Never Fear

by Ian Strathcarron

  To make Frank feel even smaller, the MBE was for ‘his outstanding contribution to the advancement of air navigation’ – by writing no less than the voluminous Air Publication 1456, the second part of the Air Ministry Manual of Air Navigation (1938).

  With Dickie things were easier. They bonded personally and professionally, Dickie fully aware of Francis’s solo flights to Sydney and across the Tasman Sea and the navigation skills and sheer bravery required. Dickie recalled that ‘we were joined by Flt Lt (sic) Frank Chichester, then nursing a duodenal ulcer by constantly sipping milk and munching digestive biscuits. Frank and I had our way in reshaping the Air Almanac, which became the foundation in the revolution of astro navigation’. Francis wrote:

  Dickie was one of those sterling, stalwart citizens who make a country great if there are enough of them. He left the Air Ministry to become Chief Navigation Officer of Coastal Command, where he introduced a navigation drill which raised the standards of navigation and with it the standard of safety. Dickie’s navigation drill was almost precisely the same as the system I had worked out for navigating to Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island.

  Dickie was working on the new navigation guide, Air Publication 1234, which was to replace Kelly’s earlier one – perhaps another reason for Kelly’s hostility. In early 1943 it was translated into all Allied pilots’ languages and inevitably a captured one fell into German hands. Dickie had been rather stumped for chapter headings, so he had borrowed some from Lewis Carroll: six from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and six from The Hunting of the Snark. After the war he met the former Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor navigator Dr Karl Karwarth, who in 1943 had been asked to translate the captured Air Publication 1234. All was easy enough, reported his former enemy, except the chapter headings: ‘Tell me now we are at peace: what on earth was their code?’

  Apart from his ease with Dickie, the free-spirited Francis found it hard to fit in with his superiors and the hierarchy of military ranking when outside the confines of Adastral House. And being Francis, he didn’t take it upon himself to hide his feelings. No doubt the Whitehall regulars resented a civilian navigator being drafted in to advise them, and no doubt he resented being told what to do by a bunch of blackboard-wallahs, who had probably never navigated further than Dover, and that by train. He amused himself making navigation games for Allen and Unwin, firstly ‘Pinpoint the Bomber’ and then a ‘Planisphere of Navigations Stars’.

  In early 1943 Francis’s boredom was lifted somewhat. Dickie found himself operational, being sent from Adastral House to put his skills to better use as Coastal Command’s Chief Navigation Officer, based at their headquarters in Northwood, West London, now the site of the UK Permanent Joint Headquarters. Under his wing, as it were, were Nos. 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 Groups responsible for patrolling the channels, seas and oceans all around the British Isles. By 1943 most attention was centred on No. 15 Group, based at Derby House in Liverpool, responsible for fighting the Battle of the Atlantic, protecting convoys and sinking U-boats. (By early 1943 the U-boat fleet had grown to 400. In the first ten days of March alone it had sunk 600,000 tonnes of Allied shipping, operating with some impunity in the Mid-Atlantic Gap out of range of RAF and USAAF air attacks.)

  No. 15 Group had nine squadrons, based as far west as possible, either in Northern Ireland or the Hebridean coast of Scotland, in order to be out of range of German bombers and in range of the eastbound convoys and their U-boat predators. Most of the Group’s squadrons operated Short S.25 Sunderland flying boats and only two squadrons, 120 and 220, flew B-24 Consolidated Liberator GR1s and Boeing F-17E Mk IIA Flying Fortresses respectively. The Liberator and the Fortress had the longest range available to Coastal Command, the Liberator at 2,400 miles, the Fortress at just under 2,000 miles. In spring 1943 both squadrons were based at RAF Aldergrove, 18 miles north-west of Belfast, the only squadrons so located. I mention all this detail because:

  It is at this stage in Francis’s war that we come across his mysterious, unofficial visit to Northern Ireland to navigate a Liberator and a Fortress in the Battle of the Atlantic. As Sebastian Cox, Head of Air Historical Branch at RAF Northolt tells me, ‘According to his personal record Chichester was then sent to HQ No. 15 Group in Liverpool, again for duties connected to navigation, although somewhat puzzling is the fact that the RAF List continues to show him in AMT’s Directorate and not in one of the staff navigation posts at 15 Group. 15 Group was an operational group within Coastal Command, principally responsible for maritime air warfare against German U-boats in the north-west approaches to the UK and the North Atlantic. Navigation was, of course, of supreme importance to Coastal Command aircraft, which had to navigate for very long distances far out into the Atlantic.’

  Francis himself is a little more forthcoming in his autobiography, where he writes about his sorties in a Liberator and a Fortress:

  Convoy escorts and antisubmarine patrols were out for long flights with continuous manoeuvring, such as square searches to be plotted. I took part in one sortie, in a Liberator which was 11 hours and 40 minutes out. We proceeded to 25° W in the Atlantic, and after an oblong search of ships picked up a convoy on the return.

  Another day I joined a Fortress, for an eight hour thirty-five minutes flight into the Atlantic. I got into hot water with the captain of the aircraft for firing a burst from a .5 machine-gun I was interested in, just as a corvette was passing below.

  Putting all the pieces into place, it is not unreasonable to surmise that Francis’s mysterious mission to Liverpool and then Northern Ireland was to brief Dickie Richardson personally on long-range Atlantic navigation practice, including the possible usefulness of the new American LORAN (long-range navigation) radio positioning system. As noted, these long-range flights needed either a Fortress, as flown by No. 120 Squadron, or a Liberator, as flown by No. 220 Squadron. Conveniently both flew out of Aldergrove near Belfast. No doubt Francis reported back to Dickie and no doubt, being Francis, he suggested ways in which matters could be improved.

  Formidable beasts, the Liberator and Fortress, so similar at first sight – long-range, four-engined Second World War American bombers, yet significantly different for the aircrews who flew – and died – in them. The armchair Air Marshals much preferred the Liberator. Not only could it fly faster and higher and longer and drop more bombs but it was far less expensive and time-consuming to produce and was remarkably reproducible: by July 1945 some 18,482 Liberators had been manufactured by five manufacturers, with the Ford Motor Co. responsible for half of them. But the aircrews much preferred the Fortress. The Liberator was known as the ‘flying boxcar’ because of its ungainly slab sides and the ‘flying coffin’ for its frailty under attack, its propensity to catch fire on attack and the near-impossibility of evacuating through the rear-only exit wearing a flying jacket and parachute after attack. They were also harder to fly in formation, with heavy and waffly controls – dead sticks, as the pilots called them. Somehow a 50/50 shot-up Fortress held together and made it home; a 50/50 shot-up Liberator crashed and burned.

  I was keen to find out about Francis’s wartime exploits and luckily there are examples of each type on display in the UK and enthusiastic curators willing to show me around them. John Delaney looks after the Imperial War Museum’s B-17 Boeing Flying Fortress at Duxford and Andrew Simpson keeps the Consolidated B-24 Liberator at the RAF Museum in Hendon.

  Let’s start with the Fortress. Housed in Duxford’s American Air Force Museum behind an ex-Desert Storm eight-engined B-52 Stratofortress and alongside a B-29 ‘Enola Gay’ Superfortress, the B-17 Flying Fortress looks almost quaint. I ask John how Francis’s Coastal Command B-17 would have differed from the United States Eight Air Force one we are walking around. He explains: ‘Tricked out for Coastal Command, the planes were different enough from the bombers. The side gunners’ slots were replaced by windows for observation and the underneath “ball” turret removed for smoother airflow. So more range. Bomb bays took depth charges. And of co
urse the whole plane would have been painted a dull white with RAF roundels.’ He opens a tiny hatch on the rear starboard side of the fuselage and we crawl in. ‘As you can see, getting in is only marginally easier than getting out’, he says, ‘especially getting out falling through the air at 300 mph in a spin, on fire, wearing a flying jacket and parachute’. The very thought does occur.

  RAF Coastal Command Boeing B17

  Once inside, behind the bomb bay, we can just about stand up but barely move around. ‘And this is just with two of us’, I say. ‘How many did they carry?’

  ‘On a bombing mission a crew of ten. Two pilots. The navigator and seven gunners. The top gunner was also the radio operator, the front gunner also the bombardier.’

  ‘So Pilot Officer Chichester was spared gunning duties?’ I ask.

  ‘Two things here. Generally speaking, the navigator was the most educated person on board. In the USAF he had to be an officer. And he was a few years older. The rest of the crew were late teenagers, early twenties. The navigators maybe mid-twenties. And then, of course, they thought the navigator was too genteel to be in direct combat. And then, of course, they all wanted to get home. For which they needed the navigator.’

  ‘So on Francis’s sortie, what crew would he have with him?’

  ‘Bear in mind the RAF were perennially short of manpower and Coastal Command even worse. The “Cinderella Service”, it was called. Over the Atlantic they wouldn’t have had to fight off Messerschmitts, so they would do without the side gunners. Their main problem would be Focke-Wulf Condors.’

  Francis wartime action view, navigating from the bombardier’s seat in a B17

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘Like the Fortress, four-engined bombers converted for longrange reconnaissance, also over the Atlantic, looking for convoys. If a Condor saw an Allied plane it had battle orders to attack it. Our boys did the same if they saw a Condor unawares. So you had two four-engined bombers dogfighting like single-engine fighters.’

  ‘So rear and front gunners only?’

  ‘Yes, plus the top gunner-cum-radio operator. Let’s go to the sharp end.’

  As we crawl through the bomb bay to the navigators’ station in the bubble in front of the pilots, the lack of space through which to squeeze static in a museum – let alone through which to bail out in full kit with a parachute – is made worse by sharp edges and unfolded chamfers. Within seconds I snag my new Christmas present cashmere jumper on an exposed nut.

  ‘Now then’, John says, ‘crawl in backwards through there’. He is pointing to a 3-foot-square opening in between and in front of the pilots. ‘That’s where your Francis would have been.’ Suddenly an element of space and visibility opens up. On the port side is a small desk, about two foot square, and a chair: the navigator’s station. In front of him the bombardier/front gunner’s glass turret gives an uninterrupted view of what’s ahead.

  I ask John about life on board. ‘Cold was the worst of it. Coastal Command would have flown lower, but for the Bomber Command crew at 20,000 it was minus 20 or 30. If you took your gloves off to touch something, you stuck to it. So frostbite was a massive early problem. By 1943 they had introduced electric heated suits, which you plugged in, but they were pretty ineffective. So he would have worn one of those under his flying jacket, fully lined boots and helmet, and navigator’s gloves, which he would have swapped for proper ones when writing up the log or doing his workings.’

  ‘And if he needed the loo?’

  ‘There was an Elsan right aft, really a potty with a lid. To get there from here … well, you can imagine how undressed you wanted to get to squeeze through versus how warm – if that’s the right word – you wanted to stay. Better to hold on if you could.’

  ‘For eight hours.’

  As we crawled, scrambled, squeezed, squirmed out of the rear again, thoughts of young crew desperately trying to escape the spinning, burning, hurtling bomber in full kit and parachute, the bravery of it all comes to mind. Even Francis’s un-dangerous sorties in to the Atlantic were desperately uncomfortable – and still had the Condor uncertainty. ‘Brave men all’, John and I agree as we stand up, warm and straight, alongside the fully intact Flying Fortress.

  It was with Francis’s other plane, the B-24 Liberator, that I hoped to find out more about the navigation practices he was using. Luckily the Liberator and the records are under one roof, the RAF Museum at Hendon. It was lucky, too, that the museum’s very helpful curator, Andrew Simpson, is under the same roof. I ask Andy about the navigation equipment Francis would have carried on board. ‘In 1943 … well, for sure a chronometer, in the form of an RAF-issue wristwatch; a bubble sextant – so a sextant with a spirit level basically; dividers; a Dalton computer – a very glorified circular slide rule; a Douglas square-sided protractor; a ruler, known as a straight edge; some pencils and a rubber. And of course an almanac and reduction tables for back-reading the sextant.’

  Navigation was principally by dead reckoning and, where Atlantic cloud conditions allowed, bubble sextant. The theory and practice of dead reckoning were second nature to Francis. On the Fortress or Liberator he would ask the bombardier/front gunner to trade places for a few minutes, while he trained the drift wires on the bombsights on the prevailing sea lanes over the waves. If he took three drift readings from three different headings it was easy to work out the wind speed and direction; knowing the true air speed it was simple to calculate the ground speed and enter it in the log, this being done every hour.

  RAF Coastal Command Liberator

  On the Fortress and Liberator there is an astrodome between the pilots and the front gunner but I imagine astronavigation in the North Atlantic was limited by cloud cover. Optimally they would fly at 5,000 ft, high enough to spot convoys but not so high as to miss tell-tale signs of U-boat wakes.

  ‘Francis mentions being out in the Liberator for eleven hours and forty minutes, reaching 25 degrees west. That’s about a 2,000-mile round trip.’ The crew quarters were only slightly less cramped than the Fortress but he was up there for three hours longer. ‘It was cold too, of course, and noisy’, says Andy, looking out at the inner port engine’s prop just a few feet away from the navigator’s perch.

  The sorties excitements over, Francis had to moulder at the Air Ministry for only a few more months; maybe more smoulder than moulder, as in his own words: ‘By the middle of 1943 I reckoned that I had written 500,000 words on navigation, and was becoming difficult to live or work with’. But relief was at hand: ‘I was offered a post at the Empire Central Flying School at RAF Hullavington in Wiltshire, with no official status and the rank of Flying Officer, the lowest commissioned rank except Pilot Officer. I accepted what looked like an interesting job.’ And so it proved to be; from now on Francis could say he had a good war. All that rankled was rank:

  For my job at the Air Ministry I had been upgraded to the rank of Flight Lieutenant, but that was as high as I could rise. I was not officially allowed to fly, not officially allowed to navigate, and I was not permitted to wear pilot’s or navigator’s wings on my tunic. One of the results of this was that whenever I visited an operational mess, unless I knew one of the members of the mess personally, I would soon be quietly edged out of any group of operational pilots talking at the bar. I could only have an administrative job.

  In the National Archives at Kew I look through the Operations Record Book for the Empire Central Flying School at RAF Hullavington and can see what happened, operationally, on every day of Francis’s time there, starting with his arrival:

  4.7.43 F/O (A/F/L) CHICHESTER (61089) posted to D.D.T. (Nav) for Navigation duties (supernumerary)

  D.D.T. was the Deputy Directorate of Training. One hopes they meant supernumerary in the additional staff and not the unneeded staff sense of the word. The school had been started in April 1942 to train Allied pilots, mostly from the Commonwealth, in the latest instruction methods, so that they in turn could instruct their own pilots. Its mission statement was ‘To
train instructors, test individual aircrew, audit the Flying Training System, give advice on flying training and provide a formation aerobatics display team’.

  The base was divided into two squadrons, the Handling Squadron, which was involved in exploring the outer limits of a plane’s capabilities and writing remedial reports, and the Examining Squadron, in which Francis served, instructing and examining the pilots, all officers. Francis describes his duties thus: ‘My job, principally, was to brief the pilots on the navigation of their flights, and to devise navigation exercises for them.’

  The intake of pilot students on Francis’s first full course in September 1943 was typical: ‘46 names in all, 12 Canadians, 3 Australians, 2 New Zealand, 3 US Navy, 1 Rhodesian, 2 South African, 3 representatives from Bomber Command, 2 from Fighter and TAF, 2 from Coastal Command, 12 from FTC, 1 Naval Officer and 1 Belgian’. Francis noted that:

  We ran courses for officers such as Chief Flying Instructors with ranks from Flight Lieutenant to Group Captain. They were mostly pilots drawn from every arm of the Service and from every ally. In one course we might have Fleet Air Arm, Army and RAF officers, together with Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Poles, Frenchmen, Norwegians and Americans. We never had US Air Force and US Navy pilots at the same time, because they did not mix well.