McCALLA – Harry McFarlane

605574 – H.M.F. (Harry) McCalla – Jamaica – attested 29.4.43 – Sgt. Air Gunner UK 25.3.44

[Source: NA AIR 2/6876]

 

 

Crew of Lancaster ‘A-Able’  (218th Squadron) taken on 11th April 1945, on completion of operations. In the second picture, from left to right, are: Miles Tripp (Bomb Aimer), Ray Parke (Flight Engineer), George Bell (Wireless Op.), George ‘Dig’ Klenner DFC (Pilot), Paul Songest (Mid-Upper Gunner), Les Walker DFM (Navigator), Harry McCalla (Rear Gunner)

[Source: Martyn Day on http://www.coughtrey.me.uk/stapfield/museum/tripp.htm; courtesy Audrey Dewjee]

Miles Tripp wrote a book called The Eighth Passenger and Harry McCalla features in it along with the rest of the crew. Review of The Eighth Passenger – Wordsworth Editions Ltd (30 Dec. 2002) – from Amazon:

When The Eighth Passenger was first published it was acclaimed as one of the most remarkable first-hand accounts of combat flying in the Second World War. Over the years the author has learned much, which for security reasons, he could not have known at the time of the book’s first publication. This edition, while retaining the integrity of the original, uses this added knowledge to reappraise the events of those fearful years. Seven young men, brought together by chance, and almost literally from the four corners of the earth, wake up day after day fully aware that the odds on their seeing another sunrise are relentlessly shortening. This story of a bomber crew flying through darkness and flak over Hamburg, Essen, Cologne, Dresden and Berlin, and always accompanied by an eighth passenger – fear – makes compulsive reading. Of nearly 7,500 Lancaster bombers built, no fewer than 3,349 were lost in action – killing nearly half of the young men who flew with Bomber Command.

 

 

 

 

 

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