Interview with George Dunn
Title
Interview with George Dunn
Description
George talks about his career staring with OTU at RAF Lossiemouth where he crewed up. He describes the state of old Wellingtons on that unit and recounts some incidents. He recalls HCU on Halifax at RAF Rufforth, including his first two trips as second pilot with 10 Squadron. George was posted to 76 Squadron at RAF Linton-on-Ouse. He tells of his first operation to Dortmund and recalls several incidents while on his first tour. He describes hismove to 18 OTU and some incidents on this tour. Subsequently, George volunteered for a second operational tour and converted to Mosquito. He was, eventually, posted to 608 Squadron at RAF Downham Market flying operations to Berlin. In April 1945 George moved to 1409 reconnaissance flight at RAF Wyton. He recall his subsequent post war service in Malta and the Middle East. George oncludes with comments on training in Canada. Contemporary head and shoulders portrait of George Dunn dated 22 April 2013.
Creator
Spatial Coverage
Language
Type
Format
One colour photograph
00:55:32 audio recording
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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
SBondS-DunnGv10017, SBondS-DunnGv10016
Transcription
SB: I know that you, your Wimpy experience was OTU and then you did a tour on Hallies didn’t you and a tour on Mossies so although I’m concentrating on Wimpy at the moment that’s equally of interest. So, what I’d really like to do George is just, just chat through —
GD: Yeah. Yeah.
SB: Your career.
GD: Yes.
SB: And pick up things as we go along.
GD: I fetched my logbooks out because I thought you might —
SB: Oh yes.
GD: Talk about some dates or something. I actually started at OTU at Lossiemouth.
SB: Right.
GD: On the 2nd of January 1943.
SB: Right. Ok. And you crewed up there obviously. You crewed up there.
GD: We crewed up there. Yes.
SB: Yes.
GD: Yeah. And we actually, we didn’t do the flying at Lossiemouth we went to the satellite station.
SB: Milltown was that?
GD: Elgin.
SB: Oh Elgin. Right.
GD: Which to the locals was known as Bogs O’Mayne.
SB: Right. Right.
GD: So apart from a bit of ground school work at Lossiemouth all the flying was done at Elgin.
SB: Right. Right. Now, by ’43 I imagine, well obviously you had old Wimpies I’m sure. What? 1Cs?
GD: We had, we had the 1Cs.
SB: Right. Ok.
GD: Yeah.
SB: They were a bit tired I expect were they?
GD: They were. Yeah. I think in my, my bomb aimer wrote a book after the war.
SB: Oh right.
GD: I think he goes to say somewhere here [pause] “20 Operational Training Unit was equipped with Wellington aircraft many of them having seen better days and a little bit the worse off for wear. This was not surprising as many of them had seen operational duties against the enemy and they were among the first bombers to attack Germany. On close examination I thought how frail the fabric looked covering that geodetic metal construction. But most important was the two very fine Pegasus engines which were kept in good running order.” So yes you’re right there. It was a, it was they were a bit clapped out.
SB: Yeah. So how long were you up at on the OTU for then?
GD: 2nd, 2nd of January ’43 and I finished on the 4th of March.
SB: Right.
GD: 1943.
SB: Now, at that time did, did you get involved in any operations?
GD: None at all.
SB: Nickeling? Anything like that?
GD: None at all.
SB: No. Right. Ok.
GD: Not at all.
SB: Right. What did you think of the Wimpy?
GD: I thought it was a good aircraft.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Yeah. I mean whilst at OTU we did have an engine failure over the North Sea on one of the sort of bombing and cross country exercises. But we got back on the one engine. The only snag was that we had to use the, we had to make a flapless landing because we couldn’t use the undercarriage controls. So —
SB: Oh right.
GD: So then we had to wind down the undercarriage.
SB: Oh, ok. Yeah.
GD: Which then prevented you from using your flaps.
SB: Oh really.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Oh.
GD: So we had to, we had to make a flapless landing which was ok because that was one of the things you were taught anyway.
SB: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Who was the rest of your crew then?
GD: Who were they?
SB: Yeah.
GD: There was [pause] there they are. I’ve got a photograph over here [pause] This is, this is Andy, the chap who wrote this. You can just probably recognise him from —
SB: Andy Maitland. He was the bomb aimer.
GD: The bomb aimer.
SB: Right.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Reg McCadden was from Belfast was the navigator.
SB: Right.
GD: Dixie Dean was the rear gunner. He was a Canadian. Jock Todd was from Montrose was the wireless operator. Ferris Newton which of course we didn’t pick up until we got to Heavy Conversion Unit.
SB: The flight engineer.
GD: Flight engineer. He was a very useful member because his wife and his mother ran a pub near Leeds.
SB: Handy.
GD: Andy of course and Joe Scrivenor, mid-upper gunner.
SB: Right. Ok. So, after OTU then HCU.
GD: Yeah. That was at Rufforth.
SB: Oh right.
GD: Just outside York.
SB: Right.
GD: But of course you know that pilots always had to do two second dickie trips.
SB: Yes.
GD: So I was sent to 10 Squadron at Melbourne and I hadn’t even set foot in a Halifax.
SB: Oh right.
GD: I mean, actually lots of pilots sort of got sent off maybe in the middle of their Conversion Unit or at the end but I got sent off straight away and the first [laughs] the first one was Essen.
SB: So the first time you ever flew in a Halifax was an op.
GD: Was an op. Yeah. Yeah.
SB: That’s a real baptism of fire isn’t it? So that April the 3rd ’43 and April the 4th ’43.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Essen and Kiel.
GD: Diverting a little.
SB: Yeah.
GD: This chap whose crew I was with on that.
SB: Pilot Officer Ellis.
GD: Ellis. I often wondered whether they got through their tour.
SB: Really?
GD: You know. I mean, I was only with them two days. We did the third and the fourth.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Straight off.
SB: Yes.
GD: And I often wondered afterwards whether they got through their tour. Anyway, a few years ago I belonged to the Mid-Sussex Aircrew Association and just around the corner up this road was a fellow called Jim Sparks who was actually on 10 Squadron but much later in the war.
SB: Right.
GD: And I said to him a few years ago I said, ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I did my two second dickie trips on [pause] with 10 Squadron.’ I said, ‘I’ve often wondered whether the crew I did them with ever got through.’ So he said, ‘Well, I’ve got some 10 Squadron newsletters,’ he said, ‘In my bag.’ He said, he said, ‘You wouldn’t know anybody obviously,’ he said, ‘But if you’d like to read them.’ And so I did. I picked one of them up and in it was a letter from his bomb aimer announcing that he’d just, this chap had just died, from Canada. So I wrote to this chap in Canada. I said, ‘You won’t remember me,’ I said, ‘Because I did my two second dickie trips with you on the 3rd and 4th of April ’43.’ I said, ‘And you had rather an extrovert Irish engineer who made a point of saying when we got in for take-off, ‘The second pilot seat is mine for take-off and landing.’
SB: Really?
GD: And it turned out he went out to New Zealand this Irish engineer and had nine kids. You know.
SB: Wow. Yes.
GD: And this was, this would be I suppose six, seven years ago now and I just had the, just sent the one letter to him you know and he replied. Yeah. So they did actually get through.
SB: Well, that’s, that’s good to hear.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. Oh ok so after your baptism of fire then off to HCU.
GD: So that was [unclear] in ’43.
SB: Yeah.
GD: I actually got on to the squadron at Linton on Ouse about a month later.
SB: Right. Right.
GD: Just about a month later.
SB: With a brief foray into Beam flight at Driffield.
GD: Air approach, yeah.
SB: Yeah. Right.
GD: Beam approach course.
SB: Yeah.
GD: At Driffield.
SB: Ok. Right.
GD: Our first, our first op as a crew was Dortmund which was —
SB: Yeah.
GD: 23rd of May. And then of course after that when I got screened we finished our tour on the 3rd of October.
SB: Right.
GD: And I then went to OTU at Finningley on Wellingtons.
SB: Oh right. Ok.
GD: But didn’t stay there long because again they had a satellite station at Worksop and that’s where I did, I did my instructing at Worksop.
SB: Can we just before we move off 76 can we just have a quick look through the ops that you did? Where do we start?
[pause]
GD: That’s where we are.
SB: Ok.
GD: Yeah.
SB: [pause] That’s a strange comment. “No camera carried.” You’re talking about the target camera obviously when you —
GD: Yeah. Of course that could have been the, that could have been the photo flash camera.
SB: That’s what I’m thinking. Yeah. Yeah. It must have been. “Usual Ruhr activity,” [laughs] Yeah. What happened here? Do you recall? You’ve written down, “Caught in flak on the way back. Searchlights ineffective.”
GD: Yeah. We got coned.
SB: Right.
GD: I think Andy describes it more in here.
[pause]
SB: Oh, I saw Gelsenkirchen mentioned here just as you turned the page over. Which is here. So would that be the raid after that? Cologne. Maybe that was. Maybe you went, oh no, you went to Gelsenkirchen again so maybe not.
GD: 29th.
SB: This is the —
GD: A bit before.
SB: The 28th of June. Oh, so it is further back. Ok.
GD: That’s July so it’s got to be up here. Ah, there we are.
SB: Oh right. “The Cologne raid was carried out by bombing through cloud which was completing obscuring the city but it did not stop the German gunners from mounting a very heavy and accurate flak barrage. I felt a bit cheated at not being able to see the city. However, one felt a little safer when cloud was obscuring the view of the gunners on the ground. They did not really make a great deal of difference as the radar predicted anti-aircraft shells were often too accurate for comfort and keep weaving. Just as I thought the flak barrage was abating we cleared the target area. I was trying to guide George clear the flak when the master blue searchlight picked us up illuminating the whole aircraft and I felt we were the only aircraft in the sky. Like a flash there was about six more searchlights on us but George reacted quickly with nose down and weaving frantically. I asked George to weave in the opposite direction of the cone’s movement. We were lucky. It seemed to work. We were through and seemed to be moving away from the searchlights but not before the ack ack shells were bursting all around us. Only one got near enough to do any real damage as with one hell of a bang it exploded below the central fuselage. A few holes but nothing desperate so we all sighed with relief.”
GD: You were lucky, you were lucky if you got coned to get out of it.
SB: Well, indeed. Yes.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yes.
GD: Fortunately that was the only time.
SB: Right. Oh right. Ok [pause] Oh gosh. Saw four shot down. 30th of July. When was she done? The Ruhr. Oh gosh.
GD: That was —
SB: Ah yes.
GD: That was a terrible trip that was. We should never have gone.
SB: Hamburg. 2nd of August. Ok. Can you talk us through that then?
GD: Yeah. We lost, I lost my airspeed indicator through ice. Although the pitot head was heated the icing was so severe that the pitot head got iced up obviously so I had no airspeed indicator. So I had to decide whether to carry on or turn around. Jettison and turn around. So I decided I’d carry on because if you use your rate of climb indicator and your revs you had an approximate idea what speed you were going and I erred on the safety side. But the conditions got worse the whole time and we got to the stage where the aircraft was completely iced up. It was the machine guns looked like Bunsen burners. They got like a plane coming right out the end and the wingtips were lit up and all around the metal edges of the, of the cockpit the static was —
SB: Yeah.
GD: Coming off it and hitting you in the face and it virtually got to the stage where it was almost uncontrollable. So we were only about fourteen and a half minutes before we reached Hamburg but there was just no point. I just had to give it. Call it a day.
SB: Yeah.
GD: We jettisoned and came back. And the following morning I was called up before the flight commander and given a rollicking for endangering the lives of aircraft and crew.
SB: Really? Good God.
GD: So [laughs]
SB: Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
GD: Talk about press on.
SB: God. Well, oh [pause] oh Peenemunde. Diverted to Wymeswold. Was that a technical diversion or —
GD: Yeah, we had, I think we had an hydraulic leak I think. When was that?
SB: August the 17th.
GD: Ah. That’s right [pause] Yeah, we had a hydraulic leak.
SB: Oh right.
GD: And they told us to land at Wymeswold. And the trouble was that it was a Boston squadron there and we couldn’t get away until they, they’d got a daylight op and we had to wait.
SB: Oh right.
GD: Until later on before we could get, before we could get away and then my mid-upper gunner he was a bit of a, a bit of a character. He sent the two pigeons that we’d got saying that, “Held up by bullshit.” He got, he got a rollicking.
SB: I bet he did. Yeah.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Excellent.
[pause]
GD: That was another one [unclear] and again air speed indicator failure. That was the last one. We lost four from the squadron that night.
SB: October the 3rd ’43. Castel. Really?
GD: Yeah. I think.
SB: Gosh.
GD: I think we lost, I think we lost [forty six. Forty six] aircraft I think that night. That was the 76 Squadron operations. This one.
SB: Right. Here we are. October the 3rd.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. As you say.
GD: Yeah. We lost two. Two Norwegians and two others. Mostly, oh POW. Not, not many of them got away with it.
SB: No. That’s right. No. Most fell —
GD: That’s quite a loss in one night.
SB: It is.
GD: For one squadron.
SB: It certainly is.
GD: I remember him. Thorpe.
SB: Thorpe. Yeah.
GD: And this chap he got away with it.
SB: Yes.
GD: He’d been to [pause] I believe he died recently. I saw it in the squadron newsletter.
SB: Right.
GD: I met him up on several squadron reunions. Wilkie [unclear] Yeah.
SB: So finished the tour. A big sigh of relief no doubt. And then right off to 18 OTU for a while.
GD: Then I did [pause] yeah that’s right I went over to the satellite station.
SB: Worksop. Yeah.
GD: And then I did an instructor’s course on Wellingtons at Church Broughton.
SB: Right.
GD: And then a bit later I carried on. Carried on instructing at —
SB: 18 OTU.
GD: Worksop.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And then went, I finally went on to a Central Flying School Instructor’s Course on Oxfords a bit later on.
SB: Oh gosh. You were on the OTU quite a long time weren’t you?
GD: Where are we? I thought it was earlier than that. Where are we? [pause] Now, this is, this is interesting.
SB: January 20th ‘44.
GD: I was officer in charge of night flying that night and this chap was actually one of my pupils. Flying Officer Jennings. They were beginning to come in at that time from Flying Training Command so they were, as far as flying was concerned they were quite experienced. It was just a question of converting them and this particular night there was a bit of haze about and I thought perhaps I’d better do a weather check before letting the pupils go up. Well, as you can see it was only ten minutes. So we went up and I think this chap, Mr Hindley, he was a civilian, I’m not sure whether he was a Met man or whether he was a bombsight man.
SB: Right.
GD: But we took off, I did a circuit. The weather was quite ok. We did a circuit and I had arranged for the lorry to pick me up at the take off point so I could just nip down and he could get straight off without having to go into dispersal and that.
SB: Right.
GD: He took off again, did a circuit. For some reason he overshot. He did an overshoot and that was the last we heard of him. He crashed somewhere down near Nottingham. The whole crew. They were all killed.
SB: Oh God.
GD: And I had to go down to a Court of Enquiry the following day and it turned out eventually they had a prop blade had come off.
SB: Good grief. Dear oh dear. Wow.
GD: So we had —
SB: There but by the grace of God and all that sort of stuff. Gosh that was close wasn’t it?
GD: Yeah. Yeah. When you think about it. I’m trying to think where I fitted that [pause] oh here. Oh, here we are on Oxfords. Here we are. Yes. That was quite some time after you see.
SB: Right. Yes.
GD: I went to [pause] I went to 18 OTU in ’43, November.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And it wasn’t until the January that I did the second instructor’s course. That was at —
SB: June ’44. Yeah.
GD: Which is now Bristol Airport.
SB: Yes indeed. Yes. Yeah.
GD: And then I came back after that. It was a month’s course I think.
SB: Right.
GD: I came back.
SB: Back to 18 OTU again near Worksop. Yeah.
GD: And I stayed there until right the way through until [pause] until January. That’s right. I finished. Finished there.
SB: December ’44. Yeah.
GD: December ’44. And then volunteered to go back on Mosquitoes.
SB: Oh. Ok.
GD: I’d had enough.
SB: Right.
GD: All that time.
SB: Yeah.
GD: So I teamed up with a chap called Bancroft who was a navigator at Worksop. Strangely enough after the war he lived in the next road.
SB: Really?
GD: Yeah. So we did a, we went to Upper Heyford in actual and again we didn’t stay at Upper Heyford. We did the conversion on to Mosquitoes at a place called Barford St Johns.
SB: Yes, I know it well.
GD: Do you?
SB: Yes. Yeah. Quite close to where I am now.
GD: Is it? What’s there now? Anything?
SB: No. Nothing. It’s just gone back to agriculture primarily. There are a few buildings left but not much.
Yes. It’s not a housing estate or anything.
SB: No. No.
GD: The weather was so bad when we were there that we had one or two nights we stayed in the Whately Hall Hotel in Banbury.
SB: Oh, did you?
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Yeah. So then I did that.
SB: Did you enjoy the Mossie?
GD: Oh yeah. She was a lovely aircraft. Yeah. And did the conversion course and then went on to 608 Downham Market.
SB: Ah right. Now, I can tell you something about that. Have you been to Downham Market at all recently?
GD: No.
SB: Well, I’ve, I have been a couple of times recently and I’m amazed how much is left there and what’s really nice about Downham Market is that the technical site and the hangars have gone. The technical site is pretty much complete and as you turn off the main road into the, into the camp what was the guard room is now a kitchen furniture showroom. Well, the people that run that business are passionate about preserving Downham Market and one or two of the other buildings on the technical site has got, has their workshops for making their kitchen furniture. When you walk in the guardroom which is the front room to their showroom on the right-hand doors it says, “NCOs Offices,” on it. You know, they’ve little things like that they’ve tried to preserve and I took a walk around only about two months ago. I had a walk around there and they took me into one of the buildings where they are now making this kitchen furniture and on the, it was obviously an aircraft recognition room because on the back wall in this workshop are still all the aircraft recognition posters. It’s amazing and the landlord of Downham Market, that site is really enthusiastic about preserving it and they’re putting a big Memorial up. They’ve cleared the space for it and they are doing a magnificent Memorial and some of the doors have still got, “635 Squadron Ops,” and this kind of stuff. I’ve never seen a place for years that is so well preserved.
GD: Oh, that’s good. Very interesting.
SB: Very nice. Yeah. It is. Yeah.
GD: I know it was always a laugh there. I think the pub then was it called the Crown? Is there one called the Crown?
SB: Yeah. I think so. Yes.
GD: And the landlord was a fellow called Crump.
SB: Right.
GD: At the time and they used to say if you want to know what the target is tonight go down and have a word with Crump [laughs] the landlord at the Crown.
SB: [laughs] Oh dear. So, ‘March ’45 start on ops.
GD: Yeah. That was when what we called the Berlin Milk Run. It was —
SB: Oh, that’s, wow almost every one is Berlin.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Goodness me. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
GD: I stayed there from March to end of March and then we had a friend, another navigation friend of Bancroft’s.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Who had also been at Worksop. He was on this 1409 reccy flight at Wyton.
SB: Right.
GD: And he phoned us up and said there’s a vacancy.
SB: Oh right.
GD: There was only about ten crews. We used to fly these blue, light blue Mosquitoes and he said if you want to come we’ll get you in. So —
SB: Oh.
GD: We applied and we moved over to, to Squadron which of course was 8 Group.
SB: Yes. Yeah. Pathfinder group. Yeah.
GD: Yeah. So we just carried on there until, until after the war. They were called PAMPAs the weather trips we did.
SB: So, how? Sort of, give me an example. How sort of far out would you go? What sort of brief would you have?
GD: Oh, it was we’d go right out into the Atlantic. Do Germany, France. Anywhere.
SB: Right. So you’ve got four-hour trips, three hour trips.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. Yeah.
GD: See here. This one was Germany. Cuxhaven.
SB: Yeah.
GD: That one was Dutch.
SB: Yes. Yeah. Oh ok.
GD: And then of course once D-Day was —
SB: D-Day.
GD: D-Day we’d taken the —
SB: Cook’s Tours.
GD: Ground crews over to, on what they called a Cook’s Tour. You could only take one of course —
SB: Sure.
GD: In a Mosquito and he had to lie in the —
SB: Yeah.
GD: In the bomb bay.
SB: Yeah.
GD: That was [pause] oh and then we moved from, we moved from Wyton to Upwood.
SB: Right.
GD: And that carried on until —
SB: July ’45 was it that finished? Would that be? Yes. The end of July ’45.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And then [pause] this one.
SB: Oh, it carries on. Right. Ok. Yeah.
GD: Upwood and then I think I moved to, we moved to Wickenby I think. Yeah. I went to Woodhall Spa. We had very quick moves then. So, oh it changed over. That’s right. They, 1409 I was disbanded.
SB: Right.
GD: And 109 Squadron.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Was converted into a Met flight.
SB: Oh right.
GD: And we moved with them and then we went to Wickenby.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Then we went to Hemswell. And whilst we were at Hemswell they were asking for people to go out to Malta to form a Mosquito Met Flight out in Malta.
SB: Right.
GD: And we were about, oh I suppose ten or a dozen crews and we went out in a Stirling.
SB: Right.
GD: And it was going to be 1357 Met Flight but it never came about. Typical RAF. We got out there, all these crews. Mosquitoes. We were appointed with the highest rank was flight lieutenant. We were nearly all flight lieutenants I think. I’m not sure whether I was at that time. But we appointed a spokesman, went to see the station adj and, ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Oh, we’ve come out to, we’re here to form —’ ‘We don’t know anything about you.’
SB: Oh really.
GD: And they gave us a, they gave us an old lorry and a disused building over on the far side of Luqa and we spent about six weeks there just kicking our heels going into Valetta and back. I managed to get one or two trips in Masters there. I did an Anson and a Mosquito.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Ferry trips.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And then eventually I went to Almaza which was a transit camp outside of Cairo. Kicked our heels there for I don’t know some weeks. I just wondered what was going to happen.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And eventually went out to finish up at 132 at Ismailia.
SB: Right.
GD: On Spitfires and —
SB: And whatever else came along really.
GD: And whatever else came along. There was a Wellington there.
SB: Oh yeah. Yeah.
GD: A thing called a Fairchild Argus.
SB: Yes.
GD: I’ve got one here. An American thing.
SB: A Hawk. Right. That was quite interesting wasn’t it? Flying all sorts of different stuff?
GD: Yeah. It was a bit because I mean I hadn’t flown a single engine aircraft since the Tiger Moth.
SB: Right.
GD: Out in —
SB: Yeah.
GD: Out in Canada.
SB: Right. Right.
GD: You see various ones.
SB: Lots of —
GD: Ansons, Harvards.
SB: Yeah.
GD: I did a few. An Auster.
SB: Gosh.
GD: I did a few.
SB: Oh, a Mustang.
GD: Yeah. Yeah. That was a, that was an undercarriage check.
SB: Right.
GD: Again you see you had no, you had no notes or anything.
SB: So you didn’t know where everything was and then off you’d go.
GD: What we were doing then we were doing selling Spitfires to the Greek Air Force. We were testing them and then we had two or three Greek pilots which would then take over from us and do their own check and then we used to fly to, fly them over to Cyprus.
SB: Right.
GD: Where we are? That was a Halifax I brought back.
SB: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
GD: Used to fly them over about twenty at a time with a Lancaster escort.
SB: Oh right.
GD: And a chap that used to come down from 205 Group at Cairo, a chap called Joe Patience he lives at Pevensey Bay along the coast here.
SB: Oh really.
GD: He’s about ninety, he’s about ninety four now I think. I did one or two trips back to the UK with a, with a Halifax. They found some Halifaxes over at a place called [unclear]
SB: Right. I see.
GD: A tented camp. Everything was tents. The Mess and everything and they had nobody out there. They couldn’t find a Halifax pilot at all anywhere then. They cottoned on to me.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And I had to show these Croatian and Serbs. Had to convert them onto —
SB: Oh really.
GD: Yeah. And then I think my last, my very last trip was bringing a Halifax back from [pause – pages turning] yeah. That’s one of those trips we did taking Spits over to, we used to refuel at Nicosia and then on to Ismailia.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Yeah. That’s the very last one. Bringing the Halifax back from there.
SB: Right. Well, gosh. Gosh, quite a varied career wasn’t it? So you finished then. So that was June ’47.
GD: Yeah.
SB: And what happened to you after that?
GD: I went back to my old firm.
SB: What was that? What did you do?
GD: Pickford’s Removals.
SB: Oh really. Yeah.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. You said your old firm. You worked for them before you joined up then.
GD: I joined up. I worked. I joined them when I was fourteen.
SB: Right.
GD: In 1937 and, and then I got called up. I got called up ’41.
SB: Right. Right.
GD: Yeah.
SB: And you did your training in Canada you say.
GD: Yes. Yeah. I trained at a place called Caron. Oh, that was that. That chap’s —
SB: AC Boulton.
GD: Yes. That was his navigator.
SB: Oh right.
GD: Remember I told you Ellis.
SB: Yes. Yes.
GD: That was him.
SB: Oh right. Right.
GD: Yes. That’s right. It was in Saskatchewan.
SB: Oh right.
GD: But I got rid of this. I started instructing with this chap called Howard.
SB: Yeah.
GD: He was a pilot officer, a Canadian and didn’t get on with him at all. In fact, at one stage I thought I’d be washed out.
SB: Really?
GD: He was one of those chaps. Impatient. He’d snatch the stick you know if you weren’t and if you weren’t doing too well they changed you. Changed your instructor and I then got a Battle of Britain pilot.
SB: Oh. This chap is it?
GD: Yeah.
SB: Pilot officer [John].
GD: And this chap here, where is he? Flying Officer Boot.
SB: Right.
GD: Different. Different person altogether. Flying officer. He was a Battle of Britain pilot. Boot.
SB: Right.
GD: And I got on. I got on quite well. Different. Different attitude he had from this first chap.
SB: Right. Right.
GD: Can I get you a coffee or a tea or something?
SB: Oh, a coffee would be lovely.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yes, please George. Yeah.
GD: What do you have?
SB: A little bit of milk and one sugar please.
GD: One sugar. Yeah.
SB: Are you ok if I take a look through your logbooks.
GD: Yeah. Look through whilst I’m making it.
SB: I will. Thank you very much.
(pause- pages turning)
SB: Is this your part of the world originally then George?
GD: What? Here?
SB: Yes.
GD: No. I’m a Kent man actually.
SB: Oh right. Right. Are you a Kent man or a man of Kent?
GD: Man of Kent.
SB: Oh right.
GD: Yeah, I come from Whitstable.
SB: Oh right. Ok.
[pause]
GD: Have you got anywhere else to go today?
SB: Yes, I went to see, I don’t know if you know Jo Lancaster do you?
GD: Oh, Joe.
SB: Yeah. Yeah. I went to see him a couple of weeks ago.
GD: Right.
SB: I’m going to pop back up to see. I’m going to go back up —
GD: He’s got quite a story I would imagine. Joe. Hasn’t he?
SB: Oh, he has.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yes, I mean the —
GD: They tell me, I don’t know this is I only heard this recently that he was in the Air Force pre-war and got chucked out for low flying.
SB: Ah. I think, I know the story. He didn’t get chucked out. I’ll tell you what happened. It was before he joined up and he was doing because he told me this story and showed me the result. He was doing some flying because he worked for Armstrong Whitworth as an apprentice and he did his flying training at his commercial, you know his private pilot’s licence then. And he was flying an Avro Cadet and he decided to bugger about a bit and he had, I can’t remember exactly what happened to it but, that’s right he had engine problems. He was, he was messing around and put this thing down in a field somewhere and didn’t notice the ditch running across the middle of the field and tipped it up and made a bit of a mess of the Avro Cadet and he, I think he had to leave Armstrong Whitworth after that. But his, his Air Force career was just, oh thank you very much, his Air Force career was just amazing.
GD: Yeah.
SB: He did, let’s look back. He did a Wimpy tour on 12 Squadron at Alconbury. Then out to North Africa and did a second tour on Wimpies on 40 Squadron. And then a bit like you he did lots of time on Wimpy OTUs and then he got sent to Boscombe Down. A&AEE. Well, the sort of aircraft he was flying were, you know a most peculiar assortment of aeroplanes he was flying there. That was ’44 beginning of ’45. Then he went to Empire Test Pilot School.
GD: At Farnborough. That was at Farnborough then.
SB: It was at Boscombe Down at the time.
GD: Oh, was that at Boscombe?
SB: That was ’45. Course 3 at Boscombe Down. Did his ETPS course. Then he got seconded to Boulton Paul and flew only for a few months with them. Then he, then he went to Saunders-Roe on the Isle of Wight and he was flying the SRA1 jet flying boat fighter. A bizarre thing. And then he went back to Armstrong Whitworth and I expect you know his claim to fame is he was the first man in England to do an emergency ejection from anything.
GD: Oh. No.
SB: Yeah. He was. He was flying the Armstrong Whitworth 52 Flying Wing and he got longitude and oscillation on it which he couldn’t control. This is in 1949. So he ejected from it. And then he carried on flying with Armstrong Whitworth for a little while but he’s got something like twenty thousand hours in his log.
GD: Does he really?
SB: Yeah. Extraordinary.
GD: He’s very quiet old Joe because I don’t know whether you probably know that we’ve got a book signing group.
SB: Yes.
GD: And —
SB: Yes
GD: In Sussex.
SB: Yes.
GD: And so far we’ve raised twenty five thousand pound.
SB: Have you really? Goodness me. Yes, I’ve met a couple in that group. Dave Fellowes.
GD: Dave Fellowes. Yeah. Yeah.
SB: And as I came down this way a couple of weeks ago and I saw Joe and Dave Fellowes and Harry Hacker. Now, neither Joe nor Dave knew him.
GD: I don’t know.
SB: He’s at Lindfield.
GD: Oh yeah.
SB: And he was a, he was a Wimpy bomb aimer. He did his tour on 40 Squadron as a bomb aimer in Italy.
GD: Ah. It’s a wonder he’s not a member of our Association.
SB: Well, I gave, I gave Joe his contact details and I think he was going to —
GD: Yes.
SB: Try and encourage him to get involved. But he’s a very lively chap. Excellent chap to talk to.
GD: We went to the, a fortnight ago we went to the Wings Museum.
SB: Oh yes. I know of it but I haven’t been there.
GD: They got kicked out some time ago. They got kicked out from Redhill.
SB: That’s right.
GD: They used to be up there and they found this, well it’s almost like an aircraft hangar I suppose. It’s an old agricultural shed but it could be almost classed as a hangar out at Balcombe near where David is.
SB: Oh yes. Yes.
GD: And its right out in the sticks you know. There’s no public transport or anything like that and we had a terrific attendance there.
SB: Really?
GD: And do you how much we made on that day? Fifteen hundred pounds.
SB: Blimey. Did you really?
GD: Sixteen fifty I think.
SB: Gosh. That’s really good isn’t it?
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. That’s fantastic.
GD: Of course, a lot of our time last year was we were involved with the Memorial.
SB: Well, indeed. Yes. Did you get there for the unveiling?
GD: Oh yes.
SB: Yeah, me too. Yeah.
GD: Were you there?
SB: Very hot.
GD: Do you know I got home and my white shirt here was a mass of blue.
SB: Was it?
GD: Which had come out of my, the lining of my blazer.
SB: Oh really. Goodness me.
GD: God it was hot that day.
SB: It was. But it was a great day wasn’t it?
GD: Oh yeah. Yeah.
SB: At last.
GD: Oh, we went to the launch with Carol Vorderman at the [unclear] Hotel.
SB: Oh yes.
GD: Do you know Steve?
SB: Steve Darlow.
GD: Darlow.
SB: Yes.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yes. He and I are great pals. We know each other very well. Yes, he’s a super chap. He’s done a lot of good stuff. He really has. Those Spitfires are interesting.
GD: Yeah, emanating from that you know I was involved with the presentation of the Festival of Britain, Festival of Remembrance.
SB: Oh right. Yes. Yeah.
GD: At the Albert Hall.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And following on from that I had a communication from a chap who used to run his own removal business in London. Well, his father had it and then he took it over.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And I hadn’t had any contact with him for about thirty years and he rung me up, sent me a letter. Said, he said, ‘I’ve never realised that you were in the RAF.’
SB: Oh right.
GD: And he said, ‘And I see that you were on Peenemunde.’ He said, ‘I can remember when I was a lad scrambling under the dining table when you heard the engines cut out on the, on the flying bombs.’
SB: Oh Right. Yes.
GD: And he said, ‘I’d like to make a donation to the fund.’ So I said, ‘Well, that’s very kind of you,’ thinking that he would send me what perhaps fifty quid or a hundred quid, you know. Opened a letter one morning. A cheque for a thousand pounds.
SB: Really? Gosh.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Wow. Excellent [pause] Ah, now what have we got here, George? This is you is it?
GD: No.
SB: No.
GD: That’s Joe Scrivenor. That’s, that’s me there at Ismailia.
SB: Right.
GD: I think we were doing, we were doing a ferry trip somewhere.
SB: June ’46. So that’s you in the middle there is it? Pointing —
GD: Yeah.
SB: That’s right.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Ok. And this chap by the Hali is Joe Scrivenor.
GD: Yeah. That’s Joe Scrivenor. Yeah. [pause] Yeah, this was taken right at the very edge of the southern part of the Suez Canal.
SB: Oh right.
GD: What we called the French Beach. I don’t know whether there is anything else that is of interest that —
GD: Yeah. Yeah.
SB: Your career.
GD: Yes.
SB: And pick up things as we go along.
GD: I fetched my logbooks out because I thought you might —
SB: Oh yes.
GD: Talk about some dates or something. I actually started at OTU at Lossiemouth.
SB: Right.
GD: On the 2nd of January 1943.
SB: Right. Ok. And you crewed up there obviously. You crewed up there.
GD: We crewed up there. Yes.
SB: Yes.
GD: Yeah. And we actually, we didn’t do the flying at Lossiemouth we went to the satellite station.
SB: Milltown was that?
GD: Elgin.
SB: Oh Elgin. Right.
GD: Which to the locals was known as Bogs O’Mayne.
SB: Right. Right.
GD: So apart from a bit of ground school work at Lossiemouth all the flying was done at Elgin.
SB: Right. Right. Now, by ’43 I imagine, well obviously you had old Wimpies I’m sure. What? 1Cs?
GD: We had, we had the 1Cs.
SB: Right. Ok.
GD: Yeah.
SB: They were a bit tired I expect were they?
GD: They were. Yeah. I think in my, my bomb aimer wrote a book after the war.
SB: Oh right.
GD: I think he goes to say somewhere here [pause] “20 Operational Training Unit was equipped with Wellington aircraft many of them having seen better days and a little bit the worse off for wear. This was not surprising as many of them had seen operational duties against the enemy and they were among the first bombers to attack Germany. On close examination I thought how frail the fabric looked covering that geodetic metal construction. But most important was the two very fine Pegasus engines which were kept in good running order.” So yes you’re right there. It was a, it was they were a bit clapped out.
SB: Yeah. So how long were you up at on the OTU for then?
GD: 2nd, 2nd of January ’43 and I finished on the 4th of March.
SB: Right.
GD: 1943.
SB: Now, at that time did, did you get involved in any operations?
GD: None at all.
SB: Nickeling? Anything like that?
GD: None at all.
SB: No. Right. Ok.
GD: Not at all.
SB: Right. What did you think of the Wimpy?
GD: I thought it was a good aircraft.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Yeah. I mean whilst at OTU we did have an engine failure over the North Sea on one of the sort of bombing and cross country exercises. But we got back on the one engine. The only snag was that we had to use the, we had to make a flapless landing because we couldn’t use the undercarriage controls. So —
SB: Oh right.
GD: So then we had to wind down the undercarriage.
SB: Oh, ok. Yeah.
GD: Which then prevented you from using your flaps.
SB: Oh really.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Oh.
GD: So we had to, we had to make a flapless landing which was ok because that was one of the things you were taught anyway.
SB: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Who was the rest of your crew then?
GD: Who were they?
SB: Yeah.
GD: There was [pause] there they are. I’ve got a photograph over here [pause] This is, this is Andy, the chap who wrote this. You can just probably recognise him from —
SB: Andy Maitland. He was the bomb aimer.
GD: The bomb aimer.
SB: Right.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Reg McCadden was from Belfast was the navigator.
SB: Right.
GD: Dixie Dean was the rear gunner. He was a Canadian. Jock Todd was from Montrose was the wireless operator. Ferris Newton which of course we didn’t pick up until we got to Heavy Conversion Unit.
SB: The flight engineer.
GD: Flight engineer. He was a very useful member because his wife and his mother ran a pub near Leeds.
SB: Handy.
GD: Andy of course and Joe Scrivenor, mid-upper gunner.
SB: Right. Ok. So, after OTU then HCU.
GD: Yeah. That was at Rufforth.
SB: Oh right.
GD: Just outside York.
SB: Right.
GD: But of course you know that pilots always had to do two second dickie trips.
SB: Yes.
GD: So I was sent to 10 Squadron at Melbourne and I hadn’t even set foot in a Halifax.
SB: Oh right.
GD: I mean, actually lots of pilots sort of got sent off maybe in the middle of their Conversion Unit or at the end but I got sent off straight away and the first [laughs] the first one was Essen.
SB: So the first time you ever flew in a Halifax was an op.
GD: Was an op. Yeah. Yeah.
SB: That’s a real baptism of fire isn’t it? So that April the 3rd ’43 and April the 4th ’43.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Essen and Kiel.
GD: Diverting a little.
SB: Yeah.
GD: This chap whose crew I was with on that.
SB: Pilot Officer Ellis.
GD: Ellis. I often wondered whether they got through their tour.
SB: Really?
GD: You know. I mean, I was only with them two days. We did the third and the fourth.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Straight off.
SB: Yes.
GD: And I often wondered afterwards whether they got through their tour. Anyway, a few years ago I belonged to the Mid-Sussex Aircrew Association and just around the corner up this road was a fellow called Jim Sparks who was actually on 10 Squadron but much later in the war.
SB: Right.
GD: And I said to him a few years ago I said, ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I did my two second dickie trips on [pause] with 10 Squadron.’ I said, ‘I’ve often wondered whether the crew I did them with ever got through.’ So he said, ‘Well, I’ve got some 10 Squadron newsletters,’ he said, ‘In my bag.’ He said, he said, ‘You wouldn’t know anybody obviously,’ he said, ‘But if you’d like to read them.’ And so I did. I picked one of them up and in it was a letter from his bomb aimer announcing that he’d just, this chap had just died, from Canada. So I wrote to this chap in Canada. I said, ‘You won’t remember me,’ I said, ‘Because I did my two second dickie trips with you on the 3rd and 4th of April ’43.’ I said, ‘And you had rather an extrovert Irish engineer who made a point of saying when we got in for take-off, ‘The second pilot seat is mine for take-off and landing.’
SB: Really?
GD: And it turned out he went out to New Zealand this Irish engineer and had nine kids. You know.
SB: Wow. Yes.
GD: And this was, this would be I suppose six, seven years ago now and I just had the, just sent the one letter to him you know and he replied. Yeah. So they did actually get through.
SB: Well, that’s, that’s good to hear.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. Oh ok so after your baptism of fire then off to HCU.
GD: So that was [unclear] in ’43.
SB: Yeah.
GD: I actually got on to the squadron at Linton on Ouse about a month later.
SB: Right. Right.
GD: Just about a month later.
SB: With a brief foray into Beam flight at Driffield.
GD: Air approach, yeah.
SB: Yeah. Right.
GD: Beam approach course.
SB: Yeah.
GD: At Driffield.
SB: Ok. Right.
GD: Our first, our first op as a crew was Dortmund which was —
SB: Yeah.
GD: 23rd of May. And then of course after that when I got screened we finished our tour on the 3rd of October.
SB: Right.
GD: And I then went to OTU at Finningley on Wellingtons.
SB: Oh right. Ok.
GD: But didn’t stay there long because again they had a satellite station at Worksop and that’s where I did, I did my instructing at Worksop.
SB: Can we just before we move off 76 can we just have a quick look through the ops that you did? Where do we start?
[pause]
GD: That’s where we are.
SB: Ok.
GD: Yeah.
SB: [pause] That’s a strange comment. “No camera carried.” You’re talking about the target camera obviously when you —
GD: Yeah. Of course that could have been the, that could have been the photo flash camera.
SB: That’s what I’m thinking. Yeah. Yeah. It must have been. “Usual Ruhr activity,” [laughs] Yeah. What happened here? Do you recall? You’ve written down, “Caught in flak on the way back. Searchlights ineffective.”
GD: Yeah. We got coned.
SB: Right.
GD: I think Andy describes it more in here.
[pause]
SB: Oh, I saw Gelsenkirchen mentioned here just as you turned the page over. Which is here. So would that be the raid after that? Cologne. Maybe that was. Maybe you went, oh no, you went to Gelsenkirchen again so maybe not.
GD: 29th.
SB: This is the —
GD: A bit before.
SB: The 28th of June. Oh, so it is further back. Ok.
GD: That’s July so it’s got to be up here. Ah, there we are.
SB: Oh right. “The Cologne raid was carried out by bombing through cloud which was completing obscuring the city but it did not stop the German gunners from mounting a very heavy and accurate flak barrage. I felt a bit cheated at not being able to see the city. However, one felt a little safer when cloud was obscuring the view of the gunners on the ground. They did not really make a great deal of difference as the radar predicted anti-aircraft shells were often too accurate for comfort and keep weaving. Just as I thought the flak barrage was abating we cleared the target area. I was trying to guide George clear the flak when the master blue searchlight picked us up illuminating the whole aircraft and I felt we were the only aircraft in the sky. Like a flash there was about six more searchlights on us but George reacted quickly with nose down and weaving frantically. I asked George to weave in the opposite direction of the cone’s movement. We were lucky. It seemed to work. We were through and seemed to be moving away from the searchlights but not before the ack ack shells were bursting all around us. Only one got near enough to do any real damage as with one hell of a bang it exploded below the central fuselage. A few holes but nothing desperate so we all sighed with relief.”
GD: You were lucky, you were lucky if you got coned to get out of it.
SB: Well, indeed. Yes.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yes.
GD: Fortunately that was the only time.
SB: Right. Oh right. Ok [pause] Oh gosh. Saw four shot down. 30th of July. When was she done? The Ruhr. Oh gosh.
GD: That was —
SB: Ah yes.
GD: That was a terrible trip that was. We should never have gone.
SB: Hamburg. 2nd of August. Ok. Can you talk us through that then?
GD: Yeah. We lost, I lost my airspeed indicator through ice. Although the pitot head was heated the icing was so severe that the pitot head got iced up obviously so I had no airspeed indicator. So I had to decide whether to carry on or turn around. Jettison and turn around. So I decided I’d carry on because if you use your rate of climb indicator and your revs you had an approximate idea what speed you were going and I erred on the safety side. But the conditions got worse the whole time and we got to the stage where the aircraft was completely iced up. It was the machine guns looked like Bunsen burners. They got like a plane coming right out the end and the wingtips were lit up and all around the metal edges of the, of the cockpit the static was —
SB: Yeah.
GD: Coming off it and hitting you in the face and it virtually got to the stage where it was almost uncontrollable. So we were only about fourteen and a half minutes before we reached Hamburg but there was just no point. I just had to give it. Call it a day.
SB: Yeah.
GD: We jettisoned and came back. And the following morning I was called up before the flight commander and given a rollicking for endangering the lives of aircraft and crew.
SB: Really? Good God.
GD: So [laughs]
SB: Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
GD: Talk about press on.
SB: God. Well, oh [pause] oh Peenemunde. Diverted to Wymeswold. Was that a technical diversion or —
GD: Yeah, we had, I think we had an hydraulic leak I think. When was that?
SB: August the 17th.
GD: Ah. That’s right [pause] Yeah, we had a hydraulic leak.
SB: Oh right.
GD: And they told us to land at Wymeswold. And the trouble was that it was a Boston squadron there and we couldn’t get away until they, they’d got a daylight op and we had to wait.
SB: Oh right.
GD: Until later on before we could get, before we could get away and then my mid-upper gunner he was a bit of a, a bit of a character. He sent the two pigeons that we’d got saying that, “Held up by bullshit.” He got, he got a rollicking.
SB: I bet he did. Yeah.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Excellent.
[pause]
GD: That was another one [unclear] and again air speed indicator failure. That was the last one. We lost four from the squadron that night.
SB: October the 3rd ’43. Castel. Really?
GD: Yeah. I think.
SB: Gosh.
GD: I think we lost, I think we lost [forty six. Forty six] aircraft I think that night. That was the 76 Squadron operations. This one.
SB: Right. Here we are. October the 3rd.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. As you say.
GD: Yeah. We lost two. Two Norwegians and two others. Mostly, oh POW. Not, not many of them got away with it.
SB: No. That’s right. No. Most fell —
GD: That’s quite a loss in one night.
SB: It is.
GD: For one squadron.
SB: It certainly is.
GD: I remember him. Thorpe.
SB: Thorpe. Yeah.
GD: And this chap he got away with it.
SB: Yes.
GD: He’d been to [pause] I believe he died recently. I saw it in the squadron newsletter.
SB: Right.
GD: I met him up on several squadron reunions. Wilkie [unclear] Yeah.
SB: So finished the tour. A big sigh of relief no doubt. And then right off to 18 OTU for a while.
GD: Then I did [pause] yeah that’s right I went over to the satellite station.
SB: Worksop. Yeah.
GD: And then I did an instructor’s course on Wellingtons at Church Broughton.
SB: Right.
GD: And then a bit later I carried on. Carried on instructing at —
SB: 18 OTU.
GD: Worksop.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And then went, I finally went on to a Central Flying School Instructor’s Course on Oxfords a bit later on.
SB: Oh gosh. You were on the OTU quite a long time weren’t you?
GD: Where are we? I thought it was earlier than that. Where are we? [pause] Now, this is, this is interesting.
SB: January 20th ‘44.
GD: I was officer in charge of night flying that night and this chap was actually one of my pupils. Flying Officer Jennings. They were beginning to come in at that time from Flying Training Command so they were, as far as flying was concerned they were quite experienced. It was just a question of converting them and this particular night there was a bit of haze about and I thought perhaps I’d better do a weather check before letting the pupils go up. Well, as you can see it was only ten minutes. So we went up and I think this chap, Mr Hindley, he was a civilian, I’m not sure whether he was a Met man or whether he was a bombsight man.
SB: Right.
GD: But we took off, I did a circuit. The weather was quite ok. We did a circuit and I had arranged for the lorry to pick me up at the take off point so I could just nip down and he could get straight off without having to go into dispersal and that.
SB: Right.
GD: He took off again, did a circuit. For some reason he overshot. He did an overshoot and that was the last we heard of him. He crashed somewhere down near Nottingham. The whole crew. They were all killed.
SB: Oh God.
GD: And I had to go down to a Court of Enquiry the following day and it turned out eventually they had a prop blade had come off.
SB: Good grief. Dear oh dear. Wow.
GD: So we had —
SB: There but by the grace of God and all that sort of stuff. Gosh that was close wasn’t it?
GD: Yeah. Yeah. When you think about it. I’m trying to think where I fitted that [pause] oh here. Oh, here we are on Oxfords. Here we are. Yes. That was quite some time after you see.
SB: Right. Yes.
GD: I went to [pause] I went to 18 OTU in ’43, November.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And it wasn’t until the January that I did the second instructor’s course. That was at —
SB: June ’44. Yeah.
GD: Which is now Bristol Airport.
SB: Yes indeed. Yes. Yeah.
GD: And then I came back after that. It was a month’s course I think.
SB: Right.
GD: I came back.
SB: Back to 18 OTU again near Worksop. Yeah.
GD: And I stayed there until right the way through until [pause] until January. That’s right. I finished. Finished there.
SB: December ’44. Yeah.
GD: December ’44. And then volunteered to go back on Mosquitoes.
SB: Oh. Ok.
GD: I’d had enough.
SB: Right.
GD: All that time.
SB: Yeah.
GD: So I teamed up with a chap called Bancroft who was a navigator at Worksop. Strangely enough after the war he lived in the next road.
SB: Really?
GD: Yeah. So we did a, we went to Upper Heyford in actual and again we didn’t stay at Upper Heyford. We did the conversion on to Mosquitoes at a place called Barford St Johns.
SB: Yes, I know it well.
GD: Do you?
SB: Yes. Yeah. Quite close to where I am now.
GD: Is it? What’s there now? Anything?
SB: No. Nothing. It’s just gone back to agriculture primarily. There are a few buildings left but not much.
Yes. It’s not a housing estate or anything.
SB: No. No.
GD: The weather was so bad when we were there that we had one or two nights we stayed in the Whately Hall Hotel in Banbury.
SB: Oh, did you?
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Yeah. So then I did that.
SB: Did you enjoy the Mossie?
GD: Oh yeah. She was a lovely aircraft. Yeah. And did the conversion course and then went on to 608 Downham Market.
SB: Ah right. Now, I can tell you something about that. Have you been to Downham Market at all recently?
GD: No.
SB: Well, I’ve, I have been a couple of times recently and I’m amazed how much is left there and what’s really nice about Downham Market is that the technical site and the hangars have gone. The technical site is pretty much complete and as you turn off the main road into the, into the camp what was the guard room is now a kitchen furniture showroom. Well, the people that run that business are passionate about preserving Downham Market and one or two of the other buildings on the technical site has got, has their workshops for making their kitchen furniture. When you walk in the guardroom which is the front room to their showroom on the right-hand doors it says, “NCOs Offices,” on it. You know, they’ve little things like that they’ve tried to preserve and I took a walk around only about two months ago. I had a walk around there and they took me into one of the buildings where they are now making this kitchen furniture and on the, it was obviously an aircraft recognition room because on the back wall in this workshop are still all the aircraft recognition posters. It’s amazing and the landlord of Downham Market, that site is really enthusiastic about preserving it and they’re putting a big Memorial up. They’ve cleared the space for it and they are doing a magnificent Memorial and some of the doors have still got, “635 Squadron Ops,” and this kind of stuff. I’ve never seen a place for years that is so well preserved.
GD: Oh, that’s good. Very interesting.
SB: Very nice. Yeah. It is. Yeah.
GD: I know it was always a laugh there. I think the pub then was it called the Crown? Is there one called the Crown?
SB: Yeah. I think so. Yes.
GD: And the landlord was a fellow called Crump.
SB: Right.
GD: At the time and they used to say if you want to know what the target is tonight go down and have a word with Crump [laughs] the landlord at the Crown.
SB: [laughs] Oh dear. So, ‘March ’45 start on ops.
GD: Yeah. That was when what we called the Berlin Milk Run. It was —
SB: Oh, that’s, wow almost every one is Berlin.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Goodness me. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
GD: I stayed there from March to end of March and then we had a friend, another navigation friend of Bancroft’s.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Who had also been at Worksop. He was on this 1409 reccy flight at Wyton.
SB: Right.
GD: And he phoned us up and said there’s a vacancy.
SB: Oh right.
GD: There was only about ten crews. We used to fly these blue, light blue Mosquitoes and he said if you want to come we’ll get you in. So —
SB: Oh.
GD: We applied and we moved over to, to Squadron which of course was 8 Group.
SB: Yes. Yeah. Pathfinder group. Yeah.
GD: Yeah. So we just carried on there until, until after the war. They were called PAMPAs the weather trips we did.
SB: So, how? Sort of, give me an example. How sort of far out would you go? What sort of brief would you have?
GD: Oh, it was we’d go right out into the Atlantic. Do Germany, France. Anywhere.
SB: Right. So you’ve got four-hour trips, three hour trips.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. Yeah.
GD: See here. This one was Germany. Cuxhaven.
SB: Yeah.
GD: That one was Dutch.
SB: Yes. Yeah. Oh ok.
GD: And then of course once D-Day was —
SB: D-Day.
GD: D-Day we’d taken the —
SB: Cook’s Tours.
GD: Ground crews over to, on what they called a Cook’s Tour. You could only take one of course —
SB: Sure.
GD: In a Mosquito and he had to lie in the —
SB: Yeah.
GD: In the bomb bay.
SB: Yeah.
GD: That was [pause] oh and then we moved from, we moved from Wyton to Upwood.
SB: Right.
GD: And that carried on until —
SB: July ’45 was it that finished? Would that be? Yes. The end of July ’45.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And then [pause] this one.
SB: Oh, it carries on. Right. Ok. Yeah.
GD: Upwood and then I think I moved to, we moved to Wickenby I think. Yeah. I went to Woodhall Spa. We had very quick moves then. So, oh it changed over. That’s right. They, 1409 I was disbanded.
SB: Right.
GD: And 109 Squadron.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Was converted into a Met flight.
SB: Oh right.
GD: And we moved with them and then we went to Wickenby.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Then we went to Hemswell. And whilst we were at Hemswell they were asking for people to go out to Malta to form a Mosquito Met Flight out in Malta.
SB: Right.
GD: And we were about, oh I suppose ten or a dozen crews and we went out in a Stirling.
SB: Right.
GD: And it was going to be 1357 Met Flight but it never came about. Typical RAF. We got out there, all these crews. Mosquitoes. We were appointed with the highest rank was flight lieutenant. We were nearly all flight lieutenants I think. I’m not sure whether I was at that time. But we appointed a spokesman, went to see the station adj and, ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Oh, we’ve come out to, we’re here to form —’ ‘We don’t know anything about you.’
SB: Oh really.
GD: And they gave us a, they gave us an old lorry and a disused building over on the far side of Luqa and we spent about six weeks there just kicking our heels going into Valetta and back. I managed to get one or two trips in Masters there. I did an Anson and a Mosquito.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Ferry trips.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And then eventually I went to Almaza which was a transit camp outside of Cairo. Kicked our heels there for I don’t know some weeks. I just wondered what was going to happen.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And eventually went out to finish up at 132 at Ismailia.
SB: Right.
GD: On Spitfires and —
SB: And whatever else came along really.
GD: And whatever else came along. There was a Wellington there.
SB: Oh yeah. Yeah.
GD: A thing called a Fairchild Argus.
SB: Yes.
GD: I’ve got one here. An American thing.
SB: A Hawk. Right. That was quite interesting wasn’t it? Flying all sorts of different stuff?
GD: Yeah. It was a bit because I mean I hadn’t flown a single engine aircraft since the Tiger Moth.
SB: Right.
GD: Out in —
SB: Yeah.
GD: Out in Canada.
SB: Right. Right.
GD: You see various ones.
SB: Lots of —
GD: Ansons, Harvards.
SB: Yeah.
GD: I did a few. An Auster.
SB: Gosh.
GD: I did a few.
SB: Oh, a Mustang.
GD: Yeah. Yeah. That was a, that was an undercarriage check.
SB: Right.
GD: Again you see you had no, you had no notes or anything.
SB: So you didn’t know where everything was and then off you’d go.
GD: What we were doing then we were doing selling Spitfires to the Greek Air Force. We were testing them and then we had two or three Greek pilots which would then take over from us and do their own check and then we used to fly to, fly them over to Cyprus.
SB: Right.
GD: Where we are? That was a Halifax I brought back.
SB: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
GD: Used to fly them over about twenty at a time with a Lancaster escort.
SB: Oh right.
GD: And a chap that used to come down from 205 Group at Cairo, a chap called Joe Patience he lives at Pevensey Bay along the coast here.
SB: Oh really.
GD: He’s about ninety, he’s about ninety four now I think. I did one or two trips back to the UK with a, with a Halifax. They found some Halifaxes over at a place called [unclear]
SB: Right. I see.
GD: A tented camp. Everything was tents. The Mess and everything and they had nobody out there. They couldn’t find a Halifax pilot at all anywhere then. They cottoned on to me.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And I had to show these Croatian and Serbs. Had to convert them onto —
SB: Oh really.
GD: Yeah. And then I think my last, my very last trip was bringing a Halifax back from [pause – pages turning] yeah. That’s one of those trips we did taking Spits over to, we used to refuel at Nicosia and then on to Ismailia.
SB: Yeah.
GD: Yeah. That’s the very last one. Bringing the Halifax back from there.
SB: Right. Well, gosh. Gosh, quite a varied career wasn’t it? So you finished then. So that was June ’47.
GD: Yeah.
SB: And what happened to you after that?
GD: I went back to my old firm.
SB: What was that? What did you do?
GD: Pickford’s Removals.
SB: Oh really. Yeah.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. You said your old firm. You worked for them before you joined up then.
GD: I joined up. I worked. I joined them when I was fourteen.
SB: Right.
GD: In 1937 and, and then I got called up. I got called up ’41.
SB: Right. Right.
GD: Yeah.
SB: And you did your training in Canada you say.
GD: Yes. Yeah. I trained at a place called Caron. Oh, that was that. That chap’s —
SB: AC Boulton.
GD: Yes. That was his navigator.
SB: Oh right.
GD: Remember I told you Ellis.
SB: Yes. Yes.
GD: That was him.
SB: Oh right. Right.
GD: Yes. That’s right. It was in Saskatchewan.
SB: Oh right.
GD: But I got rid of this. I started instructing with this chap called Howard.
SB: Yeah.
GD: He was a pilot officer, a Canadian and didn’t get on with him at all. In fact, at one stage I thought I’d be washed out.
SB: Really?
GD: He was one of those chaps. Impatient. He’d snatch the stick you know if you weren’t and if you weren’t doing too well they changed you. Changed your instructor and I then got a Battle of Britain pilot.
SB: Oh. This chap is it?
GD: Yeah.
SB: Pilot officer [John].
GD: And this chap here, where is he? Flying Officer Boot.
SB: Right.
GD: Different. Different person altogether. Flying officer. He was a Battle of Britain pilot. Boot.
SB: Right.
GD: And I got on. I got on quite well. Different. Different attitude he had from this first chap.
SB: Right. Right.
GD: Can I get you a coffee or a tea or something?
SB: Oh, a coffee would be lovely.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yes, please George. Yeah.
GD: What do you have?
SB: A little bit of milk and one sugar please.
GD: One sugar. Yeah.
SB: Are you ok if I take a look through your logbooks.
GD: Yeah. Look through whilst I’m making it.
SB: I will. Thank you very much.
(pause- pages turning)
SB: Is this your part of the world originally then George?
GD: What? Here?
SB: Yes.
GD: No. I’m a Kent man actually.
SB: Oh right. Right. Are you a Kent man or a man of Kent?
GD: Man of Kent.
SB: Oh right.
GD: Yeah, I come from Whitstable.
SB: Oh right. Ok.
[pause]
GD: Have you got anywhere else to go today?
SB: Yes, I went to see, I don’t know if you know Jo Lancaster do you?
GD: Oh, Joe.
SB: Yeah. Yeah. I went to see him a couple of weeks ago.
GD: Right.
SB: I’m going to pop back up to see. I’m going to go back up —
GD: He’s got quite a story I would imagine. Joe. Hasn’t he?
SB: Oh, he has.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yes, I mean the —
GD: They tell me, I don’t know this is I only heard this recently that he was in the Air Force pre-war and got chucked out for low flying.
SB: Ah. I think, I know the story. He didn’t get chucked out. I’ll tell you what happened. It was before he joined up and he was doing because he told me this story and showed me the result. He was doing some flying because he worked for Armstrong Whitworth as an apprentice and he did his flying training at his commercial, you know his private pilot’s licence then. And he was flying an Avro Cadet and he decided to bugger about a bit and he had, I can’t remember exactly what happened to it but, that’s right he had engine problems. He was, he was messing around and put this thing down in a field somewhere and didn’t notice the ditch running across the middle of the field and tipped it up and made a bit of a mess of the Avro Cadet and he, I think he had to leave Armstrong Whitworth after that. But his, his Air Force career was just, oh thank you very much, his Air Force career was just amazing.
GD: Yeah.
SB: He did, let’s look back. He did a Wimpy tour on 12 Squadron at Alconbury. Then out to North Africa and did a second tour on Wimpies on 40 Squadron. And then a bit like you he did lots of time on Wimpy OTUs and then he got sent to Boscombe Down. A&AEE. Well, the sort of aircraft he was flying were, you know a most peculiar assortment of aeroplanes he was flying there. That was ’44 beginning of ’45. Then he went to Empire Test Pilot School.
GD: At Farnborough. That was at Farnborough then.
SB: It was at Boscombe Down at the time.
GD: Oh, was that at Boscombe?
SB: That was ’45. Course 3 at Boscombe Down. Did his ETPS course. Then he got seconded to Boulton Paul and flew only for a few months with them. Then he, then he went to Saunders-Roe on the Isle of Wight and he was flying the SRA1 jet flying boat fighter. A bizarre thing. And then he went back to Armstrong Whitworth and I expect you know his claim to fame is he was the first man in England to do an emergency ejection from anything.
GD: Oh. No.
SB: Yeah. He was. He was flying the Armstrong Whitworth 52 Flying Wing and he got longitude and oscillation on it which he couldn’t control. This is in 1949. So he ejected from it. And then he carried on flying with Armstrong Whitworth for a little while but he’s got something like twenty thousand hours in his log.
GD: Does he really?
SB: Yeah. Extraordinary.
GD: He’s very quiet old Joe because I don’t know whether you probably know that we’ve got a book signing group.
SB: Yes.
GD: And —
SB: Yes
GD: In Sussex.
SB: Yes.
GD: And so far we’ve raised twenty five thousand pound.
SB: Have you really? Goodness me. Yes, I’ve met a couple in that group. Dave Fellowes.
GD: Dave Fellowes. Yeah. Yeah.
SB: And as I came down this way a couple of weeks ago and I saw Joe and Dave Fellowes and Harry Hacker. Now, neither Joe nor Dave knew him.
GD: I don’t know.
SB: He’s at Lindfield.
GD: Oh yeah.
SB: And he was a, he was a Wimpy bomb aimer. He did his tour on 40 Squadron as a bomb aimer in Italy.
GD: Ah. It’s a wonder he’s not a member of our Association.
SB: Well, I gave, I gave Joe his contact details and I think he was going to —
GD: Yes.
SB: Try and encourage him to get involved. But he’s a very lively chap. Excellent chap to talk to.
GD: We went to the, a fortnight ago we went to the Wings Museum.
SB: Oh yes. I know of it but I haven’t been there.
GD: They got kicked out some time ago. They got kicked out from Redhill.
SB: That’s right.
GD: They used to be up there and they found this, well it’s almost like an aircraft hangar I suppose. It’s an old agricultural shed but it could be almost classed as a hangar out at Balcombe near where David is.
SB: Oh yes. Yes.
GD: And its right out in the sticks you know. There’s no public transport or anything like that and we had a terrific attendance there.
SB: Really?
GD: And do you how much we made on that day? Fifteen hundred pounds.
SB: Blimey. Did you really?
GD: Sixteen fifty I think.
SB: Gosh. That’s really good isn’t it?
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. That’s fantastic.
GD: Of course, a lot of our time last year was we were involved with the Memorial.
SB: Well, indeed. Yes. Did you get there for the unveiling?
GD: Oh yes.
SB: Yeah, me too. Yeah.
GD: Were you there?
SB: Very hot.
GD: Do you know I got home and my white shirt here was a mass of blue.
SB: Was it?
GD: Which had come out of my, the lining of my blazer.
SB: Oh really. Goodness me.
GD: God it was hot that day.
SB: It was. But it was a great day wasn’t it?
GD: Oh yeah. Yeah.
SB: At last.
GD: Oh, we went to the launch with Carol Vorderman at the [unclear] Hotel.
SB: Oh yes.
GD: Do you know Steve?
SB: Steve Darlow.
GD: Darlow.
SB: Yes.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Yes. He and I are great pals. We know each other very well. Yes, he’s a super chap. He’s done a lot of good stuff. He really has. Those Spitfires are interesting.
GD: Yeah, emanating from that you know I was involved with the presentation of the Festival of Britain, Festival of Remembrance.
SB: Oh right. Yes. Yeah.
GD: At the Albert Hall.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And following on from that I had a communication from a chap who used to run his own removal business in London. Well, his father had it and then he took it over.
SB: Yeah.
GD: And I hadn’t had any contact with him for about thirty years and he rung me up, sent me a letter. Said, he said, ‘I’ve never realised that you were in the RAF.’
SB: Oh right.
GD: And he said, ‘And I see that you were on Peenemunde.’ He said, ‘I can remember when I was a lad scrambling under the dining table when you heard the engines cut out on the, on the flying bombs.’
SB: Oh Right. Yes.
GD: And he said, ‘I’d like to make a donation to the fund.’ So I said, ‘Well, that’s very kind of you,’ thinking that he would send me what perhaps fifty quid or a hundred quid, you know. Opened a letter one morning. A cheque for a thousand pounds.
SB: Really? Gosh.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Wow. Excellent [pause] Ah, now what have we got here, George? This is you is it?
GD: No.
SB: No.
GD: That’s Joe Scrivenor. That’s, that’s me there at Ismailia.
SB: Right.
GD: I think we were doing, we were doing a ferry trip somewhere.
SB: June ’46. So that’s you in the middle there is it? Pointing —
GD: Yeah.
SB: That’s right.
GD: Yeah.
SB: Ok. And this chap by the Hali is Joe Scrivenor.
GD: Yeah. That’s Joe Scrivenor. Yeah. [pause] Yeah, this was taken right at the very edge of the southern part of the Suez Canal.
SB: Oh right.
GD: What we called the French Beach. I don’t know whether there is anything else that is of interest that —
Collection
Citation
G Dunn, “Interview with George Dunn,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed June 13, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/49149.