501 Squadron

On the 10th of August 1944 the FIU boys in this Tempest flight moved to Manston to reform 501 as a night fighter Squadron, of which Joseph became commanding officer, taking over command from Squadron Leader Barnett. The squadron at that time could only boast of three flying bombs shot down in 200 sorties.
In the first 10 days of that month after taking over command; the squadron's score had increased ten fold, starting immediately on the night of the 11th of August, with the destruction of eight flying bombs.
Joseph's marksmanship had became so accurate that on at least two occasions he destroyed a flying bomb with the expenditure of 60 rounds, with the rounds per minute (RPM) rate of his 4 Hispano 20mm cannons, 60 rounds meant, just over a one second burst on the firing button.

Entries in the squadron's 'Summary of Events' log for the night of the 12/13th of August makes excellent reading, as follows:

During the hours of darkness patrols were kept up. S/Ldr. BERRY shot down two Divers, one on each patrol. Some night flying training was undertaken by some of the original day pilots of 501.
The following nights entry 13/14th reads, Patrols over the inland area of the South & South East coast resulted in 1 Diver being destroyed by S/Ldr. BERRY. F/Lt ROBB attacked two; their destruction was confirmed after enquiries.
One night later on the 14/15th reads, Except for short intervals when roaming balloons made flying dangerous, patrols were kept up through the hours of darkness, F/Lt THORNTON chased a Diver from Hastings to the balloon barrage. He fired at it and saw strikes but the Diver was unharmed and went on its way.
The 15/16th reads; the patrols over the Kent area began at dusk under Watling Control, and went on throughout the night. The earlier patrols were uneventful but the later ones produced results 2 Divers being destroyed by S/Ldr. BERRY. Both were destroyed by an expenditure of 60 rounds of 20mm.

On the night of the 19/20th of August the same log reports,
Patrols were flown during the hours of darkness. Activity was reported early on and F/Lt BURTON destroyed a flying bomb. There was again activity at dawn and a section was scrambled. S/Ldr. BERRY made two patrols in a Mosquito to see the effect of searchlight dousing and diver interception from the point of view of the Mosquito pilot. On the first patrol he was accompanied by F/O EAST, the Intelligence Officer, and on the second by CAPTAIN PAYNE the squadron searchlight Officer.
No record of the Flying Bomb that Joseph destroyed on that night appears in this log, but, in the Squadrons 'Operations Record Book' dated the 20th of August 1944 two entries show, flying Mosquito UP-U between 23:10 and 01:00, 1 Diver chased and attacked. No result, and later the same day flying a Tempest V SD-Q (EJ584) between the hours of 06:15 and 07:25, 1 Diver destroyed.

As the Commanding Officer of 501 Squadron, Joseph was summoned to London to be told by Churchill's Ministers what was expected of his squadron; what he was told, and had to relay to his squadron on his return; was 'chilling'.

'I was called away yesterday and received instructions about the role of 501 against the night intruder. It was said to me that these instructions came from the Prime Minister himself, to the effect that the squadron must consider itself expendable and thus will take off to try to effect interception in every weather condition even though all other squadrons are grounded. This, because it was felt that the threat of the V1 is so great that the people on the ground must at least 'hear' fighters airborne whenever there is a V1 warning. So the squadron will get airborne even if it is quite impossible to make any interception.'

The expendability factor was reinforced when the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair visited the base, he informed the pilots that the morale in London was so low due to the V1 attacks, that the Government had decided to treat the situation seriously; even to the extent that they were prepared to sacrifice the lives of several pilots for every flying bomb shot down.
The lighter side to his visit to London was to the BBC to record, for broadcast a message of reassurance to the listening population of London.
In the BBC Transcript made by Squadron Leader Berry he describes his method of shooting down the flying bombs, and a description of the V1 he shot down over West Malling airfield, for which he was only awarded half a kill.
The complete transcript of the BBC broadcast published in the 'Listener Magazine' late July 1944.

BBC 1944

'There are probably those of you among my listeners tonight who imagine that tackling a robot which cannot shoot back or take evasive action is, to use a popular service term, 'a piece of cake.

Nothing could be further from the truth, I assure you!
As many of you will probably know, the first of these flying bombs, or 'Doodlebugs' as they are popularly called, were fired at us by the Germans during the daytime.
Our fighter pilots could see them coming and were able to pick a lot of them off in the air.

Soon the Germans started to send them over at night when the only thing that was visible were the flames coming from their jet engines.
To start with, some of our day fighter pilots were sent to try to intercept the robots.
Normally these pilots in their Tempests and Spitfires are crack shots, but it soon became apparent that they were not sufficiently at home in the dark clouds of night.
Because of the urgency of the situation, it was decided by the RAF top brass to see if some of the night fighter pilots could convert to flying the Tempest more easily than the day fighter pilots could convert to all weather night flying.
There were those who were sceptical about the plan, I know, because I was one of the night fighter pilots involved right from the very start.
And because I already had some experience of attacking the 'Doodlebugs' in daylight, I can tell you that flying against them by night proved even more dangerous.
Fortunately, we became very successful and are now in a position to tackle the robots at whatever time they appear in our skies.
Of course, when the first flying bombs came over the Channel from France in the middle of June, very little was known about their habits and construction, and all fighter pilots had to experiment and swap experiences to work out the best method of destroying them or shooting them down.
We had to find out how near we could get to the flying bomb and shoot without the risk of being blown up by it, and I have to tell you that some brave men died before the answer was obtained.
It was on the lawn of a cottage in Southern England close to an airfield that, every evening, one of the most important little councils of war took place during the first stages of the battle, with the flying bombs.
The cottage was a wing intelligence office, and on its lawn the pilots of a Tempest squadron, led by Wing Commander Roland Beaumont, gathered to compare notes and discuss their experiences.
Methods of approaching and attacking the robots would be discussed one evening, tried out the next day during ops, and then reported on that evening.
During this experimental period nobody worked harder than the "Wing Co" who flew day after day from first light till dusk, and finally the perfect method of attack was evolved, the approach from astern at an acute angle.
Results were immediate; the 'bag' went up hand over fist and casualties dropped equally sharply.
They were long summer's days for the pilots, some of them frequently spending twenty of the twenty-four hours within sight of their machines.
They had to grab some shut-eye whenever they could.
But they soon had the satisfaction of using only 150 rounds for each 'Doodle' destroyed compared with more than 500 at first.
It was in July that I was posted as a Squadron Leader to organise night flying against the 'Doodlebugs'.
Although my squadron had to put up with a lot of leg pulling in the officer's mess whenever low clouds or rain prevented us from flying, once we were airborne there were usually rich pickings to be had.
On the 23rd of July I had the chance to demonstrate how good our technique had become when I shot down seven of these robots in one night!
We patrol at between 5 and 6000 feet, that's about 3000 feet higher than the path of the average flying bomb. The first thing we usually see is a small light rather hard to distinguish from a star coming in from the sea, then the search lights light up and point out the direction from which the bomb is coming. The guns go into action and we wait for the bombs that get through the gun belt, as soon as we spot a bomb that's run the gauntlet successfully we make a diving turn and go down after it, finishing our dive just behind the bomb and opening fire at a range of about 250 yards.
But don't get the wrong idea, the 'Doodlebug' doesn't go down easily; it will take a lot of punishment and you have to aim at the propulsion unit, that's the long stove pipe as we call it on the tail, if your range and aim are dead on you can see pieces flying of the stove pipe the big white flame at the end goes out and down goes the bomb. Sometimes it dives straight to earth, but other times it goes crazy and gives a wizard display of aerobatics before finally crashing, Sometimes the bomb explodes in mid air and the flash is so blinding that you can't see a thing for about 10 seconds, you hope to be the right way up when you are able to see again, because the explosion often throws the fighter about, and some times turns it upside down.
One bomb that I attacked caught fire, and started to dive onto a lighted aerodrome. I closed in behind and opened fire at about 100 yards giving it a long burst with my cannons, the bomb blew up much to the relief of the flying control officer who was watching it on the aerodrome. Fragments of the bomb were blown into my aircraft and one went into the air intake, jamming the throttle, which was almost wide open. I went home at full speed weather I liked it or not fortunately I managed to get down safely."
There are a great many things I could tell you that we have learned about fighting the 'Doodlebugs', but there is one more interesting sidelight I should like to add.
This is the story of how we have found a way of destroying the flying bombs without even firing a shot.
In a busy sortie, a pilot can quite easily run out of ammunition.
One day, a pilot from one of the Polish Squadrons found he had used up all his ammunition on a group of 'Doodlebugs', but was still on the track of the lone raider.
He had a sudden flash of inspiration and flew in alongside the 'Doodlebug'.
Then by getting his wing tip under that of the robot and giving it an upward flick, he found he could turn it on its back and send it crashing down into the empty countryside below.
This delicate manoeuvre has since been tried out successfully by other fighter pilots, and we have learned that it is even possible to turn the bomb right around and head it back towards its base on the Pas de Calais.
Which seems to me an even better idea than sending it crashing into the sea'. The unit continued to hunt the V1's, and he personally accounted for seven more, adding to 501 Squadron's August total of 40 V1's destroyed.

(Reproduced with the kind permission of Peter Haining.)

Fewer and fewer flying bombs were being ground launched against Southern England due to the allied advances, and the capture of the V1 launch sites in the Pas-de-Calais area, this gave the Manston boys little to do, so the squadron and its echelon moved to Bradwell Bay in Essex; near Southend on the 22nd and 23rd of September, to enable patrols to be maintained against any V1's that were still being launched, the way the Luftwaffe had originally intended; from the port wings of Heinkel He111H-22's, of Bomber Gruppen 111/KG3, some 1200 V1's in total were to be launched this way.

Flying from their bases in Western Germany and Holland, code-named Operation Rumpelkammer, with a V1 under its wing, the mother ship would cross the North Sea at very low level to avoid radar detection, then climb to about 1400 feet before launching its 'robot' missile in the direction of it's target city and then diving for home.

During the night of the 28th of September, Joseph led a two Tempest 'Ranger to the Rheine' sortie over Holland and Germany, to attack these enemy airfields, the first sortie of its kind for these pilots. Due to low cloud and rain the mission was cut short, but the two still managed to twice attack and seriously damage the engine of a train 12 miles East of Zutphen.

With the weather clearing up it was decided to go again, before dawn at 05:35 on the 2nd of October flying his Tempest (SD-F) he led this Ranger sortie with F/Lt E.L. 'Willy' Williams (SD-L) and F/Lt C.A. 'Horry' Hansen (SD-H) to attack these airfields and ground targets of opportunity between (Bad) Zwischenhan in North/Western Germany, a He111 airfield and a nearby rail yard where trains transporting V1's to these airfields could be found, and any other He111 airfields or enemy targets of opportunity from there to the Rheine.

Crossing the Dutch coastline at first light, and at a height of 50 feet they flew via the Ijssellake and the Noordoostpolder in the direction of Mappel, a slight turn North East brought the three Tempests heading towards Veendam.

At approximately 06:15 a.m. while flying fast and low to their targets, bursts of machine gun fire from alerted soldiers stationed at the German Radar Site 'Gazelle' just East of Veendam, unluckily struck Joseph's Tempest, rupturing his aircrafts glycol tank. Struggling to control his stricken aircraft, eye witness reports say 'that he' increased his height', presumably in an attempt to bail out, 'leaving a glycol vapour trail in his wake' He radioed to his fellow pilots in the truest RAF tradition 'I've had it chaps; you go on'.

Just over 2 miles to the East of 'Gazelle' Joseph's plane flipped over on to it's back and crashed in flames on farm land in Kibbelgaarn, 4 ½ miles South of Sheemda. The two other pilots circled the crash site a couple of times to see if their commanding officer had survived the impact, and then carried on with their mission.

Two inhabitants of Kibblegaarn; Mr A.Jager who was the head teacher of the village junior school that Joseph's airplane had just narrowly missed, and Mr S. de Lange the farm owner were the first to reach the crash site, they pulled the already dead pilot from the blazing wreckage, desperately trying to extinguish the flames from his uniform.

The name of the pilot at that time was unknown as any identification was destroyed in the blaze. The only clue to his identity was a cigarette case with the initials 'JB' engraved on it, Joseph's body was then spirited away by these villages before the Germans arrived on the scene to salvage what may have been of interest to them.

(Information from Holland supplied by Mr Joop van der Does)

The local police instigated a report into the crash; this report took a few day to compile, the official report was dated the 4th of October 1944, that could be why the wooden cross over Joe's grave has the date 4/10/44.