• Home
• Squadron News
• 427 History
• ROAR
• News
• Membership
• Remember
• About Us
• Links
• Biography

Like God, the air force works in mysterious ways. However I was so elated with the turn of events that I didn't quibble even though I knew I would have to fork out a bundle of cash to purchase an officer's uniform and all the other gear.

I next went to the RCAF Pay & Accounts section located in Knightsbridge where I withdrew 100 pounds sterling from my deferred account. 1 then went to Austin Reed tailors and got measured for a uniform and ordered an officer's trench coat, an officer's great coat (which I never wore), a flat hat, a wedge cap, some shirts, a pair of shoes and other odds and ends. I also purchased a steamer trunk to hold all the stuff. No more kit bags which I had used for the past 18 months to tote my clothes and other worldly goods from place to place. I continued to stay at the NCO's Club in Leinster Gardens. lnstead of going to Scotland, I decided to hang around London until my uniform was ready.

During my time in London I had a chance to visit some of the historic sites including Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace. I kept running into former Ferry Command guys who were now scattered all over the country. One Sunday I bumped into Roy Grier and we went to a small church in central London. After the service, a Canadian Army Captain came over and introduced himself. He turned out to be Rev. Bob Sneyd, formerly of Port Hope and now an army padre. He showed us around London and took us to St. Paul's Cathedral among other places. He pointed out the hole in the roof that had been partially patched after having received a direct hit courtesy of the Luftwaffe during the blitz. In the days following, I met several Port Hopers including Bob Wheeler, a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm and Fern Hodgson in the Canadian Women's Army Corps. It was always good to exchange news items - everybody had thoughts of home.

With a couple of days remaining in my leave, I moved over to the Strand Palace Hotel where I knew a couple of guys. I picked up my uniform and was all set to be an officer, in appearance at least. The uniform was a good fit and the smooth barathea cloth was a great improvement over the heavy blue serge I had worn since my Valcartier days. The flat hat was another matter and at whatever angle, I felt absolutely stupid wearing the thing.

I had my photo taken, hat and all, to send home to my folks. It wasn't much of a picture, however mother seemed to think, it was okay, and it was the one that she gave to the local papers when I went missing four months later. On the squadron it was common practice to remove the wire ring from the crown of the hat and crunch the front to give a more I casual appearance. Officially this was a "no no" but in wartime it was considered big time to make flat hats operational and the commanders had too many other problems and ignored such things as crumpled headgear.

On the morning of February 24, 1943, I grabbed a cab to King's Cross station which was the railway terminal to the north country. My destination was the village of Croft on the Yorkshire-Durham border where 427 Squadron was based at the time. On the train I met two of my crew and they wondered what 1 was doing impersonating an officer. It took them totally by surprise because I was very clearly a Sergeant when we said goodbye at Pershore two weeks before. However they were pleased with my good fortune and hoped their time would come.

On arrival at our destination we obtained transport to the air base and I was dropped off at the officer's mess. It sounds rather grandiose but nothing could be further from the truth. Croft was a war-time base with temporary buildings and the officer's mess was a wooden hut like all the others. In actual fact the temporary bases in Britain far outnumbered the posh peacetime stations. Despite the mud and mundane surroundings, I liked 427 Squadron from the very beginning. I was greeted by the Canadian adjutant Chazz Chasanoff and Squadron Leader Cyril Earthrowl, a RAF type who was on his second tour and would be my flight They helped me in with my luggage - what a friondly touch and the beginning of an association with a terrific group of guys. They introduced me to the dozen or so officers in the mess who rolled out the welcome mat to the new boy on the block. One of the chaps I met that first day was Lou Somers. 1 recognized his name immediately as a former football star with the University of Toronto in the late 30s. I didn't know that I would eventually be a member of his crew.

At Croft my living accommodation was one of several small rooms in a Nissen hut. This was the standard arrangement on wartime bases and served the purpose well enough. We lived several hundred yards from the mess and the working area for aircrew was in a hangar in another direction so there was a fair bit of walking to do. At times there was also lots of mud and we wore rubber boots around the station during the rainy season. By its very nature Croft wasn't a dress-up place and our Commanding Officer Dudley Burnside, a Brit in the pre-war RAF, had the good sense not to insist on a lot of spit and polish. He had too many other important matters to deal with in trying to whip a new squadron into shape.

427 Squadron was formed on November 7, 1942 as part of 4 Group in Bomber Command and joined the newly-established RCAF 6 Group on January 1, 1943. When I arrived near the end of February the squadron had completed only a few operations and for most of the personnel it was still very much a learning situation. Fortunately there was a sprinkling of experienced aircrew and groundcrew that gave the squadron some stability. The biggest asset was W/C Dudley Burnside already wearing the DFC - a courageous airman and a great leader. Both Flight Commanders and the Section heads had completed a goodly number of operations.

At noon on the day after arriving at Croft, I met my wireless operator Rex Calplin. He said "Guess what, I'm on ops to-night." I couldn't believe it but sure enough his name was on the battle order. He was assigned as an extra crewman in Sgt. Harwood's Wellington to stand amidships during the flight and to look out of the astrodome searching the sky for enemy fighters. This was an experiment being tried on a few aircraft and it turned out badly for poor Rex. The aircraft never returned and our wireless operator became a casualty after being on the squadron precisely one day. I was saddened by the news that Rex was missing which meant that Don Burge, our gunner, and I were the only ones remaining of our original crew. Rex, who was Jewish, was the first of three members of the Hebrew faith who would be my crew-mates. In recent years I learned that Rex is buried in the General Cemetery in Eindhoven having been shot down over Holland.

At this stage we still had Maxwell as our pilot who kept saying he wanted to fly day bombers. With a piecemeal crew we were assigned the task of delivering an aircraft to Sywell in the south of England. This we did and returned to the squadron by train. We had to change stations in London and created quite a stir on the underground in our flying suits and carrying our parachutes. Several people asked us what had happened and thought surely we had crashed someplace. I suppose we could have shot quite a line but told them it was classified information. It wou1d have been disappointing to the inquisitive onlookers to find out we were doing nothing more dangerous than delivering a surplus aircraft.

A couple of days later we flew a night cross-country exercise to Wales, up the west coast of England, across the north and back to base via London. The flight itself was okay but the landing was terrible. Max may have had a problem with night vision or some other deficiency. At any rate it was now agreed that flying night bombers was not his cup of tea and it would be best if he transferred to another unit. Don Burge and I were delighted with the news. In future we would only have to worry about flak and night fIghters. When Max left Croft he said he wanted to fly Bostons, a medium bomber used extensively in the Tactical Air Force and in North Africa and mostly in daytime. I never heard if Max got his wish, or if he survived the war.

I was now without a pilot and wireless operator and only a fill-in navigator. When crews were broken up due to casualties or long-term illness, the surviving members sometimes were sent back to OTU to pick up a new crew. This didn't happen in my case and I was glad. There was no way that I wanted to repeat all that training. I would remain on the squadron until further notice and I didn't have long to walt. Just three days later on the morning of March 5, 1 went down to flights (the assembly area for aircrew) and heard my name called by the Bombing Leader. "Whitey you're on tonight." I was pretty sure what he meant and he removed any doubt by informing me that Sgt. Erickson's bomb aimer was ill and I would be his replacement on the night's operation. That was okay with me although on my first operation I would have preferred to fly with someone I knew. That was not to be because of the tragic loss of Drew Gain and the reluctance of Maxwell his replacement to fly at night.

First Op

I met Erickson later that morning when the crew rode out in a lorry to the dispersal site where 'F' Freddie was parked. I've forgotten Erickson's first name but recall that he was a tall Sergeant Pilot with a shock of blond hair over his forehead. He was about my age, perhaps a year or two older and hailed from the Prairies (a Wings Abroad article refers to him as 'Slim' Erickson from Eadville, Saskatchewan). He seemed like a nice guy and I met the rest of the crew all of whom were NCOs. It was customary to air test the aircraft on the day of a night operation, especially if there had been recent repairs or reported service problems. This consisted of running up the engines and checking the various instrument readings before taking off for a few circuits in the vicinity of the base. The pilot tested the manual controls to make sure the ailerons, rudder, flaps etc. responded as they should. The gunner would test the hydraulics in his power-operated turret and the other trades would test their radio and electronic equipment. All was well with 'F' Freddie and we landed in time for lunch.

I can't recall what I did in the afternoon but I expect I wrote a few letters. I had so many people writing to me that I seemed to spend a lot of my time answering them. Some day I should list aU the kind people who wrote to me or sent parcels during my time in the service. I was fortunate in that respect and one of the reasons I'm sure is that my parents were so well liked.

Around 16.00 hrs (4.00 p.m.) we assembled in the briefing room which was a new experience for me. The room was a glorified hut with a raised stage at one end. There were rows of chairs extending to the back of the room. When the Commanding Officer and his deputies arrived, we all stood to attention until the brass had taken their places. The CO, Dudley Burnside lost no time, and as the Intelligence Officer pulled back the screen covering a large map, he announced the target as Essen. By reputation this was the hottest target in the entire Ruhr industrial complex and perhaps in all of Germany. I had hoped I might get initiated on a trip to St. Nazaire or Lorient, two French targets that had been frequently attacked in recent weeks in an effort to destroy the submarine pens. Such was not to be the case. Instead it was the Krupps Works in Essen for better or for worse.

The CO explained the importance of Essen to the German war effort and announced that a new target-marking technique was to be used by the Pathfinder crews. He didn't go into details but as we learned later a new system for locating and marking targets had been developed. It was called Oboe and consisted of radio beams emanating from powerful transmitters in Britain intersecting at the designated target. Special Pathfinder aircraft with special radio receivers would monitor the signal and know precisely where and when to drop the target indicators, usually red or green markers. Other Pathfinder aircraft would then drop additional target markers to reinforce the initial markers.

Another recollection I have is a conversation I had with a guy from another crew who was on ops that night. We were walking together from the Mess down a lane to the hangar where our flying gear was stored. He suggested that I must be nervous and I thought he was referring to this being my first trip and the target being Essen. That may have been part of his reasoning but there was something else that I didn't know about. He informed me that on a previous trip before I joined the squadron, Erickson's crew briefed to bomb the submarine pens in France found themselves over Scotland. They had flown a reciprocal heading and were 180 degrees off course. This occasionally happened but was considered to be a monumental goof and was the joint responsibility of the pilot and the navigator. By the time the error was discovered it was much too late to set course for France and they could only sheepishly return to Croft. They must have received a blast from the CO or the flight commander. In any case here I was on my way to the hottest target in Germany, on my first trip, with a crew that couldn't set and read a compass.

We were trundled out to 'F' Freddie in a tarp-covered lorry, There were a couple of other crews and they were dropped off at their individual dispersal sites with the usual thumbs up for a good trip. We clambered out and waved goodbye to the WAAF driver. The reliable ground crew were already there having readied the aircraft including the bombing up. We were carrying three 500 pounders plus six containers of incendiaries. The ammunition belts feeding the Brownings in the rear turret and to the nose guns were in place. Erickson talked to the Sergeant in charge of maintenance and was assured that it was all systems go. The navigator and wireless operator re-checked their equipment as they had done on the air test earlier in the day. Next and I most importantly, the pilot ran up the engines and verified that they were producing the power necessary to get the fully-loaded Wellington into the air and to sustain it in flight. No problems or deficiencies showed up which meant that we were on our way.

Padre Don Carlson was making his rounds from one aircraft to the next offering words of encouragement and passing out sweets (candy) and chewing gum. This was customary on most squadrons and in Don Carlson's case he was always present at take-offs and again when the aircraft were returning. Erickson wheeled out of the dispersal site in the darkness and taxied slowly around the perimeter track which circled the airfield. We lined up in single file with 10 other Wimpies near the take-off point - we were somewhere in the middle of the pack. A mobile van was parked near the end of the runway and this was the final control point for operational departures. When the NCO in the van received the all clear from the control tower he would point his green Aldis lamp at the first Wellington in line and the pilot knew he had the okay to get rolling. The captain would immediately turn onto the runway, line up the aircraft, rev up the engines one more time and release the brakes. At the same time the bomb aimer sitting beside the pilot in a jump seat would gradually push the throttles forward as the fully-loaded Wimpy started down the runway. All the while a cluster of well wishers comprised of ground crew, WAAF's, the padre and others gathered at the edge of the runway giving the thumbs up. It was a heart-warming sight and was always an inspiration to the crews heading out.

At this point of my life I have no special recollection of my first operational departure. I know we had no difficulty and the Wellington soared into the air with some runway to spare. With a full load of bombs, high octane fuel, oxygen bottles, flares, ammunition and other combustibles it was always a relief to know you were airborne. During the course of the war and for a variety of reasons, some crashes occurred at the edge of the airfield when fully-laden bombers went straight into the deck. Very rarely were there any survivors and it was a sickening feeling to the crews waiting in line for the green light.

We made a wide circuit around our base several times to gain altitude ever mindful of other aircraft. In this part of Yorkshire the bomber bases were close to one another and in some cases the outer perimeter lights actually intersected. It was always a relief when we made one last pass over our home base as the navigator set course on the first leg of the flight plan designated by Bomber Command. We crossed the North Sea coast at Flamborough Head and obtained a perfect pinpoint of our position. We were laboriously gaining altitude all the time and as we reached the 10,000 foot level it was time to put on our oxygen masks. We had only used oxygen a couple of times on special training flights in England, and knew from our sessions in the decompression chamber in Canada that oxygen was essential to remaining alert or even staying alive. We plugged into a central oxygen line at our normal crew positions and had small portable canisters when we had to move about the aircraft.

We flew for perhaps an hour and knew that we would soon be approaching the Dutch coast. I had a good sense of navigation and had studied the charts at briefing. The first indication that we were near enemy territory was the I tell-tale flashes of anti-aircraft fire in the sky. We called it ack ack and the German term was flak - an abbreviation for flugzeug abwehr kannonen. Whatever the name, it was very frightening to the bomber crews and one of the defenses adopted by the bomber pilots was to take evasive action by changing altitude and direction or weaving it was called. It was a way of life over enemy territory whenever the ack ack batteries below started to open up and the bursts were in close proximity. If the flashes were some distance away we didn't need to weave. Weaving was strenuous work for the pilot and if carried to extremes could mess up the navigation. Whenever the pile undertook weaving he had to compensate for the change of direction and height by turning in the opposite direction for an equivalent time and distance before resuming his regular course. The theory was that it required perhaps twenty seconds for an anti-aircraft shell to reach the altitude of the bomber stream and the idea was to be in a different spot, when the shell burst, rather tllan the location computed by the radar-equipped batteries below.

During tho time I was on operations, the flak belt on the Dutch coast was not a major problem. There were some guns of course, however the Germans had moved most of the batteriesz inland to defend the industrial cities. There were some dangerous spots and our Intelligence people did their best to warn us about the heavily defended areas that we might encounter en route and on the return trip. Also what we didn't know at the time was that the Dutch skies were patrolled by more and more German night fighters and they were inflicting heavy losses on the bombers. The above is general infonnation, most of which, I learned about after the war. We were terrified of heavy flak barrages and many aircraft were shot down or badly damaged, however when I was flying in the spring and early summer of 1943, night fighters were by far the most lethal - we just didn't realize it at the time.

Getting back to my first operational trip, we crossed the Dutch coast and the few flak. bursts were probably meant for some other aircraft in the bomber stream. This is a good place to explain that at night we didn't fly formation and each aircraft was on its own but flying the same course, sometimes at different altitudes. We seldom saw other aircraft except near home base and - sometimes over the target. In actual practice it was a very loose arrangement and it's a wonder there weren't more mid-air crashes. Of course there were some collisions and few survivors to tell what happened.

I can't remember all the details of my first operation. Fifty years later, they had a certain sameness about them except for several close calls and these I vividly remember to the finest detail. We crossed into Germany without incident, and as we approached the Ruhr there was already a glow in the sky. The Pathfinders were using a new marking technique for the first time that was much more accurate than any previous method. The leading aircraft - flown by highly skilled crews, and using special equipment, marked the aiming point with coloured flares. Other crews would follow up and reinforce the original flares burning on the ground. In cloudy weather aerial markers were used. In either case the main bombing force approached the target at specified times and in a typical raid there might be as many as ten waves to overpower the defenses. As I recall we were in one of the middle waves and by the time we arrived there were few markers visible having been obscured by the incendiary bombs and high explosives already dropped. There was plenty of flak and I wondered how we could escape being hit. We were lucky because nothing came real close. The searchlights were sweeping the sky trying to lock on to an individual aircraft. When they did lock on other searchlight batteries would join the party and form a cone from which it was difficult to escape. The flak batteries threw everything skyward into the cone and it was often curtains for the unfortunate crew trapped in the illumination. We had no such problem and bombed on schedule. It was always a relief to be rid of the bomb load - the aircraft was a lot lighter and as soon as we had taken a photograph, the pilot put the nose down a few degrees to pick up speed to clear the target area and set course for home.

Our return trip was uneventful. As we neared the Dutch coast, I recall seeing one aircraft, on our starboard beam, being heavily engaged - the crew had apparently wandered too close to Rotterdam where there was a concentration of flak and seaarchlights and they were paying the price. I don't know if the stricken bomber was one of those lost that night. There was nothing we could do as we sped accross the the coast and reached the comparative safety of the North Sea. From then on it was routine and as we approached Croft, our home base, Erickson called AirTax for landing instructions. All the airfields had coded names for security reasons and I still remember the station call sign. AirTax responded and gave us permission to pancake which was another term for landing. When we rolled to a stop at our home base around one in the morning, I was one happy camper. I had my first operation under my belt with only 29 to go.

Just one week later on March 12, I was on ops again and this time as a replacement for Paul Peters' bomb aimer who was ill. Paul Peters was a F/L in the RAF with a lot of experience as an instructor. I was delighted to be flying with him even when I learned at briefing that Essen was again our target. Briefing was quite similar to the previous week with minor changes to the course across Holland into the Ruhr.There was one added chore for Paul Peters crew to perform that evening. After bombing, we were to orbit the target for a time to monitor the progress of the raid. I don't know how general this was but it was being tried on some squadrons at this stage of the war. The observations were used to supploement information from the other crews. As a Deputy Flight Commander, Paul Peters had been selected for this task.

During our morning air test and on the flight to Essen itself, it was obvious to me that Paul Peters was an excellent pilot. If it was in the cards for me to raid Essen on my first two ops, then I knew I was in good hands this time. We reached the target area without incident and what impressed me most was the skll of the pilot as he manoeuvered the Wellington the last few miles to the center of Essen. He bobbed and weaved jsut enough that we didn't present a straight and level target to the predicted flak. The illuminated markers were clearly visible and we bombed right on schedule.

After releasing our bombs, we flew straight and level for 30 seconds to be sure we obtained a good photgraph. Paul then flew to the perimeter of the target area and began to orbit a designated sector. We seemed to be clear of the worst of the flak and as the raid progressed, the anti-aircraft defenses were largely subdued by the concentration of bombers. We remained in the Essen area for perhaps 15 minutes and luckily were not hit. As usual one of the hazards was the danger of colliding with friendly aircraft. We had a grandstand seat for the fireworks display and it had all the signs of being a sucessfull raid - thanks to the accurate marking of the pathfinders. We flew home without incident.

Our debriefing was a bit more extensive than usual due to quizzing the crew about the specal reconnaissance. Before leaving the briefing rooom we got word that W/C Burnside had landed at a drome down south. All we knew was that they were badly shot up. Next day we received the sad news that Rod Heather , the Wingco's Canadian navigator had been instaantly killed and the wireless operator Geoff Keen, seriously wounded. The rest of the crew were okay. When the remenents of the crew arrived back at Croft, the details of their heroic ordeal became known and the account of the attacks by enemy fighters and anti-aircraft fire may be found in the history of the air war. Geoff Kean's injuries were such that he could never fly again. He was recommended for the Victoria Cross and received the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal to go with his DFM. Dudley Burnside was awarded a bar to his DFC. Dave Ross, the rear gunner received a DFC as did Rex Hayhurst, the bomb aimer.

We were all shaken by Rod Heather's death. There had been previous casusalities of course in aircraft that had gone missing, but this was the first time on our squadron that a dead airman had been brought back from operations in a badly damaged aircraft. Even though the Wingco's Wellington had landed in Suffolk, it brought the reality of was close to home. Rod's brother, a Sergeant Pilot, came to Croft a few days later to help with the disposition of Rod's personal belongings.

My next operation was to Duisburg in the Ruhr on March 26. Again I was assigned to Erickson's crew - his bomb aimer, was still on sick parade. My log book shows that we didn't do an airtest prior to take-off so it must have been felt that "K" for Kitty was okay. In any case the trip to the target was without inmcident. The attack was already in progress when we arrived however there was a lot of clould. On the run-up we received one burst that rocked the aircraft. I was down in the nose and the crew were relieved to hear me say, Bombs gone". Erickson put the nose down to clear ther target area. On the way home he found the controls very sluggish even with the lightened aircraft. He thought there was some damage to the controls and we should head for the nearest point on the English coast. It didn't seem that we were in any danger but it was a long way to Yorkshire. He was the skipper and felt there was no point in taking chances. We put down at Wattisham, an RAF base in the process of being taken over by the US Army Air Corps. We were plied with cokes and Sweet Marie candy bars and it seemed to me that just about everyone had his own jeep. The American mechanics checked the aircraft next morning and could find no serious problems. There was some minor flak damage but nothing that would ground our Wellington for long. At noon we flew back to Croft somewhat overdue but our whereabouts were known to Operations form our phone call the night before.

I was on ops again three nights later this time with Gandy Ganderton, a big burly guy from Alberta as my pilot. The navigator was Red Soeder from Saskatoon. They were both Flying Officers and for the past month I had known them in the Mess. For pennies we played a card game called Switch. It was similar to Crazy Eights and had the appeal that it didn't require too much brain power. So for once I was glad to be flying with somebody I knew. Our target was Bochum in the Ruhr - where else? This was wae to be a diversion by the Wellington squadrons while the main force of four-engined bombers raided Berlin. The forecast was for cloudy conditions enroute but hopefully clearing in the target area. That is precisely what we found. There was a patch of clear sky with the ground markers easily visible. We bombed from 19,000 feet which was quite an achievement for a Wimpy. We landed back at Croft after only five hours in the air. I have always felt that it was a vety successful raid a1though Martin Middlebrook, who has researched every Bomber Command operation from the official records, felt otherwise. If this is so, I can only conclude that the red and green ground markers were dummies set out by the Germans as a deception.

I would have been glad to continue flying with Gandy's crew but that was not to be. Ganderton completed two tours on 427 Squadron rising to the rank Wing Commander and being awarded both the Distinguished Service Order and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Red Soeder was not so fortunate. On the disastrous Nuremberg raid in March 1944, his aircraft was involved in a mid-air collision and Jim Moffatt of Castleton was the only survivor. Red was one of two Soeder brothers killed in the RCAF.

By now I had four operations under my belt and I don't mean the surgical kind. Stu Dunbar who was posted to Croft from Pershore the same day I was, had yet to do his first op. There were not many trips being flown by the squadron in March 1943 due to bad weather and the fact we were still a new squadron. It was something of a feat to have completed four operations under ,these circumstances and without a crew of my own. In general, aircrew were . granted seven days leave every six weeks and I drew my first such furlough after the Bochum raid.

Finally I had the opportunity to visit Scotlland and except for a day trip to Glasgow, I spent the whole time in Edinburgh. I stayed at an officers' leave club near the main railway station and had a fine view of historic Edinburgh Castle from my room, Edinburgh was, and is, a beautiful city and not jammed with service people in the way London was. I met a Wren from Aberdeen who was stationed at Dumfermline just outside Edinburgh and came into the city to dances and the cinema. She was a bonnie lass and fun to be with, however she smoked like a chimney. We saw a good bit of Edinburgh together and the week passed all too quickly. I went to Glasgow one day to try to track down the relatives of Janet Battersby who was then a country school marm near Welcome. I didn't find them at home - perhaps they heard that a Canadian was on the way over. Back in Edinburgh I said goodbye to my little Wren friend and agreed to correspond if I could learn to write Scottish.

I arrived back at Croft and within a day or two my name was again on the battle order. The target was Frankfurt-am-Main, usually referred to simply as Frankfurt. The other Frankfurt was on the Oder River bordering Poland. The Frankfurt in this story is in southern Gennany and was a frequent target of Bomber Command. This would be my fifth operational trip, and this time I was assigned to fly with F/Sgt Higgins of Amherstburg, Ontario. I didn't know the names of the other crew members except the navigator, Bob Frost of Toronto, who was on my OTU course at Pershore.

We were based in north Yorkshire and to fly to Frankfurt, our course took us down the entire length of England. It made for a long flight in a twin-engine aircraft. One of the concerns was to avoid other planes since we passed in the vicinity of dozens of air bases on the way south. In the early part of the flight the sky was partly clear and we could see the ground okay. While over England this was an advantage and we were able to plot the location of flashing beacons or pundits as they were called. Each visual signal was a unique letter of the alphabet in Morse code and was changed every night for security reasons. We had other navigational aids, but at that stage of the war there was nothing as reliable as a physical pinpoint.

We crossed the English Channel dead on course but encountered more and more cloud and the ground soon disappeared. By now the navigator was relying on GEE - an electronic device, and on dead reckoning. We made a number of course alterations to stay on the track established for the operation by Bomber Command. We flew on for a long time. It was over France for most of the way and this provided a good measure of safety although there could be enemy fighters about, even over the occupied countries. We altered course at the Rhine river and headed due east into Germany and started looking for some sign of the Pathfinders. They would be forced to use aerial markers since ground markers would be obscured. According to the navigator we should be in the target area, but other than some anti-aircraft flashes in the clouds below we saw nothing. We were at the alloted height of 19,000 feet and in dense cloud. We stooged around for quite a while with the navigator keeping track of our estimated position as best he could.

As we started the bomb run, all hell broke loose and grerat gobs of heavy flak were bursting all around us. We could actually hear the pieces of metal rattling against the underside of the Wimpy. I was lying on my stomach in the nose and just as I was releasing the bombs, the covers on the equipment panels in the nose became unhinged and clattered down on my head. I was thrown on my side by the concussion and felt a severe jolt.I could feel sticky fluid on the back of my neck and immediately thouight that the pilot, a few feet above, had been wounded. There was no sound from him or other crew members and Higgins continued to take violent evasive action in an effort to escape from the heavily defended area.We were still in dense cloud, so there were no searchlights or fighters to contend with. Suddenly there was absolute quiet and we realized that we had broken free of the flak zone. It was all over in a matter of minutes but at the time it seemed an eternity.

It was now time to assess the damage.Both of the Hercules engines were still operating and we were able to maintain height. We soon realized that many of the instruments were not functioning. The airspeed indicator was not working at all and the gyro controlled compass was behaving erratically. The pilot then announced that we must be losing hydraulic fluid and it was then that I realized the leaking fluid was the source of the sticky substance that had poured down my neck. As best he could, Bob Frost set a course for home using the questionable compass readings. On the return flight we were wondering all the time if we were headed for jolly old England.

We saw no sign of enemy activity other than occasional anti-aircraft reflections in the clouds and fortunately our petrol seemed to be holding up. It was never intended that we would fly all the way back to Yorkshire, even if the flight had gone according to plan. It was too far away for a Wellington. After an hour or so, Bob Frost managed to get the navigational GEE working - more or less, and it seemed we were somehere between Paris and the Channel. This made us all breathe a lot easier and we headed north.

We flew on for another twenty minutes and began to see the occasional break in the clouds. We looked for the coastline but again the clouds filled in. Soon afterwards, the rear gunner broke the silence with the welcome news that he could see a beacon off to one side. Higgins circled the area and we all peered into the murky sky to read the signal. The wireless operator identified the code as the RAF base at West Malling, south of London. It was then that we realized that the sky was brightening and dawn was breaking. Our chances of getting down safely looked better all the time.

Higgins called the control tower and fortunately the intercom was working. He explained that we were in difficulty and couldn't lower the undercarriage due to a total loss of hydraulic fluid. Also we had no airspeed indicator. He was instructed to circle the airfield and ordered not to use the runway as there were other aircraft landing as we could now see in the growing light. The next order from the flying control officer was to crash land on the grass at the side of the main east-west runway. None of us had ever belly-landed before but we had regular drills for just such an emergency. All of the crew3 except the pilot took up crash positions behind the main spar. This would provide a measure of protection in case the Wimpy broke apart.

Higgins started his long approach and had to estimate his airspeed all the way in. We couldn't see out and it seemed forever as we settled lower and lower. We sensed we were leveling off and sure enough, we slammed into the soft grass with a tremendous thud and skidded and screeched along as Higgins cut the switches. We let out a shout of "good show" as we scrambled out of the aircraft. Having made it this far we wanted to depart the scene quickly in case of a fire or explosion. Four of us went out the back and Higgins through the top. We ran a few yards and looked back. There didn't seem to be any danger and the fire engine, crash truck and an ambulance arrived with a great flourish - just like in the movies. We had made it back all in one piece and the sun was poking its head over thr horizon. I don't think England ever looked better to five happy airmen than on that gorgeous April morning.

Transport arrived to take us to a building on the other side of the airfield. I thought I should get out of my parachute harness and the way to do it is to turn the quick releaser box 90 degrees and give it a sdmack with your fist. This released the four metal holding devices (much llike modern sdeat belts) and the harness would fall free. I did what was required and nothing happened- nothing moved. I tried again and again - still no luck. Then the rear gunner who was nearby said " Have you looked underneath ?". I turned the quick release box facing upward and there was a big gouge in the mechanism.The quick release box is about 3 inches in diameter and right over one's stomach. The blast sustained as we were bombing and while I was lying flat on my stomach, had sent shards of shell fragments in all directions. One of the pieces was headed for my innards if that small metal box on the parachute harness had not de one of the pieces was headed for my innards l if that small metal box from parachute harness had not deflected it . I think they call it luck, or is it fate?

We were debriefed, had breakfast and hitched a ride back to Yorkshire with Sgt Hall's crew of 420 Squadron, based nearby. Our faithful old Wellington was a write off and never flew again. We were delighted a few weeks later to learn that Flight Sergeant Francis Higgins had been awarded the coveted Distinguished Flying Medal for outstanding airmanship. It was the first DFM to be won on squadron and richly deserved. We owed our lives in no small measure to his courage and skill.

I regret to report that Warrant Officer Francis Joseph Higgins DFM did not survive the war. He and his entire Halifax crew were killed on the night of June 25/26, 1943 over Holland, where yours truly had landed safely by parachute only 24 hours earlier. In May 1995, Enid and I made the 50th anniversary pilgrimage to Holland, and one of the cemeteries that we visited was at Gorssel in Gelderland. There, in a lovely village cemetery, W/O Higgins and the six members of his Halifax crew are resting, where the graves are tenderly cared for by the Dutch.

When I arrived back at Croft on April 11, the day after the Frankfurt raid, I was asked to report to Chaz Chasanoff, the adjutant took me aside and gave me the welcome news that I would soon have a crew to call my own, captained by Lou Somers. He had been on 427 Squadron for some time brushing up on his flying and recovering from battle wounds received on an RAF station in 1942. He was now cleared for operations and a crew was assembled composed of surplus bodies that were about. This was in contrast to the system used all the used at OTUs where crews usually matched themselves as I had done with Drew Gain

I might mention at this stage that Don Burge, the English rear gunner and sole remaining member of Drew Gain's original crew was posted to 434 Squadron, a newly formed unit in 6 group. In later years I wondered if Don survived the war. In 1988 I was correspnding with Roy Nesbitt, an English author and historian, and asked him to check the RAF records in London which he did. Sadly Don Burge went missing in 1943 with his 434 Squadron crew and was later presumed dead. Thus the book on Drew Gain's crew was now officially closed.

Our new crew consisted of Lou Somers of Toronto, navigator Max Shvemer of Montréal and yours truly plus two Brits – Larry Bone (wireless air gunner) from Burnley, Lancs and Fred Ashby (rear gunner) from Reading. We flew a few practice flights around Yorkshire including one called fighter affiliation. This was an exercise where bombers were attacked by a friendly fighter, in our case a Hurricane. The fighter would approach from astern or beam or somewhere in between and the rear gunner would direct the pilot when to take evasive action. When timed properly the fighter would overshoot the bomber since the faster aircraft couldn't slow down enough to make its turn to follow the slower bomber – the fighter required a wider arc. The system worked for us but this was in broad daylight where the gunner could see the fighter and give the bomber pilot plenty of warning. Stil it was reassuring to know that an alert crew could, under ideal circumstances, escape from a fighter attack.

We continued to train as a crew and on April 27 were briefed for a gardening operation. Gardening was the name given to the dropping of mines into enemy shipping lanes. During the course of the war, thousands of mines were sown by bomber squadrons and hundreds of enemy ships of various shapes and sizes were sunk as a result. Three aircraft from our squadron were briefed for the operation with other Bomber Command squadron's sending dozens of gardening crews to coastal waters in France and the Low Countries. Our dropping zone was a estuary on the Dutch coast, and our flight across the North Sea was uneventful. As we approached the Dutch coast we suddenly flew into a wall of fog so dense that we couldn't see the shoreline much less the precise pinpoint we had to find. Lou began to orbit the area and hoped that the swirling mist would clear away. There was anti-aircraft fire from coastal batteries or flak ships lighting up the sky all around us and we were flying only a few hundred feet above the water – a very dicey situation. We orbited the area for some time and then flew up and down we thought the coast should be. It was no use and it was unthinkable to risk dropping mines in the wrong place in Dutch waters. Lou felt that it would be irresponsible to hang around any longer, and risk losing a complete crew and aircraft in a futile attempt to outlast the weatherman. We brought our mine back to base which was the accepted practice when the dropping zone could not be identified visually.