Britain at War 2014-09

OPERATION MARKET GARDEN 1944-2014

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BRITAIN’S BEST SELLING MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

TRAPPED IN ARNHEM Major General R.E. Urquhart

THERemembering THEAUGSBURG AUGSBURG RAID a Bomber Command VC PLUS:

World’s Only Airwor Lancasters Mee thy t, WW1 Q-Ship A A 1944 D-Day ction, Da The RFC Heads y Trip, to War in 1914 and m ore …

Message in a Bottle

The Remarkable Story of a Soldier’s Note Thrown Overboard in 1914

MONTE CASSINO

One Second World War veteran’s account of a spell in the front line on Snakeshead Ridge

THE HUMBIE HEINKEL

The first enemy aircraft to come down intact on the mainland of the British Isles in WW2

UNIQUE FIRST WORLD WAR TIME CAPSULE OPENED

SEPTEMBER 2014

ISSUE 89 £4.40

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Notes from the Dugout

www.britainatwar.com Should you wish to correspond with any of the ‘Britain at War’ team in particular, you can find them listed below: Editor: Martin Mace Assistant Editor: John Grehan Editorial Consultant: Mark Khan Editorial Correspondent: Geoff Simpson Australasia Correspondent: Ken Wright Design: Dan Jarman EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES: Britain at War Magazine, Green Arbor, Rectory Road, Storrington, West Sussex, RH20 4EF or email: [email protected]. ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES: For all aspects of advertising in ‘Britain at War’ Magazine please contact Alison Sanders, Advertisement Sales Manager Tel: +44 (0)1780 755131 or email: [email protected]. GENERAL ENQUIRIES: For general enquiries and advertising queries please contact the main office at: Britain at War Magazine Key Publishing Ltd PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincs, PE9 1XQ Tel: +44 (0)1780 755131 Fax: +44 (0)1780 757261 SUBSCRIPTIONS, BINDERS AND BACK ISSUES: Britain at War, Key Publishing, PO Box 300, Stamford, Lincs, PE9 1NA Email: [email protected]

SUBSCRIPTIONS, BINDERS AND BACK ISSUES HOTLINE:+44 (0)1780 480404 Or order online at www.britainatwar.com Executive Chairman: Richard Cox Managing Director/Publisher: Adrian Cox Group-Editor-In-Chief: Paul Hamblin Commercial Director: Ann Saundry Production Manager: Janet Watkins Marketing Manager: Martin Steele ‘Britain at War’ Magazine is published on the last Thursday of the preceeding month by Key Publishing Ltd. ISSN 1753-3090 Printed by Warner’s (Midland) plc. Distributed by Seymour Distribution Ltd. (www.seymour.co.uk) All newsagents are able to obtain copies of ‘Britain at War’ from their regional wholesaler. If you experience difficulties in obtaining a copy please call Seymour on +44 (0)20 7429 4000. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part and in any form whatsoever, is strictly prohibited without the prior, written permission of the Editor. Whilst every care is taken with the material submitted to ‘Britain at War’ Magazine, no responsibility can be accepted for loss or damage. Opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor or Key Publishing Ltd. Whilst every effort had been made to contact all copyright holders, the sources of some pictures that may be used are varied and, in many cases, obscure. The publishers will be glad to make good in future editions any error or omissions brought to their attention. The publication of any quotes or illustrations on which clearance has not been given is unintentional. We are unable to guarantee the bonafides of any of our advertisers. Readers are strongly recommended to take their own precautions before parting with any information or item of value, including, but not limited to, money, manuscripts, photographs or personal information in response to any advertisements within this publication.

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AVING BEEN at the helm of Britain at War Magazine since its launch in May 2007, it is with a degree of emotion that I am penning this, my last “Dugout”. Having had the exciting and rewarding opportunity of being part of the organisation at Key that has created the UK’s best-selling military history monthly, I am moving on to pastures new. Reflecting on the last eighty-nine issues, I can certainly say that I have learnt a lot and enjoyed many remarkable opportunities. Not least of these have been those occasions when I have been able to listen to those men and women who were there, the veterans of the Second World War about whom so much of this magazine depends. It is appropriate that I should thank all those that who have helped make my time as Editor so rewarding. My immediate editorial team, John Grehan and Mark Khan, have been there from the start, whilst Geoff Simpson and Ken Wright have assisted me for many years. A band of regular and knowledgeable contributors has also ensured that nothing was too much trouble. I would also like to thank my wife Leanne, who has not only had to contend with the irregular hours, but has faithfully read every word of the magazine’s content. Then, of course, there are the magazine’s readers, many of whom have also shared the experience from Day One. Whilst I will carry on writing for the magazine, I am handing over the reins as Editor to Andy Saunders, someone whom I have known for many years, and who has a lifetime of interest in, and expertise of, military history. Please be assured that Britain at War is in safe hands with the team at Key continuing to provide you with the same breadth and depth of content as it does today.

Martin Mace Editor

COVER STORY Twenty-one years ago the main briefing room at RAF Waddington was dedicated as “The Nettleton Room”. Squadron Leader John Dering Nettleton was “the leader of one of two formations of six Lancaster heavy bombers detailed to deliver a lowlevel attack in daylight on the diesel engine factory at Augsburg in Southern Germany on April 17th, 1942. The enterprise was daring, the target of high military importance.” On page 79, Andrew Thomas explains what happened that night. The attack is immortalised in this month’s cover painting of Squadron Leader John Dering Nettleton’s and Flying Officer John “Ginger” Garwell DFM’s Lancasters over their target. By the artist C. Stodhard, it hangs in RAF Waddington’s Officers’ Mess. (RAF OFFICIAL WADUNC-20120118-0037-041, RAF WADDINGTON.)

© Key Publishing Ltd. 2014

OPERATION MARKET

GARDEN 1944-201 4

TRAPPED IN ARNHEM

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BRITAIN’S BEST SELLING MILITARY HISTORY MONTHL Y

Major General R.E. Urquhart

THEA EReme AUUG GSSBBUURRGG RA mbering a Bomber CommandID VC PLUS:

World’s Only Airworthy Lancasters WW1 Q-Shi Meet, A 1944 D-Dayp Action, Day Trip, The RFC Heads in 1914 and to War more …

Message in a Bottle

The Remarkable Story Note Thrown Overboaof a Soldier’s rd in 1914

MONTE CASSINO

One Second World War veteran’s account of a spell in the front line on Snakeshead Ridge

THE HUMBIE HEINKEL

SEPTEMBER 2014

ISSUE 89 £4.40

The first enemy aircraft to come down intact on the mainland of the British Isles in WW2

UNIQUE FIRST WOR LD WAR

TIME CAPSULE OPEN

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20 A UNIQUE GATHERING

On 8 August 2014, under leaden skies, an Avro Lancaster emerged from the gloom to touch down at RAF Coningsby; no unusual sight at the station that houses the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. This was, however, an exceptional event. As Rob Pritchard explains, the arrival was not the BBMF’s familiar City of Lincoln but rather the Lancaster belonging to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at the end of a transatlantic flight from its base in Ontario.

Contents ISSUE 89 SEPTEMBER 2014

95 D-DAY DAY TRIP

The images that are usually portrayed of the Normandy landing beaches in June 1944 are of men leaping from landing craft. Some, though, had a far different experience, as Richard Polglaze describes.

FEATURES 26 TRAPPED

Seventy years ago this month, the British 1st Airborne Division had landed to the west of Arnhem. The division's commander, Major General Roy Urquhart, soon found himself stranded.

34 MASSACRE OF THE MUNSTERS

As the BEF continued its withdrawal in August 1914, command of I Corps’ rearguard was handed to Brigadier-General Ivor Maxse’s Brigade, which included the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers.

39 LEFT BEHIND

Chris Goss presents a selection of images depicting some RAF fighters that were shot down or abandoned during the Battle of France.

47 MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

The remarkable story of a how a note written to the editor of the Daily Mirror in August 1914 was thrown overboard in the English Channel.

53 THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS GOES TO WAR

Stuart Hadaway relates how the RFC prepared for war in 1914.

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75 70 THE RAF ON THE AIR: “THE BATTLE OF THE SITTANG RIVER BEND” In a radio broadcast from Singapore on 5 October 1945, the CO of 155 Squadron, Squadron Leader Gordon Conway DFC, told the story of the part his pilots played in the Battle of the Sittang River Bend during 1945. The battle was, noted an official communiqué, “a deciding factor in the closing stages of the epic Burma Campaign”.

REGULARS 6 BRIEFING ROOM

News, Restorations, Discoveries and Events from around the UK.

22 FIELDPOST Your letters.

33 WHAT I WOULD SAVE IN A FIRE

A pair of autograph books in an exhibition at the British Schools Museum in Hitchin, Hertfordshire would be saved from a fire if Andy Gibbs, the museum manager, had his way.

52 IMAGE OF WAR

21 November 1941 – “A Slugging Match”.

60 DATES THAT SHAPED THE WAR

FREE BOOK

Claim your FREE Albert Ball VC or Cruise of the Sea Eagle book worth £10.95 when you subscribe to Britain at War. See pages 68 and 69.

We chart some of the key moments and events that affected the United Kingdom in September 1944.

101 RECONNAISSANCE REPORT A look at new books and products.

114 THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN OBJECTS

The gun that defied a division – a surviving QF 13 pounder Mk.I gun which remained in operation at Néry.

Editor’s Choice 75 THE DAY THEY BOMBED THE STATION

One date stands out in the history of Middlesbrough in the Second World War – 3 August 1942. The target, as Bill Norman describes, was the town’s Railway Station.

79 THE NETTLETON ROOM

Twenty-one years ago the main briefing room at RAF Waddington was dedicated as “The Nettleton Room”. Andrew Thomas explains the background to the ceremony.

86 HEROES IN DISGUISE

Steve Snelling charts the story of one of the most remarkable sea duels of the First World War – an epic encounter between a British Q-ship and a German U-boat.

106 THE HIDDEN SECRET OF THE HUMBIE HEINKEL

In the case of the very first enemy aircraft to come down intact on the mainland of the British Isles in the Second World War, a highly significant discovery was made by RAF investigators – albeit one that had initially been overlooked.

www.britainatwar.com

62 A BRIEF SPELL IN THE LINE

It was during the height of the Battle of Monte Cassino when, in March 1944, Second Lieutenant (later Major) Peter Laughton’s platoon, part of the 2nd Battalion Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, found itself occupying front line positions on Snakeshead Ridge not far from the Monastery itself.

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BULLETIN BOARD

A MEMORIAL has been unveiled in Uckfield, East Sussex to Flight Lieutenant Eugene Seghers, DFC who was killed on 26 July 1944, while flying a Spitfire of 91 Squadron, writes Geoff Simpson. Seghers was a pre-war pilot in the Belgian Air Force, who escaped to France and then Britain in 1940. In the Battle of Britain he flew Hurricanes with 32 and 46 squadrons. On the day of his death Flight Lieutenant Seghers attacked a V-1 over Uckfield, but died when the flying bomb exploded. The memorial has been placed in the garden of the Highlands Inn, Ridgewood, close to where much of the wreckage of the V-l and Spitfire fell. THE SITE of the Former Second World War Inland Aircraft Fuel Depot at Cootamundra in New South Wales is to be taken into local council ownership. The former No.3 Inland Aircraft Fuel Depot was installed in 1942 as part of Australia’s Second World War defence infrastructure. The site, which is currently privatelyowned, largely remains in its original condition. Once under council ownership, the intention is to create a Second World War historical attraction.   BATTLE OF Britain veteran Wing Commander Tim Elkington was awarded the Russian Federation’s Ushakov Medal at a ceremony held in the Russian Embassy, London on 7 August 2014, some seventy years after his entitlement to the honour. The award was for services in the Murmansk region where Elkington had flown Hurricanes with the RAF Wing in Russia, serving on 134 Squadron from September 1941. In Russia, Wing Commander (then Flying Officer) flew bomber escort and airfield defence sorties before going on to train Russian pilots on Hurricanes in October of that year. During his time in Russia with 134 Squadron he shared in the destruction of a Junkers Ju 88. Wing Commander Elkington went on to have a long career in the RAF, retiring in 1975. A PLAQUE has been unveiled at Mossley railway station, near Manchester, in memory of Private Ernest Sykes VC, a native of the town. Private Sykes (1885-1949) earned his award on Easter Monday 1917 near Arras, serving in the Northumberland Fusiliers, when he tended and rescued wounded men, “under conditions which appeared to be certain death”. He was an employee of the London and North Western Railway and had a locomotive named in his honour.

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News • Restorations • Discoveries • Events • Exhibitions from around the UK

Carisbrooke Statue Depicts ‘Warrior’ A STATUE of Warrior, “the real War Horse”, is to be displayed at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, reports Geoff Simpson. Foaled on the Isle of Wight in 1908, Warrior served on the Western Front throughout the First World War as the mount of Major General Jack Seely (1858-1947). Among many other engagements, he took part in the charge on 30 March 1918, which forced the Germans to concede Moreuil Wood, a position commanding the Arve river bank in France. During the fighting, Norfolk-born Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew of the Canadian regiment, Lord Strathcona’s Horse, earned a posthumous Victoria Cross. The action at Moreuil Wood played a significant part in halting the German Spring Offensive. It was depicted in a painting by Alfred Munnings, who went on to depict Warrior in further paintings. Warrior returned to the Isle of Wight with his owner and was ridden for many years by Jack Seely. In 1934 Seely published a book, My Horse Warrior. Warrior died aged 33 in 1941. The (London) Evening Standard reported his passing under the headline, “Horse the Germans Could Not Kill”.

The broadcaster, author and former jockey Brough Scott, who is Jack Seely’s grandson, is pictured here with the statue.

In 1912 Seely became Secretary of State for War. He also served on the Committee of Imperial Defence. He believed that conflict with Germany was inevitable and was determined to prepare the Army for that eventuality. At the outbreak of war Seely was placed on the staff of General Sir John French and remained in France for much of the war.

Jack Seely became a temporary Brigadier-General in 1915, took command of the Canadian Cavalry Brigade and led it successfully in action. The Seely family has commissioned the statue of Warrior being ridden by Jack Seely. It has been loaned to English Heritage and accompanies the current Carisbrooke Castle Museum exhibition, “Men and Horses Go to War”.

RFC Records Online

THE ROYAL Air Force Museum has launched a new website which will enable members of the public to examine previously unseen Casualty Cards relating to Royal Flying Corps personnel who suffered injury during the First World War. In addition to these records online visitors are now also able to search the Muster Roll for the RAF as drafted on 1 April

1918 and the Air Force List as of 1 February of the same year. This new online resource is the culmination of a three-year digitisation project involving over 10,000 hours of work by staff of the museum, who electronically preserved over 300,000 fragile records. Karen Whitting, Director of Public Programmes for the Museum,

An example of one of the RFC Casualty Cards – in this case relating to Captain Albert Ball. (RAF MUSEUM)

stated: “As part of the Museum’s on-going mission to open up our archives to the public, we felt it was of paramount importance that, as the world unites to commemorate the outbreak of the First World War, our online visitors were able to read these fragile documents which previously would have only been accessible through supervised visits with our curators. “Each of the records contained within this digital archive reveals the story of a member of the Royal Flying Corps who suffered injury, often making the ultimate sacrifice to protect their families and their country at a time of major global conflict – heroes such as Albert Ball and Mick Mannock whose names are central to the story of the First World War in the air. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Heritage Lottery Fund for their grant of £19,000, which enabled the museum to build this site.” www.britainatwar.com

Exhibitions from around the UK • Events • Discoveries • Restorations • News

HMS Queen Elizabeth Floats for the First Time THE UK’S largest ever warship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, successfully floated out of the dock in which she was assembled on 17 July 2014. In an operation that started earlier that week, the dry dock in Rosyth near Edinburgh was flooded for the first time - a task which in itself took two days to complete to allow the 65,000 tonne aircraft carrier to float. It then took only three hours to carefully manoeuvre the aircraft carrier out of the dock with just two metres clearance either side and then berth her alongside a nearby jetty. Teams will now continue to outfit the ship and steadily bring her systems to life in preparation for sea trials in 2016. The dock she vacates will be used for final assembly of her sister ship, HMS Prince of Wales, which will begin in September.

The float out came just thirteen days after the vessel was named by Her Majesty the Queen. The following signal was sent to the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas, to mark the milestone: "Director ship acquisition is

pleased to inform you that HMS Queen Elizabeth is afloat." When it becomes fully operational in 2020, HMS Queen Elizabeth will be able to carry a contingent of thirty-six Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning fighters. (© MOD/CROWN COPYRIGHT)

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THE LATEST plans for a museum at the former RAF Biggin Hill have been approved by Bromley Council, writes Geoff Simpson. The museum, for which funding still has to be obtained and use of the land agreed with the Ministry of Defence, would be built on the car park next to the RAF St George’s Chapel of Remembrance at Main Road, Biggin Hill. The initiative has come from the Biggin Hill Battle of Britain Supporters’ Club. The club envisages that the museum will tell the story of Biggin Hill’s role in the Battle of Britain, but will also take visitors back to the airfield’s beginnings in the First World War. There will be replica aircraft, artefacts, models and a cafeteria.

BELOW: The Surgical Ward at the St John Ambulance Hospital, Étaples. (MUSEUM OF THE ORDER

armed forces. Additionally, the funding received will enable the Museum to increase public access to the fascinating First World War materials in its St John Archive including diaries, photographs and official correspondence with the War Office.

THE AUSTRALIAN War Memorial has received the Victoria Cross and full medal group of Warrant Officer Class 2 Keith Payne VC OAM, one of the country’s most decorated Vietnam veterans. Payne was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions on the night of 24 May 1969, as commander of 212th Company of the 1st Mobile Strike Force Battalion. During a strong attack from a North Vietnamese Army force, his company became isolated and surrounded on three sides. Under heavy fire, Payne covered the withdrawal of his troops and organised a defensive perimeter. Although wounded, Payne searched the battlefield for isolated and wounded soldiers, finding forty wounded men. Dr Brendan Nelson, Director of Australian War Memorial, said, “These medals will form an integral part of the continuing story of the Australian experience of war ... Only four Victoria Cross medals were awarded to Australians during the Vietnam War. Keith Payne’s is the largest individual medal group of all Australian Victoria Cross recipients.”

LEFT: Veronica Nisbet. (MUSEUM

OF THE ORDER OF ST JOHN ARCHIVE, LONDON; BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ESTATE OF VERONICA NISBET)

OF ST JOHN ARCHIVE, LONDON)

the Hospital in Étaples), the learning resource will be made available in the Museum as well as online to commemorate the 45,000 St John volunteers who, by the end of the First World War, had answered the call for Voluntary Aid to support the

BULLETIN BOARD

PLANS HAVE been announced to create a military railway museum at the former Royal Engineers Central Supply Depot at Long Marston, Warwickshire, reports Philip Curtis. This follows the ending of the Army's involvement in railway operations earlier this year with the disbandment of 275 Railway Squadron, Royal Logistics Corps. A statement issued on behalf of the proposed museum said that the project, “exists to preserve the kit, culture and capability of British Military Railway operations. It is not a ‘railway preservation society’ in the traditional mould – it is an active (some might even say hyperactive) veterans’ association with a rail theme”.

Scrapbook and Sketches of a WW1 Nurse to go Online

THE TESTIMONIAL of a St John Ambulance nurse who volunteered to serve during the First World War is soon to be made available in digital format as part of a project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The Museum of the Order of St John has received a grant of £69,400 from the HLF to tell the story of Veronica Nisbet, a Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurse who served at the St John Ambulance Brigade Hospital in Étaples, northern France, during the First World War. The St John Ambulance Brigade hospital in Étaples was arguably the most significant initiative of the British Order of St John during the 20th century. Over the course of the First World War, the hospital received 35,000 patients. It was staffed and maintained principally at the Order’s expense, a unique and unprecedented achievement by a voluntary organisation. Through cartoons, sketches and photographs, Veronica Nisbet’s scrapbook captures the hospital’s endeavours to heal and care for the sick and wounded. Once complete in September 2015 (the 100th anniversary of the first convoy of patients arriving at

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BULLETIN BOARD

TWO AUSTRALIANS who served in the British Army in the First World War and who died on the Western Front in 1914 have been added to the Australian War Memorial’s Commemorative Roll. Based on the available evidence, one of the two men, Lieutenant William Malcolm Chisholm, may well be the first Australian killed in the First World War. He was mortally wounded in the Battle of Le Cateau on 26 August 1914, just three days after arriving in France, and died the next day, aged 22. “Until now,” stated a press release from the Australian War Memorial, “Lieutenant Chisholm had not been nominated for inclusion. Once we were alerted to his service and sacrifice, we followed the process of collecting the required supportive evidence. His name has been added … along with that of Captain Charles Dalglish.” Lieutenant Chisholm was born in Sydney in 1892, the eldest son of an eminent surgeon. He was commissioned in the New South Wales Scottish Rifles before his family moved to England in 1910. He was accepted into the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1911. Two years later he was gazetted into the 1st Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, and embarked for France in August 1914. Captain Charles Antoine De Guerry Dalglish, 1st Battalion, The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders), was born in Goulburn, NSW, in 1883. He served with the regiment in the Boer War, and was later killed near Soblonnières, France, on 8 September 1914. MORE THAN 300,000 First World War records have been released by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to show how Britain came to commemorate its war dead. During the fiveyear long project, more than 300,000 documents relating to those who died in service have been scanned and uploaded to the CWGC’s website. The documents give an insight into the process of commemoration undertaken by the Army and the CWGC after the Great War, and include details of personal headstone inscriptions, date of death, rank, regiment and even some documents which show the journey of the dead to their final resting place. The archive also includes alternative commemoration documents – collections of grave registration documents for graves and cemeteries that have been lost or abandoned; as well as burial returns – lists of people recovered or exhumed from their original burial location and moved to a particular cemetery.

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News • Restorations • Discoveries • Events • Exhibitions from around the UK

The Prince Of Wales Visits GCHQ Scarborough

HIS Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, Royal Patron of the Intelligence Services, recently paid a visit to GCHQ Scarborough to commemorate the centenary of the oldest continually operating signals intelligence station in the world. The Prince was given a tour of the site and shown items of interest including its Second World War “bunker”, which remained in operation until the 1970s. Whilst in the site’s museum the Prince was given a demonstration of an original wartime Enigma

encryption machine and an explanation of the crucial role that Scarborough played in the tracking of the German battleship Bismarck prior to its sinking in 1941. The Royal Navy first established a Wireless Telegraphy Station at Scarborough in 1912. During the First World War the station’s role was to monitor the German High Seas Fleet. During the Second World War, Scarborough intercepted German Naval and Naval Air communications, passing intercepted Enigma traffic to Bletchley Park. It also controlled a Direction-Finding network. During May 1941, the station at Scarborough played a key role in the location and subsequent

destruction of the German battleship Bismarck. In 1943, the station moved to its current location and used as its main building a half-buried bombproof bunker partially covered in hundreds of tons of earth. The working conditions in the bunker were far from ideal; space and heating and water supplies were inadequate while rainwater would seep into the building as well. In 1965, operations at the site were transferred to GCHQ and the station was renamed Composite Signals Organisation Station Irton Moor. Work on the present building began in 1972 and all operations had transferred from the ‘bunker’ by 1974.

Growing Tribute to a Generation BETWEEN THE years 2014 and 2018, the Woodland Trust will be commemorating the Centenary of the First World War on a national scale. Millions of trees will be planted in memory of everyone involved in the war, from those that paid the highest price to the hardworking men and women who made sacrifices off the battlefield. The Woodland Trust is the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity, championing native woods and trees. It owns over 1,000 sites across the UK, covering 50,000 acres and its “Centenary Woods” project revolves around ambitious plans to create four flagship sites – one in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This will offer a unique place for reflection and commemoration to each country, with trees planted in memory of people from those nations.

Donations made towards the project will play a huge part in purchasing, developing and caring for the new woods. The English wood alone requires £9 million to contribute towards the total cost of the site. The Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland sites will also need a further £2.4 million, accumulatively. Members of the public can make contributions to a site of their choice and, as is the case with all Woodland Trust woods, be able to visit the wood they have made a contribution towards free of charge for decades to come. The Trust is also offering the chance to dedicate a tree in one of the Centenary Woods. A donation of £20 will enable the Trust to dedicate a single tree, which will become part of a larger woodland story and stand as a tribute for future generations to appreciate.

The first Centenary Wood is the 640 acres of rolling hills and grassy fields at Langley Vale, near Epsom. Here, it is intended that 200,000 native trees will be planted to create carpets of striking wildflowers, transforming the land into a peaceful place where people can reflect. The Welsh Centenary Wood will be set in the 120 acres of rolling landscape at Ffos Las, Carmarthenshire, with views out to the coast. Meanwhile, the Northern Ireland site will be at Brackfield Wood in Faughan Valley, County Londonderry, whilst the Scottish site will be in the Pentland Hills, just outside Edinburgh. To find out more about the project, dedicate a tree or make a contribution to any of the four flagship sites, please visit: www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/fww www.britainatwar.com

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NEWS FEATURE |

Spitfire MJ627

LEFT: A picture of MJ627 whilst being operated by 441 Squadron. On 27 September 1944, Pilot Officer Sid Bregman shot down a Bf 109 near Arnhem whilst at its controls. (COURTESY OF S. BREGMAN) ABOVE: MJ627 pictured during its service with the Irish Air Corps. (COURTESY OF RICHARD VERRALL)

RESPLENDENT IN its 441 (Silver Fox) Squadron RCAF markings, Supermarine Spitfire TR.9 MJ627, coded 9G-Q, a recent addition to the Boultbee Flight Academy at Goodwood airfield in West Sussex, has been wheeled out of its hangar to fly its first passengers, reports Mark Hillier. The Goodwood-based Boultbee Flight Academy is able to offer licensed pilots the opportunity to undergo training on an actual veteran Second World War combat aircraft. Acquired to complement Boultbee’s existing two-seat Spitfire, Mk.IX SM520, MJ627 has an interesting combat history and a wartime connection to RAF Westhampnett (the wartime name for Goodwood airfield). An ex-two seat Irish Air Corps aircraft, it was originally built at Castle Bromwich during the autumn of 1943 as a single seat Mk.IX, as part of the serial batch MJ602 to MJ646. Shortly afterwards MJ627 was delivered to No.9 Maintenance Unit (MU) at RAF Cosford, where it was stored until the spring of 1944. The aircraft was issued to 441 (Silver Fox) Squadron RCAF in April 1944, which was then resident at

RAF Westhampnett. Whilst the squadron was at Westhampnett, MJ627 arrived at General Aircraft Ltd for further checks, which were almost certainly conducted at Hanworth, Middlesex. MJ627 finally became operational with 441 Squadron, at Advanced Landing Ground B70 in Belgium, on 25 September 1944. It was given the code letters ‘9G-Q’. Its first sortie occurred on 25 September with Flight Lieutenant Alistair Angus Smith, the ‘B’ Flight Commander, at the controls. The flight involved a patrol over the Nijmegen Area in support of Operation Market Garden. That afternoon MJ627 was flown by Pilot Officer B.W. Dunning, who took off at 14.35 hours for a patrol with ten of the squadron’s aircraft around the Nijmegen area. As they approached Nijmegen Bridge they encountered a mixed force of thirty or more Bf 109s and Fw 190s which was about to attack the river crossing. The Spitfires tore into the formation, breaking it up into a series of dogfights, compelling the enemy aircraft to jettison their bombs. Two of 441 Squadron’s aircraft were shot down and one force-landed. Against this the squadron was able to claim five

enemy aircraft damaged and one destroyed. The squadron were also involved in escorting Dakotas which were dropping supplies to Arnhem at the tail end of the operation. MJ627 remained with 441 Squadron until 11 September 1945, when it was sent to Air Service Training, Hamble, Hants for repairs, before being issued to 29 MU at High Ercall, Shropshire for storage. It was sold to Vickers Armstrong on 19 July 1950, and subsequently moved by road to Southampton. The company then converted the airframe into a Tr.9 Trainer variant. Having been converted to a two-seat trainer, MJ627 was sold to the Irish Air Corps. Delivered to Baldonnel, near Dublin on 5 June 1951, it was given the markings IAC 158. The Spitfire Tr.9s were used to train pilots for the IAC’s Seafire fleet. MJ627 remained with the IAC until 20 April 1960, when it was withdrawn from service. Described on its website as “the world’s only Spitfire flight training school”, Boultbee currently offer licensed pilots the opportunity to learn to fly a de Havilland Tiger Moth, a North American Harvard and the Spitfire.

Goodwood’s New Combat Veteran BELOW: Supermarine Spitfire Tr.9 MJ627, which is now operated by the Goodwoodbased Boultbee Flight Academy. (COURTESY OF ALAN WILSON)

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Home Front Records From 1914 Go Online |

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Home Front Records from 1914 go Online WITHIN DAYS of the outbreak of war in 1914, what was then called SSFA – the Soldiers and Sailors Families Association – was called upon to assist the Government to help ensure that families did not suffer hardship when the men were called up. SSFA was asked to provide some of the structures and services which would be automatically provided by the state today. SSFA, later becoming SSAFA (Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmens Families Association) was the only national Service charity in existence at that time and was already a well-respected organisation, having been established in 1885. Within a few weeks branches of the Association throughout the land were ordered to recruit and the charity grew from 7,000 to 50,000 volunteers in a matter of months. At the beginning of the war, the Government had not allocated any money for the families left behind. A charitable fund was established to take care of those families whose men had gone off to fight. Known as The National Relief Fund, this struck a chord with members of the public who were quick to respond and money poured in. At the end of the first fifteen months of the campaign a staggering £5 million had been raised by the National Relief Fund. This enabled SSAFA to assist more than 1 million people in 1914 alone. One SSAFA volunteer, a Mrs Wood, said, “When the bugle call rang out …there were two sorts of recruiting going on, men answering the country’s call, and the non combatants who came in their thousands to serve under the banner of SSAFA.” The charity also played a vital role in persuading the men to volunteer for war. SSAFA’s work supporting the families at home meant that men could join up knowing that their families would be looked after and not become

ABOVE: A SSAFA Nurse in 1914. www.britainatwar.com

ABOVE: Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who went on to become the Queen Mother, at a SSAFA fundraising event in Musselburgh Scotland, in 1915. (BOTH IMAGES COURTESY OF SSAFA)

destitute. William Hayes Fisher was a member of SSAFA’s Executive Committee in 1914. He went on to become President of the Local Government Board and Minister of Information. He outlined SSAFA’s achievements in 1915 as: “Homes have been maintained free from anxiety, in comfort and in decency and will so be maintained until the heroes to whom those homes belong return home.” To mark the centenary of the start of the First World War, SSAFA has announced that it has made its local 1914 records available online. The digitalised records reveal SSAFA’s extraordinary achievement, mobilising its thousands of volunteers across the UK and assisting more than 1 million people in 1914 alone. Every town is listed with details of committee members, the number of people helped, the types of cases, and the individual local benefactors. The SSAFA records are an important social history resource that offers an unseen perspective on the impact of the First World War and the hardships it imposed on the wives and children left behind. The documents online also include reports from the charity’s national committee, which offer a fascinating insight into the issues faced when coordinating a ‘volunteer army’ and contending with such, then, controversial topics as unmarried mothers. SSAFA is still going strong locally today with branches in every county dealing with thousands of clients each year.

The records, which are free to access, are held on an online searchable database. This can be found at: www.ssafa.org.uk/ww1

CASE STUDIES AN EXAMPLE of SSAFA’s work in the First World War involved a Mrs Warren from Hampshire. Since her husband had enlisted she had no lodgings and no food. Accommodation was duly provided by SSAFA and she was given 1s 6d for her food to ensure that she did not have to walk the streets with her children. The visiting officer commented that: “She is so dirty that three lodging houses in Farnham refused to take her.” The newly released files also reveal the poignant story of the family of Robert Williamson of Top Street, Burnley. Robert was a private in the Manchester Regiment and was killed in action in France on 23 March 1915. His youngest son had been born five days after he was called up. In August 1915 the local SSAFA representative found Private Williamson’s wife and two children starving and penniless, with one of the children seemingly close to death. They arranged for the child to be taken to hospital where it was nursed back to health. They also helped Mrs Williamson get all the money and pension to which she was entitled and with her father arranged for the family to have a new start in Canada, from where she wrote a letter of gratitude to SSAFA enclosing a photo of her two now-healthy children.

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The RAF’s Original ‘Smart’ Bomber’s Medals Sold At Auction

The RAF’s Original ‘Smart’ Bomber’s Medals Sold MEMORIES OF some of the RAF’s most extraordinary “missions impossible” have been stirred by the recent medal sale of the medals and decorations awarded to Air Commodore Ted Sismore, reports Steve Snelling. Sismore’s awards include a Distinguished Service Order and a Distinguished Flying Cross and two Bars, recognising his skill and daring in a succession of low-level, high precision raids against vital targets in Germany and enemy-occupied Europe during the Second World War. Born in Northamptonshire in 1921, Edward Barnes Sismore had enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as an 18-year-old in 1940. Sismore, whose baby-faced features earned him the improbable nickname of “Daisy”, endured two crash landings in his first week of training. A posting to the Bristol Blenheimequipped 110 Squadron followed, and, at a time when Blenheim crews of 2 Group were suffering some of the highest loss rates of any force in Bomber Command, his continued survival was little short of miraculous. In the course of these operations, his reputation as a first-class navigator grew and, following a spell as an instructor, he converted to de Havilland Mosquitos before returning to operational flying with 105 Squadron at RAF Marham. This squadron, one of the first to fly the Mosquito operationally, had been responsible for carrying out the precision bombing raid on the Gestapo HQ in Oslo, the first raid of its kind. By this stage of the war, 21-year-old Sismore was already a veteran of thirty missions, which included the first “thousand bomber raid” on Cologne in May 1942. It was through his time with 105 Squadron, however, that Sismore forged his reputation as the RAF’s leading Mosquito strike navigator, having played a leading role in a series of pinpoint attacks. Described at the time as “daylight spectaculars”, the sorties in which

ABOVE: Ted Sismore, the RAF’s top low-level, precision-bombing navigator of the Second World War.

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ABOVE: The eleven-medal group which, led by the Distinguished Service Order and Distinguished Flying Cross with two Bars, was awarded to Air Commodore Ted Sismore. (ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF SPINK) LEFT: Sismore, top right with arms behind back, joins Air Vice Marshal Basil Embry, bottom right, on a tour of the Danish capital where they met with resistance survivors. Sismore was later appointed a Knight of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog for his role in the attacks on Gestapo headquarters in Denmark. BELOW: A distinguished veteran, Ted Sismore, right, meets the Queen at a gathering of former RAF aircrew.

Sismore specialised depended for their success on what Spink’s medal expert Mark Quayle called “minutely-detailed planning, incredible flying skills and unerringly accurate navigation”. Amongst the many awards Sismore received, his first was an “Immediate” Distinguished Flying Cross for undertaking the RAF’s first daylight bombing raid on Berlin. This was, notes the Spink auction description, “an 1,100 mile roundtrip timed to coincide precisely with a radio broadcast to be given by Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Hitler’s accession to power. Dropping bombs close to the broadcast station, Sismore’s explosions were heard across Germany, and the speech went ungiven.” Other important attacks in which Sismore was involved include that on the Gestapo-run prison at Amiens. In May 1943, Sismore was also involved in the RAF’s attack upon the Schott glass works and Zeiss optical works at Jena, near Leipzig, which was the deepest daylight, low-level penetration of Germany up to that time. Sismore also took part in the precision attacks upon Gestapo headquarters in Denmark.

After a spell as Commandant of the Royal Observer Corps, Sismore, who flew with a number of RAF “legends” including Air Chief Marshal Sir Basil Embry and Air Vice Marshal Robert “Pinpoint” Bateson, eventually retired as an Air Commodore in 1976. Sismore then joined Marconi as a service adviser. During the Falklands War he was able, in a matter of a few weeks, to negotiate the availability of a mobile air defence radar – something that would ordinarily have taken several years to procure. Despite a pre-auction estimate of £40,000£50,000, Air Commodore Ted Sismore medals sold for £72,000 at Spink’s Bloomsbury auction rooms, one of 472 lots offered in the auction. www.britainatwar.com

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Attic Find Leads to Great War Exhibition

Attic Find Leads to Great War Exhibition A MAJOR find by National Trust volunteers has led to new insights into the life of a First World War officer and an exhibition at Scotney Castle, Kent, reports Geoff Simpson. The volunteers found a metal box in an attic at the Castle which “revealed a treasure trove of memorabilia from a Brigadier-General during the First World War”. Inside was “an astonishing collection of letters, diaries, photographs and battle plans belonging to Brigadier-General Arthur Hussey, Commander, Royal Artillery, of the 5th Division,” said a statement by the Trust. “Before the discovery in 2011, almost nothing was known about the life and character of Arthur Hussey, son of Edward Hussey III who built the house at Scotney Castle, and only one photograph of him was on display in the house. Now this remarkable collection of items is going on show to visitors for the first time, revealing Arthur’s war in detail as part of the centenary commemorations marking the start of the First World War.

“The eleven diaries in the box were the first items to be read and they span Arthur’s time at the front from 1914 to 1918. It took a team of eight volunteers over 1,200 hours to transcribe the diaries which include passages on the use of gas, wire cutting experiments and specific battles. Over seventy letters have also been transcribed which Arthur sent during the war to his sister Gertrude and which show him to have been a funny, caring and loving brother.” Laura Edwards, visitor experience manager at Scotney Castle, commented, “Since the house came into our care we have discovered nearly 12,000 objects, but we know there are many more yet to be found as every drawer, cupboard, nook and cranny is revealing potentially exciting finds. To have uncovered this box is astonishing in itself, but we have subsequently discovered Arthur’s medals, ration books from the period, First World War recruitment posters, Fortnum &

ABOVE LEFT: Some of Brigadier-General Arthur Hussey’s wartime diaries which have been found in the attic at Scotney Castle.

(NATIONAL TRUST/GLYNN ROCHE)

Mason catalogues for ordering provisions during the war, and a signed book of poems given to the family by Siegfried Sassoon, all of which we are using to bring Arthur’s war to life for visitors.” Among the artefacts discovered are forty stereoscope images which show life on the front line during the war, including fighting, trenches, and tanks. Visitors to the castle will be able to view these through a replica 3D viewfinder in the way that they were intended to be seen. Brigadier-General Arthur Hussey’s eleven diaries cover the entire period he was involved in the war effort and run to 31 July 1919. Some of the themes in the first diary include the use of gas, entries on which include: “Friday 23 April 1915: The Germans have been

ABOVE: The books signed by Siegfried Sassoon. (NATIONAL TRUST/GLYNN ROCHE)

RIGHT: Brigadier-General Arthur Hussey’s medals. They are, left to right, The Queen’s South Africa Medal, 1914 Star, War Medal, Victory Medal, and 1911 Coronation Medal. (NATIONAL TRUST/ GLYNN ROCHE)

14 SEPTEMBER 2014

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Attic Find Leads to Great War Exhibition

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LEFT: Brigadier-General Arthur Hussey. ABOVE: The box containing Brigadier-General Arthur Hussey’s wartime collection on display. (BOTH NATIONAL TRUST/GLYNN ROCHE)

using bombs with asphyxiating gas which they say are effective a mile away. “Monday 3 May 1915: The bombardment yesterday was another gas attack at Ypres, but we at once bombarded heavily ... the Germans were seen running to the rear out of their trenches ... a lot of them must have been killed. Several devices are being thought out to deal with gas, which is probably Chlorine, such as mouth pads soaked in bicard. ..... the French, they say, are inventing worse gasses. We seem to be reverting to savagery.” On the subject of wire cutting experiments, Brigadier-General Hussey wrote: “Wednesday 17 March 1915: Went for an early ride to look for a place near the Bois de Nieppe to carry out experiments with wire cutting by

RIGHT: Some of the letters Arthur Hussey sent to his sister between 1916 and 1919. (NATIONAL TRUST/ GLYNN ROCHE)

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Artillery Fire. The result was not satisfactory … the conclusions I came were (1) a slight command of a few feet is necessary (2) Elev [elevation]: of 500ᵞ must be given (3) Fuze .6 or .7 for 250ᵞ. “Friday 19 March 1915: We made further trials at cutting wire entanglement with a 12½ pr. Mountain gun … but the fuzers were most irregular – I think only one strand was cut.” During the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, Hussey made the following diary entry on Wednesday, 10 March 1915 (the battle’s opening day): “The grand attack on NEUVE CHAPELLE. The forward reporting centre opened at 7 near La Gorgue. I went out at once to the new … How. Batteries ... arrived just as the bombardment began. It was a magnificent spectacle. By dark we had established a line round the E. edge of the village ... had gained about 1 mile to the front on a front of 2 miles. Nearly 1000 prisoners captured in the 1st Army; our losses must have been heavy, 1050 wounded arrived at Merville.” Arthur Hussey, who was born in 1863, was the brother of Edward Windsor Hussey who lived at Scotney Castle during the First World War and

ABOVE: The front of a Fortnum & Mason war catalogue from 1917. (NATIONAL TRUST/GLYNN ROCHE)

was an Honorary Colonel in the Territorial Army. The Hussey family took ownership of Scotney Castle in 1778. It has been in the hands of the National Trust since 1970. Arthur studied at Eton and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was commissioned in 1882 and served in India and South Africa. During his career Hussey was Mentioned in Despatches six times. He was made CB and CMG, retired from the Army in 1919 and lived in London,

ABOVE: The National Trust’s Scotney Castle today. (NATIONAL TRUST/JOHN MILLER)

becoming a co-author of the official history of the Fifth Division in the First World War. He took part in hunting expeditions to India and Africa and was a keen amateur artist, often sketching during his travels. He died in Singapore in 1923 from blackwater fever and was buried there. Associated with the “Arthur’s War” project is research into the men of nearby Lamberhurst village, some of whom worked on the Scotney estate, before enlisting in the forces. As part of the exhibition, artist Vivian Pedley has produced portraits of these men, inspired by their images in obituaries that were published. The exhibition has been a year in development. Visitors will be able to view “Arthur’s War” between 9 October 2014 and 22 March 2015. SEPTEMBER 2014

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Tower of London Poppy Project has been drawn up in conjunction with stage designer Tom Piper. Up to the beginning of August around 120,000 had been planted, but another army of craftsmen are hand-creating around 55,000 poppies per week until November in order to complete the project by this year’s Remembrance Day. Each individual poppy takes around three days to complete. At the end of the project the individual poppies will be sold off at £25.00 and the money raised will be split between six service charities. For visitors to the tower, the whole installation can be viewed from the public area outside the ticketed entrance parts of the site. Each evening, as dusk falls, the names of one hundred and eighty of the war dead, each one nominated by different families and members of the public, will be read out. A different speaker will be invited each night to read out these names and will be standing amid the poppies on the same grassy mound where new City of London recruits were sworn in during the war, the mound having been preserved amongst the growing sea of red that now surrounds it. The Deputy Governor of The Tower, Colonel John Brown, said: “As a military man, I obviously have the temptation to make it all look very neat and tidy but that would look like a cemetery and the whole idea is to let it flow. This is a dynamic thing which will grow and grow and then, suddenly, go away.” Indeed, this whole piece of public art will quickly be disassembled after the 11 November and vanish – just like those whom it represents disappeared between 1914 and 1918.

BY NOVEMBER this year a total of 888,246 handmade ceramic poppies, one for each British and Commonwealth soldier, sailor or airman casualty of the First World War, will have been planted in the moat and grounds of the Tower of London by an army of volunteers working in shifts right up until 11 November, Armistice Day. This remarkable project is currently the biggest single commemorative event within the UK, writes Andy Saunders. Ceramic artist Paul Cummins was inspired to create this unique project when he read a poem by an unnamed soldier who wrote, “Blood swept land and seas of red”. Through this commemorative project, Cummins has sought to re-create this sea of red and each of the poppies is handmade to reflect the fact that each casualty was unique. In what is described by Cummins as “a swirling cascading pattern” around the moat and grounds at the Tower, the “sea of poppies” grows on a daily basis. Indeed, it is rapidly becoming an extremely popular visitor attraction. Some of the poppies, mounted on special frameworks and scaffolding, have been placed to represent them flowing out through one of the tower windows above the moat. The first poppy was planted in July and subsequently Prince William, the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry have visited to plant their own poppies. Each of the ceramic flowers is mounted on steel rods of varying lengths. Rotating shifts of volunteers assemble the flowers onto the mounting rods and plant them out into Cummins’ pre-ordered plan that

Tower of London Poppy Project BELOW and BOTH ABOVE: The poppy tribute in the moat and grounds of the Tower of London. (ALL IMAGES © MOD/CROWN COPYRIGHT, 2014)

16 SEPTEMBER 2014

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NEWS FEATURE |

BBFA Chairman Bob Foster Dies

BBFA Chairman Bob Foster Dies WING COMMANDER Bob Foster, DFC, AE, the Chairman of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association, died on 30 July 2014. He was aged 94. Robert William Foster was a south Londoner, born in Clapham on 14 May 1920, writes Geoff Simpson. He worked for Shell and BP and joined the RAFVR on 1 May 1939, as an airman under training pilot. Called up the day before Neville Chamberlain’s announcement on 3 September 1939 that Britain had declared war on Germany, Bob Foster continued his training at Cambridge and Grantham. He eventually arrived at 6 OTU at Sutton Bridge at the beginning of June 1940 and converted to Hurricanes. Foster was commissioned in June and in July he was posted to 605 (County of Warwick) Squadron, then stationed at Drem in southern Scotland. He would later recall that Sergeant (later Air Commodore) “Ricky” Wright had received the same posting, but, in view of Foster’s newlyacquired officer status, they had to travel north in different parts of the train. Foster and Wright had applied to exchange postings with two other pilots so that they could be closer to their families. The request was turned down and the other pilots were killed soon afterwards. On 7 September 1940, 605 Squadron flew south. The Hurricanes landed at Abingdon to refuel so that they would not be caught low on fuel in the main combat area. They then headed to their new home at Croydon. As they were landing the fires were visible from the

major German attack on London that day. The squadron was quickly in action and began to suffer casualties, with the first death being that of the rugby-playing Pilot Officer George Forrester. During the late afternoon of 9 September, in an engagement over Hampshire, Forrester’s Hurricane collided with a Heinkel He III. On 27 September Bob Foster’s Hurricane was hit by return fire from a Messerschmitt Bf 110 that he was attacking. With his engine damaged he considered baling out but then decided to try to find somewhere to land. Without realising where he was, he touched down at RAF Gatwick. Before he left he was offered, as a trophy, a human ear found at a nearby German crash site. “I hastily declined” remarked Foster years later. By the end of the Battle of Britain Foster had been credited with one enemy aircraft destroyed, one probable, one shared and two damaged. He remained with 605 until September 1941 when he was posted to Usworth as an OTU instructor. In the following year Foster returned to operations as flight commander with 54 Squadron, equipped with Spitfires. He sailed to Australia with the squadron, which was at first based in New South Wales and then at Night Cliff in the Northern Territory. Bob Foster’s haul of Japanese aircraft was five destroyed, two probables and two damaged. He was awarded the DFC and became Officer Commanding, Night Cliff. Having returned to the UK, Foster served at HQ Fighter Command, Bentley Priory and at RAF Bentwaters. He was released from the RAF

ABOVE: Bob Foster pictured soon after receiving his commission. (BOTH IMAGES COURTESY OF THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN FIGHTER ASSOCIATION)

in February 1947 and resumed his career in marketing roles with Shell and BP. He also served in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. Bob Foster became Chairman of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association in 2009, following the death of Air Commodore “Pete” Brothers, CBE, DSO, DFC and Bar. He was determined that the BBFA should remain in existence as long as possible and was instrumental in developing its relationship with the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust, leading to the decision by BBFA members that the BBMT was the appropriate successor organisation in the longer term. The Trustees of the Memorial Trust have paid tribute to Bob Foster as a “staunch supporter and benefactor”. Group Captain Patrick Tootal, OBE, DL, Secretary of the BBFA, said, “Bob was a genial and much loved man who dealt modestly with the attention he inevitably attracted as both one of ‘The Few’ and a Second World War ace. Many people are deeply saddened by his passing.”

BELOW: The late Wing Commander Bob Foster, DFC, AE laying a wreath at The National Memorial to the Few at Capel-le-Ferne, Kent.

18 SEPTEMBER 2014

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WW1 Time Capsule Opened

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A FIRST World War “time capsule” created by Dundee postal workers in 1921 was opened at a commemorative ceremony in Dundee City Chambers on Monday, 4 August 2014. A selection of photographs of local dignitaries, soldiers and postmen, and scenes of Dundee, including visits by Princess Mary in 1920 and Winston Churchill in 1921, were found inside the oak casket. It also contained a number of documents relating to the period including publications and newspaper cuttings, as well as letters and photographs from soldiers serving on various battle fronts, in addition to stamps and coins from the time. There were also a number of sealed envelopes. Amongst the documents within these was a letter from Lord Provost Spence (1921) to the Lord Provost in 2014, a letter to the Postmaster of Dundee in 2014 from the Postmaster in 1921, and an essay on the League of Nations addressed to the youngest member of the Education Authority in 2014. Speaking over the opening ceremony, the current Lord Provost, Bob Duncan, said: “The story of this capsule provides a fascinating insight into Dundee’s history and the role that postal workers played throughout the First World War. At this time of remembrance to mark a century since the outbreak of the war, we have a poignant reminder in Dundee of the sacrifices that were made.”

ABOVE: The oak casket which, also known as the “Postal War Memorial Shrine”, served as the Dundee Postal War Memorial Committee’s time capsule. (GREAT WAR DUNDEE PARTNERSHIP)

The oak casket has an inscribed plaque on the front saying, “To be opened on the 4th August 2014 by the Postmaster in the presence of the Lord Provost”. It was re-discovered by Janice Kennedy whilst she was researching her family history. Janice, whose grandfather was a postman in Dundee during the war, said: “I read about the memorial in a diary that was passed down through my family. The diary mentioned a poem written by the author’s brother called The Postman’s Shrine, that was put in the capsule. “I next thought about it when I was going to the McManus Galleries and saw work was being done on the old post office building where it was kept. I went to ask what was going on but nobody could tell me. The building is owned by Dundee High School, so I asked them but they

didn’t know where it was. I also asked in the museum, but they had never heard of it either. “Then I asked a postman who, by luck, knew where the memorial was. I was just in the right place at the right time. He had no idea of its significance, but it’s unique.” In recent years, the casket has been held at Royal Mail’s Dundee East Delivery Office and previously at a Dundee Post Office. Due to the age and condition of the sealed lead container housed within the wooden casket, it was opened under controlled conditions prior to the ceremony and to ensure the safe removal of the contents without damage. The envelopes addressed to the Postmaster and the Lord Provost and others were still sealed just as they were when placed into the capsule ninety-three years ago.

WW1 Time Capsule Opened

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ABOVE: Members of the Dundee Postal War Memorial Committee which organised the time capsule. (THE MCMANUS: DUNDEE’S ART GALLERY &

MUSEUM/UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE)

MIDDLE LEFT & RIGHT: A ticket issued for the viewing of the time capsule, or “Postal War Memorial Shrine”, prior to its sealing and one of the letters found within the time capsule.

(GREAT WAR DUNDEE PARTNERSHIP)

SEPTEMBER 2014 19

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The Last Two Airworthy Lancasters Join Forces

BELOW: The last two airworthy Lancasters pictured about to take off from RAF Coningsby, to fly together for the first time, on 13 August 2014. An RAF press release noted that this was “the first formation flight of this aircraft type since the 1960s”. The joint flight was a rehearsal for the two Lancasters’ first public engagement at the Bournemouth Air Show. (ALL IMAGES © MOD/CROWN COPYRIGHT, 2014)

The Last Two Airworthy Lancasters Join Forces ON FRIDAY, 8 August 2014, a large crowd had gathered to watch an Avro Lancaster emerge from the gloom to touch down at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. Whilst this is not an unusual sight at this RAF Station, it being the home of the RAF’s Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF), this was in fact an exceptional event, reports Rob Pritchard. The Lancaster in question was not the BBMF’s familiar Mk.I, PA474, but one belonging to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum (CWHM) which was landing after a remarkable transAtlantic flight. That journey had seen the CWHM’s Mk.X, FM213, travel from its base in Ontario to the UK, via Goose Bay and Keflavik, over the preceding four days. As a consequence of this flight, the last two airworthy Lancasters from the 7,377 examples built between 1941 and 1946, met for the first time. During its stay in the UK, the Canadian Lancaster (which being coded V-RA is often referred to as “Vera”) will fly with PA474 on a tour that will see the two Lancasters entertaining crowds at some sixty venues across the country. In a year when the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) celebrates its 90th anniversary, the two Lancasters’ tour commemorates the shared experience of UK and Canadian pilots during the

ABOVE: The Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum’s FM213 pictured en route to its arrival at Coningsby on 8 August 2014.

Second World War, during which approximately 50,000 RCAF aircrew served with Bomber Command. Almost 56,000 Bomber Command aircrew died during the Second World War, of whom approximately 10,000 were Canadians serving either in RAF or RCAF squadrons. Canadians served in all four RAF Commands – Bomber, Fighter, Coastal and Transport Command – and 16% of all gallantry awards to air force personnel were made to individuals serving in the RCAF, including two VCs. It is in honour of one of those Canadian VC recipients that the CWHM’s aircraft is named the “The Mynarski Lancaster”. Pilot Officer Andrew Mynarski was recognised for his actions

on 13 June 1944, when the Lancaster in which he was the mid-upper gunner was attacked by a Luftwaffe fighter. Following the loss of both port engines, and with a fierce fire raging between the mid-upper and rear turrets, the order was given to abandon the aircraft. However, Mynarski remained to assist the rear gunner who was trapped. Eventually, Mynarski was forced to bale out and his descent was seen by French people on the ground; both his parachute and clothing were on fire. He was so severely burnt that he died from his injuries. The tail gunner remained trapped in his turret and astonishingly survived when he was thrown clear as the aircraft crashed. One of the highlights of the Lancasters’ schedule will be the visit to Durham Tees Valley Airport on 28 August. During the war this was an RAF station named Middleton St. George. Several RCAF squadrons were based there, including Pilot Officer Mynarski’s 419 Squadron. “Vera” is due to return to Canada on 22 September 2014. Its full itinerary can be seen at the following website, though it would be advisable to check with any of the venues before planning a visit as it is known that several are already sold out: www.warplane. com/lancaster-2014-uk-tour.aspx

ABOVE: PA474 and FM213 taxiing for take-off at RAF Coningsby on 13 August 2014.

20 SEPTEMBER 2014

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Torquay's D-Day Embarkation Hards

ABOVE: Two views of the pair of surviving D-Day embarkation hards at Torquay. (ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF TONY WINGFIELD)

framework. Each is about 27m/90ft SIR – Following on from all your wide, with a gap of 24m/80ft recent coverage of sites and objects related to the Normandy between them; the lengths of 25m/83ft and the steep inclines were landings and Operation determined by the topography of the Overlord, I thought that your site. The apron sloped into the water, readers might like to see the allowing approaching vessels to land attached images that I took at on the ramp[s] and load. Two sets Beacon Quay in Torquay. of ‘dolphins’ (steel-framed mooring The main point of interest at this location is the surviving embarkation points) were located perpendicular to the quay, allowing four secure berths hards or slipways that can be in for loading.” seen in New Harbour. A plaque A second plaque carries the mounted near the hards informs the visitor that, “The hards are part of a following information: “All hards were operated by a dedicated total of sixty-eight individual hards detachment; core personnel that were established between included a Commanding Falmouth and Felixstowe between Hardmaster, Embarkation Staff April 1942 and June 1943. Between Officers, who would oversee them, these hards or slipways loading, a maintenance and repair provided 172 landing Craft Troop crew, supply quartermasters, (LCT) and forty-seven Landing cooks, stewards and medical Ship Tank berths. Both Torquay, orderlies. A minimum team of which had the code letters PY, and nearby Brixham (code PU) lay within one officer and eleven would be expanded to around forty when in Plymouth Command." operational use. Where hards were Work began on Torquay’s fourberth LCT slipways on 14 January 1943. Along with an adjoining linking section of quay wall, the hards were completed by 30 May 1943. In the case of Torquay, the slipways were constructed out of reinforced concrete by the men of 931 Port Construction and Repair Company, Royal Engineers. “The hards at Torquay are unusual,” ABOVE: One of three plaques that notes the plaque, “the aprons being can be seen near the embarkation supported by a reinforced concrete hards at Torquay.

used exclusively by US troops, US forces provided crews during the assembly and assault phases." “Landing craft employed on Overlord operated a shuttle service between England and Normandy taking on diesel and water at each turn around. In Torquay, Haldon Pier had been a base for an RAF Air-Sea-Rescue flotilla since early on in the war, so fuel and water were already available. From early 1944, all hards and dolphins had electric lighting to provide a navigational aid to approaching crews and indicate the dolphin positions. This was easy to maintain and could be instantly doused if under attack. “The soldiers of the 4th US Infantry Division who embarked at Torquay were among those who landed at Utah Beach at 6.30 on the 6th June." Tony Wingfield. By email. Ed - An American account explains a little of the rationale behind the hards' construction: “The mounting of the [D-Day] assault forces entailed a great amount of construction besides that involved in the provision of the marshaling camps. Additional loading facilities were vital to the embarkation plan, for the [UK’s] ports were unequal to the task of simultaneously loading hundreds of ships,

particularly landing craft. This requirement was met largely by the construction of concrete aprons known as ‘hards’ along the water's edge, some within the ports and others along river banks, where landing craft could nose in and drop their ramps to take on personnel and supplies, and particularly vehicles." A file in the National Archives (reference WO 219/4173) adds that the “hards varied in capacity from 2 to 4 craft, either LCT or LST, depending on harbour conditions. Hards were [often] of ‘chocolate block’ construction, backed by concrete apron to access road.” English Heritage’s “Pastscape” website informs us that the slipways at Torquay were used by troops of the 4th Division of US Army’s 7 Corps when they embarked for the crossing to Utah Beach in Normandy for the D-Day landings. The 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Division was one of the first Allied units to hit the beaches of Normandy on D-Day itself. The hards at Torquay are listed at Grade II*. They are, notes English Heritage, “extremely rare survivals”, and that they “are possibly the best-surviving example of D-Day fabric in the country”.

The author of the Letter of the Month may select a book of their choice (maximum value £25) from the extensive range of titles available at www.pen-and-sword.co.uk 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

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FIELD POST

'Britain at War' Magazine, Green Arbor, Rectory Road, Storrington, West Sussex, RH20 4EF | [email protected]

FOLLOWING THE article “Centenarian Great Escaper” in the August issue, Andrew Thomas has written in providing some further background to the loss of Paul Royle and his crew during May 1940: “Pilot Officer Paul Royle, whose story featured in the August issue, had arrived at 53 Squadron’s base at Poix, some twenty mile south west of Amiens, in the midst of the maelstrom of the German assault on France in 1940. The squadron had been reformed in the Army Co-Operation role on 28 June 1937, and, on 19 January 1939, with the arrival of L4836 from the Bristol factory it began replacing its biplane Hectors with long nosed Blenheim IVs. No.53 Squadron

United in Effort

when Squadron Leader Clements, at the controls of L4842, flew a sortie over the Bremen-OsnabruckMünster area, whilst Pilot Officer Read, flying L4840, covered Hanover-Minden-Hamm. “Despite flying through the winter and into the spring of 1940, 53 Squadron was fortunate in not suffering any losses. However, that situation was soon to change for on the evening of 8 May 1940, a Blenheim was shot down south of Baden Baden and its crew killed. “The Phoney War ended with unprecedented ferocity on 10 May 1940, when the Germans opened their Blitzkreig on France and the Low Countries and advanced rapidly. In a fluid situation information was vital and 53 Squadron’s crews flew intensively,

Phoney War. BELOW: Blenheims of 53 Squadron seen at Poix during the (53 SQUADRON RECORDS)

remained undertaking Army Co-Operation tasks, particularly in the long range reconnaissance role, a specialised skill for which its crews, like Paul Royle’s, were trained at the School of Army Co-Operation. “On the outbreak of war 53 Squadron moved to France as part of the Air Component of the British Expeditionary Force and by mid-October it had settled at Poix in Picardy where it was to remain until the following spring. A photographic survey of northern France, and elsewhere, began as a matter of priority. “The squadron began operations from an advanced base at Metz on the night of 29 September

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 Picture Post

ABOVE: Blenheim IVs of 53 Squadron pictured at Odiham in mid-1939. The nearest aircraft is L4841 in which Pilot Officer Huggett and his crew were killed on 17 May. Not all of the Blenheims have been identified, but it is probable that Paul Royle’s L4861 is amongst them. (W.S.G. MAYDWELL) BELOW: This Blenheim IV, L9459 (coded PZ-N), was lost over Belgium on 11 May 1940. It was 53 Squadron’s first loss after the opening of the Blitzkrieg.

(T. KOPANSKI)

RIGHT: Blenheim IV L4860/PZ-W, flown by Pilot Officer Lovell’s crew, fell to Bf 109s near Cambrai on 16 May 1940. (M.D. MCLEOD)

the squadron losing its first aircraft on the 11th when L9459 (coded PZ-N), which was flown by Pilot Officer Panton, Sergeant Christie and AC2 Bence, was shot down over Belgium. The latter was injured and captured. “Several aircraft were damaged by ground fire over the next few days, whilst Pilot Officer Bone’s crew was lost on the 15th. The next day, Pilot Officer Lovell’s crew

was flying a reconnaissance of the bridges at Maastricht in L4860 (PZ-W) when their aircraft was shot down by marauding Messerschmitt Bf 109s. Two more aircraft were lost through the day, with one crew becoming prisoner of war. “It was to replace losses such as these that Paul Royle was posted to the squadron. There was no reconnaissance activity on the 16th, but 53 Squadron was tasked

with three such flights on the morning of the 17th. “First off at 08.10 hours was Pilot Officer Bartlett’s crew in R9460. Although Bartlett’s aircraft was spotted by the ever-present Messerschmitts, he escaped by low flying, only to then be hit by ground fire! Both Paul Royle, in L4861, and Pilot Officer Leslie Huggett, at the controls of L4841, were flying their first missions. Paul’s crew was shot down as described in your article, whilst poor Huggett and his crew of Sergeant Anthony Gothard and AC1 James Christie were shot down near Frévant and killed. “For its part, 53 Squadron was evacuated back to Andover on 30 May 1940.”

SEPTEMBER 2014 23

FIELD POST

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The Battle for Mandalay SIR – I read with interest your very informative article on “The Siege of Fort Dufferin” in issue 88 and I would like to share some further information that may be of interest to your readers. On Tuesday, 12 February 1946, a conference took place in Rangoon between the wartime commanders of the British and Japanese forces in Burma. During the meeting, more than 100 questions were posed to the seventeen Japanese officers present. The questions were raised by senior officers from the 17th and 19th Indian Divisions, the 11th East and 82nd West African Divisions and the 1st Indian Armoured brigade, about the British strategy and tactics employed during the Burma Campaign. Amongst the questions asked by the Allied commanders were a number concerning the Battle of Mandalay. Some of these, along with the relevant Japanese response, were: Question: “Who are you?” General Tanaka: “I am Lieutenant General Tanaka Shinichi of the Imperial Japanese Army and Chief of Staff of the Burma Area Army.” Question: “The two division engaged at Singu and Mandalay were the 15th and 53rd. Can you tell us what happened to those divisions?” General Tanaka: “Yes. On 17th December [1944] the 4th and 20th Independent Engineers Regiments were merged and then set to building fortifications at Mandalay. The 53rd Division, which had been relieved by the 15th Division

in the Singu Thabikmyin area, concentrated at Mandalay by 8 January. “Due to the landing at Napin they were ordered back. Better shelter north of Mandalay. The enemy, which landed at Napin on 4 January, was attacked by troops of 53rd Division with under command elements of 15th Division. On 1st February, 15th Army ordered 15th Division to take over responsibility for the whole of the operations in the Mandalay sector and for 53rd Division to concentrate at Kyaukse to oppose the threatened crossing at Myinmu.” Question: “What casualties did those two divisions suffer at the Irrawaddy?” General Tanaka: “15th Division was 7,000 strong at the start of battle, 3,000 strong at Mandalay; 4,000 Casualties. 53rd Division [was] 5,000 strong at Singu, 3,000 strong at end of Irrawaddy Battle; 2,000 Casualties.” Question: “When and why did the Japanese finally decide to give up the battle of Mandalay and order the general withdrawal of South Burma?” General Tanaka: “The Commander of the 15th Army gave the order to abandon Mandalay on 18th March. It had been the intention of the Burma Area Army to defend Mandalay to the end, but 15th Army, in view of the weakness of 15th Division (this being reduced in strength to only 1,500 men) gave the order to withdraw. It was later recognised by Burma Area Army that defeat was inevitable.” James Luto. By email.

A White Flash

SIR – I read with interest the article in the July issue of Britain at War regarding the Rhodesian Squadron 1944. I am writing in the hope that you can help me with some information. During the Second World War I lived in Liverpool. I was aged 7 years when the war started. My auntie who lived with us was courting a Scottish airman and stayed with us over the odd weekend during the period of the ‘May Blitz’. When the airman left us to go back to his base, he took a piece of white material from the front of his cap and gave it to me

24 SEPTEMBER 2014

as a farewell present along with a dried sprig, similar to heather, and said it was from the location of Cecil Rhodes grave. I am trying to establish the significance of the white flash. I have been forwarding any information to his son who lives in Canada as he never knew his dad who was lost in the war. Dennis A. Jones. Wirral. Ed – The white ‘flash’ may have been used to indicate that the wearer was a cadet. If readers have any further information, we would be glad to publish it.

Flying Bombs

SIR – The recent articles on V-1s have rekindled many memories of that time. Having volunteered for the RAF, I reported to No.1 Aircrew Receiving Centre at St John’s Wood on Saturday, 10 June 1944. We were billeted in requisitioned flats in Prince Albert Road around Regent’s Park. Having had a pass-out parade on the evening of Tuesday, 13 June, I made for my home in South Woodford to leave my civilian clothes. Arriving at Liverpool Street Station it was announced there were no services on the line I intended to use. The first V-1 to land on London had destroyed the railway bridge over Grove Road, Stepney. I diverted to Chingford railway station and took a bus home. On arrival I only had time

for a quick ‘cuppa’ before having to return the same way. Although we did do some ‘square bashing’ most of our time was spent ‘Doodlebug’ spotting for the eight weeks I was there. Incidentally, our Dining Hall was in the Zoo restaurant. I did some six months at Radio School but the course was abandoned due to the war nearing its end. I was then re-mustered to Driver M.T. and spent about six months covering all parts of England before being sent overseas to the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces in Japan for two years. After ‘demob’ I spent a further four years in Air Force blue as a Leading Observer in the Royal Observer Corps at Post Love 2 near Markyate, Herts. Colin Brown. Luton.

E-Class Submarine E-20

SIR – In your last edition, you detailed the discovery of the wreck of submarine HMAS AE2 in the Sea of Marmara. The actions of this submarine are justly famous, but what is not so wellknown is that of the fate of another submarine, E-20, the wreck of which also lies in the Sea of Marmara. The story of its sinking is as follows. In October 1915 the Emeraude-class French submarine Turquoise was on operations in the Sea of Marmara but had mechanical problems and had to turn back through the Dardanelles. On 30 October she ran aground on the southern shore at Nagara Point right under a Turkish fort. In order to save his crew, Lieutenant Ravenel surrendered and the submarine was captured intact. All twenty-five men on board were taken prisoner. Unfortunately the boat’s confidential papers had not been destroyed and these were also captured by the Turks. Amongst these papers was a notebook or chart which showed that Turquoise was scheduled to rendezvous with the British submarine E-20.

An E-class submarine underway. This is in fact the lead ship of the class, HMS E-1.

At this time, the German submarine UB-14 was in Turkish waters and the information was passed onto the German captain and he set off to await E-20’s arrival. The two submarines reached the rendezvous point, with E-20 completely unaware that the approaching vessel was not Turquoise. It was only when they saw a torpedo heading towards them that the crew realised something was wrong. It is said that the skipper was actually brushing his teeth at the time. The torpedo hit E-20s conning tower and the submarine sank with the loss of twenty-one men. The wreck of E-20 now sits in 400 metres of water off Marmara Island. The wreck was located in 2004. Andy Masters. By email.

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TRAPPED Arnhem: Operation Market Garden

T

HE COMPLEX plan that was Operation Market Garden relied upon speed for success. Each of the objectives for the US 82nd and 101st airborne divisions, as well as those set for the British 1st Airborne Division, had to be taken quickly before the Germans could respond. When these objectives had been seized the British XXX Corps would race through Holland to consolidate the gains made by the airborne troops. These lightly-armed troops could only be expected to hold their objectives – principally the road bridges over the Maas, Waal and Lower Rhine – for a day or two, so XXX Corps had to reach the airborne divisions quickly. Speed was the most important factor in the greatest airborne operation in history. The first troops of the British Airborne Division to land were the

men of the 21st Independent Parachute Company, amounting to six officers and 180 men, who had jumped from twelve converted Short Stirlings to mark the Drop Zones and the Landing Zones for the rest of the division. Next came the main force. Horsa, Hamilcar, and a few Waco gliders, dropped, bounced and slid onto the ground. Some, as Lieutenant Peter Baille later described, also crashed into the ground: “Our pilot slightly misjudged it, and we overshot somewhat and found ourselves heading straight for a thick wood, doing about 80 m.p.h., but due to his masterly piece of flying he remained on full flap, raised the nose. And stalled it, and we hit the deck with such force it smashed the tricycle undercarriage, and we spun round and crashed into a bank. No one was hurt except for my Sgt. and myself who were slightly grazed.”1

MAIN PICTURE: The landings near Arnhem underway on 17 September 1944 – this is the scene later in the day at Landing Zone ‘Z’ near the village of Wolfheze. Having taken off from RAF Fairford, Major General Robert “Roy” Urquhart later said that his arrival was “deceptively peaceful”. (ALL IMAGES HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE)

Then the skies were filled with the round canopies of Brigadier Gerald Lathbury’s 1st Parachute Brigade. Private Bob Elliot who had landed with the glider-borne 1st Battalion, Border Regiment looked up to watch the three parachute battalions dropping. “There was stuff coming down all over the place; as well as the paras, there were containers, cycles, motorcycles, all different coloured chutes – it was worth seeing. One of the paras came down with a ‘Roman candle’ – chute not fully opened. We watched him fall, and he hit the ground with a bump about 400 yards away. He was first down in that part; he had left all the others floating down slowly behind him, poor fellow.”2 Taking the bridge was the job of the Reconnaissance Squadron, the coup-demain force. This was a mixed body of parachutists and glider-borne troops.

TRAPPED Seventy years ago this month, the British 1st Airborne Division had landed to the west of Arnhem and was pushing eastwards to capture the vital road bridge over the Lower Rhine. The division encountered stiff resistance from the enemy and its commander, Major General Robert "Roy" Urquhart, found himself stranded in Arnhem, surrounded by German troops and armour. Somehow he had to escape. 26 SEPTEMBER 2014

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TRAPPED Arnhem: Operation Market Garden They were supposed to go hell-forleather for the bridge, take the German garrison by surprise and hold on until the first of the parachute battalions – Major John Frost’s 2nd Battalion – could join them. The remainder of the division was to hold the surrounding area to stall German counter-attacks and, as more men and supplies would be dropped over the course of the following two days, to hold and defend the landing and drop zones.

COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE By 14.10 hours the first parachute drop was complete and Major General Roy Urquhart formed his first tactical HQ in an adjacent wood. A total of 5,191 men were on the ground. Now it was necessary for Urquhart to establish radio contact with all of the units of the 1st Airborne Division that had landed.

The radios, though, did not work; at least not properly, their transmissions being blocked by the trees. Unable to communicate with the rest of his division Urquhart decided to travel by Jeep around his brigades to find out what was happening. He initially headed to the headquarters of the 1st Airlanding Brigade, where he heard that Major Freddy Gough’s Reconnaissance Squadron had run into difficulties. Urquhart left instructions at both the Airlanding Brigade HQ and his own headquarters for Gough to contact him. He then took off in his Jeep with its driver and a wireless operator, to find Brigadier Lathbury. Urquhart found Lathbury with the 3rd Parachute Battalion which had also encountered determined enemy resistance as it advanced into Arnhem. The two officers remained with the 3rd

Battalion for the rest of that first day of Market, as the airborne element of the operation was code-named, and were still with that battalion when on D+1, 18 September 1944, further attempts were made to break through to the Arnhem road bridge. The Germans, though, were well aware that the paratroopers were aiming to reach the bridge and had blocked all the routes through to Arnhem. Urquhart himself takes up the story: “We had made good headway and then, on the sweeping bend just west of the St Elizabeth Hospital where the lower road again joined the main road, the Germans halted our leading elements. They were shooting down the road, and they had brought up some self-propelled guns and a few tanks which wheezed and rattled around the district … As we had struck substantial 

ABOVE: ABOVE:The same view today; LEFT: An aerial view from the north showing men of the 1st Parachute Brigade, 1st (British) Airborne Division, descending on Drop Zone ‘X’, which is already littered with gliders and parachutes, on 17 September.

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SEPTEMBER 2014 27

TRAPPED Arnhem: Operation Market Garden

FOOTSTEPS IN HISTORY:

Holed up at No.14 Zwarteweg, 17-19 September 1944

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Zwarteweg

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Mauritsstraat

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at Alexanderstra

Frederik Hendriksraat

Oranjestraat

Anna Paulownastraat

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eg tsew ech Utr

URQUHART'S DIRECTION OF APPROACH

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g ewe chts

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N225 ARNHEM ROAD BRIDGE

LOWER RHINE

German opposition I moved with Lathbury a few yards off the road into a three-storeyed house which had a flat roof on the first floor level at the rear. Later an obsolete tank rattled down the main road and the parachutists of the 3rd Battalion, timing it nicely, stopped the thing with plastic grenades; handfuls of explosive which they were adept at using. We were now stuck.”3

ABOVE: A map showing the area in which Major General Roy Urquhart, Captain William Taylor and Lieutenant James Cleminson were trapped from late on Sunday, 17 September 1944.

TRAPPED Though the tank had not actually blocked Urquhart’s and Lathbury’s way out, the explosion had shown the enemy that there were British troops in the immediate area. “Soon the Germans had located us,” continued Urquhart whilst describing

28 SEPTEMBER 2014

BELOW: Men of the 1st Airborne Division assemble on their landing zone near Arnhem, 17 September 1944.

Men of the 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment pictured on the Utrechtseweg, on their way towards Arnhem, late on 18 September. By this stage, Urquhart was already hiding in the attic of No.14 Zwarteweg.

the events in his memoirs, “and the mortar bombs came down behind the roadside houses in which we had taken temporary cover. As other tanks and self-propelled guns made their appearance in the road at the front, so there developed an exchange of smallarms shooting between the houses at the rear. Looking through one of the back windows I saw that we were in a thickly built-up part of the town: there were rows of terraced houses divided by a maze of gardens fenced and walled off in the usual thorough Dutch style. There was a good deal of small-arms fire across this area and I was told that there were Germans in the upper rooms of the houses across the gardens.” Urquhart concluded that his “prospects of returning to Divisional HQ appeared for the present more remote than I would have liked”. Elements of John Frosts’ 2nd Battalion had managed to reach the Arnhem road bridge as had part of Freddie Gough’s

Reconnaissance Squadron. However, they would not be able to hold out alone for long. The rest of the 1st Airborne Brigade had to reach the bridge quickly: speed after all was the vital ingredient. But both Lathbury and Urquhart were trapped. The great airborne operation against the Lower Rhine was, to some extent, leaderless. Back at the house, chairs and other furniture had been stacked on the rear balcony to form a firing point. Behind this barrier and from the upper windows, the paratroopers with Urquhart and Lathbury fired into the houses across the intervening allotments. Urquhart saw Lathbury himself taking “pot shots” at the Germans. On the road at the front of the house a tank rolled into view but this was brought to a halt by a Gammon bomb thrown from the house adjacent to where the two senior officers were holding out.

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TRAPPED Operation Market Garden

1

It was in this area that Major General Urquhart became trapped on 17 September. When Brigadier Lathbury was wounded, he was carried by Urquhart, Captain William Taylor and Lieutenant James Cleminson to this house – No.135 Alexanderstraat. Taken in by the family who lived there, Lathbury was then moved to St Elisabeth Hospital – part of which can be seen on the right.

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Defence Platoon, around thirty men in total. They had brought a welcome re-supply of ammunition with them in the carrier. This gave Urquhart fresh hope of being able to escape and return to his headquarters. If they had got through surely he and Lathbury could do the same. Such hopes were almost immediately dashed as more German troops were seen to the west of the houses, threatening to surround the 3rd Battalion’s position. This was a critical moment. There was little to be gained by the 3rd Battalion remaining where it was. It had been There were now two immobile tanks pinned down all day, being unable to in the road but there was still room for make any progress towards the bridge. other German armoured vehicles, “which With the recent reinforcement and fresh After Urquhart, were now more brazenly trundling up and ammunition, there would be no better Taylor and down the road as a preliminary to blasting Cleminson left time for a breakout in the future, especially us out” noted an increasingly anxious Lathbury at No.135 with the Germans closing in. Likewise Urquhart. As it happened another vehicle Alexanderstraat Urquhart and Lathbury decided the time (the building to had come for them to also get away. then came up the road – a British Bren the right of the gun carrier. Alongside a Dutch resistance wooden fence), fighter as his driver was Lieutenant Leo and with fighting Heaps, a Canadian attached to the 1st still raging in the area, they Parachute Battalion. He had been sent to try and find out what had happened to the walked the short distance to the Major General. There were rumours that alleyway that Mark he had variously been killed, wounded Khan can be seen looking down. and taken prisoner. Heaps brought with him bad news. No further troops had got through to Frost at the bridge, heavy casualties had been incurred by every battalion and the second airlift planned for that day had The alley which Urquhart, Taylor been cancelled. Now, more than ever, Urquhart was needed to coordinate the and Cleminson first entered actions of the division. after leaving the With Heaps was Lieutenant H. rear of No.135 Burwash with ‘A’ Company and the Alexanderstraat.

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After a few yards, the alleyway turned to the left, before coming to a dead end. Urquhart, Taylor and Cleminson then opened one of the gates on the right and entered the garden at the rear of No.14 Zwarteweg. This was the home of Anton Derksen, who quickly directed the three men to his attic.

BREAKOUT The plan was that the entire group would escape through the back gardens of the houses. This would mean climbing over the various walls and fences which the “bulky” Urquhart would find particularly difficult; but there was no alternative. The river ran along the rear of the gardens so the men could only run northwards, into streets of smaller houses to the west of the St Elisabeth Hospital. Lathbury has left us an account of this escape attempt: “We left about 15.50 p.m. There was a lot of delay and bunching as the route was full of obstacles, such as walls, etc. There was a little sniping but nothing  serious. To avoid the congestion I SEPTEMBER 2014 29

TRAPPED Arnhem: Operation Market Garden

30 SEPTEMBER 2014

5

The view looking south down Zwarteweg towards the Lower Rhine – note that part of St Elisabeth Hospital can be seen on the left. The self-propelled gun that halted outside No.14 would have been roughly in the roadway alongside the spot where the purple car on the right is parked. No.14 is the house with the wooden sign attached to the wall.

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They were spotted by a German soldier who went after them, but Urquhart shot him through a window with his revolver. It seemed that Lathbury had been temporarily paralyzed by a bullet which had entered close to the spine, and he was taken down to the cellar. The occupants of the house, a middleaged couple, promised to get him to the nearby St Elisabeth Hospital. Urquhart now resigned himself to having to fight his way out. “Not surprisingly,” Cleminson later remarked, “the Germans thought they had us in a trap and surrounded the block of houses and started to beat it like a pheasant drive.” Leaving Lathbury in the care of

The front of No.14 Zwarteweg as it is today. The windows in the loft where Urquhart, Taylor and Cleminson hid are a post-war addition - though once in the attic the three men realised that a German self-propelled gun had parked in the road outside, roughly where the photographer is standing. The presence of the enemy troops led Urquhart, Taylor and Cleminson to be trapped in this house until the early hours of 19 September.

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led the Intelligence Officer [Captain William Taylor] and the General by a different route and we rejoined the main party as they were crossing the road parallel to the main road and just north of it. Here again there was serious delay, and this time some sniping and mortar fire caused casualties. I again attempted to get the General found a better way, but this time we were caught and I was wounded in the back and slightly in the elbow.”4 Instead of moving west, it seems that Urquhart, Lathbury and Taylor had headed off in the wrong direction. The OC of No.5 Platoon of ‘B’ Company, 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, Lieutenant James Cleminson, shouted that they were running straight towards the German positions. Realizing they were unable to hear him Cleminson had raced after them. They now entered a network of small streets on the east side of Oranjestraat. It was as the small group attempted to cross a street that Lathbury received a bullet in the back. With the help of Cleminson, Lathbury was carried into a nearby house at the corner of Alexanderstraat – No.135, the home of Anton and Anna Derksen and their children Jan and Hermina.

the Dutch couple in the house, the three men, Urquhart, Taylor and Cleminson, slipped out of the back door into yet another maze of tiny, fenced gardens. “We crossed these, turned right then left into another terraced house set at right angles to the one we had left,” continued Urquhart. “Our entry through the kitchen of 14 Zwarteweg came as a shock to Anton Derksen and family. A plump and solemn Dutchman, he pointed to the stairs almost too narrow for my boots, and the ceiling low for a six-footer. On the landing we paused before entering a bedroom with a single wooden bed under the window. I glanced down into the street and saw the familiar field-grey uniforms of the Wehrmacht.” The stairs were in reality a detachable ladder and once inside the attic bedroom they pulled the ladder up behind them.

ANOTHER NIGHT

ABOVE: No.14 Zwarteweg is now called “Urquhart House” and a brick tile with the emblem of the British airborne forces (Bellerophon mounted on the winged horse Pegasus) can be seen in the pavement in front.

As the three soldiers considered their next move, a self-propelled gun made its way up Zwarteweg, coming to a halt almost directly in front of No.14. Expecting German troops to burst into the house at any moment, the three men prepared their weapons and hand grenades. To add to the tension there was no sign of the Dutch family that had let them in. The house was silent. As the minutes passed and no Germans appeared it became evident that the www.britainatwar.com

TRAPPED Operation Market Garden enemy was unaware of their presence. This meant that they could continue their efforts at escape. Taylor lowered the ladder and climbed down to the main bedroom. From its window he could see the self-propelled gun. Its crew had disembarked, some of whom were standing around smoking whilst others appeared to be carrying out a little maintenance on their vehicle. They were just seven or eight yards away. Fully aware that he was contributing nothing to the battle, Urquhart decided that, whatever the risks, he had to get away. “We could lob a grenade on this thing down here and make a dash for it,” he suggested. The others were not so sure. “Even if we knock out the gun and its crew,” observed Cleminson, “we would be killed or caught. I’d prefer to wait for an attack to catch up with us rather than go prowling around.” Urquhart agreed to a majority vote and the decision was that they would not take the risk of running into the street. So they waited. Throughout the night they took turns to keep watch. Urquhart, though, could not relax. He had no idea how the battle was developing and was completely helpless. “It was very restricting in the little house and my frustration was increasing. I must have slept for a short time, then I awoke with a dull pain across my chest. I felt for the sore spot. My fingers touched one of the two hand grenades inside my smock. I had been lying on them and the pressure bruised me slightly. At that moment, we heard the wheeze of the engine of the selfpropelled gun outside followed by shouts and the rattle of its tracks. It was moving off.”

ABOVE: The former Hartenstein Hotel is now the home of the excellent Airborne Museum ‘Hartenstein’ which has in its collection the actual pennant Urquhart used. Urquhart himself opened the museum on 11 May 1978.

Anton Derksen then appeared, declaring excitedly that British troops were at the end of the road. The three men rushed out of the house and into the street. There were indeed British soldiers – men from both the 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment and from the 11th Parachute Battalion. Urquhart was given the news that his headquarters had been established at the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek. Urquhart commandeered a Jeep and driver – Lieutenant Edward Eric Clapham, CO of the 1st Airlanding AntiTank Battery RA’s ‘A’ Troop – and set off at top speed, and under fire, to find the hotel before the enemy closed in again. Leaving Cleminson behind to try and reach his unit, Urquhart took the lower road near the Rhine. “I advised Taylor

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The top of the Airborne Commemorative Marker that can be seen in front of the old St. Elisabeth Hospital – the building itself was converted into apartments in 2000.

ABOVE: Major General R.E. Urquhart poses beside the airborne pennant that he planted in the grounds of his headquarters in the Hartenstein Hotel, the last British stronghold in the Arnhem and Oosterbeek area before the evacuation, on 22 September 1944.

to duck and hold tight,” remembered the major general, “I put my foot down hard. Sure enough the bullets pinged around us so that not for the first time, and certainly not the last, I felt like an Aunt Sally on a shooting range.” As they reached the Arnhem-Utrecht road, they could hear the German mortars pounding away at the British positions in Oosterbeek. It was day three of the operation and by this time the Arnhem bridge should have been secured and XXX Corps should have been pushing into Arnhem. When Urquhart finally located the hotel and assembled his headquarters team, the reality of the situation was revealed to him. XXX Corps was thirty hours behind schedule and no-one had been able to get through to help Frost’s battalion at the bridge. Urquhart was back in command but he would have little influence upon the events that would follow. All that he and his men could do was hold on and hope. 

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Richard J. Aldrich, Witness to War (Doubleday, London, 2004), p.563. Quoted in Martin Middlebrook, Arnhem 1944, The Airborne Battle (Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2009), p.110. Urquhart’s quotes are reproduced from his book, Arnhem, (Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2007). General William Lathbury, “Diary of Arnhem September to October 1944”, courtesy of the Airborne Forces Archive, 2007 and available at: www.paradata.org.uk

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Save in a Fire What I Would

From The Fifteen Times World Champion

| TONY ALLCOCK

Geoff Simpson asks a top curator or trustee which single item in their collections they would reach for in the event of a disaster.

FIRST WORLD WAR AUTOGRAPH BOOKS

The British Schools Museum, Queen Street, Hitchin, Hertfordshire A PAIR of autograph books in an exhibition at the British Schools Museum in Hitchin, Hertfordshire would be saved from a fire if Andy Gibbs, the museum manager, had his way. “We are marking the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War with the extraordinary story of sixty-eight former pupils of the British School in Hitchin who lost their lives in the ‘war to end all wars’,” Andy explained. “These autograph books are particularly precious as they contain such fascinating insights into both their owners and the many soldiers who signed and illustrated them. “Some of the illustrations are of extremely high quality and speak of the many talents of the ‘lost generation’. They are also treasured possessions of one of our volunteers, Jean Handley, whose research and personal collection of Great War artefacts form the backbone of the exhibition. Jean’s research has now been published under the title Remembered with Pride and charts the family and military histories of the sixty-eight former pupils who made the ultimate sacrifice between 1914 and 1919.” The two books belonged to sisters Winifred and Dorothy Hands. They were born in Birmingham in the 1890s and were 21 and 19 when the Great War broke out in August 1914. They both became members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) and worked as nursing assistants in hospitals in Birmingham. “They had autograph books, as was the fashion at the time,” Andy continued, “and asked the wounded soldiers they were nursing to write something in them. The talent of these young men is very obvious for some of the illustrations are amazing. Many of them signed their work, stated their regiment and said where and when they were wounded. “Sergeant Billy Holder, for example, reproduced two pages from the popular publication of the time, Fragments From France where Bruce Bairnsfather’s brilliant humourous drawings were guaranteed to amuse the troops and keep up morale.” www.britainatwar.com

Charles Bruce Bairnsfather (18871959) was born in India, the son of an Indian Army officer. He failed to get into both Sandhurst and Woolwich, but eventually followed his father and gained a commission in The Cheshire Regiment. He left the Army in 1907, failed to forge a career as an artist and became an electrical engineer, before his artistic ambitions began to come to fruition through producing advertisements for a number of well known companies. In the First World War Bairnsfather was a machine-gun officer with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. His work became enormously popular with the troops, although some in the establishment considered them vulgar.

THE BRITISH SCHOOLS MUSEUM THE FIRST World War exhibition runs until November 25. The museum also features the enormous Jill Grey Collection of items relating to the history of education and the social history of childhood. Jill Grey, who died in 1987, was a code and cipher officer with the RAF during the Second World War and later worked in the United States as personal assistant to Sir Frank Whittle. In 2014 the museum is open, until 25 November, on Tuesdays (10am-4pm), Saturdays (10am-1pm) and Sundays (2pm-5pm). More information can be found at: www.britishschoolsmuseum.co.uk

LEFT: One of the autograph books that Andy Gibbs would save in the event of a disaster at the British Schools Museum.

Bairnsfather was injured and suffered shell shock at the second Battle of Ypres in 1915. He later worked in Intelligence at the War Office as an official cartoonist. His most famous creation was “Old Bill Busby”. In the Second World War he held the rank of Captain in the United States Army and was official cartoonist to the US forces in Europe. The British Schools Museum, specialising in the history of elementary education, is housed in Victorian and Edwardian buildings in Hitchin, on a site at which the first school was established in 1810.  SEPTEMBER 2014 33

MASSACRE OF THE MUNSTERS A Battalion's Fight to the Finish, 1914

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N THURSDAY, 27 August 1914, the route of the retirement of I Corps was due to take it through Étreux towards the high ground south of Guise. The rearguard for the day was the responsibility of Brigadier General Ivor Maxse, who, on hearing that practically the whole of Haig’s Corps was to use the same highway to Guise, realized that the day “promised to be critical”. I Corps was underway by 04.00 hours with the 1st Division remaining in a covering position until the 2nd Division had moved off. By 07.00 hours Maxse had moved his brigade headquarters from Fesmy to the canal bridge at Petit Cambrésis, where he was visited by his divisional commander, Major General Samuel Lomax. Lomax made it clear that it was vital to hold the Fesmy– Wassigny line until the two divisions of I Corps had passed through Étreux.

Not only were they passing through, reiterated Lomax, but they were being re-supplied in the town and thus it was essential that this took place unhindered. Accordingly Maxse issued his orders: first to Lieutenant Colonel Adrian Grant-Duff of 1st Battalion, Black Watch and 23 Field Company Royal Engineers, who were to reconnoitre and prepare a fall-back, rearguard position just north of Etreux, and second to the three rearguard units themselves,

consisting of 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers with the addition of ‘C’ Squadron 15th Hussars under Major Frederick Pilkington and ‘C’ and ‘D’ Guns from 118 Battery, XXVI Brigade under the command of Major Abingdon Bayly. Commanding the Munsters was Major Paul Alfred Charrier, a man fluent in French and very much a Francophile who had joined the battalion in 1890. Known in the regiment as an individualist, the 45-year-old Charrier

Massacre of the

Munsters

As the British Expeditionary Force continued its withdrawal from Mons in August 1914, command of I Corps' rearguard on day five of the retreat was handed to Brigadier-General Ivor Maxse’s (Guards) Brigade, which included the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers. Jon Cooksey tells what happened when a brave battalion fought to the finish. 34 SEPTEMBER 2014

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MASSACRE OF THE MUNSTERS A Battalion's Fight to the Finish, 1914

was easy to spot on the march in his brown tropical-issue pith helmet with its distinctive green and white hackle of Munster, a nostalgic reminder perhaps for those with an eye for the history of the regiment’s origins under Clive of India in 1756. Mentioned in Despatches in 1901 for service in West Africa, he had gone on to serve with the Imperial Yeomanry during the Boer War. Major Charrier prepared his defensive positions with ‘B’ and ‘D’ Companies at the Chapeau Rouge crossroads and ‘A’ Company, less two platoons, at Bergues-sur-Sambre. ‘C’ Company was at Fesmy-le-Sart. Contact with the German forces that day had begun early in the morning. Shortly after dawn the 15th Hussars found themselves deployed www.britainatwar.com

right across the brigade frontage with a strong detachment at Chapeau Rouge and another with the Munsters at Fesmy. German forces were evidently moving quickly. As the tail end of the long and weary column of men and equipment passing through the Munsters’ lines on their way south, the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards left two of their companies on the left of the main road to Landrecies – the present-day D946 – to defend the bridge over the Sambre Canal just north of Petit Cambrésis. By 10.00 hours, with the sky darkening to the north and threatening rain, most of the 15th Hussars’ patrols had been forced back and thick lines of infantry from the German X Corps, many of whom had been

MAIN PICTURE: A picture of British troops waiting, according to the original caption, for the advancing German troops during the early weeks of the First World War. (HMP) FAR LEFT (OPPOSITE PAGE): A map showing the first stages of the withdrawal at Étreux. (AUTHOR)

brought forward in motor lorries, were advancing across the fields on both flanks. Those German units that had come up against Charrier’s entrenched positions had waited until they were in enough strength to advance into Fesmy, where a counter-attack by Captain Claud Rawlinson and ‘C’ Company cleared the village and restored the status quo for the time being. Further north at the Chapeau Rouge crossroads, ‘B’ and ‘D’ Companies were engaged in a furious fire fight at close quarters. In the confusion that followed – aided by the rain which was now sheeting down in torrents – the two companies withdrew. ‘D’ Company fell back down the Bergues road towards Fesmy and ‘B’ Company towards Oisy. It was now 13.00 hours.  SEPTEMBER 2014 35

MASSACRE OF THE MUNSTERS A Battalion's Fight to the Finish, 1914 NO ESCAPE The message from General Maxse ordering all rearguard units to retire – sent out at 12.46 hours – did not reach Charrier at his battalion headquarters at Fesmy. The cyclist carrying those orders came under fire north of Petit Cambrésis and was unable to reach the Munsters. Instead the cyclist delivered them to Major Day who attempted to get through to Charrier on horseback but he too was unsuccessful. The orders did get through, however, to Captain John Gibbs and the two Coldstream companies which withdrew to the bridge and continued their march south through Étreux.

At 15.00 hours Charrier was in the process of pulling back towards Oisy when he got word that German cavalry had been seen to the south. It was an ominous sign that the enemy was closing in. With German infantry reported to be in the wooded area south of Boué, the danger of becoming surrounded must have been absolute. There was now only one gap in the enveloping mass of German units and that was at Bergues-sur-Sambre. In conference with Major Pilkington, Maxse ordered the 15th Hussars to attempt a rescue whilst the remainder of the brigade continued south. Pilkington knew that Fesmy was practically surrounded but his intelligence suggested there was still a gap at Bergues that might just allow ‘A’ Company to get away. The “greater part of the squadron therefore dashed for this gap and a fierce fight now ensued at the outskirts of Bergues”. Pilkington’s men attacked with such determination that the Germans were caught a little off guard and in the ensuing mêlée over 170 men of the Munsters retired under the covering fire of the Hussars. This was not accomplished without some loss, however, as Private William Wilkes was killed and Lance Corporal John Stent died of his wounds six months later in captivity at Guise. The only officer to fall in the action was Lieutenant the Honourable Edward Charles Hardinge who was wounded in both arms and later died of his wounds in the UK.

ABOVE: The situation at Étreux, as experienced by the men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, at 18.00 hours and 19.00 hours on Thursday, 27 August 1914. (AUTHOR)

BELOW: British troops pictured during the early stages of the war. (US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

At 17.30 hours the main body of the Munsters was at the crossroads west of Oisy but without Captain George Simms and ‘B’ Company. Charrier sent runners and cyclists out to find them but it was nearly an hour before they appeared – an hour of inactivity which was to prove fatal. Moving through Oisy, Captain Rawlinson’s ‘C’ Company brought up the rear of the battalion and almost immediately came under attack from General Karl von Plettenberg’s 2nd Guard Division from which it was only just able to escape thanks to covering fire from the two platoons of Lieutenant Drake and Sergeant Foley.

ABOVE: One of the unwounded survivors of the fighting at Étreux – albeit as a prisoner of war – was Lieutenant Harry Newsome. He is pictured here in a prisoner of war camp at Friedberg in December 1916. (AUTHOR)

36 SEPTEMBER 2014

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MASSACRE OF THE MUNSTERS A Battalion's Fight to the Finish, 1914

fire took us in flank from the environs of Étreux, and it was this position the Commanding Officer decided to attack.”1

INTENSE ENEMY FIRE

Now, though, the consequence of the delay caused by ‘B’ Company was beginning to manifest itself as General von Barfeldt’s 19th Reserve Infantry Division was moving rapidly southwards. The door was closing fast and it was von Barfeldt’s division that would finally slam it shut. Moving onto the Oisy-Landrecies road and covered by Lieutenant Chute’s machine-gun section, the Munsters approached Étreux only to see enemy infantry crossing the road ahead of them. Before 118 Battery could unlimber its guns, and before the Munsters had time to deploy, a heavy fire was opened up on them from the houses on the edge of the town. “Our guns galloped South for the purpose of coming into action,” wrote one historian when providing a description of the action at Étreux. “As they passed a house a shell crashed into them and a second struck the team, knocking out three or four gunners and two horses; the remainder dismounted, and in the face of a murderous fire brought their guns into action. In addition to the artillery and rifle fire from the East, a raking rifle www.britainatwar.com

ABOVE: The graves of some of the men of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who fell during the fighting at Étreux. This was a picture taken by Lieutenant Harry Newsome during a return visit to the battlefield c 1919. (AUTHOR) TOP: The loopholed house occupied by German troops during the early stages of the fighting at Étreux. (AUTHOR) RIGHT: The Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, Major Paul Charrier. (AUTHOR)

In preparation for the attack Lieutenant O’Malley was sent to ‘C’ Company to direct them to keep the road clear as Lieutenant Chute was to open fire with his machine-guns at the enemy advancing from North. Lieutenant O’Malley bicycled back under heavy fire, and a couple of ammunition carts came up at a gallop before the horses were shot. ‘B’ Company, with half of ‘A’ Company in support, set out to attack. The enemy was located in a loop-holed house on the west side of the road and also in the nearby fields. On the other side of the road a farmhouse had caught fire and blazed furiously. “The Commanding Officer, Captain Wise, and Lieutenant Mosely succeeded in approaching to within fifty yards of this house, creeping along a ditch followed by their men. The enemy’s fire was intense, and though Captain Wise succeeded in reaching the house, the whole party was put out of action. Major Charrier renewed the attack, and again later made a third attack, with his usual determination, but was shot dead at close range in the last charge.” ‘B’ Company was heavily engaged from both sides of the road, and Captain Simms

was killed leading the attack. ‘C’ Company reinforced this position, and ‘D’ Company, which was in the orchard to the east, converged into the open and was met by a flank attack from the enemy holding the cutting. Lieutenant Erasmus Gower was with ‘A’ Company: “When we got to the orchard I went to report to Major Charrier. I found him by the gun [which was] deserted as all the team of men were killed or wounded. Charrier [was] killed almost while [I was] talking to him. Rawlinson wounded at the same time.”2 Returning to the orchard, Gower passed Captain George Simms lying dead and reported the death of Charrier to Captain Hall. Shortly afterwards Hall himself became a casualty. The Musters, though, were still not finished: “Aided by the fire of a platoon of A Company, D Company advanced by alternate rushes to within 70 yards of the hedge, where the officer in command (Captain Jervis) ordered a charge. The men sprang up with a cheer, fixed bayonets and charged. The enemy’s fire redoubled, and Lieutenant Phayre fell, shot through the heart. Man after man went down, and only Captain Jervis reached the hedge alive, subsequently falling into the enemy’s hands. The remnants of the Battalion fell back to the orchard where Captain Hall was wounded. Lieutenant Gower organised a defence facing N.S.E. and West.”  SEPTEMBER 2014 37

MASSACRE OF THE MUNSTERS A Battalion's Fight to the Finish, 1914 After the armistice, the orchard in which many of the British casualties had been buried was purchased by the family of Lieutenant Frederick Styles, an officer of the Munsters who had been killed during the rearguard action. The family erected the large Celtic Cross in the centre of the cemetery which lists the First World War battle honours of the Munsters, as well as a stone memorial bench and plaque. In 1924 the cemetery was handed over to the French state and its care duly became the responsibility of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. (COURTESY OF THE COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES COMMISSION)

NO WAY THROUGH Captain Jervis, who was the senior officer to survive the action at Étreux, takes up the story in a letter he wrote to the father of Lieutenant Carol Awdry: “In order the better to safeguard the retreat of the remainder our withdrawal was delayed by some hours. We were attacked on three sides, and when we moved off finally it was found that the greatly superior forces of the Germans had enabled them to cut us off from our main body. Faced by odds of six or eight to one, we put up the best fight we could until compelled by fire from all sides to surrender. E Company – to which your son belonged, of course – was chosen to watch our right rear (on the N.E.) as the battalion withdrew to the South, and Captain Rawlinson selected your son to take his platoon out to an exposed position, the far end of a village named Fesmy, through which our line of retreat lay. “He performed the duty in a most able manner, and although harassed with a nasty fire, he held on until the battalion withdrew, and then rejoined with his little force intact. It was a commendable performance, worthy of one of far greater age and experience than your son. His Company then continued the withdrawal until we came to the next village (Oisy), when it was detailed to act as rearguard. Again they were sharply engaged, by largely increased forces this time, but they gallantly held their own, your son again holding a detached position at an important crossroads, and again the battalion was able to withdraw in safety. Your boy’s party was the last to come in, and though he lost a few men he saved many more. It was now six o’clock (p.m.), and it was 38 SEPTEMBER 2014

then discovered that they were cut off from the main body. “The battalion shook out to the attack in an endeavour to break through, every officer doing good work, your son no less than the others. With sword drawn, he led his men in support of the attack, which was in progress in front (to the South), and as he advanced he fell, shot through the lungs. His death was painless and practically instantaneous. He was buried with his eight brother officers, who fell the same day, in one grave.” Jervis was actually captured and command of the Munsters devolved on young Gower. Still they fought on until around 21.00 hours, hoping that someone would come to their help. Gower was now faced with the most

ABOVE: Wounded in both of his arms during the fighting at Étreux, Lieutenant the Honourable Edward Charles Hardinge was evacuated back to the United Kingdom. Aged 22, he died of his wounds on 18 December 1914 and was buried in Fordcombe (St Peter) Churchyard at Penshurst, Kent. (CWGC)

LEFT: The Munsters memorial in Etreux British Cemetery. Over 600 British soldiers were killed during the rearguard action at Étreux, but by engaging so many German troops for so long the Munsters had allowed I Corps of the BEF to continue its retreat with only minor losses. (AUTHOR)

difficult decision of his short military career: “Fresh enemy coming up from [the] north so surrendered at 9.12pm – very little ammunition left ... I could hear no other firing to show any relief coming and was only losing men and doing no good. Also, fresh machine guns [were] getting into positions. I surrendered with three officers and 256 men.” The Munsters and the surviving men of 118 Battery had been fighting for twelve hours against seven German infantry battalions, three batteries of artillery as well as cavalry and Maxim guns. Their action had enabled the main body of I Corps to put twelve miles between it and its pursuers. It was said at the time that after the surrender the German soldiers applauded the Munster’s bravery.3 

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Mrs. Victor Rickhard, The Story of the Munsters at Etreux, Festubert, Rue du Bois and Hulloch (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1918), pp.61-2. TNA WO 95/1279, Royal Munster Fusiliers War Diary. Jon Cooksey and Jerry Murland, in their forthcoming guidebook The Retreat From Mons 1914 - South (Pen & Sword, 31 October 2014), point out that there are no surviving documents to authenticate such claims.

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LEFT BEHIND The Fall of France, 1940

d n i h e L e ft B through France, the wrecked RAF fighter aircraft had almost exclusively been Hurricanes, this being due to the fact that Dowding had declined to send Spitfire squadrons to operate from airfields on the opposite side of the Channel. However, as the fighting moved up to the Channel coast, particularly around Dunkirk, Spitfires could begin to operate within range of their British home bases. Inevitably a number of these aircraft also fell on and around the French coast. Here, Chris Goss presents a miscellany of photographs that were taken by German personnel of shot down and wrecked British fighters in the period immediately post the Dunkirk evacuation. Each image has its own unique story to tell. 

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The events surrounding the Battle of France in 1940, including the retreat from Dunkirk, were a costly time for the RAF. Chris Goss presents a selection of images depicting some of those RAF fighters that were shot down or abandoned during this period.

2. Although the actions of both the sea and souvenir hunters have removed all of the fabric and much of the tail, and therefore many of the clues as to any positive identity, there is much about this photograph that suggests it could be the same aircraft as that which appears in the photograph below, although taken much later in the demise of this particular Hurricane which is gradually sinking deeper into the sand with each successive tide. (ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE)

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1. This Hurricane (an early Mk.I with the pole aerial) carries the bear and ragged staff emblem of 605 Squadron on the white band of its fin flash along with the early pre-war squadron code letters ‘HE’. The individual aircraft code letter, ‘T’, is repeated on the engine cowling. Despite extensive research, it is difficult to attribute this aircraft to a specific incident or pilot but it would appear to have made a good wheels-down landing before sinking into the sand. Given its condition, considering the presumed passage of tides, and the presence of German personnel it would not be unreasonable to assume that this aircraft landed at some point very close to or around the time of the final Allied withdrawal and German occupation. (COURTESY OF ANDY SAUNDERS)

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4. This Spitfire of 74 Squadron made a forced-landing at Berck-sur-Mer on 21 May 1940. At the time it was being flown by Pilot Officer R.D. Aubert, who abandoned his aircraft and made good his escape only for the aircraft, K9977, coded ZP-Q, to be discovered by the advancing Germans. Again, it became a popular spectacle for German troops and a favoured back-drop for the snapshot to send to the folks back home.

3. During the actions over Dunkirk in May 1940 at least two Spitfires are known to have landed wheels-down on the beaches there. One of them, N3295 (code letters ZD-G) had been flown by Pilot Officer Graham Davies of 222 Squadron – it landed on 31 May 1940 after its engine had been damaged by antiaircraft fire. Davies set fire to his aircraft before joining the evacuating troops and reaching the UK by ship. Not far away, and on 25 May 1940, Pilot Officer George Gribble was flying Spitfire N3103 when it was damaged in combat with Messerschmitt Bf 109s of I./JG 76 and Messerschmitt Bf 110s of 6./ZG 76. Like Davies, Gribble also landed wheels-down and set fire to his aircraft. He also managed to make his way to the evacuation vessels and returned safely to England. Almost certainly this series of photographs illustrates the remains of the two Spitfires, but it is impossible to say with any certainty which aircraft is which. However, they became popular tourist attractions for German troops who visited the Dunkirk area to view the mass of wrecked and abandoned war materiel.

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LEFT BEHIND The Fall of France, 1940

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LEFT BEHIND The Fall of France, 1940

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5. This is another Spitfire which had been shot down onto the beaches of Dunkirk during the evacuation period, but it currently defies positive identification. The mass of abandoned vehicles, equipment and wrecked vessels tells its own tale of the havoc that these beaches had seen.

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6. This photograph of one of the two Spitfires that came down near Dunkirk - as described in the No.3 set of pictures opposite - was captioned as having been taken during September 1941. If this date is correct then the wreckage was in situ and still attracting curious German visitors over a year after its loss.

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7. This burned out Spitfire is thought to be P9377 of 222 Squadron which force-landed on the beach near Bray-Dunes on 1 June 1940 following combat with Messerschmitt Bf 109s of I./JG 26 and Messerschmitt Bf 110s of 1./ZG 1 during which the Spitfire’s engine was hit and damaged. Pilot Officer R.A.L. Morant bellylanded the aircraft and set it on fire before making good his escape and getting on board a boat bound for Britain. Interestingly, the wreck of a Hurricane can be seen in the distance and this is almost certainly P2902 of 245 Squadron that had been shot down there the day before, 31 May 1940. Pilot Officer K.B. McGlashan had been the pilot and although wounded he too had made it back to England. During the 1980s the wreck of P2902 was found buried in the sand and eventually recovered. It is currently undergoing reconstruction for eventual return to flight.

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LEFT BEHIND The Fall of France, 1940 8. Another 222 Squadron loss on 1 June 1940 was Spitfire P9317, ZD-A, which had been damaged in the same combat. Its pilot, Pilot Officer H.E.L. Falkus, had managed to land at Le Touquet, only to spend the rest of the war as a PoW. Post-war, Falkus became a well-known writer, TV presenter and film-maker.

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10. This time it was civilians who came to view an extremely battered Hurricane “somewhere in France” – although the already badly smashed up aircraft also seems to have undergone some attention at the hands of souvenir hunters.

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9. These two images show all that remains of Spitfire K9912 (coded YT-O) of 65 Squadron – an aircraft that was shot down by Hauptmann Wilhelm Balthasar of 1./JG 1 on 26 May 1940. Pilot Officer K.G. Hart was yet another pilot who managed to get his crippled aircraft down onto Dunkirk's beaches and set fire to it before making good his escape, subsequently joining one of the evacuation vessels heading to the UK. Over the succeeding weeks, and following the collapse of France, it became a source of interest for occupying German serviceman who were keen to be photographed with the wrecks and, perhaps, acquire a souvenir or two! As can be seen from this series of pictures the already battered Spitfire disintegrated and sank into the sand quite rapidly.

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11. When the Luftwaffe began to take over abandoned airfields in France during the spring and early summer of 1940 they found a mass of abandoned aircraft, vehicles and equipment. Some of the aircraft had been destroyed during German air attacks, but many were in an un-airworthy condition when the RAF pulled out. In such cases the aircraft were simply set on fire to prevent them falling into enemy hands and virtually every airfield that the Germans occupied had its fair share of burnt out Hurricanes, along with a few other RAF aircraft types. This photograph was taken on the airfield at Vitry-en-Artois after the RAF had left and it became occupied by the Heinkel He 111 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 53 and include several wrecked but unidentified Hurricanes.

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13. Amongst the jumble of destroyed or damaged aircraft and vehicles at Vitry-en-Artois were the remains of a single Bristol Blenheim of 59 Squadron (seen here on the left). This aircraft, N6168, coded TR-A, had been damaged by flak south-east of Louvain, Belgium, on 16 May 1940. It had then been mistakenly attacked by a Hurricane flown by Pilot Officer Grassick of 615 Squadron. Badly damaged and with a wrecked port engine and shot-up hydraulics, it returned to crash-land at Vitry-enArtois. Flight Lieutenant G.V. Smithers, Sergeant R. Tull and AC2 D.J. Pitcher were all unhurt but their aircraft was subsequently written-off and latterly ended up in the scrap heap; it was still there when the Germans arrived.

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12. This Hurricane, shot down near Cambrai, is in an even worse condition and appears to have almost totally disintegrated leaving this section of inverted wing with its undercarriage leg to be examined by Luftwaffe officers.

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LEFT BEHIND The Fall of France, 1940

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15. On the airfield at Reims two more burned-out Hurricane wrecks attract the attention of the occupiers. Once again, the landing gear has been collapsed (or partly so) and there are no obvious means by which to identify the aircraft concerned. The furthest aircraft looks to have been midway through an engine change when it was hastily abandoned.

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14. Up on the French coast at Le Touquet the occupying German forces found yet more burned-out Hurricane hulks on the airfield there. Again, these had been nonairworthy aircraft at the time of the British withdrawal and were simply torched after their landing gear had been collapsed. (ANDY SAUNDERS)

SEPTEMBER 2014 43

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LEFT BEHIND The Fall of France, 1940

16. The curled propeller blades show that this Hurricane had force-landed on its belly and slid to a halt in a pasture rather than having been abandoned on an airfield. Again, there are no clues to help us identify the exact aircraft or its pilot other than the fact it was just one of hundreds of such losses that stretched across France from the Ardennes up to the French Channel coast.

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18. Very soon these Dornier Do 17 aircrew from I./KG 76 would be participating in raids over the United Kingdom to knock out similar fighters on the ground at RAF airfields. Here, however, they can be seen clambering over a wrecked Hurricane at their new base on Beauvais airfield north of Paris.

17. By mid-June 1940 the Heinkel He 111s of II./KG 4 had moved into the airfield at Merville where further wrecked Hurricanes were found (there was at least one other abandoned here). Just about every airfield and landing ground used by the RAF in France was found to be littered with the wreckages of abandoned aircraft.

44 SEPTEMBER 2014

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19. This force-landed Hurricane of 32 Squadron, which had the code letters GZ-V, is being inspected by German personnel, although it is uncertain which particular aircraft it might be. It is either N2583 flown by Sergeant G. North, who crash-landed south of Arras on 20 May 1940, or P2727 flown by Sergeant D. Flynn, who was shot down and captured near Dunkirk on 2 June 1940. Circumstances might point more to the latter, as North’s Hurricane was reported as “burnedout” after the crash landing.

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MESSAGE ME IN A BOTTLE Letter Thrown Overboard in 1914

In the aftermath of the outbreak of war in 1914, the regiments and units of the British Expeditionary Force began to deploy across the Channel. Amongst their number were the men of the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment who sailed to Boulogne on 23 August 1914. During their journey they decided to send a message home – by writing it on a piece of paper and throwing it overboard.

“O

N 12 August we moved out of barracks for the last time to Cowes where we embarked in two steam boats for Southampton,” Lieutenant K.F.B. Tower of the 4th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers described his battalion’s departure for the front – their journey to war. “Large crowds assembled to see us off. As we moved out of the Solent, the Royal Yacht Squadron ran up a signal: ‘Goodbye and good luck’. At Southampton we re-embarked on a P&O transport where we were packed like herrings. About 6 p.m. that evening we set sail, and it must have been a wonderful sight to see the convoy of ships passing down the Solent, past the forts and Spithead. We sat all through the night in darkness with a thousand thoughts of the future crowding through our brains.”1

The advanced elements of British Expeditionary Force had actually started leaving for France, under conditions of the greatest secrecy, on 6 August 1914. Between the 12th and 17th August, British troops continued to pour across the Channel to disembark on French soil, the principal ports used for the purpose being Folkestone and Southampton in the UK, and Le Havre and Boulogne in France. “All was ready for their reception,” noted the Official History, “and the welcome given to them by the inhabitants was enthusiastic”. Predictably, the British press reported the departure of the troops for France on their front pages: “Stirring scenes were witnessed in Southampton, from which port the bulk of the expeditionary force sailed for France,” ran the words from an undisclosed correspondent in the Birmingham Gazette of 19 August. 

MAIN PICTURE: The shell encrusted bottle thrown overboard by a soldier of the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment whilst he was en route to France in August 1914. The bottle is now in the collections of the King’s Own Royal Regiment Museum which is in the City Museum, Market Square, Lancaster. (KING’S OWN ROYAL REGIMENT MUSEUM; KO2654/052)

BOTH TOP: The message which, addressed to the Editor of the Daily Mirror, was placed inside the bottle. (KING’S OWN ROYAL REGIMENT MUSEUM; KO0151/01)

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SEPTEMBER 2014 47

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE Letter Thrown Overboard in 1914 “A huge rest camp was established on the common and regiment after regiment marched through the town to the docks. But that was the extent of the public knowledge. Excluded from the docks and having the railway level crossing which spans the road leading from the station to the docks blotted out from sight by huge barriers, they knew nothing of the endless procession of trains packed with soldiers which deposited their khaki-clad occupants alongside the transports in the dead of night. “Before the camp was completed detachments of cavalry arrived and were billeted in the local hotels, and it was quite a common spectacle to see stalwart troopers with shirt-sleeves tucked up, assisting the maids in the kitchen. By the time the infantry and artillery put in an appearance, the camp was ready. “Every regiment was directed straight to its quarters without any delay or confusion. The guns were packed in one part, the motor lorries in another, and one spot right away from the main camp was used for stabling remounts. “The inhabitants of the town thronged the approaches to the common at all hours, and were quick to render useful service. The Tramways Committee permitted all soldiers to travel on the cars free. The members of the Avenue Congregational Church arranged the school-room as a reading and writing-room. They were provided

48 SEPTEMBER 2014

RIGHT: The original caption to this image states that it shows “what the 1st Battalion saw on the morning of 26th August 1914. Wambaix Station in the background.  Taken from the actual spot where Lieutenant Colonel Dykes was killed.” According to The Times of 18 September 1914, Dykes’ last words were: “Goodbye, boys.” (KING’S OWN

ROYAL REGIMENT MUSEUM; KO0012/15)

BELOW: British troops, possibly of the 2nd Battalion the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, pictured soon after their arrival in Boulogne on 14 August 1914. In the background is the Grand Hotel du Louvre et Terminus. (WW1IMAGES)

with postage stamps. Willing helpers from outside flocked to assist the Avenue Congregationalists, who were soon able to add refreshments and cigarettes to their gifts. “Troops arriving after a long march, or a long railway journey, appreciated this kindly thought, and last week several hundreds subscribed a penny or twopence each to present the church with a silver epergne. “The march of the Army through the town has been an inspiring sight. The armed host tramped steadily to the strains of popular songs which the soldiers and civilians sang lustily. Practically every regiment sang, ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary,’ and another favourite was ‘Who’s your lady friend’. “On Saturday night as one battalion of infantry reached the dock gates the men struck up the chorus ‘Just break the news to mother’. The throats of the spectators were so choked with sobs that they could not raise a cheer when the great gates clanged behind the troops and shut them from view.”

The Birmingham Gazette then went onto recall a number of anecdotes that exemplify the mood that prevailed in those momentous early days of the war: “One morning tired and dust stained troopers turned their horses towards a public water trough, which was quite inadequate to supply their needs. The occupants of a row of villas nearby came out with buckets full of water. On another occasion a detachment of soldiers halted outside a big house within a large garden. The elderly gentleman who lived there called his servant to help him to strip the apple and plum trees of their fruit, which was taken out in baskets to the soldiers.”

CUT THE AIR WITH A KNIFE F.A. Bolwell described his journey to France – one which was considerably different than that experienced by the first batch of troops earlier in the month: “Proceeded to Farnborough Station en route for Southampton, arriving that night, everyone and

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MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE Letter Thrown Overboard in 1914

everything being embarked by 11.30 p.m. No one of course knew for what port we were bound, though many suggested Belgium. “We had no send off whatsoever, no shaking hands or wet handkerchiefs. Anyone not knowing a war had been declared would have had no suspicion that these men were starting out on active service. Yet everyone was jolly; everyone was happy. They put us aboard an old China boat, and stuffed us into the holds almost to suffocation, with one large electric light burning in a distant corner: it was most unhealthy. After an hour one could have cut the air with a knife.

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“No sooner had we left our moorings than we ran down a lighter, killing one man on her and knocking a big hole in her side. None of us below had the slightest idea of what was happening; all we heard was an awful noise, with the lowering of the anchor. We all declared that we had been either mined or torpedoed; but after a while things quietened down, and we all tried to obtain a little sleep. “There had been issued out to us on starting seven-pound tins of jam with our other rations. One was placed near the spot I had made for myself to sleep in. It was one of the darkest parts of the hold; and, being tired, I was soon fast asleep. On awakening next morning, to my horror I found myself covered from head to foot in jam – a sorry plight indeed, as we were not allowed to carry more kit than what we stood up in. However, after fighting for a few drops of cold tea, which had to satisfy me for a breakfast, and an hour in the sun and wind on deck, I had become perfectly dry, but my clothes were as stiff as a board. All I could do was to

ABOVE: Another view of the Fulham Brewery beer bottle. (KING’S OWN

ROYAL REGIMENT

MUSEUM; KO0151/01)

ABOVE LEFT: Captain (later Lieutenant Colonel) Alfred Dykes photographed in Dundee, South Africa, during 1901. Dykes took command of the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, in 1913 and it was he who led them to France on 23 August 1914. (KING’S OWN ROYAL

REGIMENT MUSEUM; KO2654/052)

cheerfully declare that at any rate my armour was perhaps more bullet-proof than before. “Having set sail on the eleventh of August, we arrived at Le Havre on the morning of the twelfth, after a journey of twelve hours.”2 On 12 August, Field-Marshal Sir John French, the BEF’s Commander-in-Chief, retaining only a small party of his immediate staff with him, despatched his General Headquarters from London to Southampton. Its staff crossed to Le Havre on the 14th, and proceeded by rail early on the 16th, reaching Le Cateau late that night. Sir John French himself left London on 14 August. He arrived at Amiens soon after 21.00 hours that day. The majority of the BEF, with a combatant strength of about 80,000 men – four infantry divisions and one cavalry division – was on the Continent by the evening of 16 August. The two remaining divisions did not reach the front till the middle of September. 

SEPTEMBER 2014 49

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE Letter Thrown Overboard in 1914

NOTES 1. 2.

Lyn Macdonald, 1914-1918, Voices and Images of the Great War (Penguin, London, 1991), p.15. F.A. Bolwell, With a Reservist in France, (George Routledge & Sons, London), pp.6-7.

A LAST LETTER HOME Amongst those later units that sailed for France was the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment. The battalion had been mobilised on 4 August in Dover. Though it had prepared for war at Dover, it was not from there that the battalion sailed. Following mobilisation, the 1st Battalion moved to Cromer and was then, between 12 and 18 August, billeted at Horsham St Faith in Norfolk. On the 19th the men travelled by rail from Norwich to Wembley where the battalion camped at Neasden until it departed on 21 August to Southampton docks. Throughout the 22nd, the battalion embarked on the troopship SS Saturnia, which sailed for France later that evening and under the cover of the dark. Like so many of their contemporaries, the men of the battalion whiled away the time with a variety of activities or tasks. Some, like the battalion’s Commanding Officer,

Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Dykes, opted to write home to their loved ones – in Dykes’ case his letter to his wife was written on the ship’s notepaper – and posted once ashore the following day. Another unnamed soldier also opted to write a note, this time to the editor of the Daily Mirror. On this he wrote: “Well on the way to the front. Just seen the last of England. Mean to fight like Britons. Hope to see Leicester square again shortly. From the boys of the King’s Own (R.L.R.), Dover, SS Saturnia. 22nd August 1914”. This correspondent’s method of delivery was, however, somewhat unusual. Once the pencil-written message had been completed, it was carefully rolled up and inserted into an empty Fulham Brewery beer bottle and thrown overboard. As the battalion steamed on towards the Continent, the bottle was carried away by the waters of the English Channel.

“SEA’S WAR SECRET” It was eight years before the bottle came to light again, during which time many of those who sailed on the troopship SS Saturnia had made the ultimate sacrifice – Lieutenant Colonel Dykes included. Under the heading “Sea’s War Secret”, one edition of the Daily Mirror of March 1922 provides the following explanation: “An interesting link with the early days of the war, in the form of a message to the Editor of The Daily Mirror from troops on their way to the front, has just been recovered from the North Sea, where it has presumably been since August 22, 1914 ... “It was found in a small screwstoppered bottle, now covered with marine fungus and the shells of 50 SEPTEMBER 2014

AS THE writer of the message in the bottle has never been identified, it has not been possible to establish whether or not he survived the days, months and years that followed – the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment spent the rest of the First World War serving on the Western Front. One of those who did put pen to paper during the night of 22/23 August 1914, as the SS Saturnia crossed the Channel, and who did not return home, was Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Dykes. In fact, Dykes would never see the British coast again, as he was killed in action at Le Cateau just three days later. The letter he had written to his wife had been his last. Just before dawn on 26 August, the battalion had arrived at a spot on the Ligny road near Le Cateau. Having been “ordered to form close Column facing the enemy’s direction of defences”, the men then settled down for breakfast. The following account appears on the King’s Own Royal Regiment Museum’s website: “Then came the fire. The field we were in was a cornfield. The corn had been cut. Bullets were mostly about 4 feet high just hitting the top of the corn stalks. Temporary panic ensued. Some tried to reach the valley behind, others chewed the cud; of those who got up most were hit. The machine gun fire only lasted about two minutes and caused about 400 casualties. The 4th Company moving off to the left was caught in columns of fours. Shell fire now started and did considerable damage to the transport … The Commanding Officer was killed by the first burst.” TOP & LEFT: Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Dykes’ is named on the La Fertesous-Jouarre Memorial, which commemorates 3,740 men of the BEF who fell at the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, Marne and the Aisne, between the end of August and early October 1914 and who have no known grave. (COURTESY OF THE CWGC)

limpets, and forwarded to the Editor by Mr. E. Dunn, skipper of the Grimsby trawler Egret. Egret “The message on a half-sheet of notepaper [is] still in an excellent state of preservation … It is written in a well-formed hand, but is unsigned, and there are consequently no means of discovering the fate of the writer, whose spirit of high courage, typical of those days, is revealed in his words … “Mr Dunn, the Grimsby skipper, states that he picked up the bottle at sea while fishing.” In time, the bottle was forwarded to the 1st Battalion of the Regiment who subsequently donated it to the Regimental Museum in Lancaster, ensuring that an unusual reminder of the British Army’s journey to war in 1914 has been preserved for future generations.  www.britainatwar.com

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AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE FIRST YEAR OF THE GREAT WAR A

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ImaGe oF WAR THE SOUTH African Air Force provided a major part of the Allied fighter strength during the desert fighting in North Africa. One of its most notable units was 2 Squadron which, later nicknamed “The Flying Cheetahs”, had returned to action in October 1941 after a rest period. Operation Crusader, the biggest Commonwealth offensive thus far in the desert, began on 18 November 1941. With heavy air support, Crusader resulted in some ferocious air fighting during the succeeding days. In its ranks 2 Squadron SAAF contained a number of notable pilots, some of whom were already Aces and others who would soon reach that coveted status. Amongst these was Lieutenant Eric Cowley Saville, usually known as “Danny”, who had joined the squadron on 15 October, still four months short of his 20th birthday. He was soon in action. On the afternoon of Friday, 21 November, ten Curtiss Tomahawks of 4 Squadron SAAF, with a dozen more from 2 Squadron providing top cover, mounted a ground strafe on enemy armour that was retreating to the west of Tobruk. Shortly after the formation had crossed the line, and despite the cloud hanging low over the desert, three Regia Aeronautica Italiana Macchi MC.200 Saetta fighters were sighted flying on a similar course to the South Africans. Lieutenant “Klippie” Stone pulled to the left and quickly broke up the enemy formation with one of the Saettas falling to his guns. Danny Saville pursued another and after a vigorous chase was soon involved in a tight turning fight. He manoeuvred so closely to the nimble Italian fighter that as he broke off his attack his Tomahawk’s starboard wing struck the Macchi violently very close to the cockpit. The Italian aircraft, thought to have been that flown by Capitano Piero Raimondi, who was the CO of the 373а Squadriglia, fell away, whilst the impact spun Saville’s Tomahawk through 90 degrees. With several feet of his starboard wingtip bent downwards at right angles, it was only by some very skilful flying that Saville managed to land at El Adem. The Macchi’s fate was not confirmed, though

Friday, 21.1 1.1941

some of the South Africans stated that they had seen it crash. As a result, the Macchi was credited to Saville only as a “probable”, but nonetheless he had recorded his first air combat claim, albeit by somewhat unconventional means! Post-war research reveals that Raimondi was in fact reported as missing in action. Elsewhere in the mêlée, either anti-aircraft fire or the third remaining Macchi had seemingly hit Lieutenant Hinde’s Tomahawk. He was forced to crash land his blazing aircraft in the desert, though he was safely picked up by armoured cars from 3 SA Armoured Car Regiment. The following day the youthful Saville was interviewed by the prominent American journalist Quentin Reynolds in front of his battered aircraft. During this Saville commented that “he had had a bit of a ‘slugging match’ with the Italian!” Two days later, in an incident very reminiscent of Danny Saville’s, Lieutenant Douglas Golding’s Tomahawk of 4 Squadron SAAF was found to have had two feet cut off its port tailplane and a deep gash in the trailing edge of the port wing which jammed the aileron after a combat. Not for nothing were the SAAF fighter pilots renowned for their aggression. Danny Saville was to have further adventures on 4 December 1941, when, over El Gubbi, he shot down a Junkers Ju 87 – only to then be attacked by another Tomahawk. He managed to evade the latter before finally heading for home. As his victories mounted during the fighting over the desert, Saville eventually reached Ace status. He was also to be given command of 260 Squadron RAF. Sadly, he was killed in action over Italy in September 1943. By this time he had been promoted to Major and been awarded the US Distinguished Flying Cross and a British DFC and Bar. He had still only reached the age of 21. The photograph seen here, taken on 21 November 1941, shows Danny Saville’s Tomahawk, AN311 coded “TA-C”, at El Adem after his encounter with the Italian MC.200 fighter. The damage to his starboard wing after the resulting mid-air collision can clearly be seen. (GROUP CAPTAIN J. PELLY-FRY)

A SLUGGING MATCH

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THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS GOES TO WAR The Events of 1914

The Royal Flying Corps

Goes To War The first powered flight in history had taken place just eleven years earlier and no-one knew how aircraft would perform or how their roles would develop. Stuart Hadaway relates how the Royal Flying Corps adapted for the outbreak of war in 1914.

T

HE MOBILISATION of the British armed forces in August 1914 was an historic event for all involved, but perhaps especially for the men of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC). Only formed in May 1912 from the Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers, the RFC had a lot to prove. Exercises and manoeuvres before the war had shown its potential, but this would still be their first active deployment. The RFC consisted of seven flying squadrons in August 1914, although three of them were non-operational. No.1 Squadron was still undergoing transition between lighter-than-air and fixed wing aircraft at Brooklands, while at Farnborough Nos. 6 and 7 squadrons were still in the process of forming, although No.6 was almost operational. The other four were scattered around the country: No.2 Squadron at Montrose, No.3 at Netheravon, No.4 mostly at Eastchurch and No.5 at Gosport.

The very act of mobilisation would be a feat in itself, with the units so widely scattered, although a gathering of the squadrons in June at Netheravon on Salisbury Plain for the so-called “Concentration Camp” had helped ease the process. It gave the officers and men experience in travelling with all of their ancillary kit over long distances, and operating under some kind of field conditions. It allowed testing not only of aerial techniques, but also ground movement and logistics, showing several deficiencies that were then worked on to make improvements.

MOBILISING FOR WAR The RFC’s mobilisation plan called for each squadron, plus the headquarters and the Aircraft Park, to make all necessary preparations to move in just three days. It also stated that the flying elements of each squadron were to deploy to Dover on Day Four 

ABOVE: Another view of an Avro 504. Fairly sturdy and easy to fly, the Avro 504 was used by the Royal Naval Air Service to conduct bombing raids into German territory at the beginning of the First World War. The first aircraft to strafe troops on the ground, it was also the first British ’plane to be shot down by enemy ground fire. Better aircraft soon replaced the Avro 504 in combat, but it remained the standard British trainer for the duration of the war. (COURTESY OF KEITH BROOKS)

ABOVE: A starboard rear view of an early Avro 504 – the aircraft flown by Lieutenant Vincent Waterfall and Lieutenant Charles Bayly when they were killed in action on 22 August 1914 – in RFC service. By the end of the First World War, some 8,970 Avro 504s had been manufactured, though production continued for almost twenty years. (© THE TRUSTEES OF THE RAF MUSEUM, 2014)

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SEPTEMBER 2014 53

THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS GOES TO WAR The Events of 1914 of mobilisation. After a day of repairs and further preparation, the RFC would fly en masse to France on Day Six. Meanwhile, the ground elements would proceed separately to Southampton to board ships. Although the June camp had helped, when war came in early August there was still much to be done. Mobilisation was announced on 4 August, although No.4 Squadron had been moved from Netheravon to Eastchurch a few days earlier, ready to support the Royal Naval Air Service in patrolling the south and east coasts. No.2 Squadron, with the furthest to go, had also been warned and had already begun moving the day before. The unofficial word to prepare had already been put out to the other units as well, and according to Air Mechanic (later Major) James McCudden of No.3 Squadron “we were all semimobilised in the RFC, and were all very impatient to get going”.1 However, in the event, all of the units were considerably delayed. A major problem was the gathering of serviceable aircraft and spare parts; No.6 Squadron was immediately cannibalised for aircraft to bring the other units up to strength, while more were taken from the Central Flying School. Civilian aircraft were rapidly purchased, and construction of new machines rushed through. Spares were more of a problem and Captain (later Air Chief Marshal Sir) Philip Joubert de la Ferté recalled how his unit was “frenziedly searching for spares … Personally, I was pursued for two years by a bill for a pair of Bleriot wings that I took without adequate authorization from the works at Brooklands and carried off in triumph to Netheravon.”2 Transport was also in equally short supply, and much had to be requisitioned from civilian companies to bring the RFC up to strength. Lieutenant (later Wing Commander) Louis Strange

54 SEPTEMBER 2014

ABOVE: Lieutenant Vincent Waterfall and Lieutenant Charles Bayly are both buried in Tournai Communal Cemetery Allied Extension. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records state that both men were “one of the first Royal Flying Corps casualties of the war”. (COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES COMMISSION)

recalled that No.5 Squadron acquired “a miscellaneous and unsoldierly collection of vehicles”, most of which had been requisitioned from various commercial organizations. He went on to add: “The headquarters stores lorry was a huge, covered, red van, with BOVRIL painted in black letters all over it; we may have laughed when we saw it go off, but later we blessed it because it was so easy to spot from the air on the frequent occasions when we lost our transport. Our bomb lorry was originally destined for the peaceful pursuit of propagating the sale of Lazenby’s Sauce (The World’s Appetizer), while Peek Frean’s Biscuits, Stephens’ Blue-Black Ink, and the ubiquitous Carter Patterson were also represented.”3

DOVER ARRIVALS

BELOW: Swingate Down, from where much of the early RFC departed for France, as seen from Dover Castle. (AUTHOR)

On Day Two of mobilisation an advance party from No.6 Squadron was despatched to Dover to prepare the field selected for the arrival of the squadrons. Captain (later Air Marshal Sir) Hugh Dowding was appointed Commandant of this new airfield, perched on the cliffs above Dover Castle at Swingate Down. Work immediately began in levelling the field and preparing stores and accommodation.

No.3 Squadron arrived on 12 August, though it had suffered a serious loss along the way. On taking off from Netheravon, Bleriot No.260 had suffered an engine failure and fallen to the ground from a height of 200 feet. The pilot, Second Lieutenant Robert Skene (reckoned by McCudden to be “a good pilot and one of the few who had at that early date looped the loop”), and his passenger, Air Mechanic (AM) Ray Barlow, were both killed, making them the first members of the RFC to be killed on active duty. No.2 Squadron arrived over the course of several days, after an eventful journey, mostly via Farnborough. They had also suffered various accidents and incidents along the way, which delayed some pilots but caused no serious injuries. No.4 Squadron meanwhile had sent a single flight, equipped with wireless transmitters, but the rest of the squadron stayed at Eastchurch due to fears regarding congestion at Dover. The various arrivals at Dover were more or less successful. A few accidents occurred due to pilot error, including that of the South African Lieutenant Kenneth van der Spuy, of No.2 Squadron: “When I arrived at Dover, arrogant young bastard that I was, thinking I knew everything about flying, I thought, ‘I’ll show these lads something.’ So I came down in a steep spiral. I had a big, fat flight sergeant, packed in next to me in the observer’s seat. As we came down, his neck grew redder and redder. I saw where I should land between the flags and flattened out. But I didn’t flatten out where I should have flattened out. Boom, crash! I crushed the undercarriage, and there I sat like a bloody fool, with three [sic] squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps marching out to see who this bloody fool was.”4 Others blamed the landing ground itself. No.5 Squadron ran two days later than the rest of the RFC, taking off from Farnborough on 14 August to fly

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THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS GOES TO WAR The Events of 1914 BELOW: Lieutenant Hubert “H-K” Harvey-Kelly resting beside his BE.2, No.347, near Whitby during the long haul from Montrose to Dover (he can be seen by the haystack). This aircraft is often celebrated (and replicated) as the first aircraft to land in France, but No.347 actually broke down on the way and did arrive in France until much later. (AUTHOR)

to Dover. Four of the eleven aircraft crashed along the way, without fatality, whilst Louis Strange suffered a “prang” on arrival: “At Dover I found that the aerodrome lay on high ground at the edge of the cliffs above the Castle. There were a number of red flags, which told me of ditches to be avoided, but whether the supply of flags had run short or whether some careless fellow had left a ditch unmarked through negligence, I cannot tell; the main thing was that after landing safely, I ran into an unmarked ditch and broke a longeron.”5 This fairly minor accident did little for the state of mind of his passenger, AM Walls, who had already fortified himself against the terrifying prospect of slipping the surly bonds of earth with a bottle of whisky. The combined effects of the drink and the landing led to unsoldierly conduct enough to warrant placing the unfortunate Walls under arrest, although during the night he contrived to escape from the guard tent and into the town. Strange was distracted by the need to repair his aircraft, and it was not until the next morning when he came to prepare to cross the Channel that the absence was noted. A search was made, and Kent Constabulary eventually returned the still-inebriated Walls, although not until long after the rest of the squadron had flown. Strange’s rushed and delayed departure allowed a second bottle of whisky to be secreted aboard the aircraft, and the subsequent behaviour of AM Walls led to fifty-six day’s No.1 Field Punishment on arrival in France, which Strange thought to be “rather hard luck in the circumstances”. www.britainatwar.com

BELOW: The site of the aerodrome at Swingate Down, from the cliff looking north. (AUTHOR)

BELOW RIGHT: Situated near Cliff Road between Dover and St Margaret’s at Cliffe, this memorial commemorates the departure of the RFC’s first four squadrons to head to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. (AUTHOR)

IN FRANCE The other three squadrons were already waiting for No.5 Squadron outside Amiens, having flown across two days earlier on 13 August. Nos.2 and 3 squadrons had gone from Dover with the stray flight from No.4 Squadron, while the rest of No.4 Squadron had flown direct from Eastchurch. It had been a nervewracking experience for all, and no mean feat with the aircraft of the day. From Dover to the French coast was a flight of around forty-five minutes (or even more from Eastchurch) over an unforgiving sea, followed by just as long south down the coast and then a final leg inland, all in under-powered and overloaded aeroplanes. As well as pilots and an officer or mechanic as a passenger, each aircraft also carried a small amount of their personal kit and, according to orders issued to No.2 Sqn, a holdall containing a tool roll, small spares, engine covers, binoculars, revolvers and ammunition pouch, “observers block” (a clipboard-like slab

for pinning maps to), and spare goggles, a haversack containing two biscuits, cold meat, a piece of chocolate, “1 packet soup making material”, and a water bottle with boiled water or tea. On top of all this, each man was issued the tyre from a motor-car for use as a life-jacket: “It was as well that nobody had to try out this primitive life-saving device, which was certainly very difficult to wear in the tiny cockpits of the aircraft of that day. As he crossed the French coast one pilot found the Cap Griz-Nez lighthouse so inviting an object that he spent a little time trying to drop his inner-tube, like a quoit, on to the spiky top.6 The first aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps landed at Amiens at 08.20 hours on 13 August 1914. This was No.2 Squadron’s BE2 No.471, flown by Lieutenant Hubert “H-K” Harvey-Kelly, a pilot known for his daring. The other passenger with Harvey-Kelly was AM Harris, making him the joint-first RFC member to land in France. Their squadron commander, Major Charles “Pregnant Percy” Burke, had claimed 

SEPTEMBER 2014 55

THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS GOES TO WAR ?? ??C ?? ??C///?????/ ?? ??C///?????////?????/ Elsewhere, Lieutenant Gilbert Mapplebeck (with Captain D. Le G. Pitcher in BE2a No.242) had been forced to land at Étaples with a pump failure. In all, of the twelve aircraft from No.4 Squadron that had set out from Eastchurch, only two made it to Amiens without incident. No.5 Squadron had better luck the next day, although Lieutenant R.M. Vaughan (in Henri Farman No.393) was arrested by the French police and detained for a week after force landing near Boulogne. Those that did arrive safely at the airfield just outside Amiens were met in fine

this honour for himself, leading his squadron in formation down the River Somme to Amiens, but “H-K” had decided to cut a corner and swept in two minutes before his irate commander could do so. Burke’s anger was short-lived as the euphoria of bringing his squadron safely in took over. It is remarkable that no aircraft were lost on the crossing, although various mishaps occurred on their arrival in France. Several aircraft suffered damage on landing, and Second Lieutenant E.N. Fuller and AM Cyril Littlejohn of No.3 Squadron went missing, but rejoined their unit five days later. No.4 Squadron went astray en masse, though. This squadron had the furthest to go, and crossed the Channel at heights ranging from 4,800-8,000 feet. Lieutenant (later Air Marshal Sir) Patrick “Pip” Playfair recalled: “We had been told that we might have to land at an aerodrome en route to refuel, if the wind was adverse, but that the leading machine would make the decision, and all we had to do was to follow it down. It so happened that one of the aircraft – not the leading one – had an engine

failure and made a forced landing. All the rest of us followed him faithfully, alighting on rather a small field. Luckily there was no harm done except to the unfortunate passengers who had been detailed to accompany us, and who we were obliged to jettison, in case their extra weight should hazard our rather cramped take-off.”7

HORSEWHIPPED In fact, two of No.4 Squadron’s aircraft had been forced to land at Équihen. These were Captain F.J.L. Cogan (with AM Abram in BE2a No.231), due to engine trouble, and Lieutenant H.J.A. Roche (with Corporal Jerrard in BE2a No.249) with “fuselage trouble”. Four other aircraft from the squadron then followed in the belief that this was their landing ground, one of which broke its undercarriage on landing. Meanwhile, Captain Gordon Shephard (with Lieutenant I.M. Bonham Carter in BE2a No.320) had landed at Berck with engine trouble, and Lieutenant K.P. Atkinson (with AM Halstead in 80hp Sopwith No.248) landed to give assistance, only to suffer his own engine failure on taking off.

BELOW: Although often captioned as being the RFC, this postcard actually shows the RNAS preparing for its own deployment to France. The two identifiable aircraft are No.42, an 80hp Short Seaplane, converted to a landplane and wrecked at Maubeuge in September 1914, and No.50, a BE.2a built for the RFC but used by the RNAS in France, Belgium, and later Gallipoli. (AUTHOR)

56 SEPTEMBER 2014

TOP LEFT: Air Mechanic James McCudden in 1913. He went to France as a mechanic with No.3 Squadron in 1914, but later rose to be one of Britain’s greatest air fighters. (AUTHOR) ABOVE: The RFC/ RAF Memorial at Saint-Omer, where the RFC’s Aircraft Depot finally set up base. This would be the “home” of the RFC throughout the war. (AUTHOR)

style – perhaps too much so. Kenneth van der Spuy of No.2 Squadron recalled: “As I was coming in to land, the whole of the French people in the area – it looked like the whole of France – came surging onto the aerodrome in front of me. Men, women and children. Three times, I had to open up my engine and go up again. In the end, somebody came out with a horse whip, and literally horsewhipped the crowd until they made a path for me to land.”8 They found the Headquarters, under Brigadier General Sir David Henderson, waiting for them, although little else. The various ground echelons did not begin to arrive until the following day; those for Nos.3 and 4 squadrons arrived on 14 August, but those of Nos.2 and

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THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS GOES TO WAR The Events of 1914

5 squadrons did not arrive until two days after that. Each had travelled to Southampton and loaded their vehicles onto waiting ships, a process which unit records show took up to fourteen hours to complete. The ground echelon commanders only knew they were heading for a destination code-named “Port B”, and only once at sea could they open sealed orders to discover that (perhaps unimaginatively) “Port B” was Boulogne.

HOME BY CHRISTMAS? After two or three days and nights driving and loading (or much more in the case of No.2 Squadron), for the ground staff there was now fourteen hour’s peace as the Channel was crossed, and AM McCudden found time for reflection: “The voyage proved uneventful, and we sighted the French coast about 1pm, and I know there were many silent thoughts of what lay in store for us over there. However, it was generally expected that we should all be home by Christmas.”9 Their own arrival was met as exuberantly as the flying units. Driver George Eddington was part of No.2 Squadron’s convoy: “What struck me most was that as we went through the villages, they all turned out. And they called out, ‘Aviation Anglias?’ ‘Oui!’ They loaded us up with wine and anything we wanted, and they wouldn’t take any money. The French were very friendly indeed. The girls were friendly, too.”10 The Aircraft Park arrived later still, www.britainatwar.com

ABOVE: The use of aircraft in a military capacity soon led to the development of numerous other roles – one of the earliest of which was the gathering of aerial photographs – as evidenced by this image, taken at a low altitude, of French soldiers during an attack on the Somme front. (HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)

having not left Farnborough until 15 August. In the end, most of its nominal twenty spare aircraft were either hurriedly issued to squadrons or flown across by Park staff, and only four (all Sopwith Tabloids) accompanied them in crates. They arrived in Boulogne on the night of 18 August, and reached Amiens three days later. From there it would follow the flying squadrons around France until October, when it settled at its permanent home at Saint-Omer.11 By the time the Aircraft Park reached Amiens, the flying squadrons had already deployed forward, to Maubeuge, about six miles from the Belgian border. Sadly, the move was marred by the crash of a No.3 Squadron BE8, one of

three such “Bloaters” with the RFC in France. Second Lieutenant Evelyn Copeland-Perry and his observer, AM Herbert Parfitt, were both killed. Two days later, a second BE8 crashed, killing Corporal Frederick Geard and severely injuring the pilot, Second Lieutenant (later Colonel) Robert Smith-Barry. Back at Dover, work continued to build up the Swingate site, establishing a large airfield that would become one of three near the town used for maritime patrols, home defence, and transit flights. More aircraft began to arrive in a steady stream, ready to be sent to France as replacements and reinforcements. Dowding would spend the next few weeks travelling the country 

BELOW: An early example of a Royal Aircraft Factory BE.2., the aircraft flown by Lieutenant G.W. Mapplebeck, a No.4 Squadron pilot, during the RFC’s first aerial reconnaissance mission on Wednesday, 19 August 1914. (US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

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THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS GOES TO WAR The Events of 1914 LEFT: The Bleriot Memorial, Dover. Only a few hundred metres from Swingate Down, this marks the spot where Louis Bleriot landed after the first crossChannel flight in July 1909. Just five years later, an entire fleet of aircraft was crossing the other way.

However, on that day the returning flights brought back valuable information on the location of the German First Army, on the northern flank of the British Expeditionary Force. This information proved of great importance for the planning of the Battle of Mons, fought the next day, and during which the RFC continued to provide a steady stream of crucial intelligence. The RFC had proved its worth, and the British Army had changed the way it would fight forever. 

(AUTHOR)

arranging for the collection of the various aircraft that were abandoned across the English countryside by the mobilising squadrons. This was an important job. Although the RFC had seventy-five aircraft on charge in the UK, it was estimated that only thirty-six of these were fully serviceable, although another ten were in the process of being requisitioned and thirty more on order. All of those serviceable aircraft were needed at the Central Flying School, where twenty-eight pilots were under instruction.12 These men were urgently required, as just ten fully qualified RFC pilots were now in the UK. In both men and machines, this was a perilously small pool from which to keep the forces in France fed.

INTO ACTION At Maubeuge the Royal Flying Corps began to prove its worth. The first active reconnaissance operations were flown on 19 August, by Philip Joubert de la Ferté of No.3 Squadron and Gilbert Mapplebeck of No.4 Squadron. These were far from unqualified successes,

as Joubert de la Ferté recorded: “First reconnaissance with Mapplebeck. Lost myself most thoroughly. Landed at Tournai, where I had lunch with the governor, and again at Courtrai, until rescued by the Irish inhabitants. Finally achieved my task and returned after six and a quarter hours flying.”13 Mapplebeck had a similar experience, albeit only lasting three hours. The clouds and the difficulty of recognising towns from the air hampered his efforts severely.14 Still, the pattern was set. Over the next few days more flights were made. Union Flags had to be painted on the aircraft due to frequent occurrences of “friendly fire” from British and French troops, while enemy fire took a serious toll. On 22 August 1914, Lieutenant Vincent Waterfall and Lieutenant Gordon Bayly of No.5 Squadron were killed when their aircraft was shot down. Sergeant Major D.S. Jillings of No.2 Squadron became the first British soldier to be wounded by enemy fire during the First World War when he was shot in the leg.

RIGHT: One of the great characters of early military aviation, Lieutenant Louis Strange. (AUTHOR)

BELOW: An example of an Airco DH.2. Designed by Geoffrey de Havilland, the DH.2 was the first effectively armed British single-seat fighter, though because of its sensitive controls, and at a time when service training for pilots in the RFC was very poor, it initially had a high accident rate, gaining it the nickname “The Spinning Incinerator”. Fourteen aces scored five or more aerial victories using the type.

(HISTORIC

MILITARY PRESS)

58 SEPTEMBER 2014

NOTES 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

James McCudden, Flying Fury Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps, Corps p. 21. The Fated Sky, p.40. Recollections of an Airman, pp. 35-6. IWM 13639. Recollections of an Airman, p.37. Philip Joubert de la Ferté, RAFM AC71/14 ‘Pip’ Playfair, p.40 IWM 13639. Flying Fury, p.24. IWM 13639. Raleigh, War in the Air, p.284 TNA AIR1/686/21/13/2252. Philip Joubert de la Ferté, RAFM AC71/14. Gilbert Mapplebeck, RAFM DC71/8/175.

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Western Front F_P.indd 1

13/08/2014 10:42

DATES THAT SHAPED T 8

1

The bombardment of the United Kingdom by V-1 flying bombs launched from bases in the Pas de Calais came to an end with the launch of the final weapon at 04.00 hours. Between 13 June and 1 September 1944, no fewer than 8,617 V-1s had been fired at British targets from northern France before these launch sites were overrun by the advancing Allied forces.

1

With the German garrison having evacuated Dieppe, the port was liberated by troops of the Canadian 2nd Division. A victory parade through the streets was held on 3 September. This was followed by a memorial service to remember those who lost their lives during the Dieppe Raid in 1942.

11

Having departed Loch Ewe on 18 August 1944, the 153 ships of Convoy ON-249, the “ON” standing for “Outward North” and indicating convoys that sailed from the UK to North America, arrived safely with no losses. This was the largest of this series of convoys to run during the war.

Compulsory attendance at Home Guard parades ended. It had been noted in Parliament that “the military situation on the Continent warranted a relaxation of Home Guard duties”, and consequently the necessary orders were issued to Commander-in-Chief Home Forces on 6 September, the effective date of the relaxation being five days later.

11

The Royal Navy’s midget submarine HMS X-24 carried out a successful attack on a floating dock at Bergen, Norway.

2

The German V-weapon, or Vergeltungswaffen, campaign escalated when the first V-2 rocket was fired from a launch site in Wassenaar, a suburb of The Hague in the Netherlands. It took an estimated five minutes to cross the North Sea and reach London, where it struck at 18.43 hours. The V-2 landed in the centre of Staveley Road in Chiswick, towards the junction with Burlington Lane. Three people were killed and twenty-two were injured. Eleven houses were demolished and twenty-seven more were seriously damaged in the immediate area.

At 10.15 hours on the morning of SUNDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 1944, six officers and 180 men of the 21st Independent Parachute Company, under the command of Major B.A. Wilson, took off in twelve Short Stirlings. Within hours they had jumped out of the aircraft into the skies over Occupied Holland near the city of Arnhem. They were a Marker Force, and their task was to lay out the aids and other markers for the guidance of the main body of Allied airborne forces that was following close behind them. Wilson’s men reached their drop zones without incident, only one aircraft being fired at. A few scattered Germans were found on the ground and fifteen of them taken prisoner. Just half an hour after the 21st Independent Parachute Company had landed the markers were in position and then the first lift came in by aircraft and glider. Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne operation up to that time, was underway.

OPERATION MARKET GARDEN SUNDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 1944 60

SEPTEMBER 2014

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D THE WAR 12

Attended by Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry Morgenthau Jr (Secretary of the US Treasury) and numerous senior military and diplomatic advisers, the Second Quebec Conference, code-named Octagon, opened in Canada. This high-level strategic meeting included discussions on such topics as the continuation of Lend-Lease, the role of the Royal Navy in the war against Japan, and the impending invasion and occupation of Germany.

15

Under the code-name Operation Paravane a force of twenty-seven Lancasters of Nos. 9 and 617 Squadrons attacked the German battleship Tirpitz which was at anchor in Altefjord in Norway. Having detached to a Red Air Force airfield at Yagodnik near Archangel, twenty of the bombers were loaded with 12,000lb Tallboy bombs. The raid caught Tirpitz by surprise and one of the seventeen Tallboys dropped hit the battleship near the bows causing considerable damage.

Field Marshal Montgomery’s plan had been to force an entry into Germany over the Neder Rijn (Lower Rhine). As part of this, the 1st Allied Airborne Corps, which included the American 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, was tasked to secure the main canal and river crossings between Eindhoven and Arnhem. Meanwhile, the 1st British Airborne Division, under the command of Major General R.E. Urquhart, was dropped near Arnhem to seize the road bridge over the Neder Rijn. The aim was to provide an “airborne carpet” along which the ground forces spearheaded by XXX Corps would break into the Ruhr and end the war. This picture shows a number of USAAF Douglas C-47 transport aircraft and a row of Waco CG-4 gliders standing ready for Operation Market Garden at an airfield in the UK, 17 September 1944. (US NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

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SEPTEMBER 1944

Key Moments and Events that affected Britain in WW2

 BRUSSELS IS LIBERATED

On 28 August 1944, both battalions of the Welsh Guards left the pleasant country of Normandy, to begin the ever quickening advance to Brussels. The two battalions worked closely together, with the 1st Battalion acting in the infantry role, the 2nd Battalion as an armoured unit. By the afternoon of 2 September, the 2nd Battalion was at Douai – Brussels being just short of 100 miles distant. The tanks moved out that day, their destination being the Belgian capital. Incredibly, after what was described as “an armoured lash unequalled for speed in this or any other war”, the Welsh Guards reached Brussels the next morning. At 07.00 hours on SUNDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER 1944, Lieutenant J.A.W. Dent’s tank of 1 Squadron’s No.3 Troop was the first to enter the city. Such was the welcome the liberators received that at least one Guardsman was injured by a bottle of wine thrown by an over-enthusiastic well-wisher! The image seen here shows one of the tanks of the Guards Armoured Division entering Brussels. (COURTESY OF THE TANK MUSEUM)

17

A relaxation of the UK’s civil defence regulations saw the Black Out being replaced by a “Dim-Out”. This development was welcomed across the UK, except in some coastal areas where the Black Out remained. One reporter noted: “Crowds gathered in Leicester, Newcastle, Birmingham and other cities to see the modified lighting turned on. Many young children who had never seen street lights were brought out for the occasion.” It was also announced that fire-watching was to be abolished except at night in London and south-east England, and that Civil Defence duties were to become part-time only.

19

Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar, and his navigator, Squadron Leader J.B. Warwick DFC, were killed while returning from a raid on the twin towns of Mönchengladbach and Rheydt. Gibson had been acting as the Master Bomber for this attack. The aircraft he was flying, a 627 Squadron de Havilland Mosquito, crashed near the Dutch coast.

24

Following the liberation of Araxos airfield the previous day, the first RAF unit to return to Greece, the Spitfire-equipped 32 Squadron, flew in on this date.

27

The Secretary of State for War, Sir James Grigg, confirmed that fixed anti-invasion defences and “road blocks [in the UK] are no longer required for military purposes” and that their removal was being facilitated where the necessary labour was available.

29

Canadian troops captured the German coastal battery at Cap GrizNez. For the first time in four years the citizens of Dover and its environs were free from harassing shellfire from the long-range guns located there – the last round had fired on Dover on 26 September. Calais itself was liberated the following day. SEPTEMBER 2014 61

A BRIEF SPELL IN THE LINE The Battle of Monte Cassino

A BRIEF SPELL IN THE LINE A

LLIED FORCES had invaded southern Italy, the alleged “soft under-belly” of Hitler’s Fortress Europe. What the Allies found as they battled their way up the Italian peninsula was that the under-belly had been stiffened with a backbone of powerfully built and garrisoned defences set amidst imposing peaks and steep valleys. By the beginning of 1944 the British Eighth Army had found itself facing the most impressive of those fortified lines, the so-called ‘Gustav Line’ which stretched from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian Sea.

62 SEPTEMBER 2014

The Allies’ objective was Rome but the road from Naples to the Eternal City ran along the Liri Valley, the southern entrance to which was dominated by the hill upon which stood the abbey of Monte Cassino, which had been fortified and integrated into the Gustav Line. The historic sixth-century abbey itself was not occupied by the German troops but they had dug defensive positions in the steep slope below the walls of the building.

TOP RIGHT: The Abbey at Monte Cassino pictured during the fighting in 1944.

(BUNDESARCHIV BILD 146-2005-0004)

The first attempt to take the German positions began on 17 January 1944, with attacks by the British 5th Division and 56th (London) Division. This was the start of a bitter struggle for the heights that would involve American, French and Polish divisions as well as other British divisions.

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A BRIEF SPELL IN THE LINE The Battle of Monte Cassino It was during the height of the Battle of Monte Cassino when, in March 1944, Second Lieutenant (later Major) Peter Laughton’s platoon, part of the 2nd Battalion Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, found itself occupying front line positions on Snakeshead Ridge not far from the Monastery itself. However, as Major Laughton himself describes, the Snakeshead still heavily favoured the enemy. Believing that the Germans were using the abbey, the ancient building was targeted by US bombers on 15 February. In a bid to take advantage of the chaos and confusion created by the 1,400 tons of bombs that had been dropped on the heights, the 1st Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment was

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BELOW: A tranquil setting today, this is the view of the rebuilt Abbey of Monte Cassino as seen from the Polish War Cemetery. Part of Snakeshead Ridge, the summit of Hill 593, is a twenty minute climb from the cemetery.

ordered to storm the hill that night. The attack was a disaster, with the Royal Sussex losing twelve out of fifteen officers and 162 out of 313 men – a casualty rate of nearly fifty-four per cent. The Royal Sussex was relieved by the men of 2nd Battalion Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, amongst who was Lieutenant (later Major) Peter Laughton, the CO of No.16 Platoon, ‘D’ Company. His platoon’s position was on top of Hill 593, which was the highest

point of so-called Snakeshead Ridge. Hill 593 was a secondary peak at Monte Cassino, to the north-west of the Monastery and defended by German Fallschirmjäger (parachute troops). It had been attacked by American troops in the early phase of the fighting for Cassino without success. The 4th (Indian) Division then took over, and then in February 1944 the 1st Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment lost heavily in the fighting for the hill. 

SEPTEMBER 2014 63

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THE MOST FRIGHTENING TROOPS IN THE WORLD “My platoon first arrived at Cassino [the town] in February 1944,” recalls Major Laughton, “and we spent the first three weeks carrying stuff up the hill to the troops that were in the line at the top of the mountain. "We had about 3,000 mules under our command and every night for three weeks we used to stagger up the hill in deep snow, ice, rain and everything else. It was the worst winter they had had for years and years and it was pretty tough going because the path was so steep. “The mules had a terrible job keeping their footing and every night we went up with say thirty mules – three or four Scottish soldiers leading the mules with their carers who were Indians – and probably two or three would go over the edge of the cliff and fall 2,000 feet to their death. That caused serious problems with the supply of food and ammunition for the troops who were up there, these mules carried great big

64 SEPTEMBER 2014

loads on either side and I was sorry for the poor brutes trying to get up there; but I’m afraid we lost a lot. “Shelling was another problem when taking the mules up because they [the German gunners] knew the track was there and they had zeroed in on it. At night time they couldn’t see us but they just took pot luck – they knew that we were going up there. So there was a fair amount of shelling on that route.” Eventually the moment came when the Cameron Highlanders, rather than just undertaking portage duties and transporting supplies to the Royal Sussex, were instructed to relieve them. “My platoon took over from the 1st Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment who had been having a terrible time at the top of this mountain,” continued Major Laughton. “They were absolutely delighted to be leaving – it was a pretty hellish place to be. We realised that, from going up and down every night.” The relief was undertaken at night, each company replacing the like

ABOVE LEFT: A 240mm M1 howitzer of ‘B’ Battery, 697th Field Artillery Battalion, US Fifth Army, photographed on 30 January 1944, just before it fires into German-held territory around Monte Cassino. (US

NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

ABOVE RIGHT: A map showing the location of the Abbey, Hill 593 and Snakeshead Ridge in relation to the town of Cassino. BELOW: One of the defending German Fallschirmjäger at Monte Cassino.

(BUNDESARCHIV BILD 146-1974-006-62)

company in the Royal Sussex. “We were twenty-five yards away from the Germans who were in the front line against us and twenty-five yards is not a long way. “The only two things we had in our favour were first, that the weather forecast was better so we expected to get some sunshine; secondly, and most importantly, we had a section of a battalion of the Royal Gurkha Regiment side by side with us. We had two companies on one flank and two companies on the other flank and I tell you these Gurkhas are the most frightening troops in the world if you are not on their side. The Germans are absolutely petrified of them ... it’s a wonderful thing to have them beside us because no German will come near us as long as the Gurkhas are around.”

BURYING THE DEAD ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ companies, along with Battalion Headquarters, took over the front line positions on Snakeshead

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A BRIEF SPELL IN THE LINE The Battle of Monte Cassino

LEFT Today Hill 593 is the location of the main Polish Memorial at Monte Cassino, seen here on the left. Major Laughton notes that the memorial is “the highest point of Snakeshead Ridge. My sangar was actually on the very top of 593.”

(BOTH COURTESY OF PAUL REED)

Ridge from the Royal Sussex and part of 2/7 Gurkha Rifles, with ‘A’ Company being held in reserve. The relief took place over the course of two nights, with ‘B’ Company moving into position on the night of 3 March and the rest of the Cameron Highlanders joining over the course of the following two nights. The relief was completed by 20.30 hours on 5 March. ‘B’ Company formed the right of the line, with ‘D’ Company in the centre and ‘C’ on the left. On reaching the mountain troop, Lieutenant Laughton ensured that his men knew what their duties were and that they had a full understanding of their area: “My platoon’s frontage was probably about thirty-five to forty yards and the Company Commander would probably be maybe 100 yards away. I [also] said Sergeant Murphy, my platoon sergeant, and I would be coming round to see them at frequent times but it would have to be at night time because during the day no-one, and I repeat no-one, was allowed out of their sangars. "That means that all eating, latrines, any sort of movement at all would be attacked by a sniper who had our position very well covered – they had been there long before we got to Cassino and had had plenty of time to get the right positions for all their observation points, whilst parts of our territory were overlooked by the Germans. It was fatal to move by day. “After relieving the Royal Sussex during the dark, we bedded down for the night,” added Major Laughton. “As I went across to my sangar I tripped over something; this was a dead body which had been there for about six or seven weeks. It was an American Sergeant … That was a nasty occurrence. I got the Sergeant-Major to cover up the American so that I didn’t fall over him www.britainatwar.com

every time I came to my sangar. I got to bed that night with wet blankets and fell asleep very soon.” The Allied and German positions on Snakeshead Ridge were so close that both sides, as Peter Laughton soon experienced first-hand, “were restricted to hand grenades and rifle grenades”. Indeed, it was the case that simply every activity, including eating and going to the latrines, had to be undertaken at night, As Major Laughton notes: “In the evening [of the 6th] I went off to the latrine and I squatted down, and low and behold, there is another Jock squatting down beside me – Private Jo McGoran. The latrine was just a hole in the rock by quite a deep crevice. “We both sat down to do our business, when suddenly a rifle grenade exploded very close to Jo McGoran who suffered appalling wounds. He was taken down by stretcher to the Regimental aid post and, sadly, lost his right arm and right leg. However, he made a miraculous recovery and in 2004 he came all the way down from Glasgow and had lunch with us in Petworth (see photo next page). A few years later I was honoured to give a church eulogy to a very brave Cameron and a great friend..”

ABOVE: A USAAF Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress pictured during the bombing of Monte Cassino on 15 February 1944. Hill 593 and Snakeshead Ridge are located in the bottom right corner of this shot. (US NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

It was not long before the German snipers had also given the Cameron Highlanders a costly lesson in just how deadly they could be. “I was woken up just before daylight one morning. I looked out of my sangar and saw an old wall about twenty yards in front of me – I hadn’t seen it before as it was only just daylight. Suddenly I saw someone from the next platoon crawling up to this wall; this was against all our instructions that you shouldn’t move in daylight. “Anyway, this chap got up to the wall. I kept watching him through a crack in my sangar and I could see him as he got his binoculars up and he was looking ABOVE: This farmhouse served as the Company HQ on Snakeshead Ridge, being used by every British unit that occupied at the enemy positions the other side of the wall. Because he wasn’t in my  the positions in front of Hill 593. (COURTESY OF PAUL REED) SEPTEMBER 2014 65

A BRIEF SPELL IN THE LINE The Battle of Monte Cassino

platoon, but from the adjacent platoon, I called them up on my No.38 Wireless Set and said, ‘What is the man doing at the wall? Why has he left his sangar? For goodness sake tell him to get away otherwise he will be dead.’ Anyway they said, ‘Yes Sir, we will do what we can.’ “Anyway this chap saw an aperture in this old wall and he thought he would have a peep through so that he could see the German positions. He was there for ten minutes, so one of his colleagues decided to go and see if he was alright. Having crawled along on his belly up to him, when he got there he pulled his leg and he slumped to the ground. They found he had been shot through the temple.” This victim of a German sniper was Lieutenant George Mackie of ‘B’ Company, who is recorded by

TOP RIGHT: The view from Hill 593 looking down towards Cavendish Road and Albaneta Farm. The Abbey itself is to the left of this picture. (COURTESY OF PAUL REED)

ABOVE LEFT: Major Peter Laughton escorting the Queen Mother in 1953. (COURTESY

the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as being killed on the second morning that his unit had been in the line – 7 March 1944. “George Mackie was a great friend,” said Major Laughton, “and I felt very sad. I spent the rest of the day in my sangar writing letters to various friends and George Mackie’s widow”. Mackie was the only officer killed that day even though enemy mortars and artillery bombarded the Camerons' positions all morning and afternoon. Seven other ranks were killed and a further twenty-five were wounded. Such were the conditions up on the ridge that a “prevalence of trench feet [sic] amongst the forward coys.” was already being noted.

THE BRITISH RESPONSE

positions between 07.00 and 08.00 hours, hammering the enemy ahead of the Camerons’ line. It was reported that 3,000 shells were fired in that hour. Amongst the sixteen casualties suffered by the Camerons were four who suffered severely with dysentery and another four, including Captain Hall of ‘D’ Company, who were evacuated with trench foot. One man went missing, presumed taken prisoner. The Germans also mounted two patrols, each numbering around half a dozen men, penetrated to within a few yards of the Camerons front defensive line. The difficulties experienced by those in the Camerons’ positions on the mountain were explained in some detail in the battalion’s War Diary of 8 March: “All supplies have to be carried and wounded evacuated by a

Early the following day, 8 March, the British responded. Artillery and 4.2-inch mortars struck the German

OF MAJOR PETER LAUGHTON)

RIGHT: Two Monte Cassino vete rans – both of whom were wounded during the time that the 2nd Battalion Quee n’s Own Cameron Highlanders spent on Hill 593 – pictured together in 2004. On the left is Peter Laughton; on the right Jo McGoran. (COURTESY OF JOHN MCGORAN)

BELOW: The view from the Abbe y at Monte Cassino across to the Polish Memorial. Note the Polish War Cemetery lying in between. (SHUTTERSTOCK)

66 SEPTEMBER 2014

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A BRIEF SPELL IN THE LINE The Battle of Monte Cassino

ABOVE: An aerial view of the Abbey at Monte Cassino taken during or just after the fighting in 1944. The town of Cassino is in the foreground, whilst Hill 593 is on the right. During the First and Second Battles of Cassino, the Germans did not occupy or fortify the Monastery; they were dug in further down the slopes. Once the building had been reduced to rubble by the Allied bombardment, the mass of huge craters, piles of masonry, and deep, indestructible vaults, presented too big an opportunity and the Germans set about turning the mountain top into a veritable fortress. (COURTESY OF THE AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL; SUK12202-1)

narrow and very steep mountain track over rough stoney ground which up till today have been a morass of mud owing to continuous rain which has caused discomfort to all. The supplies etc., come up to the foot of the hill by a track which is passable by jeeps only. These jeep drivers are doing a good job.” It was not only mortars and artillery which caused problems for the Camerons: “The Germans had snipers posted who had become very familiar with the terrain. No-one was supposed to leave their sangars during the day. This included the Signallers who, unable to move during daylight, went out every night to relay lines severed by the shells. The distance between the forward line and Battalion HQ was around 800 to 1,000 yards over which the lines ran and the frequent shelling repeatedly cut these lines.” So dominating were the German positions overlooking the Camerons’ line that the War Diary recorded that, on 10 March, no ammunition was used by the forward companies all day because of “the helplessness of the men, who are unable to hit back with their own weapons at an enemy who is not slow to take advantage of their situation ... the enemy are higher up the slope of point 593 than we are and they have an opportunity to observe while we have none and any movement by day is impossible. The CO is concerned at the wastage of men in this position before they have had a chance to prove their mettle in combat.”

EVACUATED It was also on 10 March, only a matter of days after arriving on Snakeshead Ridge, that Lieutenant Laughton www.britainatwar.com

BOTTOM RIGHT: The rebuilt Monastery at Cassino looks down on the Commonwealth War Grave Commission’s Cassino War Cemetery – seen here. The site for the Cemetery was originally selected in January 1944, but the development of the battle during the first five months of that year made it impossible to use it until after the Germans had withdrawn from Cassino. When the last men of the 2nd Battalion Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders pulled out of the line on the night of 25 March 1944, assisted by “24 native porters”, they brought with them the bodies of ten of the battalion’s dead, including that of Lieutenant George Mackie. However, the bodies of six men, noted the War Diary, could not be recovered from Hill 593.

became part of that “wastage” to which his CO had referred. He was resting in his sangar when disaster struck: “This bloody rifle grenade landed between myself and [a colleague]. There was only a foot or two between us but amazingly every bit of shrapnel [sic] except one went towards him, whilst just one bit of shrapnel went into my right arm. I was amazingly lucky.” When his company commander, Major Ambrose Todd, arrived on the scene, Peter Laughton was ordered to be evacuated down the mountain. “No Sir, there is no need for that I will pull it out myself”, he replied. “No, no, you will have to get that taken out professionally and you will go down to the hospital to get it done,” was Todd’s response. “The funny thing is the stretcher bearers have a Red Cross flag which they fly and the Germans respected it. We walked down quite peacefully with no trouble at all. We got half way down the hill with the stretcher sliding about. I then saw somebody running up

the hill. I said, ‘Good God, what the hell is that chap doing coming up the hill at this time of the morning.’” It was just after 05.00 hours and broad daylight. “‘He must be stark staring mad,’ I remember exclaiming,” continued Major Laughton. At this point, one of the small party Peter Laughton was with pointed out that the individual making his lone, and somewhat dangerous, journey up the hill was a Cameron officer. “‘I don’t believe it,’ Peter Laughton responded. “So I looked round. ‘Good God, its Tony Findlay. He is one of my very oldest friends.’ As he reached me, I rebuked him: ‘What on earth are you doing?’ To this, Tony replied, ‘What am I doing up here? I am coming to relieve you.’” After a quick conversation, Lieutenant (later Brigadier) Findlay “went his way and I went the other way”. So ended Lieutenant Peter Laughton’s brief spell in the line on the heights near Monte Cassino. 

(COURTESY OF THE COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVE COMMISSION)

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12/08/2014 10:33

THE RAF ON THE AIR Squadron Leader Gordon Conway DFC 

   

 

 � T 11 PART

MAIN PICTURE: A Spitfire Mk.VIII provides the backdrop to a group photograph of some of the pilots and groundcrew of 155 Squadron shortly after the end of the war. (WING COMMANDER

A.G. CONWAY)

HE BATTLE of the Sittang River Bend was, noted an official communiqué, “a deciding factor in the closing stages of the epic Burma Campaign. RAF Spitfires which supported the Army in this battle played an important part in the successful action, and were responsible for thousands of Japanese troop casualties. One Squadron in particular, No. 155 Spitfire Fighter Squadron, earned the heartfelt thanks of the Army and guerilla parties for the magnificent support given by the pilots during the battle.” In a recording which was broadcast from Singapore on 5 October 1945, 155 Squadron’s Commanding Officer, Squadron Leader Gordon Conway DFC, told the story of the part his pilots played.

70 SEPTEMBER 2014

“After the fall of Rangoon in May this year,” Conway stated, “there were still several thousands of Japanese soldiers attempting to reach safety in Siam and South East Burma. In order to do this, they were massing in the Pegu Yomas, which run north and south, flanking our main line of communication from Imphal to Rangoon. To reach Siam they had first to cross the Toungoo - Pegu road, which was the main Army supply route, and lies in open paddy fields, and then cross the winding Sittang River which flows roughly north and south through Burma. “They were in a very poor state of health and were leaving their wounded to die if they were not fit enough to do the forced march. In May and June, the first reports of these parties told us that a big massing would

During the Second World War, RAF personnel regularly described their activities on the radio for listeners of the BBC. These broadcasts described their experiences in their own words and in effect provided the human stories behind the official communiqués. Each month we present one of these narratives, an account selected from over 280 broadcasts which were, at the time, given anonymously. probably take place fairly close to our airfield. We had several early reports from guerilla forces telling us of small parties of between a hundred and five hundred Japs staying overnight in the village trying to get food. We tried to

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BELOW: Spitfire Mk.VIII MV483 (coded “DG-A”) was one of the 155 Squadron aircraft flown by Squadron Leader Conway on some of the operations in late July 1945 which he described in his broadcast. (J. GEESON)

“We tried to arrange these strikes when the Japs would be having their meals, which all tended to make them a little bit annoyed, and kept them moving without food. As we went over to strafe, we could see the guerillas quite clearly on a nearby hill, watching with obvious enjoyment the large explosions and fires starting in the middle of frantically running Japs, which the guerillas would pick off quite easily with their rifles. A few days later, in would come Captain

find these in very difficult country, and did achieve one or two successes, but nearly always the terrain was too difficult to verify results. “At this time we were stationed at Toungoo. Apart from these odd sorties, which were often abortive, things were very quiet. The monsoon had set in in earnest. Our airstrip was unserviceable, so that we could not fly for most of the month, and our pilots were very browned off.

“About the third week in June reports were gradually building up, and the Army had a very fair picture of what the Japs intended to do. On 20th June we were told that there were nine thousand Japanese west of us, ten miles away in the junglecovered hills which run north and south along the Pegu - Toungoo road. We had no definite instructions to attack them, but every now and again a good target would come in, usually from the guerillas, and we would take off, despite the soggy conditions of the runway, and have a crack at them. “Liaison with the guerillas at this stage was very good indeed. One of their leaders, a British officer who was known for miles around as ‘Captain Mac’, would frequently trek two or three days and then drive thirty miles to see us and tell us that he had rounded up so many hundred Japs in a village, and would like us to lay on a strike.

ABOVE: Squadron Leader Gordon Conway DFC was the Commanding Officer of 155 Squadron during the fighting in early to mid 1945. (WING

COMMANDER

A.G. CONWAY)

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Mac again on a very fast elephant, and tell us just what we had done. “On 21st June, after one of these attacks, we were told that we had killed sixty Japs. The guerillas had actually seen the remaining Japs throwing the bodies into a chaung [gulley]. The next day we chased up the remaining party, which amounted to one hundred soldiers, and killed a further fifty-six. 

SEPTEMBER 2014 71

THE RAF ON THE AIR Squadron Leader Gordon Conway DFC

ABOVE LEFT: That the pilots of 155 Squadron often pressed home their attacks at very low level is evidenced by the damage to the wing tip of this particular Spitfire VIII. (J.D. OUGHTON)

ABOVE RIGHT: Maintenance on 155 Squadron’s aircraft was almost always carried out in the open with the groundcrew personnel often having to work in the most trying conditions. (WING COMMANDER A.G. CONWAY)

“During this period we ran what we called a ‘private war’. We were the only squadron at Toungoo for quite some time, and the war for us consisted of 155 Squadron and the 19th Division against ‘the rest’. Spasmodic sorties of this nature were carried out, and turned out to be very useful later on, as the boys, who previously had dropped few bombs, were now getting extremely accurate. “The Japs had now built up in strength to about 17,000 troops in the Pegu Yomas. They were trying desperately to organise food and build rafts prior to attempting a mass breakthrough to the east, across the road and the Sittang River into Siam. In order to get food, they had to contact local villagers, and similarly in order to get materials for building rafts, they had to use local labour. Here was one of our best sources of information, and the Japs, although they probably knew this, still had to show

72 SEPTEMBER 2014

themselves to the villagers in order to get these supplies. Consequently, from the guerillas and local villagers a very fair picture had been built up. On the night of 19th July we were told that the balloon had gone up. “Reports showed that the Japs were ready to cross in parties varying from tens to several hundreds on a long line up and down the Pegu - Toungoo road. The 17th and 19th Divisions, whom we were supporting, were on the road waiting for them. Now we started real work, and in the next ten days each pilot in my Squadron flew an average of two or three bombing and strafing sorties each day, answering urgent priority calls for direct support from the Army. “We were carrying, in addition to our cannon and machine-guns, beautiful 500lb bombs under the fuselage of the aircraft. They were really lovely. We were very pleased to get these bombs,

and had been waiting some time for them. They were just in time. “The weather was not exactly good flying weather. In fact, that is a definite understatement. It was at times so bad that it was impossible to see the aircraft in front of you during a strafing attack. When we approached the target in these conditions we would go into a long line astern about 800 yards behind each other, and as each pilot went in and bombed he would call out over the radio telephone; ‘Red One bombed’, ‘Red Two bombed’ and so on. Everyone would break away from the target in the same direction and climb to roughly the same height, so that in the blinding rain as we made our strafing runs, each pilot relied on everyone else attacking the right thing! “Fortunately, this usually worked out alright, although

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BELOW: Spitfire VIII, MD215/DG-Y of 155 Squadron sits at Meiktila awaiting its next mission during May 1945. (J.D. OUGHTON)

there were some very fraught occasions when someone would be a little stupid and go round the other way. Two or three would be converging on the same target at the same time, whereupon there would be frantic yells on the radio telephone and everyone would sort themselves out again. Of course, in conditions of good visibility all this was easy, and if you were Number Five to strafe, you merely counted the aircraft in front of you and followed Number Four in. “Our work was usually as follows. We would be sitting at dispersal. The telephone would ring and the target would come through from the Army. A quick briefing and off we would go, four, eight or twelve Spitfires, according to the size of the target. We would fly off low down in an effort to catch the Japs by surprise, hoping that the first thing they would see would be the first bomb falling. When all our bombs were gone, we went in strafing with cannon and machine-guns, starting fires where we could until all our ammunition was used up. One particular village burned for two days after one of these attacks. In several shows, villages were completely wiped out by as few as six Spitfires. “I think that by far the most spectacular close support, and to us certainly the most enjoyable, was with the guerilla forces. These boys, led by British officers, were behind the enemy lines in small numbers, and were often cut off, sometimes with very large enemy forces opposing them. We had no means of talking to them over the radio telephone and had to rely www.britainatwar.com

on ground signals of a very primitive kind. You must remember that these guerillas made these signals which had to be clearly seen, in the open, when they themselves were in full view of the Japs. “When they heard us flying over, they would dash out into the open waving red flags, and then lay white arrows pointing to the Japs around them. The guerillas themselves were always easy to recognise, as they always carried something bright red, such as a red umbrella or red handkerchief on their heads. When possible they would put out two arrows for us as we circled and we knew that where those two arrows converged, there were the Japs. “When we were satisfied, we would go in bombing and strafing, and the guerrillas would change the direction of the arrows as the Japs ran for different cover. In nearly every case, sooner or later, the guerillas would rush out again, waving furiously, and spell out the letters ‘OK’. We all got a tremendous kick out of this, and we knew without waiting for reports that we had hit the Japs. After one of these strikes, the

Gurkhas went in and counted two hundred and forty dead Japs, killed by the Army and ourselves. “By the end of July it was obvious that the break-out was smashed. Rumours of peace were abroad, and we did our last sorties on 12th August, when, as a final gesture, we killed a further sixty Japs in one village. During this whole break-through only two of our aircraft were shot down, and the Army brought both pilots safely back. “When the final scores were totted up, the Army and RAF had confirmed 11,000 Japs killed out of 17,000, for the loss of about a hundred of our own troops, and 155 Squadron alone had killed over 2,000.” 

ABOVE: A 155 Squadron Spitfire Mk.VIII is bombed up before another sortie against the trapped Japanese troops during the Battle of the Sittang River Bend, which officially lasted from 2 July to 7 August 1945. (J.D. OUGHTON)

BELOW LEFT: One of 155 Squadron’s Spitfire Mk.VIIIs touches down at the end of another mission against the Japanese. (A.F. PROUT)

FAR LEFT (OPPOSITE PAGE): Flying Officer A.F. Prout poses with his fitter and rigger in front of “their” Spitfire, Mk.VIII DG-Y, after the Japanese had surrendered. (A.F. PROUT)

SEPTEMBER 2014 73

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15/08/2014 16:18

THE DAY THEY BOMBED THE STATION Middlesbrough Railway Station

THE DAY THEY

BOMBED THE STATION B

ANK HOLIDAY Monday, 3 August 1942, was a dull, grey day. A heavy cloud layer hung low in the sky and there was a hint of drizzle in the air. Over the North Sea, the cloud base was down to between 200 and 300 feet and the mass of grey was banked up to 12,000 feet. Conditions were ideal for the hit and run tactics of Luftwaffe raiders. In the late morning, some ten Dornier Do 217 bombers (of KG2 or II./KG40, or possibly a combination of both) took off from their bases in Holland and flew out over the North Sea. At 12.14 hours they were picked up by Spurn Head radar. Nine of the raiders subsequently crossed the coast between Spurn Head and Flamborough and flew inland to targets in the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire and the East Midlands. One, however, continued to fly northwards. “At about mid-day” an eye-witness in the North Yorkshire fishing village of Staithes saw a Dornier Do 217 four miles off the coast, tracking northwards and hugging the cloud base. Minutes later, it crossed in just north of Saltburn www.britainatwar.com

before circling a couple times over the Eston Hills (so low that eye-witnesses “could easily see the markings and the crew”) before diving steeply towards the Warrenby ironworks, close by the mouth of the River Tees. Teesside with its massive iron and steel works and chemical factories was a prime target for the Luftwaffe and considerable measures were taken to protect these industries. Decoy fires and buildings of wood and canvas were built on the moors for the Germans to bomb instead of the real target; sometimes this ruse worked well. The ICI chemical works at Billingham, which was high on the enemy’s hit list, was extensively camouflaged and often deliberately shrouded in a smoke screen. However, on this day the lone German bomber had another objective in mind. Though eye-witnesses on the Eston Hills initially thought that the Warrenby ironworks were the intended target, the raider in fact banked to port and began to follow the river (and the railway line that was parallel to it) towards Middlesbrough.

The interior of Middlesbrough railway station after the air raid on 3 August 1942. (ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR UNLESS

STATED OTHERWISE)

BELOW: A Dornier Do 217 en route to its target.

One date stands out in the history of Middlesbrough in the Second World War. Though it was an important industrial area, with its steel and chemical factories, on that day the Luftwaffe had another objective in mind. That date was 3 August 1942, and, as Bill Norman describes, the target was Middlesbrough Railway Station. EXCITED ADVENTURE The Dornier’s westerly route towards Middlesbrough took it over Smith’s Dockyard on the River Tees, where Roland Parkinson was an 18-year-old apprentice. When the works’ air raid siren had sounded, all of the workers had left the machine-shop where Parkinson was employed: the older men went straight to the shelters – the younger ones stayed outside. 

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THE DAY THEY BOMBED THE STATION Middlesbrough Railway Station

“We were excited and there was a sense of adventure about it,” recalled Parkinson. “The plane dipped out of the clouds above Smith’s. It seemed to be heading for the river, then it banked, as if following the river. Its bomb-doors were open. “Subsequently, we saw four ‘dots’ fall from the plane. A big cheer went up: we thought that he had been hit and that the crew were baling out. As the ‘dots’ continued to fall, another cheer went up: we thought that their parachutes had failed to open. Then we heard the crumps and saw smoke. It was then that we realised that the ‘dots’ were bombs.” Harry Hurst, who was just 16-yearsold, was a very young civilian aircraftrecognition instructor at local RAF and

RCAF stations. Some days before, he had received an updating of aircraft information from the Air Ministry, including details of the latest Dornier bomber, the Do 217E-2. Decades after the incident, Harry could not remember whether the sirens had sounded, but just before the raid he had cause to leave his house, which was a mile from the station: “I hadn’t gone far when I heard the unmistakeable sound of BMW engines. The sound came from the South Bank area and the aircraft was obviously very low, travelling very fast and coming in my direction. My first sighting of it was when it broke cloud, the base of which was very uneven, almost directly over Cargo Fleet station.

ABOVE: The North platform, Platform 2, after the passing of the Luftwaffe raider. TOP RIGHT: A map showing the route taken by the Middlesbrough raider on 3 August 1942. BELOW LEFT: Middlesbrough railway station today. The wreckage from the raid was quickly cleared and the station’s distinctive, but badly damaged, roof was replaced by temporary low-level canopies. Though the skeleton of the east end was retained to brace the concourse roof, these last vestiges of the original structure were removed in 1954, making way for the present concrete roofs over the concourse and platforms. (COURTESY OF MARK ANTHONY SMITH)

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“It was in a shallow dive and the bomb-doors were open. It made a long sweeping turn to starboard, levelled out at about 600 feet, and released its bombs. At its nearest, I was within half a mile of it and I clearly identified it as a Dornier 217E-2. She was in the standard camouflage of day-bombers, i.e. dappled bluish-grey on the upper surfaces and greyish-white underside. “Immediately after releasing its bombs, it banked slightly to port, flew level for a short time, then climbed back into the cover of the clouds. I heard the bombs explode, although I could not see them, my ground vision being obscured by houses.”  

TARGET MIDDLESBROUGH Just before the bombs dropped, the “Z” Battery Rocket Projector site at Brambles Farm fired twenty-eight 3-inch UP (Unrotated Projectile) anti-aircraft rockets at the Dornier. Their effect was not observed but the aircraft seemingly did not falter before the gunners counted four bombs dropping from the raider’s open bomb-bay. Tim Felce was a 24-year-old policeman on the station ‘patch’. He was walking up Bridge Street, close by the railway station, when he heard the sound of approaching engines: “I thought that it was one of our returning bombers – we were on the flight path for Thornaby aerodrome. I was wrong. When the aircraft came into view, it was following a line from the river to the station. Its bomb-doors www.britainatwar.com

THE DAY THEY BOMBED THE STATION Middlesbrough Railway Station were open and it was extremely low – so low that I remember thinking that I could easily hit it with a cricket ball – and it was making a hell of a noise. Then I saw the bombs drop. I flung myself to the ground, my fingers in my ears as a precaution against blast.” Four 500kg high-explosive bombs were aimed at the station. They fell at 13.08 hours. The first bomb ripped through the arched roof before exploding among the buildings lining the North platform. The blast – which was so powerful that it was heard in Darlington, fifteen miles away – tore a fifteen-yard gap across the entire width of the canopy. Extensive damage was caused to the refreshment room, the ticket collectors’ room, the guards’ room and the general waiting-room.

Redcar Norton

Billingham

Saltburn Grangetown South Bank North Ormesby

Middlesbrough Eston Nab Key: Known balloon sites Known Anti-Aircraft gun sites

AN INTRIGUING POSTSCRIPT FOLLOWING PUBLICATION of a version of this tale in the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette some years ago, the author received a letter from a reader whose mother had visited the German town of Kassel in 1950. While there, she went into a handbag shop to make a purchase, during the course of which she fell into conversation with the owner, who spoke fluent English. He asked her which town in England she was from. When she told him that she was from Middlesbrough he replied that he knew the town well, having bombed the railway station there in 1942 – while searching for ICI. If the latter was, in fact, his intended target, there is the puzzle of why he did not attack the chemical works, which he must have been able to see a mile or so beyond the railway station. Indeed, within seconds of dropping his bombs he flew through the balloon cordon that hung over the Billingham plant. BELOW: The devastation to the area of the North platform and the station canopy is clear to see in this image. Note how the clock on the wall has stopped at roughly 13.10 hours – the moment that the bombs may have exploded.

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Eston Hills

Estimated flight path of Do.217E-2, 3 August 1942

Flying masonry, shards of splintered steel and slivers of glass joined with the cascading girders and metalwork to form a lethal combination of hurtling debris that threatened anyone or anything exposed to it. The second bomb exploded immediately in front of the Newcastle train, which was standing alongside the South platform. The front buffer of the engine was later discovered 250 yards away in a house in Vaughan Street. Of the nine coaches that made up the train, three were completely wrecked. The third bomb struck a fruit warehouse in Station Street, adjacent to the station, demolishing it and a tailor’s shop next door to it. The fourth destroyed five properties in Crown Street, 100 yards or so beyond the target. The shock waves from the explosions caught a Middlesbrough Corporation bus that had been halted by traffic lights at

the junction of Albert Road and Zetland Road adjacent to the station, “bounced it like a rubber ball, shattered all of the windows,” and threw conductress Ethel Clifford to the floor. Driver Ron Nelson heard no sound except the ringing of the bell “and then the nearby Albert Bridge was moving and a curtain of rust was raining from it”. The shock waves continued to radiate from the points of impact, shattering windows and ripping slates from the roofs of properties within a 400-yard radius. The following day the town's Evening Gazette contained a brief report on the incident. Under the headline “Five Killed in Day Raid on North-East Town”, the report read as follows: “A sneak raider slipped out of the clouds above a North-East town yesterday and dropped a stick of bombs. Five people were killed, several people are detained in hospital, some seriously injured, 

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THE DAY THEY BOMBED THE STATION Middlesbrough Railway Station and more were treated for slight injuries and allowed to go home. People saw the raider cross the town and release four bombs ... A hostel was badly damaged and had to be evacuated. Bombs were also dropped in the vicinity of some old warehouses and cottage property and caused some damage, but the casualties in this area were slight.”

FATE UNDETERMINED Rescue work began almost immediately. Among the early helpers were a number of patrons from a nearby public house as well as workmen who left their own jobs nearby and dashed to the spot to render what aid they could. Within an hour, that small group had been joined by 200 soldiers and the task of rescue got underway in earnest. However, a number of victims were already beyond help. Despite what the press stated, eight people lost their lives on that day in August and fifty-seven were injured, twenty-two of whom required hospital treatment. Among the fatalities was 17-years-old Charles Taylor, a refreshment-room boy, who became the sixth member of his family to die as a result of air raids that year. Another was James Binks, the railway guard from the Newcastle train. He should not have been at work at all that day as it had been his day off but he had changed shifts at the request of a colleague; his shift was due to end at 14.00. He was killed in the station platform; the guard’s van that he had left only minutes earlier was unscathed. The attack caused much structural damage to the railway station but not sufficient to disrupt its operation for any length of time. Within fifteen minutes of the raid, LNER, working

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with Middlesbrough Corporation Transport and the United Bus Company, had started to organise a shuttle service to local stations for would-be rail passengers. Priority rail traffic was immediately re-routed, freight traffic was restored within  twenty-five hours and passenger services were back to normal some eight hours after that. After making its attack, the raider flew due west, crossed the river Tees and passed through the balloon cordon that protected the town’s Ironmasters’ District and the ICI chemical complex at Billingham. It was then seen to curve towards the south-east and fly over the small community of Haverton Hill.

ABOVE: A final view of the badly damaged station at Middlesbrough on 3 August 1942. BELOW: Some of Middlesbrough’s defenders, ATS personnel of 500th (Mixed) Heavy AntiAircraft Battery RA, march past one of their 3.7-inch guns, 12 May 1942. (IWM; H19602)

Minutes earlier, Saltburn resident Mrs Campbell and her friend had finished taking coffee at the town’s Spa Hotel and were preparing to leave. Mrs Campbell later recalled that: “As we came out of the door a large, low-flying aeroplane came over the Spa from the land and flew out to sea.” The lone raider was on his way home. Witnesses have different opinions regarding the Dornier’s fate. Some claim that it was shot down over the coast, while others believe the rumour current at the time that it was shot down over the North Sea by locallybased fighter aircraft. Still others maintain that it was destroyed by anti-aircraft defences at the mouth of the Tees; while others are certain that “it got clean away.” Examination of available records gives no indication that the raider was destroyed and it must be presumed that it returned safely to its base in Holland. 

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THE NETTLETON ROOM RAF Waddington

NETTLETON ROOM M THE

Twenty-one years ago the main briefing room at RAF Waddington was dedicated as “The Nettleton Room”. Andrew Thomas explains why.

R

EFORMED IN 1937 as part of the great expansion of Bomber Command, 44 Squadron moved to RAF Waddington, just south of Lincoln, later the same year. Initially equipped with Hawker Hind biplanes it had subsequently been re-equipped with the Bristol Blenheim and, from February 1939, Handley Page Hampdens. It was with these that, on 3 September 1939, 44 Squadron began operations when nine aircraft were despatched on an armed reconnaissance to the area of Heligoland. The crews went on to fly night bombing attacks on Germany, the first coming on 19 March 1940. Then on 24 December 1941, by which time it had been re-titled as 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron due to the increasing numbers of Rhodesians posted in, that the squadron received a welcome Christmas present – and one that cemented its niche in RAF history. That day the first three Avro Lancasters to enter operational service were delivered to

Waddington. Under command of Wing Commander Roderick Leoroyd, who had been awarded the Victoria Cross whilst flying Hampdens with 49 Squadron in 1940, 44 Squadron had been selected as the first unit to receive the iconic four-engine bomber. Training on the Lancaster commenced immediately and additional aircrew were posted in as the type required a crew of seven, comprising the pilot, co pilot, navigator, wireless operator and three air gunners; later the co-pilot was replaced by the flight engineer. With Bomber Command keen to see their latest bomber committed to action, from late January the squadron stood by several times but bad weather or other reasons caused cancellation.

ABOVE: The badge of 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron. (MOD)

Eventually, on the evening of 3 March 1942, watched by the Air Officer Commanding 5 Group, Air Vice Marshal John Slessor, four Lancasters flown by Squadron Leader John Dering Nettleton, Flight Lieutenant Sandford and Warrant Officers Crum and Lamb, lifted off from Waddington to lay mines in the waters of the Heligoland Bight. Work up training continued apace and a week later two aircraft from the squadron joined forty-one Wellingtons, seven Short Stirlings and three Avro Manchesters in a raid on Essen on what was the Lancaster’s first operational bombing raid. By this time 97 Squadron at nearby Woodhall Spa was also re-equipping, but a short grounding due to technical inspections following the loss of a 97 Squadron aircraft slowed the process somewhat. 

The Augsburg raid is immortalised by this painting of Squadron Leader John Dering Nettleton’s and Flying Officer John “Ginger” Garwell DFM’s Lancasters over their target. It hangs in the RAF Waddington Officers’ Mess. (ALL IMAGES ARE COURTESY OF RAF WADDINGTON UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE)

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THE NETTLETON ROOM RAF Waddington

Then, on 24 March, 44 Squadron’s Flight Sergeant Lyster Warren-Smith and his crew set out in R5493 (coded KM-M) on a Gardening sortie to lay mines off the French port of Lorient but failed to return. A message was heard from R5493 around 23.00 hours and it is believed that the aircraft was shot down by flak from the Île de Croix. This was the first Lancaster lost on operations; the crew were all killed.

AUDACIOUS ATTACK The early months of 1942 saw shipping losses in the Atlantic reach unacceptable levels and reducing the U-boat threat became a strategic priority by all available means. As a result HQ Bomber Command was requested to examine the feasibility of bombing a factory that was vital for the manufacture of submarine diesel engines, the MAN AG (Machinenfabrik Augsburg Nurnburg)

LEFT: The 44 Squadron flying order detailing the crews assigned to take part in the Augsburg raid. (VIA

AUTHOR)

RIGHT: This pastel of Squadron Leader John Nettleton hangs in the RAF Waddington Officers’ Mess.

ABOVE: An Avro Lancaster I of 44 Squadron pictured at RAF Waddington in early 1942. (PETER GREEN COLLECTION)

plant at Augsburg in Bavaria. To ensure the accuracy required, a plan was proposed for a daylight attack at low level using the RAF’s latest bomber. The scheme was breathtakingly audacious in its concept involving as it did an unescorted round trip of over 1,000 miles, most of it to be flown over enemy territory. The attack called for a dozen Lancasters drawn from both

44 and 97 squadrons, both of which, in early April, began long range low-level formation training on routes around Britain. The attack was to be led by a 25-year-old South African, Squadron Leader John Nettleton of 44 Squadron, who had previously been Mentioned in Despatches, with the 97 Squadron formation, that would to all intents be a separate element, led by Squadron Leader John “Flap” Sherwood. Nettleton led 44’s final long range formation practice lasting five and a half hours on 15 April. Rumours of a “special” were confirmed when the selected crews were informed on the 16th that the raid, but not the target, was planned for the next day. At 11.00 hours on the 17th the crews at both Waddington and Woodhall Spa were briefed on the target – and the planned route before individual crew flight planning commenced.

MAIN PICTURE: One of 44 Squadron’s Mk.I Lancasters sits at dispersal at the time of the Augsburg raid. (PETER GREEN COLLECTION)

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BELOW: Pictured at RAF Waddington circa April 1942, Avro Lancaster R5556/ KM-C was one of the first examples of the type delivered to 44 Squadron, though it did not participate in the attack on Augsburg. (VIA R.C.B. ASHWORTH)

Out on the dispersals each Lancaster was filled with a maximum load of fuel (2,154 gallons) and loaded with four 1,000lb General Purpose high explosive bombs fitted with eleven-second delay fuzes. Having conducted pre-flight checks the various crews mounted their aircraft and then, at 15.12 hours, John Nettleton eased the throttles forward on Lancaster I R5508/KM-B and steered his heavily laden aircraft onto Waddington’s grass runway. He was followed by the rest of his ‘vic’. These were the Lancasters flown by Flying Officer John “Ginger” Garwell DFM (R5510/KM-A) and Sergeant George “Dusty” Rhodes (L7536/KM-H). The second of 44 Squadron’s “vics” of three Lancasters was led by Flight Lieutenant R.R. “Nick” Sandford in R5506/KM-P with Warrant Officer Hubert Crum DFM (L7548/KM-T) and Warrant Officer John Beckett DFM (L7565/KM-V). The 97 Squadron aircraft took off from Woodhall Spa at the same time and the two formations immediately set course for Selsey Bill. From there the Lancasters headed out over the Channel flying at less than fifty feet to avoid German radar.

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Although unescorted, a large number of fighters and light bombers were making diversionary sweeps over northern France to draw off any Luftwaffe fighters from the Lancasters route. However, if any fighters were encountered the Lancaster crews’ only hope was to maintain their low level and rely on the concentrated fire from the gun turrets. By the time they crossed the French coast the two squadron formations had separated somewhat. Hugging the contours of the Normandy countryside, however, they continued without incident until they were about twentyfive miles to the north-west of the town of Evreux just after 17.00 hours.

THE 1,000th VICTORY On the airfield outside the village of Beaumont-le-Roger was based the Stab and II Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 2 which were equipped with Messerschmitt Bf 109F-4 fighters. These had earlier been scrambled to counter the diversionary sweeps in support of the Augsburg force but by the greatest of ill luck 44’s formation flew past 

ABOVE: Warrant Officer Hubert Crum’s Lancaster, L7548, was shot down by Feldwebel Bleymuller, but he survived to become a PoW.

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THE NETTLETON ROOM RAF Waddington

ABOVE: With Squadron Leader John Nettleton at the controls, Avro Lancaster Mk.I L7578 casts a shadow during low flying training a couple of days before the Augsburg attack. Nettleton flew a different aircraft, R5508/KM-B, on the mission.

the airfield just as they were returning to base. This was described in Combat Report No.16 of JG 2’s war diary in this manner: “Emergency scramble! The men run to their machines, swing themselves up into the cockpits, clip on their parachutes. A moment of quiet on the field, then the engines start to bellow and the leading Schwarme taxi out. The drone of the machines fades as they head northwards. The ops room is a hive of activity. We soon hear that the Tommies have turned away

prematurely. The first fighters come back into land. “But then – what’s going on across the far side of the field? Incredible, British four engined bombers! Three – no, six of them! Slowly they roar past low overhead, looking for all the world like a shoal of clumsy carp. Our fighters are still landing. Haven’t any of them seen the enemy bombers? “Yes, there – one has spotted them just as he is about to touch down. He guns his engine, retracts his undercarriage and chases off after them. Other fighters follow, some that have already landed quickly take off again. They hurl themselves upon the bombers. “One of the enemy is already going down. A cloud of black smoke rises into the air. The second explodes in the air like a glowing star. Immediately thereafter another pillar of smoke indicates the fate of the third. Three mushrooms of smoke stain the horizon. The fighters return, waggling their wings as they roar low across the field. Beaming with joy, the pilots clamber from their cockpits: Hauptmann Greisert [is the] 998th victory for the Geschwader;; Feldwebel Bosseckert 999th, Unteroffizier Pohl 1,000th!

ABOVE: Seated on a bomb trolley, and pictured in the days before the Augsburg raid, is Pilot Officer “Buster” Peall who was killed during the attack whilst flying as part of Flight Lieutenant Sandford’s crew. ABOVE FAR LEFT: Squadron Leader John Nettleton VC. LEFT: The view from the cockpit of a 44 Squadron Lancaster during a daylight raid. (JOHN GEE)

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“Finally Kommodore Oesau taxies in. He has downed the fourth bomber. He edged into position 10 metres above the [ ] and shot its two left-hand ‘Liberator’ [sic] engines out.”

DESTROYED On board 44 Squadron’s KM-V, John Beckett broke radio silence as soon as the enemy fighters were spotted: “109s, eleven o’clock high!” The Lancasters closed up to give mutual support as they saw the fighters overshoot their landings and turn toward them. As already mentioned, at 17.06 hours Hauptmann Karl-Heinz Greisert of II./JG 2 closed in and sent a hail of fire into Beckett’s aircraft which quickly hit the ground and exploded, killing all on board. www.britainatwar.com

UNFLINCHING DETERMINATION

THE NETTLETON ROOM RAF Waddington

THE AWARD of the Victoria Cross to Squadron Leader John Dering Nettleton was announced in The London Gazette of 24 April 1942: “Squadron Leader Nettleton was the leader of one of two formations of six Lancaster heavy bombers detailed to deliver a low-level attack in daylight on the diesel engine factory at Augsburg in Southern Germany on April 17th, 1942. The enterprise was daring, the .target of high military importance. To reach it and get back, some 1,000 miles had to be flown over hostile territory. Soon after crossing into enemy territory his formation was engaged by 25 to 30 fighters. A running fight ensued. His rear guns went out of action. One by one the aircraft of his formation were shot down until in the end only his own and one other remained. The fighters were shaken off but the target was still far distant. There was formidable resistance to be faced. With great spirit and almost defenceless, he held his two remaining aircraft on their perilous course and after a long and arduous flight, mostly at only 50 feet above the ground, he brought them to Augsburg. Here anti-aircraft fire of great intensity and accuracy was encountered. The two aircraft came low over the roof tops. Though fired at from point blank range, they stayed the course to drop their bombs true on the target. The second aircraft, hit by flak, burst into flames and crash-landed. The leading aircraft, though riddled with holes, flew safely back to base, the only one of the six to return. Squadron Leader Nettleton, who has successfully undertaken many other hazardous operations, displayed unflinching determination as well as leadership and valour of the highest order.”

At the same time, Feldwebel Alexander Bleymuller attacked Herbert Crum’s aircraft, sending shards of Perspex around the cockpit and injuring the pilot who grimly held position as his aircraft received further hits – strikes that wounded Sergeant John Miller in the mid-upper turret and set the port wing on fire. Ordering the bomb load to be jettisoned, Crum fought for control. Meanwhile, Unteroffizier Otto Pohl had attacked Nick Sandford’s KM-P. With its engines ablaze, and despite his desperate evasion tactics (including reportedly flying under some power lines), the Lancaster’s wingtip touched the ground and the bomber cartwheeled to destruction. By then Herbert Crum had managed to affect a forced-landing in a wheat field and all his crew survived to be taken prisoner. In little over a minute, half of the 44 Squadron formation had been destroyed. The German fighters then turned their attention to the trio of Lancasters which, led by Nettleton, had continued grimly on in close formation. Leading the chase was the Kommodore of JG 2, Major Walter Oesau. An experte

ABOVE: Major Walter Oesau photographed during 1942. (VIA JOHN WEAL)

ABOVE: This aerial reconnaissance photograph, taken a few days after the Augsburg raid by No.1 PRU on 29 April 1942, shows the extent of the damage to the MAN diesel works.

with 100 victories to his name, Oesau, accompanied by his wingman Oberfeldwebel Fritz Edelmann, chased “Dusty” Rhodes’ Lancaster. Edelmann’s Bf 109F-4 was hit by return fire from Rhodes’ gunners – fire which wounded the Luftwaffe pilot. Undeterred, Oesau closed to a range of just thirty feet behind the Lancaster before opening a devastating burst of fire. Both of the bomber’s port engines erupted in flames, followed quickly by the starboard wing. Moments later the stricken bomber reared up to the vertical before crashing at 17.10 hours; it was Walter Oesau’s 101st victory. 

BELOW: Major Walter Oesau, the Geschwader Kommodore of JG 2, shot down “Dusty” Rhodes’ Lancaster with a devastating burst of fire. Here his Messerschmitt Bf 109F is pictured at Beaumont-le-Roger. (VIA JOHN WEAL)

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THE NETTLETON ROOM RAF Waddington

RIGHT (OPPOSITE PAGE): Squadron Leader Nettleton’s was the only 44 Squadron Lancaster to return from the raid – and all of the crew (seen here after the attack) were decorated. In the rear, left to right, are: Sergeant Les Mutter (awarded the DFM), Flight Sergeant Frank Harrison (DFM), Flight Lieutenant Charles McClure (DFC), Sergeant Don Huntley (DFM). In the front row, meanwhile, are, again left to right: Pilot Officer Pat Dorehill (DFC), Squadron Leader John Nettleton (the VC), Pilot Officer Des Sands (DFC), and Flight Sergeant Charles Churchill (DFM). Note how Flight Lieutenant Charles McClure was obviously absent when the rest of his crew gathered for the picture, his face being subsequently superimposed. BELOW: The shattered remains of one of 44 Squadron’s Lancasters – grim testimony of the brief fight over Beaumont-le-Roger on 17 April 1942.

Short of fuel the Messerschmitts withdrew. By now, four devastating minutes into the combats, two-thirds of the 44 Squadron formation had gone. The two surviving aircraft of Nettleton and Garwood had also been damaged.

three others survived – the others in the rear of the aircraft, Flight Sergeant Flux, Flight Sergeant McAlpine and Sergeant Edwards, were all killed. As Nettleton headed west into the setting sun, “Flap” Sherwood’s 97 Squadron formation made its attack. The Lancaster crews duly dropped their bombs on the factory complex, though Sherwood’s aircraft was shot down as they came off the target. That of Warrant Officer Mycock blew up just after he had bombed. Badly damaged, the surviving four raiders from 97 Squadron turned for home.

TARGET IN SIGHT With “Ginger” Garwood’s KM-A tucked close, John Nettleton grimly pressed on for the target, still several hundred miles distant. Fortunately they, and the separate 97 Squadron formation, avoided further loss, though they had to endure occasional bursts of anti-aircraft fire as the German defences were by now fully alerted to their presence. On reaching the last turning point, a lake ten miles south of the target, Nettleton and Garwood turned onto their final run to the target in clear weather and excellent visibility. As they crested a ridge they saw Augsburg before them – and immediately a barrage of flak opened up. Manoeuvring so as to locate his ‘run-in’ feature, Nettleton closed on the target with the enemy guns firing almost horizontally at them. The factory sheds that represented the target were soon sighted – and they appeared exactly like the models that the Lancaster crews had been shown at their briefing. Nettleton’s crew’s particular aiming point was the T-shaped submarine diesel engine shed. With rooftops flashing beneath them the two 44 Squadron Lancasters - now astern of each other delivered their attack.

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SOLE SURVIVOR

Once the “bombs gone” call had been made, Nettleton swung west as the bombs exploded. His crew had the satisfaction of seeing whole sections of the shed and surrounding building explode. However, having dropped his bombs, Garwood, who had stuck gallantly with his leader throughout, was hit and his aircraft caught fire. With fire engulfing the rear part of his aircraft he managed to crash land in fields near the town. Garwood and

ABOVE: This marker was erected over the mass grave of some of the crew of Flight Lieutenant Nick Sandford’s and Warrant Officer John Beckett’s Lancasters by the French. (VIA CHAZ

BOWYER)

BELOW: The sign to The Nettleton Room at RAF Waddington.

After a long, but blessedly uneventful, flight home, John Nettleton’s exhausted crew landed at Blackpool shortly before 01.00 hours on 18 April. It had been a costly mission, though, with seven aircraft and forty-nine aircrew posted as missing (twelve of them became PoWs, including John Sherwood – the only survivor from his crew). It had always been a high risk operation that was pressed home in the face of many setbacks and drew praise from all corners, including Winston Churchill who wrote that they had “struck a vital point with deadly precision. We must plainly regard the attack as an outstanding achievement.” Nettleton’s was the only aircraft from 44 Squadron to return and every member of the crew was decorated. For his courage and inspirational leadership Squadron Leader John Nettleton was

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THE NETTLETON ROOM RAF Waddington

awarded the Victoria Cross. Flight Lieutenant Charles McLure (from Rhodesia), Pilot Officer Pat Dorehill (Rhodesia) and Pilot Officer Des Sands (London) all received the DFC whilst Flight Sergeants Len Mutter (Cardiff), Frank Harrison (also from Cardiff), Charles Churchill (South Africa) and Sergeant Don Huntley (Rhodesia) each received the DFM. When it was known that he had survived, John Sherwood received the DSO.

BOMBER HARRIS Despite the gallantry displayed by those involved, the losses encountered during the Augsburg attack resulted in postraid discussion. Indeed, as the historians Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt note in The Bomber Command War Diaries, there was “some dispute” over the raid. They go on to explain: “The British Official History contains the text of letters between the Ministry of Economic Warfare, the Prime Minister, the Air Ministry and Bomber Command over the selection of the diesel-engine factory at Augsburg for this raid. The Ministry of Economic Warfare protested that there were other, more vital, bottleneck targets in Southern Germany which

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TOP RIGHT: After bombing the factory, Flying Officer “Ginger” Garwell (seen here on the left) was forced to crash land his blazing aircraft, though he and his surviving crew became prisoners. BELOW: Having been promoted to Wing Commander, 26-year-old John Nettleton VC was killed in action on 13 July 1943. His 44 Squadron Lancaster, ED331/ KM-Z, was shot down whilst returning from a raid on Turin. His body and those of his crew were never recovered. All are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial – seen here. (COURTESY OF

THE COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES COMMISSION)

ABOVE: Flight Sergeant Frank Harrison DFM flew as Nettelton’s bomb aimer during the Augsburg raid.

they would have recommended for such a risky raid.” Harris had earlier considered attacking the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt but opted for the Augsburg “for tactical reasons”. He later wrote the following: “I laid on, very soon after I had taken over, a daylight attack on an objective far within Germany. On April 17th, twelve Lancasters were dispatched to bomb the M.A.N. works at Augsburg, which produced a large proportion of the enemy’s U-boat engines; the Dieselengine shed in the midst of the very large factory was the precise target. “The attack was very carefully planned; Augsburg was far beyond the then range of fighter cover, but Fighter Command laid on diversionary sweeps, which, however, did not go altogether according to plan. The Lancasters also flew at very low level, because it was at that time difficult to detect very low flying aircraft by radar and also because this gave some protection against fighters and flak. Seven out of the twelve Lancasters were missing, a loss which was not excessive in proportion to the importance of the objective and the serious damage that was done to it, but which did demonstrate beyond

all question that daylight attacks on Germany could at that time only be carried by Bomber Command at a prohibitive casualty rate.”

IN MEMORIUM When infrastructural refurbishment work was undertaken at RAF Waddington in the early 1990s, one aspiration of the then Station Commander, Group Captain Jim Uprichard, was to refurbish the main briefing and conference room to reflect the Station’s long and distinguished history. He requested that the author, then flying with 8 Squadron, assume the task. It was then decided to christen it “The Nettleton Room” in honour of the VC winner. After much work, on Sunday, 14 November 1992, during a short ceremony The Nettleton Room was officially opened by John Nettleton’s widow, Mrs Betty Nettleton, who was accompanied by their son. It remains in use as a lasting reminder to the current generation at RAF Waddington to the station’s long and distinguished heritage.  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: The author would like to extend his grateful thanks to John Weal for allowing access to the JG 2 diary and images.

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HEROES IN DISGUISE Q-ship Versus U-boat

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N THE face of it, the 3,117ton collier steaming out of Plymouth Sound on the third anniversary of Britain’s entry into the war was nothing exceptional. Painted in the distinctive colours of the Blue Funnel Line, she displayed a deck cargo of what seemed like four railway trucks and the by now customary “pea shooter” 2½-pounder gun conspicuously mounted aft on a raised platform for self-protection. With drapes of washing and weathered canvas she looked for all the world a common or garden “tramp” bound, like so many other similar vessels at the time, for the Middle East. Looks, however, were deceptive. Almost nothing about the Dunraven or her crew was what it seemed on that August day in 1917. For masked behind a veneer of harmless normality lurked a killing machine like few others, crammed with a hidden array of lethal weapons and commanded by the most audacious and successful submarine hunter in the Royal Navy.

ABOVE LEFT: Commander Gordon Campbell VC, DSO (1886-1953) playing the role of Merchant Navy captain on the bridge of his first Q-ship, HMS Farnborough,, a 3,200-ton converted collier. Aboard this ship, he earned the first of his three DSOs for sinking U-68 on 22 March 1916 and a VC for the destruction of U-83 almost a year later. ABOVE RIGHT: Campbell with his son David and pet bull-terrier named Nelson in 1915. That same year, on Trafalgar Day, he commissioned his first decoy ship after joining the Queenstown Command on “special service”. A professional naval officer, he had begun his career as a cadet in 1900 and rose to become a vice-admiral. He was brought out of retirement to briefly command the Royal Navy’s Second World War fleet of Q-ships.

MAIN PICTURE: Charles Pears’ painting of HMS Dunraven’s first and last action depicts the moment, with her poop deck and stern ablaze and her “panic” party in lifeboats, that she opened fire on UC-71. (ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE)

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HEROES IN DISGUISE Q-ship v German U-boat A REPUTATION WITHOUT EQUAL At 31, Commander Gordon Campbell was the most distinguished of all “mystery ship” captains with a Victoria Cross, two Distinguished Service Orders and three U-boats already to his name. In the clandestine world of Q-ship warfare his reputation was without equal. His combats, in which he deliberately invited torpedo strikes in order to lure U-boats to the surface, were the stuff of legend. Now, after almost two years’ “special service”, the Royal Navy’s most pugnacious and single-minded decoy commander had the ship to match his courageous brand of close-quarter fighting. HMS Dunraven, a 331-foot long collier with a large poop and double well-deck requisitioned from Cardiff a few weeks earlier, had been transformed into the deadliest and most sophisticated Q-ship afloat. To Campbell, she was a “beautiful ship”, the last word in deceitful design and naval cunning. As well as being armed to the gunnels with hidden guns, depth charges and torpedoes, Dunraven

was kitted out with all manner of ingenious devices and gadgetry that were the product both of Campbell’s fertile imagination and his crew’s hardearned experience. A web of wires and hinges spread across the ship was poised to collapse cabins, derricks, hatches and railings rendering Dunraven capable of switching from harmless merchantman to deadly man o’ war at a moment’s notice. What appeared a simple, unprotected wooden bridge was, in fact, a mini-fortress lined with one-inch thick armour plating. Even the railway trucks were fakes. Made of canvas and wood, they, too, could be collapsed to order and were, as Campbell later put it, a “brainwave” that would prove an unexpected boon. Among the more inventive refinements was a perforated pipe that snaked around the ship’s upper works and was designed to release a cloud of steam to hoodwink the enemy into believing they had scored a hit in the engine rooms. 

ABOVE: Master and officers. Campbell, seated centre smoking a pipe, with his team of officers in typical Merchant Navy garb aboard the Q-ship Pargust. They include two future Victoria Cross recipients – his original First Lieutenant, Ronald Stuart, standing second from left with binoculars, and his indomitable second-incommand aboard Dunraven, Lieutenant Charles “Gus” Bonner, seated second from right next to his captain.

ABOVE: Gus Bonner (1884-1951) pictured before the First World War with his mother and sisters, Mary and Dolly, at the family home, Manor Farm, Aldridge in Staffordshire, while on leave from the Merchant Navy in April 1912. A master mariner by the age of 21, Bonner began his career with George Milne & Co in 1901. After the Second World War, he embarked on a new career as a ship salvage expert, his greatest project being the removal of the wreck of Tirpitz from its Norwegian lair.

An epic encounter between a British Q-ship and a German U-boat brought two warring aces together in a mortal combat that scaled peaks of valour on both sides. Steve Snelling charts the story of one of the most remarkable sea duels of the First World War.

N DISGUISE www.britainatwar.com

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STEELIEST OF NERVES Of all the myriad subterfuges, however, none was more elaborate than that designed to mask the 4-inch gun on the specially lowered poop deck. Partially hidden by a roofless collapsible hatch, the rest of the weapon was concealed by the line of washing and pieces of old canvas that formed an essential part of the ship’s disguise. To reach the gun, the seven-man crew had to clamber up through a trap-door that led via an alleyway to their mess deck. Once in position, they were to lay low and withstand whatever punishment came their way till the opportunity to strike back presented itself. It was a role that called for split-second timing and the steeliest of nerves which

ABOVE: Bonner, seated top right, aboard a drifter during the early part of the war. Commissioned into the Royal Naval Reserve in December 1914, he served two years aboard converted fishing vessels, mainly operating out of Larne in Ireland as part of an anti-submarine barrage.

were stretched even more taut by the knowledge that they were sitting directly above a miniature arsenal housing magazines packed with ammunition for both their own and the ship’s 2½-pounder guns as well as two depth charges each containing 300lb of explosives. Volunteers to a man, they consisted of gun captain and gun layer Petty Officer Ernest Pitcher, a Cornish regular with fourteen years’ service, Able Seamen Dennis Murphy and Richard Shepherd, Seamen William Bennison, John Martindale and James Thompson and Wireless Telegraphist Tom Fletcher. Overall control and direction of the gun was in similarly capable and courageous hands. Lieutenant Charles ‘Gus’ Bonner, a Royal Naval Reserve officer from Aldridge near Walsall, was highly regarded by Campbell who considered his unprepossessing brand of leadership perfectly “cut out” for decoy work. In keeping with Dunraven’s disguise, his command post was inside what looked like an ordinary hawser reel - a round steel drum on which ropes were reeled - but was, of course, a dummy with slits cut in it and a small periscope mounted inside. All of these contraptions had been fitted out in “record time” and, sea trials quickly completed, Campbell left port bound not for his home base of Queenstown, as originally planned, but for the Bay of Biscay from where there came reports of considerable U-boat activity.

CAT AND MOUSE Following three fruitless days without any sightings, Campbell decided on a new ploy. Intercepted wireless signals had indicated that an enemy submarine was at work to the north. So, Dunraven’s captain ordered the mock railway carriages laid flat and changed course back towards the UK, hoping that their paths might cross and his plodding decoy might be mistaken for a homeward-bound steamer. His ruse worked. While steaming at eight knots on a zig-zag course at 10.58 hours on 8 August, a look-out spotted a U-boat on the horizon. She was steering straight towards them, but the range was such that Campbell, in his official report, reckoned he could “probably have escaped” had he so desired. Instead, noted Campbell, “we assumed our usual role of a bad look-out and did nothing”.1 The game of cat and mouse had begun. For almost twenty minutes the submarine remained in sight until, at 11.17 hours, she submerged, briefly raising hopes of a torpedo attack which Campbell thought offered the best chance of duping his opponent. But it was not to be. At 11.43, she broke surface some 5,000 yards away on the starboard quarter and immediately opened fire. Dunraven responded in text-book Q-ship fashion with a near-panic and as discreditable a display of gunnery as her play-acting crew could muster. Under orders from their captain to aim well short in a bid to lure the submarine

INSET ABOVE: Petty Officer Ernest Pitcher (1888-1946) was gun-captain and gun-layer of Dunraven’s masked 4-inch gun that was positioned on the ship’s poop deck. A Cornish man and regular seaman, he had joined the navy in 1903 and was an early Q-ship recruit in 1915. As well as the VC earned during the encounter with UC-71, he was awarded a DSM, a Mention in Despatches, and the French Médaille Militaire and Croix de Guerre for his services on Q-ships.

ABOVE: This poor quality image shows HMS Attack coming to the aid of the badly-hit Dunraven after UC-71 had broken off the action. The picture was taken from the USS Noma which fired at a periscope spotted astern of the stricken Q-ship before moving in close to take off the two most dangerously wounded seamen and transferring them to hospital in Brest.

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HEROES IN DISGUISE Q-ship Versus U-boat BELOW: Seen from the boat deck, the after part of Dunraven is awash following the heavy damage sustained by the explosion of munitions and the torpedo strike. Having succeeded in keeping the ship afloat through the night, HMS Christopher’s tow was taken over by two tugs, but they were fighting a losing battle. At 01.30 hours on 10 August, Campbell finally admitted defeat and Christopher drew alongside in heavy seas to take off the Q-ship’s remaining crew members.

LEFT: Battle scars – a heavily bandaged Gus Bonner after the action in which he was blown up twice in the space of twenty minutes while commanding Dunraven’s hidden 4-inch gun.

closer, Leading Seaman Edward Cooper, Wireless Operator William Statham and Seaman William Williams, whose Q-ship exploits had already brought him an “elected” Victoria Cross and a DSM, turned drama into a comedy of errors complete with farcical misfires and frequent delays. Ironically, the enemy’s firing was initially little better with nearly all the shells passing over Dunraven. Campbell did his best to make things easier for them. While pretending to escape by throwing up a huge cloud of smoke, he actually reduced speed by a knot to allow his pursuer to draw closer. Signals pleading for assistance were sent en clair for the benefit of the U-boat to further convince the enemy commander of their desperate plight. Eventually, after almost half an hour’s ineffective bombardment, the submarine ceased firing and closed Dunraven. She came within 1,000 yards, then stopped again, turned broadside and resumed firing. The shells fell closer, but still Campbell stayed his hand in the hope of luring the submarine nearer. Finally, a shell burst close to the ship’s side abreast the engine room and Campbell took it as his cue to make his www.britainatwar.com

RIGHT: This splinter damage to Dunraven’s bridge testifies to the narrow escape experienced by Campbell during UC-71’s bombardment. The Q-ship commander, seen here in the background with his usual pipe, later credited the specially fitted armour plating around the lower bridge with saving his life. RIGHT: Here Bonner is pictured with his wife, Alice “Cissy” (née Partridge), on their wedding day, 20 June 1917, which took place during a brief leave between ‘decoy’ service aboard Pargust and Dunraven.

next play. From the bridge, he turned to one of his latest gadgets and within seconds the centre of the ship was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of steam to give the impression of a direct hit on the ship’s vitals. At the same time, he signalled “Am abandoning ship”, prompting a carefully choreographed panic in which a lifeboat was tipped up on its end, the 2½-pounder gun crew bolted and “pandemonium reigned”. All the while, Dunraven’s true gun crews, including Lieutenant “Gus” Bonner and the seven men manning the hidden poop deck gun, lay watching and waiting, holding their nerve and their fire till the order to throw off their disguise reached them. That moment had almost arrived.

DAMAGING BLOW From the conning tower of UC-71 wary eyes scanned the smoke-shrouded decks of the merchantman. Oberleutnant zur See Reinhold Salzwedel’s youthful appearance belied long and hard-won experience in the exacting struggle for control of the sea lanes.

One of the most popular and successful commanders in the Flanders Flotilla, the 27-year-old was credited with having sunk more than 100 vessels with a combined tonnage in excess of 100,000 tons. Furthermore, he knew all about the dangers posed by so-called “trap ships”, having survived a recent encounter with the French decoy SS Normandie. Caution and patience were his watchwords and, thus far, he had taken no chances. He had begun his attack from long-range and then medium range, all the while monitoring his target for the merest sign of trickery. He had pursued his quarry with the utmost care and had seen his shells, wayward at first, eventually find their mark to leave the ship apparently crippled and at his mercy while the crew fled for their lives. Convinced there was  SEPTEMBER 2014 89

LEFT: A “masked” gun’s crew aboard the Q-ship HMS Eilian. Gus Bonner was given command of the auxiliary schooner following his recovery from the injuries sustained in the fight against UC-71. A number of former shipmates from Dunraven joined him, including Seaman William Williams VC, DSM.

nothing untoward about the seemingly abandoned vessel, he gave orders for UC-71 to close for the kill. As the submarine drew nearer it fired three more shots in quick succession. All of them found their target, but it was the first shell that dealt the most damaging blow. Ploughing through the poop, directly below the masked 4-inch gun and the positions occupied by its hidden crew, it struck one of Dunraven’s depth charges causing a massive explosion. The blast severely wounded Warrant Officer Statham, a member of the theatrical 2½-pounder gun team, and blew the man in charge of the depth charges through the poop doors. Seaman Alexander Morrison, DSM, was found by one of the ship’s “panic” party, covered in blood, struggling to get back to his post. The force of the explosion also hurled Gus Bonner out of his hideaway. Wounded and non-plussed, it took him a few moments to regain his senses. Having come to, he crawled into the hatch where his gun team was still sheltering.

APPALLING DILEMMA There was nothing phoney this time about the thick cloud of black smoke which rose from the ship’s ruptured stern. As well as touching off the depth charge, UC-71’s treble strike had

set fire to the cabins and store-rooms beneath the poop deck, creating a burning smog that quickly engulfed Dunraven. From the bridge, it, at first, appeared to Campbell as though the entire magazine had detonated. For a while, he could see nothing of the gun positions on the poop deck or the submarine which he knew must be close. After an agonising few minutes the smoke cleared sufficiently for him to see that the poop, though severely damaged, “was still intact and our secret not disclosed”. Campbell was then faced with an appalling dilemma. He knew that the fires blazing out of control beneath the poop deck must eventually explode the ship’s store of munitions, but to order the 4-inch gun team to abandon their position was certain to blow Dunraven’s cover and, with it, any faint hope of destroying their attacker. “To cold-bloodedly leave the gun’s crew to their fate seemed awful,” he later wrote, “and the names of each of them flashed through my mind, but our duty was to sink the submarine. By losing a few men we might save thousands not only of lives but of ships and tons of the nation’s requirements.”2 Inspired in part by his confidence in Bonner and his men, Campbell took the decision to stay his hand a little longer.

BELOW: Seaman William Williams VC, DSM and Bar (1890-1965) being feted in Dinorben Square, Amlwch, on his native Anglesey.

His faith was not misplaced. To a man, the 4-inch gun crew had determined to hold their position as long as it was humanly possible to do so. “We thought, if we abandon ship we’ll give the game away,” recalled Seaman William Bennison, “so we stuck, though the decks were getting red hot where we were laid and kneeling.”3 But it was not only the intense heat that was hard to bear. Smoke from the fires raging below filled the covered hatch in which they were sealed till they were choking. One man, thought to have been Seaman John Martindale, stripped off his shirt and shredded it, giving pieces to his pals to use as gags against the fumes. “Others,” according to Campbell, “lifted the boxes of cordite off the deck to keep it from exploding”.4 It was only a matter of time before the fires would reach and ignite the ship’s arsenal. For the time being, at least, the subterfuge was still working. With the guns’ crews all lying “doggo” on the

ABOVE: A contemporary artist’s depiction of another Q-ship action – in this case the encounter between the disguised schooner HMS Prize and U-93 on 30 April 1917.

ABOVE: Under tow. The destroyer HMS Christopher, on the right, managed to get a line on board Dunraven which, by then, was already low at the stern. Despite what Campbell described as a “nasty sea” valiant efforts were made to save the Q-ship by the destroyer’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Frederic “Fritz” Peters, himself a future Victoria Cross recipient.

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ABOVE: Campbell, seated centre of the second row from the front with Bonner on his right, and the crew of HMS Dunraven after “paying off” their eventful, if short, commission after less than a month. A total of fifty-five men were either decorated or Mentioned in Despatches for their part in the action with UC-71 making Dunraven one of the most highly honoured ships in the Royal Navy.

burning deck and not a soul stirring to fight the fires, Dunraven appeared to Salzwedel a doomed and deserted ship as he crept round the stern. A little over ten minutes had passed since the explosion and Salzwedel was oblivious of the risk he was running. In his report of the action, he admitted to being completely and utterly hoodwinked by Campbell’s desperate ploy. Unbeknown to him, his course was carrying him to within 400 yards of Dunraven’s three hidden 12-pounder guns and almost certain annihilation. Then, it happened. In a deafening roar that rocked the entire ship, what were thought to be two depth charges and a store of cordite suddenly exploded.

LAST PLAY The blast completely wrecked the poop deck and sent gun and crew spinning through the air. One man was blown clean overboard to be rescued by the ship’s “panic” party. The rest were scattered across the stern. Miraculously, none were killed, their fall having been cushioned by the make-believe railway trucks which had been fortuitously collapsed and laid across the deck before the action started. Most, like Petty Officer Pitcher, the gun-captain, were peppered with wounds. He was hurled as far as the engine-room. Gus Bonner, who had already been blown up once, suffered a severe head injury and burns to his hands. Yet with blood streaming down his face, he somehow had the strength and presence of mind to clamber up and onto the bridge where he reported to Campbell. “I am sorry, sir, for leaving my gun without orders,” he said. “I think I www.britainatwar.com

must have been blown up.” Still evidently in a state of shock, Bonner then asked Campbell what had hit them. When told, he famously remarked: “Is that all? I thought it was at least a battle-cruiser.”5 In the confusion following the explosion, one of the ship’s guns situated on the after bridge opened fire. It managed to get off just a couple of shots, one of which was optimistically reported as a possible hit, before UC-71, by now thoroughly alerted to the danger, slipped beneath the waves. The trap having been well and truly sprung, Campbell could have been forgiven for picking up his ‘panic’ party and steaming off. But that, as he later put it, “savoured of running away”. Instead, he made up his mind to extend his crew’s courageous charade. “Realising that a torpedo would probably follow,” he reported, “I ordered the doctor to remove all the wounded and lock them up in cabins, etc, so as not

BELOW LEFT: Gordon Campbell and Gus Bonner at the King’s garden party for Victoria Cross recipients held on 26 June 1920. BELOW RIGHT: William Williams VC, DSM and Bar. He had been credited with saving HMS Pargust from revealing its true identity during the encounter with UC-29 by taking the entire weight of the gun port on his shoulders after it had been shaken free by a shell fired by the U-boat.

to spoil the next part. Hoses were also turned on the poop which was one mass of flames, the deck being red hot and the magazine still, apparently, intact. I also signalled to a man-of-war, who had answered my signal for assistance when the explosion took place, to keep away, as I realised the action was not yet ended.”6 In this, he was quickly proved right. At 13.20 hours the track of a single torpedo, fired from approximately 1,000 yards range, was seen streaking towards Dunraven. It struck on the starboard side, abaft the engine-room. The blast lifted hatches, threw the mock timber and tarpaulin carriages about the stern and ruptured a bulkhead, but, mercifully, caused no further casualties. Campbell then began his last play. He sent out the signal ‘Q abandon ship’ and with his guns left visible but apparently unmanned sent more of the crew away on a damaged lifeboat and a raft made of barrels and spars. Their departure 

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HEROES IN DISGUISE Q-ship Versus U-boat left thirty-four men aboard of whom only twenty-three were fit for action. They included two complete gun crews, who were capable of manning the tilting f’c’stle gun and either of the pair of cabin guns sited midships, together with a couple of torpedo tube operators.

“UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE” The waiting game began again. Then, twenty minutes after the torpedo hit, UC-71’s periscope was sighted on the starboard bow. For almost an hour, it continued to be seen, weaving between the lifeboats and warily circling Dunraven. During all of this time, boxes of cordite and 4-inch shells were exploding “in penny numbers” every few minutes as the fires continued to rage and the ship sank deeper beneath the weight of in-rushing sea water. And yet still Campbell and his indomitable skeleton crew hoped against hope for a last chance.

TOP: A naval contingent that includes Gordon Campbell, fourth from left, and a strikingly bearded Ernest Pitcher, two rows behind him, prepares to lead the march outside Wellington Barracks in London for the King’s garden party for VC recipients in 1920.

As luck would have it, Salzwedel did surface again. But, whether by accident or design, he chose to do so in the one position where no guns could be brought to bear, directly astern, from where he began a relentless bombardment from a few hundred yards’ range. What Campbell understatedly described as “a most unpleasant experience” lasted twenty minutes and resulted in shells pounding Dunraven while a machine-gun sprayed the men in the open boats. Two of the shells struck the bridge where Campbell was only saved by the thickness of the speciallyfitted armour plating. Campbell held his nerve for twenty minutes during which time he resisted a fleeting opportunity to open fire in the vain hope of drawing UC-71 closer. Moments later, the chance had gone as the U-boat slipped beneath the surface. 92 SEPTEMBER 2014

LEFT: Lieutenant William Sanders VC, DSO (18831917), pictured right aboard HMS Prize, with his First Lieutenant William Beaton, in typical Merchant Navy garb.

For the next twelve minutes or so, UC-71 cruised within 150 yards of Dunraven at periscope depth, tempting Campbell into a last desperate throw of the dice. Between 14.55 hours and 15.02 hours he fired two torpedoes at the submarine, one missing just ahead of the boat’s periscope and the other a couple of feet abaft. With his own supply of torpedoes exhausted, it was enough to finally scare Salzwedel away. And with that, one of the greatest of all Q-ship versus U-boat encounters came to an end.

“UNKILLABLE” However, no sooner had one battle finished than another began as Campbell’s men struggled to salve

their battered and sinking vessel. The effort lasted thirty-six hours before, with Dunraven under tow from a destroyer and her after deck awash, Campbell was forced to concede defeat. With a small party of volunteers, Campbell had remained aboard her to the last, supported by a heavily bandaged Gus Bonner. Since being blown up and badly injured twice in the space of twenty minutes, Dunraven’s second-in-command had devoted his efforts to helping the ship’s doctor care for the wounded, most of whom were members of his own gun crew. The fight over, he had then pleaded with Campbell to let him remain aboard after all the other

RIGHT: Lieutenant Harold Auten VC, DSC (1891-1964) aboard HMS Stock Force in which he earned the last Q-ship VC of the war.

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HEROES IN DISGUISE Q-ship Versus U-boat

injured had been evacuated in order to help with efforts to save the ship. “He was unfit for duty,” wrote Campbell, “but we gave him a chair on the bridge and his cheery disposition bucked us all up”. Bonner was still in good heart four days after the action when he scribbled a hasty letter home to his parents. “Had dozens of small wounds and burns but not one of any account and am quite well again now … I half believe I shall get the VC but please don’t say anything about it … as it is not certain of course till the Admlty [sic] decides. I was quite star turn in the fight, and by every law and regulation was killed on 3 different occasions by shells and explosions. Am feeling quite unkillable now, though I don’t want another dose quite so bad as that again for a day or two.”7

UNIQUE CASE Based on Campbell’s report and recommendation, the Admiralty did indeed decide in favour of the Victoria Cross for Bonner and they went one step further by awarding a second VC whose recipient was to be decided by ballot. It was the third such elected award to be made to ships’ crews commanded by Campbell in the space of two months and was to prove a bit of a unique case. Though rare, such ballots were normally applied to either an entire ship’s company or the ship’s officers. In this case, however, the terms of the VC warrant were stretched by restricting the vote only to the crew of www.britainatwar.com

the 4-inch gun who, ironically, had not fired a single shot but had nevertheless performed heroically by holding their position at the risk of being blown to smithereens by the ammunition fires raging beneath them. The result was that Petty Officer Ernest Pitcher, the gun-captain, was selected to receive the honour on behalf of the crew, all of whom received richlymerited Conspicuous Gallantry Medals. The same award also went to Seaman Alex Morrison, who succumbed to his injuries a few weeks later, while the ‘play acting’ crew of the poop deck’s 2½-pounder gun variously received two Distinguished Service Medals and a Bar to the DSM between them. In all, forty-one members of Dunraven’s crew were decorated and a further fourteen Mentioned in Despatches for their part in an action that at least one Q-ship historian considered the “greatest” fight of Campbell’s remarkable career. It proved to be his last fight. His final commission had lasted fewer than four weeks and had ended in rare, albeit gallant, failure with the compensation of promotion to captain and a second Bar to his Distinguished Service Order. More significantly, against all the odds, he had survived and would live to see the peace. His adversary was not so fortunate. Oberleutnant zur See Salzwedel was feted for his victory. He received the highest honour his country could bestow, the Pour le Mérite, better known as the Blue Max, and went on to be credited with the destruction of more than 150,000 tons of Allied shipping. However, his luck ran out on 2 December 1917, when his new command, UB-81, hit a mine off the Isle of Wight and was destroyed with the loss of all but six men. Enemies they may have been, but Campbell always regretted his death; it had denied him the chance of meeting and comparing notes with the only man to have beaten him in “a fair and square fight”. The navy’s leading Q-ship ace consoled himself with the thought that “if any mistake was made, if anything was done that ought not to have been done, if anything was left undone that ought to have been done, then the only possible person to blame could be myself”. Of his ship and his men, he had nothing but praise. Dunraven had been “perfectly fitted out” and had performed admirably while his crew had scaled peaks of courage even he had not imagined possible. “Not a man failed,” he wrote proudly. “Not a man could have done more.” 

THE OTHER Q-SHIP VCs THE HAZARDOUS nature of Q-ship work was recognised by the award of eight Victoria Crosses during the First World War. Of those, no fewer than five were presented to men aboard vessels captained by Gordon Campbell. As well as the honours to Lieutenant Charles 'Gus' Bonner and Petty Officer Ernest Pitcher for their part in the five-hour fight with UC-71, VCs went to the following heroes in disguise:

COMMANDER GORDON CAMPBELL HMS Farnborough, a disguised collier

One of the pioneers of Q-ship service, Gordon Campbell was already the holder of a DSO for the sinking of U-68 when he earned the highest award for valour by deliberately steering his ship into the path of a torpedo to help lure U-83 to destruction on 17 February 1917. The ships he commanded with such courage and coolness accounted for more than a quarter of the submarines sunk by decoys.

LIEUTENANT WILLIAM SANDERS HMS Prize, a disguised topsail schooner

A New Zealand-born Merchant Navy officer, Willie Sanders fought one of the most celebrated Q-ship actions in command of Prize on 30 April 1917. His ship took a fearful battering before turning the tables on U-93. Although badly damaged and her commander blown overboard to be taken prisoner, the U-boat managed to steal away. Repairs having been completed, Sanders fought another inconclusive action before Prize was surprised and sunk with all hands by UB-48.

LIEUTENANT RONALD STUART SEAMAN WILLIAM WILLIAMS HMS Pargust, a disguised tramp steamer

Ronald Stuart, First Lieutenant under Gordon Campbell’s command, and William Williams, a member of one of the ship’s 12-pounder gun teams, were the first elected VC recipients of the Q-ship service for their part in the sinking of UC-29 on 7 June 1917. Already the holder of a DSO, Stuart went on to command a Q-sloop and earn a US Navy Cross before resuming a successful career with the Canadian Pacific Steamships Company. With a DSM and Bar to add to his VC, Williams was the most highly decorated seaman of the war.

SKIPPER TOM CRISP

HM Armed Smack Nelson, a sail fishing boat

Lowestoft fisherman Tom Crisp volunteered for special service after his fishing smack was destroyed by a German submarine operating off the East Coast in 1915. He earned a DSC for a U-boat encounter in February 1917 and a posthumous VC for his selfless sacrifice during an unequal contest with UC-63 on 15 August 1917. Fighting on after his boat was holed below the waterline, Crisp was mortally wounded by a shell that tore off both his legs. Still conscious, he ordered the crew, which included his son, to abandon ship and leave him to his fate.

LIEUTENANT HAROLD AUTEN HMS Stock Force, a disguised collier

Despite his ship being holed and sinking, Harold Auten fought a desperate close-quarter battle with UB-80 in the English Channel on 30 July 1918. Holding fire until the last moment, his gun teams scored a number of hits before the submarine managed to submerge and escape. The valiant attempts to save Stock Force ended just eight miles from land. Auten, who was already the holder of a DSC, went on to act as technical consultant for a silent movie called Q-ships, Vampires of the Deep which was partly based on his wartime exploits.

NOTES 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Rear-Admiral Gordon Campbell, VC, DSO, My Mystery Ships (Hodder & Stoughton, 1928). Ibid. Deborah Lake, Smoke and Mirrors (Sutton Publishing, 2006). Rear-Admiral Gordon Campbell, VC, DSO, quoted in Q-Ships and Their Story, by E. Keble Chatterton (Conway Maritime Press, 1972). Campbell, My Mystery Ships, op.cit. Captain Gordon Campbell, ‘Report of the Dunraven’s action against an enemy submarine’, The National Archives. Lieutenant Charles ‘Gus’ Bonner, letter to his parents dated 12 August 1917.

SEPTEMBER 2014 93

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D-DAY DAY TRIP Arromanches, June 1944

> D DAY DAY TRIP The images that are usually portrayed of the Normandy landing beaches in June 1944 are of men leaping from landing craft to rush through the surf, whilst bullets strike the water; of bodies lying on the sand; of small groups of men huddled beneath sea walls for protection from the German guns. Some, though, had a far different experience, as Richard Polglaze, a D-Day veteran, describes.

T

HE LONDON and North Eastern Railway (LNER) dieselelectric direct-drive paddle ship Talisman was built by A. & J. Inglis at its yard at the confluence of the River Kelvin and the River Clyde, in 1935. The direct-drive element to its propulsion system was unique for a diesel-powered ship. Unfortunately her duties as a passenger ferry on the Clyde proved too strenuous for her engines. Repeated problems led to Talisman being withdrawn from service on 25 July 1939. A few days later when war was declared, Talisman lay lifeless within the LNER harbour at Bowling. Too much money had been invested in Talisman to abandon her and agreement was reached between English Electric, which had made the engines, and LNER to solve her problems. Towards the end of May 1940, the modifications were almost complete and the Admiralty was showing an interest in requisitioning the paddle ship for duties with the Royal Navy. This became a fact the following month, and in August, with the new name of HMS Aristocrat, work began on fitting her out as an Auxiliary AntiAircraft paddle ship. On 7 October Aristocrat left the Clyde and went to war.

TO THE THAMES After a period defending Methil docks, which suffered little interference from the Luftwaffe, it was decided that HMS Aristocrat would be more usefully employed on the Thames. Transferred to Nore Command under the Senior Officer, Thames Local Defence Flotilla, Aristocrat was based at Sheerness in the Thames Estuary. Her normal station while on antiaircraft duties was off Margate or out towards the Goodwin Sands, with occasional spells at the Nore. She operated on a rota of five nights out and one night back at Sheerness on the buoy. In 1942, Aristocrat missed out on the opportunity to be involved in the raid on Dieppe in August (Operation Jubilee) as she was undergoing a refit in Chatham docks. It was shortly after her return to service from that refit that Ordinary Seaman Richard Polglaze joined Aristocrat. Trained as a gunner, Richard was able to man any of the paddle ship’s weapons. These were four Quick Firing 2-pounder guns (known as pom-poms), three 20mm Oerlikons, two Boulton & Paul turrets, each of which was fitted with four .303inch Browning machine-guns, and two twin .303-inch Lewis gun mountings.  ABOVE: Ordinary Seaman (later Able Seaman) Richard Polglaze

catching up with his “dhobiing” on HMS Aristocrat. (COURTESY OF

RICHARD POLGLAZE)

BELOW: This view of Arromanches was taken from the decks of HMS Aristocrat soon after the warship’s arrival off the Normandy coast. Note the smoke lingering from some form of explosion above the ships in the middle distance. (IWM; A24075)

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SEPTEMBER 2014 95

D-DAY DAY TRIP Arromanches, June 1944 After sailing up to Mull to provide aerial protection for troopships assembled there in preparation for the invasion of North Africa in the autumn of 1942, Aristocrat returned to Sheerness and back to her routine patrols.

AUGUST COMPANY In the preparations for Operation Overlord, HMS Aristocrat found herself assigned to convoy protection work for the pontoons and other equipment being transported from the Thames area to the Pagham Harbour and Selsey Bill areas – the assembly point for the sections of Mulberry Harbour ‘B’ which was destined for Arromanches.

RIGHT: Rear Admiral W.G. Tennant, CB, RN (third from left) with Captain J.H. Petrie, DSO, RN (fourth from the left with arms folded) pictured aboard HMS Aristocrat at the quayside in Portsmouth. The Army officer on the left is believed to be Brigadier Walter RE. (IWM;

A24071)

BELOW LEFT: A member of HMS Aristocrat’s crew pictured whilst servicing the twin Lewis guns on the upper deck, port side. (COURTESY OF RICHARD POLGLAZE)

BELOW: Sub Lieutenant Alex Mitchell, RNVR, who hailed from Glasgow, plays HMS Aristocrat away on the bagpipes as she leaves her depot ship, the Danaeclass light cruiser HMS Despatch (the warship in the centre just above Mitchell’s head), to sail for the D-Day beaches. (IWM; A24059)

96 SEPTEMBER 2014

With little or no idea what was happening, the crew of Aristocrat were surprised when the paddle ship was tied up alongside the cruiser HMS Despatch. “We just couldn’t understand why we, a relatively unimportant ship, should be in such august company,” Richard Polglaze remembered. It was only later that the men discovered that the old cruiser was to be the Headquarters Ship of the naval and military officers in charge of the construction of Mulberry ‘B’ at Arromanches and that Aristocrat was to be its support ship. By that time Aristocrat had been “closed”; nobody was allowed ashore except for officers to receive their final briefings, and no mail could be sent or received. The installation of Mulberry ‘B’ came under the authority of the Headquarters Port Construction Force which was led by Brigadier A.E.M Walter RE. Also aboard Aristocrat was Captain C.H. Petrie DSO RN who

was the naval officer in charge of a party responsible for the provision, placing and sinking of the blockships (the Gooseberries) to form the inner breakwater and other naval activities. Brigadier Walter, meanwhile, was in charge of the caissons, other sea defences and the construction of the port itself. Both had a considerable number of staff. On Saturday, 3 June 1944, the main party of the Port Construction Force embarked on Aristocrat with the remainder joining the following day. “There were now dozens of extra men on board,” continued Richard, “including a Royal Engineers squad for work ashore and a party of Naval Signalmen to direct and control the tugs, blockships and other craft employed in construction work. They had to sleep wherever they could find spare space and when a crew member returned from watch he’d usually find someone asleep in his bunk. In total we had 25 officers and 55 men of various ranks quartered on board plus as many stores as could be crammed into the ship.”

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D-DAY DAY TRIP Arromanches, June 1944 hours to rendezvous with a number of tugs and merchant ships before heading south to cross to Normandy. The convoy travelled through the swept channel, with buoys marking the route to the invasion beaches. En route, a screen of destroyers patrolled each side of the swept fairway and one of these moved up to Aristocrat with a message that had to be handed over manually, not transmitted through any medium that could be intercepted by the enemy. How this was done was described by Richard: “In those days was done by firing a 0.303 rifle with a special bolt and a line attached. The message was then put in a metal container, fastened to the line, and hauled across to its destination.”

ABOVE: An aerial view of Mulberry ‘B’ at Arromanches in which the harbour’s construction appears complete. It is quite possible that one of the multitude of merchant vessels and warships in this picture is HMS Aristocrat. (HMP)

BELOW: Taken from the deck of HMS Aristocrat on 6 June 1944, this image shows a small part of the Allied invasion force en route to Normandy. The two-masted ship that can be seen is Alybank, which was the first blockship sunk to form the breakwater at Mulberry Harbour 'B'. (IWM; A24066)

""At night German planes frequently came over but much to our regret we were not allowed to open fire since this could betray our position and the harbour activity."" ARROMANCHES

Before Aristocrat left for Arromanches, Rear Admiral William Tennant CB, RN, who was responsible for all the naval operations involving the transportation, assembly and set up of the two Mulberry harbours, went on board Aristocrat to confer with Captain Petrie and Brigadier Walter. Even though it was evident from all the “top brass” on the paddle ship that Aristocrat was to perform a vital role in the events to come, the crew were still unaware of their vessel’s part in the great invasion plan.

NORMANDY “The invasion fleet was now ready to sail and on 5 June we lined the decks of Aristocrat to watch the huge armada weigh anchor, giving the ships and troops a wave as they passed us to line up in groups for crossing the Channel to their respective landing beaches on the Normandy coast,” Richard observed.1 “There was great apprehension as to what sort of reception lay ahead and the atmosphere on board Aristocrat was rather subdued that night.” www.britainatwar.com

The next morning the crew learnt that they were to sail that day – 6 June 1944 – and that their little paddle ship was initially ordered to head to Arromanches. Just before the ship departed a party of official photographers joined Aristocrat to take photographs of the crossing and off the beach-head. To the skirl of bagpipes played by Sub Lieutenant Alex Mitchell, the Electrical Officer, drifting across the still water, the former Clyde ferry left the Solent at 14.30

ABOVE: Some of HMS Aristocrat’s Aristocrat crew in the Seamen’s Mess which was located in the for’d deck saloon on the paddle steamer’s port side. (COURTESY

OF RICHARD POLGLAZE)

The crew was placed on a two watch system, with the men closed up on the guns. In addition they had to stand-to at dusk and dawn, so there was relatively little chance of sleep. When off-duty the men did not have time to undress, simply “crashing down” fully clothed in the mess. When dawn broke on 7 June Aristocrat was still some distance off Gold Beach at Arromanches. “It was a lovely sunny morning,” continued Richard. “We could see the initial landing force craft (possibly including the second wave too) milling about on the other sectors to the east and west of us. A number of the larger Infantry Landing Craft passed us on their way back to the UK to reload and bring up reinforcements. Off shore were the naval support ships – battleships, cruisers and rocket firing craft giving cover to the troops ashore and knocking out gun emplacements as requested. There seemed to be  continuous air cover over the SEPTEMBER 2014 97

D-DAY DAY TRIP Arromanches, June 1944

beaches, the black and white zebra strips below the wings and on the bodies of the aircraft making them instantly recognizable and although there was little enemy activity we nevertheless could clearly hear the sounds of battle inland from Aristocrat’s decks. “As it got lighter we steamed cautiously forward towards the beach and at approximately 4.30 am anchored about ¼ mile offshore. To our surprise there was very little sign of damage or destruction along the coast in our area ... The plan, of course, was to keep the beaches in what was to be Mulberry ‘B’ Harbour undamaged and accessible from both land and sea.” HMS Aristocrat was the first Port Construction Force ship to arrive at Arromanches. “The first craft to come alongside,” recalled Richard, “was a small Survey motor launch

98 SEPTEMBER 2014

carrying the officers who had placed buoys to mark the positions where the blockships were to be sunk thereby forming a breakwater protection for the harbour proper.2 “Next alongside was one of the two USA tugs which had crossed with us and up the bridge ladder came the captain … Shortly afterwards the tug brought alongside a DUKW with two dead US soldiers aboard which had drifted down from the American Sector, about 12 miles to the west of Gold. The DUKW was requisitioned by Brigadier Walter who then took his first trip ashore to try and find a suitable HQ.” Finally, at 13.50 hours on D+1, the first blockship, Alynbank, was sunk by explosive charges, coming to rest in three fathoms (eighteen feet) of water. It was the start of a process which saw a total of fifty-five old cargo ships, (twenty-three of them American) and

ABOVE: One D-Day veteran’s reminders of a visit to the Normandy shore in the aftermath of the D-Day landings – the postcards purchased by Richard Polglaze when he went ashore to Arromanches from HMS Aristocrat. (ALL COURTESY OF

RICHARD POLGLAZE)

BELOW: This was the stretch of Normandy coast, Gold Beach at Arromanches, off which HMS Aristocrat operated from 7 June 1944 onwards. Remains of Mulberry ‘B’ can still be seen. (SHUTTERSTOCK)

four old warships that formed five Gooseberry breakwaters. In terms of enemy activity, Richard recalled that it “was conspicuous by its absence”. “Shells occasionally fell around us but nothing really interfered with all the intense activity off Arromanches. At night German planes frequently came over but much to our regret we were not allowed to open fire since this could betray our position and the harbour activity. “Of course, one night the inevitable happened, a gun opened fire and the next thing we were all at it. The bells started to ring and we were ordered to cease fire immediately. As every ship had received a signal on D+1 which read ‘No ship shall open fire with close weapons after dark to safeguard our fighters and prevent giving away the position of the anchorage’ and continued ‘All commanding officers shall be held personally responsible and there shall be no departure whatsoever from these rules. Should they be broken I shall require the captain to attend the Flagship

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D-DAY DAY TRIP Arromanches, June 1944

and give his explanation’, signed Rear Admiral Talbot. No wonder the bells rang!” Richard also recalled that “after the first day we moored alongside the sunken blockships and offloaded a telephone communication cable which we had carried across with us – the other end was taken ashore. This cable was used to communicate from

a blockship to a station ashore for the movement of vessels crossing to unload. After four days HMS Despatch came in to the Harbour area (still not fully built) and assumed the duty of Headquarters Ship – our hour of glory was over!” This, though, was not the end of Aristocrat Aristocrat’s Overlord duties, as she reverted to the role that she had been converted for. She was stationed outside the artificial harbour for anti-aircraft protection and ship direction duties.

DAY OUT IN FRANCE Towards the end of June, some of the crew of HMS Aristocrat finally got the chance to go ashore in Normandy. “A DUKW came alongside and away we went to France. As we neared the ramp on the beach the driver, a soldier, did a bit of gear change and up the ramp we went, through the break in the sea wall, and so onto dry land. There we changed onto an army truck and set off inland ... Eventually we arrived at a chateau, where we spent a couple of

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BELOW LEFT: Men in the 'crow's nest' of HMS Aristocrat, including Lieutenant Nicholson, the Navigating Officer. Here Lieutenant Nicholson is taking compass bearings as Aristocrat was first anchoring off the beachhead at Arromanches on D+1. (IWM; A24064)

hours strolling abound stretching our legs and then had tea and sandwiches. We had actually landed in France via the Normandy beaches and felt rather pleased about it all.” Richard later recalled that pleasant day out at Arromanches: “Whilst waiting for the Army DUKW to take us back to my ship, I went into a little shop in the square where the D-Day Museum now stands and bought some postcards.” It all seemed so normal. There, in the tracks of the greatest military operation ever mounted, the men of Aristocrat had a pleasant day out in France as any tourist would have done – and Richard Polglaze has the postcards to prove it. 

NOTES 1.

2.

The story of Aristocrat’s wartime service is described in Alan Brown’s and Richard Polglaze’s HMS Aristocrat, A Paddler at War, published by Waverley Excursions, Glasgow. These old ships had been stripped of all their equipment and ballasted and, with one exception, had sailed across the Channel under their own steam.

SEPTEMBER 2014 99

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BOO | RECONNAISSANCE REPORT OF THK MONT E Jack Lott, were originally buried at H Auvers before being re-interred in

The Britain at War team scout out the latest items of interest



THE LATEST title in Fighting High’s renowned “Failed to Return” series, this publication focuses upon the events surrounding D-Day in relation to Bomber Command. The various authors follow the now tried and tested formula of selecting a number of men who, as the subtitle indicates, failed to return from a mission relating to the Allied invasion of Europe and telling their stories in depth. One such story is that of John Earnest “Jack” Lott, a navigator with 619 Squadron flying Lancasters with his Australian skipper Flight Lieutenant Kim Roberts. Lott had joined 619 Squadron on 8 January 1944, with his first mission, to Magdeburg, being just less than two weeks later on 21 January. It was not until April 1944 that Lott and his colleagues undertook their first raid in support of Operation Overlord. Such sorties increased in intensity throughout May and reached their highest level in June. It was at 00.55 hours on 7 June 1944, when Warrant Officer Jack Lott took off in Lancaster LL783, coded PG-C, from RAF Dunholme Lodge. His crew’s stated objective was “to attack a road and rail bridge at Caen where our Paratroopers were attempting to hold up attempts to attack the Beachhead”. Having bombed the target, Roberts set course for home. Heading for the Cherbourg Peninsula and flying at less than 2,000 feet beneath cloud, it was reported that an “object” was approaching. Sergeant Jack Forrest recorded what then happened: “Within

www.britainatwar.com

seconds there was a tremendous bang and crash, the aircraft shuddered, Kim took immediate evasive action, started to corkscrew, and I heard a scream from the rear gunner as we were attacked again by the Ju 88. I saw a stream of tracer rush past and hit both starboard engines, which immediately caught fire.” Kim Roberts tried to call up his crew but heard nothing from his wireless operator or gunners. Then, as Forrest again recalled, “the fighter came in again, guns and cannons blazing, and the inner port engine caught fire”. Roberts ordered his men to abandon the aircraft. “The pilot’s ’chute was passed over and clipped on and there was time only to glimpse the flames streaking back forty feet from three Merlin engines and Kim struggling to keep the bomber level.” One of the crew members, Flight Sergeant Reg de Viell (sometimes given as Deviell) was able to climb out through the escape hatch, followed by Jack Forrest. “We were no higher than 1,700 feet when I went out,” remembered Forrest. He landed safely but both he and de Viell were captured by the Germans after a few days on the run. The Lancaster came down in a field at Baupte, a few miles west of Carentan. A young boy had watched Kim Roberts struggling to control and land the burning bomber, and he had then seen flames engulfing the pilot, who was still in the cockpit as the aircraft struck the ground. No remains of Kim Roberts were ever found but the bodies of the other four men who had gone down with LL783, including

Bayeux War Cemetery. The most vulnerable position in a bomber was that of the rear-gunner and it is appropriate that at least one of the tales in this book centres on one of these men. Reginald William Joyce joined 30 Squadron on 31 March 1944 and then 102 Squadron at the end of May. It was almost a month later, on 28 June that his Halifax LW143, was logged as missing. The bomber was attacked from the rear by what was believed to be a Messerschmitt Bf 110 night fighter. Reg Joyce was unable to hit the enemy fighter before it scored decisive hits on the Halifax. The bomber’s left wing fuel tank ignited but Reg managed to grab his parachute from inside the fuselage and climb back into his rear turret to rotate it to make good his escape before the aircraft exploded. Reg parachuted safely to earth – though minus his flying boots and socks – becoming a PoW. This story, though, does have a happy ending. A young French girl had watched LW143 crash to the ground. Five years later that girl became Reg’s wife Janine. The eleven chapters of D-Day Bomber Command – Failed to Return are written by six different authors. As a consequence they are of varying length but all are written to a high standard and surprisingly similar style. Each story is, by its very nature, tragic, but the authors refrain from using highly emotive language, letting the facts, and the survivors, speak for themselves. REVIEWED BY ROBERT MITCHELL.

D-DAY BOMBER COMMAND

Failed to Return Steve Darlow, Sean Feast, Marc Hall, Andrew MacDonald, Howard Sandall and Peter Cook

Publisher: Fighting High www.fightinghigh.com ISBN: 978-0-9926207-1-4 Hardback. 128 pages RRP: £19.95 Illustrations  References/Notes Appendices  Index 



BELOW: Men of 467 Squadron RAAF celebrate the completion of 100 operations by Avro Lancaster R5868 (coded PO-S) after its sortie on 11/12 May 1944, when the target was a pre-invasion communication hub in Belgium. (IWM TR1795)

SEPTEMBER 2014 101

RECONNAISSANCE REPORT |

The Britain at War team scout out the latest items of interest THE KAISER’S PIRATES

OPERATION PEDESTAL

The Story of Convoy WS21S in August 1942

Hunting Germany’s Raiding Cruisers 1914-1915

Brian James Crabb

Nick Hewitt



“THE BATTLEMENTS of Malta were black with

thousands of people, all cheering and shouting and there were

bands playing everywhere. It was the most amazing sight to see all these people, who had suffered so much, cheering us.” These

were the words of Lieutenant-

Commander Roger Hill the captain of the destroyer HMS Ledbury as the survivors of Convoy

WS21S limped towards Malta’s

chance of passing through this perilous

the happiest day of his life. He

the moonless period between 10 and

Grand Harbour. It was, he said,

had helped bring succour to the beleaguered little island.

area in the time available was during 16 August.

With Malta on the verge of collapse,

Other than the ill-fated PQ17, this

if the convoy could not get through

of the Second World War. The story of

opportunity. Almost every available

was probably the most famous convoy WS21S has every element one could wish; dogged determination, horror,

pathos and the final triumphant finale. Its drama is matched by its scale. To protect the fourteen merchant

ships taking essential supplies to the

Mediterranean island, the Royal Navy committed four aircraft carriers, two

battleships, seven light cruisers, and

thirty-two destroyers. Of these, one of

the aircraft carriers was sunk during the

operation as were two light cruisers and one destroyer. Three other warships were damaged.

Though the naval ships came under

heavy and repeated attack from on,

above and below the surface, it was the merchant ships that were the principal

targets of the Axis aircraft and vessels. Only five of those fourteen reached

Malta. Those ships took 29,000 tons of general cargo into the Grand Harbour

in August, there would be no other

THE LAST ESCAPER

resource was therefore committed to the operation. Speed was

obviously another major factor and

the merchant ships selected for the convoy had to all be capable of at

least fifteen knots. The most important of these ships was the oil tanker

Ohio. Her sister ship Kentucky had to take fuel to Malta in Operation

Harpoon. This left just Ohio as the

only fast, modern tanker in service.

It was simply a case that if Ohio did

not reach Malta, the island would run out of fuel. The significance of this

was that it would mean the end of

its operations against Axis shipping crossing the Mediterranean taking

supplies and equipment to Rommel

in North Africa. The consequences of failure were almost incalculable.

Brian Crabb details all the ships

involved in WS21S, the journey down

defenders could continue to fight and

account of the desperate race through

the Maltese could continue to support

them. Yet it was only enough to last for

little more than two months – but it was enough, just enough.

Brian Crabb tells this tale well.

He opens his account of Operation

Pedestal with a detailed examination

of the planning undertaken. The most dangerous part of the journey from

Gibraltar to Malta was the stretch of

water between Sicily and Tunisia, known as the Narrows. There were only two

possible routes through this dangerous

to Gibraltar, and gives an exciting

the Mediterranean, highlighted with

accounts from those that took part. It is, as I have said, a story with every

element one could wish for and laid out in fine style in this excellent book. REVIEWED BY JOHN GREHAN.

Publisher: Shaun Tyas ISBN: 978-1-907730-19-1 Hardback. 262 pages RRP: £24.00 Copies can be ordered direct from the author. For more information, please email: [email protected]

area, both between Sicily and Cape

Bon on the Tunisian coast, divided by

the small island of Pantelleria. The best

102 SEPTEMBER 2014

Illustrations  Appendices 

References/Notes Index 

The Untold FirstHand Story of the Legendary Bomber Pilot, ‘Cooler King’ and Arch Escape Artist Peter Tunstall

been sunk on the previous attempt

along with petrol, oil fuel, kerosene and diesel fuel. It meant that the island’s

 BY 1914 Germany had ships and sailors scattered across the globe, protecting its overseas colonies and “showing the flag” of its Imperial Navy. After war broke out on 4 August 1914, there was no hope that they could reach home. Instead, they were ordered to attack Britain’s vital trade routes for as long as possible. Rounding up these “Kaiser’s Pirates” became the first priority for Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord – the story of which is detailed in this book. Publisher: Pen & Sword; www.pen-and-sword.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-84884-773-6 Hardback. 238 pages RRP: £25.00



 FEW SECOND World War German prisoner of war camps have become as well-known as Colditz and Peter Tunstall is one of the would-be escapers interred in that formidable castle. He became known as the “Cooler King” on account of his long spells in solitary confinement for continually tormenting his captors. It is stated that during one twelve-month spell he amassed the record number of escape attempts by a British PoW. Tunstall has said that he waited so long to write his memoirs because the intervening years have given him time to reflect. Publisher: Duckworth Overlook; www.ducknet.co.uk ISBN: 978-0-7156-4923-7 Hardback. 320 pages RRP: £18.99

1 GROUP BOMBER COMMAND An Operational Record Chris Ward

 DURING THE period immediately before the Second World War, the RAF modified its command structure to rationalize for rapid expansion. Bomber Command was divided into six operational groups, each flying

the same type of aircraft, including Wellingtons, Sterlings, and Lancasters. Chris Ward presents us here with the history of 1 Group Bomber Command. The book contains individual squadron statistics, their commanding officers, stations and aircraft losses. It provides a reference for one of the RAF’s most important wartime operational groups. Publisher: Pen & Sword; www.pen-and-sword.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-47382-108-8 Hardback. 331 pages RRP: £25.00

COLD WAR COMMAND

The Dramatic Story of a Nuclear Submarine Richard Woodman and Dan Conley

 THE PART played in the Cold War by the Royal Navy’s submarines still retains a great degree of mystery and, in the traditions of the “Silent Service”, remains largely shrouded in secrecy. Cold War Command brings us as close as is possible to the realities of commanding nuclear hunter-killer submarines, tasked to hunt out and covertly follow Soviet submarines in order to destroy them should there be an outbreak of hostilities. Dan Conley takes the reader through his early career in diesel submarines, prior to his transition to nuclear submarines. Publisher: Seaforth Publishing; www.seaforthpublishing.com ISBN: 978-1-84832-769-6 Hardback. 280 pages RRP: £25.00

COMMANDO DESPATCH RIDER From D-Day to Deutschland 19441945 Raymond Mitchell

 IN 1944, Ray Mitchell landed in Normandy with his unit, 41 Royal Marine Commando, as a despatch rider. Often operating alone in totally unfamiliar and hostile terrain, he and his motor bike delivered vital messages to forward units. This is a fighting soldier’s account of war described in vivid terms of his and his fellow commandos’ experiences and emotions. Over the next ten months the commandos were in the thick of the action in France, the Low Countries, the amphibious landing on the Walcheren Peninsula and on into Germany itself. Publisher: Pen & Sword; www.pen-and-sword.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-47382-292-4 Softback. 234 pages RRP: £14.99 www.britainatwar.com

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TANK TRACKS TO RANGOON

AERODROMES OF FIGHTER COMMAND

The Story of British Armour in Burma

Then and Now

Bryan Perrett

Robin J. Brooks



ANYONE WHO has purchased other

After the Battle “Then and Now” books will know just

how wonderfully presented the latest offering is. This

particular publication by wellrespected aviation historian

Robin J. Brooks deals with the

airfields of Fighter Command’s Nos. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14

Groups. Each airfield in these groups is examined, with the

customary selection of “then and now” photographs, aerial shots

and operational histories. How the Fighter Command operation functioned is explained, as are the defences of the airfields, before the more than ninety individual airfields are detailed. As well as being a book about the airfields that featured in the second great conflict of the twentieth century, it is also a local history book. It is inevitable that upon flicking through this book, that one turns to airfields that are familiar, which usually means, local. One such is Ford airfield in West Sussex. Ford was handed to the Admiralty in May 1939 to become HMS Peregrine and home to No.17 (Training Group), Coastal Command. Three naval air squadrons arrived at the same time, these being Nos. 750, 751, and 752. These units undertook coastal patrols before moving to Yeovilton a year later. However, Ford, being on the south coast close to Littlehampton, soon came under attack from the Luftwaffe – such as the raid on 18 August 1940, the “Hardest Day” of the Battle of Britain. The airfield was very severely damaged, with fuel dumps, accommodation blocks and hangars being demolished. Seventeen aircraft were also wrecked on the ground. As a result of the raid, the Admiralty pulled out of Ford and when the RAF took over the airfield again to become part of No.11 Group. At this point Blenheims and Beaufighters of the Fighter Interception Unit flew in. With the Battle of Britain won, 23 Squadron replaced its Blenheims with Havocs to conduct intensive intruder patrols over French airfields. Later the squadron flew Boston IIIs and, in June 1942, converted to Mosquitoes. Other squadrons flew from Ford, with the airfield being in action as part of Fighter Command and home to

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| RECONNAISSANCE REPORT

units including Canadian, Australian, Norwegian and Polish squadrons. That was until 31 December 1944, when Ford once again reverted to the Admiralty, regaining its former name of HMS Peregrine. Ford continued to act as a shorebased training establishment for squadrons temporarily disembarked from carriers. It continued in this role until the airfield closed in 1958. The airfield was then transferred to the Home Office with part of it becoming Ford Prison. The two runways can still be seen and have in fact become the home to weekly markets. It is therefore possible for the ordinary individual to walk freely along the very ground upon which the men and machines of the RAF stood some seventy years ago. A reminder of its time as HMS Peregrine, a Royal Navy Hawker Hunter stands at the entrance to the airfield as a spectacular gate guardian. Because of its public access, Ford is easily investigated. It is the opposite case with another coastal airfield, that of Friston in East Sussex. This grass runway was decommissioned in 1946 and nature soon took her back. She was, however, the backdrop for some of the scenes in the TV series Piece of Cake. Now little more than a feint outline can be seen. There is no doubt that anyone with a passion for the Battle of Britain, of that Spitfire Summer of 1940, and of the daring sweeps across Occupied Europe, will simply have to include this book in their library. REVIEWED BY ALEXANDER NICOLL.

Publisher: Battle of Britain International www.afterthebattle.com ISBN: 978-1-87006-782-9 Hardback. 360 pages RRP: £44.95 Illustrations  Appendices 

References/Notes Index 



 FIGHTING IN a somewhat forgotten corner of the Empire during the Second World War, the British and Indian armoured regiments called upon to harness the power of tank warfare to extreme new levels did so in an effort to outwit an army until that point was considered invincible – the Imperial Japanese Army. Their collective efforts gave the Japanese a taste of mechanised warfare from which they never recovered. Bryan Perrett describes the full course of the armoured units’ efforts, illustrating the importance of the mighty 7th Armoured Brigade. Publisher: Pen & Sword; www.pen-and-sword.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-78383-115-9 Softback. 254 pages RRP: £14.00

LUFTWAFFE CRASH ARCHIVE

Volume 5: 28th September 1940 to 27th October 1940 Nigel Parker

 VOLUME 5 of this excellent and wellillustrated series from Red Kite covers some of the final days of the Battle of Britain and the early stages of the Blitz. By this phase of the battle, heavy daylight raids by bombers had more or less discontinued as their crews were tasked with the new challenge of bombing London and other British cities by night. Camouflage and markings changed with many bombers were now appearing with blacked-out national markings reflecting their new role as night bombers. Here every Luftwaffe crash is identified and located. Publisher: Red Kite; www.redkitebooks.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-906592-17-2 Softback, A4. 125 pages RRP: £25.00

OPERATION TONGA

The Glider Assault: 6 June 1944 Kevin Shannon and Stephen Wright

 THIS IS an account of the Glider Pilot Regiment’s role in Operation Tonga, the first stage of the airborne assault in the Normandy landings in June 1944. The story is told through the eyes of those who were there – glider pilots,

paratroopers, pathfinders, tug crews and passengers – and covers the operation from training through to evacuations after D-Day. Operation Tonga was vital to the success of D-Day and included the now famous attacks on the Merville Battery and the bridges over the Orne River and Caen Canal. Publisher: Fonthill Media; www.fonthillmedia.com ISBN: 978-1-78155-249-0 Hardback. 160 pages RRP: £20.00

DOWN BUT NOT OUT The Incredible Story of Second World War Airman Maurice ‘Moggy’ Mayne

 MAURICE “MOGGY” Mayne’s Bristol Beaufort was shot down off the Norwegian coast. Having survived, he was sent to Stalag Luft VIIIB, the infamous German PoW camp near the Polish border, where he was badly treated. Risking recapture and execution, he saw the chance to escape alone, thus beginning an epic journey through Germany. As the Gestapo shot other escaped British servicemen, Moggy Mayne came agonisingly close to lasting freedom. Instead, as the war neared its end, he had to face the horrors of the infamous “long march”. Publisher: The History Press; www.thehistorypress.co.uk ISBN: 978-0-7509-5206-4 Hardback. 208 pages RRP: £17.99

A HISTORY OF THE MEDITERRANEAN AIR WAR 1940-1945

Volume Two: North African Desert February 1942-March 1943 Christopher Shores and Giovanni Massimello

 THE FIRST volume of this series dealt with the initial nineteen months of the air war over the Western Desert of North Africa. This extensive volume picks up the story as the Eighth Army, following its success in Operation Crusader, was forced back to the Gazala area, roughly mid-way between the Cyrenaican/Tripolitanian border of Libya and the frontier with Egypt. It covers the lull prior to the disastrous defeat of the Eighth Army in June 1942, the fall of Tobruk, through to the final advance to victory in North Africa. A highly recommended publication. Publisher: Grub Street; www.grubstreet.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-909166-12-7 Hardback. 736 pages RRP: £50.00. SEPTEMBER 2014 103

RECONNAISSANCE REPORT |

The Britain at War team scout out the latest items of interest

THE BRITISH ARMY

OCTOBER 2014 ISSUE

1914-1918

Andrew Rawson



ON SALE FROM 25 SEPTEMBER 2014

THE BRITISH Expeditionary

132-PAGE FIRST WORLD WAR SPECIAL ISSUE

Force that sailed to France

in August 1914, widely regarded as the finest ever to leave

Britain’s shores, came into being

By the time the Armistice was signed in November 1918, effectively ending the fighting that had stretched around the globe, many of the Great War’s battlefields, big and small, had become household names. To mark the war’s centenaries, we examine some of these locations on the Western Front – sites that can be visited today.

because of embarrassing failures during the Boer War. Faced not with ill-equipped natives but

with European settlers armed

•

with modern guns and rifles, the British troops were frequently

TO DEATH AND GLORY

out-gunned and found to be

tactically deficient. Clearly change

was needed. Amongst the reforms

into the War Book, prepared by the

of the twentieth century was the

This included instructions for each

put in hand during the early years formation of an Expeditionary Force which could be rapidly

mobilised for overseas operations. This was to consist of six infantry

divisions and one cavalry division. There were corresponding

Committee of Imperial Defence.

branch of the Army and government departments, each of which had its

own chapter in the book summarising

action to be taken in both the build-up to war and on the declaration of war.

Without these reforms Britain could

improvements in staff and regimental

not have played an effective part

a vital means of transportation, was

Army, though, was still a voluntary

officer training. A census of horses, still taken across the country, and quickfiring field guns were introduced for

the Artillery. The Army Service Corps and the Royal Army Medical Corps

were provided with greater equipment and facilities. For the former, specially designed military vehicles were

introduced for private sale and then listed for requisition in the event of

war. Reorganisation within the RAMC

in the First World War. The British

organisation at the start of the war, and it could not compare with the vast numbers of the conscripted

enemy. That all changed, of course,

but the reforms undertaken before the unprecedented scale of the conflict, marched to victory in 1918.

It is not only the army of 1914

battlefield, and measures were put in

is explained, as well as the range of

aid in the UK. The Army Nursing

Service was given official recognition. A register of officers and men with

military experience was established to form the National Reserve. By 1914 it had 350,000 members on its books. In addition to this, the previously-

existing local Militia and Voluntary units were reorganised into the

Territorial Force. Territorials agreed to full-time service if war was declared

divisional structure and organisation

weapons and equipment used by the Army throughout the First World War. Tactics are also discussed, including open warfare as well as the more

familiar trench warfare. Uniforms, rations, responsibilities of rank,

badges, medals and punishment

are all investigated. The Imperial

forces from around the Empire are

not forgotten and the contribution of these is given due attention.

Even if you have become war-

and they could be posted anywhere in

weary with the mass of First

but more than 17,000 had signed the

will reinvigorate your interest,

the UK. Overseas service was optional Imperial Service Obligation before the outbreak of the First World War.

Long before the war, the main

perceived threat was Germany,

and Britain and France agreed to

combined operations to counter this threat. In 1911 British and French generals began to meet to draw

up plans for the defence of neutral Belgium. These were incorporated

104 SEPTEMBER 2014

HMS Rockingham had sailed from Rosyth at 15.35 hours on 25 September 1944. Her objective was to patrol off the Scottish coast as a safety ship during air targeting exercises, her duties being to rescue any airmen that might find themselves in the waters of the North Sea. As it transpired it would be the men on board Rockingham that would need rescuing.

laid the foundations of the army that

that is detailed in this fine book. The

place to use hospitals and voluntary

A ‘FRIENDLY-FIRE’ SINKING

war, though found wanting due to the

saw the formation of clearing hospitals to treat casualties evacuated from the

During more than three years’ of war, John Rhodes enjoyed an almost charmed life as he acquired a reputation as a fighting soldier second to none. However, his luck ran out at Cambrai in November 1917, just twenty-four hours after the announcement that he had been awarded the Victoria Cross to add to his Distinguished Conduct Medal and Bar. Steve Snelling nonchronicles the remarkable story of the most highly decorated Guards. er Grenadi the of history the in officer ioned commiss

•

GREAT WAR GALLANTRY

It was in October 1914 that the first gallantry awards to be made a total in the First World War were announced. Indeed, that month of twenty-two Distinguished Conduct Medals, nine Distinguished Service Orders, eight Distinguished Service Crosses, twenty-three Distinguished Service Medals and one Conspicuous Gallantry Medal were awarded. Next month Britain at War Magazine will launch a major new series which month-by-month over the period of the Great War commemorations will summarise all the British gallantry awards announced.

World War publications, this book explaining as it does so much that is usually overlooked.

REVIEWED BY ROBERT MITCHELL

Publisher: Spellmount www.thehistorypress.co.uk ISBN: 978-0-7509-5614-7 Softback. 376 pages. RRP: £16.99 Illustrations  Appendices 

References/Notes Index 



www.britainatwar.com

THE HIDDEN SECRET OF THE HUMBIE HEINKEL The First to Fall Intact

The Hidden Secret of the

HUM BIE

HE I N KE L

A

T 09.15 hours on the morning of Saturday, 28 October 1939, the three Spitfires of Red Section, 603 (City of Edinburgh) Squadron, took off from RAF Turnhouse for a routine patrol at 14,000 feet over the River Forth. At around the same time, the three Spitfires of Red Section, 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron, were patrolling over RAF Turnhouse. Despite the fact that the war was less than two months old, Luftwaffe raiders had already operated against targets in and around Scotland and the very north of England with 602 and 603 squadrons claiming victories over the North Sea against Junkers Ju 88s and a Heinkel He 111 on 16 and 22 October 106 SEPTEMBER 2014

MAIN PICTURE: The wreckage of Leutnant Rolf Niehoff’s Heinkel He 111H-2, the first enemy aircraft to fall intact on the British mainland since 1918, pictured near the hamlet of Humbie in late October 1939.

respectively. Operating at long range over the North Sea from their base at Westerland on the island of Sylt, the German raids were clearly risky. Conducted during daylight hours, and with no possibility of any fighter cover, the raiders were flying into a sensitive and well-defended area. With the strategically important naval base at Scapa Flow and the shipyards and docks of Greenock off to the west, the region was patrolled almost constantly by sections of the various squadrons of Fighter Command’s 13 Group. It was into this “hot” area that Leutnant Rolf Niehoff, as captain of the Heinkel He 111H-2 coded 1H+JA (werke nummer 5449), brought his Stab./KG26 crew that

morning. His mission was an armed reconnaissance, first to Glasgow and then back eastwards to look for British warships in the Firth of Forth. As the first Luftwaffe aircraft to cross the coastline of the British Isles that morning, Niehoff was under orders to transmit a weather report once he had reached the coast at around 18,000 feet. Later, he would conclude that this wireless transmission had been his undoing and had been heard by the British, thus alerting them to the Heinkel’s presence. However, that was not the case.

ANTI-AIRCRAFT FIRE Returning from the west coast, but now down to around 15,000 feet, Niehoff www.britainatwar.com

THE HIDDEN SECRET OF THE HUMBIE HEINKEL ???????? ?????????????????????? ?????????????? During the Second World War around 1,200 enemy aircraft were brought down over the British Isles. Each aircraft was examined by RAF Intelligence Officers and any captured aircrew were interrogated in order to elicit technical and operational information. In the case of the very first enemy aircraft to come down intact on the mainland of the British Isles in 1939, a highly significant discovery was made – albeit one that had initially been overlooked. Andy Saunders takes up the story.

discovered that the earlier cloud cover had thinned over the Forth giving him a much better opportunity to photograph any shipping. Unfortunately, the thinning cloud was very much a double-edged sword; it also gave anti-aircraft gunners a better view of the roaming Heinkel that could be heard and seen overhead. Immediately the gunners are reported to have put up an effective barrage. However, since the 3rd (Scottish) AntiAircraft Division reported that none of its guns opened fire that day, then the barrage must presumably have originated from naval shipping laying at anchor at Queensferry. “When we returned from the area of Glasgow, flying at a height of about 12,000 www.britainatwar.com

to 15,00ft,” recalled Niehoff, “we were greeted by anti-aircraft fire. One shot must have been a hit because I heard the explosion and felt the impact, but I do not think much damage was done.” Whilst Niehoff judged the damage from the anti-aircraft fire to have been non-critical, it might still have sealed his fate for Red Sections of 602 and 603 squadrons, both already in the area, were now alerted to the Heinkel’s presence by the bursting AA shells. The Spitfires were soon in hot pursuit. “A short time after the anti-aircraft fire four Spitfires appeared and began attacking, one after the other,” continued Niehoff. “My two rear gunners were, of course, at their



TOP RIGHT: Civilians and service personnel alike examine Niehoff’s Heinkel near Humbie. It has been established that this aircraft was manufactured at the HeinkelWerke factory in Oranienburg during October 1938. (ALL

IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE)

weapons and alert. They were Gefr Bruno Reimann and Uffz Gottlieb Kowalke. Twice before we had had contact with enemy fighters but this time my gunners started shooting back far too early, so that the first Spitfire killed them both as they were changing their spent ammunition drums. Before I could go to look after my gunners, my young but very able pilot, Uffz Kurt Lehmkuhl, was hit in the back by two bullets and I had to stay with him in the cockpit in case he fainted. “Now, of course, the Spitfires got no more machine-gun fire from our aircraft and they flew very close to our rear. Therefore, most of their bullets hit our  wings and engines which soon SEPTEMBER 2014 107

THE HIDDEN SECRET OF THE HUMBIE HEINKEL The First to Fall Intact

stopped. Only a few more bullets hit the cockpit, which is why I and my pilot survived. The four Spitfires were shooting at us, one after the other, right up until we hit the ground.” Meanwhile, and on the ground at RAF Drem, Yellow Section of 602 Squadron was ordered off to find and engage the enemy after an over-flying Heinkel He 111 had been reported – but the three Spitfires instead found what turned out to be an RAF Anson off May Island. Flight Lieutenant Hodge, mistaking the Anson for an enemy aircraft, led his section in for a line-astern attack and raked the RAF aircraft with gunfire before the error was realised and the interception called off. This was not before the unfortunate Anson pilot had been hit and wounded in the jaw.

THE FIRST TO FALL Although wounded in the back, weak from loss of blood and still under relentless attack by four Spitfires that were queuing up, one after the other, to pump more fire into his aircraft,

108 SEPTEMBER 2014

Unteroffizier Lehmkuhl did a more than creditable job of maintaining control of the Heinkel. With insufficient height to bale-out, and with two smoking and disabled engines, he had little choice, though, but to put his aircraft down. In a rapidly descending glide over the Lammermuir Hills in southern Scotland, Lehmkuhl selected the only place available to him – an area of sloping and heather covered ground that he could see directly ahead. Lehmkuhl eventually set the bomber down between High Latch and Kidlaw, just to the east of of the hamlet of Humbie. His Heinkel thus became the first enemy aircraft brought down intact on mainland British soil during the Second World War. Crashing and careering over the rough terrain and demolishing a dry stone wall, where it left behind its starboard tailplane, the bullet-riddled bomber eventually came to rest on an uphill incline with its nose smashed. However, it was not only the Heinkel that had suffered. The bumping and jolting

landing had, indeed, been literally bone-jarring and Rolf Niehoff, unhurt in the sustained fighter assault, was later found to have suffered a broken back as the Heinkel juddered to a halt. That said, his injuries were not so incapacitating as to prevent him helping his wounded pilot out of the aircraft as they waited for the arrival of the authorities. Reimann and Gottleib were beyond any human aid, so Niehoff concentrated his efforts on Lehmkuhl.

EYE-WITNESS The arrival on the ground of a German aircraft within the British Isles was understandably the cause of great interest and excitement for civilians nearby. Such was the novelty of the event that the BBC later broadcast an interview with Mr John K. Irvine of nearby Long Newton Farm: “I was filling up sacks of barley about a quarter past ten when I heard a noise like the hurling of a barrow. That’s what I thought it was at first, but it went on and on and came nearer, and then I knew it was the noise of guns. Then we saw a big black machine with two engines coming over the trees from the north-west. There were four British machines with it. They were circling round and round and rattling bullets into the German as hard as they could do it. “I thought we ought to take cover, there were women workers there, but curiosity brought us out again. The whiles we were running in and the whiles we were running out again, so that we saw the German go over the houses, so low that it almost touched the chimneys. Then they all went out of sight up over the hill, and a few minutes later I saw our fighters going back, all four of them. They seemed to be finished with the job, so I ran up to see what had happened.

TOP LEFT: The view inside the cockpit of the first German aircraft to fall intact on the British mainland during the Second World War.

(WW2IMAGES)

TOP RIGHT: An informal picture of Flight Lieutenant Archibald “Archie” McKellar, who is holding a pet dog, which was taken at Drem, Scotland. Having been promoted to Squadron Leader and awarded the Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar, McKellar was killed in action on 1 November 1940.

(WW2IMAGES)

LEFT: The damage to the cockpit of Niehoff’s Heinkel is clear to see in this still taken from the wartime news footage. (CRITICAL PAST)

www.britainatwar.com

THE HIDDEN SECRET OF THE HUMBIE HEINKEL The First to Fall Intact PRISONER OF WAR Despite the fact that John Irvine thought one man (Niehoff) was unwounded, we now know that this was not the case and a contemporary photograph shows Rolf Niehoff with the Police officers holding his hand to his back. Niehoff himself takes up the story of events following the crash-landing: “A few minutes after the crash some men arrived on the scene and among them was a doctor who took care of my wounded pilot. He was later taken to an Edinburgh hospital.

“Two of the crew were dead. I expect they must be the gunners and they must have been shot before they came my length, because I never saw them firing at our ’planes. The machine had scrapped its tail over a dyke and then came down on the moor on an even keel. One of the crew was not hurt at all. He was pulling out his mate. By the time we got up there he had him drawn out and lying on the ground. “We tried to talk to the unwounded man but he did not know what we were saying, although he spoke a little English. The wounded man said he wanted a drink, but the doctor said he ought not to have one. He had two bullet wounds in the back. “The Police took the unwounded man away and before he went he shook hands with his mate. We got a gate off one of the fences and carried the wounded man down to the road and waited there for the ambulance to come for him.”

ABOVE: Two of 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron’s Spitfires pictured at Grangemouth during October 1939. (WW2IMAGES)

www.britainatwar.com

ABOVE: Flight Lieutenant Pat Gifford stands alongside the aircraft, Spitfire L1050, he flew during the action of 28 October 1939. The three pilots of 603 Squadron’s Red Section who were involved that day were Gifford, Pilot Officer C. Robertson and Pilot Officer G.K. Gilroy (flying Spitfires L1050, L1070 and L1049 respectively).

“I was taken prisoner by some friendly policemen and taken to a police station. As far as I remember this was in a town called Dalkeith. Here I waited some time until an Army Captain arrived and took me in his private car to the HQ of an army unit located in a country estate. Here, a Colonel received me and asked me for my name and home address, but then added, ‘I don’t suppose you will answer any other questions?’ Of course, I wouldn’t! Then he introduced me to the officer’s mess where I had some conversations with the officers there. Then, at about noon, the Captain invited me to lunch in his room and afterwards I was taken to Edinburgh Castle where I spent the afternoon in the guard room. “During that afternoon I was interrogated, or I had better say interviewed, by two RAF officers. They asked me which of the four Spitfires had shot me down. Of course, I didn’t know which one. Furthermore, they seemed very interested in our self-sealing fuel tanks and the fuel injection system. “That night I was taken to London by train, guarded by four armed soldiers. After arrival in London I was taken straight to the Tower of London where the treatment was very correct but strictly military. It was not always so with the interrogation that followed. 

ABOVE RIGHT: As would be expected, extensive coverage was given to the downing of the He 111 at Humbie in the British press. Indeed, an image of the wreckage appeared on the front cover of War Illustrated on 18 November 1939.

ABOVE: Two of 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron’s Spitfires pictured at Grangemouth during October 1939. In May 1939, 602 Squadron became the first of the Auxiliaries to be equipped with the Supermarine Spitfire. (WW2IMAGES)

SEPTEMBER 2014 109

THE HIDDEN SECRET OF THE HUMBIE HEINKEL The First to Fall Intact

ABOVE: The extensive damage caused to the Heinkel’s fuselage is evident in this still taken from contemporary news footage. One of those who witnessed the final moments of 1H+JA was John Spencer Churchill, the nephew of the future Prime Minister Winston Churchill. At the time, John Spencer Churchill had been visiting Lady Tweeddale at Yester House

in Gifford when he witnessed the 602 and 603 squadron Spitfires attacking the German bomber. A talented artist (by May 1940 he was serving as a Camouflage Officer),

Churchill promptly painted a scene depicting the Heinkel being shot down. (CRITICAL PAST)

COMBAT REPORT

ABOVE: Having completed the first part of their mission on 28 October 1939, a reconnaissance flight to Glasgow, Leutnant Niehoff’s crew then flew eastwards to search for British warships in the Firth of Forth, particularly the area around Queensferry which is the subject of this Luftwaffe target photograph which was taken on 2 October 1939.

TO THIS day debate continues as to which squadron or pilot was the victor over Leutnant Rolf Niehoff’s Heinkel He 111H-2, coded 1H+JA, on 28 October 1939. Post–war research, however, credited the victory to Flight Lieutenant Archibald “Archie” McKellar. A pilot with Red Section, ‘A’ Flight, 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron, McKellar later described the events that day in his combat report: “Patrolling T’house 16,000ft noticed AA fire N of my position. Saw 1 a/c heading S.E. at 14,000ft approx. Being doubtful of identity asked T’house for information. Put section into line astern full boost & followed. Identified as hostile. “Carried out No.2 attack, my No.2 followed with No.1 attack. E/A dodged into cloud & I followed him. He appeared again when I & No.2 attacked. Noticed port engine disabled with smoke issuing. Machine started to circle. Reported to T’house E/A appeared to be going down. “Three other Spitfires then came in and attacked. Saw machine land approx. 6 miles due south of Tranent.” LEFT: One of Leutnant Rolf Niehoff’s images of the Forth Bridge under attack on 16 October 1939 – some of which, as a PoW, he later saw in Picture Post. The warships in the picture are the cruisers HMS Southampton and HMS Edinburgh with the destroyer HMS Mohawk. The plumes of mud denote bomb explosions.

110 SEPTEMBER 2014

“The interrogator was a man in RAF uniform, but I got the impression that he was a civilian. He spoke German fluently, but with a strong Viennese accent. His questioning was rather primitive and he several times contradicted himself and wasn’t always telling the truth. His methods were not always very decent and I was interrogated by him six times and, later, another three times when I was in hospital. He wanted information from me that he knew I had, but refused to give. “In the Tower I shared my room with Oblt Heinrich Storp who had been shot down over the Firth of Forth on 16 October 1939 in a Junkers 88 that crashed into the sea. Strangely, I had been on the same raid! “During that raid I had taken photos of the British ships Edinburgh and www.britainatwar.com

THE HIDDEN SECRET OF THE HUMBIE HEINKEL The First to Fall Intact

ABOVE: Gefreiter Bruno Reimann and Unteroffizier Gottlieb Kowalke were buried with full military honours in adjacent graves in Edinburgh’s Portobello Cemetery on 31 October 1939. Both men were subsequently exhumed and moved to the German War Cemetery at Cannock Chase in 1959.

Southampton and to my huge surprise I saw these same photographs later in the British magazine ‘Picture Post’. Later, I heard that my photograph had been distributed around the world. “After some days in the Tower I was taken for X-Rays on my troublesome back at Westminster Hospital, and then on to the Luftwaffe PoW ward at the Royal Herbert Military Hospital in Woolwich. Here, I had treatment for a broken back. I was prisoner number 32, but would have had a much earlier PoW number if it were not for my long stay at Woolwich Hospital before being sent off to the PoW camp at Grizedale Hall.”

ENEMY OF THE KING In many respects, Niehoff’s experiences were typical of those experienced by Luftwaffe airmen taken prisoner throughout the United Kingdom; friendly treatment on capture, the taking of drinks and lunch whilst being ‘entertained’ by British officers, armed escort by train to London, sometimes www.britainatwar.com

aggressive interrogations and, if needed, treatment at the Royal Herbert Hospital. Only in his incarceration at the Tower of London did Niehoff’s early imprisonment differ significantly from most of those captured later. In the early days of the war the British authorities had not yet established the procedures for housing and processing prisoners during their captivity in what became known as the London Cage. Thus, the Tower of London was used initially for this purpose and it was something that Niehoff later rather regarded as a badge of honour. “After all”, he once said, “the Tower of London was traditionally used to imprison enemies of the British Monarch. And here was I, most

ABOVE LEFT: Such is the interest in the arrival of Niehoff’s Heinkel that despite the relatively isolated location of the crash site, a small crowd soon gathered. Note the camouflage net being pulled over the right hand wing. (CRITICAL

PAST)

ABOVE LEFT: A poor quality photograph which shows Leutnant Rolf Niehoff, the navigator and captain of the Humbie Heinkel, in the immediate aftermath of his aircraft’s arrival on British soil. Note that he is holding his back which, it later transpired, was broken.

definitely an enemy of the King!” If Niehoff’s interrogators, and those initially investigating the wreck of his Heinkel, had been keen to learn what they could about the self-sealing tanks, fuel injection and, perhaps, the operational details of KG26 they were, in fact, missing a rather bigger secret that lay hidden in the aircraft. It was only much later, however, that this “secret” and its huge importance to the conduct of electronic counter-measures would become apparent; and only then as very much an almost accidental afterthought. For the time being, though, an examination of the Heinkel’s airframe and engines was a priority. As the first intact enemy aircraft to fall into British hands it was, of course, of considerable technical interest and it was decided that a thorough examination of the DB601 engines would be undertaken at the Rolls-Royce aero engine works in Derby. In due course detailed reports were produced, setting out the various metallurgical and performance properties and examining every single technical detail including the quality of engineering and production. As for the fuselage and remnants of the airframe, these were despatched to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Again, a careful look was taken at the instrumentation, radio fit, armour, armaments and general matters such as cockpit layout and overall construction methods. Scrutiny of the instruments, for example, also looked at issues such as how they were constructed and the names and locations of the factories which had made them. One thing, though, caught the investigating technician’s eye; the blind landing receiver was extremely sensitive. Mentally, he explained it to himself as just an odd anomaly having no other particular significance and promptly forgot about it.  SEPTEMBER 2014 111

THE HIDDEN SECRET OF THE HUMBIE HEINKEL The First to Fall Intact

A PIECE OF THE WRECKAGE

A NUMBER of pieces of the wreckage of Leutnant Rolf Niehoff’s Heinkel still survive – such as those in the 602 Squadron museum in Glasgow or the object seen here, and which is in the collections of the Imperial War Museum. A letter that accompanied this item states: “You have asked me to let you have an eye witness account of the bringing down of the German aircraft near Gifford, East Lothian [a village to the east of the crash site] in the very early stages of the war. I believe this was the first enemy aircraft to be brought down on British soil, though several had come to grief in the sea approaches to the Scottish coast, and in the Firth of Forth. “We were managing a small hotel in Gifford, about 20 miles SE of Edinburgh at this time, and one morning just after breakfast I had gone up to our bedroom to get some papers I needed when a sudden loud noise like the ripping of calico startled me, and I sprang to the window. I was in time to see the back end of a large plane at hedge height gliding rapidly in the direction of Humbie. Then there were noises of crashing and bumping, and I rushed downstairs and called the barman to get out the hotel car. “We drove to a T-road outside the village, and there we paused, uncertain of our direction; Bob, the barman, also pointed out that the petrol gauge registered ‘empty’. There was nothing for it but to return to the hotel and collect my own car, in which I set off at good pace, and in a very few minutes arrived at the scene of the crash. “By then, however, several other people had had the same idea, and a little crowd of 2-3 dozen were ambling curiously around the machine, now under the guard of 3 policeman; a Spitfire continually dived and circled overhead. The plane was a Heinkel 4-seater, and had probably been on reconnaissance; it was not severely damaged. “Had we been first on the scene, as we should have been, we might have taken one or two of the earliest German prisoners, but by the time we eventually turned up the bodies of two Germans had been removed, and two survivors marched off under escort. Back at our hotel we were soon inundated with reporters, RAF officers and sightseers. The phone was in continuous demand, and Audrey’s typewriter temporarily commandeered by the Press. “In the afternoon we were invaded by half a dozen ‘Boffins’ from the RAE Farnborough. They had been out to the wrecked aircraft, and came into the hotel laden with bits and pieces and parts of the Heinkel. They stayed nearly a week in the then nearly empty hotel, going out daily to the plane and returning in the evenings. These they spent squatting on the floor by the fire surrounded by miscellaneous material from the machine, which they examined and discussed in great detail. One of their discoveries was that the fuel supply of the aircraft was protected by a self-sealing material, an innovation which we adopted, and no doubt improved upon.” (IWM; EPH5446)

112 SEPTEMBER 2014

ABOVE: A large number of “trophies” from the Humbie Heinkel survive to this day. One of the largest collections can be found in the care of the National War Museum in Edinburgh (formerly the Scottish United Services Museum). This includes items such as Rolf Niehoff’s flying suit, a MG15 machine-gun, a bullet-holed tip of one of the propellers, a fire extinguisher and much more besides.

THE CROOKED LEG On 12 June 1940, the scientific intelligence expert, Professor R.V. Jones, was summoned to meet Group Captain L.F. Blandy, head of the RAF’s ‘Y’ radio listening service that monitored all German wireless traffic. Blandy handed a slip of paper to Jones. On it was written: “KNICKEBEIN, KLEVE, IST AUF PUNKT 53 GRAD 24 MINUTEN NORD UND EIN GRAD WEST EINGERICHTET”. It was a recently picked up Luftwaffe transmission and Blandy admitted that it had stumped all in the ‘Y’ service as to what it might mean. Did Jones have any idea? The translation was: “Cleves Knickebein is established at position 53 degrees 24 minutes north and 1 degree west”.

Immediately the message made sense to Jones. It was confirmation that the Luftwaffe was operating a blindbombing system by using intersecting radio beams – the existence of which Jones had suspected. The name Knickebein meant “crooked leg”, and to Jones this reflected the shape that might be made by the crossing of two radio beams. The story of the so-called Battle of the Beams is, of course, well known. However, it was Niehoff’s Heinkel that would subsequently unlock some if its early secrets. The question for Jones was which equipment on board Luftwaffe bombers was being utilised for receiving the Knickebein signals? At this point in the war nothing had been found on the now plentiful German aircraft examined on

ABOVE: The wreckage of 1H+JA being removed from the crash site on the Lammermuir Hills – its removal, by personnel from the RAF’s No.63 Maintenance Unit, began on 31 October. The individual in the bowler hat on the left is Willie Gilmarpin, an engineer from Rolls-Royce who was sent to oversee the recovery of the Heinkel’s engines for testing.

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THE HIDDEN SECRET OF THE HUMBIE HEINKEL The First to Fall Intact

TOP and BOTTOM LEFT: Despite its broken back, Rolf Niehoff’s Heinkel was of considerable value in terms of a technical evaluation by the RAF. It could not, however, be made airworthy for flight testing. That opportunity was presented to the British authorities on 9 February 1940, when another He 111 of KG26 crash-landed not that far from Humbie in a field at North Berwick. This bomber, 1H+EN of 5./KG26, was shot down whilst engaged on an armed shipping reconnaissance flight, also in the Firth of Forth area. Although damaged – as these two images show – the aircraft was deemed repairable and it was therefore the first enemy aircraft to arrive in Britain that would subsequently be test flown.

the ground by RAF intelligence officers. But if the system was in use then there must be something reasoned Jones. In exasperation he approached Squadron Leader S.D. Felkin, head of A.I.1(k), the department responsible for the interrogation of Luftwaffe prisoners. Was there anything, enquired Jones, which had been gleaned from prisoners that might offer a clue? No, was the simple answer. There was nothing. However, Felkin started to ask very specific questions about beam-bombing and once the prisoners who had been so interrogated were put together their “private” conversations were covertly recorded. One clue was gleaned in this manner – although, in truth, it was more of a confirmation than a clue. In a recorded conversation one of the prisoners had said to his colleague: “No matter how hard they look for the equipment they will never find it.” Once this information was relayed to Jones he realised that there must be something obvious, but in plain sight, that had simply been missed.

Jones himself takes up the story: “This could not have been a better challenge because it implied that the equipment was in fact under our noses, but that we would not recognise it. I therefore obtained a copy of the full technical examination of the Heinkel that had been shot down during the Firth of Forth raid, and looked especially at the various items of radio equipment. “The only equipment that could possibly fit the bill was the receiver that was carried in the aircraft for the purpose of blind landing. It was labelled E.Bl 1 (which stood for Empfanger Blind 1 – blind landing receiver type 1) and was ostensibly for

THE ARRIVAL OF EAGLES

LUFTWAFFE LANDINGS IN BRITAIN 1939-45 THE STORY behind Leutnant Rolf Niehoff’s Heinkel He 111 is just one of many Luftwaffe “arrivals” that the author of this article, Andy Saunders, features in his latest book. Some of the enemy aircraft had got lost, others were brought by defectors, whilst some were lured through electronic countermeasures. Published by Grub Street, readers of Britain at War Magazine are able to purchase copies at the special offer price of £18.00 (including postage and packaging), by calling 0207 924 3966. Please quote "Britain at War" to be eligible for this exclusive offer. For more information, please visit: www.grubstreet.co.uk ABOVE RIGHT: This relic from Rolf Niehoff’s Heinkel was found buried at the crash site during an investigation by After The Battle in August 1983.

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the normal purpose of blind landing on the Lorenz beam system which was now standard at many aerodromes. I ascertained that the equipment had been examined by Cox-Walker at Farnborough and so I telephoned him. ‘Tell me, is there anything unusual about the blind landing receiver?’ I asked. ‘No’, he replied – and then, ‘But now you mention it, it is much more sensitive than they would ever need for blind landing.’ So that was it. I now knew what the receiver was, and the frequencies to which it could be tuned, and therefore on which frequencies the Knickebein beam must operate.” This at last explained Niehoff’s comment that his interrogator “wanted information from me that he knew I had, but refused to give”. In the case of the Humbie Heinkel the discovery was highly significant in understanding how the Luftwaffe was conducting its bombing campaign against the British Isles and in developing counter-measures during the Battle of the Beams.  SEPTEMBER 2014 113

The First W

rld War in Objects

THE GUN

that defied a division THE BRITISH Expeditionary Force had been compelled to fall back from the Belgian town of Mons in line with its French allies. Since 24 August 1914, under severe pressure from the German First Army, the British troops had marched hard to stay ahead of the enemy. For the men of the 1st Cavalry Brigade and the attached ‘L’ Battery of the Royal Horse Artillery, the retreat meant long days in the saddle. After a day patrolling along the bank of the River Oise on 31 August, Brigadier-General Charles Briggs’s men were tired and needed to find billets for the night. Having been informed that there were no British troops in the village of Néry, the 1st Cavalry Brigade headed there and settled down in the hope of some much-needed rest. However, it was also where General Otto von Garnier’s German 4th Cavalry Division was aiming for in the hope of catching the British troops by surprise. The next morning a patrol of the 11th Hussars stumbled into the leading units of von Garnier’s division. Both sides were surprised at meeting the enemy but both commanders acted quickly when their respective patrols returned to report. Briggs deployed his men in defensive positions around the village as Garnier’s artillery opened fire from the heights to the south and east of the village. Shells fell amongst the British cavalry and guns from a range of only around 800 yards. One of the first casualties was the battery commander Major Slater-Booth. So Captain Bradbury and Sergeant Nelson took one gun, Lieutenant Gifford another, and Lieutenants Campbell and Mundy the third. Almost as soon Campbell and Mundy took control of their gun it was silenced by a direct hit. Shortly afterwards Lieutenant Gifford was severely wounded and all his detachment was killed or wounded. This left just Bradbury’s and Nelson’s gun as the only artillery left to defend the cavalry. Campbell and Mundy, their gun useless, went to join

NO.2

MAIN PICTURE: The surviving QF 13 pounder Mk.1 gun which remained in operation at Néry which, along with the VCs awarded to Captain Bradbury, Battery Sergeant Major Dorrell and Sergeant Nelson, is in the care of the Imperial War Museum – note the damage to the gun and carriage. The battery itself was later awarded the Battle Honour “Néry”, the only British Army unit to have this accolade. (HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS) ABOVE: Issued in 1915 by Gallagher Ltd., these two cigarette cards depict two of the three men who were awarded the Victoria Cross for their actions at Néry. (HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)

LEFT: An artist’s depiction of the remaining gun of ‘L’ Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, in action at Néry on 1 September 1914. (HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)

114 SEPTEMBER 2014

Bradbury. This single 13-pounder – that seen here – began to shell the German batteries, which then turned their full attention upon Bradbury’s little team. Lieutenant Campbell was soon killed but the gun continued to fire, with Mundy acting as the observer, Bradbury as the gunlayer and Sergeant Nelson the range setter. Gunner Darbyshire and Driver Osborne kept the 13-pounder supplied with shells. Sergeant Nelson and Lieutenant Mundy were both seriously wounded but Battery SergeantMajor Dorrell was able to reach the gun. Bradbury was then mortally wounded – though he had a leg shot away, he propped himself up and continued to direct the fire; he died shortly after. Dorrell kept the gun in action. The Affair at Néry lasted for around three hours. The 1st Cavalry Brigade was heavily outnumbered but managed to defy the Germans until support arrived, thanks to the action of that single remaining gun of ‘L’ Battery, which is known to have accounted for at least three of the German guns. The gun fired its last two rounds just as the reinforcements arrived on the scene. The Germans were driven off having lost approximately 180 men and 200 horses. After the battle the wheels of the damaged guns of ‘L’ Battery were replaced, and all were recovered. The action resulted in the award of Victoria Crosses to Bradbury, Dorrell and Nelson. Giffard received the Legion d’Honeur, whilst Gunner Darbyshire and Driver Osborne were awarded the Medaille Militaire. www.britainatwar.com