The pilots of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain were often referred to as the Few. One book paying tribute to the young men of Bomber Command referred to the “bomber boys”, in contrast, as the Many. And we have lost another one of this band, a very special one.
The story didn’t make it into the news outside the U.K. it seems. I only heard of it via a link, forwarded by a friend, to a British newspaper. The lack of coverage of the funeral of Wing Commander Jack Harris does seem to me, sadly, rather apt; almost symbolic of the way the “bomber boys” were mostly forgotten. You see, he was the last of the Many. Jack Harris was the last surviving wartime Bomber Command pilot, and when he passed away recently at the age of 104 it truly meant the end of an era. Harris survived 37 ops with 550 Squadron and was one of the lucky ones who returned to his family and went on to live a long, happy life by all accounts. Rest in Peace Mr. Harris - “...we shall not see his like again.”
The loss of the vast majority of the ones who were there means that we are left with those who came after to tell the story of history, and that is a sad loss.
I recently started the much-talked about TV mini series Masters of the Air. I had trepidation going into it, as American storytellers tend to have (to put it mildly and politely....) a skewed, jingoistic attitude when it comes to telling Second World War history. Saving Private Ryan was an amazing film, but the British are only mentioned in passing, and that mention was to disparage General Montgomery. The same with Band of Brothers which depicts British forces rarely and in a poor light. I recall a British tank commander in one episode who pooh-poohs the American G.I.’s warning and promptly gets himself and his tank destroyed by the Germans. Those dumb Limeys right?
I am only two episodes in to Masters of the Air and already I see the writing on the wall. A pompous, tactless British Bomber Command pilot gets in a fight with the Americans in a pub and gets his ass whupped after telling the Yank airmen their daylight campaign is foolish “suicide”.
Oh, our American friends make me shake my head sometimes! But actually, (and sadly) they don’t seem so much like friends these days. My wife and I were planning a 10th wedding anniversary trip to Hawaii this year, back to where we were married on the beach, but all U.S. destinations are off the menu for the foreseeable future. American products and produce are off the shopping list as well...if you had told me six months ago that I would be eagerly bagging up Chinese carrots at the grocery store, I would have called you crazy. But these are strange times and that bullying orange gasbag has us all a bit crazy. Last week I was out for a walk and spotted a Cybertruck approaching up the quiet suburban road...I swear it took all the restraint I had not snap to attention on the sidewalk, lift my right arm and yell out “Heil Musk!!” as the ugly beast went by. I can’t promise anything if it happens again......

In a first for this blog, I will devote this months space to a review of one of the most memorable Bomber Command books I have had the pleasure of reading. Following The Echoes by Claudia Fox Reppen and Lance Fox is an amazing and very moving journey through history, one that connects dots and digs into mysteries.
As I mentioned in my book The Job To Be Done, I think all history is interconnected on some level, and to appreciate history one has to appreciate all the threads and “echoes” that link times, events, places and people together. Following The Echoes does this in a masterful way. The authors take us on a profound journey in an entertaining way, telling us the story of their grandmother, Gladys, and her first love, a young Canadian airman named Wendell Drew who was a wireless operator on a Lancaster bomber. Drew died in July of 1944 when he and his crew were shot down over the North Sea during a raid on Hamburg.
And here we come to one of those connections: Drew and his six comrades died in Lancaster JB707 from 405 Squadron, the very same aircraft that the Coffey crew had been flying on ops before they had been granted a fortnights leave. Flying Officer Townsend and crew took off in JB707 (LQ-M) on the night of July 28 1944 and the crew fell victim to a German night fighter hours later. When the Coffey crew returned from leave, they simply took over a new aircraft and carried on with ops. I am betting that Del was friends with at least some of the Coffey crew, as he was from the same part of rural Saskatchewan as Bob McWhirter (rear gunner) and Malcolm Dingwall (bomb aimer), and they would have had much in common.
Gladys, an English girl, and “Del” Drew had been deeply in love and engaged to be married when he was killed. After the war Gladys emigrated to Canada, in part to meet Del’s parents, and ended up marrying a Canadian, raising a family and becoming a beloved grandmother. But she never forgot Del, nor stopped loving him.
Her grandchildren took on trying to tell the story after she passed, and what a wondrous job they have done, creating a tale that is part Bomber Command aircrew history, part love story, part detective story, part exploration into grief, love, family, resilience and courage. It is a book that is hard to pigeonhole into a category, but I found it hard to put down, and it has stayed with me. Perhaps it is not surprising that these two young Canadians have penned a loving tribute to their beloved grandmother, but I find it extraordinary that they have have written such a heartfelt and respectful tribute to a young man whom they never met, one who died doing his duty decades before they were even born. Put this one on your reading list, trust me. It is available from Amazon and other online retailers. 

We are at that time of year again, the day we take time from our busy lives to remember. To remember those who served and especially those who gave their lives. It is usually, unsurprisingly, a sombre time, but there is one story I would like to share that always comes to mind for me around this time of year. It is a story of remembrance in more ways than one, and I love its lesson of having pride, humour and defiance in the face of petty ignorance.
Several years after the war, an ex-Bomber Command Flight Engineer was making his living travelling the countryside selling insurance. He made his way from village to town, knocking on doors and talking to people, so he must have been a gregarious sort of fellow. During the war, he had completed two tours of combat operations, but he was on civvy street now and his service counted for nothing. He relied on his wit and “gift of the gab” to sell a product that many had never thought of buying. It must have been a tough job in austere, post-war Britain. On the occasion of our story of ex-bomber boy was in a village near where he had been stationed during the war. He knew the village fairly well, as he and his crewmates would often visit the local pub if they were not flying that day. Now, the young men of Bomber Command had developed a reputation for sometimes “having a good time” when they were not flying, but the British people turned a blind eye to the silliness for the most part. These boys were taking the war to Hitler every night, and had a 1 in 5 chance of going home to their families, as most would either be killed, be seriously wounded or end up in a German P.O.W. camp for years – people forgave them their occasional beer-fueled antics and escapades. Most people that is.
On this day our young salesman knocked on the door and began his patter with the older gentleman who answered the door. As part of the spiel, he mentioned that he had spent time in the village during the war, having been based at the local RAF station.
The man’s demeanour changed and he looked down his nose at our salesman.
“Oh your one of those, are you? By god, I saw what you lads got up to in the High Street after the pubs closed!”
Our ex-bomber boy snapped. Perhaps remembering the horrors of burning Lancasters and burning cities, and recalling countless dead friends and comrades, his brow darkened and he spat back “oh is that right?! Too bloody bad you weren't there to see what we got up to at 18,000 feet over Berlin, you poxy bastard!”
Likely he didn’t make a sale that day...
To close I would like to offer this picture, from the Imperial War Museum. It is a photo of an unknown Bomber Command pilot - the date and place are not known, but that is a Stirling bomber behind him.
I find this photo absolutely haunting. This boy can’t be any more that 21, but his eyes are those of a very old man, a man who has seen too much death and destruction, too much war, too much loss in his life. Did this courageous young man survive? Did he make it home to his family? And if he did was he able to put what he had been through behind him and bring some life back into those eyes?
Lest we forget.

This year the R.C.A.F., working the Royal Canadian Mint, has put out a commemorative $2 coin to mark the 100th anniversary of the Air Force. The main aircraft pictured is a Hercules, and I thought “fair enough”, as this aircraft has served the R.C.A.F. for decades and lived up to its name and earned its reputation. But as I looked closer at the design and the other (much smaller) aircraft depicted on the edge of the coin, I could not spot one example of a warplane. Not a Sopwith Camel, not a Spitfire, not a Lancaster. How was this oversight possible?
I was not the only one who noticed. An online friend, another Bomber Command researcher named Jim, was outraged by the slight and wrote directly to the head of the RCAF, Lt. General Kenny. To his credit, Kenny responded to Jim’s complaint, but his arguments were pretty weak. There is a Fleet Finch on the coin he said – it was used as a training aircraft during the war....
A coin honouring 100 years of the history of a fighting force should include the depiction of a fighting aircraft, a combat veteran, should it not? Thousands of young Canadians gave their lives serving in aircraft like the Halifax, Lancaster and Hurricane – no disrespect to post-war veterans, but can the same be said of the Otter or Griffon helicopter?
Can we imagine the RAF or the USAF pussyfooting around like this when it came to commemorating their proud military history? This kind of soft-pedalling our military’s combat experience seems to be a uniquely Canadian phenomenon. In an effort to portray ourselves as a peaceful nation, we end up disrespecting a million young Canadians who put themselves in harms way to restore the peace in 1939-45. Tens of thousands of them never made it home, many of them meeting their end in aircraft that are, sadly, not portrayed on this coin.
There is a museum on Vancouver Island that is restoring a Lancaster – dedicated volunteers have been working for years, lovingly repairing and cleaning in hopes of bringing this old warhorse back to new. Hats off to all involved. Sadly though, in my opinion, they plan to paint the restored aircraft in post-war Search and Rescue colours. I have nothing but respect for the work of Search and Rescue, but how many SAR aircrew sacrificed their lives versus how many Bomber Command aircrew? To whom do we owe a bigger debt of gratitude?
Personally, when this toonie makes it way into my palm, as it likely will in the near future, I will take a moment to remember the aircraft and airmen that are NOT depicted.

 While writing The Job To Be Done, I often found myself wondering what ended up happening to the various aircraft the Coffey crew flew into combat. To me, they all seemed like characters in the story of the crew, worthy of having their stories told. I did manage to squeeze in stories about characters like the Tiger Moth my Dad totalled at flying school, or that pesky Percival Proctor from what I called the “Mystery Flight” of October of 1944. Despite my curiosity about them, I decided not to spend much time delving into these stories, as my focus had to remain on the crew if I was ever to finish the book.
Last month I decided to revisit the question, and it was like old times again, digging into internet archives and sleuthing through various online forums and databases, this time looking for aircraft instead of people.
The Germans had a reputation during the war for meticulous record keeping, but it turns out the Brits were no slouches either. I found an archive online of an amazing wartime document called Form 78. This simple card acted like a biography of every single aircraft to roll off an assembly line in Britain during the Second World War. It was started at the factory when each aircraft was assigned a code number. Once it entered service, its squadron I.D. letters might change, but its code number remained with it for life. Squadrons regularly updated the A.V. Roe or Handley-Page factory with any accidents or losses, and the factories kept the Form 78 cards updated accordingly.
Thus, using the code numbers recorded in Dad’s logbook and in the 405 Squadron’s Operational Record book, I could trace the fates of three of the Lancasters that the Coffey crew flew into combat that summer and autumn of 1944.
Lancaster ND412 was the scrapper of the bunch. I told the story in The Job To Be Done about how the Coffey crew fought for their lives over Wizernes, France in July of 1944 flying in ND412. They had just finished bombing one of Germany’s V2 rocket bases when they were attacked by a German nightfighter – thanks to Bob McWhirter and Ken Hart, the crew’s gunners, they drove the JU88 off. They got safely home, albeit bloodied and battered (literally). ND412 had 146 holes in her and her hydraulic and electrical systems ripped to shreds. The Form 78 says simply that a contractor was needed to repair all the damage, as it was too severe for the squadron mechanics to deal with.
After a month of restoration work, ND412 found a new home with 630 Squadron, flying out of East Kirkby in Lincolnshire. She continued to fly combat operations that year until November 1, when she got into another scrap with the Germans over Homburg and was damaged badly enough to need another month of repair work at the A.V. Roe factory. She returned home to East Kirkby and just a few weeks later, while taking part in an attack on the Urft dam, was mauled again. Another three weeks of repairs were made and ND412 returned to the fray with 630 Squadron once again. An accident, perhaps while landing, on January 30, 1945 seems to have finally signalled “last call” for ND412. She was repaired but sent out to pasture at the No. 22 Maintenance Unit way up north in Cumbria. She languished there for over two years, and eventually this plucky warrior was cut up for scrap in May of 1947.
The story of JB707, the Coffey crew’s next aircraft, is shorter and even sadder. Dad and crew had taken JB707 on several operations during the busy month of July 1944, but then were granted 10 days of leave. Of course, the Lancasters of 405 Squadron got no such leave. While the crew were away, JB707 continued to work. On the night of July 28/29, Flying Officer Elwood Townsend and his crew took off in JB707 and joined 306 other RAF Lancasters attacking Hamburg. They never made it home. On the return trip, while of the coast of Denmark, they were attacked and shot down by a nightfighter, crashing into Ringkobing Fjord without leaving a trace.
When they returned from leave, Dad and crew resumed operations with Lancaster PB402, which had just arrived at Gransden Lodge after a very brief stint with 7 Squadron at RAF Oakington. Throughout the fall of 1944 the Coffey crew flew most of their ops in PB402, including the last, against the synthetic oil plant at Wanni-Eickel in the Ruhr Valley. After that last flight (my Dad’s 59th combat operation) the Coffey crew were done, having completed their required two tours of operations. The aircraft were not so lucky though - they carried on. PB402 flew on operations for another two months or so, until the fateful night of January 16/17, 1945. F/L Harold Payne was 23 years old and from Hanna, Alberta, not that far from my Dad’s hometown of Czar. Payne and his crew took off in PB402 at about 6:30 pm on January 16, joining 327 other Lancasters headed for the synthetic oil plant at Zeitz, Germany. The Payne crew never made it. Some controversy surrounds their fate: was it a nightfighter or a mid-air collision that brought them down? Little matter to the Payne crew, who all perished that night.
The record for combat operations completed by a Lancaster is an incredible 139 by ED888, and she (like thousands of others) was sent to be scrapped in 1947. Luckily, there are a few of these noble warhorses still surviving, lovingly preserved and cared for in museums around the world. Don’t miss an opportunity to see one if you get the chance...and if you do, spare a thought for the tens of thousands of brave young men who died while flying aircraft like them.

I know there are many of you (hah!) who are hoping for another controversial diatribe about current events, but I must disappoint you: I think I ruffled enough feathers in June’s blog, and will return to safer ground this month.
June 6th of this year was the Eightieth Anniversary of D-Day, and it got me to thinking about anniversaries and my Dad and the rest of the Coffey crew. Eighty-two years ago today, on July 19th in 1942 Dad was a Leading Aircraftman 2, the lowest form of life in the Air Force, and was walking the perimeter at the No. 2 Air Observer School in Edmonton, on guard duty. A year later on July 19th 1943 Sgt. Coffey was overseas at the Pilot’s Advanced Flying Unit in Shropshire, flying a solo training exercise in an Airspeed Oxford.
Finally we come to July 19th 1944, and we find Dad (a Flying Officer now) and crew in the thick of things, taking part in an intense battle known as Operation Crossbow.
In 1943 odd installations began appearing all over the Pas de Calais and Dieppe areas of Nazi-occupied France, built by the Germans in preparation of their V-1 flying bomb offensive. The installations were launch facilities, and they were relatively small, consisting of a concrete launch ramp that pointed toward London, and several storage bunkers, shaped like a snow ski lying on its side (the curve in the bunker prevented rockets from fighter-bombers being shot up their length...). They were usually hidden in orchards or fields, scattered about the French countryside and they could be quickly built and were easy to repair. Dozens and dozens of the sites were built and they began firing their flying bombs in early June, just after D-Day. The V1’s were true terror weapons, as they could not really be aimed – they flew off towards London and an internal mileage counter would cut off the fuel and cause them to plummet to earth when they were over the city. Hitler hoped that hundreds of V-1’s falling on the London area every day would force the Allies to come to terms with him and make peace.
What he got instead was an all-out offensive aimed to destroy his new wonder weapon. A defensive shield was placed across southern England, consisting of flak batteries and barrage balloons. Spitfires that had been specially modified to increase speed flew patrols in front and behind the screen, intercepting as many of the “buzz bombs” as they could.
The strategic and tactical air forces of both Britain and the U.S. did their part as well, with ground attack fighter-bombers like the Typhoon and Thunderbolt pummelling the sites from low level with bombs and rockets, medium bombers like the B-26 Marauder attacking them in small formations and Lancasters and B-17’s staging heavy attacks when needed. All these attacks were part of what was dubbed Operation Crossbow.
The Coffey crew took part in over a dozen attacks during Crossbow, and one of them was eighty years ago this very day, at about 4pm on July 19th, 1944. Dad’s logbook records the site they were attacking as “Rollez”, but the site was not actually in that tiny French village, but hidden in the woodland and pastures nearby. Other sources refer to the site as Verchocq, Bellevue or Herly, which are all very close by, within a kilometre.
The bombing method used that day was to lead the 50 Lancasters to the aiming point with an Oboe-equipped Mosquito. Oboe consisted of a pair of radar beams broadcast from two stations in England – the specially equiped Mosquito followed one beam and when it intersected the second, dropped its target indicators on the aiming point. The Lancasters following closely behind would wait a second or two and then drop their loads in unison. It worked very well, and on this day there was minimal cloud, so they got a visual on the site as well. There were too many launching sites in Normandy for the Germans to defend effectively, and Dad and his comrades faced no opposition, either from flak or fighters. The Rollez site had been hit the week before, but the damage had been repaired and it required this second visit. The USAAF sent a photo recon P-38 aircraft over the site in mid-August and confirmed the site was destroyed and no further attacks were required (see below).
Between the defensive screen in the south of England the Operation Crossbow offensive, Hitler’s “vengeance weapon” was prevented from making a significant impact on the course of the war, although it killed thousands of civilians and cost the lives of hundreds of bomber crews.
Today the remains of the V1 site at Rollez are still prominently visible among the trees and pasture of the French countryside, jutting out of the ground like disinterred bones in an ancient graveyard.

It was never my intention with this blog to vent about current events or controversies in the world – the purpose was to present ideas and stories directly related to Bomber Command and my Dad’s service in that Second World War campaign. However, in recent months I have increasingly seen a convergence of the past and the present, of history repeating itself yet again. I can’t ignore the parallels I see.
On October 7th last year the world witnessed an attack on innocent civilians that rivalled anything committed by the Nazi’s in World War Two, if not in scale then certainly in the level of monstrous savagery. The atrocity committed during that dark day was, I am convinced, coldly calculated to elicit exactly the response it got. The terrorist group responsible for the sickening crimes scurried like rats back to Gaza, taking many of their victims (both dead and alive) with them, retreating into their maze of underground tunnels and leaving their women and children above to take the brunt of the response from Israel. It is worth noting that the Nazis built tunnels and concrete shelters as well, but they put their civilians into them to protect them from Allied attacks, leaving their military above to fight the enemy.
And what was Israel to do then? Shake their fists impotently at Gaza and say “darn it, they got away! Oh, let us hope they don’t do it again!”
The perpetrators of the October atrocity knew exactly what was coming and, I think, planned for it. The innocents who have died since then are just necessary sacrifices in their cruel, twisted view. And so, like a wounded wildcat who has been backed into a corner, Israel has unleashed everything it has.
With a cowardly enemy who relishes hiding behind civilian shields the results have been horrific and heartrending – no one can deny it.
Again: what was Israel to do? The parallels with the Bomber Campaign cannot be avoided for anyone, who like me, has a passion for history. The RAF and the USAAF attacked Germany with single minded ruthlessness, with all the weapons available to them. If an area of a city had to be destroyed in order to destroy Hitler’s factories then so be it – and if the bombs flattened homes and killed the civilian workers who ran those factories so much the better. Heartless and cold, but if the Nazi empire was to be defeated, necessary – the gloves were off, this was a fight for survival. This is why no one should start a war, and why the moral responsibility for innocent deaths should be laid at the feet of those who started it.
During and after the World War Two, the criticism was constant – accusations that Bomber Command had gone too far, that the brave young men of the RAF and USAAF had taken part in “war crimes” ... “never mind Coventry and Dachau, remember Dresden!” the post-war pundits cried.
Like the soldiers of the I.D.F., the airmen of Bomber Command were given the thankless task of taking the fight to a cruel, fanatical enemy who could not be separated from the civilian population. After the war the Bomber Campaign was condemned by some for the devastation it had wrought in the process of defeating the most evil regime in history.
Well, I for one have lost patience with the Monday morning quarterbacking, the unfair criticism, the condemnation by those not there, the accusations of war crimes – I stand with the “bomber boys”, and by the same token and for the same reasons I Stand With Israel.

My Dad is the main character in The Job To Be Done but I wish I had been able to tell more of my Mom’s story in the book, as she play an undoubtedly vital role in the story. My Dad’s love for her and his desire to return home safely to her and his young son Gary (my eldest brother) motivated some of the decisions he made (and attitudes he had) while he served overseas in 1943/44. I didn’t tell more of Mom’s life at that time simply because I don’t know a lot about it – to my discredit I never asked her while she was alive and now the history is sadly lost.
The bare basics of her story are similar to millions of other mothers during the Second World War – she carried on without her husband, doing whatever was necessary to provide for her son and keep “body and soul” together until he returned. If he returned, that is...she must have dreaded every day he was away that a telegram would arrive with the awful news that Dad was “missing – presumed killed”. With losses running at 50% in Bomber Command this was a very real possibility.
Mom lived in the small town of Provost Alberta and worked for a time at the local hotel, and rented a large house where she could sub-let rooms to other young women. She made do, scrimped and saved, did what was required without complaint and found time every month to send a care package to my Dad, filled with small gifts like Canadian cigarettes, hand-knit socks and chocolate, each item carefully and lovingly gift wrapped. This supportive lifeline from home was, I believe, influential in shaping my Dad’s time in Bomber Command. His attitude of serious attention to details and his professionalism might have been different if he had been a single man without a family to think about. His decision to join the Pathfinder Force meant getting home a year sooner than had he stayed in a regular squadron – he accepted the increased risk in return for that chance of getting back to Mom and Gary sooner.
Moms in Great Britain had it even tougher than those in North America, with acute shortages of everything from sugar to trousers. The watchwords for every British mother were “make do and mend!" (see cartoon above)  as British clothing factories were busy turning out uniforms and parachutes, not civilian clothing.
One story in particular comes to mind when I think of mothers taking charge and getting the job done while their husbands were far away. My friend Henry was a youngster during the Second World War and grew up in the small town of Rochdale, near Manchester. Henry’s Dad join the British Army in 1940 and served during the Fall of France when he was evacuated at Dunkirk. Later he took part in the invasion of North Africa (Operation Torch) and fought his way across North Africa against Rommel’s Afrika Korps. By 1944 he was a Sergeant Major, leading his men in savage fighting up the boot of Italy. After four years of almost continuous absence, Sergeant Major Calladine was finally “demobbed” and returned to his home, which had been kept running and safely intact by Henry’s beloved “Mum”.
Collapsing into his armchair, finally home again, Henry’s Dad noticed one big change he felt compelled to comment on: “Bloody hell, when did we get a cat?!”
In honour of the strength and courage of my Mom and all other moms, here is a photo of Mrs. Ruby Coffey and Gary, taken in 1944 while Dad was thousands of lonely miles away.

   I recently finished reading a fascinating and unique book entitled Thinks He’s A Bird, by Australian author Brian Campbell. It is the story of a young Aussie named Keith Watson who joins the R.A.F. in 1942 and eventually ends up as the captain of a Lancaster bomber in the Pathfinder Force. Watson kept extensive journals and sent numerous letters, all of which survived and were combed through by the author to create a remarkable narrative about a young man at war, far from home. Watson’s eye for detail and Campbell’s skilful weaving of the story make for fascinating reading. One detail of wartime life that Keith Watson often comments on is food, an interest we all share. Second World War rationing in Britain is a fascinating subject – as I was researching my Dad’s time in Bomber Command I often wondered, “what was he  eating and drinking...?”
Wartime rationing in Britain meant everyone had less to work with. Brewers had to make due with less sugar, so wartime beer was lower in alcohol than in peacetime – but it was never rationed. Lord Wooton, Churchill’s Food Minister, said “..if we are to maintain at least some semblance of normal life, beer must be produced...”. Hear, hear! In the words of Mark Twain, beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.                    During the Battle of Britain the country’s beer brewers even had a hard time getting hops, as it was hazardous for the pickers to work in the fields of Kent with the battles raging overhead. Anti-aircraft shrapnel and expended bullets from Spitfires and ME-109’s would have been raining down like lethal hail that summer of 1940.
Coupon ration books were issued to all, to control consumption (but of course the black market thrived) and everything from candy to lard had a weekly allowance. Everyone scrimped and saved and made due with what was available. The Ministry of Food published a weekly edition of “Food Facts” which gave tips like “Never waste the peel and cores of your apples. Boil them with a little sugar in water and you’ll have a delicious and very health-giving drink”, and “Try young nasturtium leaves instead of jam at tea-time. It makes a change; it’s better for you and saves the country’s sugar”.  The wartime cartoon reproduced above sums up the attitude of the times very well. People were allotted one egg a week, and many made do with powdered eggs, which were coming from the U.S.A. by the ton. The boys of Bomber Command were lucky in this regard – it became tradition for them to be served fresh eggs, bacon and chips on days when they were flying an operation.
Meals on the airbases were spartan. Bob McWhirter, the Coffey crew’s rear gunner, told me in 2015 that he remembered a lot of mutton and cold, clammy noodles were on offer. After he and the rest of the crew reached officer rank the food improved a bit, served with a “bit more imagination”, although there was still only so much the station cooks could do with the limited ingredients they had available. However disappointing a meal may have been at a Bomber Command base during the Second World War, the “brylcreem boys” (as the Army nicknamed them) had it better than British and Canadian troops in Normandy after D-Day. The soldiers there lived on “compo rations” for the most part. In his book Caen: Anvil of Victory, author Alexander McKee relates the story of a hungry British soldier who turns down an offer of a hot meal during the thick of the fighting – the meal presented was “P.V.” (canned pork and veggie stew), a dish “so vile” even “a dog” wouldn’t eat it.

One of the stories in The Job To Be Done is told in increments – I thought it was appropriate to tell it that way, as it is the way I learned the full story, a bit at a time over several years of research. The story is that of the crew’s mid-upper gunner, Ken H., who had accidentally fired a burst of machine gun bullets into the rear turret of his own aircraft, killing his own tail gunner. The accident had happened a year before he joined my Dad and crew, and Ken had kept the details to himself until the Coffey crew finished their tour of operations, and then confessed the details to his friends (including the fact he had been court-martialed and grounded) before they all parted ways.
One aspect of the story eluded my sleuthing skills – I was never able to find the actual transcripts of Ken’s court-martial. In the book, I posit that perhaps the records were still in a file box somewhere in Kew, where the U.K. stores original historical records. It turns out they are online, it is just a matter of knowing where to look, and having contacts online who keep you in mind when they run across something they think you might find interesting (....thank you again Dave).
Ken H faced a court martial several months after the accident happened, and the transcripts tell the tragic story of a perfect storm of mistakes, sloppy leadership and faulty training.
The whole story of the accident is told in detail in The Job To Be Done, but suffice it to say that Ken experienced a jammed gun while on an anti-submarine patrol (flying out of RAF Beaulieu in Hampshire) and in the course of clearing it had accidentally fired a small burst. The errant bullets had torn into the rear turret of his Halifax bomber and mortally wounded his own tail gunner.
As I read through the transcripts, I was struck by how thorough, fair-minded and professional the hearing was. Everyone from the Medical Officer who gave the wounded rear gunner first aid to the armourers who serviced the .303 machine guns was spoken to at length, and both the defence and prosecutor were professional lawyers, serving with the R.C.A.F. Ken himself was given full opportunity to tell his side of the story, and he comes across as honest and without guile.
The story that emerged from the testimony is heartbreaking – as crazy as it sounds, the powers-that-be had sent Ken into combat on his very first operation, having never operated a mid-upper turret before. All of Ken’s training at Air Gunner’s school, the Operational Training Unit and the Heavy Conversion Unit had been completed in the rear turret only. A number of factors collided to result in confusion and assumptions. Ken’s Squadron had only just arrived at RAF Beaulieu, having moved in a frenzy, lock, stock and barrel, from RAF Topcliffe in the Midlands. In the chaos of attempting to get the Squadron back into operation as soon as possible things had been missed and questions had neglected to be asked. No one in the Squadron, not the Gunnery Officer, not the Flight Commander, not even Ken’s new pilot had asked if the new Air Gunner had any experience in the mid-upper turret of a Halifax, a lapse in leadership I find a bit shocking. Ken, no doubt gung-ho, confidant and not wanting to appear hesitant, had not volunteered the info. It is understandable – he was young, enthused, and was, after all, a fully qualified air gunner, having completed all his training. The Air Gunner’s Book (the bible of all the do’s and don’ts of the Halifax gun turrets, something every gunner at an operational squadron was made to read and sign off on) was missing from the Squadron – no one knew why. In the upheaval of the move from Topcliffe to Beaulieu, many things got missed and misplaced. The pressure was on the Squadron to get up to speed and back in operation after their move, to start their anti-submarine patrols and try to stem the losses that Hitler’s U-boats were wreaking on Allied shipping.
So on a fateful November morning, Ken and his crew took off to begin their first combat patrol, searching for any signs of submarines in the Bay of Biscay. When Ken encountered a jam in one of his Browning machine guns it seems he got tunnel vision and, by force of habit, turned his turret to face the rear of the aircraft, as he would normally do in a rear turret. He then operated the gun manually, so that only the single problematic gun would fire and clear the jam. Tragically, in doing so he bypassed the safety mechanism that prevented the guns from firing if they were pointed at any part of the aircraft. Two mistakes, done in haste – neither would have been mistakes if he had been in the rear turret. But he was in the mid-upper, and the mistakes cost a man his life.
Even the prosecutor seemed sympathetic to the way Ken had been set up to fail, asking the judges to take his inexperience into consideration. In the end, Ken was convicted, demoted and taken into custody. After his sentence was done, he was reinstated to his previous rank, and, displaying remarkable character and courage, volunteered once again for aircrew duties. He joined my Dad and crew in February of 1944 and became a vital and skilled member of a successful Bomber Command aircrew.