Heligoland (25 page)

Joseph Kennedy’s assigned target has usually been assumed to have been the Heligoland U-boat shelter, the three entrances to which were only 65ft wide and just 45ft high, with heavy torpedo nets at water level. At 6pm on 12 August 1944 his converted B-24, ‘Zootsuit Black’, took to the air from Dunkeswell airfield in East Anglia. As the plane headed towards Heligoland, Kennedy prepared to bale out but first he needed to activate the remote control mechanism. Reportedly, as he did so the B-24, packed with 18,435lb of Torpex high explosive, accidentally detonated, blowing itself to smithereens. Kennedy was killed instantly. There are some doubts as to where this explosion took place, whether it was over England, the North Sea or near the island itself. Even now there are Heligolander eyewitnesses who emphatically recall, although they are unclear as to the date, a huge explosion when a lone Allied bomber inexplicably hit the waters of the harbour.

Undeterred, the US Navy made at least two other Aphrodite attacks. One took place in September 1944 near the airfield barracks on the tiny Sandy Island and was carefully analysed by British Air Intelligence. It devastated a massive area – some 72,700 sq. yards. The other occurred on 15 October 1944 when a pilotless bomber laden with an 18,435lb Torpex charge was crashed into the Lower Town, causing the destruction of an estimated 24,600 sq. yards of non-military property. The effects of the explosion were of much interest to the Armaments Department of Britain’s Ministry of Home Security, which soon put together a detailed and highly classified report entitled
Incident at Heligoland
.
⁷
There were certain indications that the explosion in the town was not the consequence of an overshoot of the U-boat shelters but a deliberate experiment (on the entirely domestic and commercial buildings of the Heligolanders) and the report concluded: ‘It is noted that no existing High Explosive load on an existing aircraft could demolish more than about half this area.’ Another intriguing possibility is that the real target of this attack, and of that which Joseph Kennedy had embarked upon, was the Biological Institute of Heligoland (BAH), the laboratories of which were severely damaged in the 15 October attack. It was near here that Werner Heisenberg had formulated his Nobel Prize-winning uncertainty principle – and having created a mathematical system known as matrix mechanics to explain the structure of the hydrogen atom, he was now busy in an underground bunker on the mainland as the head of Germany’s secret mission to develop an atomic bomb.

At this time there were already some who were turning their thoughts to the island’s future. In London one such character was barrister Dr W. Regendanz, who appears to have been acting on his own initiative. Most of his private research papers on the history of the island were destroyed in an air raid, but he was allowed to gather more information at the Foreign Office’s library and the Royal Geographical Society. On 8 September 1943 he wrote to the Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, Anthony Eden, suggesting that in a postwar peace settlement Britain should, for strategic reasons, seek to annexe Heligoland and the island of Sylt. These, he claimed, were in a similar position: an air force based on Sylt would command the Skagerrak and Kattegat, just as Heligoland dominated the Kiel Canal; and should Russia in the future become master of the Baltic Sea it would be important for British policy to close the only exits to the North Sea – namely the Skagerrak and the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal.
⁸
Significantly the reply from the Foreign Office thanking Regendanz for his letter was made on behalf of Eden by Frank Roberts, an official who would become prominent in the Heligoland story a few years hence. But in 1943 the Foreign Office wanted to keep Britain’s options open regarding the island, and when in parliament Lt Cdr Hutchinson MP asked Eden if Heligoland ought to revert to British sovereignty he was curtly put down with the excuse that ‘it was more a matter to be discussed at the Peace Conference than at Question Time in the House’.

However, at around this time, Barnes Wallis, the co-designer of the Wellington bomber, was seeking to develop an idea he had had in 1941 for a weapon powerful enough to put out of action the underground V-1 plants as well as U-boat shelters such as those at Heligoland. Although he had figured that it could best be done with very large bombs weighing 10 tons which would have a
camouflet
(earthquake) effect, for a while his proposals were rejected. They were revived in 1943 and a smaller version of the 10-ton design, weighing 12,000lb, was built. Known as the ‘Tallboy’, it was test-detonated at Shoeburyness in what then seemed the largest explosion ever detonated at that range. It was heard 40 miles away at Chislehurst in Kent.
⁹
The men entrusted to use these weapons in anger were from the famous 617 ‘Dam Buster’ Squadron, whose Lancaster bombers were converted to carry them (as later were those of 9 Squadron). An early success was their use to wreck the V-1 underground plant at St Leu d’Esserent, just north of Paris, where flying bombs were made. Another attack effectively demolished the major part of a massive concrete structure in northern France designed to house, underground, a number of 9-metre gun barrels set at a fixed elevation. This was one of Hitler’s secret weapons, intended to drench London with hundreds of tons of high explosive every week.

By February 1945 the full 10-ton version, known as the ‘Grand Slam’, had been developed. Although the new weapon arrived untested from the manufacturers, it was successfully used by 617 Squadron to destroy the Bielefeld Viaduct near Hanover, a hitherto almost impossible target. Another success had been the attack on the battleship
Tirpitz
, which was hit in Altenfjord by Lancasters of 9 and 617 Squadrons dropping Tallboys on 12 November 1944. As their ship capsized and the icy waters rose, the doomed crew inside were heard singing
Deutschland über Alles
– the anthem composed under British occupation in Heligoland.

By mid-April 1945 the war in Europe was only three weeks from ending. Canadian troops had overrun Friesland on 12 April 1945, and the British were advancing on Berlin. The strategic high command organisation, SHAEF, reckoned that as the Allied forces would want to enter the Elbe and Weser estuaries the heavy guns of Heligoland would need to be put out of action. They had been alerted to that possibility by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who on 23 March 1945, with regard to the German Bight islands, had written to the planning staff of his 21 Army Group: ‘By far the most important island is Heligoland which dominates the entrance to all the north-west German ports from Emden to Hamburg.’ Initially Montgomery wondered if the island might be starved into surrendering: ‘If Heligoland continues to hold out it appears that we shall have to starve it out (meaning delays in opening Hamburg for British maintenance, and Bremenhaven for US maintenance, and Cuxhaven for minesweeping).’ But wondering if an air attack might bring about the required result sooner he told the planning staff: ‘It would be appreciated if you could examine the possibility of reducing Heligoland from the air, should the island continue to hold and after the rest of North Germany has been overrun.’

Another alternative considered had been the immobilisation of Heligoland’s heavy weaponry by means of naval gunfire. However in late March the Admiralty formed the view that the emplacement of artillery there was such, in its present form, that the island was impregnable to attack by the sea. But was it really necessary now for the Allies to bother with the island at all? This is highly ponderable because the maximum range of the 12in guns, the heaviest on the island, was only 12 miles, meaning there was just enough sea-room to allow safe access to the estuaries without needing to attack Heligoland. Moreover, it was never considered that it had not been essential to invade or bomb any of the German-occupied Channel Islands, either before, during or since the Normandy landings.

On 31 March Bomber Command were asked by SHAEF to formulate a plan for ‘neutralising’ the guns of Heligoland. Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris and his colleagues, notably the Chief of the Air Staff Sir Charles Portal, had reason to relish an opportunity to attack Heligoland. After all, the tiny island had brought down the Hampdens and subsequently countless other Allied planes in its capacity as a watchtower. British Intelligence believed the island was an outstation of the ‘X system’ network that guided German military aircraft, and it had also given many warnings of imminent Allied raids on the mainland. Even now islanders recall how the German military used to look up in the sky, note the number and altitude of Allied bombers, and report where they were heading. On 4 April Bomber Command recommended a two-phase attack, initially using masses of conventional bombs to knock out the forty or so flak guns, then dropping Tallboys and Grand Slams to destroy the big guns. Accepting Bomber Command’s plan on 16 April, SHAEF ordered that the mission should make ready to proceed.

Unusually, word from the Allies reached the island that some intensive bombing was due to begin. The message from London was that if the garrison surrendered, Heligoland would be spared. The islanders certainly did not want their island to be extensively bombed and two men in particular, hotelier Eric Friedrichs and roofer Georg Braun, wished to make sure of it. There were a number of German soldiers on the island who also reckoned the time had come to put a halt to the fighting. Four of them met with Friedrichs and Braun to consider how to proceed. Should the surrender be forced by means of a rebellion and mutiny? Unfortunately these events coincided with the arrival of an SS detachment, sent to the island to halt any faltering in the garrison’s resolve to battle on. According to various Heligolanders who were there at the time, the conspirators were in the course of making their views known throughout the garrison when the plot came to the attention of the Gestapo and the island’s unpopular Military Commandant, Kapitan Roeggeler, an ardent Nazi. Action was swift and brutal. The six ringleaders were rounded up and arrested, then taken across to the coastal fortifications at Cuxhaven. There, after a summary interrogation, all of them were condemned to be executed, and were then shot.

Thus the white flag that the British had ordered to be hoisted over Heligoland by noon on 18 April never did appear. Readying themselves for the expected attack, the islanders made for the deep underground air-raid shelters set aside for civilians near the cliff-side staircase on the eastern side of the Oberland. Early that afternoon the sirens sounded a warning, as they had done many times before during the war. But never had they foretold a raid more terrifying than this.

The sky was cloudless, clear and bright, as a vast armada of nearly 1,000 aircraft – mostly Lancaster and Halifax bombers – approached the island at 18,000ft, accompanied by squadrons of long-range Spitfire and Mustang fighters. The first to strike were twenty Mosquito pathfinders, which swooped in at low level to drop coloured smoke marker flares indicating the three aiming points: the North and South batteries on the main island and the Dune airfield. The RAF had sent 618 Lancasters and 332 Halifaxes to obliterate Heligoland and they rained down 4,953 tons of bombs on the island. Although fierce resistance was put up by the flak guns, which brought down three Halifaxes, it was remorselessly overwhelmed. Long before the later waves of bombers arrived, RAF crews could see huge columns of smoke rising from various parts of the island. A huge oil fire was burning at the south end, and elsewhere great fires were raging under clouds of smoke which drifted across the plateau.

The bombs fell relentlessly for an hour and a quarter, and even now older islanders can vividly recall the horror of that raid. Even deep in the shelters the noise was tremendous. The bombs fell in systematic patterns, like giants’ footsteps getting closer and closer. As they approached, those who were not speechless with horror were screaming in terror. At one point the generators failed and all the lights went out, leaving them in total darkness. Almost without exception the Heligolanders thought they were going to die.

When the civilians finally emerged from their refuge that afternoon, blinking in the sunshine, they could hardly take in the scene of total devastation. Their island was a crater-pitted moonscape. Virtually every building was so utterly destroyed that there was scarcely one stone left standing on another. Historic places such as the Villa Hoffman von Fallersleben were utterly wrecked, as were all the buildings for so long associated with British rule: the church with the model ship presented by a former governor; the Empress of India; Government House; and even the streets with English names. By a supreme irony the only building effectively remaining was the highest structure on the island – the anti-aircraft control centre, the Red Tower. Its survival became a prominent new addition to the island’s aura of indestructibility against the odds.

But the firestorm had not yet ended. The next afternoon the RAF returned, officially to destroy the 12in and 6in guns – although some had already been put out of action. This time the escorting Spitfires and Mustangs nearly outnumbered the bombers – there were just thirty-three of them. But these were special aircraft: Lancasters of 617 and 9 Squadrons carrying Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs, as well as a camera crew filming events. No attempt was made to attack the U-boat shelters. The targets were the heavy gun positions. For the ‘earthquake’ bombs to be effective, they needed to be dropped within a radius of 60–90ft of the target. The bombs were delivered from 13,000ft, the six 22,000-pounders from the north and the twenty-seven 12,000-pounders from the west. For the islanders this attack could have been even more deadly than that of the previous afternoon if an earthquake bomb had reached their shelters. An Air Ministry assessment of the 18–19 April raids subsequently concluded: ‘Damage by 500lb and 1,000lb bombs was very serious in that gun positions and, in particular, radar installations were affected. The damage to military and naval installations on the island by Tallboy was very small.’
¹⁰

All the Lancasters returned home to Britain safely. Such was the unnecessary callousness of the attack that it was described in one newspaper as making Heligoland look ‘like a stale cake crumbling under a knife’, and in Paul Brickhill’s famous book
The Dam Busters
(1951) it was noted as having been done for the purpose of ‘plastering’ the island fortress.
¹¹
This raid on Heligoland was the Dam Busters’ penultimate attack of the war, the finale being the controversially absurd bombing of Hitler’s mountain hideaway at Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps. Unable to distinguish the Führer’s Eagle’s Nest from the snow-covered mountains, they bombed the staff barracks.