Last weekend, I had an interesting couple of hours with my wife’s uncle, Peter Jensen, who’d been a WOP/Gunner on Sunderlands with the RAAF’s 461 Squadron based in the UK during WW2.
(461 Squadron, formed in April 1942, (No. 461 Squadron RAAF - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) was an offshoot of No 10 Squadron, RAAF, which had been in the UK at the outbreak of the war picking up its Sunderlands. The Australian PM, seeing Britain’s immediate need as being a little more pressing than Australia’s in late 1939, offered the squadron to the UK for service there rather than return to Australia as originally planned.)
He’d brought along a few photographs – and many memories
(oh, how I kicked myself for not having a tape recorder on hand). However, the good news is, we’ve arranged to meet again in a couple of weeks when he’ll loan me his rather copious notes, which I hope I can transcribe over time and share here.
Some of the things he mentioned are worth repeating. For example, 10 Squadron has the dubious distinction of being the first Australian unit to lose men in combat in WW2. This is why 10 Squadron always leads the Sydney Anzac Day march.
How they came to do so might interest some. As France was collapsing, two 10 Sqn aircrew were tasked to rescue Madame de Gaulle and her children from France. They set out in a Walrus to the pre-arranged place on the French coast. (General de Gaulle had already reached England.) Unfortunately, they arrived at the coastal port at virtually the same moment as the invading Germans – and forty or so fighters – and were promptly shot down.
(After some adventures, including just missing a ferry that was sunk soon after leaving France, Madame de Gaulle eventually reached England by boat.)
Peter spoke, if all too briefly, of three incidents during his time with the RAAF in England. A crash landing in a Wellington,
(“a week in hospital, a week in a convalescent home and week’s sick leave and then back to the squadron”), with a brief aside about one of their crew who’s already survived a landing while still in the extended ‘dustbin’ turret of a Whitley. Apparently, this rather weird cylindrical apparatus, similar, (but looking nothing like) the B17 dorsal turret, was extended hydraulically under the Whitley’s belly once airborne and retracted before landing. For some reason, the landing was made – with the gunner still in the turret – while it was still extended, and the turret, along with the hapless gunner, was (thankfully) rather forcefully detached from the aircraft on touchdown and sent rolling across the airfield at almost 100 knots. The gunner survived to go on to be in the crash landing Wimpy.
The second incident he spoke of was perhaps more dramatic. On July 30th 1943, (his) Sunderland ‘U’ for Uncle of 461 Squadron (i.e., ‘U 461’ as marked on the aircraft side), was among a number of Allied aircraft that came upon three surfaced U boats in the Bay of Biscay – at a time when German U Boat tactics were to stay on the surface and fight it out with attacking aircraft,
(and thus they were very well equipped with anti-aircraft guns to do so). Details of the engagement can be read here:
Caught on the Surface - AUD$495.00 : Aviation Art, The Art of E-commerce and here
U-boat Archive - U-461 - Interrogation Report
As can be seen from the links above, Sunderland U 461 of the RAAF went on to sink U-461 of the Kriegsmarine – and saved the lives of 15 of the U Boat’s crew by dropping a life raft to the survivors. Photographs of the engagement appear below, as does a photograph taken in 1988 when Peter Jensen and the Sunderland’s captain, Dudley Marrows, met the U Boat’s captain, Wolf Stiebler, at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Sunderland E 461 over the Bay of Biscay, 1943. Taken from a USAAF B24.
Sunderland U 461 attacking U-461, 30 July 1943. (Note the height the attack was made from! See links above to explain why.)
Depth charges exploding on U-461.
U-461 survivors in the water after its sinking.
Dudley Marrows, Wolf Stiebler and Peter Jensen with Sunderland model, Australian War Memorial 1988.
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His third tale, when he and his crew on Sunderland E-461 were shot down in the Bay of Biscay by six Ju88s, is all the more extraordinary thanks to the photographs he has of the engagement – most of them taken by the CO of the German Ju88 fighter squadron. Although his duty station as WOP usually had him in the centre section of the Sunderland, Peter happened to be relieving the tail gunner when E-461 was attacked by the six Ju88s. Thus he was in the tail turret for the whole engagement, running back to his crash station with only moments to spare before the Sunderland, down to only one engine, alighted on the very rough water. The engagement went on for almost two hours and before running out of ammunition, the Sunderland gunners managed to shoot down one of the attacking Ju88s. However, with only one of its four engines still operating, the aircraft was forced to ditch into the sea, in less than ideal conditions.
Sunderland E 461, with only # 3 (or ‘starboard inner’ in the RAF/RAAF parlance of the day) still operating, on very short finals just prior to alighting on the sea. Cannon shell splashes from the attacking Ju88s can be seen just forward of the # 3 engine. It being patently obvious that the aircraft was going down, the RAAF crew could not understand why the Germans kept firing at them right up to the point where the aircraft alighted onto the sea. The answer did not come until after the war, when they learned that under the system the Germans used to award kills, the kill went to the last man to hit the aircraft prior to its crashing. Hence every one of the Ju88 crews, (apart from the photographer CO, who was circling above directing the attacks), was attempting to be the one who could claim the kill.
Sunderland E 461 immediately after alighting on the sea. The 11 man crew hastily inflated their three life rafts, only to find two to be riddled with bullet holes,
(one of the two that can be seen inflated here quite quickly deflated), so all 11, with two of them wounded, had to fit into and around the one remaining six man raft.
Sunderland E 461 sinking, the much-holed port wing first. The crew, still struggling to launch their life raft, can still be seen on the top of the fuselage. When the captain, Dudley Marrows, saw the Ju88 that took these photographs approach, he expected it to fire upon the survivors. He apologised to his crew for getting them into the predicament they found themselves in and instructed them to make ready to jump into the water if the Junkers commenced firing. The 11 men spent 17 hours in the water in the six man raft before being rescued the next day by HMS Starling.
Like many others who’d excelled in operations in the UK and Europe, Marrows, awarded a DSO and DFC for his service there, was treated shamefully by the RAAF upon his return to Australia late in the war. But that’s another story... that might come out in Peter’s notes.
Edited to add that what was most interesting (to me at least) was that Peter's daughter, who was with us when he showed me the photographs and told me the stories, had quite obviously not been aware of most if any of the details he related that day. I suspect there would be many families out there like that. Many if not most of that generation, so many of whom did the most extraordinary things in the war, were not given to talking much about it when they came home. I hope we can convince many more families to redress that, hopefully here, before it's too late.