Flt Sgt George Thompson

The son of a Scottish ploughman, George Thompson was born on 23October 1920 at Borestone Cottage in the parish of Trinity Gask, Perthshire. His early education came from the Portmoak Public School and, later, Kinross Higher Grades School, a senior secondary school; and on leaving at the age of fifteen, he became apprenticed to a grocer in Kinross. Serving a four year apprenticeship,

Thompson finally qualified as a certificated grocer, but by then war had been declared and Thompson's thoughts turned naturally to military service. His first move was to join the Argyll branch of the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV), precursor of the national Home Guard - but in the summer of 1940 lie applied to enlist in the RAF; only to be given deferred service. With typical quiet determination, Thompson, not content to merely await officialdom's eventual decision, volunteered again in late 1940; this time for flying duties. He attended an aircrew selection board on 7 January 1941, but was not selected, and therefore enlisted as ground crew three days later. As a boy he had developed an interest in radio and wireless, and therefore opted for training in the RAE wireless trade. Completing his trade training in October 1941, he was posted briefly to RAF Coningsby before being sent overseas to Iraq on ii February 1Q42. For the following eighteen months Thompson quietly and efficiently carried out his duties in Iraq, but was increasingly bored by what he considered to be mundane, unexciting jobs.

Accordingly he again applied for flying duties, was accepted, and arrived back in England in mid August to commence training as an air wireless operator. Graduating from No 4 Radio School as a Sergeant Wop/Air on 29 November, he next attended a short air gunnery course, and completed his training at No 8 (B) AFU. On 2 March' 1944 he reported to No 14 Operational Training Unit (0TU), Market Harborough in order to join a bomber crew and thou complete crew training prior to actual operations. At the OUT, one pilot, Flying Officer Harry Denton, a farmer from New Zealand had already 'enlisted' his future bomb aimer, Ron Goebel, and a navigator, Ted Kneebone; and it was Kneebone who suggested to Denton that he invite George Thompson to join the crew. Denton had already noticed Thompson, a tall, raw-boned, tough-looking NCO with an open face and pleasant Scots accent, and was favourably impressed. To fill the two air gunners' places, he then invited a pair of Welshmen to join the 'team; Sergeant Haydn Price and Sergeant Ernest Potts. All six men quickly settled down as a crew and, after some 80 hours practice flying in Wellington bombers, went on to a heavy conversion unit to fly Short Stirlings, near Lincoln, where they 'recruited' their future flight engineer, Wilf Hartshorn.
Now a complete crew, Denton and his men underwent a short conversion course to Lancasters, and were posted on 29 September 1944 to 9 Squadron at Bardney, Lincolnshire to commence an operational tour.

The first operational sortie was flown on 6 October when Denton piloted Lancaster LM548 to Bremen for a five-hours' round trip; and was soon followed by two more sorties that month, to Flushing and Nuremburg respectively on the 11th and 19th. A lull in operations for the squadron during November gave the crew little to do, but on 4 December, Denton flew Lancaster NG249 to bomb Heilbronn successfully. Meanwhile Thompson had been promoted to Flight Sergeant with effect from 30 November.

On New Year's Eve, the crew joined most of Bardneys station personnel in the traditional festive celebrations - Thompson, being fiercely proud of his Scottish ancestry, looking forward to suitable celebration of Hogmanay' - when the dance was interrupted by a Tannoy loudspeaker message, ordering ten of the Lancaster crews, Denton's included, to report to the briefing room. Here they were told that there was to be yet another attack on a prime target, the Dortmund-Ems Canal, at dawn the following day. At 5 am on 1st January all 70 air crew were awakened and soon reported for final briefing. The weather was freezing cold, with buildings and aircraft coated in hoar frost as the crews finally climbed into their Lancasters. For this trip Harry Denton was allotted Lancaster PD377, 'U', with a bomb load of a dozen 1000lb high explosive bombs tucked inside its belly. Detailed as first to go, Denton started his take-off run just before 7.45am, taking up most of the runway before finally becoming airborne. Climbing laboriously to 500 feet he began a turn, and saw the Lancaster due to follow him career off the runway and erupt in a holocaust of flames; followed by the third bomber which also crashed, but from which the crew managed to escape without serious injury - a black start to the sortie.

Along with 100 other 5 Group bombers, Denton flew independently to a point over northern France, and then settled into various loose formations at 10,000 feet for the last leg to the objective. Visibility was good in clearing skies as they made the final approach to the Dortmund-Ems waterway, and Denton made a perfect run-in, with Goebel only needing to ask for slight corrections. As the first of the I2 thousand-pounders dropped away from 'U-Uncles' bomb bay, the pilot started correcting the flying attitude of the Lancaster, compensating for the shift in load distribution, until the final bomb was released. Once Goebel had checked physically that the bomb bay was indeed empty, he would give Denton the customary 'Bombs gone message", and the pilot could close the bomb bay doors, trim the aircraft and head for England. Flak opposition had already claimed several Lancasters ahead of Denton and he was poised to swing his bomber out of the immediate danger zone, when a deafening explosion right in front of him knocked him momentarily unconscious.

An 88mm shell had found its mark shattering the nose compartment where Goebel had been crouching, tearing the top off the pilot's perspex canopy, and setting the port inner engine on fire. A split second before this hit, though unknown to Denton then, a second shell had torn a six feet square chunk out of the under-fuselage just below the mid-upper turret, slashed through the trimming controls and ruptured the hydraulic lines, thereby leaving the bomb doors gaping open. Inside the fuselage a raging fire immediately broke out, fed by the hydraulic oil slopping from the burst pipelines, and engulfed Ernie Potts seated in the dorsal gun turret, immediately above the point of impact of the shell. Denton recovered his senses quickly, took stock of the burning engine and punched the relevant extinguisher button which soon doused the danger there. The icy gale howling through his shattered canopy cleared the smoke of the explosion but fed force to the roaring flames in the rear fuselage. Having feathered the burning engine, Denton was left with an unevenly powered aircraft, and had to apply hard right rudder constantly while pushing the control column fully forward to prevent the aircrafts tendency to nose-up into a stall. By sheer chance Denton's instrument panel was still intact, but behind him Ted Kneebone's navigational charts and maps had gone - sucked out of the aircraft by the slip- stream gale roaring through the fuselage.

Goebel then appeared from his nose compartment, smoke-blackened but uninjured carrying the remnants of his parachute pack. In the rear fuselage George Thompson could see the havoc caused by the flak, and realised that with both turrets on fire, the gunners were in deadly peril. Working without gloves at his wireless set, and relatively lightly clad, the tall Scotsman instinctively moved aft to help the gunners. While Denton set a rough course to get them away from Germany. Thompson, clinging by fingers and toes to the sides of the fuselage, eased himself past the gaping hole in the floor to Potts dorsal turret just beyond. Then, slowly and deliberately, he extricated the unconscious gunner from his seat. Potts flying clothing was already aflame, and Thompson's clothing began to burn in the furnace. Getting Potts clear of the turret, the Scot humped him across his shoulders and began the perilous journey forward, along the side of the fuselage and hovering over the jagged hole. One slip or loss of balance and both men, each without a parachute, would have fallen to earth. Immensely strong Thompson achieved the feat and bore Potts to a relatively safer place forward, where he proceeded to beat out the gunners flaming clothing with his bare hands. By then Thompson's own clothing was a shambles; his trousers having been almost completely burned away. Fire had also seared his bare hands and face, and the icy gale of slipstream must have caused him agony. But, having seen that Potts was being cared for, Thompson then turned his attention to Haydn Price, trapped in the rear turret in the centre of the furnace. Price, once he realised the aircraft was ablaze, and getting no response on the intercom, had decided to bale out.

Rotating the turret manually to the beam, he removed his flying helmet, disconnected the leads to his electrically heated flying suit, and flipped opened the turret doors behind him in order to fall backwards out of the aircraft. As soon as he opened the doors he became engulfed in a fierce rush of flames which immediately singed off his hair and almost burned away his ears. Pulling the doors to promptly, Price rotated the turret hack to its normal aft-facing position where he heard someone knocking from inside the fuselage. Opening the doors, he saw Thompson, who told him to "come on out, Taffy".

Burned and shocked, Price eased himself into the fuselage with Thompson's help, and was then assisted forward, past the gaping hole in the floor, until he found relative safety alongside the still unconscious Potts. Thompson by then was in a shocking state of burns and blackened charred clothing; his face, hands and legs blistering and contracting in the still howling slipstream. Yet he was still not content. Fearing that the pilot might order the crew to bale out, he made his way forward to Denton's cockpit to tell him about the two injured gunners. The pilot, his mind and hands full with the continuing struggle to control the shattered Lancaster, had no recollection afterwards of seeing Thompson at that time; though in the state that the young Scot was by now he was virtually unrecognisable, even to his friends.

With Hartshorn and Goebel helping alternatively, Denton was nearing the Rhine when Goebel pointed to some flak on the starboard side. As the pilot started to take evasive action the aircraft was hit in the starboard inner engine, which immediately ceased pulling and had to be feathered. By now the bomber was down to about 5,000 feet and steadily descending, when Denton received a fright as a flight of German fighters suddenly appeared heading straight towards him. Luckily, these ignored the lame bomber, being fully intent on fleeing from a Canadian squadron of Spitfires right behind them. The Spitfires on seeing the wallowing and obviously crippled Lancaster abandoned their prey and formated on the bomber, attempting to guide it to their own airfield. Soon the Lancaster was only a few feet above the earth, and Denton, on the point of exhaustion from his efforts, knew he had only minutes left in which to put the aircraft onto the ground. One attendant Spitfire suddenly shot in front of him and plainly indicated danger from some high tension cables looming up in front of the bomber. With a supreme effort Denton lifted the aircraft over these, and then spotted a village dead ahead. Avoiding the possibility of crashing here, lie turned towards a pair of fields bisected by a long hedged ridge and set the Lancaster down diagonally across these.

Touching earth halfway across the first field, the bomber punched its way through the ridge and broke up in mid-fuselage the separate sections finally coming to a stop before reaching the far edge of the second field. Smashed petrol feed lines gushed raw fuel everywhere but there was no fire, and the crew managed to get out of the wreckage, including Potts who had temporarily recovered semi-consciousness. The first person Denton saw afterwards was George Thompson and the sight shocked him. With face, hands and legs burned black, and only the tattered, charred remnants of his clothing left to cover him, Thompson still found the strength to remark, "Jolly good landing, skipper!"
Checking the others, Denton sent Goebel off to find help in the nearby village of Heesh, while he and Kneebone took Thompson to a cottage across the field. Hartshorn, himself part-burned, helped Price and Potts to the cottage; where all the crew received rough first aid from the friendly owners. Meanwhile their escort of Spitfires had radioed to base the location of the crashed bomber, and soon there appeared an ambulance containing two Service doctors. All were taken to the Eindhoven Catholic hospital except Goebel who was picked up by members of an Army unit eventually transferred to Rauceby RAF Hospital in Lincolnshire having lost the first joints of all his fingers due to severe frostbite.

The mid-upper gunner Ernie Potts lapsed back into unconsciousness soon after transfer to the hospital and never recovered, to die some I8 hours later; but Haydn Price, though badly burned around the head and having to spend many months undergoing plastic surgery to build up his cars and face again, finally made a full recovery. He owed his survival to the courage of George Thompson. Hartshorn was also sent home to Rauceby hospital for treatment to his burns but was able to leave the medical centre a few weeks later. Thompson was initially transferred to No 50 Military Field Hospital where a series of penicillin injections anti other treatments appeared to put him on the slow road to recovery; and he remained a model patient, cheerful and without complaint, but his ordeal was heightened by the incursion of pneumonia and on 23 January I 945 he succumbed to his dreadful injuries and illness. Shortly after, he was buried in the Brussels Cemetery of Evere-les-Brizelles.
On 20 February the London Gazette announced the award of a Victoria Cross to the gallant Scot; the citation for which underlined Thompson's self-sacrifice by stating:

"When the aircraft was hit Flight Sergeant Thompson might have devoted his efforts to quelling the fire and so have contributed to his own safety. He preferred to go through the fire to succour his comrades. He knew that he would then be in no position to hear or heed any order which might be given to abandon aircraft. He hazarded his own life in order to save the lives of others. Young in years and experience, his actions were those of a veteran."