RAF 10: Operation Frothblower and Operation Chubb ~ 16-17 April 1943 RAF Bomber Command

Preliminary Paper to RAF 37 and RAF 38
RAF 38 will publish on 31 March 2024

When the crash site of Handley-Page Halifax DK165 MP-E was located by IG Heimatforschung in 2015 this brought the need for more detailed analysis.

William B Chorley has compiled the definitive record of RAF Bomber Command Losses between 1939-1945 and which comprise nine volumes. Very often, when reading about an aircraft and its crew in any history book that relates to Bomber Command, I automatically look up the aircraft. Invariably, Mr Chorley provides me with even more information than is reported in the article or book I’m reading. Why? Because I am able to see the whole operation.

I am very proud that my parents’ brothers were a Sergeant Pilot and a Flight Sergeant Flight Engineer on heavy bombers. Often, people like to tell me about commissioned ranks, and that is fine. But as a boy, I remember my father speaking with immense pride of the wartime rank of Sergeant-Pilot. And that has stayed with me to this day. By 1943, there was considerable disparity within aircrews. The Webb Crew of Halifax DK165 MP-E was entirely non-commissioned. I am immensely proud of this. The Payne Crew of Avro Lancaster PB402 LQ-M in late 1944 was both commissioned and non-commissioned.

I am often reminded by relatives that whilst their ancestors held the King’s Commission, once the war ended, they reverted to their non-commissioned ranks. It takes a while sometimes to explain the concept of battlefield commissions and wartime commissions.

All of this ‘got me thinking’.

I decided to see how many non-commissioned pilots were shot down on the night of 16-17 April 1943. My source was of course the Chorley War Records.

In my legal career, drafting estate and trust accounts eventually led me to transferring this skill to computer spreadsheets. And in retirement I was only too pleased to maintain this skill but using it to take a detailed look at some aspect of the War in the Air.

I learned much. I was able to see, at a glance, the ranks of all the pilots who had been shot down. Furthermore, I saw immediately that I had 59, not 53, aircraft losses. But I think the greatest surprise was to see at first hand the logistics involved.

35 Squadrons flying from 31 RAF Stations from 12 Counties or Shires had 598 four engine heavy bombers gather over the Skies of East Britain, 327 of which would form Main Force and heading out over the North Sea via Denmark to their target, the Škoda Works in Plzen Czechoslovakia, and the remaining 271 bombers forming the Diversionary Force that would attack the city of Mannheim. This diversion was meant to draw German night defences away from the Main Force.

We speak today of the difficulty of assembling aircraft in the air. Yet, what we do today is almost a sideshow to what the Royal Air Force was doing by night and what the United States Army Air Force, as it then was, did each day.

I will write further, in due course.

21 February 2024
All Rights Reserved


LIVERPOOL


© 2024 Eyes to the Skies

Kenneth .T. Webb
Flight Lieutenant RAF VR Rtd

Handley Page Halifax W7805 MP-M

This aircraft flew the Howarth Crew on its final mission on 3 April 1943 in an operation against Essen. I have chosen this because it depicts one of the Ground Crews serving on 76 Squadron at RAF Linton-on-Ouse. It enables me to obtain a very clear view of the station in April 1943, and the activity that would have surrounded Sgt-Pilot Kenneth Webb’s Mark V Halifax on the 16 April 1943, 13 days late.

Those who know me will know that I am always at pains to emphasise the role of our ground crews. Seldom do they receive decorations beyond the campaign medals that all are entitled to. Yet without them, not a single aircraft, even a fighter plane, would leave the ground.

It is also why I have chosen this other image below. On this occasion, Her Majesty the Queen (mother of the Late Queen Elizabeth II) is visiting an RAF station, and we see an Avro Lancaster of the No 8 Group Pathfinder Force comprising both ground and air crews intermingled and being presented by senior officers to the Queen. It is not the pomp I concentrate upon, though that has always been an important part of life due to my own service, but the fact that we have here the Lancaster’s entire crew ~ Ground and Air ~ working together.

This image is by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum, (of which I am a paid member) and the official IWM Caption reads:

HM Queen Elizabeth
inspecting flight and ground crews
on a visit to Warboys,
a station of No 8 Pathfinder Group.
An Avro Lancaster of No 156 Squadron, Royal Air Force
is seen in a T2 hangar.

The combined crew - Ground and Air - of an Avro Lancaster being presented to HM The Queen and which was part of the elite No 8 Group Pathfinder Force at RAF Warboys in Cambridgeshire, UK in 1944.