By Bomber To Britain Via Atlantic

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 171, 22 July 1941, Page 6

By Bomber To Britain Via Atlantic

TJERE is one of the most thrilling * *• stories of the war—the story of the men who are flying bombers in an unending stream from America to Britain. Reprinted from "Life" magazine, it tells of pilots who made the first flight wearing sports suits, beaver hats, business clothes. They j are Americans, Canadians, Austra-1 lians, New Zealanders, British, Norwegian. The author is a well-known American pilot whose name is withheld at the request of the Canadian j Government. | Across the wintry North Atlantic since November a band of flyers rep-! resenting in nationality a small League of Democratic Nations, has j been flying American bombers from Newfoundland to Britain. Soldiers of Fortune Among the Americans we have former cotton dusters, army and air line men and flyers who once flew bootleg liquor into the States for a living. Although we are flying bombers that will help to bpat Hitler, most of us are soldiers of fortune. Besides expenses, the American pilots are paid 1000 dollars a month, first officers 800 dollars, radio operators 600 dollars. Our job since November has been to fly Lockheed Hudson bombers across the Atlantic. Recently we have begun flying even bigger four-engined Consolidated B-24's. I was in the first flight of j Lockheeds to England. It had few i of the trappings of an historic event. ! It had snowed earlier that day and we spent part of the morning clearing ice and snow from our planes while ploughs swept the great macadam surface of the main runways clean. Ground crews scurried around the planes, checked the 1200 horse-power engines and filled the two extra fuel tanks which each plane carried. Then, R.A.F. Captain Donald C. T. Bennett, in command of our flight in plane No. 1, called us together. He handed each pilot the latest weather reports. Flight plans and route were discussed and agreed upon. To identify ourselves as British to each other, to other planes and ships, each crew was handed a Verey pistol with a combination of variously coloured flares to be changed at hourly intervals. Each plane, likewise, received its secret code number, which also changed hourly. As a result it is almost impossible for a German plane, ship oT radio station to pass itself off as British by code or flare. "Thumbs Up!" In a last word, Bennett cautioned us against flying over ships or towns lest we were fired on by mistake. Then, with a crisp, "Thumbs up, good luck!" he ordered us into our planes. Comic relief was afforded by the sight of the pilots coming out to enplane. Our wool-lined flying suits had not yet arrived, so each man was dressed according to his own sartorial tastes. Some of the men wore business suits, others tweed sports jackets! One Australian wore a beaver hat, and many of the men had ski-ing outfits. We looked as though we were heading for a costume ball instead of a Transatlantic hop. We were too busy inside our planes to see anything, and the noise of our engines was ioo great to hear anything, but a regimental band had come out to serenade us. Thev struck up "Lead Kindly Light," which seemed somewhat sombre for the occasion. "George," the automatic Sperrv Gyro pilot, flies us, but we were kept busy watching Bennett's tail-lights, checking and logging our instruments every half hour and keeping radio and navigation logs in minute detail. About midway across we had a midnight snack of tomato soup, coffee and chocolate bars. Occasionally we rested on our cots. Contrary to some fanciful accounts that have appeared, we did not fly in the stratosphere. At high altitudes we inhaled oxygen through rubber tubes in our mouths. The taste of the rubber was sickening, and on the first trip I vomited three times. Now we use Mayo oxygen masks. Five hours out we ran into heavv clouds and everyone lost track of Bennett. It was every plane for itself the rest of the way, and our plane crossed the ocean first. Although we made bad time after land was sighted, we set an over-water transatlantic record of 8 hours 57 minutes. After delivering the bomber to Britain I came back to Canada by boat. Soon we will be ferried back on transport planes and by the summer, with better weather and more planes, each of us should be flying the Big Pond three or four times a month. Our greatest need is more pilots, navigators and radio men. The base at Newfoundland is an airman's paradise. It is the world's greatest but least publicised airport built within the past three years with an eye to future use as a great peacetime transatlantic terminus. Australian Leader The most respected man in the outfit is 33-year-old Australian-born Captain Bennett. He holds the world's long-distance record for seaplanes—6ooo miles, from Scotland to South Africa. He is a licensed pilotnavigator engineer, radio operator, and author of some of the best aviation textbooks ever written. I have never known a better all-round flyer My second transatlantic flight began about Christmas. When we were out six and a half hours everyone lost sight of Bennett in a cloudbank. Each pilot flew the rest of the way alone, and as this was the second time the flight group had become separated we now always make the entire trip solo. After losing sight of Bennett outplane cruised, sometimes at a great height, and at other times skimmed the tops of the waves at 50ft. When we were two hours from one of the spots towards which we were heading we received a radio report that Germans were bombing the neighbourhood. Accordingly we changed destination and soon were taxi-ing down at a British base. The ground crew had not been told to expect us, but these transatlantic • hops have already become so un(eventful that when I stepped out the l ground staff just said "Hello." Then they rolled the plane away and I sent my wife the customary cable: "One hundred per cent crossing." Flying bombers across is done almost as nonchalantly as this. The Lockheeds are fitted with every imaginable safety device, including flotation gear. By pressing n button the door in the cabin pops off and an inflated four-man rubber dinghy with paddles falls floorward. We have so far had no need to press this button. For not. one pilot spanning the Big Pond has yet had au accident, over the ocean or had a •brush with a German.