Last Flight to Stuttgart

The boys arrived at Linton-on-Ouse, home of two Canadian squadrons, 426 Thunderbird and 408 Goose, on February 5, 1944. A number of purpose-built buildings, including hangars, an air control tower, offices, instructional rooms, a mess, and housing, dotted the flat terrain. However, the number of ground and aircrew working from the base meant much of the accommodation was farther afield.

The boys, all non-commissioned airmen, had neither the best nor the worst of the situation. Most staff, commissioned officers, and ground crews took up residence in the camouflaged H-shaped brick buildings on the base or in other readymade accommodation, only moments from their Lancasters and a short sprint from training rooms and the mess. The boys billeted at Beningbrough Hall, about four kilometres away. This was a huge step up from the damp Nissen huts but not nearly as convenient as being on base.

The government had requisitioned the hall from its owner, Lady Chesterfield, for use by those stationed at Linton-on-Ouse during the war. She remained on the property, moving out of the hall and into Home Farm, a much smaller building. On more than one occasion she complained about damage done by the airmen. This included not only the trampling of a vegetable garden,² but also the use of inside staircases as raceways for those afoot or on bicycles, who wished to see who could get to the downstairs bar the quickest. The great staircase is unused today, its delicate condition likely in part the result of the battering it received during these racing sessions—although it cannot only be attributed to wartime abuse. Under the ownership of Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Dawnay in 1892 (before Lady Chesterfield’s time), there were reports of “‘tobogganing’ down the main staircase.”³ It seems the stairs at Beningbrough were destined for the racing games of the young or the young at heart.

In more than one room, evidence remains of the servicemen’s ill-treatment of the house. There are cigarette burns on the waist-high coping to the right of the door leading from the closet (used as the darts room during the war) to the dressing room (at the time the bar room) on the ground floor. In the adjoining room, the drawing room (then the social area), the words “Olie loves Gypsy” are carved just above the fireplace, memorializing a British girl and her love for a Canadian airman. Throughout the years, doorknobs disappeared, most likely removed as keepsakes.⁴ Today, many look upon these damages with a smile, attributing them to the craziness of the time, but it must have been stressful for Lady Chesterfield to be moved out of her own home, to see her belongings packed away before the airmen arrived, and then to watch as what amounted to young hooligans treat her home as a barracks.⁵

The men used the ground floor for socializing and the two floors above as sleeping quarters. The saloon room, the largest of the sleeping quarters on the first floor, was originally designed for large gatherings such as “county balls, formal banquets, family parties and other occasions that needed space and a sprung floor.”⁶ During the war the walls likely remained the peacock blue colour painted by the Chesterfields, but the room was stripped bare and now contained nothing more than exposed wood floors and a three-metre-long aisle with iron cots along each wall. As there was nowhere to keep their kit, duffle bags acted as bedside cupboards. The mattress consisted of wire springs, covered by three canvas squares, which made for little comfort.

The hall had two redeeming qualities, however: first, it was located near the pub, the Alice Hawthorn, situated on the opposite bank of the River Ouse in Nun Monkton. The waterway posed little problem for the crews billeted at the hall. They simply walked to the river bank and, for a fee, the land-owner on the far bank would row the crews back and forth to enjoy a drink.

The second redeeming quality was the bathtub adjoining the sleeping quarters inside the hall. J. Douglas Harvey, a pilot with 408 Squadron, recalls, “There was only one bathroom for twenty-five men. Ah, but the bathtub. A huge seven foot crater! The only time I was ever warm in an English winter was when immersed to the chin in that tub. Government regulations prohibited the use of more than five inches of hot water. The frozen young Canadians said, ‘Balls,’ and plunged in to their necks.”⁷ It is no surprise, then, that “it was like Grand Central Station when anyone took a bath with people going to and fro all the time.”⁸

Bud, coming from the starkness of the Nissen huts and not privy to the even more luxurious accommodations of the commissioned officers on base, obviously agreed with the sentiment when he wrote to his sister Evelyne: “Well this situation is pretty good. We sleep in a huge country estate. It’s really lovely. However we have C.O.s instead of butlers and there’s no Chamber maids unfortunately. Outside of that it’s okay. The whole house is centrally heated plus a fireplace in each room. Also our own private bath. No it’s not heaven I’m in, but a likely substitute. I guess they’re just getting us prepared for it. I hope my crime sheet isn’t here or they’ll move me to the cellar to shovel coal.”⁹

Bill concurred, telling his brother, “This seems to be a pretty good station we are on. We are billeted in an old manor house and it happens to be steam heated which is certainly quite a change and besides that it is nice to have a bathroom outside your door with plenty of hot water.”¹⁰

Obviously the accommodations were appreciated, if not for the locality then at least for the central heating and the hot water they could soak in after a cold winter’s flying practice, a seven-hour flight over Germany, or a long walk or bike ride back from the station. Those billeted at the hall found the four kilometres separating them from the base frustrating at times. The bus that transported the men back and forth to the base ran infrequently, and its schedule did not always coincide with bombing runs or practice flights. At the end of a raid, if they did not mind the wait, they could catch a ride back to the hall in the back box of a truck. For most, however, it was either ride a bicycle or “walk in the rain or walk in the mud or walk in those clammy thirty degree [Fahrenheit] temperatures that are colder than any arctic weather.”¹¹ Whatever the reason, the cold, dreary winter of 1943–44 in Yorkshire and the bathtub at Beningbrough Hall had a lasting impact on many of the aircrew billeted there over the war years.

On the base, the boys found themselves in the centre of the whirlwind. Terrible weather, the demand for record-breaking numbers of aircraft in flight, and significant losses in terms of both planes and lives plagued the squadron. In Canada’s 6 Group, “between August 1943 and March 1944, the group’s Avro Lancaster II loss rate averaged 5 percent per operation, producing a concomitant 21 percent survival rate.”¹² Bud and his crew mates joined the fight at the worst time, during the “Berlin raids, which occurred from November 1943 to March 1944,” where the “individual crew odds of survival were much less than for those who commenced operations later in 1944.”¹³ To put it in the starkest perspective: “The bomber offensive of 1942–43 and the first months of 1944 was the Second World War’s equivalent of the First World War’s Somme and Passchendaele [battles in which hundreds of thousands of men were killed].”¹⁴ The boys would practise manoeuvres over the English countryside, endure the ups and downs of waiting for their turn in the war-torn skies over Germany, and fly near the end of the Battle of Berlin, through the nights of Big Week and beyond, but they, being part of the other 79 percent, would never make it home.

The first few days of squadron life consisted mostly of settling in, with no flying for the sprog (new) crew. The moon was in its bright phase, known to squadrons as a “moon period,” making bombers highly visible to night fighters. This, mixed with unfavourable weather, meant bombing operations were off for the time being, so the squadron put on a variety of training and exercise drills, with the boys taking part in inspections and a lecture on Visual Monica, a radar in the bomber that warned the crew of approaching enemy night fighters.

On February 8, the boys waited on the ground for their first training flight on the squadron while other crews took to the sky, each member practising his own skills within the aircraft. They made use of their newly acquired Monica training, trying to evade friendly fighters as though they were the enemy. They bombed in designated areas and took radio communications from base before landing. The boys finally got their chance to fly that evening.¹⁵ They left at 1849 hours in EQ-Q,¹⁶ one of a group of six aircraft, on a bullseye exercise. A technical failure caused one plane to return early, but the rest carried on successfully,¹⁷ returning five hours later.

The next day, 408 Squadron crews took part in another extensive flying training course before receiving six Lancaster IIs from 432 “Leaside” Squadron, which was converting to Halifax IIIs.¹⁸ In all, 408 Squadron absorbed eleven Lancaster IIs over the next few days, while 426 Squadron received eight Lancasters. These were battle-worn planes that had flown between three and thirteen operations each.¹⁹ While some planes flew in and out of Linton on practice runs, others landed to roost in their new home. The boys departed at 1848 hours in EQ-R for a night training flight across the countryside with two other aircraft.²⁰ Although one crew was diverted to RAF Station Compston, all successfully completed the task in just over three hours, with the boys and the other crew landing back at base.²¹

Five days into squadron life, snow and rain again grounded the crews. They attended ground training and lectures on wireless communications and new equipment.²² Throughout the latter half of the war several new pieces of equipment were produced to help crews find their target or alert them to approaching night fighters. For the crews, there was always something new to learn. Afterward, Bud wrote to his mother, letting her know he still had a light cold and enlightening her about his recent experience in the air:

I froze my face the other night. Both cheeks. Boy do I ever look lovely. I’ve got two big brown welts down both cheeks. Then I went to the hospital to get some salve and it makes it look twice as bad. As you know we fly pretty high. Well at the altitude we fly at it’s damn cold. I have heated clothing etc., but that doesn’t cover my face. You’ve probably seen pictures where aircrew wear an oxygen mask which covers their nose and mouth. Well my outlet valve froze up, due to the condensation of my breath. Well there is only one place for the air to get out then and that’s up along the bridge of my nose. Well it gets out okay, then condenses in the cold air and the moisture falls on my cheeks, and then freezes. All in all very uncomfortable. How’d you like to sit for about 6 or 7 hours in 28-35 below zero with ice forming on your cheeks and eye-lashes. Also there is no cover. All the back of my turret is open so when I turn onto the beams (90 degrees from dead astern) I have the slipstream to contend with too. It’s about 120-150 m.p.h. wind. Well I’ve overcome most of that now. I wrap a scarf around my face, stuff cotton-batten between my scarf and face. Put on my helmet and mask, then goggles so nearly all my face is covered. Then I’ve still got my mask to contend with. As my breath condenses the water can’t get out as an oxygen mask fits real tight, so you can draw the oxygen in. Well about every half hour or hour I have to empty about a cup of water. Well when I take my mask off the cold air freezes the moisture on my face where the mask was. Also there’s a thin film of ice that forms in the mask. Then the fun begins all over again and I put the mask on and wait for my breath to thaw out the ice that’s formed. Sounds like a full time job eh? Well that’s just a small part of it. Also as height varies I have to keep blowing my ears out to keep the air in my head at the same pressure as the atmospheric pressure outside. Then in my spare time I keep the turret moving so the anti-freeze doesn’t get sluggish. Take fixed watch for occults,²³ and a hundred other odd jobs I have to do. Lots of fun eh? Just thought I’d give you the bare outlines.²⁴

On February 11 the squadron took advantage of better weather and no bombing duties to give the crews an extensive flying training course. The day played out its typical routine of flying around the skies with the boys practising their skills, while at night the crew again took to the sky, departing at 1857 in EQ-W on another bullseye exercise with four other crews, returning nearly five and a half hours later.²⁵

The following morning the base again stood down from operations. Bud, still smarting from frostbite, began to feel the twinges of an illness coming on, but he got up as normal and headed to base with the rest of the boys for more lectures and more training.²⁶ All the boys except Larry left the station in EQ-W at 1430 hours as one of the crews assigned to a two-hour fighter affiliation (in which they practised defensive manoeuvres, such as corkscrews, against friendly fighters) and bombing exercise.²⁷ Larry flew at the same time with Flt. Off. Harvey in EQ-S, practising with Visual Monica.²⁸ Later that evening, other crews took part in a training flight across the countryside.

On Sunday, February 13, it looked as though Norm might get his first chance at operational flying as a dickey pilot when Bomber Command called on the squadron to carry out operations. Dickey flights gave a new pilot the opportunity to experience an operational bombing raid with a seasoned pilot and crew before taking on the challenge alone with his own crew. Only moderate ground training took place, with seventeen crews preparing themselves and their aircraft for the night ahead. However, “just about an hour and twenty minutes before takeoff, the whole detail was scrubbed, apparently owing to the weather closing in.”²⁹ A sense of disappointment balanced with relief greeted the news.

Monday proved to be just as frustrating, as lingering fog pinned the squadron down for much of the day. Heavy ground training was a refreshing change from the previous week’s air exercises. Operational crews—crewmen versed in fighting over enemy territory—engaged in parachute and dinghy drills. Non-operational crews, whose pilots had not yet taken their dickey flight (such as the boys), sat in on a lecture about intelligence and tactics. All bomb aimers, like Bill, trained in GEE and Link. Wireless operators, including Larry, took intense Morse training, while air gunners, such as Bud and Bob, got off easy with light training in shooting practice.³⁰ This was just as well for Bud, as he was feeling the full effects of an illness setting in and was not in any shape to fly.

At some point during the day, the fog cleared enough for a crew from 432 Squadron to ferry Lancaster II LL637 over to 408 Squadron.³¹ It was a couple of days before she was ready to fly again, as she had to have her old code removed, to be replaced with EQ-P. The boys now had their bird.