RAF Squadron Profiles - 138 Squadron

Most of the deeds of Bomber Command’s war are well documented. In the main, the wartime record of each squadron’s service, written with reasonable accuracy at the time, is available for scrutiny. As a result, many heroes have emerged since the end of the war, and the full extent of the various roles performed by Bomber Command’s squadrons is a matter of history. There is just one exception. Such was the secrecy surrounding the activities of the moon squadrons at Gibraltar Farm, which became RAF Tempsford, that records, initially at least, were a luxury only occasionally indulged in. Brief hand-written entries allow a glimpse into this end of the Special Operations Executive, an organisation, which dispensed information on the strictest need-to-know basis. It was not unusual in the early days for a pilot to arrive at Tempsford on posting, only to kick his heels for days and even weeks, before being given an insight into the station’s activities and his part in the grand plan. Later on, the demand to service resistance organisations saw crews pressed into service with much greater alacrity, but the level of security never wavered. The greater one’s insight into SOE and SIS matters, the more insistent becomes the question, how did they do it? In 1943 and 1944, with all the latest electronic gadgetry to hand, giant armadas of bombers were failing to find the centre of huge urban areas like Berlin, Stuttgart, Hanover, Leipzig and Nuremberg. Meanwhile, Whitley crews in 1940 and 1941 manage to navigate to Poland, southern Germany and Austria, and find a tiny pinpoint deep in the countryside, whilst the diminutive Lysanders were able to locate and land in specific fields deep in Occupied Europe.

Chris Ward’s 138 Squadron Profile, drew in part on the unique insight of F/O Freddie Clark, who flew from Tempsford between late January and early April 1944. Each sortie was an operation in its own right, and had to be dealt with individually. This Profile provides the necessary facts, supplemented by the personal stories of some of those who took part, and includes a large number of photographs including a collection relating to the squadron’s ‘C’ Flight, manned by Polish aircrew, between April and November 1943.