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This poem was written by my father, John H Jones, who was a navigator with RAF Bomber Command. Having flown his full quota of flights during the war, he went back into the air when given the chance to fly with 617 Squadron, and flew on many more raids, including the bombing at Berchtesgaden in April 1945.

Night Flight to Turin
Twelfth of November 1942
The seventh operation for one crew;
Crews in the briefing room were all agog
The wing commander came in through the smog
He gave the crews a friendly little grin
And said 'The target for tonight — Turin.'

A muffled groan was heard for crews, though bold,
Knew that above the Alps the air was cold
And masks for oxygen they'd have to wear
Another mild discomfort they’d have to bear.

The briefing went its smooth and well worn way
Each expert had some useful things to say.
The route with tape was on the wall-map shown,
The bomb load, target details were made known.

The weatherman, (alas no satellite)
Was rather vague re weather for the flight -
It looked as though conditions might be grim -
Cumulus cloud and possibly cu-nimb.

Above the Alps crews must beware of ice -
A quite nonsensical piece of advice
For ice which forms in thick cloud can't be seen
As on the wings it forms a glassy screen.

The briefing over, crews had hours to wait
To doze, play cards or think about their fate.
Collecting parachutes was next to do
And getting flight rations for the crew.

Three tuppeny chocolate bars and coffee flask
What more could any hungry airman ask?
Pessimists had them on the outward track
Optimists saved them for the journey back.

And so our crew above the Alps we find
At 20,000 feet and flying blind
With deadly ice amassing on the wings
And more collecting on some other things.

The extra weight was telling on the kite
The altimeter showed a loss of height
But worse was yet to come, for now I fear
The skipper said 'We’ve lost an engine here.'

Another engine failed within a trice
The air intakes were blocked with solid ice
And soon, all engines gone, the aircraft stalled
'We'd best get out,' the struggling pilot called.

Rear gunner had the easiest job no doubt
He swung his turret, slipstream pulled him out.
But at the front escape was much more fraught
Crew members couldn’t do the things they ought.

Now in a spin, the aircraft held them tied
By G-force hard against the starboard side.
The navigator strained and pushed and swore
Trying to reach the escape hatch in the floor.

At last the spin began to be less tight
The hatch was opened to the crew's delight
And, thankful that he hadn't so far died
The navigator sat with legs outside.

All set to jump he felt a gentle tug
He had forgotten his intercom plug
He reached for the plug and heard, 'Hold on there
An engine's come back — we're still in the air.'

As it got warmer and ice all dispersed
It seemed that the crew were over the worst.
But that's not the end of their rotten luck
While they were in storm cloud lightning had struck.

The distant-reading compass was u/s,
The pilot's stand by compass in a mess -
Its needle wandering in an aimless way
The bombsight compass seemed to be OK.

The navigator, starting from a guess
Worked out a course for England, more or less
The bomb-aimer got courses from the nav
And told the waiting pilot what he'd have
To do in terms of turning left or right
To keep a steady heading through the night.

At last the English Channel came in view
And soon an airfield beacon was seen too,
A fighter station by the name of Ford.
And some crew members said, 'Oh, thank the Lord'
The crew, on landing, just shook hands all round
And then like Pope John Paul they kissed the ground.

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