Lancaster

I fought my war from five miles up.

I dropped at one time seven or eight tons of bombs on somewhere

came back, had me breakfast, out on the booze the next day

thought nothing of it.

It was totally another world.

But I realised that what I had done was fundamentally wrong.

But the circumstances were such that we did it.

And I can't reconcile those two viewpoints.

I just... I can't reconcile them.

I was 20 years old, very naive.

Didn't have any experience of life at all.

You knew you were facing death all the time.

Night after night, after night, after night.

But it's just a thing you accepted.

A pet aversion of mine

it's what I call retrospective historians.

Even now if I met one, I'd ask them just two questions...

"Were you there, were you personally aware of the circumstances and conditions

of that time?"

The answer to both those questions is no, so keep your bloody mouth shut.

We heard them coming.

We heard the squadrons on their way to bomb our town.

The Lancaster bombers at night.

There's no second prize in a war, you win it or you lose it.

And all we could do in bomber command was to keep on bombing them

and bombing them and bombing them

until someone gives up.

And the Lancaster played a big part in winning the war.

It was the best of its day.

And it brought us back alive.

Today, five squadrons of Royal Air Force Typhoon fighters

are based at Coningsby.

They share the run ways with one of the most iconic aircraft

in British aviation history.

The Lancaster bomber.

It is one of only two that remain airworthy.

Looking back now

I have to tell myself, "did I really fly one of those aeroplanes?"

It's such a long time ago

maybe it's all... Maybe it all happened to someone else

and I'm just making it... making it up.

It's a living thing and it was a living thing.

There were times almost when she spoke to you.

Or you felt she did.

I could still go to her right now and press the right buttons I think.

I'd love to.

Pure nostalgia, pure nostalgia.

Every time I see it in the air I say "God, look at that. Beautiful."

And there's no question about it

it transformed bomber command by its pure operational capacity.

It was an amazing, amazing aircraft.

The Avro Lancaster was a crucial weapon

in winning the war against Hitler.

But before the bomber's arrival, Britain was fighting for survival.

I can still hear it sometimes.

It's a whistle that gets louder and louder and louder

and everything gets darker and darker.

then there was nothing left.

my mum had gone into an Anderson shelter.

When she came out

she just went berserk and she felt the thud in the ground

but of course to see her house gone...

When the London blitz started

I used to stand on the cliff at Whitstable

and could see all the German bombers, hordes of them

coming up the Thames estuary.

They bombed about 22 mile of dockland.

There were all timber wharfs and all that along the Thames

and they set them on fire.

And then they just showered the bombs on the arsenal

Woolwich arsenal.

I was in the auxiliary fire service

and I thought, "well, bugger this".

There was ammunition going off, you know?

Exploding and all that.

I can remember one night

my father and I had to go down the fire escape

because the bombers were so close and I trod on a huge piece of human flesh.

And that was my... I suppose my induction to war.

For eight months, the bombs fell.

London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow and most notoriously, Coventry

were amongst those cities hit.

In all, 43,000 people were killed

I thought, "well, if that's the game we're in

that's the game we're in."

You couldn't be one—sided otherwise it would have been over in no time.

I wanted... always wanted to fly

so I told my dad I wanted to join the air force

and of course he hit the roof.

And I kept nagging my father

to let me join the RAF.

Well, I wanted to be a plotter, one of Churchill's girls.

Pilots training took anything up to a year

navigators about nine months, and gunners about eight weeks.

I thought, "hell, I don't want to miss the war"

so I joined as a gunner.

I think one of the factors is everyone was relatively young.

And of course, when you're young, you want to really have a go at 'em

and I think this was the attitude in many respects.

I was the 39th man to join the Royal Air Force in Jamaica.

We were shipped out

and I remember leaving Jamaica

in the sunset, and seeing Jamaica fade away

and I wondered if I would ever return.

RAF fighter command had saved the country in its hour of need

but in 1941, bomber command was not yet equipped to play its part.

There was no equivalent of the Spitfire in the RAF's bomber squadrons.

Those aircraft they did have were slow and mostly out of date.

We flew in the Wellington bomber.

It had Bristol Pegasus 18 engines and they were not powerful enough.

So the result was that if you lost an engine

there was only one way to go and that was downwards.

Flying at night with no radar, weather conditions as they were

sometime the winds were... Perhaps veered a bit

and you could finish 30 miles off course.

Hello Mac, where are we now? As though you're likely to know.

I can't find where we are.

I'm not surprised at all that a lot of the bombs were way off target.

Left, left.

Steady.

In 1941, if you bombed a target and got within five miles of it

you reckon that was a bloody good hit.

And all the time the German defences were getting stronger.

We went into this knowing that there was going to be losses

and er, we just hoped it wasn't going to be us.

We were caught in a cone of search lights, about 15 lights

and they hammered hell out of us.

My turret was on fire.

Suddenly the navigator said

"look out, Dave, for that fighter on the port quarter"

and of course, went to swing the gun... He chuckles

turret wouldn't move.

God, I could have wept with frustration.

Bombs explode I was useless.

Ok chaps, don't worry. Everything's alright.

Then we were given the orders to bail out.

Anybody hurt?

The wireless operator's copped it.

Once I landed

I came across some buildings, and I thought they were farm buildings

and then a door opened, and a shaft of light shot out

and a voice said "halt!"

And I put my hands up

and it was a building occupied by searchlight crews.

And we were regaled with cognac and coffee.

And I remember one guy saying

"don't worry, the war will soon be over, and our fuhrer will ride on a white horse

up to Buckingham Palace and take occupation."

We said, "wait and see".

David Fraser's captors did not have to wait too long.

In the works were new aircraft that could take the blitz back to Berlin.

I suppose, really, it's ironical that, er...

How the Lanc was developed almost accidentally.

Two of these new bombers, the Stirling and Halifax

were already on order for the RAF.

At aircraft builders Avro

chief engineer Boy Chadwick thought he could do better.

A twin—engined aircraft called the Manchester.

But its Rolls—Royce vulture engines were causing trouble.

They were a completely revolutionary type of design

but it was never successful.

The minute they got airborne they got problems straight away.

Nothing but engine failures, one after another.

Although already in production

the fate of the Manchester hung in the balance.

With the RAF desperate for new bombers, Chadwick suggested a radical solution.

He swapped the two flawed Vultures for four proven Rolls—Royce Merlins

the same engine that powered the Spitfire.

And they were so amazed at the difference in performance

and that's really how the Lancaster developed almost accidentally.

There were six of us, all trainee gunners.

We were in having lunch

when we were told, "right, gentlemen, you're all going back

to such and such a hangar

and they'll be a lot of other air crew there."

And then this was almost out of Monty Python.

They said "well, gentlemen, we've all completed our training

and now we've um, we've got to get together to form crews."

And what we were told then

you pick your own crew.

Well, we thought this was madness.

You had no idea of people's abilities or their background whatsoever.

And we wandered around looking at people and looking at their brevets.

From the brevet on your uniform

it indicated what you were in the crew.

"N" for navigator

"s" for signals or wireless operator, etcetera.

So the first thing you think about is

"how do I find a pilot who is going to get me through the war?"

You had to think a bit about this because you realise "I'm stuck with these guys".

You would think, "gosh, I don't fancy him as a pilot!"

You're going to live or die with them

so you made sure you were going to live.

You'd go around saying, "I'm short of a navigator

would you like to fly with me?"

"We haven't got a rear gunner, let's see if we can find a rear gunner."

And if you liked who you were talking to, you'd offer to go in the crew with them.

If I'd handpicked the best, I couldn't have done better

because we just gelled.

It was like a dating agency in a way.