Operation Manna had an abrupt onset but a long genesis. It can be said to have begun on 29 September 1943, when Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a memo to his Chiefs of Staff. It contained the germ of the plan for the operation a year later.
“Should the Germans evacuate Greece we must certainly be able to send 5,000 British troops with armoured cars and Bren gun carriers into Athens […] Their duty would be to give support at the centre to the restored lawful Greek Government […] There may be some bickering between the Greek guerilla bands, but great respect will be paid to the British, more especially as the saving of the country from famine depends entirely on our exertions in the early months of liberation.”
Churchill’s concern was brought about by the surrender of Italy in September 1943 following the conquest of Sicily (in which British glider pilots had played key roles in operations Ladbroke and Fustian). After an armistice, Italian troops in Italy and the Balkans laid down their arms. In the case of Greece, these arms were promptly taken up by one of the “guerilla bands”. This was ELAS, the communist-controlled People’s Liberation Army. Not openly stated in Churchill’s memo, but implicit in his support for the non-communist pre-war “lawful Greek Government”, was a great fear of the ‘Bolshevisation’ of the Balkans.
Nearly a year after his memo, the events he expected began to unfold, although the size of the forces he envisaged roughly doubled. On 6 August 1944 he warned his Chiefs of Staff that within a month or so “we shall have to put 10,000 or 12,000 men into Athens, with a few tanks, guns and armoured cars.” He emphasized the need for speed once the Germans pulled out, to prevent even the briefest of power vacuums that could be filled by communist-controlled ELAS.
Events began to accelerate. Churchill met the Greek Prime Minister on 21 August. Two days later Romania surrendered to the Allies, followed by Bulgaria on the 26th. Russian advances now threatened to cut off the Germans’ escape routes northwards out of Greece.
Churchill promptly ordered his Chiefs to plan the expedition to Greece. He stipulated that the troops involved should be ready by 1 September. Initially the operation was codenamed Dogfish, but this was deemed inappropriate given the mission’s humanitarian aspects, and it was changed to Manna, after the Biblical “bread from heaven” (confusingly, there was another, entirely unconnected Operation Manna, named for the same reason, which saw food being air-dropped to starving Dutch citizens in 1945).
Most of the forces taking part in Operation Manna were due to go by ship from Italy to Greece. These however would not arrive quickly enough to prevent a power vacuum, so the rapid-deployment part of the plan fell to airborne forces in the shape of the British 2nd Independent Parachute Brigade Group. The Brigade comprised three battalions of paratroops (4th, 5th and 6th), along with airborne engineer, artillery, anti-tank, medical, glider pilot and other units. Most of these had only recently taken part on 15 August in Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of the South of France. However, with only two weeks until Churchill’s target date of 1 September, some units might not even have fully returned to their bases in Italy, let alone reorganized and re-equipped by then.
This was particularly true of 1 Independent Glider Pilot Squadron, which had lost 37 single-use Horsa gliders when they landed them in the fields and vineyards behind the French Riviera. The Squadron now had none, or at least not enough for another operation. Nevertheless, a Brigade operation instruction dated 1 September specified 14 Horsas for use in Manna. These were expected to carry the following equipment to back up the first phase of the parachute assault:
6 Horsas: two troops of 4.2” mortars
2 Horsas: two wireless jeeps
4 Horsas: four jeeps & trailers with 22 set radios and ambulance fittings
2 Horsas: engineer equipment
At some point in August the GPR in the UK was ordered to ferry 32 Horsas from England to Italy (according to Alan Wood in “The Glider Soldiers”, although other sources differ). This ferrying mission was codenamed Operation Molten. It is not clear if it was an automatic replacement of the Dragoon gliders, or if the imminence of Manna may have lent some urgency. If so, the time pressure did not carry through to the planners, as the ferry flight did not take off until 9 October, too late for Manna. Perhaps the intervening Operation Market Garden, the race and battle for Arnhem, got in the way.
The lack of Horsas did not prevent the Independent Squadron from preparing for Manna, and a hunt began in Italy for Waco gliders to use instead. During Dragoon the Squadron had been based at Tarquinia airfield, near Rome, where it was well placed for flying to France. For Manna it needed to fly in the opposite direction, so at the start of September it began to move to the airfield at Manduria, in Italy’s heel. On the way GPs stopped at Marcigliana airfield, and picked up Waco gliders left over from Dragoon, to ferry to their new base.
There were loud complaints by the pilots about the state of the Wacos, a large percentage of which were deemed to be “unserviceable for operational purposes”. This report was escalated rapidly up to Brigade, and the next day the Brigade commander flew in to see for himself. Only then did he begin work on the operation order for Manna. It is not recorded what he said, but presumably it was something along the lines of “gliders are vital to the whole operation, so just get on with it”.
The rest of the Squadron later flew into Manduria on USAAF C-47 (Dakota) aircraft. Once everybody had arrived, ten days of “military training for pilots” began. In the early days of planning for Manna, it was deemed wise to presume that the initial landings in Greece might be contested by the Germans. In theory, according to the “total soldier” concept of Colonel Chatterton, CO of the GPR, the pilots were already fully trained as infantry, and were not in need of an elementary bout. However, over a year had passed since they had seen fighting in Sicily (there had been none in Dragoon). In any case, training is as a good way as any to keep morale keyed up while waiting for an uncertain call to combat.
At the end of September eight more Wacos were ferried in. Thorough testing of all the Wacos began. There was one day of test flying with empty gliders, then five days with “light loads only”. It is not clear how risky this was for the GPs, but it must have required courage to take up an aircraft just to see if it might fall out of the sky. From 4 October, for a week, “final preparations” were made. On 10 October “loading of gliders began”, followed by two days of (apparently fully loaded) “final test flights”.
While the glider pilots were getting to grips with training and testing, events proceeded apace. On 13 September Churchill ordered the capture of Araxos airfield in the Peloponnese, 150 miles west of Athens, as some Germans were withdrawing towards Corinth. However, others remained firmly ensconced in Athens, which prevented launching the Athens operation. Nevertheless from 00:00 on 14 September the Manna units were put on 48 hours’ notice. The Brigade operation order with a detailed plan was issued that day. In it, maintaining law and order in Athens remained the sole objective – Araxos would have to be tackled by other forces.
The Brigade plan specified a series of lifts to an airfield near Athens, with two primary purposes. Firstly, paras were to set out for the city on foot as soon as they had assembled after jumping. Secondly, parachute engineers were to rapidly make the airfield usable, so C-47s could land with more troops, jeeps, trailers and supplies, and take off again carrying wounded. The engineers were to remove German mines, and fill in craters in the runway. The craters were not solely caused by German demolitions as they retreated – the airfields had also been bombed by the Allied Balkan Air Force, because they were being used by German transport planes to evacuate their forces, and they made a splendid target. Over 100 were claimed destroyed.
So a key component in the glider loads was bulldozers. These could not be dropped by parachute. Without their vital contribution to speedily repairing runways, the British forces in Athens would at first be limited to three battalions of foot-slogging paratroopers. The plan specified the Waco’s maximum payload as 3750 pounds, and noted that an airborne dozer was much heavier than this (5000 pounds). The dozers were so important to the plan, however, that Brigade approved their use for Manna, as long as no troops were carried apart from the pilots.
The gliders, with their precious dozers, were to be part of Lift 1 on D-Day. As usual in major glider operations, the planned lifts were governed not just by tactical priorities, but also by limited numbers of transport planes. Also as usual, the British had to look to the Americans for help. No less a person than American President Franklin Roosevelt himself had, at Churchill’s direct request, authorized the use of American aircraft in Manna. 51st Troop Carrier (TC) Wing, with its 60th and 62nd TC Groups, would provide 102 C-47s in Manna, not enough to lift the whole of 2 Para Brigade in one go.
The plan for Lift 1 on D-Day was as follows:
First came the pathfinders of 1 Independent Para Platoon in two C-47s, whose job it was to mark the DZ/LZ for subsequent waves, including a safe strip for gliders. Next came the main wave of drops, due at 08:15, with 66 planes, each carrying some 15 men of the 4th and 6th Para Battalions. Their job was to secure the airfield and then immediately set off for Athens. A further eight planes were to drop the engineers of 2nd Para Squadron RE to prepare the landing strip for the gliders. There were also two planes with a surgical team, and nine with Brigade HQ, including several detachments of other units.
The third wave of Lift 1 was due to be gliders, 15 of them, landing an hour later at 09:15, carrying “RE, Sig, Med eqpt & tpt” (engineer, signal, medical equipment and transport). Frustratingly for historians of the GPR, that’s as good a squadron loading list as there is. We can surmise that some items from the 1 September list above were included. More would arrive by glider in Lift 3.
Lift 2 was also planned for D-Day. In it 24 planes were due to drop most of 5th Para Battalion at 17:00, followed an hour later by 26 planes dropping supplies (this was a twilight run – sunset was at about 17:45).
The next day, D+1, was to begin with Lift 3 arriving at 09:15. It included the Support Group of 5th Para Battalion, plus more Brigade HQ and medical teams, all jumping from 50 planes. Lastly a further 15 planes were to bring more gliders carrying “RE, Sig eqpt, inf sp weapons & tpt”. The presence of infantry support weapons (including perhaps heavy machine guns, mortars and PIATs) may explain why the Support Group of 5th Para was held over from D-Day.
Lifts 1 to 3 would thus in two days take care of all the parachuting and gliderborne elements. The next phase assumed that the runway would now be clear, and C-47s could land. They would be delivering the men of the Brigade’s artillery and anti-tank batteries, the latter (surprisingly perhaps) in order to man 4.2” mortars.
There would also be transport for all the Brigade’s units in the form of 140 jeeps, 137 trailers and 95 motorcycles. Delivering jeeps and trailers by C-47 seems to have been new to the Brigade. An artillery officer experimented before the operation with how to load them, and then instructed his men how to do it. American pilots of 51 TCW objected that a jeep and trailer was “excessive”, but were eventually won over. In the absence of more gliders, this airlanding (as it was called) was a quick way to get lots of “tpt” to the parachute units.
Brigade had been ordered to prepare plans for three different alternative airfield DZ/LZs. There were two at Kalamaki airfield, which was some four miles south-east of the centre of Athens, and one at Eleusis, twice as far to the west of the city. Kalamaki was preferred for its proximity. It was also a “proper” airfield with a control tower and other buildings. However, it was ringed by German AA batteries and other defences, although they all appeared to be unmanned, or, it was assumed, would be, once the Germans evacuated.
Finally, it seemed as if D-Day was imminent, and in the morning of 11 October the pathfinders, who would be the first to jump, were told to be ready to land at Kalamaki within the next five days. They began to prepare accordingly. The Brigade commander then went to the HQ of the Balkan Air Force, which was in charge of the air aspects of the plan, where the “complete plan for ‘MANNA’ altered”. On his return he met the pathfinders at 22:00 and revealed that D-Day was now the next day, 12 October. A team of 11 pathfinders would be roused in two hours’ time, at midnight, to be dropped in the morning to mark the parachute and glider landing zones.
More shockingly, they were told that much-studied Kalamaki was out, due to the unexpected presence of manned German AA. Instead, a rough landing ground at Megara had been chosen as the new DZ/LZ. Megara is some 28 miles by road from Athens, much further than Kalamaki, and the airborne units had no information about it. Briefing consisted of one 1:100,000 map “on which the approximate area in which they were to drop was pointed out”. There was no time to set up frequencies and call signs for radio navigation aids.
A company of paratroopers from 4th Para Battalion were due to drop with the pathfinder team to secure and scout the airfield. It was apparently not clear if the Germans were in fact still a threat. This was the final surprise – the pathfinders’ war diary noted, “Briefly a defended Pathfinder operation!”
Apart from the lack of German AA, Megara had the additional advantage that it had already been reached by British forces. The Special Boat Service (SBS), an offshoot of the SAS, had dropped onto Araxos airfield in the Peloponnese on 23 September, as ordered by Churchill. They were shortly joined by the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), equipped with jeeps mounting .50 cal machine guns, and 2908 Squadron of the RAF Regiment, equipped with 6 pounder guns and Otter armoured cars. This strange ad-hoc force was soon chasing along the coast, nipping at the heels of the retreating Germans.
The British reached Megara on 10 October and captured the airfield unopposed. The SBS and LRDG were met by the local British Liaison Officer, who came out of hiding along with ELAS fighters. It seems the capture of the airfield was a key consideration in triggering the sudden launch of Manna to Megara, as opposed to Kalamaki. The Germans had not quite left the area, however, and still occupied the town of Megalo Pevko, some five miles east of Megara. Patrols from both sides clashed, and German mortars kept the airfield under desultory shellfire. It caused no casualties, but presumably produced more craters in the runway.
And so Operation Manna began at last, just over a year after Churchill’s memo. The pathfinders along with engineers and a company of paratroopers began to jump over Megara at 14:11 on 12 October, D-Day. They were protected by covering fire from RAF armoured cars, but the real threat was not from the Germans. A 40 mph gale was blowing. Observers on the ground thought it was impossible that the drop would go ahead, but, after the planes made a single circuit to choose a suitable DZ, to their astonishment it did. Jeeps raced out to help collapse billowing chutes, but one man was killed and 25% of the force were stretcher cases. All the rest were cut and bruised. One officer was dragged by his parachute for six miles before being found by the SBS. He later died of his injuries. The rest of the operation was postponed 24 hours.
However the goal of securing the airfield had been achieved. Witnessing the arrival of reinforcements by air seems to have triggered a German withdrawal. Megara had previously been used by German gliders taking off for the invasion of Crete in 1941. Now, after more than three years of occupation, the Germans were finally gone, and gliders would again use the airfield.
The day after the drop, 13 October / D+1, there was no longer any shelling, but the wind was still blowing hard, and parachute jumps were postponed a further 24 hours. However, gliders could land in winds that were too dangerous for parachutists, so the GPs got their turn. The pathfinders and engineers, aided by the LRDG jeeps, had prepared a special runway for the gliders, separate from the airstrip’s main runway.
Of the 30 available gliders, nine had been loaded with equipment for the engineers. At first on the 13th these nine were being held back in Italy because the engineering equipment was deemed “unnecessary”. The GP Squadron’s war diary does not explain why. Perhaps it was felt the engineers who had jumped on D-Day had matters in hand. The remaining 21 gliders were due to take off at first light (about 06:00). Suddenly “at last minute [the] operation [was] postponed due to bad flying weather i.e. gale over LZ”.
Within a couple of hours this hesitation over the weather vanished. The order of going was now completely reversed – at 9:30 a message was received that only the nine engineer gliders were to go. Again, the diary gives no reason. Perhaps the 21 were now withheld as the military situation was stable. In any case most of the para units to which the loads belonged were not yet in Greece to use them, whereas repairing runways remained paramount. The diary continued:
“At 1130 9 gliders took off. Bad weather over Gulf of PATRAS otherwise good trip with no enemy interference. All landed at MEGARA, Greece on improvised strip at approx. 1415 hrs. 2 gliders written off on landing but all stores O.K. and no casualties. All assisted in making supply dump & guards put on various strong points of the airfield. Aerodrome guard done by Greek partisans.”
One of the written-off gliders was piloted by S/Sgt Will Morrison, who was carrying one of the hugely heavy dozers, which made him extremely apprehensive. In his book “Horsa Squadron”, he described what happened after he released from the tug:
“As I followed the others down, I took a wider sweep to avoid getting too close. (I heard afterwards that two of the gliders had to take avoiding action to avoid a mid-air collision.) I banked the glider to port so that I would be lined up with the marker strips showing where it was safe to land. As I moved the controls to level out for the final run in there was no response, and if anything the bank to port was getting worse due to the weight of the bulldozer. We were still a good hundred feet up, and at one stage I was afraid that the glider would roll over which would finish us, as the load came crashing down. Luckily for us, the port wing hit the ground and we crash landed.”
Luckier still, for the mission objectives, the dozer was unscathed. The engineers’ war diary records that six men, two dozers, two tractors, one grader, one scraper, two motorcycles and 25 tins of petrol landed by glider. The equipment was immediately put to use by the sappers who had landed the day before. Once again LRDG jeeps helped transport supplies and materials, and also towed the gliders off the LZ.
Meanwhile the weather-induced upheaval continued. There were no other landings that day, with all parachute jumps postponed again. The next day, 14 October / D+2, the rest of the pathfinders and the rest of 4th Para Battalion jumped. Only part of the 6th Battalion dropped, due to there being not enough C-47s. On 15 October / D+3, all landings were again postponed.
On 16 October / D+4, the rest of 6th Battalion dropped along with the 5th Battalion. Finally, it was again the turn of the Independent GP Squadron. The war diary reads:
“21 gliders took off at 1100 hrs. One glider forced landed in Italy. Good flying weather. All 20 gliders landed at MEGARA, Greece at 1400 hrs. No casualties & no damage to loads. Base HQ remained at Manduria [Italy] & O.C Sqdn set up his Main HQ at Megara.”
The irony of these delays was that no sooner had all the gliders arrived, than the main reason for their landing promptly at Megara was overtaken by events. The same day a lone C-47 landed at Megara to check its viability, and then took off again carrying five wounded men. The next day, D+5, troops and jeeps were airlanded by C-47 at the now-repaired Kalamaki airfield near Athens, and seaborne forces were unloading at Piraeus, the port of Athens.
Once the troops had landed, the planes of 51 TCW began ferrying food to the starving people of Athens, and British forces, including the glider pilots, willingly went on half rations to help.
The GPs now settled into life at Megara. The diary for the rest of October reads: “Guards & resupply work by Sqdn. Sqdn H.Q. moved from airfield to Megara village. Inauguration of special duty section to stand by to deal with any possible mob action.”
Resupply was initially furnished by RAF and USAAF aircraft dropping supplies onto the airfield by parachute, or even without chutes. One such “free” drop took place when some paras had just landed. Luckily none of them was hit. Greek civilians enthusiastically helped gather in supplies. They had also swarmed the airfield during the jumps, helping the paras deflate their chutes and carrying their packs to the RV.
The glider pilots’ experiences in Megara in October and November were very much coloured by their relationship with the Greeks – joyful with most of the locals, but ambivalent and tense with the armed “banditti” of ELAS. Several pilots have left accounts. There are books by Will Morrison, Cornelius Turner and Tom McMillen, and pieces in ‘The Eagle’ magazine by Tommy Gillies, Vic Taylor, Harold Lansdell, Stan Coates, Harold Protheroe and Donald Stewart. Gillies remembered that the pilots were feted as liberators and “the villagers were always able to produce the ubiquitous old man and his fiddle and with unlimited supplies of ouzo all became exceedingly good dancers”. The GPs even learned to like retsina, a wine pungently flavoured with pine resin.
“We were billeted in the village school which had long ago ceased teaching. One of our pilots ‘Droop’ Newman, a skilled electrical engineer, was able to repair the village power station much to the joy of the villagers. We were introduced to ‘explosive’ fishing by the partisans which involved throwing explosives into the sea and harvesting the dead fish floating to the surface. We had many happy times in Megara and were able to visit Athens and even do some sightseeing.”
At first relations with ELAS were cordial, even friendly, but this soon changed. ELAS was the biggest and most heavily armed partisan group – indeed for a long time they were supplied by the British with weapons to fight the Germans. ELAS quickly came to dominate, and began to terrorise local populations, as they settled scores with their non-communist rivals, the very people Churchill wanted to protect.
Major McMillen was CO of the Independent Squadron at the time. In his book “Aim for a Soft Landing”, he recalled how, as the senior representative of local British forces, he was appointed Town Mayor by Brigade HQ. His nemesis was the communist-sympathising Chief of Police. McMillen recounted how on one occasion he returned from Athens to find him loading his rivals into a truck to take to Athens for trial and presumably execution. McMillen solved the problem by blocking exits to the square and deploying threatening bren gunners. He reported that later it was the Chief of Police himself who was sent for trial.
No source explains why it was thought useful to keep two dozen gliders idle in Greece for months, guarded by their highly skilled pilots. Whatever the reasons behind doing so, however, it seems they became irrelevant once open warfare broke out in Athens. Suddenly it was deemed expedient to fly the Wacos back to Italy as soon as possible.
Trouble had been brewing for some time, with both the British and ELAS playing each other along. Churchill was expecting a communist coup, and ELAS were bent on not being disarmed and demobilized by the British. On 3 December ELAS units began the long-anticipated attempt to seize Athens. The British paras, besieged in the city centre, came under intense pressure. There were no forces to spare to reinforce tiny outposts like Megara.
The very next day, 4 December, as recorded by the Squadron war diary, 12 gliders took off from Megara and landed at Tarquinia, near Rome. The following day another 12 gliders left Greece, and ”landed on various airfields in Italy”. The diary does not explain the discrepancy between the 24 Wacos that left Megara and the 27 that had arrived intact two months before, but sitting in the open in the Greek winter cannot have helped the condition of the Wacos. The return trip was horrific. Gillies recounted his flight with Dick Clarke:
“Dick and I were faced with extreme weather conditions. The driving rain and gale force winds made it very difficult to maintain our position behind the tug. During the flight we diverted several times trying to avoid the atrocious weather. We even flew through a water spout. We took turns at the controls but became very exhausted physically and mentally. We were nearing the end of our tether when to our great joy we found ourselves over land. We had agreed that at the first opportunity we would cast off and after a four and a half hour flight, on seeing an aerodrome, we duly did just that.”
By January 1945 British reinforcements had airlanded at Athens and ELAS was defeated. But Greece’s problems were not over, and later a full-scale civil war broke out.
Back in Italy the GPs were reinforced by a draft of 40 second pilots from the UK, and there was an expectation that gliders might be used in British offensives in Northern Italy. This never happened, and in fact Operation Manna turned out to be 1st Independent Glider Pilot Squadron’s swansong.
.
A version of this article appeared in “Glider Pilot’s Notes”, the magazine of the Glider Pilot Regiment Society.
