The Tonsberg Raid.

25/26-4-1945, Tonsberg:
467 Sq sent 14 a/c and 463 Sq 14 a/c to join 107 Lancasters and 12 marker Mosquitos of 5 Group attacking the oil refinery and U boat fuelling depot in this town in Southern Norway.
The attack was accurately carried out and the target was severely damaged. 463 Sq lost F/O Arthur Cox and crew, the last Lancaster of more than 3,300 lost in the war. F/O Cox and his all British crew survived and were interned in Sweden until the end of the war, only 12 days away.

The following report is from F/O Arthur Cox in a letter to Nobby Blundell some years later. Arthur died suddenly on 14 September 1974.

    “We were off early that night, so dog-legged over the North Sea to lose time. The Met men were dead right, we came out of cloud just where they said we would and Jack, the navigator, gave us a perfect landfall on the Norwegian coast. The coastline was crossed at 23.00 hrs and coincided with a banking search which revealed nothing. One minute later a stream of flashes appeared under the starboard wing, followed immediately by a devastating series of crashes in the nose. Bob, the Bomb Aimer, hurtled past as old “Z” for Zebra went into an undignified dive.
    My “prepare to abandon” and the rattle of Jock’s rear guns were simultaneous. The mid-upper turret jammed and I remember Fred praying that the fighter would attack again on his side. His prayers were quickly answered, for his guns soon joined Jock’s. Later they claimed that even if they had not shot him down the weight of lead they hit him with would have forced him to land.
    Old Zebra straightened up with a shattered nose but engines still roaring away. Through the aircraft screamed an excruciating, icy blast bringing with it the ‘window’ which made the controls and the cockpit resemble a weird Christmas tree, and over it all that agonising cold numbing us all. Another “prepare to abandon” only evoked the response: “Steady on, Skip, it looks bloody cold and dark down there.” A report from Fred, the W/Op, on Bob’s serious condition was followed by a request to give him a full shot of morphia, and to open a parachute to protect him, and a discussion as to how we would get him out if we had to abandon.
    George, the engineer, seemed to be taking a long time reporting on the nose damage. What I did not know was that he was having great difficulty, with a shattered hand, in getting his legs back through a hole in the floor, his only comment, “Can’t bomb, bomb sights u/s. Engines OK.” The calmness of the whole crew still fills me with admiration; no panic not even a raised voice, a perfect team in an emergency.
    So we turned for Oslo Fiord, for to bomb was impossible, and to try to return home suicidal. As all the maps had been blown out of the aircraft, Jack, the navigator, had the almost impossible job of navigating us into Sweden by memory. We jettisoned the bombs over the sea but two of them ‘hung up’. There followed a long, painful plod into Sweden where we landed by the lights of car headlamps. The crew were unanimous in their opinion of my landing, “Typical Cox effort” - a hell of a bounce, followed by a barely-controlled crash ending in a screaming ground loop to avoid going in the lake. Then internment with hospitable, kindly people, who could not do enough for us.
    The above account does less than justice to a crew who will always have my admiration and respect, and l am proud to have been an Aussie for part of my life.”

Historian’s note:
Arthur did not mention in his report that he was also painfully wounded, and frozen to the controls of the aircraft with blood. How he managed to land the machine at all is remarkable. The Swedish medical team had to carefully remove his frozen hands from the controls before hospitalising him.