Just Another Day at 96 Squadron

Just Another Day at 96 Squadron. RAF Cranage

by Pete Smith and Joe Bamford

Tom Smith

The young Pilot Officer Tom Smith arrived on 96 Squadron in September 1941, after being posted from 60 O.T.U. at East Fortune. He was posted in with a number of officers and senior N.C.O.s who had been on the same course, including his good friend John Birbeck who was killed in a tragic accident a year later.

“A few scribbled pages that Tommy wrote at the end of a day, when he was with 96 Sqn.”

I waken luxuriously in my comfortable white covered bed to see the sunlight streaming thro’ the window where the blue blackout curtain has been pushed back the night before.

I look at my watch: 12 midday.

For nearly a month now I have been getting used to sleeping from 4 am till noon and have almost got used to it now.

The rest of the gang sleep whenever they get off duty, but I’ve been patiently forcing nature off her course so I won’t get tired on duty.

I turn on my face and doze and wait the familiar morning happenings.

The batman (who handles four of us) clumps into the hut looks at the time on my door, comes in and clanks about, filling the tin jug by whose inadequate aid I am supposed to wash in the equally inadequate tin basin in the corner of my narrow wooden room.

He goes out with my tunic from behind the door and my shoes from below the bed , and I quietly and lazily debate with my half conscious self whether to wake up and do some foot pedalling or back arching exercises to trim up the old frame before he comes back to disturb me.

Deciding to have a bath I roll out of bed, scuff into my sandshoes (saved from ranks’ days) and run a hand over my bristly chin before the mirror, then don my woolly dressing gown and flying boots, collect my odds and ends, take down the mirror and sally forth into the sunlight with it under my arm.

It is a short walk to the brick bathhouse, and the neat officers from station H.Q. and the equally neat youths of the observer school on their way to lunch politely ignore me with my lousy hair, and sleep disfigured face.

There is a fresh wind and the Anson’s of the school are climbing overhead into a sky of scattered cloud.

First clear day for weeks.

Sometime later while dressing Mac, who lives one block up comes in, to say ‘he shall accompany me to lunch’ and deplores my laziness at not being up sooner.

He has really come to tell me about his new girlfriend with a frightful name, Anastasia or something, whom he met on his last leave and has been escorting ever since.

Mac is lucky, living only thirty miles away and being in 3 flight he gets home every second night and stays the day as well.

Now he is upset because his mother doesn’t like Anastasia, who was a ‘Cochrane’s young lady’ but is now a nurse.

He knows I won’t laugh at him and wants to air his grievance, and I kid him along, for I know he’ll get over it and forget before the week is out.

A good lad is ‘Mac’, just a bit juvenile where girls are concerned, but with a very wise mother.

It’s a sound lad that listens to his mother after a year in the R.A.F.

We dutifully wear our gasmasks walking to the mess and pick up George at the writing room and so to lunch.

The squadron sits at one table no matter how many are present, for there is a great dislike between these operational squadron men and the schoolteacher kiwis and stiff necks of the school, which cuts both ways.

The food is adequate (just), the cloth clean, the service not too bad if you handle the waiters firmly enough.

After lunching and listening to the news in the smoke filled anteroom, full of officers sitting or standing in groups, and drinking foul coffee, some of us head for flights.

I don my rompers (battledress) and after some strenuous cranking get my little Morris started despite its over advanced ignition and off we go out the main gate groaning under the weight of F/O Pelham Toll the smug smiling intelligence officer who never makes mistakes at his job but is a fearful bore to listen to.

Also John, and my gunner Andy.

We tour round outside the boundary of the drome, the little car roaring merrily thro’ a broken silencer, down a country lane past the field where the Anson’s are mostly parked along the edge of the drome hedged with barbed wire and so to our dispersal at the other side of the great field where the squadron has its being.

Hawker Hurricane

Here there is a shaggy birch wood, which conceals the squadron H.Q. offices and the stores and cookhouse. A paddock containing two cannon Hurricanes and three Daffys, and the flight huts on the field itself with the dispersed black Defiants nosing to wind.

Boulton Paul Defiant

There is a trip authorised for me in the book, so I sign up put on my helmet and sling my chute over my shoulder, then shout to the man at the telephone thro’ my open mask from permission from group to take off.

As I head for the machine, the mechanic jumps in and starts pumping, the other squats by the battery starter.

‘Contact’.

The airscrew grinds round; she kicks, balks, spews flame out of the exhaust stubs, then breaks with a roar.

Andy walking ahead of me in his parasuit looks exactly like a green backed soft-shelled turtle even to his little white tail, which he is supposed to clip to the seat.

He climbs into the turret with much ratchet scraping and hissing of air while I clip up my shoot, then into the cockpit vacated by the Mechanic who helps with the Sutton harness.

Strapped in, I run round the clocks and knobs, then at a sign the two mechanics jump up on the tail and sit with heads bowed into the blast while the roaring engine gets full throttle.

Throttle back, the noise dies, the blower whistles down the scale and chocks waved away as we trundle out

There are Oxfords landing and taking off all over the place, with pupils from Shawbury using the drome, but we jockey for a clear spot, then into the wind, then turn up the wick and we go.

There is a gathering of speed, a smell of exhaust gases in the cockpit, a lurching run which evens out to smoothness, and we are airborne on the rather tedious business of flying to valley.

The wheels are up, and the radio comes to life in my ears with a ‘Hello, Tom’, test from the ground station and the set course.

Andy sings and I tunelessly accompany him as we crawl across the map, across Wales and its hills and lakes.

I point out Conway Bridge and Castle and the training ship, then we drop down over the Menai to the comparatively flat land of Anglesey and look for the drome.

It proves to be right on the seacoast, and we wheel above the white breakers and land on a fine new runway into a strong breeze from the sea.

I had a good look at the layout before landing, for the reason of the visit was in case I did a cross country to, or from, valley, that night.

There were ‘Beaus’ and ‘Daffys’ dispersed about the drome which was only in the making, as well as steamrollers, trucks, heaps of stones for making taxiing hazardous.

I went round the perimeter track and took straight off again, just ahead of John coming on the same job. He stayed to tea.

It was rather a treat to be on runways again, tho’ the wind was slightly across.

I climbed at a set rate, and noted that I’d have to climb faster in the dark as I was too close too those jagged Welsh hills for comfort on a dark night.

They looked threatening enough by day, black and wreathed in cloud.

On the way back we attacked two Anson’s and a Henley Rowing machine, for practice, tho’ I don’t suppose they appreciated such keenness and also practised having Andy get homing on the R/T for me in case my mike should ever pack up.

For in the dark with no means of getting in touch we would have no means of getting down unless I had loads of petrol or excellent visibility conditions.

I hop in the car with Andy and off we buzz round the outside of the drome again to tea.

The officers all have tea in the writing room, and there they are all schoolteachers, admin men, the three WAAFS and the rather dissipated looking pilots who fly the training navigators about. (They do fancy landings and take offs in the Anson’s, but the rest of the boys say ‘they’re the sort who never go on ‘ops’ at any price despite their line’). Also the andemic youngsters straight from the S.F.T.S. who are here to train as ground navigational instructors. It’s rough on them, but the one who confided in me said he’d go nuts if they made an instructor of him; he’d joined to fly and fight.

Sounded very childish, maybe he’s a better ground instructor.

I come in for some dirty looks from the admin bosses adj. while getting my tea from the urn, cos(sic) I’m waring battledress, which they frown on.

Another case of stiff-necked school v. ops.

Sandwiches down I pick up the ‘wee chaps’, Andy and Doug, Mac’s gunner, and so back to dispersal.

I was only due to do a night flying test (of instruments, radio transmitter, engine, in fact every thing) but got roped in to do the Manchester Gun loop.

So at 6 we take off amid the Oxfords, which are setting off home, and climb to ‘Angels 10’ above the drome. We pass a then patchy layer of cloud at 4000ft. and thereafter the air is smooth and keen.

The drome becomes a greener patch in the green patchwork mottled with cloud: the engine drones, a background to Andy’s distorted whistling and we climb on into the clear gold fading to blue sky with the sun ablaze on the port beam.

The controller called me like the voice of conscience in my ears and we had a ‘vector’ for Manchester .

Now it is really monotonous just droning along at lowest reasonable boost, a constant speed airscrew coarsened to the lowest revs that will charge the alternators, and in weak mixture just save on petrol.

Periodically ‘the voice’ asks for a fixing transmission, which I give by merely switching my transmitter on and answering, then off.

Then ‘the voice’ gives us a new course to steer, so that we do predetermined runs round the city, to give the guns and predictors a chance to prove their accuracy or otherwise.

I concentrate on practising steering dead accurate courses at a fixed height, which is none too easy, for when the heavy machine starts to lose height you have to overcorrect to stop her.

Here is a flat-based sugarloaf cloud ahead under whose ‘apron’; dark and forbidding blackness shrouds the dimming landscape.

At my height I just go through one of the cloud heads, like heaped lather on top, and tho’ I’m only in it for twenty seconds, my curved windscreen is covered half an inch thick with hoar frost!

Doesn’t seem to be sticking anywhere else, but I alter height to be well above it, and Andy notes the change in the log he keeps of our heights, courses and times.

Have to watch that big cloud (12000ft. of it) going home. It’ll be darned icy in the middle, and in the dark too; don’t fancy it.

Round and round the square ‘box’ we cruise while the ‘golden west’ pales to greenish pink shading to leaden above, then blue black and star touched in the east, leaving only some very high cloud above the still orange flecked.

The oxygen from my mask smells faintly (of rubber tube I expect) and makes my eyes nip.

At last instead of another course ‘the Voice’ gives me a vector for home.

Thank God. I’m nearly stiff with cold.

I close the throttle and lose height as I go, at nearly 1500ft. a minute.

It gets darker as we go down, till by the time I have skirted the big Cumulus Nimbus cloud, I see the read beacon flashing its letters from a pit of complete darkness.

I go over to another button and call our own ground station and get a check bearing from them then spiral down to 15000ft. I’m lucky, or clever, or something for I see the flare path immediately (always do).

My mike has cut out due to the rapid descent (must find out why it does that), so I flash Andy a green on the call lights.

He catches on, and stows the guns forward while I flash my downward light for permission to land, still circling the drome.

A green Aldis lamp flashes, surprisingly bright, from the ground, and Andy has seen it too.

Then the usual stuff. Wheels down going downwind, the green lights check them locked. Mixture too rich; enough brake pressure? Yes, tons; turn across wind. Flaps down, throttle right back, pitch to fully fine, all set. Hell! I boobed that time, forgot my nav lights!

Better late than never. We’re in the green sector of the glide path indicator now and the turn brings us dead in line with the flare path.

A little cross wind, but the port wing down a little will compensate and half the view too. Bit more throttle. Speed Ok.

‘All set to land Andy?’

‘OK Tom.’

He has his turret open now and will be braced with crossed arms against the ‘piano’.

Motoring right down now.

The line of lights appears end on.

The green one turns yellow suddenly as I flatten out and leave the green sector throttle right back just floating above the ground now (at 90 miles an hour) and the flare whips past to port. Then another. Should be touching now. Back, back, right back with the stick, whoops don’t get high now.

A slight bump, but she lifts again: ‘whump-a-dump’! She’s down now and touring along: check the swing, give ‘er the brakes. We slow down and stop just short of the totem pole. Good show. Flaps up and out of here.

We taxi leisurely down the other side of the flares and then to where a torch is flashing in the dark, which proves to be an airman by the starter battery, round which we swing and stop.

Pull the slow running control and the old engine speeds up a bit then stops firing.

The prop swings and grates round a bit and all is still. Switches off!

We both climb out and jump down stiffly.

The various trades want to know if the machine is ok then clamber all over it for the interflight inspection.

‘Thank the Lord, that is over’.

You said it.

‘Jeez, what a ---- bind’.

Which shows you how monotonous it is, as we plod through the mud with our chutes towards the dispersal hut, a tractor clatters by towing a bowser to refuel the bus then, she’s all set for take off again.

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When Pete (his son) was going through Tommy’s log book he worked out that he would have had 250plus flights with 96 Squadron, 170+ would have been on Defiants, plus another 70-80 of which 60+ were on Beaufighters, all completed by mid August 1942.

Bristol Beaufighter

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In late 1944 he was posted to 23 Squadron at Little Snoring, flying Mosquitos. Ironically, Tom was posted to 23 Squadron just after another former 96 Squadron pilot, Squadron Leader Rabone, had been shot down. On 16 January Tom suffered a similar fate when his aircraft was hit by flack whilst flying near the German air base at Fassberg and although he survived, his navigator, Flying Officer Cockayne was killed.‘Cocky’ as Tom called him was reluctant to bale out but Tom ordered him but he was killed probably because they were too low.Despite being badly injured in the crash, Tom carried the heavy burden of Cocky’s death around with him. It was clearly not his fault and the decision to tell him to get out was made instinctively on the spur of the moment in an attempt to save Cocky’s life. When the German’s buried Flying Officer Cockayne in the cemetery at Fassberg, so great were Tom’s injuries that they dug another grave by the side of it, as they were convinced that he too would soon die.The ‘Great Reaper’ was denied one of his prizes on that occasion and a German guard later gave Tom a photo of the two graves (one left open), which he carried around with him. After he was repatriated Tom spent a long time undergoing medical care and rehabilitation at various hospitals under the guidance of Archie McIndoe and Tom became a celebrated member of ‘The Guinea Pig Club’. Good came out of bad because while he was in hospital Tom met his wife Joy who was one of the nurses who he admitted, he used to tease rotten!

Acknowledgements and thanks to Pete Smith and Joe Bamford

Aircraft graphics courtesy of Air of Authority website .

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