Night-time Circuits and Bumps - February 1942

February 1942 found my Grandfather, Howard Kelsey, taking on a very busy training schedule of both day and night training flights on the same date. Indeed, on the 4th Feb., P/O Street had to endure two hours of "circuits and bumps" with my Grandfather, in the open cockpit of a Tiger Moth, on a freezing February night! I just hope he passed this section of his training.

The day flying hours were indicated in the Log book in black ink and the night hours were in red ink. I'm not sure if this sudden increase in night-flying was due to my Grandfather's future ambitions, or due to the fact that the RAF was undertaking far more night operations at this phase of the war, due to the high levels of daylight casualties among RAF crews. Either way, it must have been incredibly uncomfortable and highly dangerous trying to take off and landing in complete darkness.

I have to thank another RAF pilot, Dudley Steynor, who was also a flying trainer for 21 EFTS at the same time as my Grandfather,  for writing a blog with his reminiscences of his time at RAF Booker. This blog includes some more great stories and also gives further evidence of the high calibre of person that would be influencing the behaviour of my Grandfather who was still a very young, impressionable man. Dudley Steynor was not only an RAF pilot, but also an accomplished pianist. It seems that many of the RAF trainers  had more than one string to their bow. From his blog I learned some more of the daily life of a Pilot trainer at RAF Booker;

"Booker airfield was all grass in those days, and we took off and landed into wind.  We commenced flying at 8.00am and flew until 12.30 or 1.00, had some lunch in the mess and returned to our flying at about 2.00pm.  At 6.00pm we left the flying to the night boys.  Those of us who were flying that night would finish day flying a bit early or might go straight on to night flying and have the following morning off.  A busy life but I loved it.  There were plenty of challenges to be mastered for we flew in all weathers compatible with the aircraft we flew, Tiger Moths and Magisters.  I think most of us became extremely good pilots – as Cecil (Sagittarius Rising) Lewis wrote in his book “All my Yesterdays” ‘There is nothing like instructing for improving one’s flying’."

I also learned from Dudley's blog the rudimentary way that trainee pilots were taught night flying;

"I had many good pupils and rarely failed to get them up to solo flying. I remember one interesting case of a pupil I had to fail on account of his night flying.  The glide indicator at the beginning of the approach used three lights – green, amber or red. If you were too high you saw Amber, if you were too low you saw Red and Green was the correct one.  The Amber meant closing the throttle to lose some height.  The Red meant open the throttle further until you could see Green. This pupil consistently closed the throttle when the red light appeared and I am pretty sure he had no suicide tendencies. He passed all tests for colour blindness. Once when we were three miles away over the valley above Wycombe and the red light showed I had time to ask him ‘What colour do you see?’  He answered ‘Red’.  ‘And what does that mean?’  ‘We are too low’ and he opened the throttle a little which I immediately increase to full throttle and hoped I was not too late!"

I'm not sure what he means by "glide indicator", whether this was a light on the instrument panel, or a light shone from the ground. If you know, I would be interested to hear from you.

From my Grandfather's Log book, during a busy January and February 1942, the following pupils were trained by him in Tiger Moths;

LAC Bunday      LAC Warnes     LAC Walker    LAC Bailey

P/O Arnell      LAC Osborn     LAC Reeve     LAC Waters

LAC Thornton    LAC Warmsley   LAC Dorsie    LAC Bubb

LAC Charman     LAC Crighton   LAC Nash      LAC Robinson

LAC Ault        LAC Wigley     P/O Street    F/Lt Riddell

P/O Barlow      LAC Gray       LAC Geeson    LAC Johnston

LAC McCarthy    F/O Wheatley   P/O Arts.

If you think any of these young men are your relatives, I would be happy to send you a scan of their page from the Log Book.

The war at this time heralded more bad news for Britain with the fall of Singapore to the Japanese resulting in the capture of over 60,000 allied prisoners. We know now how unlikely it was that they would survive the Japanese POW camps. Also the Japanese bombed Darwin, Australia. 

Meanwhile the war in Europe was taking a sinister turn when the "Area Bombing Directive" of 14th February 1942 allowed the RAF to start bombing industrial towns and "dehousing" the German population. In other words, bombing women and children. So much for the moral high ground!

Finally, terrible news was filtering through of atrocities being carried out on Russian prisoners of war by the Wehrmacht, following Operation Barbarossa. Of over 3.6 million Soviet Prisoners of War taken in late 1941 to early 1942, nearly all of them were dead. The attempted annihilation of Bolshevism, and ethnic cleansing of "Asiatics" and "Transcaucasians" by order from Nazi high command meant that prisoners were starved, left out in the snow to freeze to death , or simply shot in huge numbers.

Russian POW's 1941

Britain and Russia Together

Here's a question that's going to divide opinion - Who or what saved Britain from losing the Second World War?

No, not Churchill. No, not the Americans. Not the Spitfire, nor the English Channel. It was Stalin and the Russians.

This is not just my opinion but, in 1940's Britain, it was the view of most of the British populace too. During the War, membership of the British Communist Party more than doubled, from 17,756 in September 1939 to 45,435 by March 1945.

Once Russia had been invaded in Operation Barbarossa, the British government was not slow in using propaganda to encourage the British to embrace their new ally. Stalin, the 'man of Steel' was portrayed as 'Uncle Joe', the cuddly leader who was going to keep us safe in our beds.

There's a nice clip of a wartime film called "Tawny Pipit" which shows the Russians being applauded for helping us in the war. Actually, it's a great film and worth watching in full because it contains lots of "messages" about the way we should behave and the perils of leaving ourselves unguarded from '5th columnists'.

The Internationale - "Tawny Pipit"

Here's a link to the full film "Tawny pipit"

The fact that Russia was now on 'our side' would not have gone amiss to my twenty-one year old newly qualified R.A.F. pilot, proudly Socialist, Grandfather, Howard Kelsey. He would have been elated that the political and military left was rising up to confront the Nazis at last. His early attraction to Russia and Communism was to remain with him all his life, despite the Cold War and the atrocities and purges carried out by Stalin that were revealed after the Berlin wall came down. He was learning to write in Russian and had a Russian pen-pal up until the time he lost his eyesight in his eighties. His political views were very important to him, but they did not make for an easy life. Indeed, with the anti-Communist atmosphere and McCarthyism in the late 1950's, his political stance would end his career in the R.A.F. with a great deal of acrimony.

Whatever we think about Stalin, there is no doubt that Russia had to confront the vast majority of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, and the Russian people lost over 20 million people to the carnage. This fact is terrible enough, but made worse by the news that the Western leaders will snub the 70th V.E. day celebrations in Moscow this year. Guardian link to Moscow Snub We never learn!