Posted on 10/09/2011 10:26:49 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
DAMBUSTERS flying hero Guy Gibson was killed by friendly fire, The Sun can reveal — solving a 67-year-old riddle.
New research shows the RAF hid the truth of the famous bomber pilot's death.
Gibson won the VC leading 617 Squadron's epic raid that smashed giant German dams in May 1943 — but died mysteriously in September 1944, aged 26.
It is thought he got lost flying a Mosquito over Germany and crashed while following Lancaster bombers home.
Now a secret tape reveals a Lancaster gunner mistook Gibson's plane for a similar German Junkers 88 night-fighter and thought he was under attack.
Bernard McCormack recalls he opened fire and the Mosquito went down near a Dutch town — the spot where Gibson crashed.
Racked by guilt, he taped the confession before he died in 1992.
No account of the shooting down is in RAF war records. But the tape and the Lancaster crew's combat report were discovered during research for a remake of 1955 movie The Dambusters.
Researcher James Cutler, 62, said: "It could only have been Gibson's plane. The RAF killed one of its greatest heroes."
(Excerpt) Read more at thesun.co.uk ...
The tragedies of the fog of war, but the two planes do not look alike on the ground. Different cowlings, plexiglass nose front, etc.
However, at a distance, they could look similar because of the twin engines. Because a gunner only has a few seconds to sight and shoot, he might not be able to properly identify who is flying towards him.
Today, fighters have radio transponders on them to broadcast an identification signal. SO do our armored vehicles.
Plus I think it was at night.
“mistook Gibson’s plane for a similar German Junkers 88 night-fighter”
He also placed his VP-11 logbook (WW2) on the Web. Listed there, was a co-pilot who was killed beside him—taking fire from P-40s. I don't know how US fighters mistook a two-engine PBY for a four-engine Kawanishi "Emily".
I also didn't know that there was a second bombing of Pearl Harbor! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawanishi_H8K
Supposedly, Lucas copied the dambuster’s attack for the rebel attack in the first Star Wars movie.
The Mosquito really was a remarkable aircraft.
I can understand this friendly fire shootdown of a famous aviator being kept secret during the war, but not this long.
According to one account, on the History Channel, iirc, on his flight from England to Paris on Christmas Eve, 1944, the small plane would passed through an designated "Ordance Displosal Zone" in the English Channel if it had taken a direct route. Planes, other than bombers disposing of ordance, were supposed to avoid these zones. They interviewed one member of a Lancaster crew who were coming back from an aborted raid on Germany. Rather than land with full (or any) bomb loads, they dropped their ordance in these zones before returning to base.
This crew member distinctly remembers seeing a "grasshopper" (small plane) his by his units jettisoned bombs at the time Miller's plane disappeared. The pilot of Miller's plane was relatively inexperienced and like a lot of Army pilots in World War II, had only a minimum of experience. He may have prefered chancing a direct course for Paris to taking a chance on getting lost on a less direct course.
Alfred Pierce, in his wonderful history of U.S. electronic warfare in World War II (published by the Society of Old Crows) tells the story of an American B-24 outfitted as an electronic surveillance plane sniffing off the coast of Italy in 1942, prior to the invasion of Sicily. They detected what they thought was emissions from an ME-110 nightfighter and the tailgunner fired a few burst at what appeared to be an ME-110 tailing them. The pursuing plane broke off contact after this.
A few days later they got a note from members of a British nightfighter outfit, also in Africa, telling them they needed to improve their aim. It appears that the detector, which was tuned to the known frequency band of the ME-110 had detected harmonics of the British nightfighter’s radar. The harmonics were generated by the EW aircraft’s receiver, not emitted by British nightfighter.
I was reading a story on the Dambuster raid a couple of years ago which had a picture of Gibson and his crew posing at their airplane before the raid. The caption noted that every single member of that crew was later killed in action during the war. Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how many sacrificed everything.
There was a really good old movie about the dam busting raid.
It was my introduction to the remarkable Mosquito.
They skipped the bombs (they were round)on the reservoir into the dam.
My father, who flew in B-24s in the 8th Air Force, recounted a similar story.
Apparently, the intelligence types of his squadron were reviewing bomber camera films (probably shot with a handheld camera from the waist position) when they came across images of a twin engine fighter making a head on approach toward the bomber. Tracers start streaking past the aircraft as it approaches, it pulls up to avoid the fire revealing the planform of a Mosquito, and is promptly raked from nose to tail by the incoming .50 caliber bullets.
Oops!
The aircraft had US markings and apparently was serving some sort of early airborne bomber command and control function for his B-24 group or wing. (Today, we would probably call them FAC (Airborne).) Anyways, after being hit, the Mosquito rolled over on its back and headed for the deck. Can’t remember if he said the crew was able to bail out or not.
What I do remember is that there was regret that the aircraft had been shot down but not a lot of sympathy for the crew: “Any fighter pointing its nose towards a bomber in combat is going to get shot.”
I’d love to ask him further questions about this story (and a great many other things) but he has been dead since 1975.
As for confusing a particular German aircraft type for the Mosquito, consider also the Me-410:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_410
3-view image here: http://www.airwar.ru/image/idop/fww2/me410/me410-1.gif
The Me-410 was a lot more similar in size, layout, etc. However, my understanding is that RAF bomber operations were mostly flown at night; my casual reading mentions Me-410s only as daylight bomber destroyers for the Luftwaffe. Without further details, their different operational employments make it hard to reasonably place a Lancaster in the same airspace over Germany at the same time with an Me-410.
I believe the USAAF’s 25th BG flew the Mosquito among other aircraft.
So the RAF didn’t kill him, a nervous tail gunner killed him. Can’t really blame him.
Chaos happens, even to heroes.
I think they used ME-110s, JU-88s and a few He-219s as night fighters. Me-410s were fighter bombers, bomber destroyers and aerial recon.
Incredible performance, do-anything versatility, and of course stunningly beautiful in the DH tradition.
Too bad that the wooden construction removed them from the ranks of flying survivors.
I have heard of reports of a small plane wreck that was seen on the French coast soon after he disappeared but I had never heard of the ODA theory. It makes sense though, I think they would go through all kinds of maneuvers to keep that sort of thing quiet.
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