Escape, Evasion and Revenge

Contents

Acknowledgements Foreword Preface

9 11 13

Part One: Fire Over Berlin! (7 September 1941)

19

Chapter 1 Long Day’s Journey

21

Chapter 2 Night Flight

31

Chapter 3 The Heart of Darkness

42

Part Two: Georg Franz Hein (1919–39)

47

Chapter 4 Childhood at 19 Rumannstrasse, Hanover (1919–26)

49

Chapter 5 On His Own: At the Castle Boarding School (1926–33)

57

Chapter 6 High School in London (1934–5)

65

Chapter 7 Passing the Torch (1935–9)

75

Part Three: Peter Stevens in the RAF (1939–41)

87

Chapter 8 From Airman to Pilot Officer (September 1939–March 1941)

89

Chapter 9 144 Squadron: Hemswell and North Luffenham (April–7 September 1941)

104

Chapter 10 Abandon Aircraft! (8 September 1941)

120

Escape, Evasion and Revenge Part Four: Prisoner of War (1941–5)

127

Chapter 11 Learning Escape: Dulag Luft, Lübeck, Hanover (September–October 1941)

129

Chapter 12 ‘Orderlies’ and a Latrine Tunnel: Warburg and Schubin (October 1941–April 1943)

150

Chapter 13 A Wooden Horse and the Great Escape: Stalag Luft III (April 1943–March 1944)

168

Chapter 14 End of the Road: Stalag Luft III and Luckenwalde (March 1944–May 1945)

183

Part Five: Epilogue

191

Chapter 15 Patterns of a Lifetime: Hanover, London, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto

193

Chapter 16 Rediscovering My Father

203

Postscript Bibliography Index

208 209 212

8

Night Flight For if Stevens was anything as a pilot, he was business-like. The cockpit was his office, and he did everything there by the book. He commenced going down the pre-start checklist and was ready within a minute.

Following the same procedure as earlier that day, he started first the port engine, then the starboard. While they were coming up to temperature, Stevens held his breath for a moment and listened very hard to each engine. Not only did he use his hearing, but he also put both hands on the control yoke and felt the engines – or at least their vibrations. If something were slightly out of balance, if one of the crankshafts were about to spin a bearing, he might just feel the early warning signs. They were his lifelines, and if there was the slightest doubt about their health this was his last chance to check. As it was, he could sense nothing amiss and liked what he had heard and felt. The engines seemed to be running perfectly. Next, he used the engine-powered hydraulic system to raise the flaps from fully extended to fully retracted. While most aircraft required a small amount of flap for take-off, the Hampden’s patented automatic leadingedge slats gave that extra bit of low-speed lift necessary to get off the ground.

Having connected his oxygen mask/microphone to the radio/intercom system, he tested it by asking the crew to check in, one by one. By habit, they each clipped on their oxygen masks with the integrated microphones and replied.

‘Wireless operator to pilot, everything ready.’

‘Air gunner to pilot, clear.’

‘Navigator to pilot, ready here.’

With the engines warmed up, the pilot used the hydraulic controls and started one last task: ‘Pilot to navigator, closing bomb bay doors.’

‘Pilot to crew, okay chaps, here we go. Let’s keep everything safe on this one, and everyone comes home.’

Following guidance from the control tower, once again with different-coloured Aldis lamps, Stevens waited for clearance and then joined the convoy taxiing slowly towards the furthest downwind section of the airfield. He handled the aircraft particularly gingerly on the ground, as it was now a very dangerous weapon, loaded with 2,000 pounds of high explosives and several thousand pounds of high-octane – extremely flammable – aviation fuel. Everything about this Hampden was now high, and Stevens knew he was sitting on top of a large bomb, just itching to explode. He would do his damnedest to ensure that it didn’t. It was more than just his life, after all. The rest of the boys were relying on him now.

It was approaching dusk as Stevens turned his plane into the wind and, receiving the appropriate lamp signal, slowly advanced the throttles to take-off power. This time, the Hampden was much slower to react. At a taxi weight of a few hundred pounds over its maximum allowable gross weight (21,000 pounds1), she would require a very long take-off run. Stevens was ready for that and entered the airfield as far back as possible. As the kites ahead in line became airborne, Hampden AD

35

Escape, Evasion and Revenge 936 responded well to his demand. He deliberately kept her on the ground longer than normal, as he would need more speed to make her fly at so heavy a weight.

Finally, when the end of the field appeared to be just a few seconds away, he gently pulled back on the yoke, feeling the wings take the machine’s weight off the main undercarriage. He had now committed himself and raised the landing gear to decrease drag. She was flying, but would she climb?

Soon he had to find out. Coming close to some trees up ahead, Stevens asked her to climb, and ever so gradually she did. While he monitored the engine temperatures and pressures, he guided the machine ever higher, striving for the transit altitude of 15,000 feet above sea level. He could just barely make out the shapes of the five aircraft ahead of him, and there were six to follow. All of a sudden, as he climbed through 3,000 feet, out of the corner of his left eye he saw a huge explosion on the ground behind him. The fireball rose, and the night slowly enveloped it. Everyone in the crew saw it; they gasped into their microphones but instantly clicked them off, realising that dwelling on what had just happened would help no one.

In fact, the aircraft of P/O Reginald John Roake, Stevens’s best friend on the squadron, had suffered an engine failure almost immediately after take-off.

Unable to maintain altitude, let alone climb, the stricken Hampden had resisted all his admonitions and could not keep sufficient airspeed for the wings to generate enough lift to remain aloft. In airman’s terms, she had stalled and spun in. At the altitude from which it had happened, only 300 feet, the end had been mercifully quick. There were no survivors. With enforced radio silence, no one in the air could know which crew had just ‘bought the farm’. Roake’s Hampden had augured in at 8.55 p.m., just three minutes after take-off, crashing on the Empingham–Ketton road, north-east of the base.2 Roake was twenty-three years old.3 His father, a captain in the Royal Army, had earlier distinguished himself in service to his country, being awarded the Military Cross (presumably in the First World War). Clearly it was a family of extreme dedication.

Of course, Roake’s crash was a painful reminder to all aboard of what could happen to any of them at any moment. That was the worst: not knowing.

Would it be a mechanical malfunction, or an enemy fighter, or an anti-aircraft cannon shell rising from the ground, or a mid-air collision with one of their own aircraft in the dark of night, or would one of their own planes drop a bomb on them from a thousand feet over their heads? Any one of these was a distinct possibility, and each of them occurred with unpleasant regularity. While almost paralysed with fear, each man bearing it in his own, private way, they all had one common wish: that if it happened, it should be quick and painless. Roake’s crew had been lucky, they all agreed wordlessly. But the absolute worst would be horrible injuries or disfigurement and survival. Fire terrified every member of the aircrew. Imagine spending the rest of your life with no recognisable face.

Each of them did imagine it, regularly. They were afraid not of dying, but of living under such conditions.

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Chapter Ten

Abandon Aircraft!

(8 September 1941)

‘P

ilot to crew, abandon aircraft! Bale out, bale out!’ Quietly to himself, Stevens gave them his blessing, ‘Thanks chaps, you’ve done everything you could. Now, go while you still can. Good luck to you all, and be

safe.’

With the badly damaged Hampden clawing to stay airborne after bombing Berlin, and with searchlights dancing all about the sky, Stevens had made the fateful intercom call to his men. Two of the three followed his order. Sgt H. Thompson, one of the rear gunners, baled out successfully. The Germans captured him, and he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.1 Sgt Ivor Roderick Fraser (serial no. 649384), the other rear gunner, was not so fortunate. Reports surfaced after 1945 that he too had baled out, but no one knew whether he did so with or without his parachute, or if perhaps he had sustained serious injuries and had lost consciousness. If he was wearing a parachute, it failed to open. He did not survive. No one ever found his body, and he has no known grave.2 At Runnymede, a quiet spot on the Thames near Windsor Castle, where King John signed Magna Carta in 1215, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains the beautiful Runnymede Memorial to honour fallen soldiers with no known final resting place. Among the more than 20,000 names on the monument, Fraser’s appears on wall panel no. 43. A tiny but uplifting tribute to such a magnanimous sacrifice of a human life.

Not knowing what was happening to his two rear gunners, Stevens flew his Hampden as best he could. He realised that the plane’s weight had changed with their departure, but was too busy trying to maintain control to think about their fate. Little by little, as the seconds passed, he realised that he could, indeed, fly the kite. His concentration was total, and so a tap on his shoulder a minute or two later shocked him. Looking over his shoulder, expecting to see a ghost, he recognised his smiling navigator, Sgt Alan Payne. Asking him what the devil he was doing there, Stevens learned that flak had damaged the nose compartment, rendering Payne’s escape hatch inoperable. Stevens asked if him if the flak had injured him, and Payne confirmed that he was still in one piece.

Abandon Aircraft!

Payne asked whether the aircraft was flyable. When Stevens replied that it seemed to be, Payne said that he would much rather take his chances in a perfectly good (!) aircraft than with a parachute! Everyone in the crew had heard about Stevens’s successful belly landing a month earlier, and the navigator assumed he must be an expert!

Stevens now sought to move Payne and himself as far from Berlin as he could.

Flak shells were bursting and searchlights burning holes in the sky, looking for a target such as Hampden AD 936. Stevens headed roughly north towards the Baltic, but that was almost a hundred miles away and no closer to home.

Before the two men could take stock and make crucial decisions, the Luftwaffe intervened. Two German night fighters had spotted the Hampden in the cone of a searchlight and made strafing passes. With tracer bullets lighting a path back to the fighters and giving Stevens a clue as to their location and angle, he instinctively dived away. Praying that the now-dark sky would obscure their plane, Stevens watched his altitude indicator unwind as he neared the ground in a steeply banking descent. Sensing that he was approaching terrain, he gently pulled back on the control yoke, praying that his damaged elevator would have enough surface area remaining to stop the Hampden from ploughing into the ground. Fortunately, he had pulled out early enough that the aircraft could level out just a hundred feet above the trees. He seemed to have evaded the Germans.

Stevens decided to try to make it back. Doubting that the aircraft could cover the 500 or so miles to England and safety, his attention turned towards the gauges in his cockpit. The engine temperatures and oil pressures seemed acceptable, but fuel remained low in the portside wing tank. All he could do was attempt to steer the most direct course for home. It was now about 1 a.m., and about 375 miles remained to the Dutch coast, plus 140 to the English coast.

Stevens admitted his doubts to Payne, who ran the numbers around his head and reached the same conclusion. At least they should try and run as far as they could, he suggested, and then take events as they came. Stevens agreed.

And so the Hampden headed westward over Germany, trailing a thin stream of aviation fuel from its port wing. A normal speed with no bomb load might have been 200 mph or more. Without the weight of the missing two rear gunners, they might have neared the Hampden’s maximum speed of 265 mph. But with serious damage and the need to conserve fuel, Stevens slowed to the most economical speed, about 170 mph. This would lengthen the journey but save the two engines a great deal of fuel, and the remaining high octane might get them home. At that speed, however, reaching the sea would take more than two hours and crossing it almost another hour.

They spent the next two hours in several ways. Although Payne was not qualified to fly a Hampden, he had received a certain amount of flight training, and was eager to help. But the extremely narrow cockpit stopped from giving any direct aid to the pilot and he spent his time doing whatever he could to

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Escape, Evasion and Revenge lighten the aircraft. Payne jettisoned the five portable machine-guns in all three locations (two rear upper, two rear lower, and one nose), the portable toilet behind the main wing spar, and the remaining ammunition tins and personal gear. Stevens had to concentrate intensely to maintain his very low altitude without hitting anything. At the same time, he kept listening to the drone of the two Bristol Pegasus radial engines, waiting for the pitch to change, indicating a more serious emergency. The seconds ticked away as if in slow motion.

Requiring human presence and regular reassurance, the two young men huddled together and hoped that the miles of darkness would pass by more quickly. The engines’ droning was not as reassuring as it should have been.

Both men were aware that they did not know how long the motors would keep them in the air. And they were flying at 170 mph only 100 feet above the ground – not exactly safe. In an emergency, they would have precious little time to react. They were already far too low to use their parachutes. And if one or both engines sputtered and died, Stevens would have to land straight ahead and hit whatever might be in front of them, be it trees, or a building, or a farmer’s field.

Especially dangerous in the pitch black of night.

And so, as two hours had dragged by since the anti-aircraft artillery hits, the fuel-gauge readings over Holland showed England was indeed unreachable.

An external compartment in the port wing root had a built-in life raft, but that wing had sustained the most battle damage, and the raft might be unusable.

Besides, Stevens could not swim and somewhat feared the water. The North Sea might not prove as benign for a belly landing as the field at RAF Coningsby had the previous month. Calling to Payne, Stevens announced his decision: they would find a cleared field and attempt a landing.

Just as Stevens was becoming comfortable with his decision, the port engine began to sputter and cough. He instantly turned to the port fuel gauge – ‘Empty.’

The starboard side still had as much as thirty minutes’ fuel left. Later-model Hampdens could cross-feed fuel between tanks, but AD 936 was an earlier version. Any remaining flight would take place on a single engine. ‘No choice now,’ he informed Payne. ‘We’ll have to do a crash-landing!’

With his port engine about to cut out completely, Stevens decided to give them an additional ‘out’ and climbed to 3,000 feet. If anything went badly wrong now, they could at least use their parachutes. The Hampden did not have feathering3 propellers, so Stevens could only cut the port ignition switch and steady himself for the coming landing. The port propeller caused a huge amount of drag, making the aircraft yaw to the left. Stevens had to counter that adverse yaw by commanding almost full right rudder pedal, adding to the workload.

The additional drag from the unpowered propeller also meant that the plane needed full power from the remaining engine to remain airborne, dramatically increasing fuel consumption. Stevens knew that little time remained and that he had to land quickly! Descending would not be a problem, as the aircraft in this configuration would drop like a stone.

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