75 (NZ) Squadron - Chris Ward and Chris Newey

It’s been a while since I’ve featured a guest reviewer and now seems as good a time as any what with the amount of work I have on at the moment that is taking me away from review writing for ABR. Robert Brokenmouth is the editor of Wakefield Press’ two most successful aircrew books published this century: They Hosed Them Out and 101 Nights. Both are books written as fiction by their former aircrew authors, but, as Robert was able to discover and then prove with extensive references, both titles are actually slightly fictionalised memoirs. They are also incredible reads and enduring, yet underrated, Australian aircrew classics. Robert is also a music reviewer of note with a particular style and entertaining turn of phrase. It is, therefore, a treat to feature one of his aircrew book reviews here for the first time. Andy Wright

Essential purchase. Cheap, given the fact this monster runs to 475 pages, all on foolscap-size paper. Holy moly! Okay, let's get our breath back. Why is the book so thick? Partly because 75 Squadron flew "more sorties than any other Allied heavy bomber squadron, suffering the second-highest number of casualties”. Also, there's a wealth of photos but, crucially, the publisher hasn't opted for brevity over quality - this series aims to provide the best overview of each squadron possible. It's not just 'a topic' to the writers, it's a vivid reality.

For many years 75 Squadron was famous; consequently it's been covered in other books (Saunders' Return at Dawn, and Franks' Forever Strong, for example). So why on earth would you buy Mention the War's profile? And especially one this fat?

Well, firstly, Saunders' book is very hard to come by. And, second, Franks' book covers the squadron history from 1916 to 1990 and, at 252 pages, that's essentially an overview, not an in-depth look at the unit’s operations in World War Two like this. Ah, see, now we're talking.

Have you ever met a real stamp collector? I mean, the kind who research the period and countries they're interested in, who also collects postmarks as much as stamps? These are the kind of people interested in the reality of history, who don't just read a book, they have period maps, background reading and biographies. And stonking reference books like this. 

Ward and Newey's achievement here is quite, quite remarkable, telling a huge story with as much detail as possible (in the circumstances - nothing short of reprints of the Operations Record Book (or Form 540, or ORB) will satisfy some of us), giving us names, details, events. It's a herculean task. 

I asked Newey about it (Facebook is occasionally useful). "Chris Ward wrote the initial manuscript, I curated the photos and provided some New Zealand and background content, based on the research I'd done, and the comprehensive squadron databases compiled by Simon Sommerville, who you should mention, as he's put an enormous amount of work into his website www.75nzsquadron.com.”

The squadron became famous for several reasons during the war (I'll let you find out about a few of those yourself), but a couple of members of the squadron you'll have heard of. One of the most incredible acts of bravery to earn the (inevitably embarrassed) hero a VC was performed by ‘Jimmy’ Ward, co-pilot of a Wellington after a raid on Munster on 7 July 1941. After an attack by a night-fighter, one of the fuel tanks on the starboard wing caught fire. Ward volunteered to climb out onto the wing to put the fire out. If you're not familiar with the story, I won't spoil it.

Newey and Ward (apparently no relation) simply quote from the ORB and, believe me, that makes for extraordinary reading (there are other accounts; Hector Bolitho, in Penguin in the Eyrie, describes meeting Jimmy at the Savoy Hotel bar and bandaging his finger, Jimmy died in action a few days later).

Navigator Eric Williams found himself on the wrong end of a parachute after his Stirling was attacked on 17 December 1942. If the name seems familiar, it's because he escaped from Stalag Luft III, with Michael Codner and Oliver Philpot, and reached neutral Sweden a little over a year after his initial capture. See The Wooden Horse, film or book or both.

Other notables rubbed shoulders with the unwashed in 75 Squadron. Frank Gill continued in the RNZAF after the war, rising to be air commodore before entering politics, ending his career as NZ Ambassador to the USA, and Sir Douglas Lowe stayed in the RAF to become quite a senior officer indeed. "Not famous in their own right," continues Newey, "but two individuals who were lost in action were brothers of famous people - pilot Raymond Going, brother of legendary All Black halfback Sid Going, and navigator James Lovelock, brother of Olympic 1500m gold medallist and world record-holder Jack Lovelock. Another unique character was Sergeant Sir Charles Thomas Hewitt Mappin, RAFVR, a baronet and member of the House of Lords, who volunteered as a gunner in the RAF, and is said to have refused a commission and a ground job. Killed in action."

During World War Two, 75 Squadron took part in 739 operations, putting up aircraft for 8017 sorties. They're just numbers until you remember, 'Oh, yeah, there was usually only about a three percent chance of you making it through a tour of 30 operations'. 

Unlike stamp collectors and their knowledgeable breadth of history, when you pick up RAF Bomber Command Profiles: 75 (NZ) Squadron, sure, you'll be thrilled, you'll be dumbstruck, you'll have a decent whisky to hand and possibly some cheesy snacks, but you'd have to have a heart of stone not to need a box of tissues handy.

ISBN 978-1-9112553-4-5

Images of War: Veteran Lancs - Norman Franks

Adam Purcell is a young professional working in the Australian aviation industry and absolutely committed to recording the history of Bomber Command however he can. This fascination came from discovering, as a child, that his great uncle ‘Jack’ had been a Lancaster navigator with No. 467 Squadron. Adam’s research leads him far and wide as he pieces together the story of his uncle’s crew and this has grown to interviewing Bomber Command veterans on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. Be sure to check out his blog Something Very Big. Few people live and breathe Bomber Command like Adam, hardly any his age, so he is the perfect guest reviewer for this title which, incidentally, would make a decent companion to Franks’ earlier studies in this area, Arms & Armour’s Claims to Fame – The Lancaster from 1994, and the 2015 revised edition of the same from Grub Street, Ton-Up Lancs.

The average Lancaster bomber, flying operations during the war, could expect to return from about twenty trips before crashing or being shot down. So it’s no surprise to learn that out of more than 7,000 examples of arguably Avro’s most famous aeroplane, just 35 are known to have flown on more than 100 raids. In Veteran Lancs, the prolific and widely respected Norman Franks shares the stories of all of those centenarian Lancasters, while also featuring a number of others that ‘almost’ made it to the ton.

The book, a mid-sized paperback of 166 pages, is packed full of facts and figures, and there’s no doubt Franks has done a lot of research. He follows the careers of some pilots, sometimes going beyond the time when they were flying the aircraft concerned, and even names members of groundstaff where they are known. Some of the featured aircraft – like R5868 ‘S-Sugar’ or EE139 ‘Phantom of the Ruhr’ – are quite famous, but most of them are far less well known. Therein lies both the strength and limitation of this book. Including the less-famous aircraft tells a part of the Bomber Command story that isn’t as widely known, and that can only be a good thing. It follows, however, that there is also less information available on some of them. What sources there are sometimes conflict about exactly how many operations some aircraft flew on, and there’s occasional uncertainty about which trip was the hundredth, a legacy of the variable quality of operational record keeping on wartime squadrons. Franks is mostly quite open about what he has and has not been able to definitively determine, but in some places he has fallen into the trap of supposing and assuming, where there perhaps wasn’t quite enough detail in the records. He uses vague sentences like “…no doubt because she was starting to become unreliable and a bit ‘dodgy’” or “after a bit of a refit”. It sometimes reads as filler.

Veteran Lancs feels a little repetitive, with each aircraft profile following much the same routine – this is always a difficulty with what is essentially a book of lists. Perhaps in an effort to break up the monotony, Franks has split his book into chronological chapters. There are large sections of text that each cover, say, half-a-dozen Lancs, and then several pages of photographs featuring each of those aircraft before the next chapter begins. This brings another slight annoyance: having conquered big slabs of unbroken text, by the time you reach the photos you’ve forgotten which aircraft belongs to which. It would have been less confusing, I think, if the photos had been spread out among the relevant sections of the text.

The book is billed as a “photographic record”, so it’s the images themselves that are perhaps of most interest. While Franks has included several well-known photos, he has also drawn extensively from a very large collection of images that have never before been published. The sheer variety is a strength of the book, and there are some outstanding photos among them. Most of the photos appear to come out of the author’s own collection, which he notes has been assembled over several decades, and the final section (a potted collection of nineteen ‘almost-centenarians’) is particularly interesting. In places the reproduction, which is just on the standard paper stock, is not of the most impressive quality, but bearing in mind the varying condition of original wartime prints, it may well be that this was as good as was possible.

Veteran Lancs, as a straight record of the 35 highest-scoring Lancasters, is a reasonable effort. It’s not a particularly exciting book to read, but it does illustrate the hitherto-untold stories of several very high-achieving bombers and their crews, and for that it deserves credit.

ISBN 978-1-47384-726-2

Beyond Courage - Norman Franks

Without knowing about the author’s earlier work on the subject - Another Kind Of Courage – you’d have little chance of guessing the subject of the book. One look at the cover though is enough to make the title clear of course. Not a lot has been written about the Walrus Air Sea Rescue squadrons of the RAF and rarely have I come across their memories - written or otherwise. Naturally, that’s not to say they’re not out there (Graham Pitchfork’s Shot Down And In The Drink is a good companion for AKOC and BC). It’s just that in a world of dashing fighter pilots and determined bomber captains, the men who risk their lives, and aircraft, to save others tend to get overlooked. Fortunately, one of the pioneers of RAF record research has had the foresight to address this imbalance.

As is well known, the Walrus was a single-engine, biplane amphibian that flew with a crew of two or three. Perfectly suited to being catapulted from cruisers and battleships, she was necessarily smaller than you’d expect but, as discovered within the pages of this book, possessed a big heart. The book chronologically follows the rescues by Walrus aircraft operating from North Africa and, as the war moved on to Italy, from bases that could cover the far northern reaches of that country’s waters.

Far from being picture-postcard perfect, the Mediterranean proves to be a constant challenge for the Walrus crews with the outcome of a successful landing and recovery often being a taxi to shore or being placed under tow by a vessel such as an ASR high-speed launch. The crews knew the weight limitations of their aircraft but with a bomber crew in the water below and night falling, for example, the decision was regularly made to alight on the surface to provide some comfort for the downed airmen. The result of such a commitment sometimes led to a night on the open water manning the bilge pumps to prevent the Walrus from sinking. If the sea was rough, the structure of the aircraft – wing floats etc – could be damaged. So, knowing these conditions, the RAF and Commonwealth crews of 283, 284, 293 and 294 Squadrons, scrambled time and time again to conduct searches for missing aircrew. I think it is pretty clear where the title of the book earned its inspiration.

Details of squadron and detachment formation and movements are presented against the backdrop of the war in the MTO as a whole. The writing can seem a little stilted in these sections but that’s only because the escapades of the Walrus crews and those they save are so riveting. Franks covers a good portion of the rescues effected often with extensive (and typically understated) comment from those involved. I was fascinated by long-termers such as F/O Arnold Divers DFM RNZAF of 283 Squadron. Their insights into being part-aviator and part-mariner are a joy to read (Divers, amazingly, went on to fly Mosquitoes over Europe). Similarly, Franks sets up each featured rescue well with reference to the downed airman/airmen and how they end up in the ‘drink’. American aircrew obviously feature as heavily as those of the RAF etc and one wonders what they thought when they saw a decidedly quaint-looking Walrus heading their way. Something tells me all they saw was rescue and the strong arms waiting to pull them aboard to safety.

Norman Franks’ work takes a bit of a beating from time to time mostly from occasional errors of dates and fates found by other researchers. While I have seen evidence of this secondhand, it should not diminish the attractiveness of his titles should you come across them. It would be unwise to forget that the current high level of interest, and public general knowledge, in the aircrew of the war is a relatively recent thing. Long before records were made available online or discussions could be opened up to the world, researchers like Norman Franks were shuffling vast amounts of paper records at places like Kew, writing letters to veterans and transcribing their interviews in order to make some sense of an air war so vast it will never be completely covered. Today’s ‘bibles’ and best-sellers owe a lot to the groundwork and interest generated by the likes of Norman Franks.

Reading about the RAF etc will invariably lead to accounts of ditching, days in dinghies and subsequent rescues. This book provides a detailed understanding of such things from the point of view of the ASR crews. If you are new to the genre and want to understand the courage of aircrew in the face of adversity, give BC a go. You will not be disappointed.

I came to this book after the Egles title below. He and his Wellington crew had been rescued by a Walrus and, knowing I had BC on the shelf, was inspired to find out more.

As with all Grub Street books I’ve come across, BC is well put together and features a great range of photos including some of actual rescues.

My copy of this title came in a care package from a good friend. It is, however, easily available from Amazon.

Reviewed copy published by Grub Street in 2003.
ISBN 1-904010-30-X