William Tweddle Audio memoir. One

William Tweddle Audio memoir. One

Doug Tweddle undertook the initial pilot training in South Africa. On return to the UK he attended Operational Training Unit at Upper Heyford where he selected his crew. After completing training the crew were posted to 9 Squadron at RAF Bardney. After their first tour they opted to remain together for another crew rather than be posted to training units as instructors. Of four pilots who went on second dickie trips Doug was the only survivor.

00:48:40 audio recording

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ATweddleWD770915-0001

John, it’s Doug Tweddle here. I have your letter of the 21st of June and I hope you will excuse me for replying in this fashion but I find that it’s much easier to record onto a tape when I’m using my logbook and various other items of reference than attempting to commit it all to print. I’ve got your letter in front of me at the moment and I’m trying to put into the order the information which you request about Y-Younger. You say you’d like the, the history of the Lanc, the actual kite. When it was built, sorties and what have you. I don’t know whether you have come across the books written by Garbett and Goulding. They are pretty well known. Garbett and Goulding brought out, “The Lancaster,” with details of a technical nature, the list of all aircraft built, where built and what have you. They then moved on to the “Lancaster at War,” and finally the “Lancaster at War Number 2” and there are references to WS-Y in all of these copies. For example, on page twenty six of the “Lancaster at War 2” there is a description by Jack Sheppard, the Canadian who [ran up] the Lanc and carried out the checks. I mention that particular bod and Jack’s name because when I arrived at 9 Squadron of course I didn’t have my own aircraft to fly. The new boy had to sort of cut his teeth on other things. I went to Bardney on the 4th of July ’44 and did my second dickie trip almost immediately. In fact, with Pilot Officer Bradwell who is a survivor, I met him at our last reunion and we went to a trip on Creil where the flying bomb caves were used for storing V-1s and what have you. It was all very new to me and I had a very rough night and as it worked out Bradwell was on his second last trip. He went the following night and was shot down by night fighters but he did in fact survive and one of his crew was killed, the bomb aimer and I met him recently when 9 Squadron handed over their standard from the Vulcans to the Tornadoes at Waddington. The first occasion that I met Bradwell since I went on that trip with him. Just a bit of a preamble to say that from the 4th of July onwards until, oh when I started to operate myself with my own crew on the 14th of July. On that occasion I flew Lancaster Z and we did an operation on Villeneuve-Saint-Georges which is a marshalling yard very close to Paris. I think it might make sense if I get my scattered brain organised and take it up from the angle of the members of my crew and how we got together before we arrived at Waddington, to Bardney. I have a couple of photographs which I’m enclosing for you. I suppose you can as you suggest make copies and what have you. I’d be pleased to have them back but there is no panic. You can take all the time you wish. I’m also going to send you the copy of the Profile publications, the Avro Lancaster 1. It’s number 65 and I’m pretty certain that it’s, it’s from this copy that most of the references to WS-Y have been taken. In the centre page coloured spread is a plan, painting, drawing, layout of a Lanc and it is ours and as such a lot of people have used it on models and other things as being an authenticated one. So you’ll see that when I get it to you. This publication I assume that one could get copies, back copies with details of the publisher and on the copy but I would in fact, it’s the only one that I have so I would prefer it back when you’ve carried out the copying that you would like to do from it. The, my crew which you see on the photograph standing under the nose of WS-Y reading from left to right Charlie Heath, he’s my engineer. He’s the oldest man in the crew. Charlie must be seventy three now. We’ve been down to, we had a crew reunion this summer which I’ll tell you about later and we went down to see Charlie. He lives at Paignton. He’s showing signs of getting on a little but I think he’s good for a bit yet. But we all, we started off as an all-NCO crew for the first five trips. The technique in 5 Group Bomber Command with the honourable Sir Ralph Cochrane was the chief, old Cocky didn’t like the idea of NCO crew. He felt that the captain must be commissioned and probably a flying officer at least. But we started as an NCO crew and after five trips I was commissioned. I was never a [PO] as I remember. I was a pilot officer, acting flying officer almost immediately and was an acting flight lieutenant very soon after that. So then after about ten sorties they commissioned the navigator and bomb aimer, interviewed the rest of the crew and progressively they moved in otherwise. So I wound up, I started off with an all-NCO crew and wound up with myself a flight lieutenant, three flying officers, two warrant officers and a flight sergeant. Anyway, Charlie was our engineer and he was the least experienced from an airborne point of view having been trained in England. A hell of a good man who did precisely what I asked him and we struck up quite a relationship and we made it. A modest quiet man. My navigator was Cas Shields. Edward Shields. He was a Leeds accountant and if you want anything better, if you want anyone better for you than a navigator than a Yorkshire accountant I doubt whether you’ll find them. They’re not mean. They’re just careful, and Cas who was called incidentally Cas because one of his close navigating friends was so with him that they were known as Castor and Pollux, the heavenly twins and that nickname stuck. He joined me as the rest of them did at the OTU at Upper Heyford where we flew Wellington 3s and 10s and Cas saw the tour out with me and a few more afterwards, came out twice on the trips. Put his head out from behind the black curtain once I think over Munich and was scared by what he saw and once over the Tirpitz on the final sinking when he looked out to see the old ship which was then showing signs of beginning to roll over. Cas seemed to think that as long as he was behind his black curtain he was in a world of his own and not really concerned with what was going on around him. I suppose that’s what made him so accurate. But it was bloody infuriating when he would come on the intercom and say, ‘I want you to turn on to 220 and you’re ETA is —’ so and so so and so, ‘And a quarter,’ with a churchlike voice that to me seemed to ignore everything that was happening and I’m very grateful. My bomb aimer, Jack Singer, JW Singer was a Canadian from Ottawa and I got Jack because all the intake of bomb aimers to OTU were Canadians. So the [pause] he was an Air Canada man. He actually retired recently and I had him over for a holiday about a month ago. He was the manager of Ottawa airport for Air Canada and a bundle of nerves actually at the end of his tour but he made it and of course Canadians go home when they’d completed a tour. So when we decided to take up the offer of an extended tour which was offered to PFF and 617 and 9 that was to complete forty five trips and then not fly again if you so wished rather than go off to be an instructor at the end of your thirty trips. But we decided, the crew said whatever I fancied they were with me. So we in fact continued and we did thirty seven before the bell was rung at the end. Anyway, Jack went home at thirty back to Canada and I collected a new bomb aimer, Doug Jennings who had been shot down on his first tour in Belgium. Evaded successfully. Stayed with the Underground and when our land forces moved into Brussels surfaced and came back in time to join me and do several more before the end. My wireless operator was Paddy Carson. A real Irishman, a marvellous wireless op, always on frequency, considered to be the smartest wireless op in the Group but with [green muffler] and a [days’ beard] at any time Paddy typified these really good-natured men from the top end of that little country. He was the one man of the crew that I haven’t as yet been able to contact. The others we’re all in touch and see each other frequently. But Paddy married a girl in Scotland, I think around Dundee and despite some enquiries, and I’ve just recently had an advert in the RAF news in the, “Where Are You Now?” Column, I can’t as yet trace him. I haven’t given up hope but he well could be the group telecommunications engineer for either the Red Hand of Ulster or the IRA depending on his fancy. He’d be a good one. At the end of the top row myself. My mid-upper Alan Foot [pause] No. I’ve got the order wrong. Looking at the photograph on the left is Ken Mallinson, the rear gunner. He’s at present living in Blackpool. He’s the [pause] works for the House of Fraser. He’s the boss of their furniture group. We held a Club reunion at his house last month and he is a quiet man. Never came out of his turret under any circumstances and that included the thirteen hour trips to Russia and over the Tirpitz. He would never leave his turret and said little and never fired his guns in anger which applied to the mid-upper. I think we had two, two of the best pairs of eyes in 5 Group which it may surprise they never fired their guns in anger but quite a lot of crews would probably claim that distinction. Alan, he came originally from Hull as did the mid-upper Alan Foot. Now, Alan’s quite a small, a youngish chap in every way and we kept in touch for the first ten years I suppose with cards at Christmas and what have you but then I lost him for probably about the next twenty. When we were going to the Memorial Reunion at Bardney for the unveiling of the Memorial thanks to another author and I think they called him Cooper, who was the 617 man, writer he traced him for me and he was living about one mile away from the address that I had previously at home. Well, we have since got together with himself and his wife and he’s back in the fold. So those are the crew as they line up in the photograph standing under the nose of Y-Younger. The other photograph they are sitting on the nose and around the cockpit. They are not so easy to pick out, particularly those behind me in the seat but you’ll, you’ll be able to do that. I met these lads at OTU Upper Heyford. You probably know more about the system than I do but under the Empire Training Scheme we were all individually trained at various points and gathered together. For example, I did my flying training in what was then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and I flew Tiger Moths at Induna and Oxfords at Kumalo near Bulawayo and came back to this country in ’43. Went to near Derby for a fortnight and then for about sixteen weeks near Church Lawford near Rugby where I flew Oxfords on Beam courses and a lot of reconversion. At that time the Empire Training Scheme was in full blast and we really were running in a logjam of crews so courses had a tendency to stretch out. From, from Lawford we went to Upper Heyford where the Americans are now. We had no runways then and we converted on to Wellington 3s and 10s and these were the Wimpy with the Hercules engine. Very very powerful. You had to be so careful when you run them not to tip the nose forward and belt the props. They had about a sixteen hundred horsepower engine and when you consider the original Wimpy with its original [unclear] of about nine hundred odd it was quite another aircraft. It shook and wallowed and the wings moved up and down but with all Wallis’ geodetic it was quite an incredible aircraft. I enjoyed flying it and as a crew we began to get together. We’d get together incidentally quite almost by accident. We were assembled at Heyford when we first arrived. Addressed by the wingco flying, a man called Shorthouse who had the most brilliant sort of way of introducing himself. He stood on the platform. He said, ‘My name is Wing Commander Shorthouse. Not shithouse and not short arse and don’t you lot forget it.’ He then went on to say that for a fortnight we would be on joint studies and in a fortnights’ time we would reassemble. He would call out the pilot’s name who would then tell him the members of his crew. So the selection was left to natural forces. For example, I picked up my rear gunner, original rear gunner by running last and second last in a cross country. I met Shields, my navigator in a shower and having established we were both north countrymen after five minutes chatting we got together. I’m not sure how we got the Canadian. Probably out of a Craps game. But that was how you, you sorted out. The incredible thing was according to the people who were around there for years that when the last fourteen who had never got together were put into two crews they always turned out to be not very good.
[recording paused]

I notice from the Record of Service list I omitted to say that before I went to Upper Heyford and Lawford I’d done about twelve weeks at Bridgnorth at a GR School. Reconnaissance. At the end to fly Flying Boats. In fact, my formula was I would fly the biggest thing you’d got with the most engines. That wasn’t bravado. It was common sense. I worked on the argument that the more engines you’ve got the more you can do without and later on Lancasters of course we proved that on several occasions. Fighter boys were always conscious that one engine when it stopped made things into the proverbial brick built place that went down very vertically. So the GR school at Bridgnorth was highly concentrated navigation of a very complicated kind. You were flying and keeping station on slow moving convoys and moving back to aircraft carriers that were no longer where they were when you left them. This kind of plotting. It stood me in very good stead because later when I was establishing my relationship with my navigator who assumes that everyone who aren’t navigators are stupid I’d had the good sense to hold on to these “dry swims,” as they are known in the trade and while Cas was bragging about some plotting I slipped him a couple of these sheets of “dry swims” and it quite took his breath away. So from that moment onwards he allowed me to use the computer to figure out winds and odd simple things. So it was a very good relationship because it meant that he knew that I appreciated what he was doing in detail and that had a lot to do with that. I’m certain that we lost ourselves infrequently. From Church Lawford we did, incidentally we did most of our flying from the field at Barford St John which is on the road to Banbury Cross and I flew with an instructor who I shared actually with Wing Commander Bazin who turned out to be my CO later and was an original Battle of Britain fighter boy and was the CO of 9 during the most of our time. Incidentally, later he went back to the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, 607 County of Durham Squadron on Spits and Vampires flying out of RAF Ouston near Newcastle and invited me over in 1950. And I was his adjutant for seven years until the [pause] that Duncan Sandys, that very badly informed son in law of Churchill’s disbanded the Auxiliary Air Force in 1957 because, to quote him there would be no more fighter pilots. Everything in the future was going to be by rockets. How stupid he was. The, so I saw quite a bit of Jim later although he subsequently gave up command there and I think he’s now down living near Doug Jennings, my second bomb aimer somewhere down at Weybridge. But he doesn’t come to reunions. I’m not quite certain why. He must be getting on in age but I believe there is something deeper than that. So when we left Heyford after converting onto Wellingtons and beginning to pull ourselves together as a crew we did all the usual things cross countries around Britain, bombing, all the practices that one carries out. We then went for a short while to Scampton, non-flying for two or three weeks waiting for our posting to Con Unit where we had the misfortune from then to go to 1654 Con Unit at Wigsley where we flew Stirlings. And that was where the misfortune came into it because by this time Stirlings, or the flying submarine as everyone knew them possibly because they were built by Shorts but probably because they looked more like a bulge when you were inside and obviously the chief designer must have been one of those nautics because instead of tumbler switches he used great big levers and wheels. Incredible. When you climbed in a Stirling at the back door the first two rooms you walked through seemed to be perfectly empty except there was a mid-upper turret stuck in the roof of one of them. One just kept walking forward and then you came across the engineer’s room and unlike a Lancaster he didn’t stand or sit alongside you he had a room of his own and it was a mass of electrics, tanks, switches and one was always fortunate to get it off the ground. The incredible thing was that once airborne and you’d got all the necessary pieces tucked away it flew beautifully and wouldn’t do any wrong turns and I quite liked it. But the amount of unserviceability and the consequent danger was really terrifying. It was a measure that of sixteen crews at Con Unit we lost four so when I said at an earlier part of this tape that the crew and I opted to go to forty five rather than be an instructor I had in the back of my mind time back in those Stirlings. As it worked out they got rid of them and we all flew Lancasters but I had no ambitions to go back to a Stirling. That was at Wigsley which is now a disused field not far from Lincoln. In fact, following the Lincoln Memorial [pause] no, following the Lincoln handing over the standard on the last occasion Margaret and I decided to locate Wigsley and we actually drove out. Drove out on to the old field and the tower was still there and Nissen huts and animals and farm and what have you. Another place that I didn’t fall in love with at all and I was very pleased to leave it. From Wigsley we went to Syerston which was near Nottingham and that was the [pause] the 5 Group Lanc Conversion Course. Well, I got to Syerston about June 20 or 21 of 1944 and one didn’t do a lot of flying there. Actually, to convert from a Stirling to a Lancaster was a joy. You had switches, tumbler switches instead of levers. Your navigator, your engineer was actually sitting next to you and the whole thing was a much more simple aircraft than the Stirling and in every way it did everything a great deal better. So the total flying at Syerston, probably no more than seven or eight maybe ten hours both dual and solo and the, we left about the end of June, June the 27th to go to Bardney and report to the Squadron. One nice little touch that the Air Force did, I don’t know whether this was general but they did it at Syerston for the first time we were given a big envelope with the crew details in it. The details of the crew’s training handed over in a big envelope which you handed over to the adjutant at 9 Squadron when you arrived. The envelope was unsealed but the adjutant at Syerston said, ‘You will of course hand it over to your new adjutant sealed.’ Which I suppose was their way of saying if you want to do a little bit of private reading you can do. I was being a bit of a coward. I licked the envelope and stuck it down. What I don’t know about these people or what someone else thinks they know about them won’t be a great deal of help to me. We’d better find out the way we are doing now and that was it. So I never pried into the judgements as to my crew and I never regretted that one. Anyway, on the 30th of June we came up to the Squadron and as usual then we did some cross countries around the country. The Isle of Man, St Tudwalls, [St Bees?], York. The usual around that starting point. The usual places. Five or six hours. Sometimes less. Just to sort of get one’s hand in and then an initial check with a Wing Commander Petty who was the chief test man of the Group. I think he went on later to be quite a big man in, in the aviation branch. Civil aviation. Anyway, he did an initial check with me on the 4th of July. He must have been reasonably happy because as I said previously I did my second dickie trip with Bradwell on the 4th to Creil. These mushroom caves where they were storing flying bombs. The idea of a second dickie trip was that at least the crew could say well the old man has been before albeit once. But I became the only survivor of four second dickies who arrived about the same time as I did. What I’m saying is the other three went down quickly and it was figured out and I think correctly that to introduce a stranger into a crew on an operation to give him experience was one thing but what it did to the crew? Whether it disturbed them or was off-putting one can’t be certain except that having lost three out of four and I was the fortunate fourth they decided that they would do, this practice would cease and that the second dickie trips from then on were out. Well, from the 5th of July to the 10th we were practice bombing at night. 9 Squadron were always keen about practice bombing and undoubtedly this was the reason why they were selected later to work with 617, the Dambusters, on the Tallboy project because the accuracy of our bombing was a very important consideration. I flew until the 11th, the 13th of July, 14th of July on practice bombing and ferrying and familiarisation and we were down for our first trip on the 14th of July to this Villeneuve St George which is a marshalling yard as near to Paris I suppose as one could bomb because Paris had been declared an open city. But we certainly dropped bombs in the suburbs and that was one of them. A seven hour trip with my own crew. The first one out. Very average and quiet I should think. Reasonably quiet. We’d nothing to judge it by but we got back and I suppose we felt the better for that. The next trip was the 18th of July. We began to run into a very very busy period. In fact, we were in great danger of completing our tour in about three weeks. We went out on the 18th of July in the daylight to Caen. You will recall when Montgomery broke out of Caen where they were locked up a little after D-Day we at 5 Group were allocated to bomb the steelworks at Colombelles over the canal and our own troops were on the other side of the canal. I recall that we had a very very stiff briefing to say that anything on the other side of the canal was killing our own and we sent the Americans anywhere within a radiance of ten miles to go and take the outlying fields and then we did the steelworks very thoroughly. But I understand that when it was over and our troops attacked across the canal the hun came out of the steelworks, the ruins of it and still gave them a hell of a time. So one wonders why. The same night, that Caen trip was in the morning about 6 o’clock I recall. The same night we were on a target at a place called Revigny, R E V I G N Y, which is about ninety miles east of Paris I think. One of these targets that few people seem to remember for its significance but one that we remember well because we lost a great deal of aircraft on that target. They were and nearly all 5 Group and I recall when within a couple of days one was checking the intelligence lists of crews lost then practically all the people that had been to OTU with me and later at Con Unit were taken out on that sortie. So the bulk of them must have gone out with no more than four or five trips to their credit. Some probably less. We continued then on the 20th of July to Courtrai in Belgium which was I think another marshalling yard job and that was a night trip. Well, from July the 30th daily until the 24th, oh to the 16th of August we flew every day. We operated every day and that if I recall was a magnificent summer. The weather was superb and as I explained before I didn’t at that stage have my own kite. I didn’t have Y. At least on the, on the Courtrai trip I flew Johnny. On July 30th U-Uncle in [unclear] which is, we were doing then field support for the Army. Mass bombing. July the 31st [unclear] August the 1st [unclear] the 2nd [unclear] Castle. The 3rd of August Troissy. The 4th Etaples, and at that stage I was flying U, Roger, Victor, Sugar, Queenie and a W. I’m reading out of my logbook now. That’s not my memory which has got this lot. August the 7th I did a ten sortie check with Flying Officer Warnock. This was the technique. 5 Group were worried about losing crews and found that they were losing quite senior crews. People had come back to do a second tour and people say like Bradwell who’d gone on his, gone out on his last trip one doesn’t expect this and the implication was could these crews were becoming a little bomb happy and fatigued and/or careless. So they brought an experienced crew in and attached it to the Squadron and he flew a ten sortie check with you and later a twenty sortie check in which you flew around the local countryside but all your drills were functions and accurately checked by Warnock and his crew and he obviously sent in a confidential report on your ability and otherwise. I think that they found that some of the earlier crews had done their first tour of Wellingtons and came back and joined them on the theatre were really well out of touch. Yet we were flying probably that earlier style and maybe unfortunately paying for it. Anyway, on the, we began to get some west coast French ones on the E-boat pens at that stage and on the 7th of August in U-Uncle I went to Lorient. We used to go down over Brest and Belle Island and down the, the west coast of France and these were daylights so we always had the problem of fighters but at that stage we hadn’t met any and on the 9th of August this is significant because we went to La Pallice when I got Y. Good old Y. I picked it up from Jack Sheppard. Jack had completed his tour. He was a Canadian, Jack Sheppard and was going back to Canada and being in my flight and I’d been their, the only survivor I suppose, second dickie I think Y. It wasn’t of course then known as Y-Younger. It had no detail on it because it had only done about twelve sorties. It was quite a newish kite when I got it and I see from my log from August the 10th, 11th, 13th , 14th, 15th, 16 we went to Bordeaux where we were going after an underground petroleum dump Ciboure. And then two on Brest and these were absolute shockers. Daylights on Brest. We did our first collaboration with 617 on this. I always suspect it was an attempt by the Navy to get two of the best Squadrons wiped out in two days which was well within the ability of the Navy’s thinking. The, the Americans were trying to use, or were coming in to use Brest as their main port of embarkation for the continuation of the land war. The Germans had many —