Ops: Victory at All Costs: Operations over Hitler's Reich with the Crews of Bomber Command 1939-1945, Their War - Their Words

By Andrew R B Simpson

'Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.'J.G. Magee's celebrated poem of 1941 offers what could be taken as a somewhat over-romantic view of operational flying in the wartime RAF. From 1939 to 1945, of 125,000 men who volunteered for operations with Bomber Command, 55,573 were killed, the slaughter being at the almost unprecedented level of 41 per cent losses. The total British Empire and Commonwealth fatalities from 1939 to 1945 were 452,000. Thus, approximately 13 per cent of all British and Commonwealth deaths during the Second World War were among bomber crews.These very 'ordinary men' were asked to take on an almost suicidal task, with slim chance of survival, and they generally volunteered for the job; a phenomenon that continued until the cessation of hostilities. After the fighting was over no campaign medal was ever struck for the air and ground crews of Bomber Command. Most had to content themselves with the Defense Medal for fighting a six-year offensive which was highly significant in the destruction of the Third Reich.Air Marshal Arthur Harris, the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, never forgave the government for this. Such was his disgust at the lack of official recognition of the effort of his men, a task they 'faced up to' for all this period that, when he was awarded the CGB in 1946, it caused him great distress and embarrassment, and he refused to accept a peerage. Harris felt particularly strongly for his ground crews who had to work at all hours in often abominable conditions to keep his vitally needed aircraft flying.Many books have been written about Bomber Command's war, from the highest levels of command to the experiences of the lowest WAAF, but only a few have been able to reveal the human side of the bomber crews' experience. Based upon many personal interviews, correspondence and archival sources, Andrew Simpson has compiled a compelling, informative and absorbing documentary record of what the men of Bomber Command went through - from initial training and crew formation, to descriptions of life on squadron and on their extremely dangerous and draining operations, to the numbing effect of morale breakdown. This intensely researched book, the result of years of work, contains many personal accounts from air crew - from those that survived and those that did not. Many heroic, tragic and often humorous incidents are described. The author also examines the technology of bombing and how this form of aerial warfare evolved in terms of aircraft design, navigation, bombing methods, tactics and gunnery as used in, and as deployed by, the Hampden, Whitley and Wellington medium bombers, and the Stirling, Halifax and Lancaster 'heavies' which equipped Bomber Command's squadrons.A view of, and from, the German side is also included, whilst a section of the book is devoted to recording dramatic personal accounts of being shot down. A further section records the sometimes harrowing experiences of evasion, both on land and by sea, and various accounts are given of the techniques practiced at the Luftwaffe Interrogation Center - the infamous Dulag Luft. Finally, the story of the prison camp experience is also recounted, examining in particular Stalag Luft III and the escapes that were made from it, including the notorious 'Great Escape' of March 1944.Running like a thread through the work is the story of the author's father, who served as a Lancaster pilot on an Australian bomber squadron during 1943 and 1944. His very personal account forms the backbone of this comprehensively researched and often very moving book.For anyone with a desire to learn more about Britain's aircrews at war or for those seeking to understand more about the operations of Bomber Command, this book offers a unique and extraordinary insight into a momentous period of history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tattered Flag
• Release date: Jul 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9780955597794

Book preview

Part One

FIRST STEPS

‘There were all sorts, mostly from nineteen years old to their early twenties, a few in their late twenties or sometimes even over thirty. They came from all walks of life, the serious minded, the flippant, the brash or raucous. At times they appeared undisciplined by some standards, but on duty in the air all were members of a team and as one in their application and dedication to the job which had to be done.’

GROUP CAPTAIN TOM SAWYER, 4 GROUP STATION CO, from Only Owls and Bloody Fools Fly at Night, 1982

CHAPTER ONE

‘… OTHERWISE I MAY END UP IN THE ARMY’

First Steps

THE 1930s have been described as ‘The Devil's Decade’: a time of mass unemployment and privation, the origins of which had been the General Strike of 1926 and the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The financial world fell into a trough of depression and in Germany reparations payments bankrupted the country and inflation was rife. In Britain the economy was in a dangerous state with the foreign markets hedged in by protective barriers, exports shrinking, and businesses collapsing. All of this led to more unemployment, people having to find work below their capabilities. In 1931 unemployment benefit cost the government £ 120 million. Hunger marches were staged as late as 1938, and five days before Christmas 200 unemployed men laid down in front of traffic lights in Oxford Street and stayed there for 24 hours.

Amidst all this misery one bright light seemed to shine through the omnipresent gloom – the rise of the aeroplane. Prospects of appreciating this new wonder were limited however. Opportunities to fly, or to learn to fly, were generally only the province of the rich and famous. Les Hill, a flight engineer, pointed out that ‘before the Second World War very few people had flown in an aircraft; commercial flights were only affordable by the rich, mainly on short hops from London to Paris.’¹ Gradually however, this restriction began to be corrected. One pioneer, who inherited the mantle from the barnstormers of the 1920s, and was the origin of many a young man's fantasies, did offer affordable flights. This was Alan Cobham.² Ten year-old John Goodrum, who would spend his entire working life in aviation, received the free gift of a flight in Cobham's ‘Youth of Britain’, an Armstrong Whitworth biplane with a 500 hp Armstrong Siddeley engine. The flight was paid for by a dignitary to stimulate underprivileged children's interest. Bob Burns was brought up in Sheffield and also experienced Cobham's opportunity. In 1935 Cobham's ‘Flying Circus’ arrived at Coal Aston landing field, four miles from Sheffield city centre and 15 year-old Burns won a competition for a 20-minute flight in a Handley Page H.P.35. Gerald Lane was 12 when his father took him to Lympne airfield to see the ‘Flying Circus’ in 1928. He paid five shillings for a flight and Gerald was so impressed by it that he maintained his interest with copies of Flight magazine, eight years later joining the RAF on a Short Service Commission.³

Henry Wagner was 11 years-old in 1934. He recalled having his first flight with Cobham when scraping the finances together to fund such flights was difficult. ‘Paying for the flight was just not on’, he recalled. ‘Sir Alan Cobham's Air Circus was due to come to Henley that year and, by way of publicity, coupons were printed in the Henley Standard. The first ten to be drawn out were to be awarded a free flight. I went round all the houses in the neighbourhood asking if I could have their coupons, and sent in a whole batch of them. One of them brought home the bacon.’

These flights with early pioneers like Cobham whetted the appetite of many young men. There had been an expansion in higher education in the 1920s: increased government expenditure meant that university places rose by more than 100 per cent by 1939,⁴ and it was educated individuals such as Wagner who became the lynchpin of the new RAF. Then came war. Wagner went to Reading University in 1940 to study for a French degree and enrolled in the University Air Squadron. ‘In August 1942 my call-up papers arrived and I reported to the Aircrew Reception Centre at St. John's Wood, London. After a medical with other students of the squadron… we went to a Holding Unit in Brighton.’

Already regular RAF when war broke out, John Leakey had been brought up to go into finance, but found the routines of ordinary office work difficult to hold down. ‘I had two or three jobs in a rather short time and was far from happy’, he recalled. ‘I had always enjoyed being with a crowd and found it hard to stick to the rules and regulations of an office. As I was working in central London I found it easy to get to the air force recruitment office in Kingsway from where my life took a change.’⁵

Robert Vollum was born into a working class family near Sheffield and educated at a council school before going to Nether Edge Grammar School. He was bright and started work in a local accountants/estate agent's office in 1937, aged 16. Early in 1940 he volunteered for the RAF and passed all the medical examinations and interviews with flying colours. But although he swore an oath of allegiance to the King, disappointingly he was put on ‘deferred service’. He recalled: ‘I was finally called up to begin my training on my 19th birthday and posted to Blackpool.’

This holding over of recruits continued for some time. In 1942 Peter Banyard had not quite finished school. He added 12 months to his age and volunteered for flying duties with the RAF at Ipswich. But, despite passing all the tests and medical, he was deferred for 12 months – poetic justice some would say.

Russell Margerison was born in 1925 and brought up in a ‘two up, two down' workers’ house in the backstreets of Blackburn, Lancashire. The last surviving of seven children, he was employed as an apprentice compositor before joining the air force.

Ray Thomas's father was a Fleet Street journalist prone to alcoholism, which was an occupational hazard. Ray's mother divorced him, returning to Cardiff to live with her mother. It was in the middle of the Depression and times were hard: she was only 33 with three young boys to look after. Although passing his Eleven Plus exam, Ray was obliged to leave school at 14 to help with family finances. He received ‘…the princely sum of 8/4d a week minus stoppages.’ His mother made many personal sacrifices: she ‘…had to have recompense from the Social Services of the day’, Ray recalled. ‘The indignity of this must have been hard for her to bear.’ Social Services had supplied his school uniform and text books. After being called up Ray went to train in Canada.

Dick Raymond was brought up in North Devon. His father ran a small family bakery business founded by his grandfather. This had two delivery men: one drove a motor van, the other a horse and cart. Because they were in the Territorial Army both men were soon called up and Dick was taken out of school and put on the delivery round with the horse. ‘It was not an enviable job in winter’, he recalled. ‘My friends were slowly joining various services, so at the age of seventeen I volunteered for the RAF and was sent to the receiving centre in Exeter. I had been hoping to get an aircrew medical grade, but was told I was unfit for service, but could return in a few weeks time.’ The result was that he was assigned as medical grade 3, (unfit for flying duties), but could enrol as an aircraft hand, under training as a flight mechanic. ‘I thought maybe I should accept this,’ he recalled, ‘otherwise I may end up in the army.’

Ron Brown was born in 1921 before his parents' marriage and brought up in the coalfields of Derbyshire. His father was a miner who worked in ‘horrendous conditions’ and his grandparents were Bible-thumping Christians, which made things difficult. His grandfather could not face the stigma of a bastard grandson in the home and evicted Ron's mother, saying ‘Never darken my doors again’, which left Ron sceptical of religious hypocrisy. He joined the RAF in 1939.

Just before the Dunkirk disaster in 1940, Geoffrey Willatt was working for a firm of surveyors in Bloomsbury, driving back and forth daily to digs in Dover. The Germans were shelling the port: ‘You could see the flash from the guns 20 miles away in France’, he reminisced. Every day a flag on Dover Castle would indicate if shelling was imminent. His landlady refused to have her bath before her daughter checked the flag. ‘White or yellow was safe for a bath, but red meant shelling and no bath!’ he recalled. After the Dunkirk evacuation the whole country felt exposed. In his London office Willatt became swept up in a feeling of near panic: ‘I went round to a Recruiting Office off Euston Road,’ he said, ‘and signed up for the RAF.’⁶

Lew Parsons worked in a Chelmsford factory in a reserved occupation when war was declared. His mother and stepfather had moved from Clacton-on-Sea to Coventry to find war work, but were bombed out during the German ‘Moonlight Sonata’ air raid on the city. Lew, consequently, felt the RAF was the logical service for him to join and was accepted in August 1941.

Arthur Cole was born in 1923 and brought up in Broadstone, a small town near Poole, Dorset. He attended the local grammar school. His mother had an unduly high opinion of him and pushed him on. Thus he was 18 months younger than the average age in his class and, when all his friends left to join up after war broke out, he was too young. At 16 he tried to get into the air force but was rejected and not accepted until a year later.

Steve Jackson was brought up in Gloucestershire and served an apprenticeship in Dursley at Maudsleys Ltd, which made dynamos and undertook secret radar work. The production of materials for war was important and hours were long. ‘We had to work 12-hour shifts for six days or nights a week and no excuse would allow you time off’, he recalled. Initially, the war had little effect upon him, but ‘…over a period, things became more difficult to obtain and eventually rationing of food and clothing came into effect. We began to know that we were at war.’ He was in a reserved occupation, could not be conscripted, but equally could not volunteer. The only exceptions were for aircrew and submarine work. ‘I wanted to join up,’ he recalled, ‘and certainly did not want to go on submarines, so I volunteered for aircrew.’

John Nunn, born in 1923, was brought up in the depths of the Suffolk countryside. He left school aged 14 in 1937 and worked for the local village builder to learn carpentry. His foreman had served with the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in the First World War and had trained as a rigger on the wood and canvas biplanes which equipped the RFC's squadrons. Whilst working, he told John stories of the RFC aircraft on which he had worked. In the late 1930s the RAF was expanding through a scheme for apprentices inaugurated by Lord Trenchard, who had commanded the Independent Air Force in 1918; there were advertisements in the papers every day for staff. But when he looked at the standards required, John realised that his youth and poor village schooling were not good enough to qualify. He could only dream of flight.

Don Wilson was better equipped. A pre-war student at Edinburgh Veterinary College, and a member of the Senior Division Officer Training Corps, he trained for ‘mounted cavalry’ with the Dragoon Guards but within a year the War Department had dismounted the regiment and sold its horses. So he transferred to the 10th Hussars, Royal Armoured Corps at Aldershot for tank training. But, as he was not too happy with tanks, he joined the RAF.

Peter Gibby, a ground crewman, recalled that the circumstances of his taking up a trade were unusual, not reflecting his initial leanings: ‘I hoped to follow my brother, who was three years older, and become a wireless operator/air gunner: he did a tour on Whitleys and then went on to Training Command.’ Their parents thought that he was safe but, one night, awaiting take-off, another Wellington landed on them and most of the crew, including Peter's brother, was killed. His parents wanted Peter to stay on the ground, so he became an electrician.⁷

John Geddes was a Metropolitan Policeman serving in London's Dockland during the Blitz in 1940. In 1941 the Police were permitted to volunteer for aircrew duties, so John applied to be an RAF navigator.

Although brought up in Plymouth, Fred Danckwardt was of Danish/German origin. In 1941 he was evacuated with his school, Devonport Boys High School, to Penzance. His grandfather was born in Holstein,⁸ then a Danish state, but left at 18 and went to England. ‘My grandfather spoke German’, Fred recalled. ‘He didn't speak Danish, but his travel documents said Dane – so they didn't know whether he was Danish or German; but he spoke German.’ During the First World War he was interned: ‘The Saxe-Coburg-Gothas became Windsor; the Battenbergs became the Mountbattens, but my granddad didn't anglicise his name so they put him on the Isle of Wight.’ Fred was in the Penzance Home Guard at school: ‘I never saw a gun; but we had an offensive weapon – a metal pipe with a bayonet stuck in the end.’ As soon as he was eighteen, while still at school, Fred volunteered for the RAF.

Laurie Simpson – my father – was born in 1918 and brought up in Deniliquin, New South Wales at the centre of Saltbush Country: 26,000 square miles of extremely dry plains in the south-west of the Riverina, an area bounded by the Murray, Darling and Murrumbidgee Rivers. Laurie's father, Joe, was a builder and carpenter, owning a small brickworks in the town, where Laurie worked as a youth. His upbringing was Roman Catholic. He was an altar boy and learned to throw the boomerang with Aboriginal boys when visiting the local Catholic mission. It was a beautiful but unforgiving land and, years before, with no hospital in the ramshackle town, exhausted men met their deaths on the arid plains or, if they had money, put up in a local hotel to die. If they were destitute they were thrown in the jail and died there. The killer of outlaw Ben Hall was made Police Inspector of Deniliquin in the 1890s, and Ned Kelly himself was reputed to have once visited. Laurie's teenage friend Gertrude MacDonald remembered Laurie as ‘one out of a box’; ‘a lovely fellow’, tall, dark-haired and handsome, with a quiet, understanding nature.⁹ The Simpsons were not from convict stock, but originated in the pioneer folk of Australia, whilst Laurie's mother was from the Dennis family from the ‘Lorna Doone country’ of Exmoor. In the autumn of 1938 Laurie joined the local militia, the 39th City of Bendigo Regiment. After a month's training he was promoted to Sergeant, but soon became bored with the inactivity. So, in January 1939, he joined the air force at the battalion HQ.

American Robert Raymond, who joined the RAF before Pearl Harbor, was brought up in Kansas City, and served as a volunteer ambulance man during the Battle of France. He was from a strict, religious background – his grandfather had been a Methodist preacher in Eastern Kansas in the days when wagon trains crossed the prairies. Men had to work ten hours a day, six days a week, just to eat in those days. It was this background of competitiveness, and a desire to excel, that led Raymond, a boyish-looking, short, 28 year-old with a slight stammer, to succeed as a bomber pilot.

An Australian from even more obscure origins than Laurie Simpson was Queenslander, Jan Goulevitch. ‘John’ Goulevitch, as he preferred to be called, was born in February 1919 close to the border of Siberia and Manchuria. His family had emigrated from central Russia to take up new land. They lived in Shanghai for a number of years, but on 1 April 1925 Jan arrived in Townsville, Queensland in the ship the SS Tango Maru after travelling from Yokohama in Japan. The holds were full of refugees and migrants. His father and mother had arrived six months earlier: when they disembarked, they saw so many sunburnt dockworkers on the quayside that they concluded Australia to be full of Negroes. They falsely gave their identity as Polish and the whole family subsequently moved to Ayr in Queensland, where they remained for many years. Jan became a carpenter and cabinetmaker there. In 1943 he enlisted in the RAAF.

These were but a few of the 125,000 or so men who served as aircrew with Bomber Command from 1939 to 1945. They had travelled to England for one purpose: to fight.

Forging the Weapon

Largely due to his work with the Independent Air Force, the most significantly influential figure in British bombing strategy development before World War Two was General Sir Hugh Trenchard. The Independent Air Force, founded in France in June 1918 under Trenchard's command, was part of the new RAF, and equipped with Handley Page's 0/400 and enormous V/1500 ‘Bloody Paralyser’ biplane bombers. Trenchard, actually sceptical of any use of an independent bomber force, was ordered to attack Germany's ‘densely populated industrial centres’, the aim being to destroy their morale;¹⁰ however, only a limited number of tactical attacks and even fewer strategic industrial attacks were carried out before the Armistice was signed.¹¹

Trenchard considered the morale impact of bombing 20 times greater than the material impact. A phrase originally coined by P.M. Stanley Baldwin and used by proponents of bombing strategy for years afterwards, largely out of context, was the popular ‘the bomber will always get through.’ Baldwin was actually trying to raise public awareness of the dangers of bombing: there ‘…was no power on earth,’ he said, that could prevent ‘the man on the street’ from ‘being bombed’, qualifying this with the even more controversial ‘The only defence is offence’, i.e. one has ‘…to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy’ in order to win.

On 21 May 1935 the Cabinet held a special meeting which approved plans to accelerate the expansion of the air force. A broad timetable was set for any future building work and, the same day, contractors received instructions to proceed with the construction of new RAF stations in Lincolnshire and Shropshire. These were but a drop in the ocean of future airfield development, but there was a real fear that the German Air Force would carry out strategic attacks against British targets. However, the Luftwaffe had been developed primarily as a tactical force to support the Wehrmacht, and its equipment reflected this, although the Cabinet was unaware of this fact. British thinking concerning bombing developed completely independently from that in France and Germany, partly reflecting the fact that British cities had been the object of bombing by the first ‘heavy’ bombers – the German Zeppelins and Gothas of the First World War. Ever since the formation of the Independent Air Force, the British ‘powers that be’ had been committed to the principle of strategic bombing by a unit independent of other forces.

The formation of Bomber Command in 1936 was part of the general drive to expand the RAF, although this was late in the day considering how advanced Germany's militarization had become. But even though it had a defined purpose of long-range attack, the RAF did not have the tools to fulfil this mission. Much of its equipment, including bomb sights, had been inherited from the First World War. Biplanes such as the Heyford, a ‘heavy’ bomber in the parlance of the period, were still considered front line aircraft. Only with the introduction of modern monoplane bombers, such as the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley and the Handley Page Hampden, could the RAF be considered in any way capable of strategic attack, and such aircraft rapidly became obsolete. So there was a futuristic concept with antiquated equipage.

At the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939, there was a certain naive feeling amongst some senior British staff officers that the war would continue where it had left off in 1918, making no allowance for developments in the interim period. A succession of well-meaning civil servants in the 1930s had contrived to resist moves to rearm, ignoring Churchill's cries from the ‘wilderness’, and discouraged any financial expenditure on the RAF. Their somewhat misguided thinking was that a weak Britain was less likely to be attacked than a strong one.

Senior RAF staff had no idea what course the conflict would take. Throughout the 1930s there had been a series of switches in strategic thinking, from offensive to defensive conduct. A theory developed, which was later adopted by Hitler during the area bombing of Germany, that the only acceptable way to counter a bomber offensive was to have a bomber force equal to or greater than the enemy's. There was also the consideration of range. If the Germans invaded France or Belgium, they would have only 22 miles to travel across the Channel to reach British targets. British aircraft attacking Germany, however, would have much further to travel and German defences consequently would have more forewarning than the British, giving them time for preparation. As important as this, German centres of population and industry were far more widely dispersed than in Britain, especially in the east of Germany where they were beyond the range of British attacks.

When Bomber Command was formed in 1936 simultaneously with Fighter, Coastal and Training Commands, it was not proposed as a night force and preparatory training was poor. It was difficult to replicate in 1938 what would have been the impenetrable blackness of a wartime blackout. Ideally this could only be achieved over the sea, but night-flying practice at that time was generally undertaken near well-lit home airfields. The comparative ratio of daylight to night-flying hours practised in 1938 for most crews was 10:1.

There was also a sparseness of thinking in the Air Ministry on the protection of the bombers. Losses were so high amongst the Hampdens, Whitleys and Wellingtons early in the war that by April 1940 the decision was made to switch them to night raids. After the first few night ops, crews realised that the problems of distance, darkness and bad weather were very real. In aircraft like the Wellington, the second pilot was the navigator. However, when single pilot aircraft were introduced, such as the Hampden, all the thinking behind navigational techniques had to be reconsidered, and it became gradually accepted that long-range navigation at night was highly specialised work, in days when navigation equipment was extremely basic and often inaccurate.

In 1937 Chamberlain's government, despite apparently adopting a stance of appeasement, realised that Hitler represented a substantial threat, and that some form of detailed plan for aerial action would be required if a war broke out. This led to the Western Air Plans. These were drawn up by the Air Staff in 1937 in response to a government request: a list of 13 objectives, divided into four groups, was prepared for all RAF Commands. The most important of these were Group I, Plans 1 to 5, three of which applied to Bomber Command. In a condensed form these were: WA 1 for an attack on the Luftwaffe's striking force; WA 4 for an attack on Wehrmacht areas of concentration, and for breaking any communications supporting an attack into Belgium, Holland and France; and, most importantly, WA 5 for attacking industrial concentrations in the Ruhr, Rhineland and Saar. Only WA 5 was viewed by Bomber Command as ‘useful and realistic’. Its aim was to neutralise the whole of the Ruhr's armament industry by attacking Germany's main sources of power, its power and coking plants, with 3,000 operations in 14 days. Predicted losses for these were 176: optimistic in the light of later developments.

However, although the Bomber Command's new C-in-C, Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt,¹² was enthusiastic about WA 5, before it could be implemented a list of priority targets had to be drawn up. This was done at the beginning of 1938 by a sub-committee of the 1934 Air Intelligence Centre, which led to the problem of deciding what the key elements were for the functioning of a large-scale industrial system. From this arose two separate factions: one for attacking rail and canal networks, and the other for attacking the electric power supply.¹³ However it was soon realised that a huge number of individual attacks would be necessary before any of these strategies could be effective.

The Chiefs of Staff, unimpressed with the sub-committee's conclusions, finally decided against any preparations for implementing WA 5 and, in April 1938, the British and French commanders officially decided against any intentional bombing of civilians. However the initial objection to WA 5 ceased automatically when Germany invaded France and the Low Countries in May 1940.

•   •   •  

At the beginning of the 1930s England was still suffering from the effects of a worldwide depression. Many thousands were out of work and, as in Germany, the gearing up for war meant employment. New developments in technology meant new skills had to be learned. The majority of men who enlisted in the new Bomber Command, particularly in the ranks, generally came from very humble and deprived backgrounds. There was no conscription for aircrew and throughout the war aircrew service was entirely voluntary: for the ordinary man aircrew was a much more attractive and exclusive option than the infantry or submarines. In the army one never knew where one was going to be, but it certainly was not so in the air, and death at sea was a far more chilling prospect than death in the air. The motivation for joining could vary considerably and many were deeply influenced by events in the society around them.

The Dunkirk evacuation, the bombing of Coventry and the London Blitz affected many, particularly those who had lost friends, homes and relations, or knew people who had. Many joined simply because they were following in colleagues' footsteps. Some had already served in a uniformed service, whilst others had been RAF regulars before the war. Some came straight from university and were influenced by the pioneers such as Sir Alan Cobham. Some like John Nunn, with very little formal education, were still able to eventually obtain high rank. Others were advised to avoid aircrew duty altogether because of the dangers involved. Bush pilots, cowboys, and men from even more obscure backgrounds came to the bomber war by some unbelievably indirect and varied paths.

With the Nazi warhorse rearing its head, these young men were offered an unprecedented opportunity to fly in extremely high-tech aircraft. Developments in aviation and military strategy were eons away from the primitive thinking of 1918, despite some staff officers' outdated thinking. The new monoplane stressed-skin bombers could deliver a relatively large payload at heights and speeds unequalled by existing designs.

These were the beginnings of a relatively inflexible organisation that evolved into a collossal professional force dedicated to wholesale destruction, although no one saw it thus at that time, or realised what it would lead to. The aircraft were there; the men were there; but they had to be trained.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THAT'S THE LAST TIME YOU WILL EVER BE AT THE CONTROLS!’

Training

IN September 1939 the Royal Air Force was inadequately equipped to counter the threat of a modern, battle-tried air force such as the Luftwaffe, already blooded in the skies over Spain. Immediately after war was declared a massive air-training programme was set up involving all the air forces of the Commonwealth. The Empire Air Training Scheme has since been described as ‘…the single largest aviation training programme in history’. It was responsible for training nearly half the pilots, navigators, bomb-aimers, gunners, wireless operators and flight engineers of the Commonwealth air forces in the Second World War. Under an initial agreement of December 1939 it was planned that 50,000 aircrew would be trained each year for as long as was required: 22,000 were to come from Britain, 13,000 from Canada, 11,000 from Australia, and 3,300 from New Zealand. Elementary training was to take place in the various Commonwealth countries and advanced training in Canada. Canada was the optimum location for the ‘The Plan’ because of its ample fuel supplies, open spaces, industrial facilities for the supply of trainers, parts and supplies, lack of threat from Axis forces, and distance from the war theatres. At its peak ‘The Plan’ incorporated 231 training sites, 10,000 aircraft and 100,000 administrative personnel. Of 167,000 students, 50,000 were pilots.

Ronnie Cartwright, who became a wireless operator with 49 Squadron, recalled:

‘The first few weeks in the Royal Air Force were tough with foot drill, arms drill, strict discipline and general fitness exercises. I wasn't physically fit when I started, but I was when I finished. Getting up at 6 am, polishing, cleaning, having breakfast and being on parade at 8 a.m. were foreign to us all. The instructors appeared to be ruthless and almost inhuman, using a rare form of English with a combination of uncommon, unusual, obscene and lewd words. First impressions were not encouraging, but I later learned that the instructors had to instil in us a sense of rigid discipline in a short period and that harsh treatment was the only way to break us from our mother's apron strings.’

RAF staff often played pranks on inexperienced trainees. One instructor at Binbrook in Lincolnshire, when tired with an AC2¹ acting up at lectures, sent the erk off to the stores to collect some ‘tappet clearances’ and a bucket of ‘propeller pitch’, to get him out of the way. The aircraftman never found them.²

Alan Castle, who later became a navigation leader with 101 Squadron, also suffered from pranksters as a trainee: ‘I suspect that I looked much younger than my actual age of 19, as I was only 9 stone, but 6 ft tall. One day I was called to the CO's office and given a requisition form for an ‘oxometer’ and told to collect this from the stores. When I presented the requisition I was told that the ‘oxometer’ was out on loan to the MO. I went there and was told that it had been taken by the Adjutant. The Adjutant's office told me that it had gone to another department. This went on all afternoon until eventually I returned to the CO's office and told him I had been unable to find the ‘oxometer’. He just told me to take no further action. It was not until over a year later that I learned that an oxometer was a machine for measuring bulls' testes!’³

John Nunn ended up at the Number 9 Reception Centre at Blackpool, after Warrington and Padgate, and was subsequently declared an Aircraft Hand, General Duties, Second Class. He was then posted to the No. 3 School of Technical Training, at Squires Gate, near Blackpool, where there was also a Vickers Aircraft factory producing Wellington bombers. He left a particularly fascinating and detailed account of his early training as a Flight Mechanic (Engines), which illustrates the lengths to which, even in those days, the RAF was willing to go in order to attain the precision necessary for its technical work. Nunn had received only very limited schooling at his village school as a young man. On his course the majority of trainees had been to grammar or secondary schools and had a much higher standard of education than the four or five of the ‘entries’ who had left school at 14 or 15. ‘This had a marked effect’, he said. ‘It was very noticeable that they seemed to absorb everything easily whereas we had to work very hard to achieve the same results.’

Keith Slade was also assigned to Squires Gate and had previously been to Yardley Grammar School where ‘people simply didn't steal’. On the first day of his three months at No.3 S.T.T. he had his fountain pen stolen. ‘Most of the chaps had a very poor education and, whilst they could express themselves volubly with some highly unusual language… I doubt if many of them could have ventured further than the cat sat on the mat.’ He passed his mechanics' course with flying colours, achieving the highest mark ever given, and was awarded his ‘Props’ (a winged cloth badge with the image of a propeller indicating that the wearer was a qualified air mechanic).

Nunn found it more difficult. ‘I had a full week in the classrooms, taking Maths and English; they even tried to teach me some algebra but with little success.’ On 17 September 1942 he started basic training:

‘The first two weeks were designated to basic training and to assess if we were suitable. There was some classroom work, where we were told about different tools etc., files, hacksaw blades, metals and the colour codes, various types and uses of nuts and bolts. The practical work consisted of us taking a piece of mild steel plate and producing a test piece that was about three inches long, by an inch and a quarter wide and about a third of an inch thick. It had to be in two pieces and joined in the middle by a dovetail joint. The whole thing had to be produced to a tolerance of plus or minus two thousandths of an inch. To achieve this level of accuracy, we had to learn to use a micrometer and Vernier Gauge, scribers and a scribing block to mark the metal and a rubbing block to check that we had filed it level and flat.

‘We all passed this phase except for one chap. His uncle was in the RAF and he had been continually telling us what would happen and what we would have to do. At the end of the first week, he was told that he was not suitable and was taken off the course. He had to pack his kit immediately and was posted. After the second week, we were tested on what we had been taught, our test piece was checked for size and we were told that we had all passed.’⁴

Keith Slade also started from scratch with basic training: ‘We had two blocks of aluminium about 4 ins by 3 ins, more or less oval, with a scoop out of each. We had to scrape the surfaces, using engineer's blue [paste], to get them as flat as possible, before drilling and tapping six holes for studs and fastening them together. We then had to drill into the joint and screw in a Schrader Valve, to pressure test our work. One can imagine the leaks.’

But even Slade's work had bubbles: ‘It seemed to me that almost no one had any idea about how to use a file or engineer's blue’, he concluded. At grammar school he had had a proficient metalwork teacher, ‘… so I coped very well, not only with the basic training but also with my grasp of the detailed workings of both radial and in-line engines.’ Ignition and magnetos, carburettors, superchargers and boost controls were all grist to the mill and ‘the variable pitch propeller I found to be a most absorbing engineering contrivance.’ After a week's leave Slade was posted to RAF Waterbeach at Cambridge.

John Nunn recalled one character he subsequently met on his course at No. 9 ‘Arsy-tarsy’,⁵ Blackpool:

‘Life at Blackpool was not service life as you would imagine it. It was more like civilian life, going to the office each day from eight until five with the rest of the time your own. There were none of the fatigues, drills, parades or petty restrictions we would have had on a camp and when we finally did get posted to a camp, we certainly noticed the difference.

‘There was a chap called Humphries from the West Country. He was the only one amongst us who spoke and acted as if he had been to public school, and had a terrific sense of humour. He was very fond of chocolate and was always trying to scrounge from the others. One day, someone had the bright idea of buying a bar of Exlax (the laxative chocolate) and feeding it to him in the hope that he would get the trots and be cured of his addiction. The plan backfired though, because it had absolutely no effect on him. On his return from our forty-eight hour leave, he told us a lurid tale about how he had picked up a girl on the train to London and spent the weekend with her at the Strand Palace Hotel. Whether it was true or not, he was certainly a good raconteur and had us all in stitches as he recounted his experiences, many of which would not bear repeating. I will always remember how he stood in front of a fire notice and pretended to read it: "If you discover a fire, try to put it out. If this is impossible, pour some petrol on to keep it going while you fetch help".’⁶

Russell Margerison recalled his experiences of the Aircrew Selection Board procedure whilst at RAF Padgate in November 1942. After two days of peculiarly unusual aptitude tests, both physical and mental, that could only have originated with the RAF at that time, he was asked to appear before the selection board. In a large interview room he was confronted by a line of ageing RAF officers ‘with enough decorations on their chests to cover a snooker table’, he later commented. Always, at the end of an interview, a prospective airman was asked, in order to test his initiative, what Margerison termed ‘a silly question’. One candidate was confronted, typically, with: ‘What would you do if you were on sentry duty on the fringe of a wood and were attacked by a submarine?’ To which the young man responded: ‘I would throw my cap at it sir.’ He was successfully accepted for Aircrew training.

At the Officer Training Unit at Uxbridge in 1937, Derek Hodgkinson, a pilot with No. 1 Coastal Operational Training Unit flying Hudsons, met a character named ‘Dismal’ Devitt who was an acting pilot officer:

‘The opening address of the course was given by the station commander, an elderly, irate-looking group captain, on ‘The Behaviour Expected of an Officer and a Gentleman’. He banged on for about twenty minutes whilst we all sat bolt upright in our chairs trying to look interested in this extraordinary subject, when suddenly he stopped. The ensuing silence would have been shattering, had it not been for the rhythmic sound of snoring: the snoring of a heavy sleeper. The group captain, who had turned slightly white with shock, transfixed the back row of his audience with a terrible stare: we all turned round, and there was Dismal, comfortably stretched out in his chair with his head sunk on his chest, oblivious to the world. He jumped at least a foot when he was awakened by a strangled cry from the stage: "Adjutant, place that officer under close arrest, and have him before me at 0800 hours tomorrow!"’⁷

Devitt later became CO of the RAF's Advanced Training Squadron.

Eric Foinette (Foinette)

Eric Foinette, whose family were of Huguenot extraction and had holidayed in Germany before the war, became a navigator with 12 Squadron. He remembered one particular individual who was on his course at Prestwick:

‘At nine weeks Bispham, who had bluffed his way past the CO to remain on the course, was caught cribbing in a test to see if he had progressed. That finished him and he was suspended. He went on leave but did not report back, and so a warrant for his arrest was ordered. Two regular S.P.s were sent to collect him and bring him back to Prestwick. When found, he was wearing sergeant's stripes and wings and was chargeable on quite a few counts. But, upon reaching Prestwick, he slipped his guards and disappeared. He had made himself both objectionable and unpopular – no one knows how he got as far as he did because his educational standard was low for a budding observer.’⁸

Years later, when Foinette was in Stalag Luft III a pilot named Thompson arrived. Another Kriegie,⁹ who had been with Foinette at Prestwick, called him over to ask if he recognised Thompson. ‘I immediately identified him as Bill Bispham. He at first denied it all and we reported the matter, because he was the only survivor of his crew and we feared he may have been a plant.’ But eventually Thompson admitted the truth, and then said he had changed his name in Ireland and enlisted for pilot training. This time, Foinette assumed, he had made the grade. ‘How he got a commission, though, was beyond our comprehension because he was quite an unpleasant character.’ Although the SBO accepted the story, Bispham was taken away for court martial, allegedly for having struck a guard, and the Germans ultimately shot him. Foinette had no idea why. ‘He was given a jail sentence and was not heard of again. Maybe he was really a plant but removed by the Germans when we reported him’, Foinette concluded.¹⁰

Australia

Laurie Simpson started his flying training on 4 May 1941 at No. 3 Elementary Flying Training School, Essendon, Victoria. After nine-and-three-quarter hours' dual instruction he did a ten-minute solo on his 21st flight. He had developed a carbuncle on the back of his neck during training and found it very difficult to loop the aircraft, which was a standard DH. 82 Tiger Moth. Not only did pupils have to be familiar with the cockpit layout and controls, and be able to taxi, fly straight and level, climb, glide and stall and perform medium turns, but they also had to be able to take off into the wind, make both powered and gliding approaches and landings, spin, slide slip, fly low (with an instructor), make steep and climbing turns and force-land. ‘Easy stuff’ with an instructor, but the course became progressively more difficult, culminating in instrument flying, restarting the engine in flight and aerobatics, to name just a few elements.

After Laurie's final test on 24 June, having flown 25.03 hours dual and 25.5 hours as a pilot, the Chief Flying Instructor stated that he was an ‘average’ pupil. Points to be watched, however, were that he was ‘…generally inaccurate and careless of detail’. It was a mediocre beginning. By 19 August 1941, after six weeks at the Service Flying Training School at Amberley, Queensland, with 49½ hours under his belt on twin-engined Ansons, he was an ‘average’ pilot.

By the time Laurie had boarded a troopship for England, the SS Themistocles, (a requisitioned, coal-fired liner of World War One vintage), his flying was still ‘average’, as was his navigation. The trainee aircrew were going via the Cape of Good Hope and they envied those on a boat bound for the USA with the opportunities to see the sights over there. Earlier, on 11 November, Laurie had expressed his feelings on what awaited them:

‘Armistice Day

A doubtful day as to the weather and my feelings. The latter were very mixed as I left Spencer's Street station for God knows what. To say au revoir to my family, my sweetheart and my friends would be unbearable except for the companionship of my fellow aircrews. This promises to be a wonderful adventure and, if we come through on top, an invaluable experience. But then it is tough on the folks left behind.’

The trainees were given £5 Sterling for the trip and eventually boarded the Themistocles on 17 November 1941. The following day, after awaking with a ‘nasty cold’, Laurie began to perk up:

‘[It] was queer for me to be gazing at an endless vista of sea, sea and more sea. Had an escort of various sea birds whose tireless gyrations caused us endless enjoyment. Wish I could handle an aircraft the way they handle themselves. Saw my first sunset at sea and it made me think of my loved ones so near, yet so far. Still, let's get on with our job and finish it, then we'll come back for our just heritage.’

Wilson's Promontory – the southern extremity of Victoria – was eventually sighted and the ship soon steamed west into the Bass Straight. Despite being close to home, paravanes¹¹ were launched due to the threat of Japanese mines and the vessel was continuously pitching in a heavy swell. They ran into a storm on the 20th and Laurie was given charge of a team to supply shells to the aft naval gun. On the 24th they sighted land and berthed at Albany. When they went ashore they had a whale of a time, playing billiards, drinking spirits and meeting girls. Laurie was developing a close friendship with a fellow pilot he had met at Essendon named Graeme Keys: ‘Graeme and I seem to be stuck everywhere together viz postings, commissions, berths, boat stations etc. Really a remarkable coincidence’, he wrote. It was the same ‘remarkable coincidence’ that was to take them to the same Advanced Flying Unit, the same Operational Training Unit and the same Heavy Conversion Unit. In fact they would both be posted to the same bomber squadron and both serve as Flight Commanders simultaneously. They would start and finish their tours at the same time, and both be awarded the DFC together. The friendship, which seemed to be based on a subtle chemistry, would end only when one went missing and the other was killed on operations.

On 27 November they were halfway out of King George's Sound at 05.00 hrs. On the 29th they arrived at Fremantle and left on 5 December: ‘It is now 6.30 and Australia has just disappeared below the skyline’, Laurie wrote. ‘This time it is quite definitely gone for many, many months. Still I'm glad to be getting on with the job. I wonder what the people we leave behind think and feel at this moment.’¹²

Little did he know that it would be over three-and-a-half years before he would see his homeland again. Many of those with him, including Graeme Keys, would never see it again.

South Africa

A number of RAF aircrews trained abroad, away from the war zone. Postings to Canada were popular, but there were also training centres in exotic places such as the Bahamas. Henry Wagner did most of his early training in South Africa:

‘Tropical kit was issued to us so we knew we were headed for somewhere warm. We travelled by train to Liverpool and were marched from the station to the docks, to embark on a troopship – the 23,000-ton SS Strathmore. Ten days after setting out we sailed into Freetown, Sierra Leone. Three days later we put to sea again, to arrive in Durban, South Africa a fortnight later. South Africa was a new world to all of us, far removed from the wartime austerity of England. There were no blackouts, the shops were full of everything, and no ration books.’

Wagner spent three weeks at Roberts Heights, which he regarded as ‘time wasted’, waiting for a vacancy at the Navigational Training School. Eventually he was posted to No. 43 Air School, where he learnt the rudiments of navigation.

‘For the first three weeks of training nothing much happened. We did a lot of PT, played rugby, and regularly marched the drill square with and without rifles. It was during a rifle drill one day that the station warrant officer, Warrant Officer Barnett, came out to watch us. Observing the drill manoeuvre Put down arms, when the rifle had to be laid on the ground, he shouted, "You lot remind me of a lot of WAAFs getting down on a jerry! [chamber pot] What a common man, I thought, how does HE know what a WAAF would actually look like getting down on a jerry?"’

On 22 December 1941, the SS Themistocles steamed into Durban. ‘Awoke to find us steaming slowly into the roadstead outside Durban’, Laurie Simpson wrote. ‘Around us are some 20 odd ships all waiting their turn to dock. Ships of British, Norwegian, Belgian, Argentine and French nationalities are here.’ On 18 January 1942 the ship reached Freetown, but it was found that there had been a big mistake: ‘It seems that we should never have left Newcastle (Australia) with 160 fully trained aircrew aboard; should never have left Cape Town unescorted; should never have come to Freetown. Someone blundered, at our expense. Two submarines chased us three days out from here, the Navy got one. Half-a-dozen of us saw the depth charges that got it, but didn't realise it at the time. No doubt about this ship – she's dead lucky.’

Canada

Bob Kemley became a navigator with 427 Squadron. He joined the RAF in 1941 as a Trainee Observer and did his ground training before going to Canada. Under the Empire Air Training Scheme, his instruction was at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island:

‘In those days air navigation was a continuous task of establishing wind velocity which is, in essence, the movement over ground of a vast column of air in which your aircraft is flying and with which it is being taken. Air speeds were then relatively slow and a wind velocity of 30 knots would significantly alter the aircraft's direction and/or speed over the ground, and would have to be allowed for. There were several methods of calculating wind velocity, all involving the solution of a triangle of velocities, and this would vary according to the data available.’¹³

At Prince Edward Island all these methods were practised and, flying out of sight of land over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, coastal navigation was undertaken. But taking bearings and map reading was done over land. Astro-navigation could be done anywhere after dark.¹⁴

The RAF had a prerogative for changing its plans if it was thought necessary. Howard Pearce originally went to Hastings in Sussex for his initial training but, since that was too close to France, he was transferred to Torquay. He was then to be posted to Africa, but there was some confusion:

‘The funny part was they said, "You're going abroad for training, so here's your khaki and sun helmet – you're going to Africa. Then, at the very end, they said, Have it all back, you're going to Liverpool, and then by boat over to Canada. So that's what happened – they changed their mind. It's a little complicated as I was in the second batch of RAF characters sent to Canada. I wasn't a bomb-aimer then: bomb-aimers hadn't been introduced – the navigator did the bomb-aiming. I passed my navigation course, and shone at signals, so they said, We want signaller/gunners at present, not navigators. If you do a course on signals you'll get an automatic commission. I thought Well that's good enough for me." I loved Canada, the training was terrific, and the girls beautiful: it was a great place. So I stayed there [and trained as a signaller] at Montreal. I think I was over there for a year and a bit altogether, from 1940. Then I came back, went to Cranwell, then to Newmarket on a gunnery course, and then to squadron.’¹⁵

Ted Boorman, who became a navigator/bomb-aimer with 102 Squadron at Pocklington, also trained in Canada.

‘We were at Belle Vue first where it was freezing cold with only the uniform on. Then we trained to be observers at Ainsi-Lorette in Quebec. It was summer and was very nice there. They got me onto a navigator's course. It was a 24-week course, which meant every fortnight one course would finish, and so upon arrival, you went to the back of the queue. The first course in front got their half wings, and then every fortnight it would start again. Every fortnight you moved forward a stick. Later we did bombing training on the St. Lawrence in winter. We used to mark out circles on the ice when it was frozen. We dropped dummy bombs from an Anson, which were actually smoke bombs so they didn't make a hole in the ice.’

After the course had ended, Boorman took a fortnight's holiday in Buffalo. On return he was told he was being posted to Miami to go on Catalinas, but he first had to do a course for ‘Navigator Overseas’. He sat the course and passed the exam, but things did not turn out as he expected: he was due for another week's leave and was intending to return to Buffalo, but when he went to collect his tickets,

‘…the Sergeant said: "You're not going to Buffalo: you're going back to England. You're not going on Catalinas: you're going to Bomber Command." I thought Miami would have been lovely, so I lost out on that. I don't know why. They wanted more people in Bomber Command, I suppose. They wanted crews.’

Whilst Ray Thomas was in Canada training to be a navigator he heard that his mother was dying. She was 43. ‘My love for her was so deep,’ he recalled, ‘that when I knew she was very ill I spent several hours in the camp chapel at night, heartbroken and offering my life on ops if God would spare her.’ But his beloved mother died. ‘The effect on me,’ he said, ‘a very unworldly just 20 year-old, 4,500 miles from home, was absolutely devastating.’ He had no counselling from officers or padres, and his contemporaries did not know how to cope with his despair. ‘With no chance of compassionate leave,’ he said, ‘I was reprocessed and carried on somehow to graduation.’

Pilot training was a specialised, highly skilled discipline that normally took anything from 18 months to three years of intensive training: one had to learn to fly several different types of aircraft. The selection method was rigorous, and many people who failed found that they had to accept other skills as second best. There was a variety of different reasons for this, not always because of a lack of ability, but often due to bad luck and the intense pressure of ‘The Plan’ to produce the large numbers of qualified pilots required in a limited time. As the war progressed recruitment increased and the authorities began pushing them through as fast as possible.

Capable men often failed their pilot training. In some cases the cause of the problem was partly the aircraft: the Tiger Moth was a very light aircraft and trainee pilots found judging its correct height above ground when landing difficult, sometimes having to make several approaches. Some causes were medical. Other cases were attributable to a trainee being too slow and taking too long to perform set tasks. Others were occasionally due to airmen being sent to the wrong establishment. Despite this, trainees accepted the decision against them and went on to fight the war in a different capacity, sometimes outside the more elite ‘PNB’ scheme.¹⁶

Eric Foinette's instructor had been dissatisfied with his handling of the Tiger Moth; however one morning the man told Foinette to go solo. His trouble was the aircraft's lightness: it would bounce if dropped from a great height. Foinette found judging the height above ground when making a gliding approach without engine difficult. His first solo was probably his best: he made an almost perfect landing. Unfortunately, this did not continue. After 22 hours, the instructor took him up for a test: ‘Although I had finished top of the theoretical subjects,’ he remembered, ‘he decided to ground me. If the war had gone on for a long time, probably I'd have made a pilot, but time was essential.’ Foinette became a navigator with 12 Squadron.

Henry Wagner had similar problems: ‘After I had flown ten-and-a-half hours solo an incident occurred which put paid to my dream of becoming a pilot.’ His instructor ‘…got out of the aeroplane, took his control column and off I went. But as I came in over the wire to land I could see I was too high, so I increased speed and went round again.’ This happened three times. On the third attempt he had to get down at all costs: ‘On touching the ground and having no brakes I could do nothing to arrest [the Moth's] progress and finally stopped two yards from the boundary wire.’ He turned the aircraft around manually and then scrambled aboard and taxied back to where the instructor was waiting. ‘Right, Wagner, the man said, Fly me back to Kroonstad and make a good job of it because it's the last time you will ever be at the controls!’ Wagner retrained as a navigator and went to 51 Squadron.

Tom Lees was posted to South Africa to train as a pilot after joining the RAF in late 1939. He had already completed, in six months, the first year of a Cambridge engineering degree, part of an RAF scheme. However, in South Africa, he suffered the misfortune, whilst on exercises, of being shot accidentally in the eye by a fellow trainee, which ended his prospects of ever becoming a pilot. He spent the remainder of his life partially blind.¹⁷

Arthur Cole trained in Florida on Stearman biplanes, which he found interesting but it only lasted three-and-a-half weeks. ‘I had this bad sinusitis problem,’ he recalled, ‘and they treated me in the sick bay with heat packs and ice packs, and when that didn't work they sent me to a civilian specialist in Miami.’ That didn't suit the air force at all so he was posted up to Trenton in Canada by train, to ‘… a big air force place in Ontario. There I had an operation and was there for some weeks.’

Cole terminated flying training firstly since, although he was still on a pilot's course, he had lost confidence in his ‘ability to land’, and secondly since he was ‘frantic’ to get on operations, ‘largely because it was the thing to do in those days’, he said. Cole wanted to get on ops. ‘I volunteered for the relatively new trade of bomb-aimer and trained at a Bombing/Gunnery School at Picton, Ontario.’ Cole later became a bomb-aimer with 158 Squadron.

Ted Boorman started off pilot training but, because of an inflexible eight-hour rule, he missed qualifying by half-an-hour.

‘You had eight hours to go solo in the war – that's a day! I did all my basic flying, spinning, etc. in a day – you didn't get a second chance! My last instructor said: All you need is another half-hour to polish a couple of things up; I would send you solo, but I can't because you've had your eight hours.’

Ted's explanation was ‘…because of the war they were pushing people through, and couldn't mess about!’ He retrained as a navigator and went to 102 Squadron.

Graham Korner had been accepted for pilot training but things went wrong:

‘I don't know what happened. I tried to join up but when the war broke out I was too young. I got sent home and tried again later, and got accepted for