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Message 2 - 'The Sky was Black with Planes' Frank Mee

Posted on: 16 January 2004 by Frank Mee Researcher 241911

Hello Tony,
Thank you for those kind words and I understand the view from your tender age would be vastly different to mine. My upbringing and age grouping made it a surety I would lap up the new excitements like a sponge. It seemed so strange at times to be playing normal games on a village green whilst masses of planes flew around overhead getting into formation to go and bomb other people who had probably been doing the same things as us earlier in the day.
I regret to say it became so common place at the time we hardly looked up from what we were doing apart from cursing the noise they made. That is what war does it dulls your senses and we forgot about those young men above who wondered if they would be coming back. I was told later that the more missions they did the more they felt their number was coming up. They still climbed into the planes though and for me that is a far braver thing to do than some of the things they handed out medals for, in fact they did not hand out many medals at all to Bomber command men.
I often when working in my garden look up and watch the flights coming into Teesside Airport, the old Goosepool Aerodrome, we are almost in line with the main runway and you can see them letting down. I think of those young men who took off and never came back or came back with horrendous injuries. They gave us the chance to have what we have today and I will forever remember them.
I write my stories so that mine and other grandchildren get some insight into what our childhood was like and hope they never ever see anything like it, some hope the way the world is going.
Frank.

Message 3 - 'The Sky was Black with Planes' Frank Mee

Posted on: 18 January 2004 by TerryS

I too remember that evening. I was a child of about 9, staying with my grandparents near Harlow outside London during that part of the war.
The sky was indeed 'full of planes'.
I recall standing outside identifying some of the types of planes. The number of planes, the time it seemd to take for them to fly over and the variety of machines told us that 'Something Big' was going on.
The next day the ´óÏó´«Ã½ announced "One thousand planes over Germany last night".
Whether it was 1000 or not it was certainly a pschylogical boost in light of Air Marshall Goering's boast of "No enemy bomber will fly over the fatherland".
In recent years there has been some severe criticism of allied 'pattern bombing' which included civilian areas!
As far as I am concerned that moral dilemma ceased when German Zeppelins bombed the east end of London during World War I.
Also when the Germans started firing their 'Terror Weapons', the V1, Doodlebug and V2, faster than sound rockets, at Britain, there was no moral dilemma about bombing anything.

Message 4 - 'The Sky was Black with Planes' Frank Mee

Posted on: 18 January 2004 by Frank Mee Researcher 241911

Hello Terry,
Thanks for your kind words. The whole of the east coast must have been overflown by that first thousand bomber raid, it was a sight you never forget.
I never had any qualms about the massed bombing of Germany, they started it so to my youthful mind they deserved what they got. I had relatives in London during the blitz who were in essential warwork so had to stick it out. When I got to London later in the war and saw the damage it was beyond belief, how you Londoners went through that and still remained sane I will never know.
Many thousand bomber raids took place after that first one and in our area they were mainly four engined planes though we did spot some Blenheim and Wellington's among the Lancs and Halifax, they must have scraped everything that would fly into those raids.
Living so close to the aerodromes two within six miles and another ten within twenty miles with even more further into the Vale of York we saw planes every day and would cheer them on their way.
I have read the words of those who tried to say they were mass murderers, in the main they were not there at that time so how can they judge. For two lonely years this country was on its own so when the time came to lash out who are they to judge the morality of it. None of our family including those in the forces at that time ever condemned those raids well not in my hearing so why feel guilt.
Regards Frank.

Message 5 - 'The Sky was Black with Planes' Frank Mee

Posted on: 22 January 2004 by Researcher 552543

Hello Frank - thanks for reply and interesting description of your experiences.

Yes, whenever I think of the bravery of those crews, who went up knowing they had less than a fifty-percent chance of comming back, I'm reduced to tears and find it impossible to imagine myself being able to muster even a fraction of such courage. When later generations come to judge things, they nearly always do so from the moral perspective of their own times. It is difficult for them to imagine the culture, atmosphere and pressures of total war - how it can change your feelings and outlook. In the last war - the Second World War that is - such feelings were strengthened with the knowledge that we were fighting not the Germans as such, but the evils of Nazism. If no other war in history was Just - that one certainly was.

As I have already said, I was too young to remember much detail, but only the traumer of the raids themselves - which I tried, without exageration to describe, since I thought it important to record the memories of a five year old. Even a couple of years, either way, can make a surprising difference as to how you experience things.