The Mailly Raid
Tim Nicoll and David Fell
Bud Barker’s painting of the attack on Mailly
By 1944 it had become clear to the German High Command that the Allies could not delay their invasion of Europe for much longer. While German forces of occupation stretched from the Russian to the Spanish borders, considerations of air and sea superiority during, and inland communications following, the invasion indicated that the Allies would decide to land in France. Furthermore, long daylight hours would be of prime importance to them as indeed would be the phases of the moon and tides. It was thus possible for the Germans to make an informed guess of when the invasion would take place. The imponderable was, exactly where? The issue was further clouded by the fact that by April the Allies had reduced their bombing campaign against Germany and were now uniformly attacking centres of communication the length and breadth of France. Whilst this ploy hid their real intentions, it also indicated that an invasion was imminent.
It was significant that Field Marshal Rommel, appointed by Germany to tackle this conundrum, was a tank general, the man who had so nearly overwhelmed British forces in North Africa. His strategy was to allow the Allies to land their forces, which would initially largely comprise infantry, and then to destroy them on the beaches using his armour before the Allies could land their own. To this end Rommel based his tank divisions some distance inland near centres of good road and rail communication such that they could swiftly be deployed forward as tactics demanded. Mailly le Camp was one such location
For centuries the natural route for trade, and therefore for invasion, from southern Germany to Paris lay through the gap between the high hills of the Hunsruck and the Pfalz. Consequently by 1897, following the German invasion of 1870, the French Army had established the garrison of Mailly le Camp to straddle this route and support the fortresses of Metz and Verdun. It was a cruel irony of fate that some fifty years later the Germans should be using Mailly to defend France against the Allies which included the Free French Army’s 2nd Division under General Leclerc!
By April 1944 members of the French Resistance had gained access to Mailly le Camp and made detailed reports to London of the state of readiness of the 21st Panzer Division re-equipping there. These reports raised considerable concern since this was one of the two German armoured divisions which had fought so well in North Africa becoming battle hardened in the process. Headquarters Bomber Command responded by planning an attack by 348 Lancasters of 1 and 5 Groups, together with other supporting aircraft, for the night of Sunday 3 May. Sadly, things started almost immediately to go wrong for this force drawn from 28 squadrons.
In the course of the previous four years Bomber Command had learned the supreme importance of concentrating a bombing attack into a very short space of time. Not only did this swamp the resources and ability of the enemy to cope with the devastation on the ground, it also overwhelmed those of air defence. However, on this night the hard-won experience was not applied and some time separated the arrival of the aircraft of the two Groups. Nor was the tactic of confusing the German air defences by diversionary raids applied on any significant scale. The inevitable consequence was that the German fighters were able to concentrate on the Mailly raid and even had time to land and replenish fuel and ammunition before again getting airborne to renew their attack. They were aided in their task by the brightness of the moon which permitted even day fighters to be thrown into the fray. Two German pilots each had three confirmed victories and two others, five.
Although the very experienced Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire had been appointed Master Bomber, his radio transmissions were often drowned out by an American Army radio station transmitting off its allocated frequency. Crews speak of their frustration of being deafened by such tunes as “Deep in the Heart of Texas”! Nor, following a suspected radio failure, were the commands of Wing Commander Deane, the leader of the bomber stream, heard by all concerned.
To make matters worse the initial Assembly Point, marked by a yellow flare, was dangerously close to the German airfields of Leon, Juvincourt and St Dizier. RAF crews describe how, as they circled the flare for up to 30 minutes, they could see as many as five Lancasters at a time going down in flames. Others attribute their survival to the fact that their pilots disobeyed instructions and flew away from the designated assembly point and made their bombing runs from unplanned directions. Even though the target marking was initially not up to its usual standard of precision, 1500 tons of bombs were dropped onto the target.
For the crews of 103 Squadron and 576 Squadron flying from RAF Elsham Wolds, Lincolnshire their experiences of the Mailly attack were typical of all the units that participated that night. At briefing the operation was considered to be a piece of cake€ť. 103 Squadron detailed 14 crews of which three failed to return - the crews of Squadron Leader H Swanston, Pilot Officer S L Rowe and Pilot Officer J E Holden. 576 Squadron detailed 18 crews for the loss of one – that of Pilot Officer R Whalley DFC. In addition, the Lancaster of Pilot Officer R R Reed was very badly shot up by two Ju 88 night fighters killing the rear gunner and causing considerable damage to the aircraft. Only with great difficulty was Reed able to return to Elsham Wolds and make a crash landing. Pilot Officer A C Blackie also sustained serious damage in a combat with a twin engined night fighter. His gunners claimed they shot down their attacker and Blackie made an emergency landing at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk.
It is significant to note however that, in spite of everything, all the crews that returned to Elsham Wolds reported that they bombed the Red Target Indicators marking the Mailly target when the order to attack finally came through at 0024 hrs. The final run in was like the starting gate at the Derby, as one pilot reported. The bombing was very accurate and civilian casualties on the ground that night were almost all caused by crashing aircraft. At debriefing returning crews expressed considerable anger about the delays which had left them so vulnerable whilst orbiting the Assembly Point at Chalons. Another complaint concerned the volume of unnecessary chatter over the RT whilst crews were awaiting the final order to bomb.
A former 576 Squadron mid upper gunner, the late Eric Page, who flew on Mailly commented years later that without doubt Mailly was his worst trip. He had flown on the big raids to Leipzig, Berlin and Nuremberg earlier in 1944 when losses had been much heavier. However, he had never seen so many bombers shot down in such a short period of intense combat nor so many night fighters active at one time as at Mailly.
Former 103 Squadron pilot Pat Furlong wrote of the Mailly operation.
“When I arrived at the Assembly Point I soon saw a number of aircraft going down in flames. We were all a bit green at that time as it was only our third trip together but, after a minute or two circling, I decided Chalons was not a very healthy place to be so I decided to fly off for 7or 8 minutes. I flew away from Chalons in a triangular course - two and a half minutes on first leg, turn 120° for a further two and a half minutes, another 120° turn and so back again to Chalons. Maybe that saved my life - I shall never know! Shortly after that the Deputy Master Bomber, Squadron Leader Sparks, took over and clearly instructed us to go in and bomb the Red Target Indicators. I bombed at 00.29 hrs which was in fact 8 minutes after my allotted time. Needless to say, it seemed much longer than 8 minutes since I first arrived over Chalons.€ť”
Although Mailly was not the most costly raid in terms of casualties suffered by RAF Bomber Command in WWII, over three hundred Commonwealth aircrew failed to return to base that night. Relatively few who parachuted evaded the Germans to return to England. Others survived but remained prisoners until the war’s end. Sadly, 248 died almost immediately. Their number was swelled by those who died whilst prisoners or later, as a result of the wounds they had received. To put the material and human costs into present day perspective, the aircraft losses on the Mailly raid would be the equivalent of losing the entire RAF force of operational attack bombers, the Tornado GR4, in one night! Mailly aircrew casualties would exceed the Tornado aircrew casualties approximately threefold.
When measured against our large losses, what did the raid achieve? Admittedly, the Mailly le Camp garrison was extensively damaged. On the other hand, the Germans were able to restore it to use as a depot for the Jagdtiger, the formidable tank-destroyer carrying the largest calibre gun of any fighting vehicle in the World, within a matter of weeks. Unfortunately for the Allies, Rommel had reacted to an, as yet, undisclosed item of intelligence or to some sixth sense and deployed much of the 21st Division forward to the vicinity of Caen in the days immediately preceding the raid. Here the Division fought bitterly, despite heavy bombing by the RAF, and was responsible for delaying Montgomery’s planned advance until the second week in July.
Whilst the debate over the military value of the raid will continue for many years to come, we cannot but admire the generosity and scale of the response by the French civilian population. Despite a number of their fellow villagers being crushed by falling aircraft, they still gave every possible assistance to the Commonwealth airmen.
In the first instance they defied the curfew and scoured the countryside for survivors. Where these were seriously injured the villagers took them to French or German hospitals. Others fit enough to travel, were passed on to the escape lines such as Comete. In one instance where an airman was shot by the Germans a few days after he had parachuted to safety, the Resistance even kidnapped him from a guarded hospital in order to hand him over to an escape line! The villagers next sad task was to gather the bodies for burial. Even here they managed to turn the situation to the advantage of the escapees by misleading the Germans as to exactly how many bodies, in some cases dismembered, had been recovered and therefore how many survivors were on the run. There is evidence that in some instances the Germans were prepared to turn a blind eye to this ploy rather than to pursue evaders into the surrounding forests dominated by the Resistance.
After the war had ended the French population was able to show its gratitude to those who had participated in the raid on a far greater scale. Most of the airmen who died have been made honorary citizens of the villages where they fell and feature on the local war memorial alongside the French. Furthermore, many crews have their own memorials in the churches or out in the countryside close to their crash sites. Above all the population remembers. Each year the third or fourth of May becomes a day of communal mourning. Children have been taught how much they owe to the airmen buried in their churchyards and, in many cases, now tend their graves.
It is essential that we encourage the younger British generation to understand as their French counterparts do. Then, as the number of veterans sadly but inevitably declines, for youth to take their places in these ceremonies of commemoration and remembrance. Fortunately, this is now happening in increasing numbers. As one fourteen-year-old Air Training Corps cadet poignantly remarked last May “ this is the most important thing I have done in my life “€ť.
Mailly under attack. The camp is bottom right
Tim Nicoll flew during the Indonesian Confrontation in nineteen-sixties as a helicopter pilot on 103 Squadron. He was Secretary of The Mailly Commemoration Support Group and had a great interest in the history of his former Squadron. Sadly Tim passed away in August 2017 and is greatly missed by all who had the pleasure of knowing him.
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