First Air Raid of WWII – 2

09.20 – pre-raid reconnaissance

 
At 09.20 hours the Chain Home (CH) Radio Direction Finding (RDF) station at Drone Hill, Berwickshire, on the east coast of Scotland, detected enemy aircraft approaching from across the North Sea.

They were two Heinkel He111s of Kampfgeschwader [Combat squadron] 26 (KG 26) ‘Vestigium Leonis’ [The Lion’s trail], based at a Luftwaffe airfield near the village of Westerland on the German island of Sylt, situated just south of the German/Danish border, and briefed to carry out a pre-raid armed reconnaissance of the Forth area in order to confirm the whereabouts of HMS Hood.

Heinkel He111

The Stabs Staffel of KG26 had been engaged in long-range armed reconnaissance of the North Sea and Scottish sea areas in what became known to the Luftwaffe air crews as the ‘watery triangle’. With a number of German Rb30 cameras fitted in place of the port bomb racks the Heinkels could undertake tactical reconnaissance photography and in some cases actually engage targets. These missions were a marathon affair and in most cases amounted to a round trip of 1,000 miles and called for a high level of flying skill, endurance, and alertness from the crews.

It would have required a very high resolution photograph to allow the German photographic interpreter (PI) officers to have recognised the Spitfires of 603 Squadron on the ground at Turnhouse prior to 16 October. Whilst German intelligence denied the existence of Spitfires in Scotland in the lead up to the raid, the Luftwaffe crews were aware that Spitfires were present. This despite the assurances from the German hierarchy keen to boost morale by playing down the existence and numbers of the RAF’s latest fighter in the area.

At 09.45, the Observer Corps of 36 Group reported a visual sighting of an unidentified aircraft moving at high altitude south-west over Dunfermline heading towards the Royal Navy base at Rosyth.
Another aircraft was sighted and tracked by the Observer Corps posts of 31 Group. Galashiels.
Both Observer Corps groups correctly identified these aircraft as He 111s. One of the Heinkels subsequently flew eastwards at high altitude over the Naval Dockyard at Rosyth where it took photographs.