fires’ as a guide for the flare force. The Master Bomber agreed and ‘RSFs’ went down at 00.24 hours in the estimated vicinity of the target. Unfortunately, the Main Force started to bomb this red spot fire immediately it went down and half of the Main Force bombed this. The result of this was that the five Mosquitoes of 627 Squadron returned to Woodhall Spa with their bombs and were unable to mark the target. Immediately the ‘Master Bomber’ ordered ‘Stop Bombing’, as he realised it was impossible to identify the target but VHF was very poor, particularly on Channel ‘B’ and the Germans had jammed Channel ‘A’. Only half the Main Force received the ‘Stop Bombing’ instruction and ninety-four Lancasters bombed the target. At 00.34 hours a wireless message, ‘Return to base’ was sent out to all crews.
The following night, 12/13 May, while formations of the Main Force visited the railway yards at Louvain and Hasselt, twenty-two Mosquitoes of 8 Group attempted to block the Kiel Canal by laying mines from low level. Intelligence sources said that the flak defences on part of the canal had been removed. One of the 692 Squadron crews who took part was Canadian pilot Terry Goodwin
DFC
DFM
and his navigator Hugh Hay
DFC
. Goodwin recalls:
First thing on 12 May we were told to do some low-level flying on the Great Ouse canal that was not too far away. We were told nothing else except we would be dropping something from 50ft. The briefing itself later in the day was from a high level. AVM Bennett was there as was his flak expert, the ‘brown job’ [British Soldier]. It was explained that Jerry kept his ‘E’ boats (fast motor torpedo boats armed with light flak) in the Baltic instead of the North Sea or the Channel so that they could not easily be attacked. They could create havoc amongst an invasion fleet. The Navy and the Air Force had mined all the coastal waters around the north Danish coast leaving only a small channel open. This had just been closed. The only route out of the Baltic to the North Sea was through the Kiel Canal. Our job was to drop anti-shipping mines in to the canal. The mines would fit into our large bomb bays. The proper time for attack was almanac dawn we were told. Flares would be dropped overhead and other Mossies with cannon (we had no guns on ours) would beat-up the gun positions. We would drop the mines from 50ft into the relatively narrow channel. The ‘brown job’ explained where the flak was, mostly at both ends of the canal, but also every so often along the canal itself. There was a gap, so he said, just east of the railway bridge. This was where we would drop. Privately I was not optimistic. The briefing was over. Things did not quite happen the way they were planed. Almanac dawn to a night bomber pilot is like being in Piccadilly Circus with your pants down. Then I questioned the ‘brown job’ (whom by now I really respected) about the position of the guns along the canal. It appeared they were every 200 metres or so. If nothing else, Jerry was methodical. There should be a gun right at the drop zone. ‘Brown job’ said they could not see it in the photos. I was dubious.
We took off to reach the coast at dawn as briefed. There were no markers and no flares (it was too bright for them to have done any good), no apparent action from anyone beating-up the flak positions. Our aircraft of course had no guns so we couldn’t do it. We stepped down as briefed and then suddenly saw the railway bridge. I did not feel confident of making the run and swung to the right crossing the south end of the bridge. A light flak opened up. It was just pitiful. There was a balloon inflated but not up (no mention of this in the briefing). I swung south and then back north to the drop zone. It was daylight though the sun was not up yet. On the north side of the canal between the bridge and us was a ship, larger than a minesweeper, tied up in a passing bay. Although lightly armed, it did not fire at us; Live and let Live? I turned left in a large circle, came back to the canal and started the run. The first gun missed but the second one, the one that ‘was not there’ was sure putting out. From a distance light flak and its tracers look lazy and decorative. Up close, coming right at you, NO. And for every tracer there are likely to be six shells that you don’t see. I acquired great respect for the army co-op pilots who looked down the throats of such cannon every day.
It seemed an eternity for Hugh Hay, the navigator/bomb aimer, to get rid of the mine, then a sharp turn left as more guns opened up on me. The ‘not there’ gun followed us and I shrank between the trees and hedgerows as its shots went overhead. We did get home. No.692 Squadron had sent out twelve aircraft, we got twelve back. The canal was closed for 2-3-weeks. There were three DSOs and ten DFCs awarded for this operation. Hugh got his well deserved DSO.
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We heard later that twenty-one of Jerry’s ‘back room’ boys had tried to salvage one of the mines and disarm it. They were not successful. It did its job and took all of them with it when it went off.
No.5 Group was now used exclusively in support of the bombing campaign against interdiction targets for Operation Overlord, as Flight Lieutenant Benny Goodman
DFC
recounts:
1 June 1944 was the same as any other day at Woodhall Spa. Bill and I walked to the Flights after breakfast, found that we were on the Battle Order and went to the dispersal and tested G-George. We then strolled to the Operations Room and were told that the target was to be the marshalling yard at Saumur. The day proceeded normally, with detailed briefing about the target and a close examination of maps and photographs. At the end of the afternoon we attended the AOC’s broadcast link-up with the COs of all squadrons participating, then made ready to go. The operation was a copybook 5 Group attack, with no alarms and excursions. After landing, we switched off everything and climbed out as we had done so often before. G-George stood black and silent; the ground crew moved forward to ask if all was well; it was a lovely summer night. After debriefing we ate the usual bacon and eggs and went to bed. Maybe tomorrow there would be a stand-down for us. We did not know it, but in fact our tour was over. We had flown together against Fortress Europe thirty-eight times. Soon we would be instructors again and soon our work in 5 Group would be recognised by the award of a Bar to the DFC to each of us. Paradoxically, however, Bill and I would never fly together again.
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On the night of 4/5 June, while 243 heavies and sixteen Mosquitoes bombed coastal batteries in the Pas de Calais, six Mosquitoes went to Argentan and twenty more flew to Cologne. Flight Lieutenant John E.L. Gover
DFC
and Flying Officer Edward Talbot
DFC
of 692 Squadron were one of the crews that set out for Cologne and carried a ‘Cookie’ in the bomb bay. Gover recalls:
As was not uncommon, we were flying west to gain height before turning east. Pressures and temperatures were normal when, at about 5,000ft and somewhere near Oxford, my port engine stopped without warning. Then it came on again, stopped again, came on again and then finally stopped. Normally, with engine failure, one switched off the bad engine and feathered the prop so as to reduce drag. I did not want to do this, in case it came on again. If I feathered it, it could not possibly have come on again. I was praying devoutly that it would. The result was, I lost height more quickly than I would if I had feathered it. A Mosquito would fly quite happily on one engine; but not loaded with 600 gallons of petrol and a 4,000lb bomb. It was unsafe to jettison a blast bomb below 4,000ft. When my engine failed, I was high enough to have done it safely enough for myself but hardly safely enough for anybody who might be on the ground underneath. I turned east in the hope that I could make the coast and jettison the bomb into the sea. After a while I saw the lights of a flare path coming up [Warboys], so I decided to try and do a wheels-up landing. However, I had now lost too much height and, coming in on the approach at 155 mph, hit the ground. There was a half moon, which enabled me just to see the ground coming up. I switched off both engines and pulled back on the stick. The 4,000lb bomb was very dangerous in that it was all explosive with a very thin casing and it was liable to go off even if it was not fused. However, it didn’t go off. All I remember was a most tremendous jolt and when I came to I was in a muddy field looking for my helmet, of all things! The aircraft had broken up and caught fire and, although I did not know it at the time, the 4,000lb bomb had just rolled away.
As a pilot, I had a Sutton harness which consisted of four straps coming up over one’s legs and down over one’s shoulders. If this equipment was locked, the pilot stayed with the aircraft. I did lock it, although I thought it was useless to do so; in fact it saved my life. Navigators only had a body belt, which meant my poor navigator’s head went straight through the instrument panel and he was killed. This was hardly fair, as he was a married man with two children whereas I was single at the time. As a result of this accident, navigators were provided with Sutton harnesses in the same way as pilots, but it was too late to save poor Ted. I imagine the reason navigators were only provided with body belts before this accident was because they had to leave their seats to go to the nose of the aircraft to drop the bombs, but they could easily get out of a Sutton harness, so it seems a poor reason. Of course, there was an enquiry into the accident, but both engines were burnt out, so it was impossible to see what had caused the flow of petrol to stop. Subsequently, the same thing happened to somebody else on another squadron, but he jettisoned his bomb too low and blew himself up. The next time the same thing happened, it was to somebody in my own squadron, but he was only testing his aircraft by day with no bomb aboard. The result was that he made a successful single-engine landing, the fault was found and put right; and we had no further trouble. I had suffered second-degree burns and had to go to hospital and it wasn’t until 10 August that I went back on operations. No prizes for guessing the target: Berlin!
In the run up to D-Day an 8 Group weather report by Pilot Officer Joe Patient and Pilot Officer Norry Gilroy, a 1409 Met Flight crew, delayed the Normandy invasion by one day and D-Day finally went ahead on 6 June. Four Mosquito crews in 627 Squadron at Woodhall Spa could pat themselves on the back for helping to remove one of the American objectives on D-Day, as Benny Goodman relates:
The Americans were nervous about the long-range heavy gun battery at St. Martin de Varreville behind what was to be Utah beach. This presented a threat to Allied shipping approaching Normandy and also to the troops landing on Utah beach. It was decided that 5 Group would attack this precision target, so on the night of 28/29 May, a force of sixty-four Lancasters, led by a flare force from 83 and 97 Lancaster Pathfinder Squadrons and four Mosquitoes of 627 Squadron, flew to St. Martin de Varreville. The flare force identified the gun battery on their H
2
S sets and laid a carpet of flares over the target. At Zero Hour minus 5 minutes, the Mosquitoes roared in at 2,000ft and identified the gun battery visually. The first pilot to see the target called, “Tally Ho” on his VHF radio to warn his companions to keep out of the way and then proceeded to dive at the gun, releasing a red TI at the appropriate point in the dive. His companions followed suit, making individual dives on the battery and creating a box of red TIs around it.
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The Master Bomber now called in the Main Force, with each aircraft carrying several 1,000lb armour-piercing bombs and the target was obliterated. On 6 June the 101st Airborne Division landed behind Utah beach as planned, but amid a certain amount of confusion. However, by 06.00 hours Major General Maxwell Taylor had mustered one sixth of his force and with this he captured the exits from Utah Beach. An element of the 502nd Regiment had orders to overrun the battery and to crush the garrison if necessary. Captain Frank Lilleyman, the first US soldier to land in Normandy on D-Day, reconnoitred the battery and discovered that it had been abandoned, as a result of the 5 Group bombing attack on 28/29 May. A document captured soon afterwards revealed that the Officer Commanding,
Heer Kust Artillerie Regiment 1261
, reported the bombing attack had begun at 00.15 hours, parachute flares having been dropped first in great numbers. He said that the battery had been hit ‘with uncanny accuracy’, approximately 100 bombs of the heaviest calibre having been dropped in addition to several hundred smaller ones. Very large bombs had made several direct hits on the gun casement and it had burst open and collapsed. As a result of the destruction caused by the attack he had cleared the remainder of the battery out of the position into three farms in the Mesier area.
On the night of 8/9 June when 455 heavies and twenty-eight Mosquitoes attacked railways in France to prevent German reinforcements from the south reaching Normandy three Lancasters were lost. The first 12,00lb Tallboy bombs developed by Barnes Wallis were dropped by 617 Squadron on a railway tunnel near Saumur, 125 miles south of the battle area. During the first delivery of Tallboys to Woodhall Spa the M/T drivers pulled up alongside 627 Squadron’s dispersals to enquire the way to the bomb dump. On seeing the Mosquitoes one of the drivers was heard to say, “I hope you don’t think you can put these bloody great things in Mossies do you?” No.627 Squadron’s targets were Pontaubault railway junction and Rennes marshalling yards. The Mosquito flown by 30-year old Flight Lieutenant Harry Steere
DFM
and Flying Officer K.W. ‘Windy’ Gale
RAAF
failed to return. ‘Bill’ Steere was a former ‘Halton Brat’ who had joined the RAF in 1930. By 1940 he was a flight sergeant flying Spitfires on 19 Squadron and he shared in the squadron’s first victory on 11 May. In June he was awarded the DFM and he saw further action during the Battle of Britain. By late November he had been credited with a total of six German aircraft shot down and five shared destroyed as well as two probables. He was commissioned in 1941 and he joined 627 Squadron in November 1943 after a spell as an instructor. Steere was last heard telling his Australian navigator to “Get out of this as quickly as possible” after they were hit and on fire near St. Erblon. Both men died and they were buried at Orgeres. Steere’s award of a DFC was gazetted later that month.