By the Skin of my Teeth: The Memoirs of an RAF Mustang Pilot in World War II and of Flying Sabres with USAF in Korea

by Colin Downes

  My duties involved considerable travel in France, my favourite country in Europe, for which I found the Guide Michelin invaluable in my quest of the coveted Michelin stars of culinary France. My other main area of travel involved Germany and this was usually undertaken by air with one of the headquarters communication aircraft based at an airfield a few miles north of Melun. These aircraft were light passenger transports of around twelve passenger capacity consisting of the Percival Pembroke powered by two Alvis Leonides engines and the de Havilland Dove or Devon powered by two DH Gypsy Queen engines of 400 hp. In order to keep in current flying practice I qualified on type with a VIP endorsement so that I could fly very senior staff around Europe in the course of their visits to NATO forces. This gave me a legitimate reason to spend as much time out of the headquarters as possible. In order to keep current on jet flying and to maintain my jet instrument rating I had periodic visits to the RAF Flying College at Manby in Lincolnshire where I flew the Meteor. I also flew the French Fouga Magister jet trainer, a nice handling aircraft but not up to the performance of the RAF Gnat jet trainer.

  As a result of my VIP endorsement I flew frequent flights to Northolt, the RAF air base for London and took advantage of the occasions to supplement those provisions unavailable in France and to take advantage of the very favourable currency rate of exchange in purchasing the French franc against the pound sterling. These trips also included flying ‘The Brass’ to such venues as the Farnborough Air Show and the Brussels World Fair. It was on the return from a weekend in Brussels that I experienced my only near flying incident while in France. On the approach to Melun airfield while flying the Pembroke with some senior staff aboard I started a gentle direct approach to the runway and in so doing reduced throttle and airspeed as I lowered the landing gear and some flap. With the wheels locked down and half flap selected I attempted to increase power but found the throttles jammed, and with this configuration the aircraft was scheduled for a crash landing in woods short of the airfield. I decided to retract the wheels and flaps but with the power still available this was insufficient to maintain height. Fortunately, I had made a high approach to give the passengers a smooth ride, for the prescribed pattern for VIP flying was to give the least impression of being airborne. I was able to continue a flapless approach selecting the wheels down as we crossed the airfield boundary. The passengers were surprised when cars came on the runway to collect them and a tractor towed the aircraft and crew back to the dispersal. The passengers were blissfully unaware that their weekend junket nearly ended in disaster, and the navigator and I decided to stop off for a thankful libation on our drive back home. That was the first and last time I ever experienced throttle linkage jamming, although the jamming of flying controls by a tool dropped carelessly during maintenance inspections was something I had experienced. It was indeed fortunate that the incident did not arise while on approach to Brussels airport.

  It was while carrying out local flying from our airfield near Melun that I flew over the battlefields of the First World War. I had visited these with my father after the Second World War when he identified the areas where he had fought and the places where he was wounded. After a period of forty years of regrowth and cultivation it was often difficult from ground level to be sure of the battle areas of the Western Front with its network of entrenchment. However, the trench systems that stretched nearly 500 miles from the North Sea to the Alps could be seen quite clearly from the air as if revealed by X-ray. This was most evident when flying over the chalk-downs of the Somme where the armies of both sides burrowed like moles during the four years of fighting.

  My father received his baptism of fire in his nineteenth year amid the coalfields around Loos in September 1915 during the Second Ypres Offensive. He was fortunate to survive the slaughter at Loos that resulted in 60,000 British Empire casualties, the majority occurring during the first day of the battle, for little or no strategic gain. The same result occurred the following year on the Somme where he was not so lucky, when on 14 July 1916 in an attempt by the 9th (Scottish) Division to capture the village of Longueville either machine-gun or rifle fire struck him in the chest and he fell with many others short of their objective. The bullet entered the upper right side and exited at the lower left, and he described the effect of first staggering back as if hit by a sledgehammer before pitching forward as if kicked in the back by a mule. A stretcher party found him late in the day and after sheltering in a shell-hole during an intense artillery barrage they left him to die. Some twenty-four hours later some Dragoons retiring to their lines after the loss of their horses found him while sheltering from machine-gun fire. They carried him back to a casualty station that was unable to treat his wound, and after being taken to a rear dressing station he was then transferred to a field hospital where he was put aside to give priority to the wounded considered more likely to survive. Apparently, it was not his time to go and he eventually recovered in England with the recollections during his conscious moments of jolting rides over bumpy roads that brought blood from his froth filled lungs gurgling into his throat, and pictures of the horrific overcrowded human charnel houses as if painted by Hieronymus Bosch.

  The poets of the First World War of 1914 – 1918 produced many fine poems describing the appalling conditions that prevailed on the Western Front, and of those who passed through the valley of the shadow of death. None of them gave a more graphic description of trench warfare and the conditions under which the infantry lived and fought than Arthur Graeme West in his poem ‘Night Patrol’.

  . . . and everywhere the dead.

  Only the dead were always present – present

  As a vile sticky smell of rottenness;

  The rustling stubble and the earthy grass,

  The slimy pools – the dead men stank throughall,

  Pungent and sharp; as bodies loomed before,

  And as we passed they stank: then dulled away

  To that vague foetor, all encompassing,

  Infecting earth and air.

  As a result of a year spent in Flanders and on the Somme, my father decided it was time to leave the filthy, fetid and sodden trenches of the Western Front. He volunteered to transfer from the infantry to the emergent Tank Corps and he arrived back in Flanders as a tank commander in time for the Third Ypres Offensive in July 1917. The men who volunteered for the early tanks were similar to those who volunteered to crew the early submarines and they lived, worked and fought under similar conditions. Outside the tank the noise from the big diesel engine and the clacking, clanking caterpillar tracks was deafening. For the crew inside the confined space of the tank the noise was ear-splitting, the air was foul from the choking fumes and the heat intense from the engine. An eight men crew operated the tank and its guns while jammed between the engine and the guns in a dimly lit restricted space that allowed little movement or headroom. The tank crew consisted of the commander seated beside the driver with a Lewis machine-gun, he also operated the tank’s brakes requiring the full use of his strength; the driver controlled the engine and steered the tank tracks; two gear-men manned the two independent gearboxes that controlled the independent tank tracks; two gunners in the sponsons manned the two six-pounder ex-naval guns in a male tank, or two Lewis machine-guns in a female tank and two additional gunners manned two other Lewis machine-guns.

  Manoeuvring the tank required the coordinated actions of four men: the commander and the driver with the two gear-men to advance or stop and reverse the tank tracks alternately or in unison. As the noise inside the tank made speech impossible all communications and information were conveyed and orders given by hand signals, or tapped out on the engine for the two gear-men with their ears pressed against the sponsons of the tank. Hot steel splinters flew around the interior of the tank when it was hit by gunfire and shell fragments entered the tank through gapes in the armour plates. In addition, by 1917 the Germans had produced a long barrelled 12.75 mm Mauser anti-tank rifle that could penetrate the tank’s armour with t
he bullet ricocheting around the interior of the tank. I consider myself indeed fortunate that the working conditions in my P-51 Mustang during the Second World War, and in my F-86 Sabre during the Korean War, were congenial by comparison and far removed from those prevailing in the tanks during the First World War.

  The waterlogged conditions around Ypres not only made it almost impossible for the infantry to dig in but also to attack through the mud, water-filled shell-holes and a maze of barbed-wire in the face of intense machine-gun fire from the many small concrete pill-boxes just placed on top of the mud. Continuous artillery fire from the German guns sited on the higher ground overlooking the British positions harassed the attacking infantry and tanks. The continual rain and ensuing mud and flood water spelt disaster for men, horses and tanks alike, and under these conditions the manoeuvring of the tanks was limited to the few clearer areas with the Menin road from Ypres becoming a graveyard for the tanks. Despite this my father participated in three tank actions, losing his tank on each occasion. The first action during August resulted in his tank becoming immobilized soon after leaving the start line when the tank became bogged down in the morass around Ypres before being hit by artillery fire.

  In his second action in September he was supporting some fellow Scots in the 51st (Highland) Division assaulting Passchendaele Ridge. The Highlanders were wallowing in the mud and water desperately trying to clear the barbed-wire while pinned down by machine-gun fire from one of the German pill-boxes. The tank’s six-pounder guns had no effect on the concrete casemate that required a direct hit from heavy artillery or a grenade attack through the embrasures. My father directed his tank to climb on top of the pill-box and by alternately advancing and reversing the tracks the tank drove the pill-box down into the soft mud entombing the machine-gun crew inside. Shortly afterwards the tank’s engine overheated and the two gearboxes controlling the tracks seized-up causing the tank to stall close by the pill-box when it became a stationary target for the German guns. The tank caught fire when hit in the rear and the crew abandoned the tank and made it back to the British lines with only minor injuries.

  His third and last action involved an attack down the St Julian-Poelcappelle road to capture the village of Poelcappelle, only to lose it when the heavy rain made it impossible to consolidate their gains and forced the tanks to withdraw. My father’s tank, while returning to the start line, became immobilized when it lost a track and the crew returned to their lines aboard another tank.

  There is no better description of the conditions that prevailed during Third Ypres, when the rainfall was the heaviest for thirty years, than that written by Paul Nash with his painter’s eye while serving as an official war artist in Flanders. His painting ‘The Menin Road’ brilliantly conveys the scene during the battles of Third Ypres – No pen or drawing can convey this country – the normal setting of the battles taking place day and night, month after month. Evil and the incarnate fiend alone can be master of this war, and no glimmer of God’s hand is seen anywhere. Sunset and sunrise are blasphemous, they are mockeries to man, only the black rain out of the bruised and swollen clouds all through the bitter black of night is fit atmosphere in such land. The rain drives on, the stinking mud becomes evilly yellow, the shell-holes fill with green-white water, the roads and tracks are covered in inches of slime, the black dying trees ooze and sweat and the shells never cease. They alone plunge overhead, tearing away the rotting tree stumps . . . annihilating maiming, maddening, they plunge into the grave which is this land; one huge grave, and cast upon it the poor dead. It is unspeakable, godless, hopeless.

  Before the capture of Passchendaele Ridge by the Canadian Corps in November 1917 that effectively closed down the Third Ypres Offensive, the perpetual quagmire forced the remnants of the demoralized, emasculated and immobile Tank Corps to move south for the first major tank battle of the war at Cambrai in November 1917. Before doing so my father celebrated his 21st birthday and his majority on 25 October, St Chrispin’s Day, becoming eligible to vote for his country, as well as to bleed and die for it! Of all the statistics of the First World War none are more inconceivable or horrific to contemplate than those of the three months of fighting during the Third Ypres Offensive in 1917 that gained a total advance of 4 miles at the cost of over 400,000 British Empire casualties. This figure compares in its magnitude with those suffered during the Somme Offensive the previous year over a slightly shorter period, but with the horrific difference of 90,000 casualties listed as ‘missing’ and 40,000 never found who died in the waters of the battlefield and were interred in the mud of Flanders.

  The appalling conditions that prevailed in Flanders rendered the tanks largely immobile, vulnerable and unproductive during the Third Ypres Offensive. However, the tank offensive at Cambrai over good tank country with rolling downland free from craters and standing water, offered a chance for the Tank Corps to redeem itself. My father’s contribution to the Battle of Cambrai was short-lived without him firing a shot at the enemy. As the tanks advanced a thick mist covered the front line around Havrincourt Wood hindering the manoeuvring of the tanks as they moved towards the German trenches. My father walked ahead of his tank guiding his section of three tanks by means of a red (Port) and green (Starboard) torch through the gaps cut in the barbed-wire. A heavy German artillery barrage opened up on the tanks as they approached the first German trench and my father’s lead tank received a direct hit by a heavy calibre shell, killing the seven crew members inside the tank. My father fell in front of his blazing tank with multiple injuries from shell fragments to his back, arms and legs, while the remaining tanks and supporting infantry passed and successfully crossed the first of the three German trenches. Later that morning some stretcher bearers found him and carried him back to a casualty station. Evacuated to a hospital in southern England, many shell fragments were removed from his body. His wounds kept him in hospital for several months. One wound in his back was large enough to place a fist, and another shell fragment had removed most of the calf muscle of his right leg. However, many small fragments remained and for the rest of his life they moved around his body, appearing at times on the surface of his skin. He commented that his recovery from the battlefield at Cambrai was far less traumatic than had been his experience at the Battle of the Somme; but this time there was the mental anguish at the loss of his entire crew. In losing his fourth tank in action, a quirk of fortune and the fog saved him from joining them at the moment of their destiny, on the Battle Roll of Honour. Fortes Fortuna adjuvat! – indeed!! In passing through his majority, three years of war had aged him, mentally and physically, at least a full decade.

  He returned to the 1st Tank Brigade on the Somme in time for the great German spring offensive of 1918, and the British Fourth Army’s counter attack at Hamel in July that checked the final German offensive. The Battle of Hamel prepared the Allies for the last great battle of the war at Amiens in August 1918 that decided the outcome of the fighting on the Western Front. Prior to the start of the Battle of Amiens my father flew on several reconnaissance flights with the RAF to coordinate operations between the tanks of 1st Tank Brigade, the Canadian Corps, the artillery and the RAF. On the second day of the offensive on 11 August 1918 his aircraft was shot down by ground fire and the aircraft crashed killing the pilot. My father received serious and extensive injuries for the third time and these injuries ended his war at the age of twenty-two, and he began his long and painful battle of rehabilitation. Post-war studies by the RAF reveal that by the end of the war 64 per cent of the pilots and observers flying on the Western Front became casualties. After many months in hospital by virtue of a combination of his youth, strength and luck he was able to return to civil life with a full disability pension that a grateful nation exempted from income tax. He was to survive this most horrible of all wars until his nineties. Comparing my father’s war with my own experience of war at the same age always leaves me feeling humble, inadequate and very fortunate.

  Died some, pro patria,


  Non dulce non et décor . . ..

  Walked eye-deep in Hell

  Believing in old men’s lies,

  Then unbelieving

  Came home, home to a lie,

  Home to many deceits,

  Home to old lies and new infamy.

  Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

  My duties at AAFCENT involved the targeting and delivery of tactical nuclear weapons under the NATO Atomic Strike Plan. For the safe delivery of the weapon by the fighter-bombers and a safe escape from the nuclear blast, the aircraft used a loft technique called Low Altitude Bombing System (LABS). The modus operandi called for a high speed, low-level approach to the target area to avoid radar detection. Then at a predetermined speed and distance from the target, the pilot pulled up into a loop at a constant high G and when near the vertical the weapon was released; the bomb being lobbed upwards towards the target. At a prescribed altitude it deployed a parachute; and descended towards the target. The bomb detonated at a preset height above the target. Meanwhile, the pilot, after releasing his weapon, completed his loop, rolling on his descent while diving steeply for a fast, low level return; hopefully, avoiding the consequences of the nuclear blast.

  Headquarters considered it helpful that I should learn something of the consequences of my targeting with a short course at the US Army Atomic Weapons School in Germany, and I drove to a small town in Bavaria near Munich. Ironically, Oberammergau, the town chosen by the US Army for its Doomsday school, is more famous for the Passion play performed once every ten years. The play is performed entirely by the villagers, and initiated from a desire by the villagers in the seventeenth century to ward off the Black Plague sweeping across Europe. Fortunately, I attended the course in late winter and not only avoided the summer plague of tourists but was able to experience that unique and interesting German carnival of Fasching, or Shrovetide, that allows the dispensation of mortal sins prior to Lent. The inhabitants of Munich enjoy two such festivals where the consumption of strong beer is prodigious, with the second occurring after the harvest with the Oktoberfest. By all accounts both festivals were an inspiration for Martin Luther in his fight against the sale of indulgences to Rome. I stayed in a delightful small Bavarian style hotel and the close proximity of Garmische-Partenkirchen enabled me to enjoy some skiing on the Zugspitze. My return to France was via Mittenwald on the German-Austrian border for more skiing before crossing the border into Austria to initiate a survey of the ski resorts of Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France. So that one-way and another during my three years in France and afterwards I managed to ski at most of the major ski resorts of Europe. After I retired from the RAF my skiing experience was extended to include Iran, Japan, New Zealand and North America.