Lancaster Men

by Peter Rees

  Peter Rees has been a journalist for more than forty years, working as federal political correspondent for the Melbourne Sun, the West Australian and the Sunday Telegraph. He is the author of The Boy from Boree Creek: The Tim Fischer Story (2001), Tim Fischer’s Outback Heroes (2002), Killing Juanita: A True Story of Murder and Corruption (2004), The Other Anzacs: The Extraordinary Story of our World War I Nurses (2008 and 2009) and Desert Boys: Australians at War from Beersheba to Tobruk and El Alamein (2011 and 2012).

  First published in 2013

  Copyright © Peter Rees 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74175 207 6

  EISBN 978 1 74343 398 0

  Internal design by Lisa White

  Maps by Ian Faulkner

  Set in 12/17 pt Minion by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  In memory of my father, Ormonde,

  who was a RAAF ground crew member in Australia.

  And for Jack Wheildon, a Lancaster wireless operator/air gunner.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Maps

  Prelude

  1 The Sugarloaf

  2 The short-arm parade

  3 The usual awful eternity

  4 The Thousand Plan

  5 The Dimboola regatta

  6 Cold, gut-wrenching fear

  7 Crippled over Essen

  8 The jam can

  9 The German from Sydney

  10 The poacher

  11 Stalag time

  12 Feuersturm

  13 WAAFs and other girlfriends

  14 Fairly shaken

  15 The boomerang

  16 Danger above

  17 Cramped

  18 The silent world

  19 An inviting target

  20 Beating the odds

  21 Trouble on the base

  22 No easy answer

  23 The quick and the dead

  24 Good luck, boys

  25 Face to face with the enemy

  26 D-Day

  27 Death only a matter of time

  28 The battle for recognition

  29 The sweetest words of all

  30 No backward glances

  31 Shot down

  32 The strain of command

  33 Letters from the front

  34 The clairvoyant

  35 Double scotch, thanks

  36 The beast

  37 The special duties boys

  38 Smoke puffs and flak barrages

  39 Forebodings

  40 The prisoner in the cell next door

  41 Shrove Tuesday

  42 An unearthly thing

  43 Sharing bread

  44 An air force divided

  45 Return to the Sugarloaf

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  Postscript

  Bibliography

  INTRODUCTION

  For thousands of young Australian men, the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 meant a chance to fly. For many, it was the opportunity to fulfil a dream; for others, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) was the least worst of the services they could join. This was a time when most Australians also felt loyalty to Britain.

  The war meant that the United Kingdom was suddenly faced with a need for 50,000 aircrew a year; it could supply less than half this number itself. The solution Britain put to Australia, New Zealand and Canada was to jointly establish a pool of trained aircrew who could serve with the Royal Air Force (RAF) and other Commonwealth air forces. In December 1939 the four nations officially launched the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, known in Australia as the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS).

  Crucial to the scheme was recognition of the need to maintain a national identity for RAAF personnel sent to serve overseas. On 15 November 1939, Minister Robert Menzies had told the House of Representatives that the government would do its best to preserve the Australian character and identity of any air force that went abroad. It wanted the airmen to remain RAAF members, wear RAAF uniforms or a distinguishing badge, and be grouped into squadrons that would bear the name Australia. As far as possible, Australians would be led by Australians.

  Article XV of the agreement allowed for some of these provisions, but RAF commanders were anxious to have all aircrews under their aegis. With Britain under growing pressure, there was little time for hashing out the finer points of the scheme. Australian trainees were needed urgently, and the first crews arrived in the UK in December 1940. The final text of the agreement between Britain and Australia called for eighteen RAAF squadrons to be formed within the next eighteen months. Their members would wear Australian uniforms, a senior RAAF officer would have access to the higher echelons of the RAF, RAAF personnel would be placed in RAF records and postings sections, and the two governments would continue to consult on major questions affecting the employment of RAAF personnel and squadrons overseas.

  Even before the outbreak of war, about twenty per cent of Royal Air Force pilots came from the dominions and colonies. Since 1926, Australia had sent around ten trained pilots a year to serve with the RAF on short service commissions. Under the scheme approved they were supposed to join the RAAF Reserve on return to Australia, but most joined the RAF on permanent transfer. Other Australian nationals joined the RAF directly. In September 1939, about 450 Australians were serving with the RAF, mostly as pilots.

  After EATS began in 1940, Australian recruits went through training programs that varied from thirty-six weeks for wireless operators/air gunners to fifty weeks for pilots. Waiting lists were long. By May 1942, just over 9500 aircrew were under instruction. At the time, the average cost of producing a trainee in Australia was £2200—$144,000 in today’s money. About 10,000 Australians did part of their training in Canada on the way to England. All costs connected with the training of aircrew, whether locally or in Canada, were met by Australia. More than 38,000 Australian aircrew participated in EATS.

  After the United States joined the war in early 1942, RAF Bomber Command (including Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and South African squadrons) was supported in England by VIII Bomber Command of the US Army Air Force (USAAF), later redesignated the Eighth Air Force. The RAF’s bomber workhorses at the start of the war included the Fairey Battle, Bristol Blenheim, Armstrong Whitworth Whitley and Handley Page Hampden/Hereford. They had been designed as tactical-support medium bombers, and they had neither the range nor the ordnance capacity for more than a limited strategic offensive. The Vickers Wellington, although limited by its two-engine configuration, was the only effective long-range bomber in the RAF inventory at the start of the war.

  This changed with the advent of the British four-engined heavy bombers, the Short Stirling, Handley Pag
e Halifax, Avro Manchester and the redoubtable Avro Lancaster. By late 1944, RAF Bomber Command alone could mount a raid by up to 1200 four-engined aircraft. It was composed of Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (Canadian) and 8 (Pathfinder Force) Group, each commanded by an air vice-marshal. Each group had its own headquarters planning staff and reported to Bomber Command Headquarters at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, run by Sir Arthur Harris, who in 1943 was made Air Chief Marshal.

  Until June 1941, only one Australian Article XV squadron (as the EATS air units were known) had operated with Bomber Command—455 Squadron, flying outdated Hampdens as part of 5 Group. The ground crew were mainly Australian, although there were many RAF supervisors and special tradesmen not sent from Australia. Operations continued until April 1942, when the squadron was transferred to Coastal Command.

  In January 1942, 460 Squadron RAAF joined No. 1 Group, flying Vickers Wellingtons and later Avro Lancasters until the end of the war. The RAAF’s 462 Squadron initially operated in the Middle East and did not join Bomber Command’s No. 4 Group until August 1944, flying Halifax bombers. This squadron transferred to 100 Group RAF—Bomber Support—in December 1944 and operated there until the end of the war. In September 1942, 464 Squadron RAAF joined 2 Group, flying Ventura light bombers, and transferred with the rest of 2 Group to RAF Second Tactical Air Force in August 1943 in preparation for the invasion of Europe the following year.

  In October 1942, 466 Squadron RAAF joined 4 Group, flying Vickers Wellingtons and later Halifax Mark IIIs and remained there until the end of the war. It then transferred briefly to Transport Command, but flew few operations. Three months later, 467 Squadron RAAF became operational with 5 Group, flying Avro Lancasters. In November 1943, 463 Squadron RAAF was formed from ‘C’ Flight 467 Squadron, also flying Avro Lancasters; it then joined 467 Squadron in 5 Group at Waddington, where it remained for the rest of the war.

  Despite the early intention to ensure an Australian identity, the appointment of an RAF officer, Sir Charles Burnett, as Chief of Air Staff saw the RAAF become a reservoir of personnel for the RAF. This denied the RAAF airmen the corporate identity enjoyed by the soldiers of the Second Australian Imperial Force.

  By the time the EATS agreement was renewed in March 1943, Australians were scattered among at least 135 RAF squadrons, mostly bomber units, in Britain alone. By 1 July 1944 there were 14,000 RAAF members in the UK, of whom 12,400 were aircrew, most of them serving in, or en route to, Bomber Command. In the final stages of the war the RAAF would have three Lancaster and two Halifax squadrons within Bomber Command. By this stage, Australians rarely made up more than seventy per cent of crews in the RAAF squadrons. In some Groups the ratio frequently fell well below fifty per cent, although most pilots and navigators were Australian.

  Under the renewed agreement, much more effective administrative control was given to Overseas Headquarters, and longstanding but often misunderstood demands for the retention of national identity were included, such as wearing RAAF uniform and serving together in Australian crews. Aircrews were not to be deployed in small numbers in remote locations, and were to be commanded where possible by RAAF officers. But by then 8400 Australian aircrew had arrived in the UK alone, and they had been absorbed into a vast machinery that was working at full capacity. Procedures were not easily altered, and the qualifying phrases—‘subject to operational exigencies’ or ‘as far as possible’—were often invoked.

  In June 1944, the British Air Ministry abruptly advised Australia that no further aircrew were required. With no forewarning, the EATS ended nine months early. The decision was, as a peeved Chief of Australia’s Air Staff, Air Vice-Marshal George Jones complained, like asking an ocean liner travelling at full speed suddenly to be stopped.

  No RAAF formation operated as an independent bombing force in the European theatre. Throughout the war, members of the RAAF, about half of them in nominally Australian squadrons, were subsumed into RAF Bomber Command, operating under the orders of its chief. Nonetheless, the Australian airmen made a significant and distinctive contribution to Bomber Command’s success.

  They were part of an extraordinary war effort. On the 2074 days between 3 September 1939 and 8 May 1945, Bomber Command:

  • operated on 1481 nights and 1059 days—74.4 per cent of all the nights and 52.5 per cent of all of the days of the conflict;

  • flew 307,233 night sorties with 7953 aircraft lost;

  • flew 80,163 day sorties with 1000 aircraft lost; and

  • dropped approximately 972,322,000 kilograms of bombs, of which Lancasters dropped 40 per cent.

  Such statistics can only ever tell part of the story. But what of the men behind them, who went about their work quietly and efficiently, coping with the knowledge of fearful casualties and knowing that they could be next to ‘get the chop’ or ‘go for a Burton’? There is a human element to the stories of the Australians who were part of this experience that is perhaps difficult to comprehend in a different age with different values. But compelling these stories are. They were a generation of fine young Australians whose contribution to the Anzac tradition has been long overlooked.

  PROLOGUE

  A red mist formed as poppies tumbled from a Lancaster bomber flying low over London. As the flowers drifted down, more than 1000 airmen in their eighties and nineties watched and waited. They were Bomber Command veterans from World War II, and the poppies were deeply significant to them.

  Nearly seventy years after the end of the war, it is hard to comprehend the magnitude of the casualty figures for Bomber Command. More than 125,000 men from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Poland flew bombers against Nazi Germany. Almost half—55,573 of them—were killed; poignantly, this was the precise number of poppies released from the plane.

  Among the veterans shading their eyes from the sun in Green Park on 28 June 2012 were 106 of the more than 10,000 Australians who formed part of Bomber Command. For them, some of those poppies represented the 3486 Australians who died on Bomber Command operations in Royal Australian Air Force squadrons.

  The veterans knew that luck had played a large part in their own survival. Flying bombers in the longest and most costly of all the war’s campaigns was like playing Russian roulette. At the time, they would try to joke about it, make light of it. After their pre-raid meal they’d wait in the mess for the vehicles to take them out to the planes, tense with the knowledge that some would probably not return. Then some wag would put on a record to lighten the mood: Vera Lynn, their sweetheart, singing Coming in on a wing and a prayer. Everybody would laugh. Then the Mills Brothers, Chop, chop, chop, well all right, well all right, Well chop, chop, chop, well all right. They knew what it meant. When somebody got shot down, he’d ‘gone for a chop’. How else could you deal with such forebodings other than with black humour?

  Flying over the heavily fortified Ruhr valley, where thousands of searchlights lit up the night sky and the flak was so thick aircrews almost felt they could walk on it, survival came down to chance. Men still speak of hosing the remains of rear gunners out of their bomber turrets. And even if you evaded the enemy’s fire, you might be accidentally bombed by one of your own from above, or rammed by another of your comrades in the huge formations of a thousand planes or more that flew night after night against the enemy.

  The men had no idea of those risks when they enlisted in Australia. Many had just thought joining the air force seemed an infinitely better prospect than foot-slogging with the infantry in the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East. There was, after all, a certain glamour associated with being an airman. But even before their training ended, the reality was sinking in: once they started bomber operations, they had a life expectancy of six weeks. If they were not killed, they could be wounded or taken prisoner. About one in three Bomber Command airmen could expect to survive a tour of thirty operations. Of those, about one in six brave souls undertook a second tour. Some went on taunting death with a third.

  The falling poppie
s symbolised the long-delayed recognition of Bomber Command’s sacrifices. That day, as the old airmen stood in Green Park and remembered their comrades who had failed to return, the Queen dedicated a memorial in their honour. It had been built after a private campaign initiated by Robin Gibb, the late Bee Gees star, who had a longstanding fascination with the Lancaster bomber.

  Aluminium from a Royal Canadian Air Force Halifax bomber shot down over the Netherlands in 1944 forms part of the pavilion’s roof, which is braced inside in a pattern inspired by the geodetic lattice structure of the Vickers Wellington bomber. Beneath it, sculpted in bronze, is a seven-man crew just returned from a raid. They look blank, exhausted, as if aware that they have just survived another roll of the dice. On one side is a bronze wreath sculpted by an Australian veteran, Colin Dudley DFC, a Halifax navigator on 578 Squadron RAF.

  Floral wreaths were piled around the crew’s feet at the memorial, many with hand-written tributes attached. ‘In loving memory of my father Ian Alexander McIntosh’, read one note about an Australian pilot officer attached to 12 Squadron RAF who was taken prisoner after being shot down over Germany. Another note commemorated brothers John and George Mee from Becks, in Central Otago, New Zealand, both Lancaster pilots, who were killed over Germany in March and April 1944, one aged twenty-five and the other twenty-six: ‘As with their comrades they did not seek glory, they asked for no collateral for their lives, they demanded no privileges, no power or influence as they flew steadily into the valley of death.’

  Among the veterans present that day were the Maxton brothers, from Western Australia. Ninety-one-year-old Murray Maxton and his brother, Eric, eighty-eight, spent their war years flying with 460 Squadron RAAF. Murray was a pilot and Eric a wireless operator. Uniquely, they flew thirty operations—or ‘ops’ as they were known—together on the same aircraft. For them, it was the ‘icing on the cake’ to be able to attend the dedication of the memorial ‘for all those young men that lost their lives’.