Colin Stokoe is the nephew of two 102 squadron members, Wilf Bell, a rear gunner who completed a tour with the New Zealand pilot Arthur Carey, and Arthur Brown a mechanic in one of the ground crews.
In 1993 Colin wrote a piece for the Pocklington Post all about this crash, and he has kindly given us permission to reprint it here, MANY thanks to you Colin.
In January 1943 Bill Comrie and his crew came to Pocklington where 102 Sqn had a Conversion Flight which instructed crews on four engined bombers after their earlier training on two engined aircraft. This Conversion Flight was to be disbanded on 10 March 1943, when the practice of having Conversion Flights within operational squadrons changed to that of separate Heavy Conversion Units.
Bill Comrie was taken through Heavy Conversion Training by the Fiight Commander, W. J. ("Wally") Lashbrook DFC, AFC, DPM, MBE, who has been rated as one of the most experienced Halifax pilots in Bomber Command. In his book ‘Terror by Night' Michael Ranaut, DFC includes an account of Wally Lashbrook's remarkable escape after being forced to bale out over Czechoslovakia. By night he walked alone through Germany and into France, There with the aid of the 'Rabbit Run‘ escape organisation he reached Lisbon where he read in a copy of ‘The Times‘ the notice "Squadron Leader Lashbrcok, DFG, missing believed killed". When 102 Sqn Conversion Flight was disbanded, Wally Lashbrook went to the new 1653 Conversion Unit at Rufforth but later went back to Pocklington as C Flight Commander. Although he also operated from Dishforth, Topcliffe, Dalton, Leconfield, Driffield, Marston Moor, Linton –on-Ouse and Rufforth he said that, "I always considered Pocklington as my main airfield". Wally Lashbrock wrote "I remember Comrie and was very favourably impressed with his abilities".
When the crew had finished their training at Pocklington in early March 1943 the phase of the war know as the Battle of the Ruhr was beginning. It was primarily in this campaign that Bill Comrie and his crew were to be engagedduring their time here. The crew would not know it as the Battle of the Ruhr; It was only with hindsight that Sir Arthur ("Bomber"} Harris, the Commander-In-Chief of Bomber Command, was to so name it. In the previous five months the tide of the war had turned in the Allies' favour with victories at El Alamein and Stalingrad. However the D Day landings were still 15 months away and in March 1943 it was still only the strategic bombing launched from Pocklington and other airfields which was carrying the wax tn Germany itself. Bomber Harris was to Call the period from spring 1943 to spring 1944 his 'main offensive'.
The Battle of the Ruhr was to last from March to July 1943. It included the famous Dams Raid of May 1943. Less glamorous were the regular night bombing raids on the cities of Germany's industrial heartland in the Ruhr Valley - towns such as Essen with its Krupps armaments factories and Duisberg with its docks.
This was not of course the first time that attacks had been launched on the Ruhr from Pocklington. In fact the crew of a Canadian Halifax of 405 Squadron based at Pocklington had styled itself the ’Ruhr Valley Express’ in the previous year. These attacks of were skirmishes by comparison with the attacks which were about to take place. During these three months 58, 000 tons of bombs were dropped on Germany, more than the RAF dropped in the whole of 1942.
These vital targets were heavily defended. The Ruhr was sometimes referred to by crews as *Happy Valley". As we will see, Bill Comrie and his crew were to experience the ferocity of the wall of flak which surrounded these towns.
The exact date of the start of the Battle of the Ruhr was 5th Match 1943. On that night 442 aircraft from Bomber Command attacked the Krupps armaments factories 1n Essen. The raid was very successful. 160 acres and 53 separate buildings in the Krupps armaments works were laid waste. 12 Halifaxes from Pocklington took part in this raid. The crew of Flying Officer Barnes reported seeing fires burning in Essen from as far away as Amsterdam on their return journey to Pocklington.
Bill Comrie was not yet ready for operational duties on March 5th. On that day he was on his last training flight with Wally Lashbrook. When Essen was attacked again on March 12th it was the turn of Bill Comrie and his crew to do their first operational raid from Pooklington. They were with 10 other Pocklington Halifax’s. Weather and visibility were both good.
Night bombing raids generally set off shortly after dusk, with some account being taken of the distance to the target. On this night they set off at 7:27pm. They bombed from 18,000 feet on the red target indicator laid by the Pathfinders . They sustained a few small flax holes in the fuselage, but returned safely to Pocklington just after midnight. Three of the other Pocklington aircraft failed to return. The Rear Gunner in another aircraft was wounded by an attacking German aircraft, and the pilot had to land away to get him to hospital. The raid generally was successful and it was assessed that the Krupps factory received 30 per cent more damage than in the raid of 5th March.
There were no raids from Pocklington for another fortnight. On the night of 25th March the target was Duisberg. Bill Comrie’s crew took part in the raid with 12 other Pocklington Halifax’s. They took off from Pocklington at 7:52 pm. The raid was one of the few failures in the battle of the Ruhr, mainly because it was a cloudy night and five of the Pathfinder Mosquito aircraft which were to have placed sky markers had to turn back owing to technical problems. There was 10/10 cloud over Duisberg. William Jenkins managed to get a red sky marker in his bomb sight and bombed the primary target. But then it was found that two of the 1000 bombs had hung up and these were jettisoned at 10:09 pm a few miles west of the target. Another Pocklington aircraft had the same problem and had to jettison a 10001b bomb. Although Bill Comrie's crew noted that the searchlights were not penetrating the clouds the flak certainly was. One wing had a small hole and so also did the oil tank on the other wing. They returned to Pocklington just after l pm.
Not all targets during these months were exclusively in the Ruhr Valley. On 9th March for instance nine aircraft from Pocklington had made the long haul to Munich, a round trip of over eight hours. Targets outside the Ruhr were attacked in order to avoid the concentration of German defences in one area. On the night of 27 March the target was Berlin. The proper Battle of Berlin was not to begin until the winter of that year, Berlin was much further away than the towns of the Ruhr. In a direct line from Pocklington Berlin was a distance of nearly 600 miles, compared with just over 300 miles to the Ruhr.. Even before the target for the night was officially made known to aircrews, ground crews could often guess from the unusually large amount of fuel they were asked to load that the likely target was "the Big City".
Berlin had seemed such a difficult target that Goering had promised its inhabitants that if any enemy bombers penetrated that far into Germany then he was a Dutchman. The first RAF raid on Berlin was on 25th August 1940 and cynical Berliners were to come to know Goering as “the fat little Dutchmen". On 30 January 1943 Mosquito aircraft were bombing Berlin in daylight as Goebbels and Goering addressed a rally to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Hitler's regime. The raid on 27th March was to be the 59th RAF visit Berlin.
Senior officers in RAF Squadrons did not have their own aircraft, but some would from time to time take, return to flying duties for a single raid. On that night it was not to be Bill Comrie who captained 'G-George' on its first trip to Berlin, but no less than wing Commander George Holden DFG. who had been the Squadron Commander since October 1942 (the Station Commander at that time was the famous Gus walker, the RAF’s youngest Air Commodore). Bill Comrie was stood down that night, as was Myles Squiers. A Pilot Officer Such and a Flight Sergeant Clark also joined the crew for the one night, making the crew number up to eight.
There was no cloud on this night. ’G-George’ set off for Berlin with eight others Halifaxes from Pocklington at 8:01 pm and returned at 2:40 am. 0nce more their aircraft was holed by flak, but this time it was a single burst which hit Douglas Harper's maps and cut his finger.
The next night, March 28th, the crew were stood down, as were most of those crews on the Berlin raid. Seven other aircraft from Pocklington took part in a raid on the U Boat pens and harbour at St. Nazeire. A sister of Arthur Brown’s bride to be in Pocklington was also to marry an airman of 102 Squadron. Arthur's brother-in-law to be , Sgt. Wilf Bell, did his first trip from Pocklington on this night in the crew of the New Zealand pilot.
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