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By Root 918 0

less experienced crews to them. Yet this bred resentment among those who were still flying long, dangerous night sorties to eastern Germany. Eddie Lovejoy, a navigator with the RAF’s 75 Squadron, was one of a crew serving their second tour. They were exasperated to see others racking up several trips towards their quota of thirty operations on short daylight “milk-runs,” while Lovejoy’s men were flying through the darkness for nine or ten hours to targets such as Stettin. In September, their pilot formally protested to the commanding officer, who duly rostered them for some daylight ops against German V-weapon sites in Holland. “It was thus that I saw the enemy coast approaching in full daylight for the first time in the war,” wrote Lovejoy wonderingly. After flying so often over Europe in darkness, he found it strange now to do so in sunlight, and was even more amazed when he saw a German Me-262 jet fighter streak past them. At the end of October, his crew took part in a tactical raid on German gun positions near Flushing. The neighbouring Lancaster was a wingspan away when Lovejoy, in the astrodome, saw a 105mm shell strike its bomb bay. The ensuing explosion caused the entire formation to lift in the air. Lovejoy was hurled against the side of the astrodome by the force of the blast, “and to my utter horror was gazing at a few dark pieces of debris drifting down to earth . . . By flying at night, we had missed the spectacle of horrors like these, but seeing it happen close to was an experience to shake one clear down to the soles of one’s shoes . . . It was a rather silent and melancholy journey home.”

All heavy bomber crews found it a strange experience, creating a special kind of strain, to drink one night in a pub in rural Lincolnshire or Norfolk, then to be thrown next day into a battle that might end in a PoW camp or in death. Most men’s loyalties became fiercely focused upon their own crews. “Other people in the squadron were just acquaintances,” said Sergeant Bill Winter, a Lancaster wireless-operator. “The crew was everything—you slept together, drank together, ate together, went on leave together—and fought together. My biggest fear was of being sent on a trip as a ‘spare bod’ with a strange crew.” On the ground, little was asked of bomber aircrew save that they should rest, attend briefings, check and test equipment. At Winter’s 106 Squadron, there was intense resentment when, during a period of poor weather which permitted little flying, aircrew were ordered to muster for a morning jog around the airfield perimeter track. There was even greater fury when they were issued with shovels and told to help clear snow off the runways. They believed, not unreasonably, that enough was asked of them over Germany to merit forbearance on the ground.

If there was a common strand among young men of the wartime generation, whether American, British, German, Russian, it was their passion for flying. They were seized by the romance of escaping from the earth. The air corps was first choice of assignment for millions of disappointed conscripts who finished up in armour, infantry, artillery. Richard Burt, a Liberator gunner from Utah, found that flying above cloud “made you feel as if they had cleaned up the earth . . . it has a peaceful, mind-washing effect on me.” Until he met the enemy, he simply gloried in the aesthetic beauty of the sky.

“I thought a lot about our guys down there on the ground with the army,” said another B-24 gunner, Ira Wells. “We had all the glory. I realised how fortunate we were to be in the air.” Wells was a dentist’s son from Staten Island who volunteered for the air corps in 1943, but realized during training on Piper Cubs that he would never make the grade as a pilot. His crew formed in Lincoln, Nebraska, a wonderful amalgam of Americans at war. There were two Jews, two Catholics and five Protestants. The pilot was from Michigan, the bombardier from Iowa, the top turret gunner from Illinois, waist gunners from Oklahoma and Massachusetts, tail from Ohio; the other three were New Yorkers. “We were