I am convinced that if this request could be granted and a little trust placed in me by higher authority with regard to my future behaviour, I shall not fail.21
There is no evidence that Heath fought in the Spanish Civil War nor did he have the opportunity to do so, given he was in the RAF when it started and at Hollesley Bay thereafter. It’s doubtful, too, that Elizabeth was pregnant again, their son being only seven months old when this letter was written. But it’s typical of Heath to risk lies such as these (one heroic, one sentimental) that could fairly easily be disproved. Fortunately for him, this gamble worked. Given his good record in service and apparent sincerity to reform his character, the director general of the Air Force thought he should be given another chance. He could remain in the SAAF on six months’ probation on the condition that he repaid all his outstanding debts.22 Heath’s father-in-law reluctantly obliged. The Immigration Authorities would hold his deportation in abeyance. Once again, he was offered an extraordinary opportunity to rehabilitate and redeem himself.
Having successfully deflected these issues from the past, Heath might have embraced the strategy he had implemented at Hollesley Bay; to keep his head down for the duration and concentrate on training other pilots. However, on the international scene, the war was now moving in the Allies’ favour. The Axis powers had surrendered in North Africa, British troops had landed on mainland Italy and the Italians had declared war on Germany. With a series of concentrated bombing raids on Germany beginning in February 1944 and the Germans heavily invested on the Eastern Front, Allied victory seemed a real possibility – a far cry from the situation when Heath had last been in England in 1940. It is at this point, Heath recognized in retrospect, that he made a fundamental mistake. Rather than settling for a safer, duller life in South Africa, he still wanted to go on active service and take part in the war.
One thing is certain, and it is that if I had I not left Training Command in South Africa to go on ‘ops’ none of this last eighteen months of hell would have occurred.23
Heath’s desire to fly again with the RAF was intense. He had been trying for a secondment or transfer since 1940. His objective was not to work as part of support staff or in training, but to go on operations in one of the active theatres of war. He specifically wanted to return to Fighter Command, the daring, glamorous face of the RAF. In April 1944 he achieved his long-held ambition and successfully arranged a transfer, with the RAF presumably unaware that ‘J. R. C. Armstrong’ was actually ‘N. G. C. Heath’, who had been dismissed from the service in 1937.24 Arriving back in England, he was sent to Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey to join 180 Squadron, part of the 2nd Tactical Air Force.25 The squadron flew under the motto ‘suaviter in modo fortier in re’ (charming in manner, forthright in deed), perfect for the golden-haired adventurer Heath.
On 27 June, Heath called at the Borstal Association wearing the uniform of a captain in the SAAF, bearing his wings and two ribbons on his chest. He told Mr Scott that he was now based in South Cerney in Gloucestershire working on Intruder Operations. This involved fighter planes making night attacks on German fighter bases, hoping to cause disruption to reduce the heavy losses that were being suffered by Bomber Command at the time. However, whatever he told Mr Scott, Heath was not flying in Fighter Command at all, but had been training to fly bombers.This was a significant change for Heath as flying a fighter and flying a bomber demanded very different skills of their pilots and – some aviation experts would say – different personalities. Much of the bomber’s work was done before they left the ground and flying over to Europe could mean flights of seven, eight or nine hours. These journeys were highly dramatic at take-off and landing, and particularly intense over the target, but outside these peaks there were long periods of boredom and fatigue. Heath had been used to flying up-to-the-minute fighter planes like the Hawker Hurricane – sports cars of the air. The Dam Busters veteran Guy Gibson likened flying a bomber to driving a bus.26
As well as the different technical and intellectual demands that flying fighters and bombers made on their pilots, one of the crucial differences between Bomber Command and Fighter Command was the number of fatalities they suffered. Of the 125,000 airmen who served in Bomber Command during the war according to one study, fatalities were as high as 65 per cent. Two thirds would be expected to die. These terrifying statistics would have been known to all bomber aircrew. Air Chief Marshall Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, Bomber Command’s Commander-in-Chief later noted that:
These crews, shining youth on the threshold of life, lived under circumstances of intolerable strain. They were in fact – and they knew it, faced with the virtual certainty of death, probably in one of its least pleasant forms.27
One nineteen-year-old flight engineer, Sergeant Dennis Goodliffe, was told on arrival at his squadron: ‘You’re now on an operational squadron, your expectation of life is six weeks. Go back to your huts and make out your wills.’28
Yet, extraordinarily, even in 1944 when Bomber Command was suffering terrible losses, the supply of aircrew candidates never dwindled and the Air Ministry felt able to turn away 22.5 per cent of the volunteers who applied to join them.
Over several months of training, crew members would be taught in a particular role for which they had shown aptitude – pilots, navigators, engineers, wireless operators, air-gunners and bomb-aimers. But even in training the notion of death was never far from their minds as over 8,000 trainee aircrew died before they qualified – one seventh of fatalities that Bomber Command suffered throughout the duration of the war. These accidents in training often provided young crews with their first direct acquaintance with death, as many were still in their teens. The average age of an airman in Bomber Command was just twenty-two.
Heath was trained to fly American-made two-engined Mitchell bombers, the B-25. Having completed specialist training, pilots, navigators and bomb-aimers were given further advanced instruction before finally arriving at an Operational Training Unit where they would join the wireless operators and gunners, who had been trained elsewhere. It is at the OTUs that British trainees would meet their various counterparts from Australia and New Zealand who had been trained at the Empire Training Schools abroad. Crews were then put together in an extraordinarily unscientific process known as ‘crewing up’. The requisite numbers of each aircrew category were put together in a large room or hangar and simply told to team up. Each potential aircrew member would need to make instinctive decisions, attempting to interpret a special chemistry between a group of complete strangers. Jack Currie, who reached his OTU in 1942, remembered that ‘I had a strange recollection of standing in a suburban dance-hall, wondering which girls I should approach.’29 And indeed, crewing up was a sort of mating ritual. Who would be calm, efficient, hard-working, reliable, great to have a laugh and a drink with and – most, importantly – who would be lucky? There must also have been some subliminal sense of attraction between the men who were drawn to each other. Heath was fit, good-looking and charming and it’s easy to see how he would be able to attract an enthusiastic crew around him. The decisions that he and his fellow crew members had made in this casual, haphazard way were to be the most important decisions these young men would ever make, as it would dictate whether they – as a crew – would live or die.
Captain William Spurrett Fielding-Johnson was a hugely distinguished and much-admired flying ace, credited with five aerial victories in the First World War. He had been awarded the Military Cross in 1915 whilst serving with the Leicestershire Yeomanry. Following an injury in 1916 he had trained as a pilot with the RAF. In 1918 he destroyed four German fighters and a reconnaissance aircraft. He was exactly the sort of daring, heroic airman that Heath aspired to be.
Fielding-Johnson had volunteered for the RAF immediately the Second World War broke out and served as a squadron leader and aerial gunner. In 1940, at the age of forty-eight, he was the oldest rear gunner in the service and had been awarded the DFC. Having been wounded in June 1944, he was in recove
ry until September of that year, when he rejoined 180 Squadron as a squadron leader. He was responsible for the maintenance of aircraft armaments and assisting the commanding officer in observing the physical and mental wellbeing of the aircrews in his care.
As the Allies were forcing their way through Europe, 180 Squadron was preparing to move from RAF Dunsfold to Melsbroek in Belgium. The bulk of personnel, including ground staff, were sent to Belgium by road and sea, whilst the aircraft were flown over. Heath accompanied Fielding-Johnson with the land and sea party and this was the first time they came into each other’s company. As the journey continued, Fielding-Johnson became aware of Heath’s unusual behaviour, as he had ‘periods of irresponsibility during off times and when he had a drink or two’. On more than one occasion, he took issue with Heath’s behaviour – and despite Heath’s ranking as a captain, Fielding-Johnson felt more and more that he was thoroughly unreliable. Once they had settled at the Melsbroek air station, Heath’s behaviour continued to trouble him. When he had been drinking, Heath was like a completely different person; supremely arrogant, talking wildly about his past exploits and – in a most ungentlemanly manner – about his finances. Hugely knowledgeable about the pressures and strains that airmen had to cope with, Fielding-Johnson felt that Heath’s behaviour was very similar to cases he had previously dealt with when a pilot’s nerve had gone due to operational exhaustion or simply from the strain of flying itself. Effectively, he identified that Heath was in the throes of some sort of breakdown.30
In 1947, the Air Ministry commissioned a report, Psychological Disorders in Flying Personnel of the Royal Air Force Investigated During the War 1939–45. This study is a fascinating context in which to examine Heath’s actions and behaviour at this point, exploring as it does the particular pressures that pilots suffered.
The physical fatigue of flying a heavy bomber is limited to the pilot who, as captain of the aircraft, has an added mental load. There was agreement that big men [like Heath] found these planes easier to fly than small men of slender build, and one station commander thought that there should be special selection for these heavy jobs.31
The report goes on to say, based on the evidence of flight crews throughout the war, that the incidence of neuroses was highest in Bomber Command, this being almost twice the incidence in Fighter Command, and that the crew members most affected were pilots of bombers. Psychologically, fighter pilots had to concern themselves solely with their own safety. Fighter planes were also both more agile and better armed than bombers. Bomber pilots had a much less manoeuverable aircraft, slower and more vulnerable to attack by enemy fighters. Crucially, bomber pilots felt responsible not just for their own lives but for the lives of the rest of their crew.
Flying for long distances, often in the dark, affected all flight crews. Fatigue and frostbite were common and lack of oxygen sometimes resulted in blackouts. It was not unusual for a pilot to suddenly wake after a period of unconsciousness in the air. A pilot staring for hours at his instrument panel might also suddenly find everything he saw upside down – normally the human eye sees objects inverted and the brain corrects this, reversing the image. All of these symptoms were brought on by changes in physical conditions during flights.32
The psychological neuroses exhibited by aircrew were collected under six headings: anxiety, hysteria, depression, fatigue, obsession and schizophrenia.33 RAF neuro-psychiatrists established that the most important cause of neuroses in aircrew was, not surprisingly, fear.34
Many young airmen, paralysed with terror at the prospect of their own violent deaths, were equally burdened with feelings of responsibility for the carnage that they caused in the towns and cities of Germany. Frequently they would drown their fears off duty in alcoholic binges and it’s alcohol that Fielding-Johnson identified as one of the causes of Heath’s abnormal behaviour, if not the root of it. But it’s also true that airmen had access to other stimulants that could be as addictive and damaging. RAF medical officers regularly distributed ‘wakey wakey’ pills to aircrew who were suffering from fatigue and who would need to keep awake for raids that could last for up to nine hours. This was the amphetamine known as Benzedrine. Officially doctors were only supposed to offer it to pilots, gunners and navigators on missions, but in practice it was readily available on RAF stations to aircrew, ground crew and even WAAFs. Airmen became accomplished at acquiring large quantities of the drug and storing it up for their own recreational use. They’d take the pills not only on operations when they needed to keep alert for several hours, but also at off-duty parties and drinking sessions. Joan Wyndham, a self-confessed addict, remembered the casual use of Benzedrine by WAAFs and aircrew: ‘I really love the clear, cool feeling in my head and the edge of excitement it gives to everything you do.’35
Benzedrine usage was widely abused, and, like all amphetamines, highly addictive. It is the chemical base of the popular clubber’s drug, MDMA (Ecstasy). The body quickly develops a tolerance of it, encouraging higher dosage. Side effects from long-term use of Benzedrine include hyperactivity, grandiosity, euphoria, increased libido, irritability, paranoia, aggression and psychosomatic disorders. The most severe symptoms of chronic amphetamine abuse can result in psychotic behaviour that can be indistinguishable from schizophrenia. Heath would certainly have had access to Benzedrine at the time and in combination with his alcoholism it might explain some of the more extreme behaviour observed by Fielding-Johnson.
Towards the end of October, 180 Squadron had made three daylight bombing attacks on the town of Venlo in Holland and were then ordered to make a fourth. Venlo had both a road and a rail bridge over the River Meuse and the Allies would make a total of thirteen attempts to destroy the bridges in order to cut off German supply lines and to block the retreat of German troops across the river. During the attacks on the bridges, from 13 October to 19 November 1944, 300 people were killed. Despite their best efforts, Allied attempts to bomb the bridges would fail and eventually retreating German troops would blow them up themselves in an effort to halt the Allied advance.
At this time, certain members of Heath’s crew began to confide in Fielding-Johnson that they were not keen to go out with him at night off duty, though they would not give detailed reasons for their objections other than to say that he encouraged them to spend too much money. There were no complaints about his performance as a pilot. Fielding-Johnson took it upon himself to monitor Heath’s behaviour from then on and actively encouraged other members of the crew to share with him anything that Heath might do or say which might be detrimental to their morale. This in itself was an extraordinary state of affairs as the tight fraternal bonds between bomber crews were thought to be crucial to their survival.
The fourth attack on the Venlo bridges was to take place on 29 October. Aircrews would hear after breakfast if they were due to fly that day. After the mission was announced, Heath’s top turret gunner approached Fielding-Johnson and told him that he felt unfit. He didn’t want to fly and had lost his nerve. This was known within the RAF as ‘lack of moral fibre’ (LMF), a bureaucratic euphemism for cowardice. It was recognized by senior officers that such cases had to be dealt with quickly as ‘one really frightened man could affect the others around him’.36 The threat of being branded LMF was used as ‘little short of a terror tactic’37 over all aircrew and many men carried on flying scared out of their wits because they were more frightened of being called a coward than they were of flying.
It wasn’t so much the admission of fear and loss of self-respect that deterred men from going LMF, it was the awareness that they would be regarded as inadequate to the pressures of war in a country totally committed to winning the war. In this atmosphere, the man who opted out was a pariah, an insult to the national need. He was conscious of bringing shame to his family, and that most of his friends wouldn’t wish to recognize him, or at best they would be embarrassed and awkward on meeting. Nobody cared about the explanations of the psychiatrists about stress-induced illness.38
The preliminary briefing took place a few hours before take-off in the briefing room hut. Some 120 members of the squadron filed into rows of chairs, having been checked in by RAF police. Cigarettes and pipes were lit immediately as the crews waited for the squadron commanding officer and the station commander. In some squadrons, a map of the target was propped on a stand, hidden by a blackout curtain to be dramatically revealed by the station intelligence officer, who generally led the briefing. In others, every available inch of the walls and desks was covered with large-scale maps and photographs – a mosaic of information about the ‘target for today’, for the attacks of the Venlo bridges were to be in broad daylight. The position of balloon barrages, ground defences and hostile fighter bases would be marked by blobs of purple ink. Threads stretched across the large maps to indicate the route the bombers were to take. The blinds were then drawn as an epidiascope projected large images of the target on the wall. On some stations, the padre would then say a prayer before final preparations began – and a medical officer would be on hand to distribute Benzedrine.
The squadron then headed to the mess for their pre-operation meal, usually bacon and eggs, a luxury in days of rationing. They were then sealed off from the outside world. Phone calls to wives and girlfriends were forbidden as they waited nervously to see if the weather was favourable, chain-smoking and reading paperback books to distract themselves. It is during these long hours of waiting that Heath first began to read the adventure stories and thrillers he liked so much: Peter Cheyney’s Slim Callaghan novels, John Buchan’s Hannay books or James Hadley Chase’s No Orchids for Miss Blandish, a well-thumbed copy of which seemed to be in every RAF mess. The sense of anticipation and anxiety steadily grew from the time crews were briefed until take-off. Guy Gibson felt that this period was the worst part of any bombing raid: ‘Your stomach feels as though it wants to hit your backbone.’39 Vomiting and diarrhoea were common and men were prone to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. ‘All this,’ Gibson said, ‘because you’re frightened, scared stiff.’40
Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller Page 19