101 Squadron and Ludford Magna and Operation Grapple amongst other things.

I thought this would be a good place to post a link to an article on 101 Squadron SOs (Special Ops) ABC Radio Jammers.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-raf-special-operators-in-radio-counter-measures-with-101-squadron

It’s off topic, but I was searching for Grapple / 206 SQN references and up came an image I knew really well – the crew of WG528 waiting to fly off for Grapple X. My Dad (Bill Houldsworth) joined in 1943 as Wop/AG but remustered as a pilot after the War, flew shacks from 1957 all the way through to 1975, when he was posted from 8 Sqn to fly Hastings and from there became Ops Officer at Coningsby and ended up on PA474 starting the week before your dad got his Finningly fly past in. He retired in 1984 after putting in 7 years on the BBMF. I thought you might like to see his log book for Grapple X? He did Grapple 1, X and Z the latter including a sales tour to Norfolk VA of a gleaming new MR3 WR986. I have better pictures from Z. I think your father’s achievements are outstanding, in particular surviving 101 SQN! My father died of cancer in 1991. They are all such a hard act to follow.

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Also to WL745 (Sage?) I’ve stuck on a chunk from the very good John Chartres book “Avro Shackleton” ISBN 0-7110-1513-9 that covers the night in 1961 when they bounced a 204 Shackleton off the sea. This became a bit of a legend and Ive read MR3 pilots saying it was an MR3, I think it made people feel better that the airframe was that strong it could survive it.

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The cross was “lit” as dusk fell and as NX611 ‘Just Jane’ did a taxi run in the gathering darkness the old airfield took on an air of what it would have been like back then as they set off into the unknown. It was a very moving and fitting tribute to those that didn’t return.

As mentioned before I took one of my spare bomb arming spools to Norway to donate to the Tirpitz museum. Don’t ask me how but I had ended up with 4 of them but have now whittled them down to 3. I had searched high and low to try and find pictures of them in situ and had found numerous bomb bay pictures but none had a close up of the spool.

However thanks to considerable help and string pulling by Stephen Elsworth, one of the B.B.M.F. volunteer hanger tour guides and with the co-operation of the flight commander and chief maintenance officer, I was given access to the bomb bay of Lancaster PA474. Here are the results. You can see that these don’t have the steel wire fitted to the spool, possibly to save weight.

This is one of my spools with the wire partially unwound and under spring loaded pressure ready to retract if I release the button under my forefinger. This would have been done electronically by a solenoid in the spool housing. The pin that arms the bomb, when pulled out, would be attached to the spiral clip just where the stores label is tied on.

This shows a couple of bomb arming spools attached to bomb cradles. The winch that was used to load the bombs into the bomb bay is just behind. Picture taken at East Kirkby.

These are various types of bomb fuse and the picture was again taken at East Kirkby.

Thanks Howard. I don’t know where the time has gone since we got back from Norway. It was certainly an action packed long weekend going to the B.B.M.F. for a V.I.P. hangar tour, then East Kirkby for the Nuremberg event, followed by the Blue Bell Inn & Petwood in Woodhall Spa before heading over to you at Newark and finally home.

Here are a few pictures from the Tirpitz museum in Tromso, Norway.

The museum is housed in an old underground bunker.

The reason the destruction of the Tirpitz was such a high priority for Churchill.

Without the X-craft damaging the Tirpitz who knows what the outcome might have been?

Part of the submarine net that was protecting the Tirpitz.

Damage from a Tallboy that narrowly missed it’s target.

Sequence of shots of the bomb strikes.

Items from a Lancaster that had crash landed on one of the earlier raids.

Glad to see you posting again and I like the RAF Blyton keys – now where could they be I wonder? 😀

Well it’s been a while but after my trip to the Tromso Tirpitz museum in Norway at the beginning of March and a visit to Lincolnshire for the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg raid it is time for some more posting.

Here is a taster of what’s coming.

Thank you very much MindOverMatter. I may have a couple of questions for you next week if that’s ok 🙂

No problem Ashley. I’m getting caught up with most of my replies to people now. The article for the L.L.A. is now underway and in the planning stage and pictures have been forwarded with some documents and logs still to go.

Thank you very much MindOverMatter. I may have a couple of questions for you next week if that’s ok 🙂

Brilliant stuff as I said in #2 please keep it coming when you can. This is my favourite thread in the Historic section. I thank you very much for your efforts in posting it all!

Ashley as far as I know he was in an advance party to Christmas island leaving St.Eval on 5 June ’56 and arriving on Christmas Island 26 June ’56 before returning to the UK on 14 July ’56.

He left again for Christmas Island on 19 January ’57 and arrived 28 January ’57 returning 18 March ’57.

He had his first Grapple “X” briefing in the UK on 25 September ’57 leaving for Christmas Island on the 3 October ’57 and he started SAR operations on Christmas Island around 11 October ’57.

The bomb he refers to as No 4 was indeed detonated on Friday 8 November and afterwards en route to the UK on 11 November ’57 they did a 16 hour 40 minute SAR mission looking for a Pan American Airways Stratocruiser (Romance of the Skies) that went down in the Pacific finally returning home on 23 November ’57. He only mentions witnessing just the one detonation which fits with the dates for the others when he wouldn’t have been out there.

Thank you for the replies and all the Private Messages. I am working my way through them so please bear with me. Rest assured I will reply to them all, eventually.

My “101” records alone span 542 pages for 1942/43 and 558 pages for 1944 and each page has 5 different crews and aircraft etc on it so scanning them all by eye, as they are image files not text, is very time consuming. Not to mention coffee consuming. 🙂

Ray (Berkyboy) in Australia I have found 21 pages of logs relevant to your brother W/O Laurie Collins, WAG, RAAF A419981 and his crew from 07/10/44 until 24/12/44. I don’t have logs for “101” in 1945 so my trail ends on Christmas Eve 1944. Please Private Message me an email address and I will get them on there way to you.

I’m also doing an article about “101” for the Lincolnshire Lancaster Association journal. I haven’t written so much since A levels.

I am off to Norway in March and plan a visit to the Tirpitz display in the Tromsø War Museum and have printed a little Lancaster related piece for them courtesy of Howard Heeley. Thank you Howard. I am also hoping to donate a Lancaster bomb arming spool to their collection from my various bits and pieces of instruments and equipment. So it’s going to be a busy next few weeks.

Hello MindOverMatter, welcome to the forums 🙂

I have a particular interest in the Grapple series of tests having spent six years cataloguing the AWRE film collection documenting the British atomic weapons testing programme. I believe the Grapple test you are referring to here is actually Grapple X, conducted on 8 November which certainly tallies with the details in your father’s fascinating letter. Operation Grapple, also known as Grapple 1, was conducted earlier in the year between 15 May and 19 June 1957. Was your father involved in more than one of the Grapple series of tests? Grapple X was followed by Grapple Y in April 1958, which was followed in turn by Grapple Z, a series of four tests conducted between 22 August and 23 September 1958.

Some of you have probably seen this before as it was released to the public many years ago, but this is the version of the ‘Operation Grapple’ documentary which was produced for the Air Ministry. It is one of only a handful of AWRE related films digitised so far but more will follow:

http://film.iwmcollections.org.uk/record/index/18364

Hello MindOverMatter (Mark)- GREETINGS FROM MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA
Thank you for your interesting post. My brother (W/O Laurie Collins,WAG, RAAF) was stationed with RAF 101 Squadron at Ludford Magna from 10 September 1944 till his fatal flight, 16 January 1945, 28 sorties. He also was a member of the Empire Training Scheme, partly trained in Australia and finished in England. He was a member of a crew made up of 4 RAF, 3 RAAF, and 1 RCAF- Seven of the 8 crew were killed but one Australian meraculously survived their crash.
Over the years, I have found it difficult to get photos of “active” aircraft with the ABC equipment-I was told that it was highly illegal at that time to take photos of these planes, due to the secret nature of the ABC equipment..
I too am extremely interested in any information regarding my brother, W/O Laurence COLLINS, and his crew.
Thank you for your very intering post, Mark. a ns subseguent authors of the posts.
berkyboy (Ray)

MOM. Thank you SO SO much for you PM. Absolutely fascinating.

Operation Grapple 1956-1957 60 page booklet

All previous British atomic tests had taken place in and around Australia but for testing weapons of the scope involved in Operation Grapple they needed somewhere more isolated. It needed favourable wind and weather conditions for air and sea operations and an island in the Pacific was deemed most suitable. Christmas Island was remote from any inhabited area and had a suitable harbour for landing supplies and scope to build an airfield from scratch capable of handling Valiants and other large aircraft like the Shackleton.

The logistics to maintain a large force of various types of aircraft 10,000 miles from U.K. maintenance facilities was immense. Not forgetting the fact that some aircraft were war-time transports and others the latest up-to-date medium bombers. In the end 10,000 tons of ground equipment and spares in 15,000 packing cases was sent out and that’s not including fuel, oil and compressed gasses etc.

All the armed services were involved in detailed and varied ways. Put simply the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy sorted sea patrols and transport. The Army did the building work and the RAF as well as dropping the bomb did meteorological reconnaissance, cloud analysis after the burst, transport, SAR and patrolled the exclusion zone.

Friday 8th November “H” bomb No 4 letter home

Diary entry: Tea. Dinner. Couple of beers. Life goes on!

We donated most of the Operation Grapple items to 206 Squadron, just keeping the letter, the diary and the booklet after letting the squadron historian copy them.

Hi Janie. I shall have a look through my logs and see if I can locate anything on Henry de Solla for you.

I think my multi subject thread title may have caused some confusion. Operation Grapple was in November 1957 and my father was a navigator in a 206 Squadron Shackleton so this was much later than his time with 101 at Ludford Magna.

Edit : Had a look whilst waiting for some Operation Grapple downloads.

I have found details for 25 of his missions. The earliest on 7/6/44 not long after my father’s last trip on May 31/5/44. They continued on to 23/10/44. Then from what I can see he might have then been replaced in his regular crew a few days later on 25/10/44. I’ll try and download some of them tomorrow.

Hello Mens Agitat Molem

I am extremely interested in anything to do with 101 at Ludford Magna, particularly Henry de Solla, who was a Special Wireless Operator. He spoke very little about his time at the squadron. Although he did not mention Operation Grapple by name, he did describe to me how he managed to survive a particular mission when most of the others failed to return. He completed a full tour of duty and I have his log books buried somewhere, too deeply to be retrieved easily, unfortunately.

(Previously known as “Janie”.)

MindOverMatter, I’m also looking forward to seeing the printed item. The project is progressing reasonably well; I’m awaiting a call about it this morning and hopefully it should meet its production deadline!

I sometimes use a similar Christmas Menu when talking about World War II / Rationing with school children who are visiting Newark Air Museum. I use a Christmas 1944 menu from RAF Winthorpe and like your example it featured a wide range of choices over several courses. We often debate ‘forcemeat stuffing’ but the big comments always come when you get to the cigarettes!!

Hi TwinOtter23. No problem regards the RAF Blyton items for the West Lindsey project. I can’t wait to see it in print.

As well as being very methodical and ordered my father was also a bit of a hoarder so his photo album, log books and diaries often have little bookmarks or additional bits of memorabilia tucked away amongst the pages. You never know what may be lurking as you turn the next page.

This menu gives a little snap shot of life in the Sergeants mess in 1943 at Christmas. Not a bad spread considering.