Interview with Leslie Valentine

Title

Interview with Leslie Valentine

Description

Leslie Valentine was a second year student at the University of Scotland when he volunteered for the Army. After serving with the BEF and returning to the UK after Dunkirk, he saw an advertisement for aircrew with the RAF and decided he would volunteer. He trained as a pilot and was posted to 88 Squadron based at RAF Hartford Bridge and then RAF Swanton Morley. He flew Bostons and during D-Day flew at 50 feet over the beaches to distribute a smokescreen. He described the experience of coming under bombardment from both sides, while low level flying, as flying "through the gates of hell". He completed two tours with the RAF.

In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.

Creator

Date

2018-03-09

Temporal Coverage

Language

Type

Format

01:42:54 audio recording

Conforms To

Rights

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

Identifier

AValentineLD180309

Collection

Citation

Chris Brockbank, “Interview with Leslie Valentine,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed June 13, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/11746.