Operation Manna

My dad took part in some of these ops. After flying on the last operational sorties that 75 Sqn completed he wrote “The very next day we were engaged in practice supply dropping. Rumours had been going around that the Germans were about to pack it in and this was shown by the lack of defence on our last trip. We were told that we would be dropping supplies to the Dutch from low level and that the Germans had agreed not to shoot at us, provided we kept to designated lanes. On the 30 April we took off at 4.50pm with our bomb bays full of supplies and dropped them (just by opening the bomb doors) at the racecourse at Rotterdam. It was nice to see the Dutch waving madly and some of them running around in the dropping zone where they were likely to get killed as the bags of flour etc would have done them in for sure. The Germans did not wave and we understood that there had been a few rounds let off at some of the aircraft. On the 2nd of May we did this again but this time we dropped the supplies on a large clear area at Delft near The Hague. In flying on these two trips at low level over Holland we could see very clearly the results of the bombings that had breached the dykes – done to make life difficult for the occupying German forces. Of course it made life difficult for everybody and was probably one of the reasons why the Dutch were very short of food. I took some photos on these (and also on some of the daylight bombing raids) which was very naughty as we were not supposed to have cameras on board.)”