In Memoriam Wing Commander David Donaldson
In what was, given the cruel statistics of wartime flying, a remarkably long career on bombing operations, David Donaldson flew his first raids during the Battle of Britain in September 1940, when Bomber Command’s techniques were in their infancy, and he was still there at the end. He participated in Pathfinder ops in 1943, by which time the whole strategic air offensive had taken on a much more scientific cast and was beginning to achieve results. And he was still airborne over enemy territory on electronic countermeasures missions in the last months of the war, by which time the RAF and the US Army Air Forces were masters of the skies over Western Europe.
In four tours of operations, Donaldson flew 86 sorties, a figure which put him well above the average survival chances. During Bomber Command’s worst days in 1941 and 1942 (if one discounts the virtual suicide missions against heavily defended German naval bases in December 1939), the average life in the command was as low as eight sorties.
David William Donaldson was born in 1915 at Southampton, a son of the managing director of the Thornycroft shipyard. He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a keen rower. Taking a boat over to Germany with the First Trinity Boat club in the mid-1930s, he enjoyed the hospitality of boat clubs in the Rhineland – and at the same time became sharply aware of the culture of aggression that was taking over the German psyche with the advent of Hitler.
In 1934 he joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve as a weekend pilot, and did much of his flying training at Hamble. After graduating at Cambridge he had joined a firm of solicitors in London. But his articles were interrupted in September 1939 when he was called up.
After basic training he did operational training on Wellington bombers and on September 20 was sent to 149 (Wellington) Squadron at Mildenhall, Suffolk. No 149 had already been involved in some desperate missions: the forlorn-hope attack on German shipping at Wilhelmshaven on December 18, 1939; the equally hopeless attempt to stem the German advance in the Low Countries in May 1940; and a brave but futile transalpine lunge at Genoa in June after Italy had opportunistically entered the war on the German side. Now it was ordered to attack invasion barges which had been collected in Channel ports, and Donaldson’s first sortie was a daytime raid on Calais harbour.
With the end of the Battle of Britain, No 149 was redirected to strategic-bombing. This was soon to be revealed as far to dangerous against flak and fighter defences by day, and was therefore conducted by night, when (frequent) bad weather made locating targets extremely difficult in the state of development of navigational aids at this time.
During the winter of 1940-41 the main effort was against targets in the relatively close Ruhr, but there was a much longer sortie to Berlin, in vile weather, in October. This ended with Donaldson’s Wellington becoming completely lost on the return trip. At length, with fuel running perilously low, he achieved a casualty-free forced landing at St Osyth, near Clacton.
There were also further attacks on northern Italian industrial cities, one of which an attack on the Fiat works at Turin, Donaldson was asked by the BBC to describe in a radio broadcast in December 1940. Instead of dwelling on the difficulties of such a mission, he eloquently described the majesty of the snow-covered Alps for his audience.
Donaldson won his DFC for a highly successful raid on Merignac aerodrome near Bordeaux, which he bombed from a height of 1,500ft, destroying its large hangars. Further publicity for these early efforts by Bomber Command came from his featuring in a series of propaganda photographs taken by Cecil Beaton entitled ‘A Day in the Life of a Bomber Pilot’. One of these, which features the aircrew of a 149 Squadron Wellington at Mildenhall, adorns the cover of a recently published video of the 1941 propaganda film: ‘Target for Tonight’.
Donaldson was ‘rested’ after completion of this tour in March 1941. But there was still plenty of flying to be done. He was seconded to the Air Ministry to help to buy aircraft in the US. This turned out to involve hazardous ferrying across the Atlantic of American aircraft that had been purchased, notably the invaluable Hudson long range patrol bomber for Coastal Command.
In September, Donaldson returned to operations with 57 Squadron, another Wellington unit. Bomber Command was fairing no better than it had earlier in terms of results, and an improvement in German air defences was increasing the rate of losses among aircrew, with corresponding effects on RAF morale. No 57 was roughly handled. In a raid over Dusseldorf in October, Donaldson’s aircraft was badly shot up and limped home without hydraulics. The undercarriage could not be lowered and the sortie ended with a crash landing at Marham. After several more raids Donaldson succumbed to the strain and at the end of the year was admitted to hospital.
After a period of sick leave he was posted as group tactical officer to 3 Group, but in July 1942 the air beckoned again when he was posted to No 15 Operational Training Unit for six months as a flight commander. Though this was not supposed to be a frontline unit, he did get in one operational trip to Dusseldorf during this period.
Through January 1943 he was appointed as Flight Commander to 156 Squadron, one of the original units of the Pathfinder Force, which had been making strides in the improvement of bombing through its marking techniques since its formation under the Australian Don Bennett six months previously. The four-engined Lancaster was now the mainstay of Bomber Command and both the weight and accuracy of the air offensive began to assume a different dimension. With No 156 Donaldson carried out 23 raids and was awarded the DSO and promoted to Wing Commander at the end of his tour. Bennett himself said of Donaldson: ‘He has provided an example of determination and devotion to duty which it would be difficult to equal’.
Rested again in June 1943, Donaldson commanded a conversion unit and then went as Staff Officer to No 100 (Special Duties) Group. The air war had changed out of all recognition and the need to be able to jam and confuse the enemy’s radars and radio direction beacons was now well recognised.
In June 1944, just after D-Day, Donaldson was back in the air again in command of 192 (SD) Squadron. Flying a mixture of Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Mosquitoes, over the remaining months of the war No 192 sought out, and jammed the enemy’s radio and communication systems using methods ranging from the well-tried ‘Window’ – dropping steel foil strips – to more sophisticated electronic deception techniques.
Leading the Squadron in a Halifax III, Donaldson flew 25 more sorties, some of them in daytime. On one daytime operation he was attacked by two Me109s. Rather than trying to shoot it out with the cannon-armed fighters, with the Halifax’s .303in machine guns, Donaldson chose to elude the foe by violent and skillful evasive action, and brought his aircraft and crew safely home. He was awarded his second DSO in July 1945.
Donaldson had no ambition to further a career in the RAF and on demobilisation he resumed his law articles and qualified as a solicitor. After four years in the City firm Parker Garrett, he joined National Employers Mutual Insurance, where he was at first company secretary and later a director. He left NEM to become chairman of an industrial tribunal, which he greatly enjoyed, presiding over some notable cases. He finally retired in 1987.
His wife Joyce, whom he married when she was a WAAF officer during the war, died in 1996. He is survived by a daughter and two sons.
This article is from the Winter 2010 issue of Confound and Destroy
