Having been told by the adjutant that I was being sent on a specialist navigation course, I did not immediately know where the course was being held. It therefore came as somewhat of a surprise that I would be heading for Port Albert and had to reach for an atlas to be sure of where we were going. First I took the train to Gourock on the Clyde where I would board my ship, the M/S Batory.
M/S Batory was an ocean liner that was part of the Polish merchant fleet and which had sailed the Gdynia/New York route in happier times. We were to sail in convoy with one other vessel, but no other escort ships as far as I can remember. We would be relying on our speed to avoid any lurking U-boats.
We were a mixed company comprising pilots and observers who had completed ops on Whitleys, Wellingtons, Blenheims and Hampdens, as well as some who were ex-Coastal. We were far from lonely, for we were part of a group that included an entire flying training school that had crated up its equipment (including its aircraft) to relocate to Canada. The officer in charge on the trip was Group Captain A’p Ellis, the CO of the FTS we were carrying.
The voyage across the Atlantic was mercifully short and uneventful, and we disembarked at Halifax with the help of a highly efficient movement unit and entrained that evening for Montreal. We were billeted overnight in the city, just long enough to have a drink or two in the Mount Royal, a regular watering hole for RAF aircrew in transit. By pure chance I bumped into Danny Falconer, ex-58 Squadron, on his way home, having completed the Spec.N course, and he told me what to expect when we got to Port Albert. Sadly it was the last time I saw Danny alive.
It was another day/night journey to Toronto and finally to the railhead on the shores of Lake Huron at Goderich. We all peered out into the wilderness, half expecting to see a ‘Red Indian’ or two galloping over the plain. We were wide-eyed innocents abroad, and took full advantage of the endless amounts of food that was supplied, which after the shortages back home was most appreciated.
At last we arrived at Port Albert, Western Ontario, our home for the foreseeable future. The camp had only recently been completed, and as the snow had only just receded, it was a sea of mud. Whilst the infrastructure may have been primitive, there was no criticising the camp spirit, which was positively engendered by the station commander, Group Captain Paul Robertson. The groupie was a fascinating character, ex-Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), and memorable because he only had one eye and a badly burned face. He wore over his breast pocket the ribbon of the Albert Medal in gold, and I learned later that this was for trying to rescue his pilot after their seaplane had crashed into marshy land and burst into flames.2
Robertson was one of the old school, an excellent administrator who ran a tight ship very well. A young yet quite senior Canadian AOC told him once that he was going to be sent a number of Canadian WAAFs to help with the camp’s administration. Robertson told the officer in question that he had no desire to have any women on his base, since they only caused trouble.
The AOC insisted, tapping his head and saying: “Don’t worry about Canadian WAAFs, they’ve got it up here.” Robertson replied: “I don’t care sir, wherever it is, my men will find it!”
Port Albert was the top school for ex-operational pilots and navigators with the very best senior instructors. It was to all intents and purposes a complete RAF ‘base’ that had been transported from the UK and ‘re-located’ in Canada, away from the dangers of wartime Britain. Among the staff pilots was John Searby, later one of the RAF’s great bomber leaders and the first ‘Master Bomber’.3
This was an early example of the Empire Air Training Scheme in action, a scheme that had been well constructed and well planned before the outbreak of war, and from which we were now reaping the benefit.
The course, which lasted four months, focused primarily on the complicated theory and understanding of astro (what the US preferred to call ‘celestial’) navigation. The British, of course, had long ago understood the importance of being able to navigate using a compass and the stars. This understanding had led to the first astrodomes being fitted into our aircraft. The Americans, however, were not so trained. They relied on radio navigation aids, flying from beacon to beacon, and as such were expert instrument flyers. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that some very important products of the Spec.N course, such as those who found themselves part of the British Air Commission in Washington, had an important influence on how US aircraft were subsequently equipped with hydraulic gun turrets, astrodomes and even where the compasses were sited so that they did not deviate excessively.
I qualified as a Spec.N with an average of 78.4%, with my logbook certified by Squadron Leader Mervyn Stanley, OC 31 ANS. Now, looking back, I realise that the Spec.N syllabus was already out of synch with the Bomber Command thinking of 1941/42 that was beginning to move away from astro-navigation in favour of electronic aids such as Gee (and much later H2S). Keeping a bomber aircraft straight and level long enough for the navigator to get an accurate fix was increasingly impractical in the hostile skies of northern Europe, and sure enough by 1943 the Spec.N course was brought back to the UK and appropriately adapted, as the ‘new series’ Spec.N course.
On completing my studies, some of my contemporaries were posted to the newly opened 32 ANS at Mount Hope, Hamilton, as instructors. Others reported to Dorval for repatriation as working aircrew on Ferry Command aircraft, as required. I fully expected to be re-absorbed within the Bomber Command family, almost certainly within an OTU where I thought my operational and navigational experience would be most in demand. The authorities, however, had different ideas.
I found myself appointed project officer on the development of a new astro-navigation training device then under construction. The celestial navigation trainer (CNT), as it was called, had been dreamed up by a few senior RAF Spec.Ns and given to the famous Link Aviation business to build for the RAF, the RCAF and the USAF. As its name implies, the CNT was primarily a navigation trainer with the ability to obtain astro fixes (with a sextant from certain collimated stars, radio D/F fixes and map reading) from a projected ground image beneath the cockpit.
The pilot (twin-engined controls and instruments) could ‘fly’ it as a conventional instrument trainer and perform blind approach training, either on the radio range or standard beam approach (SBA). From the floor of the nav. position, where an Mk IX bombsight was installed in a bombing window, the navigator/bomb aimer could direct the pilot on a simulated bombing run to attack a pre-selected target projected rather crudely on a screen beneath the cockpit body.
The instructor, at the standard Link desk, could set the ‘sky’ for the exercise by rotating the dome and setting its starting latitude. He could pre-position radio beacons for use with the radio compass and could–if he were multi-dextrous–set the terrain ‘plate’ in the projector for the target to appear in co-ordination with the progress of the ‘flight’ of the trainer. A standard Link ‘crab’ enabled him to do this; the same crab could be used to monitor the pilot’s blind landing if required. For navigation exercises, the table was covered with a constant scale chart, appropriately marked with turning points, radio beacons, targets etc, with the scale set relevant to the distances needed.
A team of RAF tradesmen had already helped with the assembly of the device and were to be the technical instructors for future maintenance crews. By reason of their undoubted abilities, they were an enormous help to Link on the design and manufacture of the CNT’s workings.
At first I was concerned with the development trials of the prototype and the development of suitable training exercises at Port Albert, alongside US personnel from the Link factory. Later, however, I worked at the factory itself on the first production model for shipment to the UK, under the ‘lease-lend’ agreement.
I also wrote a training manual for the device, and created ‘readymade’ exercises for embryonic navigator/bomb aimers to perform, whilst at the same time showing how its many facilities could be fully utilised. At all times I liaised closely with the Link factory over the latest modifications that were being suggested.
Throughout this time I had a most able and effective ‘number two’ in Flying Officer George Watson. ‘Doc’ Watson had come up the hard way. He had been an armament fitter or some such and was most proud of the brass bullet he had worn on his sleeve that denoted he was a gunner of the old school. Above his breast pocket he wore the distinctive ribbon of the DFM & Bar, the first of which he had won for operations in Waziristan in 1938 as an LAC. He took part in one of the first daylight bomber sorties of the war, and told me that when his squadron had re-equipped with Blenheims, he was effectively ordered to attend a short navigation course at North Coates Fittes, and being RAF, he did as he was told. I shared a room with ‘Doc’ and his dog called Aries, which kept making a mess of the floor. We were friends, though very different and with especially different tastes. With his big moustache and thick black hair, he was always one for the ladies and women positively swooned in his company. He was no intellectual, but incredibly shrewd, and could sum up senior officers straight away.
It was an interesting period for all who were involved, and as our guinea pigs we managed to rope in some of the most experienced and senior officers then in Canada. These included the new station commander of Port Albert, Group Captain Richard Crofton (known as ‘Auntie’ because he was a bit of an old woman, especially compared to his one-eyed predecessor) and as many Spec.N students as we could lay our hands on.
Our work came to be well-known and attracted a good many visitors, including Ed Link himself who used to fly in to see us in his own little Amphibian, a Grumman Widgeon, accompanied by a number of his factory specialists. Among the senior air force visitors were Air Commodore Brookes, the AOC No 1 Training Command, Toronto; his SASO Group Captain Mackeson and his Air 1, Wing Commander Wilf Oulton. I managed to sneak a flight with Wilf–a much decorated and highly experienced coastal pilot who by coincidence commanded 58 Squadron after it transferred from Bomber to Coastal Command later in the war. He was a most brilliant staff officer who I much admired. I also managed to fix a few private flying lessons with a Miss Hamilton in a Piper Cub at the London Flying Club (in Ontario). At the back of my mind I think I still harboured some dreams of becoming a pilot, and whilst I enjoyed flying, it was not something that came naturally to me.
Trials of the trainer were conducted all through the summer of 1941 until the spring of 1942, by which time I had been detached to the British Air Commission in Washington DC. I had also been elected as a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society (dated December 3, 1941) and been awarded my air navigators’ certificate 2nd class (February 9, 1942).
During this time, I was frequently required to sing for my supper and do my bit of PR for the local community. In my case this meant giving talks at local Rotary and Lions Clubs, with my every word reported in detail in the local press.
Some of the coverage was especially excitable. On one occasion I was photographed with the local sheriff having given an address to the Binghamton Lions Club. The picture appeared beneath a caption that states simply: “Sheriff shakes with one who drops bombs.” I saw no reason at the time not to tell the Canadians the truth, and the truth was that I had killed women and children during raids over enemy territory and this too was reported in graphic language: “I admit I have killed women and children, and I must say I am not ashamed of it,” I was reported as saying. “That might sound bloodthirsty to you but after all they have made rather a nasty mess of England!” I also suggested that the Germans “will feel the full fury of war until the myth of their much vaunted impregnability sinks into their thick Teutonic skulls”. Stirring stuff.
I made a good many friends in Canada. The social life was outstanding, and the locals incredibly friendly. They were intensely pro-British and looked upon our antics with studied amusement. I think they thought us all mad, and found some of our customs and traditions difficult to understand. One of our more ‘informal’ clubs was the ‘Dead End Kids’–in effect an officers drinking and social club. Members could be distinguished by the way in which they held their beer pots, with the thumb on the rim and little finger on the base. It had been started by Sammy Mather, a former Halton apprentice. Sammy was another tremendous character who had been head ‘plumber’ (wing commander engineer) at Manston before being shipped out to Port Albert.