The Boys’ Own airmen who led Britain to victory
THE PATHFINDERS: THE ELITE RAF FORCE THAT TURNED THE TIDE OF WWII
In early 1942, Britain was reeling from a string of defeats in Norway, France, Malaya, Burma and North Africa. Among the few offensive weapons available to Winston Churchill were the planes of Bomber Command which, since late 1940, had been striking enemy targets on mainland Europe. Their problem was accuracy: only a tiny number of the more exceptional crews, writes Will Iredale, were able “to find an enemy target in darkness in the face of heavy flak, searchlights, fighters, smoke screens and bad weather”. As a result, fewer than a quarter of bombs were dropped within three miles of their aiming point.
The solution – suggested by 33-year-old Wing Commander Sydney Bufton, Deputy Director of
Bomber Operations – was to create an elite force of target finders who would lead in the rest. The idea was opposed by Air Marshal Arthur “Butcher” Harris, Bomber Command’s chief, who felt that a policy of creaming off the best crews would create jealousy and dent morale among the rest. But Harris was overruled by his boss, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, who agreed with Bufton that the “ability to find and actually see their target would be an inspiration to the rest of the Bomber Force”.
The man chosen to lead the new Pathfinder Force – its name coined by a reluctant Harris – was 32-yearold Wing Commander Don Bennett, a hugely experienced Australian aviator who had set a world longdistance seaplane record by flying non-stop for 42 hours from Scotland to South Africa in 1938. More recently he had been awarded the DSO for evading capture after a failed attempt to sink the German battleship Tirpitz in Norway. Iredale provides an excellent pen portrait of the talented, brash and single-minded Aussie: “While Bennett was a Marmite character to his contemporaries – there’s no doubt he could be bloody hard work – his pre-war aviation exploits and his Tirpitz adventure had cemented him as a something of a Boys’ Own hero in the ranks. One fellow airman observed, ‘He is a bundle of energy. Never still. The fellows under him think the world of him.’”
The Pathfinders’ first mission – to lead 118 planes to bomb the north German town of Flensburg in August 1942 – was a disaster. The 16 Pathfinders dropped their flares not on Flensburg, but on two Danish towns to the north which were badly damaged by the bombers that followed. The error was repeated soon after, when tiny Saarlouis was mistaken for Saarbrücken, and by the end of August Bennett had already lost 15 of his aircraft, almost 10 per cent of the total. Yet Harris was pleased, telling Bennett that they had done a “damned good job in finding a target for the main force to pummel”.
The chief reason the Pathfinders gradually upped their game was technological: better planes, in the form of Avro Lancasters and de Havilland Mosquitoes; new target locating devices such as Oboe and H2S (the latter “a sort of airborne radar housed in a rotating scanner” under the fuselage that identified built-up areas); and coloured marker flares or candles, the invention of former chemistry teacher Wilfred
Coxon, that were dropped by the Pathfinders to indicate the “mean point of impact”.
The Pathfinders’ finest hour was the Ruhr bombing campaign of 1943 when they led 73 per cent of bombers to within three miles of their target. This destruction of German industry was a turning point in the war as it choked off German armaments production. Bennett’s men also played a major role in the destruction of the French transport network that was so vital to the success of D-Day. Less impressive was the 1943-44 campaign against Berlin, which cost the Pathfinders 1,443 airmen and failed in its strategic objective to crack German morale. “Berlin,” notes Iredale, “was simply too big to be destroyed.”
The bombing of Germany – particularly the “area” bombing of civilian targets – is still hugely controversial. Iredale does not shy away from the horrific consequences: 55,573 Bomber Command deaths; and 600,000 Germans, the majority innocent civilians. He avoids a personal judgment, but makes the important point: “Most Allied airmen had little compunction over the rights and
Bombers had been striking mainland Europe, but there was one problem: accuracy
Thanks to the Pathfinders, arms production in the Ruhr was choked off
wrongs of their operations: they had a job to do and their main aim was to do that job and survive.”
A former journalist, Iredale has dug deep in the records and interviewed the few surviving Pathfinders and their families, to produce a sensitive, colourful and moving account of those brave young men and women who worked tirelessly to turn Bomber Command into a lethal weapon. They didn’t win the war on their own, of course. But they did play “a significant role in the eventual Allied victory” that deserves to be recognised. Iredale’s compelling tale does just that.