1 Group: Swift to Attack by Patrick Otter

Author:Patrick Otter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783830534
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

The Avro Manchester was used in small numbers for training purposes in late 1942 and early 1943 by 1 Group. (Author’s collection)

One of the men at Elsham at the time was wireless fitter Ivor Burgess who was to witness at least three fatal crashes on or around the airfield during his time there. ‘The Halifaxes we had at Elsham were horrible,’ he later recalled. ‘There was a problem when you applied a certain degree of bank, the tail surfaces were blanketed and the tail went up and down went the Halifax. Some of the aircraft supplied to heavy conversion units were disgraceful. They had been shot up, patched up and were mostly clapped out and no one should have been allowed to fly in them.’

A number of experienced pilots had been attached to the conversion flights to act as instructors but even they were not immune to the problems of the Halifax II. On September 22 F/O John Purcivall took off from Breighton with three 460 men on board. Purcivall, a 30-year-old New Zealander who had flown 32 operations with 103 before volunteering to become a Halifax instructor, was demonstrating a rudder stall, always a dangerous manoeuvre on the Halifax II, when the aircraft prematurely stalled, spun and crashed near Tadcaster, killing all those on board. Two hours later, W/O Reg Fulbrook DFC, who had served alongside Purcivall at Elsham, was killed when the 103 Conversion Flight aircraft he was flying, stalled and dived into the ground near the airfield, killing all five on board. Fulbrook had been one of the men specially picked to lead the intensive Halifax training programme for crews at Elsham.

103 CF had been issued solely with Halifax IIs for its training programme as the squadron was about to begin operations with the aircraft but 460 CF received a mixture of Halifaxes, Lancasters and a few Manchesters, the problematic twin-engined aircraft from which the superb Lancaster evolved. The Manchesters were still at Breighton when 1656 HCU came into being on October 1and one was to be lost in unfortunate circumstances a few days later. Many of those who joined 1 Group units did so via 27 OTU, which was based at Lichfield in Staffordshire. On October 19 one of Breighton’s Manchesters was seen making low passes over a Lichfield public house popular with 27 OTU crews when it clipped a tree and crashed into a field, killing the pilot, F/O Reg Horner, his three Australian crew members and two of the Manchester’s ground crew, who had been taken along for the ride. The report into the crash stated the crew had been ‘stunting’ and had misjudged their height.

Conversion training got off to a slow start in 1 Group mainly because most squadrons were still flying Wellingtons and would do so well into 1943. More Lancasters were available during this initial stage of HCU work, but even these were not immune from problems and several were to be wrecked in crashes flying from both Lindholme and Blyton.

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