Bomber Boys. Patrick Bishop
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duties included monitoring the panels of dials and warning lights, one for each engine, which were situated on the side of the fuselage out of the pilot’s line of sight. This left him to concentrate on his flying instruments. Their most important responsibility was nursing the fuel levels to ensure there was enough petrol to get home. Engineers received elementary flying training and could theoretically fly the aircraft in an emergency. In practice, if the pilot was dead or too badly hurt to function, the engineer was likely to be in a similar condition.
The wireless operator had, according to Bruce Lewis, who served as one, ‘a lonely existence, mentally isolated from other members of the crew for long periods of time while he strained to listen through the static in his headphones for faint but vital signals.’ These told him the aircraft’s position which he passed on to the navigator. He also manned the radar monitor which warned of the approach of night-fighters.
The gunners had what appeared to be the worst job of all. They lived in metal and Perspex turrets that poked out of the top and the back of the aircraft, washed by whistling winds that could freeze them to their guns. They carried the huge responsibility of defending their mates, constantly scanning the night for flak and fighters. Yet the long hours of staring into darkness meant it was all too easy to lose concentration, even fall asleep. If a night-fighter was spotted a decision that could mean the difference between life or death had to be made. You had seen him, but had he seen you? There was one sure way of ensuring he had, which was to pour glowing tracer fire in his direction. If you got it wrong, your end was particularly lurid. Everyone had a story of seeing the rear gunner being hosed out of a shot-up bomber that had hobbled back to base.
Yet some chose the job. It was the quickest way to an operational squadron with the actual gunnery course taking only six weeks. The training, though, was thorough. By the end, many could manipulate the turrets so well they could trace their names on a board with a pencil wedged in a gun barrel. Cyril March had seen an RAF recruiting poster in the window of Stanton’s furniture store in his native Durham appealing for Tail End Charlies and ‘decided there and then that I would become an air gunner, none of the other trades appealing to me.’ For all the privations and dangers of the job it was possible to get used to it or even enjoy it. ‘In the end you learned to love it, strangely to say,’ said Edward Twinn, who had abandoned a safe job in a reserved occupation to join up. ‘You were the king of your own castle, right back there on your own. You never spoke to anybody unless the pilot gave you orders, so there you were sixty feet from the rest of the crew, all together at the front of the aircraft. They could see each other, they were near each other and they had that bond of being together. But the rear gunner, no, he was right out on a limb, down the other end looking the other way. Many of the raids lasted seven, eight, eight and a half hours … you never left your turret at all. It was lonely but you got used to it. And you were there for the crew’s protection and they were a lovely crew.’17
After finishing their specialist training pilots, navigators and bomb-aimers had a further spell at an advanced school before finally arriving at an OTU. Wireless operators and gunners went there directly.
At the OTUs the British came together with their Australian and New Zealand counterparts from the Empire schools (the Canadians formed their own, separate group of squadrons). It was here that one of the most crucial processes in the training programme took place, the welding of individuals into crews. For each member, the crew would from now on be the centre of his existence. Life beyond the base, the world of parents and family and home, drifted to the margins of their thoughts. The six men you would share your bomber with were now the most important people in the world.
The process of selection was called ‘crewing up’. In devising it the RAF departed from its strictly utilitarian selection and training methods and took an enormous leap of faith. Instead of attempting a scientific approach to gauge compatibility they put their trust entirely in the magic of human chemistry. The crews selected themselves. The procedure was simple. The requisite numbers of each aircrew category were put together in a large room and told to team up. Jack Currie, who reached his OTU at the end of 1942, ‘hadn’t realized that the crewing-up procedure would be so haphazard, so unorganized. I’d imagined that the process would be just as impersonal as most others that we went through in the RAF. I thought I would just see an order on the noticeboard detailing who was crewed with whom. But what happened was quite different. When we had all paraded in the hangar and the roll had been called, the chief ground instructor got up on a dais. He wished us good morning … and said: “Right chaps, sort yourselves out.”’
Currie stood among the other sergeant pilots and, trying not to stare at anyone in particular, looked around him. ‘There were bomb-aimers, navigators, wireless operators and gunners and I needed one of each to form my crew. I didn’t know any of them; up to now my air force would have been peopled by pilots. This was a crowd of strangers. I had a sudden recollection of standing in a surburban dance-hall, wondering which girl I should approach. I remembered that it wasn’t always the prettiest or the smartest girl who made the best companion for the evening. Anyway, this wasn’t the same as choosing a dancing partner, it was more like picking out a sweetheart or a wife, for better or for worse.’
Like most pilots, the first thing Currie looked for was a navigator. He saw a knot of them standing together. But how was he to pick one?
I couldn’t assess what his aptitude with a map and dividers might be from his face, or his skill with a sextant from the size of his feet. I noticed that a wiry little Australian was looking at me anxiously. He took a few steps forward, eyes puckered in a diffident smile and spoke: ‘Looking for a good navigator?’ I walked to meet him. He was an officer. I looked down into his eyes, and received an impression of honesty, intelligence and nervousness. He said:
‘You needn’t worry. I did all right on the course!’
I held out my hand. ‘Jack Currie.’
‘I’m Jim Cassidy. Have you got a bomb-aimer? I know a real good one. He comes from Brisbane, like me. I’ll fetch him over.’
The bomb-aimer had a gunner in tow and while we were sizing each other up, we were joined by a tall wireless-operator, who introduced himself in a gentle Northumbrian accent and suggested that it was time for a cup of tea. As we walked to the canteen, I realized that I hadn’t made a single conscious choice.18
At some OTUs new arrivals were given up to a fortnight to team up. Harry Yates, having got over his disappointment at not being posted to a fighter squadron, arrived at Westcott with the ambition to ‘skipper a well-drilled crew, the best on the squadron, every man handpicked, utterly professional at his job and dedicated to the team.’ He started his search in the officers’ mess where he found himself at the bar next to Pilot Officer Bill Birnie, a stocky New Zealander navigator who ‘seemed to be the sort of tough-minded chap who knew the score’. During the evening’s socializing he noticed a young pilot officer wearing a wireless operator’s badge. For a wireless operator to be commissioned so early in his career suggested exceptional ability. So Rob Bailey, ‘tall, slim and blessed with the dark, aquiline looks that women tend to admire’, was in.
The following day the 220 men of the intake assembled in a hangar to finish off the process. They were mostly formed into twos and threes now and there was ‘a lot of movement and noise’, as they scrambled to complete their teams. Bill Birnie disappeared into the crowd and returned ‘with a bronze-skinned giant in tow. This was Flight Sergeant Inia Maaka, the first Maori I’d ever met and I knew the bomb-aimer for me.’ Mac, as he immediately became known, ‘was a stranger to the inner tensions and vanities that make liars of the rest of us’. He had wanted to fight the war as a pilot and had won a place at elementary flying school but had not been selected to advance and been reassigned to bombing school. ‘He clearly loved the job,’ Yates recorded, ‘there wasn’t a hint of second best.’ It was Mac who found the gunners: Geoff Fallowfield, an extrovert eighteen-year-old Londoner and Norrie Close, a taciturn Yorkshireman, who was a month younger still. ‘So there they were,’ Yates marvelled later, ‘my crew: a straight and level Kiwi, a ladykiller; a Maori warrior; and two lads as different as chalk from cheese.’19
Such assorted crews were the norm. The mysterious chemistry that had brought