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This story is submitted to the People’s War site by a member of Market Harborough Branch, Royal British Legion on behalf of Tony Johnson and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Jornson fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Hazards of Aircrew Training
By Tony Johnson, ex- Wop/AG (Wireless Operator/Air Gunner), RAF

From time to time, when passing Gartree Prison, that blot on the rural landscape, I am reminded that it stands on the site of a World War II Royal Air Force aircrew training establishment, No.14 Operational Training Unit (OTU), Bomber Command. It was one of seventeen such units located about the Midlands, with two more in Morayshire, Scotland.

With few exceptions, all air crew trainees took a three months course of training with one of these OTUs before joining an operational squadron. A rooky pilot and crew invariably flew a clapped out Wellington, Whitley or Hampden twin-engined bomber, which was prone to all sorts of malfunctions after being discarded by operational squadrons. Flying during the winter months did tend to get the adrenaline flowing in full spate following a flying incident which we referred to as a ‘shaky do’. Who needed laxatives?
Statistics show that during the period of World War II, OTUs suffered the loss of 1,619 aircraft, the majority of which were Wellingtons. A mental calculation, assuming in most cases a five-man crew, would give some idea of the terrible loss of life sustained in aircraft were well past their best before date. In addition, a total of 212 aircraft and crews were lost as a result of operational duties carried out from these units. The year 1943 was a particularly bad one, as a total of 558 aircraft were lost to OTUs.

In December 1942, after completing my wireless and gunnery courses, which took a total of two years, the theory of wireless telegraphy and morse code training being the most time-consuming of aircrew trades, I reported to 22 OTU at Wellesbourne Mountford, Warwickshire. No sooner had I managed to get ‘crewed up’ with four other likely lads, than the Signals Officer talked me into collecting my kit and to report forthwith to the Unit’s satellite airfield at Gaydon, a few miles away. A crew, well advanced in training, had suddenly found themselves without a Wop/AG (Wireless Operator/Air Gunner).

From what I was able to gather, the lad had formed the conclusion that flying was not really for him after all. Most likely stressed out of his mind, he had been quickly hustled off the station overnight ‘to prevent him from contaminating other pupils’, and to carry the grossly unfair stigma of LMF - lack of morale fibre.

Thus, after no more than three weeks of test flights and exercises ‘bombing’ London, Manchester and other cities - and much nervousness from time to time - I joined 427 RCAF Squadron at Croft, North Yorkshire, following a week’s leave. During my comparatively short stay at 22 OTU, the veteran instructors in the various aircrew trades were, to use a present day expression, my ‘role models’. Having completed at least one tour of thirty operations over enemy territory, and wearing their well-worn battledresses, many with distinguished flying medals, they had been ‘screened’, or rested. They now had to virtually place their lives on the line once again to train one ‘sprog’ crew after another for a period of about six months before resuming their operational flying duties. Some showed the strain and were unkindly labelled as ‘flak happy’ or ‘round the bend’. Nevertheless, despite these uncalled for names, none were more experienced and professional in the air and over enemy territory. I am privileged to count two of such veteran instructors as my longtime friends, having first met them in 1943 in German prisoner-of-war camps. These were Stalag Luft 1, at Barth Vogelsang, on the Baltic Coast east of Lubeck, and Stalag-Luft VI at Gross Heydekrug, situated in what was then East Prussia and close to the border with Lithuania.

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