By the Skin of my Teeth: The Memoirs of an RAF Mustang Pilot in World War II and of Flying Sabres with USAF in Korea

by Colin Downes

  There were two problem areas with the early model Canberra: one concerned with baling out of the aircraft and the other with its electrical systems. Initially the aircraft had no ejection seat and the crew endeavoured to bale out through the entry door. Later, when fitted with the ejection seat, the pilot fired the seat through the canopy and the navigator through an escape hatch. Several injuries resulted until explosive bolts fitted around the canopy and the hatch released both before the ejection guns fired. This resulted in a successful ejection if the crew were in their seats, however, if the navigator was out of his seat in the bomb aiming position in the nose, any G force made it impossible for him to return to his seat. On a visit to the Martin Baker factory to see James Martin, the managing director and chief designer, I found him on the floor of the corridor in front of his office attached to a strong bungee cord stretched down the corridor. On a word from him he was released and the bungee catapulted him along the corridor. On seeing my surprise at the MD of Martin Baker Aircraft flying along the corridor he got up and said he was trying to solve the problem of the navigator in a Canberra returning to his seat in a high G situation. James Martin was a remarkable man with an extraordinary inventive mind in designing aircraft, ejection seats and many other aeronautical inventions that included equipment such as an airborne balloon-cable cutter attached to an aircraft wing. He inspired great loyalty among his employees and he persuaded one brave engineer named Benny Lynch to do the first live ejection demonstrations from the open rear cockpit of a modified Meteor III aircraft. Lynch carried out many live ejection demonstrations to the extent that it was said that his joints creaked as he walked. The day I met him this problem was eased with a little sherry in the mess to lubricate his joints before the demonstration ejection.

  The other problem with the early Canberra concerned the electric trim control. Nearly everything in the Canberra, apart from the primary flying controls, operated electrically and some Canberra aircraft crashed owing to a runaway on the elevator trim. A good friend of mine at The Central Fighter Establishment (CFE) had the problem while low flying and the elevator trim ran forward which caused him to fly into the ground. By the time I flew the aircraft this problem no longer existed and I grew to like the Canberra a lot; especially the luxury of a navigator aboard to see one returned home safely. The aircraft was not as fast as the Meteor but it could climb to 50,000 feet which was useful in allowing a pilot to climb above the weather, except perhaps in the tropics where the tropical storms can reach up to this altitude.

  After a year as Pike’s ADC I thought it time to get back to regular flying and I suggested to the AOC that while appreciating the opportunity and experience, I thought a year was sufficient as his Personal Assistant and suggested that someone else now to gain the experience. I asked to return to a squadron and he agreed, asking me where I should like to go. I replied that I should like to command a flight on 41 Squadron when it moved to Biggin Hill. I had established through ‘P’ staff that 41 Squadron was in the process of converting from Hornets to Meteor IVs at Church Fenton in 12 Group, and moving to Biggin Hill to join 600 and 615 Auxiliary Squadrons, also converting to Meteor IVs. Although my time as ADC was a staff appointment I managed to get in quite a lot of flying time on jets and the Anson, and consequently I was in current flying practice with no need for a conversion course. There are times when it is a definite advantage to have the right contact in the right place and at the right time; now for once these factors all coincided for me. To my great relief Pike suggested in the right quarters that they try to accommodate my wishes, and when 41 Squadron arrived at Biggin Hill I became the ‘A’ Flight commander.

  In retrospect, when considering the 1939 – 45 war, I was very fortunate in finally achieving my ambition to fly fighters and doubly so in that the war, in so far as it effected me, proved very benevolent in contrast to many of my contemporaries. My tour of flying instruction in Flying Training Command, following my Wings graduation, kept me out of combat for eighteen months and during that time I did at least have an experience of what it was like to fly in Bomber Command. The flying instructors in Flying Training Command had the opportunity to fly one operational mission with a bomber squadron and early in 1944 when asked if I should like to fly an operational mission, as a newly commissioned pilot officer I did not have the nerve to decline with thanks. The procedure for these initiation flights was usually to fly on a diversionary raid that was mounted in the hope of diverting some of the attention of the German night fighter force from the primary target. However, the German air defence system from 1944 onwards was such that it assessed the RAF raids very accurately, allowing the main night fighter force to be concentrated on the main targets, leaving the AA guns to cope with the diversions. The Lancaster had a limited and cramped crew space and the supernumerary observers generally flew with the Halifax squadrons. The Handley Page Halifax although slightly inferior to the Avro Lancaster in terms of performance and bomb load, was slightly roomier inside and had the comforting reputation of being a rugged and dependable aircraft able to withstand battle damage. It was on such raids that the war correspondents generally flew when reporting on Bomber Command’s operations; Ernest Hemingway flew a similar sortie to mine in a Halifax bomber, as well as on a B-25 Mitchell medium bomber raid. I flew in a Halifax of No. 77 Squadron of 6 Group out of Elvington in Yorkshire with a Canadian crew captained by Flight Lieutenant Thompson, DFC, RCAF: Canada was second only to the RAF in supplying air crews to Bomber Command. We flew on a diversionary raid on Emden while the main bomber force headed for Essen in the Ruhr. We were fortunate that we met little opposition with the German fighters which were either preoccupied with the main force or thwarted by the adverse weather.

  We flew the whole mission through overcast and I saw little of the ground during the flight and experienced little evidence of AA fire, other than the occasional glow in the cloud and a bump of the aircraft as a shell exploded nearby. We flew the 350 miles to the target in cloud at 18,000 feet by means of D/R navigation with guidance from Oboe, which placed us accurately over the target area. The Oboe system was an improved version of the radio beam guidance of the Gee system. The Germans managed to jam the Gee system but not Oboe where radar stations on the UK coast enabled the aircraft to fly a grid to the target. It was a very effective aid to navigation but unfortunately did not have the range to extend its grid guidance to targets as far as Berlin. Over the target we bombed blind by the use of the H2S radar that gave a radar picture of the ground. As our target was the docks it stood out clearly on the radar screen for the bomb aimer to drop the bombs accurately. We had no attacks from night fighters, and being above or in cloud we avoided the cones of the searchlights bracketing us that would require a violent corkscrew evasion manoeuvre. On the debriefing after landing the crew summed up the mission as a ‘milk run’, but I could see the strain on the crew during the six hours of the flight. I could imagine the strain of a tour of thirty missions flying during a ‘hunter’s moon’ over the Rhur, or on the long flight to Berlin while running the deadly gauntlet of a greatly improved and highly efficient air defence system. Each bomber raid was a roll of the dice and synonymous with the infantry ‘going over the top’; its outcome dependent upon weather, enemy dispositions, sheer chance and a lot of other factors that could not be controlled. It was a game that if played long enough one could only lose and it is a wonder that some aircrew in Bomber Command survived as many as three tours, when it was calculated that only one third of them survived a first tour of thirty missions, and only a quarter survived two front line tours in Bomber Command.

  Requiem for a Rear Gunner

  My brief sweet life is over: my eyes no longer see.

  No summer walks – No Christmas Trees – No pretty girls for me.

  I’ve got the chop: I’ve had it: my nightly ops are done:

  Yet in another hundred years, I’ll still be twenty-one.

  R. W. Gillbert

  By 1944 Bomber Command’s aircraft
loss rate on raids over Germany averaged around 5 per cent, and occasionally rose to nearly 10 per cent. The Nuremberg raid in March 1944 resulted in the worst loss rate on a single raid when 96 aircraft failed to return out of a force of nearly 800 aircraft, a loss rate of 13 per cent. In Bomber Command alone some 56,000 air crew died out of a total RAF loss of 70,000 air crew killed in all war theatres during the Second World War. These losses exceeded those sustained by the much larger USAAF with 52,000 air crew dead. However, it was the USAAF who suffered the most disastrous losses in proportion to their gains during the daylight raids on the ball-bearing factory at Schweinfurt and the oil fields at Ploesti in Romania. The two raids on the Schweinfurt factory in 1943 suffered losses of over 15 per cent and such unsustainable losses resulted in the suspension of further raids until the bombers were provided with fighter escort to and from the target area. Whatever damage occurred to the Schweinfurt factory it had little effect on the availability of ball-bearings to the German war machine. Similarly, the raids on the Ploesti oilfields resulted in the loss of 350 aircraft with little oil loss to the Germans until the oilfields were occupied by the Red Army in 1944.

  The advent of a British socialist Government in 1945 fuelled criticism of RAF Bomber Command and in particular the Commander-in-Chief, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris. This criticism resulted from studies on the effectiveness of the RAF policy of night area bombing, as against the USAF policy of day precision bombing. What the critics chose to ignore is that up to 1944, precision targets could not be identified at night, and the lightly armed RAF bombers could not survive over Germany in daylight without prohibitive losses. Over and above these factors was a more unpredictable but crucially important factor – the European weather. It was not until 1945 that navigational aids became available such as an improved Oboe system, GH and H2S that enabled Bomber Command to find and attack targets regardless of weather. ACM Harris was not the originator of the area bombing policy, although he did fervently believe in it. The critics conveniently forget that Britain was fighting a total war against Germany and Japan requiring unconditional surrender by both enemies. Bearing this in mind, there was no other way to carry the war to Germany, and the British people, who had suffered extensive bombing of their major cities, desperately wished to hit-back at the Nazis. Much of the venom against Harris focuses on the bombing of Dresden. However, this target was not the choice of Harris or the RAF, but one of several cities in eastern Germany on the target list from Eisenhower and the Chiefs of Staff to give support to the Russian front. The Soviets specifically requested the destruction of Dresden as a focal point for communications in the transfer of troops and supplies between the German western and eastern fronts. The Allied air forces, after receiving political approval, bombed Dresden to destruction with the RAF by night and the USAF by day. Incendiary bombs are the most effective conventional weapons for the mass destruction of a city and the incendiary bombs used in the raids against Dresden produced a fire storm that destroyed the city with a loss of life estimated at around 50,000 dead. It was the ultimate terror raid and a grim reality of total war. The German refugees from East Germany that poured into Dresden with the advance of the Soviet forces and terrified by reports of rape and pillage by the Soviet troops, fled out of the city to block the roads thus achieving the Soviet objective in disrupting German communications and reinforcements to the Eastern Front. The devastation of Dresden did not materially influence the outcome of the war as the war was effectively won at that stage, but for the German people it was a portent of what might occur to other German cities by prolonging the war. The Dresden raids on 13 – 15 February 1945, followed requests from the Soviets to also bomb the cities of Berlin, Chemnitz and Leipzig to prevent German reinforcements to the Eastern Front. On 3 February 1945 the USAF launched ‘Operation Thunderclap’ against Berlin. One thousand B-17 bombers of the US 8th Air Force bombed Berlin to destruction with an estimated loss of life of between 20,000 – 30,000 German civilians. The higher casualty figures for the Dresden raid was due to the intensive firestorm that developed in a city crowded with refugees escaping from the Soviet advance. In the post-war analysis and criticism of allied strategic bombing offensives, it is the Dresden raid that is remembered and the one that specifically fuelled the outcry at the destruction by the RAF of a historically important city crammed with refugees when the war was virtually won. The destruction of the other cities is conveniently forgotten as the vigorous criticism of RAF Bomber Command and its Commander-in-Chief continues. The moral and political outcry at the devastation of Dresden was the result of the efficiency of its destruction, although the participation of the USAF is muted in the attacks against Harris. It is now known that Germany was well advanced in the production of a nuclear bomb and if the Nazis had been the first to use the atomic bomb or fitted nuclear warheads in the V-2 rockets aimed at British cities, would the reaction to the destruction of a historic German city have been the same?

  To murder thousands takes a specious name,

  War’s glorious art, and gives immortal fame.

  Edward Young (1683 – 1765)

  Controversy always encourages a ‘What if?’ analysis by historians and as far as the Dresden raid and RAF Bomber Command controversy is concerned, ‘What if the war had ended in 1944?’ It is suggested by some military historians that with complete allied air supremacy the Allies lost a great opportunity to end the war in 1944 by ‘Blitzkrieg’ strategy. Despite the wish of the commanders of the Allied army groups to thrust eastwards from Belgium into Germany in the summer of 1944, the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, decided on a ‘broad front’ strategy for an advance along a linear front. The result of this allowed the Germans to regroup for a counter-offensive through the Ardennes with considerable losses in Allied lives, the murder of prisoners of war, an increased death toll in the Nazi concentration camps, and the Soviets reaching Berlin first. Had Montgomery’s 21st Army Group in the north and Bradley’s 12th Army Group in the south been allowed to make independent thrusts for Berlin, they had every prospect of succeeding in advancing the surrender of the German forces. With the surrender of German forces in 1944, the Dresden raid would not have taken place; and along with many other assumptions resulting from such a scenario, is the likelihood that post-war Europe would have been different.

  If history requires someone to be responsible for the incineration of 50,000 civilians and the unnecessary destruction of the historical city of Dresden, it should not be the commander-in-chief of RAF Bomber Command. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris did not target Dresden and he did not politically authorize the raid or its destruction. As the C-in-C of Bomber Command he ensured that his bomber crews carried out the raid effectively as directed by the Chiefs of Staff in conjunction with the USAF. More deserving of censure is General Eisenhower who supported the Soviet request to bomb Dresden to destruction and who when given the opportunity to end the war in 1944 allowed it to continue until May 1945.

  Bomber Command and its long-time Commander-in-Chief, ACM Sir Arthur Harris, were not treated well by the British nation following the end of the war in Europe, despite public appreciation and gratitude. The refusal by both the coalition government of Churchill and the new socialist government of Atlee publicly to acknowledge the debt owed to Bomber Command by the awarding of a campaign medal, or even a clasp to the Defence medal, to the air and ground crews was a disgrace to the many thousands of volunteers from the British Commonwealth that came from afar to fight in the air war of attrition against Germany. It was also a national shame to the memory of over 55,000 aircrew of Bomber Command who did not return home from the raids into Europe. Was the British Eighth Army more deserving of recognition by a clasp to the Africa Star medal than the contribution and sacrifices of Bomber Command in winning the war? The answer is obviously not, but elements within the government in Britain thought differently. A total of 40 per cent of Bomber Command crews came from beyond the shores of the British Isles: of this total Canada provided
a majority of 60 per cent. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, together with Czechs, Frenchmen, Norwegians and Poles provided the remainder. Even the Soviets acknowledged a debt to Bomber Command and its commander-in-chief, Sir Arthur Harris. It is strange that Churchill, of all people, who was so effusive in praise of Fighter Command with his Finest Hour speech, made no similar reference to Bomber Command. In his victory speech to the nation he first spoke of the events of the war and the achievements of all the Services, before speaking of the liberation of France and the land battle into Germany, but he made no mention of the part played by Bomber Command in making it all possible, while saving innumerable Allied lives following the D-Day landings. There is no doubt that had the Dresden raid not taken place both RAF Bomber Command and its Commander-in-Chief would have been judged differently by the post-war generation. My night with Bomber Command gave me a great respect for the bomber crews that flew night after night in all weathers over Germany. To those of us in Fighter Command there was an excitement and pleasure in flying a high performance fighter aircraft and it appeared to us, quite wrongly, that the bomber pilot had little opportunity to feel this joy as he concentrated on the job in hand with the survival of his aircraft and crew. The greater responsibility towards one another among the bomber crews led to a greater sense of esprit de corps than was apparent among fighter pilots, with the fighter aces being by definition individualists. Bearing in mind the task of the bomber pilot, I was grateful in my selection to fighters. The government that denied the aircrew of Bomber Command due recognition by a campaign medal or clasp was the same mean-spirited and niggardly government; subsequently endorsed by succeeding governments and the bureaucracy; that withheld the payment of the supplemental flying pay entitlement of RAF aircrew incarcerated as POWs for the period of their captivity.