Almost a year would elapse before the Luftwaffe returned in
strength for the next phase of their attacks on the Midlands, this time with
Kampfgeschwader 2 (KG2) – the Holzhammer Gruppe – in the van. From April until
September/October 1942, Dornier Do217s spearheaded the notorious Baedeker air
raids against historical British towns and cities. Mounted in retaliation for
the RAF’s escalating attacks on the great cities of Germany, these raids were
stimulated in particular by those upon the Baltic ports of Lübeck and Rostock
in March and April 1942. Dornier Do217s of KG2, together with other units, were
heavily involved in the Luftwaffe plan but by the end of that summer would,
once again, suffer heavy losses to the RAF’s night defences.
Almost coinciding with the beginning of the Baedeker phase,
151 Squadron – still based at Wittering – became only the second squadron to
re-equip with the de Havilland Mosquito NF II and made its first Mosquito
patrol on April 30. The last of 151’s pilots went solo on the Mossie on June 20
and that day its diarist recorded confidently that, “the whole squadron can now
be left to its own devices”, and in common with other night fighter units, soon
got to grips with the enemy once more.
Plt Off Wain in DD608 and Flt Lt Pennington in DD628
reported some AI contacts in their patrols on the night of May 28/29 but it was
during enemy mining sorties to The Wash and anti-shipping raids in the Great
Yarmouth area on May 29/30 that the squadron’s first real engagement occurred
with the new fighter. First up from Wittering were Pilot Officer John Wain and
Flt Sgt Thomas ‘Jock’ Grieve in DD608 who tackled a Dornier 217 but could only
claim it as damaged. The same night the A Flight commander, Flt Lt Denis
Pennington and his RO Flt Sgt David Donnett in DD628, intercepted and fired at
what he thought was a Heinkel He111 out over the North Sea but spirited return
fire made him break off with an inconclusive result for him, too.
With faster fighters and more effective radar cover, the
profile of night air combat was changing distinctly, but because defending
fighters were now intercepting more enemy raiders out over the sea, it would
also become more difficult to verify some of the results of their combats and
subsequent claims.
On Wittering’s patch it was the CO of 151 Squadron, New
Zealander Wg Cdr Irving Smith, who led the way to success with the new
Mosquito. Airborne at 22.45 hours in W4097 for the first patrol of the night of
June 24/25, he and his RO Flt Lt Kerr-Sheppard were vectored by Neatishead GCI
out to sea from The Wash towards an incoming raid. At 12,000 feet altitude,
Kerr-Sheppard soon picked out a contact and guided the wing commander into
visual contact at one hundred yards range. It was a Heinkel He111 and in his
combat report, he said it looked to be carrying “two torpedoes under the
wings.” The crew of the Heinkel spotted the incoming Mosquito for it suddenly
dived vertically but not before Wg Cdr Smith put a burst of cannon fire into
the port engine, which started to blaze and the starboard torpedo – if indeed
that’s what it was – dropped away. Smith clung to the bomber, firing more short
bursts at it from his machine guns as it first dived then pulled up into a
stall turn, shedding pieces as the rounds hit home. Now the Heinkel dived again
with the Mosquito still on its tail, this time firing another burst of cannon.
Diving hard, the two aircraft were enveloped by cloud and although
Kerr-Sheppard followed it on the AI set it gradually went out of range. Smith
continued to follow the descending track of the Heinkel and at 7,000 feet
altitude Kerr-Sheppard regained a contact off to port still losing altitude but
again the target disappeared off the display. Wg Cdr Smith claimed a ‘probable’
for this one and climbed back up to look for more trade. Control put him onto
the track of another bandit and at 7,000 feet altitude in bright moonlight he
saw the aeroplane two miles distant, in fact just a few seconds before
Kerr-Sheppard called out the AI contact. Smith opened up the throttles to close
the range and then eased the Mosquito in to 300 yards behind and below another
Heinkel He111, also carrying what he also described as “a torpedo under each
wing.” He just managed to get in a one-second burst of cannon that brought hits
on the underside of the wings and fuselage before the Heinkel dived vertically.
This time, with its port wing on fire, the enemy bomber continued to dive until
it struck the water, where it left a circle of burning wreckage. Claim one
He111 destroyed.
The patrol was hotting up indeed and Wg Cdr Smith was
directed towards a third bandit on which AI contact was made but then lost at
extreme range. Circling at 7,000 feet, control put him onto a fourth bandit,
which this time was held on AI right down to visual contact at 300 yards on a
Dornier Do217. Smith fired all his remaining cannon ammunition in one long
burst at this target, spraying it with hits until wings and fuselage were
blazing and parts of the engine cowlings were seen to fall away. The Dornier
crew put up a fight, though, and fired back at their tormentor from the dorsal
guns but calmly closing the range to a hundred yards, Wg Cdr Smith silenced the
return fire with several short bursts from his own machine guns. With the
Mosquito windscreen covered in oil from the stricken bomber he was obliged to
break off the attack, but by now the Dornier was flying very slowly and losing
height rapidly. Wg Cdr Smith drew alongside the bomber and his last view of it
was as it flew into cloud, burning fiercely and eerily illuminating the cloud
from within. Out of ammunition he headed back to Wittering, landing at 00.52
hours to claim two E/A destroyed and one probable. On the question of the
torpedoes under the wings, while it is true that the Heinkel He111 could carry
such ordnance, it is possible that on this occasion – and in view of Plt Off
Wain’s combat report below – Wg Cdr Smith mistook a pair of large calibre bombs
loaded on the two bulbous hard points situated at the wing roots, for
torpedoes. The He111 had to carry bombs larger than the SC500 externally and
two SC1000 or alternatively, two parachute mines – the latter might bear some
resemblance to torpedoes when seen in poor light – and these could be what Wg
Cdr Smith saw. Furthermore, the squadron diarist didn’t do modern researchers
any favours when he logged two sorties by Mosquito W4097 at the same time on
the night of 23/24 – but flown by two different crews: Plt Off Fisher and Wg
Cdr Smith. It seems clear, though, that Wg Cdr Smith’s sortie date was flown on
that hectic night of 24/25.
Plt Off Wain and Flt Sgt Grieve left Wittering in DD616
shortly after the WingCo. They were handed over to Happisburgh CHL control
where trade was still brisk and sent off towards an inbound bandit fifty miles
out from The Wash. Wain’s combat report was equally brisk, stating:
A visual was obtained against Northern Light at one mile and
identified at 600 yards as a Heinkel 111 with two bombs stowed externally. Fire
was opened at 250 yards with cannon and machine gun. One long burst caused
starboard wing to explode and one third of the wing came off. E/A went into
vertical dive leaving a trail of smoke. Time 23.40 hours. An aircraft burning
on the sea was seen by Wg Cdr Smith, who was in the vicinity. It is claimed as
destroyed.
The night was still young and next off was Sqn Ldr Donald
Darling with Plt Off Wright (RO) in DD629 at 00.25. At 01.15 Neatishead GCI put
him onto the track of a raider heading south-east at 6,000 feet and shortly
afterwards Wright got a blip below and to starboard. Darling got a visual at
700 yards range on a Dornier Do217 but while closing to 200 yards the Mossie
was spotted and the bomber dived towards the clouds. Darling put in a short
cannon burst as the Dornier entered the cloudbank and with Wright following it
on AI he loosed off another burst as they emerged from the cloud. Return fire
came from the dorsal turret but this stopped when more bursts of cannon fire
from the Mosquito brought hits on the fuselage. Sqn Ldr Darling was unable to
stay with the Dornier as it dived hard into the cloud once more so he abandoned
the chase and climbed for more trade. After another unproductive chase Plt Off
Wright held a new contact, which they turned into a sighting of a Ju88 but once
again in the good light conditions the Mosquito was seen and this bomber, too,
dived away to sea level where contact was lost. Claim one damaged. Flt Lt Moody
flew the last, uneventful, patrol of the night.
Moody was on ops next night when the bright moonlight of
June 26/27 brought bombers from Holland in over The Wash in an effort to creep
up on Norwich from the least expected direction. A Do217E-4, wk nr 4266, of I/KG2,
was lost when Flt Lt Moody and his RO Plt Off Marsh in Mosquito NFII, DD609,
caught up with it over The Wash.
Neatishead put Moody on to what turned out to be a friendly
then directed him towards a bandit dead ahead. As Marsh was trying to pick out a
contact they got quite a fright when a stream of tracer fire zipped past them.
Moody dived out of danger and started again. GCI gave him another target at
10,000 feet altitude and Marsh got an AI blip at maximum range. The Mosquito
was easily able to overhaul the bandit and in less than a minute Moody had a
Dornier 217 in his sight at 800 yards range. He closed in from down-moon and
opened fire as the Dornier began a gentle turn to port. Hits on the fuselage
were followed by a faint glow and suddenly the bomber blew up, falling into the
sea where it exploded again. The aircraft was U5+ML flown by Fw Hans Schrödel,
who died with his crew in this engagement.
With the arrival of the Mosquito NFII the science of night
fighting had taken great strides since the days of the Blenheim just two years
earlier.
During the process of re-equipment, B Flight of 151 Squadron
soldiered on with Defiants well into that summer and the tenacity of those
Defiant crews – working mainly with the ‘eyeball Mk 1’ – had fulfilled an important
job in plugging gaps in the night defences.
Although by now usually relegated to pottering around on
searchlight cooperation sorties, it is interesting to find a few Defiants –
described by the squadron itself as “Old Faithfuls” – still around on 151
Squadron in June 1942 – for example AA425, AA436 and AA572 and on the 26th one
of these, believed to be AA572, even managed to muscle in and take a slice of
the Mossies’ action.
Flt Lt Colin Robertson with air gunner Flt Sgt Albert Beale
left Wittering at 00.56 hours on the 26th for one of the regular searchlight
cooperation sorties with sites around The Wash. They were old hands on the
Defiant and when flashes from exploding bombs and fires over in the Norwich
direction grabbed Robertson’s attention, with the turret fully armed, he could
not resist the opportunity to go and investigate. Five miles west of Coltishall
Flt Sgt Beale saw a Dornier Do217 coming up behind them at 2,000 feet altitude.
Calling for “turn port!” he brought the turret round and opened fire at the
bomber from just eighty yards range. Beale saw his fire hit the rear fuselage
and this was answered by a stream of tracer from the Dornier’s guns as it went
into a steep dive under the Defiant, where it was lost to sight.
Turning south-east Robertson saw another Dornier silhouetted
against the moon, almost stern on but turning towards them. The Defiant was
still only at 1,000 feet altitude when Beale asked for “starboard!” to close
the range to 150 yards. Opening fire, he scored hits on the nose and fuselage
and stopped return fire from the dorsal gun position. Then Beale’s guns chose
this moment to jam and the bomber escaped. Landing back at Wittering at 03.14
hours they filed a claim for two Do217s damaged and the Squadron ORB noted: “As
Defiants have not been used operationally for some time, this is likely to be
the last combat in which this type will engage.” Or so they thought.
Always keen to keep his hand in with ‘his’ squadrons,
Wittering station commander Gp Capt Basil Embry borrowed a 151 Mosquito for a
dawn patrol to try his luck at catching the ‘regular’ German PRU Ju88. Much to
his disgust he was unsuccessful and since the Luftwaffe looked like staying
away for the rest of the month, when the weather clamped in, a squadron party was
organised on the 30th to celebrate the month of June successes. But Jerry
managed to spoil Robertson and Beale’s party by sending a single raider in the
wee small hours of June 29/30.
Ground radar tracked an incoming raid across the southern
Fens and Flt Lt Robertson with Flt Sgt Beale were scrambled from RAF Wittering.
Lashed by rain and hail, their Defiant soon emerged from heavy cloud at 5,000
feet and after twenty minutes, at 03.21 hours, Robertson called “tallyho” on a
Ju88. Closing on the Junkers, it was seen flitting in and out of the cloud tops
until, when it emerged for a third time, Flt Sgt Beale let go a five-second
deflection burst of 200 AP and 200 de Wilde incendiary rounds at the bomber
from a range of one hundred down to fifty yards. Later he was of the opinion
that the enemy aircraft flew right into his gunfire but it dipped into cloud
again and did not re-emerge. The Defiant crew could only claim one Ju88 damaged
and a radio fix put them in the vicinity of the town of March in Cambridgeshire.
While much has quite rightly been written about the air war
from a pilot’s perspective, the achievement of Flt Sgt Albert Beale DFM, in
being personally credited with three enemy aircraft destroyed and four damaged
while flying in Defiants, is a fine example of the contribution made by air
gunners to the night air defence campaign.
151 Squadron continued to make successful interceptions with
its new Mosquitoes, even though Luftwaffe incursions were reducing in size and
frequency again and thus there were fewer targets to find in the same volume of
sky. Apart from the obvious factor of an individual crew’s skill in closing a
kill, that the squadron could still shoot down the enemy is the most obvious
demonstration of the complete effectiveness of the GCI/AI system – it didn’t
matter how many of them came, radar would find them.
While seeking a target of opportunity along the north
Norfolk coast on July 21/22, Ofw Heinrich Wolpers and his crew, including the
staffelkapitän Hptmn Frank from I/KG2, ran into a 151 patrol just after
midnight. Controlled by Flt Lt Ballantyne of Neatishead GCI, Plt Off G Fisher
and Flt Sgt E Godfrey in Mosquito W4090 (AI Mk V) chased the Dornier in and out
of cloud cover from The Wash to fifty miles off the Humber estuary, before
finally despatching it into the sea. The fight was not all one-sided either.
Fisher got in several bursts of cannon and machine-gun fire that eventually put
both the ventral and dorsal gunners out of action, but not before their own
fire had peppered the Mosquito under the fuselage and engine nacelles and
damaged one of the cannon spent-round chutes. Both aircraft were twisting and
turning; climbing and diving steeply from 9,000 down to 5,000 feet and back
again and it was during one of these dives towards patchy cloud cover that
Fisher fired a telling burst and the Dornier’s starboard engine caught fire.
Going down in an ever steepening dive the flaming engine was suddenly swallowed
up by the sea and Fisher who, in all the excitement had not registered his own
rapid approach to that same patch of sea, heard Godfrey yelling at him to pull
up. He pulled out of the dive at 200 feet – and went home. It had taken
twenty-five minutes of hard manoeuvring; 197 rounds of 20mm cannon and 1239
rounds of .303 machine-gun ammunition to despatch Dornier Do217E-4, U5+IH, wk
nr 4260.
One particular night in July 1942 can be seen as indicative
both of the success of the defensive night fighting force guarding The Wash
corridor, of the continuing wide-ranging radius of the sorties and of the
recurring problem of confirming combat kills in darkness, often over water.
Because of the intensity of air activity over the whole region on this night of
July 23 1942, in contrast to the usual rigid censorship and no doubt to bolster
civilian morale, the Lincolnshire Free Press newspaper was, on the occasion of
the night’s outstanding events, allowed to print an unusual amount of detail.
For the RAF, while – loosely speaking – Beaufighters of 68
Squadron covered the Norfolk/Suffolk region from RAF Coltishall, 151, having
recently completed its conversion from Hurricanes and Defiants to Mosquitoes at
RAF Wittering, was assigned The Wash area while the Canadians of 409 Squadron
at Coleby Grange (Lincoln), also equipped with Beaufighters, watched over the
rest of Lincolnshire towards the Humber. These then were the primary night
fighter units in the region in mid 1942. In addition, though, other squadrons
added support, so that the umbrella over the approaches to the Midlands by
night left few holes for the enemy to pass through unmolested. Not least of the
other units were the radar-equipped flying searchlight Turbinlite Havocs of
1453 and 1459 Flights (later 532 and 538 Squadrons) that flew variously from
Wittering and Hibaldstow. Until September 1942, when they were re-formed into
integrated squadrons, comprising one flight of Havocs and another of
Hurricanes, the Havoc flights drew their satellite fighters from Hurricane
units with whom they shared a base. In the case of 1453 Flight at Wittering,
when 151 re-equipped with Mosquitoes, it called upon the Hurricanes of 486 (NZ)
Squadron to make up their Havoc/Hurricane teams. However, in addition to its
Turbinlite commitment, 486 Squadron also mounted independent Fighter Night
patrols of its own. Generally speaking, though, the twin-engine fighters
patrolled about fifty miles out to sea and the singles inland from the coast
but inevitably, once the action started, it will be seen there were no rigid
areas and overlaps by all units occurred frequently.
Including the two being discussed in detail here, claims for
a total of seven enemy aircraft destroyed over East Anglia were submitted for
the night of July 23/24 1942. Five of these were made by Beaufighter crews of
Wg Cdr Max Aitken’s 68 Squadron based at RAF Coltishall, their victims
apparently falling either in the sea off the Norfolk coast or in Norfolk
itself. Wg Cdr Aitken claimed two, Sgt Truscott one and two Czech crews one
each. The other two claims were made by Flt Lt E L (Peter) McMillan of 409
Squadron and Flt Lt Harvey Sweetman of 486 Squadron. Examination of German
records in recent years, however, indicates only three enemy aircraft were lost
over England that night, while a fourth – almost certainly the result of
McMillan’s second combat – crashed on landing back at its base. Such is the
benefit of hindsight!
With the likelihood of some or all of these defending
aircraft chasing around the night sky after declining numbers of enemy
aircraft, inevitably duplicate claims were bound to happen. On this night, just
such an event occurred.
Oblt Heinrich Wiess of II/KG40 was briefed to attack an
aircraft factory in Bedford with four 500kg bombs. With his crew, Fw Karl
Gramm, Fw Hermann Frischolz and Ofw Joseph Ulrich, he took off from Soesterberg
in Dornier Do217E-4, wk nr 4279, coded F8+CN, just as the moon was beginning to
rise. His route from Soesterberg airfield in Holland took him across the North
Sea, down the length of The Wash, making landfall over Boston at 10,000 feet
before turning south towards the target. It was only five minutes after this
point that the Dornier was caught in a searchlight beam and one of the crew saw
a single-engine fighter below them about 1,000 yards away to starboard. Oblt
Wiess took evasive action by diving the Dornier, first to starboard then
curving to port to get back on course. The fighter seemed to have been shaken
off but soon another single-engine fighter was spotted below, on the port side
this time, flying on a roughly parallel course. After being interrogated later,
the transcription of flight engineer Ofw Ulrich’s recollection of events went
as follows.
He said he fired a few machine-gun rounds in its direction
and the fighter turned in to attack the Dornier from below. The first burst
from the fighter set the port wing on fire and the crew baled out. During his
parachute descent he saw a twin-engine fighter fly past but he was positive
that the aircraft at which he fired and which then shot them down was a
single-engine.
Flt Lt Harvey Sweetman, a New Zealander from Auckland,
commanded a flight of 486 (NZ) Squadron at RAF Wittering and was a founder
member of the squadron in March 1942. The Hurricane IIbs of 486 were usually
tied, at night, to the apron strings of the Turbinlite Havocs, but the results
of this technique of night interception had been singularly unimpressive so
far. On this night, however, it was Harvey’s turn to go off chasing the Hun on
his own freelance patrol and from his combat report we can piece together his
version of events.
Sweetman eased Z3029, SA-R, gently off Wittering runway at a
quarter to midnight on July 23 1942. According to his recollections after this
sortie, at first he headed north before turning on a reciprocal course that
brought him to the vicinity of Spalding. There, outlined against a cloud layer
below and to starboard of him, he spotted the menacing shape of a Dornier
Do217, flying south. As he closed in, Sweetman’s Hurricane was spotted by the
Dornier crew and its dorsal turret gunner let fly with a burst of machine-gun
fire. The bright red and white tracer rounds were way off target though.
Banking to starboard, Sweetman closed to seventy yards, loosing off a
deflection burst at the nose of the Dornier from his eight machine guns, but
without any visible effect. The Dornier dived rapidly in an effort to escape
the line of fire but Sweetman hung on down to 5,000 feet altitude, firing two
more bursts as he followed his prey. These seemed to produce an immediate
result as “twin streams of thick smoky vapour flowed from the enemy aircraft.”
Furthermore Sweetman reported that the Dornier “turned right over on its back
and dived vertically down out of sight.” Although it was bright moonlight,
there was some broken cloud around at 3,000 feet and as he orbited the spot, Sweetman
saw “the flare of an explosion below”, which he took to signal the end of his
victim. Calling up Wittering sector operations, his position was fixed to
within six miles of the crash site and he set course for base, landing back at
01.00 in an elated mood.
It was established that an enemy aircraft had crashed in a
field at Fleet Fen south of Holbeach and according to 58 Maintenance Unit (58
MU) inspectors, it was a Dornier Do217E that was entirely destroyed, with
wreckage strewn over twenty acres. It was their task to salvage as much
material as possible and gather intelligence about this latest model.
The German crew had baled out and landed in a string between
Fleet Fen and Holbeach itself and the occupants on duty in an Observer Corps
post just outside the town had quite a shock when a German airman walked in and
gave himself up! He was left in the care of two slightly bewildered observers
while a colleague, quickly picking up the only rifle in the hut, ran outside
and rounded up another of the crew a short distance away. A third German was
found hiding in a farmyard and the fourth was apprehended nonchalantly walking
down the road in his stockinged feet, having lost his boots when he abandoned
the aeroplane.
Flt Lt Sweetman duly submitted a claim for one Dornier 217
destroyed but that signalled the beginning of another battle, this time with
one of his own side. When the 486 Squadron Intelligence Officer made enquiries
to support Sweetman’s claim, the crash having been confirmed by a searchlight battery
at Whaplode Drove, he was told that a 409 Squadron Beaufighter crew, Flt Lt E L
(Peter) McMillan (pilot) and Sgt Shepherd, had submitted a claim for the same
aircraft. It was also verified that there was only one enemy aircraft shot down
in that district that night.
In an article written by Bill Norman and published in the
December 2000 issue of FlyPast magazine former night fighter pilot Peter
McMillan recalled his two particular air combats with the enemy in July 1942
and remembered how he had to share his success with another squadron. Flying
409 Squadron Beaufighter VI, X8153, it was the first of his claims that he
believed was the Fleet Fen aircraft – the one he, too, claimed as destroyed.
Peter claimed only a damaged for his second engagement. From the details
contained in McMillan’s combat report – just as with Sweetman’s – it is
impossible to reconstruct clearly his precise location at the time of the Fleet
Fen combat. However, a D/F bearing put him in the vicinity of Holbeach, and
having fired off 339 rounds of 20mm cannon ammunition, he most certainly had a
go at something that night.
McMillan’s combat report outlines his version of events. He
wrote: “Take-off from RAF Coleby Grange was at 23.05 on the 23rd and after a
short while the Beaufighter was handed over to Orby radar station to begin a
GCI exercise.” This was a quite normal procedure during a patrol so that the
night fighter crews could get in as much practice in the air as possible, at
the same time as being instantly available if ground control detected a
potential target. On this occasion, very soon GCI reported trade and McMillan
was vectored northwards. Anticipating imminent action, he told Sgt Shepherd to
set the cannon armament to ‘fire’ which involved Shepherd leaving his seat to go
forward to the central weapons bay, between himself and his pilot. While he was
doing so his intercom failed owing to a broken headset lead. Fortunately
McMillan could still hear Shepherd – vital for the interception – but Shepherd
could not hear his pilot’s responses. There was a buzzer link between the
cockpits, however, and they found by speedy improvisation of a simple code they
were able to continue with the interception.
Orby GCI put them onto a vector of 100° and warned McMillan
he would have to turn quickly onto the reciprocal of 280°. When the instruction
to turn came he brought the Beaufighter hard round and there on Shepherd’s
display tubes was the blip. But the target was jinking around and the contact
was lost just as quickly. The Orby controller gave a quick course correction
and Shepherd was back in business and this time he held on to it.
McMillan opened the throttles to 280mph at 9,000 feet
altitude and began to close in on the target. At 650 yards range he obtained a
visual to port and above and thought it to be a Dornier Do217 that was weaving
and varying altitude. Calmly McMillan slid the Beaufighter over to bring his
quarry slightly to starboard then closed to 250 yards range to make quite sure it
was a hostile.
Confirmation was soon forthcoming because at this point the
enemy opened fire, fortunately inaccurately. Slight back pressure on the yoke
brought the gunsight on and McMillan let fly with three short bursts of cannon
fire of two or three seconds each. After the third burst, a white glow appeared
on the port engine and the target began to slow down. This caused the
Beaufighter to overshoot its prey but as he passed below the Dornier McMillan
saw the port engine was on fire. He hauled the Beaufighter round in a tight
orbit and regained visual contact with the enemy aircraft silhouetted against
the moon. He was in time to see two parachutes detach themselves from the
aircraft just before it went straight down with the port engine blazing fiercely.
He wrote: “My observer saw it explode on the ground and I claim this as
destroyed.” This is a much more visually positive result than Sweetman was able
to offer.
Now 486 Squadron would have nothing to do with this
‘sharing’ rubbish and the whole squadron closed ranks to validate Sweetman’s claim.
Sweetman himself, accompanied by Sqn Ldr Clayton from Wittering operations and
Plt Off Thomas (the squadron intelligence officer), visited the crash site the
next morning where they consulted with Flt Lt Morrison of 58MU from Newark. The
latter was responsible for examination and removal of the debris. 486 Squadron
documents record that Flt Lt Morrison declared that, despite searching for
evidence of cannon strikes, he could find none. It was known of course that
Sweetman’s Hurricane was armed only with .303 machine guns. However, on this
latter point, the recollections of two former 58MU recovery team NCOs,
interviewed by Sid Finn for his book Lincolnshire Air War, provide a contrary
view as they said they worked at the site for many days and found evidence of
20mm cannon strikes on the wreckage.
The New Zealanders did not let it rest there and proceeded
to interview the police constable who had arrested the German crew. He stated
that one member of the crew said they had been shot down by a Spitfire. This
remark was taken to indicate that a single-engine, rather than a twin-engine,
aircraft was seen which lent support to Sweetman’s claim, it being easy to
confuse a Spitfire with a Hurricane in the turmoil of a night battle. In their
opinion, a final corroboration of 486’s claim came when Captain G A Peacock, a
Royal Artillery officer stationed at Wittering, made a formal written
declaration, carefully witnessed by an army colleague and Plt Off Thomas. In
his statement Capt Peacock wrote:
At about midnight I was walking in the garden of a house
at Moulton Chapel, where I was staying on leave. My attention was attracted by
the sound of machine-gun fire in the air. I saw two bursts of fire. . . after
which an aeroplane caught fire and dived steeply. It passed across the very
bright moon, making the perfect silhouette of a Dornier. The aircraft crashed,
a mile from where I stood, in a tremendous explosion… looking up again I
plainly saw a Hurricane circling and it was from this aircraft that the gunfire
originated. No other aeroplane fired its guns in the vicinity at the time of
this action.
The lengths to which 486 Squadron went to back up their
claim graphically illustrates the high degree of morale and camaraderie
existing in RAF night fighter units at this time. The outcome was that 486
Squadron believed Harvey Sweetman had proved his case conclusively, yet
ironically his original combat report does not carry the usual HQ Fighter
Command ‘claim approved or shared’ endorsement. Peter McMillan’s report on the
other hand is endorsed ‘shared 1/2 with 486 Sqdn’.
What seems clear now is that there were several enemy
aircraft and RAF fighters in close proximity that night for, in addition to the
Fleet Fen Dornier, at least one more Dornier was lost from each of KG40 and KG2
at unknown locations. The “twin streams of vapour” reported by Flt Lt Sweetman
do not necessarily mean the Dornier had been hit, since it was known that
aviation fuel had a propensity to produce black exhaust smoke when engine
throttles were suddenly rammed open. It might be felt significant that Flt Lt
Sweetman also lost sight of his target – last seen in a radical manoeuvre quite
in keeping with its design capabilities – at a critical moment, while Flt Lt
McMillan recorded that his gunfire set one engine of his target on fire and Sgt
Shepherd had it in view down to impact. On the other hand, when questioned by
486 Squadron, the MU officer – without, it has to be said, the benefit of a
lengthy inspection – is reported as saying he “found no evidence of cannon
strikes”, yet his recovery team senior NCO, who spent more than a week at the
site, firmly expressed the opposite view. Even one of the German crew admitted
seeing a twin-engine aeroplane fly past him as he fell from the bomber.
Well, in the historian’s ‘paper war’, evaluation and
accreditation may seem important – and there are certainly puzzles enough in
this incident! But in the ‘shooting war’, while there was clearly a healthy
element of unit pride involved, the only important thing in the end is that
someone actually shot down a raider when the enemy was at the gate.
This busy night was not yet over for Peter McMillan though,
and once again with the advantage of hindsight, the outcome of his second
combat was not quite as he thought.
As soon as he had reported the first kill to Orby he was
passed to sector control for position fixing and then back to Orby GCI. More
trade was reported to the east. McMillan was vectored onto 100° and advised of
a target at four miles dead ahead at 8,000 feet altitude. McMillan increased
speed to 280mph to close the gap and calmly asked Orby to bring him in on the
port side as the moon was to starboard. A stern-chase followed and when he got
within one and a half miles range of his quarry Orby GCI advised him they could
not help him any more and told him to continue on 110°. After a while Sgt
Shepherd picked out and held an AI contact although the target jinked around
before settling on a course of 090°. McMillan’s vision was hampered by cloud
now but Shepherd neatly brought him down to 1,500 yards range and there, off to
port and slightly above, was the silhouette of an aircraft. Keeping it in sight
he crossed over to approach with it slightly to starboard. With the lighter sky
behind him and fearful of being spotted, McMillan swiftly closed to 500 yards,
eased up behind it, identified it as a Dornier Do217 and let fly with his
cannons, all in a series of smooth, decisive movements. He saw flashes of his
fire hitting the enemy aircraft, which immediately did a quarter roll and dived
away. McMillan endeavoured to follow but lost sight of the Dornier and it
disappeared into the ground returns (electronic ‘noise’) on Sgt Shepherd’s
screens. When they reached 4,000 feet with 320mph on the clock he pulled out
and returned to base, claiming the Dornier as damaged.
Peter McMillan’s second adversary that night was Feldwebel
Willi Schludecker, a highly experienced bomber pilot who flew a total of 120
ops, of which thirty-two were made against English targets. Survivor of nine
crash-landings due to battle damage, Willi came closest to oblivion the night
he ran into Peter McMillan. Willi Schludecker was briefed by KG2 to attack
Bedford with a 2,000kg bomb load carried in Dornier Do217, U5+BL, wk nr 4252.
Approaching The Wash, Fw Heinrich Buhl, the flight engineer and gunner, had
trouble with one of his weapons and let off a burst of tracer into the night
sky. Willi thought that may have attracted a night fighter because a little
later the crew spotted an aircraft creeping up from astern. This is believed to
be McMillan’s Beaufighter. Displaying a considerable degree of confidence,
Willi decided to hold his course and allow it to come within his own gunners’
range. Both aircraft opened fire simultaneously with the greater muzzle flash
of the Beaufighter cannons preventing McMillan from seeing return fire and the
Dornier crew thinking their own fire had made the Beaufighter explode! When the
Dornier made its violent escape manoeuvre – bear in mind it was an aeroplane designed
and stressed for dive-bombing – they never saw each other again.
In fact Peter McMillan would have been justified in claiming
two Dorniers as destroyed that night because Schludecker’s aircraft was so
badly damaged in the encounter that he had to jettison the bomb load and head
for home. It was with the greatest of difficulty that he made it back to
Gilze-Rijen in Holland, where he crash-landed the Dornier at three times the
normal landing speed after making three attempts to get the aircraft down. That
was Willi’s ninth – and last – crash-landing because he spent the next six
months in hospital as a result of his injuries and it put an end to his
operational flying career.
On March 9 2000 Peter McMillan, Willi Schludecker and
Heinrich Buhl came face-to-face for the first time when they met in Hove at a
meeting arranged by Bill Norman. This time it was a friendly encounter between
men who, in Heinrich Buhl’s words, “had been adversaries but never enemies” and
who found they had much in common.
