大象传媒

LONG TRIPS
Our two longest trips were to drop mines in the Gulf of Dantzig and an attack on Munich. Both of these involved long routes selected to confuse the enemy defence. Mines could only be laid accurately by means of a "time and distance run" from a point on the enemy occupied coast. In this case the Hell peninsular of Dantzig (now Gdynia) was very suitable but flying the direct route across Denmark and Northern Germany would have been too hazardous on a clear moonlit night. We therefore flew across the North Sea to northern Norway, then across neutral Sweden who took no notice of us and the to the northern Baltic before turning south t6 Poland. We had dropped our mines and were away before some light and ineffective flak opened up.

Munich was a distant target in southern Germany which had never been seriously attacked and where the direct route went over areas with plenty of flak and fighter defenses. We therefore flew south over France as though heading for Italy; over the top of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe, then around neutral Switzerland watching dummy target indicators being dropped over Turin before turning north to pass over Austria and attack Munich from the south. This raid was very successful due in particular to Wing Commander Cheshire who flew the direct route from England in a Mosquito and dropped the initial marker from low level. He was coned by searchlights for 15 minutes while making his escape and landing back in England with nearly empty tanks. This was towards the end of his 100 operational flights after which he received a well deserved VC. While bang over the target a Fock Wolf fighter flew directly over us, clearing us by perhaps l00feet. We banked steeply and lost him.

TOUGH TRIPS
Two trips when there were heavy losses, mainly due to weather conditions, are worth mentioning. Firstly Berlin on March 24th 1944. The plan was for the bomber force to approach from the north, turning onto a due southerly course near the island of Rugen in the Baltic. On the long plug eastwards the had been a wind from the north of perhaps 30 knots i.e. for every hour flown eastward the navigator had to compensate for a potential drift to the south of 30 nautical miles. This was a very normal state of affairs; however after making the southerly turn near Rugen, the northerly wind picked up almost instantaneously to over 100 knots. There was no doubt about this, Rugen and the German coastline showed up very clearly on the H2S radar. The result of this was that the target marking scheduled for a particular time was disrupted and bombing by the main force using there own radar became disorganized and less accurate. Worse still on the way home westward the northerly wind increased even more and many navigators made insufficient allowance for this and as a result flew over the Rhur area with its massive flak defenses. The losses that night were 73. Secondly Nuremberg on March 30th 1944. This was a clear night with some moon. For some strange reason the approach route over France and southern Germany included one dead straight leg of 300 miles dead east. Some cloud cover had been forecast but this turned out to be a thin layer with its top at about 10000 feet. The temperature was such that the bomber force flying at 23000 feet left condensation trails behind them making it simple for German fighters to spot the bombers silhouetted against the cloud tops below and then to attack at leisure. 96 bombers were lost out of 782 dispatched; in human terms 545 crew were killed, 152 taken prisoner, 26 wounded and 15 evaded and made their way home.

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Anastasia Travers a volunteer with WM CSV Actiondesk on behalf of John Maunsell and has been added to the site with his permission. John Maunsell fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

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