Wilson - Bomber Boys: The RAF Offensive of 1943 (Bomber War Trilogy 1)

Im not terribly surprised to hear that Willie has won the VC. Hes always been a very determined boy.

The mother of F/Lt William Reid quoted in the Daily Express after the blacksmiths son won the Victoria Cross for flying his crippled Lancaster to Dsseldorf and back again despite serious wounds.

We got to the squadron on 21 August; the first raid I went on was two days later and within eight days I had done another five and been shot down.

Flight engineer W/O Lew Parsons of 75 Sqn, forced to bale out on the Berlin raid of 31 August 1943.

Picked up 6 pay then rushed away as member of a funeral party for a rear gunner killed in action. Ghastly business funerals, weeping relatives all over the place. Went to pictures afterwards.

From the diary of bomb aimer Sgt John Gilvary of 419 Sqn, killed on the Peenemnde Raid twelve days later.

My throat became parched and I considered whether to cut myself so that I could drink some of my own blood to alleviate the terrible thirst.

Air gunner F/Lt Eric Hadingham, DFC and bar, who spent six days in a dinghy after his 166 Sqn Wellington ditched en route to Mannheim on 16 April 1943.

It was amazing how often a navigator would say to me, Well cheerio, sir, Im not coming back and they didnt. One night I was briefed for Cologne and it was scrubbed. I was never so thankful because I knew if I went that night I wouldnt return.

Navigator S/Ldr Alex Flett, DFC and bar, who completed a tour with 460 Sqn and a second as navigation leader with 625 Sqn.

THE dawn of Bomber Commands year of attrition began beguilingly with a whisper. The seductive sound was carried in the tendrils of mist which both enclosed and linked billet to hangar on airfields from north to south and it held the promise of life continued. It was the soft, sibilant hiss of drizzle.

The rain crept and swept the length of eastern Britain from the flat fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire to the soft contours of Yorkshire and up into County Durham, dribbling from the wings of hooded Halifaxes, Stirlings and Lancasters poised at dispersals, glistening the grey of concrete runways lost in the fog, and carrying its damp promise into the austerity of crew huts beneath dripping trees.

Its message was that tonight there would be no war. The crack and thump of exploding flak, the urgent tearing flash of cannon fire, the shriek of plunging aircraft which would echo through the months of the great bomber offensive to come hung still. The young aircrew from spotty-faced 18- and 19-year-olds just out of school to bloods fresh from drawing office and workbench turned on that first morning of 1943 and slept on.

Before New Year dawned again 15,832 operational Bomber Command aircrew would be dead and 2,898 prisoners of war. Another 1,500 or so would die in training accidents on OTUs and HCUs; the rest of the doomed would be lost in the variety of horror that was the air wars speciality. Some would die instantly or agonisingly by direct contact with flak or Luftwaffe bullet or cannon; others would vanish as if they never existed in a boiling flash of oily red and orange flame as their aircraft exploded against the night sky; some would be burned alive, pinned helplessly by centrifugal force, as their stricken bombers spiralled earthwards; a number would drown in the cold waters of the North Sea as their damaged or fuel-starved aircraft failed to make the long journey home. And for a very few there would be the horror unique to their service of falling helplessly without a parachute, after being tossed from their disintegrating aircraft before they could reach for and clip on the means of survival.

In the target areas below, death would also come in a kaleidoscope of chaos never visited in such scale on non-combatants from the blast of blockbuster bombs which could collapse the lungs without leaving a scar on the body to firebombs which threw out pats of benzol and rubber to begin conflagrations which greedily gulped oxygen from the air.

But for the moment drizzle and fog meant reprieve. The bomber boys dreamed on of the station dance the night before when they sang Auld Lang Syne and held hands in a circle with the pretty WAAF theyd had their eye on for weeks or the snood-haired girl from nearby town or village, pert in her 10-shilling dance frock, seams pencilled on her coffee-stained legs to make up for stockings so hard to acquire in this fourth winter of the war. The most requested tune for the all-important last waltz had been White Christmas. It was said that the new number was selling so well it could become a classic. On a few stations the more daring had tried out the burgeoning dance craze of the jitterbug, part of the cultural shock wave from the arriving American troops.

Now in the dawn as the chill drizzle with its accompanying fog seeped through blanket to the bone some aircrew would stir for an early morning raid on the coke store, waiting for the guard to disappear round the far reaches of his beat before rapidly climbing the chain-link fence and throwing shovelfuls of fuel to a comrade loitering with a kitbag on the other side.

The search for warmth from the rationed discomfort of Nissen and Maycrete billet would drive others to the sergeants mess where at least there was a degree of constant heat from the well-supplied mess fire as men sprawled in the sagging leather of battered armchairs and leafed through the latest issue of the Air Ministrys Tee Emm magazine for aircrew, with its illustrations of what not to do as demonstrated by the hapless Pilot Officer Prune.

The more senior among the officers were in their flight offices working their way through log books to be signed, requisition orders to be processed, training to be organised and recommendations for promotion and gallantry awards to be forwarded. Occasionally a pilot or navigator would pop his head round the office door to ask a flight commander: Are we working tonight? But the weather would keep German cities safe from major attack for a while yet.