Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers

by Bruce Lewis

We suggested earlier that the rear gunner might have occupied the most dangerous position in the aircraft. There is no doubt, however, that over the target where the flak was normally at its thickest, the bomb aimer was exceptionally vulnerable. Stationed in the nose, which was constructed only of transparent perspex and a thin metal skin, he lay stretched full length along the floor of his small compartment, his face above the lens of the bomb-sight, his whole body exposed to any piece of white-hot, jagged shrapnel that might enter the front of his plane at any moment during that crucial bombing run. As a bomb aimer, Harold Chad-wick worked out his own solution to this and other problems.

  Over the years Harold Chadwick has carved out a way of life that, in many ways, is that of a 20th Century Robinson Crusoe. He lives in the foothills that look down on the Mediterranean coast of Southern Spain.

  As companions he has a variety of animals – a very old horse, goats, turkeys, chickens, and many dogs and cats whom he and his wife, Cynthia, have rescued over a period of time from certain destruction. Harold’s first action each morning is to climb down the deep well that he dug for himself and his family years ago when they first came to Spain. When he reaches water level he has a brief chat with his friend Ernie. Ernie is an eel. An old Andalucian farmer advised Harold to pop an eel into the well to keep the drinking water pure. Ernie, undoubtedly grateful for his permanent home, has never failed in his task. It would be beyond the grasp of Harold’s Spanish neighbours to associate their friend, the ‘funny’ Englishman with the sharp jerky movements – el hombre who is never still, with Flight Lieutenant H. Chadwick, DFC, of 617 Squadron – one of the specially chosen bomb aimers who dropped the first of the mighty ‘earthquake’ bombs.

  Harold Chadwick was born on 14 September, 1922, in Nottingham. Later on the family moved to Uttoxeter, and when he left school he went to work in Woolworths as a trainee manager. He did not take kindly to the routine, and anyway, his ambitions lay elsewhere.

  During the First World War his father, also Harold Chadwick, had transferred from the cavalry to the RFC. As a scout pilot he flew Spads, Bristol Fighters, Sopwith Triplanes and SE5s – and was shot down twice. Harold senior was lucky to survive those years. Harold junior had always admired his father’s exploits in the air and was determined to become a fighter pilot himself.

  The Second World War was at the end of its first year, and the daylight phase of the Battle of Britain had just been fought and won by the Royal Air Force. As soon as Harold was 18 years old, the youngest permissible age to start aircrew training, he volunteered to fly with the RAF. Neville Crisp, who had been his friend at Alleynes Grammar School, applied at the same time. They were both accepted for training as pilots.

  At an RAF station near Cambridge the new cadets were put through a flying aptitude test before graduating to Tiger Moths for their Initial Flying Training. This successfully completed, they were shipped over to Canada to take part in the Empire Air Training Scheme. The young trainees were sent on sister ships, former Dutch cargo vessels, and it was the alphabetical division by name that decided which vessel they sailed. Chadwick and Crisp, therefore, had no problem in keeping together. They reached Nova Scotia without incident. The other ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat. There were no survivors.

  Everything went well for Harold at first, flying Stearman PT17 biplanes and clocking up some sixty hours on these machines at Calgary, Alberta. Then, to his delight they were posted over the border to the USA for a session on Vultees, finally graduating on to the Harvard Advanced Trainer. But his Harvard instructor, an ex-Eagle Squadron flyer, must have suspected that his pupil was harbouring a ‘guilty secret’. Taking him up one day he put the machine into every aerobatic manoeuvre known to man. After being thrown violently about the sky for minutes on end, the unfortunate Harold literally ‘coughed up’ his ‘secret’. He was most horribly air sick.

  But it was not just the result of aerobatics. All through his training, every time he took off he had thrown up. To make matters worse, this was nearly always accompanied by prolonged nose-bleeding. It was to his credit that he had managed to conceal his affliction for such a long time, and indeed had done so well on his course in spite of it. Now, with only days to go before receiving his wings, he had been found out.

  His friend ‘Spud’ Crisp gained his wings as a pilot and eventually finished up flying Coastal Command Beaufighters. Distressed beyond measure as he watched his fellow cadets being rewarded for their efforts, Harold cast about for some way of continuing to fly. Like so many before him, he sought the shortest course that would qualify him for flying duties in any aircrew capacity. It was obvious that the officers in charge had no idea how serious his air sickness really was.

  Back in Canada, at Picton, Ontario, he began training for a new aircrew category – a Nav/B. Essentially this was a bomb aimer with a working knowledge of navigation. The course was short, only 14 weeks. The navigation part of the syllabus had already been covered during pilot training, while the bombing practice was not particularly taxing. He passed out among the top three and received an immediate commission. At the same time he was awarded his bomb aimer’s brevet – the single wing with a B surrounded by an oakleaf cluster.

  Harold’s air sickness never left him, nor did the nasal bleeding. Invariably, when returning from a mission over Germany he would be plagued with the stench of his own vomit, while his oxygen mask would be slimy with blood. Yet, lying in the dark isolation of the Lancaster’s front compartment he was able to conceal his suffering from the rest of the crew. In spite of all, he was eventually to join the elite by becoming one of Bomber Command’s most skilful bomb aimers.

  He must have done particularly well on his course in Canada because he was retained as an instructor at Picton. After six months, however, he came back to Britain, and was posted to RAF Lichfield, an aircrew reception centre. It was now around the middle of 1943.

  The time had come to find himself a crew. This involved a haphazard process of wandering around and trying to assess pilots, navigators, wireless operators and gunners purely from their appearance. It really was a case of ‘pot-luck’. Nobody had any means of measuring another man’s standard of competence in the air until such time as they flew together.

  As time went on, more and more people formed themselves into crews, and he wondered if he might be left as odd man out. Then he spotted an ‘old’, grey-haired Sergeant pilot hanging about waiting for the NAAFI tea wagon to arrive. To Harold he looked steady and reliable. His name was Arthur Fearn, a man in his thirties, at least eleven years older than himself. They agreed to team up, and then between them brought together the other three members of the crew – Nav, Wop/AG and AG – an all-Sergent crew with the exception of Pilot Officer Harold Chadwick.

  At Fradley OTU, still not far from Lichfield, they gained experience as a team, flying Wellingtons. Nearing the completion of their course, they were sent on a ‘Nickel’, the code name for a leaflet raid. Four Wellingtons with their trainee crews took off that night and dropped ‘bumph’ over Paris. Only Harold’s crew and one other returned – a 50% loss.

  They converted to Halifaxes at Swinderby HCU, collecting two more Sergeants, a flight engineer and a mid-upper gunner to man the extra positions. Unlike the Wellington, Harold was no longer in isolation; he now shared the nose position in the Halifax with the wireless operator and the navigator. His confidence in the crew was growing, especially in the ability of Arthur as a pilot. Arthur was not going to do anything silly, not with a wife and family to go home to.

  Conversion to Lancasters when they reached 57 Squadron, at Scampton, in Lincolnshire, meant that Harold regained his solo position in the nose. On the ‘Lane’ the navigator and wireless operator were stationed further aft in their own cabin.

  57 Squadron had been operating steadily since the beginning of the war and had always suffered higher than average casualties. On top of that, Sergeant Fearn’s crew had chosen just about the worst time to join an operational squadron. It was the
Autumn of 1943 and ‘Bomber Harris’ was ready to throw his command into an unprecedented attack on Berlin, in a battle that was to be fought to the death through the coming winter and into March of the following year.

  Their baptism came on 3 September. They were scheduled for a raid on ‘Big City’. The Bomber Command Diaries state that because of the high casualty rates among Halifaxes and Stirlings in recent Berlin raids the heavy force was composed only of Lancasters. On some of the Berlin raids that followed, Halifaxes, and even the lumbering Stirlings, were used again to make up the numbers. It was not the most successful of attacks, many of the bombs falling short because of inaccurate marking. Twenty-two of the aircraft were lost out of a force of 316 Lancasters.

  To Harold and the other inexperienced members of Arthur Fearn’s crew the long trip across Germany seemed nothing less than awful. They witnessed Lancasters being shot from the sky, not only over the target but also on the flights there and back. Shocked by the night’s events, they concluded that there was little hope of completing more than one or two such trips.

  Yet, as the weeks went by they somehow survived, and, because of the date, Harold was to recall one incident as being particularly poignant. It was over Berlin yet again. They had just dropped their bombs when a blazing Lancaster drifted across their path slightly above them. In what seemed like slow motion, the doomed aircraft slid over to port. He saw the rear door of the fuselage open and three figures tumble out into the flak-filled night. Within moments their chutes had billowed out. Then, still with four of the crew injured, trapped or dead inside, the stricken bomber plunged in an ever steepening dive into the target. It was Christmas Eve.

  Being commissioned, Harold lived in different quarters from the NCOs. He slept in a corrugated-iron Nissen hut with beds for twelve officers. During his time with 57 Squadron, from his place in a corner of the hut, he saw every other bed change ownership at least twice as the occupants went missing. It was the duty of each WAAF batwoman to look after the domestic welfare of two junior officers. Harold felt sorry for these women, often ‘motherly’ types, who, with tears in their eyes, collected up a small bundle of possessions belonging to yet another of ‘their officers’ who would not be coming back.

  Throughout that terrible winter Arthur Fearn’s crew soldiered on. The losses mounted all the time until, on 24/25 March, 1944, Harris staged his last big raid on Berlin. It was to cost Bomber Command, on that single night, the loss of hundreds of aircrew as seventy-two aircraft were shot from the sky. And only five days later the command was to suffer its greatest tragedy ever – ninety-five bombers lost on a disastrous mission to Nuremberg. More aircraft ditched in the sea, and a further seventy-one were heavily damaged in crashes back in England. But Harold and the rest of Arthur Fearn’s team had moved on to something more specialized by then, as we shall see shortly.

  In all, Arthur Fearn and his crew completed nine raids on Berlin, interspersed with missions to other heavily defended targets such as Mannheim, twice, Frankfurt and Leipzig. Harold remembers one Berlin trip in particular. They were on their bombing run and Harold was guiding Arthur up to the aiming point: ‘Left, left, steady … left, left … right … steady’. Harold pressed the ‘tit’: ‘Bombs gone!’. But they had not gone. There was a total hang-up. Feverishly, with heavy flak bursting all round, and searchlights slicing perilously close, he checked his bomb panel a second time, re-setting each switch in turn. But the 4000-pound ‘Cookie’ and its surrounding canisters of incendiaries remained obstinately in place.

  Arthur’s voice came over the intercom: Tor God’s sake get the bloody things sorted out. We can’t stooge around this place all night!’ Harold realized he would have to try releasing the load manually. Grabbing an emergency oxygen bottle and clawing his way back to the body of the Lancaster, he hastily removed the inspection covers above the bomb bay. But he was unable to reach the hooks that retained the 4000-pounder. Seizing the fire-axe he started chopping away at the aluminium floor. Arthur’s voice came through again on the head-set: This is too bloody dicey. I’m going to get away from the target and head for home.’

  Harold chopped and chopped with desperation. He knew well enough that the extra fuel consumed by carrying this load on a return flight could mean dry tanks before reaching England. Ditching in the sea with the extra weight of bombs would reduce their chances to nil. At last he made a hole large enough to start work on the actual retaining hooks. With the bomb doors open, he lay in the path of a howling gale. His hands were so frozen he feared the axe might slip from his grasp at any second. Eventually the great steel drum fell away, taking one of the bomb doors with it. The remaining door closed and every member of the crew breathed more freely. A moment later the rear gunner reported a large explosion which lit up the blackness below. It was later confirmed that ‘Harold’s bomb’ had landed smack in the centre of Kassel, a large industrial town engaged in manufacturing war weapons, including the V1 rocket.

  They were too short of petrol to land at base in Lincolnshire, so put down at Waterbeach, near Cambridge, still with the load of incendiaries on board. Harold was uneasy, wondering if in some way he was to blame for the ‘hang-up’. The following day they flew back to Scampton, and their kite, E Easy, was wheeled away for inspection. When Harold heard the official report from the armament officer he was filled with relief. E Easy was a brand new Lancaster. Like all its contemporaries its underside had been sprayed with matt black paint before leaving the factory. A small ball-bearing had become gummed up with paint. When the bomb doors were opened the ball-bearing was supposed to leave the socket and complete the electrical bombing circuit, but in this case it had stuck fast, rendering the system inoperative. On such small items hung men’s lives.

  This thought was much in Harold’s mind when they returned from one raid in the early hours of the morning. As the crew climbed wearily from their bomber they noticed the station ambulance drawn up beside one of the squadron’s aircraft. A bloodstained figure was being lifted into the back of the vehicle. On inquiry Harold was told that it was the bomb aimer who had been killed by flak. A fragment of metal had entered below his chin, spiralled up through his skull and sliced off the top of his head. Harold wandered round to the nose of the Lancaster and looked up. There was a hole no bigger than a two shilling (10p) piece in the aluminium underside.

  One of Harold’s duties was to discharge ‘Window’ down the flare chute on a carefully timed basis while over enemy territory. The heavy metal strips were packed in compact blocks. From that day on he lined the floor of his cabin with a generous supply of these solid parcels. (Unlike American aircraft, British bombers had a minimum of armour plating.) On more than one occasion after that, he spotted holes underneath the Lancaster when they returned from a mission. Once a sharp sliver of flak penetrated right through the parcels and, although its velocity was much reduced, it cut through his flying boot and buried itself in the calf of his right leg.

  Their tally of trips to Berlin should have been ten. One night they were flying across the North Sea, still climbing steadily, when the Lancaster was attacked by a Ju88 night fighter and the starboard outer engine set on fire. Arthur threw the bomber all over the sky while his two gunners replied as best they could with their Brownings. For some reason the German broke off his attack and disappeared into the night. Although the crew managed to get the fire under control their aircraft was in no shape to continue the long journey to Berlin. But Harold had what almost amounted to a phobia about being involved in an ‘abortive sortie’ – returning to base without bombing. (The Kassel incident had counted as an ‘op’ because a target had been bombed, even if it was not the primary one.) After some argument he persuaded his skipper to press on the comparatively short distance to Heligoland, and drop their load on the heavy fortifications there. Over the island the Germans opened up at them with everything they had, so Harold aimed at the gun flashes. After the line-overlap photographs had been developed and examined the crew were credited with their �
��op’.

  Harold was now completely satisfied that Arthur’s crew was the finest in 5 Group, if not in the whole of Bomber Command! It was a standing joke that their skipper was also the oldest Sergeant pilot in existence. The Commanding Officer of 5 Group, Air Vice-Marshal The Hon R. Cochrane, accompanied by his chief, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, visited 57 Squadron on a morale-building exercise following heavy losses. After the customary pep-talk, aircrew were invited to express themselves freely. When Cochrane turned to Arthur Fearn and asked him what was in his mind as he approached the target, Arthur, always outspoken, replied, ‘Getting through the damn thing as quickly as possible and then heading home like a bat out of hell!’ His crew reckoned that this retort had scuppered their skipper’s chances of promotion for ever.

  Towards the end of their time with 57 Squadron and when the outfit had been transferred to East Kirkby, Arthur was at last made a Pilot Officer. His bomb aimer was now a Flight Lieutenant, but in a few weeks, by an unprecedented promotional leap, Arthur caught him up. After a raid in which the squadron sustained particularly heavy casualties, including the loss of both its Flight Commanders, Harold’s skipper, as the longest surviving pilot, took over as one of the Flight Commanders and was immediately promoted to Flight Lieutenant. Engineer Trevor Davies became a Pilot Officer. The rest of the crew remained NCOs.

  Harold had a high regard for Sergeant Howard Dewar, the rear gunner. He was a Canadian, a tough ex-lumberjack, who seemed to be without fear. Together with his fellow gunner in the mid-upper turret, Wilson Williams, he had saved the crew from disaster on at least two occasions. Then one night, on yet another trip to Berlin, an extraordinary thing happened. They were approaching the target when they were attacked by a Messerschmitt 109. Arthur went into his usual corkscrewing routine to try to throw the German off his tail. During this manoeuvre the crew temporarily lost communication with each other. Nevertheless the fighter was foiled and they went on to bomb the city.