RAF 30: A Shaky Do ~ The Plzen Raid 16-17 April 1943 by P W Cunliffe ~ Revised Book Review
Royal Air Force
The author Peter Wilson Cunliffe presenting a copy of the First Edition of A Shaky Do to the Royal Air Force at the book’s launch.
Book Review
A SHAKY DO
by
Peter Wilson Cunliffe
Revised Book Review
Flight Sergeant William Waller Dawson RAF VR
The Macfarlane Crew
Avro Lancaster W4317 QR-R
61 Squadron, RAF Syerston
I
Pilsen is the Germanic spelling, hence the RAF Planners adopted this in 1943. It is right that we call it as the Czech People call their city, and it is also a reminder to us all that what was the Czech Republic until 5 July 2016 is now Czechia. It is a further reminder, too, that even though we, in these islands, sympathised with every nation that had fallen and become part of Occupied Europe, nonetheless we fought total war.
There was no room for sentiment. When the invader, having subjugated and enslaved the populations, seizes that nation’s infrastructure, then that becomes a direct target. Today, we are used to 24/7 news reporting missile strikes and the number of people killed. Often the presenter will say something like killing three people, two of whom were children, one a six-day-old baby. We are rightly angered.
In the Strategic Air Offensive against Nazi Germany and the Third Reich, the latter encompassing all occupied countries, the night-by-night operations by Royal Air Force Bomber Command and the day-by-day operations by the United States Eighth Air Force from Britain, not only suffered enormous losses in aircrew personnel but wrought havoc on the civilian populations across Europe. For the first time in history, arguably, the entire civil population of every country engaged in the Second World War found that they were at the very centre of the battlefields. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed by these devastating operations.
A Shaky Do
The Škoda Works Raid ~ 16/17 April 1943
by
Peter Wilson Cunliffe
First Edition of Two Editions and also a Kindle edition.
II
In reviewing A Shaky Do, a good starting point is an entry in the Nine Volume W H Chorley Record of RAF Bomber Command Losses. I quote from the 1943 volume.
Avro Lancaster W4317 QR-R took off from RAF Syserston in Yorkshire on an ambitious long distance operation to the city of Plzeñ in what is now the Czech Republic, Czechia. Plzeñ is world-famous for its lager, a point not lost on the RAF Planners in 1943 when they allocated the codename Operation Frothblower.
The Chorley entry reads thus:
Pilot Officer W MacFarlane Pilot and Skipper
Sergeant P J Keay RAAF Flight Engineer
Flying Officer C F Williams Navigator
Sergeant E R Davidson Second Navigator
Flight Sergeant W W Dawson (the uncle of Peter Wilson Cunliffe) Air Bomber
Flight Sergeant J F Edwards DFM Wireless Operatior-Air Gunner
Sergeant J V Rees Mid Upper Gunner
Sergeant D A Holdsworth Rear Gunner (Tail End Charlie)
Shot down by a night-fighter (Hptm Rudolf Attendorf, I./NJG4) and crashed 0430 just to the south of Givry (Hainaut), 10 kilometres southeast of Mons, Belgium. All were buried on 18 April in Chièvres Communal Cemetery; their average age was 22. Unusally for an RAF squadron, their flight engineer was an Australian. Flight Sergeant Edwards DFM was Gazetted on 14 May 1943. Sergeant Davidson was flying as a second navigator.
End of Chorley Entry
III
I reviewed A Shaky Do for another reason.
The date 16-17 April 1943 is seared into the family consciousness. So, too, The Skoda Works.
I grew up knowing that the portrait of the man in the heavy large collared RAF greatcoat in my Grandparents’ front room was my namesake and the reason for my name. This was drawn in pastel by the Artist Hicks at the beginning of 1941, when Webb was stationed at R.A.F. Torquay in Devonshire on the south coast, a few weeks before embarkation via troop ship for pilot training on Craig Field USAAC Alabama, USA. There is another portrait. I’ve always called this Life is Good. My father’s brother is clearly full of high spirits seated in that most efficient training aeroplace, the Boeing Stearman Kaydet. The author has provided me with a photograph of the BSK in the aviation collection at the IWM Duxford, Cambridgeshire.
Little was known of the Pilsen Raid - as my family always refer to it - on 16/17 April 1943 - other than the eyewitness account brought back to my paternal grandparents immediately after the war by the sole surviving member of the crew, Sergeant Leslie Mitchell, the mid-upper gunner. His account was imperative. It gave them something to hold on to and, to use modern language, to ‘box off’ the terrifying night and events that followed.
But my maternal grandparents did not have this lifeline for their son, as none of his crew survived or the other crew survived, when the two Pathfinder Avro Lancasters collided fully laden.
This is the case with all families of the 57,205 aircrew - worldwide - who perished in the most horrendous bombing campaign and military offensive in history - known officially as the Strategic Air Offensive - that when the Wright Brothers made their first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA on December 17, 1903, 39.5 years earlier, quite simply was beyond their comprehension. And the War in Ukraine makes me very aware that aggressors, with hardly a whim, sign the death warrants of thousands of their own troops, even civilians, in the disgusting pursuit of their need to conquer, subjugate and seize for their own use, lands and seas and air space to which they never had any right in the first place, save in their own twisted, demented, logic.
Handley Page Halifax
Overshadowed by the Avro Lancaster, nevertheless, the Halifax had a fearsome reputation, a well proven record and was engaged in offesnive operations throughout the Second World War.
At the Yorkshire Air Museum (formerly RAF Elvington and home to the Free French Air Force operating with Halifaxes), there is a magnificent example. Occasionally, as on the day I visited, a Messerschmitt ME BF 109 rested beneath the starboard wing of the Halifax. The BF 109 was tiny. The Halifax was colossal.
Yorkshire Air Museum (formerly RAF Elvington, North Yorkshire)
A Handley Page Halifax displayed at the Yorkshire Air Museum which I believe served with the Free French Air Force .
Image taken by KTW
IV
Research is imperative. And history relies upon expert research to ensure that facts are properly reported to future generations and not reliant upon conjecture, half-truths and myths. But this is no easy task and when I made my own visit to the Public Records Office at Kew Gardens, London, in the early 1990s I was overawed by the data. At that time, the internet was still in its infancy.
The records were pre-internet and suddenly everything was about to change. Would research be easier? No. It is the opposite!
The more data we have, the greater the need to accurately sift through every piece of documentation, cross-check, cross-refer, and then thrice-check every fact and interview. Careers in both the police and law respectively emphasised the need to accurately report facts. This is difficult at the best of times, but when dealing with a timeline that is often longer than our own lives, it becomes even harder.
“Memories tend to embellish or blot out.”
IV
It is even harder when interviews will be with elderly relatives, or with second or third-generation relatives, who are trying to pass on information as best they can, as it has been reported to them, and handed down within family archives, often just by word of mouth. That is the case in point in my own paternal and maternal family but supported, in the main, by correspondence and military logbooks.
This research must first start with the surviving veterans of Bomber Command. They fast depart. It then fans outwards to the families and military organisations.
Like the pebble in a pool the waves move ever wider, taking in the interviews with surviving Luftwaffe personnel, often the very airmen who shot one of ours down, and vice versa, then to their families, then to the people who risked their lives in sheltering downed RAF aircrew, then to members of the French Resistance and every resistance group throughout Occupied Europe, to the German People, too, to those who risked danger in offering help.
That last paragraph was written and published in April 2013.
Little did I know that I would come face to face with the families of Frau Hedi Kraus and Herr Manfred Watta, and the incredible actions of Hedi in her insistence in remembering the downed crew, and of Manfred who, in his last year, provided a very accurate drawing of the crash site of Handley Page Halifax DK165 MP-E in Lachen-Speyerdorf. What Manfred saw, is not what children should ever see.
As Her Late Majesty the Queen put it in April 2013 …
“Whether we be of all faiths, or of none, we need a foundation upon which to build the work that we endeavour to achieve.”
Peter Cunliffe’s work is of historical significance.
It thus behoves an author to do that which is never done, to step from behind their preferred pen name. When I turned the page and saw the image that had been in my head from my earliest memory, that of Ken Webb Senior, it took my breath away. It was a very moving and very personal and private moment. Even though I did not realise it at the time, I grew up in the house in which he grew up, and by age 13, I knew every nook and cranny. Only now do I realise that nothing in that wonderful home had changed from when he was a boy. Even the blackout blinds remained in place, beautifully rolled up to the curtain tops and held by a thin chord wrapped around a hook in the wooden window frames, in every room, in every window.
VII
On 19 September 1982, I was privileged to meet Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur ‘Bomber' Harris at a Reception at the Cheltenham Royal Air Force Association, after attending the unveiling of a plaque by Sir Arthur Harris, marking his birthplace in 3 Queens Parade Cheltenham. I remember, as a young serving flight lieutenant chatting for several minutes with him over a cup of tea, and in particular, Sir Arthur Harris's interest in the loss of my two uncles.
Both of us in uniform, an extraordinary moment then, priceless now, for I also remember his quiet fortitude and gentleness and at the same time his bearing as the Commander who had carried such weight upon his shoulders. I remember at the time thinking that it had always been right to carry through the government's policy and I remember, too, Sir Arthur's barely discernible slight shrug of the shoulders when I touched upon the rough treatment Bomber Command received as soon as operations ceased. I remember his wry smile too, and I am even more proud today that my parents’ brothers had served under his command.
This memory rankles today not through embarrassment, but with anger at writers who pronounce themselves as historians, and write of a man they have never met, never, themselves, served in the military, let alone high command, yet pontificate as judge and jury.
Social Media eagerly seduces, along with the plethora of ‘tin pot’ documentaries that eagerly give vent to air time, reinforced by inaccurate and, at times, downright plain embarrassing re-enactments that are mere fabrications.
A Flight of Handley Page Halifax Heavy Bombers
This image by courtesy of the 76 Squadron Association
Maximum Effort
Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris C-in-C RAF Bomber Command during the Strategic Air Offensive
Image by courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
VIII
That remains an incredible occasion etched upon my mind, and as Peter Cunliffe makes clear in this record, Bomber Harris was carrying out the policy laid down by the government of national unity. He did not have his own agenda. He did though have one aim - to prosecute the war with all the vigour and determination expected of any military commander, a fact of which Churchill was well aware, and which was not, in the prime minister's own assessment both during and after the war, always present in his generals, admirals and air marshals.
In air force matters the prime minister was able to rely fully upon such men as Bomber Harris, Marshal of the RAF, Viscount Charles Portal and Marshal of the RAF Sir Arthur Tedder, a fact that later turned sour and which has taken 70 years to put right. But at least it has been put right, even though most of the survivors did not live to see it.
It is one of those rare moments when I find myself in very strong contention with that great man who led us through six years of war, only to then snub so many people, people that he had five years earlier praised as “The Few”. But because it would upset Stalin - another vicious dictator as bad as the one they, with the absolutely crucial role of President F D Roosevelt, had managed to defeat – Churchill refused the famous RAF Polish airmen of 303 Squadron to take part in the Victory Parade in Whitehall. That was but the start.
Politicians, no matter how great they are, no matter what they achieve for the nation, or for the people they serve, are seldom worthy of the high honours they bestow upon themselves.
IX
Another foundation stone of this work is the author’s attention giving us the whole picture, by reporting facts, when available, as seen through the eyes of those who served in the Luftwaffe.
We cannot look at conflict without seeing both sides.
Gaining this perspective is crucial to a work of this nature and import.
It draws us together. And I have no doubt that the vast majority of people serving as an enemy of each other in those awful times and on that terrifying night, would also now say to their offspring - `work together, listen to each other. Stand side by side, argue and fight your cause, but do so across the table, without guns, without bombs, without having to kill or be killed.'
Strong words especially with the War in Ukraine only five months away from its third year.
This is the whole point of Peter Cunliffe's work.
X
What also comes through in this work is the strength and unity of the countless eyewitness accounts. I was enthralled, perplexed, shocked, uplifted, downhearted, then raised again. Yet, at the same time soberly aware that this is just one operation of many such operations - reflected time and again, night after night, day after day, in the vigorous prosecution of the war and the Allies' determination to defeat the Axis Powers, and in particular, their nucleus - Nazism and Fascism.
XI
About a decade ago a documentary was made about young grandchildren of surviving bomber command veterans learning to fly an Avro Lancaster four-engine heavy bomber. The documentary is powerful and moving; the book from which the documentary was made, is even more so. I mention it because I encourage young people to read A Shaky Do. So much can be learned from such reading. Nothing changes in the horror of war. Only the age changes of those who survive. For any student of military history, any student of the Second World War, and any student of the history of RAF Bomber Command, this book would be gold dust.
At Cranwell, Sandhurst and Dartmouth, there are many works for future officers to draw upon as they undergo intensive training that will see them granted the King’s Commission.
A Shaky Do is one of the works within the British Library, and, one hopes, is also lodged with the RAF College Cranwell Library.
Endnote
[i] I grew up with the anglicized spelling Pilsen
1 March 2024
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© 2024 Eyes to the Skies
Last updated 15 September 2023 ~ First Written circa 2015
RAF Pilot, a Squadron Leader reading the Daily Sketch 1940 by Glynn Dewis from Westcott
