V.C’S. STORY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 August 1940, Page 8

V.C’S. STORY

BOMBS TAKEN THROUGH STORM OF Fi'RE FOR ATTACK ON VITAL CANAL. PLANE BROUGHT HOME BADLY DAMAGED. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. August 19. Telling the story of the operation against the enemy for which he has been awarded the Victoria Cross, a young Royal Air Force bomber pilot described how he and his crew set of! as the last of a party of five bombers to destroy an old aqueduct which carried the Dortmund-Ems Canal over the River Ems.

The new aqueduct, he explained, had already been blown up by R.A.F. raiders and the Germans had diverted to the old aqueduct the traffic of the canal, which is of great importance to the industrial area of the Ruhr. Most of the crews knew the way for they had been there before, and they met with no opposition all the way over. Describing the attack, the pilot said. “We were relying on moonlight reflecting on the water to give us our direction for the run up. We. being last of the five, were due to go in at 11.23 p.m., and two minutes before then we came down to about. 300 feet. We were then still several miles north of the target, and gradually we lost height as we came along the canal, following its course all the time. “The navigator was in the nose of the aircraft doing the bomb-aiming. Everything was quiet till we got to a point where the canal forked just before the two aqueducts. I was doing the run up to this point, and then the navigator was taking over the directing. We must have gone off a bit to the left, because he called out, ‘Right,’ and then immediately after, when he had turned a bit to make the correction, he called out, ‘steady.’ “Then, suddenly, everything started at once —searchlights and all sorts of anti-aircraft fire. It was unfortunate from our point of view that the enemy knew pretty well the direction from which we must attack, and they had disposed their defences so that they formed a sort of lane through which we had to pass. “It seemed to me they had strengthened these defences a great deal since the first raids. The searchlights were blinding and we were flying entirely on the bomb-aimer’s instructions. I had my head down inside the cockpit trying to see the instruments but the glare made even that difficult. Our instructions were not to rush it too much because of the need for extreme accuracy.

“Before we started the rear gunner had asked if he could fire at something or somebody, and he was shooting at the searchlights as we went past. Almost at the same moment as we bombed I felt a thump and the aircraft lurched to the right. A pompom shell had gone through the starboard wing. Then another shell hit the same wing between the fuselage and the engine. “They were firing pretty well at point-blank range. It was all over in a few seconds, and the navigator called out, ‘O.K., finis.’ Then we turned away again.

“When we had got away the rear gunner reported that oil was coming into his cockpit, and then the wireless operator reported that the flaps were drooping. I tried to raise them but found they wouldn’t come up. What had happened was that the hydraulic system had been damaged. We discovered, too, that the undercarriage indicators were out of action.

“Not having landed without flaps before, I didn’t like to try it that night with the crew aboard, so we cruised round a bit doing a few local crosscountry flights for about two and a half hours. We waited till dawn and then came in all right.”