Professional journalists will tell you the best stories are sometimes just stumbled onto.
I went to the Canada Aviation Museum in Ottawa in 2001 expecting to see many different types of old aircraft on display in the massive building. That summer afternoon about a dozen people took the 45-minute guided tour of the building, which houses one of the world’s best collections of vintage aircraft. The aircraft included the powerful Spitfire, one of the most famous British fighter planes of the Second World War; the Messerscmitt 163A Komet, the first jet-powered German fighter, which was developed towards the end of the war.
There was a huge four-engine bomber — an Avro Lancaster X — in the far side of the section where the Second World War aircraft were on display that caught my fancy. The massive bomber, in a dark green colour, intrigued me.
When our tour group finally got to the bomber and we stood behind the aircraft, I was amazed at the tiny glass-enclosed place where the rear gunner would sit among machine guns and ammunition. It was hard to imagine that someone could fit in that place and sit there for eight hours on bombing runs.
Some well-dressed elderly gentlemen and their wives and family suddenly joined our group as the tour guide told us the details of the aircraft. The tour guide explained that the rear gunner sat in very precarious cramped quarters and he would have to sit there for hours. As the guide was explaining this, one of the elderly gentlemen said something that sounded like he knew what she was talking about.
He said, “She’s damn right! I should know. I sat in there during the war.”
The elderly gentlemen gathered around us were the last living bomber crew, there for a portrait by artist Elaine Goble.
It turned out there were four very special men and their wives among us. A daughter of one of the men had brought them together. She wanted a painting of her dad and his war chums before it was too late.
The tour group moved on and I stayed and chatted with the airmen and asked them to pose for a photo. I had a camera, pen and notebook and couldn’t believe I was in the right place at the right time. The photos are a treasure.
The men flew a British Wellington bomber, which is smaller but similar to the Lancaster. William Pettit of Ottawa was the rear gunner, Eric Hodgson of Winnipeg was the front gunner, Mike Manning of Oshawa was the radio (wireless) operator and Ralph Stutt of Ottawa was the pilot. The navigator, Roland Dube of Grandmere, Quebec, was killed in 1950 in an RCAF air crash in Alaska.
For nearly a year, from November 1942 to August 1943, they flew together in night raids over German cities and later from North Africa to Sicily. In spite of nightly anti-aircraft fire and attacks from German fighter planes that sometimes left their Wellington bomber so full of holes that a grounds crew had to replace the wings before it could fly again, no crew member was ever injured. After August of ’43, they trained other aircrews.
When I met the men, Stutt was 89, Petitt was 83, Manning was 85 and Hodgson was 90.
A portrait was made from a photo taken that day and donated to the new War Museum in Ottawa.
