Way We Were: Meet the boy from Ipswich who bombed 98 targets in WWII

Hollywood would be hard stretched to capture the death-defying heroics of this WWII air force bomber, writes Dot Whittington

It was against all odds that Keith Campbell survived long enough to see his 25th birthday, much less be around to receive a letter from the Queen on his 100th birthday.

Princess Elizabeth was only 15, when he met her at Windsor Castle in 1941, and she presented him with a postcard of the castle with “Best wishes from the King and Queen” handwritten on the back.

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With a wartime story that could have come straight from the pages of a Biggles adventure book, Keith’s encounter with royalty is one of the lighter tales from the five years, five months and 13 days he spent in the air force.

The boy from Ipswich was the 371st Queenslander to join the Empire Air Training Scheme. He was 19 when he enlisted in January 1940 and like many others, dreamt of becoming a pilot. Instead, he would be a navigator and bomb aimer.

He had his first brush with death at the bombing and gunnery school in Canada. After dropping practice bombs on a target in the middle of a frozen lake, the engine of the aircraft died.

WWII airman Keith Campbell. Picture: Supplied

There was no choice but to crash land, and quickly, leaving no time to close the floor hatch left open to improve visibility. They landed wheels up and were engulfed by waist-deep snow in 40 below zero temperatures. Looking like snowmen, the crew trudged off the lake.

Keith celebrated his 21st birthday and was on his way to Bomber Command in England. He arrived in Liverpool on June 21, 1941, the day Hitler declared war on Russia.

Four nights after arriving at his new base, the aerodrome was bombed and three airmen were killed.

Keith was to join Wellington bombers on night operations to Europe. His job was to locate the target and then lie on his belly on the perspex floor of the plane’s nose to survey the scene and quickly set up calculations before fusing the bombs. The first operation was to Antwerp on September 20, 1941. Greeted by searchlights and gunners firing across the night sky, Keith realised this was now his life. “All we had to do was survive another 29 trips,” he recalled later. “It paid not to dwell or hypothesise on our prospects.”

He would complete 50 trips over 13 months on his first tour, by which time squadron losses were mounting. Just one crew in three made it.

A Wellington Bomber in which Keith Campbell survived a German attack. Picture: Supplied

When Japan struck Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, over Dusseldorf Keith’s bomber was attacked by a Messerschmidt night fighter. Two crewmen were wounded, the port wing was alight and they went into a spiral dive. Miraculously, the fire went out and they recovered but the aircraft’s hydraulics had been shot away, the wheels and bomb doors were hanging down and bombs were still on board.

They limped home with large strips missing from the fuselage and port wing and a gaping hole near the beam gun. Keith jettisoned the bombs in the North Sea and they could only hope they wouldn’t perish in a ball of flames when they hit the runway.

In heavy fog, the pilot lined up the approach. They held their breath. The wheels held fast. They were the first to survive a night fighter. Next it was off to the Middle East and Keith was pleased as the odds of completing 30 trips were getting slimmer.

He arrived in Cairo as allies prepared to bomb Tobruk Harbour. With plenty of ack ack and searchlights and 500 miles of desert between base and Tobruk, it was no place for the faint hearted.

Just as he got his opportunity to train as a pilot, the government recalled all airmen who had been overseas for more than three years. He landed in Brisbane on January 1, 1944 but his war wasn’t over. He was posted to Western Australia and then New Guinea.

All up, Keith navigated to and dropped bombs on 98 targets, 50 by night in Europe and the Middle East and 48 by day in the Pacific.

On January 29, 1946, he was discharged with a Distinguished Flying Cross and French Legion of Honour among his pile of medals. He had survived three tours of duty flying 107 missions.

At 25, he returned to his job with the bank that had given him War Service Leave. He later became an executive with a cosmetics company and retired when he was 62. At 90 he landed his first hole in one.

Keith celebrated his 100th birthday in March last year and died in September. He told his family that, like other airmen, he remembered being really scared only three times – at the beginning, the end, and all the time in between.