The Martin Baltimore is one of World War Two’s forgotten aircraft, but it performed outstandingly over the Aegean — as one crewman remembers WORDS: bl@BEN DUNNELL
For a young lad hailing from the north of England, it must have come as quite a shock to the system. Landing ground 07 at Matruh West in the Egyptian desert was no place for the faint-hearted or easily homesick. “It was just tents”, says former wireless operator/air gunner Arthur Mills. “You couldn’t hide behind very much”. This was where he first went to war with No 15 Squadron of the South African Air Force and its Martin Baltimores, during a period when these twinengined attack bombers proved themselves among the most effective and reliable strike assets available to the Desert Air Forces. Having joined up and learned Morse code in Blackpool, Mills began the airborne phase of his training with No 4 Signals School at Madley,
Herefordshire, in DH Dominies and Percival Proctors. Then it was off to No 8 Air Gunnery School at Evanton, Ross and Cromarty, where he flew in the Blackburn Botha. He qualified as a wireless operator/air gunner on 27 November 1942, his logbook describing him as: “Above average. Good knowledge of all subject. Efficient and reliable in air firing.”
Further instruction came at Hooton Park, Cheshire-based No 11 Radio School, using Bothas to teach coastal patrol techniques, and Avro Ansons for wireless telegraphy. Arthur remembers, “The station commander called me in and said, ‘You’ve done very well. I’m very pleased with you. You will go far’. I think I said to him, ‘Sir, is it Berlin, this weekend?’ I was waiting to join a bomber squadron… Four or five weeks later, I found myself in the desert, about to join No 15 Squadron of the South African Air Force. The South Africans were desperately short of signallers and air gunners.”
