Don Nixon sits in an easy chair in his retirement home in Langford, a heavy photo album on his lap.
It’s bound by plywood covers and contains dozens of pages with hundreds of photographs that chronicle his years as a bomber pilot during the Second World War and as a fighter pilot when he returned from overseas.
“I keep this because I want younger people to know what war was like and to be in combat …
it was a dangerous time,” says Nixon, who signed up for the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942 at the age of 19.
At 102, the personable Nixon still vividly recalls each of the 35 missions he flew over Nazi-occupied Holland and France, as well as Germany’s Ruhr Valley, heart of the Nazi industrial complex.
Nixon flew the Halifax bomber with a seven-man crew, including a navigator, bomb aimer and gunners. They dropped 16,500-pound bombs on every perilous run between England and the designated targets — railyards, factories, oil refineries, enemy gun positions — both day and night.
Somehow, he managed to make it back to England every time, although he admits his bombers were sometimes “like cheese, filled with holes” when he touched down on English soil.
Nixon’s heavy photo album contains photos from those missions, taken from cameras inside the Halifax bombers. The pictures, with the time and date stamped along with Nixon’s name as the pilot, show the targets, and sometimes the explosions from the bombs they dropped from 25,000 feet.
He got the images after the war to add to his impressive collection.
“I had to pull a few strings to get those,” he said with a smile. “I had to reach the intelligence officer to go back through my records to get them.”
Like many young men of the day, Nixon, who grew up in Vancouver, signed up to fight as a 19-year-old in 1942 “because everybody was doing it.”
After pilot training, his first missions were patrols over the North Atlantic looking for enemy submarines and aircraft, although he never came into contact with any.
By early 1943, as bombers were being shot down in greater numbers and the loss of pilots escalated, Nixon found himself in one of the war’s most dangerous jobs, the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command.
Of every 100 airmen who joined Bomber Command during the conflict, nearly half — 45 — were killed, six had serious wounds and eight became prisoners of war, according to the Bomber Command Museum of Canada.
Out of more than 125,000 airmen who served, 58,000 were killed, including 10,400 Canadians.
“I guess I was just lucky,” said Nixon. “I don’t know how I did it.”
Typically, a bomber tour would be 30 operational trips, but with losses peaking, Nixon flew 35 missions in 1943 because “so many were being shot down.”
Nixon said his Halifax crew never missed a target. But each mission was a huge risk.
“We had to fight our way to the target and we had to fight our way back, too.”
He evaded fighters “by being a fighter myself,” the veteran said, twisting his arms as if at the controls of the bomber and mimicking the sound of bullets ripping into the bomber’s fuselage.
“I used the Halifax as a fighter and took on German fighters and beat them … the gunners were the ones — they were very good — and I just kept dodging the fighters.”
On his first mission, German fighters shot half of his bomber’s tail right off, but Nixon managed to limp the airplane home.
That was the first of what Nixon said were many close calls.
“We got shot up pretty badly certain times, but the Halifax bombers could take a lot,” he said.
Each run, they faced a wall of anti-aircraft flak and he would twist and turn the bomber, zig-zagging just out of reach of the explosive material, he said.
German fighters would come at the bombers from above or below, and at other times, the fighters were “just everywhere.
“We really had to keep our eyes out. You never knew where they were, sometimes in the clouds.”
On one mission, bullets raked across his windscreen, spraying glass shards all over his face and goggles. “I thought that was it, or maybe I lost my eyes, but I just wiped it off,” he said. “We made it back again.”
On other missions, Nixon and his flight engineer sometimes would have to redistribute fuel from one engine to another if it was hit, fearing a spark could ignite the engine and wing.
He recalled one mission in Northern Europe where one of his crew said: “Skipper, we’re losing fuel from No. 4 engine.”
“It was streaming out and there was a hole in it somewhere, so when we landed, that tank was empty. The [ground crew] had a look and said there’s something in there. So they opened it up and they found an unexploded shell inside the fuel tank.
“We all looked at each other and went ‘phew!’ It would have blown the whole wing right off.”
Nixon feels very fortunate that he was never wounded in action, but said some of his crew “got shot up pretty badly” at times.
He said the crews he flew with were exceptional men. “They were amazing. Not too many bomber crews could claim they’d beaten a [German] fighter. We shot one fighter down and got credit for a half,” said Nixon. “We knew we’d hit one pretty good and it got into the clouds, so they only gave us credit for half an aircraft.”
He has no idea why he survived. “I taught air fighting, how to evade and hit back,” said Nixon. “I was told what to do and I did that. But I felt that in my position as a pilot and the captain, it was also my job to get that aircraft and those crew members back home. That was my principle.
“Three of our crew were married with wives in Canada, so I always thought that I had to get them back every time. I tried hard and it worked.”
He said the German fighter pilots who tried so many times to shoot him down were very skilled. “I had to really be on my toes and know what I was doing,” said Nixon.
Several years ago, he had the opportunity to meet a German fighter pilot while fishing with his son near Shawnigan Lake.
He discovered the connection during a casual conversation with two people in a vehicle, one of whom turned out to be the German fighter pilot.
“We had a ball,” said Nixon with a laugh, saying the two shared stories. “We said to each other: ‘Glad to see you made it OK.’ I never wanted to shoot a German down — I wanted to shoot the aircraft down.”
After the Second World War, Nixon married his wife Diana, who he met during his operations in England. They were married for 70 years, raising two sons and daughter. She passed away four years ago.
With the war over, he moved on to fighter jets in the Royal Canadian Air Force, training pilots for the North American Aerospace Defence Command, also known as NORAD, and also flying intelligence flights for Canada during the Cold War.
He served at several bases across Canada, including Bagotville, Quebec, Cold Lake, Alberta and Comox.
Nixon retired after nearly two decades in the air force.
This year, for his 102nd birthday on Sept. 17, Nixon received a congratulatory letter from King Charles and letters from strangers around the world. After a friend, Marlene Graham, posted Nixon’s amazing milestone and his war service on social media, cards started flowing in from across Canada and from as far away as Australia.
A big pile sits on the coffee table in his living room at Cherish at Central Park, and Nixon invites his guests to look through them. “It was a very nice thing they did,” he said. “It makes you feel pretty special.
The retirement community has also honoured Nixon by giving all residents of the community free memberships to Langford Legion.
“At 102, Don stands as a living testament to the courage and sacrifice that have shaped our world today,” said Mickey Fleming, president and chief executive of Cherish at Central Park.
“Veterans like Don answered the call in humanity’s darkest hours … bravery has given us the gift of freedom, a gift we must never take for granted.”
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
