Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945
Page 52
SNAPSHOT
BORN
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1952, Ashford, Kent.
EDUCATED
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Wimbledon College; Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
CAREER
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Evening Standard, the Observer: Northern Ireland Correspondent, War Correspondent, the Falklands, 1982; Sunday Times: Diplomatic Correspondent; Sunday Telegraph, Daily Telegraph: Middle East Correspondent, Senior Foreign Correspondent, Foreign Editor, Associate Editor (Foreign), Paris Correspondent.
Top Ten Favourite Reads
1. Sentimental Education
Gustave Flaubert
2. Just William
Richmal Crompton
3. The String of Pearls
Joseph Roth
4. Ashenden
Somerset Maugham
5. The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. A Peace to End All Peace
David Fromkin
7. A Savage War of Peace
Alistair Horne
8. My Early Life
Winston S. Churchill
9. The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
10. A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov
Life Drawing
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Freewheeling downhill through woodland on a sunny summer day.
What is your greatest fear?
Falling off.
What objects do you always carry with you?
Lucky Hurricane-wing keyring.
Where do you go for inspiration?
For dinner with my wife.
What are you writing at the moment?
I’m researching a book on the experiences of bombing and being bombed in the Second World War.
About the Book
A Critical Eye
Reviewers of Fighter Boys, including some of Britain’s leading historians, hailed it immediately as a classic. Sir Alastair Home, writing in The Week ‘found it quite unputdownable.’ Other writers on the same subject are also highly sought after. The BBC’s History magazine duly hired Malcolm Brown, author of Spitfire Summer, who praised Fighter Boys as ‘a fast, compulsively readable account, based on deep research, and fresh with it’.
The TLS reported that ‘by using so many individual testimonies, Bishop gives his work a genuine sense of immediacy and vitality…[he] captures both the reality and romance of the pilots’ experience’. The Daily Mail seconded the motion: ‘Fighter Boys’ concentration on named individuals – with new material from letters, diaries, and recollections supplementing the usual accounts – really pays off.’
Finally, the book’s magnanimous nature earned it many plaudits. The Evening Echo found in it ‘a very worthy testament to the Few’. The Times, echoing that sentiment, concluded that Fighter Boys is ‘a moving and generous book’. We think you’ll agree.
The Bigger Picture
Soon after the publication of Fighter Boys, Patrick Bishop is visited by a voice from the past.
SHORTLY AFTER THE APPEARANCE of the first edition of Fighter Boys I received a letter from Mrs Bunty Lawson. In the summer of 1940, Bunty Lawson was Bunty Nash and 18, going on 19 years old. She was one of the first Waafs to be posted to a Fighter Command station, in her case Pembrey in South Wales, where she befriended the pilots of 92 Squadron who were sent there to recuperate after Dunkirk.
There were only 1,700 Waafs at the start of the war. They were to play a vital part in the defence of Britain in 1940, as plotters in the operations rooms, as cypher officers decoding messages and orders, and not least as a source of comfort, flirtation, friendship and often love, to the young men of Fighter Command.
Mrs Lawson wrote because a friend had recognised her in the pages of the book as the recipient of a letter from Roy Mottram, a young pilot officer with 92 Squadron who, having shifted to Biggin Hill, wanted to update her on the news of her old friends. The relatively carefree mood of the high summer when 92 had been removed from the full heat of the battle had gone. Behind the attempt at light-heartedness you can sense Mottram’s weariness and foreboding as the fighting grew ever more desperate.
Today Bunty is a vigorous widow of 82, who lives in a large cottage in Wiltshire. The independent spirit and charm that endeared her to 92 Squadron is still very evident, and her memories are still sharp.
She was brought up in the village of Sandhurst, near Camberley in Surrey, the daughter of a local GP, a normal, middle-class girl with normal, contemporary aspirations. ‘I wanted to be rich and beautiful and loved,’ she remembered. ‘I wanted to play tennis, ride horses and dance.’
She was set to marry a young officer from the nearby military academy. The approach of war made her think again. ‘Patriotism and the desire to be in the middle of things’ drove her to volunteer for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force against her parents’ wishes.
Bunty arrived at Pembrey on 29 June 1940 as a newly commissioned cypher officer. She was one of two Waafs, the only women on a base housing several hundred men. The officers’ mess was unused to dealing with females. At first they were served their meals in the ladies’ anteroom. Later, to save the legs of the waiters, they were moved to their own table in the main dining hall.
Bunty says now that she had been ‘very narrowly brought up. We were far younger then than an 18-year-old is now.’ But she refused to be overawed. ‘If you had been a shrinking violet you wouldn’t have lasted long.’
The barriers quickly crumbled. Soon Bunty was accompanying the pilots on their ‘bashes’ at the local golf club where the drink flowed and the squadron’s star musician Bob Holland entertained on the piano.
The squadron was still mourning the loss of their charismatic commander Roger Bushell who had been shot down over France and taken prisoner. They nonetheless exuded a strong sense of assurance. The new CO, SL Phillip Sanders, kept in the background. It seemed to Bunty’s eyes that Brian Kingcome actually ran the show. ‘He seemed very old and very sophisticated. He was certainly never an escort of mine. I would have died of fright if he had ever asked me.’
Her particular friend was Roy Mottram, who had joined the RAF on a short service commission just before the outbreak of war. She found him to be rather shy, mad about flying, thoughtful and chivalrous. He steered clear of romance, feeling that ‘it wasn’t fair’ to expose a woman to the high risk of a swift bereavement.
Even at Pembrey, at some distance from the front line, she noticed the tensions behind the banter and careful insouciance. The pilots only seemed at ease when with each other. ‘They couldn’t communicate with civilians,’ she said. ‘They couldn’t even communicate with their own families. I think that, looking back, they didn’t want to worry them any more than they were worried already.’
In early September as the Battle of Britain moved towards its climax 92 Squadron was ordered to Biggin Hill and the front line. In the space of a few days it lost six aircraft with two pilots killed and two seriously wounded. A letter from Bob Holland on 10 September conveys the frenetic activity the pilots were now engaged in. ‘We are…at it all day and every day,’ he wrote. ‘My God, the peace of Pembrey after this place would be heaven.’
Bunty stayed on at Pembrey for another year. She continued to receive letters from 92 Squadron pilots and once Roy Mottram flew down to show off his new Spitfire. ‘He kept saying “Isn’t it wonderful?” but it looked to me to be remarkably like the one he flew off in.’
She was, as friends later joked, to have a ‘BGW – a bloody good war – serving in Egypt, North Africa and Italy, where she met her husband Group Captain Ian Lawson, a distinguished bomber pilot. They were married for 52 years until his death six years ago and have a son and a daughter.
Her last encounter with 92 Squadron was in the late summer of 1940 when the Battle of Britain was still raging. She was home on leave when Roy Mottram phoned up from Biggin Hill to invite her to a party. She stayed at the Red Hou
se, the home of the legendary Macneal twins, Moira and Sheila, whom she remembers as ‘terribly elegant with unusually long legs that made them look as if they were wearing high heels even when they were in flat shoes’.
The bash was up to 92 Squadron’s high standards, with much laughter and drink and Bob Holland on the piano. She never saw Roy Mottram again. He was killed a year later over northern France.
Read On
Have You Read?
The Winter War: The Falklands, (with John Witherow) Quartet Books, 1982
A ground-level history, depicting life as a soldier during the Falklands War.
* * *
The Provisional IRA (with Eamonn Mallie), Corgi Adult, 1988
When it was first published, this was the first full-length study since the Troubles began in 1969. It remains an authoritative work.
* * *
Famous Victory: The Gulf War, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992
A personal account based on Patrick Bishop’s experiences as a correspondent, including riding into liberated Kuwait at the head of a column of Kuwaiti tanks.
* * *
The Irish Empire, St Martin’s Press, 2000
Linked to the five-part BBC2 series on the Irish diaspora.
If You Loved This,
You’ll Like…
GENERAL
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The Right of the Line: The Royal Air Force in the European War 1939-1945, John Terraine, Hodder & Stoughton, 1985
PLACES AND SQUADRONS
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The Story of 609 Squadron, Frank H. Ziegler, Crécy Books, 1993
RAF Fighter Squadrons in the Battle of Britain, Anthony Robinson, Brockhampton Press, 1999
PLANES
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My Autobiography, Denis ‘Hurricane’ David, Grub Street, 2000
PEOPLE
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Fighter Pilot, Paul Richey, Cassell, 2002 Described by Patrick Bishop as ‘one of the best books ever written about the experience and ethos of air fighting…still rings with unalloyed authenticity’
A Willingness to Die, Brian Kingcome, Tempus, 1999
One of the Few, Johnny Kent, Tempus, 2000
Time and Chance, Peter Townsend, Book Club Associates, 1978
Flying Start, Hugh Dundas, Stanley Paul, 1998
The Last Enemy, Richard Hillary, Macmillan, 1942
Find Out More
PLACES/MUSEUMS
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Biggin Hill: South East London
RAF Museum, Hendon: Grahame Park Way, North London
RAF College, Cranwell: nr Sleaford, Lincs
Halton Apprentice School: Royal Air Force, Halton, Aylesbury, HP22 5PG
The Kent Battle of Britain Museum: Hawkinge, nr Folkestone
The Imperial War Museum: Lambeth Road, London, SE1 6HZ
FILMS
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Reach for the Sky, 1956 (starring Kenneth Moore as real-life pilot Douglas Bader, who overcame the loss of both legs to return to his fighter plane)
The First of the Few, 1942, Leslie Howard (director, producer, star)
Tells the story of R. J. Mitchell, designer of the Spitfire. Leslie Howard was killed in a plane crash shortly after completing the film.
WEB
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www.battleofbritain1940.net Historical resource site featuring documents and articles. Detailed commentaries on the different planes used in the conflict provide pictures, blueprints, pilots’ impressions and technical specifications.
www.raf.mod.uk/bobl940/bobhome.html An official site cataloguing official reports, including never before seen daily instalments of Fighter Command’s Operational Diaries. Various other resources, such as maps and lists of all units and stations, cover the strategic gamut of the battle – acting as an interesting foil to Patrick Bishop’s more personal, pilot-oriented account.
www.iwm.org.uk/exhibitions/battle-of-britain The Imperial War Museum’s introductory site gives clear, short introductions to the major tactical, operational and chronological features of the battle.
www.kbobm.org The Kent Battle of Britain Museum’s website.
www.luft46.com A repository of never-completed German fighter plane designs from the Second World War by Messerschmit, Mercedes-Benz and others. Some of these are remarkably similar to more modern implementations, featuring swing-wings, jet engines and Stealth-style delta wings.
Praise for Fighter Boys
‘This has to be one of the big, best-selling books of the year…It is a unabashed glorification of young men at war, of the courage, often insouciant, of those who seized the day and more often than not died in its empyrean…Patrick Bishop gives these young men posthumous honour and respectful tribute. It is, in many respects, a moving and generous book that will bring pain as well as pride – for whatever reasons – to the many who will read it.’
IAIN FINLAYSON, The Times
‘Original, penetrating, lucid, moving and just.’
MAX HASTINGS, Sunday Telegraph
‘Patrick Bishop focuses on the lives and thoughts of the heroic lads and lasses and it stirs the emotions, If Fighter Boys doesn’t make you think, read it again.’
Sunday Sport
‘The author has given us a very human history of the Battle without losing sight of its overall strategic importance to the war. His book will not only inform a new generation but act as a memorial to the brave men in whose debt this Kingdom and Commonwealth remain.’
Contemporary Review
‘Written with great commitment and admirable detachment.’
The Tablet
‘Patrick Bishop’s account moves with all the assured speed of a Spitfire…a fast, compulsively readable account…and fresh with it.’
BBC History Magazine
‘One of the great strengths of Fighter Boys is its ability to fill the reader with great respect and admiration for the pilots whilst also showing their foibles and character traits…it is a fresh addition to the bibliography of the Battle of Britain, and captures both the reality and romance of the pilots’ experience.’
TLS
BOMBER BOYS
FIGHTING BACK
1940–1945
PATRICK BISHOP
Dedication
To Peter, Margaret, Amelia
and Daniel
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Maps
Prologue: Perkins
Introduction
1 Learning the Hard Way
2 Coventrated
3 ‘To Fly and Fight’
4 Crewing Up
5 Dying in the Dark
6 Enter ‘Butch’
7 The Feast of St Peter and St Paul
8 The Reasons Why
9 The Battle
10 ‘A Select Gang of Blokes’
11 The Big City
12 The Chop
13 Crack Up
14 Home Front
15 Love in Uniform
16 D-Day Diversion
17 Tallboys and Tirpitz
18 Götterdämmerung
19 Forgetting
Epilogue: Went the day well?
Notes
Bombers
Index
Acknowledgements
P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features…
About the Author
Q and A: Louise Tucker talks to Patrick Bishop
Life at a Glance
Top Ten Favourite Reads
Read On
Have You Read?
If You Loved This, You Might Like…
Find Out More
Read the first chapter of Patrick Bishop’s new book 3 Para
Maps
Prologue:
PERKINS
In the early summer of 1961, sophisticated Londoners were laughing at an entertainment brought to them by four young Oxbridge graduates. Beyond the Fringe had been a great hit at the Edinburgh Festival the previous year. Now, night after night, smiling audiences in the capi
tal left the Fortune Theatre feeling they had witnessed something fresh, audacious and above all very funny. The excitement that comes with the anticipation of sudden and unpredictable change was in the May air. The old, hierarchical Britain personified by the prime minister, Harold Macmillan, appeared to be tottering to an end. The shape of the future was hard to make out but it surely belonged to the young, the daring and the irreverent. Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore were the incarnation of all that.