Yes, it happened, and it happened early. On the afternoon of 21 December 1939 two Handley Page Hampdens of No. 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron were returning from anti-shipping search tasking off Norway when they were intercepted over the Firth of Forth and shot down by Spitfires from No. 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron at RAF Drem. Both bombers ditched in the winter sea. Seven of the eight aircrew survived. One, Leading Aircraftman Terrance Gibbin, died.
It is a stark example of what the RAF’s air defence system was still learning to do in the “Phoney War”: turn an early-warning plot into a correct identification, fast, in foul weather, with everyone primed to expect the enemy.
The operational backdrop: “Deutschland” and the long North Sea day
By late 1939 Bomber Command was already being used for maritime work as much as anything else. Politics and policy limited bombing over Germany in the war’s first months, while German surface raiders and the threat to shipping were immediate problems. The result was a steady diet of armed reconnaissance, searches and mining. On 21 December a combined Hampden force was ordered out to look for the German “pocket battleship” Deutschland reported off the Norwegian coast.
The mission was not small. Twelve Hampdens from 44 Squadron left Waddington in the morning, joined by Hampdens from 49 Squadron and 83 Squadron. The aircraft met over Lincoln, headed out over the North Sea, then spread out in line abreast along the Norwegian coast in a vain search, before turning back on the edge of their range as the weather closed in.
That last part matters. The return leg was flown in sleet and showers, with visibility down. Formations that had looked tidy over Lincolnshire became separated. People ended up where they did not expect to be, and controllers were forced to make decisions on incomplete information.
The interception: when “unidentified” became “hostile”
On the British side, the east coast of Scotland was on a short fuse. No. 602 Squadron had already been in action against real Luftwaffe intruders over the Forth in October, and Drem was one of the airfields tasked with shielding the Firth of Forth and the naval anchorage at Rosyth.
On 21 December, the separated Hampdens came back in pieces.
Accounts of the day describe how the RAF Scampton element made landfall in Northumberland, where RAF fighters intercepted and correctly recognised them as friendly, and most of those aircraft ended up landing at RAF Acklington. One of the 49 Squadron aircraft, Hampden L4072, was short of fuel and crashed into a chapel at Broomhill during an attempted emergency landing, killing two of its crew. That accident was separate from the Drem shootdown, but it shows the wider conditions of the day: aircraft scattered, tired crews, poor weather, fuel margins gone.
The Waddington element of 44 Squadron had a worse navigational outcome. Instead of reaching the Moray Firth area, they made landfall near the Firth of Forth in error, and were plotted as “unidentified”. Twelve Spitfires of 602 Squadron were scrambled from Drem at about 15.20. Their pilots identified the incoming aircraft as German and attacked.
There was at least one chance to stop it. One account states that Hurricanes of No. 72 Squadron intercepted the Waddington aircraft first and reported back that they were Hampdens, yet the 602 Spitfires were also up and, without at first recognising the aircraft, proceeded to shoot down two of the bombers. That is not a single-point failure. It is several moving parts failing to mesh in real time.
The two Hampdens: serials, crews, and where they went in
The two aircraft lost were Hampden L4089 and Hampden L4090, both of No. 44 Squadron.
Hampden L4089
L4089 was shot down over the sea in the North Berwick area. All four crew survived and were rescued by a fishing boat:
- P/O Ronald John Sansom (pilot)
- Sgt Edward Littleton Farrands (navigator)
- Sgt Harry Rowland Moyle (air gunner)
- AC1 John Erwin Lyttle (wireless operator/air gunner)
Local-history work notes later confusion about which airframe lay where, suggesting L4089 may have ditched in Aberlady Bay at high tide and been salvaged. Without the original salvage paperwork, it is best treated as plausible rather than settled.
Hampden L4090
L4090 was the aircraft with the fatality. It ditched in the Forth and three crew were rescued in a dinghy by a fishing boat and landed at Port Seton. One man drowned:
- P/O Patrick Fraser Dingwall (pilot)
- Sgt John Anthony Mawson Reid (navigator)
- Sgt William Kenneth Lodge (air gunner), injured
- LAC Terrance Gibbin (wireless operator/air gunner), drowned
Gibbin is buried at Kirkleatham (St Cuthbert) Churchyard.
Who fired: the 602 Squadron pilots named in the record
Three 602 Squadron pilots are commonly named in connection with the shootdown:
- F/Lt John Dunlop Urie
- F/O Norman Stone
- F/O Archibald Ashmore McKellar
McKellar’s name tends to stand out because he later became a noted fighter pilot and was killed in action in November 1940. But the important point here is not biography. It is the system the pilots were working inside. They were launched against “unidentified” aircraft at a time when the RAF was still building the habits, equipment and procedures that later became routine.
Why the RAF got this wrong
It is tempting to pin friendly fire on one cause, because it feels tidy. The surviving accounts point to several pressures piling up at once.
Winter weather and navigation errors
The returning force flew through sleet and rain showers with reduced visibility, and the formations became separated. When the 44 Squadron group arrived near the Forth rather than the north-east coast, it entered an area where fighters were already being primed for interception.
A young air-defence system working at speed
Fighter Command’s early-warning and control system was powerful, but it was still bedding in under wartime pressure. Even if plots were good, they did not automatically tell you what an aircraft was. Controllers needed confirmation, and pilots had to make visual judgements, sometimes from poor angles, at speed, in poor light.
The RAF had already suffered a notorious early-war friendly-fire episode, the “Battle of Barking Creek” in September 1939, which exposed how easily a chain of assumptions could end with RAF fighters shooting RAF fighters. The Hampden shootdown sits in the same family of problems, just over water, with bombers instead of fighters.
Recognition: the Hampden’s silhouette
The Hampden’s narrow fuselage and twin-engine outline could be misread, particularly head-on or in broken cloud. One squadron history notes that the Hampden was often confused with the German Dornier Do 17. That does not mean every Hampden was doomed to be mistaken for a Do 17. It does mean that if you already believe you are intercepting the enemy, and you only get a few seconds of imperfect view, the eye can be pushed into the wrong answer.
Identification technology not yet in place
IFF coding was introduced very shortly afterwards, on 1 January 1940, to help identify RAF aircraft within the air defence system. That does not mean “no IFF, therefore friendly fire”. But it helps explain why visual recognition and radio procedure carried such weight in December 1939. If those pieces did not line up, the system defaulted towards hostility.
Communications and procedure friction
A particularly painful detail in the secondary accounts is the suggestion that one RAF fighter unit had already identified the aircraft as Hampdens, yet a second unit still attacked. If that is accurate, it implies a message arriving too late, not reaching the right place, not reaching the pilots in time, or not being believed. Any one of those is plausible. Only the original Operations Record Books, their appendices and any surviving signal logs will pin down which mattered most.
One later source suggests the Hampdens may not have identified themselves correctly as “friendly”. That may be true, but it is not as well supported as the core facts. It belongs in the “possible, not proven” bracket unless the contemporary paperwork can be checked.
The ditchings: what survival looked like in 1939
Both crews got their aircraft into the sea rather than simply losing control and cartwheeling in. That is not luck; it is skill and discipline.
A Hampden ditching was not a neat “water landing”. It was an emergency controlled crash into freezing water, with a slim margin between climbing out and being pinned or injured in a sinking airframe. For L4089, a fishing boat got all four men out. For L4090, three made it into a dinghy and were landed at Port Seton; one did not make it. The human detail that survives in local accounts is often the rescue craft. It was fishing boats and small coastal vessels that turned RAF survival equipment into actual survival.
A small, grim footnote appears in later retellings: the next day, Hampdens are said to have flown over Drem and dropped toilet rolls onto the squadron huts. It may be true, it may be mess-room folklore that stuck. Either way, it reads like brittle humour from people who could not unsee what had just happened.
What changed afterwards, and what didn’t
It would be comforting to say: “This happened, and then it never happened again.” That is not honest. Friendly fire and mistaken identity did not vanish. What did improve, over time, was the layering of safeguards.
Technical aids to identification and control matured. Procedures hardened. Recognition training improved, reporting and plotting got more rigorous, and the system learned how to handle “unknowns” without reflexively treating them as targets.
But the deep lesson of 21 December 1939 is that air defence is a judgement business as much as a technology business. The aircraft, the sea, the weather and human fear do not care what the rulebook says.
Timeline
- Morning: Hampdens of 44 Squadron depart RAF Waddington; aircraft from 49 and 83 Squadron join for a search off Norway for the reported Deutschland.
- Late morning to early afternoon: search conducted; no contact; return begins as weather worsens.
- Mid-afternoon: formations become separated. Many aircraft make landfall in Northumberland and later land at Acklington; one 49 Squadron Hampden crashes at Broomhill due to fuel shortage.
- Around 15.20: 602 Squadron Spitfires scramble from RAF Drem to intercept “unidentified” aircraft near the Firth of Forth.
- Shortly afterwards: Hampdens L4089 and L4090 are attacked and forced to ditch.
- Rescue: L4089 crew all survive; L4090 crew lose LAC Terrance Gibbin, who drowns before he can be freed.
Sources
- East Lothian at War, “Friendly Fire 21 December 1939” (local narrative, ditching area notes, later confusion over wreck locations)
- Martin’s Aviation Pages, “21 December 1939” (mission overview, aircraft serials, crew lists, pilots named; includes pointers to ORBs/AIR files)
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), casualty record for LAC Terrance Gibbin (death and burial details)
- 49 Squadron Association, “21st December 1939 Search for the Deutschland” (mission narrative, weather, dispersal, interceptions, Acklington landings, Broomhill crash context)
- East Lothian at War pages on RAF Drem / No. 602 Squadron and pilot notes (context for Drem and 602 operations; McKellar background)
- Reference accounts of the “Battle of Barking Creek” (6 September 1939) as early RAF friendly-fire context
- 44 Squadron history page noting Hampden misidentification with the Dornier Do 17 (recognition context)
- RAF Museum, radar/air defence timeline noting the introduction of IFF coding on 1 January 1940 (identification technology context)
- Aviation Trails, “21 December 1939” (secondary commentary and the toilet-roll anecdote; treated as unconfirmed where appropriate)
