Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers (11 page)

Incidentally, the Sergeant from Brooklyn was asked by the American Eighth Air Force to leave the RAF and join them. He complied with this request and was immediately promoted to Colonel. The increase in pay alone must have been a heady experience!

The time came when Affleck’s crew became the longest surviving on the squadron. Their durability was attributed to the quality of the crew, a seasoned pilot and, particularly, an outstanding navigator, ‘Mack’ MacMasters. He, like his skipper, was on his second tour. He never failed to reach the drop zone accurately and on time, and then always plotted a safe course back to base. Flying so low, there was little help from electronic aids, although, like other navigators, he sometimes made good use of a radar device hidden in a tree ‘somewhere in France’!

John could hardly believe his luck, when, after completing thirty-nine operations, his tour was over and he was still alive. It took a little while for the fact to sink in. Not only had he survived, but he had actually completed nine more missions than was normal for a first tour in Bomber Command. (In spite of its special-duty role 161 Squadron was still a Bomber Command squadron under the authority of 3 Group.) After Affleck had completed his second tour, John pressed on with another crew skippered by a cheerful New Zealander, Sergeant Wilkinson, and then completed his operational duties with Flying Officer Don Harborow and his crew.

It was November, 1943, and while John was celebrating his good fortune on leave, 161 suffered what was probably its heaviest loss of the war. Western Europe was unexpectedly blanketed in a
thick layer of fog. Bomber Command transmitted a warning to its raiding bombers and they were recalled to their various bases in time. 161 Squadron was forgotten. Very few of its Halifaxes returned safely that night.

MacMasters was navigating a new crew. He had brought them back to an emergency airstrip at Woodbridge, in Suffolk. Because of the dense fog the pilot misjudged his approach and the Halifax crash-landed. ‘Mack’ was thrown clear. He fell at the side of the runway, unconscious, but not badly injured. When searchers discovered him he was lying face downwards; he had drowned in a puddle of water.

To John’s surprise he was awarded the DFM, commissioned and sent to RAF Feltwell, a Lancaster Finishing School, as an instructor. The usual pattern, which was to reveal itself throughout his flying career, had cropped up again. Apart from his early apprenticeship not once did he receive training for any job that came his way. Now he was expected to teach others in an aircraft he had only seen flying in the distance!

His introduction to the Avro Lancaster was a revelation – to use his own words, ‘It was a dream! It flew like a bird’.

Yet the greatest bomber of the Second World War had been born out of failure. With high hopes, the Avro Manchester had been launched early in 1941. Powered by two Rolls-Royce Vulture engines of 1760 hp, it proved a bitter disappointment. The Vultures were notoriously unreliable. Many aircrew lost their lives flying in these dangerous machines. There was nothing wrong with the aircraft itself, only its engines. Roy Chadwick, A. V. Roe’s chief designer, was inspired to fit four Merlin engines in place of the two Vultures. The name Manchester died. With a wing span increased by 12 feet to accommodate the two extra engines, the Lancaster soared into the air – the ‘Shining Sword’, as Arthur Harris called it, had arrived.

Unlike the Halifax, where the flight engineer was stationed under the astrodome, on the Lancaster John found he was in closer proximity to the pilot, almost like a second pilot. With his Merlin XXs, which had also powered the Halifaxes, he was perfectly content. Perhaps his most satisfying moment in the air came one day when an American B17 Flying Fortress took up formation
alongside them. The American pilot indicated by signs that he would welcome a race. Reaching over to his switch panel, John cut two of the bomber’s engines. Then opening the throttles on the two remaining motors, the Lancaster pulled steadily ahead of the Fortress!

John, who in 1946 married Lynne, a charming girl from the WAAF, remained in the RAF as a flight engineer until 1960. One of the highlights of his peacetime career was taking part in the Berlin airlift, when the entire population of the city was fed from the air for months by the Americans and British, until the Russians, who had blockaded the city, relented and removed the road barriers. Apart from food, the aircrews carried electrical generators, huge rolls of newspaper, and coal. John and the others were not very keen on coal as a cargo. But, joining the constant stream of planes, they did enjoy flying low over General Sokoloski’s residence. He was the man who had ordered the blockade!

After 22 years in the RAF, John retired with the rank of Flight Lieutenant and became, not a botanist, but an antique dealer.

The role of the bomb aimer, like that of the flight engineer, was created through the need for greater efficiency in bombing operations, utilizing the effectiveness of the four-engine bombers. Until the arrival of these larger aircraft, the business of dropping bombs had been left to the navigator. With increased specialization among aircrew, better aircraft, improved equipment, radar navigation aids, bigger and more potent bombs, the highly trained bomb aimer became the prime member of the crew at the moment of attack, guiding his pilot towards the aiming point.

Bomb aimers were sometimes recruited from the ranks of cadets washed out as pilots. After further rigorous training they passed out in their new role. Because of their long period of instruction, many of these men, apart from being skilled in their own job, had also accumulated a knowledge of navigation, and how to fly an aircraft – not a four-engine bomber, perhaps, but with enough know how to be useful in an emergency.

We suggested earlier that the rear gunner might have occupied the most dangerous position in the aircraft. There is no doubt, however, that over the target where the flak was normally at its thickest, the bomb aimer was exceptionally vulnerable. Stationed in the nose, which was constructed only of transparent perspex and a thin metal skin, he lay stretched full length along the floor of his small compartment, his face above the lens of the bomb-sight, his whole body exposed to any piece of white-hot, jagged shrapnel that might enter the front of his plane at any moment during that crucial bombing run. As a bomb aimer, Harold Chad-wick worked out his own solution to this and other problems.

Over the years Harold Chadwick has carved out a way of life that, in many ways, is that of a 20th Century Robinson Crusoe. He
lives in the foothills that look down on the Mediterranean coast of Southern Spain.

As companions he has a variety of animals – a very old horse, goats, turkeys, chickens, and many dogs and cats whom he and his wife, Cynthia, have rescued over a period of time from certain destruction. Harold’s first action each morning is to climb down the deep well that he dug for himself and his family years ago when they first came to Spain. When he reaches water level he has a brief chat with his friend Ernie. Ernie is an eel. An old Andalucian farmer advised Harold to pop an eel into the well to keep the drinking water pure. Ernie, undoubtedly grateful for his permanent home, has never failed in his task. It would be beyond the grasp of Harold’s Spanish neighbours to associate their friend, the ‘funny’ Englishman with the sharp jerky movements –
el hombre
who is never still, with Flight Lieutenant H. Chadwick, DFC, of 617 Squadron – one of the specially chosen bomb aimers who dropped the first of the mighty ‘earthquake’ bombs.

Harold Chadwick was born on 14 September, 1922, in Nottingham. Later on the family moved to Uttoxeter, and when he left school he went to work in Woolworths as a trainee manager. He did not take kindly to the routine, and anyway, his ambitions lay elsewhere.

During the First World War his father, also Harold Chadwick, had transferred from the cavalry to the RFC. As a scout pilot he flew Spads, Bristol Fighters, Sopwith Triplanes and SE5s – and was shot down twice. Harold senior was lucky to survive those years. Harold junior had always admired his father’s exploits in the air and was determined to become a fighter pilot himself.

The Second World War was at the end of its first year, and the daylight phase of the Battle of Britain had just been fought and won by the Royal Air Force. As soon as Harold was 18 years old, the youngest permissible age to start aircrew training, he volunteered to fly with the RAF. Neville Crisp, who had been his friend at Alleynes Grammar School, applied at the same time. They were both accepted for training as pilots.

At an RAF station near Cambridge the new cadets were put through a flying aptitude test before graduating to Tiger Moths for their Initial Flying Training. This successfully completed, they
were shipped over to Canada to take part in the Empire Air Training Scheme. The young trainees were sent on sister ships, former Dutch cargo vessels, and it was the alphabetical division by name that decided which vessel they sailed. Chadwick and Crisp, therefore, had no problem in keeping together. They reached Nova Scotia without incident. The other ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat. There were no survivors.

Everything went well for Harold at first, flying Stearman PT17 biplanes and clocking up some sixty hours on these machines at Calgary, Alberta. Then, to his delight they were posted over the border to the USA for a session on Vultees, finally graduating on to the Harvard Advanced Trainer. But his Harvard instructor, an ex-Eagle Squadron flyer, must have suspected that his pupil was harbouring a ‘guilty secret’. Taking him up one day he put the machine into every aerobatic manoeuvre known to man. After being thrown violently about the sky for minutes on end, the unfortunate Harold literally ‘coughed up’ his ‘secret’. He was most horribly air sick.

But it was not just the result of aerobatics. All through his training, every time he took off he had thrown up. To make matters worse, this was nearly always accompanied by prolonged nose-bleeding. It was to his credit that he had managed to conceal his affliction for such a long time, and indeed had done so well on his course in spite of it. Now, with only days to go before receiving his wings, he had been found out.

His friend ‘Spud’ Crisp gained his wings as a pilot and eventually finished up flying Coastal Command Beaufighters. Distressed beyond measure as he watched his fellow cadets being rewarded for their efforts, Harold cast about for some way of continuing to fly. Like so many before him, he sought the shortest course that would qualify him for flying duties in
any
aircrew capacity. It was obvious that the officers in charge had no idea how serious his air sickness really was.

Back in Canada, at Picton, Ontario, he began training for a new aircrew category – a Nav/B. Essentially this was a bomb aimer with a working knowledge of navigation. The course was short, only 14 weeks. The navigation part of the syllabus had already been covered during pilot training, while the bombing practice
was not particularly taxing. He passed out among the top three and received an immediate commission. At the same time he was awarded his bomb aimer’s brevet – the single wing with a B surrounded by an oakleaf cluster.

Harold’s air sickness never left him, nor did the nasal bleeding. Invariably, when returning from a mission over Germany he would be plagued with the stench of his own vomit, while his oxygen mask would be slimy with blood. Yet, lying in the dark isolation of the Lancaster’s front compartment he was able to conceal his suffering from the rest of the crew. In spite of all, he was eventually to join the elite by becoming one of Bomber Command’s most skilful bomb aimers.

He must have done particularly well on his course in Canada because he was retained as an instructor at Picton. After six months, however, he came back to Britain, and was posted to RAF Lichfield, an aircrew reception centre. It was now around the middle of 1943.

The time had come to find himself a crew. This involved a haphazard process of wandering around and trying to assess pilots, navigators, wireless operators and gunners purely from their appearance. It really was a case of ‘pot-luck’. Nobody had any means of measuring another man’s standard of competence in the air until such time as they flew together.

As time went on, more and more people formed themselves into crews, and he wondered if he might be left as odd man out. Then he spotted an ‘old’, grey-haired Sergeant pilot hanging about waiting for the NAAFI tea wagon to arrive. To Harold he looked steady and reliable. His name was Arthur Fearn, a man in his thirties, at least eleven years older than himself. They agreed to team up, and then between them brought together the other three members of the crew – Nav, Wop/AG and AG – an all-Sergent crew with the exception of Pilot Officer Harold Chadwick.

At Fradley OTU, still not far from Lichfield, they gained experience as a team, flying Wellingtons. Nearing the completion of their course, they were sent on a ‘Nickel’, the code name for a leaflet raid. Four Wellingtons with their trainee crews took off that night and dropped ‘bumph’ over Paris. Only Harold’s crew and one other returned – a 50% loss.

They converted to Halifaxes at Swinderby HCU, collecting two more Sergeants, a flight engineer and a mid-upper gunner to man the extra positions. Unlike the Wellington, Harold was no longer in isolation; he now shared the nose position in the Halifax with the wireless operator and the navigator. His confidence in the crew was growing, especially in the ability of Arthur as a pilot. Arthur was not going to do anything silly, not with a wife and family to go home to.

Conversion to Lancasters when they reached 57 Squadron, at Scampton, in Lincolnshire, meant that Harold regained his solo position in the nose. On the ‘Lane’ the navigator and wireless operator were stationed further aft in their own cabin.

57 Squadron had been operating steadily since the beginning of the war and had always suffered higher than average casualties. On top of that, Sergeant Fearn’s crew had chosen just about the worst time to join an operational squadron. It was the Autumn of 1943 and ‘Bomber Harris’ was ready to throw his command into an unprecedented attack on Berlin, in a battle that was to be fought to the death through the coming winter and into March of the following year.