No. 314 Squadron.
Target for Tonight,
16th/17th August 1944; Oil Refineries at Gelsenkirchen — in The Rhur.
Percentage of bomb payload dropped on target: 30%
Enemy aircraft shot down: 1 (Me-110).
Fatalities: None.
Injuries: 1.
My Wireless Operator W/O Simon Templar, unfortuate enough to have been wounded on our last op', received a light wound to his lower back.
Briefing:
Tonight, myself and my crew were bound for Gelsenkirchen, in Germany's industrial heartland of The Rhur. With all of the macabre highlights that 'Happy Valley' has to offer, we absorbed carefully what the C/O had to say, and then made a point of noting the Navigation Officer's cautious words …
Nav' Officer's Briefing:
"It's back to The Rhur, tonight chaps … So be careful not to stray off track. Gelsenkirchen, lies cosseted amongst half a dozen similarly sized towns, any one of which is more capable enough of giving you chaps a devil of a roasting should you steer a poor course — so be careful to stay on track!" he said, tapping his pointer stick soundly against the city, on a large wall map placed beside him.
Taking a moment to look over one and all watching on, he then jostled his stick before stopping to the circle the point of it, over the city of Essen.
"Essen, lies only five miles to the southwest of tonight's target area, and many of you will know just how formidable the defences there can be," he said, unemotionally, to which the small band of the surviving old hands began to murmur and nod. Confidently casting the pointer stick toward Bochum and Bottrop, he then returned to rest it back over our target for tonight on the pin ridden wall map …
"The route in tonight, is tight … And jerry — no fool," he added, looking coolly at all in the briefing room. "Should you stray off-track gents, you'll be as good as left to run the gauntlet alone, so do be sure to keep those eyes well peeled and make their fly boys work doubley hard for their ersatz!" before finishing a touch later on his all familiar phrase; "The very best of luck to you all chaps … See you in the smoke."
Pre-Op':
Our latter op' to Orléans, saw us operating without a regular Mid-upper Gunner following F/Sgt Valentine's death, and on the eve of tonight's operation to Gelsenkirchen, this state of play continued to remain the same despite the C/O's best attempts to badger a fresh egg from the silver tounged types who walk with 'egg on hat only' at the Aircrew Selection Centre.
As it was, we invariably failed to receive any permanent replacement in time for the main briefing. Come 16:30hrs — well beyond the completiton point of our night flying test, a temporary hand was finally received, so I wasted no time in shoe-horning F/Sgt Kendall; a Mid-upper Gunner from neighbouring R.A.F. Warley Fen, into our crew. Kendall, appeared to be a somewhat reserved soul, however, his gunnery report read well and his accuracy ratings are very much above the average, so I felt more than confident of his ability to partcipate and engage fully for what was shaping up to be an interesting night ahead.
It's just a pity in these situations, that the lack of time — pre-op' — makes it quite impossible for the remainder of my crew to get to know any replacement that much better. There's nothing like breaking the ice with a new egg, over a beer or two, at the Dog and Duck or Royal Oak, if only to help inspire a greater confidence in the team as a whole and accelerate the blending of whatever talent a new type has to offer, into the crew.
Take-off:
Tonight, we departed from the peri-track toward the runway in the wake of two sister aircraft; E-Emily and Obstinate Kitten. As Emily climbed to disappear into the darkness, I turned my attention to Obstinate Kitten — then formating on the runway ahead — and watched with F/O van der Boom as the light from the dying sunset began to arc across the perspex of it's slowly turning rear-turret.
As ever, van der Boom's 'piece of sweet' was there to be seen in regular attendance beside the chequered aircraft caravan at the runway's end. Smiling and waving, as she sought to wish us all well, I could not help but note just how cheeky a wink the sweet little WAAF had.
"Damn' bloody rhur …" said van der Boom, "What I'd give to see this scrubbed!" he groaned, as he tapped the instrument guages.
"Never mind, old man …" I replied, "At least you'll be coming back to a far happier valley than any of us tonight …" before adding a touch of throttle to push Lady-X closer to the runway. With Obstinate Kitten now bounding headlong down the runway, I watched as she lifted up to begin her long climb into the dark, then turned my attention to the task in hand, as I received a brilliant flash of green from the aldis lamp, then began X's long lonesome journey into the night.
En-route:
Despite a long climb skywards in acute and growing darkness, we made a safe and steady trip across the North Sea's foreboding black waters, to reach the coastline of the Netherlands without event. Thereafter, I opted to steer a stealthy path across Holland, sweeping from one pocket of fleeting cloud to another, in a bid to remain visually pretty much undetected, though was finally rumbled by a lone Tame Boar Me-110 night-fighter, who came up to meet my aircraft at roughly 23,000ft, just above the hamlet of Lemmer, in Holland.
Despite the vigilance of both my gunners who sighted the foe in good time, a rapid exchange of fire quickly ensued as the enemy night-fighter sought hard to take us out. Lurid rounds of enemy tracer were seen by myself to shoot fast over the top of the cockpit- which Imust say were a shade too close for comfort!
Rounds were also seen to pass over the station of my Wireless Operator W/O Simon Templar; who was at the time observing proceedings from the astrodome, before the night-fighter was finally shot down by F/Sgt — exploding violently as it went. No parachutes were reported seen. Three further rounds were later found on return to have made impact in my Lancaster's mid-section, though these thankfully caused only superficial damage — more kisses from Adi' to the Chiefy, no doubt!
Sometime thereafter, as I steered Lady-X on a very tight tangent to maintain her path through an air corridoor running between Dorsten and Gladbeck, my aircraft was heavily pounced on by an unseen Ju-88, resulting in the airframe taking a hell of a pasting; with damage to the port wing, port-inner engine, port oil tank and bomb-bay on the enemy pilot's initial engagement.
The damage to the port-inner engine necessitated the feathering of the port-inner prop; which I successfully managed. Both of my gunners then set about trying to take down the enemy night-fighter. The jerry broke off his engagement and banked away to port, to which my gunners assummed he would return from to have another crack, however thereafter there was no further sign of the foe, who inexplicably disappeared. A rapid inspection of my Lancaster's bomb-bay; by both my Bomb-Aimer and Flight-Engineer, found nothing out of the ordinary or untoward, and confident that the state of play down there was generally alright, we continued onwards toward the target.
Towards the target area:
The weather on arrival over Gelsenkirchen was found to be as forecast, though as we maintained our approach to the aiming point, we ended up well and truly jinxed by jerry's searchlights, whose blue master beam managed to bag us good and proper. As a result, we ended up getting coned, then further entangled with a determined FW-190 pilot who sought hard to press home an attack on us, though thankfully for all of us, the fellow simply couldn't get a shot to hit home, and then quickly broke off his engagement to seek other prey.
1st Bomb-run attempt:
As we steered to engage in our bomb-run, I and the crew identified a number of decoy fires and dummy t.i's, whilst maintaining a tight track toward the aiming point. The flak we encountered was relatively light, however any possibility of conducting a positive 'on-run' with a good degree of success was badly marred by jerry's searchlight crews, who blinded us very badly indeed. Jerry's blue master beam caught us bad and we quickly ended up coned. As the blue beam held us tight, we soon found ourselves joined by other beams — flooding the cockpit and all other stations with such an enormity of brilliant white light, that it made it almost impossible to see anything clearly at all. Corkscrewing on a dead engine — and we we're at this point on two — was simply out of the question, thus I opted to evade jerry's attention by taking violent weaving action and placing Lady-X in a dive. So long as the searchlights had us pinned, we were at serious risk of succumming to volleys of far heavier flak. I next had a hurried consultation with my Bomb-Aimer F/Sgt Styles — who doubted any chance of managing even a 20% drop on the a.p. with things as they were, so with this in mind, I then pushed the nose forward and decided to try and save the crew's bacon and our bombs, and descended to 12,000ft with the intention of altering course as I did, to bring us back on a tangent viable for making a good second attempt.
2nd Bomb-run attempt:
Having escaped the snare of the searchlights, I steered Lady-X out toward Erle, then turned towards Buer, before returning Lady-X onto track to prepare for our bomb-run. Our second run-in began positively and we successfully managed to evade the searchlights that had so plagued our first attempt. However, our luck was to remain rather short straw, as we quickly became the centre of attention for a hungry Wild Boar FW-190. The pilot of this enemy night-fighter did his very best to give us a hot reception, and badly raked my Lancaster's airframe as well as wounding my Wireless Operator; who sustained a light wound to his left thigh, before inexplicably vanishing into the night unscathed.
Damage to Lady-X; albeit superficial, was done to the starboard wing, mid-section and the fuselage, though by far the worst impacts were to the starboard-inner engine — which siezed up almost immediately after taking several hits. Despite the loss of the second engine, we did however manage to engage in our bomb-run with no futher problems, and made a commendable drop over the aiming point which F/Sgt Styles believes was 30% on target.
Exiting the Target Area:
Making a smooth clean exit from the target area, I then proceeded to steer Lady-X back across Germany and did as such without further incident. Creeping back into the skies over Holland, we then began to steer for the coast at a shade over 11,000ft and I urged the crew to be extra vigilant.
Our temp egg for tonight, Kendall, then broke radio silence when we were some two to three minutes from the coastline. I had been banking Lady-X steeply from port to starboard — to allow my gunners to keep a good lookout for jerry — when Kendall said, somewhat hurriedly; "Skipper, there's an '88 below, and he seems to be shadowing us …' Kendall, had seen the '88's silhouette slide in below us after we had passed over some water, and I can only guess how this made the remainder of my crew feel.
A few rightfully charged expletives from F/Sgt White; from his station way back in the rear-turret quickly coloured the air, but any chance of a crew member tendering Kendall with another reply, was sharply curtailed as the '88 suddenly tore into us with its guns. Taken quite unaware, I ducked, then watched on as most of the perspex of my station — the glass that made up a good percentage of the upper cockpit — was violently shot away to disintegrate in all directions, before being replaced by the freezing night air, which then thundered on into the cockpit like one's partner from hell!
This '88 then dropped down a shade and shot away at our elevators, then sought to give our bomb-bay a really good strafing. Quite why, I'm not sure? I can only think that his intentions were to take out our fuel tanks, or undercarriage, as being this close to the coast, even a novice pilot would have known we'd have no bombing ordanance left aboard … but then, just as we thought we were done for, the enemy night-fighter turned, and was gone.
"Jerry, must be low on gas …" said, F/Sgt White, as he watched him vanish into the night. Then, having made a rapid descent to skirt fast over the dutch coast, I levelled Lady-X off at 8,500ft and began to steer on a steady track for base.
Landing at Base:
The weather on arrival at base was found to favourable, by which time all of us — especially those of us in the nose section — were now feeling the cold, very much indeed.
Tired, and with only two engines running and a fuel supply now reading very low, we finally sighted and then touched down at base … The time; a shade past 03:15hrs, the damage impacted terrible, but we were all more or less in one piece and we were back.
Signed: F/O Green
Captain of Lancaster Lady-X.
Notice from R.A.F. Hospital Beechbrook, Warley Fen, for the attention of the following:
No. 314 Squadron Station Commander, No. 314 Squadron Commander and F/O David Green.
It is the professional opinion of The Senior Station Medical Officer, that W/O Templar (lightly wounded whilst engaged in his duties on the night of 16th/17th August 1944) should be fit and available for return to his duties, no sooner than on the evening commencing the 18th/19th of August 1944.
In the event No. 314 Squadron's next flying operation should be conducted before W/O Templar has fully recovered, then W/O Templar shall remain officially exempt from the undertaking of any flying duties, as agreed with Bomber Command H.Q. Medical Orders, No. 314 Squadron's Station Commander and No. 314 Squadron's Squadron Commander.
Signed: Air Commodore Archie Hamilton Glengarry,
Senior Consultant Surgeon,
R.A.F. Hospital, Beechbrook, Warley Fen.