A Special Duty (10 page)

A real morale-booster in mid-March was the return of Brotherton-Ratcliffe and his crew, who had been hiding out and living like partisans since early January. Tom had flown his first sortie with ‘Brother Rat’ and so when the opportunity arose due to a bad weather stand down, he and the rest of the Squadron went along to hear Brotherton-Ratcliffe give an account of his experiences, and hopefully pick up a few tips on survival and escape in case they should need it themselves. The focus of operations had now switched to Poland and with DC3s of American 267 Squadron arriving daily to fly sorties out of Brindisi to Balkan targets, 148 Squadron was preparing to assist 1586 Polish Squadron in supplying the Polish Home Army, 800 miles from Brindisi. Halifax JN888 ‘Rita’, in which Tom had flown more than thirty missions, would not take part in the Polish drops; she needed an engine change and Wing Commander Pitt told Tom to fly her to the maintenance unit at Maison Blanche, Algeria. He added that since he thought the crew were all “barmy” he didn’t want to see them for a week! On the way there they flew over an erupting Stromboli, their second live volcano, and arrived in Algeria in time for Tom to celebrate his 24
^th
birthday. Ever resourceful, he managed to get them into a hotel for South African airmen, rather than the tented transit camp they were assigned to. Tom left the hotel daily to check for an aircraft that they could take back to Brindisi and on the 5
^th
April he came rushing back to say that they had all been put on a charge for staying at the hotel without permission! Luckily, Halifax JN925 was ready to return to Brindisi with freight and in their haste to get away before the charge took effect, Walter left his identity tags behind in the hotel. His mother had replaced the original string with a gold chain and a medallion which he found uncomfortable at night and so he had taken them off and left them by the bed.

Back in Brindisi, they now flew whatever aircraft was available and the main thrust of air drops was to Poland. Polish pilots, many of whom had made their way out of Poland after the 1939 invasion and headed for England to join RAF Squadrons, began flying supplies into their homeland from England in 1941, but the long-distance flights and weather conditions meant heavy losses for relatively low tonnage of supplies. At the end of 1943 an all-Polish Squadron
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arrived at Brindisi under the command of Squadron Leader Krol and, together with 148 Squadron (who joined them in February 1944), they began supply operations to the Polish Home Army,
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a well-organised resistance force that took its orders from the London-based Polish government in exile. The Storey crew, along with seven other crews, were briefed for a Polish target on the 12
^th
April, and with clear skies forecast everything augured well for the operation. Unfortunately during three take-off attempts the plane swung violently off the runway and Tom decided not to proceed,
xv
reporting the problem as magneto failure.
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A couple of nights later the crew took off with a supply load of nine containers and twelve packages for Home Army troops in the far north-east of Poland, close to the Belarus border;
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a round trip of eleven hours which they successfully completed.

In an effort to provide further help to the Polish Home Army, a bridging operation got underway in April to transfer political figures, couriers, and intelligence material by air between London and Poland, using Gibraltar and Brindisi as staging points. The movement of personnel had previously been done overland which took weeks, but now that the winter snows had cleared it was possible to prepare a safe landing site near Lublin. Dakota FD919 of 267 Squadron left Brindisi for the first stage of Operation Wildhorn 1. The logistical difficulties of this operation were enormous, and Flight Lieutenant Harrod and his crew, who had nervously been standing by for a month, encountered poor weather, enemy flak, incorrect lights, and then had to land and take off again from a ploughed field airstrip.
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Luckily all went to plan, and back at Brindisi a reception committee of RAF and Polish officers greeted the high-ranking General Tatar
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and four of his staff as they stepped off the plane on the first stage of their journey to London. The VIP visitors spent three days at Brindisi and, before leaving, the General gathered the aircrews together and, with Squadron Leader Krol translating his words, thanked them for dropping arms and supplies to patriots in Poland. He was then flown to Gibraltar and on to London, where he joined Polish HQ and tried to muster support for an uprising in Poland.

The penultimate operation to Poland for the Storey crew was on the 16
^th
April; a delivery of supplies to Polish Home Army forces south-east of Zwolen.
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The supply load of six containers and nine packages was considerably smaller than would normally be carried for Balkan and Italian zones because of the extra weight of fuel, which was carried in overload tanks in the wing bomb bays. The round trip of around 1,800 miles was on the limit of a Halifax’s reach and once airborne, the crew would endure ten or more hours of thunderous engine noise, intense cold and the very real danger of night-fighter attack. The rear gunner had the worst of it in his cramped turret, isolated but for the echoing voices of the other crew members over his headset, and always having to remain alert despite the numbing cold and tight confines. A couple of days later the Storey crew were back in the skies for the night of the ‘Big push’ on Poland, but this time they would not return; it would be the last flight of Halifax JP224.

¹
Major McAdam (previously Head of TINGEWICK Mission)

²
Taken from Squadron ORB Summary for 2
^nd
March 1944

³
Fixing their location using the stars, a common method of navigation on night flights

⁴
Operation Shingle.

⁵
Dropping ground ACOMB

⁶
Beat up
- to fly very low over those who are watching in celebration, or to show off.

⁷
1586 Polish Squadron.

⁸
Armia Krajowa (AK).

⁹
Magneto is part of the engine ignition system.

¹⁰
Dropping ground WYDRA

¹¹
Also known by pseudonym ‘Turski’.

¹²
Dropping ground JARZAB

A
t 1938 hours precisely, Halifax JP 224 roared down the avenue of flares at Brindisi, eight minutes behind the Bruce crew and followed at short intervals by the nine aircraft of 148 Squadron that were also flying to Poland that night.
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Earlier, at the afternoon briefing, Tom Storey had learned that he and his crew were to take part in a big push to deliver supplies to the Polish Home Army, and that nineteen aircraft, eight of Polish 1586 Squadron and eleven of 148 Squadron, would be taking part. The Storey and Chalk crews, in the second and third take-off slots, were given a target in southern Poland
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and were to drop their supply loads to the Polish Home Army 9
^th
Infantry Regiment
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, just outside the village of Franciszkow. Hap drew out a course to the target on a Mercator plan
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, taking care to avoid known anti-aircraft batteries. Eddie then drew out the same plans on his air-to-ground maps, so that he knew the landmarks along the route. Both crews were flying aircraft from a new batch
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that had recently arrived at the base, and both would fail to complete the mission, though for different reasons.

Eddie sat alongside Tom for take-off and set the throttles to full power, while the crew, in their take-off positions on the floor and facing aft, braced themselves against the rear wing spar. The aircraft gathered speed and, as they lifted off the ground, Tom retracted the undercarriage and adjusted the throttles to climb, keeping half an eye out, as always, for a suitable area to belly land in case of engine failure. The aircraft bounced and heaved its way through the turbulent cloud layer, and, once they had levelled off on a dead set course for Poland, Tom adjusted the controls to fly ‘hands off’, and flipped the lever on the left side of his seat to engage George (the aircraft’s gyro autopilot). His hand would never be far from this lever during the flight in case he needed to respond to equipment failure or take evasive action but for a brief moment, with the tension of take-off eased, Eddie lit two cigarettes – one for himself and one for Tom. It was part of a ritual they had. Then, disconnecting the intercom jack from his headset, Tom climbed out of his seat and moved through the aircraft to check on the crew and exchange a few reassuring gestures and hand signals. The deafening roar of the four Rolls Royce Merlin engines made any attempt at conversation futile, but a ‘thumbs up’, pointed finger, or a pat on the shoulder usually got the message across.
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The loneliest place on the aircraft was the rear turret, where gunner Jim Caradog Hughes would have no human contact for the next ten hours, and it would be up to the skipper to relieve his isolation and keep him involved via the crackling intercom. Patrick Stradling’s first task was to sort and rearrange the load, grouping the packages around the hatch in such a way that he could push them out in as few runs as possible when the time came. They were still four hours flying time from the drop zone, but the skipper needed to know that he could jettison the load quickly if a problem developed. The pile of bundles and packages would be stacked almost to the roof in the narrow fuselage and the only way past for a crew member who needed the Elsan at the rear of the plane, was to scramble over the top in full kit.

Eddie remained alongside the skipper as they crossed the Adriatic and then, as they approached Yugoslavia, he went forward to his position in the nose to get the navigator an exact pinpoint when they crossed the coast. Hap was a good navigator and didn’t need much correction but Eddie, from his prone position looking down at the ground, would call out whether they were to port, starboard, or dead on course – he was proud of his nickname, ‘pinpoint elk’, and assisted by map reading every inch of the way. From time to time, Charlie Keen, twenty years-of-age and the youngest of the crew, took an astrofix through the bubble roof of his engineer’s position and Tom, while constantly searching the sky for other aircraft, also kept a lookout ahead for landmarks to assist in navigational fixes. He imposed strict discipline in the air and permitted no idle chat over the intercom, which was reserved for procedural matters. This protocol was strictly adhered to by the crew, who had been in enough tight scrapes to know that discipline in the air mattered. Night fighters had rarely been encountered during Balkan operations, but the flight-path to Poland exposed the solitary and fully-loaded aircraft to attack by enemy fighters based in Hungary and Romania
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, and to German anti-aircraft batteries located around Budapest. Gunner Jim Hughes needed to be able to alert the skipper immediately if evasive action was required – they flew alone and without fighter escort, so the rear gunner was their first and only line of defence.

Weather worsened for all the crews once they were airborne and, although most of the aircraft ploughed on for hours through the difficult conditions, eventually, lack of visibility, icing on the aircraft, or excessive fuel consumption forced most of them to abandon the attempt. One-by-one, fifteen of the crews turned for home without dropping their supplies, among them the Chalk crew, who had reached the Slovakia-Poland border before turning back with heavy icing, and half their fuel load used up.
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As an added complication for the returning crews, they were unable to land back at Brindisi because of the strong crosswinds that had developed while they were airborne, and they were all diverted to Manduria, an American base east of Taranto. The Storey crew pressed on, their progress punctuated by intense bursts of squally rain that lashed the windscreen, and by dense cloud banks that threw the aircraft around and reduced visibility. The skies cleared briefly as they crossed the Danube, leaving Budapest on the starboard side and, once over the Carpathian Mountains, they descended from 13,000ft to 3,000ft in an attempt to get beneath the low cloud on the Polish plain.

At 2,000ft, Tom was forced to shut down the port inner engine. It was getting dangerously hot and the oil pressure was dropping. To reduce drag he feathered
5
the engine and then, over the intercom, Hap said: “Twenty minutes to drop zone skipper”. Tom gave the routine instruction: “Switch to full tanks, engineer,” which was normal procedure; all drops were done on full tanks. Charlie made his way back to the switch levers, which were located in mid fuselage by the rest position, and switched from tanks two and four to tanks one and three. Events from this point on were not routine; the aircraft was minutes away from disaster. Shortly after the tanks had been switched, and six minutes from the drop zone, Tom reported over the intercom that the port outer engine had suddenly cut dead. The Halifax was now only flying on its starboard engines, making it extremely difficult to control both course and altitude.
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To lighten the aircraft, Tom gave the order: “Jettison the load”. The containers were released from the bomb bay and Walter Davis was asked to break radio watch and help Patrick Stradling (despatcher) to jettison the internal load. The last words he heard before unplugging his headset were the skipper asking the navigator: “What’s the distance to the Russian Front?”
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He sprinted back, taking his parachute pack with him, and helped the despatcher to push out the packages, but events were overtaking them. The aircraft was losing height fast and, struggling to hold a course, Tom tried to restart the port outer engine, and then the inner engine, but to no avail. He shouted: “Engineer, did you switch those tanks?” Charlie confirmed that he had, but was asked to go back and check. Realizing that he couldn’t make it to the Russian Front, Tom turned the Halifax to the south-east, calculating that their best chance of finding partisans was in the southern forests. As they descended over the town of Rudnik, the roar of the engines caught the attention of partisan Commander Stanislaw Belzynski,
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who was working late on the detailed plans for a raid on a German installation. He raced outside and watched the blacked-out aircraft pass like a shadow, low over the town. ‘Had it been bombing rail lines? Was it trying to land?’
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Eight miles to the south-east in Sarzyna, Bronislaw Kaminski was enjoying a glass of milk at the kitchen table of a family friend, before setting off home to Tarnogora. Through the window he spotted the flickering red and green lights of an aircraft approaching from the west.
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The lights seemed to come and go but, as it got closer, the aircraft turned south and then back to the north, getting lower all the time.