2003 History Conference - Air War Europe A different war:
Australians in Bomber Command Writing to his family in
Cootamundra in 1941, Flight Sergeant George Hawes, then at a
Bomber Command Operational Training Unit, tried to express his
admiration for the aeroplane that he was flying. “I would like
to give old Coota a thrill and bring one of these ‘Wimpies’ down
the main street about a hundred feet up – and give them a look
at a real aeroplane …”. When he was posted to 207 Squadron and
shifted from Wellingtons to Manchesters, he wrote: “Heck, they
are a size! I thought the others were big, but ‘boy you should
these babies’ (as my observer would say).” In 1942, 207 Squadron
was re-equipped with Lancasters. Twice Hawes called them “wizard
kites”, and he underlined a sentence: “If anybody had told me
two years ago that I would be flying the fastest four engine
bombers in the world in 1942 I would have said they were mad.
Hawse’s was right to be both surprised and proud at what he was
doing, and his struggle to d