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    The Path Finder Force
    The Path Finder Force
    The Path Finder Force
    Ebook539 pages7 hours

    The Path Finder Force

    By Martin W. Bowman

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    Charged with the formidable task of locating and marking German targets for attack by the main force of Bomber Command, the Path Finder Force - 8 (PFF) Group and those in 5 Group - was perhaps the most experienced and highly trained elite group created within the Royal Air Force during World War II. Its aircrew members were almost entirely volunteers and despite the terrifying odds against any individual (or complete crew) ever completing the sixty-sorties tour of operations with the PFF, the most feared punishment' was to forfeit their coveted Path Finder wings and be posted away to other units.This remarkable evocation of a remarkable force is made up largely of narrative and photographs from the men who flew with or were an integral part of the PFF. They alone are best qualified to recount the Path Finder story.While the subject matter herein largely covers the four-engined Stirlings, Halifaxes and Lancasters and twin-engined Mosquitoes of 8 (PFF) Group, the Path Finding techniques used by 5 Group are not forgotten and there are two chapters detailing the work of the Oboe Mosquitoes and other markers in support of the night and day Main Force raids on German and Italian cities and individual targets in the Reich.This book is a fitting tribute to the PFF and in particular, to the crews who failed to return from the PFF's many operations.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 30, 2016
    ISBN9781473881167
    The Path Finder Force
    Author

    Martin W. Bowman

    Martin Bowman is one of Britain's leading aviation authors and has written a great deal of books focussing on aspects of Second World War aviation history. He lives in Norwich in Norfolk. He is the author of many Pen and Sword Aviation titles, including all releases in the exhaustive Air War D-Day and Air War Market Garden series.

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      Book preview

      The Path Finder Force - Martin W. Bowman

      First Published in Great Britain in 2016 by

      Pen & Sword Aviation

      an imprint of

      Pen & Sword Books Ltd

      47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS

      Copyright © Pen & Sword Books 2016

      ISBN: 9781473837713.

      PDF ISBN: 9781473881174.

      EPUB ISBN: 9781473881167.

      PRC ISBN: 9781473881150.

      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.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

      any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying,

      recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

      permission from the Publisher in writing.

      Typeset in 10/12pt Palatino

      by GMS Enterprises PE3 8QQ

      Printed and bound in England by

      CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

      Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword

      Aviation, Pen & Sword Family History, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword

      Military, Pen & Sword Discovery, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe

      True Crime, Wharncliffe Transport, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword

      Military Classics, Leo Cooper, The Praetorian Press, Remember When,

      Seaforth Publishing and Frontline Publishing.

      For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

      PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED

      47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

      E-mail: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk

      Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

      Contents

      PreludeLAC Leslie Halward

      Chapter 1.We Light The Way

      Chapter 2.The Man For The Job

      Wing Commander Bill Anderson OBE DFC AFC

      Chapter 3.Gamekeeper Turned Poacher

      Chapter 4.The Battle of the Ruhr

      Chapter 5.Operation ‘Bellicose’

      Chapter 6.Peenemünde, or the Bashing of the Boffins

      Wing Commander Bill Anderson OBE DFC AFC

      Chapter 7.‘The King of the Path Finders’

      Chapter 8.‘We can wreck Berlin from end to end.’

      Chapter 9.. Masters of Ceremonies

      Chapter 10.Despite The Elements

      Frank Leatherdale DFC

      Chapter 11.‘You Will Go Back!

      Chapter 12.‘Manna’

      Appendix PFF Order of Battle

      Acknowledgments

      figure

      Squadron Leader Frank Leatherdale DFC collection

      Prelude

      On the night of 14 November 1940 the Luftwaffe devastated the city centre of Coventry. Plans of the large-scale attack were known in advance because of Ultra intelligence but the knowledge had to be kept secret from the Germans so no additional measures were taken to repel the raid. The raid was the most severe to hit Coventry during the war. It was carried out by 515 German bombers of Luftflotte 3 and the pathfinders of Kampfgruppe 100. The attack, code-named Operation ‘Mondscheinsonate’ (‘Moonlight Sonata’), was intended to destroy Coventry’s factories and industrial infrastructure, although it was clear that damage to the rest of the city, including monuments and residential areas, would be considerable. At around 2000 hours Coventry Cathedral (dedicated to Saint Michael) was set on fire for the first time. The volunteer fire-fighters managed to put out the first fire but other direct hits followed and soon new fires in the cathedral, accelerated by firestorm, were out of control. During the same period, fires were started in nearly every street in the city centre. An estimated 568 people were killed in the raid with another 863 badly injured and 393 sustaining lesser injuries.

      Faced with exactly the same problems as the RAF, the Luftwaffe had developed radio aids that were widely used during The Blitz of 1940/41. Lacking enough equipment to install in all their aircraft, a single experimental group, Kampfgruppe 100, was given all available receivers and trained extensively on their use. KGr 100 would fly over their target using these systems and drop flares, which the following aircraft would then bomb on. On rare occasions KGr 100 was used as a pure bombing force, demonstrating the ability to drop bombs within 150 yards of their targets in any weather. The KGr 100 unit itself would, in mid-December 1941, be redesignated I.Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 100, as the basis for a new Luftwaffe bomber wing, or Kampfgeschwader (literally ‘battle formation’) that bore the same unit number.

      ‘Dim as muck!’ Joe said, chuckling and shaking his blond curls.

      ‘I gave her half a dollar for a packet of ‘Players’, a box of matches and a bar of chocolate and she gave me one-and-tuppence back! She's a piece of cake!’ After that, in the NAAFI, the boys used to wait to be served by Daisy. She didn't always make a mistake, of course and when she did it wasn't always in the boys' favour. (A shout very quickly went up when that happened!) But quite a few of them got away with a copper or two here and there and one was lucky enough to be given change out of a pound note when he had handed over only a ten shilling one. Daisy was too easy. A piece of cake.

      Daisy was about 35, small, dark, with big, innocent, cow-like eyes and big, rather prominent teeth which she showed at all times in a wide and vacant smile. She was always harassed and bewildered; always, with little shuffling steps, darting about behind the long counter, more often than not in the wrong direction, falling over things and bumping into the other girls; always untidy, as if she had dressed hurriedly in utter darkness, hat awry, strands of dank black hair sticking out from under it, collar rumpled, overall never completely buttoned; always mumbling to herself, counting and recounting the money she received and the money she handed back; always unsure of herself, always in a whirl, a maze, like a lost dog among a crowd of shouting strangers; and always smiling that big, soft smile of hers and lifting those big, soft, cow-like eyes to each airman's face in a long look that bordered on adoration.

      The boys ragged her unmercifully. They asked for things they knew the NAAFI didn't stock. One of them would order four teas and then, when she had filled the cups, change the order to one tea, a coffee, a beer and a glass of fizzy lemonade. Half a dozen of them would all, at the same time, shout for something different, making believe they were in a great hurry, urging her to get a jerk on, telling her she was likely, with her dilly-dallying, to get them into serious trouble, confusing the poor girl even more than she was normally confused and getting a great deal of amusement out of it all.

      No one could blame them. There wasn't much to amuse the five or six hundred men who had been thrown together on this west coast airfield ten miles or so from the nearest one-cinema town. Daisy didn't blame them. Ignorant of the fact that they were making fun of her she wasn't aware that there was anything to blame them for.

      One Saturday evening when most of the boys were in town or working late and the NAAFI was fairly quiet I stood at the counter sipping tea and chatting to Daisy. I asked her how long she had been in this place.

      ‘It'll soon be two years now’ she said.

      I almost dropped the cup. ‘Good Lord!’ I said. ‘Two years? I haven't been here two months yet and I've had more than enough of it. Give me somewhere within reach of civilization! What do you do in your time off?’

      She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I have half a day off a week’ she said. ‘In the summer, on days like to-day, I usually go for a walk along the beach. I like the sea. I could look at the sea for hours. I do sometimes. Just look at it. I don't think of anything special. It might seem funny to you.’

      ‘You have leave of course?’ She nodded. ‘You go home then, I suppose?’

      ‘No’ she said.

      ‘No?’

      ‘I haven't got a home’ she said simply. ‘I had a home. In Coventry.’

      ‘The Blitz?’

      ‘The second one’. I was lucky. Only a broken arm. All the rest, Mum and Dad, my younger sister and her baby......’

      ‘All killed?’

      ‘All killed’ she said.

      She had not taken her big, innocent eyes from my face. ‘I didn't know what to do,’ she said. ‘I wanted to do something. I had to do something, didn't I! I wanted to help with bombs and aeroplanes, do something towards sending them out over Germany. They wouldn't have me in the WAAF. So I went to the NAAFI people and asked them to send me to an airfield and I came here. I wanted to be where I could see the bombers go off loaded and come back empty. I sit at my bedroom window and watch them. I sit waiting for hours sometimes.’

      She was looking away from me now and I knew she was remembering, living again that awful night in Coventry when in a few terrible hours all she loved was so cruelly snatched away from her. I didn't say anything.

      She turned her eyes on me. ‘I love the boys. All of them. They're doing such good work. It's a honour’ - she sounded the ‘h’ in honour - ‘It's an honour to serve them. You know what the NAAFI motto says? Servitor Servientium. It means something like 'We Serve those who Serve.' I don't suppose I shall ever get a George Medal or anything,’ she said, with a childlike smile.

      ‘No, you won't get a George Medal or anything,’ I said.

      ‘I don't care about that’ she said. ‘I don't care about being stuck in this place, or anything. I'm happy.’

      And I knew she was, in her way, if one can be happy and bitter and full of hate and experience a savage delight at seeing bombers emptied of their load returning at dawn, all at the same time. And I saw then into her poor harassed mind and realized why she was a piece of cake; and why, whenever she served an airman she smiled that big, soft smile of hers and lifted those big, soft, cow-like eyes to his face in a long look that bordered on adoration.

      LAC Leslie Halward ¹

      Endnotes Prelude

      1Quoted in Slipstream: A Royal Air Force Anthology (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1946).

      Chapter 1

      We Light The Way

      ²

      ‘One more thing. There will be more than a thousand aircraft on the target.’ The climax was terrific and in a moment everyone was cheering and laughing. So this was IT. This was what we had been waiting for so long. The Hun had asked for it. Rotterdam, Coventry, London and now, by God, he was going to get it.’

      Edward William‘Bill’ Anderson, 9 Squadron navigator at Honington, Cologne raid 30/31 May 1942. Anderson was a schoolmaster in peacetime and joined the RAF in 1940 as a Pilot Officer in administration. The death of an air crew friend led him to volunteer for flying and, despite ‘advancing age’ and a suspect right eye, he managed to pass on to training in Canada and then on to bomber operations. He soon discovered another inherent ‘weakness’ - he was air-sick every time he flew. After two further raids, on Essen, he was sent to Bomber Command Headquarters at High Wycombe to work on the Navigation staff.

      According to Wing Commander Dr. Roland Henry Winfield DFC AFC, ‘7 Squadron and 27 Squadron were the two finest squadrons I ever flew on operations with; finest because they were the most deadly instruments of war.’ Winfield was born on 20 December 1910 and was educated at Shrewsbury School and Cambridge and Edinburgh Universities. After house appointments he worked as a ship’s doctor and in general practice. He joined the RAF in June 1939 and learnt to fly before the exigencies of war made this impossible for medical officers. He went to France in 1939 and after the evacuation in 1940 was posted to West Raynham. Shortly after he was appointed chief assistant to Dr. B. H. C. Matthews, the consultant in applied physiology and went to the RAF Physiology Laboratory which was concerned with problems of aviation physiology. In 1941 Winfield took over as senior service officer and remained on the staff at Farnborough until he was demobilized. He was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1942. The DFC followed in 1944. By flying on bombing operations Wing Commander Winfield became aware of many matters not obvious to the laboratory worker, nor to the non-operational pilot and his significant contribution was to weigh up service problems and communicate them to the laboratory scientists. He made 98 flights against the enemy with the aircrew of Bomber Command.

      ‘I was lucky all along the line with the Stirlings of 7 Squadron at Oakington in Cambridgeshire [which had been the first squadron in the RAF to receive the Stirling four-engined bomber, in August 1940] and within half-an-hour of arriving at the station I was made acutely aware of this when I met the squadron commander, Wing Commander H. R. Graham DSO. By the end of the war, there were at most a mere handful, less than a dozen, still living of those who formed the founder members of the collection of people that Graham, by the fire of his personal example in the air and on the ground, turned into the first squadron of four-engined bombers to operate against the enemy. Graham did much more than that because I never knew another CO who started with less than nothing in the way of material and, by sheer force of character, moulded the first squadron of Stirlings into a fine war-waging unit, giving it by his personal example pride and precision combined with utter disregard for personal safety. Many a time have I pondered over the miracle that brought him through Hitler's war alive. Maybe it was because his courage was combined with an extra-ordinary capacity for anticipating the sort of situations that would lead to the chop and calmly thinking out an alternative course of action so impudent that its recklessness caught the enemy unawares and brought him and his crews back to base unscathed. The nature of the man is best illustrated by the first sentence he spoke to his assembled squadron, which was: 'Gentlemen, the Stirling is not a bomber at all. You will remember in future that you have the incredible luck to be flying the finest four-engined fighter in the world without all the bull of the fighter boys. You are to use it as such.' ‘Bobby’ Graham had all the qualities that brought out the best in me and in particular, the ability to say the thing that was most likely to sting a man into showing him his natural self.’

      Although Winfield had seen the quarter-scale model of the Stirling both on the ground and in the air at Farnborough, this was the first time that he saw the full-scale aircraft operational and in all her glory.

      ‘On the ground, my first impressions were those of her size but almost perfect proportions enhanced by the black camouflage paint of the fuselage against the Fenland sky lit by the setting sun. On the ground, however, her beauty was nothing to how she looked when seen in flight either from the air or from the ground. The gigantic undercarriage raised her wings so high above the deck that, as I watched her from the Wing Commander's car, a petrol bowser passed under her port wing with all the room in the world to spare. On the tarmac, although the rear-gunner in his tail turret was less than three feet from the ground, the pilot was eighteen feet up as a result of this enormous undercarriage that raised the wings so that the Stirling sloped and appeared to be crouching as though longing to spring into the air. In the air, I always thought the Stirling absolutely lovely; then she was to me what the Tea-Clippers were to those who sailed in them. With her undercart tucked away, her lines gave her the grace of a dragon-fly and the dignity of a swan on water. On land, her undercart showed her at the same disadvantage as a swan on its feet instead of on the water.

      ‘The Stirlings at Oakington were the original Path Finders and the idea of using a special squadron to light up the target after they had found it for the main bomber force was first put into practice by ‘Bobby’ Graham when he commanded 7 Squadron. From the end of 1941 until the middle of 1942 we did the marking for Brest and then for ‘Happy Valley’ and the Renault works at Paris. Hamburg, Kiel, Stuttgart and Mannheim all belonged to us as marker targets. Later on, when the Path Finders were formed into a group and used Mosquitoes and Lancasters to mark the targets, the Stirlings became part of the main bomber force. Things then became really tough for us because Lancasters were also used by other squadrons in the main force. This meant that the Lancs with their superior ceiling could and always did, fly at least 5,000 to 6,000 feet above us and the result was that we, in the Stirlings, acted as a shield for them and absorbed a lot of the flak that was aimed to reach them.

      ‘Even at that time I still loved the Stirling. The amount of punishment she took was something incredible. I came back from Kiel Bay one night after having one engine blown clean out of its mountings by a direct hit from heavy flak when we were over the target. Then we were attacked by fighters on our way home - the bastards always went for the stragglers. One airscrew parted company from its engine as we crossed the Dutch coast and I saw it for an instance, shining like a scimitar, 400 yards ahead of us before it flashed into the sea. By the time we had shaken off the swarms of fighters we had 10,000 feet on the clock, but we gradually lost height as we limped across the ditch towards the English coast. Soon it became obvious that one of our two remaining engines had absorbed a good deal of tracer before we had realised what was happening. The engine began to run rough and this got worse and worse until it was vibrating like an organ pipe. The only thing to do was to throttle back gently. This meant losing still more power and yet she still kept on going - going like a bird - on one engine and the remains of the other engine just keeping her in the air. There wasn't a chance of bailing out when we had crossed the English coast; we hadn't enough height for that. Our rear gunner was dead and the mid-upper was severely wounded. The flaps and the undercart were more absent than present and to this day I've never rightly understood how the aircraft held together let alone kept airborne. We put down in a stubble field not far from Brandon Heath and, as the aircraft came to rest, she simply fell apart as if she were tired of life.

      ‘Wing Commander Sellick to all intents and purposes succeeded Graham as CO of 7 Squadron. There was an intervening CO but, since he was with the squadron less than a week and was shot down on his first sortie, he had come and gone before he had made any impact.³ ‘Shrub’ Sellick was a fine squadron commander. He, like Graham, never asked his crews to operate against any target of more than average risk without flying on the operation himself. He lacked the burning fire that consumed his predecessor but was well aware of this and not in the least disconcerted. I knew him before he came to Oakington because he was a flight commander on 15 Squadron at Wyton and he got me out of a packet of trouble when I took off the station communications flight Tiger Moth from a runway that was under repair and, therefore, not in use. I scared the wits out of a gang of Irish labourers who were working on it as I ground-looped the aircraft and then finished up upside down in a very undignified fashion. We understood one another at our first meeting and we always kept this understanding, which was based upon a mutual respect for the competence that each of us saw in the other. My regard for him was for the way in which he took command of the squadron and also because he was the first squadron commander to make use of me as well as giving me every facility for doing my own job.

      'Whom do you want to fly with, Doc?' he asked me. 'Any preference for any particular crew?'

      'I leave that entirely to you, sir. But there are two things I should like you to know. First, I don't mind whom I fly with, but I could get a better idea of how the new oxygen equipment is working and what the practical snags are if I could become a member of one particular crew and, as well as that, do odd trips with different crews.'

      'You've got your own job to do and you know how to do it best but, if you really don't mind which crews you fly with, you can be of enormous help to me.' ‘Shrub’ paused and I wondered what was coming next. I hadn't long to wait. 'What I'll get you to do,' he continued, 'is to fly with those crews that I'm doubtful about - doubtful whether it's time I took them off operations or not. Of course, this isn't my idea of the way to spend a pleasant Sunday afternoon and you must remember that you're free to tell me before every flight that you'd prefer a crew that I have no doubts about.' It was one of the very few times I ever saw Sellick look grim instead of cheerful as he added 'Now, what about it? And before you answer me, Doc, just remember that whether you say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ you will always be as welcome to fly with 7 Squadron as long as I command it as you were when Bobby Graham was CO.'

      ‘Perhaps it was because ‘Shrub’ Sellick belonged to a younger generation of squadron commanders than Bobby Graham that made certain differences in the way these two men tackled the job of commanding 7 Squadron so very obvious. Perhaps it was their very different temperaments which underlined the different approach each made to accomplish the same task - the task of maintaining the first of the heavy bomber squadrons as the most efficient instrument of war that Britain possessed at that time. And for nearly a year and a half under three commanders - Graham, Sellick and Wing Commander Oliver Russell ‘Rusty’ Donaldson DSO DFC - 7 Squadron was just that.

      ‘It was a beautiful late May evening in 1942, such as only the Fens can produce, as I strolled across to the flying clothing room of 'A' Flight at Oakington to collect my flying boots. It was the night of the 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne [on 30/31 May] and Group Captain Cyril Douglas Adams, the station commander, had given us a very moving briefing. He had said that it was an honour to be taking part in an attack that would so shake the Germans that it would bring home to them at last some idea of what they had started; that it was an evening we should remember all our lives; and that, of all the operations we had taken part in, this one was the one we had been trained for. I have never forgotten his closing words. He said, 'The C-in-C says that you will spread apprehension and despair throughout Germany and I am pleased to remind you that you are at last able to hit Germany where it hurts. You will overwhelm their defences and set up a conflagration that no fire-brigade in the world has the remotest chance of extinguishing. I have therefore delegated my duty in the Ops Room in order to satisfy my pleasure in observing your firework display from the rear turret of ‘A’ Flight Commander's aircraft.’

      ‘I suppose that the experience I had after that briefing was similar to that of religious conversion and, after it, I learned to face the fact that I was under sentence of death. As a bomber pilot I was perhaps fortunate in that I knew the hour and the day (the next trip) and because the span of life was governed by the time left until the next trip, there was every inducement or incentive to do everything one could as well as one could because time was so short and because everything one could do to help win the war must be done. I don't know about peace with God, but what it did give me was peace with myself. I had at last achieved peace of mind because death was so close and I saw it so often, daily taking one's friends, acquaintances and those one didn't know; close enough to become familiar with it, no longer a stranger to it and, more important, no longer afraid of it.’⁴

      Within the space of ninety minutes on Saturday night, 30 May 1942 more than 1,000 RAF bombers were put over the city of Cologne, second largest in Germany and a great armaments and war transport centre. More than 1,500 tons of bombs were dropped and scores of thousands of incendiaries and reconnaissance aircraft reported that the city was still on fire two days after the raid. The largest number of night bombers ever used by the Luftwaffe on a single raid up to that time was just over 450 - against London, a target many times bigger than Cologne. The American press described it as 'the first payoff for Warsaw and Rotterdam, Coventry and Plymouth'. On paper the actual number of serviceable aircraft totalled 1,047 bombers - mostly Wellingtons (602) - almost 300 of which were clapped-out OTU aircraft. The raid was led by the ‘Gee’-equipped Wellingtons and Stirlings of 1 and 3 Groups who were to operate in a fire-raising capacity. They were allotted a time span of fifteen minutes to set the centre of Cologne alight with loads of incendiary canisters. The lead aircraft was that of Wing Commander J. C. MacDonald DFC AFC, CO, 15 Squadron at Wyton who led twelve Stirlings to drop their loads of 4lb and 30lb incendiaries to start fires to act as ‘beacons’ for the following aircraft. One of the dozen Stirling pilots was Squadron Leader Gilmour, a veteran of the night-bombing of Germany.

      ‘For some days before this biggest of all raids, most of us on the station guessed that something special was afoot. For one thing the Intelligence and Operations people had been invisible except at meal times. And when they did appear among us they were much too excessively eager to talk about any subject on earth rather than 'shop' and Ops.

      All squadrons had been brought up to total strength plus reserves and the ground crews had been working sixteen hours a day to make every aircraft fully serviceable. Some of the wise guys had been making side bets on the probable target and the poor 'weather man', sitting in his cubby hole surrounded by charts and instruments, had been getting his life pestered out of him by artfully phrased inquiries. What's the weather going to be like over Germany tonight, ‘Met’ old man?'

      'Baltic area, probably heavy ground mist. Berlin, thick low cloud. Ruhr area, clearing, but doubtful.'

      'And what's it going to be like elsewhere?'

      'Well... in the extreme south it's still holding bright and clear.' So back to the crew rooms and hangars the wise guys would go. 'It's going to be Turin, or Milan, or Munich.' Another day it would be Berlin or Dresden or Leipzig, according to these hunch riders and weather wizards. But it was all guessing.

      ‘We never knew till that Saturday morning of 30 May, the day of the big raid. I was in the mess ante-room with the others, turning over the morning papers after breakfast and wondering whether I would be able to 'work' that night out for a local dance. Suddenly the Tannoy speaker blared out from the wall: 'Attention everybody! This is Operations. There was a short pause and everybody stopped talking to listen. Then the voice blared forth again: ‘All flying crews - I repeat: all flying crews of squadrons will assemble in Operations Room at 1000 hours...' We looked at each other briefly and I know all of us felt a quickening of excitement. This is IT, I thought. And this is a big thing. A 10 am call meant that. For if it had been a call to a 'prayer meeting' (as we call the usual informal lectures on tactics, etc.) or if it were to be a briefing for the ordinary kind of raid, it would have been held in the crew room.

      ‘At 1000 hours we were all in Ops Room. The Station CO was there as well as the two Wing Commanders. Also there was an officer from Group HQ and the Intelligence and other experts in full strength. Our 'Wingco' began his 'spiel' casually enough and looking downwards at some papers on his table. 'You are going to be briefed for an absolutely ‘maximum effort’ raid. You are going to a place where most of you have been before - but' (he added with a sudden grin) 'you'll find it's no trouble at all.’ Then he looked up suddenly, shuffling his papers and addressed us directly. 'It must have been obvious to you all that something special has been cooking. I can tell you now that you will be attacking Cologne, that more than 1,000 aircraft will take part and that from the first machine ‘on target’ to the last one off, the completed in ninety minutes.' There must have been nearly two hundred of us packed into that room, but nobody made a sound as the 'Wingco' went on. 'Before I give you the ‘gen’ (general information) I will read you this special letter to all taking part from the C-in-C'. He then read that letter about letting the Hun have it 'right on the chin'. After that he gave us the 'gen'. Take-off times and intervals (which had to be precisely adhered to), routes and heights for the journey out, the various types of bomb load and the heights at which the attack was to be carried out. He suggested a medium altitude - subject of course to the conditions each pilot found over the target.

      ‘I heard that my squadron was to have the honour of being first on the scene. We were to be the 'path finderss' - to start fires for the others to follow. My aircraft, for instance, was to be entirely loaded with incendiaries - nearly eight tons - and there were plenty more like me.

      ‘The Intelligence Officer followed the 'Wingco' with a talk on the target to which we had been assigned (it was an area in the centre of Cologne) and about the sort of opposition we should be likely to meet. The Weather man followed him and then the Signals Officer. Then the Station CO wound up the proceedings with an especially straight little talk which was much appreciated (the CO rarely says much at the briefings). The briefing ended as simply and unemotionally as it had begun. There were no dramatics and no high-flown phrases - but all of us felt that we had been present at an historical moment in aerial warfare. I know I felt, as I went through the routine of that day - working out courses with my navigator, thoroughly testing my bomber in flight, etc. and in spite of the dragging tension of waiting for the take-off - that I wouldn't have changed places for any other job in Britain.

      ‘At last the time came when we drove out in the gathering dusk to our bombers waiting at the dispersal points and after the usual preliminaries, with my ground crew (bless 'em!) fussing around till the last minute to put the final touch of perfection on everything, we climbed aboard. We took off with clockwork precision. I was fifth in place in my squadron and punctually to the minute I got my radio signal for the 'off'. Climbing nicely, the rising moon swinging past my wing-tips as I circled to my course, I headed for the coast. On my course I plugged in 'George' (the automatic pilot) and then called up the rest of the crew to see if they were all set and comfortable.

      ‘First, to 'Rupe', my rear gunner, a tough Rhodesian who had just rejoined the squadron after a marvellously quick recovery from three bullet wounds, two in the throat and head, obtained in an encounter with a German night fighter (who, however, never lived to tell the tale). ‘Rupe’ was cheerful as ever and ready for trouble. Then to my navigator, an Australian flight sergeant, serious but keen and one of the best navigators I know. After him to my mid-upper gunner, a cheerful Cockney much addicted to song. Then to my flight engineer, lugubrious like most engineers, but a sound man who can work miracles with a sick engine. Also to my wireless operator, who thereafter would say nothing more unless he had to, being all the time intent on his instruments and sharing the watch through the astrodome for night fighters with the engineer. Lastly I spoke to ‘Curly’, my front gunner, who from his position has a better view than anybody except the bomb-aimer when actually over the target. ‘Curly’ is a disappointed man. He failed as a wireless operator, so it is now his pleasure to pick up beacons on the way home long before the wireless operator reports his radio signals. But ‘Curly’ also knows the night face of Germany as well as the streets of his native Lancashire town and he is a great help in picking up landmarks. I also had a passenger with me as second pilot - a squadron leader who was returning to 'ops' after a year's absence. He was coming along to get the 'gen' on any alterations made on the German defences since he was over there last. And to be in on the big party, of course.

      ‘Heading east across the North Sea, the brilliant moon shining out of a cloudless sky seemed to turn the night into day. And far away on my left hand the Northern Light, which holds perpetually at this time of the year, filled the horizon with radiance and put out the stars. My Stirling was flying perfectly and I was in a trance, not thinking of what lay ahead, when the casual voice of the mid-upper gunner in my earphones brought me back to the present. 'Here's the reception committee, sir,' he said. I looked up from my instruments and saw ahead of me on the Dutch coast the first 'flak' barrage coming up. It was coming up in car-loads, much thicker than usual, miles of coloured tracer curving against a winking, flashing wall of shell-bursts. And scores of searchlights pale against the moonshine waved and probed across the sky. 'Blackpool Front,' murmured the squadron leader in my ear. The searchlights seemed a trifle frantic in their erratic groping. And no wonder; I thought of the masses of 'plots' their radiolocation must be picking up from the approaching air armada. Enough to put the wind up anybody. And the Hun is notoriously easily rattled by anything that's off the straight line of the expected. Kicking the rudders about, pushing and hauling at the control column, turning and diving and climbing in violent avoiding action, I passed through the first walls of the coastal barrage. Inland over Holland there was no opposition, fields and rivers and small towns sliding peacefully below, clearly marked out in the light of the moon. If it's only like this over Cologne, I thought happily. But I warned the gunners to keep a sharp lookout for the expected night fighters and the radio operator posted himself with his head in the astrodome (the glass bulge in the roof of the fuselage) to add his pair of eyes to the gunners. It was just here, a few miles inside Holland that I got the full measure of what this terrific night's operation meant. For some minutes the intercom phones were busy with staccato calls from the gunners, 'Aircraft, red (port side), below ... Aircraft, green (starboard), astern.' And as fast as I swung the aircraft to help the gunners to get these strangers in their sights, back would come further reports: Wellington, or Whitley, Lancaster, Manchester, Stirling. We looked out through the windows and saw the black shapes filling the sky, converging from all over England on our course for Cologne. You ought to appreciate what that sight meant to an ordinary bomber pilot. I have been on dozens of raids and never seen another one of our aircraft out or home. And here there were countless scores of bombers. It was hugely thrilling and from the excited back-chat going on over my phones, everybody was thinking the same.

      ‘For another half-hour or more we rode on in this majestic company. What our sky-filling roar must have seemed like to the Jerries in Holland below, I don't know. But there was plenty of evidence of how we were catching them on the hop. Half-way across Holland I counted no less than three 'dummies' to represent fires or airfield flare-paths being hopefully and hurriedly lit to attract our bomb loads. We laughed and passed on. Then ‘Curly’ called out from his glasshouse in front that he was picking up the bend in the Rhine which was our run-in point to Cologne. The navigator passed me, tapping me on the shoulder, to go to his position forward over the bomb sight. As I banked to turn, all Germany was spread out dead and silent below and the Rhine was a twisting band of shining ebony. A few minutes more and the whole sky broke into a blinding blaze as the first belt of lights and gun defences swept into action. (I mentioned that my squadron was to be first into Cologne to start fires.) In a moment my cabin was lit up with the baleful blue glare of a 'master searchlight' and then a whole cone caught me. I slammed the hand lever down which lowers my seat and then, sticking my head down to avoid being dazzled by the glare, I went hurtling and twisting down to lose the lights, listening the while to my navigator calling out changes of direction. Out of one belt of defences and into another. Gusts of blast shook my Stirling as packets of 'flak' burst beneath. Once there was a heavy thud as something hit us, but I had eyes only for the dim-lit instruments panel, ears only for the chanted directions of the bomb aimer in my earphones, 'Left, left... steady. R-i-g-h-t, steady,' as the target area wavered down his sights. Then suddenly, 'Bombs going; hold her!' I could feel the little 'lifts' as the loads of incendiaries left her in succession laying a long trail across the target area. Then 'Bombs gone!' and I swung out and along the perimeter of the city.

      ‘Travelling thus outwards and away from the target there was one dreadful moment when a Wellington flashed across my nose less than fifty yards in front. The second pilot gave a convulsive gasp and kicked out as if he was striking at the rudder pedals. It was a shattering experience but some indication of how full the sky was that night.

      ‘My orders were to cruise round the city for a while after dropping my load, observing, keeping out of trouble as much as possible. And as I turned in again from the eastern ring of defences I saw an unforgettable sight below.

      ‘The whole city seemed a mass of myriad points of white light as the incendiaries started off. Hundreds were slowly changing to red as fires took hold. And in their midst there were thundering great flashes, as swift as rolling gun-fire, as the other bombers were unloading their HE. I heard the second pilot (whose parents once lived in Coventry and who was in the Bath raid a few weeks ago) murmuring fervently, 'Hold that, you Hun and that... and that.'

      ‘By the time I started in on my second circuit the whole field of view below was a mass of red glare marked by leaping flashes of bombs still raining down. Below and around were black silhouettes of our bombers still coming in and above were many more, their undersides lit up in the red glow of the burning town. 'Out from under!' I heard the second pilot yelling. And I got out. By the time I completed my third circuit of stooging round I could see that we had the defences completely foxed. A lot of lights were out and guns silent, probably knocked out by our hail of bombs. Others were shooting wildly and anyhow. The gunners must have thought that the end had come. Near the western outer ring I went down in a great dive to give my gunners a chance at a specially big searchlight battery. Six flicked out and two stayed steady as if their crew had left or been hit. And just here I ran into my first trouble. I heard my mid-upper gunner yell 'Fighter!' Then I saw a line of flashes streaming ahead of me. I thought at first he was firing forward and shouted to him, then realized that it was cannon shell from the fighter astern

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