My first glimpse of the airfield at Oulton Street and of a few dispersed, and very darkened, B-17 aircraft of No. 214 Squadron came just before 8am one September morning in 1944 from the carriage of the Peterborough East train to Norwich, belonging to the long extinct M & GN railway.
I was one of thirty-eight reluctant air gunners, reluctant because all had been previously mustered under training as pilots, navigators and air bombers, who had to be persuaded to qualify at No.10 Air Gunnery School, Walney Island, Barrow-in–Furness. Strictly speaking we should have gone to an Operational Training Unit but, at the time these were all full, so instead we were given indefinite Leave.
On our penultimate day, however, at Walney Island, a highly classified signal was received from the Air Ministry calling for thirty-eight volunteers from among the sixty-strong course to help form a special and secret unit in Bomber Command. No other information was available, but the task turned out to be the reformation of No. 223 Squadron, which had recently been disbanded in Italy. Unsurprisingly there were no volunteers, and so the first thirty-eight names were simply taken from the passing-out order of merit. As I had come top of the course, which had lasted ten weeks, my name was placed first on the list of ‘volunteers’.
It had been impressed on all concerned of the urgency of the situation and that the detachment of ‘volunteers’ should reach its destination as soon as possible. So we travelled through the night in order to do so.
After this first glimpse I resolved to find out why exactly Bomber Command in 1944 came to be equipped with American aircraft. This was a subject which was then a closely guarded secret, and remained so for many years long after the war was over.
It was to take me some time before I could find the answer as to exactly why Oulton received American and not British aircraft and involved me in the acquisition of a PhD.
Peter Lovatt
This article is from the Winter 2008 issue of Confound and Destroy
