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| ISBN-13: | 9781743433980 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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Lancaster Men
The Aussie Heroes of Bomber Command
By Peter Rees
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2013 Peter ReesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74343-398-0
CHAPTER 1
THE SUGARLOAF
Jack Mitchell had a yen to climb the Sugarloaf one more time. As he made his way up the steep, scrubby hill with some boyhood mates, he carried a metre-long stick. On reaching the summit, he drove it into the ground and heaped stones around the base. 'I wonder if this will be here when I come home,' he said. Amid the banter and chiacking, one of the boys snapped a photo of Jack, laughing as he held on to the stick. He was just nineteen and on his final home leave before going off to England, 17,000 kilometres away.
The Sugarloaf, overlooking the Jordan Valley, in south-east Tasmania, was where Jack had always gone to gaze out on the river flats and dream. At age five, he had witnessed the famed aviator Bert Hinkler landing in a paddock close by after his record-breaking 1928 flight from England to Australia. Jack had never seen an aircraft before and was entranced. Thirteen years later he began training as a pilot with the Royal Australian Air Force. Australia was at war with Nazi Germany, and Jack was one of thousands of young Australian men who joined up. The dean of St David's Cathedral in Hobart, who knew Jack well, described the former choirboy in a reference 'as a thoroughly reliable lad, well behaved and straight forward'. Having enlisted in the RAAF in October 1941, Jack completed his training and sailed for England, destined for Bomber Command.
Three months before Jack enlisted, a nervous Noel Eliot sat before a selection panel at RAAF Station Pearce, near Perth, on the west coast of Australia. He knew his dream of becoming a pilot was hanging in the balance. The head of the panel asked the farm boy in front of him, 'Can you ride a horse?' Noel's reply was quick: 'Yes, sir.' The panel chairman snapped back: 'Pilot!' He was in.
The path to the selection panel had not been easy for Noel. He had started work on the family farm at Tardun, a whistle-stop village in the vast Western Australian wheatbelt, during the Depression. Making a living was tough, and the experience left him with little enthusiasm for farming. Lacking formal education, Noel shadowed his older brother, Ivan Aubrey, or Bill as he was known, in his diesel engineering studies in Perth. As Bill finished a paper, he would send it to Noel to study. After Bill had been accepted into the RAAF, he suggested that Noel join him. Not fancying his chances because of the educational requirements, Noel met with the head education officer at the RAAF recruiting centre. When asked to explain Pythagoras' theorem, Noel was 'able to rattle it off'. The officer signed Noel's application form there and then. He couldn't believe his good fortune.
While Jack Mitchell and Noel Eliot enlisted through the newly established Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS), Rollo Kingsford-Smith was already in the RAAF. He had joined as a cadet in 1938. He remembered steeling himself as he walked into the mess of No. 1 Flying Training School at Point Cook, Victoria, for the first time. Given the significance of the name 'Kingsford Smith' in aviation, he was expecting to be given a hard time. Shouts from senior cadets greeted his arrival: 'Here's the great birdman,' and 'Stand up on the table, birdman, let's see you.' Rollo could only shrug it off. He had lived all his life in the shadow of his famous uncle, the aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, and had become used to such taunts. 'Most ten-year-old boys are uncomfortable being patronised,' he later recalled. 'I was no exception. In fact I hated it, and after several years I knew what I did not want. I did not want to be an aviator or be famous. I planned to do my own thing, study medicine and be a doctor.' But the Depression put paid to that. The family could not afford university.
At the age of nineteen, the lure of a salary three times the pittance he earned as an office boy made it an easy decision to apply for the RAAF. Here was an escape from a dead-end job. The male Smiths all had Kingsford as their second name, but the RAAF gave Rollo and his two brothers, Peter and John, a hyphenated surname: from now on they were Kingsford-Smiths. There was no escaping the connection with their uncle now.
When war broke out, Ted Pickerd was working for the bicycle manufacturer Malvern Star in Melbourne. Ted had an aptitude for accounting and had been promoted to head the consignment stock section. He had grown up in the middle-class suburb of Windsor, but the Depression had hit his father's electrical business hard. As the family struggled to put food on the table, in 1931 Ted's father died suddenly, aged just forty-one. Ted and his brother Bill had to go to work to help make ends meet: 'I used to do gardening, help Mum clean cinemas. I forsook pleasure in the interests of the family.'
When their mother remarried, Ted refused to attend the wedding. It was a decision he would come to regret. Brother Bill had joined the Army in March 1941, and shortly before he was sent to the Middle East, he married his sweetheart. 'I opposed that too, on the grounds that I thought it was not the ethical thing to do to get married just before going overseas when there was always a chance of your not coming back,' Ted recalled.
He knew it was inevitable that he too would join Australia's war effort. He chose the RAAF as the 'least less appealing' of the three services. 'I had thought about the Army but I don't like guns, I thought about the Navy but I get seasick waving goodbye on the wharf, so I joined the Air Force.'
After seventeen-year-old Alick Roberts applied to enlist in the RAAF, a letter arrived at his home in West Wyalong, in central western New South Wales. Inside was his RAAF Reserve lapel badge, his first step to the war. The reason Alick joined up was simple: loyalty to 'King and Country'. He felt 'that the threat in Europe if not curtailed would eventually encompass Australia as well. By the time I entered for service the threat to home was serious indeed.'
While young men from all walks of life went into the Air Force, to become an aircrew member a certain level of education was required. Alick was not surprised when a heavy carton of text books, exercise books, graph books and note pads followed his lapel badge, along with instructions to attend the local school two nights a week for training and study. Two teachers conducted the classes in advanced maths, trigonometry, radio, theory of flight, elementary navigation, meteorology, and electricity and magnetism — a primitive version of electronics. He hoped to become a pilot.
In Melbourne, twenty-one-year-old Geoffrey Williams realised his level of education was far below the necessary standard when he quit his job as a floor walker at the Myer Emporium and went to enlist in October 1941. The son of a gas inspector, he was asked to produce his Leaving Certificate, or at least his Intermediate Certificate. 'Using my initiative I simply said I had forgotten to bring them. An IQ test had to be passed, which luckily I managed,' he recalled. Geoff was placed on reserve for some months pending entry into Initial Training School (ITS) and sent back to school to brush up on mathematics and other subjects, including learning Morse code at the local post office every Sunday.
After two months at Initial Training School at Somers, on the Mornington Peninsula, Geoff was categorised as a pilot, despite his lack of education. But his shaky maths found him out. 'My ITS maths teacher could not understand why I could not cope with trigonometry. He would take me for a walk around Somers in the evening and enquire if I was having trouble at home or worrying about a girlfriend.' But 'it was simply a case of my not having sufficient understanding of mathematics. My pilot training was cut short.'
Geoff took the option to become an air gunner.
A month after Alick Roberts turned eighteen, in June 1942, he was called up. He reported to the RAAF Recruiting Centre in Woolloomooloo, Sydney, to be sworn in as an aircrew trainee. The bank where he had worked in West Wyalong farewelled him with a fountain pen to take with him on his service career. Alick would treasure it.
He began training at No. 2 Initial Training School (2ITS), Bradfield Park, on the northern shore of Sydney Harbour. He was among the youngest in his group of about 300 brand-new aircrew trainees, who wore a distinctive white flash — a strip of cloth tucked into the front fold of their caps. This earned them a nickname they detested. As another eighteen-year-old recruited that year, Keith Flitcroft, explained: 'Once that white flash was in your cap you were a marked man, in fact we were referred to as "Kotex Kids"' (a reference to a leading brand of female sanitary pads).
Two months before Alick was recruited, nineteen-year-old Jim Rowland was finally called up to start his pilot training. He too had developed an early fascination with flight and as a boy built model aircraft from balsa wood and tissue paper, powered by rubber bands.
At Sydney University, Jim studied aeronautical engineering. His college, St Paul's, included in its 1940 Revue a skit based on British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's 1938 visit to Munich in a bid to appease Adolf Hitler and avoid war. Despite being one of the brawniest of the Freshers, Jim, whose nickname was 'Tiny', was in the corps de ballet. He described his performance as 'elephantine'.
The role of Chamberlain went to a student named Gough Whitlam. The future Labor Prime Minister demonstrated 'his already considerable stage talent' as, brandishing a roll of toilet paper [representing the newly signed agreement], 'he debouched from the stage aircraft, proclaiming "Peace in our time. I have seen their Leader, and I have his reply!" With that he threw the roll into the audience.' The roll landed in the lap of Mrs Jessie Street, an old Rowland family friend and prominent feminist, who had recently returned from Russia, where she had been greatly impressed by the achievements of the Communists. A month after Jim Rowland was called up, Gough Whitlam followed him into the RAAF; he would become a navigator–bomb aimer and serve in the Pacific.
The RAAF recruits went into a vast network of training schools and units established across Australia under the Empire Air Training Scheme. Schools of elementary flying, bombing and gunnery, and other specialist skills were established in capital and regional cities and in country towns such as Deniliquin, Uranquinty and Parkes in New South Wales, Geraldton in Western Australia, Bundaberg in Queensland, and Port Pirie in South Australia.
Rollo Kingsford-Smith had finished his training by the time the Empire Air Training Scheme began. Because of the Kingsford-Smith name, he kept a low profile, particularly in the mess. However, at morning parade no one could hide. Every detail, from the crease in one's trousers and the shine on one's shoes to the length of one's hair had to be immaculate. Rifles carried at parade had to be in perfect working order, with the stock polished and the bore of the barrel shining. Punishment, as Rollo discovered, was quick. He found himself charged with 'Conduct to the prejudice of good order and Air Force discipline: In that he appeared on parade with a dirty rifle.' He was fined five shillings.
Rollo was cautious when the flying lessons started, not the cocky cadet the instructors expected. One noted in a confidential report that Rollo was 'inclined to be timid', complaining that he was too heavy on the rudder controls. Rollo remembered that:
His cockpit was in front of mine and my rudder pedals were just beneath his seat. So he dropped his hands down to rest on the pedals. My shoes were then pushing onto the hands. He said, 'If you hurt me the slightest bit with your clumsiness you will regret it.' He left his hands there for about fifteen minutes, when I found I could control the aircraft with the lightest and daintiest touch of my feet.
Rollo graduated as a pilot officer in June 1939. Less than three months later, and still at Point Cook on a navigation course, he heard Prime Minister Robert Menzies announce on 3 September that, since England was at war with Germany, Australia was also at war. In the mess that night, celebrations broke out. 'It seemed a good occasion to party late because few wanted to go to bed,' Rollo said.
Posted to Richmond in New South Wales for flying duties with a Coastal Reconnaissance Squadron, Rollo experienced his first scent of war. A German raider had laid mines off the New Zealand coast and sunk two ships: 'We went out looking for survivors or the German and in case we found him I carried two World War I bombs — 112 pounds each. Long-range tanks had been hurriedly fitted by this time and I was searching for over six hours but saw neither survivors nor, thankfully, the German.'
The squadron was small, with just three flights, each of three aircraft. Flight Lieutenant John Balmer, known as Sam, arrived to command B Flight and was Rollo's flight commander. Sam was almost too senior for the job. An instructor at Point Cook from 1935 to 1937, he achieved renown in Air Force circles when he reputedly parachuted out of a training aircraft to motivate his pupil to land on his own.
Promotion had been slow coming Sam's way. A sardonic fellow, he did not like administration, and was intolerant of fools and of over-conservative authority. Unmarried and with a shock of wavy hair running back from his forehead, he was a loner with a confident smile, liked fast cars, women and flying, and was seldom seen in the mess. He came from a wealthy farming family near Bendigo, Victoria, and was a man of few words.
Sam Balmer was the first officer Rollo had ever met who firmly believed the RAAF should be an all-weather fighting force. He expected all pilots to be capable of flying in any weather conditions, be aware of the latest developments in aviation technology, and be operationally and mentally fit for war. Rollo was eager to finesse his flying skills with Sam, and they soon formed a strong friendship. In the midst of his 'postgraduate' flight training Rollo proposed to his vivacious girlfriend, Grace Prior, whose family owned the Bulletin magazine (which they sold to Frank Packer in 1960). She accepted, and the wedding was set for November 1940 in Sydney.
Posted to Bairnsdale, Victoria, in 1942, Rollo helped train Hudson and Beaufort crews, some of whom were sent to reinforce the RAAF squadron at Milne Bay, New Guinea. Training flights south over Bass Strait often went past Flinders Island, and the new squadron leader thought it a waste for the crews not to land and collect lobsters for the officers' mess. Sam Balmer wanted Rollo to join him in New Guinea, but the RAAF had other ideas. He was to be posted to England. That meant leaving Grace and their daughter, Sue, behind, with no idea when they would see each other again.
After three months of initial RAAF training, Noel Eliot was sent to No. 9 Elementary Flying Training School, Cunderdin, where he took to the air for the first time, flying a Tiger Moth.
When not trying to fly the beastly little things, we seemed to spend the rest of our time digging trenches and filling sandbags. The Japs had just started bombing northern Australia at that time and we had all the experts telling us how to dig trenches. First of all we dug them in a straight line, then another expert said that was no good, fill them in and dig them in a zig-zag. The weather was hot and the ground was hard. However, the [Warrant Officer Disciplinary] was a great help — he used to come around with a bottle of methylated spirits to put on our blistered hands.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Lancaster Men by Peter Rees. Copyright © 2013 Peter Rees. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,Prologue,
Maps,
Prelude,
1 The Sugarloaf,
2 The short-arm parade,
3 The usual awful eternity,
4 The Thousand Plan,
5 The Dimboola regatta,
6 Cold, gut-wrenching fear,
7 Crippled over Essen,
8 The jam can,
9 The German from Sydney,
10 The poacher,
11 Stalag time,
12 Feuersturm,
13 WAAFs and other girlfriends,
14 Fairly shaken,
15 The boomerang,
16 Danger above,
17 Cramped,
18 The silent world,
19 An inviting target,
20 Beating the odds,
21 Trouble on the base,
22 No easy answer,
23 The quick and the dead,
24 Good luck, boys,
25 Face to face with the enemy,
26 D-Day,
27 Death only a matter of time,
28 The battle for recognition,
29 The sweetest words of all,
30 No backward glances,
31 Shot down,
32 The strain of command,
33 Letters from the front,
34 The clairvoyant,
35 Double scotch, thanks,
36 The beast,
37 The special duties boys,
38 Smoke puffs and flak barrages,
39 Forebodings,
40 The prisoner in the cell next door,
41 Shrove Tuesday,
42 An unearthly thing,
43 Sharing bread,
44 An air force divided,
45 Return to the Sugarloaf,
Acknowledgements,
Notes,
Postscript,
Bibliography,