The Squadron That Died Twice Read online

  There was no miracle likely in Delap’s machine. With the first attack over, the WOp/AG, Frank Jackson, married to Kathleen and twenty-two years old, called on the intercom to say he had been badly wounded. Delap ordered ‘stand by’, which meant ‘get your parachutes on’.

  The top speed of a fully loaded Blenheim was around 220/230mph. A few days before, on 4 May 1940, the Royal Aircraft Establishment had been running tests on a captured Me109 E series, which was the type flown by the pilots now eyeing up the remains of 82 Squadron. Here are some of the comments made:

  During a dive at 400mph all three controls were in turn displaced slightly and released. No vibration, flutter or snaking developed. As speed is increased, the ailerons become heavier, but response remains excellent. They are at their best between 150mph and 200mph, one pilot describing them as an ‘ideal control’ over this range. Above 200mph they start becoming unpleasantly heavy, and between 300mph and 400mph are termed ‘solid’ by the test pilots. A pilot exerting all his strength cannot apply more than one-fifth aileron at 400mph. Good Points: High top speed and excellent rate of climb. Engine does not cut immediately under negative ‘g’. Good control at low speeds. Bad Points: Ailerons and elevator far too heavy at high speeds. Owing to high wing loading the airplane stalls readily under ‘g’ and has a relatively poor turning circle. Cockpit too cramped for comfort.

  A later conclusion was: ‘There is no doubt that in 1940 the Bf.109E, in spite of its faults, was a doughty opponent to set against our own equipment.’ What was meant by ‘our own equipment’ was the Spitfire and the Hurricane. Despite their poor turning circle and heavy controls at 400mph, fifteen examples of the E Series were more than doughty when set against seven Bristol Blenheims.

  The Blenheims were still bombed up. They had not reached the target, had not dropped their loads in anger, and skippers would not willingly jettison over what was still friendly territory.

  For McConnell, it was time to go. He couldn’t keep his machine in the air any longer. They were a few miles north-east of Hirson, near the French border. Observer Sgt S J Fulbrook went out of the front hatch while the pilot was struggling to get his own hatch open. The WOp/AG, LAC H Humphreys, also managed to get out but he had been wounded.

  Sgt Fulbrook, observer in that one aircraft to be downed by ground-fire, later made a report to Paddy Bandon: ‘My last sight of the pilot was him attempting to open the top hatch of the aircraft. I went out of the front gun hatch and my parachute took a long time to open. On my way down I was shot at by some French soldiers, who took me for a Hun parachutist. I landed in some woods about 12 kilometres east of Couvin.’ He was about 40 miles south-east of Nivelles where they’d taken the hit.

  Fulbrook’s reluctant parachute saved him in more ways than one. The pilot, McConnell, either landed in enemy-held territory or strayed into it and was taken prisoner.

  By this time, approximately 06.20, the remaining seven were in the Hirson/St Quentin/Laon area, heading into France as far and as fast as possible. The fighters came in for their second spree, from the starboard quarter, and picked on UX/B, captain Sgt T J Watkins. The pilot heard his gunner, Ken Reed, blasting away but not for long. The port engine was on fire and clearly they’d had it. Watkins turned off the petrol to that engine, put the machine into a shallow climb and ordered everyone out. The gunner never heard the order. LAC Kenneth Gordon Reed, aged nineteen, had been shot dead in his turret.

  Sgt Watkins was trapped. The cockpit escape hatch was stuck. As he wrestled with it, the Blenheim went into a half roll and exploded, and he found himself out there, skydiving, with no more injury than a bloody nose caused by his helmet being ripped off. Ripcord pulled, parachute opened, Watkins saw James Grierson’s machine with a wing on fire, and what was left of his own hurtling past him. He landed among the wreckage, between the hamlet of Merval and the small village of Lappion, north-east of Sissonne, about 15 miles from Laon. He saw Ken Reed’s body. There was nothing he could do; the people of Merval would later bury him in their churchyard. He couldn’t see his observer, David ‘Algy’ Lees. The villagers of Lappion would find the body and do the honours. The skipper, lone survivor, set off through the woods and fields.

  As Watkins’s machine exploded, Sgt Morrison was in section formation with Flight Lieutenant Watson and Sergeant Grierson. They managed another half-dozen miles or so. Morrison: ‘On this attack a petrol feed pipe in my starboard motor was severed and the engine lost revs immediately. This threw me out of formation and as I went I saw Sgt Grierson’s aircraft burst into flames.’

  UX/O, captain James Grierson, fell to earth near Festieux, a village of around 500 people on the Reims road, roughly 6 miles south-east of Laon. His body and those of his two crew, Joseph Paul aged twenty-one and John Patterson aged twenty, were recovered from the wreckage by the locals and buried in their cimetière communal.

  While Morrison wheeled away to port on his one engine to the north-east, the fighters turned their attention to the last man in the section, erstwhile leader but now with nobody to lead, George Watson in UX/M. It was no contest. Within a moment Watson, Frank Wootten and Alf Sims were hurtling down to oblivion. They fell little more than 5 miles from Grierson and 5 miles south of Laon, by the tiny village of Presles-et-Thierny, to be buried in the local churchyard. To be married, like Watson and Sims, was much more common this early in the war than it was later on, when the regulars were replaced by young volunteers who mostly thought their flying careers too uncertain for such a commitment.

  In the same few seconds, as that group of Messerschmitts was destroying Watson’s section, another was finishing off Delap and Co, already damaged and with their gunner incapacitated. Robert Francis Wyness had only just managed to don his parachute: ‘In a matter of seconds our machine was ablaze and my pilot opened the top hatch and signalled me to bale out, which I promptly did. On the parachute opening I saw others very near the ground and saw them land, but could not see who they were before I landed myself. On my way, a fighter approached from behind and fired a few rounds at me, which missed.’

  Possibly, the chutes he saw belonged to Sergeants Wrightson and Beaumont, and AC1 Thomas, the only whole crew to survive being shot down. Certainly, the chutes did not belong to Wyness’s colleagues. Delap was behind him, burned by the flames but managing to launch himself clear; Pilot Officer Frank Jackson was dead. The aircraft went in at Pancy-Courtecon, another 6 miles south of Presles-et-Thierny.

  F/O Fordham was in UX/B. As they took more than enough fighter fire to destroy them entirely, Fordham managed to get out and parachute to a safe landing but, looking around in what he assumed to be Belgium, or France maybe, as yet unoccupied, he couldn’t find anything of his regular observer, Frank Fearnley, nor of twenty-year-old Allen Glyndwr Richards DFM, U-boat sinker; two more names for the Runnymede Memorial.

  So, that was all of them, one to the flak, ten to the fighters, and Jock Morrison. ‘None of my crew were hit,’ he reported later, ‘and it was impossible to regain formation.’ Indeed it was, Sgt Morrison. There was no formation to regain.

  ‘I dived steeply, taking evasive action. On the way down I turned the petrol to the starboard motor from outer to inner tank and the motor caught almost immediately. On levelling out at 600/700 feet, there was an explosion underneath us.’

  It was a ‘friendly’ explosion. Messerschmitt bullets had damaged the bomb racks of UX/W and, in spite of all the switches being off, the 250lb bombs had disengaged and blown up some trees.

  Morrison and observer Sgt Carbutt conferred, saw much forested countryside and a major river, which must have been the Meuse, and decided they were over the woods near Givet, to the south-west of that historic town just over the border into France. If the bigger bombs could explode on their own, so could the smaller ones, so, ‘picking another heavily wooded area, I dropped the 40-pounders too so that we could force-land with some measure of safety if we had to.’

  They had the track home, briefed from the target, that cros
sroads beyond Gembloux they had almost reached not half an hour before: off they went. Morrison: ‘We were very far out in our calculations and we took a very long time to cross the Channel. I asked LAC Cleary to “home” on Watton, which he did, getting his first bearing very quickly and continuing to supply them regularly. This bearing brought us over our base.’

  Delap turned his men south as the fighters appeared but Gofton, Newbatt, Toft and Christensen all went down near the target. Six more succumbed to the fighters around Laon, while Sgt Morrison turned north-east towards Givet, then west towards Amiens, on to landfall on the Sussex coast, and north-east to Watton.

  They landed at 08.20. They hadn’t done all that badly coming home – an hour and fifteen out to the flak at Nivelles, twenty minutes being attacked by Messerschmitts, two hours back to Watton including looking for a place to drop the 40-pounders.

  ‘As we landed, the starboard motor petered out, due to lack of petrol, we having lost a goodly amount of petrol through the various leaks in the system, and having had trouble with airlocks in the system on the way back.’

  Fifteen Messerschmitts would indeed cause ‘various leaks’. ‘The aircraft had to be written off, principally because the main spar in the centre section had some bullet holes in it.’

  Wing Commander Bandon was there to watch his squadron return. They were late, no doubt about that: should have been back around 07.30 and it was getting on for 08.30 by the time UX/W stuttered to a halt. Taxying to the hangers on one engine in a wreck of an aeroplane was not really an option, and Paddy Bandon went up to meet the three shattered ghosts of aircrew who climbed out and tried to look presentable for the boss.

  ‘Where’s everybody else, Morrison?’ asked the Wing Commander.

  Approximate routes on 17 May and positions of downfall. The squadron flew directly to Gembloux, near Nivelles, from Watton, where the first five were hit. McConnell appeared to go down almost immediately, the only clear victory for the flak gunners, but managed another forty miles or so before having to jump near the French border, by Hirson.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RISING FROM THE ASHES

  As the Air Ministry put it, heavy losses must be suffered in attacking vital objectives. Bomber Command losses over the whole war were about one aircraft in twenty per operation. During the Blitzkrieg that was more like one in two, but twelve out of twelve was unique even in this dangerous trade.

  Morrison knew that at least four, more likely five Blenheims were not coming home. He told Bandon. Everybody saw McConnell go down. Cleary saw ‘three or four’, and Morrison himself had seen Grierson. That left six. They waited. The point soon came when they knew that petrol would have run out and the machines were either lost or landed elsewhere.

  The first notice they would have of that was some hours away, a telephone call saying that Delap was in hospital, injured but not badly. For the moment, there were no calls from airfields. ‘Everybody else’ was lost, missing, but not necessarily dead. Sgt Fulbrook had been in the first machine to go down, and his adventures were very far from over:

  ‘I left my parachute, harness etc and headed westerly, circling around behind the troops who had fired at me, and confirmed that they were French. On hearing the noise of motor transport I headed towards the nearest road and saw several light tanks and lorries with roundels painted on the front, so I came out of hiding and stopped one of them that had a parachute in the back.’

  The chute belonged to WOp/AG Humphreys, who was being looked after in a nearby village. With wounds from the flak and damage from his jump, he needed more serious treatment than the locals could supply. Fulbrook was taken to see him.

  ‘I found him with his arm and leg broken, and had his wounds dressed as far as was possible. I saw that he had an injection [morphine] before being taken to [an army] hospital at Massigny [Wassigny].’

  Wassigny, a small town between Le Cateau and St Quentin, 40 miles west of Couvin where Fulbrook had landed, would soon be overrun by the advancing Germans and Humphreys would be taken prisoner. Fulbrook: ‘I returned to the woods on a motor cycle and searched for F/O McConnell until 08.30.’

  There was no sign of his skipper so Fulbrook gave up and began to look to himself. A French officer he met spoke good English and was happy to take him in a car to ‘La Chappelle’ (La Chapelle-en-Thierache) and on to St Quentin, being strafed by three Me110s on the way.

  ‘On our arrival at St Quentin at 13.30 hours no [onward] transport was available so we went in the car to Péronne, as a train was leaving there for Paris at 15.00 hours. At about 3 miles east of this town, at a crossroads, there was a traffic jam and a Hun aircraft dropped about 70 [anti-personnel] bombs, and immediately the bombing ceased, the road was shelled for about 30 minutes.’

  Fulbrook had left the car and taken what shelter he could, which was fortunate as the car was blown up in the shelling.

  ‘The French officer and his staff had vanished, so I started to walk back to St Quentin [20 miles]. After three hours I was picked up by a motor-bus which dropped me in the square.’

  This was proving to be an exciting day for Fulbrook, and it wasn’t finished yet.

  ‘I tried to find an officer but could not find one to take any interest at all, and a section of the French troops treated me as a spy and wanted to shoot me on the spot. An English-speaking Frenchman came to my rescue and I stayed with him, helping him to build a barricade on a bridge over the river Somme. We left St Quentin at approximately 19.30 hours, going to Amiens via Péronne. I reported to Amiens aerodrome at about 23.00 hours and asked for a signal to be sent to base, advising of my return.’

  Time for bed, Sergeant Fulbrook. Frank Wyness, meantime, was also collecting stories for his grandchildren. He landed in a wood near Pancy-Courtecon, luckily in a clearing, if a boggy one. He stuck his parachute in a tree as a marker, thinking he might want to find his way back there, and set off to look for the parachutists he had seen land beneath him. He walked for an hour and a half before realising that the enemy had advanced rather further than he’d been led to believe.

  ‘I saw between fifteen and twenty Hun troops, apparently searching for something or someone, possibly me. I jumped into a stream and followed it, north-westerly, keeping under cover of the banks and some overhanging trees. After running for some time I came across a column of retreating Frenchmen, who had seen my parachute and were also searching for me. They were retreating fast so I joined them, and eventually reached Braye-en-Laonnois.’

  Wyness was back where he began, a mile or two from his landing ground. He picked up his parachute: ‘We retired to some woods south-east of Soissons but could not reach the town as it was being bombarded. The French left me in the charge of a nurse, Mme Sorlin, who was with some Belgian refugees. From there the refugee column moved to Villers-Cotterêts.’

  This was a 12-mile walk, south-west along the road that is now the N2. Villers-Cotterêts was the site of a fierce battle at the beginning of the First World War, during the retreat from Mons. The Germans would not meet such resistance this time but they weren’t there yet and the column turned north-west towards Compiègne.

  ‘We were bombarded by Hun aircraft. After lying under cover for three hours, we carried on along the railway line to a point where trains were running and finally reached Paris at 06.00, 19th of May.’

  After 60 miles on foot, carrying his parachute, he reported to the British Air Attaché in Paris who sent him to the Medical Officer for a check-up. That was fine, so he boarded a Lockheed Electra (as flown by Amelia Earhart when she disappeared, a similar aircraft to the DC2 Dakota) at Le Bourget, arrived at Hendon 15.15, got a train to Brandon in Norfolk, arriving 22.05. It is not recorded if he still had his chute with him when he turned up at RAF Watton.

  The 17th was an eventful day on both sides of the Channel for the Watkins family. About an hour after the sergeant was shot down, Mrs Watkins gave birth to a daughter, and a couple of hours later the telegram came telling her that her husband was m
issing. He was, but not permanently.

  He was walking south-west, hiding as he went from German soldiers who seemed to be everywhere. When he heard two men conversing behind a haystack, he drew his service revolver, the standard .38 Enfield No. 2, and confronted them. Two privates of the French army immediately surrendered to the superior power of the RAF and the three of them set off walking together. Some three hours later they reached a village, by which time Watkins’s injured knee was swollen to an enormous size and the shrapnel in his shoulder was painful. An ambulance was found and he was put in it, bound for Reims, where he spotted an RAF officer who turned out to be F/O Fordham, B Flight, 82 Squadron. Forgetting his swollen knee, Watkins jumped from the ambulance and, with Fordham, decided on a plan.

  They made their way south to Épernay, thence to Cherbourg, where they were evacuated with remnants of 105 Squadron, a Fairey Battle unit of the AASF which had virtually ceased to exist after heavy losses in the first week of Blitzkrieg. Watkins and Fordham were back at Watton a fortnight after they were shot down.

  Les Wrightson and Stan Beaumont, with AC1 Thomas, had not had an easy time of it either. The pilot, Wrightson, had been badly hurt in his parachute landing and the other two had to carry him. They joined a flood of refugees, caught a train to Paris and journeyed on many miles to Nantes, on the Biscay coast, where the captain of a French fishing boat agreed to take them back to England.

  Back at Watton on that dreadful morning, Jock Morrison and his crew went through the debrief - called the interrogation - with the intelligence officer, doubtless grateful for the tea and free cigarettes. Out on the airfield, in the messes, in the flight offices, in the control tower, there was a stunned silence for two hours. Ground crew, working as it were on autopilot, confirmed the status of Morrison’s machine as a write-off. People wandered about, or sat in confusion, wondering how such a thing could be. Paddy Bandon began making plans to reform his squadron.