They Spread Their Wings (21 page)

One day in late July 1944, Wg Cdr Scott came to grief when he fell from a ‘liberated’ horse that he was riding around the airfield. Its hooves slipped on the steel matting used to form runways and taxiways for the aircraft and the horse fell on top of Desmond Scott, breaking his leg in several places and putting him completely out of action for over three weeks. The leg was also badly lacerated and he was admitted to a local Field Hospital where he was operated upon. Scott was desperate to stay at B7 and not lose command of his wing – for which his promotion to group captain was imminent – by being hospitalised in England, so he pulled every string possible to get ongoing treatment at B7 by a surgeon who happened to be awaiting a posting to England. During his recuperation, though, Scott’s wounds became badly infected and it was only by the swift scrounging of the new wonder drug penicillin from a nearby American Field Hospital by No 609’s MO, Fg Off George Bell – in exchange for a bottle of whisky – that the threat to Desmond Scott’s leg, and possibly his life, was removed. Shortly afterwards, Scott’s promotion to group captain was confirmed and he conceded that during his hospitalisation: “‘Farmer” Dring had filled my shoes as Airfield Commander and kept me well informed on the activities of the Wing.’ It could be a matter for speculation that if, as the Field Hospital had suggested, Wg Cdr Scott had returned to England for treatment, Walter might himself have been promoted to command No 123 Wing.

In August 1944 the names of Mortain and Falaise would become synonymous with the Typhoon and that period might even be seen as the zenith of the Typhoon’s chequered and much-maligned career. At the beginning of August, following the devastating effects on the German army of a series of huge air raids by Allied heavy bombers, the British and Canadian armies had at last fought their way through Caen and were now south of the city, poised to push down the road to Falaise, 16 miles distant. The big British push, Operation Totalize, kicked off on 7 August; the same day as Operation Luttich, a German counter-attack – sometimes referred to as the Mortain counter-attack – began. This latter was an attempt by four Panzer divisions, at the western end of the German line of battle, to head for Avranches, through Mortain and cut off Gen Patton’s American forces that had broken through to Le Mans. Providing air support for the 21st Army Group, No 2 TAF was brought in to attack the German Panzers around Mortain, and with the ‘cab rank’ and VCP (Visual Control Post) system working well at squadron strength, 294 Typhoon sorties were flown, resulting in the German attack being crushed with little progress made. No 123 Wing’s RP Typhoons knocked out eighty-seven tanks that afternoon.

By 10 August, Totalize in the eastern sector and Luttich in the western sector had both run out of steam. This, however, left the majority of the German Seventh Army and a large Panzer Group in a pocket, almost surrounded by the Americans from the west and south, and the British, Canadians and Poles from the north and east. There was a diminishing ‘mouth’ to this pocket, located south-east of Falaise.

The Typhoon squadrons had a field day. On the 10th, No 609 Squadron mounted three operations at squadron strength, hitting tanks and motorised troop transport. Walter Dring led the last one at 18.30, going after some tanks in the Vassey area. Dring was airborne again the next day, when the squadron attacked a chateau and other HQ buildings near St Quentin, leaving them blazing from the effects of the rocket attack. Flying sorties almost every day, Walter’s logbook notes:

7th. One flamer, one AFV [Armoured Fighting Vehicle], one carrier. 8th. Weather very bad. 9th. Wing total for day: 16 tanks, 85 MET [Mixed Enemy Transport]. 9th. Lost Tolworthy and Thuesby. 10th. Very heavy flak, no tanks visible. 12th. Blew up ammunition trucks, wizard sight. 13th. Clobbered two Tigers. 14th. Two smokers. 17th. Destroyed 17 trucks. 18th. Two trucks destroyed.

Realising the predicament they were in, pressed on all sides and harried constantly from the air, on the 11th the Germans began a major retreat. They made an enormous effort to extract the 7th Army and the Panzers through the mouth of the pocket near Falaise, around Trun and Chambois – the location that became known as the ‘Falaise Gap’ – and escape to and across the River Seine.

On 12 August, heavy and medium bombers pounded transportation routes out of the Falaise pocket and, by that evening, German manpower and equipment was in full, almost panic-stricken, flight. Thousands of tanks, half-tracks, infantry lorries, petrol and ammunition vehicles, and horse-drawn transports were all being squeezed into an ever-narrowing area measuring about 7 miles by 6 miles. The RP and bomber Typhoons of No 2 TAF hammered the tightly packed roads trying to close the gap. Hobbling on crutches at the base airfield, Desmond Scott wrote:

The withering, terrifying power of our fighter-bombers and rocket Typhoons began scorching the battle area with methodical ferocity. The Falaise Pocket became the chopping block and graveyard of Hitler’s 7th Army. Dring and the No 123 Wing squadrons blasted their way through blazing hot days of maximum activity. The Falaise Gap was closed on 20 August but elements of armoured formations outside the pocket, together with the remains of the German tanks inside, tried desperately to force it open again. This situation caused the [Allied] armies some concern and 123 Wing was called in to tidy it up. It proved to be one of the finest close-support operations in the history of No 84 Group.

This was Walter Dring in his element!

On 18 August a fierce ground battle developed near Chambois, but Canadian troops linked up with the Poles and closed the mouth of the Pocket – although it was still a tenuous situation and the Germans frantically tried to force an opening again. By the 20th, the enemy counter-attacked with tanks and fighting became severe around Vimoutiers, particularly against the Canadian 4th Armoured Division and the Polish Armoured Brigade, who were just 2,000 yards apart on opposite sides of the River Vie and found themselves outnumbered and in a difficult situation. The recommendation for an award of a decoration to Walter Dring, who had by this time flown 245 operational fighter sorties totalling 300 hours, stated:

The position of our troops was critical and air support was requested. During the confused land battles of the previous two days, friendly aircraft had unfortunately attacked our own troops on a number of occasions and this target was accepted with some misgivings. Wing Commander W. Dring, the Wing Commander Operations of No 123 Wing, was asked whether he regarded it as a practicable operation for RP Typhoons. He undertook it without hesitation and asked if he could lead all the squadrons of his Wing in the attack. Permission was given and orders issued for the attack, which was carried out, in spite of low cloud and intense flak, with faultless precision and timing.

The success of this heavy attack, in which thirteen tanks were destroyed and eleven damaged, carried out in such close proximity to our own troops, did much to restore the Army’s confidence in air support and was instrumental in neutralising the enemy counter-attack. No 123 Wing’s consistent success in ground attack operations with RP Typhoons is very largely due to Wing Commander Dring’s careful planning, thorough briefing and dashing leadership.

At this most crucial point Walter Dring arrived at the head of thirty-two RP Typhoons from Nos 164, 183, 198 and 609 Squadrons. About 100 German tanks and armoured cars were rolling out of a wood and Dring’s formation caught them as they emerged. Plt Off W.T. Lawson, one of the attacking pilots, recalled: ‘I was flying number two to Dring. He was first to fire his rockets then he orbited the wood giving instructions throughout the attack.’ They claimed seventeen ‘flamers’ and many damaged.

Walter Dring was awarded an immediate DSO and it is well known that the jaws of the trap (the Pocket) remained firmly closed. Inside the Pocket the Germans left behind 1,300 tanks, 1,500 field guns, 20,000 vehicles and 400,000 troops, half of whom were taken prisoner. Remnants of the German 7th Army retreated across the Seine as best they could, harried constantly by No 2 TAF’s Typhoons. This action in effect marked the end of the Normandy campaign; Paris was liberated a week later and the advance towards the River Rhine began. Walter Dring’s star was at its zenith, too.

* * *

No 123 Wing’s first move from B7 was to airfield B23 at Morainville, south of Evreux, on 3 September, but three days later it made a great leap to airfield B35 at Baromesnil, inland from Le Treport. On the 11th another leap took it to airfield B53 at Merville, near Armentières, a permanent airfield with long concrete runways, recently vacated by the Luftwaffe, where it would be joined by No 135 Wing. In less than a week No 123 Wing had leapfrogged from Bayeux almost to the Belgian border. During this period the four squadrons were still engaged on operations at the call of the army over a wide area, some of these involving ops against German enclaves in the ports of Le Havre, Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk.

By this time Desmond Scott, his plaster cast removed, was back in full working and flying order and he and Walter Dring – together with their squadrons – were working well as a team in this frantic race to keep up with the army. Desmond Scott spoke of their relationship:

After weathering the triumphs and tragedies of Normandy and the blistering heat of battle, Dring had become my brother. We had always got on well, even back in our Tangmere days, but now we were veterans, drawn closer by the forces of survival. We had, in the previous four years, lived through a thousand lifetimes. We had become the products of the battle skies and of the cold, hard facts of war. During the day we did not see much of each other for, unlike the Spitfire squadrons, Typhoons normally ferreted around in the battle zone in small formations and it was a full-time job for [Dring] conducting the many briefings that were part of our close-support operations. In front of the squadron personnel I was always ‘Sir’ and he ‘Dring’ but in the evenings, when flying was finished, we would meet in my caravan to discuss the day’s activities on the same level. Then he became ‘Dringo’ and I ‘Scottie’. A drink or two and [Dringo] seemed to finish back on his Lincolnshire farm. I, too, had spent most of my childhood surrounded by sheep and horses and we talked about farming well into the night. It diverted our minds from the menacing skies, the mud of Merville and the thousand fears of an unknown future.

During mid-September 1944, much to the disgust of its commanders, No 123 Wing was not called upon to provide close support in the battles raging around Arnhem. However, the wing became heavily involved in ‘clearing-out’ operations against the German army bottled up in the Antwerp area around the Scheldt. Antwerp was vital to the Allies and it was captured as early as 4 September, but shipping could not be brought into the port until the Germans were removed from Walcheren – and the fortifications there were strong, with well-camouflaged heavy coastal guns and huge bunkers. First the wing was asked to provide ground attack support for the Canadian army clearing out the Breskens ‘pocket’ opposite Flushing. This ground objective was achieved by 22 October and gave the army a point from which to launch an attack on the strategic Walcheren Island, a tough nut to crack.

While all this was going on, No 123 Wing moved to B67 Ursel, west of Ghent, on 29 October. The amphibious assault on the island began on 1 November, but at Ursel airfield, like all the other No 2 TAF airfields, No 123 Wing was grounded by fog. Reports filtered through about the seaborne forces encountering great resistance and being desperate for air support. George Bell’s recollection of this situation was that Group HQ telephoned Gp Capt Scott to tell him air support ops were being called off and Scott replied that he was ‘not going to leave those poor bastards with no air support … and 123 Wing will be over Walcheren in the next hour or two’. And it was. Scott and Dring constantly monitored the weather situation and when they walked along their low-lying runway, the fog seemed thinner. They knew they could take off directly towards the destination and that the flight path to the target area would be at sea level, so Scott decided to risk it, hoping visibility would be good enough along the route. He called a full wing operation; everyone to fly! Desmond Scott briefed his wing to operate in two formations; he would lead the first formation of two squadrons and when airborne would decide whether or not to continue. If he did not call an abort, Walter Dring would take off leading the other two squadrons.

Scott’s formation took off and within a few minutes found the cloud had lifted to 500ft and visibility improved. He was soon joined by Dring and when the four squadrons arrived in the target area they took up a patrol line off the coast between West Kapelle and Flushing. Scenes of devastation could be seen below, with broken vessels, bodies floating in the water and soldiers wandering around. German heavy guns were still keeping up a deadly bombardment and Desmond Scott recalled:

It was a moment or two before the well-camouflaged heavy coastal batteries barked out their messages of death and we could pinpoint the seat of the trouble. But immediately we saw their flashes we answered them back and every time a gun fired, four Typhoons set upon it. As though stirred by the scene below, each pilot pressed home his attack almost into the gun barrels. Rockets exploded against the steel and concrete, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in salvoes. Flak flew in all directions, but we raked the flak guns with our cannon fire. We kept the pressure on and before long, the guns along the southern perimeter of the island ceased to fire.

The weather cleared even more during the day, allowing No 123 Wing and the others of No 84 Group to mount many more attacks on fortifications in other parts of the island. Walcheren was taken within days and the seaway into Antwerp was no longer under threat. No 123 Wing’s contribution on that critical day was acknowledged in a signal from Admiral Ramsey, the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief Europe: ‘The timely and well-executed support by your rocket firing Typhoons when 80% of the landing craft were out of action, undoubtedly was a vital factor in turning the scales to our advantage.’