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Flight Engineer Horace Wilfrid Cooke (1595041)

My father, Horace Wilfrid Cooke served with the Royal Air Force during the World War 11.

After the War commenced on September 3rd 1939 Horace joined the Auxilliary Fire Service. Initially he was a fireman and then was made Station Officer at a local Sheffield fire station. He had applied to join the Royal Air Force, hoping to become a pilot, but an earlier boxing accident that had resulted in a broken nose, meant that he required an operation to clear the nasal airways, before he could fly an aeroplane.

Once he had had the operation he was accepted on a Flight Engineer’s Course No 4S of
T.T. R.A.F. St. Athen, South Wales in 1944. In the same year he attended the 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit in Lindholme, Doncaster. From August 14th to September 16th 1944 he flew Halifax bombers, his total flying time was 36 hours, 55 minutes during the day and 23 hours, 50 minutes during the night. During this time he completed 16 crash landing and dinghy drills, with 8 parachute drills. He was now 1595041 Flight Engineer Sargeant Cooke.

On September 28th 1944 he moved to L.F.S.Hemswell and carried out familiarisation and air tests on Lancaster 111 bombers, a total of 6 ½ hours day, and 3 ¼ hours night flying.
He moved to 100 Squadron, Waltham in Lincolnshire, where he and his crew carried out a total of 45 operations, 33 were sorties over Germany. The pilot Ken Fraser, was only nineteen years old. The rear gunner Shorty and air gunner Howie, were also Canadian and aged 20 and 21 respectively. Sorties took them to Stuttgart, the Krupps works in Essen, Cologne, Dresden and many more German towns, all well-documented in his Flight Log Book, which gives details of the duration of flights, aircraft, height and bomb capacity. A newspaper cutting dated February 1945, which his daughter Eileen found inside the book, reported on the destruction of Dresden using high explosive and incendiary bombs. 135,000 people were killed. These tremendous casualties were caused by the firestorm, created by the appallingly effective incendiary bombing technique developed by the R.A.F.

When so many air crew were lost, it is amazing that this crew survived so many sorties over Germany. Horace firmly believed that it was due to the skill of the pilot Ken, who did not always ‘stick to the rules’, but was very successful in avoiding trouble. A photographs of the crew is attached.

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