Mosquito: Menacing the Reich: Combat Action in the Twin-engine Wooden Wonder of World War II (44 page)

I was completely occupied in flying the aircraft at very low level in formation and listening to Flying Officer John Hepworth, my navigator, on what landmark to expect next. The way in was deliberately made very roundabout in order to confuse the enemy of our objective and to achieve maximum surprise.

As they approached the Dutch coast Bateson and his navigator Flying Officer B.J. Standish noticed something strange. There were no recognizable landmarks; they found themselves flying over a vast expanse of water, dotted with islands where no islands should have been. Unknown to the aircrew, the Germans had opened the sluice gates on the River Scheldt inundating a large area of the flat Dutch countryside. There was relief all round, when, after flying on for a few more minutes, they finally got their bearings and leaned that they were on track for the objective. As they approached The Hague the Mosquitoes split up into pairs, following in line astern, sweeping across the rooftops the narrow streets shuddering to the din of their engines. Bateson’s and Flight Lieutenant Peter Cobley’s, the first two FB.VIs, lined up to attack while the other four circled Lake Gouda allowing the 30-second 500lb delayed action bombs carried by the first two aircraft, to explode. The third and fourth aircraft carried incendiary and the fifth and sixth aircraft, two HEs and two incendiary. Rob Cohen, an ex-student at the Delft Technical University who had escaped to England by canoe, flew one of these Mosquitoes. Bateson’s Mosquito streaked towards the target, bomb doors open, its port wing-tip missing the tall spire on top of the Peace Palace diagonally opposite the
Huize Kleykamp
by inches. Cobley, following Bateson, saw the leader’s bombs drop away. He had a hazy impression of a German sentry throwing away his rifle and running for his life, then he saw Bateson’s three bombs quite literally skip through the front door and the large windows of the first floor of the building. A. Korthals Alter wrote later:

Immediately after there were two large explosions. A streetcar about to turn into the Javastraat, stopped and the conductor, driver and passengers ran for cover. At the corner of Scheveningsweg and Laan Copes van Cattenburgh people lay flat on the ground. The only sound that followed after the explosions was that of broken glass and a dull rumbling noise resembling a distant thunderstorm. During the first few moments, people were so bewildered that no one uttered a sound. Only when the second Mosquito came rushing in and heavy explosions were again heard did people realize what was happening. “They are bombing” they called out. A frightful noise then announced the second attack.

Cobley dropped his bombs in turn, pulling up sharply over the roof of the building. Two minutes later, with dense clouds of smoke already pouring from the shattered building, the second pair of Newman and Smith made their own attack. One of the Mosquito crews could barely see the target. After a further interval, the third pair, led by Flight Lieutenant Vic Hester and Flying Officer Ray Birkett, finished off the mission by dropping HE and incendiary bombs. By now little of the
Kleycamp
building remained and Hester’s bombs flew through the air and hit the Alexander barracks. Cohen, whose bomb drop failed, but who took photographs, was killed later that summer on a sortie over France. Flight Lieutenant Ron Smith’s final recollection was of coming out over playing fields filled with footballers before crossing the coast north of the city to be escorted home by waiting Spitfires. The
Gestapo
building had been completely destroyed and the majority of the identity papers destroyed. The card files lay buried under the burning wreckage or fluttered over the Scheveningsweg carried by the heat of the fire. The state police who rushed to the scene forced passers-by to pick up the file cards from the street and even made them search the wreckage, threatening them with their cudgels. Most realised why the raid had occurred and they slyly dropped file cards into the flames or destroyed the photos. Fire brigade personnel kept people away from the devastated building instead of trying to save people in the Kleycamp. Among the dead lay Van der Kamp and some of fellow Dutch Underground workers. Buildings that surrounded the Kleycamp had suffered only slight damage but sixty-one civilians were killed, twenty-four seriously injured and forty-three slightly injured. All six Mosquitoes got back safely, without a shot being fired at them. Five weeks later a report reached the RAF that the operation had been highly satisfactory. For his leadership of this operation Bateson was awarded the DSC and received the Dutch Flying Cross from Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. An Air Ministry bulletin later described the raid as ‘probably the most brilliant feat of low-level precision bombing of the war.

The main work for 138 and 140 Wings also was Day and Night Ranger operations and Intruder sorties from England. On 12 April Flight Lieutenant J.L. ‘Les’ Bulmer and Flight Lieutenant Ed McQuarrie of 21 Squadron were intruding over the airfield at St. Dizier when a searchlight was turned on them.  Les Bulmer remembers:

We took exception to that, so we flew right down the beam, firing our cannons as we went. That soon put it out. Didn’t do our night vision a lot of good, though, we were almost blinded for a while. On our return journey we ran into searchlights near Abbeville and there were so many that we were in and out of them for about 10 minutes. There was no sign of flak so I kept a sharp eye out for night-fighters but didn’t see any. I was beginning to wonder where I’d taken us, because a concentration of searchlights such as this was normally reserved for large cities and I was convinced that we were nowhere near a town, let alone a city.

All was revealed when we got back to debriefing. While we’d been away the flak map had been changed and where before there had been no flak position, there was now a large green area with ‘800’ marked against it. This meant that we had just flown through a large defended area with 800 light AA guns in it. It seems that the Germans, in a bid to stop the destruction of their individual V-1 sites, had concentrated a number of them into one large area heavily defended against low-level attack. I think someone might have told us before we took off.

For the second half of April Ed and I were on a Gee-H course at Swanton Morley. This was to be our precision blind-bombing aid. Although I got good results in practice raids on Boston Stump and the central tower of Ely Cathedral, on operations it, and sometimes I, were something of a failure, so this piece of equipment was not much used. In fact I only carried out three Gee-H sorties. On the first the equipment packed up. On the second we dropped our bombs from 20,000ft on the Seine crossing at Duclair, at least that was where they were supposed to go. I have a feeling that they were nowhere near. The third and last I put down in my log-book as Gee-H trouble but some unkind person came along afterwards, crossed out Gee-H and inserted ‘finger’ and drew a small picture of Percy Prune’s award of the highly Derogatory Order of the Irremovable Digit.

FB.VIs of 2nd TAF continued their night-fighting role and bombing of German targets in France and the Low Countries. Meanwhile, the first PR.XVI production examples had been urgently despatched to 140 Squadron, 2nd TAF where they supplemented PR.IXs on reconnaissance and mapping duties as part of the build up to D-Day. As photo-reconnaissance Mosquito crews of ‘B’ Flight left their crew room at Northolt on the evening of 4 June on their way to tea they were astonished to see that their blue PR.XVIs had been painted with broad black and white stripes. Geoff Curson, one of the radar-navigators, states:

No explanation was given buy our flight commander, my pilot, Squadron Leader Robert ‘Bobby’ W. Pearson
DFC
. We wondered…. The weather was foul and we had been stood down for the night. After dinner most of us headed for the ‘George’ in Ruislip to drink and dance the night away. Next day we reported as usual to the Flight buildings at about 14.00 hours and carried out the normal night-flying tests on our aircraft, ready for operations, if needed, that night. At 17.00 hours, three crews were detailed for briefing; ‘Bobby’ Pearson and myself, Harry Cartmell and Mark Hubert, Ray Batenburg and Walter Le May. When we entered the briefing room (a tent) we were amazed to see Group Captain Lousada, OC 34 Wing waiting to brief us. This was most unusual and had never happened before; we knew that the invasion of France was to take place the next morning and that the troops were already at sea, on their way to the Normandy beaches. Our task was to be over there before them to photograph the road junctions behind the beaches in the early hours of the morning to see if the German forces had been alerted and were moving troops into the area. He ordered total secrecy, no one else was to know what was on and he asked for our maximum effort.

The usual briefing by the Met man and Army liaison officer followed and we were given individual targets. The cloud base was about 4,500ft and the fuses on our flash-bombs were set accordingly. My targets were Granville, St. Lô and Vire; the most westerly of those allotted. This meant that we had to approach them by a roundabout route from the direction of the Channel Islands to avoid the prohibited area of the sea crossing. Back in the crew-room we carried out detailed planning for the flight. Bobby said, “We will go out and back over Start Point, that should keep us clear as far as the Navy is concerned!” He left the rest of the planning to me, while he checked the serviceability of the aircraft and the other crews’ navigation plans.

I decided to climb all the way to Start Point and cross the Channel at 25,000ft. Bobby liked to be high crossing the enemy coast where the main defences were; out of range of flak. Our height over the target would be 4,500ft and we would drop a string of four flashes over each target (we carried twelve). Gee would be used as the aiming points for all targets, so I worked out the co-ordinates for each and our best line of approach. At 23.00 hours we went out to the aircraft; the ground crew saw us safely on board and gave me the twelve safety pins from the flashes, showing me they were armed. We taxied out to the runway and took-off. I entered the time 23.25 in my log as ‘airborne’ and we set course for Exeter, to stay over land all the way and started our climb. After a while I could see a red light to port flashing ‘TG’ and recognised Tangmere’s beacon and knew their night-fighters were probably active. A little while later the aircraft rocked; Bobby said, “We hit someone’s slipstream, its probably one of their fighters having a look at us!” By the time we reached Exeter we were at our desired height of 25,000ft and turned for Start Point. At 00.16 we crossed out over it and set course for Granville across the sea. It would take 20 minutes to reach our first target. After 5 minutes on course we could see Guernsey in front. The enemy coast was in sight. Crossing Guernsey we had to lose 20,000ft in 6 minutes. We were at 5,000ft over Jersey and moving very fast.

I had set up the Gee for the target but the signals we were receiving were not good as they became weaker as we descended. ‘B’ signal for our approach was strong but ‘C’ was weak and I needed it for the flash release. It was only a tiny blip that kept rising and falling. When we were in line I released the first four flashes and by their light I could see the harbour at Granville beneath us. I set Gee for St. Lô. It was now 00.35 on 6 June.

The Gee signals picked up as we turned. Suddenly our cockpit was filled with brilliant light. A searchlight had flashed straight onto us. I looked downwards, it was on the end of the jetty and coming up the beam was a stream of tracer shells from the flak gun beside it. “They are shooting up the beam”, shouted Bobby and as the shells streaked past our starboard wingtip he pushed the nose down, stood the Mosquito on its port wingtip in a violent turn away. We swung round and lost height into the safety of the dark. We levelled out at 2,000ft and had to climb swiftly back on to East for the approach line to St. Lô. St. Lô and Vire were photographed without incident. Instead of turning for home, Bobby decided to do a low-level reconnaissance towards the Seine along the Le Mans–Paris road. We were 500ft above the ground but the night was dark and no lights were visible. Little did we know at the time, but we passed over three Panzer Divisions in the area. All I saw were fields and hedges. Navigation was no problem; I could fix our position using Gee whenever it was needed. About 5 minutes short of Paris we turned West and headed back for home, crossing out from France at St. Malo and keeping well clear of the Channel Islands on our way back to Start Point. We were back over England at 02.20 hours and followed the route taken out, back to base.

Near Salisbury we saw the most amazing sight. In the sky above us, coming down from the North, were row after row of lights. It looked as if there was a runway in the sky flying towards us. I was astonished. I could see then that they were the navigation lights of aircraft. It was the Airborne Brigade on its way over, planes and gliders from all over Britain in a steady stream that seemed never-ending. We finally landed at Northolt at 03.00 hours. All three crews operating that night returned safely. On this occasion we waited up for the photographs to be processed. We viewed them wet; they were excellent both from the point of view that our objectives were covered and the information obtained. The Army was delighted, it looked as if the invasion was going to take them completely by surprise. That was the news they were longing to hear. We went off to our tents to sleep, well satisfied with our night’s work.

On the night of 5/6 June on the eve of D-Day, all six of 2nd TAF’s Mosquito fighter squadrons carried out defensive operations over the invasion coast. In night operations on 7/8 June 1944 seventy Mosquitoes of 107, 305 and 613 Squadrons operating to the west on rail targets at Argentan, Domfort and Lisieux, sealed approaches to the bridgehead in Normandy. The opportunity for breakout and the eventual invasion of Germany was now within reach and 2nd TAF would go all the way with the ground forces. On 11 June six Mosquitoes of 464 and 487 Squadrons led by Wing Commander Bob Iredale and Flight Lieutenant McCaul attacked petrol tankers in a railway marshalling yard at Châtellerault at the request of the Army. Wing Commander Mike Pollard of 107 Squadron and his six Mosquitoes arrived at 22.44 hours to find fires burning in an area 300 x 200 yards with smoke rising to 4,000ft. The night attacks continued on railway targets and fifty aircraft from 88, 98, 107, 180, 226 and 320 Squadrons bombed the railway junction at Le Haye, west of Carentan. Two nights later forty-two Mosquitoes of 107, 305, 464 and 613 Squadrons strafed and bombed troop movements between Tours and Angers-Vire, Dreux and Falaise and Evreux and Lisieux.