RAF 6-3 Eighty Years ~ 17 January 1945 ~ Operation Zeitz (and Operations Magdeburg, BS, Wanne-Eickel and Brux)

RAF 6-3

Eighty Years ~ 17 January 1945 ~ Operation Zeitz

and

(Operations Magdeburg, BS, Wanne-Eickel and Brux)

Pathfinder

Flight Sergeant Harry Alfred Marshall Pathfinder RAF VR 1337884 (1923-1945)

The Cover is part of the Payne Crew, location and aircraft type unidentified, the pilot and skipper, Flight Lieutenant Leslie Payne Royal Canadian Air Force standing far left. Harry, known as Shorty, I see why! Our Canadians are all tall! And a great bunch by all accounts when some visited on their last weekend leave in October 1944 to my Grandparents’ home in Cheltenham.

This is more fully written about in the family story ~ Windsor Street Days.

Introduction

I write 80 years after the event and therefore outside the syndrome of bereavement. I write also in light of letters written by Harry Marshall to his parents in December 1944 and keeping a weather eye on an extract by way of counterbalance from AFTERMATH by Harald Jähner [i] ~ the reality of life in post-war Germany ~ that I will feature in the History Category later this year.

I am direct. I understand victimhood. The cloak of victimhood is not easily worn. Wearing the cloak is not selective. There lies the uncomfortable fabric of such a garment. We are the victims now, we are occupied by the Allies, yet we do not even think about the Holocaust. We do not see semitism as part of our Germanic nationhood. In a nutshell, here is the kernel that persisted well into the 1960s until the grandchildren rose up in consideable anger and demanded answers from their parents and grandparents, and this was so either side of the Iron Curtain.

In 1939–1945 this was total war.

The present generation is much more aware in 2025 because of both the War in Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza War. The global situation is white hot and will burn. We in the West and NATO had never expected the leader of the free world to threaten to do to Greenland that which it castigates China for threatening the very same action against Taiwan.

Tyrants rule and live by terror. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Tojo ~ confining myself to 1933-1945.

Hamas ruled by terror on 7 October 2023. Their actions equal that of the actions of the Nazis and their Axis states in the Holocaust. They did that which the Nazis did.

They sowed the wind and their entire people reaped the whirlwind. There is, here, no sympathy for the Jihadists. I do have enormous sympathy for - coupled with utter frustration - the thousands of innocent people in the Middle East who have lost their lives; the countless thousands who have suffered life-changing injuries; the complete destruction of towns and cities, whether in Europe by Russia, or the Middle East by Israel.

Tyranny is tyranny. Its only means of removal is destruction. The winds of war are never understood and will always be misrepresented. This always happens when nations not at war begin the long process of navel-gazing. It serves no useful purpose.

Humankind is as corrupt today as it has ever been.

Nature always deals with corruption in the most brutal fashion and, alas, as we see throughout the world, and at the moment ferociously, in Los Angeles County.

Part I

I travel back in time eight decades. It is a new week, Monday 15th January 1945. 

The Allies are making progress, Paris was liberated six months ago in August 1944. Even though Nazi Germany would be defeated and unconditionally surrender to the Allies on Tuesday 8 May 1945, on 16 January the War in Europe was at its most savage and ferocious, humankind the witness in those last four months to the barbarity and brute savagery of Nazism - symbolised by the Skull and Crossbones worn with such pride by millions - to a complete and absolutely ruthless destruction.

In 2025 - and this has not always been so - it is less easy to gloss over this reality because we are witness to both the War in Ukraine, the War between Israel and Gaza and the actions of Iran, fomenting hatred both abroad and within its borders.

Russia - a once great nation - stands, yet again, pariah-like, pretending that the things it is doing it is not doing.

Pariah

Russia - a once great nation - stands, yet again, pariah-like, pretending that the things it is doing it is not doing.

As I write, I try to imagine the thoughts of my mother’s brother as he prepares for another maximum effort [ii] tomorrow. He has flown many missions now, and the last photos of him and some of his crew at my grandparents’ home in October 1944 capture the recollections passed on to me over 63 years by my mother. I could understand her anger. “The war was almost over.” Paris had been liberated. It was not wise to argue that the last months of the war were the most terrifying.

My uncle and his crew are at RAF Gransden Lodge in Cambridgeshire. A huge heavy bomber station where pedal cycles were an absolute necessity. The dispersals were indeed very widely dispersed, at least a mile and a half from the station complex, each dispersal isolated from the other to lessen the target area for marauding Luftwaffe. The station was throbbing with ceaseless activity, aggressive, efficient, engaged in total war, airmen and airwomen, large civilian contingents; and farmland right up to the heavily guarded boundaries, active in the war economy production even in the depth of winter, in soulless January.

Snow is melting. It is slow, for the frosts are very sharp and temperatures plummet. Ground Crews are working around the clock, 24/7. In normal times one of four of the Merlin engines of an Avro Lancaster might be expecred to be changed over a period of several days, five even. Not now. Five hours maximum, preferably less. What is more, our Ground Crews achieved this. It is incredible to visualise that for a moment.

Getting about the station is difficult. Slightly easier when it is frozen, as now, but lethal when the thaw arrives and with it all the mud and sludge. It is a fact that wartime RAF stations, many hundreds, seemed to local populations to appear almost overnight as huge townships, with ceaseless activity, especially at night. Transport quickly turned routes used by service personnel on foot, cycle or a cadged lift on a ‘heavy’ back to the billets or to the bustling station complex, into a quagmire.

Flight Sergeant Harry Marshall RAF (substantive rank Sergeant) is a flight engineer with the Payne Crew, flying an Avro Lancaster Mk III with 405 (City of Vancouver) Squadron Royal Canadian Air Force with the Pathfinder Force. Why is he with the RCAF? From the outset of the Second World War, the Commonwealth air forces did not train flight engineers, a very specific and demanding post within aircrew. If one pictures the need for an engine to be very, very finely tuned, this was just one of the functions. The flight engineer also served as a second pilot. Quite early in the war, a directive required that flight engineers be given regular tuition by their skippers to offset the sudden and often fatal loss of the pilot through enemy action even though the rest of the crew were functioning well and the aircraft itself was able to fly.

“During the Second World War, the RAF reached a total strength of 1,208,000 men and women, of whom 185,000 were aircrew. About 70,000 RAF personnel were killed, 55,573 on Bomber Command alone.”

— Fact files commissioned by the BBC in 2003

Part II

It is now Tuesday 16 January 1945, approaching 18:00. PB402 LQ-M is in a long line of Avro Lancasters taxiing towards the runway. It is already dark. The whole operation will be conducted in darkness, for their estimated time of return is set to 02:00 hours. The hessian seat is alongside the pilot to his right. Earlier, Flight Sergeant Marshall had liaised with the Flight Sergeant i/c Ground Crew and they had agreed all was in order. Flight Lieutenant Payne would then be called over by his flight engineer to confirm that everything is in in order sir, and Les would quickly double-check - the body language alone between the three men, watched on by their ground crew spoke volumes of the trust and camaderie. les was under no illusion. Now Sir, you make sure you bring her back safely to us. We’re entrusting her to you for a few hours, that’s all. This would be the conversation between both elements of an aircraft’s crew, and still is to this day.

The last each saw of the other was that wondrous moment when their own gound crew waved off their friends with grfeat affection from the edge of the runway. It is something that, to this day, only those who are serving in or are now veterans of our Armed Forces.

At 18:13 PB402 LQ-M takes to the skies… this time, for one final time. All are quiet and orderly on board, all functioning superbly, all very aware of the stakes. Some even have a thought of their fathers ‘going over the top’ in the last war and somehow surviving. Well Dad, you did it! So I guess that means I’ll do it too. Harrie thinks about one of his letters home, describing the snow ~ you wouldn’t like all this mud Dad. I know you don’t like mud. I don’t either with a lettle giggle to himself as he checks off the instrucments behind the skipper before he receives the all clear and takes up his place alongside.

The four Merlins sound sweetly beautiful. The pilot’s right hands pushes the throttles forward; suddenly the Lancaster is moving at terrfic speed. Already her tail has left the ground; as Les begins to pull the stick, Harrie’s hand slips over the controls to hold them to max as Les pulls the stick deep into his tummy. Yessss! She leaves the ground with such grace. A slight yaw is corrected and soon they are many thousands of feet over Cambridgeshire, just a blackness below, so effective is the nationwide blackout.

Now begins the task of gathering the entire force from 33 Squadrons flying from 27 RAF Stations over 7 Counties. On board PB402 LQ-M, the task is twinfold. Not only to reach their target, the Braunkohle-Benzin Synthetic-Oil Plant in the city of Leipzig in what post-war generations came to know as East Germany (German Democratic Republic behind the Iron Curtain).

I have not used the wartime maps because I am writing for today’s generation as we enter into the second quarter of the 21st Century. This is merely to give myself a gentle perspective. The Image is produced courtesy of the online Google Map 17 January 2025 to whom all rights are Reserved. KTW

RAF Bomber Command mounted five simultaneous Operations against Nazi Germany and the Third Reich during the night of 16/17 January 1945.

Operation Magdeburg
Target ~ City of Magdeburg
“the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system and the direct support of land and naval forces” (note ii)

Operation Zeitz
Target ~ Braunkohle-Benzin Synthetic-Oil Plant

Operation BS
Target ~ Benzol Synthetic-Oil Plant

Operation Wanne-Eickel
Target ~ a Synthetic-Oil Plant

Operation Brux
Target ~ Synthetic-Oil Plant in Western Czechoslovakia

By using the definitive 9-volume series ~ Volume 6 of the Chorley Bomber Command Losses 1945, I obtain an incline of the overall “maximum effort”. I have restricted myself to the losses, rather than the overall Aerial Battle Order.

My mother’s brother was part of Operation Zeitz. Chorley reports that Marshall’s aircraft, an Avro Lancaster III PB402 LQ-M took off from RAF Gransden Lodge at 18:13 hours on Tuesday 16 January 1945. As a Pathfinder, the Crew was to assist in the marking of the Braunkohle-Benzin Synthetic-Oil Plant.

Just collating the data of the lost aircraft, I discovered that the five operations were mustered from 33 Squadrons across 27 RAF Stations over 7 Counties. Transposing the data from my spreadsheet compiled from Mr Chorley’s records, I can identify the stations, counties and Air Types quite easily.

27 Squadron Bases (or Stations)

Melbourne East Riding of Yorkshire

Wickenby Lincolnshire
Little Snoring Norfolk

Snaith Yorkshire

Mepal Cambridgeshire

Grimsby Lincolnshire

Ludford Magna Lincolnshire

Pocklington East Riding of Yorkshire

Scampton Lincolnshire

Lissett East Riding of Yorkshire

Kirmington Lincolnshire

Stradishall Suffolk

Oulton Norfolk

Faldingworth Lincolnshire

Elvington Yorkshire

Gransden Lodge Cambridgeshire

East Moor Yorkshire

Tholthorpe North Yorkshire

Linton-on-Ouse North Yorkshire

Leeming  North Yorkshire

Croft North Yorkshire

Driffield East Riding of Yorkshire

Waterbeach Cambridgeshire

Fiskerton Lincolnshire

Burn North Yorkshire

Little Staughton Cambridgeshire

Leconfield East Riding of Yorkshire

7 Counties

East Riding of Yorkshire

Lincolnshire

Norfolk

Yorkshire

Cambridgeshire

Suffolk

Norfolk

Aircraft Types

18 Halifax III

 1 Halifax VII

9 Lancaster I

3 Lancaster III

1 Lancaster X

1 Mosquito VI

1 Fortress III

A total of 34 aircraft of 7 Types/Marks lost including two involved in a mid-air collision fully laden.

33 Squadrons serving within RAF Bomber Command

2 Free French Air Force

1 Polish Air Force

13 Royal Air Force

3 Royal Australian Air Force

14 Royal Canadian Air Force

2 Royal New Zealand Air Force

Pilots and Flight Engineers

1 Squadron Leader

2 Cne’

2 Adjutants

11 Flight Lieutenants

21 Flying Officers

1 Warrant Officer

0 Pilot Officer

3 Flight Sergeants

30 Sergeants

Total 70

23 RAF Flight Engineers on Secondment to RCAF

3 RAF Flight Engineers on Secondment to RAAF

34 aircraft lost with the loss of ... personnel

Chorley Volume 6 Totals

Page 48      49      50      51      52      53

Killed   29    36      26      20      23      7           141

Injured        0       5       1       0       1       0                7

POW           8       9       1 1     22      15      0           65

 Part III

Mid Air Collisions

Being bombed from above by one’s comrades when flying in formation, aircrews will be aware of.

Mid-air collisions were equally frequent.

I discovered the final moments of the Payne Crew when Flight Lieutenant Payne’s Niece, Ms Linda Payne, contacted me via Ancestry from Canada. I learned of the mid-air collision and the eye-witness reports suggest that either one or both Lancasters ~ PB402 LQ-M (405 Squadron RCAF) and Avro Lancaster KB850 WL-O (434 Squadron RCAF) ~ were fully laden.

In due course, I will add further documents relating to the collision mid-air eighty years ago 16-17 January 1945.

For now, I will just list the two entries recorded on pages 50 and 52 in Chorley Volume 5. As I have already done so in regards to Operations Frothblower and Chubb on 16-17 April 1943, I will then list all the lost Crews on this Quintuple Military Operation against the Third Reich.

Part IV

Payne Crew

405 (City of Vancouver) Squadron
Royal Canadian Air Force

RAF Gransden Lodge

Avro Lancaster III PB402 LQ-M

Flt Lt H L Payne RCAF
FS H A Marshall RAF
Fg Off H E Novak RCAF
Fg Off D G McKay RCAF
Plt Off A B Miller RCAF
FS J A Bruggeman RCAF
FS N L L Smith RCAF

Mr Chorley writes: Took off from RAF Gransden Lodge, Cambridgeshire to assist in the marking of the Braunkohle-Benzin synthetic oil plant. Crashed at Pfaffenhausen. All are buried in Dürnbach War Cemetery. Plt Off Miller RCAF was flying in the capacity of visual air bomber.

KTW: I have shown the RAF flight engineer as a flight sergeant. This is from the family archive which records light-hearted banter between Harrie and his sister Nancy when our mother met her brother at the Cheltenham railway station, when it took her a few moments to cotton on to why Harrie was overly coughing and catching her eye to look at the chevrons, at which point Mum noticed the King’s Crown. I believe that this was a wartime acting rank although his substantive rank was that of Sergeant. It is of course the substantive ranks that are recorded in archives.

Bauch Crew

434 (Bluenose) Squadron
Royal Canadian Air Force

RAF Croft

Avro Lancaster X KB850 WL-O

Flt Lt A Kiehl Bauch RCAF
FS D Turner RCAF
Fg Off G G Shaw RCAF
Fg Off N G Fadden RCAF
Plt Off W T Wilson RCAF
Plt Off A G Carolan RCAF
Plt Off W D Martin RCAF

Mr Chorley writes: Took off from RAF Croft, North Yorkshire to attach the Braunkohle-Benzin synthetic oil plant. All are buried in Dürnbach War Cemetery. It is possible Flight Sergeant Turner RCAF was an Englishman serving with the RCAF; certainly, he had married Margaret Kathleen Turner of Church Stretton and it seems likely from evidence in the CWGC Cemetery Register that his parents, too, lived in the same area.

 Note. This was the first Lancaster X reported missing from No 434 Bluenose Squadron since converting to the type in December 1944.

Part V

Victory Message

To: The Path Finder Force

From: Air Vice Marshal DCT Bennett C.B., CBE., DSO.

 

Great Britain and the Commonwealth have made a contribution to the civilised world so magnificent that history alone will be able to appreciate it fully. Through disaster and triumph, sometimes supported and sometimes alone, the British races Have steadfastly and energetically over many long years flung their forces against the international criminals. They have fought the war from end to end without a moment's rest bite, in all theatres, and with all arms dash land, sea and air.

 

Bomber Command’s share in this great effort has been a major one. You, each one of you, have made that possible. The Path Finder Force has shouldered a grave responsibility. It has led Bomber Command, the greatest striking force ever known. That we have been successful can be seen in the far-reaching results which the bomber offensive has achieved. That is the greatest reward the Path Finder Force ever hopes to receive, for those results have benefited all law-abiding peoples.

 

What you have been at work through these vital years, I have not interrupted you, as I would like to have done, with messages of praise and congratulation. You were too busy; but now that your great contribution to the world has been made, I want to thank you each man and woman of you personally and to congratulate you on your unrelenting spirit and energy and on the results you have achieved.

 

Happiness to you all dash always. Keep pressing on along the path of peace.

 

Don Bennett

 

HQ, Pathfinder force

European V-Day, 1945

Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett CB CBE DSO

AOC-in-C RAF Path Finder Force 1943-1945

An Australian aviation pioneer and bomber pilot who rose to be the youngest air vice marshal in the Royal Air Force. He led the "Pathfinder Force" (No. 8 Group RAF) from 1942 to the end of the Second World War in 1945. He has been described as "one of the most brilliant technical airmen of his generation: an outstanding pilot, a superb navigator who was also capable of stripping a wireless set or overhauling an engine". (1910-1986)
Born in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. (Courtesy online Wikipedia of which KTW is a monthly subscription member).

Part VI

W R Chorley

Royal Air Force

BOMBER COMMAND

LOSSES

of the Second World War

In writing this Paper, I discharge an obligation to my family, but chiefly to an uncle I never met, yet whose brief life impacted mine hugely. This really came home when I realised, upon assuming command of an Air Training Corps Squadron in 1990, that this was Harrie’s Squadronin which he had attained the rank of cadet sergeant by the time he became a member of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. It is for this reason that I also value my own peacetime commission the the RAF VR (Training Branch) and am silently very proud of the gift to me by MOD Air to use the title of my rank for life. This is not usual for junior officers, and when I telephoned my former Wing Commanding Officer, Wing Commander Ian Todd, having received notification that day from MOD (Air), I always remember Ian’s chuckle. At one time we had served together as squadron commanders and had always had that great sense of fun as well as the determination to make our respective squadrons the best, to give the young people within our commands the best starts in life. Ken. Haha! Don’t worry. You’re correct. It is usually for squadron leaders and above. But it’s also within my gift. You’ve earned it, Ken. Our way of saying thank you.

Needless to say, I only use this when in a military setting. But I will also flag this. This gesture threw an unexpected lifeline in Liverpool in 2009 when everything went belly up. I’ve much to thank both the Citizens’ Advice Bureau in Liverpool and the Officers’ Association in London. When a ship is in distress and another ship comes alongside, believe me, this can never be overstated.

As I mention at the beginning, writing this paper is not a matter of bereavement. That would be misplaced. It is a matter of innermost expressions of thanks to all the men and women who paid the price that has me sitting here, aged 71, in freedom and security and protected by the Rule of Law.

Although I have placed above, the Victory Message, the last word must be with William Chorley whose tireless work of a lifetime has given us a Record that could so easily be otherwise quickly forgotten and then lost.

With Mr Chorley lies the final word, at least for me.

His eloquent Conclusion on pages 182-183 of Volume 6 1945, brings the matter to a conclusion, a very long and at times perilous flight, rewarding us with every aviator’s dream, to brings us safely to rest as light as a feather, so light that our passengers think that they are still aloft and then hearts momentarily flutter as they hear the wind down of engines…

No, No… all’s well, we’ve landed. You were resting so we put your safety belt on and just kept an eye on you from our own seats near the cockpit. Right, let me help with your luggage.

Thank you so much William.

Bill, you have achieved that which is beyond the ability of the rest of us.

Yours aye,

Ken

Ken Webb

17 January 2025

Gloucestershire and Liverpool

Conclusion
by
Willam R Chorley

W H Chorley

Volume 6 Front Cover

W H Chorley

Volume 6 Rear Cover

Pathfinder

The Pathfinder Wings were worn only when on active service with a Pathfinder Squadron. The Wings were not worn during Operations, as they denoted an Elite which, in the event of capture, the enemy would do all in their power to extract information.

Despite this being against the Rules and Conduct of War and enshrined in the Geneva Convention to which Germany had been a signatory, Adolf Hitler had signed his infamous order that all allied airmen captured within the Reich were to be treated as spies. This meant summary execution.

Written Autumn 1944

Mum with Flt Lt Payne - pilot and skipper - when the crew visited Cheltenham in 1944 six weeks before they were all KIA. The photograph is reproduced by kind permission of Ms Linda Payne of Canada, the niece of Les Payne, and is a page from her Uncle’s contemporaneous photograph album.

Life is Good…

And here we see the informal portrait … that same smile captured countless times through our lifetimes with Mum and their younger brother Frank. That hint of fun, and as Mum put it, ‘“Harrie used to give a wink with his eye that was barely noticeable, but meant, ‘don’t worry our Nance, I’m pulling Dad’s and Mum’s leg!’”

The thing is, Mum was still doing this in 2016, and Frank too in 2018! Something I could never quite master!

“You’re supposed to do it without noticing; not screwing your whole face up, Ken!” Wonderful memories. Ha-Ha!!!!

Life does indeed go on!!!!

KTW

The Epilogue comprises the Memorial written by Mr Graham Sacker in HELD IN HONOUR Volume Two Cheltenham and the Second World War, which is, with his memorials in respect of two others killed in the First World War and the third killed served with the RAF in 1943 - also over Germany - now formally placed within the family archive.

The Horror of War

Disintegrating Over Hamburg, 1943. A rendition using digital AI.

The Horror of War

Mid-Air Collision 16-17 January 1945. A rendition using digital AI.

16 January 2026
All Rights Reserved


LIVERPOOL

© 2025 Kenneth Thomas Webb

Digital Artwork by © KTW

Notes

i Published by Penguin Random House UK 2022 is a translation of Wolfszeit by Harald Jähner supported by the Goethe-Institut. English translation copyright © Shaun Whiteside, 2021. (Wolfszeit ~ The Time of the Wolves). First published in German by Rowohlt, Berlin in 2019.

ii Maximum Effort. An air operation against the enemy in which the directive came from the Headquarters of Air Officer Commanding in Chief of the Royal Air Force, that every available aircraft would be required and which, as the Strategic Air Offensive against the Third Reich increased its intensity, would see Squadrons from Operational Conversion Units (OCU) and Heavy Conversion Units (HCU) also being committed.

iii RAF Operational Summary (January 1945) of 35 Squadron, RAAF, RCAF, RAF Official Archive Paper