Mosquito: Menacing the Reich: Combat Action in the Twin-engine Wooden Wonder of World War II (10 page)

Just before D-Day 544 Squadron flew special rail sorties in daylight to France in an effort to detect any movement of Panzers towards the Normandy beachhead as early as possible. If any movement was observed, the crew had to land at Farnborough to give a verbal report to SHEAF HQ, who would then initiate interdiction bombing by 2nd TAF medium bombers. The first confirmation that the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter was being operated by the
Luftwaffe
came on 25 July. A Mosquito of 544 Squadron flown by Flight Lieutenant A.E. Wall and his navigator, Flying Officer A.S. Lobban, was operating over Munich when it was intercepted and attacked by one of the German jets. The engagement lasted for 20 minutes until eventually Wall was able to evade his attacker by going into clouds over the Austrian Tyrol. He subsequently made an emergency landing at St. Fermo on the shores of the Adriatic. The usually low casualty rate in the PRU rose dramatically from 0.6 per cent in June 1944 to 2.9 per cent in September. Such an increase in losses could only have been caused by the Me 262, since 50 per cent of them occurred in the area where these jet fighters operated. In an effort to reduce casualties and combat the threat posed by the Me 262, from then on until early-1945 PR sorties over Germany were flown mainly by Spitfire PR.XIXs since their superior manoeuvrability and performance made them a better choice than the PR Mosquito.
⁸⁰

Flight Lieutenant Alan ‘Joe’ Morgan and Sergeant Frank ‘Ginger’ Baylis who flew forty-six PR Mosquito sorties on 544 Squadron from January to October 1944, were well aware of the dangers, as Joe Morgan recalls:

PR sorties were nearly always high level jobs, mostly without untoward incidents apart from the usual flak and occasional pursuit by fighters, which we could outpace if they were spotted in time for us to apply full power and accelerate to full speed. The Me 262 jet and the Me 163 rocket-powered fighter did not appear until about the end of our tour and we did not encounter either. The main threat arose during the actual photo runs when the navigator would be prone in the nose compartment, operating the cameras and directing the pilot, who would be concerned mainly with accurate flying concentrating on the flying instruments. The normal complement was two massive 36-inch focal length cameras, one 6-inch focal length camera for vertical photography at 6,000ft or below and forward and side-facing cameras for really low-level work. With all the film magazines and control gear, this was a really significant load. The rearward visibility from the pilot’s station was not adequate, even from the perspex port-window adjacent to his seat. When we were
en route
in hostile skies, Frank would kneel on his seat, facing aft. He did not care for this but it proved a wise precaution. Although the Mosquito had the legs of the opposition, we could not afford the fuel to cruise on full power and thought that good look out astern was imperative for the early sighting of any pursuer. The aircraft was at its most vulnerable when making photo-runs, especially on the ‘railway recces’ in which the navigator was constrained to

remain in the nose compartment for perhaps 28 minutes at a time.

Morgan and Baylis had flown the first of 544 Squadron ‘rail recces’ on 3 June 1944, as Baylis recalls.

We spent about an hour covering lines between Mont de Marsan and Bordeaux, which made Joe quite uncomfortable, as the last time he flew over Merignac in 1941, he’d had a pasting with accurate flak. Our most memorable ‘railway recce’ was on 6 August. We had been briefed to follow the railway from south of Paris to Lyon, then up towards Belfort. As we trundled towards Lyon, we saw this huge smoke cloud rising to 20,000ft from oil tanks south of the town. We could even see flames from our height of 28,000ft, conjecturing that ‘it must be a raid by Fifteenth Air Force heavy bombers from Italy‘. (There had been no information given at briefing). We cut across to the rail-line leading north-east to Belfort. As Joe turned quite steeply, I took an instant shot of the fire and towering smoke. We settled onto the railway and Joe asked me to have a last look around. Good job. I saw twelve fighters in three groups of four obviously in hot pursuit. Without any urging, Joe put the throttles through the ‘gate’ and we managed to avoid them, aided by some high thunderheads in which we played ‘hide and seek’ for ten minutes or so.

Morgan continues.

Our worst hazard arose from our life-preserving oxygen supply! It happened on our second trip. We were climbing outbound over the Channel when, at about 25,000ft I passed out. I later discovered that the oxygen supply had become disconnected from the face-piece of my mask. Frank told me later that he noticed we were flying erratically and he saw me ‘hanging in the straps’ as he put it. He pushed the stick forward and held the oxygen tube to my mask and I gradually came to. We were at 6,000ft in thick haze. The compass was swinging wildly, the engine temperatures were ‘off the clock’ and the gyro flying instruments had toppled. I felt dazed and ill and put out a Mayday call on VHF. Manston gave me a course to steer and I landed shakily. But after a couple of hours on oxygen I was able to fly back to Benson. All our oxygen masks were modified the next day so some good came of it.

We had two further jousts with oxygen! One was on our seventh trip when I began to feel ‘woozy’ again while we were being ‘flakked’ when photographing naval units in Oslo Fjord. Sure enough, the supply indicator was in the red sector. Having finished our task, we dived away out to sea and returned at low level. The third (and thankfully last) encounter came when crossing the North Sea
en route
to Berlin. I saw Frank had passed out. The bayonet fitting of the tube, which ran from his harness to the oxygen supply point had come adrift. I only had to get down from my seat and connect the pipe. He soon perked up and we completed the trip.

One of our most ‘dodgy’ encounters occurred on our tenth trip. We had just finished a long run in the Lyons area with Frank in the nose when we spotted a gaggle of fighters bearing down on us. We were at about 25,000ft with drop tanks still attached. It seemed a long time to shed these impediments and wind up to maximum power. Meantime, our pursuers were diving on us and gaining rapidly and opening fire. I put the nose hard down with full power and tried to jink to disturb their aim while we made for some scanty cloud cover far below. I feared for the integrity of the aircraft structure, but we reached the cloud unscathed. After some more hide-and-seek our pursuers gave up and we sneaked off home, duly chastened! I have since thought these were US fighters as there was a bombing raid in the area at about this time. I believe that a Mosquito of 540 Squadron went missing in this area at the time.

On 27 August one of the longest PR flights was flown by 540 Squadron’s CO, Wing Commander John R.H. Merrifield
DSO DFC
in a PR.XVI. Taking off from Benson at 06.00 hours, he photographed Gdynia, Danzig, Königsberg in Russian Lithuania and Bromberg in Poland, Gleiwitz, in southeastern Germany and oil installations at Blechhammer, Bratislava and Zarsa on the Dalmatian coast before landing at San Severo, Italy, at 12.10 hours. After refuelling, the Mosquito took off again at 15.00 hours to make the return flight to Benson, where it landed at 19.00 hours, having photographed Pola, Trieste, Millsradr in the Tyrol and Le Havre on the return leg.

PR operations to northern Norway, meanwhile (especially those concerned with maintaining a watchful eye on the
Tirpitz
), were not being neglected, for the 544 Squadron detachment at Leuchars was kept constantly busy. In March 1944
Tirpitz
had left its anchorage in Alten Fjord and later that month it was found in Kaa Fjord by a PRU Spitfire of 542 Squadron operating from Russia. On 3 April the ship was damaged in an attack by Royal Navy aircraft from
Victorious
and
Furious
,but to what extent, no one knew. On 9 July Flight Lieutenant Frank L. Dodd and Flight Sergeant Eric Hill in 544 Squadron were despatched to find
⁸¹
the
Tirpitz
. Eric Hill, born in Taunton and educated at Taunton School, where he showed considerable promise as a stylish batsman, recalls that:

In the course of fifty-three operational flights (we did all our ops together) I got to know Frank Leslie Dodd pretty well. We first flew together on 31 January 1944 from 8 OTU Dyce. The first thing I noticed about him was his calm, quiet, almost sleepy exterior and the second was that it covered a steely, inflexible determination to get things as right as he could possibly make them. The third was his modesty and indeed, when this profile was first mentioned, Frank demurred sharply. His reason was absolutely characteristic. He told me, ‘A lot of people, especially in the early days, did a great deal more than we did in PRU’. Frank was immediately and obviously a chap of a thoughtful, observant, pacific nature with a sound family basis, centered completely on his splendid wife Joyce and a steadily growing family. Decidedly not the type to lead a riot in the Mess, or ‘High Cockalorum’ or the singing of ‘Eskimo Nell’, he would mingle, join in the fun and melt quietly into the background. This then, although it recounts a few things that happened to us in PRU with dear old 544 Squadron (one of the youngest and shortest-lived in the wartime RAF), is essentially a tribute to all the huge numbers of people. Most of them were unsung and unrewarded, who made PRU into the highly important arm of intelligence it became. This, in context, is to be taken as typical of some of the unusual things that happened to photographic reconnaissance crews all over the world, flying unarmed and unarmoured aircraft into the heart of enemy strongholds. Furthermore, this, we hope, will be taken as a memorial to the grievously large number who did not quite make it home.

Flying solitary missions over heavily defended enemy territory in unarmed, wooden aircraft, I suppose, needs special qualities. Having once watched a huge formation of Fortresses flying into and through heavy flak without budging, apart from the ones that were hit, I think PRU suited Frank and me. Like everyone else of any experience in PRU we had our moments and I think all of them reveal the cool calculation, coupled with the ability to make lightning decisions that made Frank the magnificent pilot he was and saved our lives quite a few times.

On 9 July the operational task was to carry out a visual and PR of the west coast of Norway, flying as far north as fuel permitted and certainly beyond the Lofoten Islands, paying attention to any fjords likely to provide suitable anchorage for the
Tirpitz
. Due to a rare gap in intelligence, there was great uncertainty as to her location and readiness for action. She was always a potential threat to Atlantic shipping and Murmansk-bound convoys. Not too many RAF crews have taken photographs of both sides of the superb German battleship
Tirpitz
. After the ‘Bomber Boys’ had put a Blockbuster down its funnel, it was a piece of cake for us to get some almost sentimental sea-level pictures of the upturned hull and poodle back to sun-soaked Sumburgh. Taking photos of the other side of it a long time before when its mere presence sent tremors through the Admiralty as a threat to all our sea connections and notably the Murmansk route, was a different matter. We had to operate with petrol overload (the numbing 100 gallon wing-tanks) at extreme range with the weather on return likely to clamp down irretrievably most of the Northern British airfields. There were other hazards, too, apart from the fact that in those days Sumburgh was a small ’drome, with one runway, usually crosswind and demanding a steepish turn to avoid a hill near the town. Frank handled this beautifully as always. We set off, with me still wondering why our dear allies, the Russians would not let us land at Murmansk to refuel, thus making the job about 400 per cent more likely to succeed. And what had happened to the glorious Norwegian underground, who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it?

Dodd and Hill carried out a search for the
Tirpitz
at heights ranging from between 6,000 and 24,000ft over the Norwegian shipping lanes from Stattlandet to the Lofoten Islands, including Narvik. Their Mosquito was hit by flak in the starboard wing whilst photographing Bødo at 15,000ft. Nevertheless, valuable photo-negative information was obtained from this sortie, the Mosquito having been airborne 7 hours 44 minutes when it landed back at Leuchars with less than 10 gallons of petrol remaining. On 12 July Dodd and Hill flew to Sumburgh to top up their tanks for another sortie in search of the
Tirpitz
. Hill recalls.

Fortunately, the weather for the first part of the sortie was reasonable and we were able to start the recce at 25,000ft without any apparent hostility. However, when 15 miles west of Bødo, we were greeted by a perfect box-barrage of flak at our precise height, which set the adrenaline flowing. This was just as well, because we needed all our wits about us shortly afterwards when the weather deteriorated, necessitating a blind Dead Reckoning descent through heavy cloud to regain visual contact, as we approached where we estimated the Lofoten Islands to be. Happily, the D/R navigation turned out to be correct and there were no hard centres to the clouds. Unfortunately, still no sign of the
Tirpitz,
so no alternative but to press on to Alten Fjord, which intelligence thought might be a possible lair.

We gentled up the coast and started to sneak into the many fjords past the Lofotens until we came to Alten. There it was  45,000 tons of
Tirpitz
, looking oddly menacing and peaceful at the same time. A bit of desultory flak (we were at an uncomfortable 8,000ft under the cloud, in an essentially high-level kite) down the fjord, persuaded Frank to steep turn on to a short photographic run on the ship. Almost immediately there was a huge explosion, maps, Q codes, escape kits, Horlicks tablets, hopes and fears flew wildly around the cabin and I remember thinking, ‘God, these Germans are bloody good’. They weren’t. The top of the cabin had just flown off into the fjord. We had no sunshine roof and no look out. Anxiously we checked that we were OK, then noted with surprised relief that so was the kite apart from the top.