Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers Read Free Page B

try to stem the enemy onslaught. They bombed supply columns and lines of communication. The losses among the Battles and Blenheims reached horrific proportions. They were shot out of the sky, either by withering fire from the mobile flak batteries, or as a result of relentless attacks by Messerschmitt 109 fighters, whose superior fire-power and speed left the Battles, in particular, with almost no hope of survival.
    On 12 May, 1940, the CO of 12 Squadron told his men that it was vital to destroy two large bridges that spanned the Albert Canal near Maastricht in Holland. This was the only chance of stemming the Wehrmacht’s headlong advance. Making no bones of the fact that the mission was suicidal, he called for volunteers. Every pilot, observer and wireless operator/air gunner in the squadron stepped forward.
    Six crews were picked for the job. The Battles took off. In spite of intense opposition, one of the bridges was hit and partly destroyed. None of the aircraft returned from that mission. One of the pilots, 21-year-old Flying Officer D.E Garland, and his observer, Sergeant T. Gray were each posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross – the first to be won by the RAF in the Second World War. Their wireless operator/air gunner, Leading Aircraftman L. R. Reynolds, who also died, received no such recognition.
    This was the quality of aircrew transferred from Bomber Command to other duties. The command could ill afford to lose such men.
    Over the course of the coming years the frittering away of men and machines was to continue in other ways. Crews, after being expensively trained in Bomber Command’s own operational training units, were then not infrequently transferred to Coastal Command, or sent overseas.
    Thus the efforts to build up Bomber Command’s strength until it was equal to the immense task it had set itself, that of bringing Germany to her knees by strategic bombing, was constantly frustrated by factors quite unrelated to losses caused through enemy action.
    I witnessed one or two examples of this ‘filching’ during my training. On one occasion some of us were asked if we would be prepared to transfer for duties with the army, serving as wireless operators in tanks fighting in the Western Desert. A few of our number volunteered to go, relishing the chance of immediate action. These young men were unhappy at the prospect of at least another year’s training in the RAF before seeing active service.
    By the end of the Battle of Britain the Luftwaffe, too, had been taught by our fighter pilots that daylight bombing attacks were too costly in men and machines, even when the German bombers were accompanied by large fleets of escorting fighters. From then on, until their services were required the following year in Russia, the Heinkels, Dorniers and Junkers also sought the cover of night to bomb British cities.
    Previously, during the Battle of Britain, the German bomber force had concentrated on trying to destroy the RAF fighter fields in south-east England. Such was the intensity of the onslaught that Fighter Command was at one time in a critical situation.
    On the night of 25/26 August, 1940, a force of forty-three British bombers, made up of Whitleys, Hampdens and Wellingtons, bombed Berlin. Six of the Hampdens, flying to the limit of their fuel capacity, were lost. Material damage to the cloud-covered city was negligible, yet the psychological effect on the Nazi leader was profound. The effrontery shown by British airmen in daring to fly600 miles into the Fatherland to drop high explosive on the Third Reich’s capital city was too much for Adolf Hitler. Angrily he ordered his Luftwaffe chief, Hermann Göring, to retaliate with all his strength against London – only a few miles away from his front-line airfields in France.
    Göring was anxious to restore his tarnished prestige. Previously he had confidently told Hitler that the RAF fighter force would be smashed in two weeks. This had not happened. On the