Lancaster Men

by Peter Rees

  In mid-April, Rollo heard that Charlie had turned back from his latest operation claiming he had engine trouble but that the ground crew were unable to find anything wrong with it. Soon after, Charlie reported engine problems again. ‘The second time he had engine trouble I could tell he really wanted to press on but he couldn’t cope with the stress,’ Rollo recalled. He was tempted to ground Charlie, but the pilot pleaded for another opportunity. Rollo was faced with a dilemma. He knew he could use the Air Force’s unique ‘Lack of Moral Fibre’ (LMF) classification and take Charlie off operations. Any airman who was unable or refused to fly owing to nervous stress, sickness, fear, or for any other non-physical reason, could be branded LMF. Since this amounted to a finding of cowardice, it carried a powerful stigma. A man could fly twenty ops and, his nerves stretched to the limit, find himself branded LMF, stripped of his wings and rank, and given a dishonourable discharge. To help commanders deal with the issue of fear as fairly as possible, LMF was later split into four categories: Lack of Moral Fibre, Inefficiency, Misconduct and Medical.

  Rollo considered his options and summoned Charlie’s crew. He told them that while he had a high regard for their pilot and his skills, he had decided to make the navigator the captain of the aircraft. ‘I didn’t want an LMF case in my squadron so I gave him the benefit of the doubt,’ he recalled. The crew went along with Rollo’s decision.

  A few days later, on 22 April 1944, Charlie celebrated his twenty-third birthday. That night he and his crew flew on a raid to Brunswick on which four Lancasters were lost. One of them was Charlie’s. His plane apparently had mechanical problems on the way to the target. An eyewitness in the Dutch town of Wagenborgen who saw the plane fly over later reported seeing the aircraft on fire. ‘It was very low and made a lot of noise,’ the witness said. The Lancaster crashed at high speed in a field. There was a huge explosion, probably from the bombs it had on board, and it disintegrated completely. Rollo never found out the circumstances that led to the crash and the death of Charlie and his crew. For the rest of his life he would wonder whether he should have removed Charlie from operations altogether.

  The much-decorated RAF Group Captain Leonard Cheshire had a different approach. He ‘was ruthless with “moral fibre cases”,’ he later said. ‘I had to be. We were airmen not psychiatrists. Of course we had concern for any individual whose internal tensions meant that he could no longer go on; but there was the worry that one really frightened man could affect others around him.’

  Despite Cheshire’s hardline stand, determining LMF could be difficult. Wrong judgments were sometimes made, as 460 Squadron navigator Ron Friend saw. On one operation, engine failure forced his pilot, Warrant Officer Paddy Boyle, to drop out of an attack, drop the ‘cookie’ in the North Sea, and return to base early. ‘A new flight commander, an Australian I am sad to report, and a proper shit, didn’t take kindly to this and had Paddy in his bad books,’ Ron said. On another raid shortly afterwards, Paddy said soon after take-off that the aircraft was getting out of control and was becoming unflyable. Ron gave him a course to the North Sea, where they dropped their ‘cookie’ before returning to base.

  The next morning the flight commander had him on the mat, told him there was nothing wrong with the aircraft, and accused him of LMF; a most serious charge. The ground crew loved Paddy and the next day on his request gave the aircraft a thorough check. They found that one of the trims on the tail plane had been installed upside down! That flight commander was soon transferred from the squadron I am happy to report.

  Harry Wright, an Australian navigator with 103 Squadron RAF and a Pathfinder, saw how the fear of going on Berlin raids affected airmen. On every trip, ‘from one to four fellows would go sick’. In one case, a crewman who reported sick underwent surgery for appendicitis a few hours later. But others would be discharged after being deemed LMF. It was something Harry did not agree with. ‘I do think it was a bit tough on a lot of them, because some of them just couldn’t take it. I think they should have been more or less invalided out rather than disgraced. In one case on 103 Squadron, a mid-upper gunner refused to fly on an op and he was publicly stripped of his brevet and stripes in a hollow square of the assembled airmen. I think that was a bit much.’

  An Australian navigator confided in 115 Squadron RAF gunner Leigh Johns that he was going LMF following a horrific flight in which his Lancaster caught fire and a crew member had jumped. ‘I suppose you’re disgusted with me,’ he said. Leigh replied that he, personally, ‘wouldn’t have the guts to do it’. ‘I said, “If that’s the way you feel, I think you’re very brave”. There were a lot of blokes like that.’

  Pilot Jack Lukies saw another side of the problem. Returning from a raid to Leipzig, he suddenly caught sight of a night fighter and dived steeply to starboard to get out of the area as fast as possible. The fighter flew close to Jack—‘I felt I could have touched him’—but was aiming at another bomber. Jack had little doubt he would have been a ‘kill’ if he had been the fighter’s target. On return to base, he asked the gunners why they had not warned him of the fighter’s approach. The enemy aircraft should have been in the mid-upper gunner’s vision, but he said he had not seen it. The rear gunner later told Jack in confidence that the man had got out of his turret in fright.

  That gave me a problem, report him in which case he would be court martialled and discharged LMF or give him another chance on his word it was a ‘one off’ and wouldn’t happen again. At the back of my mind was the thought that losing him would mean no more ops until a spare gunner could be found. I decided to give him another chance but looking back it was the wrong decision. His nerve could go again thus endangering the crew. In subsequent ops I never received any more adverse reports from the crew and I was too busy over targets to check on him. However I found out later he had been ostracised by the crew, so that told a story. Also later on when our ops were over he said he was going to get married, to the daughter of the Mayor of Stafford, and would we attend. No one did. Probably out of the incident I lost some goodwill of the crew.

  John Egan, the mid-upper gunner with 460 Squadron pilot Reg Wellham, saw the impact on the crew of the ‘terrifying experience’ of a near disaster during the Hamburg raids. ‘Two gunners and the wireless operator refused to fly again, were classed LMF and disappeared from the station overnight,’ he said. Another scary incident occurred shortly after a raid on Milan. As they flew back across the English Channel, anti-aircraft gunfire mistakenly opened up on them over Portsmouth. The Lancaster then flew into thick cloud, causing it to spiral downwards from 11,000 to 1000 feet. Reg managed to pull the aircraft out of the dive in time, but not before some of the crew panicked. The new wireless operator jumped on navigator Bill Lamb’s back, screaming to get out. Bill, who was lying over the front escape hatch and took the full force of the assault, said, ‘The lad was clawing and scratching. He quietened down when we landed at Lakenheath, but on the return to Binbrook he also went over the hill.’ In the mayhem, the wireless operator also attacked John Egan, bowling him over and taking his parachute as he fought desperately to bail out. John added: ‘That one crew had four crew members fall out due to LMF.’

  Given the ever-present risks that bomber crews faced, the figure of 200 cases of LMF in Bomber Command identified each year by one study seems small. Just as Rollo Kingsford-Smith had not been keen to label Charlie as LMF, other commanders too were sympathetic to airmen with ‘nerves’, often bundling them off to other areas or resting them. As a result, many cases evaded the official radar. Compounding the issue was the virtual absence of psychological treatment. It meant black and white judgements had to be made—decisions whose ramifications affected not just the lives of crew members in question, but also the dynamics among the whole crew. There were no easy answers.

  Not long before he left Australia, Jack Mitchell placed a stick in a pile of stones on top of the Sugarloaf, in the Tasmanian Midlands, wondering if it would still be there when he returned.

&nbs
p; (Bothwell Historical Society)

  Blue Connelly (left) and his mate, Frank Woolfrey, in a casual moment during training in Australia. (Blue Connelly)

  Don Huxtable (left) poses with two mates during training at Narromine, New South Wales.

  (Don Huxtable)

  Ted Pickerd (third from right), with his crew just before a sortie.

  Ted later noted their ‘feigned smiles’. (Pickerd family)

  Jack Mitchell (second from left) and his crew pictured just a few days before they died. (Bothwell Historical Society)

  Their parents didn’t know it at the time, but brothers Eric (first left) and Murray Maxton (fifth from left) flew together on the same Lancaster as members of 460 Squadron RAAF. (Maxton family)

  Australian aircrew relaxed at the Boomerang Club, Australia House, London, while they caught up on the latest news. The club was staffed mainly by Australians, for Australians. (Pickerd family)

  Ted Pickerd noted that the popular barmaid, Eve, was in a ‘talkative mood’ as she shared a beer with Australian aircrew at Codgers pub in London. A bomb shell at the end of the bar was marked ‘Australian Prisoners of War Fund’. (Pickerd family)

  Rear gunner Gerald McPherson (first left) was one of many Australians who flew with RAF crews. Attached to 186 Squadron RAF at Stradishall, Suffolk, he is pictured here with his crew, who also included four other Australians: wireless operator, Wilbert Perry (third from left) from Penshurst, Victoria; navigator Ron Liversidge (fourth from left) from Lithgow, New South Wales; pilot Jeffrey Clarson (fifth from left) DFC, from Brisbane, Queensland; and mid-upper gunner Jim Mallinson (far right) from Griffith, New South Wales. (McPherson family)

  While attached to 550 Squadron RAF, Gilgandra, New South Wales, farmer Jack Foran, a wireless operator/air gunner, met a young Irish WAAF. They are pictured here on VE Day, not long before they married and returned to the family farm in Australia.

  (Foran family)

  Wing Commander Rollo Kingsford-Smith (left foreground), Squadron Leader of 463 Squadron RAAF, is shown here conducting a pre-take-off briefing for his aircrews before they headed off to their Lancasters for the night’s raid. (Author’s collection)

  Prime Minister John Curtin met the men of the Australian squadrons when he visited London in May 1944. Among those he met was Group Captain Hughie Edwards, VC, a fellow West Australian, and Commanding Officer of the RAF Binbrook station, Lincolnshire, where 460 Squadron RAAF was based. (Maxton family)

  Blanket bombing of enemy airfields in occupied Europe was a key part of Bomber Command’s activities. This RAF Film Production Unit photo shows bombs being dropped on the Gilze-Rijen Airfield in the Netherlands on 15 August 1944.

  (Author’s collection)

  Brunswick burns. On the night of 14 October 1944, 233 Lancasters and seven Mosquitos from Bomber Command dropped 800 tons of high explosives and incendiaries on a city that was one of Germany’s most important aircraft and engineering centres. Just one Lancaster was lost on the raid, which left 561 people dead. (Author’s collection)

  Cologne Cathedral is the tallest Gothic church in northern Europe. Despite being hit fourteen times by Allied bombs, the cathedral did not collapse. Reconstruction was completed in 1956 to return the cathedral to its full grandeur.

  (Pickerd family)

  Wireless operator Frank Mottershead, who flew in Don Huxtable’s crew with 463 Squadron RAAF, poses with an Adolf Hitler snowman.

  (Bryan Cook)

  Clearing the runways of snow—often by hand—was a frequent mid-winter task. Here, the Lancasters of 463 and 467 Squadrons RAAF at Waddington are snow-bound in January 1944. The Lancaster parked on the immediate right was flown by Ted Pickerd and crew. (Pickerd family)

  Ted Pickerd noted that this was a ‘typical take-off crowd at Waddington’. WAAFs and office staff would cheer each Lancaster from the runway. (Pickerd family)

  On 23 December 1944, 153 Lancaster bombers from 3 Group attacked the German city of Trier, targeting the garrison and railway yards. At this stage of the war, Bomber Command was able to undertake daylight attacks. (Author’s collection)

  Bomber Command’s film unit recorded this scene of devastation in Berlin in October 1944. Ted Pickerd noted that such destruction was prevalent throughout the entire German capital. (Pickerd family)

  These are the false identity papers that the Comète Line provided to Noel Eliot after he was shot down over France. The card was made out in the name of Albert Charles Favro, of Corsica. The ruse worked and Noel was among those liberated after D-Day before returning to Australia. (Eliot family)

  Ted Pickerd noted that the photo on the left shows that the Lancaster bomb aimer obtained a clear view. The photo on the right shows a rear gunner checking the intricacies of the Frazer-Nash turret. For crews that diced with death every time they flew, occupying the rear turret was considered the most dangerous job of all. ‘They hosed them out’ was a common remark about the fate of such men. (Pickerd family)

  About to make another Berlin run, Lancaster ‘S for Snifter’ is loaded up with 1000-pound bombs to, as Rollo Kingsford-Smith put it, ‘blast an enemy railway junction’.

  (Kingsford-Smith family)

  A 4000-pound ‘cookie’ is loaded onto a Mosquito in preparation for a Berlin raid. The fast, all-wood Mosquito was known as the ‘wooden wonder’. (Pickerd family)

  A Lancaster drops a 4000-pound ‘cookie’ and a shower of incendiaries on Duisburg during a raid by more than 1000 bombers on 14 October 1944. More than 4500 tons of high explosives and incendiaries were dropped on the important Ruhr communications centre within twenty-five minutes. It was the heaviest single attack yet made on any German industrial city. (Author’s collection)

  Hanover was an important road junction, railhead and production centre for the German war effort, with forced labour employed. The target of eighty-eight raids, this photo shows the combined effect of fire and bombs on the industrial and manufacturing area. (Pickerd family)

  The city of Dresden had no smokestack industries but contributed to the German war effort with high tech production. Here women work on a production line making radar instruments at the Sachsenwerke factory in 1944. (Author’s collection)

  The bodies of air raid victims were gathered up for open-air cremation in Dresden’s Altmarkt square, on 25 February 1945, twelve days after the city was destroyed by bombs and a firestorm. (Author’s collection)

  On 25 April 1945, twenty Lancasters of 460 Squadron RAAF joined in the attack by 355 aircraft on Hitler’s ‘Eagle’s Nest’ chalet and the local SS guard barracks at Berchtesgaden, in the Austrian Alps. Here, a stream of Lancasters fly over the snow-capped peaks of Walchen, Austria, during the raid. (Author’s collection)

  How better to mark the end of the war than with a victory kiss? The newspaper headline reads: ‘VE-DAY—IT’S ALL OVER’ as crews of 463 and 467 Squadrons RAAF celebrate on 8 May 1945 at Waddington. The party of all parties began shortly after in No. 2 Hangar and continued until the beer ran out around midnight.

  (Author’s collection)

  At war’s end, Bomber Command ferried thousands of released POWs from Europe to receiving depots in England. Here, jovial Australian ground crew brighten up a Lancaster, dubbed ‘The Aussie Express’, ready for take-off to bring the liberated men back. (Pickerd family)

  With the city of Berlin in ruins, the Tiergarten in the days following the end of the war was the scene of a flourishing black market, including prostitution. (Pickerd family)

  23

  THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

  Bill Purdy was sharp-eyed and nimble, with the quick hand-eye coordination that gave a crew confidence in their pilot when under attack. Bill often seemed to be fused with his aircraft, so quick were his reactions. These skills were tested on the Brunswick raid that saw Charlie and his crew killed. It was Bill’s first op as captain of a 463 Squadron Lancaster. He remembered ‘bags of searchlights and flak from Bremen to the Ruhr’.

  The radar controlled searchlights
were usually set apart from the main defences where you would be least expecting them—one moment pitch black and the next blinded by the intense almost blue light. It was like looking directly into the sun. The idea was that the main light would hit you and then half a dozen satellites grouped in a circle would pick you up. Once that happened there was no chance of escape as the anti-aircraft batteries just fired up into the cone until you became another statistic. Hence the reason for leaving the first controlled beam in a hurry.

  Suddenly, Bill was caught in a cone. He knew that he had a split second to try and get out of it. ‘The moment it hit me I was doing a steep diving turn and then turning 180 degrees, a backbreaking effort when you just yank the aircraft around. You just hope that they don’t pick you up.’ Somehow Bill managed to survive the flight, and quickly determined that if he was to continue doing so, he had to be prepared to take instant evasive action. ‘You were either quick or you were dead,’ he said. ‘You had no chance to debate. If one of my crew said to “Corkscrew!” I didn’t ask questions, I just did it immediately.’