Fuel, Fire and Fear: RAF Flight Engineers at War
by Colin Pateman Fonthill, 240 pages, £25
Some of the most dangerous places to be during the Second World War were in the Halifaxes, Lancasters and Stirlings of Bomber Command. Over 50,000 young men lost their lives over Europe. The fact that not more were killed is due in part to the skills of the flight engineers who repaired faulty equipment when they could, and coaxed it when they couldn’t. In the words of the only flight engineer to win a Victoria Cross, Norman Jackson, “It was my job… to get the rest of the crew out of trouble.” The scale of their task becomes immediately clear if you look at the banks of dials found in the cockpits of the few surviving planes, or in the excellent photographs in this book.
Colin Pateman tells the stories of a few of the men, such as Stuart Soames, the young father of two whose Halifax was set ablaze by flak on a raid over Germany in October 1944. Not only did Soames have to keep the damaged engines working, he had to try to extinguish the fires that had started on the aircraft and tend to the critically wounded navigator and bomb aimer. However, he and the pilot managed to get the stricken plane back to England. For his bravery Soames was awarded a Distinguished Flying Medal. More importantly, he also survived the war.
The author also explains how flight engineers were selected and how they were trained for their vital roles. For me this was the most interesting part of the book. Unfortunately Colin Pateman, although undoubtedly knowledgeable, has a rather wooden prose style, which means that the book does not really take off. But if your father or grandfather was a Bomber Command flight engineer, reading it will help you understand what he experienced.