Stories

If an airman was to fly in bombers, he would be posted to a Bomber Command Operational Training Unit (OTU) for around three months, prior to a Heavy Conversion Unit and then to a Squadron.

At the OTU, the training was serious, part of a crew learning to fly operationally on an actual warplane. Crews formed at the beginning of training, with airmen assembled and told to form crews – a random mix of fortune and self-selection that could be life-changing. In many ways OTU flying was much more dangerous than previously experienced, a mix of the novice crews and ‘clapped out’ aircraft that had previously flown operationally but were no longer fit for combat service.

Commonly these were Wellingtons, Whitleys or Hampden twin-engined bombers, which was prone to all sorts of malfunctions after being discarded by operational squadrons. Around 10% of Bomber Command’s losses occurred while training.

As Tony Johnson (Wireless Operator/Air Gunner) recalled: “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”.

Bomber Command operated as many as twenty-two OTU’s, most in the Midlands, and two in Morayshire Scotland, where one rookie pilot said, “flying during the winter months did tend to get the adrenaline flowing in full spate”.