Charles William Collishaw

NOTTINGHAM SOUTHERN CEMETERY Sec G34 Grave 72

Central and eastern Berlin were pounded during the 16/17 December 1943 attack. Little industrial damage occurred with most of the bombs hitting housing and railways. Sustained bombing had by this point in the war rendered more than a quarter of Berlin’s total living accommodation unusable.

It is probable that 720 Berliners were killed of whom 279 were foreign workers – 186 women, 65 men and 28 youths – killed when their train was hit at Halensee Station. In the city centre, the National Theatre and the building housing Germany’s military and political archives were destroyed. 1,000 wagon loads of war materials bound for the Russian front were held up for six days. (Middlebrook and Everitt, Bomber Command War Diaries p. 459).

Despite these military achievements, December 16th/17th’s raid on Berlin became known within Bomber Command as ‘Black Thursday’. 25 Lancasters (5.2% of the Lancaster force) were shot down on the more northerly, return flight so around 150 airmen were lost near the target.

However, it was on return to the UK that tragedy really unfolded. Visibility was reasonable upon departure but low cloud/fog enveloped much of Britain as the bomber stream attempted to land. 30 aircraft either crashed or were abandoned as crews attempted to parachute to safety. 1, 6 and 8 Groups were particularly badly affected with 148 flyers losing their lives, 39 injured and 6 presumed lost at sea.

97 Sqdn of 8 Group lost 8 planes, the most from any unit. ‘The squadron,’noted their Operations Record Book, ‘had a disastrous night in a/c losses and 28 crew being killed.’ 8 landed safely at Bourn (Cambridgeshire) and 3 at Gravely, 1 at Wyton. Remarkably, Flt Sgt Scott ‘with great skill’ flew his Lancaster home on two engines (on the same wing) after the other pair was knocked out by another plane’s incendiaries. Two crews bailed out, 6 crashed, some with survivors others with all on board killed.

Charles William Collishaw was the Flight Engineer aboard LBIII 117 ‘C’ for Charlie. In command was 20 year old Australian Ian Macdonald Scott flying only his second operation. Unable to see the runway at Bourn (see Extra Information), he headed off towards Gravely but crashed at 01.01 just over a mile to the north east of Gravely airfield close to Papworth Everard. The aircraft was discovered burnt out at first light. There were no survivors. Also killed were Australian K Foxcroft, Canadians H Hope and C Irvine and S Parrot and S Meek from the UK. Meek had stepped in at the last minute replacing their regular navigator L. Pinkney.

With a dense fog obscuring much of the country on the night of 16/17 December, the RAF crews returning from operations were faced with enormous difficulties in landing.

At the PFF (Pathfinder Force) stations of Bourn and Gransden Lodge, conditions were probably the worst in the country. Visibility was dropping progressively with every minute that passed – by midnight, it would be down to 300 yards or less, and it took about 1,000 yards to stop a Lancaster. By the early hours of the morning, cloud base at Gransden Lodge would be at 100 feet and the fog would be meeting up with it. 405 Squadron, which was based at Gransden Lodge, would have as serious problems as 97 Squadron in trying to land their Lancasters; only 5 of the 13 aircraft operating that night would eventually touch down at their home station.

With 21 Lancasters due to land within the space of about 90 minutes, Flying Control at Bourn would be stretched to the limit. Those anxiously awaiting the returning crews knew that there would be serious problems when they arrived. The airfield was covered in thick fog and pilots descending blind through the clouds would not break into even partial visibility until 250 feet. There would be little hope of them seeing the lights of the airfield circuit which ended in a funnel on the NE.-SW. runway. Nor would the angle of glide indicators be visible to ensure the correct approach – an amber if too high, a red if too low, a green if on the correct glide path.

Technical aids for landing in such difficult conditions were in their infancy. Gee, a radio navigational aid which was very accurate over England, would help the returning aircraft to locate their home airfield, but it was too imprecise to actually direct them down onto a runway. The only real facilities available to land in severe bad weather were FIDO and a system known as SBA.

FIDO, the Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation, was at that time only operational at three airfields: Graveley six miles north-west of Bourn; Downham Market 35 miles to the north-east (the installation barely completed); and Fiskerton, close to Lincoln, 95 miles to the north. Only 1 of 97 Squadron’s aircraft, that of the Coates crew, would land at Downham Market under very remarkable circumstances – it was to Graveley that at least 6 of the squadron’s aircraft would be diverted.

FIDO was a very new system, which had only come into operational use at Graveley, the prime test site, in the previous month after a long series of trials and modifications.The official statement on FIDO, put out by Bomber Command shortly after the war ended and the need for secrecy had passed, summarises what had become a desperate situation:

The electrical beam [SBA] could help the pilots to approach to within 100 or 200 feet of the runway but they were then still flying absolutely blind at over 100 miles an hour with the imminent danger of crashing the aircraft, and killing themselves and all their crew, because they could not actually see to land. Fog over British airfields [had become] more of a menace than flak over Germany… (Courtesy of https://raf-pathfinders.com/black-thursday/)