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“….. I send my heartfelt and sincere wishes to all of you. From Arthur.” Ed - JWF. Many of us had the experience, on return to Australia in 1945/46 of conveying, often face to face, similar messages to family and friends of colleagues lost on the other side of the planet while flying with a Bomber Command squadron. Often, having to that time only had the very bland and dreaded official telegrams, it was the first real enlightening they gleaned of life on Bomber Command operations. Having had that experience in February 1946 as a confident and very much alive 21 year old, facing, in the comfort of their lounge room, still grieving parents of an only son lost flying with our squadron on the raid on Brux in January 1945, in retrospect I am far from satisfied that I handled the meeting well. I admire the strength and the compassion ‘Arthur Hope’ showed in his letter to Mrs Heckendorf. Recent contact with the late Jack Heckendorf’s 97 year old very alert sister confirmed that the letter was much appreciated by the family, even almost two years after the loss of a loved brother. Whoa Bessie! Those aficionados of nose art may know JO-F (Whoa Bessie) the Lancaster nose at the Imperial War Museum London. It has a strange story. The aircraft was in for maintenance and a fitter was in the pilot's seat holding the brakes on. Bored he began working his way around the "Office" seeing a large red toggle handle he pulled it, dumping fuel. Inevitably there was a fire which consumed much of the aircraft and only the nose was salvageable. For some reason it survived to complete the Waddington Lancaster collection in London. (PO-S JO-F). The story was related to the Editor by Bruce Buckham in January 2011 The Victory Tests The lull after the storm A book by Mark Rowe, referred to me by Don Southwell 467-463. Without having read it, I understand it is mostly aimed at cricket lovers and social historians of the English class system and colonial relations. Review taken from Mark Rowe's web site. One minute before 7pm on Tuesday, May 22, 1945 a packed Lord’s roared as Australia beat England in the last over of the first Victory Test. A fortnight after Victory in Europe, the result did not matter – only the cricket. The five matches between a near full-strength England and Australian servicemen, at least one of whom had just been released from a POW camp, drew huge crowds. Great cricketers played on both sides: Len Hutton, Wally Hammond, Keith Miller, Lindsay Hassett. Everyone hailed the spirit of sportsmanship. Even the result – a 2-2 draw – was satisfying. Yet this story is forgotten today. The only history of the series is a limited-edition Australian book on the subject. Three "Tests" took place at Lord's, not because of any southern bias but because of transport problems and also that few other major venues were usable, and even Old Trafford, the scene of the final match, was being repainted and renovated by prisoners of war on the eve of the game. For the Australians, desperate to return to their families, it did not end when they left England, either, as the success of the series led to them being sent on a tour of India and then having to play all the states when they eventually got back home at the very end of the year. The story has characters – besides the stars, men such as the Australian Dambusters Squadron pilot Ross Stanford; the quiet un-Australian, Australian spin bowler Reg Ellis; and the English teenagers Donald Carr and John Dewes, who were on the wrong end of Keith Miller discovering that he was the fastest bowler in the world. Page 4 of 8
By using the available sources to the full – newspapers of the time, memoirs, deposited records in England and Australia, recollections of surviving players The Victory Tests details what made the dressing rooms tick – in England’s case, the class system of amateurs and professionals; and the tensions inside the Australian team too. Besides the see-sawing games – the largely unknown Australians playing beyond themselves – it’s a story of players and sports lovers alike emerging joyously after years of war. Cricket mirrored wider society – people hoped for brighter cricket, just as they hoped for a better post-war world. Their hopes, inevitably, were disappointed. The Australians, wearied by a colourful tour of India, did poorly in matches on their return home and largely returned to obscurity. Even the bomber men’s war efforts were later derided. Yet while the Victory Tests were not officially for the Ashes, they offer a refreshing change from the commercial and cynical cricket of the 21st century. The 1945 series brought sporting competition with goodwill – something more than the Ashes. Filming the Pathfinder Drop Phone interview with Flight Lieutenant Bruce Buckham DSO DFC 20/1/2011 "We always had problems with the Germans camouflaging the damage done by our bombs before the PRU aircraft arrived the following day to ascertain the effect of the previous night. They of course did this to affect our morale and to perhaps waste more effort on an already obliterated target. So on dropping the target markers the Pathfinder had to maintain straight and level flight as the camera whirred to pick up the target marking. It was fairly tense, presenting a predictable target for the ack-ack until Frame 6B came up on the instrument panel, then we could dive and turn away clear. On landing the film was removed immediately and flown to Northolt for processing and evaluation of the success of the attack. CHASED BY THE SUN by Hank Nelson To move from the ridiculous to the sublime, in our Summer 2006/7 issue, we gave excerpts from this excellent book and now feature another. Mention is made earlier in the extracts from “The Tocchini Tales’ of the briefing of the Tocchini crew for the raid on Bochum on 4 November 1944. An extraordinary event on that raid is featured in ‘Chased by the Sun’: On 4 November 1944, 749 aircraft attacked the Ruhr industrial centre of Bochum. Although the attack was rated very successful, your scribe on his first op, from his lookout possie in the astro dome developed a rather dim view of this operational caper as he saw a goodly proportion of the 28 planes that were lost go down between the target and the Rhine on the way home. Among them was that of Joe Herman whose miraculous escape is described in the following excerpt from ‘Chased by the Sun’. Page 5 of 8
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