Don Nicholson audio recording. One

Don Nicholson audio recording. One

Don was a Flight Engineer with No 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron in 1944-45 at Dunholme Lodge and later at Spilsby and completed 31 operations.
Don lists his 31 operations and recounts how having arrived for the briefing for his first operation, he was grounded by the medical officer and sent to hospital. His crew did six operations without him and did not return from the last one. Having done some operations as a spare flight engineer he describes how he was recruited by a captain who wanted to replace his engineer. He was impressed by his new captain landing a Lancaster with a punctured tyre, ending up on the grass but the aircraft was intact.
He then goes on to describe a number of incidents during his operations. These include bombing the German battle cruiser Lutzow which turned out to be a decoy. Being diverted to Kinloss and the airfield was not open but they had to land as they were out of fuel, they also had a bomb loose in the bomb bay. Returning from an operation below cloud over the North Sea and one of their Lancasters bounced off the water. One of his last operations to Hamburg he did not think that they would survive, they were coned by searchlights, ended up in a power dive when corkscrewing and having recovered flying round to gain height to eventually bomb.

01:34:08 audio recording

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ANicholsonD151002-01

I was a flight engineer with Bomber Command during 1944/45 in World War Two. I served with 44 Rhodesia Squadron and I did a total of thirty one operations over Germany twenty nine of which were successful. Two were what we classified as boomerangs. Something went wrong on the way out and we had to turn back, dispose of our bombs and come back and land so they were not classified as genuine operations. So thirty one trips attempted. Twenty nine successfully completed.
[recording paused]
Starting with number one on the 9th of August 1944 we went to La Gironde which was the Bay of Biscay to deposit six mines across the Bay of Biscay to try and catch one or two of the submarines that were using that area. On the 12th of September we went to Stuttgart. On the 18th of September we went to Bremerhaven. On the 19th of September we went to Munchen Glad, Munchen Gladbach. The 23rd of September we went to Handorf. The 27th of September we went to Karlsruhe. The 6th of November we went to the Dortmund Ems Canal. On the 11th of November we went to Harburg. On the 16th of November we went on a daylight raid to Düren. On the 17th of December we went to Munich. On the 18th of December we went to Gdynia in Poland. On the 21st of December we went to Politz in Poland On the 28th of December we went to [unclear]. But unfortunately, one of our engines blew up and we had to turn back and deposit our bombs in the North Sea before we could come back and land. On the 1st of January we went to the Dortmund Ems Canal. On the 4th of January we went to a place called Royan. On the 5th of January we went to another one called [unclear]. On the 1st of February we went to Siegen. On the 7th of February we went to the Ladbergen Canal which was another tributary of the Dortmund Ems Canal. On the 8th of February we went to Poland again, to Politz. On the 14th of February we went on a raid to Dresden but unfortunately we had something wrong and we had to turn back. Do the same again. Deposit our bombs in the North Sea and come back. Mission uncomplete. The 15th of February they sent us across to Rositz. 19th of February we went to Bӧhlen again. 20th of February we went to Gravenhorst which was another part of the Dortmund Ems Canal. 24th of February we went on a daylight raid to the Dortmund Ems Canal. On the 12th of March we went on another daylight raid to Essen. This was a three thousand bomber raid. The 14th of March we went to a place called Lützendorf. On the 20th of March we went back again to Bӧhlen. On the 21st of March we went to Hamburg. On the 23rd of March we went to a place called Wesel. On the 4th of April we went to Nordhausen which was a daylight raid. And on the 7th of April our last trip was to a place called [unclear] A total of thirty one trips. Twenty nine which were successful and two which were rated as boomerangs but because we’d got so far out on the trip it was classified as operation flying.
[recording paused]
We were posted to, to Dunholme Lodge from 5 LFS, Lanc Finishing School on the 13th of July 1944. Our first briefing took place on the 21st of July 1944. The target was Givors. Sitting around the table being told the ins and outs of where we were going and all the paraphernalia that goes with it the medical officer came in and he gestured to me to go over. So over I went. He said, ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I’m keen to do my bit.’ He said, ‘You look flushed. Open your mouth.’ So he stuck a thermometer in my mouth, got hold of my wrist, took my pulse. Took the thermometer out, shook it and looked at it. He said, ‘You’re not flying tonight.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘It’s my first trip.’ He said, ‘I couldn’t care if it was your last trip. You’re not flying. You’ve got a sore throat. And —’ he said, ‘That’ll interfere with your ability to do your job properly.’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘It’s my first trip.’ He said, ‘I’m not consulting you in any other way but whether you are fit or unfit. So pack your bags and report to the hospital.’ So I told my crew. I said, ‘I’ve been taken off tonight’s trip. I have to go to hospital because of my sore throat.’ So we said goodbye there and then and away off to the hospital I went. In the meantime, a spare engineer was recruited and put in my place to fly along with my crew. Anyway, before I’d left them they’d indicated that they would keep in touch if after every trip one of them would find it necessary to come and say hello. Well, each night they went out. I listened to the engines taking off and then I just laid and waited until the next noise interrupted which said they were coming back. This happened on five occasions and each, after each raid one of the crew came in asked how I was getting on, told me what was going on over there and so it went on. The sixth time they went out I listened and they all went off. I laid down and went to sleep. And then when I heard them coming back I wakened up and listened and they sounded like they’d all finished circling and that and had landed. And then I waited patiently for one of the crew to come in [pause] but no such luck. So I shouted the orderly. I said, ‘Will you go and check and see if all the kites have come back off the raid?’ So away he went. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Before I go,’ he said, ‘Which crew are you looking for?’ I said, ‘Mine. Flight Sergeant Duncan.’ So away he went. He came back a few minutes later and said, ‘I’m sorry. Your crew have been listed as missing.’ And I thought well there’s a good start. I haven’t even flown with them and they’ve been shot down. Prisoners of war, dead or whatever I hadn’t the foggiest idea. I later learned the name of the chap who had taken my place was a Sergeant Waters. The next day the doctor declared that I was fit to be discharged. He said, ‘Under the circumstances you need to get over the loss of your crew so three days sick leave and off you go.’ Anyway, I went home, let my parents know what had happened and they weren’t very happy at all. They tried to talk me out of flying but I said, ‘No. I’ve joined. I’ve volunteered to do what I’m going to do and if it does happen then that’s just my luck.’ I reported back to my unit at Dunholme Lodge and the chief engineer he gave me instructions to be his right-hand man. So when he was otherwise occupied elsewhere I had to run the office and as such I was the spare engineer on the squadron. So much so that on the first occasion a Flying Officer Stockwell came in. He said, ‘I need an engineer. Mine’s sick.’ I said, ‘Ok, that’s me.’ So I flew my first trip with Flying Officer Stockwell which was La Gironde. The mine laying expedition. The next man to come into the office was a Flying Officer Wilson. Away I went with him and it was Stuttgart. A lively place was Stuttgart. Managed that one alright. The next fella that came into the office was a Flying Officer Boswell. With him I flew to Bremerhaven and then again to Munchen Gladbach. That over, the next man into the office for an engineer was Flight Lieutenant Dobson. With him I did the Handorf raid. The next fella in was the flight commander, Flight Lieutenant Newmarch. He took me on a trip to Karlsruhe and I thought oh well time’s gently ticking over. I’ll get my thirty one trips eventually. Eventually a message came through from Group. The squadron had to move and take up station at a place called Spilsby. Well, on the 30th of September we packed our bags and moved on and moved into Spilsby. Anyway, I was sitting in the office this particular morning and this pilot came in, a Flying Officer [Plenderleith]. He said, ‘I want a new engineer.’ I said, ‘Pardon?’ he said, ‘I want rid of my engineer. I want a new one.’ I said, ‘What’s the matter with your old one?’ He said, ‘He’s a womaniser. Goes off on the razzle and falls asleep while we’re up in the air.’ And he said, ‘I’m not tolerating it. I want rid of him. I want a new engineer.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. We haven’t got any spares.’ He said, ‘Whose engineer are you?’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’m nobody’s really.’ ‘Well, I’ll have you,’ he said. ‘Oh.’ I said, ‘You don’t.’ I said, ‘I don’t just join up with somebody who comes in and demands I want. You’ll have to go and see the flight commander and see what he’s got to say.’ So off he went. A couple of minutes later Dickie Bird, the flight commander he came in, he said, ‘Hello Nick.’ ‘Aye.’ I said, ‘I know what you want and all.’ He said, ‘I’ve got a problem.’ I said, 'I know. [Plenderleith].’ ‘Yes.’ He says, ‘A good pilot. In fact, he’s the best pilot we’ve got.’ ‘Oh, come off it,’ I said, ‘You’d say that about anybody. You want to offload him on to me.’ ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Do us a favour. Go on a trip with him. Just the one trip. I know it’s asking a lot but,’ he said, ‘You go on this one trip with him and if he suits your purpose I’ll see that you’re transferred. If not you’ll stay spare and I’ll get somebody else to hang up with him.’ ‘Ok,’ I says. So off he goes and the next operation up is Dortmund Ems Canal. Well, I joined the crew at briefing. Made my presence known. Shook hands with all the crew and sat down to listen to the briefing. The raid went off normal and in fact I was impressed by the manner in which the crew reacted. We finished the trip and joined the circuit to come in and land. Well, one of my jobs is to check the wheel, the wheel to be ok on landing and I control the flaps to reduce the speed as we come in to land. The skipper gave me the order, ‘Flaps 20,’ and I dropped the flaps down, and, ‘Wheels down,’ and I dropped the wheels down. As I looked out of the window and the pilot does likewise to check the wheel on his side I noticed that we had a flat tyre and I remarked, ‘We’ve got a flat tyre.’ The pilot said, ‘What’s that?’ And I said, ‘We’ve got a flat tyre.’ ‘Crikey. We’re in the funnel.’ I said, 'Hadn’t we better overshoot?’ ‘No. No. We’ll go in and land on one wheel.’ Crikey. I couldn’t tell him what to do. It was left to him. He touched down, ran down the runway on one wheel and then the punctured wheel touched the tarmac and started to spin and the weight of the aircraft descended down and made the landing course change because the tyre was dragging and not breaking sufficiently. He swung the aircraft off the runway on to the grass. He did a couple of three turns around and around and we stopped. I thought crikey, how lucky we were. Anyway, we climbed out of the aircraft and congratulated the skipper and I said, ‘After doing that performance landing on one wheel if you want an engineer I’m available.’ The skipper replied, ‘You’re welcome to join if you feel happy.’ Anyway, I had to move in with the rest of the crew so that we were all sleeping in the same billet. It so happened in December that the last pocket battleship belonging to the Germans, the Lützow was operating over in the Baltic Sea. It caused quite a bit of commotion over there and it was decided by the higher ups in the RAF that this ship had to be got rid of. Well, oddly enough there was a force of about three hundred bombers lined up to go on this raid. Well, the three hundred bombers weren’t going to be chasing the Lützow. Three out of that three hundred which included my crew and two others were earmarked to go and seek out the battleship and sink it. We carried special armour piercing bombs that would penetrate the armoured deck of the battleship. It was just [unclear]. At ten to five on the 18th of December we took off. We went up around by Sweden and Denmark to a place called Gdynia off the coast of Poland. The main force went in and they started to spatter the dockside and set it on fire. Now that was more or less to illuminate the shipping so that we could go in and select from a photograph the exact ship. The Lützow. We were about five miles out to sea coming in towards the coast. I happened to look out of the window which I was permanently doing because night fighters were [unclear] and you had to avoid them if possible and I spotted this twin engined aeroplane in the distance. I remarked to the pilot and said, ‘There’s a Mossie out there.’ That’s a Mosquito. One of the gunners shouted back, ‘It’s not. It’s not a Mossie. It’s an ME262.’ A jet. I hadn’t seen any jets. That was the latest one that the Germans had just brought in. It was the most efficient fighter that they had produced so far. As I was looking the pilot of the 262 he must have spotted me looking out of the window and he waved. And I thought you cheeky devil. So I said to the skipper, I said, ‘He’s coming around to have a go at us.’ So the skipper stuck the nose down and we high tailed it down as low as possible on to the sea. Going down there we were almost invisible from height and by the time he got himself settled down to come back to attack we’d gone. Well, that’s what we did. So we did a little dog leg sort of style and climbed up again so that we could look at the fire and hopefully pick out the ship that we were supposed to bomb. We started to do our track in and the bomb aimer kept saying, ‘I’ve got it. I’ve got it.’ And when he exclaimed that he’d got it we opened the bomb doors and he takes over and controls the aircraft and he calls out left or right or straight ahead or whatever he wanted the skipper to do and the skipper follows his directions. We followed his instructions so far and then he said, ‘Oh, it’s the wrong one. Turn off. Turn off.’ So we had to do a back loop as it were and then come in again. We did that three times and I thought hell’s bells we’re never going to find it. And then suddenly he shouted, ‘I’ve got it. I’ve got it this time.’ So in we went, bomb doors open and as soon as he got the right spot, ‘Bombs gone.’ And we thought that those bombs would go straight down into that dockyard and blow that ship to smithereens. We carried on, took our photograph, shut the bomb doors and away. By then the whole of the raid had finished on the docks and we were left to go back around by Sweden and Denmark back home. Anyway, on the way back as they did on the way in the three put up some flares into the sky more or less to say, ‘We know you’re there.’ So from them doing that the Germans flying over Sweden would have picked us up in Germany and said, ‘There’s bombers flying around Sweden. Send some fighters out to catch them as they come back over the North Sea. We had to watch our step going back but eventually we got back and we landed ok. The total of that trip was eleven hours and five minutes there and back. The longest trip I ever did. Anyway, we got debriefed, told the officer in charge what we’d seen and what we’d done and he said, ‘Good lad. I think you’ll get a medal for what you’ve done.’ And we thought oh well we deserve it. The next day we went up to the Mess after dinner and the news came on. “In the Baltic Sea the German battleship the Lützow is operating once more and two of our merchant ships have been sunk.” Well, we’d told everybody that we’d sunk it. Then everybody shook fingers at us. You couldn’t blame them. We thought we’d sunk it. Never mind. Time passed and days went by and I went up to the section, the engineer’s section in the morning when I went in the boss says to me, ‘Hey Nick, you know that battleship you were supposed to sink?’ ‘Oh aye,’ I said, ‘the Lützow?’ And he said, ‘It wasn’t there. It was out in deep water with the flags out. What you sank was a rubber decoy.’ I thought of all the daft things to do. But then again who can blame them. They’d built the battleship out of rubber the same way as they do a balloon barrage and stuck it in the dock and put a net over it so that looking down it looked exactly like a battleship in dock. So actually what we bombed was a rubber duck [laughs]. The war by now had turned in our favour. We had the Germans on the run and the British Army and the American Army were pushing through Germany towards Berlin. On New Years Day 1945 we got called to go on operations to the Dortmund Ems Canal again. Well, the Dortmund Ems Canal was a place that the Germans were day in and day out repairing because we’d bombed it forever and a day. So consequently, the goods that they were transporting along the canal were special for the war front and we had to make sure that they never got to the war front. Anyway, this particular trip Lincolnshire was snowed over and it had had a heavy frost on top of it. Well, the runways were in a hell of a state. With a bit of luck they got the runway cleared sufficiently so we could take off without any incident. So we took off just before midnight and away we went over to the Dortmund Ems. We got there and there was plenty of activity in the air. Fighters, anti-aircraft guns, searchlights. It looked as though all hell had let loose. The Germans were with their back to the wall and they were all out to get us if they could. We managed to drop our bombs and we headed for home. Over the North Sea when we were about a hundred mile away from home a message came across from Group. ‘Divert to Kinloss.’ Divert to Kinloss? Fancy sending us up to Kinloss in Scotland. Lincoln is snowbound. Scotland we wouldn’t be able to find it the snow was that deep. I don’t know why they sent us [unclear] ‘What are we going to do?’ So I said to the skipper, ‘We’re going to do what they want us to do.’ ‘Work out and see if we’ve got enough petrol to get there for a start off.’ I did my calculations and I said to the skipper, ‘Well, with a bit of luck we’ll get there. I don’t know whether we’ll have any petrol to spare when we get there. It looks like we’re going to have to fly on empty tanks if we’re lucky.’ I mean this was never forecast before we came out. ‘I’ll do my best. Don’t blame me if we run out.’ Well, that’s the order. We’re going to Kinloss. That’s the way. I’ll drop the revs down and increased the boost as best I could. Made sure that I was flying on the least mixture possible. Dropped the air speed down from one sixty to one forty five and we chugged along. We got within ten miles of Kinloss so the skipper radio’d in, ‘This is KMX X-ray calling Kinloss.’ And there was no reply. Three times, ‘This is CMX X-ray calling Kinloss.’ No reply. And all the time getting nearer and nearer. I said, ‘It looks like there’s nobody there.’ I said, ‘I’m not surprised. It’s New Years Day in Scotland.’ At least it’s the 2nd of January now but it was New Years Day yesterday. They’ll be tucked up and [unclear] laid on the top. Now, we’ve got to get down somehow. We dropped down to a couple of thousand feet. So we dropped down to about five thousand feet. Kept calling up and getting no reply. Of course, normally when you go to a strange aerodrome that’s not expecting you and you get a call for someone to land they put the generator on. The lights around the aerodrome would light up the whole aerodrome and anything. But nothing. Nobody was awake. Nobody was responding. Anyway, we got there and we could see that there was a mountain and the airfield was at the bottom of the mountain running out to the sea. So the skipper in his normal placid tone, ‘Go on to the surface and drive around the surface down wind and then cross wind and then off wind on to the runway.’ And all the time he would call up, ‘This is CMX X-ray. I’m approaching cross wind, up wind, down wind. Whatever. Anyway, as we turned I felt this rumbling underneath the floorboards. ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘We’ve got something loose underneath here.’ The skipper said, ‘Well, go down and have a look.’ Well, I reached for the aldis lamp which was like a hand searchlight and I popped down into the bomb aimer’s compartment where there was a little door that looked into the bomb bay. And I opened this and shone the light in and there in front of me was this bomb. It had been frozen up and when we’d ] come down into the warmer air the ice had melted and the bomb had dropped into the bomb bay and it was rolling about on the bottom of the bomb bay. ‘Christ,’ I said, ‘We’ve got a bloody bomb down here. It’s a live bomb. Shit. What do we do now?’ So the bomb aimer came on. He said, ‘It's alright.’ He said, ‘It’s a timer.’ I said, ‘It’s a timer? What do you mean it’s a timer?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s timed.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Well, what? What time?’ ‘Oh, you needn’t worry about that.’ I thought aye, he didn’t want to tell us. I shut the door and went back up into the cockpit, turned around and he came down towards the runway but he overshot. The runway was still short and he ran over the end of the runway over the sea. He came around again and as he came around two of the engines shuddered. I said, ‘We’ve got no petrol.’ So he did a manoeuvre that I’ve never seen done by a Lancaster bomber as such. He started to lift it down the side of the hill and he levelled out and dropped on to the runway and landed. Ran down the runway like we normally do and I put the throttles back so at the end we were just ticking over. We got about three quarters of the way down the runway and all the engines just cut out. We’d run out of petrol. Normally you’d taxi the aeroplane to a parking spot. Well, in this case it was just running freely with no engine power so we pulled off the runway on to the grass and stopped. ‘Everybody out,’ he said. By then everybody was out except me. Well, I’m always the last man out and I have to put all the things on standby, make sure that everything’s ok and then get out. And when I got out I couldn’t find them. They’d gone and there was a mist all over the airfield. Five foot six and I’m shouting, ‘Where are you?’ ‘Where are you?’ ‘Where are you?’ And there was not a word. I thought well the bloody bomb’s going to go off if I’m not careful. So I was off. I ran. I ran in the direction away from the aeroplane. Eventually I came across this ticket hut and I went inside and there were two blokes in there. One of them [unclear] ‘Who’s that?’ And I said, ‘It’s me.’ ‘Who’s me?’ I said, ‘It’s me. We’ve just landed.’ I said, ‘We’ve run out of petrol and we’ve landed on your bloody aerodrome and there’s nobody here.’ Well, no. Aye.’ He said, ‘We’re on stand down.’ Oh lord. This is great. He said, ‘[unclear] there. Get yourself tucked in.’ He said, ‘There’s nothing doing until 9 o’clock tomorrow.’ I thought right. Off with my [unclear] So the next morning we came over at about half past seven and took me into [unclear] He said, ‘Do you want to get anything to eat? There won’t be much like but —’ he said, ‘There’s skeleton staff on in the Sergeant’s Mess if you want something. You can have a lend of my towel. Get yourself washed and scrubbed.’ So I did. I said, ‘Which way is the Sergeant’s Mess then?’ ‘Straight over there. You can’t go wrong.’ So I walked over. I went into the Mess. Everybody stared as if to say, What’s all this? Fancy dress or something?’ I went up to the, where the served [pause] I said to the WAAF, ‘Flying breakfast please.’ She says, [laughs] ‘You’ll be lucky.’ Naturally of course I had to just make do with what was on offer. I took my meal and my cup of tea and I went and sat down at a table. I was busy enjoying my breakfast and I was thinking, ‘Where’s the rest of them gone?’ Then the tannoy went, ‘Will the flight engineer of the Lancaster bomber on the runway please go to flying control immediately.’ So that’s me. [unclear] I’m having my breakfast. Get somebody else. One of the sergeants came across. ‘Did you not hear? Did you not hear the tannoy there.’ I said, ‘I did.’ He said, ‘Well, apparently they want you out there at flying control for some reason or other.’ ‘Presumably they’re wanting us to go and shift the bomb.’ He said, ‘The bomb? What bomb?’ I said, ‘There’s a bomb in the bomb bay.’ I said, ‘We’ve just come back from Germany last night and we’ve landed and we’ve got a live bomb in the bomb bay.’ ‘Christ almighty,’ he said, ‘Get yourself over there.’ Aye, after I’ve had my breakfast.’ Just then a WAAF came into the dining hall. ‘Is there a flight engineer in here?’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s me.’ She said, ‘They want you over at flying control [unclear].’ So I gulped my tea down and I followed her out. She walked me over to the flying control. There was about half a dozen Army blokes waffling about. One of them came over and he said, ‘We want your help.’ I said, ‘Why?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We want the bomb doors open so we can get the bomb out. We can’t get at it.’ I said, ‘Do you want me to go and help you?’ ‘That’s the idea. We want you to get up into the cockpit and open the bomb doors for us.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You must be joking.’ I said, ‘I’m not a bomb expert.’ No. No. No. He said, ‘There’s no danger really.’ But he said, ‘What we’re going to do we’ll throw a big net underneath the bomb bay and when you open the bomb doors the bomb will just roll into the net.’ ‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘I suppose we’ll not be able to get the aeroplane away until we shift the bomb so let’s do it.’ So off down to the aeroplane we went. The sandbags were right around. There must have been about thirty sandbags around then and this great big rambling net underneath. ‘Right,’ he says, ‘All you need do is go up there, open the doors gently,’ and he said, ‘We’ll lower the bomb into the net.’ Ok. So I was just going to climb into the kite when, ‘Halt. Halt.’ He says, ‘Put this on.’ A tin hat. I said, ‘What do you mean put that on?’ He said, ‘It’s regulations you know.’ he said, ‘You’re not allowed to do anything unless you’re wearing one.’ Well, I said, ‘That’s not going to save us if it goes off.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Put it on.’ So I put the tin hat on and I went and climbed in the kite, and when I was in the kite I took it off and [unclear]. I passed around the opening to the pilot’s compartment and I opened the window and I looked out and, ‘Are you ready?’ ‘Ok, fire away.’ So I released the bomb door lever so that it was ready to bump open. And with that releasing lever the weight of the bomb lying on the bomb doors gave a little scrunch. So I thought oh. It made me start. I moved the handle of the pump gently forward and [unclear] I could hear the bomb scraping on the doors and the doors tried to push themselves open and the bomb pushed the door [unclear] with the weight of it. I decided I’d move the handle and [unclear] the door opened and all of a sudden there was a bit of a bang when the bomb left the bomb door and dropped into the net. I thought that’s it. I’m out. Down, out and away. Away back down to the flying control and they were all tearing and flapping. And then I went in and one of the officers said, ‘I think you need a swift drink after that.’ And one of the blokes chipped in and he said, ‘I agree with you there sir but unfortunately his friends have drunk the bar dry.’ I said, ‘What do you mean my friends have drunk the bar dry?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Apparently it was your pilot’s birthday yesterday and when they went into the Sergeant’s Mess last night and they found out that it was his birthday they just continued with the celebrations.’ He said, ‘They drunk the bar dry.’ I said, ‘And while I’ve been over there worrying about where they’ve been and they’ve all been on the booze. Well,’ I said, ‘Isn’t it ridiculous?’ [pause] Alright, I said, ‘All in a day’s work I suppose.’ Anyway, they came with a low loader, loaded the bomb on and away they went. Contractors came, loaded the sandbags and away they went. That left the aeroplane in my care. The rest of the crew came across and we all climbed aboard. The pilot said to me, ‘Are we ready to start up?’ I said, ‘When you are.’ So one by one the engines fired up and were running ready to take-off. Well, there was nobody there to say that we could take off or we couldn’t take off. We just had to gauge ourselves. So away we went. Goodbye to Kinloss. But nicely up into the air and the pilot said to me, ‘Nick,’ he said, ‘How would you fancy flying us back down to Lincoln?’ I said, ‘You’re joking aren’t you?’ ‘No. No.’ he said, ‘I’ve got a bit of a funny head,’ he said, ‘And I think it would be better if you finished.’ So out of the seat he got and I sat in for him and I flew the aeroplane all the way down from Scotland down to Lincolnshire. This was a very unusual thing for any pilot to do but seeing as he, he was suffering from a hangover his [pause] well trust in me was being checked out as it were. He wanted to know whether I was capable of flying the aeroplane or not in an emergency. I’d done any amount of flying in the training machines but very very seldom got more than half an hour at the controls of the aeroplane and at usually, usually was ten thousand feet or more. But over the sea was a bonus and I enjoyed it.
[pause]
At the airfield I noticed that they’d cleared the runways so that was something to look forward to. I’d witnessed two or three incidences of kites —
[pause]
And they weren’t for me. I think I have a feeling that the raid on Siegen in February, February the 1st 1945 that one was one of these big raids where there were a hundred. Anything on these raids was a massive, it was a massive support. It wasn’t just a half a dozen aeroplanes in the air. It was hundreds. In fact, on one of the raids that I took part there were three thousand American and British aeroplanes in the air at the same time. Three thousand. You can imagine what it must have looked like. It was in daylight too. Just like a dirty great big invasion fleet. Anyway, at the primary attack this operation on Siegen it was to be Army barracks and transport belonging to the Army. The war was starting to come in our favour I think and some of these raids that we were going on were designed to eliminate the enemy or eliminate the supply to fight back. We go on this raid and we take off at a quarter past four in the afternoon. It was February. Pitch dark at 5 o’clock. So we trundle away down the runway and up into the sky and we make our way up to our height that we have to be available to bomb. We climb up and up and up and we see all the aeroplanes far and wide all doing the same thing, heading in the same direction and the light is getting less and less and you think to yourself I wonder how many of them I’ll see when I get back. You never think I wonder how many airmen are going to get shot down. That never crossed your mind. It just wasn’t worth thinking about. Anyway, we get up to height and we levelled out and we go across the Channel towards France into Siegen. The usual interpretation of safety by the pilot. ‘Keep your eyes out sergeant for fighters.’ The pilot’s routine for all of us at a certain point [unclear] night fighters. [unclear] they were. What they used to do I think they would be [unclear] they used to find an aeroplane or aeroplanes at a certain height and they would call down to the gunners down below with the coordinates and the height. The gunners would set the shells to explode at that height and would tell the fighter, ‘Get out of the road we’re going to open fire.’ And the fighters, the fighters would zoom off right away. [unclear]and then came the ack ack. Hells bells. It used to come up. You could walk on it. And I thought [unclear] all right. We know what you’ve got there and the plane would be locked down with all this fire power. A good idea right because it would use up their ammunition for parts of the Army. They struggled there. We’re getting popped off. And every now and again you know you would see a bright flash and that was an aeroplane and it would go down. And the shells were coming up left, right and centre. Bang bang bang all around and suddenly there was such a big bang and the aircraft just lifted and turned over. Well, I thought we’ve hit an air pocket or something and apparently it was from the shells exploding up in the air and over. By the time the pilot had got us back on an even keel the compasses had been disturbed and he didn’t know which way he was going. Then he called out to the navigator, ‘Is your compass out of action?’ To which the navigator said, ‘Yes, mine’s spinning too.’ Anyway, the compasses settled down and it was noted that we were headed in the wrong direction and the skipper said, ‘Keep a good lookout lads. We’re going in the wrong direction and we’re heading into the bloody stream.’ Just then I noticed out in the distance a formation of an aeroplane. I thought, ‘What’s that?’ And then I screamed, ‘Dive. Dive. Dive.’ It was a Lancaster coming head on towards us. We dived and luckily he pulled his stick back and went over. We missed each other and I’m damned sure that the tailwheel of his aeroplane cut out. I found a hump as he went over the top. I thought blimey, where on earth did he come from? Anyway, the skipper pulled the plane around and we headed in the direction [unclear] back towards [unclear] the rest of the [unclear] back towards [unclear]. And we lifted. And I thought God, I still can’t see [unclear] I put it down to the pilot was a hero. Now our next adventure was a different kettle of fish. We’d completed the trip with apparently a few holes where the shrapnel had pierced the side of the aircraft but no apparent damage. We landed eventually and parked up. When we parked up it was always necessary to look around and see if there was any structural damage that you could report to the ground crew. The crew climbed out of the aeroplane one by one. I noticed that the navigator was limping. I said, ‘What’s happened to you?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve hurt my foot.’ He lifted his foot up and the bottom of his flying boot was ripped open. A piece of shrapnel had gone through and ripped his flying boot open on his heel and it was all blue. He said he’d been wounded. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You’d get a Purple Heart if you were in the American Air Force.’ ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I hadn’t realised.’ Anyway, we reported back and he was sent up to the hospital and they bandaged his foot up and he had two or three days without flying duties.
[recording paused]
The raid on Bӧhlen was about to take place. 44 Squadron mustered around twenty, twenty two aircraft to join 5 Group’s raid on this particular occasion. The other squadron based at Spilsby alongside 44 was 207 and they would supply so many of the aircraft to go along and make up 5 Group’s total. Anyway, the weather was absolutely ridiculous. We didn’t think it was common sense to send us out in such weather. Filthy thick cloud, wind, rain. Of course, March you can expect that sort of thing happening in March. It’s bad anywhere anytime. Anyway, away we go. We pick our kite up, join the circuit and away we go. After an uneventful journey we arrived. The markers had already been dropped and all you can see is a red glow or a green glow in the sky. You can’t see the target. Its cloud, cloud, cloud. Anyway, the markers decide that they’ll mark above the cloud and you drop your bombs where you see the particular marker. The fighters were up. They come up and they pinpoint our height over the target. Not a very nice thing to do but at the same time it saves them coming in and being fired at. So what they did they radio’d down and the main force is at such and such a height and they got us down below. Set the fuses in the shells to accommodate us on our height. Fifteen thousand feet or something like that. Whatever you are. Anyway, the raid goes on. One or two casualties. I couldn’t tell you how many. I didn’t take any notice of how many but as I say it was the sort of thing that every time you saw somebody being shot down it was logged so that when we were briefed and got back all the information coming in identified who, if possible had been lost on that raid. The raid over we started to make our way back home and flying through cloud is one of the most wicked experiences that you can have. It’s like flying through a snowstorm. The cloud just belts onto your windscreen and you see nothing. Occasionally there’s a little gap and you see something. To safeguard our existence in the sky the order to be quiet over the RT, radio telecommunications was broken. Not just by us. It was broken by everybody because it was a case of trying to find out if anybody else was there and how far away were they? Were we going to bump? But we were all heading in the same direction of course. But it’s like being on a motorway with six lanes and you don’t know who’s in what lane. So we put our lights on. Our navigation lights on. That lights us up in the sky and at least it gives a little indication where you are to any other aircraft that might approach you from either direction from either behind or in front, underneath and where. That was the only little bit of safety that we could afford ourselves. Anyway, during the course of travel we associated our communication with another two aircraft from 44. A for Able and K for King. So we said, ‘Righto, lads. Let’s all fly together. Let’s all keep in harmony. Look after each other.’ So away we went plodding through the cloud our eyes bulging. Anyway, as we soldiered on the radio operators were tapping out messages trying to get information on the weather and the wind, the cloud and anything else that was worth listening to. Suddenly one of the wireless operators indicated that he’d got a fix and a message and the message was that the cloud base was between two hundred and five hundred feet. So that meant that there was a clear air space above the water because we were over the North Sea. The air went silent when this message came across and I thought what’s going to happen now? And then suddenly a voice across the airwaves rang out. ‘Last man down stinks.’ Well, you can understand that sort of thing with young men. I mean we were only lads, teenagers and a challenge like that had to be taken seriously and suddenly three Lancasters flying along nice and steady dropped their noses and away down like hell down through the cloud. Well, I’m watching the altimeter and I’m calling out the different heights that we approached. Ten thousand. Nine thousand. Eight thousand. We were going down full bore you know. We get down to about three thousand and I said to Pete, the pilot, ‘Pete,’ I said, ‘It’s about time you pulled out, isn’t it?’ ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I’ll start fetching her out.’ So he started to pull the stick back to come out of the dive. The altimeter got down to a thousand and there was still cloud there and I thought crikey we’re still in cloud. And then suddenly it broke and it was clear and you could see the sea. You could see the little, the breaking of the waves as they rolled. They weren’t waves. They were just swell. And right in front of us was this Lancaster and it beat us down. But just then in a flash of lightning there was a whoof of water and he hit one of these swells as it came up. He hit it and the water just whooshed to one side. Just like a skateboard would do and he bounced off. I thought, ‘Jesus wept. Did you see that?’ And of course, Peter said, ‘Christ, what happened there?’ I said, ‘He’s hit the water.’ Anyway, up he came and the airwaves were alive then. Chatter, chatter, chatter. But prior to the airwaves becoming alive a lone voice came across [dive corporal] and we thought who the hell was that. Anyway, words were passed between the pilot and the other two aircraft. ‘What’s the damage?’ He said, ‘The kite’s rocking like hell. I don’t know what I’ve done.’ Well, my skipper offered to fly underneath and examine what the damage was so we flew underneath and we looked and I said, ‘Well, his tailwheel’s gone.’ So of course that was passed on. ‘You haven’t got a tailwheel. Your tailwheel must have gone.’ And then a voice came on, ‘Well, we’ve got a tailwheel but its here. It’s behind me. It’s sticking up. It’s come up through the floor. It’s sticking up the wrong way.’ But then, that was the rear gunner in their kite. Then the bomb aimer who had gone into the astrodome to have a look and see what was happening he said, ‘And he’s lost his H2S scanner.’ It was unusual if an aeroplane had no H2S scanner on it. ‘Oh crikey. You’re in a mess.’ Anyway, the skipper, the pilot of the damaged aircraft, Flying Officer Walker, he said, ‘She’s shaking like a jelly.’ So somebody suggested, ‘Feather one of your props and see what the props look like. See if you’ve bent your props.’ So sure enough one engine was feathered and there were the props curled at the end. They had been hit and had curled under with the force of hitting the water. So he re-engaged it and he was on all four once again. We said, ‘What are we going to do about this? Hell’s bells we can’t go back and say that we’ve had a mishap.’ So this was chatter went on over the airwaves and then all of a sudden one of the, one of the crew said, ‘Well why don’t we say we were jumped by a German night fighter and we just dashed through the cloud to get out the road.’ ‘Yeah. That’s as good an excuse as any.’ ‘Alright, we’ve all got the story. When we get back if anybody asks any questions. That’s the answer. Alright. Righto.’ So away we went. We got back to Spilsby and we thought well we’d better let Able have priority in landing because he’d got no tailwheel. So as we approached we let him call up and he got permission to land and he said he had sustained damage. He didn’t say that he’d hit the water and lost his tailwheel. He just said he’d sustained damage and would have difficulty landing. And they said, ‘Ok. You have permission to land and the fire engine and the ambulances will all be standing by.’ So, away down he went. Perfect landing and rode down the runway and before he put his tail down he shot up onto the grass so it wouldn’t matter if was coming down without any wheel. It just skidded along like that and he pulled up and he stopped. We both came in and both landed and that was it. Hunky-dory. Everything was hunky-dory. We taxied around to our berth and parked up and the crew bus came to pick us up to take us back to [unclear] . But on the crew bus there was two STs. Military policemen. I thought well what do they want? We climbed on to the bus. I said, ‘What’s the reception for?’ ‘Just sit down and be quiet.’ Stopped us talking. So something is going on here. So we get our way back to debrief and we were marched in and told to go and sit at some tables that were isolated away from the others. So we sat down and an officer came over and he sat down. He said, ‘Right, lads. What sort of trip have you had?’ Well, that was natural. That was always the same. The same questions. ‘What sort of a trip have you had?’ So of course we said, ‘Alright.’ Not a very good one. The weather was lousy. Thick cloud. You couldn’t see a damned thing but we bombed what the PFF called it. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Before we start no fancy stories. We know what happened.’ We were gobsmacked. ‘We know what happened.’ So Pete my pilot, he said, ‘Would you like to explain what you mean? No stories.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Being jumped by a night fighter as you were coming over the North Sea just doesn’t go down very well. We need the story as it unfolded.’ So, we thought well how on earth can they know what happened? Somebody’s been squealing. Somebody’s. Somebody’s let the cat out of the bag. So we said, ‘Right. You want to know what happened?’ We told him. He said, ‘Well, thank you very much for doing that because,’ he said, ‘You’ve saved yourselves a lot of embarrassment. Needless to say one of your colleague pilots from 207 Squadron decided that he would get in and drop the bombshell about what happened. He overheard it all over the RT.’ He was one of these who never missed a trick. He’d remustered from ground staff to flying duties and he was untold quantity on 207 Squadron and was highly disliked by all. But he was one of these who never seemed to put a foot wrong. But he was always there when you didn’t want him and he’d been listening out when you were detailing what had gone on and that was his glory day as it were. He could shop you lot and probably get a gong for it and he probably did. Anyway, that was it. We had to tell our stories word for word and we thought well it’s over. The next night the list went up for ops and there we were. All of us again. All three of us. All on. On this raid. Away we went. When we came back Flying Officer Walker and his crew were put under close arrest. Now, what was the point? I mean they had already been on the raid, damaged the aeroplane I understand, they’d come back and they’d admitted what they had done yet the Air Force decided to send them out on another raid. Was this a possibility that they were thinking well if they get shot down on this one we don’t have to answer for what they did before. And that has bugged me oh, ever since it happened. Well, unfortunately they were as I say they were taken off flying duties the following day and subsequently sent to different parts to go with different crews. In other words the crew was broken up. The pilot, he was court martialled and he was sent back to New Zealand in disgrace.
[recording paused]
One of the funny things about flying was the fact that some things you couldn’t understand. A force of about seventy eighty bombers being sent out on a raid and when they get there the master bomber says, ‘Go home. Do not bomb.’ And you think what on earth are they playing at. We have to go back and take our bombs home. But we can’t take all the bombs back. We must throw half of them into the North Sea because it will be too heavy to land with a full bomb load. So the number of bombs we throw away has to be worked out by the engineer. Unfortunately, I worked out that the number of bombs I should dispose of on this particular raid was eight. Well, the eight bombs were dropped in the North Sea and we took the rest of the bombs back home. When they checked up it was found that I’d lost one bomb too many and I was put on a charge and was being detailed for a court martial for the waste of one bomb. So the things that went on during the war simply don’t add up. Happily nothing occurred that was spoiling my reputation and I was exonerated. The next raid that I was involved in was the raid on Hamburg on the 22nd of March 1945. This was a raid which I never thought I would come out of in one piece. All my crew were at the time really on the way down to meet their maker. But first of all we’ll go back to the beginning on how it started and how it finished. Normally an hour before we reached the target we were all supplied with wakey wakey pills. That wakey wakey pill takes away all the fears that you might feel on the way in when you see all the flak and the searchlights ahead. Out on either side you would see shadows and the bombers that were on the mission with you and at fifteen thousand feet we were way up. There were kites above us and there were kites below us scrambling over quite a wide area which was the practice. Anyway, we approached the target and the gunfire increased. Shells were bursting to the left, overhead, to the right and occasionally there was a massive explosion when an aircraft blew up in mid-air. Now, when these aircraft blow up in mid-air it’s not the end of the story. As each crew who are on that mission spots that aeroplane going down it’s logged by the navigator. The position, the time and the height and the heading that we were on. Now, all that information goes back to central headquarters where it is analysed to try to find out the identity of that aeroplane that ceased to exist at that particular moment in time. Anyway, we are steadily approaching our target. The searchlights are waving about trying to grab hold of somebody when suddenly the whole of the interior of the aircraft lit up. We were coned. Immediately two other searchlights coned with the master searchlight. One of the searchlights is on automatic control. The other two are manual and wherever the automatic one follows you the other two follow as well. Immediate action at that particular minute is by the pilot to start the corkscrew and he calls out, ‘Corkscrewing,’ and away we go. The corkscrew was a manoeuvre in the air to try and shake off either a fighter or the searchlights. At the same time the pilot administers an instruction to me to increase speed. So I bang the throttles up to twenty eight fifty revs which gives us full, almost fatal power and away we go. We weave left, down, up, right, down, left, up, down, left and so we go on and the shells come up bomb bomb bomb all around. [unclear] one of these has got our name on it. But having taken our wakey wakey pill the fear does not do anything to break the harmony between our replying to commands and doing our duty. We get stuck in. We know that we’ve been caught and we know that if there’s a shell with our name on it goodbye. Well, at one particular instance I wondered is this it? Should I say my prayers? I thought no. You don’t say your prayers. You haven’t got time. So Peter keeps on doing his best to shake them off and all the other kites in the vicinity are whipped away out the road. They didn’t want to be there when we copped off because when our bombs go off there would be one hell of a big explosion and anybody near at hand is going to cop it. Well, you might think this is it but no. Up came the shell and it exploded. Wham. And the Lancaster just took one mighty leap up and forward. The bomb blast had pitched us into a dive. We were at twenty eight fifty revs which is almost full power which means that we’re going down in a power dive. That immediate surge into the downward position threw all of us into a situation where we were spellbound and couldn’t move. The downward motion of the aircraft was such that the G force pinned us in our positions rock solid and we couldn’t move a damned leg or an arm. The skipper was shouting out to me, ‘Do something engineer. Do something. What can you do? What can you do?’ I can’t do a bloody thing. ‘What about the trimmers?’ ‘The trimmers.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘The trimmers.’ The trimmers were a little wheel with little ridges on it down on the left-hand side of my chair and that wheel controlled the elevator flaps at the tail end. If for any reason the aircraft wasn’t flying straight and level those trimmers would trim the flying attitude of the aeroplane to compensate for the way it was flying. Therefore, if I could get a hold of the trimmers I could trim the tail to be heavy. That would bring the nose up and it would help to get us out of the dive. We were hurtling down. Seconds are like years. It takes such a long time. I couldn’t believe how long it took. But microseconds. Microseconds you might say. It’s all a dream. No, it wasn’t a dream. It was reality. Down we went and the skipper who called to me for help to pull the stick back. I said, ‘I can’t. I can’t move. I’m stuck. I’m still bloody stuck.’ Anyway, I’m looking at the altimeters and I’m thinking Christ there they are. Four thousand. Three and a half thousand. Three thousand. Two and a half thousand. And then I realised we’re not going straight down and the lights have gone out. The searchlights had switched off which was an unusual thing. They usually follow you into the ground. But apparently these must have been in a position where they couldn’t find us and they switched off. Here we are coming down in a gradual loop and the skipper is pulling like hell on the stick. Then he said, ‘Pull us out. Pull us out.’ I couldn’t move my bloody arms. I couldn’t. Anyway, for some reason or other I managed to get my arm forward and pulled the bloody throttles back. But with the throttles back we were just free falling. We weren’t in a power dive and he managed to bring it out of the dive. And he let it out and with no engine power, we slowed down to flying speed. Forward with the throttles twenty six fifty revs. I thought thank God for that. We’re safe. We’ve still got the bloody bombs on board though hadn’t we? We had to get rid of them. Then all of a sudden there was beep beep beep. I said, ‘What’s that?’ The wireless operator chipped in. He said, ‘It’s the electronic eye on the wing. Theres a cable ahead.’ ‘Where?’ He said, ‘On the starboard.’ So Pete automatically fixed the rudder around and swung to port. It went off. I thought thank God for that. No sooner had it gone off than a yep yep yep yep. I said, ‘What’s that?’ Up came the wireless operator, ‘Another cable. On the left-hand side this time.’ ‘Christ,’ I said, ‘We’re over the ships aren’t we?’ That’s it. So the skipper managed to dive. We missed that one and all. He’d no sooner got banked over to the right and straightened up and then all of a sudden this long droning noise came on. I said, ‘Oh Jesus, what have we got now?’ ‘There’s two cables. One either side.’ Oh Christ. ‘What do we do now?’ ‘Pete, what are we —’ Oh my God almighty. We couldn’t have been in a worse fix if we’d tried. ‘Hang on,’ he said, the aircraft rolled on to its side and as it slipped down we thought oh we’re going to crash. We picked up the controls around and pulled us out of the side slip and then we were going up. Ahh I said we missed them. We levelled out. Twenty eight fifty revs, ‘Engineer. Let’s get out of here and get rid of these bloody bombs.’ So I ran the throttles up to twenty eight fifty. Locked them on and away. ‘Give me a course for a new heading onto the target navigator.’ Called the pilot to the navigator. Change to heading such and such and such a such. So we changed to that heading and we kept our time up and he said, ‘Change course.’ Come back on such and such and such. ‘What height are you?’ ‘Six thousand feet.’ ‘You’re too low.’ Another course. Away we went out into the country flying up and up and up and up. ‘Right. Change course.’ We’ll come back under this heading such and such such and such. Climbing all the time. Eventually we got up to the sixteen thousand feet that we should be and we headed into the target again. Well, by now most of the target had been bombed. Everybody was on their way home. Bye bye. Anyway, the bomb aimer called out, ‘I’ve got my eye on [unclear] that we are supposed to be bombing on. Bomb doors open.’ So I opened the bomb doors. And then he called out, ‘Steady. Left a bit. Left a bit. Steady. Steady. Bombs gone.’ Well, once he says, ‘Bombs gone,’ the aircraft lifts so they can pull out of the sequence. But we have to stay there straight and level because the bombs are on their way down. As the bombs get nearer to the ground the clock inside the camera is ticking and all of a sudden there’s a flash. It’s the photoflash that falls with the bombs. It flashes and the camera takes a picture. ‘Bomb doors closed. Let’s go home.’ So I lifted the bomb doors and after twenty six fifty away we go back home. Level out. [unclear] twenty two hundred once we got clear of the ack ack and the mischief and we’re on our way home. We are on our way. ‘That was a bloody another scrape that one wasn’t it?’ There it was. You can’t imagine the funny feeling that I had when I was going down. I still can’t believe it. On the way down I was stuck. Pinned by the G force through that dive [unclear] and there in front of me, in the air this is, for some stupid reason was my brother. My brother had been in the Army in the Royal Signals and he’d been shot and killed in 1944. This is 1945. March 1945. He got killed in November. I said, ‘What are you doing here? Get out. Get out man.’ And he just looked and he smiled and he said, ‘Ok.’ And went. Gone. Have you, have you ever had that sort of feeling that you’re not alive. You’re dead. He’s playing games with you. It was true. We were out of that dive, we cleared the ground, we went in, did what we had to do and here we are on our way back all in one piece. It was a relief for when we came back. Down the road one four thousand high explosive, sixteen five hundred pound explosives. Bombed at 04:11 hours from fifteen thousand feet on one hundred degrees true at one hundred and sixty miles an hour. The weather was three tenths low stratus cloud. The target was identified by red TIs and we bombed from east to west. Good plan if the TIs were accurate. Big explosions in target area at 04:11. Port outer engine cutting out intermittently which caused a little bit of a problem but other than that the sortie was completed. Now, according to that one would assume it was a straightforward raid but unfortunately what happened on that raid has got to be revealed by the individuals who experienced what happened. All my crew were at the time really on the way down to meet their maker. Nobody can ever say they were not frightened. I was scared stiff. Well, the Hamburg raid finished and we had a little rest and the next one up on the 28th of March was a place called Wessel on the River Rhine. The Army was being pelted on the banks of the River Rhine. The Germans were bombarding the troops who had gathered on the banks of the Rhine and couldn’t get across so we were called in to clear the side of the Rhine where the Germans were to let the Army across. Well, that was a successful raid. We cleared the path into Germany. The next one was a raid on Nordhausen. Nordhausen was a place of very special importance. It was the base where the V2 missiles were being manufactured and dispatched and fired on London. It was also a concentration camp full of prisoners who were employed making the warheads and the control was organised by being the headquarters of a branch of the SS. Well, the raid was organised to take place 9 o’clock on April the 4th which was a Sunday. It was timed at 9 o’clock because the SS and the guards at the concentration camp —
[recording ends suddenly]