Mosquito: Menacing the Reich: Combat Action in the Twin-engine Wooden Wonder of World War II (43 page)

By this time we had lost sight of Mike Benn and were somewhere south-east of the target. If we tried to make the target on our own we might arrive just as his bombs were due to explode, so we headed for a secondary target in a wood. We duly dropped our four 500-pounders on a hut in the wood and fled at high speed towards the coast. We flew low over a large chateau outside which German troops were milling around, then I told Ed to climb before we hit the coast. Unfortunately I left it too late and we were on top of the coast as we started to climb. Up came the flak, hosing around us and down went the nose as we sped out to sea, weaving like mad and followed by the now all too familiar tracer. Soon we were clear and heading for home, somewhat relieved to find ourselves still in one piece.

When we got back to Hunsdon we found that a 20-mm shell had come up underneath us from the port and entered the starboard nacelle. It blew a large hole in the inboard side of the nacelle and a smaller one in the outboard side. Shell splinters had knocked chunks out of the starboard flap and out of the fuselage side just about where I was sitting. I was thankful that a Mosquito had a thick skin; if it had been metal I would probably have had a sore bum. The shell struck in the only part of the nacelle where it couldn’t do any damage: in the rear fairing. Any farther forward and it would have smashed the undercarriage.

For another Noball, on 7 March, to near Les Essarts, our leader was Flight Lieutenant Duncan A. ‘Buck’Taylor, with Squadron Leader Philippe Livry-Level as his navigator.
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We decided to stay high after crossing the coast, identify the target, dive on it, then climb back up to 3,000-4,000ft until clear of the coast on the way back. There was a flak position on the right of our approach to the target, so we arranged that we would both fire our cannons as we dived, hoping that this would make them keep their heads down until we were clear. Everything went according to plan and we arrived over the target and went into a steep dive, both of us firing cannons on the way down. There was no problem from the flak position but as we pulled out of the dive and released the bombs a burst of 20mm shot up vertically in front of us. Buck was clear but we had no choice but to fly through it. As we climbed away I looked back to see the whole site erupt as 4,000lb of high explosive went off. I must say that I’ve always had a grudging admiration for the guy who shot at us. To be blasted with eight cannons and yet have the nerve to jump up and let fly at us, presumably aware that he was about to get eight 500lb bombs around his ear holes took some courage.

Ed said, “Check around. I think we’ve been hit.”  There was so much racket from the cannons as we dived that I hadn’t heard any bang but I checked for fire and loss of fuel. The fuel gauges were reading normal, so we joined up with Buck for the return trip. We climbed to 4,000ft and stayed there until clear of the coast, then dropped down to sea level over the Channel. Soon after we were clear of the French coast Buck’s aircraft fired off a Very cartridge and he was obviously in trouble. I checked the list of the colours of the day but the one he’d used wasn’t on it. We were puzzled and expected him to ditch at any moment but nothing happened. I tackled Philippe at debriefing and he explained that he had to have a smoke, he used a long cigarette holder, and since the designers of the Mosquito had forgotten to include an ashtray in the specification, he was forced to improvise. An empty Very cartridge case would fill his requirements, so he emptied one! Smoking in or near an aircraft was strictly forbidden but Philippe was a law unto himself.

Ed had been right in thinking that we’d been hit; a 20mm shell had exploded in the port spinner. It appeared that bits of it had gone rearwards through the engine, because the bottom cowling had a number of carbuncles that weren’t there when we started. And yet the engine and propeller pitch mechanism had functioned perfectly, which gave me a great deal of confidence in the Merlin. I was beginning to think that if these sort of trips were the norm then sooner of later a shell would find a vital spot and our chances of completing a tour of ops looked none too promising. In the event these were the only times that we sustained damage although they weren’t the only times the enemy took a dislike to us and let fly.

Our next two ops were also against V-1 sites but employed a very different technique. Six aircraft, in two vics of three, joined up with two Pathfinder Mosquitoes fitted with Oboe, at the coast. We followed the lead Oboe aircraft up to 20,000ft while the second Oboe aircraft tagged along behind in case of equipment failure in the lead aircraft. We had an escort of six Spits, which was some comfort. The idea was that we would maintain close formation on the Oboe aircraft. His four bombs were set to drop in a stick and the boffins had calculated that, by the time the third bomb appeared out of the bomb bay, we would have woken up and released our bombs also. So the leader’s third bomb was supposed to be on target, with the first two undershooting and the last one overshooting. The only snag with this system was that Oboe required that we fly in tight formation, straight and level for 10 minutes until bomb release. This was not exactly amusing, since the Germans were somewhat hostile and slung a lot of heavy flak at us as we approached the target east of Abbeville. It was a long 10 minutes, sitting there at 20,000ft, having to take everything that was thrown at us and not being able to take avoiding action. You just prayed that your name was not on any of the bits of metal that were being flung into the sky. The Spits, wisely, kept well clear of the formation at this time, as did the stand-in Oboe aircraft, who only closed in tight at the last minute.

With bombs gone we turned for home. From that height Dungeness looked so close. The rest of the formation had adopted a ‘last man home’s a sissy’ attitude and were hell bent for the English coast. With wartime camouflage it was difficult to see an aircraft from above; it merged very effectively with the ground below. So suddenly Ed and I found ourselves all alone in the sky and, reckoning that we’d outstayed our welcome, stuck the nose down and went, hell for leather for Dungeness and safety. We were travelling so fast that even with the throttles right back and the undercarriage warning horn blowing continuously the ASI was indicating well over 300 mph. And I was wondering at what speed the wings came off. Part way across the Channel we caught up with another Mosquito and tried to maintain some form of decorum by flying in formation with him. One of the Spit escort managed to catch us up in mid-Channel and stayed with us until we crossed the Kent coast when he did a victory roll and headed for his base, wherever that was. At debriefing the flight leader, Squadron Leader Ritchie issued a rocket. He said we’d behaved like naughty schoolboys who’d been breaking windows and then run away. I don’t think we cared that much, as long as we’d broken the right windows. Sadly, we hadn’t. The much-vaunted Oboe had caused us to drop our bombs several miles, I believe, from the target. So, as a penance for our sins, we had to go out next day and do it all over again and this time we did all come back together. For the rest of March and the first half of April our ops were all Night Intruders on airfields in Holland and France. We never spotted any aircraft but we did bomb and strafe the runways and dispersals. At Evreux the Germans were most co-operative and switched the lights on for us. We made what we thought was a bombing attack, that is, until we got back to base and I found a dark object hanging under each wing, which shouldn’t have been there. Ed had forgotten to select the bombs.

The last raid on Hengelo by twelve Mosquitoes of 140 Wing, 2nd TAF took place on 18 March 1944. Although the Stork Works was no longer on the target list there was still the important target of Hazemeyer. The low-level raid was led by Wing Commander R.W. ‘Bob’ Iredale
DFC
and involved four aircraft from each of 487 Squadron
RNZAF
, 464 Squadron RAAF and 21 Squadron RAF at Hunsdon. A Mosquito of 487 Squadron aborted its sortie 5 miles south-west of Lowestoft after an engine failure while another hit a tree when it took evasive action to avoid hitting another Mosquito. Three remaining aircrews bombed the target at 16.36 hours and very good results were claimed. The whole area was seen to have numerous fires. No.464 Squadron bombed a minute ahead of 21 Squadron and crews succeeded in hitting the central part of the main building and setting it on fire. Fifteen-year old Henk F. van Baaren was among those who took shelter in the cellar at the family shop in Hengelo. He recalled:
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Some bombs fell in the town centre, one killing a German officer in the street. A couple of houses were damaged and two civilians were reported as having been killed. After the raid I saw two girls running away from the bombed centre area of the town. There was blood all over their faces and dresses but later I heard that they had been in a grocer’s shop when the blast of the exploding bombs had blown debris from tomato juice and jam containers over them! Later when my father and I were talking together on the pavement in front of his shop window, there was a loud bang followed by the sound of broken glass. At that moment an ammunition train near the railway station exploded and the force of the huge blast blew out our shop window scattering glass all over us. Buildings in a large area around the station, including much of the main shopping centre, the main offices of the Stork Works and other factories nearby had all their windows shattered. Two German guards were killed and a number of soldiers were injured. The German AA gunners, having been in action on the roof couldn’t leave their positions after the bombing as numerous fires surrounded them. The German fire brigade arrived to rescue them but when they connected the hoses to the fire hydrant they couldn’t get any water. They were rather irate and angry and accused the local firemen, who were called in from other factories nearby, of sabotaging the supply! Peace was eventually restored between the two parties and the AA crews were rescued. The fire brigade report reads: ‘forty-eight 250kg HE TD eleven bombs dropped of which forty were on target; twelve bombs hit the factory interior at 16.36 hours after which the factory clocks stopped! It took until 3 am to extinguish the last of the fires in the factory.’

No.464 Squadron had also bombed the primary target but the Mosquito flown by Squadron Leader W.R.G. ‘Dick’ Sugden and Flying Officer A.H. ‘Bunny’ Bridger was hit by flak in the starboard engine, which caught fire. The Australian crew crash-landed in Albergen not far from the target area and they were slightly injured. Luckily Dutch farmers living nearby helped them out of the aircraft but they were disturbed to discover that there were still bombs on board. Some Germans, who quickly arrived on the scene, took Sugden and Bridger prisoner. They were taken to hospital for a check up and three weeks later Sugden was sent by train to Amsterdam and from there with a group of American aircrew to Frankfurt. He ended up in
Stalag Luft
I Barth where he was reunited later with ‘Bunny’ and with his former flight commander, Squadron Leader Ian McRitchie who had been shot down on the Amiens prison raid in February, which Sugden and Bridger had also flown. The Russians liberated all three airmen on 1 May 1945.

More low-level pinpoint daylight raids, for which 140 and 138 Wings would become legendary, took place in 1944. In April Mosquitoes of 2nd TAF were once again called upon to fly a very important low-level strike mission, this time to Holland, when 613 Squadron, commanded by Wing Commander R.N. ‘Bob’ Bateson
DFC
, was directed to bomb the
Huize Kleykamp
in The Hague. Before the war the five-storey, 95ft high white building on Carnegie Square had been used for art exhibitions. Now occupied by the
Gestapo
, it housed the Dutch Central Population Registry and duplicates of all legally issued Dutch personal identity papers so that identity cards falsified by the Dutch Underground could be checked and recognized as false. Jaap van der Kamp and a few other Underground members had managed to infiltrate the Bureau staff in the building and sketches of the interior layout and its immediate surroundings were prepared. The
Huize Kleykamp
was strongly defended day and night and the ID card duplicates were stored in heavy metal cupboards so a raid by the Underground was just not possible. In mid-December 1943 London received word from Holland requesting that the building be destroyed from the air. It would be the most difficult job that a bomber squadron had ever had to face.

Light anti-aircraft weapons defended the
Huize Kleykamp
and it was tightly wedged among other houses in the Scheveningsweg, which made accuracy very difficult and heavy civilian causalities could be expected. By March 1944 there was no alternative; the building had to be destroyed. Planning for the raid therefore had to be meticulous. The attack would have to be carried out when the building was occupied on a working day so that the files would be open and the card indexes spread out on desks, otherwise they could not be destroyed by fire. The Dutch underground was not overly concerned with the deaths of the
Kleykamp
personnel as they were regarded as collaborators anyway. Finally, the time of the attack was scheduled for midday so that most civilians would be off the streets and having lunch. A scale model of the building, perfect in every detail right down to the thickness and the composition of the walls was built. Meanwhile, scientists developed a new bomb, a mixture of incendiary and high explosive, which was designed to have the maximum effect on the masses of
Gestapo
files and records. Bateson picked his crews carefully and put them through weeks of intensive training. Embry insisted that the mission could not go ahead until visibility of at least 6 miles was available. At last, on Tuesday 11 April all was ready.

In the early morning Bateson led six Mosquitoes off from Lasham and set course very low over the North Sea to Holland with Spitfires for escort. The Mosquitoes climbed to 1,400ft and flew a feint from the head of Goeree via Lehornhoven to the Reeuwijk Lakes near Gouda. No.2 in the second pair led by Squadron Leader Charles Newman and Flight Lieutenant F.G. Trevers was Flight Lieutenant Ron Smith: