Part 21.

August, 1940

HUDSONS’ MILLIONTH MILE

BY A SQUADRON COMMANDER OF COASTAL COMMAND

I am the Commanding Officer of a Squadron which has just completed a million miles of flying in Hudson aircraft.

A million miles is a long way—about four times the distance between the earth and the moon. Indeed, for most of our flying time, we might have been on our way to the moon for all that we saw of Mother Earth.

We clocked up our millionth mile quite quietly. It happened the other night when we had a number of aircraft out over the North Sea. After they came back we logged up the mileage, and found we were well over the million mark. Incidentally, we've used up enough petrol in those million miles to send a fleet of four hundred family-cars right round the world.

Our work is general reconnaissance—known in the Service as "G.R."—and we are a unit of the Coastal Command of the Royal Air Force. A reconnaissance really means going somewhere to see what is there. But while that is the essence of our job, there is actually a great deal more to it than that. For instance, we do a lot of bombing, and, when we run into enemy aircraft, we have to be fighters as well.

I would like to tell you first something about our day to day work, then about our aircraft, and finally about the men who compose our Squadron. I'm not going to try to shoot a line about hair-raising exploits in which our Squadron has played a part—not because we haven't had plenty, but because that would be putting such incidents in a false perspective. Our work is not spectacular in the main. It is a hard, plodding routine on patrols. Every day, in sunshine, rain or snow we go out over the North Sea to find out what's happening on the other side. With the long days of summer we put in plenty of flying hours, but winter, of course, is the biggest test. Think of a bare aerodrome in the bleak darkness of a frigid morning, a bitter wind whistling, and perhaps ice on the ground. Pilots, navigators, air-gunners and wireless operator stagger and slither to their aircraft, laden like Father Christmases with their bulky navigation bags, parachutes, flying kit, thermos flasks, packets of sandwiches, pigeon baskets and what-nots.

Flying towards the rising sun, it may be the navigator has just enough light to see the white horses on the grey sea as he lies full length in the nose of the aircraft calculating wind, drift, speed and position. The engines drone on for a couple of hours before the coast of Norway comes into view, or is found hidden in cloud or mist. It isn't uncommon for the crew never to see land in six or seven hours' flying, although they may be so close to the mountains of the Norwegian coast as to be in danger of running into them. If visibility permits, they go into the fjords to take photographs, spot shipping and note anti-aircraft positions and aerodrome sites. Such information is of the greatest importance to Coastal Command, and many a fruitful bombing raid has been made possible by the preliminary reports from my Squadron.

In the early parts of the war the Squadron did a good deal of U-boat hunting. There was scarcely a pilot who had not had a crack at one or more, and our total bag of enemy submarines is quite impressive. Even if a U-boat sees us coming and crash-dives as fast as it can, it may still be within reach of our bombs. They are timed to explode beneath the surface of the sea. Then a shuddering and a disturbance of the water, and masses of dark brown oil coming up. These tell what has happened in the sea below. Other U-boats, which we caught by surprise on the surface, proved easy prey. Some of my pilots have seen their heavy bombs burst right on the hulls.

Now that Germany threatens to invade this country from Norway, our work has become even more vital. If Germany should ever attempt a mass crossing of the North Sea, my crews may well be the first British subjects to find it out. It might be on their reports that the whole of our anti-invasion system of defence would spring into operation. Please don't think for a moment that a reconnaissance, say, of the North Sea or Norwegian coast is just a question of flying over there, taking a few photographs, making observations, and flying back. I wish it were as simple as that.

But the Germans have established a very excellent system of coast defences, specially designed to keep our aircraft from doing the jobs we want them to do. So we have to look out for such hazards as enemy fighters, patrolling the coast, and anti-aircraft fire which is of an accuracy not to be sneezed at. It is on such occasions that we use our Hudsons as fighters.
To match an aircraft built for reconnaissance work against a modern fighter is rather like putting a retired boxing champion against the newest holder of the title. The fighters have an advantage over us in speed, but we carry pretty useful armament, and our big aircraft can take an enormous amount of punishment.

You would be surprised if you could see the condition of some aircraft which our pilots bring home. One of my pilot-officers—who, by the way, has just received the D.F.C.—is making quite a habit of bringing back what one might describe as a bundle of shell holes held together by pieces of fuselage. I was aghast when I saw the holes in his last two efforts. You could crawl through the gashes in the wings and petrol tanks. In one case the undercarriage folded up as he landed. In the other, although it stayed in position, one tyre was shot to pieces and made the aircraft sink dangerously.

There's no doubt about it, our Hudsons are first-class aircraft for the job of reconnaissance. They have far more room in them than the average Service machine; indeed, there's the same internal space as in the Civil counterpart, the Lockheed 14 airliner, in which some of you have probably flown before the war. There is a row of windows in each side of the cabin, a folding bed, hot and cold air regulator—in fact, every modern convenience. The seats, of course, have been taken out, and there is a gun turret in the tail. The operational performance, too, is exceptionally good. The fact that we use these land-planes so much for long reconnaissances over the sea speaks for itself. Nobody ever worries about engine failure, which used to cause so much anxiety in the last war. A typical remark was made by one of my pilots as he taxied in the other day after a long trip. He turned to his navigator and said: "You'd think these blinking engines would go on turning over forever."

And now I'll tell you a little about the lads who do this work. They are the advance scouts of our defence system, and they accept gladly the risks of the scout—the danger of running into enemy forces and the prospect of lone flights with the odds against you, where you know that if you survive the fight, you have a long slog back, perhaps damaged, over the sea to your base.

There is little glamour in our work. It is rather like the northern patrols of the Navy—loneliness, monotony, danger of dirty weather. But it is a vital work, and the men of my squadron and other squadrons who do similar work include some of the most experienced pilots and navigators in the Royal Air Force. They have hundreds of hours of war flying to their credit, and many of them have been out on more than a hundred long range operational flights.

They are all grand types, and I should like to make special mention of the sergeant pilots and also of the wireless operators and air gunners, and the ground staff who are an indispensable part of the Squadron.

At nights when I go down to the aerodrome, waiting for the aircraft to come back from the sea, I often think of those in my squadron who have not returned. Their work has gone to build up our first million miles. I know they would wish us luck as we go forward to our second million miles.


A Hudson crew back from a patrol off the German and Scandinavian coasts. Left to right: Navigator, Pilot, Wireless Operator, Rear Gunner (with carrier-pigeons taken in case of wireless failure).


A Hudson back from reconnaissance over Norway with a shell hole in her wing.