Court Martial and Courage

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.