After being involved in 23 raids, he took part in a raid in late 1943 as a Lancaster tail gunner – he thought it was over Dresden but wasn’t sure. Whatever, his plane was badly damaged on the raid and limped back to Lincolnshire on two engines. One of the Luftwaffe tactics at the time was to send their night fighters to hang around our home aerodromes and wait for the bombers returning home. Naturally, after a long and dangerous mission, this would be the time when the bomber crews were tired, least vigilant and most susceptible to such tactics. And this is what happened to my father’s Lancaster as it tried to land on two engines. After being machine gunned, the plane nose dived and crashed short of the runway. As far as the fire crews at the scene were concerned, no-one could have survived the inferno. It was not until first light the following morning that the tail of the Lancaster was found lying in a field a half mile from the crash site. My father was still alive but deeply unconscious, and still strapped in his seat behind his machine guns.

He remained unconscious in hospital for some two weeks, slowly coming round, and was finally discharged three months after the crash. After a further three months recuperation he returned to his squadron but was deeply traumatised by his experience, so much so that he could go nowhere near an aircraft without breaking down.

He was examined by the squadron medical officer who referred him to a civilian psychiatrist. I still find the diagnosis that was made by that unempathetic psychiatrist deeply and disgustingly offensive – LMF – lack of moral fibre !!

Fortunately for my father, the squadron leader intervened immediately and quashed the psychiatrist’s diagnosis. As a flying man himself the squadron leader knew exactly what my father had been through and understood his predicament. Dad was retrained as a gunnery instructor and spent the rest of the war teaching youngsters the intricacies of aircraft guns.

Barrie Davies

10^th June 2008