In his 2005 book "Warriors" Max Hastings gives an interesting retrospective on Gibson, warts and all, in a chapter titled "The Dam Buster." I recommend this to anyone interested in the dams raid and the film. In the piece, Hastings refers to a "penetrating biography" of Gibson by Richard Morris with Colin Dobinson, "Gibson" (Penguin, 1995). I've not yet read it. Has anyone on this board a comment about the Morris book?
shareAfraid I haven't read it. I did read the chapter Hastings wrote about Gibson and found it very interesting.
Most people who knew Gibson recalled that he was a much more complicated man than Richard Todd depicted him as being. Many of his crews didn't like him on a personal level, as they found him oftentimes unapproachable and cold. However, both his supporters and detractors all agreed that he was an exceptionally brave man and had fine leadership abilities.
One thing I wonder about is what would Gibson's life had been like if he had survived the war. Would he have been able to fit into peacetime life as either a civilian or a RAF officer? When he was taken off of operations, he was despondent seemed unable to cope. (This is what drove him to push to be reinstated on operations where he was killed).
An interesting comparison is to look at one of Gibson's successors as the CO of 617 Squadron, Leonard Cheshire. Cheshire, in the first several years after the war, had a great deal of trouble adjusting. He joined a commune of ex-servicement, then he went to Canada to recover after his health broke down and spent a year doing general labour in a small hamlet in the Rockies. I think it could be argued that Cheshire may have been suffering from PTSD. He had served on combat operations fairly constantly for four years. (Cheshire eventually found his postwar niche when he took in an ill veteran dying of cancer and cared for the man in his last months. This was the start of Cheshire founding the Cheshire Homes.) It's quite possible that Gibson might have been affected as well by the constant strain.
"One thing I wonder about is what would Gibson's life had been like if he had survived the war. Would he have been able to fit into peacetime life as either a civilian or a RAF officer? When he was taken off of operations, he was despondent seemed unable to cope. (This is what drove him to push to be reinstated on operations where he was killed)."
Toronto:
I remember a thread on another board discussing this fellow comparing with ANOTHER famous Commonwealth Fighter Pilot, George 'Screwball' Beurling, the top Allied Ace during the fighting in Malta...apparently BOTH guys seemed to be TOTALLY lost when they weren't flying in combat....
nm
I know the backstory on Beurling. He was Canada's top scoring fighter pilot of Word War II (31 confirmed kills). However, he had a different sort of personality even before the war. From his early youth, he'd wanted to do nothing but fly. He was rejected by the RCAF when the war began because he lacked a high school diploma. (As well, the then small RCAF wouldn't be able to handle the huge influx of volunteers for months. Many future members tried to join when the war began but were told to come back in six-months, when they would have things running more smoothly). He had even been willing to have joined the Finnish Air Force (he had contacted Finland's consulate, and been accepted) but his father stopped him from doing so.
Once he went to England and joined the RAF, he proved to be an exceptional, but difficult, fighter pilot. In sweeps over France and the Channel, he often refused to obey flight discipline and would break formation for a chance to have solo dogfights. (This not only endangered himself, but other pilots he flew with). His superiors thought he would be better suited for duty on Malta, and he agreed.
On Malta, which was under seige, there wasn't any of the tight formation discipline as there was on Cross-Channel work. It was pretty much unrestrained, pure air combat and Beurling excelled at it. He only seemed to care about air combat. He didn't care about promotions or decorations. He refused a commission more than once (on graduation from flight training, and later on Malta) until he was basically given no choice in the matter.
He flourished on Malta, but when that campaign ended and he wound up back in England, transferred to an RCAF wing, he found himself in trouble again. He again refused to fly like a team member. His CO, Wing Commander Hugh Godefroy found him a pleasant person, but very hard to figure out. He made Beurling a flight commander and he protested feeling it was "administration". Godefroy had to talk him into accepting it, saying that the job was leading other fighters on operations. As Godefroy recalled that seemed to cause Beurling to rebel. He began doing stunts like low lever aerobatics over the field. Godefroy took him aside and said that he had no objection to Beurling doing aerobatics, but they both knew it was a Court Martial offence to do them under 1000 feet altitude (for safety reasons) as well as him doing it over the airfield. Godefroy was worried that inexperienced pilots would see him doing it, try to do it themselves, and get killed. A short time later, Beurling deliberately disobeyed that order, and Godefroy had no choice but to ground him and transfer him out. Godefroy always felt that he lost Beurling's cooperation when he promoted him to flight commander.
As an interesting afternote, Godefroy met Beurling again, by chance, in December of 1947 at a ski hill outside Montreal. Beurling told him about an offer he'd had to go to Israel and fly in some combat operations there. Beurling said Godefroy could go along as well, and would be paid $1000 just for crossing the Atlantic. In eight weeks, he could return to Canada with $8000 (and that was in 1947 dollars). Godefroy was then a medical student, and had a wife and family, so he was tempted by the money. He had to turn Beurling down when his wife told him -in no uncertain terms- she would divorce him if he returned to combat flying like that.
I think Gibson was definitely a different sort than Beurling. He wasn't quite the complete individualist Beurling was and could work with others. (As a bomber pilot, he had led a crew. And, when he flew night fighters, he and a navigator had to function as a well-oiled team). As well, he had been an officer in the prewar RAF, so he was able to live with Air Force discipline and structure.
If Gibson had survived the war, I think he might have gone into test-flying afterwards. He had actually wanted to be a Vickers test-pilot in the 1930's, when he was 18. So, it might have been a natural step for him. He may well have found a good outlet in testing and integrating the new jet aircraft into service in the postwar years. I think Gibson would have been able to eventually adjust so long as he had been allowed to fly. As well, giving him a command was something he would rise to, not want to avoid (like Beurling).
Toronto:
Thanks for the feedback! Always found Beurling an interesting fellow; was recently reading a book about the Malta Airwar for the Spitfire Squadrons & there was an amazing photo of Him; even in a black n white photo his eyes were amazingly light & intense--and he had a look on his face...you could almost tell he was thinking: "Yo, Photo guy: what the *beep* are you looking at??"
nm
You might find Hugh Godefroy's memoir Lucky 13 to be interesting. He describes his dealings with Beurling -who he describes as, from a technical viewpoint, the best fighter pilot he ever met.
Godefroy even met Guy Gibson once, when he was between tours and sent as a liason to visit some bomber squadrons to compare notes with bomber crews and see what they could learn from each other. This was when Gibson was in command of 106 Squadron. He found Gibson to be an aloof man with no use for fighter pilots. He described Gibson's crews as thinking of him to be cold, but held him in the highest regard for his sheer courage.
Toronto:
I shall seek it out at my local bibliotech!
NM
Richard Morris's biography of Gibson is a masterpiece. There have been many who attempted this project, the worst example of which must be Susan Ottaways's book "Dambuster" - a star struck, hero-worshipping, rose tinted piece of drivel not worthy of my bookshelf. Alan Cooper's attempt in "The Men Who Breached The Dams" was not much better, and for the same reason, both authors were hamstrung with hero-worship from the start, so any attempt by them to get to the real man was doomed to failure.
But Richard Morris wrote a masterly work on Gibson. I was in awe of 617 squadron and their exploits as a boy in the 60's, and indeed of all the RAF's work in the war. I have since read widely on the strategic bombing offensive. Gibson was a schoolboy hero and inspiration for me, so I approached the "warts and all" book by Morris with care.
I need not have worried. Although Gibson is revealed to be a different character from the one he paints of himself in "Enemy Coast Ahead", the one that Brickhill portrayed him as in "The Dambusters", and the Richard Todd portrayal of him in the film, Morris reveals Gibson to be every bit the hero is remembered as, and yet all the moreso because and in spite of his human failings and complexities.
It's an excellent book, and along with Morris's biography of Cheshire, is a worthy addition to anyone's bookshelf.
Thanks for the comments on the Morris book, Whiteflood. I'll try to find it.
Absoloutly agree on Richard Morris's book, first class. There are some 2nd hand copies available on Amazon.
"We have 650 planes!"
"Yes, and they have 2,500"
"Well they wont all come over at once"
He was approached about becoming an MP - as was Bader. One of them as PM...
share