This is the story of a navigator who flew with 30 Squadron RAAF as a Navigator Air Gunner.

Both Australian and British built aircraft served with 30 Squadron in the South West Pacific theatre of war.

This account covers part of the Battle of Bismark Sea where an invasion force some 6,800 Japanese was reduced to just 600 survivors in a battle known as a turning point in the Pacific War.

Battle of Bismark Sea

I suppose if you’re talking about my time in 30 squadron, probably the most significant thing we ever did, which we believe and so did McArthur. It was a turning point in the war was the battle of the Bismarck Sea, when 12 Beaufighters took the brunt of attacking those 18 altogether, there were 12 transports and 6 destroyers and only two destroyers came out of it, but of course we had Liberators and Fortresses upstairs dropping bombs while we’re strafing, it was a bit dicey I tell you, you’d be strafing a transport or even a destroyer and a big shoot would go beside you and a bomb would be dropped by a Liberator.  The B25’s had also learnt the art of skip bombing and they followed us behind us and dropped skip bombs and on one particular run we were making, I looked over the starboard side and believe it or not, at the same height as us and traveling at the same speed as us was a 500 pound bomb heading for the same target.  Things like that you never forget. 

Dicing with Zeros

We could get away from the Zeros providing we could get away towards the sea.  The top speed of a Beaufighter was about 330 miles an hour, which was about the top speed of a Zero down there, but once we got in the air we were very vulnerable. The higher we went the less manoeuvrable and less power we had.  Our maximum boost was at sea level and that’s the way we were rated, but when we did get jumped by Zeros they could normally only get one pass maybe two at the most because if they come from diving down and you’re going…they would only get one dive at you, up the other side and another dive, by that time we’ve gone further. I’ve seen Zeros formating on us about 50 yards on either side just looking at us, they can’t go any faster, we can’t go any faster and if they turn towards you they can’t get a shot in.

I can remember one time when we were coming back from Rabaul, which was probably one of the most heavily defended aerodromes in the Southwest Pacific, because it was the headquarters for the Japanese, it was of course the destination of those ships that we got rid of in the Bismarck Sea battle and that’s when we got jumped. 

In the Beaufighter you had a steel door between you and the pilot, some people used to close them, but we never did, because we liked to see each other and anyhow, there’s these two Zeros zooming up around  the back of us and I said: “For Pete’s sake get this bloody thing going!” and he said: “What do you think I’m trying to do?” And he had his foot up, the throttle’s on the left and he had his foot up like this and he said: “I’m bending the bloody throttle, I can’t go any faster” Of course there was no armour at the back, but I used to carry a bag full of coloured paper, lolly paper, magazines, I’d rip them up and I’d throw them down the chute for the flares, as it might take their attention away from us, or I used to put the red cover on the Aldis lamp and I’d flick it at them.  Whether it had any effect I don’t know, but it gave me something to do as a navigator sitting up there in the middle of the fuselage. You know you’re like a shooting gallery, you thought you were for show, and we did get shot at quite a lot and later on we carried two 500 pound bombs, one on each wing, we used to drop those, but mainly four canons and 6 machine guns which was a hell of a lot of bloody fire power and when you’d shot up a barge or lugger it would just disintegrate. 

You know there were some great times in Beaufighters and some tragic times.  The first bloke I ever flew with got killed on his first operation and took my course mate with him.  Life is luck, absolute luck.  As a navigator I was asked to fly with a fellah because his own navigator was ill, but we always carried a spare one or somebody… when this other bloke said he’d fly, they didn’t come back, so its just luck. 

 John Gates was a young Australian pilot with 137 Squadron in the RAF. In 1944 he wound up leading his squadron in the first real test of the mighty Hawker Typhoon in it’s moment of glory in the battle of Falaise Gap.

The Typhoon was a behemoth of a fighter. Weighing over 5 tons loaded it needed all 2200 horsepower of it’s 24 cylinder Napier Sabre engine to fly at the impressive speed of more than 400 miles per hour. The Typhoon suffered some disturbing teething problems including a propensity to lose it’s tail and a high-revving temperamental engine.

Here’s the story in John’s own words. 

“I think the Air Ministry decided the Typhoon was not going to be a fighter. It just wasn’t. You couldn’t roll the thing, I mean you’d be shot down every time you’d be fighting with even a Tiger Moth I think, but fore and aft it was so sensitive.”

John had learned the art of ground attack on Hurricane aircraft. “I had the one with 40mm cannon and when you fired the guns you’d get pushed back in your seat! The Hurricane had 1000lb of armour plating up against the pilot, up yer bum and up your spine, eight rockets, four on either side, well by that stage.. the poor old Hurricane.. we had a Spitfire escort to take us across the channel. We lost very few aircraft - I don’t think we lost any at that stage, simply because if the German ack ack fired at us they were firing at a plane doing they thought about 180 knots and we were doing 120.”

John’s specialty was shooting trains. “You’d start at about 10,000 feet, and you’d come across this train and you’d say well, let’s have a go…so you’d go down and try to blow up the boilers.  If your shots went toward the carriages, we really got very upset. 

Then we got rockets, we became an experimental rocket squadron. We also attacked the German V1 bases in the Pas de Calais area. It was all good fun at that stage.”

From the Hurricane John moved onto the Typhoon. “ The Hurricane was a much slower plane so you could fire the rockets and then break left or right with sufficient time before  the rocket blew up the target. When the Tiffies came along, they’d do maybe a hundred miles an hour more, you just got to the target nicely when they blew up. So after blowing up a number of Typhoons, the Ministry decided this was a no-go show. They decided on a new technique which was to fire the rockets at 2000 feet range which gave you air top bottom and sides to break away and go somewhere else.”

 ”The next problem was the Typhoon’s gunsight. So some bright bugger certainly did the right thing, turned the sight right around and focused your attention on the aeroplane’s own windscreen. So the windscreen reflected a dot and a couple of red lines, there wasn’t anything else to help you. If you were firing the guns you put the dot on the target, but with the rockets you’d have to look out and see which way the smoke was blowing and where the wind was coming from. Then it was really a bit of deduction. You’d then have to say well the wind is blowing totally from the left so it’s going to blow it that way so we’d better pull the first couple back the other way and see if we win. And you generally have enough time because you drop from 10,000 feet to two thousand before you fired, so you had enough time to have a go with two rockets at a time, one push and if that was good you’d say ‘gee that was marvellous’ and away you’d go and all the way down you’d fire until you got to 2000 feet - you’d get rid of them all pretty quickly. We got very accurate. It was quite surprising how good you can get when you try.”

Then the squadron was sent to a forward base in France. 

“The German Army in the Falaise Gap area made a big mistake. They were totally caught with their heavy armour and this was the first real test of the rockets on Typhoons. Well, it was an absolute howling success. If the rocket hit the tank which we hoped they did because the sighting was a bit up and down… it blew the gun top off. Turret, gun and all, Boonk! It wasn’t very nice for the people inside, either. They were 60 pound high explosive warheads which penetrated the tank armour and then blew up. Well I mean it was really horrible when you come to think of it but it certainly killed tanks by the dozen.”

After the battle, more than 10,000 Germans lay dead, and over 730 tanks and tank destroyers from a total of 880 were destroyed.

Soon after, the Germans were in retreat along the Albert Canal. The squadron was asked to fly an almost suicidal mission.

“The idea was to fly straight down the main road and capture everything on the way - that’s army, with the Air Force going up along the side of the road on half an hour breaks to stop or hit or fire or do what damage we could to any enemy movement on left or right. So we went up to a map mark and went around for half an hour. So Group got us together and made a wonderful speech and told us he was prepared to lose every aircraft - we looked at each other and said is he flying in this? No way! 

We drew straws to see which squadron would go first and 137 won the straw for first. 

Like everything, sometimes first on is the best and sometimes first on is the worst. The Germans were expecting us and they put down a great barrage across the canal so we flew to one side of the barrage around and around and around for half an hour. Virtually nothing happened till the last five minutes when on the ground we saw the leading Guards armoured division tank going straight up the main road towards Eindhoven when it was hit by German fire. Boong! But from where? Boong! over there a bit of smoke going up. I reckon bloody brave, he really went up Boom like that and the second tank knocked him into the ditch. Well we saw where it was coming from so we circled around and back into this wood where there were three German 88mm guns which had just blown the tank completely over. 

We then endeavoured to blow them over with rockets. We couldn’t see exactly what we were firing at; we had a very vague idea so we all dithered around, and our eight aeroplanes each put eight rockets into that bloody wood, and it worked. So the next lot did something similar I think, and I understand that the poor Germans came out practically mental from the impact of the rockets. We didn’t actually hit every one of them but the fear was there and very effective.” 

 John survived the war to become managing Director of Streets Ice Cream. He is seen here at the Temora Aviation Museum.