Anzac Day Adelaide: Bomber Command Lancaster pilot Ern Milde reflects on German raids

Lancaster bomber pilot Ern Milde, now 97, will never forget the night he had to duck and weave through the skies above Europe to save his crew from a German fighter plane which had them in its sights.

It’s 1939 and times are tough for the Milde family in Adelaide’s western suburbs.

The family patriarch Eddie, a 3rd Light Horse Regiment veteran, has never quite recovered from the horrors of World War I. He suffers shell shock and a stutter thanks to the war and struggles to find consistent work.

But then, with South Australia still reeling from both the depression of the 1930s and a polio outbreak which closes down schools and enhances the fiscal malaise, Eddie Milde is killed in an industrial accident.

So eldest child Ern is forced out of school and into the workforce to help his mother Eliza put food on the table for himself and younger siblings Lawrence, Nancy and Betty.

After completing just one year of high school, at Woodville High after completing six years at Challa Gardens Primary School, Ern finds work as a message boy and trainee at Dunlop tyre company.

And by the time he turns 18 in March 1942, the Allies’ war against Germany and Japan is in full swing and options for young men are mostly limited to three choices – army, navy or air force. Ern choses the newest arm of our young nation’s defence arsenal – the air force.

Today, nearly 80 years later, Ern Milde sinks into a comfortable armchair in his Linden Park home and reflects on his days as a Lancaster bomber pilot, participating in raids, food drops and rescue operations over war-torn Europe.

The young Ern Milde had never even driven a car, let alone been on an aeroplane, but in 1942 a career in the army, which his 18-year-old mind imagined would consist of little else but endless marches and becoming an easy target for German machine gun fire, didn’t appeal. And the navy didn’t even enter his considerations.

Bomber Command veteran, Flying Officer Ern Milde. Picture Matt Turner.

“I didn’t know much about planes and wasn’t even very keen on them,” Mr Milde, now 97, says as he leans out of the chair with an enthusiasm which comes with reminiscing about such a momentous period of his life.

“It wasn’t until a mate said that we needed to do something about joining up, because if we didn’t do that we were going to get called up anyway when we were 18 and shoved into the army – and we didn’t want to do that.”

And so he enlisted, and spent two months at the Royal Australian Air Force’s Mount Breckan Training School at Victor Harbor, where he impressed enough for a selection panel to earmark him as pilot material. He was posted to Parafield where he flew his first plane, a Tiger Moth, and soon another selection panel then had the job of separating the trainees into fighter or bomber pilots. The brass decided Mr Milde would become a bomber, so he went further north to Mallala for more training and was presented with his wings four months later.

After a three-week ship journey to San Francisco, five days on a train to New York and five more days crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary he arrived in England. A secondment sorting mail in London, a stint in hospital battling shingles and a surplus of available pilots delayed his entry to the war but finally, on his 21st birthday on March 5, 1945, he was posted to Binbrook in 460 Squadron RAAF, part of the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command.

Ten days later he led his seven-man crew on its first operation bombing raid to the German city of Hannover. They subsequently took part in raids over Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Nordhausen, Keil, Heligoland and Bremen. They also completed a food drop over Rotterdam and rescued 25 prisoners of war from Brussels after Germany surrendered.

A Lancaster bomber aircraft dropping bomb over Ruhr Valley in Germany.

They pushed to the back of the minds the recognised fact that when they flew out of Binbrook for each mission, there was a near 50 per cent chance they would not return.

During one flight, Mr Milde was forced to throw the massive Lancaster into a corkscrew manoeuvre, banking left and right, climbing and diving to throw a chasing German fighter off their tail.

“The gunner would call out ‘dive port’, so you’d dive port as steep as you could, as fast as you could,” he says. “And then you’d pull the plane up and then you’d turn starboard.

“It was a system that they hoped would trick the fighter pilots, and it tricked our fella who had chased us – and this was in the dark, too.”

Bomber Command had a history of suffering huge casualties. Planes were large and cumbersome, most missions were at night, communication often patchy and navigation difficult.

Most operations involved multiple aircraft flying in formation and if the pilots were able to successfully navigate enemy anti-aircraft artillery and fighter planes, they still needed to avoid mid-air collisions, bombs dropped from planes above and overcome the logistic challenge of landing safely in the dark amid the flurry of returning crews.

Flying Officer Ern Milde, front centre, with his 460 Squadron RAAF Lancaster bomber crew. Back, from left, navigator Jack McCallum, flight engineer Phillip Poulter, tail gunner Eddie Reeves and mid-upper gunner Tuffy Gray. Front, from left, wireless operator Sammy Blakeman, Ern Milde, bomber Pat O'Connell.

On top of the perils specific to combat flying, there were also the hazards which came with flying in planes such as the massive four-
engine Lancaster, which could weigh more than 20 tonnes when fully loaded with fuel and bombs, in the still relatively early days of aviation.

Adverse weather, lack of oxygen, frostbite at high altitude, mechanical failures and running out of fuel were all constant threats.

Allied Bomber Command crews suffered the inexorably high mortality rate of 44.4 per cent – of about 125,000 aircrew, more than 55,000 were killed. About 4000 of these were Australian – more than 10 per cent of our nation’s tally of 39,000 killed in World War II, despite the fact less than 1 per cent of enlistments served in bombing crews. The average airman lasted just 15 of a maximum of 30 operations on a tour and had a life expectancy similar to that of a lieutenant or sublieutenant on the Western Front in WWI.

But ask Ern Milde today if he had a sense of trepidation for his own safety as he left on every mission, and he quickly deflects the conversation to his concern for others.

“I suppose there was always a bit of a feeling of anxiety,” he says. “But I was lucky, I wasn’t married. I used to feel sorry for the married men, particularly those who had kids.

“I had a mother and three young kids (siblings) younger than me back home. I used to think about how they would get on if I was knocked down or shot. But I think the single men were lucky about their outlook. We used to try and laugh it off – our nerves or being frightened.”

Pilot Ern Milde, far left, and navigator Jack McCallum, far right, and crew on the wing of a Lancaster bomber in East Kirkby.

Some raids required more than eight hours in the air and the seven-man crews of the pilot, navigator, wireless operator, bomb aimer, flight engineer, mid gunner and rear gunner formed strong bonds.

Mr Milde and his navigator Jack McCallum became lifelong friends and even went halves in a £40 car, in which Victorian farmer Jack taught his mate, who could pilot a plane but had never driven a car, the nuances of operating a land-based motor vehicle. The car ferried them to numerous dances near their air base and, at the conclusion of hostilities, even to a Victory Test cricket match between an Australian Services XI and an English national side at Lord’s.

Mr Milde is one of just a handful of Bomber Command veterans still alive in South Australia. He was among special guests expected at today’s Dawn Service at Adelaide’s National War Memorial, where RSL (SA) Anzac Day committee chairman Ian Smith paid tribute to all airmen to mark this year’s centenary of the Royal Australian Air Force.

Mr Smith says Australians should be “very grateful” for the determination and courage of the Bomber Command airmen in World War II.

A Lancaster bomber in Waddington, England.

“When you consider the fact that Bomber Command aircrew had a nearly 50 per cent chance of being killed in the course of the war, constantly saw their mates being killed around them and were keenly aware of aircraft missing as their squadrons returned to base after each mission, it is incredible that they just kept on getting into those aircraft and flying,” he says.

“They demonstrated incredible bravery and commitment every time they put on their flight suits and climbed aboard. They must have had nerves of steel.

“Then, now and always, the RAAF has been a key part of every war and overseas peacekeeping or humanitarian mission Australia has participated in over the last 100 years.

“In this centenary year, more than ever its members deserve the heartfelt thanks of the nation for their dedication, service and sacrifice.”

Air Force Association SA president Robert Black says the Bomber Command story is the most “amazing, heroic and dangerous” of any WWII Allied force.

“It was just extraordinary, because they were all conscious of the huge dangers that were undertaken every time they took off,” Mr Black says. “It was astonishing bravery.

“Brendan Nelson described that generation as Australia’s most heroic. Those in Bomber Command were among the most heroic of that generation. Many of my generation regarded those crews as role models of courage and sacrifice.”

There was extra pressure on the bombers’ pilots, who literally held the lives of their crew in their hands. But the way Ern Milde recounts it, getting everyone home safe and sound was just another box which needed to be ticked.

Ern Milde was a special guest at this year’s Anzac Day Dwn Service - the first Dawn Service he has ever attended. Picture: Matt Turner

“It was really a big responsibility,” he says. “But it was just another job, you’d think, you just had to do it properly.”

After Germany surrendered in May 1945, Mr Milde and his great mate Jack McCallum volunteered to stay in the UK for a few more months. They came back to Australia after the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which officially ended all World War II hostilities in August.

By the time he returned, Mr Milde had about 600 flying hours under his belt – a tally that couldn’t compete with a competitive field of pilots, some with 6000 hours, all looking for work in the aviation industry.

So he started an accounting course and accepted a job in Angaston, where he met his future wife Daphne. The couple was married for 71 years until Daphne died four years ago. Sons Bronte and Michael are now 72 and 68 respectively.

Mr Milde was part of a contingent of former airmen who returned to tour their former bases in the UK three years ago. A year earlier he had received a Legion of Honour from the French government. He has been a regular participant in Anzac Day marches in Victor Harbor and Adelaide but, remarkably, today will be his first Dawn Service.

And what is his message to the generations of younger Australians as they honour returned servicemen such as him on Anzac Day?

“Just be proud,” he says thoughtfully. “Be proud of being an Aussie. That’s the main thing. We’re very lucky here in Australia, and I’m proud to be an Australian.”