Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Carl Krieg was born in Nuriootpa on 10th October, 1924, the youngest of five children.  His parents were Gustav Krieg and Alwine nee Kretschmer.  He attended Nuriootpa High School where he gained the Leaving Certificate with a credit in German. He was a cadet in the Air Training Corps from 23 June, 1942 until 30 January, 1943.   Before he enlisted he was employed at the National Bank in Nuriootpa.

Carl enlisted in the R.A.A.F on 31st January, 1943 as a Wireless Air Gunner and did his training in Ballarat in Victoria.   By 9th December, 1943 he had risen to the rank of Flight Sergeant and on 27th January, 1944 he embarked from Sydney bound for the United Kingdom, arriving there on 12th March.

On 3rd May, 1944 Carl joined an elite telecommunications squadron known as the RAF Squadron 101 as a Special Duty Officer (SO).  For this position he needed to have a good knowledge of German.  Many Allied bombers were falling victim to German night-fighters guided by ground controllers scrutinising radar screens. The British developed a response to this which was tested by the 101 Squadron.  It was a top secret jamming device with the code name ABC which stood for Airborne Cigar.  Using a receiver and three 500 watt T.3160 transmitters, the German VHR frequency – and language - was recognized and then jammed.  The jamming caused a loud and constantly varying note running up and down the scale of the relevant speech channel.

The Special Duty Officer was included as an eighth crew member in the crew of specially fitted Lancaster bombers.  All were volunteers from various aircrew trades. The volunteers included German-speaking Jewish refugees, who were especially at risk if captured, as well as British and Commonwealth personnel, many of whom spoke German at home.  Since the enemy often gave phoney instructions to divert the jammers it was essential that they knew German reasonably well.  In addition, if the Germans changed frequencies the SO would have to be skilful enough to do likewise.  The SO had to recognize German code words – such as Kapelle  for “target altitude” and log any German transmissions for passing on to Intelligence at the post flight debriefing.   By the end of October 1943 most Lancasters in the 101 Squadron had been fitted with ABC. The only signs of special equipment were two 7- foot aerials on top of the fuselage, another below the bomb-aimer’s window and a shorter receiver at the top-rear of the fuselage.

The Special Duty Officer sat just aft of the main spur on the port side of the aircraft, immediately above the bomb bay at a desk with three transmitters and a cathode-ray screen.  He was cut off completely from the rest of the crew except for his intercom, and was in darkness with no window to observe what was going on.  His nearest human contact were the boots of the mid-upper gunner, 4 feet away.  In order to avoid distraction the intercom had to be switched off, and only a red “call light, operated by the pilot, was available should there be an emergency.  Since there was no room for the SO in the heated forward section of the Lancaster, he, like the mid-upper and rear gunners, had to wear bulky electric suits, slippers and gloves, dangerous if a rushed exit were required.  At 20,000 feet over Europe in winter, temperatures often fell to minus 50°C so that the SO would have to wear gloves, even though these made it difficult to operate switches.  He would lose the skin of his fingers if he attempted to touch metal without them.  It was common to have to pull off chunks of frozen condensation from oxygen masks during the flight.  The concentrated work of jamming kept the SO’s minds off minor discomforts for most of the flight.

From October 1943 until the end of the war, all main-force attacks on German targets were accompanied by Lancasters of 101 Squadron; sometimes up to 27 in one raid.  They dropped 16,000 tons of bombs between January 1944 and April 1945 alone and flew more bombing raids than any other Lancaster Squadron in Group 1. The squadron’s casualties were enormous. Between 18 November 1943 and the 24 March 1944, for example, seventeen aircraft of 101 Squadron were lost in battles over Berlin. But only one was lost on D-Day itself, when twenty-four Lancasters of 101 helped deceive the enemy into thinking the landing was to take place in Pas de Calais by forming an ABC barrier between the Normandy beaches to the south and the German fighter bases in Holland and Belgium to the north. Other aircraft simulated airborne landings elsewhere and jammed enemy radars.  Countless lives were saved in this ‘Battle for Ether’, fought by a squadron of which the motto was appropriately Mens Agitat Molem, ‘Mind over matter’.

Returning to targets in Germany by the end of 1944, 101 Squadron carried out a series of devastating raids on cities and ports until their last attack on 25th April, 1945.  During the bomber campaign against Germany, 101 Squadron flew on more raids than any other bomber squadron and suffered the highest casualties of any RAF unit in the war losing 1,176 killed in action and having 178 taken prisoner.

In the spring and summer of 1944 101 Squadron attacked targets in France in preparation for, and support of, the Allied invasion of Normandy.  It was on one of these missions that Carl Krieg was killed.

Carl died at about 1.30 a.m on 1st July, 1944 when his Lancaster was shot down near the town of Langon in France.  The crew of this plane consisted of four members of the Royal Air Force, two members of the Royal Canadian Air Force and two Royal Australian Air Force members, Carl Krieg and fellow South Australian John Pritchard.

These excerpts from a letter received from Conte de Saint Céran, the mayor of Langon, give a graphic description of what happened on that night.

On the evening of 30th June on a very dark night a squadron of British Lancasters came over the railway station of Vierzon, a railway centre in the middle of France.  The bombardment lasted for nearly an hour and from our house we could hear the terrible blows the station was receiving.  The airplanes were flying over our estate.  My daughter was looking out a window at the top of the house when she heard at about 1.30 a.m. a fight between all the machine guns of a Lancaster and a German fighter.  We all heard the crash of the big plane.

Inhabitants were rapidly on the spot.  They had followed the fight and thanks to the pilot, the plane did not crash on a small hamlet of about 15 houses.  Every inhabitant of les Trechis was out of doors and could see the plane avoiding them by a splendid manoeuvre and hitting, by ill luck, a small wood of pine trees

All the airmen were killed and they were buried in the cemetery in Langon on 3rd July at 6 p.m.  The church bells tolled the knell during the funeral.  During the ceremony, the Germans did not authorise entry to the cemetery and only myself as Mayor and my secretary were present.  In English and then in French I said the Lord’s Prayer

I can assure you that the inhabitants of our small village and particularly the inhabitants of the hamlet of les Trechis will never forget the splendid behaviour of the man at the wheel of the ill-fated airplane. Up to the end of my life and my children after me will take care of the graves of the airmen of the R.A.F, R.A.A.F and the R.C.A.F. who died near us on that night of the 1st July, 1944.

The Mayor has kept his promise. In the cemetery of Langon there is a large memorial on the grave which contains the bodies of all the crew and their names are also listed on a special memorial to inhabitants of Langon who died in the World Wars 1 and 2.

Langon is a very small town in the Department of Loir-et-Cher in the middle of France.  This is not to be confused with a much larger town of the same name in the Gironde area in the south-west of France.

(Compiled by Gwynith Krieg)