First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Airlife Publishing Ltd
Reprinted in this format in 2014 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Barnsley
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Copyright John Frayn Turner, 2000, 2014
ISBN 978 1 78346 303 9
eISBN 9781473839885
The right of John Frayn Turner to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful and glad to acknowledge various British official sources published by HMSO. I would also like to offer my thanks to the United States Department of the Army for permission to refer to the files of Yank Magazine . The Reference and Photographic Libraries of the Imperial War Museum, London, have always been helpful and courteous.
In addition, I have drawn on certain material from the following of my other books: The Battle of Britain (Airlife); VCs of the Air (Airlife); British Aircraft of World War 2 (Sidgwick and Jackson); Battle Stations (Putnam, USA); Famous Air Battles (Arthur Barker); The Yanks Are Coming , with Edwin R.W. Hale (Midas UK and Hippocrene USA); and Fight for the Sky , with Douglas Bader (Sidgwick and Jackson).
Finally, I would like to pay sincere tribute to everyone mentioned in this book, and respectfully dedicate it to all of them.
John Frayn Turner
Contents
The Blitzkrieg Begins
The storm broke on 10 May 1940. The Blitzkrieg began. The German juggernaut thundered through the Low Countries. Enemy Panzers trampled the defences of Holland and Belgium, while Luftwaffe bombs hailed down on seventy airfields in France and elsewhere. Royal Air Force bombers and fighters went into action at once.
So sudden was the Allied withdrawal from their prepared positions along the River Meuse that they did not have time to blow up the Maastricht bridge, as they had done all the others on this reach of the river. Now the bridge was to become a threat to the retreating armies as the Germans built up a powerful force in the immediate area. Once across the bridge, the Germans would be in a strong position to cut the Allied front in two.
The order went out to RAF bomber squadrons stationed in France to destroy the bridge. But the Germans had defended their gain powerfully and ground guns kept up a barrage of fire against the attacking aircraft, while enemy fighters maintained constant patrols. Yet in spite of these defences, the RAF made eight separate attacks. Pinpoint bombing at that stage of the war and in those conditions was out of the question, however, and none of the eight sorties succeeded.
To some extent, the whole operation in Europe might depend on that one bridge, yet the umbrella of fighter cover, coupled with the ground guns, made any further attacks almost impossible. Such was the situation on 12 May, only two days after the start of the Blitzkrieg attack.
On that day, two separate attacks were made by two separate squadrons. First, a squadron of Blenheims delivered an attack from 3,000 feet in the face of fierce anti-aircraft fire ( flak ). Their leader described it as the heaviest he could have imagined. On approaching the target, the squadron broke formation in order to run in from several directions. But as they were bombing, the leader spotted enemy fighters and immediately called on his squadron to regain formation. They did so at once and faced the fighters, which were driven off by concerted fire. Out of the twelve Blenheims, eight returned to their base, and every one of these had been hit at least once.
That same day, the commanding officer of 12 Squadron stationed at Amifontaine assembled his pilots and called for volunteers to attack Maastricht. Every pilot stepped forward, but as only five Battle bombers were wanted, the pilots scribbled their names on slips of paper and the five crews were chosen by ballot.
The five bombers were escorted by a fighter force of Hurricanes, and leading the five was the Battle piloted by Flying Officer Donald Garland. Still a few weeks off his twenty-second birthday, Garland had been promoted from pilot officer only three months earlier. With him in the single-engine Fairey Battle flew Sergeant Thomas Gray, an observer with more than ten years service since his enlistment in 1929 as an apprentice.
Flight of Battle bombers on reconnaissance. Only one man came back from a formation of five Battles that attacked the vital bridge at Maastricht over the River Meuse on 12 May 1940
While the Battles flew straight for Maastricht, the Hurricanes swept the sky to ward off any opposition from enemy fighters. But as the bombers could not hope to effect any surprise, they were bound to meet heavy fire from the ground, against which the Hurricanes would be powerless. The way back if there were one would have to be through fast fighter formations of the Luftwaffe .
The bridge spanned a section of the Meuse known as the Albert Canal. As it moved into their sight through a haze of early flak bursts, enemy fighters put in their first appearance. The Hurricanes kept these clear of the five Battles, but the ground guns got an accurate range on the bombers, which had to fly through a blizzard of shrapnel. Even German machine-gun posts, too, joined the heavier fire.
Lashed by flak , the leading Battle flew on into the firing, with machine-gun bullets embedding themselves in the fuselage and the whole bomber rocking from the blast of a near-miss. Through the smoke, Garland glimpsed German lorries on the bridge as he pushed his stick down directly towards it. He dived straight through twin bursts of fire and loosed his bomb-load. In spite of the opposition, he delivered his dive-bombing attack from the lowest possible altitude and the other four Battles followed his lead.
A plume of water beside one of the supports signalled a very close drop. A lorry belched oil fumes about a third of the way across the bridge, halting the following traffic. Not that it could have continued anyway, for one of the bombs scored a direct hit, right in the centre of the bridges roadway. The surface crumbled away and some struts collapsed. The whole bridge area became a mass of flames obscuring the vision of the Hurricane pilots high above the scene. Yet as it cleared a little they could be sure of one thing: the bridge was blown. The bridge busters had done their job. Later reconnaissance confirmed that one end of the bridge had been demolished and the structure put out of action, at least temporarily.
