Wilson - Airborne in 1943

AIRBORNE

____ IN ____

1943

THE DARING ALLIED AIR CAMPAIGN

* OVER THE NORTH SEA *

KEVIN WILSON

PEGASUS BOOKS

NEW YORK LONDON

A IRBORNE IN 1943

Pegasus Books, Ltd.
148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2018 by Kevin Wilson

First Pegasus Books hardcover edition December 2018

All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reproduced in whole
or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reriewers who may
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ISBN: 978-1-68177-880-8

ISBN: 978-1-68177-946-1 (e-book)

Distributed by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

To Mollie

Contents

PHOTOGRAPHS

354 Air Gunners Course, RCAF Station Mountain View, Ontario: Marcel Dowst and Reid Thomson were the only ones not killed on operations.

Sgt Graham Allen in his flight engineers position.

Air gunner Sgt Albert Bracegirdle.

The remains of F/Sgt Ted Laings Lancaster fall to earth after it exploded over Enschede, Holland.

P/O Dennis Batemans aeroplane after it was shot down in Belgium on 9 March.

Air gunner Sgt Cliff Hill, about to take off for Berlin on 1 March 1943.

Peter Johnson, after he was commissioned and awarded the DFC.

P/O Bluey Mottershead.

Wop/AG Sgt Walter Hedges of 102 Sqn.

Australian Ron Gooding, lost on the Kiel operation of 4 April.RIGHT: Ron Goodings fiance, Laura Lancaster

F/O Eric George Hadingham and F/O Roderick Alan Lord being rescued off the French coast after five days and nights in a rubber dinghy.

Air gunner P/O Albert Wallace.

Flight engineer John Walsh.

Kenneth East, pictured in 1939 at the start of his operational career.

Bomb aimer Sgt George Stewart, the sole survivor of his crew when their Lancaster exploded over Bochum.

Wing Commander Guy Gibson (standing on ladder) minutes before he took off with his crew on the Dams Raid.

The Eder Dam, destroyed by low flying Lancasters on the night of 16 May 1943.

F/Lt Les Munro and fellow New Zealander F/O Len Chambers, wireless operator in Mickey Martins crew: a photograph taken at Scampton in the publicity blitz which followed the Dams Raid.

F/O Dave Rodger in an off-duty moment at 617 Sqn.

A reconnaissance photograph of Kassel showing flooding from the Eder, breached by the Dambusters.

Michaelisstrasse, Hamburg, before and after the firestorm raid of 27 July.

Michaelisstrasse after the firestorm.

Sgt Peter Swan of 44 Squadron.

Bomb aimer P/O Alan Bryett with his 158 Sqn pilot F/Lt Kevin Hornibrook, who gave his life to save Bryetts.

A reconnaissance picture of Peenemnde in June 1943, showing two V-2 rockets, the rocket storage buildings and the assembly shop.

W/O Dennis Slack.

Val Clarkson.

POW identity document of flight engineer Lew Parsons.

A Lancaster flies over Hanover during the attack of 8 October, the citys burning streets clearly outlined below it.

A photo reconnaissance picture of Hanover the next day, showing the same streets, their buildings, roofless, gutted ruins.

Burning Kassel on the night of 22 October.

Post-raid reconnaissance shows how fires raged unchecked through Kassels old town.

A surprised F/Sgt Bernard Downs arrives back at Breighton with his crew from the Berlin raid of 22 November to meet a barrage of press photographers.

The Finlay crew at Elsham Wolds, arranged around a 4,0001b bomb.

MAPS

The 1943 targets of RAF Bomber Command 245

The Pilsen raid, 16/17 April 1943 135

Im not terribly surprised to hear that Willie has won the VC. Hes always been a very determined boy.

The mother of F/Lt William Reid quoted in the Daily Express after the blacksmiths son won the Victoria Cross for flying his crippled Lancaster to Dsseldorf and back again despite serious wounds.

We got to the squadron on 21 August; the first raid I went on was two days later and within eight days I had done another five and been shot down.

Flight engineer W/O Lew Parsons of 75 Sqn, forced to bale out on the Berlin raid of 31 August 1943.

Picked up 6 pay then rushed away as member of a funeral party for a rear gunner killed in action. Ghastly business funerals, weeping relatives all over the place. Went to pictures afterwards.#x2019;

From the diary of bomb aimer Sgt John Gilvary of 419 Sqn, killed on the Peenemnde Raid twelve days later.

My throat became parched and I considered whether to cut myself so that I could drink some of my own blood to alleviate the terrible thirst.

Air gunner F/Lt Eric Hadingham, DFC and bar, who spent six days in a dinghy after his 166 Sqn Wellington ditched en route to Mannheim on 16 April 1943.

It was amazing how often a navigator would say to me, Well cheerio, sir, Im not coming back and they didnt. One night I was briefed for Cologne and it was scrubbed. I was never so thankful because I knew if I went that night I wouldnt return.

Navigator S/Ldr Alex Flett, DFC and bar, who completed a tour with 460 Sqn and a second as navigation leader with 625 Sqn.

THE dawn of Bomber Commands year of attrition began beguilingly with a whisper. The seductive sound was carried in the tendrils of mist which both enclosed and linked billet to hangar on airfields from north to south and it held the promise of life continued. It was the soft, sibilant hiss of drizzle.

The rain crept and swept the length of eastern Britain from the flat fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire to the soft contours of Yorkshire and up into County Durham, dribbling from the wings of hooded Halifaxes, Stirlings and Lancasters poised at dispersals, glistening the grey of concrete runways lost in the fog, and carrying its damp promise into the austerity of crew huts beneath dripping trees.

Its message was that tonight there would be no war. The crack and thump of exploding flak, the urgent tearing flash of cannon fire, the shriek of plunging aircraft which would echo through the months of the great bomber offensive to come hung still. The young aircrew from spotty-faced 18- and 19-year-olds just out of school to bloods fresh from drawing office and workbench turned on that first morning of 1943 and slept on.

Before New Year dawned again 15,832 operational Bomber Command aircrew would be dead and 2,898 prisoners of war. Another 1,500 or so would die in training accidents on OTUs and HCUs; the rest of the doomed would be lost in the variety of horror that was the air wars speciality. Some would die instantly or agonisingly by direct contact with flak or Luftwaffe bullet or cannon; others would vanish as if they never existed in a boiling flash of oily red and orange flame as their aircraft exploded against the night sky; some would be burned alive, pinned helplessly by centrifugal force, as their stricken bombers spiralled earthwards; a number would drown in the cold waters of the North Sea as their damaged or fuel-starved aircraft failed to make the long journey home. And for a very few there would be the horror unique to their service of falling helplessly without a parachute, after being tossed from their disintegrating aircraft before they could reach for and clip on the means of survival.