They Spread Their Wings (8 page)

Foreground, in flying suit with parachute slung nonchalantly over his shoulder, pilot under training Jack Cheney at EFTS Desford in March 1941. (J. Cheney Collection)

After three glorious weeks of leave at home in Spalding, looking up old friends, putting my feet up and sampling home cooking with my mother and three sisters, I was summoned to No 54 Operational Training Unit (54 OTU) at RAF Church Fenton in Yorkshire. This was to be the last stage of my training as a night-fighter pilot and I arrived at the station on 3 August 1941. I was not immediately impressed by what I saw of the base but later that day, I met up with ‘Tosh’ Bramley, Jimmy Smith, Arthur Howard and ‘Hammy’ Hamilton, all of whom had been with me on No 22 Course at No 7 Service Flying Training School, Kidlington (Oxford airport). Life, it seemed, would not be quite so bad after all. Church Fenton was considered to be the crack night-fighter OTU in the country but we soon discovered it had also earned a reputation as a killer station.

Now designated No 11 Course, we were obliged to do some day flying in the Airspeed Oxford just to get our hand in again. However, before being permitted to fly at Church Fenton at night we first had to go to RAF Catterick and do a few hours at night in Tiger Moths. We were at Catterick for only a week and flew from a satellite landing ground called Forest Farm. What a week that was! It was really great fun being back in the old Tiger again. All too soon though it was back to the serious business at Church Fenton, where night flying dual was carried out in the Oxford, augmented by day solo flights in the ropey old Bristol Blenheim.

September saw the arrival of our observers. For this seemingly important event, the actual teaming up process was, in fact, pretty informal. We were all assembled in a large room and told to get on with it. A fair-haired fellow about my own age, calling himself Sgt Mycock, made the first approach to me. We seemed to hit it off from the start and from that day he became, and still is, my observer. His name is James Kenneth Mycock but from that first day I met him I called him Mike and so it remained.

A tragic blow fell on 2 September, when my pal Arthur Howard and his observer were killed in an Oxford. Blokes were killing themselves right, left and centre in the ropey old Blenheims, which we had now begun to fly at night. At the end of that month, the aircrew sergeants of my course moved out of Church Fenton mess, to be rehoused in an old country house known as Barkston Towers, three miles from the aerodrome. It was a marvellous old place, with ornate gardens and a splendid interior. George, our cook, was in the submarine service in the last war and vowed he would never go near an aeroplane. He was good to us though and served up colossal meals and we lived like kings to the end of the course.

Together now with our observers, we put in a tremendous amount of both day and night flying in an effort to become an efficient team and yet again the end of the course was rushed. It was not the hard work I minded, it was more of a desire to get away from the OTU in general and the CFI [Certified Flight Instructor], Sqn Ldr Aikens, in particular. One week before the course was due to finish, on October 17, another blow fell on my small circle of friends, Sgt T.C. ‘Tosh’ Bramley was killed during an altitude test at night in Blenheim IV, V5622. He was the fourteenth casualty in three months.

Those of us left in my group of pals said our farewells again and on 28 October 1941, almost one year after I joined up, parted company to go to our respective operational stations. Church Fenton at least had lived up to its grim reputation while I was there. Now I was off to RAF Wittering, not far from my home, for my first operational posting to No 1453 Air Target Illumination (Turbinlite) Flight.

The emergence of the Turbinlite concept has its roots in the air situation following the Battle of Britain. Due to the – not unreasonable – previous concentration on single-seat, high-performance day-fighters, when the Luftwaffe turned to its night offensive there was no suitable specialist RAF night-fighter or control system to take them on. The few airborne radar-equipped (AI or airborne interception) Blenheims that did exist had little success, but like all such ideas, that was more a reflection of the very newness of this particular man/machine system, together with inadequate aircraft, rather than an indication of the true potential of the AI night-fighter concept itself. Lack of results diverted attention away from acceptance that the subject had simply been neglected and that it needed a focused and swift injection of resources. Critics of the system – and there was always competition for resources or competing ideas – were the catalyst for some of these alternative ideas gaining a lot more prominence than their true practicality warranted. Among the latter was the idea to mount a searchlight in the nose of an aeroplane. The RAF had acquired some Douglas Boston aircraft originally destined for the French and this was the most suitable aircraft to hand.

To the modern eye at least, any basic description of the Turbinlite Havoc concept cannot fail to engender incredulity about its practicality. It was based around the American-designed Douglas Boston twin-engine light bomber, designated by the RAF as Havoc I, with its nose compartment removed and replaced by an enormously powerful searchlight.

The idea was the brainchild of Wing Commander W. Helmore and the light, named Turbinlite, was built by the General Electric Company (GEC) in England and powered by forty-eight 12-volt batteries that weighed a total of about 2,000lb. These were stowed away on reinforced flooring in the bomb bay, the batteries themselves being laid out in four banks of twelve with two banks placed in each of the two halves of the bomb bay. They were charged up from an external ground-based source with special attention given to providing forced ventilation inside the aeroplane to avoid the build-up of hydrogen fumes during the charging process. A description of the Turbinlite by a former pilot, Michael Allen DFC**, will convey the sheer power of this airborne searchlight:

Its batteries were capable of producing a current of 1,400 amps and discharging totally in two minutes. The lamp – reputed to be the most powerful in the world at that time – produced a beam from mechanically adjusted carbon rods located in front of a para-elliptical mirror reflector with a small frontal area approximating to the size of that cross-section of the forward fuselage. The light thus produced had an illumination intensity of over 800,000 watts [try to imagine 8,000 x 100 watt domestic light bulbs] and blazed out as a horizontal, sausage-shaped, beam of light that illuminated an area 950 yards wide at one mile range. It was not, however, simply a case of detecting a target then throwing a light-switch! The carbon rods took some seconds to bring the arc-light to full power during which time, in order to avoid a situation where the beam was not at full strength but nevertheless provided an enemy with a juicy light to fire at, the light source and reflector were hidden behind shutter doors on the inner surface of the lamp glass. Only when maximum luminosity was achieved [code name: Boiling!] did the pilot open the shutters, expose the beam and [hopefully] pinpoint the target like a blinded moth.

Equipped with an AI Mk IV set, with an arrowhead transmitter antenna protruding from each side of the lamp glass, the aeroplane carried a crew of two. The pilot sat in a comfortable single-seat front cockpit and a radar operator occupied the glazed rear compartment, originally intended for a gunner. But in this AI configuration the Boston carried no armament, because with the weight of the batteries, light and radar there was no spare capacity for guns and ammunition! Despite this peculiar arrangement and – as will be seen – the lack of combat success, it nevertheless provided night-fighter crews with many months of valuable – if boring – night flying and radar interception practice. This was to stand them in good stead when the Luftwaffe stepped up its activity over Britain later and also when RAF night-fighters carried the fight to continental and other skies.

The design team in front of the Douglas Turbinlite Havoc prototype after its first flight. From left to right: Dick Becker, Dennis Roberts, Leslie Baynes, Bruce Benson. (Courtesy of Paul R. Becker)

One of an eventual ten such units in Fighter Command’s 11 and 12 Groups, No 1453 Air Target Illumination Flight, to give it its full title, formed at RAF Wittering in July 1941 from elements of 1451 Flight which was based at RAF Hunsdon. The commanding officer of the new flight was Sqn Ldr Kenneth Blair DFC, who had seen active service both in France with No 85 Squadron and in the Battle of Britain, and was transferred from No 151 Squadron based at Wittering at the time. These Havocs co-operated with one or more single-engine fighters, usually Hurricanes, but on occasion Defiants or even Spitfires are recorded as taking on the role of satellite fighter. Take-off would be carried out in close company, with the Hurricane keeping formation to the rear of the Havoc by reference to a few tiny, variable-intensity lights playing over broad white paint stripes on the upper and lower rear surface of the wings.

Of course, to assemble in this manner at night would have been no mean feat in itself, but how was this unwieldy group going to bring the enemy into combat? The scenario goes like this: ground control would vector the Havoc on to a bandit to a point where the AI operator could take over and use airborne radar to try to pick up the target. If a target was found the AI operator guided his pilot towards visual range. The pilot might, of course, be fortunate to get a visual contact first but the whole idea was to bring the Havoc within searchlight range – without needing to rely on a visual sighting – and that was when the Turbinlite would be switched on. The pilot of the satellite fighter was supposed to spot the enemy in the beam, move in and shoot it down. There were many imponderables that could affect the success of this sequence of events – not least that it was highly unlikely that an enemy aircraft so illuminated would stay mesmerised in the beam long enough for the satellite fighter to catch it! Or that either of the two RAF pilots would not have their night vision ruined by the sudden intense light. So far, successful interceptions had been a quite rare event.

It was in July 1941 that No 151 Squadron began co-operating with the Turbinlite Havoc unit at Wittering. As a first step, several of its aircraft and pilots were sent to RAF Hunsdon to learn the ropes from one of the first Havoc units formed. When they returned to Wittering, almost all flying in August, September and much of October was devoted to training with No 1453 Flight.

As the flight was more or less up to personnel strength, training started in earnest with the Hurricane and Defiant boys from No 151 Squadron. It was recorded in No 151 Squadron’s Operational Record Book that: ‘on October 22, Pilot Officers Stevens in Hurricane Z3261 and McRitchie in Defiant AA431 carried out a pukka Turbinlite patrol for the first time.’ It also records that: ‘Plt Off Stevens broke away and independently destroyed an enemy aircraft.’

Jack Cheney continues:

The weather deteriorated into December but practice interceptions continued whenever there was a break. Despite the cold, our dispersal was very comfortable during the bad spells and we sat around line-shooting whenever there was little else to do. However, the calm was quickly shattered when, on 18 December, Sgt James Sudders, who had been with us at Church Fenton and posted in during October, spun in and crashed his Havoc at Stowgate railway crossing, between Crowland and Market Deeping (Lincs). At this time radio observers outnumbered pilots so it was quite usual for a pilot to have two observers attached to him. On this occasion, Sudders had both Sgt Eric Welch, his regular RO, and Sgt William Fradley, a spare RO, in the back of BD120 and they were all killed in the accident.

Later on in December there were a few sorties in company with Hurricanes of 151 Squadron to try out a new wheeze. The Havocs were to fly around at 5,000 feet dropping flares on possible targets as an alternative method of illuminating the enemy. Bit of a shambles all round! Since the flares were loaded in the bomb bay, the Havocs used for these sorties were the battery-less non-Turbinlite aircraft that the squadron had on charge for crew training purposes. As we were not yet declared fully operational, the whole flight was allowed Christmas leave, which suited me down to the ground being so near to home. There was precious little flying for us in January 1942 and we were still ‘non-op’. The bad weather made our other activities scarce but we played several ice hockey matches on the frozen Whitewater lake at the edge of the airfield. There was also bags of snow clearing to be done and it was both back-breaking and heart-breaking as, every time an area was cleared, it snowed up very soon after. The CO was dead keen on playing soldiers so, when flying was scrubbed, we used up many Very cartridges and thunder-flashes on these ground exercises.

In February the snow abated a little and although it was still cold enough to keep skating, we were able to put some flying in too. My pride took a bit of a blow when I taxied a Havoc into one of the dispersal bay walls. The brakes failed and the starboard engine cowling was a trifle bent but there was no serious damage and I got away with it. The station dance, held on 17 February in Stamford Grammar School, was a good opportunity to give Flt Lt George Turner, one of 1453’s original pilots, a good send-off. He was being posted to RAF West Malling and a replacement crew arrived from 51 OTU Cranfield even before he had left.