Chapter 11 Rocket Firing Beaus; Germany Revisited; Flying Freight Cars

ROCKET-FIRING BEAUS

The rocket-firing Beaufighters of the Anzac Wing, in which No. 455 Squadron, R.A.A.F., and a New Zealand squadron worked side by side from a base in northern Scotland, gave the Germans in Norway no peace in their efforts to maintain their sea communications with Germany. The Beaufighters' job in the last few months of the war was to ferret out enemy ships hidden in the narrow fjords of the Norwe6an coast. It was a hazardous task and losses were not light.

"Our job was to go after this shipping and sink it, but the very rugged and indented Norwegian coastline didn't make that very easy," said Wing-Commander Colin Milson, D.S.O. and Bar, D.F.C. and Bar, who succeeded Wing-Commander Jack Davenport, D.S.O., D.F.C. and Bar, G.M., in command of No- 455 in October 1944, and remained C.O. until the end of the war in Europe.

"The German ships normally sailed by night and laid up during the day in some narrow fjord," Milson said. "These fjords were often only 200 or 300 yards wide, with cliffs rising vertically Up to 2000 feet. With the steepness of the cliffs, the water was very deep and the ships could get right up beneath these high and overhanging cliffs, making it exceedingly difficult for us to attack owing to the very narrow frontage.

"Our fellows tried to get a lot of aircraft in on the target at one time, thus beating down the flak and allowing our main weapon -the rocket-to take full effect. Owing to the narrowness of the fjords, however, frequently only two or three aircraft could get in at once. Consequently they got a lot of flak from the heavily armed ships."

just one more hazard to these flights were the enemy fighters based along the Norwegian coast specifically to protect the German convoys. One afternoon in April 1945, for instance, a Beaufighter which had been "shipbusting" in Sogne Fjord was chased for ten minutes among the mountains and fjords by six F.W.190s. The Beaufighter was flying at 250 miles an hour, but the enemy fighters were lined up and after each one had attacked he took his place at the back of the queue to wait another go - all except one which was hit several times in the nose and engine by the navigator firing his rear gun.

Neither the pilot, Warrant-Officer (later Flying-Officer) Ian Murray, of Bell (Q.), nor his navigator, Flight-Sergeant (later Flying Officer) Donald Mitchell, of Woodville (S.A.), was hit, but the Beaufighter was so riddled with cannon and machine-gun u lets that how it made base remains a mystery. The instrument panel was hit and there was no airspeed indicator to give the pilot any idea at what speed he was landing, but another crew flew a few feet above him, giving him an estimate of his speed over the R/T. His hydraulics were out of action and he had to land at approximately 200 miles an hour, being unable to operate his flaps or other landing aids.

"My pilot hugged the sides of the mountains and fjords, dodging in and out, with the 19os keeping close at us," Mitchell said, describing the fight. "We were so close in that the fighters had to keep one eye on the cliffs and the other on their sights to fire at us-which did not improve their aim. As each one came in and fired he would break away and then join the line coming in after. We must have doubled back on our tracks several times. Then we decided to make a break for it and dodged out a few feet over the sea for a short distance and into a cloud. That was the last they saw of us."

Navigation had to be dead accurate to find targets among the Norwegian fjords. It was not easy to navigate over 300 or 400 miles of sea at "0" feet in the cramped cockpit of a Beaufighter. As Flight-Lieutenant M. Jackson, of Brisbane (Q.), put it: "You are surrounded with navigational and wireless equipment and the rear gun bangs the back of your neck with every incautious movement. Then the pilot has a very restricted view towards the rear and keeps asking questions. None of these things makes navigation easy."

In the words of Flight-Lieutenant Stuart Addison, of Melbourne (V.), who made a number of successful operations against German convoys in the fjords, attacks by rockets were "just devastating".

"Firing the rocket itself is quite a simple matter," he said. "It is really just aiming the aircraft at the target, and when you consider you are in correct range you fire the rocket. The actual results of your own rockets are rather hard to see because you have to break away so quickly. If you fly too close it is quite possible your aircraft will be hit by flying debris from the ships, but by photographs taken by other aircraft and your own you can usually see your results. One chap fired eight rockets and got direct hits on the bow of a minesweeper and blew it completely off."

Bleeding from more than thirteen puncture wounds in his le~,, and side, and with a compound fracture of his left arm, Flying-Officer (later Flight-Lieutenant) S. J. Sykes, D.F.C., of Currawang, via Goulburn (N.S.W.), brought his Beaufighter more than 400 miles back from the Norwegian coast in April 1945 and landed it at night. His heroism won him an immediate award oil the D.S.O.

Sykes led a strike force to Ardals Fjord, where they found a medium-sized merchantman. Despite flak from the ship and the shore they attacked with rockets and cannon and the last crew to leave saw a large white explosion, followed by a dull red glow amidships. Dark smoke was pouring in a huge column from the vessel.

Sykes's aircraft was hit when 400 yards from the ship and when he was travelling at nearly 300 miles an hour. But he pressed home his attack and, in spite of a piece of flak severing his humerus, pulled the Beaufighter out of its dive and turned for home.

"Flak burst at the port side close to the pilot's window and not only was he sprayed by shrapnel but also by small pieces of Perspex from the window," said his navigator, Flying Officer H. W. Pearson, of Brisbane (Q). "I put a tourniquet on his left arm, plugged the worst wound and gave him a shot of morphia. He made no complaint, although it was bitterly cold, and he was determined to get back to base. Standing behind him, I did my best to steer the Beaufighter, but he had to work the rudder himself, although his left leg was well peppered. He made a normal landing with only one hand."

On another occasion in April, Warrant Officer (later Flying-Officer) 1. M. Gordon, of Kulin (W.A.), navigator in a Beaufighter which scored rocket and cannon strikes on a merchant vessel in a narrow fjord, beat out a fire in the aircraft with his hands, enabling it to reach base safely. He received an immediate award of the D.F.C. When the Beaufighter was hit, the cannon installations caught fire. Although Gordon promptly used the extinguishers the flames spread, but he persevered and eventually got them under control by using his gloved hands. Afterwards he navigated the Beaufighter back to base.

In April, the last complete month of the European war, No- 455 made attacks on enemy shipping in the fjords on seven occasions. An attack on the afternoon of April 14 was typical of these and many others.

A U-boat, naval auxiliary, small merchantman and a depot ship were found in Josing Fjord, scene of the famous Altmark incident. To make their attack, Australian, New Zealand and R.A.F. Beaufighters, escorted by Mustangs of Fighter Command, flew 300 miles over the sea from their Scottish base, the last 100 miles through rain and thick cloud. All the enemy ships were hit.

Flying at over 300 miles an hour, the Beaufighters entered the 250-yard mouth of Josing Fjord and, after attacking their targets, climbed over the 1,000-foot cliffs before making their way back to base.

Wing-Commander Milson led the striking force. "The weather, which had been terrible, cleared as we got over the Norwegian coast," he said. "We dived down to 2500 feet and the first wave took the defences by surprise. Crews following us in said we got hits and they could only fire at the centre of the cloud of smoke covering the U-boat and the naval auxiliary."

Formed in June 1941, and flying Hampdens, No. 455 was the first R.A.A.F. bomber squadron to operate from Britain. When the war ended in Europe it had flown 2,584 sorties 0f 11,753 operational hours, covering over 2,000,000 miles. Its tally was seventeen ships destroyed and five damaged. In the final phase of its successful career, equipped with Beaufighters, it fired 1833 rockets and 126,963 cannon shells.

FLIGHT-LIEUTENANT S. B. PRIOR

GERMANY REVISITED

To see the German targets he himself has bombed is possibly one of the greatest hopes of any bomber aircrew man (provided the wish isn't granted through courtesy of enemy flak or fighters). So my delight can be imagined when I was posted on duty to Germany with an opportunity of seeing those towns.

After suitably celebrating VE eve and day in London-which included becoming involved in the singing and dancing in Piccadilly among the fire-works obviously provided by the Allied Air Force-I arrived in Brussels to find that I had to complete those celebrations there with even more demonstrative crowds. A few days I spent in this gay city. On the outskirts of it I was fortunate enough to find one of our R.A.A.F. Mosquito squadrons and also to bump into several of my own Lancaster squadrons. These latter had flown in to evacuate ex-prisoners of war - quite a few of them A.I.F. men who were in great spirits having been released after up to five years in various Stalags. Our Lancaster boys were extremely happy in this work and their aircraft were covered in chalked signs, "Blighty bus run" and such.

Then the trip began, amusingly enough in a German staff car, which - complete with dachshund - had been captured some weeks previously by Flight-Lieutenant Norman Bartlett of Sydney (N.S.W.), and Flying Officer Cyril Isaac of Melbourne (V.). Through Belgium we travelled along the pleasant tree-vaulted roads-many bearing countless furrows scored by the cannon-fire of our fighters as they harassed the retreating Germans and so into Holland. We passed through the historic town of Arnhem where rubble and wrecked vehicles told the tale of the bitter fighting and a burnt-out Dakota in the ruins of a farm-house bore mute witness to the part played by the Air Force in that magnificent failure. Then over the world-known bridge and eventually to the German border.

As we passed the notices "This is Germany" I felt my stomach muscles tighten-a hang-over of the twitch that used to strike me as we crossed the enemy coast, but as we passed through the pleasant peaceful countryside it gradually sank in that the war was really over and I could relax. The poppy studded fields with farm workers industriously busy, the solid farm-houses and the untouched villages then had me thinking "What war' , " but then here and there craters and the burnout hulks of armoured and other vehicles soon dispelled this and prepared me as photographs could never have done f or the large towns to come.

I think I should digress somewhat here to explain that, although I can claim to have seen the majority of large German cities, I cannot possibly hope to describe the complete chaos reigning there. Firstly, no words or even photographs can depict the utter devastation -every town with any pretence to industrialization is from 70 to go per cent laid waste. And, secondly, the mind becomes numbed with the extent of such destruction. Therefore I can hope only to give some idea of the impression each town left with me.

To continue then, the first large German town we visited was Osnabruck, until then to me merely a name on the map and a hot-spot of flak. My first reaction, as we drove in, was that the town had not been badly hit, but I soon discovered that this impression was decidedly false. Although the outer suburbs had been rather slightly damaged, the heart of the town had been completely torn out. I was to learn as I travelled that, except for those that had been almost entirely wiped out, such is the pattern of German towns today.

At Hanover and Bremen and the smaller towns between the story repeated itself in greater or lesser destruction. In all at one time or another the railway system had been ripped away, the industrial district had no existence and the built-up areas unfortunate enough to be associated with these war potentials had suffered for their sins as accessories.

It was in this area that we passed through Lunenburg where the German army surrendered to Montgomery and on our return we were there the day Himmler did his one and final good deed for the world by removing himself from it.

Hamburg, the second city of the Reich in peace and probably now in desolation, is to my mind a fitting monument to Nazi ideas. One drives, literally for miles by the speedometer, along bomb-cratered roads through acres and acres of rubble desert with fantastic growths of twisted steel, while here and there crudely scrawled on what little wall remains can be seen the signs "Welcome to our liberators from the Nazi yoke".

Kiel conformed to the general pattern, but a variation was added by the unimaginable tangle of what was shipping in the harbour. Two of Germany's proudest battleships lay completely written off by bombing and around as far as eye could see were submarines and merchantmen, sunken, turned turtle, beached or hurled one upon the other in unbelievable confusion.

After such soul-deadening surroundings we were lucky enough to run up into Denmark which had just been liberated. On the roads we saw the German army of occupation withdrawing in straggling columns like the beaten men they were. People there were still wildly happy and so we drove through crowds who waved and cheered as we went and who covered the car with flowers when we stopped, while the demand for autographs made us all feel like Hollywood heroes. In Copenhagen we inspected the remains of the Gestapo Headquarters on which the Mosquitoes had done such a magnificent job.

The Danes told us with admiration, which I myself could not help reflecting, how this one building had been blasted out from its untouched neighbours by a roof-level attack. I was happy, therefore, to meet Wing-Commander Iredale, D.F.C. and Bar, of Heidelberg (V.), who had taken part in the "do" and had just arrived in Copenhagen with the identical aircraft in which he had helped do the lob. Outside Copenhagen, too, we saw for the first time one of the most impressive demonstrations of air power imaginable.

An R.A.F. wing in which there were several Australians, after much excellent set-piece flying, staged an attack on sonic clapped-out German transport on the beach. Spits, Typhoons, Tempests came in in power dives with cannons blazing and whooshing rockets. Standing over 1,000 yards away from the target we felt the blast and the noise was terrific. Now I have an inkling of why the German troops feared the ground-strafing of these planes.

Reluctantly we left friendly Denmark and returned through depressing Germany and pitiful Holland where we saw Rotterdam, one of the Germans' attempts at bombing. I think if they compare it to any of their cities they must admit crime doesn't pay.

The second tour was much more interesting to me because I then saw many of the targets on which I had been myself, but which until now had been merely memories and names in a log book. This time we drove down through the beautiful country of the Ardennes, passing through the battlefield at Bastogne, through the Maginot Line outside Luxembourg and across the Rhine and through the Siegfried Line at Strasbourg.

Stuttgart was our first town of major importance in this sector. I had been on two attacks there and what I remember about it was that because of hills most of it was difficult to identify but mainly that on one of our sorties there we'd had to spend all day digging the aircraft out and clearing one runway of 18 inches of snow, then the wind changed and we had to get off in a strong cross wind. Still it was worth it as we left the place ablaze, most awe-inspiring with the fires cupped by the hills and reflected and magnified by the snow.

And now here it was almost intact from the distance, but at close view really a collection of burnt-out shells of buildings with the usual demolition at the centre. We stayed the night (with Americans) on the hills in Bosch's fine villa, about the only relic of his once proud domain. His electrical factories which had given Stuttgart much of its reason for existence just weren't there any more.

Next came Augsburg which I remembered as one of the best concentrations of incendiaries I'd seen, but, as in such cases, found the results not up to expectation, although the lob had been done. One interesting point here, however, was that we'd always considered the Munich-Augsburo, area as one of the main searchlight areas, third only to the Ruhr and Berlin, but somehow almost completely clueless. I think I discovered why, as we certainly saw bags of searchlight batteries but all controlled by the early sound-detectors and not by the miles more efficient radio-locators.

On the road to Munich we saw scores of jet fighters parked in the woods, while just

outside the city were great numbers of night fighters. In these I was even more interested as, although I had seen some so close at night that you could make out the black crosses, I had never seen any on the ground except those, including two Ju.88s our gunner shot down, burning below us.

Their radar equipment was most complete, so the trouble they gave us was understandable. Actually in our time this was not a great fighter area, so the presence of these planes showed how the Luftwaffe had been pushed back and back and this impression was confirmed by the obvious fact that the autobahns had been used as take-off and landing strips.

As a textbook example of the effect of aerial bombing Munich is probably classic, mainly because it received no artillery damage. Munich sticks in my mind for several reasons. We ran down along the Alps past Mont Blanc and had a fighter attack about there. One Lancaster was shot down on our port, but our gunners beat the Hun off when he came in at us so he stooged off and had another go at a Lancaster well out on our starboard. Wing-Commander Cheshire, later V.C., marked that night, the first attack on that target. It amazed us to see his Mossie in the light of flares flying backwards and for-wards over the town at about 200 feet while we were at 18,000.

His marker was bang on and our small force (main force were at Karlsruhe that night) did a particularly good job because of that. We were carrying our armament officer to observe the effect of new-type incendiaries used that night for the first time. Flying over the town about five times, we could see that the loads were so well placed that it seemed to me the streets must have been about four feet deep in incendiaries. Sure enough now after eighteen months the town still bears traces of that raid. In amongst the rubble one finds pieces of those same incendiaries. One interesting result was that we saw the Brown House, birthplace of Nazism, completely razed, although the infamous beer cellar is among the few places almost untouched. It was while we were viewing this that an elderly German came up and demonstrated with the aid of a heavy walking stick just what he'd like to do to any Nazi.

Berchtesgaden naturally came next, so through beautiful country where only man was vile we drove to this legendary retreat. Here Hitler's Berghof had been blasted by 1,000-pound and 12,000-pound R.A.F. bombs and even more pleasing, as the Berghof was empty, an S.A. barracks had been completely flattened. Here also by courtesy of the Americans, who had turned the district into a regular tourists' paradise, we saw Goering's special train and looted art treasures.

Next call was at Nazism's main breeding ground (Nuremberg), where the Jew-baiting lecherous Streicher matured the vile beast during Hitler's incarceration and where in stadia and parade grounds its militaristic tendencies were most apparent. Our attacks on that city cost Bomber Command its heaviest loss of the war. It was a bright moonlight night and the fighters (day as well as night) really got among us, although at the time the papers were carrying a lot of guff about the Luftwaffe having been shot out of the sky.

We logged twenty-five Lancasters going down and saw at least five or six others, so we weren't surprised to learn the next day that ninety-six had failed to return. Eight months after I met Flight-Lieutenant Bruce Simpson, D.F.C., one of our R.A.A.F. boys who went early that night. He had baled out, evaded capture and finally arrived back in England. We hope, therefore, that many others have been lucky that way or at least were later released from prison camp.

Anyhow the ruins of the city, which the Americans are bulldozing away for material to build airfields, together with the four stadia, two still incomplete, intended to hold about

200,000 fanatics in all, should be a fitting reminder in cause and effect to the German people of what such maniacal delusions eventually mean.

Associated in my mind with Scheinfurt, another of our targets not far away, will always remain the name of a friend of mine from Sydney, Flight-Lieutenant Dudley Ward, who had two engines knocked out and one damaged over the target. He got his bombs away and finally reached England on one engine after scattering guns and other heavy equipment from one side of Europe to the other. He received a well merited immediate award of the D.F.C.. but unfortunately went missing two nights later. I can still see the huge factory which was our aiming point, outlined in the curve of the river by fires from an earlier attack that night. You just couldn't miss. A German pointed out to us where it had been. All that remained was one chimney and a small fairly recent concrete shelter, camouflaged to look like the ruins among which it stood.

S.H.A.E.F. are quartered now in Frankfurt in the administrative block of I. G. Faben's chemical plant and in a couple of hotels, about all that remain of the city. These seem inexplicably preserved by the fates' that watch over high-ranking officers and chair-borne troops generally. I had been on two attacks there, but apart from odd fighter attacks-it was in the tiger-country-and good fires I don't remember much, probably because we struck no real trouble ourselves.

The Ruhr I remember as a sea of searchlights with our Lancaster floating among the crowded flak bursts at the top and angry fires in the depths. Now it was as though that sea had receded, leaving jagged rocks and strange wreckage. Here could be seen our main objective, Krupps works, completely devastated.

My third visit to Brunswick was much more pleasant than the first two. Somehow that place had a 'Jinx for us. The first time there was great difficulty identifying the target because of cloud. Some people bombed, some didn't, and we decided to bring our load home rather than waste it. The Germans caught us in a neat trap that night. They had a band of searchlights stretching all the way up through
the Ruhr to the North Sea, but left an opening which we thought was between Osnabruck and Bremen. It wasn't. It was over the Bremen defences. We spent over thirty minutes thereabouts receiving the sole attention of those defences while another Lancaster, apparently out on our starboard with defective R/T, gave a running commentary of our flight, an added feature we didn't appreciate at the time.

Anyhow we gave Bremen the bombs intended for Brunswick and staggered home sadder and wiser to hear, not with much enthusiasm, that others, including our then Flight-Commander (now Wing-Commander) W. Brill, D.S.O., D.F.C. and Bar, of Grong Grong (N.S.W.), had fallen or almost fallen for the same trap. Our next attempt saw one of our engines pack up about 100 miles before the enemy coast. Our skipper, Flight-Lieutenant F. L. Merrill, D.F.C., of Port Augusta (S.A.), inquired if we felt like go ng on. A unanimous "No" greeted this but he said, "Let's give it a go." So we found ourselves, over Brunswick at 10,000 feet instead of 20,000, then tottering home losing height most of the way. Fortunately we met no other strife and so were able to say we were glad we pressed on - human nature's wonderful.

Brunswick really had it from those attacks. All that stands in the centre are the huge nine-story concrete bunker shelters designed for 2,000 but used for 10,000. The Germans told us that in the R.A.F. attacks, especially those using the new cluster incendiaries as we had and whose action they described most accurately, all that 5,000 firemen could do was to play water on the shelters and let the town burn.

Another target I saw was Leipzig. We'd taken off in snow and sleet for that attack, one of the grimmest nights I've seen. We flew across the North Sea at about 1,000 feet, icing in the clouds being too severe to risk climbing until we almost reached the enemy coast. Here everybody climbed and found the winds all anyway, so the force was doglegging all over the sky from there to the target, losing time to attack as briefed. We arrived a couple of minutes early and orbited outside the target area. I thought as I watched that the defences were more concentrated there than even Berlin or the Ruhr. Anyhow with that and the weather we lost seventy nine that night. Well, Leipzig, to put it in the words Of one of its citizens who identified me as "fliegent", is now "kaput".

We next tried to get into Berlin, over which we'd done seven trips and some of our fellows, like a school friend of mine, Squadron-Leader Jim Comans, D.F.C. and Bar, up to thirteen. The big city thus had more interest to me than any other target. The name itself conjures up many memories. Our skipper being wounded over the eye on his first trip. Fighter attacks from fifty miles the coast all the way in and out. Our mid-upper, Flight-Sergeant Bert Turner, R.A.F., shooting down two Ju.88s on one trip and on the next dying because of a flak fractured oxygen line. We fought for over an hour to release him from his turret. Our one-plane air raid, due to defective compasses that caused us to arrive twelve minutes after everyone else had left for home.

Unfortunately it's still just a name and memories. Although we tried in three different places, we were prevented from getting closer than fifty miles by demolished bridges and Russian guards who intimated that as yet they were not receiving.

Thus my tour came to an end although it was still unfinished. I was left with a deadened feeling at the complete destruction of Germany and could almost feel sorry for the Germans if I did not remember what I've seen in London, Coventry and Rotterdam. My reaction therefore is to quote Shakespeare as I vaguely remember it: "You taught us but we bettered the instruction." My main hope is that in the ten to fifteen years it will take the Germans to rebuild these cities they will see the error of their philosophy and become a wiser and saner people.

FLIGHT-LIEUTENANT J. HALL

GRAND SLAM

THE war in Italy offered, perhaps, the most conclusive evidence so far, that air power alone can make a land victory possible.

justification for this bold statement is seen in the ultimate stage of the campaign. The enemy surrendered because air power had transformed the twenty-eight German and six Italian divisions on the front from a cohesive, reasonably mobile fighting force, into a disintegrated rabble. When that rabble found itself on the north bank of the Po it - was without mechanized equipment, and so unable either to offer further resistance, or to extricate itself.

Not all the German and Italian mechanical transport and mobile guns had been destroyed; but the Po bridges had been. And when the Axis forces had been driven by Eighth and Fifth Armies to the south bank of the Po, they were unable to drive or ferry their transport across. Thus, when they reached the north bank, they were no longer an efficient fighting force, and gave in. They were rendered unable to fight and unable to retreat to the Alps, where, had the destruction by the air arm of Po bridges been less efficient, they might well have been able to reorganize and offer stern resistance for some considerable time longer. In this battle of the bridges, the air arm had scored a grand slam.

The shadow of defeat hung over the Axis forces for some time before the final assault was launched in April. Although their land forces outnumbered the Allies', their artillery was slightly weaker, and their inferiority in air strength most marked. Briefly, the Allied plan was for the composite Eighth Army, on the Adriatic wing (with which Australian squadrons worked), to strike north-east towards Comacchio and the Argenta Gap and then split and spread north-west towards Bologna. The vital area of German defence on the Eighth Army front lay just ahead of our front line, and to the south-cast of Bologna. It was to be subjected to a withering attack from the air as a preliminary to the infantry assault.

In this attack, when it materialized, heavies, mediums, and single-engined fighter-bombers and fighters co-operated, the heavies making air history by the closeness to the infantry of their close support operations. When this combined blow had made progress, and the enemy showed signs of disorder (bringing south his two support divisions), the Fifth Army struck in a north-easterly trend for the other flank of Bologna.

This pincer movement, preceded by the brilliant success of the Eighth, caused the complete crumbling of German resistance, and the great retreat was on. And so the Axis rolled back to the Po, badly battered, but still capable of renewed resistance. From the Po, however, its doom was sealed. The bridges were down. As an army it could go no farther. The troops got across, but the mechanized equipment stayed on the south side, to be added to the Allies' collection of salvage, scrap, and war booty.

To give the entire credit for victory to the air weapon would be to ignore the too obvious; yet it was the air weapon which made possible the rapid collapse of resistance and the incapacity to re-form, reorganize and fight on north of the Po.

This was another classical example of consummate skill in the use of the tactical air weapon, often revealed in the Mediterranean. In this form of warfare, the Allied air forces in the Mediterranean were supreme. Just as the United Kingdom had been the testing ground of strategic air warfare, the Mediterranean theatre-which included Syria, North Africa, and Italy-had been the laboratory for the evolution, practice and perfection of tactical air fighting.

The ultimate form it took set the pattern for the tactical attacks in Europe, which helped to fold up German might from Normandy to Berlin; and no doubt, with modifications, forced by terrain and distances, it was the model f or the tactical air war against Japan. This superiority of the Mediterranean tactical air forces did not spring like a rabbit from a hat. It was painstakingly evolved from earliest days when No. 3 R.A.A.F. Army Cooperation Squadron first flew in Syria and the Western Desert until the final day, when that same squadron, with others from Australia, was flying tactically over the Po Valley in Mustangs, Kittyhawks, or Baltimores. The force has had the longest experience of any in the world in the type of fighting in which it has specialized, and its more recent exploits are recognized as masterpieces and models for air support in any war zone.

The four main tasks of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces were to bring pressure on enemy industry by the employment of strategic bombers; to support the land forces by tactical bombers, fighter-bombers and fighters; to keep sea lanes, communications, ports, and installations protected against enemy action; and to supply the partisans in Yugoslavia, Italy and (earlier) in France with arms, ammunition, food, clothing, medicines and expert advice. To do this, M.A.A.F., when it reached full strength, disposed about 14,000 aircraft and about 300,000 officers and men. These can be apportioned about 50-5o between Britain and America, the British allocation, of course, including a considerable number of Dominions and Colonial air and ground crew. Australia's maximum contribution was seven squadrons and numerous individuals serving in R.A.F. squadrons.

As the tempo of fighting died down, or commitments increased elsewhere, these Australian forces were decreased until, in the final stages of the campaign, there were left in Italy one Mustang squadron (No. 3), one Kittyhawk squadron (No. 450), one Baltimore squadron (No. 454), all in Desert Air Force or Tactical Air Force, and one Wellington squadron (No. 458) which was transferred from Sardinia, to Fogaia, to Gibraltar, where it carried on Coastal Command anti-U-boat patrols, escorts, alternative target bombing and so on.

Individual Australians were scattered over the length and breadth of Italy and the Middle East. They flew in all commands, in all types of aircraft, from Spitfires, Mustangs, Marauders, Bostons, Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Liberators to air-sea rescue and transport planes. Besides those already mentioned, the Australian squadrons in this theatre included (until their disposal elsewhere) a general reconnaissance squadron (No. 459), a Spitfire squadron (No. 451), and a Halifax squadron (No. 462). The former was sent to the United Kingdom to carry on the war against the Germans from there.

Since the Allies' clean sweep in North Africa, the air forces in Italy have dropped between 500,000 and 600,000 tons of bombs and shot down about 9,000 aircraft. A contributing factor to this efficiency was the merging in British and American officers of command of all air forces in the area. Unlike control in other areas, in M.A.A.F. it was truly "Allied"

History of the air forces in the Mediterranean naturally falls into three phases. The first phase began with the formation of British Desert Air Force, with which Australian squadrons were always closely identified, and ended early in 1943 when D.A.F. merged with the U.S. Twelfth Air Force in Tunisia. The second phase extended until Cassino, and the last phase dates from then (when M.A.A.F. was formed) until the end of the campaign. The second phase saw the establishment of complete air superiority in Africa which enabled the interdiction of supplies from the European mainland reaching Rommel, and his ultimate collapse. In the North African campaign, the combined air forces dropped some 12,000 tons of bombs, shot down 1,300 odd enemy aircraft, and sank about 80 Axis ships.

Our own losses were a moderate 650 aircraft. The stepping up of the violence of our air effort from then on is exemplified in the conquest of Pantellaria-first time a land mass had been conquered entirely from the air-in which our aircraft flew 5,250 sorties in 12 days and dropped about 6,300 tons of bombs.

Pantellaria provided the base from which our aircraft could continue the war of attrition against enemy air strength remaining in Sicily, our next stepping stone. So effective were our sorties, and so inept and vacillating the enemy's decisions as to disposal of his air forces, that only token opposition was encountered from the air when the Sicily landing was made. Similarly, strafing attacks against the important Foggia aerodrome so depleted the enemy's air resources, that the Salerno landing was eased for the ground forces; and when the Germans counterattacked there, our air forces by mustering iooo sorties, were able to stave off disaster and inflict it instead on the Germans.

To put 1,000 aircraft over a single beachhead was, in those days, a worthy achievement. It must be remembered that at that stage, total Allied air strength in the Mediterranean was less than 6.500 aircraft. By the time southern Italy had been liberated, another 1,000 aircraft had been added, and a new element had appeared on the scene.

That new element-a strategic air force was the wedge which was to widen the crack in the Nazi defences, and ultimately to bring the whole edifice crashing. It was made possible by the capture of the Foggia airfield, from which strategic bombers could operate against German war industry inside Germany and on the outskirts of the German fortress. Hitherto, this had not been possible. The order of priority given such strategic targets was (a) the aircraft industry, (b) ball bearing plants, and (c) oil installations. Immediately a great build-up of the strength of the Allied air forces commenced. The greatest increase was in heavies, to enable the tactical plans to be carried out, and in the spring and summer of 1944, 15 groups of heavies poured into the organization. When the blows started in real earnest, M.A.A.F. deployed its 14,000 aircraft, of which more than 5,000 were directed against long range targets.

An immediate reflection of this great access of power was given in the historic Anzio landing. In the Sicily landing, the Allies had put up 25,000 sorties, and in the Salerno invasion, 29,000 sorties. In the Anzio landing they made 54,000 sorties. This effort crushed all Axis hope of completing the threat to throw our forces back into the sea; indeed, it inflicted such punishment on the enemy that he retreated towards Cassino precipitately.

This vast aggregation of air power also made possible the famous "operation strangle", and so weakened the enemy logistically that it was impossible for him to resist for long the determined assaults of our land forces. M.A.A.F. in 26 days devoted 65,000 sorties and 33,000 tons of bombs to this tremendous interdiction operation, which succeeded in cutting all enemy communications in Italy from north to south, and so starved him of supplies that, after the first resolute resistance, he had neither the power nor the spirit to continue fighting, and retreated towards Rome.

Bridge-busting, in which R.A.A.F. squadrons participated, attacks on barges and ships attempting to augment supplies coastwise, in which they also took part, and mechanical transport bashes in which the Australian fighter-bombers excelled, completed the enemy's discomfort. Even while the enemy fell back in disorganized rout, our air forces continued the pressure. In a seven weeks period between May and June, M.A.A.F. aircraft flew some 73,000 sorties and dropped between 51,ooo and 52,000 tons of bombs, totals which averaged 135o effective sorties and 850 tons of bombs daily. In addition, cuts in rail lines averaged 71 each day.

Devastation of the enemy's transport and forces was caused before Rome, and he was forced to withdraw steadily to a line on the southern fringe of the plains of the Po Valley, where the last combined blows from the air arm brought him to his knees.

SQUADRON-LEADER S. K. S. SUMMERS

THEY MANNED THE FLYING FREIGHT CARS

ASK any brand-new aircrew recruit what his Service ambition is, and you'll almost certainly be told: "I want to be a fighter pilot." Watch his eyes light up! He's envisioning the day when he'll be driving twenty-two hundred horses at something like 400 miles an hour through what scientists and other learned people call the sub-stratosphere, but what he knows is really a starry or sun-lit road leading to the top-most pinnacle of adventure.

If your Brand-New Recruit should be a rare type-if he doesn't aspire to become a second "Killer" Caldwell or Bobby Gibbes -it's more than an even-money bet that his fancy is for the driver's seat in a twin or multi-engined job, so that lie can drop great big beautiful bombs on oil refineries and suchlike nicely prangable targets, and cause lots of fires which, as somebody once said before, can "be seen 60 miles away on the homeward journey".

We'll leave our B.N.R. now, with a "Good Luck", and a "I hope you make it, son". (But, secretly, that expression of hope is tempered with some doubt, for so many new boys want to become fighter pilots, and there are so many other Air Force jobs to be filled, that disappointments are inevitable.)

Let's talk now about another flying type. He's probably got so many air-hours entered in his logbook that it looks something like a summer excursion railway timetable. He, like our B.N.R., once felt that he just had to be a fighter pilot. And possibly he did manage to work in an operational tour on "Tommies" or "Hurries". Or perhaps he drove a Bombay or a Blenheim. Or, again, maybe he just sat in the shufti-man's seat in the wallowing old Bombay or Blenheim and told the pilot where to go, or twiddled with the knobs on the W/T set, or monkeyed about with the machine guns.

That, of course, was 'way back in the old Desert days, when we were so outnumbered in aircraft strength that flying was a pretty dicey occupation, when even passenger flips were not without their hazards.

Well, after he had shot down a few enemy kites and been shot down a couple of times himself, the day arrived when our Experienced Flying Type-we'll call him our E.F.T. from now on-was forced to realize that, so for as operational flying was concerned, he had had his time. There were dozens of new kinds of so-called non-operational jobs that were crying out for the services of sound men with flying experience.

And one of these jobs was air transport.

Our failure to deliver the coup de grace to Rommel when he had been chased back beyond Benghazi in the winter of I 941-42 was due in a large measure to the fact that our rapidly advancing ground and air forces had outstripped their supplies. In the bitterness of that hurried retreat lay a salutary lesson, a lesson which taught us that before we could win the war in the desert we must win the battle of transport and supply.

True, we already had our motorized supply and transport columns, and they did grand work. But mobile desert warfare called for a speedier means of rushing forward high priority items such as petrol, oil and ammunition for tanks and aircraft, and food for the fighting man. It was a pressing problem to which a solution had to be found without delay. The multi-ringed and broad-braided blokes who have been responsible for planning the air war-and many of them seem to be pretty clueful types, in spite of what you and I may have confided to each other over the odd schooner of Stella in the Kiwi Club in Cairo-agreed that here was a job for the Air Force. And Air Transport Command, then in its infancy in the Middle East, was their obvious choice.

And so our E.F.T. was suddenly taken off ops, and with other E.F.Ts and a few new chaps who in their advanced flying training had shown that they possessed special aptitude for transport work, woke up one tragic morning to find himself landed for which he doubtless described to his commiserating cobbers as "just a bloody stooge job".

But his idea that it was a stooge job didn't last long. A few trips to Malta-the island was still being raided in those days by 200-plus enemy kites daily - with a petrol-laden Hudson which one well-directed incendiary bullet would have sent down in flames; the occasional steely-grey landing on airfields which, won from the enemy only a few hours before, had nor been thoroughly cleared of mines, and were still within range of his guns; flights in unarmed aircraft over long reaches of land and water where it was reasonable to expect opposition from enemy fighters; landings in the early hours of the invasions of Sicily, Italy and southern France .... These assignments, and many another dicey "do", were enough to dispel any impression that the transport boys were but glorified bus drivers and conductors.

If you've read thus far, you'll be relieved to know that we're now coming to what is supposed to be the real point of this story. This is it.

The work of the Middle East air transport squadron is of special interest to Australians. At one time one of these units had as many as thirty Aussie pilots, navigators and wireless operators on its strength, and they ranked high in the esteem of all who had an opportunity to appraise the value of their effort. There were plenty of other Dominionites to keep them company. too. Indeed, to walk into the officers' mess was rather like entering the lounge of a cosmopolitan hotel in peacetime, if one overlooked the furnishings for a moment. It was a R.A.F. squadron, therefore most of the fellows came from the United Kingdom, but the rest of them were a very mixed bag. The commanding officer, for instance, was from Paraguay, while in addition to the Australians, there were men from New Zealand, South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya, Belgium and France.

Towards the end of 1943 this squadron moved its base from Africa to Italy, which it reached the hard way, following the Eighth Army westward to Tunis then northward almost to the Senio. (To say it "followed" the Eighth on this history-making trek is not strictly correct; on at least one occasion it actually went ahead, landing in hostile territory with petrol, bombs and ammunition for aircraft which, unknown to the enemy, were operating from an airfield on his side of the line.)

This unit, known as the "Flying Horse" Squadron because its aircraft bore on their nose a pictorial representation of Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology, played an important part, in its unobtrusive way, in the winning of the Allied victory in Italy and the Balkans, by its speedy and efficient handling of petrol, oil, ammunition, bombs, aircraft and M.T. spares, food, nails, newspapers, blood for transfusion and other urgent medical supplies-and almost every other conceivable form of high-priority goods. It did another vital job, too, by dropping supplies to partisans in Northern Italy and Yugoslavia -but that's another story, to be told elsewhere.

It might not be correct to say that the war in Europe could not have been won without these flying freight cars, and the men who manned them. But its winning certainly would have cost a greater price in lives and time. And it is a cause for a sneaking national pride to know that some of those one-time B.N.Rs whom you and I knew back in Australia, and who eventually found themselves in Air Transport Command because they had proved themselves good E.F.Ts, carried with honour Australia's name
across the skyways of the world.

FLIGHT-LIEUTENANT W. K. ROBERTSON