Luck and a Lancaster

Chance and Survival in World War II

Harry Yates

• Verlag: Airlife
• Jahr: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781847974099
• Thema: History
• Thema: World War II

This book takes you, raid by raid, through the author's tour of operational duty over the last five months of 1944. It is a bomber pilot's story, but it is also about the grinding operational pressure, the brotherhood of the crew and fears of injury and death. It is about a squadron of Bomber Command that bore a barely-equalled burden in operational effort and losses. It is about young airmen the author knew, who lived and too often died amid the turmoil in enemy skies. It is not unusual these days to find authors getting their first book into print in the 'wrong half of their seventies', but far less common to find an individual wartime experiences book justifying a second edition barely two years after its original publication...Thoughtfully and attractively written, this well-produced softback is a very good read at an inexpensive price. - RAF HISTORICAL SOCIETY An excellent account, once again one marvels at the courage of Bomber Command aircrew in the face of appalling odds. - AIR PICTORIAL Harry Yates' book is compelling reading. It is well illustrated... and a valuable addition to the enthusiast's bookshelf. - IX SQUADRON ASSOCIATION The author is an intelligent and sensitive man and his book reflects these qualities. Detailed accounts of his experiences are set out, including several astonishing incidents. There are some good contemporary photographs that add to his recall of desperate days when, however individuals might conspire to hide it, the continuing emotion for all aircrew members must have been dread...He grieves for his many comrades...and so will you if you read his book. - PILOT

CHAPTER ONE

IF I ONLY HAD WINGS

I remember it still, almost as though it was yesterday. The day was hot, indeed gloriously so. We stood in our flying gear on the concrete of the dispersal pan, seven of us gazing up to that familiar shape, the purposeful nose rounded in Perspex by the bomb aimer’s window, the front turret with its Brownings and the angular canopy beyond. No one spoke. No one needed to. We all felt the same, quiet pride.

The date was 18 August 1944, two weeks and five raids since we had reported for duty with 75 Squadron. The object of our attention, of our unbounded admiration, was a Lancaster B1 newly arrived from the Maintenance Unit. Aside from factory test pilots and the ATA girl who had brought it here, not a soul in the world had known the thrill of flying it. I was to be the first. Before any aircraft was taken onto an operational squadron it was subjected to an acceptance test. That we were now to fly. And then this beautiful machine would be allocated, amazingly, to us.

As yet only the squadron markings, the famous AA, graced each side of the fuselage, red against the black, metal skin. The identification letter had to wait until, on our return, we could pass the aircraft fit for service. A letter was not a matter of indifference to aircrew. The boys voiced several inventive if somewhat indelicate preferences as we climbed aboard. But Archie, the newest man in the crew, would have none of it. Turning to me he said, ‘I don’t give a damn which letter they give us, skipper … so long as it isn’t P-Peter.’

I knew he meant it. He was on board a Lancaster P-Peter on the night of the infamous Nuremberg raid of 30 March 1944. It was Bomber Command’s blackest night of the war. Ninety-six aircraft failed to return, twelve more crashed in England. Many things went awry during the operation, the worst an unforecast tailwind of atrocious strength. It carried the main force far ahead of the Pathfinders. They were left with no option but to wait and circle under a brilliant moon. For forty-seven minutes there was not a single marker to be seen, but many a night-fighter. All told, the enemy put up two hundred of them.

Archie’s P-Peter was mauled in several running battles. He witnessed the suffering of friends and crewmates. The survivors got the bombs away but couldn’t fly their crippled kite home against the wind. They were forced south. By the grace of God they made it to North Africa and landed wheels-up on a broad, sandy beach.

Archie struggled doggedly on to Gibraltar. By the time he set foot on English soil again three months had elapsed. Being indefatigable he sought an immediate return to operations. Being a New Zealander he requested a posting to 75. He was in the pool on the day we arrived only six strong (the seventh having quit us the night before). We were all rookies but Archie was a veteran of fifteen raids. To him we must have looked only marginally preferable to a series of different or scratch crews. To us he was a man of proven experience and resolve, a priceless asset.

Archie rarely mentioned the Nuremberg raid, but then aircrew tended to look forward, not back. It left its mark, though. No coincidental link went unnoticed. Some filled him with foreboding and real fear. He sincerely believed his presence on board another P-Peter would open the path to hell. He had walked it once and survived. Only a fool would willingly go that way a second time, and Archie was no fool.

As usual I flew the air test at under 10,000 ft so the boys could work without oxygen. We completed our checks and pronounced the aircraft battle-worthy. Her handling seemed markedly more responsive and accurate than the ageing kites I usually flew. I couldn’t resist a corkscrew (standard drill for evading an enemy fighter), then another, then one more. Our new charge, though nameless, did not disappoint.

As calm returned to us, a vivid and totally unexpected sense of home came upon me together with a great need to see my family one more time. I suppose this was natural enough. The Battle Order for the night would probably include us, and who knew what that would portend? And if the answer was nothing this time, we would still have all of two dozen ops of our tour to go.

But there was one other reason why home, that singular place of the heart, should spring to mind. At the end of my last leave I had made a promise to my father: when an opportunity presented itself I would return, but above the rooftops on a flying visit. Now I had a chance to make good on that promise.

I asked Bill for a course to Stony Stratford, my home town. We eased down to 200 ft. A mile north of Wolverton station we flew over the LMS railway line and the fields I had walked so often as a kid. The Ouse sparkled briefly below. We all but clipped the tall trees in whose shadows lay shoals of silvery roach and bream, the catching of which once occupied my every childish thought. Ahead stood a row of little houses, the sixth from the top my parents’. I pulled the Lancaster around in a wide circle and ran in over the rooftops, scattering cows in the surrounding fields.

Our arrival interrupted lunch. As we came around again my father appeared in the garden, extravagantly thrashing the air with a white cloth. At a circumspect distance my mother and sister, Joan, waved and gesticulated with equal vigour. I made a third low-level pass to return their waves. And then it was done. I climbed away to 2,000 ft for two steep turns and a farewell waggle of the wings.

So we took our leave for Mepal, my second home now and home for all of us in 75. We entered the circuit and received permission to land from Control. With the undercarriage down and locked I turned across wind, then again to straighten up on the runway ahead. And with flaps down and Tubby calling out the airspeed, we sailed over the airfield boundary and touched down.

As we clambered down the aircraft steps at dispersal a bowser pulled-up.

‘How many gallons?’ I asked the driver.

‘Two thousand’, he replied.

That meant no soft trip to occupied France, Holland or Belgium but, almost certainly, a penetration deep into the Third Reich. We made straight for B Flight office. Our names were indeed on the Battle Order, with twenty-four other crews. Briefing was not until 1800 hrs. There was time for an unhurried lunch and, for the boys, an hour or two relaxing in the sunshine.

For me relaxation was not on the agenda. I was still fired up from the air test and the sight of my family in the garden of our home. My mind was racing. It seemed an improbable slice of luck for a crew like us, virtual rookies, to be given a permanent aircraft. Usually that honour was reserved for the experienced crews, the gen men, on the station. It was pool kites for the rest of us.

I just had to have another look at my Lancaster, and grabbed my bicycle. As I pedalled towards her I saw a figure in overalls stroking red paint onto the starboard side. He was executing a letter P. I was utterly aghast. As it was, the dangers and demands of our night’s work would be daunting enough. But to take Archie to Germany in a Lancaster P-Peter was the final straw. I determined there and then to keep the news from him for as long as possible. I would tell the others to get him on board the aircraft even if they had to pick him up by the scruff of the neck and throw him in.

I cycled away wondering if Fate would deal us a double blow tonight and send us to Nuremberg. I glanced at my watch. The time was still only three o’clock. We would have to sweat it out for a few hours yet before we were told.

I was seventeen years old at the outbreak of war and worked as a junior clerk in the offices of a printing company. They paid me the handsome sum of thirty-two shillings and sixpence per week. After paying my dear old mother for food and board I was left with seven shillings for clothing, cigarettes and a weekly visit to the picture palace with my best girl. Destitution usually arrived by Wednesday of each week.

My education had been as basic as it could be. But in the thirties a basic education was a good education. I’d had a very happy childhood and left school three months after my fourteenth birthday with strictly limited ambitions. My birthplace was my father’s and my grandfather’s. No one thought of leaving for wider horizons. Stony was a quiet town of three thousand souls. I felt that I knew every one of them and they all knew me.

Like many lads my passion was soccer. I played as a kick-and-run right winger for Wolverton Town. Once, an Everton talent spotter came to watch us. It might have been the doorway to my dreams but nothing came of it. Still, I had the consolation of a few medals and a miniature silver cup for my dressing table. And, in any case, the war soon came to overshadow all things.

On the evening of 14 May 1940, as the BEF’s fate unfolded in Northern France, Anthony Eden made a broadcast in which he announced the formation of the Local Defence Volunteer Force (later called the Home Guard). Next morning I cycled to the Police Station in the town square and signed-up with my fellow patriots.

Now invasion was on everybody’s lips. Signposts were ripped out and place names obliterated. In the meadows by the river and in all the big fields stout posts were driven into the ground to snare enemy planes and gliders. If not these unwelcome guests then hordes of fearsomely armed parachutists were expected, or Fifth Columnists bent on sabotage. In preparation and perfect innocence we drilled with broom handles or mounted patrols and lookouts armed with a pair of binoculars. Our only recourse, should a silhouette cross the moon or someone mutter ‘Gott in Himmel’ in the darkness, was to run like hell to HQ. Stopping a bullet for King and country was firmly against orders.

The highpoint – probably the only point – of our patrols was the bacon and egg breakfast served at four a.m. in the town garage. If everything else had an air of unreality about it, this at least hit the stomach with a satisfyingly real thump.

But change was afoot. We were told that a consignment of Canadian Ross rifles was being sent. Two weeks later it arrived though the accompanying ammunition did not fit.

‘Don’t worry, chaps. Jerry will never know’, explained Charlie Green, the pork butcher who had appointed himself our Company Commander.

Luckily, his theory was never put to the test. When the correct ammunition finally arrived a major dilemma confronted our leader. We were thirty in number but there were only six rifles. After much deliberation we were summoned to the public bar at the Crown to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Standing on the bar Charlie announced a rifle shooting contest in the field behind the pub on the following Saturday afternoon. The best six shots would each be given a rifle to keep safely and in good working order, and to carry whenever on duty.

Saturday arrived and we all assembled to be given six rounds each. To my delight, when the firing ceased and the points were totted up, I was placed second. Charlie handed me my hardware but no ammo. This would be kept strictly under lock and key for issue only in dire emergency. As he so rightly said, ‘If we gave you the bullets you’d only waste them on rabbits.’

I could hardly get home quick enough to show off my prize. My Dad, in his duties as an air raid warden, had been put in charge of a mere stirrup pump which he kept in the shed at the bottom of the garden. But what was that compared to a Ross … and one of only six in the town? The house was empty. I stood the rifle in the hall and rehearsed my words. But the moment the front door opened and my mother walked in, triumph turned to dismay.

‘What’s that thing doing here?’ she demanded.

‘I won it in the contest, Mum. Now I can keep it and …’

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she cried, ‘I won’t have a gun in my house. I mean it. You get on that bike of yours and take it back to Charlie Green now.’

She was incensed that an adult had blithely handed her boy a gun. I could see it was useless to argue. Utterly crestfallen, I did as I was told and explained my situation sheepishly to Charlie. But for a butcher he was a compassionate chap, and after that I was always given charge of the patrol binoculars.

Despite the privations of rationing and blackout, my remembrance of this time is of days of idyllic simplicity and peacefulness. The glorious summer of 1940 is vivid in my memory. With my father’s help I built a hen house. My grandfather presented me with a strutting cockerel whose life with fifteen hens must have been idyllic, too. Corn was scarce so I fed them potato mash. Most days yielded a dozen eggs to supplement our rations and earn me some sorely needed pocket money. The family ate well, my father’s allotment providing fine vegetables both for us and for our relatives in the town. Catching game fell to me and my faithful collie, Bob. Together we walked the fields to check my rabbit snares or went fishing for perch with redworms or a live minnow. If lucky I brought home two or three fat perch or even a small pike which mother used to soak overnight in salted water, ‘to take out the muddy taste’, she always said. And if the fish weren’t biting I gave it up and swam with my dog in the cool, reedy river.

Evenings found some of the men not yet called to arms taking guard with a cricket bat on the ‘rec’. As the shadows grew long and the skies red so we retired to the companionship of the pub. A pint cost threepence and sometimes a good few were sunk.

The well-worn cherry and batting pads and the cold, frothy ale had a certain, timeless appeal. But I was never a great cricketer, much less a carouser. That summer, the first call on my affections belonged to a dark-eyed girl named, as I well recall, Bess. Nothing on earth was sweeter to me than to idle with her across the fields to Cosgrove or haunted Passenham, hand in hand in the balm of evening. But not even this token of life’s ineffable beauty could divert a young man’s attention from the drama of war and, in particular, the drama enacted daily over southern England.

The Battle of Britain must have been the most glamorous recruitment campaign ever. Thousands of young men from all walks of life were inspired by the daily exploits of Fighter Command. A popular show song of the time said it all: If I Only Had Wings. Every pilot flying a Hurricane or a Spitfire was fêted. Some became household names, even idols. How could anyone but be stirred by the exploits of Ginger Lacey or the tin-legged Douglas Bader, Stanford Tuck with his swashbuckling moustache or Sailor Malan with his heroic demeanour and film-star looks?

For me there was also an infinitely more humble and personal example to follow. This was my oldest and closest pal, Cyril Downing, with whom I had shared a classroom in infants’ school and played football as a youth. He was a few months senior to me and at the beginning of 1940 he volunteered. In what seemed like no time at all he was posted to 42 Squadron of Coastal Command stationed at Lossiemouth. He began flying operationally as an air gunner on Beaufort twin-engine torpedo bombers.

On leave Cyril would visit our house and recount hair-raising scraps with the German naval squadrons docked at Kiel, Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven. How I envied him. The last time I saw Cyril, then a Flight Sergeant proudly wearing his air gunner’s wings, was in October, 1940. I told him that I, too, had volunteered for flying duties. A few days later his aircraft went missing in an attack on a cruiser off Cuxhaven. Cyril had left a deep and abiding impression on me. It was as if the cold waves had closed over my own brother that day.

Even so, my desire to fly was unchecked. I awaited the RAF’s reply with mounting trepidation and worried in case my limited schooling would count against me. Could it be that, in reality, becoming one of these pilot types required a un...