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Blazing bomber hero’s VC is up for sale
(Filed: 19/02/2004)
Armed with a fire extinguisher, Norman Jackson climbed on to the wing of his Lancaster as it was attacked by a fighter at 22,000ft. Will Bennett reports
The Victoria Cross awarded to an airman who, in one of the most heroic acts of the Second World War, crawled on to the wing of a blazing bomber at 22,000 feet to try to put out an engine fire is to be auctioned in London. Even by the extraordinary standards of the men who have won Britain’s highest award for valour, the astonishing bravery of Sergeant Norman Jackson during a bombing raid over Germany in 1944 is exceptional.
Jackson clung to the wing as the Lancaster tore through the night at 200 miles an hour under attack from a German fighter.
He then plunged thousands of feet to earth with his parachute on fire but survived when his fall was broken by bushes.
“It is the most incredible Victoria Cross story I have ever heard,” said John Hayward, medal consultant at Spink, where Jackson’s VC and other medals will be auctioned on April 30.
“He knew that he could never get back into the aircraft.”
Jackson died 10 years ago aged 74 and the medals are being sold following the death recently of his widow Alma.
The medals are expected to fetch between £120,000 and £140,000. Bidders may include the RAF Museum and Lord Ashcroft, the former Conservative Party treasurer, who has Britain’s largest private collection of VCs.
Jackson did not have to be aboard Lancaster ME669 when it took off for a 1,000-mile round-trip to Germany on April 26, 1944.
Aged just 25, he had already completed his tour of 30 missions but agreed to stay with the rest of his crew because they had done only 29.
After bombing the target near Nuremberg, ME669 turned for home but was attacked by a German fighter that set an engine ablaze with a burst of cannon fire. Jackson realised that this could ignite an adjacent fuel tank and destroy the aircraft.
He volunteered to climb out with a fire extinguisher despite the fact that the Lancaster was flying at 22,000 feet.
The plan was to release his parachute inside the aircraft and then crawl from the cockpit with two crew members paying out the cords.
With the extinguisher stuffed inside his tunic, Jackson emerged into the freezing, 200mph slip-stream and lowered himself from the top of the fuselage on to the wing. He then threw himself forward and grabbed an air intake on the wing’s leading edge.
Clinging on with one hand he subdued the flames with the extinguisher held in the other but, just as success seemed possible, the bomber banked sharply to the left and he heard the sound of cannon fire.
The German fighter had returned and Jackson was wounded in the legs and back. He lost his grip on the extinguisher, which was swept away, the engine burst into flames again and the slip-stream lifted him off the wing and flung him backwards.
Jackson was now being dragged along on his parachute behind the twisting, falling bomber like a fish on a line.
His two comrades desperately paid out the cords to try to get him clear before they baled out of the doomed aicraft.
Jackson suddenly broke free from the Lancaster but then realised that the fire had spread to the canopy of his parachute. The cords were also smouldering and he gripped the rigging lines with his bare hands to extinguish them.
Because the canopy was torn and had holes burned in it, Jackson was plunging to earth much too quickly but he landed in some large bushes, which broke his fall. His ankles were broken, his hands and face were badly burned and he had shrapnel wounds in his back and legs, but he was alive.
Two fellow members of the crew of ME669 were killed when the aircraft crashed but four others escaped by parachute and were subsequently taken prisoner.
It was not long before Jackson, who was in no fit state to escape, was also in captivity. He crawled to a cottage and knocked at the door but Allied bomber crews were hated in Germany. When the owner opened the door he spat at Jackson and called him a “Churchill gangster”.
But the man’s two daughters took care of him and bathed his wounds while their father fetched the police. “I was lying there like a lord,” he later recalled. “I began to think I was pretty lucky.”
After 10 months in hospital Jackson made a good recovery, although his hands were permanently scarred. The full story of his incredible bravery did not emerge until the surviving crew members of ME669 were released at the end of the war.
Jackson, who had been promoted to Warrant Officer, went to Buckingham Palace to receive his VC alongside another RAF hero, Gp Capt Leonard Cheshire.
“This man stuck his neck out more than I did, he should have the VC first,” Cheshire told George VI. But protocol did not allow it.
After demobilisation Jackson worked as a salesman for a whisky company and he rarely talked about the war.
“If he went to a reunion he would never put his medals on until he got inside the building,” said David Jackson, one of his seven children, yesterday. “It was almost as though they were an embarrassment. He didn’t think that he had done anything out of the ordinary.”
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