Chapter Three
Anew era began for 218 Squadron on the 24th, when it was informed that it would convert to the Bristol Blenheim and join 2 Group. Three days later the first four Mk IV Blenheims were taken on charge, but W/Cdr Duggan unselfishly sent them back as he had no maintenance equipment or qualified ground crews to maintain them. On the 28th W/Cdr Andrew Combe was posted to the squadron to familiarize himself before assuming command two weeks hence. He had been born into a wealthy family of barristers resident in London, and had begun his RAF service in 1930 at Cranwell. While in France he had served with 71 Wing commanded by G/C H Field. By the time he became 218 Squadron’s new commanding officer he would have celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday
Working up to operational status would take until mid-August, and in the meantime the inevitable training accidents would cost a number of aircrew lives. Until W/Cdr Combe officially took command, S/Ldr James Gillman filled in and oversaw the arrival of three Blenheims on the 5th. Most of the crews were undergoing conversion training at RAF Upwood, and until the return of F/O Newton and P/Os Turnbull, Smith and Crosse from 17 OTU on the 7th, only ground instruction could take place. On the morning of the 8th all three Blenheims took to the air on cross-country flights, and all remaining unconverted crews were packed off to start their training. Wing Commander Combe looked in on this day to make himself known to the assembled crews and check up on the progress of squadrons conversion before he was installed as commanding officer on the 13th of July, three days after W/Cdr Duggan’s posting to Oakington as the temporary station commander. The outgoing C/O had actually been posted to No 3 School of Technical Training at Blackpool, but the unexplained absence of G/C Fields, the intended station commander at Oakington, caused the move to be delayed. It was also on the morning of the 13th, that the squadron registered its first Blenheim casualty, when R3597 was taken by F/O Terrence Newton for a cross-country exercise from Mildenhall to Waddington-Sywell and back to base. Witnesses on the ground watched the aircraft make a low pass over a pig farm in Bedfordshire, some ten miles from the planned route. During one of a series of low-level passes the Blenheim’s starboard wing tip struck the top of a 40 foot high ash tree, and the collision sent the Blenheim into a steep turn to starboard from which the pilot had no chance of recovering. The stricken Blenheim smashed into the ground north-east of Harrold and immediately caught fire, killing Terence Newton and two recently posted observers who were carrying out the map reading. The reason for the diversion became apparent after it was discovered that the farm belonged to Newton’s uncle, and that Newton himself was well-known in the area. It was an avoidable incident, especially at a time when the squadron was still recovering from its mauling in France. In a moment of high spirits, three young lives were ended.
On the 14th W/Cdr Combe oversaw the squadron’s departure from Mildenhall to take up residence at Oakington, and the entire process was completed by the 18th. The squadron now had a full complement of nineteen Blenheims on charge, and spent the remainder of July continuing its march to operational readiness. The experienced S/Ldr Charles House MiD was posted in on the 8th of August as A Flight commander. The first two and a half weeks of August brought a continuation of the working up process, and as this went on, the Battle of Britain was gaining momentum overhead. While Fighter Command was involved in a bitter fight for survival, Bomber Command was committing ever greater resources to eliminating the barges and other marine craft being assembled in the occupied ports in preparation for the intended invasion. The squadron’s training period came to an end with a tragic incident on August 18th while B Flight was conducting a formation flying exercise. In almost perfect visibility tragedy struck when L9264 and T1929 collided in the air, both spiralled in flames into the ground. Pilot Officer William Wheelwright in the former and B Flight commander F/L George Newton, who had been with the squadron less than a month, died with the other five occupants, one of whom was a member of ground crew.
On August 19th the squadron was declared operational and would alongside other Group squadrons participate in 2 Group’s Operations Order 11, which called for daylight cloud-cover raids on oil and railway targets to maintain the pressure being applied by the night bombers. The ever changing war situation often thwarted the plan, as other considerations became the priority. During August Operational Order 11 was only a small part of the group’s remit, as the threat of invasion called for both day and night raids on airfields and long range batteries along the Pas-de-Calais coast, and for North Sea sweeps. 218 Squadron was initially assigned only to the first mentioned, and at 05.30hrs on the 19th, F/L I Richmond took off in T1996 HA-S to carry out the squadron’s first sortie, an attack on the aerodrome at Vlissingen (Flushing) on the island of Walcheren at the mouth of the Scheldt. He returned two hours later having completed his assigned task, registering the squadron as a fully-fledged member of 2 Group. Squadron Leader C House also undertook an operational sortie to De Kooy airfield, but was forced by insufficient cloud to abort.
Although for 218 Squadron the time on Blenheim’s would be only a brief interlude in a long and varied wartime career, any association with 2 Group operations should be looked upon with pride. Throughout the battles for the Low Countries and France, 2 Group had shared with the AASF the responsibility of trying to stem the irresistible enemy tide, and had suffered the most horrendous losses. The “courage by daylight” displayed by its crews then, and in the time to come before its departure from Bomber Command, was inspirational and unsurpassed, and never were crews asked to undertake more hazardous operations with such little prospect of survival. The first operational loss of a 218 Squadron Blenheim was not long in coming, and resulted from a raid on Brugges on the 23rd. Having taken off at 11.35hrs in T1990 HA-J, S/Ldr House was shot down by a fighter and crashed onto a farm between Hames-Boucres close to the Calais-Boulogne railway. Charles House was buried in the local Cemetery at Guines while his observer, Sgt Percy Lefevre was laid to rest in St. Tricat Churchyard. The survivor, Sgt Howard, spent the remainder of the war as a PoW. What makes this loss intriguing is that at 14.41hrs the crew requested a fix, which was plotted near the south coast of England, near Dungeness. Two of three sorties mounted by B Flight against aerodromes on the following day were completed, and all three Blenheim’s returned safely. The squadron flew a modest seventeen sorties during the month, and in comparison with some of the group’s other squadrons, it would continue to be under-employed.
September would bring the climax of the Battle of Britain, and with invasion fever still gripping the nation, an even greater number of sorties was sent against invasion transports, making it 2 Group’s busiest month until 1944. The squadron was put on Invasion Alert No 1 on the 8th, which required half the squadron to be available for operations at immediate readiness. That afternoon the squadron registered its second and final operational loss of a Blenheim, after L8848 crashed in the North Sea during a search for enemy shipping off the Dutch coast. There were no survivors from the crew of Sgt Gerald Clayton, a twenty-three-year-old from County Cork. Only the body of the air gunner, Welshman Sgt Gordon Taylor, was recovered after being washed ashore. Acting S/Ldr Kenneth Ault was posted in as the new A Flight commander on the 4th, two days after his promotion, having previously served with 114 and 139 Squadrons on Blenheims. Flight Lieutenant J Hughes had an inconclusive encounter with three He113 fighters on the 13th while carrying out a photo reconnaissance sortie between Ostend and Flushing. The various reported encounters with the He113 fighter was a result of a deception carefully orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis Reich Minister of Propaganda, there were in fact no He113 fighters operational. On the same day Sgt C Owen attacked a convoy steaming out of the Scheldt Estuary, and dropped a salvo on the biggest vessel. Upon their return the crew claimed hits on an escorting destroyer, which had split in half and sunk. The convoy may have consisted of three German torpedo boats that had set sail from Rotterdam the previous day. Torpedo boat T.2 was attacked and damaged by a Blenheim resulting in serious damage. It limped into port and required major repair.
There are very few photographs of Bristol Blenheims in squadron service. This shows the regular mount of New Zealander Flight Lieutenant Ian Richmond. Bristol Blenheim T1996 HA-S survived its brief service with 218 squadron and finished its days with the Turkish Air force.
On the 15th the squadron lost veteran F/L John Hughes DFC who was one of the few surviving pilots from the Hawker Hind days. He was posted first to the Radio Servicing Flight at RAF Biggin Hill then to 25 Squadron based at RAF Wittering. On the afternoon of the 16th P/O W Crosse was briefed to carry out a photo reconnaissance of the coast between Calais and Ostende. A convoy of German E Boats was sighted just leaving Calais, and as Crosse positioned himself for an attack, he was bracketed by intense flak from the port. With the defenses alerted he opted to head for Dunkirk instead, where he took a number of photographs of the town in ideal weather conditions. Continuing on north to Ostende he dropped his bombs on another convoy, and was again engaged by accurate and intense flak from shore batteries and flak ships. The Blenheim received a number of hits to the wings, aileron controls and main spar, forcing Crosse to dive into cloud to escape the barrage. There they were flipped upside down and sent into an inverted roll, causing the bomb sight to leave its mounting and hit the canopy roof, knocking out a panel. Crosse cut the throttles and wrestled the Blenheim back onto an even keel, by which time he was down to a thousand feet. The sensible option at this point was to turn for home, where he landed without further mishap. The squadron lost another pre-war veteran on the 22nd when F/Sgt Charles Owen was screened from operations. Sadly Charles would be killed with 107 Squadron flying from Malta in September 1941. During this, it’s first fully operational month with 2 Group, the squadron dispatched fifty sorties, of which thirty were completed.
In October the squadron would share in the continued assault on the Channel ports, while also conducting night raids on airfields, daylight armed reconnaissance sorties and roving commissions. October’s operations began on the 3rd with a daylight foray by four aircraft to the Ruhr. The crews were those of Sgt F Hoos, P/O Mansfield, Sgt Morley and F/O Anstey, all of B Flight. Hoos was given the oil town of Sterkrade-Holten to attack but on crossing the Rhine at 3,000 feet he was unable to locate his primary target and selected instead a factory in a wood. The crew returned at 18.15hrs with the distinction of being the first from 218 Squadron to drop bombs on Germany since taking on Blenheims. Sergeant Morley’s objective in N6183 was the oil works at Reisholz, but lack of cloud cover forced him to look elsewhere, and he ultimately delivered a successful attack on fifty invasion barges moored at a quayside on the River Maas. Flying Officer Anstey headed for a synthetic oil plant near Homburg, but with cloud becoming almost non-existent, he turned to the north to attack the docks at Rotterdam. Four 250lb bombs were delivered from 5,000 feet, but intense flak made an assessment of the results impossible. Pilot Officer Mansfield and crew encountered insufficient cloud cover and returned with their bombs.
On the following day nine crews were detailed for attacks on the Ruhr and targets in other parts of Germany, including Bremen and Emmerich. Wing Commander Combe was leading from the front in T1865 with Salzbergen as his objective. Weather conditions prevented the primary target from being reached and he attacked a convoy off Ijmuiden instead. Coincidentally, this convoy was also attacked by S/Ldr Ault, who had intended to attack Bremen until his starboard engine sustained flak damage over the seaplane base at Schellingwoude. Squadron Leader J Gillman landed at West Malling after attacking a factory west of Rotterdam, in fact not one of the nine aircraft reached its primary target.
On the 5th ACM Portal relinquished his post as Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, and became Chief-of-the-Air-Staff. He was replaced by AM Sir Richard Peirse, an officer of great ability, whose period of tenure would be dogged by misfortune, and the general inadequacies at the time with regard to equipment and the expectations of the exalted. On the 9th F/L Shaw was persuaded by the weather to seek alternative employment when bound for the oil refinery at Homberg near Duisburg in the Ruhr. He found and attacked three ships in the Maas, and on the way home he mixed it with a Heinkel 111, before being forced to call off the fight when the guns jammed one by one. The encounter lasted fifteen minutes, and damage to the Blenheim was limited to one bullet hole in the rudder. On the following day one of the new four engine Short Stirlings landed at Oakington, providing the squadron’s air and ground crews and station staff with their first glimpse of the bomber type that they would be operating sometime hence. The type had only recently begun trials with the newly reformed 7 Squadron at Leeming, and would ultimately become the main equipment for 3 Group squadrons. Oakington had been selected as 7 Squadron’s new home, and this station was about to be transferred from 2 Group.
On the 16th F/L Shaw had another encounter, this time with a JU88. Engaged on a weather reconnaissance sortie to assess cloud conditions, Shaw pressed on to within thirty miles of the Terschelling lightship before heading back to base. When only fifty miles from the English coast he glimpsed the hazy silhouette of an aircraft in the mist below. He turned towards the still unidentified aircraft, and it was only when two hundred yards distant that he recognised the unmistakable outline of a JU88. Shaw immediately cut across the enemy aircraft to give his gunner, Sgt Gill, an opportunity to open fire from the turret. Two short bursts were fired with indeterminate results and the element of surprise was lost. Shaw now found himself astern of the JU88, and opened fire with his wing gun, only for the JU88 pilot to open the throttles and put himself beyond range. Another to encounter the enemy on this day was S/Ldr Ault, who was outbound for Dunkirk and was about to abandon the operation because of insufficient cloud cover. It was at this point, 16,000 feet over the Channel, that two Bf110 fighters were spotted 2,000 feet above. Ault carefully lost height while keeping the fighters in view, and made it safely back to Oakington, it was a close shave.
The squadron operated Blenheims for the last time on the 31st of October, F/L Shaw and crew taking off at 10.20hrs on a roving commission, during which they attacked Soesterburg aerodrome from 600 feet, before returning safely at 13.05 hrs. The fifty-seven sorties flown during the month demonstrated a more equal share in the group’s activities, but it was once more time to move on. On the 29th the first influx of officers and men began to arrive from 7 Squadron at Leeming, and that afternoon two Stirlings landed. The remaining 7 Squadron personnel and aircraft arrived over the next two days. The squadron were shocked to learn that John Hughes one of the squadrons most respected and experienced pilots had been killed while carrying out a black out test over Peterborough on December 7th, the possible result of a collision in bad weather. Having survived the Battle of France the loss of this fine officer under these circumstances was a bitter blow to all those who knew him.