Few wartime airfields were at their best just after 2am. RAF Strubby, set with its black sprawl of Nissen huts amidst the flat fertile fields of East Lincolnshire, where broad beans and cabbages flourished more heartily than young airmen, had little to offer anyone during the dead hours of night. Almost within spitting distance of the North Sea, cruelly windswept in the winter, Strubby was said to be nearer occupied Europe than any other air base in the county.
Dawn was just hours away on the 25th of April 1945, when the crews of 619 Squadron were dragged roughly from their beds and sent wobbling on their bicycles in the unyielding dark towards the mess with the pungent taste of last nights beer lingering in their mouths, not quite ready to welcome a ridiculously early fry up of bacon and eggs. They were briefed to attack Hitler’s mountain top retreat at Berchtesgaden and the local SS barracks.
The war was nearly over, Germany was on its knees. The enemy were still displaying remarkable obdurate resistance defending their shattered country, but the young men of Bomber Command were at last able to make real plans, including the biggest end of term piss up the world had ever seen.
This was the earliest Canadian pilot Flying officer Wilf De Marco and his crew had been called for an op. As they sat rubbing their hands and yawning in the cold truck, bumping across the dark desolate airfield to their Lancaster dozing at dispersal, most could reflect on the twenty-seven operations from which they had returned safely. Twenty five year old Sergeant Gordon Walker from Toronto, had missed three ops when he was laid up in March with influenza. To save Walker from the ordeal of being a veteran rear gunner lumbered with the dubious role of spare bod, his six crewmates readily agreed to fly the extra sorties with him until he had completed his tour.
It seemed longer than five months ago when, as sprogs they were briefed for their first sortie. Since then they had aged five years. Some people would call it maturity. Veteran crews might describe them as suffering from the abject weariness of battle.
Full of apprehension and excitement they had taken off for that first op at 4.04pm on the 22nd of November 1944, in Lancaster III LM756 F-Freddy, to attack the submarine pens at Trondheim, the medieval capital of Norway, a city and seaport, lying on the mouth of the River Nid, on Trondheim Fjord, 250gruelling miles North of Oslo. One Lancaster had been left behind at Strubby when its embarrassed crew found that it had not been filled with fuel.
They flew at low level with another 170 Lancasters and seven Mosquitoes up the North Sea, gaining height as they drew near to the target, which they found obliterated by a smoke screen and the Master Bomber ordered the operation to be abandoned. It was a miserable anti-climax. The aircraft turned back and jettisoned their bombs halfway home. The weather had closed in at Strubby and De Marco, short of fuel, was diverted to Thornaby, Yorkshire which had an emergency runway.
De Marco’s wireless operator, Sergean Jack Speers, another Canadian, says: “They told us we would be landing on FIDO. As we approached the runway in dense fog we saw a red glow ahead, which turned into two lines of fire and we landed safely in the middle of the runway. We had been airborne for 11hr 10 minutes and it seemed for nothing. One lad joked, if this is ops, I want my mother”.
The engines were switched off and, crouched with weariness, they climbed down from their Lancaster. De Marco was twenty four. A broad muscular boisterous six footer, of Italian descent, he came from Timmins Ontario. Owner of an old banger and never short of money, he often ventured alone to Grimsby where his crew thought he was hiding a secret girlfriend. When challenged to demonstrate his raw strength, he picked up any two of his crew, tucking one yelping under each arm. An outstanding hockey player he spent his leaves playing and coaching at a rink in Liverpool.
De Marco’s flight engineer Freddy Cole, said: ”Wilf was a brilliant pilot. His sharp reactions got us out of trouble several times. He also had a terrific sense of humour. We had all done a bit in the link trainer but he used to tell me to take over, sitting in his seat while he wandered casually aft, terrifying the crew by pretending no one was at the controls”.
After a boring exercise De Marco had been known to fly at zero feet over the sea off Skegness, dropping the tail, almost tickling the tops of the waves, listening to roars of fury from the tail gunner who was not enjoying his unexpected cold shower. “What the fuck are you doing you stupid bastard?” yelled Walker. “I’m half fucking drowned back here” The rest of the crew hooted with laughter as the grinning De marco climbed over the coast and pointed towards Strubby. The crews from any ships in the area would be telling an extraordinary story years later about the day they had seen a Lancaster make a perfect take off from the sea.
A thin, shy and unassuming man, Sergeant Cole had been an apprentice machine tool fitter in Civvy Street. From Exhall, near Coventry, his hatred of the Germans was intensified in November 1940 when the city was pulverised over several nights by waves of enemy bombers.
He says: ”They were arrogant shits who needed to be dealt with ruthlessly.I just wanted to kill the bastards and was determined to get into the RAF. I didn’t have good enough eyesight to be a pilot, but the RAF thought I was best suited to be a flight engineer. I spent several months at St Athen, Cardiff, where the training was brilliant and I learned everything there was to know about the Merlin engines. The comradeship was special and, of course there was the flying”.
The navigator, Norman Johnston, twenty one, was tall, slim, quiet and studious, always with his nose inside a book, with a growing interest in photography. He was engaged to be married to a girl in Calgary, Alberta, where his father was an undertaker.
Johnston and Cole became pals and the Canadian occasionally spent his leave at the engineer’s home, visiting the flattened areas of Coventry which refuelled their hatred for the Germans. It was here at the Wheatsheaf pub where the quiet man was roused to boiling anger, standing shoulder to shoulder with Cole, fighting off American GI’s who had made the mistake of calling the navigator “a Canadian bum”.
Flight Sergeant Arthur Sharman, twenty six, a furniture designer, from Streatham, South London, before joining up, was the bomb aimer. Cole described him as “shit hot” at his job, often recording the best aiming point for the squadron.
Jack Speers, twenty four, an aircraft fitter from Barrie, Ontario and Gordon Walker were great pals, sharing the same reckless high spirits. They developed a taste for British beer and a couple of times finished up cheerfully sizzled in deep Lincolnshire dykes, having gone off the road on their stolen bikes. Cole remembers going with the crew to a dance one night at Alford village hall when a stationary steamroller was spotted at the top of a long incline.
Walker shouted “I bet you can’t drive that Jack”
“Who can’t?” replied Speers, gleefully climbing aboard and releasing the brake. The steamroller began rumbling down the hill, gathering speed, with Speers desperately clinging on, crying with excitement, trying unsuccessfuly to steer the steel monster to safety as the others galloped, yelling in pursuit. The steamroller, out of control, smashed into a wall near the village hall and they scattered as Alford thought that a bomb had fallen. Cole says a local newspaper carried a report about the runaway with quotes from the police who had mounted a wide search for the culprits. They were never caught.
Mid-upper gunner Sergeant Ted Norman, only nineteen, spent most of his spare time at home in the nearby town of Boston.
“As out tour progressed we were very lucky” says Speers. We sustained minor damage and had several landings short of base because of diminishing fuel and bad weather. In training at Market Harborough, Leicestershire, a motor caught fire in our Wellington as we took off. We turned for an emergency landing, came down hard and wrote it off. Luckily we were unhurt.
“Besides Berchtesgaden, two other trips stand out in my mind. We flew to Munich three times. The first occasion, on our second operation, was on a night with a glittering full silver moon. It was like daylight in the Alps and we flew lower than the peaks to avoid the radar”.
“Switzerland was a beautiful sight, with no blackout, all lit up. We were briefed to bomb at 5.10am after the moon had disappeared, just before daybreak to give us total darkness. The target was identified by smoke and fires to the south of the town and by green and red TI’s. We bombed from 16,000ft and flew back into the mountains when dawn was breaking. We didn’t encounter any problems, but this was a spectacular flight. The glow from the fires could be seen when we were 100 miles away”.
“We had a narrow escape on the night of 21st of December 1944 when we attacked Pölitz, near Stettin”. Flying LM630, their target was a synthetic oil factory. Speers again: “We took off at 4.54pm, having been briefed to fly over Denmark and Sweden. Although Sweden, like Switzerland, was neutral, there were a lot of German fighters present. Routed directly over Stockholm a heavy flak barrage came up as we approached. As we arrived with the whole stream the flak stopped and when we had cleared the area a huge “V for Victory” was blasted up in tracer behind us”.
The target was obscured by smoke, but they dropped their bombs at 10.08pm and were turning off the target when the engineer spotted an aircraft heading towards them on a collision course and screamed “Dive Skipper! Dive!” Everything hit the ceiling and when Speers tried to use the radio, they found that the aerial fixed to the mast behind the astrodome to the twin fins on the tail had been ripped off by the other aircraft. Drawing near to England and told that Strubby was again consumed by fog, they were directed to land at Lossiemouth. They touched down at 3.17am, another marathon trip.
They attacked Dresden on the 13th of February 1945 and, homeward bound, could see the leaping fires 150 miles behind. The crews were told they were hitting large concentrations of German tropps, but pacifists still rise up in a great swell of anger over fifty years later because of the number of civilians killed. As many as 50,000 are believed to died during the two raids by the RAF and another by American aircraft, dropping a total of over 2,570 tons of bombs. “For us”, said Cole, “It was an uneventful trip, just another raid, and we were doing what we had been told to do.”
On the 23rd of March they bombed Wesel to support the Allied troops crossing the Rheine and Field Marshal Montgomery was so pleased by the accuracy of their bombs he wrote a letter of congratulations to 619 Squadron.
Before the war, the small town of Berchtesgaden, standing about 1,700ft up in the Bavarian Alps, was popular with tourists. Her mines of rock salt had been worked for 800 years and the townsfolk were known for their skills as toymakers.
To the War Cabinet in London the only tourists likely to be visiting Hitler’s mountain retreat, apart from RAF bombers, were Nazis and if any of them perished in this raid it would be a day for rejoicing. Bomber Command sent 359 Lancasters and sixteen Mosqitoes to flatten Hitler’s so called Eagle’s Nest and each excited crew, buoyed up by the knowledge of their task, was fervently hoping that he was in residence. In fact Hitler was hiding like a rat in his bunker deep beneath the Chancellery in Berlin.
A total of 857 sorties were made that day, with other aircraft attacking coastal batteries on the Frisian island of Wangerooge and an oil refinery at Tonsberg in southern Norway.
De Marco was at the control of Lancaster LM756 F-Freddy which took off at 4.19am. Freddy was their regular aircraft, one they had flown on operations fourteen times. They were comfortable in it were always pleased to see it waiting for them at dispersal. Five other Lancasters from 619 Squadron flew to Berchtesgaden. The raid was supported by a group of American fighters.
Cole says: ”One of the Yanks flew under us early in the flight, showing off, going from one side to the other. I was glad to see the back of him, although he hung around for a while then disappeared. I didn’t see any flak or German fighters on the way, it looked as if it was going to be a milk run but that soon changed.”
Speers recalls: “ We were among the six wind-finding crews which meant we led the stream, dropped bales of Window to block radar sightings from the ack – ack guns, and broadcast wind direction and velocity back to the Bomber Command as we did a run over the target. This information was collated then sent back from Command to the whole stream for bomb sight settings. The target was very hard to find in the mountains, and this was made worse by a mist, and snow lying on the ground.”
Eight Oboe Mosquitoes, here to help with the marking, were frustrated by their signals from a ground station being blocked by the mountains, even though they were flying at 39,000ft.
“Our job was to bomb the SS Barracks” say Speers, and we had to fly very slowly to spot them as they were long lines of building with every other section camouflaged to make it all resemble a small village. Others were to bomb the power station or the Eagle’s Nest.
“As we had killed time on the approach to the target the first wave was close behind us and by the time we had done an orbit and come in low over the target, almost like stragglers. By now, the Window was too low, the flak was heavy and the guns in the mountains had us in a crossfire. We sustained little damage on the bombing run and I heard Art Sharman call “Spot on, Skipper” after releasing the bombs.
We held a steady course for the camera run, but were caught in a heavy crossfire and took several hits. Seconds later we were hit from all directions and I ended up under the wireless set. The intercom was u/s and we couldn’t communicate with each other”.
Athur Sharmann, the bomb aimer says: “I was in the nose lying on my belly having just released the bombs from about 22,000ft. I watched the bombs fall and was pleased to see one land in the middle of the square and another hit the SS barracks. The photoflash had just gone off when our aircraft was hit. There was a big explosion and the intercom went dead. I couldn’t see the pilot, but it was clear we only had a short time to get the hell out of it.”
He did not bother checking with the pilot to see if it was alright to leave, Sharman had done his job, there was no point hanging around. He clipped on his parachute, dragged open the escape hatch and was first out. He landed in the top of a tall fir tree and slid down to the ground, breaking a leg. He recalls the moment:
“I was lying on the ground in agony, with no chance of getting away when the Germans arrived. They must have seen us coming down. The forced me to walk on my broken leg, kicking me down the mountainside and once, when they levelled their guns at me, I thought I was going to be shot. They took me to the SS barracks which we had just bombed, I didn’t receive treatment to my leg until I was returned to England three weeks later.”
Just before Sharman released the bombs navigator Norman Johnston, unable to supress his eagerness, asked the pilot if he could come into the astrodome to look outside as he had never before peered down at a target they were attacking. The request could be equated to signing his own death warrant. Johnston stood briefly beside Cole, on the spot usually occupied by the engineer, and gazed down, transfixed by falling bombs falling from his aircraft and the explosions far below.
When seconds later, their Lancaster was riddled by gunfire, shrapnel burst in through the windscreen and struck the wide eyed navigator. Johnston recoiled and fell, his face a mask of horror and pain, flinging out a despairing hand, grabbing the D ring of Cole’s parachute which lay on the engineers tip up seat. The chute opened up and yards of silk spilled into the cockpit as Johnston lay dying. Cole, his life saved by the insatiable curiosity of his friend, believes Johnston was killed by a sliver of metal ripped off one of the propellers by a bursting shell.
The port inner and starboard inner engines were on fire. Cole feathered them , but the extinguishers didn’t work and he heard the skipper yell: “Get out! Get out!”. The aircraft was also on fire at the back and he saw Speers, injured by shrapnel, limping forward silhouetted against a great wall of flame, and he had a moment to think about the scattered silk of his parachute.
The navigator was clearly dead. Even if he had been badly injured there was little anyone could do. Unlike soldiers under fire with a trench to fall into and gather their senses it was now a case of every man for himself to avoid oblivion.
Speers again: “I was supposed to leave the aircraft by the rear door with the gunners. There was a thin bulkhead door aft of the main spar which I tried to open, but the floor of the bomb bay had been blown up and it would not budge. The main cock which balanced the wing tanks had been cut and the fuel was burning furiously. The gunners could not survive in the inferno that rushed through the rear of the fuselage.
I headed towards the front of the aircraft and I found the body of Norm Johnston. There was no response from Wild when I hit his knee, which was the drill as you evacuate the aircraft. The front of the cockpit had been blown away, he could not have survived. Part of the instrument panel had gone. Art Sharman had opened the escape hatch and was gone. Freddy was there ready to jump but his chute was in a bit of a pickle after being accidentally pulled.
Speers clipped the parachute on to the engineer and gave him the thumbs up. Cole carefully drew the silk into a big bundle and sat anxiously with it beside the hatch. Speers gave him a push and was relieved to see the engineer disappear safely into space without the exposed parachute snagging on the hatch.
Cole, whirling helplessly through the sky passed out for a moment and, coming round saw their blazing Lancaster blunder into a mountain and explode. It contained the mangled bodies of the pilot, navigator and both gunners. It was a cruelly incongruous sight as Cole drifted down serenely that fresh morning, trying with little success to accept that the six men whose lives he had shared for several months, and who were all robustly alive fifteen minutes ago, had been suddenly reduced by four. Four good pals he would never see again. Four lives brutally ended. Four futures tossed into a dustbin and four families devastated. So lucky not to be one of them, he was unhappy to be shorn forever of their company, but the warm memories of his lost companions would remain intact forever.
Three meadows lay far below and luckily he landed unhurt in one of them, otherwise he would have struck the side of a mountain. A second Lancaster was lost on this operation.
Freddy Cole was picked up quickly and taken by truck to the SS barracks in Salzburg. He says: “Soon after I arrived American planes came over and bombed Salzburg and I was taken by two SS guards to an air raid shelter beneath a castle. They weren’t very friendly. I was later moved to a cell in Salzburg police station which I shared with two French men and two prostitutes. It was not a happy experience.
Jack Speers dived through the escape hatch and was struck by the awesome silence after his ears had been assailed by four roaring engines for several hours. “I saw the chute above me and thought at this time the ground looked so far away I decided to have a sleep. As I landed my foot struck a shrub adding to my severe pain. I remembered that we had been instructed to bomb at 9.00am and a larger stream was due over the target at 9.20. I was in an open field and saw people approaching me from every direction. There was no way of telling how they would treat me. Then the warning sirens sounded for another wave of bombers and they all ran away to the salt mines which were used for air raid shelters. Shrapnel had torn right through the joint of my left leg, left hand and wrist. I couldn’t walk and just had to wait.
I saw the incoming aircraft open their bomb doors and release their bombs. It was very noisy and the ground shook all around me. The al-clear sounded and the Germans again started coming towards me across the field. I hadn’t known that we had been provided with fighter cover and suddenly several American Mustangs appeared, firing rockets. The sirens sounded again and I was once more left alone.
After the last Allied aircraft had disappeared the Germans picked up Speers on a ladder thoughtfully padded with hay and took him to a farmyard. “I was transferred to a farm cart filled with hay, and an old grey horse was hitched up to it. Then more fighters swooped in shooting rockets and I was again on my own. I heard water running and saw a pipe going into a trough. My mouth and throat were dry, I crawled off the cart and had a long drink of the best water I had ever tasted. I dunked my head in the water and began thinking more clearly.”
“As I was hauled up the mountain more people joined us, including shrieking women who tried to jab me with pitchforks. If it had not been for the soldiers guarding me I think the women would have killed me.”
“I was taken to a building where Freddy and Art were being held, but the Germans would not let me them see me. Eventually I was moved to the town of Hallein, 12km from Salzburg. I was put into an old school house with other prisoners, mostly amputees who had been suffering from frostbite. I was kept in a little chamber off a room which contained about sixty other men. I didn’t know the nationalities of the other prisoners, but they all had something missing: hands, feet, ears, noses, legs or arms. I was there over two weeks.”
“I was put in a body cast as they had no bandages. They used paper which hardened with the plaster. I was soon afraid to move otherwise the fleas would go into a route march up and down my back. One fellow in the big room had an accordion and he played Lily Marlene and The Beer Barrel Polka from morning to night.”
“I was interrogated many times by the SS who did not believe we could fly all the way to Berchtesgaden from England. They insisted we must have taken off from one of the Allied airfields in Italy. By this time my leg was badly infected and I thought I might end up like all those other poor sods.
When Hallein was attacked by a French tank division they got into Hitler’s wine cellar and were soon so drunk that the Americans had to drive them out before they could take the town.
Everyone was running around saying “Hitler kaput” and the Americans were here, so I hoped the war had ended, but no information came my way. Next day I could hear Americans talking outside under a window, but none came into the building.
“There was a curfew on and no one would go outside, but I did get one old fellow to find me a piece of paper and a pencil. I wrote a note and put it in a piss bottle the Germans had given me and threw it out of the window above my bunk, but still no one came.”
“I was found about 5pm the next day. They apologised for not finding me earlier and brought me cigarettes, wine and chocolate bars. I was carried down to a nice clean room and after receiving the benefit of a few cans of delousing powder and more interestingly, some bottles of wine, I had the best sleep I could ever remember.”
“I was later taken to a field hospital at Salzburg, where the present airport stands. After a couple of days I was flown back to England with other injured airmen and spent the next three months at the 17th Canadian General Field Hospital in Woking, Surrey. I arrived home on the 29th of August 1945 on the hospital ship Lady Nelson.”
In December 1945, Arthur Sharman married Nancy Swift, the pretty nineteen year old WAAF cook he met when she was working in the airmen’s mess at Strubby, a romance he had kept secret from the rest of his crew after meeting her at a dance.
Many years later Jack Speers and his wife Barbara, flew from Canada to Austria and drove by car to Klagenfurt where his four former crewmates are buried. A parish priest had defied the Germans by giving them Christian burials in Hallein. Their remains were later removed and reburied by the Americans,
Speers says: “I shall never forget the loss of those boys whom I look back on as brothers, I had a good cry when I saw each of their graves.”
FROM THE BOOK “FLYING INTO HELL” BY MEL ROLFE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BOMBING HITLER