The Squadron That Died Twice Page 2

  The novelty was also a challenge for the ground crew. In this revolutionary aircraft, nothing was what they were used to except for the training which, for aircrew and ground crew alike, in the RAF style of the time, was based on the assumption that the chaps would soon work it out.

  The first Blenheim to be delivered to an operational squadron crashed on landing and was a write-off, when the pilot was over-enthusiastic on the brakes and turned turtle, which could only contribute to the already burgeoning reputation the Blenheim had for not keeping itself in good shape. Some of these first machines were ‘development’ aircraft, expected to be flown for 500 hours as soon as possible and then returned to the factory for checks and tests. Aircraftman First Class Richard Passmore, WOp/AG, remembered one such:

  I did a fair amount of flying in K7059 and watched thoughtfully the steady deterioration of the visible surfaces, heard the creaks and groans accumulating, and felt more of that dicing-with-death feeling than normally. By the time she was ready to return to Bristol, the port wheel was lashed on with wire rope, everything rattled, and her condition was so unreassuring that the squadron’s pilots drew lots for the honour of flying her on her last trip. The loser won, so to speak.

  Factories at A V Roe and Rootes were brought in to help Bristol, and between them they built just short of 1,400 of the Blenheim in its first version, equipping twenty-six squadrons at home and in Empire outposts.

  The RAF now had some aircraft capable of attacking targets in Germany and would soon have more types capable in different ways. There were nowhere near enough for an all-out war, nor were there men to fly them should there ever be enough, nor yet a cohesive system for fully training such men. There were still no navigation aids beyond the old methods, so finding specific aiming points in bad weather or at night remained a matter of luck and inspiration. There was no stratagem for aircraft combining together to hit a marked target, and no devices for target marking, had there been such a stratagem. There were no RAF fighters that could do Germany and back but the idea that bombers could defend themselves successfully against enemy fighters had not been tried, much less proved. Worse, there had been no serious thinking about how these matters might be resolved.

  Although a full-scale offensive of strategic bombing against Germany was to become the official policy, the RAF was a long, long way from being able to carry it out.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, Commander-in-Chief of the bomber force from 1937, had had a brilliant career in the Great War, starting as a pilot of high repute and ending as a thirty-one-year-old brigadier, Royal Flying Corps. That he had a superb brain and exceptional talent for administration and analysis was never in doubt, though his abilities as a front-line commander were less apparent to some of his senior colleagues.

  His own serious thinking, on the gap between policy and capability, came to a horribly obvious conclusion. His pleas for more resources did not resonate loudly enough with the Air Ministry, preoccupied as most officials and politicians were with the requirements of Fighter Command and, in any case, there was that general belief, summed up years before by Stanley Baldwin, that the bombers would always get through.

  Doubt about the RAF’s capability in a bombing war obviously extended beyond the corridors of power.

  There was also opposition, or inertia, among those who objected to the whole business of bombing a country into submission. The RAF’s plan for destroying industrial targets in the Ruhr was initially met with a ministerial objection that factories were private property.

  Ludlow-Hewitt saw that if he were asked to mount that offensive, Bomber Command would be totally destroyed. With war approaching, he calculated that his current force would be annihilated within eight weeks. That force consisted of fifty-three squadrons of five types of aircraft – Wellington, Whitley, Hampden, Battle and Blenheim.

  Aircrew comfort was never much of a priority in warplane design unless it impinged directly on effectiveness in action, and the Blenheim did leave much to be desired in that respect. A new nose was called for, so the pilot could see and do everything with minimum inconvenience, and the observer/ bomb-aimer could do his job a lot better with more space and a chart table. The WOp/AG would appreciate a little more room and turret controls that were simpler and more convenient. Armament remained the same for the moment, although efforts to improve the machine defensively would later include twin guns in the turret and a fixed, rearwards firing gun under the nose.

  More powerful Bristol XV engines and bigger fuel tanks gave the new Blenheim, the Mark IV, longer range (1,460 miles unloaded), making it more suitable for reconnaissance although it was still seen as a bomber, a role for which it was not so suitable. It was no faster than the Mark I (slightly slower in fact) but it seemed to many aircrew and senior officers the very model of the modern light bomber, especially in view of biplanes gone before.

  These are official Air Ministry figures, showing how the air speed of bombers progressed in the ten years up to 1939, given in mph:

  Type 1929 1934 1939

  Light Fox 160 Hart 184 Battle 257

  Medium Sidestrand 144 Overstrand 152 Blenheim 295

  Heavy Virginia 104 Heyford 142 Hampden 265

  Hendon 156 Wellington 265

  The definition of a heavy bomber was really little more than the heartiest twin-engined beast around at that moment, and obviously does not compare with the later four-engined heavies. None of the 1934 bombers could have reached a target in Germany with a worthwhile bombload and got home again. Why the Blenheim was classified as medium is not clear, as the standard bombload was the same – 1,000lb – as before and the same as the Battle, and where they got 295mph from isn’t clear either.

  In December 1938, HM King George VI had approved the new 82 Squadron motto – Super omnia ubique (Over everything everywhere) – and the new badge, a weathercock in front of a sun in splendour, a nod to the original World War One design. This squadron was ready to operate in any direction, or it would be in August 1939, a month before war broke out, when the new Mark IV arrived and the move to Watton was made. Meanwhile, there were exercises in the Mark I, low-and and high-level bombing practice, cross-country flights, flying displays and, for 82 Squadron, ferrying Blenheims to RAF stations in Egypt. Squadrons from 2 and 3 Groups flew over France on missions to show solidarity and the flag; No. 82 did a round trip over Beachy Head to Paris, Orleans, Chartres and back, not realising just how well the crews would get to know such unfamiliar territory in the not too distant future.

  As war drew closer, other jobs were found for the 1,400 or so Mark I Blenheims, some in training and some being converted to nightfighters, and the other home-based squadrons also re-equipped with the Mark IV. At least, that was the theory.

  The actuality, two days before war was declared, was rather different. The RAF had been moving up through various official stages of readiness: Readiness D, 26 August, meant no flying except for necessary testing, aircraft dispersed around the outlying parts of airfields, all personnel recalled from leave, all aircraft to be serviceable. When mobilisation was ordered on the afternoon of 1 September, three of the 2 Group squadrons still had the Blenheim Mark I. Seven squadrons, including No. 82, had the Blenheim IV, but two of them (Nos 90 and 101) didn’t have the new engines yet. Most of the rest had the larger petrol tanks fitted but half didn’t have the new fuel systems completely installed.

  Other technical hitches and incomplete facilities meant that 2 Group could offer only 82, 107, 110 and 139 Squadrons as ready for the fray. No. 82 had fourteen aircraft serviceable, and fifteen crews. In a general ‘scattering’ in expectation of German bombing raids, half of 82’s strength was despatched to the satellite aerodrome at Horsham St Faith (now Norwich International Airport).

  By this time, exercises with Spitfires and Hurricanes had shown that the Blenheim, faster than anything else in the RAF when it was designed, was now nowhere near fast enough. Still, there was nothing anybody could do about that.

 
; No country has yet had extensive experience in modern aerial warfare, and although certain experience has been gained in the Spanish Civil War and in China, these can only be compared to an Air Force Pageant in relation to what aerial warfare between two powerful nations would be. (H P Folland, June 1939.)

  To-day the aeroplanes supplied in quantity to the Royal Air Force are technically as good as, or better than, those in other air forces. (F Handley Page, President of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors, July 1939.)

  Following recent successful experiments, a number of Italian reconnaissance machines will be equipped with television transmission sets enabling them to send off instantaneous pictorial reports of work done. The only problem still awaiting solution concerns the dimensions of the apparatus, which is very heavy. (L’Aquilone magazine, 13 August 1939.)

  The invisible wall, the Air Defence Zone West, is unsurpassable. Raiding machines will either be brought down entering German territory, or leaving it. (German periodical Der Adler, 22 August 1939.)

  CHAPTER TWO

  A TIME AND A PLACE

  During World War Two, a great many villages and small towns in East Anglia would find themselves transformed by the rapid addition to the local geography of a fighting aerodrome, but in Watton, Norfolk, the transformation came earlier, in peacetime, and not so suddenly.

  The last time Watton had had such a buzz about the place was around the Elizabethan era, when wool was the business and Norwich was England’s second city. This area of Norfolk, called Wayland, and the greater region, called Breckland, was always a candidate for outsider-mocking as the middle of nowhere. Unless you happened to be travelling between East Dereham and Thetford, you probably would never come across Watton, although you might know the story of the Babes in the Wood, supposedly originating in the ancient darknesses of Wayland forest.

  This quiet old town made its living largely from arable farming and life was geared to the annual cycle of the seasons. The people of Watton didn’t bother much about the world beyond the horizon, but that world came to them in September 1936 when work began on a new aerodrome, just south of the Norwich road, east of the town centre, between the Watton outskirts and the village of Griston.

  Work at ‘the camp’ paid rather better than agricultural labourers had been used to, and local farmers had to rethink their terms if they were not to struggle for a workforce. The work itself, at first anyway, was what the men were used to – clearing trees and rough ground, hedging and ditching, digging holes – but the more skilled tasks when the real building got underway needed more pairs of hands than the neighbourhood could provide. Over the next three years, Watton was something of a boom town, as the four great hangars went up and all the offices, quarters, messes and facilities were constructed for what was then considered a very modern station, with metalled apron in front of the hangars and a perimeter track, but no runways. Bomber aerodromes were still grass fields. There were no bombers big enough to need runways.

  First unit there, February 1939, was 34 Squadron with the Blenheim Mark I; they would be off to Singapore in August. Next, 21 Squadron landed, also with the Mark I. For all personnel, especially those in the officers’ mess, life was rather fine on such an up-to-date aerodrome. The countryside around Watton was excellent for riding and shooting, and dances in the mess became a considerable social attraction.

  No. 82 came to Watton with the Mark IV on August 22, only to be scattered nine days later to Horsham St Faith, thence to Netheravon on the day war was declared, to Bassingbourne, back to Horsham, and back to Bassingbourne. If an op were to be called, scattered aircraft would have to return to base to be armed, and crews to be briefed.

  After the disastrous attack on German shipping in the Schillig Roads on 4 September, when five Blenheims of 107 and 110 Squadrons were lost for virtually no productive return, another attack was ordered for the 6th, to be made by 82 and 139 Squadrons. They stood ready all day. By late afternoon, they would have been wondering how they were supposed to find ships passing in the night. At six o’clock, the op was cancelled.

  There were stand-bys most days after that, and from the 14th to the 16th, nine Blenheims of 82 and forty-five others stood by all day at three-quarters of an hour’s notice, ready to attack the Kriegsmarine should it try to interfere with the Royal Navy’s minelaying in the Channel. No call came, likewise when the squadrons moved to a more general readiness to combat German naval movements.

  Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and we know that the RAF was not permitted to attack mainland Germany. The British and French governments had agreed to follow President Roosevelt’s dictum that there were to be no civilian casualties, and Hitler had also concurred as soon as he had finished with Poland. This meant that the only legitimate target was warships at sea, but we have to ask why air force commanders thought it possible, never mind a good idea, to try to sink German battleships with Blenheims. Going in low meant that bombs would not penetrate and crews were very exposed to anti-aircraft fire from highly skilled and well-practised sailors. Later, orders would be given to other squadrons to attack from 10,000 feet, above the flak. It cannot have been considered relevant that, at that time with no accurate bombsight to work with, no RAF crew, in practice or in anger, in cloud or clear skies, had ever hit anything as small as a ship with a bomb from 10,000 feet, much less one that was steaming along taking evasive action.

  Anyway, for 82 Squadron, ships became yesterday’s priority. After Poland, a German invasion of France became a possibility and a new set of orders came in, for photo-reconnaissance of enemy communications – roads and railways – so that any subsequent build-up of forces could be measured, and of enemy airfields, twenty-eight of them, beginning on 27 September. Two Blenheims of 21 Squadron and three of 82 flew off to do this, with cameras not really suitable for the job. Flying Officer Hall of 82 came back with some marginally useful pictures taken above Hamburg and Fassburg. Pilot Officer Fordham saw the first real action for the squadron when he was attacked by flak near Wunsdorf and had to come down low, so low that he flew between two German aircraft, Heinkel 111s, which were on their landing approach. Fordham’s WOp/AG fired on them but no effect was noted.

  The third machine’s captain, F/O Coutts-Wood, was an amateur photographer on the ground, Leica always in hand, but he suffered oxygen failure at 20,000 feet, turned south from Cologne towards France, got lost, and managed to find Auxerre aerodrome before running out of petrol.

  Eventually, sixteen of the twenty-eight airfields were photographed, for the loss of two Blenheims of 110 Squadron. They found a complete lack of effective camouflage except at Fassburg, and the Luftwaffe had not followed the RAF’s lead in dispersing aircraft to the boundaries but rather left them in their normal groupings. Had the Blenheims been attacking rather than photographing, they might well have had very good results.

  Knowing that the ban on bombing Germany could not last, discussions now centred on enemy power stations, so photo-reconnaissance switched to those types of target as well as the constant look-out for signs of forces building up for an invasion of France. Indeed, there was a false alarm on 18 October, when a German offensive through Belgium was thought possible. If that had happened, 2 Group’s Blenheims could have been there in response in four hours plus flying time. As it was, they could keep their machines on the ground so that the top brass’s new idea, a fixed backward firing gun to be operated by the observer, could be fitted. Very few crews thought such armament would be any use at all. Of greater utility would be twin guns in the turret, but the trade-off in restricting the field of fire, especially to the rear where most fighter attacks could be expected, tipped the balance back to the single gun for the time being.

  Still looking for improvements, a Blenheim of 139 Squadron was treated to a modest streamlining and polishing, resulting in a top-speed gain of 13mph, from 264mph to 277mph at 10,000 feet. This treatment was deemed too labour intensive/ expensive for everyone to have it but the first to get the treatment was
also the first to have the new underside paint, colour ‘light sea green’, later known as duck-egg green. Squadrons were to have a few of these polished and painted machines for special missions.

  No. 82 Squadron consolidated at Watton on 1 November 1939 and Group orders changed again soon after. Those solo reconnaissance flights had cost seven Blenheims, very nearly one loss in every five sorties. Ships were back on the list and there were many stand-bys that came to nothing, reconnaissance flights that depended entirely on the weather, plus a new coastal duty, which had the Group providing, on every third day, twenty-four Blenheims ready to go at two hours’ notice. Christmas Eve, for example, had two aircraft of 82 Squadron looking for Deutschland class ships in port. These were the heavy cruisers that the British called pocket battleships, , the Deutschland, the Admiral Scheer and the Admiral Graf Spee, famously scuttled after the Battle of the River Plate. In any case, 82 Squadron didn’t find them.

  So far in the so-called Phoney War, up to the end of 1939, Bomber Command had lost sixty-eight aircraft in action and seventy-eight in non-operational crashes, mostly in training. Aircraft could be replaced; men learning their job, men teaching them, men lost in action who, at this time, were all experienced, pre-war regulars – these losses were harder to compensate for. Matters had been quieter at 82 Squadron, losing no machines in action and four Blenheims in training accidents with two fatalities, one crash being from a landing with the undercarriage up.