RAF 13: THE HALIFAX SQUADRONS
I
THIS RAF PAPER rests upon a book that was recommended to me by the nephew of the flight engineer on my uncle's Handley Page Halifax DK165 MP-E Sgt-Pilot Kenneth Ernest Webb RAF VR 1315766, 76 Squadron Royal Air Force, and taking to the skies from Linton-on-Ouse. His flight engineer was Sgt Stanley Braybook RAF VR.
The aircraft was shot down and whilst six of the seven Webb Crew were lost, the mid-upper-gunner survived, coming down in the tail section when the aircraft broke into two following a direct hit amidships, and mercifully surviving.
His war continued even in captivity, as Sgt Leslie Mitchell refused to accept that being a prisoner of war meant that he must sit out the rest of the war in idleness. Sergeant Mitchell, a tenacious Canadian, made several attempts to escape, and it was a sepcial moment to meet his son and grandson at the former crash site, now a Memorial, in Lachen-Speyerdorf Woodland on 3-4 August 2018, along with other families of the crew.
II
This Paper’s source is that recommended book title ~ Johnny Kinsman by John Watson.
John Watson writes exclusively about the Royal Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force Squadrons that flew Halifaxes.
My other uncle - Flight Sergeant Harry Alfred Marshall RAF VR 1337884 - was a flight engineer on a Pathfinder Avro Lancaster.
I have always felt slightly off-kilter that the Halifax flies in the shadow of the Lancaster (understandably so) but which was, itself, a remarkable aircraft, with a slightly wider wing span too.
It is, therefore, a great relief to discover in family records that Harry Marshall, too, served a tour on Halifaxes before being posted to 8 Group , 405 (City of Vancouver) Squadron RCAF - one of the elite Pathfinder Squadrons - Avro Lancaster PB402 LQ-M, likewise lost with all the Payne Crew in 1945 when they too took to the skies from RAF Gransden Lodge in Cambridgeshire. They were tragically involved in one of the all too frequent mid-air collisions, fully laden, and which killed both crews, fourteen men. I have written elsewhere about this.
The fact that the author writes in 1955 means that he writes with authority and direct knowledge. This gives it a very high degree of contemporaneous authority.
This is especially important because we are hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth. Even so, this did not fully register with me for another four years when, more by accident, I stumbled across the world famous interwar years stories of a First World War pilot, the entirely fictituous Capt Bigglesworth - yep, BIGGLES - by Capt. W.E. Johns (William Earl Johns). But here’s the thing. Johns gives us a superb account of life in the Royal Flying Corps, and introduces the reader to a host of expressions and technical terms, most of which are lost on us today. And, like Watson, he is Bomber aircrew, and many of the hair-raising stories he recounts happened both to him or by other pilots serving with him in France during the First World War (Great War).
Johnny Kinsman
by
John Watson DFC
This Revew to sets the tempo, for it is by John Watson’s grandson. The review can be found on Amazon.
“This is a great book, based on true experience. John Watson flew over 40 bombing missions and was awarded the D.F.C. for getting his plane home from Germany after losing half his engines. When he describes the atmosphere on the base after losing his friends, and flying over cities that are like seas of fire, it’s all the way it happened to him. Even the names of his crew haven’t been changed. I should know because I’m his grandson and I’ve met them! This is a senitive book about the many layers of a teenage boy becoming a man in an insane situation. When it came out in the 1950s it was considered one of the most powerful books about bomber command and it has been in print ever since. The original unabridged version is the best. So ignore the bad review from a guy who is probably having candlelit dinners with Airfix kits in his garden shed, and give it a go. “ End of Amazon Review”
This is just ten years after the war’s end, and Mr Watson writes also as one of those aircrews that flew Halifaxes. He writes at a time when it was clear that the general public preferred not to know about the role of Bomber Command, the Strategic Air Offensive, of the 125,000 aircrew personnel who served in that command - all volunteers - nor of the 57,205 of that number who did not return. They did not wish to know of a forty-six per cent death rate, of an aircrew’s awareness in March-April 1943 that their average life expectancy was four operations. The general public did not wish to know of the number of wounded-in-action amounted to 8,403, nor, that of that these 125,000 aircrew personnel, 9,838 became prisoners of war.
III
The public’s volte-face took on a very belligerent tone when it was made clear that no campaign medal would be struck for these 125,000 members of aircrew personnel, and marks one of the British People’s less impressive moments. I go so far as to say that the shining example of Britain’s Greatest Generation faded long before most of that Generation had departed.
Men remained silent.
In my own service, I have never once met any aircrew who gloried in the task demanded of them; in fact, truthfully, I was often unaware of their war service. If a person had a DSO or DFC and one did the arithmetic, one did not ask what had led to that decoration. This was exactly the same following the First World War. Not until the late 1970s did my maternal grandfather speak of that war. Three brothers joined up, he alone came back. That was that. And 27 years later he watched his eldest son enthusiastically transfer from the Air Training Corps to the RAF Volunteer Reserve. As all fathers would have known deep down about their sons, I ponder often what he must have felt like on the evening of 17 January 1945 upon receipt of that dreaded priority telegram. Two Harry Marshalls, two generations, uncle and nephew, both 21, two ominous years ~ 1918, 1945.
I write this merely to enable Gen Z to concentrate their minds a little. And neither the millennial generation or Gen Z have any excuse now.
War is NOT wargaming playstations!
We have only to cast our eyes east to see the War in Ukraine. As I write this I just hope that the War in Ukraine does not become the War in Europe. Food banks, Cost of living Crises, low wages will pale into insignificance just like it did in 1939, should we find ourselves being threatened again.
World War II was Total War. Armchair historians and the armchair British yawning public of today, sated on reality TV and Celebrity Status are largely disinterested in the events of a previous century.
But had things not gone our way, history reveals now a future for a conquered Britain that is too hard to fathom.
Their plans for Liverpool and for Edinburgh - had Operation Sealion succeeded - subjugating by ruthless example two cities as a warning to the whole of Britain, are chilling.
The armchair historian, not unlike his dinner by candlelight Airfix friend in the garden shed prefers the notion that Hitler wished no harm to Britain, that the man respected Britain and would allow her to keep her empire which, they say, the man greatly respected, just so long as they accepted his free hand in Europe.
We have only to ask the people of Poland what subjugation meant to them. And it came without mercy from both West and East ~ from Nazi Germany and from Soviet Russia in September 1939. In short, a courageous Nation twice raped in one month.
IV
Anyone having an interest in the Handley Page Halifax will find an extraordinary, moving and at times, emotional account. It is also a wartime love story. Sex lies within the pages, as fleeting as in real life, for we are here today, gone tomorrow.
It was on my second reading that the emotional side came out, for this time I knew Watson's fictional character Kinsman before, during and after. On my third reading, I discovered the exact same process but, this time, relating to all the other characters, and something else too. My love for the fierce loyalty and independence of the People of Scotland.
Watson also refers very directly, through his characters, to all the commonwealth air forces, as well as quietly reminding us that Kinsman is in fact a Scotsman, and this again resonated deeply, not only because I become impatient with the term 'English' being used to mean 'British', but also because my maternal grandmother was born in Scotland, although lived south of the border, and a sizeable part of my ancestry is Scots.
V
John Watson writes with authority, precision and an un-emotion (notwithstanding my note above) that captures the stoicism of the people of that tumultuous time in our history, and he has left us a great legacy in this work.
That, too, resonates, because today, I grow tired of seeing people on camera weeping about the loss of people of whom they know nothing. Why is it that people now feel that the moment they know a lens comes their way, they must gush with tears? I have no patience with them. Then again, I practised Probate and Succession Law for thirty years, so perhaps I hardened a tad!
But I discovered something else when being interviewed. Cam crews hope to see tears and will try every trick in the trade to get tears on cam. I am of the old school. To Gen Z and quite a few of my own generation ~ “a fossil” because I do not always accept the almost impertinent informality that permeates society today.
It is my earnest hope that those involved directly in the conservation of the three Halifaxes remaining will recommend Kinsman for Kindle publication. As his Grandson has pointed out, Johnny Kinsman has been in print since its publication in 1955, almost half a century ago.
VI
Some might say I am harsh. Unforgiving, even. Not at all.
As followers of this website will know, the greatest international relationship and friendship I have is with the German and Austrian Peoples, two very separate and distinct nations, but who, like many others, fell victim to the wiles of a total madman, a megalomaniac.
Dictatorship, populism, and extreme nationalism are as one, a stench to the nostrils, and Watson has succinctly reminded us all just what happens when true freedom and true democracy do not stand firm.
In a phrase, with such people, there is no negotiation.
These are blunt words. I am an islander. I take exception to anyone who dares to think that they have the right to invade their neighbour. We would do well to remember this as Ukraine battles against this world’s current tyrant in the Kremlin.
Front Cover hardback (unabridged 1955 Edition)
Mr John Watson D.F.C.
Johnny Kinsman hardback Back Cover with a resumé for the Author (unabridged 1955 Edition)
15 March 2024
All Rights Reserved
LIVERPOOL
© 2023 Eyes to the Skies
The Front and Rear Covers of a treasured book ~ the highly sought unabridged Hardback1955 Edition
First penned around 30 September 2018 and last published on 26 April 2023