Wings

by Patrick Bishop

  The section received all the aero engines from the Desert Air Force, stripped them down to their last nut and bolt and, after an overhaul and bench-test, sent them back to the squadrons for another lease of life. The engines came from Malta and Syria, as well as all over the desert, and by the time they arrived were often ‘completely covered with a coating of sand at least a quarter of an inch thick. Some had been dragged by tanks on to rocky ground before they could be loaded and suffered considerably in doing so, yet those engines left No.1 ERS as jet-black, gleaming power units with the guarantee of the RAF behind them.’10 The same feats were repeated all over the globe where the RAF’s footprint fell.

  By now women were an intrinsic part of the enormous logistical support force. The Women’s Royal Air Force had been disbanded after the First World War. Following the Munich crisis in 1938, the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) was set up to engage women for work in the event of a war. Two offshoots emerged, the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). It was officially founded on 28 June 1939 and its first Director was Jane Trefusis-Forbes, an independent-minded thirty-nine-year-old who had left school early to volunteer for war work in the previous conflict, and had built up a dog-breeding and kennel business before becoming an instructor in the ATS. She had vitality and organizational gifts and a streak of unorthodoxy, roaring into work each day on a motorbike. At the outbreak of war there were 1,734 Waafs. Three years later there were 181,835 – 16 per cent of the entire RAF. They served in a dozen trades – from drudgery as mess orderlies, cooks and clerks to skilled work as ops-room plotters and radar operators, a category which by 1944 was predominantly female. Some served as intelligence officers, a tough calling in a masculine world in which pre-operation briefings were always regarded with scepticism when delivered by a woman. More than 160 women served as pilots with the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), ferrying new or repaired aircraft from factories to maintenance units and squadrons.

  The influx of personnel from the Waafs released many men for flying and other operational duties. It was calculated that without their support, the RAF would have needed another 150,000 extra men. Volunteers had to be between seventeen-and-a-half and forty-three years old. Most were eighteen or nineteen. The first influx seemed to contain a disproportionate number of the wealthy and the well-educated. ‘At the start there were a whole lot of titled people,’ remembered a former Waaf, Marian Orley. ‘But a lot of them couldn’t take it. Out of sixty of us, thirty didn’t come back after a week’s leave at Christmas.’11

  Among the more socially prominent were the Prime Minister’s daughter, Sarah Churchill, the British Ladies Golf Champion Pam Barton, and an airwoman cook who rode to hounds and asked permission to keep her two hunters on the station. However, there were also a number from the other end of the class spectrum. On a tour of inspection of RAF bases in 1943 Joubert was horrified to find ‘Borstal girls, trollops and thieves amongst a mass of decent women’.12

  Many of the volunteers came from the dominions and colonies, which in the early days lacked organizations of their own. Others were refugees from occupied Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia and France. ‘There were many reasons that brought all these girls to enrol,’ wrote Squadron Leader Beryl Escott, the WAAF historian. ‘Patriotism, money, freedom, escape from unpleasant jobs, the promise of companionship, revenge on fathers or boyfriends, or for a husband’s death. Many chose the air force out of a fascination for flying and a spirit of adventure.’13

  Conservative fathers disliked the idea of their daughters joining up. ‘My father was very service-oriented and his memory of the women’s services from the First World War was that they had bad reputations,’ said Vera King, a WAAF NCO. ‘His theme was, if you go into the services, no decent man will want to marry you.’14 So did some mothers. ‘I shall always remember my mother, tears streaming down her face, at the door,’ said Hazel Williams. ‘Then she called me back and said, “Don’t sit on strange lavatory seats” and, pointing to my bosom, “Don’t let any man touch you there.”’15

  Some of the older pre-war professionals bristled at this influx of females. ‘A very high percentage of the regular RAF officers regarded them as an unmitigated nuisance and gave them no help,’ wrote Philip Joubert. ‘Their accommodation was abominable, their food most unsuitable and their uniform unattractive. But the volunteers that came forward to enrol had amongst them some outstanding characters, and all had a burning desire to be of use to their country in whatever capacity they were called upon to work.’16

  Most of the war-service airmen were delighted to see them. Serving on bases where there were plenty of women around was a significant factor in attracting recruits to the RAF. Morfydd Brooks, a young, married woman, had joined the WAAF after her husband was called up to the RAF and posted overseas. In the spring of 1943 she was working in the sergeants’ mess at Scampton, where 617 Squadron was preparing for the Dams Raid. ‘We would hear the planes, then after they discussed and analysed the day’s training, they entered the mess,’ she wrote. ‘The doors would burst open and the aircrews would swarm in shouting boisterously as we served their food. We young Waafs had to endure a barrage of good-natured banter. “How about a date, darling?” “How is your sex life?” “I dreamed about you all night.” “Would you like to sleep with me?” “Please serve us in the nude.”’17 The stations and depots served as gigantic dating agencies and tens of thousands of marriages and children had their genesis in an encounter in a canteen or at a Saturday night hop. For many couples, though, the war deprived them of a happy ending. Pip Beck was a young radio telephony operator at Waddington, a Lincolnshire bomber base, when she went to a dance in the sergeants’ mess. Nervous and alone, she hovered in the anteroom until a tall sergeant with an air-gunner’s brevet and wireless operator’s badge approached.

  “‘You’re new around here, aren’t you?” he enquired. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around before. Look, I’m a bit tight just now, but I promise I won’t drink any more if you’ll come and dance with me.”’ Pip finished her sherry and followed him to the dance floor where they joined the crush of couples, the smoky air making her eyes tingle. ‘The smell of alcohol near the bar was now overpowering and the floor wet with spilt beer,’ she recalled. ‘We kept away from that area as much as possible and my partner stuck to his promise and drank no more. He told me that his name was Ron Atkinson, and his home was in Hull. We danced and danced – I was having a wonderful time. Sometimes we slipped back into the anteroom again, just to talk. He teased me and we both laughed a lot. I studied his angular, intelligent face and large grey eyes; the dark hair and the rather youthful moustache . . . We fell in love – what else could we do?’18

  When Ron proposed marriage, however, Pip shied away. ‘Marriage was something I hadn’t thought about. I was just in love.’ When she tried to explain this to him he ‘turned away, hurt and angry’. They didn’t see each other for three days. Then, as she was leaving the cookhouse after tea she ran into him. ‘He was wearing battledress, flying boots, thick white roll-necked pullover – and a little black cat charm dangling from the button of his breast pocket. So he was “on” tonight. My anxieties rose in full force – and yet I felt a surge of fierce pride.’ Ron had been looking for her. He asked her to phone him the following day in the mess, after he got back from the raid on Le Havre. Pip felt a shiver of fear. She could not sleep and went to the control-tower roof, praying to see his bomber H-Harry looming out of the dawn. But Ron never returned. ‘Loss was an unknown experience until now – and it was painful.’ She talked to no one about it ‘and tried to behave normally. I was silently grateful to those who did know and were unobtrusively kind. And at eighteen, one recovers quickly.’19

  Initially, all but a handful of Waafs did their service in Britain, but in the middle of 1944 they started to be posted abroad. By the end they were present in twenty-nine countries, from the Arctic to the tropics. For many of the quarter of a million young wome
n who passed through the WAAF their service was a high point in their life, a liberation, an adventure, an awakening. When Phyllis Smart was demobilized it felt as if a deep emotional bond was being severed. After queuing up in a large hall in Birmingham to collect her back pay, clothing coupons and ration book she was called into a small office where a young WAAF officer solemnly shook her hand and bade her farewell. ‘I was out! I have never felt so forsaken in my life. After being part of a huge family for so long, I was on my own. I lay in bed that night and cried.’20

  Chapter 14

  No Moon Tonight

  In North Africa, where air power was used in conjunction with land forces, the record was one of almost continuous success from late 1942 onwards. The pattern was repeated after the landings in Italy and then in north-west Europe and a dozen other places. Over the sea, Coastal Command grew in numbers and confidence. It was in the realm of strategic bombing – the activity by which the RAF hoped to make its greatest contribution – that the story grew darker and more complicated.

  The destruction visited on Cologne by the first ‘Thousand’ raid in May 1942 had generated high hopes. The effects, however, were short-lived. Contrary to the belief (held by even highly intelligent men like Sir Charles Portal) that enemy civilians were less able to ‘take it’ than their British counterparts, German public morale did not crack. Within a fortnight of the raid, Cologne was functioning more or less as normal and the loss of industrial production was temporary – perhaps no more than a month’s worth.

  This was not known at the time, however. The raid seemed a sort of victory, providing an illusion of power and bringing the satisfaction of revenge at a time when there was nothing else to celebrate. Harris was given the green light to press on with the ‘Thousands’. On the night of 1–2 June Essen was attacked by 957 aircraft. There was cloud over the city. Many of the crews could not be sure they had identified the target. Little damage was done to Essen and the Krupp works was untouched. Three weeks later there was another raid on Bremen. Harris plundered Coastal Command to scrape together the aircraft to reach the magic number. Once again, the weather intervened and results were disappointing. Casualties, though, were high. Fifty-three aircraft failed to return.

  These failures were glossed over in official reports and public enthusiasm remained high. But until he had more Lancasters and Halifaxes, Harris simply did not have the resources to maintain operations on this scale, at this tempo. He was forced into the unwelcome step of having to lower expectations about what his command could achieve.

  Inside the Air Ministry there were those who believed that while not immediately possible, precision bombing of vital German war industry targets was attainable. They were led by Group Captain Syd Bufton, the Director of Bomber Operations. Bufton pressed Harris to concentrate on objectives where area bombing would have a definite effect. A favourite was Schweinfurt in Bavaria, where most of Germany’s ball bearings were thought to be made. His argument was backed up by data from the experts at the Ministry of Economic Warfare. Harris did not welcome the intervention. He countered that the town was very difficult to locate. At any rate, he held ‘experts’ in low esteem and was highly suspicious of claims that destroying this or that factory would significantly shorten the war, deriding them as ‘panacea targets’.

  As far as he was concerned, area bombing was an end itself, and, if vigorously enough pursued, could lead to victory. The argument between Harris and the advocates of precision bombing would rage until the end of the war, and, as the methodology of bombing became more and more accurate, his continued opposition became increasingly difficult to justify.

  Bufton had another proposal which put him squarely in the path of Harris. Earlier in the war he had led Bomber Command’s 10 Squadron and pioneered a technique of using his best crews to locate the target with flares, then to direct the others on to it by firing signal lights. He argued strongly for a small, elite spearhead that would guide the main force to the target area and then drop markers to identify the aiming points. The idea of a Pathfinder Force was strenuously opposed by Harris, who complained that it would mean creaming off the best crews from his squadrons and undermining their performance and morale. His doubts were shared by the bombing group commanders. Eventually, Portal stepped in to overrule Harris and in August 1942 one squadron was detached from each of the command’s four heavy groups to operate from bases in Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire.

  The operations they would lead were overwhelmingly area attacks. By the end of 1942 obliterating cities had become official policy, thanks to the advocacy of Portal and the acquiescence of both politicians and the other service chiefs. With the Americans bringing their assets to the air war, he reckoned that a fleet of up to 6,000 heavy bombers could be amassed which could blast 25 million Germans from their homes and kill 900,000 of them, fatally weakening Germany’s home defences before the land invasion was launched. That Portal could coolly present such a proposal is proof of the brutalizing consequences of going to war with the Germans. Appalling choices were necessary to crush the evil of Nazism, and the critical judgements on Bomber Command that followed in peacetime, delivered by those who had never had to endure the appalling ethical pressures of war, were arrogant and unjust. Few knew the reality better than Noble Frankland, the Bomber Command navigator and historian of the campaign. In his words, ‘the great immorality open to us in 1940 and 1941 was to lose the war against Hitler’s Germany. To have abandoned the only means of direct attack which we had at our disposal would have been a long step in that direction.’1

  The crews were now caught up in a horrible process that inevitably resulted in the large-scale deaths of civilians. They, too, would experience their share of suffering. By the spring of 1943 all the elements for a full-scale assault against German cities were in place. Harris had a regular front-line strength of more than 600 new heavy bombers at his disposal and the numbers would keep on growing.

  He had his orders, delivered from the highest level. In January 1943 Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt met at Casablanca to plan the next stage of a war that was now irrevocably going their way. The role of Bomber Command was spelled out in what became known as the Casablanca Directive, which informed Harris: ‘Your primary objective will be the progressive destruction of the German military and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their armed resistance is fatally weakened.’ Throughout spring and summer the crews would be hurled against the industrial conglomerations clustered between the Rhine and the Lippe, an area which became familiar to the British public through countless progress reports, in the press and on the BBC, as the Ruhr.

  Rapidly constructed bases sprang up on the flat fields of the eastern counties of England, and placid market towns filled with men and women in grey-blue serge. Bomberland started where East Anglia juts out into the North Sea, reaching out towards the Low Countries and Germany, and stretched north to Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. The American journalist Martha Gellhorn, who visited a bomber base to report for Collier’s magazine, found it ‘cold and dun-coloured. The land seems unused and almost not lived in.’

  There was not much to divert your mind from contemplation of the operations that lay ahead or to celebrate your safe return. At the end of a mission, crews came back to a monochrome world of muddy potato fields, Nissen huts with smoky stoves, weak beer and dull food. The experience of the fighter pilots of 1940 was sometimes portrayed by them as something of an idyll, and that the trauma of a day of dogfighting might be soothed way by evenings in old pubs nestling picturesquely in downland and weald. No Bomber Boy ever made this claim. Life on base was as dank and unappetizing as a raw Lincolnshire spud, and letters home are full of yearning for decent food and drink. George Hull, arriving at the Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley near Newark in Nottinghamshire in the autumn of 1943, wrote to his friend Joan Hull: ‘I seem to have fallen decidedly into the soup or what have you in being posted to this station. Eve
n the name is obnoxious. Wigsley, ugh! Pigsley would be more appropriate, yet I doubt that any pig would care to be associated with it. The camp is dispersed beyond reason. If I [didn’t have] a bike I doubt if I could cope with the endless route marches that would otherwise be necessary. Messing is terrible, both for food and room to eat it. Normally we queue for half an hour before we can even sit, waiting for it. Washing facilities are confined to a few dozen filthy bowls and two sets of showers an inch deep in mud and water.’2

  There was nowhere to escape to. The local towns were dreary, even by provincial standards. For the many airmen in Lincolnshire the choice was between the tearooms of the cathedral city or Scunthorpe’s handful of dance halls, where hundreds of men competed for the favours of a handful of local girls. Drink provided a little solace and piss-ups in pubs or mess were frequent. Sex was sometimes available, from a variety of amateurs, professionals and lonely wives whose men were away at the war. No one wanted to die a virgin and descriptions of first encounters make them sound more than usually like a job to be done rather than a sensual experience.

  The bleakness of life was to some extent compensated for by the warmth of companionship. ‘Thank God for the crew,’ wrote George Hull from his dreary base. ‘A fierce bond has sprung up between us . . . we sleep together, we shower together, and yes we even arrange to occupy adjacent bogs and sing each other into a state of satisfaction.’3

  They were fighting a very peculiar sort of war. They attacked an enemy they couldn’t see, night after night. Their targets were not soldiers or fellow aviators but buildings and those who lived in or near them. There was no way of measuring success, no territory or strongpoint they could say they had captured, no enemy put to flight. The fights were brief. There was nothing connecting them to the battlefield. They visited, then left.