53
Neville and Peter paid frequent visits to
Melsbroek
, as did their satelites -
John Bishop
("Bish" - late of 140),
"Li" Perry
,
John Barratt
and
Tom Palmer
.
During March, the armies started to advance again and most of the night
effort was directed to the areas between the MAAS and the RHINE where enemy
movements were detected on many occasions. The
Mosquitos
photographed detraining
stations and marshalling yards amongst a variety of targets and the conversion of
'A' Flight 140 to night photography was just completed in time for them to put in
their maximum effort during the period when the two big river crossings were being
made by the Armies. This proved to be of exceptional value because the weather
handicapped daylight reconnaissance to such an extent that night sorties were
called upon to provide the Armies with much of their essential intelligence.
The following figures illustrate the superb effort of 140 when it is realised
that this Squadron only possessed 14 aircraft and a tribute must be paid to the
ground crews who did so much to make possible the high standard of serviceability
on such occasions as this:- During the period 21 to 26 March inclusive 140 Sqn
flew 53 night sorties, including 14 on the night of March 25th. Some interesting
sorties were flown by 69 with a rather mysterious
Sgt Earl
as a passenger who was
dressed as a soldier but worked for the Navy. He carried a special apparatus
to find out if the Huns were using infra-red searchlights to detect the
iminent Rhine Crossing. The Wing also was honoured by having its activities
described in the 'Sphere', where the
Wellingtons
were stated to be flying as low
as 50 feet, and this produced another "line" from a 69 Sqn N.C.O. aircrew who
commented, "What the hell were they doing up there?" Daylight work increased
-
+
Sorry, your browser does not support inline SVG.