When the Fight Starts the Rear Gunner Takes Over.

Camp News, Volume 3, Issue 139, 11 September 1942, Page 2

When the Fight Starts the Rear Gunner Takes Over.

By

In the life of every air gunner may i come a brief few seconds when he jumps to the position of General of the Air. ■ Short though his command may be, those few seconds are packed with thrills and danger, with sudden death for the loser. Now R.A.F. tactics give him his temporary promotion. When a day bombing raid is made now, a rear gunner of the flight becomes the leading air gunner. He comes into his command when enemy fighters attack, not only as General, but as broadcaster and huntsman as well. He takes command of all the planes in the flight. He gives them and his own pilot a commentary on the attack and directions to meet it. The, jargon he uses is borrowed from the Navy and the hunting field, in an odd mixture. ’'Tally-ho” he calls over the radio-tele-phone. "Tally-ho. Bandits 1,000 yards up on the red beam. Turning in now . . . 800 yards ... 600 yards. Stand by to go to-' port . . . Go!” In tight formation the planes > wheel together, to turn on the attackers their maximum combined fire power. The 'guns start their harsh chatter, the bullets rip into the bodies of the enemy fighters. “Breaking away to green beam,” calls our leading air-gunner (red and green indicate, Navy fashion, port and starboard). “Breaking away .'. . attach broken . . . over.” His pilot takes command again, and our general is an air-gunner once more in his transparent turret at the end of the plane. The attack may have lasted less than a minute, but to meet it he underwent months of rigorous training, and he must be alert. “Tail-end Charlie,” as he is called

in the “Daily Mirror.”

in the RAF, sees the air war backwards from his turret. He’s a Jack-of-all-trades — publicised — but doing a great job. He gets Bs. 3d. a day, a half-wing on the breast, and the most uncomfortable ride of all the plane’s crew. Every movement of the plane’s nose is accentuated by the tail planes. While he’s bumping up and down, he’s also swinging from side to side in his rotating turret. • > ■ That powered turret is his great blessing. While on a flight he keeps it continually traversing, so that no fighter can creep up on his blind side. The sight of that turret with its wicked looking guns has been enough to frighten off many an attack, without the gunner opening fire. But he is tightly cramped in his egg-shaped cage, and suffers intensely from the cold. 'He cannot move from his post from start to finish of a flight, yet all those hours of alert expectancy may lead to no action at all. His one consolation then is the grandstand view he gets of the fireworks when the bombs scream down to the target. , “Tail-end : Charlie” learns ■ three trades —wireless operation, gunnery, and photography, with a- smattering of hydraulic engineering for his turret. He may need all three on one tripor none of them. Searching the skies at night is not as easy a task as it sounds. Staring into blackness, the eyes are liable to fix-focus on. one plane, missing anything beyond or in front of this range. But in our new.giant bombers the gunners are getting more action. Huge as these planes are, they are highly manoeuvrable, and in many a combat it is the enemy fighter who goes down in flames from the air gunner’s fire. “Tail-end Charlie” is starting to notch up his “kills.”