Woodfield Publishing Limited

During his part-time Volunteer Reserve training Ken had progressed to dual flying with an instructor but had just two hours in total by the time the war started and he was formally called up. He received notice to attend the Central Medical Establishment for his medical on 5 October 1939; passing meant he would enter an RAF at war. He must have been quietly confident of passing, knowing how fit he was with all his sporting activities. Predictably he was declared fit by the medics and moved on to the next stage, the selection board. Significantly, this board cast the dye for the whole of Ken’s wartime service by making two almost unprecedented decisions.

It was more or less unheard of for a civilian to be granted an immediate commission on being called up, even for someone who had completed their Volunteer Reserve pilot training let alone someone still in the early stages. Yet this is what happened to Ken. He was granted an immediate commission with the caveat ‘for the duration of hostilities on probation’. That meant with effect from 8 October he was Acting Pilot Officer K M Bastin. He was allocated a service number – 75168.

Despite his new title, however, his hope of continuing his pilot training was dashed by the board’s second decision. Ken would fly as aircrew, but not as a pilot – the selection board decided he would be trained as an air gunner. Not an ordinary air gunner, but one of the first commissioned air gunners who would go on to become one of the new class of gunnery leaders who would hold senior positions in squadrons responsible for improving air gunnery. How these decisions were explained to Ken and what his reaction was to them are not known. After all he had set his heart on becoming a pilot, but he certainly could not have anticipated an immediate commission.

To understand the real significance of the board’s decisions one needs to take a wider look at the emergence of the air gunner in the RAF. For Ken though his selection as a commissioned air gunner meant he was to be at the vanguard of what can be described as the RAF’s new ‘professional gunnery management’, one of the most vital developments in the advance of air gunnery in the RAF since the early days of the First World War. In fact he was to remain one of the most senior officer air gunners of the RAFVR throughout much of the war.

Bearing in mind that Bleriot flew the English Channel in 1909, it is not surprising that planes were used in the early days of the First World War for simple observation to help direct ground offensives and defences. But inevitably as the war progressed, planes were rapidly developed for more active military roles, which in turn led to the development of planes to attack planes, which in turn led to armament to help planes defend themselves. In the early days, pilots and observers were armed with rifles, pistols and even shotguns! By the end of the war pilots could operate a fixed machine gun that fired straight ahead through the propellers by means of a synchronised gear, and the observer was able to defend his plane from attacks from various directions with a ring mounted Lewis .303 calibre machine gun. But these guns had not been specifically designed and commissioned for aerial combat; they were simply adaptations of guns used by the army and used army ammunition.

In the immediate years after the war there was little practical development in air gunnery, largely due to severely cut post-war budgets for running the RAF, and to some extent the need to use up the vast stocks of munitions left at the end of the war. But the lessons and experiences gained were taken forward and worked on in the background albeit under considerable constraints. In reality though, armament of the 1918 era was still in operation well into the late 1930s.

It was said that the conditions of firing from one aircraft at another are so complicated that even the best shot in the world would not have a sufficient chance of hitting if he were firing only single shots. The air gunner had fleeting opportunities only of firing at his attacker, so his chances were significantly improved if he had the means of firing the greatest number of shots in rapid succession. At that time an expert army rifleman in rapid-fire mode could let off one shot only every four seconds. Hence the use of machine guns, but the Lewis was capable of only 500 rounds a minute, although through adaptation and modification for use in the air this was increased to 800 rounds (about fifty times faster than the expert rifleman). It was still, however, a gun designed for use by ground forces.

There was another imperative, and this was determined by the increasing speeds of aircraft through continuous development. With the ring mounted Lewis the air gunner had to use his strength to swing the gun to aim and maintain that aim. As speeds increased he was less able to overcome the effect of the airflow on the heavy gun, tending to swing it to the rear, and so he needed some sort of mechanical help.

What was needed was a gun specifically designed for the job in the air. Some of the problems the armament developers were trying to solve were highly technical. Requirements included: the highest possible rate of fire; almost instantaneous achievement of the rate of fire, because there was simply no time for the rate to be built up; the greatest reliability so it could be placed in the best position to defend the aircraft, which may not be where the gunner can easily clear stoppages; being as light as possible without sacrificing strength to avoid breakages; capable of being belt fed continuously from either side; maintaining full rate of fire when being fired in all directions, not just level; operating at extreme temperatures and without lubrication; and the gun had to be short as space was at a premium. Add to all these the usual economic needs of mass production, ease of replacing broken or worn components, and still using army ammunition.

Inevitably there was no time for such a gun to be developed even if it were possible. So the solution was the best compromise, and this was the American designed Browning .300, adapted slightly to allow the use of our .303 ammunition. First testing of the Browning began in 1929 and the final version was introduced into service in 1936.

It is worth here just pondering the marvel of engineering in a rapid-fire machine gun. Firstly, consider the series of operations required to fire a bullet from a gun. The breech of the gun has to be opened; the cartridge placed inside; the breech has then to be locked to counter the huge forces generated; the trigger has to be pulled and the striker hit the cap on the cartridge; and once the bullet has left the barrel the breech has to be opened and the empty cartridge removed before the next cartridge can be inserted. The speed of the bullet leaving the barrel of a Browning .303 is about 2,400 feet (or nearly half a mile) per second and is spinning at 3,000 revolutions per second. To achieve this, the propulsive explosion in the breech creates some 20 tons of pressure to the square inch. A Browning machine gun fired 1,150 rounds a minute, nearly 20 shots a second, generating about 80 horse power, equivalent to the output of a small car engine. It was this generated force that was used by various means to power the mechanics of the gun enabling it to carry out the series of operations described above nearly 20 times every second the trigger was pulled. Imagine four of these guns going off all at the same time just inches away from you in the confined space of a gun turret!

The powered gun turret was a significant development. Early attempts to overcome the slipstream problem were not particularly satisfactory. Also there was a growing need to provide more protection for the gunner from the effects of higher wind speeds and greater altitudes. In the early 1930s development of a powered turret began and the first type was introduced into service in 1933. Much engineering development was subsequently needed to produce a turret that met very exacting requirements. Principally the turret had to give full and continuous rotation; movement of the gun had to be smooth at slow speeds when tracking and firing at a target and also at high speeds when swinging the gun to a new target; and with complete freedom of elevation of four belt-fed guns.

Obviously weight was a consideration, but less so in the first of the heavy bombers coming through in the middle 1930s. These were twin-engine monoplanes of all metal construction, such as the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley that came into service in 1937. Of course the armament of fighter aircraft was also being improved and it was vital therefore that the defences of these new first-line bombers did not lag behind. The powered turret enabled the gunner to have a significantly beefed-up rate of fire at his trigger finger by mounting two or four Browning machine guns in the turret.

A by-product of doubling or quadrupling the firepower was the need to carry much more ammunition. Initially the ammunition was carried in boxes in the turret, which limited the amount of ammunition available to the gunner. Later, storing the belted ammunition in the fuselage and feeding it to the guns along trays running aft to the turret solved this restriction. As war approached in 1939, the RAF had three types of heavy bomber equipped with power-operated turrets featuring single or multiple Browning guns. This made Britain the only major power with an operational force of bombers fitted with power-operated turrets.

Of course a military aircraft was of little use if there was no efficient means of aiming its armament. There were three main problems for the air gunner. The first was range estimation, a particular difficulty in the air as there is no fixed reference by which to estimate the range of the target. There was no point in firing when the target was beyond the range of the gun; a potentially dangerous waste as ammunition was limited. More difficult than range estimation was to determine where to aim one’s fire – exactly where was that point in the sky where the opposition aircraft would arrive at the same time your bullets reached there? This point was somewhere ahead of the attacking fighter, so the gunner aimed not directly at the fighter, unless it was very close, but a distance in front of its path. This ‘aiming off’ or ‘deflection shooting’ was the art and skill of the gunner for most of the war. Lastly the gunner had to take into account the velocity given to his bullets by the forward speed of his own aircraft.

Fortunately considerable scientific effort had gone into the development of a new sighting system called the reflector gunsight. It was a very big improvement on the early sights that relied on lining up a close ring with a bead near the end of the gun barrel, or similar, which was very difficult when both target and gunner were moving around the sky. The reflector gunsight produced a circular image with a dot in the centre on a clear glass screen and this image appeared to be at infinity. The size of the circular image was such that it allowed the gunner to estimate range by gauging the ratio of the wingspan of the target to the diameter of the circle.

For this, the gunner had to be on the ball with his aircraft recognition. The reflector gunsight was ideal for multiple gun turrets where sighting necessarily was remote from the guns. It enabled the gunner to be in the best position; in fact it forced him to be because if he moved out of position he lost the reflection and so had no sight at all. By a series of rods and levers the reflector gunsight moved in direct relation to the upward and downward movement of the guns. The intensity of the image could be adjusted for day or night flying and also the design allowed easy adjustment making harmonisation with the guns a fairly simple task.

The model of reflector gunsight introduced just before the war proved to be so successful that it was standard on almost all RAF armament for most of the war. Towards the end of the war help was at hand to solve the problem of ‘aiming off’ through the development of a gyroscopic reflector gunsight, which dramatically improved the gunner’s aim and success rate. And later still radar was introduced to take the estimation out of the range problem. The reflector gunsight was a piece of equipment Ken would have been very familiar with throughout his time in the RAF.

Despite all this advancement in the mid to late 1930s, it was not until January 1939 that the air gunner was officially recognised as a distinct aircrew category. In the early days he was usually a willing volunteer from the armourers or from ground maintenance crews; later on he was given formal training but was still part-time only with a few pence on his pay when he flew. As such the vast majority were from the lower ranks, mostly Leading Aircraftsmen. Under the Air Ministry Order on Aircrews dated January 1939 his position became full-time but only when trained in the wireless operator role also, with a few exceptions. Over time the majority of air gunners were trained as wireless operators, however at the beginning of the war there were still a few ‘straight air gunners’, that is gunners who were not trained as wireless operators, and they too were moved to full-time so that all aircrew were full time at the commencement of hostilities.

Because of this background to the body of pre-war air gunners, it had long been clear to Bomber Command that the standard of gunnery at squadron level left much to be desired. Supervision and leadership were weak and training had been somewhat informal under local arrangements and at short annual summer camps if spared. Even under the Air Ministry Order of January 1939 there was little prospect of promotion for air gunners. As late as May 1939, when urgent enquiries were being made by the government of the RAF about its preparedness for war, Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, Bomber Command’s Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, was writing:

And so it was in Bomber Command at the outset of the war, the most acute need perceived was for officer gunners to provide leadership for this essential but weak area. Sir Ludlow-Hewitt had been pressing for a suitable unit to devise and refine techniques and tactics, to train instructors and to produce specialist officers to fill staff appointments and to act as gunnery leaders. A new Central Gunnery School was to be established at RAF Warmwell on the south coast, with the first course due to commence in the middle of November. The immediate task was to find suitable candidates. They were looking for men who exhibited, ‘quickness of mental reaction, dependability in an emergency and fighting spirit’.

At this moment of need, Ken appears at the selection board – the perfect candidate for a gunnery officer. He had been to public school (public schools were then still seen as the main source for the officer ‘class’), he was more mature than most recruits at 26 years old, and had been a Sergeant in the Officer’s Training Corps at his school plus a few months Volunteer Reserve training. With the focus on the need for officer gunner recruits rather than for pilots, Ken’s fate was sealed.

He was told he would be trained as an air gunner. Of course he wanted to be a pilot but apparently he was advised that he had ‘flat feet’ and was therefore unsuitable for pilot training. Was that just an excuse and a sop? Probably, but we will never know. What seems quite certain is that he was immediately earmarked for the new Central Gunnery School courses being planned for November because he was granted a commission even before the Treasury sanctioned the funds for such commissions on 19 October. Given that one Air Ministry document states that the grade of officer air gunner was introduced on 9 October 1939 and that Ken’s commission is dated 8 October, he was undoubtedly one of the very first, if not the first such appointment in the RAF.

Ken’s commission of Acting Pilot Officer was announced in The London Gazette of 27 October 1939, quoting his service number – 75168. Commissions for three other Acting Pilot Officers were also announced in the same edition underneath Ken’s name; they were Raymond Fletcher Lumb (service number 75169), Harold Francis Welte (75170) and Clair Neale Robinson (75171). In the event Ken together with these three newly commissioned officers attended the first Central Gunnery School course, as we shall see...