250-lb, nine 40-lb and a can of incendiaries. One of Breese’s 40-lb bombs was still hung up when his aircraft crashed, and exploded on impact.
A few days later a new crew crashed on take-off, and an Me109 poured fire into Atkinson’s Blenheim as he bombed. His observer threw himself to the floor to bring the ventral gun to bear, meeting a burst that ripped through the aircraft and himself, lifting the man bodily into the air. French flak hit them in the bomb bay as they hedgehopped home, flying low so that the great columns of refugees could see the RAF roundels and escape being obliged to dive into the ditches. Somehow they got home to Watton.
There were days when they flew in formations drawn from the whole of 2 Group. ‘Mac’ McFarlane joined the RAF as a Direct Entry Observer in 1938, and now at twenty was the most experienced on 82 Squadron. Three of his pre-war training course survived the war. One morning his Blenheim was in the midst of a long train of thirty-six aircraft, in vics at 8,000 feet, attacking an airfield near Béthune. To his astonishment and dismay, the formation leader took them over the airfield once without bombing, and began a long, slow turn for a second run over the target. The Me109s and 110s were already scrambling. Wellings, McFarlane’s pilot, went into a vertical dive as an Mel10 flashed by so close that they saw the crew’s white faces staring up at them. McFarlane was struck by the fire axe at the stern of the aircraft breaking loose and falling upon him. The compass dial cracked and the air speed indicator reached a mad, screaming 350 mph. A line of holes stitched across the port wing, and there was a sudden explosion as black smoke poured from the engine. The pilot struggled to force back the yoke with McFarlane’s assistance. They pulled out of the dive over a wood. In a series of jolting concussions, they lost the ventral gun nacelle, the bomb doors, the trailing aerial and the tailwheel in the tree tops. But the fire was out and the Messerschmitt had vanished. They went home across the fields, sending an old Frenchman diving from his tractor into the corn as they roared over him, then over the coast and skimming the waves of the Channel. Theirhydraulics were gone, and over Watton they fired a red Very light. On their second attempt, they made a successful belly landing and walked away from the wreckage.
The German bombing of Rotterdam, although it killed a thousand Dutch civilians rather than the 30,000 reported across the world at the time, seemed a convincing justification for the Royal Air Force to lift some of its restrictions on bombing military targets inside Germany. On 15 May Portal was authorized to attack rail and oil installations east of the Rhine. As the summer of 1940 melted into autumn, Bomber Command’s attentions were divided between German airfields in France and the Low Countries, the gathering concentration of invasion barges in the coastal ports, and the oil installations which Portal had become convinced were the key to striking at the German war machine. While 3, 4 and 5 Groups flew night after night over Germany accomplishing little but also losing very few aircraft, 82 Squadron, like the rest of 2 Group, was now called upon to fight by day and by night.
The results of their efforts were predictably indecisive. ‘Object of strike: Attack 1(a) (ii) 28a Mannheim Rhenonia Oil Works’, reads a characteristic photographic intelligence report of the period, for an attack on 25 June 1940. ‘Photograph does not appear to show all the target, but no evidence of damage is visible.’ Their losses were also predictably crushing. Under the terms of their new orders, they were not required to press on with a daylight attack unless there was adequate cloud cover en route, but it was left to each pilot to make his own decision, and more and more often they flew on missions independently rather than in formation. On 2 July twelve 82 Squadron aircraft took off. Ten
A few days later a new crew crashed on take-off, and an Me109 poured fire into Atkinson’s Blenheim as he bombed. His observer threw himself to the floor to bring the ventral gun to bear, meeting a burst that ripped through the aircraft and himself, lifting the man bodily into the air. French flak hit them in the bomb bay as they hedgehopped home, flying low so that the great columns of refugees could see the RAF roundels and escape being obliged to dive into the ditches. Somehow they got home to Watton.
There were days when they flew in formations drawn from the whole of 2 Group. ‘Mac’ McFarlane joined the RAF as a Direct Entry Observer in 1938, and now at twenty was the most experienced on 82 Squadron. Three of his pre-war training course survived the war. One morning his Blenheim was in the midst of a long train of thirty-six aircraft, in vics at 8,000 feet, attacking an airfield near Béthune. To his astonishment and dismay, the formation leader took them over the airfield once without bombing, and began a long, slow turn for a second run over the target. The Me109s and 110s were already scrambling. Wellings, McFarlane’s pilot, went into a vertical dive as an Mel10 flashed by so close that they saw the crew’s white faces staring up at them. McFarlane was struck by the fire axe at the stern of the aircraft breaking loose and falling upon him. The compass dial cracked and the air speed indicator reached a mad, screaming 350 mph. A line of holes stitched across the port wing, and there was a sudden explosion as black smoke poured from the engine. The pilot struggled to force back the yoke with McFarlane’s assistance. They pulled out of the dive over a wood. In a series of jolting concussions, they lost the ventral gun nacelle, the bomb doors, the trailing aerial and the tailwheel in the tree tops. But the fire was out and the Messerschmitt had vanished. They went home across the fields, sending an old Frenchman diving from his tractor into the corn as they roared over him, then over the coast and skimming the waves of the Channel. Theirhydraulics were gone, and over Watton they fired a red Very light. On their second attempt, they made a successful belly landing and walked away from the wreckage.
The German bombing of Rotterdam, although it killed a thousand Dutch civilians rather than the 30,000 reported across the world at the time, seemed a convincing justification for the Royal Air Force to lift some of its restrictions on bombing military targets inside Germany. On 15 May Portal was authorized to attack rail and oil installations east of the Rhine. As the summer of 1940 melted into autumn, Bomber Command’s attentions were divided between German airfields in France and the Low Countries, the gathering concentration of invasion barges in the coastal ports, and the oil installations which Portal had become convinced were the key to striking at the German war machine. While 3, 4 and 5 Groups flew night after night over Germany accomplishing little but also losing very few aircraft, 82 Squadron, like the rest of 2 Group, was now called upon to fight by day and by night.
The results of their efforts were predictably indecisive. ‘Object of strike: Attack 1(a) (ii) 28a Mannheim Rhenonia Oil Works’, reads a characteristic photographic intelligence report of the period, for an attack on 25 June 1940. ‘Photograph does not appear to show all the target, but no evidence of damage is visible.’ Their losses were also predictably crushing. Under the terms of their new orders, they were not required to press on with a daylight attack unless there was adequate cloud cover en route, but it was left to each pilot to make his own decision, and more and more often they flew on missions independently rather than in formation. On 2 July twelve 82 Squadron aircraft took off. Ten
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