Tail-end Terry

It is often said that Terence Rattigan’s ‘thing’ was his homosexuality and that his disguising of it coloured everything he wrote. But he had, I think, another secret up his sleeve that is still little known. He was a tailgunner in the RAF. Indeed the service was his family and a thread of blue serge runs through his career. He died in 1977, aged 66.

After Harrow and Oxford, the war rudely interrupted his dazzling entrée as a dashing young Thirties playwright. After basic training, Rattigan was assigned as a wireless operator and airgunner to a squadron of Sunderlands, hunting enemy submarines in the Atlantic. One moment he was banking nice fat royalties from West End hits such as French Without Tears. Next thing he knew, he was patrolling the Atlantic on 13-hour missions, prey to long-range enemy aircraft looking for an easy target. Actually, the deep-bellied Sunderlands were, apparently, very hard to kill. The Germans called them ‘flying porcupines’ — the prickly spines being their ten machineguns. Rattigan manned the rear end.

His 1942 play Flare Path was so authentic that the manuscript practically had a bullet hole through it. He completed the first act during repairs after a Heinkel had shot up the tail end of his aircraft. Then, flying 1,200 miles on to West Africa, the starboard engine died. Luggage, loo seat and every fitting they could hack off with an axe went overboard in a desperate bid to stay aloft. Rattigan was about to sling his kitbag when he realised that his manuscript was in it. He ripped off the heavy cardboard covers but shoved the pages up his jacket. The Sunderland made it home with a few minutes’ fuel to spare. He finished the play on the verandah of the officers’ mess in Freetown.