Interview with James Edwards.

Interview with James Edwards.

James Edwards trained initially as a pilot before training as a navigator. Part of his initial training was in South Africa. When he returned to the UK and completed his training he was posted to 49 Squadron at RAF Fiskerton.

00:30:24 audio recording

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AEdwardsJA[Date]-010001

JE: In London where they specifically do all sorts of extraordinary tests. Medical, physical.
Interviewer: Aircrew.
JE: Aircraft, and colour blindness, what have you. And that pretty much what they asked for and sent home on what they called deferred service because at that time they wanted the aircrew but they hadn’t got the aircraft [laughs] so we went home to think about it [laughs] and that lasted until 1941. And in 1941 my —
Interviewer: What time did you go for your tests?
JE: Oh dear. It’s dates I’m bad about.
Interviewer: Sometime in 1940.
JE: Yes. Something 1940 it must have been. Yes. Yeah. And eventually I was called up to St Johns Wood in London. The Aircrew Reception Centre. ACRC or Arcy Darcy where we all had to wait and be drilled and fitted with boots and kit. Square bashing. From there we were finally posted to various ITWs, Initial Training Wings. I was sent first of all to Newquay in Cornwall. But standing on parade waiting to go I suddenly passed out.
Interviewer: Ah.
JE: I had pneumonia.
Interviewer: Ah.
JE: So I had quite a long time in hospital on sick leave and eventually I was posted to ITW at Aberystwyth which I liked very much. In wartime it was a very quiet little town and the CO was very good. We did all our drilling and marching on the front and quite reasonable buildings attached to the University College of Wales where we had all our lectures and navigational extra training and so forth. That was really quite an interesting patch and —
[background chatter]
JE: From there we eventually parted and then I became, from becoming an LAC2 I became an LAC. Leading aircraftsman.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: And my pay went up to five shillings a day with a promise of an extra half crown flying pay [laughs] when I got to my next training station which first of all I had to go through the EFTS at Northampton for pilot training which I did for some time and failed. That wasn’t very good particularly [unclear] From then I was posted as a navigator and was sent to Heaton Park, Manchester. A huge, totally [unclear] Park which I really quite enjoyed. Yes. That was purely a holding camp where we were being sorted out into various aircrew categories. Some people were being sent to Canada, some to Rhodesia and some to South Africa. I was selected to go from there to South Africa for navigation training which was interesting. I was sent to Liverpool. The Princes Dock. We eventually set sail from there. A six week sea voyage which again I thoroughly enjoyed. The food really was very basic. We were very uncrowded but it quite fun. I learned to play Solo, I learned to play Bridge [laughs] [unclear] I learned how to gamble.
Interviewer: Yes. Do you remember what ship it was?
JE: Yes. It was the Moreton Bay. She was the [unclear] line. Sister ship to the famous —
Interviewer: Oh, Jervis Bay.
JE: Jervis bay. We had one large gun facing aft.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: With six sailors to man it and we were known as a non [unclear] cruiser. We used to do duty on it on the [orbital] guns. After a six weeks voyage the first stop we had at Freetown, Sierra Leone which was marvellous after wartime blacked out Britain to see these lights all up and we had concerts on the deck and so forth. We eventually arrived in Durban. First of all we got to Cape Town I thought we were going to disembark and we stayed in Cape Town for about two days on the ship and eventually told we weren’t going to disembark there. So we ended up again up the coast to Durban and there we did actually pull into the docks there. We were greeted by the famous Lady in White. Do you know about the Lady in White?
Interviewer: No.
JE: She was a self-appointed welcomer of troops. She was an opera singer. She dressed in full long white clothes with a big [wide rimmed hat] [unclear] and she sang all troop ships in [unclear] opera. It was quite quite moving actually.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: Quite remarkable.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: And anyway arriving in South Africa in wartime was absolutely marvellous because the servicemen had absolute priority over civilians for everything. Free on the buses, free on the trains. Welcomed everywhere that was possible. Didn’t have anything to do at all and when we actually travelled by train they would actually take civilians off the train to make room for us. And so I thoroughly enjoyed Durban.
Interviewer: [unclear] I imagine.
JE: That was just a short transit. From there I went to [pause] by train it was a three day journey around what was then Basutoland down to East London.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: Which was a preliminary training camp again which was really quite short lived and mostly [unclear] work. From there we went to Grahamstown. A university town [in Natal] about fifty sixty years behind the times. The place was controlled by the city fathers. If you wanted to take out a girlfriend you had to sign for her and bring her back in good order. Get a signature [laughs]
Interviewer: At a certain time.
JE: At a certain time. Yes. Before the deadline. From there I started my flying training on Avro Ansons doing a lot of classroom work and a lot of navigational exercises either along the coast or inland which was really quite interesting because it was such wide open country that it really made navigation quite easy because you could actually if you headed towards somewhere and you weren’t very accurate you could tell when you got there. You saw it.
Interviewer: Ten miles away but you could see what you were looking for. All the stars would be different of course from England.
JE: Yes. [unclear] the reverse. Yes. Everything was a bit upside down.
Interviewer: [unclear]
JE: [unclear]
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
JE: Again, that course I don’t know how long that course lasted. that course. About seven months and at the end of that I was awarded my wings as a navigator observer so I got one of the old O wings.
Interviewer: Oh yeah. I’ve seen them.
JE: Yes.
Interviewer: Yes [unclear]
JE: What happened after that? [pause] Again the usual thing. After the course we were sent to transit camps. Well, I was commissioned at that stage which came out and became a pilot officer which made a change. And we went to a big transit camp again. Eventually I set course home on the SS Orion which was —
Interviewer: P&O.
JE: P&O. A P&O liner which was came with very very few of us so we were lucky. Very lucky.
Interviewer: Are you serious?
JE: A lot of heavy-duty cargo below with a deck which us we had virtually to ourselves and it was several weeks playing Bridge and Solo and drinking gin and wine. The drink at the time was gin and wine. Plenty of gin and wine and nothing much else. That was, that a splendid voyage back to England again and [unclear] [pause] Arrived at Southampton. That’s right. It was Southampton. Southampton water. It was the first time I’d seen a helicopter. We were welcomed by helicopter came into the ship and the pilot hovered next to the bridge. So the helicopter pilot [unclear] and the captain went down to the [unclear] with his foghorns.
Interviewer: Good lord.
JE: Yeah. As he came alongside. And from there [unclear] [pause] oh another holding. That’s right. Off to Harrogate. A holding camp there and we were waiting there. We were stuck there for a bit and while we were waiting they sent us on an RAF Regiment battle course.
Interviewer: Just to keep you busy.
JE: Three weeks of going through drains, climbing on ropes.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: Generally keeping fit and [unclear] sent us to AFU. To Advanced Flying Unit at Dumfries in Scotland where we learned mostly navigational exercises on Ansons up and down the Western Isles and around the north bit there and over the sea. It was very much sea navigation. That was the first time I was shot at by the Royal Navy.
Interviewer: I see.
JE: We were flying low. I don’t blame them. We were flying very low up the coastline on a beautiful day and we just came around the headland and there were ships in the harbour there. They didn’t ask questions. I think they were painted bright yellow. We were low enough [unclear] Anyway that was the advanced navigation course and from there I went to OTU. Operational Training Unit at Winthorpe in Nottinghamshire to convert onto twin engine Wellingtons to again practice mostly night flying, night navigation which lasted a bit. Then we went on a Heavy Conversion Unit at [pause] I forget the place now. It was on to Stirlings. Stirling. Converting on to Stirlings. Again it was all night exercises. Night flying and night exercises.
Interviewer: Were these retired Stirlings or were they on active service?
JE: Well, some were on actual service. They were still using a few at that stage.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: They didn’t use them very much because they’re ceiling was so low.
Interviewer: That’s right they could easily get shot down.
JE: Their ceiling was about sixteen thousand feet and the Halifax and the Lanc were about just twenty thousand and we used to get towards the bottom. But they were an extraordinary aeroplane. A huge aeroplane.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: And it was full of wheels inside like a submarine. First of all the electricity. The electrical work didn’t work very well so invariably the undercarriage wouldn’t lift and wouldn’t come down and you had a handle at about head level which very roughly you had to wind each wheel down separately. About sort of five hundred turns to each wheel and the flight engineer would instruct any member of the crew who was about which would be me changing the petrol. You had to change it. You had to [unclear] turn that knob. Run down the plane, you had a wheel up the front you’ve got to turn like mad to get the petrol transferred from one part of the aircraft to the other to keep the balance right. You’ve seen it was like a submarine. But was just like a submarine but otherwise it was very [unclear] One of the very few aircraft I could stand up in. I could actually walk into my cabin standing up.
Interviewer: Right.
JE: Then that finished and I went on to [unclear]. Lancaster [unclear] training. We converted onto Lancasters. When we converted on to the Lancaster again was the latest navigation equipment and the latest briefing and we did all the usual things like leaflet raids and mostly again it was nearly all night navigation. Night navigation endlessly night navigation and they had there what nowadays people will train on because Air Marshall Harris was very very keen on training for bombing and he had a whole lot of fuselages made up and doctored to give exercises and we were [unclear] woken in the middle of the night [unclear] taken down to these fuselages, given a navigational exercise to do in this mock-up of an aeroplane which shook and shuddered. It had cordite smells. It had bangs going on around it. Clocks set at double time and you had to do the navigation exercise in this [unclear] It was that was hard again but it was. It was horrible at the time but it was obviously a very good thing and [unclear] After that I was posted to 49 Squadron which was at that stage had moved to Fiskerton which was a fairly new airfield east of Lincoln and I found there a very good squadron. The morale was very high. The camaraderie was terrific.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JE: And they accepted us in straightaway and [unclear] it was very very good indeed. Really had quite a good time with the people and the camaraderie generally and of course the discipline immediately relaxed as such which again was self-imposed.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JE: After that of course it was back to training and we had, my skipper was very keen and we got on very well with him. We never allowed speaking in the aeroplane. There was no unnecessary chatter on the intercom. If you had something to say you said it and then you shut up and if you left your intercom switched on you got a bollocking for it. [unclear] And he was very good. It was a very good squadron altogether and I stayed with them until they moved to Fulbeck which was near Grantham.
Interviewer: Right.
JE: Continued to upgrade and during that stage we had a lot of losses and my pilot who had joined as a flight lieutenant within a matter of weeks was a squadron leader and within a matter of weeks again he was wing commander and he was the commander of the squadron. Which immediately of course cut down my operating because the wing commander couldn’t fly as much as the main crew. So we only operated at irregular intervals which consequently meant that my tour instead of lasting perhaps three months lasted for over a year. We got maybe sixteen or probably twenty ops.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: [unclear] and gradually we had to cut down and my last ops were done over a long period of time.
Interviewer: Yes. Was this good or bad?
JE: Well, in a lot of ways it was good because it kept me in the squadron and there were a lot of people I got to know very well indeed on both the squadron and the base at off-duty times. [unclear] wise it wasn’t very nice. One would have liked to get it over and done with.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JE: One would have liked to have got it finished.
Interviewer: You would start relaxing and you’d got another op.
JE: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. You never knew what was coming. When the wing commander would suddenly decide [unclear] do the next one.
Interviewer: Yes. And then.
JE: Yes. [unclear]
Interviewer: That’s right. Handling. Yes. Did you say before that you were on Wellingtons sometimes.
JE: Yes. On training.
Interviewer: Oh, on training.
JE: On training. Yes.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JE: The first, the first real night flying training I did was on Lincolns.
Interviewer: Yes. And did, did they have a forward gun?
JE: Yes.
Interviewer: They did.
JE: They did. Yes. I think there was just two, two Brownings facing forward.
Interviewer: And four in the aft.
JE: Four yes [unclear] flying 303.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: Because later we got the .5s in the Lanc. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yes. Oh, I didn’t know that.
JE: It’s who gets the bigger guns in the end.
Interviewer: Yes [unclear]
JE: I say if you get a chance to read Harris’ book you’d see it was quite horrifying really.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: How we ever survived. How we ever, how we ever got to the war and how we ever survived it.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: A lack. A lack of everything.
Interviewer: Yes. Yes.
JE: It was people like Harris who came along and who really made it possible.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: These men who had got the real go.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: And didn’t mind what they said or anything. Or who they said it to.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: They made enemies but they got things done.
Interviewer: Take me through a typical bombing raid. You know, you’d get, when would you get notified about when you were going?
JE: 10 o’clock in the morning. [unclear] was the usual. You reported to your flights as a crew and you weren’t talking at all except you took your aircraft up. What we called a NFT. A night flying test. And you took it up. You used to check everything worked. The gunners tried the guns, the radio operator tried his radio. We all tried our bits and pieces and that was that. We only came back at lunch and we were told then to report to flights. Usually somewhere around 4 o’clock if I remember rightly in the afternoon and you’d pick up your parachutes and your gear and you were then going to the briefing room where you were given first of all in our case it was the navigators were given the target and the maps that we required and the courses we would fly and talk about the target. The gunners would have done the same in their section and we all met up in the main briefing room after we’d had our own briefing. First of all it could be the base commander. It could be the CinC if he happened to feel like it. He came down and gave us a pep talk you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JE: [unclear] you know. Destroy the hun [laughs].
Interviewer: That’s it [laughs]
JE: And the CO talked first. Then the flight commander with the wing commander and squadron commander talk to you about the target and then the flight commands of the flight would tell you their part of it. Then you get a talk by the radio men. The Met man would come on. He always got cheered, always got jeered or cheered [laughs]
Interviewer: He’d what?
JE: He always got jeered or cheered [unclear] and at this stage of course the maps were up on the wall and the targets were marked out and then when that was over you were given time to take off. Then you went and had a meal. Usually bacon and eggs. Just before take-off you went out to your aircraft and usually it was a case of sitting around. Used to sit around on the grass, just smoke and chatter until it was time to take off. You took off in order you see.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JE: [unclear] queuing up one after the other and we were usually waved off by the flight control at the end of the runway would wave you off. And then of course in those days, well in today’s terms underpowered aeroplanes used to take off with a fairly large bomb load and an awful lot of petrol so you had a long time to climb before operations.
Interviewer: Just get over the hedge.
JE: Yes. We did. We had one case where we actually had to lift the wheels up. We were going to somewhere in eastern Germany and the pilot was very unhappy about the load of bombs and the petrol that was on. Actually it was above maximum. He said the thing of all was [unclear] the whole crew to come forward and stand behind the pilot and engineer which we did to keep the weight forward and [unclear] he’s never going to get off. [unclear] coming up [unclear] the wheels up and we could probably do that. Just cleared the [unclear]. Two other aircraft went in. Yeah.
Interviewer: Two went in.
JE: Yeah. Two ahead of us went in. And that was unusual I have to say and one of the pilots survived and he was in dead trouble. He was sent him on a special course on night flying training.
Interviewer: That was a bit harsh [laughs] wasn’t it?
JE: Yes. He didn’t get court martialled but he got a right rollicking for this.
Interviewer: [unclear]
JE: [unclear] the aeroplane and the bombs.
Interviewer: [unclear] yes. Your feet on the ground.
JE: In that case it was a case of getting mostly you got operational height [unclear] over base. We set course. You were then climbing on track to cross the British coast at a certain height and the enemy coast at a given height too and from then we kept very strictly to a course and time. We were allowed I think it was something like a mile either side of a given course and half a minute outside of a given time at the target. If you didn’t achieve that you had to tell them why. Usually you’d tell them why because something had gone wrong with the wind or [unclear] flak belts.
Interviewer: Yeah. I presume they tried to see.
JE: Oh yes. Yes. You were routed between flak belts.
Interviewer: Of course that’s the one thing they would really do.
JE: That was why the navigator had to be you know quite good.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: If you didn’t go where you were told. [unclear]
Interviewer: Yes. In that bomber book he was talking about getting extra height by jolting the Lancaster up [unclear] usual time and that’s how he did it.
JE: Yes. I didn’t know that at all really. I was speechless. [ Usually we reached the ceiling and that was it you know.
Interviewer: Yeah. What about night flights?
JE: The first, the first trip. We were sent to a place called Mailly le Camp in France which was a concentration of Panzer divisions hidden amongst the woods and moving up and it was a bit of a mess up really because when we all got there they knew we were coming and knew what we were supposed to be doing as far as I can gather and we all had to circle. [unclear] the leading bomber gave us a height to fly. We were literally going around in circles until these things sorted themselves out. And at one stage I looked out of the right hand window because I had come forward at that stage and there was a German fighter on our right starboard wing quite close. He didn’t see us. I was watching him. He was [unclear] just thirty seconds but anyway eventually we came in to [unclear] and it was the first time we’d seen flak. I can remember thinking to myself this is impossible you know. There is no way can you get through what’s coming up. The whole lot bang bang bang just a solid mass defending this area and this is it, you know. That was my first trip. It can’t last and my nerves were shaking. In actual fact we flew straight into the target and the only plane [unclear] bang and the aircraft shook, the smell of cordite and we hadn’t got a mark. We ran into it on the bombing run was the dodgy bit because we’d got to fly straight and level on a heading for the bomb aimer to have a chance.
Interviewer: For how long?
JE: Oh, as long as it takes. You know. It feels like an awful long time.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JE: It depends on, he goes on the heading for quite a way to get lined up with what was the target and of course the last bit really is steady steady steady and the pilot has got to keep this heading and his height and his speed.
Interviewer: Whatever is coming.
JE: Whatever is coming up. Yeah. That’s it.
Interviewer: So where, where did your other raids take place?
JE: Hamburg. Essen. A lot of places in France. [Grafhorst?]. Oh dear.
Interviewer: The next time —
JE: Yes, indeed.
Interviewer: Apart from the Eastern Germany ones [unclear] or something.
JE: No. I didn’t. No. No. [unclear] Several of the crews went on the long trips over to Southern Italy.
Interviewer: Oh yes.
JE: And they landed at North Africa. It was a one way go, you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JE: You took a bomb to Italy Turin or Naples and landed in Africa and did the reverse trip the next day.
Interviewer: Came back laden with wine did they?
JE: Yes [laughs] probably. [unclear] mostly bombing in and around the Ruhr. The names I can’t recall now. [Wesseling?] was a very bad night.
Interviewer: [unclear]
JE: Yeah. A place called [Wesseling] was a particularly bad night when we lost all but two on the squadron.
Interviewer: All but two?
JE: Yes. And that was how my pilot became a wing commander. Bad losses [unclear] flight commander [unclear] We were down to about seven that night. [unclear] Again, you see, again I was lucky that we weren’t touched. I watched aircraft being shot down in all directions this particular night. You saw them being [unclear] all over the place.
Interviewer: They exploded? These planes.
JE: A lot exploded yes. We were banging about back to base. That’s it. So [pause] we were very lucky but right at the end of the war we were penetrating into Germany in daylight because there was virtually no fighter, or very little fighter opposition or flak opposition and we were going in actually in daylight escorted by rocket firing Typhoons. We really couldn’t go wrong you know. They were scorching in ahead of us picking out airfields.
Interviewer: Yes.
JE: All the way along you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JE: We didn’t see a thing. We were just bombing along. Lovely day it was. Sunshine.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JE: I quite enjoyed that as navigator. I could see the burst waterways and the navigation was easy. Then all of a sudden the aircraft in front blew up. Just completely exploded and the next thing I was [unclear] we lost our windspeed [unclear] Quite high losses. As far as we knew there was no flak. But it was a total explosion. The aircraft [unclear]. All I could see was this aircraft dropping out of the sky. And they never quite knew what hit them. What it was that did it. But I was lucky. I must say than ever before.
Interviewer: [unclear] the windspeed [unclear]
JE: Yeah. [unclear] yeah. It was daylight and we weren’t flying around. It was daylight and we were equipped. Yeah. We were equipped, you know we were equipped with [unclear]
JE: See what we’ve got there.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: You were saying that —
JE: Is this on?
Interviewer: Yes. That sometimes [unclear]
JE: Yes. From time to time coming back from Eastern Germany if the navigation equipment wasn’t in very good condition particularly it was not unknown for aircraft to fly along the Channel missing England completely [unclear]
Interviewer: And what about what happened [unclear]
JE: Well, around about that time [unclear] something was going to happen. [unclear] and we suddenly found ourselves doing slightly more daylight trips than usual on Northern France targets. And one particular night I’d been over I think it must have been about the 5th of June that year and we had bombed somewhere in Northern France. Caen I think it was and coming back I turned on my H2S radar screen that was the scanning radar that showed you a picture of the ground and I said to my skipper, I said, ‘Skipper, if my radar hasn’t gone wrong [unclear]?’ And I said, ‘Well [unclear] I can’t get a response from the coast at all. It’s just a mass of mush. [unclear] in daylight and seeing this mass of shipping crossing the Channel but the interesting part was we had been given very strict instructions that night the height for coming back. Every level you could think of had aircraft coming or going. It was like a Piccadilly Circus of aeroplanes [unclear] getting aircraft going in. [unclear] Dakotas going out with troops, bombers coming out, fighters going out and troops carriers going out it really was quite quite incredible. I’d never seen anything quite like it. It was really quite exciting and of course after after that of course we were on daylights most of the time. Instead of flying once a week or once a fortnight [unclear]. [unclear] the Fallaise Gap this the Germans were holding up our troops and they sent a whole force of heavy bombers, Lancasters to literally saturate the area.