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AVRO LANCASTERS|VALOUR IN THE AIR
RIGHT
WO ‘Tex’ Campbell.BELOW
Lancaster 'N Nuts'
at dispersal.BELOW
Lancaster 'N Nuts'
at dispersal.PB141 ‘F’ Freddie, the Lancaster of
Flt Lt Reg Hockley DFM was also hit
and the order given to bale out. The
aircraft broke into pieces, trapping two
of the crew in a portion of the fuselage
that fell to earth with no possible hope
of survival for those inside. Yet they
did. Indeed, all seven men survived the
initial disaster; though one would be
murdered later by the Germans.
Flt Lt Peter Thomas in Lancaster
PB523 withstood a series of fighter
attacks, but with his aircraft ablaze was
obliged to give the order to bale out.
Four of his crew got out and survived;
a fifth, the flight engineer Flt Sgt
Viv Hobbs, also made it clear but his
chute cruelly failed to open. Thomas
stayed at the controls with one of
the wounded gunners, WO ‘Tex’
Campbell. Neither made it home.SPIRITED RESISTANCE
The Lancaster of Australian Fg Off
Robert Terpening DFC was not
only hit by flak, but also set upon by
fighters. But the Luftwaffe men did
not have it all their own way, and a
spirited resistance from Terpening’s
gunners gave him sufficient time to
reach allied lines and for all of the
crew to grab their parachutes and
make it out alive.
Others fought through and
managed to return to base, among
them another future VC, the South
African Cpt Edwin Swales. He fought
a running battle lasting 15 minutesbefore reaching safety. On all of the
returning aircraft there were the scars
of the fight: dented fuselages, battered
cockpits, shattered men.
The last to land was Vivian Owen-
Jones in PB591 ‘N’ Nuts. A near-miss
had splintered the cockpit Perspex,
injuring his flight engineer. He was
relieved to be home.
The shock among those who had
taken part was palpable. Many of the
pilots who returned were confused
as to how the raid had gone so
spectacularly wrong. That said, it
was far from unsuccessful. The Oboe
reports showed that at the point
Palmer was shot down, his aircraft
was tracking with absolute accuracy
towards the target. Such precision
was rarely achieved on a practice run,
let alone on an actual raid with the
aircraft under constant attack.
The raid succeeded in causing
considerable damage to the
marshalling yards but the price to pay
was arguably too high: 35 Squadron
lost two aircraft and crews, before
even reaching the target; five of 582
Squadron’s Lancasters came to grief,
and of the three Mosquitos, one (in the
first wave) was also shot down. Eight
aircraft out of an attacking force of 30
was a terrible price to pay, especially so
late in the war at a stage when Bomber
Command had stopped calculating
losses in terms of percentages. In
addition to those aircraft and crews
that failed to return, many more hadserious damage and injured crew.
Some aircraft were so badly mauled
they need to be sent away for repair
and rebuild.
The commanding officer at Graveley,
Gp Capt ‘Dixie’ Dean was distraught.
The new CO of 582 Squadron, Wg
Cdr Stafford Coulson, was also
concerned for the morale of his men.
But they soon bounced back and five
days later, Bomber Command returned
to finish the job.This feature has been adapted from
Heroic Endeavour – the remarkable story
of one Pathinder Force attack, a Victoria
Cross, and 206 brave men, by Sean Feast.