(dramatic orchestral music)
- A perfect summer day
over Northern France
in the summer of 1944.
I was a terrified young man dangling
on the end of a parachute.
I was swinging wildly and the
parachute was full of holes
and they were shooting at me.
Well, maybe they were
shooting at the parachute,
not at me but perhaps they
were only kidding now that
we're all friends again,
I like to think that they
were only kidding.
I was one of the lucky ones.
I came back to tell
the story, some didn't.
Our two gunners,
Sergeant Orbison and Sergeant Regmond
were killed.
In this program, we hope to
bring you some of the stories
of the men and indeed the women
of the the Royal Air Force
who contributed often above
and beyond the line of duty
to bring this country
to its finest hour.
We hope that it will keep
alive the memory of those
who gave their lives to
protect to this country
and our freedom.
Lest we shouldn't forget them.
(military fanfare)
- Our life expectancy was
a fortnight which narrowed
to 10 days towards the
end of Operation Dynamo
and I can give an example
of a volunteer reserve pilot
who came direct from the
volunteer reserve as a civilian
where he'd learnt some flying.
And he rose from sergeant
pilot, gull commission,
rose to the rank of flight
commander, flight of talents
and the DFC and was killed
all within a fortnight.
- We landed about eleven
o'clock at night and then
yes, we heaved a sigh of relief.
Of course the only thing was
you were conscious of all
the blokes who didn't come back.
- We were all so young
and that was the problem.
So many youngsters went and
fortunately I came back.
- I was quite sure that I would
be killed because 15 months
in a bomber squadron and it was
changing, most of the people
were gone either to be
instructors or dead or prisoners.
About every three, four months.
But of course, if it were
a big show, you know,
death or glory then the
whole squadron could go.
- The second pilot on that
aircraft had been killed
in a attack from a fighter.
The tail gunner had received
a shell which burst on top
of his turret and he was
deafened and temporarily blinded.
The front gunner whose blood
had been dripping out was
badly injured and the
navigator had fallen through,
during the attack, fallen
through the hole where the
center tight originally
was so he wasn't on
the aircraft at all.
- If you weren't frightened,
you were a fool. (laughs)
But you were more frightened
of appearing to be frightened
of course, obviously but I
mean you've got to have some
sensible fear otherwise you're
not gonna last very long.
- It was more excitement I
think than a sort of fear.
You always thought the good
Lord would smile on you
and you'd get back which
in my case, I was right.
- In the summer of
1940, the fate of Europe
lay in the hands of a
few courageous young men,
the RAF's fighter pilots.
They fought relentlessly
and they succeeded
against all odds.
Many of these young men, some
of them no more than 19 years
of age came back to tell the tale.
But a great many didn't.
Although at the time, they
might have been considered
too young and irresponsible to vote,
they were not considered too
young to die for their country.
- I was 20 years old on
the 28th of June, 1940.
So I was just 20 years old
at the Battle of Britain.
You weren't supposed to
admit to being frightened.
I think there were a lot of
us and I will say it appears
that there were a lot of us frightened 19,
20 year olds around.
You've got the way of handling
the aircraft and how to go
into it and into fight but
it's a bit hit and miss.
I don't think we had dog
fights in the same way they did
in the first World War
when they were circling.
It was a much more come in quickly,
get your target, press the
button, and then get the hell
out of it again quickly or
come around for another attack.
But you didn't just
sit behind an airplane,
you'd be losing off with
it because that was the way
to disaster because the
Germans have far more fighter
aircraft than we had.
I did 16 sorters in six days.
I started asking myself, how
long is this going to go on?
Because I'd been at it
since May of the 10th,
rarely few days off and
I'd been shot, you know,
I'd been hit twice.
You get to a point where
you carry on in desperation
and some, it works, you
come out of it unscathed
and you've learned something,
another experience.
We won't get into that predicament again.
We started off with about 20 pilots
and we lost two in the previous weeks,
right at the beginning of the battle.
But on the 12th of August
we lost two more pilots
and on the 13th, three more.
So that was 10 pilots,
50% of the squadron had been shot down.
I lost my best friend,
they were done kept.
And another best friend
was killed in 1942.
It did affect me, I
never made a very, very
close friend since
because it's very traumatic.
- During the Battle of
Britain, one in three pilots
failed to return.
- The Battle for Malta was the
third decisive island battle
of World War II.
The Battle of Britain was the first one.
The Battle of Malta was the
second and the third was
the Battle of Midway on the
Pacific which turned the
Pacific War.
So Malta was the place from
which we were striking at the
enemy and that was really it.
The prime raise on dates
for this tremendous attack
which was launched on the island.
And we were in a very difficult
position for two reasons.
One because we had to
get convoys in there.
I mean getting ships through
from Gibraltar or Alexandria
was terribly difficult,
I mean it was a frightful
gunrunning operation.
And the second thing was we
had to get fighter airplanes in
because we had to win
the Day Fighter Battle.
Just like they had to win
the Day Fighter Battle
in the Battle of Britain
here to win the day.
And so far as getting the
airplanes in, the only way you
could do that was by flying
them off the carriers,
you couldn't put them on a
boat and fire them through.
In the very early part of
the war they were doing that
but you couldn't do that
from sort of 1942 onwards
when they're really bombing the place.
And so the Royal Navy loaded
up the aircraft carrier Eagle
with Spitfires and we
could get I think 16 or 17
on each time.
I flew Spitfires off of that once.
But it wasn't enough to
get enough airplanes in.
I mean we were operating
at odds of 10, 20,
30, 40 to one against.
So Churchill and Roosevelt
made a deal whereby
the United States carrier
Wasp was brought in to service
and they could take, Wasp
could take 48 Spitfires aboard
and it did two runs and
that caused Churchill to say
"Who said a wasp couldn't sting twice?"
And the first one was great
that they loaded these airplanes
up in Scotland on the
Clyde at Granite and 48
and they flew them down or
rather they ran the carrier
down to Gibraltar and went
through the straits and
to a point about 300
miles east of Gibraltar
and about 700 miles short west of Malta
and they flew them off from there.
Now, I was actually in
the island that time
and I could see them
coming because we wanted
these airplanes so badly and
I could see them coming over
because we were based at Ta Qali,
which was the northern that
was that fighter airfield
and I could see those
airplanes coming in, I mean,
a very tight formation.
Now with a battle like that,
we'd never formated tightly
like that since we'd been in England.
I mean good God, you see these
109s up here and all that.
There was no way you were gonna
fly it tight in like that.
Well anyway, they all came
in and landed at Ta Qali
and at Luqa.
And of course, the Germans had
monitored these all the way
down with their radars and
their reconnaissance aircraft.
They saw exactly where they
were gonna be flown on.
And as soon as these airplanes
landed and when they were
being refueled and all that,
within about half an hour,
the first of these raids
came in from Sicily,
well it's only 60 miles
across, well they get there in
20 minutes, you know, that sort of thing.
And they started to
bomb these two airfields
and bomb these airplanes and do you know,
and this was the nadir of the battle,
it was a terrible,
terrible, terrible moment.
Within 48 hours of those
46 airplanes, only seven,
repeat seven were serviceable.
And quite frankly, we thought
because the Germans would know
what was going on with
that photographing aircraft
and all that, and we
thought that was the payoff,
that this was the deal and
that they would then invade.
Well, the Wasp went back up
to Scotland, up to the Clyde,
they loaded up another 48 Spitfires,
they went down into Gibraltar,
and it joined up with Eagle,
which had got 17 airplanes on it.
Now what it meant was when Wasp
and Eagle went in together,
there was roundly about 62
or 63 airplanes going into
the island at once.
And when Eagle turned around
and put another 17 in,
what we did was to get in
fact about 80 airplanes
into Malta within a
matter of about 10 days
and that did in fact turn the battle.
And so they got them up off
the ground before the raids
came in and they punched
the Germans on the nose
as they came in and that
was the turning point
of the Battle of Malta and
it was a tremendous victory.
It was a tremendous battle.
I was lucky enough, I was
fortunate enough to command
the top scoring Spitfire
squadron at the battle which was
number 249 squadron and we
did shoot a lot of airplanes
down and we had some
absolutely first class pilots
and they came from all
over the commonwealth.
They came from the United
States, they came from the UK,
we were a completely sort of
integrated English speaking squadron.
Right at the end of the time
when I'd been commanding it
for a while, I was overconfident, I think.
I'd done all right, you know,
and I hadn't really been
touched much by the enemy
and I can remember with the
squadron we were up with
Woodall controlling,
he got us right up well
sight of the island
with bags of height 24, 25,
26 thousand feet I suppose.
A raid, a fighter raid
of Messerschmitt 109s
and a few Italians coming in
at the same time from Sicily.
And we had a go at these
things and knocked one or two
of them down.
And like all those battles in the air,
suddenly the thing was over.
It was a tremendous thing
and everyone sort of rushing
for the goal of Strikers and so on
and our backs are all
mixed up together and so on and suddenly,
it was all over and you
couldn't see anything, you know.
I mean there was one of
the airplane in the sky,
it's the most extraordinary effect.
That was what happened in the fighting,
in the aerial fighting in
the really intense period.
And I was looking round
for a mate to join up with
and we always had this
cardinal principle that if you
were on your own, look
round for another airplane
and join up with him and
we used to fly these two
airplanes together in line
of breast, 200 yards apart,
each pilot looking in.
So the whole sky was covered,
this chap covered that way
and this one covered that.
And I was looking round and I suddenly saw
an Italian Macchi 202 down
there at about 11 o'clock,
three or four thousand
feet below and I thought,
my God, that's a piece
of cake for me, you know?
And I was just nipping
round in behind and I,
as one was always trained
to do, I just had one look
in the mirror, the driving
mirror if you'd like
and it always used to be said
that if you could recognize
a Messerschmitt 109 in the
mirror, it was too late.
Well I could see four and
here this was a pure trick.
It was what we used to tell
every single pilot officer
prune when he joined the
squadron to watch out for.
If there's one airplane down there,
you may be blooming sure
there's about half a dozen
up in the sun.
And here was I, I was
a squadron commander,
I'd been telling these fellows
who came to the squadron,
as a matter of fact, there was much more
experience than that
but earlier in England,
we would tell them when they
went if you see a single
airplane for God's sake,
watch out in the sun.
And here I, all that
experience, and I just fell into
the trap anyway.
I suddenly saw this thing and I whipped,
as I whipped the airplane
over there was a great hail
of these cannon shells roared
into the side of the wing
en route into the side of
the engine and all that.
And I thought, well, there I am there.
The smoke started to fill,
I still had about 23 or 24
thousand feet, I think the
smoke started to fill in the
cockpit and then down the
starboard line of the engine
by the ports, the exhaust
ports, I saw little flames
started to flick up under the cowling,
through the cowling.
And I thought, well, dear
me, I mean I'm gonna have to
step out and it was a
very good mate of mine
who was controlling it, it wasn't Woodall,
it was a Canadian called Stan Turner
who'd been commanding
the squadron before me
and I was one of his flight
commanders and he was
a super guy.
Stan Turner, the Canadian,
he deserves a chapter
in the Malta story.
And I called him up
and I said, well, Stan,
I'm gonna have to step out and
he said, well that's unlucky,
he said and that was all.
And so, in a Spitfire, you had a bobble,
a sort of rubber bobble here
which you pull to jettison
the hood canopy and I
pulled this blooming thing
and it came away in my
hand and there was the hood
absolutely stuck tight.
And the heat was coming
up in the cockpit and this
and the smoke and I thought,
I don't know, I thought
I was diving because now
with that, I didn't wanna get
any more of these fellows
behind, I'd had enough of them.
And I thought well this is
an interesting situation.
I mean I can't get out of here
and this thing is on fire.
This is a very interesting
period in my life
and the extraordinary thing
was and I suppose that when
you begin to think that
it might be terminal,
I don't know, I have no
doubt the psychiatrist would
have the answer for it but
you, I found a sort of wave
of tranquility almost came over me.
I wasn't sort of particularly frightened,
I thought, I kept thinking to myself,
well you silly whatnot, I
mean there was that airplane,
a single airplane and you'd
been telling these fellows
and here were these guys behind
and I mean you can't beat it
and anyway, so here it
was and I was going down,
I suppose I got down to
about 14 and 15 thousand feet
and the heat really was very
considerable and the smoke
and all that.
And I'd cut all the switches,
the ignition switch and everything.
And then suddenly I was
conscious of the fact that there
wasn't quite so much smoke
and that when I looked down,
all right, because it's difficult
to see down the Spitfire,
a great long nose from the
side, unless you can put
your head outside, which
I couldn't, of course,
because I couldn't get the hood off.
And I was jamming away,
pushing away at this hood,
trying to get the blooming
thing off and I couldn't rather.
And then suddenly I
thought, my God, I wonder if
the fire's gone out or going out.
And suddenly occurred to
me, I mean I had no engine.
Aircraft the screw, the airscrew was dead.
I flicked everything off.
And I thought to myself, what
Lord, what a remarkable thing,
maybe I can make something of this.
And I suppose I was probably
then about four or five miles
east of the island, it was
in the morning about 11:30
and the sun was up over here.
That's where these fellows
came from. (laughs)
And I thought and airplanes
were like gold dust in Malta
and I thought to myself, well
look, I mean I might have
clocked myself over this
and somehow or other,
I gotta try to save this airplane.
I mean it's in no shape,
blooming holes in the wing
and all that, but anyway, let's try.
And I still had because
I had climbed when once
the smoke had started to die down,
I had a lot of excess speed so I pulled up
and I got about another
five or six thousand feet
so I had about 18 thousand, I suppose.
And I was looking around to
see if there was nothing else
but there was nothing else in the sky,
I was absolutely on my own.
And I thought, well I can
see, just see in the distance,
in the haze, that Mediterranean
that lovely summer's day
it was, I could see Hellfire,
which was the southern most
airfield in Malta and I thought
to myself, well, I wonder
if I can stretch it ground
line and reach that.
And anyway, I did, I got
everything sort of trimmed up,
I had to be careful because I
thought one of these fellows
might be nipping around, you know,
having another go and finish me off.
And anyway, I got over the
coast at about 3,000 feet,
I suppose, 2,000 feet and I
rang up on the RT, on the radio
telephone to Stan Turner and I said,
I'm gonna try and make it,
tell them it's an emergency.
Okay, he said, lots of luck
and I can hear him saying
it now and instead of, I
hadn't got enough height to go
all the way around and land into wind
like obviously one did.
And I thought well now,
shall I try and get the
undercarriage down because if
I can get the undercarriage
down and even if I can get
the flaps down, I mean I could
at least even downwind I
think get the airplane in,
you know, it was a
relatively small airfield.
And so I put the
undercarriage down and by God,
it locked down, the
light, the thing came on
and then I put the flaps down
and I was just going over
the top of the hedge
downwind and three Swordfish,
these things that they called string bags,
which the Royal Navy, the
Fleet Air, a marvelous lot,
were flying and they came
straight up towards me
and I near to the touch to hit these.
Anyway, I put it down and rode
to the end of the airfield
and of course, I just sat there.
And I think I must've passed out actually
because I was the next
thing I was conscious of
was two fitters and the
ground crews that we had,
they were a simply super
lot, those fellows.
I mean, we'd never won
the battle without them.
And there were two of them.
One was a corporal fitter
and the other one was I think
a rigger on the other side
and they were standing up and
they were trying to get the hood open.
They realized that I couldn't get it open.
They knew I was sort of
partially unconscious.
And they eventually got the
thing off, I think the runners
had been hit by the fire
from behind when I was hit
and one of them on the right hand side
said how'd you get on, sir?
And I said oh, I mean,
and then he looked round and he saw,
"Cor," he said, "what an
effing mess." (laughs)
- Those brave fighter pilots
were immortalized as the few.
In the years to come, fighting
against terrible odds,
over 55,000 men of bomber
command lost their lives.
They were remembered as the many.
Winston Churchill said, "The
fighters are our salvation"
"But the bombers alone
provide the means of victory."
For the crews, this meant
operation after operation,
raid after raid, this
one might be their last.
- Our losses were tremendous,
I have an analysis which,
several about losses
and I think from memory,
that we lost 100 Blenheims in
the first 12 months of the war
because we started losing
five out of 10 on the first
bombing raid of the war
which our squadron did
with 110 squadron to Wattisham.
If there's something distant, dangerous,
or did risky, send the Blenheims.
- We started training with some
major operation unspecified.
And it all sounded very
alarming but we didn't know
where it would be.
And we're told probably it
was somewhere near Paris
or something like that.
It never occurred to us
that any of the crews
and Blenheims particularly
after so many loses,
we sent into Germany itself and low level.
And I was, I had to be
the deputy leader of it,
dare to say I flew number
two to the wing commander
leading the whole operation.
And as deputy leader, I
would have had to taken over
if he'd been shot down.
This meant that I was shown
the target 48 hours before
the other crews and I
was in on the discussions
of the planning of the
final planning of the raids
and so on.
And I nearly forgotten
going into the crew room,
I think the raid was a
Sunday, I have a feeling,
but anyway, 48 hours before
and to see what the target
and I looked at the operations
map laid out on the table
and I couldn't believe it.
I saw this red line going
straight from Norfolk,
West Rainton straight
to Cologne in Germany.
And I just couldn't believe it.
And it was only too true
and it was to bomb the
two great power stations
there which Knapsack was the
biggest in Eurpoe.
And we were to do it low
level and the leading six
were to go fly down between the chimneys.
So I thought oh, I've had it.
And for 48 hours, I had to
make up my mind as to whether
I can do this trip or whether I couldn't.
It was the acid test because
the chances coming back
seemed nonexistent.
We were bound to be
intercepted by fighters
and traditionally Blenheims
intercepted by fighters
without an escort meant
anything from 50 to 100% losses
but as deep into Germany
as that must mean 100%.
And the flack around the target itself.
So I wrestled with myself for 48 hours,
can I do this or can't I?
And eventually, I'd been asked
this before, how did you?
My technique of doing it
was to finally tell myself
accept the fact that I wouldn't
come back and therefore,
in a strange way, this removed
all this terrible worry.
I just knew where I stood.
I wasn't coming back and I
just got to make myself do it.
And that was the frame of
mind in which I set off.
And of course we all took
time circling round to
formate and join up the whole
group was involved in this,
54 Blenheims all together
in which I was in the 36th
and we set off across the
North Sea at low level
in formation.
- This is the only deep
penetration of Germany
which I can recall in the Blenheim Ts,
I went to costal targets.
But my big memory of this is
flying hedge hopping across
Holland all the way and the
ecstatic reception we received
from the farm workers in
the fields as they saw
RAF Roundals and they waved like mad.
And you then realized
what the war was all about
because they had been occupied.
And of course the waving stopped
when we crossed the frontier,
didn't need my navigator
to tell me when crossed
from Holland into Germany.
Well, we had no fighter escort you see,
once we crossed the land, the Dutch coast,
the fighters came with
us to the Dutch coast,
had to turn back, didn't have the range.
- We went on and on and
I just went on like an
automaton just flying
next to keeping formation
with the leader very close.
And then suddenly, he
said over the intercom,
we got the order to target
coming up, turn to starboard
target coming up and I
thought, oh well, this is it.
And we turned to starboard,
very low, only about 13, 15 feet
above the ground, turned
around and then straightened up
and there ahead up on a hill
ahead of us was this enormous
great industrial complex
with this belching smoke,
with these great towers and
these 12 enormous chimneys
and I thought well, this
is it and we went on over
a whole lot of electric
systems with grids and things
which were all linking up I
suppose with the power surge.
And before one knew where everyone was,
we were up to the power station.
I dropped in as a number
two behind the leader.
We had to, the first six had to fly down
between the chimneys and drop
their bombs straight into it.
And I can see myself now, I
thought, well, here we go,
this is the end and plunged into smoke.
And to my amazement, we
came out the other side
and realized we survived.
All our six did survive.
Of course the feeling of
relief, you can't describe it,
you have to experience it.
- We lost 12 of our Blenheims
out of the 54 which took part
in that raid.
But to me, that was one of the
outstanding raids of the war.
- Like the pilots and fighter command,
the aircrew members and
bombers were all volunteers.
Out of a hundred crews flying 50 missions,
only 13 would survive.
- When you looked, there
was something peculiar on,
because of the briefing prior to the raid,
we were told that we had to
hit this target and hit it hard
because if we didn't tonight,
we'd go tomorrow night
and the night after and
the night after that
until we flattened it.
So this was a most unusual statement.
And a little later, during the briefing,
it was explained that
Peenemunde was the center for
rocket and V1 experimentation
and that the German war
industry was tooled up to
produce the V2, the rocket,
in quite large numbers.
Unless we could do something
about this to delay this
production, London was
within very easy range of the
channel coast and the Londoners
would be under a rain
of these one turn rockets until
perhaps London was flattened
and we'd have to give in.
So we all realized that this target
demanded really close
attention from all the crews.
But despite this, we retained
our usual sense of humor.
I had a radio operator
who devised what he called
a terror weapon which
we were going to drop
along with the other bombs
and this terror weapon
consisted of three screamers.
Screamers were flute like
objects, the Germans started this
with the dive bombing tactics.
These screamers would make a
loud howl attached to a bomb
as it fell.
So we had these three
screamers attached to a tiny
11 pound practice bomb and he
claimed that psychologically
the enemy hearing this
terrible noise coming down
from the sky followed by a
mere plop would all go mad.
Well, we didn't take much notice
of this other than laughing
but on the way into
Peenemunde, there's an island
called Rugen and there was a
searchlight making a little
bit of a nuisance of itself
and we said, Merrils,
this is your opportunity
to try your terror weapon.
And he went to down the
fuselage and prepared to drop
this practice bomb and
the bomber in air gave me
some instructions.
Left, left, steady and now.
So Merrils dropped this
bomb and much to everybody's
surprise, the searchlight went out.
So we never heard the
last of that from him.
But to get back to the target,
the really serious stuff
that night, the air force
had laid on a master bomber,
a group captain Searby who
was a marvelous bombing ace.
- He was the master bomber
which meant that he had to be
at the target five minutes in
advance of the main forces,
the whole bomber command
and it was the first time
that a master bomber had been
employed with the main force.
He had to get to the target and circle it
and identify the three
different aiming points
and then hold off and wait
for the pathfinders to come in
illuminate the target with
magnesium flares so it was like
daylight and then the rest
of the pathfinders came in
and dropped their kind of flares.
- This worked perfectly
and in the meantime,
a spoof raid by some of
our Mosquitoes had attacked
Berlin and the reason for
that was to entice the German
night fighters away down
south from Peenemunde
and as I, personally, left the target,
the crew were reporting
night fighters arriving
and very soon quite a lot of
heavy bombers were going down.
So I put my nose down and
shot out over the Baltic Sea
and back over Denmark and that
was the end of that target
as far as we were concerned.
But we heard the following
day from photographic
reconnaissance that it'd
had been very successful
and we know from Spears'
diaries that production
and experimentation
ceased completely then,
they had to move the works somewhere else.
And approximately six months
delay was caused to this
V2 program.
- Many raids carried out
by the RAF during the war
carried a rather different
definition of shooting
the enemy.
There were the courageous
soldiers of the aerial
reconnaissance units.
- I joined the unit in
the late summer of '40,
when the Battle of
Britain was in full swing.
And we just about that
moment had transferred from
fighter command to coastal command.
The reason I think, quite
apart from the fact that
fighter command were
pretty busy at the time
to say the least of it.
The real beneficiaries of our
activities were the admiralty,
particularly the admiralty
and bomber command.
We were only then
developing enough definition
on period ops, the tail bomber command.
Alas, a lot of it that they
were missing the target.
But with coastal command,
they only needed to know
where the German ships were.
And throughout the war in the whole,
the unit did keep a good
watch on Bismarck, Tirpitz,
Scharnhorst, all these
people and for example,
we used to cover best
every day if we could.
And the unit built up into
something very big indeed,
I think just for the war it
reached the status of being
a group and the Americans
example copied the technique
and I'm sure that that is the only way,
you can't fight for reconnaissance.
And people have said to me
didn't you feel rather worried
flying deep into Germany with no guns?
The answer of course is that
is far safer deep into Germany
than it was flying down the channel coast
because there they had
radar that might get you.
And I didn't remember any
of us really discussing it
being bothered about it.
The most dangerous place
was Brest, definitely,
because the night when I was
commanding unit down there
we had two shot down a
day, two of ours that is.
When these two were shot
down, the command headquarters
and I think the amnesty suggested
it best we ought to have
fighter escort.
Well my pilots and I were
more incensed, we reckoned
that would ruin everything.
Well we thought it didn't
make any sense at all
because if you went out
with a fighter escort,
it was enemy territory, they
would soon outnumber you
and all the rest of it.
And I phoned my commanding
officer Benson and said would
he have any objection if I
went to the headquarters nearby
fighter group that would
have to provide the escort
to persuade him to discourage
any idea like that.
So I flew up to the headquarters,
which was in Wilshire, I suppose.
Instinct, the AFC there was
a man called Adalbert who was
the commanding officer
of the Schneider 12 Fleet
in both '29 and '30, 1929 and 1931.
And he thought I'd come to
help with the organization
of it, I said no, no, no.
I want you to say it's madness.
Because weren't going to
be shot down at two a day.
We would find ways around it.
But the only way yo get
intelligence is stealth.
You cannot fight for
instance, and there were loads
of fighters apart from
anything else as you well know,
he rolled up on, you will
have fighters with long
range tanks and all the
rest of it and they won't be
in vague and innate to fight
the Germans who come up
because the channel is quite wide there.
I said what we would prefer
is if you would always
watch us on radar and if you
see as soon as you pick us up
that we have company so to
speak, if you would scramble
fighters to come out and look after us.
And that, it stayed like that,
we never did get a fighter
escort, it would have been crazy.
- Reconnaissance was not
the only reason while flying
over enemy territory alone.
The pathfinders and later on the raiders
and intruders often flew missions alone.
And these were usually low
level, highly dangerous raids.
Often in full view of
heavy German defenses.
High speed raids with just a
few aircraft flying sometimes
no higher than the rooftops
to take out difficult
and specific targets.
- Augsburg which is only
just sort of northeast,
northwest of Munich
and we had to go there.
And we had the target of
the factory which made
diesel engines for submarines
and that was the whole purpose
of the raid, to knock it out
because the battle of the
Atlantic was on, we
were losing arms coming
across from America, food,
and the U-Boats were having
a ball and so they
decided the New Lankester,
which had only been in service
by then in three months.
The New Lankester could do it.
Only one snag, it'd have
to be done in daylight.
So, it was low level.
It's no good trying to hit
a factory from 20,000 feet
so instead we went in at 15 to 100 feet.
In the briefing room, this
map of Europe was right across
the wall and it was covered
by a curtain and anyway,
we stood up when the
wing commander came in
for the briefing and then
he said, right chaps,
sit down and then they
pulled the curtain, you see.
And we saw this tape coming
right down from Lincolnshire
down to France, right across France,
across parts of Germany,
to Augsburg, you see.
And everybody burst out laughing.
Get off, sort of thing, you know.
And then the wing commander's
face was pretty grim
and we realized that he wasn't kidding.
This was where we were going.
Well one, I remember one bloke
saying well I might as well
go and shoot myself now
because I know I won't come
back from this but he did
go and he did come back so
there we are.
But it was, it was really
and truly a suicide raid
and those who go back
were jolly, jolly lucky.
- So, it was decided
to send a daylight raid
of 12 Lankesters defending
themselves against fighters
all this way down to Augsburg
and then back by night.
So it was an evening raid
but unfortunately the
Germans didn't play fair.
They decided to arm their fighters with
20 millimeter cannon
which fire outranged our
303 machine guns so we couldn't
defend ourselves really.
And due to a navigational error,
one squadron didn't join
up with the other.
- There were two squadrons involved.
Each sent six aircraft.
The other squadron, I was on
97 squadron, the other one
was 44 squadron, we were
then the only two squadrons
who had Lankesters and the
leader of their formation
was ostensibly the
leader of the whole raid.
It didn't work out that
way in the end because
when we got to the French
coast, they went a little north
further north than us and we went south.
And unfortunately fight
command had laid on
hundreds of sorties against
the part the Clair L'Elle area
to draw the German fighters set up there
so that we could nip in across
the sort of farther south
and not run into the fighters.
And unfortunately, the
other squadron did run into
the fighters and they
shot down four out of six
straight away.
And the remaining two
then flew on to Augsburg.
And then when they got
to Augsburg, the leader,
Nettleton, squadron leader
Nettleton who got the VC for it,
they bombed and his, the
remaining aircraft with him.
That came in and they bombed
and then we were hit by flack
and they turned into a
torch and they went down.
But some of them I think,
it was about three or four
of the crew managed to get out.
- As we turned over one
of the lakes down there
towards Augsburg, we could
see clouds of black smoke
and we realized that 44
were already attacking.
It had been meant that
we'll all attack together.
So as we arrived, the Germans
were well apprised of what
was happening.
- My crew was in the last
three to cross the target
and by this time Augsburg
was awake and they knew that
something was happening and
so we ran into a tremendous
load of fire and I looked
through the window at
the aircraft on our starboard side
and it was on fire, the pilot,
and he was a warrant officer,
warrant officer Tommy Maycock
and he had his window open
and his head outside and you
could see the flames behind him
and this is about 100 feet up.
Now he could have probably
put it down because we hadn't
reached the target and he
could have probably put it down
in the field, okay, then
might have been killed then.
But still, they would have had a chance.
But no, he pressed on and
dropped his bombs and then
it blew up and if anybody deserved a VC,
I reckon that guy did.
- I'm pretty sure that one
of the reasons why our 44
got off track was that we
all started thinking after
the briefing knowing
that we were flying low
and people would be shooting
up under the bellies
of our aircraft that perhaps
it might be a good thing
to have a sheet armored
plate or something like that
underneath our seats
and most people did this
and I'm wondering if Nettleton,
who got a VC for the raid
incidentally, whether he had
put a piece of steel under
his seat and hadn't allowed for
the deviation on his compass.
That could have sent him off
track across the channel.
- We were all hit in some
way, we were on fire,
our aircraft was on fire.
And we had managed to get it
out so that was a good thing.
One of the engines was on
fire and we got that out,
the pilot got that out.
But everybody was hit
and we came back in fact,
it was one of the remaining
blokes from our squadron
and we thought if we flew back with him,
he'd got his guns
because we had lost ours,
the oil which fed the gun
turrets on the Lankester
went down the side of the aircraft.
That been hit and it was
the oil from those pipes
that caught fire in the
fuselage on the floor.
And so our guns wouldn't work.
So we said to the other bloke
can we come and join you?
We thought if we run into
trouble, he's got guns maybe.
When we got back, we found
he thought same thing.
He hadn't got any guns
left either. (laughs)
- It was not only in the
air that the men and women
of the RAF showed acts
of bravery and heroism.
Those in the ground crews
and in the operations rooms
suddenly found themselves in
the front line of the war.
- We had a young man, Alfred his name was,
he was a good man was asked of 15 years.
He was sitting on the load of
explosives going to be taken
to an aircraft into Lorry.
These were photoflash bombs and flares
and things of that nature.
And with Lorry bombed to
a standstill they did so,
one of these flares, one of
the photo flashes which were
a flare body filled with
magnesium, it was a bomb,
it would have gone off
with a terrific blast
because of the others on board.
One of these, the firing
wire caught on another one
as it fell down and there
was a crack which was
quite audible and the
young man knew the fuse had
started burning and he had
18 seconds I think it was
before the bomb went off.
Now I'm sure I would have
lept out of the Lorry and run
for my life like so many.
But he scrambled across the
Lorry, got to this photo flash,
dismantled the flare, took
out the burning delay capsule
and threw it out of the
Lorry all within 18 seconds
and it was very calmly done.
We did our best to get
him a medal for that one
but all they managed was
the AOC's commendation
which is the equivalent to
a mention in dispatches.
But it was a very brave thing to do.
- The thing about the ground
crew is was they were prepared
to service these airplanes
when the raids were on and
the courage which those
fellows showed in those
terrible months of March and
April and the early part of May
was absolutely extraordinary.
And this Malta book that I wrote,
Malta: The Thorn in Rommel's Side,
I dedicated this book to them
and I did that little quote
from A. Housman.
"Their shoulders held the sky suspended."
"They stood, and earth's
foundations stay."
And you know that is exactly
what those fellows did.
- We have not had time
to tell you the story
of all their battles, maybe
these few words from a
young fighter pilot sum up
the spirit that they brought
to the nation.
Night raids, daylight
raids, intruder raids.
Into the dawn, across the bars of sunrise.
Through rain and storm,
there is always glory on their wings.
They came to avenge the
innocent, to break the tyrant,
to release a continent from slavery.
To save mankind.
Once they were few, now they are many.
They must never be forgotten.
(victorious fanfare)
