George E. Williams, DFM

Shot Down in Sweden

as told to Deana J. Driver by Gary M. Williams

My father, George E. Williams, was born in 1916 in Allan, Saskatchewan. In 1931, the family moved to Saskatoon and in 1939, at age 23, he enlisted in the RCAF. After flight training in London, Ontario and Moncton, New Brunswick, he went overseas and was assigned to #61 RAF Bomber Squadron, which was called the Lincoln Imps. He flew Manchesters, Hamptons, and finally, Lancasters. He had been to Cologne, Paris, Debden, Bremen, and other places and was a flight sergeant and the pilot on his 21st mission when disaster struck.

On the night of July 3/4, 1942, he was flying one of two Lancaster Mk 1 bombers on a mission to lay mines in a set pattern into the three-mile strait between the Danish island of Zealand and the Swedish coast. In RAF code, he was gardening or sowing “vegetables”. That channel is only about four kilometres across and is between Helsingborg on the Swedish side and Helsingör on the Danish side. Helsingör is famous as the location of Kronborg Castle, which is where Shakespeare’s Hamlet was based.

Each bomber usually carried four mines. My father’s plane had dropped two mines on their first southbound pass through the strait and was on their return northbound pass, flying through anti-aircraft flak from the Germans, who occupied Denmark at the time and were filling the sky with Pom-Pom shells against the nightly Allied bomber runs. The Allied planes could not return fire because their gun flashes would alert other German batteries of their location. The other Lancaster was able to drop its mines and return safely to its base in Syerston, Nottingham, England.

My father watched the tracks of the shells that missed them and exploded across the strait in Sweden. Then his mid-upper gunner yelled, “Skipper, we seem to have been hit in Number 2 engine!” They continued on course and dropped the last two mines. He then steered his aircraft to the left over the Swedish coast. When my father looked out the port window, he saw that the wing was “blazing like an enormous blowtorch” because the 500 gallons of 100 octane, high-test gasoline in that wing tank were on fire. They were going more than 100 miles an hour, but they were only at 600 feet above the ground so they could effectively drop the mines. He realized he could not make it home, so he called to his crew to take ditching positions at the back of the plane.

The Swedes were neutral, so there was little danger from the Swedish gun battery some 10 kilometres north of Helsingborg. My father saw the neon signs and the streetlights of Helsingborg ahead, but the burning wing was rising higher and higher. He knew it had burned through and was folding up on them. He turned towards the water, wanting to ditch over the channel as close as he could to the Swedish shore and as far away as possible from Denmark without crashing on Swedish soil.

When it hit the water, the aircraft unfortunately hit a shoal that was just under the water. The plane stopped suddenly and crashed rather than ditched.

Official records noted that Lancaster R5663, from 61 Squadron of RAF based in Syerston, crashed in flames 10 minutes after midnight in shallow water about 300 metres (half a mile) NNW of the harbour of the tiny village of Lerberget, 16 kilometres (10 miles) NNW of Helsingborg, Sweden.

My father told a sanitized part of his story in a 1944 Maclean’s Magazine article. He said the next thing he knew, he was waking up in the water. His head had bashed into the plexiglass window on his left, but he felt no pain at the time. When the water hit him in the face, he regained his senses and unlocked his safety seat harness. He remembers standing on his seat to get out of the right window, which was above his head because the plane was in the water with its burned-out left wing down. He did not remember how he got out the window, but he recalled thrashing around in the water, which was made more difficult because he was wearing his flying suit and parachute harness. His left arm felt dead. It was badly broken and was

behind his back and on top of his right shoulder at one point. He came up into a mass of flames because the oil and gasoline floating on top the water were on fire. He swallowed some gas and oil and he came up three times before he pulled the lever of his compressed air bottle to inflate his Mae West life preserver. He wanted to be on his front in the water, but the vest kept him on his back. Although he could see a harbour marker buoy of some kind, he could not get to it.

He heard voices and he started yelling – for his crew and for help. Suddenly, the fire parted on the water and a small boat came up beside him. He felt a hand pull on the collar of his Mae West. He looked up and saw a beautiful blonde girl who was wearing a coat over a nightdress. Then he heard a man’s voice shouting in what he assumed was Swedish. The next thing he knew, a larger rowboat came alongside, and he was being lifted out of the water by strong arms.

From the boat, he looked behind them and saw the flames on the sea. There were also other small rowboats on the water. He realized they were looking for other survivors. He remembered seeing the plane’s right wingtip sticking up from the water, looking like a tombstone. My father was the only survivor of the crash. Being strapped in the pilot’s seat probably saved his life. The other six members of his crew were knocked unconscious in the aft part of the aircraft when it crashed and all had drowned…