W D Tweddle. Tape Three

W D Tweddle. Tape Three

Doug Tweddle describes the final days of the war on the Squadron. He participated in Operations Dodge and Exodus bringing POWs home. After his posting to Bardney he was posted to RAF Skellingthorpe with 50 Squadron.

A second copy of this recording is available.

00:58:25 audio recording

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ATweddleWD[Date]-030001, ATweddleWD[Date]-030002, ATweddleWD[Date]-030003, ATweddleWD[Date]-030004

Prior to take off as you know we’re losing power. Let me see now. Which way did he pull? No, it must have pulled to the right. There we are. I went down to the corner to compensate for the swing that I knew that I would get with losing that engine and I said, ‘Well, at least I’ve got the width of the runway to play with.’ So it was an absolute regular morning. I went down, incidentally I still had a big bomb on because there was no suitable trolley at Carnaby to take it off. So we went down the runway, lifted off, I got a couple of hundred feet and there was this almighty whoosh again. So there I was with another one feathered. I had to go home so I went down to Bardney. Well, it took a lot of time and put it down quite quietly, taxied in and Jim Bazin, and the old engineer leader, Wing Commander [unclear] came out. I’ve never seen him go up a pair of ladders so quickly to have a look at what was wrong with my inner engine. Well, when we got the outer covers off the [unclear] casing with the supercharger [unclear] there was a hole there where the gasket sort of, the gasket [unclear] and obviously on that engine when you sort of [unclear] at that point. So, I gave him the travelling 700 or whatever. I just decided that I’d got away with it that day and the engineer said, ‘Leave that to me, Doug. I’ll sort it out.’ Well, I don’t know what it was. I wasn’t terribly interested but that was one day when I should have definitely stayed at home. There were days like that in your flying career. As no doubt you appreciate there are some days when you would have been better if you’d stayed in bed. But that was the 14th and then we were up the next day, the 15th and we were off to Arnsberg which is another of these bridges and again with our Tallboy. I should say by the way that at this a point when we were doing these bridges we picked up the most fantastic escort of Mustangs from 11 Group from Horsham St Faith and down that part of the country with Mustangs with long range tanks and we were welcomed by this escort which of course used to meet us over the other side. On our side of the bombing line because they could come on quickly. But whoever was particularly leading the crews that day was on the button until the wingco agreed the support wing and he was [unclear] you know. But this particular trip we did a [unclear] back again and when we were coming back I was deputy leader that day. I think it got cancelled. It was a Canadian squadron on this occasion and Joe was an Australian. [unclear] but we always seemed to cross the Rhine just about where that bridge was at Remagen. The bridge that eventually the Americans, well the Americans had at that stage headed for to get over it. We seemed to cross the Rhine at that point and Joe lost an engine before we got back to there. He had an engine on fire and he tried to feather it before he used the fire extinguisher and he didn’t appear to be successful so he baled about four of his crew out. Then finally he got the engines started and when he counted heads he had the rear gunner, the wireless op and himself left so he called out and said what had happened and I told him that, I know George [Campling] said, ‘I’ll hang around. I can see [Jonah] and I fired a verey cartridge. We identified each other.’ I said I’ll stay with [unclear] if you like because of course the normal [unclear] and then he was, when you deemed it safe you’d say, ‘Well, proceed independently.’ Because we would all be flying these trips in sort of two lines. Two columns of nine stepped down. And when it was all over and you were back over your own territory well then like to push off on their own and you would set the machine independently back to base. So I said to George and a few people [unclear] [pause] I said, ‘I’ll look after [Jonah] all the way back [unclear] and I thought well we’d go down to Woodbridge and I’d give him plenty of time to settle down and [unclear] to do the engineer’s work so they could get down adequately. But [Jonah] wasn’t flying over the Channel. I think he was about an hour probably so my crew said, well I said to Paddy, the wireless op to extend our signals and what have you so he said, ‘Let’s go to Brussels, Doug.’ He said, ‘That’s a great place.’ But although we were heading in that direction I thought well we’d better get down sooner. So we came across an aerodrome where the original Fairey aviation people were. I believe they called it [unclear] but it’s near Charleroi and it’s a sort of a strip. A metal strip laid out in the ground. [unclear] Within eleven hundred yards it had a church steeple. Well, we were on the end of the runway and I called up on D, D-Doubty dog [unclear] everywhere in the flying world knows this sign flying with the Observer Corps and everybody if you called out on D-Dog somebody would be up. Well, the American came out, I could see him walking out of his trailer [unclear] looking up. I said, ‘Have you had a Lancaster down there?’ He said, ‘No. We’ve never had.’ I said, [unclear] and he said, ‘Yeah. That’s right.’ I said, ‘If you could get a call the same,’ I said, ‘We’ll have a go at bringing a Lanc in.’ I said, ‘By the way this has got to be [unclear] he’s only got two of the crew with him.’ So I said, ‘I think the idea is that I’ll come in and land and then I can talk him down and explain any problems to him.’ Ok. [unclear] So as I went in again, it wasn’t a clever landing by any time but anyway I made it, got settled down, turned around [unclear] then he came in [unclear] under those conditions and he made a magnificent landing. And there we were on the other side of the Channel and when I say I was in the hands of the Americans who you can’t argue with the way they organised themselves beautifully. We went along to the transit Mess at Charleroi. First of all we went along to [unclear] like that in the place. And I’m looking at my logbook now on the other side from the entry sheets I’ve got two little chits sellotaped on. One is the [unclear] at Charleroi and the ticket for the 16th of March [unclear] for three meals starting with dinner. SC Curtis, Captain [unclear] Charleroi and going in for one meal. Again the usual the Americans rations were a great deal better than we had. And then they arranged that we stayed out overnight at some villas arranged by the Belgian Blue Cross. Now, we turned up in the house of a dear old lady who was a potato merchant and her daughter. They shared the house. The daughter had a very nice MG sportscar so when we’d got our billets organised where we were going to sleep she said, ‘Well, why don’t you come up for a drink?’ Because we were all cooped up in Charleroi then. Well, we were in our flying kit with our flying boots and our [unclear] and our white polo necks you know. So we went into this big restaurant with a lady’s band up on the stage. There was about seven girls playing in this orchestra and when we first went in we got rather steely, well not welcoming looks to put it mildly. But then she explained to us that in the gear we were dressed in, even in my case with a pilot’s wings on it doesn’t look unlike the German field kit. [unclear] to point out. Anyway, once it was established who we were the drinks came flying in so we had rather a hard-won night. So the next morning I procured [unclear] and we took off. We got off all right. We got, well we flew over [unclear] the transmission [unclear] on the way back, the transmission and they said was supposed to have crashed somewhere. But anyway when we got back and we told them all what a splendid night entertaining you can imagine the old man setting up a crew so that he’d brought back [unclear] the kite with a new engine. So we rather had a lot of fun. But just when we were thinking it was about time we should push after this [unclear] sort of flying them down you see having been there once before. When [Jonah’s] kite came out of the circuit, flew around and landed then I became a flying officer and a corporal. The flying officer, the corporal was the engineer and putting them an engine in and brought it back and delivered it to our own fields. So we were both pleased and annoyed at the same time. And that was that little Charleroi episode. I’ve never been back to the place. It was a coal mining set up I think in Belgium with canal I remember running right down the middle and I don’t know. I suppose really [unclear] often enough. I have [unclear] a lot of the people there. I should think the old lady is gone but these things are always fun things to do with everybody. It was the 19th our next sortie. A very similar thing. Vlotho. V for Victor LOTHO and that was again the deputy leader and wind assessor. I don’t remember anything particularly exciting about that. The, incidentally when we had these escorts of [pause] again these escorts were fighters. It was very interesting. They gave you [unclear] beautifully until the flak started flying about and then they just disappeared miles out of the way until it settled down and then they came back again. And as I previously mentioned it was in the morning when we had one engine and put down [unclear] because with a piston engine again we never avoided flak. You know, if you’re running into a flak day or night there is little point in trying to avoid it because they’d [unclear] with something else. Night fighters were one thing but flak was another. This was where in the assessment of good or bad luck there luck was a big thing. You either got it or you didn’t. [unclear] That was the 19th. On the 22nd, and again these are all in Y, the 22nd back again and I set off originally as the leader to go to Bremen and I was wondering if it was this [bridge] in Bremen with a Tallboy. On that occasion my engineer Charlie, his wife had been bombed out in London with a V-1 or something and he’d been sorting her out with some billets in Lincoln. So I was flying with the, Jim Bazin’s engineer and we used to take off and from Bardney and try and get [unclear] and assemble as a group particularly if we were going with another two squadrons. Well, I was busy over Nottingham or thereabouts climbing in sectors when my [unclear] All I remember was [unclear] and this temporary engineer of mine was really remarkable because [unclear] and fortunately for us he got it stopped because we were there with a Tallboy right across Nottingham and normally if you didn’t get a runaway engine stopped you were lucky to catch it in [unclear]. If you didn’t get a response well it would seize [unclear] engineer did a really good job there. Then we had a problem because I was supposed to be leading then and again George [unclear] but I couldn’t tell him what had happened to me because we couldn’t break radio silence. That meant that George and the rest were heading towards Bremen thinking that I was at the front and I wasn’t and I wanted to tell him that he was the governor. So I had a word with Cas, my navigator and said, ‘Where is the nearest dropping ground to get rid of this Tallboy?’ [unclear] decided I had to drop it out on this occasion. He said, ‘Well, it’s really halfway in the middle of the North Sea.’ And he figured out that by the time we got there to drop it we wouldn’t get back to Bardney in time to warn George when he was nearly on target. [unclear] you know to make his mind up on what he was going to do. So we then found [unclear] and there was an emergency dropping zone in the Wash off Kings Lynn. So as long as my engineer figured that was where we would go we dropped it and we dropped it safe. [unclear] But we put it down and my bomb aimer sort of [unclear] a fair amount of people [unclear] must have got a hell of a scare. So deep down in the Wash somewhere there is a Tallboy. I don’t know [unclear] its probably [unclear] in time for [unclear]. He had a rough day that day. He lost a motor over Bremen and then he was coming back and I think I told you before his engineer was a big policeman called Edward [unclear]. And when they were coming back over the Frisians they got hit again and lost another. So George was flying with two on one side and Edward who was Charles’ friend [unclear] a couple of ops [unclear]. Don’t worry about it I’ve been on an engine handling course and these are all [unclear] that can go under any circumstances. So they came home on two on one side and an Oleo problems and they went down on the first field clearing that they found as well. Now, as you probably realise you can. A Lanc will do almost anything on three that it can do on four especially when it’s empty. It was really no problem. You can in fact fly it on two. In fact, you can fly it on one. [unclear] once did try this, unloaded of course and in daylight. [unclear] feathered three at [unclear] height. Of course you lose all the facilities that you get at each end. The dynamo, generators, feather control, you lose a lot of things. But it was to say how good the kite was. To land on two was no big problem except that there was no going around again. You could go around on three if you had strong legs but you couldn’t go around on two. So the obvious thing was you aimed well into the field because the old axion that it’s better to go through the [unclear] at [unclear] speed or running speed than it is at flying speed. [unclear] flying speed. Well, the story that George told was that he went out through the far end of this field, it was quite a big one and finished up at the side of the road and would you believe it the local bobby got off his bike and said, ‘Hello young man. What’s going on?’ I love that story from him. True or not it’s typical set to a cartoon like. That was the [unclear] trip and then I went to the last squadron I did on March the 23rd. Again in Y and this was the big railway bridge at [unclear]. It was quite far away from [pause] [unclear] was the land based [unclear] Not far away from [unclear] That side of the world. By this time we barely knew what we were doing and we hadn’t seriously met any opposition. But at this stage it was a lovely day and we had a look at this place and believe it or not with eighteen Lancs we had ninety six [unclear] hydraulics. Really, it’s almost the entire wing. [unclear] and when you went in to bomb you’d got straps and flying gloves. The hydraulics [unclear] fortunately we had a marvellous bombing action on this [unclear] entrance to the railway train down into the bottom of the bridge foot because when the war was over we went back up there and did a low level trip to have a look at this place and our engineers had built a trestle bridge alongside. So [unclear] Anyway one or two of us got a hit on that and some very interesting incidents. One of our lads Mike Follows who was originally from down Devon way. I think Mike [unclear] and it was reported the twin engine aircraft about a thousand yards astern of fighters. Well, in those days it was unreal in a [unclear] for this and we had a manoeuvre which was known as a corkscrew. When you went into a definite corkscrew it was kind of a violent action. The idea of it was that fighters could not really get the gun on you because you were in a constantly changing situation but they were very strenuous to carry out. Not very good when you were in close company. You probably wouldn’t do it. Mike, Mike’s rear gunner called out, ‘Fighter. Fighter,’ at a thousand yards behind. And then there was a [unclear] Fortunately it didn’t go off. It turned out later to be a cannon and we lost the starboard elevator clean out so it left me with half the elevator and [unclear] pull the [unclear] effectively. Put some rope on and get one of the lads to [unclear] when he was pulling it. Well, in the process of doing that the rear gunner I think must have got a hit on this kite. It floated down and later we heard that two of the [unclear] Mustang men claim to have shot this aircraft down and they claimed it to be a 262. This new German twin jet which was an excellent aircraft I gather and that’s the one we’d got on my tail [unclear]. And there was the one that was the first in our experience seen in the skies. The first and the last [unclear] We were certainly grateful. Stupidly on allowing that aircraft to go to [unclear] returning it was the idea of the 8th Army [unclear] I think it was [C for Canibal]. Also on that particular trip John Macintosh who now is retired as a captain of British Airways 707 [unclear] a missiles which seemed to be following. So we were probably beginning to see too the beginning of the homing missiles. So that seemed a rather nice trip on which to back out because things were becoming too serious changing like that. To do it now [unclear] and [unclear] superiority anymore. We didn’t know at the time but that was the end of it and the after that we were doing wind finding tests and all kinds of things. Then I recall, I forget when the original Hiroshima bomb went down but I recall going into Lincoln one day with a friend and seeing all these placards, the newspaper placards, “Americans drop the atomic bomb,” and we made the usual disparaging remarks about our young friends. What the hell were they up to this time. Well, what they were up to finished the whole business and that was it and the game was over. After a while on the 1st of May we carried on doing some local flying. Even corkscrew practice I see here for the gunners. But you can’t switch off from these machines when you’ve got it going like that. But it was very noticeable both in the Mess and the squadron when at [unclear] I can see why all the newsreels were most people [unclear] and some went home. We went down to the pub, the Jolly Sailor in Bardney. Got ourselves fit again. Prior to this we lost our group captain. The New Zealander. He’d gone off to [unclear] as happens. We were saddled with a group captain who came back from Canada where he’d been totally tucked away and the first time I saw [long unclear] but I recall that he laid on a religious service in the hangar to which he invited all these Jewish rabbis, you name it, the lot. I think he’d got about a dozen there. They left us down in the village and I remember we came back in the back of a lorry because we weren’t supposed to do anything else. [unclear] just twenty four POWs from the base in Juvencourt in France. [unclear] pushed off and landed in this French field [unclear] and all the arrivals came in the open lorries with ex-POWs had been coming out of the camps and had been broken up into groups of twenty four [unclear]. We stuck them into a Lanc. You can imagine how tight it was. You could get them all in the main spar for the take-off. After that they could sit about. [unclear] a bunch of Sikhs and there they were bless them with their [unclear] whatever they called it and then a piece of rag tied in their hair. [unclear] a cracking salute. Obviously top class soldiers. [unclear] after that because we brought them back to England. And such was the for them that we [unclear] around the peri track, came to a halt and there was the WVS emptied these kites, feeding them. The Indians just stood. They hadn’t got the faintest idea what to do. They were in a strange land surrounded by strange people and the last I saw of them they had people coming out [unclear] Yeah. We did that a couple of times. On the second occasion instead of going into [unclear] we went to Brussels and again flew back to the base again. And you know how crazy can you be? On the 22nd of May [unclear] Bury St Edmunds, Boscombe, Bideford [unclear] As I say you couldn’t switch off. On the 25th of May we went out over the North Sea and dropped a lot of incendiaries. Some of these things were getting rather [unclear] they were dangerous. So we got rid of a lot of those. We picked up a new group captain by then. Wing Commander Dupont. He wasn’t very popular neither. Jim Bazin had an early demob number. He had gone home. Du Pont got me to run him down to [Branscombe] Lodge to play golf with the chief constable of Buckinghamshire I think it was. I don’t know why he thought I was a bit sharp with him because he was a man who when he introduced himself to 9 Squadron [unclear] right away we knew it was about time. [Du Pont] then got up and said that he wasn’t new to 9 Squadron. that he had been a flight commander of 9 Squadron when F for Freddie Pickard who was the, if you recall the star of “Target for Tonight” which was filmed by] 9 Squadron and Freddie Pickard was later killed on the Amiens jail job on Mosquitoes. This man had [unclear] that he had been Freddie Pickard’s flight commander. Well, he told us that he’d been all over the world in Training Command. He’d been to Canada, South Africa, Rhodesia, New Zealand and he said that I’d been rather unlucky as far as operations are concerned and the entire room [unclear] you’ve been bloody lucky. Now, that that didn’t endear us to our new CO neither. Nevertheless, [unclear] and I was saying you could detect a change almost immediately. People began to remember they had a letter saying that within twenty miles or less from Lincoln there was a man who had lived there for the last three years and the fellow wanted to know why he’d never been [unclear]. Well, people began to move in their own independent way and began to [unclear] and took off and do things which while they were operating they would never do. instead of around the station at a local pub. Another thing we didn’t bother about. In many ways began to drift away from each other. [unclear] it was very normal. On the 31st of May I see I’ve got another cross country to Newcastle, Carlisle, back to base. I don’t know why I did that. Probably because I was looking at my home town or city. Then what happened at this point Churchill had promised in one of his [unclear] with the Americans that our war was over. We would help [unclear] The Americans were coping very well on the far side. There was nothing we could do for them except that we did have Tallboys and they didn’t have them. So it was decided that 9 and 617 [unclear] Lancasters would be based in Okinawa and they said was anyone who was over the age of thirty and done more than thirty trips wasn’t going. They were going to fill up the squadron with the younger Australian and New Zealand men who had arrived. We felt that that part of the world was all [unclear] anyway. So that another argument. I lost out on that. I don’t think I wanted to go really. So, I was transferred to 50 Squadron who were at Skellingthorpe at that stage but I only stayed there one night and then the squadron moved up to Sturgate which is near Gainsborough. And on the 23rd of June I took the crew and some passengers and we went on what was officially called a Cook’s Tour. [unclear] that was a low level loop over Germany to see what we had done to the towns. We went around at one thousand feet. [unclear]. July the 3rd [unclear] exercise I wasn’t flying right when I was [unclear]. A postmortem exercise. Base, Flensburg, base. Flensburg [unclear] and what happened then was our radar people went out and sat on his radar at Flensburg with the radar detection gear. We’d go and they were listening to see [unclear] radio sites. Incidentally one of our squadron was killed on that particular trip. Something went seriously wrong on that day which seemed a pity it should happen at that stage when [unclear] And then on July the 18th I was sent off on a night cross country. Base to Reading, [unclear] Cherbourg and back. Then come home and do some high level bombing and I remember [unclear] take my crew back over the [unclear] to do practice bombing and we completed our operational tour and bearing in mind you could always be killed with an aircraft even when there is enemy around or not. [unclear] that was a bit of a [unclear] to say the least. So, life began to take on a new form for a while. The 15th of August. The 15th of August and we then went and did, went on a new trip called Dodge and this was ferrying troops from Italy back to the base. We set of from Sturgate again. Flew down to the Warboys and that area there. picked up people who were going to Italy. Went to Pomigliano which was just north of Naples to pick up some POWs returning. So put [unclear] in the bomb bay, brought them back home. That was a seven hour trip. Very pleasant coming down the Med in the sunshine [unclear]. We were supposed to stay one night in Naples but the weather was [unclear] to get down to Sorrento to make it last a little longer. Went on into September. I’m sure [unclear] were still doing it. I had a very rough trip on one of those being very badly knocked about [unclear] way. Extremely bad weather. I was one of the only kites that [unclear] we had been flying through the night. The kite called, I think it was Nurse that went in. there was a hell of a row about it and I remember being there with the wing commander and I because I’d had no rest the previous day and [unclear] at night and flew through the night with these people. That was one of the careless things that happened. And so we went on. I see in November we were still flying from Pomigliano. December, on the way out I went out to [unclear] which is the, really the Air Force at [unclear] in the south of France [unclear] on that occasion and I remember getting involved with that bloody [unclear] that nearly took my engines out. But then I went to, oh I went to I spent a very enjoyable week in [pause] in Berlin. This was another of these trips that should have taken, you landed one day you were shown around a bunker and the stadium [unclear] then come back the following day but I went off in January. That’s right. January the 19th with snow on the ground. Wing commanders and squadron leaders come through from Bawtry and we got stuck in Berlin for a week which is alright because we had taken a lot of drink [unclear] and as we were getting to the best days one hundred and twenty marks for a packet of American cigarettes that cost one and six pence and in the Mess you could buy any kind of spirit. Well, the mark up again you can imagine that things were alright. We had quite an interesting time there. Getting towards the end we qualified for another NAAFI ration of some bars of chocolate, fifty more cigarettes which we promptly sold because we were non-smokers anyway. But that kept us going for the remainder of that week. Well, then we were finding that after we brought all kinds of things back [unclear] nylons, anything we could find. And then we’d been joined by, [unclear] wife had been in with their husbands about a week before we [unclear] And then we followed them out with an another aircraft to carry it in. The [unclear] and that was the end and they got around to the 14th of March which was our last trip. A cross-country routine. I don’t even know what it was. [unclear] about the beginning of the 1st of [pause] April it must have been because I remember I went down to the [unclear] the day before. The day before the handicap. The [unclear] in those days and [unclear] . The following day I went down to Uxbridge. The next morning I had a cup of tea in bed [unclear]. And then I went to the [unclear] machine in Wembley where I got a suit and shirt, shoes what have you and then I was on a train and went across. I didn’t want to fly any more after that. [unclear] to be interested in going to BOAC as it was in those days. Several of my wartime colleagues did. john MacIntosh, [unclear] and they’ve since retired as senior captains on BOAC. They picked up their dues and I suppose they made themselves quite a bit of money. In 1950 I got the yearn to fly again and went up to see Jim Bazin who was then the CO of [unclear] fighter squadron at RAF [unclear]. I joined on the 10th of December [unclear] Used to go there and then we had a fortnight of summer camp each year which took us to Sylt [unclear] Germany. Northern Ireland and I enjoyed that. We’d go on a weekend Saturday to Sunday. [unclear]
[recording interrupted]
[unclear] knew nothing and heard nothing about this business. They closed down the Auxiliary Air Force when I remember the CO at the time was Squadron Leader Stevens, now lives up in Dunollie Castle in Oban. Steve made a report about this and we really got rid of about four hundred trained pilots. Not wartime men. The bulk of them were young men who had been [unclear] by being National Service pilots and they got rid of them and now whenever since then we’ve been short literally millions of pounds of trade because people read it wrong. My next episode I’ve got in my logbook is a very elegant entry actually. On September the 15th a friend of mine was flying Shackletons with 8 Squadron up at Lossiemouth and he found out looking through my logbook that I’d flown out to Lossiemouth too. Well, the Air Force now [unclear] publicity, is not adverse to it and he went back and the next thing Margaret and I did we were invited up for three days at they laid on a trip for me to fly a Shackleton of 8 Squadron, early warning. They would recreate the Tirpitz trip flying to Tromso. And we flew out in the Shackleton to do it. Group Captain Stuart Hall who was the station commander, he came along there. Squadron Leader [unclear] who had been flying Shackletons for years he and I flew in one bird. Stuart Hall and my friend who were in the other team who flew an hour on and an hour off. But we climbed in it as far as we could without going to sixteen thousand. [unclear] quite remarkably we took almost exactly the same time and we [unclear] the fjord at Tromso and we went to where we knew the ship was laid. Now, I had a stupid theory that I would have seen some evidence of it and of course it’s been converted since [unclear] But there was nothing there. I thought I detected on the map some alterations there, indentations where I knew a tall boy had landed. But then we flew home in the evening again and it got dark and flew through the new oil fields. And it’s quite a fantastic site because we did all this at about a thousand feet. So I was taking my stint because when you wake up a Shackleton you just have to land [unclear] I suspect. There was about eight or nine in the crew. All I seemed to be doing was sitting eating Chinese food all the time. They kept sending it up in platefuls. It was very different from [unclear] that we used to live on in the good old days. Anyway, that is [unclear] my logbook and well, that’s it John. [unclear] but we do get together as a crew frequently. I’ve been over to stay with Jack in Canada October this year. And I’ve been to Miami [unclear] by very good fortune. Miami Beach [unclear] the last two winters. We go over for six weeks to get away from our cold winter and went to see [unclear] Eight four one afternoon in Miami and minus twenty seven the next morning in [unclear] Well, he came back over here a couple of months ago. We had two weeks up in Scotland in Skye and John O’Groats, [unclear] One day we saw them off to the airport. My eldest daughter Anne, she’s married to a squadron leader in Strike Command. He’s not a flying man. He’s a course designer and educator. He’s a fine boy and he’s at the moment laying on a course that does the conversion [unclear] hence being stationed at Kinloss. [unclear] Strike Command. We have four grandchildren that keep us busy and my son John is in the Air Force and he’s at RAF Leeming. He’s not flying now. He’s on the accounts side of the [unclear]
[pause]
And my other [pause]. My number two child, Margaret is a [unclear] she did her training in Aberdeen and she’s a forensic psychiatrist which means she deals with the criminally insane and at the moment she’s a senior registrar in [unclear]. She’s in delightful company. [unclear] Well she’s accepted an appointment in Edmonton in Alberta which she will take up probably around about the end of year. She’s spent two and a half years in Omaha in America about four or five years ago. She’s been over eighteen months. All in all if you can imagine two grandchildren and Anne’s four and [unclear] people say, ‘What do you do now you’re retired?’ Well, they must be joking. I haven’t got time to do any work. You said [unclear] well as I’m totally in charge of my time and one thing or another we’re [pause] we’re thoroughly enjoying things. The important thing of course is health. I’m sixty seven next birthday. Margaret is a little younger but we’re perfectly fit and we’re looking forward to a big programme. We have family in Australia. Quite a lot actually. And also a lot of our flying friends out there so that seems possibly not this winter I suspect but the following winter we’ll make probably [unclear] So between that and America and of course now that young Margaret is opening up Canada probably looking forward to something I have in mind. Riding on the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Calgary Stampede, the Rockies and around that part of the world. So it keeps you going. I fly of course. I fly of course when we go abroad and generally have a word with the steward and ask him if an old trade unionist can have a look at the sharp end and invariably with Laker or British Airways or what have you, Caledonian they’re always very very kind and you meet the younger men at the front of the [unclear] show you what’s going on. Generally about thirty seven thousand feet and there it goes. They’re very similar types you know. They all look very good, well dressed and all [unclear] flying is flying. Anyway, it’s been so nice to contact you through this quite totally unexpected source. I’ve had a through a friend of mine I’ve had a reproduction made of that photograph. He’s [unclear] a ten by eight print and [unclear] that he’s put it on to what looks like an oil background [unclear] And I left him with the negative saying that I’m getting in touch with the crew so I have in mind that I’ll get them a copy each. So I gave them a copy each and [unclear] I would like to take up your invitation to come down and see the original in situ and as I’ve pointed out before Anne and Keith are at Medmenham. Strike Command of course is at Marham. So it’s not a part of the world that is so far removed and [unclear]used to be in Lyneham. That was quite close to you. So perhaps some time I’ll give you a tinkle and you know where we are in this part of the world. You’ve been here. You’re more than welcome. We have spare rooms and you might as well put your head down as go and give the money to some hotelier. Anyway, thanks a lot, John. If you want to know anything more [unclear] I’ll enclose a few photographs and cuttings and these three tapes now. Perhaps you have the gear with which to copy them. If so I would appreciate getting them back because I’ve never really gone to these lengths before to talk to [unclear] and I’d certainly do it again if I ever think about that. Anyway, thanks very much indeed. Bye bye.