BOMBING COLOGNE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 2 September 1942, Page 3

BOMBING COLOGNE

AMERICAN’S PRAISE NEW ZEALAND CAPTAIN ' The author of this article, pub- j | lished in the "New York Times,” • Flight-Sergeant R. J. Campbell, is | I a 23-year-old American from i ' Pawling, New York, who joined j | the Canadian Air Force nearly two : j years ago. He has taken part in more than 20 raids, as air gunner I and wireless operator. The big Cologne show was a beauty j -1 and 1 wouldn't have missed it for any- j i thing. Our attack on Essen a couple of j nights later was on just as large a. 1 scale —with the number of kites involved j running into four figures again—but i *■ there were lots of things about that trip j to Cologne that will make it stick in j my mind. While we were standing around the I plane waiting to go on board we check- i 1 ed up on each other to make sure ; everybody had his own good-luck pieces j ’ with him. 1 didn’t use to take any j ' stock in such things as three on a j ■ match and so on. but I don’t know—- ? somehow. 1 feel a little bit better when t everybody’s all in order. I’m the only ' Roman Catholic in my crew and I al--1 i ways wear my St. Christopher medal. So. as we stand there, my pals ask -me. "Have you got him with you?” s "Yes.” i say. "And did you get your - good-luck shirt back from the laundry in time for this trip?" “UNDERWEAR ON BACKWARD So questions and answers pass among j t j us. The mid-upper gunner has got his j underwear on backward as always when ] he goes out. Baldy—that’s the pilot | j officer Baldwin, our navigator—has his I good-luck tokens properly arranged ! | underneath the shoulder straps of his j blouse. , Then there’s my skipper. I mean our j - skipper. Keith Thiele, who is about the j ; same age as myself and comes from j Christchurch. New Zealand. He's the ! best little old bomber pilot in the whole Air Force and every one of us looks up \ to him as a little tin god. I’ve made 15 ; trips with him. More than once he has ' got us out ot ticklish spots when we've i been caught in a cone of German J searchlights and had enemy anti-air- j craft gunners pumping everything they had all around us. I wouldn't like to ; go out in any kite now that didn't have I, Keith at the controls. GOOD-LUCK “PIECES” i Like the rest of us, Keith has his M own particular fetish. In addition to j having some good-luck pieces he never J i fails to make a certain mark on the i port landing wheel. If lie didn’t go | j throdgh this little bit of ritual I think j j we’d gang up on him and make him. | j Almost before we knew it we were j , over Cologne. What a sight! The entire city looked like a seething cauldron. Fires were blazing everywhere, spread- j, ing right and left, merging into one) another, their glow tinting our kite a j . rosy pink. The Germans pumped every- j j thing they had at us. The flak was terrific. All around us jagged bursts of , light glinted as anti-aircraft shells ex- L ploded. IN AND OUT OF BARRAGE Old Keith just weaved in and out of j i

that barrage, tossing our "Halibag’ (Halifax bomber) around as if it were a baby carriage. Once or twice the Getman shells burst fairly close underneath our kite, but they didn’t do us much harm beyond scratching one aileron. We could i \ r those shells going off above the roads of our four motors. The explosions sounded like big steel doors being slammed shut with a bang. There were so many fires that we had to fly around the city three or four times looking for pockets of darkness on the ground where there weren't any flames, in one of which was I a certain factory which we’d been told when we were briefed was our particular target. As we stooged around we got caught in a big cone of searchlights. Then things began to get really hot. The Germans kepi their searchlights trained on us while on the ground the gunners tried to take our range and let us have it. SINGING NEW ZEALAND SONG The skipper gave them a good run for their money by diving, twisting and weaving in and out of the barrage, and finally wriggled out. All the while we could hear Keith singing—at least he calls it singing; we don’t. But he had got some New Zealand song in his bean ) that night and he kept singing it over and over, stopping every once in a while, when ack-ack came quite close, to shout. “Look at those so-an-so’s trying to get us!” Once again we circled over the city

and again we were caught briefly ai | the point where the searchlights converged in the sky. Keith kept on yowl- , ing his song. I’m not permitted to say what our , target was, but this much I can say: | We hit it. all right, after we made sure j we’d located it. I know we hit it because I saw chunks of that factory leaping up like salmon out of that red sea below us. NO “HANG-UPS” * I When we’d seen our bombs burst we ; made a rapid check-up to be sure we ■ didn t have any "hang—ups” ( bombs j tbal had stuck in the racks when they were supposed to be released), found 1 the bomb bay was empty, all right, then ■ started taking photographs. Eventually we were back over our own aerodrome. Sometimes if we’ve had yn arduous trip the pilot is apt to be [awfully tned and he lands the kite with !a heavy bump. But not our skipper. He ! "greased” in so smoothly we hardly j knew our landing wheels had touched j ground, but we darned well wouldn't i let on to him he’d made a beautiful landing. All we did was groan. You ; should have heard him laugh.