Sub-Lieutenant Mike Janson was an officer on the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Bulldog. They were in the North Atlantic, returning to Liverpool, carrying in the secure hold an Enigma coding machine, together with the Offizier procedures and settings. This invaluable prize had been seized the previous day from U-110 by Lieutenant David Balme, leader of the boarding party from Bulldog, after she and the Royal Navy sloop HMS Broadway had attacked and disabled the U-boat. Although Mike Janson had not been a member of the boarding party he was officer of the watch when the U-boat had first been sighted. U-110 sank while being towed by the British. The taking of the Enigma was a pivotal moment in the struggle to intercept and decode encrypted orders from the German High Command. (After the war, Mike Janson continued to serve with distinction in the peacetime Royal Navy until his retirement with the rank of Rear Admiral in 1960.)
The RAF was active over Europe on the night of May 10/11, 1941. Five Bristol Blenheims attacked shipping off La Pallice in western France - no ships were hit and no aircraft were lost. (Sergeant Andy Martin was the navigator of one of the Blenheims. To Stuart Gratton he described the flight bitterly in terms of great duration and danger, with no apparent purpose or effect.) The shipyards, power station and central area of the north German port of Hamburg were attacked by a mixed force of one hundred and nineteen bombers. Thirty-one people were killed and nearly a thousand others were injured or bombed out of their homes. Fires were started in several parts of the town, destroying the Kosters department store, a large bank and the Hamburg Stock Exchange. Four British aircraft were lost. (Wolfgang Merck was a fireman in Hamburg at the time of the raid and he described a night of much confusion and activity, but in the morning the authorities discovered there was not as much permanent damage as they had feared while the bombing was going on.) Another twenty-three RAF aircraft went to Berlin, causing damage in widely spread areas. Three aircraft failed to return. (Hanna Wenke, a schoolgirl in 1941, described a hot and uncomfortable night in the shelter beneath her parents’ apartment building, with no apparent damage in her suburb of Berlin the next day.) In addition to the main bombing efforts another twenty-five RAF bombers were sent on minor operations, including minelaying in the Kattegat; no losses were reported.
Police Sergeant Terry Collins was on firewatching duty on the night of May 10/11 at the Houses of Parliament, with particular responsibility, along with other members of Westminster Police, for the safety of Victoria Tower. After nightfall the Luftwaffe launched what turned out to be the biggest raid of all on London. Breaking with their normal practice of concentrating on the industrial areas and docks in the East End, the German bombers ranged far and wide across London, with few areas of the capital entirely free from bombing. The most concerted attack took place in the West End and surrounding districts, areas which until this night had been left relatively unscathed by the bombing. More than one thousand four hundred Londoners were killed during the night and another one thousand eight hundred were injured. In excess of sixty thousand homes were destroyed or damaged; many important buildings or famous landmarks were devastated. The debating chamber of the House of Commons was ruined by explosion and tire. The BBC took a direct hit, but managed to continue its activities during and after the raid. Westminster Abbey sustained hits by at least fifteen incendiary devices. Buckingham Palace was hit. The British Museum was bombed. Big Ben was hit by a bomb, halting the chime but not the clock. Shops and offices the length of Oxford Street were burned out. Gas mains, sewers and telephone connections were seriously damaged. Victoria Tower, for which Sergeant Collins was responsible, was at the time shrouded in scaffolding for essential cleaning and repairs. The presence of so many wooden planks attached to the outer structure presented a serious fire risk. Shortly after midnight, a rain of incendiaries fell in the immediate vicinity. Most of those falling on the streets were dealt with swiftly, but one that lodged in the scaffolding close to the top of the tower continued to burn brightly. Sergeant Collins grabbed a heavy sandbag and climbed up the scaffolding ladders and platforms to reach the fire. After a strenuous climb, Sergeant Collins quickly extinguished the fire with the sand and returned to the ground. (He told Stuart Gratton that he thought no more about his actions until the following year, when he was awarded the George Cross. By this time he had moved to the British mandated territory of Madagascar, where he helped oversee civilian security matters during the transition. He remained on Madagascar throughout the upheavals caused by the struggle for independence. When the Republic of Masada was declared in 1962, Chief Superintendent Collins was forced to return home with the other British administrative and diplomatic officials.)
In the early evening of May 10, Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took off in a twin-engined Me-110D from the Messerschmitt factory’s airfield in Augsburg, Bavaria. He carried with him a plan for peace between Britain and Germany, commissioned and authorized by Hitler, which Hess intended to deliver in person to Winston Churchill. He landed his plane in Holland for refuelling. Shortly after taking off again, his plane was intercepted by German fighters, which first attempted to make him land, then later tried to destroy his aircraft with machine-gun fire. Hess managed to elude them and headed out across the North Sea. The smaller fighters gave chase for a while, before dropping back. More Luftwaffe fighters, based in occupied Denmark, also took off in an attempt to intercept his aircraft. They returned to base, claiming that they had shot down his plane over the sea, but in spite of vivid descriptions and corroboration of each other’s stories, the pilots were unable to provide conclusive proof. (Hess completed his mission to bring peace.)
Then, latterly, there was Flight Lieutenant Sawyer, RAF Bomber Command. Churchill said Sawyer was a registered conscientious objector who was also an operational bomber pilot. Churchill’s memorandum to his departmental staff required them to discover how this came about. No official reply was recorded. Nearly sixty years later, Stuart Gratton, whose own family had a tradition of pacifism, sensed a story. What was it about? In particular, what might Sawyer have been doing on May 10, 1941?
Part Two: 1936-1945
1
I was a serving officer with RAF Bomber Command from the beginning of the Second World War. My entry into the service was by way of the University Air Squadron at Oxford, where I was a rowing blue at Brasenose College. In those early years I had two passions: one was rowing, the other was flying. I had no interest in war, no premonition that I might ever become involved in one. The events of the world went on beyond my restricted area of awareness, as they had done for most of my life. I know I was naive and therefore badly prepared for the immense war in which we were all eventually caught up.