The "Death or Glory Boys" - 617 Squadron

They were formed for a single mission -- and lost eight out of seventeen aircraft in one night. 

Rather than being disbanded, they were handed over to a new CO -- who was killed on his fourth operation, along with his crew and four other aircraft of the eight participating on the raid. That was a loss rate of 63%. Hardly surprising that by October 1943, 617 Squadron was viewed by aircrews as a "suicide squadron" or the "death or glory boys." 

Yet by the end of the war the squadron was known as the RAF's foremost "special operations" squadron. It was the squadron which demonstrated the most cutting edge technologies and techniques and attacked the most difficult and most vital targets from the Ruhr Dams to the battleship Tirpitz.

The survival of 617 was by no means a foregone conclusion. After the Dams raid, Wing Commander Gibson was promptly given a Victoria Cross and was sent off to Canada and the United States on a public relations tour. But the RAF wasn’t so sure what to do with the twelve remaining superbly-trained aircrew and the specially selected ground crews. Should they simply be dispersed? Sent back to other squadrons or training units? That hardly seemed sensible.

Yet at first no one seemed to know what to do with them -- so much so that they got the reputation as a "one op squadron." They even made fun of themselves as, for example, this song, allegedly sung in the Mess, which included the following lines:

Selected for the squadron with the finest crews,

But the only thing we're good for is drinking all the booze....

Main Force go to Berlin, and are fighting their way back,

But we only go to Wainfleet*, where there isn't any flak.

* Wainfleet was the RAF's primary practice bomb range.

 

Then in September 1943, under their new CO, Wing Commander Holden, they were sent on another low-level, night operation against a strategic target: the Dortmund-Ems Canal -- a major "highway" for the transportation of iron ore from Sweden to the Ruhr and for ammunition and war materiel to the Eastern front as well as component parts to the U-boat factories on the Baltic. Six of nine aircraft didn't return, including that of Holden, who was flying with Gibson's crew from the Dams Raid. 

 

That might have been acceptable if the canal had been destroyed, but it wasn't. The raid had been a complete disaster, and in terms of flying personnel 617 Squadron almost ceased to exist. Fourteen crews had been lost leaving only seven crews of the original twenty on the squadron, only four of which had flown on the dams raid. The argument for disbanding the squadron was strong.

Yet someone, possibly Harris himself or AVM Cochrane of 5 Group, decided to try to rebuild the squadron instead. They selected as the new CO a man who would prove to be one of the RAF's greatest leaders in WWII and arguably one of the most impressive figures of the second half of the 20th century: Wing Commander Geoffrey Leonard Cheshire. Although Gibson had technically flown more sorties than Cheshire, many of Gibson's sorties had been as a night fighter pilot during a period in which the enemy was rarely intercepted and risks to the attacking fighter were practically nil. Cheshire in contrast flew 100 operational flights as a bomber pilot -- the equivalent of four full USAAF tours. He ended the war with the VC, OM, three DSOs and the DFC. (Below Wing Commander Cheshire)

 

 

The major difference between Gibson and Cheshire, however, was that Cheshire knew how to make every single member of his squadron from the batmen and canteen staff to the ground and aircrews feel appreciated and respected. Gibson was infamous for being arrogant; Cheshire may be declared a Catholic saint (albeit for what he did after the war, not during it.) Gibson didn't talk to NCOs socially; Cheshire treated them no differently from commissioned officers. Furthermore, the inventor Barnes Wallis testified to the fact that Cheshire, far more than Gibson, was genuinely interested in improving performance and intellectually capable of grasping technical details to an exceptional degree.

Cheshire came to 617 Squadron with the intention of making it a precision-bombing unit which could demonstrate the techniques necessary for improving bombing accuracy in all of Bomber Command. He was passionate about precision bombing because he understood that Bomber Command was paying far too high a price for far few results. He understood that unless accuracy improved, bombing would not have the strategic impact necessary to win the war.

Cheshire shared this passion for much more precise bombing with Barnes Wallis. The latter wanted his innovative (but very complex and heavy) bombs placed no less than 20 yards from the target. Attaining that kind of accuracy when bombing at night with minimal navigational aids and primitive bombsites was more theoretical than possible in November 1943 when Cheshire joined 617 Squadron. Furthermore, "Bomber" Harris showed only marginal interest in accuracy anyway. Harris' plan was to bludgeon Germany into submission, not run it through with a rapier. Harris was happy to "de-house" German workers rather than surgically strike at German industrial capacity. That didn't change Cheshire's mind in the least.

After a cool reception from the veterans, Cheshire set to work rebuilding 617 Squadron. On the one hand, he had to build morale in a squadron which had suffered from devastating losses and whose remaining crews were reluctant to welcome replacement crews -- and COs. On the other hand, although Wallis' latest bomb was not yet ready for deployment, it required high altitude bombing. This meant that in order to prepare the crews for its use, Cheshire had to completely reorient the squadron away from their previous trademark expertise in low-level, night bombing to high-level, daytime bombing. This required a radical alteration of the training program. 

 

Cheshire also had to recruit some fourteen more crews, and initially at least the expectation was that all those crews would have two, or nearly two, tours of operations behind them. It wasn't easy. Cheshire discovered that he could hardly recruit anyone even for his own crew. Some men were reluctant to join a "chop shop." Others dreaded the boredom and slow rate of promotion that came with 617s long gaps between operations. But before very long, the unit's reputation changed.

Cheshire's biographer Richard Morris puts it this way:

617 [under Cheshire] was not so much a select unit as an evolving project in which each operation took some innovative step beyond the last...The squadron was indeed a corps d'elite, ... [b]ut there was more to it than that. As time passed the squadron also worked in conjunction with other units and pioneered techniques which passed into wider use.

After Cheshire's departure, there were to be two more COs of 617 Squadron. Cheshire's immediate replacement was Wing Commander "Willie" Tait, who commanded until mid-December 1944. It was under Tait that 617 achieved what 30 other attempts by ship, submarine and aircraft had failed to do: sink the battleship Tirpitz. Tait  was replaced by the Canadian Wing Commander "Johnnie" Facquier, who commanded the squadron from December 1944 until nearly end of the war. They and the crews they commanded carried on Cheshire's traditions.

 

My novels about the RAF in WWII are intended as tributes to the men in the air and on the ground that made a victory in Europe against fascism possible. 

Riding the icy, moonlit sky, 

they took the war to Hitler. 

Their chances of survival were less than fifty percent. 

Their average age was 21.

This is the story of just one bomber pilot, his crew and the woman he loved. 

It is intended as a tribute to them all.  

Buy now on amazon

or Barnes and Noble. 

 

Disfiguring injuries, class prejudice and PTSD are the focus of three heart-wrenching tales set in WWII by award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader. Find out more at: https://crossseaspress.com/grounded-eagles

 

  

 

 

 

 

"Where Eagles Never Flew" was the the winner of a Hemingway Award for 20th Century Wartime Fiction and a Maincrest Media Award for Military Fiction. Find out more at: https://crossseaspress.com/where-eagles-never-flew

For more information about all my aviation books visit: https://www.helenapschrader.com/aviation.html