Mosquito: Menacing the Reich: Combat Action in the Twin-engine Wooden Wonder of World War II by Martin Bowman Read Free Book Online Page A

form up into the echelon position. We climbed 12,000ft on a heading of 045° NE and started our trip to Oslo.
    The North Sea is a long trip and we had been told that the water was so cold we would last only 2 minutes in it. I don’t remember worrying too much about it on such a beautiful day. We relaxed and enjoyed the scene just below us: snow covered mountains and bright sunshine. Willis and I did not talk much, if at all. Each of us absorbed in our own thoughts, thinking of what could happen and Willis no doubt wondering what this bastard was going to do next. We cleared the Norwegian coast, with the Oslo Fjord to our right. The target was ahead of us but not in sight, lost in the haze. Suddenly bursts of flak came up, seemingly one for each aircraft and right on altitude. This was the first time that I had seen, heard and smelled flak all at the same time and we flew through the cloud. Wing Commander Curry called out for us to descend on target, probably with his usual ‘Tally Ho’. He started to dive and we followed his movements. No.2 disappeared from my view and left a gap between the leader and myself. He told No.2 to close in and after a couple of instructions like that I realised I was the one he called No.2. I had already pushed up my throttles at the start of the dive to close the gap. I broke radio silence to tell him I was No.3 and closing fast. Everything happened so quickly. We had of course fooled the flak defences by our diving attack and at last: the target. Bomb doors open, wait for right moment, push the button and hold at 1,000ft. I felt two concussions that closely followed one another. There was no smoke, no dust. I then pushed lower over the city and I saw an open-air skating rink with people skating around, unaware of the chaos and explosions behind them. 151
    Suddenly No.4 was descending down on top of us. Once again I had to break silence and suddenly what seemed to be a mountain loomed up right in front of us and as we changed our straight and level to a steep climb, flak came off the mountain, then we were up and over. Curry ordered us to break up, every man for himself. I was doing a left-hand turn to head back when I saw a valley to our right. I slid down into the valley and kept at a low level. We passed over the coast and I began the climb back to our operational altitude of 28,000ft. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and no enemy aircraft were in the vicinity. I didn’t know until years later that the second wave did not drop their bombs. All they saw was smoke and dust at the target site and would not risk killing Norwegians. 152
    Squadron Leader Peter Mallender in D-Dog was briefed to lead the second wave of six aircraft, which were ordered not to bomb unless they could see the target. 153 Mallender recalls:
    I was instructed to follow our intrepid leader after an interval of 5 minutes. I did and the German naval gunners quickly learned how fast a Mosquito could travel in a dive. All the aircraft in my flight were hit.
    Mallender’s navigator was Flight Lieutenant Wallace ‘Johnno’ Gaunt DFC ,who had been a forester and much later, a glider instructor who had also completed thirty-three operations on Wellingtons on 466 Squadron. Gaunt recounts:
    We had been briefed to expect flak from the hillside of the fjord. In fact the Prinz Eugen with its flotilla of destroyers was just to starboard of our low-level mid-day attack and they were most unfriendly. We suffered massive damage and I got a cannon shell through my right leg, exposing but not breaking the bone. I later found a small arms bullet in the left-hand breast pocket of my battle dress. It had travelled through the tube of gentian violet and a field dressing.
    Mallender continues:
    It missed the back of my head and went out through the Perspex top. Another hit removed the whole of the curved part of the port leading edge outboard of the engine leaving the very flat and unstreamlined bare main spar to face the force of wind of a