Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers

by Bruce Lewis

  I suppose it was the Junkers that did it. Or at least not so much the Junkers as the Spitfire that was chasing it. We were outside the tuckshop during a mid-morning school break when we heard the grinding growl of unsynchronized German aero-engines. It was the summer of 1940. The Battle of Britain was at its height and schoolboys knew all about these technical matters. The twin-engine Luftwaffe bomber flew low over the school, and then, thrill of thrills, came the shapely little Spitfire in hot pursuit, the distinctive whistle from its Merlin engine sounding almost like the wind itself.

  In an instant the two planes had passed from sight over the Wiltshire downs. Later we learned that the Spitfire had shot down the Ju88 on a bleak corner of the Plain to the west of Salisbury. But what really set us boys on fire was the news that the victorious Spitfire pilot was Eric Marrs, who, not so long ago, had been a pupil at our school. As far as Dauntsey’s School was concerned, the RAF could not have had a more effective recruiting officer than Marrs. As for me, this was the day I jilted the Royal Navy after a passionate affair that had lasted more than ten years.

  I was 16 years old at the time, born on 6 November, 1923. The following year, on leaving school, I started broadcasting as a radio actor with the BBC Repertory Company. The Drama Department had been evacuated from London to Bristol because of the bombing. It was the break of a lifetime, and a great privilege for one so young to be in the company of then famous people doing work that brought me so much pleasure and satisfaction. Under normal circumstances it would probably have been the doorway to an exciting career. However, the ‘war was on’ and, like many thousands of others, I knew I had to do my bit.

  My father, who was a professor, wanted me to give up broadcasting and go to university, where, until I had completed my three-year course, I would have been exempt from war service. To my mind such an existence would have been impossible – to sit studying in complete safety while others of my age were dying for their country was not on. My father himself, as a 20-year-old subaltern in the 8th Devons, had been badly wounded on the Somme in 1916. He had been a fine athlete, but the First World War stopped all that when it took away his arm.

  So on my 18th birthday, with visions of that avenging Spitfire of the previous year still clear in my mind, I walked into the RAF recruiting office and volunteered for flying duties. Eventually, called before an Aircrew Attestation Board with thirty others, I spent the morning doing basic written examinations in mathematics and English and filling in intelligence tests. In the afternoon we appeared before a board of officers who fired questions at us of a ‘Why do you want to kill Germans?’ variety.

  From those tested that day, three of us were accepted for aircrew. One, who turned up in ATC uniform wearing gliding wings, was accepted for pilot training. Another, good at maths, was designated as navigator, while I was to become a wireless operator/air gunner – with the promise that I could re-apply to train as a pilot ‘at a later date’ (something which, in the event, I never did). The Spitfire suddenly seemed a long way off. Oddly, the passing of that dream did not worry me much. I just felt elated that I was going to fly anyway.

  It was a bit of an anticlimax when we were given little winged badges to wear in our lapels, and told we were now on ‘Deferred Service’. The RAF would call us when it was ready. That call came in March, 1942. It was a shame that a fine service like the Royal Air Force should have tolerated such an unworthy reception camp as Padgate, near Warrington. Enthusiastic young volunteers entered this gateway to their new career only to be cursed at, degraded and insulted by the low-quality types on the permanent staff. I was well prepared for all this bullying nonsense, having tasted the rigours of life in public school, but some of those lads were away from home for the first time. I used to feel sorry for the ones I heard sobbing in our hut at night.

  What a contrast when we arrived at Blackpool to start our basic training. Ultra-smart drill and PT instructors; efficient classroom teachers; wizards at morse code – especially two civil servants in striped trousers, one short and portly, the other tall and thin – inevitably known as ‘Dot’ and ‘Dash’. To hear them signalling to each other at well over 25 words a minute was like a symphony. Unfortunately, not every cadet could ‘take’ morse and those who failed were remustered as ‘straight’ air gunners. One pupil disappeared for a week and was eventually discovered sleeping rough in an air-raid shelter. He was muttering to himself in morse, having gone completely out of his mind.

  At pay parade we received 30/- per fortnight. After deductions for the PSI fund and other mysterious organizations we did not have a great deal left. Nevertheless, entertainment was cheap. We could see a show at the Tower Theatre for 4d. Stars were plentiful – Arthur Askey, Max Wall, Michael Bentine were just a few. I went to have a chat with Arthur in his dressing room and took a couple of my pals along to impress them with my show biz contacts!

  On one occasion we were all gathered in the vast Tower Ballroom to hear a lecture about the Poles, of whom there were many in the RAF in Blackpool. The speaker was introduced as a world expert on Poland and its people. Who should walk on the stage in Flight Lieutenant’s uniform but Reggie Hill, my former history master. Turning to my mate, Pete Bishop, I said, ‘I know him!’ My reputation as a chap who knew everything, and everybody, became difficult to refute. During the rest of my stay by the sea, Reggie, who enjoyed a smoke, used to welcome my cigarette ration, while my friends and I never went short of chocolates from the Officers’ Mess.

  One of my most terrifying experiences ever occurred during this period. We cadets were scheduled in rotation to do ‘fire-watch’ duty at night in the larger buildings. My turn came to look after Woolworths. The extensive area on the first floor above the store had been converted into a morse instruction room. Bare trestle tables with benches occupied the whole floor space. With careful precision, morse keys were screwed in rows at three-foot intervals along the tops of either side of these tables. The black shiny knobs appeared to stretch into infinity. It was like a parade of soldiers, or the dead straight lines of headstones in a military cemetery.

  I occupied my time wandering about the building and climbing up on to the flat roof and staring out to sea. But it was a chilly night and I soon took up position in the instructor’s chair facing the tables. Time passed slowly. Only the light on my small desk fought to penetrate the gloom of the vast interior. In diminishing return as they faded away into the shadows the parallel rows of bakelite knobs reflected back the light. As I contemplated these objects, so familiar to me during the day, my mind started to dwell on the hundreds of hands that must have pressed those silent keys. How many of those hands now lay immobile in death? Before long I was ‘seeing’ those keys moving up and down in unison. Horrified, unable to turn my back as these noiseless messages were being transmitted from another world, I sat transfixed until dawn. Then, when I glanced in a mirror, I saw my face had turned a sickly green. Group Captain Leonard Cheshire once said that aircrew were better off without too much imagination!

  After three months those of us fortunate enough to complete the course participated in a grand parade. As we marched along the promenade, toting our heavy First World War Lee Enfield rifles, the salute was taken by Sir Archibald Sinclair, complete with morning coat and winged collar. He was the Minister for Air. ‘I suppose you know him,’ whispered Pete Bishop. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘and considering how little he knows about aviation, I wouldn’t want to.’

  One might have supposed, with all the fuss, that this was the culmination of something important. In fact it was only the beginning. The wireless operator’s course was longer than any other in aircrew. Still only Aircraftmen 2nd class, we proceeded to No 1 Signals School at Compton Bassett, near Calne, in Wiltshire. In a matter of months we had to try to absorb all the technicalities of radio, virtually double our morse sending/receiving speed to twenty-two words per minute, and cover related subjects including navigation, beam approach, aircraft recognition and radar. Such a course would have been sprea
d over three years in peacetime.

  Pete Bishop and I looked at each other with grins of satisfaction when, at the end of it all, we sewed our ‘sparks’ on our right sleeves. Nothing that we achieved subsequently meant quite as much to us as those ‘sparks’. They represented months of unremitting study, and only about a third of our original intake had made it. There was no outward sign of an increase in rank, but an appreciative RAF turned us into Aircraftmen 1st class.

  Because of bottlenecks in the system, although we had now been in the service for a year, we had to endure a period of waiting. I was posted as a temporary ground wireless operator to 7 Flying Instructors School, Upavon, Wiltshire. This was a First World War aerodrome, consisting of well-built permanent buildings and a grass airfield with a dip in the middle. By a coincidence I had once flown as a schoolboy from this station on a brief trip in an Avro Anson. If I could avoid it, I was not going to spend my time in a stuffy signals cabin. I badgered every pilot in sight to let me fly with them in their Airspeed Oxfords. Soon I was being allowed to take over the controls in straight and level flight. On one occasion I flew with a Flight Lieutenant Mansell on a cross-country and, although only a cadet, was designated as the crew’s wireless operator.

  My Signals CO, impressed with my keeness to fly, presented me with the Log Book of a dead airman. ‘Keep a record of your trips in there, Lewis, until you get your own Log Book at Gunnery School.’ At the time I prized that book above all other possessions.

  It was while at Upavon that I saw my first crash. A poor old lumbering Whitley, lost and in trouble, tried to put down in the dark. It finished up in the sunken part of the airfield and burst into flames. The crew were reduced to charred effigies. Later, when it was all over, I remember staring at the melted money spread over the wireless operator’s hip-bone. It may be hard to believe, but a handful of General Duties types chose this occasion to look at us aircrew cadets with pitying contempt. One said, ‘What price aircrew now? Ten a penny! That’s all you’ re bloody worth!’

  Among my happier memories of Upavon were my visits to the station library. The Sergeant ‘librarian’ would normally be sitting with his feet up on the anthracite stove, reading an American comic. He was the famous Freddie Mills, that most courageous of light-heavyweight boxers. Beating everyone in his own class, he was forced to take on the heavier guys and always gave a good account of himself. His cheerful face had become concave, like the moon, because of the bludgeoning received in many fights. We had many an amiable chat, little realizing that in years to come we would share a television news show together.

  The time came to press on. In April, 1943, we travelled to Madley, in Herefordshire, home of No 4 Radio Flying School. Combined with liberal doses of ‘ground tuition’, we also took to the air in what can only be described as ‘flying classrooms’. The DH Dominie was a ‘joke’ aircraft, originally designed as a biplane airliner. With a bored pilot flying round in circles, a harassed Corporal Instructor and four miserable pupils trying to tap out morse while on the point of throwing up, as the underpowered kite wallowed about the sky like a one-winged duck, it was all stiflingly claustrophobic.

  I was mad about flying, but not in DH Dominies. Messages somehow got transmitted from air to ground, and from ground to air in spite of it all. It was a pity that the transmitter/receivers were obsolete, and bore little relation to the much more sophisticated equipment we were to use in Bomber Command. The station appeared to be run by corporals who laboured manfully to turn us into Wop/AGs. They were supported by a few senior NCOs, but officers, if there were any, obviously had something better to do than take part in the training function.

  Again Pete Bishop and I made the grade quite comfortably, thanks to the Corporals, and along with other successful pupils we were promoted to Leading Aircraftmen. This time we did not stitch on our award – the LAC ‘propeller’. It hardly seemed worth the effort. We had confidence that in a little over six weeks, after our air gunner’s course, we would be sewing on our Sergeant’s tapes.

  In fact we had overestimated the time it would take. We actually completed the introduction to our second trade in three weeks and five days. No 8 Air Gunnery School was situated in glorious Scottish countryside, at Evanton, north of Inverness. The camp had a backdrop of magnificent mountains, while the runways stretched almost to the edge of the Moray Firth.

  Each morning at dawn we woke to the sound of pipes. The pipers, in a highland version of RAF uniform complete with kilt, would descend the mountainside or rise out of ditches and other mysterious hideaways and meet at the camp gate. During this period of coming together we cadets had to be up, washed, shaved and dressed ready to fall in behind them for a march down to the hangars. There, mounted on a rostrum, the padre offered a short prayer, the RAF flag was broken to the sound of a bugle, the parade was dismissed and the day’s work began. It was unforgettable – the beautiful sunrises, the dark silhouettes of the aircraft, the skirl of the pipes.

  If the DH Dominie was a joke, the Blackburn Botha was beyond a joke. Originally designed as a torpedo bomber, this high-wing, twin-engine, underpowered aircraft proved to be useless for its intended purpose. It was relegated to the role of flying back and forth over the sea, while trainee air gunners took pot-shots at canvas drogues towed by single-engine Martinets. The pilots engaged in these exercises were not among the most enthusiastic I had met. They took care never to stray far from base as the ‘Bloody Botha’ was unable to maintain height on one engine should the other fail.

  It was a rule that the pupils had to wear full flying kit as if equipped for a night trip over Germany. This gear consisted of silk under-combinations, ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ flying suits, parachute harness, Mae West life-jackets, three pairs of gloves, flying helmet and oxygen masks. In the sweltering heat of a brilliant summer, four sweating pupils stood in the forward cabin, beside a non-communicative shirt-sleeved pilot, waiting their turn to crawl down a narrow tunnel which led to the egg-shaped Fraser-Nash turret.

  It was bad enough for all of us, but for ‘Paddy’ it must have been purgatory. A 6 foot 3 inch giant of a man, ‘Paddy’ had transferred from the Irish Guards in order to see some action in the air. On one occasion he was scheduled to enter the turret before me. After an inordinate amount of time, during which no firing had taken place, the pilot impatiently told me to go and investigate. I found poor ‘Paddy’ in the pipe, near the upward bend into the turret itself. What with his size, and the amount of bulky clothing he was wearing, he had stuck fast, unable to move forwards or backwards. Similarly clad, I was almost too exhausted to return and carry out my own air-firing by the time I had managed to drag him backwards along the tunnel. As a weight-losing exercise I never found a better.

  In the classroom we had some inspirational guidance in Aircraft Recognition from a tour-expired Flying Officer air-gunner. Armed with a multitude of models he would zoom in and attack us from all angles, coming up from floor level, or standing on a desk and diving down unexpectedly. Using a projector, he would flash perhaps a head-on view of a Ju88 on to the screen for a split second. ‘Come on boys! What is it? Quick! Quick! Your life depends on it.’ He went to infinite trouble to cut out endless jigsaw puzzles, the pieces made up of characteristic features of a variety of planes. He was a natural teacher, always happy to answer our questions, and we learned a great deal from him. He turned what some of us had considered a dull subject into a topic of endless fascination.

  We passed out on air-to-air firing, air-to-ground firing and night firing. It was perhaps strange, but at that school, night firing produced no worse marks than those achieved during the day. The answer was simple. During the ‘night tests’, which anyway took place during the day, cadets were ordered to don goggles fitted with dark lenses. Naturally, with no one in the turret to observe us, we all forgot to do so, that is, with the exception of my great pal, Pete Bishop, whose intrinsic honesty often put the rest of us to shame. He conscientiously wore his blacked-out lenses and drilled neat hol
es in the tailplane of the target-towing Martinet; the LAC in charge of the airborne winch applied for compassionate leave immediately afterwards.

  For a time I feared for Pete’s future, but it was all right. All wireless operators passed out ‘Average’ on air gunnery as far as I could tell. Later on, because of greater specialization in aircrew categories, wireless types ceased to take the gunnery course and were re-classified as signallers, wearing the newly designed S brevet. We, however, were awarded our AG brevets, of which we were particularly proud, being among the last of a breed. We also became Sergeants.

  It was a pleasure to go on leave, although it took a long time and several changes of train to travel from Inverness to my home in Aberystwyth in West Wales. To my misfortune, 6 ITW was stationed there. So cadets with white flashes in their caps abounded. Previously, when I had come on leave as a cadet myself, I had frequently suffered the irritation of being stopped in my own home town by Service Police and asked why I was not on parade. Now, as a Sergeant, for the first time I was spared this embarrassment. During the war servicemen were forbidden to wear civihan clothes on any occasion.

  But training was by no means over. Next stop was 2 Operational Advanced Flying Unit at Millom in Cumberland. Here we flew on cross-country exercises in friendly old Avro Ansons. The Anson was the workhorse of the RAF, the ‘Flying Greenhouse’, and, as its nickname implied, offered superb visibility all round. It was so beautifully balanced, with its low wing and twin Cheetah engines, that it was confidently believed the ‘Annie-bag’ could take herself off, and then come back and land, even if the pilot forgot to turn up. She was designed by Roy Chadwick, the man who gave us the Lancaster.