The Night Hunter's Prey: The Lives and Deaths of an RAF Gunner and a Luftwaffe Pilot

By Iain Gordon

This is the story of two airmen an RAF Rear Gunner and a Luftwaffe Pilot. Alexander Ollar was raised in the Highlands of Scotland. He became an exceptional sporting shot and volunteered as an RAF Air Gunner in 1939. Helmut Lent enrolled for pilot training in the Luftwaffe as soon as he was old enough. Both were men of integrity and honour. Alec completed his first tour of 34 operations with 115 Squadron and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal by the King. After a year as an instructor, Alec was commissioned and returned to 115 Squadron as Gunnery Leader. He took part in the first 1,000 bomber raid and is described by his Squadron Commander as the best rear gunner he has ever flown with. At the same time Helmut was building up an impressive score of victories as a night fighter pilot and a national hero who was decorated by the Fhrer. In July 1942, just as both men reach the apex of their careers, they meet for the first time in the night skies over Hamburg. As this fascinating book reveals, only one will survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473882522

Book preview

Prologue

For anyone who lived near a Bomber Command airfield during the Second World War the memories will never fade: the ululating roar in the middle of the day, rising to a crescendo then fading to a low, purposeful drone as mighty engines were run up and tested – the engines which would later drag the great, heavily-laden bombers off the concrete runways and carry them across the North Sea to engage the enemy and, with luck, bring them safely back again.

After dusk came the nightly takeoff ritual; successive waves of sound as one after another the bombers roared down the runway with throttles fully open; then the great dark shapes passed overhead in their sinister cavalcade, one every few minutes, the passage of the whole force sometimes lasting for over an hour. Then, when it seemed the show was over, there came the distant sound of more aircraft from other stations as they struggled to gain height and join the bomber stream until one was surrounded by the reverberating drone of bombers on their way to war. If the operation was a major one and the night was clear, the sky would seem black with their purposeful forms. At last the great east-bound armada passed out of earshot and sleep became possible.

In the early hours the squadrons started to return – not in the ordered succession in which they had departed but singly or in ragged groups of two or three. Sometimes an aircraft would be flying unusually low or would be making a different sound as it limped home with damaged airframe or with one or more engines out of commission. These casualties usually arrived much later than the others and sometimes a rumbling explosion like thunder and the scream of tearing metal would tell the sad tale of another cripple which had not quite made it home.

The next morning word would spread through the civilian community of those aircraft which had failed to return and of any which had crashed in the vicinity. Children on bicycles or on foot would rush to seek out the latest wreck in field or spinney, its sad body twisted and its tail or a wing pointing grotesquely and unnaturally into the air. Later in the day a huge RAF Scammel recovery vehicle would squeeze its way down narrow country lanes to the place where a row of decapitated trees or a broken down hedgerow and a group of light-blue uniformed guards marked the site of the accident; the great dead monster would be removed leaving the ground scarred forever and strewn with broken perspex and other sad relics for later retrieval by small boys to add to their collections, or as swops. Tragedy was re-enacted nightly but it was wartime and death was more especially a normal part of life.

Aircraft recognition cards and charts with the silhouettes of allied and enemy aircraft were to be found in most public buildings and in the possession of many families and groups. Heaven help any boy who, among his peers, could not tell the difference between a Lancaster and a Halifax, or a Heinkel and a Dornier.

The airfield became the hub of the community. Most of the road traffic in the area was RAF staff cars, ambulances, motorcycles and trucks – Bedfords, Commers and the ubiquitous Chevrolet 15 cwt GP trucks made in Canada to British specifications. The roads resounded with the characteristic hiss of their tyres and whine of their transmission. Many men and women, too young or too old for active service, depended, directly or indirectly, upon the airfield for their employment and most of the local shops relied upon service customers to keep their businesses solvent.

RAF personnel usually outnumbered the local civilians; the ‘Erks’, or aircraftmen who serviced the planes and their equipment and ran the airfield, were mainly qualified tradesmen and, on balance, probably behaved better in the local pubs than their counterparts in the Army and Navy. But the real stars were the aircrew, the young gods who proudly wore junior officers’ rings or sergeants’ stripes and the brevets of pilots, observers and air gunners. They filled the pubs and their stentorian badinage and laughter proscribed all attempts at conversation by other customers; but they were held in deep respect and were treated with the amused tolerance and affection which has always been accorded to unruly heroes. The locals soon learned not to enquire about the absence of a particular airman; losses were so regular and so heavy that the unspoken convention among aircrew was to make no mention of them and to restrict mourning to a brief and understated verbal tribute to a lost friend. There could be no other way; life had to carry on and tomorrow it could be themselves.

Memorial to the Canadian crew of a Wellington bomber which crashed in the Brecon Beacons in July 1942. This is one of hundreds of similar memorials throughout Britain to the crews of Allied bombers lost in training or returning from operations.

What sort of people were these men? There were a few public school boys and university graduates and undergraduates but by far the greater number of aircrew volunteers were very ordinary young men in very ordinary occupations. Those with a technical training, such as electricians or mechanics, tended to be directed to trades allied to their skills but those without, such as clerks, teachers and salesmen, were ideal material for aircrew. They would be required to handle complicated machines and equipment so a reasonable level of education was required which was then augmented within the service by thorough training courses ranging from nine months for an air gunner to two years for a pilot.

It was a strange form of warfare in which they were engaged: Bomber Command was statistically the most hazardous branch of the Allied armed services, requiring immense courage and endurance, and yet aircrew were able to lead lives nearer to normal than any other servicemen; when their night’s work was done, those who returned could enjoy relatively normal life and liberties, sleeping in their own beds, eating normal meals with their friends and enduring none of the round-the-clock privations of the infantryman in the field or the sailor on Atlantic or Arctic convoys.

Their initial tour of duty was for 30 operations; if their aircraft had to turn back due to mechanical problems, it did not count. A strong bond of friendship and trust developed between individual crew members who would often do a few extra operations in order to finish at the same time as a mate. Those who survived would then normally become instructors for about a year before embarking on their second tour. Their chances of surviving the first tour were about one in six; and the second tour one in forty. In a group of 100 bomber crewmen 55 would be killed in action, 18 wounded or shot down leaving only 27 who would survive the war physically unscathed. Mental damage was another matter: those who simply could not take the pressure and broke down, or requested a release from operations, were stripped of their rank and their brevet and branded as LMF, Lacking Moral Fibre, a condemnation which would follow them for the rest of their service lives.

The first time that many of the locals in the towns and villages in the East of England had heard foreign accents was when the bomber stations were established and the British airmen were joined by Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and a few Americans who were not prepared to wait until the USA entered the war. Their numbers increased steadily as the war progressed and they were joined by South Africans, Rhodesians, Caribbeans, Poles, Czechs and Free French. Some 20,000 Australians and 50,000 Canadians served in Bomber Command either integrated with British crews or in their own RAAF and RCAF squadrons. Canada even had its own Group, No.6 (Canadian) Group, comprising up to 14 squadrons.

With the arrival of the US Army Air Force in 1942, the East of England acquired yet another level of national diversity. The American 8th Air Force took over 41 bomber airfields in the East of England and around 350,000 US servicemen served in these stations during the war. Local men and women who had never been further than their county market town suddenly found themselves surrounded by these friendly people who spoke an unfamiliar form of English and spent more money than they had ever imagined was in circulation; and it was the first time that most of them had ever seen a black man, or someone chewing gum. The Allied bomber force and its enormous support organisation had taken over vast tracts of East Anglia, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire which had become more cosmopolitan than London or Paris; their presence became the sole topic of conversation in the shops and memories of the old rural ways gradually faded as this new society, dominated by men of war from far off lands, became the norm.

The other abiding memory of childhood in wartime England was the bomber traffic coming the other way: the rising and falling note of the air raid siren then the throbbing drone of the approaching German bombers – a sound unlike any other; the dash for the air raid shelter in ‘siren suit’ or for sanctuary under the staircase or kitchen table from where one would listen to the crash and rumble of enemy bombs and the steady thump from our own ack-ack batteries until the continuous note of the all-clear was heard. To a child, these nights held no terror; to be dragged from bed and rushed to a shelter was simply an exciting game and the louder the bangs the better the experience. The child had no conception of the anxiety and distress suffered by the adults in the family. Next morning there would be dust in the air, rubble at the roadside where houses once stood and strands of silver foil in the fields and hedgerows.

Sometimes one of the raiders would be brought down relatively intact; it might be put on triumphal display for a few days before the RAF would take it away for examination and trial. The more serious enemy crashes were a priority target for souvenir hunters; a strip of canvas with a swastika or German cross was the ultimate prize but many houses treasured instruments, tally plates and engine parts.

Later in the war one became used to the unmistakeable rasping growl of the V1 ‘Doodlebug’ and the silence as everyone waited for the engine to cut, the delay before the mighty explosion and the speculation as to where it had fallen which followed. They were the sights and sounds of the bomber war, once seen and heard never to be forgotten.

After the war the Allied legions were repatriated and the towns and villages slowly returned to austere normality as the bomber airfields were decommissioned, their runways and dispersals dug up and returned to farmland or lying silent and sinister awaiting some form of development. Today those that were not restored for agriculture are mainly covered by housing or industrial estates; the occasional control tower or hangar is preserved and odd lengths of runway to remind the visitor that this was once a bustling military airfield which never slept.

On a quiet summer’s evening when the activity of the day has subsided, it is still possible, for those who knew them in their heyday, to stand awhile in such places and recall the roar of the bombers as they thundered down the runway; and in the pubs around the old airfields to remember the animated discourse of those extraordinary young men most of whom lost their lives and are commemorated on the memorials in their home towns and villages, but whose ghosts must surely still inhabit these deserted and melancholy places.

Pilot and Co-Pilot of a Wellington Bomber.

Chapter 1 – One of the boys

R.A.F. Marham, Norfolk, 1800 hrs, 27th November 1940

The whine of the starboard engine turning over was broken by a sharp report as it fired and spluttered into faltering life. The pilot released the starter button keeping his finger on the adjacent booster coil button until the engine had picked up and settled down to a steady beat. The ground crew beneath the engine, their coats ballooning in the slipstream, screwed down the priming pump, turned the priming cock to off and closed the engine cowling door. The pilot slowly opened the throttle until the engine reached its warming up speed of 1,000 rpm. The procedure was repeated for the port engine.

As the aircraft stood on its dispersal with both engines warming up, the pilot began his engine and installation tests. Temperatures and pressures were observed and the flaps were raised and lowered to check the hydraulic system. When the oil pressure of each engine had reached 15°C and the cylinder temperature 120°C, he increased speed to 1,500 rpm for a precautionary check of each magneto. While still at 1,500 rpm he changed each engine to high gear observing the momentary drop in oil pressure and ensuring that it returned to normal after a few seconds. Changing back to low gear he opened both engines up further to 2,400 rpm before checking the operation of the constant speed propeller. With the propeller controls right forward he then fully opened each throttle control to check take-off boost and static rpm.

Dust from the dispersal blasted across the airfield in the increased slipstream and the roar of the two huge Bristol Pegasus engines could be heard in the surrounding fields and villages for miles around. The pilot prepared to move off and undertook his final checks before getting under way: Brake Pressure – at least 120 lbs/sq ins; Hatches closed; Fuel Levels OK; Pressure Head Heater – ON. He eased the throttles open together, released the brakes and the bomber started rolling ahead towards the junction with the perimeter track.

Once on the perimeter track, the pilot increased speed to start the long taxi to the head of the runway. His aircraft, ‘A-Able’ T 2520, was to take off first with ‘E-Easy’ T 2560 close behind. A total of eleven aircraft from the squadron were to take off on operations that night but with different targets so those with the longest flight would take off earliest. Some were only heading for Boulogne, just across the Channel, but ‘A-Able’ was bound for Cologne in the enemy’s heartland. At the head of the runway the pilot stopped the aircraft, turned into the direction of take-off and, with the assistance of his second pilot, began the final pre-take-off checks – Trimming Tabs and Flaps, Mixture and Propeller controls. At last the aircraft was ready for take-off.

A green light flashed and ‘A-Able’ was cleared for take-off. The pilot eased both throttles up to full power and the aircraft started its high-speed journey down the runway; both throttles were held fully open to avoid even the smallest loss of power. As the speed increased the tail lifted and the aircraft started to pull heavily to starboard like a headstrong horse. The pilot, with long experience of Wellington bombers, knew this tendency well – particularly with a heavy bomb load. ‘A-Able’ was fully loaded with four 500 lb and six 250 lb general-purpose, high-explosive bombs plus a parcel of incendiaries and the pilot had opened the starboard throttle slightly ahead of the port throttle to counteract the swing he knew this load would cause; he now used the rudder to keep the aircraft straight on its course. The two great engines strained to the limit of their combined 2,100 horse power in their resolve to lift the heavily laden bomber off the ground; the fuselage flexed and the aircraft vibrated at every loose component in its frenetic endeavour; 75 mph, 85 mph and the end of the runway was approaching fast. At a ground speed of just over 100 mph the pilot eased his control column back and lifted the aircraft gently off the ground. The undercarriage cleared the perimeter fence by some 10 feet. As ‘A-Able’ lifted off ‘E-Easy’ began its take-off run behind.

On an order from the pilot the second pilot retracted the undercarriage and when the aircraft had reached a safe height of 500 ft the pilot raised the flaps and throttled back to commence the long climb to their operational height. Down below in the villages of Castle Acre and West Lexham farm workers returning home looked up at the drone of the bombers approach, said a silent prayer for the young men who were heading over the North Sea for a brutal confrontation with the enemy and thanked God that they, themselves, were returning to a cosy hearth and a hot meal.

Squadron Leader Norman George Mulholland, the pilot and captain of the aircraft, was an Australian who had started life as a jackeroo at Colombo Station, Charleville, in Queensland.

Wing Commander Norman George Mulholland DFC killed in action 16th February 1942, 458 (Royal Australian Air Force) Squadron.

His father, a skin and wool buyer in Brisbane, died when Norman was 17; the family lost everything and Norman became the principal breadwinner until, ultimately, his mother was remarried to a French farmer near Helensburgh, New South Wales and became Mrs Calvignac. Norman had learnt to fly at the Queensland Aero Club and in 1932 joined the RAF on a short service commission. After four years he left the service and became a pilot with Imperial Airways returning to the RAF on the outbreak of war. This trip to Cologne was his 23rd operation.

With the aircraft settled on a course for a point on the Dutch coast, given to him by the navigator Sergeant Symons, the pilot pushed the intercom button on the right hand side of his control column and addressed his crew:

Everyone OK? Are you OK back there in the tail Jock?

Yes, OK skipper Sergeant Ollar the rear gunner replied.

The navigator and the wireless operator exchanged a smile and a wink; it was one of the crew’s favourite jokes that the captain, with his thick Australian accent, and the Scottish members of the crew could hardly understand a word of what the other was saying. One by one he spoke to each crewman in turn and obtained a positive response – Sergeant Ollar the tail gunner, Sergeant Sutherland the forward gunner, Sergeant Williamson the wireless operator and Sergeant Symons the navigator. Sergeant John Bernard Molony, the second pilot, had been beside him since take-off so needed no such enquiry. Malony was perhaps the most well connected of the crew members: he was the son of the Rt Hon Sir Thomas Malony Bart, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin and former Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. On Sir Thomas’s retirement the family had moved to Wimbledon, a suburb of London.

Navigator in a Wellington Bomber.