Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers

by Bruce Lewis

  During these moments of relaxation, he was filled with a happy contentment for the opportunities the war had brought him. Under normal circumstances he would never have met so many interesting companions who had come from such a variety of different places. It was stimulating, exciting, and so much better than anything he had ever hoped to experience in civvy street

  Leslie was taught by two flying instructors during this period. After a time he came to the conclusion that the first of these was not a good teacher. He was sure that the man’s ability to instruct was impaired by his fear of flying with pupils. The potential dangers of trying to teach cadets the intricacies of flying, and correcting their errors, with only 3,000 feet leeway between themselves and the ground, had obviously played on his nerves. Leslie was sure that, because of this pilot’s apprehensions, he was not receiving the best instruction

  The second instructor, a Flying Officer, certainly knew his stuff. But, as time went on, Leslie became more and more certain that this officer was not satisfied with his progress. He dreaded the thought that, perhaps, he too might soon join the ranks of the ‘washed out’. One day he was accompanied by a civilian pilot who asked him to stall the aircraft. This he did successfully. After some more flying he told him to complete a circuit and bring the Magister in to land. The civilian flyer then reported: ‘Nothing wrong with this man. Time he went solo.’

  Leslie had undergone no more than eleven hours’ instruction. Yet he thought the length of time taken to solo was rather excessive. In later years he was consoled to learn that the Duke of Edinburgh had soloed after the same number of hours. In fact, the time he had taken was somewhat better than average for RAF pupils during that period.

  At that time the Luftwaffe carried out several air raids in the area. Protesting cadets were herded into concrete shelters that were crowded, dusty and hot. Most of them would have preferred to have stayed in bed. One night they thought they were in for a direct attack when a number of flares dropped on their airfield. The actual bombing, however, took place further north in the vicinity of some steelworks

  Training at EFTS being satisfactorily concluded, Leslie was posted to Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. Nearly all trainee pilots in the RAF fervently hoped to finish up flying fighters – especially then, during the Battle of Britain, when the ‘First of the Few’ were saving the nation in their Spitfires and Hurricanes. But as soon as he arrived at this new station, he guessed he had been selected for bombers. The training aircraft were twin-engine Airspeed Oxfords.

  He remembers a brisk, efficient Flying Officer instructor who warned him straightaway, pointing to an Oxford, ‘Don’t try spinning that thing or you’ ll dive straight into the deck!’ Training included ‘circuits and bumps’, cross-country navigation flights, beam approach exercises – a new technique at that time – low-level practice, forced-landing procedure and emergency flying on one engine. All valuable ‘gen’ for a future bomber pilot.

  A catastrophe befell Leslie while he was at Brize Norton, Someone stole his parachute. He had to replace this expensive pack of silk, and it cost him £40. This was a fortune. An LAC’s net pay barely exceeded a £1 per week in those days.

  Another disaster of a much more serious nature occurred at this time. One morning he shared an Oxford with a fellow trainee called Bickford. He heartily disliked those moments when Bickford was at the controls indulging in what Leslie considered to be impossibly tight turns. That evening ‘goose flares’ were lit, and night flying was ordered for the first time. At the end of the exercise Bickford was missing. The officer in charge ordered a search. They found him lying in a damp field. His aircraft had dived straight into the ground.

  There was a lighter side. Like the other trainees, Leslie enjoyed attending the local dances. Easily identified as ‘aircrew in the making, by the white flashes in their forage caps, they were popular with the girls of the district. It was during one such ‘do’ that he met Joan, an attractive girl from Witney. It was not long before they became engaged. He thought nothing of walking the seven miles from his girlfriend’s home back to the RAF base after a rapturous evening.

  The completion of training at Brize Norton, just before Christmas, 1940, was a highlight in Leslie’s flying career. This was the moment when he was promoted to Sergeant and awarded his pilot’s wings. Unusually, there was no ceremonial ‘passing out’ parade to mark the occasion.

  He had done well. His overall pass mark was 73.5%. If he had managed to attain 75%, then he would have been awarded a Pilot’s ‘B’ Licence – useful for peacetime flying.

  Before leaving, he was told to report for an interview to assess his suitability for a commission. The presiding Squadron Leader asked him what school he had attended. ‘Highfield College, Leigh-on-Sea, sir.’ The officer looked at him with an air of pitying disdain. ‘Never heard of it.’ That was the end of the interview and, for the time being, Leslie remained a Sergeant.

  He now expected to be posted to an Operational Training Unit to gain experience on the type of bomber he would be flying on operations. Instead he was posted to No 2 Air Navigation School at Cranage.

  The system in those days, later discontinued, was for ‘sprog’ pilots to fly as ‘second dickies’ to more experienced ‘skippers’ until they became proficient enough to warrant their own aircraft and crew. Apart from taking his turn at the controls, a second pilot was also expected to help out with the navigation. This, it was explained, was the reason for his posting to Cranage.

  This part of his training was, more or less, a waste of time. Lecturers dealt with the theory of getting an aircraft from one point to another – reading off the rectified airspeed, correcting for altitude and temperature differences to find the true air speed, then applying the actual windspeed to give the ground speed of the aircraft. Rightly, it was emphasized that calculations involving all these factors had to be meticulous. This was the only way a given course could be followed accurately.

  It was all classroom stuff, fair enough in its limited way, but barely touching on the many extra problems brought about by darkness, adverse weather conditions and enemy action when flying over hostile territory. At best it was a revision of what he had already been told in earlier training.

  Air navigation practice in lumbering twin-engine Avro Ansons – ‘flying greenhouses’ the RAF called them – was, for the most part, a farce. The men who piloted these aircraft were nearly all ‘tour-expired’ veterans. They were thoroughly ‘brassed off’. They had no interest in co-operating with ‘sprog’ navigators in the furtherance of their training. One of their few interests lay in ‘beating up’ those pubs where they happened to know the barmaid. To attempt serious navigation under those circumstances was not a practical proposition.

  Not surprisingly Leslie, too, was more than a little ‘brassed off’. As a recently qualified pilot, he never had an opportunity to keep his hand in at Cranage by taking over the controls of an aircraft.

  1941 had dawned and the weather was freezing cold. The heating facilities in Ansons were primitive indeed. What with one thing and another he was pleased when the day came to pack his kit and leave for the Operational Training Unit at Cottesmore.

  With a thrill of excitement he saw that the hard-standings were occupied by Handley Page Hampdens. Smaller and lighter than its twin-engined contemporaries, the Wellington and Whitley, it was really a medium, rather than a heavy bomber.

  Powered by two Bristol Pegasus XVIII engines of 980 hp each, it is surprising how wildly, as with other aircraft of the day, the performance and bomb-carrying capacity were exaggerated in the press and popular publications. (Sometimes these figures are still quoted in books about the history of bombers). In the case of the Hampden these were virtually doubled. One book brought out in the early ’40s described the Hampden as having a top speed of 265 mph, cruising at 217 mph, and with a bomb load of 4,000 lbs. The Hampden was known in the RAF to exceed the operational speed of the Whitley by 10 mph and we have already established that the Whitley
flew, in favourable circumstances, at 120 mph! As for bombs, 2,000 lbs was really more than enough. Even the great Guy Gibson was apprehensive about such a load:

  None of us had ever done it before and we did not even know whether our Hampdens would unstick with 2,000 lbs of bombs.

  By the time Leslie flew on operations the normal load for a Hampden was down to 1,500 lbs – two 500 lb HEs and two 250 lb HEs being a typical package. It is incredible that, only four years later, slightly modified Avro Lancasters were each capable of carrying 22,000 lbs in the shape of a single ‘Grand Slam’ bomb – more than the total weight of bombs lifted by a squadron of fourteen Hampdens. Yet the Lancaster, itself not a specially large aircraft, had a net weight only three times that of a Hampden.

  The day after Leslie arrived at Cottesmore he attended a lecture given for the new intake of aircrew. The officer went to the trouble to emphasize what a safe aircraft the Hampden was to fly. Any rumours heard to the contrary should be discounted as idle gossip. At that moment they heard the sound of a tremendous crash outside the window. A Hampden had taken off and dived into the ground, smashing itself to smithereens.

  In spite of this dramatic introduction, he found the Hampden was indeed a pleasant aircraft to fly, with gentle, ‘forgiving’ characteristics. But it was cramped. When his instructor took him up for the first time, Leslie had to squat down behind him and look over his shoulder. This was the only way to glean some idea of how to handle the bomber. In an aircraft about half the width of a family saloon car it was impossible to sit side by side.

  Later on, during cross-country exercises, he took it in turns with a fellow pupil to fly either as pilot, or as navigator/bomb aimer. Because of the confined interior they could not swap roles while flying. The pilots only had a few weeks to get to know their aircraft, learn to navigate in a restricted space – beneath the pilot’s feet – and carry out a little bombing practice with a World War One bomb sight.

  There was no attempt to form crews at this stage, something which became normal practice at OTUs later on. Leslie never knew with whom he would be flying next. Sometimes he was unlucky enough to be paired with one of the ‘mad’ characters on his course. Mouland-Begbie could handle a Hampden better than most, but over the bombing range he enjoyed easing back on the stick and stalling the aircraft. This had an unfortunate effect on his colleague who was trying to aim the bombs – he would be pinned to the deck unable to move!

  Rishworth, another ‘bonkers’ type, liked nothing more than riding his Hampden like a horse, bucking it up and down through the skies by pushing the control column backwards and forwards. Whenever he saw an inviting hole in the strata he could never resist diving through it. Sadly, neither Rishworth nor Mouland-Begbie survived OTU. They were killed before they ever reached the squadrons.

  Once, when at the controls of a Hampden, he had a narrow escape himself. Coming in to land he misjudged his approach and had to make an instant decision – either to attempt to overshoot and go round the circuit again, or try to land two-thirds of the way along the runway. He was in ‘fine pitch’, so decided to put the bomber down on the concrete strip and hope for the best. He thought he had got away with it as he swung the aircraft round to port, but unfortunately the airfield boundary hedge on his starboard side was just too close, and tore off the aircraft’s entire twin-tail unit. (If the reader cares to study photographs of a Hampden, he will see how slender was the boom to which the tail was attached). The horn warning the pilot that the tail-wheel was still retracted blared its strident note continuously. This was not surprising, because the wheel was buried deep inside the hedge.

  Leslie and the rest of the crew climbed out of the remaining section of the Hampden and stomped across the airfield to take whatever ‘medicine’ the CO decided to dole out.

  A new kind of endorsement had recently been introduced by the RAF. It was a form of mild reproof, making full allowance for inexperience. Leslie got away with nothing more than this. However, he and the others had been spotted by some ‘admin’types as they had walked away from the wreck and crossed in front of Station HQ. They received an entirely separate chastisement – nothing to do with crashing an aircraft, but for being improperly dressed. They had omitted to wear their caps! As punishment for this ‘crime’ they were obliged to march round and round a hangar for one hour. All ex-aircrew will recognize this as a fair illustration of the two distinctly ‘different’ ‘RAFs’.

  Something now occurred at Cottesmore, the horror of which has remained in Leslie’s memory to this day. A blazing Whitley, one of the few on the strength of the OTU, succeeded in landing on the airfield. The fire-tender, the ambulance, and every available person on the station rushed to the scene. They saw members of the crew clambering free – all except the rear gunner who was trapped in his turret. Helpless, they watched as the poor boy became engulfed in flames. Nothing could save him. His agony was unbearable to see – he was pleading for help. An officer, his face set, raised his pistol, took careful aim and fired. The boy’s agony was over.

  Still shocked, Leslie later went round to visit two of the air gunner’s pals in their billet. As he entered, he was astounded to see both airmen sitting on their beds, laughing uncontrollably. They had been studying a tiny piece of charred cloth no bigger than a half-crown. ‘Look,’ they said, the tears rolling down their cheeks, ‘that’s all that’s left of him.’ This was his first experience of raw hysteria.

  As soon as he had clocked up sufficient hours, he was posted to a squadron at Hemswell. Almost before he knew what was happening he was on a night operation to Mannheim. Flying as navigator, he had to guide the bomber to the target, drop the bombs, and man the hand-held Vickers ‘K’ gun poking out of the aircraft’s nose. The following day his papers arrived and he was given a severe dressing-down. There were two squadrons stationed at Hemswell and he had flown with the wrong one – 144 Squadron, instead of 61 Squadron, to which he had actually been posted.

  Now at last he became a member of a regular crew, skippered by Pilot Officer John Graham. Sergeant ‘Ginger’ Hughes was the wireless operator/air gunner. The lower/rear gun position was manned by a quiet, reliable New Zealander, Sergeant ‘Kiwi’ Nut-tall.

  Leslie was 2nd pilot, navigator, bomb aimer and front gunner. The first and last of these duties were academic: in the event of the 1st pilot being killed or wounded it would have been virtually impossible to take his place for the reasons already given. As for the front gun, it was most unlikely that any German fighter pilot would be so insane as to mount a frontal attack at night.

  Within a short time both squadrons were transferred to North Luffenham. It is worth noting that 144 Squadron flew more raids than any other Hampden squadron, and suffered the highest losses. This included a 100% loss during a raid in the area of Heligoland.

  61 Squadron went from strength to strength and finished the war with the second highest number of raids in Bomber Command. It actually chalked up more Lancaster raids than any other squadron. While flying with 61 Squadron, Flight-Lieutenant William Reid won his Victoria Cross on a flight to Düsseldorf on the night 3/4 November, 1943. But this was more than two years after Leslie’s brief flying career with the RAF had come to an end.

  Pilot Officer John Graham was a competent and cheerful captain who went out of his way to look after his crew. Leslie had no opportunity to fly his bomber on operations, yet he felt neither resentment nor anxiety. He had every confidence in John’s ability, and was quite prepared to wait until he had completed ten trips before becoming a 1st pilot himself. Meanwhile, he was grateful to be flying in any capacity.

  They worked well as a team and flew to Aachen, Hanover, Karlsruhe twice, Frankfurt and Cologne without encountering too much trouble. Leslie applied whatever he had learned during training to get them to these targets. It was a matter of crossing the English coast at the correct point, and then checking the position once the enemy coast was reached. Ginger never failed to get him some useful radio bearings while crossi
ng the sea. As for arriving at the target, he always prayed that someone else would get there first and light it up for them. This implied a touching belief that the first man in had found the right place!

  Returning from a raid, they always kept on the alert, even after reaching Britain, The Hampden, with its slim fuselage and twin rudders, was too easily mistaken for either the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt 110 or the Dornier 17, A number of Hampdens returning from operations against the enemy, sometimes almost within sight of their home bases, had been shot down either by their own AA batteries or by RAF fighter pilots deficient in aircraft recognition skills. [See page 18]

  They never sighted an enemy night fighter during these missions. Leslie put this down to the modest height at which they flew – not more than 11,000 feet. (The books of the period, of course, quoted the Hampden’s service ceiling as 22,700 feet!) Wellingtons, however, operated at around 14,000 feet and possibly ran into more fighter opposition.

  The flak looked deceptively pretty, like a colourful firework display when viewed from a distance, but was deadly, and frightening to fly through. At that low height the AA gunners fired highvelocity, low-calibre tracer shells. When flak struck the bomber it reminded Leslie of someone throwing gravel. One of the most startling experiences was when they ploughed their way through an electrical storm. Lightning flashes crackled all round the metal frame of the cabin.

  His seventh mission was to the great northern port of Kiel. On the night of 8 August 1941, Graham and his crew, accompanied by forty-nine other Hampdens and four Whitleys, flew straight over the North Sea towards Denmark. Leslie remembers well that the briefing officer had told them their objective was the German battleship Schamhorst. This is interesting, because the Schamhorst and Gneisenau where both in Brest at the time.

  They had been advised to fly down the east coast of Denmark in order to reach the target. By doing this, they were assured, they would avoid the flak. This proved to be untrue. Nevertheless, they pressed on and arrived over the docks at their usual height of 11,000 feet.