Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers (2 page)

Yet from that very first day of hostilities crews were climbing into their slab-sided, matt black Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys, while others struggled to board the less cumbersome, but unbelievably cramped Handley Page Hampdens – with fuselages only three feet across at the widest point!

Luckiest, from the standpoint of flying the best RAF bomber then available, were those crews who manned the remarkable Vickers Wellington. Basically it was a metal and wood basket covered in canvas. It was everything that a warplane should be – strong, reliable, able to absorb untold punishment and regarded with real affection by the men who flew in her. They nicknamed her the ‘Wimpey’. Designed by Barnes Wallis, the genius whose name is irrevocably linked with Bomber Command, the ‘Wimpey’ was the only aircraft among those early bombers to be still on active service at the end of the war.

This trio of twin-engine bombers, pitifully lacking in defensive armament, painfully slow, yet remarkably rugged, was the mainstay of Bomber Command’s offensive against Germany in the early years of the war. In the beginning they were crewed by men who had made flying their career in the peacetime RAF. The training they had received had ill-prepared them for the arduous duties that lay ahead – especially in the essential skills of navigation by night.

These professional airmen alone carried the war to the doorstep of the enemy. From among the few survivors of that era emerged the leaders of the many who were to follow – outstanding flyers including Guy Gibson of Dam Buster fame, Leonard Cheshire who won his Victoria Cross for numerous acts of supreme courage rather than for a single incident, and Don Bennett, leader of the Pathfinder Force, a superb pilot and brilliant navigator.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the American President, had appealed to all European nations to refrain from ‘unrestricted aerial warfare on civilian populations or unfortified towns’. Britain, in her immediate reply to the President, had promised that ‘indiscriminate attack on civilian populations as such will never form part of our policy’. Undoubtedly this was sincerely meant at the time, but in the light of what was to happen as the war progressed no statement could have presaged a more bitter irony.

Even so, as darkness fell on that first night of war, ten Whitleys, three from 51 Squadron and seven from 58 Squadron, took off from their grass runways and set course to the east. The Whitley was the only RAF bomber specially designed to fly at night. The crews had been trained accordingly, but under conditions of peace, when it was comparatively simple to navigate from one well-lit town to another while flying over home territory.

It is remarkable, in the light of later operational strategy, that these poor old kites, pushing their way through the night at all of 120 mph, visited between them Hamburg, Bremen and no less than nine other cities in the Ruhr during the course of that one mission. Of course, they did not drop a single bomb on the Germans – instead they rained down 5½ million leaflets!

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris, whose name is synonymous with Bomber Command, spoke for many in the
RAF – particularly those aircrew who had to risk their lives dropping these bits of paper:

In the earliest stages of the war we were not allowed to bomb anything on land, and our only possible targets were therefore warships, which we could attack only by day. Our losses from enemy fighters and flak were prohibitive and we therefore desisted before we had done ourselves or the enemy much harm. Meanwhile the Whitleys and Hampdens were put to the questionable employ of dropping pamphlets all over Europe, a game in which we never had the slightest faith. My personal view is that the only thing achieved was largely to supply the Continent’s requirements of toilet paper for the five long years of war.

As Sir Arthur said, our losses were prohibitive. After a series of hard lessons, Bomber Command had to admit that the theory of the successful ‘self-defending bomber’
operating by day
had been no more than a peacetime pipe-dream. Even the concentrated fire from Wellingtons flying in close formation had proved inadequate in warding off attacks from German single-engine fighters.

The climax was reached on 18 December, 1939, when twenty-two Wellingtons flew on an armed reconnaissance sortie over Wilhelmshaven. At 13,000 feet they could see and be seen for miles through a cloudless sky. The crews were obliged to break formation to a certain extent because of the intense flak. Unknown to them, for the first time a German ground controller was operating an experimental ‘Freya’ radar station.

This controller had detected the British bombers when they were still 70 miles from their target. As they turned for home, the waiting fighters tore into their ranks with vicious beam attacks. The Luftwaffe pilots had quickly learned that an approach from this quarter left the Wellington at its most vulnerable. After a running battle only ten of the twenty-two bombers remained. It was small consolation that gunners in the Wellingtons managed to shoot down two of the German fighters.

Five out of a force of twelve Wellingtons had been shot down in the same area only four days previously. So, out of thirty-four bombers dispatched on those two raids, exactly half had been lost. Eighty-five aircrew did not return to their squadrons.

As a result of these disastrous set-backs, and in view of further
tragic losses sustained during the short but hopeless Norwegian campaign the following April, a change of policy was forced on Bomber Command. It was vital to conserve the small number of bombers and the limited supply of crews then on squadron strength. It was difficult to gauge when the full Nazi onslaught in the West would begin, or exactly what form it would take.

If the Wehrmacht marched against France, every bomber the RAF possessed would be needed to harry the enemy’s lines of communication. Or, should the Luftwaffe engage in an all-out bombing offensive against Britain, then plans were ready to strike at German airfields and supply depots. Schemes to destroy industrial centres, oil refineries and storage facilities had also been worked out in detail.

Meanwhile, by the turn of the year Hampdens and Wellingtons were joining the night-flying Whitleys on ‘Bumphleteering’ raids, as the crews called them. At least the airmen were gaining experience in flying over enemy territory in the dark. Navigation was based on ‘dead reckoning’, radio ‘fixes’ when not too far from base, and, on moonlit nights, observation of ground features such as lakes, rivers and coastal landmarks. In addition it was sometimes possible to take ‘star shots’ with the sextant, a time-honoured aid to navigation at sea, but only of limited value in the air because of problems caused by the speed and motion of the aircraft.

On pitch black nights, in freezing temperatures, it was a case of ‘dead reckoning’, working out
in theory
just where you were by making use of forecast winds, and
nothing
else. As likely as not, even the radio would be out of action, its aerial a useless icicle. Yet even these crude facilities were usually sufficient to get a crew somewhere over Germany and back again to England on a ‘bumph chucking’ trip. Exactly where the leaflets fell was not critical. Later, when specific targets for bombing raids had to be located, it was another matter. Then, and only after a long period of self-delusion by Bomber Command, did the gross inaccuracies of nighttime navigation across Europe become shatteringly obvious.

It was no fault of the men who flew those early missions that aircraft so often failed to reach their targets. With the lack of direction-finding aids it was rather like, as one navigator put it, ‘sitting in a freezing cold stair cupboard with the door shut and
the Hoover running and trying to do calculus.’ Never in the history of war was a man called upon to carry out such complicated calculations in the midst of battle.

When I flew in bombers as a wireless operator I was able to observe at close quarters the unimaginable stress under which a navigator worked for long periods of time. He had to maintain an almost superhuman detachment, even when the enemy was doing his best to destroy the aircraft in which he was working, and when his pilot was twisting and turning and diving and climbing in a corkscrewing effort to escape that destruction.

In those earlier days of war, before the Germans had honed their night defence system into the deadly weapon that it later became, the most terrifying enemy the bomber crews had to face was appalling weather. 1940/41 produced the worst winter in living memory. The men flying the Wellingtons, Whitleys and Hampdens had to struggle through endless blankets of fog and fight fierce head-winds that reduced the forward speed of the already slow aircraft to almost nothing.

Ice was the worst menace. It formed in thick layers on the wings. It turned hydraulic systems to jelly; gun turrets, bomb doors, undercarriages all stopped working. It formed an opaque sheen over Perspex windows, making it impossible to see out. Ice played havoc with instruments and the radio.

Frostbite was not uncommon among those who flew in these pioneer bombers. Hands were encased first of all in a silk glove, over this a woollen glove, and finally a thick leather gauntlet. In order to carry out some essential duties, plotting a course on a chart for instance, writing up a signals log, or accurately tapping out a message on a morse key, this protective clothing had to be removed. If a bare hand inadvertently touched a metal part of the aircraft it would freeze to that object immediately.

I remember one of my first night cross-countries in a Wellington, while training at OTU. We had each been provided with a pack of sandwiches wrapped in grease-proof paper with an outer cover of newspaper. In addition we were given a small tin of concentrated orange juice. It must have been around 3 am when I felt the need for refreshment. I reached for the fire axe and aimed a blow at the top of the tin, making a suitable hole through which to pour the
liquid. It was a waste of time. The orange juice had frozen into a solid block. Unwrapping the sandwiches I discovered they were encased in a frosty covering of crystals and were as hard as stone. When I hit them with the axe, sharp splinters of bread flew all over the cabin. We were flying in an airborne refrigerator.

Although this book concentrates on the aircrew who flew in the heavy bombers of Bomber Command and the American 8th Air Force, it would be churlish not to say a word about a couple of machines flown by men of the RAF in the initial stages of the war. One of these was the Bristol Blenheim.

The Blenheim was generally unable to join its bigger brothers under the protective cover of darkness. Its range was limited and, when the strategic bombing policy began in earnest, its bomb-carrying capacity was too restricted. It carried only 1000 lbs of bombs, compared with up to 7000 lbs lifted by a Whitley. Yet in spite of these shortcomings, the twin-engine Blenheim was a compact, business-like
medium
bomber, which, a few years earlier, had been acclaimed a world beater. It was Britain’s first modern, all-metal stressed-skin military aircraft. It was faster than any other RAF bomber of those days, which was just as well, because its defensive armament was disgracefully inadequate.

So the men who flew in Blenheims, pilot, observer and wireless operator/air gunner, had to go on facing the perils of daylight operations. Once the ‘phoney’ war was over and all-out bombing began, the crews of the Blenheims kept up an unremitting attack on enemy-occupied channel ports and targets near the coast. Any gentlemanly agreement relating to bombing restrictions had come to an end when the Germans bombed Rotterdam on 15 May, 1940. During the Battle of Britain Blenheim squadrons played a vital role in making sure that England was not invaded by the Germans. They, and the crews of Wellingtons, destroyed hundreds of motorised barges concentrated by the enemy for that purpose.

The stalwart Bristol Blenheim remained in action until August, 1942, when its intruder role over Europe was taken on by the American-built Douglas Boston flown by RAF crews. But the Blenheim continued to serve overseas long after this time.

In those early days Britain had yet another bomber, the Fairey Battle. Also manned by a crew of three, the aircraft was classed
as a
light
bomber. It was powered by a single Merlin engine. Ten squadrons of Battles, of which the RAF had more than any other bomber, were sent to France at the outbreak of war, along with a number of Blenheims. They formed the Advanced Air Striking Force in support of the French Army, and were no longer part of Bomber Command. In fact, Bomber Command only rarely used the Battle in an operational capacity.

The Fairey Battle looked so advanced, so clean in outline, more like a long, elegant fighter than a bomber, that no one could fail to be impressed by its appearance. As a schoolboy my favourite Dinky Toy was a model of a Fairey Battle. Later I thanked God that I was born too late to fly in combat in one of those underpowered, unprotected machines. The courage of the crews who flew to their death in Battles has never been fully acknowledged.

In the Spring of 1940, when the Germans invaded the Low Countries, the Advanced Air Striking Force was thrown into the battle to try to stem the enemy onslaught. They bombed supply columns and lines of communication. The losses among the Battles and Blenheims reached horrific proportions. They were shot out of the sky, either by withering fire from the mobile flak batteries, or as a result of relentless attacks by Messerschmitt 109 fighters, whose superior fire-power and speed left the Battles, in particular, with almost no hope of survival.

On 12 May, 1940, the CO of 12 Squadron told his men that it was vital to destroy two large bridges that spanned the Albert Canal near Maastricht in Holland. This was the only chance of stemming the Wehrmacht’s headlong advance. Making no bones of the fact that the mission was suicidal, he called for volunteers. Every pilot, observer and wireless operator/air gunner in the squadron stepped forward.

Six crews were picked for the job. The Battles took off. In spite of intense opposition, one of the bridges was hit and partly destroyed. None of the aircraft returned from that mission. One of the pilots, 21-year-old Flying Officer D.E Garland, and his observer, Sergeant T. Gray were each posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross – the first to be won by the RAF in the Second World War. Their wireless operator/air gunner, Leading Aircraftman L. R. Reynolds, who also died, received no such recognition.