Around three percent of the world’s population died during WW2. This included about 20 million military personnel and around 40 million civilians. Mass-bombings were responsible for many of the non-combatant causalities, as the war in the air proved to be a decisive battle ground.

The term ‘Bombers’ Moon’ came into use during WW2. It indicated a night with a bright full moon, which enabled the aircrews of heavy long-range bombers to visibly find and strike their targets. Conversely, it also helped anti-aircraft guns to target these bombers, or enabled enemy fighter planes to find and shoot them down.

As the aircrews from all sides found themselves in a front-line role, both the German Luftwaffe and the British RAF took advantage of bombers’ moons. With civilians in cities like Coventry, or Cologne, learning to fear those especially bright nights that would probably bring air raids.

The conflict in the air was severe and brutal. In Britain RAF Bomber Command were at times sustaining 50% casualties and fifty-five-thousand aircrew – out of a total of 125,000 – met their deaths in combat over Europe. Some airmen were faced by the statistical odds of zero for surviving their tours-of-duty on bombing missions.

 

After a varying number of flights, many aircrew experienced feelings of intense anxiety and depression. Some had nightmares about bombing missions, others would ‘freeze’ while in the air. These conditions were then associated with ‘combat-fatigue’, which we now know as combat-related PTSD.

 

RAF navigator, Richard Pape, was shot down over Holland, returning from a bombing raid. After the war he explained how many crewmen had experienced a very real fear that their next mission would be their last:

“I strolled back to the mess, coldly, practical, unconcerned. And then it happened. As I walked through the deserted crew room my eye caught the enormous map of Europe on the wall. A terrible feeling of panic gripped me. I stood motionless, staring at the map, my eyes hypnotised by the coloured tapes that indicate the bombing routes. My heart pounded violently; I leaned against the wall gasping and breathless. To try and pull myself together I began to swear – my infallible cure for nerves. As I steadied blind panic gave way to stark horror. Five words beat into my brain with maddening repetition: ‘You will not come back. You will not come back’. I knew then I was doomed.”

[Boldness Be My Friend, by Richard Pape, Elek 1953].

 

Richard Pape had continued flying until his plane was shot down. He survived and managed to evade the Germans for several months. When he was captured, however, he was interrogated by the Gestapo and then detained as a prisoner of war.

 

When Richard Pape died in 1995, Dan Van der Vat, who wrote his obituary in the Guardian, told how Pape had experienced difficulty settling back into civilian life:

 

“… like many an-other forced by war to peak too soon, Pape found it hard to settle down to civilian life after his wartime adventures, which won him the Military Medal. He continued to get into trouble of his own making, involving violence or alcohol … He said he wrote his first book to exorcise the ‘demons’ that plagued him after the war. It appeared in 1953. In that year he was fined for firing shots outside the home of his estranged first wife. Boldness was turning into an enemy.”

      

Sir Arthur Harris, was appointed Commander in Chief, RAF Bomber Command, in February 1942. He became known as ‘Bomber Harris’, because he developed the techniques of mass-bombings of German cities – designed to destroy the enemy’s ‘will to fight’. Once in command, Harris quickly became extremely concerned that a number of his aircrew were reporting ‘sick’ and asking to be taken off flying duties. He called them ‘weaklings’ and ‘waverers’ and warned his commanders that such men should be dealt with harshly. Saying that: ‘The risk of contagion is very real’.

Over 40 years later, in 1988, Simon Berthon produced a documentary, ‘Whispers in the Air’, about WW2 RAF bombing crews for Granada TV. Among former aircrew interviewed was a bomb aimer named Arthur Smith, who’d began to develop a growing fear of flying. His symptoms increased, until on one mission he found himself ‘frozen with fear’ and unable to carry out his duties.

 

The aircraft returned to base with a ‘sick bomb aimer’ and he was immediately taken to hospital. When Smith was found to be physically fit, he was sent to a centre where a psychiatrist interviewed him. It was clearly spelt out to him that if he refused to fly, he would be dealt with harshly, along the lines recommended by Air Chief Marshal Harris.

 

According to Jack Wallis, a former RAF Station Adjutant, this meant an immediate reduction in rank to Aircraftsman 2nd class, the lowest rank in the RAF. The ‘offender’ was then posted off station and his documents had ‘LMF’ (Lack of Moral Fibre) written in red ink, slanting across the right hand corner. Arthur Smith was informed that his family, girlfriend and his colleagues would be told that he was considered a coward.

 

He was also told that in 1914-18 he would have been charged with ‘desertion in the face of the enemy’ and shot. Rather than face the degradation, Smith chose to return to flying, but the fears continued and a few missions later his aircraft crashed. Some of his fellow crew members were killed but he survived, albeit with severe burns.

 

Another aircrew member interviewed was John Wainwright, a rear gunner. On his 72nd mission his aircraft crashed on landing, injuring him. After recovering in hospital, he found he was unable to return to flying. Having completed 72 missions and been wounded in battle, he thought his removal from combat flying would be an easy process.

 

He recalled, however, that the RAF doctors considered: ‘I was bonkers, completely bananas, because I didn’t want to go over Germany and drop bombs’. Wainwright went through an entire series of degradations because of his refusal to fly any more.

 

Facing criticism about his methods, Sir Arthur Harris ordered that his means of dealing with cases of ‘LMF’ be classified as ‘top secret’. In 1944, the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, wrote a private memorandum to Harris to say that if the way the RAF treated its combat-fatigue victims were made public, with the writing of LMF on their service records, then it would be ‘indefensible in Parliament’. For a time, the documents were marked ‘W’ for ‘waverer’ before the insidious practice eventually ceased.

 

Mike Harding was born in 1944, just a few weeks after his father was killed returning from a bombing raid over Germany. In his later years he was to become famous as a comedian, folk-song writer and singer. When Harding released his song, ‘Bombers’ Moon’, in 1984, he said it was:

 

“Dedicated to the memory of my father, Flight Sergeant Louis Arthur ‘Curly’ Harding, a navigator in Lancaster Bombers, who died with his crew when his plane was shot down returning from a raid over Germany. It’s also dedicated to the memory of my good friend Jurgen Boch of Cologne, who was a small child in a bomb shelter in Germany on the night my father died, and to my mother who was a bride, a widow and a mother within the space of a year.”

 

To listen to Mike Harding singing ‘Bombers’ Moon’ click below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0AfwsMDd44

 

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Article by Aly Renwick, who co-founded Veterans In Prison with Jimmy Johnson. Aly served for 8 years in the British Army (1960-8).