The Squadron That Died Twice Read online

The Germans were outraged, naturally. This was the most flagrant violation of neutrality ever seen. Added to which, the Allies were obviously too cowardly and weak to fight Germany directly, and so conducted an underhand war using the neutral countries as pawns in the game.

  As the newspapers published the Allies’ list of forbidden sea areas on the morning of 9 April, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and Denmark. By the time British readers had moved on to the crossword and the latest advice from Lord Woolton to housewives, Denmark had decided that the better part of valour was discretion, and was occupied. The southern half of Norway followed after a stiff but short fight.

  Such action was deeply regretted by Germany. It was only important military objectives that were the concern, and it was all done to secure Scandinavia against Allied aggression. Germany would respect the freedom and independence of the peoples of Denmark and Norway, and hoped very much that such respect would not be prejudiced by anything as silly as resistance, passive or active.

  The Germans’ real purpose was more complex than simply securing the iron ore. They did indeed want to prevent the Allies from setting up bases in Norway from which to attack northern Germany, and they wanted naval bases – especially U-boat pens – and aerodromes to give them better access to their enemy’s shipping lanes. Above all, they wanted to test just how determined and competent the Allies would be in a total war.

  The orders came in from Group, telling 82 Squadron to get ready to sink ships, then telling them not to bother. Nobody had ever severely damaged a surface warship at sea with a bomb, much less sunk one, but every day the squadron stood by to do the impossible, then stood down.

  Notification came to Bodney on 14 April that invasion of the Low Countries was imminent, so 82 was to be sent to recco the probable routes of the advance. There were four routes, with two aircraft assigned to each. ‘Recco can only be completed successfully by flying at low altitude. Obtain photos if possible. Do not carry bombs. Avoid AA defences at Wesel, Rheine and Münster.’

  This was serious stuff to set the nerves a-jangle. Flying low over Germany, looking for armoured columns – that would make a change from Heligoland. Of course, the Germans didn’t invade and the orders switched back to warships in the blessed Schillig Roads, Wilhelmshaven and everywhere else around the Bight where they hardly ever saw anything to bomb.

  On the 9th, a single platoon of German paratroops had captured Ålborg aerodrome, the Danes making no effort to stop them, in the first action of its kind in the history of warfare. Danish airfields would be highly convenient for air-raids on the UK; dusk attacks were to be made on Ålborg and Rye aerodromes, ‘to light fires for the benefit of the night bombers’, which would cause ‘maximum disorganisation and damage’. Crews were to be warned that if they flew low and fast they would run short of petrol and, curiously, they were told to ‘aim incendiaries at the target. It is most important that they fall on aerodrome. Release of bombs by judgement on run-up.’ Whatever the crews might have thought of such statements of the obvious, it didn’t matter. They didn’t go. Orders cancelled again.

  Thus, in April 1940, Germany had subdued Denmark and Norway with a minimum of effort, and Poland before that. When Hitler turned his gaze to the west, which way would he come? The French believed they could withstand any attack on their defensive barrier, the famous Maginot Line. So smashed up would the Germans be, that attack would turn swiftly into ignominious retreat.

  Since the Germans knew the strength of the Maginot Line as well as anyone, said the doubters, why would they try to break it when there was a much easier route through The Netherlands and Belgium? Belgium was neutral but so she had been in 1914 and that hadn’t bothered the Germans in the slightest. Denmark had been neutral a few days ago.

  The Dutch did believe themselves to be at great risk. Their forces were ready, determined, not so well armed, a gallant few – alas no match for the mighty Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. The Belgians did have defences, but they would be badly exposed if The Netherlands fell, and there were no defences to speak of between Belgium and France, and none in Luxembourg.

  The British sent aircraft from their France-based squadrons of Battles and Blenheims to recco possible airfields in advanced positions, so they could move up there to face the invaders more closely.

  Meanwhile, the Allies could not decide whether, in the event of a German invasion, they should hold the line at the French border or, assuming the attack had been halted by Dutch and/or Belgians, advance through the Low Countries and meet the Germans head on.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE WAR IN NORFOLK

  Who live under the shadow of a war,

  What can I do that matters?

  Stephen Spender might have written those words for the boys of 82 Squadron, keen to get into the action but so far seeing war according to an earlier definition, as long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of terror, except the punctuations hadn’t really happened.

  On the first day of the month of May, 82 swapped bases, Bodney for Watton, with 21 Squadron, and had six aircraft and crews standing by (again) for an attack on Ålborg aerodrome (again). Many moments of terror would occur at Ålborg later in the year but for now (and again) the op was cancelled. Never mind, twelve machines were bombed up and stood by at one hour’s notice, only to be stood down at 21.30. Bombing up with a mixed load of 40-pounder anti-personnel bombs and 250lb general-purpose bombs was a time-consuming business but the armourers got on with it, and debombed when yet another stand down came, and bombed up again for another stand-by, one hour’s notice from 05.30 next morning. Two sections stood down at 15.30, one to stay on an hour’s notice, another on three hours, all sections stood down at 20.00.

  From 2 May, the Blenheims of 2 Group were withdrawn from Scandinavian duty as a German attack to the west and south was believed imminent. The result, for a few days at any rate, was just another sort of stand-by. Here is Blenheim WOp/AG Richard Passmore:

  We stood by until light was fading and were then told we might stand down until the following day. Relieved, we went off to tea. That evening we listened more intently than usual to the news bulletins; they were clearly as confused as our intelligence reports had been. We knew that sooner or later our people would find targets for us and that we should then be sent in, time and time again, to do what we could. It was not a pleasant thought to sleep on, but none of us seemed to have much difficulty in going to sleep.

  When would they be doing something that mattered? Maybe 82’s Flight Lieutenant George Hall would have better luck, promoted to Squadron Leader and posted to 110 Squadron in Lossiemouth where, doubtless, even with his new responsibilities, he would be repeating his party trick of falling backwards to the floor with a drink in his hand.

  Stand by, stand down, stand by, stand down – long periods of boredom for aircrew, punctuated not by terror but by lectures on ‘First Aid in the Air’ and ‘Administration of Oxygen’. The armourers took the opportunity of fitting the observer-fired, rear-firing gun under the noses of those machines yet to be so fitted. Maybe that would come in handy when the balloon went up, or not. Bombing practice was the usual shallow diving at moderate heights, and experiments with a new low-level bombsight seemed promising.

  If you were one of the few crews not on stand-by, you might have blind take-off practice, or a trip to Mildenhall to practise Lorenz approaches. The Lorenz system was a German method for landing blind, adopted by the RAF, which worked on a radio signal. The receiver in the cockpit gave out a series of beeps – dots if you were off line to port, dashes if to starboard, and a continuous tone if you were right on the mark.

  There were cross-country flights too, to keep the navigators up to speed, and all this was still happening on 9 May. Next day it was different – in a way. As the Germans began the Blitzkrieg, all of 82 Squadron’s aircraft and crews were on one-hour stand-by and so, as the Recorder of Operations observed, ‘no training flying could be carried out’.

  Stand-down came at 16.0
0, but they were on an hour’s notice again from 03.30, 11 May. Orders came in three more times that day but none led to an op. The situation was fluid to say the least – the Germans were here, or nearly there, or already past that point. Targets could not be assigned with any certainty and aircrew, eager for action, found the delays and confusion very wearing indeed on the nerves, and imagined that situation to be worse than the reality of attacking the enemy.

  Meanwhile, another set of orders came from HQ, telling 82 and two other squadrons to be ready to move to France. The orders were written before the German attack but in expectation of it. The ‘probable role of the squadrons will be, during the very early stages after the violation of Holland, to reconnoitre to locate the advance of enemy columns, and to attack columns of AFVs and mechanised columns at the head of the advancing armies’.

  No mention here of the possibility of paratroops taking airfields, as they had done in Norway and Denmark. In any event, while the top brass was not deciding where to make a stand, and the staff officers of 2 Group were sending out their travel warrants, the Germans had struck simultaneously at several points on the Dutch and Belgian borders, in much greater force than had been expected. Paratroops took the Dutch airfields long before mechanised columns could have reached them, and air support and ground forces swept in behind.

  Suddenly, 2 Group’s priorities were bridges over rivers and canals, and those now-enemy aerodromes, as a force given over to Air Marshal Sir Arthur ‘Ugly’ Barrett and his command, the AASF. Still, matters were no clearer at Watton. There was more standing by on 12 May, more stand-downs and more bombing up, finishing with nine machines ready to go at 16.00, and at 19.00, glory be, they were ordered into the air. They circled, and at 19.30 they set off for the target, a road bridge over the Albert Canal north of Hasselt in The Netherlands.

  They were too late. Airborne troops had already overcome fierce Belgian resistance to take Fort Eben-Emael by landing on its roof, an exercise rehearsed in the strictest secrecy since the very beginnings of the war, and were in complete charge of the three bridges that the fort’s guns overlooked. By the time the 82 boys got their final instructions, the Germans had been in possession for a full day and more, plenty of time to set up their phenomenally good anti-aircraft batteries.

  There are no records of what happened to those nine crews after 19.30. We know there were no losses, likewise no story of success or failure. Perhaps they were recalled. Perhaps, luckily for them, they never got to Hasselt.

  Elsewhere it was a much bloodier story. The AASF was striking all right, but it was also being struck at an horrific rate. In a disastrous attack on the Albert Canal, 12 Squadron won two posthumous VCs but lost five Fairey Battles. By the evening of 12 May, Day Three of the Blitzkrieg, half of the AASF had disappeared. ‘Ugly’ Barrett said his force of 135 machines at the start of Day One had been reduced by 63 to 72. It was worse than that if you counted those aircraft that got home but were so badly shot up that they’d never fly again. There were also some destroyed on the ground by German bombers that Barrett may not have known about yet, and in fact the total was the other way around, more like 72 lost leaving 63, all Blenheims and Battles. The fighters also had losses, ten or more Hurricanes.

  Flying from UK, 2 Group lost a further nineteen Blenheims trying to stop the Wehrmacht, including six – plus one beyond repair – in a single raid by 15 Squadron, and four of 107 Squadron following in to the same target. The Luftwaffe War Diaries describes this, a great event from their point of view, and a clear demonstration of the Me109’s superiority over the Blenheim:

  At 06.00 First Lieutenant Walter Adolph observed some dark dots in the lightening sky to the east. Three, six, nine of them. They grew larger; too large to be fighters … twin engined bombers, coming rapidly nearer. Red, white, blue roundels … English … type Bristol Blenheim. A hundred yards astern of the last of them Adolph went down, then coming up again approached obliquely from below. The bombers stuck rigidly to their course. Hadn’t they noticed anything?

  In his reflector sight the Blenheim appeared as big as a haystack. He glanced momentarily to the left, saw Sergeant Blazytko closing with the next bomber, and pressed the button. Cannon and machine-guns went off together at a range of eighty yards, and little flashes dotted the target’s fuselage and wings. Adolph threw his plane in a turn to avoid colliding, and looking back saw the Blenheim’s port engine on fire. Suddenly the whole wing broke off. The rest of the plane seemed to stop. Then, rearing up, it went down to destruction.

  Adolph at once went after another Blenheim, and within five minutes had shot down three. Three more were claimed … as if that were not enough, the remaining three were spotted during their escape over Liège … two of them crashed to the ground in flames.

  Unusually for such reports, the losses were worse than the fighter pilot described but not all the victories were due to fighters. Twelve Blenheims of 15 Squadron took off at dawn for the Albert Canal bridges at Maastricht, with the standard orders to stick together in formation unless forced apart by intense flak. Six were shot down in the target area with fourteen crewmen dead and four taken prisoner, and one more aircraft was so badly beaten up that it never flew again. The Blenheims ‘spotted during their escape’ were part of the follow-up raid by 107 Squadron, with three shot down, one force-landed in the Liège area, and another struggling home to a no-wheels belly-flop.

  As 82 Squadron would be in a few days’ time, the twelve of 107 Squadron were flying in two boxes of six. F/O Gareth Clayton DFC, later the belly-flopper, was leading the second box: ‘I closed in hard behind and just below Embry’s leading box [Wing Commander Basil Embry DSO and Bar, AFC, later to evade capture in amazing fashion after being shot down over Dunkirk] making it a tight formation of twelve, flying in on the bomb run, but this did not last for long. Ahead of us I could see exploding AA fire – as well as being a good bombing height, 6,000 feet was also perfect for the Germans’ excellent 88mm gun.’

  The pilot of the force-landed machine was F/O Ronald Rotheram: ‘As we approached the bridges at Maastricht, I could see intense flak as another formation attacked the bridges ahead of us. My aircraft was hit repeatedly and Sergeant Brown (observer) was wounded in his arm. Controls to the port engine were severed and the starboard engine damaged.’

  Rotheram carried on to bomb, only to find two Me109s in hot pursuit. Escape in a small amount of cloud was followed by his port prop falling off and a crash landing in unoccupied Belgium.

  Eleven of the twelve of 107 Squadron were hit by flak as they went in to the target, one fatally. The flak forced a break-up of the formation; although some were able to reform as a group in defence against the fighters following them out of the target area, and one Me109 was claimed shot down, Blenheims v Messerschmitts was not a fair fight, a fact which all Blenheim crews were surely well aware of by now.

  Nothing much happened on the 13th in Bomber Command. There was a small op by the AASF aimed at the roads near Breda. A hit was claimed on a crossing and one Battle went down, nobody killed, while 82 Squadron was ordered, not to stand by, but to ‘stand to, a condition difficult to define’ according to the Recorder of Operations, on a day for licking wounds and taking stock. At Watton, a few of the observers went up for flying instruction. Perhaps there was speculation in the mess afterwards about the chances of an observer scrambling up from his cramped position to take over flying the aircraft with a dead or wounded pilot in a low-level attack, which was the kind they were expecting to make.

  Expectation became reality the next day, 14 May, and six of 82 Squadron flew from Watton, take-off time of Paddy Delap in the lead at 11.21, having been standing by since 04.00. The target was a crossroads between Breda and Tilburg. Breda, a strategically important Dutch town not far from the Belgian border, was also a target for large forces of Germans thrusting into The Netherlands from the east, and the mayor of Breda had been instructed by the French commander to evacuate. French forces intended to make a stand around B
reda and Tilburg and turn the tide of war against the Germans there, and by 14 May that should have happened, except they had left Tilburg to the Germans, who had also crossed the river into Breda - the CO of the Dutch forces in Brabant and all his staff officers were POWs.

  The French had retreated towards Antwerp on 13 May and the defensive line was now west of Breda, the road to Roosendaal, along which crowds of refugees from evacuated Breda were trying to make their way, often under fire from the Luftwaffe. Such up-to-date information was not available to the RAF and those six of 82 Squadron set off ‘with the intention of blocking’ the Breda–Tilburg road, which was a little like shutting the stable door after the cavalry regiments had bolted. That the road was not already blocked with retreating wrecks of French armour was a credit to the hard scrap-metal work of the German infantry.

  The squadron went in at their particular crossroads with the Germans well settled in their positions. Bombs dropped from between 5,000 and 2,000 feet hit the roadway, some houses around, and the Breda–Tilburg railway line, crews all the while under heavy anti-aircraft fire. According to the men coming home, the ack-ack gunners seemed to have got their height worked out especially well. The standard tactic of shallow dives would allow gunners the opportunity to make better calculations, but flying in close line astern, as these boys did, meant they were in and out before the gunners could focus on any one of them.

  All the 82 Squadron men did get home and, amazingly, could tell the ground crews that each machine was being returned in perfect condition. Six crews, eighteen men, safely delivered from fatal dangers on Tuesday, back in time for lunch at around 13.55, and every one of them fated to experience terror and destruction on Friday.

  The Germans had reached the River Meuse near Sedan in a spearhead attack, while the French 9th Army had obligingly vacated the Sedan area and moved north to confront the Germans in Belgium. The Luftwaffe had flown 500 bombing sorties in the late afternoon, well in front of their ground forces, keeping the French artillery quiet and stopping any attempts at reinforcement. Huge numbers of the German military could be seen moving unhindered to support the spearhead, and their 1st Rifle Regiment was over the river.