… Of the eight Jewish boys, only one is a gunner.3 (JJL 21 August 1940)
There had been some concern in the Montreal Jewish community about how and indeed whether its sons might be accepted in the RCAF. The concern was not groundless, considering that Jews frequently encountered barriers to employment, housing and public accommodation, entry quotas in some universities and professions, and they were unwelcome in most corporations and clubs. But there were no such barriers in the air force, and over the course of the war, the RCAF was the branch of service for which the majority of Canadian Jews volunteered, and there was no evidence that Jewish flying crew experienced systemic discrimination with respect to promotions, commissions, or decorations.
Yet, at the crucial moment of trade selection during initial training, it appears that being Jewish could have consequences. Jews were vastly overrepresented as navigators and bomb-aimers in flying crews, and under-represented as pilots, over the course of the war. Preconceptions of Jewish fitness for military service seem to have lingered in the armed forces. If Jews had not the sturdiness and grit required to prevail on the playing field and on the frontier, could they endure the suffering and hardship of war? Would they remain steadfast in adversity, and so be able to lead and inspire other men in battle? Would other men submit to Jewish leadership? A bomber aircraft was a combat unit, and its captain was the pilot. Joe Jacobson’s medical board assessment, even if it was exceptional with respect both to other Jewish air force recruits, and to his own subsequent assessment by other examiners along the way, was an expression of those doubts about Jewish leadership capability and effectiveness in battle. A selection process that evidently directed Jews toward the air observer trade seems to have presumed a particular Jewish fitness for it based on mental skills, but perhaps also presumed a lack of fitness for leadership.
In any event, an air observer Joe would be, and when he wrote his parents he put a good face on it. Exaggerating, as he was sometimes prone to do, he made the job out to be the most important in the aircraft.
The pilots are called the “chauffeurs,” the observers “the brain trust” and the gunners are the real men. Naturally everybody wants to do the piloting but somebody has to do the other jobs, and when you get right down to it, we really don’t give a hoot what we are as long as we get a chance to get overseas and do a little job all of our own. The spirit around here is really magnificent and there is a gang here that are going to be the backbone of the R.C.A.F. and what a backbone it will be and what a job we will do. (JJL 23 August 1940).
Joe remained at No. 1 ITS for another four weeks, as his course had been extended to include navigation, flight theory, signals, aero engines and airmanship. There was plenty of physical training, along with sports competitions with local Toronto teams. Joe’s 79 percent average ranked him near the bottom of the air observer class, although he was characterized in his progress report as sound, keen, and capable. Among his classmates, Joe had acquired a reputation as a keen athlete, an engaging fellow, and always up for a good time. He was a good man to know because he seemed always to be well supplied with care packages from home and happy to share.
One hundred young men graduated as prospective air observers in mid-September. The class was split up and sent to three separate air observer schools across the country. The bonds of fellowship would remain, and they would meet again months later on their way overseas. Who were they, and what were their backgrounds? They were above all almost entirely of Anglo-Celtic origin. By name, only a handful betrayed a francophone or European background. And they were overwhelmingly of Protestant faith. Only a handful were Roman Catholic, perhaps reflecting the less than enthusiastic participation of French Quebecers, and the generally lower educational attainment of Catholics (and particularly francophone Catholics) at that time. Three were Jewish.
Joe’s classmates ranged in age from nineteen to thirty-two, but most were in their early twenties, and almost all were single. His classmates were better educated than most Canadians. All had obtained at least their junior matriculation, and a dozen or so had university degrees. They were for the most part the sons of professionals, merchants, and office workers. Few came from working-class or farming backgrounds. Most of the boys had left white-collar jobs; some had been drivers and mechanics. Few, if any, were unemployed at the time of enlistment. All in all they were a middle-class lot, among the more fortunate young men in Canada at that time.
Joey had imagined the ideal woman to have a sense of humour, practical intelligence, and a strong mind. She would be a good sport, not spoiled, and not overly sentimental. He sometimes commented in his diary on the qualities of the girls he was dating but, speculating about the kind of person he would marry, or indeed whether he would marry, he wrote:
When you fall in love (I haven’t yet) I suppose it is impossible for either party to analyze each other’s qualities. I guess you are carried away, as if in a dream and wake up in a couple of years to find you are either living with an angel or a demon. I shudder to think that I might someday fall in love and throw away my freedom for some empty headed, good looking fun loving babe, who possesses none of the qualities of women I admire in our society. (JJD 14 February 1937)
However much he enjoyed and sought female company, he was reluctant to commit himself and he had no steady attachment in high school or university.
Joe met Cecily Samuel in early August. The Samuels, who lived a few blocks from No. 1 ITS, were apparently acquainted with the Jacobsons. Joe wrote home in July that he had got in touch with them, but their daughter Cecily had been away at the time. They met shortly afterwards, and took up with each other quickly. Joe and Cecily were of similar background, coming from well-to-do families of Anglo-Jewish lineage, and members of their city’s leading Reform congregations. Cecily, named for an uncle who had been killed in the British Army in the Great War, had been educated at one of Toronto’s leading private girls’ schools, and was studying for a degree in household science at the University of Toronto. She liked riding and skiing. She was the privileged one in her family; she had insisted on a horse and been given one. Cecily fit Joe’s perception of what he wanted in a woman: good-looking, intelligent, athletic, adventurous, vivacious, well brought up, and presentable, summed up in his own words as “classy.” And Joe – handsome, athletic, well-bred, and with a promising career ahead of him – was the kind of man Cecily was attracted to.
Joe wrote home in late August that he was spending more time with Cecily and less with his male friends. Seeing her on a regular basis was much more to Joe’s taste than the competitive nightly skirt-chasing he had engaged in at Manning Depot. Whether Cecily entirely broke through Joe’s reluctance to burden himself with a relationship is doubtful. But she was certainly on Joe’s mind throughout his subsequent training in the west, and he was on hers.
Percy had followed Joe’s progress through initial training:
England is holding valiantly against terrific air raid by the Germans. … Canada is building thousands of planes and training thousands of young men as pilots, observers, gunners. One of those men we are much interested in is our son Joe. … We expect him home late tonight on a forty eight hour leave. This is the first time we have seen him since he left just about two months ago. However, his letters have been intimate and interesting. His last letter shows evidence that he has become a fighting man. Today I am proud of the fact that he is single-hearted. Not so long ago I abhorred the idea. So we change. (PJD 30 August 1940)
Cecily Samuel, graduation photograph, University of Toronto, 1942.
(Courtesy of Robert Willinsky)
Joe has been home for forty eight hours. He has become a man, but he can still laugh and act like a boy. It has been a grand weekend.
(PJD 1 September 1940)
Joe home again for thirty six hour leave. He may be transferred to Edmonton the coming weekend. He looks fine and is seemingly very happy. He travelled from Toronto by motor car yesterday, arriving here at 9 PM stayed aroun
d the house talking to us until after eleven then went out with his friends, up this morning to play golf and then he will be on his way back to Toronto by motor at three o’clock. That is youth for you. (PJD 8 September 1940)
In Percy’s eyes, the boy who had left home two months before was well on his way to becoming a man. Percy liked what he was seeing.
Five
Regina
Joe Jacobson awoke on Saturday morning, 14 September 1940, in the unbroken boreal forest landscape of northern Ontario. There was room enough there for 50 million people, he observed, “but what you could do with them beats me.” He and forty air observer trainees were on a troop train to Saskatchewan. The boisterous throng of passengers also included thirty trainee pilots who would get off at Fort William that night, and two hundred wireless operators who would carry on to Calgary. All disembarked at Hornepayne to take a short route march through town for exercise, then continued westward. Each enjoyed his own sleeping berth and dining car service on white tablecloths, a luxury that would soon be done away with on transcontinental troop trains. The next morning would bring another brand-new landscape for a Montrealer: the open and endless prairie. The train pulled into Regina at five o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Classes at No. 3 Air Observer School at the city’s airfield began the next morning.
Joe and his classmates would spend the next twelve weeks in Regina, followed by six weeks at bombing and gunnery school in Mossbank, Saskatchewan, and another four weeks of advanced navigation training at Rivers, Manitoba. They were among the first three hundred air observer trainees, the pioneers and the guinea pigs in the extraordinary undertaking of the British Commonwealth Air Training Program. The program was still being cobbled together at top speed in brand-new but as yet under-equipped facilities. Aircraft, navigation equipment, bombs, guns, and instructors were all in short supply.
Joe wrote home at the end of his first day at Air Observer School (AOS):
Joe, Regina, 1940. (Janet Jacobson Kwass)
We are the first batch to set foot in this station and everything is as new as can be. Our barracks are really beautiful, roomy and as nice as any rooms at most of the college residences. We have individual sinks for washing, hot and cold water and all the modern facilities imaginable, including indirect lighting. We have two general duties men assigned to our squadron to keep our barracks clean for us.
Then there is the dining hall. Separate tables, six to a table with waiters. In other words we get restaurant service and really tasty meals, fruit for breakfast etc.
All this makes for very comfortable living. Added to that most of the boys here are from out east which makes for a pretty chummy bunch. I have my bunkmate and pal from the Hunt Club with me which makes it pretty swell. He is from the University of New Brunswick and is a good head if ever there was one.1 … The course mapped out for us is difficult. We are supposed to work seven days a week … we get one 48 hour week-end per month and … thirty-six hours off every week. … Our instructors are all officers, all extremely young and they seem like pretty decent chaps and should know their stuff.
The country out here is absolutely amazing. I can look out my window in the morning and see objects 5 to ten miles away. There is absolutely not a solitary tree in sight, the ground is flat as a billiard table and the earth as dry as can be. It will be extremely difficult to make head or tail of any landmarks from the air as they all look the same to me.
(JJL 16 September 1940)
He told the Pony Club
It is the old college grind over again only this time we have as much work to learn in three months as we had in 8 at McGill and it all has to be put in practice. It is a marvelous course they are giving us, real interesting, lots of fun, plenty of work. (JJL 4 October 1940)
“Observer” (or air observer) was originally a First World War designation for the person who observed, photographed, and reported back on enemy troop positions and movements on the ground, the function that had been the original purpose of deploying aircraft in war. When airplanes were later used to drop bombs, it was the observer’s task to aim them. It was the pilot, however, who was the designated commander of the aircraft, and therefore a commissioned officer. After the war, the RAF discontinued observer training and gave the pilot pride of place. Up to the late 1930s, the RAF assumed that a pilot could both fly and navigate his aircraft. Far too late did it recognize that effective navigation in combat needed a member of crew specifically devoted to that task and properly trained for it. The pilot needed flying skills and quick reflexes; the observer needed intellect and mental agility. The requirements for one were no less exacting than for the other, the mistakes of one no less costly than those of the other, even if the observer’s badge was a half wing, and the pilot’s the full wing.
Marine navigation was an ancient science, and one the British were particularly good at. Navigating an aircraft involved some new wrinkles, however: moving in three dimensions instead of two, and at far greater speed, through a medium that is itself in constant, if not necessarily visible, motion. Yet the air training schemes in England in the late 1930s had given little attention and few resources to observer training. The standard text was the RAF’s Manual of Air Navigation. The 1938 version covered maps and map reading, the compass and magnetism, basic meteorology, and radio direction finding. Air observer students were introduced to the basic concepts and methods of navigation and to the essential tools of the trade – compasses, sextants, computing instruments – and the principles of plotting track and position. “Dead” (deduced) reckoning was the foundation of the observer course, and counted for 30 percent of ground school marks. It consisted of calculating the “triangle of velocities”: prediction of future position from one’s current position, based on time, speed, and bearing from point of origin, taking into account the effect of wind direction and speed on an aircraft in flight. As error will compound quickly, frequent and precise recalculation of course and position is essential.
Once the students moved from the desk to the air, they were assigned a destination in preflight briefings, and expected to calculate the appropriate course. Other exercises included calculating wind velocity and maintaining a compass course. Pilots were instructed to fly the course the trainees gave them, even if in error, in which case pilots had to be able to find their way home. Usually two or three pupils were on board each training flight, one to lead the practice and the others to watch. It was helpful to all on board, in a pinch, that the landmark prairie grain elevators were clearly painted with the town’s name.
The Air Observer School at Regina was staffed by civilian instructors under RCAF supervision. It was equipped with twin-engined Avro Ansons, transport aircraft of early 1930s design since adapted as trainers. Only a few were on hand at the start, but more arrived over the next two months to make up the requisite complement of twenty-four. Many of the pilots were Americans who had flown with commercial airlines, while most of the Canadians were experienced bush pilots. When observer training began in Canada, there were no non-pilot navigators. Some instructors were familiar with civil aviation navigation procedures, but most were university grads with math backgrounds, relying on Royal Air Force syllabi and equipment.
Joe couldn’t wait to get airborne. The first week was taken up with ground school, but he was a student navigator on two flights the next week.
We had a lot of fun on our first trip as we rode three fellows in a plane plus a pilot. We were only supposed to pinpoint ourselves on the map and learn to locate ourselves by land marks. However our pilot had not made the trip before and got away off the course, mostly because of a strong south wind, blowing at about 30 m.p.h. Since I started out as first navigator on the first leg, we had to get to work and plot out his course for him. Strangely enough we got him back on the track, heaven knows how, and I still don’t know whether the pilot was more surprised than we were. We had a real nice trip though despite the rough weather. It was really bumpy at 4000 feet, which is the altitude at which we fl
y with the result that about two thirds of the boys were a little sick. I myself felt a little shaky at one stage of the trip but survived in rare style.
From the look of things, that trip we took today is going to be about the only joy ride we will get. Our work is real tough. We have to crawl up in front of the plane, estimate the wind, give the pilot his course, estimate our times of arrival and report everything seen on the way. If you think you don’t get a workout try it sometimes – you have to arrive at given places within one minute and one degree of your estimated figures, which is tough to arrive at even on paper. …
The country here from the air is absolutely flat. Most of the rivers have dried up and there are very few land marks to guide us by. You don’t have to worry about forced landings here since you could land anywhere safely. We all have to wear parachutes up – they are worth $400 a piece and always work. We are all dying to get a chance to bail out but the pilots are too good so we don’t need to figure on that type of job. …
The weather here is still lovely, clear, cooler but dry and fresh. I run two miles every morning at 6.30, play football for an hour or two in the evening and generally keep in good shape. (JJL 25 September 1940)
Every flight was a new adventure to write home about. He wrote his sisters about his next trip:
Joey Jacobson's War Page 7