Mosquito: Menacing the Reich: Combat Action in the Twin-engine Wooden Wonder of World War II Read Online Free PDF

Main Force raids. The Gelsenkirchen raid began as planned, five minutes ahead of the two other attacks, at 19.25 hours. The city was still burning as a result of an afternoon raid that day by 738 RAF bombers. From their altitude of 25,000ft the Mosquitoes added their red and green TIs and high explosives to the fires. A few searchlights and only very light flak greeted the crews over the devastated city. On 25/26 November a force of sixty-eight Mosquitoes attacked Nuremberg.
    After a couple of operations like their first two in September Flight Lieutenant Chas Lockyer DFC and Flying Officer Bart ‘Jock’ Sherry DFC * were thoughtful about their chance of doing another fifty-three to complete the tour. Lockyer noted that ‘the good old Law of Averages prevailed and the next half a dozen ops were comparatively uneventful’. But on 3/4 November, whilst taking off for another Berlin raid, their aircraft had swung to the left due to the port engine suddenly losing power. Lockyer closed the throttles but he was unable to prevent the Mosquito from crashing into the radar hut at the other side of the perimeter track. Both men’s top front teeth were knocked out but they were fit to fly again three weeks later, as Lockyer recounts: 145
    At the end of November there was a somewhat more unwelcome diversion in our flying programme when somebody at Command decided to try a daylight raid, employing the American pattern of flying in tight formation, led by two Oboe Mosquitoes and bombing in salvo. With no defensive armament we were inclined to think that this was carrying cockiness a bit too far, even though we were promised a fighter escort. [This operation took place on 29/30 November, with thirty Mosquitoes of 8 (PFF) Group attacking the Gessellschaft Teerverwertung tar and benzol plant in the Meiderich district of Duisburg]. At the appointed time and place the Mossies rendezvoused, but with no sign of the fighter escort, and since our time schedule didn’t allow us to hang about waiting for them we pressed on. We were halfway along the straight and level run-up to the target when I spotted high above us a cluster of fighters. They had single engines and square wing tips, so they were probably Me 109s. If they were, then that famous ‘corner of a foreign field’ was going to accommodate twenty-four new permanent guests. It was with a tremendous sense of relief that we identified them as Mustangs, as they dived towards us. Just at that moment the flak started to burst among us and they retreated as quickly as they’d arrived and stood off nicely out of range, eyeing us, as Jock put it so succinctly, with morbid interest. They rejoined us when we were safely away from the target and we saw no sign of enemy fighters. 146
    We flew two more daylights after that but luckily never encountered any enemy fighter opposition, but on one of the raids I saw a Fortress going down over Rotterdam, and watching that great aircraft helplessly spiralling earthwards was one of my saddest moments of the War. After that we were thankful for the cover of darkness again, although Berlin appeared on the board at briefing more and more often until Jock knew its street geography better than he knew his native Glasgow. We got belted once more on a low-level attack on Erfurt and flak pierced our hydraulics, resulting in a flight home with the bomb doors open. Without flaps we opted for the emergency landing strip at Woodbridge in Suffolk and landed without any further problems, although Jock had to use the emergency system to pump down the undercarriage. And so our tour drew towards its end, but we completed it in style with nine of our last eleven trips to Berlin and we finally finished about three weeks before the German surrender.
    On the night of 9/10 December Feldwebel Reichenbach of 4./NJG11 claimed a Mosquito near Berlin but the sixty Mosquitoes that attacked the ‘Big City’ returned without loss. One of them was a 139 Squadron Mosquito XX, one of