Into the Darkness

By Arthur R. Hoyle

Our Lancaster raced over the perimeter track and then tore down the slope through the dispersal area... with its wheels thumping on the grass but still firmly on the ground. It now seemed that nothing could save us and that, in the next couple of moments, we would disappear in a great explosion. I could hear Bob saying “Get off the ground, you bastard, get off,” while Harry just said nothing...

"Into the Darkness" is the true story of a young Australian thown into the crucible of the air war over Europe. Navigator, Arthur Hoyle, discovers the excitement, the comraderie and the fear of being part of Bomber Command. Intelligently written this book dramatically recreates the the trials of air crews over the dark skies of Europe — where the chance of surviving the full ‘tour’ was very low. Close to half of all Bomber Command crew who took off into the darkness never returned.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Vernon
• Release date: Jan 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466179394

Arthur R. Hoyle

Arthur Robert Hoyle was an Australian historian and biographer. Born in Sydney, Australia he served in the Royal Air Force as a navigator during World War II and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He served in the Australian Public Service and later taught Administration at the University of Canberra. He holds the degrees of BA (Hons) and Dip Ed (University of Sydney) and M.SocSci (University of Birmingham).He is best known for his biographies:King O'Malley: The American Bounder, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1981Roderick Flanagan: A bright flame too soon extinguished, Canberra, 1988Eddie Ward: The Truest Labor Man, Canberra, 1994The Life of John Hunter: Navigator, Governor, Admiral, Mulini Press, Canberra, 2001Hughie Edwards VC: The Fortunate Airman, A.R Hoyle, Mulini Press, Canberra, 2001He died in May 2012.

Book preview

Into the Darkness

One young Australian’s journey from Sydney to the deadly skies over Germany 1939 — 1945

By Arthur R. Hoyle D.F.C.

Edited by

David Vernon

Published by Stringybark Publishing

PO Box 464, Hall, ACT 2618, Australia

http://www.stringybarkstories.net

Smashwords Edition

Copyright: This edition, David Vernon, 2018

Copyright: Individual stories, the authors, various.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Contents

Introduction to the Second Edition — David Vernon

Foreword — Air Marshall Ray Funnell AC (Retd)

Preface — Arthur Hoyle DFC

In the Beginning

Preparation

To the War

The Furnace of War

Into the Darkness

Dead Reckoning

Surviving the Struggle

Return to Battle

Then it was Over

And Afterwards

About the Editor

Acknowledgements

Introduction to the Second Edition

— David Vernon

In 1989, Arthur Hoyle DFC, my second cousin, self-published his memoirs, entitled Into the Darkness, detailing his time as a navigator, serving in Bomber Command during World War II. At the time, he was kind enough to give me a copy, which I read cover to cover in one night and then put away as university exams, earning money and young women became my life.

Twenty-two years later, my youngest son showed interest in aircraft in World War II and so I dusted off my copy of Into the Darkness and presented it to him to read. He, like me a generation earlier, read it from cover to cover in one night. His enthusiastic response to the book prompted me to re-read it. What a treat. I have read many memoirs and histories of this period over many years and yet Into the Darkness was one of the best I had ever read. It wasn’t just Arthur’s keen eye for detail and his fascinating anecdotes, but it was his appreciation of history and his ability to place his experiences into a wider historical context that made his book so appealing. In addition, his literate and readable writing style eased the experience of reading about some of the horrors that confronted young men as they fought to take Europe from Hitler’s grasp.

Writing of Arthur’s calibre does not require editing for style or grammar. I have left Arthur’s original text untouched. What I have done is provide photographs and context to many of the events he describes [This material is available in the print version of the book which can be found here: http://www.davidvernon.net ]. The internet has allowed a massive amount of information to become available, which Arthur would never had a chance to find. When I visit him, he looks at me with bemusement when I show him my latest ‘internet find.’ Arthur spent his latter part of his life writing biographies, which involved spending hours and hours in libraries and scouring catalogues for names and events. I now can find material in a matter of minutes that took Arthur days and sometimes weeks to find. The difficulty for today’s researcher is not what to include, but what to leave out. I hope I have found a suitable balance.

As I write this, Arthur is the sole remaining member of his original crew still alive. So rapidly eye-witnesses to the events of World War II are dying. I thank Arthur Hoyle DFC for allowing such a vivid and readable eye-witness report to be made available to the historical record.

David Vernon

Editor

Stringybark

February 2012

Foreword

— Air Marshall Ray Funnell AC (retd)

Arthur Hoyle is a member of that great generation of Australian men and women who grew up during the Great Depression, served their nation and the world’s free peoples during the Second World War, and then in the post-war period transformed this nation from a pastoral and agricultural back-water into a vibrant, cultured, and sophisticated community. I doubt we will see their like again, but we all benefit from their legacy.

This is the story, self-told, of how a young man left his youth behind in the dark, deadly skies over Germany during 1944 and 1945. It is a story without heroes and without heroics. Although it was written for Arthur Hoyle’s family, the story is so rich in its perceptions and so wonderfully human in its detail of life in a squadron of Bomber Command in those terrible and terrifying years that anyone who reads it will benefit greatly.

Arthur Hoyle is a gentle man and a gentleman. He went to war willingly and with alacrity. He also went with a naïve conception of what he was facing, so much so that he was concerned that the war would finish before he could put his training into operational effect. Two tours of operations in No 460 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command, left him alive but with a vastly different set of beliefs and attitudes about the war, its prosecution and life itself.

To understand that change, consider these facts: most crews of Bomber Command were killed before they had completed five missions; after only five missions, Arthur’s was the third most experienced crew on the squadron; the squadron had twenty crews, each of seven men, and lost 1019 aircrew, that is more than seven times its total complement in just over two years. These raw statistics reveal the scale of the tragedy but, unless pursued, conceal the cost in human terms including to those who survived. Arthur Hoyle did survive, not only his first tour of thirty missions but also the second of twenty for which he volunteered without hesitation. After those fifty missions, he was a man with very different views of the world and of warfare. He did not volunteer for a third tour.

The pages of this work reveal a perceptive and a thoughtful man. Arthur Hoyle was diligent in his pursuit of excellence as a navigator, his aircrew role. However, he became increasingly aware of the political and strategic framework within which Bomber Command and therefore he operated. He disliked the strategy of area bombing. This came to head in the bombing of Dresden in February 1945 in which he participated. He saw the destruction late in the war of this treasure with little strategic value for what it was, namely, vengeful, inhumane and indefensible. He was part of that; it seared his soul.

Arthur Hoyle went ‘Into the Darkness’ night after night more than 65 years ago. The story he tells is not dated, it is timeless for it reminds us that we are not perfect; we all make errors both as individuals and as members of wider organisations. However, and more importantly, it tells how good people working together with intelligence and commitment can overcome evil and establish a better order.

Ray Funnell

Air Marshal (Retd)

Canberra

February 2012

Preface

— Arthur Hoyle DFC

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words

Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

But we in it shall be remembered;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother.

Henry V Act IV, Scene III

This memoir endeavours to recount the experiences of a very young man, in the first half of this century, in the greatest adventure of his life. It tries to convey how he felt when he looked death in the face and what it was like to live in a group of young men who, knowing that they had little chance of survival, tried to hide that knowledge from themselves and act as though they had many years of life left to them.

I went to war in a spirit of high adventure. The adventure I certainly found but with it went trauma. It altered not only my pathway in life but also many of my attitudes and values.

My experiences made me grow from a boy to a man in a few short months and forever removed any illusions I may have had about my bravery in the face of death. Because, to my continuing wonder, I survived without any physical injury does not mean that I do not still carry mental scars from the experience. But I have never regretted going to the war because it taught me to know myself to an extent that was unlikely to occur in a world of peace.

Inevitably, this narrative is selective but it is, I believe, free from falsity in fact or sentiment.

Arthur Hoyle

Canberra, 1989

Preface to the first edition

In the Beginning

The flight of three Avro Ansons in vee formation flew low over the crowd on the rocky hill. Painted silver, with the sun reflecting from the canopies and the red, white and blue roundels of the Royal Australian Air Force showing clearly on the glistening, silver wings and the fuselage, they made an impressive sight. To me, standing in Centennial Park, Sydney, in the crowd gathered to watch the celebration of the l50th anniversary of the coming of the British to Australia, they were a revelation. As the roar of the Cheetah engines died away and the aircraft became dots in the sky, I knew, for a certainty, that I wanted to fly.

Quite oblivious of the restless, chattering crowd, I stood silent but thrilled as a tingling went through my l5 year old body. I could not articulate it but I knew that the young men with their ugly flying suits, in their shining machines, were the chivalrous warriors of the twentieth century. Far more than the marching infantry in their khaki uniforms or the jingling light horse with emu feathers in their hats, they were the future.

In the late 1920s and in the 1930s, like many another boy, I was fascinated by the feats of the young airmen who had fought and usually died in the skies over France and by the deeds of the aerial pioneers such as Kingsford Smith, Ulm, Cobham, Hinkler and Amy Johnson. Hour by hour I had followed the great air race from London to Melbourne in 1935. Sitting at my scarred desk in the classroom, instead of listening to the teacher, I entered a dream world where my pencil became a Zeppelin flying in the dark skies over London and I was a daring young pilot intent on destroying the great raider.

Nobody in my family had ever been up in an aircraft. My infrequent requests to go for a joyride were always turned down. My parents were convinced that flying was dangerous and they were certainly not going to risk losing their carefully nurtured elder son. After all, one of the neighbours had driven the adjoining households to distraction by building his own aircraft in the backyard and running the engine up and down for hours at a time, only to fall into Cookʼs River on his first flight. As far as they were concerned, I could get all the adventure I needed in the Boy Scouts where I was a patrol leader. If even that was not enough then perhaps — a very big perhaps — I might go to sea like my grandfather and all his West Country ancestors.

I was quiet, and as a natural conformist found school no trial. My path in life seemed to be preordained. I would finish high school and, if I won a scholarship, I might go to Sydney University, become a high school teacher and lead a worthy life alternating between city and country schools. If I did not win a scholarship I would probably become a clerk in the public service with the unexciting prospect of following my father into a lifetime of servitude behind a desk.

Neither prospect entranced me but, in the narrow suburban world of Lane Cove, there seemed to be no alternative. But I dreamt of a more exciting life — one where I would travel and where life would present lots of adventure. Every week, when I crossed the Harbour Bridge on my way to my music lesson, I gazed eagerly on the ships in Walsh Bay and Circular Quay. I knew all the regular liners by name and every Saturday I read the advertisements for P&O, the Orient Line and the Matson Line imagining myself in such exotic, almost fabled, places as Colombo, Port Said and San Francisco. When the great white and cream ships stood down the harbour my heart went with them.

Australia in the 1930s was a long way from the rest of an increasingly troubled world. The great brown land was politically insulated from the fears and storms of both Europe and Asia. With only some seven million people, almost all of English, Irish and Scots descent, it seems destined to be set far apart from the quarrels of the old world. As part of the greatest empire the world had seen and protected by the might of the Royal Navy,

it was inhabited by people who were insular, preoccupied with parochial matters and generally distrustful of the products of intellect and culture. Foreign affairs were of little concern, even in the federal parliament in the little bush