A hero of Bomber Command
He had a 50-50 chance of death and was too tall even to wear a parachute ... meet one of the brave airmen who stopped TV’s SS-GB becoming a grim reality
THEY were the bravest of the brave – and all that stood between Britain and Nazi occupation.
The men of RAF Bomber Command were instrumental in hitting back against Hitler at a time when all hope seemed lost.
If they had failed then the nightmare scenario envisaged in gritty new BBC1 drama, SS-GB, which paints a fictional picture of Britain under Nazi rule, could have come to pass.
But Churchill’s hope that Bomber Command would deliver Britain from the clutches of tyranny and evil was realised – in no small part thanks to men like Geoff Payne, who served as a rear gunner on a Lancaster bomber.
Now 92, he remembers the terrifying bombing runs he took part in as if they happened yesterday.
The missions were some of the riskiest ever undertaken by British armed forces personnel, with a chance of survival so diminished they were akin to suicide runs.
Airmen had a one in two chance of making it back alive.
And Geoff’s odds of surviving were dealt a hammer blow due to a peculiar quirk.
A strapping 6ft 2in tall, his parachute wouldn’t fit in the cramped gunning pod where Geoff was expected to fend off German attack aircraft. It was kept in the fuselage instead.
In his Cumbernauld home, Geoff admires the striking picture of a Lancaster bomber which has pride of place on his wall and remembers the first day he reported to Bomber Command squadron, which had the motto “Strike hard, strike sure”.
“I reported for duty on my first day and, as I picked up my gear, I was told I was flying that night. The gunnery leader said, ‘Good. You’re on tonight as a spare gunner. The gunner is sick and you’re taking his place’. I had expected a couple of days to bed in. “At that point I didn’t know if my first day would be my last. “The first flight was terrifying. “You know the enemy is desperate to pick you off. “You have to see and hit them first. “We were all young terrified lads but we were doing what it took to keep Britain free from Nazi clutches. “Every night we went out on bombing raids we knew we had only a 50% chance
of coming back.”
Geoff, minus his parachute, survived that first mission and quickly settled in to life at the airfield, where gallows humour and the knowledge every day might be your last reigned supreme.
“You would sit in the mess next to a friend and then lose them in the next mission,” he recalls.
“We were so young that the oldest guy in our hut was only 34 and we called him ‘Pop’.
“Bizarrely, we passed our time between missions making and flying paper planes which we set on fire.
“This drove Pop crazy and he would give us a telling off.”
One of the things Geoff remembers best is the flying rations.