Just a thought – Mucky end of the stick – Bomber Command

One from my Fathers log book(He survived the war)
Jan 14 1943 A/C AL518 Liberator

OPERATION TRIPOLI CROSS ROADS
6x1000lb Bombs.Intense Heavy Flak a/c Received 3 Direct Hits.Bomb Doors And Rear Hatch Blown Off. ist w/op and beam Gunner Wounded.Hydraulics and Petrol Lines Shot Away Bombs Salvoed. Landed At LG143 Gambut After Winding Down Wheels. Touched DownTwice Before Reaching Flare Path. No Flapes or Brakes. No Damage on Landing a/c Has 700 Plus visible Flak Holes. No Future In This

Next Op Jan 18 Liberator AL506 dropping agents Aetos and Isari Greece for S.O.E.

So it was buckle down and get on with it. He obviously thought he would not survive but like all the others he did his duty and took his chance and we all know how many who took their chance did not make it.

Just a little point that sometime gets to me. We hear a lot about Bomber Command in Europe(obviously the most casualties) but very little about the Middle and Far East air war unless things like Flight Sergeant Copping comes up. That has gone very quiet as well!

The thought of going back into the grinder as soon as Christmas was over must have weighed heavy.

Moggy

No let up for 101 Squadron on Christmas Eve 1943 either with a trip to Berlin.

22 December saw a trip in one of the “Ton Up” Lancs DV245.

5 trips squeezed in between 24 December and 5 January.

My father very nearly didn’t make it back from Berlin in DV298 on the 20 January having been attacked by 3 Me 110’s. This aircraft was repaired and he flew in it again to Orleans on 19 May 1944, bombing from 9,000 feet.

75 (NZ) Squadron definitely wanted to get rid of their Stirlings, there are high-level memos about it!

They would have been longing for a decent aircraft.

Moggy

It is always a mistake to presume to know what were good aeroplanes to fly in the past.
As a wannabe shiny new airline pilot I had complete contempt for the old DC3. When I got there I was astonished at the number of people I flew with who had time on the Dak and considered it amongst their most enjoyable flying. Now retired, I understand this and I myself rank the aircraft I flew in almost reverse order to the ones now considered “cool” by aviation journos.

They are workplaces, not fashion items. There’s more to flying than whether you think you look good sitting in any particular one ………….

in the film the Longest Day, Richard Burtons character a fighter pilot hears one of his mates has been shot down, and another pilot with him says why him now he was with you in the Battle of Britain one of the few, to which Burton replies that’s the trouble with being one of the few we keep getting fewer. So Ryan had this in mind back in the late 50,s early 60,s.

Some crews did practice drills and learn each others jobs,it was the case that it did improve the odds.Having a good ground crew helped as well.

it must have seemed strange to be sat in a pub with your friends one night almost as if there was no war, and yet knowing how different it could be the following evening. Come to think of it, I believe in the early days of the war crews would go to the pub and then fly a mission later the same evening.

In Sagittarius rising by CS Lewis there was a bit where he took a plane up from France and flew back over the channel to home and how that must’ve been really disconcerting knowing that short distance over the channel was peace or death.

To paraphrase the reported words of, I think, a wing commander just arrived on an operational squadron from a long spell of instructing. When someone asked what he would be doing at Christmas with his children, he replied “Oh, I won’t be here” and he wasn’t.

That is in one of my innumerable Bomber Command biographical books. But which one? I can’t say.

The point is that the protecting mantra “it will be the other bloke” probably had a very limited currency. Harris said something along the lines of “the bravery of the small hours of the night”. Then there’s the title of fighter pilot Brian Kingcome’s book “A willingness to die”. He becomes dimly aware of this concept early on operations and refines it as his experience develops. I’m sure analogies of this concept were widespread in Bomber Command.

I’ve tried to visualise myself so many times in their situation. I’m sure I would not have had their courage to face consciously an excruciating death on every op. I think it would have been LMF for me.

Mike

I would guess at first that may be the case and then maybe the end happened too quick for them to get that bad feeling BUT i would think that after a while you realised the odds were getting lower and lower [although in hindsight experience would increase your chances to a degree ] .The power of youth and optimism,but that can only last so long.

Didn’t someone fairly recently work out that experience had very little or no measurable effect on Bomber Command loss rates on operations?
Which makes sense if you never get to see the NF putting 30mm shells into your belly.

I don’t understand how you wake up every morning knowing that there was a huge chance this could be your last few hours alive and do this over and over again.Incredibly brave men.

Well put. I’ve always wondered about the differences in that respect between bomber crews and soldiers on the front line. Both must have been afraid of course, even if it wasn’t the “done” thing in those days to admit it, but it must have seemed strange to be sat in a pub with your friends one night almost as if there was no war, and yet knowing how different it could be the following evening. Come to think of it, I believe in the early days of the war crews would go to the pub and then fly a mission later the same evening.

I would guess at first that may be the case and then maybe the end happened too quick for them to get that bad feeling BUT i would think that after a while you realised the odds were getting lower and lower [although in hindsight experience would increase your chances to a degree ] .The power of youth and optimism,but that can only last so long.

But of course that was the point, wasn’t it? You, like me, will have spoken to many of these fine survivors and they never or rarely had those thoughts and if they did it was certainly not going to be their last day, always someone else’s. They could not have got through it any other way.

I don’t understand how you wake up every morning knowing that there was a huge chance this could be your last few hours alive and do this over and over again.Incredibly brave men.