Interview with Roger Rogers. One

Interview with Roger Rogers. One

‘Roger’ Rogers trained as a rear gunner. On one operation he saw what he describes as a salmon in the sky above their aircraft. This was the reflection of fires below on the metal of the German aircraft. As it manoeuvred to attack Roger managed to attack first and the aircraft crashed to the ground. He entered the RAF at seventeen and mourns the fact that so many of his colleagues never saw their eighteenth and nineteenth birthdays.

Flight Lieutenant Joseph Clement Augustine Rodgers DFM (Distinguished Flying Medal)
[inserted] 1 BJZ [/inserted]
I was introduced to, ‘Roger’ by Donald Brooks, a good friend who was also Secretary of the Stalybridge branch of the WW2 Aircrew association and an RAF veteran himself.
‘Roger’ was a rear gunner aboard Halifax and Lancaster bombers in Bomber Command. Life expectancy of these chaps was 2/3 sorties, this man did 27. Most were shovelled out of their turret at the end of a sortie after flights Over Berlin and other German cities.
Born into a catholic family in Liverpool, Roger is now in his nineties. Interviewing him was the first of many that I conducted on behalf of Tameside Talking News for the Blind Association as part of our weekly Recordings for our blind & visually impaired listeners across the borough. For me, this has been a truly wonderful opportunity and a great privilege.
You don’t meet heroes everyday, this man is certainly one!
Roger died in November 2016 aged 92. A Scouser & a hero.
Copies of these recordings are in Tameside Archive.
I am indebted to Donald Brooks for arranging this and other meetings with these heroes of the Royal Air Force who fought for our country and our freedom.
Sadly, Roger died in November 2016.
John Howard jp
June 2011
[page break]
[CD in Sleeve]
J Howard
TTN 2014.
Flt. Lft. J.C.A. ROGERS [sic] DFM.
INTERVIEWS 1 & 2.
FOR TAMESIDE TALKING NEWS.

00:27:27 audio recording

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.

SRodgersJCA[Ser#-DoB]v10001-0001

Interviewer: This is John again with another of these interviews of interesting people. This time I’ve got a gentleman who although not blind or visually impaired is somebody who did the kind of work that most of us only see in the occasional film and in fact he’s a rare breed because of it. This is a guy who was a rear gunner on Halifax and Lancaster bombers during World War 2 and in fact not many rear gunners have survived even that period let alone until here we are in the next century. I’m just going to let him tell us anything he wants to about that. So it’s over to, well I’ll use, I’ll use the name that everybody knows him as and he can tell us if it’s any different and that’s Roger.
RR: Thank you. Good evening or perhaps afternoon. My name is Rogers, JCA Rogers. Everybody calls me Roger. The reason I don’t go by my initials JCA, my mother was very religious but actually she called me Joseph Clements Augustine and my second crew, my first crew on operations they wanted to know what to call me and I said, ‘Rogers.’ But they wanted my Christian name so I said, ‘Joseph.’ And they said, ‘Oh, we don’t want a Joe flying with us. It’s very unlucky. Joe got all the dirty jobs.’ So I wasn’t going to give them my second names Clement Augustine so I said, ‘Just called me Rogers like everybody else does.’ And the navigator said, ‘Oh, that’s it. Roger. We’ll call him out.’ So after that I was Roger. This was on my first squadron. My first crew. We’d been posted there but my pilot whilst I was away on a course had flown low over his wife’s school in Sheffield and the police had taken the aircraft number. VN something. VN was 50 Squadron. The aircraft was a Lancaster and when I got back after my course he’d been reduced to the ranks for low flying. They asked me did I want to go back to my training unit for a new crew or would I like to stay on the squadron because they’d had a crew while on sick leave the rear gunner had been killed on the thirteenth trip. So I said I’d like to stay on the squadron because I’d been on it waiting for my flying training when they were flying different aircraft. So I stayed on the squadron but it meant that my crew had done thirteen trips so whenever my crew weren’t flying I would fly with anyone else trying to catch up on my crew. Normally a first tour consisted of thirty trips. Although [laughs] it very very rarely for some people to finish the thirty trips. Well, I remember my first trip. We were going to Berlin and I was a little worried about it. But anyway, I went down to flying changing room and that. Put on my clothing. I used to wear long johns and heavy singlets and I’d have my battle dress on and over my battledress I had an electric suit which consisted of electric overall with electric slippers and electric gloves.
Interviewer: This is all to keep you warm.
RR: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: None of this modern flying stuff then.
RR: No. No. No. It was forty degrees below sometimes.
Interviewer: Oh.
RR: The temperatures. Thirty five, thirty eight was an average one.
Interviewer: Oh.
RR: And despite all the electrical clothing and that with so much clothing we couldn’t wear the Irvin jackets. We all had a leather fur lined jacket and that but you could only wear them during the daytimes. On an operational flight no.
Interviewer: They were very thick weren’t they? I’ve worn one of them.
RR: Yes.
Interviewer: They are very thick aren’t they? Huge things.
RR: I have one at home and at the moment. My armourer who I’ll tell you about later painted on the back a skeleton in flying boots, striped underpants and an helmet dancing with a French lady of the night who is holding a bottle of wine.
Interviewer: You’ve still got that have you?
RR: Yeah. Have you seen them? And beneath it he’s written, “Dancing with death,” because our expression —
Interviewer: Right.
RR: Every time we went on ops we were dicing, throwing dice with death.
Interviewer: Yeah.
RR: Whether we would come back or not. But I’ll tell you about the first trip. We crossed the Zuiderzee and that was my first seeing flak. Now, flak in the First World War it was called ack ack. Anti-aircraft. We called it flak. Something from the German about being thrown to the air. But when you hear it it is a hell of a noise.
Interviewer: Really.
RR: Yeah. And when you are flying through the clouds you smell the cordite and that. Although you’re breathing oxygen and that you’re still puffing inwards —
Interviewer: From the explosions outside.
RR: From the explosions and that’s a good sign. If you smelled the flak you know you’ve flown through it. You’ve missed the bits.
Interviewer: Goodness.
RR: It’s when the bits start hitting you and when you see it on the pictures it’s not like the noise, the ripping and this and that it’s just like peas in a pod. Ping. Ping. Ping as the bombs whip through the turret or the airframe. The aircraft frame. But anyway I, as we crossed the coast the mid-upper gunner who had flown with the rear gunner who was killed on his thirteenth trip he had the back of his turret blown off and he started complaining that he couldn’t see. Now, we were flying over the Frisian, the Dutch islands then.
Interviewer: Yeah.
RR: To get into the Zuiderzee and halfway across the Zuiderzee he started saying he can’t see. He’s gone blind. Well, a couple of the crew, the engineer and the bomb aimer they came down trying to get him out of his turret. We had a little first aid kit and a sort of a bench for wounded and they could give them a couple of doses of morphine, knocked him out and tie him up on the bench. But they couldn’t get him out of the turret and all the while he’s cursing and swearing he can’t see and this, that and that other. So we decided to turn back and we turned back but over the Frisian Islands the pilot decided he’d bomb Heligoland. So we bombed Heligoland and then came back. When we landed at the aerodrome the mid-upper gunner was put under close arrest right away. We called it lack of moral fibre.
Interviewer: Right.
RR: There was no such thing then as trauma or stress and that. If you wouldn’t face the war you were a coward, lack of moral fibre and eventually he’d be reduced to the rank. He was a sergeant actually and he’d be given the dirtiest flipping job they could find in the RAF for him. But the wing commander was most upset. He thought we should have carried on. But our station commander who was a higher rank, a group captain, he’d been a fighter pilot in the First World War, he explained to the wing, ‘How the hell can they fly on if somebody is screaming over the intercom?’ They couldn’t disconnect his intercom and it would be, it would upset any normal conversation.’
Interviewer: All the other people. Yeah.
RR: ‘They’ve not wasted the bombs. They did bomb Heligoland.’ And talking about that the next day the Daily Express [unclear] said Heligoland had been evacuated. So Mac, the New Zealand pilot still has to this day well unfortunately he died oh eleven years ago he had a copy of the Daily Express with the headline, “Heligoland evacuated.” But that was my first trip then. My second trip we had a replacement mid-upper, mid-upper gunner. A Flying Officer Clark and I didn’t like him. I don’t know whether some of you will remember George Raft, the American actor. Well, he had this hair like him parted in the middle and I disliked him. The other reason I disliked him apart from the fact he was over me as pilot officer was we had done a trip. The squadron had bombed Italy and flew on to North Africa. Then did the bombing for the Americans over there and came back. Bombed Italy again and landed in England and apparently he’d brought a little donkey. Whether it was true or not and put it in the aircraft. Of course the poor little beggar died once we were over ten thousand feet and we had to have the oxygen on. So I disliked him.
Interviewer: [laughs] brought a donkey.
RR: I disliked him for that. Now, as we crossed [unclear] the flak opened up and I of course this was my second trip we did, ‘Mac, flak below us.’ And this voice from the top turret, this Flying Officer Clark, ‘It’s alright, Mac. It’s just the guns below us.’ The next minute there was this bang bang bang ping ping ping in the aircraft but it shook me up. Right. I though they must think I’m scared saying there’s flak there. We went on and we bombed the target and we came back. That was my second trip. So already I felt like an experienced —
Interviewer: I’ll bet.
RR: The next trip was Mӧnchengladbach. Right. Which is in the valley of the Ruhr.
Interviewer: The Ruhr. Yes. This is the industrial area.
RR: The valley of the Ruhr was very bad. This was where Bomber Command’s heavy losses had been until the Battle of Berlin started later on. I did a couple of the Ruhr trips and this was my first one at Mӧnchengladbach. Right. The same thing happened. When we were crossing [unclear] I said, ‘Flak below.’ And of course the mid-upper gunner said, ‘It’s alright, Mac, It’s only the flash of the guns.’ And once again ping ping ping and I smelled the cordite. We just rolled through the flak base. Over the target we, as a rear gunner I’m not supposed to look at the target, I lose my night vision. But what the hell had I been there for? Well, the first thing I want to do is the crew in the front had said, thinking back now the pilot, the navigator and the flight engineer were very heroic. They deserved a VC for every flight. I said they are coming into the target seeing what, it’s like the, “Charge of the Light Brigade.” Cannons to the left of them, cannons to the right. Cannons underneath them.
Interviewer: Yeah.
RR: And fighters above them. I’m sitting at the back of the passage and I’m alright. I can’t see what they see. It’s only when we get in, further into the target that I can feel you know and see —
Interviewer: What they’ve already seen.
RR: What they’ve already seen and that and I was swinging my turret around and I look up and there port quarter high to me it looked like a salmon in the sky. It was pink, red and black. Well, as I say it looked like a salmon. It was a night fighter but with the searchlights and the flames below it gave it this colour. So I called the pilot up and said, ‘Mac, there’s a fighter starboard quarter high.’ And of course the pilot starts wobbling his wings waiting for instructions and that and then the fighter starts coming in getting larger and larger. Now, the fighter’s got cannons, 30mm canon and probably 220 mls and he can open fire nearly a mile away. I’d got four 303s with just the same bullets the Army —
Interviewer: Yeah.
RR: The troops carried.
Interviewer: Yeah.
RR: And my fighting range is probably four hundred to six hundred yards.
Interviewer: Wow.
RR: And anyway as this one comes in he makes a curve of pursuit. To me he is just sliding through the air. Not moving forward catching up with us but he’s judging our speed and direction and then he starts sliding. Sliding behind you. Just as he’s nearly behind dropping his wing to be dead behind I fire a little burst from my four guns and shout to my pilot, ‘Hold it steady, Mac.’ Of course, Mac’s sweating up in the front. He’s waiting for me to say, ‘Dive starboard,’ or this, that and the other. But at any rate the fighter opens, oh the mid-upper gunner starts screaming then. now, he’s swearing at me. He said, ‘Stop it you — ’so and so so and so, ‘It’s a — ’ so and so, ‘Lancaster.’ Away between us and the fighter is another Lancaster and to him my tracers are aimed at the Lancaster. But anyway the fighter opens up then and despite what you see again on the pictures the way these shells come at you they don’t come at you they just seem to float at you. They floated over my head sort of thing.
Interviewer: Wow.
RR: Then the mid-upper gunner opened fire then. Fired a short burst and there was an explosion in the cockpit of the pilot. He’s about a hundred and fifty yards, two hundred yards away at this time. Then his port engine exploded and the wing fell off and he just started falling. Fell out of the sky. Of course, I’m shouting, ‘Mac, turn around. Turn around.’ I wanted him to turn around so the crew could see the fighter going down. But you can’t turn around in a bomber stream. Although you can’t see them you know on each side above and below you there are aircraft. But anyway I was very excited. That was my first combat and I felt like Jimmy Cagney. You older people will remember. Let them all come sort of thing. When we, when we got back to camp the mid-upper gunner, this Flying Officer Clark he shot over to the gunnery leader who had briefed the gunners. He’d done this and that and he’d done the other but my bomb aimer Percy [Nash] Smith, I think his mother was fond of one of the poets and he come up and said, ‘No. You were telling him he was a so and so so and so so and so. That it was a so and so Lanc.’ Anyway, the flying officer got his, his story in and then I said about all that and they wanted to know why I didn’t take evasive action. So I said, ‘Well, I thought it was better not to. If I took evasive action I couldn’t have hit the fighter,’ and blah blah blah. But anyway the next day they had checked the guns and I’d fired eight hundred and forty something rounds and he, he’d fired forty nine before both his guns had packed up. A couple of weeks later confirmation come through. Two other crews had seen the combat and they’d made a note, or the navigator made notes. The gunners would say, ‘Combat starboard quarter,’ and normally it is, ‘Bomber going down.’ But in this case they could say it’s a fighter going down. So they did grant me the aircraft had come. After that I was flying with anyone and different crews have different ideas. I would fly with new crews with other people other gunners didn’t want to go with but the new crews would listen to me who would consider myself at this you know six seven or eight survivals experience and I used to give them little tips. ‘When you are approaching the target throttle back. Let other people overtake you and they’d be coned by the searchlights so those on the port would attract all the searchlights on the port and those on starboard would say and they would leave you a V of blackness. So head for the blackness.’ I know it sounds you know a little rotten now but my job was to protect the crew.
Interviewer: That’s what your job was.
RR: You know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
RR: The crew.
Interviewer: That’s your sole function really.
RR: There was another time I was saying flying with the crew. It was their second trip. He was an Australian pilot, Flying Officer [Tuvey] and I was flying in the rear turret and the mid-upper turret came from Liverpool also. He was a personal friend and we were going to Berlin but we were heading as if we were going to bomb Leipzig to put the German radar and fighters off. When we got to Leipzig we’d turn sharp port and head for Berlin. Over the Zuiderzee we were hit by flak and it knocked the port engine out. Now, the port engine controlled my turret. It meant then my turret was out of action. I could neither operate it, the only thing I could do I could fire six short bursts from my guns but I couldn’t manoeuvre the turret by power. I couldn’t raise or lower the guns by power but I had a little wind around handle on the right side of the turret. I could turn the turret around slowly and holding two of the gun butts I could push them up and down. And anyway over Holland itself we were hit by flak again and it knocked the port engine out. Well, the port, the inner port engine and the inner port controlled the mid-upper gunner. That meant that the mid-upper gunner couldn’t turn his turret around this, that and the other. And then the pilot said he’d decided to boomerang. Boomerang was turning back as we’d had to turn back on my first trip when the mid-upper gunner lost his nerve and that. I suggested we had an eight thousand pounder and then the rest were a thousand why not drop the eight thousand pounder on the outskirts of Leipzig? We were turning port to Berlin so he he agreed to do that more or less and we dropped it on the outskirts of Berlin. But we still kept losing height and we bombed Berlin at six thousand feet and at six thousand feet everybody else was up at twenty two thousand. What it means it is not fighters, not the flak, it’s the people above us maybe dropping all —
Interviewer: Stuff on you.
RR: I’m saying you could see the fire engines in the streets. You know, they were so close. When we got back the pilot told him he’d bombed Berlin at six thousand feet which could be proved by our photographs that we had taken. He got the immediate award of the DFC, Distinguished Flying Cross and that was the second trip so he was very very pleased with that. But they finished again years later when I joined the squadron unit we were, we met at Skellingthorpe where the squadron was operating from then for the thing and they’d kept the guard room and that as a, you know just a symbol for 50 and then 61 Squadron joined us later on. But at the first reunion this chap had come over from Australia and the first thing the mid-upper gunner from Liverpool said, ‘Here’s the lad who got his DFC.’ Tuvey just looked. You know. Turned away. The only thing I’d say is people don’t realise what it cost Bomber Command. There were a hundred and ten aircrew in Bomber Command and there was nearly sixty four thousand killed in action.
Interviewer: Wow.
RR: And this was not counting those who died coming back or were killed in training. People now they just don’t understand it. Most, I was lucky I managed to get in when I was seventeen. Most of my comrades were eighteen and nineteen but a lot of them didn’t see their eighteenth and nineteenth birthday. Those who were like me who had got in at seventeen and that.
Interviewer: How many operations did you actually do then? Flying in a vengeance.
RR: Well, thirty one in Bomber Command.
Interviewer: Thirty one.
RR: My last trip I flew with the wing commander. I asked my gunnery, my crew finished when they’d done twenty seven trips. That was three less than they should. We had been hit by flak a couple of times and we’d been attacked you know by fighters when both turrets when I tell you that both turrets are we actually combatted two 88s over the target and that. But they finished them on twenty seven. Of course I’d only done seventeen. I’d caught up with the crew so far.
Interviewer: Yeah.
RR: So after that I would fly with anyone who just wanted. I always asked could I go in the rear turret. If it was a mid-upper gunner who was sick I’d ask the pilot, ‘Tell your rear gunner that I want to go in the rear turret.’ And with two exceptions they always agreed. I was the more experienced gunner like. But two didn’t. One night we were losing so many aircraft and this is, there was seven in a crew of a Lancaster. I’m not talking about the Stirlings and Halifaxes. I’m talking about the Lancasters now. There’s seven in a crew. If you lost one Lanc you lost seven men. It’s unusual for anyone to bale out. The fighters are learning new tactics by this time. They knew you had no armoured plate underneath the tanks in the wing so they used to fly underneath. Instead of diving down as more of my combats were they’d come up behind you and they would fire up. They had guns pointing upwards. They called them music makers for some reason. But it meant that they were firing and none of our petrol tanks were armoured as the Germans were and of course the aircraft, the petrol tanks would either explode or just burn up and of course you’d see these going down. Flaming aircraft. And we had seen so many of them. Right. As it got worse especially the Battle of Berlin as I say and the Air Ministry realised that it was a bit upsetting to watch all these and they come out and they told us that they weren’t aircraft going down. It was what the Germans called Scarecrows. They were firing these rockets up which would explode like a bomber. Of course we accepted that.
Interviewer: Wow.
RR: But years after then the Air Ministry did agree they were Lancasters and that going down. Not rockets being fired up and that.
Interviewer: Roger Rogers I’ve got to say as we come to the end of this interview it’s been a fantastic privilege for me and although it’s for Thameside Talking News I’m going to keep a copy of this for good. Thank you very much indeed.
RR: Well, I’ll —
Interviewer: It’s been a real privilege to meet you.
RR: I’ll introduce myself. When I started life in the Air Force I was an HCH2GDUTAG. That was the lowest form of life and I finished up the King gave me a medal and he commissioned me. When the war in Europe ended I was on my way out to China to work for Chiang Shek but the Japanese packed in before we got out there. And then I was posted to Transport Command but I found my old squadron was going to Palestine with the paras so I managed to exchange. And the RAF had said if I signed on for another four years I’d get a [unclear] blah blah blah. So I was in the RAF from ’41 to ’49 and really I enjoyed the war. It broke my bloody heart when it ended in Europe. They, when we were in Palestine I’d flown a couple of times over into Iraq and by the Persian border and the Russians were on the other side and I was always hoping [laughs] the Russians would stray on our side. They never did.
Interviewer: Roger thanks.
RR: Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. I’m laughing now, joking now but I have to say the thing to me is my friends who didn’t see their nineteenth birthday.
Interviewer: Yeah.
RR: And I look around me now.
Interviewer: I hope this isn’t a rude question. How old are you now?
RR: Eighty seven.
Interviewer: Eighty seven. What can I say? Thank you. Thank you sincerely.