Tim Sunter's family history

A web log of my family history research

Keith Harper’s RAF record – Ian Meredith’s notes

Our cousin Ian (one of Frank’s son) emigrated with the family to Australia in the 1920s.

He became a pilot with Qantas and has an interest in the RAF in the second world war.

As part of the quest to find a photograph of Keith I contacted Ian at the beginning of the year.  Unfortunately, although the family remember seeing a photograph of Keith and Fred’s wedding, it seems to have been thrown away when Olive moved into her home.  Olive is alive and well at the age of 93 now, although her short term memory is giving her problems.

I sent a copy of Keith’s war record to Ian.  He responded with some fantastic information which I give verbatim below:

 

Hi Tim, It doesn’t seem like three months to me either….thanks very much for the info ,I find it very interesting.

You did very well with the abbreviations…

1 ACRC = number 1 Aircrew Reception Centre

I ITW should have read 1 ITW I’d say = number 1 Initial Training Wing

AS stands for Air Station ( an African peculiarity of the time)

MAFD I hate to say has me stumped for the moment

A/C school was an error on the writers part I’d suggest it should have been A/G school (airgunner school)

LFS = Lancaster Finishing School, OTU’s usually had obsolete or war weary aircraft as training machines, I’d say Keith’s crew trained up on Short Stirlings at OTU, they were then posted to an LFS before going to a Lanc squadron.

I don’t suppose his logbook was amongst the documents you have?…I was curious how many operations the crew had flown on.

To say that they were unfortunate given the fact that the war would be over in a little over a fortnight is something of an understatement; also losses to enemy action were very low by that stage as the Germans had little or no airforce left and they flew over friendly territory most of the way to the target as the ground forces advanced….compared to 1942 to mid 1944 when losses averaged 3 to 5% per raid. Aircrew were required to carry out 30 trips to complete a "tour" of ops, it doesn’t take a mathematician to work out their chances of survival. The casualty rate at OTU’s often neared that of the operational squadrons…mainly due to a combination of the English weather and the inexperience of the crews. Most aircrew were sent overseas for initial training to the blue skies of Canada, the U.S. and Africa, where they could be churned out in huge numbers without the hindrance of too many weather delays.

The downside of all that was they came back and suddenly had to learn to fly in very poor weather in the minimum of time, with the inevitable result. As a pilot I can feel only acute sympathy for them, the majority of the pilots had only about 300hrs total flying time by the time they were posted to a squadron in command of a 4 engine bomber  with a crew of 6 others. The average age was about 22.

On the subject of engine failures…they barely rated a mention given the urgency of the times. The Lanc was powered by the legendary Rolls Royce Merlin, a brilliant engine but like everything else at the time they were pushed to the limit and sometimes beyond….squadron commanders were under huge pressure to dispatch as many aircraft per raid as possible.

Under normal peacetime conditions an engine failure on takeoff, while no laughing matter would have been well within the performance capabilities of the Lanc to continue climbing…but these aircraft were loaded way way above that to maximise the bomb load, an engine failure while the aircraft was still "dirty" (wheels down, take off flap extended)  would have been curtains.. crews used to hold their breath until they had the undercarriage up and about 1000ft of air beneath them…then they had a fighting chance…they’d be able to get out over the coast and dump a good proportion of the bomb load into the North Sea and make a safe return, which many did.

I checked the targets for 24th April ’45, they would have been taking off to attack a place called Bad Oldesloe, a smallish town southwest of Lubeck to support the advancing ground troops. The aircraft they were flying, serial number NF955, was about 4 months old and had come new to 218 in Dec ’44.

This brings up another interesting point…throughout the war the R.A.F. never counted aircraft that crashed in the u.k. either departing or returning from an operation  in the official losses for a particular raid, no other aircraft were lost on Keith’s raid, so the official record states that 110 Lancasters attacked the Bad Oldesloe railyards without loss. I suspect it was done to prevent public unrest had they announced the true rate of losses on some of the raids (one night in Dec 1943 about 25 Lancs and Halifaxes crashed in England on their return from Berlin due to fog and low fuel…many with the loss of the crew..but only the missing aircraft were counted as losses).

This has always seemed strange to me; Keith and his crew (quite rightly) are listed as being Killed In Action….yet they don’t appear in the losses for the raid. Had they been taking off on a training flight…(or any other non operational flight), they would have been listed as Killed On Active Service.

Anyway…hope I haven’t bored you to death, but you made the fatal error of coming up with about the only subject on earth I actually know much about….lol.

I asked mom today if she remembered the day war was declared and walking home with Freda, and she said she did.

I see the Baggies have made it back to the Prem….of course my Wolves will stay up and give them a hiding next season. :-)

(I like the early kick offs…that way I can watch the game and still get to bed by 1a.m.).

Speaking of bed it’s about that time.

Cheers for now, Ian

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