Wg Cdr Murray - Part 4
207 Squadron – RAF Bottesford
After his flight in BT308 Tucker flew a few more missions before the squadron moved to RAF Bottesford (roughly halfway between Newark-on-Trent and Grantham).
‘In November 1941 we moved to RAF Bottesford. After the pre-war luxury of RAF Waddington this was a severe shock to th system. Damp Nissen huts in dispersals for sleeping quarters, a central Nissen hut site for messes and ablutions, all separated from each other and the operations site by a mile or so of muddy paths. Woe betide you if you strayed of a perimeter track when taxiing out; the wheel would sink axle deep in mud, blocking any following aircraft. I was in short misery.
That month, the decision was made to cancel any further development of the Vulture engine, much to the relief of Rolls Royce. (…) there was no prospect of any improvement in the aircraft’s abysmal performance.’
After a quiet December, operations resumed early in the new year. The first was ‘eventful’.
‘On the 2 January 1942 I was back flying Manchesters and we had been briefed to do a low level attack on the Prinz Eugen in the harbour at St Nazaire. After some difficulty finding the target due to low cloud cover we started to run in through heavy flak at about 1,500 feet. I selected bomb doors open and the hydraulics failed. They only opened a little bit so we did everything we could to get these damn doors open, but as we roared over the battleship not doing any harm to it at all but getting all the attention. There was heavy flak and we were hit several times.'
'We got quite a bit of damage and the navigator was not any use at all. I’m not sure if the lights failed in his compartment, so I worked out a route home and the wireless operator got out a distress call. As we neared the coast, our searchlight batteries came on and pointed us in the direction of the nearest airfield which was Exeter. This was only a fighter station with a short grass strip. On approach I found that due to the hydraulic failure neither the undercarriage nor the flaps would come down so I had to blow down the undercarriage using the emergency system. We still had a full bomb load, I didn’t know if the bombs had fused or not. This meant a high speed flapless landing with the inability to retract the undercarriage should it be necessary to slow the aircraft down after landing. I managed to make full use of the landing run and fortunately the brakes still worked so I was able to avoid any further damage to the aircraft. That was the smoothest landing I ever did and the most nerve-wracking.’
The squadron operational record book notes it was the Navigator’s first op and ‘he had difficulty pinpointing himself’ over then target.
A week later Tucker was over Brest trying to bomb
Scharnhorst or
Gneisenau through 10/10 cloud.
January brought good news with the formation of 207 conversion flight. The flight had a dual role, training replacement crews and converting existing crews to the Lancaster.
‘Despite all the tinkering and alterations to the Manchester the engines were really never any good and caused the death of a number of crews. Thos reckons his chances of engine failure were reduced due to his method of handling the engines,
‘The technique those days was to fly with high boost and low revs which in theory gave the best range on the aircraft. It meant that the engines gave the best range on the aircraft. It meant that the engines were trundling around in top gear at low speed, so I reversed the procedure against standing orders and used to fly my aircraft at high revs and low boost, so it whined a bit and used more fuel but it seemed to be a bit happier and that’s why I reckon I survived much longer than other people.’
At 1430 on 12 February the Channel Dash was in progress and Tucker was briefed for a bombing mission against the ships; on take-off hydraulic fluid sprayed into the cockpit. Tucker landed safely and thanks to the herculean efforts of the ground crew L7485/EM-D (the same aircraft as 2 January) took off at 2252 to go GARDENING at NECTARINE (drop mines off the Friesian Islands) another hydraulic failure meant S/Ldr Murray returned with a full load of mines at 0443. According to the ORB all four assigned crews had a frustrating night:
· R7596/EM-W, P/O Doble - dropped his ‘vegetables’ but they failed to fuse.
· L7392/EM-Y, S/Ldr Beauchamp - failure of hydraulics and manual release returned with mines.
· L7515/EM-S, F/O Leland - returned with his mines due to severe icing.
Tucker would complete the final three of his 20 ops in the Manchester before the squadron was stood down to convert to the Lancaster. His final Manchester operational flight was in L7378/EM-A to Essen. Some of the first wave were equipped with Gee and dropped flares followed by incendiaries.
'The night of the 8 of March was one of the worst trips I had to the Ruhr. I had been here many times before. The target was the Krupps factory at Essen and I could see the main force bombing a dummy target 10 miles north of Essen. I was watching these aircraft but I manged to drop my bombs at the Krupps factory, the actual target. My photo flash went off and I could see I was on target, but the intelligence people said the photo didn’t come out clearly as they wouldn’t dare admit that the main force had bombed a dummy target. At that point the whole of the Essen anti-aircraft defence opened up. Until then they had been quite hoping I would go away I think.
'Luckily for me one of the other members of the squadron was behind me so at least two aircraft got their bombs on target. I did everything I could to get out of that flak. I really thought we had had it, I dived down from 22,000 feet to 3,000 feet to get out, I threw all my experience at it, I actually wept at the time, not for me but for betraying the crew. I was an experienced operational pilot and everything I knew didn’t seem to work. Then all went quiet, they gave up or I got out of range and I flew back at low level. We got badly peppered and had quite a bit of damage when we got back. The Germans were good at setting spoof fires to distract the bombers it was quite common.'
‘Of those bombers who took part, 168 claimed they had bombed the target but in reality the brunt of the attack fell on the southern outskirts and the neighbouring towns of Hamborn, Duisberg and Oberhausen.’
The ORB record for L7378 on 8/9.3.43 says the target was identified after some difficulty by reference to the shape of the river and other landmarks. Flt/Sgt (?) Walker in L7491/ EM-O is recorded as using a pin-point on the river to identify the target so it may well have been the other aircraft referred to.