Interview with Stan Mellor
Title
Interview with Stan Mellor
Description
Squadron Leader Stan Mellor joined the RAF in 1943, initially training as a wireless operator and air gunner before qualifying as a signaller. His early service saw him instructing on Dakotas before deploying to Burma, where he flew operations to rescue prisoners of war from jungle airstrips shortly after VJ Day. Mellor’s crew operated under challenging conditions, often sleeping under aircraft wings.
Post-war, Mellor served in Java and Sumatra during regional unrest, supporting Dutch and British forces. Re-joining the RAF he, flew transport, maritime patrol aircraft, and eventually Valliants, Victors, and testing Vulcan aircraft. He was involved in nuclear readiness during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later contributed to Concorde engine trials.
Post-war, Mellor served in Java and Sumatra during regional unrest, supporting Dutch and British forces. Re-joining the RAF he, flew transport, maritime patrol aircraft, and eventually Valliants, Victors, and testing Vulcan aircraft. He was involved in nuclear readiness during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later contributed to Concorde engine trials.
Creator
Date
2025-05-24
Spatial Coverage
Coverage
Language
Type
Format
01:15:13 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
AMellorS250524, PMellorS2501, PMellorS2502, PMellorS2503, PMellorS2504
Transcription
SP: So, this is Suzanne Pescott and I’m recording the interview of one hundred year old Squadron Leader Stan Mellor today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Stan’s home and it is the 24th of May 2025. Also present at the interview is Stan’s daughter Diane. So, Stan joined the RAF in 1943 serving for forty years including time in Burma and Singapore. So, first of all, thank you Stan for agreeing to talk to me today. So, do you want to tell me a little bit about what you did before you joined the RAF?
SM: I was a clerk from leaving school at age fourteen. My first job was at age fourteen, and there was odd little jobs I did, one was the main library in Liverpool. Liverpool. I spent some time there and eventually joined a company where I was a clerk. And then the war started and staff of the company I joined were being filtered off into the Services and I was taking, automatically joining their position in the company until finally I joined in May ’43 but it was generally clerking. And then that was, I was aged seventeen when I went to the first interview. I was a member of the ATC at that stage and I was sent home and told to come back in six months’ time when I would be eighteen and that happened in February of ’25 [pause] Not ‘25. In [pause] sorry when I was eighteen I then had my joining up papers and eventually I ended up at St John’s Wood, Regents Park where quite a few hundred other aircrew and I joined. We were all split up into flights and each flight was about twenty people and in my flight was a film star, Dickie Attenborough and he was, Dickie Attenborough was in the flight with me at St John’s Wood and then I was posted on to Bridgnorth to Initial Training Wing. But Dickie Attenborough was, as is well known was posted off to Canada to do pilot training. The story goes that he failed his pilot training and became a navigator. He did one or two operational trips and then the film industry grabbed him and that’s the sort of story of his life from there on. He was mostly his film star world to do with the Service, the RAF or some unit or other for the rest of the war.
SP: What role did you —
SM: I beg your pardon?
SP: What role did you do in the —
SM: I joined as a wireless op/air gunner and eventually I checked out, they changed the brevet at that time which was a AG brevet the wireless op/air gunners carried. But after a short while they ditched the AG brevet and formed the S brevet which was signaller and that put a lot of smiles on the faces of a lot of characters who used to go around waving flags. But I carried the signaller brevet until, until when I joined the V-Force at Gaydon much later on where I did a postgraduate course and became an air electronics officer. Another change of brevet which was AEO.
SP: So, going back to your role when you first joined. So you’d done your initial training. What happened after your period of initial training?
SM: Initial training. Went on to, initial training was at Madley at Hereford and I was, my course, training course was posted to various Bomber Command units and I was one of one or two who were held back because they wanted to have a look at my exam results and as a result I didn’t go to Bomber Command. I was posted to [pause] now, it was a unit. I can’t remember the unit now.
SP: Yeah. No worries. So what, what role was that doing if it wasn’t initially in Bomber Command because —
SM: No. It was Training Command then.
SP: Yeah.
SM: When I was posted with about three others to a unit in Northumberland to join a navigator’s Conversion Unit and I functioned as a wireless operator on a Avro Anson and the Avro Anson in those days carried a turret in the, halfway down the fuselage on the top. I did a month or so there and just from there I was, I joined the Dakota unit at, I should have gone to America or Canada to join the first Dakota unit. Conversion Unit. As it happened the first Conversion Unit was set up at Carlisle at Crosby-on-Eden and I joined the, the first course. I did the first course but then was held back as a flight instructor and likewise on the second course and also the third course I spent as a flight instructor at Crosby-on-Eden. But then a crew turned up on, on the third course who required a wireless operator and so the finger was pointed to Stan Mellor who was available. So he joined the crew that needed the wireless operator and flew one or two trips with the, with the crew. Just flight. Didn’t do the ground course at all and then we, we were posted to Burma via Karachi and Delhi and, and Rangoon.
SP: Do you want to tell me a little bit about that trip going out all the way over to —
SM: To India?
SP: India. Yeah.
SM: From [pause] from the UK, pardon me, we were posted to a Stirling unit in the New Forest which had been converted into passenger carrying and our crew joined a Stirling at New Forest and they took us out to [pause] initially to the unit at Karachi. There we stayed one day and one night and it was such a dreadful place we, we reported ourselves to the Air Movements Unit at Rangoon and reported that we were the, a flight re-force crew for Rangoon. And they accepted this and posted us down via Delhi and Rangoon who didn’t know anything about us where we, they said, ‘Well, thankfully we need a crew because we’ve just lost a crew,’ whose captain was the son of Anthony Eden the government at the times Foreign Secretary and they never did find Anthony Eden’s son’s crew. So we took up that slot and it was the first, either the first or the second night we spent underneath the wing of a Dakota because there was no accommodation for us. They supplied us with tent fly sheets. Just a couple for the four man crew and we slept underneath the wing of a Dakota where we were rudely awakened during the night with gunfire and, we put that to the back of our minds, went back to sleep again to find in the morning the Japanese had attacked the officer’s line, the tent lines, their accommodation but didn’t come anywhere near the aircraft or the crew which was hidden in fly sheets underneath the wing and, but nobody was injured. I think it was an Australian unit came down from, from the north from operations and sorted the Japanese out and captured them all and we, we then found our proper accommodation at 114, 117 Squadron, Hmawbi, Rangoon, or north of Rangoon. About twenty miles north of Rangoon and our first sortie there, proper sortie was flying into Siam, into a Japanese jungle airstrip and we could say rescued the POWs there. Although the parachute regiment had been, been in to that camp I think the day before or the two days before and sorted the Japanese out but we landed at a Japanese jungle strip and the Japanese maintained our aircraft, refuelled us and generally looked after us because there was the only English speaking people there were the POWs and all they wanted was to get on board our Dakota which we did. The Japanese boarded, made sure the POWs were boarded and we did about eight. Eight trips to Hmawbi pulling the POWs out.
SP: And about how many POWs would you take back in the Dakota at a time?
SM: Probably about twenty I should think.
SP: Really.
SM: Which was a normal airborne troops accommodation.
SP: Yeah.
SM: But that was with their arms of course. All the, all the POW, all the POWs had was their rags of clothing.
SP: Yeah.
SM: Whatever could be found and their, the only clothing they had in the POW camp was the loin cloth. Just a strip of cloth really and that’s the way they boarded the aircraft and as we took off from Hmawbi enroute to Bangkok so they strung all the, all the cloth. I’m trying to remember the name they called them but their previous, you know loin cloths.
SP: Yeah.
SM: They streamed out of the windows. The windows of the Dakota.
SP: So what condition were they in, the prisoners or war when you picked them up?
SM: Well, some of them were quite fit and happy to chat and talk to us. A very moving time for me because the first chap, the POW I met was an Australian and he grabbed me by the hand and shook me by the hand and wouldn’t leave go the whole time we were there and it was a very moving time.
SP: So you were such an important role that you did to bring him out of there wasn’t it?
SM: Yes. Indeed.
SP: Yeah. Yeah.
SM: So we, he boarded. We made sure he was comfortable on the aircraft and took him back to Bangkok. There were, he was one of the walking wounded you could call him. So where there were some, some people on, on stretchers boarded up the aircraft and they, all they wanted to know was there anybody in the crew from [pause] one particular individual apart from the Australian was a chap from Liverpool. I always felt sorry that I didn’t make a note of the individual because I would have, I would have loved to have met his family when I flew back.
SP: Yeah.
SM: To England.
SP: Yeah.
SM: But that was it. From Hmawbi we, we were transferred to Mingaladon which was at Rangoon. Mingaladon was Rangoon’s airport and that, that was [pause] I’m trying to remember the name and the number of the squadron [pause] Anyways it was the Dakota squadron at Rangoon and we were there for some time operating route flying in the Far East and opening up routes from, from Siam to Hong Kong, Saigon and all these airfields that I mentioned. They were all manned by the Japanese who looked after us and managed our aircraft and air traffic and there was one incident that we, the crew had, did their pre-flight planning at Saigon airfield which was manned by the Japanese and so was the operation, the operation block was manned by the Japs who saw to our needs. The crew had finished their planning and they got the transport to a house just nearby the airfield, Saigon airfield which we, the crews, the Dakota crews had named Dakota House. My crew got transport to Dakota House and left me in the Operations Block, the only English speaking in the Japanese block whilst I finished my own planning and when I finished planning I packed my bag and I walked out through the main gate where I was. I got a salute from the Japanese party which was manning the gate with the equivalent of a flight lieutenant Japanese officer in charge who held his samurai sword aloft in salute and I thought what the hell am I supposed to do because I was, I had a Smith & Wesson revolver on my waist and that was it. That’s the only arms I had and a pair of ragged shorts and I was walking to the main gate in the direction of Dakota House to be, to get a proper salute by the Japanese. I walked a few hundred yards in the direction of the accommodation that I was looking for and in the opposite direction approaching me was a party of Japanese troops with rifles on their shoulders. Rifles and bayonets on their shoulders with an officer in the front with a samurai sword up aloft and they were in, I think either twos or threes I can’t remember. But they were on the opposite side of the road marching, passing me in the opposite direction and so this representative of the British Empire was by himself with his Smith & Wesson .38 walking in the opposite direction whereupon the Japanese officer yelled something that I couldn’t understand but what turned out to be, ‘Eyes right,’ and the whole, the whole column which was probably about seventy-five or a hundred Japanese troops all eyes right. So I thought what the hell do I do? Again. So I brought myself to return their salute in a fashion and, and the, ‘Eyes front,’ again and marched on towards the main gate where I continued to Dakota House. When I arrived at Dakota House I was yelled at by the chaps in the main door who said, ‘Don’t go near that water.’ Apparently a navigator on a crew previously had arrived at Dakota House and the navigator had walked into the pool of water which was electrified and he was killed on the spot and so I was very lucky that I was warned. So I went around the pool and survived and we stayed there whilst we, we looked after our POWs and travelled back and forth from there to Bangkok and Mingaladon where we continued other operations to Japanese held airfields and units around the area whilst we continued to open up the routes for the rest of the Air Force. And from there we continued through. Pardon me. We continued up to Hong Kong where we, it was virtually the same story at Kai Tak which was the rather run-down Japanese airfield. That was a year or so before they built the main airfield at, at Hong Kong and from there we returned to Mingaladon to continue what we were good at.
SP: During that time did it surprise you the respect that the Japanese were showing to the British crew while you were over there?
SM: Well, yes.
SP: Yeah.
SM: It had changed you know at the snap of the fingers really. They, had it have been perhaps a couple of days before we would have had a bayonet in the guts or were shot down or —
SP: Yeah.
SM: POW camp to join the rest of them. We were [pause] I wouldn’t have got away with marching past them.
SP: So the timing of this compared to VE Day, sorry VJ Day. Was it around VJ Day that you were over there?
SM: It was after VJ.
SP: Just after VJ.
SM: Yeah.
SP: Yeah. Just after.
SM: I can’t remember the date.
SP: Yeah.
SM: But it was —
SP: It was —
SM: About a week or so.
SP: Yeah. It was only September ’45 so it was very —
SM: Yeah.
SP: Very recent wasn’t it? Yeah.
SM: But the Japanese were still in charge for quite some time.
SP: Right.
SM: And the, they looked after us at their airfields and maintained our aircraft around while we opened the routes around the Far East.
SP: So after your time in Burma was that your tour completed over in Burma then?
SM: Yes. It was. We, I was in, I think I mentioned 62 Squadron at Mingaladon and then once we finished the POWs operation and we transferred to [pause] what squadron was it? 62, 1 [pause] 48 Squadron and we operated more of opening the routes and general transport operations throughout the airfields which we’d already opened. Until [pause] when was [pause] until I was repatriated to the UK in 1940⸺ [pause] I think it was late ’46 or early 1947. But prior to that we, we had joined the Dutch forces in Java because the Japanese, no, Javanese president raised his ugly head at that time and attempted to take over Sumatra and Java and we were on a war footing then because as the Javanese president used to send parties over to Singapore and Changi raiding us. So we were on night operations with the Shackletons as well as the Dakotas trying to put the Javanese troops down. But anyway we were doing operations in the Javanese, the Sumatran airfields and the Java airfields because they were being, the Java airfields I had mentioned were manned by Dutch troops. The Sumatra airfields were manned by the British troops and they were being attacked by the Javanese. The Javanese troops, regulars of Suharto’s. Suharto was the president. It was on most of our Dakota trips from Changi loaded with supplies our regular trip was up to the northern airfield of Sumatra, offload either stores or goats in fact because we’d load the aircraft with goats for the Indian and Gurkha troops there which brings me to the next airfield. Half way down Sumatra on the western side was manned by Gurkha, a Gurkha platoon which had been attacked that night and the Gurkhas were, were about to have a go at us when we landed because they thought we were the Japanese aircraft and, but fortunately we put that to rest and, but found one of our engines had been hit by the Javanese ground troops on the edge of the airfield and so we, they, the Gurkhas found, and there was a small contingent of British ground troops. Only about, probably be about ten. Ten lads to look after our aircraft. Anyway, they found us accommodation and took us around to a wooden basha and as we entered the accommodation we were yelled at from the opposite end of the accommodation. There was a Gurkha. A young, a young Gurkha lad who probably was in his [pause] in his very young age sitting on the top of his bed on his pillow pointing his automatic rifle at us as we were going through the door and we just managed to stop him from firing into us and whereupon he broke down and we put him at rest. And so we had accommodation for the night and then we had to service our own aircraft. I radioed using our ground led aircraft radio. I radioed the squadron at Changi what our problems were and the following morning a new engine appeared and we helped the ground crew install the new engine and that evening we were airborne back to Singapore. And I said, I mentioned Changi, it wasn’t Changi. It was, it was the parkland airfield which was the original Singapore airfield. Anyway, that was it and we stayed at, we stayed at 48 Squadron at Changi and from the parkland airfield on the outskirts of Singapore the Japanese had finished building the Changi airfield which they’d lined instead of concrete with PSP metal strips all interlocked like a jigsaw and that was what we landed at.
SP: What was that like to land on?
SM: Hmmn?
SP: What was that like to land on?
SM: Noisy [laughs]
SP: Noisy [laughs] I can imagine.
SM: It was a bouncy landing and usually bent quite a few of these strips which probably measured about ten foot long and about three foot wide. Something like that. And there were, they were all open, open weave.
SP: Yeah.
SM: On the holes.
SP: And that would have been —
SM: And this —
SP: Sorry. That would have been in a Shackleton that you did that.
SM: That was a Dakota.
SP: You had a Dakota on that. Yeah.
SM: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
SM: That was the Dakota time.
SP: Yeah. Right. So, I’ve just got, just for the interview could we say in the years you were there you actually finished in May ’47.
SM: Yeah.
SP: So, it was May ’47 when you actually left Singapore and that was 48 Squadron.
SM: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
SP: Where you finished on that one. Yeah. So after your time in Singapore where, what happened next in your RAF career?
SM: Well, I was transported to Watton in Lancashire for demob and I was demobbed there reluctantly because when I was leaving 48 Squadron at Singapore my CO asked me to stay on at 48 Squadron. And I said I’d just received word that my father had died and he, he was in fact buried whilst I was still in Singapore and it left mother by herself in Liverpool and I put it to them that my place was in Liverpool looking after mum. And so that’s what happened. I was transferred to Watton in Lancashire where I left the Air Force and I joined the company that I’d been, a company at [pause] I’m backtracking again. I mentioned before that another staff of the company I previously was at had gone into the Services so people like me were hopping into senior, senior places. I ended up as a teenager running a small company within, within the, it was a number of companies run by this main company. So I was running the company and it was from there that I lost the feeling for civil life and mother was coping very well. Meanwhile as our relatives had banded together to look after her and I I licked my pen and wrote to the Air Force and the Air Ministry as it was then and said I’m available. And they said unfortunately they were not recruiting anymore but they, because they had plans to recruit the wireless ops again and calling them signallers as I mentioned before and they will be contacting me. Contacting me when they were ready. And it was a couple of months after a couple more letters to Air Ministry I was told to report to St John’s Wood at Regents Park where I’d met Dickie Anderson err Attenborough, and that was it. From there it [pause] I joined a unit at Cardington as a, it was an Initial Training Wing type of accommodation where we did daytime lectures for, we were only there a month or so and then we were posted on again to a more permanent unit which was [pause] let’s think [pause] It was on 50 Maritime Unit.
SP: So you had some time in 1949 at Swanton Morley and then at Dishforth in ’49.
SM: Oh, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
SP: And Lyneham in ’50.
SM: Yeah.
SP: And then Topcliffe in ’50. Yeah. And Abingdon. So then you moved on to, from Topcliffe to Abingdon.
SM: Which was, they’d taken over from Dakotas and because they’d then fitted the force, the transport force with Hastings and I joined the Hastings [unclear] flight at Abingdon and that’s where we were. I did Air Support Flight with paratrooping, glider towing and later on, pardon me, later on posted on to a similar role in Leicester East and that was, that included glider towing and glider snatching and that’s where I joined. I think I previously called the [pause] I joined the full crew and from Leicester East we went out to Burma.
SP: So this, so your time after Burma was sometime Abingdon and Leconfield.
SM: Leconfield was a matter of weeks on a gunnery course flying Lincolns and firing twin cannons from the mid-outer turret, mid-upper turret. And I turned out to be an ace on the twin cannons because later on in the, when we were fighting the Dutch which I’d previously covered we were practicing the, from that we were practicing the maritime role with Shackletons with twin, twin cannons in the nose and twin cannons in the mid-upper turret. And although during that time I was skipping some time now but I was running the Operations Centre at Changi but I was talking myself into night operations on the Shackletons when I was manning the twin cannons —
SP: Really.
SM: On the operations and I remember the first time I operated the twin cannons from the mid-upper turret against a large flame float in the water, the South China Sea just off Changi I blew the thing out of the water on the first, on the first couple of rounds.
SP: Yeah. So this is back at your time when you were in your Burma and Singapore time.
SM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SP: So what was that? A float. A fire float did you say? What were they?
SM: Flame float.
SP: Flame float. What were they?
SM: We carried for, amongst operations on maritime we, we tracked submarines and to track a submarine we would and other enemy surface vessels we would drop marker floats and the marker floats were either sonar buoys which would go down into the water and electronically send electronic messages back to the aircraft which I would get on my equipment and we would, we could allot the position of whoever we were tracking. Also the flame floats. They were the flame, they were smaller flame boats about the size of that settee there.
SP: So that’s about what? Five foot?
SM: About six foot.
SP: Six foot. Yeah.
SM: About six foot.
SP: Yeah.
SM: And then there was the big flame float about ten foot long which I mentioned and we launched those from the flame float tube down from the back of the Shackleton and it was, it was that as I mentioned that I that blew the first flame float out, the main flame float out of the water.
SP: Crack shot.
SM: So I was known as the crack shot of the squadron.
SP: Brilliant. So, you said you’d come back to England. You’d gone back to your old company. You’d re-signed up with the RAF. So what roles did you do post the Burma? So, what in the RAF what was your role after your Burma campaign?
SM: It was Hastings. I went on a [pause], a retraining course and that was at [pause] I’m trying to remember the name of the airfield. It’s in Norfolk.
SP: So you’ve got, I don’t know where it is. You’ve got one in Morley. Here.
SM: Swanton Morley.
SP: Swanton Morley. Is it that one?
SM: That’s the one.
SP: Yeah. So Swanton Morley.
SM: Near Norfolk.
SP: Yeah.
SM: Near Norwich. Yeah. Swanton Morley. I was there for a few months on a retraining course and from there I flew in Ansons again and a single engine, a single engine aircraft which was flown by usually by foreign pilots. Czechs or Poles that had been retrained and joined the, retrained by the RAF. But there was one occasion I’m not sure if it was that or a previous one. I think it was the previous training course on the single engine. I was flying with a Czech pilot and the sortie was I would do an exercise on my radio whilst the Czech pilot would fly a particular course whilst I did my work with the base which was Swanton Morley or whichever and the, we were a little time into the flying around with the Czech pilot and I had a call from base stating, ‘Beware a Junkers 88 on reconnaissance in your, in your area,’ and I’m leaping forward. In fact, this was on a previous —
SP: Yeah. Yeah.
SM: A previous case on the first conversion sortie as a first training sortie. And I passed the message to the pilot who faced forward. I faced out. Passed him a piece of paper with the, ‘Junkers 88 in area, return to base,’ and I don’t think he’d finished, he’d finished reading the paper because we were upside down heading for the deck and we levelled off the right way up at treetop level and he flew treetop height between the trees all the way back to base.
SP: So evasion tactics and this was back in ’44 in your training. Yes. Yeah.
SM: Exactly.
SP: Yeah.
SM: So I was leaping ahead then.
SP: Yeah.
SM: But it was the same aircraft. Ansons and —
SP: You were in at post war.
SM: And the single engine aircraft with a pilot.
SP: Yeah. That’s great. Did you say at some point you moved on to the V-Force so when did that happen? What happened in your career then?
SM: Well, from Hastings I went on a maritime course and from the maritime course posted to a squadron in Gibraltar, 224 Squadron and that was a wonderful time to be at Gibraltar. It was an excellent posting and I spent, I spent a whole tour there and then it was I was posted back to the UK. I think it was on Hastings.
SP: So you were in Gibraltar from August ’54 through to June ’56.
SM: Yeah.
SP: Yeah. So a couple of years and then you came back to Jurby so as we know Isle of Man. Yeah.
SM: But anyway —
SP: ’56. Yeah.
SM: Wherever I ended up I was on Hastings again. I was reposted to [pause] at my wish I think. I remember writing away about it to Gibraltar and I was posted back to Gibraltar but not, not as aircrew but to running the operations desk as number two. And my first night, my first day at the Operations Centre at Gibraltar which was maritime, Suhartos which I’d already covered in the Javanese wartime. So I was operating the Operations Centre at that stage. I was short toured there. I was, a signal came in to report to OCTU at Jurby. To Officer Training Corps. So I turned up at the Isle of Man at Jurby and about what three months I think later I finished at OPTU with a commission. Posted to Gaydon to the first Valiant squadron. The first V-Force squadron which was a Valiant and after conversion onto the Valiant posted to 90 Squadron and with a bit of normal training flights of circuit and bumps in the Valiant we found ourselves confronted by Suharto. No. Khruschev who was sending his ships manned with missiles down to the American western isles. In the [pause] I’m trying to remember his name now, the president of the, American president at this stage got his V-Force together. His U, his U force together and we followed suit. So the American V-Force was ready to launch against the ships which were heading down to the western isles with, manned full of missiles obviously to be used against the Americans. And we did likewise and we were in either two hours readiness, cockpit readiness or four hours readiness and we spent time sitting in the Valiant for on two hour stretches with a nuclear bomb in the bomb bay ready to launch and, but fortunately Khrushchev withdrew. So did the Americans and likewise we followed suit. So we were stood down fortunately.
SP: Yeah.
SM: Otherwise, we would have been on the way to Southern America with a nuclear in the bomb bay. So that was an unhappy time and from there on it was, it was the Bomber Command bomber force in the Valiant. 90 Squadron. Then I was posted to Victors. Did the Victor conversion course. Became an instructor on Victors and eventually crewed on Victors on a Victor tanker squadron and it was from there to, posted to Farnborough to the multi, multi-engine aircraft training squadron of [15?] Squadron then. We were there, it was there that I was on the [pause] now then I was seconded to Filton on the in-flight testing of the Concorde engine which was slung underneath the Vulcan Mark 1 which was the standard multi-engine test aircraft and I did about eight trips with the Concorde engine slung underneath in the bomb bay. And it was towards the end of my secondment to Filton that I was asked to join them. To join them initially and then on to BOAC and I was on the, on the list to join British Overseas Airways as a wireless op until somebody else had taken the job and so I was posted back to Farnborough to do the day to day work. The day to day work.
SP: Yeah and what —
SM: It was from there that I was [pause] I went back to, I went to Victors on 57 Squadron and I was doing a full-time tour at 50 Squadron and I was towards the end of the tour I was commissioned and posted to the Operation Centre at [pause] I’m not sure whether it was Marham or Changi.
SP: You’ve got your —
SM: No that was at Marham.
SP: You were at Changi ’64 ’65. So, yeah. So —
SM: Yeah. I was at Changi. I was then [pause] I’ve lost it now.
SP: It’s okay. So, just talk while you’re in that period of the V-bomber what was it like flying in the Vulcan bomber because they’re very compact aren’t they?
SM: I didn’t fly any bombing sorties in the Vulcan. It was the Vulcan Mark 1 at Farnborough.
SP: Yeah.
SM: With the Concorde engine and it was with the Mark 1 at Farnborough on various [pause] various methods of refitting the Vulcan 1 and also the refitting of the Force with the Vulcan 2 and it was there I was flying the Vulcan 2 on occasions.
SP: Yeah.
SM: As a test AEO before I, I came out of the Service from Farnborough.
SP: But actually being, because you’ve actually flown in a Vulcan so what was it like to actually fly in a Vulcan?
SM: Didn’t like it.
SP: No.
SM: Didn’t like it at all. The, harking back a bit the Valiant was a beautiful aircraft to fly. It was. It was like a large Canberra and it was, it was a very very good aircraft until that had a problem with the air frame when they almost lost a wing but the, the Victor was a very good aircraft because it was, the Victor was a proper crew compartment, pilot, co-pilot, navigator, engineer and AEO, air electronics. But the Vulcan was the pilot, co-pilot, navigator and bomb aimer and the AEO was down below by himself and his, his method of entry, of entry was through the side door. Now, correction, the crew entry in the Vulcan was underneath the front door entry. Also, to get out of the aircraft in a, with a problem you went through the trap door and it was the AEO’s job to open the trap door and get out that way. But it was, it was quite a, quite a sortie getting [pause] getting into the setup, the trap door setup to allow the crew, the rear crew to go out through the front door whilst the two pilots went to, went in their chairs. They went in their bang seats which brings me back to another point. The, when the V-Force came in to, in to being the, the initial design had ejection seats for all crew, the two pilots and the three crew members. But when they came into service it was the two pilots that had the ejection seats and the three crew members sat at benches. Sat at a long bench at normal aircraft seats and to, to vacate the aircraft it was the AEO’s job who sat adjacent to the main door to initiate the problem of getting the door open and he was first out. Having, all the rear crew would have gone through the drill of attaching the, the lanyards to the airframe which was automatic opening until it got to oxygen height which was about twelve thousand feet or flight level one two when the automatic parachute opening came into being and then it was a parachute landing from twelve hundred feet. So it, the, that came to a head pretty early on in the V-Force when the, the, all the rear crew members of the V-Force virtually went on strike because they didn’t have, in the V-Force they didn’t have the ejection seats and the [pause] so I’ve been through that of course having had the normal seat and stepping out of an aircraft in a normal way.
SP: Yeah.
SM: Through a door instead of being assisted out.
SP: Yeah. So obviously after your time with the V-Force you say you finished your RAF career and what did you do after you left the RAF?
SM: Well, I’d been through that looking after family. Looking after mum until that was sorted out after a matter of months and I was then into correspondence with the Air Ministry to come back into the, into the Service.
SP: But after your eventual, because you came back into the Service didn’t you and served many more years in the V-Force.
SM: Yeah.
SP: And then left the RAF at the end of your RAF career. Was that just to retire or did you go on to do anything else?
SM: No. No, that, I came out. Came out of the Air Force and I my previous civilian occupation was way behind me. I was only a teenager then but I I then [pause] I can’t remember what I joined [pause] I can’t remember. That’s gone.
Other: I think he joined Marconi.
SP: Marconi.
SM: Oh, yes. Yes.
SP: Right. So you went to work for Marconi. Is that where —
SM: Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
SM: That’s right. Yes. Yes.
SP: Right.
SM: And I stayed with them until, it was only [pause] is it? I did one or two things. There was Marconi. I also joined a small company of technical writers and technical illustrators because elsewhere in my history one of my hobbies apart from model aircraft I did [pause] calligraphy. Calligraphy was another of my pastimes of which I did calligraphy for, pardon, for military units and also for the royalty. Royal backed units like the [pause] I’m just trying to remember the names now. Certain royalty would take on various secondary postings.
SP: Yeah.
SM: As unit commanders or sideways and they would, they would write up the names in calligraphy and hang the framed calligraphy items on the messes and unit headquarters and they’re probably still there.
SP: I was going to say your writing will be in many an RAF station today won’t it?
SM: Yeah. Both RAF and Navy and Army.
SP: Yeah. Right. So all the military.
SM: Yeah.
SP: Right. So, I can also see you mentioned your model aircraft. Your love of model aircraft and I’m just going to mention it on here when you are talking about model aircraft we’re not talking about what most people would think of model aircraft. We’ve actually got a model aircraft in the conservatory that’s six foot long is it?
SM: It's, oh perhaps yes but there’s a growing wingspan and it’s either ten or twelve foot wingspan.
SP: So, it’s a twelve foot wingspan.
SM: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: So it wasn’t a small model of aircraft you were making was it? And I believe you’ve done Tiger Moths and many a plane.
SM: Tiger Moths, and my favourites were biplanes.
SP: Right.
SM: Hence the Tiger Moth and the present range is the, the American trainer [pause] the, that a favourite biplane of mine which has a radial engine. The Tiger Moth of course had an inline engine and the American biplane had a seven, five, five piece engine or a seven cylinder engine.
Other: Is that the Stearman?
SM: The present one which I’m hoping to finish sometime it’s got a five foot, a five piece cylinder engine fitted. It’s all ready to go virtually.
SP: So at a hundred you’re still making these absolutely huge and fantastic model aeroplanes.
SM: That’s right.
SP: Well done. Yeah. That’s great. So, on behalf of International Bomber Command Centre I’d like to thank you very much for taking the time today to record your remarkable stories that will be able, people will be able to listen to in the Archive. So thank you, Stan for your time today.
SM: You’re welcome. Although this a bit of a mishap trying to remember.
SP: It wasn’t at all. A remarkable memory and so much information in there so thank you very much.
SM: Thank you.
SP: Thank you.
SM: I was a clerk from leaving school at age fourteen. My first job was at age fourteen, and there was odd little jobs I did, one was the main library in Liverpool. Liverpool. I spent some time there and eventually joined a company where I was a clerk. And then the war started and staff of the company I joined were being filtered off into the Services and I was taking, automatically joining their position in the company until finally I joined in May ’43 but it was generally clerking. And then that was, I was aged seventeen when I went to the first interview. I was a member of the ATC at that stage and I was sent home and told to come back in six months’ time when I would be eighteen and that happened in February of ’25 [pause] Not ‘25. In [pause] sorry when I was eighteen I then had my joining up papers and eventually I ended up at St John’s Wood, Regents Park where quite a few hundred other aircrew and I joined. We were all split up into flights and each flight was about twenty people and in my flight was a film star, Dickie Attenborough and he was, Dickie Attenborough was in the flight with me at St John’s Wood and then I was posted on to Bridgnorth to Initial Training Wing. But Dickie Attenborough was, as is well known was posted off to Canada to do pilot training. The story goes that he failed his pilot training and became a navigator. He did one or two operational trips and then the film industry grabbed him and that’s the sort of story of his life from there on. He was mostly his film star world to do with the Service, the RAF or some unit or other for the rest of the war.
SP: What role did you —
SM: I beg your pardon?
SP: What role did you do in the —
SM: I joined as a wireless op/air gunner and eventually I checked out, they changed the brevet at that time which was a AG brevet the wireless op/air gunners carried. But after a short while they ditched the AG brevet and formed the S brevet which was signaller and that put a lot of smiles on the faces of a lot of characters who used to go around waving flags. But I carried the signaller brevet until, until when I joined the V-Force at Gaydon much later on where I did a postgraduate course and became an air electronics officer. Another change of brevet which was AEO.
SP: So, going back to your role when you first joined. So you’d done your initial training. What happened after your period of initial training?
SM: Initial training. Went on to, initial training was at Madley at Hereford and I was, my course, training course was posted to various Bomber Command units and I was one of one or two who were held back because they wanted to have a look at my exam results and as a result I didn’t go to Bomber Command. I was posted to [pause] now, it was a unit. I can’t remember the unit now.
SP: Yeah. No worries. So what, what role was that doing if it wasn’t initially in Bomber Command because —
SM: No. It was Training Command then.
SP: Yeah.
SM: When I was posted with about three others to a unit in Northumberland to join a navigator’s Conversion Unit and I functioned as a wireless operator on a Avro Anson and the Avro Anson in those days carried a turret in the, halfway down the fuselage on the top. I did a month or so there and just from there I was, I joined the Dakota unit at, I should have gone to America or Canada to join the first Dakota unit. Conversion Unit. As it happened the first Conversion Unit was set up at Carlisle at Crosby-on-Eden and I joined the, the first course. I did the first course but then was held back as a flight instructor and likewise on the second course and also the third course I spent as a flight instructor at Crosby-on-Eden. But then a crew turned up on, on the third course who required a wireless operator and so the finger was pointed to Stan Mellor who was available. So he joined the crew that needed the wireless operator and flew one or two trips with the, with the crew. Just flight. Didn’t do the ground course at all and then we, we were posted to Burma via Karachi and Delhi and, and Rangoon.
SP: Do you want to tell me a little bit about that trip going out all the way over to —
SM: To India?
SP: India. Yeah.
SM: From [pause] from the UK, pardon me, we were posted to a Stirling unit in the New Forest which had been converted into passenger carrying and our crew joined a Stirling at New Forest and they took us out to [pause] initially to the unit at Karachi. There we stayed one day and one night and it was such a dreadful place we, we reported ourselves to the Air Movements Unit at Rangoon and reported that we were the, a flight re-force crew for Rangoon. And they accepted this and posted us down via Delhi and Rangoon who didn’t know anything about us where we, they said, ‘Well, thankfully we need a crew because we’ve just lost a crew,’ whose captain was the son of Anthony Eden the government at the times Foreign Secretary and they never did find Anthony Eden’s son’s crew. So we took up that slot and it was the first, either the first or the second night we spent underneath the wing of a Dakota because there was no accommodation for us. They supplied us with tent fly sheets. Just a couple for the four man crew and we slept underneath the wing of a Dakota where we were rudely awakened during the night with gunfire and, we put that to the back of our minds, went back to sleep again to find in the morning the Japanese had attacked the officer’s line, the tent lines, their accommodation but didn’t come anywhere near the aircraft or the crew which was hidden in fly sheets underneath the wing and, but nobody was injured. I think it was an Australian unit came down from, from the north from operations and sorted the Japanese out and captured them all and we, we then found our proper accommodation at 114, 117 Squadron, Hmawbi, Rangoon, or north of Rangoon. About twenty miles north of Rangoon and our first sortie there, proper sortie was flying into Siam, into a Japanese jungle airstrip and we could say rescued the POWs there. Although the parachute regiment had been, been in to that camp I think the day before or the two days before and sorted the Japanese out but we landed at a Japanese jungle strip and the Japanese maintained our aircraft, refuelled us and generally looked after us because there was the only English speaking people there were the POWs and all they wanted was to get on board our Dakota which we did. The Japanese boarded, made sure the POWs were boarded and we did about eight. Eight trips to Hmawbi pulling the POWs out.
SP: And about how many POWs would you take back in the Dakota at a time?
SM: Probably about twenty I should think.
SP: Really.
SM: Which was a normal airborne troops accommodation.
SP: Yeah.
SM: But that was with their arms of course. All the, all the POW, all the POWs had was their rags of clothing.
SP: Yeah.
SM: Whatever could be found and their, the only clothing they had in the POW camp was the loin cloth. Just a strip of cloth really and that’s the way they boarded the aircraft and as we took off from Hmawbi enroute to Bangkok so they strung all the, all the cloth. I’m trying to remember the name they called them but their previous, you know loin cloths.
SP: Yeah.
SM: They streamed out of the windows. The windows of the Dakota.
SP: So what condition were they in, the prisoners or war when you picked them up?
SM: Well, some of them were quite fit and happy to chat and talk to us. A very moving time for me because the first chap, the POW I met was an Australian and he grabbed me by the hand and shook me by the hand and wouldn’t leave go the whole time we were there and it was a very moving time.
SP: So you were such an important role that you did to bring him out of there wasn’t it?
SM: Yes. Indeed.
SP: Yeah. Yeah.
SM: So we, he boarded. We made sure he was comfortable on the aircraft and took him back to Bangkok. There were, he was one of the walking wounded you could call him. So where there were some, some people on, on stretchers boarded up the aircraft and they, all they wanted to know was there anybody in the crew from [pause] one particular individual apart from the Australian was a chap from Liverpool. I always felt sorry that I didn’t make a note of the individual because I would have, I would have loved to have met his family when I flew back.
SP: Yeah.
SM: To England.
SP: Yeah.
SM: But that was it. From Hmawbi we, we were transferred to Mingaladon which was at Rangoon. Mingaladon was Rangoon’s airport and that, that was [pause] I’m trying to remember the name and the number of the squadron [pause] Anyways it was the Dakota squadron at Rangoon and we were there for some time operating route flying in the Far East and opening up routes from, from Siam to Hong Kong, Saigon and all these airfields that I mentioned. They were all manned by the Japanese who looked after us and managed our aircraft and air traffic and there was one incident that we, the crew had, did their pre-flight planning at Saigon airfield which was manned by the Japanese and so was the operation, the operation block was manned by the Japs who saw to our needs. The crew had finished their planning and they got the transport to a house just nearby the airfield, Saigon airfield which we, the crews, the Dakota crews had named Dakota House. My crew got transport to Dakota House and left me in the Operations Block, the only English speaking in the Japanese block whilst I finished my own planning and when I finished planning I packed my bag and I walked out through the main gate where I was. I got a salute from the Japanese party which was manning the gate with the equivalent of a flight lieutenant Japanese officer in charge who held his samurai sword aloft in salute and I thought what the hell am I supposed to do because I was, I had a Smith & Wesson revolver on my waist and that was it. That’s the only arms I had and a pair of ragged shorts and I was walking to the main gate in the direction of Dakota House to be, to get a proper salute by the Japanese. I walked a few hundred yards in the direction of the accommodation that I was looking for and in the opposite direction approaching me was a party of Japanese troops with rifles on their shoulders. Rifles and bayonets on their shoulders with an officer in the front with a samurai sword up aloft and they were in, I think either twos or threes I can’t remember. But they were on the opposite side of the road marching, passing me in the opposite direction and so this representative of the British Empire was by himself with his Smith & Wesson .38 walking in the opposite direction whereupon the Japanese officer yelled something that I couldn’t understand but what turned out to be, ‘Eyes right,’ and the whole, the whole column which was probably about seventy-five or a hundred Japanese troops all eyes right. So I thought what the hell do I do? Again. So I brought myself to return their salute in a fashion and, and the, ‘Eyes front,’ again and marched on towards the main gate where I continued to Dakota House. When I arrived at Dakota House I was yelled at by the chaps in the main door who said, ‘Don’t go near that water.’ Apparently a navigator on a crew previously had arrived at Dakota House and the navigator had walked into the pool of water which was electrified and he was killed on the spot and so I was very lucky that I was warned. So I went around the pool and survived and we stayed there whilst we, we looked after our POWs and travelled back and forth from there to Bangkok and Mingaladon where we continued other operations to Japanese held airfields and units around the area whilst we continued to open up the routes for the rest of the Air Force. And from there we continued through. Pardon me. We continued up to Hong Kong where we, it was virtually the same story at Kai Tak which was the rather run-down Japanese airfield. That was a year or so before they built the main airfield at, at Hong Kong and from there we returned to Mingaladon to continue what we were good at.
SP: During that time did it surprise you the respect that the Japanese were showing to the British crew while you were over there?
SM: Well, yes.
SP: Yeah.
SM: It had changed you know at the snap of the fingers really. They, had it have been perhaps a couple of days before we would have had a bayonet in the guts or were shot down or —
SP: Yeah.
SM: POW camp to join the rest of them. We were [pause] I wouldn’t have got away with marching past them.
SP: So the timing of this compared to VE Day, sorry VJ Day. Was it around VJ Day that you were over there?
SM: It was after VJ.
SP: Just after VJ.
SM: Yeah.
SP: Yeah. Just after.
SM: I can’t remember the date.
SP: Yeah.
SM: But it was —
SP: It was —
SM: About a week or so.
SP: Yeah. It was only September ’45 so it was very —
SM: Yeah.
SP: Very recent wasn’t it? Yeah.
SM: But the Japanese were still in charge for quite some time.
SP: Right.
SM: And the, they looked after us at their airfields and maintained our aircraft around while we opened the routes around the Far East.
SP: So after your time in Burma was that your tour completed over in Burma then?
SM: Yes. It was. We, I was in, I think I mentioned 62 Squadron at Mingaladon and then once we finished the POWs operation and we transferred to [pause] what squadron was it? 62, 1 [pause] 48 Squadron and we operated more of opening the routes and general transport operations throughout the airfields which we’d already opened. Until [pause] when was [pause] until I was repatriated to the UK in 1940⸺ [pause] I think it was late ’46 or early 1947. But prior to that we, we had joined the Dutch forces in Java because the Japanese, no, Javanese president raised his ugly head at that time and attempted to take over Sumatra and Java and we were on a war footing then because as the Javanese president used to send parties over to Singapore and Changi raiding us. So we were on night operations with the Shackletons as well as the Dakotas trying to put the Javanese troops down. But anyway we were doing operations in the Javanese, the Sumatran airfields and the Java airfields because they were being, the Java airfields I had mentioned were manned by Dutch troops. The Sumatra airfields were manned by the British troops and they were being attacked by the Javanese. The Javanese troops, regulars of Suharto’s. Suharto was the president. It was on most of our Dakota trips from Changi loaded with supplies our regular trip was up to the northern airfield of Sumatra, offload either stores or goats in fact because we’d load the aircraft with goats for the Indian and Gurkha troops there which brings me to the next airfield. Half way down Sumatra on the western side was manned by Gurkha, a Gurkha platoon which had been attacked that night and the Gurkhas were, were about to have a go at us when we landed because they thought we were the Japanese aircraft and, but fortunately we put that to rest and, but found one of our engines had been hit by the Javanese ground troops on the edge of the airfield and so we, they, the Gurkhas found, and there was a small contingent of British ground troops. Only about, probably be about ten. Ten lads to look after our aircraft. Anyway, they found us accommodation and took us around to a wooden basha and as we entered the accommodation we were yelled at from the opposite end of the accommodation. There was a Gurkha. A young, a young Gurkha lad who probably was in his [pause] in his very young age sitting on the top of his bed on his pillow pointing his automatic rifle at us as we were going through the door and we just managed to stop him from firing into us and whereupon he broke down and we put him at rest. And so we had accommodation for the night and then we had to service our own aircraft. I radioed using our ground led aircraft radio. I radioed the squadron at Changi what our problems were and the following morning a new engine appeared and we helped the ground crew install the new engine and that evening we were airborne back to Singapore. And I said, I mentioned Changi, it wasn’t Changi. It was, it was the parkland airfield which was the original Singapore airfield. Anyway, that was it and we stayed at, we stayed at 48 Squadron at Changi and from the parkland airfield on the outskirts of Singapore the Japanese had finished building the Changi airfield which they’d lined instead of concrete with PSP metal strips all interlocked like a jigsaw and that was what we landed at.
SP: What was that like to land on?
SM: Hmmn?
SP: What was that like to land on?
SM: Noisy [laughs]
SP: Noisy [laughs] I can imagine.
SM: It was a bouncy landing and usually bent quite a few of these strips which probably measured about ten foot long and about three foot wide. Something like that. And there were, they were all open, open weave.
SP: Yeah.
SM: On the holes.
SP: And that would have been —
SM: And this —
SP: Sorry. That would have been in a Shackleton that you did that.
SM: That was a Dakota.
SP: You had a Dakota on that. Yeah.
SM: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
SM: That was the Dakota time.
SP: Yeah. Right. So, I’ve just got, just for the interview could we say in the years you were there you actually finished in May ’47.
SM: Yeah.
SP: So, it was May ’47 when you actually left Singapore and that was 48 Squadron.
SM: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
SP: Where you finished on that one. Yeah. So after your time in Singapore where, what happened next in your RAF career?
SM: Well, I was transported to Watton in Lancashire for demob and I was demobbed there reluctantly because when I was leaving 48 Squadron at Singapore my CO asked me to stay on at 48 Squadron. And I said I’d just received word that my father had died and he, he was in fact buried whilst I was still in Singapore and it left mother by herself in Liverpool and I put it to them that my place was in Liverpool looking after mum. And so that’s what happened. I was transferred to Watton in Lancashire where I left the Air Force and I joined the company that I’d been, a company at [pause] I’m backtracking again. I mentioned before that another staff of the company I previously was at had gone into the Services so people like me were hopping into senior, senior places. I ended up as a teenager running a small company within, within the, it was a number of companies run by this main company. So I was running the company and it was from there that I lost the feeling for civil life and mother was coping very well. Meanwhile as our relatives had banded together to look after her and I I licked my pen and wrote to the Air Force and the Air Ministry as it was then and said I’m available. And they said unfortunately they were not recruiting anymore but they, because they had plans to recruit the wireless ops again and calling them signallers as I mentioned before and they will be contacting me. Contacting me when they were ready. And it was a couple of months after a couple more letters to Air Ministry I was told to report to St John’s Wood at Regents Park where I’d met Dickie Anderson err Attenborough, and that was it. From there it [pause] I joined a unit at Cardington as a, it was an Initial Training Wing type of accommodation where we did daytime lectures for, we were only there a month or so and then we were posted on again to a more permanent unit which was [pause] let’s think [pause] It was on 50 Maritime Unit.
SP: So you had some time in 1949 at Swanton Morley and then at Dishforth in ’49.
SM: Oh, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
SP: And Lyneham in ’50.
SM: Yeah.
SP: And then Topcliffe in ’50. Yeah. And Abingdon. So then you moved on to, from Topcliffe to Abingdon.
SM: Which was, they’d taken over from Dakotas and because they’d then fitted the force, the transport force with Hastings and I joined the Hastings [unclear] flight at Abingdon and that’s where we were. I did Air Support Flight with paratrooping, glider towing and later on, pardon me, later on posted on to a similar role in Leicester East and that was, that included glider towing and glider snatching and that’s where I joined. I think I previously called the [pause] I joined the full crew and from Leicester East we went out to Burma.
SP: So this, so your time after Burma was sometime Abingdon and Leconfield.
SM: Leconfield was a matter of weeks on a gunnery course flying Lincolns and firing twin cannons from the mid-outer turret, mid-upper turret. And I turned out to be an ace on the twin cannons because later on in the, when we were fighting the Dutch which I’d previously covered we were practicing the, from that we were practicing the maritime role with Shackletons with twin, twin cannons in the nose and twin cannons in the mid-upper turret. And although during that time I was skipping some time now but I was running the Operations Centre at Changi but I was talking myself into night operations on the Shackletons when I was manning the twin cannons —
SP: Really.
SM: On the operations and I remember the first time I operated the twin cannons from the mid-upper turret against a large flame float in the water, the South China Sea just off Changi I blew the thing out of the water on the first, on the first couple of rounds.
SP: Yeah. So this is back at your time when you were in your Burma and Singapore time.
SM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SP: So what was that? A float. A fire float did you say? What were they?
SM: Flame float.
SP: Flame float. What were they?
SM: We carried for, amongst operations on maritime we, we tracked submarines and to track a submarine we would and other enemy surface vessels we would drop marker floats and the marker floats were either sonar buoys which would go down into the water and electronically send electronic messages back to the aircraft which I would get on my equipment and we would, we could allot the position of whoever we were tracking. Also the flame floats. They were the flame, they were smaller flame boats about the size of that settee there.
SP: So that’s about what? Five foot?
SM: About six foot.
SP: Six foot. Yeah.
SM: About six foot.
SP: Yeah.
SM: And then there was the big flame float about ten foot long which I mentioned and we launched those from the flame float tube down from the back of the Shackleton and it was, it was that as I mentioned that I that blew the first flame float out, the main flame float out of the water.
SP: Crack shot.
SM: So I was known as the crack shot of the squadron.
SP: Brilliant. So, you said you’d come back to England. You’d gone back to your old company. You’d re-signed up with the RAF. So what roles did you do post the Burma? So, what in the RAF what was your role after your Burma campaign?
SM: It was Hastings. I went on a [pause], a retraining course and that was at [pause] I’m trying to remember the name of the airfield. It’s in Norfolk.
SP: So you’ve got, I don’t know where it is. You’ve got one in Morley. Here.
SM: Swanton Morley.
SP: Swanton Morley. Is it that one?
SM: That’s the one.
SP: Yeah. So Swanton Morley.
SM: Near Norfolk.
SP: Yeah.
SM: Near Norwich. Yeah. Swanton Morley. I was there for a few months on a retraining course and from there I flew in Ansons again and a single engine, a single engine aircraft which was flown by usually by foreign pilots. Czechs or Poles that had been retrained and joined the, retrained by the RAF. But there was one occasion I’m not sure if it was that or a previous one. I think it was the previous training course on the single engine. I was flying with a Czech pilot and the sortie was I would do an exercise on my radio whilst the Czech pilot would fly a particular course whilst I did my work with the base which was Swanton Morley or whichever and the, we were a little time into the flying around with the Czech pilot and I had a call from base stating, ‘Beware a Junkers 88 on reconnaissance in your, in your area,’ and I’m leaping forward. In fact, this was on a previous —
SP: Yeah. Yeah.
SM: A previous case on the first conversion sortie as a first training sortie. And I passed the message to the pilot who faced forward. I faced out. Passed him a piece of paper with the, ‘Junkers 88 in area, return to base,’ and I don’t think he’d finished, he’d finished reading the paper because we were upside down heading for the deck and we levelled off the right way up at treetop level and he flew treetop height between the trees all the way back to base.
SP: So evasion tactics and this was back in ’44 in your training. Yes. Yeah.
SM: Exactly.
SP: Yeah.
SM: So I was leaping ahead then.
SP: Yeah.
SM: But it was the same aircraft. Ansons and —
SP: You were in at post war.
SM: And the single engine aircraft with a pilot.
SP: Yeah. That’s great. Did you say at some point you moved on to the V-Force so when did that happen? What happened in your career then?
SM: Well, from Hastings I went on a maritime course and from the maritime course posted to a squadron in Gibraltar, 224 Squadron and that was a wonderful time to be at Gibraltar. It was an excellent posting and I spent, I spent a whole tour there and then it was I was posted back to the UK. I think it was on Hastings.
SP: So you were in Gibraltar from August ’54 through to June ’56.
SM: Yeah.
SP: Yeah. So a couple of years and then you came back to Jurby so as we know Isle of Man. Yeah.
SM: But anyway —
SP: ’56. Yeah.
SM: Wherever I ended up I was on Hastings again. I was reposted to [pause] at my wish I think. I remember writing away about it to Gibraltar and I was posted back to Gibraltar but not, not as aircrew but to running the operations desk as number two. And my first night, my first day at the Operations Centre at Gibraltar which was maritime, Suhartos which I’d already covered in the Javanese wartime. So I was operating the Operations Centre at that stage. I was short toured there. I was, a signal came in to report to OCTU at Jurby. To Officer Training Corps. So I turned up at the Isle of Man at Jurby and about what three months I think later I finished at OPTU with a commission. Posted to Gaydon to the first Valiant squadron. The first V-Force squadron which was a Valiant and after conversion onto the Valiant posted to 90 Squadron and with a bit of normal training flights of circuit and bumps in the Valiant we found ourselves confronted by Suharto. No. Khruschev who was sending his ships manned with missiles down to the American western isles. In the [pause] I’m trying to remember his name now, the president of the, American president at this stage got his V-Force together. His U, his U force together and we followed suit. So the American V-Force was ready to launch against the ships which were heading down to the western isles with, manned full of missiles obviously to be used against the Americans. And we did likewise and we were in either two hours readiness, cockpit readiness or four hours readiness and we spent time sitting in the Valiant for on two hour stretches with a nuclear bomb in the bomb bay ready to launch and, but fortunately Khrushchev withdrew. So did the Americans and likewise we followed suit. So we were stood down fortunately.
SP: Yeah.
SM: Otherwise, we would have been on the way to Southern America with a nuclear in the bomb bay. So that was an unhappy time and from there on it was, it was the Bomber Command bomber force in the Valiant. 90 Squadron. Then I was posted to Victors. Did the Victor conversion course. Became an instructor on Victors and eventually crewed on Victors on a Victor tanker squadron and it was from there to, posted to Farnborough to the multi, multi-engine aircraft training squadron of [15?] Squadron then. We were there, it was there that I was on the [pause] now then I was seconded to Filton on the in-flight testing of the Concorde engine which was slung underneath the Vulcan Mark 1 which was the standard multi-engine test aircraft and I did about eight trips with the Concorde engine slung underneath in the bomb bay. And it was towards the end of my secondment to Filton that I was asked to join them. To join them initially and then on to BOAC and I was on the, on the list to join British Overseas Airways as a wireless op until somebody else had taken the job and so I was posted back to Farnborough to do the day to day work. The day to day work.
SP: Yeah and what —
SM: It was from there that I was [pause] I went back to, I went to Victors on 57 Squadron and I was doing a full-time tour at 50 Squadron and I was towards the end of the tour I was commissioned and posted to the Operation Centre at [pause] I’m not sure whether it was Marham or Changi.
SP: You’ve got your —
SM: No that was at Marham.
SP: You were at Changi ’64 ’65. So, yeah. So —
SM: Yeah. I was at Changi. I was then [pause] I’ve lost it now.
SP: It’s okay. So, just talk while you’re in that period of the V-bomber what was it like flying in the Vulcan bomber because they’re very compact aren’t they?
SM: I didn’t fly any bombing sorties in the Vulcan. It was the Vulcan Mark 1 at Farnborough.
SP: Yeah.
SM: With the Concorde engine and it was with the Mark 1 at Farnborough on various [pause] various methods of refitting the Vulcan 1 and also the refitting of the Force with the Vulcan 2 and it was there I was flying the Vulcan 2 on occasions.
SP: Yeah.
SM: As a test AEO before I, I came out of the Service from Farnborough.
SP: But actually being, because you’ve actually flown in a Vulcan so what was it like to actually fly in a Vulcan?
SM: Didn’t like it.
SP: No.
SM: Didn’t like it at all. The, harking back a bit the Valiant was a beautiful aircraft to fly. It was. It was like a large Canberra and it was, it was a very very good aircraft until that had a problem with the air frame when they almost lost a wing but the, the Victor was a very good aircraft because it was, the Victor was a proper crew compartment, pilot, co-pilot, navigator, engineer and AEO, air electronics. But the Vulcan was the pilot, co-pilot, navigator and bomb aimer and the AEO was down below by himself and his, his method of entry, of entry was through the side door. Now, correction, the crew entry in the Vulcan was underneath the front door entry. Also, to get out of the aircraft in a, with a problem you went through the trap door and it was the AEO’s job to open the trap door and get out that way. But it was, it was quite a, quite a sortie getting [pause] getting into the setup, the trap door setup to allow the crew, the rear crew to go out through the front door whilst the two pilots went to, went in their chairs. They went in their bang seats which brings me back to another point. The, when the V-Force came in to, in to being the, the initial design had ejection seats for all crew, the two pilots and the three crew members. But when they came into service it was the two pilots that had the ejection seats and the three crew members sat at benches. Sat at a long bench at normal aircraft seats and to, to vacate the aircraft it was the AEO’s job who sat adjacent to the main door to initiate the problem of getting the door open and he was first out. Having, all the rear crew would have gone through the drill of attaching the, the lanyards to the airframe which was automatic opening until it got to oxygen height which was about twelve thousand feet or flight level one two when the automatic parachute opening came into being and then it was a parachute landing from twelve hundred feet. So it, the, that came to a head pretty early on in the V-Force when the, the, all the rear crew members of the V-Force virtually went on strike because they didn’t have, in the V-Force they didn’t have the ejection seats and the [pause] so I’ve been through that of course having had the normal seat and stepping out of an aircraft in a normal way.
SP: Yeah.
SM: Through a door instead of being assisted out.
SP: Yeah. So obviously after your time with the V-Force you say you finished your RAF career and what did you do after you left the RAF?
SM: Well, I’d been through that looking after family. Looking after mum until that was sorted out after a matter of months and I was then into correspondence with the Air Ministry to come back into the, into the Service.
SP: But after your eventual, because you came back into the Service didn’t you and served many more years in the V-Force.
SM: Yeah.
SP: And then left the RAF at the end of your RAF career. Was that just to retire or did you go on to do anything else?
SM: No. No, that, I came out. Came out of the Air Force and I my previous civilian occupation was way behind me. I was only a teenager then but I I then [pause] I can’t remember what I joined [pause] I can’t remember. That’s gone.
Other: I think he joined Marconi.
SP: Marconi.
SM: Oh, yes. Yes.
SP: Right. So you went to work for Marconi. Is that where —
SM: Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
SM: That’s right. Yes. Yes.
SP: Right.
SM: And I stayed with them until, it was only [pause] is it? I did one or two things. There was Marconi. I also joined a small company of technical writers and technical illustrators because elsewhere in my history one of my hobbies apart from model aircraft I did [pause] calligraphy. Calligraphy was another of my pastimes of which I did calligraphy for, pardon, for military units and also for the royalty. Royal backed units like the [pause] I’m just trying to remember the names now. Certain royalty would take on various secondary postings.
SP: Yeah.
SM: As unit commanders or sideways and they would, they would write up the names in calligraphy and hang the framed calligraphy items on the messes and unit headquarters and they’re probably still there.
SP: I was going to say your writing will be in many an RAF station today won’t it?
SM: Yeah. Both RAF and Navy and Army.
SP: Yeah. Right. So all the military.
SM: Yeah.
SP: Right. So, I can also see you mentioned your model aircraft. Your love of model aircraft and I’m just going to mention it on here when you are talking about model aircraft we’re not talking about what most people would think of model aircraft. We’ve actually got a model aircraft in the conservatory that’s six foot long is it?
SM: It's, oh perhaps yes but there’s a growing wingspan and it’s either ten or twelve foot wingspan.
SP: So, it’s a twelve foot wingspan.
SM: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: So it wasn’t a small model of aircraft you were making was it? And I believe you’ve done Tiger Moths and many a plane.
SM: Tiger Moths, and my favourites were biplanes.
SP: Right.
SM: Hence the Tiger Moth and the present range is the, the American trainer [pause] the, that a favourite biplane of mine which has a radial engine. The Tiger Moth of course had an inline engine and the American biplane had a seven, five, five piece engine or a seven cylinder engine.
Other: Is that the Stearman?
SM: The present one which I’m hoping to finish sometime it’s got a five foot, a five piece cylinder engine fitted. It’s all ready to go virtually.
SP: So at a hundred you’re still making these absolutely huge and fantastic model aeroplanes.
SM: That’s right.
SP: Well done. Yeah. That’s great. So, on behalf of International Bomber Command Centre I’d like to thank you very much for taking the time today to record your remarkable stories that will be able, people will be able to listen to in the Archive. So thank you, Stan for your time today.
SM: You’re welcome. Although this a bit of a mishap trying to remember.
SP: It wasn’t at all. A remarkable memory and so much information in there so thank you very much.
SM: Thank you.
SP: Thank you.
Collection
Citation
Susanne Pescott, “Interview with Stan Mellor,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed February 18, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/56386.