Wings (31 page)

The relationship between aeroplanes and soldiers had come a long way in the space of less than thirty years. The air force had moved from being a useful adjunct to military operations to a
crucial necessity, and air superiority had become accepted as a prerequisite of victory. When the Eighth Army met the Afrika Korps again at Second Alamein, Monty had overwhelming mastery of the
skies to complement the overmatch he enjoyed on the ground, and he had no excuse for not delivering the first great British success of the land war.

Throughout October 1942 new aircraft flooded in, supplemented by the men and machines of the United States Ninth Air Force. By the time the battle opened on 23 October, the Allied air forces
mustered ninety-six squadrons. By its end, the RAF had flown 10,405 sorties, and the Americans 1,181. The Axis air forces managed just over 3,000. Though outnumbered, they could still bite. The
Allies lost nearly a hundred aeroplanes against the Germans’ and Italians’ eighty-four.

Such intensity of air operations was dependent on the matching energy and efficiency of ground crews. Not a single
sortie could take place without fitters and riggers
preparing the aircraft before it set off, and maintaining and repairing it when it returned. Inevitably, public attention had always focused on the men in the air. The achievements of the men on
the ground were as remarkable in their way, and if they did not endure the same hazards, they were often exposed to danger and frequently to hardship. Between the wars maintaining aircraft was
largely carried out by the squadrons themselves. The demands of wartime meant a new system was needed and the Air Ministry set up a series of maintenance units at home and abroad.

Often the arrangements were improvised and unusual. In Egypt the workshops were situated in various suburbs of Cairo. No. 1 Engine Repair Section (ERS) was situated in ‘a rather
distasteful slum quarter’, according to Philip Joubert. ‘The pungency of the surrounding atmosphere was almost visible, so intense were the odours, but this had to be endured as the men
entered into the spirit of the job and appreciated all it entailed.’ A small nucleus of RAF tradesmen worked alongside Egyptians, Greeks, Cypriots, Palestinians, Jews and Armenians, recruited
locally.

The British presence was not welcomed by the locals and a phalanx of Indian soldiers was needed to protect the mechanics. Personnel came and went in a truck, which had to carry out ‘a
number of intricate manoeuvres to dodge the hordes of men, women, children, donkeys, camels, taxis, gharrys . . . in time it was possible to judge reasonably accurately where to expect a shower of
filth, garbage, chewed sugar cane and spit
as the truck wended its way to the shop. Craftily thrown stones and plenty of abuse announced the point of
arrival.’
⁹

The section received all the aero engines from the Desert Air Force, stripped them down to their last nut and bolt and, after an overhaul and bench-test, sent them back to the squadrons for
another lease of life. The engines came from Malta and Syria, as well as all over the desert, and by the time they arrived were often ‘completely covered with a coating of sand at least a
quarter of an inch thick. Some had been dragged by tanks on to rocky ground before they could be loaded and suffered considerably in doing so, yet those engines left No.1 ERS as jet-black, gleaming
power units with the guarantee of the RAF behind them.’
¹⁰
The same feats were repeated all over the globe where the RAF’s footprint
fell.

By now women were an intrinsic part of the enormous logistical support force. The Women’s Royal Air Force had been disbanded after the First World War. Following the Munich crisis in 1938,
the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) was set up to engage women for work in the event of a war. Two offshoots emerged, the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and the Women’s
Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). It was officially founded on 28 June 1939 and its first Director was Jane Trefusis-Forbes, an independent-minded thirty-nine-year-old who had left school early to
volunteer for war work in the previous conflict, and had built up a dog-breeding and kennel business before becoming an instructor in the ATS. She had vitality and organizational gifts and a streak
of unorthodoxy, roaring into work each day on a motorbike. At the
outbreak of war there were 1,734 Waafs. Three years later there were 181,835 – 16 per cent of the
entire RAF. They served in a dozen trades – from drudgery as mess orderlies, cooks and clerks to skilled work as ops-room plotters and radar operators, a category which by 1944 was
predominantly female. Some served as intelligence officers, a tough calling in a masculine world in which pre-operation briefings were always regarded with scepticism when delivered by a woman.
More than 160 women served as pilots with the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), ferrying new or repaired aircraft from factories to maintenance units and squadrons.

The influx of personnel from the Waafs released many men for flying and other operational duties. It was calculated that without their support, the RAF would have needed another 150,000 extra
men. Volunteers had to be between seventeen-and-a-half and forty-three years old. Most were eighteen or nineteen. The first influx seemed to contain a disproportionate number of the wealthy and the
well-educated. ‘At the start there were a whole lot of titled people,’ remembered a former Waaf, Marian Orley. ‘But a lot of them couldn’t take it. Out of sixty of us,
thirty didn’t come back after a week’s leave at Christmas.’
¹¹

Among the more socially prominent were the Prime Minister’s daughter, Sarah Churchill, the British Ladies Golf Champion Pam Barton, and an airwoman cook who rode to hounds and asked
permission to keep her two hunters on the station. However, there were also a number from the other end of the class spectrum. On a tour of inspection of RAF bases
in 1943
Joubert was horrified to find ‘Borstal girls, trollops and thieves amongst a mass of decent women’.
¹²

Many of the volunteers came from the dominions and colonies, which in the early days lacked organizations of their own. Others were refugees from occupied Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia and
France. ‘There were many reasons that brought all these girls to enrol,’ wrote Squadron Leader Beryl Escott, the WAAF historian. ‘Patriotism, money, freedom, escape from
unpleasant jobs, the promise of companionship, revenge on fathers or boyfriends, or for a husband’s death. Many chose the air force out of a fascination for flying and a spirit of
adventure.’
¹³

Conservative fathers disliked the idea of their daughters joining up. ‘My father was very service-oriented and his memory of the women’s services from the First World War was that
they had bad reputations,’ said Vera King, a WAAF NCO. ‘His theme was, if you go into the services, no decent man will want to marry you.’
¹⁴
So did some mothers. ‘I shall always remember my mother, tears streaming down her face, at the door,’ said Hazel Williams. ‘Then she called me back and
said, “Don’t sit on strange lavatory seats” and, pointing to my bosom, “Don’t let any man touch you there.”’
¹⁵

Some of the older pre-war professionals bristled at this influx of females. ‘A very high percentage of the regular RAF officers regarded them as an unmitigated nuisance and gave them no
help,’ wrote Philip Joubert. ‘Their accommodation was abominable, their food most unsuitable and their uniform unattractive. But the volunteers that came forward to enrol
had amongst them some outstanding characters, and all had a burning desire to be of use to their country in whatever capacity they were called upon to work.’
¹⁶

Most of the war-service airmen were delighted to see them. Serving on bases where there were plenty of women around was a significant factor in attracting recruits to the RAF. Morfydd Brooks, a
young, married woman, had joined the WAAF after her husband was called up to the RAF and posted overseas. In the spring of 1943 she was working in the sergeants’ mess at Scampton, where 617
Squadron was preparing for the Dams Raid. ‘We would hear the planes, then after they discussed and analysed the day’s training, they entered the mess,’ she wrote. ‘The doors
would burst open and the aircrews would swarm in shouting boisterously as we served their food. We young Waafs had to endure a barrage of good-natured banter. “How about a date,
darling?” “How is your sex life?” “I dreamed about you all night.” “Would you like to sleep with me?” “Please serve us in the
nude.”’
¹⁷
The stations and depots served as gigantic dating agencies and tens of thousands of marriages and children had their
genesis in an encounter in a canteen or at a Saturday night hop. For many couples, though, the war deprived them of a happy ending. Pip Beck was a young radio telephony operator at Waddington, a
Lincolnshire bomber base, when she went to a dance in the sergeants’ mess. Nervous and alone, she hovered in the anteroom until a tall sergeant with an air-gunner’s brevet and wireless
operator’s badge approached.

“‘You’re new around here, aren’t you?” he enquired. “I
don’t think I’ve seen you around before. Look, I’m a bit tight
just now, but I promise I won’t drink any more if you’ll come and dance with me.”’ Pip finished her sherry and followed him to the dance floor where they joined the crush of
couples, the smoky air making her eyes tingle. ‘The smell of alcohol near the bar was now overpowering and the floor wet with spilt beer,’ she recalled. ‘We kept away from that
area as much as possible and my partner stuck to his promise and drank no more. He told me that his name was Ron Atkinson, and his home was in Hull. We danced and danced – I was having a
wonderful time. Sometimes we slipped back into the anteroom again, just to talk. He teased me and we both laughed a lot. I studied his angular, intelligent face and large grey eyes; the dark hair
and the rather youthful moustache . . . We fell in love – what else could we do?’
¹⁸

When Ron proposed marriage, however, Pip shied away. ‘Marriage was something I hadn’t thought about. I was just in love.’ When she tried to explain this to him he ‘turned
away, hurt and angry’. They didn’t see each other for three days. Then, as she was leaving the cookhouse after tea she ran into him. ‘He was wearing battledress, flying boots,
thick white roll-necked pullover – and a little black cat charm dangling from the button of his breast pocket. So he was “on” tonight. My anxieties rose in full force – and
yet I felt a surge of fierce pride.’ Ron had been looking for her. He asked her to phone him the following day in the mess, after he got back from the raid on Le Havre. Pip felt a shiver of
fear. She could not sleep and went to the control-tower roof, praying to see his
bomber H-Harry looming out of the dawn. But Ron never returned. ‘Loss was an unknown
experience until now – and it was painful.’ She talked to no one about it ‘and tried to behave normally. I was silently grateful to those who
did
know and were
unobtrusively kind. And at eighteen, one recovers quickly.’
¹⁹

Initially, all but a handful of Waafs did their service in Britain, but in the middle of 1944 they started to be posted abroad. By the end they were present in twenty-nine countries, from the
Arctic to the tropics. For many of the quarter of a million young women who passed through the WAAF their service was a high point in their life, a liberation, an adventure, an awakening. When
Phyllis Smart was demobilized it felt as if a deep emotional bond was being severed. After queuing up in a large hall in Birmingham to collect her back pay, clothing coupons and ration book she was
called into a small office where a young WAAF officer solemnly shook her hand and bade her farewell. ‘I was out! I have never felt so forsaken in my life. After being part of a huge family
for so long, I was on my own. I lay in bed that night and cried.’
²⁰

In North Africa, where air power was used in conjunction with land forces, the record was one of almost continuous success from late 1942 onwards. The pattern was repeated
after the landings in Italy and then in north-west Europe and a dozen other places. Over the sea, Coastal Command grew in numbers and confidence. It was in the realm of strategic bombing –
the activity by which the RAF hoped to make its greatest contribution – that the story grew darker and more complicated.

The destruction visited on Cologne by the first ‘Thousand’ raid in May 1942 had generated high hopes. The effects, however, were short-lived. Contrary to the belief (held by even
highly intelligent men like Sir Charles Portal) that enemy civilians were less able to ‘take it’ than their British counterparts, German public morale did not crack. Within a fortnight
of the raid, Cologne was functioning more or less as normal and the loss of industrial
production was temporary – perhaps no more than a month’s worth.

This was not known at the time, however. The raid seemed a sort of victory, providing an illusion of power and bringing the satisfaction of revenge at a time when there was nothing else to
celebrate. Harris was given the green light to press on with the ‘Thousands’. On the night of 1–2 June Essen was attacked by 957 aircraft. There was cloud over the city. Many of
the crews could not be sure they had identified the target. Little damage was done to Essen and the Krupp works was untouched. Three weeks later there was another raid on Bremen. Harris plundered
Coastal Command to scrape together the aircraft to reach the magic number. Once again, the weather intervened and results were disappointing. Casualties, though, were high. Fifty-three aircraft
failed to return.