Remembering the Leipzig raid, 19/20 February 1944

This year sees the 80th anniversary of events that took place in 1944. We can expect the commemoration of events such as the Great Escape, D-Day and the first use of V-weapons. Some events of the strategic bombing campaign of 1944 will be remembered too. Bombers played an important part in the preparation for Overlord and the allied advance to liberate occupied Europe. Visiting the IBCC, you can discern the battle fronts advancing through France and Italy by watching the movement of the bombing line on the large animation of the bombing war in the exhibition space.

In public memory, the most commemorated (or contentious) bombing operations tend to be the ones that are perceived as the most daring, together with those with the highest death rates in the air or on the ground. Operation Chastise to breach the dams of the Ruhr, the 8th Air Force’s Schweinfurt mission, and the firestorms of Hamburg in 1943 or of Dresden in 1945 are frequently referred to. This year for RAF Bomber Command, we can expect the anniversaries of the sinking of the Tirpitz and the operation to Nuremberg to be highlighted in the press and on social media. More RAF airmen were killed on the operation to Nuremberg 30/31 March 1944 than during the four months of the Battle of Britain. On that one night, 95 aircraft were lost and 545 airmen were killed. You can read about it in several books including Martin Middlebrook’s Nuremberg Raid (1973) and John Nichol’s The Red Line (2014). I intend to blog about the way the memory of this operation has fed into the heritage and cultural memory of Bomber Command next month.

However, RAF Bomber Command lost 78 aircraft and 438 aircrew killed on their attack on Leipzig the month before, but because the aircrew losses were eclipsed by Nuremberg, I do not expect to read much about it elsewhere this year. Of course similar acts of bravery, sacrifice and shared suffering occurred during every bombing operation, in the air and on the ground, regardless of how well remembered it might be.

44 Squadron operation order for 19/20 February 1944.

On 19 February 1944, 823 aircraft took off from stations in England to bomb Leipzig. 44 Lancasters and 34 Halifaxes failed to return the following morning. Four aircraft were lost by collision and around 20 to anti-aircraft fire. The majority were shot down by Luftwaffe night fighters. The German fighter controllers sent only a few aircraft to the diversion minelaying at Kiel. Engaged by fighters as soon as they crossed the Dutch coast, the bomber stream was under attack all the way to the target.[1] Air gunner, Robert Creamer reported seeing three Lancasters shot down.[2]  

H2S map of Leipzig

Due to unexpected winds, some crews arrived before the Pathfinders and had to circle the target. Leipzig was obscured by cloud and the Pathfinders used sky marking. Over 80 USAAF aircraft were dispatched to bomb Leipzig the following day. It is impossible to differentiate between the damage caused by the British or American bombing in the subsequent reconnaissance photographs. However, for the people in snow-covered Leipzig, it didn’t really matter who dropped the bombs. Almost 1,000 people were killed on the ground.

The IBCC Digital Archive contains over 70 items about this operation. Whether in the air or on the ground, for families, it is the bombing operations their loved ones were involved in that are remembered.

The story of the crew of Lancaster LM382 deserves to be told. Pilot Officer James Catlin, and his crew, Sergeant Barry Wright, Pilot Officer F Sim (RCAF), Pilot Officer A Pragnell, Sergeant Thomas Hall, Sergeant T Powers, and Sergeant William Birch, took off at 23:40 with 21 other 166 Squadron aircraft from RAF Kirmington. After a couple of ‘uneventful’ hours in the air, they were attacked by two ME 110s over Stendal, Germany.

A page from Barry Wright’s log book. Leipzig was his 25th operation. Ten had been to Berlin.

“In the first attack the electrical system was fused and all lights in the aircraft came on. The mid-upper gunner was badly wounded and the rear turret damaged. Rear and mid-upper gunners both fired long bursts and the enemy aircraft was last seen going into a dive with smoke pouring from it… The other aircraft then came into the attack and closed to 40 yards range… Both gunners fired long bursts and hits on the enemy aircraft are claimed. The attack was then broken off.”[3]

James Catlin’s account contains more detail. After the first attack, “aileron control was lost and it was only possible to apply left rudder… the R/G [rear gunner] was heard to give a good commentary, but the pilot was unable to carry out the manoeuvres ordered.”[4] Catlin gave the order to prepare to bale out but cancelled it when it was discovered that the mid-upper gunner was unconscious and could not be removed from the turret. The bombs were jettisoned at 03:30. The wireless operator managed to put the lights out by removing the fuses and the navigator plotted a course for home. Although he was badly wounded and fainted several times from loss of blood, Barry Wright, the Flight Engineer, transferred fuel from damaged petrol tanks and kept the engines running.  They crash-landed at RAF Manston at 06:05.

Pilot, James Catlin later wrote to Wright’s mother, telling her “Now I want to be quite honest and frank when I tell you that we all owe our lives to Barry. Although wounded and on the point of collapse, he would not leave his post”. Wright spent time at RAF Hospital Halton before returning to flying in April 1944. He later received the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal, Catlin was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and Sergeant William Birch the Distinguished Flying Medal.[5]

In 1944, Catlin and Wright’s experiences on the Leipzig operation was important news. It was used as morale boosting propaganda with headlines such as “CRIPPLED BOMBER, LIGHTS FULL ON, WON DOG-FIGHT.”[6] The war rhetoric carefully omitted the unsustainable 9.4% losses. However, eclipsed as it has been by the even greater RAF losses on the Nuremberg operation, unless this blog post is read, I doubt many people will think of the Leipzig operation this February.

References.

Middlebrook, M and Everitt, C. (1985) Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference book 1939 – 1945, Viking.

The National Archives, 166 Squadron ORB Records of Events Feb 1944 AIR 27/1089/29

The National Archives, 166 Squadron ORB Summary of Events Feb 1944 AIR 27/1089/28

Wright, Barry Colin collection IBCC Digital Archive https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1587


[1] Middlebrook, M and Everitt, C. (1990) Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference book 1939 – 1945, Penguin, p. 473.

[2] RA Creamer, “Robert Creamer’s Operations and Wartime Memories,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed February 6, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/26388.

[3] The National Archives, 166 Squadron ORB Summary of Events Feb 1944 AIR 27/1089/28

[4] J H Catlin, “Captain’s account of operation to Leipzig in February 1944,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed February 6, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/26765.

[5] “Extract from London Gazette 17 March 1944,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed February 6, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/26794.

[6] “Four newspaper cuttings,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed February 6, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/26768.

Lancaster: Above and beyond (2022) Review

I watched this documentary film half expecting to see 100 minutes of Lancaster porn. However, to the disappointment of some viewers, this is not a film about the Lancaster. It is not even a documentary about Bomber Command – this is effectively a documentary about Bomber Command veterans and the public memory of the bombing war.

A group of aircrew and one ground crew member arranged at the rear starboard side of Lancaster PA964. Six are standing and three are sitting on the tail plane.

Fred Phillip’s crew and Lancaster https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/6707

The documentary is high quality and well-crafted; it is beautifully researched and makes good use of classic and archive films, still photographs, news report audio, voice over and veteran ‘talking heads’. The veterans’ individual stories glue the whole thing together and the quotes were skilfully used to tell the bigger story. The filming of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Lancaster is emotive and unusual in that several air-to-air shots were taken towards dusk. While the film does not directly address that the Lancaster was designed as a killing machine it does attempt to engage with the technical, military, strategic, moral and political complexities of the heritage of RAF Bomber Command and the roles the Lancaster, the veterans, and the Command played in the war.

It goes to some length to explain the context behind the aircraft’s design and use. It does a good job of describing crewing up and the different roles for each aircrew position, it discusses the changes of strategy around D-Day, considers the technical advances in radar and countermeasures and the difference between area and precision bombing. The film well describes the Hamburg, Peenemunde, Nuremberg operations, ‘Happy Valley’ and the ‘Battle of Berlin’. For many people, the cultural memory of Bomber Command is either the Dam Busters (Operation Chastise to breach the Ruhr dams) or Dresden. The film considers both.[1] In this documentary, the section on 617 Squadron’s attack on the Ruhr dams was slightly too long, even though this is the operation that underpins the Lancaster legend. However, probably because of their interviews with Johnny Johnson, the last remaining ‘Dam Buster’, it focussed on the usually under-told story of the Sorpe. In the section on Dresden, one veteran indicated that the Russians requested the attack as the city was a legitimate military target as a transport hub, but perhaps unhelpfully, the bombing was illustrated by animated archive film of Meissen porcelain figurines waltzing.

Four rows of personnel standing and sitting in front of a Lancaster. In the background, trees.

Squadron personnel in front of Lancaster https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/17107

If you are familiar with the history of the strategic bombing campaigns during the Second World War, the film ticks all the boxes you would expect, but it also repeats the tropes and clichés we’ve been hearing over the last decades. Fighter Command and the Spitfire ‘saved the country in its hour of need’, but the Lancaster was ‘the aircraft that would help Churchill win the war’. The film repeats Arthur Harris’s famous ‘they started it’ speech and highlights that 43,000 people were killed in the London Blitz.

With interviews with Neil Flanigan, a Jamaican ‘erk’, WAAF veterans, Elizabeth Mortimer-Cook, Betty Tring and Wendy Carter, and Ursula Dickinson, a German witness, the film is inclusive, however there was no mention of class difference within the RAF, and they could have done more to tell the story from both sides. For a documentary that relies so heavily on oral testimonies, it fails to address some of the issues about using these sources. The veteran testimonies are unquestioningly accepted, but as Bomber Command veteran and historian Noble Frankland admitted, eyewitnesses tend to be unreliable.[2] As in some of the IBCC Digital Archive’s interviews, the veterans retell well-rehearsed ‘crystallised narratives’ and frequently say with confidence things they could only have learned after the war.  In the film, Peter Kelsey, Ernie Holmes, and Bill Gould describe their disquiet with what they had been asked to do, but Johnny Johnson opens the film on the defensive with a comment about ‘retrospective historians’. Reinforcing the ‘powerful memory narrative of veterans as victims of neglect,’[3] almost all the veteran testimonies fit into a heroic victim framework. They discuss desperate corkscrew maneuvers away from night fighters, the ‘chop’ and ‘empty chairs at empty tables’. Although New Zealand veteran, Ron Mayhill said that the unveiling of the Bomber Command memorial in London in 2012 changed things, Jo Lancaster, John Bell, and Jack Watson talked about the lack of recognition for Bomber Command, and Rusty Waughman reiterates that Harris ‘carried the can’ for Churchill and politicians after Dresden.

Target indicators are descending from a cloudy sky; anti-aircraft fire on the left. The silhouettes of barbed wire and an utility pole are visible.

Target indicators over a POW camp https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/1905

Directorial choices including the use of pyrotechnics and the musical score subtly amplify these narratives and continue to reinforce the way Bomber Command has been remembered. Fireworks are used as a metaphor for Flak, but not for the falling target indicators from the perspective of those on the ground. The emotive air-to-air shots of the solitary Lancaster approaching the coast at dusk appears after comments ‘defences unbelievable’ and ‘suicide’. On its own and at low altitude, it appears vulnerable, and the documentary fails to convey the size and power of Bomber Command towards the end of the war when over 1000 aircraft could be operational every night.

Air-to-air photograph of ten Lancasters against backdrop of cloud and terrain, submitted with caption; “514 sqdn on way to Regensburg 20/4/45”

Ten Lancasters in Flight https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/28569

The Lancaster continues to be a symbol for Bomber Command and its veterans, and this documentary is very much a product of today. Like John Nichol’s recent book Lancaster: The forging of a very British Legend, the focus of this documentary is on the memories of the few remaining aircrew rather than the aircraft. It is a must watch for the new footage of the Lancaster in flight and for the clips of the veterans, but to be able to access the unedited interviews recorded for the film would be incredible.

Dan Ellin & Nigel Moore

[1] Ellin, D and Lawrence, C (2018) ‘After Them, The Flood: Remembering the Dam Busters and Bomber Command through Performance’. In: Staging Loss Performance as Commemoration. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 109-129.

[2] Frankland, N History at War: The campaigns of an historian, Giles de la Mare, London, 1998, p.34

[3] Hughes, H ‘Memorializing RAF Bomber Command in the United Kingdom’ Journal of War & Culture Studies 2021, p.10.

IBCC Digital Archive interviews with veterans included or credited in the film: 

Benny Goodman https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/514

Bill Gould https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/10832

Bob Leedham https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/11304

Cecil Chandler https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/10736

Charles Clark https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/229

Daphne Brownlie https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/8364

David Fraser https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/5527

Ernie Holmes  https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/11118

George Dunn https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/510

Gerry Norwood https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/11429

Hal Gardner https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/10823

Harry Hodgson https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/11113

Jack Watson https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/11760

Jan Black https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/333

Jo Lancaster https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/551

Johnny Johnson https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/252

Ken Johnson https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/546

Len Manning https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/3448

Ron Mayhill  https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/17900

Rusty Waughman https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/348

Tom Rogers https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/10331

75th anniversaries and wartime commemorations 1945 – 2020

This week sees the commemoration of the end of the conflict in Europe with the Nazi surrender and the official end of Allied operations in Europe on 8 May 1945. In the UK it is known as Victory in Europe Day or VE Day. In other countries including Germany, it is remembered as a day of liberation.

75 years ago, it quite rightly deserved celebration. There were parties and people danced in the streets, crowds filled town and city centres, and in London thousands gathered to witness the Royal family and the Prime Minister on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

For some however the celebrations were blighted by the knowledge that the war against Japan continued in the Far East, thousands of troops and prisoners of war were waiting to be repatriated, and across Europe, millions of people were displaced, homeless and hungry. The political cartoonist, Philip Zec created an image of a battle scared and bandaged soldier holding a wreath representing victory in Europe captioned ‘Here you are. Don’t lose it again!’ (Zec, Daily MIrror)

The prospect of peace and survival were celebrated as much as victory. This year 75 years on, the planned commemorations are being restricted by the Coronavirus pandemic and alternatives to many of the planned events have had to be arranged. This year there will be no street parties or one final parade for the last few surviving veterans. The IBCC Digital Archive however does contain many of their stories they recorded for posterity.

Click here to read and listen to some of their stories about the events of 8 May 1945.

A living example of reconciliation

Earlier this year, Helga Wynne visited the IBCC. When staff heard her story, they persuaded her to be interviewed for the IBCC Digital Archive.

helga

Helga was born in 1926 in Kiel, Germany. At age 14, she started work on a farm, but an accident left her with severe injuries. After months of recovery, she became a student nurse at a children’s hospital in Kiel. During an air raid, she was buried in rubble and survived only because of the determined efforts of fellow students to dig her out.

She became engaged to a German submariner in Kiel. The train on which they were travelling to his home in Westphalia for their marriage was strafed and her fiancé was killed. Of this tragedy, she remarked, ‘you just cope when you are young’.

In 1947, Helga met Harold Wynne, a British paramedic on national service, at a dance in Kiel. Harold brought her to live in the UK in 1948 and they were married in Burton upon Stather church, near Scunthorpe. Harold’s family adored her. Apart from being homesick at times, her life was very happy. Altogether she was mother to four sons and now has six great grandchildren.

Since Harold’s death in 2000, his lifelong friend Graham Atkinson has been Helga’s companion. Gordon remembers standing outside during the war to watch the bomber streams departing, and many limping home on less than four engines. One of his relatives, Arthur Leslie Horton, served in the RCAF at RAF Linton-on-Ouse and was killed in action in 1944.

Both Gordon and Helga were deeply moved by the exhibition at the IBCC – ‘it brought back many memories’, said Helga. Their story seems a living embodiment of the IBCC’s values: as Helga noted, ‘no matter what country you came from, all these young men had mothers’.

The Normandy campaign and the bombing of Caen 1944

Harry Thomas Ansell’s logbook showing daylight operation to Caen. b
Harry Thomas Ansell’s logbook showing daylight operation to Caen.

As well as the RAF 100 celebrations and flypast, this month includes the 74th anniversary of Operation Goodwood, part of the battle of Caen. Throughout July 1944, Bomber Command carried out numerous tactical operations in support of Allied troops in Normandy after D-Day, targeting transport networks and troop concentrations.

Northern and central Caen was badly damaged on 7 July 1944 by almost 500 aircraft attacking German troop positions north of the city, and on 18 July 1944 villages east of Caen were bombed by over 900 Bomber Command aircraft in support of Operation Goodwood. Seven aircraft were lost with 24 aircrew killed on this operation. Most of the French population had already left the city but several hundred of those who remained were killed and much of the city was destroyed.

Target photograph of Caen from the Margaret Hourigan collection. Taken on 18 July 1944 by Flight Lieutenant Mouat from 50 Squadron, RAF Skellingthorpe.
Target photograph of Caen from the Margaret Hourigan collection. Taken on 18 July 1944 by Flight Lieutenant Mouat from 50 Squadron, RAF Skellingthorpe.

Following the IBCC’s aims to promote remembrance, recognition, and reconciliation, the Digital Archive is recording and preserving stories and material about the bombing war from all perspectives. This includes those who flew, served on the ground or were bombed – on both sides of the conflict. We’d be very interested to hear from anyone who witnessed RAF bombing in Germany and occupied Europe. Please contact archive@internationalbcc.co.uk or call (+44) 01522 837707.