This story is one of five which will be published in October 2026. It follows the exploits of a young Miramichi, New Brunswick, airman during World War Two. Part two will appear here on June 28.
EARLY DAYS
As a five-year-old, I saw him as the imposing man behind our village post office counter. When I got the chance to pick up the mail, I’d stand outside the building, waiting for an adult to open the heavy doors. A glimmer of polished brass in the entrance signalled the building’s importance. The sparkling glass of the large windows enhanced the dark wood. This individual held dominion over the adult world. My mind buzzed with questions about him and his work. My father, a man of few words, provided token insight. He described how we are related and spoke about an experience in World War II. The latter piece of information only increased my curiosity. It took several decades for me to learn about Wilfred (Wilf) Gorman’s wartime experiences. The narrative unfolded as one of courage, resolve, and appreciation.
Wilf entered the world in the small community of Craigville, New Brunswick, on September 10, 1921. He was the middle child among seven offspring. Based on present standards, the family was poor. Most families in the larger Miramichi region were poor. Wood harvesting and lumber mills, the largest source of employment, had cratered following World War I. But there was land, and lots of it. The Gorman family took full advantage of it. From spring to fall, sunrise to sundown, every child had chores to maintain the hundred-acre farm. The abundance of hard work and plenty of fresh, nutritious food ensured the kids grew up healthy.
Gertie and Wilfred Senior, the parents, had little education. But they knew its value. A one-room school occupied a corner of their land.
Rough-cut planks formed its construction. Oakum filled the gaps in the wooden sections for warmth, and a potbelly stove offered a miser’s heat. Successive teachers over the years (some certified) taught students from grade one through eight. Wilf, with the older boys, would cut and split winter wood and keep the stove fired. He handled the early morning task of lighting a fire. The building, long since silenced, remains today.
Hockey occupied the rare moments of freedom for the boys. They carved sticks from pieces of nearby ash or birch. Skates were a luxury, so most played in their heavy winter boots. Wilf looked small for his age, but small was mighty as he showed any larger bully. Most evenings involved playing cards around the kitchen table or, in later years, tuning into the local radio station.
Wilf’s intelligence and natural curiosity made him popular with his teachers. He would often be called upon to explain difficult algebra and math concepts.
He enjoyed working on his parents’ farm and enrolled in courses at the provincial Agricultural College in Fredericton. During summer breaks, he worked at the local lumber yard for thirty cents an hour.
ADVENTURES AWAIT
April 1941 brought a pleasant warmth. The ice had run early from the Miramichi River. Wilf and his friends grew restless hearing news of the war in Europe. They longed for something new in their lives. Gorman’s reflections, decades later, provide some insight.
“We grew up with little and worked for everything we had. It encouraged self-reliance. For us, as young lads, news of the war that filtered into our small community fuelled [AC1] talk of adventure and freedom. The opportunity to visit far-off lands and have unique experiences lay within reach. Danger existed, but naivety protected us from the reality.
The next month, two friends, Tom Butler, Fred Adair, and I, decided our time had come. One night after chores, I told Mom and Dad. I saw resignation and fear on Mom’s face. Dad didn’t show his feelings except to say it was the right thing to do and that he was proud. Fred and Tom showed up driving Fred’s uncle’s 1934 Ford pickup. We chose the Moncton recruiting depot because we figured the truck would get us there. Because I had my license, I drove.”
The trio set out with four dollars for gas. Their mothers had made sandwiches to hold them over. During the drive down, Wilf had decided he would sign up for the Air Force. After a four-hour trip and one flat tire, they pulled up in front of the Moncton Armoury building. A smiling sergeant welcomed them, happy to add to the day’s count.
“They did a lot of tests and four hours later, the fellow supervising asked if I would be ready to go into the Air Force [AC2] at any time. I said yes, and he had me sign a paper. He told me to report to the Moncton train station that night at ten o’clock to go to Toronto. Fred and Tom found themselves on a delayed roster. They had enlisted in the Army. They would see action in a few months. I got them to call my parents and tell them what happened.
While waiting in the station lobby, I read a newspaper story and realised [AC3] the rush to have people sign up was because things were going badly in the European air war. That kind of thinking would not be helpful, so I dismissed it from my mind and focused on the adventures ahead.”
IN TRAINING
After a thirty–hour trip, the train pulled into Union Station on Front Street, Toronto. It had been packed with recruits, sitting up on wooden seats which had been added to accommodate troops. Later that night, the young lad from Craigville, New Brunswick, found himself on the parade grounds of the Manning Depot with over five thousand prospective troops. The living quarters were re-purposed cattle barns. Wilf slept soundly while many other city boys had difficulty adjusting.
The four-week orientation and basic training passed quickly, and afterward, Gorman was sent to his first post in Labrador. He learned to live close to the land, working on the construction of the giant Canadian-American base at Goose Bay, Labrador. He developed an appreciation for the Inuit people, at one point, they kept him and another soldier from dying in a blizzard.
Wilf went to Number Seven [AC4] bombing and gunnery school in Paulson, Manitoba, spending six months training as an air gunner.
“I didn’t know what I would do in the Air Force when I signed up. My vision wasn’t the best, so I figured I wouldn’t be selected as a pilot. That was okay, as I did not want to be outgunning a Messersmith. I wanted to learn something useful when the war finished. When I was assigned as an air gunner, it seemed exciting and useful.
On the last week at Paulson, I got my overseas assignment and spent the two-week embarkation leave at home. Someone took a picture of me and my parents. Mom mailed it a month later. I still have it in my wallet. The finest present I gave her was not mentioning my relocation to Europe.”
Wilf and Parents 1941
Before Wilf and other young Canadian recruits joined the fight, things were going badly for the Allied nations. The quick collapse of France and other countries combined with the Battle of Britain served to set them on their heels. [AC5]
The Allies’ strategic position in Europe underwent a massive change in June 1941. On June 22, Germany launched a surprise assault on Russia with four million soldiers, almost crippling the nation. That fateful decision began a series of events, leading to the involvement of Allied forces. Gorman, with thousands of other Canadians and equipment, had a major impact on events.
BOMBS AWAY
Gorman joined the 419 Bomber Squadron RCAF in Midland St. George in the north of England. It included Canadian flyers employed by the RAF while stationed in England. From there, he went to the 405 Pathfinder Squadron at Gransden Lodge.
Lancaster Bomber WW11
In 1942, Bomber Command began making considerable upgrades to how well they could hit targets. A principal element involved in introducing the Pathfinder squadron. The Pathfinders would lead the main bomber group, deploying coloured flares, target indicators, and incendiaries on the objective. Planes coming in to bomb would know where to release their loads. The result was a tremendous rise in striking higher-level objectives such as civilian areas, thus diminishing their confidence in the Nazi government. Wilf’s 405 Squadron was transferred to No.8 (Pathfinder) Group in early 1943 and would remain in that Group until the end of the war. 405 (Pathfinder) Squadron was the only RCAF squadron of the ten squadrons in No.8 (Pathfinder) Group. Pathfinder squadrons had to stay above the target area for the entire bombing raid; when required, they had to join the bomber stream to remark the target. Their task held the greatest danger of the bombing force.
“We had a front-row seat to the bombing campaign on Germany. The Lancaster bomber served as the aircraft selected to head the Pathfinder squadron in Britain. From the first time I saw the Lancaster, I had a sense of security. It was huge and loud, powered by four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. The Lancaster had a seven-person crew: pilot, flight engineer, navigator, a bomb aimer, wireless operator, and mid-upper and rear gunners. Each person was a specialist. We were a real team with mutual [AC6] respect and trust.”
Gorman’s selection as a crew member happened for good reason. The testing he underwent in Moncton identified the intelligence and temperament required to fly into hell and repeat it the next night.
Pathfinders had a critical importance in the European campaign. But as Gorman explained, success also came with increased risk for the aircrew.
“We were always the first to arrive on target. Our primary missions involved mine-laying in the water, diversionary and bombing raids on German factories and harbours.
Lining up on the target required the plane’s low, slow trajectory, making those runs challenging. That made us vulnerable to artillery fire and fighter-plane attacks. On average, a new crew lasted six weeks before perishing.”
People today would find it hard to understand what life was like being part of a Lancaster aircrew; intense training preceded long, high-risk missions demanding concentration under immense stress.
Each person had to sharpen his skillset to the point of ignoring distractions. When on a bombing run, those distractions included intense flak (anti-aircraft fire), enemy fighters, and mid-air collisions. Wilf offered insight into the situation.
“A recurrent dread among bomber crews entailed a Fokker or Messerschmitt fighter positioning itself below the bomber and obliterating it with guns aimed skyward. Most German night fighter pilots targeted a starboard engine, igniting the plane. This tactic afforded the crew sufficient time to escape. Fighter pilots preferred to take out the rear gunner first. They saw us as easy prey because the Lanc was slow, and they were coming in at over two hundred kilometres per hour.”
The emotional toll included mates being severely wounded, with friends only able to provide comfort as a prayer for a quick death. Combat fatigue caused aircrews to believe they were on a “suicide mission.” It seemed a reasonable inference, given the fifty to seventy–five percent mortality rate typical when Wilf first enlisted in the 405 Squadron.
A WWII Lancaster bomber contained cramped and uncomfortable conditions, as seven crew members operated in a noisy, unpressurized space. Temperatures fell to minus forty degrees Celsius at high altitudes, requiring heated clothing. Aircrews worked in dark, cramped spaces for hours, often without wearing parachutes because of the tight quarters. The Lancaster’s fuselage offered little space, accommodating sixteen bulky oxygen containers and restricting movement.
Gorman occupied the tail gunner’s position. It stood apart from the rest of the team, with frostbite a constant worry. Main wing spars ran through the fuselage, creating a significant obstacle to moving between the front and rear sections, leaving the tail gunner alone during the long missions. The roar from the four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines made communication nearly impossible, requiring the use of the restricted, unreliable intercom system.
The spectre [AC7] of death accompanied the crew on every flight. In early March 1943, Wilfred had agreed to replace the tail gunner from another plane. They met with heavy flak flying over a target in Berlin.
“A piece of flak whizzed past my head. I turned to see that the door had been blown off my gun turret. Into five miles of nothingness, I stared. The pilot told me to stay put; I spun the turret away from the plane, facing the opposite direction, then gripped tight for the rest of the journey. The ground crew couldn’t believe their eyes when they found me nearly frozen, attached to the side of the plane.”
Gorman’s squadron was one of ten RCAF bomber squadrons in No.8 (Pathfinder) Group of Bomber Command. 405 Squadron was known for bombing accuracy and destruction of German targets. On July 24, 1943, they attacked Hamburg using area bombing tactics. It had been the target of 178 bombing raids between 1940 and 1943.
They returned the following month. That night served as the starting point of the term ‘firestorm’, a phenomenon where oxygen escaped from a multitude of collapsing structures converged into one massive inferno.
“There were so many scenes of horror that continue to haunt me. That night over Hamburg is one. We dropped so many bombs that the surrounding sky, even at twenty-five thousand feet, was lit up enough to see the hundreds of planes around us. As we turned to head for home, the silence on our radios was deafening. There were no cheers, only a sense that we had done something evil but essential. One last look from my vantage point, we were one hundred eighty miles away, I could still see the lights of a city dying. Fifty thousand German civilians died that night. It emerged later that more than a million were left homeless and destitute until after the war.”
On August 17, 1943, the 405 Squadron turned its attention to Peenemunde, an experimental research station on the Baltic. It was the location housing scientists developing the VI and V2 ("Vengeance" rockets.) No. 6 Bomber Group led a force of fifty-four Halifax bombers that killed the scientists and eliminated the threat of the program in forty-five minutes.
Strong and impenetrable to outsiders, the ties that bound the aircrews of 405 Squadron existed. Several elements forged the links within and between aircrews. Every person contributed to the endurance of the rest. The success of the mission and the survival of the crew depended on each knowing and performing their job.
In the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), crews self-selected as opposed to the RAF. They would need to discover a person’s beliefs, likes, and dislikes. The unconventional approach fostered genuine connections, as men selected persons with whom they could relate, instead of being randomly matched.
Teams shared the intense, life-threatening moments of combat, as well as the downtime between missions. Men often spent their off-duty hours together, reinforcing their connection.
They were young (Wilf had just turned nineteen when he joined), whereas the more seasoned members were up to twenty-five. They shared the fear of death, the stress of high casualty rates, and the pressure of trying to complete their tour of duty.
The squad operated with seamless coordination, often bypassing conventional military ranks. Theirs was a “democratic” survival strategy, valuing each member’s crucial contribution. Canadian crews refused to accept the traditional RAF approach to determining who became an officer, eliminating the inherent class structure.
This connection proved crucial for preserving morale and ensuring operations continued. It transformed a collection of unknown individuals into a close-knit unit of comrades, as shown by many veterans staying linked with their fellow soldiers (or their kin) for many years after the conflict.
As shown in the preceding sections, the men operating heavy bombers made up a separate category of pilots. Within this category, rear gunners proved unique. Stationed in the aft fuselage, Wilf was detached from the others of the crew. The mid-upper gunner at least kept his legs within the plane. Gorman couldn’t see any section of his own aircraft from his position, regardless of how far he rotated his turret.
The rear gunner, in his surreal position, viewed the war like a film played backward. He sat on a metal shelf in a crouched position throughout the mission. His turret occupied the coldest, loneliest area in the Lancaster.
Rear gunners were small-framed. Wilf represented an exception, standing around six feet tall and tipping the scales at one hundred eighty pounds. For seven or more hours, he would scan the sky for bandits racing toward his plane, trying to ambush the seventeen-ton bomber as it lumbered to and from its target.
Rear Gunner in Turret
The trust between the gunner and the pilot was sacred, as they held the lives of their crewmates in their hands. When he spotted the invader, Gorman would shoot the four .303-caliber machine guns on a single trigger. Working from a line of bullets running the length of the plane, he had ten thousand rounds of ammunition, or about two minutes’ firing time. He would call to the skipper to “corkscrew starboard” or “fighter, corkscrew port.” The resulting G-forces as the plane pitched would glue the crew to their seats.
Rear gunners had their own fraternity, and, like pilots and navigators, had their own jargon. A skilled marksman earned the admiration of his team, who appreciated the hardships he faced. Gunners took pride in their position and effectiveness. Many developed an obsession with keeping the turret windows clean, trying to get that one-second jump on the attacker. Some made the cleaner from their own ingredients, bordering on the bizarre, including their own urine.
One of Gorman’s friends took out his turret glass. He insisted that the heat insulation from the warmed aviation clothing offered enough protection. Bomber Command intervened when incidents of frozen limbs rose from malfunctioning suits.
The gunners faced other frustrations. If they used too much anti-icing grease on the guns, they would jam. If they didn’t have enough grease, the guns froze. Too-heavy gloves prevented them from freeing a jammed gun. Too-light gloves and they froze their fingers.
Darkness enveloped the solitary man. Loneliness stocked him. He could not see his crewmates and heard only snippets of their exchanges. German fighter planes, possessing superior weaponry, shattered his solitude with brutal assaults. Mental breakdowns were not uncommon among the courageous rear gunners fighting their battles on two fronts.
LANCASTER CLIMBING
The Lancaster brotherhood shared one-of-a-kind experiences. One member penned the following.
“The Lancaster strained with its maximum load as we climbed through thick banks of cloud, inching our way through rain and ice towards the sun above. Sometimes it took an hour to climb twenty thousand feet. Gradually, the sky brightened, and the clouds shifted from grey [AC8] to white, and we knew we were close to the summit. Then, pop, we surfaced into blinding sunshine, forcing eyes to look only at the instruments. We encountered a sight that staggered the imagination. Stretching from horizon to horizon, over six hundred Canadian bombers sprang up through the mist, their black bellies stark against the white of the dazzling cloud tops.
Stretching upwards, aiming for elevation, they emerged from every direction, seeming to appear out of a magician’s hat. Big, powerful, sinister. We watched awestruck as a silent force converged into one massive stream. Every bomber turning east, all heading towards the German guns. This was a bomber stream. A sense of belonging emerged as squadrons became one. It was poetic as planes rose and flowed like water from above, beneath, and adjacent, creating a flood that stretched one hundred miles long and five miles wide as it thundered toward its goal.
Power, tremendous power, deadly power, thrilling in its sense of purpose and might. Radiating strength and togetherness, the message was “You are not alone.”
Then, as quickly as they had appeared, bombers at the front vanished as sunlight receded into clouds. Those beside you evaporated, and as the sun set, partners behind disappeared, and we flew alone into the darkness. With the first flash of fire from the enemy coast, the beauty left and the crew settled into the job. The Lancaster tilted upward on a single wing and pitched over in a frightening lurch, its excess cargo sending it beyond command.
Our hearts pounded as a wing was wrenched from the skipper’s control. We were in the slipstream of a bomber ahead; the swirling cyclones from its four propellers destroying the smooth airflow over our wings.”
“WE'VE BEEN HIT.”
September 27, 1943, marked the last mission for twenty-two-year-old sergeant Wilfred Melvin Gorman. Rain and cool weather characterised [AC9] the previous day. As the front moved away, heavy clouds persisted over Brunswick, Germany. The Lancaster crew had completed their thirty missions and enjoyed a two-week break in London. Except for their pilot, who had become engaged, they had agreed to continue.
The night raid had targeted Hanover, Germany. Their role was to fly a diversion, dropping markers on nearby Brunswick to draw German fighters from the primary target. This involved the dangerous, low and slow routine of flying straight on the bombing run.
“We drew near our objective. Flying straight on a bomb run, you have no protection underneath. You can’t tell what, if anything, is beneath you. On this occasion, something flew up. It was a German Junkers 88-night fighter. Right off, we saw we got hit bad. The two port motors were dead. The starboard inner motor sustained damage, yet continued to work. We tried to make it back to England, but the damaged motor caught fire over Holland. With the bomb doors gone and the undercarriage dangling below the belly, we were out of options. We bailed. There isn’t any time to think in this situation, but when my chute opened and I drifted downward, I was aware my life was about to change again.
TO BE CONTINUED.................
