Fighter! Fighter! Corkscrew Port!: Vivid Memories of Bomber Aircrew in World War Two

By Pat Cunningham

The young men who flew with RAF Bomber Command in World War Two were a complex mixture of individuals but they all shared the gift of teamwork. A crew of seven may have comprised all non-commissioned men and some crews included commissioned officers but not always flying as pilots. The outstanding fact was that each man relied on every other member of his crew to return from each mission safely.This book contains ten intriguing reminiscences of bomber aircrew; some were pilots, others navigators, flight engineers, bomb-aimers or gunners. They flew as both commissioned or NCO airmen. Understandably, a common problem was that of coping with fear. Many former aircrew hold that anyone who claims to have felt no fear on operations is either lying or has allowed the years to blank out that fear. But there are a few who do maintain that they never felt afraid. For the majority, though, handling fear was something to be worked out by the individual. Some hit the bottle, others womanized to excess; others tightened the gut and bit the lip; or drew the curtain and focused upon the plotting table or the wireless set. The passing years may have silvered what hair remains, dulled the eye that formerly registered on the merest speck; lent a quiver to the hand that once controlled the stick, penciled in the track, manipulated the tuning dial, set the bombsight, tapped the gauge, or rotated the turret. And yet for all the attributes of age their irrepressible youthfulness shines through.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781783461479

Book preview

Introduction

This book is a tribute to the Second World War aircrews of the Royal Air Force who, for much of that conflict, were Britain’s only direct means of striking back at the enemy. And yet until a short time before the outbreak of war the RAF’s concept of aircrew was hazy to say the least, indeed, the term itself did not gain currency until 1939. Fortunately, in 1934 perceptive elements in the government authorized a massive expansion of the RAF. However, as an unlooked-for outcome this also showed up serious shortcomings.

Paramount among these was the lack of a cohesive policy for the crewing of aircraft, and particularly of the heavy bombers which, even then, were long past the drawing-board stage. Essentially, the system regarded only pilots as full-time fliers. The others, observers and air gunners, were invariably found among volunteer tradesmen whose technical qualifications were rather wastefully misemployed when they were called from the workshops to fly.

There was also the woeful state of navigation, illustrated by the fact that in a two-year period 478 RAF bombers made forced-landings because their pilots had lost their way. And that was over Britain, when venturing aloft at night, over a fully-lit land!

Steps taken to rectify matters included sending all observers on ten-week navigation courses. Even so, just two months before the outbreak of war the Commander in Chief of Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Ludlow-Hewitt, was obliged to report to the Air Council that his command was incapable of operating in anything but fair weather.

In the interim air gunners and observers had been established as full-time fliers and, nominally, at least, made sergeants, although this would take time to implement. Even so, the gunners were expected to double as wireless operators, and the observers as bomb aimers. Clearly, to fully crew the anticipated heavy bombers would be an enormous undertaking calling for the economic husbanding of resources.

The requirements decided upon for these yet-to-be-found fliers were not particularly flattering. The medically suitable aspirant volunteer, while ‘not exceptional’, was to be ‘more than keen to learn’. A mechanical background would be ‘advantageous’ and he should have a good general education with a fair working knowledge of maths and the application of simple formulae. It was to be left to the Initial Training Wing (ITW) to bring out the dormant ‘spirit of aggression’ and to maintain personal initiative while encouraging the ‘crew spirit’.

Meanwhile, the creation of instant sergeants did not sit happily with the non-fliers in a Service where promotion had been historically slow. But the new planners were also stuck with another historical precedent, that of commissioned and non-commissioned fliers that had been foisted upon the Service since the earliest days. In 1914 Trenchard – the revered Father of the RAF – had seen no need to commission pilots, reasoning that they commanded nobody and that the trained military observer they carried would regulate the sortie. The Royal Naval Air Service, however, offered commissions to its pilots, so that, suddenly facing a dearth of recruits, the Royal Flying Corps had to follow suit.

As the Second World War loomed then, the attributes of aspirant aircrew had been established. But where were these ‘not exceptional’ volunteers to be found?

Happily, the climate was right. Race-awareness of four years of Flanders mud and blood had raised the sights of many to the knightly conflict fought by the air aces of that Great War. In addition, the aerial record breakers were rarely out of the headlines. And always there was the allure of Flight, mankind’s primeval dream. Finally, after war actually broke out, German blitzes and the desire to strike back became a spur for so many more that, in the event, recruiting aircrew was always to be a matter of feast rather than famine.

Where flying training was concerned, however, the British weather presented enormous problems to continuity. These, though, were alleviated through schemes by which such training could be done in the fair-weather skies of not only Commonwealth countries but of the still-neutral United States. Notwithstanding, it would still take nearly two years to bring many aircrew to an operationally-ready state.

Even so, a build-up on such a scale, forced by the hot-house of war, had inherent costs. Over 8,000 of the 56,000 fatalities suffered by Bomber Command alone, had to be attributed to accidents – essentially to inexperience – rather than to enemy action.

Viewed dispassionately, this is not surprising, for many crews, having finished a first tour of operations, had logged less than five hundred hours’ flying time. Nor were they able to take full advantage of those electronic aids to navigation that did exist, being denied them for fear of interception.

The navigational problem was not helped by the fact that unacceptable losses had forced the RAF to give up day bombing. Instead, it pragmatically used such activities as nocturnal leaflet dropping to build enough navigational expertise to enable it to meet most of its war aims by night operations.

The morality of bombing, whether by night or day, though not entirely without its contemporary critics, has come under intense scrutiny since. However, it was not a matter that overly concerned the crews. Primarily, they were far too busy trying to stay alive. They knew full well from practice scores that not all their bombs would hit the actual rail junction or factory targeted. Any qualms, however, would be quelled by such rationalizations as, ‘They started it, the humane thing is to finish it as quickly as possible.’

Then again, they were only too familiar with British cities razed by an enemy who, even with the war already lost, resorted to unmanned flying bombs and rockets that made not the slightest pretence at accuracy. Equally, they knew how the populace of those razed cities universally urged off-duty aircrew to pay back the enemy in his own coin.

What figured more largely with virtually every crew member was the battle with fear – a fear made no easier to bear by the acceptance that it was a natural concomitant of the dangers they faced. And theirs was the wearing sort that even concentration on technical tasks could not entirely hold at bay: fear of flak, of night-fighters, of collision, of technical malfunction, and always of the weather awaiting them back at base.

Among the measures they took to combat fear were superstition, such as peeing on the tailwheel before flight, pocketing a mascot, or wearing a certain scarf ... Some turned to religion, or to living to excess off duty. Of course, there was always the old fall-back, ‘It won’t happen to me.’ But to men with ‘a reasonable working knowledge of maths’, empty bed spaces told the tale.

One thing that helped sustain them was the complete trust held in those who got them into the air, except that in aviation the groundcrews are always the Cinderellas. Indeed, one might suspect that the human psyche must have it so, seeing that even when reporting air operations in 2012 attention continues to focus on the fliers, and almost invariably on the pilots, even though in many cases they once more do little else but drive the machine as the specialist crewmembers to the rear dictate!

But there were two other sustaining factors. The first was the youth of the flier concerned, for again, many finished not just one but two operational tours before their twentieth birthdays. Secondly, and of pre-eminent importance, there was the crew.

It might take aircrew up to two years to qualify, the final stage being the Operational Training Unit (OTU) where the various specialities came together to learn to operate the type of aircraft they were assigned to. Crews would typically form by being left to mingle, but no matter how haphazard the process and how disparate the individuals, the strains of war flying were to form bonds frequently referred to as ‘stronger than kin’.

This was at least partly due to the fact that the war itself had compelled the RAF to address its crewing policy. From the outset additional categories had emerged, each with a distinguishing brevet. The original pilot, observer, and air gunner were supplemented by the bomb aimer, wireless operator and flight engineer. In the process the observer became a navigator, although, like the gunner, he might take on dual roles, of bomb aimer, and even wireless operator. But the ideal tentatively advanced in the aforementioned Ludlow-Hewitt’s day, of the composite all-rounder who could turn to every job – and approached most closely in the single-seater fighter pilot – proved to be a non-starter, not least because of the training time involved.

The actual crew composition, of course, varied with the type of aircraft and the role. Other anomalies arose due to the sociohistorical two-tiered system referred to earlier. So that although a typical heavy bomber crew might comprise two officers and five non-commissioned officers, the pilot, often a sergeant, would be the captain. A kindred anomaly was the two-tier system of awards, with crosses for both commissioned officers and warrant officers but lower-precedence medals for NCOs; a distinction persisting until 1993. Even then, bearing in mind the five NCOs to two officers structure, under 7,000 Distinguished Flying Medals were awarded in contrast to over 20,000 Distinguished Flying Crosses.

It does appear, however, that such fripperies meant little to the crews. All could play the game of ‘Sir’ on the ground, and ‘Skipper’, or ‘Bert’ in the air. Indeed, during the course of the conflict many would be translated themselves and, having exchanged tunics and messes, would simply carry on as before. The truth was that most were only too glad to complete their tours in one piece.

What would rankle later, however, was that for so many of them there was to be no recognition that they had ever flown against the enemy. It was not that they resented sharing what campaign medals came their way with the so-deserving non-fliers, but that there was no national recognition of the fact that 62 per cent of operational aircrew had become casualties.

On the other hand, a retrospective medal for the Malayan Emergency was awarded to all Commonwealth participants by the Malaysian state fifty years after the event, while the Women’s Land Army was similarly recognized by Britain in 2008. So hope remains...

Back in the Second World War, though, what did help crews to bond was that they were all volunteers. This notwithstanding, having become operationally qualified they were required to complete a tour of, typically, thirty operational flights. Having done this they were then rested for up to six months before becoming liable for a second tour. As it happened, of the 125,000 aircrew that passed through Bomber Command only 7,000 actually embarked upon a second tour. And although there were men who volunteered for a third tour, these were very rare. Rarer still were those who completed that third tour. What was far more common, though, was for a crew to waive their rest period, preferring to take their chances on an immediate second tour with known and trusted comrades. With, that is, their own by-then all-important crew.

And what of these ‘not-exceptional’ men who formed these close-knit crews? Nobody who has not shared their experiences can fully assess their quality. It does happen, however, that some of the 20,000 hours and the forty years I spent in the RAF and civil aviation involved engaging in certain officially-designated operational campaigns. So this brought me into at least peripheral fellowship with such men. But that, as anyone must appreciate, is still worlds removed from being of their number.

And in 2012, inevitably, that number dwindles. Indeed, even their old-comrades club, The Aircrew Association, is in the process of being wound up. Even more reason then for this series, paying timely tribute as it does to those aircrews who so valiantly carved their own niche in the history of both the nation and the RAF.

Pat Cunningham, DFM, RAF 1951–73

1

Who, Sir, was Glenn Miller?

Pilot Officer Ron Brown, flight engineer

I was brought up in Creswell, in Derbyshire, and on leaving school struck lucky in becoming an apprentice typewriter mechanic, gaining at once both employment and a lifelong passion. War was looming, however, so I also joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve as a flight mechanic.

Once I was called forward, I did my initial training at Padgate, in Warrington, then moved to Cosford, Shropshire, for an intensive engine course. Having qualified, I was posted to No. 58 Maintenance Unit at Newark, Nottinghamshire, where part of the task was to recover crashed aircraft. Although this often proved ghoulish, it served me well in dispelling any Biggles-derived notion that flying was all glamour!

Ron Brown, 1944.

Early in 1940 I was posted overseas, the six-week journey from the Clyde taking our draft around Africa, up past Aden and through the Suez Canal to Alexandria. Then, after a brief respite at Kasfareet, in the Canal Zone, we were moved on to No. 71 Operational Training Unit at RAF Gordon’s Tree, in the Sudan, just seven miles from Khartoum.

We soon entered into the routine of working from 0500 hours until midday, finishing just before temperatures really soared. During that time we sweated to keep the desert from insinuating itself into the engines of the unit’s fifty Harvards and twenty Hurricane fighters. Even so there were frequent engine failures and consequently, many funerals. Just the same, we shared the smiles of the majority of pupil pilots who successfully gained their wings.

Off duty, sports kept me occupied. I missed golf, but there was cricket and football, and on opportunity, swimming and even sailing, for in representing the RAF at tennis I travelled widely throughout the theatre.

A visit to Jerusalem for the Combined Services Tennis Tournament.

An early Enigma machine, in much better condition than mine was.

Early on, my fight with the sand was interrupted by a summons to Headquarters at Cairo where a search of records had turned up my typewriter background. I was asked to see if I could mend a damaged keyboard machine recovered from the desert. It took a week of unbending bits to get it going again, but although it had a standard Qwerty keyboard a given key never activated the same letter twice running. Many years later, of course, I realized that it had been an Enigma machine. Undoubtedly, once I had got it going, the boffins would have set about unravelling its cipher function. As it was, I was viewed with smiles all round and rewarded with a stay in a first-class hotel!

Connie.

However, though work and sport enlivened my sojourn, I was increasingly missing Connie, who had years since sat beside me in school. When I read in SROs [Station Routine Orders], therefore, that mechanics could apply to remuster for the new aircrew category of flight engineer – which meant selection and training in the UK! – I put in an application. Which duly led to the SS Strathnaver making a swift run down the Mediterranean and safely depositing me in Blighty. I shall not say anything of my emotional reattachment to Connie, suffice to say that the disembarkation leave passed all too quickly.

Having been approved for aircrew at Lord’s Cricket Ground, I was then posted to St Athan, in Wales, for a three-month flight-engineer’s course. It proved to be demanding, but I was able to study in company with John Lamond, a friend who had joined up with me, served with me in the Sudan, and had now returned for much same the reasons, although his girl lived in Scotland.

Upon successfully completing the course John and I departed on leave with chests bearing ‘E’-brevets thrown out and striped sleeves prominent. Only to find the pleasure at our prowess admixed with sadness, every news broadcast featuring aircraft losses. In view of this, although Connie and I discussed marriage, I persuaded her that we should wait. John and his girl, on the other hand, set an early date, with me as best man!

John Lamont and me

We recommenced training at RAF Chedburgh, near Bury St Edmonds, at No. 1653 Heavy Conversion Unit. Here, new flight engineers joined a crew of six who had already been flying together on Wellingtons. My crew – the details given here reflecting some developments during our tour – were: Sergeant (later Pilot Officer) Harry Sheldon, pilot; Sergeant Donald Whittaker, DFC, navigator; Sergeant George Brown, bomb aimer; Sergeant Lawrence (Roger) Rogers, wireless operator/air gunner; me – Flight Sergeant Ron Brown, flight engineer; Sergeant Tom ‘Scouse’ Moore, mid-upper gunner; and Sergeant Brian Conncannon, rear gunner. By tour’s end, all of us senior NCOs had become warrant officers.

Harry, from Nottingham, was twenty and a Trevor Howard lookalike. Later, he would be commissioned, the only one of our crew to be so translated. Don had left his father’s Oldham law practice to become a navigator, and would use astro-navigation to get us back to base when all our normal nav aids were shot, for which – as a warrant officer – he was awarded a well-deserved Distinguished Flying Cross.

The operational recipient of Don’s skills was George, our bomb aimer, a former schoolteacher in Surrey; he was both self-contained and dependable but at twenty-four we regarded him as ancient. More youthful, and equally dependable, if nowhere near as self-contained, was our nineteen-year-old mid-upper gunner, Scouse, an over-the-top Liverpudlian, a fine gunner, and a vital member of the crew.

Our crew (left to right): Sergeant George Brown, bomb aimer; Flight Sergeant Ron Brown, flight engineer; Sergeant Brian Conncannon, rear gunner; Sergeant (later Pilot Officer) Harry Sheldon, pilot; Sergeant Lawrence (Roger) Rogers, wireless operator/air gunner; Sergeant Tom ‘Scouse’ Moore, mid-upper gunner; and Sergeant (later Warrant Officer) Donald Whittaker, DFC, navigator

As for wireless operator/air gunner Roger, though still only twenty he had managed an engineering company in Huddersfield. An often-dour Yorkshireman he was – not to upstage Harry – something of a matinee idol, having fine features and sandy hair.

The Short Stirling.

Our rear turret was manned by Brian, another nineteen-year-old, but from Birmingham and utterly irrepressible. I treasure to this day his plaintive suggestion over Cologne. ‘Hey, Skip, why not put the wheels down; we could taxi on this flak!’

This, then, was the crew I was to fly with; the finest ever.

Like the great majority of those destined for Bomber Command, we had hoped for a posting to Lancasters, so it required a certain stiffening of the sinews when we realized that we were to fly the Short Stirling, in comparison a great, underpowered brute of a thing with an operational ceiling of barely 12,000 feet and, therefore, an unfortunate propensity to fall foul of flak. As it was we simply ‘pressed on’, as the parlance of the day had it.

I was probably less disconcerted than the others, for never having flown as aircrew before, I was the odd man out whatever machine we were to fly. Which meant that I very swiftly had to become the ‘in man’, for not only was every system and operating control in the aircraft my especial pigeon but I was also to function as second – emergency – pilot. This meant learning to fly straight and level in the Link Trainer so that should Harry become a casualty I could get the crew back over Britain.

Some pilots found the Stirling a handful, but Harry coped from the start, which made my task, hovering at his shoulder, easier than it might have been. Initially, we flew circuits and landings, Harry doing the flying and me operating the services for him. After that we began the equally complicated business of flying the aircraft with one and more engines stopped: a likely enough eventuality once we started driving them through shards of Krupp’s steel!

The Link Trainer instrument flying and procedural trainer

The flying was intense, both by day, and increasingly, by night, but the off-duty hours we spent in various pubs around Bury St Edmonds not only provided relaxation but brought us even closer together.

Not that all the training flights went smoothly. In fact, one night an engine overheated so markedly that we had to shut it down. As it was, Don subsequently eased the aircraft onto the runway so gently as to draw a rear-turret suggestion that henceforth he did all his landings on three engines.

Then again, on another night sortie, our undercarriage failed to come down despite all the tricks we tried and all the advice from the ground. In the end we were instructed to fly to the emergency airfield at Woodbridge, on the Suffolk coast.

Ignoring the scores of aircraft – so many of them Flying Fortresses – that had been bulldozed off the runway, Harry made his approach. I was calling out the airspeed. And apart from that there was what, in a four-engined bomber, passed for silence. Then, just before touchdown, Harry advised tightly, ‘All right, chaps.’

It must have been difficult, adjusting from the giraffe-high normal landing attitude of the Stirling to the belly-flat touchdown now called for, but he managed it, and smoothly, for all that the screeching and rending seemed to go on for ever. But it did stop eventually. To allow the comment – from the back, where else? – ‘Better than he does it with wheels!’

Once we were back at Chedburgh the course, if anything, intensified. And suddenly we faced the final exercise, known as a ‘Bullseye’. This was designed to be as near an operation as possible and was to be flown in loose company with two other trainee crews.

As we left the briefing room John Lamond, whose aircraft was to depart ahead of ours, gave a wave. I waved back and, grinning widely, we clowned a formal farewell. For on landing we would both be members of an operations-ready aircrew. This meant that, although we had stayed together since enlisting – during the initial medical I had supplemented his urine sample after he ran dry! – this might well be the parting of the ways, John to one squadron, me to another.

The flight was an extended cross-country with Dover as the target, where the searchlights would cone us, allowing the pilots to practise the corkscrewing evasion manoeuvre.

All went well, and smack on ETA we approached Dover. Ahead of us we saw John Lamond’s aircraft, suddenly and garishly illuminated by the searchlights. Only for interest to turn to horror as a German night intruder flashed into sight. An enormous explosion drowned out our engine roar. And John, and the rest of his crew, were gone.

There was an immediate recall, the return flight seeing me sick, not just to my stomach, but to the very depths of my soul.

We were, though, the inheritors of a tradition, and there were no empty tables at breakfast that morning. But samurai stoicism did not help when composing the letter