by Peter Rees
I cannot pretend that Curtin hurried to England because of my complaints about our aircrew reinforcements being hijacked by the UK. It had a lot to do with the overall dissatisfaction by the Australian Government with the conduct of the war by England and with Churchill’s misuse of Australian Army, Navy and Air Force personnel under his government’s control short-sightedly placed there by Menzies early in the war.
From the start of the war, Rollo had been critical of the way Australia’s involvement had been organised. He believed the Menzies government had ‘agreed to make Australia a giant camp to train pilots and navigators, gunners and radio operators to send overseas to serve under the English government directions’. On the other hand, it could be argued that while mistakes were made regarding the command structure, the RAAF had no great expertise to offer Britain in the early stages. But Rollo was nothing if not passionate about the interests of his fellow Australian airmen.
On 19 May 1944, despite a full program ahead of him in London with the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference and talks with Churchill, John Curtin accompanied Wrigley to Waddington to visit 463 and 467 Squadrons. Curtin had made it clear that he wanted to spend as much time as possible with RAAF crews, and Wrigley thought that this station, with its two Lancaster heavy bomber units, would give him a good idea of the work they were doing. Curtin arrived at 6 p.m., just in time to attend the briefings for 463 and 467 Squadrons for that night’s operations, which centred on railway yards at Tours, in France. He chatted with the men and shared a cup of tea with them, thanking them for putting up with him and his questions.
Some, like 467 pilot Dan Conway, missed the planned dinner that night because they were on operational duty, but they were given the chance to meet the prime minister in the officers’ mess. Non-commissioned aircrew also attended and, when questions were invited, some raised the issue of NCO pilots captaining an aircraft when their crew included commissioned officers. Like many, Dan thought this unfair and that any captain should be given a commission—and the appropriate pay increase. ‘Commissioned officers were expected to take the responsibility and make the decisions. However when an NCO pilot flew the aircraft he was traditionally the skipper and gave the orders,’ he would later write. This situation arose in the first place because a limited number of trainees received commissions as pilots ‘off course’. Conway was not alone in thinking that this practice was a hit and miss affair.
The current situation ‘negated the whole principle of the lines of military authority for the saving of a few shillings a day’. That it worked well was a tribute to the goodwill and commonsense of the aircrew. ‘Honest John’ Curtin listened patiently to the submissions and promised to investigate. Soon after, it was announced that all pilots who were captaining multi-engined aircraft would be commissioned. There is nothing like going to the top.
Curtin joined the VIP party at the end of the runway to watch the boys take off. It was still daylight, so the insignia that crews had painted on the various aircraft were clearly visible. Curtin laughed at one freshly painted sign: a ballot form listing Curtin, Jan Smuts of South Africa, Stalin, Churchill and Gandhi, with a cross beside Stalin’s name. Later, Dan Conway was handed a message from the PM reading, ‘Good luck boys—Curtin.’ He duly passed it to the radio operators for transmission.
It had been a quiet night as all the crews landed away due to bad weather at base. When they did get back I copped several protests about the message. Some had interpreted it as, ‘Good luck curtains’ and some wondered whether it was a recall. Which does not say much for our radio standards but something about the tensions of an op and the reactions to extraneous messages. Our Prime Minister, however, did leave behind a favourable impression.
Rollo Kingsford-Smith did not fly with 463 Squadron that night. He was present as the red carpet was unrolled and Curtin dined with officers in the mess at a dinner in his honour. As mess president, Rollo was the host, with Curtin seated on his right, Group Captain Bonham-Carter on his left and Air Vice-Marshal Wrigley sitting opposite. During the dinner a messenger came in and gave Bonham-Carter a note. He then scribbled something on the back of his place card and passed it behind Rollo’s back to the PM. Curtin read it and then asked Rollo if he could make a short announcement. ‘I stood up and requested everybody’s attention for the PM who said, ‘I am delighted to announce that my host Wing Commander Kingsford-Smith has just been given the immediate award of the Distinguished Flying Cross.’ This was a complete surprise to me and my obvious embarrassment was a topic of comment later on.’
Wrigley noted in his diary: ‘It is a long time since I have seen anyone look as embarrassed as Kingsford-Smith did for he had no inkling that anything of this nature was on the way.’
After the dinner, Curtin returned to his hotel to rest until the bombers came back. However, because of thick ground fog, they were all diverted to other stations. Wrigley was in no doubt that the men were impressed by Curtin. ‘What I think pleased them more than anything was that his questions were intelligent ones, where previously a lot of them were very superficial and meant nothing very much. I’m sure that they all appreciated his visit to them. He told them too that he’d tell the Australian people when he got home the sort of work that they were doing.’
An entry in the Operations Record book for 467 Squadron noted that the visit was ‘a big day for both Australian Squadrons’ and had been covered by a large press contingent. It added that the Prime Minister had addressed a meeting of all Australian personnel before watching take-off. ‘Question time kept a good number of ground staff busy firing queries at Mr Curtin, which were answered to the satisfaction of all concerned.’
More important in Rollo’s view, after this visit ‘our reinforcements began to flow again’. At 10 a.m. the next day Curtin travelled to Binbrook to visit 460 Squadron. On behalf of the Binbrook RAAF Welfare Committee, Perc Rodda had been chosen as spokesman for the seventy-five minute meeting in the station’s theatre. In particular, RAAF ground staff wanted their grievances about repatriation raised. Wrigley had suggested to the Australian War Cabinet a repatriation scheme of fifty ground crew a month. At that rate, it would take three years to send home and replace all those currently serving in England. Perc said it was felt that the overseas personnel were ‘being called upon to make an inequitable sacrifice’ compared with the large percentage of RAAF ground staff who had not served outside Australia. He noted that requests for repatriation on compassionate grounds had not received the sympathetic consideration they deserved. Curtin said he ‘fully appreciated’ the desire of men to be sent home after lengthy service overseas, adding ‘all that was possible would be done’.
And it was. By the end of the month the Australian War Cabinet had approved the start of negotiations with the British government for the return of ground staff at a rate of 100 men every second month, with a three-year qualifying period. Six weeks later, Churchill agreed to the plan. At that time there were 1486 ground crew in the United Kingdom, of whom 740 had been there for more than three years.
Sensing the undercurrent of discontent, Curtin expressed his appreciation of the service that members of the RAAF were rendering in England. He assured them that the ‘government and the people of Australia had a full realisation of the important and gallant part they were taking in the defeat of the enemy’. He added that there was ‘no suggestion in any reasonable man’s mind that the personnel in England were not playing as effective a role in the defeat of the Axis powers generally as they would if they were operating from Australian or adjacent bases’. This was a clear reference to a developing view in Australia that Australians should not be serving in Europe while the Japanese in the Pacific were still a threat. Despite Curtin’s reassurance, however, popular appreciation of the contribution the RAAF in Europe was making to the total war effort would continue to deteriorate.
Curtin also undertook to clear up another contentious issue: pyjamas, or the lack of them in a cold climate. The British Board of Trade would not p
ermit the issue of coupons [for pyjamas] to RAAF personnel below commissioned rank because this would create a precedent. However, the Australian Comforts Fund had undertaken to supply a quantity of pyjamas to non-commissioned RAAF personnel.
The meeting over, Curtin complimented Perc on his handling of the discussion and headed off for lunch with officers before watching 460 Squadron’s veteran Lancaster ‘G for George’—which had flown a record ninety operations—take off on its last war flight. The PM remained at the airfield until the last 460 Lancaster had left to join the raid on Tours and had the same good luck message flashed to the pilots as he had at Waddington—fortunately with no ensuing confusion.
25
FACE TO FACE WITH THE ENEMY
Noel Eliot and a mate felt like a beer after leaving the cinema in Oakham, near RAF Station Woolfox Lodge, Lincolnshire, on a spring evening in April 1944. But to their exasperation, all the pubs had run dry. ‘The horrors of war!’ Noel noted in his diary. Noel was attached to 218 Squadron RAF, and the next night, 1 May, he was to take part in a raid on the Chambly railway marshalling yards just north of Paris. After the briefing he went back to his quarters to change into his flying gear. He still had some time to kill before leaving on the op, so he decided to finish a letter he had half written to Enid Stumbles, the ‘winsome lass’ he had met in Sydney while awaiting embarkation for overseas.
The ten-page letter, on Australian Comforts Fund notepaper, began with a good-natured jibe at Enid for not having written for six weeks. Noel then detailed some mishaps that had befallen him.
I’m down in the dumps tonight Enid! Have a lovely pile of strife on my hands, and am feeling very disgustipated with everything and everyone. To start the sad story, a couple of weeks ago, I was taxying [sic] a plane out of its dispersal and caught the elevator on the gantry that had been left near the dispersal, damaging the former slightly, with the result that I had a strip torn off me and my log-book endorsed. The ground crew are supposed to see all obstructions are moved out of the way, and I was being guided out by an airman, but nevertheless, I was blamed for it. Then this afternoon, with the same plane and in the same dispersal, I caught the tail-plane on a tree, doing a bit more damage. What they’ll do to me this time I’m frightened to contemplate. I’m just ‘Joe Soap’ sitting up in front of the plane doing what others direct me to, I can’t see the tail at all, while a lot of silly fools stand on the ground and watch the tail swing into a tree!! After this effort, they’ll probably reduce me to the ranks, or something of the sort. What makes me sore is the fact that up till now, I’ve never so much as scratched the paint on an aircraft in 2 ½ years flying, and then I get my log-book endorsed for my first offence!! If it hadn’t been for the first affair, I’d have been a Flight-Lieutenant now. This will settle it altogether!!
Noel told Enid that he was still on four-engined Stirlings, and quite happy about it. His crew’s new plane, ‘P for Peter’, had missed two trips because of engine trouble but was now flying well. They now had a good ground-crew sergeant for the aircraft and that made all the difference. Noel added some news that, while to him it was everyday reality, must have sent a chill down Enid’s spine. ‘When my first squadron was disbanded, most of the crews went onto Lancs [Lancasters], and out of those who did there are only about four surviving now. Glad I stuck to the old love!!’ Folding the letter into an envelope, he addressed it and left it on his dressing table.
After the disbandment of his original unit, 623 Squadron RAF, Noel had been posted to 218 Squadron RAF in early December 1943. Both squadrons’ Stirlings were being phased out of service, as they were considered too slow and heavy. With a full load they could climb only to 16,000 feet, and while they could carry twenty-four 500-pound bombs as far as the Ruhr, for trips beyond that they had to take a lot of extra fuel, which greatly reduced their bomb capacity.
The Stirlings normally flew well below the Lancaster and Halifax bombers, and it was not unusual for them to be hit by incendiaries from the aircraft above, though surprisingly, these seldom did much damage. One aircraft from Noel’s squadron had a 500-pounder go clean through the fuselage just in front of the mid-upper turret without doing any serious damage. ‘When subject to the scorn and derision about our aircraft from Lancaster and Halifax crews, we would reply, “We don’t mind—you fellows up there cop all the fighters”,’ Noel recalled. But the casualty rate in Stirlings was high. Only one crew on 218 Squadron had survived a full tour of operations.
Noel had often felt his luck tested. On the night of 19 November 1943, the night after his ‘operational baptism’ on a raid to Mannheim in south-western Germany, he was part of a bomber force of 266 aircraft sent to attack Leverkusen, near Düsseldorf. Four Halifaxes and one Stirling were lost in weather that was so bad most of the German night fighters stayed on the ground. Noel recalled that they:
spent ten minutes over the target trying to see the markers. Bomb aimer missed it on first run in so I had to do a circuit and come in again. Lots of flak, clouds stopped the searchlights. Shot at all the way back. Nay, took us forty miles north of track at coast and over all the heaviest defended area in France. To finish the day off we were diverted to Chedborough on our return because of fog. Reached our base at twelve thirty the next day. I reported to Squadron Leader Overton about our trip and told him about circling the target area for fifteen minutes. He turned quite pale and said, ‘Eliot, I admire your determination but never, never do that again!’
Noel and his crew had completed fifteen operations and were even beginning to think that they might survive their full tour. Noel was happy with the men, with one exception: the English navigator, Jack Hassett. Though competent at his job, Jack was difficult to get along with, but he would be hard to replace, so the crew put up with him. Another Englishman, Ted Hawkins, a small, neat man in his thirties, was the flight engineer. The wireless operator was a tall Irishman, Paddy Clayton, while the bomb aimer was Jack Lynch, a teacher from New South Wales with a droll sense of humour.
The mid-upper gunner was a nineteen-year-old Scot, Charles ‘Jock’ Weir, who loved to talk, mainly about himself. ‘We felt that when Jock ran out of facts, his fertile imagination was always equal to filling the void—a likeable lad, nevertheless,’ Noel recalled. There was always a bit of chaffing between Jack Lynch and Jock. Jock’s Scottish burr could be a bit hard to understand over the intercom, prompting Jack one night to tell him to ‘speak English’. Jock replied that ‘he wouldn’t speak English for any bloody Sassenach’! The rear gunner, or ‘tail-end Charlie’, was Johnny Grantham, a nineteen-year-old from Sussex, who had been a steeplechase jockey with a promising career ahead of him when he enlisted. For this raid they had an extra crew member, Sergeant Harry Wilson, who was getting operational experience on the nose turret guns, normally the bomb aimer’s responsibility.
Sixteen aircraft took off in fair weather at 2230 hours and had a good run to the target. They encountered the usual light flak over the French coast, but Noel never worried too much about that if he was above 6000 feet. He had the Stirling at 11,000 feet, and for the only time he could remember—and for what reason he never fathomed—the Lancasters and Halifaxes on the same target were flying below him. Using the Gee-H radio navigational system, an update of Gee, they dropped their bombs right on target and headed for home.
When the 218 Squadron aircrews returned to base, they began filling out the Operations Record Book. Of the sixteen aircraft that left, thirteen had attacked the target. The Chambly depot was ‘brilliantly lit up by flares’ that the Pathfinders had dropped and could be easily seen as 120 aircraft dropped 142,000 pounds of bombs. Approximately 500 high-explosive bombs fell inside the railway depot area, causing serious damage to all sections. Active on the return journey, they had run into some German fighters, and three aircraft were shot down. One crash-landed at Woodbridge, in England. The other two were missing. One was Noel Eliot’s plane.
Noel had been about ten minutes out from the target and about halfway to
the coast on the way home when Johnny Grantham called urgently on the intercom from the rear turret: ‘There is a fighter coming in from behind, Skipper—get weaving!’ Noel heeded the warning.
I put the aircraft into an evasive corkscrew, but almost immediately a stream of incendiary cannon shell passed just above my head, coming from the rear and almost at the same time another came up alongside my window from below, obviously two fighters attacked us together—they were Focke-Wulf 190s. Both gun turrets were firing continuously and the plane was juddering from their reactions, while the air was full of the smell of cordite.
It was soon obvious they were badly hit: one engine was burning and the propeller on the port outer engine was out of control. Noel called over the intercom for the crew to prepare to bail out. The intercom then went dead.
Jack Hassett, as his part of the ‘prepare to bail out’ drill, brought my parachute from where it was stowed near his table and clipped it on to the harness on my chest. Jock came up to me and said the plane was on fire amidships and I yelled to him and the others to ‘get out’. The controls were now flopping about uselessly, the cables to the rear end obviously destroyed. Part of the bomb aimer’s ‘prepare to bail out’ drill was to open the escape hatch down in the nose section, which he had done. The nose of the plane was now going up and down, my last look at the altimeter showed we were going down through 9000 feet. Undoing my seat harness, I threw off my helmet and its attachments and dived down into the nose section and headfirst out through the open escape hatch.
Noel did not see any of the other crew members and presumed they had all gone before him. The tail gunner would not have been able to come forward, but his method of escape was to rotate his turret 180 degrees and tumble out backwards. As lights were never on in the plane during operations, all movements had to be made in complete darkness. Moments after Noel jumped, he pulled the ripcord and the parachute opened with a solid jerk, sending him into a pendulum swing. He stopped this by pulling down on the shroud lines on one side. He could not see the ground but could see his plane burning in a field several kilometres away, where it had crashed.