At his Advanced Flying Unit, Max learned to fly in the completely alien conditions of the very crowded and often foggy British Isles. In the open spaces of Australia, one could pick up a feature sixty miles away on the horizon and simply head towards it. But here, amid the mist and rain, you sometimes couldn’t even find the horizon, and every close-packed little village looked just like the next one.
Advancing to their Operational Training Unit, the men were told to sort themselves into crews. A redheaded wireless operator and a navigator approached Max and started chatting. The three men looked each other up and down. This fella might be a terrific bloke, but it was something else you looked for, something that made you think he’d be good to fly with, something you could rely on in a crisis. The wireless operator mentioned that a friend of his topped the gunnery course. At this, Max abandoned his reserve. ‘Well, go and get him then!’ His crew was born.
Max was posted to 115 Squadron, 3 Group, RAF, at Witchford, a mile and a half from the lovely cathedral town of Ely.
‘Been to Ely?’ he asks me, and I’m able to impress him with my recollections of a visit years ago, and the strenuous climb I made up to its unique Byzantine square tower. ‘Yes. That was our homing beacon,’ he says. The flat Cambridgeshire fen country was perfectly suited to flying, but in winter the wind cut like a knife. Witchford was a temporary wartime base, spread out with a mile between the accommodation, the mess and the ablution block. ‘You didn’t take too many showers there,’ says Max, ‘especially in winter.’
Max arrived as a newly commissioned Pilot Officer on 1 December 1944, assigned to B Flight, but was straightaway pulled out of it by an oddly rattled Flight Commander, who mumbled something about an administrative mistake. Later Max discovered the real reason: there had been Australians in B Flight previously, and not one of them had survived.
With only thirteen hours on Lancasters, Max had been told to expect a further few weeks’ training. But just three days later, his name appeared on the battle order for his first, compulsory ‘second dickie’ trip, where a new pilot went along for the ride with a more experienced crew to get the taste of a real operation. ‘I was wide-eyed,’ he remembers. ‘I didn’t know what to expect.’ The target was Mersberg. It was a daylight, and an eye-opener. In the run-up to the target, Max remembers just noise and chaos. ‘We had a Canadian skipper. Over the target, the bomb aimer started screaming like a maniac, then someone else started to screech and I thought, ‘Oh my God, is this what operational flying is like?’ All of a sudden in front of them appeared a huge yellow flash of flame and a ball of black smoke. ‘That’s an aircraft blowing up,’ said the skipper over the intercom, dryly. It was quite an introduction. When he got back to Witchford, the rest of his crew were bursting with questions. ‘What’s it like?’ they asked their skipper, who did his best to hide his shaken nerves. ‘I just couldn’t tell them,’ he says.
Many of the men I speak to, particularly from the bomber crews, seem to feel a need to talk about the fear of operational flying, of quietly, day after day, facing the statistical probability of one’s own violent death. The balance sheet was indeed formidable. Averaged over the six years of the war, out of every 100 Bomber Command aircrew, fifty-one were killed on operations, with just twenty-four surviving their tour without capture or injury. At various stages, these figures rose substantially.
For a pilot in charge of an aircraft, fear was a constant, dangerous and unstable element, like an extra, rogue member of the crew or a virus that had to be contained. What was it like for Max? ‘Oh, you were scared, but you controlled it. You had to. I still can’t explain the feeling,’ he says. ‘As skipper you just couldn’t show fear or anxiety, otherwise it would spread.’ Only once did he have to exert himself to calm a panicking crewmember. ‘I just had to shut him up,’ he says bluntly. He is still reluctant to tell me who it was, but his authority was obviously effective and nothing was mentioned later. ‘I decided to keep strict procedure over the intercom. No first names, no idle chatter. I figured that if the crew weren’t talking, the panic couldn’t spread.’
Max and his crew operated mainly in daylight, their trips marked with distinctive green ink in the pages of his logbook. The German air force had been significantly diminished by the time Max began operations, with flak a greater menace than fighters. ‘My mid-upper reckons he could see the 88-millimetre shells coming up at us,’ he says. There were, however, exceptions, and one of them occurred on 12 December 1944 when 140 Lancasters of 3 Group attacked the Ruhrstahl Steelworks at Witten in the Ruhr Valley.
Max winds himself up slowly to tell the story.
‘Yep, that was our fifth one,’ he says, exhaling, as I pore over his logbook, picking out names and places. It was a daylight attack utilising an early form of airborne radar known as ‘G-H’. This electronic ‘blind bombing’ device was used exclusively by 3 Group, and allowed a target to be hit through cloud. Those aircraft fitted with the device, G-H leaders, provided a visual cue for the others to bomb simultaneously, similar to the American practice. When the leader bombed, so did you.
On this day, a fighter escort of Spitfires and Mustangs picked up the bombers as they crossed into Germany, and scouted out twenty to thirty miles ahead. ‘Generally, we wouldn’t see much of them,’ says Max. This time however, approaching the target, Max could make out a swarm of moving black specks through the windshield ahead of him. ‘They just looked just like flies,’ he says. ‘Then I woke up to what it was – dogfights.’ The German air force had decided to make a rare appearance.
‘I was in formation on the port side of my G-H leader. The fighters were attacking the outside of the stream and so no one wanted to be there. Lancs were dodging around all over the place trying to move out of the way,’ he says. He still doesn’t quite know what happened, but looking out, he saw another Lancaster coming at him on his port side. ‘I knew we were going to hit,’ he says. ‘I wanted to get away so I went down at the same time as he pulled up.’ There was a terrible bang, a ghastly noise and vibration, and in an instant, the propeller of the other aircraft’s outer starboard motor had sheared seven feet off the end of Max’s wingtip. ‘It was a bit close,’ he says. I let out an expletive, and he chuckles a bit.
Max had no idea how much damage had been done but immediately ordered the bombs to be dropped. He then found he did not have full control over the aircraft. ‘It took the wingtip off just short of the aileron, which was slightly jammed and restricted in its movement.’ He had now to execute an extraordinary balancing act: being caught in the turbulent slipstreams of the aircraft ahead could throw his fragile Lancaster into an irretrievable spin, but dropping out of the formation to avoid them exposed him as a lame duck to the German fighters. He thought carefully, and reckoned that from side-on it would be hard to tell his aircraft was damaged. He elected to duck slightly below the stream, and move back into it if there was any sign of fighters. He just hoped that they didn’t spot him from either above or below. The ruse worked, and he made it home.
Occasionally, dirty yellow trails of smoke zigzagged their way across the sky and Max witnessed the precursor to a new and terrible age of warfare as Germany’s V2 rockets made their way to southern England to cause death and mayhem.
As 1944 closed, ushering in the last year of the war, Max and his crew were due for some leave. It was the custom for crews about to be rested not to be posted on operations the night before, so Max was surprised to see himself on the battle order to attack the railway yards at Vohwinkel in the industrial Ruhr, a tough target if ever there was one. His Flight Commander, Squadron Leader Mills, was apologetic. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m very sorry but we’re short of crews and I have to put you on.’ He offered to buy him a drink when they got back to make amends. It was a short, five-hour trip to Vohwinkel, but turned out to be anything but uneventful. Max was holed by flak – the only time, he says, he actually heard it above the roar of his four motors – collecting thirty shrapnel holes in his aircraft. A Ge
rman night fighter, also the only one he encountered for the entire war, passed directly in front of him, and over the target he became coned in searchlights which he couldn’t escape until, for some reason, they simply switched off. Then, with ten days’ leave awaiting them on their return, they flew home.
The return was a melancholy one. ‘We got back and looked up at the board. Squadron Leader Mills wasn’t there,’ says Max. Mills was the only casualty of the night. ‘The Yanks shot him down,’ says Max, and I can still hear the hurt in his voice. Friendly fire events were a frequent occurrence in the Allied forces between trigger-happy and confused armies, but I decide to reserve my judgement on this one until I can investigate further. Later, I find it confirmed in the squadron history. ‘It is believed that Squadron Leader Anthony Mills (118465 RAFVR) and his aircraft (NG332 IL-D) was mistakenly shot down by gunfire, possibly from the US 184th AAA Gun Battalion who had been transferred to Namur and the Meuse river 10 days before. On 1st Jan. 1945 whilst returning from a raid on Vohwinkel, his aircraft crashed in Belgium, killing all on board,’ etc.
As he became experienced, it would be Max’s turn to become a G-H leader himself, and on one of his later trips, he found himself leading a large attack on Münster in northern Germany. ‘I had the Wing Commander formatting on me,’ he remembers. It was, however, as he puts it, ‘an abortion of a raid’. With his navigator watching the cathode ray tube of the G-H box, Max bombed on the given coordinates and returned to base, then turned in. The next morning he encountered his navigator in ‘an extremely distressed state’. The target had apparently been missed and an enquiry had been going on all night. As the navigator in the lead aircraft, the finger was being pointed at him. After an exhausting investigation where calculations were reconstructed, and wind directions averaged and compensated for, it was discovered that Max’s crew had been given the incorrect coordinates, and no amount of compensation would have brought the formation correctly onto the target. One squadron, however, the New Zealand No. 75, had seen the mistake visually, made an orbit, then bombed on their own. Suddenly exposed, and on their own, three of their Lancasters were shot down in the process.
Even though he was in no way to blame, I can see that this is something that’s worried Max ever since. ‘Three out of the one squadron. That’s a big loss,’ he says quietly. Perhaps, he says, if his bomb aimer had been in the nose rather than helping the navigator with the equipment, he may have seen the New Zealanders turn and alerted Max to follow them. But Max will never know, and puts it down to one of those imponderables of life and war.
Having completed his thirty, Max was awarded the DFC. Not that you’ll ever see it adorn his chest. Out of respect for the many deserving airmen who remained unrewarded, he refuses to wear it. One of those is his friend Pat Kerrins, who I have already met.
It turns out Max was never on the Dresden raid, but he still feels for those who have had to bear the brunt of some of the ghastly decisions made in war. When it was all over, he returned to Bacchus Marsh where, ironically, he was confronted with the first dead person he had ever seen, his grandfather, lying peacefully in his coffin at home. He had also saved £1500, which built the house in which we are now sitting, watching the autumn sun set on his well-kept garden.
In 1977, Max went back to the peaceful Cambridgeshire countryside to see what was left of the old aerodrome at Witchford. There wasn’t much to look at. The massive 2000-yard east-west main runway had long been pulled up, leaving only a ten-foot wide strip. Cattle now occupied the hangars. Just like any other curious tourist, Max hired a car.
‘I drove along what was left of the runway until I hit a haystack. Felt a bit funny that, driving a hire car along the runway, after you used to fly off it.’ I can but agree.
BARNEY BARNETT
Pilot, RAAF
For a boy from the west of Queensland whose father had been badly wounded on the Somme, who’d lost his mother and been brought up by an aunt, whose family Soldier Settlement block had succumbed to depression and drought, the idea of being paid to come down to the coast, carry a rifle and learn how to be a soldier sounded something akin to paradise. So, for the first year of the war, Barney Barnett was a soldier in the militia, and could well have ended up slogging through the mud of New Guinea. It wasn’t until an air force recruiting train chuffed its way into his home town of Richmond in late 1940 that young Barney got the first, exhilarating sense of his future. He stepped aboard, put his name on the line and began a new life that would see him become a fighter pilot, and lead him to one of the most astonishing adventures of survival I have ever heard.
My meeting with Barney had been a long and very pleasant time coming. Driving down his street looking for his house just behind Eagle Farm Racecourse in Brisbane, I was hoping I would soon be ushered inside one of these wonderful timber ‘Queenslander’ homes that I, from southern climes, find so exotic.
I forget how many scraps of paper, phone calls and messages from interested parties measured out the stepping-stones of separation between us, but when I called up Barney out of the blue one afternoon from Melbourne to talk about his past, it hardly mattered. Barney is the truest of gentlemen, a kind of Australian version of an Old Southern Gent (minus the awkward overtones of slavery), and said he would be delighted to meet me, whenever I could find the time.
Half a continent away as I was, I pledged to visit him soon, but for something to go on with, he sent me down a small library of interesting material. Weeks later, as I drove down his street on a sweltering day, it formed a pile on the back seat of my car, and I felt a strange sense of completion in the knowledge that I would soon be returning it to its source.
First though, I had to find his house. It was one of those streets where the numbers bore no correlation from one side to the other, and seemed to start again halfway down. I called him on my mobile and became even more confused. Perhaps he could just come outside and wave me in?
I waited a couple of minutes with the engine running. A group of kids began to eye me dirtily. Then … yes, way down the other end, the strange sight of a tall and stately elderly figure, standing right in the middle of the road, quite still. He saw me but didn’t wave – I guess he figured I’d work it out for myself.
I smiled at a small child who immediately bolted off, and coasted a few hundred metres down the street. Barney’s house was as much like a Queenslander as I was. No big rustic tree-trunk timbers here, but a large postwar blond-brick and curved glass wedding-cake – the predominant style in fact, in the suburb where I reside, 1700 kilometres away.
With typical southern – well, northern – hospitality, I am ushered in to the cool interior where lunch has been prepared, at which I am the guest of honour. I almost expect a mint julep to be placed in my hand, but the glass of crisp white is welcome – if dangerous – enough.
Barney and his wife Peg are a testament to the noble institution of marriage, and they speak to each other with a delightful affection that has endured for well over half a century. She has prepared for me a wonderful lunch – a rich tuna and rice concoction. I make no effort to resists seconds, then thirds, then to my horror another bottle appears, the first having been already demolished, seemingly in minutes.
The conversation is warm and engaging, and soon I am so relaxed I am talking about all sorts of things, and start to think about heading over to the couch for a snooze. I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded if I had done so, but no, Barney and I have work to do, and I need to get a grip.
‘I still remember one of my instructors,’ Barney tells me, after some very hot tea has been drunk, and some very cold water applied to my face. We are seated on an old lounge suite at one end of a large rectangular room overlooking a garden. It is filled with all manner of things – desks and shelves piled with projects and memorabilia (one object in particular has caught my eye) – and lined floor to ceiling on all sides with books. ‘His name was Campbell,’ he continues. ‘He’s still a horror to me.’ Campbell was a screamer
– the worst kind of instructor a raw pilot could have. They usually formed two types: superannuated civilian instructors hauled out of retirement and collapsing under the stress, or frustrated combat pilots seething with rage and venting on their hapless pupils. Either way, Barney can still hear his tormentor’s near-hysterical voice as he practised landings on the little grass runway at Sydney’s Mascot aerodrome. ‘There’s the ground, you fool! You’ll never make it! Jeez, give me the bloody stick!’ etc.
‘I had a terrible time,’ says Barney.
Still, he made it – first to selection for single-engine pilot training and then all the way to Canada. Here in their bright yellow Harvard trainers, the young pilots delighted in sallying over the border to Buffalo, New Jersey, and buzzing the P-39 Airacobras as they rolled out of the Bell factory.
‘They must have absolutely hated us,’ Barney says. ‘But gee it was fun.’
In a large convoy, the threat of U-boats ever present, Barney headed off across the Atlantic, experiencing a storm so fierce that ships close by disappeared from view between grey walls of water.
Disembarking at Liverpool, he trained it down to Bournemouth on the south coast, experiencing a sense of disbelief at just where he was, and why. ‘I’d spent years in western Queensland, then in suburban Sydney. Now here I was on a train in England. It was quiet unreal,’ he says.
Barney was sent to Annan, on the banks of the Solway Firth in the rugged southwest of Scotland, to learn to fly the Hurricane fighter. ‘I’m still nostalgic about Hurricanes,’ he tells me, as is everyone who had the pleasure of flying this wonderful machine. ‘Kindly’ is the word he uses, a true pilot’s aeroplane – responsive, fast and forgiving. Here he experienced several idyllic months in training, flying low over the ancient face of Britain, discovering the castles and ancient monuments he had read about in his boyhood. ‘All historic places were in italics on the flying map,’ he says. ‘I picked out castles with moats and flew along Hadrian’s Wall – still so clear stretching out across the countryside.’
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