Long Time No See

Lieutenant Deryk Wakem, Royal Navy (Ret'd.)
(Originally published in Courage, Honor, Victory)

I wrote an earlier article about the rescue of the crew of B-17 "Superstitious Aloysius" by H.M.S. Verdun after their Fortress had ditched in the North Sea off the Suffolk coast. Following several letters to the United States, I managed to contact six out of the ten crew members of that B-17. 

So, on Sunday, 14 September 1986, I had arranged to meet Peter Milward, the pilot of "Superstitious Aloysius." The rendezvous was to be the control tower at Duxford Airfield at 1300 hours. 

I had not seen Peter since that afternoon of 4 January 1944, when we had all given the crew a hand up the scrambling nets of the Verdun and I had subsequently collected their valuables for safekeeping. 

We now move forward a matter of forty-two years and find that 14 September 1986 was the big anniversary flying day and that twenty to thirty thousand people were also milling around the control tower. 

Peter's idea that we should both display placards giving our names turned out to be a brilliant move. We shuffled through the crowds, holding up our cards and being watched curiously by the surrounding people. After a few minutes I made another foray and bumped into Peter, and we shook hands for the first time in nearly half a century. 

Peter is, without a doubt, one of the most anglicized Americans that I have encountered. But then, what would you expect from the son of a father who worked for Rolls Royce, both in Derby and later in their brief American operation? Peter therefore has many relatives living in England, and it was to visit them that he made his three-week pilgrimage to England this summer, his first in fourteen years. 

We walked and talked, to the roar of the modern jets on display and then stood back to admire the smoothness of the Spitfire, the Hurricane, the Lancaster, the B-17, and the Mustang. We then paid a visit to the B-17 "Sally 'B" in her hangar, and I video-filmed Peter, describing the good habits of the Fortress. 

Peter then said goodbye to his cousins with whom he had been staying in Suffolk, and my wife and I took him to our home in Lincolnshire. 

We continued talking until it was time to take Peter to the station for his return to London, from which he intended to take off for Elgin on another family-tracing expedition before finally returning to California. 

The actual meeting made my day, of course, but it also answered several questions that had been in my mind, on and off, for those forty years. 

The weather in the North Sea on 4 January 1944 was very poor; the tail end of a gale was still blowing, the seas were still quite high, and there was more than a hint of the snow to come. The tops of the waves were being blown away into long columns of spume down to leeward. When the Coston gun-line was fired across to the two life rafts, the first three lines were blown away. In the end, one of the American flyers jumped overboard and swam to pick up the floating line and towed it back to the inflatables. 

The gallant swimmer turned out to have been Peter. 

Only one of the ten men was totally dry beneath his flying clothes, I recorded at the time that I made out the report. Which one and how come? 

It was Staff Sergeant McComber, the giant of the crew, and the unlikely ball-turret gunner. How these two events came about I heard from Peter Milward for the first time at Duxford this year. 

The first life raft had inflated with no problems and eight of the crew took off in her. McComber volunteered to stay with Peter and attempt to inflate the second life raft. As they stood atop the fuselage, rolling in the sea, they struggled with the equipment, especially the lines that had become tightened by immersion. It was still possible, however, to walk along the top of the Fortress from one end to the other. 

At last the second dinghy was inflated and just before climbing aboard, Peter decided that it was time to "take a leak" from the stable platform afforded by the Fortress' fuselage. This he duly did with some sage advice from McComber as to which direction was downwind. Then they both dropped into the circular dinghy, cast off, and drifted down to join the others. 

Almost thirty minutes later an R.A.F. Walrus arrived and dropped two large smoke floats. Peter said that it was a little unsettling to see them tumble out of the flying boat and land in the water nearby. Immediately afterwards the Verdun arrived and began the difficult task of catching the dinghies that were moving rapidly down-wind to the southeast. 

This was the moment when Peter got wet, and how McComber managed to stay dry in the lightly loaded dinghy. The other life raft with eight men aboard was full of water by this time, much of the gear having been washed away initially, while the rest was rolling about in the water-filled raft. 

This had been their first and last flight in "Superstitious Aloysius," which had lost three engines on the way back from Kiel. As they dropped steadily back from the 95th's formation until they were alone, they were approached by two Spitfires. This alone produced its own doubts and problems. The Spitfires were obviously reluctant to approach too closely, unaware that the Fortress had ditched her guns and ammunition to keep themselves airborne for as long as possible. The Fortress crew, on their side were suspicious of the two fighter planes that were standing off at some distance. However, the Spits rolled to display their friendly markings and then, having been identified, approached more closely and remained with them for a time, until fuel levels forced them to leave. 

As we drove away from Duxford, on that autumn afternoon, Concorde was flying across our path and the Red Arrows were tightening up their formation preparatory to giving their last flying display of the afternoon. Meeting Peter once again after our earlier, brief meeting on that winter's afternoon so many years ago was one of the high spots of my researches, and we have found a new friend, Peter Milward, a gentleman in all senses of the word. Stop Press: I have just received a letter from Eddie Winstead, the radio operator of "Superstitious Aloysius."