My father (RAF 1936-1962) served in 142 Fairey Battle Sqn in France 1939-40. He recalled that the officers would seldom speak to the lowly LAC gunners who were indeed sometimes given ordinary duties on return from 'joyriding in aeroplanes' as one NCO put it. The hapless LAC gunners were proud of their 'winged bullet' badges but were not even told the target on those early raids. My father's friend Dandy MacLaine survived the Battle and was promoted to Sgt just in time to be killed in his Wellington rear turret as they returned from Germany.
About five years ago our matchless Brevet thread, preserved as a sticky above, carried the story of 19-year-old Rupert Parkhouse, who joined 12 Sqn at Amifontaine in France on June 5 1940, just as the news of Garland and Gray's VCs came through. A week later he was shot down on his second raid, spending the rest of the war in captivity. I'm now preparing another e-book on his experiences, for which long-standing contributor Chugalug has given me the following quote:
“One of the regular attendees at our annual 30 Squadron reunions had been a rear gunner on Fairey Battles in those early months of WWII. Somehow he had survived the suicidal daylight ops against heavy flak and Me109s alike.
"The barrels of our guns would overheat as they engaged attacking fighters, which they duly reported. The solution? Then fire them less often".
A Battle well fought, e-book on the lines of Danny 42C's In with a Vengeance, will be offered on this forum shortly if the mods kindly permit.