The RAF Hero, and the Son Born 8 Months After He Died

A memory of shoulders

Wearing lightly, bravely,

The tunic blue.

The roar of squadrons already roaring out Over our last farewell.

For Essen? Sylt?

The marshalling yards at Ham?

Cologne?

Or death?

(‘June 1940’ by Norah Watts)

At dusk on 12 June 1940, Wing Commander Joseph Watts held his wife Norah tight. He was off on another bombing mission over occupied Europe. Hitler’s forces had just stunned the world, sweeping through France, Luxembourg, Holland and Belgium.

The British had escaped, just, from Dunkirk, and now the bombing raids were the only way for them to strike a blow against German forces. Watts was fairly sure he was not going to survive the war.

He was exhausted, he had watched a procession of his friends and comrades shot down in flames, Messerschmidt fighters pouncing on their plodding bombers, or their airframes shredded by ground fire.

He had broken down after one raid, on Kristiansand in Norway, when around half of his squadron had failed to make it back. He always told Norah not to attend his funeral if and when he died.

Joseph John Watts, aged 19.

Tonight he was going to strike the Low Countries. Just before they parted he asked Norah, if she still thought she might be pregnant. She had told him a day or two before that she thought she could detect the very early stages of a child growing inside her. She replied, yes, she thought she was. He looked thrilled and headed for his aircraft.

The side of the P4345 Hampden Bomber

The bantering voice,

The tender clasp

Altered not a whit.

His heart beat warmly against mine

For seconds longer.

The strong hand gathered, pressed me hard Against the dear familiar serge of blue,

Holding to him extra tightly

The atom in me on which

We pinned such hope and love,

A brother or a sister?

Norah was right. Eight and a half months later, John was born. A little brother for 5 year old Gillian. But he would never meet his father. Joseph had never returned from that raid in June. His aircraft, a Hampden bomber, P4345, had struck a barrage balloon cable over Felixstowe docks on the early morning of 13 June, on his return from the night’s sortie.

80 years ago Wing Commander Joseph Watts was killed when his RAF Hampden Bomber crashed. He left behind an unborn son. John Watts, born 8 months later, would never meet his father. But recently he discovered that at the RAF Museum at Cosford, they have one of the very few surviving Hampdens. And this one is from the very squadron his father flew in. In this poignant documentary, John sees the plane for the very first time.

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80 years later John reached out to History Hit after making an exciting discovery. He had never actually seen a Hampden bomber before, there are only a handful left in the word. However he had just found out that the RAF Museum in Cosford is in the process of restoring a Hampden, one that, remarkably, had actually flown in his father’s squadron.

As soon as lockdown loosened up sufficiently he and I hurried to Cosford and I was privileged enough to accompany him into the workshop where he came face to face with the aircraft.

John up close with the Hampden.

I watched the splendid back

Walking with grace and swiftness.

Never a backward look,

Into the summer scented June.

I watched him down the hill,

My life contained

Beneath that tunic.

The forage cap jauntily poised;

The four-lined cuff.

When John saw the Hampden he staggered. He had been waiting all his life for this moment. He placed his hands on the pilot’s seat and told me that this was the closest he had ever felt to his father. 80 years after his father’s death the rawness of his grief was palpable. The war is long over, but its trauma endures.

John wearing his father Joseph’s tie.

John’s father has been, he told me, a golden ghost to him. A smiling, encouraging presence as he went through life as a child, then a student and a decades long acting career. John is also so aware that he was talking to me as a representative of an entire generation of people like him, who never knew their fathers.

A powerful reminder that the losses of the Second World War are still so real for thousands of people alive today. Men and women who grew up without fathers or mothers, or were raised by veterans who bore the scars of what they had seen and done.

Before early summer dawn

Over the Belgian bridges

He fought with his crew Desperately

For England.

And died.

John’s mother dealt with her grief by leaving the RAF family. She refused to attend his funeral, refused to go to Buckingham Palace to collect his gallantry medal, she sold all their possessions, moved her little family to London and got a job in an antique shop.

She lost contact with Joseph’s family. We can feel her grief through her poetry. Jaw-droppingly powerful verses that, I believe, should be canonical, listed alongside the great war poems of the English language.