There she stood, sturdy, powerful, fearsome, surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd. Most of us admired from the outside as only those with influence or possessed of extreme cunning got inside. Pilots, engineers, fitters, riggers, armourers and signals mechanics were in attendance, and they probed and tinkered and adjusted until they hand brought her to a state of good-tempered servicability. Then they all tiptoed quietly away for, like all young monsters in unfamiliar hands, she showed promise of being tempremental. Even Mick Weadon, the Flight Sergeant in charge, was said to have been seen walking away backwards from the Presence.
For the gunners, however, there was a shattering disapointment. Where the turret should have been there was nothing but a plain, moulded dome of perspex. Here was our dream fighter. But where were the four free guns in the turret in the back that could fire forwards and upwards into the belly of an enemy bomber? There was not even a single free gun with which we could foster our delusion of usefulness.
Eventually I managed to elbow my way through the crowd and get to the aircraft. Just aft of the perspex dome a panel in the bottom of the fuselage hinged downwards leaving open the back entrance. I ducked down, set my feet on the steps cut in the panel, and climbed in.
Right in front of me there was a very serviceable swivel-seat, set high up under the dome, with the back-rest and saftey harness, and scooped out to take the one-man dinghy. That was a good start.
I squeezes past the seat, swivelling it around, and found Sandifer, one of the oldest gunners from the point of service in the Squadron, red in the face, sitting on the cat-walk that led forward. Stan Hawke, another of the senior gunners, was standing behind him, bent down under the curving roof, with a stop-watch in his hand.
'Where's that turret we've heard so much about?' I demanded
Sandi was breathing hard. 'We've had that,' he grunted. 'The only gunnery we're likely to get will be this job.' He pointed at a row of 20mm ammunition drums set in the racks above his head on either side of the cat-walk.
'From now on we're just powder monkeys,' Stan said. 'We're having a go to see how long it takes to reload.'
Sandi chuckled. 'Wait untill Tommy catches sight of this lot!' he commented. He patted something set in the floor.
It was dim in the tunnel-like fuselage, but as my eyes became accustomed to the half-light I saw them, two on each side of the cat walk: four, solid great cannon, firmly set in place just below floor level! Their massive breeches gleamed with an evil beauty.
'Four twenties!' Sandi gloated. 'They ought to do a bit of no good....if ever we catch anybody!'
In spite of my disapointment over the turret my gunner's heart warmed at the sight. My face must have shown it, because when I looked up Stan was smiling.
'How's the reloading going?' I asked.
Sandi was nursing one of the drums. 'These things weigh sixty pounds each,' he said. 'God knows what it's going to be like hauling them out of the racks and fitting them on the cannon with all your kit on, oxygen tubes and phone cords and all.....and in the dark.'
'And with the pilot going into a tight turn just as you get it off the rack,' Stan added. 'That'll make it weigh a darn sight more.'
'Probably go straight through the floor,' Sandi said, 'if it doesn't chop off your fingers against the breech.'
I went back aft and wriggled into the seat under the dome and swung around to look out over the tail. There was a fine, unobstructed view all around above the horizon, and with a little squirming one could even see into that old Blenheim danger spit below and behind.
The radar equipment appeared to be a new version of what we had had in the blenheim, with the Box suspended from the low roof just behind the dome. One could look into its rubber visor or keep a visual watch over the tail with only a slight movement of the head.
I looked around inside, and found that there were catches to release the whole dome in case of ditching or a belly landing. the bottom hatch, through which I had entered, was opened automatically by the slip-stream at the turn of a lever. There were an altimeter and an air-speed indicator; and -bless my frozen feet!- there was a hot-air duct discharging into the lap from the starboard side.
Squeezing past the other, I went forward along the cat-walk, stooping under the low roof, through a pair of armour-plate doors, and into the pilot's compartment. his seat was in the centre. The windscreen was one large sheet of bullet-resisting glass sloping back fairly close to the face. There would be no more mad craning and peering trying to see out, with the glow from the instruments reflecting back from a half a dozen small panes. And perspex panels gave a clear view to path sides and up through the roof.
Getting out in an emergency, I found, would be a bit of a gymnstic feat for the pilot, having collapsed the back of his seat by pullign a lever, could swing himself up and back and down on to the forward escape hatch, hinged like the one at the back. whenshut, this hatch formed the floor of a small well between the pilot's seat and the armour-plate doors, with enough room for a passenger to stand and look out forward over the head of the pilot.
I pulled the hatch open, dropped down on to the ground, and walked around to the front of the aircraft. She was good, whichever way you looked at it, sturdy and aggressive, although perhaps a bit heavy. But the two gigantic Hercules engines with which she was powered, air cooled and close cowled, with their huge propellers, sweeping through a wide arc, could surely lift anything. From the tip of that forked aerial at the nose to her shapely rudder she was a beauty. I knew that somehow, as a gunner, powder-monkey, operator or stowaway, it did not matter which, I just had to fly in her.
C.F. Rawnsley and Robert Wright
lovingly read and re-typed (so please excuse the typos) from 'Voices from the War in the Air' published by Vintage books.
