大象传媒

A MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT DIP IN THE BALTIC
Chapter 1

Foreword
This is the account of the fate of one Avro Lancaster of No.57 Squadron, dispatched to drop mines off the German port of Swinemunde in August 1944, or more precisely, this is the account of the events of that night by one crew member of one of the Lancasters involved.

It has been built upon the personal recollections of an ex-airman, nearly sixty years after the events actually happened. As one might reasonably expect after such an interval, the memory has played its inevitable tricks and some details may have been lost, or confused. Wherever possible, alternative sources have been used to fill in gaps and to add additional detail to the context and so on. However, the core remains indisputably the outcome of a series of conversations between a W.W.II aircrew member and a member of the next generation, who was blessed to grow up in the peace and prosperity won so gallantly and at great sacrifice, a decade before his birth.

East Kirkby in 1944 was not a special airfield; it was one of many in Lincolnshire that were home to the Lancasters of Bomber Command and the personnel who flew, serviced, maintained and administered their part in the Bomber Offensive. Like so many other wartime airfields, East Kirkby was essentially a small, temporary town put down on the fertile soils of Lincolnshire, with the single purpose of prosecuting the air war against Germany. Its buildings were functional in the extreme. Traditional brick and mortar were very much the exception in the sea of corrugated sheet steel, Maycrete and mud. One episode from East Kirkby's early operational days has passed into folklore. The first operation dispatched from the new airfield was briefed in candlelight, as mains electricity had not been fully installed. What a stark contrast it must have been for the airmen of No.57 Squadron who had moved from the relative pre-war luxury of RAF Scampton to the rampant utilitarianism of the multitude of Nissen huts that it now made home.

In August 1944, one of the two thousand-plus occupants of RAF East Kirkby was a nineteen year old Flight Engineer hailing from the south of Yorkshire. His name was Malcolm Crapper.

New Boys
On July 7th 1944, a new crew arrived at East Kirkby to become operational with 57 Squadron, having completed their final stage of training with a two-week stint at 5 Lancaster Finishing School at Syerston in Nottinghamshire. The crew comprised:

Pilot Flt. Lt S. L. [Stan] Scutt from Chichester aged 30
Flight Engineer Sgt M [Malcolm] Crapper from Sheffield aged 19
Navigator FO A. Stienstra from Canada aged 21
Bomb Aimer FO R.E. Trindall from Yorkshire aged 25
Wireless Operator PO J. Farnhill from Lancashire aged 23
Mid Upper Gunner F/Sgt J. Shields from Australia aged 24
Rear Gunner Sgt C.A. Harris from Essex aged 21

Flt. Lt Scutt had previously served as a flying instructor and F/Sgt Shields only joined the crew at Syerston, where the previous mid upper gunner had gone LMF'.

1. LMF - Lack of Moral Fibre. The categorisation of aircrew who, for whatever reason, could not or would not fly operationally. Some cases were genuine mental illness or loss of nerve. The RAF never sought to disavow the interpretation of LMF as cowardice.

For Malcolm Crapper, the path taken to operational duties was by then a well-worn and proven route. Having opted for a direct entry to Flight Engineer, Malcolm, like so many airmen before and after him, started his RAF career at Lord's Cricket Ground. From there three weeks were spent at St John's Wood followed by six weeks at an Initial Training Wing in Torquay. St. Athan in South Wales was the location of the 28 week long Flight Engineer's Course from which Malcolm passed out with the rank Sergeant in March 1944. He was still only 18 years of age.

"I really wanted to join the airforce. On my way home from Sunday School - almost eighteen years old, and still going to Sunday School! I ask you!!" Malcolm laughs about it now, "On the way back from Sunday School we saw 617 [Squadron] Lancs low flying over the local dam. We didn't know what they were up to. No-one did. Not until after the Dams Raid that is. Anyway, those big, dark aeroplanes and their noise really got to me. I knew then what I wanted to do."

When postings came through, Sgt Crapper found himself destined for No.5 Group in mid Lincolnshire. RAF Scampton, famous for its association with 617 Squadron and the Dams Raid, and former base of No.57 Squadron, was his destination. Whilst there, Malcolm spent his 19th birthday. He recalls, "I was with three other Flight Engineers listening to the radio the day after my birthday, when we heard the shocking news. 94 aircraft had been lost at Nuremberg. Not one of us had even flown at the time..."

Of this quartet of FEs, one was killed at Winthorpe with a Heavy Conversion Unit (HCU), the remaining trio were eventually posted to East Kirkby and all survived the war. Having gone through three months' training with 1661 HCU at Winthorpe, the final step to operations was a two-week course at 5 Lancaster Finishing School (LFS) at Syerston.

Down To Business:
After their arrival at East Kirkby, Stan Scutt's crew had a period to assimilate themselves into their new surroundings - coming to terms with the geography of the airfield and the topography of the rising land to the north of the airfield where the billets were located, for starters. It was very much like new boys at school. Common practices had to be learned, squadron protocol and idiosyncrasies absorbed.

Both squadrons based at East Kirkby, Nos. 57 and 630, had spent July undertaking a wide variety of bombing work, compared to the repeated hammering of German cities, particularly Berlin, over winter of 1943/4. The style of, and techniques used in, the precision bombing of French targets could not be more marked from the urban area attacks on Germany.

French rail yards were attacked to impede German troop movements to counter the thrust inland from the Normandy coast, and to prepare for the Allied landings on the French Mediterranean coast. U-boat pens at Bordeaux and St Nazaire, warships at Brest and V-Weapon launch and storage sites throughout France were all attacked. Even Dutch airfields were attacked to prevent their use by Luftwaffe aircraft for air-launching V l s at Britain. The most risky sorties of all were the battle-front bombings in Normandy, where the price of inaccuracy was Allied infantry and armour.

That is not to say that there was a respite for the German cities. Despite the use of his force in supporting the invasion of Europe, Butch(2) Harris still maintained, albeit on reduced scale, his onslaught against the Nazi homeland and its industry. Kiel, Brunswick and three raids on Stuttgart were carried out in this period.

(2) Although known to the British public by the epithet `Bomber', Sir Arthur Harris was known through his command by wry, black nicknames, both `Butch' and `The Butcher' being widely used. His fondly remembered Old Lags still use them in admiration, some sixty years on.

Eleven days after they arrived, F/L Scutt and crew flew their first operational sortie. It was not easy - the target was Caen where stiff German resistance was halting the Allied break-out from the Normandy beach-head. Bomber Command was detailed to smash the German forces holding Caen, thereby allowing the seriously delayed breakout, code-named Operation Goodwood, to proceed.

Malcolm recalls, "The summer of 1944 was a very busy time at East Kirkby. We were doing flying training, attending briefings, flying ops - and sleeping. In the week between July 18th (our first op.) and July 25th, when we went on leave, we did five ops. and two training flights. On returning from leave on August 6th, we discovered that the pace hadn't relented. The Lanc. we flew our first op in, DX-F [PD212] had gone missing. In the ten days after our leave, we flew eight ops. and two training flights. The weather was pretty good and I don't recall any delays or postponements."

One of the sorties was a daylight raid on a V 1 storage site at Bois de Casson, just outside Paris, on August 6th. It proved eventful for the Scutt crew flying Lancaster LM582, DX-B. Sgt Crapper:

"We were caught by two Messerschmidt Bf109's, whilst on our bomb run. The worst possible time - not that any time was a good time to be in a British bomber in daylight, bounced by a couple of Jerries. The Skipper ordered me to the front turret as the bomb aimer was prone working his bombsight. I can't remember if I fired a few rounds in anger or not. It happened so quickly. As soon as it started, the attack seemed to finish and I slid out of the nose turret, avoided trampling our bomb aimer and made my way back to the skipper's right hand.

鈥淎fter a few seconds, he caught my eye and tilted his head at the port wing. I knew that the Lanc's wings flexed in flight - I had seen it so often that I no longer noticed - but this was different. The movement was not only more obvious, but far more pronounced than I had ever seen. I drew breath to speak, at which point the skipper held up his forefinger to his pursed lips in a semi-theatrical 鈥淪hhh!鈥� mime. I got the message and remained silent. The trip home was largely uneventful and we landed OK. Next day at dispersal, we were told a cannon shell had hit the spar between No.l and No.2 fuel tanks. Fortunately the spar had not failed. Equally fortunate was the fact that neither tank had received the shell. However, further investigation revealed an even less welcome surprise in the form of an unexploded 20mm cannon shell embedded in the main spar. Had that one exploded.,....鈥�

"The only time, as far as I remember, that I visited any of the hangars in my time at EK, was to see the unexploded shell in the main spar. All routine servicing took place on the dispersals, regardless of the weather. And, of course, I only saw the summer cycle. How they [ground crew] coped in the ice and snow and screaming winds coming in from the North Sea, is beyond me.

"We were grateful that the Americans had significantly reduced the effectiveness and expertise of the Luftwaffe fighters. I am quite sure more experienced pilots would not have let us off鈥�.

The Commanding Officer of 57 Squadron, W/C Humphries was also attacked by a pair of Bf109s. He and his crew survived, Humphries being awarded an immediate DFC for his actions.

Pr-BR

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