Vickers Wellington
sets off to attack
Kiel, 4 September 1939
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The Vickers Wellington was originally designed to serve as a medium bomber for Bomber Command. It was to serve in that role from 1939 until October 1943, far longer than either of its two peacetime stable mates at Bomber Command, the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley and the Handley Page Hampden (the Whitley was phased out of Bomber Command by April 1942, the Hampden in September 1942).
The Wellington was the end product of a lengthy design process that had begun in 1932. The Wellington Mk I finally reached the RAF in October 1938, when No. 99 Squadron received the first aircraft. Over the next year, the number of Wellingtons in service increased rapidly, until in September 1939 the type equipped eight squadrons.
Bomber Command began the war by reducing the number of squadrons it operated from 55 to 23, partly to create a reserve of aircraft. The Wellington Mk I and the new Mk IA which was already replacing it equipped the six squadrons of No. 3 Group, based in East Anglia, as well as two reserve squadrons. The Wellington’s first raid was not a success. On 4 September fourteen aircraft from Nos. 9 and 149 Squadrons attacked the entrance to the Kiel Canal at Brunsbüttel, but achieved nothing, failing to do any significant damage to German ships and suffering two losses in the process.
Bomber Command was about to get a hard lesson in the reality of daylight bombing. It was firmly believed that the defensive firepower of a formation of Wellington bombers would be enough to ensure their safety. Experience quickly proved that assumption to be ridiculously optimistic.
It would only take two attempted raids on German warships at Wilhelmshaven to shatter that believe. On 14 December six out of twelve Wellingtons were lost, five over the target and one in a crash landing. Worse was to come. On 18 December a force of twenty four Wellingtons attacked the same target. The bombers reached their target, but were under orders to only attack German ships outside the harbour. Unfortunately the German ships were inside the harbour on 18 December and so the bombers turned for home.
At that moment the German fighters arrived. Bf 109s and Bf 110s launched a series of attacks on the bomber formation during their long return journey. The much vaunted firepower of the Wellington had a fatal flaw – none of the guns could be aimed at an attacker coming from above and to the side – the front and rear guns could not turn far enough and the ventral turret could only fire at targets below the bomber. In the running battle ten Wellingtons were shot down, two forced to ditch and three crash landed. Only two German fighters were shot down.
Bomber Command learned several lessons from the disaster on 18 December. The Wellington had proved vulnerable to fire because it lacked self-sealing fuel tanks. A pre-war belief that bombers would be almost impossible to attack from the side had proven to be false. Close formations were hard to maintain in the face of anti-aircraft fire and determined fighter attacks. Most important of all, Bomber Command decided to abandon day bombing raids, and switch to night attacks only.
For the next five months Bomber Command restricted itself to dropping leaflets over Germany. The Command was under great pressure not to cause civilian casualties, or provoke a German bombing campaign in response. Only after the start of the German blitzkrieg in the west was Bomber Command allowed to attack strategic targets inside Germany. The Wellington’s first night bombing raid took place on the night of 15-16 May 1940, when a mixed force of Wellingtons, Whitleys and Hampdens attacked the Ruhr. Five years of strategic night bombing had begun.
The first two years of the bombing offensive were largely ineffective. Night navigation was imprecise. Independent reports later suggested that very few bombs were dropped within five miles of their target. The small bombs then used by Bomber Command did little damage when they did hit their targets. Some raids had more impact that the damage done – Wellingtons were amongst the aircraft that bombed Berlin on 25-26 August 1940.
The Wellington was involved in developing many of the new technologies and techniques that would transform the effectiveness of Bomber Command.
Early 1941 was the appearance of the Mk II Wellington and also of the 4000 lb “Blockbuster” bomb. The bomb bay of the Wellington had to be modified to carry the new bomb. Work was carried out on both Mk IIs and existing Mk ICs. The first raid using the new bomb was against Essen on 1 April 1941, when two Wellingtons dropped the first of countless “Blockbusters” on a German city.
1941 also saw the first navigational aid enter RAF service. This was Gee, a system that used three widely spaced transmitter stations to help a bomber fix its location. The new system was first tested in the field on a Wellington bomber taking part in a raid on München Gladbach in August 1941. Full scale use of the new system was held back until March 1942, when a sufficient number of Gee equipped aircraft were ready.
The Wellington remained the mainstay of Bomber Command into 1942. That year also saw “Bomber” Harris take over as Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command. At this point Bomber Command was under pressure. Its bombing raids were not producing enough damage to justify the effort involved. Other demands on bomber production were preventing the growth of the bomber force.
In order to prove the value of the bomber force, Harris promised to launch a raid with 1,000 bombers against a single German target. Given that this was almost twice the operational strength of Bomber Command at the time this was very ambitious plan. Only by stripping every aircraft from the reserves and from the Operational Training Units was Harris able to reach his target. On 30-31 May 1942, 599 Wellingtons provided the main strength of the force of 1,042 bombers that attacked Cologne. German air defences were overwhelmed, just as Harris had expected. 898 of the 1,042 bombers claimed to have attacked their target, and only forty were lost. The Cologne raid and the thousand bomber raids that followed proved Harris’s point. In the aftermath of the thousand bomber raids Harris was given the resources he wanted.
Although the Wellington was the most numerous aircraft during the Cologne raid, its time as a front line strategic bomber was clearly limited. Amongst the other types involved had been the Stirling, the Halifax, the Manchester, and most importantly the first sixty eight Lancaster bombers. The four engined heavies were starting to appear in the sort of numbers that would make the Wellington obsolete in Bomber Command. The Wellington Mk III flew its last Bomber Command mission on 8 October 1943. The final major bomber variant, the Mk X, entered service with Bomber Command in late 1942. At its peak in March 1943 the type equipped twelve squadrons. However, during the summer of 1943 even the Mk X was replaced by newer aircraft. The Mk X also flew its last Bomber Command mission on 8 October 1943.
For the first three years of the war the Wellington had been the most important aircraft available to Bomber Command. From limited beginnings in 1940 the night bombing campaign had become a fearsome instrument of war by the time the Wellington was finally retired from the front line. Whatever its impact on German war industry, the Wellington and its fellow bombers forced the Germans to divert an increasingly large number of men and guns to the defence of Germany at a time when they were desperately needed elsewhere.
Wellington in Action, Ron Mackay. A well illustrated guide to the development and service career of this classic British bomber. Mackay looks at the early development of the Wellington and the unusual geodetic frame that gave it great strength, the period when the Wellington was the mainstay of Bomber Command and the many uses found for the aircraft after it was replaced in the main bomber stream.
