Talk:Operation Robinson

Success v Failure

It may be worth mentioning that the 'Group navigator' responsible for the successful overwater and overland navigation to the target -- a fairly considerable achievement in itself, particularly the overwater stretch with few landmarks, which nevertheless saw the bomber force cross the coast bang on track, avoiding the flak-traps of U-boat bases to either side -- was Pilot Officer A.S. Grant, navigator in Wing Commander Slee's lead aircraft. (Martin Middlebrook & Chris Everitt, The Bomber Command War Diaries, Midland Publishing, Hinckley, 2000, ISBN 1-85780-033-8, p.317.) Grant, along with Slee, was awarded the DSO for his actions.

Yes, it was very well done, and it is hard for a present day reader to understand the difficulties entailed and the achievement that it was. I think this might best be added as a notation upon the narrative.Gunbirddriver (talk) 02:33, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Done.Gunbirddriver (talk) 02:52, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

It's a little OR, but it may also be worth mentioning that the raid failed to some extent, despite all the care taken, because the Lancasters still carried the Mark IX Course Setting Bomb Sight, a 1932 model based on a design of Great War vintage, which couldn't adjust for aircraft attitude and was liable to go wrong unless the aircraft made a long, steady, perfect straight-and-level run at accurately measured altitude with accurately measured airspeed, groundspeed, altitude above terrain and wind drift, conditions which did not apply at Le Creusot, where the bombers had to climb hard up from the deck and accelerate shortly before target. Guy Gibson's memoir Enemy Coast Ahead (Crecy Publishing, Manchester, 2005, ISBN 978-0-859791-18-2, p.198) states that his 106 Squadron did not acquire the much-superior computerised, gyro-stabilised Mark XIV bomb sight until some weeks later, and in Mike Garbett and Brian Goulding, The Lancaster At War, Ian Allan, Shepperton, 1971, ISBN 7110 0225 8, p.53, there are photographs taken on board a 207 Sqn Lancaster, Sgt John McIntosh's ED802 EM-M, at Langar in May 1943, which clearly show that the bomb aimer Sgt Desmond Ball was still stuck with the Mark IX sight even at that late date. Fitment of the Mark XIV was about to become universal by then, though. Indeed it's likely that the official photographer was assigned to that aircraft precisely because of its unusually out-of-date and soon-to-be-replaced bombsight, since the Mark XIV was of course highly secret and such clear and detailed photographs of it could not be published. Pictures of the old Mark IX in its last days on an operational Lancaster would amount to a kind of discreet disinformation.

And it may be worth mentioning the follow-on raid on Le Creusot on the night of 19-20 June 1943, when 181 Halifaxes, 107 Stirlings and 2 Lancasters of Nos. 3, 4, 6 and 8 Groups attacked -- with an unusual marking plan in which the Pathfinders only dropped flares, not TIs, and Main Force were required to identify the targets visually by flarelight -- and, despite severe damage to the surrounding township, 20% of the bombloads did actually hit the Schneider factory and the nearby Breuil steelworks, an exceptional result by the standards of the time and far better than US Eighth Air Force normally achieved in day raids. (Middlebrook & Everitt, pp.398-9.) Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:30, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

In regard to the above, the Official History (Sir Charles Webster & Dr Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-1945, London, HMSO, 3 vols., 1961, vol. I pp.446-7) remarks of Robinson, 'the Operational Research Section at Bomber Command came to the conclusion that the accuracy of the bombing had been far less than was expected. They thought this was partly attributable to the failing light and the smoke which which soon began to drift across the target, but they also thought that the tactics adopted had been inappropriate and that the bomb-sights had not been properly used. They suggested that the outcome was the penalty of employing night crews in complex daylight operations without giving them more than a few days' training.'

But the article is wrong to claim that the raid was simply a failure, or that there was 'no significant damage' to Schneider as the infobox falsely states. Op Robinson failed in its intention to avoid hitting the workers' housing estate to the east of the Schneider works -- the whole reason why it was laid on in daylight -- but of course it did hit the Schneider works, and the associated Breuil steelworks, and the Montchanin electrical transformer station. One of the article's own sources, the William Farr School biography of Group Captain Slee, mentions this: 'Nonetheless, many of the bombs had fallen into the factory area and damage there was fairly extensive.' http://www.williamfarr.lincs.sch.uk/about-us/royal-air-force-heritage/station-commanders-of-raf-dunholme-lodge/group-captain-l-c-slee-dso-dfc-and-bar The reconnaissance photographs showed whole buildings at Breuil and Schneider burnt out or heavily damaged: at Breuil, the general machine shops, the steel manufacturing plant, the sheet and bar mills and a 650-foot-long warehouse (which ceased to exist); at Schneider, the processing works and locomotive machine shop, among other buildings. A couple of the photographs appear in Jon Lake, Lancaster Squadrons 1942-43, Osprey, Oxford, 2002, ISBN 1841763136, p.36. Lake is not particularly reliable, but he says, 'it was eventually established that the [Schneider] plant was put out of action completely for more than three weeks, while repair work disrupted production for more than eight months.' Leo McKinstry, in Lancaster: the Second World War's Greatest Bomber, John Murray, London, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7195-2353-3, p.111, says, 'According to RAF intelligence, the damage was so severe that the factory was still being repaired eight months later.' The British were, of course, getting information from the French resistance, and it was just over eight months later, with repairs completed, that Bomber Command visited Le Creusot again, on the night of 19-20 June 1943, to undo the repairs. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:22, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Almost a year's gone by and the original American author has not cared to fix the article, so I've fixed it myself. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Casualties and Losses

The infobox is wrong on this point. First, not all the crew of Sqn Ldr WD Corr DFC's 61 Squadron Lancaster were killed when it crashed. Sgt R Turtle, the mid-upper gunner, survived and was taken PoW. (WR Chorley, Bomber Command Losses, Vol.3: 1942, Midland Publishing, Hinckley, 1994, ISBN 0-904597-89-X, p.243.) RAF losses at target were therefore six rather than seven. (A seventh man was killed elsewhere, see below.) And the figure of 250 French civilians killed was a Nazi propaganda claim, as mentioned in the Farr School biography of Gp Capt Slee. The French Wikipedia article on Le Creusot, though not RS, states that 63 people were killed and about 250 injured. In the heavier June 1943 raid, over 300 were killed and 1,000 injured, but again the damage to Schneider and Breuil was pretty considerable. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Creusot

There were some additional German losses on Op Robinson, detailed in Martin W Bowman, Last of the Lancasters, Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2015, ISBN 978-1783831746, p.27, which mentions that Sgt Ronald Wilson's 207 Sqn Lancaster lost an engine just short of the French coast and turned back. On the return flight, 50 miles west of Brest, it was intercepted by three German Arado 196 seaplanes, fairly agile two-seat aircraft each armed with twin 20mm cannon and a 7.92mm machine gun (plus a second machine gun for the observer). https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vP9sBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=operation+robinson+207+squadron+arado+196&source=bl&ots=dcTaS2dnvn&sig=HbWouSfee5xkvijaSMWXsk7NJt8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZ5vfniK_fAhUXRBUIHaUICIQQ6AEwDHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=operation%20robinson%20207%20squadron%20arado%20196&f=false Two Arados attacked from the stern quarters. One was shot down into the sea by the rear gunner and one driven off badly damaged by the rear and mid-upper gunners. One attacked from the starboard beam, killing the flight engineer Sgt Kenneth Chalmers, but was shot down into the sea by the bomb-aimer manning the front turret. The survivors of the all-NCO crew (Sgt Wilson, who was shortly commissioned Plt Off, bomb aimer Flt Sgt WD Rose, navigator Sgt JH Lovell, wireless operator Flt Sgt AJ Perrin, mid-upper gunner Flt Sgt RP Strain RCAF, rear gunner Flt Sgt CWW Peck RCAF) were all awarded immediate DFMs but were lost on the Genoa raid of 7-8 November 1942, their Lancaster, L7546 EM-G for George, crashing at Champignon-les-Mondeville in the Aube region of France, presumably shot down by an enemy night fighter. All lie in the churchyard of Champignon-les-Mondeville, along with their replacement flight engineer Sgt WAH Ball. Chorley, op. cit., p.256. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:22, 20 December 2018 (UTC)