The Squadron That Died Twice Read online

  At 10.30, F/O Charlie Breese arrived from his fighter escort duties in France and Bandon told him the news. The establishment on 10 May had been twenty-two Blenheims. Now, assuming the other three got back from France, there were ten. Bandon knew very well that this sort of damage could result – at the least – in a short-term amalgamation with another squadron; but headquarters had decided on something more drastic. Before midday, the phone call came saying that No. 82 Squadron was to be shared out among the other hard-pressed squadrons and would therefore be no more.

  Bandon’s response was very firm indeed. Eleven crews were missing with no word so far of survivors and, assuming that Morrison’s first-hand knowledge was applied to the rest of the operation, there might well not be any. Those men could not be dishonoured in this abrupt manner. Their squadron must live on, and Paddy Bandon would see that it did.

  The wing commander got his way and began making inquiries, to be interrupted at 16.30 by the other three escorts landing back home. Captains Sutcliffe, Hunt and Atkinson were called in and given the story. There was still no news of anyone, but hope must not be given up. In any case, most of A Flight was still alive and well, and Bandon had every intention of getting the squadron up to strength within days, so the boys had better be ready to operate again soon.

  Next day was Saturday the 18th. Messages came in to say that F/O Fordham and Sgts Fulbrook and Watkins were safe, so their families could be told to ignore yesterday’s telegrams, and Fulbrook could tell Bandon about Humphreys, in hospital. Four officer pilots arrived from elsewhere to begin the rebuilding programme (other ranks’ arrivals were not noted in the ORB) and Paddy Bandon led them up on a practice flight.

  A copy of Friday’s London Gazette arrived at the station on Sunday. It announced the DFC for Sq/Ldr Walter Philip Sutcliffe, for his photography under intense AA fire on 20 March, surveying the seaplane base at Hornum (Sylt). Sergeant Reg Newbatt, late of Gembloux, only had MID for the same op, while their crews, including Algy Lees and Ken Reed who were killed at Gembloux in Watkins’s aircraft, got nothing.

  The bleak story of May 17, entered in the records as far as current information allowed, was signed off at the end of the month by Squadron Leader ‘Rusty’ Wardell, himself fated to appear in a similarly sparse report later in the summer.

  Another officer pilot arrived that afternoon, and that evening a young WOp/AG sat down to write a letter home. He was Fred Thripp, age nineteen, in the RAF since April 1938, with 82 Squadron since January 1939. He’d been on the fighter escort trip with F/Lt Joe Hunt:

  Dear Mum Dad Rene & Harry.

  Well here we are again, but not in quite the same spirit. I suppose that you heard about those eleven machines failing to return from the raid on Brussels, well they were all ours. Nine were from B flight and 2 were from A flight. Some of them escaped and are in hospital, and there is quite possibly some more hanging around that we have not heard of yet. My best pal was in one of them and we know definitely that he was killed. [‘Best pal’ was LAC Ken Reed, the only WOp/AG so far to be confirmed dead.]

  It was only by a miracle that they [Morrison and crew] got back, as the engines cut as they landed through loss of oil and petrol. The A.G. had the narrowest escape anyone has ever had. His turret was shot to pieces, his gun hit, holes all over the fuselage. The armour plating did its work very successfully.

  It was only by chance that all A flight were not on it, but the rest of us were over in France having a good time. We had to navigate some fighters over to different dromes, then by a prearranged plan we all met on one drome. You should have seen the stuff we brought back with us. And of course we all sold the stuff at a profit to us and the chaps themselves. They can get 50 cigarettes for 1s/6d so we brought quite a number back beside some liquid. [As opposed to 30, generally at 6d for a packet of ten. One shilling and sixpence would be about £3.50 today.]

  We had an air raid soon after we landed [in France], but nobody takes any notice of them, you just carry on, listening to the guns and watching the smoke puffs in the air. We landed on one drome which had been bombed only a couple of nights before. I can nearly find my way over France now by just looking at the towns. It was very pitiful to see the refugees going along the roads, with a couple of blankets and a few odds and ends strapped onto their cycles, with no place to go, yet all going in the same direction. We could just make out what they were trying to say to us, about good luck and all of the rest of it. But it was quite an education, all through the whole trip. I always looked on the old war stories with a certain amount of doubt but it is just as they say. The cookhouses are small tents hidden in the trees.

  Well I could tell you a lot more but that can wait for a while, until leave periods start coming round again. We are waiting for some new machines to come in now. Then we get going again with what is left of us. Cheerio for now.

  With Love.

  Fred

  PS If you will I should like some more of that sulphur ointment for my face, and perhaps some Yeast-Vites. I hear now that we go into the attack tomorrow with our remaining six.

  It would seem that Fred, like many teenage boys, suffered from acne, to be treated the traditional way with sulphur.

  Mum, Dad, Rene and Harry may well have heard about the eleven missing aircraft. The Air Ministry had released a statement on the evening of the 17th, which was reported in all the papers the next day. The Times carried the story, beneath headlines that read ‘RAF Still Attacking, Bombs on Enemy Supplies, Heavy German Losses’ and beneath a deal of copy about fierce and determined attacks inflicting great damage. One paragraph said: ‘In support of the French Army, a squadron of Blenheims made a sortie this morning to bomb a key position at Gembloux. They encountered a large formation of enemy fighters and intense AA fire. In spite of great gallantry and determination 11 of our aircraft failed to return.’

  Air Ministry statements were a curious mixture of propaganda, gloss, and the stark truth. On the same page of The Times was a piece headed ‘Losses Compared’, suggesting that the Germans had lost over 1,000 aircraft since the start of the Blitzkrieg, not to forget the losses sustained in Poland and Norway.

  Today’s German High Command communiqué gave the losses of Allied aircraft as 1,462. It is thought that the High Command must have published their own loss in error. Allied losses are in fact only a small fraction of the German machines.

  In spite of these heavy inroads into the fighting strength of the German Air Force it must be understood that their reserves are considerable, and that they are for a time, at least, able to sustain their effort.

  The Times Aeronautical Correspondent further commented: ‘It is accepted that during the whole of the past week’s intensive aerial warfare in France and Belgium the technical superiority of British aircraft over those of the enemy has been demonstrated even more convincingly than during the earlier minor engagements.’

  Fred Thripp, who must have known rather more about fractional losses and technical superiority than Times journalists, had written that he expected to be on the attack again the next day, the 20th, and so he was. Orders had gone out that, in view of the disastrous results so far, 2 Group and the remnants of the AASF and the Air Component were to fly only at night. It was never explained quite how 1940 bomber crews were expected to find small moving targets, such as groups of armoured vehicles, in the dark, with no more navigation aids than a walker on the fells. Then, having found said target, ill met by moonlight perhaps, they were supposed to destroy it while being unable to see it properly.

  During the day of Monday 20 May, the eight Blenheims remaining of Air Component squadron No. 18, landed at Watton from France. At 21.35 and 22.05, two sections of three Blenheims of 82 Squadron took off for the road between Geraardsbergen (Grammont) and Oudenaarde (Audenarde), about 30 miles west of Brussels, where there was an armoured column. In the lead was Paddy Bandon, with WOp/AG Leading Aircraftman Thripp, both of them no doubt thinking about those eleven machines and crews failing to retur
n but never for a moment questioning their duty as a fact of wartime life. With them were four new pilots and old boy P/O Atkinson, with a mixture of new and old hands as crew.

  If the expectation was that two separate sections of three crews might each fly to and find a particular panzer unit on a particular road at night, then somebody wasn’t thinking straight. A more realistic task would have been to fly to the area and attack targets of opportunity, which was what happened.

  One of the six came back early with mechanical trouble. On a misty night, two crews found a target that they believed was on the Halle–Leerbeek road, 12 miles south-west of Brussels and bombed from 2,000 feet. Another crew dropped their bombs near the little town of Galmaarden (Gammerages), around 6 miles east of Geraardsbergen, all at once (in salvo) as their Mickey Mouse was u/s (unserviceable). The control used by the observer to select which bombs to drop was a small panel of switches with a clockwork mechanism, all of which, looked perhaps, very vaguely, like a Mickey Mouse watch, or perhaps this was an early instance of that term being applied to something not really up to its job.

  The other two came home with their loads intact, having been unable to find anything to bomb, and the overall effect was negligible. Night raids of this sort were worse than useless. Aircrews were still in danger – ‘All forms of AA fire were encountered and searchlights were numerous and effective’ – although there was no threat from fighters. More important from Ugly Barratt’s point of view, night bombing was doing nothing at all to hinder the Germans. He asked for daylights to be brought back.

  The policy at 2 Group was that daylights could only be mounted with fighter escort or cloud cover, neither of which could be reliably arranged, and even if they were so mounted, the results were hardly encouraging. Just a few hours between target assignment and attack often meant the target was no longer there but rather those few hours further into the enemy’s short-term objective: to encircle and trap the British Expeditionary Force.

  Fred Thripp was up and away again next day as WOp/AG with the CO, and with the Germans well into the Pas-de-Calais, heading rapidly towards completing the circle. Trying to stop them as they roared along the road from Hesdin towards Boulogne were three of No. 82 in a joint op with nine of 21 Squadron, scheduled to meet another dozen from 107, for whom it was the second raid of the day. Near Montreuil, only 6 miles from the fishing port of Étaples and the elegant holiday resort of Le Touquet, bombs were seen to hit and near-miss, and as they returned so six more of 82 plus three of 18 Squadron, lately based in France, headed for the same region led by Walter Sutcliffe.

  They would have fighter escorts, Spitfires, so there should be no trouble from Messerschmitts. As if to prove that you were never safe in a bomber in daylight, when the formation was almost at the appointed rendezvous with the escorts, six Spitfires flew across their line and fell in behind. This was odd, because escorts normally flew above, 1,000 feet or so, ready to dive down on any peregrines attacking their pigeons.

  Just how odd became clear immediately, as one of the Spitfire pilots, the leader, went for the 18 Squadron Blenheim skippered by P/O Viv Rees and shot large pieces off the port engine. He also managed to hit fuel tanks and port aileron but missed everything on the starboard side and most of what was in the middle, including all the crew. Bomber crews expected this sort of thing when flying over His Majesty’s warships, the sailor boys being notoriously poor at aircraft recognition, but it was something of a shock coming from their own RAF.

  Rees thought he could get down, which was better than jumping, and so headed for Boulogne. Once over that town and 5 miles on, he found a decent landing space near the small seaside resort of Wimereux. Coming in, he realised that the Spit had rendered his landing gear u/s and so had to belly flop. This was still a German-free area, and the crew could get themselves back to Boulogne and on to Watton next day. What happened to the Spitfire pilot is not recorded.

  Keeping a careful eye out for friends and enemies, the rest pressed on to find ‘columns of tanks and lorries at 20 yard spacing north of Le Touquet’. They went in low, down to 1,500 feet, dropped their bombs, and came around again to strafe the enemy on the road. Bombs hit, fires were started, there were explosions, but a few gallant Blenheim crews could only do so much.

  The situation was indeed desperate. The Germans had reached the Channel coast at Abbeville on the 20th and had turned north, with a large swath of Belgium and France behind them, bordered more or less by the river Somme. Le Touquet marked a point 45 miles or so south of Dunkirk. They were also on the North Sea coast in The Netherlands, which had surrendered on the 15th, and, despite last-gasp resistance in Zeeland, the enemy effectively controlled the whole country and its aerodromes. In the middle was the British Expeditionary Force, what was left of the Belgian army and large components of French.

  The BEF was cornered and launched a counter-offensive from Arras towards the Bapaume–Péronne gap, where there was a perceived opportunity to break through the German corridor along the Somme valley – that is, the space of some 30 miles between the isolated Allies and ‘mainland’ France. The French changed their supreme commander, causing delays, and though they came at the same objective from the south, they were compelled to fall back. The gap had shrunk to not much more than 10 miles but there was no breakthrough. The BEF was doomed, and all that 2 Group had left to help were 60 serviceable Blenheims.

  Eighteen of them went back to Hesdin, 22 May, a joint op for 82 and 21 Squadrons. They found some tanks and transport standing in the road at Hubersent, a few miles north-west of Le Touquet. They dive-bombed the targets in sections of three, line astern, and almost got away with it. There were direct hits on the vehicles but there was also one on a Blenheim of 82, its observer one of the old boys, Sergeant Fred Phillipson, age 27, married to Elsie. He’d flown with Sutcliffe on the French fighter escort jaunt, so missing the mayhem of 17 May but not missing the same fate for long. The skipper, Sergeant John Hartfield, and the WOp/AG AC2 Angus Elliot were killed, too, so that was the end of their 82 Squadron experience: four days.

  Also on this day, Squadron Leader George Hall of 110 Squadron, late of No. 82 - he of the falling-over drink trick - and his crew were killed, shot down by the Abbeville flak.

  During the night of 22/23 May, the Germans launched a surprise attack on the fort at La Crèche, near Wimereux, originally a Napoleonic defence against the British but now modernised with formidable guns and a significant obstacle for the Germans as they gathered around Boulogne. For the Allies, Boulogne wasn’t just another city to fight for; it was the main evacuation port, where the wounded could be sent home.

  The Germans’ night attack failed as the garrison spun their cannons round to fire inland, but another attempt in daylight succeeded. The naval response was to send a small flotilla of Royal Navy and French warships to shell the fort, to try to destroy the guns.

  One aerial response was to send three Blenheims of 82 Squadron in the evening, led by F/Lt Hunt with Fred Thripp in the turret. By this time, the Germans were in possession and the flotilla was bombarding. ORB: ‘The first run was ruined by several Allied destroyers which fired continuously at our aircraft in spite of correct recognition procedure.’ Even so, the Blenheims went around again and bombed some German tanks. Crews noted that the fort was damaged, so the navy was getting something right.

  The news was worse the next day, Friday 24 May, two weeks into the German invasion. Boulogne had fallen. The BEF had nowhere to go except home, via Calais and Dunkirk, and the Germans were not going to allow that. Boulogne to Calais is hardly 20 miles as the crow flies or, indeed, as the tanks raced along the main road that is now the A16/E402. About two-thirds of the way is the village of St Inglevert, and the panzers were rattling through there on that same morning. Six of 82 Squadron took off with six of 21, fighter escorts were met, and by midday they were bombing the enemy north-east of St Inglevert, towards Calais, and blowing holes in the road if no tank hits could be claimed.

  Britis
h reinforcements had arrived in Calais in a great rush, with orders to push out. Attempts to do this proved very expensive, while the Germans, obviously planning to attend to Calais when they had a moment, skirted round the place and headed for Dunkirk.

  That evening, Paddy Bandon, with his favourite WOp/AG Fred Thripp in the turret, led six to a spot about halfway between those two ports, near Gravelines. Again, it was holes in the road but no tanks hit.

  Headquarters at 2 Group issued an order of the day that surely cannot have been gratefully received by aircrew flying out to face the flak and the fighters every morning and afternoon: ‘It must be impressed upon leaders that risks must be taken in this emergency to find the really important targets, and attack them.’

  Really? And what else?

  ‘It must now be accepted that the day has passed when attacks can be launched at definite targets as a result of previous reconnaissance. This is due to the rapidity of movement of enemy forces.’

  You don’t say. So that’s what’s been happening.

  The statement closed with another stab at the obvious: ‘In view of the critical situation of the BEF it is essential that all attacks are pressed home with vigour.’

  The Germans were coming from the east as well as the south. Some 2 Group squadrons kept on bombing in the Calais region, while 82 went for that stretch of the river Lys between Menen (Menin) and Kortrijk (Courtrai) the Germans were trying to cross. Bridges were the targets, old ones and the pontoons the enemy had built, and most attacks were made by single aircraft, dive-bombing through heavy concentrations of AA fire or, like the man said, taking risks to press attacks home with vigour. Six went at dawn, and six more in the afternoon and, surprisingly, they all came home again.