‘The Squadron had several new pilots now, including another American, Nicky Knilans, a droll youngster from Madison, Wisconsin, with precisely the quality of nervelessness that Cheshire wanted in 617. Knilans had already done about twenty trips with 619 Squadron and been in strife on nearly every one of them. Several times on the way to the target he had had engines shot out, and more shells had ripped chunks out of his aircraft, but he had always pressed on and bombed and had a D.S.O. to commemorate that laudable habit. Once his rear gunner had been cut in two by a night fighter, and it was such a terrible mess that, when they landed back at base, the ambulance driver who met them had had hysterics and largely left it to the nerveless Knilans to get the remains out of the turret.
Knilans had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force before America came into the war and had just recently been transferred. Now a '’Lootenant’ in the U.S. Air Force, he wanted to stay and finish his tour in the R.A.F., and had a row with his crew when he had them posted with him (without telling them) to 617. They claimed it was a suicide squadron, but, as Knilans pointed out, few people on 619 had ever finished a tour either, so it didn’t make much difference. The crew was even more unhappy when Knilans suddenly seemed to develop into an exceedingly hamfisted pilot. He was given a new aircraft, ‘R Roger’, when he joined 617 and could not make his usual three-point landings any more; even the take-offs were frightening, as ‘R Roger’ seemed most reluctant to leave the ground, and when she did leave climbed like a tired duck. ‘Give the game away, Nicky,’ one of his gunners said. ‘You’re getting flak-happy. You can’t even fly any more.’
‘Doggone, it’s not me,’ said the badgered American. ‘It’s this bloody-minded aircraft. You don’t have to fly it, you have to understand the son of a bitch.’
At length, the causes of R Roger’s terrifying tendencies were ascertained. Paul Brickhill’s The Dambusters, continues:
‘On 1 June Avro experts fitted new automatic pilots in the Lancasters for the D-Day operation, and Nicky Knilans at last found out why his much-cursed ‘R Roger’ flew like a lump of lead. They found it needed longer elevator cables than the others, inspected to find out why and discovered that the elevators had been put on upside down at the factory. Knilans had been flying it for months like that and, as Cheshire said, ‘Only you and God, Nicky, know how you stayed up.’
‘Not me, sirrrr,’ Knilans said in his American drawl ... ‘Only God. I didn’t know.' At any rate he was very relieved, but not so much as his crew. ‘R Roger’ had so often frightened them.’