CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE - Part One
The Retaliation
Following the release of the mauling received by the Channel Fleet, the news grew even graver for the Allies when the Hungarian press announced the triumphant victory of the Hungarian Army in the capture of the Yugoslavian provinces of Pristina and Nov Pazar on October seventh and eighth. With the loss of those two provinces, Yugoslavia was completely cut off from any sources of supplies save those provided by the naval forces of the Allies, which were coming under a great deal of harassment from the Italian Navy.
Under pressure to make a desperate attempt to save the Yugoslav Kingdom, the Imperial General Staff pulled the Royal Marines under Lord Mountbatten out of Denmark and put them upon their transports and had them begin sailing for the Mediterranean, leaving the Royal Airborne Army to hold Kiel and assist the Danes in defending the Danish frontier. While the French government and the French High Command both promised to provide forces to support the remaining British forces in northern Germany, it was wildly rumored within the halls at Aldershot that the General Staff put little to no faith in those assurances as the French had done nothing in the first month of the war other than allow their ships to be sunk beneath them and to grow fat and lazy within the confines of their beloved Maginot Line.
As if the situation was not bleak enough, it was also decided that due to the threat of a rapid thrust into Denmark by the Germans, the RAF would begin pulling its squadrons out beginning with the squadrons based in the south. Things looked forlorn the British Paras and many sat in their defensive positions and simply waited for the inevitable German retort to their invasion.
Excerpt from The Death of Nations
By Edgar Bryce Fellows
Paris University Press, 1960
***
RAF Odense
Odense, Denmark
October 7, 1939
At four-thirty in the morning he woke to the whistling wind swirling around the barracks, and then the deliberate, determined footfalls of the duty sergeant.
“You gentlemen are operational! Out of bed, gentlemen!”
Standing in the open doorway, bringing with him the unseasonably coldness that marked the Danish autumn 1939, after several seconds with not a soul stirring the gruff NCO cheerfully growled coarsely,
“Move your arses, sirs, the Group Captain’s briefing begins in thirty minutes!”
Ten minutes later, the air crews plodded through the mess hall for their pre-mission meal, no conversation, just tense and anxious men wondering if they would survive this mission or if this was their last meal.
Twenty-five minutes after the duty sergeant first kicked open the barracks door, the assembled command aircrews, pilots, navigators and bombardiers, were assembled at the air base’s makeshift briefing hall. Crowded together, the thunderously loud din of mumbled conversations wondering what the mission of the day was going to be almost muffled the sound of aircraft engines being fired up by busy ground crews. Exactly thirty minutes after being awoken, the bomber crews jumped to their feet as their commanding officer strode into the room.
“Good Morning, lads,” Air Vice Marshal Alexander D. Cunningham’s voice cutting through the sudden tense silence like a knife. The crews were instantly on edge, knowing that having the AVM of the Command coming to their briefing meant little to no good news. Turning to face the assembled aircrews, Cunningham continued bluntly.
“As you are all already thinking it, I’ll confirm it. This is not a good thing having me here, but it’s happening all across Denmark. Today’s mission is going to be different from the ones we’ve been flying for the last several weeks in that we are not returning to Odense. Jerry is lined up to march back into Denmark and the General Staff feels that it is time for us to pull out and fight another day.”
Drawing back a curtain that revealed the wall-sized map of Northern Europe, Cunningham allowed the aircrews to examine the red tape that was placed on locations forming aerial routes to the target, routes that would hopefully steer the bomber formations clear of enemy anti-aircraft batteries. Also located on the map was the Initial Point of the bomb run, the Rally Point following the bomb runs, and if necessary, secondary targets. Most importantly were the aerial routes back from the target to their new center of operations. Taking a deep breath, he continued.
“As you can see, we’re going to do our best to protect the Paras as much as possible by inflicting as much damage as possible on the forces Jerry has lined up to come at us. After you drop your bomb loads, lads, our Command is heading for southern Sweden to set up shop.”
Stepping away from the map and searching the aircrews, the AVM spoke with a humorous growl,
“Flying Officer Randall, pay attention!”
“Yes sir,” the young pilot, who had picked up the unfathomable nick name of
Polynike, replied as he stood up, slightly unsure. It was never a good thing to be singled out by an Air Vice-Marshal.
“When we get to Sweden, sirrah,” Cunningham smiled,
“would you please make sure that yourself and Pilot Officer Cadigan do you best to refrain from angering to many fathers? Your squadron leader and the rest of the Command staff have more than enough on our plates to deal with without having to keep some young girl’s father from attempting to lynch you to rascals!”
As the men erupted in laughter and Randall dropped to his seat with a grin, Cadigan, whose fellow pilots teasingly called
Nikolai the Mad Russian, jumped to his feet.
“But sir, it was all an honest mistake!”
“Oh, sit down, Nikolai,” Squadron Leader Alfred “Mooses” MacFarlaine, smiled wearily.
“Once or twice a honest mistake it be, six times is not!”
The Command intelligence officer, Wing Commander Derek Pullem, brought the air crews back to the moment by clearing his throat loudly.
“Gentleman, certain young officers not withstanding,” he began with a sly grin,
“as in all briefings, today’s intelligence briefing is three quarters optimistic thinking and one quarter blind luck, however, let’s have a go at it, shall we?”
“Thanks to the fellows over in Fighter Command, we shouldn’t run into very many Messerschmitts in or out of the area, but we will be dealing with quite a bit of Jerry’s lovely fliegerabwehrkanonen* so be aware.”
The rest of Pullem’s briefing was interrupted by a grizzled Flight Sergeant dashing up and breathlessly handing him a note. Reading the note quickly and paling slightly, Pullem handed the note to the AVM who had stepped forward as soon as the Flight Sergeant made his appearance. Glancing at the note, Cunningham snorted loudly and then looked to the hushed aircrews.
“Gentlemen, we will need to cut things short. It seems Jerry is not willing to wait for us and has begun his attack. The Paras are doing what they can to hold him back, but cannot promise much. Get to your aircraft and get airborne. If you are loaded, find the closet Jerry formation and make your attack run, if you don’t have a bomb load, gather what every ground crew and supplies you can and make for Sweden. God Speed.”
Racing from the briefing hall, the aircrews quickly collected their flak vests, fleece-lined leather jackets, flight gloves, parachutes, personal side arms (some crewmen taking the efforts to carry as many as three weapons and enough ammunition to make a Para proud), flight helmets, radio and intercom headsets, and oxygen masks before sprinting across the runway to their aircraft. All across Denmark the scene was the same at each aerodrome being utilized by Strike and Strategic Command squadrons. If there was any bedlam created by the German surprise attack, the aircrews found no evidence of it amongst the bustling ground crews who had stopped loading the strategic and tactical bombers of the two Commands on the flight line for combat and begun loading them for evacuation.
*
Much to the chagrin of the planning staffs of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) and Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), the German offensive into Denmark, Operation Herbstdonner*, failed in its primary objective, namely the destruction on the ground of the RAF’s Strategic and Strike Command squadrons flying out of Denmark. Thanks to RAF preparation for such an eventuality by having those Commands operating from aerodromes far from the Danish/German frontier, the initial thrust of the German offensive had little direct effect upon the RAF’s bomber squadrons. There was also that added benefit that many of the aircraft of the Strategic and Strike Command squadrons were in the process of being prepared for take their combat missions when the offensive began, a fact of which allowed the majority of the RAF bomber squadrons, and their support staff and ground crews, to flee Denmark with little trouble, albeit without the majority of their combat stores.
The same could not be said for the RAF squadrons of Fighter and Interceptor Commands. The Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons, due to their shorter combat range, had the misfortune of being located at aerodromes closer to the frontier, and thus were the first of the RAF to feel the fury of Operation Herbstdonner.
Not needing to prepare for their missions as early as their compatriots in Bomber Command, the pilots, ground crew and support staff of Fighter Command were only beginning to prepare for their day’s missions and many were caught completely unprepared. Being the closest to the frontier, the Interceptor Command squadrons based at the grass aerodrome of Sønderborg took the brunt of the damage, and lost many Hurricanes on the ground to artillery fire.
Hurricanes of Squadron 118 caught on the ground by Operation Herbstdonner
Western Denmark’s Tønder County, were many Spitfire squadrons were based at the small grass landing strips that were scattered throughout the county, also took a great deal of damage from Herbstdonner. Here, however, came the second failure of the German offensive as the attack into Tønder had been delayed by a full hour, time which allowed the Spitfire squadrons the ability to evacuate a good portion of their support staff and ground crews to the airfields about Aalborg and in southern Sweden. This evacuation did not come off as smoothly as the one undertaken by Bomber Command, unfortunately, and dozens of Spitfires were destroyed on the ground.
Spitfires of Squadron 266 evacuating from the Tønder region
Despite Operation Herbstdonner’s simultaneous attacks against Royal Airborne Army positions in Kiel and Denmark from Hamburg, Lübeck and Pomerania, and overrunning several airfields before being forced to a temporary standstill by the British Paras, the RAF had been able to evacuate relatively unscathed from the offensive and in good order. Despite the failure of Herbstdonner to destroy the RAF in Denmark on the ground, the attack had forced the destruction and loss of great quantities of stores and provisions, which effectively made the RAF squadrons useless in prosecuting the war effort on behalf of the Allies, a fact that saved the careers, if not the lives, of several of the operation’s principal planners at OKH and OKW.
Excerpt from The Aerial War of World War Two
By General Johannes Steinhoff, Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern*
Georg-August University of Göttingen Press, 1972
* -
fliegerabwehrkanonen - roughly translated as flight defense cannon
* -
Herbstdonner - Autumn Thunder
* -
Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern - Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords
Up Next: Operation
Herbstdonner's impact on the Royal Airborne Army...
