National Post (National Edition)
THE NIGHT MY FATHER'S LANCASTER WAS SHOT DOWN AFTER A RAID ON BERLIN.
WHEN YOU LOOK UP AT THE NIGHT SKY ON SUNDAY, THINK OF A FLAMING LANCASTER AND A 19-YEAR-OLD FROM TORONTO, SWINGING IN HIS PARACHUTE
The 17th of January is the 78th anniversary of the night my father's Lancaster was shot down after a raid on Berlin in 1943.
Andy Carswell was a 19-year-old teenager from Toronto and a Sergeant Pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was also the sole pilot of his Lancaster bomber of #9 Squadron of the Royal Air Force with its crew of seven. Andy had enrolled in the RCAF on his 18th birthday on May 29, 1941, when the principal told students at Malvern Collegiate that anyone doing war work would be exempt from exams.
It's now hard for us to understand how a young man from Balmy Beach would have bombed Berlin and parachuted from his blazing and doomed Lancaster.
But Andy, and the thousands of men and women who joined the Canadian war effort, lived in a different reality than our own.
Britain was on its back heels in 1941. Europe was occupied by the Nazis. U-boats were ravaging Britain's convoy lifeline in the Atlantic and Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps threatened the Suez Canal. Hitler had invaded Russia.
Andy completed his training in 1942. That was a better year for the Allies. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had brought the United States into the fight against the Axis, but the Allies still didn't have the strength to invade Hitler's Fortress Europe. They turned to daylight bombing raids by the U.S. Army Air Force and night attacks by the RAF to aid their new Russian ally.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Arthur “Bomber” Harris wanted to use RAF Bomber Command to strike back and destroy Germany's capacity to make war from the sky. More modern four-engine heavy bombers made this possible. The Lancaster was an instrument of destruction, an aircraft designed to maximize its bomb load. It was the perfect tool to exact revenge on Nazi Germany for its ruthless bombing of Britain during the Blitz.
The problem was that bombers had to be crewed by humans and the casualty rate of bomber crews was dire — 50 per cent of Bomber Command was lost throughout the war. The rate was even higher during the dark days of 1942 and early 1943, when German anti-aircraft guns and night fighters were decimating trained bomber aircrew. Each bomber that was lost took seven aircrew with it.
Canada did its part and created the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan to train the thousands of pilots, navigators, flight engineers and air gunners needed for the war effort.
My Dad was inducted into the RCAF in the summer of 1941 and shipped out to Britain six months later. He had his own Lancaster and crew just over a year after receiving his pilot's wings.
Andy did two operational missions and was shot down on his third, so he and his crew were statistically average for that time. But in the end, Andy was lucky to have survived, as the Lancaster was notoriously difficult to bail out of in an emergency. He parachuted into the frigid winter of northern Germany near Zerbst. He and the four other members of his crew who survived the crash spent the rest of the war as prisoners of war, which was an ordeal in itself.
Andy is now 97 and lives in North Toronto with my mother, Dorothy, whom he met and married after the war. He has lived a full life, serving as a peacetime RCAF pilot and Ministry of Transport aviation inspector. He kept in contact with his surviving crew and wartime friends, attending many aircrew and POW events. He wrote a book, Over the Wire, about his wartime experiences, and volunteered pushing wheelchairs at the Sunnybrook Veterans Wing for many years after retirement. He is very proud that the Veterans House for homeless veterans in Ottawa is named after him.
It's hard to imagine how brave these men of Bomber Command really were; flying missions when they knew the odds were unequivocally stacked against them.
War has a terrible cost for those who fight but also for their families. The two crew members who died when my Dad's Lancaster was shot down are buried in the RAF cemetery near Berlin. Mid Upper Gunner Joe De Silva was older, an Englishman from London with a wife and two children. He died when his parachute didn't open. His son wrote a poignant entry to the BBC online archive WW2 People's War, which included: “My mother spent over 25 years in a psychiatric hospital after receiving the telegram that my father was missing and presumed killed. My sister and I were raised by loving grandparents.” They think Canadian navigator John Galbraith died of exposure after parachuting in the freezing winter woods. He had married Margot Parker, an RCAF nurse he had met in Winnipeg during his training, the night before he shipped out. She said he was the love of her life and never remarried.
I flew with my Dad in the Canadian Warplane Heritage Lancaster for a fly-past over the Parliament buildings in Ottawa during the Battle of Britain parade in 2015. I couldn't help think of the sheer terror that he and his crewmates must have felt that night in January 1943.
When you look up at the night sky on Sunday, think of a flaming Lancaster and the 19-year-old from Balmy Beach, swinging in his parachute in the freezing night air, watching his doomed Lancaster's death dive and wondering what would happen to him next.
Thank you crew of Lancaster W4379:
❚ Pilot Sgt. A.G. Carswell RCAF
❚ Navigator Sgt. J.K. Galbraith RCAF Killed in Action
❚ Flight Engineer Sgt. J.W. Martin RAF Deceased
❚ Bombardier Sgt. H.C. Hipson RAF Deceased
❚ Wireless Operator Sgt. E.J. Phillips RAF Deceased
❚ Mid Upper Gunner Sgt. J.H.W. De Silva RAF Killed in Action
❚ Rear Gunner Sgt. C.E. Clemens RCAF Deceased