Obituary: Jim Aitken, wartime airman and teacher

JIM Aitken was a young wireless operator in RAF Lancaster bombers who survived hazardous missions over Nazi Germany and went on to become a teacher.

Aitken joined the RAF in 1943, taking his first flight on his 19th birthday. He trained in the Vickers Wellington and other aircraft before qualifying in March 1944, destined for heavy bombers.

He was stationed with 170 Squadron at RAF Hemswell in Lincolnshire; one of the first airfields built in 1936 for the newly-formed Bomber Command. Hemswell aircraft had taken part in some of the earliest operations of the war and dropped the first bombs on German soil.

Aitken was assigned the four-engine Avro Lancaster bomber, V-Victor, and “crewed-up” with six other new arrivals of contrasting backgrounds, three of whom were Canadian. The one thing they had in common was youth; all were aged just 19 or 20.

Although the tide of the war was turning, fighting would go on for another year. He participated in the Bomber Command offensive throughout the winter of 1944-5, which included raids on Hamburg, Dortmund, Keil and Bremen, sometimes in daylight as the Luftwaffe threat receded.

The last hostile mission carried out by 170 Squadron was the attack on the SS barracks at Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps on 25 April, 1945. The highly symbolic target featured Hitler’s retreat, the Kehlsteinhaus, or Eagle’s Nest, and the properties of Nazi leaders.

Humanitarian duties then prevailed, with the crew taking part in Operation Manna, dropping food instead of high explosives from V-Victor’s bomb bay for starving Dutch civilians around the Hague and the ruins of Rotterdam, where Aitken recalled flying at rooftop height over the racecourse.

By the war’s end in May 1945, Operation Exodus saw his crew transporting liberated prisoners of war back from Germany to Britain via Brussels. Bomber Command flew 2,900 sorties over 23 days, repatriating 72,000 PoWs by air.

Aitken was proud to have been a member of Bomber Command and had no difficulty in discussing his experiences, harrowing as they were. He died shortly before the Queen unveiled the memorial to the 55,573 wartime airmen of Bomber Command who gave their lives.

James Alexander Aitken was born on 19 November, 1924, in the Canonmills district of Edinburgh, the youngest of three brothers. He was educated at Flora Stevenson’s and George Heriot’s School, where two of his classmates were Jewish refugees from Austria.

With war looming, he left school at 15 and took an office job, with the duties of fire warden included, before joining the RAF. Returning from one raid, he and the other crew of V-Victor had a narrow escape when an unreleased bomb started rolling around the fuselage. It was jettisoned at sea with barely enough fuel to get them home.

Decades later, this incident and many others were recalled when he met one of his Canadian crew and they returned to the site of their old station at Hemswell. Up and down the runway they sped in Aitken’s car, oblivious to his young son clinging to the back seat in fear.

After the war, Aitken held a number of jobs before studying English Literature at Edinburgh University, followed by teacher training at Moray House. He taught English at Oakley in Fife followed by Dunfermline High School, Liberton and Gillespie’s in Edinburgh and finally Leith Academy, from where he retired at 60.

Following a gap of 45 years, he then resumed his studies in German, played curling, indulged in his passions of walking and reading, and took up genealogy research on the internet. Travel had always been a favourite, either alone, with friends or with family; the latter case involving a Morris Traveller with loaded roof-rack and essential indifference to continental driving attitudes.

Aitken’s final years were devoted to caring for his beloved wife Muriel through her illness, ensuring that, until the last possible moment, she stayed in familiar surroundings at their home in Comely Bank, Edinburgh. A committed Christian, he was stoic and confident in his beliefs. His death came three months after Muriel’s passing.

He is survived by his sons, Andrew and Robert, and granddaughter Megan.

Campbell Thomas