RAF veteran Colin Bell on being chased by the Me 262 in World War II
A 105-year-old Second World War veteran has backed President Donald Trump’s strike on Iran, calling it the right decision. Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell is the last surviving pilot of the celebrated RAF Pathfinder squadron, which led Allied bombers into the heart of Hitler’s Germany.
He believes the West once again faces threats on a scale not seen since the rise of Nazi Germany. He told the Express: “Despots attack anybody that they think are weak or decadent. Certainly, Hitler thought we were weak in the 30s, while the country was following a policy of appeasement, and we know that appeasement doesn’t work.
“As far as Iran’s concerned, I think Trump is doing the right thing. You can’t possibly let a mad regime, like the Iranians, develop and possess an atomic bomb.”
Colin went on: “I’ve been waiting and watching with a degree of apprehension, while everybody seemed to be dithering around, and while the Iranians were cheating and dissembling, and getting ahead with the development of the atom bomb. So, thank God, that Trump has stepped in and done what nobody else has had the ‘cojones’ to do, and started knocking them out.
“I am sorry for any civilians that get killed, because civilians do get killed in wars, but, this is something that had to be done – and full marks to Donald Trump for doing it. In my judgement.”
Colin with one of his beloved De Havilland Mosquitos (Image: Little Brown)
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Colin’s journey to the cockpit of one of Britain’s pioneering Mosquito bombers began in May 1927, when his father took him to watch American aviator Charles Lindbergh touching down at Croydon Airport following the first successful solo crossing of the Atlantic.
The young Colin was entranced with the romance of flight, but it took the outbreak of war before he was able to achieve his dream. After volunteering for the RAF he was shipped off to Florida, dressed as a civilian, to undergo training at a US airbase.
While he modestly plays down his achievements, Colin excelled as a pilot to such an extent that shortly after graduating in 1942 – and with America now entering the war – he was immediately set the task of training American pilots.
It wasn’t until the spring of 1943 that he returned to the UK and, with his outstanding record earning him his choice of postings, Colin ended up in No.8 Pathfinder group. This was an elite team of pilots and navigators whose job it was to lead Allied bomber groups into battle, helping them identify their targets with pinpoint precision.
Until the advent of Germany’s jets, the ‘Mossie’ was almost untouchable (Image: Getty)
It was dangerous work but, but Colin says others faced far worse odds.
“The Mosquito, while it was a very fast and efficient aircraft, still suffered casualties,” he said. “We did lose from my squadron, about 25% of the serving crews. That was pretty high, but it was nothing like as high, as if you’d been flying Stirlings.”
He believes he could easily have ended up at the controls of the four-engined heavy bomber, which was especially vulnerable to German night fighters and anti-aircraft fire because of its relatively low service ceiling.
Colin continued: “If you were in a room with three other Stirling captains and all of you were waiting to begin a tour, from the time that you started your tour, to 3 months ahead, only one of you will be left alive.
“That’s a 75% casualty rate compared with a 25% that I’ve just mentioned for Mosquitoes. A 75% chance of survival is more than acceptable. I would have gone in on 50-50, except, of course, you don’t have a choice. But if the odds are 75% against you, that’s pretty daunting.”
Colin flew 50 missions over Nazi Germany (Image: Getty)
Despite being comparatively safe in the fast, nimble twin-engined Mosquito, Colin endured his fair share of near-misses.
He recalled one incident when two German searchlight crews zeroed in on him, temporarily blinding him as his cockpit was flooded with light.
He continued: “I allowed myself to be coned by searchlights, and I allowed a shell to come up underneath the aircraft and explode. I say ‘allowed’ because at that point, I wasn’t on a bombing run.
“If you’re on a bombing run, you can’t take evasive action. If I’d taken the wise evasive action in the position in which I was at the time, I wouldn’t have been subjected to this unfortunate experience. But up came the shell, it exploded. It lifted the aircraft in the air, and we lost power on both engines. The props were windmilling around without any power.”
Colin looks back very modestly on his war service (Image: Little Brown)
Colin added: “My navigator, who was a Canadian, big chap, ex-lumberjack, brilliant man, leaned across and said ‘What do we do now?’ which I thought was a bloody stupid question.
“I said ‘Well, we wait, don’t we?’ Because that’s all we could do. I put the aircraft into a glide, and we continued to be pummelled by shell fire.
“But then all of a sudden, hallelujah! The power came back on, and I was able to turn the aircraft away, get out of the anti-aircraft fire, and, head back home. At which point, I leaned across to Doug, my navigator, and I said ‘You weren’t frightened were you Doug?’, and he said, ‘no, I wasn’t frightened. I was bloody terrified.’”
Colin didn’t realise quite how close he had come to disaster until he took a look at his Mosquito on the following day.
Colins’s plane had no guns, relying on speed to outwit German air defences (Image: Getty)
He recalled: “In the morning, when we went down and inspected the aircraft on the flight line, the whole of the back of the aircraft was peppered with holes. My fitter came up to me and said, ‘Would you like to have a memento of last night, sir?’ and he handed me two shell fragments about six inches long.
“I said. ‘Where did you find them?’ And he said they were in the parachute that you were sitting on. Which made me a bit thoughtful.
“I subsequently said to my son, there are two reasons why you might never have come into existence. One of these shore fragments might have gone through me and killed me. And the other is that I might have been left with a rather high-pitched voice, and in either event, would you have come into existence, which made him a bit thoughtful too.”
Bloody Dangerous: Fifty Missions Over Germany, by Colin Bell is in bookshops now.