Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers (12 page)

Their baptism came on 3 September. They were scheduled for a raid on ‘Big City’. The Bomber Command Diaries state that because of the high casualty rates among Halifaxes and Stirlings in recent Berlin raids the heavy force was composed only of Lancasters. On some of the Berlin raids that followed, Halifaxes, and even the lumbering Stirlings, were used again to make up the numbers. It was not the most successful of attacks, many of the bombs falling short because of inaccurate marking. Twenty-two of the aircraft were lost out of a force of 316 Lancasters.

To Harold and the other inexperienced members of Arthur Fearn’s crew the long trip across Germany seemed nothing less than awful. They witnessed Lancasters being shot from the sky, not only over the target but also on the flights there and back. Shocked by the night’s events, they concluded that there was little hope of completing more than one or two such trips.

Yet, as the weeks went by they somehow survived, and, because of the date, Harold was to recall one incident as being particularly poignant. It was over Berlin yet again. They had just dropped
their bombs when a blazing Lancaster drifted across their path slightly above them. In what seemed like slow motion, the doomed aircraft slid over to port. He saw the rear door of the fuselage open and three figures tumble out into the flak-filled night. Within moments their chutes had billowed out. Then, still with four of the crew injured, trapped or dead inside, the stricken bomber plunged in an ever steepening dive into the target. It was Christmas Eve.

Being commissioned, Harold lived in different quarters from the NCOs. He slept in a corrugated-iron Nissen hut with beds for twelve officers. During his time with 57 Squadron, from his place in a corner of the hut, he saw every other bed change ownership at least twice as the occupants went missing. It was the duty of each WAAF batwoman to look after the domestic welfare of two junior officers. Harold felt sorry for these women, often ‘motherly’ types, who, with tears in their eyes, collected up a small bundle of possessions belonging to yet another of ‘their officers’ who would not be coming back.

Throughout that terrible winter Arthur Fearn’s crew soldiered on. The losses mounted all the time until, on 24/25 March, 1944, Harris staged his last big raid on Berlin. It was to cost Bomber Command, on that single night, the loss of hundreds of aircrew as seventy-two aircraft were shot from the sky. And only five days later the command was to suffer its greatest tragedy ever – ninety-five bombers lost on a disastrous mission to Nuremberg. More aircraft ditched in the sea, and a further seventy-one were heavily damaged in crashes back in England. But Harold and the rest of Arthur Fearn’s team had moved on to something more specialized by then, as we shall see shortly.

In all, Arthur Fearn and his crew completed nine raids on Berlin, interspersed with missions to other heavily defended targets such as Mannheim, twice, Frankfurt and Leipzig. Harold remembers one Berlin trip in particular. They were on their bombing run and Harold was guiding Arthur up to the aiming point: ‘Left, left, steady … left, left … right … steady’. Harold pressed the ‘tit’: ‘Bombs gone!’. But they had not gone. There was a total hang-up. Feverishly, with heavy flak bursting all round, and searchlights slicing perilously close, he checked his bomb panel a
second time, re-setting each switch in turn. But the 4000-pound ‘Cookie’ and its surrounding canisters of incendiaries remained obstinately in place.

Arthur’s voice came over the intercom: Tor God’s sake get the bloody things sorted out. We can’t stooge around this place all night!’ Harold realized he would have to try releasing the load manually. Grabbing an emergency oxygen bottle and clawing his way back to the body of the Lancaster, he hastily removed the inspection covers above the bomb bay. But he was unable to reach the hooks that retained the 4000-pounder. Seizing the fire-axe he started chopping away at the aluminium floor. Arthur’s voice came through again on the head-set: This is too bloody dicey. I’m going to get away from the target and head for home.’

Harold chopped and chopped with desperation. He knew well enough that the extra fuel consumed by carrying this load on a return flight could mean dry tanks before reaching England. Ditching in the sea with the extra weight of bombs would reduce their chances to nil. At last he made a hole large enough to start work on the actual retaining hooks. With the bomb doors open, he lay in the path of a howling gale. His hands were so frozen he feared the axe might slip from his grasp at any second. Eventually the great steel drum fell away, taking one of the bomb doors with it. The remaining door closed and every member of the crew breathed more freely. A moment later the rear gunner reported a large explosion which lit up the blackness below. It was later confirmed that ‘Harold’s bomb’ had landed smack in the centre of Kassel, a large industrial town engaged in manufacturing war weapons, including the V1 rocket.

They were too short of petrol to land at base in Lincolnshire, so put down at Waterbeach, near Cambridge, still with the load of incendiaries on board. Harold was uneasy, wondering if in some way he was to blame for the ‘hang-up’. The following day they flew back to Scampton, and their kite, E Easy, was wheeled away for inspection. When Harold heard the official report from the armament officer he was filled with relief. E Easy was a brand new Lancaster. Like all its contemporaries its underside had been sprayed with matt black paint before leaving the factory. A small ball-bearing had become gummed up with paint. When the bomb
doors were opened the ball-bearing was supposed to leave the socket and complete the electrical bombing circuit, but in this case it had stuck fast, rendering the system inoperative. On such small items hung men’s lives.

This thought was much in Harold’s mind when they returned from one raid in the early hours of the morning. As the crew climbed wearily from their bomber they noticed the station ambulance drawn up beside one of the squadron’s aircraft. A bloodstained figure was being lifted into the back of the vehicle. On inquiry Harold was told that it was the bomb aimer who had been killed by flak. A fragment of metal had entered below his chin, spiralled up through his skull and sliced off the top of his head. Harold wandered round to the nose of the Lancaster and looked up. There was a hole no bigger than a two shilling (10p) piece in the aluminium underside.

One of Harold’s duties was to discharge ‘Window’ down the flare chute on a carefully timed basis while over enemy territory. The heavy metal strips were packed in compact blocks. From that day on he lined the floor of his cabin with a generous supply of these solid parcels. (Unlike American aircraft, British bombers had a minimum of armour plating.) On more than one occasion after that, he spotted holes underneath the Lancaster when they returned from a mission. Once a sharp sliver of flak penetrated right through the parcels and, although its velocity was much reduced, it cut through his flying boot and buried itself in the calf of his right leg.

Their tally of trips to Berlin should have been ten. One night they were flying across the North Sea, still climbing steadily, when the Lancaster was attacked by a Ju88 night fighter and the starboard outer engine set on fire. Arthur threw the bomber all over the sky while his two gunners replied as best they could with their Brownings. For some reason the German broke off his attack and disappeared into the night. Although the crew managed to get the fire under control their aircraft was in no shape to continue the long journey to Berlin. But Harold had what almost amounted to a phobia about being involved in an ‘abortive sortie’ – returning to base without bombing. (The Kassel incident had counted as an ‘op’ because a target had been bombed, even if it was not the
primary one.) After some argument he persuaded his skipper to press on the comparatively short distance to Heligoland, and drop their load on the heavy fortifications there. Over the island the Germans opened up at them with everything they had, so Harold aimed at the gun flashes. After the line-overlap photographs had been developed and examined the crew were credited with their ‘op’.

Harold was now completely satisfied that Arthur’s crew was the finest in 5 Group, if not in the whole of Bomber Command! It was a standing joke that their skipper was also the oldest Sergeant pilot in existence. The Commanding Officer of 5 Group, Air Vice-Marshal The Hon R. Cochrane, accompanied by his chief, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, visited 57 Squadron on a morale-building exercise following heavy losses. After the customary pep-talk, aircrew were invited to express themselves freely. When Cochrane turned to Arthur Fearn and asked him what was in his mind as he approached the target, Arthur, always outspoken, replied, ‘Getting through the damn thing as quickly as possible and then heading home like a bat out of hell!’ His crew reckoned that this retort had scuppered their skipper’s chances of promotion for ever.

Towards the end of their time with 57 Squadron and when the outfit had been transferred to East Kirkby, Arthur was at last made a Pilot Officer. His bomb aimer was now a Flight Lieutenant, but in a few weeks, by an unprecedented promotional leap, Arthur caught him up. After a raid in which the squadron sustained particularly heavy casualties, including the loss of both its Flight Commanders, Harold’s skipper, as the longest surviving pilot, took over as one of the Flight Commanders and was immediately promoted to Flight Lieutenant. Engineer Trevor Davies became a Pilot Officer. The rest of the crew remained NCOs.

Harold had a high regard for Sergeant Howard Dewar, the rear gunner. He was a Canadian, a tough ex-lumberjack, who seemed to be without fear. Together with his fellow gunner in the mid-upper turret, Wilson Williams, he had saved the crew from disaster on at least two occasions. Then one night, on yet another trip to Berlin, an extraordinary thing happened. They were approaching the target when they were attacked by a Messerschmitt 109. Arthur
went into his usual corkscrewing routine to try to throw the German off his tail. During this manoeuvre the crew temporarily lost communication with each other. Nevertheless the fighter was foiled and they went on to bomb the city.

As they set course for home, the skipper, as was his custom, called up each crew member in turn to ask if they were all right. Everyone replied except Howard. After several unsuccessful attempts to get an answer, Jack Baker, the wireless operator went along the fuselage to investigate. To his astonishment, Jack found the rear turret empty – Howard had baled out over Berlin! No trace of him was ever found.

Dennis Pearson, a West Indian, took over the tail gunner’s job and remained in Arthur’s crew until the completion of operations, as did all the other NCOs, including Harry ‘Johnny’ Johnson as navigator, and Trevor Davies, the recently promoted flight engineer.

From the start of their tour, in early September, 1943, until the end of March the following year, Bomber Command lost in the region of 1500 heavy bombers over enemy territory, and many more in crashes in England. Over 10,000 young men’s names had been deleted from the command’s roll call during this period. Yet, towards the end of January, 1944, and with their missions totalling twenty-eight trips, they were still only just over half way through their operational duties!

A Bomber Command tour with Main Force consisted of thirty operations, after which, for those fortunate enough to reach such a figure, there would be a ‘rest’ period of six months, normally spent as an instructor, before returning to fly a further twenty-five missions. But for Flight Lieutenant Fearn’s crew it was to be altogether different because of the intervention of 617 Squadron.

The astounding exploits of 617 Special Duties Squadron need no retelling in detail here. They have been immortalized in the history of the RAF, in Paul Brickhill’s
The Dam Busters
, and in the award-winning film of that name. It was a squadron unique in the annals of war, formed in the spring of 1943 to carry out the audacious raid which breached the Moehne and Eder Dams in Germany. Thanks to the courage of the airmen who undertook this mission and the inventive genius of Barnes Wallis who gave
them the ‘bouncing bomb’ to do the job it was a major success. The price was high, eight out of the nineteen Lancasters taking part were lost, and only three of the fifty-six airmen involved survived.

Since that time, nearly nine months earlier, 617 had specialized in raiding selected targets with mixed results. They had had a crack at the Dortmund-Ems Canal, a viaduct in Italy, an armaments factory near Liège, a flying-bomb site, and even a leaflet raid – always operating in small numbers, sometimes of not more than nine or a dozen Lancasters. Their original brief to attack at low level had been changed. With the acquisition of the revolutionary Stabilizing Automatic Bomb Sight, they were now bombing from a greater height – sometimes at the maximum of 20,000 feet, similar to Main Force, but, on other occasions, around 12,000 feet.

In need of experienced crews, 617 Squadron canvassed the various squadrons, mostly in 5 Group, asking for volunteers to join them. It may seem surprising that the members of Harold’s crew, now with only two trips to go before completing their tour, should even contemplate such a move. Yet they did. Crew loyalty probably accounts for their reaction. They felt that if they split up for six months they might never get together again. Eventually, they argued, they would have to do a second tour anyway. ‘Better stay together and get on with it now, rather than risk our necks later with strangers.’ So they volunteered – and were accepted.

By this stage, Arthur, Harold and Trevor had each been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, while Harry, the navigator and still a Sergeant, got the Distinguished Flying Medal.

Arrival at Coningsby meant a return to rigorous training, but this was a relief from the strain of night operations. Harold revelled in the cunning efficiency of the SABS – the new bomb sight. But, as Paul Brickhill said in
The Dam Busters:

It needed more than a hawk-eyed bomb aimer; it called for team work. The gunners took drifts to help the navigator work out precise wind direction and speed, and navigator and bomb aimer calculated obscure instrument corrections. An error of a few feet at 20,000 feet would throw a bomb hopelessly off. Altimeters work off barometric pressure, but that is always changing, so they used
a complicated system of getting ground-level pressures over target and correcting altimeters by pressure lapse rates (with temperature complications). A small speed error will throw a bomb off, and airspeed indicators read falsely according to height and the altitude of the aircraft. They had to compute and correct this, and when it was all set on the SABS the pilot had to hold his exact course and height for miles while the engineer juggled the throttles to keep the speed precise. That, over-simplified, expresses about a tenth of the complications. When the bomb aimer had the cross-wires on the target he clicked a switch and the SABS kept itself tracking on the aiming point by its gyros, transmitting corrections to the pilot by flicking an indicator in the cockpit. The bomb aimer did not have to press the bomb button; when it was ready the SABS did that, and even told the pilot by switching off a red light in the cockpit.