Bomber Command Read Free

accounted for all the RAF losses. Tactics were adjusted accordingly. Henceforth attacks would be carried out at higher levels.
    On 3 December, after a prolonged lull provoked by digestion of the lessons of September, by lack of suitable targets and weather, and by the general lack of urgency about prosecuting the war that characterized all British activities at this period, a formation of twenty-four Wellingtons from 3 Group carried out a second abortive operation against German cruisers off Heligoland and returned without loss, despite a series of German fighter attacks. These relatively large British forces had failed to damage the enemy, but Bomber Command was encouraged by their very survival. Even when a third ‘armed patrol of the Schillig Roads’ by twelve Wellingtons on 12 December ended in tragedy, with the loss of half the force, there was no weakening of confidence at the top. It was believed that most if not all the losses had been inflicted by flak and not fighters, despite repeated attacks by Me109s.
    ‘The failure of the enemy’, noted Air Commodore Norman Bottomley, Bomber Command’s Senior Air Staff Officer and the future Deputy Chief of Air Staff in 1944, ‘must be ascribed to good formation flying. The maintenance of tight, unshaken formations in the face of the most powerful enemy action is the test of bomber force fighting efficiency and morale. In our service, it is the equivalent of the old “Thin Red Line”, or the “Shoulder to Shoulder” of Cromwell’s Ironsides . . .’
    There can be no doubt that these raids were deliberatelyconceived as a means of testing Germany’s defences and Bomber Command’s tactics, rather than as a serious assault on German sea power. There is no other way to explain the Command’s lack of concern about the failure of its aircraft to sink or damage a single enemy ship. Even after the experience of 12 December – which he himself compared to the Charge of the Light Brigade – 3 Group’s AOC, the cheerfully energetic and popular Air Vice-Marshal, John ‘Jackie’ Baldwin, was impatient to get his squadrons once again to grips with the enemy.
    At 3 pm on the afternoon of 17 December, Baldwin telephoned on the scrambler to Air Commodore Bottomley at Bomber Command HQ at High Wycombe, to urge a further operation against the German fleet:
The Group Commander pointed out the importance of seizing the very first suitable day in view of the few such occasions which were likely to present themselves under winter conditions. He stated that from the point of view of preparation, the details of the plan had been thoroughly considered by all concerned, and he was satisfied that if Monday the 18th of December were given as zero day, there would be no undue haste in planning and preparation right down to the crews engaged. 1
     
    Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, C-in-C Bomber Command, concurred. He approved Baldwin’s proposal to mount a new attack on the German fleet at Wilhelmshaven on the 18th, subject only to a proviso that the Wellingtons bomb from at least 10,000 feet, which should take them above effective flak. Group-Captain Goodwin, SASO at 3 Group HQ drafted orders for the operation to be carried out by twenty-four Wellingtons. Nine aircraft would come from 149 Squadron at Mildenhall, including that of the formation leader, Wing-Commander Richard Kellett, who had also led the 3 December sweep; nine would come from 9 Squadron at Honington; the remaining six from 37 Squadron at Feltwell. ‘Task: to attack enemy warships in the Schillig Roads orWilhelmshaven’, began the Operation Order. ‘Great care is to be taken that no bombs fall on shore, and no merchant ships are to be attacked. Formations shall not loiter in the target area, and all aircraft are to complete bombing as soon as possible after the sighting signal has been made.’
    ‘Not only did I have all the leaders into the Operations Room the night before the mission went out,’ wrote