But the Red Army was within 130 miles of Berlin and a punishing aerial assault on the city was seen as a way to help the Soviets advance. It may have been a Wellington but not sure. I wonder if any who served in the 214 are still living, My uncle Sgt Peter Grenville Brothers was in 214 squadron ,wireless operator and was killed in a raid on Bremen July 1942. But if we attacked with a larger force, supposing that we could get one, should we be able to organise it in such a way as to get a really high concentration over the target? Des Lauriers always surprised himself by being calm just after wake-up for a big mission. Technical Sergeant Raymond H. Fredette, togglier of a Douglas-built Boeing B-17G-15-DL Flying Fortress (44-6465) named Fancy Nancy, also at Mendelsham but assigned to the 7th Bombardment Squadron, began the day knowing that someone had scratched “Fat Boy Hector”—referring to his girth and middle name—on the chin turret of his bomber. So, Britain's air marshal sent over 1,000 British bombers to hit the city with over 1,500 metric tons of ordnance.

The newspapers and radio said it all at daybreak. … also with some stories from 1945 (75 years ago) until September …. himself; Smythe-Piggott , who, in full flying gear made the remark, “Probably some of you hope I won’t be coming back?” Though his remark was true enough, we all had reservations about the crew he was to be flying with. No such movement was taking place. She is now 90 years old,widowed and living in Anglesey. At sunset, we all stood and watched as the whole lot took off and we watched still as they disappeared into the night sky. The aircraft were being loaded up with live bombs and gun ammunition – not the usual requirement for training flights. (A waist gunner had been deleted from traditional 10-man crews in part because the Luftwaffe was no longer likely to attack a B-17 from both sides). “We confronted the cold, the fog, the mist. The crew were supplied with two gas operated Vickers Machine Guns which they were supposed to poke through the skin of the aircraft if they came under fighter attack from above. Lieutenant General James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle was also a gentleman who rarely used harsh language, but when they gave him the battle order for a mission to be flown on February 3, 1945—a mission to Berlin—Doolittle reportedly uttered an expletive or two. I was born in cologne 30.05. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Inside a B-17 you needed oxygen to breathe and heated clothing to resist the sub-zero temperature and then, only then, you also needed to be able to fight. The searchlights and flak followed him until the outskirts of the city were passed. New British Grant tanks attack in the desert, Rommel renews his attack on the Gazala line, 3 November 1944: Maximum Effort: USAAF send a 1000 B-17s to bomb Berlin, 31 October 1944: RAF Bomber Command revisits Cologne – again, The Holocaust and the 'average' German - Page 19 - Historum - History Forums, 4th May 1943: The battle of the Ruhr hots up. Something special was on but nobody knew or was letting on what it was. I am currently copying my late fathers war-time autobiography. Nevertheless it was pressed into service on this night to make up the numbers. The report that Germany’s Third Panzer Army was en route from the Western Front to the Eastern and would pass through the railway station was in fact an error on the part of U.S. intelligence. There remained the problem of the first-class target, the major industrial town round which the enemy was bound to concentrate effective and heavy defences. Codenamed Operation Millennium, the massive raid was launched for two primary reasons: . First Lieutenant Robert Des Lauriers, co-pilot of a Vega-built Boeing B-17G-75-VE (44-8629) named Purty Chili of the 391st Bombardment Squadron, 34th Bombardment Group at Mendlesham in East Anglia, was quietly focused on pulling his weight as part of a nine-man crew. At briefings taking place at airfields all over East Anglia, men were told the target. Re Peter Caldwell’s comment ….

All of his crew parachuted to safety, only one of them was taken prisoner whilst the others evaded capture and made it back to Britain. Moreover, Spaatz reminded Doolittle that Berlin was not a new destination for American bombers and that legitimate targets lay within Adolf Hitler’s capital—Gestapo headquarters, the Air Ministry, railroad facilities, a panzer army on the move, etc. My uncle, Flt Sgt W Lewis J Young didn’t make the last photograph. Nearly 900 were sent to Berlin in February 1944; with aircraft on other missions that night more than 1,000 bombers were active, but 1,000 bombers were never sent against a single target after June 1942. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a1057367.shtml, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thousand-bomber_raids&oldid=970292612, History of the Royal Air Force during World War II, World War II strategic bombing of Germany, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 30–31 May 1942 : First thousand-bomber raid, 1,047 aircraft dispatched in, 1–2 June 1942 : Second thousand-bomber raid, This page was last edited on 30 July 2020, at 13:03. He took the aircraft up to 2,000 feet. At this critical moment, Flying Officer Manser once more disdained the alternative of parachuting to safety with his crew. However, not one of those weary aircrews revealed where they had been.

The Führer, Adolf Hitler, had spent much of the war in residences far from the capital but was now in the city, using apartments in the Reich Chancellery and spending some nights in his bunker deep beneath Berlin. The means to overcoming the defences was to employ an unprecedented number of aircraft. Later mass RAF raids used between 400 and 700 four-engined bombers, and on some nights, Bomber Command could send two 400-bomber forces to separate targets. Your email address will not be published. I am 88 now – the only survivor of five brothers, but I will never forget Bill, and his unfortunate demise. in October 1942. 30th May 1942: RAF launch the first 1000 bomber raid I was convinced that a force of 250-300 aircraft was wholly inadequate to saturate the then existing defences of a major industrial town of half a million or more inhabitants. The front cabin filled with smoke; the port engine was over-heating badly. On the 30th May 1942, there was a buzz around the airfield at Defford. Crew consisted of two pilots, bombardier, navigator, radio-operator/gunner, and four gunners. Thankfully, in the small hours, we heard the first planes from the group returning and, over a period of about an hour, all were to return safely. Yet the mission was both a turning point in U.S. strategy and a continuation (since 1942) of a kind of warfare that had never been seen before and would never be witnessed again, carried out on a scale that seems, today, almost too much to imagine.

Any information welcome. In the event the casualty rate was much lower than feared. My brother, Pilot Officer Bill Caldwell was killed on this raid. The ritual followed. Asleep, awake, on the ground, in the air, we were always cold,” he said. He received a commision, and had his uniform only ten days, and was due to be married at Prestbury, Cheshire on the Thusday after the raid. Unlike previous missions, this attack on Berlin received little coverage afterward because, for the most part, it lacked the high drama of air-to-air duels between Luftwaffe fighters and Flying Fortresses that had occurred earlier in the war. Flying Officer Manser was captain and first pilot of a Manchester aircraft which took part in the mass raid on Cologne on the night of May 30th, 1942.

Doolittle was to dispatch 1,437 heavy bombers and 948 fighters to attack Berlin.

Today’s journey into the cold, blue vastness above Europe was Des Lauriers’s 12th mission. The Biggest Bombing Raid of World War II: 1000 Bombers Sent to Destroy Berlin. I did a tour of ops on Liberators over Burma, and came through without a scratch. The togglier was an enlisted man who filled in for the bombardier, usually an officer, and dropped bombs not by aiming them but by following a cue from the aircraft in the lead of the formation. Are there any survivors from the group? Soon, the aircraft became extremely difficult to handle and, when a crash was inevitable, Flying Officer Manser ordered the crew to bale out.

Peter Grenville Brothers wireless operator 214 Squadron was killed after a raid on Bremen July 1942. Operation Gomorrah in 1943 and the attack on Dresden in 1945 each used nearly 800 aircraft. Learn how your comment data is processed.

With a wartime population that had mushroomed from three to five million and with an area of 1,600 square miles, Berlin was rated as the sixth largest city in the world.

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