'Ops' (Operations)

Reforming the Command       John Gee

'I don't think we realised at the time that our equipment wasn't really up to it. They'd forgotten to design or produce any navigation equipment, so the Wellington bomber, which was intended to be a day bomber, had to operate at night because it was so vulnerable during the day. It had virtually the same equipment that the Tiger Moth had, with one exception - the Wellington had a loop aerial. Here we were flying 500 or 600 miles over enemy territory, trying to locate a target in total blackout, often with cloud below us and a lot of industrial haze. It's not surprising that our bombers were 5, 10 miles away. There was no bomber stream. We were largely on our own, perhaps 10 or 14 aircraft at intervals.

Bomber Command was pretty ineffective, but we didn't realise it at the time. We thought we were finding the target and doing a good job, otherwise our morale would have been really zero. When the Butt Report was produced, we didn't know about it at all. It was kept very secret indeed. It wasn't until Sir Arthur Harris took over in 1942 that things began to change. By that time I had done my first tour of operations and been fortunate enough to be sent to the Central Flying School to do a flying instructor's course. I spent two and a half years instructing before I went back on operations and during that time the whole thing had changed completely. The navigation equipment was highly organised with radar navigation. We had the benefit of the bomber stream, and the Pathfinders marking the target, and of course an enormous weight of aircraft. To fly in a stream of 500 aircraft out over Beachy Head with all the navigation lights on! Soon they were all switched off and you couldn't see any of them. But they were all still there, a wonderful feeling of power.

John Gee,
Bomber Command pilot

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Superstitions       Flt Lt Harry Le Marchant

'Rituals, and superstitions. I prayed a lot, I prayed always before I went on operations. We had our talisman. We took all the WAAF parachute packers out for a pie and a pint, and a little WAAF very kindly and very sweetly got out her purse and gave me a Victorian bun penny, one of the very old coins with Victoria when she was young, with the bun of hair at the back. It had a hole in it. She said, "Here, take this as a lucky charm for the future" which I did, and I always flew with it. My uncle gave me a silver cigarette case, and I never flew without that too. I always kept mine in my breast pocket, over my heart. This was very much a superstition.

I and many of my friends had girlfriends' stockings too. When you flew you had a white pullover, but you were not allowed to wear a collar and tie because the collars in those days were detachable, and if you went in the water the clothing might shrink and suffocate you. So everybody had gay coloured scarves, be they old school scarves, or girlfriends' stockings, which you wore round your neck. There were lots of teddy bears, even teddy bears in flying kit, and things made by wives or girlfriends.'

Flt Lt Harry Le Marchant,
Bomber Command observer

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You had to have luck       John Gee

'We were all volunteers. Nobody was forced to fly. Their own ego and self-esteem kept them flying. If they did turn and run they were treated as lacking in moral fibre and dealt with in various ways. I'm sure that during a tour of operations everybody at some time or other had that fear and would willingly have given up, but they didn't. They went on. At the height of the bomber operations a great many would not survive the first 30 operations. They knew that every night some were not going to come back. Sometimes it would be two or three aircraft from a squadron, maybe sometimes five, maybe only one, sometimes none. We knew the chances that some were not going to come back.

The WAAF officers and the WAAFs who had done the parachutes and bombed up the aircraft would come down to the runways and wave us off. It was all very emotional, but it was part of life. You just had to do it. We knew that if we did not, we would be letting ourselves and the squadron down. I was just lucky You had to have luck. There was a certain amount of skill, but you had to have luck. Otherwise you didn't survive.'

John Gee,
Bomber Command pilot

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Collision over Berlin       Lord Mackie of Benshie CBE DSO DFC

'There was always tension going into Berlin. I always tried to get in early. I tried to get in with the Pathfinders when I could, because I fancied that I was as good as any Pathfinder. When you went in all hell let loose. They had extraordinary devices that exploded with a tremendous bang and lit up the whole sky to frighten you. The Pathfinders were remarkably good. You saw the flares and incendiaries go down. Then 600 bombers were all around you. The risk of collision was very great. Looking down you gradually saw the city explode with bombs dropping and with incendiaries. Looking back you saw Berlin burning. This was the turning point at which extreme caution had to be exercised. If everyone did not turn at the same time the risk of collision was very great.

On one particular night two Lancasters collided in front of us and one of them exploded and went straight down. The other did two upward rolls with all four engines burning and exploded right in front of us, a hundred yards away. The pilot shouted to the gunners to turn away so that their night vision would not be impaired. One gunner asked why, and when he was told his knees shook. Quite an extraordinary scene.

Lord Mackie of Benshie CBE DSO DFC
Bomber Command observer

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Coned       Alex Kerr

'We'd been briefed to attack an aircraft works at Hamburg. We bombed from about 9,000 feet, and were on our way back when some flak hit the rear turret. The rear gunner was trying to extinguish the fire, but couldn't put it out. The flames became obvious from the ground and we were caught in a cone of searchlights. About 20 lights homed in on us and it was like daylight. Though we got the turret fire out, a nightfighter had come in and lined himself up. He polished us off and some of the bullets he fired set off the flares inside the aircraft and set the aircraft on fire. I'd been hit several times, as had my navigator, and we were both lying on the floor of the aircraft.

We were lucky. The fire had put out the hydraulics on the rear turret and when the order was given to abandon the aircraft by the captain the rear gunner was not able to go out sideways as you would normally do, but crawled back inside the aircraft to get out of the hatch. He saw me lying on the aircraft floor and picked me up, sat me on the edge of the hatch, put my parachute on, put my hand on the rip-cord, said "For God's sake pull it!" and chucked me out. I came to consciousness enough to pull the cord. We came down by parachute and I was taken to the nearest POW hospital, which was staffed entirely by French prisoners. No one could speak English, but there was a Professor of Surgery there from Strasbourg University, one of the few surgeons in Europe who was skilled enough to save my life. The navigator was left inside the aircraft. He came to, looked around, saw that there was no one else there, got up to clip on his parachute, had a dizzy spell and dropped it through the escape hatch. He was in an aircraft that was on fire with no parachute. He walked up to the front, saw that there was no pilot there either and got into the pilot's seat. He decided to end it quickly and dive straight into the ground, but then he had second thoughts and ended up bringing the aircraft down and landing it in a field in Germany about 1 o'clock in the morning, pitch black, with great skill. He ended up in the same hospital as I did a month later. He was badly wounded.'

Alex Kerr,
Bomber Command pilot

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Missing a lynching       Wilkie Wanless

'We were briefed for Kassel. We were doing the diversion: we flew past Kassel and then turned and came back. After the turn coming back we got hit by a fighter. Nobody saw him. He came up underneath us with his upward firing cannons. He hit the starboard wing and he must have hit the fuselage too because he killed the mid-upper gunner. We were a ball of fire. Everyone got out except the mid-upper gunner and the pilot. Why the pilot didn't get out I have no idea. I spoke to the pilot from the rear turret. I said, "This is the rear gunner, I'm going out, everyone else has gone."

I pulled my chute in, buckled it on and flipped out backwards. I was always very apprehensive about getting run into by another aircraft in the stream. so I did a delayed drop, landed in a potato patch, undid my chute, buried it under some potato tops, took off my sheepskin trousers. I'd taken my helmet off in the aircraft, otherwise you would break your neck if you baled out with it on. It was about 9 o'clock at night, October 3rd 1943. I walked out to what I thought had been a river - but it was an autobahn. I walked out on to the highway and trundled along until I became absolutely exhausted when the nervous reaction set in. I crawled into some brush and went to sleep.

I thought I' d get to Switzerland. We had escape kits and I had a beautiful silk map so I knew where I was. I was a mess. I'd fallen in a few ditches. The second night I hid, and the third day I was in a ditch by a farmer's field. He came to look at his hay crop and saw me there. I pretended I was French with my schoolboy language. He just shrugged and walked away.

Within a short time three men arrived and arrested me, marched me into the town hall. The Gestapo called in and one man interpreted, an old man who had been in England in the First World War. They phoned Berlin. Now, my name is William Alexander Wilkie Wanless, and when they phoned Berlin they said Vilhelm Alexander Vilkie Vanless. I kept saying, "No, no, no - William Alexander Wilkie Wanless."

They locked me up in the city jail, and during the night a couple of Luftwaffe guys arrived in a black Maria and took me to the air base. They assigned me an armed guard and he took me by train to Frankfurt and the interrogation centre. I was amazed to look up in Frankfurt station and see all the glass. I thought we would have broken it all by then.

An elderly German went by and saw 'Canada' on my shoulder. He looked terribly disturbed and started screaming. It was a mob scene in seconds, and my escort had to get his Luger out. He grabbed me by the arm and said "Run!", and we just ran down the platform as the train was coming in. You couldn't hold it against anybody. The RAF had been there a night or two before; the Americans had been there a day or two before. You could feel for them."

Wilkie Wanless,
Bomber Command rear gunner

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Dropping a mine       Air Chief Marshall Sir Lewis Hodges KCB CBE DSO DFC

'Mining was a major role, particularly for the Hampden squadrons of No. 5 Group. The magnetic mines that were used fitted very neatly into the bomb bay of the Hampden, and they carried out the majority of the early mining operations. These magnetic mines, which were relatively new, were dropped by parachute at low altitude, about 1,000 feet. They came down on to the surface of the sea by parachute, and then the effect of sea water on a soluble plug enabled the parachute to be released. The parachute floated away and the mine itself became active and sank to the seabed, where it rested until a ship passed over the top. The laying of these mines was critical. They had to be dropped in fairly shallow water in order to be activated. So navigation was a problem, as these operations were carried out mainly by night. They were carried out to the Baltic in great numbers, along the sea lanes of the Friesian Islands, the north German coast, the entrance to the Kiel Canal. We had to fly low over the North Sea, which was not pleasant, particularly when you had low cloud, and rain and static. You very often got thunderstorms. You got the effect of static electricity building up on the aeroplane, which caused what was called St Elmo's fire, like a blue flame flashing on the windscreen. It was not dangerous, but disconcerting. Then in bumpy conditions you had to find the enemy coastline, assess your position and then do a run to find the actual spot in the sea where the mine had to be actually dropped. We did a great number of these mining operations in the years 1940 to 1942.'

Air Chief Marshall,
Sir Lewis Hodges KCB CBE DSO DFC

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The Dambusters Raid       Danny Walker

When we were on our way in we were picked up by searchlights. They were dazzling. The blue light was a master light. Once the blue light was on you, the other ones automatically picked you up. But we were fortunate. We were able to shake it off. But we lost the two other aircraft we were going in with, so we just carried on singly. As we got down to the Mohne we started down the right-hand side and the light guns opened up on us. We picked up one hole. Then we joined the other six aeroplanes circling the Mohne Dam to create confusion and draw a little fire to give the one who was doing the run a better chance.

We were at the top end of the Mohne. The idea was that you had to have the bomb spinning at 500 revolutions per minute and to be at exactly 60 feet. Everything had to be right. You only had the one weapon, and you couldn’t waste it. We were running down the Mohne water when Guy Gibson crossed at right angles and said, “This dam's gone!" You could see the hole in the Mohne, and then a big gush of water. Then he said, “Number 6, number 6, B target.” The B target for that night was the Eder Dam. So we struck off for the Eder.

It was situated in a deep valley. It was very, very difficult to get low enough, quick enough and to have everything settled - 240 miles per hour at 60 feet. So we did this dummy run, but right ahead of us was a hill. The pilot had to put on full power and go screaming over that hill. It took exacting flying. The next aircraft came along and hit the hill. We went round again and made a decent drop. And then the next aircraft came along and knocked the dam out.

Danny Walker,
Bomber Command navigator
617 Squadron

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A Pathfinder at Peenemunde       Sam Hall

A Minister was given the job of running the Peenemunde raid by Churchill, Duncan Sandys. We were told that it was such an important target that if we didn't get it that particular night, we'd go back until we did. For me it was one of the most memorable raids. In the Pathfinder force you had to be accurate. Your target indicators had to go down on time because the rest of Bomber Command, the main force, was waiting to see those target indicators at the time that they'd been told. Now in order to achieve your timing, you had to keep time in hand in case the winds were such that you couldn't get there at the time you expected. When you got near the target you had to get rid of that time, and one way of doing it was to do dog-legs. You would go 60 degrees to the left, say, for 2 minutes and then come back 120 degrees, and by doing that you'd have an equilateral triangle for every 2 minutes. For every 2-minute leg you lost 2 minutes along the main track. That wasn't the best way of losing, but most people did it.But in our aircraft I had an arrangement with my pilot whereby I'd say a 1-minute turn or a 2-minute turn, and he would do a 360-degree turn and then go back on track.That would get rid of the time in one fell swoop. We did this in front of the thundering herd of Bomber Command behind us, but we reckoned it was worth it. We did that manoeuvre that night and it saved our lives. When we straightened up I decided to have a look at the war, pulled the navigator's curtain back, and immediately a German fighter came across our nose so close I could see the crosses under the wings and the wheels in place. The fighter had committed himself to a curve of pursuit against us in such a way that he'd expected us to be 4 miles further on and he couldn't reorganise his curves to get behind us. After we'd bombed, the mid-upper gunner said, "There's a fighter coming in! It's got a Lanc, it's got another, it's got another!" Three Lancasters were going down in flames. You didn't waste too much time thinking about it. So many things were going on - all sorts of lights in the sky, flashes on the ground. I knew the first Master Bomber on that raid. When he got back to Wyton he was still bathed in perspiration. He'd had to fly above the target for the whole extent of the raid.'

Sam Hall,
Bomber Command Pathfinder navigator

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The Peenemunde raid       Wilkie Wanless

'When we were briefed for Peenemunde we were told this is top secret, can't tell you anything about it. It's the only briefing I ever went to where the briefing hut was surrounded by Service Police. You had to go to the door with your crew and show your identification with your pilot. We were told that if a word leaks out about the target you don't go tonight, and the source will be summarily executed. So we paid attention, we said this has got to be a biggy. We were also told if we didn't get it that night we would go back every night; tonight they won't expect you, but from then on they'll expect you but you will have to go back.

Before we had been bombing at 16,000 feet with the Halifax, but Peenemunde was 4,000 feet. It was the only low level I was ever on, and we were in the first wave. We were there before there were any markers. Our navigator had a movie camera and we were taking pictures that night for the RAF Film Unit. We kept flying back and forth over this target and the navigator kept saying, "I think the damn thing's working now, do another run." This was just terribly nerve-wracking. The fighters had all been decoyed to Berlin, which was fine for the first wave or two. But then the Germans caught on that it wasn't Berlin and the fighters refuelled. The ones that had the range headed for Peenemunde. They shot down a lot of aircraft from the Canadian Group in the last wave. When I was a prisoner of war I met a fellow in our hut who was the only one I met, until long after the war, to have been shot down over Peenemunde and survived. Very few got out in the dark. At 4,000 or 5,000 feet your chances of getting out are slim. After we got back and the results came in there was a message from Air Marshal Harris saying. "Congratulations, boys, on a job well done".

Wilkie Wanless,
Bomber Command rear gunner

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With Dimbleby aboard       John Gee

'The army was bogged down about 10 or 15 miles short of the Rhine. February came and they were anxious to break out because V2's had been bombing the south of England. The armies were going to make their final push to get across the Rhine, and Bomber Command was asked to knock out a number of targets in front of the army. Cleve was one of them.

Cleve was a little town about 4 or 5 miles west of the Rhine, 10 miles from Nijmegen. There were 295 Lancasters and 10 Mosquitoes from B Group, and we had to bomb this target because it was thought to be a road and rail junction. The town had been virtually destroyed anyway, but it was a place where Panzer reinforcements might be brought up to resist the army push. Cleve was only just in front of our own front line troops, so we had to be jolly careful that we didn't bomb our own troops.

The weather forecast was good. There was no cloud about. Richard Dimbleby came up to Scampton that day, along with his engineer and his recording equipment. As I was the senior officer flying from 153 Squadron that night I was nominated to take him. I had two extra bodies on board which made us quite a lot overweight, so to reduce it we ditched some gallons of petrol. I was tickled pink to have him with me. He came up to the squadron and we sat with him and had a meal before we took off. He was a big chap, and of course when he sat alongside me the flight engineer. who would normally be there, had to stand behind and operate all his gauges and things. We were a bit pushed. You couldn't really get past in the fuselage with all the recording gear. He had an engineer to operate it. He had to squat down in the fuselage. I can't imagine anything worse than squatting in a Lancaster for 4 or 5 hours waiting to operate equipment for probably no more than 5 minutes.

It was only when we got near the target that he started to make his commentary. We were flying at 11,000 feet and couldn't see a thing I thought, "What are we going to do? We can't drop our bombs on our own troops. "Suddenly we heard the Master Bomber calling us down below 4,500 feet. If you can imagine 295 Lancasters coming down from 17,000 to 4,500 feet through cloud. Why there was no collision I just don't know. Now they talk about a near miss if an aircraft goes within 10 miles of another. There were 295 near misses there all at one time.

There below us was Cleve, and the target was marked by the Pathfinders and searchlights were reflected off the cloud - it was like daylight. And you could see the Lancasters coming out of the cloud like darts. Then we had to bomb the target from 4,500 feet. The bombs were exploding and the aircraft was being bounced all over the place. Richard Dimbleby made his commentary, which was broadcast the next day on BBC radio. We knocked Cleve out completely, so much so that when the army advanced the next day there were so many bomb craters and so many broken roads that it quickly came to a halt.'

John Gee,
Bomber Command pilot

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Silencing Goering       Ted Sismore

'On one occasion we had a bit of a shock. We used to work permanently on Mosquitoes. and every so often you were given a day off. You never knew when it would come. We would suddenly be told that tomorrow was a stand-down. We would plan to go out somewhere, make a late night of it, sleep in in the morning. It was surprising how often just as we were going out in the evening someone would come rushing in and tell us it was all cancelled, we were on again, and we would be called at 6 in the morning. That happened on one occasion. We got a call to say cancel your trip, go to bed, you'll be called at 5.30. Quite often I would be called in to the preparatory work on the raid, but on this one I wasn't. We got up the next morning and it was blowing a gale, the cloud base was about 3,000 feet, it was pouring with rain, horrible, dark and nasty. We got in the flight van to drive down to the briefing. My pilot, who was then the Flight Commander, said on the way down, "This one's a bit different. We start to climb after we've crossed the Elbe." There was a stunned silence in the van. We thought, "Start to climb when we cross the Elbe? Where on earth are we going?" We walked into the crew room and there was a tape on the map going from Marham to Berlin. Everybody without fail turned round and said, "Will we have enough fuel?" We hadn't been that far before, but that was it.

The Flight Commander was absolutely right. We flew low-level out to the south of Hamburg and we then climbed up to 25,000 feet. We had to bomb precisely on time, and the target was the radio station. The reason for the timing was that Goering was to make a speech. When we climbed there was unbroken cloud, and as we got closer I said "We're not going to see anything - we're going to have to drop the bombs on the target area." As I spoke there appeared a small hole in the cloud, and I could see the lakes of Berlin. It was the only hole in the cloud over the entire horizon. Quite incredible. We bombed, and there was no gunfire until after the bombs hit the ground. The guns started firing, but miles away from us by then. We came back and later on heard a tape of the broadcast. They announced that the Reich Marshal would make his speech, but he never said a word; there was a bang in the background, and the radio then played martial music. He never did make his speech.'

Ted Sismore,
Bomber Command navigator

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It was the proverbial piece of cake        Harold Yeoman

This one was so hush-hush that, in 12 Squadron at any rate, we were told we could only tell the rest of the crew once we were airborne. It was to be a low-level attack, unheard of at that time, with lots of flares promised so that we could be 100% certain of hitting the target. Out at the aircraft that evening the wireless op. and the two gunners were in a ferment - why all the secrecy? Where were we going? I remember pointing to the W/op’s oxygen mask: “You won’t need that,” I told him cruelly. It did nothing for his peace of mind.

[After crossing the French coast] Minutes later: “Christ! It’s not the bloody target on fire, is it? It was. We ran in at 2500ft from the south-west through a corridor of flares, about 40 of them. One light flak gun was dribbling tracer up into nothing about two miles to the south. He would stop, then start again. “Gone down to the stores for more ammunition,” I suggested. The target was like a huge shovelful of hot ashes which someone had flung on the ground; we’d never seen anything quite like it. A Hampden, bomb-doors open, came charging at us at the same height. We bloody-fooled him and jinked out of his way. It was the proverbial piece of cake. Our first bomb hit the factory on the banana-shaped island in the Seine, the rest straddled the main buildings. “Every one a coconut”, as the rear-gunner gleefully said. In the distance an aircraft went in near a bend of the river downstream - the only one to be lost, we believed. On the way home they were flashing V’s from their skylights in Beauvais, an inspiring sight. We could still see the factory burning from the coast crossing out. We were tremendously excited about this one: it was a turning-point, we knew, and we knew from that night on things could only get better.

Harold Yeoman,
Bomber Command Pilot

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Crashing in Flames        Sub-Lieutenant K.G. Wallace, RNVR

Sub-Lieutenant K.G. Wallace, RNVR, seconded to the RAF for special observer duties, was flying in a formation of ten Bisleys (an improved version of the Blenheim) when they attacked an enemy fighter aerodrome in Tunisia. Sqn Ldr Hugh Malcolm, who commanded the formation, was awarded a VC in the action.

Our bombs were still going down when 50 to 60 Messerschmitt fighters came in at us. In the tightest possible formation we weaved as a single unit through the valleys of the hills. We could see the fighters' cannon-shells bursting all along the mountainsides on a level with our faces.

Finally, we were forced out of formation, and with the starboard engine on fire, the fuselage on fire, and a large piece of wing missing, we went into a hillside at about 150 miles per hour. Out of the blazing aircraft all three of us emerged more or less in one piece, and as we were in No Man's Land, we began to run like hell.

Behind us were a party of men rushing down a hillside, and ahead was a second party of men - our own troops - coming to meet us. We were accelerated by cannon-shells from an enemy fighter who was trying to get us, but we made it. Then I passed out, and the party was over.

Sub-Lieutenant K.G. Wallace, RNVR
Special Observer

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After a raid       John Gee

'Most people lit a cigarette. You waited for the crew bus to come and take you to the interrogation and debriefing session. The CO of the station and everyone else was there asking you questions, making out the report on the effectiveness or otherwise of the raid. What were the defences like, and similar questions. Your main feeling was to get that part of it over and get back, have a meal and get to bed. Having got to bed, you couldn't sleep because you could still hear the engines and you were really wound up. I never slept after an operation, by which time it was daylight anyway. You couldn't sleep in the daytime, you were just so highly strung. You tried to calm down, but you had to let off steam to calm down. Possibly the next day you would not be flying. You would have a number of beers and get yourself into the state where you could go to sleep. That was how you got over it. You were just glad to have got back and survived.'

John Gee,
Bomber Command pilot

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