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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 1718.PDF
530 JUNE 13, 1940 Perhaps we were lucky, and in fact I am forced to the con elusion that, after certain precautions have been taken, sur- vival in a bombing raid is just a matter of luck, although the chances to one against being hit are high. There is no doubt that if you abandon dignity and an appearance of bravado, lower yourself into a ditch or trench, and lie face down with your tin hat over the back of your head nothing short of a direct or very close ex- plosion will damage you. If caught in a street, lie flat against the stoutest wall away from glass windows. These are things everyone familiar with A.R.P. has learnt, and experience merely goes to prove their correctness and to encourage their rapid fulfilment! The first bombs which dropped close to me were in Lens. I foolishly parked outside a shop opposite the rail- way station, and a salvo fell outside the station building. I pressed myself up against a stout concrete buttress and was all right, being well clear of the shop windows. Both bombs fell a hundred yards away, but that particular experience taught me to avoid railway stations, which are favourite targets. I had been told that a bomb dropped in a street caused the windows to collapse outwards and not inwards as one might expect. This was shown to me clearly when bringing the convoy through Armentieres one evening. The first warning that a raid was imminent was a sight of a bomb actually falling under 100 yards ahead across a square; another fell to the right, and the windows of the houses ahead and to the left which were facing the square tinkled into the roadway ahead. We abandoned the car and sheltered. On that occasion the Heinkels wheeled and came back, causing horrible havoc with a heavy bomb in a block of flats. Actually, when driving along in a car, one cannot hear the hum r.f bombers, but the sight of everyone looking quickly up- wards is sufficient warning to be on the look-out. Anti-aircraft fire accounted for two machines at the end of that Armentieres raid, both crashing in flames towards Lille. We sent out a despatch rider to note the result, and he returned to say that he had met with an unfriendly French crowd, as they had been two French fighters which had been shot down. It is possible, however, that these two were fighters bombecT on the ground on the nearby The successful Bofors light anti-aircraft gun referred to bythe author. aerodrome. Lack of confirmation of such stories was very disquieting. Another similar difficulty in identification concerned parachutists. The proper thing would have been to have effected capture in each case, but parachute troops and Fifth Columnists had achieved such notoriety that everyone regarded a parachutist as fair game. In Alost two fighters circled round and round a parachute firing machine-guns, the unfortunate man being dead before reaching the ground. The fact that he was dressed in R.A.F. Leading Aircraftman uniform condemned him as a spy. Wide Devastation The most damage done to a district near me was in a very heavy air raid on Poperinghe just aftor lunch one day. Half an hour before 1 had fortunately left the narrow streets of the town, which were absolutely crammed with Belgian soldiery and refugees, the latter thronging the cafes. This foolhardy concentration suffered dearly when a number of heavy bombs caused terrible casualties. Most of Western Belgium was bombed that day, and as I took a convoy by cross-country route in the evening down to Ploegsterte, avoiding Ypres, every single small town that I passed had received its measure of attention. At this time we never saw Allied fighters, and the Germans would fly over in the morning on reconnaissance and bomb accordingly in the afternoon without opposition. On one occasion a German machine left a trail of smoke in a figure of eight over a wood, where there was a concentration of transport, and this was duly bombed later. The dog fights I saw all ended in favour of the Allied fighters. A couple of Hurricanes climbing incredibly steeply towards the bombers would invariably scatter them. The sing of a diving fighter after a fugitive hedge-hopping Heinkel brought the troops to their feet for a rousing cheer of encouragement. " Go on. Get him, boy ! " or successful anti-aircraft fire would bring forward an enthusiastic "He's lovely with that gun! " It is difficult to single out actual incidents when the hum of German bombers was so constantly in one's ears that one imagined it in the slightest noise of a distant vehicle or motor cycle. Naturally, I saw the greatest activity around Dunkerque. On May 28 I saw some fourteen Messerschmitts wheeling and diving in an abso- lutely devilish machine-gun attack, but as a whole I had seen few German fighters and only the usual Heinkels, Dorniers, and an occasional Henschel H.s.126. Home Again I returned on a 500-ton merchantman which was attacked by a squadron of dive-bombers just off-shore. Personally, I did not witness this vicious attack, as I was trying to get some rest after three sleepless nights, but I understand from those on deck that they were Junkers dive-bombers, each carrying more than one bomb. A large number of bombs were dropped, the aircraft concentrating on ourselves and a hospital ship about a quarter of a mile away. The last bomb dropped so close astern that the ship rocked, lights went out, two engines stopped, and the compass was damaged. The impression I got of being dive-bombed at sea was that the whine of a diving aircraft is even more sinister than the whistle of a bomb, but that a ship is not easy to hit. Some of the bombs first ricochetted off the water, according to witnesses, and one man was wounded with shrapnel. All the time the ship's Lewis and Bren gunners were hard at it, encouraged by the soldiers crammed aboard, and one cannot pay too high a tribute to these brave gunners who stand out in the open to reply to these bombers. Concentrated machine-gun fire from the ground defences definitely worries low-flying aircraft and has been successful in isolated cases, but it takes a deal of doing to stand virtually in the open and hand it back, as it were. To sum up, the Flanders campaign has proved absolutely to the B.E.F. that, provided we are in the air, we have supremacy. Given an R.A.F. equal in numbers, or, better still, superior in numbers, to the enemy, we will in all certainty drive off their air attacks, which are the key to Germany's initial gains in this war. J. D.
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