Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers (6 page)

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 crossing 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.

As they lined up for their bombing run, a searchlight caught them in its beam. Within a fraction of time this column of intense light was joined by two others of equal brilliance. They had been caught in a dreaded cone. Leslie, blinded, lay in the bomb-aimer’s position in the transparent nose. In seconds the flak was hitting them, badly damaging their port wing. John pushed the stick forward and sent the bomber into a steep dive. The altimeter spun in reverse as they fell away from the searchlights and flak. Pulling out of the dive must have been too much for the weakened wing. It failed to support the aircraft, still loaded with bombs. Moments later they crashed.

Leslie remembers struggling to his hands and knees and crawling out through a gap in the side of the Hampden. He could hear groans coming from both John and Ginger. John had broken his back, while Ginger was in agony from a terrible head wound. Kiwi, in the lower gun position, was dead. He had probably been killed by flak before hitting the ground. Miraculously, although in the most vulnerable part of the aircraft, Leslie had escaped with no more than a sprained ankle and a scratch on his nose.

Within a few moments some Luftwaffe soldiers from a nearby anti-aircraft site arrived on the scene. In a state of shock, Leslie
called to them in the only words of German that he knew: ‘
Deinicht mein ganzes herz
!’ …‘You are my heart’s delight!’ The Germans laughed and treated the three survivors with consideration. The lives of both John Graham and Ginger Hughes were saved by skilled surgery carried out in Lübeck hospital. Leslie Biddlecombe became a prisoner of war for nearly four years.

The Bomber Command War Diaries mention the reactions of some German military veterans from the First World War who witnessed that raid on Kiel. They said that the flak barrage was so intense, it reminded them of the Western Front offensives of 1914–1918.

It is certain that young men who volunteered for flying duties during that period and were assigned to bombers suffered from inadequate and hurried training that fell far short of proper preparation for their onerous tasks. Newly qualified pilots were used, certainly when flying in Hampdens, in a capacity for which they were only minimally prepared – that is as navigators, while in Whitleys or Wellingtons, where the second pilot took over the controls from time to time, they were still wastefully underemployed.

It was illogical for pilots to be paired in aircraft that could only carry a small bomb load. In the later stages of the bomber offensive a single unmodified Lancaster, flown by one pilot and a crew of six, could carry up to 18,000 lbs of bombs. In order to lift that same load it would have required twelve Hampdens with combined crews totalling forty-eight airmen,
twenty-four of them qualified pilots
. In current terminology – hardly cost-effective!

True comparison between the earlier days of Bomber Command’s operations and those that followed later in the war is barely possible anyway. A given weight of bombs dropped in 1944 did infinitely more damage than a comparable weight dropped in 1941. In the beginning RAF bombs were of such inferior construction that the explosive element accounted for little more than a quarter of their weight, the difference being made up of heavy metal casing. The Amatol explosive, used by the British since World War One, was not nearly so effective as that employed by the Germans, who, in any case, packed twice as much explosive into their bombs.

The crowning irony was that aircrew were expected to throw away their lives while fighting, not only with inefficient weapons, but with ones that were often defective. A large percentage of those early bombs failed to explode on impact.

Added to this, as we have seen, was the frequent failure of crews to find their targets through lack of navigation aids. Even if the target was found, the chances of hitting it were reduced because of antiquated bomb-sights. Is it fair to assume, then, that the campaign in those early days was a pitiful waste of time? Nothing could be further from the truth. Without the fortitude and bravery of men such as Flight Sergeant (later Warrant Officer) Leslie Biddlecombe, the massive bombing offensive of the future could never have come about. It was the pioneering spirit of these early volunteers that laid the foundations for what was to come – an onslaught on the enemy such as the world had never seen. They showed the world that, in spite of Göring’s boast to the contrary, British bombers could range, night after night, far and wide over German territory.

Britain then stood alone, her cities bombed by the Luftwaffe, her home army impotent, her ships at the mercy of U-boats. Only Bomber Command carried the war to Germany. This was done as well as it could be done at the time. The exploits of the young bomber crews gave heart to the British people. Their deeds brought comfort to a nation under siege. Furthermore, they inspired those of us who were to follow.

The professional air gunner emerged as a distinct aircrew category in World War Two. In the previous war a bombing plane’s defence was in the hands of the observer who operated under very difficult conditions. For example, in the British B.E.2 he sat in an open cockpit in front of the pilot, surrounded by a confusion of struts and wires, while the engine limited his field of fire immediately ahead. Flying suits were, of course, unheated and the intense cold not only affected the physical efficiency of the men, but also caused stoppages in their guns when the lubrication systems froze.

By the outbreak of the Second World War the RAF had developed the power-operated turret. It was then best utilized in the Vickers Wellington which mounted two.303 Browning machine guns in a nose turret, and four.303 Browning machine guns in the tail turret. Later, beam guns were added to frustrate side-on attacks. After the development of the four-engine ‘heavies’ the mid-upper turret became standard additional defensive equipment. Later we shall see how the Americans brought the ‘art’ of air gunnery to its ultimate peak, when, in daylight skies over occupied Europe, their aptly named Fortresses and Liberators fought their way through to the target in spite of the fiercest opposition from cannon and rocket-firing Luftwaffe fighters.

At first air gunners were usually of low rank, often no more than LAC. Soon, however, the minimum rank, as for all aircrew, was established as Sergeant. It was possible for a volunteer air gunner to reach operational squadron service more quickly than in any other flying category. The actual gunnery course took only six weeks. It was said, with some justification, that the rear gunner occupied the most dangerous position in the plane. It was certainly the loneliest, and the coldest. Yet occasionally it was an advantage to be situated aft; as Reg Scarth discovered – on two occasions.

Tough, restless and stocky, with a clipped northern accent, Reg Scarth finally hauled himself into the rear turret of a Vickers Wellington in 1943. He went an unusually roundabout way to get there. But for his determination to fly, he might well have remained as an administrator in the RAF.

Having volunteered for aircrew duties, he should have finished up as a pilot, which was what he was selected for. In fact he almost certainly would have become a pilot if it had not been for his stockiness. Then he could have trained as a navigator, but his restlessness got in the way of that. Instead, Reg became an air gunner, for which his toughness suited him well. Eventually he attained the rank of Squadron Leader.

Reg was born in Osset, Yorkshire, on 15 September, 1922, and joined the RAF as an apprentice in July, 1938, shortly before his 16th birthday. He was posted to Ruislip where he trained in the Records Office. He qualified in September, 1939, the month Britain and France declared war on Germany, and began work as an RAF clerk at Church Fenton.

It was not very long before restlessness set in. Volunteering for duties overseas, he expected to finish up in France like most other servicemen at that period of the war. Instead he was posted to Rhodesia. Life was pleasant enough – good climate, a full social life, and plenty of sport. By 1942 he had been promoted Sergeant.

In South-East Africa the war seemed a long way off. It was this that worried him more and more as time went by. Reading between the lines in newspaper and radio reports, he felt certain there must be a serious shortage of aircrew back in England. Yet there he was living in safety and comfort in a billet remote from the war. So he volunteered for flying duties. As a veteran of four years standing in the RAF, he sailed through his initial training, being excused much of what the raw recruits had to undergo.

At EFTS he thoroughly enjoyed himself learning the basics of flying in tiny De Havilland Tiger Moths. These delightful little biplanes were like machines from a bygone age. They could be spun and stalled with impunity, and however much pupils mistreated them, their wood and canvas construction nearly always stood up to the strain. Reg was convinced he had found his vocation – he was a natural pilot. But when he reached SFTS at
Cranborne, near Salisbury (now Harare) he was faced with one of the most frustrating situations of his life. Here the advanced training aircraft were rugged North American Harvards. Built on a much more generous scale than the diminutive Tiger Moth, they were also very noisy, with large, ‘ungeared’, single radial engines.

Reg was convinced he could handle the Harvard, or any other aircraft for that matter. Eagerly he strode out to the flights alongside his instructor. Full of enthusiasm he hauled himself up the metal side of the fuselage, stepped over the lip of the cockpit and sank out of sight into its depths. To his dismay, at 5 feet 4 inches, his head was below the level of the windscreen. He was unable to see out. Even worse than that, the rudder bar was beyond the reach of his feet!

For a moment his chagrin knew no bounds. He cursed all idiot aircraft designers who based their cockpit dimensions on the measurements of giant Texans. Then his mind raced – seeking a solution. Explaining the problem to his sympathetic instructor, he rushed off to the Sergeants’ Mess and grabbed a couple of cushions. Returning to the Harvard, he placed one behind his back to move himself forward towards the pedals, and then sat on the other which he placed underneath his parachute. ‘AH right now,’ he assured the pilot, ‘Let’s go!’