I'm re-reading the excellent 'Chasing after danger' by Terence O'Brien. He was an Aussie who travelled to the UK in 1939 to join the RAF. He had a story to tell about the (above) Whitley bomber, mentioned earlier in the post on the recruitment magazine of 1939, where it was described as being Britain's 'heavy bomber'.
O'Brien was, at the time of hearing this story, consigned to working in the cookhouse, while waiting for a posting for pilot training. He was at Dishforth, in Yorkshire, from which 10 Sqn was flying Whitleys most nights, to drop leaflets over Germany. (The Germans, of course, were extremely grateful for such geneous supplies of toilet paper.)
There's many 'rear gunner' stories that came out of the war, aren't there? I rather sympathise with them. Many were recruited from ground staff in the early days, who eagerly seized the opportunity for adventure and promotion. Unfortunately rear turrets were cramped, cold... and very dangerous if enemy fighters latched onto the tail. Much to their regret, tail gunners who decided the role was no longer for them, discovered that it was impossible to
un-volunteer themselves. Anyway, the story concerns one such tail-gunner (and I re-hash O'Brien's version mostly into my own words).
On this occasion, a Whitley was returning from France. It was a bitterly cold evening and the aircraft had crossed over the Channel. The gunner, cramped and cold, was no doubt looking forward to landing. Suddenly there was an almighty wrench and the tortured-metal cacophony of impact, followed seconds later by a dazed silence. The tail-gunner realised the aircraft had crash-landed and fearing fire, urgently reversed his turret and exited onto the ground. Then he stumbled to the front of the aeroplane desperate to help his fellow crew members to get out before a fuel tank went up. He could see no one through the perspex, so he entered the fuselage. To his utter astonishment and confusion... there was absolutely no one there!
He later learned the explanation. The Whitley, flying through freezing cloud, had become so iced-up that the pilot could no longer operate the controls. So he ordered the crew to bale-out which, heart-in-mouth, he and they urgently did. What they didn't realise was that the intercom to the tail-gunner had become disconnected. The crew were now gone into the night and the aircraft, locked with ice, flew on at a gently descending angle; the tail-gunner 'blissfully unaware of his appalling solitude'. The plane continued for some minutes before it's doomed encounter with a wide open ploughed field, where 'it belly-flopped with a heavy but not disastrous impact, and after a single stable bounce, slithered through mud and ice to a standstill'.
Apparently, the gunner was made of stern stuff. When O'Brien managed to chat with him in the cookhouse, he denied having been undermined by the experience: 'Frightened?... no not me', he said. 'I was down alright, you see!' And with that, he was off up to the counter for a second helping of breakfast... aircrew being entitled to extra on return from a night-time operation.
(If you're wanting a 'holiday read', O'Brien's book is worth hunting down. 'An extraordinary achievement' was the Times Literary Supplement's conclusion. They weren't wrong. (ISBN 0099874105)