One of my heroes, Wg Cdr Reggie Baker RAF DSO DFC & Bar, commanded 263 Sqn during its Whirlwind period – most notably during the incredible raid on the blockade-runner 'Muensterland' in Cherbourg Harbour in 1943 (the story of which reads like the attack on the Death Star – see below). He'd previously made a name for himself flying Sunderlands in this part of the world and was finally killed leading a Typhoon wing in Normandy. I took my cadets to visit his grave in Normandy last year. There is a superb website dedicated to him here:
eregbaker.info
This is an extract:
"Look out, yellow section, Flak-ship, one o'clock !"
And immediately after Frank Wooley, it was Ken Charney who saw a Flak-ship, straight in front of us !
"Max blue attacking twelve o'clock !"
A grey mass rolling in the mist, a squat funnel, raised platforms, a mast bristling with radar aerials – Then rapid staccato flashes all along the superstructure. Christ ! I released the safety catch, lowered my head, and nestled down to be protected by armour plating. Clusters of green and red tracer bullets started up in every direction. flowing Jacques, I went slap through the spray of a 37 mm. charger which only just missed me – the salt water blurred my windshield. I was fifty yards from the Flak-ship. Jacques in front of me was firing ; I could see the flashes from his guns and his empties cascading from his wings.
I aimed at the bridge, between the damaged funnel and the mast, and fired a long, furious continuous burst, my finger hard on the button. My shells exploded in the water, rose toward the water line, exploded on the grey black-stripped hull, rose higher to the handrails, the sandbags.
A wind-scoop crashed down, a jet of stream sputtered from somewhere. twenty yards – two men in navy-blue jerseys hurled themselves flat on their faces. – ten yards – the four barrels of multiple pom-pom were pointing straight between my eyes – quick – my shells exploded around it. A loader carrying two full clips capsized into the sea, his legs mown from under him, then the four barrels fired, I could feel the vibration as I passed a bare yard above – then the smack of the steel wire of the aerial wrenched off by my wing as I passed. my wing tip had just about scraped the mast !
Phew ! Passed him.
My limbs were shaken by a terrible nervous tremor, my teeth were chattering. Jacques was zigzagging between the spouts raised by the shells. the sea was seething.
Half of dozen belated Typhoons passed to my right like a school of porpoises, bearing down on the hell going on behind the long granite wall of the breakwater
I skimmed over a fort whose very walls seemed to be belching fire – a curious mixture of crenulated towers, modern concrete casements and thirty Years War glacis.
We were now in the middle of the roadstead – an inextricable jumble of trawlers masts and rusty wrecks sticking out between the battered quays. the weather seemed to have cleared a little – Look out for the Jerry fighters ! The air was crissed-crossed with tracers, lit up by flashes, dotted with black and white puffs of smoke.
The Munsterland was there, surrounded by explosions, flames, and debris. Her four masts bristling with derrick and her squat funnel well aft emerging from the smoke. The typhoon attack was in full swing, bombs exploding all the time with colossal bursts of fire and black clouds of smoke, thickening as they drifted away.
A Typhoon vanished into thin air in the explosion of a bomb dropped by one in front. One of the enormous harbour cranes came crashing down like a house of cards.
"Hullo, Bob leader, Kenway calling – There are Hun fighters about, look out !"
What an inferno ! I was close to Jacques, who was gaining height in Spirals, making for the layer of clouds. Two Typhoons emerged from a cumulus, a few yards from us, and I just stopped myself in time from firing at them. With their massive noses and clipped wing they looked uncannily like Focke-Wulfs.
"Beak, Blue Four !"
Jacques Broke away violently and his Spitfire flashed past a few yards under my nose, a white plume at each wing tip. To avoid a collision I waited for a fraction of a second a Focke-Wulf – a real one this time – flashed past, firing with all four cannon. A shell ricocheted off my hood. As I went over on my back to get him in my sights, a second Focke-Wulf loomed up in my windshield, head on, at less than one hundred yards. Its big yellow engine and its apparently slowly turning propeller seemed to fling themselves at me and its wings lit up with the firing of its guns. Bang ! stars appeared all over my slintering windshield which became an opaque wall before my eyes. Thunderstruck, I dared not move for fear of a collision. He passed just above me. A stream of oil began to spread all over my hood.
the sky was now alive with aircraft and full of flak bursts. I let fly at another Focke-Wulf and I missed. Luckily !… It was a Typhoon. Jacques was circling with a German fighter. I saw his shells explode in the black cross on the fuselage. The Focke-Wulf slowly turned over, showing its yellow belly, and dived, coughing smokes and flames.
"Good show, Robbie ! You got him !"
My oil pressure was disquietingly down. the rain began again and within a few seconds my hood was covered witha soapy film. I slipped into the clouds and set course north on I.F., first warning Jacques and Yule over the radio.
I reached Tangmere as best I could, my oil pressure at zero and my engine red hot and ready to explode. I had to Jettison my hood to see to land.
In this business we had lost two pilots, as did 132. Seven Typhoons were destroyed, plus two which came down off Cherbourg and whose pilots were picked up by the launches.
As for the Munterland, although seriously damaged and with part of her cargo on fire, she succeded two nights later in sneaking as far as Dieppe. She finally got herself sunk off the coast of Holland by a strike of Beaufighters."
