R W Craft's audio memoir

R W Craft's audio memoir

Richard Craft was navigator on 640 Squadron. He recalls briefing visiting American officers about RAF navigation. He took part in a thousand bomber operation to Duisburg. While over the target area he looked up through the astrodome and saw to his horror a Lancaster was immediately above them ready to bomb. Fortunately the bombs fell either side. They also found themselves being 'Mother Goose' to forty B17 bombers returning to the UK.

00:30:44 audio recording

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ACraftRW960924

Hello Berlin this is Richard Craft. I used to be a navigator for Sid Spencer on 640 Squadron. Our usual aircraft was H-How. My story is going to be about the daylight raid on the 14th of October 1944 when we took part in a thousand bomber raid on Duisburg combined with the American Army Air Force and a couple of fighters which we hoped we would not see. I had already started the tape and had to pack it in. That was because within this trip we found on the return from Germany we were acting as Mother Goose to a number of American Flying Fortresses who had lost their lead navigators and followed us all the way back to England. But prior to that on a night when we were preparing charts and our logs we were disturbed and I’m about to say why we were disturbed. We were in the navigation hut doing our pre-flight briefing when the door flew open and in walked the station navigator accompanied by a lot of high-ranking United States Army Air Force officers. We jumped to our feet and were told, ‘Sit down gentlemen. These officers are here by special permission of Air Ministry to ask you questions regarding navigation. You can tell them whatever you like and then forget it please.’ About the lowest rank amongst them was a colonel who came towards me and said, ‘Hello,’ and I said, ‘Hello.’ He said, ‘How do you keep in touch with other aircraft when you are navigating?’ And I said, 'Well, we don’t sir.’ ‘Why is that?’ I said, 'Well, if we touched RT or the wireless the Germans would pick it up either directly or by the frequency and they would know what we were about. So no contact.’ ‘Well, how do you navigate?’ I said, ‘Well, we’ve been taught right from the very beginning to depend only upon ourselves and we have various ways of fixing our position. Radar is one, wireless is another and of course visual contact with the ground if we’re lucky and also by astro navigation but very seldom. Usually especially to Germany we use something which is known as Gee which you already know about because it was published in your magazine back in 1942. The secret of our navigation is to stay on time and on track. At various points along our routes we have places where I could turn or where we had to be at a certain time. That guarantees that all the aircraft taking part in the flight will be there approximately at the same time. That is our guarantee of safety and of accomplishing the mission. He said, ‘Is that all there is to it?’ [laughs] So I said, ‘Well, sir. Yes. Up to a point that is all there is to it.’ And I said, ‘It takes weeks and months of practice and you have to have a very good crew and a very good skipper who will fly at a constant speed and a constant height and make sure he stays where possible within two degrees of the course he is supposed to be flying and that is no joke.’
[recording paused]
There were of course lots of other questions and eventually they all gathered together and thanked us for our trouble and then disappeared into the night and that’s the last we ever knew about them or about the reason for their coming. But as my next story will tell we found that the Americans trained up their leading navigators. In other words the navigators who were to be in the aircraft leading the formation and they were experts. But the navigators in the other aircraft had to learn as they went along. We found that they had had certain basic training but to get to the efficiency of being able to navigate by themselves for journeys say to Germany that they had to do literally that. To follow the leader. And it was because the Germans as usual knew what was going on that if the Americans lost their lead aircraft then they lost their lead navigators and then they were literally lost and had no idea how to navigate back to England. It is because of this that in the ensuing story we will see or hear what in fact happened to us on our return from Germany.
[recording paused]
It seemed like any other day but it was still very dark but my watch told me that it was day. It was the 14th of October 1944. There was an incessant voice, low pitched and suddenly I was wide awake and realised what it was. ‘All aircrew to report for pre-flight briefing. All aircrew to report for pre-flight briefing.” I rolled out of bed and tapped Jimmy on the shoulder. Jimmy, the bomber aimer and I had shared a large room at the rear of the mess ever since the beginning of operations when we were together. Och leave me alone. She’s beautiful. She’s wonderful. Leave me. I don’t want to know.’ I said, ‘Jimmy, never mind your girlfriend. We’ve got to go lad.’ ‘Och no.’ I said, ‘Well, never mind. You can catch up with her tonight.’ Not realising of course that tonight was going to be a long way off. We as usual got ready in companionable silence and at the rear of the Mess stopped to fill our pipes and when they were satisfactorily burning we went slowly on our way. Luckily, it was light enough for us to be able to see without banging into buildings as we walked. While I walked with Jimmy I had the opportunity to think of the crew. They were exceptional. There was Jimmy in the front nose of the Halifax, sometimes shared the long bench seat that I had and learned something about the navigation that I was doing or invariably he was stretched out just by my feet his head towards the nose of the aircraft looking out into the night. He would tell me if it was possible when we crossed the enemy coast but mainly he would guide the skipper away from the concentrations of flak if that was at all possible. He was a first-rate bomb aimer and the fact that we held the squadron record for aiming point photographs speaks for itself. Then there’s the skipper. Sid Spencer had been a fighter pilot in North Africa and when he came and we met up with him at Harwell OTU we thought we were a very snooty lot. He was a warrant officer and both Jimmy and I were flying officers. That’s another story. Anyway, he was a very good pilot. He said that on the first trip he did he put his head above the [coping] his words, didn’t like what he saw and from then on on every trip he kept his eyes down on the instruments which was just as well for us. Speed and height and direction had to be constantly watched and it’s no joke when you’ve got a full load petrol and bombs and you have to steer the aircraft accurately. So he was an excellent skipper. Then Tommy Farr. Tommy used to sit down next to me underneath the pilot’s seat. You see, the nose of the aircraft the wireless operator, the navigator and the bomb aimer were three steps down from the flight deck and in the nose of the aircraft we used to be able to stand quite comfortably. Tommy had very little to do except to watch out should there be any signal from Bomber Command and apart from that he used to put Window out at specific times. Now, you know that Window was metallic strips which were designed to imitate the echo of an aircraft on the German radar. On specific times on the route he would push it out through a hole in the bottom of the aircraft known as the chute and that confused, we hoped, the German radar up to a point. Apart from that Tommy used to sleep. Occasionally he looked out of his side window and said afterwards, ‘Well, I liked the fireworks.’ Well, of course, Tommy would. We then had the flight engineer, Trevor. Trevor Roberts. He was a very young man and when he joined us at Riccall because that’s the time when we changed from two to four engines and required a flight engineer he was the youngest member of the crew and had only been in the Royal Air Force for six months. Nevertheless he was a first-rate flight engineer and knew exactly when to change the petrol tanks. If he hadn’t not only would the skipper have sworn about a lopsided aircraft but we would no doubt have crashed also. Then the joker of the crew was Bob [Lether]. He was the rear gunner. Full of fun, very good at his job. We did one trip where we flew eventually under cloud at about sixteen hundred feet and the Germans had had the temerity to fire at us with rifles. Now, Bob had under his control four Browning 303s firing simultaneously about twelve hundred rounds a minute. Needless to say the Germans soon scattered. That was our Bob. We had another Bob and that was Bob [Reynolds]. He was our mid-upper gunner. A big strong silent type. Very very pleasant. His mum had a flower stall down the Cut in London. And that was our crew and we got on very well together.
[recording paused]
‘Come on Dickie. What are you doing?’ ‘Oh, sorry Jimmy. I was thinking.’ ‘Well, it’s time we parted. See you later at the Mess.’ And I walked into the navigation hut. I say I walked. In fact, I stopped and wondered. The place seemed full of people. Full of people. Very very busy. Not the usual crowd. More than the usual crowd. There was Harry. Now, a flight lieutenant DFC. The squadron navigator. Flight lieutenant DFC. And the wing commander’s navigator. Canadian. All in the room together. What was going on? The squadron nav asked us to sit down and then he said, ‘We are about to take part in a thousand bomber raid to Duisburg. This is to be a maximum effort.’ Twenty one aircraft. That was ridiculous. Twenty one aircraft from one squadron. Had we got any cooks missing? Anyway, after the buzz of excitement stopped we went through the usual routine. He told us the route and the things related to it followed by the meteorological officer and then by the intelligence officer. We prepared our charts and our logs and then when it was all done the squadron nav said, ‘Come on chaps. We’ll go and have a bite to eat. You can leave your stuff where you are for now because we’ll go out from the door. So off we trooped into the night to the Airmen’s Mess. On a number of trips because it was convenient all the crews used to assemble and eat on the top floor of the Airmen’s Mess and so it was tonight. When we got there it was complete chaos. There was a noise like a hive of bees. I met up with the crew and the skipper said, ‘Dickie, is it right? Are we really going on a thousand bomber raid and is it Duisburg?’ I said, ‘Yes. Absolutely’ ‘Oh.’ So we all went upstairs and had our meal, chatting of course as usual about the various things that occupy one’s minds at that time. We left together and made our way to the main briefing room which was a fairly large Nissen hut. We all sat down in the chairs and then suddenly there was a door opened and all leapt to their feet as the station commander walked in followed smartly by the wing commander and of course the Met officer, the intelligence officer and anybody else that might help us with information for the trip. ‘Sit down, gentlemen.’ And so the briefing began. At the end of it all as usual the station commander said, ‘Well, press on chaps. Good luck.’ Press on chaps. Press on regardless. [unclear] And there it was. We made our way to the navigation and bomb aimer’s hut and then to the locker rooms where we got dressed for the night. Usually one of the other chaps helped me with some of the kit that I had to take with me as I had a large green canvas bag and of course the sextant just in case everything else failed. We formed up, got into lorries and went out to the aircraft and there she was. It wasn’t H after all. It was A-Able which the skipper swore about afterward but nevertheless that was our aircraft for the morning. There is a particular smell about aircraft almost an indefinable one to try and describe. So we climbed aboard and when the skipper had started one of his port engines then my tiny P lamp springs into life and I can see sufficiently to put the chart and the other things in their places. After a while we go to our various places for take-off and we get the light to go and we are off. Almost without exception we make base to Goole. That’s twenty odd miles in which we climb on track to reach operational height at about seventeen and a half thousand feet and then we turn to port. In other words we go south, missing London and its defences and trying not to get into anybody else’s areas. They are no respecter of persons when you were flying above them. So we drone on, me busy as a bee as usual taking the fix every six minutes and the wind velocity every twelve minutes because the Germans, knowing our radar were adept at jamming it and the more information I could get at the beginning of the journey the better it would be for the navigation of the trip. I say that because within the log I would have already logged the estimated winds, speeds and direction that the Met Office would have given us for the whole journey. Now, those could only be estimates on their part but by using the new winds that we found we were able to adapt them and to use them for the rest of the journey. Soon Jimmy would say, ‘Dickie, enemy coast coming up now.’ I’d then say, ‘Sid, turn to port. Course —’ whatever it was and we were on our way.
[recording paused]
The Germans had a habit of placing single ack ack positions in fields on the tracks that we tended to follow and every now and again there would be one single shot and usually they were very accurate. There would be a sound like pebbles hitting a tin roof and then we would be past and that would be it. We would go on our way and suddenly the aircraft would bump up and down and we knew then that we’d hit the airstream of someone in front of us. But by now it was beginning to turn to daylight and gradually we could see the aircraft forming. There appeared to be masses of them above us, to the sides and below as far as the eye could see. Soon we were virtually at the target and I could tell Jimmy the last winds and speeds that he wanted which he had to set on his bombsight and suddenly it was bomb doors open. On this particular occasion I’d taken the opportunity to go up on to the flight deck and to look through the astrodome. I wish I hadn’t. Directly above us doing exactly what we were doing were Lancaster aircraft and Jimmy said to the skipper, ‘Bomb doors open.’ They had opened their bomb doors. And as I followed Jimmy’s instructions to the skipper, ‘Left left. Left left. Right. Steady. Steady. Steady. Bombs gone.’ To my horror I saw that the bombs in the Lancaster above us had also gone and they came down, tumbling down whoosh either side of us. That was a very close call.
[recording paused]
The flak was very accurate and very intense. Once the leading aircraft had gone over the target, the first aircraft I should say then the Germans would know what height and speed and direction we were flying and also by the markers on the ground the target we were aiming for. They therefore used to put up a box barrage covering a few thousand feet directly on the aiming point where we would have to be in order to drop our bombs. It was also essential that we flew straight and level at that point because the camera was synchronised with the dropping of the bombs. Five plates used to roll over and to be able to take back to base confirmation that we had hit the target we needed the photograph. The real photograph of the five plates would be the one on which the target would be shown before you hit it. We would go through the target area ignoring [laughs] if possible the noise of the racket from the ack ack guns. Three minutes we would fly and then skipper, ‘Ninety degrees port,’ and he would turn very smartly. We would then go for another three minutes and another ninety degrees port and we would be flying the reciprocal of our route in. The idea of the three minutes was to get us past the main defences of the area and it worked usually very well.
[recording paused]
However, that did not prevent a sudden bang. The aircraft lurched. [unclear] sounded on the tin roof and I became aware of a sort of buzzing sound around my ears. Bang clang bang and then plop and on my plotting chart was a piece of grooved brass. It felt rather hot. I picked it up and put it in my pencil tin. I was jolly glad that my head hadn’t been in the way as that buzzed around above my table. And then eventually we were clear. Steady drone drone drone of the engines, being surrounded by aircraft knowing that within limits we would not be attacked by fighters with the escort that we had. We went on I suppose for about half an hour, possibly a little more. Then suddenly Sid said, ‘Dickie, come up here.’ And I thought oh lord now what’s the trouble? ‘Dickie, come on. Come up.’ So I unplugged my intercom, found myself an oxygen bottle and made my way to the astrodome where I plugged myself into the intercom. I said, ‘Ok. Come on. What’s the matter now?’ He said, ‘Well, look behind us.’ I did look behind us [pause] and there was forty Flying Fortresses. I know there were forty because I counted them. I said, ‘Well, what’s happening?’ He said, ‘Well, they’re following us.’ I said, ‘Oh, don’t be silly. How can they be following us?’ He said, ‘Well, they are. Stay and watch.’ So I stayed and I watched and sure enough the forty Forty Fortresses had formatted on us, our lonely little Halifax and we progressed and so did they. We went across France and so did they. We turned and crossed the Channel and where was our flock? Behind us. We had become Mother Goose and we were going to take the flock home and sure enough it was a lovely day. We went up England aircraft all around us and steadily as if by a piece of string forty Flying Fortresses followed us and followed us and followed us. We crossed the Humber and there was Leconfield. We asked permission to land but before it was given permission was given to the Flying Fortresses. They went ahead of us, landed in perfect formation and disappeared and I mean disappeared. By the time we had landed they had all been secreted away behind one of the hangars, all forty of them and we never saw them again. The following morning two very large mobile workshops and when I say large I mean large were there. But before all that we landed and as we got to the end of the runway there was a figure waving his arms up and down. It was a corporal from our flight. So, Sid slowed the aircraft and braked and reduced the engines to idling speed and the corporal clambered on. ‘Morning gentlemen, nice day?’ Hmmn. He said, ‘Well, never mind. Don’t go too far. You’re going back tonight.’ There was a deathly hush. ‘Going back tonight? How do you know?’ ‘Well, you’ve got the same petrol load and the same bomb load and you’re going to have your old ship H-How and you’re going back tonight.’ Thank you very much. And so there it was. Jimmy’s girlfriend would have to wait or to put it more accurately Jimmy would have to wait.
[recording paused]
Log to the crew. Op 29. 14/10/’44. Captain Flying Officer Spencer. Target Duisburg, Ruhr Valley. Morale attack on the city. Flak very very intense and accurate. No enemy aircraft. Load seven times one thousand pound bombs, six times five hundred pound bombs. Duration five hours five minutes. Aircraft A-Able. Day. Good flying but a lousy trip. Aircraft holed twice by flak. Once in the starboard engine and the other in the main plane. One thousand aircraft took part dropping four thousand five hundred tonnes of bombs. Aiming point obtained.