The following story was submitted by Collingwood resident George Czerny-Holownia. He has written it about his father's experience as a navigator with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.
This year, the Collingwood Legion Branch 63 has asked residents to stay home on Remembrance Day and observe a moment of silence in memory of all the veterans of war.
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Pardon me while I wipe an occasional tear from my keyboard after having just flown with my dad in a Lancaster bomber on a mission over Germany.
For 14 minutes, I sat in the cramped confines of the Lancaster bomber “F for Freddie” as it flew into the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe. From my seat, just behind the pilots, as we flew closer to war-torn Berlin, I could see the night sky being split by shafts of light from aircraft-seeking spotlights. Here and there, bursts of flak sought and sometimes found Royal Air Force (RAF) planes. It saddened those in my plane, but they flew bravely on.
My dad, Kazimierz, was a navigator with the RAF in the Second World War. He escaped to England from Poland during the war and flew with number 300 and 304 Polish squadrons of the RAF. I have his logbook and know that he survived 30 operational flights which ranged from Foret de Nieppe to Stettin and LeHavre to Stuttgart. Some of his other bombing flights included Dusseldorf, Dortmund and Essen.
Sometimes, my father returned from one mission and set out the next day to fly another. The median age of airmen in the bomber command was 22 years old. Sometimes, their working day ended in death. Their fight for our freedom ended, but others continued the battles.
As we flew in our Lancaster I could hear the crackle of radio communications between members of the crew. The pilot calmly talking to the tail gunner as came the need to fight off a night fighter plane. The pilot announcing that the bomb doors were open. Seconds later bombs were on their way. Minutes later as the Lancaster banked and turned for home, the pilot was congratulating the crew on bombing success. The night sky was belching with bursts of explosions. The ground below was a riptide of flame destroying enemy installations.
War is hell it has been said and flying a bombing mission in a Lancaster was no picnic. My father flew in nine types of aircraft during his wartime service but I had no idea until recently what his flying experiences – the real life-and-death experiences – were like until friends of ours, Susan Meneer and Ken Magill, took us to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Mount Hope, Ontario.
At this museum, in an alcove adjacent to the main hangar's displays, there were six chairs and an invitation for visitors to try the “Virtual Reality Experience – BBC 1943 Berlin Blitz.” We signed up for a virtual-reality session and went off to look at the aviation-related exhibits. An hour and a half later, I was seated wearing a head-piece which resembled the top part of a welder's helmet and incorporated goggles and earpieces.
Our Lancaster take-off was smooth and the propellers of its four, roaring engines spun in unison just feet away from the fuselage; or so it seemed, as I looked out the windows from my seat in the cockpit. I have flown in a number of aircraft, large and small, as well as in helicopters. So seeing, the ground fall away as the aircraft gained altitude was nothing new to me. But this was not a pleasure flight to see the scenery. Soon, as we moved into the early stages of our simulated, almost-eight-hour flight, we crossed the English Channel and the havoc of fighter attacks in the air and dangerous flak from the ground began.
The simulation is sensational and is thanks to the BBC creating this virtual-reality experience using the recordings done by war correspondent Wynford Vaughan-Thomas who bravely flew “F for Freddie” on September 3, 1943 and recorded what transpired on that mission.
We were told, before we donned the headsets, to look around during the “flight.” I did and found that by doing so it provided an extremely-realistic feeling to this wartime mission. By turning through 360 degrees, I could look to see the action inside and outside the Lancaster as we flew. I had my camera in hand and a couple of times I had to stop myself from taking photographs of the pilots at the controls, or the landscape – a constant eruption of flame and flak – outside. That's how realistic it was as the Lancaster droned onward.
At one point in the flight, I turned 135 degrees to my left and looked down. There, at a small table was the Lancaster's navigator, his eyes pouring over a map and his mind calculating. His hands moved across the table as he plotted the airplane's flight path and conveyed that information to the pilot. The navigator's area, not far behind the pilots at the front of the plane, was cramped and dimly illuminated.
It's then that I almost lost it.
No, I did not vomit. I was not bothered at all in that way.
But, as I looked down on our virtual-reality navigator, thoughts of my father flooded into my mind and I got a lump in my throat. I sensed how he must have felt during his operational flights, knowing that at any minute a successful flak strike, or burst of bullets from an enemy fighter, could have ended it all for this brave crew.
I got choked up just thinking about it and it took me a little while to regain my composure after we left the virtual-reality station. I got a bit choked up again, as I set about writing this, knowing that my father died in a post-war airplane crash at Coleby Heath, Coleby, England. His high-performance Mosquito bomber, serial number TH984, crashed during inclement weather conditions and my father died. He was 28 and I was four when it happened on December 20, 1949.
The “Virtual Reality Experience – BBC 1943 Berlin Blitz” was a travelling exhibit at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum when I visited there.
If there is any way that this virtual-reality, wartime experience could be made available to all students in schools across Canada, especially at Remembrance Day, it would be extremely meaningful in underscoring that brave people fought and many died to give us the freedoms we enjoy today.
We must never forget. I know I shall not.
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