First printed in Great Britain in 2014 by Pen & Sword Aviation an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd. 47 Church Street Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS Copyright © Philip Kaplan 2014 A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978 1 78 346 3046 EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47 386 1015 PRC ISBN: 978 1 47 386 1008 The right of Philip Kaplan to be identified as Author of thisWork has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing. Printed and bound in England By CPI Group (UK) Ltd. Croydon, CR0 4YY Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Family History, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Pen & Sword Discovery, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe True Crime,Wharncliffe Transport, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics, Leo Cooper, The Praetorian Press, RememberWhen, Seaforth Publishing and Frontline Publishing. For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact Pen & Sword Books Limited 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk Contents THE HARDWARE COUNTRY FOLK DINGHY, DINGHY MUD AND MUSCLE AIRCREW A BRITISH RAID DAYLIGHT RAIDERS ABANDON! TO THE BIG CITY ROUND THE CLOCK WAR PAINT The author is grateful to the following for the use of their published and/or unpublished material, and for their kind assistance in the preparation of this book: Fred Allen, John Archer, Roger A.Armstrong, Beth and David Alston, Eric Barnard, Sy Bartlett,Malcolm Bates,Mike Benarcik, Robert Best, Ron Bicker, Larry Bird, Quentin Bland, Charles Bosshardt, Sam Burchell, Leonard Cheshire, Don Charlwood, Paul Chryst, Winston Churchill, Jack Clift, John Comer, N.J. Crisp, Jack Currie (for his text) Jim Dacey, E.W. Deacon, James H. Doolittle, Lawrence Drew, Spencer Dunmore, Ira Eakin, Gary Eastman, Jonathan Falconer, W.W. Ford, Alan Foreman, Stephen Fox, Noble Frankland, Carsten Fries, Toni Frissell, Bill Ganz, Stephen Grey, Roland Hammersley,Arthur Harris, Ian Hawkins, John Hersey, Dave Hill, Franc Isla, Claire and Joe Kaplan, Neal Kaplan, Margaret Kaplan, Paul Kemp, Percy Kindred, Nick Kosiuk, Edith Kup,WilliamT. Larkins,W.J. Lawrence, Beirne Lay, Jr., Robert D. Loomis, David C. Lustig, Donald Maffett, Dickie Mayes, Cheryl and Mike Mathews, Edward R. Murrow, Frank Nelson, Keith Newhouse,Michael O’Leary, Merle Olmsted,Tony Partridge, Colin Paterson, John Pawsey, L.W. Pilgrim, Reg Payne, Douglas Radcliffe, Sidney Rapoport, Lynn Ray, Duane Reed, Alan Reeves,Ted Richardson, Kay Riley, Dave Shelhamer, Paul Sink, John Skilleter, Dale O. Smith,Tony Starcer, James Stewart, Ken Stone, Lloyd Stovall, JohnThomas, Leonard Thompson,AlbertTyler, ForrestVosler,Mae West, RobertWhite, RayWild, JoeWilliams, Jack Woods,DennisWrynn, SamYoung. Efforts have been made to trace copyright holders to use their material.The author apologizes for any omissions.All reasonable efforts will be made to correct any such omissions in future editions. The Hardware The bomb-aimer of an RAF Avro Lancaster bomber. The bomb-aimer of an RAF Avro Lancaster bomber. A B-17F Flying Fortress bomber of the 91st Bomb Group on a practice mission over England. To describe warplanes in terms of their statistics—weight, length and wingspan, bombloads and armament, power plants and cruising speeds—is for books of reference. The figures are factual and give no cause for argument. To offer an opinion on less definable characteristics—maneuverability, effectiveness, feel, or appearance—is to be subjective and to risk making hackles rise somewhere in the world; to compare like with like—the B-17, say, with the B-24, the Lancaster with the Halifax, the Spitfire with the Hurricane, or the P-47 with the P-51—and to state that either airplane was superior, is to court an argument with the other’s champions. Veterans of the air war have it in common that they had, and had to have, faith in their aircraft; that was the plane that saw them through their missions: they will regard it with affection and guard its reputation evermore. The opinions, therefore, that follow in this chapter should be read with that loyalty in mind. There was a time after graduation when Ray Wild’s ambition was to fly a pursuit plane. “But a little major got up and asked if any of us red-blooded Americans wanted to get into action right now. We raised our hands, and they sent us to Sebring, Florida, on B-17s. We knew nothing about them. They looked like great big lumbering things, and we weren’t too happy, really. They used to send you to gunnery range, for the waist and tail gunners to shoot at targets, and you realized it was steady—a great platform to shoot from. We started to like the airplane. That thing could be ten feet off the ground and hold steady. You put it on automatic pilot and it held steady. You didn’t do it, of course, but you could. “Now, the B-24 was ten miles an hour faster, it cruised at 170, but it had a Davis wing, which was a great wing, except that if you got hit in one wing that doubled the stress on the other. It could get hit lightly and go down. A B-17, you could chop in little pieces and that sonofabitch would come back. It would fly when it shouldn’t fly. We lost eight feet of wing one time and twelve feet off the stabilizer, and it handled the same way. A little sluggish, maybe, but it was fine. You could lose two engines on one side in a 17 and so long as you turned into the live engines, you could fly it. Everybody knew that the plane would get back. If they could stay in it and stay alive, they knew they’d get back. The only way you wouldn’t was with a direct hit or with a wing blown off. You got a great affinity with it. Of course, the B-24 pilots said the same thing. For them the 24 was the best airplane in the world.” For an aircraft designed in 1934 as the very first all-metal four-engined monoplane bomber, the “Fort” had a marvelous career. Don Maffett realized its robust qualities on the first of his forty missions with the 452nd Bomb Group. “The left wheel was shot off, but I didn’t know that, and I landed on one wheel. The airplane had three-hundred-and-fifty flak holes in it. The B-17 could take a lot of punishment—I think far more than the B-24. Shot up or in good shape, the B-17 was pretty consistent. You’d come in over the fence at a hundred-and-ten miles an hour and it would stall out at ninety-two or ninety-three. It gave you a tremendous feeling of confidence.” There used to be a tale that when a prototype bomber was wheeled out of the factory, you would see a group of men with slide rules walking anxiously around it. The answer to the question as to who those men might be, and what they were about, was that they were the designers, trying to find a place to put the crew. Don Maffett, for one, had some reservations about the pilot’s compartment in the B-17: “It was very cramped. There was very little space between the seats. With the armor plate, your heavy fleece-lined equipment, parachute and so forth, it was almost impossible to squeeze between the seats in order to get out if you had to.” Avro Lancaster bombers awaiting the final assembly process. Maffett’s comments could be applied with equal force to the Avro Lancaster: a price had to be paid for that slender, streamlined shape. There was little room in the cabin and the fuselage, and moving fore or aft was like competing in an obstacle race. It was for this reason, throughout his tour with 550 Squadron, that flight engineer Leonard Thompson never used his seat. “It was a bench,” he said, “that folded down from the side of the aircraft, and you pulled a short tube out for a footrest. If there was ever an emergency, they would be a problem, and the time it took to get them out of the way might make the difference between escaping with your life and not.” Group Captain (later Lord) Leonard Cheshire, VC, flew a hundred missions in Whitleys, Halifaxes, Lancasters, Mosquitoes, and, on occasion, in a Mustang fighter borrowed from one of Brigadier Hunter’s Eighth Air Force fighter groups. Cheshire was arguably the RAF’s most successful bomber pilot. In 1991, he gave a view about the two main British bombers: “One has to be careful when comparing one aircraft with another. I know that those who flew the Halifax and nothing else will stand up and say it was the best aircraft in the wartime RAF, and I completely respect that. But I did two tours on Halifaxes before I flew the Lancaster and the difference was very obvious. The Lanc was a forgiving aircraft. You could make mistakes—I made mistakes—and get away with it. It was a beautiful machine.” Most pilots who, like Cheshire, flew both airplanes would agree with that opinion. The Halifax was stable, reliable, and solid as a rock, but the early models were not a great success. The Mark I, for example, had trouble with the rudders, which could lock in the airflow and perpetuate a turn. The Lancaster flew faster, higher, farther, and carried greater loads; the majority of pilots found it easier to fly. By early 1943, the Halifaxes were suffering such losses that they were restricted to the shorter or less hazardous operations. They resumed a full share of the main offensive with the arrival of the Mark III, which had redesigned rudders, air-cooled Bristol engines, no front turret, a lower-profile dorsal turret, and a much improved performance.“The Mark III was a marvelous aircraft,” enthused rear gunner Eric Barnard, half of whose thirty-two missions with 10 Squadron were in daylight. “It climbed like a rocket and was very maneuverable. I was frightened to death all the time on ops, but I loved the Halifax.” Fred Allen, another rear gunner, agreed with Eric Barnard.“The Lanc got the glory, like the Spitfire and Fortress, but the Halifax played its part, same as the Hurricane and the Liberator. I was trained in Wellingtons, with the Fraser-Nash gun turret, hydraulically operated, the same one as the Lancaster. The Halifax had the Boulton-Paul turrets, electrically operated. That’s typical—train you on one and put you in another. Just to keep you awake, I suppose. You controlled the Lanc turret with two handles, but the Halifax turret had a joystick, just like a fighter, with the firing button on top. There were two doors into the turret, and