On the 80th anniversary of Operation Plunder, the British crossing of the Rhine in 1945, with the anniversary of VE Day not far off, our historian from 20 Sqn looks back here at the story of one of the mobile radar units that participated in the North-West Europe campaign. You can find a map of the locations mentioned at the end of the article.
Eighty years ago in March 1944, Number 15054 Fighter Director Post (FDP) entered Germany with the advancing Allied forces. They had spent the winter protecting the eastern flank of the British 2nd Army by providing air surveillance and aircraft control from a site at Meeuwen in Belgium. When the order came to move forward, they had to dig their vehicles out of soft ground and improvise wooden trackways to reach the tarmac road before they could drive the 70 miles to their new site at Bönninghardt, across the German border. Their Operational Record Book for 22 March 1944 noted the large number of amphibious vehicles, pontoons and bridging equipment on the local roads. On the following day, “there seems to be an electric touch in the air today as something big is brewing. The barrage going across the Rhine is fantastic”. On the 24 March, FDP personnel not operating radars or radios, “watched huge formations of aircraft passing over the camp. Continual streams of Dakotas passed overhead towing gliders, returning minus the gliders in a very short time. Estimated by visual observation that at least 1500-2000 of these aircraft passed over.” They were watching the transport aircraft of Operation Varsity, the airborne element of Operation Plunder, the Allied operation to cross the River Rhine in the north. Their count wasn’t far out – there were 1,600 transport aircraft and 1,300 gliders involved, with cover provided by around 2,000 fighter aircraft. This was the largest airborne operation of the war. So how did this small RAF mobile radar unit find itself in Germany only five miles from the largest airborne assault of the war?
Formation and Training
15054 FDP was formed in early 1943 and equipped at RAF Chigwell, Essex in August of that year. RAF Chigwell had transformed from a Barrage Balloon station to become one of the major ‘Base Signals Units’, responsible for equipping mobile radar units for overseas service. Amongst the cavernous hangars and storage buildings, four commissioned officers (three controllers and one technical officer) joined 56 airmen, whose trades included radar and radio operators, mechanics, cipher and accounts clerks, cooks, drivers, a medical orderly, stores assistant and general duties charge hands. Having been allocated their unit equipment, they spent several days checking that everything, from electrical valves to camp beds and cooking pots, was present, serviceable and accounted for.
15054 FDP left Chigwell on 7 August 43 to begin field training. There were two strands to this. Firstly, developing the technical skills to erect, use and dismantle the radars, radios and other equipment to perform air surveillance and aircraft control. This took many hours of practise. Secondly, developing the general skills of living in field locations and moving the unit around by road. The challenges of living in field conditions will be familiar to generations of service personnel, but the unit convoy was another matter. It comprised a total of 28 vehicles. There were six lorries for the three radar sets, four radio vehicles, four diesel bowsers, a range of general purpose lorries, the Officer Commanding’s jeep and three motorcycles, which acted as route markers, marshallers and message carriers.
All sixty of the unit’s personnel were cross-trained to drive different vehicles in case of casualties. Three of the radar vehicles were ‘out-of-gauge’ (overweight or larger than standard), making route planning and enhanced driving techniques a very necessary skill.
From autumn 1943 through the winter and the spring of 1944, 15054 moved around sites in south-east England, exercising its functions under the control of No 83 Group, for whom it would work during the upcoming liberation of mainland Europe. Personnel were issued with Army khaki to replace the Air Force blue uniforms.
In September, they took the twenty-hour train journey to the Combined Signals School, HMS Dundonald 2, near Troon in Ayrshire. For the next week, they completed the Combined Operations Course, where their fitness was improved, and they were trained in seaborne assault, waterproofing vehicles and ground defence activities. Squadron Leader Kemp, Officer Commanding 15054 FDP, noted that the assault course noticeably developed team spirit, with the physically strong helping those less able, so that the whole unit could succeed.
In October, they took part in Exercise Pirate, a large scale amphibious assault rehearsal in Dorset. Although the Exercise was cancelled before its completion due to bad weather, all the units involved gained useful lessons, not least that moving convoys of large numbers of vehicles required more time than originally envisioned.
Training continued throughout early 1944. The unit was becoming ever-more proficient in operating and moving. Tragedy struck at the end of April, when Corporal Clark, the unit’s discipline and general duties corporal, went missing during a duty run to a nearby RAF station. He was found by the local police, his motorcycle having hit a patch of gravel, skidded into a ditch and hit a tree where he sustained injuries from which he was to die the next day. His death was all the sadder from being from a road accident, as he would be the only unit fatality during its wartime service. Cpl Clark is buried in the graveyard at Murston Parish Church, in his hometown of Sittingbourne, Kent.
Operation Overlord - the invasion of Europe
At the end of May 1944, the unit received its Warning Order for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe, finally achieving its wartime personnel strength on 1 June through “begging, borrowing and even stealing personnel”! On the night of 5-6 June at RAF Old Sarum, Salisbury, they were awoken by large numbers of transport aircraft, some towing gliders, flying over the station in a southerly direction, leading to widespread speculation that the invasion had started. Having moved to a transit camp near Fareham on 7 June, they had to wait until the evening of 10 June to be called forward to load their vehicles onto three Landing Craft (Tank) at Gosport. While queuing to load, local residents had supplied tea and cocoa, and even invited some airmen in for a wash and a shave!
During the night crossing, there was some desultory small calibre fire from other ships in the convoy and a few aircraft crossed low overhead. Due to the tide, the Landing Craft were held offshore, with 15054 FDP finally landing at 1630 on 11 June 1944 on Jig sector of Gold Beach, near Asnelles.
After some initial confusion about operating locations, the FDP settled down near a village called Beaupigny, a few miles east of Bayeux. Its role was to plot all aircraft in various sectors, report them to the Group Control Centre (GCC), and to control fighter patrols as directed. It shared these duties with three other similar units during the day, with defensive duties taken on by similar units of No 85 Group overnight. Night defences involved heavy anti-aircraft fire from surrounding army units, so one of the first tasks for FDP personnel was to dig covered trenches in which they would sleep to protect themselves from falling shrapnel. In the days that followed, the cooks had arranged to purchase some fresh food from local farms, while some of the unit used basic French to arrange for the laundry of their dust-caked clothing by local families. Such was the nature of operations ‘on the road’ in 1944.
The Unit Diary records a constant stream of plotting and the control of fighters. Taking the 7 July as an example, the unit opened radar watch at 0430, controlled twelve sets of fighters during the day, and continued operating until 2300 that night. ‘Icecold’ Blue Section (Spitfires IXs) from 132 Sqn made a successful interception of eight enemy aircraft whilst under the control of Squadron Leader Kemp, driving them away from the landing beaches and destroying one of them. In the late evening, the unit tracked two waves of Lancasters and Halifaxes from Bomber Command who attacked German defences around Caen prior to Operation Charnwood. After closing down, personnel had five hours rest before opening the next day’s watch at 0430.
Advance from Normandy
After the Allied breakout from Normandy in early August, 15054 FDP found itself on the move again. Over the next six weeks, it moved location eight times as it followed the British Second Army’s rapid advance from Normandy through Picardy and Belgium. The operating site at Foulanges was “pleasantly rural”, but further south at La Villette their site had been the scene of recent heavy fighting, with unburied casualties - human and animal – and the debris of war all around. At Fontenai, they had a very convivial evening with the local village. Here they were also joined by several communications units, including a ‘Y’ (intercept) unit. These facilitated the FDP hosting forward elements of their parent Group Control Centre; the Allied armies were advancing too rapidly for the single GCC and it had split itself into two echelons, which would leapfrog each other in the advance.
While at Le Vauroux, near Beauvais, LAC Coogan, one of the MT drivers earned his wartime spurs. While on a duty run in one of the three-ton lorries, he took the surrender of a German unit and arrived back at the FDP with forty-eight prisoners in the back of the vehicle. Having handed them over to the nearest Army unit, the Officer Commanding felt the unit had proved just how far in the forefront of the Allied advance they were! At each location, the FDP would operate its radars for a few days before moving on, with the GCC ensuring that there was always one of its FDPs operating to provide surveillance and control.
Having spent an exciting week at Melsbroek (now Brussels International Airport) mixing ‘duty’ with the ‘pleasures’ afforded by the recently liberated Belgian capital, on 21 September 1944 they moved to an abandoned German radar site on the edge of an artillery range at Meeuwen, eastern Belgium.
Operation Market Garden
At the time, Operation Market Garden was in full flow. Mobile radars transported to Arnhem in gliders had been destroyed, and the British and US armies in Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem lacked sufficient air surveillance and control. Early on the morning on 25 September, 15054 FDP received immediate orders to move half of the unit 60 miles north to Grave on the River Meuse, just south of Nijmegen, to plug the gap in coverage and provide air defence of the river bridges already captured. Deliberately splitting an FDP was logistically and administratively difficult, but the Type 11 and Type 13 radars with supporting vehicles moved off in convoy for Grave. They encountered difficulties with the number of army vehicles queuing on the road heading north, and various Army units made attempts to stop them. LAC Coogan again demonstrated his worth by winning a well-voiced debate with a brigadier, who then allowed 15054 FDP to proceed. Established at Grave, the FDP plotted multiple German raids and controlled defensive fighters. The busiest day was 27 September 1944, when over 600 enemy aircraft were tracked of which 46 were destroyed by friendly fighters. The first German jet fighter was detected on 1 October, but German air attacks reduced in early October as the front stabilised, and the forward element of 15054 FDP returned to the unit’s main site at Meeuwen on 7 October. The FDP’s time at Grave had been the busiest and most successful since arriving on the continent.
Into Germany
After wintering at Meeuwen, the FDP moved north-east for the Rhine crossing as described in the opening paragraph. As German resistance collapsed, the British 2nd Army advanced rapidly moved north-eastwards through Germany, crossing the River Elbe on 29 April, cutting off German forces in Denmark and driving for the Baltic Sea, reaching Wismar on 2 May 1945. 15054 FDP followed those troops in a line approximately joining Osnabrück, Celle and Lauenburg. During the month of April, there was much less requirement for daytime radar operations, but it did operate at night, controlling fighters against the occasional stray German aircraft. One location was close to the recently liberated Bergen- Belsen concentration camp; many of the prisoners were still at the camp, so members of the FDP loaded a 3-ton lorry with clothing, blankets and food, making the necessary arrangements with the Red Cross to distribute them at the camp. The Officer Commanding described their “shock beyond description” at what they saw. In Celle, acting on local information, the unit captured the local Gestapo chief and handed him over to the Military Police.
Travemünde and the End of the War in Europe
German forces in north-west Germany surrendered on 4 May 1945, which led to the FDP’s final move. It was ordered to take over the Luftwaffe airfield on the Priwall peninsula at Travemünde on the Baltic Sea coast. The airfield was originally used by civilian aircraft and hosted an aircraft factory, but since the mid-1930s it had been run by the military, as the main base for testing naval aircraft. It had not suffered greatly in the fighting and the FDP soon had electricity and water restored to the headquarters building.
The start of the official VE Day celebrations on 8 May were interrupted by the unannounced arrival of a Luftwaffe BV 138 flying boat, which had flown in from Tromsø in northern Norway. The crew was brought ashore amidst a firework display, which used Very Lights, pistols, flares and rockets. The Luftwaffe pilot was less concerned with the British unit in charge of the airfield than how far the Russians advanced; it appeared that his family may still have been in Russian occupied territory, and he wanted to get them out. For the rest of May, the unit mixed their duties of guarding and occupation with a range of recreational activities. The Luftwaffe unit had three sailing boats which the FDP commandeered and started their own sailing club which proved extremely popular. There were regular sporting activities, although higher authorities ordered that fraternisation with the local population was forbidden.
On his own initiative, Squadron Leader Kemp arranged for Luftwaffe technicians to start to assemble FW190 fighters in one of the airfield's hangars, which were then painting in RAF colours with an example of each donated to all the RAF and RCAF flying squadrons in the area.
The first airmen from the Air Disarmament Wing, responsible for the disposal of Luftwaffe weapons and equipment, arrived on 18 May 1945 to take over the airfield from the FDP. The following day, the first posting notices arrived, with some members of the unit going back to the UK, while some were bound for the Far East, where the war continued. Although the unit would move to a new location on the Danish-German border to continue its work, most of the ‘originals’ would be posted away. The Officer Commanding, Squadron Leader Kemp, summed up the feeling as personnel slowly dispersed:
“We could look back knowing that we had played our part well and could think of ourselves as being the best and leading [radar] unit of the 2nd Tactical Air Force. We had been at risk and most of us had been frightened, we had been lucky to survive. With the war in Europe over, we had made the most of our short stay at the magnificent base at Travemünde and left with much regret.”
Squadron Leader Kemp
Officer Commanding
References:
15054 Fighter Direction Post Operational Record Book, The National Archives, AIR 29/152/15.
John Kemp, Off to War with ‘054’, Braunton: Merlin Books, 1989.
Air Ministry (Air Historical Branch). Signals Volume IV – Radar in Raid Reporting. 1950.
Hilary St George Saunders, The Royal Air Force, 1939-1945, Volume 3: Fight is Won, London: HMSO, 1954.
