RAF Navigators

[Steven M]

Great posting. Many thanks for adding this to the forum.

[OKW]

These must be his original notes or log made whilst airborne and then transferred to his flying log afterwards. Just a few words and numbers on paper which can't convey the terror and uncertainty of flying missions over occupied europe, which so many under took and so many didn't survive, of a generation of aviators which have been ignored by the powers that sent them out.
The crew photo is great, i can't see the prop blades on the outer engines so presumably they are running, the group on the right must be in danger from the prop wash. Apart from the fact that it was against regs to have a camera on base crews also considered it unlucky to have their photo taken thats why there are comparitively few aircrew photos made.
It makes you wonder what happened to all those in the photos, 1942/43 was a dangerous time for bomber command aircrew and if they survived one tour at this stage in the war would have been expected to have undertaken a second or even third tour after being screened and rested.
Having read numerous records of bomber command written by flight crew, most of whom say the crew was closer than family, the crews split and go their separate ways at the end of a tour without a backward glance, no contact, no exchanging of addresses etc and then an urge at about the fifty year apart point to be reunited with their crew mates, of course by then for alot it would have been to late. Nice to see someone showing an interest.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Once again thanks for sharing these. Really interesting.

Cheers, Ade.

[Gary Cain]

I agree! Many thanks for sharing the log books. These are not seen very often!

[snailer]

Thanks for your comments everyone, sorry I have only just replied.

Mike, I have wondered about the Nickels myself, there are the references I2 I3 I4 G3 G3q and G48 on some of the logs. I have seen a "Luftpost" leaflet on the net but sadly it didn't seem to have any of these references. Of the thousands dropped I'm sure there must still be some about somewhere.

OKW, before I found these and started researching a bit I was totally ignorant of what these young men endured and the grim statistics of there chances of surviving.I read a comment from a rear gunner that he went to war straight from school knowing nothing about life and came home 3 years later older and wiser than his Father. Certainly character building if nothing else.
On quite a few logs he has noted that his navigation equipment didn't work, "G packed up" , "G U/S" and "Last of life out of G".

As far as I could see on the CWGC site the crew seems to have survived the war although the gunners Sgt Stainton and Sgt Sherrard-Smith in the following log from Sept 42 were killed with another crew before the end of the month whilst bombing the submarine pens at Flensburg.

[snailer]

Here's a Minelaying or Gardening sortie, so-called because all the enemy waterways were named after vegetables apparently

The Grid reference is just off the coast of Terschelling

They are at 300ft before climbing to 700 then dropping the mines from 800ft at 170mph


The logs seem to have comments from his Commanding Officers


Does anyone know what No5 dots single R means?