RAF Bomber Command's Shocking First Bombing Mission Of WWII
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- čas přidán 9. 04. 2023
- Discover the untold stories of the RAF Bomber Command's first mission in World War II, as brave aircrews embarked on dangerous bombing raids over Wilhelmshaven and Brunsbüttel.
This is the story of the incredible acts of heroism and tragic losses that marked the beginning of a relentless campaign against Germany. Join me as I delve into historical records, unraveling the mysteries and inaccuracies surrounding these events.
This was the birth of a new type of aerial warfare. The sacrifices made by these courageous men, whose actions would ultimately contribute to the defeat of the Axis powers.
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0:00 intro
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These raids where costly in lives but they did pave the way in Bomber Command's ability to accurately fly in bad/night weather over Europe I read about these many years ago. An excellent video about the start of 6 years of war across the globe.
13:38 !!! A Matchless 41 G3 L !!! The bike that made me fall in love with the two wheels!!! I enjoyed it from 1962 to 1997, before me it was my father's and my older brother's workhorse. A practically new machine, having been assembled with all the surplus spare parts of which the military workshops in Italy had an abundance, after the war... Rest in peace, my faithful little mule, wherever you are.
Thought I recognised the name... Herbert Brian Lightoller was the son of Charles Lightoller the senior officer to survive the Titanic sinking (as played by Kenneth More in "A Night to Remember"). Another great video!
Thanks Jerry, I hadn't made that connection with the Titanic.
Lightoller sr was a hardass and a war criminal during WW1 . He needlessly separated families when Titanic sank , forbidding men from getting in the lifeboats with his interpretation of the Captain's orders of women and children first. He did women and children ONLY.
He also machine gunned German submariners after they abandoned the submarine he had sunk .
Excellent video. Claims made in the fog of war must be incredibly difficult to sift through. Well done.
Thanks for watching Simon!
Great video!. My relative was a member of 9 squadron before the start of the war. He was never mentioned in the ORB until around February 1940. But there are pictures we have suggesting he was around earlier and his service record states he was stationed at honington before the start of the war. There were two Turners in 9 squadron and both flew on the September 1939 raid. The one who survived was called Robert/Bob Turner and became the pilot of my relative and actually flew on one of those leaflet raids. I have one of those leaflets at home!. In the book you referenced by Gordon Thorburn, you can actually find a section of the ORB that mentioned Turner and my relative Whittle, whist raiding an airfield in France. I’m always going back to my research to try and find more on my relative. He died in 1941 in 7 squadron when he was only 21. Thank you for the video. It has given more context on the squadron at the very start of the war
Thanks for watching. If you haven't done so already make sure you request his service record from the MOD/National archives. They are in the process of moving records from one to the other and you just need to put the request in with both organisations. It may take some months, but that will help you get some more information.
Interesting video, with such great detail. Thank you. Churchill, on the first day of his PM job, ordered the bombing of German cities( May 1940)So much for the Grand leader! Peace be unto you.
A very well done video. One of the bombs droped on Esbjerg, allmost made me not make this comment. It landed about 200 meters from my mother, age 5 at the time. I have a foto of the house it hit, where a friend of my mother lived. Fortunately, noone was home..
How terrible. Glad she survived it!
I had not heard about this engagement. We will remember them.
Thank you for your dilligence in presenting this action in such a well researched manner.
Still sore they did not receive a campaign medal....
Thanks for watching John. If you ever get a chance to go up to Lincoln, the Bomber Command centre there is well worth a visit. A great place to pay your respects.
Your vids are astonishingly well made, Caliban. I particularly appreciated the "cross check" statement: a wise way of doing research! Another great video, informative, documented and, as sad as it is with all those young lives lost, entertaining.
Thanks for watching Riccardo, I appreciate it!
The air gunners were not enthusiastic erks, they were WOp/AGs, wireless operator /Air Gunners. Fully trained aircrew who at this state of the war were ac1 and ac2 ranks. Only later were all non commissioned aircrew made sgts. The book Blenheim Boy gives a fantastic account of these early missions and a chilling narrative of almost certain death these crews faced.
It's my understanding that pre-1940 and the establishment of the No 1 WOp/AGs training school, those air gunners who flew did so in addition to other ground duties. They were even paid additional flying pay for the time they were in the air.
Anybody who is interested in the early war bomber operations MUST read Guy Gibson's book "Enermy coast ahead" he was flying at this time and on many missions himself. Also at this time many of the radar assits and techniques were not availble to the crews at this time....
Good vieo too, proving bomer command was not just about the Lancaster.
Great investigative work! Love learning about things I've never knew
Glad you enjoyed it!
Well presented. Captivating.
Thanks for watching, I appreciate it!
My Dad was stationed at Wattisham during the 90’s
Bomber Command suffered horrifically at the hands of the Luftwaffe, but it would be very interesting to know how many German planes were destroyed by the RAF on the ground. With the level of research you put into these videos Caliban I've got no doubt you could find out.
I'll put it on my list and see If I can find the right data to answer that question, thanks JB.
Great video.
Glad you enjoyed it
Futile accidents were all too common in WW2. Many hundreds if not thousands died in them.
Thank you for your thorough research and for sharing your video.
I've read a _lot_ of books about WWII over the years. I have also found that one should take them with a huge grain of salt.
Thanks again for watching. I think it's easy to misunderstand an original source (or not have everything available) and it's even easier to repeat a mistake from a secondary source. I definitely fall into this latest trap.
In this case I just so happened to have some of the books and data Thorburn was quoting to hand and caught a few discrepancies. I suppose that's why we'll always have the next generation of historians who come back and review what's been said before.
Excellent story.
Thanks for listening
Usually those aircraft reported as being blow up by own bombs were shot down.
It was a disgrace that after the all bravery, effort and even luck to make it to the target the bombs should be duds. An affront to the men involved.
It made me wonder where the fault occurred in the weapon; was it the fuse itself, or did the very low altitude drop prevent the vane from properly arming the bombs before impact?^ If the former, it's a travesty - if the latter, a genuine tragedy.
^(I'm no expert, but I do know that, at this stage in the war, even veterans were experiencing a learning curve with their weapons' deployment and functionality in battle - torpedoes were a notorious example with issues that *sometimes* came down to the enthusiasm of the users, pressing the edges of the envelope. Could bombs have had somewhat similar 'short' launch issues?)
@@AndrewGivens who knows, quite possibly.
@11:32. Herbert Lightoller. I wonder if he was related to Charles Lightoller, Titanic's Second Officer.
Yes, it was his son.
@@CalibanRising Thanks.
Ah thanks for showing this. To be straight here Bomber Command didn’t have the right bombers and bombs to conduct even anti-ship missions at the start of the War (they didn’t even have radio beacon homing equipment to find targets).
Indeed the start of the War was a huge costly learning curve for Bomber Command. Unfortunately the USAAF didn’t learn from this until much much later on.
"Twenty year old AC2 Ken Day and twenty-two year old AC2 George Brocking, both Royal Air Force ground crew acting as volunteer air gunners for the day, died together when their Wellington L4275 was blown out of the sky during a bombing raid by six RAF No. 9 Squadron aircraft from Honington Air Base, Suffolk, on German battleships at the mouth of the Keil Canal. Both died on September 4th 1939 - the second day of the war.
The body of young Ken Day was picked up ten days later by a cargo steamer between Elbe Lightships I and II and buried two days later with full military honours at Cuxhaven Cemetery. The body of his comrade George Brocking was never found and his name is inscribed on the Royal Air Force Memorial at Runnymede, just one of the 20,547 RAF airmen from World War Two with no known grave.
Londoner George Brocking, and Ken Day from Essex, were non-active members of Mosley’s British Union because of RAF service regulations but associated freely with Suffolk members. One old Suffolk Blackshirt remembers them as ‘courageous and reliable members’ and Brocking’s former District Leader and friend described him as ‘a grand and splendid lad, fond of fun and with an ever ready smile - yet his frequent discussions on the problems of the time, and the British Union’s remedy for them, revealed an intelligence far beyond the average.’
Ken Day, a happy-go-lucky character, had volunteered for, and been accepted by, the RAF’s Advanced Striking Force for operations in France on Germany.
They would have died as they lived: with a smile on their lips, conscious of the odds against them, but fighting to the end - an outlook on life that as Mosley men they would have felt and understood.
These two young men were the first of many members of British Union whose bones lie scattered over four continents, including those who had suffered previous unjust internment under Regulation 18B. Those of us who came back searched in vain for those laughing young faces who had marched three-abreast with us in Mosley’s great demonstrations before the War"
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Excellent video, but what is supposed to be cruiser Emden looks like a destroyer at 10:20
I'd be lying if I said I really knew the difference, but this was one of the only options in the game I use for footage. I did manage to include a colour photo of the right vessel somewhere in the video though.
聽著你的聲音，可以很溫柔地陪伴我入睡~
I'll bring over one of my homebrew beers next time, that will work even better. ;-)
The Lightoller who was KIA. Was he related to The Lightoller of Titanc fame?
Yes, apparently it was his son. Another viewer made the connection for me.
Look at the country now, if they knew what was to happen to their country they wouldn't have sacrificed their lives.
Did he say at the beginning that Brunsbüttel lies near the Danish border? Later on it was correct anyway.
Yeah, I was being liberal with the word "near". Closer than Munich at any rate 😀
(It’s Seh-con-did not second-did. Just sayin’:)
Hadn’t read a lot about this raid. I find the whole ‘Phoney War’ period interesting in that it was remotely phoney. German air attacks on the East Coast colliers is a good example!
Thanks for the correction.
The problem with promises made by country leaders is you have to trust the leader. Hitler had proven himself untrustworthy several times which meant others who had made similar promises would be disinclined to keep theirs. Also the Hague Rules on Aerial Warfare, whilst agreed by negotiators at the time, were not ratified by any of the participant countries by the time of the SWW, so targetting civilians whilst /morally/ wrong, was /technically/ not illegal as no law existed against it. Ergo Hitler's bombing of Warsaw, Rotterdam etc whilst morally repugnant was unfortunately technically legal. It was only the British /moral/ stance against it that prevented us from reacting in kind until much later.
[Actually the navigation at this time was 'Time on target' not 'Dead Reckoning'. ToT was simply to navigate by your watch and drop the bombs at the right time which meant you might not be where you were supposed to be. Dead Reckoning (probably used more after the Butt Report) used the Met Office's forecast of wind speed and direction to work out the course beforehand, and during the flight to recalculate based on observation of where they /actually/ were as opposed to where they /should/ be.]
[BTW WRT early bombing raids, I'd like to see a video about Haddock Force. A short-lived force of Wellingtons based in the - very briefly free - south of France which bombed Turin once just after Italy declared war. The French prevented them from flying any more raids and they were then withdrawn to the UK.]
Thanks for the extra information Julian and for the video suggestion!
@@CalibanRising My MA dissertation was on the British bombing of Italy in the SWW and I found Haddock Force's war diary in the National Archives. IIRC they flew one raid and then their runway was physically blocked.
@@CalibanRising BTW TNA's document reference for Haddock Force is AIR 35/325.
@@julianmhall Cheers mate. I'll make a note of that. I might even have a chance to get to the archives later this year!
Was the picture used around the 2:40 mark colourised? If so they did a terrible job of it, leaving all the ribbons in the same blue as the tunic. I hope you didn't have to pay for its use.
Some of the other colourised photos show the usual poor colourisation with clothing showing multiple colours when they should be a single uniform colour.
Neville Chamberlain looks pretty much like our modern politicians.
At least Chamberlain initiated large scale militarization, after realized he foreign policies didn't work. Modern Western politicians? Not so much.
Poor old Neville, he makes a convenient scapegoat when others were equally culpable. Churchill had the decency to confess publicly that he was just as responsible as Chamberlain for the debacle in Norway. Chamberlain is seldom given the credit for seeing to it that Britain was well armed, and in 1937 authorised massive purchases of Hurricanes and Spitfires for the RAF. Our armed forces now are far, far weaker than they were then, and our modern politicians are incomparably worse than those of the late 30s. Chamberlain survived the vote of confidence but had to resign when Labour refused to join a coalition while he was still PM, and Churchill was seen as the best candidate to replace him.
A couple of points I believe worthy of consideration.
Firstly the misconceived idea prevalent after WW1 , that the bomber would always get through was quickly found to be false . Nethertheless it must have been behind the planners thinking at the time .
The Wellington squadron having difficulty in maintaining station and formation in the cloudy weather was repeated many times by the 8th AF after 1943. Earliest example strangely enough coincided with the RAF's first big success , operation Gomorrah against Hamburg. The USAAF was intended to bomb after the RAF's night attack with a total force of about 350 B-17's . 200 aborted after taking off , as they failed to format because of cloud. A further group aborted not being able to find the target , Some 90 did manage to reach Hamburg but their target Blohm & Voss was obscured by smoke.
The famous Memphis Belle completed 21 of its 25 ops against what would be described by B.C. as soft targets .
The RAF are seen as easy pickings for dissecting and criticizing , usually because of the false premise that they area bombed because being unable to accurately hit a target , In fact the charge was more truthful when applied to the USAAF.
Thanks for the comment James.
You intrigued with with the mention of the Memphis Belle, I'm going to research those targets more myself. Thanks.
It's a shame they weren't armed and trained to use torpedoes like the Japanese. Or trained in the art of skip bombing.