W D Tweddle. Tape One

W D Tweddle. Tape One

Doug Tweddle undertook his initial pilot training in South Africa. On return to the UK, he attended Operational Training Unit at Upper Heyford where he selected his crew. The crew were then posted to 9 Squadron at RAF Bardney. Doug was the only survivor of four second dickie trips. He describes also the relationship between aircrew and ground crew. Doug was given a DFC for being involved in all three attacks on the battleship Tirpitz.

A second copy of this recording is available.

1982

01:33:06 audio recording

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ATweddleWD[Date]-010001, ATweddleWD[Date]-010002, ATweddleWD[Date]-010003, ATweddleWD[Date]-010004

I have here your letter of the 21st of June but I hope you will excuse me for replying in this fashion but I find that it’s much easier to record onto a tape when I’m using my logbook and various other items of reference than attempting to commit it all to print. I’ve got your letter in front of me at the moment and I’m trying to put into the order the information which you request about Y-Younger. You say you’d like the, the history of the Lanc, the actual flight when it was built, sorties and what have you. I don’t know whether you have come across the books written by Garbett and Goulding. They are pretty well known. Garbutt and Goulding brought out, “The Lancaster,” with details of a technical nature, the list of all aircraft built, where built and what have you. They then moved on to the “Lancaster at War,” and finally the “Lancaster at War Number 2” and there are references to [WS-Y] in all of these copies. For example, on page twenty six of the Lancaster at War 2 there is a description by Jack Sheppard, the Canadian [unclear] and carried out the checks. I mention that particular bod and Jack’s name because when I arrived at 9 Squadron of course I didn’t have my own aircraft to fly. The new boy had to sort of cut his teeth on other things. I went to Bardney on the 4th of July ’44 and did my second dickie trip almost immediately. In fact, when Pilot Officer Bradwell who is a survivor, I met him at the last reunion and we went to a trip on Creil where the flying bomb caves were used for storing V-1s and what have you. It was all very new to me and I had a very rough night and as it worked out Bradwell was on his second last trip. He went the following night and was shot down by night fighters but he did in fact survive and one of his crew was killed, the bomb aimer and I met him recently when 9 Squadron handed over their standard from the Vulcans to the Tornadoes at Waddington. The first occasion that I met Bradwell since I went on that trip with him. Just a bit of a preamble to say that on the 4th of July onwards until, oh when I started to operate myself with my own crew on the 14th of July. On that occasion I flew Lancaster Z and we did an operation on Villeneuve-Saint-Georges which is a marshalling yard very close to Paris. I think it might make sense if I get my scattered brain organised and take it up from the angle of the members of my crew and how we got together before we arrived at Waddington, to Bardney. I have a couple of photographs which I’m enclosing for you. I suppose you can as you suggest make copies and what have you. I’d be pleased to have them back but there is no panic. You can take all the time you wish. I’m also going to send you the copy of the Profile publications, the Avro Lancaster 1. It’s number 65 and I’m pretty certain that it’s, it’s from this copy that most of the references to WS-Y have been taken. In the centre page coloured spread is a plan, painting, drawing, layout of a Lanc and it is ours and as such a lot of people have used it on models and other things as being an authenticated one. So you’ll see that when I get it to you. This publication I assume that one can get copies, back copies with details of the publisher and on the copy but I would in fact, it’s the only one that I have so I would prefer it back when you’ve carried out the copying that you would like to do from it. The, my crew which you see on the photograph standing under the nose of WS-Y reading from left to right Charlie Heath, he’s my engineer. He’s the oldest man in the crew. Charlie must be seventy three now. We’ve been down to, we had a crew reunion this summer which I’ll tell you about later and we went down to see Charlie. He lives at Paignton. He’s showing signs of getting on a little but I think he’s good for a bit yet. But we all, we started off as an all-NCO crew for the first five trips. The technique in 5 Group Bomber Command when the honourable Sir Ralph Cochrane was the chief, old Cocky didn’t like the idea of NCO crew. He felt that the captain must be commissioned and probably a flying officer at least. But we started as an NCO crew. After five trips I was commissioned. I was never a [unclear] as I remember. I was a pilot officer, acting flying officer almost immediately and was an acting flight lieutenant very soon after that. So then after about ten sorties they commissioned the navigator and bomb aimer, interviewed the rest of the crew and progressively they moved in otherwise. So I wound up, I started off with an all-NCO crew and wound up with myself a flight lieutenant, three flying officers, two warrant officers and a flight sergeant. Anyway, Charlie was our engineer and he was the least experienced from an airborne point of view having been trained in England. A hell of a good man who did precisely what I asked him and we struck up quite a relationship and we made it. A modest quiet man. My navigator was Cas Shields. Edward Shields. He was a Leeds accountant and if you want anything better, if you want anyone better for you than a navigator than Yorkshire accountant I doubt whether you’ll find them. They’re not mean. They’re just careful and Cas who was called incidentally Cas because one of his close navigating friends was so brilliant that they were known as [unclear] and the heavenly twins and that nickname stuck. He joined me and the rest of them in the OTU at Upper Heyford where we flew Wellington 3s and 10s and Cas saw the tour out with me and a few more afterwards. Came out twice on the trips. Put his head out from behind the black curtain once I think over Munich and was scared by what he saw and once over the Tirpitz on the final sinking when he looked out to see the old ship which was then showing signs of beginning to roll over. Cas seemed to think that as long as he was behind his black curtain he was in a world of his own and not really concerned with what was going on around him. I suppose that’s what made him so accurate. But it was bloody infuriating when he would come on the intercom and say, ‘I want you to turn on to 220 and you’re ETA is —’ so and so so and so, ‘And a quarter.’ With a churchlike voice that to me seemed to ignore everything that was happening and I’m very grateful. My bomb aimer Jack Singer, JW Singer was a Canadian from Ottawa and I got Jack because all the intake of bomb aimers to OTU were Canadians. So the [pause] he was an Air Canada man. He actually retired recently and I had him over for a holiday about a month ago. He did go home when they’d completed a tour. So when we decided to take up the offer of an extended tour which was offered to PFF and 617 and 9 that was to complete forty five trips and then not fly again if you so wished rather than go off to be an instructor at the end of your thirty trips. But we decided, the crew said whatever I fancied they were with me. So we in fact continued and we did thirty seven before the bell was rung at the end. Anyway, Jack went home at thirty back to Canada and I selected a new bomb aimer, Doug Jennings who had been shot down on his first tour in Belgium. Evaded very successfully. Stayed with the Underground and when our land forces moved into Brussels surfaced and came back in time to join me and do several more before the end. My wireless operator was Paddy Carson. I realised what a marvellous wireless op, always on frequency, considered to be the smartest wireless op in the Group but he [unclear] and had a [days’ beard] at any time. Paddy typified these really good-natured men from the top end of that little country. He was the one man of the crew that I haven’t as yet been able to contact. The others were all in touch and seeing each other frequently. But Paddy married a girl in Scotland, I think around Dundee and despite some enquiries, and I’ve just recently had an advert in the RAF news in the, “Where Are You Now?” Column, I can’t as yet trace him. I haven’t given up hope but he well could be the group telecommunications engineer for either the Red Hand of Ulster or the IRA depending on his fancy. He’d be a good one. At the end of the top row myself. My mid-upper Alan Foot [pause] I’ve got the order wrong. Looking at the photograph on the left is Ken Mallinson, the rear gunner. He’s at present living in Blackpool. He’s the [pause] works for the House of Fraser. He’s the boss of their furniture group. We held a club reunion at his house last month and he is a quiet man. Never came out of his turret under any circumstances and that included the thirteen hour trips to Russia and over the Tirpitz. He would never leave his turret and said little and never fired his guns in anger which applied to the mid-upper. I think we had two, two of the best pairs of eyes in 5 Group which it may surprise you that they weren’t firing their guns in anger but quite a lot of crews would probably claim that distinction. Alan, he came originally from Hull as did the mid-upper Alan Foot. Now, Alan’s quite a small, a youngish chap in every way and we kept in touch for the first ten years I suppose with cards at Christmas and what have you but then I lost him for probably about the next twenty. When we were going to the Memorial Reunion at Bardney for the unveiling of the Memorial eventually another author and I think they called him Cooper, the 617 man, writer he traced him for me and he was living about one mile away from the address that I had previously at home. Well, we have since got together with himself and his wife and he’s back in the fold. So those are the crew as they line up in the photograph standing under the nose of Y-Younger. The other photograph is of them sitting on the nose and around the cockpit. Not too easy to pick out, particularly those ones behind me in the seat but you’ll, you’ll be able to do that. I met these lads at OTU Upper Heyford. You probably know more about the system than I do but under the Empire Training Scheme we were all individually trained at various points and gathered together. For example, I did my flying training in what was then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and I flew Tiger Moths at Induna, Oxfords at Kumalo near Bulawayo and came back to this country in ’43. Went to near Derby for a fortnight and then for about sixteen weeks near Church Lawford near Rugby where I flew Oxfords on Beam courses and a lot of reconversion. At that time the Empire Training Scheme was in full blast and we really were running into a logjam of crews so the courses had a tendency to stretch out. From, from Lawford we went to Upper Heyford where the Americans are now. We had no runways then and we converted on to Wellington 3s and 10s and these were the Wimpy with the Hercules engine. Very very powerful. You had to be so careful when you run them not to tip the nose forward because of the props. They had about a sixteen hundred horsepower engine and when you consider the original Wimpy with its original [unclear] of about nine hundred odd it was quite an [unclear] It shook and wallowed and the wings moved up and down but the good old qualities, it was geodetic. It was quite an incredible aircraft. I enjoyed flying it and as a crew we began to get together. We’d get together incidentally quite almost by accident. We were assembled in an apron when we first arrived. Addressed by the wingco flying, a man called Shorthouse who had the most brilliant sort of way of introducing himself. He stood on the platform. He said, ‘My name is Wing Commander Shorthouse. Not shithouse and not short arse and don’t you lot forget it.’ He then went on to say that for a fortnight we would be on joint studies and in a fortnights’ time we would be reassembled. He would call out the pilot’s name who would then tell him the members of his crew. So the selection was left to natural forces. For example, I picked up my rear gunner, original rear gunner by running last and second last in the cross country. I met Shields, my navigator in the shower and having established we were both north countrymen after five minutes chatting we got together. I’m not sure how we got the Canadian. Probably out of a Craps game. But that was how you, you sorted out. The incredible thing was according to the people who were around there for years that when the last fourteen who never got together were put into two crews they always turned out to be not very good. I notice from the Record of Service list I omitted to say that before I went to Upper Heyford and Lawford I’d done about twelve weeks at Bridgnorth at a GR School. Reconnaissance. At the end to fly on Flying Boats. In fact, my formula was I was flying the biggest thing you’d got with the most engines. That wasn’t bravado. It was common sense. I worked on the argument that the more engines you’ve got the more you can do without and later on Lancasters of course we proved that on several occasions. Try to avoid but we were always conscious that one engine when it stopped and take us into the proverbial brick built place that went down very vertically. So the GR school at Bridgnorth was highly concentrated navigation of a very complicated kind. You were flying and keeping station on slow moving convoys and moving back to aircraft carriers that were no longer where they were when you left them. This kind of plotting. It stood me in very good stead because later when I was establishing my relationship with my navigator who assumes that everyone who aren’t navigators are stupid I’d had the good sense to hold on to these “dry swims,” as they are known in the trade and while Cas was bragging about some plotting I slipped him a couple of these sheets of “dry swims” and it quite took his breath away. So from that moment onwards he allowed me to use the computer to figure out winds and odd simple things. So it was a very good relationship because it meant that he knew that I appreciated what he was doing in detail and that had a lot to do with that. I’m certain we lost ourselves infrequently. From Church Lawford we did, incidentally we did most of our flying from the field at Barford St John which is on the road to Banbury Cross and I flew with an instructor who I shared actually with Wing Commander Bazin who turned out to be my CO later and was an original Battle of Britain fighter boy and was the CO of 9 during the most of our time. Incidentally later he went back to the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, 607 County of Durham Squadron on Spits and Vampires flying out of RAF Ouston near Newcastle and invited me over in 1950 and I was his adjutant for seven years until the Duncan Sandys, that very badly informed son in law of Churchills disbanded the Auxiliary Air Force in 1957. Because, to quote him there would be no more fighter pilots. Everything in the future was going to be by rockets. How stupid he was. The, so I saw quite a bit of Jim later although he subsequently gave up command there and I think he’s now down living near Doug Jennings my second bomb aimer somewhere down at Weybridge. But he doesn’t come to reunions. I’m not quite certain why. He must be getting on in age but I believe there is something deeper than that. So when we left Heyford after converting onto Wellingtons and beginning to pull ourselves together as a crew we did all the usual things. Cross countries around Britain, bombing, all the practices that one carries out. We then went for a short while to Scampton non-flying for two or three weeks waiting for our posting to Con Unit where we had the misfortune from then to go to 1654 Con Unit at Wigsley where we flew Stirlings. And that was where the misfortunes came into it because by this time Stirlings, or the flying submarine as everyone knew them possibly because they were built by Shorts but probably because they looked more like a bulge when you were inside and obviously the chief designer must have been one of those nautics because instead of tumbler switches he used great big levers and wheels. Incredible. When you climbed in a Stirling at the back door the first two rooms you walked through seemed to be perfectly empty except there was a mid-upper turret stuck in the roof of one of them. One just kept walking forward and then you came across the engineer’s room and unlike the Lancaster he didn’t stand or sit alongside you he had a room of his own and it was a mass of electrics, tanks, switches and one was always fortunate to get it off the ground. The incredible thing was that once airborne and you’d got all the necessary pieces tucked away it flew beautifully and could do any wrong turns and I quite liked it. But the amount of unserviceability and the consequent danger was really terrifying. It was a measure that of sixteen crews at Con Unit we lost four so when I said in an earlier part of this tape that the crew and I opted to go to forty five rather than be an instructor I had in the back of my mind time in those Stirlings. As it worked out they got rid of them and we all flew Lancasters but I had no ambitions to go back to a Stirling. That was at Wigsley which is now a disused field not far from Lincoln. In fact, following the Lincoln Memorial [pause] no, following the Lincoln handing over the standard on the last occasion Margaret and I decided to locate Wigsley and we actually drove out. Drove out on to the old field and the tower was still there and Nissen huts and animals and farm and what have you. Another place that I didn’t fall in love with at all and I was very pleased to leave it. From Wigsley we went to Syerston which is near Nottingham and that was the [pause] the 5 Group Lanc Conversion Course. Well, I got to Syerston about June 20 and 21 of 1944 and we didn’t do a lot of flying there. Actually, to convert from a Stirling to a Lancaster was a joy. You had switches, tumbler switches instead of levers. Your navigator, your engineer was actually sitting next to you and the whole thing was a much more simple aircraft than the Stirling in every way. It did everything a great deal better. So the total with flying at Syerston probably not more than seven or eight maybe ten hours both dual and solo and the, we left about the end of June, June the 27th to go to Bardney and report to the Squadron. One nice little touch that the Air Force did, I don’t know whether this was general but they did it at Syerston for the first time we were given a big envelope with the crew details in it. The details of the crew’s training handed over in a big envelope which you handed over to the adjutant at 9 Squadron when you arrived. The envelope was unsealed but the adjutant at Syerston said, ‘You will of course hand it over to your new adjutant sealed.’ Which I suppose was their way of saying if you want to do a little bit of private reading you can do. I was a bit of a coward. I licked the envelope and stuck it down. What I don’t know about these people but what someone else thinks they know about them won’t be a great deal of help to me. We’d better find out the way we are doing now and that was it. So I never pried into the judgements as to my crew and I never regretted that one. Anyway, on the 30th of June we came up to the Squadron and as usual then we did some cross countries around the country. The Isle of Man, St Tudwalls, [unclear], the usual around that bay starting point. The usual places. Five or six hours. Sometimes less. Just to sort of get one’s hand in and then an initial check with Wing Commander Petty who was the chief test man of the Group. I think he went on later to be quite a big man in, in the aviation branch. Civil aviation. Anyway, he did an additional check with me on the 4th of July. He must have been reasonably happy because as I said previously I did my second dickie trip with Bradwell on the 4th to the Creil. The [unclear] caves where they were storing flying bombs. The idea of a second dickie trip was that at least the crew could say well the old man has been before albeit once. But I became the only survivor of four second dickies who arrived about the same time as I did. What I’m saying is the other three went down quickly and it was figured out and I think correctly that to introduce a stranger into a crew on an operation to give him experience was one thing but what it did to the crew? Whether it disturbed them or was off-putting one can’t be certain except that having lost three out of four and I was the fortunate fourth they decided that they would do, this practice would cease. That the second dickie trips from then on were out. Well, from the 5th of July to the 10th we were practice bombing at night. 9 Squadron were always keen about practice bombing and undoubtedly this was the reason why they were selected later to work with 617, the Dambusters, on the Tallboy projects because the accuracy of our bombing was a pretty important consideration. That was until the 11th, the 13th of July, 14th of July on practice bombing and ferrying and familiarisation and we were down for our first trip on the 14th of July to this Villeneuve St George which is a marshalling yard as near to Paris I suppose as one could bomb because Paris had been declared an open city. But we certainly dropped bombs in the suburbs and that was one of them. Seven hour trip with my own crew. The first one out. Very average and quiet I should think. Reasonably quiet. We’d nothing to judge it by but we got back and I suppose we thought the next [unclear]. The next trip was the 18th of July. We began to run into a very very busy period. In fact, we were in great danger of completing our tour in about three weeks. We went out on the 18th of July in the daylight to Caen. You recall when Montgomery broke out of Caen where they were locked up a little after D-Day we at 5 Group were allocated to bomb the steelworks at Colombelles over the canal and our own troops were on the other side of the canal. I recall that we had a very very stiff briefing to say that anything on the other side of the canal was killing our own and we sent the Americans anyway within a radiance of ten miles to go and take the outlying fields and then we did the steelworks very thoroughly but as I understand that when it was over and our troops attacked across the canal the hun came out of the steelworks, the ruins of it and still gave them a hell of a time. So one wonders why. The same night, that Caen trip was in the morning about 6 o’clock I recall. The same night we were on a target at a place called Revigny, R E V I G N Y, which is about ninety miles east of Paris I think. One of these targets that few people seem to remember for its significance but one that we remember well because we lost a great deal of aircraft on that target and nearly all 5 Group and I recall when we had a couple of days when I was checking the intelligence lists of crews lost then practically all the people that had been to OTU with me and later at Con Unit were taken out on that sortie. So the bulk of them must have gone out with no more than four or five trips to their credit. Some probably less. We continued then on the 20th of July to Courtrai in Belgium which was I think another marshalling yard job and that was a night trip. Well, from July the 30th daily until the 24th, oh to the 16th of August we’d go every day. We operated every day and that if I recall was a magnificent summer. The weather was superb and as I explained before I didn’t at that stage have my own kite. I didn’t know why. At least on the, on the Courtrai trip I flew Johnny. On July 30th U-Uncle in [unclear] which is, we were doing then field support for the Army. Mass bombing. July the 31st [unclear] August the 1st [unclear] the 2nd [unclear] Castle. The 3rd of August Troissy. The 4th Etaples, and at that stage I was flying U, Roger, Victor, Sugar, Queenie and W. I’m reading out of my logbook now. That’s not my memory which has got this lot. August the 7th I did a ten sortie check with Flying Officer Warnock. This was the technique. 5 Group were worried about losing crews and found that they were losing quite senior crews. People had come back to do a second tour and people say like Bradwell who’d gone up on his last trip one doesn’t expect this and the implication was that these crews were becoming a little bomb happy and fatigued and/or careless. So they brought an experienced crew in and attached it to the Squadron and he flew a ten sortie check with you and later a twenty sortie check in which you flew around the local countryside. All the drills where functions were accurately checked by Warnock and his crew and he obviously sent in a confidential report on your ability and otherwise. I think that they found that some of the earlier crews had done the first tour of Wellingtons and came back and joined them and said well we weren’t out of touch yet. We were flying probably that earlier style and may be unfortunately paying for it. Anyway, on the, we began to get some west coast French ones on the E-boat pens at that stage and on the 7th of August in U-Uncle I went to Orleans. We used to go down over Brest and Belle Island down the, the west coast of France and these were daylights so we always had the problem of fighters but at that stage we hadn’t met any and on the 9th of August this is significant because we went to La Pallice. I’d got Y. Good old Y. I picked it up from Jack Sheppard. Jack had completed his tour. He was a Canadian, Jack Sheppard and was going back to Canada and been in my flight and I’d been their, the only survivor I suppose, second dickie I think Y. It wasn’t of course then known as Y-Youngers. It had no detail on it because it had only done about twelve sorties. It was quite a newish kite when I got it and I see from my log from August the 10th, 11th, 13th , 14th, 15th, 16th we went to Bordeaux where we were going after an underground petroleum dump [Ciboure]. And then two on Brest and these were absolute shockers. Daylights on Brest. We did our first collaboration with 617 on this. I always suspect it was an attempt by the Navy to get two of the best Squadrons wiped out in two days which was well within the ability of the Navy’s thinking. The, the Americans were trying to use, they were coming in to use Brest as their main port of embarkation for the continuation of the land war. The Germans had many —
[recording interrupted]
And the Navy thought well they would sink them across [unclear] the entrance to the harbour and block the port. We didn’t disagree with that thinking but two of the possible ships that they were going to use was an oil tanker and an old French battleship of the Courbet class which was, which was alongside the jetty. 617 were allocated the battleship and 9 were allocated the tanker. Well, what we didn’t know at the time but we found out the hard way was that the gunnery defences, ack ack at Brest were German Naval gunners who would have every small portion in the sky completely plotted. Generally when we were committed on our bombing run they didn’t fire. As you are aware if you want to drop a bomb very accurately you have to be flying straight and level and no variations. We were using Mark 14 air bombsights and normally after you dropped the bombs you keep on the same steady course until you get the photograph which is really synchronised to go with the bomb burst. So you were still committed to fly straight after the bombs have gone down. I’m talking now about targets of accuracy rather than a bulk area target. So on these particular ones that we were very careful about the shift sixteen thousand feet is very small. There was nothing at the time I recall. The only flying is two Brest trips. The only time I did drop them were armour piercing. Quite a small bomb with a solid steel nose on them for deep penetrative qualities. So there we were, 9 going for this tanker which is out in middle of the dock and when we were arriving I suppose at the point of the long drop the [unclear] opened up with a large marker shell which burst like a ball of orange coloured wool like the old thermogene wool burst in the sky. And undoubtedly that was absolutely on the bomb release point. We had to go through it at that particular point to drop them. Then immediately every gunner they had hammered it up the pipe to this point and quite a lot of us were hammered. We lost one [unclear] One of our Squadron. I recall this man. I believe he was born in China and he was flying down on my starboard side not far away and I think he got a complete one to himself because he just turned down and landed on the side of the dock and burned for a considerable time as we were leaving. My starboard inner the first thing I knew of the mid-upper, Alan reported that there was streaming back and it was the coolant from the radiator and I feathered to stop it and got off the target as quickly as I knew how. That was the 13th of August which I think was a Saturday. Not that one seemed to recall any day of the week. Although there were seven days in the week at times you couldn’t, you didn’t know whether it was Wednesday, Tuesday or Monday at all. It meant nothing really. But I think I recall that was a Saturday because the next morning we [pause] we went out to our dispersal. By this time I’d got the dispersal next to the hangar and that was a good move because I could walk to it instead of waiting to be carried out in the crew coach and I could go and see the ground crew and it was more , very convenient rather than be dispersed on the far side of the field. My ground crew led by a laddie called Corporal Bert Savage had built themselves to the small corrugated iron hut complete with flagpole and on the top of the flagpole we had our own flag. Y. And they were always there for a cup of tea and a brew and a chat. In fact, Bert Savage said that the kite belonged to him and that he allowed me to use it as long as I brought it back. But believe it or not if my landings as you remember my landings were off a little now and again and we seemed to lose the touch and then it comes back, you know. He used to play hell with me and ask me if I was trying to break the thing and whether he was a corporal and I was a flight lieutenant made no difference. He gave me a loud whipping. But he was a wonderful man and later in this little chat I’ll tell you how he proved it to me. It was when I went to see Bert the next morning he looked very down in the mouth and the ground crew and he said, ‘The same place, Doug. Same bomb load, same petrol load.’ These lads became very expert at forecasting targets by bomb loads and petrol. They knew the ranges. They knew the whole thing. Honestly the idea of going back there really probably a long time low because any work done we had set our tanker and the 617 had not visibly disabled the Courbet class and they were briefed to go back on that one. And we were going to go for another ship. I forget its type which the hun had pulled out in the middle of the water one assumes ready to take the place of a tanker. Well, what really upset us was that honestly there were thirty vessels there all suitable for sinking across the [unclear] which let’s face it it could have sunk any time it likes in any of the twenty four hours that we weren’t there and achieved the purpose and yet the Navy wanted us to go out, sink two. Go out sink two. On that argument they would have cleaned us out. It was just about the level of their thinking. You’ve probably gathered from the odd comment I’m not a nautic man and nothing I’ve seen or heard in the Falklands recently gets me to change my mind about them. They were [unclear] However, we went off on the, on the second Brest affair and we were delighted to experience very similar but the flak seemed lighter or less accurate. But I think we were probably just a little lucky. But we came off it and there was a tremendous sigh of relief. The following day I see we were at a place called Gilze. Gilze-Rijen actually. It’s an airfield in Holland and about that time both the Lancasters at night in the main force and the Americans during the day were getting regularly bothered with the fighters, night fighters and day fighters so someone decided at Bomber Command HQ and the American 8th that they would take out as many of these airfields as they could in one big swipe. So we were briefed to go to Gilze-Rijen, and the Americans took out the other fields and their bombers then regrouped on their own field or two [unclear] and I remember the concentration in this field. We dropped five hundred tonnes of bombs inside the peri track on the runways in two minutes. Now, when you think back that the Germans dropped about four, well nearly five hundred tonnes of bombs on Coventry spread over about seven hours you get some idea of the, of the progress of heavy bombing and the concentration and the timing. I recall once later seeing some photographs taken by the Dutch people who had actually come out of their houses and photographed this bombing from a fairly short distance which again is tribute to the intense accuracy of it. Whether it was effective is another point because by that time the hun was pulling out his aircraft and parking them probably well off the field, bringing them back at night when he wanted to use them and on top of that around that part of the world there had about ten thousand Russians with as many picks and shovels who promptly repaired any damage that was done by sheer manpower. So, and whether it, I didn’t notice in subsequent reports or even experience that we quietened down these night fighters to any significant degree. The 16th again, the following day we went to La Pallice which again is down on the French west coast and on this occasion I took up a new task of wind finding. Someone had worked out a device that you attached to the aileron and it was a small computer repair which if you flew over a fixed point on a fixed heading accurately, picked out a landmark then a two or three minutes, or maybe four minutes orbit, say to the left and came back over this point on the same run, same height, same speed you got a plot of which you could figure out a very accurate local wind. So we worked a system which we used later on Tirpitz and the main targets. We worked a system on 9. We’d appoint about four of the aircraft to wind find and we might, as we were later be wind leader and each of these aircraft sometimes they went a few minutes ahead to be able to do it in time. We produced this accurate wind, produced it from a one side setting and the wind leader would broadcast it to the force which meant that we were all dropping our bombs with one wind setting. Course and airspeed. Course and speed on the long sight. Which meant of course that assuming they were dropped accurately you’d got a much higher concentration of bombs and a much less scatter which was what you were trying to do. The quality of the wind when you got your wind sent in to you from the other wind finders your navigator knowing them personally and judging their ability and otherwise did an averaging ability judgement and emerged with an average wind which he felt was an accurate one. Or in turn he may discard the ones he was doubtful about but it proved itself to be a very very good idea. So that was the wind finding. And down at La Pallice where again we were chasing U-boat pens and E-boat pens. These concrete structures. On the west coast these U-boats used to come right in from the sea and sail right into these big, thickened U-boat pens and well, we found out of course that we could damage them with our Tallboys at a later date. Anything else up to that was no good at all. So I suppose that was really the beginning of sounding out this particular future task. I must have had some leave about then because I see there is a gap between the 16th and the 24th. Normally, interesting as an aside, our normal leave technique used to work out about nine days every five weeks. How we did it, when I was in the flights we used to do this. How they did it the four top crews on the Battle Order went on leave and you worked your way up. And of course if there were any fatalities that took out anyone who was ahead of you well you got your leave quicker. Well, living in Carlisle as I did at the time Margaret and I used to spend a lot of our leave in the Royal Oak at Keswick which is a delightful place. Good food, good drink, good company and we didn’t do a great deal. Walked down to Friars’ Crag a little. You probably know the Lake District having lived up here for a while and it was a nice change and there it was. Anyway, we went back and on the 24th we did a trip on Ijmuiden which again is in Holland, a port in Holland and it had its E-boat pens again and I’ve got some bombing frames. One of the intelligence girls did a [unclear] for me and stole most of my bombing plates. It might have been intelligence towards the end. So I have about twenty or more actual bombing frame photographs of these targets in which you can see the details. Particularly on Brest and Ijmuiden. Extremely accurate at sixteen thousand feet. You can see people stripping them out in little speedboats in the wake ferrying. Some of our, the right kind of magnifier and you could get a lot of information out of these. Anyway, on the, we were now on the sort of getting practice to set up for the Russian trip and there was a great deal of secrecy about this. Not a lot of people let in on this. But an interesting episode on the 6th of September. I didn’t have Y. I think Y was in for one of the majors, major overhaul about this time and I was flying U-Uncle and it had the annoying feature that when you were flying straight and level the spectacle of the old control was slightly starboard down and it annoyed me. So I got hold of the chiefy who was the rigger and he said, ‘Oh, I’ll sort that out for you. I’ll come down in the evening for you. We’ll get that right.’ We were trying to get these aircraft in top, top nick for this. This trip abroad. Anyway, while we were down there on a very light evening Cochrane came over the fence in his Percival Gull he used to fly with a white boiler suit and I saw the old man [unclear] Jim Bazin, the station master was Group Captain [MacMullan] he was a New Zealander. A hell of a nice chap. He and Jim Bazin [unclear] to a coffee and then they headed my way along with a lot of other people and I found out that he wanted to drop some practice bombs which was his wont and incidentally he was very very good. He ran a 5 Group bombing ladder in which everyone, wing commander and above, not below, a wing commander and above had to drop practice bombs and drop them accurately. Cochrane argued that if they couldn’t drop bombs how could he control people whose job it was to do exactly that. Sentiments that were right. But then Cochrane was always right. He came up and the bombing armourers came on and put some practice bombs on to my kite and the old man who was trying to come around the corner and whisper things to me when I had a lot to do. One was interesting. He said, ‘Tell your crew they must call you captain.’ He wouldn’t have all of these nicknames and other things we do. So that was interesting. But anyway we went home. He wanted me to go to Wainfleet on the Wash to drop bombs. Well, I wasn’t a particular user of Wainfleet. The range I knew inside out was at Tollerton which is again out towards Newark and Nottingham way. I knew that range pretty well but Wainfleet was a bit of a stranger to me so I thought I must get him off this one. So I said, ‘Well, I’ve been checking up with the weather briefing line. I think there is a sea fret coming in and if you take Wainfleet out then you may not get them down.’ He looked at me as if, ‘You’re pulling my leg aren’t you?’ But I had a good point. So he said, ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ I said, ‘We’re going to Tollerton.’ So with an aside to Jim Bazin I said, ‘For God’s sake Jim make sure the range officers are awake and they’re reset.’ So off we went to Tollerton and Cochrane got in the nose of my kite and took Jack Singer the bomb aimer through every screw and nut in the nose and eventually got his six practice bombs and all the separate headings and he was giving me corrections of course of one and two degrees as if one could do this very very easy. It was possible on a fine night. But anyway, he seemed very satisfied and when we got back to the Mess by the time I’d put the kite away and came in for my dinner he said, he bought me a drink and he said, ‘Go and eat.’ So I said, by that time of course everybody else had gone to the dining room so I sat down with him and he said, ‘Now, I’ll tell you about your crew.’ And he started to tell from the back and I don’t even recall that he saw Ken but he came forward through the aircraft, mid-upper, wireless op, navigator, engineer, bomb aimer and he gave me a character and an ability assessment of my own crew and he was absolutely right. It had taken me what? Eighteen months. Getting on a bit to find out all these things and this man had been airborne with me for about three quarters of an hour which has got to be some measure of his ability and why he became the boss of 5 Group. A wonderful man Cochrane. Completely ruthless but he would come and meet you in the morning when you came back off a trip, sit at your table on debriefing, listen to you and ask penetrating questions and if he thought your fight was valid he went into function right away. He was very very good. I met him subsequently at a reunion when he must have been [pause] oh well up to his late seventies, early eighties and along with his personal secretary who was another dear old soul, a female and he said, ‘Oh, my memory isn’t what it was.’ But it was pretty good even at that stage. A wonderful man. Anyway that was my little jaunt with Cocky and of course he was then briefing us for this Russian trip which we carried out on the 11th of September and I was flying this U-Uncle. We went off to Yagonik which is an island in the delta of the Dvina near Archangel. I think that’s right. It’s an enormous river. You sort of stand on the river, on the island bank in the estuary and you can hardly see the far banks. A Mississippi style thing. And we stood up to go there taking the Tallboy with us and I see from my logbook that it was eleven hours twenty. All night. We took off about teatime, six, something like that in the evening and the plan was they turned up the strength of the Gee chain, the northern Gee chain so that we’d get a good start. We were way past Scotland. Be there in Aberdeen going north and we went up as far as [Lafoten]. Then I think the additional strength probably kept as accurately up to then. We then turned across Norway, Sweden and Finland and flew across an enormous stretch of what seemed to be [unclear] once you get into Russia, Russia and Finland, over there. Came out of the White Sea and of course by that time it was coming around morning again. We were on I suppose pure DR. There was no aids to navigation in that part of the world. It was supposed to be, Russia was supposed to have a system which transmitted radio in ten degree segments which had a letter for each segment and the segment which you missed when you were listening was the segment in which you [unclear]. That didn’t sound a bad idea actually except that when we landed eventually it hadn’t been switched on. So that was a nice theory. But beyond that there was no clue. No help. In fact, they didn’t seem to know we were coming because the fire was, we got a burst of ack ack which didn’t please us because we were getting very tired wondering all about it and I emerged over Archangel. I could see the top of the masts of the ships coming out of the fog in the morning but I couldn’t see the decks and needless to say at that stage we had practically no fuel left and there was the bomb inside and you could hear kites on our own wavelength saying they were in trouble and they were going down through forced landing. So I told Paddy my wireless op to switch it off. I said, ‘We’ve got enough problems of our own without listening to other people who are in trouble.’ And at the point of really beginning to sweat believe it or not I saw some searchlights in daylight flashing about coming across our eyesight so I then saw a light aircraft like a Tiger Moth buzzing around. Between one thing and another I saw this aerodrome on an island and I went in and low flying around I had a look [unclear]. Nothing there and then when I got near enough and I saw one or two of them were friends standing over the noses. It was a grass field and I didn’t know the length of it but I got in, taxied over to this group of, I could then see there was a Liberator there. We had two Liberators accompanying us. They were supposed to go ahead of us and send them some [unclear] In fact, they came no sooner than we did so they were no good. And there we were at least two or three friends, both 617 and ourselves and we found out of course that we weren’t at Yagonik. We were at an airfield just a few miles down the, down the estuary but we were in very short flying distance. So then we set about trying to get some fuel. At least enough to take us up to the other place. You can imagine that the scene there. There was one of our kites come towards the hut standing up on its nose, there were two or three like me with no juice. The Russkies, most of whom incidentally were marine, they were their Naval crowd, back to the old argument again and the, everyone was in uniform. Some of the kids looked about twelve years old and it seemed that any non-commissioned types could grow their hair as long as they liked but the commissioned types were almost shorn, Telly Savalas style except that the, they all had two or three days growth of beard on them and none of them could speak English. I suppose few of us could speak Russian too but we various sort of pointing there and shouting they must have got the message that we wanted some, some juice. In the corner there was a small bowser and I thought well they have aircraft around this field there must be some kind of supply. I knew that one or two of our aircraft had Mossie overload tanks inside and there must be some juice left in there so that was bound to make sense. There was one, there was a couple of air traffic, squadron leader lads who had come up with the Liberators and we all tried to knock into their heads what we wanted and what we were doing because by then we had gathered that we couldn’t get ourselves a pint or two aboard. We’d fly up to Yagonik where we ought to have been. Anyway, we weren’t getting a lot of joy so I suggested that if I could get up to this Mossie tank in the Lanc that was dumped I’d put my own ruddy juice in. So I got my lads to hold this tank, overload tank and believe it or not we got a bucket and a rope and we were going to pour it in our own tanks. So when the Russkies saw us going to these lengths it seemed to dawn on them that if they let us have some juice out of the tanker and as it were, if he gave it out of the tanker they could take it back out of these overload tanks if he was worried about losing on the deal. But anyway to cut a long story short I eventually got enough put in and I thought well that would get me up [unclear] anyway. And I forget whose kite it was. I’ve an idea it was [unclear] but it was somebody out of 617 that had written his off pretty effectively so they wanted to ride up with me and I saw a little bit of nodding and whispering from this laddie to 9 Squadron friends of mine as if is he safe to go with? You know. So I stuck them in, taxied out in the far end of what wasn’t a big field, a grass field. Incidentally of course we were still carrying a Tallboy and [unclear] and I was half way along to getting airborne and there was a great big ditch. Fortunately, we just had enough weight to stay airborne over the top. [unclear] where we ought to have been which really was only next door and landed at Yagonik and taxied in and there was the band and a big red banner welcoming the glorious fliers of the Royal Air Force and alongside the field was like a Mississippi river steamer from which we gathered this was where were going to be our quarters. But in some ways I was lucky because with arriving a little later than some of the others they suggested that I could stay on the, in some of their log huts that were available to what would normally have been the eaves of the house and you had to go down once you get in. I suppose that was for safety. They were all log construction, a brick floor, an iron bedstead, clean linen I must say. Clean white bed linen except when the Russkies sort of threw the bed back he sort of whipped up a lot of little black flies that were running across the seams. Swept them off with the back is hand in a nonchalant manner as if they were always there in every bed aren’t they you know. And hanging on the wall there was the five gallon drum with a big nail sticking out of the bottom and when you pushed the nail in with your hand the water trickled down the nail and seemed to be to me to be a perfectly adequate toilet affair. They had a great big long toilet outside with sloping boards and everything just went downhill into an enormous pit. There were kids in uniform about. Absolutely organised chaos. But then, well we didn’t know what to expect and there we are. They were, we were all friends then of course and we were fed on board this Mississippi river steamer. The food was reasonably adequate I remember and then they brought some very fine looking drink up which turned out to be a hundred percent pure vodka and I remember what appeared to be a bunch of semi sort of half flaked out types who had turned into, well they were rolling drunk in no time at all. So I think that was a Sunday I think and we actually flew up on a Saturday and landed there on the Sunday morning but my book is saying it was the 11th and we actually bombed the Tirpitz on the 15th. I don’t know whether that adds up but I seem to recall that it was a Thursday. Would that be right? 13, 14,15. Heading that way. Then we had a Mosquito. A beautiful PRU Mossie there of ours and his job was to fly out to the target and see whether it was clear and that was up at Kafjord which is the most northerly fjord at North Cape in Norway. It really is quite some distance away. In fact, looking at the logbook now it was a seven hours ten minutes trip. So we’re talking about nearly four hours. Three and a half hours each way. That’s from Archangel up to North Cape to bomb. That was why of course we couldn’t tackle it from Lincoln in those days. So we hung around and we played them football and we wandered around the field and we went to, they put on cinema shows in a great big long hangar again which was obviously below the ground and they entertained us with dances and accordion players and all kinds. And there were many amusing incidents which I’ll tell you a couple which seems indicate the kind of built in suspicions that Soviets have. Let’s face it no one has been friends with them ever since they were set up in what? 1917. But I recall moving in one night. They said they would put on a film and would we like a film? One of ours or one of theirs. So we said, ‘Oh, we’ll have one of yours.’ So it was a film about them recapturing Sevastopol and, and it was bloodshot and bayonets and just blood all over. Incredible how they loved this. And we were sitting in the row there before the cinema started and right in front of us was one of those close hair shorn cardboard epilet captains or something and we were behind. Very usual of my navigator as usual Cas not wasting any time was playing a game. I think with John Mackintosh’s navigator. A very elegant bloke called Nigel Hawkins who wanted to be a film man in Civvy Street and they were doing a lexicon word game as navigators wanted to do and they never waste time navigators. They’re always intelligent occupying every spare minute you know. Anyway, Paddy my wireless operator shuffled down the row trying to get a seat and going past the backside of this, behind the seat of this Russian captain Paddy patted him on his bald head and said, ‘Hello, you bald headed old bastard. How are you?’ And this fellow just turned around and grinned at him, you know and smiled and [unclear] on his head and Paddy sat down. Later when the navigators were doing this word game and they were arguing about some word and the spelling of it the bald headed old lad leaned around and said, ‘Gentlemen, I suggest —’ so and so, ‘Might fit in there rather well.’ In pretty good English you know which of course is what these people did. They were rather reluctant to let you know that they knew your language until they were on sure ground and I gather that the normal drill is that they don’t pretend to speak much about it until the liquor flowed and then when sufficient of them having the same kind of state and they all decided well now is the moment that we can enjoy ourselves. They might then disclose to you that they are perfectly ok with everything that is going on. Which seems to be an eminent way to self-preservation. One of our crew George [Camsell] who was a Canadian, he had a lot of fun much later over Bremen but George was one of the unfortunates who came down on a fighter field a little further away from [pause] from Archangel and then went over the fence and took his wheels off and finished up on this field and was promptly put inside a cabin with a guard mounted over them. Well, you can imagine a bunch of Canadians. How they would feel after being tired out and so and so and then put under guard so the language and the description would be well worth recording. But a car turned up with a girl driving and one of their commissioned Johnnies again who was supposed to be an interpreter. He apparently spent a considerable time getting nowhere with George and his boys and you can imagine that their opinions of him and the nation and the trip and everything were well expressed. And at that stage the girl said, ‘Well, gentlemen, if you care to come this way with me we’ll go along and see the commanding officer and the rest of your friends.’ And of course you had to put, well put two and two together to realise that she was the interpreter and the other boy was the Charlie and she listened out for quite a while until you said what you were doing, what you were there, why you were there [unclear] which again I suppose is a cunning way for the intelligence people to do their job. Oh, there’s scores of stories like this. Another one that [Kealey, Scouse Kealey] who was a well-known type in 9, he baled out. Went down in a place more remote than that. The incredible thing was that in a very short time of us arriving there we counted up everyone who was missing. The Russkies knew exactly where they were and had made arrangements to sort them all out in a very short period of time. [Kealey] had the experience of seeing a Walrus come over him. Incidentally, he regretted that he had set fire, to make the little fire he had to burn the foreign notes which we always carried with us, the money. He never got over that and burned a few maps to make the fire to warm up. I suppose they were getting miserable by then. Then this character came over in a Walrus and [unclear] and drifted down to them and sort of said, ‘Follow me,’ type. So, there were a lot of stories like this that someone one day may well put together. But I don’t know that anyone has as yet done it. But another little sideline to this was we had a couple of BBC types. I don’t recall the name of the one that I spent some time with. I’ve forgotten now. Quite a quiet dark haired man with glasses but the other one I do remember his name was called Guy [Brian] and he was dressed in a paratroopers kit [unclear] with a red beret. The lot. And why I gather he was turned out like this was that he’d been with Sydney [Maxted] on the Arnhem affair. Hence his kit. And he had a lot to say about this. In fact, so much that he was sent the Australian skipper on the photographic flight, we had a photographic kite with us and he was going to fly with us from Archangel to Kafjord to the bombing