Interview with Kenneth Percy Bellew Grantham
Title
Interview with Kenneth Percy Bellew Grantham
Description
Kenneth Percy Bellew Grantham describes the distinctive change in engine noise after take‑off, recalling how once the propellers synchronised the aircraft settled into rhythmic pulse. His duties centred on managing the Marconi 1154/1155 wireless set, monitoring Group broadcasts every twenty minutes, and maintaining communication with home stations. He explains the “code of the day” booklet, kept at hand during operations, where “all the groups in it were pre‑printed and all that happened was that the significance changed around”.
Grantham outlines the wireless operator’s crucial role in navigation and emergency procedures. He regularly requested QDM bearings, obtained fixes from MFDF stations, and operated the trailing aerial. In emergencies he could route the intercom through the wireless set and, during ditching, was responsible for sending SOS signals and later operating the dinghy radio. He notes that “that’s when he really came into his own… he could save their lives”.
He describes clothing and conditions on board, contrasting the warmth of the Lancaster wireless position with the extreme cold in the Halifax nose, where electrically heated slippers were essential.
This interview was recorded for the Imperial War Museum. The transcription only has been published. Sound: © IWM (10225)
Grantham outlines the wireless operator’s crucial role in navigation and emergency procedures. He regularly requested QDM bearings, obtained fixes from MFDF stations, and operated the trailing aerial. In emergencies he could route the intercom through the wireless set and, during ditching, was responsible for sending SOS signals and later operating the dinghy radio. He notes that “that’s when he really came into his own… he could save their lives”.
He describes clothing and conditions on board, contrasting the warmth of the Lancaster wireless position with the extreme cold in the Halifax nose, where electrically heated slippers were essential.
This interview was recorded for the Imperial War Museum. The transcription only has been published. Sound: © IWM (10225)
Creator
Date
1982-10-12
Language
Type
Format
00:38:40 audio recording
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
APlumbeL[Date]-01
Transcription
KG: I would say though in that tape he’s still climbing —
Interviewer: It wouldn’t surprise me. It wouldn’t surprise me. Blasted thing. I’m not very good with things like that.
KG: I’ll [pause] where did you get the tape then?
Interviewer: I got it out the BBC Sound Archives. I just thought well let’s try the BBC first.
KG: Yes.
Interviewer: See if they’ve got a tape.
KG: Yes.
Interviewer: And that’s the, that’s their Lancaster flight sequence.
KG: Right. Well, I think what you really need is a much longer tape.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: To get it.
Interviewer: Well, I think —
KG: And at a guess I would say the people to approach are the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
Interviewer: Yeah. Well, we can get on to the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight for a start and get a recording there.
KG: Right.
Interviewer: I was thinking we would probably have to do that.
KG: Because once you get into a cruising situation —
Interviewer: Just a steady —
KG: It is a much softer sound really. I mean it’s noisy as hell.
Interviewer: Oh yeah.
KG: And I went deaf from it basically but it’s a very much softer sound than that.
Interviewer: I’m not surprised. It was noisy enough when I had —
KG: It comes down to a sort of brum brum.
Interviewer: That’s where you get the beeps.
KG: [Boom boom boom] you know. Like that. Once they’ve got the props are all synchronised —
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: And that it comes out a much more even sort of sound in flight.
Interviewer: Hang on. I’ll just grab my notebook. So I’m so dreadful at taking notes anyway. There is one interesting thing that was probably a red herring that keeps cropping up is someone that, someone we were speaking to saying that when he was flying in Lancasters they had a psycho code machine. I don’t think you ever came across that.
KG: No.
Interviewer: No.
KG: No. We had a code of the day which was a book. A little booklet in which the code letters were printed and they were merely the meaning of them was changed around.
Interviewer: Yeah. I’ve heard of that sort of thing.
KG: Every day.
Interviewer: Would that booklet be sort of to hand all the time?
KG: Yes. Yes. Except, well, it was to hand all the time yes on operational flying. Not necessarily on just ordinary day to day flying.
Interviewer: Yes. So you’d have that. That would be one of the things you’d have bar the key in front of you.
KG: Yes.
Interviewer: So you’d have the code of the day book.
KG: You’d have the code of the day which was this —
Interviewer: [unclear]
KG: This set type code book. All the groups in it were pre-printed and all that happened was that the significance changed around. The meanings. They sort of all, you know —
Interviewer: Yeah. I think I’ve heard of —
KG: Coming up. So that todays like ABC.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Didn’t mean what tomorrows would mean and, yes or yesterdays. So if one fell into German hands —
Interviewer: Yeah. That’s it. It didn’t, it didn’t compromise the entire system.
KG: No. It didn’t [unclear] the system.
Interviewer: Just have a message pad.
KG: We had a logbook.
Interviewer: Logbook.
KG: And as I recall I don’t remember messages passed.
Interviewer: No messages.
KG: No. Things were just recorded in the, in the logbook.
Interviewer: Would you just write it in pencil? Or —
KG: Yes. Always in pencil.
Interviewer: Just an ordinary pencil.
KG: You couldn’t take a fountain pen up because it would just leak all over the place.
Interviewer: Of course it would. Yes.
KG: They hadn’t got biros in those days. Ball points weren’t known yet. So all we had was pencils. The old wooden pencil. Plain wooden Ministry, Air Ministry pencils.
Interviewer: Air Ministry pencils. Just plain wood. How did you sharpen them?
KG: I don’t remember.
Interviewer: That’s a silly question. I’m just curious.
KG: It’s a good question. Yes. I suppose we just took them up sharpened —
Interviewer: Yeah. So —
KG: We had the razor blade with us.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: You know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Took a razor blade along to do it.
Interviewer: The navigator was a completely separate person from the wireless operator.
KG: Yes. Yes.
Interviewer: I presume he’d be sitting at his desk throughout most of the trip.
KG: He was. He never left it.
Interviewer: He never left it.
KG: He never left his position.
Interviewer: This is, this is one of the things where we came, we’ve come slightly unstuck because we didn’t realise that looking from the main spar forward like that the wireless operator there looked —
KG: The navigator is there. Yes.
Interviewer: Blasted silly if you didn’t have a navigator.
KG: That’s right. You’ve got someone —
Interviewer: So —
KG: Right alongside. Yeah. And to the forward part of the cabin. In fact, I’ve got some photographs at home taken inside the aircraft looking back from the navigator to the wireless operator. They’re not very clear. Not as clear as these sort of things.
Interviewer: Yes. It would be very, it would be very helpful if we could borrow these photographs and copy them.
KG: Right. I’ll take copies for you. Get them down.
Interviewer: Because as I say getting photographs are the same because you see all these wiring looms and things like that.
KG: Well, that —
Interviewer: Sort of roughly —
KG: Yeah. That is more difficult for me to tell you the truth. A because I don’t really remember now.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: After all this time.
Interviewer: Oh no.
KG: Exactly where the bits and pieces went. What you really want to get hold of for that is possibly a wireless mechanic.
Interviewer: Well —
KG: The old wireless mechanics.
Interviewer: What we have got we do know of a chap who is a private sort of, for private purposes is reconstructing a Lancaster wireless operator’s position.
KG: Oh yeah.
Interviewer: So we’re just photographing his, copying his work.
KG: Yes. Yes.
Interviewer: I presume you had a light on all the time.
KG: Well, we had, we had a little light which was a dimmer. It had a dimmer switch.
Interviewer: Yeah. So the light had a dimmer switch.
KG: And it was, it was one of those little tubular type lights.
Interviewer: Right.
KG: A spotlight more than anything. A spotlight type of thing and it had a dimmer to it and I wouldn’t keep it on necessarily all the time. It had a [unclear] on it. You could turn it off.
Interviewer: Yeah. So you just keep it —
KG: Because on the astrodome above your head you had the blackout curtain you drew across. As you, you realise there is, there is an astrodome up there.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: Right. And above your head you had the astrodome, you had the blackout curtain across it and just pulled that across and then I mean because the wireless operator one of his jobs amongst the others was to keep a lookout as well for enemy aircraft.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: When he wasn’t actually operating. Now, on an operational flight as a Pathfinder aircraft we had, we had more function than perhaps anyone else because we listened out to group broadcasts every twenty minutes.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: Now, they would come through with a message. The call sign of the Group’s sending station and the number. Just a single digit.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: From one to ten. That digit was the check on the wireless operator when he got back that he had in fact been listening —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: To Group broadcasts and hadn’t been listening to the BBC or [unclear]
Interviewer: And this would be in plain language.
KG: Just a call sign.
Interviewer: This would —
KG: And a number.
Interviewer: Of course. You see I know very little about radio.
KG: No. Ok.
Interviewer: So it would be —
KG: The call sign was the, would be the call sign of the sending station.
Interviewer: Could you be —
KG: You know APXT or something.
Interviewer: What would be a typical sort of —
KG: Well, a typical call sign would have been for instance 8LY.
Interviewer: 8LY.
KG: 8LY was probably if I remember rightly that was 8 Group.
Interviewer: Yeah. So that would, that would have been —
KG: 8LY was Graveley.
Interviewer: So that would have been —
KG: Transmission.
Interviewer: Transmitted in Morse.
KG: That would have been sent in Morse.
Interviewer: And was the number say 8LY?
KG: The number eight.
Interviewer: Eight.
KG: 8LY. 8LY. Then 7. So 8LY — 7. Now, if there was a message to be transmitted —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Then they transmitted the message in that Group broadcast.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Every twenty minutes throughout the flight.
Interviewer: Every twenty minutes. Because I’m thinking that the fact that we could —
KG: The hour, twenty past and twenty to.
Interviewer: The hour, twenty past and twenty to. So they would transmit. They’d say, they’d transmit their call sign twice.
KG: They would keep this up for about five minutes.
Interviewer: Oh, they just, oh that’s interesting.
KG: And they’d keep, this broadcast would be, Group broadcast would be going for about four or five minutes. They would just send the call sign and your number. So call sign and number. Call sign and number. If you were getting a number you knew they had nothing. No further instructions to send you. If they had, if they had an instruction, for instance one night when we’d set off to [pause] where was it? The German towns now. We got a recall. Now, we’d got out as far as probably halfway across the North Sea and when I turned into the, into the, tuned into the Group broadcast there was call signs and there was an actual message transmitted on that occasion when I had decoded the message it said, ‘Return to base.’ That was all.
Interviewer: That’s interesting because one of the sort of ideas we had was every now and then for variety putting a message over the —
KG: Yes. Now, the other function that the wireless operator had of course was as back up to the navigator. This was his, one of his big functions. Right.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Because he could get bearings. He could ask for fixes. He could ask for assistance —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Of all sorts by Morse. That’s transmitting by Morse.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He could ask, he could ask his home base station, direction finding station for a bearing back to base and this would be, he would just come up for the QDM. That’s part of the Q code. International Q code still. QDM was what is my [pause] What is my direction to fly to reach you?
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: That sort of idea. And the parent airfield would acknowledge his transmission and then the wireless operator clamped his key down. So if you see on that key there is a little —
Interviewer: Ah.
KG: A little button on there.
Interviewer: So that’s important. We ought, we must have that little clamp there.
KG: Yes. You must have that key. That’s a genuine key. Right. And it’s all encased in a plastic case. You would press this key down, flick that button over it to hold it down for a few minutes. The home station would take a bearing on the aircraft. He’d then unflick that key and the home station would send him his bearing. The course to fly to reach that.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Reach that station. So he’d get a bearing. If he was completely lost he called up the Medial Frequency Direction Finding stations. MFDF stations as they were known and they were dotted around England. Now, he carried, the wireless operator carried with him a flimsy with all these codes in it.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: So he knew exactly where to call.
Interviewer: That’s different. That’s different from —
KG: They were all marked up on this. On this book here.
Interviewer: I see.
KG: Yeah.
Interviewer: So that would be —
KG: The plaque on the front there. Right.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He very often, I’ll come to that in a minute with a pre-tuned in set but he could ask them for a fix.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And the master station of the three stations would answer him and tell him to go ahead. He would again clamp his key down. The master station would take a bearing and two slave stations would take a bearing and where they crossed the slave stations would immediately inform the master station who informed the wireless operator in the air what his position was.
Interviewer: Yeah. There was stuff.
KG: The wireless operator could also cross transmit and receive messages.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: For his aircraft of any sort at all. But largely his transmitting work consisted of getting bearings and fixes.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And things like that. Now, there was of course his very very very important function which was when the aircraft was badly damaged and in trouble. That’s when he came to —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: The wireless operator really came into his own because if the aircraft was badly damaged over Germany and could be flying home and about to ditch in the sea —
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: The crew depended on the wireless operator being capable of doing his job.
Interviewer: That’s when he really came into his own.
KG: That’s when he came into his own because he could save their lives and he operated the dinghy radio once they were out the aircraft as well.
Interviewer: Oh I see.
KG: So that was another function he had. And the procedure there of course was that he called up on the MFDF stations.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And sent out an SOS. The MFDF stations would answer him and he would continue sending this SOS and clamping his key down so they would be keeping a permanent fix on the aircraft as it went down.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And only in the last minutes when the rest of the crew had gone to the, to their ditching stations the wireless operator and the pilot would still be at their positions.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: And at the last minute when the pilot told him he was about to go in the wireless operator would clamp his key down, leave his set and go and take up a ditching station in the —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Over the main spar.
Interviewer: Not very pleasant.
KG: No. So you’ve got you know that’s, that was really —
Interviewer: Yeah. That was it.
KG: That was important.
Interviewer: Otherwise the wireless operator he didn’t really have all that much to do.
KG: No. He had a knowledge of the circuits of the of the aircraft. He had a knowledge of the circuits of the, an intercom system.
Interviewer: Oh yes.
KG: Which he could repair in an emergency. He knew the workings of his set and he could, he knew the emergency procedures to carry out repairs on that.
Interviewer: Oh yeah.
KG: If necessary, if the intercom failed which was a separate system he could feed it in through the wireless here and through the wireless he could set up an emergency intercom system.
Interviewer: Oh, that’s interesting.
KG: So the intercom went through the, through the radio which connected him.
Interviewer: That’s intriguing.
KG: But when he was using it through the radio in order to protect the radio he could only have about three people on the intercom at any one time.
Interviewer: Yeah. Otherwise it did something nasty to the radio.
KG: Yes. Otherwise it would blow one of the valves in the radio.
Interviewer: What sort of —
KG: [unclear]
Interviewer: What sort of kit would you normally have been wearing when you were —
KG: Well, the wireless operator would be wearing certainly flying boots and heavy socks. Probably he wore a pair of, a pair of, I always wore a pair of electrically heated shoes, slippers.
Interviewer: Oh yes. I’ve heard of those.
KG: Right. Because that was the part of me that got the coldest quite honestly but by and large the wireless operator wasn’t too bad because the hot air duct came out here.
Interviewer: Yes. This is what I’ve —
KG: And he got sometimes he was too hot. But the basic kit I suppose was you’d be wearing flying boots, this is all in case the heating failed obviously.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: He’d be wearing his flying boots, he’d be wearing socks, he’d be wearing a pair of the long john underwear. A long heavy woollen vest. Shirt on the top of that. Probably a collar and tie usually as well on top of that. He’d wear a white roll neck pullover.
Interviewer: Oh, that’s useful.
KG: Right. His battledress top over that. Battledress trousers on.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: On the top of that he would wear the Mae West and on the top of that he would have his parachute harness. Right. He’d wear a flying helmet and an oxygen mask with a microphone in it. The same as all the rest of them.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: The rest of the crew did. He’d probably, he had gloves. He had silk gloves.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Silken gloves and he had leather gauntlets as well.
Interviewer: Yes. would you usually, would you usually tend to wear the silk gloves?
KG: No, not really. Not in a Lancaster. We did in a Halifax.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Because in a Halifax the wireless operator’s position is down in the nose. It’s in a completely different position and it was freezing down there because you’d got no heat at all. And that’s when I used to wear electrically heated slippers and all my, every person would possibly wear.
Interviewer: You had everything. Everything in there.
KG: Because being down the nose there even our navigator with that on he still got a frost-bitten toe.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: So that shows how cold it got in a Halifax. But in a Lancaster he was much more, he really didn’t need all that much kit. In fact, in summertime I had more than once flown in shirt sleeves foolishly.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Foolishly looking back now.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Because if we had been shot down, baled out I would have found myself over the other side in the middle of the night in shirt sleeves you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Which wouldn’t have been funny but took the battledress to top along you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Took that along with us and a pullover along with us. Probably put all that on as we got, as we gained height you know but for the first hundred miles or so we would be flying out over the North Sea towards Denmark at zero feet. You know, about a hundred feet up. In the summertime it was quite pleasant and warm, you know. So that’s, that as I said is the receiver and that is the transmitter. Now, the transmitter had these coloured knobs on it or has these coloured knobs on it which are the different ranges.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Right. Different ranges and the frequencies of those ranges were set out pretty well clearly on the, on the set itself.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Right. And you could pre-tune those. For instance you could set one set to the to the —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: To the nearest DF stations and the other one to your home base station and the other to your home station.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And the other one was left, you know loose so that all you had to do in order to come on to the DF stations was to turn the switches. Two switches. Click click and your transmitter was set. You didn’t have to start tuning in and finding the other guy. You could tune that set to that set.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And of course vice versa but I mean basically what you did was you tuned in on your receiver.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: You tuned into the station that you wanted and then you tuned your transmitter to your receiver. At the side here just above or behind his head there and I don’t know if you can see it on here you have the aerial switch.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: Which switched the aerial for the various ranges. Now, I don’t see one on there.
Interviewer: The thing, one thing I know we’ve got to sort of get. Get to copy —
KG: It should be in here alongside here and it’s just a big switch that, with a big handle on it and it switches from various things.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Because you carried the trailing aerial. I think if I remember it was two hundred and fifty feet.
Interviewer: Oh.
KG: Of trailing aerial which was a fairly decent steel cable with a set of little steel balls on the end of it to give it weight. And that is on a reel at the left-hand side of the wireless operator down here.
Interviewer: Yes. You would have reeled this in and out.
KG: And you would reel this in and out. You reeled it out once you had got to a certain height and that was if I remember rightly that was the medium frequency aerial.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: For NF transmission. Two hundred and fifty feet of it. Trail that behind the aircraft and you wound this in very very quickly when the pilot was landing because you had got to get it in before it caught on a tree or a fence and you lost it because if you lost it you had to pay for it.
Interviewer: That sounds typical [laughs]
KG: One of things that the Air Force did make you pay for.
Interviewer: The frequency aerial.
KG: I know because I lost one.
Interviewer: Gosh.
KG: I lost one in the trees coming in to land and it was quite a, it was quite a job to reel it in. I mean, it was, you know there was a lot of wire to reel in on that thing.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: By hand to feed it and then you had on the top of the aircraft you had the fixed aerial.
Interviewer: Oh yes.
KG: I’m rambling a bit on this I know but you’ll be able to pick this out.
Interviewer: Yes, well that’s the idea.
KG: On the top of that you had the fixed aerial in a V shape to the wings.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And that was also connected to your aerial switch as was your DF loop. Now the direction finding loop is situated just forward there of the astrodome.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And it’s actually under the Perspex canopy of the aircraft. Right. That was another feature of the wireless operator’s functions was that he could get directions from the aircraft itself. He didn’t have to call for QDMs or anything like that. If his transmitter was blown out for any reason he could still operate with the receiver.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He could operate the direction finding equipment himself on the aircraft and this decision, this DF loop on top with a goniometer reaching down just underneath. Just over his head here.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: I don’t see it on here at all. It should come down from the top there and operating this he could tune to his home station.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: For instance his airfield radio transmitter and he could take a bearing on it himself and then give the pilot instructions where to fly. Now, in addition to that he could feed that direction finding aerial through his receiver on to a little gadget on the pilot’s cockpit.
Interviewer: Oh, that’s clever.
KG: And that had two, two needles that crossed like that. A left and a right. And you will see here there’s a little switch here on the top.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: With L and R on it. Right. Which is left and right. When the, when the needles went down to the right the pilot knew he was going off to the left. When it went the other way he knew he was going off the other way. So all he had to do was to keep those two needles crossed on the central arm on that dial and he would be theoretically anyway flying towards the station from which the transmission was coming. The left and right switch enabled the wireless operator once you’d fixed the station to determine whether it was forward or behind him because he switched the left or the right hand side of the loop. And whichever it was loudest on that gave him his, I mean you were flying towards it and yeah the signal was coming from the front. So this half of the loop is getting more —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Than the back half.
Interviewer: Than the back half.
KG: So he then switched to see which way the [pause] if he overflew the day station [coughs] excuse me.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: If you overflew the station then of course he would be getting a reading behind him and he’d know he’d gone too far.
Interviewer: It’s all clever stuff.
KG: Now, all these things worked within reasonable —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Limits you know. They weren’t perfect because it was let’s face it a 1940s radio wasn’t as developed as it is today.
Interviewer: No.
KG: In fact, this whole Marconi setup here. This 11 54 55.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Was a hell of an advance on what had gone before because the radio sets before this were extremely primitive and you had to, you actually had to change coils and crystals and, you know. Still [pause]
Interviewer: Great. Yeah.
KG: This was a tremendous advance where you could just tune it you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Straight off. No bother at all and it all had coloured knobs on it to reset.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And it was extremely, extremely clever stuff that was.
Interviewer: Stop it and see how it’s —
[recording paused]
Interviewer: It’s going again now.
KG: He would say a complex M-Mother. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And then you would go back and one of the stations would come back to you. Now that station would be within ten miles because this was the range of the Darkie set.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: It would be within ten miles of you and he would then take you over and give you all the instructions. You know, if you were lost he would say, well, ‘This is Manston here.’ So you knew you were within ten miles of Manston. He would then say, ‘Switch on all your navigation lights.’ Once you switched navigation lights on they would then instruct the Royal Observer Corps —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: To look for you. And the searchlight batteries to look for you. If they detected you the searchlight batteries would raise a searchlight upright. Vertical. And then they would lay it along the ground and all you had to do was fly along that beam until the next searchlight picked you up and it would do the same and you would fly along that beam until you came to the airfield which would be lit up for you.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: They could also send up Spitfires to guide you home. There were all these sort of things were laid on by Darkie you know if you really were in trouble.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: That was, the wireless operator was if you like the Darkie expert.
Interviewer: Yeah. He knew.
KG: He knew the procedures for calling on Darkie if you were in any sort of trouble. He could also of course transmit by Morse if his kit, his set was working.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And he could get the aircraft out of any sort of trouble in that sort of way. If you ditched in the sea the wireless operator carried the dinghy radio and he took that out with him and he set that up in the dinghy. He would fly off the kite carrying an aerial and he’d plug that in to the dinghy radio and the dinghy radio had a handle on it which you turned and that sent out an automatic SOS. It had a little button on it which you could actually manually send them.
Interviewer: What sort of sound did the Morse of that period make? I sort of ask this because Morse, the various Morse sounds did change over the years.
KG: Well, I think it’s pretty well as you would hear it on the radio today. I don’t, when I hear Morse on the radio I don’t hear it any, any differently.
Interviewer: Yes, because I know very much in the earlier days before the musical spar the early Marconi Morse was more of a burp.
KG: Oh yes. No. This was a, this was a bleep rather than a burp.
Interviewer: Bleep.
KG: It was a straightforward carrier wave sound. A clear sound and of course the pitch of it depended on how well you’d tuned the station.
Interviewer: Yes. We could get away with.
KG: Yeah. You accurately tuned the station.
Interviewer: So no one would find anything terribly wrong if every say ten minutes or so just for the object of the exercise we put in a couple of minutes of Morse —
KG: No. No problem.
Interviewer: With one of those code signals.
KG: No. No problem. The average wireless operator was trained I suppose to, he started at four words a minutes. Six. Eight. Ten. Twelve. Fourteen. Sixteen. Eighteen. Eighteen he passed out at the end of the, all the courses at eighteen words a minute.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Most operators went on to get about twenty four I suppose.
Interviewer: Really?
KG: Twenty four. Some of the better ones I consider myself amongst those would have been on about twenty eight.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: To thirty words a minute. They were keen enough on it.
Interviewer: Yes. I’m just thinking these sort of twenty minutes, these sort of codes that were transmitted every twenty minutes you said.
KG: Yeah.
Interviewer: They were specific for Pathfinders.
KG: No. No. They were specifically for all aircraft.
Interviewer: For all aircraft.
KG: For each Group. Each Group. 4 Group, six.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: 4 Group. 8 Group. Whatever it was sent out its own group broadcast.
Interviewer: Oh, I see. That’s useful.
KG: To its aircraft.
Interviewer: Because obviously we want to try and make this thing as general as possible.
KG: Sure. They would have sent out their own group broadcasts to their own aircraft.
Interviewer: I see.
KG: And in that they would have sent out any particular message. Now, in the Pathfinder aircraft the navigators of the Pathfinders being supposed experts at their jobs this is why we were Pathfinders. They had the job of determining at certain points along the route what the windspeed and direction was at their, at their height so that they could, they could determine their drift. Well, the navigators had to keep a track obviously —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Of windspeeds and that because it meant they would be drifting with the wind off track so they had to know how much to allow for and every, I’m not sure if it’s every hour but at regular intervals the navigator on some Pathfinder aircraft would pass the wireless operator a slip with the wind speed and directions that he was finding in his navigation.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Right. And the wireless operator who had to maintain wireless silence throughout the trip over Germany —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Would break wireless silence and just rip off this message and just close down. Now, they worked on the basis that if there were twenty aircraft of the Pathfinders sending back messages at least one or two would get through.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Would be heard and group would then compute the average speed and direction of the wind that the navigators of the Pathfinders would find.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Feed it back to the Groups who were transmitting in their Group broadcasts to their —
Interviewer: To their aircraft. Yes. So they could set up.
KG: So the navigators there could have the benefit of this.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Of this you know check on their, on their navigation.
Interviewer: But more or less really the wireless operator was along for the ride until something went wrong.
KG: Something went wrong. Yes.
Interviewer: That’s what —
KG: Yes. That’s quite true, yes. Yes.
Interviewer: He didn’t have much to do and then when something went wrong he was very busy.
KG: Well, you could say the same with the gunners.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: You know I mean they just sat there unless they were attacked. In fact, most of the crew apart from the pilot and —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: The navigator had that function. I mean the bomb aimer had only really initially one function.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: Which was to press the tit when they got to the target you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: But in point of fact later on he did fulfil a very vital function working the, working the radar sets.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Alongside the navigator and it was the flight engineer who went down and pressed the tit when they got to the target.
Interviewer: Yeah. That’s interesting.
KG: Because it was all being dropped on radar. But as you say the wireless operator like everyone else in the crew had his function.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: The moment his function was needed.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Like the gunners had their function the moment they were attacked otherwise they just sat there.
Interviewer: Yeah. I think when we make this thing up we’re not really going to, we’ll try and avoid showing any radar equipment or anything because we’re really just going to concentrate on the wireless. The wireless equipment. But it’s going to be in semi-darkness anyway.
KG: Yes.
Interviewer: So it should be pretty convincing I think.
KG: Yes. Well, the wireless operator had a very hard seat you can see.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: It wasn’t all that comfortable because his back was to the main spar and he was sitting on a sort of bench like structure which was quite, you know quite solid.
Interviewer: Quite solid.
KG: Quite a solid seat. There was no, no real comforts to all that you know and you could get a numb bum on that no trouble at all after about eight hours in the air. It got a bit, got a bit binding. In fact, you obviously, he obviously took along his, he took along his flying rations.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Which usually consisted of a Mars bar and perhaps a sandwich and a cup —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: A flask of coffee. He also had his emergency, mustn’t forget his emergency flying rations to pack.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Which contained the silk handkerchief for the map.
Interviewer: Oh yes. All that.
KG: And the Horlicks tablets and the concentrated beef cubes and that in it you know in case you had to bale out.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And it was down the other side.
Interviewer: These would all be stowed away under the little —
KG: Well, you’d have them in a bag.
Interviewer: Bags.
KG: A little bag or anyway he might have them in his pocket. No. You can see his pencil there.
Interviewer: Yeah. Just an ordinary one.
KG: That’s an Air Ministry pencil by the look of it. Yes. Those plain wood ones they were.
Interviewer: Yeah. Plain wood ones.
KG: Very plain colourless wood. Wood things like that. What else can I tell you because he had all that going through his stuff. Yeah. He had his lookout position through the astrodome which was a useful function because it was spotting for enemy aircraft. Oh, of course. The verey pistol.
Interviewer: Oh yes. The verey pistol.
KG: The wireless operator also had to have the verey pistol behind him. The verey pistol mount clip was over his head. Just behind his head.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Where he took the pistol and twisted it into the socket.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: Plugged it in so it could fire out of the aircraft and he carried with him in his bag, his flight bag he carried the cartridges for the code of the day. So that should they come back with no wireless and be attacked by British ack ack as they came in —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Not having any identification friend or foe to avoid then he would fire the colours of the day.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He had to identify himself. he also carried an Aldiss lamp with which he could do visual signalling.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: From aircraft to aircraft or aircraft to ground.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He was, he could also do that. That sort of signalling. The only thing he didn’t do was, was flag wigwagging you know.
Interviewer: Yeah [laughs]
KG: But otherwise he could do that. Otherwise between group broadcasts it was probably all a case of Vera Lynn on the BBC you know for him. Which, which we did a lot of. The rest of the crew didn’t want to hear it of course. They were too busy with their various functions and jobs.
Interviewer: But what happened if, was it but if you were tuned to Vera Lynn you couldn’t pick up any emergency messages.
KG: No. No. You’d be listening to the BBC.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: And the wireless operators did that the whole time you know. So Group broadcasts over that time twenty minutes.
Interviewer: Group broadcasts. Let’s have fifteen minutes.
KG: Twenty minutes let’s have a bit of you know the Forces Programme on and he could of course feed that into the intercom.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: It was all linked up because by turning the switch, but what the other thing the wireless operator had on his bench was the call light.
Interviewer: Oh.
KG: Now, that was quite an important function because when he was off intercom.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Doing his job either transmitting or receiving whatever it might be.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He was not connected into the intercom.
Interviewer: I see.
KG: And if the pilot wanted him then he would press the call light button.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And that would flash.
Interviewer: Where would the call light be?
KG: It was down by the set here somewhere. Down the side here.
Interviewer: It would be down the side somewhere.
KG: Yes, it’s all down the side there.
Interviewer: It would be just off the side.
KG: It would just be a little light, a little tiny bulb you know and they tended, it just flashed.
Interviewer: What colour was it?
KG: White.
Interviewer: Just a little white light.
KG: Just a light white light. Yes. It just flashed on and off. One, two, three, four would be the wireless operator. One two would be the navigator. Whatever, you know. That’s the sort of auxiliary lighting. And — [pause] So all in all I suppose the wireless operator did do quite a lot of, of work when they were not on operations. So when they were perhaps on the navigational cross-country exercises.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Or something like that.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: The navigator would make use of the wireless operator to check his navigation.
Interviewer: Switch it off now.
Interviewer: It wouldn’t surprise me. It wouldn’t surprise me. Blasted thing. I’m not very good with things like that.
KG: I’ll [pause] where did you get the tape then?
Interviewer: I got it out the BBC Sound Archives. I just thought well let’s try the BBC first.
KG: Yes.
Interviewer: See if they’ve got a tape.
KG: Yes.
Interviewer: And that’s the, that’s their Lancaster flight sequence.
KG: Right. Well, I think what you really need is a much longer tape.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: To get it.
Interviewer: Well, I think —
KG: And at a guess I would say the people to approach are the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
Interviewer: Yeah. Well, we can get on to the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight for a start and get a recording there.
KG: Right.
Interviewer: I was thinking we would probably have to do that.
KG: Because once you get into a cruising situation —
Interviewer: Just a steady —
KG: It is a much softer sound really. I mean it’s noisy as hell.
Interviewer: Oh yeah.
KG: And I went deaf from it basically but it’s a very much softer sound than that.
Interviewer: I’m not surprised. It was noisy enough when I had —
KG: It comes down to a sort of brum brum.
Interviewer: That’s where you get the beeps.
KG: [Boom boom boom] you know. Like that. Once they’ve got the props are all synchronised —
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: And that it comes out a much more even sort of sound in flight.
Interviewer: Hang on. I’ll just grab my notebook. So I’m so dreadful at taking notes anyway. There is one interesting thing that was probably a red herring that keeps cropping up is someone that, someone we were speaking to saying that when he was flying in Lancasters they had a psycho code machine. I don’t think you ever came across that.
KG: No.
Interviewer: No.
KG: No. We had a code of the day which was a book. A little booklet in which the code letters were printed and they were merely the meaning of them was changed around.
Interviewer: Yeah. I’ve heard of that sort of thing.
KG: Every day.
Interviewer: Would that booklet be sort of to hand all the time?
KG: Yes. Yes. Except, well, it was to hand all the time yes on operational flying. Not necessarily on just ordinary day to day flying.
Interviewer: Yes. So you’d have that. That would be one of the things you’d have bar the key in front of you.
KG: Yes.
Interviewer: So you’d have the code of the day book.
KG: You’d have the code of the day which was this —
Interviewer: [unclear]
KG: This set type code book. All the groups in it were pre-printed and all that happened was that the significance changed around. The meanings. They sort of all, you know —
Interviewer: Yeah. I think I’ve heard of —
KG: Coming up. So that todays like ABC.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Didn’t mean what tomorrows would mean and, yes or yesterdays. So if one fell into German hands —
Interviewer: Yeah. That’s it. It didn’t, it didn’t compromise the entire system.
KG: No. It didn’t [unclear] the system.
Interviewer: Just have a message pad.
KG: We had a logbook.
Interviewer: Logbook.
KG: And as I recall I don’t remember messages passed.
Interviewer: No messages.
KG: No. Things were just recorded in the, in the logbook.
Interviewer: Would you just write it in pencil? Or —
KG: Yes. Always in pencil.
Interviewer: Just an ordinary pencil.
KG: You couldn’t take a fountain pen up because it would just leak all over the place.
Interviewer: Of course it would. Yes.
KG: They hadn’t got biros in those days. Ball points weren’t known yet. So all we had was pencils. The old wooden pencil. Plain wooden Ministry, Air Ministry pencils.
Interviewer: Air Ministry pencils. Just plain wood. How did you sharpen them?
KG: I don’t remember.
Interviewer: That’s a silly question. I’m just curious.
KG: It’s a good question. Yes. I suppose we just took them up sharpened —
Interviewer: Yeah. So —
KG: We had the razor blade with us.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: You know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Took a razor blade along to do it.
Interviewer: The navigator was a completely separate person from the wireless operator.
KG: Yes. Yes.
Interviewer: I presume he’d be sitting at his desk throughout most of the trip.
KG: He was. He never left it.
Interviewer: He never left it.
KG: He never left his position.
Interviewer: This is, this is one of the things where we came, we’ve come slightly unstuck because we didn’t realise that looking from the main spar forward like that the wireless operator there looked —
KG: The navigator is there. Yes.
Interviewer: Blasted silly if you didn’t have a navigator.
KG: That’s right. You’ve got someone —
Interviewer: So —
KG: Right alongside. Yeah. And to the forward part of the cabin. In fact, I’ve got some photographs at home taken inside the aircraft looking back from the navigator to the wireless operator. They’re not very clear. Not as clear as these sort of things.
Interviewer: Yes. It would be very, it would be very helpful if we could borrow these photographs and copy them.
KG: Right. I’ll take copies for you. Get them down.
Interviewer: Because as I say getting photographs are the same because you see all these wiring looms and things like that.
KG: Well, that —
Interviewer: Sort of roughly —
KG: Yeah. That is more difficult for me to tell you the truth. A because I don’t really remember now.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: After all this time.
Interviewer: Oh no.
KG: Exactly where the bits and pieces went. What you really want to get hold of for that is possibly a wireless mechanic.
Interviewer: Well —
KG: The old wireless mechanics.
Interviewer: What we have got we do know of a chap who is a private sort of, for private purposes is reconstructing a Lancaster wireless operator’s position.
KG: Oh yeah.
Interviewer: So we’re just photographing his, copying his work.
KG: Yes. Yes.
Interviewer: I presume you had a light on all the time.
KG: Well, we had, we had a little light which was a dimmer. It had a dimmer switch.
Interviewer: Yeah. So the light had a dimmer switch.
KG: And it was, it was one of those little tubular type lights.
Interviewer: Right.
KG: A spotlight more than anything. A spotlight type of thing and it had a dimmer to it and I wouldn’t keep it on necessarily all the time. It had a [unclear] on it. You could turn it off.
Interviewer: Yeah. So you just keep it —
KG: Because on the astrodome above your head you had the blackout curtain you drew across. As you, you realise there is, there is an astrodome up there.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: Right. And above your head you had the astrodome, you had the blackout curtain across it and just pulled that across and then I mean because the wireless operator one of his jobs amongst the others was to keep a lookout as well for enemy aircraft.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: When he wasn’t actually operating. Now, on an operational flight as a Pathfinder aircraft we had, we had more function than perhaps anyone else because we listened out to group broadcasts every twenty minutes.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: Now, they would come through with a message. The call sign of the Group’s sending station and the number. Just a single digit.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: From one to ten. That digit was the check on the wireless operator when he got back that he had in fact been listening —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: To Group broadcasts and hadn’t been listening to the BBC or [unclear]
Interviewer: And this would be in plain language.
KG: Just a call sign.
Interviewer: This would —
KG: And a number.
Interviewer: Of course. You see I know very little about radio.
KG: No. Ok.
Interviewer: So it would be —
KG: The call sign was the, would be the call sign of the sending station.
Interviewer: Could you be —
KG: You know APXT or something.
Interviewer: What would be a typical sort of —
KG: Well, a typical call sign would have been for instance 8LY.
Interviewer: 8LY.
KG: 8LY was probably if I remember rightly that was 8 Group.
Interviewer: Yeah. So that would, that would have been —
KG: 8LY was Graveley.
Interviewer: So that would have been —
KG: Transmission.
Interviewer: Transmitted in Morse.
KG: That would have been sent in Morse.
Interviewer: And was the number say 8LY?
KG: The number eight.
Interviewer: Eight.
KG: 8LY. 8LY. Then 7. So 8LY — 7. Now, if there was a message to be transmitted —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Then they transmitted the message in that Group broadcast.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Every twenty minutes throughout the flight.
Interviewer: Every twenty minutes. Because I’m thinking that the fact that we could —
KG: The hour, twenty past and twenty to.
Interviewer: The hour, twenty past and twenty to. So they would transmit. They’d say, they’d transmit their call sign twice.
KG: They would keep this up for about five minutes.
Interviewer: Oh, they just, oh that’s interesting.
KG: And they’d keep, this broadcast would be, Group broadcast would be going for about four or five minutes. They would just send the call sign and your number. So call sign and number. Call sign and number. If you were getting a number you knew they had nothing. No further instructions to send you. If they had, if they had an instruction, for instance one night when we’d set off to [pause] where was it? The German towns now. We got a recall. Now, we’d got out as far as probably halfway across the North Sea and when I turned into the, into the, tuned into the Group broadcast there was call signs and there was an actual message transmitted on that occasion when I had decoded the message it said, ‘Return to base.’ That was all.
Interviewer: That’s interesting because one of the sort of ideas we had was every now and then for variety putting a message over the —
KG: Yes. Now, the other function that the wireless operator had of course was as back up to the navigator. This was his, one of his big functions. Right.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Because he could get bearings. He could ask for fixes. He could ask for assistance —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Of all sorts by Morse. That’s transmitting by Morse.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He could ask, he could ask his home base station, direction finding station for a bearing back to base and this would be, he would just come up for the QDM. That’s part of the Q code. International Q code still. QDM was what is my [pause] What is my direction to fly to reach you?
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: That sort of idea. And the parent airfield would acknowledge his transmission and then the wireless operator clamped his key down. So if you see on that key there is a little —
Interviewer: Ah.
KG: A little button on there.
Interviewer: So that’s important. We ought, we must have that little clamp there.
KG: Yes. You must have that key. That’s a genuine key. Right. And it’s all encased in a plastic case. You would press this key down, flick that button over it to hold it down for a few minutes. The home station would take a bearing on the aircraft. He’d then unflick that key and the home station would send him his bearing. The course to fly to reach that.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Reach that station. So he’d get a bearing. If he was completely lost he called up the Medial Frequency Direction Finding stations. MFDF stations as they were known and they were dotted around England. Now, he carried, the wireless operator carried with him a flimsy with all these codes in it.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: So he knew exactly where to call.
Interviewer: That’s different. That’s different from —
KG: They were all marked up on this. On this book here.
Interviewer: I see.
KG: Yeah.
Interviewer: So that would be —
KG: The plaque on the front there. Right.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He very often, I’ll come to that in a minute with a pre-tuned in set but he could ask them for a fix.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And the master station of the three stations would answer him and tell him to go ahead. He would again clamp his key down. The master station would take a bearing and two slave stations would take a bearing and where they crossed the slave stations would immediately inform the master station who informed the wireless operator in the air what his position was.
Interviewer: Yeah. There was stuff.
KG: The wireless operator could also cross transmit and receive messages.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: For his aircraft of any sort at all. But largely his transmitting work consisted of getting bearings and fixes.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And things like that. Now, there was of course his very very very important function which was when the aircraft was badly damaged and in trouble. That’s when he came to —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: The wireless operator really came into his own because if the aircraft was badly damaged over Germany and could be flying home and about to ditch in the sea —
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: The crew depended on the wireless operator being capable of doing his job.
Interviewer: That’s when he really came into his own.
KG: That’s when he came into his own because he could save their lives and he operated the dinghy radio once they were out the aircraft as well.
Interviewer: Oh I see.
KG: So that was another function he had. And the procedure there of course was that he called up on the MFDF stations.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And sent out an SOS. The MFDF stations would answer him and he would continue sending this SOS and clamping his key down so they would be keeping a permanent fix on the aircraft as it went down.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And only in the last minutes when the rest of the crew had gone to the, to their ditching stations the wireless operator and the pilot would still be at their positions.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: And at the last minute when the pilot told him he was about to go in the wireless operator would clamp his key down, leave his set and go and take up a ditching station in the —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Over the main spar.
Interviewer: Not very pleasant.
KG: No. So you’ve got you know that’s, that was really —
Interviewer: Yeah. That was it.
KG: That was important.
Interviewer: Otherwise the wireless operator he didn’t really have all that much to do.
KG: No. He had a knowledge of the circuits of the of the aircraft. He had a knowledge of the circuits of the, an intercom system.
Interviewer: Oh yes.
KG: Which he could repair in an emergency. He knew the workings of his set and he could, he knew the emergency procedures to carry out repairs on that.
Interviewer: Oh yeah.
KG: If necessary, if the intercom failed which was a separate system he could feed it in through the wireless here and through the wireless he could set up an emergency intercom system.
Interviewer: Oh, that’s interesting.
KG: So the intercom went through the, through the radio which connected him.
Interviewer: That’s intriguing.
KG: But when he was using it through the radio in order to protect the radio he could only have about three people on the intercom at any one time.
Interviewer: Yeah. Otherwise it did something nasty to the radio.
KG: Yes. Otherwise it would blow one of the valves in the radio.
Interviewer: What sort of —
KG: [unclear]
Interviewer: What sort of kit would you normally have been wearing when you were —
KG: Well, the wireless operator would be wearing certainly flying boots and heavy socks. Probably he wore a pair of, a pair of, I always wore a pair of electrically heated shoes, slippers.
Interviewer: Oh yes. I’ve heard of those.
KG: Right. Because that was the part of me that got the coldest quite honestly but by and large the wireless operator wasn’t too bad because the hot air duct came out here.
Interviewer: Yes. This is what I’ve —
KG: And he got sometimes he was too hot. But the basic kit I suppose was you’d be wearing flying boots, this is all in case the heating failed obviously.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: He’d be wearing his flying boots, he’d be wearing socks, he’d be wearing a pair of the long john underwear. A long heavy woollen vest. Shirt on the top of that. Probably a collar and tie usually as well on top of that. He’d wear a white roll neck pullover.
Interviewer: Oh, that’s useful.
KG: Right. His battledress top over that. Battledress trousers on.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: On the top of that he would wear the Mae West and on the top of that he would have his parachute harness. Right. He’d wear a flying helmet and an oxygen mask with a microphone in it. The same as all the rest of them.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: The rest of the crew did. He’d probably, he had gloves. He had silk gloves.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Silken gloves and he had leather gauntlets as well.
Interviewer: Yes. would you usually, would you usually tend to wear the silk gloves?
KG: No, not really. Not in a Lancaster. We did in a Halifax.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Because in a Halifax the wireless operator’s position is down in the nose. It’s in a completely different position and it was freezing down there because you’d got no heat at all. And that’s when I used to wear electrically heated slippers and all my, every person would possibly wear.
Interviewer: You had everything. Everything in there.
KG: Because being down the nose there even our navigator with that on he still got a frost-bitten toe.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: So that shows how cold it got in a Halifax. But in a Lancaster he was much more, he really didn’t need all that much kit. In fact, in summertime I had more than once flown in shirt sleeves foolishly.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Foolishly looking back now.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Because if we had been shot down, baled out I would have found myself over the other side in the middle of the night in shirt sleeves you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Which wouldn’t have been funny but took the battledress to top along you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Took that along with us and a pullover along with us. Probably put all that on as we got, as we gained height you know but for the first hundred miles or so we would be flying out over the North Sea towards Denmark at zero feet. You know, about a hundred feet up. In the summertime it was quite pleasant and warm, you know. So that’s, that as I said is the receiver and that is the transmitter. Now, the transmitter had these coloured knobs on it or has these coloured knobs on it which are the different ranges.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Right. Different ranges and the frequencies of those ranges were set out pretty well clearly on the, on the set itself.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Right. And you could pre-tune those. For instance you could set one set to the to the —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: To the nearest DF stations and the other one to your home base station and the other to your home station.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And the other one was left, you know loose so that all you had to do in order to come on to the DF stations was to turn the switches. Two switches. Click click and your transmitter was set. You didn’t have to start tuning in and finding the other guy. You could tune that set to that set.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And of course vice versa but I mean basically what you did was you tuned in on your receiver.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: You tuned into the station that you wanted and then you tuned your transmitter to your receiver. At the side here just above or behind his head there and I don’t know if you can see it on here you have the aerial switch.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: Which switched the aerial for the various ranges. Now, I don’t see one on there.
Interviewer: The thing, one thing I know we’ve got to sort of get. Get to copy —
KG: It should be in here alongside here and it’s just a big switch that, with a big handle on it and it switches from various things.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Because you carried the trailing aerial. I think if I remember it was two hundred and fifty feet.
Interviewer: Oh.
KG: Of trailing aerial which was a fairly decent steel cable with a set of little steel balls on the end of it to give it weight. And that is on a reel at the left-hand side of the wireless operator down here.
Interviewer: Yes. You would have reeled this in and out.
KG: And you would reel this in and out. You reeled it out once you had got to a certain height and that was if I remember rightly that was the medium frequency aerial.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: For NF transmission. Two hundred and fifty feet of it. Trail that behind the aircraft and you wound this in very very quickly when the pilot was landing because you had got to get it in before it caught on a tree or a fence and you lost it because if you lost it you had to pay for it.
Interviewer: That sounds typical [laughs]
KG: One of things that the Air Force did make you pay for.
Interviewer: The frequency aerial.
KG: I know because I lost one.
Interviewer: Gosh.
KG: I lost one in the trees coming in to land and it was quite a, it was quite a job to reel it in. I mean, it was, you know there was a lot of wire to reel in on that thing.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: By hand to feed it and then you had on the top of the aircraft you had the fixed aerial.
Interviewer: Oh yes.
KG: I’m rambling a bit on this I know but you’ll be able to pick this out.
Interviewer: Yes, well that’s the idea.
KG: On the top of that you had the fixed aerial in a V shape to the wings.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And that was also connected to your aerial switch as was your DF loop. Now the direction finding loop is situated just forward there of the astrodome.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And it’s actually under the Perspex canopy of the aircraft. Right. That was another feature of the wireless operator’s functions was that he could get directions from the aircraft itself. He didn’t have to call for QDMs or anything like that. If his transmitter was blown out for any reason he could still operate with the receiver.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He could operate the direction finding equipment himself on the aircraft and this decision, this DF loop on top with a goniometer reaching down just underneath. Just over his head here.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: I don’t see it on here at all. It should come down from the top there and operating this he could tune to his home station.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: For instance his airfield radio transmitter and he could take a bearing on it himself and then give the pilot instructions where to fly. Now, in addition to that he could feed that direction finding aerial through his receiver on to a little gadget on the pilot’s cockpit.
Interviewer: Oh, that’s clever.
KG: And that had two, two needles that crossed like that. A left and a right. And you will see here there’s a little switch here on the top.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: With L and R on it. Right. Which is left and right. When the, when the needles went down to the right the pilot knew he was going off to the left. When it went the other way he knew he was going off the other way. So all he had to do was to keep those two needles crossed on the central arm on that dial and he would be theoretically anyway flying towards the station from which the transmission was coming. The left and right switch enabled the wireless operator once you’d fixed the station to determine whether it was forward or behind him because he switched the left or the right hand side of the loop. And whichever it was loudest on that gave him his, I mean you were flying towards it and yeah the signal was coming from the front. So this half of the loop is getting more —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Than the back half.
Interviewer: Than the back half.
KG: So he then switched to see which way the [pause] if he overflew the day station [coughs] excuse me.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: If you overflew the station then of course he would be getting a reading behind him and he’d know he’d gone too far.
Interviewer: It’s all clever stuff.
KG: Now, all these things worked within reasonable —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Limits you know. They weren’t perfect because it was let’s face it a 1940s radio wasn’t as developed as it is today.
Interviewer: No.
KG: In fact, this whole Marconi setup here. This 11 54 55.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Was a hell of an advance on what had gone before because the radio sets before this were extremely primitive and you had to, you actually had to change coils and crystals and, you know. Still [pause]
Interviewer: Great. Yeah.
KG: This was a tremendous advance where you could just tune it you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Straight off. No bother at all and it all had coloured knobs on it to reset.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And it was extremely, extremely clever stuff that was.
Interviewer: Stop it and see how it’s —
[recording paused]
Interviewer: It’s going again now.
KG: He would say a complex M-Mother. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And then you would go back and one of the stations would come back to you. Now that station would be within ten miles because this was the range of the Darkie set.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: It would be within ten miles of you and he would then take you over and give you all the instructions. You know, if you were lost he would say, well, ‘This is Manston here.’ So you knew you were within ten miles of Manston. He would then say, ‘Switch on all your navigation lights.’ Once you switched navigation lights on they would then instruct the Royal Observer Corps —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: To look for you. And the searchlight batteries to look for you. If they detected you the searchlight batteries would raise a searchlight upright. Vertical. And then they would lay it along the ground and all you had to do was fly along that beam until the next searchlight picked you up and it would do the same and you would fly along that beam until you came to the airfield which would be lit up for you.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: They could also send up Spitfires to guide you home. There were all these sort of things were laid on by Darkie you know if you really were in trouble.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: That was, the wireless operator was if you like the Darkie expert.
Interviewer: Yeah. He knew.
KG: He knew the procedures for calling on Darkie if you were in any sort of trouble. He could also of course transmit by Morse if his kit, his set was working.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And he could get the aircraft out of any sort of trouble in that sort of way. If you ditched in the sea the wireless operator carried the dinghy radio and he took that out with him and he set that up in the dinghy. He would fly off the kite carrying an aerial and he’d plug that in to the dinghy radio and the dinghy radio had a handle on it which you turned and that sent out an automatic SOS. It had a little button on it which you could actually manually send them.
Interviewer: What sort of sound did the Morse of that period make? I sort of ask this because Morse, the various Morse sounds did change over the years.
KG: Well, I think it’s pretty well as you would hear it on the radio today. I don’t, when I hear Morse on the radio I don’t hear it any, any differently.
Interviewer: Yes, because I know very much in the earlier days before the musical spar the early Marconi Morse was more of a burp.
KG: Oh yes. No. This was a, this was a bleep rather than a burp.
Interviewer: Bleep.
KG: It was a straightforward carrier wave sound. A clear sound and of course the pitch of it depended on how well you’d tuned the station.
Interviewer: Yes. We could get away with.
KG: Yeah. You accurately tuned the station.
Interviewer: So no one would find anything terribly wrong if every say ten minutes or so just for the object of the exercise we put in a couple of minutes of Morse —
KG: No. No problem.
Interviewer: With one of those code signals.
KG: No. No problem. The average wireless operator was trained I suppose to, he started at four words a minutes. Six. Eight. Ten. Twelve. Fourteen. Sixteen. Eighteen. Eighteen he passed out at the end of the, all the courses at eighteen words a minute.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Most operators went on to get about twenty four I suppose.
Interviewer: Really?
KG: Twenty four. Some of the better ones I consider myself amongst those would have been on about twenty eight.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: To thirty words a minute. They were keen enough on it.
Interviewer: Yes. I’m just thinking these sort of twenty minutes, these sort of codes that were transmitted every twenty minutes you said.
KG: Yeah.
Interviewer: They were specific for Pathfinders.
KG: No. No. They were specifically for all aircraft.
Interviewer: For all aircraft.
KG: For each Group. Each Group. 4 Group, six.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: 4 Group. 8 Group. Whatever it was sent out its own group broadcast.
Interviewer: Oh, I see. That’s useful.
KG: To its aircraft.
Interviewer: Because obviously we want to try and make this thing as general as possible.
KG: Sure. They would have sent out their own group broadcasts to their own aircraft.
Interviewer: I see.
KG: And in that they would have sent out any particular message. Now, in the Pathfinder aircraft the navigators of the Pathfinders being supposed experts at their jobs this is why we were Pathfinders. They had the job of determining at certain points along the route what the windspeed and direction was at their, at their height so that they could, they could determine their drift. Well, the navigators had to keep a track obviously —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Of windspeeds and that because it meant they would be drifting with the wind off track so they had to know how much to allow for and every, I’m not sure if it’s every hour but at regular intervals the navigator on some Pathfinder aircraft would pass the wireless operator a slip with the wind speed and directions that he was finding in his navigation.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Right. And the wireless operator who had to maintain wireless silence throughout the trip over Germany —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Would break wireless silence and just rip off this message and just close down. Now, they worked on the basis that if there were twenty aircraft of the Pathfinders sending back messages at least one or two would get through.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Would be heard and group would then compute the average speed and direction of the wind that the navigators of the Pathfinders would find.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Feed it back to the Groups who were transmitting in their Group broadcasts to their —
Interviewer: To their aircraft. Yes. So they could set up.
KG: So the navigators there could have the benefit of this.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Of this you know check on their, on their navigation.
Interviewer: But more or less really the wireless operator was along for the ride until something went wrong.
KG: Something went wrong. Yes.
Interviewer: That’s what —
KG: Yes. That’s quite true, yes. Yes.
Interviewer: He didn’t have much to do and then when something went wrong he was very busy.
KG: Well, you could say the same with the gunners.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: You know I mean they just sat there unless they were attacked. In fact, most of the crew apart from the pilot and —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: The navigator had that function. I mean the bomb aimer had only really initially one function.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: Which was to press the tit when they got to the target you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: But in point of fact later on he did fulfil a very vital function working the, working the radar sets.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Alongside the navigator and it was the flight engineer who went down and pressed the tit when they got to the target.
Interviewer: Yeah. That’s interesting.
KG: Because it was all being dropped on radar. But as you say the wireless operator like everyone else in the crew had his function.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: The moment his function was needed.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Like the gunners had their function the moment they were attacked otherwise they just sat there.
Interviewer: Yeah. I think when we make this thing up we’re not really going to, we’ll try and avoid showing any radar equipment or anything because we’re really just going to concentrate on the wireless. The wireless equipment. But it’s going to be in semi-darkness anyway.
KG: Yes.
Interviewer: So it should be pretty convincing I think.
KG: Yes. Well, the wireless operator had a very hard seat you can see.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: It wasn’t all that comfortable because his back was to the main spar and he was sitting on a sort of bench like structure which was quite, you know quite solid.
Interviewer: Quite solid.
KG: Quite a solid seat. There was no, no real comforts to all that you know and you could get a numb bum on that no trouble at all after about eight hours in the air. It got a bit, got a bit binding. In fact, you obviously, he obviously took along his, he took along his flying rations.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Which usually consisted of a Mars bar and perhaps a sandwich and a cup —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: A flask of coffee. He also had his emergency, mustn’t forget his emergency flying rations to pack.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Which contained the silk handkerchief for the map.
Interviewer: Oh yes. All that.
KG: And the Horlicks tablets and the concentrated beef cubes and that in it you know in case you had to bale out.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And it was down the other side.
Interviewer: These would all be stowed away under the little —
KG: Well, you’d have them in a bag.
Interviewer: Bags.
KG: A little bag or anyway he might have them in his pocket. No. You can see his pencil there.
Interviewer: Yeah. Just an ordinary one.
KG: That’s an Air Ministry pencil by the look of it. Yes. Those plain wood ones they were.
Interviewer: Yeah. Plain wood ones.
KG: Very plain colourless wood. Wood things like that. What else can I tell you because he had all that going through his stuff. Yeah. He had his lookout position through the astrodome which was a useful function because it was spotting for enemy aircraft. Oh, of course. The verey pistol.
Interviewer: Oh yes. The verey pistol.
KG: The wireless operator also had to have the verey pistol behind him. The verey pistol mount clip was over his head. Just behind his head.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Where he took the pistol and twisted it into the socket.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: Plugged it in so it could fire out of the aircraft and he carried with him in his bag, his flight bag he carried the cartridges for the code of the day. So that should they come back with no wireless and be attacked by British ack ack as they came in —
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Not having any identification friend or foe to avoid then he would fire the colours of the day.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He had to identify himself. he also carried an Aldiss lamp with which he could do visual signalling.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: From aircraft to aircraft or aircraft to ground.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He was, he could also do that. That sort of signalling. The only thing he didn’t do was, was flag wigwagging you know.
Interviewer: Yeah [laughs]
KG: But otherwise he could do that. Otherwise between group broadcasts it was probably all a case of Vera Lynn on the BBC you know for him. Which, which we did a lot of. The rest of the crew didn’t want to hear it of course. They were too busy with their various functions and jobs.
Interviewer: But what happened if, was it but if you were tuned to Vera Lynn you couldn’t pick up any emergency messages.
KG: No. No. You’d be listening to the BBC.
Interviewer: Yes.
KG: And the wireless operators did that the whole time you know. So Group broadcasts over that time twenty minutes.
Interviewer: Group broadcasts. Let’s have fifteen minutes.
KG: Twenty minutes let’s have a bit of you know the Forces Programme on and he could of course feed that into the intercom.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: It was all linked up because by turning the switch, but what the other thing the wireless operator had on his bench was the call light.
Interviewer: Oh.
KG: Now, that was quite an important function because when he was off intercom.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Doing his job either transmitting or receiving whatever it might be.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: He was not connected into the intercom.
Interviewer: I see.
KG: And if the pilot wanted him then he would press the call light button.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: And that would flash.
Interviewer: Where would the call light be?
KG: It was down by the set here somewhere. Down the side here.
Interviewer: It would be down the side somewhere.
KG: Yes, it’s all down the side there.
Interviewer: It would be just off the side.
KG: It would just be a little light, a little tiny bulb you know and they tended, it just flashed.
Interviewer: What colour was it?
KG: White.
Interviewer: Just a little white light.
KG: Just a light white light. Yes. It just flashed on and off. One, two, three, four would be the wireless operator. One two would be the navigator. Whatever, you know. That’s the sort of auxiliary lighting. And — [pause] So all in all I suppose the wireless operator did do quite a lot of, of work when they were not on operations. So when they were perhaps on the navigational cross-country exercises.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: Or something like that.
Interviewer: Yeah.
KG: The navigator would make use of the wireless operator to check his navigation.
Interviewer: Switch it off now.
Collection
Citation
Peter Turvey, “Interview with Kenneth Percy Bellew Grantham,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed July 21, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/53774.