Interview with Harry Denton

Interview with Harry Denton

1998-09-04

00:40:13 audio recording

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Interviewer: Pilot, 9 Squadron. captain of W-SU took off 1st of January 1945. Shot down over Dortmund Ems Canal. His pilot when George Thompson was awarded the VC. It’s the 4th of September 1998. Harry has been staying in Bardney since Tuesday. His first time for fifty three and a half years. We’re over here for the reunion at Cottesmore for 9 Squadron. So, here’s Harry.
HD: Well, I joined the Air Force in 1941 after three months in the Territorials Army Unit [unclear] I didn’t like the way the Army was run so I joined the Air Force and I did five months correspondence course after having medicals and been accepted and then did five months in aerodrome defence and further studying navigation and meteorology and things like that. Then two months with Tiger Moths learning to fly initially. Posted to Canada and did the four months flying Avro Ansons and after, at the end of that period received my wings and I got my commission. Then did two months as a second navigation trainee in Summerside in Prince Edward Island. It was a lovely place to be and we flew, again we flew in Avro Ansons as navigators. At the end of that course they told us that losses in Coastal Command were very light and that we were all now posted to Bomber Command. So that was virtually a waste of time. Posted then to England. Came over on the Aquitania with about ten thousand American troops and after a few weeks at Brighton on England’s south coast I went to Kidlington just north of Oxford and flew Airspeed Oxfords for four months familiarisation with English conditions and a little more pilot experience waiting to go into OTU. Several times we had leave and I was able to visit places in the south, southwest and again up into Cumberland. Lake District. We were posted to Market Harborough OTU on Airspeed Oxfords and that was where we picked up most of our crew. Found the Wellingtons were quite a lot harder to fly than the smaller planes. Quite enjoyed it and we became quite a close-knit crew.
Interviewer: Can you tell us about the crew members?
HD: Well, I watched Ron Goebel do the Times crossword puzzle. He was posted as a bomb aimer although he had been an air observer which meant that he was also a navigator and I thought if he was as good as that and he could do the Times crossword puzzle he would be a very good crewman and we got along very well together. He was a flying officer at the time too. Then the next day we picked up Ted Kneebone as navigator. He was introduced to me by another New Zealand pilot who had crewed up with one of his friends and Ted was a small dapper man who had been top of his course. So, Ron has also been top of his course and so had I. So, we had the nucleus then of a crew and by lunchtime Ted had sorted out George, again the top of his course and he also had eighteen months experience on ground wireless operating from the Middle East. George was a big strong Scots and I liked him from the very beginning. By afternoon teatime Ted had also, Ted by the way he was a sergeant navigator, gave us access to the other aircrew members in the Sergeants. He had picked out Taffy Price, a short [unclear] Welshman. A lovely little chap with a great sense of humour and because he had a good friend in Potts, also from Wales we crewed up with the two gunners and that made up our six man for the rest of the OTU, Market Harborough and Husbands Bosworth which Bosworth was one battlefield. Do you know of the battlefield of Bosworth?
[pause]
HD: Yes. Well, that was, that was where Husbands Bosworth was and we finished our OTU and we were then posted to Wigsley just north of Lincoln and very much a satellite station and on to Stirlings and we found that there, again it was we picked up our flight engineer who was a flight sergeant. So that completed the crew and now we were seven. We had quite a successful conversion to heavies. On one occasion we did a cross country to bomb Green Park in the middle of London which was lit up with the type of flares that you would see on an operation. So we were flying out over the Irish Sea down over Wales as we were making it a worthwhile cross country and we ran into a very heavy storm. There was a lot of thunder and lightning which we avoided. When we got to the Green Park it was quite clear so we did our practice run and photographed the markers, returned to base and found that we were the only crew that had done the job. The rest had all turned back. So we went. That was our final training run so we went on a fortnight’s leave and the others had to stay back and wait for another week until the weather had cleared and do that trip over again. So, we were very happy about that. Then we had quite a short conversion course on to the Lancaster. I think only about ten hours at Syerston. And from there we went to Number 9 Squadron on Bardney. We did two or three cross countries and then we started our operations.
Interviewer: You didn’t have a second dickie?
HD: No. Never at any time. I think second dickies were phased out because there were too many trainee pilots being lost. They couldn’t afford to lose two pilots and there was no real need for the second pilot because the flight engineer would offer the assistance the pilot needed. I thought that was quite sensible. The Lancaster at that time was worth about, well cost about sixty thousand pounds and they were designed for a short, a fairly short life. Which there were many of them [unclear] of course. Our first trip was over Bremen and Ted, the navigator looked out the window and he could see all this anti-aircraft fire coming up and he said, ‘I’m never going to look out again.’ [laughs] He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know [unclear] The second trip was to assist the Canadian Army which were approaching Flushing and were being bombarded by artillery across the other shore and so we went. I think we were successful there.
Interviewer: Do you remember what bombs you had on?
HD: I think they were twelve one thousand pounders. We were trying to destroy the [docks] and we were fairly successful. Our third trip was to Nuremberg when we dropped a twelve thousand pound blockbuster bomb. In fact, you read, during the war you would read in the papers that raids had taken place and twelve thousand pound bombs had been dropped but it was only 9 and 617 that were equipped to drop them. A special, a special bomb dropped from the plane and on that occasion the bomb failed to leave the aircraft so we had to go around again and had to circle around. It was fairly dicey because you were flying against the flow of the rest of the bomber force.
Interviewer: You actually bombed going backwards. Going towards the other bombers?
HD: No.
Interviewer: Around the bombers in the same direction.
HD: No. No. We, we made a very slow turning so that we were outside the bombing, the bombing stream and then we came in to join it and bombed in the same direction. Because we had already activated the camera we had no record of the second run and we never did know where the bomb actually landed or what it hit.
Interviewer: Did you tell me that you had a bit of fighter activity on that.
HD: Yes. As we came around to come in the second time we found that there was a fighter in the distance. It didn’t actually shoot at us but the rear gunner did see the fighter and we took some evasive action. Our fourth trip was to [unclear] and that was successfully bombed. And our fifth trip was to the Dortmund Ems Canal and that was our last trip.
Interviewer: Just on that, on that night there was a dance going on in the, a New Year’s Eve dance it was on the camp. Were you at that?
HD: No. No, I wasn’t there. I was either, I can’t remember clearly but I was either in the Mess or the billet and the tannoy system covered the whole station [unclear] and it was getting along for midnight when they announced that ten crews were required for morning, briefing the next morning. So that was [unclear]
Interviewer: And they gave the names of the pilots.
HD: They gave the names of the pilots and said that, the crews were named by the pilots’ names so that everybody heard that and then there was a break in the morning, five forty something for an early morning breakfast and the briefing.
Interviewer: What kind of breakfast did you have before you go on a raid?
HD: Well, it was usually porridge, cereal, bacon and eggs. [unclear] not at other times and at other times quite often we would get through if you were on night flying well then you would have your eggs, bacon and eggs for breakfast then.
Interviewer: When you came back. What was the briefing like? Did they say it was going to be difficult or —
HD: This particular briefing, no. They said that, they covered the whole plan of the operation with the flying [unclear], what the target was and what you hoped to achieve by bombing it. The weather conditions. Fighter escort if there was any. Any anti-aircraft guns that they knew about and routes in and routes home but that was more for the navigator. When you were briefed you were briefed separately. The gunners would be briefed by the gunnery officers. What loads they were carrying. The bomb aimer would be briefed in a separate briefing. He would have all his target markers and what he was looking for on the run in and that sort of thing. The navigator was given all the courses. Coordinates and things like that. So the pilots were briefed separately.
Interviewer: Who would brief you? Would it be the CO or the —
HD: It would be —
Interviewer: The 9 Squadron CO.
HD: Yes. It was the main squadron CO with the Met officer and the armaments officer come and tell us what load we had on board. That sort of thing.
Interviewer: When that was over and you was, you had to draw your clothing did you ever draw a pistol at all?
HD: Never. No.
Interviewer: No.
HD: The only time I was ever issued with a pistol was on D-Day and pilots were issued with a pistol and the two gunners were issued with Browning machine guns because they thought that the Germans, we were on a training station at the time, an OTU, they thought the Germans might make a counter attack and attack airfields even with parachutists to try and stop the air support. It never happened so we were only, we only had the pistols for perhaps a week and then we handed them in then.
Interviewer: Yeah. And then you, on this particular day then you went out to the crew bus and you went out to your aircraft.
HD: Yes. It was just breaking day.
Interviewer: What kind of weather was it?
HD: Fog plus a frost. We’d been, we’d had weeks, several weeks of fog and it was freezing fog which had stopped us from flying for probably at least a fortnight. We hadn’t been off the air, I mean off the ground. Anyway, on this particular day we were the first off. [unclear] the plane was a bit difficult to get off the ground because of the, we think because of the, some residue of frost steaming the windows. But in the end we took off and it was a normal climb and it was a fine day. It wasn’t a bad day at all. But the two aircraft that followed us both lost [unclear] in one wing and they both crashed. In one case there was one survivor. The rest of them were killed when the bombs went off. And the other plane it lost two [unclear] the pilot closed the other two down and landed straight down in the woods.
Interviewer: Do you know what caused the two to —
HD: The generally accepted theory was that the tanks not being quite full and there was a certain amount of moist air in the tanks and that the moisture froze and blocked the [pause] the, where the petrol leaves the tank or the intake. But the trip to the target was easy. We climbed to ten thousand feet and it was clear all the way. [unclear] I didn’t feel cold. We had a lovely run up to the target and we joined the bomber stream and I felt certain that it was such a perfect run we were certain to be successful with our bombing run and the plane was flying very very steady. Absolutely straight and true. That was the, was the absolute key to accurate bombing was that the pilot must fly absolutely straight. Any evasive action would throw the bombs off and allows the bombsight to be, stay steady too. Do you want me to talk about what happened then? Well, the moment our bombs dropped the pilot could always feel each one go because if I was to trim the plane you could feel a little jerk in the control column when each bomb went. We were carrying twelve one thousand pound bombs. We dropped over the period of a second and each one would be released a tenth of a second after the next one and they would land about ten to fifteen yards apart. That’s what they called a stick of bombs. So the twelve bombs we dropped and I thought [unclear] reached down to trim the aircraft as quickly as I could and we were hit by a hundred and five millimetre shell. The aircraft was filled with smoke. Couldn’t see anything for smoke. The engines were hit again and the second shell blew off the nose cone, blew off the canopy above the pilot which was Perspex and I think the first shell must have struck near the mid-upper turret and then set the turret on fire. Some turrets were operated by hydraulic oil and of course from then on we had no hydraulics because the hydraulic oil was burning. Then with the, they seemed to think that we were also having oxygen tube blown then so there was oxygen [unclear] feeding into the fire which made it almost like a torch and the whole back end of the plane was on fire. But I didn’t know anything about this and I think, in fact I know that I unconscious for a short time during which we lost two thousand feet in height. When I regained control we were down to eight thousand feet with the port inner motor on fire, no intercom, no radio, all our electrical gear instruments were out because of the electrical system had been somehow damaged and all our trim controls were gone. The next thing I can remember was Ron and Wilf coming up from the bomb bay. They had tried to bale out but there was such a gale blowing through the plane that they were blown back and couldn’t get out. Both of them lost their parachutes and one was burned and one was blowing up through the pilot’s canopy. When we landed we found that we were still towing the parachute. It had been snagged on something. Some protrusion from the plane. So we towed [unclear] the bomb doors were open and that caused a lot of drag so we were losing height roughly at a hundred feet a minute. I stopped looking at the metre. [unclear] and started following the [unclear] but that was very difficult because I had to force the control column forward to balance against the loss of the bombs, the loss of weight and with two motors on the right hand side and one on the port it was safe to say it was [unclear] had to take all that strain and I used the left knee to help get the control column and was able to have one hand free to handle some of the other controls. We flew like that for roughly forty minutes. When we were in a generally westerly direction I could see the River Rhine and once we crossed that I knew that we would be behind friendly lines in say five to ten minutes. At that stage we, our starboard inner motor packed up and we completely lost power. I don’t know why. It hadn’t been on fire. So I think that one stopped it. That made the plane a lot easier to fly but by this time we were losing height [unclear] up again and another five or ten minutes we were picked up by a group of, a flight of Spitfires that tried to lead us into the aerodrome at Heesch. That was a forward Spitfire base. We found that I didn’t think we were going too. I didn’t know how far we would have to go and we were losing height so rapidly that I could see a possible landing place where there was an open area with no trees and so I simply closed the [unclear] completely and put it straight down on the ground wheels up, flaps us because with no hydraulics I could not put the wheels down. And when we came to rest we were only ten fifteen yards from a plantation of trees.
Interviewer: Did the, did this squadron of Spitfires, did it tell you that there were some high-tension wires?
HD: Yes. That’s right. There was a main high-tension wire. We were heading straight for it and the Spitfire suddenly pulled up. It was flying just in front and to the left so when it pulled up I saw the wires and, or the pylons and I pulled up over them and realised that we were so low that, and losing height, that we just had to get on to the ground as quickly as possible. So the opportunity was clearly taken.
Interviewer: So there was no doubt you were going to, you told them that you were going to go in.
HD: No. No. I told them nothing. We had no intercom. The gale blowing through the plane you couldn’t possibly talk to anyone.
Interviewer: Were you aware of what was happening behind you?
HD: None.
Interviewer: [unclear]
HD: I had no idea at all what was happening because behind me was a piece of armour plating and I was tied in. Pretty thoroughly tied in with the harness. So that I had no idea.
Interviewer: So when you crashed the others bolted out. How did you get out of the plane?
HD: Well, I undid my parachute and my harness and just stood on the pilot’s seat, leaned out through the canopy above, slid down on to the nose cone and [unclear] on the ground from there. That was quite a jump.
Interviewer: The top of the canopy had been blown off and you had just like a windscreen
HD: I had a windscreen. I very luckily had a windscreen. Yes.
Interviewer: Yeah. What happened when you got to the floor? Did you see then the crew and how badly injured they were?
HD: Yes. When I got down the rest of the crew were already out of the plane and George was coming towards me and I didn’t recognise him at all he was so badly burned. He had no trousers on and he was blackened. Most of his body was black. The rest of the crew had covered him with parts of a parachute and they laid beside him to try and keep him warm. They did the best they could for him.
Interviewer: Did he speak to you at all?
HD: Yes. He said, ‘Good landing skipper.’ And that was just about the last words that I heard him speak because Ted and I recognised George was in such a bad way we took one each side of him and took him to a cottage that was only about fifteen hundred yards away. They got him inside the cottage, laid him down on the floor and Ted went back and got the, he got back into the aircraft and get the emergency first aid kit and I gave him a shot of morphine and —
Interviewer: And by this time had, Ron had gone for help had he?
HD: Ron had gone off to get help and before he’d gone very far he was picked up by an RAF regiment and the Spitfires had already notified the station at Heesch and the ambulance was on its way. So we were, we had an ambulance there within a quarter of an hour. And Wilf had escorted the gunners to another house where they were looked after there. I didn’t realise how badly burned the gunners were because they were, their clothing was much better than ours because they were in open turrets and they had to have electrically heated flameproof clothing but Ernie Potts had been unconscious in the fire and what killed him I think was that he was breathing in flames and his lungs had been [unclear] and he only lived fifteen hours. Taffy, the rear gunner his injuries were all to his head, back and ears.
Interviewer: George must have been a strong person then to have got him out of his —
HD: He was. George. George, it was, it was amazing that George could have got Ernie out of his turret and he took him to the rear of the plane and decided with Taffy he got him out of the rear turret. Taffy turned his turret and had to do it manually to bale out and when he tried to bale out one of the things he had to do was to take his helmet off. When he took his helmet off the flames were coming down the side of the plane and burned him so badly that he didn’t bale out and George saw his predicament and got him out of there and left him with Ernie. Then George came forward, across the damaged the bottom of the plane, crawling along the side and to tell the others that honestly we would have to land. They couldn’t bale out. George was so badly burned that he eventually, I thought he was going to survive but he died through the smoke.
Interviewer: And you were in hospital just for a short time and then got back to England.
HD: Yes. Ted and I were not badly injured at all. My left eye and in the x-ray they thought I might have a [unclear] and Ted and I had two, two nights I think in a very good peacetime hospital at [unclear]. We were flown back to a hospital in [unclear] or something and I was there for two or
Interviewer: What did you do when you came back to Bardney? Where did you go for your sick leave then?
HD: I went to Glasgow. I had relatives in Glasgow and they looked after me.
Interviewer: When you came back to Bardney —
HD: I came back to Bardney for the best part of two months waiting for another posting.
Interviewer: What did you when you when you were at Bardney?
HD: Precious little. I did do some flying with a second pilot on cross countries and made a few landings mainly to keep my hand in. I was given the opportunity of saying whether I would like to carry on. I could have picked up another crew who had lost a pilot but I thought that I would rather than start with another crew I would transfer to the Light Night Striking Force on Mosquitoes. I’d always had a fancy for the Mosquitoes and the air vice marshall at Waddington said, ‘If that’s what you want we will put an application in.’ And eventually it came through. So I then did two months on Airspeed Oxfords and three months on learning to fly Mosquitoes and was posted to 692 Squadron. By this time the war against Germany was over. We were training to go out to, against Japan and they dropped the atomic bomb and we were disbanded shortly afterwards. There was no longer a need to go out and I was home by Christmas Day 1945.
Interviewer: Home by Christmas Day.
HD: Yes.
Interviewer: Did they fly you over? Back to New Zealand or —
HD: No.
Interviewer: You went on a boat.
HD: No. I went on the, one of the P&O liners, the Mooltan and we went out as far as Port Said, back to Taranto, picked up five thousand New Zealand soldiers. Back to Port Said for another seven days. And then we called at Colombo and we called at Perth in Australia on the way home and I think it was five or six weeks before we got back to New Zealand. But we were very close to getting home for Christmas.
Interviewer: Yeah. Do you remember much about your spare time in Bardney. You told me you had a bike and used to ride around and a lot of the time you’d just leave it at the entrance of the Bramley’s house, the school master or stayed in the Mess.
HD: Yes. Well, [unclear] and I visited the Bramley’s frequently. Mrs Bramley was very motherly and we were made to feel welcome there and [unclear] for six weeks on call day or night there and we had nine days leave. I spent quite a lot, a few weeks up in Cumberland [unclear] around there. I tried to keep myself as fit as I could physically because it was a very active life from sitting around a lot. And I also visited relatives in Glasgow which was like a second home. I also visited a home where I was very welcome between Callander and Stirling in Scotland.
Interviewer: Yeah. When you said that you went to a film show at Bardney where all 617 were invited for the Tirpitz, following on the Tirpitz raid.
HD: Yes, I was, I walked in with the other pilots although I think I was [unclear] because I wasn’t on the raid and I wasn’t supposed to be there but it was a photographic reconnaissance plane had flown with the other main bombers on the Tirpitz raid and I think it must have lasted twenty or thirty minutes, the film. It was a movie film plus stills and contained a vivid record of that particular raid which had been so [unclear] 9 Squadron went eventually but that was their third attempt to reach the target. It was still there and they had either failed to bomb or [unclear]
Interviewer: Is there anything else you remember about Bardney when you were off duty?
HD: I can remember the Nightingales at night. I never, I never heard of nightingales before but they had a beautiful song and for the few months there because Bardney was surrounded by woods.
Interviewer: So up to the 1st of January your time at Bardney was happy.
HD: Yes. Oh yes. Living on an operational station was the best part of being in the Air Force because of the relaxed, free and easy life there. Not the strict discipline that they had on the training stations. So everybody enjoyed their off-duty times on bombing stations.
Interviewer: You said, I was showing some photographs and you saw a chap called Rex [unclear] who was also a pilot at Bardney. He was also from New Zealand and I think you met him.
HD: He came to see me oh two or three years ago. He lives up in the North Island. I’m in the South Island. We’re a long way apart but because Rex [unclear] he took me in a Lancaster from Bardney to Upper Heyford to the OTU. That was the last time I’d been in a Lancaster until oh for many years.
Interviewer: Thank you very much, Harry.