A World War II conundrum

In My Humble Opinion
1

Am not sure in which forum, this post most properly belongs: have plumped for IMHO – mods, please move if reckoned appropriate.

This is prompted by a reference in the Great Debates thread “I’m a Baby of the Atomic Bomb…”. A poster mentions their father’s World War II service in the US Air Force: he was shot down over France, evaded capture, and got back to Britain. He was then sent back to the US and assigned to duties there, to protect the well-established and effective escape line run by the resistance movements in German-occupied Europe to get escapers / evaders in the Allied armed forces back to their own side, which performed this service for him. I’ve read, in a non-highbrow but excellent WWII-based novel, of a pretty-well identical series of experiences on the part of an American flier.

The situation depicted as above, revolves around the risk of the airman concerned, flying further missions; coming to grief and being captured by the Germans; being recognised as having escaped / evaded once before; being coerced into revealing details about the people in the occupied countries, who had helped him to get away; and from that, these folk being apprehended, undergoing suffering and very likely death, and their escape line being destroyed. This all makes sense “so far”; but I feel that realms are then entered, where the making of sense is less clear. If I have things rightly – while escape lines in occupied territory did their best to help get to Britain, all and any Allied military personnel who came their way: until late in the war, virtually the only damage being done by the Western Allies to the Germans in Europe was in the shape of aerial bombing raids. Those running the escape lines were thus keen above all else, to get aircrew back home – so that they would be able to go back into the fight, and continue hurting the enemy.

Leaving aside for the moment, considerations of compassion and humanity and just looking at the most effective way of prosecuting the war – the scenario as mentioned in the previous paragraph, suggests a potential hole in the entire thing. If John Doe or Bill Bloggs is shot down over Europe and a Resistance escape line gets him back to Britain, but he is then not allowed to fly further bombing missions over Europe, for fear he might fall into German hands and be threatened / tortured into revealing details about those who helped him in his previous escape, that resulting in their escape line being closed down – this would seem to go a considerable way toward invalidating what the Resistance people were risking their lives to accomplish in the first place. Depending on how much this situation actually did obtain: I feel that the question could come up, “what’s the point?”

Would be interested to hear from WWII scholars, concerning in how many instances the above-described scenario played out; and the proportion of such instances, to those of aircrew getting back to Britain with Resistance help, and continuing to fly further missions over Europe.

2

You seem to think that duties in the US weren’t really part of the war effort, but that’s not true. Training new pilots, moving goods, patrolling convoy lanes, and the like were all important parts of the war effort, they weren’t just makework. Even if the airman himself can’t go on combat missions over Germany any more because of the risk of recapture, by doing some other job he frees up another airman to fly over Germany. The system only stops being useful if so many airmen have been shot down and evaded capture that all of the possible jobs stateside, over the Atlantic, in neutral countries, and against Japan are all of those slots are filled by someone shot down. That didn’t come remotely close to happening.

3

Do you have any evidence that the Resistance gave some kind of priority to flyers over other types of captured soldiers? It makes sense that they would get MORE flyers, but would flyers be “expressed shipped” back faster than sailors or spies (who presumably would be the other two most numerous kind of soldiers)?

Also, returned fliers could continue to help the war effort by becoming instructors, or selling war bonds, or serving on planning staffs, etc. There’s a whole lot of stuff they could continue to do without returning to fly over continental Europe.

4

And indeed, the Allied practice of using veteran fliers in training roles is often highlighted as one of the major factors that let the Allies dominate the air war. The Germans kept their best pilots flying in combat missions, which unsurprisingly led to a lot of them dying, and thus losing the experience they could have shared with new pilots in training. The Allies did a much better job maintaining institutional knowledge, so our new fliers came out of training with a much better sense of what to expect.

5

Until late in the war, flyers would have been the ONLY troops most resistants would have seen. Sailors even along the coasts would have been relatively rare, and unknown inland. Flyers could be recognized by their uniforms and the presence of their aircraft; even leaving aside the numbers involved, how would members of the Resistance recognize spies and determine they need aid?

6

No, there were tens of thousands of other prisoners who’d been captured in Africa, or the Eastern Front, or before the fall of France. They might escape from their camps at any time and get through to the Resistance.

7

Can give no detailed “cite” re this; but, from my random but quite copious reading of WWII memoirs, I seem to have got the impression that aircrew were – for the reasons which I gave – regarded and treated as something of a priority, and tended to be bumped to the head of the queue.

Logically and cerebrally, it makes perfect sense that non-front-line duty in which those performing it are relatively safe, is in itself a vital part of the war effort. However; in desperate and highly-emotionally-charged situations in which people are pushing themselves to the point of suffering or beyond, those people are liable not to be greatly in touch with the logical-and-cerebral; and can be sensitive about their efforts perceivedly being under-valued by the recipients. A peacetime, much-less-dramatic analogy: not-very-affluent First World inhabitants giving what they can, to relief organisations supposedly ministering to the very poor parts of the world; and finding that (or being told – truthfully or otherwise – that) a very large part of the money which they’ve given, is pissed away in supposed “administration” on the part of the outfit which they’ve given to: the donors will likely, and understandably, be angry / upset / cynical.

Though presumably, our controlling / administering guys refrained from widespread spelling out to the Resistance folk, that the fliers whom they returned to us, might well not go straight back into the front line – and as said, “bod A coming once more to be on hand, frees up bod B to do job C, while A goes off to do equally vital job D”. I suppose I’ve done some falling victim to the “hindsight is 20/20” thing. It’s just: I had the impression from much that I’ve read, that “send them right back to the fight” was a big motivation for many of the Resistance people; and if – many of them not being mental giants (as is the case with any cross-section of humanity) – they’d been aware that it often didn’t work exactly like that, they’d wonder, “what’s the point?”.

I’m sure that in various memoirs / intended history pieces, re that war, I’ve read that very considerable numbers of Allied aircrew were spirited back into Allied hands via doings by the Resistance, and flew again over Europe, and in many cases, died in action. It would be interesting to know some figures (if such exist) re how many escaped / evaded once, to fly over Europe again; and how many did the first, but not the second. (Obviously, their orders were what they were, handed down from above – nothing snide implied, toward the individuals concerned.)

8

The Comet line was one such resistance aid, MI9’s official history recounts that it helped 2,373 British and Commonwealth servicemen and 2,700 Americans return to Britain. On the torture point, from the book Home Run;
“In November, 1942, after some leave, Flight Lieutenant Higginson rejoined 56 Squadron…The Squadron welcomed him back, but, like all aircrew who had recently escaped from France, he would not be allowed to resume offensive operations for some considerable time. Knowing so much about the escape organization, they might, if captured, give away information under torture.”

9

People who worked on the escape lines wouldn’t have been in a position to know whether or not any particular person they’d helped was back flying missions to Germany rather than North Africa or anywhere else, surely? They might not even know whether they had got back to Britain.

Don’t forget there were many different resistance groups doing all sorts of different things, it took several false starts and losses of agents, and a lot of disagreement, to establish any sort of co-ordinated strategy to support the invasion, for example.

As with so much else, the resistance movements simply had to trust to luck, which is an additional testament to their courage.

Incidentally, information on people known to have helped escapers was collected on their return to Britain and kept in card indexes (I’ve seen them in the National Archives), but as to whether and how any of that was made available to aircrew in case they were shot down, I don’t know. You’d have to get hold of a history of MI9 or of one or more of the escape lines, like Comet

10

Chuck Yeager is a famous example of a WWII pilot who bailed out over occupied France and was helped by the locals to get to Spain. While he was officially interned in Spain for the duration, it was easy for him to get back to the UK.

Once there, he was grounded from further air combat. But, after D-Day and the invasion of France started to progress, he was antsy. He appealed all the way up to Ike that the people who helped him were going to be liberated soon. He was approved for returning to combat.

11

My grandfather was Royal Navy and was sunk somewhere near Italy. The resistance spent several months smuggling him back home through occupied Europe. He got given a weeks leave when he finally got home and then he was back serving on another ship. So clearly no restrictions applied to sailors.

He had been reported ‘missing, presumed dead’ or some such so my grandmother was very pleased to see him. Which is how my father got conceived in that 1 week of leave! He also got his name in the book of rememberance and on the war memorial. He was already listed as dead during WWI due to a mix up with his brother that had the same initial.

12

OP presumes that returning the airman to the fight is the only valid reason for removing him from the AO.

I would say, look at the opposite. What would happen if the downed airmen were not evacuated? They get captured by the Germans, who then interrogate them for information about the Allied war effort, their squadron’s order of battle, and the strengths/weaknesses of their aircraft and tactics. And, FWIW, the Germans were really, really good at this… Interrogators like Hanns Scharff didn’t torture anyone because they didn’t need to.

Further, up until rather recently in history prisoner swaps were quite common. If the Germans capture X Allied airmen, then at some point in the future they might arrange a swap for X captured Germans. Every airman they fail to capture is one less airman they use to negotiate with.

Other posters have already covered the variety of benefits the airman can provide to the war effort even outside of a combat role, so I won’t bother covering this. Suffice it to say, returning to combat was not the sole purpose of exfiltrating airmen.

13

http://www.bombercommandmuseum.ca/commandlosses.html

From the Royal Air Forces Escaping Society:

No figure is given of those who returned to bomber duty.

The Americans have a similar society whose website is here.

14

“For some considerable time” – yes, that makes sense and gives perspective.

Glad about the happy outcome ! One infers that the situation was different for servicemen other than active aircrew. It would seem that sailors; and soldiers who had managed to escape from POW camps; would have been few in number in comparison to downed airmen – and after getting back to Britain, statistically unlikely to (pre-D-Day at any rate) land up, from the “occasions of their service”, back in Axis captivity.

Bolded above: no, I don’t think I was presuming that. Just that – until these very recent discussions on the Dope, I’d been rather oblivious to this issue: had previously seen mention of it in the novel referred to in OP, but thought little of it there: the American evader’s being promptly shipped off back to the US, was necessary to the personal-lives plot of the book.

Reading about parallel real-life situations, has caused me maybe to over-think (or under-think) this business. The dreadful risks which the Resistance folk took, had me imagining the less-sophisticated among them anyway, feeling dismayed and wondering “why am I thus putting my head on the block?”, if they’d known that the airmen they were helping to get back into the fight would likely not (for whatever reasons) be getting straight back into a plane and setting off once more to blast the hell out of Germany. The less-sophisticated folk concerned, would of course not have been privy to such precise details… I conclude that I’ve been puzzling my head over what is mostly a non-issue. Thanks to all, for info and thoughts.