Mosquito: Menacing the Reich: Combat Action in the Twin-engine Wooden Wonder of World War II (28 page)

In the daylight reconnaissance 12 hours after the Peenemünde attack on 17/18 August 1943, photographs revealed 27 buildings in the northern manufacturing area destroyed and forty huts in the living and sleeping quarters completely flattened. The foreign labour camp to the south suffered worst of all and 500-600 foreign workers, mostly Polish, were killed. The whole target area was covered in craters. The raid is adjudged to have set back the V-2 experimental programme by at least two months and to have reduced the scale of the eventual rocket attack on Britain. (
Australian National Archives
)

Bombing up a Mosquito with a ‘Cookie’ for a night raid on Berlin.

Sergeant Derek Smith, an observer/ navigator at 25 OTU, flew his first bombing operation in a Wellington on 10/11 September 1942 and completed his first tour with Pilot Officer Gordon Oldham’s Lancaster crew on 61 Squadron. Promoted to Pilot Officer, Derek Smith flew a second tour, 1 September 1944-12 March 1945, as a navigator on Mosquitoes in 692 Squadron, 8 (PFF) Group. He was awarded a bar to his DFC. (
Derek Smith Coll
)

Canadian built B.XX KB326
ACTON ONTARIO CANADA
was the first of two such aircraft to arrive at Hatfield on 12 August 1943. The B.XX was basically a Canadian-built B.IV. (
via Jerry Scutts
)

A 4,000lb Cookie being hoisted aboard a Mosquito.

Flight Lieutenant Alfred J. Cork DFM of 109 Squadron in January 1945, a month after being shot down, on 27 December 1944 during an Oboe marking operation to Rheydt during the Battle of the Bulge when 200 Lancasters and eleven Mosquitoes attacked the marshalling yards. Cork and his pilot, Flight Lieutenant Hodgson, took off from Little Staughton at about 1300 hours in ML961 T-Tommy. After takeoff it soon became apparent that the cabin heating was not working properly, if at all. Soon after crossing the coast the windows became completely frosted over and visibility was virtually nil but they pressed on. They completed the release run and Cork believes that he had already received the release signal and he released the first TI when a burst of machine gun (or cannon) fire hit them. He could still see nothing through the iced up perspex. ‘Hodge’ signalled to him that they were out of control and pointed to the escape hatch. At that moment, a second burst of gunfire hit them and the aircraft went into a dive. Cork got out. Sadly, Hodge didn't. Cork’s parachute opened and one of his highly prized pre-war fleece-lined all-leather flying boots fell off. He was angry – those boots were a mark of seniority! (Latecomers had to make do with canvas legged boots!) Cork was picked up and transported back to England. (
A.J. Cork DFM
)

A 4,000lb bomb being released by B.XVI MM200/X of 128 Squadron. During the final months of the war, Mosquitoes of the Light Night Striking Force were the scourge of the battered German cities, especially the Reich capital. Berlin, suffered severely at the hands of 4,000lb Cookie-carrying LNSF Mosquitoes. These ‘nuisance’ raids culminated in a devastating series of 36 consecutive night visits against Berlin, beginning on 20/21 February 1945. Of 1,896 sorties flown, only 11 Mossies failed to return from the ‘Big City’. MM200 overshot landing on one engine at RAF Valley, Wales on 27 August 1945. (
Graham M. Simons
)

Aftermath of the raid on the Dortmund-Ems canal at Ladbergen on 4/5 November 1944. Three Lancasters from the 174 dispatched by 5 Group failed to return from the raid on the canal. On 6/7 November when 235 Lancasters and seven Mosquitoes of 5 Group again attempted to cut the Mittelland Canal at Gravenhorst, crews were confronted with a cold front of exceptional violence and ice quickly froze on windscreens. The marking force had difficulty in finding the target due to low cloud and the bombers were told to bomb at low level. Only 31 Lancasters bombed before the Master Bomber abandoned the raid due to low cloud. Forty-eight Mosquitoes dispatched to Gelsenkirchen on a ‘spoof’ raid to draw German night fighters away from the Mittelland attack and a 3 Group raid on Koblenz, had better luck. Gelsenkirchen was still burning as a result of that afternoon’s raid by 738 RAF heavies. Ten Lancasters FTR from the Mittelland debacle. (
via Derek Patfield
)

128 Squadron B.XVIs of the LNSF (Light Night Striking Force) taxi out at Wyton fitted with 50-gallon underwing drop tanks for another visit to Berlin. Mosquitoes flew so often to the ‘Big City’ that its raids were known as the Berlin Express and the different routes there and back, as platform one, two and three. LNSF Mosquitoes raided Berlin 170 times, 36 of these on consecutive nights. (
via Jerry Scutts
)

Flight Lieutenant D.W. Allan DFC, navigator and Flight Lieutenant T.P. Lawrenson, pilot, in front of B.IX LR503 GB-F of 105 Squadron on the occasion of its 203rd operation. LR503 eventually set a Bomber Command record of 213 sorties but was lost on 10 May 1945 along with the crew Flight Lieutenant Maurice Briggs and John Baker, when it crashed at Calgary during a goodwill tour of Canada. (
via Norman Booth
)