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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 1370.PDF
\V^ FLICHT ^ JULY 6TH, 1944 The attack by Mitchells on the steelworks at Caen which were only about 1,000 yards from our own troops. Invasion Close-up Air News from the Notebook of Our Correspondent with the Allied Expeditionary Air Forces STOOGING around above the English Channel in murk the other night, I found myself in the way of a number of doodle bugs or, as we British might call them, thingummies, as they left the French coast full of ersatz bravery. The experience was eerie, to say the least. A number of readers of mature age will remember what street lamps looked like on a foggy night. Step that glow up considerably in both intensity and size, then imagine it rushing at you at a relative speed of about 400 m.p.n., and you have the effect. In a clear sky, of course, they appear as a sharp ball of fire. By the way, here is a little tip which roof spotters and fire watchers may find comforting. It is something every aircrew has to learn. Because of perspective, every tracer coming up from a target flak appears, until the very last moment, to head straight for the aircraft in which you are flying, then it appears to swerve away very sharply. So, if you are on a high roof and watching in the direction from which the air torpedoes are launched, the visual effect will be much the same but on a larger scale. One more note on air torpedoes (which the Germans called an anti-invasion weapon but which was just as dead on that occasion as the live Luftwaffe). I was sitting in a tent at an R.A.F. Mitchell station, when one came directly overhead making more than the usual noise and appearing to be just scraping the tree-tops. A sharp bang was heard in the distance, and shortly afterwards a New Zealander landed his plane and said he had shot -it down, bringing his " bug log " up to nine. The pilot had chased the bomb in southern England. Day-bombers' Share Much of the foregoing is by the wayr as I was actually visiting the Mitchell station to get the story first-hand from Wing Cdr. Lynn, D.S.O. and Bar, D.F.C., of the work of a typical day-bomber station of Sir Leigh Mal- lory's A.E.A.F. In particular I wanted to hear an account of the bombing of the steelworks near Caen. Wing Cdr. Lynn is Wing Commander Flying at the station and has over 150 operational flights to his credit—88 of these in Mitchells. He flew Fairey Battles in France in 1939. Before he became airborne, so to speak, he trained for the merchant navy in South Africa. In his ship was Sqn. Ldr. Nettleton, V.C., and Group Capt. Malan. There must have been something about that ship. When he first came to twin-engined day bombers every bomb- aimer took his own sight. The arrangement is now for selected aimers to give the signal to the rest of the machines. This, in effect, is the same as having the best bomb-aimers in every aircraft. A bomb-aimer and bomb- sight are, of course, carried in every machine in case of need. Wing Cdr. Lynn's navigator-bomb-aimer is a Dutchman, borrowed from the Royal Dutch Naval Air Service who fly a squadron of Mitchells at the station, and
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