Woodhall Spa - UK Airfield Guide

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Woodhall Spa




WOODHALL SPA: Military aerodrome

Aerial view
Aerial view

Note: This picture (2006) was obtained from Google Earth ©


Not a lot left these days, but, looking at a WW2 map of the airfield signs of the runways and parts of the perimeter can still be discerned.



 

Military user: WW2: RAF Bomber Command         5 Group

97 Sqdn  (Avro Manchesters, late Avro Lancasters)

617 & 619 Sqdns (Lancasters)

627 Sqdn (Mosquitos)
 

Post WW2: 109 Sqdn (Mosquitos)
 

Location: NE of B1192, N of Tattershall Thorpe, 2nm SE of Woodhall Spa, 6nm SSW of Horncastle

Period of operation: 1942 to 1964

 

Runways: WW2: 18/36   1280x46   hard           06/24   1829x46   hard
                         12/30   1280x46   hard

 

NOTES: In his excellent book Bomber Crew John Sweetman relates an interesting story told by Sergeant George 'Johnny' Johnson who had joined 97 Squadron based here. “When his ambition to become a pilot had not been realised, he trained as an air gunner. Arriving at Woodhall, Johnson found the Squadron needed bomb aimers for its new Lancasters and agreed to be retrained. Meanwhile, he completed ten operations as a gunner with different crews.”

This story somewhat undermines the notion that all bomber crews were made up of a closely bonded bunch who would go through hell and high water together. The sadder truth is that many crews were made up from ‘gash’ airmen for a number of reasons, not least because some crew members had been injured or killed on previous missions.

But, back to the story: “ One trip with a single 8000lb. bomb underlined the twin problems of navigation and target identification.” (My note: This was in 1942 when these were still major issues). “On this occasion his aircraft was piloted by a Wing Commander, who had the squadron navigation officer on board to carry out the navigating and bomb aiming in accordance with current practice. Arriving in the target area, the pilot noticed a concentration of explosions and fires away to port. He promptly blamed ‘those bloody fools’ for attacking the decoy target.

Instead, he flew south and the bomb was dropped in the face of ‘no opposition’. Johnson recalled that ‘all hell was let loose when we got back. The Wingco. continued his tirade about everybody bombing the wrong area.’ That is, until the photographs were developed, which showed his aircraft had bombed another town 80 miles south. Johnson observed that they had been ‘a little off course, as it were’, adding semi-apologetically that ‘the approaches to the target were very, very similar’.

What isn’t mentioned of course is that this bloody big bomb fell, quite possibly, on people not in any way engaged in the war effort. Who knows? Perhaps making wardrobes or piss pots or clocks etc. Even today the industrial base of Germany is still well hidden away and dispersed. Visit any small town tucked away and you will invariably find at least one factory, usually very well organised and managed, and often equipped with the latest, and expensive, tools and machinery.


A LESSON TO BE LEARNT?
Oh dear, what a cock-up! One reason I include this is to illustrate that seniority, whether in an air force or an airline does not always equate to competence to actually do the job. Indeed, often a more widespread problem whereby senior management almost everywhere invariably appear very reluctant to respect, or even seek, advice from those who can actually do the job! For those to whom this problem is of great interest I can highly recommend The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong by Laurence J Peter. Just an aside, airlines often bring out very senior staff, (invariably mostly desk-bound), for the prestige of flying very notable VIPs, (such as members of our Royal family), whereas these passengers would arguably be in safer hands if flown by highly experienced line pilots. 

 

A BETTER SOLUTION
In his excellent book Wings Patrick Bishop explains that in the run-up to D-Day the RAF had made big improvements regarding bombing accuracy, and: “…when sent against small targets (with strict instructions to avoid casualties among the civilians they were about to liberate)….”

But, it still wasn’t good enough. “The use of a Master Bomber to go in low and mark the objective became standard. One of the greatest practioners was Leonard Cheshire, commander of 617 Squadron.” 617 Squadron had of course risen to fame when led by Guy Gibson to bomb the dams in the Ruhr region of Germany and immortalised in the 1951 film “The Dam Busters” directed by Michael Anderson and containing, I think, arguably some of the most moving sequences ever filmed about the realities of going on a raid.

However, back to Wings: “In March 1944 Cheshire and Group Captain Monty Philpott, the station commander at Woodhall Spa…..had prepared a paper on how the squadron’s bombing performance might be improved. It could already count on getting 60 per cent of the bombs it dropped within 100 yards of the target. Cheshire hoped to better that. At that stage, aircraft tasked with dropping markers arrived at the objective at the same time as the main force, which had to hang around in the flak-filled skies while Target Indicators (TIs) were dropped from heights of 5,000 to 8,000 feet. The memorandum argued that the target should already be marked before the bombers arrived.” Reading this came as news to me, and I am of course assuming that Mr Bishop has his facts correct here? (I'm certain he has) As this method seems so blatently obvious and clearly sensible I am amazed it took so long to be introduced. Indeed I had always believed this was standard practise from the time ‘Target Indicators’ were first introduced.

“Also, to ensure precision, the marking should take place at the lowest possible level. To do so in a Lancaster was suicidal. Cheshire and Philpott proposed that smaller aircraft should be used, preferably a Mosquito.” The Mosquito was very fast too and, I would imagine, as the airframe was made of wood it would have had a small presence on radar? “The proposal was accepted by Ralph Cochrane, the commander of 5 Group to which 617 belonged, and two Mosquitoes were duly delivered.”

Initially it did not go according to plan: “The new technique was called ‘Mossie marking’ and it was pioneered in a raid on Brunswick on 22 April 1944, with good results. The first time it was used in France, however, it resulted in a qualified disaster. The target was a panzer base near the village of Mailly in the Champagne-Ardennes region and the attack was due to go in just before midnight. The operation required expert marking and 617 Squadron, which by now had four trained Mosquito crews, was brought in. Cheshire led the team and the marking was good, so he called the main force to tell the bombers to begin their runs. By an appalling mischance, however, the controller’s VHF set, was swamped with an American forces radio broadcast and he could not communicate the order. In the ensuing delay, the target had to be marked again. In the meantime German fighters appeared and shot down forty-two Lancasters, more than 11 per cent of the force. The raid was nonetheless a success. But there were misplaced accusations that Cheshire’s perfectionism had contributed to the debacle.”

Hold on a mo – who exactly made these accusations? It seems to me blindingly obvious that at a higher level, somebody, or more probably certain persons both in the British and American forces, had utterly failed to arrange the use of suitable radio frequencies by either party. Sadly, huge numbers of examples involving utter incompetence exist in countless accounts written by aircrews - to such an extent that one really has to question if this was always the case, or perhaps evidence of the existence of 'moles' working for the Germans?  
 


THE FLYING BOMB MENACE
“617 Squadron would play a major part in the immediate post-operational air strikes to disrupt the German counter-attack, and on the V-weapons sites that menaced London and the South East. Their role on D-Day itself was psychological. They were tasked with executing Operation Taxable, which was part of the great deception strategy utilized in the run-up to the invasion to convince the Germans that the landings would be in the Pas de Calais. Research suggested that Window – the aluminium strips dropped on bombing raids to blind radar defences – could also mimic the presence of a mass of shipping. After dusk on 5 June 1944 the squadron took off from Woodhall and headed to a point off the Sussex coast to line up with a small dummy fleet. They then began flying back and forth towards the cliffs of Cap d’Antifer near Etretat along a fourteen-mile front, dropping Window all the while. When dawn came up at 4 a.m., their task was over.”

Small wonder 617 Squadron were given this task. Condidering the navigation aids then available, to keep this up for four hours in the dark and make it look convincing must surely be one of the finest feats of precision formation flying witnessed in WW2? And, of course it provides the clue to another aspect of WW2 which eventually led to the Allied Forces becoming victorious. Unlike anything seen before, the outcome this war was very dependent on technical innovation, deception techniques, intelligence gathering etc. Sheer brute force, the traditional method of waging war, was not enough, not by any means.

 

THE ‘TALLBOY’ EPISODE
Once again I will quote Patrick Bishop from his excellent book Wings: “On the night of 8-9 June, (My note, just after D-Day which proves just how flexible this squadron was), 617 Squadron went to work with a new weapon. It was the 12,000 lb ‘Tallboy’ bomb, another product of the mind of the inventor Barnes Wallis. The Tallboy was made of strong, light molybdenum steel, twenty-one feet long, and tapering to a point that was as sharp as a pencil and fitted comfortably into the bomb bay of a Lancaster. Wallis had given his bomb a perfect aerodynamic shape and arranged the fins so that they would impart an increasingly rapid spin. As Tallboy passed through the speed of sound it attained a velocity that drove it a hundred feet into the earth. Wallis had established that shock waves rippled more powerfully through earth and water than they do through air. Thus, the bomb did not have to score a direct hit to destroy a target.”

“The objective that night was the main railway line running from the south-west – where German units were held in reserve, including the soon-to-be-notorious Das Reich division – and Normandy. The aim was to bring down a bridge and collapse a long tunnel in the area of Saumer on the Loire to block the flow of reinforcements. Four Lancasters from 83 Squadron (My note: Then based at RAF CONINGSBY) were to drop flares and deal with the bridge. The tunnel was reserved for 617. The target was marked by Leonard Cheshire, Dave Shannon, an Australian veteran of the Dams Raid, and Gerry Fawke in Mosquitoes. Nineteen Tallboys were dropped, collapsing not just the tunnel but the whole hillside above it.”

“Four days later Hitler ordered the the first of his ‘revenge weapons’, the V-1 flying bombs or ‘doodlebugs’, to be despatched to fall randomly on London and the South East."


BOMBER FLEET
Quoting from the most excellent book Bomber Command by Max Hastings, first published in 1979: "In May 1942 there were 214 Wellingtons, 62 Halifaxes and 29 Lancasters among the front line of 417 aircraft. By January 1943 there were only 128 Wellingtons left, and 104 Halifaxes and 178 Lancasters among the total of 515 first-line aircraft."

So just how, the more perceptive might ask, did 'Bomber' Harris, Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Commend, achieve the '1000 bomber' raids at the end of May 1942? The answer is that he exploited everything at his disposal, mainly from OTUs (Operational Training Units) with bombers manned by instructors with the best of the trainees coming along for the ride.

There are two aspects we need to remember. Up to this point Bomber Command had singularly failed to make any notable impact on the war. Also, the war was not going well, so this idea was very welcome in the corridors of government. The propaganda value was huge. Köln (Cologne) was the target and the damage inflicted was immense. Many people today are surprised that the cathedral survived - easy enough to explain as that was the target centre - and the RAF couldn't be expected to hit it - unless by pure accident.

It was during this period that tour of duty comprising thirty missions was introduced, and operational aircrew capable of doing basic arithmatic, realised that their chances of surviving were very slim indeed. But still they climbed into their bombers, knowing that they were the only way the British had of hitting back at Germany . And they all had vivid memories of the cities the Germans had visited during the 'Blitz' campaign. This was 'pay-back' time, and they were leading it.

The basic arithmetics don't tell the whole story. A novice crew was generally lost within the first six operations - gun fodder in WW1 terms. Those that survived stood a much better chance and devised a wide range of techniques to enhance their chances. But all knew that sheer luck really was the main factor.

 

 

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