Heroic Endeavour: The Remarkable Story of One Pathfinder Force Attack, a Victoria Cross and 206 Brave Men

By Sean Feast

This WWII combat history offers a detailed chronicle and analysis of an RAF Pathfinder Squadron's ill-fated operation over Cologne.

On December 23rd, 1944, an elite squadron of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command engaged in a courageous yet tragic daylight raid on the Gremberg railway yards in Cologne, Germany. One of the war's most significant raids, it is scarcely mentioned in history books. Yet it was an operation in which its leader won the Victoria Cross, and a future VC fought a similarly heroic battle. It was also a harrowing ordeal in which ordinary men lost their lives doing extraordinary things.


In Heroic Endeavour, aviation historian Sean Feast tells the story of this fateful raid from two different perspectives. In the first part, he presents a gripping narrative recreation of the events as they unfolded. In the second, he shares retrospective interviews with survivors from both sides, as well as an analysis of what went wrong and why.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781909166516

Sean Feast

Sean Feast is a Director and co-owner of Gravity London and the author of several books on World War II pilots.

Book preview

Published by

Grub Street

4 Rainham Close

London

SW11 6SS

Copyright © 2006 Grub Street

Text copyright © 2006 Sean Feast

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Feast, Sean

Heroic endeavour: the remarkable story of one Pathfinder

Force attack, a Victoria Cross and 206 brave men

1. World War, 1939-1945 – Aerial operations, British

I. Title

940.5′44941

ISBN 1 904943 51 9

ePub 9781909166516

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

Typeset by Pearl Graphics, Hemel Hempstead

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG, Bodmin, Cornwall

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Author’s Note

Part One          The Raid

Chapter 1         Awakenings

Chapter 2         Briefings

Chapter 3         Assemblies

Chapter 4         Attacks

Chapter 5         Landings

Chapter 6         Reckoning

Part Two         Reflections

Afterword

Appendix I:      Precise Timings of the Raid

Appendix II:     Formations and Escort

Appendix III:    The MacLennan Letter

Appendix IV:    The Murder of Ken Hewitt

Appendix V:      Operational Record of Robert Palmer

Appendix VI:     The Third Man

Acknowledgements and Sources

Index

Foreword

I had sufficient experience of earlier Oboe attacks on V1 and V2 sites to say that this is a truly remarkable account of a remarkable raid.

While I cannot agree with all the opinions expressed, this detailed account, with its input and recollections from both friend and foe, is an outstanding exposition of the Gremberg raid. It is also a graphic record of what it was like to take part in specialised bombing operations over Germany. By bringing that to life it highlights the extraordinary courage of those who took part.

It makes compelling reading, and I commend it to all interested in this field of operations.

Hindsight may or may not offer new perspectives, but Heroic Endeavour remains a most fitting epitaph to the Cologne-Gremberg raid.

Group Captain S.P. Coulson DSO, DFC, Queen’s Messenger

(C/O 582 Squadron – December 1944).

Introduction

In the log book of Flight Sergeant George Owen, a wireless operator with 101 (Special Duties) Squadron and 582 Squadron Pathfinder Force (PFF), are the details of 29 operations. The final entry, above a heavily-inked stamp proclaiming ‘Death Presumed’ and the signatures of his Flight Commander and Commanding Officer, the details ‘Ops – Koln’ (sic) have been written by an unknown hand, along with the simple word ‘Missing’ in block capitals. The raid, which was one of the most important at that time, is scarcely mentioned in the history books, and yet was an operation in which its leader won the Victoria Cross, and a future VC fought a similarly heroic battle. But it was also an ordeal in which ordinary men fought and died, ordinary men, doing extraordinary things. This story is for them.

Author’s Note

This book is effectively in two parts.

The first part is a narrative, recreating the events on the 23rd December 1944, and the heroic yet dreadful action that unfurled. The second part is more retrospective, including present-day interviews with the survivors, and an analysis of what went wrong and why. The purpose is to present an objective appraisal of the raid, and to consider the achieve-ments of those who took part in the context of the day, so that others can fully appreciate the sacrifices that were made in the struggle to free the world from Nazi terror.

Chapter One

Awakenings

It was 0630 hours, and miserably cold. The biting wind swept through the Nissen huts dispersed around the airfield of Little Staughton, mocking the puny attempts of the wood-burning stoves as they lost their unequal struggle to provide warmth. The crews stirred gradually, stiffly, as the masked torches of the unsympathetic SPs signalled an end to their slumber. Experience had taught these men that the only really efficient way of waking the aircrew on the Battle Order for that day was to rattle their batons along the ribbed sides of the tin huts. Few could resist the clamour. All would curse it.

Little Staughton was four miles from St Neots, where the rural communities of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire became one. Such a pretty name for what had now become an ugly place undertaking an ugly trade, however necessary. It was a place where, night after night, mighty Lancasters would take to the skies, flying hundreds of miles to wreak death and destruction. Originally it had been built as a base for the USAAF as the 2nd Advanced Air Depot for repair of B-17s of the 1st Bomb Wing, but it had not proved to their liking. So on 1st March, 1944, RAF Little Staughton had been handed over to Bomber Command, and on 1st April, the C Flights of No. 7 Squadron from Oakington and No. 156 Squadron from Upwood arrived to form No. 582 Squadron, PFF. The Mosquitoes of 109 Squadron flew in from Marham the following day.

The war, in Europe at least, was now more than five years old, and entering its dreadful finale. Yet still the crews were required to bomb the enemy into submission, increasingly in support of their land troops as they broke out of Normandy and fought their way across France, Belgium and Holland, and now stood virtually at the doorstep of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Surely the war couldn’t last much longer?

Moribund frames emerged at last from under heavy blankets, sniffed the cold, and buried themselves once again in the warmth to snatch just a few moments more repose. A handful of brave souls were already up, and on their way to the ablution block. Others followed more slowly, anxious first to find their socks and shoes before daring to risk the freezing floor on their sensitive feet.

In one of the huts, 21-year-old George Owen awoke. No sooner was he awake than he remembered how many were unhappy about the loss of leave for the day’s operation, even though they had been reassured that they could pick up their passes as soon as they got back. Four days of postponements looked like stretching into another, and another. Today was Saturday 23rd December. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and they were due to celebrate in style. ‘They’ included three other members of his hut, and of his crew: John Paterson, Jack MacLennan, and Bob Pearce.

John was the flight engineer, a Scot from Partick. Quiet, and quite content with his own company, John had been a printer before the war and had the most beautiful handwriting, so much so that Bob Pearce cajoled John regularly into addressing his letters home. Bob, a Canadian from Toronto, was the rear gunner, and with the mid-upper gunner and fellow Canadian Jack MacLennan the two made a formidable pair both in the air and on the ground. Indeed Bob and Jack had been together from the start. Both had volunteered for pilot training at the same time, and both had failed. Bob’s maths had been so poor that remustering as a navigator was not an option, and with little interest in wireless telegraphy he opted instead for gunnery. Jack followed suit, despite his background as a telephone engineer, but comfortable in the knowledge that it was the quickest way of getting into the war. Appropriately both had also been recommended for commissions which they had recently learned had been approved, although not yet officially.

George, meanwhile, did not share Bob’s antipathy or Jack’s apathy towards wireless, and positively relished his role as wireless operator. George was a Lancashire lad, from Salford, the only Englishman in the crew who was contentedly employed as a clerk in the local timber merchant’s yard at the time war broke out. After training at 5 AOS Jurby on the Isle of Man, George had been posted to 28 OTU (Castle Donington) where he had met John and the two gunners, as well as Ken and Pete, navigator and air bomber respectively.

Being officers, Ken and Pete were billeted and messed separately, though hardly any more luxuriously. Ken Austin, another Canadian, this time a schoolteacher, was very different from the irrepressible Torontonians. For one thing, he was much older, and more studious. At 28, he was positively ancient. For another, he was married, which put him into quite a different league altogether. Like John, Ken was also very quiet, although far from antisocial, but failed dismally in keeping up with the others in terms of alcohol consumption. As a result, he was easily drunk, and equally easily led astray.

Pete Uzelman, the fourth Canadian, from Saskatchewan and of German descent, had lived in the small town of Revenue before volunteering for aircrew, and was currently undertaking a correspondence course to become a pharmacist. Tall, in excess of six feet, he was a habitual smoker, as indeed they all were, with the smell of his favourite Sweet Caporal brand never far away. Pete liked to party, and he found an ideal playmate in his great friend, and the skipper of the crew, Walther Reif.

Flight Lieutenant Arndt Walther Reif, known to everyone as ‘Walt’ was a Canadian by birth of German parents. His father, Arndt Johannes, originally from Dresden, had become a Canadian citizen and married Margot Walther, Walt’s mother, but she had died in the great influenza epidemic of 1919. He then re-married Emily (Emmy), Walt’s step-mother, and the family moved to Baker, Oregon. The fact that they had lived in the country for more than 20 years did not stop them being ostracised as illegal aliens following the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor.

Walt, a solidly built, almost bull-like man of 29 with a square jaw, was an adventurer of the old school. A keen hunter and trekker, in the true frontiersman tradition, Walt was a man who could never have felt comfortable sitting behind a desk. His passion for the outdoors took him from lumberjack to flyer, becoming an accomplished crop-dusting pilot across the Great Plains near his home. His passion for hunting led him to take trips for city-folk out into the wilds to shoot elk, and he would always make sure they never returned empty handed, even if it meant shooting the beasts himself.

The United States’ entry into the Second World War led Walt to volunteer for the air force. Because of his German extraction, which was not helped by his obviously German name, his application was refused. He never forgave them. Undaunted, and like many before him and several after, he simply crossed the border where he was welcomed warmly by the Royal Canadian Air Force.

It was to Walt that George was looking that Christmas to come up with the goods, and he wasn’t going to let them down. Already Walt had arranged the turkey, and in cahoots with the local landlord at the White Swan in nearby Colmworth, and a posse of groundcrew and drivers from the MT section, had arranged the Christmas party to end all Christmas parties. All they had to do was see this trip through, and their war might conceivably be over. At least they were due some leave. It was, after all, their 30th operation.

Similar scenes were being played out all over the base. Bill Lanning, a young yet highly experienced flight engineer who, like many of them, could double as a gunner or bomb aimer, staggered out of bed to be greeted by a chorus of advice from various Aussie and Pommie accents. Most voluble amongst them were members of Johnny Gould’s crew who had gone to bed with smiles as broad as could be, having learned that they had been replaced on the Battle Order by Harry Manley’s crew and were free for Christmas leave. Little did they know that in a short while, early one morning whilst on their way back from Chemnitz, they would blow up over Chesham, and that only the rear gunner, Hart, would escape alive.

Tex Barron, a Newfoundlander and mid-upper gunner, slept on. He and ‘Pin Point’ Newman, Bill’s navigator along with air bomber Bruce Hutchinson had decided to take a rest after their 45th operation. Bruce wanted to be sure he’d make it back to see his new bride in Canada. Their places in the crew had been taken by Bert Carter DFC, one of the most experienced navigators at Little Staughton, and David Mansell-Pleydell as air bomber. The mid-upper turret was filled by various spare bods, since a permanent replacement had yet to be found. Flight Lieutenant Owen ‘Jock’ Milne, their skipper, would no doubt sort something out in due course.

Bert Nundy, the wireless operator in the crew, seemed as unperturbed as ever as he padded out of the door to make for the washroom. Coming from Hull, he was used to the cold, or so he said. Bert was best pals with Russell Yeulett, and the pair were well matched both in temperament, and in the keenness for their trade. ‘Russ’ had been a Cranwell ‘Brat’, and his knowledge of the Kings Regulations was surpassed only by his skills as a gunner. Whilst with 100 Squadron early on in his tour, and with their Lancaster down to three engines, Russ had engaged a Junkers 88 night fighter for more than ten minutes as it tried to sneak underneath for the kill, before sending it packing with an engine on fire. This was the first report of an attack in such a way, and corroborated stories filtering back from POW camps about Schräge Musik (literally ‘slanting music’, the German term for ‘Jazz’), German night fighters armed with upwards-firing cannon to attack the most vulnerable and undefended parts of a bomber.

In Russ’ billet, George Tungate stirred. Being a farmer’s son from Norfolk, George was used to early mornings, but this particular morning, like many 19-year-olds, he was in no rush to get out of bed. It was cold. Damned cold. Not as cold as his turret at 20,000ft of course, but not much in it. The perspex of the turret had been cut away to offer better visibility, but it removed the only barrier between him and the elements. George took to gunnery much more than he took to farming. As a boy he had always dreamed of running away to sea, but the RAF gave him one of the only guarantees out of a reserved occupation, and a gunnery course would assure him the quickest entry into the war. Gunners seemed to get the chop regularly, and were always in short supply. He had started his tour with an Australian, Mick Miller, but Mick had had to return to Oz for various reasons never fully explained. It meant George had a new skipper, Wing Commander Peacock DFC, a pre-war regular, aloof, but by no means unkind or unfair.

In pilot Bob Cairns’ Nissen, there was an empty bed and a man short. Reg Cann, Bob’s regular navigator one had gone down with tonsillitis, and been carted off to the station’s hospital. It meant he would miss today’s show, whatever that might be. Cairns, a dour Scot from Edinburgh, had the habit of practising his bagpipes by using his chanter in their hut, and the sound of a cat being strangled was not everybody’s idea of fun. Two other members of Bob’s crew shared the accommodation, if not his musical tastes: Percy Ansell, wireless operator, and the Canadian Johnny Crew, navigator two. Reg rated them both highly, if not altogether understanding what Percy did during an op, apart from listening to the odd radio broadcast and keeping half an eye on ‘Fishpond’, their fighter-warning device. But perhaps he was being disingenuous. There wasn’t a single man in the crew for whom he did not have the greatest respect and trust. Every operation was risky, but if you had a good crew, you were half way to survival. His skipper, Cairns, was also one of the best. Perhaps, at 27, it was because he was that much older. Perhaps it was because he was married, it was said to calm a man. He wasn’t much of one for drinking, apart from the occasional sherry. But then none of them were. They wanted to have a clear head when in the air. Whatever the reason, as their rear gunner Willie Ritchie would say in his thick Scottish brogue, ‘they wouldn’t have swapped him for the world’.

Of the two remaining occupants in the hut, ‘Bunny’ Austin, the 35-year-old mid-upper gunner with Owen-Jones’ crew, had one of the other beds, with the last occupied by Bill Dalgarno, a highly experienced gunner who had arrived on the squadron in August as a gunnery leader and flew as a spare bod whenever he could.

George Ward was also an experienced gunner, sharing a hut with his flight engineer Dennis Hughes. As well as being talented in the air, George also had hidden talent on the ground as a demon on the snooker table. He’d once played an exhibition match against the legendary Joe Davis and it had been the talk of the squadron for weeks. Both George and