The First Flight in B for Baker

On Friday 3 March 1944, LM475, the aircraft that would become B for Baker, appears in Phil Smith’s logbook for the first time. Two flights are recorded on this day, and while on the face of it they appear perfectly normal – two sessions of High Level Bombing, one during the day and one by night – the entries would lead to much head-scratching on my part, some seven decades later.

Phil’s logbook records this for the first flight:

Lancaster LM475. Pilot: Self, Crew: W/Cdr Balmer, F/L McCarthy, Crew. HLB. Landed at Hunsdon. 2.05hrs Day.

There are a few curiosities in this entry. Wing Commander Balmer was the 467 Squadron Commanding Officer. It appears most likely that the other passenger was Flight Lieutenant Patrick Ernest McCarthy, who was probably the 467 Squadron Bombing Leader at the time. It is unclear whether Phil’s ‘normal’ bomb aimer Jerry Parker came along or not as Phil had a habit of not recording full crew names for non-operational flights. The reason for the trip to Hunsdon (a nightfighter airfield 20 miles north of London, or some 100 miles from Waddington) is unknown. There is a possibility that this could have been a check flight for either Phil Smith or for the new aircraft, though I don’t know if Squadron Commanders carried out this sort of activity. More likely, perhaps, is that Balmer needed to get to London and so Phil took the opportunity to take his new aeroplane for a spin to get him there.

The mystery deepens however when we throw the entry in Jack Purcell’s logbook into the mix:

Lancaster. Pilot S/Ldr Smith. Duty: Navigator. Remarks: Owethorpe – H.L.B. 1.25hrs Day.

Owethorpe is most likely a spelling error – there was a practice bombing range at Owthorpe (without the ‘e’), just east of Nottingham, and this was probably the destination for the bombing exercise. The High Level Bombing part agrees with what is in Phil’s logbook, but there is an alarming inconsistency here: Phil records the flight as having been 40 minutes longer than Jack did. My initial theory was that Balmer went along first for a 40-minute check flight in the Waddington circuit with Phil Smith only, and then the remainder of the crew with F/L McCarthy joined them for a flight to Hunsdon via the practice range at Owthorpe. But I’m not sure that 1.25 hours is enough time to get from Waddington to Hunsdon via Owthorpe, particularly when the later flight to another range close to Nottingham took 1.30 hours on its own.

This second flight appears to be recorded correctly in both logbooks. Phil says this:

Lancaster LM475. Pilot: Self. Crew: Crew, F/Lt McCarthy. HLB (5). 145yds bombing error. 1.30hrs Night with 0.45hrs Instrument.

And Jack says this:

Lancaster. Pilot: S/Ldr Smith. Duty: Navigator. Remarks: Eppistone – HLB. 1.30hrs Night.

These entries both clearly relate to the same flight (1.30 hours at night with S/L Smith), which was for more practice bombing. Once again F/L McCarthy went along (no mention if Jerry Parker was also on board though), and Jack has misspelt the destination (which come to think of it is a somewhat startling trait for a navigator!) which should probably be ‘Epperstone,’ the site of another practice bombing range seven miles north east of Nottingham. This also tallies with the entry in the 467 Squadron Operational Record Book:

No ops again today – instead we had 2 Bulls Eyes and plenty of Bombing Practice at night. With the moonlight conditions were ideal.

So this second flight is fairly easy to explain. But it’s hard to think of a scenario which could explain a flight on which practice bombing was carried out at Owthorpe AND a landing made at Hunsdon, with the Squadron Commander AND the Bombing Leader along for the ride, on a trip on which the pilot logged 2.05 hours but the navigator logged just 1.25 hours. The simplest explanation would be that Jack Purcell made a mistake. If we assume this was the case, it would be quite reasonable to fly from Waddington to Hunsdon, either to drop off W/C Balmer or simply as an exercise on which Balmer came along to observe, via a few practice bombing runs at Owthorpe range, and then back to Waddington again inside 2.05 hours. Judging on other parts of his logbook Jack’s record keeping was never particularly fantastic so a mistake is a distinct possibility. It does not sit well with the fastidious nature of his job as a navigator though.

There is insufficient information in the sources currently available to me to explain what might have happened in a definitive sense. The ORBs do not record non-operational flights in adequate detail and Phil did not write of this trip in his post-war manuscript so the only way of being sure would be to compare the logbooks of all those involved. But as far as I know out of the crew of B for Baker only Jack’s and Phil’s logbooks have survived, and they disagree with each other. This one will probably remain a mystery.

(c) 2013 Adam Purcell