Operation Manna: Australian Airmen and the Mission to Feed the Starving Netherlands

In the final days of the Second World War in Europe, an extraordinary act of humanity took place in the skies over the Netherlands.

For almost six years, Allied and German forces had been trying to destroy one another. Now Allied bomber crews were being asked to fly low and slow over territory that was still occupied by German troops, within range of anti-aircraft guns and even small-arms fire.

Their bomb bays would contain no bombs.

They would carry food for a starving population.

Even more remarkably, when the first aircraft flew into the occupied Netherlands on 29 April 1945, the detailed arrangements guaranteeing their safety had not yet been formally concluded. The airmen had to trust that German forces on the ground would not shoot.

Among the first pilots sent to discover whether that trust would be honoured was a 21-year-old Australian, Flying Officer Peter Gerald Langwill Collett RAAF.

His flight helped open Operation Manna, the massive British and Commonwealth food-dropping operation that brought desperately needed relief to the people of the western Netherlands.

The following day, Australians of No. 460 Squadron RAAF joined the operation in force.

Two days later the Americans joined the relief effort with Operation Chowhound.

Together, the operations became one of the most remarkable humanitarian episodes of the Second World War.

The Hunger Winter

By the winter of 1944–45, conditions in the still-occupied western Netherlands had become catastrophic.

The Allied advance following D-Day had liberated much of the southern Netherlands, but the heavily populated western provinces remained under German occupation. The failure of Operation Market Garden, disruption of transport, the Dutch railway strike, German restrictions and an exceptionally severe winter combined to produce the Hongerwinter — the Hunger Winter.

Food and fuel became desperately scarce.

In the major urban areas around Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, official daily food rations had fallen to around 600 calories by 1945. People travelled into the countryside searching for food, ate tulip bulbs and sugar beets, and dismantled furniture and abandoned buildings for fuel.

Thousands died from starvation, cold and the effects of malnutrition.

With the German military position collapsing in April 1945, another danger emerged. A final battle for the densely populated western Netherlands could cause further destruction at precisely the moment when the civilian population was least capable of surviving it.

Something had to be done urgently.

An extraordinary approach from the enemy

The origins of what became Operation Manna are more complicated than the often-told story of the Allies simply persuading the Germans to permit food drops.

There is evidence that Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian Nazi appointed by Hitler as Reich Commissioner for the occupied Netherlands, was himself involved in opening the path towards negotiations.

At the Nuremberg trials after the war, Seyss-Inquart testified that on 2 April 1945 he met the senior Dutch civil servant Hans Hirschfeld in The Hague.

According to Seyss-Inquart, the two agreed to make contact with confidential representatives of the Dutch government to explore negotiations. His proposed basis was that the Allies would refrain from advancing into western Netherlands, the Germans would undertake no further destruction, and arrangements could be made for the Allies to feed the Dutch population through the existing Dutch food authorities.

Information that Seyss-Inquart might be prepared to negotiate subsequently reached the Allies through Dutch channels.

Historian Stephen Dando-Collins, in his book Operation Chowhound, also gives considerable attention to this little-known background to the eventual food-dropping operations.

Seyss-Inquart’s motives should not be romanticised.

He had presided over a brutal occupation of the Netherlands. Under his administration Dutch Jews were persecuted and deported, hostages were executed and resistance was ruthlessly suppressed. He was subsequently convicted at the Nuremberg trials of war crimes and crimes against humanity and was hanged on 16 October 1946.

Nevertheless, in the extraordinary circumstances of April 1945, channels had opened through which bitter enemies could discuss an arrangement intended to prevent the starvation of the Dutch civilian population.

Negotiating while people starved

The Allies meanwhile developed plans for delivering large quantities of food by air.

Air Commodore Andrew James Wray Geddes played a central role in developing the arrangements for what became Operation Manna, including designated flight corridors, dropping zones and procedures intended to prevent German forces from firing on the aircraft.

But time was running out.

At Achterveld on 28 April, Allied representatives met a German delegation to discuss the proposed operation.

Seyss-Inquart had already indicated that he would accept several dropping zones. However, the German representatives at Achterveld said that they did not have authority to approve the complete Allied proposal. They could receive it and report back.

The Allies then made an extraordinary decision.

The food drops would begin the following day.

German forces were informed that they were not to interfere with the aircraft.

The detailed arrangements had not yet been formally concluded, however, and the crews preparing to fly into enemy-held territory could not know with certainty how the German forces below would react.

Would the Germans keep their word?

Before the great formations of bombers arrived, two Lancasters of No. 101 Squadron RAF were selected for a hazardous preliminary flight on the morning of 29 April 1945.

One was flown by Canadian pilot Robert “Bob” Upcott. His Lancaster became famously associated with Operation Manna as Bad Penny.

The other was flown by Australian RAAF pilot Peter Gerald Langwill Collett.

Collett had been born at St Leonards, New South Wales, on 6 July 1923. He had enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in August 1942 and was only 21 years old when he flew the Manna mission.

Stan Jones, the wireless operator aboard Bad Penny, later recalled that the two Lancasters were specifically selected for the test flight into Holland.

The weather was poor and the mission had already been delayed several times. Finally, early on 29 April, they received permission to go.

As they crossed the occupied Netherlands, the danger became very real.

Upcott later recalled seeing German anti-aircraft guns pointing towards the low-flying aircraft. The Australian Lancaster flew alongside him as they approached the dropping area near The Hague.

The crews could only continue and see what happened.

The Germans did not open fire.

The food was dropped.

The fragile understanding between enemies had held.

Later that day, hundreds of RAF Lancasters followed them into the occupied Netherlands. More than 500 tonnes of food were delivered on the first day.

Operation Manna had begun.

The Australians of 460 Squadron join Manna

The following day, 30 April 1945, Australia’s No. 460 Squadron RAAF joined the humanitarian operation.

This was a squadron accustomed to a very different kind of mission.

No. 460 Squadron had become one of the most heavily engaged Australian bomber squadrons of the war. Its Lancasters had attacked targets across Germany and occupied Europe.

The cost had been terrible.

The Australian War Memorial records that the squadron lost 181 aircraft on operations and suffered 1,018 fatal casualties, including 589 Australians — the highest number of any Australian squadron.

Its final bombing operation had taken place against Berchtesgaden on Anzac Day, 25 April 1945.

Only five days later its Lancasters were being filled with food.

On its first Manna mission, 21 aircraft of 460 Squadron flew to the Netherlands. In only seven minutes they dropped more than 50,000 kilograms of food over The Hague from an altitude of approximately 150 metres.

Over seven food-dropping missions, 460 Squadron eventually flew 118 Lancaster sorties and delivered more than 340,000 kilograms of food to the Dutch population.

Flying at rooftop height

Operation Manna was unlike the bombing missions these crews knew so well.

The Lancasters had to approach the designated dropping zones at very low altitude. The food was generally dropped without parachutes, requiring the pilots to fly low enough for sacks and packages to survive the impact.

The RAF Museum records operating heights generally between 200 and 500 feet — approximately 60 to 150 metres — with some aircraft flying even lower.

The bomb bays contained sacks and packages of flour, dried milk, tinned meat, sugar, tea, chocolate and other desperately needed foods.

For the crews, the scenes below were extraordinary.

Dutch civilians gathered in fields, streets and on rooftops, waving flags, sheets and anything else they could find. Messages of thanks appeared on the ground.

For men accustomed to seeing explosions and burning cities beneath their aircraft, the reaction of the Dutch population was profoundly different.

Some Australian crews added cigarettes and chocolates to their loads, sometimes dropping them on improvised miniature parachutes.

Aircraft designed to carry destruction were now carrying food.

The danger had not disappeared

The early Manna crews had good reason to be apprehensive.

Their aircraft were flying low enough to be vulnerable not only to German anti-aircraft guns but also to rifles and machine guns.

The German authorities had indicated that the aircraft would not be attacked within the agreed corridors and dropping areas, but the Allied crews could not know whether every German unit below had received — or would obey — those instructions.

The RAF Museum records that some enemy infantry nevertheless fired at low-flying aircraft, although with few harmful consequences.

For the crews, particularly those flying the first missions before the arrangements had been fully formalised, the risk was very real.

Yet there was no concerted German attack on the food-carrying bombers.

The extraordinary gamble worked.

Operation Chowhound — the Americans join

On 1 May 1945, the United States Army Air Forces joined the relief effort under the name Operation Chowhound.

Where Manna was the RAF and Commonwealth operation, principally using Lancaster bombers, Chowhound employed American B-17 Flying Fortresses.

General James Doolittle, commander of the US Eighth Air Force, required the American personnel taking part in Chowhound to volunteer. The humanitarian flights would not count as combat missions.

The crews nevertheless came forward.

The American aircraft faced essentially the same extraordinary circumstances as their Commonwealth counterparts: heavily laden bombers flying at exceptionally low altitude over territory that technically remained in enemy hands.

Operation Manna and Operation Chowhound were therefore separate British/Commonwealth and American operations, but parts of the same humanitarian effort to prevent mass starvation in the western Netherlands.

Together they delivered thousands of tonnes of food before and immediately around the liberation of the country.

The agreement catches up with the aircraft

While the bombers were already carrying food into the Netherlands, negotiations continued on the ground.

Further meetings involved senior Allied, Dutch and German representatives, including Seyss-Inquart, Prince Bernhard and Allied officers responsible for organising the relief operation.

The detailed arrangements were subsequently formalised.

The precise dating is described somewhat differently in surviving accounts, with sources referring to agreements reached around 1–2 May. What is clear is that Operation Manna had already begun on 29 April, before the final arrangements were formally completed.

By then the airmen themselves had demonstrated that the extraordinary understanding could work.

460 Squadron’s final missions

No. 460 Squadron continued participating in Manna during the first week of May.

Its final Manna mission took place on 7 May 1945 and involved 28 aircraft.

The war in Europe was ending.

Conventional supplies could soon begin reaching the western Netherlands again, but Manna and Chowhound had provided urgently needed food during a critical period. Just as importantly to many Dutch people who witnessed the drops, the aircraft overhead provided visible evidence that liberation and relief were finally close.

For members of 460 Squadron, the missions became some of their most memorable experiences of the war.

Remembering Manna

The Dutch did not forget the airmen who brought food during the final days of the Hunger Winter.

Australian 460 Squadron veteran Art Whitmarsh returned to the Netherlands for the 40th anniversary commemorations in 1985 and again with his wife Esma in 1990.

He recalled moving ceremonies in Dutch towns, wreath-laying at Dronten and the sight of a Lancaster flying overhead at low altitude with its bomb doors open, recalling the food-dropping aircraft of 1945.

The Australian War Memorial also holds records relating to RAAF involvement in the 40th anniversary commemorations in the Netherlands in 1985.

Operation Manna continues to be remembered in the Netherlands. At Terbregge in Rotterdam, close to one of the original food-dropping areas, a permanent Operation Manna memorial has commemorated the drops since 2006. Appropriately, the path beside it is named the Air Commodore Geddespad after Andrew Geddes, who played such an important role in organising the operation.

Humanity amid war

Operation Manna and Operation Chowhound brought desperately needed food to the Dutch population during the final days of the German occupation.

Their story is also a reminder that even in war, humanity can survive.

Allied airmen accepted the risks of flying low over enemy-held territory. German forces overwhelmingly honoured the undertaking not to fire. And aircraft built to carry bombs instead carried food to a starving population.

For the Australians of 460 Squadron, it was an extraordinary final chapter to years of dangerous bomber operations over Europe — and one that many remembered with particular pride.