Mosquito: Menacing the Reich: Combat Action in the Twin-engine Wooden Wonder of World War II (9 page)

On 20 August meanwhile, Bill White and Ron Prescott, now back at Benson, were allocated PR.IX LR421 to fly their 39th operation, a sortie to Blechhammer on the Polish border. Bill White recalls.

Blechhammer’s factories produced synthetic rubber, as Germany couldn’t get a supply of natural rubber, so this was a very important target. The RAF wished to bring the wheels of the Germans to a stop due to a lack of rubber. Blechhammer was certainly well defended. The PRU had already flown six Mosquito ops against it and none had returned. We were to be the seventh to attempt this long trip. Ron and I took off from Benson and topped up with fuel at Coltishall. From there, we proceeded to Blechhammer, seeing nothing more than a bit of flak. The weather was clear over the target and we got excellent photos. On leaving the target we were intercepted by fighters and by using all our throttle power, we were able to escape from the enemy. However, when Ron calculated our fuel reserves, the strong headwinds on the route back to base meant that there was no way we would be able to make it. Our first plan was to go to Switzerland, but by conserving fuel and helped by favourable winds, we managed to get over Yugoslavia to Naples, in Italy, before eventually running out of fuel on the west coast of Sicily. There, we made a deadstick landing at Bo Rizzo. We were standing in front of our Mosquito when some of the 8th Army approached in an armoured vehicle to find out what had brought us here. Ron was about to say ‘nothing’ when he recalled that he had the
Daily Mail
from the morning in his flight bag. These soldiers completely gave up on us and all six were on the ground checking up on ‘Jane’ from the morning paper. When we finally got attention from our hosts we enquired about getting some 100 Octane fuel for our plane. The best they could do was automobile gas with which they had plenty. We got the engines started on this fuel but you never heard such knocking and weird noises in all your life that came from those Merlin engines. We managed to get off the ground and thumbed our way across the Mediterranean to Tunis. The fitters changed the spark plugs, flushed out the tanks and fuel lines and we were on the way home the next day. With refuelling at Maison Blanche, Algeria and Gibraltar we reached base after a trip lasting 14 hours 45 minutes.
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No. 544 Squadron borrowed LR431 from the Benson pool for its first PR.IX operation, a night sortie to Vannes on 13 September 1943, which was flown by Flight Lieutenant R. L. C. ‘Dicky’ Blythe. The unit received its first PR.IX on 22 October 1943, whilst the first PR.IX loss occurred four days later. PR Mosquitoes were now very much in demand, not just for RAF bombing operations, but also by the Americans. On 9 October 378 B-17s of the Eighth Air Force had been despatched on the day’s operation, 115 to the Arado aircraft component plant at Anklam, near Peenemünde, as a diversion for 263 bombers sent to attack the Polish port of Gdynia and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 factory at Marienburg. Squadron Leader Reggie Lenton and Pilot Officer Heney of 540 Squadron supported the raid, taking off from Leuchars to photograph Marienburg, as well as also try for Gdynia and Danzig. Just before arriving over Danzig, two Bf 109s intercepted them, but the Mosquito was able to escape with ease and Lenton and Heney successfully photographed the Marienburg factory. The images they brought back showed that the aircraft factory had been demolished. Lenton was subsequently reported shot down over Sylt some weeks later.

On 18/19 November 1943 ‘Bomber’ Harris began his nightly offensive against Berlin. This series of raids, which were to last until the end of January 1944, brought added demands for BDA. Flights over Germany were being made ever more difficult by enemy action, bad weather and other factors such as smoke from still burning factories and houses. It took no less than thirty-one PR Spitfire and six PR Mosquito sorties before the results of the bombing of Berlin on 18/19 November were obtained. BDA became such an issue with both the RAF and USAAF bomber commands that PR aircraft were required to cover targets within hours of a raid being carried out, sometimes even before the returning bombers had landed. While covering targets in the south of France on 20 January, Pilot Officer John R. Myles
DFC RCAF
and his navigator and fellow Canadian, Flying Officer Hugh R. Cawker had to feather the propeller on the port engine over Toulouse. (The cause was low oil pressure caused by a split in the ‘banjo’ union (oil pipe).) Myles recalls:

We first thought of going to Corsica but we decided there was too much water to fly over and we were not sure where the aerodromes were, anyway. We next considered returning to base but I knew there was a lot of activity on the north French coast that day and I did not like the idea of coming out through it at 10,000ft on one engine. Besides, if anything did happen on the way it would mean walking all the way back again. Finally we decided to set course for Gibraltar. I did not know what our petrol consumption would be on one engine and I did not think we had enough to reach Gib but we figured we would fly as far as possible, then bale out and walk the rest of the way. After two hours on one engine we were getting a bit tired, but we had computed our petrol consumption again and it proved to be less than the first estimate. If only that engine would hold out! After three hours we found ourselves over the Pyrenees at 14,000ft with about one hour left. We flew over the mountains full of expectancy and we pinpointed ourselves on the coast at Malaga. There, silhouetted against the sinking sun was the Rock of Gibraltar. We circled the Rock at 10,000ft, descended to 2,000ft over the runway and fired off the colours of the day. I then made my first single engined landing in a Mosquito after spending 6 hours in the air, 3 hours of which, were on one engine over the Pyrenees and it did not even heat up.

Navigator G.W.E. ‘Bill’ Newby had teamed up at Dyce PR OCU in July 1943 with Flight Lieutenant William Hampson, a 6ft tall pilot who had flown a tour on Coastal Command Hudsons. On New Year’s Eve 1943 Hampson and Newby flew a Mk.I to Norway and had to return to Dyce with engine trouble. On landing, using only the starboard engine, they lost their undercarriage and ran into a cottage just off the peri track. They were put to bed in the sick quarters but Newby awoke at about 9pm to find Hampson’s bed empty. He had gone to find his current lady love in Aberdeen and Newby decided to join in the Hogmanay festivities at the best hotel in Aberdeen with other squadron members and the Royal Scots, who were having a party instead of guarding Balmoral. In January 1944 Hampson and Newby reported to 1 PRU at Benson.

Crews from Benson covered the Dams project, keeping an eye on how full they were in readiness for the raid, 16/17 May 1943 and photographing the after-damage and the chaos the Dambusters caused locally. Our job in 544 Squadron was to take photographs before and after air attacks by both RAF night- and USAAF day-bombers. (We high-tailed it back and overtook the USAAF on the way home). We photographed Wiener Neustadt, north of Vienna before the USAAF arrived, then we cleared off to Lake Constance to take the Zeppelin sheds at Friedrichshafen, before returning to take the after-damage shots. We also took strategic photos of the coastal defences prior to the invasion of Europe. And we photographed U-boat pens; pocket-battleships holed up in various French, German and Danish ports; oil-plants and aircraft factories deep in Germany; V-I launching sites in the Pas de Calais. We even photographed secret underground manufacturing sites in the Hartz mountains and fields etc, which were to he used for dropping zones in France for Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents. For all of this, the Mosquito was ideal.

Most PR flights, in cinematography terms, were very routine. Occasionally, they were spiced up with ‘one offs’. Like rushing to Copenhagen late on Whit Sunday afternoon 1944 because one of our ‘informers’, sitting on a hillside in Sweden, was sure that the pocket-battleship
Deutschland
[renamed
Lützow
] had disappeared from its moorings overnight and was thought to be free in the North Sea. Bill Hampson and I did a square search up the Kattegat and Skagerrak but could find no trace. So with light fading, we swept low over the Tivoli gardens and Hans Christian Andersen’s Mermaid to the dockyard, only to find that the ship had been moved to a new berth and was disguised overnight to look like a tanker. Other flights were more exciting. Long hauls up the Baltic as far as Gdynia, equally long trips to Austria and on over the Alps to Venice and Yugoslavia, stopping overnight at Foggia (San Severo). After the landings in Italy; returning via Ajaccio, Corsica, or Gibraltar, to refuel, on one occasion taking photographs of Vesuvius in eruption. Another operation, which took pride of place in the national press, was a visit to the Gnome-Rhône aircraft engine works at Limoges on the morning of 9 February 1944 after it had been a special target of Bomber Command the night before. The place had been utterly devastated and we could easily see the damage from 30,000ft but we had been authorized to go ‘low-level’, so we could not pass up the chance to scream across at tree-top height to take really close ‘close-ups’, which later appeared in the press.

Squadron Leader Bill Aston
DFC
of 544 PR Squadron also had an eventful PR career, sometimes flying Spitfires but more usually Mosquitoes with Flight Lieutenant Peter Fielding as his observer. In November and December of 1943 they ranged widely over Europe, going to Annecy and the Franco-Italian frontier; to Zurich and Bolzano on other trips (landing back at Benson with only 20 gallons of fuel left). In January, they fired six flash bombs on Abbeville, the same again on Cherbourg a few nights later and then to the Biarritz area. Flash bombs were very unstable and everyone was sceptical about their success rate. (Each photoflash weighed 60lb and each one could provide 120,000-candle power).

When Bill Aston took off in Mosquito PR.IX LR430 on 29 January 1944 on a night photographic sortie over France he had logged 1,934 hours and 50 minutes, many of them at night and in bad weather and it was his 175th operational sortie. While over France at 35,000ft a flash bomb exploded and both crew were thrown out of the Mosquito. Fielding had no time to clip on his observer-chute and he was killed. Aston, fortunately, was wearing a seat-type parachute and he free-fell from 35,000ft to about 500ft. He regained consciousness and frantically searched for the D-ring to open the parachute. Eventually he found the D-ring up by his left shoulder. It had obviously twisted in the harness. As Aston located the release and operated it he heard a bang as the parachute deployed and he hit the ground at the same time. Fortunately, it was dark and he was blind anyway from the explosion of the photo flash bombs, so he had no idea that the ground was so close. There had been considerable rain and he landed in the softest, muddiest field in France. His first thoughts were to escape so he got up and started to run, only to go flat on his face in the mud, as he still had his chute attached. Since it was pitch dark he did not realise that he was blind but he managed to pick up the chute with the idea of hiding it to avoid subsequent detection. By now Aston could not walk because his muscles had seized up. He crawled through the mud for about halfan-hour, still clutching the chute and eventually found a ditch and hid the chute under a pile of dead leaves. By now his teeth were chattering with the cold and the shock. Aston heard a dog barking in the distance and headed off towards it. After about an hour of slow and difficult crawling, he found a gravel path and started to shout, ‘I am an English aviator’ in his broken French. People came out but of course he could not see them. It was now about midnight. Aston was carried into a farmhouse and he discovered that he was with the Maquis. They asked him for his name, rank and serial number. He was informed that London would be notified that he was alive but later, the Maquis said that because of his injuries he would probably die without medical attention and that therefore he was a liability to their organisation. Unable to move, they said they had no alternative but to hand him over to the Germans and this they did. Aston received no medical attention of any kind for the next six months and was subjected to many beatings by the
Gestapo
in the process. Eventually he ended up in
Stalag Luft III
where it took him about six months to recover his sight.
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On 19 February 1944 a PR.XVI brought back photos of Berlin, despite the appearance of German fighters sighted at 42,000ft!
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‘Bill’ Newby flew in the prototype PR.XVI,
⁷⁸
the first aircraft in the world (apart from the pre-war Bristol Type 138A) to be fitted with a pressurised cabin. He recalls. ‘I had the privilege of flying on cabin tests with my squadron commander, Wing Commander D.W. Steventon
DSO DFC
and Geoffrey de Havilland. We were having trouble with ‘misting up’ of windows and I was the smallest navigator on the two squadrons (my pilot Bill Hampson called me ‘Tiny’) so we flew ‘3-up’ for short periods to carry out tests.’
⁷⁹

PR flights to southern France continued unabated in May 1944. Though crews were unaware the series of sorties were in preparation for Operation Dragoon, the Americans’ southern invasion (which was due to begin on 15 August). On 15 May Flight Lieutenant Peter Farlow and Flight Lieutenant E.E.G. ‘Dicky’ Boyd, who had joined 540 Squadron in 1943, flew their 25th operation, to the south of France to cover about ten airfields. Although they did some night flying practice all of their ops were in daylight and 15 May was no exception. Dicky Boyd recalls:

Whilst over the fourth target we were ‘jumped’ by a dozen Messerschmitts. We turned tail and headed off north going flat out and although we were able gradually to pull away from them, it was not before they had holed a fuel tank. Fortunately, there was no fire but on checking the gauge we found that we had very little juice left. It was streaming out like white smoke behind us. We had to find a suitable spot to put down on. Peter put her down, wheels up of course; a superb landing. The props were a tangled mess. There were a few splinters of wood and the perspex nose was shattered. Otherwise we were intact! As usual, the special detonator canister would not work but I was able to open a ‘chute’ in the nose and fire a Very light into it to ‘get it going’. It was about midday so we beat it for cover in a nearby wood. We knew that before we came down that the nearest town was Châteauroux, an important railway junction in Central France. After a while we decided to move in a south-westerly direction towards Spain. Just as we were crossing a road a German motorcycle and sidecar unit came around a bend in the road. The occupants covered us with their rifles and thus put an end to our hopes of getting away. A week later we found ourselves in
Stalag Luft
III.