1 Group

by Patrick Otter

  ‘When I got there the LAC behind the counter looked at the paperwork and saw my name. He said they had been calling for me over the tannoy for the past five minutes telling me to report to the ops rooms immediately.’ He ran across the airfield to the briefing room where he was greeted by an RAF Police corporal who told him to report to the bombing leader, F/Lt Peek, immediately.

  ‘By this time I was in a blue funk and didn’t know what to expect.’ He went on. ‘When I found him he told me I’d missed my very first briefing and added: “Never mind, I’ve drawn the tracks on your chart – you’re going to Dortmund”. Then he proceeded to give me an individual briefing. What a nice chap to come to the aid of a sprog bomb aimer!’

  Blyton had a particularly bad reputation. It was shoddily built and life on an HCU could not match that on an operational squadron for the ground staff. John Allison was a wireless operator whose crew spent some time there on 1662 HCU during the winter of 1943-44 before going on to 101 Squadron. ‘It really was a bloody awful place,’ he recalled. ‘Our Nissen hut had matchboard ends and they fitted so badly that the resulting cracks had to be filled with rolled up newspapers and old socks. Even so, the draughts howled through whenever it was windy.’

  The nearest town was Gainsborough which his crew found a particularly miserable place. ‘Our navigator, Steve Wall came from Kent, which he kept reminding us was the garden of England. He would go on alarmingly about Lincolnshire. I was born and bred in Lincolnshire but I had to agree that the Blyton area was pretty bleak. However, once we got to Ludford and were able to cycle to some pretty villages like Tealby and Walesby, Steve quickly changed his tune about Lincolnshire, much to my satisfaction.’

  Most of those who served at Elsham left with fond memories of the time they spent there. It was built in the early days of the war and the contractors did a good job. It was well drained and didn’t suffer from the problems its neighbours did.

  Mike Stedman flew from there as a pilot in B Flight of 576 Squadron in 1944 and remembered particularly the easy cycle ride down the hill to Barnetby station to catch the train to Scunthorpe where he had a girl friend waiting and a pint or two to look forward to in the Oswald Hotel.

  ‘There was also the night we had a trip up the hill to camp from a dance at the Waafery in Barnetby village in the Wing Co’s car. There was a full load with our bomb aimer standing in the boot pretending to throw out ‘Window’. Then someone shouted: ‘Fighter, fighter, corkscrew left!’ The car swerved, pitching our luckless bomb aimer out of the boot and over the hedge. Happy days!’

  Elsham, like most other airfields, had been carved out of Lincolnshire farmland and, war or no war, some agricultural work had to go on. Cutting the grass and providing hay for local farms was part and parcel of airfield life. Elsham was unique in that one farm worker, Ernie Hatcliffe, continued to live on the airfield throughout the war with his wife Gladys. Mr Hatcliffe had actually helped survey the site for an airfield in the summer of 1940 and by the time 103 Squadron arrived he was living in a farm workers’ cottage around which the airfield had been built. The Hatcliffes were issued with Air Ministry permits to get on and off the station and, as time went by, became an integral part of life at Elsham Wolds. Apart from his routine work Ernie helped tend the vegetable gardens which were dug around the airfield and to look after the pigs which provided a source of fresh meat. His wife, in the meantime, was only too happy to help young airmen with their laundry though she found it upsetting on the days when someone else would come round to collect the freshly-ironed shirts and starched collars with the news that the owners were missing on operations. The Hatcliffes became firm favourites with all who served at Elsham and what other farm worker and his wife had a cinema on their doorstep where they went three times a week for just three pence?

  Elsham could still be a cold place in winter. Gwen Richardson served there as a cook and lived in one of the huts on the WAAF site adjacent to the Melton Ross road. The winter of 1944-45 was particularly bad and with their water supply frozen, the WAAFs had to heat snow in order to wash.

  Wickenby was another base where the ‘dig for victory’ campaign got full backing from the station CO. The camp had its own piggery and a large area around one of the technical site buildings was turned into a potato patch, the rule being that those returning from leave had to spend their first day back at Wickenby tending the area.

  Emily Warwick spent most of the war in the WAAFs and in 1943 was posted to Wickenby as a clerk in the headquarters office. One of her tasks was to type letters to the families of those missing in action. She was given a book of sample letters, some for British aircrew and others for Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders, and it was usually left to the clerk to decide which was most appropriate. It was then left to the squadron commanding officer to sign them. She, too, recalled the grim winter conditions on the airfield. ‘We had long icicles hanging from the roof of our hut and our towels would freeze overnight if we left them damp over the backs of chairs. Often we would have to go out and collect snow in a bucket, heat it up and then the 10 of us in the hut would get washed in it. What water was left then went into our hot water bottles.”

  Whatever the conditions, there were still a few for whom the importance of pre-war ‘bull’ was never forgotten. One such was Station Warrant Officer ‘Lavender’ Yardley at North Killingholme, who was a stickler for regulations. Woe betide anyone who appeared in front of him with his tunic not buttoned correctly. Ted Stones, who served with 550 Squadron, remembered Yardley as ‘a real sod’. He explained: ‘There was a path running through a particularly muddy area to the NAAFI. It wasn’t wide enough so he decided something had to be done about it and it became known as our ‘Burma Road’. It was built solely on fatigues. He had a big Irish sergeant who went around with him and they used to stand outside the airmen’s mess. Anyone who came out without his hat on correctly or a button out of place was on fatigues that night and that meant a spell helping build the Burma Road!’

  Wireless fitter Ivor Burgess served on most 1 Group airfields, meeting and marrying his wife, a WAAF, at Wickenby. The airfield was as spartan as most bomber stations in North Lincolnshire and there was no provision for married couples but he remembers it being a happy station. ‘Much of that was down to the man at the top, the station CO, G/Cpt Crummy. He was a gentleman of the old type and treated everyone under him as gentlemen. The same applied to W/Cmdr Craven, the CO of 12 Squadron.’

  Ivor Burgess is not alone in singling our G/Capt Crummy for praise, nor the first to mention that station morale had much to do with the station or base commander. But sometimes the opposite could occur as those stationed at Kirmington with 166 Squadron early in 1945 were to discover.

  In mid-December 166 Squadron’s popular COW/Cmdr Don Garner, who had won a DSO the previous September, was posted to a staff job and his place at Kirmington was taken by W/Cmdr R. L. Vivian, a pre-war RAF officer who had commanded an Army Co-operation squadron in England before taking over 60 Squadron in Malaya in 1941 and then a training unit in Rhodesia. When he arrived at Kirmington he had no experience of flying Lancasters and, despite the best efforts of a number of pilots who took him on training sorties, it seemed it would be some time before he got the hang of it. It also seemed he hadn’t got the hang of the almost complete lack of ‘bull’ on a wartime bomber airfield which led to what became a virtual threat of mutiny, the story of which appears in the wonderfully detailed wartime history of 166 Squadron, On Wings of War, by S/Ldr Jim Wright, who was a wireless operator with the squadron at the time.

  Life was so much better with transport. Wickenby aircrew and one of the station WAAFs, 1944. (Wickenby Archive)

  On December 29, the day after he flew his first operation as a second pilot, W/Cmdr Vivian issued an order that was to shock every aircrew member at Kirmington: they were to parade every morning at 8am for inspection. This was an absolute anathema to everyone who flew Lancasters. Yes, there had to be discipline but daily parades for aircr
ew? That was just too much for the men of 166, in fact it was virtually unheard of in Bomber Command in 1945. Every morning air crew had the far more important job of carrying out detailed checks on their aircraft, checks that were vital to their own and their crew’s well being.

  The first of the parades was due to be held on Monday January 1. Over the weekend there had been talk of little else and most aircrew had decided they were not going to turn up. They gathered that morning in the section huts around the perimeter track and watched as the flight sergeant in charge of discipline waited and waited for the reluctant airmen to fall in. By 8.30am less than 10 per cent of the squadron had assembled. At this point W/Cmdr Vivian marched out carrying a Malacca cane and looking distinctly displeased with what he saw. He stood waiting for 15 minutes but no further aircrew turned up so, after a brief word with the flight sergeant, he marched back to station HQ and summoned the three flight commanders and five section leaders. The popular bombing leader with 166, F/Lt Arthur McCartney, set out to explain to the CO exactly why daily parades were low down on the priority list for aircrew at Kirmington but W/Cmdr Vivian was in no mood to listen and accused him of being a trouble-maker and said he would have him posted away from the squadron.

  Later, the news was passed on to aircrew that not only were the daily parades to continue and that those who failed to turn up would be on a charge, but the man who had spoken for them at the meeting was under threat of being posted. There was an angry response from the Lancaster crews. F/Lt McCartney was not only popular at Kirmington, he was also highly regarded by all who flew with the squadron and the men quickly made it clear to their flight commanders and section leaders that if ‘Mac’ was posted then they would refuse to fly. As the word spread, news came that the ground crews were also threatening to down tools if W/Cmdr Vivian went through with his threat.

  The situation was now spiralling out of control and the three flight commanders asked for another urgent meeting with the CO. What was said behind closed doors was never disclosed but later that morning F/Lt McCartney was told his threatened posting had been withdrawn and an order went round the airfield cancelling daily parades for aircrew. There was to be no more ‘bull’, pre-war style, at Kirmington.

  S/Ldr Dutton (centre) and crew pictured at Fiskerton shortly after a raid on Bottrop in February 1945. This aircraft, UL-02 of 576 Squadron, was one of three lost from Fiskerton on the Nuremburg raid on 16/17 March. (Martin Nichol/David Briggs collection)

  Chapter 22

  The Veterans

  The Lancaster 100-Club and

  the Lone Survivor

  Between 1941 and 1945 some 7,374 Lancaster bombers were built. Of those 3,349, or slightly more than 45 per cent, were lost on operations and many more in crashes and training accidents. The average life of a Lancaster was around 17 operations, about the same life expectancy of the young men who flew them. Just 34 of all those built were to complete 100 or more operations. What is surprising is that 1 Group, which lost almost a third of all Lancasters shot down, had half of those on its strength at one time or another.

  This statistic alone says a lot about the skill, dedication and hard work of the ground crews who cared for 1 Group’s Lancasters. Much has been recorded in this book about the exploits or air crew and the dangers they faced, but none of this would have been possible without the men assigned to look after each aircraft, men who would often assemble at the side of a runway to watch their charge take to the air and, as often as not, would be there waiting with fingers crossed for the safe return of ‘their’ Lancaster and the crew who had, after all, only borrowed it for the night. There was a real bond between the air and ground crews and Joe Clark, a flight engineer with 100 Squadron in 1943, recalled that before every operation one of his Lancaster’s airframe fitters always gave him his wedding ring ‘just to keep me safe’. The good luck charm worked and the crew completed their tour at Waltham.

  It was a hard life for these men. Most of their work had to be carried out on the dispersal pans in all weather. Only occasionally were Lancasters towed into the hangars when major work was required. Routine jobs, of which there were very many, had to be done out on the edge of the airfields, and those airfields could be damnably cold and uncomfortable places to work. There they would have to check each engine carefully, make any repairs necessary, patch up holes in the fuselage, inspect the hydraulics, test the electrics and so on and so on. Then there was the armament work to do, cleaning, checking and rearming guns, refuelling and, of course, the back-breaking job of ‘bombing up’ before every operation.

  It wasn’t surprising that a firm bond was quickly established between air and ground crews. The men who flew the Lancasters and the Wellingtons before them knew their lives depended on the men with oil-stained fingers, faces chapped from the cold and often with a Woodbine clamped between their lips. The ground crew themselves mostly had a similar high regard for the men who flew the Lancasters. They saw at first hand the looks on the faces of aircrew when they returned from a particularly tough operation. They saw, too, the damage caused by flak and fighters to those fortunate enough to make it back. And often they had to help with the wounded and swill away the blood after another night over the Ruhr.

  G-George’s 80th bomb tally is added at Binbrook after an attack on Stuttgart in February 1944. (Laurie Wood)

  The dedication of the ground crew and the skill of those who flew the Lancasters were not, of course, enough. It was largely down to good fortune that a crew and a Lancaster survived. That’s why so many men carried mascots with them. For some it was a ‘lucky’ scarf, a child’s toy or a rabbit’s foot. Others went through a regular routine before they flew. One 1 Group airman always made a habit of urinating on his Lancaster’s tail wheel before he flew. He survived so it must have worked.

  Good fortune certainly flew with those 17 1 Group Lancasters which made it into the record books although, in the case of four of them, it was to run out shortly after they flew their 100th operation. The average life expectancy of a Lancaster was around 17 operations, and for every one which was able to chalk up 100 operations, very many more never made it into double figures. Some squadrons did seem to be luckier than others. Four of the Lancasters which recorded 100 or more operations flew at one time or another with 100 Squadron which, as we have already seen, suffered fewer losses than some of its neighbours. 460 Squadron, just up the road at Binbrook, did not have a single centenarian, although it did have one Lancaster which made it to 90 operations. 626 and 300 were the other two squadrons operating before the autumn of 1944 not to have a Lancaster with 100-plus operations.

  The grand dame of all Lancasters was ED888, Mike-Squared/‘Mother of Them All’, which flew with 103 and 576 Squadrons from Elsham. It was delivered to 103 in April 1943 and was finally retired after returning from Cologne late on Christmas Eve 1944, its 140th operation. It left Elsham early in 1945 for Tollerton, near Nottingham where many hundreds of Lancasters were to be reduced to scrap. At the controls for that last flight was F/Lt John Henry, one of three Australians brothers who served with 103 Squadron as pilots at the same time. After take-off he flew several low passes over the airfield where Mike-Squared/Mother had amassed an astonishing 974 operational hours and had undergone no fewer than 19 engine changes. At Tollerton, John Henry did manage to salvage a few mementoes from ED888 before it was finally towed away to await its fate, which eventually came about over two years later. Among the items he did take was the bomb release cable which was later mounted and presented by the Henry brothers to the Elsham Wolds Association, which represents air and ground crews who served with 103 and 576 at the airfield. One man who flew in ‘Mother’ was Charlie Baird, a Scotsman who was mid-upper gunner in Sgt Denis Rudge’s crew. They had joined 103 in April 1943 and took over ED888 after five operations, flying all but one of their next 25 in ‘Mother’, completing their tour over Berlin at the end of August.

  A classic photograph of Elsham’s most famous Lancaster, ED888, as it was ‘awa
rded’ a bar to the DFC it had already been bestowed with. This photograph dates from its time with 576 Squadron. (Elsham Wolds Association)

  Ground crew of 460 Squadron pictured at Binbrook with G-George before the aircraft left for its flight to Australia. (Laurie Wood)

  ND458, ‘Able Mabel’ of 100 Squadron ended the war with 127 operations to its credit plus six ‘Manna’ drops of food to the civilian population in Holland and one ‘Exodus’ flight to pick up British PoWs, making a total of 134. The Manna flights did take place over territory still occupied by the Germans although a tacit agreement had been struck that the aircraft would not be fired on. Able Mabel was delivered to the squadron in January 1944 and had a number of close shaves, including a damaging combat at high altitude with a Me410 over Russelheim in August 1944. It was also scrapped without ceremony in 1947.

  At Waltham Abel Mabel often flew alongside two other veterans, JB603 ‘Take It Easy’, and ND644, ‘Nan’, all of which were to record 100-plus operations. JB603 had been delivered to the squadron in November 1943 and was to be lost on its 111th operation to Hanover early in January 1945, all seven of F/O Reg Barker’s crew being killed when it crashed in Holland. ND644 was also lost, the aircraft failing to return from a raid on Nuremburg in March 1945 when only two of F/O George Dauphinee’s crew survived. Record-keeping was not meticulous in Bomber Command and in his excellent book, Claims To Fame: The Lancaster, Norman Franks points out that Nan’s total at the time was either 115 or 128 depending on a variety of factors.