70 years ago tonight – Nuremberg Raid

My Dad flew on both the Berlin and Nuremberg raids and was also on the same Squadron as Cyril Barton VC for both raids. Dad was proud that “his” squadron was the only 4 Group Halifax squadron to earn a VC albeit at a terrible cost. On the Nuremburg raid Dad witnessed several aircraft going down but he and the crew had a quiet night as such Dad crediting the strong winds blowing them further south on the return leg. Having said that they were lucky not to add to the loss tally. They were advised that they could not land at Burn, their home airfield, as an aircraft had crash landed closing the airfield and were diverted to Elvington. Due to being blown further south fuel was becoming critical. Having called up Elvington they didn’t get any response and with the F/Eng saying they were nearly out of fuel the Pilot went straight in and landed despite light ground fog. It was just as well as having just turned off the end of the runway the engines quit, out of fuel. A lucky end to the trip for them.
In regards to the route taken for the Nuremberg raid Dad said that when the curtain was pulled back and the crews saw the route gasps of disbelief were heard all-round the briefing hut.
Type683

The Barton Centre , Ryhope , County Durham

I wrote these notes for the Airfield Information Exchange forum and thought they may be of interest here too ?

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Raid which took place on the night of 30-31 March 1944 and was the largest loss suffered by Bomber Command in one Operation during The Second World War when 95 aircraft , 64 Lancasters and 31 Halifaxes , were lost .

One of those Halifax bombers was flown by Cyril Barton whose name and heroic deeds passed in to Ryhope folklore that night and whose name is still as much revered today as it was then in 1944 . That association continued today , Monday 31 March 2014 , when four glass panels dedicated in his memory were unveiled at the soon to be opened ‘Barton Centre’ by his sisters Cynthia Maidment and Joyce Voysey . The Barton Centre forms part of the new Hopewood Park Hospital which is being built to replace the Cherry Knowle Hospital were Cyril Barton was taken to following his crash-landing and were shortly after his arrival , he died of his injuries .

I was privileged to attend the dedication service at the invitation of Alan Mitcheson who as a schoolboy saw the Halifax crash and who tirelessly fought for many years to have Cyril’s name added to the local war memorial . I have attached below a story from The Norther Echo of 25 March 2004 in which Alan recalls his experiences of that fateful night ;

John North: The boy who watched the plane go down

As a lad of 11, Alan Mitcheson witnessed the death throes of a hero pilot’s plane, before it crashed into a hillside at Ryhope.

SIXTY years to the day after Cyril Barton earned a posthumous VC – “gallantly completing his last mission in the face of almost impossible odds” – his courage will be remembered at a moving North-East ceremony next Wednesday.

The story is a sequel to last week’s column, in which we revealed plans for a service this Sunday at the former RAF base at Skipton-on-Swale, near Thirsk, to mark the air battle over Nuremberg from which 95 of 795 British bombers never returned.

“Ninety five out of 795 mightn’t sound much if you say it quickly, but I can tell you it was pretty hairy that night,” says 82-year-old Len Lambert, Barton’s navigator.

Attacked by Luftwaffe night fighters, their Halifax had suffered major damage, wrecking – among much else – the internal intercom. Misunderstanding the emergency light code, Len Lambert and two other crew baled out over Germany and were captured. “For months,” he says, “we didn’t know that Cyril and the others had completed the mission and got home.”

Pilot Officer Barton dropped the bomb load himself, then without a navigator tried to head back to RAF Burn, near Selby, using only a small compass and a flight map strapped to his leg.

Off course, crippled and desperately short of fuel, the first lights he saw were of the colliery village of Ryhope, south of Sunderland.

Alan Mitcheson, then just 11, not only vividly remembers that late March dawn but has turned his dining room in Silksworth into a “virtual memorial” to Cyril Barton – a hero he never met.

Alan’s 19-year-old brother was killed in the D-Day landings a few weeks later. “I thought the world of my brother and I sort of paired him and Cyril together,” he says. “They both left an everlasting impression on my mind.”

The all-clear having sounded about 5.30am, Alan and his parents had just left the Andersen shelter at the bottom of the garden when he identified the sound of another approaching aircraft – one of ours, but in trouble.

Fighting to avoid the densely populated village, and to control his plane, Barton demolished the last house in a miners’ terrace before crash landing the Halifax into a nearby hillside.

“It went over the houses at no more than 100 feet, banked to the left and then went down over the houses in front of me,” says Alan, subsequently an airman himself.

Wreckage was scattered for hundreds of yards. The three remaining crew survived; the pilot died a few hours later in the nearby Cherry Knowle hospital. George Heads, a Ryhope miner, was also killed after being struck by the aircraft’s tail on his way to work.

Len Lambert, now in Ponteland, near Newcastle, recalls an “extraordinary ordinary man”, a good friend who’d only have soft drinks in the pub and who kept his deeply held religious beliefs to himself. After Pilot Officer Barton’s final mission, however, his family were given a last letter which revealed that he had no fear of death. “I have trust in Christ my saviour.”

Len heads a party from the North-East Air Crew Association to the service at 11am at Ryhope war memorial; Alan Mitcheson will lay a wreath of red, white and blue carnations with a VC centrepiece on behalf of Cyril Barton’s three surviving sisters before guiding a tour around the much changed crash site – and the housing estate named Barton Park two years ago.

He’d campaigned for years for greater recognition for Barton’s gallantry before the war memorial plaque was unveiled in 1984.

“At first the council wouldn’t do it because they said he didn’t belong to the area. I was totally devastated; as if it mattered where he came from.

“It was the only VC won by No 4 Group Bomber Command. I’ll tell you this; they didn’t give them out willy-nilly.”

The centre was mentioned in the Daily Mail on Saturday , 29 March 2014 , in a feature article on pages 16 and 17 ;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti…-unmarked.html

Websites of the local press have now posted details and photogrpahs of the dedication ;
The (Newcastle) Journal ; http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/nor…h-east-6900633
and
The Sunderland Echo ; http://www.sunderlandecho.com/what-s…lass-1-6532662

May I respectfully recommend to the house :
The Nuremberg Raid: 30-31 March 1944 by Martin Middlebrook.

An excellent read as always from the amazing Mr Middlebrook.

Agreed completely. Also, The Bombing of Nuremberg by James Campbell is worth a read.

(Although certain people’s memoirs are worth avoiding due to the paucity of detail or even mention)

May I respectfully recommend to the house :
The Nuremberg Raid: 30-31 March 1944 by Martin Middlebrook.

An excellent read as always from the amazing Mr Middlebrook.

I used to think average losses of 4% (someone will let me know if I’m wrong) for each operation seemed not unsustainable but it’s incredible to think they were able to maintain operations night after night, week after week. While the odds for the individual might have seemed reasonable for one trip, a tour of 25 or more meant, of course, that you were statistically unlikely to make it. The maths is frightening!

Not really. The bombers weren’t routed over the night-fighter beacon…

…the Luftwaffe (logically) used the night-fighter beacons that lay under the route the bombers took!

Germany and the Occupied Countries were covered with night-fighter beacons and ground-direction radar stations; there weren’t great big gaps that Bomber Command could route the bombers through. That was the whole point of the ‘bomber stream’ to route as many bombers through as small a piece of sky as possible so that the defensive ground-control radar stations (especially) would be saturated.

The German night-fighter controllers correctly guessed the target early on and the predicted cloud cover did not materialise. It was a long straight leg for much of the route (especially with the headwind) but the night was clear with good moonlight; the night-fighters had no problem following the bombers when they did make a sharp turn into the run-up to the target.

The real reason for the losses was just that Bomber Command was pushing its luck by going so far into Germany on such a clear night; it gave the defending fighters too much opportunity to score kills…

…and the night-fighters had had plenty of practice during the recent months of the ‘Battle-of-Berlin’.

Among many key issues leading to the Nuremberg disaster not already mentioned, was an almost direct routing to the target by Main Force which took them right over the main night fighter assembly beacon in use that night.

Now that is a good piece of the puzzle,, that wasn’t a smart move at all, like putting a fox in the henhouse.

If you want to obtain some background info on the night bombings I can recommend

Alfred Price’s Instruments of Darkness: The History of Electronic Warfare, 1939-1945

Alfred Price is absolutely one of my favorite authors and this book is on my ‘To read again’ list

Take care

J

Indeed, the fighter beacons, the much stronger than forecast winds… these are just some of the unarguable factors. Add in the possibilities that there was political pressure to hit that particular target before switching to support Overlord and various other possible subtexts. RIP the crews lost – Not Forgotten.

Among many key issues leading to the Nuremberg disaster not already mentioned, was an almost direct routing to the target by Main Force which took them right over the main night fighter assembly beacon in use that night.

I would ask also how would the night fighters radar work on a plane made mostly of wood, same for ground radar, how much less of a radar signature does a mosquito have?

I think it is a bit of a myth that a Mosquito, or any wooden aircraft, had a smaller radar signature that an equivalent sized metal aircraft; the part of an aircraft that provides the best radar target are the propellers.

Mosquito night-fighter crews would surely train and practice interceptions against other Mosquito night-fighter; I’ve never heard of them experiencing any difficulty with radar. Also the British night-fighter defences relied on seeing both the enemy intruder and the defending fighter on radar so that steering instructions could be broadcast from the ground; if the defending Mosquito was not clearly visible to radar how would this work? (Unless an identification transponder was used?)

Steve,, since I live in the USA the odds of me seeing that programme anytime in the near future are pretty slim, to none. With the night fighter score being so high I would assume a full moon and a cloudless night, care to be a little more specific?

That plus ineffective diversionary raids, lower than normal contrail levels, probably other reasons too.

The losses on that raid were largely caused by a unique set of circumstances and did not give a true reflection of the overall loss rate during Bomber Command’s night campaign…

Absolutely. Six nights earlier Bomber Command had lost 72 out of 811 aircraft (8.9%) bombing Berlin but four nights earlier only 9 out of 705 aircraft (1.3%) bombing Essen and on the same night 0 out of 109 aircraft bombing Courtrai.

Nuremberg was an aberration, a minor aberration, and did absolutely nothing to prevent Bomber Command roaming virtually at will over Germany and Occupied Europe, causing great damage, governed only by the losses that Bomber Command was willing to accept.

One statistic from than night surprises me: the Germans, I think, flew about two-hundred-and-fifty night-fighter sorties. Given that that is about one night fighter for every three bombers flying the operation and the fact that most bombers were shot-down by a relatively few ‘experten’ it goes to show how difficult it was to stop Bomber Command and that, perhaps, only one in ten of the night-fighters flown even saw a bomber, let alone, shot at one!

Moggys comment on an all mosquito force made me wonder some more,, since its faster, intercepting it would be more challenging to the defenders, I would ask also how would the night fighters radar work on a plane made mostly of wood, same for ground radar, how much less of a radar signature does a mosquito have? if any?

a few yrs. back Lockheed Martin built a mock up of the Horton flying wing, using the same basic construction materials, mostly wood as the original Horton, the radar signature was substantially below aircraft of the same era would that be because of the wooden construction or the shape?

Steve,, since I live in the USA the odds of me seeing that programme anytime in the near future are pretty slim, to none. With the night fighter score being so high I would assume a full moon and a cloudless night, care to be a little more specific?

Would the RAF have been better off flying more day missions?

It has long been acknowledged that possibly the best of all possible solutions would have been an all-Mosquito force. Though without knowing what the German response would have been it’s pointless just to extrapolate from the actual Mosquito loss rate (at about 10% of the Lancaster’s)

The 8th AF had some very hard times until the P51 arrived in numbers. I think Stirling massed daylight raids would have been carnage.

Moggy

The losses on that raid were largely caused by a unique set of circumstances and did not give a true reflection of the overall loss rate during Bomber Command’s night campaign. There are many theories about Nuremberg and I have recently contributed to a major TV documentary which examines what went wrong in a lot of detail. I have no broadcast date for the programme as yet.

….79 just to night fighters. Is there a particular reason losses were so high on this raid??

Which leads me to a related question.

With losses like those it appears that the RAF did not find protection in the night…the reason for their nocturnal bombing in the first place.
While direct comparison with USAAF losses probably are meaningless, is it possible that whatever defense advantages were gained by flying at night were lost by not having escorts and massed protective formations?

Would the RAF have been better off flying more day missions?
Are there statistics that compare RAF Heavy bomber losses in day vs. night missions?

That is a staggering number,,,79 just to night fighters. Is there a particular reason losses were so high on this raid??

i quite agree with your sentiments david

the simple statistics are overwhelming

we do well to remember such sacrifice