James Edward Bunt

Jim Bunt's father, James Russell Bunt, was born into a farming family in Alliston, Ontario in 1889. His mother was Irish and his father was born in Canada to English parents. James Sr (who went by the name of Russell) was eight years old when his father died. By the time he was 19, Russell was living in Toronto, working as a fireman on locomotives. Jim's mother Florence Audrey Dixon was born in 1895 in Minot, North Dakota to Ontario-born parents. The Dixons returned to Canada in 1906. In 1911 the family was living at 498 Quebec Avenue and Florence's father Edward was working as a yard foreman for CPR. Florence's parents were paying sixteen dollars a year for her education.

Russell was also working for the CPR and had been promoted to locomotive engineer. It is probable that he met Florence through her father. When they married on September 27, 1917, Russell was living at 67 Laws Street, a five minute walk from the Dixon house.

When Jim was born on June 8, 1919, the Bunts were living above a store at 3085 Dundas Street West, between Quebec and Clendenan Avenues. Jim was their only child. By 1924 the family had moved to 38 Barber Avenue which was renamed Westholme Avenue a few years later. Jim started school at Strathcona in 1926 and graduated to Humberside Collegiate in 1932. He was a generous boy, donating three dollars to The Toronto Star's Fresh Air Fund that year. At Humberside, his 6'2” frame helped to make him a member of the school's hockey and swim teams and Jim also enjoyed playing rugby and baseball. Hunting was a hobby and he spent three years in the army cadets, probably at Humberside. He had a scar in the middle of his forehead.

During six childhood summers, he worked on a farm, most likely belonging to his father's relatives. For the summers of 1938 and 1939, Jim had a job pumping gas at the station that was on the south side of Humberview Road at Jane Street. He graduated from Humberside in 1939, taking longer than most to get his junior matriculation and he soon found a job at an Imperial Oil station on Avenue Road north of Bloor.

In June 1940 Jim filled out the initial paperwork for joining the RCAF. At the time the air force was only taking licenced pilots and university graduates. During the autumn of 1940 Jim trained for a month with the Toronto Irish regiment and enlisted with the RCAF on December 17. He stated that after the war even though his service station job would be waiting, he didn't wish to return and hoped to become a commercial pilot.

Jim went through what was the Commonwealth Air Training Plan, where air force candidates learned the basics of military drills and taking care of their kits at a manning depot before moving on to initial training school for four weeks where they would take classroom courses in navigation, meteorology, algebra and trigonometry. They would also be tested in a decompression chamber, have a four hour physical examination and be interviewed by a psychiatrist. Some were immediately determined not to be pilots and sent directly to wireless air gunner school. The remainder were given fifty hours of basic flying instruction at an elementary flying training school and at the end of the course the trainees were streamed to be pilots or other aircrew.

Jim was sent to Picton's manning depot on January 7, 1941, where he also attended the initial training school from January 24 until late March, when he transferred to the school at Victoriaville, Quebec. He graduated on May 4 with a 77% average. He was back in Ontario the next day to start his elementary flying at Malton (now Pearson) airport. His trainer plane was a Tiger Moth. Jim was able to visit his parents and friends when he had leave before he moved on to Brantford's service flying training school on June 21. The only position open to a man of Jim's height was pilot. He was too tall to fit in a gunner's turret of a bomber or for any other seat. Brantford trained bomber pilots and so he knew what his future would be.

He must have struggled in this program because although he graduated, winning his wings on September 1, Jim was last in his class of 48. He was promoted to Flight Sergeant and given his two weeks' embarkation leave. He said good-bye to his parents in mid-September, sailing from Halifax on September 18. The RCAF loaned him to the RAF.

Jim reported to the personnel reception centre in Bournemouth, England on September 28, where he remained until October 8 when he was assigned to No. 25 Operational Training Unit at Finningley. The airfield is now the site of Doncaster Sheffield airport, 25 kilometres northwest of Sheffield, England. The unit trained crews on the Handley Page Hampden medium bomber, the smallest of the trio of medium bombers that the RAF used in 1941, the others being the Wellington and the Whitley. The Hampden had a unique twin tail and was wonderful to fly, but horrible to fly in. The fuselage was only three feet wide, enough for a single person and similar to a Spitfire fighter plane. The navigator, who was also the bomb aimer and front gunner, sat behind the pilot. The two rear gunners, one who doubled as the wireless operator, sat in the back which was known to be the coldest part of the plane. There was almost no room to move in the Hampden and it was very uncomfortable during long missions, garnering it the nickname “The Flying Suitcase.”

Handley Page Hampden. From wingcotomjefferson.wordpress.com.

Once he completed his training, Jim became a member of the RAF's No. 97 Squadron on March 9, 1942. The squadron's airfield was located in at RAF Woodhall Spa, in Lincolnshire, 26 kilometres southeast of Lincoln. The airfield opened the previous month and 97 Squadron had moved there on March 1. The squadron had twelve Lancasters and was one of the first squadrons to fly the heavy night bomber. It is uncertain whether Jim was sent for conversion training on the Lancaster prior to his arrival at RAF Woodhall Spa but in April he spent some time in Derby at the Rolls Royce factory, whose engines powered the Lancaster. He had a Toronto friend at the RAF base, Sergeant John Paton, a navigator whose family lived on Grenadier Road. Paton transferred to another squadron on April 21, but loaned his bicycle to Jim to use.

Jim's first mission, on May 31, was to bomb Cologne. He flew as second pilot on the crew of Flight Sergeant P. R. Baines. This mission to Cologne was an important one, the first of the three “thousand-bomber raids.” The Lancaster took off at 0046 hrs, but it dropped its 4000 pound bomb in the sea and returned to base due to engine trouble. The next night was the second thousand-bomber raid, with the target of Essen. The Lancaster departed at 0016 hrs and joined the other 955 aircraft bombing the city that night. Jim's Lancaster returned at 0402 hrs. On June 25 Baines' and Jim's Lancaster participated in the third thousand-bomber raid on Bremen. Their specific target was the Focke-Wulf aircraft factory. They dropped their bomb from 15000 feet but, after they returned to base at 0535 hrs the next morning, they reported “two enemy fighters observed, both JU88. The first was successfully evaded and we dived into cloud to avoid the second which (was) overwhelming us fast.” Over ten weeks Jim flew fourteen missions with Baines' crew, mostly bombing German targets. The last mission on August 9 was the most eventful. The Lancaster was on a mine laying mission over the North Sea and was hit in the tail by enemy defences. The aircraft arrived safely back at the base.

By August 1942 the second pilot seat was replaced by the flight engineer which the Lancasters had started carrying. Jim was sent to the flight conversion unit at nearby RAF Conningsby to sharpen his skills on the Lancaster with his own crew. A fellow Canadian from Calgary who was also loaned to the RAF was his bomb aimer. Robert Stewart Donald was a married 22 year old whose birthday would be celebrated by the crew in October. The rest of the crew were English – Yorkshireman William Cecil Morgan, a man in his early thirties, was the flight engineer; navigator John Stewart Macks; Clifford Alexander Farrimond, also in his early thirties, from Bristol who operated the Lancaster's wireless; middle gunner James George Hebdon and rear gunner John George Liney, also in his early thirties, from Cheltenham.

Jim was welcomed back to RAF Woodhall Spa on September 10 and helped his crew settle into their new base. September 13 was Jim's first mission as the pilot of his own Lancaster. They dropped a 4000 pound bomb on Bremen from 15000 feet. It was noted that “all crew co-operated very well.” So continued their bombing missions, mostly over German targets, but there were two sorties to Turin and one each to Milan and Genoa.

The photo below, a still from a film which is part of the Imperial War Museum's collection, is of Jim's Lancaster, R5497 “OF-Z” flying over France during a daylight raid on October 17, 1942. Unfortunately Jim's crew wasn't called on that day and the aircraft was flown by a different pilot.

Source: The Imperial War Museum.

About every six weeks, the crew had a week's leave to rest and take their minds off their jobs. By December 9, they had flown 18 sorties, most successfully completed, but two were not, one due to generator trouble and the other was abandoned due to bad weather. On December 9, they bombed Turin and experienced considerable flak. James Hebdon's gunner turret was hit, but luckily he was uninjured. Jim was twelve flying hours away from the two hundred needed to complete a tour of duty and the reward of a six month leave.

On December 17, the target was Neustadt, Germany. Jim's was one of five squadron Lancasters that were mustered that evening, they took off at 1708hrs and dropped their bombs over the target. Their Lancaster and one other from the squadron went missing. Near the Dutch coast, Jim's plane was spotted by German night fighter pilot Hans-Joachim Jabs, one of the most successful pilots in the night fighter force.. Jabs' method of attack was to approach a bomber from low and behind the plane, hoping to avoid being sighted by the rear gunner. Once Jabs was close enough, he would climb toward the bomber and fire at its underside.

Jim's Lancaster fell into the ocean five kilometres west of Egmond aan Zee at 2246 hrs. He and his crew mates are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial, which was dedicated to over 20000 Second World War Commonwealth air force members who were lost and have no known graves. He is also commemorated on the Bomber Command Memorial in Nanton, Alberta.

Russell retired from the CPR and passed away in 1955. Florence was still living on Westholme Avenue in 1969 and died in Mississauga in 1984.