Bowman - Bomber Command. Volume 5: Armageddon, 27 September 1944 - May 1945

Other volumes in this series

RAF BOMBER COMMAND: REFLECTIONS OF WAR

Volume 1: Cover of Darkness (1939May 1942)

Volume 2: Live To Die Another Day (June 1942Summer 1943)

Volume 3: Battleground Berlin (July 1943March 1944)

Volume 4: Battles With the Nachtjagd (30/31 MarchSeptember 1944)

First Published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Copyright Martin W Bowman, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-84884-496-4
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PRC ISBN: 978-1-47382-618-2

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Gebhard Aders; Harry Andrews DFC; Frau Anneliese Autenrieth; Mrs Dorothy Bain; Gunther Bahr; Charlie Jock Baird; Harry Barker; Irene Barrett-Locke; Raymond V Base; Don Bateman; Steve Beale; A D Don Beatty; Jack Bennett; Andrew Bird; Peter Bone; Alfons Borgmeier; Jack Bosomworth; Len Browning; Don Bruce; George Burton; Jim Burtt-Smith; Maurice Butt; Philip J Camp DFM; City of Norwich Aviation Museum (CONAM); Bob Collis; Jim Coman; B G Cook; John Cook DFM; Rupert Tiny Cooling; Dennis Cooper; Ray Corbett; Coen Cornelissen; Leslie Cromarty DFM; Tom Cushing; Hans-Peter Dabrowski; Rob de Visser; Dr. Karl Drscheln; J Alan Edwards; Wolfgang Falck; David G Fellowes; Elwyn D Fieldson DFC; Karl Fischer; Sren C Flensted; Vitek Formanek; Stanley Freestone; Ian Frimston; Prof. Dr Ing. Otto H Fries; Air Vice Marshal D J Furner CBE DFC AFC; Ken Gaulton; Jim George; Margery Griffiths, Chairman, 218 Gold Coast Squadron Association; Group Captain J R Benny Goodman DFC* AFC AE; Alex H Gould DFC; Hans Grohmann; Charles Hall; Steve Hall; Jack F Hamilton; Eric Hammel; Erich Handke; James Harding; Frank Harper; Leslie Hay; Gerhard Heilig; Bob Hilliard; Peter C Hinchliffe; Neville Hockaday RNZAF; Werner Red Hoffmann; Ted Howes DFC; Air Commodore Peter Hughes DFC; John Anderson Hurst; Zdenek Hurt; Ab A Jansen; Karl-Ludwig Johanssen; Wilhelm Wim Johnen; Arthur Johnnie Johnson; John B Johnson; Graham B Jones; Hans-Jrgen Jrgens; Erich Kayser; George Kelsey DFC; Les King; Christian Kirsch; Hans Krause; Reg Lawton; J R Lisgo; Chas Lockyer; Gnther Lomberg; Peter Loncke; George Luke; Ian McLachlan; Nigel McTeer; B L Eric Mallett RCAF; Len Manning; The Honourable Terence Mansfield; Eric Masters; Bernard Max Meyer DFC; Cyril Miles; Colin Moir; Frank Mouritz; Friedrich Ostheimer; Maurice S Paff; Simon Parry; Path Finder Association; Wing Commander David Penman DSO OBE DFC; Richard Perkins; Peter Petrick; Karl-Georg Pfeiffer; Eric Phillips; Vic Poppa; John Price; Stan Reed; Ernie Reynolds; Peter Richard; Albert E Robinson; Heinz Rkker; Squadron Leader Geoff Rothwell DFC; Fritz Rumpelhardt; David M Russell; Kees Rijken; Eric Sanderson; Klaus J Scheer; Dr. Dieter Schmidt-Barbo; Karl-Heinz Schoenemann; Jerry Scutts; Johan Schuurman; Group Captain Jack Short; Leslie R Sidwell; Don L Simpkin; SAAF Assn; Albert Spelthahn; Dr Ing. Klaus Th. Spies; Dick Starkey; Squadron Leader Hughie Stiles; Mike Taff Stimson; Ted Strange DFC; Maurice Stoneman; Ken Sweatman; Paul Todd; Fred Tunstall DFC; Hille van Dieren; George Vantilt; Bob Van Wick; Andreas Wachtel; Georg Walser; David Waters; H Wilde; John Williams; H J Wilson; Henk Wilson; Geoffrey and Nick Willatt; Dennis Wiltshire; Louis Patrick Wooldridge DFC; Fred Young DFM; Cal Younger.

I am particularly grateful to my friend and colleague Theo Boiten, with whom I have collaborated on several books, for all of the information on the Nachtjagd or German night fighter forces contained herein. And, aviation historians everywhere owe a deep sense of gratitude to his and all the other valuable sources of reference listed in the end notes; in particular, those by the incomparable W R Bill Chorley, Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt and Oliver Clutton-Brock. Finally, all of the late authors books, as listed, who are beyond compare. This book and its companion volumes are dedicated to their memory.

CHAPTER 1

Beating The Life Out Of Germany

Hells bells, yelled Skipper. Mac, get us outta here!

The first intimation that anything was wrong came suddenly, when anti-aircraft shells began to burst all around us. I can still see the port wing dissecting a hideous ball of black smoke tinged with wicked orange flame and I can still smell the cordite. But, with the roar of our engines in my ears, it was like watching with the sound turned off.

Id become used to being scared but this was different. This was real fear and there was nothing I could do. The next few seconds would be in the hands of our pilot. It was our twelfth op eighteen more to go.

Peter Bone, Lancaster mid-upper gunner, 626 Squadron

It seems rather a makeshift place, out in the wilderness but I guess well get used to it Ernest Peter Bone noted rather gloomily in his diary on the night of 27 September 1944. The bomb aimer and the rest of Squadron Leader Richard Lanes crew had just been posted to 626 Squadron at Wickenby, about ten miles north-east of Lincoln. In time they did more than just get used to Wickenby; in the ensuing nine months they would become part of it. Peter Bone recalls:

Wickenby had been carved out of farmland in September 1942 to accommodate 12 Squadron, veteran of the Battle of France but latterly based at nearby Binbrook. A year later its C flight had, like Adams rib, been taken away to form the nucleus of a new squadron, number 626. Its first operation had been on the night of 10/11 November 1943 when 313 Lancasters bombed railway yards on the main line to Italy at Modane in Southern France. Wickenby was typical of many wartime bomber squadrons, appearing like mushrooms almost overnight in the flat countryside of Eastern England. With two squadrons, each comprising of two flights of eight Lancasters apiece, flown by a total of 224 aircrew, it was serviced by hundreds of ground personnel of both sexes, working in shifts on aircraft maintenance, air traffic control, motor transport, parachute packing and, not least in importance, in the cookhouse, because as Napoleon once observed, an army marches on its stomach. Not for Wickenby the imposing red brick buildings of the pre-war bases. We made do with prefabricated huts. But it was to be our home for the time being.

But what circuitous chain of circumstances had conspired to put the former junior reporter behind two Browning .303in machine guns in a Lancaster bomber at the age of twenty-two and sit in a gun turret on 25 bombing operations, 16 by night and nine by day? Once back in England after his training in Canada, Peter Bones immediate destination had been Harrogate in West Yorkshire.