Interview with Frederick Harold Shepherd

Interview with Frederick Harold Shepherd

Frederick joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. After going to RAF Cardington, he was given deferred entry and studied for a year at university. He was invited to London for initial training, followed by the Initial Training Wing at RAF Newquay. He did basic flying in Tiger Moths at RAF Clyffe Pypard before going to different stations in Canada for 15 months. He trained mainly on Ansons. On his return, he went to RAF Harrogate and was then posted to RAF Dumfries, where he did a specialised bomb dropping course for Pathfinders. Frederick crewed up at RAF Chipping Warden and trained on Wellingtons. He did one operation, dropping leaflets over France. Frederick then went onto Stirlings at RAF Chedburgh before Lancasters at the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Feltwell. He carried out several operations with 218 Squadron at RAF Methwold. Frederick then moved, with his captain, to RAF Mildenhall when the latter was promoted. He carried out several operations on major cities and was appointed as bombing leader for 15 Squadron, as well as the squadron adjutant. Frederick was chosen to accompany Arthur Harris, flying with Charles Calder as a co-navigator. The crew were all section leaders. Frederick describes Harris’s personality and the leadership challenges he faced, expressing his sympathy and respect. Having refuelled in the south of France, they went through Africa and on to South America and the United States, arriving in Washington on VJ Day. Frederick signed on for another six months and went to RAF Marham in the experimental unit for Operation Manna before leaving the RAF.

2015-05-25

01:11:50 audio recording

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AShepherdFH150525

This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is Claire Bennett, the interviewee is Mr. Frederick Shepherd, the interview is taking place at Mr. Shepherd’s home near Kings Lynn on the 25th May 2015.
CB: Good morning, Frederick.
AS: Good morning.
CB: Perhaps you could start by saying your date of birth and place of birth please.
FS: The date of my birth was 8th March 1921 and I was born at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Manchester.
CB: Do you remember very much of your early life?
FS: That’s either very detailed or very shallow, I was, put it this way, I was the first child of my mother and father, and my next brother, Douglas, was born in 1926, and my second brother, Ronald was born in 1934. At the moment, all my family have departed this world so I am the only one left in the Shepherd family.
CB: And your early life until you joined the air -
FS: I was schooled in Manchester, and on leaving school I joined the company of South American Shipping Association and stayed with them until I went to the Air Force when I was twenty years of age.
CB: What made you join the Air Force?
FS: Er, basic inclination was to fly and, in that connection, I applied to join the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm but I was assured that entry into the Fleet Air Arm was via the Royal Marines, and no one would give me any indication of the gap period between joining and possibly being transferred to the Naval Air Force, so I immediately applied to join the Royal Air Force.
CB: And this would have been 1941, something like that?
FS: 1941 yes.
CB: So where was your first posting to?
FS: Ah, I need to qualify that a little bit, I was accepted by the Royal Air Force, er, took physical and mental examinations at Cardington, er, was sent home on deferred entry and I went to Manchester and Salford University for extra schooling on mathematics, geometry, Royal Air Force Law and the Morse Code technique, and that covered the period of time ‘twixt me being accepted and actually being invited to join in London at my, at um er, for the entrance into the Royal Air Force proper.
CB: How long would that have taken about?
FS: Twelve months, the training took twelve months.
CB: Right, and then?
FS: I went into London for initial training, and then to Newquay for what they called ITW, that was the Initial Training Wing, before being selected to go into flying which I did immediately I left Newquay. I went into basic flying at place called Clyffe Pypard which is in Wiltshire. I’m curious by the by, are we being recorded now?
CB: Yes, we are.
FS: That happened to be the initial training school for flying, happened to be a private training school and one or two of the previous employers at the school were still there until young ex flyers, that’s not Bomber Command but Fighter Command, came to do the training and they were young men of nineteen, twenty, twenty one, and the next part I would not like recorded, its purely of interest but not, I don’t think it is for the record, I mean these, sorry.
CB: Would you like me to pause it?
FS: Yes, just for your [pause]. So I was taken under the wing, metaphorically, of a young man who was nineteen/twenty years of age who obviously shown how good he was a flyer and then been sent on to this training base, and I found him excellent as a flyer but virtually useless as a trainer, because he’d no tolerance of my ineptitude for flying [slight laugh] at all and he got all these flying techniques slow rolls, shuffles, turns and all the rest of them and I was just clinging to the side of the aircraft hoping I wouldn’t fall out [laughs].
CB: What aircraft were you in?
FS: Tiger Moths [laughs].
CB: Tiger Moths, I see.
FS: You’d sit there next to him doing slow rolls and you’d catch everything that was coming out, the cigarette ends and everything else that was in there, would hit you in the face you know, and you weren’t supposed to hold the sides of the aircraft, you were supposed to have your hand on the joystick and I didn’t, that’s all part of the fun [laughs]. From then, what happened next, er yes, I had um, I was taken off all training because playing rugby, I had a scratch on my right eye across the pupil and there was a danger that I might not be able to fly at all, so I was admitted to the hospital at Swindon and I was there for a while and finally I was released unconditionally, the repair had been affected as far as my eyes, but meanwhile I was taken out of the training for weeks on end and I wondered whether I was going to go back again but I did, but of course I lost all the people I was with, they were well on their way to Canada. Shall we go on now?
CB: Yes, yes please.
FS: From then we were all posted, all prepared for despatch to Canada because they had set up this empire air training scheme, which was part in Canada and the other part in Port Elizabeth in South Africa, where all this training for all, all aspects of flying, all duties, were going to be covered and we were sent up to a waiting station in Manchester, a placed called Heaton Park where the maximum holding of manpower was for two odd thousand and it built up to ten thousand and we had individuals who actually were finding homes to stay in in proximity to Heaton Park. This was all because of the big problems in the Atlantic, we were going to be sent off by the Queen Elizabeth first boat and because of the submarines and so forth, they were diverted, they were slowing everything down for obvious reasons and it came to a point there was a terrific overflow from Manchester and they sent a company of us down to the south coast, just to deposit us for a while. We had only been there for four days and the Germans had obviously been advised and they sent across a fleet, and we had a lot of casualties because they caught one flight coming back from training exercise, and we had suspected that when we heard the roar of these aircraft, that they were English aircraft, when in actual fact they were German aircraft who were attacking us, and from there, from that we had only been there for three days and that night, or following morning, at about two o’clock in the morning, we all paraded, we went right along the full length of the promenade, on both sides of the promenade, to the railway station onto a train and we didn’t get off the train until we got off at Harrogate. And from then on, we were there for a short period of time, despatched to Scotland and for one night only and then onto the Elizabeth the following day and away to Canada.
CB: How long did it take to get to Canada?
FS: Four and a half days.
CB: What were the conditions like on board?
FS: What with twenty thousand, we ate twice a day and we heard about when we were going to eat and whatever when we got on the boat by having these tickets, and mine said two o’clock in the afternoon and two o’clock in the morning, and from two o’clock until six o’clock afternoon and evening I was on special guard duty for the whole trip and we were allotted that sort of guard duty from two until six, two until six.
CB: And what did that involve?
FS: Parading all round the ship like in the daytime, not so much from two am in the morning until six am in the morning, round the decks and that was the job. It’s not everybody who had that sort of assignment but when I got on board, I was given that ticket, which advised me that I was one of twenty-one in the bridal suite and that I had these duties from two until six, two until six [laughs].
CB: Were you on your own in this bridal suite?
FS: No, twenty-one. I was one of twenty-one in the bridal suite.
CB: In the bridal suite.
FS: Oh yes, seven three tier bunks.
CB: Oh, I see.
FS: Great fun [laughs].
CB: So, you got to Canada, docked at Canada.
FS: No, no, we went into New York, we went into New York and then a train travel, the likes of which I had never experienced before, on the train for about three days off to Canada and we ate and slept, we slept on the luggage racks which you could pull down for luggage, but we had to sleep on them, we couldn’t sleep at all. We went up to Canada, a place called Moncton which was the assembly point, at the beginning of our trip to Canada, we went to several stations in Canada for different aspects of training of course.
CB: So, from Moncton, you went to?
FS: Er, one, two, three, four different stations and then the last station was a place called Ancienne Lorette which was outside Quebec City, and from there the majority of them were, six of us were commissioned out of the thirty six on the flight, six of us all went to Prince Andrews Island for this GR training and the rest of them either went straight away into operations in the Far East, as one or two of my friends and colleagues did and the rest of us went to Prince Edward Island for six weeks and then came home and that was it. We were there for about fifteen months all told.
CB: And you were being trained on?
FS: All aspects.
CB: And you settled for and you ended up where?
FS: I had nothing to do with it, you were directed. I came back here one of the, after that they differentiated with you between your badges, I got an observer badge, fully qualified, afterwards that changed to either air gunner or BA, which is bomb aimer or N for navigator, they split it.
CB: Just to go back to Canada a minute, what was the accommodation and the food like after what you had been used to in the UK?
FS: No comparison, vastly superior, because they had no restrictions there in actual fact, and that meant either in the camp or going out into the town for dinner. I mean the prices were very realistic and the food was superb because it was free choice, so when we went into Quebec City itself in actual fact, you could dine for silly prices and you had fantastic meals and that’s what it was.
CB: What aircraft did you learn on?
FS: Mainly Ansons, mainly Ansons and we had one or two gunnery trips on Beaufighters, which I haven’t mentioned before, Ansons and Beaufighter.
CB: What did you feel about your time in Canada, was it happy memories?
FS: Oh, it was superb, long time, we had we worked eight days and then had a day off, that was the standard eight days and one day off until we arrived in Prince Edward Island. Surprise, surprise, there was a weekend, we finished work and we had Friday and Sunday off. We used to go oyster fishing off Prince Edward Island [laughs].
CB: What were your other recreations apart from oyster fishing?
FS: Gymnasium and squash, that was about it, and walking of course, did a tremendous amount of walking, lovely, particularly from Quebec. One amusing incident, we a bunch of us went into Quebec to the cinema and when we came out at the end of the show, there had been a five foot fall of snow which meant we couldn’t even get out of the entrance of the theatre there, so we ultimately got out and one of us went into the, the hotel there, which I have got a photograph of, and booked a room, and twelve of us occupied the room for the night. Then we got back to camp the following day, the camp was about fourteen miles so I mean it was either snow shoes or horse drawn sleds took us back the following day, but that was one of the amusing incidents.
CB: So happy times in Canada.
FS: Oh absolutely, in the main yes, great fun, and then coincidence I suppose, we came back on the Elizabeth again.
CB: Same sort of routines.
FS: Yes, not quite as cramped [laughs].
CB: How did you feel going across the Atlantic? I mean were you frightened you were going to be torpedoed?
FS: I don’t think it entered any of our minds at all. We changed course getting slightly technical, we changed course every seven minutes on that boat which you could realise, in actual fact, if you were up on the bridge because you could see this in the water, purely as a safeguard and we diverted well south and then turned back again up into New York.
CB: You were you part of a convoy.
FS: Oh no, oh no, nothing could keep up with that boat, that’s why it was superior to the submarines, they ain’t got that speed so we got away with it, just changing course every seven minutes which is standard procedure, and it can be set up by equipment in those days, so every day of course, you can see it. So later on in the day, you can see where you are crossing because you had left a stream there purely to indicate you changing course and that was entirely automatic until we got into New York, and we were only there for a short time but there again, talk about hospitality, when we got off the boat we were given a little bunch of cards with names and addresses on and please give us a telephone call, and it would be an automatic invite to their houses if they were in proximity to where you were, and we used to go out while we were there until everything was ready for the, onto the train and up into Canada, but that was a very nice experience. Went to big shows called Sons of Fun at the gardens there and they made fun of us course, but it was all light-hearted stuff, yes, but we were one of the early contingents obviously across there into the states, and they made a fuss of us while we were there, which we accommodated very well and they did it in Canada. In Canada the same arrangement, the first Christmas we were there, two of us, David and I, went to stay at a family, they called them Driscolls, and they lived in Montreal. They had three children and we were invited there to stay there as long as we wanted over Christmas, they took us up in the mountains, up to the top and had Christmas dinner up in the Laurentian Mountains as part of their hospitality suite, it was really good.
CB: Wonderful.
FS: Oh yes, it was, no it was, and they were also wonderful, they used to send parcels to my family in Manchester, the Driscoll’s, Mr and Mrs Driscoll used to send parcels to my family in Manchester. And saying jumping ahead a lot now, on our way back from South America, when we landed in Washington on VJ Day, imagine what that was like, and then we flew on to Montreal and when in Montreal, I phoned the Driscolls. You’ll never guess, within ten minutes they said, ‘you’re not staying at the Windsor Hotel’, they picked me up and took me home. I had to have five [unclear] with them of course and that was an indication of the hospitality, I phoned them and within minutes they were there with the car and I renewed acquaintance with them after several years in Montreal.
CB: How wonderful
FS: More about that later.
CB: So, you arrived back in Liverpool.
FS: No. So, we arrived back in Scotland.
CB: And then what was the next stage of your -
FS: Down to down to Harrogate and then on to – down to Harrogate, posting to Dumfries where I did an extensive course of specialised bombing for Pathfinders, not that was any indication that we were going to [unclear] but that was specialised in training in Dumfries, with a Polish pilot by the, by very good. We used to do specialised bomb dropping as required in these aircraft, which I suppose was a Wellington and then down to, er um, down to pick up my crew, yes that’s where I met McFarlane and the rest of my crew before we went into mess halls.
CB: And where did you do your crewing up?
FS: At um – Chipping Warden near Banbury.
CB: Right.
FS: Yes, because then in actual fact, we were [unclear] break of through Wellington so before that, in actual fact, we crewed up at this place called Chipping Warden, that was Banbury, that was a substation for Banbury, we did our crewing up and then went to Chipping Warden and then started flying on Wellingtons. Purely training, didn’t do any operational flying from there. I tell a lie, we did one operational flight, that was on VJ night, we flew over France dropping thousands of leaflets.
CB: Would you like to explain the crewing up.
FS: Yes certainly. We would assemble, there was no assembly you just went into a huge hangar and you just wandered around I suppose, so that was in the main, the captain of the aircraft and in my case that was Squadron Leader McFarlane and he had met one person of the crew at the railway station at Littleport, and on the railway station before they got there, the two of them had decided that Captain McFarlane would have this other fella. And then we got into this hangar and we wandered around and picked up, ‘are you crewed up?’ ‘no’, ‘would you like to join us?’ and we gathered up the crew, the two gunners, and then wireless operator, the bomb aimers as was, then the navigator and the captain and that’s how we formed up and from there we went on to Wellingtons and then Stirlings and then on to Lancasters.
CB: So, you first OTU operational training unit, where would that have been?
FS: That was at Chipping Warden, yes.
CB: And your first, your first training, your first training, was it leaflets or -
FS: When you say first training, first training or first flight? The first operational flight.
CB: Yes.
FS: Was on VJ night and on landing night when we dropped thousands leaflets over France.
CB: Right.
FS: Then from then onwards, we went on to Methwold and then Mildenhall. Ah, I am telling lies, we went to – Chedburgh, that was on to Stirlings, no, we did, no that’s right, we went onto Stirlings but before we did any operational flights on Stirlings, we transferred to Lancasters, so went to Lancaster Finishing School, LFS, which was at a place called Feltwell just down the road from here.
CB: What date would this have been?
FS: I’ll have to check with my -
CB: Roughly.
FS: Forty, end Forty-Three, beginning Forty-Four as near as makes no difference.
CB: So, you went from flying on Wellingtons.
FS: Yes, only one trip.
CB: Only one trip on Wellingtons.
FS: Then we went on flying Stirlings, but we never did operational flying on Stirlings, then we went on to Lancaster Finishing School at Feltwell and then on to operations at Methwold.
CB: What did you make of flying in the Stirling?
FS: We didn’t but we had no choice, I mean as far as we were concerned when we went training on Stirlings, that was the aircraft we were going to fly in operations. It so happened coincidentally, happily, that the Lancaster was coming in and replacing the Stirlings and whatever other aircraft we got, and that was going to be the aircraft in this part of the country as opposed to Halifaxes in the Lincolnshire area, which was a different group as you realise here, we were 3 Group Lincolnshire were that’s what 4 Group. Glorious place.
CB: So, we are now on to now in Lancasters
FS: Right operational flying.
CB: Right.
FS: The usual. Now, what details would you like because I would have to refer to my flying log book.
CB: Certainly like to know some of the targets that you went to.
FS: Right, yes, right. Shall I get my book?
CB: Yes, that’s fine, Frederick, if we could talk about your start the start of your Bomber Command experiences in the Lancaster, so could you tell us about, well, your first operation?
FS: Yes now, let’s just have a look and be precise. That’s Lancaster Finishing School, 208 Squadron Methwold, operation was destination was Boulogne, can’t imagine what that was about, um daylight visit to Boulogne doesn’t mention anything about bombing at all, um then there was a four-and-a-half-hour flight to Dusseldorf, that was a straightforward bombing exercise. Now that would be the one [unclear], Calais [unclear], Duisburg bomb target so it must have been that trip to Dusseldorf we did when we came back the following morning that we noticed several technical people were busy standing underneath our aircraft, gazing up underneath the right the starboard wing, of which there was a hole between the second and third petrol tanks [laughs].
CB: And that had been caused by -
FS: That had been caused by a bomb being dropped from one of our aircraft above, which had gone straight the way through between the two tanks without exploding, which it should have done on impact.
CB: Incredible.
FS: Absolutely, absolutely incredible, and then we did several trips and – that’s [unclear] that transfer date [pause] ah there we are, yes, the transfer date to Mildenhall, see how many trips we did there, Stuttgart, Essen [unclear].
CB: So, you are bombing the major cities now.
FS: Yes, that’s up to about October forty-four.
CB: Were you involved in any of the Berlin raids?
FS: Not one, no scheduled for but cancelled so then we, what had happened in actual fact, pardon me, oh sorry, let’s go back please to Methwold again because that was, I had been talking about our first bombing raid when we actually arrived at Methwold as a crew. The previous night they had sent out twelve Lancaster aircraft and five came back, which is a heavy loss for one station and we became part of the quite pathetic exercise of moving into accommodation which had previously been occupied by friends of ours and you know, when anybody is lost they have a special committee set up particularly with officers and these officers were doing all their duty work and we were moving in the following day, so it wasn’t a very good start as far as we were concerned, but still we obviously, we accommodated it but that was a heavy loss that they sustained that night, and then the, this was the first operational, operational job, we came back and found that incident the following morning in our aircraft, yes, so going on. Now what more -
CB: So, you went from Methwold to -
FS: So, we went from Methwold to Mildenhall. I’ll tell you about why there had been a loss at Mildenhall, there was a vacancy for a new squadron commander and they appointed my captain, Squadron Leader McFarlane, and they agreed, which was unusual, they agreed for him to take his full crew so we all went, so we were all transferred our affections to Mildenhall and then onwards.
CB: And this was with 218 Squadron.
FS: From 218 to 15.
CB: Right [unclear].
FS: And here we are, 15 Squadron at Mildenhall, and when there was a loss, our captain was a squadron leader, so when there was a loss of a senior officer, the group captain, no it wasn’t a wing commander over, they appointed our captain McFarlane to take over from him as a wing commander so he lost his crew for obvious reasons and that crew was taken over by a Squadron Leader Percy and at that point I was appointed, I was taken out of the crew and appointed as bombing leader for 15 Squadron and I also I became squadron adjutant at the same time, reporting again to my previous Captain McFarlane, so I was taken out of my crew at that time.
CB: What does being adjutant involve at that time?
FS: All the clerical work, on top of which I was the leader of the bombing section, so I was actually the bombing leader, which you had to have in every squadron. He’s the guy who goes to all the early meetings to take advice for onward transmission to the people of what was going to happen that night, so that was, so I had those two jobs I had still when I was, so I was then whipped out of my crew and another individual appointed to the crew, which was then being handled by Squadron Leader Percy who had taken over from McFarlane, so I lost my crew because of my other involvements and I stayed in that situation until surprise, surprise, I was advised that I had been selected to accompany Harris. Now the reason, how they did that, they obviously they wanted an aircraft, and I will show the aircraft that had been modified afterwards, they wanted, what was I going to say, how they chose who was going to do what, they chose 15 Squadron because it was the oldest squadron in the Air Force to do these flights for Harris, and having chosen the aircraft from 15 Squadron they took out the leaders from each department, bombing section, navigation section, wireless and telegraphy section, and those leaders all were part of the crew, that’s the crew I have got in the photograph next door so from that point onwards, I was involved in, away to Africa, America, Canada and everything and left the crew behind.
CB: So, your operational life stopped.
FS: It stopped.
CB: How did you feel about seeing your crew go off and having been given these new duties?
FS: Well, I was immensely proud because I mean it was quite an assignment we were going to go on, we had no idea at that time we’d only got the shadow of what was going on. We knew he’d been invited, I’m talking about Harris being invited to Africa, because he’d been in Africa before he came to England, he was been in South Africa, he’d been invited to various places and the South er the Brazilian Government had invited somebody out there to commemorate the arrival of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force which had gone to Italy and not fired a shot and got back home again, and they declared a national holiday [laughs] and coincidentally we were due to be arriving in Rio de Janeiro before they arrived back, and that was what that was all about.
CB: There must have been a terrific comradery on you know, when you were flying with your crew that you had been with such a long time.
FS: [laughs] of course yes, but it had to be severed, the initial severance was when I was appointed the bombing leader which immediately took me out, because only on rare occasions, I had one or two rare occasions when a particular crew would be short of a bomber for one reason or another and I stepped right into their jobs. That was quite harrowing to be a foreigner, so to speak, with a crew because you get used to your crew, their attitude and their application and even their reaction to situations, but to go with another crew I found that quite tough going, yes. I flew with a Canadian crew on one occasion and they’d had several very rough experiences with, I’ll mention one, a decapitated bomb aimer came back in the aircraft and there were others, now the crew, in relation to my crew, which were far more disciplined, but with respect they hadn’t gone through the sort of operation now that crew with whom I flew on their twenty second operation were. Very little discipline there at all, I think they were very concerned about what had happened on their previous operations, they bailed out and they had done lots of other things and I flew with them as the air bomber for them and I found that the disciplines were very sadly lacking, which was reflected on the chattering that goes on over the telephone, over the intercom, which was fairly evident but still that is by the by and you ride that situation which I did.
CB: Did you just fly the one operation with them?
FS: Yes, yes, yes just the one.
CB: And did your crew, your original crew, did they survive the war?
FS: Yes, they did, yes, yes, yes, they did, no they did, yes in spite of all the losses, yes, yes.
CB: So, you are now given these new duties and the next thing you hear is that you are going to be flying with Harris.
FS: Right.
CB: And when did you first see him, when did you first meet him?
FS: At the first place, before we were going to, let’s get the dates – where I finished up [unclear] – it all started in July Forty-Five.
CB: Oh so -
FS: Yes, [unclear], July Forty-Five it started, that’s when I met up with Wing Commander Calder, a Scots ex-Dambuster, and he came down and I started flying with him as a co-navigator and then that was just before the trip started. Now the actual trip, do you want to go on to when the trip started.
CB: Well, if we can go back to Calder, what would, had been your, you know, your trip tours after the war in July Forty-Five, what were you doing with Calder?
FS: He was the captain of the aircraft taking Harris around the world.
CB: I see.
FS: Yes.
CB: Right, so -
FS: Calder was ex bomber no, ex-Dambuster Squadron, yes that’s Wing Commander Calder, double DSO, double DSC. No seriously, he was only twenty-one, brilliant.
CB: Yes, so he was the pilot.
FS: He was the pilot.
CB: So, you would be the -
FS: I flew with two navigators.
CB: Right, so you were the navigator on this because obviously we weren’t, this wasn’t any hostile flying involved.
FS: None at all.
CB: It was just -
FS: Hardly, hardly.
CB: It was just taking Harris around.
FS: Yes, quite literally and all that went with it.
CB: So, what did you make of Bomber Harris?
FS: I found him most of all to, if I used the term, a gentle person, obviously a very, very strict disciplinarian but in actual fact, on a personal basis, on the occasion when I was talking to him, he was much a very relaxed, bearing in mind with what he had to contend. As I mentioned before, it wasn’t an easy life for him at all, he had to virtually fight for possession for his own force and he had the big people in government who were contesting him in many instances. I could name names but there is no point, until he finally, bearing in mind as I mentioned before, the junior service, the first being the navy, the second being the army, were very much the junior service, and he didn’t find he’d get his own way at all, in spite of the plans he had laid and the proposal view, put before the big people like Portal and others who didn’t entirely agree with him that getting behind the German war machine by tackling in reducing to ruins their equipment factories that were providing the aircraft and all the aircraft parts was what he wanted to get at. He didn’t find it easy until apparently, he did get his own way and that’s when the war then moved to the German armoured factories, which was part of the beginning of the end so to speak, so the rest of that in actual fact is devoted to flying. We did the whole of Africa and then started off, we should have gone, we went to a little aerodrome in the South of France for refuelling, then we should have gone to Crete but we got to Crete and they said, ‘on no condition that you land because we have got a fever which is sweeping through Crete which could be dangerous’, so we didn’t drop off at Crete at all. Our next port of call was Egypt and then we went right the way down Africa, staying at various places until we got to Cape Town.
CB: What was the purpose of Harris’ travels.
FS: There was really no purpose, these were just invitations from these people overseas to express their appreciation of what he’d done for Bomber Command, and in the longer term, what he had done for the country in terms of accelerating the close of the war, and I suppose a thank you for the fifty five thousand who died during the war, because this came out in all his little addresses that he gave, in actual fact he was conscious of that fifty five thousand, he dropped it in quite loosely everywhere. So that was the trip and we came back only for a short period of time, and then went on to the South American trip, flying down the west coast of Africa to a place called Bathurst and then flying across from Bathurst to North Brazil and down to Rio de Janeiro and then all the way back, calling in at various places British Guyana etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, up over Florida and landing on VJ Day in Washington for the big celebrations which we joined in and at that time, he met big people like General Arnold and General Eaker with whom he, Harris, had been negotiating years before for the Americans to come into the European war instead of devoting their care and attention to the Japanese which was arguably their main drive force. In actual fact, he was one of the individuals who had dispatched to America to talk it over and in fact these two individuals were present when we landed in Washington so it was quite a gathering quite a gathering. yes.
CB: Do you know if Harris knew that they were going to drop the atomic bomb in August?
FS: Oh yes.
CB: He knew, so was it timed that he would be in Washington at that
FS: No.
CB: No.
FS: He didn’t. We did our trip across South America, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, addressed the British community in Sao Paulo, this is where the fifty five thousand came up again and purely by coincidence, I met a young man there, an Englishman who had completed his course at [unclear] university when I went there and he had transferred his affections to the equivalent of our administration organisation and he had joined that in Sao Paulo, and as he mentioned, he said, ‘if you ever thinking about coming over here, do get in contact with me and we will see what we could do’. This was in Sao Paulo, South America, and we had that closeness in that part of our education, of being in the same place at slightly different times. We got round to discussing this and he said, ‘well wait a minute, I was there too when were you there’, and I realised I had gone there when he’d left in Manchester, quite astounding, yes, quite astounding [laugh]. We kept in a bit of correspondence for a while but I had no intention of going to South America, in actual fact at that time, well by that time, I had left [unclear] and was working in Mareham, I had met the lady who was going to be my future wife, who’d had a little girl whose husband had died and any thoughts of going out of England had gone. She came from Kings Lynn in actual fact.
CB: So how long was this flight with Harris?
FS: Oh right –
CB: Right Frederick, so you have started with going around Africa, and so on, in July Forty-Five and you actually came back in August of Forty-Five, so do you look on that time as a pleasurable month? Did you enjoy doing what you did with Harris?
FS: Oh fantastic, I mean these places I had never visited before, I’d never been to Africa before and we, I say we, just went to these various places in Africa, stopping for two or three days and at each place from Cairo to Cayga, I mean as far as I was concerned, that was fantastic. We did all these wonderful things in the Sahara, into the jungle at night time, you name it, we did it, of all the places to stay in Nairobi, we stayed at the Norfolk Hotel in that location and to things like seeing all the African workers sitting on the steps, making things like I’ve got those forks, knives and forks actually, making them and selling them to us in actual, that was a new experience. Going out on night time safaris, going out on night time sing songs in the jungle and all that sort of thing we did, going to moth and butterfly museums, quite absolutely incredible.
CB: Did Harris join you for any recreations?
FS: No, for some but mostly he was at a much higher level than we were and were concerned with our, I mean we went to Mombasa, we went down, we did the big things like going down a gold mine for instance, going down a gold mine and you go down a gold mine instead of going straight down there, you go about seventy-five degrees and six of you go down at a time. Two, two, two, and you go down at a fantastic speed at about that angle, that was the Wanderer Gold Mine, and I’ve still got specimens. I joke not, I’ve got specimens of gold that they gave us at the gold mine, fifty, sixty years ago, I’ve still got them, I don’t know what they are worth but these are specimens inside that you see petrite, it’s called inside the petrite, is pure gold.
CB: Gold - that would be worth now these days
FS: Oh, bound to, I might take it to see that fellow who does gold in Lynn, he’d say, ‘oh thank you, I’ll have this bit, its worth a couple of pounds’, couple of pounds, sorry I joke, but no, it showed I had a fantastic experience in those places. We went to a place in Bathurst on the West Coast of Africa from which we flew to South America and we went, they took us down to a cellar where the native bunch were all sitting on the floor making filigree and we could buy it and we could buy it for ridiculous prices. I mean low, low prices and we all bought our specimen as few of but actually to sit there and watch it being made, that was a fantastic experience. That followed not quite such a fantastic experience when we were landing into Bathurst, a place called Halfdie, which has taken its name from the fact that they had a plague which wiped out fifty percent of it and thereafter named it Halfdie, and we went in there and the last few hundred yards in, we encountered a terrific sandstorm and we couldn’t see a thing out of the aircraft. It was kind of landing by instinct and we got out of the aircraft and it was torrenting down and we were absolutely saturated, and they persuaded us to strip off and put clothes on and they put all our clothes on to fast heaters, so we went in, there was a crisp uniform standing up in the corner which you had to break it to get it on [laughs], like this crack, crack, crack, it was quite ridiculous and we had a function, an important function, that night and there was our stuff. We had to wear everything, shirt, vest and pants was rock hard [laughs].
CB: I assume Harris’ stuff wasn’t.
FS: No, he had six spare uniforms in his luggage, but that was incredible, we had that photo they had just taken all our clothes away and woosh, we’ll dry these for you [laughs].
CB: Now after the war, if we can just conclude with Harris, he didn’t, he wasn’t treated very well.
FS: No, no, he wasn’t.
CB: Nor was Bomber Command for that matter.
FS: No, no, no.
CB: Did you have sympathy with Harris at this time about how he was treated?
FS: Oh yes I think we all did, yes, I suppose even then, the realisation of what sort of, if I can put the wording in the battering, he had to get his own way and the fact and even the fact that it was proven beyond any doubt, that what, that the plans he had put forward and etcetera, which had met so much opposition at one time and then finally he got his own way and got the power behind his throne that he wanted to do what he wanted to do with Germany, in spite of Dresden and all that. I suppose we all had a tremendous amount of sympathy and a tremendous amount of respect for his dogmatic approach, in actual fact to get not his own way for words sake, for getting his own way for the benefit which would be derived in him getting permission to do what he wanted to do and the result was the war came to an end, so I suppose at that time, we thought a great deal of him.
CB: And did you all think, you know, a great deal of him during the war when he was, he had this programme?
FS: Yes, that was the general, the general sentiment yes, he didn’t mean admire he wouldn’t expect to meet any opposition at that, it was patently obviously what we had to do and one was certainly not send the trained crews to handle the Atlantic war, in spite of how vital that was. I mean, we talking about hundreds of thousands and when you look at the figures of what was going down ‘twixt and ‘tween American and where they were delivering the goods to place like Archangel and Murmansk, North of Russia, and then there was all those goods coming through Russia into the European war in spite of all that and the tremendous demands which were made upon him by, as I say the Navy, to send to have some trained forces sent out so they could handle the Atlantic war, well of course, that wasn’t realistic in anyway. There was nothing that we were doing in Germany to identify with anything to do with the Atlantic war, that was something else quite different. Admittedly they wanted the planes and they could have the planes and they could have the armaments to be able to drop bombs on submarines, which was a bit wild gesture anyway. That might have been, might have made a contribution towards the more positive influence of all the shipping that was coming across the Atlantic than it did, because we wouldn’t, I remember the speeches in parliament by Churchill, ex hundreds and thousands and thousands of tons of zinc had gone down and then the humanitarian aspect of how many they had lost at sea, I don’t suppose any of us could really identify that with sending trained Royal Air Force crews into the Navy to do what, you know, one of the things you were possibly do is to have a fleet of aircraft over the Atlantic, dropping bombs on U-boats. Bearing in mind, we had U-boats out there trying to blow the hell out of the Germans anyway, but that was, I suppose, that could have taken a different more important role entirely had that shipping gone down, a more. I mean with these vital elements that were arriving from America, in Russia, well it was a contributory factor obviously, and hundreds of thousand tons going down in the Atlantic meant nothing at all to that building up that war coming down from Russia through Germany etcetera so we had a great deal of respect for him and he was a person for whom you did have a great deal of respect for anyway, not because of his position and his number of stripes, in actual fact, his dogged determination to get his own way for the benefit of not he, for the benefit of the war.
CB: Well.
FS: Sorry to interrupt, but this came out in his speeches that he gave overseas in South America and the particular one we all attended in, in Rio to the British contingent. He was quite emotional about [unclear] the losses that had been sustained doing what he wanted to do.
CB: Of course, Churchill after the war distanced himself from Harris.
FS: Oh yes, yes.
CB: His strategy and Bomber Command. What do you feel about that?
FS: We had very strong feeling, extremely strong feelings. The war was over then, we could say but wait a minute, we succeeded but it wasn’t that easy, in actual feel there was a tremendous amount of ‘oppo’ of course, a lot was caused by this Dresden business that manifested itself too. I remember that we haven’t touched on it yet, Joy and I were specially invited to the memorial service, the unveiling service for the house, you’ve got all the details for that.
CB: Yes.
FS: Because I’ve got all the details, just digressing for a moment, only because of my association, close association for a short period of time, I had special dispensation to attend the church. We had seats, you had to pay for them, but we had seats reserved at the church for the unveiling ceremony, which was the Queen Mother of course.
CB: Yes.
FS: And that was, sorry to be digressing just for a moment, but when we got the invitation, it was a question of where it was so forth, how you get there so forth, and I said, ‘oh there’s no point taking a car, there’s thousands going there’. Having a contact at The Savoy, I phoned my contact and got a reservation in their garage for my car and again realised you come out The Savoy, turn right and there’s the church, so Joy and I went up there, I was in full regalia, medals and all chat, chat, chat, and went in there and had breakfast in The Savoy [laughs]. There were people coming up and what’s going on, oh yes, we’ve got something special going on down the road, and then walking out the front and walking out and there was the church and we had reserved seats. That was packed to capacity as, of course, the Queen Mother was there, of course she performed the unveiling ceremony and again, Dresden, there was a terrific uproar in the background on her left-hand side at the back. It was subdued but in actual fact, it started off being very, very rowdy and she continued on with her little citation for the opening and it came very interesting from Joy and I point of view. My group captain at Mildenhall was then the chairman of the Bomber Command Association, and his duty on that particular day was to escort the Queen Mother round and into the law courts, where we were having [unclear] or teas, coffee, whatever, I mean, so he took and upside in his wheelchair was Cheshire so we could shake hands with Cheshire, that’s purely by the by, and we got inside and we wondering how difficult this is you’ve got two hands, a cup in one hand, a plate in the other one, said help yourself and we were in this sort of situation and a voice boomed out. It was my group captain, ‘Shepherd, would you bring your good lady over’, and we were introduced to the Queen Mother as spontaneous as that, no preparation at all, so Joy went across and was presented on the spot. That was a lovely instance and that was my group captain.
CB: Yes.
FS: From Mildenhall. So where have we got to as far as your concerned?
CB: I just wanted, I know that you were involved, even on a slight degree, with Operation Manna.
FS: Oh yes, on experimentation, that’s right.
CB: So how did you come to be involved with that?
FS: There wasn’t much and I signed on for an extra six months, no I’m getting things out of timing, I came back to Mildenhall and everybody had gone, all the bodies had gone, all disappeared and there was [unclear] bombing leader who would need a bombing leader after the war.
CB: This is April Forty-Five, right?
FS: That’s absolutely right and I had come back, I had finished full of my trips overseas America and everything else and that was excitement at the tail end of that. When we arrived in Washington of course, it was madness and from there we flew up to Duval, which is Montreal, in the Lanc of course, in preparatory for coming home and we flew off from there, landed in Newfoundland and took off for the trip back to Prestwick, which the navigator and I, the two of us, decided that was going to be an entirely star navigation back home as an experiment, two three thousand miles. So, we dropped all the mechanics, we concentrated on star shooting with our cameras and moon charts and we got a freak tuning in from Prestwick, two thousand three hundred miles from Prestwick, and we picked it up, so that pointer came there and we had a beam it up so that we could tell exactly where we were coming over the county. It was fine at that time, we had a fire on the outboard engine on the starboard side of the aircraft, a fire, no problem, just press the button to extinguish it, press the button to extinguish it, press the button to extinguish it, nothing happened, so we had a fire in the starboard engine so the only thing that Calder could do, we were probably about twelve, fourteen thousand feet high, was to put the aircraft into a very steep dive and hope it worked. It blew the fire out the engine so on investigation, we found that when we dropped into Duval for final check-up, they had not put the fuses back into the system, so it was a toss up, shall we turn back into Newfoundland rather than risk anything and that’s where they confirmed there were no fuses in the fire system whatsoever, so we thought we’d choose this, got airborne and we came back to Prestwick [laughs heartily]. But these things what happen, we could have gone down there and had no, well they wouldn’t know, well they would have had a rough idea of where we’d gone down but fat lot of good that does [laughs], well yes that was the spot, yes, you can see it, no can’t see any bubbles, a simple things like that happen, yes and that was on the return flight. So back now Manna.
CB: Yes, Manna.
FS: So, when I came back to Mildenhall, obviously there was no job for yours truly, but they had a vacancy up the road in Mareham in the experimental unit for Manna and not much alternative. I had my service to do and I wanted a job so I was posted, in actual fact, to take over this Manna thing now, that involved researched into a sort of canister that we were handling that had to go on board, laden with goods and lifted up into the bomb bay if you like, and writing up a report and making recommendations and so forth and on, one could be tragic as far as I was concerned. We got everything ready we got a pannier fixed in-between these two containers and we were filling it with whatever to make weight [unclear] and upstairs, one of the armament people was controlling the hoist and halfway up, the hoist gives way and I am standing with my hands on the edge of the thing and I took my hand and the whole of the thing crashed down into the pannier. It would have just taken it off at the wrist and we looked at the hoisting gear, it was clearly marked ‘US’ and they had used it. Oh, there was a terrific stink because the person actually totally responsible was the fellow doing the mechanical winding upstairs was clearly marked, anyway but that’s the time I could have easily lost my two wrists so I continued on my balance on my extra six months writing up reports and so forth and then I left the Air Force.
CB: So, for Operation Manna, the supplies couldn’t be dropped by parachute so they were in these cannisters.
FS: Yes they were an oblong framework and supported with release gear [unclear] by the pound in actual fact yes, these are the continued sort of developments experiments if you like that we were conducting, and it was changing fairly rapidly what was being called for because we were getting reports back from Holland and Belgium on how things were landing and what sort of degree of damage was occurred etcetera, and what was the ideal height for dropping and they were putting up these tremendous haystacks. I suppose you could call, in actual fact, them to cushion the thing and they worked, then I came away from the operation so they built these fields with twenty-foot haystacks, totally soft so they cushioned everything, so the percentage of damage incurred by the contents was minimalised and that was when I came away came out.
CB: So, you really finished with the war with Operation Manna and taking Harris around, two positive ways to finish the war.
FS: Oh, very much, no question about that I assure you.
CB: Rather than finishing it off on a bombing mission.
FS: Yes, yes, absolutely.
CB: And how did you feel when you –
FS: Well tail end of course, the humanitarian thing came in and it was the most simple thing in the world. In Kings Lynn, at the Dukes Head, throughout the war, every weekend, every Saturday evening throughout the war they had an officers invitation dance at the Dukes Head Hotel, and they meant officers and it was at one of these occasions at the officers dance, I went along there and surprise, surprise, I met Joy who was on about her second time out having lost her husband who was a bomber pilot, university bomber pilot, straight from university, straight in to the -
CB: They had their own squadrons, didn’t they?
FS: Absolutely yes, he did complete his first tour of thirty trips, came out unscathed, was sent to train pilots who were going to be involved in the dropping a bridge too far sort of thing, he did all his training and he was called back to do his second tour of operation and on his second trip, on his second tour, went down coming back from Cologne and left her with a little girl, she was then three, and I met her and we got married.
CB: What did you do after the war?
FS: I worked for a company called Nestle on the sales side and I became responsible for recruitment and training and development for the whole organisation. I was with them for thirty years, wonderful company, international of course, head office in a lovely place called Vevay in Switzerland on the banks of the lake and I was with them for -
CB: Did you live out there?
FS: No, went but no, lived in England, moved about in England when Nestle moved their head office into Croydon and had this twenty-two storey block, the first one they had seen in Croydon, and they occupied the whole of the building because they brought in all the associated companies into one building. The associated companies being the likes of Kieler, Crosse & Blackwell, Toblerone, Findus all the associated companies which were dotted around, that all came into the head office, twenty-two storey block in Croydon so I was there until I retired and then I started work.
CB: How would you sum up your time in the Second World War and in Bomber Command?
FS: Well, it’s tough, I mean apart from being revolutionary of course, which it is to my mind, I don’t know what would have happened if I had stayed with the South American Shipping Association, which was involved obviously in shipping goods to South America and that came to an [unclear] end at the start of the war, because you couldn’t expect boats to go out there, so there was no job. So that’s a bypass so answering your question, because it’s obviously so revolutionary and so different to what it would have been and I could never imagine what I would have done had I not gone into the Air Force. Well, I suppose life would have been fairly steady, progressing with an organisation and at some stage deciding I wasn’t going far enough, fast enough and getting out, but I mean, that was wiped off by going into the Royal Air Force.
CB: So, you obviously had to volunteer, so, did you?
FS: Ah, you can’t go into the Air Force, Royal Air Force, without being a volunteer.
CB: No.
FS: As you know.
CB: Yes.
FS: So, I had to volunteer, I had to go into the Air Force after I had tried to go into the Navy. Fortunately, the Air Force, they said yes please, thank you, rather than the Navy did, no, no, no, [laughs].
CB: So, well a time really of excitement danger new experiences.
FS: A mixture of all of those. I mean the new experiences were embodied in the African trips and so forth we did and at the end, when we were coming home from Africa, we spent some time in Greece, we spent some time in Italy on the way back so it was really a very comprehensive trip and whilst we down, in particularly Rio de Janeiro, that was absolutely fantastic. I mean you have seen pictures of it, Copacabana Beach, but we went out to place called Quichaninnia, about seventy miles out. We had never ever, I had never in my life seen a hotel like that out there, it had its own everything, I mean I mentioned things, seventy pianos for a concert, seventy pianos for a concert, indoor and outdoor ballroom, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and it was situated actually on the banks of a river, so you could get out at night time and go right the way up the river which were all lit from this Quichaninnia Hotel, all lit right up into the hills. Fantastic place.
CB: So, all these experiences that you wouldn’t have had.
FS: I couldn’t have afforded it, we were honorary members of everything when we arrived there, golfing club, swimming club, the lot, they’d opened everything and across the bay from the statue, you know it’s the English quarter and that was fantastic. A bit of England on the opposite shores to Rio de Janeiro.
CB: Wonderful, it’s been fantastic and interesting to hear all your experiences so thank you very much Frederick.
FS: It has if it identifies with what you are looking for, fine, yes.