21

Just Jane

Our time in York done, we spent the next day travelling by train to Lincolnshire for our mutual anniversary present at the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre. We arrived there early, around 8:45 AM. As we waited for the museum to open, we watched from the fence as the hangar doors trundled back and the reason for our trip slowly rolled out onto the tarmac.

Upon entering the centre, I let my husband take the camera and snap away at Just Jane. She posed like a 1940s pin-up girl, smooth and rounded with feminine poise. I stood and stared, then moved a little, stopped, and stared again, in complete awe, my heart bursting with happiness. Jane was a beauty.

Near the front of the plane stood two elderly, well-dressed gentlemen, obviously emotional yet pleased to be there having their picture taken. I wanted to talk to them but I did not approach, and instead just watched as the photographer took photos of the pair.

When I saw them and the plane, the full impact of what was about to happen finally hit me. Soon I would be inside this bird of war—not just any bird, but the greatest bomber of the war—going for a ride. This was an aircraft meant for men, a plane very similar to the one my boys had been in the night of their deaths. A niggling pain crept up my throat, and tears stung the back of my eyes. I continued to follow Michael around the aircraft like a lost dog, my eyes filling to glassy pools that I tried not to let spill over. This was it. This was the closest I would ever get to EQ-P in its full three-dimensional glory.

I swallowed hard, pushing the welling emotions down. Bud had only had one operational flight. It was his first and last, yet in his records the squadron listed his operational hours as “NIL.” The flight was never finished, so it was impossible to determine the hours served. But, irrationally, I resented the “NIL” hours record, for if Bud had had no operational hours, surely he should still be alive. I doubted if he or any tail gunner would consider those last hours to be “NIL.” Bud would have spent the time making sure his guns were free of ice and working, emptying his mask of condensation, freezing in an open-ended turret, alone, turning through quadrants of the dark night sky looking for night fighters. What had he seen that night?

I wandered around the back and looked at the tail turret. A skull and crossbones painted below the Perspex marked the deadliest position of the plane. Luftwaffe night fighters “preferred to attack from the rear and under the belly of the bomber, so he was often first in line for elimination.”¹ If that was not bad enough, the tail gunner, as well as the rest of the crew, was at risk from their fellow bombers. When one plane was shot down or blown up, it could smash or break off the turrets or other parts of airplanes below it as it fell from the sky. And in some cases, cookie bombs and incendiaries, dropped from the aircraft above, landed on bombers in the same or other Allied squadrons.

The lifespan of a tail gunner varied from two to five weeks, or approximately five operations. If an operational flight averaged around seven hours, then a tail gunner survived approximately thirty-five hours of operational air service before he died. That would have been about the length of Bud’s operational service if he had not been sick the month before the Stuttgart operation.

These were some of the thoughts rampaging through my mind as I studied Just Jane. Later, while we waited to enter the plane, I was distracted by another observation: I was the only female inside the roped-off area for passengers. Where were the women? Didn’t any other females have an interest in stepping inside the greatest bomber of the war or knowing what it was like for their relatives? Some must, but perhaps they were intimidated. I felt it myself as I stood on the edge of the group, facing a wall of burly male backs. They chomped at the bit to hop into the plane.

As we prepared to board, the organizer asked who wanted which spot in the aircraft. I had requested the tail gunner position when paying for the ride months earlier, and now I held my breath as the organizer said first dibs went to Second World War vets and their families. The elderly veterans who’d had their pictures taken earlier in the day happily requested the cockpit. My panic subsided.

When it came to family members of veterans, a number of hands went up directly in front of me. I doubted my hand could be seen behind them, and I stopped breathing again. Would I lose the only place I wanted, the reason I had come halfway around the world?

At this point the organizer said there had been a request for the tail gunner position, and she called my name. The men all looked to their left and right and, not seeing a woman, turned around. One fellow ahead of me and slightly to the right quietly said to his friend, “Didn’t you have a relative who flew as a tail gunner?” and I realized my dreams of taxiing in the tail turret might still be contested. For a Second World War vet I was willing to step aside or perhaps share the turret by sitting behind, just outside on the spar, but the thought of having to give it up to another family member, and one who had not previously requested the turret, did not sit well. My heart pounded, and I strained to draw in enough air with each breath to maintain my calm. The man’s friend answered in the affirmative but waved at him to be quiet and let the position slide in my favour without any remarks. The two of them took the mid-upper turret, a place that I would not have been able to see out of, given my height. I waited gratefully at the back of the line as the others took up their favoured positions.

Once inside, my husband went up to the cockpit while I remained in the back with the men who had been in front of me. Each person had a chance to check out the tail turret, and I watched them sit on the spar, turn, and slide down to the small open doors before entering the turret. I thought of Bud doing this with bulky clothing on. Then each took his turn sitting in the space that was Bud’s, and I smiled as they, unburdened in polo shirts and jeans, sat in the turret seat and inevitably bumped their heads on the back of the turret opening as they tried to get out of the tiny space and push themselves back up the spar to make room for the next person.

When they all finally headed for their positions in the mid-upper turret or farther forward, to the navigator or wireless operator post, I hopped up and, at the dizzying height of five feet and three-quarter inches, had no problems sliding down the spar and entering the turret. I settled into position, alone with my thoughts. As the lone female I had the distinct impression I did not belong—but I pushed the thought aside. I was on a mission and no one was going to take that away now.

I sat in the seat and looked at the controls and the space. The turret offered little room, even for a shorty like me. Leaning back to look around, I too scraped my head on the top of the door opening. I scanned the turret, absorbing everything, and tried to imagine what it would have been like to sit here in the cold for hours, in bulky clothing, freezing, in the dark. I was pretty happy by this point, waiting for the pilot to sort everything out for the ride and enjoying the freedom of being on my own in the turret. Well, on my own but with my little teddy Gap, riding shotgun, clipped to my belt loop. My own little talisman. It seemed appropriate for this ride.

As I sat, trying to take everything in, I turned to my right and caught sight of an axe wired into a crevice within reach of my hand. I felt the blood rush to my brain and my gut, a sickening feeling as if I were being swallowed whole by a thick, rising liquid. I jolted upright in my seat, drawing my knees in to my stomach and then shoving them, full force, straight out on a diagonal, with an audible humph escaping my mouth. Thank goodness my legs were so short or I would have broken my ankles on the foot controls.

“SHIT, shit, shit!” I half yelled the words silently in my head, half whispered them out loud through gritted teeth. I looked up at the top of the turret, sucking in air and fighting to stem the tears and ease the pain in my chest as I sat in Bud’s coffin.

Moments later, Barbara Bignell came toward the turret, camera in hand, ready to take some pictures. How could I smile, knowing what I knew? But I did. I smiled for Ken and for Bud. The photo would be sent to Ken when I got back to Australia, and I’d be damned if I was going to be crying in it. I pulled myself together, and when I heard the sound of one of the four engines chugging, I smiled all the harder.

The engines came to life one by one, and before long we were moving out into the open field. Riding over the grass, the engines roaring, though not even near the full sound that Bud would have experienced, I smiled without force. I knew the thrill of Bud’s heart. The movement and the power of the plane, the noise of the engines buzzing in my ears—I loved every precious minute. I could see why so many volunteered to join the air force despite the deadly statistics. There could be nothing like flying free at the tail end of a plane.

The grass lay flat under the generated wind, and I swung and bumped around in the turret. Looking up to the sky, I focused my view through the gun sights. I wished I could turn the turret and shoot the guns, feel the tail rise up and go barrelling down the runway backward with the ground dropping away beneath me. What would it be like to see the squadron planes rising up into the dark in front of me and to look at the ground below?

Later, I had the luck to meet 514 Squadron tail gunner Robert Chester-Master, who recalled, “One could always see your mates taking off in the line before and I used to say a little prayer for us all. God speed [sic] and safe return.” As for his view of the ground below, he told me, “On one wonderful occasion as our dispersal area was close to the road, a young English girl got off her bike and knelt and prayed . . . I felt very humbled, knowing the problems that they and their family and friends were being blasted with bombing on a regular basis and that she still had thoughts for others, such as us.”²

All too soon the ride ended. As we returned to the tarmac, and I sat there for the last moments in the rear turret, I noticed a man taking photos of the plane. Pat and Barbara stood beside him, and I waved at them, not sure what to convey about the experience. The photographer continued snapping shots and seemed to be focused on the rear turret. I wondered if I should move so he could get a photo without me in it, but as he came closer, I realized I was his focus.

When we finally left the plane, Pat and Barbara introduced me to the photographer, Terry Mason, who told me that his father had “worked for AVRO and carried out the final aircraft inspection and pre fly out checks before the aircraft was flown out from England to Agadir in Morocco having been purchased for maritime reconnaissance use by the French Navy. He was then sent out to Morocco by AVRO to carry out servicing and repairs to this Lancaster along with several others purchased under the same contract.”³ That plane had gone through a long restoration to become Just Jane.

The day was an incredible journey, and Terry, the cameraman, captured the most poignant picture as I waved at Pat and Barbara, one gunner family to another, caught between two worlds and two states of being. I glimpsed the life of a tail gunner and found Bud on that first and final night. I had done it for Ken and Bud, and for Bob and his family as well, and no one could ever take that away. I was a girl in a turret thousands of kilometres from home. I had become one of the boys.