F/O. James Sharp Beetham
Royal Canadian Air Force 420 Squadron
from:London, Ont., Canada
Dad, Jim Beetham didn't talk about the bad times at all. I'm sure they happened. In war bad things always happen. These are a few of the stories that I still remember, that he used to tell us when we were very young. He always tried to put them in a humorous light, which is probably why we kept pestering him to tell them again and again,. year after year after year. His biggest story that he told, wasn't usually done in one sitting unless he was poked and prodded a lot. It was how he and his crew joined the elite club for crashing once on the ground, once on the sea and once in the air.
The ground crash, his log book indicates that this happened while in training for the Heavy Bombers, on their first flight in a Halifax on 17th of May 1944. I can't recall much of this story any more, although I'm sure that there was a humorous anecdote to it when he told it.
The sea crash, his log book indicates that this also happened while training for the Heavy Bombers on 23rd of May 1944, just six days after the first crash. The aircraft caught fire and they were forced to ditch in the North Atlantic off of Whitby. This was probably everyone's favorite story. The pilot came on the intercom announcing that they were going to have to ditch the aircraft in the sea and that they were to get to their crash positions. The problem here for dad was that his escape hatch was in the roof of the aircraft which he could not reach, even using his fingertips. Till the day he died, he swears that he does not know how he managed to reach the hatch and get out with his parachute on (a feat deemed impossible since it was not supposed to be possible to get through the hatch with it on.) All he remembered was laying on the floor, in the crash position and seeing the wall of water coming up at him, the next thing he new he was on the wing helping another crew member trying to pull the life raft out of the wing as it was filling with air (another feat deemed impossible as the dingies were designed to be full of air and ready to go, before the crew ever got to them.) After they all got into the dingy they started paddling to shore and after a short period of time one of them looked behind to see how far they had gotten, only to discover that they were still right next to the sinking aircraft. It would seem that Archie (the tail gunner) was still holding onto the tail of the plane and required some convincing to have him let go. Once underway, and making progress, a fishing trawler appeared on the scene. The captain hollered if they had any bombs on board ( obviously they didn't as they were still on familiarity flights at this time ) and Archie in his wisdom hollered back that they only had two "500 pounders", causing the fishing trawler to reverse course and then held off 50 yards away from the aircraft. They then encouraged the airmen to row to the trawler for rescue. He used to have a card in his effects giving him membership in the Goldfish Club.
The air crash, his log book indicates that this happened during a bombing run on Caen on 18th of July 1944. This was another story that he didn't talk about much. What one has to remember about this story is that the British/Canadian bombers didn't bomb the way they show in the old movies and TV, the films are usually those of American bombing techniques. In the RAF/RCAF each bomber was given a specific time to be on target to drop their bombs. These targets were usually (but not always) marked by smoke dropped by Mosquito Fighter Bombers. To be on target at a certain time was up to the pilot, who would do things like flying at right angles from the formation, to climbing, diving and what ever other techniques he could think of. More on this later. As a result, once the bomber was on his bomb run, he expected that he owned the space. Add to this the chaos of flak exploding, smoke, search lights, fighters, etc, etc. It was not uncommon to have collisions. In this case, as Dad's plane was commencing it's dive run (dropping somewhat in altitude) a Lancaster bomber had just dropped its bombs below them. The instant release of all that bomb weight from a bomber causes the plane to rise dramatically. The Lancaster was climbing quickly when it spotted Dad's Halifax and tried veering to the left, the pilot of Dad's Halifax spotted the Lancaster and tried to pull up veering to the right. Their wings collided. The Halifax lost some where between 3-6 feet off of its wing tip, making the flying difficult but not impossible, they made it home. The Lancaster unfortunately was not so lucky. Their wing was sliced between the two engines, causing them to lose both the power and the lift. The Lancaster spiralled down crashing below with no survivors seen jumping from the plane.
Dad had a few stories about his experiences with the American Air Forces. One that he always enjoyed telling was of an American bomber crewman at the bar one night. I assume he must have flown in during the night. He was bragging about how now that the Yanks were here, the war was almost over. He kept going on and on and on again about how big and powerful and mighty their bombers were compared to anything else in the sky. He invited Dad and his crew out to the craft to visit this amazing machine. The next day dad and his crew met the American at his plane, nestled comfortably underneath the wings of two Halifax bombers, one on each side, making it look quite tiny. Everyone, including the American had a good laugh at that. Dad usually referred to it as a B17 Flying Fortress. Dad sometimes also talked about the day the American Air Force flew support for their squadron. It was an eye opener for both Canadian and American and once again really showed the differences in the way their operations were.
As I mentioned earlier, each Canadian bomber had a set time to be over their target. This meant that it was not at all uncommon for a bomber to start flying at right angles to the rest of the flight in order to burn off time because they were too early. For example, flying 5 minutes north instead of east, then 5 minutes south, will bring you back (approximately) to where you were 10 minutes ago and will move your flight arrival time 10 minutes later than before. This is usually called a dog leg. The RAF/RCAF fighter squadrons were quite familiar with this procedure. However the Americans were not. American bomber squadrons, for the most part, flew in formation under control of one lead plane who was in charge of a wing of bombers. It was up to the lead plane, or leader to have his whole wing arrive on target at a certain time, and once he dropped his bombs on target, all other bombers in his wing would simultaneously do the same. They flew in formation, no one unless injured or damaged, left this formation. This gave their bomber squadrons a defensive posture unequaled. If the wing was attacked, all machine guns on all the bombers that could see the enemy aircraft opened fire. A wall of bullets would ensue. When the Americans had American fighter support, the fighters would fly close to and in and out of the formation only leaving the formation while attacking in support of a damaged bomber. The British (which of course includes Canadians) usually flew above the bomber formation, keeping a lookout for enemy fighters, and engaging where necessary, but leaving (for the most part) the bombers to do their own thing. Unfortunately, when American fighter support mixed with British bombers, there were a few problems. The first and more humorous of the two was when a bomber would do a dog leg, one or two of the American fighters would dash off from the support group protecting the squadron thinking that the one bomber was in trouble, only to have it turn around a few minutes later and rejoin the group. It apparently drove the Americans crazy seeing all these bombers popping in and out all over the place. The second and more dangerous problem was when the Americans would fly in-between or get close to what what they thought was a bomber in trouble. The gunners on-board the bomber would open fire on the approaching fighter endangering both the pilot and the fighter. The Americans learned quickly to give the RAF/RCAF more space. As a note to this story it was not uncommon, during the latter part of the war, that either side would put together stealth aircraft put together from parts of enemy aircraft that had been shot down in order to get in real close and effect serious damage to either side. It was a standing order withing Bomber Command to shoot down any aircraft, friend or foe, who got too close.
Dad liked to talk a lot about the ground crew, and how much they treated the bombers as their own. Sometimes even crying when a plane would come back all beat up. He sometimes talked about how they had gone on a mission this one day and flying home, low above the rooftops, they were brutally attacked by a German with a machine gun. He shot them full of holes, but nothing too serious, but it made them very very angry. To have survived an apparently very rough bombing run unscathed only to be shot up by someone on a roof-top! They turned the bomber around and every gun on the bomber opened up at the poor German, who disappeared in a cloud of dust as the roof collapsed. Later, landing in the dark they past the bright search lights which shone through several hundred holes on the aircraft. Which of course caused all sorts of anguish for the ground crew, including lectures for the air crew and required that their regular craft be pulled out of service for repairs. Dad actually remembered the number, as someone in the ground crew had counted them all, but unfortunately I can no longer remember it.
They were given a brand new aircraft for their next run, which was the aircraft that suffered the mid-air collision. Dad used to say that the faces of the ground crew were all beaming the day they landed that crate. It looked spotless to the ground crew ( I guess they thought that their lectures had worked ) that is until they turned it around to taxi back to their parking position which then showed the sliced wing with parts hanging out of it. The looks on the faces of the ground crew was apparently priceless. If one takes a look at dad's log book, you can see that on 15th of July 1944 their bomber was Halifax-T, on 18th of July 1944 their first flight (which collided with the Lancaster) was with Halifax-R. The second flight that day was with Halifax-T again. Once can deduce then that he was shot at, and they returned fire on their return from Newcourt.
The story goes that Mom and Dad were visiting my Grandad one day, and Canada at War or one of the WWII series like that was on the television. My grandad was saying, “Watch this right, there I'm going to get blown out of my tank!” and sure enough on the screen a tank is destroyed as if on command, by a bombs dropped by Canadian bombers. It would seem that the squadron bombing that night was my Dad's and that the tank corps (as I remember it Polish/Canadian ) was where my Grandad was serving. Apparently there was a mix-up in the colors of the flares. One color was to identify the Canadian position, and the other to identify the bombing target. Somehow these got mixed up. The story goes that Grandad chased my Dad out of the house that night. Thankfully they sort of made up but for the rest of their lives always claimed that the other one was color blind. Over the years this story others who retold the story sometimes changed to the day my Mom introduced Dad to her parents. It certainly would have made a good TV skit, but I'm pretty sure he never told it that way.
The Halifax bomber, unlike a lot of heavy bombers back then, did not have a belly (bottom) turret, instead it had an equipment/radar dome. This gave the aircraft an immediate weakness in that fighters would often try to attack from below away from the bombers guns. It was a common occurrence to have bullets stitching up the middle of the aircraft and a very dangerous place to sit. As a result, many aircraft, including Dad's, would rip out the equipment (not being necessary I suppose) and replace it with a cut slot through which a 30 cal machine gun could be mounted. The gunner would sit on a board straddling the slot and the gun and gave many a German fighter pilot a deadly surprise.
Another of the bombers deadly enemies was radar controlled anti aircraft fire. Once the German radar fixed on your bomber, you were dead. The result was an invention called Window. Window was a tube of long (2-3ft) strips of aluminum foil, which when dropped out of the aircraft separated into 100's if not thousands (considering all the bombers in the air) of bogus aircraft that the guns would try to aim on, making the radar guns useless. One day, one of the crew got the bright idea to drop beer bottles through the window chute to terrorize the enemy. The logic being that if it howled loudly when you blew across it with your mouth, it would be terrifying as it screamed faster and faster towards the ground. So it was tried, once up in the air over enemy territory, somebody popped a beer bottle into the chute (near the front of the plane) with a resulting and extremely loud wham shortly there after as the bottle smashed itself against the dome underneath, resulting in the gunner sitting there screaming that he had been hit. it was a good idea, but it just didn't work very well. And the gunner didn't want them to try it again, nor do I think did the ground crew.
Dad was a Wireless Air Gunner. Essentially a Morse code operator who could take over one of the machine guns when needed. His log never indicated that he was actually employed as a gunner at any time during combat. He showed me where he sat using the models we used to build. There was a small round window over top of the table that his radio, logs and code books used to sit. One day he was bent over working on something during the raid, and for some reason sat back in his chair. At that instant a shell went through the window right where his head would have been. He only suffered minor cuts from the flying glass. Once in a while he told a story about how, while out on a practice flight, they tuned the radio to one of the many broadcasts that one could pick up back then. On this one particular flight they lost track of time and by the time that he tuned back in to the frequency that he was supposed to be listening to, he had missed the return to base call that the squadron had been sending out and hour or so earlier. After landing, he was called out before his commanding officer and chewed out royally about not following protocol. Dad used the excuse that he radio was acting up and he never got the call until much later. The officer ordered an immediate inspection of the radio ( obviously suspecting the obvious a lot of them did just what dad Did.) Thankfully, what Dad did not realize until later was that either the engineer or pilot had overheard his excuse and went back into the plane and sabotaged the radio by pulling a wire loose, saving him from a rather embarrassing moment. He always loved Morse code, there was many a night when we would both sit by his shortwave radio and he would transcribe the dits and dahs. It was like magic, the way he would bring the words out of the air for me. That magic is still there with with me today.
Dad never mentioned that anyone was lost or injured from his crew. Then again he only told the funny stories and he certainly had a way of telling them. He certainly talked a lot about them, alas most of those stories I seem to have forgotten over time. Of all the crew that I remember Archie is the one that stood out. He was a 6ft tail gunner (almost too large for the tail turret) with flaming red hair. He was always pulling jokes. The other one was F/O Heron. I can't remember what Dad called him, But he used to like buzzing the tower and making them duck for cover. He also liked to buzz the cows out in the fields landing with pieces of picket fences stuck in his tail wheel. Some time during Dad's tour over in England, Canada produced a ribbon for those who volunteered. He was the first of his crew to receive it and I assume one of the first in the area. The crew was out to a show one night and they were sitting in the balcony. Unbeknown to him, one of the crew had used Dad, who was wearing his ribbon to garner some free beer (or maybe better seats), because the next thing Dad knows is that the music all at once stops and the stage spotlights shine on him, lighting him up for all to see. The master of ceremonies then announced to the crowd that there was a hero in their midst, a Canadian Flyer who has just been awarded the Canadian Victoria Cross (there is no such thing) and everyone stoods up to applaud him. I don't think dad was too happy about it, but then again they did get some freebies and he did like to talk about it after the way, so who knows.
Once in a while dad would bring out his parachute story, usually while watching a WWII movie with parachutes in it. On the day of a mission the crew would pick up their parachutes for their flight and after the flight they would return it. The never really wore their chutes in flight unless they were going to need them as they were cumbersome, and got in the way (for starters one could not sit down in a chair while wearing one.) Above the window where the assigning clerk gave out the chutes was a sign that read something like: "Satisfaction guaranteed. If it doesn't open the first time, bring it back and we'll give you a new one." It is also good to know that there were no emergency chutes on these sets, just the main chute. So during one of dads missions over seas the bomber was hit by flack. His log book indicates two days for this 12th or 15th of August, and the pilot recommended that they get their chutes on. Dad grabbed for his chute, and got the rip cord causing the chute to pop open (this effectively renders the chute useless as it will not open safely or properly anymore.) He bundled up the silk in his arms and showing the engineer said "Hope we don't have to jump!" Thankfully they didn't have to, and made it home safely. Dad, being the comedian that he was (It must have been a wild crew with him and Archie) bundled up his parachute in his arms and walked back to the the wicket. He plopped the whole mess back onto the desk and said quite nonchalantly, "It didn't work!" leaving the person in charge with mouth speechless and eyes wide open.
A lot of times, Dad would just add a comment or two to something that we were watching on the television. Unfortunately, many of those are either lost to memory, but a few pieces still remain. Dads squadron was the 420 Snow Owl squadron, assigned to London Ontario (although they were actually never based there or flew there). They shared the Tholthorpe airfield with the 425 Alouette Squadron from Montreal Quebec. When taking off they would alternate planes down the runway.
The Halifax bomber's skin again unlike most bombers shown on TV was made of cloth, not metal. Their usual bomber was Halifax-O, which he sometimes said was O for Oboe ( which was actually a code word for one of their navigation signals, so it doesn't seem likely). I did once come across a picture of nose art (paintings on the side of the nose of the plane) on a Halifax which was of a goose falling on roller skates with the words "OH-OH" or "OOPS" on it. But it seems to have disappeared. If there was a problem with their aircraft and they were scheduled to go on a bombing run that night, another plane would be assigned to them. You can see this happening a lot in his log book.
Crews flew together, unless one of them were needed to temporarily fill a missing position (due to injury or death on another crew). As a result crews usually, but not always finished their tours (34 bombing missions) together. In Dad's log book you can see one of the gunners and the engineer were both screened (finished their tour of duty) earlier than the rest of the crew.
Dad always had a warm spot in his heart for the Salvation Army (Sally Ann.) He talked about how many a time after a mission or at the train station there would be a booth where one could get a coffee. The Red Cross managed one where they would sell you a cup, and the Salvation Army managed one where they would give you one. I continue to respect the Sally Ann today in memory of him and his comrades. He was stationed pretty close to family while he was in England. The Beetham clan (both grandfather and grandmother come from Yorkshire) I guess macaroni and tapioca were a staple during the war. Till the day he died he refused to eat either.
He once talked about how the bomber in front of him, an Alouette Squadron Lancaster had their bomb bay doors open up while getting ready for take off. (not an uncommon experience) A 1000 pounder hit the ground, but thankfully did not explode, by the time the crew were taken off of that aircraft one of them had hair whose color had turned white. He also once mentioned how another bomber wasn't so lucky and the remains were just pushed off the runway with a bulldozer.
Dad only served one Tour of Operations in Europe. He had signed up to go to Burma as part of the Tiger Force but the story goes that he got drunk one night and threw a beer which crashed against the Base Commandants crest resulting in him choosing to return home to civilian life. By the time the squadron was actually ready to go to Burma the war was over
Dad knew quite a bit about the survival gear that came with ones kit when flying over Germany. One day we were watching a movie about an RAF officer who was intentionally captured in order to help some others escape. Dad explained that near the end of the war most uniforms were equipped with compasses in the buttons, piano wire, saws in the lapels, maps and money. They were also experimenting with some flying uniforms making them reversible (into civilian attire.) Halifax bombers were not heated, you had to wear very heavy coats, boots and gloves, Especially the gloves. The machine guns would get so cold that you could not hold onto them for fear of freezing your hands to them. There are no fully built, flying Halifax aircraft left any where in the world, which in my and my dads opinion is why the Lancaster got all the glory. The Halifax bomber was the workhorse of Bomber command albeit slower and older than the Lancaster, it was actually much more versatile and put to extensive civilian use after the war. I went back to Yorkshire for a day on holidays. That's when we stumbled across the Yorkshire air museum Before we left on holidays we told Dad where we were going, and if there was anything that he wanted us to see. The only thing that popped up was Betty's Bar. It was a great hangout back then for most of his squadron. So we went looking for it and enquired at the tourist kiosk and they knew of it. It's was actually quite famous during the war. We unhappily had to report back to dad, that yes it still exists today, only now it's a café and tea house. However in the main room there still remains a log book for visitors looking for Betty's Bar and one of its many mirrors (etched with names of many airmen) still exists downstairs.
The last I heard there were three Halifax bombers being rebuilt, there is a composite bomber put together with different parts from different versions but it will never fly. Rumor has it that a private individual is trying to put one together from parts frozen or preserved by water. Dad was contacted on his saying that someone was going to raise his craft from the sea in Whitby, but nothing else was ever heard. The RCAF museum in Trenton Ontario has also put together a model based on a craft from Norway, but it too will never fly. A completely reconstructed WWII bomber base has been built as part of the Yorkshire Air Museum where the first reconstructed Halifax bomber resides, I had a chance to actually visit and touch it. Unfortunately it was locked that day, and the key was not available. Things were still in construction, and we bought a brick which will have Dad's name etched on it as part of the memorial. While my dad and I have built many a plastic model of the Halifax Mk III or II. When I was quite young my dad had in the basement a gasoline powered balsa wood model of a Halifax bomber. It's wingspan was, as I recall, about 30 inches. Unfortunately, being so young, I would try and play with it, hitting many a support pole and cement floor. It alas just disappeared one day. I was quite young but I remember it's look and feel to this day. We stumbled across a great book about another pilot's experiences with the 420 squadron during WWII, One of the Many by Russell McKay and gave it to Dad. He always said that after reading the book, that he must have been in the Squadron before dad joined, well he was right for most of it. Their tours of duty actually overlapped. Starting from 24th of July 1944 to 31st of July 1944 they actually flew many of the same missions. 420 Squadron, Dad's squadron was known as the Snowy Owl Squadron, which was the main symbol of their crest. Their motto in English was "Fight to the Finish". They were disbanded after WWII, and became a fighter squadron in the 50's only to be disbanded again and turned into an Air Force Reserve unit for a while in the 70's. Last I heard it was no longer operational.
