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Up the Gatineau! Article

This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 22.

An Airman’s Story

Harry A. Forbes

The lives of few of us, soldier or civilian, who lived through the war were unaffected by it. Though the changes wrought by the war experience are not measurable, they were real and profound, particularly for those actively engaged in the conflict.

I count myself very lucky, and it was largely a matter of luck, to be among the survivors. After the war was over the peacetime RCAF offered me an opportunity to contribute to the building of a better and stronger nation in the new post-war world. Much later, as a mature student at Carleton University, me early goal of a university education was finally achieved. Like so many of my generation, I had set aside earlier career plans, but I have no regrets. My career could never have been planned, but my life has nevertheless been very rewarding and highly satisfying.

This is how it all began for me.

* * *

The spring of 1940 brought warm, sunny days. As I walked around the campus of Dalhousic University, aircraft droned overhead, stirring strong emotions. Would I soon be up there too, experiencing the freedom of the skies while under training for combat against the enemy?

After a winter of the so-called “phoney war,” the pace of activity had suddenly quickened. The Germans were on the march across the face of Europe. Within days Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and even France had fallen to the Blitzkrieg.

Eight months earlier, on Labour Day weekend 1939, I had heard Chamberlain’s fateful announcement: “T have to tell you now that no such assurances have been given, and that consequently we are at war with Germany.” I felt an immediate urge to join the war effort and was drawn to the Cape Breton Highlanders, my older brother’s regiment, which had already been called up and was in uniform. Here was an active unit that I could be part of right away. But my brother thought it wiser that I enter university as planned, at least until the spring.

University was part of a long-standing dream. Finishing high school in 1930, just as the Great Depression got under way, it was two years before I found work at the local bank. Seven years as a bank clerk at a salary ranging between $380 and $1,050 a year made saving for an education almost impossible without help from family and friends. However, by September 1939 I had resigned from the bank and was ready for Dalhousie.

So I heeded my brother’s counsel. Besides my regular engineering studies, some military subjects were included under the COTC (Canadian Officers’ Training Corps). During the year, thoughts of service in the forces remained strong, but my interest gradually shifted from the army to the air force, and an application right after the spring finals to join the RCAF led to a call-up on 18 July 1940, and to a new, exciting and hectic life.

In quick succession came postings to Manning Depot, to the Initial Training, the Air Observer, Bombing and Gunnery Schools, and the final and esoteric astronavigation course at Rivers, Manitoba. The bombing and gunnery training, in the open cockpit of the Fairey Battle during the prairie midwinter presented a challenge that no operational need ever called for!

An Airman’s Story
Hallifax aircraft with ground crew and others, at edge of Middleton, St. George, 1642. Photo RAF CH3394.

On 30 April 1941 I was one of twelve “passengers” on the HMS Circassia, an armoured merchant cruiser that in peacetime had been a liner in service in the Indian Ocean. It was the sole escort for a convoy of Sixty ships travelling at 7 kmots across the Atlantic.

Facing the reality of the Air War

On the afternoon of 7 September 1941, the aircrews of 78 Squadron assembled in their briefing room to prepare for the night’s planned operation over Europe. The overriding point of interest to the aircrew was the target: it was Berlin, the “big smoke,” the most meaningful of all targets and the most heavily defended. For me this was the target for my first night on “ops.” I had been posted to 78 Squadron at RAF Middleton St. George in County Durham, the most northerly bomber station in England, having arrived just the day before.

The summer had been spent at 10 Operational Training Unit, at RAF Abingdon near Oxford, learning the aircraft, equipment, and techniques then in use in RAF Bomber Command. Many hours in the classroom, demonstration laboratories, and in flying exercises kept us busy. Finally we were declared ready and sent off to join operational squadrons. At that time there was no attempt to form up crews from new graduates and send them out on selected “easy targets” to gain experience, as was done later. New arrivals were simply added to the roster of available pilots, observers, wireless operators, and gunners from which the crews for a night’s operations were made up. However, some attention was already being paid to the personal preferences of crew members wishing to fly together.

So my first target was Berlin, after which in quick succession we went to Stettin, Essen, and Nuremberg; all of these on the two-engined Whitley bomber. This plane was commonly called the “flying coffin” because of its box-like configuration and low speed (for example, the return flight to Nuremberg took over ten hours). Searchlights, flak and enemy fighters quickly became familiar flying companions. The captains with whom I flew at this period, Sergeant Moorfoot and Sergeant Thomas, were already experienced pilots.

The new four-engined bombers were just beginning to come into service. The sister squadron at Middleton St. George, number 76, was being re-equipped with the new Halifaxes, and after a two-week course at 1 Air Armament School at RAF Manby (Lincolnshire), I found myself posted to this squadron. The winter of 1941-42 was spent on shakedown exercises on the new Halifax aircraft. On 12 February we were suddenly pressed into service and sent out in daylight into a very murky sky over the North Sea to “find and destroy” the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisnau and the lighter cruiser Prinz Eugen after their dashing escape through the Channel from Brest. Unfortunately, we had to count ourselves among the many crews who failed to locate the ships in the appalling weather, though we had gone to within sight of the Dutch coast.

An Airman’s Story
"Preparing for a night out:" navigators' briefing session, RAF Pocklinglon, 1942. Author, third from right. Photo, RAF.

In April, 76 Squadron resumed regular bombing duties. These included two attacks on successive moonlit nights on the German warship Tirpiiz in Norway’s Trondheim Fjord from an advanced base in northern Scotland.

In May, 405 (RCAF) Squadron based at RAF Pocklington (Yorkshire) was being converted from Wellington aircraft to Halifaxes, and as I was a Canadian with some experience on Halifaxes, I was posted there. The well-known Johnny Fauquier, a Canadian bush pilot, was the squadron commander, getting his early experience on operational flying. T completed my first tour flying as his navigator. This was the only Canadian operational unit that I served in during the war; the others were all RAF units. Even the nominally Canadian units, particularly at this time, were mixed; that is, they had aircrew from the RAF, the other Commonwealth air forces, and from the forces of the exiled European governments. The opportunity to get (o know so many from such varied ‘backgrounds was one of the rewards of squadron life during the war.

Time Out: The “Rest” Tour

In August 1942, after completing my first tour of operations, I was posted as station navigation officer to RAF Leeming, a station of 4 Bomber Group slated to be part of the new 6 (RCAF) Group in January 1943. In February I arrived at the new Group Headquarters as group navigation officer.

It was no rest! On the station I was responsible for all navigation training, for advising the station and squadron commanders on navigational matters, for supervising the navigational work of the squadron navigators, and ensuring that the procurement and maintenance of the navigational equipment and charts was adequate. Although the duties at Group HQ were similar, I was also duty officer in the operations room one night in three, and expected to attend squadron debriefing when possible at one of the stations when the aircraft returned from operations (usually in the middle of the night). It was the busiest job I ever had; almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with no leave other than Christmas Day for nearly a year and a half.

The enormous pressure of daily exposure to the stresses of squadron operational duty was partially lifted, but Leeming was an operational station with two squadrons, and my work with the aircrew kept me closely involved. Ihad realized soon after first going on “ops” that the chances of survival were low, for Bomber Command was prepared to accept losses of up to five per cent every time the planes went out, a rate we knew was often exceeded. Almost nightly, friends and acquaintances failed to return. This was the depressing side of squadron life. The aircrew were under the pressures of operational duty seven days a week for six weeks, followed by a week of leave before returning for another six weeks of constant duty. This was the routine until they completed a tour of thirty operations. Little wonder that nights of stand-down were marked by boisterous high spirits, usually at the local pubs.

Following the operational tour, aircrew were posted as instructors at training units, or to supervisory positions at operational stations and headquarters. As the war continued on, the need for experienced aircrew in the Pathfinder Force and in other squadrons engaged in special duties brought some of them again to active squadron duty.

My “rest” tour coincided with that long period from 1942 to mid-1944, when the war seemed endless. Everyone knew “fortress Europe” must be breached and conquered. But how and when could this be done? There seemed little more than hope to go on. The steadfast confidence of Winston Churchill and the courage and buoyancy of the British people were invaluable during this time.

The Road to Victory

D-Day, 6 June 1944, found me in Warrington (Lancashire), waiting for a troop ship to Canada, the authorities having decided that I should have home leave before going back to squadron duty. Suddenly, news of the Normandy invasion broke upon the world — and here I was going home; definitely the wrong direction.

The news coming out of Europe in the next few weeks was exciting and finally giving real hope for the future; but I had a restless and unrelaxing holiday with the feeling that I had been sidetracked at this crucial stage of the war.

Arriving back in England in early August, I was posted to 139 (Jamaica) at RAF Upwood (Huntingdonshire). This was the marking squadron for the Light Night Striking Force, or LNSF, a formation of nine Mosquito squadrons and a part of the Pathfinder Force (PFF) used for diversionary atiacks during raids by the main bomber force. A few weeks of training on PFF techniques prepared me to rejoin the squadron for operational duty. The days of the “rest” tour and of endless hoping were over. The times were busy, exciting and anxious, for the Allies were at last on the offensive and on the Continent. There was a new confident spirit of hope.

With the squadron from 17 September 1944 to 27 March 1945 I flew on forty-four operations, an average of one every four or five nights. During most of this time my captain was Lieutenant André A. J. van Amsterdam, a pilot from the Royal Netherlands Naval Air Service. Our busiest period was in February and March when the RAF was maintaining nightly attacks on Berlin. On the last of this series, the thirty-sixth night, 27 March, my wartime flying career was brought to an abrupt end by a German jet-fighter, a Messerschmidt 262, the only jet aircraft in service in the Second World War. Tragically, André did not survive and his fate remains unknown.1

On Easter morning 1945 a raw, cold wind was blowing across the Liineburg Heath as a German NCO, an older fellow probably invalided back from the Eastern Front, escorted me from solitary confinement for yet another interrogation. He spoke some English: “This is a strange Easter Day.” “Itis indeed,” I replied. “But never mind,” he said, “for you the war is over. In a few weeks you be home and we be the prisoners.”

“For you the war is over.” After five years in uniform. After four years of living in wartime England. After seventy-one operational flights over enemy territory, the war for me was over. How could I believe it? T was alone, desperately alone, deep within enemy territory, in enemy hands and at his mercy. What a contrast to those warm bright spring days at Dalbousie five years earlier.

I was sent to Stalag Luft 1 at Barth in Pomerania for the rest of my stay in Germany. The Soviet Red Army, in its relentless western march released us on 1 May. On 12 May I was among those of the Commonwealth prisoners of war who were flown to England in B-17s of the American Eighth Air Force.

For me the war was over.

An Airman’s Story
Author (left) and André van Amsterdam in front of Mosquito aircraft, Upwood, 1945. Photo, H.A. Forbes.

Footnote

  1. The Historical Section of the Royal Netherlands Air Force has confirmed to me in a recent letter that the official record shows that André is still listed as “missing in action” when his Mosquito aircraft failed to return from air operations 27/28 March 1945.

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