by Ray Ollis
Morse: Morse code. Letters coded as dots and dashes.
Natter: talking aimlessly, endlessly, irritatingly; to talk when speech is forbidden.
NCO: Non-Commissioned Officer.
Nightfighter (when not an aircraft): a sexually active (if not predatory) woman, who may or may not be a prostitute.
Nuisance raid: a few fast twin-engined bombers (e.g. Mosquitos) dropping bombs on a target as a diversion while the main force head elsewhere; also used to provoke to disturb the sleep of the inhabitants. See spoof.
Oboe: Ground-controlled Blind-bombing Radar System. Intended to increase the accuracy of bomb-aiming or target marking under all weather conditions. An aircraft followed radio beam and its position was calculated by measuring its distance from a second point.
Observer (also ‘O wing’): Until 1942, the man responsible for navigation and bomb-aiming, and sundry other tasks.
Olio-leg: Oleo leg; the two main oil-damped shock-absorbing undercarriage legs of a heavy bomber, to which the main wheels are attached.
Odd bods: Spare people; unattached airmen who flew with an unfamiliar crew missing a member.
OTU: Operational Training Unit. It was rare for a crew to be returned to an OTU, and regarded as a great disgrace for the crew and the OTU itself.
Over: and Out. In radio transmission, a simple method to indicate that someone has finished talking and is waiting for a reply by saying ‘Over’ at the end of a sentence. ‘Out’ means that the speaker is finished speaking and does not expect a reply.
Paps: large breasts.
Perimeter track: Taxying lane leading off and around the three runways, enabling the bombers to get onto their pan quickly.
Perspex: Transparent, plastic and shatter-proof substance which acted as a window in bomber gun turrets, astro domes, bomb aiming positions and cockpits.
Piccadilly Circus: metaphorically, somewhere very busy indeed.
Pinpoint: a precise time matched to a visually identified place enabling the navigator to confirm speed and direction, and plot accordingly.
Pongo: Derogatory RAF slang for a member of the Army, supposedly because they don’t wash as often.
Popsie: RAF slang for wench, a woman of easy virtue or frivolous nature.
Press-on gong: a medal for continuing the attack in spite of damage to the aircraft, aircrew or other difficulties normally necessitating an early return to base.
Prune, P/O: Pilot Officer Prune. A pilot who takes unnecessary risks, and generally loses his neck through ‘prunery’; a pilot who has several ‘prangs’ on his record.
Put up a black: do something bad which is brought to a superior officer’s attention.
Radar: the acronym RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging) was first used in 1940–1941 by both the British and the US Navy, although the term RDF (Radio Direction Finding) was used by the British for several years. By the end of the war, ‘radar’ was in conversational use.
Radio silence: not transmitting radio signals, which could be picked up by the enemy and used to detect the transmitter’s location.
Rag: noisy, disorderly conduct, great high spirits.
Rake: an immoral or dissipated man.
Rip van Winkle: someone not connected with current events (Rip van Winkle slept for 20 years and awoke to find that things had changed).
Roué: a man who leads, a life of pleasure and sensuality.
Rolling-stock works: A factory that makes and repairs the vehicles which use a railway, from carriages and engines to cattle-trucks.
Romance wreckers: Also known as Passion Killers, Blackouts or Official Issue. Voluminously virtuous women’s bloomers as worn by the various branches of the women’s Armed Services, WAAFs, WRENs etc.
Scoop: news obtained and printed in advance of a rival newspaper.
Second Dickie: (also Second Dickey, or the Dickey Pilot): a pilot flying with an experienced pilot for instructional purposes.
Section: a section of aircraft was between two to six; but usually four. Thus a Flight Commander outranks a Section Leader.
Sextant: an instrument that measures the angle between two objects, such as a planet or star, and the horizon: the angle combined with the time measured allow the navigator to compute a position line on a chart.
Shooting a line: to talk too much, especially to boast.
Shower: a large number (pejorative), e.g. ‘a shower of shit’.
Show her his etchings: (or, show you my etchings) to entice a girl home, code for a request for sex.
Sideslip: when attempting to land in a cross-wind, aiming the aircraft into the wind so that the aircraft’s flightpath follows the aircraft’s intended direction (rather than simply flying straight, which will allow the wind to push the aircraft off the runway).
SOS: the international request for urgent assistance; the letters were chosen because their Morse pattern was easy to remember (three short dashes, three long, and three short).
Spitfire: the Supermarine Spitfire, the most flexible and effective fighter aircraft of the Second World War.
Spiv: a borderline criminal, an unreliable opportunist.
Spoof: to fool or to trick. A spoof attack was where the bomber stream would apparently head for one target, only to change direction to another. Later raids would sometimes use more than four changes of direction in order to spoof the defenders.
Sprog: a new recruit, especially a raw one.
Squadron: An RAF squadron consisted of up to 24 aircraft. Wartime supply difficulties, damage and attrition meant that a squadron might be whatever the aerodrome could put up.
Stinko: exceedingly drunk.
Stringers: strips of light metal which hold the frames of the fuselage rigid.
SWO: Station Warrant Officer.
Swuffled: from swung and waffle.
Tannoy: Public address system made by Tannoy.
Teleprinter: a device for sending a typed message via telephone line to one or many destinations, where the message was printed by the teleprinter at its destination.
Tit: The bomb-release button in British bombers. A pressable nipple on the end of a cord.
TOT: Time On Target.
Tracer: Tracer bullets. A bullet which has a small charge at the bottom; the charge burns brightly (red, in World War II) when ignited which reveals its trajectory, allowing the gunner to adjust his aim.
Trailing Radio Aerial: A lengthy wire aerial unwound behind the aircraft to enable the wireless operator to receive transmissions from the home aerodrome.
Trim: keeping the aircraft balanced in flight; hence ‘trim tabs’, which are the small flaps attached to the wing’s trailing edge, intended to assist in maintaining trim.
Tucker: food, rations.
USAF: The USAAF, United States Army Air Force, became the USAF in 1947.
Very lights, Very pistol: a single shot flare gun which fired a lighted flare into the sky.
VC: The highest British medal possible: the Victoria Cross.
Waaf: a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force; the acronym WAAF was simply pronounced ‘waff’, or, as the author writes it, ‘waaf’. Australian WAAFs were WAAAFs.
Wing: Several squadrons of aircraft, usually three or four.
Wings: (or pilot’s wings). Named for the cloth patch that all pilots wore on their shoulder. ‘Getting your wings’ meaning ‘qualifying’.
Wizard prang: RAF slang via Public School slang: ‘wizard’ meaning ‘exceptionally good’ or ‘exceptionally spectacular’, and ‘prang’ for crash, destruction; after a successful bombing run, an exclamation of relief and joy at the destruction, reducing the enormity of the event to a schoolboy game.
WRAN: Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service. The British equivalent was Women’s Royal Naval Service (WREN).
Wurtzburg: giant radar dishes which the Germans used to direct night fighters, searchlights and anti-aircraft fire. Also spelled Wurzburg or Wuerzburg.
Bibliography
These skeletal publishing d
etails quoted are of the original publication unless otherwise stated, and should enable the intrepid reader to locate the reference; there were many other references consulted.
Raymond Alexander, Special Operations No 101 Squadron, (The Author, Anglesey, 1979).
John Anderson, Parallel Motion. A Biography of Nevil Shute Norway (The Paper Tiger, 2011).
D.C.T. Bennett, Pathfinder (Frederick Muller, 1958).
Patrick Bishop, Bomber Boys. Fighting Back, 1940–1945 (Harper, 2007).
Paul Brickhill, Reach for the Sky (William Collins, 1954).
J.R.D. ‘Bob’ Braham, Scramble! (Frederick Muller, 1961).
Andrew Brookes, Bomber Squadron at War (Ian Allan, 1983).
Richard Burton, The Book of The Thousand Nights and A Night, (10 volumes, Kama Shastra Society, 1885; popularly known as The Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One Nights).
John Bushby, Gunner’s Moon (Ian Allan, 1972).
Harold Butler, The Lost Peace. A Personal Impression (Faber, 1941).
Christy Campbell, Target London. Under Attack from the V-Weapons (Little, Brown, 2012).
Colonel Jean Calmel, Night Pilot (William Kimber, 1955).
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (Hamish Hamilton, 1939).
Leonard Cheshire, Bomber Pilot (Hutchinson, 1943).
W.R. Chorley, Royal Air Force Bomber Command Losses of the Second World War series; several volumes, Midland Press. Now published by Ian Allan, they are also available online, with updates.
Martyn Chorlton, To Serve Was Their Highest Aim (Aeroplane, Kelsey Publishing Group, June 2012).
H.I. Cozens and Brian Johnson, Night Bombers (DVD; ‘Archive at War’, Oracle, 2009).
John Bede Cusack, They Hosed Them Out (revised and expanded edition, 2012, Wakefield Press).
Len Deighton, Bomber (Jonathan Cape, 1970).
Ken Delve, Bomber Command 1936–1968. An Operational and Historical Record (Pen and Sword, 2005).
Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (Harper and Row, 1979).
John Ellis, Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War (Andre Deutsch, 1990).
Sean Feast, Carried on the Wind. Wartime Experiences of a Special Duties Operator with 101 Squadron RAF Bomber Command (Woodfield, 2003).
Guy Gibson, Enemy Coast Ahead—Uncensored (Crecy, 2003). In comparing passages quoted by Richard Morris (who worked from the manuscript) with this edition, one realises that the Crecy edition is not complete.
A.C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities. Is the Targeting of Civilians Ever Justified? (Bloomsbury, 2006.
William Green, War Planes of the Second World War. Volume One: Fighters (Macdonald, 1960).
John Grigg, 1943. The Victory That Never Was (Eyre Methuen, 1980).
Bill Gunston, Night Fighters. A Development and Combat History (Patrick Stephens Limited, 1976).
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Richard Hillary, The Last Enemy (Macmillan, 1942).
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Clayton Hutton, Official Secret (Max Parrish, 1960).
Ernst Junger, The Storm of Steel (Originally published in 1920), but translated by Basil Creighton for Chatto and Windus, May 1929. Junger revised the book many times, and the current edition (Penguin, 2003) is a new translation of the last revision; I have quoted from the 1929 edition.
Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker (Andre Deutsch, 1975).
Heinz Knoke, I Flew for the Fuhrer (Evans Brothers, 1953).
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Death. The Final Stage of Growth (Spectrum, 1975)
Gavin Long, Official History of Australia in the Second World War, Volume II: Greece, Crete and Syria (Australian War Memorial, 1953—.
Norman Longmate, Air Raid. The Bombing of Coventry, 1940 (D. McKay, 1978).
Keith Lowe, Inferno. The Devastation of Hamburg 1943 (Viking, 2007).
Ian Mackersey, Into the Silk (Robert Hale, 1956).
Alexander McKee, Dresden 1945. The Devil’s Tinderbox (Souvenir Press, 1982).
Leo McKinstry, Lancaster. The Second World War’s Greatest Bomber (John Murray, 2009).
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J.C. Masterman, The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939–1945 (Yale University Press, 1972).
Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everett, The Bomber Command War Diaries (Viking, 1985).
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Bob Ogley, Doodlebugs and Rockets. The Battle of the Flying Bombs (Froglets, 1992).
Susan Ottaway, Dambuster. The Life of Guy Gibson VC (Pen and Sword, 1994).
Patrick Otter, Lincolnshire Airfields in the Second World War (Countryside Books, 2012 revised).
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Alfred Price, Instruments of Darkness. The History of Electronic Warfare (Macdonald and Jane’s, 1977, revised).
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Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day (Gollancz, 1960).
John Searby, The Everlasting Arms. The War Memoirs of Air Commodore John Searby DSO, DFC (William Kimber, 1988).
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M.J. Trow, War Crimes. Underworld Britain in the Second World War (Pen and Sword, 2008).
Chris Ward and Steve Smith, 3 Group Bomber Command. An Operational Record (Pen and Sword, 2008).
Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland: The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany (HMSO, 1961).
Mark K. Wells, Courage and Air Warfare. The Allied Aircrew Experience in the Second World War (Frank Cass, 1995).
G.A. Wilkes, A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms (Sydney University Press, 1978).
Kevin Wilson, Men of Air. The Doomed Youth of Bomber Command, (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2007).
Geoffrey Williams, Flying Through Fire (Grange Books, 1995).
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