MINELAYING
52 aircraft to Kiel Bay and the Danish coast. 1 Lancaster and 1 Stirling lost.
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MAINZ
154 aircraft - 68 Wellingtons, 33 Lancasters, 28 Stirlings, 25 Halifaxes - on the first large raid to this city. 6 aircraft - 3 Wellingtons, 2 Halifaxes, 1 Lancaster - lost.
Much damage was caused in the centre of Mainz, with some ancient cultural buildings being hit; the castle and its museum were burnt out. The number of people killed is believed to be 152 - 87 men, 64 women and 1 soldier - but there may be some doubt about this.
Minor Operations: 16 aircraft to Le Havre, 9 Blenheim Intruders, 9 Hampdens minelaying in the Elbe, 3 Lancasters on leaflet flights. 1 Halifax and 1 Lancaster lost on the Le Havre raid.
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and Sir Arthur Harris received the official instructions to establish a force of squadrons to help Bomber Command find its targets. Even then, Harris rejected the originally suggested name of Target Finding Force' and selected what was to become one of the air war's most famous titles - the 'Pathfinder Force'. The Pathfinders would not yet be given group status but were to work directly under the control of the Bomber Command Headquarters planning staff, although the orders would actually pass through the headquarters of 3 Group.
As the commander of this new force, Bufton had suggested Group Captain Basil Embry, who had earlier served in 2 Group and whose escape from behind German lines in France in 1940 was one of the war's early legends. It was thought that Embry could provide the necessary skill and inspiration to lead the Pathfinders but, although he was only serving as Station Commander at Wittering, a Fighter Command station, Embry was not released, for reasons which are not known. The man who had been suggested as Embry's Senior Air Staff Officer had an equally spectacular reputation in aviation although one gained in entirely different circumstances. This was the Australian Wing Commander D. C. T. Bennett, a distinguished pre-war pilot and navigation expert and holder of several long-distance flying records. Rejoining the R.A.F. - he had served as a junior officer in the early 1930s - Bennett had, like Bufton, commanded Halifax squadrons in 4 Group and was now preparing to take part of 10 Squadron to the Middle East. 10 Squadron can be said to have been the cradle of the Pathfinder Force. Donald Bennett's posting to the Middle East was cancelled and he became, not the number two man in the Pathfinders, but its first and only wartime leader. He formed his headquarters at Wyton airfield, in 1943 moving to Castle Hill House in nearby Huntingdon.
Each of the night-bombing groups was ordered to send one of its regular squadrons to the Pathfinders. It had been hoped by the supporters of the Pathfinder concept that the groups would select the best crews from all their squadrons and ask them to volunteer for transfer to the group's designated Pathfinder squadron, but Harris did not issue a firm order on this subject and a study of the records shows that there was hardly any transfer of crews. Four ordinary squadrons thus found themselves forming the new Pathfinder Force. 156 Squadron came from 1 Group, 7 Squadron from 3 Group, 35 Squadron from 4 Group and 83 Squadron from 5 Group. Each group was to remain responsible for supplying replacement crews for 'its' Pathfinder squadron, but there were often difficulties over this and it is recognized that the Pathfinders never received the pick of the best crews in the groups. The only group commander to give any consistent support to the Pathfinders was Air Vice-Marshal Carr of 4 Group and it is interesting to note that both Bufton and Bennett had served their operational tours in that group.
The squadrons of Pathfinder Force transferred to their new bases in Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire on 17 August. The hard-driving Harris warned them to be ready for operations in their new role in the coming night. Because of weather conditions over Germany, however, this first Pathfinder-led raid was cancelled and an ordinary raid to a minor target, Osnabrck, was substituted. The first raid for the Pathfinders was to Flensburg on the following night.
The new force had few advantages. It had no history or tradition. It was operating four different types of aircraft - Halifaxes, Lancasters, Stirlings and Wellingtons. It came into being at a time of increasing tactical difficulty: the growing Flak and searchlight defences at targets were forcing bombers to fly at ever increasing heights; the still growing effectiveness of the German night fighters was starting to force the use of moonless rather than moonlit nights; the winter weather was approaching; the Germans had just started to jam Gee. The early Pathfinders had no special bombs for marking targets and could attempt no more than the finding of a target and the illuminating of it with flares. Within weeks, however, a crude form of 'target marker bomb' was produced by packing the casing of 250- and 4,000-pound bombs with inflammable material and chemicals which would produce a distinctively coloured 'super incendiary' to burn on the ground, it was hoped at or near the centre of the target area, and act as a guide for what would become known as the Main Force. The first of these so-called Tink Pansies' were used in September and, although of only moderate assistance, they proved to be the start of a process of improvement which would serve Bomber Command well and justify the foundation of the Pathfinder Force.
The only command change at group level in Bomber Command during the next few months was the appointment of Air Vice-Marshal The Hon. R. A. Cochrane to relieve the long-serving and much respected Air Vice-Marshal Baldwin at 3 Group. Baldwin was the last of the pre-war group commanders to leave; he had served Bomber Command well. His departure coincided with the retirement of two more of the pre-war bombers. The last Blenheim sorties were flown on the night of the first Pathfinder raid and the last Hampden squadron would hand over its aircraft to training units in mid-September. Only the Wellingtons remained of the old types. The four-engined aircraft, particularly the Lancaster, on which so many of Bomber Command's future hopes rested, were now growing steadily in numbers. The only new type of aircraft to appear on the scene was another stop-gap purchase from the Americans; this was the Lockheed Ventura which was given to 2 Group, intended for use as a night Intruder, but the aircraft only operated in the day-bomber role.
It is time that something was said about the morale of the bomber crews serving in squadrons at that time. There had been some boost in spirits at the time of the first 1,000-bomber raid on Cologne, but later Thousand' raids had not been successful and all of these raids had incurred heavy casualties. There had also been serious losses in a disappointing run of raids on targets in the Ruhr, particularly Essen and Duisburg. Morale in Bomber Command usually held up at an amazingly high level, much of this being due to the leadership of Harris himself, but twice in the war it is recognized that morale sagged and this period, the middle and later months of 1942, was the first of those occasions.
Bomber Command eventually settled down to a system by which a man selected for aircrew duty in the command was expected to complete a first tour of thirty operations and then, after a rest, a second tour of twenty operations. He could not be forced to fly again in Bomber Command after those fifty raids, though some men did volunteer to continue. There were some variations but the fifty-operation rule is satisfactory for these comments. These were the mathematical chances of a member of a bomber crew surviving fifty operational flights at various rates of loss:
The casualty rates for Bomber Command night operations during the recent periods of this diary were as follows:
