The Gunners

10th April 1944 | Reg Miles Biography

It was cold, it was apparently dangerous, and if you worried about not getting back, you probably wouldn't. Those that were frightened all the time were the real heroes, most of us just did it and were glad to be doing something to save our civilisation. Not that we ever knew just how bad things were or what a terrible bunch the leaders of the enemy were.

Yes I was a bit frightened on our first operation, but the ones that I always felt sorry for were the gunners. The pilot and engineer could see what was happening but were also very busy. The navigator and wireless operator were shut up in their places with little to see, but were also busy. The bomb aimer was in all probability stretched out full length looking at the sights below waiting to do his bit, and telling us what he could see to help us avoid others and ensure we got where we were supposed to go.

But the gunners isolated in their turrets had only themselves to talk to, and fear can become a self promoting thing. Being busy kept me from being too frightened to do my job properly.

Nine Thousand Miles of Concrete

14th January 2016 | Nine Thousand Miles of Concrete - Airfield Raesearch Group

On 31 August 1945, the journal 'The Aeroplane' published an article on the construction of airfields in Britain. The article described the UK as "one vast aircraft carrier anchored off the north-west coast of Europe".

The Aeroplane article estimated that the AMDGW had spent £600 m in the first five years of war - the total area of concrete laid in runways, perimeter tracks and aircraft dispersal points was around 160 million square yards. Sir Archibald Sinclair had, in Parliament, compared this area with a 9,000-mile-long, 30-feet-wide road from London to Peking. The weight of the stone aggregate required to manufacture this large expanse of concrete, exclusive of the weight of cement, was in the region of 30m tons, or sufficient to fill a convoy of average-sized lorries stretching one-and-a-half times around the world at the Equator. Also, one million prefabricated buildings were erected to provide workshop, technical, training and accommodation facilities

In 1935 airfields occupied an estimated 37,000 acres, of which 25,000 were held for service use and 12,000 for civil use. By 1940 service airfields alone accounted for 105,000 acres.

During the conflict a further 255,000 acres were requisitioned, bringing the total held by the various service departments in 1945 to 360,000 acres, representing an area a bit larger than the whole of Bedfordshire. In 1945 there were over 30,000 acres of service airfields in Lincolnshire alone, which was more than the whole of the UK just ten years later.

During the six years of war about 175 million square yards of concrete, tarmacadam, or other hard surfacing were laid in paved runways and connecting tracks.

A typical bomber station would need 22 miles of underground and 30 miles of overhead wiring for its lighting equipment - this produced a total of 12,000 miles of overhead cabling, using half-a-million support poles, plus 9,000 miles of trenching for the buried wiring.