4 25 2268 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/257/3404/PFraserC1501.jpg 1b37fb0db87bcc24ea45c3ca9410d737 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/257/3404/AFraserC151113.mp3 c25ed2496f5e21b68df313bc38956864 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fraser, Colin Colin Fraser C Fraser Description An account of the resource Four items. An oral history interview with Colin Fraser (Royal Australian Air Force) an account of his being shot down, a crew photograph and a piece of parachute memento. He served as a Lancaster navigator on 460 Squadron. His aircraft was shot down in April 1945 and he was a prisoner of war. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by XXX and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-11-13 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Fraser, C Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Col Fraser. A 460 Squadron navigator. The interview is taking place at Camberwell in Melbourne. My name’s Adam Purcell. The date is the 13th of November 2015. Col. I believe you have got something prepared. Let’s go. CF: Yeah. I was born in Melbourne on 5th of November 1922. My air force number was 435111. And when the Japanese came into the war I decided to join the air force but they had many volunteers and the army wanted me so I went into the army on the 31st of December ‘41 and it took me ‘til March ‘43 to get back into the air force at Number 2 ITS Bradfield Park in Sydney. Where I was then classified as a navigator which is what I wanted. By changing Australia where the system was to have a observer, which means you could be a navigator, a bomb aimer or both depending on the size of the crew. I graduated in February forty — oh sorry. It was ‘43. ’44 sorry. Yeah. I graduated, sorry, in February ’44 as a navigator and had leave and then lived in the Melbourne Cricket Ground grandstand for seven days before I sailed off to England. I arrived in Brighton where the Australians were — had a reception centre, in February, sorry in March ’44. And we were told then immediately that there would be a delay because the fact is that the Bomber Command was not losing the people and aircrew were surplus for the moment there. I took leave courtesy of the Lady Ryder Scheme at a farm in, outside York. And I then returned to the new area of the instruction things at Warrington in Lancashire. And I and my mates spent a lot of time from there looking around various parts of England while we were waiting and we had some leave. At that time the RAF stopped the number of pilots being trained and there were empty airstrips and aeroplanes. So they said the pilots had been waiting a long time, for three weeks down to these airstrips and an empty backseat. They sent the navigators and bomb aimers to learn about map reading in English conditions. I finished up at Fairoaks which is in the Windsor Castle area. And we arrived there in early June ‘44 and we could see with flying at only a few thousand feet around the area that the invasion was well and truly on. And a couple of nights later we were not surprised at the amount of aircraft flying around for the invasion date. The — and then about ten days later we woke up to the sound of the V2. The flying bomb. We were not on the direct route from France to London, but the stray ones often were within our sight and two at least came over our area. We went back to Padgate and there we were split up into navigators and bomb aimers and I, being a navigator went up to West Frew in Scotland. And there we were joined by a section from New Zealand boys and I did my first DR navigation for six months while there. Then we were sent to 27 OUT at Lichfield which was the Australian OTU. And there we met up with our bomb aimer mates who we’d trained with, and I crewed up with Dan Lynch for the following day. We discussed having a pilot and decided we wanted one who was big and strong and had to be mature. About twenty three or twenty four [laughs] so we mixed with the pilots and picked out two pilots who seemed to fit the bill a bit. And we were at the same meal table as them that evening and the following morning when we decided that we wanted as a pilot Harry Payne. Known as Lofty because he was six foot three. So later that morning when we all got in the big hall we sat behind Lofty and were chatting to some gunners who’d also paired up. And when the chief flying instructor said, ‘Righto boys. Crew up,’ we tapped Lofty on the shoulder and said would he like a navigator and a bomb aimer and he said, ‘Yes. Do you know any others?’ and we said, ‘There’s two nice gunners over there. So we had them. They in turn knew a wireless operator from the night before so we finished up with a crew which was Harry ‘Lofty’ Payne from West Australia. Dan Lynch, the bomb aimer from Tasmania and myself, Colin Fraser from Melbourne. Our wireless operator was Bill Stanley from Melbourne. And then we had two Sydney boys as gunners. Jack Bennett, upper, mid-upper and Hugh Connochie known as Shorty, as the rear gunner. We then did ground subjects for a couple of weeks. Everybody. And I was then introduced into the mysteries of Gee. The radar navigation aid. We were taken out to the Wellington aircraft with a instructor pilot and he showed Harry how things were done and then said to him, ‘Now you can take off for three landings and take offs and then call it a day.’ Well, we took off and landed twice and the third time as we reached height the port engine failed and we went into emergency drill which for my position was in the middle of the aircraft where I couldn’t see anything. As we went around I pulled a nacelle cock to get rid of some petrol from the plane. And when Lofty turned in to make the landing he instructed me to pull the air bottle which I did and down came the undercart. The original Wellingtons that would also blow all hydraulics. But the pilots had all been advised that all planes on the station had been adjusted. That this would not happen. However, as Harry went to put down the flaps nothing happened. And he finished up banging the aircraft down halfway down the strip and he ran through the fence, across a road, a fence the other side, a bush or two, and finished up in a ditch with the back broken and up in the air. We all managed to get out of the escape hatches with any trouble, no injuries except a few minor cuts. And we took on, went back to flying the following day. And the only one there the one night the heating failed just after take-off and I had to navigate around with frozen hands. Putting them in gloves and out again. Navigation was a bit sketchy. And when I handed the log in, the instructor said to me it wasn’t too good. I maintained that in the circumstances it was quite ok. His comment back was, ‘In Bomber Command there are no excuses,’ which stayed with me for the rest of the tour. We finished there on the 11th of December and then we went in to Poole which meant sitting around for nothing for a couple of months because it was winter and there wasn’t any flying going on anyway. And we took leave to several places such as Edinburgh and there. Then on the 2nd of February we then went to Heavy Conversion Unit at Lindholme and met up with the mighty Lancaster bomber. As the navigator I met up with the H2S which allowed you to look through cloud and pick up the signals from the ground. It was good on the coast but not too good with towns. And one night when we were flying on a decoy raid which meant you flew within a few miles of the enemy coast and then turned back to make them think you were going to attack them. And that night it turned out that my oxygen tube got twisted and I was only getting half the amount of oxygen, and as such I got — cut out a dog leg we should have done and got back earlier to be noted that they were bandits in the area which was code for German fighters. Anyway, we got down. The last crew in to land while a mate of ours at 460 Squadron, Binbrook was shot down on a training flight and two of his crew were killed. AP: Col. CF: There were about a hundred JU88s came back with the bombers. AP: Col. I’ll stop you there for a minute. Other: I’ve heard this story. AP: I haven’t yet. [recording paused] CF: Ah yes. AP: Now where weren’t we? CF: That’s how it goes. Now, where was I in this? AP: We were talking about bandits returning from your decoy trip I think. Bandits. You were returning from your decoy trip. CF: Oh yeah. AP: And there were bandits. CF: Yeah. Which meant that therefore we landed. I think we said we landed. And got, Binbrook. That’s right. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. So we’re as we said before any former on there. We finished on that at Poole, there we’ve got the — ah that’s right we’re at Lindholme. Ok. So Ok. Now where do I start from now when. AP: Say again. Alright. Have you finished. CF: Yeah. AP: Your prepared statement shall we say. Ok. You said you were picked as a navigator and you said you wanted to be a navigator. Why? CF: Because I’m good at figures. I’m not very good with my hands. I never wanted to really drive a car like all the other kids were fighting to get the steering wheel and I’d say, ‘Give me the map.’ So [laughs] yeah. I haven’t got the co-ordination with my hands. Well the obvious thing is my wife very nicely said to me, ‘You know dear if we lived on what you made with your hands we’d be below the poverty line.’ [laughs] AP: Fair enough. CF: No. I’m good at maths and I enjoy doing the figures. And secondly to stare, to sit with your steering column in front of me for five, six, eight, nine hours. That’s deadly. I like, I’ve got figures in front of me. I’m working on this time . Doing it there. So all in all the idea of being a pilot, although I had all the things. In those days my eyes were good for landing and everything. I was pilot/navigator category only because I was six feet one and they would not make you a gunner if you were over six feet. AP: That’s why you’re — CF: When I went in for my interview as to what I could be and they said, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘A navigator.’ And they probably looked at each other and said well that’s a change because ninety percent or more say a pilot. And they had a look at my figures that I had done pretty well in the exams. The mathematics and so forth. So yeah. So I was happy with being a navigator, yes. I wouldn’t have liked to have been a bomb aimer. Again, you would be steering there on a bombing trip for hour after hour whereas, you’re working on it. Mind you, at the same time you have a lot of pressure on you because if you’re not there and where you should be the crew look upon you. I always remember reading memoirs of some fella that when he said they got there and he said, ‘But we’re there,’ and the pilot and the rest of the crew said, ‘There’s no markers down. No, nothing. Are you sure you’re right Bill?’ You know. And then all of a sudden some markers went down and the pilot said, ‘Oh well done. The markers are down.’ He said, nobody apologised for all the queries and suggestions that I’d stuffed up really [laughs] yeah. No I enjoyed being a navigator. Yep. Yes. AP: Very good. Can we — we might backtrack a little bit actually. Your early life when you were growing up. What, what did you do before the war? CF: What? AP: Yeah. CF: Well I grew up at, in Hawthorn you might say. Down near the Quay on tennis courts on Scotch College where we had the Gardiner Creek winding around and like all the little kids along the Gardiner Creek we played down there when we shouldn’t have probably. We even had a bit of naked swimming there when we were six or seven or eight sort of business there in the creek. And somebody asked me once what was the, your memory of childhood? And I said, I thought for a while and I said, ‘Freedom.’ We were free. There was never any worries about anything sort of business there. Admittedly in the Depression I never gave my parents enough credit for the way they looked after us four kids during the Depression sort of business then. But the point was that as I said at my elder brother’s funeral my first memory of him was mother calling out, ‘Take you little brother with you and look after him.’ And that was the way that it acted in those days. Big sisters and big brothers looked after little brothers and I had what you might — and of course there was no TV. And we played games within the family and with our mates, sort of business, there. I had a great mate who died only a few months ago with a sudden heart attack and I went out my back gate and up a couple of houses in his back gate and vice versa and he was just as much — had two sisters he didn’t [pause] but he was just as much an elder brother as I was for the girls. They just treated me like a brother. He was over so often, he was always with us. Yeah. But the freedom was that was it. I could do what I sort of liked. Mother never said ‘Where are you going?’ Or something or other. I would just say, ‘Oh I’m going down to see Bill Jones or something like that.’ There was no worries that there were going to be any strange men or odd people around about. I had the — and there weren’t that many cars on the road either sort of business. That was it. It was freedom type of business that I had on there. And I was in the, one of the higher ones up in class. Again fortunately I had brains. I had nothing with the hands but the brains. I had the brains. And I can remember at state school you had two, what you’d call, very smart bastards, and I was one of the next three or four after that to get fired over two or three or four of us. But those two were outstanding and then we three or four or so were varied from time to time as to who was the smartest bastard shall we say. But that was it. We had freedom type of business of it there. And what was more. To do it there, more we had security ahead of us. It was obvious that if we’d ever thought about it we would grow up and get married and have kids and have a house. And that was, you know, the feeling was there was life ordained and certainly anybody who took a job in the public service would be, assume that they would see their life out in the public service. Again, if you joined a big company like BHP or something like that you would again, would assume that you’re there. So that was also better. But on the other hand of course as you were growing up you didn’t think too much about security. You just assumed I suppose that there was a instruction. And living in Hawthorn black was black and white was white. It was only when I went into the army I found there was a lot of shades of grey, depending on circumstances and the viewpoints of people etcetera. But in Hawthorn where I was, as I said we had all those. We had all that creek and the open land to run and play and fished and so forth etcetera there and I can remember the actual Quay on tennis courts there being built shall we say on it there. But that was it. It was the freedom of doing things. We might, as I say, Depression we might have had a second hand football or cricket bat or something or other. You had something. That was it, sort of business there. You weren’t looking for much sort of business there, and as I say you had a lot of, a lot of kids in that area I suppose moved at the same time and there was always. You walked out the house and walked around to the next over or you’d run into a couple of kids and you sort of business there. Yeah. Yes. AP: Yeah. [unclear] CF: A good childhood really. As I say not a very, not a rich one in any way or form sort of business there but a good childhood of freedom. Yeah. AP: What— was the army your first job. Was the army your first job? CF: What? AP: Sorry. Sorry. Your first job. Was, was that — did you come straight out of school and straight into the military or did you do something? CF: At that stage, Year 10, the intermediate was where everybody except the, the title used recently — only the swots went past Year 10 and they would be the future doctors and so forth there. The only the very, very smart ones you might say, the top ten percent or something went past Year 10. The rest of but again, looking, you went to work in a big company and when you started out they had — shall we say half a dozen new boys started at the end of January or something and you worked in the mail room. And for twelve months you delivered papers and picked up papers all around and you got to know what happened in the company. And then after that or sometime during it perhaps you then got a job of doing — writing something up or doing something and you stepped up your attitude. And you also went to work — you went to night school to learn book keeping accountancy. Or whatever was the thing of it there. So for two nights a week and maybe a bit of time to do a bit of study you were occupied shall we say. You didn’t have much money so you couldn’t go out much sort of business there. You did the things. Yeah. AP: So why did you want to join the air force? Why? Why did you want to join the air force? CF: Well I’d never had much to do with the water so the navy was out for a start. The idea of being on a ship sailing around on water had no appeal. The army — well I had read a few books about World War One. In the trenches and such and again the idea of face to face, shall we say, bayonet and so forth didn’t appeal much to me and so I couldn’t see a place in the army for my clerical skills shall we say. That type of business. So the air force and being a navigator appealed to me. Yeah. Yeah. AP: Fair enough. You were, I think you said ITS was at Bradfield Park. Your Initial Training School was at Bradfield Park? CF: Yes. Don’t ask me why they sent a Melbourne boy, like a fella said to me when he went to do his initial training as a pilot, he lived in Adelaide and thought he’d go to Padfield or something. AP: Parafield. CF: And no. No. No. They sent him over to Wagga. AP: Ask not. Just do. CF: The mysteries of postings. Yes. AP: What happened at ITS? What, what sorts of things did you — were you taught. What sort of things did you do? CF: Well you learned the theory of flight was the main thing there. Why did a plane stay up shall we say. You did mathematics for your because later on your skill. You did plenty of PT to keep yourself in good fit there. Incidentally, the fittest I ever was after the army induction because we did marching, drill there. PT. And then we’d finish up at four in the afternoon with a swim in the [Goulburn River?] And at the end of six weeks of that or something like that we, at nineteen years of age you were very fit when you’d been doing all this exercise every day for six weeks sort of business there. Yeah. The [pause], I can’t really think what else you did in there as I say the theory of flight. The theory of there and as I say mathematics. And PT. Yeah. I can’t think of really much else you did in that sort of days. I didn’t ever keep any records of what we did but certainly when you were on the reserve they would send you homework to do on mathematics. Do that there. So we had a reasonable amount of mathematics in there. Teaching up at there. But now I can’t remember really much other than the fact that we did the mathematics and the theory of flight etcetera up at there. Yeah. They might have had something else up at there. I don’t think if that was the question when you know they would ask you how you got up there. Yeah. AP: So the first time that you ever went in an aeroplane what aircraft was it? Where was it? And what did think? CF: It was an Anson aircraft at Mount Gambier which was Number 2 Air Observer’s School. So that was where I go on from ITS to Mount Gambier. And we went on [pause] I think it was an initial flying thing. We flew over the land and we flew over the ocean. And I think that was, you might say, showing us what flying was about. I don’t think we did anything other than fly around and see what was there. Yeah. And the Anson. Yeah. AP: Did you — CF: And what was more you had to wind it up a hundred and six turns because you were the, you were there. The pilots wouldn’t wind it up. You were part of the crew who had to wind it up. Yeah. AP: That’s the undercarriage. That’s the wheels. CF: That was the navigation. Yes. And you flew two to a crew. Two to a crew. One was the navigator and the other was the secondary one who had to take some notes about the countryside. Yeah. AP: Did you, did you encounter any accidents or incidents in that early training? Did you, did you see any or — CF: No accidents in the early training. AP: No. CF: Australia had none of the training actually till I was a sergeant and I didn’t actually get involved in any accident that time at all. Sort of business there. No. AP: Alright. Once you got your wings you passed out as a qualified navigator. You then went to the UK somehow. How did you get there? CF: We actually went to Brisbane and we caught a American twelve thousand dollar victory ship. They were the ships that they were welding for the first time. They had the, what was the seven thousand tonnes was called the something or other. And I was on a twelve thousand tonne called the Sea Corporal. And we went from Brisbane to San Francisco. And the two things I remember was A) I could see a rain storm and I could see a rainstorm had length and it had width but living where I was in the sort of valley a bit really of Gardiner Creek you only ever saw the rain coming at you sort of business there. You could never see the width or the depth of it but then all of a sudden there you had the ocean. Look across there and there is a rain going across and it’s got width and it’s got length. And the other thing. One day we went into the doldrums when the sea is perfectly smooth. There was no waves crashing. Smooth. There’s no, not a ripple on the water. This was what the old time sailors with the sail used to dread getting. I can imagine. That’s it there. I saw that one day. Yeah. It was eerie to watch this, shall we say, waves — not raising high obviously but, you know, up in the air, yeah. AP: Very nice. You got to the States. Did you spend any particular time in the USA or was it straight across? CF: Oh we had six hours. We went to a place called Angel Island in San Francisco Bay which was an American camp and we were given six hours from 6 o’clock in the evening till midnight to see San Francisco. That was our time in San Francisco. Then the next day we caught a train. A train across America. And the great thing about that — on the Pullman carriages they had sleepers. Great thing. Yes. We had to sleep sitting up in Victoria. Well in Australia and in England and then we got to outside New York and we got three days leave in New York. And then we went down to the harbour to there and on one side was the Queen Elizabeth of eighty four thousand tonnes and on the other side was a boat, I’ve forgotten the name, fifty five thousand tonnes. And we had never seen a ship bigger than twenty thousand tons. So eyes opened up big and wide. We didn’t know actually we were going to go on, you see. We actually slept in the Queen Elizabeth. In the third class cinema with bunks three high. And they had something like twelve to fifteen thousand troops on. I understand the American soldiers had eight hours each to sleep. That was it. There was only one bed for three American soldiers when they were taking them across. Six were there. So that was — you had two meals a day. And you had about, I think about half an hour you were allowed up for fresh air once a — once a day you got half an hour on the deck to get a breath of fresh air or something. Because the Queen Elizabeth had done that trip, you know, how many times they had the work down to a fine art. You had to wear a colour patch on your uniform and you weren’t allowed to move outside that colour patch except to go down and have your meal. It was a highly organised thing of it sort of business there. Yes it was. Yeah. AP: How long ago — sorry, how long did that take. That voyage. CF: Five or six days it took us to get across. Yeah. Yeah. AP: Not much fun. Not much fun. CF: Yeah. AP: Alright. You get to England. This is the first time — CF: Actually you finish up in the Gourock in the Clyde. Firth of the Clyde. AP: Ok. CF: Yeah. AP: You get to the UK though. CF: You take the train down and in actual fact you get in the train and you go to Glasgow and then you come to a city that’s got a big castle. And it’s got Waverley. That’s when we asked where we were. ‘You’re at Waverley.’ We couldn’t find Waverley on the map. And of course later on, some a month or two or so later somebody went up to and said, ‘Hey that was Edinburgh.’ Waverley is the station like Flinders Street. AP: Certainly is. This was the first time you were overseas. CF: Yes. First time. No. Sorry the army was the first time I was outside Victoria. AP: Really. CF: Yeah. AP: Ok. So as a young Australian, the first time you were overseas wartime England would have been fairly confronting I suppose. What did you think of wartime England when you first got there? What was it like? CF: Well, wartime. We got there in April which was spring you might say. And we had seen many pictures of England. Of the green land and so forth there. And coming down from Scotland the land was open shall we say and pleasant and the main memory I got down there seeing, for instance all the poles to stop planes landing from the invasion and other matters that indicated there was a war on around the place and England, I read a book. The same thing. It seemed to fit in pretty clearly of what you’d seen in the papers shall we say because you weren’t looking at the slums of London or anything of that nature. We were at Brighton which was the big as you probably know was the big holiday resort with the pubs all along the front. Like something, you might say, like the Gold Coast or something or other like that. And plenty of, actually in peacetime B&Bs behind that, also around places etcetera there. But no England was comforting I would say. There was no problem in there and of course they spoke the language [laughs] AP: What did you think of the people? CF: Incidentally, going across to America we had one naive nineteen year old saying to some American officers talking about America and he said, ‘Won’t they think it funny we haven’t got an accent?’ Took the Americans about five minutes to calm down with their laughter. AP: Fair enough. What did you think of the people in England? Did you, did you have much to do with the civilian population? CF: Well as they said in the book of, “No Moon Tonight” the author said if there was ever a Commonwealth spirit it was in England during the war. There were no — the Canadian, the English and such and one of the great things about being an Australian was that there were no Australian army troops to stuff it up in England. The air force by and large were ground crew admittedly as well. But by and large the Australians over there were, shall we say middle class and educated and were very popular with the locals and with the girls. That’s it. Yeah. And we were pretty well paid shall we say. Not as well paid as the Americans but we had — yeah. AP: What — what sort of things, when on leave and these could be at any point when you’re in England. When you’re on a squadron or when you’re in training. What sort of things did you get up to when you were on leave or when you were off duty? CF: Well, I went on leave with Dan Lynch who — he’d been doing the first year of a medicine course so you might say that we, on leave looked at seeing what we could of England, Scotland and Wales sort of business of it there. So we were always looking for the views and what was there and the old castle and all those types of things of it there. We had a few drinks but basically we didn’t hang around the pubs etcetera there. We, we wanted to see the actual country and as a tourist shall we say there. Yeah. That was my particular little group of, shall we say half a dozen mates and so forth you mixed. In other words you soon found out who wants to, you know, we were friendly with a couple of older blokes who, you know. They were shall we say twenty five or twenty seven or something like that. They’d like to, and they were married they liked to just go down to the pub and just have a drink and a talk. That was fair enough. Whereas we would possibly pop into the pub for one or two drinks and then on to the dance or something of that nature of it there. Yeah. So, like, how things go, when we were at OTU we got a week’s leave and Dan Lynch and I went out and went to hitchhike a ride with the Americans trucks to Brum. Birmingham. And we –they pulled up and, ‘Where do you want to go.’ I said, ‘Birmingham,’ and, ‘That’s ok we’re going to Oxford.’ ‘Could we come to Oxford?’ ‘Oh yes. Hop in the back.’ So we finished up at Oxford. And the following night we went and saw a George Bernard Shaw play which I had never seen one before. But that’s, as I say, a mate of mine. Dan Lynch. He was, that was his culture more so than mine, shall we say, etcetera. Yeah there. Again it was mixed up with you that for instance out of hours, 7 that was what we had to go to get back by the way that we picked up with the English. Bill Stanley and Dan and I would often make a three and go to the dance shall we say. Whereas the navigator Jack Bennett would then be he was a bit of a, he had a couple of other blokes or something. He was chasing the girls and so forth there. And he would, he’d go there and go sometimes with Shorty and the pilot. They tended to do other things shall we say. Yeah. But that was it. You, you soon found the people that wanted to do things that you wanted to do. Yeah. AP: Did you spend much time in London? Did you spend much time in London? CF: No. AP: Not at all. CF: No. We thought, having had a good look around London on a couple of occasions when we were there. No we didn’t spend, we spent some time there but no we wanted to, when we went on leave we would head down to either Cornwall and Devon or John O’Groats up in Scotland. We never made either place, or land. We didn’t make Lands End. We didn’t make John O’Groats but we would head off with a pass and went off with a thing and we’d stay one day, two days, three days and then all of a sudden realise that we’ve only got two days left. Perhaps we had better in that case make a firm plan where we’d go but that was it. Yeah. We went we made the opportunity. The one little group I sort of mixed around in was to see as much of England, Scotland and Wales as possible in the time. Yeah. In fact, Ireland as well. When the war was over, over there I actually went over to Ireland. Yeah. Where my Irish grandfather came from. AP: Excellent. What did, what were your thoughts when you finally got out of that Wellington? Or the Wellingtons that kept having engine failures. CF: Yeah. AP: And you’re now on four engine aeroplanes. You’re looking at a Lancaster for the first time. CF: Well, wait a second. When I, when after the Wellington crashed or when we moved in to the Lancaster. AP: Sorry. In general. When you moved on. So you’ve left the Wellingtons behind. CF: Left it behind you. Yeah. AP: Yeah. Thank goodness for that. CF: The old story was that the following day we went flying and that crash was they rolled the Wellington. That’s what happened. We didn’t suffer any and our main thought then was we’d got a bloody good pilot who didn’t panic. He did everything he could to keep the aircraft going and so forth. Safety sort of business of it there. Because as I said they found out that aircraft somehow had not been modified. I never found out why and so forth. Anyway, no, you, we were young. You got on with it and when you got to a Lancaster well let’s face it, let’s say the Lancaster at the Heavy Conversion Unit might have been a little battered but it was better than the Wellington. At the OTU sort of business there. Yeah. And you had four engines too. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. You didn’t worry too much about that. AP: Can you, can you describe for me what the navigator’s position on the Lancaster is like? What? What’s there when you’re sitting at your desk. What’s around you and what’s it like? CF: Well a Lancaster you had first of all you were the pilot and the flight engineer stood alongside of each other with the great things in front of them. You, then there was a big black curtain could be pulled across there where [unclear] and you actually faced sideways with a desk in front of you and therefore in front of you you had a compass which theoretically agreed with the compass in the — [paused]. You had to check that there because sometimes it didn’t. And you then had a set for the Gee which you used frequently. You read the thing and you got two, and two things on that and then you plotted on a special sheet which curved and let there. And then you had a, then a thing for the, on the side, for the H2S when you had that equipped on it there. And the rest of the thing of course your tables had your log and most of all you had your flight plan which you drew on as you went along and filled the detail in it there. So you had a couple of pencils and a compass and you had then a, the calculator. I’m trying to think of the name that is that you put your thing on and drew a couple of things on. It was a calculator for navigators to use. I’m trying to think of the name of it now. Yeah. That was it. At that stage you hadn’t, the navigator didn’t have a drift recorder and the ones we had which you had in the Anson and so forth to get there but when you had the Gee in the aircraft you didn’t need that. You had your map on there. Yeah. So as I say you sat on the side and then as I say you had a curtain between you and the, really, flight engineer and then you had a curtain on the other side to keep the light going out that way type of business of it there. So you were in your little cocoon with the light going on. As they said one navigator came out of the second or third raid and had a look at it, and said, ‘Bloody hell,’ and he said he never looked, he never would come out of his cocoon again. He didn’t want to see it. AP: Did you ever have a look at a target? Did you ever come out and have a look? CF: No. I went out and had a look. As one navigator said if you’re coming this far let’s have a look. But as they say in my thing that I had down there that on my first trip we were down for a place near Cologne which is in the Ruhr. Where the ack ack is pretty severe and the point was that we got there. We — ok there. Everything was going nice and easily and you’re thinking it’s a nice and easy sort of business there and then you see what’s there. But the bomb aimer’s there and he says everything and then all of a sudden he says, you know, ‘Bomb doors. Bomb doors closed.’ That’s the thing and then he called down a rather, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ I must admit that the rest of the crew including me were feeling much the same way as he was feeling. This is no, no place to be for us nice blokes. That was straight out of there and say, as we were flying across occupied France and Germans had —half an hour later something after we’d dropped the bomb or something, maybe there, a shot come up and went through our wing and kept on going thank God. And it was dark. You couldn’t see outside and our pilot, having already done one trip as a second pilot said, ‘Oh it’s alright boys. A near miss.’ And about twenty minutes later when daylight appeared the mid-upper gunner said, You’ve got a bloody big hole in the wing,’ [laughs]. But that’s it. We got back home and we felt a bit guilty that, bringing back an aircraft another crew normally flew with a hole in the wing. As if we had been a bit careless about the whole thing. Yeah. AP: That sort of leads on to the next question. The ground crew. What sort of relationship did you have with your ground crew? CF: I didn’t have much of a relationship because as the navigator I was working up to the last minute finishing the plan we’d been told and so forth. And I was taken out to the aircraft just before it was time to — I never, never really saw the ground crew at all. And of course when we got back there was a no talk for the crew. So I had no relationship with the ground crew for the simple reason, as I say, that I didn’t — I was not there like the rest of the crew had been out doing a check and so forth etcetera there. But I was a late comer because I was there and sometimes you got you had to then finish your flight plan because you hadn’t had time to finish it beforehand. Yeah. So our pilot had a good relationship with the ground staff. I don’t know about the other crew members that were there as to whether they did or didn’t. I have a feeling that we only did seven trips so we weren’t there a long time and I don’t think, I think basically our flight engineer and our pilot had a good relationship with the ground crew but the other members I don’t think they really had much relationship with them type of thing. AP: Alright. I’ve done that. Were there any superstitions or rituals that you, either that your crew took part in or that you saw in the squadron? Hoodoos or anything like that? CF: No. No. I heard of various rituals and odds and sods but as far as I know there was no rituals about you always wore a blue tie or a certain hankie or something or other. As far as I know, in our particular crew, there was never any particular ritual, as you said. Some crews there was a ritual something or other but with our crew as far as I know there wasn’t any. AP: Did you have any nose art painted on your aeroplane or were you not there long enough? Did you have anything painted on the front of your, on the nose of your aeroplane. CF: No. AP: You weren’t there long enough. CF: No. No. AP: That’s alright. Just thought I’d ask the question. So oh that was what I was going to ask you. As the navigator you’re working pretty hard when you’re flying. I believe it was fixing a position every six minutes or something along those lines. Can you remember much of the process of the actual physical what you were doing? CF: Well when you were in England and you had the Gee which gave you your position, as you, I think you mentioned, every six minutes. You had to get a reading where you were and from that you had to work out the wind that had blown in the last six minutes and then readjust your flight plan as to whether to tell the pilot to change course if so what to change to. And you also had to check your estimated time of arrival likewise. Every six minutes. Which meant that you were working steadily shall we say? Yes. Yeah. As I say that was the great thing as I was good at mathematics I could, I could meet those six minutes all right shall we say. Yeah. Yes. AP: And when, when you were no longer — CF: And then once you, once you got over Germany and your Gee was jammed or you had difficulty getting a good reading because Gee lines were curved and over a certain distance they tended to merge into each so you could you know could be a half an inch deciding where they actually crossed sort of business there. But when you, after that you were dependant on if the bomb aimer can tell you something and sometimes the Pathfinders would drop a light to say this is the turning point to something of that nature there which I don’t remember ever having that myself. And basically we were flying on what information we’d had and anything we’d had in the first half hour or so or an hour or so of flying. And that’s one thing. When we started operations the [pause] see this was the — we started in March ‘45 the actual operations and the, that stage they were getting into the German border which meant that you possibly had a couple of hours of what the actual wind was that you could do yourself, sort of business a bit there. Other than that you flew on your flight plan and if you were over cloud, well, there and there were at times a wind direction might be come over from the Pathfinders. They might send it back if the wind was so and so and you might get a thing from them. Very rarely we did that but I heard it happened at times. We basically flew on DR. Dead reckoning. Once you got past the, into the German jamming and so forth there. Yeah. And of course it was always nice to see the Pathfinders drop the markers and you got off the course. Or you could see them ahead of yourself. Yes. AP: The [pause] alright, what was the drill if one of your gunners spotted a night fighter and said, ‘Corkscrew. Port. Go.’ From your perspective as a navigator what happened next? CF: Never happened to us fortunately there but as a navigator you mean when they said, ‘Go.’ Well, as a navigator you just sit there and grind your teeth or something or other. Or say, that there is nothing you could do and the only great thing what you had to do was to make sure that the, your gear on your desk when they flew into a steep curve didn’t go flying anywhere. And particularly because I remember the first time when we’d been practicing doing it for the first time when the pilot flew it down and the bomb aimer for some reason was having a rest on the bed, the rest bed which went along the aircraft. And my compasses flew up in the air and was flying towards him. And he was trying to push away this compass coming at him. At that — so I learned from that that if there was at any time the first thing I would do would be yes to put my hand on my gear and hold it there. AP: Hold on for dear life. CF: But fortunately I didn’t have to do that. Yeah. AP: Ok. You mentioned something when we were at the RSL at Caulfield the other day. At the EATS lunch. You came up and you said something happened on Anzac Day 1945. CF: Happened on — AP: Anzac Day 1945. You haven’t told me that story yet. CF: Well that’s what I’m getting on to later on. That was the, in actual fact that’s the day we got shot down. AP: That’s what I was hoping you’d say. CF: Yeah. Yeah. AP: Please tell me about that experience. CF: Yeah. Well I’ll tell you about the whole story. That’s part of my story. AP: That’s part of your story. CF: Yeah. AP: Well ok. CF: In actual fact I did that for this group, did one and I got for what turned out to be would I have my photograph taken and I said yes and I turned up like this and the, I found out that there was a team of five or six people. Not just one from the publicity. And one wanted the story and one wanted a photograph and so forth there. And I finished up getting my medals out and having a photograph taken and then they said, ‘Would you say a few words?’ I said, ‘Well a couple.’ A few words turned into, ‘Will you make a ten minute speech?’ So I finished up making a ten minute speech which described what happened from the day before when we were on the battle order which was the, picked like lead teams. That was the team that picked for the following day which was Anzac day. And my story lasted from there till the time that [pause] where does that go? Till the time we got to the Stalag. That’s right. Yeah. Ten minute speech. Yeah. AP: Well I’ve got to the point in my questions now where we’ve been talking about operations so this is probably an appropriate time to carry on with your story if you — CF: Yeah. AP: If you’re happy to do so. CF: Yeah. Yes. Well as I say. Right. Ok. Well now. Where were we? We’d got [pause] oh we got to Heavy Conversion Unit. I got introduced there, that I forgot to mention the fact that we picked up a flight engineer there. English flight engineer at the, when we got to Lindholme we picked up a English engineer. He had been, he was one of those fellows who’d been trained as a pilot and been sitting around for eight or ten weeks doing nothing and therefore he volunteered to go to go to a six weeks to be flight engineer and therefore get into operations. So we finished up, as I say a bit there that he was happy to fly with an Australian crew and we were happy to have him as a second pilot shall we say because he was a qualified pilot on it there. And he did a little bit of flying of the Lancaster while we were there and while we were at 460 so that he could take over if anything happened to our pilot. It was reassuring to have him. Yeah. Yeah. So then we get to, let me see, then we get to the 460 in March. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Ok. We start on that now? AP: Yeah. Go for it. CF: While at the start of our Heavy Conversion Unit we met up with our new flight engineer required for a Lancaster. He — name of Rick Thorpe and he came from Sheffield in Yorkshire. He was happy to join an Australian crew and we were happy to have him as a flight engineer and second pilot if necessary. We finished our training at HCU in March ‘45 and was transferred to Australian squadron number 460 at, near the village of Binbrook in the Lincolnshire. We did a training trip and the [pause] our skipper then did a second dickey trip with an experienced crew over Germany and after he came back about three days later we were on the battle order for that night. And we had the briefing. Found out we were going to bomb [Bruckstrasse?] which was a town close to [pause] what was it? Cologne. Everything went well. We took off at about 1.45 in the morning. Flew to [Bruckstrasse?] Started our bomb run. Everything was going nicely along. Nobody was saying anything. There was radio silence except for the navigator. The bomb aimer giving directions. And then the bomb aimer said, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed. Let’s get the bloody hell out of this,’ in a rather excited voice. And the rest of the crew felt that they had the same feelings. It was time to go. And on the way back across occupied France the plane got a shudder and the pilot told us that it was a near miss but it was dark at the time. Twenty minutes later when daylight came they found out that they had a hole in the wing that the shell had gone right through. We went back somewhat shamefaced that we’d injured the plane that was usually flown by one of the more experienced pilots. We then did several more trips and went ok. And then we went to Potsdam which was our longest trip to that date and as we dropped our bombs on Potsdam we were grabbed by the searchlights circuit and that’s very dangerous because the guns keep following those searchlights. And we dived very, very smartly and very steeply and heaven knows what speed we got to but we got out of the searchlights and flew back home. We did a trip to Bremen and as we were starting our bomb run the word came over, the code word, ‘Marmalade,’ which means cancelled. No bombs. So we had to dodge over Bremen to miss the flak and come home and land with a five or ten tons of bombs. Then on the 24th of April we were on the bomb order for the following day which would be our seventh flight. And wake up time was 2.15 am. So an early night. Up next morning, breakfast, flight plan, briefing and we were going to Berchtesgaden area. Not the town. In two waves. The first wave of a hundred and eighty planes was to bomb the houses of Hitler and all the Nazi leaders who’d also built their holidays home there and the communication centre and administration buildings. The second wave, of which we were one were to bomb the barracks of the Gestapo and the army that were looking after the Nazi leaders and their communication centre and administration quarters. That was one hour later. We took off just after 5 o’clock in the morning and flew down to the meeting point, joined the gaggle and were flying over The Channel and along over the French countryside. It was a lovely day. Beautiful blue sky. No clouds. Green fields, lakes and rivers down below and on the right was the majestic Alps and with the snow shining on the snow tops. Absolute picture book. We got near the target area and I left my table and moved behind. Ten inches behind the seat of the engineer because on the floor was a parcel of metal strips for [pause] we looked ahead, the flak looked light-medium so no worries. And the bomb aimer took over and he said, ‘Left. Left.’ And then, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed.’ And as he finished that word we were hit and something flew up past my face and out over the roof. And I looked down and in the centre of the parcel there was a jagged hole. In the meantime the pilot and the engineer were closing down the starboard engine which was a mess and the two inner motors which had also gone. So we were flying on one engine and an empty Lancaster will fly on one engine. The pilot checked the crew and found that everybody was ok. And he then said that the port outer engine, the remaining one was not giving full power and perhaps it would be best if we jumped while he had full control. Nobody wanted to jump. And the flight engineer said, ‘But we can’t do that Lofty. We’re over the Germany.’ At the time I thought that was a very sensible remark. Then we decided that we would try to reach the line of the allied army but very quickly the port, the remaining engine stopped and we were gliding and we had to go. And the drill was to all escape underneath the plane so you wouldn’t get hit by the tail plane. And the bomb aimer was the first to go and the four others all followed in due rate. And then the rear gunner appeared with the parachute in his arms. It had caught on the way up and opened. The pilot told him to get the spare parachute. He came back to say it wasn’t there. Later we found that they had taken it out to repack it and not — failed to replace it. The pilot then made a very very brave decision that rather than leave the rear gunner to his fate he would try and make a crash landing. At this time there was petrol floating around on the floor of the cockpit. His chances weren’t too good but he found that with the five men gone, the petrol also gone and such the plane would glide much better. And he saw a field down below of what looked like wheat and he glided the plane down. Dodged some wires close and put it down on a cornfield. They then both got out of the plane. Ran forty or fifty yards. Threw themselves down on the ground, looked back waiting for the explosion but nothing happened. The earth they’d driven into had apparently put out the flames. But appeared four Hitler youth boys aged about fourteen or so carrying a couple of machine guns which they pointed at the two Australians who were pretty worried. The boys were very excited. Talking to each other. And then along came the Volkssturm. The German Home Guard who took over and took the two Australians back to the regular army. Harry, the pilot, Harry was interrogated by a very high German officer there who said to him, ‘Why are you Australians here? We haven’t got any argument with Australia.’ Harry didn’t attempt to explain it but — meanwhile I had parachuted down to the ground and landed near a couple of houses in which the housewives were standing. Presumably looking at me coming down. And I hastily unbuckled my harness and parachute and left it there and went, walked quickly over to where there was a large clump of trees. The Volkssturm didn’t take long to turn up and no doubt the ladies pointed out where I was. And they were — I thought they said, ‘Pistol? Pistol?’ and patted me. I said, ‘No, and shook my head very vigorously. They said, ‘Parachute.’ and I just raised my eyebrows there and I assume that the couple of German ladies would be wearing silk underwear in the future. They took me to an army camp where there were my, the [unclear] were, was there and in the next couple of hours along came the mid-upper gunner and the flight engineer. And two or three hours after that again the pilot and the rear gunner appeared. The remaining member of the crew, the bomb aimer dropped first. He landed in the snow in the foothills and was captured by the mountain troops who took him deeper into the mountains and he actually didn’t get out of there till two days after the war ended. On May the 10th. The Americans turned up there. We were taken from the camp into the town where they had taken over the hotel as a headquarters and we were put in a room and finally given a piece of dry bread and it was covered in honey and ersatz cup of coffee. There was no hostility there. They were, but they were treating us as prisoners but not close guard. And came the evening light was there and we were put in the back of a covered wagon with the parachute of the, we think, the flight engineer. And we left there with a couple of guards. You might say nominal. Nobody was taking it too seriously. And we drove into the mountains and through the night. There was lots of traffic both ways on the roads. The Germans were using the darkness to avoid the allied fighters who were everywhere. And we then changed over half way across. We changed over to an open truck and we got under the parachute to open the parachute. Yeah. And at 6 o’clock we arrived at the Stalag 7a. Moosburg. Where they opened, a couple of the allied troops actually opened a couple of Red Cross parcels and fed us some breakfast which was very welcome. They then drove us further on to a communication centre at [Mainwaring?] about twenty kilometres away. And that afternoon the interrogating officer had Lofty, our pilot, in and asked him the questions and they got the usual answers there. And they said where, ‘Where do you come from?’ Lofty said, ‘West Australia.’ And the interrogating officer said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I know that quite well. I was an agent out there on several occasions for German firms buying wheat and wool.’ And Lofty said we then had a chat about the west Australian back countryside of which he knew more than I did. And then he said, ‘Well you’d better get back to your crew.’ So he said that was the interrogation. The Germans had given up. And the next morning, we stayed the night there and the next morning we were taken back to the Stalag on a tray, a horse tray with two horses to carry us back to the thing and we did a mixture of walking and sitting on the truck. And we talked to various Australians along the way who had been working on the farms. Where was the question? And we got back to the Stalag and the chief Australian officer said, ‘Do you know what’s going to happen to us prisoners when the allies arrive?’ And our pilot said, ‘Oh yes. We’re going to be taken back to England in the back of bombers.’ ‘Oh,’ said the group captain, ‘How would you know?’ Our pilot said, ‘Well the day before we got shot down they marked twenty five places on our plane where people could sit.’ ‘Oh.’ That was the end of that. The, on the 29th of April the American 14th Division came in and we were free. But it was some time before we got back to England. AP: And you did go back to England in the back of a bomber. Did you go back to England in the back of a bomber? CF: Yes. I think that’s about enough there but in actual fact what happened was that was the 29th of May. On May the 1st, yeah the 29th of April, May the 1st two days later General Patton arrived sitting on the front of a truck and at least a hundred correspondents and photographers if not a thousand were there and he announced that we would all be home in two or three days. Back in England in two or three days. And the, some of the Americans would be back in America in two to three weeks. At which the old timers such as me and such were a little bit cynical because of the amount of numbers. And we, yeah, so we sat in the Stalag with the — somehow or other the food was still coming in and the Red Cross parcels were being tapped and so forth. There wasn’t much difference under the Americans than there was under the Germans shall we say because I wasn’t going to go out into the town that I couldn’t speak the language and there were some wild people around. And, yes, I stayed in camp. But the long term prisoners who could speak German went into the town and in actual fact slept in some of the houses because the German, the German civilians liked to have you sleeping in their house if you were well behaved. There was no, any wild men turned up in the middle of the night sort of business, there. On the 7th of May. The night of the 6th of May we were told the following morning at 5 o’clock we would be taken by semi-trailer to air strips where we would be loaded on DC3s. A Dakota who would take us to the main ports, airports where we would then get into either American or British bombers. On the 7th of May we got up at 5 o’clock and duly got on the back of semi-trailers there and we were driven, I reckon forty odd kilometres if not more to an airstrip, a grass airstrip and quite a few. A big crowd. Only a few planes turned up. And therefore that night we were taken back to the German, at Ingolstadt the German. And we did some souveniring of some German wear and tear. And they took us back to the airstrip again the following day. And that was May 8th. Everybody was celebrating. One plane turned up, don’t ask me how they got to one plane there. So at lunchtime, by then the fella in charge of the shipment out said, ‘Go away and have a swim in the river or whatever you do. There’s nothing. Nobody is going to come in today and get it there.’ So an, sorry English long term prisoner who slept just near where I was in the hut said, ‘Oh come into town.’ I said, ‘ Oh ok.’ He said, ‘We’ll go and get, go in to the house and get some hot water for which we’ll give them American cigarettes,’ which were a very strong bartering tool and we’ll take some coffee in. He said, ‘I’ve got some of the stuff that the Americans who got taken out yesterday left on the ground. And let’s put it this way. A long term prisoner never threw anything away. You could, if you didn’t want it you could barter it for something else. And, ‘Yeah. Ok,’ and we went in and I don’t know whether he’d sized it up before we went in this house and we saw them and said you know could we get some water for a wash and a shave and we got some American cigarettes. And yes that’s ok. So we had a wash and a shave and then we said we’d got some coffee and they said yeah. So we were there and two daughters appeared aged, well they might have been nineteen, twenty, twenty one. Some like that age. And we found out that they had married some local boys who had then been grabbed by the army where ever it was. They were taken into Stalingrad. Do you know? Have you heard of Stalingrad? AP: Yes. CF: And as such they wondered whether they’d ever see their husbands again, sort of business, there. So that was their message. That we were celebrating the end of the war and they of course weren’t celebrating. And the two daughters were wondering you know just what the bloody hell was going to be the future of them. Anyway we had some nice cup of coffee with them. We having produced the coffee grains there to do it. Yeah. And we went back to the camp and we were taken to a jail that night and there was a bit of a fire about four in the morning or something or other. Some screaming. We got out of that and went and spent the rest of the night back at the airfield and using the overcoats that had all been abandoned by the, because they wouldn’t let you take overcoats on planes. It would make the load too heavy. And that was the 8th. The 9th and the 10th a few planes came in and the English bloke with the German language and so forth managed to wangle himself on one of the planes. So we didn’t go back to the house again and we just filled in the day just walking around. It was nice warm weather and such. So on the 11th there we were having breakfast. Oh we slept out those two nights using the overcoats and so what shelter there was and such so the following morning we’re there and the whole bloody plane, DC3s turned up. So we have to grab what breakfast we could and go and get ready, ready to go and you know make up plans. You had to go and list. Before you got on a plane you had to list everybody who was getting on the plane so if anything happened you knew what was happening . So we got taken to Rheims. To the small aerodrome and then we were taken by semi-trailer across to the major airport which of, was Juvencourt which was, you know, had about, probably had about five runways. Whatever it is. Anyway, we got there and I was allocated to a New Zealand Lancaster crewed by new Zealanders. And the pilot — I’d been in advanced flying unit with him six months before. He looked at me a bit surprised. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘What the bloody hell do you think I’m doing?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Come and sit alongside me.’ So I, I didn’t sit in my designated spot but sat alongside him and got quite a nice view as we flew back. So anyway I was back on the 11th but the rear gunner, the bloke in there, he got back late on the 7th. He was the only one that came through on the one day where we were at the whole five thousand were supposed to do or something or other. Don’t ask me who was doing the statistics and everything around the place. Anyway, he got through on the night of the 7th and he was tired and they slept at some English ‘drome near London. Were there when fighter ones probably saw it and in the morning he and the other blokes hopped in a bus or something or other. He said, ‘What’s all the people wandering around shouting and jumping and everything else.’ ‘Oh the war’s finished. They’re celebrating.’ They said, ‘Oh is it?’ Oh. So he said he got down to Brighton on the 8th. The mid-upper gunner and the wireless operator had got as far as Holland no the 7th in other words but there was no plane to take them back to England that night. And so they got back on the 8th. That’s three. We don’t know what happened to the English engineer, he, after that he didn’t reply to any mail or anything etcetera. That was four. That’s right. So I got back on the 11th when, as I say, I got back to England on the 11th and the pilot actually stayed another four days after this. He didn’t leave the Stalag until about the 11th. Then he got flown to Nancy and then he took the train to the [pause] somewhere near the English Channel. And then flew across The Channel. He got back about the 15th. So if you get the idea that all your POWs are going to be flown back home in two days [laughs] — but I will say this much. We got very well treated when we got back to Brighton. In England. There, we got special treatment from there and when I went on leave I got, I think quadruple rations, I think, to take to the people I stayed with etcetera. Yeah. I got very well looked after. So that was the story of there. That as I say and that’s one thing on the DC3s you get quite a nice view of the Maginot and the what’s the name, the Siegfried Line. And all the debris of war was still spread out across the countryside shall we say. Nobody had had time to clear it up. It was, it’s out of the way, just leave it there and we’ll do it next week or something or other like that. The debris was and the bridges had been blown up and you could see what war had done to the countryside. You know. Yes. Oh yes. So that’s the story. AP: Well I have three more questions. CF: Yeah. AP: Alright. So after that experience you came home to Australia. What did you do? How did you adjust back to normal life again? CF: I had very little time adjusting back shall we say. And for instance my mate, Dan Lynch, who I, he was Tasmanian but he’d come over to Melbourne and he stayed in Melbourne and did the, went to the Melbourne University and got a degree in biology and then joined the fisheries and game department as their first biologist actually. And I formed a lifelong friendship and so I for the next few years while we were batchelors we saw a lot of each other. As we did with another couple of fellas who we trained with — Frank Kelly and John Hodson etcetera there. Yes. Four bachelors played around and one went up to The Northern Territory and then three bachelors played around. Yeah. So we all, as far, we all seemed, we all seemed to get pretty much, Frank actually I know started to do a course on something. I forget now. But he gave that away and then he got a job with a international there. The motors and so forth with them and from there he moved on to the South Melbourne City Council. I got a job back with a small building firm that I’d worked with and went back there. And went and did my accounting studies and then moved to a job with what was then Vacuum Oil which is now Mobil oil there. And Dan, as I say, got this thing and then he got a job. Those three of us, none of us had any, well as I say Frank had got shot down. And Dan and I had got shot down. And in actual fact the other fellow, John Hodson, he was sick one night. Didn’t fly. His crew didn’t return. So he had to get another crew etcetera. He, he, he sort of felt the war, shall we say, more than he did because he’d been pretty friendly with that crew and did a lot with them whereas we didn’t lose over there the same feeling as he got. And we also adjusted quite well to doing it there and I don’t quite know. By and large aircrew seemed to adjust pretty well back to there. Maybe the fact that we did it at remote distances as distinct to fellas that were there but on the other hand there were like the other day one fellow who didn’t do too well. And I know another fellow who didn’t, for thirty years did nothing because his best mate had got killed on 460 Squadron. I don’t know much about it. His third of fourth trip the plane crashed and killed the whole lot. Now why the plane crashed about twenty miles from base I don’t know. It could have been that something had been frayed and wear and tear over those next hundred miles might have caused something and all of a sudden some control might have snapped and the plane went in before the pilot could do anything about it. If he was flying at only a couple of thousand feet ready to land you don’t know. But that fella wouldn’t just come, for thirty years he wouldn’t come back to the air force. So there were people who were affected by the things but in my immediate knowledge of the people I trained with and saw a lot of in the next few years, none of them suffered from any kind of mental stress that showed in any way at all, sort of business there. So it did appear that being possibly a little bit away from it and so forth there but that’s how it goes on it there. In actual fact my biggest loss was a friend I grew up with who joined the air force before I did and went up to New Guinea. And on his first flight was shot down and he was injured and captured by the Japanese and the bloody Japanese sergeant then bloody murdered him. Which was a nasty one at the time but you know that one of your boys had not only not killed in action but bloody murdered sort of business there and we were told like, and the family afterwards said that they were told that they, that sergeant had been killed and they couldn’t do anything about it as a result sort of business. But that was the only, really he was the only one that was, really hurt me shall we say. My brother was in the army in the anti-aircraft in New Guinea but he was ok. And the other as I said this mate of mine. This is the odds of course. In Berkeley Street which is the next street to where I was in Kooyongkoot Road, Hawthorn. My mate did the thirty trips. The one that was there. Next door to him was a fella called Bob Benber who later became a big dealer in the insurance industry. He did a trip and got his DFC. And exactly opposite them was where Alec Wilde who did two trips — two tours. A tour and then another tour with 460. They all survived. And Kooyongkoot Road where I lived there was this lad I was telling you about got killed by the Japanese. I was a prisoner of war and a little further up the street was a fellow who was captured in the army at Crete. So two streets, three blokes all had tough luck. Next street three blokes who lived as close as you could possibly get all survived Bomber Command which was a dangerous place. Don’t ask me about the statistics. Yeah. AP: Someone. One of my interview people said, ‘That’s the important thing in war. To have good fortune,’ he said. CF: Yeah. Yeah. AP: That, yeah. That’s exactly what you just explained. CF: Yeah. AP: I’m getting closer. I have two more questions. You mentioned when, I think it was your pilot, Harry, was being interrogated or when he was captured the German asked him, ‘You’re Australian. Why are you fighting us?’ I’m just curious. If he had attempted to explain why Australia was there what might he have said? What I’m interested in is why was Australia there? CF: Well Lofty was not shall we say a well-educated man. He was a country boy. Grew up in the wheat fields and then moved into Perth. As such his, I don’t quite know what he might have said actually with his background of it there. It’s a little hard to say what you would say on it there. And whether he might have said, you know, we were fighting for the king or something. I can’t quite, can’t quite imagine him saying kind of thing that er. We were fighting. The best thing I could say he’d say we’re fighting because you Germans are threatening the rest of the whole of the world. Something of that nature is about all I think he might have said at that stage. But as I said he was not well educated in the sense of the word. He was a doer rather than a thinker type of business there. But as for a man in an emergency he comes out much higher than anybody else I know. AP: I guess he was tested there. CF: In other words, we said on his eightieth, so much so that both Dan and I worked it out that we would be in Perth around his eightieth birthday and we then took him up to Frasers restaurant, by name. Which is the big restaurant in Perth overlooking the township from what’s its name there? Have you been there at all? Anyway, we went there and we said, I said, ‘Except for picking our wives — Dan’s wife was there so she said, Thank you Colin.’ Picking Harry as a pilot was the best personnel decision we ever made. And he said, ‘Yes. I agree entirely. It was the best personnel decision that we made.’ And as you heard before we just about picked his crew for him. But as I said he was, we were right he was a solid citizen and that was it type of business of it there. He’s the type of bloke thank you want in your back line I suppose, at football. Sturdy. Dependable. And always be there. Yes. Yes a real bloke. A pity of it that they only had one daughter who was a smart lady. In actual fact she didn’t get married. Yeah. You could pass some of his genes down shall we say but there it is. Yes. Yes. He died some years ago and I flew over for his wedding [laughs] for his wedding — for his funeral and made a speech on there. Yes. AP: The final question and probably the most important one. In your opinion what is Bomber Command’s legacy? What is the legacy of Bomber Command and how do you want it to be remembered? CF: Well I’m not too sure where Bomber Command stands at the moment as you said. The thing is that hurt most of all that Churchill deserted Bomber Command. In fact he did it there and the — Harris, the one said he was sitting with on May 8th listening to, with the head of the American bombers and they listened and he mentioned Fighter Command and Transport Command and Coastal Command. Not one word one way or the other was Bomber Command in the Churchill’s speech of the victory over Germany mentioned. And in actual fact a couple of there before that after he was the man who agreed with Stalin that Bomber Command would bomb Dresden and he then sent the message back to the head of the air force — Portal. Who then passed the message down to Harris. And as Harris said all he said was the decision was made by somebody much more powerful than me and he was quite aware that no doubt he had a good relationship with Portal. He was probably mentioned of it there and he [pause] that, that hurt most of all. That later on there but that was it. When the war was close to finishing and all of a sudden shall we say the bishops and the [unclear] were saying oh we shouldn’t have bombed. Oh no. Look. Bombings nothing supposed to be like that. It’s just supposed to be drop a little bit in their garden or something. Look. Look at all the houses you’ve knocked down. Look at all the [pause] No. So in England there was great horror that those nice German people they used to see on holidays had been. Yeah. Anyway. The point is that it should always be remembered that the amount that Bomber Command did for the — well they sunk more capital ships then the navy and as Harris said didn’t even get a thank you [laughs] The army in the war in Europe would go back, instead of calling up the artillery they would call up Harris and say would you drop a few bombs on something or other on the business of it there. And while the, for instance the Americans got — grabbed a lot of praise for stopping the advance the Germans made in December, January sort of business there. Nobody ever mentioned that Bomber Command went and, in the, where there were the roads, two very important roads crossed. That Bomber Command just blasted that crossing out of action and nothing could move through there for another twenty four to forty eight hours. Reinforcements and so forth etcetera. That sort of thing never got talked about. Yeah. Well the thing is that in more recent times they have come around to realising that Bomber Command did a lot of things there. And one of the things that they did was that they bombed the artificial petrol factories there and the German fighters basically from the invasion on, or before the invasion were short of their hundred degree err hundred octane petrol because of the artificial petrol being made from coal — I think it was about eighty seven where they wanted a hundred. So they had to add things to it to make it a hundred and the, from before that the German fighters were not sent up anywhere near as often because they were trying to save petrol and of course the funny thing was that [pause] what is really never said and that is both against the Japanese and the Germans that the code breakers were able to get the messages that had been tracked on the wireless and they could then tell you what was going to, they could then tell you what was going to happen, sort of business of it there, and they never got the accolades. It did sort of business of it there. Because anyway they got the message and Churchill and the head of the army, the head of the navy and the head of the air force and I think about two other leading politicians etcetera there. I’m not too sure. They were the only ones that were allowed to be given the information that was coming through and they knew how it got there. So Portal, as the head of the air force knew that the Germans were short of petrol. Not only for their planes but for their tanks and so forth etcetera there. And he’s wanting Harris to really bomb the artificial factories more, more, more, and Harris who’s been told over the years it’s ball bearings, its gear boxes, there’s something else that was going to win the war was getting this message about it, about this. And in fact that it got to the point when Harris said to Portal, ‘Well if you don’t like my bombing programme I’ll hand my resignation in and you can get somebody who will do it.’ Portal couldn’t say, ‘I’ve got this information.’ You could understand why Harris was irate. So it was a bit tricky for some months there as to a bit of a chill between them because one knew all the information he was right but on the other hand he could understand why the other one was arguing against it there. But oh well it’s like there and I think in the last few years that the Bomber Command has been done there but it will never get the credit because it certainly did the damage and I must admit when you see the damage that Bomber Command did they did it, sort of business. And probably this is the old story of course people say oh they should have stopped it much earlier and you ask people in January ‘45 how long would the war last? You know. January February. Could go on for twelve months or so. And they say well why didn’t they stop doing it etcetera there. They probably could have stopped it a little earlier but it’s very difficult to say. Nobody knew that Hitler was going to commit suicide. If they knew that Hitler would commit suicide. Ok. Sort of business there. But as I say our raid that we got shot down on was completely unnecessary because Hitler was never going to come back to Berchtesgaden but a lot of people thought he was and he did sort of the business of it there. Ah yes I was quite glad as several leading people have said there, said the main character is that, I’m trying to this of his name. He said — he was a farmer in the Wagga area and he and another fella in Wagga further on he said, the war as he saw it was it’s like how you are at home. If there’s a fire or a flood on a neighbours territory you down tools and go over and help him. And he said, that’s what we were doing. Australia. England was in trouble and we were going over to help it sort of business of it there.’ And he [pause] Bill Brill and Arthur. AP: Doubleday. Doubleday. CF: Yeah. Yes. They had amazing bloody careers on there and I read somewhere that neither ever had to bring back an injured crew member. Absolutely amazing the fact that they had flown. Each of them had done sixty trips or something or other. Or more. Just one of those things. Yeah. AP: Well that’s all the questions I have so unless you have anything, anything else to add to the discussion just before we wrap up. CF: I don’t think so. The business of it there. The great trouble was of course after the war here as you probably knew that the fellas who came back from Europe were blackballed a bit. In fact some of them were accused of running away and actually anyway when the war was over the people who were out here were very annoyed when the people who’d been in Europe came back and told them what a real war was about. And as the fella who later became chief of the air force and the actual Governor General — sorry, the Governor of New South Wales he said he was in the mess and he said and somebody was saying, ‘There must have been forty planes, forty guns firing at me. It was terrible.’ And as this fella said, ‘I didn’t say something but I had had four hundred guns shooting at me sort of business of it there. And that was the thing. The reason there and they appointed the wrong bloke as chief of the air force during the war. They got the wrong diagram or something or other. I forget what it was. Anyway. Yeah. So that was a pity that it took ten years after the war I think to sort of get that nexus between those who had been in the war there. The fella I was telling you about Eric Wilde did two tours now he’s a bit of a character but he went to having got the DFC and the DFM and a flight lieutenant and all the rest of it. He was, went to an OUT, up I think to Mildura or somewhere like that and he was classified as not suitable for flying in The Pacific. And he promptly got a discharge and went and got a very nice job with A&A flying planes and he was made for life and that sort of business there. But some other fella came back, he’d been a wing commander over there and the best they could offer him was a flight lieutenant’s job or something or other. Those sorts of thing. Yeah. There was a bit of a nastiness as well as difficulty that fellas who had handled miles of stuff — when they came back here they would say the people who had the bit of power they’d fought in The Pacific and that was, ‘oh we had to do it. We didn’t have brick buildings to go back to at night time.’ And we had to do that and so forth there. One of the interesting periods of that incidentally was the fact that the fella came over as a wing commander at Binbrook and in that period in December, January when the big war was on. The Battle of the Bulge. And the air was there he said Binbrook when the snow came down he looked at the amount of equipment they had and he thought well in The Pacific we had one ‘drome and that was it. One big strip. That’s all we could make. So he told the bloke in charge of the ‘drome that he was to put his all equipment pick out the main one that was used and keep that one strip open. The other two strips don’t worry about them. Keep that main strip open and keep your, all the equipment on that and as he said at one time, or something or other we had seventy planes come and landed there and he said, ‘Where did you put them?’ And he said, ‘We put the one on strips we weren’t using.’ That was it. In other words where the one fella who had only ever been in England always had three strips tried to keep three strips open. Whereas he had been in The Pacific where, you know that was it. A few little things like that appeared here and there. On their, on the business side of it there. Yes. Yes. Of course there were a lot of politics on it. On the business of it there. But it’s there and the point is that’s true about Lofty Payne on there. That was in various magazines over the time and even in The Sun and it’s in the bomber what’s the name there, Bomber Boys. Lancaster man. Yeah. And I asked Lofty. He said, ‘I have never talked to anybody.’ I think he did talk to the fella who wrote the history of 460 Squadron during the war. He was Australian. I think he might have talked to him. But he said all the others — no. I’ve never talked anybody about that. Where they’ve got the information from I don’t know. But none of them ever come or ring me up or talk to me about it sort of business there. Yeah. It’s irritating slightly shall we say. Sort of business. Yeah. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AFraserC151113, PFraserC1501 Title A name given to the resource Interview with Colin Fraser Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource eng Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 02:10:16 audio recording Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Purcell Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-11-13 Description An account of the resource Colin joined the British Army in December 1941 and, eventually, moved to his preferred Royal Air Force in March 1943. He went to Number 2 Initial Training School at RAAF Bradfield Park in Sydney as a navigator, graduating in February 1944. His first flight was in an Anson at Number 2 Air Observers’ School at Mount Gambier. Colin then sailed to Britain. There were some delays as Bomber Command had surplus aircrew. He spent some leave through the Lady Ryder Scheme and went to RAF Padgate. He was sent to RAF Fairoaks and witnessed V-2 flying bombs before returning to RAF Padgate. Colin was sent to RAF West Freugh and did dead reckoning navigation. His next destination was 27 Operational Training Unit in Lichfield. Colin describes how he crewed up. He was introduced to the Gee radio navigation system and Wellingtons. He went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Lindholme and encountered Lancasters and H2S. Colin discusses his impressions of England and his activities. He also outlines how he carried out his role as a navigator. He transferred to 460 Squadron at RAF Binbrook and started operations in March 1945. Colin describes some of their seven operations, which involved damage to the aircraft on a trip to Saarbrücken; being caught in the searchlights at Potsdam and cancellation mid-route of their trip to Bremen. On 25 April 1945, they flew in the second wave to Berchtesgaden and were hit, losing all but one engine. Some of the crew baled out but the pilot crash-landed the aircraft with the rear gunner because of a missing parachute. Colin was taken to Stalag 7A at Moosburg. They were freed on 29 April 1945 by the American 14th Division, although it took some time to return to England and, ultimately, Australia. Colin gives his views on the treatment of Bomber Command and the politics involved. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Australian Air Force Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Australia Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Staffordshire England--Surrey England--Yorkshire Scotland--Wigtownshire Germany Germany--Saarbrücken Germany--Potsdam Germany--Berchtesgaden Germany--Moosburg an der Isar Germany--Ingolstadt Poland Poland--Bąków Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1943 1943-03 1944 1944-02 1945-04-25 1945-04-29 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Sally Coulter Maureen Clarke 27 OTU 460 Squadron aircrew bale out bombing C-47 crash crewing up Gee H2S Heavy Conversion Unit Lancaster military service conditions navigator Operational Training Unit perception of bombing war Portal, Charles (1893-1971) prisoner of war RAAF Bradfield Park RAF Binbrook RAF Fairoaks RAF Lichfield RAF Lindholme RAF West Freugh searchlight shot down Stalag 7A Stalag Luft 7 superstition training V-2 V-weapon Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/289/3444/ALarmerLO151112.2.mp3 df597d935fc6c85c187e6b8070109390 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/289/3444/PLarmerLO1506.2.jpg 0c1bfe4792951328ad48f11c4ba12ce5 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/289/3444/PLarmerLO1507.1.jpg 09c44ccd31bf63ba7cd8f30dcd3cd205 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Larmer, Lawrence Lawrence Larmer Laurie Larmer L O Larmer L Larmer Description An account of the resource 17 items concerning Flying Officer Laurence O'Hara Larmer (1920 - 2023, 430037 Royal Australian Air Force). Lawrence Larmer volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force and trained in Australia and Canada. He flew operations as a pilot flying Halifax with 51 Squadron from RAF Snaith. The collection consists of one oral history interview with him, wartime photographs of aircraft, aircrews and targets, his logbook, route maps, and an official certificate. The collection was donated by Laurence Larmer and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-11-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Larmer, LO Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AP: This interview is for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive is with Laurie Larmer 51 Squadron, Halifax bomber during World War II. Interview taking place at Laurie’s house in Strathmore in Melbourne. My name is Adam Purcell it is the 12th of November 2005, 2015 in fact. Laurie we might start with an easy one, can you tell us something about your story before the war growing up what you did, before you enlisted? LL: I was born in Moody Ponds eh in 1920, September 1923 and eh in 1931 or ’32 an old uncle of my father’s, my father was a painter and paper hanger by trade, during the depression there was obviously not that much work about but eh he managed and in 1931 or ’32 an old uncle by marriage of his died and he owned a hotel in South Yarrow and he left in his will that dad was to be given the lease of this hotel at a certain rental for as long as he wanted. So eh dad without any experience in the hotel business eh we moved into South Yarrow on the corner of Tourag Road and Punt Road and eh he ran this hotel until the old aunty the widow eh realised that the rental had been set in her husband’s will and she couldn’t do anything about it. So she did the next best thing as far as she was concerned, she sold the hotel. My father then moved to another hotel in Prahran and eventually in 1935 he went to a hotel in Ballarat and I went to school, St Patrick’s College Ballarat and I stayed there until I finished my schooling in 1940 eh in 1940 eh I got a job in the Department of Aircraft Production at Fishermans Bend where they were building the Beaufort bomber. Not on technical side, eh in the pay office actually I saw a lot about aeroplanes and what have you and eh in September 1941 I got called up for, I turned eighteen and got called up for a medical examination and eh it was for the army but to avoid going into the army you could volunteer for the navy or the air force. I volunteered for aircrew in the air force and was accepted. Did another medical exam, much stricter medical exam for the air force, aircrew actually, naturally and eh I then went back to work at Fishermans Bend until I got my call up sometime in 1942 and I went into the air force. So that is my pre-service history. AP: Actually I might close that door if we can ‘cause it is noisy outside [pause] still there but it is not as loud. Okay where were you and how old were you when you heard war was declared and what were your thoughts at the time? LL: I was, we were at Ballarat on the 3rd of September 1939 I was not quite eh not quite sixteen. I turned sixteen I turned sixteen a couple of weeks after the war was declared like most people I thought or hoped that the war wouldn’t last long and that I wouldn’t be affected. We were so far away that eh it all seemed a bit remote as far as we were concerned. And I certainly didn’t anticipate at that stage. I knew the talk was that kids of eighteen would be called up and I knew then or I thought then, the war would be finished before eh I got eh called up, but it was not to be. AP: I guess you covered why you joined the air force based on some sort of experience with aeroplanes em why did you move in that direction in some sort of with aircraft. Was there some sort of inspiration that this was going to happen ? LL: No I think that, I didn’t want to go into the army, the army just seemed to walk everywhere eh the eh hand to hand fighting didn’t sort of attract me. The navy didn’t attract me, I think there is a sort of glamorous feeling about the air force at that time. The Battle of Britain had just been fought and won and the eh airmen were eh I don’t know just a little bit different, and they seemed to just attract me a bit more than the other services. AP: Can you tell me something about the enlistment process, were there interviews or tests or how did that all happen? LL: The tests for the army of course was fairly simple, as long as you could stand up and breathe they accepted you for the A army and that was only for home service. The fellows who wanted to go overseas volunteered for the AIF the call-up was actually for the militia because we didn’t have compulsory service for overseas, eh compulsory callout for overseas service. Eh the air force medical was much stricter, I always remember it was done in eh a place in Russell Street on the corner of Little Column Street were where Preston Motors were for many years after the war [cough] and eh we had eye tests which were particularly hard, they tested your heart and your blood pressure and all that sort of business which seemed a bit unusual for young fellows of eighteen, sixteen, eighteen we were at the time. I passed that and there was a delay of course of some months till they caught up. We were then to be trained under the Empire Air Training Scheme. That was sometime before I was called up, and I actually didn’t go into the air force until December 1942 so it was about twelve months after I volunteered for the air force I got my call-up to report to the service. AP: Was there anything the air force gave you to do to sort of maintain the interest. LL: We had to do school, night school, I went to the Essenham High School for two nights a week for about eight or ten weeks eh and we did maths and a few things like that. I can’t recall all the subjects we did, it wasn’t a matter of doing exams or anything. It was just to refresh us from our school days. Did a bit of geometry and angles and things like that, probably preparing us for navigation. AP: Did you find that sort of training useful, did it help you when you got to your initial training school? LL: It must have helped at initial training school. I was pretty good at maths even although I say so myself. This always confused me, I was never able to explain it. Two months, after two months at Summers which was the initial training school eh they came out one day, we were all there, they said ‘The following will train as pilots’ and they read a list of names. ‘The following will train as navigators’ they read a list of names and eh ‘the following will train as wireless operators’. And the balance for gunners. How they picked us I don’t know. I can only assume I must have done very, excellently, excellent at maths and those sort of things. Those picked to train as pilots and navigators stayed at Summers for another month. We did a bit of navigation and meteorology and a few things like that. But I, so I think that going back to school, the night school probably helped to refresh an interest in these subjects and it obviously paid dividends as far as I was concerned. LL: What memories do you have of Summers, of ITS what was a typical day, what things did you do? AP: Eh a lot of it seemed a waste of time we both knew an aircraft, they didn’t talk about an aircraft, they talked about Morse code and that was terribly important, I couldn’t take a word of Morse code couldn’t take a letter, I couldn’t understand it. Then a couple of nights later, the Aldis lamp I couldn’t even see that, it didn’t register at all. There was no way I was ever going to be a wireless operator and it wasn’t because I wasn’t trying, I just could not, couldn’t get the dots from the dashes in the Morse code. We seemed to do a lot of marching and eh, it was probably very necessary teaching us air force rules and regulations and all that sort of business. After a while you would say, ‘when am I going to see some action, when am I going to do something, when am I going to learn something about flying?’ Particularly once you had been charged to be a pilot you wanted to get on with it. Instead of that we did an extra month eh and then after that extra month I was posted to Benellah. AR: Benellah was the– ? LL: Elementary Flying Training School. AR: What happened there apart from elementary flying training? LL: Elementary flying training field, the first month we were there. Obviously the weather or something had held up the courses before and we were dragging the chain a bit. For a month we were known as tarmac terriers. We used to hold the wing of the aircraft because of the strong winds and of course Benellah which was a very open aerodrome no runways or anything it was just big one big huge enormous paddock eh and we’d hold, one fellow on either wing, the wing of the aircraft and we’d hold it till it got round there cause the wind would get under it, the aircraft was such a light aircraft, the Tiger Moth and then we would wait till they took off. You turned your back and you would get splattered with little stones and pebbles and that eh. And there would be fellows waiting down the other end when they landed to wait and hold them there and take them round. It was quite an interesting process, we had for half a day and the other half day we did, school, eh lectures on gunnery and eh basic flying without getting in an aircraft eh and navigation and a few things like that, meteorology particularly which was good. That was interesting even although we weren’t flying we saw these aircraft and we knew only in another couple of weeks and we would be there, then we started. We were allotted to an instructor, Jim Pope was my instructor, he was a sergeant a lovely bloke eh we then continued our lectures for half a day and fly for the other half. The next day it would be alternative, you know, flying and then lectures. It was good, I suppose after about eh it’s still sharp in my log book there, must have been twelve or fourteen hours or something went over to Winton one day which was a satellite ‘drome a bit further up the highway with another instructor. After we did one or two circuits and landings he said, ‘take me over there, pull up over there.’ Pointed to a spot where he wanted to go, he said, ‘now’, he said, ‘you are on your own, do three circuits and bumps and then come and pick me up’. I thought ‘goodness gracious me, here I am on my own’, you know, I was ready to go solo. And eh I wasn’t nervous it was just the excitement of it and you know you were concentrating on remembering all the things he told you to do and all that sort of business. I did three circuits and landings and went and picked him up and he said ‘that was good, alright son.’ Then we did eh, I don’t know whether we went back to Benellah, we stayed there, that’s right and he put me out of the aircraft and took another student and eh that was, that was. Then I went back to the normal side of the pad. The next day we done a bit further advanced flying eh cross country, and a few things like that. We were there altogether three months. Normally it would just have been two months, two months flying, but we did three months actually. AP: What did you think of the Tiger Moth? LL: Lovely, they were a breeze now you look back on it, in those days it was a pretty big aircraft, here you were sitting in the back seat. There were two seats, one in front, the pilot sat in front there, two little cockpits. Very basic, they had a control column it was just a stick that stuck up, a throttle which you pushed here, it was very, very basic. But we were told nobody had ever been killed in a Tiger Moth, whether that was true or not I don’t know that was, that was and it was good. I remember one day we had to do a cross country, this was sort of a bit scary I thought anyway. A mate of mine we had to go from Benellah to Ochuga [?], Ochuga [?] to Aubrey then from Aubrey back to Benellah. A mate of mine came up to me Tommy Richards he used to live at Clairbourne [?] and he said, ‘you doing this cross country this afternoon?’ I said ‘yes’. He said ‘so am I’ he said, ‘stick with me I know the road.’ He knew the way and then we flew back along the river and then down the highway you weren’t supposed to do that, you were supposed to go that way and the river might have gone down here but we had no problem. Before we left we had the whole thing planned out, had a little map on our knee and had it all. We got full marks for our navigation but it was only that Tommy had lived at eh, where did he, Clairbourne. AP: You were talking while they were about no one had crashed a Tiger Moth. Did you encounter any accidents or high jinks or near misses or things, did you know- ? LL: No, not while I was there, no, no. The biggest problem I reckon and they warned us about it was low flying, we used to [unclear] go down low and then we will frighten this farmer down there. There might have been electric wires going across you know. And we had hanging down the wheels, they weren’t retractable wheels on a, on a eh Tiger Moth. We did a bit of low flying everybody did but eh no I didn’t go as low as some of the blokes did you know. They used to try and be real smart and fly at ground level almost but nobody while I was there. AP: You go from FTS, next step is a service Flying Training School? LL: Service Flying Training School we got some leave and got a telegram to report to the RTR expenses troop and eh the smarties knew where we were going. There is always a smarty in every crowd all lined up they call and he’s here and he’s there and we are going to Sydney that means we are going overseas. ‘How do you know we are going to Sydney? That’s where the bloody train’s going.’ ‘Oh right oh we are going to Sydney’, and we went to Sydney. We went to Barfield Park and eh there they kitted us out and eh ‘Don’t think because you are here that you are going overseas, you could be going to Queensland.’ Somebody said, ‘well that’s strange what did they give us Australia badges to put on there’ and then they said, ‘you have got these Australia badges but don’t put them on until you get overseas.’ That’s in case we are going overseas, I don’t know. Well we were there about three or four weeks I think eh and we did nothing and that was pretty awful. And what they do, they were waiting for a ship eh [cough] and eventually they got us all lined up one day with the kit bags we put on a train and we went to Brisbane and put on this ship there the Metsonia and eh [cough] we sailed out down the Brisbane River and out we just got outside the harbour and looking over the side we could see a submarine. ‘Goodness me I hope it is one of ours’ or was one of the Americans ‘cause we didn’t have any submarines at the time and eh we headed, they didn’t tell us where we were going. We had a fair idea it was Canada. We went to New Zealand first and picked up some New Zealanders and then went up the west coast of South America and eh North America and landed at San Francisco. At San Francisco they put us on a train, we went to Vancouver eh got off the train there and put us on one of the Canadian Pacific Railway trains. We went to a place called Edmonton in Alberta. Eh that was quite strange because we didn’t know exactly what was going to happen from there on in. There was a big heap of us there and after three or four or five days I suppose eh we got another posting. I was posted to a place called Dauphin which was in Manitoba which didn’t mean much to me at that stage. Manitoba is actually the central province of the whole of Canada. Dauphin was about ah, suppose it would be about a hundred and fifty mile north west of Winnipeg which was the capital. Then the train went through, there was nothing in Dauphin apart from the air force base and the little village really [cough]. And so when we got there eh we found that we were going to fly Cessna Cranes which was a twin-engine, little twin-engine aircraft, lovely aircraft to fly, lovely and eh that was where eh he made the point there before in crashes in Tiger Moths. I had an Australian instructor, there were a couple of Australian Instructors on the station the rest of them were Canadians. The Canadians were lovely people. The officers were friendly, they didn’t muck around with formalities and that, it was real good. Eh this Australian instructor I had was a Sergeant Lawley, Lawla, Lawley I have got it down, there we are. He didn’t want to be an instructor he wanted to get at the overseas and he was a most unfriendly fellow, but you know I was coping with him and eh one morning we got up and he and another trainee pilot had been killed night flying. It could have been me and eh and that was about the first experience I’d had with anybody sort of eh death, you know. I was nineteen years of age and you were not used to it. Anyway they gave them a full military funeral eh which was good. Then I got a Canadian instructor and then it was real great after that it was wonderful and eh I sailed through the rest of the course. And I graduated in September ’43 as a sergeant pilot, I reckon we were pretty good. AP: So then comes a boat across to the UK presumably. LL: Yeah, we got a bit of liberty and went down to New York and Washington which we could ill afford and eh we went to Halifax in Nova Scotia and caught a, and got a boat to, I can’t remember the name of the ship we got to England we went to England in [loud background noise]. AP: We might just wait for a moment I think [laughs]. AP: So we were talking about a boat across to UK, you were just about to embark at Halifax. LL: The interesting part about that trip was the ship that we went on, I think it might have been the Aquitania. It was a big ship, a lot of Americans on board [doorbell interruption; laugh]. AP: Anyway let’s get back to the boat [laugh] the Aquitania. LL: And eh there were a lot of Americans from the mid-west not only had they not been on a ship, they never even seen the ocean. A lot of those kids, they were sick all over, oh! it was awful and what we did because we were too fast for a convoy we went on our own. But they zig-zagged all day, that way and then that way all during the daylight hours eh because it takes a certain time for a submarine to line them up to fire a torpedo at them and that’s what. That didn’t worry us but it was most unusual and when it got dark we went whoosh straight ahead. And eh we lived in pretty awful conditions, it was wartime we had hammocks and had a long table that came out from the deck, from the side of the ship and if there were six blokes at the table, three either side you had to find your accommodation so one bloke would sleep on this bench there another back there. Two blokes one would sleep on the table and the other three would be in hammocks above. That’s how, and we couldn’t have showers, we couldn’t shave properly it was pretty awful. We landed at Liverpool and eh went eh got on a train, went to Brighton. We got off the train at Brighton and there was a fellow there, he was a Wing Commander Andy Swan, he was a Scotchman in the RAAF. He had apparently been in the Black Watch for many years before the war done his time, retired, came out to Australia to live and the war started. He applied for a commission and got a commission, they sent him back to England, he was ground staff what we call a shiny bummer ISD interested in special duties. He was a wing commander and he was a dreadful man, dreadful fellow. He saw us, we had been five days on the ship, unshaven, unwashed and feeling very, very lousy and he berated us on the Brighton railway station, platform. Eh he had us smartened up within no time at all, we were going to do this and what a disgrace we were. Anyway the following morning eh, no two mornings later we had a general parade in the hall and there was the padre there, the Church of England padre a fellow called Dave Bear, you might have heard the blokes talk about Dave Bear he was a marvellous fellow he put everybody at ease you know. He said ‘there are three religions in the services, RC’s odds and sods and the other buggers’, he says ‘I am one of the other buggers, if you want anything just come and see me.’ He had a sign above his shop, his store ‘abandon rank all ye who enter here’. And that is what he was like. He used to give advice on a charge or anything like that or help you to write letters home or whatever you wanted. He was a great bloke, didn’t make any difference what you were he was just a wonderful fellow. He virtually did sort of a lot, undid a lot of the evil things this Andy Swan had done. They tell a story of the fellow who finished his tour and is on his way back home and Brighton is what they called 11 PDRC, Personnel Dispatch and Reception Centre. So any Australian airmen who went into England went through Brighton and when they were going home they went through Brighton and they knew and this fellow had taken the stiffening out of his cap which we all used to do, made us look a bit racy. Swan pulled him up in the street one day and said, ‘where is the stiffening in your cap?’ ‘I lost it over fucking Berlin’ whoops and kept walking. And then after we had been there for a while I got posted. I think the first posting was to a place called Fairoaks which was just near Windsor Castle, pre-war it would have been the King’s private aerodrome. This was just a way of sort of getting us back into flying again and there we flew Tiger Moths for a while. Eh back to Brighton then went off and done a PT course and then we went off and did some more flying eventually I had been up to Scotland, I was flying up there at a place called Banff eh BANFF [spelt out] was out from Aberdeen, from Inverness, out from Inverness the Scotch people were lovely eh and eh got a posting then to eh Lichfield which was 27 Operational Training Unit. The OTU was where you formed a crew. Lichfield was an Australian OTU in that all the aircrew were Australian so we got I got an Australian crew. It was an interesting thing we had the pilots in the centre, the navigators in one corner and the wireless operators and the bomb aimers and the, and the gunners in another corner [cough]. They said, ‘alright, pilots you have got to go and pick a crew.’ It was as simple as that, I didn’t know anybody who was a navigator but a bloke came up to me, ‘you don’t look a bad sort of a bloke’, and he was a wireless op, he was a bomb aimer, a fellow named Bill Hudson and eh Bill had been a used car salesman in Sydney before the war. Eh he had all the fun in the world and he said ‘stay here’, he said, ‘I will get you a navigator, I know a bloke who is a good navigator.’ He didn’t of course, he went off and he brought back a bloke and he introduced him ‘This is Ron Harmes, so wait there,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you a couple of gunners’ so he went off and got a couple of gunners. I said to him, ‘I am supposed to be picking this crew.’ And he said ‘I got it for you skipper don’t worry about it’. Then he got a eh, he got a wireless operator so eh, here we were we had a crew and I had nothing to do with it, we turned out to be good mates, we all got on very well together. A couple of them were different they eh, but we all sort of mixed in and did our job and eh. And eh there we flew Wellingtons, they were a big, heavy lumbering aircraft they really were. They had been used as a bomber during the early stages of the war but they couldn’t carry enough bombs and eh they couldn’t carry great distances, like a lot of the British aircraft the Whitleys and those sort of aircraft, eh Hampdens, twin-engined aircraft and that eh, just hopeless and the Germans had stole the marks on them because the Germans before the war, once the Nazis got in control they said, ‘who cares about the Geneva Convention, we will build the type of aircraft we need to win a war.’ The British they didn’t, they kept, the wing span couldn’t be more than a hundred feet. That is why when they eventually got the Lancasters and the Halifaxes and wing spans more than a hundred feet they couldn’t fit in the hangers because they had built the hangers to take aircraft with wing span of less than a hundred feet. The Germans it didn’t worry them they had aircraft with wing spans greater than a hundred feet. It was a silly situation but that was the way they operated eh and eh we flew these Wellingtons for a while and we were lucky and Bill was a good bomb aimer and we got highly commended for our bombing activities at training. Then eh I don’t know how many hours we did there, it’s in the log book there, we were posted to a place called Riccall eh, which was a Heavy Conversion Unit. I had been flying Tiger Moths and Cessna Cranes, and Ansons and Oxfords and what have you, you know. Then on the Wellington then boom, four-engined aircraft, it was like eh, like riding a bike and then getting driving train or something it was just sort of an enormous thing really. There we picked up our flight engineer. There weren’t any Australian engineers so we got an Englishman he was the only Englishman in the crew, good bloke too. I don’t know how many hours we did there but that is all in the log book. Then one day they said ‘right Larmer, your crew is posted to a squadron.’ ‘Oops, yeah okay, when do we go?’ ‘This afternoon’ [laugh]. So there we were on a train and eh they met us with a truck. We thought, by this time I got commission and eh they picked us up in a truck. Another crew arrived at the same time as us, this was an English crew. It was an English squadron but this other crew was an English crew, I only had the one Englishman and I, we were the only Australian crew on 51 Squadron at the time. There had been some there before and eh, we went to the orderly room, they told us where we were billeted told me what time dinner was in the officers’ mess and all that sort of business and report to the, you are in B Flight report to B Flight Office at nine o’ clock tomorrow morning. That I did and eh the squadron leader what was his name, Lodge he had nothing doing today. He introduced me to the other blokes, other pilots that were there. The bomb aimers had reported to the bombing leader and the navs to the nav leader and what have you eh, and then he called me back and said I will get you an air test, eleven o’clock. I got the crew and we done and air test at eleven o’clock. I don’t know what the point of it was, they had just done some repairs to an aircraft. Anyway we just hung around then for a couple of days. They said if you are wanted for flying, for an operation your name will be on a list in the officers’ mess. That was up at five o’clock at night you know, a couple of, we had been there about three days, and I got the list five o’clock you know. The following crews will report to the briefing room at 0600 hours tomorrow and my name was there. I went down to the officers’ mess and they said, ‘yes we’ve seen it’, so they knew, all the crew knew. And that was it were there, ready for our first operation which was a bit strange. Nobody took any notice of you, we were just another crew there and nobody sort of put their arm on your shoulder and said ‘you will be right son.’ Just eh, you were briefed, you had a meal and boom, off you go. They said, ‘you go and get dressed, you go and do this, you go and pick up your parachute, you do this, there will be a truck will take you out to your aircraft which was at your dispersal point.’ And that was it. Then eh we did another daylight and then a couple of nights later, a couple of nights later there was a list up eh one morning that there was a briefing at two o’clock and I was flying second pilot with an experienced crew. My crew weren’t going on it, just me and this other pilot went with another crew and he was in C Flight, I was in B Flight. That was a bit strange I had nothing to do except sit next to the pilot and you saw everything that was going on, the rest of the time when you were flying you were doing something, you were busy, you didn’t have time to be worried or frightened or anything like that. I don’t think I was frightened actually on this particular night. But you could see all the anti-aircraft shells exploding all around you and what have you. We got back and we were just taxiing around to a dispersal and we heard this other aircraft calling to eh traffic control V-Victor or J-Johnnie or whatever it was. ‘V-Victor overshoot.’ They had come in a bit high and they were overshooting, the second pilot, the other bloke that had arrived the same time as me, he was still a sergeant. The bomb aimer used to sit next to the pilot on take-off and landing and eh the pilot would open the throttles but then he would have to control, take the control column. So the second dickie used to hold the, hold the throttles open, apparently this bloke didn’t . He’d opened, the pilot had opened it, got onto the thing, the throttles came back, they only got, anyway it crashed, they were all killed, eight of them it was. Nothing was mentioned at debriefing, and the next day at lunch time I said ‘did somebody, what are the funeral arrangements.’ He said ‘what?’ I said, ‘the funeral arrangements for those blokes that were killed.’ He said, ‘there is no funeral, there is a war on son.’ Stone me you know these blokes that were killed in our back yard just across the road from the end of the runway. They buried them, slight, you know quickly eh but they didn’t get any military funeral or what have you it was just ‘there is a war on son.’ And that was it. AP: Living conditions at Snaith, how, how and where did you live? LL: Well we were billeted away from the station, of course everybody had a bike eh we were somewhere down near the local village and [cough] just had living accommodation there and as an officer and aircrew we got eh sheets which normally you didn’t get in the air force. Eh in the mess we got, we could get fresh milk and eh before and after a raid we got a meal of bacon and eggs which were luxuries in wartime England. The rest of the time eh the billets were pretty ordinary but you know you got used to them. I could never front breakfast, on one station we were on, this was just after the war we were at Leconfield and one morning for breakfast they’d have kippered herrings and the next morning would be baked beans on toast, they were, I could cop the baked beans on toast but not the kippered herrings, they were. We used to have to wait for the NAAFI which was the restaurant or café opened about eh half past ten or something to get some breakfast [cough] but basically the living conditions were pretty crude eh but that was wartime England you know, they, they couldn’t produce their own food, it all had to be imported and there were much more important things to eh to bring in to the country. But you know we survived, we complained about it mainly because we were eh used to Australian food and Australian conditions. But basically it was pretty good. AP: Just sort of routing of that for a bit, what were your first impressions of war time England, what did you think, presumably this was the first time you were overseas? LL: Well eh it was quite a shock, it took a bit of getting used to. When we got there in the November eh it was eh they had two hours daylight saving. Naturally you know that was to eh, you couldn’t have a shower, in Brighton the Australian Air Force had taken over two hotels, the Grand and the Metropole eh and they were eh big, real big hotels. They had stopped the lifts working, if you were on the third floor you walked up and down to the [cough] you could have a bath but the water could only ever come to a certain level. There were all those sort of restrictions you ah you put up with really. You got used to them I suppose after a while mainly because you saw the English and eh they were, they were probably worse off than we were, you know they were on rations and we didn’t have, when we used to go on leave, they used to give us the ration to give to the people we were staying with or wherever we were staying would want ration tickets. But eh you know you couldn’t drive a car, there was no petrol available for private, well there was for doctors and things like that but basically there were all those sort of restrictions. There were blackouts and we had a pretty miserable sort of an existence we found but you got used to it after, well a couple of years I was there, just over two years, just on two years, it was you got used to these sort of things. We were pretty well received the Australians they liked us, they thought we were colonials still but I think some of them still do probably. But eh we went, we were well received on the squadron eh mainly because they didn’t know how to take us. They were eh, we didn’t salute officers, we’d salute wing commanders and above but eh you were supposed to salute squadron leaders and you were supposed to salute flight lieutenants. If you were acting as a flight commander something like that, those sort of thing you know used to rile us. We used to go out of our way [emphasis] not to and that really used to get them going. They didn’t like us at all, and they didn’t know how to discipline us really, they were frightened, and we used to tell them we were subject to RAAF control from and they had headquarters in London and they would have to go through them, but they didn’t know really [cough]. But we survived I suppose. AP: What sort of things did you do to relax if you weren’t on operations. Where did you go on leave, even not on leave, just when not on duty? LL: Eh, not much at all, you used to hang around. When we were on the squadron and eh you see that there was nothing going today or nothing going tomorrow day, tomorrow eh you’d go to the pub in the village or you would stay in the mess. They might have a few drinks in the mess eh but eh basically we didn’t do anything with, we didn’t play tennis or cricket or any of those sort of things. I don’t know how we kept fit but we did [laugh]. AP: What sort of things happened in the officers’ mess, what did it look like first of all? What went on there? LL: Eh very sort of strict, you didn’t sit at this table because this was where the senior officers sat and eh you as a new bloke could sit at that table up there you know. A couple of nights after I had been there a couple of days after I had been there I sat at the wrong table and they told me you know. I couldn’t say that it made any difference where you were sitting but that was what the sort of thing. This is where the senior officers sit. Not you know, when I got on the Squadron I was a pilot officer you know I hadn’t even graduated up to flying officer eh and that sort of thing sort of got to you a bit. I, I went into the flight office one morning, used to go in there, the flight commander you know, used to give him a sort of half salute. He was pretty good Colin Lodge, Plug Lodge they used to call him and eh he was on leave. I had been having a drink in the mess with this fellow I can’t think of his name now, eh he was a flight lieutenant and I had been drinking with him in the mess having a couple of beers with him. Eh I went to the flight office the next morning, I walked in and he is sitting behind the desk and eh I said ‘hello.’ And he said ‘you haven’t saluted.’ I said ‘I don’t have to salute flight lieutenants.’ And he said ‘I am acting squadron leader.’ I said ‘well you haven’t got the bloody rank, not showing it.’ Stupid stubborn you know, he said ‘I am acting flight commander and you are supposed to salute me.’ Oh I probably was supposed to salute the acting flight commander but I, as I say I had been having a drink with him the night before. And he said ‘go outside and come in again and salute me.’ I said ‘right ho.’ I went outside and went down the mess and had a shower. He never spoke to me again, never spoke to me again. Just unbelievable you know, that was the sort of thing. Eh we had one, this Bill Hudson I was telling you about the bomb aimer, we came back from a raid one day eh and after when you came back you dumped all your gear and what have you and you go up for a debriefing and you sit around the table, the intelligence officer sits opposite eh while you are waiting to go in, other crews that are there before you there had been a bit of a hold up and eh on our squadron the padres would give you either eh you could have a cocoa, or a tea, a coffee or something like that and eh an over proof rum. Well I had only one over proof rum, it nearly blew my bloody head off that was all. On this particular day, the eh two gunners didn’t drink and the wireless operator didn’t drink so Bill had two or three over proof rums. And we get in there and he was always a bit of a yapper our Bill eh there was a very attractive WAAF intelligence officer she was a flight lieutenant or a flight officer as they call them eh and eh she spoke to me first and how did we find it over the target area and did we this and that, one thing and another you know [cough] eh and then she said to the navigator and what about, did you have any trouble with your Gee box various [unclear] so and so. And then Bill he was looking at her sort of making a play for her, he had no hope and she didn’t wake up you know. He started to tell her about over the target area. Now there was flak coming up and eh and then the fighters and then the anti, the searchlights and he was wondering how he was able to do it. He was telling her this terrible bloody story and we were just about killing ourselves laughing you know and all of a sudden she woke up. It was a daylight raid and Bill had searchlights coming into his eyes you know. She didn’t think it was funny at all, I said, ‘don’t take any notice of him you know, just write down that we dropped our bombs and we got good photos of the target we reckon and so and so’. No. She wanted to put him on a charge eh for misleading and all that sort of business. Anyway I, I talked to her for some considerable time to try and break her down and I thought I had got, anyway I got to the flight office the next morning and the eh Squadron Leader Lodge said ‘what was this with your bomb aimer last night?’ [emphasis] I said, ‘oh no.’ she had reported it, he she demanded he put him on a charge. I had great difficulty restraining him from putting Bill on a charge and eh that gave us a much worse reputation than we deserved, you know. We were a good crew and we were doing a good job but eh just Bill had, had two over proof rums gone to his ruddy head. I will tell you one story it didn’t happen on our squadron eh but we heard about it in York or one of the local pubs or something. Eh after briefing and the mail all that sort of business, and you got out of the aircraft and had about quarter of an hour, twenty minutes and waited around, you put your stuff in the aircraft and the blokes would have a smoke, had a smoke. Just stand around and sort of relax waiting for time as I say, better get ready and so I can get out there, you know what time you had to take off. This wireless operator went up and eh and he said eh to the pilot, ‘I am not going skip.’ He said, ‘what do you mean you are not going?’ He said ‘I am not going’ he said. ‘You’ve got to go.’ He said, ‘I am not going.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I am not going.’ That’s all he said, so they sent for the flight commander and the flight commander sent one of the ground staff blokes off on a bike to get the -. He arrived out in his car and ‘you’ve got to go.’ ‘I’m not going.’ And that’s all he said, he wouldn’t give him any explanation or reason or anything you know, ‘I am just not going.’ Eh so they said, ‘you will be charged with desertion.’ ‘I am not going’, he said. They charged him with desertion, they locked him up eh they got a relief wireless operator and they were shot down and all killed. Eh he was court martialled and he got ten years in a military prison. I understand that he got out eh shortly after the war finished and they gave them an amnesty those blokes [cough]. But apparently from what I heard, what I subsequently found out later on eh that was all he ever said, ‘I am not going.’ He didn’t tell them why or, or that he wasn’t. He’d been, it wasn’t his first flight, he’d been before, eh two or three times before eh he just said he wasn’t going. Now I don’t know if he had a premonition or what but eh he survived and the other blokes didn’t and that was it. There is not much more I can tell you Adam, I think. AP: There is one other thing, well there is two questions in particular that I have for you but one I have find out is, on your wings here is a little Guinness pin. LL: [laugh] AP: I am guessing there is a story behind that. LL: On one leave we went to, went to Ireland eh and eh and one day there was a tour of the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. We had to go over in civvies but they knew we were airmen because we had our air force trousers and open neck shirt, blue shirt and sports coat which the army, air force store had provided for us. That was the only way we could get into, get into eh Southern Ireland because it was a neutral country. Eh this fellow said ‘you want to, give you this you know, Guinness badge, it will bring you luck, wear it for luck.’ I used to wear it on my battle dress, I just pinned it onto the eh onto the wing after I got rid of the battle dress at the end of the war, that was all. AP: Been there ever since. LL: [laugh] AP: Okay there is another question that I want to ask as well. Was there any superstitions or [? voodoos] on 51 Squadron, rituals that people would do that you were aware of, for luck I suppose? LL: No one thing they did eh they did, we had to do thirty flights, thirty trips for a, for a, for a tour eh and anybody that was doing their thirtieth trip, you knew but you would never say to the bloke ‘is this your last trip?’ I said it to one bloke ‘is this your last trip?’ [emphasis] He very near hit me. That was a very bad sign, no I don’t think there was, don’t think there was anything like that eh, not that I can recall, no. AP: Okay. Final question and probably the most important em, how in your view is Bomber Command remembered, what sort of legacy? LL: We fellows in Bomber Command eh [pause] during the war you didn’t sort of think much about how good you were and all that sort of business but when you saw the figures at the end of the war of the casualties and eh this is a classic example. The casualties there, just the Australian casualties that is eh when you saw you realised they had a loss rate of something round about forty per cent. It was a bit higher for the English, forty two or three per cent you know it was pretty awful and eh Harris was treated very shabbily by the British Government at the end of the war. Harris apparently, not apparently actually he was a brilliant organiser absolutely brilliant but apparently he was a dreadful bastard he used to argue eh and he would refuse. They would tell him a target say on Monday, they would have to get a couple of days in advance obviously to plan up and how many aircraft they would need, which way they would go and all that sort of business. Eh and he would tell them he wouldn’t go, that ‘we are not going to that place.’ You know. Just refused to, he would argue with Churchill, he would argue with the Air Board, he would argue with the Air Ministry eh he was one of those sort of fellows but he was always right. They wouldn’t admit it of course but eh ‘we are not going there, you want us to go there because this suits you after the war you know, so we are not going there, but we will go there.’ They said ‘no we don’t want to go there till next week.’ ‘Well we are going this week.’ You know, and he would plan it and that would be a very successful raid and it would have done the job you know eh. And at the end of the war all the chiefs of all the commands like Fighter Command, Coastal Command and Training Command were all made Marshals of the Royal Air Force, Harris wasn’t they left his as an air chief marshal. He resigned his commission immediately got on an aeroplane and went, took his wife and daughter to South America, to eh South Africa eh I don’t know whether he ever went back. Somebody told me once that he thought years afterwards that they eh had relented and made him a marshal of the Royal Air Force. I am not sure about that I never heard anything about that. Eh and eh that without any publicity the fact that these three blokes got, or four blokes got air, or marshals of the Royal Air Force which was equivalent of a field marshal eh and Harris didn’t. We all felt a bit, ‘is that what they think of us, is that really?’ We had the idea that we won the war, Harris gave us this impression. We are doing this as opposed to the American Eighth Air Force eh, and they were sort of a bit at loggerheads, they didn’t do any daylight, eh night time flights they only did daylights the eh Americans and we did daylights and nights you know, whatever it didn’t make any difference. We went out over the North Sea and fly for hours over the North Sea without any landmarks eh to check your position eh. We reckoned that Bomber Command had done an enormous job and they had, there was no two ways about it eh and a lot of us sort of felt well, the bulk of Bomber Command felt let down, eh really. Fighter Command got a lot of publicity early in the war Churchill went on with this ‘never was so much owed by so much, many to so few’. Eh but their work finished in September ’41. And they didn’t really do anything further until eh the invasion. They went over with, a bit of protective force for the invasion forces but basically they didn’t do anything. Eh we never had any fighter escort, never, the Americans had fighter escorts they used to take them over there and then meet them on the way back but we never had any. So as far as Fighter Command was concerned they did nothing [emphasis] for three years during the war. Bomber Command flew in operational flights from the day the war started or the day after the war started until the day after the war finished, really. So that was a bit of a let-down, really. And then eh persevered it took seventy odd, sixty, seventy years before we got a little clasp that said Bomber Command, the Bomber Command Association like the old boys of Bomber Command like their association in England, they tried for years to eh get some recognition and they eh tried to get us awarded the eh congress, eh the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal, CGM, eh they eventually knocked it back completely to ‘no’, said logistically couldn’t be done and all this sort of business and they went on and had a million reasons for it. And then they said well eh ‘we’ve got these ribbons.’ But no what does that show eh I’ve got a ribbon France, Germany Star which shows that I was in operations, but doesn’t show that I was in Bomber Command. So they said ‘we will give you a Bomber Command [doorbell interruption]. That’s typical. LL: I rang our honours and awards section in Canberra week after week after week and I’ve given up. ‘Well’ they said, ‘your application is on hold.’ And I said, ‘why would it be on hold?’ ‘I don’t know why Mr Larmer but it is on hold.’ I said, ‘well get it bloody off hold.’ Eventually she then came back a couple of days later, ‘no, no it’s ok.’ I said ‘there couldn’t have been any bloody doubt about it, you know. You have got the exact figures and you have a copy of my log book’ and all that sort of business. ‘We are sorry about that Mr Larmer.’ ‘Now’, I said, ‘now how long is it going to take?’ ‘Oh it shouldn’t be very long now.’ Anyway eh I’d been waiting, oh, from the time I applied it was seventeen months and a mate of mine said, ‘why don’t you get onto John Find?’ I said, ‘no, no John Find couldn’t do anything.’ Anyway the next thing I know I get a ring from John Find’s producer. And eh I said ‘who told you?’ ‘Mr Bill Burke a friend of mine’. I said ‘Oh no, I said I told him I wasn’t, didn’t want to.’ And she said, ‘John would like to speak to you about it.’ Anyway he spoke to me and he sort of eh said, ‘are you serious, you know you have been waiting seventeen months?’ and I said, ‘yeah’ I said, ‘it doesn’t have to be fairly long, because I am ninety years of age, if it don’t get it soon it doesn’t matter.’ And he said, ‘no we’ll get it.’ And eh anyway he rang me back the next day, she rang me back the next day she said ‘John wants to speak to you again.’ He said ‘I have been speaking to the assistant minister eh, and eh he said within six weeks.’ And I said ‘ I don’t know what you drink in that place, but if you believe him, you know.’ I said ‘they won’t have it in six weeks.’ Two weeks later I got it, we got it you know. He rang me and said ‘Oh Mr Larmer your clasp for your Bomber Command clasp is coming through, you know it will be sent it down to you in the next week.’ Two weeks it took and I spoke to John Find afterwards to thank him and I said ‘I, I can’t understand it you know’. He said ‘Laurie they are frightened of us, we can give them bad publicity’, he said, ‘they don’t want any.’ He said, ‘we could have made them look very foolish.’ He said ‘and that is what we were prepared to do’, he said, ‘and they know it’, he said, ‘it is an awful way to exist.’ He said, ‘you couldn’t embarrass them but we could.’ Isn’t that terrible really and that was the thing. I wasn’t so much the fault of the people here in Australia, the people in England hadn’t done anything about it. It took an assistant minister here to get onto somebody in England to get them. They only had to put a fifty or sixty or a hundred of them in a box you know, it wouldn’t be as big as that, to get them out here and that’s what happened. So you know that’s what happened. Overall eh we reckon that Bomber Command and probably we are a bit unreasonable but I reckon we got a bit of a, you know rough end of the pineapple. Because eh towards the end of the war all the operations in the last two years of the war all the operations with Bomber Command all the news on the, on the BBC was six hundred of their aircraft went to Nuremburg last night, ten of our aircraft are missing. That was another thing, ten of our aircraft, but it was seventy men. Even meant you know you go on a raid and say three out of their aircraft went to Dortmund and they did bomb the railway yards and whatever they might have done you know. Five of their aircraft are missing that was thirty five men and that, that sort of eh took a bit of getting used to. Eh I could see their point from a psychological point of view everything was done to protect the morale, or build up the morale of the British people eh but eh it gave you the impression that aeroplanes were more important than blokes [ironic laugh] probably in war time they had plenty of blokes but were short of aircraft you know. There you are, alright you have heard all of that? AP: I think we have heard all of that. Thank you very much it has been a pleasure for the last couple of hours. LL: [laugh] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ALarmerLO151112 Title A name given to the resource Interview with Lawrence Larmer Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource eng Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:09:51 audio recording Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Purcell Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-11-12 Description An account of the resource Lawrence Larmer was born in Australia in 1920. On leaving school he went to work on the Beaufort aircraft in the Department of Aircraft Production. He was called up in 1942 and volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force to avoid the army. His initial training on Tiger Moth aircraft was followed by further training in Manitoba, Canada. He graduated as a sergeant pilot in 1943 and was posted to Great Britain. He describes conditions at 11 Personnel Dispatch and Reception Centre, Brighton. At 27 Operational Training Unit, RAF Lichfield, he crewed up before posting to 1658 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Riccall. His first operational posting was to 51 Squadron at RAF Snaith. Lawrence Larmer discusses in detail the process of crewing up, of relations between personnel on the station, officers’ living conditions, and a case of desertion. He also discusses his views on Sir Arthur Harris and recounts his experience of applying for the Bomber Command clasp. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hugh Donnelly Mal Prissick Maureen Clarke Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Australian Air Force Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940 1941 1942 1943 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Australia Canada Great Britain England--Brighton England--Staffordshire England--Yorkshire Manitoba United States England--Sussex Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review 1658 HCU 27 OTU 51 Squadron aircrew bomb aimer bombing coping mechanism crewing up debriefing ground personnel Halifax Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984) Heavy Conversion Unit intelligence officer mess military discipline military living conditions Operational Training Unit padre pilot RAF Lichfield RAF Riccall RAF Snaith superstition Tiger Moth training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/290/3445/PLeicesterD1601.jpg c2820bc7a7d2d3b32e67a8ee5335b9ba https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/290/3445/ALeicesterD160501.mp3 d86dafc77cb44e9b7caaf069d8f6a1a2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Leicester, David David Leicester D Leicester Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with David Leicester DFC (1923 - 2021), and his log book. He flew operations as a pilot with 35, 158 and 640 Squadrons. The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Leicester and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-05-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Leicester, D Access Rights Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies. Permission granted for commercial projects Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AP: And I think we’re working. Yes. We are. So this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with David Leicester. He was a Halifax pilot with 158 and 640 Squadrons and a Lancaster pilot with 35 Squadron Pathfinders. The interview is taking place in North Plympton in Adelaide. My name’s Adam Purcell. It is the 1st of May 2016. So, David let’s start from the beginning. Can you tell me something of your early life? What you were doing before the war and how you came to join the air force. DL: Well, really before the war I was at school when the war broke out in 1939. And I left. In 1940 I was at High School and was very interested in the, mainly in the Battle of Britain and what their pilots were doing. And I sort of made up my mind that if I happened to be in the war I would like to be a fighter pilot. My father was in the AIF during World War One so I was very keen to get into something. I left school at the end of 1940 and started work as an office boy in the rag trade, in a manufacturer’s agents office here in Adelaide until I was called up in August 1941 as — in number 19 Course EATS at the age of eighteen. Yeah. AP: Did you, sorry did you say you had any prior military service up till that point? DL: No. AP: No. DL: No. AP: So you weren’t in the, in the army or the — DL: No. AP: CMF or anything. DL: No. AP: Ok. DL: We did, prior to be called up, after we’d applied to join the air force we would, I was, I and others were too young at seventeen. We had to wait until we were eighteen before we were called up. So we did, we were put on the Air Force Reserve and while we were waiting to be called up we did a lot of the pre-entry work. Learning Morse Code, learning air force regulations and that sort of thing. So, by the time we actually got called up and went to the Initial Training School we had done a bit of pre, pre-interest work in the air force. AP: Why did you choose the air force? DL: Well, as I said I was interested in what the Battle of Britain boys were doing and I thought, oh boy that’s for me. Exciting and it, it was the one that attracted me the most. Even though my father had been in the AIF and told a lot of stories about the AIF. I wish I’d known more about my father‘s activities actually. As most of us say these days but the air force was the one. AP: Can you tell me something of the enlistment process? DL: The which? AP: The enlistment process. The process of actually going to and signing the papers and all that sort of thing. DL: Well I don’t, can’t recall a lot of that but I guess in the early 1941 I made application to the Air Force Recruiting Office. We were under age as far as the air force was concerned so we needed the parent’s permission which was freely given by my father and mother. And so I was really ready for, to be called up. AP: Were there any medical type examinations or something that you can remember? DL: Yes. We had to get, from our local GP we’d need to get a clearance to say that we were medically fit to join the services. But of course as soon as we went in we went through vigorous tests at Initial Training School. Initial medical tests to make sure we were alright. If we had a broken toenail it was more or less couldn’t get in. We were rejected. AP: Can you remember any of the specific tests that you had to do? DL: No. I can’t really. Tests on what we had learned prior to entry. Tests on Morse Code. Tests on what we’d learned as far as air force law was concerned, and the theory of flight. We needed to know quite a bit about that prior to going in. And they assessed us on the results of what we had learned prior to entry. AP: The, you said before you were doing some, some study while you were on the Reserve. Where and how was that delivered? DL: Well, we, we were mainly did our pre-courses. We had lecture courses on theory of flight and air force law. They were, they were given to us at a local school. But Morse Code and other things like that we learned at the local General Post Office. GPO. And we needed to reach a certain qualification particularly in Morse Code, again before being accepted. I can’t remember now how many words a minute we had to do but obviously those of us that were called up had passed the requirement. AP: Do — alright, so this is in Adelaide. Sorry I didn’t clarify that. DL: In Adelaide. Yes. AP: You’ve lived in Adelaide all your life. DL: Everything was in Adelaide. Yeah. AP: Yeah. Alright. DL: I had never been outside Adelaide until I joined the air force. AP: Excellent. So your Initial Training School. Where was that? DL: That was down at Victor Harbour. AP: What happened there? DL: Well, that was mainly furthering education on air force law and theory of flight and a lot of drill, marching and all that sort of thing. Discipline. We learned discipline and had to do what an officer said. So it was very strict. And it was at the ITS, as a result, I guess of how we came through each subject and an assessment by a higher ranking officer. They chose whether we would be pilots, navigators, wireless operators or whatever was needed in the crew and fortunately I was selected as a pilot. And that course at Victor Harbour was about three months. No flying at ITS. Just strictly all ground work. AP: What was, what was the actual camp like at Victor Harbour? What were the buildings like? Where did you sleep? All that sort of stuff. DL: Well, the actual headquarters of 4 ITS at Victor Harbour was an old mansion. But as far as we were concerned as air force recruits we just slept in tents. Six to a tent. And that was it. And — AP: They had classrooms and things like that as well. DL: Oh yes. Yes. They built classrooms and as I said the actual headquarters of 4 ITS was called Mount Breckan which was an old English mansion built out here. And that contained many rooms. The air force had acquired that building and it had many rooms which we used for lectures and all the other requirements. AP: Was that, that — I drove out of Victor Harbour a couple of years ago on the way back from Kangaroo Island. Is that the big house on the hill as you go, sort of out? DL: Yes. AP: Oh cool. Now I know. DL: The big house on the hill. Yeah. AP: Yeah. Now I know where it is. DL: It was actually a house built for some Englishman. I can’t remember now but all it was built as a replica of his home, or her home in England and was built almost entirely of imported material. AP: Wow. Fantastic. DL: A grand old building it was. AP: Yeah. And I imagine the air force probably didn’t leave it in quite the condition they found it in. DL: No. No. That’s right. No. It’s still there today. AP: It certainly is. Yeah. I remember seeing it. Yeah. Ok so from ITS your next step would have been an Elementary Flying Training School. DL: Yes, selected as a pilot. Well, first we were asked at ITS whether we wanted, what we wanted to be — pilots, navigators or whatever. We were given three choices and most of us put down number 1 — pilot. Number 2 — pilot. Number 3 — pilot because everyone that went in or most of all, almost all were, ninety nine percent probably of called up wanted to be pilots. But at the end of the course at Victor we were, looked at notice board to see what the next posting would be and fortunately for me it was to be a pilot and posted to Parafield in South Australia flying Tiger Moths at EFTS. Yeah. AP: So you’re, you’re still in Adelaide. DL: Yeah. I’m still in Adelaide. Yes. Still in Adelaide. AP: Excellent. All right. Tiger Moths. They’re the ubiquitous training aircraft. DL: Magnificent little aircraft. Yes. Because we didn’t know about any the other. That was, that was it as far as we were concerned. I’d never flown before. Never thought of flying. I’d never been up in an aircraft. But we had to. Our flying started within a certain number of hours and again like ITS we were assessed by superior officers as our flying capability and given an assessment at the end of the, at the end of the course. AP: What was your instructor like? Who was your instructor? What was he like? DL: Well, the instructors were just chaps that had finished their flying training and I think the chap I had, I can’t remember his name but he had recently finished his flying training at, at Parafield. And he was posted from Parafield to Parafield as an instructor. Some of them happened like that. But I wasn’t interested in instructing. So, and at Parafield there we were given three alternatives of what type of pilot we wanted to be. Fighter pilot, bomber pilot or whatever, or instructing. And again I put down, as many others did, fighter, fighter, fighter. And it looked that way that we would be fighters because from Parafield we were posted, some of us were posted to SFTS at Point Cook and flying Wirraways. The course at Point Cook was a four month course divided into two. Two lots of two monthly courses. Two months of what they called Initial Training Centre School and another two months of Advanced Training School. ITS and ATS, flying Wirraways at Point Cook. After the end of the first two months we were given leave and many of us, the South Australians we came back to Adelaide for leave. And when we got back to Point Cook we found that all the Wirraways had gone and they had been replaced by Airspeed Oxfords. That didn’t concern us terribly because ok it looked like single engine pilots were out but we could now be twin engine pilots. And we had to complete that first two monthly period again, over again. And still complete the four months within the prescribed time. So it was a bit of a rush. And it was at ITS — at SFTS the second two months when we received our wings and became sergeant pilots or some of them were officers but most of us came out as sergeant pilots waiting for another posting. AP: So backing up a little bit more can you tell me something about the Tiger Moth in particular? What did it look like? Where did you sit? How did it fly? DL: Oh the Tiger Moth is a twin-engined little biplane with a Gypsy engine. Not much bigger than a lawn mower engine but they had two seats back to back. The instructor sat in the front and the, we were sat in the back. And we spoke to each other through a funnel. Telling us, he was telling us what to do and giving, giving us instructions. We had to fly solo within twelve hours I think it was, or ten hours. And then most of us, there were some scrubbings but most of us were able to get through in the required time. I’m not sure what I, how many hours I took. Around about eight or nine I think. There were quite a few scrubbings strangely enough. Scrubbings, I mean chaps that failed the test and they had to be re-mustered as navigators or other crew members. AP: Alright. First solo. Can you tell me about your first solo? DL: Well the first solo was quite exciting. We’d go up, up with an instructor and land at a certain time and when he thought that we were, had done enough to go solo he just got out of the cockpit and said, ‘Here we are. Off you go.’ And that was it and we had to just go around on our own. A very exciting time getting the, getting, flying solo was the ant’s pants or mostly. When we would fly solo, amazing. AP: Did, did you encounter throughout your training any accidents, or —? DL: No. Not really. AP: Did you see any? DL: You’re talking about total training? AP: All the way through. DL: Hmmn? AP: Yeah. All the way through. DL: Yeah. Well, after we’d finished training at Point Cook many of, many of us were posted to England. To the UK. We were seconded by the RAF actually to replace aircrew. Aircrew were very short in England at the time. This is now in late or early 1942 perhaps. And we were posted from Point Cook to England. We went by ship to England via New Zealand. And when we got to England we were awaiting postings again. And a lot of us had all trained together and became close friends. And when we started off at a place called Advanced Flying Unit and that was still flying Oxfords. Still thinking we were going to be, or I thought we were going to be fighter pilots. After we’d done a course at AFU at Grantham in England I was posted as a lone figure to a bomber Operational Training Unit where all of the others went to further their single engine or twin engine fighting. Many of them finished up on Beaufighters or Mosquitoes. Now, why in the heck I was sort of singled out I’ve got no idea but I finished up at an OTU at a place called Honeybourne in England flying Whitleys. Now, the Whitley was Armstrong Arthur Whitley was one of the main bomber forces of England at, in the early part of the war, and Whitleys and Wellingtons were used for training purposes. And at the OTU at [pause] where did I say it was? Honeybourne. A place called Honeybourne. On my first solo flight at night in a Whitley an engine caught fire on take-off and I had to get up and go around and bring the thing back again. And I had to land wheels up. A belly landing. So that was during training. Yeah. And that was bad enough but quite an experience. AP: I can imagine. Alright, so can you tell me how you got to the UK in a little bit more detail? DL: Well when we arrived — on the way from New Zealand, Auckland to the UK we were in a South African luxury liner which had been turned into a troop ship. A vessel called the Cape Town Castle. The Castle Line ship was a South African ship. Now, this was, this was re-modified to take about two thousand troops but there were only about a hundred and fifty on it at the time. And we took off from New Zealand to England through the Panama Canal. And, but on the way across the Indian Ocean we came across some life boats with a crew from a vessel that had, a vessel that had been sunk by a U-boat, presumably. But then we, we carried on. Went to England via the Panama Canal and eventually arrived in Liverpool Harbour. Now the, Liverpool Harbour had been bombed by the Germans the night before and we had to stay about, oh three miles out. We couldn’t get near the harbour at the time so this large vessel anchored about three miles out and we were taken in to the city of Liverpool in row boats. Taken from, from the Cape Town Castle. So Liverpool was on fire. But then, there we boarded a train and went down to Bournemouth in the south of England. AP: So this is the first time, as you were saying before, the first time you were outside of Adelaide. DL: Yeah. AP: The first time going overseas. DL: Yeah. AP: What did you think of wartime England? DL: Well, at, initial, the initial because we didn’t know much about England of course. My father was very pro-English although he had never been there. But I remember, remember through my growing up days he always had, on the dining table, a huge map of the City of London and he would have been able to drive a taxi in London without any trouble at all. And this really got me interested in England. But the train journey down from Liverpool to Bournemouth was at night so we didn’t really see much at all. And the first we saw of it was when the next posting came which was only after a couple of days, for me only a couple of days at Bournemouth. From there I was posted to heavy, Heavy Conversion Unit. HCU in Yorkshire. So, I can’t remember now how I actually got from Bournemouth to Yorkshire but I remember being very thrilled at looking at the vast expanse of England. Even though it’s a very small area it seemed to have plenty of space. And I had heard that there was something like seven hundred aerodromes there so where the heck they put them all I really don’t know. But that was, by then I knew of course I was definitely on bombers. Getting to the Heavy Conversion Unit which were flying Halifaxes. So I I transferred from Whitleys to Halifaxes at the Heavy Conversion Unit. And it was at the Heavy Conversion Unit where we picked up our crews. For example, when, when pilots had, some pilots had finished their training they were sent to Heavy Conversion Unit. Same with the navigators and wireless operators and gunners etcetera. So we picked up the crew at, at Heavy Conversion Unit. Strangely enough on my first solo flight in a Halifax at night an engine also caught fire. But by then the training had been good enough to know exactly what to do without any, any problems. So we landed wheels down and only on three engines. So it was a good experience at the time. It was usual too for a pilot to be sent to an operational training squadron, yes an operational squadron, an operational flying squadron to become experienced in perhaps flying on operational flying. And the pilot would do two trips at least with an experienced crew at that squadron. And it so happened that, and I was sent to 158 Squadron to do my first second dickies we called them, with, with an experienced crew in 158 Squadron. And having done that back to the Heavy Conversion Unit to pick up the other six crew who I had obtained at Heavy Conversion Unit, and strangely enough when the posting came through we were posted to 158 Squadron, in Yorkshire. AP: How — DL: In East Yorkshire. AP: How did, how did you actually meet your crew? How did you choose your crew? DL: Well, it’s a funny thing. Strangely enough, as I said we crewed up at HCU and all navigators and other crew members came. Now, I was looking for a navigator so as soon as I saw one I said, ‘Are you looking for a pilot?’ Or he would say, ‘Are you looking for a navigator?’ And I’d say, ‘Yes,’ and the same with, we’d just see someone come into the mess or come into the — some, some pilots used to go out to the entrance gates of the aerodrome and as new crew came in pilots and the navigator or someone would just say, ‘How about flying with me?’ That’s how, it was as uncomplicated as that. We had no idea how good they were or how bad they were but that’s how we picked them up. Just by being in the mess with a load of, a load of other crew members. AP: If you perhaps picked the wrong person. You discovered later that you weren’t suited was there any way out? DL: Oh yes. Yes, that happened quite often. As a matter of fact a friend of mine from Adelaide he was on, finished up on the same squadron. He had got a very bad navigator. And so he just wanted him replaced so he would just, if there were any spare navigators on, around on the aerodrome he would, on the airfield he would just say, you know, or tell the CO that he wasn’t happy with his navigator and he wanted him replaced and that’s, he’d get him replaced. Sometimes, in his case the squadron navigation officer went on one trip with them and found out that the navigator was just not plotting his courses properly. Yes there was an out. Yes. AP: What, ok, so, if you crewed up at the Heavy Conversion who were you flying with at the OTU? DL: Well, nobody. Just, didn’t have any crew. Just an instructor. And I think on the night that I had the fire in the engine and crash landed I think there was a rear gunner. That’s all. AP: Ok. It’s a little bit different to some other stories I’ve heard. So you did what a lot of what people did in the Operational Training Unit at the HCU instead. So it’s a little, a little bit different. DL: What have others said about the crewing up? AP: It tended to happen at the OTU. And so that’s where they started flying as a crew and then the Heavy Conversion Unit was just to add the extra two engines essentially. DL: Oh well. It depends I suppose. I hadn’t heard that. I thought, I thought they all crewed up at HCU. AP: Yeah. Well there you go. DL: I’d never known, you saying that. Well OTUs, that’s strange because a, a Whitley or a Wellington didn’t have seven in the crew. AP: Yeah. What, what tended to happen was they got the flight engineer when they got to Heavy Conversion Unit. DL: Oh. I see. Yeah. AP: So they were added on. But the, the six of them started out in those aircraft. But anyway that’s, that’s a — DL: I hadn’t heard that. AP: That’s different to your story but this is your story we’re telling. DL: But is that how they got them at OTU? AP: Yeah. DL: The same way. AP: Yeah the same sort of — DL: Saying as hey you are you looking for a pilot? AP: Or they’d put them all in a hangar. DL: Yeah. AP: Equal numbers of everyone. DL: Yeah. AP: And they say, ‘Sort yourselves out boys.’ DL: Yeah. Yeah. AP: Yeah. I think it’s one of the fascinating parts of Bomber Command stories that so often worked. DL: Yeah. And the seven became a very very close knit crew. Each relying on the other. I mean it was, if you had a dud, you know, no good having someone who couldn’t do their job properly. AP: Did you, jumping forward a bit, did you tend to socialise with that crew? DL: Yes. Yes. Yeah. AP: You all lived together and — DL: Yeah. AP: Went to the pub and all that sort of stuff. DL: You became almost all day and every day together doing everything together and became very close. You had to rely entirely on other members of the crew, particularly if something went wrong or something happened. There was only one pilot and if anything went wrong with the pilot they had to know what to do. No one could fly it if the pilot got hurt. It was almost baling out the rest of the crew, which did happen a lot. AP: So I guess going on from the doing everything with your crew what sort of things did you get up to when you were on leave, throughout the time in England? DL: Well, mostly on leave other members of the crew, if they were English and mine all were on Halifaxes, I had two different crews, I’ll come to that soon, they, they would go home for a leave. So mostly then I, I would go down to London and go to Australia House and meet other, meet some of my friends and who I’d trained with or, but the Englishmen would — would go to their home. I was asked to their home on, some of them, on occasions, where I went. When I went and met members of the family. AP: Alright. So you flew both Lancaster and Halifax. What was your first impression of a Halifax when you first saw it? DL: Well, I liked the Halifax. We might come to that later about the difference between a Halifax and a Lancaster. AP: Definitely one of my questions. DL: I didn’t know how a four engine bomber should, should operate or how it should travel. The Halifax was a very nice plane to fly and it did everything it wanted to do. In fact it did it too quickly at times. But my first impression was, was very good. They had Merlin inline engines, very capable and reliable engines. They didn’t have any real fault except that they were very vicious in any control needed by the pilot. It was like, I always say it’s like the difference between a car without power steering. The Halifax was very direct in its operational command of the pilot. It was very swift in its control, which, as far as the wartime flying was concerned meant a lot. The Lancaster was, was a beautiful plane. Very, very, very easy to fly. Very nice to fly. Very comfortable to fly but it was much slower to react to the pilots control in wartime. The Halifax would get me out of trouble more quickly then would a Lancaster. I’ve had arguments about this with Lancaster blokes forever, since the war. Most of them they, they, at OTU these fellas that you’ve already spoken to did they do their OTU on Lancasters? AP: No. Typically they were, they were Wellingtons. DL: Oh yeah. AP: Or perhaps Whitleys. DL: Yeah. AP: And in the Heavy Conversion Unit was where they flew. DL: Yeah. AP: In some cases they went to Stirlings first. DL: Yeah. Right. AP: And then there was another thing called a Lancaster Finishing School. DL: Yeah. That’s right, Lancaster Finishing School. AP: That’s where they converted into the Lancaster themselves. That was later in the war though. DL: Yeah. That’s right. That was later in the war. AP: Yeah. DL: But in most of the Heavy Conversion Units they were, were Halifaxes that had been passed their use by date. And they, they were cranky old things and they, they didn’t impress some of the pilots. But they would go from a beat up old Halifax and go on to a Lancaster Finishing School, a brand new Halifax, a brand new Lancaster and they would, you know, compare the difference. Well that’s not fair. In my opinion it’s not fair and, but the Halifaxes, oh boy, that really got you out of trouble in a hurry and also the pilot’s escape hatch on a Halifax was in a better position than that on a Lancaster. You could get out. The pilot could get out of a Halifax more quickly, not by much mind you, seconds quicker than a Lancaster. So those seconds meant a hell of a lot. AP: So you talk about the escape hatch in a Halifax. Where actually was it? DL: Hmmn? AP: Where was this, this escape hatch in a Halifax? I know the pilot’s one they could get out straight up or they had to go down the nose. Where was the Halifax escape hatch? DL: That was straight up. AP: Straight up as well. DL: But I can’t quite remember why it was better placed but I don’t think the Lancaster one was straight up was it? It was slightly to the front or back. AP: I can’t remember. I don’t know. DL: The Halifax one was straight up. AP: Alright. I guess we’re getting towards the squadron now. Your first squadron was 158. DL: Yeah. AP: Where were they? DL: They were at a place called Lissett in East Yorkshire. The East Riding of Yorkshire, right over near the coast. You’ve heard of Whitby I suppose. Not far from Whitby and it was, it was near the east coast of Yorkshire. What they called the East Riding of Yorkshire. It was war built airfield. So everything was strung out all over the place. All of the buildings and the sleeping quarters were miles apart, or seemed miles apart. Whereas in a permanent, permanent air force airfield was quite luxury compared with the wartime airfield. But they had everything there. I quite enjoyed it at Lissett and had no problems with, with anything. There were, there were three Aussies, three Aussies there, one other chap from Adelaide and a chap from West Australia and myself. We were the only three Aussies on the squadron and we got away with murder. We used to go and have a bath in the officer’s mess. Between, between where the sergeant’s, sergeant’s sleeping quarters and the ablution block, we had to pass by the officer’s ablutions. So on one occasion, it was about half a mile between each of the, of these areas. On one occasion the bloke from Western Australia was walking past the officer’s ablutions. He was a sergeant walking past the officer’s ablutions. He couldn’t hear anybody in there or see anybody and no lights on. So he hopped in there and had his shower, no shower, they didn’t have any showers, hopped in, had a bath in the officer’s quarters. He told the other two of us about it and we started doing it as well. The sergeant’s bath only had, they had a rim painted around the bath, six inches of water. Well, the officer’s had twelve inches. So, but we got caught out but being Aussies we got away with murder almost. And the CO found out but he didn’t take any notice. He just said, ‘Keep it going.’ So, that was a funny one. AP: What, what sort of thing happened in the sergeant’s mess? DL: The sergeant’s mess, well it was like a community hall I suppose. It had eating quarters. Tables and chairs. It had a billiard table perhaps. And lounge chairs. English papers, and just a general place to go and relax if you weren’t flying. It was used quite a bit when we weren’t flying. AP: What, what other things did you get up to when you weren’t flying? DL: Well, mainly, if we didn’t go to the mess we would go down to a local pub. English village local pub and spend the afternoon or evening there. I got a story later if you like about that. What we did when we were on Pathfinders. The crew instead of going down to the pub. We did other things first but it was generally just a recreation, time off, relaxing in the sergeant’s mess. AP: So, ok you were on operations at this stage. DL: Yeah. AP: You’ve already flown two as second dickie. DL: Yeah. AP: And then went back to HCU and then came with your crew. DL: That’s right. AP: Do any of your operations from Lissett stand out in particular in your memory? DL: Well, yes they do. But I can’t really tell which was which strangely enough. We weren’t allowed to put in our logbook strange things that might have, may have happened. We had a intelligence officer, a squadron leader intelligence officer who was besotted with the fact that the Germans were going to land in England. He had dates and everything else. And he would not let us put in the logbook anything that happened that might give the Germans an idea that their defences were good. So, unfortunately in the first few, while he was there, the first few ops even if we got hit up to glory all we were allowed to put was, “No flak. No fighters. Good trip.” But the logbook, the logbook, I’ve got my logbook here. The logbook doesn’t really tell us what happened. Tells us, tells me what crew I had and how many hours it took. That’s about all. So you know, I got hit in the tailplane for example one night. Now, I can’t tell you what night it was. The night of Nuremberg. You’ve probably heard about that. I was on that. That was my thirty first trip actually. We had a bad run but I can’t really tell you what happened unfortunately which is disappointing. I was very disappointed with the log book. AP: That’s wartime for you I suppose. DL: So I’m asked questions like that I’m inclined to say what happened on nights with Bomber Command. Example, things that happened, not only to me but could have happened to anybody else. Most of them did happen to me but as I said I can’t tell of one particular raid. AP: Well look if we don’t know particular dates that’s fine. We’re more interested in, in those, those, those particular things that happened. DL: I know the date when I went to Nuremberg. I know the date that, I know things that happened but — AP: That’s alright. Let’s hear some of the things that happened. It doesn’t matter if we can’t tell when it happened. DL: At Lissett we had nights of absolute horror, nights of near death situations. Near nights where had parachutes on ready to jump. Twice on occasion I had parachutes on ready to jump. Being chased by a night fighter, a night fighter plane. Being shot at from the front, from the back, from underneath. Dodging searchlights, avoiding collision, landing short of fuel. All things like that. Could have happened to anybody any night. I did sixty eight trips and had my share of trouble but, you know some fellas got shot down on their very first raid. It’s very hard to tell. And I’ve been, you know, shot up one night when the rudders got jammed and things like that. But that could happen to anybody. So I prefer not to sort of talk about individual things that happened to me. AP: That’s ok. DL: All those things I mentioned did happen but I can’t tell you when and what night and where. AP: That’s alright. The when, what night and where is less important I think then the feeling of it. What — DL: Well, you know, you land short of fuel or you land on three engines many times and it’s, you come back and you think you’ve had a hard time and you look at another aircraft on the same, you know, on the airfield that’s come back all really shot up. AP: So you mentioned there were two occasions where you had parachutes on ready to jump. DL: Yeah. AP: Why? Why was that? What sort of things happened there? DL: On one trip we got hit in the tailplane, and the, just prior to that the rear gunner had spotted an enemy fighter and he, he told me as pilot to corkscrew. You know what a corkscrew is? And while we were doing a turn, a steep turn we got hit in the rudder or got hit in the tailplane. Didn’t know where but the rudder became jammed, and we were in this turn and the rudder jammed. We couldn’t get out of it. And so the engineer and the bomb aimer came in to help me by putting pressure on my feet to try and stabilise the aircraft. But we, we were circling. We had, we had to go. You know, we could have caused collision or whatever and we couldn’t. And so I told the crew to prepare for, to abandon aircraft. We had practiced the drill many times as a crew and, but the engineer and the bomb aimer were helping me with the feet on the rudder, trying to stabilise it. And we could, my feet kept slipping off the rudder pedals so the bomb aimer took off — he had two pairs of socks on [laughs] he took off one of his socks and tied my foot to the pedal. Anyhow, after a lot of trying, we eventually, something must have been stuck in the rudder cables must have come loose because it did free itself and we were able to get out of it. AP: So, now as the pilot were you wearing your parachute the whole time? DL: No. AP: No. DL: No. AP: So you had to go and grab it from somewhere else. DL: I’m sorry. Yes. AP: Yeah. You were. DL: I had used the parachute as a, as a seat of course. You know the parachute was a seat, yes. I always preferred the parachute with a seat. Everybody else had the clip on type. AP: Yes. DL: And I’ll show you something. A friend of mine did a pencil drawing of me years ago, many years ago which I’ve got down in a room at the back. AP: Cool. DL: And I’ve got the harness on for a clip on ‘chute. I’d a funny thing to tell you about parachutes. I don’t present myself, or I don’t think I’m a superstitious type of a bloke but I — usually with a parachute we, if we were on ops, say tonight. Or during the day we would go to the parachute section and collect a parachute. Parachutes were packed every time, even though they weren’t used. We took back a parachute to the parachute section. It would be repacked before it went out again. But I never handed mine in. I went to the parachute section one day and they were all girls that did this — packed the parachutes, and asked if she would pack my parachute. And she was a young girl. Probably eighteen. And I had my parachute. I kept it with me all the time and got this one girl to repack my parachute three times a week. So, but I never handed it in. I would have got into trouble but we just kept it. Just she and I kept it. And what was the question? AP: We were talking about just parachutes in general. DL: Yeah. AP: We were talking about the time that, so — DL: Yeah. AP: You told the rest of the crew, ‘Clip them on. We might need them.’ Yeah DL: Yeah. I can’t really remember the other time. It might have been the Nuremberg raid. We got badly hit on Nuremberg raid. AP: By flak or a fighter? DL: Oh, we shot down a fighter. We actually got the fighter, yes. We got hit by a fighter. In my logbook I’ve got just, I’ve written the word, “Wheels.” Why? — I really don’t know. I can’t remember what the word “wheel.” It was something meant to happen. I think the wheels didn’t come down. They didn’t, no, that’s right. The wheels didn’t lock down. Well they didn’t show that they were locked down. The green light didn’t come on. And we were flying around so long trying to get the wheels down that we were nearly out of fuel. And so we, the air con, air controller, air controller told us to go and crash land. They had special crash landing ‘dromes, airfields, but I didn’t have enough petrol left to go so we just had to chance that the wheels had locked down. They felt as though they were locked down but didn’t show. I think that’s the story. We had a bad night. Everyone had a bad night on the Nuremberg raid. But it was, we did, it’s very hard for an RAF bomber to have a [pause] shot down fighter confirmed. Have you heard the story? For example if we saw a fighter, if we saw a bomber go down, through a fighter, shot down, a fighter. We would have to take the time, the height, the latitude and longitude and all details like that. And we would have to do it and so would other, about another dozen other planes come in with the same, with the same news. And if they all confirmed well they would, if they were all together we would get it confirmed. The Yanks used to, you know the top one used to shoot the fighter down and then the next layer down would put the hole in him as well, but very, very hard. We did get a confirmation of getting a fighter that night. AP: That was on Nuremberg. DL: That was on Nuremberg. Yeah. AP: Oh wow. Can you remember that engagement at all? DL: Yes and no. It was, there’s been a lot of stories written about it. A lot of books about it and everyone’s got a different opinion. I think we took five hours to get there and three hours to get home. We were using tactics to try and put them off. We would head, head towards another German city and before we got there we would turn off and go somewhere else. The idea was that by the time we got to Nuremberg the fighters would be on the ground refuelling. But instead of that they were there waiting for us and there’s all sorts of stories told about why. Careless talk and all that sort of thing. But that was absolute horror. There were ninety six aircraft shot down that night. You know that story? Yeah. AP: Can you, can you remember particularly the fighter that your gunners got? Can you remember that attack? DL: The what? AP: Particularly, the fighter your gunners shot down. DL: Yeah. AP: Can you remember that actual engagement? DL: Yes. Yes. AP: What happened there? DL: Well the rear gunner just advised that he had a Messerschmitt on his tail, on our tail and to corkscrew. The same thing. Corkscrew. But while we were doing all of that the rear gunner was perfect. He was terrific. And I guess while we were, while we were doing all this throwing around he put a few bullets into it. Because it was very hard for us because they were using .5 cannons and we were using 303s. So, of course they, they could get us before we could get them. But, no I can’t, maybe except for throwing around and trying to get out of the way so that the — but the gunner just reported that he had got it. AP: So how many — DL: Other than that it was just routine flying. What you do if you’ve got a fighter on our tail. AP: So, ok that is one of my questions. The gunner says, over the intercom, you know, ‘Fighter. Fighter. Corkscrew port. Go.’ DL: Yeah. AP: What happens next? DL: That’s right. He says, he might say, ‘Fighter, fighter.’ Or they were called, what word they used. What words did the Battle of Britain use? AP: Bandits. DL: Bandits, yeah, bandits. So and so, and so and so. Corkscrew. I was always known as, I was never called skipper, I was always called, I was always the youngest in the two crews I had and I was known as Junior. Which someone had painted on my helmet. And he would just say, ‘Corkscrew. Corkscrew Junior,’ and he’d just keep giving an account of where the fighter was if he could see it still. But we were, yeah, so, he got close enough to us. He missed us fortunately, the tracer bullets going in, going past. AP: And as the pilot, how, how do you do a corkscrew? What are the movements and how do you actually make a difference? DL: Oh you’re just flying it all around. Up and down. Up to stalling point or down, you know. Just trying to, so that you couldn’t get which there was still enough room to get, to get his eyesight, his bomb site on us. His guns on us. AP: So — DL: That was just, just corkscrew was the best way of getting away from a fighter. AP: How many trips did you do from Lissett? DL: How many? AP: Yeah. DL: From Lissett I did twenty seven. And the 158 Squadron had three Flights. You know all about the Flights. AP: Yeah. DL: A B and C. And C Flight 158 moved to Leconfield and formed 640 Squadron. So, and I was in C flight, I was actually, I was flight commander of C Flight. And we moved over to Leconfield as 640 Squadron. And I only did four trips from there, from Leconfield. The — when we go to a bomber squadron it is a known fact that we would be expected to do a tour which would comprise thirty ops. Many were taken off. What we called screened at twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine. There were a shortage of crews at the time. This was in March ’43. There were a shortage of crews and although the squadron commander CO had said that we were, we were ready to be taken off the crew were getting a little bit, a little bit [pause] what would I say? They were getting a little bit cheesed off. I became flight commander and was only allowed to do one trip a month. And there’s a reason for that which we can get on to. And they were getting a bit cheesed off with waiting around, waiting to be — waiting to finish ops. Not nastily but they just felt that they were, had had enough. And so we’d done our thirty and I said, ‘Ok fellas. That’s it.’ But on the night of this Nuremberg raid Bomber Command called for maximum effort. Now, when, when they called for maximum effort it was every plane they could get on the airfield and any crew they could get. So there we were supposed to have leave and finish because we were still on the squadron as a crew they wanted maximum effort. We were, every crew was put on and so we were rostered to go that night. And so actually it was our thirty first trip, op. And after that, yeah, we did finish up. They all went. They were all posted to different areas of instructing and I was posted to the RAF College to do what was called a junior commander’s course. During the time at Lissett on 158 Squadron our CO had finished. He was in permanent air force but he had finished a tour of ops and he had been posted to 158 Squadron as CO, but, and he was, they weren’t allowed to fly. COs weren’t allowed to fly on ops although they, they had a plane at their disposal. A staff plane which was shared with a couple of other squadrons. But he had itchy feet. Now bear in mind that he was not allowed to but he had itchy feet and he decided that he would go on an op one, one night. And he didn’t have a crew of course so he took with him the navigator, a crew from 158 Squadron. The navigation officer, the gunnery officer, all the senior officers on the station and the flight commander of C Flight which was the Flight I was in was, he was a squadron leader navigator. Unusual but he was a squadron leader navigator but he went as the CO’s navigator. Well, they were shot down and didn’t return. Here we are at 158 Squadron. No CO. No leaders. No flight commander for C Flight. No one to roster the crews for ops the next day, or the next couple of days. What a mess. I’m, our crew, as far as C flight was concerned was the, had the most experience on the squadron and I was asked as a sergeant to fill in for the squadron leader flight commander because they couldn’t get one. Couldn’t find one, particularly in a hurry. So, on the next night sure enough there were ops on so I with the other two flights — A and B squadron leaders, went and rostered all the planes and the crews for the night’s op, and off they went. And we had done twenty three trips I think at the time. Or about that many and we were the most experienced crew in C Flight and on the squadron actually. There were other officers on the squadron but they had, they were just none of them had done many ops at all and didn’t have any experience with, and so it so happened for the next six weeks they couldn’t find a flight commander and so [laughs] I was asked to have the job and I was given the rank of squadron leader. Six weeks from flight sergeant to squadron leader [laughs] and took over C Flight. Well then, C Flight as I told you, C Flight then moved over to Leconfield to form 640 Squadron and I was acting CO there until they found a CO for 640 Squadron. Still, still with a rank of squadron leader. And so that was it. But our crew, after the Nuremberg raid we all split up and they were posted elsewhere and so was I — AP: So — DL: So there we are. AP: As a flight commander what actual duties did you have and where did you do them? DL: Well, the duties were split between the flight commander’s office and the ground crew out at the dispersal area where the aircraft are kept. The flight commander was really, did all the paperwork necessary for C Flight. Not, not the administration for the squadron but just for C Flight. But it meant getting the orders for the day. If there was going to be an op on for that night roster the crews and make sure they were all ready to go and had no problems with crews. I was helped a lot by the chap who was flight commander of A flight. In fact, he helped me, he helped me even to his own working. He gave me advice that, from a flight commander’s point of view. I still, a New Zealander he was, and he’s still a friend of mine. He lives up in Queensland and he’s still alive and he helped me magnificently. In the meantime also we had transferred from Halifax with radial, no with Merlin engines to Halifaxes with radial engines. Mark 3 Halifaxes. And so when we moved over to Leconfield we had Mark 3 Halifaxes which were even better than the Mark 2s. And of course the radial engines were better because they were air cooled whereas the Merlin was glycol cooled. Liquid cooled. AP: So — DL: And when, there’s an anecdote there. With the, with the appointment as flight commander we had, I had the use of a motorbike and shared the use of a Hillman Minx motorcar. Have you heard of a Hillman Minx? AP: Vaguely. DL: They were not too. AP: No. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen one. DL: A Hillman Minx. The air force, the RAF had a lot of these. Hillman Minx’s, little cars and they were shared with the other two and I had this use of this motorbike and the car and I couldn’t drive any of them. I was nineteen. I was. And I could fly a four engine aeroplane before I could drive a motorbike or motor car. AP: So did you, did someone teach you how to do it? DL: Yeah. AP: Or how did you get around it? DL: Yeah. AP: Yeah. Very good, alright. So after you’d been to Leconfield your tour finishes. You said you went to a junior commander’s course? DL: I went to a junior commander’s course at the RAF college at [pause] where was the RAF college, Grantham I think. AP: Cranwell. DL: Cranwell, that’s it. AP: Yeah. DL: Yeah, Cranwell, now a junior commander’s course. There were about fifty of us. Mainly group captains, wing commanders, and a few squadron leaders. The idea was that the college was teaching these wing commanders and group captains how to be COs at squadrons. They had, most of them had finished their tour. Most of them were permanent air force blokes. Most of them had finished their tour and were being trained to be squadron COs. And I was put there, I don’t know why but I went to this course and it was just doing that. Learning how to run a squadron. But being more familiar with air force law and being more disciplined as far as a squadron was concerned. Now after, I don’t know how that lasted, I can’t remember that but after that that during that course we had a lot of exams and all sorts of things. And at the end of the course it was, I was found that I had done well in air force law. Now, I’ve never, I wasn’t interested in it at Cranwell but for some reason or other I — what happened then? AP: No. That’s alright, the sun went down. The sun went behind a cloud. It just got a bit darker. DL: What was I saying? As I did air force law and I was posted to a field somewhere as part of a, and I did well in organising Courts of Enquiry. So I was posted to an airfield somewhere, non flying to take part in organising Courts of Enquiry. Collecting evidence. Me and a couple of others there were, not just myself. Collecting evidence. This was mainly for crashes that had occurred during training practice and collecting evidence and all that sort of thing. And then the lawyers would come in who were mainly [pause] well they were seconded to the RAF. They wore a uniform although they weren’t in the RAF. They were like doctors and then they’d come in. Look at all this evidence and then find the pilot or whoever — why the aircraft crashed. And most of it was quite clear to me that they were fit on trying to make that the pilot error which I didn’t agree with. And I hated it there. Absolutely hated it. I wanted to get back to flying. And so I was friendly with a girl who was the personal assistant to the air officer commanding 4 Group. You know all about the Groups of course. And after I’d done a couple of these Courts of Enquiry I applied for leave. It was granted and so I went up and, to 4 Group headquarters and looked out, up this girl. Not romantically. I was just a friend and I was, she had an office outside of the Group commander’s office and I was sitting in her office with her just having a cup of tea and the Group commander came. She had a intercom thing on her desk and he came through the intercom and asked this girl if she knew of a spare pilot in 4 Group who could go down to 35 Squadron and take over a crew. They wanted a squadron leader. A squadron leader on 35 Squadron because 4 Group supplied 35 Squadron. The pilot had been injured and the crew were, were ok. And they wanted a pilot to take over this crew until such time as the other bloke could come back. So I’m sitting there, spare pilot and I said, ‘Hey, hey how about me?’ And she said to the air officer, commanding, you know, ‘Squadron Leader Leicester’s here. He’s looking for a job.’ So the CO said, ‘Send him down to 35 Squadron.’ So down I went. And when I got down there and made myself known to the CO he said that the pilot wasn’t as badly damaged as they thought he was and after a fortnight leave he could come back and fly with his crew. So I’m down there. And I said, ‘Well what do I do?’ He said, ‘You either go back to 4 Group or you volunteer.’ You had to volunteer for Pathfinders as a single unit. So I said, ‘Oh ok.’ I said, ‘I’ll keep on flying. Thank you very much.’ So then I was posted to the Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit flying Lancasters. Now, it’s funny but at this Pathfinder navigation, quite often when crews finish their thirty trips there’s one or two of the crew that don’t want to go instructing or anything like that. You’ve heard that story have you? Understand it? AP: Go on. DL: Yeah. And they want to keep on flying. So, if they don’t, if they can’t find a place for them the only thing they can do is volunteer for Pathfinders. And so within a week of being at the Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit in came a navigator, DFC and Bar. He had done flying, all his operational flying on Mosquitoes and he came in, navigator. And in came a bomb aimer DFC. In came an engineer and so on. Within a week or ten days I had a crew. And so we did a bit of flight training in the Lancaster and got to know each other and finished what we had to do. Strangely enough we were posted to 35 Squadron. We could have been posted to any other Pathfinder unit but we, it was usual for 4 Group to, 35 Squadron was originally Halifaxes. So that’s how that all came about. AP: Alright. How did, in terms of the operational flying that you did how did Pathfinder flying vary from Main Force? DL: Well — AP: How was it different? DL: Generally speaking for example the Pathfinders had a number of steps in a squadron. You’d start off at the bottom and step and then as you got experience you’d be given a different job to do. Now, when we, when we first got down to the 35 I think our aggregate in, every, every one of them had done a tour of ops. I think the aggregate was over two hundred. And so here we are at 35 Squadron as what we called a sprog crew, a new crew. And the first op that we were asked to do we were called a supporter. That was the bottom rank. Now, we would go in exactly the same way. Drop bombs with main force but carefully examine the work of what the Pathfinders did and so that’s as we got more experienced we got a different job to do. We didn’t carry bombs. We carried incendiaries. But we carried flares and as flares were required by the Master Bomber well we would drop them according to what was required. AP: So you said that there were different levels of Pathfinders. DL: Yes. AP: So support was one of the bottom one. DL: Yeah. I was trying to think of some of the levels. What was second? Supporter. An illuminator. Now, an illuminator would [pause] a raid is controlled wholly by the Master Bomber. Now, the Master Bomber would go in twenty minutes ahead of, ahead of main force with other Pathfinder aircraft and as an illuminator we’d go in early and we would drop an illuminator flare which would light up the whole of the area we were going to bomb. So, if we were bombing Nuremberg the illuminator would go in. If we were bombing the railway yards at Nuremberg the illuminator would light it up so bright that the Master Bomber could see quite clearly what he was looking for. And when he found the marshalling yards he would ask for a red flare to be dropped. And there would be a Pathfinder aircraft carrying red flares. And then when the red flare was dropped the Master Bomber would assess to where it was to where it should be. For example if it dropped on the Adelaide Oval instead of the Adelaide Railway Station he would be able to tell the main force of bombers it’s not in the right position and so on. And then the Jerries would start dropping red so we as Pathfinders would have to change them to green or something like that. And then others were visual marker. You could, dropping flares visually. You could see. And blind marking. You’d drop them at night. Or drop them above clouds. There was markers on little parachutes. AP: How would you know where you were when you were above the clouds in that sense? DL: Where that’s where navigators came in. They were, the navigator in Pathfinders had to be spot on. My navigator got the DSO when we finished. AP: Wow. DL: He came with the DFC and Bar. He got the, he got the DSO. He had to be, we worked to a tenth of a second and yeah, he was pretty sure he was right. He would have visual. He would have blind markers and they would drop them in the air but of course they had they would hang on parachutes so of course they’d drift all over the place. Then they had visual centrerers. That’s another name I can think of. The top job was Master Bomber. The second was the Deputy Master Bomber. You could get to Master Bomber class for example and never do a Master Bomber raid. Because there were eight squadrons in Pathfinders and each of them had their Master Bombers I guess. And we became Master Bomber status. You were given an extra crew member. There was so much radar equipment in a Pathfinder plane that the navigator just couldn’t handle it all. So, we had an extra man that was called a set operator. And he would just work entirely with, with a navigator. AP: And would he be next to the navigator? DL: Next to the navigator, yeah. AP: On the same bench. DL: Yeah. Just working all the — AP: A bit squeezy. DL: With all the equipment. Yeah. AP: Wow. And so what, what level did you — what were you? DL: I got to Master Bomber level. AP: You got Master Bomber. DL: Yeah. AP: Did you ever do any Master Bomber raids? DL: Yeah. I did. I did quite a few. AP: Tell me about that. DL: Hmmn? AP: Tell me about that. I’ve never spoken to a Master Bomber before so — DL: [laughs] I just told you about it. Just get there first. The Master Bomber is the first to get there and the last to leave and he’s flying around all the time assessing what’s going on. AP: How would you communicate with the rest of the crews? DL: By just voice over. AP: On VHF. Or on the, what would they call it? DL: I don’t, no. It wasn’t VHF. AP: It wasn’t. DL: No. It was, I don’t know what they called it but they were all on the same channel. AP: Yeah. DL: And the Master Bomber did voice over. AP: RT. DL: We would just tell them what to do. AP: Excellent. So ok, how many, how many trips did you do with Pathfinders? DL: Thirty eight, thirty seven. AP: Thirty seven. Golly. Do any of those stick out in your memory? DL: Do what? AP: Do any of those stick out in your memory? Same sort of question we had before? DL: The same sort. The same sort of things happened. We used to say in [laughs] on the squadron, Pathfinders squadron if anybody came back on four engines we used to rib them. We used to joke with them and say, ‘Haven’t you been there? Where did you drop your bombs?’ [laughs] One, one fella I remember he took the ribbing so [pause] so much to heart that on one occasion when he came back he called up for his turn to land and he was given his turn to land. And when he got down to number one turn to land on his downwind stretch he cut one motor [laughs] AP: Fair enough. DL: That was the sort of things that happened though. AP: Actually just ripping off that for a moment. The landing procedure when you all came back from a raid. All your aircraft are arriving at more or less the same time. DL: Oh yes. AP: How did that work? DL: Well, more or less the same time. AP: Yes. How was that organised because obviously only one can land at once. DL: Yeah. Oh well, we had to stay while we were over enemy territory we had to stay as we, you know, as the raid instruction said. We couldn’t, we couldn’t drop our bombs and just put the nose down and whizz for home. We had to stay where we were supposed to be. But as soon as we crossed the enemy coast, to cross the English Channel it was everyone for himself. But we would get back. We’d come in on a beam. The pilot’s mostly would come in on a beam and we, we’d get back to our aerodrome and call up with the call sign, whatever it is and say, and say, request, ‘Request permission to land.’ And back would come the control, ‘Your position to land is number six. Circle aerodrome at six thousand feet.’ Something like that. And then he’d gradually bring you down to five, and four and three and two. Yeah. AP: Yeah, that’s how it sort of how it works today. DL: That’s how it worked. AP: The beginnings of air traffic control. DL: The first in, best dressed, [laughs] the one with the fastest plane. AP: Alright. Were, you told me about, in your previous or earlier on actually, that’s right. You told me something you used to do instead of going to the pub with your Pathfinder crew. DL: Well, yes, when I got this Pathfinder crew they were all top blokes. And, but when we had a day off flying and there’s nothing on tonight most of the crews would go down to the local pub. Most of them, if not all of them. And when, the first time we were off flying someone said to us, ‘Look, we’re all going down to the pub. How about coming down?’ Were inviting us to come down. And we said yes. I said, ‘Yes, ok. We’ll be there.’ But just before we left to go down to the local pub the rear gunner came up to me and said, ‘Junior [laughs] how about we don’t go down to the pub till later?’ He said, ‘I’d like to have our crew stay behind for an hour and I’d like to talk to you about, all of you, about aircraft recognition.’ Now, the rear gunner on Pathfinders I had, he was an expert on aircraft recognition. He was a Londoner. But boy he knew every, every aircraft backwards. And I said, ‘Oh yes. Ok.’ So we told all the others that we wouldn’t be down ‘til an hour later. And he put us in a room and showed us shots. How to recognise enemy aircraft and our aircraft. Amazing. He was absolutely amazing. So we had an hour with him, seven of us. And then we hopped down to the pub. Now, on the next time it came up one of the others, perhaps the navigator said, ‘Listen, Jimmy had you back for an hour last time. How about me having an hour?’ So I said, ‘Ok.’ And so the same thing happened except the navigator, he told us all about his equipment and how it worked and everything else. And then the third time the engineer had a go. And we were already, in fact we got quite a name and people used to rib us and call us all sorts of names and laughed and joked. Until one day one of the other, we were going and we were off and one of the other crew’s pilots came over and said, ‘Listen, we know that you stay behind every time,’ to, you know we used to do parachute drill and we did all sorts of things. And the pilot said, ‘Look, do you mind if we join you?’ And I said, ‘No I don’t mind at all.’ But I said, ‘Why join us? Why don’t you do it yourself?’ And so he did it himself. And it wasn’t long before every crew in that squadron was doing exactly the same thing. They would stop behind and an hour later at the pub, incredible, incredible. But oh boy we had, the crew, the crew I had were out of this world. I’ll tell you something funny about that too. Do you know that I flew with them for I don’t know how long and I did not know their names, their surnames, and I don’t think they knew mine. I was, I was Junior and that was it. No, surnames. What names. For, yeah for example, the bomb aimer’s name was Rusty when we were at PNSU, Pathfinder Training Unit. He introduced himself as Rusty. He was a London policeman. He had the DFC. He was Rusty. Now, what the Rusty meant I’ve got no idea. And the navigator was a New Zealander. He was Pat. His name, no I’m sorry we knew their surnames. We didn’t know their Christian names. His name was, he was called Pat. He was Patrick. What his Christian name was we had no idea. The engineer was Titch. A little Canadian. Flying Officer Lloyd. Didn’t know his, didn’t know his Christian name. And there was seven of them. Never knew. Jimmy, the rear gunner, we called him Jimmy but he didn’t have a J in his [laughs] he wasn’t J something Hughes. I knew their surnames. Didn’t know their Christian name. Incredible. And they didn’t know mine. AP: One of the other, he was a Halifax pilot that I interviewed in Melbourne recently said, I think it was his mid-upper gunner, his surname was Bill so he was always Dingle. DL: Yeah. AP: That was it. He never found out his Christian name. DL: That’s right. I’m the same. AP: Seventy years later. DL: Incredible. That’s good you’ve heard that story before. AP: Yeah, a similar sort of thing to you. DL: He was on a Halifax. What squadron was he on? AP: He was 578 and then 462. DL: 462 was an Australian squadron. AP: It certainly was. Yeah. DL: Yeah. AP: Only on 462 very very briefly. DL: Where were they? AP: Oh bugger I can’t remember now. Burn, at 578. I don’t know where 462 was. DL: No. I don’t. I don’t know where 578, I’ve never heard of 578. AP: A place called Burn they were. DL: Yeah. AP: Anyway. They came out of 51 squadron same way as you. DL: 462 was 4 Group. Halifaxes. AP: 466 was the other one. DL: 466. 461 was too. AP: Yeah. DL: But they were 3 Group I think. 461 were 3 Group, I think. AP: I can’t remember. Alright, so you mentioned something earlier as well. Just going back to some notes that I took down. DL: That’s alright. No. AP: Something about as flight commander you could only do one trip a month and there was a reason for that, that you were going to say. DL: Well the reason for that was when the CO of the squadron went and took all the officers with him an instruction was ordered that flight commanders were only allowed to do one a month. That was interesting too because the other, the other two got a bit of a reputation of picking what they thought might be an easy trip. No trip was easy. But they, some were easier than others of course. I used to put up on the board, on the 1st of the month that Leicester flies on the, well on this case, Leicester flies on the 28th of August. And my crew knew that as well so they could do all of their planning. And when it came to the 28th of August there was no trips that night. No flying. 29th the same. The 30th — Nuremberg [laughs] so that’s how I got to do that. They used to wait until they saw what the others used to wait, well the story thought of. They used to wait until they found out what the target before they decided. AP: What that might be. DL: Yeah. Yeah. Take the nearest one, or the shortest one. Or the less defended one or whatever. AP: What else? Yes, alright. So you have a DFC and Bar I believe. DL: Yeah. AP: That’s also unusual. I haven’t met someone with a DFC and Bar before. DL: Haven’t you? AP: No. DL: You know what that is. AP: It’s a second DFC. DL: Yeah. AP: Yeah, so — DL: Yeah, they don’t give you two medals. AP: No, just the one little bar. DL: I’m sorry to ask you that. Of course you’d know. But, you know, I had an interview last Monday, Anzac day and the reporter was a girl. She just didn’t know anything. She hadn’t done her homework. She didn’t know what the questions to ask. She had no idea what a DFC was let alone a DFC and bar, you see. AP: So why do you have two DFCs? DL: Why? Well, I think one was given for the Nuremberg raid, and the other was towards the end of, and I can’t think what raid it is now. AP: So they were both — DL: They were both immediate awards. AP: Immediate, they were, both. Wow. That’s also unusual. DL: Yeah. Yeah. AP: So we might have to dig the citation out. I’m’ sure it’s there somewhere. Ok, cool. So how did your second tour, well your Pathfinder tour, end? DL: It ended, well, we had been discussing it for a while. And we thought we had, had done enough. But I applied for a job. The then CO for Qantas was in England and this is early ’45. The war is coming down a bit. And he was recruiting pilots to restart the Australia — England route for Qantas using aircraft called Lancastrians. And I applied for that and was one of eight. They wanted eight pilots. And I applied for that and was actually picked to be one of the eight pilots. But when I got back to Australia I was still in the air force of course. I had to be discharged and I was discharged being deaf in one ear or not, not requiring the, not reaching the required deafness. And the Civil Aviation at that time, Department of Civil Aviation — Federal. Would not accept anybody or Qantas would not accept anybody who had any defect and so I was put out. I had stayed in the air force and I went to all sorts of troubles. But that’s what happened. I just missed out on flying for Qantas. The, it’s always been a bit of a sore point with me. When I joined up in 1941 with the air force medicals we had to go through an ear, nose and throat specialist. Now, when I came out for the discharge five years later, four years later, we had to go through the same medical procedure. Who’s there? The same, the same doctor. And the first words he said to me was, because I came back with quite a bit of publicity actually because of decoration and being a squadron leader at nineteen and all that sort of thing, and the first thing he said to me, ‘Oh you whippersnappers come back and you think you own the world.’ And he just, he gave me a bad report on my ears. And although I, it didn’t show in any other way and my own GP I went to who I saw during the war, before the war, he gave me a test — no. Nothing was wrong. But I went through all sorts of tests and the Department of Aviation said no. Qantas said no, so that was it. But I’m not, I don’t regret that because the fellows that did stay in, none of them liked it. You know, you had to fly straight and level. You couldn’t, you couldn’t spill a cup of tea [laughs] they just sat there and the aircraft did it all for them. So that’s the story. AP: That’s not so, not so exciting for a bomber pilot, with sixty eight flights under his belt I’m sure. DL: No. No. AP: Alright, so your tour in Pathfinders. When did you actually finish flying with Pathfinders? When was your last trip? DL: February. January ’45. AP: So, you pretty well, at that point having done well more than the minimum you could pretty well pull the plug yourself. DL: Yeah. Yeah. AP: Yeah. Ok. And then go in. Ok, so coming home. How did, how did you get home? DL: Flew home. AP: Flew home. DL: I flew home and as [pause] well we were temporarily, the eight of us were temporarily discharged from the air force and we flew two planes home. A Liberator and a York to Australia. We landed in Perth and then we were back in the air force. And we couldn’t go to be Qantas staff until we had been officially discharged from the air force. So that’s what happened. We actually flew home. AP: And so you, you flew the aeroplane yourself. DL: Yeah. AP: Wow. DL: Well eight of us did. AP: Yeah. Nice. So you said something about publicity on your return. I’m just sort of curious as to what that was like for a twenty something year old. DL: Well just that you know south SA boy makes good. And, you know, that sort of thing. And I still get a bit of that actually. You know on the march on Anzac Day the chap doing the commentating had obviously done his homework and he said, you know, he mentioned my name and said all about, you know, sixty eight trips and all that. My actual log book shows as sixty seven. But there was one trip where we had crossed the coast, enemy coast. And the raid — we were all recalled. It was aborted, officially aborted. And at the time we weren’t allowed to count it as an op. But later on — AP: It did count. DL: We could count it. Yeah. AP: Right. How did you find readjusting to civilian life? DL: Very, very hard. It was very difficult because, you know, we left home as we were eighteen and we came back we were twenty two, twenty three. All of the jobs had gone that we would have been perhaps been promoted to. Someone else had got those. And it was very hard to get anything. In the six months from the time that I left school at the end of 1940 until I was called up for the air force, or eight months I worked as an office boy for a company. A manufacturer’s agent in the rag trade. And when I came back of course that office boy job was no good. I wasn’t a boy anymore anyway. But he knew someone in one of the retail stores and I got a job as an Adelaide representative of a Sydney company in the rag trade. But unfortunately the chap in Sydney, the owner of the company in Sydney died at the age of forty two and it all fell through. So I then got in to the food trade. I worked for Cadbury’s for four years [laughs] and then worked for other food companies right until I retired in 1988. AP: I guess the final question, possibly the most important one. How do you think, or what do you think is the legacy of Bomber Command and how do you want to see it remembered? DL: Well, it’s a hard question but whenever I hear the words Bomber Command mentioned I think of the hundred and twenty five thousand boys that joined. A hundred and twenty five thousand. Plus of a hundred and twenty five thousand. Of which fifty five thousand would die. Forty four percent, you know. It’s a big — and in Pathfinders it was fifty percent. I think of them often. Particularly on Anzac Day and Day of Remembrance and any time I see a Bomber Command bloke has died whose name’s in the paper. It’s hard. I’m a very emotional type and I cry very easily and it really — Anzac Day gets to me. But I consider I was proud to be part of Bomber Command. I don’t know how else to put it. They played their part. They’ve been criticised badly in some areas for what they did and how they did it. I have no apology for that. I did what I was told. I did what I was trained to do. What else could I say? I call them a hundred twenty five thousand heroes. A hero to me, Adam is not the bloke that kicks the goal after the siren that wins the game. The hero is the bloke that stands on the front line and gets shot at. Does that sound alright? AP: That’s a very emphatic way to — DL: I’d like to talk about defences. AP: Go for it. DL: People often ask me what I considered to be the worst. I always say searchlights. You can dodge fighters, you can dodge flak with a bit of luck. You can be hit by a fighter. You can be hit by flak and get away with it at times, you know. A lot of people didn’t. It depends where it was hit. But searchlights were impossible. They were so bright that a pilot could not see a thing. Could not see a thing. And I can say, and once a plane gets caught in searchlights, one searchlight, well the other hundred and fifty all, yeah and you form a cone like that. The fighters can see you. The gunners can see you on the ground. None of the crew can see you. It’s absolute curtains. So, for that reason I say searchlights were the dangerous things as far as I concerned. And unless you were trained and told really how to avoid them it was curtains. Once you got caught you couldn’t get out of it. But you could fly through them and that’s what I used to do. I mean, I’m doing a hundred and sixty mile an hour. The fella on the ground training the searchlights can’t move that quickly here. So you’ve gone before he can get you. The thing I feared most was an engine failure on takeoff fully loaded. I had that on one occasion. I lost power on one engine. It’s frightening. You know, you think you’re going to not take off and you land with your bombs on, you know. How does that cover it do you think? AP: That’s pretty good. Any final words before I — DL: No. I thank you, and I thank you for what you are doing and the work that your committee and everyone else is doing. I think it’s marvellous. I’m glad that Michael did get in it because he you know he went to England for the, me with the Queen there. AP: Yeah. He’s quite proud to show that photo. DL: Yeah. I’m quite, very pleased with what you’re doing. AP: Good. That’s absolutely the least we can do. DL: You’re on the last Sunday in May are you? AP: First one in June. DL: First Sunday in June. Originally it started off to be the first Sunday in June. Why has it changed? AP: It’s a contentious thing at the moment. DL: Yeah. AP: The first Sunday in June is the official day. DL: Yeah. AP: That’s in Canberra. DL: Yeah. AP: Canberra’s sort of the sort of main one. [telephone rings) DL: Can you excuse me a minute? AP: Yeah. Go for it. [ recording paused for chat] AP: That’s alright. What were we talking about? Oh yeah. That’s right, the day that changed. So it was in, in Canberra and it still is the first Sunday in June except if it’s the long weekend when it’s the one before I think. So the concept was the Bomber Command Commemorative Day. You know, supposed to be the same day around the country and around the world. DL: Yeah. AP: I don’t know why it changed in Adelaide. Different Groups organised all the different ceremonies. DL: Yeah. AP: So it’s RAFA here and in Western Australia. It’s the Queensland University Squadron in Brisbane. I don’t know who does the Sydney one because most of them are in Canberra. And with our Group which is different. Separate to RAFA that does the Melbourne one. I’m of the opinion and our group in Melbourne is of the opinion that we should have them on different days. I think the Canberra one is the big one. That’s what everyone sort of wants to go to and I think all the individual States should be on a different day because that gives you a chance to, I can go to the Melbourne one and then go to Canberra. So it’s a bit like Anzac Day. I don’t know what it’s like in Adelaide but certainly in Melbourne and Sydney Anzac Day, the day itself that’s the day of the big march in the city. DL: Yes. AP: The Sunday before is typically when all the little suburban RSL’s hold their services. So that allows the veterans to go to their local one and then also go to the big one in the city. I see it as a similar sort of concept for the Bomber Command Day. However, in Melbourne there’s a long standing booking at the Shrine on the day that we want. So we’re going to have to, we’re still working on that. We’re going to have to negotiate to get the day that we want. But that’s what it is so I don’t know why it changed here. I’m in contact with Dave Hillman who organises it for RAFA South Australia. DL: It won’t change here you say. AP: I don’t think. I don’t know. I don’t know why it changed and I don’t know. DL: I would have thought David would because originally it was the first day in June. AP: Yeah. Yeah. I know last year the one in Canberra had to change. DL: Yeah. AP: Because of the clash of bookings. DL: Yeah. AP: So it actually changed after it had been advertised if you like but yeah I don’t really know. It was useful for me because I could go to both of them. DL: Yeah. AP: But this year I’m going to Canberra for the Saturday night. Flying back to Melbourne Sunday morning and then going to the ceremony in Melbourne. Anyway, yet more travelling. Now I’ll stop the recording because we are still going here but I’ll cut this bit out. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ALeicesterD160501 PLeicesterD1601 Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Leicester Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource eng Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 02:04:02 audio recording Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Purcell Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-05-01 Description An account of the resource David was called up in August 1941 and went to the Initial Training School at Victor Harbor. Elementary Flying Training School followed, and he was posted to Parafield, flying Tiger Moths. He then went to the Service Flying Training School at Point Cook, flying Wirraways and Oxfords. David was posted to England. From Bournemouth, David went to an Advanced Flying Unit in Grantham, flying Oxfords before an Operational Training Unit at Honeybourne on Whitleys. David’s next posting was to a Heavy Conversion Unit on Halifaxes, where he crewed up and was sent to 158 Squadron at RAF Lissett to do two 'second dickies' with an experienced crew. His crew joined the squadron. David describes some of the difficult incidents he encountered: wheels locking; a rudder jamming; fuel shortages and the loss of engines. For him, searchlights were the most dangerous encounter. He carried out 27 operations from RAF Lissett. Due to crew shortages, he became flight commander of 'C Flight' with the rank of squadron leader. 'C Flight' moved to RAF Leconfield on Halifax Mark IIIs and formed 640 Squadron where he did another four operations. David details his 31st operation to Nuremberg. The crew split up and he did a junior commander’s course at the RAF College at RAF Cranwell. After organising some Courts of Enquiry, he temporarily replaced a pilot at 35 Squadron and volunteered for the Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit on Lancasters. He was posted to 35 Squadron. With a further 37 operations, he carried out 68 operations. From flying as supporters, they ended up as master bombers. He describes how he always kept his own parachute rather than hand it back and always asked the same person to pack it for him. David was awarded the DFC and bar. He left the air force with a job offer from Quantas and flew back to Australia. However, the job offer was retracted because of imperfect hearing in one ear. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Australian Air Force Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Australia Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Worcestershire England--Yorkshire Germany Germany--Nuremberg Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Maureen Clarke Sally Coulter 158 Squadron 35 Squadron 640 Squadron Advanced Flying Unit aircrew bombing crewing up Distinguished Flying Cross Flying Training School forced landing ground personnel Halifax Halifax Mk 2 Halifax Mk 3 Heavy Conversion Unit intelligence officer Lancaster master bomber mess military ethos military living conditions Operational Training Unit Oxford Pathfinders pilot RAF Cranwell RAF Honeybourne RAF Leconfield RAF Lissett searchlight superstition target indicator Tiger Moth training Whitley https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/300/3457/AMcDonaldD151013.mp3 1b0cb799bccd5b31e6022fb655bc6475 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/300/3457/PMcDonaldDA1501.jpg 24affe9a8e5b3c45763f7f0310a07306 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource McDonald, Donald Donald Alexander McDonald Donald A McDonald Donald McDonald D A McDonald D McDonald Description An account of the resource Five items. One oral history interview with Donald Alexander McDonald (1920 - 2021, 410364 Royal Australian Air Force) as well as two letters, a concert programme and notes on his interview. He flew operations as a pilot with 466 and 578 Squadrons. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Donald McDonald and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-10-13 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McDonald, D Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AP: So this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive is with Don McDonald who was a Halifax pilot during World War Two [DM coughs]. Interview’s taking place at Don’s home in Doncaster in Melbourne [DM coughs]. It’s the 13th of October. My name’s Adam Purcell [DM coughs]. Don, I thought we’d start from the beginning. Can you tell me something of your early life growing up [DM coughs], what you did before the war? DM: I was born in Melbourne and at an age too young to remember, the family moved onto a dairy farm at Koo Wee Rup [?] which is about seventy k south-east of Melbourne. I was born in 1920 and my first recollection of the dairy farm was in early school years, six and a half, seven. It was a pretty tough life, tail end of depression, appallingly low prices for our produce and there was a family of seven children, three girls and four boys so it was a, a tough life [emphasis]. As the result of poor income, low income, low prices, I had to leave school at age fourteen and I was lucky enough to have a, get work in the local post office and general store which was very much a part of Victorian Australian life. My wage was ten bob, a dollar a week for a forty-seven hour week. After a couple of years of that, I entered for an examination for the Commonwealth Public service and, and passed the exam. The examination was held in the Wilson Hall, the old Wilson Hall at Melbourne University. When I say the old Wilson Hall, it was a beautiful building but it was subsequent, post World War Two it was burnt down in a fire which was quite tragic. There was about four-hundred entrants for this examination and there were about twenty positions available, typical of the depression era or immediate post depression, world war depression era. And I was lucky enough out of the four-hundred, I came in ninth, and I misread one question, otherwise I would have gotten third, and I was pretty up, up staged about that because having only got to grade eight in school I was pretty happy with that outcome. And then of course 1939 came World War Two. In about 1937, just after I’d passed the examination for the Public service, I had to move to Melbourne to take up the position and was staying with an aunt and her, and her family. By the time I paid fares plus board and lodging there was no money left for anything else, and another guy who’d paid the same exam as I had, also from the country and equally short of funds, suggested that we should join the 4th Division Signals, because if you attended a parade one night a week you got the princely sum of five shillings fifty cents and, but that was one heck of a lot of money to both of us in the situation which we were in, and so we joined the Signals and so I was in the part time Army. Bear in mind there was no war, there was no ‘your country needs you,’ no loyalty, call on loyalty, no drums banging or cymbals playing to get you to enlist, it was pure economic necessity [emphasis] that we joined the Signals. I was a terrible [emphasis] soldier, absolutely shocking [emphasis] soldier. I didn’t think much of the Army and I didn’t give the Army any reason to think much of me. We attended our once weekly parade round and learnt Morse code and then came the outbreak of war, and with the outbreak of war within a month [emphasis] of the outbreak of war, I found myself in camp at Mount Martha, a newly formed military camp in Victoria on Port Philip Bay. Everything was absolute rudimentary. They were just still building the camp and our tents, we were living in tents and some of those leaked because they’d been stored at a military depot out in Broad Meadows, a northern suburb of Melbourne since World War One, and so they were pretty daggy [?] believe you me. As mentioned I was a shocking [emphasis] solider, I couldn’t – if something could be messed up, I would mess it up, and I’d do right turn instead of left turn on the, out in the bullring, the parade ground. My Morse was okay, I didn’t have any trouble with that, but apart from that I could drop a rifle in the middle of present arms and God, if you wanted to send a sergeant major ballistic that’s a guaranteed way I can assure you. I, I didn’t, I detested [emphasis] the Army and applied for aircrew and was accepted, and of course having left school at grade eight I was really playing catch-up. Our first Air Force camp was at Somers, purely ground subjects, no flying whatsoever, and it was rather amazing. As I say, I was on catch-up but in the evening quite often a lot of us would go down to the lecture huts and instead of going down to a picture show or camp concert or something like that where all the gym [?] there was – and we would help each other out on different subjects, whatever our forte might be, we would help someone, and I got a lot of help and made the grade as a pilot. I’d been brought up in a very [emphasis] strong, very astute Protestant family, and any thought of dropping bombs on people would have been absolutely abhorrent in our home, yet wartime dictated that was how and where I would finish up. I, I – after Somers initial flying training school, elementary flying training school was at Western Junction, the civil airport for Launceston, Tasmania, where we flew the Tiger Moth. Said to be unprangable, however I failed [?] up that story on solo flight. I apparently came in just a shade low, clipped the post on the boundary fence and finished up in an ambulance and in hospital. When I was well enough that prang meant that I had to have a scrubber [?] test with the chief flying instructor. He gave me an incredible [emphasis] drilling, he found out exactly what I’d learnt hitherto in my Air Force training, but I think he also found out what I hadn’t [emphasis] learnt and that was the important. And got to the stage [?] – he was very fair, very fair, he got to the stage of flying test and I think I – ‘cause this was a scrubber [?] test. Any, any messing up on this and my days as a pilot were finished. We, he put me through a few exercises in the air and then said [?] ‘trip’ [?], said ‘take it in and land it.’ And I think I did probably the best [emphasis]landing of my career. I absolutely breezed [emphasis] it on, you hardly knew when we, whether we were airborne or whether we’d touched down. Years later when I would try and relate this story about the perfect touchdown to my crew on a squadron they would laugh like all hell [emphasis], because they couldn’t believe that I could ever have done a decent landing. I from there went onto Point Cook, flew the twin engine Air Speed Oxford and – which was renowned as having bad stalling habits but I never did have any trouble whatsoever with them. Life – speaking from the viewpoint of mere male, to me life in the Air Force is very like life in marriage. Best to do what you’re told most times, the quicker the better, and as I say, happened to do what I was told I ended up in Bomber Command in, in England. Flew the, flew the Oxford again for a few hours and then OTU and crewed up and flew the twin engine Whitely, which was outdated pre World War Two and yet some of our very early people in Bomber Command had to fly the jolly Whitley on operations. No wonder their life span was so short. Alright, carrying on? AP: That’s a, that’s a very good start. Sorry I wasn’t sure if you were carrying on or not there. Alright we might, might go back a little bit. The enlistment process – so you’re in the Army at this stage and you’ve decided to join the Air Force, so you go and sign the papers, presumably that was Melbourne. Can you remember much of the process? Was there an interview involved, some sort of medical tests? What happened on that day? DM: Yes the medical test for aircrew was very, very strict, very exhausting and I passed that, not that I was in any great physical specimen then or now, but I managed to pass it. There were several interviews, one heck of a lot of questions, some of which seemed totally irrelevant but they were, they were there and they had to be answered. And it was a result of passing those questions and what have you that I was accepted and went to Somers on initial training school. AP: What sort of things happened at Somers? DM: Somers was great. Quite an emphasis on physical fitness, a lot of PT, a lot of square bashing or we used to call them the bullring parade ground drill. I formed an opinion there and it might be a totally incorrect opinion but I still reckon that to be a good drill inspector, the two main or the main attributes are a loud voice and not necessarily much between the ears. That might be quite unfair on DIs because they’re very decent blokes really when you got them away from the program, from the parade ground but they could give you one hell [emphasis] of a time when you were on the parade ground. AP: From your assistive [?], your service flying training, so your Oxfords in Point Cook, you then somehow got to the UK. How did you get to A to B? DM: We passed out of Point Cook, got my wings at Point Cook which was quite a thrill. Somers where we posted as instructors around various schools, flying schools around Australia. Some were posted as staff pilots flying trainees around other trainees such as navigators and bomb aimers around, flying them around to give them experience in the air and experience of navigation. I was from Point Cook and this, as I say, we had no say in, in what, in what happened to you. I was posted to pre-embarkation depot which was at the Showgrounds which are in a suburb of Melbourne. We were there for some weeks, awaiting, awaiting a ship. Shipping was very limited, very, very secret due to avoiding enemy action, not giving any secrets away in case – there used to be the saying: ‘tittle tattle buggers battle’ and tittle tattle, you know, words, things said unintentionally, if they got into the wrong ears, you have to be in a pub or something like that, and there was a fifth columnist there, well he would relay the shipping movements and make you ready made for a submarine attack. We, we were at Showgrounds for about six to eight weeks and then one Saturday morning, I can remember it quite well, they said ‘pack up all your gear you’re on your way.’ And we had no idea what ‘on your way’ meant. We finished up at Station Pier Port, Melbourne, weighed anchor late afternoon. Down port full of boat [?] and of course there was a lot of conjecture, a lot of guess work, ‘where are we going?’ ‘Well we’re going to Canada’ because a lot of our fellows went to Canada to finish their training, or ‘we’re going to South Africa’ because quite a few went there to finish their training. We got outside the hedge and turned port, so it was pretty obvious that we wouldn’t be going to South Africa. We hit it off, it was into the dark by now and about three days later we came in sight of land, and it was the coast of New Zealand. We entered a harbour, somebody recognised it as Wellington. We docked there, took on a few Kiwis and headed off again, much conjesture, conjecture [emphasis] and guessing. We all reckoned we’d be going to Canada – would we go around the, the Cape of South America or would we perhaps go through the Panama Canal, and we were heading off in generally speaking a north-easterly direction and after a certain time we were calculating our direction by the watch, you know, point the twelve o’clock at the sun et cetera, et cetera. And after a certain time we reckoned ‘oh no we’re not going around the Cape, we’re too far north for that,’ and then after several more days now, well we reckoned we must be passed the Panama Canal by now, and so it was guesswork, ‘where the heck are we going?’ And one beautiful, bright, sunny Saturday morning we woke up, walked out on deck, and were under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Harbour. Oh we reckoned this would be pretty good, we’d be able to paint the town red that night and, and, and you know, thinking up things we were going to do and not going to do, and about four o’clock on the afternoon, they pulled us into a floating jetty, probably a couple of hundred metres long, and on each side of which, shoulder to shoulder, were big black American policemen with rifles, all with rifles so there was no hope of jumping, escaping, doing anything that we, we would like to do. We were marched up on this floating jetty, straight into a train and that night instead of painting San Francisco red we were heading off east across America. And we spent five days and four nights on the train and ultimately – I better finish this [AP laughs] – we had five days and four nights on the train trans-America, experienced some very kind and generous hospitality from ladies clubs and that sort of things at stations where we’d pull up to refuel with coal or top up the water on the steam engine train. Some extremely [emphasis] generous hospitality, and we ultimately arrived early in the morning at a place called Camp Myles Standish. It was a transitory camp just outside Boston, from memory about thirty miles outside Boston. The nearest town was a place called Providence. We were given – ah when we arrived at Myles Standish we were taken off the train onto trucks and then dumped inside the gates of the camp, and the Americans had a band there to welcome us and they played us into out billets to the tune, among others, of “Waltzing Matilda,” and that was pretty great, pretty special of them to do that. We were granted leave that night and we went into the local what they call Legions Club which is the equivalent of the Australian RSL, and we were made very welcome, given the VIP treatment. We had heard during our time at Showgrounds in Melbourne that it was worth collecting a few kangaroo pennies. Now penny was currency at the time, the second lowest denomination of Australia currency, and some of the nine, pennies in the 1930s were struck with a kangaroos on the back of them, on the reverse side, and we were told that these were in great demand, the kangaroo. And we were having a drink at the bar of the Legions Club and one of us produced a kangaroo penny. Well the Americans who were in the club at the same time went berserk [emphasis] for them, and most of us had kangaroo pennies, as I say we’d been given the mail [?] about them, and if you produced a kangaroo penny you couldn’t buy a beer for the rest of the night. There wasn’t a bloke who – the recipient wanted to shout it for the rest of the night, so that was pretty good fun. After about, I think about two and a half weeks in Myles Standish, there was nothing to do. A few of us shall we say got itchy feet, and five of us decided that we would go AWL down to New York. Fancy being within a few hours of, you know, the Big Apple and not getting there, the temptation was too great. So we sneaked out of camp undetected, got into Boston to the railway station, and thankfully, very, very thankfully bought return tickets. It was a bit over a four hour trip down to New York and we had a great [emphasis] time. The Americans, the Australian uniform, Air Force uniform stood out fairly well because it was known as Air Force blue and it had Australia on the shoulder pads and we, we had a great time. The one thing though which we did [emphasis] discover was that an Australian pound didn’t go very far in New York and a sergeants pay as we then were, a sergeants pay was not very great and after about I think it was fourth day the five of us were all stone motherless broke [emphasis]. We didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and so this, as I say, was the good thing about buying a return ticket. If we’d, if we’d bought a one way ticket we’d have been stranded in New York, so we, we thankfully as I say, had the return ticket. Went to the station about ten o’clock, caught a train about ten o’clock at night, got back into Myles Standish somewhere between two or three o’clock in the morning. Again undetected, and hadn’t been in bed long and we were shaken awake, ‘wakey, wakey, wakey, wakey, you’re on your way.’ Well as I say, the good – there is a wonderful [emphasis] virtues of being stone motherless broke, not having two pennies to rub together. The great virtue on this occasion was okay we were awoken as I say after a couple of hours in bed, on another train and we finished up in Canada, a place called Halifax, a port, and we were put on a ship on our way to England. Now, the beauty about having the return ticket was this: had we not been able to catch the train to New York back to Boston [emphasis], we would have missed the ship from Halifax to England, and would have been classed as deserters. Now, desertion is a very, very serious offence in the forces and instead of getting the ship to England, we’d have been put on a ship back to Australia and arrived in Australia in handcuffs and gone straight to jail, so don’t ever worry I suggest about being stone motherless broke, it can have its virtues [AP laughs]. The ship was the, the ship from Melbourne had been the New Amsterdam which in peacetime was a luxurious Dutch liner. It had been revittled [?] in South Africa and there was only about three hundred of us airmen and about another forty or fifty New Zealanders so it was a pretty comfortable [emphasis] life. We got onto the ship in Halifax, it was the Louis Pasteur which had been a luxury French trans-Atlantic liner pre-war converted to a, a troop ship. America was in the war by now, and there were fourteen thousand [emphasis] troops onboard the Louis Pasteur. It was just incredibly packed, we didn’t get anything, the bell would ring for mess and there was nothing that even resembled edible food. You couldn’t blame the cooks, trying to cook for fourteen thousand people, they didn’t have a hope [emphasis]. The ship, for the first couple of days out we had a Destroyer escort and they were incredible, the way they would charge around. You’d swear they were going to be cut in half, they’d just you know, clear the bow of the Louis Pasteur and the Louis Pasteur, bear in mind you’ve got some pretty big Atlantic seas once you get out of a little bit from the coast, big, big waves, and the Louis Pasteur changed course every seventh minute. Quite violent change of course, and the reason for it being every seven minutes was it took a German submarine eight minutes to line you up and shoot a torpedo at you, so by changing course every seven minutes you had the German subs pretty much at your, your mercy, but it was very violent change of course. That plus the mountainous Atlantic seas, you really were getting your money’s worth I can tell you, and at times fourteen thousand troops – there was no treatment for the sewage it was just pumped out, raw sewage pumped out, and with these violent waves plus the also violent change of course of our ship, it was quite possible at times to have waves break over the stern of the ship and you’re up, you’re standing there knee deep in raw, untreated sewage. Strangely enough we didn’t hear – there may have been but if there was any sickness, any outbreak of sickness it was kept a very, very clever secret because there was never any word of it or any indication of a, a sickness outbreak from this as I say, almost living in untreated sewage sometimes. But after, after about three days I think it was, three or four days, the Destroyer escort just disappeared and one day we saw a speck on the horizon and there was much conjecture, ‘is it one of ours or is it one of theirs?’ It was an aircraft in the distant horizon and it turned out it was a four engine RAF Sunderland flying about and it took over the escort until we got almost, almost into Liverpool and another Destroyer came out and met us, took us under its wings for the last few hours, and so we landed at Liverpool late in the afternoon. Most wharf areas that you go to are not terribly exciting. This far from being exciting was rather depressing because it had had its share of Jerry bombs dropped on it and there was devastation everywhere. It was a quite a depressing sight actually, yeah. AP: So that’s probably one of your first impressions of, of wartime England, is the – DM: That’s right – AP: You know, bombing damage. DM: Yeah. AP: This is the first time you’ve gone overseas presumably. DM: Yes, yes, yes. AP: As a young Australian, what did you think of wartime England? DM: It was interesting. We’d left here at the end of early, rather early March, early March at the end of a rather dry and harsh Australian summer, and we got on a train at, at Liverpool and the first hour or two was in daylight and the – having left the harshness, the brown harshness of an Australian summer – there of course it, in March, you’re into spring and the various shades of green on the trees, the far [?] leaves. There was such a contrast to what we’d left back here about six or eight weeks earlier, and if it was very, very impressive without a, without a doubt. Beautiful shades of, of green, it was very, very impressive. We went from Liverpool by train down to Bournemouth. There were a number of delays in the journey, and we got into Bournemouth getting on towards midnight and that was our, we were to have our, that was to be our first English meal, a meal of English rationed foods. Our mess there had been an indoor bowling green in peacetime. Bournemouth is on the south coast as you almost certainly know, one of the most popular holiday spots in England pre-war but it had been evacuated. All the women and children had been evacuated out to the country. It was almost like a service town. All the hotels which had been packed with tourists in peacetime were taken over and used as billets for the three services. We – that was actually on a Saturday night and we got up on the Sunday morning and there was a church parade. Those of you who have been in the services know what it was, the Catholics went one way, the Jews went another way, the Protestants went another way, off to your various denominational services. We came out of our church service – the Catholics had an earlier service than us and some of their guys had gone back to their hotel, got their ground sheets which were a waterproof sheet, multipurpose thing, and laid them out on the lawns and there were a lot of lawns in Bournemouth, and they were enjoying a bit of Sunday morning sun [emphasis], and we came back out of church a bit later than them, and all of a sudden there’s a clatter, clatter, clatter. Now we’d been in England just over twelve hours – clatter, clatter, clatter. It was machine gun fires and so we suddenly realised ‘boy oh boy, this is a warzone.’ And the clatter, clatter from machine guns was German, what they used to call ‘tip and run raids.’ They didn’t do a lot of damage [emphasis] as such but they did cause one hell of a lot of disruption, and they were German fighter planes which would come in low, low, low over the English channel. Low so that the radar couldn’t pick them up, and when they got into, when they got over land they’d up to about a hundred and fifty, couple of hundred feet and they were just shoot. I don’t, I think at times they weren’t shooting at anything, they were just opening up their guns and as I say, nuisance value rather than damage. But interestingly enough I was saying these fellows had come home and come back to the hotel and got their groundsheets. Two of them were lying on a groundsheet, probably not much more than a metre apart enjoying the morning sun and a cannon shell ripped the groundsheet in two but neither of the blokes were harmed, it was quite, quite an initiation to, to fire and to the fact that they were in a warzone. We were there for a while, and there’s nothing worse for morale than having a congregation of guys with nothing to do so the powers that be decided that they would send us to a battle course up just outside Newcastle, Whitley Bay, just outside Newcastle. Here we were to have our introduction to Pommy drill instructors. Now when they use the word Pommy, often it’s used as a sort of derisive type of word. Later on I was to have five Poms in my crew, and whenever I use the word Pom it’s not one of disrespect, it’s more likely to be one of admiration. And anyway, I might have mentioned earlier about the main qualifications to be a good drill instructor being a loud voice and not much between the ears – these Pommy drill instructors did nothing to change that opinion. Whitley Bay had concrete strips, concrete streets, and this was a battle course to harden us up. We were, you know, scaling fences, going into trenches, God knows what, and marching clip-clop along the concrete streets with Army boots which had steel toes and steel heels, and we just about drove the Pommy drill instructors nuts when it came too hot [emphasis]. They would sound like a machine gun, and they used to let us know this, instead of – hot, you know, everybody exactly the heel on the ground at the same time sounded like a machine gun, and they, the more – they would take it out on us, they would make us double, they would make us run with our rifle above our head, but then at night we’d get in the mess or one of the local pubs and have a beer together and laugh our heads off with the Pommy DIs knowing quite well it was going to be more of the same tomorrow. But it didn’t do us, do us any harm, and from there we weren’t back to Bournemouth and on to AFU, an advanced flying unit which was where we flew the Oxfords again. Got a few hours up, the flying conditions were just so [emphasis] different there from what they are back in Australia, though Pommy instructors, and they bet us that they could take us up in the air, fly us around for quarter of an hour and we would be lost [emphasis]. They won the bet. The conditions, particularly around, we were just outside Oxford, and there are railways lines going everywhere [emphasis]. In Melbourne, Point Cook, if you’ve struck a railway line, spotted a railway line going west it’s almost certainly going to go to Bellarat. If it’s going north it’s almost certainly going to Seymour. Here you had railway lines going everywhere, little paddocks about ten, fifteen acre paddocks, whereas here we used to paddocks of hundreds of acres, and the instructors, as I say, won the bet. We were hopelessly lost after a quarter of an hour in the air. Good fun, all good plain sport, we used to have some good laughs about it, and from there we went to OTU, operational training unit. This was where you crewed up, which was quite an interesting exercise. There were probably about twenty-five or thirty of us on the course, and so you were going to have a crew of five, so it meant you had about shall we say thirty pilots, thirty navigators, thirty bomb aimers, thirty wireless ops, thirty tail gunners, and we were put in a hangar together and told to, you know, see if you could pick out someone you liked, you thought you’d like to fly with, and I saw a bloke standing there and went over and spoke to him, and his name was Pat. He was a navigator and started off, mostly, most people started off as a navigator. Skippers, most skippers started off as a navigator, and I had a bit of a yarn with Pat and Pat was, as the name might suggest, an Irishman and he was a wild Irishman. He’d been in a mercenary in the Spanish civil war when they were overthrowing I think it was King Alfonso that was overthrown. Pat was pretty wild sort of a guy and we decided, had a bit of a yarn. ‘Okay well do you want to try, do you want to, do we want to have a go together?’ ‘Yep.’ So then we looked around and saw a few bomb aimers and walked over and had a bit of a chat, and ‘ah yes,’ same sort of thing. So by now we were a crew of three, and the three of us then looked, went over to where the wireless ops were assembled, talking around and what have you. Incidentally, as I mentioned, Pat was a wild Irishman, the bomb aimer was a Kiwi, a New Zealander, the wireless op was from, a Pom from Cheshire, it was culturally [?] often called Cheese, nicknamed Cheese, and, and the – so we were a crew of four by now, picked, like picking number out of a hat really, and then we went over and had a look at the gunners and picked up a fellow, Taz Mears, who was a Pom from Brighton, and so there was the five of us and we decided we would give it a go together. The only unfortunate thing that broke that crew up was Pat got pneumonia and the Bomber Command appetite for replacement crews was insatiable [emphasis] so we couldn’t wait, we weren’t allowed to wait for Pat to get back out of hospital and rejoin us. That might have put a week or two weeks delay on our availability at the squadron, and so the CGI, the chief ground instructor, got us together and asked us would we try another guy who had been separated from his crew. Well this other guy was very, very different from, almost the opposite to, to Pat. He was an ex-public, an Englishman, ex-public school, a bank clark, and our initial meeting was to say the best was quite cool, quite – and when I say cool, not cool the way kids use it today, it was cold, it was frigid. But anyway, we didn’t have much option but to give it a try and it turned out to be good, he turned out to be a top navigator. He, he was ten years my senior, I was twenty-two, he was thirty-two. There were times where he was a steadying influence on the whole crew due to that bit of extra maturity, and we finished up despite the frigidity of our initial meeting, we finished up great mates. We, I went to his mother and sister, the father was deceased. The mother and sister lived at Exmouth, just outside Exeter in Devon, and I went down to their place numbers of times on leave, and the way they treated me was embarrassing. The food rationing in England was extremely severe, like two ounces per person per week of meat, two ounces of either butter or margarine per person per week, one egg per person per week, and we used to say perhaps, but they would save some of these rations so that when Wally and I – his actual name was Philip, Philip Hammond, but the English opening bat test, cricket batsman at the time was Wally Hammond, so Wally, Philip became Wally Hammond as far as the crew was concerned. But we finished up as I say mother and sister would save a couple of pieces of meat so we could have a bit extra and it was embarrassing [emphasis]. They killed us, killed me with hospitality. From OTU we were flying the old Whitley aircraft, a twin engine thing that was out of date before the war started and yet in the very early stages of the war, airmen had to fly the things on operations over occupied Europe, and it is no [emphasis] wonder that the losses were so great. As I say, there were hopeless [emphasis] bleeding aircraft, heavy on the control, sluggish to respond, low air speed, nothing going for them really. But we finished OTU, had a couple of nasty incidents there, and then onto the four engine Halifax. We were stationed just outside York and here further crew selection went on. We had to get a mid upper gunner and a flight engineer, and the same thing as I mentioned at the OTU, you went and had a yarn with a couple of blokes and we finished up with a fellow Pom from Newcastle, his name was Bell, surname Bell. To this day I have not got a clue what his real Christian name was because from day one with the crew he was Dingle, Dingle Bell, and what his true name was, as I say, I hadn’t a clue. And the other was a just turned eighteen year old, in fact I think he might have put his age on a bit, Johnny Cowl, and Englishmen from Kent as our mid upper gunner, so we had our compliment of five for the, for the Halifax. AP: You mentioned a couple of nasty incidents at OTU, can you expand a little bit? DM: Yes, the, the worst incident was there were only five crews on this particular course at OTU all of whom had been selected at OTU the same way as I mentioned ours, and we were briefed one night to do a cross country. Now cross countries were meant to get you ready, really ready for ops, and they could last five, six hours and the weather forecast was absolutely shocking [emphasis], and take off was postponed several times due to the weather forecast, and then ultimately it was decided that we would go [emphasis]. And as I say, why it was decided I do not know, but anyway, five crews, one had a crooked motor and didn’t get off the ground, another one of the crew took sick and I don’t blame him in view of the forecast [laughs]. I wish I [laughing], almost wish I had decided that I was sick, so there was two that didn’t get off the ground. Three of us got off the ground, one of them hadn’t gone far when he had a faulty engine and had to return, so that left two of us to – and of course we didn’t know anything about the other three, what had happened to them, we just pressed on. And after a while the control started to get heavy and as I say, the aircraft ultimately [?] was slow to respond and, and this was making it a bit worse, and then we started hearing things hitting against the fuselage and we couldn’t make out what it was, and it turned out, it was decided after we’d gotten back after everything was analysed that it was bits of ice flying off the propellers and hitting side of the fuselage. Things got worse and I lost our air speed indictor. Now what had happened, the pitot head – in case you don’t know what that is, it’s a little narrow tube that protrudes, protrudes out under the wing and the pressure at which the air hits that is converted to the air speed indictor in the cabin, via which we flew. Now, we lost the air speed indictor, and it’s a pitch black night, pitch, pitch black and so how the hell do you judge the airspeed if you haven’t got an ASI? Well with one hell of a lot of good luck, is all I can say. But anyway, we finished the, the course and got back over the airfield. Navigator did a marvellous [emphasis] job, incredible job, and bear in mind we’re only trainee crew, and I call out and said to the flying control, and told them, you know, ‘we’ve got no airspeed indicator and the aircraft’s hard to handle due to the ice, the wings and everything being so iced up,’ and the, the fellow in chargr of flying for the night was a flight lieutenant who’d done a tour of ops and a good bloke, good bloke, and he took over from the airfield controller and said, ‘okay, come in high, come in fast.’ And, which was good [emphasis] advice, no doubting the wisdom at all of his advice but how the bloody hell do you know fast when you haven’t got an ASI? So we, I, by the greatness of God and one hell of a lot, managed to do that and touched down. And it was screaming along the runway because I had come in really [emphasis] fast, screaming along the runway, brakes starting to overheat, no reverse thrust of course in those days, and the human mind is a funny thing really, I believe. I had my hands really full trying to look after and control the situation and I must [emphasis] say, just diverting for a moment, I must say the crew were absolutely marvellous [emphasis]. There was never a beep out of any of them, they each did what they were asked whenever they were asked, they fed whatever information they could to me, and they were absolutely brilliant [emphasis]. But anyway, as I say, we’re charging along the runway, brakes starting to overheat and lose their effectiveness and the human mind, suddenly it dawned on me about the excavation at the end of this runway. I would imagine there had been excavation and they’d taken the stuff out to build the runway and the perimeter tracks and what have you, and so ‘oh my God’ [emphasis]. You couldn’t possibly think of going into that, so I jammed on hard, hard left rudder, going as I say quite fast, and we went into a magnificent bloody ground loop and ultimately shuddered to a, to a halt and you know, we were off the runway, up the middle of the patty [?], out the middle of the airfield somewhere. And we hardly stopped, hardly come to a standstill and this flying duty officer who I’d mentioned to you, who’d gave us the instruction, ‘come in hard, come in fast,’ he, he was out there and up in the aircraft beside me, and anyway he was saying, you know, ‘good show, good show’ et cetera, et cetera, and we went off and, and were debriefed and went to bed. And we got up the next morning and they took us, drove us out to the aircraft, drove the crew out to the aircraft, and there were some bloody great slabs of rubber which had been ripped off the tyre when we went into the vicious ground loop at speed, and we, you know, looked and thought what might have been, what could have been. But we were by no means the main topic of conversation because the other crew I mentioned, you know, three didn’t go, we were the fourth. The fifth aircraft, he lost control [emphasis]. He couldn’t control his aircraft any longer, undoubtedly due to the icing and plus he may have let his airspeed get a bit low and perhaps close to stall. But anyway, he couldn’t control the aircraft and he gave the order to abandon aircraft, jump [emphasis]. And his bomb aimer – it was the bomb aimer’s job, he was the nearest to the front hatch, that was the only exit in the Whitley was the hatch at the front. He, his job was to lift the hatch, jump, and the others in theory follow, that was the theory. He lifted the hatch and froze, he couldn’t jump, and worst still he was blocking the exit, and the skipper, you know, he gave the order again a couple of times, and nothing was happening so he jumped out, out of the pilot’s seat to the front hatch, virtually threw this bomb aimer bloke out of the way and said ‘follow me,’ and he jumped because he knew quite well how low they were getting, so he jumped. Another two jumped and got out, but the bomb aimer and probably the tail gunner went in [?] and were killed. And I, I fell foul of authority because this skipper of course, he was being castigated. You’re supposed, you know, skipper’s supposed to be the last man to leave the sinking ship type of thing. Well I had the greatest admiration for him, because I’ve said, and our crew was agreed, better two blokes killed than five blokes killed, and I was told that I had to give evidence at, at a subject court of, subsequent court of enquiry, and I was marched in with a corporal with a bloody rifle, almost as though I was a criminal [emphasis], and I got in front of the desk where the chairman of the enquiry and a couple of other blokes were seated, and saluted and was told I may sit. And the way, the way the chairman told me, I think put us at loggerheads straightaway, you know. We used to talk cattle dog on a farm [emphasis] nicer than the way he spoke to me, and when I sat down he said ‘you’re, you’re required to answer some questions,’ and I [laughs], ‘I’ll answer any questions you ask me provided I can first make a statement.’ Well, t’was not spaghetti what hit the fan I can tell you. He lectured me about insubordination and this and that and the king’s regulations and God knows what, stathan’s [?] standing orders, and when he’d finished I repeated what I said, ‘I’ll answer any question provided I can first make a statement’ [emphasis]. And he was about to light up again when one of the other fellows on the board of enquiry asked what, why was my attitude such as it was, and I said to him just what I’ve said to you, I, the, ‘the skipper of that aircraft should be congratulated not castigated in my book.’ And anyway, after that a bit of reason prevailed and I was able to make my statement and the questions came thick and fast, and so that was, that was a rather nasty experience at, at, on Whitelys at the OTU so that was what I referred to before. From, from there it was – oh yes I, from there it was onto four engineer aircraft, Halifaxes, at a place called Rufforth which is now a suburb of York, it was just outside York at that time, and I finished HCU, that was called the heavy conversion unit, conversion on the heavy engine aircraft, heavy four engine aircraft, and I was posted to the Middle East. 462, an Australian Halifax squadron in the Middle East, and I thought ‘crikey.’ Just digressing a bit, my father came from the north of Scotland and he still had a couple of sisters, and I still had a number of cousins up near Inverness, right up the north of Scotland, and I’d been up to visit them a couple of times on leave since I’d been in England, and so going to the Middle East I sort of reckoned ‘well, I’m not half way home, I’m a third of the way home from Middle East, so I’ll probably be posted back to Australia.’ So I thought I’d better do the right thing and went up and saw my two aunties and cousins up in Inverness. We had a fortnight’s leave and I, after about a week or so, life up there was a bit dull and the bright lights of Lomond beckoned, and so I said to my auntie, said that I was going to go back down to have a few days in London before I left and that was all a-okay. If you change your address while you’re on leave you had to notify the adjutant’s office back on the unit where you were, so I sent a signal, no email of course in those days, sent a signal notifying my address as chair [?] of the boomerang club in London. I got down to London okay and sort of figured there won’t be much to spend my money on out in the Middle East, might as well have a good time here so there was no show I couldn’t afford to go to, there was no pub I couldn’t afford to drink at. I had an absolute ball and ala New York, just like New York I was stone motherless broke and went back to Rufforth, the camp where I was, the station where I was, and there was a party on in the sergeants mess so I borrowed ten bob, a dollar off one of my mates so that I could afford a beer and I was just about to have the first sip out of this pint of beer, and the CGI, the chief ground instructor came up to me and said, ‘what are you doing here McDonald?’ I said ‘just back from leave sir,’ and he said ‘well, your crew’s been, Middle East’s been cancelled, your crew’s been posted, you’ve been, you and your crew’s been posted to a squadron. The crew have all been over at Burn for two or three hours, two or three days. Be at the front door here with all your gear at seven o’clock in the morning and you’ll be on your way over there too.’ So, what had happened, I’d sent my notice as I mentioned back to the adjutant’s office, but they, they hadn’t profiled it, progressed it, hadn’t put it through the system and so I didn’t, the rest of the crew were recalled. They’d gone, you know the five Poms had gone home and Murray [?] had given the key, we, I don’t know where he’d gone, but they all got recall notices whereas mine hadn’t been put through the mill, and my change of address hadn’t been put through the mill, and so – but that was a great streak of luck, I would say, because I got over to Burn. The, it was almost straight into the CO’s office and he told me to sit down. He proved to be the greatest leader of men I have ever met or am ever likely to meet. He, I was Mac from the moment he met me. ‘Sit down Mac, I know you’re late arriving. Your crew’s been here for two or three days, but I also know that you sent a notice back to the adjutant’s office, you did all the right things’ he said, ‘you’re not, you weren’t in anyways wrong. This is a new squadron,’ and I think we were, I think we were the fourteenth crew there out of squadron strength was normally about thirty, maybe about thirty-two if you were lucky. We were about the fourteenth crew, and among other things he said to me, he said ‘Mac’ – and he’d already done a full tour, and had been selected to form up this new squadron, and one of things he said to me, he said, ‘Mac, you won’t – the only thing we’ll ask of you here is that you give off your best, and you’ll know whether or not you’ve given off your best,’ and so, you know, ‘go and get the rest of your crew round so we can have a bit of a yarn.’ And as I say, he was the greatest leader of men that I’ve, I’ve ever met but very, very [emphasis] sadly, he finished his second tour, was selected due to his ability and compatibility and all his virtues, he was selected to head up a very special training school and went over there. He always wanted to know what was happening to the men under him, and he wanted to find out more about what was happening, what was the routine with these fellows at the special school when they got in the air, and so he said to the commanding officer at this station, ‘I want to go up with, with a crew and find out a bit more detail.’ And the command officer looked his – ‘well everybody’s booked out, they’re all full crews today,’ and he says ‘doesn’t matter I’ll go with somebody, I’ll sit on the floor.’ And that was the type of guy he was. Sat on the floor and the bloody aircraft pranged on takeoff and he was killed after he’d done two full tours of ops, and as I say, his leadership, ah, outstanding [emphasis]. AP: What was his name? DM: David Wilkerson. AP: Wilkerson. DM: Yes, David Wilkerson. AP: [Unclear] record – DM: Won a DFC on his first tour and a DSO on the second tour when he was in charge of us. David Wilkerson DSO, DFC. AP: So you’re, you’re at your squadron now. This is 578 Squadron, am I right? DM: That’s right, yes. AP: Where and how did you live on the squadron? DM: Beg your pardon? AP: Where and how did you live [emphasis] on the squadron? DM: On the squadron – David Wilkerson I just mentioned, the greatest leader of men, one of the things he said very early in the piece, ‘don’t muck around with saluting and things insofar as I’m concerned, unless there’s a senior officer there with me. If there’s a senior officer there with me, well then salute because they’ll wonder why you don’t salute me as a wing commander.’ And life on a squadron, there was no bull dust [emphasis], there was no drill, you did what was required of you. There wasn’t, strangely enough, a lot of flying because the aircraft was wanted for ops. The only time you did non operational flying was to do an air test if the aircraft had been damaged and you as a skipper and a crew who were going to fly it were entitled to fly it after it had been repaired, so you’d do an air test. Might be half an hour, you might go on a cross country or something like that, but there wasn’t, very, very little non essential flying. As I mentioned, David Wilkerson didn’t want any saluting. He didn’t have to demand respect, he commanded it by his own example, by his own demeanour, as, as squadron commander. He had to seek permission before he could go on an operation, the reason for that being the losses were such, highly qualified blokes were pretty scarce [emphasis] and promotion on a squadron could come incredibly quick. I knew of one case where a fellow got his commission, was a pilot officer and six weeks later he was a squadron leader. In other words, he’d pilot officer, flying officer, flight lieutenant, squadron leader, everybody above him had been knocked off, hadn’t returned from ops, and so within six weeks from pilot officer to squadron leader. Impossible if it wasn’t for the chop rate, and now and we – life was, I wouldn’t say on the squadron, I wouldn’t say it was ill disciplined, but there was no bull dust, there was no parade ground, no square bashing. As I say, David Wilkerson didn’t want to be saluted unless a superior was there, so it, other than when you were flying, I suppose a bit lay back is the, would be a suitable word. A bit lay back. The aircrew, the close knittedness if that’s the correct word of aircrew I couldn’t describe and I don’t know that anybody could describe. You just relied on each other, you were part of a close knit team. As I mentioned in that icing incident, not a mumble or a grumble from any of the crew and they must have wondered what the bloody hell was going on at times, but very – and mutual respect and likewise [phone rings] the ground crew [phone rings], they would do anything [phone rings]. That’s it, you got it. Absolutely anything [emphasis] for their aircrew, and the close knittedness if that’s the word between aircrew and ground crew was so close to that between the aircrew that it didn’t matter. We were, we were issued pre takeoff with compasses and escape maps and that sort of thing, and also with a thermos of coffee, some glucose tablets for quick conversion to energy, molten milk tablets, and a, and some very, very [emphasis] dark chocolate, was almost back, terrible [emphasis] looking stuff, and we would always try, the aircrew, try and save a few bits of that for the ground crew because as I say they would do absolutely [emphasis] anything [emphasis] for us, absolutely anything. And one night, I mentioned Wally Hammond, the navigator, an Englishman. Wally had quite a large nose – now I’m the last one who should speak about a large nose but Wally put mine to shame [emphasis], and one night we were on our way home and, bear in mind that the aircraft thermometer went down to minus thirty-five degrees, the needle went down to minus thirty-five, and it would disappear right off the clock, minus fifty God knows what, and this night Wally wanted to blow his nose. He had a bit of a dew drop, and he pulled off his oxygen mask but before he could get his handkerchief to his nose, a big dew drop fell down onto his navigation chart and was immediately snap frozen. Now, as I say it was a big dew drop and as you would know, a dew drop is almost semi transparent, and as I say, when these, with these chocolate molten milk tablets and et cetera, we’d always try to save something for the ground crew, and some crews they’d, they’d hide them, they’d have the ground crew in and have them hide and seek. We never ever did that, we’d always try and have something for them, and this night, as I say, this giant [emphasis] dew drop, almost transparent, and one of the ground crew came up into the nose, the aircraft, the navigator’s area [?] and looking for his goodies, and Wally said ‘would you like a dewb [?] Jonny,’ because it looked a little bit like a clear, transparent clear dewb and [laughs] well, Jonny – and he’d almost got it into his mouth and Wally smacked his hand and knocked, knocked it out [laughs] and told him the origin of the dewb [?] [laughs]. AP: What, what happened in an officers mess in a squadron? What, what sort of things happened? DM: Well I wasn’t commissioned until fairly late in my tour – AP: The sergeants mess then [laughs]. DM: Sergeants mess, you can have some real [emphasis] good piss ups at times without a doubt, and the officers mess wasn’t any, the limited time that I was in there wasn’t any, any different. No, no formality as such as there is in the permanent Air Force mess. They could be very, very formal you know. The draw with the wine at the end of dinner was a port night, you would, the waiter would put a port glass down in front of everybody, and then the very strict rule was that the bottle didn’t touch the table until it was empty, you had to hand it on hand to hand to the bloke next to you, right to left, right to left and things like that. Very formal in the permanent mess, quite informal in the, in the wartime mess. Just on the subject of mess, I would reckon the best Christmas dinner I had – well okay, take the ones you can first remember, first Christmas you can remember, they’ve probably got to be your greatest. For those of us who have little kids, the next best Christmas you could have was when your little kids open their presents and sat up at the table. My third, my best Christmas other than those two and nothing can supplant them, my next best Christmas was when I was instructing after I’d finished my tour. We were at a place called Moreton-in-Marsh, in the Cotswold country of England. For those who don’t know the Cotswold country, on the corner of the Moreton airfield was the four shire stone, a stone denoting the joining of Gloucester, Oxford, Warwick and Worcestershire, the four shires all joined together there, and I was instructing there, and magically out of nowhere about two or three weeks before Christmas about six or eight geese appeared and it was much activity making an enclosure for them. We pinched bits of wire form everywhere and made an enclosure for them, and so the geese was the, there was no turkey but there were geese for Christmas dinner. This was Christmas 1944 and there were a lot of Australians on the station at Moreton-in-Marsh, and a couple of them gathered the rest of us together and suggested, ‘look, we can’t get home for Christmas. What about if we go to the CO, the commanding officer, and tell him that all the Aussies are prepared to stay on the station over Christmas and let the maximum number of Poms go home for Christmas dinner with their family.’ This was accepted and all we Aussies, I was commissioned by then, and we went to the airmens’ and the WAFs’ mess and waited on them for their Christmas dinner. Went and got the, the meal out of from the kitchen and took it and put it on the table for them, which was great and they appreciated that, and then the same thing happened with eh sergeants’ mess. We went over to the sergeants’ mess and waited on them which was absolutely great [emphasis]. It was absolutely marvellous and we got our own Christmas dinner I suppose at about four o’clock or something in the afternoon, but that was very, very, as I say, next to being a little kid and then having your own kids. That’s the, my most memorable Christmas, mm. AP: Do any of your, your operations stand out in particular? DM: I suppose whilst it was – we had a pretty easy trip, although we did lose our flight commander. D-Day was incredible. As skipper, you’re pretty preoccupied watching your instruments, flying your aircraft, looking up from time to time for other aircraft because there were bloody kites everywhere [emphasis], but the rest of the crew were – and we were a very strongly disciplined crew, very strongly disciplined in that we didn’t tolerate any unnecessary chatter, but the sight on D-Day was such that I take my eyes away from the instruments and other things from time to time and have a look out. But the rest of the crew, you know, the, the, the gunners and the navigator and bomb aimer down the nose of the aircraft, the engineer had a window beside him, as did the, the wireless op. They, you know, the sight, all [emphasis] those watercraft, God [emphasis] it was an unbelievable sight. As I say, we had a, a reasonably easy trip but we did lose our flight commander who was very experienced, he was on his second tour, and [phone rings] he unfortunately, as we used to call it, copped the chop [phone rings], mm. Now that would be one of the most memorable. Couple of the others weren’t as kind as that [laughs] was, but that was an incredible sight. AP: Are they, are those other trips something that you’re – are you able to tell us something of some of the other trips? DM: Er, yes. Our – Karlsruhe was very unpleasant, nasty weather, a lot of electrical storms. Very, very nasty and it was pretty hot over the target. They certainly gave us a, a warm welcome. We were lucky, only, only minor damage. Now look, yeah Karlsruhe was the most, probably one of the most – Essen, they certainly didn’t welcome you Essen, you know, the home of crops. Germany’s biggest armament manufacture, they, they let you know that you weren’t wanted. My – you, as a skipper you were sent with an experienced crew. You’d done everything in the way of training except being put under fire, and to try to give you some experience there, they would send the skipper to an operational squadron to do either one or two ops with an experienced crew. We, I took off with one of the flight commanders and we had an engine fault and had to return early. The target was Berlin and that was, that was, this was the first briefing of course that you’ve been to and you’ve got no idea what you’re in for. And when the squadron commander ripped the curtains back from the map on the wall and said, ‘there’s our target for the night, Berlin,’ there were groans, there were moans, there were some said ‘not again,’ others screamed out ‘the big city,’ and that was interesting for a first time. And as I say, we had to do an early return. Couple of nights later, experienced by then, I’d been to one briefing, so I’m into the second briefing, and it was Berlin again and indicative of how temporary life on an operational squadron could be is this example. There were two of us sent over to, to Driffield, the Australian Halifax squadron to do our second dicky trip with an experienced crew. The other fellow, Doug, Berlin the target again, was shot down just before they were to release their bombs, so his total experience on an operational squadron was about four hours, slightly less than four hours. Berlin was about a seven hour, roughly trip seven, depending on wind direction and whatever, and his total experience on an operational squadron, four hours as I say, it’s indicative of how brief it could be. The second time I took off with another, with a different crew and we – interesting, you know, you’re sitting there in the co-pilot’s seat in a Halifax, take it from me, no aircraft, no wartime aircraft in which I entered had any consideration of comfort for the crew, and indeed they seemed to have protrusions everywhere which, you know, as though they set traps for you to hit your head on or bump your shoulder against or some such, but as second dicky in a Halifax you pulled down a wooden seat from the side of the hall. It had no padding on the back of it, just timber, and precious little padding on the seat, and nowhere to rest your feet. You dangled your feet in midair a little bit like a very small kid in a church pew, just dangled his feet and that’s all you could do. And so, as I say, no thought of comfort and the guy with whom I was flying on this second attempt at Berlin was a fellow named Gus Stevens. Very experienced and very good pilot, and I can remember approaching or probably about half way there, ‘oh this doesn’t seem to be too bad,’ and bit further, ‘oh I’m getting close to the target. I’m not too sure this is all that good.’ Getting into the target area, ‘oh my God, there’s, there’s, I reckon there’s a few places where I’d rather be,’ and then over the target itself, ‘I know bloody well there’s a whole [emphasis] lot of places where I’d [laughing] rather be.’ And anyway, we got in and out of the target area okay and we’re stinting [?] along on our way home when all of a sudden a heap, a trace of bullets started flying everywhere and we had one of the inner engines were, were knocked out. The rear gunner didn’t spot him. Obviously if it was one of those German night-fighter aircraft where they had the upward pointing firing guns, which was a very [emphasis] bloody miserable trick in, in my book. God, talk about all’s fair in love and war, there’s nothing fair about, about that. Anyway, the – this was interesting, we’d done plenty of fighter affiliation at heavy conversion unit. They’d set up Spitfires and Hurricanes to, with us and the gunners both had camera guns so that we could, the aim could be assessed when they got back on the ground. But anyway, and with, you know, we’d thrown the aircraft round corkscrew port, corkscrew starboard et cetera, et cetera, and generally speaking the rougher and more violent your corkscrew, the more effective it was likely to be. Would you like a beer by the way, or anything like that? AP: I’m alright thank you, but you’re happy to keep going? Carry on? DM: No, no I hope I’m not boring you. AP: Oh not at all. DM: Anyway, the, one of the, I think it was the port inner engine got knocked out, but Gus Stevens, the pilot, the skipper told me to feather the engines so he could keep his both hands on the control column and put it into a steep dive. Well, there was almost like a deadly silence other than air swishing around, and Gus had, we worked it out later what he’d done, he’d put it into such an incredible [emphasis] dive, used such force that all the petrol, all the fuel was forced up centrifugal force off the bottom of the fuel tanks, and you had what was known as constant speed control on your, on your propellers, but the moment they were relived of any load [emphasis] they just went into runaway mode, and so, as I say, you had this short period when the fuel was off the bottom of the tanks and you just had air rushing by and then when he pulled it back in and the fuel went back onto the bottom of the tanks and entered the fuel allowance [?], entered the motors – the motors of course as I say, they had constant speed, like governors on them and, which governed the air, the air screw, the propeller speed to about three and a half thousand revs, but with this load moved, taken off them, I reckon they were probably at about four and a half thousand. And then when the petrol went back and into the – the bloody row [emphasis], the vibration of the – I didn’t realise what punishment a hellick [?] would take until that moment. You know, I thought I’d done some pretty rough and tough stuff on [phone rings] when we were doing [phone rings] our fighter affiliation in training, but nothing [emphasis] like [phone rings] this. Bloody vibration it shake [emphasis], I thought the thing would shake to pieces. AP: I suppose that shows the value of the second dicky trip, going with an operational pilot [unclear] – DM: That’s right, that’s right, yes, ah yes, yes, yes. AP: It’s yeah, unreal. DM: Yes, and interesting side line to that was back at the heavy conversion unit, the training unit again the next day, the CGI, chief ground instructor – there was a class in progress, I’ve forgotten what it was, and I was marched in and he said ‘I want you to tell your experience, your experience from last night.’ So I started, and he said ‘hold up Pilot McDonald, hold up. You don’t have to say any further. We’ve been in touch with the flight commander and the skipper concerned and we know almost as much about it as you do, so you can save your voice.’ AP: Very good [DM laughs]. Well I guess flying operations wouldn’t have been the most stress free existence. What sort of things did you do to relax? DM: Give the grog a good nudge [laughs]. Yes, there was sports. You could have, there was tennis courts near the squadron and you could have a – we used to play a game that was a cross between AFL and rugby. There was you know, plenty of blokes from New South Wales and Queensland. They, they’d never heard of AFL at that time, and so we would, we’d have a game crossed between AFL and rugby. And of course the blokes, the rugby boys would tuck the ball under their arm and never think of bouncing it or anything like that, and that, that, that was a bit of good fun, and most, most messes would have table tennis facilities so you could have a game, and some would also have billiards or snooker to fill in time at night. And of course you’d have the odd game of cards here and there and those who liked to play poker could put their pay on the line. AP: Can you – I gather you probably spent a fair bit of time at the local pub? DM: Oh yes [emphasis], yes, yes. AP: [Unclear]. DM: Yeah, not really funny thing, but the mid upper gunner of my second crew – when the war finished in Europe, I had just started a second tour. Indeed I only did one trip and the war in Europe ended. I – back at Moreton-in-Marsh, I, flying the twin engine Wellington which were a lovely, lovely kite to fly. As I say, twin engine. I’d had about three single engine, I’d had three single engine landings in about five weeks, and it wasn’t the fault of the ground staff. The motors were copped, cuffed out, they’d, they’d had it and no matter how good the ground staff had been, they would have had troubles keeping them airworthy. So I’d had about five single engine landings in about five weeks. The first two were highly successful. The last one, the third one, I was very lucky to walk away from. And the – sorry where were we up to when I digressed [?] – AP: So we were – pubs. DM: Ah yeah pubs. Yeah, and, and so we – I was very lucky to walk away from it. And on the sort of subject of pubs, as I say I was an instructor at this time, and I finished up in an ambulance and at lunchtime I was about to have a pint of beer because the flight commander had said, you know, ‘your flying’s finished for today.’ And so I thought I’d have a pint of beer at lunch and I was just about to have my first sip out of it when the MO, the doctor came up to me and said, ‘I think you can put that down, and, and you better come with me.’ And I didn’t realise but I had concussion, and he put me into hospital. Now, there’s two things outstanding about this. Some miserable sod got that pint of beer and drank it and never owned up to me, never paid me for it, never owned up to me for it, and so if I ever catch up with him I’ll, I’ll get my [AP laughs] money’s worth. The other thing was at night a couple of the other instructors, they were, we were all instructors at the OTU were ex-op fellows, and a couple of them decided they’d come down to the hospital, the sick quarters and see how I was, and they bought a couple of beers with them. So that was great, very good medicine, and the next night about four of them came down and finished up after three or four nights was about six or eight of them, and, and we were having a great old time grogging on in the station’s sick quarters, and lo and behold, who should come in but the doctor, and caught us all with our grog there. He ordered the other blokes out and said to me, ‘you’ll be in the flight office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning McDonald, and I’ll be there to make sure you’re there.’ And so that was the end of that medication, so that’s, you know. Looking back, looking back at him, I sometimes wonder and indeed think that possibly we were pretty much at the stage of eat, drink and be merry, tomorrow you may die, and I think that did tend to take over, yeah. AP: We’re getting, we’re getting close to the end of [both laugh] – DM: No worries. AP: We’ve been going for an hour and fifty-seven minutes. DM: Truly? Oh my God. AP: Believe it or not, flown by – DM: Yeah. AP: It’s been great [emphasis]. I guess, well yeah, coming back to Australia. How did you find readjusting to civilian life and what did you do after the war? DM: I reckon for the – I had been in the Public service, as I mentioned, when I enlisted and when I got back I took twelve months leave from the Public service, leave without pay, with a view to hopefully [?] adjusting or readjusting myself. I went back to the bush, back on the farm, and I reckon for about the first three weeks I got up and helped with the milking in the morning and then spent most of the day sitting under a big pine tree. I’ve got no idea what I would have been thinking, and the, the owner of the local general store and post office said, ‘what about coming and working for me? I need someone.’ So it was a bit more than ten bob a week at that time of course, and I accepted his offer which suited me really because I was, meant I had to be meeting people, getting out amongst them, them coming into the store, me getting out amongst them, and I think that was a good move. At the end of twelve months I resigned altogether from the public service and got married and went into business on my own. First one was a little grocery store, a newsagents and post office out at Fawkner, northern suburbs of Melbourne, just near the Fawkner cemetery. I sold out of that and worked for another guy for a few months and then opened a grocery store in Hampton, a beach side southern suburb of Melbourne. That was when self service first started to come in. Prior to that when you went in to the grocer’s shop you asked the grocer what you wanted and he put it on the counter and gave you the bill and then self service came in. We had one of about the first twenty self service shops in Melbourne and then frozen foods came in, and we had one of I think it was about the first six [emphasis] deep freezers in Melbourne. After about six, seven or eight years in that business I sold out, worked around for a while and went into radio communications. The neighbours said, ‘look, we want someone – our company’s just going into radio communications. You know a bit about it from your Air Force experience.’ And the job was virtually painted [?] there on a platter for me so I worked in that, and I could see a need for some towers. It was roughly line of sight communication – radios such as in taxis and in trucks and plumbers and electricians et cetera, communications, mobile communications, and I could see that to increase the range we needed some towers, and the company with whom I was working wouldn’t listen to me, so I said to them ‘okay, you won’t provide them, let me provide them.’ And I did and we finished up with about six of these around Melbourne, and then I, I started renting a few radios. I could see a requirement for rental and people didn’t want to buy, and once again the company with whom I was working were disinterested so I started renting radios which I owned. And then later on I saw a need for little hand-held portable radios for security people and crowd control and parking et cetera, and actually I just sold out of the last one of them in the last twelve months. But we finished up with roughly a thousand of them little hand-held ones, and we, we do some, well I’m out of it now but we did some quite big jobs. Probably the biggest was the spring carnival at Flemington in Melbourne. The Melbourne Cup is a world famous race and a big requirement for these little hand-held radios, not worth them buying them because they only need them for about two weeks of the year. The rest of the year they would be on the shelf and be knocked off or the batteries would go flat and so there’s the, you know, just a little inside there, there’s the parking, there’s security, there is crowd control, catering. Imagine what it would be like if the bird cage or some of those quite exclusive enclosures at Flemington ran out of champagne, so you’ve got to be able to engineer, develop a system so that they can get down into the bowels of the earth as it were, under the big grandstands and everything so that we could control the flow of champagne up there to marquees and the likes spread around the ground. Quite, quite an interesting, quite a challenging exercise, and, and it was, as I say, I’m sold out of it now but it was financially fairly favourable, and no Lord Nuffield or Rockefeller or anything like that but enabled a quite good standard of living. AP: Excellent. I guess the final, the final question, perhaps the most important one. From your personal perspective, how was Bomber Command remembered and what sort of legacy do you think it’s left? DM: A good question. A lot of condemnation on Bomber Command. If Bomber Command hadn’t done the duties they were called upon to do, and likewise many other branches of the service, if they hadn’t done the things they were called upon to do, goodness knows how much longer the war might have gone on. The French government just this year, seventy years later after peace was declared, seventy years later gave, made some awards. Now, one of the qualifications was that you had to be involved on D-Day. D-Day for a lot of the French people and a lot of the people of occupied territories was the first time for five years that there was any light to be seen at the end of the tunnel. That D-Day signalled in my book, the beginning of the end and Bomber Command were well and truly involved in D-Day and they were involved subsequent to D-Day, stopping Germany getting their troops and their supplies up to the front line. The V1s and V2s, the Doodlebug, flying one, call it what you like, if Bomber Command hadn’t put down the launching pads for those V1s, almost all [emphasis] of London and southern England would have been laid waste in my book, there’s not any doubt about that. And of course the V2, terrible [emphasis] weapon. There was no combating the V2 once it was in the air, there was no ways [unclear], and so what did they do? They sent Bomber Command over to the launching pads and manufacturing plants in Scandinavia. Some of those aircraft were in the air fourteen hours. Now, as I mentioned, there was no thought of comfort for the crew in a bomber aircraft. Temperatures, as I mentioned, the thermometer went down to minus thirty-five and the needle used to go right off the clock, right [emphasis] off the clock. The gunners had electrically heated gloves, other crew members had three pairs of gloves on: silk next to the skin, woollen to try and keep the warmth in and then the big elbow length, fleecy lined leather gauntlet. Bomber Command [phone rings] didn’t get, did not [emphasis] get the credit [phone rings] for which it was due [phone rings]. Almost sixty thousand people killed [emphasis]. Young men in their prime, fit, you had to be fit to be an aircrew. Fit, young men in their prime, almost – now for Victorians or Australians, almost sixty thousand, that is the equivalent to every man, woman and child, the city the size of Bellarat. There were eight thousand killed on training – I mentioned the icing experience before, eight thousand killed on training. Now, for any Victorians, that’s the equivalent of a provincial city the size of Bellarat or the size of Colac. Every man, woman, child in that city, killed. So as I say, the legacy of Bomber Command, the ruddy war might still be going on. It did not get its true dues in, in, in my book, and as I say, it would have gone on a lot longer. Yes, we’re finished I think. AP: I think we’re done. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AMcDonaldD151013 Title A name given to the resource Interview with Donald McDonald Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource eng Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 02:10:05 audio recording Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Purcell Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-10-13 Description An account of the resource Because of his dislike of the army, Don enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He went to Somers Initial Flying Training School and became a pilot. At Elementary Flying Training School at Western Junction, Don flew Tiger Moths although he damaged an aircraft. Point Cook followed, where Don flew the Oxford. He sailed to Liverpool via the United States and Canada. From Bournemouth, Don went to RNAS Whitley Bay on a Battle course and on to an Advanced Flying Unit where they flew Oxfords; the flying conditions were different to Australia. They crewed up at an Operational Training Unit. Don describes an incident when they were iced up and had a difficult landing; another crew lost two men, although Don defended the captain. He went to RAF Rufforth, a Heavy Conversion unit, on Halifaxes, before being posted to the 462 Squadron on Halifaxes. That posting was cancelled and he was posted to RAF Burn on 578 Squadron where the Commanding Officer, David Wilkerson DSO DFC, was an outstanding leader. Don describes some of the operations he remembers, such as the sight of all the ships on D-Day and electrical storms going to Karlsruhe. He recounts his second ‘dickie’ trip to Berlin, with an experienced crew, when they were shot at by a German night-fighter. Don started a second tour as an instructor at RAF Moreton in the Marsh on Wellingtons. He recalls a memorable Christmas. He talks of how they relaxed, including drinking beer when he was concussed. Don speaks highly of Bomber Command’s contributions and sacrifices. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Australian Air Force Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Australia Victoria Victoria--Mount Martha Great Britain England--Yorkshire England--Gloucestershire Germany Germany--Karlsruhe Germany--Berlin Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Katie Gilbert Sally Coulter Maureen Clarke 466 Squadron 578 Squadron aircrew Battle coping mechanism crash crewing up entertainment Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit mess military discipline military living conditions military service conditions Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944) Operational Training Unit Oxford perception of bombing war pilot RAF Burn RAF Moreton in the Marsh RAF Rufforth Tiger Moth training Wellington Whitley https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/341/3508/PTinningH1601.jpg 4d7e45a79160aa79382026fe9410ad61 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/341/3508/ATinningHW160314.mp3 00643b1db6bb18f53a1b33afa4d3184e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Tinning, Herbert Herbert William Tinning Herbert W Tinning H W Tinning H Tinning Description An account of the resource Four items. An oral history interview with Herbert William Tinning DFC, his log book and three photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Herbert Tinning and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-03-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Tinning, HW Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AP: So, this interview of the International Bomber Command Centre with a Mr. Herbert Tinning, who was a 51 Squadron Halifax navigator during World War Two. The interview is taking place, at Herbert’s place in Preston, in Northern Melbourne. My name is Adam Purcell, it is the 14th of March 2016. So, Herbert, we might start at the beginning, uhm. HWT: [unclear] AP: It is a very good place to start, isn’t it? Can you tell me something about your early life, growing up, the education and first job, perhaps? HWT: Oh yeah, I grew up on the other side of the river, mainly around Prahran and Toorak and Carnegie, I, I went to the, the Fawkner Park State School up until the sixth grade. Then I went to Toorak Central, seventh and eighth grade and then I went to Melbourne High for, to leaving. And then I went, I managed to get, no, I went to work first in a, no, no, I got an apprenticeship with the Victorian Railways as a fitter and turner, which a highly competitive job thing in those days and in waiting to go there I went and worked for a gasket maker called Ferrer, a company, that would be for about six months, and then I spent nearly three years in doing my apprenticeship at Newport during which time the World War Two broke out and I wanted to get into it but I was in a protected industry so I had to [unclear] quite big struggle but I managed to get a release providing I went into a technical trade which I, which I did do, I trained as a, what’s that called, a fitted away, which rear [unclear], I did that, then I was posted to a communication flight as a fitter and I again kept trying to get to [unclear] into aircrew, which I eventually managed and, uhm, and then I trained in Australia at, uhm, at Sale and Nhill and Cootamundra and then I was posted overseas and went to UK and ended up in Bomber Command as, I was trained as a navigator, bomb aimer but I was chosen to be a navigator and I went through the usual initial training et cetera and whilst I was at, what they called pre airview, which is because of the difference in map reading between Europe and Australia we had to get used to the greater quantity of identifiable objects and so we did a pre airview in Tiger Moths, would I tell you the story about that? AP: Go for it. HWT: Uhm, whilst we’re training, we used to do three, three day cross countries in flying in groups of three, big formation and I led this formation into Northampton and, as we’re turning over Northampton to, for another aircraft in which my mate was the navigator and the pilot [unclear] slipped under us too closely and wiped it up the main plane off on our undercarriage and we were in about 800 feet and he, they had to get out because the plane just went straight in and fortunately to this shoot [unclear] this happened in time [unclear] could land or crash land this thing so seemed so low, I straightened it and crash-landed it and that was that. Now, I tell you that as a preamble to we went on through training, we did our OTU on Wellingtons and we went to squadron, I went to 51 and he went to a different squadron and anyway I’m about, sometime later I heard that he is missing believed killed and I learned that on their fourteenth trip, I’ll tell you the, he went to 467 Squadron instead and anyway on the 8th of July ’44 he was on a French target, Saint-Leu-d’Esserent and he was shot down, it was night of course and they were on fire the Halifax navigator set out the forward straight patch so he tended to jettison the straight patch and he grabbed his parachute in his hand and he shot the [unclear] up because of his previous experience to just fall out and try to keep it on the way down but he clipped it, apparently he clipped it on a one clip and it held but he was ok and the only, the only one that could help was the bomb aimer, that was that I didn’t know anything about that at the time but he was missing believed killed. So the years went by and I finished my tour and I was appointed radar officer for the squadron and I’d been on leave and I was on my way back to squadron when we stopped at a place called Peterborough and just as the train was pulling out, the back wing doors on the bar, which is on the station, swung open as a fellow went out and I had a quick glance inside and I saw this, sort of head in silhouette, with this peculiar nose cause, in the bailout he’d, of the Tiger Moth he’d hit his nose on the tireplane [?] and it broke and he had mended it in a peculiar way. So anyway I grabbed my bag and I jumped out of the train and went back into the bar and, sure enough, it was Jim Walsh. He’d been picked up by the Free French and he’d spent the remaining years of the war until they were, until that part of France was, ehm, was occupied by the Allies, uhm, and he’d only been repatriated two days and there he was, you see. So, it was quite a good reunion, uhm, you have to believe in these units, I did you know, anyway I went on my way then and he went on his way and I’ve never seen him again. He was a Queenslander and in those days, it was much more expensive and difficult to travel into [unclear] as it is now of course and you get tied up with marriage, family, all the rest of it. So, that was that but I just tell you because of the incident that we had in the Tiger Moth and that [unclear] mine, uhm, we, that sort of saved his life in a way because if we hadn’t had the previous [unclear] he would have hesitated and try and put his shoot on, straight out of the escape hatch, it would have been too late. So anyway, that was that and then, as I say, I went to Waddington on 51 Squadron and there I did a tour with a mixture of French and German targets. AP: Pretty good. Uhm, so you were working for the railways when you heard that war was declared. How old were you at that time? What were your thoughts? And how did you [unclear]? HWT: Well, I must have been, I must have been, uhm, eighteen, because it was the age you could enlist and I was only, I always wanted to fly and a fellow who I knew was a pilot in the Air Force, he told me that you gotta get a speciality to, you know up until that, normally in the Air Force is a five year commission and you’re out. But if you had some speciality they would give you a more permanent job, you see, well, this fellow specialised in Photography and he was kept on as a aerial photographer. And because I was interested in engineering mechanical things, I thought, oh well, I’ll get an engineering diploma and then I’ll try for the Air Force. Instead I was on my third, in my third year, or just started my third year. But, it must have been during, it must have been, nearly in towards the end of my first year as an apprentice as the war broke out and I spent, you know, a year or so trying to get out of it, which I ultimately did and that was it. AP: You, uhm. HWT: Is that enough? AP: Yeah, no, no, that’s alright, we’ll, [laughs] we’ll got plenty to cover, uhm, so I guess you’ve already answered the question of why you picked the Air Force. HWT: I suppose I better finish it off and then, before I got an apprenticeship, I missed out that bit, after I’d finished with leaving, I went to Melbourne High and I was there for three years now, I’ll say it again, after I finished State School which is the eighth grade, then I went to Melbourne High and I finished there in my leaving year and went to the railways. AP: Ok. Uhm, can you tell me something of the enlistment process for the Air Force? Did you have to do any testing, any interviews, any medicals, things like that? HWT: Oh yeah, there were [unclear] interviews, there were, uhm, medicals of course, which sight was the main, was one of the principal things and [unclear] fine [laughs]. When I was, I got the notification to go and had my medical for remustering to aircrew, a couple of mates and I went out and had a bit of a party you know and anyway the next morning I had to do this medical test you see and, which I did but my sight must have been caught up to it because one eye was a bit weaker than the other. So, they, uhm, so I didn’t get the choice of a pilot, I was navigator bomb aimer and I always put it down to the fact that I’d perhaps had a bit too much booze that night but the, uhm, cause the thing is, post war when I was sort of older, I passed certainly a less stringent test but the eyesight test was just as stringent I think. Uhm, and I got the ok for a pilot’s license. So I think I’ve had a bit too much to drink at the wrong time. AP: [laughs] pretty good. Uhm, were you on the reserve at any stage? HWT: No. AP: Because you went straight in as the trade of course. HWT: Went straight in as a, as a trainee 2 A and well actually you didn’t do that as [unclear] but now they, you went in as an AC 2 and that’s we had a little white flash in our forage caps [unclear] to sending into [unclear] trainees and you did a three, four weeks of square-bashing down at Laverton and then you, during which time you, the selections were made and then you went to, in my time, Ascot Vale for engineering training and so, uhm, so I think I must have been about, almost nineteen when the war broke out. AP: So, the white flash you are telling me about, I always thought that denoted air crew training specifically but it was HWT: AP: It was aircrew training specifically. Ok, yeah, that’s what I thought. Uhm, alright, so, you did, once you transferred to air crew, presumably you had to go to initial training school and do all the square-bashing again. HWT: Yes, that’s right. AP: Where was that? What happened? HWT: The square-bashing was down at, uhm, at, oh god I must [unclear], AP: Somers, perhaps. HWT: Mh? AP: Somers? HWT: Yeah, Somers, yeah, that’s right, [unclear] bad, we did square-bashing then and pre airview at Somers. Incidentally it was, there was a well-known champion bike rider called Hubert Opperman, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of him but anyway he was, I came across him at Laverton first, where he was, a sergeant, no, he wasn’t a sergeant, I think he was DO, and then, when I went to Somers there he was again as an officer and he was doing, taking the PI training, organising and so on, nice bloke, anyway you had to gotta do that to. Anyway that’s where I did my initial training for aircrew. Then I went to Cootamundra and had training as a navigator. And then to Sale, training as a bomb aimer and gunner and then to Nhill, to do astronavigation. And then back to Ascot Vale, yeah, Ascot Vale for posting. AP: So, I’m particularly interested in Nhill, I’ll tell you why later on, but, uhm, the first time you went into an aeroplane, presumably that was Cootamundra? HWT: No, I had a passenger flight, you know, in a Tiger Moth, or was that a Gypsy Moth in those days, pre-war and while I was, fitted away, I had two Hawker Demons and a Lockheed Hudson in my charge, you see, and, anyway I used to, uhm, hit the odd flight [?] in a Hawker Demon, which we flew down over [unclear], anyway we flew down over to [unclear] anti-aircraft shooting, training, you know, and we, in a dive bomber [unclear] and so I got a, but then I fit [unclear] to it and I got a little bit of dual time on it, you know unofficially. So, yeah, that was, so I found a bit [unclear]. AP: [laughs] excellent, very good. Did you, when you were doing your training but particularly in Australia, did you see any accidents or anything like that? HWT: Accidents? AP: Along the way? Yeah. AP: Or did you know of any accidents? HWT: Oh, I knew, when I was at, when I was, just after I had been to Sale, I’m not sure which now, there was a string of accidents of aircraft going in and have a best strike and there were, I think there three of them, before they discovered what it was and what they were doing was torpedo bomb training with a damaged torpedo, see, and they had made the torpedo run which could have been made almost underwater and released the torpedo and [unclear] away you see, but I have been doing dry rounds without torpedoes and then I fitted them with these damaged torpedoes, which is the same weight as number one. And of course the pilots were used to unlighten [?] pulled out but, and because with the heavy weight they squashed a bit to say and that’s what they were doing, they were squashing into the sea and but they lost I think three before they discovered what the problem was. So, there were those and, uhm, [pauses], you know, you’d hear of accidents but they weren’t close to me, you know. AP: Uhm, so, Nhill, oh my God, was talking about before Nhill also went through Nhill, and I actually went through there just about a year ago, we were coming back from Kangaroo Island and we stopped at Nhill on the way back, and turns out that the airfield, they’re opening up this Nhill aviation heritage centre, and they’ve got an Ansett there restoring very very slowly, which is really good to see. Uhm, can you remember much about Nhill in particular and what you were doing there, I know it was, I believe it was astronavigation at Nhill, uhm, what did that actually involve? HWT: Oh well, we, we did the theory of it you know and then we did star identification, we just stand out and pointed out [unclear] to learn where they were and then you had to learn the theory side of using them, using sights to develop a fixed position and then of course sometimes that was over your head, you see, because flying over Europe was all dead black, not a speck of light anywhere and until you’ve done that, you don’t know how black the night is, you know. Uhm, and occasionally you’d have some, uhm, some guidance with, you know with the water get the reflection of the river, or a lake, whether you like it or not, although I didn’t experience this with the Gee, five lights around Berlin and they were a wonderful sort of fix for the aircraft, so the Germans were a very cunning enemy, they actually boarded out [unclear] a couple of them so there were only three lights, then they altered the shape of the other lights by boarding round it [?] you know, so none of the people would be certain [unclear] Berlin. Very cunning. But, what was I saying? AP: We were talking about Nhill. HWT: Ah, Nhill, yeah, uhm, now what I remember then it was very hot and the meals were good, we had no trouble flying out of there, at night we were flying in Ansons and, uhm, we were only a month there, four weeks, so I haven’t got much of a memory, I know, I’d been married by then and I know I missed my wife because she’d come up to Cootamundra, but Nhill was such a short stay. No, she didn’t come up to Cootamundra, she came up to Sale, where I did two months for bombing and gunnery. But, uhm, I know I got, you know, quite positive memories of Nhill, as a matter of fact I called in there once when I was driving, no, I flew in there once, that’s right, [unclear] to analyse, yeah, I landed there, just [unclear], was the last experience I had. AP: [laughs] So, yeah, it is really nice to see what they are doing there actually at the moment, but anyway. Alright, so, moving on a little bit, we go up to Ascot Vale and then you embarked and you went to the UK. How did you get there? HWT: I embarked, we went by a ship called the New Amsterdam, which went via New Zealand, cause it was taking, uhm, some of the New Zealand members of [unclear] back from Africa and were called from Wellington and then from there we went on to San Francisco. And from San Francisco we went by [unclear] car across to Boston. [unclear] car, they are still in pretty [unclear] condition and we had a black porter, made up our beds for the night, put a [unclear] chocolate on our pillow every five nights and anyway then we got to Boston, and we were waiting embarkation for England and we were embarked on a French liner, [unclear] something, wasn’t [unclear] to France but they had, they had several of these [unclear] and they flew, normally in peace time fly between Marseille, France, yeah, to Rio de Janeiro and that was a regular [unclear], you know. Anyway, we went to from Halifax in Canada to Liverpool unescorted so, they took us way up into the Arctic Circle to avoid the subs, which was interesting, and cold, and, anyway, [unclear] arrived at Liverpool and then we went by train to [unclear] out of Bournemouth. AP: What did you think of wartime England when you first got there, particularly an Australian? HWT: I liked England, I’ve been there since, I liked it better since but then during wartime it was, everything was severely rationed, there were no lights anywhere, blackout was very, very strict, uhm, and, I went to, I went to several stations, Bournemouth and from there we went to a place called Desford and then to, went to Lichfield and to Marston Moor for conversion and then to Snaith for, uhm, for 51 squadron. [unclear] We were actually posted to an Australian squadron but the day before we left, Bomber Command had raided Nuremberg and they had the heaviest losses of war, they’ve had 96 lost on the one trip and I think another twenty flying into high wind [?] when they got back. Uhm, so they were very short of aircrew so we were, uhm, then diverted to reinforcements to various squadrons and our diversion was to 51 Squadron. AP: So, what did you have getting to that point where, ok, we’re going to a squadron now and you hear about Nuremberg, what did you think of when you heard about that? HWT: Oh, well, you really got pretty philosophical about it, you know. As a matter of fact, you didn’t expect to live, you know, that’s probably more [unclear] a bit more than I should. And whatever, but we didn’t think about after the war, really, we just did what we were doing and, and uhm, did as best we could, I guess. AP: Alright, We’ll back up a bit. Lichfield. I was talking just on Saturday to a WAAF, who served at Lichfield. HWT: Oh yeah? AP: Amazing lady, I interviewed this, [unclear] Mary Mccray, we had a wonderful chat. Uhm, the important thing that happened at Lichfield I presume is where you met your crew. HWT: Yes, uhm, we met part crew, AP: [unclear] of course, except for your flight engineer. HWT: Pardon? AP: Except for the flight engineer, of course. HWT: We didn’t pick up our gunners, we, it was the, we didn’t pick up an engineer either. It was just the navigator, bomb aimer, pilot and wireless op. And we did our, well, we converted from, what the pilot did, we did to a point [unclear] from the Tiger Moths [unclear] previously flying in Ansett [unclear], no, we hadn’t, no, we hadn’t, we, uhm, [pauses] we must have flown, no, [unclear] I do recall flying in Anson but I don’t think that was in training, anyway we went to Wellingtons and we did the, the, what do we call it? [pauses] The, there was a pre airview I think they call it, anyway we flew the Wellingtons and actually I liked [unclear], I had no complain about any of the stations except, no, none of them, at Lichfield we had [unclear] they sent me to cross countries day and night, [unclear] a bit of a, a bit of a [unclear] there, see where we were, here you go, I went to 27 OTU which was at Church Broughton. AP: Ah, that was a satellite of Lichfield, I think. HWT: I think you’re right. AP: Yeah. HWT: We were flying Wellingtons there and I was West Freugh in Scotland and that’s where we were flying Ansons. I got it a bit wrong then before. AP: That’s alright. HWT: Pre airview at West Freugh AP: A bit cold up there I imagine? HWT: It was a bit. AP: [unclear] at what time of year? HWT: [unclear] was a bit [unclear], Stranraer was 7 Squadron you know. Yeah. AP: Very nice. Uhm, when you were in England, what did you do when you weren’t on duty? What did you to relax? HWT: On the station? AP: Yeah, any of the stations that you were there. HWT: AP: Anything. HWT: I played a fair bit of squash, most of the men, I know the, stations [unclear], we did a bit, we started [unclear] when we got leave, you know we went and quite often we stayed with people you were good enough to, you know, to sort of entertain, [unclear] your troops and I saw a bit of England that way, quite a bit really, underground and by you know they just we were on leave, we went some place which [unclear] short leave like overnight or a couple of days, you know, you didn’t go far but life on the squadron wasn’t bad, it was, but I initially went as a flight sergeant and there we lived in Quonset huts and that’s a thing I remember about it, the Quonset huts, oh, I suppose it might have been twenty or so, slept in them, and down the set of the bedroom on the side [unclear] down the centre and there were two or three potbellied cast iron heating stoves [unclear] and anyway it was cold alright because we stacked these things up and when we went to bed, the [unclear] of the [unclear] was cast on was red hot and was beautiful, you see, but then by morning there were icicles off the roof, from our hot breath, you know, the heating had gone out and other things, and it was cold, very cold, I remember that, but then I got a commission and we moved into a two bedroom unit in a big, where I was, in a big building at [unclear] which was much better than, I got no sort of unpleasant thought really of any of the stations I was on [unclear] I know the time has [unclear], but. AP: [laughs] HWT: But I think I remember something. AP: Very nice. Alright so, when you are on squadron and you’re not on duty, I presume that you spend a fair bit of time in the mess, at the sergeant’s mess or the officer’s mess. HWT: Play snooker, billiards, squash, sometimes I put on a cross country run and if you [unclear] you might decide to do it. And I had picture shows, pretty regularly at night and of course there was always drinking, always high drinks [unclear] appreciate. Some of the men [unclear] there and they used to get into the, particularly into the police time quarters where there were long corridors with, they’d get in there, ride round their motorcycle up and down along the corridor, you know, which in confined space was pretty deafening and then another friend I used to get up to was, and I only saw this once though, was they, they’d been drinking, and they got this fellow and they walked him over some soot and then they uphended him and hurled him against ceiling, across the ceiling, made him walk across the ceiling, you see, which looked pretty funny, you see, these black footprints across the ceiling [laughs], I remember that, [unclear] prank I remember, but no there was not, no boredom really, you know, you had, and we had [unclear] and all that sort of stuff, you know, and that was quite good. I’ll tell you a funny thing though, when I, during ops I was doing mechanical engineering and I liked engineering and I still like it and I intended to finish up as, with a diploma and working in like a designer that, you know, but during the war for some reason I changed my mind quite unconsciously and became interested in building, so when I was demobbed, I did a rehab course in building and construction and spent my working days in building administration and some on a building design on a side but yes, so I don’t know whether, whether unconsciously knocking building down through the war, unconsciously directed me towards, rebuilding, [laughs] interesting question. AP: [unclear] more questions, isn’t it? yeah. Pretty good. Uhm, that sort of leads into the next thing, presumably an operational tour was not the most relaxing thing that you would have ever experienced, how did you cope with the stress of the operations, the stress of flying and [unclear] what you were doing. How did you cope with that on a daily basis? HWT: Oh I think we had probably a bit more drinks than we should have drunk you know we had regular, you know, organised parties in the mess and they were fairly cunning you know, not that you weren’t aware of it, but, you know, you might go out on a ride one night and you come back and go through debriefing and you go off, have breakfast and go to bed. And when you were up in the morning, you know, you might have lost one aircraft say, [unclear] and you come out and you want to go out and do a, you know [unclear], usually only if you are doing ops really you had to do an air test and any way could be sitting there but you knew it was missing and what they did overnight went to remind you night, they flew an aircraft in from a, you knew, factory area, [unclear] the number, it was on dispersal and the only thing that was missing was the crew, and they sort of tried to make losses less obvious then they really were but I know some people had a lot of trouble, I, I don’t know why but I wasn’t, you know, I was concerned but I didn’t have any sort of shakes or anything like that, the only thing I got really was at the end of the tour I developed an eye tick, you know, you’d feel your eyebrow move but you weren’t sort of, you weren’t doing it, yeah, so yeah, they called it a nervous tic. AP: And how long did that hang around for? HWT: I don’t know, a few months. AP: Alright, we were talking about drinking before. The local pub at Snaith, what was it called? What did it look like? HWT: The local pub at Snaith was George and the dragon. And we drank, and it was a typical English pub you know, a nice atmosphere and all the rest of it. And of course we had our mess which we patronized, you know, fairly well because they had, you know you had your billiards or your snooker, your darts and the bar, card tables you know to play cards and that, so you had enough to do around the place. AP: Were there any [unclear]? HWT: There were concert parties and there were film [unclear] all that sort of stuff you know and they looked after us pretty well. AP: Were there any, [clears throat] excuse me, superstitions or hoodoos, things like that, within your crew? HWT: Very much, very much. And I remember some of the crew’s superstition, they are not my words, we always had to sit at the same seat in the way of going out to dispersal [unclear] aircraft. I think that was my only one. Yeah, I had to have that seat [unclear] but I know some that got some, well, the other thing too I suppose was, my wife, when I went [unclear] she gave me a white silk scarf and she’d sown a little, a little, uhm, what do you call, dice, a little dice in one corner of it, see, and I wouldn’t fly without that, I still got it, it’s no longer white, it’s now yellow. AP: [laughs] it’s done you well then, it’s done you well. I guess we’re getting to the nitty gritty now. Do any of your operations stand out for any particular reason? HWT: I remember D-Day, it just, you know, just for the amount of traffic on the Channel and we had, you know, on D-Day they locked all the [unclear] down, you know, so nobody went anywhere and there were armed guards with instructions to shoot to kill if anyone wanted to get out. And then when we went into briefing, I noticed, they told us, this was D-Day and our target was on the coast, [unclear], not [unclear], [unclear], something like that and that’s the first we heard of it, oh, no, we knew it was pending because the place was crawling with troops and [unclear] whatever but we didn’t know when and so we, so off we went and I just remember the level of activity and there was no fighter activity on that D-Day target, not where I was, there was quite a bit of flak and that was it but the, there is, thing I remember mainly is a mid-air collision of three pre airview, that’s opened your eyes pretty quick and we got shot up a few times, you know, may have taken out a bit of flak damage one night, we had one fighter attack [unclear] air gunner, I remember that, [unclear], you know, normally they were looking for someone who was asleep, you know, and because they were easy in sight but by the way [unclear] was in the time when they developed a thing they called Music, Schrage Music I think they called it and they equipped the Me101os with an upward firing cannon and they’d come in underneath [unclear] you see and stand in blind spot and [mimics the sound of rapid gun fire] and it’s gone, they aimed for the wing tanks and that was very successful and they did in the end on some of the aircraft, on the Halis or the Lancasters, they did put up a turret, or not a turret, but a gun in the, no, I’m sorry, they didn’t, no, they never did that, the Yanks did that, the Yanks did that with their [unclear], they put a belly gun in and the poor gunner had to sort of crawl in and, you know, he’s in a very uncomfortable position and but that was the Yanks, not us. No, we were, we did, part day and part night trips and by the time we were doing them, they were, by the time D-Day arrived, the Yanks had cut into the [unclear] pretty heavily with attacking their aerodromes and in air fighting, you know, by then they had the Thunderbolts and the Mustangs. And they got [unclear] in the bomber stream a fair way the Yanks [unclear] not us and of course they got into the German fighters a bit. Which is very good. AP: [laughs] yeah. Cool. HWT: But, oh, now we had, a couple of times we lost motors [?] and you get one time bomb hanger, but now we, when you’re, [laughs] when you’re being, when there’s a lot of flak, when you’re hit by the flak, it’s, you don’t have to [unclear] quick you’re in it, you know, but the no reason that the shrapnel, sometimes the noise that’s close to you when you caught a bit of shrapnel, it sort of puts you on edge but the thing that I know was my job, I was busy all the time, see, cause the safest way to get over a, uhm, an operation was to stay in the stream, you see, the head streams had five, six, seven hundred aircraft, you know, in a short space of time and if this stayed within the stream band was about ten hundred miles, you mind an individual on the German radar, you’re part of the mess which they couldn’t distinguish you from, but if you were outside that, you appeared on their screens as a [unclear] and they could [unclear] a fighter onto you, you see. So, the thing to do was, stay behind and you had to stay in that channel, then be one of the pack, so you were supposed to take a fix every six minutes, but of course you couldn’t do that with, you know, where the, your radar range weren’t, what do you call it? Interfered with, you know, which I have forgotten the word. AP: Jamming. HWT: And [unclear] otherwise you took them as you could [unclear] something on the ground or, a river or something or [unclear] started with the star sight, but they, the best took you about fifteen minutes to work out, [unclear] to work out. AP: And you, you HWT: And so you had to stay on it, you know, and if you concentrated on that but you’re not thinking about the threat, instead I was fortunate in that position. AP: What was the navigator’s compartment like in the Halifax? HWT: Good, AP: If you’re sitting at your desk, what are you looking at? HWT: It was, I haven’t got a photo of it, but it was quite generous, it was, uhm, the pilot was up on a slightly raised area and there was a lower deck but not at full height, you know, and then I was [unclear] accommodate the navigator and the bomb aimer and when the bomb aimer wasn’t up acting as a second pilot, he would be down in his prone position, you know, and when he was there, I had to let him in because I had a collapsible seat that folded back [unclear] and but I had a pretty generous desk probably about that wide I suppose and it was, we had, you know, the usual red light or amber light to light, which wasn’t all that good. But then you had an API in front of you, which was a box about so big on the wall and, you had the, forgotten the name of the thing now. You had this device over the table which carried star maps and that projected star positions down onto this chart, you see. And, in fact, I’ve collected navigation instruments since the war, you see, and might even down in the workshop. AP: Yeah. HWT: And not since the war, only since I’ve retired yes and anyway I got an API, I got a GPI and I’ve never been able to get one of these, whatever they were, because I don’t think they were common out here, I think they were common to Bomber Command in England [unclear]. Anyway, this is one thing I forgot but I’ve known now, I’ll look it up. AP: [laughs] Pretty good. HWT: But now, my space was pretty generous and the only, I had a fold down seat [unclear] and that’s about it, and we had to wear silk gloves under our gauntlets to give us feel [?], that’s one of the computers we used to use, that was, that’s just, you know, one I bought since you know, but they were between that and doing your chart work and then doing your sextant work, quite busy. AP: Where in a Halifax, I know in a Lancaster you got that astroline [?] thing behind the cockpit, where in a Halifax did you take star shots from? HWT: Same thing. AP: Same spot the Halifax. HWT: [unclear] position to it. AP: Oh yeah. HWT: To [unclear] I’ll show you. AP: Oh yeah, we have a model here so I prepared earlier. HWT: It was just alongside, just behind the pilot and I’m beside [?] the radio operator. AP: Ok. Pretty good. Uhm, you were talking about being attacked by a fighter once or twice, or being chased by a fighter once or twice. Did you encounter the corkscrew or did you have to use the corkscrew at some point? HWT: Yeah. AP: And how did that effect your navigation? HWT: Badly [laughs] it, everything I had on my desk flew up the roof, you know, scattered all over the [unclear], then I had to recover them when I got out of it and but it didn’t affect, like, navigation as far as [unclear] is concerned, they usually corkscrewed around the [unclear] they’re on, it only pictured as a one off anyway, you didn’t [unclear] you know it was [unclear] corkscrew and so it didn’t affect my navigation to any extent because whatever in the [unclear] you were picking up with the continued fixes you were trying to get, you know, so it didn’t grow and I’m frustrated you know, I kept a log and part of the chart of the trip I did to Stuttgart, which I was going to show you but I can’t find the damn thing! AP: Oh damn! HWT: I looked everywhere and it gives you a fair idea then of how the, you know, why you kept the record the fixes [unclear] you know. AP: You have to let me know if you do find it. I’d like to see that. Anyway. HWT: I’ve gotta find it. AP: Yeah. HWT: I don’t know whether it’s down in my workshop, I got stuff down there but I wouldn’t have taken it down, there is no reason for me to take it down there. However. AP: That’s alright, no worries. Uhm, HWT: And I’ve got, this is a map, a map case this, AP: Ah, cool! HWT: Which I made, when I was collecting maps, well, I still have and I’ve got, you know what a [unclear] is? AP: What? HWT: [unclear]? AP: No. HWT: [unclear] you hang the file. AP: Oh, ok, yeah. HWT: And that’s how I got the maps in here. AP: Oh, fantastic! Uhm, alright, so, how many trips did you do? HWT: I did forty. AP: That’s alright. HWT: I started off on forty two, but two of them we were recalled on. Went through all the briefing took off, were on our way when we were recalled. Because they got [unclear] information that the targets were, you know, clouded out [or up?] and even then the decisions varied you know because we were recalled on those two occasions but on other occasions, you’d, not very often though, you’d bomb out of a cloud [unclear] and now I bombed once on my H2S, AP: Ah! HWT: And the bomb aimer couldn’t see the target and when we were committed to it, so handed over to me and I took it over on H2S which where they landed but [unclear] aircrew there’s a bomb site. AP: So, Ok, tell me something about H2S. Presumably that’s in your navigator’s compartment as well, it’s around your desk somewhere. What were you looking at and how did it work? HWT: Well, you had curtains along the side of your compartment. You could find the light [unclear], so most of your time that’s where you were, except when you want to take, you know, star shots and then you turn your light out and go for [unclear] you come back and if you got [unclear] on the chart, that’s why I’m frustrated I couldn’t show to you, you know, you had to get a fix straight at target shot if you could on three stars and that gave you, you reduced your position to a small triangle, and you just took the centre of that then you had to, had a symbol for that which was a circle with a dot in the middle on the chart and then your air position which made you maintain a, what do you call it? An air position chart all the time so because your air position was always the thing you had to apply the wind to, which gives you a [unclear] position and the air position was always the triangle with the dot in the middle, so by the time you’re keeping your chart up to date and you’re writing up your log and you’re having taken the fixes, you’ve taken the shots to make the fix and then on some occasions you’re bitterly cold, you know, your hands are cold, so you don’t work as flexibly as you would normally, I remember one time before we got the Mark III [unclear] my oxygen mask was dripping onto my chart and make a little ice cream, you know, but you had to navigate through but [unclear] you know, so, you couldn’t, you wouldn’t work as quickly as you would if you’re sitting down here [unclear], you know, you had certain discomforts here so you are AP: Pretty good. HWT: That’s how anyway, but the navigator was pretty busy all the time and he looked like [unclear] interesting, I was [unclear] target when we went up to it and if there was, if there was a ten [unclear] black in the sky, if it was a day like one, I just keep the curtain pulled [laughs] not that you use your curtain as you could but that’s what you felt like AP: Yeah. HWT: But now, I was, particularly on the night targets as always busy, day targets were better because you had, you could take visual fixes, [unclear] you could have a radar range, you know. AP: You used Gee a fair bit? HWT: Pardon? AP: You would have used Gee a fair bit? HWT: Yeah, Gee. AP: How did that work? HWT: [unclear] I think I got a, no, [unclear] but the [unclear] chart was an [unclear] chart with a number of lines drawn on it, you see, and these lines, they weren’t straight, they were sort of, you know, what they call it, I forget now, anyway they were lines demarking the radiations from three different radar stations and each station had a different colour on the chart and say you’d, when you took your readings of the, of the Gee, you could prop them on against in relation to the station you were working, you know, and that was very good and very simple and then you got the H2S which and of course the [unclear] was able to, oh God there is a word for I can’t think of it, a [unclear] scrambled anyway the Gee transmission over the [unclear] so the H2S then gave you a radar unit that you carry in the aircraft and the Germans couldn’t, uhm, scramble it, ain’t that terrible? Anyway but you had the danger the Gee transmitting and the Germans took out [unclear] they could pick up your transmission and home on you, you see, so you didn’t want to, until that happened, it was great, you know, you could, all the cities had distinctive shapes on H2S screens which were the same on your chart, so it was easy and to maintain where you were but when the Germans tend to home on your transmission, you didn’t transmit all the time, you see, so then it was much harder because you hadn’t been on the thing all the time yet, you had to be, identify where you were, you know, or guess where you were in relation to what you station you were working. Bu they all had their, you know, plus and minuses. AP: It’s one of the fascinating things I think, if you follow through the whole bomber war, the measures and the countermeasures and then the counter countermeasures and then the way that, you had this brilliant new technology that gave you the advantage for about two weeks and then the other side came up with a counter tour and you had to put the counter to counter and it just kept swinging [unclear] HWT: [unclear] scientific war AP: That’s unbelievable, yeah, I [unclear] read a couple of books about that. Uhm, alright, so forty two trips happen, uhm, how did your tour end? HWT: Oh, it just ended. AP: Just ended? [laughs] HWT: It was forty, I did forty two, was the number I was set out on but how did it end? [unclear]there was another operation on Essen, two days before I’d had a day operation on Essen and the one before that which was two days before that again we were recalled by radio. Oh, it ended quite officially peacefully, [unclear] five hour trip, five hours, five minutes. AP: Were there any, any particular celebrations when you got back or? HWT: Oh yeah, we [unclear] on celebration, yeah, course, of course it has but in [unclear] long, you see, we were posted [unclear] pretty straight away but [unclear] was our pilot, he went to [unclear], no to [unclear] to conversion, I was, stayed on the squadron, they made me the radar officer which, you know, I had to assess all the bombing performance of the aircraft, you know, as recorded by H2S and I did that some months and then I was posted to a transport squadron 96, which was just forming and I did three cross countries to them [unclear] we were preparing to go on a route I’d established by then was down to Middle East, Cairo across to Bombay, then across to Chongqing I think, some Chinese place to take [unclear] squadron to them. And we were just doing our run up to that, I didn’t know which [unclear] I was gonna be on because, you know, you do the England-Cairo, we did the Cairo-Bombay, Bombay-Chongqing, a trip, be stationed on those but I can get to that, they posted me back here and I went back here and then I had my normal leave and I was posted, I was going to be posted to a squadron in New Guinea when the war was over, so that was it. AP: That was the end of it. So, how did you find then are you in the Air Force for about five years or something now? HWT: Yeah. AP: How did you find readjusting to civilian life? HWT: No problem. AP: No problem at all? HWT: No. I went back to Newport for six or eight months and then my course started at Swinburne and I did that. I did that for three years and then, then I got a job at the council as a building inspector and I was that for a couple of years, then I got, caught as a building [unclear], so I got the building [unclear] job and then that gradually grew to encompass the town planning and won a council work so started as the city architect [unclear] town planner [unclear] regional department for about fifteen [unclear] and couple of secretaries, you know. So it developed and so I had no problem, I got back into a quiet work and then I wanted to fly but my wife didn’t want me to fly until the kids had grown up a bit so I didn’t care for my license until 1968, then I got that and then, well, I still got it but and then during those years I did a lot of flying around Australia. I belonged to a group called the [unclear] aviation group [unclear] and I was the secretary, director for secretary for quite a while and so we had three aircraft and we had a Cessna 182, a Cherokee Piper 180 and a Victor and before we got the 182 we had a Piper Comanche, beautiful aircraft, I was standing in front of the aircraft but one of the [unclear] aviation group crashed the [unclear] and killed the four of them and [unclear] for me, I had to go up there and dispose of the airframe, and [unclear] took the engine and the retractable undercarriage and I had to very carefully dispose of the [unclear] which was the airframe and [unclear] back and forth which, you know, [unclear] terrible end of a lovely aircraft. Anyway and then the last trip I did, I flew clockwise right round Australia, coastal, right round Australia, AP: Beautiful. HWT: You know, took us three weeks, a good trip. AP: Oh boy! [unclear] A country that lends itself to things like that. Very much the easiest way to cover the distance I think. Very nice, so, oh, I guess we’ll come to what is my last question, I ask everyone this. Uhm, what do you think is the legacy of Bomber Command and how to you want to see it remembered? HWT: Well, I was annoyed and hurt so that affected [unclear] job didn’t but the way that the Command was treated after the war upset me, [unclear] a good two years the Command has carried the war and at the time we started was the time Bomber Harris really started his campaign we didn’t have any [unclear] gear, you know, we had normal just recorded all this stuff but and sextants but then, as a Command I’m talking about and then we got Gee, which helped us through a while and then we got H2S which helped us and then in between the, [unclear] this, they developed pathfinders to find the target and illuminate it, which made the job more accurate so and it was the Bomber Command and the government’s, the English government’s decision that we use carpet bombing because at the time we started, we had no better means to getting to and so, but they always picked an appropriate target which was bombed too but then there was always, you know, the weering skilled and the bomb aimer, all that sort of stuff come to it, so you had a spring but, but anyway Bomber Command was much blamed and the politicians particularly didn’t want to know [unclear] because you see in the bombing civilians were killed but civilians were [unclear] during the war because most people were working in something to do with the war, ammunitions, looking out, people in leave, all this sort of stuff, you see, so there was no real completely neutral person but that’s perhaps a modest justification but the, but anyway the thing I heard most was the fact that the politicians would give Harris a list of targets, see, the scientists worked them out, you know, factories [unclear] whatever, so they had collected the intelligence, then they gave the list of appropriate targets to the Parliament and the politicians nominated [unclear] you see, they normally give him [unclear], you know, the five was his choice, which one of the five his choice, depending on [unclear] and so it was [unclear] because the politicians didn’t want to know it, didn’t want to know about it, you see, because thinking that it was not very good because of people had, you know, the [unclear] of civilians being killed they didn’t know [unclear] and I think members of Bomber Command as a whole felt that way. There is one little last thought, but I don’t know whether you know about it but it was something like so long after the war I [unclear] have forgotten about it, but last year the French government decided to give the survivors of D-Day and Battle of Normandy a Legion of Honour and they presented them to them and which I got one was a nice medal but I think there were twenty five from Victoria and I think six from South Australia and I think there about twenty five from [unclear] I’m not sure but they [unclear] until the numbers were way down, you know, and I just mentioned it because it’s a very frugal [unclear] to AP: What are your thoughts on the clasp? I see there’s not one hanging on your medal up there. There’s a little Bomber Command clasp. HWT: OH yeah, good idea, I’ll show you. AP: One of those as well [laughs]. HWT: [unclear] AP: Yep. HWT: This. AP: A DFC as well I see. HWT: Yeah, and that’s the AP: Yeah, lovely. HWT: [unclear] a nice medal, isn’t it? AP: That’s a very nice medal, yeah. HWT: And when you look at it, it’s clipped by the sides. AP: Ah, wow! HWT: [unclear] any good one side. AP: [laughs] Lovely, yeah, there’s the clasp there. Very good. HWT: That’s our crew, that’s me, that’s the rear gunner, that’s the wireless op, that’s the bomb aimer, that’s the mid upper gunner and that’s our pilot. AP: [unclear] ground crew and a couple of WAAFs as well. HWT: And, yeah, that’s the ground crew, that the ones who drive [unclear] AP: Yeah. Fantastic, fantastic. HWT: And that’s, that’s the rear gunner [unclear], the pilot and the mid upper gunner [unclear], he was killed on his fifteenth trip. AP: Wow [unclear] that’s brilliant. Brilliant [laughs] HWT: [unclear] AP: Ah, very nice! Well, that’s the interview thing, so I’m gonna turn that off in a minute. So, thank you very much. HWT: That’s alright. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ATinningHW160314, PTinningH1601 Title A name given to the resource Interview with Herbert Tinning Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource eng Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:19:54 audio recording Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Purcell Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-03-14 Description An account of the resource Herbert joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and was posted, initially, to a communication flight as a fitter. He managed to transfer to aircrew and describes the enlistment process. He went to Somers, then Cootamundra for navigator training and Sale for bomb aimer and gunner training. At Nhill, he learnt astronavigation and flew on Ansons. He sailed from Ascot Vale to Liverpool and on to Bournemouth. He trained at RAF Desford and then at an Advanced Flying Unit at RAF West Freugh on Ansons. Herbert flew on Wellingtons and crewed up at 27 Operational Training Unit at RAF Lichfield and RAF Church Broughton. He converted onto Halifaxes at RAF Marston Moor and joined 51 Squadron at RAF Snaith on Halifaxes, diverted from an Australian squadron because of heavy losses in the Nuremberg raid. He carried out 40 operations and was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and a French Legion of Honour. Herbert discusses social life and crew superstitions. He recalls operations which stood out, especially D-Day and a night fighter Schräge Musik attack. He also explains about his navigation work and comments on H2S and Gee. When his tour ended, he stayed on the squadron as a radar officer before being posted to 96 Squadron for transport from Cairo to Bombay and Chongquing. After returning to Australia, Herbert ended up as a city architect, collecting old maps and navigational instruments, and learnt to fly. Herbert comments on the treatment of Bomber Command. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Australian Air Force Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Australia New South Wales New South Wales--Cootamundra Victoria Victoria--Melbourne Great Britain England--Derbyshire England--Staffordshire Scotland--Wigtownshire England--Yorkshire Egypt Egypt--Cairo North Africa India India--Mumbai China China--Chongqing France--Saint-Leu-d'Esserent France Germany--Nuremberg Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sally Coulter Maureen Clarke 27 OTU 51 Squadron aircrew Anson bombing bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944) coping mechanism crewing up Distinguished Flying Cross fitter airframe Gee ground crew ground personnel H2S Halifax mess military living conditions military service conditions navigator Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944) Operational Training Unit perception of bombing war RAF Church Broughton RAF Lichfield RAF Snaith RAF West Freugh Schräge Musik superstition Tiger Moth training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/300/32122/MMcDonaldDA410364-151013-02.1.pdf 6199184d703609ba0ef66a21865ce63f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource McDonald, Donald Donald Alexander McDonald Donald A McDonald Donald McDonald D A McDonald D McDonald Description An account of the resource Five items. One oral history interview with Donald Alexander McDonald (1920 - 2021, 410364 Royal Australian Air Force) as well as two letters, a concert programme and notes on his interview. He flew operations as a pilot with 466 and 578 Squadrons. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Donald McDonald and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-10-13 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McDonald, D Transcribed document A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive Interviews – Adam Purcell Interview Notes: 410364 Don McDonald, 578 and 466 Sqn Halifax pilot 1944-45 Koo Wee Rup, where Don’s family had their dairy farm, is a regional Victorian town approximately 65km south-east of Melbourne city. Wilson Hall is the ceremonial hall of Melbourne University. The original Hall, in which Don sat his Public Service exams, was destroyed by fire in 1952. See an article about the fire at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/18256075. Mount Martha, the site of Don’s Army training camp, is a small suburb of Melbourne, on Port Philip Bay, some 60km south-east of the city. It is about 50km west of Koo Wee Rup. Broadmeadows, from whence came the WWI-era tents in which Don and his fellow recruits stayed, is a northern suburb of Melbourne and has hosted an Army camp since the early days of WWI. 1 Initial Training School was at Somers, also not far from Koo Wee Rup, on the shores of Western Port. 7 Elementary Flying Training School was at Western Junction, near Launceston in northern Tasmania. The airfield remains active as Launceston Airport. 1 Service Flying Training School was at Point Cook, 25km south-west of Melbourne. It was Australia’s first Air Force base and it remains the oldest continually-operating military airfield in the world. Though no flying units are now based there it hosts the RAAF Museum (see http://www.airforce.gov.au/raafmuseum/index.htm). The Showgrounds are located at Flemington, an inner-western suburb of Melbourne. They are adjacent to Flemington Racecourse, the home of the Melbourne Cup horse race, which Don mentions towards the end of the interview. Camp Myles Standish was a US Army staging camp near Taunton in Massachusetts. Most Australian airmen who travelled across the US on their way to war would have been among about a million soldiers, sailors and airmen who went through the camp. The railway lines that Don mentions following while training from Point Cook went to Ballarat and Seymour. Don’s first gunner was named Chas Mears. His mid-upper gunner was Johnny Cowell. Don completed HCU at Rufforth. 578 Squadron was at Burn. AFL, or Australian Football League, also known as ‘Aussie Rules’, is a football game popular in the southern states of Australia. It is played on an oval ground and is characterised by long kicks, spectacular ‘marks’ (catches) and four upright goal posts. Rugby in this case refers to rugby league, the opposing code which is popular in New South Wales and Queensland. Don’s first grocery stores were at Fawkner, a northern suburb of Melbourne, and Hampton, which is on Port Philip Bay some 15km south-east of the city. The ‘Birdcage’ is a particularly exclusive marquee at the Melbourne Cup horse racing carnival. The actual population of Ballarat is about 96,000, and of Colac (another regional town) about 11,500. Scans: Don was unable to find his logbook at the time of the interview; he thinks a grandchild has it. If he finds it he will let me know for scanning. The only photographs that Don has of his wartime service are framed on his wall; they are under glass and so cannot be scanned. However there is a crew photograph available through the Australian War Memorial; see https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/P03759.001. Air Vice Marshal Henry Neilson Wrigley was the Air Officer commanding RAAF Overseas Headquarters in London from 1942 until he retired in June 1946. It was in this capacity that he signed the letter sent to Don on the award of his DFC in November 1944. The Programme series of scans relates to a particular leave that Don and a mate enjoyed in London in March 1944. Unfortunately, he only remembered to tell me the story when we were scanning the documents so it was not recorded, but a description follows, which I wrote up from my postinterview notes shortly after arriving home: "The thing to do when you went to London", Don said, "was to organise accommodation as soon as you arrived in the city", because of high demand. Unfortunately, on this occasion Don and his mate found themselves in a pub for some beers, which became another pub for more beers, and another, and another. When they were booted out at about 11pm - closing time - from the final pub (pubs had staggered hours in London during wartime), Don asked his mate where he was staying. He replied, dunno, what about you? Don hadn't organised anything either. The Boomerang Club was not an option at that hour, either were the other services clubs in the city, but the Strand Palace could perhaps take them, they thought. (One of the more exclusive hotels in London, the Strand Palace would well and truly have exceeded the budget abilities of the average Flight Sergeant, as both were at the time). So they went there, to be confronted by a large queue of American GIs in front of the booking desk. Here was one occasion where the distinctly blue Australian uniform came in handy. The concierge came up to them, past the Yanks, and enquired quietly whether they had a reservation. They replied, no, we don't. He nodded. "Come with me." The concierge led them to the desk, and asked the receptionist in a loud voice, "Which is Mr McDonald's room?", holding out his hand for a key, which he then gave to Don and his mate. "If those Americans had known that we didn't have a reservation either and we'd jumped the queue like that....." he said to me with a shudder. In any case, in for a penny, in for a pound, they thought. The following day they were talking at breakfast to a woman who asked if they had anything planned for the afternoon. They replied no, thinking about how little funds they had left following their extravagant accommodation. She said that she would be pleased to provide them with tickets for a show. In Royal Albert Hall. In the Royal Box. And there would be special people in the audience. Given strict instructions not to speak to royalty, should any be present, unless first spoken to, Don and his mate went to Royal Albert Hall for what turned out to be "A Grand Concert as a Tribute to Sir Henry J. Wood", and sat in the second row of the Royal Box. Shortly before the performance began there was a great cheer from the crowd (Don's mate leant over and said, "Do you reckon they're cheering for us, Mac?"), and into the Royal Box swept the Queen and the two Princesses, Margaret and Elizabeth (who of course is now the current Queen). The royal party sat in the row of seats directly in front of Don and his mate and they did indeed have a short conversation with them. This being a particularly memorable leave, Don decided a souvenir would be required from the hotel. They debated about pinching a towel (replacing it with their ratty, grey Air Force-issue towels) but decided it wouldn't last very long, so something more permanent was more appropriate. They settled on a small crystal glass. Somehow it survived the next year or so of travelling around in Don's kitbag and came home with him. As Don was telling this story he went to a cabinet and returned with the crystal glass. It is in Don’s hand in one of the photographs I took following our interview. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview Notes: 410364 Don McDonald, 578 and 466 Sqn Halifax pilot 1944-45 Description An account of the resource Notes on locations for Don McDonald's home, training in Australia. Notes people mentioned and scanned documents relating to a leave that Don enjoyed in London and includes a story of the leave written up by the interviewer from his notes which was missed in the interview. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Australia Victoria--Melbourne Tasmania--Launceston United States Massachusetts--Taunton Great Britain England--Yorkshire Victoria--Port Phillip Bay Region Victoria Massachusetts Tasmania Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1944-03 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Purcell Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource David Bloomfield Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context MMcDonaldDA410364-151013-02 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Australian Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Personal research Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Two typewritten sheets 466 Squadron 578 Squadron aircrew Halifax pilot RAF Burn RAF Rufforth training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/480/8363/ABrooksR151029.mp3 d0d059fc3e408586027f57552f30d5d2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brooks, Edward Edward Brooks E Brooks Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Brooks, E Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Rita Brooks. Widow of Flight Lieutentant Edward Brooks DFC, DFM who flew operations with 12 and 460 Squadrons. The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Rita Brooks and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AS: Right we’re in business. We’re ready to start. Okay, thank you. RB: Right. My late husband was Flight Lieutenant Edward Brooks DFC, DFM. Now Ted hadn’t meant to join the RAF. He’d already started work as an office boy in London and had joined the Home Guard, but he wanted to join the Army. So he went to the army recruiting office and all was going well, until with the innocence of youth, he stated that he wished to join the Oxford and Bucks, the regiment in which his uncle Company Sergeant Major Edward Brooks had been awarded the Victoria Cross in 1917. The recruiting sergeant looked up and said, ‘You can’t pick and choose sonny.” To which Ted replied, ‘Right, I’ll go and join the RAF.’ This he promptly did. His date of enlistment February 1941. But he was dismayed to learn that they were unable to take him immediately, but they gave him a lapel badge to indicate that he’d enlisted and that they would let him know. The months passed and although he must have been very busy, working during the day and Home Guard duties at night, he just wanted to be in the service, so after several months had elapsed he wrote to the Air Ministry [Shuffle of paper]. Two months later, two weeks later he was at Uxbridge. There followed the initial three months training course at Blackpool. There they were billeted in a former seaside boarding house. They had to surrender their ration books to the landlady and they were always hungry. Their meals were served in the dining room, but they soon realised that the corporal in charge of the bul- billet had all his meals in the kitchen with the landlady, and was enjoying much better fare. On the day they all left, to register their dissatisfaction [turning of page] they nailed a kipper to the underside of the dining table. Another memory of Blackpool was, before leaving they were lined up, sleeves rolled up and given multiple vaccinations. Then they were allowed to go home on leave before their next posting. Ted collapsed on arriving home and taken by ambulance to RAF Henley hospital, they lived nearby, where vaccine fever was diagnosed, and where he spent most of his leave. The chapter Ted contributed to “Lancaster At War Two” as wireless operator follows his training up to OTU where as he said he met the RAAF. At some time during those previous months his mother, always concerned for her son’s comfort, was worried that his regulations shirts were too rough. So she bought him officer’s shirts which she sent to him and which he wore on a night out to the local town. He was, however, picked up by the MPs and put on a charge for this offence. This was quickly followed by an individual posting to Northern Ireland to serve on a small anti-aircraft observation unit miles from anywhere. The isolation of this unit and the ever-present threat of the IRA made him sleep with his rifle alongside. They were a small group of young lads unused to cooking for themselves, so each one took their turn to be cook for the day buying meat and vegetables from the local farmers. Stew was the main meal of the day but Ted was horrified to see how it was being cooked. Meat and vegetables were thrown into a large saucepan, potatoes, carrots et cetera just as they had been lifted from the ground complete with the soil. Ted said that he’d do the cooking. Thence to OTU at Litchfield where they crewed up. Five of the crew were Australian with the pilot being Murray Brown. I had the privilege of knowing Murray Brown and John Clarke, his 460 Squadron pilot in post war years when they visited the UK. The crew were posted to 12 Squadron at Wickenby, a satellite station of Binbrook. The commanding officer was Group Captain Huey Edwards, who was the CO of Binbrook [alarm sounding in background]. Many post war years later, Ted saw an article by Group Captain Basil Crummy[?] who said he was Wickenby’s first CO. Ted said he’d confirm the facts by writing to Sir Huey Edwards VC who kindly wrote at some length explaining that for a short while he was in charge of Binbrook, Wickenby and one other station, Basil Crummy taking over from him soon after. I realised a little while ago that these letters from Sir Huey should be in an appropriate archive, and I donated them to the RAAF Museum, Melbourne. And so Ted’s first com- tour commenced on 13th May 1943. The target being Bochum. The operation had to be abandoned after crossing the enemy coast due to an outer engine catching fire, and they had decided that would have to ditch but Murray went into a steep dive and mercifully the fire went out. When looking through their list of t- targets it illustrated Bomber Commands Battle of the Ruhr, known to the crews as Happy Valley. Also Peenemunde, Berlin, Cologne, Turin, Genoa and Hamburg. [Turning of paper]. Many years later in the 1950s we sailed along the River Elbe to Hamburg. As we reached our moorings Ted looked at the other bank where there was a large sign Blohm and Voss. Ted said that the shipyard had been their aiming point. Their tour finished with Stuttgart on 8th October 1943. After returning from Mannheim they were on their crew bus on their way from dispersal to the interrogation room when it collided with a petrol tanker which had broken down on the perimeter track. They were all pitched forward off their seats and were dazed for some seconds, Ted had been smoking at the time but when he came to he realised it was still in his mouth but broken in half. They hadn’t realised, however, that a member of the crew had been pitched out they continued. Some considerable time later when he, he they continued but some con - considerable time later he appeared in the briefing room and amongst other things was asked for his escape rations. He said, ‘He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t as he’d had to eat them on the long trek back.’ On their leave on the 22nd of October ‘43, the crew made a BBC broadcast entitled “Lancaster crew describes an operation.” I found in Ted’s papers a receipt from the BBC for three pound. Ted was then posted to Lindholme instructing. He said that one night in the mess Squadron Leader John Clarke came up to him and said that he was forming a crew to do a second tour, would Ted like to join him? ‘Yes,’ he said and so to his posting to Binbrook and 460 Squadron. The first operation there was the 22nd/23rd May on Dortmund and the last 16th September, Rhine which was the night of Arnhem. [Turning of page] The pattern of this tour was essentially supporting the invasion. On D-Day 5th/6th June ‘44, their target was the Normandy coastal bat- batteries in which over a thousand aircraft were involved. Their target being the battery St Martin de Varreville. The following night the important six way junction near, road junction near Bayeux and the Forest de Cereza. There followed oil plants, flying bomb sites culminating in their final operation 16th/17th September Arnhem. Bomber Command’s main operations that night were in support of the following days landings. Several surrounding airfields were to be bombed 46- 460’s target was Rhine. However John Clarke’s crew was selected to remain behind after bombing Rhine. They were secretly briefed to carry out a low level reconnaissance over Arnhem, and told because of the importance of this assignment the radio equipment would be modified to take quartz crystals, so that the tuning would be spot on to transmit their observations. Just as Ted was about to enter the aircraft the Signals Officer drew up thrusting two small objects into his hands. ‘I don’t know how to use them,’ said Ted. ‘Neither do I,’ said he, ‘But you’ve plenty of time to find out.’ So ended his operational career. During this time, I’m not sure whether it was 12 or 460 Ted had been feeling very unwell during the day but they were told that they would be taking two high ranking army officers on that night’s operations as they wished to observe the German anti-aircraft defences. During the flight Ted felt very sick but there was no suitable receptacle. He looked down and by his position he saw two upturned army caps, these he suitably filled and then despatched them down the flare chute. On landing the two chaps searched for their caps but they were told by the crew that very strange things happen at night. He always suffered from severe migraines in post war years, this he attributed to the fact that on one trip shrapnel had penetrated the fuselage and severed his oxygen tube. He didn’t tell his pilot at the time as he knew it’d been very dangerous to reduce height and did not do so until it was safe. However he said the pain in his head was just unimaginable. After Binbrook, I believe it was back to Lindholme, there they would take ground crews to see the destruction in Germany. On one separate occasion the flu had to [laugh] the crew had to fly to the Luftwaffe base on the Island of Sylt, purpose unknown. They dined in the mess with the German officers and I understand it was rather a tense situation. After time he flew to Brussels but burnt a tyre, burst a tyre on landing. They were there one month before a replacement tyre was obtained. He said that he had volunteered for Tiger Force and that he had crewed up. I believe this was the plan for the RAF and USAF bombing campaign of Ger- of Japan. And I found confirmation of this in his 460 records. Finally, in summer 1946 he was demobbed at Swinderby. You will note that in the 12 Squadron crew list I didn’t name the mid-upper gummer- gunner. This is because on July 28th/29th they were briefed for Cologne and during the outward flight he had collapsed very distressed and had to be physically restrained by other crew members. The operation had to be abandoned and they returned to base after dropping their bombs in the sea. After that they had several replacement MUGs. He finally left the service in August 1945 from RAF Swinderby. AS: Thank you very much. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rita Brooks Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Sadler Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-10-29 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 00:14:54 audio recording Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ABrooksR151029 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Second generation Description An account of the resource Rita’s late husband was Flight Lieutenant Edward Brooks DFC, DFM. He was in the Home Guard before enlisting with the Royal Air Force in February 1941, and sometime later went to RAF Uxbridge. Following training at Blackpool, the recruits were billeted in a former seaside boarding house. Whilst at Blackpool they had their vaccinations before going home on leave. On reaching home Ted collapsed and was diagnosed with vaccine fever and he spent most of his leave in RAF Kenley hospital. Ted was trained as a wireless operator and was posted to Northern Ireland to serve on a small antiaircraft observation unit. Next he went to Operational Training Units at RAF Litchfield where they crewed up. His crew was posted to 12 Squadron at RAF Wickenby. Ted’s first tour commenced on 13 May 1943, although the operation had to be cancelled due to an engine catching fire, which the pilot managed to extinguish by going into a steep dive. Targets included the Ruhr, Berlin, Peenemünde, Cologne, Turin, Genoa and Hamburg. On the 8 October 1943 the tour ended with an operation to Stuttgart. On leave, on 22 October 1943, the crew made a BBC broadcast entitled 'Lancaster crew describes an operation'. Ted was then posted to RAF Lindholme as an instructor, then joined a second crew and was posted to RAF Binbrook with 460 Squadron. On D-Day they supported the landings by bombing batteries. In August 1945 Ted finally left the service from RAF Swinderby. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain Northern Ireland France Germany England--Lincolnshire England--London England--Staffordshire England--Yorkshire Germany--Berlin Germany--Cologne Germany--Hamburg Germany--Stuttgart Italy--Genoa Italy--Turin England--Lancashire England--Blackpool Germany--Peenemünde Italy Germany--Ruhr (Region) Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1943-05-13 1943-10-22 1943-10-08 1945-08 1941-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Maureen Clarke Carolyn Emery 12 Squadron 460 Squadron aircrew Berlin Campaign (23 August 1943 – 25 March 1944) bombing bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943) Cook’s tour crewing up Distinguished Flying Cross Distinguished Flying Medal Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944) RAF Binbrook RAF Kenley RAF Lichfield RAF Lindholme RAF Uxbridge RAF Wickenby Ruhr Campaign (5 March – 10 July 1943) Tiger force training wireless operator https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/7/3394/ADerringtonAP150715-02.2.mp3 6cd1f162411f8a65aa035d4d1151c5ab Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Derrington, Arnold Pearce Arnold Pearce Derrington Arnold P Derrington Arnold Derrington A P Derrington A Derrington Description An account of the resource Two oral history interviews with Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington DFC (- 2016, 187333 Royal Air Force), a navigator with 462 and 466 Squadrons. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Derrington, AP Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-07-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AS: It’s 15th July 2015. My name’s Adam Such. I’m a researcher for the International Bomber Command Centre and this is the second half of an interview with Flight Lieutenant Derry Derrington former DFC, former navigator on 466 and 462 squadrons RAF. Derry first of all good morning thank you for allowing me to come back. DD: My joy. AS: Great. I’d like first of all really to take you back to briefings. I know that they weren’t all exactly the same but can you give me a general idea of how long they’d go? DD: Well a briefing used to last about three quarters of an hour at most. Sometimes it could be done in a quarter of an hour and once we had the briefing the navigator would settle down to make out what his flight plan. Do you know what a flight plan is? AS: Roughly. But if you’d like to go through it. DD: It’s on every chart and every log I’ve got here and you’ll see that we knew the complete journey that we had to make and it wasn’t always direct. It would appear that it should be but we had to do all sorts of diversionary courses in order to fox the enemy and I’ve got a chart that I want to give you which shows every target we went to with, as it were, a straight line going from Driffield or our take off point was called Flaxfleet and it wasn’t a straight line as my chart shows but it’s easy for anyone to notice and we didn’t go in straight lines like it appears to be. I’d like to give that to you now while I think about it. AS: Ok. [pause] AS: Now I now have your chart in front of me with your thirty one missions on it. DD: Yes. AS: Yeah, as you say straight lines but the doglegs would be quite substantial I suppose depending on where the - DD: Well depending on the time. We could always lose time. We couldn’t pick it up unless the pilot really stepped on the gas but two minutes was the most that we have to, we mustn’t get there too early or we had to lose some time but we didn’t do that very often but of course once your jigging around like that you’re crossing the path of other members of the stream of aircraft and you were taking a risk. You’ve got to be very alert. You don’t want collisions in the air. AS: Back, back to the briefing where we started did, did the whole crew go just to one briefing or was there separate briefings for pilots and navigators. DD: No it was a total, all the crew was there for it and they went back to do whatever they wanted to do with their equipment but we had to sit down and work out our flight plan and the flight plan was a very handy thing because it depended of course on the forecast winds of that time. They may have changed completely by the time we would do the operation but they would have been just about five or six degrees difference perhaps from one course to another and it wasn’t just a case of the calculation course you had. You had to work out deviation and also each aircraft was tuned differently so that you had to amend the calculated course that you were going to steer. You applied correction and deviation but that was the navigators job to do that and well it took some time with the computer working out the courses that we had to go but the bomb aimer might have been with me on these occasions. Jonah our bomb aimer was quite keen and he would be watching what I was doing. And we were great pals. They were wonderful crew to be with. AS: After, after the briefing and you’d worked out your flight plan it’s, what happened then? I mean DD: Well. AS: We hear about the operational meal, the operational egg. What - DD: Well we had, some of the chaps said they had a good meal beforehand. I only seem to remember a good meal afterwards [laughs] they gave us plenty to eat. Two Eggs on My Plate is, I believe is the title of one book written about our experiences in those days. But they did feed us very well with a good old fry up. AS: Then out to the aeroplane. DD: We felt we were very privileged people because in those days were the days of rationing. AS: Then out to the aeroplane. How long before take-off would that, would that be? DD: Probably two hours, two and a half hours or so before take-off. And it wasn’t a case of being waved off we just were there and we went and didn’t know who was waving us off or what we were just intent on being there and doing our job. AS: You were, were 4 Group, in, in Yorkshire. DD: I was - ? AS: 4. In Number 4 Group. DD: 4 group yes. AS: Now that’s between the 6 Group North. DD: Yes. AS: And the other groups South. Did you climb out directly on course or or did you have to avoid the other aircraft from - DD: Well we had a collecting point to move from near Spurn Head, a place called Flaxfleet and we didn’t set course from the airfield as such we were out warming up and going around, flying in orbit around the area but we wanted to be at Flaxfleet by the time of take-off. TOT time of take-off or time over target TOT. And we set off from there and well we were on the alert all the time to see we weren’t too near other aircraft. I say we - especially the gunners. They were the eyes of the plane and the pilot. AS: Once, once you had formed up and I presume for daylight operations there was more of a coming together than, than at night time? DD: You mean the aircraft flying close to each other? AS: Yeah. DD: I suppose there must have been. Most of our operations were night time, dark, in the darkness but we did some daylights. The Yanks were daylight people. They didn’t do too much dark, night time flying but we were day and night. And our trips were not quite as long as some people spent a long time. I suppose the maximum length of time you’ll see from our logbooks the maximum length of time on any of our operations was approximately eight hours but some people had time longer than that. AS: Yes, I - DD: We didn’t have any very long drawn out operational time. I’m amazed we did what we did in such a short time. AS: I see Magdeburg probably was, was the furthest you went. DD: Probably, yes. AS: On your trips or perhaps Koblenz. DD: Ahum AS: Yeah. Coming, coming back now if I may coming back from the trip was there much of a desire to be home first? To open the taps? To - DD: No. No, we went along steadily the only thing was in the funnel when we were coming to land we sometimes the Germans had a fighter lurking around and we had to be equally alert at landing time as we were taking off. That was that. Have you heard much about that happening? AS: No I’d like you to tell me about - DD: Well - AS: The whole process. DD: They had fighters in the funnel sometimes and of course our fighters were up to combat them but we had to be on the alert because of that. AS: Could you talk I know you were inside behind your curtain but could you talk me through perhaps the, the sort of aids to final navigation? The funnel lights, the drem pundits, Sandra - that sort of thing. Could you talk me through the process of coming back to base and landing? DD: Well I didn’t have much to do with that. I got them back to the area where we had to be and the crew looked after that as a whole. They got their eyes open and the pundits, those are, those are the flashing lights you’re talking about? AS: Ahum. DD: Well the pilot had his job to do and the bomb aimer might have been there to help him and be observing with him but as a navigator I’d was, I’d got them back to very near the base and I’d done my job but I was alert to write and record whatever had to be done and I’d hear the conversation of the crew and if I heard anything significant then I’d make a note of it on my log. AS: Which brings me nicely into afterwards. After landing. You said you’d done your job but perhaps you were the most important man at the debriefing. What was the debriefing like? DD: We were asked all sorts of questions and were you at the target in time? What opposition did you get there? And of course the crew would say as much as I would about that. If they’d said at the time they would have been on my log recording it. I believe my logs are pretty neat. I’m not as tidy and neat now as I was then but I know you’ll their fairly clear. I did everything printing. I didn’t do anything cursive writing at all. It was fine print. AS: And they, they would they go through your navigation log either then or afterwards, DD: Oh they’d have an overview quickly. And after the operation was over the navigation leader would have a look at the log and the chart. They were handed in together. And he’d write a comment do you see there are comments on the front page of it - A satisfactory trip or did you take enough fixes, take more than you do and what they may say what was your opinion of H2S when it came in to us initially. You’ll see one or two of my charts are in a colour different from the others instead of the normal red printing on a white background. [OTHER: LONG PERSONAL CONVERSATION NOT TRANSCRIBED] DD: Yes they had a white background and the towns shape is in brown and the brown showed up very good against the white background and if a town it isn’t just a red glowing dot on the fluorescent screen it was a shape on the chart that we had and if there was some projecting point in some way that you could identify then that a bearing on, from that could be taken and that would give me my position. It was, your attempt was to get a position every six minutes at least apart from any visual sightings there may have been and this radar was a wonderful help. AS: Was it generally reliable? DD: Oh yes. They did try to jam us but we didn’t have much of that to worry about. They couldn’t jam the H2S but the window that we scattered was supposed to confuse their ground systems for identifying us. AS: But the actual installation in the aeroplane? Could you be confident you’d go in there and turn it on and it would work? DD: Oh yes. AS: And work in the air DD: Oh yes it was very reliable. AS: Was that generally true for the aeroplane? You’d walk to your allocated aeroplane and it would be fully functional for the trip. DD: Yes. Oh yes. AS: So the standard of maintenance was, was pretty high. DD: Very good indeed. The ground crews were very helpful. And if we weren’t satisfied they soon knew it. [laughs] AS: Were your ground crew predominantly Australians by the time you were on ops or a mix? DD: We were a totally pommie crew with an Australian captain. And I don’t think we were, it wasn’t a case of tolerated we were treated as equals. We had a very good company. A jolly good lot they were too. AS: The ground crew? Were they mostly Australians? DD: No I don’t know any ground crew were Australian. They were all British I believe. AS: Ok. DD: One thing which was rather interesting I ended up as a lecturer in Manchester University eventually and there was one fellow who came on the staff. He said, [?] ‘My job was I trained as a navigator but they were beginning near the end of the war not to need any more air crew things were going on so well and it was my job to load you up with our bombs, with the bombs. I was doing that job’. So he has diversified to be loading up bombs for us and well we just took off with what they gave us. AS: When we talked yesterday we talked a bit about the French at Elvington. Did you have much to do with the Free French squadrons? DD: We just knew they were there and we were just delighted I think that we were cosmopolitan as we were. We had a Maori in our squadron and well we were British and the French were there and well they had the same directions and the same intentions as we did and we were just delighted I think that we were a multinational gang, 4 Group AS: Yeah. Indeed you definitely were. [pause] There we are. So we talked that you were an Australian squadron fully accepted as English people. DD: Ahum. AS: The Australians were far from home can you tell me a bit about their life. What they did for leave and how - ? DD: Well quite a few Cornish people went overseas mining years ago. There’s an adage if there’s a hole in the ground there’s a Cornish miner at the bottom of it. And the thing is that some of these Australians who came over had relatives in England. They weren’t all convicts [laughs] and they went off and had leave and visited relations and well they liked going to London to see the bright lights. AS: Did your Skipper, did he come home with you? Did he? DD: No. He has been home since but not during operational time. AS: On the squadron can you recall any real characters and why they were characters? DD: Oh there was a chap called Tiny Cawthorne. He was a very big chap. Very tall. There was a man called Ern Shoeman and Ern Shoeman was reputed to be a millionaire property wise and he and I were good friends. He used to write me quite a bit and he knew we had a handicapped daughter. Our daughter Mary is fifty nine, she’s Downs Syndrome and she’s a very sweet, gentle little soul. She’s at a home up in Wadebridge and she’s got a very good carer looking after her. My nephew Michael is very good to her, takes her out for morning coffee and so on. She doesn’t speak because she lost her voice when my mother in law died and she was annoyed. Or Mary’s reaction was, ‘I’m not going to speak any longer ’cause granny’s not here and she didn’t tell me she was going.’ And we’ve had speech therapists for her and she is not speaking but my son David is coming down, takes her off for a walk somewhere when they’re the only two there and she’s able to make herself known. She understands sign language and she’s a great joy and friend to us and we’re very relieved to think that she’s looked after so well because we’re ancient and we shall probably pass on before she does but normally Downs Syndrome people don’t live beyond the age of fourteen but we were told that she wouldn’t live beyond the age of two but she’s still going on ok. AS: That’s And they treat her like a little doll up there where she is with the Home Farm Trust. That’s the name of the organisation looking after her at Wadebridge. AS: And she, she used to interact with this character from the squadron. The property developer. DD: Oh no, Ern Shoeman - AS: Yes. DD: Used to write and ask how she was getting on. AS: Ok. [phone ringing] DD: He was a very pleasant man. He was a pilot I think. AS: Are there any other characters that you can recall? DD: Well there was this chap Jackson who used to smoke his pipe through the inside of the oxygen mask [laughs] AS: That was insane. DD: Very risky business. AS: Presumably when he was on oxygen. DD: I think so. [PERSONAL CONVERSATION REGARDING PHONE CALL NOT TRANSCRIBED] AS: So there was room in the squadron for characters was there? Discipline was, was reasonably relaxed? DD: Oh yes. Yes. We didn’t go on parade very much. I can’t think of many more. We were characters I suppose. AS: Characters and survivors yeah. So, what, what would a day on the squadron, a non-flying day on the squadron have been like? DD: Difficult to say. I did some of my book. You’ve seen the - AS: Yes. DD: Song of Songs. Places like, let’s see, Mablethorpe. That seems people used to go there for a day out if there was a forty eight hour pass or a stand down I ought to know if I thought of that I could think of that easily I just can’t think of any. They would go to one or two coastal towns between Spurn Head and oh I just can’t think of the names of them. AS: Don’t DD: [I ought to. I’m ancient you see [?] AS: Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. So switching tack a bit. You have the DFC. DD: Yes. AS: How did you hear about your award and how was it presented to you? DD: I’ve got a newspaper cutting about it there. It was in the Gazette. Rotherham Gazette I think and I had a very nice letter from the George VI - Secretary presumably. The king was indisposed. Wasn’t able to be presenting personally as he would wish to do and wished me well in my future career and it came through the post [laughs]. No ceremony or whatever. My wife has the MBE. We went to Buck House to get that and my sister in law and my daughter could go with us. AS: Fantastic. DD: But there was no ceremony about it and immediately after the war and for at least twenty years Bomber Command was almost in the dog house. They were thinking in terms of all the damage they did to oh someplace or other. Let’s see which would be the one? AS: Was it Dresden? DD: Dresden. AS: Yeah DD: That’s the one. Well we weren’t involved in that at all. We don’t know if we injured many civilians. There were bound to have been at times but you couldn’t be that selective. Necessary they might have been injured or killed. We tried to do our best not to damage local human beings but bombing is a very, well not exactly indiscriminate but we had taken, aimed to be as accurate as we could. AS: You mentioned at Bomber Command as you put it was in the doghouse after the war. Was this a real feeling that, that you and your comrades had that your - DD: Oh we didn’t feel that. It was the attitude of the general public and Bomber Command wasn’t popular with the national attitude for some time. It was some, afterwards I think people have come around to believe and to know that we were the only ones to really get to the heart of Germany and the industrial heart of it. And if it wasn’t for Bomber Command well the war would have gone on much longer. And of course Guy Gibson’s dam busting that created havoc and that shortened the length of the war, the length of the time of the war finishing. AS: I’m, I’m really interested in the fact that you think that it’s, it’s changing. For what it’s worth I agree. But do you think things like the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park and what we’re doing up in Lincoln, do you think that is, signifies a change in public attitude? DD: It was very popular at a time when the green park memorial was the biggest attraction in London and some silly fools went and defaced it with some paint. AS: Yes I saw that. It was DD: You saw that? AS: Yes I was up there for the opening as you were. DD: Oh it was a lovely day. AS: Yeah. DD: Yes they fed us well. They provided positions for us. We booked to go to it in good time to go see it. I went a day or two earlier I was so excited about going and Charlie and I were together and my son and my grandson went with me. They were the two guests I had and they were very impressed and delighted. AS: There, there was this feeling amongst the aircrew that they weren’t appreciated before that. Is that the case? DD: We didn’t think or care about it. AS: No just - DD: We were there and did the job and it had to be done. We didn’t care what the public thought. I will say this in terms of the public and Bomber Command I’ve been to a few reunions and I sometimes had a taxi to go from Paddington to another station, our reunions were often up in York, and I met a taxi man and he said, “Oh come with me I wouldn’t dare charge you chaps. I know what you went through.” And that was a lovely gesture. I’ve met that on two or three occasions. AS: Moving completely different track if I may for a moment - use of wakey wakey pills - amphetamines or Benzadrine I know they were in the escape packs but were they ever offered to you before flying? DD: I don’t recall anything about it at all. I don’t think so. No, we didn’t, I didn’t take any. I knew they existed but I didn’t want any or need any and neither did our crew. AS: Excellent that’s good. Continuing on with the escape kit theme did you have any sort of escape training? DD: Yes. AS: And what did that consist of? DD: We went to battle school and I seem to remember walking around on my hands and knees and I believe we had details to store a map in our caps or in our shoes in case we needed to make reference to the land to find our way around. We did escape training about a fortnight as far as I know. AS: In your training before going on operations what, what sort of, of flying did you do? I’ve heard of bullseyes for instance. What were they all about? DD: Yes they were practice flights to targets and they gave the bomb aimers and the gunners experience and the bullseye was operational experience and the bullseye was operational experience and a part of operational training. We didn’t do that when we were on operations. That was prior to operations. AS: And did you get involved in leaflet dropping as well in training? DD: No. I think the wireless operator’s job was to throw leaflets down through the chute and he’d take a handful every three minutes or so and they were in different languages. Some of the leaflets were like little booklets. I’ve got one or two there stuffed away in my general folder but I did have a lovely collection of leaflets and I went out to give a talk on one occasion and I’m sorry to say someone obviously pinched them. AS: Oh Lord. DD: I reckon I lost about twenty different leaflets on that occasion. AS: That’s not a very nice thing to do. DD: One leaflet I remember particularly was about the flying bomb site Watten that we went to and that’s now a visitor attraction with a coloured leaflet to hand out to people. And we knew that we had an aiming point. There was a great hole beside of the take-off place for these V1s and the walls of it were eight feet thick so you can imagine they needed to give good protection to the missiles which were stored inside. AS: And you destroyed it. DD: Hmmn? AS: And the bombers destroyed it. DD: Well they shook it up a lot [laughs]. AS: All the way through the crew has been the major part of your experience I think. Since the war I think you’ve kept in touch. Have you had - DD: All the time. AS: Have you had reunions? DD: Oh yes we’ve had reunions. We went to Llanelli where Charlie the, Dennis Cleaver was, he married a Welsh girl. Whether we went to the wedding or what I don’t quite know. I did give an address at Jonah’s funeral. I am a Reader in the church and I wanted to talk about Jonah at the time. He was my particular close fellow ‘cause he sat beside me while we were on operations. AS: What, what, what form did the reunions take? Would you all go off to a hotel somewhere or go back to Driffield or what? DD: In York itself I think, mainly. It was Betty’s bar they used to talk about. They used to meet there when - you said what do people do on their day off or when they had free time - Bettys Bar in York was popular. I wasn’t a drinking fellow and that was very popular. They were a very hearty, jolly lot the Australians. Very easy to get on with. AS: And you’ve been to Australia yourself a number of times. DD: I’ve been nine times. Not just because of our daughter but there have been reunions in Australia. I did have some reunions to do with South Africa too. The [Hornclip?] Association. [Hornclip?] was a volcanic mountain with a flat top near where we flew from and that Association has packed in now but that was quite a popular meet up. I think we had one or two reunions in London. AS: I think we’ll, we’ll pause there. [pause] DD: I don’t think we were using H2S until the end of our tour. AS: We have from your fantastic folder here we have a, a collection of souvenirs[?] papers from each mission and one of them we have here - Mission 25 to Cologne does in fact have your H2S map here. Could you, could you talk me through what we’ve on this map? DD: Well we had a fluorescent screen same size as the Gee was and the shape of the town would come up as a darker pink glow against a faint background and the shape came up like you see here. These different shapes of towns. You see London over there, a big patch, different towns in England and that was a case of navigating by H2S and I could take a fix every six minutes with no difficulty. See the scattering towns look. AS: Yes. DD: That’s the Ruhr there. You can see the shape of towns alright there. AS: But on here you have a number of different coloured lines and writing could you, could you talk me through those. Base at Driffield there with -. DD: Yes on the track that we wanted to keep there’d be two arrows and the wind that we found would have three arrows on it, the vector with the wind and we took off from Flaxfleet but you see our base Driffield is about twenty miles north of Hull and there’s a place called Flaxfleet not far away. That’d be the start of that thing. It was a village I suppose. I’ve never been to Flaxfleet. I’ve got a, somewhere over in that file over there big file I think I’ve got a postcard with a picture of Flaxfleet on it. Not that it’s very important but that’s the name of it. AS: And then this, this is your track pre-planned. This is the track you’d planned beforehand. DD: That’s right. On the way out. That was the wind vector there. That green. AS: Ahum DD: The target would have a triangle there. AS: So you’re routing over, over Reading on this particular occasion. DD: Yes. AS: Is that, is that a regular route? DD: I don’t know. Not often. AS: But would you, would you always avoid London? DD: Oh I suppose so. It’s such a sprawl. Anyway so long as I got my fix every six minutes that was all I really needed to have, needed to do. AS: And you’re calculating a lot of wind vectors. One two - DD: We were probably wind finders about that time and maybe[?] transmit that to PFF. There’s a rash of towns along - AS: And as you say they all have different, different shapes. DD: Shapes. AS: What was the - DD: Cologne. AS: What was the target in Cologne? DD: Railway. Railway marshalling yard. 3549 Other: Morning. DD: Morning Abigail everything ok PERSONAL CONVERSATION WITH ABIGAIL FROM MARKER 3605 - NOT TRANSCRIBED. AS: So an enormous amount of information on here and you put this, which of this would you put on before you took off. DD: Nothing. AS: Information - DD: Maybe that green, we dropped leaflets or something. AS: That’s window, says window or something. DD: Oh yes that might have been put on there before we took off. AS: Also with your chart here we have a second chart and that’s - DD: Sometimes we were asked to replot an actual operation and that might have been such a case. I don’t know. AS: At short notice. DD: After the operation. Analysing what we did. AS: Ok. DD: They kept their eye on us pretty well. AS: And we also have a flight log. Flight plan, excuse me. DD: Yes that was, that was target there. Before the target. After the target. AS: Ok. DD: What does it say here? AS: Ok. - KJ Brown , Flying Officer. DD: Hmmn AS: So he was - DD: He improved. AS: Entirely satisfied with that one, with the Cologne trip. Can you, can you talk me through some of this. Here where it says watch - fast and slow. What’s that all about? DD: Oh by watch when they gave us the time signal. Was it four seconds ahead of the actual Greenwich time signal or four seconds behind. That would be recorded there and the time would be important if I was doing anything to do with astro navigation but to the nearest minute well in terms of astro navigation a minute meant, a minute in time meant a four miles position difference and we had to correct for that. AS: So you were navigating to that, that degree of accuracy? DD: Yes. AS: Ok. Here we have - is that required track? DD: Yes, and those were the different winds we used. AS: These would be given to you before the op would they? DD: Yes. Yes that’s right. AS: And then is this after take-off. This section of the form is DD: That’s right AS: After take off DD: Yes. AS: What actually happened rather than - DD: That’s right. Watches synchronised so my time was what the pilot had in front of him. Why did I underline that I wonder. Is that take off time? AS: Airborne. Yeah. DD: Yes. AS: Climb to six thousand over base. That must have taken quite a long time with a - DD: Heavy aircraft. AS: Heavy aircraft. DD: The pencil’s a rather light colour. You can read it anyhow. AS: Ahum [pause] and what’s that say? DD: Master switch off. The master switch meant that the bombs couldn’t be released afterwards once it was off. We had a hang up or two once or twice with bombs. It’s not easy landing when the bombs are held up. AS: Can, can you recall what size of bombs they were? DD: Oh there’s a list of it. I’ve got a list of it on, let’s see, I think in the logbook there’s a list of the weight of bombs which we carried. You remember you’ve got the logbook? AS: Yes. Yes, we can, we can have a look through that but this is marvellous this is a record of every single thing that happened isn’t it? DD: Well that’s what the navigators job was you see. Not that we were going to do a post mortem or anything like that but at the debriefing they may have had questions to ask us. [pause] AS: And also you have a target photograph. [pause] DD: Cologne. AS: Yeah. DD: Anything on the back? No. AS: What’s that telegram say? DD: Best wishes and love, Helen. AS: Fantastic. DD: And that was the envelope the telegram came in. You don’t get greeting telegrams, you don’t get telegrams at anymore I suppose. AS: And what’s the address there? Is that something Hall? Is that your officer’s mess? DD: [Arley?] House, Marazion. That was my home address. AS: Ah ok. Right. Shall we? [pause] Derry in amongst the things that you’ve kept is this Gee lattice chart here. DD: Yes. AS: Gee lattice chart North German chain. Could you talk me through what Gee was and how you used this chart? DD: Well Gee was signal which came to us from a ground station and sometimes of course those did get attacked but we were delighted to be able to pick up these transmissions and we had a screen in front of us and we could find out where we were and the position lines as you see had certain values written on them and the value on that it made sure we were keeping to the same signal all the time and we had to record our position and we wanted to get two signals. One signal to cross the other and the better it was in terms of being a right angle it was more spot on. If it was say a thirty degree angle between the two position lines it wasn’t very satisfactory so we had to pick out the signals that were the most suitable to give us an accurate position and when we got our fix we used to make a mark with a cross on the chart according to where we were and it was my hope all the time to take a fix whichever method we did it every six minutes because six minutes being a tenth of the hour it was easier to work out by moving the decimal point the speed that we were doing and the Gee fix that we got showed us our ground position. By joining the air position to the air position we got an angle, a vector from which we could work out the wind direction and speed and that was the navigator’s job. The duties of a navigator are shown very well in the AP1234. AS: Yeah, we, we’ll come to that. DD: Does that tell you a lot? AS: That does tell me a lot thank you and I can see here the crosses that you, some of the crosses that you’ve made. DD: Yes. AS: The lines are the Gee lines, the lattice lines are in green, red and purple. So were they different lines for different stations? DD: That’s right. Yes. AS: Ok and what would you see on your instrument, your Gee instrument? Would you see the values or - DD: No I would set with some little tuning knob which station I was on which, and then take the reading for the position line and transfer that on to the chart I was navigating on. AS: Ok and on here also apart from the crosses we have this pencil line coming down from [Maesemunde?] along the Dutch coast and then inland to by Krefeld. DD: Yes. AS: What, what was that? What does that represent? DD: I don’t know. It might be if we were flying in that area whether we would be dropping window or whether we’d be dropping leaflets. It should be labelled but I’m not aware of it if it’s not labelled. AS: Ok DD: Is it a man-made line or a printed one? AS: It’s a thick, thick pencil but no matter, it was a general query. Do these grid squares do they match up to a GJ there. HJ DD: Pardon? AS: They match up to your squares on your - DD: The transmitting units? Those are different, the transmission would be here. AS: Yeah excellent. DD: Well modern laptops, on the computers are quite a frequent things but this is a laptop and it’s a circular side, slide rule and here we set the speeds and we used to prop the wind from that centre point how long it was, each one of these is ten miles and when we rotated this we set on the course that we were going to fly and take the reading off at that point there and I don’t really remember how I used this completely but it was a very useful tool. AS: Which course would you pass to the pilot? Would you pass the true course? DD: No. No, it had to compass the deviation and the compass correction and the true course was just, was a mathematical figure but that wouldn’t be handed to the pilot. And that was for converting statute to nautical. Centigrade to Fahrenheit. Indicated air speed. AS: That’s a remarkable tool. It has a green and red pencil. What, what was the significance of the green? DD: Well. AS: And the red end? DD: We used green for the fixed position and red for the target position but the green was used much more frequently than the red. And you’ll see the different colours on the charts that I’ve got. AS: Yeah. DD: Used occasionally but I think more likely than not ordinary pencil is more significant in my calculations than the different colours. AS: Ahum DD: I hope I’m talking sense. AS: Absolutely. Now amongst your souvenirs alongside the computer is this air navigation. DD: Oh AP1234. AS: Now that is your bible perhaps. DD: Yes. [phone ringing] DD: The ladies will answer that. AS: Yeah. Now it - DD: Somebody will come up very soon AS: It seems. DD: Oh she’s got the extension with her I expect. AS: Fantastic. Quick thinking. It seems incredibly comprehensive DD: Yes. AS: Scope of navigation, bearings, compass error - was this a tool you used every day or something like a textbook from, from training or both? DD: In training time. It wasn’t taken in the air with us. If you look somewhere around page thirty. AS: Page thirty. DD: Yeah that’s, that’s the - AS: The circular slide rule. Excellent. Which is what we’ve just been looking at. The navigation computer mark III. DD: Yes, I used that which is in your hand if I was giving a talk somewhere and that would have been put on top of that page I expect. AS: Ok. DD: These straps were there for a Mosquito pilot who was wearing it. He’d strap it to his knee and it had, it mustn’t move, like that. That would keep it from falling off his knee and being readily found if he needed it ’cause more likely than not he didn’t have a navigator with him and that was, he did his own navigation. AS: Good Lord. DD: [mentioned?] about arrows? Yes. Track two arrows the course that the pilot had to go was with that single arrow and three for the wind I think. Yes the vector of all wind velocity. The triple arrow. [pause] AS: It’s completely comprehensive isn’t it? The formula and the dos and the don’ts. [pause] What sort of examinations on all this did you have in training that you had to pass? Were they very detailed or - ? DD: I don’t remember at all. AS: Ok. DD: We passed those exams that’s the thing. AS: Yeah. You did your training in South Africa. Was there any anti-British feeling that you came across amongst the Boers? DD: Oh yes we had to walk out in fours because there was a group of desperate Boers called the OBs [?] the Brothers of the Wagonette they were horse drawn people and they, they would assault air force people because of the pro-Boer feeling. South Africa had apartheid going on out there, colour bar, and that was cancelled later on but we kept together if we were walking out so we wouldn’t be attacked by these desperadoes. AS: Was there, the other side of the coin was there a lot of kindness shown by other - DD: Yes. . AS: South Africans to you? DD: Oh yes. South African families. Met some very interesting people called Thornton at East London and the lady of the house her husband was supposed to have the best stamp collection in South Africa. He was delighted to show that to us. They had a son and his friend, same age as myself and a friend, and they were training as doctors and I kept in contact with their son Geoffrey until he died about ten years ago and they, they were delighted to look after us. And the lady, Mrs Thornton, it so happened that when we moved to Queenstown from East London they were in a Red Shield Club, Salvation Army there was a friend who’d been to school with the lady that had met us in East London. AS: Incredibly small world isn’t it? [pause] AS: Derry, one of the other the other things you’ve kept is your, your logbook. DD: Yes. AS: Observers and Air Gunners Flying Logbook. It’s not a blue one. It’s not a nice blue one. Why is that? DD: Oh yes well of course the thing the normal ones are issued in England had a cloth binding. This one in South Africa just the bare boards. And this started to come to pieces and the repair I had done with that that blue colour there is the colour it should have been and it’s repaired somewhere in the St Just area. There’s a very good shop in St Just called Cookbook and they, I buy books there occasionally, I sell them books occasionally and they bind books as well and they repaired this for me. AS: It’s a wonderful job. DD: That you see there was my log when I went to grading school at a place called Ansty near Coventry flying Tiger Moths. Only small amounts of time. AS: And these exercises 1, 1a, 2 they’re still used today. DD: Oh are they? AS: Yeah. Still used today. Very short time. September the 13th to what, the 26th is there any more on the back. Less than a month. Twelve hours. DD: Ahum [pause] That’s Guy Gibson. AS: Yes. So grading school and then in October 1942, and then jump straight to Queenstown in South Africa. DD: Ahum. AS: In October ’43. DD: That’s when I passed out. AS: Ok. Qualification. DD: Do you know the pewter tankard I’ve got? It’s got a glass bottom in it. Do you know why? AS: No. DD: You don’t know? AS: No. DD: Well if it was a solid bottom and you were drinking than someone could easily draw a knife or whatever and give you a prong and that’s so you can see what was happening. AS: I didn’t know life in an officer’s mess was so dangerous. DD: Hmmn. AS: Right. This is your result of your ab initio course. DD: That’s right. AS: At Shawbury. DD: Shawbury? AS: Ahum. DD: Ahum that was a speck end course we called it. I’m entitled to the letter capital N like people put BA after their name but I don’t use it. AS: And what, what’s your remarks there? What do, what do they say about you? DD: Good results on course. With his pleasant personality and keenness this officer can satisfactorily fill a staff position. So you see I was called a staff navigator. They might have called me into a briefing room or something like that and there we are, that’s part of it. AS: I’m just trying to get a sense of how much flying you did in training. DD: I don’t think I did more than six hundred hours. AS: It’s quite intensive Derry. DD: Ahum. AS: In South Africa on Ansons. I mean here - 14th of July. Good Lord, that was, 14th of July 1943, that was seventy two years ago yesterday. DD: Yes ahum. AS: Yesterday. You did three trips in an Anson. DD: Ahum. Usually two as first navigator and second navigator. My friend Harry Dunn I was telling you about would be flying with me then and they had all sorts of strange names, Dutch names, these Boer people. South African Air Force they wore a khaki uniform. AS: And army ranks. DD: Yes. AS: I believe. Yeah. In training did you feel it was high pressure and very intense or was it reasonably relaxed? DD: Oh reasonably relaxed. My terrible feeling all the way along was will I be ready in time to do something worthwhile and we used to blame Air Commodore Critchley who was supposed to be a Training Command Officer and we used to blame old Critchley for not moving us on quickly if we got waiting and waiting and waiting for the next posting and I didn’t think I was going to live long enough to do operations but thank God we did. AS: So did you get the feeling that there were an awful lot of aircrew in the system by time this time? DD: No. No, we just accepted the fact we were a course going through and they must have planned well ahead to make places for us in South Africa and in Canada and in Rhodesia. I did write something about our overseas training. The Empire Air Training Scheme they called it. AS: Was that published somewhere or - DD: I don’t think so. AS: Ok. DD: It might have appeared in, there was an aircrew magazine called Intercom and I believe it was published in that but I’m not sure. AS: I can look out for that. And then from South Africa by the time you left South Africa you had done what forty two hours day. DD: Not very much. AS: No eighty eight hour day flying and twelve hours twenty at night. Total flying. Left South Africa. And how did you get back to - DD: On a troop ship called the Orduna. AS: Ahum DD: A South American boat. And there were a lot of women and children on board being repatriated out of India, service wives and children, and we went up through the Red Sea and we were kept at Tufik on the Red Sea until the Germans were cleared out of Italy and then they were afraid that we might meet some submarines in the, in the Mediterranean so we were well protected. They made well and truly sure that we’d be safely transferred. AS: Ok. And you came into, to Liverpool? DD: Liverpool again, yes. AS: Super. Had you been commissioned by this time? DD: Oh yes but we didn’t have commissioned uniforms until I’d travelled from Liverpool to Harrogate and that’s where the measurement and fitting of pilot officers uniform came into it. AS: I hope you got a first class travel warrant. DD: I suppose so [laughs]. I expect I did. AS: And then we’re at Number 4 AFU is that Advanced Flying Unit? DD: Yes, Advanced Flying Unit yes. Was that West Freugh? AS: West Freugh, yeah. DD: Stranraer. AS: Yeah. And this was still, I suppose, individual training for you. You hadn’t crewed up at this point? DD: No. AS: And this was on Ansons? DD: That was Ansons again. To get used to British conditions. AS: Navigating in the fog. Yeah. Was it, was it a shock coming from the, the bushveld and the plains of and South Africa to what, what we have in the UK. DD: No. We just took it for granted that it would be slightly different and we coped. AS: And all the principals and all the training were - you could carry them straight. DD: Yes. AS: Straight across. Ok. Right, so we’ve got here a pundit crawl. Can you remember what that was all about? DD: Travelling from red light to red light I think. AS: Really ok. DD: Whether it was the gunner’s point of view or from my navigation point of view I don’t know. Maybe I just had to record what was done. A pundit crawl. AS: Yeah. And then 21 OTU. DD: That’s Moreton, Much Binding in the Marsh. AS: And it seems to get really serious at this point. You’ve got a page of dinghy drills, parachute drills, wet dinghy drill. DD: We went to the Baths at Cheltenham for that. In the middle of England well away from the sea. AS: Yeah. And by this time you, you’d crewed up? DD: Yeah. No. AS: Ok. DD: Yes at OTU we crewed up, that’s right. AS: Ok and you were using Wellingtons. [pause] Right. [pause] And that is super we did your OTU and crewing up and whatnot yesterday so I think we’ll draw a pause there if we can. DD: Ahum [pause] DD: Turning on now? AS: Yes. DD: Occasionally we had a little wicker cage with pigeons in it and I believe the idea was that if we were shot down or if we were captured then the homing pigeons would come back with the news [laughs] and it only happened to us two or three times but I was aware that it did happen occasionally. AS: And did you carry them on every trip or just - DD: No. No. AS: Just a few. DD: Just occasionally. AS: What, one wonders how you could release a pigeon from an aeroplane at two hundred miles an hour but perhaps it was if you crash landed. DD: The crash would release the cage. The poor pigeons. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ADerringtonAP150715-02 Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr Derry Derrington Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource eng Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:08:21 audio recording Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Sutch Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-07-15 Description An account of the resource Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington grew up in Cornwall and joined the University Air Squadron at Exeter. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 and completed training at RAF Ansty, South Africa, RAF West Freugh and RAF Moreton in the Marsh, where he trained as a navigator on Wellingtons. He was posted to RAF Driffield where he served with 462 and 466 Squadrons. Most of his operations were over the Ruhr. He discusses H2S and Gee in detail. He was later an instructor at RAF Moreton-in-the-Marsh and was demobbed in 1945. He kept a diary of his time in Bomber Command. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Germany Great Britain South Africa England--Gloucestershire England--Warwickshire England--Yorkshire Scotland--Wigtownshire France--Watten France Germany--Ruhr (Region) France--Pas-de-Calais Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1942 1943 1944 1945 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Maureen Clarke 462 Squadron 466 Squadron Advanced Flying Unit aircrew animal Anson bombing briefing Gee H2S Halifax memorial navigator Operational Training Unit perception of bombing war RAF Ansty RAF Driffield RAF Moreton in the Marsh RAF West Freugh training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/488/8372/ACanningsDP150811.mp3 60c10de0afd2927cc4910a888db911ef Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cannings, Percy Douglas Percy Cannings D P Cannings Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Cannings, DP Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Percy Cannings DFM (1923 - 2016, 1809247 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 100 and 97 Squadrons. The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Percy Cannings and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AS: This is an interview with Warrant Officer Percy Cannings DFM, a mid-upper gunner on 100 and then 97 Squadron. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Buckden, Cambridgeshire on the 11th of August 2015 for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. Percy, thanks ever so much for agreeing to this interview. PC: That’s okay. AS: I would like to set the scene by asking you to describe your life before joining the Air Force, where you born, a bit about your home, your parents, and sisters, that sort of thing. PC: Yeah, Yeah, I was born in West Sussex, in a little village called Stedham, S T E D H A M near Midhurst. My father was a head gardener and he worked at an estate um, which was owned by a Captain Cobb. He was wounded in the first war and lost a leg, and he still carried on working, virtually, as if he wasn’t, um, what’s the word, injured, or what’s the word for it? In fact, he carried on and constructed a ha ha, if you know what that is, basically on his own, so that his estate looked over the field without the fences in the way, which consisted of a few cows and horses which he used for riding. My two brothers, I had two elder brothers and two younger sisters, my two elder brothers had already joined up in the Air Force, both of them in aircrew [coughs]. My eldest brother was, they were both wireless op air gunners, and he, Eric, he flew in, Wellingtons before the war, and he crashed on take-off, the day, two days before the war, lost an engine on take-off, but they both got out okay. The whole crew got out okay, but he lost his nerve for flying, and in those days, they classed him as LMF. He volunteered later on for [pause] my memory for words. AS: No worries. If we walk away from it, it’ll come back, won’t it? PC: Yes, um — AS: [Laughs] PC: Oh, what’s the word? AS: Is it ground duties or a different service? PC: He volunteered for the commandos — AS: Good Lord, okay. PC: And he spent the rest of the war out in North Africa, basically Italy. AS: Wow. PC: The other one, the younger one, Arthur, he went in to Coastal Command and he was on Catalinas, yeah, anti-submarine patrols. I suppose that’s what encouraged me to do the same, but unfortunately, I didn’t have enough, um, sterling to be anything other than an air gunner, so, I was called up at eighteen, or just after eighteen, I reported for duty in 1943, I think it was. I went to [pause] Lord’s cricket ground to join up, where I had my kit, all my kit, issued, and introduced to square bashing [laughs], which we, we always had to do that. After about three weeks, I was then, sent to Number 9, Air Gunnery School in Llandrog, in North Wales, spent about five weeks there, then 1656 Conversion Unit, which is in Lindholme, introduced to first of all the four engine planes, the Halifax and then on to the Lancaster. That lasted about four or five weeks. Got crewed up at the 1656 and and it was, I don’t know how we got together, but we did [laughs]. I had a Canadian skipper, Ken Harvey [pause], the navigator was [pause] oh, names. AS: It’s seventy years, isn’t it, it’s a long, it’s a long gap. PC: Hang on a minute. Right, he was a sergeant and Canadian. Then another sergeant, Geoff Mander from York, bomb aimer, Jim Crake from Scotland, Harry Woods, wireless op, and he was from Mansfield. Sergeant Andy Barr from Scotland, Gordon Brown, rear gunner, myself as mid upper and then on to Lancasters. Transferred then to 100 Squadron, which was then situated at Bourn, near Cambridge. This was early February. AS: In 1944? PC: Yeah, 1944, [pause], ‘43. My first op, was on the 4th of March ‘43, on mining and that lasted about eight and a half hours which was quite long, and then another one to Nuremberg. We suffered two attacks by fighters on that occasion, and just after bombing, we were coned by searchlights which, the skipper slung us all over the sky trying to get out of it, and I swear we must have been upside down because at some point the contents of the Elsan finished up all over me and the inside the plane. We lost all of our night vision and nearly completely blind for the foreseeable future. Luckily no further incidents occurred on this occasion and I finished my first tour, then being sent to 83 OTU at Peplow, I forget where that is. AS: As an instructor? PC: In Peplow? AS: As an instructor in the OTU? PC: As an instructor, yeah, and that lasted until the 15th of March ‘44 and called in to the office to say, ‘You are required back on ops’ [laughs], and to report to Flying Officer Reid on [pause], arriving at the guardroom at around six o’clock in the evening. I leave all my kit in the guardroom, because I hadn’t got time to — AS: Flying that night? PC: That’s it. I had to go to see this, in the briefing room, see this flying officer, where I met up with my second skipper, and we went off out to Stuttgart that night. AS: With a crew you’d not flown with before? PC: Yep, yep, they had lost their mid upper gunner due to bad eyesight, and consequences are, I went to make up their crew. AS: And this was now 97 Squadron? PC: 97, yep, yep. And I realised then that it was Pathfinders, so hence my headache for this particular bit of writing. My introduction as a Pathfinder. I didn’t get me pre-op meal on that occasion but I got it when I got back. Up until the [pause], I did daylights for the first time on the first, second and third of, whatever the month is, I thought of writing this out so I could do it, anyway, the first, second, third, and then on the fifth. Then a night time to Chateau la Roche, which I think is in France, and then finally another daylight to Deelen [?] This proved to be my last op on bombing, and the Lanc in front of us was hit from another one above us, and this resulted in an explosion that almost got us as well as, on return carried the scars so from call up to September 1942 to 15th three ‘44, I’d become a Pathfinder in about five months. That’s basically up to the [pause] ‘44, and then I went again to another OTU for further instruction, and that lasted until the end of the war. [Pause] but in between, I had to re-muster to driver MT because aircrew were no longer needed, but at that time, the Japan war was still going on, so we had to prepare for that, but luckily my de-mob time came up in between, so I didn’t have to go out there. AS: Shall we pause there? PC: Yeah, okay. AS: Percy, if I could, I’d like to go back in to your training a little bit. I know when you got your call up papers, you went up to the recruiting centre at Lord’s. What sort of things were they doing to you there? Was it instant square bashing? PC: Basically square bashing, yeah. After, we did some aircraft recognition, which, was obviously of use. AS: Were you mustered together straight away with other air gunners or was it — PC: Mainly other air gunners, yeah, yeah — AS: Okay. PC: Or trainee air gunners [laughs], and the instructors of course. We were on [pause] Blenheims. AS: Blenheims? PC: Yeah, in the turret and on the Blenheim. AS: Airborne? PC: Yes. AS: These must have been quite old aeroplanes by that stage. Were they mechanically reliable, did you have confidence in them? PC: As far as I know. We had one or two DNCO, no target, flying scrubbed. Yeah, and we did some cine gun, cine gun [unclear] on the Spitfires and Hurricanes that pursued us [laughs]. AS: Did you get em? PC: No, [laughs]. We had, the targets we had were towed by another plane usually, [pause] what was it, I’ve got it down somewhere. AS: They used to use all sorts of things, didn’t they? Masters and Martinet? PC: Martinet, Martinet, that’s the name. I had a very short trip in one of those. AS: Was there much classroom based training as well? PC: Much what? AS: Was there much training in the classroom? Or in simulators? PC: I presume there must have been, but I didn’t get it registered as such. We were flying first, eight, eight, eight three times on the eighth of the month 8th of November ‘42, one on the 9th, two on the 12th, two on the 13th, two on the 15th, three on the 17th, one on the 20th. AS: Wow, so it’s quite intensive, quite high pressure. PC: Yes, it was [pause]. I presume we must have had some innovation on the guns, but we had to strip them down, set them out, identify the bits, and also in the dark. But what use that was later on, how can you strip a gun out twenty-one thousand feet, with nothing to put it on? AS: Service training is not always famous for getting it right. PC: What use that was to us, I don’t know. AS: Did you make friendships with the people you were training with? PC: Not to my knowledge no, I never communicated with any of them either before or after. AS: Okay. PC: Not that I can remember of it. I must have most likely been with some of them sometime or other but — AS: Can you remember passing out? Did you have a passing out parade with family and a band or — PC: No, we had a photograph taken. AS: Were you presented with your flying badge or did you go and draw it from the stores [laughs]? PC: I can’t remember. AS: It doesn’t matter. PC: But I was surprised by my friends when I went home on leave for the first time, just around Christmas time, to be a sergeant with my brevet and in full Air Force uniform. My school mates couldn’t believe it. AS: Very short time, from, from getting the papers to - PC: About five, eight or nine weeks, something like that. AS: Do you know what your parents felt about having yet another son going up in the air to — PC: Well it must have been hell for them but — AS: Didn’t talk about it? PC: No. AS: Did you volunteer for Bomber Command? Did you know you were going to Bomber Command? PC: I volunteered for aircrew, I didn’t know what I would be in. AS: Okay. PC: But one thing led to the other so I finished up in Bomber Command. AS: So, you have leave after training? PC: Yeah. AS: And then straight in ⸻ PC: Straight on to the ⸻ AS: To the squadron, sorry, the — PC: 1516 Conversion Unit and then straight on to the squadron. AS: You say you were flying Halifaxes at the conversion unit? PC: Initially yeah. AS: The conversion unit — PC: 3rd, 9th, 6th, 13th, 15th, 17th, the last one we went to, which was a bit hairy, we lost sight of the ground because of haze, no idea where the aerodrome was, so skipper called out a mayday but he got safely down at the finish, but the engines cut out on the perimeter so we wouldn’t have been much longer in the air. AS: So, really, really, short of fuel. PC: Yes, yes it lasted a total of three hours sixty-five, forty-five, but we got down in time. AS: So, can you remember, how, what sort of flying you did at the conversion unit? What sort of exercises you were doing? PC: Basically, circuits and landings, local flying. Familiarisation, circuits and landings, homing and air firing, circuits and landings. That was when we went up on to the Lancaster for the first time. AS: Did you very quickly feel confident as a crew that you were working well together. PC: Yeah, yeah, the skipper was soon made up to pilot officer, but all the rest have stayed as sergeants. AS: What sort of a leader was he, did he drive you, did he encourage you? Was he very keen on — PC: He was more or less one of us and whatever the skipper did, we did [laughs] basically so I suppose you could say he led us. AS: What, what was it like, going on to the squadron? Can you remember what you felt like when you were going to put it all into practice? PC: Well we knew we were going to train for operations and it didn’t take long in coming. Did some cross countries and bullseyes. AS: What are bullseyes? PC: Pardon? AS: What were bullseyes? PC: It’s just a, you were told to fly to a certain place at a certain time, from there to another place at a certain time in order to try and keep on time, basically, all the way through. AS: So, that’s sort of like a practice bombing mission but over England? PC: Yeah, over England or Scotland or whatever. AS: When you were airborne, what were your duties? PC: Just to keep a look out basically. AS: Day and night? PC: Yeah, yeah, day and night. Not much that we had to look at a lot at night, except to try and help the navigator by reporting what, [pause] every station had a call sign which was in Morse with a red light, and you reported how many you could see of these which helps the navigator know where he was. AS: So, you obviously learnt Morse as part of your gunnery training. PC: Oh yeah. PC: Only basic Morse, I can’t remember any of it now, just SOS, yes [laughs]. AS: My dad was a wireless operator but in a tank, not in an aeroplane. PC: My two brothers who did that, and of course they were wireless ops. AS: You must have had a fantastic view from the mid upper turret on the Lancaster. PC: Yeah, yeah except from underneath [laughs]. AS: Which counted, yeah, yeah. The actual sensation of flying itself did you enjoy it? Did you very quickly enjoy it? PC: I took to it like a duck. AS: Yeah? Just the sheer enjoyment of, of, being up there? Did that, did that stay with you? PC: More or less, yeah, yeah. Never thought we were going to get it but [laughs] it’s always the other guy. AS: And did your crew really try to lengthen the odds by, for instance, doing lots of the practices, dinghy drills, things like that? Was your skipper keen on doing that or — PC: My skippers, both of them, they practiced the weaving. AS: Yeah? PC: Never flew straight and level for very long at any one time but it was always fairly predictable for the navigator to know exactly what we were doing. AS: So, so, both of them hand flew? PC: Yeah. AS: Maybe six, eight hours. PC: Sometimes nine and a half. AS: Always weaving? PC: Yeah, Yeah, they must have been sweating when they came out, because they had the heating, we didn’t, it was bloody cold [laughs]. AS: Yeah, even, well you, you had the Perspex, but it was, and you had electrically heated clothing? PC: Yeah, yeah, of course, you didn’t have that, only if you were a night flyer. AS: It was minus thirty below isn’t it sometimes? PC: It can be up to forty, and trying to manage a gun, take the gun apart, no way. AS: Maybe it was to give you confidence in the gun, who knows. PC: The theory was okay but, but if they jammed, you were having to do something about it but practicality no. AS: As you say, where would you put the bits? PC: Yeah. Where would you put it to start on it? Start stripping it out. You had no table or anything. AS: When you were airborne on a trip was there much talk on the RT between you or was it just — PC: Not between us, no. AS: No. PC: No, skipper didn’t encourage that. AS: And in the bomber stream, could you see or feel other aircraft at night? PC: You could feel the other aircraft, the buffeting now and again, but see them, very, very rarely. AS: I’ve never experienced the buffeting, can, can you describe what it’s, is it like almost like hitting something or is it — PC: Well, no, it’s like a very big wind hitting you. You’d, you’d go sideways, up, or down depending where that [unclear] was coming from. AS: But something, something obviously that you could get used to? PC: Oh, yes you could feel it every time. You knew there was one up ahead of us somewhere, whether it was friendly or foe I don’t know. AS: I, I’m told, I don’t know this to be true, that it’s quite rare, although you’re surrounded by a thousand aircraft, it was quite rare to see one in flight, is that -? PC: Yeah, yeah. AS: Is that — PC: Except for the daylights of course. AS: Yeah, yeah on the daylights. So, the crew practiced religiously, you’re flying quite a number of operations, I think quite, quite quickly, did you hang together very much on the ground as well as in the air? PC: As much as we could. AS: Okay. PC: In fact, we were celebrating the skipper’s birthday, on one occasion, that was Ken Harvey, he started off with a gin and orange, went up to double gin and orange and then a double, double, and after about one double, double, I was leaning against the wall, [laughs], no more. AS: And did you live together all the sergeants, certainly as a, a crew? PC: We were in the same [pause] hut, and of course he was in the officers’ quarters, but other than that we were always together. AS: And completely random crewing up? PC: Indeed yeah, yeah. AS: We’ll just pause there. AS: Percy, when you’d finished at the conversion unit, you crewed up and were posted to 100 Squadron. Did you go straight on ops or did you do a period of training? PC: Did a period of training AS: Is there anything that stands out in your mind about that training? PC: That is later on. AS: Okay, I know each mission was different but could you give me some idea about what a day would be, an operational day from getting up, going through the briefing, what was the routine like on your squadron? PC: Well, we would get up in the morning, and we would know, sooner or later, during the day whether or not we were on ops or whether there was anything laid on for that night, so we couldn’t leave the station [pause] it’s all a bit hazy now, but [pause] — AS: Did you all have the same briefing or were there separate briefings for the pilot and navigator? PC: The pilot and navigator were usually first, and then we were called into the briefing room, [pause], sorry I can’t give too much about — AS: No, it’s, it’s an awful long time ago, and not everything sticks in your mind. PC: But we always had a meal, or were supposed to have a meal, egg, and bacon before we went off. There was only one occasion when I didn’t and that was in the start of the second tour [laughs]. I arrived too late in the day on the station and I went out that night before I had it, too late for it [laughs]. AS: When you went out to your aircraft, had all the guns been put in for you? PC: Oh yeah, yeah, they were all set up for us — AS: Okay. PC: By the armourers. AS: And did you look after your own guns or, or, whatever was — PC: The armourers used to look after them. AS: Did you, when you were airborne obviously, over the sea perhaps, did you, did you, test fire the guns or — PC: No [pause] my skippers didn’t like that, they said it would give it away to anyone else, and you never really knew whether there was anything in the line of fire, being dark, he didn’t condone that at all. AS: When you got airborne, did you climb straight on course, or was there circling around a beacon, or what was there? PC: It depends on where you were aiming for, you usually had an aim, [pause] you usually had to con.. what’s the word? AS: To form up in the stream? PC: No, you usually had a point on the coast where you had to start off from, usually either the east coast or south coast depending on where we was heading for. We often used to congregate over [pause] on the east coast, the name won’t come. AS: No, no, no worries. I know several points, like Alford or — PC: Yeah, yeah. AS: Were there any incidents that really stand out in your mind, from, from either of your tours, really, either on ops or in training? PC: We saw actually, when we were practising, formation flying on the second tour, we had two banks of three, one, two and three, one, two and three, usually at different heights. Well always at different heights, and the [pause], the second, first one of three got up in the slip stream of the first one and he went violently up and then back down, he just missed us, and came on top of the other one, and they both went down. There was one parachute I saw coming out and he was later on classed as LMF because he wouldn’t fly again, and I think that was bad, but, obviously I suppose you could look at it as saying well, he wouldn’t be any good anyway, so, but the way they did it, they stripped him of his brevet and stripes and off the station as soon as possible. AS: In front of all of you? PC: Yeah, yeah. AS: They paraded the squadron and — PC: Yeah. AS: What [pause], did you know people on all these aircraft? PC: We knew of them. We probably came across them, but not particularly well. AS: And can you remember, again a long time ago, but can you remember the effect on you? Was it just one of those things and you, you were — PC: Just one of those things as far as you could see because we were out on ops again that following night. AS: Really? PC: Yeah. AS: And their, their two aircraft lost on training. At the time you were flying both your tours were the, were the losses heavy? PC: [heavy sigh] AS: Did you get the sense? PC: Something you didn’t realise about it. AS: Really? PC: Yeah, I think we were the only crew in the, when we were re-formed 100 Squadron to complete our tour but I am not sure about that. AS: Wow. PC: There wasn’t very many anyway. AS: But you always knew? PC: Yeah. AS: As a crew that— PC: It was always the other one. AS: Always the other guy. You have the Distinguished Flying Medal gazetted on the 13th September 1944. What was that all about? What was the citation for? PC: I don’t think it was anything particular. I say that because nothing outstanding as far as we were concerned. We were just doing our job and I think it was something to do with the Pathfinders. If you completed a Pathfinder tour it was basically automatic. AS: I think you’re being a little modest on that. So, this was the end of your second tour? PC: Yeah. AS: Okay. Could we explore the Pathfinder connection a bit? PC: Yeah. AS: ‘Cos you went to 97 Squadron and only found out when you got there that it was Pathfinders. Was the job and the routine for the crew, not necessarily for the gunner, was that very different from your previous tour? PC: Only different in the respect that once you’d bombed you were required to hang around just in case you had to re-mark. AS: So — PC: You were milling around the air the target area? AS: So, left hand circuits with flak and searchlights coming up at you? PC: Well yeah, and always trying to avoid the searchlights because we didn’t like searchlights, well at least I didn’t, I don’t think any of them did. AS: And this was for, was your skipper a marker or a backer up or what? PC: it varied with each operation. Initially it was just backer up or illuminator, sometimes blind illuminator. That’s where you carried flares to light up the ground so that the master bomber could actually identify their target for others to mark usually a Mosquito. AS: Was the, was there a fair amount of specific training to be a gunner? PC: Not as far as I was concerned but as the crew was concerned yes. AS: Okay, and you still had a crew of seven, you didn’t have a second navigator or — PC: Sometimes they had an extra one for the, but we didn’t for the operation of the H2S. AS: So, by the time you got to your second tour you had much more equipment like H2S and Gee. PC: Yeah, usually yeah. AS: The, the general, when you’d bombed and you’d been released from this circling, was your crew one of the ones that was really keen to get home first? Pour on the coal and come down hill or? PC: We usually tried to get home first but with careful note of the petrol consumption to make sure we could get back, otherwise, if you put on too much, you might not have enough. AS: That, that’s one of the things that interests me specifically actually, was the ratio between the fuel that, that the bombers were given and the bomb load they carried. PC: Mmm. AS: And then you got variables like the wind. Was having enough petrol a worry for you most of the time? Was it something that you were conscious of all the time? PC: Not to us. AS: No. PC: But to the engineer and the pilot of course, they relied on the engineer to make sure that we had enough because he had the consoles of the engines whether it was on a [unclear] or otherwise. AS: Did you always land back at base can you remember? Or did you - PC: No, we occasionally had to abort [laughs} because of the weather conditions at home. AS: Did you ever land at one of the FIDO aerodromes? Did you ever land at FIDO? PC: No, not with FIDO, no. AS: How about the long emergency strips like Carnaby or Woodbridge? PC: We had to land at [pauses] oh, what’s the one just up the road? Wittering, because of the long runway because we ran out of hydraulic power for brakes. We had to just rely on slowing up. AS: So, it wasn’t an entirely routine tour? PC: No. No. AS: What was the cause of the hydraulic power was it the enemy having a go at you or — PC: No, it was just a breakdown. AS: But generally, you had a lot of confidence in the aircraft? PC: In the airplane? Yeah. AS: It wasn’t all, I guess it wasn’t all operational flying and training. What sort of things did you do for relaxation? PC: Sorry? AS: What sort of things did you do for relaxation as a crew? PC: Mainly the pub [laughs]. AS: What, what were they like? Were they absolutely rammed full of aircrew or did it vary? PC: Sorry, I don’t — AS: Were the pubs around the airfields really, really crowded or — PC: Mainly, yes. On non-flying days, of course [laughs]. AS: So did you drink with your ground crew as well or with extra mates? PC: If we came across them, yeah, which occasionally you did. Which was encouraged. AS: I’ll pause it there. AS: Percy, I know when you joined 97 Squadron they were Pathfinders. They were on 8 Group, but I believe that at some point they went back to 5 Group. PC: I think it was something to do with Cochrane and [pause] — AS: Bennett. Was it Don Bennett? PC: Bennett, yeah. Names, names. AS: It’s said they didn’t get on particularly. PC: No. AS: So, so were you as a crew in the squadron, did you then go back to 5 Group during your time, or did you finish your time out as a Pathfinder? PC: I finished the tour as a Pathfinder. AS: Okay. PC: I joined them on the 15th of March ‘44 and finished with them [pause] on the 29th of the seventh 1944. AS: Wow. PC: Oh, no, the 30th. AS: So, were you awarded your — PC: Not then, no. AS: Your Pathfinder badge? PC: The Pathfinder badge, during the course of that, yeah. AS: Okay. PC: Which I’ve still got. AS: So you finished your tour? PC: Wait a minute, wait a minute, yeah, that was the finish of the tour the 17th of the eighth, err, the 13th, 15th of the eighth, at Sondeal, where the one in front of us was knocked out by bombs from above. AS: Was that a daylight? PC: That was on [indistinct] AS: That was a night fighter drone, wasn’t it? PC: That was a daylight, green, so there is no excuse really for that happening because it was daylight. At night time, you could understand it but - AS: So, you were on 97 Squadron in the build up to D-Day. PC: Yes AS: And the invasion of Normandy. PC: Yes AS: Did you carry out missions related to that? PC: Only perhaps in some of the raids on the [pause] on the railways and such, one of which we did an op to Courtrai [Kortrijk] on the 20th of the seventh, and a gentleman from Holland contacted me with a view to attending to his book signing which he had written about those raids, but unfortunately it was in, written in, what’s the [pauses], Flemish. Written in Flemish, so I can’t read it [laughs]. I’ve got it here somewhere, or it’s upstairs. AS: Bit of a mouthful I think. PC: And we went over there for that after getting into trouble and getting our passports. Mainly through yours. [talking to other person in room] AS: Were you well received over there? PC: Indeed. We couldn’t believe the warmth of the greetings that we got over there. For all [doorbell chimes]. There is somebody at the door. For all the damage that we caused, partly to them, it’s amazing. Even the chap who was blown out of his mother’s arms, and his mother was killed, shook hands AS: It must have been very gratifying I would think. How, that is something today to be remembered, with, with warmth for what you and your — PC: Sorry? AS: Saying that is a, a good reaction today. PC: Yeah. AS: To be remembered for what you did, you and your comrades. PC: And they were so grateful that we helped as far as we could. AS: I’ll just pause. Percy, you’ve just told me about the recognition in Courtrai and how grateful people are now for what you and your colleagues did, can you remember what you felt like, about the bombing at the time, what you were doing? PC: Well, as far as I’m concerned, the Jerries started it so we tried to finish it, and with much success. We didn’t get too much recognition from Churchill at the end of the war because he didn’t want to be involved, or at least it was the impression that I got, that he didn’t want any recognition of the badness of the bombings, if you know what that means. Um [sighs] but [sighs], I’ve lost the plot somewhere. Yep, I don’t think he wanted to be involved with anything that was wrong about it, or to be, the words don’t come — AS: Associated with it, he didn’t want to be associated with it. PC: Yeah. AS: Yep. Do you think there’s a change now, in, in, our attitudes of finally Bomber Command getting some recognition? Can you see that? PC: Only if through a bit of pressure from other people. I don’t think it was forthcoming, but it had to be wrung out of them. AS: Could we go off in a completely different direction? I know that you were involved in trying to, to contact members of your crew, and that your daughter, your daughters, in fact — PC: Yeah. AS: Have made a film. Could you give me a little bit of information on the background on that, on, on your efforts to contact your crew and the film? PC: Yeah, we found the relatives of several of them, but none actually still alive. We attended to a reunion as such at [pauses] East Kirkby, where the Lancaster is doing taxi runs and had a good day there, met a lot of the, most of the relatives, of, I think we didn’t, the relatives of Jim Crake didn’t want to be involved, but I think all the rest we, oh no, Geoff Mander, the first bomb aimer, wasn’t there because he was killed on a Mosquito in an accident between the wars, between tours, we went, we found his grave, up in [pause] that film we’re doing, forget where it was now. Anything more? AS: No, that’s really good, thank you. Percy, I know it was a long time ago and this may seem a silly question really, but can you remember what it was like to be really in the flak, to be shot at, what it felt like and what it looked like? PC: You were shaken all about, obviously, by how close it was whether there was too much air [pause] disruption to affect us once or twice it was pretty close and you could feel it and you could hear the bits hitting the metal skin of the aircraft, but we were weaving, but whether you were in to it or away from it is another question. I don’t think there is much you can say about it, it was just luck, pure luck. AS: And they, they — PC: And I’ve had my fair share of that throughout the war. AS: On luck, did you have any? PC: Talismans? No. AS: No, you didn’t. PC: No, I know some people who did, they wouldn’t leave without whatever it might have been but we had none of that. AS: Another direction, I, I think when you went to see one of your brothers you actually had a flying boat flight, what was that all about? PC: Yeah, that was very nice, we went out in a little boat out to the aircraft and I think I’ve got the date somewhere [long pause], oh god, just a second. It was on the 27nd of January, February, March, April. AS: 1943? PC: Squadron Leader Lobley was the skipper, FP232 Catalina. Lasted one hour twenty minutes. That was quite exciting. The skipper signed the book. AS: What was the sensation like on water compared to — PC: It was quite calm really, I was surprised, I would have thought there would have been a bit more, a bit more reaction from our hitting the water, but it wasn’t it as quite smooth. AS: Can you, can you remember what duties your brother’s squadron were engaged on? PC: It was on air sea, anti-submarine patrols and this specially, special equipment test, which was basically the H2S. AS: So, they carried radar in the Catalinas against the submarines? PC: That’s right, yeah. AS: When you’d finished flying you said that you re-mustered as a driver MT until the end of the war, when you, what was the de-mob process like when you’d finished? PC: It’s done on numbers depending on time of entry and actual length of service. You had a number and when your number come up you were sent to ACAC which was [pause] names [sighs], Catterick in Yorkshire, that was where I was demobbed by. AS: Is it true that you get a suit and a hat and a brown paper parcel? PC: More or less [laughs] yeah. I had a trilby hat and a de-mob suit which was a pin stripe [laughs]. AS: And did you get any help with re-training, because there is not a lot of room for mid upper gunners in civilian life? PC: Not in civilian life [laughs]. It might have been if you had gone abroad somewhere. AS: Did they teach you a trade or — PC: I thought we had adequate training because I made a good life out of carpentry and went on to building [pause] AS: So, after leaving the Air Force you got help, you were trained to be a carpenter? PC: A carpenter, yeah, yeah. AS: Okay. PC: Then you had a period of about six months in which you, before you got full pay or whatever, after that if you were employed, got the rate but — AS: And, you chose to live in Cambridgeshire or — PC: Sorry? AS: You chose to live in Cambridgeshire having been in — PC: Well because, initially I was [pause] doing a lot of travelling between, so I was going through the mileage on cars and I felt that I should get some help towards it, but during that particular time it was a little bit of depression, so I parted company rather than [unclear], and as a consequence I was then employed working on these houses in which I now live in, and as the price was really reasonable, £3,950 for a detached house. AS: Gosh. PC: Which I paid a lot more for because I had a mortgage on it, but at least I got on the ladder. AS: Yeah, yeah, It’s always hard isn’t it? PC: Yeah. AS: The numbers now are ten times as much, but it is still hard to get on the ladder. PC: Yeah. AS: Did, did you keep in touch with your colleagues at all or with the Air Force generally? Did you join a squadron association? PC: No, not until later, much later, no. AS: Okay. PC: I never even joined the um, [sighs] what do you call them? AS: The RAF Association? PC: No, no, the civilian one. AS: The Union? No. The Benevolent Fund? PC: No. AS: It’ll come. PC: RAF. No. The Royal British Legion, I never even joined them. AS: So, was that just a period of your life that you parked for a long, long time? AS: I just didn’t think no more about it. It was something you did. AS: And what sparked getting interested again and joining the Association? PC: That was done by my son, David, he saw a bit in the, whatever it is on the internet about 97 Squadron Association, so he contacted the chap, that was on it and we got a visit from him, what’s his name? I think I shall have to go upstairs and get the book. Bending, “Achieve your Aim, A History of 97 Squadron” by Kevin Bending. AS: So, he came to see you and what sorts of things have you got involved with since? PC: We’ve got involved with the actual Squadron Association and we’ve been to their reunions in Horncastle. In Norfolk is it, or is it Suffolk? AS: I don’t know. PC: I think, I think it’s Norfolk but I wouldn’t be one hundred percent sure. AS: And then there is, have been things like the Bomber Command Memorial? PC: Yes, we have been down to the Bomber Command Memorial mainly due to my daughters again, that’s Sandy, getting the tickets for it. We never went to the, sorry, we never went to the main place, we were allocated a different area which was about a mile away but we had big screens, which they showed up on us. And it was a very hot day, but they treated us well. AS: And people came from, aircrew came from all over the world for that. PC: Yeah, yeah AS: I think there were six hundred, was it still - PC: Sorry? AS: I think six hundred aircrew came to that, it was huge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Percy Cannings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Sutch Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-08-11 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:04:27 audio recording Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ACanningsDP150811 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Language A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Percy Cannings was born in Stedham, near Midhurst, West Sussex and joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 18, reporting for duty in 1943. Percy served with 100 and 97 Squadrons as a mid-upper gunner on Lancasters. He tells of his two brothers who served in the forces and then goes on to talk about his crew and some of the experiences he saw whilst flying in a bomber stream. After his first tour, he was posted as an instructor on Operational Training Units, before flying with 97 Pathfinder Squadron. Percy flew in Bleinheims, Halifaxes and Lancasters and recalls his life in the Royal Air Force, and his crews and training. He also recalls meeting up with the relatives of his former crew, and meeting people from Holland, after the war. Percy describes his experiences flying in a Catalina after visiting his brother, who flew in Coastal Command. Percy completed two tours of duty in Bomber Command and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal in September 1944. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Vivienne Tincombe Maureen Clarke Carolyn Emery Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1942 1943 1944 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Belgium Germany Great Britain Belgium--Kortrijk England--Cambridgeshire England--Shropshire England--Yorkshire Germany--Nuremberg Germany--Stuttgart Wales--Gwynedd 100 Squadron 1656 HCU 83 OTU 97 Squadron air gunner Air Gunnery School aircrew Catalina Distinguished Flying Medal Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit lack of moral fibre Lancaster Operational Training Unit Pathfinders RAF Bourn RAF Lindholme RAF Llandwrog RAF Peplow training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/558/8825/PStempJ1502.jpg cfe10a514ff45b328abec6f3cbbb1c5e https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/558/8825/AStempJE151016.mp3 732c55fd46196ec43670b0ef9903c0ee Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Stemp, Joe Joseph Ethelbert Stemp J E Stemp Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Stemp, JE Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Joe Stemp (1602809 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 578 and 77 Squadrons. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AS: This is an interview with Joe Stemp, a navigator on 578 Squadron and later on 77 Squadron. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Upton St Leonards, Gloucestershire for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. Joe, thank’s so much for agreeing to the interview. I’d like to set the scene by asking you to describe your life before joining the Air Force. A little bit about your home, your parents and brothers and sisters, that sort of thing. JS: I had a very happy boyhood really. I had one brother and one sister and I’ve always been a very independent guy. I’d always earnt money and done jobs on the side. I was actually working full time in an advertising, not an advertising, a housing agency at sixteen and doing quite well. And I suddenly realised, a friend and I, that we’d like to join the Air Force. So, we went to Oxford University and did that exam over a weekend there. And out of the thirty people who were there, ten straight away were cancelled, scrubbed, because they were colour-blind. That left twenty of us and we had this serious examination. When we finished they called us in, one by one. My friend went in before me and he came out nearly in tears. I said ‘Why?’, ‘He wasn’t the type of pilot we need, he hadn’t got the right attitude’. I said, ‘Why?’, ‘They asked me what I was doing when Mr Churchill said “Every man, woman and child should do something”’, ‘What did you do?’ Well he couldn’t do anything ‘cause he didn’t want to give his age away. So that was it, well I followed him in and they asked me the same question. But being this cocky bugger I used to be I had an answer for. ‘Well Sir, you can see I did pass the exam but I’ve had to study a lot at home in the evenings to make sure’. ‘Good lad, that’s the spirit.’ I’m in the Air Force, I’m in the RAF Association [laughs] and I never saw him after I joined. He was shot down actually eventually in Burma flying Spitfire, Hurricane. But I never saw him again, we were great mates but it was just one of those things. And so I joined straight away then. AS: What did your parents feel about you joining? JS: They didn’t say a word, I was most surprised. Now my father, who would have had a go, didn’t even complain. My brother was sixteen years old. He was doing an ITW course at sixteen years old and he did a dinghy drill course down into Torbay harbour. A bloody dinghy fell over, he went in, and in the water it was all the oil from the boats around, got into his ear and caused trouble in his ear. Eventually he had to have it operated on and he lost the hearing of his right ear. They gave him the option. You can stay in the Air Force and everything will be alright but you’ll never fly again, or you can leave on a pension. No answer to that. He left on a pension, got a great degree, ‘cause he was a clever bugger anyway. But, all those, he died last week, ninety years old. AS: Oh, I’m sorry. JS: But I was always surprised my father allowed us to go and do this. AS: And you were under age as well? JS: I was seventeen. AS: And when did you leave school? Did you get matric? JS: No, I didn’t stop on for it, I left the school at sixteen. I should have stayed on ‘cause I went to Ealing Grammar School and I was doing alright but I just suddenly thought ‘I must get on’. I wanted to get on and do something and there didn’t seem to be. We moved the school, the younger children went, were evacuated. We went to a school in Ealing which was girls as well as boys and it was a waste of time, we spent most of our time mucking about with the girls. [inaudible] it was ridiculous, I left and I’ve worked hard ever since and I’ve always been very independent. AS: What year was this we’re talking about when you joined the Air Force? JS: Oh, ’40, ’41. AS: So, you’d been in Ealing, or London, when the Battle of Britain was going on? JS: Oh yes, yeah. AS: What was that like, the? JS: It wasn’t so bad in Ealing but London was awful. I remember going to confession one Saturday night with some friends of mine, we were in Ealing, in South Ealing, and we looked up towards London ‘cause there were bright lights in the sky and it was the time when the Germans came over and had those terrible raids they did on the East End London, they really did. But because it was bad for morale they never talked too much about it did they, they kept it a bit quiet. They mentioned there was a bit of, a bit of bombing. They did terrible things the Germans. You didn’t have to be a navigator you got yourself on the end of the River Thames came up and you’re there! AS: Glinting in the moonlight? JS: Absolutely, yeah. [laughs] AS: So, in those days I suppose Ealing was separated from London? JS: Well Ealing’s always been a, always a very private sort of borough, queen of the suburbs style of thing you know? They’ve always fancied their chances and it was a very nice place to live really. I went to work for this Barrett and he was as drunk as a lord and his sons had gone in the Army and he couldn’t run the business so. I know this sounds silly but I was sixteen and I was running his business for a year. Then after that I asked for a rise and he gave me about half a crown or something, so I told him to stuff his job and I joined the Air Force. AS: That was how you came to join the Air Force? JS: Yeah. [laughs] AS: Why the Air Force? JS: I always fancied being a pilot. Because when I was a lad I used to go to Heston and, Heston airport in those days, and I used to love, and I always wanted to be able to fly. It was one of those things that I wanted to do, it was something that really I took on. But do you know why I wasn’t a pilot? AS: No. JS: I did the whole course, and they cancelled and blew me out. This is the honest truth, we did during the final course, and we took off and he told me what to do. And he said ‘Do you know where you are, son?’ And I said ‘Yes’, ‘OK.’, and we carried on and he said ‘Do you know?’ And I suddenly realised, I hadn’t a bloody clue where I was and I wasn’t really worried. But I was enjoying being up there. And at the end of the course he said to me ‘You’ve done very well’. he said, ‘but there’s only one thing wrong, you haven’t known where you’ve been from the moment we took off’. And he was right. And they scrubbed me and what did they make me? A navigator. Isn’t that typical of the Air Force? AS: That’s a wonderful story and it doesn’t surprise me. JS: No. AS: A bit. Can you rewind a little? You, where did you sign on? JS: Um, good question. I think it was Regents’ Park, I think. It was up at Regents’ Park area I know. AS: OK. JS: Because those hotels up there, aircrew were all based up there, trainee aircrew. AS: Oh, this is Arty Tarty is it? This is the aircrew reception centre? JS: Yes, that’s it. Yes. AS: And everybody went there? JS: They all went there regardless at one time and from then on, we just followed on. I finished up actually leaving there and going to South Africa, you mentioned South Africa, and I actually got my wings in South Africa. I enjoyed my South African trip I was out there for some months and thoroughly enjoyed it. Flying every day of course ‘cause the weather was suitable. I was looking through my logbook last night, ‘cause I haven’t looked at the logbook for years, at the amount of flying we did out there. AS: So, you signed on and they sent you to Regents’ Park? JS: Um. AS: And then what happened between then and going to Oxford for this exam? Could you tell me about the exam that you took? JS: Oh, the exam was before then. AS: Ah, OK. JS: Oh, that was the exam that we had the weekend. Thirty people turned up at Oxford University, the object being they were going to check us out ‘cause they were looking for pilots. Well, as I told you the first ten straight away were colour-blind, so they scrubbed them, leaving twenty of us. And it was quite a severe examination afterwards you know, mental examination. I managed to finish all right, I wasn’t that special. My friend was brilliant and he came top. So, he went in first of all for what they called the commanding officer’s interview or something. And the officers sat round this table and asked questions of the guy. And it was a shame really ‘cause they caught him on the hop really, and then they finally said to him ‘You’re not the type of person we want as a pilot, you haven’t got the right spirit at all’. And he was in tears, he came out and sat beside me and said ‘What do I, what do I do Joe?’ I said ‘I can’t believe.’ [inaudible] So I thought ‘Christ’. So I went in about two hours later and they asked me the same questions but I was a bit quicker on the mark than he was. I said ‘As a matter of fact sir’, I said ‘if you noticed I have passed the exam? Not desperately well but I passed because I studied a lot each evening to make sure I did pass your’. ‘Good lad, that’s the spirit.’ I’m in. [laughter] AS: Excellent. So, you passed at Oxford? JS: Um. AS: Did you then go home and await some sort of call up or? JS: I went home and waited and I was called up within about two or three weeks. AS: As at that stage, PNB? Volunteer reserve? JS: Yeah. Volunteer reserve. AS: As a pilot navigator bomber? Bomb aimer? JS: Yeah. A PNB yeah. AS: Front of the aeroplane, executive office? JS: [laughter]. Yes. AS: OK, you’re called up and then presumably they had to try and make an airman of you, did they? JS: Well they did. I enjoyed it really except that when I was first flying, I was OK and even the instructor that took me on the final check, he said ‘You fly well, son’. He said ‘but what’s the bloody good of having you up there if you don’t know where the hell you are?’ Which is true. When you’re seventeen years old you’re so excited you don’t care about where you are. [laughs] And it was as easy as that. AS: Picking up on the excitement. JS: Um. AS: Do you think that the RAF knew you’d lied about your age and didn’t worry about it? JS: Oh yes, I’m sure they did. I was seventeen, and I’m sure they, my brother was sixteen. When he left the Air Force with this pension, he was seventeen years old when he left, and he went straight to university, got a good degree, eventually finished up in Australia. He died last week, he was ninety, but he’d had a pension since he was seventeen years old. Isn’t that amazing? AS: Turned out nice then didn’t it? JS: Um. AS: OK, so you were, you were in the Air Force starting pilot training, in this country was it? JS: Yes. AS: Whereabouts was that, and what were you flying? JS: Tiger Moths. Reading. There was an airfield at Reading, we used to pass it on the motorway going down, can’t think what it’s called. Theale is it? AS: Yeah. JS: Theale I think it was, and we would train there, it was a pilot training school. AS: And this was 1941? JS: ’41. Um, yeah, long time ago. AS: So still this was before the great move, the move to take pilot training abroad I suppose? JS: Yes, yes and no it was, they were picking up people they wanted, particular people. Even the guy who, instructor, who interviewed me at the end on the final flight, even he said ‘You fly very well, I’m very pleased the training has been good, you fly very well, but what’s the bloody good of having you up here if you don’t know where you are?’ Which is absolutely true and when you’re seventeen it’s all exciting, you don’t, you don’t even worry whether you’re going to get down again or not you know? Yeah. AS: You wanted to be a pilot, what sort of pilot? Fighter pilot? JS: I wanted to be a fighter pilot, I didn’t want to get anything to do with bombers. I was a little disappointed. I ended up, as you know, I did a tour with 77 Squadron but, it wasn’t what I wanted but then that’s the way life works. AS: So, you did, you soloed, did you solo? JS: Yes, oh yeah. AS: Marvellous, how many hours roughly did you do? JS: I don’t know, I don’t honestly remember now. I quite enjoyed flying, it was, it was much easier than I thought it would be. The thing, it’s exciting really. You’re seventeen years old and you’re flying. And honestly, it’s nothing to, you can’t get over it really. It’s amazing. AS: Superb. So, when you were told that your pilot training was going no further, what did you feel like, what? JS: Heartbroken. I used to say that’s the day I started drinking. But anyway, I waited around a lot and I did all sorts of odds and ends, waiting for another course, and the other course was in South Africa. So, I went to South Africa to do my navigator course. Unknown: Interruption. JS: Went to this hotel at Harrogate. All the groups, gunners, wireless operators, pilots, navigators, all in this big room, talking to each other, and we meet each other and if we fancy somebody and start talking, the way like I’ve met you today, they’d say ‘We could be alright together’. Then they met somebody else, so I met the rear, the mid-upper gunner was a Scot, nice guy, and the flight engineer was a Welsh guy, that’s the chap who had to become into aircrew or else. Now the three of us got on so well. They, in turn, had friends, before I knew where I was I’m one of six. The next thing is we’ve got Henley, this is the skipper, wandering around looking for. And he picks, out of the blue, you know. [inaudible] I thought perhaps, I’d heard about crews in the past, how they all get on. They don’t. But of course, you can get a group, I mean it’s very difficult to say seven blokes getting on together, isn’t it? AS: Um. JS: But we did, three of us did very well. And we managed with the others, we didn’t fight or anything. But I told you I wasn’t a friend of the skipper’s and I never was going to be. AS: But in the air you were a disciplined – JS: In the air, we were good, in fact in the air only two of us carried on talking. We had no conversation in the air unless it was necessary. The only person to converse with him, me, because I’d have to, the others only if they had too. There was no common chat amongst us. I’ve been listening to other people and they said they talked all the time. They didn’t in my crew, my crew only spoke when they had to. I think possibly it was a good idea, I don’t know. I know that, put it this way, I never felt afraid. It wasn’t, or upset, it wasn’t until old Charlie Whatsisname blew up in front of me that I suddenly thought ‘Christ Almighty, it’s dangerous up here’. And it was a bomber, do you know it was a Lancaster dropped the bombs? AS: Um. JS: And after that I was a bit wary, a bit wary. AS: And the Lancasters were flying higher than you obviously, yeah? JS: Um. Do you know something? Think about it there were, there were seven of us obviously in the crew, and you could often get such difference in seven people. AS: Did you see this on, on other crews that? JS: Yes, I did. Some crews I remained friendly with until the end, and when we retired they were coming up for their finish. You had to do thirty, you had to do thirty ops. Well I done eighteen with 77, 578 and I had twelve to do and I signed up with 77 and everything went fine from then onwards. They liked us. I never forget going to the first meeting and the navigation leader said ‘Now look here’. he said ‘I’ll tell you new lads what’s happening’. So I said ‘Well we might be new lads but we do know’. He said ‘I’ve done twelve ops already’, I said ‘Oh, aren’t you clever?’ I said. ‘I’ve done twelve, I’ve done eighteen’. I said. ‘Oh.’ So in other words don’t give us any bullshit ‘cause we know what it’s all about. [chuckles] AS: Can I wind you back a bit and cover the period from leaving OTU to joining the squadron? What happened when you joined the squadron? What was that process like? JS: That’s a good question. It was very good because there were about five squadrons in this billet and I didn’t realise it, but they all knew each other and they’d all been flying together. But after we joined them everything, not because of us, but everything seemed to go wrong and we ended up with just two. They lost three. AS: Three crews? JS: Just didn’t come back, you know? AS: Wow. JS: But when we first went there everybody was, I mean, give you for example. Oh, I must tell you this, the first night I’m there I go to bed and I was a Catholic. AS: Um. JS: And you had to put your name on the back, it told you what religion you were, on the back of my bed. Well I went to bed about eleven o’clock time, going off to sleep. I was woken very severely about an hour later by a chap who’d obviously been drinking and said to me ‘That’s the other man’. He said to me, ‘You a Catholic?’ I said ‘For Christ’s sake man’, I said ‘It’s gone twelve o’clock, what are you worried about?’ ‘Are you a Catholic?’ So, I said ‘Yes’. So with that, he opens his pocket and he throws a little, you know, brown leather wallet, that big. He threw it to me and he said ‘Here are, you better have it. My old lady gave me this, what a lot of bullshit’. I said ‘For God’s sake, what is it?’ So I opened it up and inside was a Sacred Heart and one or two medals that his mother had given to him. I said ‘You can’t give that away’. ‘Why not?’ he said. He was a bit pissed anyway, I said ‘Because frankly your mother gave you that, it’s for you to keep’. ‘I don’t want to know about it’. So I said ‘Look’. He said ‘I’ll chuck it on the fire’. ‘Don’t chuck it’. Those fires in the middle of the room. AS: Um. JS: I said ‘Don’t chuck it, leave it, we’ll talk about it tomorrow’. So in the morning, when I woke up, he was fast asleep of course, I waited until he got round, came round, and I went up to him and I said ‘Look, this was silly last night, you must be sober now. You were pissed out of your mind last night, you didn’t know what you were talking about. Talking about your mother that way, and throwing that and giving this’. ‘I told you, I didn’t want the bloody thing. I don’t know why she give it to me. It’s an embarrassment’. I said, ‘What are you saying?’ I said. He said ‘Do you want it?’ ‘Well rather than do what you said’, I said ‘yes’. So I kept it. That night, he and his crew disappeared and were never, ever seen again. Isn’t that amazing? AS: It’s, it’s amazing, but not unexpected. Do you, did you see other examples of that, of crews that knew they weren’t going to come? JS: No. AS: Back? JS: I have seen people say that to me, they had a feeling. ‘Cause I’ve heard people say ‘Our leave is due Friday, let’s hope to Christ we don’t have anything between Wednesday and Friday to stop us going’. And they say, and that was always a bit of a dangerous time because it happened so often, that your leave was going to be on Friday, Wednesday night you don’t come back. The times I’ve seen it happen. You’re always glad when it’s done and when you’ve been and then you’ve got some more to come. Just waiting for one day off, very tricky. But I never forget him and the next day I took it to him and I said ‘Look, I still feel you should have this’, I said ‘ because I don’t feel right to have it. I know what it means to lots of people, apparently it doesn’t mean anything to you’, I said ‘but the fact is your mother gave it to you, would have made you change your mind and seriously’. ‘Don’t talk a lot of bleeding nonsense’, he said. I said ‘You’re sure now?’ He said ‘I’ve told you, that’s it. I don’t want to hear about it’. So, OK. And that night they went out and they were never, ever seen again. We don’t know whether they were kept, well we know they weren’t prisoners of war. They were blown out of the sky, it’s as easy as that. And so, I thought ‘Christ Almighty, I wonder if it’ll be better for me’. So it got that way and when I told my crew about this, before we took off, every time before we took off, they all went. And once, on one occasion, ‘Oh Christ, I left it in my best blue’. ‘We can’t have that’ they said. So, I had to get a WAAF quickly to bring a jeep round, rush round to my place to pick it up otherwise they weren’t gonna go, they said. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how these things happen? I think people do have such things as lucky charms and they rely on them you know? [inaudible] insist that everything is alright. AS: Yeah, I think, I know you’re absolutely right. Did you as an individual, and you as a crew, always feel that you were going to come back? JS: I did, yeah. I did. I never gave it a thought, I always thought I would come back. Even on a Friday night when I’m due to go on leave. I always felt it’s a bit tricky but I’m going to make it. Because the only thing was that I had a dread of being shot down in the water. Because I was the only swimmer in my crew, and we did a couple of tests, and it was absolutely ridiculous. As I was the only swimmer, I was the main person. I had to get up on the diving board, suit on and boots off, jump in the water, find the dinghy, turn it upside down to the proper way, then try and pick the others up who were hanging around the edge of the bath. Well I did this and got one or two of them but the skipper, he would not get off the wall. And the instructor who was doing the swimming said, he said ‘Get in there’, and he pushed and he went in the water. He went like mad, my skipper, nearly bloody drowned me, and in the end the instructor realised that I was in trouble. So the instructor jumped in beside me, between the two of us we managed to get the bugger out, and I thought if ever anything happens and it’s in the sea we’re finished. We’re finished. No case of, can you swim? We’ll be finished. AS: So, this was dinghy drills in a swimming pool? JS: In a swimming baths, yeah. AS: Yeah, OK. What about drills on the aeroplane? Did you, as a crew, really practice those things, evacuating the aeroplane things like that? JS: No, no, never. No, never. I, that’s a good question. But when you think back, I was never, I don’t recall, we ever worked on how we would get out should there be an incident. I don’t think we thought there would be an incident. I think we were going to be lucky. They always said as long as they got him with us, meaning me, we’re going to be alright. But the only time I never flew with that crew, the doctor said I mustn’t fly for twenty-four hours, nothing’s going to happen I thought, but something did. And that meant to say that they had to go with a spare and they went mad, they got shot to pieces. Honestly, I’m not exaggerating. I waited until the last aircraft had come back in the early hours of the morning and I thought ‘Christ’. We hadn’t even heard a message then suddenly, in a very dim way over the line, came a call to say they are coming but they’ve been badly damaged and they might have trouble, but they were hoping to make it, and they did. They made it and the next thing I was worried about was would the bloody thing turn over when they landed, like it often does. So the WAAF and I waited, and they landed, and everybody stood by, and it landed and it stopped. And we all rushed out there, and the crew, apart from the skipper who was panic stricken. He couldn’t move, he was panic stricken. But the crew come out, lit the old fags up. ‘If he don’t come, we’re not going.’ [laughs] And we had a terrible problem. I was the lucky charm, without me they said they wouldn’t have managed. Silly of course but that’s – AS: Well it isn’t is it? It’s a really good insight to the crew as an organism. The fact that you didn’t necessarily get on, that you were the charm of the crew. JS: Another thing, the fact that I was a Catholic. I said ‘That’s got nothing to do it with it, the fact that I’m a Catholic’. ‘Well you don’t fuck about the way we do’, they said, which I didn’t. I drank with them but they were shagging all over the place, my crew, they were terrible. And the skipper was the world’s worst. I told you they thought I was queer. That’s why they called these awful women, and they’d introduce those awful women to me. Why I never forget one girl, it was a shame. She was as thick as two planks and they introduced her to me and said ‘Joe’s alright, he’ll look after you’. She said ‘He’s a nice bloke, you’ll like him’. I didn’t want to know her, and she insisted I go home and meet her parents, and I thought ‘That’s the last thing you want to do’. And I kept. [laughs] As I say my, my crew were awful in that respect. AS: How about the local population? ‘Cause Burn is, is in the part of Yorkshire where my family come from. JS: Yeah. AS: So, you have Goole, Selby, all around there. JS: Burn. AS: Yeah, what were the local population like to the aircrew? JS: Very good, very good. The only thing that used to upset me was they had a lot of Italian workers in the fields. AS: Prisoners? JS: Um. AS: OK. JS: And I remember standing one night, finishing a fag and watching these Italians working, and they were watching us taking off, and you can imagine what they were thinking. ‘Where the hell are they going, who are they going to bomb?’ you know? And I had to go into hospital for a couple of days and while I was in there they, this Italian guy came in and he was in a very, very bad way, and his mates used to come and visit him and he said to me, one of his mates, his English wasn’t bad. ‘Are you a Catholic?’ And I said ‘Yes, I am’. ‘You couldn’t have words with him, would you?’ So I said ‘Surely’, I said. He said ‘He’s not going to go home you know, he’ll never go home again. We don’t know what to say to him, perhaps if you talk kindly to him, he might take it from you’. So I said ‘I’ll try’. So I did when the chap passed, before he passed out, I said to him ‘Look I’m sorry you’re like this, it’s such a shame because you look like a nice guy and you could make quite a world of it’. But so, I said ‘The best thing to do is do what they say and carry on because the war won’t last forever and then you can go home’. But he died about a week later. AS: Wow. JS: He just died and I felt bad about it. In fact, I even went to the funeral. I know I shouldn’t have done but I felt bad about it ‘cause he seemed such a nice guy. When you think about it, it’s very serious really. AS: They’re people. Under the uniform we’re all people aren’t we? JS: Um. AS: So, whereabouts locally would you go from Burn as a crew, you know, for drinking or socialising? JS: Oh, in York. AS: In York, Betty’s Bar? JS: Um. There was a, there was a pub in Burn but it was packed. We had our own pub in York which we used to attend and we used to keep, it was very wrong of us really, we used to keep the Yanks out. ‘Cause the Yanks tried to get in our pubs and we said ‘It’s not on, this is for British staff only.’ AS: Which pub was this in York? JS: I can’t think which one it was but I know that, ‘cause the girls used to follow us rotten you know? In York ‘cause most girls wouldn’t have a lot to do with aircrew. Most regular girls as I call it, because they couldn’t guarantee, as they said, that you’d be here tomorrow, so we used to get all the tarts really. Well the lads didn’t mind, but I did. [aughs] AS: Yeah, it’s an interesting slant on wartime. So, when you finished OUT, did you get a big notice up on the wall posting you to a squadron? What happened, what was the process? JS: I cannot remember. AS: OK. JS: I think there was a group of us that had started at the same time, but we didn’t all go to the same squadron. I think, if I recall, we were posted to different squadrons. One here, two there and so on and so forth. ‘Cause in Yorkshire, Yorkshire was the home of the Halifax. AS: 4 Group, yeah. JS: And all the crews in it, that was Yorkshire, the Lancasters were lower down. So, what we did was, we all knew each other as crews, we used to meet and have a chat. There was quite a bit of rivalry between them and quite good humour too, between some of the crews. When I look back now it was a very difficult situation, because if somebody was killed or whatever, what did you do? We had this big joke, you’ve probably heard it, ‘Can I have your breakfast if you don’t come back?’ And that’s the way they were looking at it, ‘cause there was no other way of doing it. You couldn’t cry your eyes out about it ‘cause it could be you the next time. So, you had to get on with it, that was the way it was. ‘Could I have your breakfast tomorrow if you don’t come back?’ Um. AS: Was, I know you talked about leave. Was there much contact, did you go home on leave? Did you have contact with family or? JS: I was lucky I always went home on leave. I had money in my pocket, a good family who were dying to see me and I enjoyed it. But one of my crew, it was really silly, he’d been shagging around and leave came up and he got a dose. And I said, I went to hospital with him, and we sorted it out. And they reckon, he had a week in hospital and then he had to take it easy for a month or something and that was the way it was. And in the middle of all this he got involved with this girl again and I said ‘Look, Tom, you mustn’t do this’. I said, ‘What’s going to happen when leave comes round, you’re surely not going to go home and start on your own missus are you?’ He said ‘What else can I?’ I said ‘Well can’t you tell her some yarn about the fact that you’ve had trouble and that you can’t use it, but it’ll be alright in the future?’ ‘Um, I’ll try’, he says. So he did. So off we go on leave, when I got back after the weeks holiday he had my motorbike and he was waiting at the station for us. I said ‘When did you get back?’ He said ‘Oh, don’t tell me Joe, I’ve been home a week’. I said ‘Why?’ He said ‘I realised straight away when I got home that she knew there was something wrong. I had a terrible conscience, I didn’t tell her, and we just didn’t get on, and I sent myself a telegram to say “Return immediately”’. ‘Oh Christ’, I said. He said ‘What else could I do?’ I said ‘Well, I suppose you’re right, it’s a fact because you didn’t want to give it to your wife.’ Yeah. AS: So, when you turn up on the, on 578, what happened then? You’re allocated to a flight? Or do you go on ops straight away or? JS: Yes, more or less. When we realised the squadron was breaking down and we were going to be posted, we weren’t all posted to the same squadron. We were posted to 77 Squadron and when I got there, there were only two other crews came with us. So I should think the rest of the crews were split around the group ‘cause it was 4 Group. And I remember going in, I think I said a moment ago, when they had their first check up and the navigator was telling us new ones what to do and what it was like up there. And we said to him ‘How many ops have you done?’ He said, ‘I’ve done twelve’. And we said ‘That’s nothing’. [laughs] AS: Get some in. JS: ‘We’ve done eighteen’. But no, it was, it was difficult. I feel that on reflection it made one very hard. You had to be hard, it’s no good crying your eyes out is it about it? ‘Cause it could happen to you any time or anyone you were with. AS: Doing the job when you’re, whether it’s 578 or 77 Squadron. Could you take me through a typical operation from waking up in the morning until it’s all finished? JS: Well sometimes we’d wake up in the morning like today. And the navigators and the pilots would be called down, and we’d go to a meeting and they’d say ‘There’s going to be ops tonight, we haven’t got conditions at the moment but we’ll be calling an order about four o’clock.’ So we thought ‘Right that’s it, we’re on ops tonight’. And about four o’clock we used to go, and initially only the pilot and the navigator went and we listened to the place where we bombing, what we were trying to achieve, and so on and so forth. And with that we then opened the door and let the rest of the crew in and told them where we were going and what we were going to do and that’s how it was. AS: So how did? JS: It could only be hours before we took off. AS: So, when did you do your flight planning? JS: Well, flight planning. On the spot really. AS: So was that after your pilot, nav briefing. Or after everybody had had the briefing? JS: Well after the pilot, nav briefing we had an idea what we were going to do and where we were going to go, but how we were going to get there wasn’t ever discussed. It was never discussed. In fact, it wasn’t until just prior to going that we would talk about it. They used to discuss which way we would mostly take off and get to Reading, and at Reading it turned on to our target. I know it sounds silly but we were going anywhere until we got to Reading then we made for the target through Reading. That was our group you know? AS: So 4 Group would fly across England, presumably avoiding London? JS: Yes. AS: And you’d have worked out your flight plan by then? JS: Oh yeah. I tell you what did happen to me one night. We’d had a very long trip and we were very tired and coming back across France, I started to fall asleep. And I did just for a second or so and when I woke up, I looked around the aircraft, the gunners had undone their guns, everybody had heads down, including the skipper who was fast asleep. And we were over the, we were over England, but nobody knew where, ‘cause they were all asleep and didn’t care and I looked around and thought ‘Christ Almighty’. So I woke Ken up, he was the skipper, I said ‘Look, Ken, I don’t know how long you’ve been like this’. I said. He said ‘Oh it’s alright, it’s been on automatic pilot’. I said ‘I know it’s been on automatic, but how long is it supposed to be on for? Where are we, do you know?’ So he said ‘No, I haven’t a clue’. I said ‘That’s marvellous isn’t it?’ So I looked around, we woke the crew up and I thought ‘This is terrible, we could be anywhere, I know we’re heading north’ and then the Wash suddenly came into view. I could not believe my luck,. ‘cause as soon as I saw the Wash we knew where we were. But if we hadn’t have seen the Wash and it had gone on we could have been Scotland, run out of fuel and all had to bail out. That’s happened before as well. AS: To you? JS: No, no. AS: To others on the squadron? JS: I’ve had friends that it’s happened to, they just run out. Twice or three times – [knocking] AS: So, Joe, back to a discussion on a typical mission if there is such a thing. You’d get briefed, did you air test the aeroplanes in the morning? JS: I was only thinking that the other day when I looked at my book. We did very few air tests, very few air tests. I looked in here the other day. It’s amazing really, you’d have thought we’d have done more wouldn’t you? Because things were wrong with the aircraft and the ground staff, used to, when we got back, immediately jump on them to put it right. Nothing worse than an aircraft going wrong in the sky, you can’t do a thing about it you see, it’s got to be right when it leaves. AS: Was that always the case with you, did you have issues in the air? JS: Not really. I think I told you about, in there. [rustling of paper] AS: But not mechanical issues? You didn’t have mechanical issues? JS: Look at some of these. Silly things. Have you read this? AS: No, not yet. JS: Just have a quick look at it. AS: OK. So, Joe, we’ll pick it up again, we’ve just had our tea. We were, we were talking about air tests. The fact that the aircraft, you didn’t test the aircraft very much so you had complete faith in the men? JS: In the maintenance crew. AS: Did you, did you used to socialise with them as well? JS: Yes and no. Difficult. They all lived on the site which was miles from anywhere, outside and they used to live out there, virtually the maintenance crew. AS: With the aircraft? JS: Yeah. Awful. I’ve been out there sometimes in the winter, when they’ve asked us to come out, where we’ve had to sweep the snow off the aircraft to get it to go off and up, you know? The Halifax was a nice aircraft, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve only ever once been in a Lancaster, I didn’t like it particularly, you had to climb over lots of beams and things to get to where you fly. But with the Halifax there was plenty of room inside. And we had also, on a couple of occasions, Ken said to me ‘You better check that bugger’, meaning the American that we’d got, or Canadian that was the mid-upper gunner, the turret under the aircraft, little turret. AS: OK. JS: And they used to fly on there, but they didn’t. I mean I never said anything, I didn’t drop them in it. But I’ve been back and they’ve been lying there half asleep having a smoke. They never went out of the turret. AS: So, the Halifax’s were fitted, your Halifax’s were fitted with? JS: Some of them were yeah. AS: OK, yeah. Did you mostly do navigation or was bomb aiming your speciality? JS: Bomb aiming was my speciality with 77. Actually, I was going to get an award. Well I got the award but because of a silly incident at Scarborough, I lost it. I didn’t realise it but they took away my DFM and they took away his DFC, very unhappy he was. My fault. AS: So, you’d been recommended for? JS: Oh, before then I was, on one occasion, I forget which one it was ‘cause I never made a fuss in my logbook. Some people wrote things in the logbooks but I never did. On one occasion I went in and I was a bomb aimer and I dropped the bombs so badly to the ground that it started one end of the rail centre, right down the line, through the station, out the other side, and ruined. I cut the whole bloody railway out of the business. No, I had a letter from them to express, to express you know what a good job I’d done. The next thing I know is, I’m recommended for the DFM. Oh, OK. But after the incident at Scarborough it wasn’t quite the same, um. I’ve seen some funny things happen to other people. They didn’t talk about it very much but you obviously know about LMF? AS: Yeah. JS: And we had, at one period, quite a lot of LMF. Except for one guy and he was, he came from New Zealand and his skipper came from New Zealand and he used to be a nice guy, bomb aimer. And I got friendly with him but he was very religious, and he’d done about sixteen ops and he turned to me one night and said ‘I can’t do this anymore, Joe’. I said ‘What’s up?’ ‘I can’t do this bombing business anymore’. I said ‘Well what can you do about it, you can’t say I don’t want to do it’. ‘Oh, I can’. I said ‘But’. He said ‘Well what am I going to do?’ I said ‘I don’t know. Think about it, think about it’. Well he did. He complained that he didn’t want to, and he explained that he didn’t want to fly anymore, and I thought they would go for him but they didn’t. They said ‘Look sunshine, you’ve done over eighteen ops so far, what are you worried about?’ And they stopped and took him off and they sent him home. So he was a very lucky guy. AS: This was on 578 or 77? JS: On 578. AS: So, what happened to some of the other guys who, as you say, went LMF? JS: Oh God, terrible. When I first joined 77 I was walking down towards the Sergeants’ Mess and I saw a gang of airmen that did all the dirty work, clearing up. And in charge was a bloke who’d obviously been a sergeant ‘cause they’d ripped the sergeants stripes and you could see where they’d been, in charge of this dirty gang. And as I got up close to him I realised it was a friend of mine called Sandy Mount, and I said ‘Hello Sandy, what’s?’ ‘I don’t know you Joe’, he said. Funny thing to say, ‘I don’t know you Joe’. And off he went with his gang. I went into the Mess, I’d only just joined the squadron, and I said, I mentioned it. ‘Oh, don’t talk about him’. I said ‘What is he doing?’ ‘He’s waiting to be sent away to the LMF place down on the coast where they really give you a bad time’. I said ‘Why?’ Apparently the first time he said there was something wrong with the aircraft so they cancelled it. The second time something else went wrong and he returned early, the third time, on the fourth time they realised that he didn’t want to do what he was doing, and they said he’d got to come off flying. AS: And punished? JS: And they took him off, called him LMF and put him in charge of all the blokes doing the shit [inaudible]. There was this New Zealand guy that I knew he done about sixteen ops and he turned to me, he was very religious, and he turned to me one night and said ‘Joe I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know why we’ve got into our states with this war, it’s not on’. I said ‘Well you can’t do much about it now, you’ve got to wait until you finish your tour’. ‘Oh, I don’t think I could’, he said. Well his pilot, who was also a New Zealander, went up to the CO and they explained the situation and the CO was very good. He said ‘I can’t say LMF, I can’t blame him ‘cause he’s an extremely good navigator’, he says. ‘but we can’t have this sort of thing ‘cause if anybody else starts doing what he does, what do we do?’ So, they sacked him but they sent him home. AS: Lucky man. JS: Which was the best thing they could have done. He wasn’t a coward, it wasn’t that, he just said ‘I can’t do this anymore. What are we doing, all this dropping bombs on people and killing them?’ He said ‘It’s not on, this isn’t warfare is it?’ His skipper actually, terrible part about [unclear} it was, I must tell you this, hell of a nice guy, they only had one or two ops left to do, the crew, not him ‘cause he’d gone. And they went missing. Never seen. So the skipper was killed, obviously the aircraft disappeared, isn’t that amazing? But he didn’t go with them ‘cause he’d gone home to New Zealand. AS: Premonition or something. JS: Isn’t it strange, this world how it works isn’t it? AS: Absolutely. You mentioned he, the navigator, bomb aimer couldn’t go on bombing. What was the feeling in the country, say in 1944/45 about the bombing, what? JS: We were heroes ‘cause we were doing a great job, we were knocking them about something awful. This is what it said about Bomber Command, there’s a big article coming out soon. 1944 we were heroes, marvellous, good lads, 1945 we were villains, bombing these poor Germans. That’s true, mind you we were bombing them. God forbid we gave them quite a hounding. I remember going to Essen twice, I remember Hagen twice and each occasion it was a write off. Because when the war was over we took some of our ground crew and the WAAF’s on a visit to see what we’d done and I was absolutely flabbergasted at some of the damage we did out there. God, terrible. AS: And most of the time you’d been the bomb aimer? JS: Yeah. AS: And somebody else was doing the navigating? JS: Um. AS: Yeah. JS: I worked, I, navigation’s a funny thing. It got easier as the time went on because we had a lot of equipment to help us. It was much easier than when we first started. AS: What did navigation involve when you first started, when you were navigating a trip? JS: They used to call it, there’s a name for it. Well, it means pencil and paper and get down to it, you know? AS: Dead reckoning? JS: Yeah, dead reckoning. Didn’t always work out either, had a lot of trouble with it. When I look back on some of the guys that I flew with and lost, it was very difficult really. You never knew, well I knew I was going to come back, which is the most important thing, but a lot of them began to lose confidence. When you find that you had not one awful trip but two awful trips and then you lose the bloody way and everything goes wrong. So you realise what can happen, and does happen, but it never happened to me. I was very, very fortunate. AS: And, generally, were the ones you saw losing confidence, were they the ones that didn’t come back? JS: Oh yes, yeah. Yes, it was a shame because, don’t know how to explain it. I used to like to dance and I used to go to dances as lot and one or two of the lads I was with came. Most of the crew didn’t go for the dancing they went for the booze and the girls and they never turned up until the last knockings to find a bird to take home with them. But some of them I met, and we lost them. It seemed sad to think we wouldn’t see them again but it was just the way it was. My crew were funny really in that respect. When I look back on old Henley, he was a terrible man, a terrible man, I didn’t treat him as an officer above me in any way whatsoever, ‘cause I hadn’t got that much confidence in him and I hadn’t got that much respect for him either. If I had I would have shown it but I couldn’t show him ‘cause I didn’t think he was that sort of a guy. AS: In, did you used to go to the cinema and watch the news reels? JS: Um. AS: What did they say about Bomber Command? JS: Well they maintained the fact that we were doing a very good job and that it was necessary. I don’t think it was towards the end of the war as necessary as they made it ‘cause we did some terrible things you know? We really did towards the end of the war. We really did tear the place apart. AS: And did? JS: I went to Hamburg one night and we made a terrible mess of it. Bugger me, two nights later, they sent us back again to finish it off. And we did, burnt it down. It was a, you get to a stage where you don’t care, it was as easy as that. AS: It’s just a job? JS: Um. AS: But the excitement of flying that you talked about before, did that stay with you? JS: Oh yeah, yeah. [chuckling]. I’ve had some good times in the air. When we first, when I first went onto Dakotas I loved it. Oh God we had some fun. AS: So how did that, you were in 77 Squadron? JS: Um. AS: You finished your tour did you, you did thirty trips? JS: Um. AS: And this would be after the war, or just? JS: No, it’s in there. AS: Just as the war was finishing. So – JS: Chevrolets. We were going to the Far East you see? So, we all trained, were trained to fly these twin-engine things, Chevers. AS: OK. So, this is in May, end of May 1945? JS: Yes. AS: So – JS: The war was over here. AS: Yeah, so ops to Nuremberg in April, ops to Heligoland. Your last op was Heligoland in April? JS: It was an island in the middle and it was the last. And I’ll tell you a strange thing, you mention that, only a few of us were there, about twenty, and I watched this happen. I watched a ‘plane above drop his bombs on the ‘plane below and blow two others out of the sky with him. Five aircraft - ‘Bang’. Honest truth. And I looked there with my skipper and I said ‘Has anybody got out?’ and he said ‘I can’t see a sign’. AS: No ‘chutes? JS: I don’t think anybody survived. This is bloody night, the last day of the war you know, isn’t that awful? AS: And that’s what you see in daylight. The same thing must have happened at night time? JS: Um. AS: And 5 Group used to fly higher than you? JS: Oh, they did yes. I, I’ve, we’d been extremely lucky with the aircraft that we had ‘cause some of them were beginning to get very worn out. In fact, I told you the one I was flying had done it’s hundredth op. This was its hundredth op when these Germans came. We’d been warned for weeks, ‘Watch out’. What was the word they called? AS: Intruders? JS: Intruders, yeah, yeah, intruders. What happened was, as soon as we crossed the coast this side the gunners undid their guns. The, everybody sat down, even the skipper. Set the target on automatic and went to sleep. Out of the blue, these bloody aircraft were with us and we never saw them. And they shot down twenty over where I was. One of my mates he was, he was in a terrible state. They tried to land but nobody would take them on, ‘cause as soon as they went into land the Germans would come and they would shoot the place up. But they did bail out and he landed in a tree in a churchyard and it was a big tree right up high, and his ‘chute got caught in the top so he was hanging there swinging. And he gets his fags out and he puts his fag in his mouth, and he gets his lighter out and drops it. [laughter], and he sat there, hour after hour, waiting for someone to come in the early hours of the morning. Nobody turned up until about ten o’clock to see him stuck up a tree. He was alive at least anyway. He got away with it. AS: Yeah. As your tour progressed and we, you got H2S and G, was there a feeling that it was becoming more professional with a bigger bomber stream and more aeroplanes? JS: I think so. I think it was the numbers that were telling, it was big. They couldn’t hit us back, we were too big. In fact, they couldn’t touch us with all their guns used together. The only thing they used to have were these intruders. They used to have jets and they used to come up from nowhere when the jets first started, but they were going so fast they used to fly past us and couldn’t hit us. By the time they turned round, we’d gone. But I’ve seen some very bad incidents, very bad incidents. When I look back on it now we used to joke and we used to laugh about things but it was a very serious business you know? When I think of all the chaps I’ve known that used to be mates of mine that have gone. We used to come home on leave and my brother Tony was there at the time of course, and he used to say ‘Why the hell you went into Bomber Command I’ll never know’. I said ‘Well, you must remember Tony, you didn’t intend to go the way you went. Life has its own way of going and there’s nothing you can do to stop it’. He ended up, as I say, deaf in one ear with a pension. Amazing isn’t it? Last week he died, ninety years old, ‘cause he put his age up about three years. He um, I could never understand why my Dad gave me such a bollocking for what I did. AS: Tell us about that. This was when you went home in? He knew you were in Bomber Command? JS: Um. AS: And you were welcomed when you went home on leave? JS: I finished my tour and I went home to finish. I told him I’d finished and Mum I wouldn’t be bombing anymore and Dad said ‘You shouldn’t have done it in the first place. What the devil you’re up to in there’. I said ‘This is what war is all about’. I said ‘You seem to forget Dad, that they bombed us first you know’. ‘I don’t recall that’. I said ‘I know you don’t ‘cause you weren’t here, you were in London, you were in the north of England’. I said ‘But they dropped bombs on us, it was just, we didn’t drop the bombs first, they did’. He said ‘Joe, all I can say to you is if you close your eyes and think back on all the people you must have killed you must have a terrible conscience’. I said ‘Well to be honest Dad, I’ve never given it a thought, but now you’ve put it into my mind I probably won’t forget’. Which I didn’t, and [inaudible] But what can you do about it? AS: But he’d known you were in Bomber Command when you went home on leave? JS: Yeah, I didn’t talk about it at all. AS: OK. JS: I never talked about flying when I was home. Never said a word. Never said I was flying ops or anything. Never said what I was doing. I just said that, they asked why do I get leave so regular. I said ‘Because that’s the way it goes’, you know. When I look back on it now it was regular then. But then you might as well take it ‘cause you didn’t know when the next one was going to be. AS: And as crews disappear you go up the leave ladder? JS: When I look back you know, God I lost some guys. I was thinking about you, I’m glad you came today, and I’m sorry that I carry on so, because I don’t ever talk about the Air Force, I certainly couldn’t do it at home. And my Dad, or even now at home with people. My girls don’t seem to realise and they don’t take any notice. I’m not bragging to be some sort of hero but I don’t really get involved in talks about it. Have a bit of a laugh sometimes with some of the funny things that happened, some of the songs we used to sing and some of the things we used to do. AS: Can you still remember any of those songs? JS: All of ‘em, yeah. AS: OK. JS: 77 has their own one. AS: Yeah. JS Then 578 was, started off – ‘We’re the pilot, otherwise Joe, we take him wherever we go. Berlin or [inaudible] wherever they send ‘em, it’s all the same to him. We’re the gunners, Dawson and Rear,[inaudible] with the flight engineer. It appalled us when they called us, we’d rather go on the beer. Navigations what I do, at least that’s what I tell the crew.’ [laughter] And things like this you know? The other one was, ‘77, 77 though we say it with a sigh. We’d rather work for Mr Bevan then we’d never have to fly’. And we had all these songs, and it was cheerful, it took your mind off what you were doing. We drank a lot and they knew we drank a lot and nobody corrected us. Because they used to say ‘The poor buggers they can’t guarantee they’re going to get any more drink’, you know? Whether they’d come back. We did lose so many guys. AS: Yeah. JE: We did lose so many guys. AS: Yeah. JE: And it wasn’t until after the war on my own I sat down and thought about it. And I’m not going to argue with my Dad, I’m not going to talk about it, I’m not even going to mention it to anybody. So, I didn’t say I was in the Air Force. I thought if I don’t say it I won’t have to talk about it or worry about it. Because some people thought I was a hero but some people thought we were villains. AS: And this was quite quickly after the end of the war that things changed? JE: Um. When I look back on it now, what a time to live eh? AS: Well, it’s an experience. I mean did you ever think you’re getting airborne with two thousand gallons of fuel and twelve thousand pounds of bombs it was a bit dangerous? JS: No, I didn’t, yeah. AS: Did you? JS: I tell you on one occasion, odd occasion this, we had a two-thousand-pound bomb hung up in the bombing rack, and the bloody thing wouldn’t go. Well, I was the smallest member of the crew, so I went, they hung me by my legs into the bomb bay with a hammer. And I had to ‘bang, bang, bang’ at the group until the bloody thing went. And it went, and after it went, didn’t it go with a bang? Christ Almighty! And the other time, of course, was definitely was my fault. Where we dropped the bombs on Scarborough. We should never have done them really, but we wanted, we were getting so close to the sea and yet we didn’t seem to be getting there. I thought if we don’t get there in a minute we’re going in. So, I pressed the wrong tit at the wrong time. AS: I think dropping them live was what probably upset them, Joe. JS: Oh my God, the rear gunner said, ‘Christ Almighty, what’s going on Joe?’ He said. There was a terrible bang and then another one and of course they were all going off. Actually, I, we were lucky we didn’t blow ourselves out of the sky really. AS: Yeah. JS: Crazy thing to do. AS: There’s a minimum height for. JS: Um. AS: You also dropped lots of bombs safe didn’t you after the war? Tell me about that. JS: We used to load the aircraft with bombs. Fly outside of Hull and drop them in the sea. Just unload the whole bloody lot downward, go back and get another load. There were so many bombs in the bomb dump and we said ‘They won’t be used again. We want them out of the way’. So, on the floor outside of Hull are literally hundreds of bombs that were dropped there during the war. The next job after that was the aircraft. We had to fly them up to Newcastle. We took anything that was necessary off, flew them up there and they burnt them and broke them up. This was after the war. AS: Soon after the war? JS: Yes, not many weeks after the war, ‘cause by that time I’d then gone onto Dakotas you see? And Ken and I had to learn to fly Dakotas, I enjoyed that, they were good fun. AS: Did you surprise Ken with how well you could fly? Did he know about your previous experience? JS: Oh yeah, he knew initially that I could fly, because rare occasions, very rare occasions, he’d let me fly the Halifax. Only when he wanted to have a slash or have a break, then I would take over you see? AS: On ops? JS: Um. AS: Gosh. JS: When I look back on it now I was glad I wasn’t a pilot. I wouldn’t have wanted to be a pilot anymore. Different if you were a Spitfire pilot or a Hurricane pilot, which is what I originally went in to do. That’s alright but not sitting at the [inaudible] of the bloody thing. AS: Bus driving. JS: Bus driving yeah. AS: Well they call them don’t they? Driver air frame mark one?[chuckling]. JS: Yeah. AS: So, you stayed on 77, and the idea was they’d re-role 77 to be a transport squadron? JS: Um. AS: And you became a second pilot sharing the flying with Ken? JS: With Ken. AS: So, you didn’t stay in the UK, what happened? JS: Went straight out to the Far East. AS: Did you take any sort of test as a pilot? Qualification as a pilot? JS: We both had a test before we left. I spent a bit of time, we both were capable of flying and it was known, but he was the pilot obviously and I was the second pilot. But the aircraft, some of them were quite good, some of them were rubbish. They had them too long and they should have been scrapped but we used them occasionally. Um. AS: In training or? JS: Um. AS: And then you went with Dakotas overseas? JS: Um. AS: What was that all about, ‘cause the war in the Far East was still going on was it? JS: Yes, we went out for the invasion of Japan. We were going to act as the taxis for the people who were going to invade Japan, but they dropped the bombs on Japan completely, well it was fantastic bombs they dropped on Japan. And the war finished immediately. So after that we did every job that could be, was necessary for an aircraft to do. We brought the prisoners of war back home, we did all sorts of interesting things. AS: You set off the 27th of September to Sardinia? That’s one leg, Libya, Karachi this took you? JS: Took about ten days. AS: Amazing. Delhi via the Taj Mahal. JS: Um. AS: Carried VIP’s. What was that all about? JS: We took some. You see we had all sorts of jobs. Oftentimes somebody’s generals and admirals that had to go and we took them. We had a special aircraft which had seats, ‘cause a lot of the aircraft hadn’t got seats, had to sit on the floor. But we had lots of aircraft fitted for important people, and we took them to various places. I did a tour once, oh that was it, I did a tour once with them, with a concert party, and we had the concert party with all the extras in the Dak. And we used to fly every night we’d fly to a different place, and then they’d do their trip. Well then they finished, towards the end they said to us ‘What do you think of the show, Joe?’ I said, and I felt embarrassed, I said ‘Actually’, ‘Oh, go on’. ‘We’ve never seen the show’. ‘Good God man’ they said. I said ‘Well, there’s always’. ‘We’ll give you a performance tonight’. So some of them did. There were two brothers, they dressed up as young females. They were so good. AS: You’ve been out East too long. [laughter] JS: And I finished up with the tour at Bombay and we realised that we had a couple of days over, so I said to Ken ‘Can’t we get hold of some money and stop here for a couple of days?’ So he said he would see what he could do, and he got some cash out of somewhere. And we stopped on for a couple of days extra. And I liked Bombay, I learned to swim underwater in Bombay, ‘cause they had a beautiful pool there. AS: And that’s where in November 1945, at Palam, you set off on your last flight with 77 Squadron? JS: That’s right yeah. AS: Tell me about finishing flying, was that planned or? JS: No. I didn’t think he was going home that quickly, ‘cause he wanted to get home anyway. And his number came up long before mine, and I could have carried on with somebody else, but I suddenly thought ‘I’ve been flying for four years, I’m the luckiest bloke I know, perhaps I can even get an early journey home’. Well I went to see the CO and he said he realised that I had had a good innings but he couldn’t let me go yet, it wasn’t down. He said ‘There’s a nice little job coming up in the post office’. I said ‘oh’. He said ‘I think you’d like it you know, you’re in charge’. So I said ‘OK’ so I took it on until such time as it was due to come home. When I look back on it now, India was going through terrible internal problems. I was bloody glad to get out of India. They were killing each other wholesale. One against the other. Just before the break up, because that’s, if you look at the time, dates, that’s when they finally broke up, India and Pakistan. AS: I think also there was some trouble in the Air Force wasn’t there? What they called the 1946 RAF Mutiny? JS: Oh yeah. AS: What was that about? JS: That arrived it was the first time I went out there. It wasn’t ’46, it was ’45 I think, could have been ’46. What had happened was, all the guys, the ground staff guys, had been out in the Far East, some of them for four years, never been home. And here was the war over in England and all their mates were leaving and getting good jobs and there’s them stuck out there in India. And it got worse and worse until eventually there was a desertion and then a – AS: A mutiny? JS: Yeah, it really went mad. I thought there might even be a bit of violence but there wasn’t. But some of the chaps who were actually in charge, and they were officers, they were in trouble, they were jailed. But, and I can see their point, lots of them had been out there for four years. All their mates had gone home in England and finished the war and were getting jobs, nothing for them. AS: So, what happened to Joe Stemp then? You’re running a post office? JS: Yeah. AS: You told me earlier you taught yourself to drive on a big truck. JS: Yeah. AS: How did you end up from India? JS: My time came up to leave. AS: OK. JS: And I went up, I flew home. [inaudible] what I’m going to do and my father said to me ‘I’ve saved you a position in the works’. He said ‘You can start next Monday’. I said ‘Hang on, I’ve been away. I wasn’t going to start work straight away, I thought I’d have a break’. ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because I’ve been away and I want a break’. ‘I don’t know about that’ he says, ‘I’ve kept a job for you here’. So I said ‘OK’. So I started and I hated it. And after a few weeks a mate of mine got in touch with me and we went and had a drink together. And he worked on the paper that the, Times no? AS: Financial Times? JS: Financial Times. AS: The pink one. JS: And he said ‘How would you like a job on the Financial Times?’ ‘Oh, not half’. I said. ‘I’ll see what I can do’. And the next thing I know is I’m offered a job by them. I went up, saw them, they liked me, I liked them and I went to work for them, and it was up and up from then onwards. I went out on the road eventually, had a good job as a rep and eventually went out on the road and did very well. Maxwell. AS: Yeah. JS: My first client, I’ve told you haven’t I? Three months I gave him his work. Did lots of [inaudible] for him, never got a penny. When I went to get money from him he was rude to me and told me to get stuffed and all sort of things. So I said ‘That’s it, we’re finished with you’. And we did but I carried on and I had some very good clients in the end and they liked me and also the women liked me, so I had lots of women clients. And they all liked Joe and I was getting more money. Before I knew where I was I was doing very well and over the years I’ve done very well. AS: How did you meet and marry Pat? JS: On a train. I was flying, it was just before I went to the Far East when I was still flying Dakotas, and I went, I took a couple of days off. And a mate said to me ‘Let’s go down the coast for a couple of days and have a break’. So I said ‘What a good idea’. And my Dad didn’t want me to because he knew that I’d go boozing. I said ‘So?’ Anyway, I went. We get to the station, we get to the train, there isn’t room to spare. We walked right the length of the train [inaudible] and in the last carriage, eight women were in there, but nobody moved. So, we stood outside all the way to Plymouth and at Plymouth two got out, and we went in and used their seats. And I took one look at this woman opposite me and I fell in love with her, now I did. I know I’m a romantic but there and then. So, the next day I looked and saw she had a wedding ring and an engagement ring. I thought ‘Bloody marvellous, every time I fancy some girl someone else has got there first’. So the next day we were talking casually and she said she was a widow. Oh, lost her husband shot down over Poland flying the aircraft [inaudible]. So on the third day I asked her to marry me. She thought I was crazy. ‘Good God man’. She said. ‘I don’t even know your name, never mind marry you’. I said ‘Would you marry me?’ She thought about and she said ‘Put it this way, I’ll think about it’. I said ’Look, I’m going away any moment now, like tomorrow or the day after, to the Far East. I don’t know how long I’m going to be going but I’ll be gone probably about a year. And I’d like to know’. She said ‘I’m not going to say anything. I’ll think about it’. So she wrote to me during the first year and when I came home I asked her again, and we got married. So, I did well didn’t I? [laughs] AS: Absolutely. JS: She said something to me about two years ago. She’d wet herself in the home down the road there, and I went to change her knickers for her and I changed her knickers in the toilet and I whispered in her ear ‘What a good job I love you to death’. Do you know what she said to me? ‘Joe, I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you’. Christ I was nearly in tears. AS: On the train? JS: Um. So I said ‘You’re a funny girl’. I knew see, and of course we got on very well over the years but she used to write me nice letters. Even when the Queen sends us a card. There’s a certain period of the year when the Queen sends us a card. Because we’ve got some connection with them. And she usually writes in the Queen’s letter or card a nice letter to me. Always a nice letter saying how much she loves being married to me and what a marvellous life she’s had. And that was how it went. AS: And did you ever talk about the war and the flying between you? JS: No. AS: Because she’d lost her husband? JS: We never did. Only time she said something was when I did say at one time, ‘I should have stayed in you know Pat?’ ‘What do you mean you should have stayed in?’ I said ‘All my mates who stayed in did a great job, doing, working for Europe, buying stuff in Europe and coming over after the war you know? They were making a fortune on the side. AS: It’s called smuggling Joe. [laughter] JS: It is just that. So I said, she said ‘Joe, I’ve told you I lost one husband and I’m not going to take another one, it’s up to you’. I said [inaudible] So we were married. Sixty-five years we were married. AS: Good lord. JS: Never had a cross word with her hardly in all that time. My girls could never understand it. ‘You and Mum’ they said ‘You get on so well’. I said ‘Well, that’s what life’s supposed to be like, getting on well.’ Well now you know a lot about that book. AS: I’d like to photograph the book in a minute Joe. Just one final set of thoughts really, perhaps? That we talked about your father’s attitude to the bombing. JS: Oh yeah. AS: The public’s attitude through the fifties and sixties and the seventies, I think was, in many ways, was much against the bombing although you didn’t talk about it. JS: No. AS: Did you feel it was unfair? Did you shout internally about it or? JS: They felt that we were taking advantage of the fact that the Germans were in trouble with Russia and when they were in their worst state we were taking advantage and bombing them badly. Which we did. I never discussed that, it never gave me a thought. When you fly you’re told what you told, you go where you’re told to go, and do what you’ve got to do. And that’s all I can say. I couldn’t say to them ‘Oh I’m not going to bomb there, I’m not going to go there’. You do what you’re told. I didn’t even want to belong to Bomber Command but once you’re are, you’re there aren’t you? AS: And you had no choice about where you went? JS: No. AS: When you were flying, this has just occurred to me, did you have a lot of, I mean the enemies were the flak, the fighters and the weather. Did you have a lot of trouble with the weather? JS: No. If the weather was bad we didn’t go. [inaudible] Our raid were also worked on how the weather was going to be on the way and on the way back,. ‘cause we had to get back from Germany, it wasn’t like round the corner it was a six hour trip sometimes. And basically we did well. Occasionally we did come unstuck. In which case we had to find somewhere to land as soon as we hit this coast. Which we did, we went to a smaller ‘drome in south of England. AS: OK. JS: Went in there on two or three occasions. I’ve been down there and found the place full of Halifax’s, and bombers and all sorts that had run out of fuel. AS: So, is it fair to say that the weather reports you were given, or forecasts were pretty good most of the time? JS: They were very good. AS: OK. JS: I think I mentioned this. Just before I joined the squadron, I met some mates of mine who were in a similar squadron but they were flying Whitley’s and Wellingtons, and they hated the flying so what they did was, and this is an absolute truth, there used to be a song. ‘Bomb holes in the roof tops, instead of craters in the sea’. What had happened was, they’d be having a drink and the skipper would come in. ‘Don’t have any more drink lads, we’re on tonight’. ‘Oh, sod it, have we got to go?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Oh, alright.’ They’d take off, get half way across the coast then they’d say to each other ‘Let’s have a go’. So they’d all have a go at the skipper. ‘Have we got to go? This is bloody silly, really isn’t it? Why can’t we dump our bombs here and go back home? The navigator can cook the log’. Which he could, so they did. And it went on and on. At that period there were more bombs dropped in the bloody sea than ever dropped over there. And then they found out what they were doing, ‘cause the next morning they’d go down and they’d say ‘That’s funny, they reckon they dropped all the bombs, where did they drop them? We can’t find any bomb holes anywhere’. Spitfire would go over. They decided they must do something about it so they fitted a new attachment like that, to a camera, to the bomb tit. So when you pressed the bomb tit it showed you where the bombs were going. So you couldn’t get away with it anymore. [laughs] AS: So, this was automatic, so many seconds after the bombs went? JS: Um. But there was an awful lot of it. And when you think of the aircraft, they were pathetic aircraft, you know? You didn’t stand a chance really with them. At least with our aircraft we had good aircraft. I mean the Lancaster and Halifax were both fantastic bombers. And well looked after, well good. AS: Can you remember still, and I don’t expect this, but can you remember the drills you had to do as the bomb aimer as you’re approaching the target? JS: Any? AS: The drills. Did you have to set the wind up or? Too long ago? JS: No, as I recall, I did most of it, I didn’t do them all. But we had to get, as I recall. We used to lay on our stomach and we got our bomb sight lined up with where we had to drop the bombs. And generally speaking I was either very lucky, not always so clever, but very lucky. Consequently, I had some very, very good results and we got a big reputation. I told you, on the bombs on that railway, I blew the station from one end to the other. Right down the line, blew everything out of the way. And so I got congratulated on it. And on a number of occasions I was, I personally was congratulated, which was such a shame when I hit the Scarborough bit. [laughter] AS: OK. I think we’ve had a really good go at this Joe, I’m – JS: Haven’t we, I’m sorry. AS: No, I’m so grateful for you. And perhaps we could resume another day? JS: Yes. AS: When maybe some more memories will come back. JS: Next time I’ll take you out to have something to eat. It’s been nice, I’m not giving you bullshit now. It’s been nice to meet you, you’re exactly as I thought you would be and I’ve enjoyed your company. And if you ever want to come again, not necessarily to chat even, you’re always welcome here with me. AS: That’s very kind and I will. JS: Sorry. AS: This is the second reel of interview with Joe Stemp. Joe, I think we paused at the point when we were talking about your disappointment at – JS: At losing. Yes. Scrubbing my pilot’s skills. AS: Did they. What happened next? Did they give you the choice of being a navigator or? JS: Not really, I don’t know. All I know is that for some months I did odds and ends around and the next thing I know is I’m at Blackpool, going out to South Africa to do this navigation course. AS: What sort of odds and ends did they have you doing? JS: Oh, I did all sorts of things for them, I was most surprised they let me do it really. I quite enjoyed it, it was quite enjoyable. I was up at Blackpool for some time and, you know, I quite enjoyed the Air Force. I had intended to go for a pilot’s course, another one, and try again but I realised that they’d got all the records and I would never have got away with it. AS: So, you’d come out then and enlist under a different name or something? JS: Yeah. AS: OK. So, after they’d had you doing odds and ends, you’re in Liverpool, presumably going to South Africa by ship? JS: Yes, we did. AS: What was that like? JS: Marvellous. I found a lot of good friends out there. East London was where I trained and the people of East London were very good to us. Families would adopt us so at the weekend we always had somewhere to go. And I was adopted by a family and they liked me and we had good times together, the Carter family. I had a very good time in South Africa, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The only thing that ever got me was she had a lot of other children, they weren’t hers. She had seven people working for her. She had people working for her, a family of seven and they lived in a rough old shack down the bottom of her garden. Well if I treated her children to sweets I treated their children. And she found out and I got a real bollocking. I mustn’t, she said ‘You don’t seem to realise, Joe, there’s more of them then us’. I said ‘It’s got nothing to do with it’. But, and I’ve always had this thing about it, the way they treated them. AS: Was there any, did you encounter any anti-British feeling in South Africa? JS: No, not really no. Not really. ‘Cause funny enough the Air Force weren’t very popular in South Africa, they weren’t very popular at all. I don’t know why, amongst the South African’s this is, I wasn’t unhappy to leave on that score. The course was very good, very interesting and we flew nearly every day. The weather was so good you could, you see We flew nearly every day. AS: So, you were there doing a specific navigators course or an observers course? JS: An observers course really. I was doing navigators and bomb aiming too. I did bombing as well. In fact, it was a brilliant – by the time I joined my crew on the Halifax I was the most experienced member of the crew really, although I was the youngest. It’s amazing isn’t it? AS: So, you’d had training on navigation and bomb aiming? What else did you manage to pick up? JS: Pilot training as well, you see, when I started, you see. AS: Of course. JS: I always remember when the war was over, I came home, and my skipper arranged to meet me in Ealing and we’d have a drink together. And we got terribly drunk and then got into trouble because we really let go. And I swore, I said ‘I’m not going to argue with you anymore. We’ll leave it to another time and finish this conversation’. And I walked out and left him. And I never did see him again, and I never did see him again because a couple of years later, out of the blue I found out he died early, so I never did get to see him. AS: Can you discuss what the argument was about? JS: Well first of all, I said the crew came to me at one period during our tour and said ‘You’re the best person to talk to him. Can you tell him that we are not here for the ride? We are part of this crew and we all have our jobs to do. Every time we say anything he completely ignores us’. So I said ‘In what –‘ So one of the gunners said ‘I told him, dive starboard’. I said. ‘How we got missed, I never know’. And all this sort of thing, he said ‘He never, ever listens to what we’re saying’. So I said ‘OK, I’ll have a word with him’. Because only the pilot and the navigator went into the main briefing. When the main briefing was over then the whole crew came in, and they all came in and after the briefing he went outside and he said ‘I believe you’re all upset with me?’ ‘Oh no’. And I stood there and I thought here I am, eighteen years old, I’ve learnt a lesson for life. Don’t talk up for other people, let them do it themselves. And I never. [laughs] And they all virtually. [inaudible] He said ‘Ha’. And I said ‘I don’t give a [inaudible], you either don’t want to know or you do, and I don’t care now’. We carried on, and in fairness he was a good pilot. And we had incidents as one does when one’s flying but basically I was very happy and we did a good job. I don’t think, I never wanted to go into bombers anyway. But as I say he was a funny guy. We went from there, as I told you, onto Dakotas, and the two of us were flying, learning to fly Dakotas at the same time. And then we flew out to the Far East with the object of the invasion of Japan, but they dropped the bomb and fortunately for us we didn’t have to invade Japan. So we ended up by doing anything out there that they needed. For example, we picked up most of the prisoners of war, our prisoners of war, and brought them back to India. Anywhere to get, you know? And we did all sorts of jobs with the Dakota. I always remember getting a whole group of these ex-prisoners. They were like, oh God it was awful, six stone some of them aAnd they didn’t want to get on the aircraft. They said ‘No, we’re going to get killed’. I said ‘We’ll be flying the bloody thing’. Anyway they got on, no seats, we just sat them on the floor. ‘Anyway, it’s only a couple of hours or so and then you’ll be out of here and on your way home’. But we did some very good jobs out there, I enjoyed it, but when he finally went home I didn’t want to fly with anybody else so they put me in charge of the post office in Karachi of all things. AS: But it sounds like a fascinating marriage almost. JS: Um. AS: One hears of crewing up and how the crew is terribly tight knit. JS: Um. AS: Doesn’t seem really – JS: It’s not true. AS: To have been the case for you. JS It’s not true. I know so many crews that were good and they were crews. They mixed together, they went out together, they worked together, they were part of a team. But my crew lasted, there were three of us, were good friends. The flight engineer and one of the gunners and I. The three of us were great friends. The flight engineer was a regular airman and he was coming, and he didn’t ever want to be in aircrew, and he was coming out with a load of stuff on his bike one day and just for a joke the guy on the desk said ‘What have you got there?’ And he’d got half a joint. He said ‘Where are you going with that?’ He was taking it to the Officers’ Mess. He’d nicked it from somewhere. It got into a big battle between him and the CO and they virtually said ‘We’ll give you an option. You can join aircrew and we’ll drop the charges or else’. And he didn’t want, he was scared. I’d been with him when poor old Tom. And I’d seen him gripping hold of the thing and I said ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be alright’. But he never did like flying. He was a good, he was a good flight engineer, but he hated flying, he was petrified. AS: But still did his job? JS: He did his job. When we finished the tour for some unknown reason, we all disappeared. Even he did you know? But he turned up again to say to me that he was going on Dakotas and he wanted me to come with him. So I did. As a pilot he was good, he knew what he was doing. As a man I wasn’t happy with him at all. AS: Was he an officer? Was he an officer? JS: He was a flight lieutenant. AS: Do you think this was part of the issue with the crew? JE: No, no. He was, he always fancied his chances. I had a feeling that he thought he was a bit cleverer and brighter than the others but actually, when it came down to it, he lived just round the corner from where I lived at home. Alright, I lived in a council estate and he didn’t, but he was nothing special and he had a very nice wife who he, I thought, treated abominably. Because there had been times when I was with him when we’d have awful rows. Because we’d be out, well I didn’t mind the other boys shagging around all over the place, but I did object to him doing it. And we’ve had so many rows over this over the years. When he, I, so for years went by and I was down in Guildford and I was sitting there and I got hold of the directory. And I looked there and there was his name in the directory. And I said ‘Good God, I’ll ring him up’. So I rang him up and a voice said, a very posh voice said ‘Hello, who’s that?’ I said, ‘It’s Joe Stemp’. ‘My God man, that’s’s going back a bit, my God’ she said ‘Fancy that’. And she kept going on and on but she didn’t mention him. I thought ‘She kicked him out, she must have done’. But she didn’t, he died a couple of years after, after I’d separated from him. With a heart attack. AS: Lot of strain, lot of stress in operational life. JS: It was yes, yeah. AS: You raise an interesting issue actually about sex in wartime. JS: Um. AS: I think, yeah, my generation thought they invented sex. Every generation thinks they invented sex. [laughter] It’s not something one hears a great deal about. JS: You know why don’t you? They didn’t like aircrew. The girls would not, did not, like going out with aircrew ‘cause they said you could never guarantee he was going to be there on Friday, which happens. They’d fall for one and then the chap just wouldn’t appear again. We lost so many men that women were very careful about who they went with, especially flying men. So I’m told. I never had a girlfriend, I didn’t really worry. I found a girlfriend at the right time when it was all over. AS: But amongst your crew mates there was a lot of? JS: Oh God, they used to take me with them. It was, I was embarrassed. And they used to, they started off first of all thinking I was queer because I didn’t want to know, then to stir things up they always got somebody for me. Some awful woman that they’d dump, and I’d get left with this. Oh God, yes they were always after me. The thing was I wasn’t very old either when you think about it was I? Only about eighteen. AS: I won’t ask you who you were more terrified of, the flak or the ladies? JS: [laughter] We had lots of incidents when I was flying but I’ll tell you a story. I didn’t do many daylight trips, mostly night trips, long night trips. I was on this day trip and the rear gunner said to me, called over, and we didn’t have a lot of chat when we were flying. And he called over the tannoy, ‘Joe, look ahead of you. See that Lanc, that Halifax on the right, that’s old Charlie Whatisname’. So I looked and I thought ‘Dunno’. I thought ‘Perhaps he’s right, yeah’. I said, ‘I think it’, and before I could say another word he disappeared into little bits. A Lancaster above dropped his bloody bombs on the. Honestly, and it blew him out of the sky. And I turned round to the crew and I said ‘I’d never really got worried about flying, but this has done me in, I can’t believe what I’ve just seen.. Terrible. AS: And not unique? JS: No,it wasn’t, it happened a lot. Crashing into each other, bombs on each other. I mean, in some of these big raids where we had hundreds of bombers there was terrible mess ups all the way through you know? AS: What sort of things? JS: I’m a strange guy. People used to say ‘You’re an amazing guy. You don’t seem to realise it’s a dangerous job you’re doing’. I said ‘Well it’s quite exciting really’. And that’s the way I saw it you see? It wasn’t until I watched him go and I suddenly thought ‘Christ, it’s dangerous up here’. But I was never nervous and I was never scared, honestly, because we had a job to do. I was quite happy. But he was, we’ve had, I had lots of problems with him, the skipper. When we flew together out in India different story entirely. I did a lot of flying with him. AS: As a second pilot were you responsible for the navigational duties as well or did you carry a navigator? JS: We had a navigator. AS: So, you were sharing take offs, landings and the flying? JS: In fact, the guy who was our navigator at that time with the Dakotas, I have to tell you this story. We were flying out to the Far East, we’d done two legs when suddenly the aircraft got into trouble. So we put it in at Tel Aviv in Israel and they said they’d examine the aircraft. While we were there two days we met a couple of girls. Just chatted normally, we took them out and had drinks and enjoyed their company and that was it. Thoroughly enjoyed it, ‘Bye, bye, see you some time’. Years later, I went to see this navigator, and I had a feeling that it wasn’t right ‘cause when I rang him his wife used to give him the information what to say, and I had a feeling he didn’t know. I think he had Alzheimer’s, I think he didn’t know what he was saying. So anyway, I went down to see him and we had quite an interesting visit. And I did a silly thing, I said to him ‘Do you remember the crash in the Wellington?’ And he looked at me all surprised, and his wife was standing behind him going. So, I thought ‘OK, stop it, that’s it’. He obviously had forgotten, one doesn’t forget crashes. So, I said ‘That’s it’. So when I left I get into my car, he had a posh house in Torbay, he came rushing down the thing and banged on the window. ‘Here, Joe’ he said, ‘Do you remember those two girls we met in Tel Aviv?’ and I said, ‘For Christ’s sake’. We had a terrible crash and I don’t know how we ever got away with it and he says, he’d forgotten that and he was talking about two girls that we met just casually. Isn’t that amazing? AS: The memory is a funny thing. What was the crash as a matter of interest? JS: I tell you what it was. And it was, my skipper wasn’t at the helm. We’d done a navigation course at which I was working and we ended up somewhere outside, that island, between England and Ireland. AS: Isle of Man? JS: Isle of Man. We parked in there and we were taking off to go back home, and we’d only been in the air about ten minutes when the operator came up and said ‘I’ve got a message, Joe, to be passed through’. The message was ‘Return to the Isle of Man because the weather in the North, in Scotland, is so bad they won’t take us in’. So I gave this to my pilot who gave it to the other man who was flying, the flight lieutenant we don’t know him. ‘Sod that’ he said. ‘I told my wife we’re going home tonight and I’m going home tonight’. Well we had no answer to this, he was in charge, he was the skipper, so off we went. When we get there it is foul. Lossiemouth, Kinloss, none of them would take us in. So we went to a little place called Elgin and he decided he’d go in there. Instead of going into wind he went downwind, took the bloody barbed wire fence with him. I watched it pull all the skin off the aircraft as I sat there, and eventually it ended on, there’s a, they used to raise dumps and put the grass round, you know, and it was a bomb dump. And as soon as we managed eventually to stop, there was nobody rushing to our aid, they’d all buggered off, running away ‘cause they thought. [laughter] I’ll never forget it. So I caught them up and we finished there and he wasn’t a mid-upper gunner because we hadn’t got a mid-upper turret. But we were keeping him for when we went onto heavies. And he went up to this officer and he walloped him. And of course everybody grabbed him. And I thought, said to my gunner ‘Joe it’s [inaudible]’’. Anyway, they didn’t. I think he lost his commission. I think he was charged ‘cause he was definitely told he mustn’t return. How the hell we got away with it I’ll never know. AS: So, this is when you were back in England? JS: Yeah. AS: Crewed up? JS: I’d crewed up but we were crewed up on Wellingtons you see? AS: OK, whereabouts was that? JS: I can’t think now. AS: Doesn’t matter. This was what OTU? JS: Like an OTU yes. This is where I first met my pilot and the other crew got together. We were crewed up as a crew. We had a strange crew. Lots of crews I’ve met over the years have been ideal. But there were some strange crews. AS: Strange in what sense? How did you, how did you meet and fall in love as it were? How did you crew up the? JS: They put us all together in this big hangar with drinks to follow, and you had the chance, people would come up and say, if they fancied you ‘Are you crewed up?’ ‘No’. ‘You’re not looking for an engineer?’ ‘Yeah, yeah’. It was all, you know, we ended up with, they were quite a mixed crowd really. Some of the crews were great, they got on so well together. They were a real team. But we couldn’t say that with Henley, ‘cause Ken Henley was an arrogant bastard really. I – AS: Who was, can you remember, who was in charge of the crewing up? Did he take the lead? Did you take the lead? JS: No, I did meet, I met two chaps who were talking together and I said to them, I liked the look of them you know? And I said to them ‘Are you crewed up?’ ‘No, not yet’.[inaudible]. He and I had just met, his gunner and his engineer had just met, and I said, ‘You haven’t got a crew?’ ‘No’. I said ‘Oh, could I join you?’ They said ‘Yeah, sure. Who are you flying with?’ And I said ‘Well I’ve got a skipper but I don’t know whether you’d like him or not?’ But they said ‘Oh sod him, we’ll have you’. And that’s how we got together. There were funny things happen with crews during the war. Very funny things used to happen. AS: What sort of things? JS: Well, my skipper for example was, he was a terrible womaniser in every possible way. And also he, what he said the crew agreed. In other words the crew used to say ‘He thinks he’s the only one on board. I don’t know why we all go with him ‘cause he doesn’t bother, you’d think he was the only one. He forgets there should be seven of us’. He did, and he did do this and I used to say to him ‘You must be more careful, Ken, with their feelings’. ‘I mean’ I said ‘When the other night’. One of the operators did something and he virtually turned him down. ‘He was absolutely right and you know it was’, I said, ‘Through him and through you ignoring him, we were five minutes late’ I said ‘We ended up that we would have reached the target five minutes after the other buggers had left’. I said ‘It wouldn’t have been a lot of fun’. And it got worse and worse and the nearer we got to the target, they kept coming up to me and saying ‘Joe, for Christ’s sake, tell him’. So I did. I mentioned ‘This is stupid. There’s no point on going on like this, we’re going to get shot to pieces in a minute, ‘cause we’re going to be the only ones up here’. And he at last agrees so we dropped all the bombs and we came home on our own. But it would have been awful. AS: Going back to your accident up in Elgin. Were you ever aware of an organisation called the Training Flying Control Centre on the Isle of Man? That - JS: No. AS: That sent all these signals? JS: No. AS: My mother worked for them. JS: Really? Good Lord. AS: Yep. ‘Cause you and lots and lots of aircrews were training over the Irish Sea and they used to fly into mountains and fly into the sea. So they started this Training Flight Control Centre and they would be the people probably who sent you the recall message. JS: Yeah. AS: So, you were crewing up and learning the art of operational flying on Wellingtons? What were they like as kites? Were they new or old and clapped out? What were they like? JS: Wellingtons? AS: Yeah. JE: Loved it. Loved ‘em. Oh, I was very keen on the Wellington. I liked the Wimpey, we all did. In fact, I was sorry when we started first of all on the Halifax. My, I must tell you this chap, one of my crew, the engineer he hated flying, he was absolutely scared stiff. But he had to, I think I told you because of an incident. But there were so many things. He was a professional airman too. He’d been in the Air Force before the war, the last thing he wanted to do was fly. But he was threatened so he had to start flying. And I used to try to comfort him because he I found he used to get so, so upset. I can see him standing there, holding onto things. He hated it, he hated ops. But he didn’t like upsetting us so he came with us. It wasn’t an easy job you know at times. We went out in some awful weather and did some awful trips, long trips. We were coming back from that big one, where we should never have dropped the bombs, we did because of the Russians. AS: Dresden? JS: Yes. And I said to my crew, ‘Now look’ I said. ‘Don’t for Christ’s sake put this in your logbook, ‘cause the time will come when you’ll be most embarrassed to know, or anybody else know, that you actually bombed here, like we’ve done’. ‘Well’ they said ‘All we’ve done is drop’. We didn’t drop explosive bombs. So, I said, I said ‘The best thing to do is forget all about it’. Because, I mean, fifty yards from the target, I looked back and the Americans had come in and they decided to bomb, and there was a lot of bombing going on. It was awful. AS: So even, even as, you were carrying incendiaries? Even as you were over the target what made you think not to put it in your logbook? Just the? JS: The fact that we realised we shouldn’t have been there anyway. I didn’t feel we should have bombed there. They said, they said ‘It’s the Russians, we’re doing it to please Russia’. Perhaps we are, but nobody seemed happy about it. None of the crews that I flew with that day said to me anything. They all had a bit of an indiscretion, they all felt a bit bad about that one. AS: This was after the briefing? JS: Um. AS: What did they say then, just that it was to help the Russians, at the briefing? JS: Well they said it would help the trouble on that front, you know? The following day the Americans went in but they didn’t have incendiaries, they had high explosives, they blew the place apart. AS: Before we got to your operational missions, you were, how long did it take on the Wellingtons, on the OTU? What sort – JS: A long time. AS: What sort of things were you doing? JS: A lot of training on the Wellington. I loved that on the Wellingtons. Apart from the crash we had a great time. I thought it was a lovely aircraft, always did. This guy who was flying it he was, he’d had a flat near the ‘drome, and he promised his missus he was going home, regardless of us. Regardless of [inaudible] that the weather was bad or that they weren’t going to take us into Kinloss or Lossiemouth. And he still carried on. Well, he was in charge, we weren’t. So, you just do what you’re told don’t you? AS: So he was a staff pilot from the OTU? JS: Oh yeah, yeah. I think he lost his rank, I think he lost his job. I don’t remember afterwards anything happening. All I know is that we were. We didn’t realise why people were running away from us, not coming to our aid. Because we were on the bloody bomb dump that’s why. AS: So, I imagine that it wasn’t quite the same then nowadays. Did you get leave and counselling or anything like that? JS: Well, when we were flying on ops we had leave about every month. We had a week off and not only did we have a week off but Lord, was it Nuffield? AS: Nuffield yeah. JS: Used to give us extra money. Did you know that? AS: Yes. JS: For aircrew, most unusual. And I used to always have a white fiver to give to my Mum. And when I used to go home I used to give my Mum the white fiver, she used to rush up the stairs and hide it. And years later, couple of years, she gave it all back to me to put in the Crusader Rescue. I said ‘I’m not going to do it. It isn’t for the Crusader Rescue, it’s for you’. But no we had a, we did quite well, we had leave quite regularly. AS: After your accident did they give you leave? Or just put you in another aeroplane? JS: No. After our accident we were flying a different ‘plane the next day to make sure we were all alright, ‘cause they thought perhaps you know we’d not want to fly again. AS: At this time when you’re flying over England, over Europe, I’m told it was very different from flying in South Africa. How did you find it, did you pick up the navigation in Europe very quickly? JS: Yes. Lots of room. Lovely weather, lots of room. The pilots actually that were training with us were South African Air Force pilots. And one in particular he’d got a couple of girlfriends. And he used to bugger me up because I’d be on a navigation trip and he’d say ‘I won’t be long, Joe, I’m just going to pull off for a bit’. And off he’d go off to up where his girlfriend lived. Then we, then I wouldn’t bloody know where we were, and I’ve got to find out. No, it was a bit of a headache with him. He was a nice enough guy but he was mad. AS: During your training, it was all. What sort of navigation did you learn? JS: I don’t know, it’s hard to say now. AS: Astro and? JS: Yes, yeah we did the lot you know. AS: Astro Course JS: It was a very good course. Navigator. And of course in the end we had H2S and these things on the aircraft too. AS: In South Africa? JS: Oh no. When we came home. AS: Yes. JS: Um. AS: So, you’d done your training. Did you come back by ship? JS: Yes, I did. AS: What was that like on the ship? JS: Hated it. I was taken ill actually and I spent most of the way home in the sick bay. And I was put in a hospital when we first arrived home. I forget what was the matter with me but I know I wasn’t right. I always remember we came home on one of those famous liners we used before the war, you know? AS: Queen Elizabeth or Queen Mary? JS: Yeah, that sort of thing, yeah. AS: Wow. JS: Amazing. AS: And can you, can you remember the trip? Were you in convoy or? JS: Yes, that was the trouble. When we were going out we had huge convoys. It took ages, it took about three weeks to get to South Africa. And also, another time, I remember flying alongside in North Africa. There were tremendous problems out there. It was, you always made a convoy around you to keep you safe, you know? So many of these things I’ve forgot but it was quite an interesting time. AS: Yeah. It’s a long time ago, forgetting is not surprising. But when we talk it’s surprising how much comes back I think. You came back, did you come back into Liverpool from South Africa? JS: Yes. AS: OK. JS: And we stopped also, I always remember. We went to a very posh place and stopped there. All aircrew and we were crewed up, we crewed up there. I have met some really nice guys in aircrew during the war. I was unhappy about my bloke but the thing was you couldn’t afford to be. When you’re flying with someone you’ve got to get on and do what’s going. So we did the best we could. He was a good pilot, he was a bit nervous. On one occasion only did he panic. We had an explosion underneath us and he called out to me ‘Joe, Joe, they’ve shot my arse away’. So I said ‘What are you talking about?’ So I went up to him and he said ‘Look, blood, blood!’ And I said ‘For Christ’s sake’. So we got a torch out of the engine, they hadn’t shot his arse away, they had shot underneath, and in doing so they he had, it wasn’t blood it was oil! And he was panic stricken ‘cause he had a handful of oil and he thought it was blood. But he was alright generally but I wasn’t happy with him. I would never have anything to do with him in private life ever. AS: But you were an extremely effective crew? JS: Yes. We were a good crew. We were a good crew. The only thing that we did wrong was the end of my tour and I bombed Scarborough. AS: I was born in Scarborough. JS: Were you really? AS: Yes. I take great exception to that Joe, tell me about it. JS: We took off, aircraft was a deadbeat aircraft, full load of bombs. Got in the sky and he said to me ‘Christ, Joe, we’re in trouble’. And the next thing is, one of the engines packed up. I said ‘For God’s sake, Ken, let’s get out of here’. We had a load of bombs, let’s. I said ‘Make for Scarborough and we’ll get to the beach and we’ll drop the bombs in the sea there’. So he said ‘OK’. So we got to Scarborough and got lower and lower and lower, and then suddenly he said ‘Look we’ve got to get.’ So I pressed the tit. I pressed the tit that would send them down ‘live’ instead of ‘safe’, and they nearly blew us out of the sky. The poor old rear gunner was nearly. And there was a terrible incident there. ‘Joe Stemp bombs Scarborough’. Christ. So when we got back we explained what had happened and they, he didn’t exactly help me. So I had to go on a switch drill campaign, just to embarrass me really you know. I thought perhaps they’d stop us but we carried on just the same afterwards, but I always remember that. We didn’t do much damage, it wasn’t too bad. But they always joked about Joe Stemp the bloke that bombed Scarborough. AS: So what were you, as a nav, doing with the bombs? JS: I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened, it was panic stations that day. AS: You just don’t like Yorkshiremen do you? JS: [laughter] Lots of things I don’t remember. But we had, the crew weren’t too bad as a crew I suppose but I wasn’t terribly happy. AS: Well, I’m, I’m interested actually about the ropey kite. Did you have your own aircraft as a crew mostly for the tour? JS: Yes, well we had an aircraft. And it had done a hundred ops.. AS: What was her letter? JS: I can’t think. AS: Doesn’t matter. JS: Anyway, the night of the hundred ops. The big arrangement there were lots of people turned up, we were going to have a big celebration, but something went wrong. Unbeknown to us, in the group coming back, was about thirty German fighters. And they didn’t make themselves known until they got over here. And when we got to Yorkshire they opened up and shot twenty of us down. AS: Oh, this is Operation Gisela is it? Yes. JS: Um. AS: Were you attacked? JS: Um. So my skipper said. I said ‘Well we better get down’. So he went to land and they tried to put him off landing, but he said ‘Sod it, we’re going in’. Well as we did and as we went there was an aircraft chasing us, shooting at us as we went down. We dived under the aircraft. Stupid our aircraft [inaudible] but of course the incidents, all the festivities forgotten. So the hundredth op just passed by. But it was a bad night, we lost a lot of aircraft. Lost a lot of aircraft that night and then the squadron broke up. And I had to join 77 ‘cos I think I’d done eighteen ops and I needed twelve more and so we joined 77 and finished the twelve with 77. AS: As a complete crew? JS: Yeah. AS: Why did they break the squadron up, because of the losses? JS: Yes, I think so. It was 578 the squadron was. It broke, they just closed it down. AS: Good Lord. So, a very, very short existence? JS: Um. I can’t imagine now why. I’ve often sat there when I’ve been on my own trying to think, ‘cause we had lots of fun on the station. Aircrew were always jolly chaps and we had singing and drinking and driving. And I had a motorbike and sidecar you see, I used to take them into York. AS: The whole crew? JS: Yeah. Well not him, not the skipper, but we’d get the rest on there. And the Police used to think, we used to think ‘They’re gonna nick us’. But I think the Police used to say ‘Poor buggers, might as well enjoy it, might not be here tomorrow’. So they let us get away with it. Oh, I drove yeah. AS: Were there generally a lot of losses on 578? Not just that one night? JS: No, there were a lot of losses. Um. AS: Yeah. I know it’s a long time ago but can you remember how you felt at the time about that, about people? JS: No, I can’t, honestly. I’ve thought about, ‘cause Emily is the journalist who was involved in their magazine and she went into it in a big way. But I can’t, I was too young and too excited to worry about what was happening. I was very excited about what we were doing. I never minded going on ops. I never worried. I said the only time I really got upset was when old Charlie Whatisname blew up out of the sky in front of me. And that really did upset me. I thought ‘For Christ’s sake. That’s in the middle of nowhere, here he is ‘Bang’. but no. AS: Shall we pause and go and have a spot of lunch? JS: Yes. I’d like that. I do go on a bit. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Joe Stemp Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Sutch Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-10-16 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AStempJE151016, PStempJ1502 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 02:12:37 audio recording Description An account of the resource Joe was a navigator with 578 Squadron and later with 77 Squadron, flying Halifaxes and then Dakotas. Joe has a sister and a brother. His brother ended his service with the Royal Air Force after an accident on a dinghy drill course left him deaf in one ear. Before joining up, Joe was working full time in a housing agency and he was just 17 when he signed up for the Royal Air Force, wanting to be a fighter pilot. Joe tells about his training in South Africa, and how he crewed up, as well as his uncomfortable relationship with his pilot. He also tells of how he did his planning – on the spot. Joe remembers seeing the lights in the sky at Ealing, from the bombs falling during the Battle of Britain. He also tells of his encounter with a man who gave away the Sacred Heart that his mother had given him, and how that man’s crew failed to return. Joe talks about how he was always sure he was going to return after an operation. Joe recalls the story of seeing another Bomber Command aircraft blowing up in front of him and of watching a Lancaster aircraft dropping its bombs onto other aircraft below. He tells of the effect that lack of moral fibre had on the unit he was with. Joe was a bomb aimer with 77 Squadron and was due to be presented with a Distinguished Flying Medal; however, it was taken away from him after he dropped live bombs on Scarborough instead of safe ones into the sea. Joe talks about the heavy losses suffered by Bomber Command, his feelings on the bombings later in the war, including the bombing of Dresden. He was also involved in Operation Gisela, which led to 30 German fighters shooting down 20 Bomber Command Aircraft. Joe finished the war having completed 30 operations. He met Pat on a train and they were married for 65 years. He proposed before he headed off to the Far East. Joe ran a post office in India and took a job with the Financial Times newspaper Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--London England--Yorkshire England--Scarborough South Africa Germany Germany--Dresden Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Vivienne Tincombe Maureen Clarke Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1945 578 Squadron 77 Squadron aircrew bomb aimer bomb struck bombing bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945) bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943) C-47 coping mechanism crewing up Distinguished Flying Medal entertainment faith fear Halifax lack of moral fibre Lancaster love and romance navigator recruitment rivalry superstition https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/568/8836/AFittP150519.mp3 81db65d296c732124d3b40d329ce903a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fitt, Peter P Fitt Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Fitt, P Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Peter Fitt (Royal Air Force) and two photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 467 Squadron. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Fitt and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-05-19 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AS: So that is now recording – PF: Right. AS: Right, as I’ve explained, this is an interview with Peter Fitt, Flight Lieutenant Signaller, from the Royal Air Force Bomber Command during the war. The interview’s carried out by Adam Sutch at Cromer, on the 19th of May 2015. The interview is also for the International Bomber Command Centre digital archive, and also present is Peter’s daughter, Jane. PF: Yep, right. AS: Peter, thanks ever so much for agreeing to be interviewed, I’d like to set the scene by asking you to describe your life before joining the Air Force. A little bit about your home, your parents, brothers and whatnot? PF: Well, well that’s very quick. I was in horticulture so, and my father was a head gardener, and he was keen – I wasn’t – he was keen on me going into horticulture. I wanted to go into the Air Force, ‘cause I was still at the grammar school and there was opportunities to, to join the Air Force, but I – it didn’t materialise, and I was a bit angry at the time, but it didn’t matter, when your children, you get on with these sort of things, and the war came along [chuckles]. Course I went into the Air Force, and that was that, I’d, I became aircrew and I flew on operations during the war, against Germany, and in Lancasters like the one up there, and that’s [laughing] about all I can say apart from describing every trip which is – I don’t want to do that. AS: No, no of course. When you were growing up, whereabouts was this? Where did you grow up? In Norwich? PF: Where did I grow up? Oh yeah well, I went to Thetford Grammar School, and I left – Jane: Where were you born? PF: Oh, where was I born? Yes, well I was born at Earlham Hall here in, in Norwich where my father was head gardener, and erm, see the connection to horticulture [chuckles], and then I – where was I until you, I – Jane: Then you went to Breccles Hall. PF: Ah yes, then I – Jane: But your father moved – PF: My father, my father moved as head gardener at Breccles Hall and I was four I think when we moved, I went the local council school, and then I went to Thetford Grammar School when I was eleven, and that’s where I was until I, until I left. Got the usual thing one gets from grammar schools, a school certificate and things like that, and [pause] then it was – a war was declared and I always wanted to go into the Air Force, and my father wouldn’t let me go, and, ‘cause when I was at Thetford Grammar School, there was chances every year, the Air Ministry used to come send people round and, canvassing for chaps to go into the Air Force, but he wouldn’t let me, so when the time came along when he didn’t have anything to do with it, and of course I went into the Air Force [chuckles]. AS: What, what year would that be? What, what month and year? PF: This would be at the outbreak of war, round about ’39 time. AS: Okay, so what, what did you want to do in the Air Force? What was your plan when you joined? PF: Well, my plan was, when, when I joined was to be a pilot and, let me think, I gotta get some things straight. I was at Uxbridge, and oh, there wasn’t a vacancy at the next pilot school, he gave, they gave me an excuse anyhow, perhaps they didn’t want me or what, however I didn’t get, I didn’t get my course, and I carried on and I wanted to be aircrew, so I became a wireless operator [chuckles], a diddy dit dah dit man. Jane: Was it Bicester? PF: Pardon? Jane: You went to Blackpool to learn Morse code. PF: Yes, that’s where I started – yes well – yes at Blackpool and Yatesbury for wireless operating. AS: Could we go back a bit? What did you do, what, to join the Air Force? Did you – PF: What was I before the war? AS: Sorry? PF: What was I before the war? AS: No, what did you do to join the Air Force? Did you go to a recruiting office or, or, or what? PF: Well, I, I just went to the St Martineau Hall in Norwich here, and I joined the Air Force from there, ‘cause I was working at Crown Point, during [unclear] horticulture actually, and I was at Crown Point, I lived in the boffy there, and, so I naturally went to the recruiting station in Norwich and joined the Air Force. AS: And that was it, you just – PF: That was it. And I was in, I think I was in the Air Force for a fortnight and I was flying in a fortnight or so. AS: Good lord. When, where, after the recruiting office, can you describe to me a little bit about the process of joining the Air Force? So, what they did to you, where you went, how you were messed about, that sort of stuff? PF: Well, I was messed about quite a bit, by waiting to go – be – [pause] to, to sign on as it were, and I had to go to a place called St Martineau Hall, is that right? Jane: No that’s County Hall. Martineau Lane is where County Hall building is now. PF: Where who is? Lucy: Norfolk County Council building is actually on Martineau Lane. PF: Oh, are they? Oh yeah, oh of course – Lucy: That’s where the archive centre is actually – PF: Well that’s why I joined the Air Force there, and signed on, because I, I was determined to go into the Air Force, my father – I was at the grammar school, I had a chance to go in the Air Force when I was fifteen, course they use to take boys from grammar schools, and I, he wouldn’t let me do it, so the time came, when I was all on my own, so I did it, and I went into the Air Force and that was it. I was, I was a wireless operator – trained as a wireless operator. I did my first tour of ops as a sergeant, a flight sergeant, and then I was, I was commissioned, and then I got a permanent commission and I was a flight lieutenant, and so that was my life in the Air Force. I was a signals, I was a signals leader in the in, and so that was my lot – my life was spelt and spent in the signals actually. AS: Great. Let’s just wind back – we’ll get onto operational flying for sure – let’s wind back to how they got you into the Air Force. So where did they, where did they send you for kitting out, and what was the process of actually becoming an airman? PF: Oh, what was the process? AS: Yeah. PF: Well, I, I of course volunteered here in Norwich, forgotten the name of the street now, and I just went and signed on there, and within a few days I’d been called up, and I was at Uxbridge [chuckles] in a uniform, much to my parents’ horror. You can imagine my mother [chuckles]. AS: Absolutely. And this, this was as selected for aircrew already, or was this basic training to start with? Basic recruit training? PF: Yes, that’s right, yeah. It was recruit training and as I was going in for the signals, I was naturally pushed to places where you could – you got used to the life, and the Morse code and all that sort of thing. However, that’s roughly how it worked, is it – was that all you wanted to know? I can’t give you a lot of detail. AS: No, no, we’re fine – PF: My logbook is up there somewhere – AS: We’re doing well. Perhaps we could do it from your logbook to an extent. So, when you’d done your recruit training, and you were selected for aircrew, what happened then, for your signals training? Were you selected for signals straight away, or given some sort of tests? PF: Well, I wanted to be a pilot, and I tried to be a pilot – I went through numerous selection things, and every time they said, ‘well Mr Fitt, we recommend you to go to Yatesbury’, I think it was to Number Two Radio School, and go in for, and go in for signals. Become a radio operator aircrew, which I did of course, and I was a signals leader and I went right up the ladder in the signals side, but – there we are. But I was a flight lieutenant, signals leader. What is it, Jane? Jane: [Unclear] AS: Thank you. Yes, so Yatesbury was your initial contact with signal, was it? PF: Yes, well no, it wasn’t really. Blackpool was, Blackpool not only was a recruiting centre where I had to go when I first joined in 1940, but it was done by One Radio School or something, so I had a little bit of wireless training there, but my main wireless training was done at, in Number Two Radio School in Yatesbury in Wiltshire. That’s where I started – I did all my training right the way through to OTU crewing up, and or not – I was on operations in early ’43, 1943, and I had a Norfolk pilot which was rather good [chuckles] from Ormesby [chuckles] – AS: So, can you tell us – the period – you joined up sort of ’39, ’40, and the period between then and going on operations, were you being trained all that time? PF: All that time yes, on radio, yes. But that, not – to answer your question correctly – not all that time. There was three or four months where I found myself at Royal Air Force Watton, two miles from where my parents lived, so that was very, that was very handy, and I was there as a radio – as a wireless operator. Well it wasn’t bad because I was, I was in keeping with the Morse code and all that sort of thing, and then from there, that’s where the whole career started, and I was flying and I crewed up and I did my tour of ops in 1943, I made thirty trips and went back again in – oh God I can’t remember, 1945, in between time I was at, back to Yatesbury as, ‘cause I was commissioned, so I went back as officer in charge of the wireless flights, so I [unclear, chuckles]. AS: When you went to Watton, early on – PF: Ah yes, I was – that was before I was commissioned. I was there as a ground operator actually, as a wireless operator, and Watton near – my parents lived three miles down the road [chuckles]. AS: As a, as a ground wireless operator, were you involved with DF-ing aircraft? What were your duties? PF: No, I could have been, but it was purely SHQ, station headquarters, radio operating, which was station to station. It wasn’t for very long, and I was back in aircrew training again. AS: Okay. Did you do very much flying whilst you were training? PF: Yes, I did, I did a tour of ops in 1943, doing my thirty trips, and I went back again, on my second tour – I can’t remember the date – what was the – have you got my logbook there, Jane? Jane: Yep, yeah it was – AS: When you were training as a wireless operator, did you do much flying or was it mostly on the ground? PF: Oh yes I did, we flew in Proctors and Dominis at Yatesbury funnily enough – AS: Really? PF: And, yeah that’s all it amounted to and that wasn’t – these aeroplanes were fixed up with four-five sets, and you just went up there with an instructor and that was that. AS: Mhm. And you learnt Morse code obviously, what – PF: Yes, I had to do eighteen words a minute, for a start before you ever did anything, and then I became a signals leader, and I had to do twenty-one words a minute for that. But I never – you never use twenty-one words a minute. Twenty-one words a minute is very, is very fast Morse and it’s usually about eighteen is the comfortable Morse speed. AS: Aside from the Morse, what else did your training consist of? Processes and procedures? PF: Well, I [pause] fault detection, fault finding, if anything went, if anything went wrong with the transmitter or receiver, you were taught to look for different things to, try and trace it through. Didn’t always work, however, but you had to do it. FF - fault finding. AS: Mhm. How about wireless bearings and things like that? PF: Oh yes well that was all part and parcel of your work, and I had to take bearings knowing where and how to call up, using the, you know the Morse code getting a bearing, and that was your job really. That was – and getting, what was it [pause], oh God, I’ve forgotten the name of them now, getting QDMs [chuckles], you’re nodding your head as if you know what I’m talking – AS: I know some of them, I know the important ones. I know QDM and QFE and one or two other things. Did you get involved with these flimsies at all? Little papers with secret information about station call signs and things like that. Was that part of the stuff you went flying with? PF: Well, we always had, we always had a, carried a – what did we call them – a flimsy, which was, could be eaten if you were [pause] caught by the enemy, that contained all the wireless information, station frequencies and call signs that you required, so that was what happened. And most of us, you – you’re doing it yourself. [Pause] there was a picture somewhere – where is it? Oh there it is, of me sitting at my 11-54-55 there. AS: That’s in a Lancaster, isn’t it? PF: Yeah it – AS: Yeah. PF: You know the sets, did you? The 54-55 – AS: Not a lot no – PF: No, I didn’t know whether you were a wireless man. AS: I – my father was a wireless man, not me. [Pause] was it all work? Did you get quite a lot of leave when you were training? PF: Well, no – we got, at the end of each course we got leave, but there was no fixed leave like when, what we got on the squadron, and we were operating, you used to get seven days leave every six weeks, and that was, that was very useful, ‘cause I was married then, and yes and [pause] what else was there? Yes, that was about all, we were just lucky, only because I was aircrew. AS: Before you got to aircrew, still on the training, apart from Morse speed examinations, did you have to take any other sort of technical examinations? Written – PF: We had, had examinations on fault finding and [pause] repair work and, you know – what’s the word for, you know, there is a word that one uses, not second-hand, [pause] when you have a breakdown on a car, you – Jane: Maintenance journal? AS: No, no it doesn’t matter, I know what he means – PF: You know what I’m trying to say. AS: Yeah. Repair’s a good, repair’s a good word, yeah, it is. Okay. The chaps you trained with, did you form close bonds with them during training, as a unit? PF: When, what? I’m not with you – AS: When you were training as a wireless operator – PF: Yeah – AS: Did you form close friendships with others on the course? Other trainees? PF: Well, no, we didn’t, well yeah, I think we got – one or two of us found ourselves on a squadron, but some weren’t fortunate, I think it just depends on your ability and how good you were at Morse and things like that [chuckles]. AS: Yeah. Again, during training, did you ever fly out over the Irish Sea on training flights? PF: No, honestly, I never flew over the Irish Sea period. AS: Okay. Now I have a special interest in asking, because of an organisation called The Training Flying Control Centre, but if you didn’t fly over there, we’ll pass that one. PF: No, no I can’t get into that, because I wouldn’t know anything about it. AS: When you’d finished your training, you’re entitled to your aircrew badge. Did you have a big parade with dignitaries, or did they send you to the stores to get it? What happened? PF: No, no we had a – I was at Yatesbury and we had a proper passing out parade, which was purposely laid on for the benefit of the, what’s the word, esprit de corps, and that was it. A parade and an inspection by the CO, who would pin your brevet on [chuckles]. AS: And at that point, were you promoted? PF: Well, immediately I became aircrew, I became a sergeant, then I was a flight sergeant, and then I applied for a commission and I was commissioned [pause] in the September, I think it was, and I became a signals leader, and I became a flight lieutenant, and I became a signals leader on a squadron, and so that was my history in, where signals are concerned. AS: When you passed out and got your flying brevet, did you choose to go to Bomber Command or were you just sent? PF: I was posted to Bomber Command. I was quite happy about it, because I didn’t fancy going into Fighter Command or, or into these fighter bombers, like Blenheims and Bostons, that wasn’t my cup of tea. I imagined myself like that sitting in the cabin [chuckles] and with, a large, with seven other members of the crew, and I was quite happy about that. That’s how I continued, I became a signals leader and a, what else, all sorts of things, a leading, you know how it goes, and the pay was good, leave was good, I was at Mildenhall only about twenty minutes away from my home[chuckles]. AS: So did, once you’d passed out, did you go straight to a squadron or, what happened then? PF: Oh, we’re back in training? Well, I did operational training on a Wellington, on Wimpies – AS: Whereabouts? PF: Finningley, and Doncaster. Then I went to the squadron, via a, oh God, I can’t think of words, a conversion – AS: Heavy conversion unit. PF: Heavy conversion unit. At, can’t think, Winthorpe I think it was. Gosh, this is going back a bit, but it’s in my logbook, doesn’t matter, I don’t want to look it up, and that was the, my history in the Air Force. So, I was connected with signals all the time, even when I’d finished operational flying, I went as a signals leader somewhere. I was mainly at Mildenhall which was a bit of luck. Jane: Can I just ask you, what about RAF Cranwell? When were you there then? PF: Yeah, I was, I went to a course at Cranwell while I was at Mildenhall, Jane. Yes, Jane’s reminding me I had to go to Cranwell, mainly because I was commissioned, and they were feeding a, pilot officers into Cranwell to give you a taste of bullshit you know [chuckles], how it is and that’s how I, that’s how I got to Cranwell. AS: Okay. What did you think of the Wellingtons that you were training on at the OTU? PF: Well, the Wellington was, it was a wonderful aeroplane, it was so reliable and erm – I did all my training on Wellingtons until we were told we were going onto Lancasters, and that we would be going onto Manchesters to convert, and that was my routine, and on Manchesters and on Lancs and that was that. AS: And at the OTU – was it the OTU you met your crew? PF: Yes, I was crewed up at the OTU. We were still on Wellingtons then, and that was at Finningley. AS: Can you tell me a little bit about the crewing up process? What you were looking for in a crew? PF: Oh yes well, that, it was left to you, the courses arrived at the OTU, the operational training unit, and we were all called to a meeting [pause], the whole caboodle, and then we were told by the CO that we were all going to be put in so and so and so and so, some large room or dining room or something like that, and then we gotta leave it and you must crew up. So that’s the way we crewed up, we just, how did I crew up? Well Dennis was in – I recognised Dennis as a Norfolk accent, so that’s how I got my pilot, and the rest came from there, the others were just dillying around and that was that, we crewed up. We stayed together all those years, all those months rather, because we did a tour in about nine months. So that’s history. AS: How long was the OTU process, and what time of year was it? Was it swift, or did you get weather problems or – PF: Oh yes, we did have weather problems, particularly when we were having to do forced cross countries, and the weather was pretty lousy, and that was in sort of November, December time. And this was at, this was at Bircotes which was a satellite at Finningley in Yorkshire, and that was that. I did my OTU, went to, we crewed up at OTU, crewed up with five and we all went on Wellingtons, and we were then posted to [pause] an HCU, a heavy conversion unit where we converted, and this was at Swinderby, and we converted onto Lancasters, and that’s the history of the thing. I never flew on anything else, only on Lancs with the same crew. AS: Can you remember what sort of training exercises you would do at the OTU? Things like nav-exes or bulls-eyes? PF: Oh yes, going back to the OTU, that was before the conversion courses, well it was, mainly cross countries at night to get you used to the navigator and the navigator getting used to you and your wireless operating [pause] speciality, if that’s the right word, expertise is the word really, and that was that. That’s what I did, we crewed up and five of us were sent to – we crewed up in five, in Wellingtons and then we were posted to RAF Swinderby where we converted onto Lancasters, with, had to have two more crew, that was an engineer and another gunner added to the five, so that made seven, and then we trained there and we went to the squadron and we were on operations, just like that. AS: How did you interact with the navigator? PF: At, at the what, process? AS: When you were airborne, how did you interact with the navigator? Providing him information, or - PF: Well, Bert and I, Bert Tischington was the navigator, we got on very well together. We trained on Wimpies as a crew of five, Wellingtons that is, and so we got to know each other very well and we, so we never looked back. We did a tour of ops, complete tour on Lancs [coughs] ‘scuse me [coughs] good God. And that was that [chuckles]. Oh dear, excuse me. AS: Yeah of course [pause]. Did you have to learn other things that you hadn’t learned in training when you were actually preparing for operations? Things like Z-procedure, using the wireless for landing? Did you get involved with that at all? PF: I wasn’t involved with that at all. [Pause] my main job was with the navigator really, ‘cause we were training for long distance stuff with Lancs, ‘cause that’s where we were destined to get onto Lancaster squadron where we, which we were, we went to I should say, so henceforth, I was on Lancs until the end of the war I suppose, [pause] but it was just like that up there [chuckles]. AS: Right, we’ll pause the tape for a little while if that’s okay – PF: I’m sorry, you’ll what? [Tape paused and restarted] PF: [Unclear] – with my logbook – AS: Peter, I’d like to go back to the OTU a bit – PF: Yeah, that’s fine, I’m going back to [unclear] if I can find it, Bottesford, so back still further [long pause, chuckles]. Oh dear, there’s a note I’ve written here, the mess and the modern, and the modern obliterations in this logbook, are necessary because my son Tim, when he was a little boy, pretended he was like his father and started filling my, filling all the bits and pieces in the logbook [laugh] ‘cause there’s a mess. So, I, I had to put a note in there about that. So, what are we, am I – AS: We’re looking up OTU on the Wellingtons. PF: Oh right, oh gosh – AS: You alright? PF: Yeah, in a minute. I’ve just got, my back was killing me. Ah, oh. So, OTU, that would be 1942, oh gosh this is going back a bit [turning pages], October ’42, yeah, I’m getting near [long pause]. Here we are, 25 OTU Finningley, 16th of September 1942. AS: That’s your first flight at the OUT, is it? PF: Yep – AS: As a crew? PF: As a crew, yeah. AS: Yeah. And did your captain immediately take you off as a crew, or did he do some flying with somebody else first? PF: Oh no, we all met as sprogs, nobody, no crews – we were assem – we were all, we were all assembling in a very big hall, and we got given four, five hours to crew up, and how did I crew up? Only because of being a Norfolk man, because Dennis Claxton was a baker at Ormesby, came along in his old broad Norfolk accent and said, ‘hello Peter, will you fly with me?’ I thought, oh my God, and I said, ‘yes of course I will’, and as I said, cause that’s how we crewed up, and I flew with him right through the war really. He was a good pilot. Claxton, his father was a baker at Ormesby. AS: Were you all sergeants to start with? PF: Yes, then I became a flight sergeant, and among the very few members of aircrew as a wireless operator, I had to take examinations would you believe, to get any, any promotion, in the wireless world of course, and until I became a grade one, I couldn’t get any promotion, so I was, I was messed about a bit. However, I got, I did it and I got my promotions and I became a flight sergeant, and then I was commissioned, and so I, and a signals leader, so I never looked back really. I had a good life, I enjoyed, particularly while I was at Mildenhall, this is after the war, this was in between tours, it wasn’t after the war. I finished my first tour and I was about to go back on my second tour at Mildenhall. I was near to home, I was near my wife, who lived just outside in a place called Ownedge, just outside Bedford, and so I was quite happy there really. AS: You’ve still got your logbook open at the OTU, how much, how much flying did you do? Can you track that back? PF: Yeah, well, I’ll tell you in a minute, I did [long pause], oh that’s the [unclear] synopsis, Finningley. Was that, Jane? AS: Yes. Jane: Sorry – PF: At 25 OTU Finningley, I did [pause], there’s loads of it, oh dear, all at sea, yeah, one hour and half hours [long pause] I did twenty, in this instance, it was twenty-nine daylight and six at night. So this has, this has got to be more. [Pause] oh here we are, Bircotes now, so that was the next station, still on OTU, so that puts me up to ninety-five, nearly one hundred hours at OTU. AS: Wow. PF: And so it goes on. Oh, this was on the conversion, and then I went – a hundred and fifteen hours, including the OTU on Wellingtons and conversion on Manchesters to Lancasters, ‘cause it was only fourteen hours [chuckles], oh God. AS: Were you a – PF: What we, what we looking for do you know? AS: Well, we’ve answered it actually, the hours, yeah – PF: Oh, have we? Oh, fair enough. It was a bit complicated, looking up logbooks. AS: Yeah. Were you straight wireless or did you do air gunner training as well? PF: I did very little air – I didn’t want anything to do with air gunnering. I was quite happy with signals and I was, I was, would be a signals leader and things like that, so I, quite honestly, I had nothing to do with gunnering. I perhaps should have been a gunnery leader but I didn’t want to know [chuckles]. AS: That’s fair. Did you do any bulls-eye exercises? PF: Oh yes, lots of bulls-eyes. AS: What did they involve? PF: Pardon? AS: What did they involve? PF: Long night cross country runs, let’s just look back. OTU Finningley that would be [pause], just give you an idea how long they were, ooh er [long pause], look I’ve got notes everywhere [long pause]. Why are logbooks so complicated when you look back through? Bottesford, that’s all good, I want training [long pause]. AS: No, so the bulls-eyes were at Bottesford were they? PF: What, just a minute, I’ll just try and get back to Bottesford, I should be there in a sec, because I remember writing – oh that’s 1660 Conversion Unit, that was after that, so it’s got to be here. Bulls-eye here we are. I did a bulls-eye [pause] with Warrant Officer Buzz [unclear] as pilot [pause], five and a half hours from RAF Bircotes which is a satellite at Finningley. Oh you know it, don’t you? AS: Yeah. PF: Yeah, so that’s it. Well, that was when I was first flying with Dennis Claxton, who was my pilot during the, during the Lancs time, who lives out here at, he was a baker at Hemsby. AS: Was, this was winter time, wasn’t it? OTU and HCU? PF: Yeah, it was 15th of November, yeah. AS: Yeah. Did the weather cause many problems, many interruptions, or many losses? Did you lose many aircraft in training? PF: We, yes, we did, because of bad navigation. We didn’t have the things like Gee and that then, and navigation was pretty [pause], what’s the word – AS: Haphazard? PF: Basic, yeah. The, you hadn’t got the, what you had later, the radar bit, the Gee box, to get your fixers. No, I was there as a radio operator and I had to get my navigator fixers on numerous occasions, you know. Get a WT fix. AS: And what speed did you get down to? How quickly could you do that? PF: Well that took an age, it used to take them an age to wind my training aerial out for a start, and then there was the getting through, well it would take me about half an hour to get a fix I should think. Main time spent cranking the bloody lot of, the aerial in because it was airmen dear, and that means I had to have a training aerial. You’re nodding your head as if you understood [chuckles]. Oh dear, that’s history, that’s the first time anybody’s asked me that question, you know, but – AS: It must have been hard work in flying kit and on your knees, was it? Winding down? PF: Yeah, that wasn’t, in the cockpit you had to – it was usually in the, the winding gear was in the panelling of the aeroplane, and that was pretty knuckling, what’s the word [pause], knocking the skin off your knuckles – AS: Grazing your knuckles, yeah. Did you ever lose one? Forget to wind it up? PF: No, I didn’t. I must admit, I never, I always – because we had to write it in on the log, and we got seriously chastised, if we hadn’t done it and so we were always very careful, ‘cause they said they were gonna start charging us for any aerials that we lose, and there were not a lot of chaps lost them. What’s that, dear? Jane: Actually that’s, I haven’t seen that before. I can’t remember the actual picture; I don’t know where the original is – PF: Oh my God, this is ancient. That was one of the first pictures taken, when, oh God, what was it? When we first joined the Old Ed fifty, 541, my wife’s name was Edna, she was called Ed, and of course up there, it was ED541, so that was Ed-541, that one [chuckles]. So, four-six-seven Wimpies away – AS: So that on the wall, I understand now, that on the wall is a painting of your aircraft, A-Able isn’t it? PF: That’s right, yeah. AS: Now I understand. PF: Yeah, that was my, that was my first aeroplane that we were allocated for, on operations, here we are, ED541 July 1943, now that’s, that must have been that picture then, yeah, ‘cause I started operating in nine, nine, July, August, yeah that’s right. Oh dear, I get confused about these dates – AS: We can go through your logbook later for the, for the operations if you like. When you were training, perhaps moving from the OTU to the HCU, did you start meeting equipment in operational aeroplanes that you hadn’t seen before? PF: Oh yes. AS: Can you tell me about that? PF: We had, well not so much from the HFDF from the normal 11-54-55 Marconi stuff that I was using for Morse and communication generally, that was the same, that never altered, the things that were altering were the Gees and H2S, and all the up-to-date radar equipment, that was always changing, but that had nothing to do with me, I was quite happy with my, my Morse code [chuckles]. AS: Did you have things like Fishpond to look after? PF: Yes, we did, but I didn’t have to look after it, the navigator looked after that. It was, he, we didn’t have it at – we were training on, with it, we never used it on operations or anything like that, but we did, we did have it, that was H2S two-three-one, I can’t remember the damn things now. [Pause] I would have remembered had I had to operate it, but I didn’t have to operate it. I had enough work to do of my own. AS: It’s quite busy, was it? You didn’t just take off and fly round and come back again? PF: Oh no, no, I mean, you had to take your broadcast every half hour, and that was numbered so you had to make sure you got that down in your logbook, erm, oh yes there was, there was never a dull moment, not where a wireless operator was concerned, because you were busy nearly all the time, from the time you took off to the time you landed. AS: So, what sort of things would you be, would be coming in and going out? Position reports or- PF: For start, things coming in would be your half hourly broadcast, which you had to rec – you had to log, and that was usually [unclear] text, it was numbered, and then after that, it was mainly work. We were always given exercises to do and, with ground stations, with, in particular DF stations, getting QDFs, QDMs, all that sort of thing, and, so there was never a dull moment where I was concerned. As a matter of fact, I suppose I was pleased in a way, because I had plenty to do, I didn’t have a chance to think about anything else. The navigator always kept me busy. AS: When you knew you were posted to Bomber Command, how did you feel? PF: Well, I was pleased in a way because we were told we were going onto Lancs, and the Lancaster had just been introduced, so everybody was keen to get onto a Lanc squadron, and as it happened, I was lucky and we got on one, and that was, that was quite good. So that was, that answers your question doesn’t it really? AS: Yeah. When you were crewed up, formed as a crew, you were all sergeants, were you living together in a mess, or in huts or – PF: Oh yes, we all lived in – there was, there was an aircrew sergeants mess, because all aircrew were sergeants then, not when I first joined up and flew, there was an LAC erm, yes there was a special mess for the aircrew sergeants. AS: And did you live as a crew? PF: Pardon? AS: Did you live all together as a crew, or – PF: Oh yes. When we first crewed up, we were always messed together in the same, and always, always in the same hut, and that went on for, through the OTU, through the conversion units when we went from Wellingtons to Lancasters [pause], to when we arrived at the squadron and converted onto Lancasters. AS: Did it get [pause] – PF: Sorry? AS: Did it get too much sometimes, being with the same people all the time, in the air and on the – PF: No, we were very pleased in a way that we had our own crew, we were like a family really, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way really. Dennis, my pilot, was, lived at, he had a, he was a baker at Ormesby, Hemsby and his wife and my wife were very good friends, and we were all very close knit, we were close knit as a crew. Yes, that was all, that was all good fun really, if you could call it fun. AS: What were the losses like during training? Were there many aircraft lost? PF: Oh no, there wasn’t. We were, touching wood, no, there were very few losses while we were training. There were losses when, for example, on OTU, on operational training units where crews got lost and went down in the mountains somewhere you know, if we, if we were doing foreign cross countries and things like that where we did for training. So yes, that used, that used to happen, but not, not very often fortunately. AS: Mhm. Did you form close links with your ground crew as well as your aircrew mates? PF: Oh yes, oh yes, we did. We have a very – while we were on operations, I, we, we flew on ops from Bottesford near Nottingham, and we got very close to our ground crews. We used to entertain them a lot, and we used to go out, always meet in the pubs and things like that, and yes, that was, yes, we were, answering your question, yes, we were quite close. AS: Whose aeroplane was it? Was it your aeroplane or their aeroplane? PF: Well, that depends, it was theirs in their camp and then ours in our camp. AS: How did they maintain it? Was it mostly working outside? PF: Oh yes, it was all outside. They did the daily inspections, the special inspections, and that was all done on the, what do you call it, the dispersal on the airfield. AS: So, what, what was the daily routine before, before flight? What would you do before flight with your equipment? PF: Well, I had, I had to check the, all the radio equipment, intercom, anything which was radio or radar, I had to check it worked alright. And the radio, the RT, the radio telephone part. AS: So, I think we’ve done quite a bit about OTU and HCU. Did you say your HCU, you were actually on Manchesters? PF: Well, I flew on Manchesters – when I finished on, let me give you the story, when we finished operational training on Wellingtons, we knew we were going to be posted to a conversion unit because we were going to go onto heavy bombers, and we knew that before we got onto them we would have to fly Manchesters, that was the Lanc with two engines if you can perhaps remember, and, so we went onto Lancs – onto Manchesters and then Lancs in that, in that order and that all went quite smoothly. I must say, it was, it was exciting going onto a Lancaster after a bloody old, twopy, old Wimpy, [pause] it was like getting into a – well as Dennis our pilot said, it was like getting into a Spitfire, though he’d never flown a Spitfire [chuckles]. He guessed as much because the Lanc was so much faster than the Wimpy, and more manoeuvrable of course. AS: When you were learning to fly the Lancaster, before you go to the squadron, was the, was the aeroplane to an operational standard, with all the equipment that was in it? PF: Oh yes. AS: Okay. Did you have to learn different operational techniques as well as this equipment when you were at the HCU, or had your training taken care of the – PF: Oh yes, yes it did – AS: It did. So, you were – PF: Pretty well [unclear] up, yeah. AS: Gemmed up with the operational techniques – PF: Yep, yeah indeed. AS: Okay. So, did you pass out of the HCU? Was there a parade? PF: Er, no, there wasn’t. We were – it was just very ordinary; we were only five or six weeks from OTU to HCU. I was at Swinderby – God, we were there and we were gone and we were on the squadron. As a matter of fact, we were nearly operating, it was that quick. Much to our horror, but there – AS: Shall we pause it there for a moment? PF: Okay. [Tape paused and restarted] AS: This is a taped interview with Flight Lieutenant Peter Fitt, carried out by Adam Sutch, on the 19th of May 2015 for the International Bomber Command Centre. Peter Fitt was on 467 Squadron for his first tour of operations, and perhaps Peter, I could, I could start by asking what happened when you came to the squadron before you went on ops, when you arrived as a crew? PF: Right, well, first of all, I want to go back a bit to OTU, Operational Training Unit, where we crewed up. We all arrived there as individual pilots, navigators and wireless operators, air gunners, and – [interrupted] – is somebody coming? Other: Sorry, would either of you like a hot drink? [Tape paused and restarted] AS: Right, let’s start again Peter shall we, now the tea lady’s gone – PF: Yeah, yeah, you carry on – AS: You were going back to the OTU when you crewed up, just before you got on the squadron. PF: Yeah, yeah, yes, and that was 1942 I believe, would that be right? AS: ’42, ’43, yeah, I think, we did before, so you left, left – PF: Yes, yes it would be ’42, because I started off – I did my ops in ’43, and this is OTU we’re talking about, yes ’42, August ’42. AS: Yeah, okay. And what can you remember about your OTU time? PF: My OTU time was a bit strange, we all arrived at the sta – were posted to this RAF Finningley actually, in Yorkshire, and we all mingled in the, hmm, whatever it was, an old hangar or something, and one officer came along and he spoke to us and said, ‘well I’ve got you all gathered here because we want you – this is the OTU and we want you to crew up, and that’s, it’s got to be up to you. You can mingle with each other and find a pilot and a pilot will find a wireless operator and the wireless operator will find an air gunner’ sort of thing, you just sort it out yourselves’, they don’t print one up to say you’ll fly with so and so, you just sort it all out, and you’re given two or three days to do that, which we did, and I, I crewed up quite easily because it was a Norfolk man, a Norfolk baker from Ormesby, he came over and said, ‘you’re Norfolk, aren’t you?’ I said – he’s real, broad Norfolk – I said ‘yes’ and ‘I am’, and he – I can tell you because he had a real broad Norfolk accent, and he said, ‘why, I’m a pilot’, and he said, ‘I was wondering whether you would, you would, as we’re Norfolkites, you can come be my wireless operator’, ‘yes’, I said, ‘I’d love to’, and in the meantime, he’d sorted out the rest of the crew, so there was five of us. We were crewing up for Wellingtons actually, at OTU, on which we – the aeroplane we did our OTUs on, and so that’s how I crewed up. And then we, we did three months there I suppose – this is RAF Finningley in Yorkshire, and then we were posted to – oh God, I can’t remember the name of the bloody place now, not Finningley, Swinderby, where we went, transferred to four engined aeroplanes, so that was the beginning on the, on the Lancaster episodes, the aeroplanes we flew in for the rest of the war. Now that was, that was, that was rather all good fun, well wasn’t good fun it was bloody dangerous but, but, erm, it was all part of the adventure, wasn’t it? AS: Exciting, exciting. PF: So there, that was, so we crewed up and we, we stayed together all those years – we did a mini two tours of ops – this is late ’42 I’m talking about – and we were still flying in ’44, ’45 together, and, and the war came to an end and we kept meeting you know, ‘cause of, Den was a, he was a baker from Ormesby actually, and we used to – we all got, you all get very, very friendly, you know, and the whole families become friendly, and so that was, that was quite a nice episode in my life. It was a bit dangerous for me, during ops but I, Dennis was a good pilot and the rest of the crew were good, and we were, yeah, that was, that was quite an exciting time. I often think back on it, and we, we have our crew reunions still, and that’s jolly nice to get together again. AS: What sort of skipper was Sergeant Claxton, Dennis Claxton? PF: What sort – AS: Yeah, was he a disciplinarian, or relaxed, or? PF: No, no, he was a typical, what did we say, ordinary bloke who liked driving, a chauffeur if you like, he was conscientious, he always knew what he wanted, he always knew what to ask the navigator, he always knew what to ask us all actually, if he wanted to know anything, and, and yeah, he was quite knowledgeable, and a good pilot. That’s what we were after, we wanted someone who really knew the aeroplane and could throw out a boat when, if we were attacked or anything like that, and he was that good, so we were happy. As a matter of fact, I was a – no, poor Dennis died five or six years ago, his wife is still alive, and she comes and sees me here sometimes which is, which is rather nice. AS: Absolutely, continuity. PF: And, and of course – my wife, well she’s dead now, but my wife used to like Iris, which was Dennis’, the pilot’s wife, and they became very friendly – well, we all became friends actually. AS: So, you finished HCU on Manchesters and Lancasters, and – PF: I, I finished what? AS: HCU. Heavy Conversion Unit. PF: Yeah. AS: On Manchesters and Lancasters was it? PF: Yeah, Manchesters and Lancs, yeah. AS: Yeah. And then you were posted to F – PF: This, this was at Swinderby where we, we, we er went onto four engines, in the Lanc, and from Swinderby. And from Swinderby we, we – now what, I’m just trying to think of what that was called, when you converted to four engines, not a confighter, it was, it had a, it had a special name – AS: HCU was it? Heavy Conversion Unit? PF: Heavy Conversion, well done, you, you’re a gen-king you know. AS: [Laughing] just, just lucky. PF: Yeah, yeah on HCU – AS: HCU, yeah. PF: And, and Dennis converted to – and he took to the Lancs, he thought it was a great aeroplane, and he was a good pilot, and erm, so that, and we were together all that time. On two tours. AS: On the aeroplane, did you feel a very great difference when it was loaded and not? PF: No, no. It was a bit – Dennis used to say it’s a bit, you know, he had to be a bit more careful on takeoff because there was a lot more power, and they used to have to – he said, ‘I’m not supposed put, to go into S-gear’, but he said, ‘I bloody will go into S-gear’, ‘cause he said, ‘I wanna get off safely’, and so he did, that – that S-gear was. It’s called S-gear was a special gear that you, you put the throttles in and that connects to the engine [chuckles], and as the throttles are connected there it does something, it gives you that extra power – AS: More power, yeah. So, you were posted to 467 Squadron I think? PF: Yes. We went to – we were posted to – we finished Swinderby, that’s Conversion Unit, and we were posted to [slight pause] Bottesford and, near Nottingham, where we were – joined an Australian squadron, 467 Squadron, and I was with them for a complete – I did my first tour there with them. AS: Did it feel like an Australian squadron? Were many of the aircrew Australian? PF: They were nearly, they were nearly all Australian, yes it did feel like, you know – that’s a nice way of putting it, they were real Aussies and that was, that made it rather nice. And erm, so I was very pleased I served on an Aussie squadron and [pause] it was, it was nice, and – what is the word when you’re a mixture, I can’t think of a name but it was, it was very good. And I, I enjoyed myself there, as one can enjoy yourself while you’re risking your bloody neck at night, but it was, that was – I had a very good crew, Dennis Claxton, my baker from Ormesby, he was good, he was a good pilot [pauses] and I hoped I was an average radio operator for, get my navigator some good bearings. AS: You brought them back. PF: Brought them back? Oh yeah. AS: When you were on the squadron, did you do a lot of training flying still? PF: Did I what? AS: Do a lot of training flying still, while on the squadron? PF: No, no, no. The only training you did on the squadron – well it was training I suppose, ‘cause they were called training flights, and that was, you would do cross countries, mainly for navigation, for the navigator and the wireless operator and, for the pilot of course, so that was what we did, yes. Cross countries. We used to call them – they were called bulls-eyes and you used to do a lot of bulls-eyes. Well, they were good really because they make you accurate at, and careful what you’re doing. AS: Were the skies full of aeroplanes doing the same thing, over England? PF: Over where, not – AS: Over England, while you were training. Did you find it really crowded skies, or? PF: No, no, ‘cause I was trained at night. I was, I was, we were trained for night flying, and we did our training at night, so we didn’t really see a lot of other aeroplanes anyhow. The only time you saw them was when you were taking off and when you joined the circuit to land, when you got back. But that was, that was good training, and well I, I mustn’t say I enjoyed it – that’s not quite the right word, but it was interesting, and I was quite happy [chuckles], I had a good crew, our Dennis was a good pilot, and [pause] we, we survived. AS: Did you encounter night fighters at all? PF: Yes, yes, we were, we were attacked several times, mainly by Junkers 88s actually. I thought they [unclear], we thought they’d been Messerschmitt 109 Es and Fs but it wasn’t, it was, we were always attacked by Junkers 88s, which is quite a heavy aircraft is a – it’s nearly as a big as a Wellington, and we just couldn’t imagine them using them as night fighters but they were. AS: But obviously not brought down, your pilot’s skills and your gunner’s skills – PF: No, no we evaded all attacks, and the gunners and that, we didn’t – the gunners didn’t shoot any down, any attackers down but I think they were sufficiently awake enough and aware to let the German know that we were around, we knew he was there, sort of thing. AS: How about the – I know it wasn’t your trade, but how about the navigation equipment when you were doing your first tour? Did you have Gee and H2S by then? PF: Ooh yes, we had Gee, ooh yes, I had – well I know I was a wireless op, but I had to know all, how to use the Gee and the H2S and all those sorts of things, which were very good, I mean we’d all, could literally be lost without, without them, and they were inc, incredibly good. H2S in particular. AS: Mhm, did – PF: Now don’t ask me what H2S stands for, because I don’t know, I never knew, I never did ask. I bet you’ve got to tell me actually – AS: Not at all, now I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t know. In your logbook here, you’ve got a, an Astra recall, or Astro recall, as a, do you know what that’s all about? PF: Ah yes, that was [interrupted]. Is somebody [unclear]. Other: Hiya, [unclear], I’ve come to change your water jug. PF: Okay, alright. Other: Thank you. PF: Thank you. Erm, what were we talking about, Astra recall? The, they, they’re two separate words actually. Astra meaning we were doing navigation by stars, by, and what was the other word? AS: Recall. PF: Recall, recall was to do with diversions and things like that, but that, that’s what that was. Astra navigation, the navigator didn’t like it and I had to help him and I wasn’t keen on it either. The, the, when you’re in cramped conditions and, you’ve got to keep referring to tables and cross referencing all the time makes – it’s hard work. AS: Hmm. From your station in the aeroplane, could you see very much? Could you see out? Did you want to see out? PF: Well, yes, I did want to – I liked to see out, there’s something – it’s nice to know that the world is passing by and if you were being attacked, you see it coming. Well, you know, I sat just behind the [pause] wireless operator, well, well you can’t quite see, there was a, there was an astrodome just behind the main cockpit coppola, well that’s what, that’s where I sat under that. That’s why there’s – there was always good light there. That’s where the warmth was, and it was, that was a good position, next to the navigator and course we used to work together. AS: What were your fears on, on ops really at night? PF: What was what? AS: Your fears on ops? PF: Well, well my fears were pretty awful really, I dreaded it. Well I think we all did, that was, it was alright, go to briefing and you, you were told the target and what to do and what not to do, and that’s frightening when you know the target, ‘cause it was usually a hotspot, and warned about night – it’s all very alarming, but once you get airborne, you’re, thing’s aren’t quite so bad until you get attacked [chuckles], but on the whole I, we were, we were very fortunate, we were, I mean we were only attacked once by night fighters. Used to get, we used to get anti-aircraft [unclear] of course, but the dread of course were night fighters ‘cause the Germans had a very good set-up. AS: Could you sense or see other aeroplanes in the bomber stream around you? PF: No, but you knew they were there because of the, of the turbulence you know, and the, and the airmen being in, being in people’s prop turbulence that used to, used to shake you about a bit. That’s the only indication you, you, you had. We were attacked two or three times but we – the gunners were alert enough to shoot away as it were. AS: I see your first operation was to the Gironde in France – PF: That’s right, yeah. AS: What were you doing there? PF: Laying mines. That, that – all freshmen aircrew, their first, their first raid over enemy territory was a gardening trip, and gardening was laying mines [chuckles], and the Gironde was one that, that was my first, that was my first trip, and that was, that was laying mines in the Gironde River, just off Bordeaux actually. AS: So, these would be solo trips, would they? Just send one aircraft to, to lay mines, or? PF: Well, well no, there would be, there would be squadrons doing it, and, and, but it wasn’t mass [pause], wasn’t mass operations, but there were several aircraft doing it, to keep their, their [pause] fighters, things, alive. AS: Hmm, yeah. Another thing you’ve got here is SBA, local flying, is that standard beam approach? PF: Yeah, yeah. AS: Did that involve you at all, or, as the wireless man, or? PF: No, it didn’t involve me in any shape or form, even though I was the wireless operator. It was, it was only the bomb aimer and the pilot’s concern because the bomb aimer was the first, virtually the second pilot because we didn’t carry a second pilot on Lancs, but we, but the bomb aimer took the part of the second pilot [chuckles]. AS: Okay. And did, he knew enough to fly the aeroplane? PF: He knew enough to fly the aircraft. Whether he would have had enough – I don’t think Taffey would have been able to land, land it, but he would get you back, and you could do a ditch in the sea if you wanted – if you couldn’t land. AS: Could I talk about some of the aids? Did you have any contact with Darky? PF: Well, that, that rings a bell, Darky – now that was to do with RT, wasn’t it? AS: Yeah, yeah. PF: Now, now what was Darky? Oh gosh that’s right, on the [pause] forefront of my mind [pause] – AS: Darky was local transmitters at, at observical posts and aerodromes, and if you were lost you could call up – PF: Yes, yes oh God, yeah, I remember. I remember, yes, Darky very well. AS: And did you use it? PF: No, no, fortunately we never had to [pause]. We had a good navigator and we had Gee which we used to use a lot, and we erm, we didn’t have to use anything else. And none, none of us did courses on that while we got through. AS: What – sounds like a silly question really, but what was the tension like as you approached the target? PF: What was the what? AS: The tension like in the crew as you approached the target? PF: Well, as a matter of fact – it’s funny you should ask that question because that does cross my mind many times, ‘cause nearly everybody asks you that question. The funny part about it is, that when you’re approaching the target, all fear seems to have gone and dissipated, and you, you, everybody was looking out to find, to look at, to find the target and see what the defences were like and what attack we were going to do, and, and bearing in mind. what you’d been told to do, so yes, yes, that was, that was – rephrase your question because I was getting a bit out of touch with it. AS: No, no I just – I wondered whether the tension really grew as you were approaching the target, but you’ve told me that the fear left you. PF: Oh, I see, you mean as you approached the target, did the tension increase? No it didn’t, funnily enough, it rather dissipated, mainly I suppose because you, you were there, you’d seen what you were going to do. The defences hadn’t erupted and all you got was a target which was coloured red, which had obviously been bombed earlier, and that was, that was it, it never crossed our, never crossed our minds. Well, it never crossed my mind because I was a wireless operator and I was busy, and I never, I never even looked out. I was, I had, I was busy on the – ‘cause we had all sorts of messages coming in and that, so I had to listen all the time. AS: Yes, so you listened on the main sets. Did you also control the RT, or, the radio telephone? You were on the radio telephone as well. PF: Yes, yes, we were but the pilot used the RT, radio tele, used that for landing and takeoff purposes – AS: Okay. PF: But apart from that, there were, there were, the RT was never used. AS: Hmm. How about the master bomber? PF: Oh, the master bomber? Yeah well, we, that [pause] he was, it was all done by, by voice actually, and – to be quite honest, we were never impressed with it. It was a bit of a, of guidance you know, but sometimes he was a bit out, and sometimes he couldn’t find the place, but, on the whole, I suppose it worked because the, with their know-how and, and our own know-how. AS: And you could hear it? You could hear what the master bomber was saying? PF: Oh yes, it was very clear. Clear as crystal. AS: Hm. So you were, you were on 467, that’s 5 Group, isn’t it? PF: That was in 5 Group, yeah. AS: 5 Group were a bit special, weren’t they? PF: They were the, THE group, yeah. If you hadn’t have said that, I was going to say that. AS: [Laughing] Sorry. PF: But I’m glad you said it, so, you knew about it. AS: Yeah. PF: Yes, we used to get all the posh jobs as we’d call them, the posh and dangerous ones. AS: And one of those that you got was Peenemunde. PF: Peenemunde, yes, I was on that raid. AS: Could, could you tell us a little bit about that? PF: [Pause] yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you [long pause]. Oh, you’ve got my logbook there. AS: Yeah, yeah, I got – PF: I just gotta think of the date, what was it, was it August something, wasn’t it? AS: I’m just looking actually – PF: It’s ‘40, ’43 [pause. AS: Do you know, I can’t find it. You’ll probably quicker than I would. Berlin, Berlin [long pause]. There we go, August, spot on, 12th of August. PF: Yeah, I remember that very well. That was the [unclear], that was the most effective raid of the war, you know, everybody was so accurate, and trained to be accurate, and it was a very efficient raid result. AS: How much did they tell you at briefing about Peenemunde and why you were going there? What did they tell you? PF: Well, I’m just trying to think [pause]. We were told of course that, that, that they were specialising in speciality model aircraft to bomb London, and well, we knew that and that did make us more attentive to detail and sorted out, which we did. AS: Is it true that the, the aircrew were told that if they didn’t do it the first time, they’d have to go back the next night, or is that just a story? PF: Oh yeah that happened to me several times. Air-chief Marshal, our boss man in 5 Group was, erm, oh God, why has his name escaped me – AS: Ralph Cochrane? PF: Pardon? AS: Was it Cochrane? PF: Was it who? AS: Cochrane. Ralph Cochrane. PF: Oh yeah Ralph Cochrane, that’s the chap, well done, you know more about what I did – AS: I wouldn’t say that sir, I wouldn’t say that at all. PF: I just forgot, I just forgot his name, and, and, he was, he wanted you to do everything right, and he was like that and, ‘if you don’t bloody well get it tonight, you’ll go tomorrow night and you’ll go the next night’, and so on, he talked just like that. It was if he was talking to a class of kids, you know, and, yes, he was a very efficient man, and we had – we didn’t applaud him, we appreciated him, his air [unclear] and things like that. Yeah, I remember the briefing for the Peenemunde raid. AS: Is it like we see on the films, where everyone sits down and the station commander comes in and they pull back the curtain – was it like that? PF: It was like that, yeah, yeah, but it wasn’t quite so, not quite so dramatic as that [laughs] you know. AS: How many briefings were there? PF: Well, that was just – there was only one main briefing, but the navigators, the pilots and the navigators always had to go half an hour early to have their separate briefing, which was – I don’t know why, and the rest of the crews went afterwards to the main briefing. But we all had – as I was signals and we all had our separate briefings by our own leaders. AS: So, what was the procedure then? The aeroplanes would be test flown, flying test – PF: Would be – AS: You’d have a flying test, a night flying test with the aeroplane – PF: Oh yes, and then an active course, yes, yeah. AS: Yeah, and then you’d have your briefing, and – PF: Yes well, the, the, it wasn’t quite as close as we are saying it. For example, if, if the operations were on the Friday night, or any particular night, you would do your flying – we had a special word for them and it escapes, it escapes me, not NFT, something like that – you’d go and do that in the morning somewhere and check everything was alright, and that would be your, your [unclear] practical briefing. And then we’d go to the main briefing and having done all that we, you knew exactly where you were. AS: And then you’d have, have a meal, or - PF: We’d have a meal, our eggs and bacon, twice. Eggs and bacon before and eggs and bacon afterwards [laugh], and, yes so that was, that was a very exciting life but it was bloody dangerous, and you got, you get a bit worried about it, particularly if you’re married and that, but there. AS: How did you get out to the aeroplane? PF: We were taken out by, by bus, ministry, you know, Air Force busses. They were specially, they were specially made for that purpose. They used to take the crews. They, you had enough space for all the parachutes and the stuff to go inside your – me and my pigeons, I had to carry, we had to carry pigeons, that sounds good doesn’t it [chuckles], and, that, that was it. We would then be taken out to our aircraft, ground crew would be waiting for us, we would be ushered into our seats, and they would carry the stuff in for us, and that was that, and the pilot would get the engines started and run up and we’d all, we’d all do our bits and pieces. I’d do mine and away we go. AS: Tell me about the pigeons. I mean, they weren’t to eat, were they? PF: Pardon? AS: They weren’t there to be eaten, were they? Tell me about the pigeons. PF: [Pause] it was quite a joke really. They, it used to be one to tell your children. We had to carry pigeons and they’d say, ‘what, you had pigeons, did they tell you where to go Dad’ [chuckles]. I’d say, ‘yeah, we’d let them out and then we’d say Berlin and we’ll follow you’ [laughs]. What was I saying? Yes, we had, we had pigeons. AS: Whereabouts did you keep them? PF: What, my – I was responsible for them as the wireless operator, and right behind me were the armour-plated doors, which was ideal for me really, but behind the armour-plated door was a rest couch – oh I thought I saw them earlier – and erm, that’s where we used to place them on that, just right, they all fitted there nicely. AS: So by the time you’d got to the aeroplane, was it all bombed up and fuelled up? PF: Oh yes, it was, they were all done up in the morning, if you were taking off in the evening. All the bombing up – everything would have been ready in the morning. That was, that was very, very efficient, and then we would go to the briefing in the afternoon and then take off in the evening. AS: Hm. Did you feel that you had enough fuel all the time, for the distances and trips that you – PF: Oh yeah well, we had a, our engine – we all had, every crew had an engineer, and that was his responsibility to make sure that the bowsers had put the right amount of petrol in, and they got the [pause], they got it all laid on so that if the, if the pilot wanted to change engines or something, they did sometimes, that could all be done by stopping an engine and starting another up sort of thing. AS: Okay. PF: That was all very complicated but all was very well organised. Everybody knew what they had to do. AS: Yeah. So, you, you’d done your Gironde mine laying trip, and then you went to Saint Nazaire. Was that the same sort of thing? PF: Yes, same thing, yeah. AS: Dropping – PF: Yeah, well I’m just trying to – why was that? It was because that was the – of course, Saint Nazaire is on the Gironde River, so that was, it was something to do with that trip. AS: And then the big one, the Big B, operation to Berlin. PF: Yeah. That was the Big B yeah, they were big trips. Dangerous ones, the losses were always heavy. Well, they were mainly night fighters – Hitler made sure that his beloved Berlin and all that area round there was well guarded by night fighters, which were the Junkers 88, which was a very efficient aeroplane, and they caused us proper problem. AS: Hm. Did you lose a lot on the squadron to – PF: Pardon? AS: Did you lose a lot on the squadron to night fighters? PF: No we didn’t, funnily enough. We used to have losses to ack-ack and the odd fighter, but that was, there was nothing catastrophic from fighters. AS: But over the period you were on ops from March 1943, were the losses heavy? Severe? PF: They were. I wouldn’t say they were severe, they were heavy. I didn’t know what the statistics are on this, I can’t remember them, but – oh you could, people used to hear it on the radio and they would say something about aircraft missing; that used to be an indication of what the night was like. Some nights were pretty awful, mainly due to night fighters. AS: And could you get a sense of this at the squadron as well? People just disappearing? PF: Yeah. AS: Hm. And then, then two days later, you went to Berlin again, and it says ‘bombs dropped on Flensburg’. What was that all about? PF: Oh yeah, that was a, that was a – that wasn’t a catastrophe, but it was an embarrassment. Let me think now. Oh yes, we were set off and we were briefed to bomb Berlin, and crossing over, oh gosh, what’s the name of, Jutland area, you know – AS: Oh I – Denmark there. PF: Denmark? AS: Yeah. PF: Yeah. The, there, to the right of Denmark is Flensburg, which is German obviously, and if you drifted off course, you got it in the neck from Flensburg. Well, that was what was happening. And yeah, that was a dicey old area, and we never, I never liked the Berlin trips, ‘cause that was, it was a long way there and you had to go through, like Flensburg, and so many other hazards, there was no sort of sitting back and relaxing and saying ‘oh well, let’s go’ [chuckles]. AS: Did you always feel yourselves well informed about where the German hazards were? Where the flack was – PF: Oh yes we were. The briefing was very accurate and – no we never had anything, no faults to find with that. AS: And how about – PF: And our intelligence was very good too. AS: How about the debrief when you got back? Was that – what happened in the debrief? Was that a long time or just very cursory or? PF: No, no that was, it was done quite quickly. We, we just, we landed dead on time as always, found your way back to the debriefing room and sat yourself down at a table, and the debriefing officer would come along and start asking us the routine questions, and that was that, you know. Nothing in particular about it, we just wanted to get back to the mess and have a meal. AS: Can you remember what – PF: Our eggs and bacon [chuckles]. AS: Okay. Can you remember what some of the questions were? I know it’s a long time ago, but what were they interested in? PF: They were interested in the concentration of anti-aircraft from the guns, and particularly the fighters. That’s what they were interested in, because they were becoming a menace, and to trace what airfield they were coming from so they could take care of them with a separate force. But that was the, that was the main thing was night fighters, and he had a very good, he was, Hitler had a very good night fighter force, or Goering I should say. AS: A moment ago, you talked about getting back and landing dead on time. What was the procedure as you approached the English coast to return? PF: What, what was the procedure? Well, well actually, we were on tracks that the briefing officer had given you and, so they always knew exactly where you were going to do. If you were off track as it were, you, I, we would just let them know that we were off track. AS: And then you’d spot, what, you’d spot the pundit light for – PF: Yeah, yeah, a pundit or a something, a light, strip of light and that would, you’d pick it up and that would give an indication. Everything was so well organised. AS: You, when you got back to base, what happened then? When you were in the circuit, did they stack you up or, or? PF: No, no they didn’t stack us up at all, they would get us down as soon as possible, which was right, and we would land and the transport would be there, the aircrew bus would be there to pick you up. We used to have a bus would you believe? And take us back to the debriefing. They’d sow us with coffee [unclear] and that was that. Everybody thankful to be back, having looked round the room to see who was missing [chuckles]. I’m laughing about it, I shouldn’t – AS: Yeah, but as you said before, you lived in your self-contained crew world. PF: Yeah. AS: Yeah. This – you’ve got quite a lot of trips to, to Italy, and I noticed you – PF: Yes, yeah. I did eight Italian trips. AS: You got the Italian Star for that. PF: What’s that? AS: Was that what you got the Italian Star for? PF: Oh yes. AS: So, what were the Italian trips like? Did you go over the Alps? PF: It was – mostly yes, mostly. Not all trips took us over the Alps but the majority did, and they were quite – we used to like the Italy trips, ‘cause they were quite uneventful. You had all that track across France and there were very few night fighters, which was, which was the problem, attacking Germany or France, and there were very little problems then. It wasn’t until we got nearer to the industrial areas that the night fighters, night fighter problem increased. [Knocking] come in. Other: Peter, returning back with the water. PF: Alright, yes, thank you. Other: Here we are. PF: Yes, thank you. Other: You’re welcome. AS: Yeah, so Italy was a long time but a comparatively easy trip, was it? PF: Oh yes, the Italian trips, we [chuckles] used to like – when we’d arrive into the briefing room and you looked up on the wall and there’d be the big map up, and you’d see the, that Italy was the target, were the targets and sigh of relief because the, you know, going all the way across France, there were very few night fighters and, not until you got to the Italian area that they become concentrated. But Italy trips were always good. We always looked forward to those. AS: Did you end up coming back in daylight from them, or was there enough time to – PF: Mostly we got back in daylight, no in, at night time I should say, but we used to do – oh God, what were they [pause], we used to do trips and there was a name for them and that, that’s slipped my mind [pause]. They were virtually daylight raids, but we were given courses across Germany and France which, which weren’t defended heavily, but, yes, we used to, but that, on the whole we used to like these light trips as we called them [chuckles]. AS: And there were some others, some really difficult trips, some really difficult trips like the Ruhr trips, like Essen and – PF: Oh yeah, the Ruhr trips were, Happy Valley as we called them, were very severe and strong. We used to hate Happy Valley, because the, the ack-ack concentration – Hitler had done it to please his own people actually, that all, the whole Ruhr Valley was saturated with anti-aircraft guns [pause]. But we did most, that was most of the operation with the, on the Ruhr Valley you know, Happy Valley – you see that? Oh God, handkerchief, oh there it is [long pause]. AS: Are there any particular moments that really stick in your mind of, of carrying out this campaign? Airborne moments? PF: Well, I, I’m just trying to think. I had an idea you were going to ask me a question like that [long pause]. AS: Were any of you wounded at all? PF: I was never, fortunately I was never wounded, I was never, we were never hit. We were knocked about a bit by German night fighters, but they weren’t very heavy attack, heavily, they weren’t heavy attacks because our gunners were good enough to keep them at bay. So no, to answer your question, no we, we, it wasn’t a problem. Thank God, because that could – he had an extremely good night fighter force. AS: And you, you flew the same aircraft, A-Able?. PF: On A-Able, yeah. There’s a painting of her up there. Er yes, we, we were fortunate enough to have our own aeroplane right through the, my tour. AS: And did she always start on four engines and come back on four engines? PF: Yeah – AS: Mechanically very reliable, yeah? PF: Yeah, but sometimes the pilot had to give an engine a rest, and we’d come back, perhaps come back on three, but on the whole we managed. Well, it’s nice to know we had – the old Lanc would fly well on two engines. AS: And on, on takeoff, was that a particularly worrying time with – PF: Was what? AS: On takeoff, with, full of full and bombs and – PF: Well, what, well yes it was, but it was a touch and go sort of thing. The, the tanks, the petrol tanks would be full up and the bomb racks would be full, so you had a, what did we used to call it, a maximum load, or it was called something else, a maximum effort I think it was called, and, and we managed to get through okay. AS: Were you, had you got married by the time you were on operations? PF: Pardon? AS: Had you got married by the time you were on operations, on 467? PF: I was, I was on operations in ’43, and no, I got married in ’44. AS: Okay, so when you’d finished ops. PF: No, and I – when I went back on my second tour, when the second, after the second front had started, that was in ’45, then, yeah I did my second tour, which was in ’45, yeah. I don’t know what when I was leading to, I’m sorry. AS: No, no, we were talking about when you got married. Did you feel differently on your second tour, when you were married on ops? PF: No, no I didn’t. We, you treated – it was a job, you know, and that’s how you looked at it, and kept your fingers crossed. I was very fortunate but I, when I, ‘cause I did, my first tour was pretty grim, but I wasn’t, but I wasn’t married then, but apart from that we had a reasonably efficient – Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Peter Fitt Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Sutch Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-05-19 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AFittP150519 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:49:04 audio recording Description An account of the resource Peter was born in Norwich. His father was a head gardener and wanted him to follow that occupation and so refused to let him join the RAF. With the advent of war, the situation changed and Peter volunteered at a recruiting station and, after selection tests, was accepted as a wireless operator. Peter completed his ground training at No. 2 Radio School, at RAF Yatesbury and air training at RAF Watton which ended with a passing out parade. Peter was sent to an Operational Training Unit to fly Wellingtons, and he remembers the high rate of losses due to accidents, particularly of flying into high ground. Crewed up at RAF Finningly in September 1942, he was converted onto Manchesters and then Lancasters at the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Swinderby. He describes, in detail, the equipment available to him which made for a very busy job, and remembers that all the codes were written on 'flimsies' which could be swallowed in an emergency. He was sent to 467 Squadron which, as a special unit, Peter felt were given the 'posh and dangerous' jobs. He completed a full tour including mine laying to the Gironde and St. Nazaire, Berlin, as well as eight trips to Italy, which he considers were easy compared to 'happy valley', as the Ruhr valley was known. One special trip was to Peenemunde and the crews were warned that if they did not do the job properly, they would be sent back every night until it was completed. He recalls being attacked by night fighters, but the gunners kept them at bay and so he completed his full tour in the same aircraft, A-Able. On completion of his tour Peter was commissioned and put in charge of the wireless flight until 1945 when he commenced his second tour, which was terminated with the cessation of hostilities. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Norfolk England--Wiltshire England--Yorkshire France France--Gironde Estuary France--Saint-Nazaire Germany Germany--Berlin Germany--Peenemünde Italy Europe--Garonne River Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Terry Holmes Vivienne Tincombe Maureen Clarke 467 Squadron aircrew animal bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943) briefing crewing up fear Gee H2S Heavy Conversion Unit Lancaster Manchester mine laying Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy Operational Training Unit RAF Bircotes RAF Bottesford RAF Finningley RAF Swinderby RAF Yatesbury training Wellington wireless operator https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/888/11127/AHughesWH151021.mp3 33613f53da69484a983e122f2ed1e463 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hughes, Harry William Henry Hughes W H Hughes Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM (- 2023, 159079 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 102 Squadron and then with a Mosquito Squadron. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-09-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Hughes, WH Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document HH: It’s all in the book, I think, mainly, isn’t it? AS: Most of it is, but we need to get it on tape. I think. This is an interview with Harry Hughes, flight lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM, a navigator in wartime Bomber Command on 102 Squadron and then later on Mosquitos. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Harry’s home in St Ives. Harry, thank you ever so much for agreeing to this interview. Perhaps we can start by going over a little your early days. I believe, you were born in Dorset. HH: Yeah. AS: Okay. Did you have brothers and sisters? HH: A sister, yeah. But I went to school in Sherborne, the Grammar School in Sherborne not the big school, not the public school. And, it was a good school but there we are, I think it was a good school anyway but they’ve, in their wisdom they’ve closed it down now and they amalgamated with the Lord Digby school, ‘cause the Lord Digby school is gonna cost too much to repair or something and I think some builder wanted to get hold of their building anyway and make flats out of it. You know, usual thing. AS: Yeah. How did you get on at school? What were your subjects? What did you do well at in school? HH: Mainly in maths. I got a distinction in Maths and a distinction in Physics and Chemistry. Otherwise I got all passes except English language in which I got, I didn’t fail, I got a pass, just got a pass so I didn’t get my ‘tric. Did so⸻ AS: Sorry. HH: Anyway that’s beside the point. Anyway I left there in 1940 and my very first job was a night watchman for some lady at Lewisham Manor near Sherborne, who lost all her staff and she wanted somebody to be in the house at night and to patrol the grounds. While I went round the grounds once, no, never again, it was too bloody scary [laughs]. AS: Things that go bump in the night. HH: Yeah, there was hooting and things [laughs]. Anyway that’s beside the point. AS: But this was 1940. Was this, was the Battle of Britain going on over your head or had that finished? HH: Yes, yeah. AS: What, was that what pushed you towards the air force or? HH: No. Well, I think. Well, what pushed me towards the air force was the fact that I went, my father wanted me to join the navy and I, I went down to Portsmouth to sit an exam to be a writer or a supply probationer [unclear] his own clerk, and I didn’t fancy that, but anyway they gave you twelve blocks of pounds, shillings and pence to add up that way and then you had to add up that way and then you had to add them all up across and then the figure you got down here and the figure you got down here should have been the same. Mine was nowhere near. Anyway. AS: But your maths were good so, you threw it really, didn’t you? HH: Pardon? AS: Did you deliberately mess up, because your maths were good. HH: Yeah. Yes, I know, but not the accountancy type [laughs]. Anyway, we then, coming back on the train, I was pretty certain I’d failed, so, coming back on the train, I had to change at Salisbury and I had about an hour to waste, wait at Salisbury so I went in the town and I saw an RAF recruiting office. So I went in there and saw a sergeant there and I signed on for aircrew. AS: Just like that? HH: Yeah. And they took me on as a pilot or navigator and then I had to go to Oxford for attestation and I went there and with all the gunners from South Wales and what have you became gunners rather, from the mines, you know, and so that’s how I came to be in the air force. AS: Okay. Did you go through the aircrew recruiting centres in London at Lord’s and? HH: Yes, I was the first one there. AS: Really? HH: Very first one to go there, I think. In July ‘41, I suppose, yeah. AS: That’s pretty early. What, what happened then? They’ve taken you into the air force at that stage, I suppose, you didn’t know what you were going to do. HH: Well, we went to ITW and⸻ AS: Where was that? HH: Down Torquay, which is very nice and, I’ve got my bloody reading glasses on, no wonder I can’t see, and then I was sent down to America to train. AS: Okay. HH: In the United States Air Force. AS: Straight from Initial Training Wing. HH: Yes. Straight from ITW. We didn’t get a chance. Later on they used to, they did a little course on Tiger Moths up on somewhere in the world, somewhere up that way. AS: So, you hadn’t actually flown in an aircraft when you went to. HH: No. AS: How did you, obviously they wouldn’t fly you over, but how did you get across the Atlantic, in a convoy or? HH: Yeah. AS: Okay. What was that called? HH: I went out on a ship called the Highland Princess, which I ended up selling. I sold the Highland Princess, the Highland Brigade and the Highland Monarch. AS: Presumably not during the war when you got there. HH: No. Four of them, I sold them in about ’51, or ’52, something like that AS: Okay. So, you’re going across the Atlantic in convoy. Was the ship crowded? What was the conditions like? HH: Well, we were in hammocks, you know, on meat hooks in the, you hung your hammock on meat hooks in the lower hold, you know? AS: Gosh. HH: And we are right up on the stern of the ship because every time the, I think she was twin screwer if I remember rightly, because every time the ship rolled the prop shoot [mimics a sound] [laughs]. AS: Is that the prop coming out of the water? HH: Yeah. AS: Gosh! Gosh, and so, there must have been hundreds of men on the ship with you. HH: Yeah. AS: All [unclear] HH: The one thing you found out, you had to hang on to your four and a half hat because one went missing, what did he do? Go and pinch another one. So, it went all round the ship [laughs]. [unclear] AS: Like measles, isn’t it? Yes, yeah, absolutely. HH: Yeah, I remember that so, I hid mine, anyway. AS: So, you went across in uniform with HH: Yeah. AS: Hundreds of other people. HH: No, when we got to, we were being issued with, at Wilmslow I think it was in Cheshire, we’d been issued with a grey flannel suit to wear in America, ‘cause we all had to go down grey worsted suits, you know. AS: Ah, ‘cause America wasn’t in the war then. HH: ‘Cause they weren’t in the war then, yeah. AS: Right. HH: So, and so we went down to Maxwell Field in Alabama first of all for acclimatization. AS: Wait, where did the ship come in? HH: Halifax. AS: Oh, so you landed in Canada. HH: Went to Canada first, yeah. AS: Okay. HH: And then, I think, yes I think we were there, we were trained down to Toronto, I think, and then we went from Toronto down to Alabama, to Maxwell Field, to Montgomery, Alabama. AS: Okay. Was the whole journey really well organised⸻ HH: Oh yeah. AS: Or was is the usual service mess up? HH: No. AS: No. It was good? HH: It was good, yeah, everything seemed to go to plan I think, pretty well. AS: How were you received at Montgomery, at Maxwell Air Force base? HH: Oh, pretty well. In fact, the very first Sunday we were there, first weekend we were there, the American officer came round and, when we were having lunch, and he said, there’s a fair in town at the moment and they’ve heard that you boys are here, so we’d like you, they’d like you to come along and be their guest. So we thought we were going there but no, it was a scam, we were all scammed out of our money. Yeah, so we woke up in the morning, everybody had lost all their money, it was a real American type scam you know and I saw a coach loading up with American service people all in uniform. So I said, ‘Where is this coach going?’ ‘Oh’, he said, one of them said, ‘We are going to a little village called Prattville just outside of Montgomery and we’re going to church and if we’re lucky we will get invited out for lunch afterwards.’ So, I said, ‘Can we come along?’ Then the three of us got on board anyway. And we went in and sang all the hymns [laughs] and, real gospel stuff too it was, yeah. AS: Deep South, isn’t it? HH: You know, happy happy-clappy type of fellows, kind of stuff, you know, and anyway afterwards all the American were all invited out to lunch and we were there, standing there, wondering what the hell to do, because it was a long walk back to Maxwell from Prattville ‘bout twelve miles I should think and then suddenly this lovely blonde comes up, she says, ‘You all from Maxwell?’ I said, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, we are.’ ‘Oh’, she says, ‘Matter of fact what sort of language is that?’ she says. ‘Well’, I says, ‘Well, you probably wouldn’t understand but we are English’ [laughs]. ‘Oh’, she says, ‘English, you are English?’ And she rushed around and she got all the Americans to cancel so that we were all invited to and she was a daughter of a, she collared me anyway and the other two were taken off somewhere else, I don’t know where. And then, we had lunch and her father was the local judge and he said afterwards, after we had lunch, he said, ‘I guess you would like to take my daughter out for a drive, would you? We gotta a nice Buick in the back. Buick with a steering column for your change’ and I didn’t even have a licence [unclear] never mind [laughs]. Never mind, and I got in anyway and I drove her out, bit of snogging and came back. And that was that and I never saw her again, she, I heard later she married an American navy pilot, who got killed in the Pacific. Yeah. So I could have followed it up if I wanted to but I didn’t but by that time I was back in Canada anyway. AS: So when did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go? HH: Pardon? AS: When did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go? HH: Well, when I go to, we went down to, we were posted from Maxwell Field down to Albany in Georgia to an aerodrome called Darr Aero Tech, that was the owner of the aerodrome, I think, Darr Aero Tech. And it’s still there, I was there not long ago. And so, I suddenly had to do a flight commander’s check and he decided, he decided to wash me out so I went back up to Canada and trained as a navigator. AS: On the flying piece, how much flying did you do? Do you think it was fair that you got washed out? HH: No. AS: How did that come about? HH: Well, they wanted, they, the Air Ministry wanted as many people washed out as possible who could train as navigators, bomb aimers and gunners and what have you. They weren’t too short of gunners but they. AS: I believe you had an instructor with a German sounding name. HH: Oh yeah. Schmidt. AS: Schmidt. HH: Yeah, that was a joke really. That was in the book, wasn’t it? Yeah. AS: So maybe he sabotaged your flying career, your piloting career. So, I presume that a lot of people were washed out at this stage. HH: They were, but [unclear] was never washed out. AS: Wow. HH: Over eighty percent. I know it was a whole lot of us came back. And on Pearl Harbour, the day of Pearl Harbour we were giving an exhibition rugby match in the town. And suddenly over the tannoy came an announcement that Pearl Harbour had been attacked by the Japanese and so everybody went home, they all packed up and went home. So we went home as well. And that night, I had a place I used to get under the wire and go into town at night, you know [laughs] and when I came back to get under the wire there was a man there with a gun [laughs]. And he was trying to shoot me because he thought I was a Japanese. He said, look mate, I don’t like your look, you look like a bloody Japanese [laughs]. AS: Did you go out of through the gate after that? HH: No. Well, I didn’t bother after that. AS: So. HH: I went back, well, the following day we were on the train to go back up to Canada. AS: Is that quick? HH: Yeah. AS: Flight commander’s test and then pack your kit and off you go. HH: About for, about a week later I suppose I was back, I was on the train going back up to Canada. And it’s quite an experience travelling by train out in America, isn’t it? In those days with the dining cars and everything, and the bars and but we had to change, we were on what was called the Chattanooga Choo Choo, but going the wrong way [laughs]. We were going there, were going north but the Chattanooga Choo Choo goes, comes south, doesn’t it? But we were on that line anyway. And I remember we stopped off in Boston and we had a bit of a wait there so we decided to go into town, we never did see Boston because we got on the way into town, we got attacked by these Irish Americans. AS: For being British? HH: We had taken them into the war. AS: Okay. HH: It’s our fault but [laughs]. And they were at war now. And they’d be getting called up and be killed. And then anyway we got away with that alright. AS: You were physically attacked? HH: Yeah, yeah. They had knives and God knows what. They weren’t very nice people. Anyway, I say Irish American but I imagine they were Irish Americans, being in Boston, wouldn’t you? AS: Big population there, isn’t it? HH: So, then I went to Trenton where I was interviewed by a group captain and he was Raymond Mass‘s brother. AS: God lord, Raymond Mass of the Agfa? HH: Yeah. It was his brother. He looked just like him too. Yeah. And. AS: Was that a sympathetic interview? HH: Yes, yeah. AS: You wanted to be a pilot and then suddenly that stopped. Was the system generally sympathetic to you? HH: Oh yes. So they were quite keen to take me on as a navigator. And so then I went from there to Quebec City, L’Ancienne-Lorette. And from there up to Rivers in Manitoba. Which was a dry town, that was, Prohibition there. AS: Oh dear. Good lord. HH: Yeah. AS: Were you in uniform by this time? RAF uniform? HH: Yeah. Wearing a Canadian uniform in fact [laughs]. They issued us with a Canadian uniform, which were quite smart actually. And they were very similar to ours but the cloth is a little kinder, shall we say? AS: So, you’re in Prohibition and you went out, presumably looking for a drink, do you? HH: Well, we knew that Mont-Joli was dry but there was a little, there was a port just down the river called Rimouski, which was a timber port mainly. I remember when I took my Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers exams, one of the questions was, could you explain what were the, how many and what sort of cargo was exported from Rimouski, well everybody else thought it was in Russia, didn’t’ they? [laughs] AS: But you had a clear mental picture. HH: Yeah, I’ve seen it. Anyway, we were trying to, we were drinking some, we went to a bar and we were drinking this clear liquid, we had asked for whiskey but they served us up with this clear whiskey, clear liquid and when we were coming back in a taxi we were, we’d had about two each of these, we were all very sick we had to stop the taxi we were really sick and we saw afterwards that [unclear] don’t drink anything that is given to you because there is a stuff called alcool which is made from wood alcohol and it’s can make you blind. AS: It’s like drinking anti-freeze, isn’t it? HH: Yeah. AS: Gosh, lucky escape! HH: And so that was that. So then from Mont-Joli we went to the staff end course at Rivers in Manitoba which was astronavigation, advanced navigations course it was. AS: What was the basic navigation course? What was your basic navigation training like? Was it mostly classroom or? HH: A lot of in the air. AS: What were you flying in? HH: Ansons. Yeah. Mark 1 Ansons you had to wind up the undercarriage, you remember? AS: Yeah. Did you take to it easily, to the navigation, because of your maths proficiency or? HH: Oh yes, yeah. AS: And you found it easy to be an accurate navigator? HH: Yes, I mean, you’re training all the time of course and right the way through when I came home from Rivers, came home over on the Union-Castle ship, called the Cape Town Castle, which I didn’t sell. And, what’s the time? AS: Now. HH: [alarm clock rings] The taxi, yeah. AS: Okay. We’ll pause at there, shall we? [recording paused] HH: Yeah. Astronavigation course A and it was mainly a flying by using star shots yeah. But when I got on the squadron, I mean you had to carry about three sets of books, you know, and a naval almanac as well. Had to work out your star shots. But when I got to the squadron they had a marvellous bit of equipment, a little projector over the navigator’s tail [unclear], which about that high off the table and you had to measure it up with a special stick to make certain it was in focus and on this astrograph there was three stars you could use and, two stars rather, two stars plus Polaris you use to get a three star fix, and you worked out a datum point for the time before you, before you got airborne and drew it on your chart and then you lay your chart down on the table and lined it up with the astrograph and then this projected the position lines of these stars onto your chart. So all, so, the bomb aimer, all the bomb aimer had to do was to take the star charts, he was, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator anyway and I think he’s still alive, I’m not sure, and. AS: So it was very much team work. HH: Yeah. AS: Between you and the bomb aimer but actually on astros. So, you, we jumped straight on to being on the squadron. Did you know, as soon as you started navigator training, that you would be going to Bomber Command? HH: Well, it’s pretty obvious I would be. Yeah. AS; Okay. And, so, you finished your training in Canada, came back to the UK by ship, and what happened next before you got on to the squadron? HH: I went to [unclear], is it Cumberland? AS: I think Scotland. HH: Up near Carlisle, north of Carlisle then, between Carlisle and Keswick I suppose. And a little aerodrome there and we learned to fly in wartime conditions, you know, where the balloon barrages were et cetera. Where to avoid them. AS: And is this when you stepped up from Ansons to bombers? HH: No, no, this is still on Ansons. And then from there we went down to Hampstead Norris still on Ansons and then we went to Harwell, Hampstead Norris was a satellite of Harwell at the time and then we crewed up with our pilot and wireless operator, I think we already had a wireless operator and we crewed up with bomb aimer and engineer, no, no, we didn’t have an engineer at that time, this is on Wellingtons and. AS: What were they like the training Wellingtons, were they in good nick, were they ropey old kites or? HH: No, no, pretty ropey, they were draughty as hell, oh God they were draughty. The wind used to whistle through that fabric, you know. [unclear] construction, wasn’t it? AS: What was, was there a step up in gear going on to heavier airplanes and operational tactics? HH: Oh yeah, yeah. AS: You are moving much more quickly in your calculations and navigation than perhaps when you were training? HH: We did quite a lot of cross countries and Bullseyes we did in OTU. AS: What’s Bullseye? HH: Bullseyes we did down, we’d go down to, say the Channel Islands and experience a little bit of flak there and then we’d come back up again and fly across to Portsmouth or somewhere and fly across the coast there or else we’d fly, out to the North Sea towards Denmark and come back into Hull. AS: So this was almost a simulated bombing mission, was that? HH: Yeah. AS: Training, for training. Okay. HH: They were called Bullseyes anyway in cooperation with the army, I suppose, with the the ack-ack. AS: So, when you’re at OTU, you’re on Wellingtons. HH: Yeah. AS: Okay. HH: Then we went up to a place called Riccall in Yorkshire, near Selby, and we had to, we trained, we converted onto Halifaxes. AS: What, can you remember what year, what month this would be when you? HH: Well, that would be about Christmas of, just around Christmas in ’42, I suppose. AS: Wow, so what type of Halifax would this be? The Merlin one or the? HH: The Merlin one, yeah. AS: Okay. HH: Yes, so the Hali, Hali 1, what’s his name? Not Gibson, what the hell was his name? AS: Cheshire? HH: No. Gus Walker. AS: Gus, oh yeah, yeah. HH: He was a lovely man, Gus was, and he’d taken out, all the mid upper turret and the front nose cone as well, there is a very big heavy turret in the front nose and like the Lanc was, you know. And then, it’s pretty useless that front turret was but anyway. Then, eventually we got the Hali II.1 A which had a four gun [unclear] turret on the top, yes, same as on the Hali 3. AS: So your mid upper then got his job back. HH: Yeah. AS: So, Gus Walker he took these turrets out to save weight, to carry more bombs? HH: To save weight, yeah. Just to save weight, to make it improve performance a bit. And get a better height. I better ring up my taxi. AS: So, by taking the turrets off, Gus Water was giving his aircrews more of a chance really, wasn’t he? HH: Yeah, but then later on they improved the, we still had the Merlin 22s, same as the Lanc had, you know. Merlin 22s, but the Mark II.1 A was a much better aircraft, you could get up to, you know, eighteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two thousand. AS: Loaded? HH: Yeah. AS: Which is, you were at the same height as the Lancs. And the Lancs had the habit of dropping their bombs on you. Which happened on our very first trip. We went to, we were waiting to have a nice easy trip but no, we got Essen. And then, when we were over the, when we were over the target on our bombing run but a whole lot of bombs dropped on us, a whole lot of incendiaries dropped on us and the engineer and myself had to go back and kick them out the door [laughs] and which is good practice actually, because it happened to us again over Wuppertal. AS: Really? HH: But that time there was a, I think it was a two thousand pounder or a thousand pounder, I don’t know, and it came and took our port rudder right off, and the port tail and the port tail blade yeah. AS: And what sort of problems did that give the pilot? HH: Mh? AS: What sort of problems did that give the pilot? HH: Well, we found, she was, it was still flying alright but I found that we were crabbing a bit. And I remember seeing a light below and I said, take a drift on that, would you? And anyway we found that we were crabbing quite about ten degrees to port, I think, yeah. AS: So you do all your sums again and take that out by adjusting the. HH: No, I just took ten degrees off every course [laughs]. Yeah. AS: That must have been quite a hairy landing I would think. HH: No, [unclear], yeah. I can’t remember it being anything but normal. AS: Wow. HH: And when we got back, the little corporal in charge of our ground crew, he came out, what the bloody hell have you done to my aircraft! [laughs] as if it was our fault, you know. AS: Did you fly your own regular aircraft that you got attached to? HH: Yes, yeah. D, we always flew in D, until one time we let, we were on leave and I think it was an Australian pilot took it and he was very conscious of saving fuel. So he throttled right back coming back and the result was that the, when we went to run the engine up the following day, the engine started to shake, port engine started to shake and suddenly the prop came off and went right through where I’d be normally sitting and sliced my table in half, but I was in the rest position now for take-off you know. AS: Wow. So that was one of your nine lives gone? HH: Yeah. I tell that story I say, as you can see I’m still here [laughs]. I wasn’t sitting there at the time. AS: So, did they repair the aeroplane or was that the demise of D-Dog? HH: But that was it finished, D-Dog was finished then and we got the Mark 2.1 A then. AS: Still as D-Dog or was there a superstition about that? HH: No. We were still with D, yeah. But, Jackie Miles, he was our mid upper gunner, he was really pleased to get that. We got four guns, he was really happy [laughs]. But it was much safer to have somebody in a blister looking down underneath. AS: Is that what he used to do before he got the target? HH: Yeah. Yes, and he used to put it in his log book, duty, rear gunner’s me [laughs]. AS: Yeah. On, when you were on ops, had the idea of the bomber stream come in by then? HH: Oh yes. Yes, we were on the very first time they dropped, the Pathfinders used Oboe on the Essen raids. I think it was first used on the 5th of March, wasn’t it? AS: I don’t know, 1943. This was. HH: Yeah, ’43, ’43 by this time, yeah. AS: So, it was quite early on in the idea of the Pathfinders. HH: Yeah. AS: So, you went on ops just as the stream and the concentration were starting to take place. I know you were deep in the bowels of the aeroplane at your navigation table. Did you, did the crew see other aircraft around them, feel the other aircraft around them? HH: No, you are in the slipstream the whole time. Especially when you got near the target, when you’re on your final run, you sort of you feel the slipstream and you have got to remember that five percent of our losses were due to collisions, it has been estimated. AS: That’s a high percentage. HH: I think we were told that at the time to be extra vigiliant, you know. AS: Against the dangers of collision. What about enemy aircraft on your first tour? Did you have any encounters with the German night fighters? HH: Oh yeah. [unclear], he shot down two, he shot down a Ju 88 and an Me 110 I think it was, yeah. AS: And this, this was your rear gunner. HH: And he had a problem as well. A lot of Battle of Britain pilots would have given their eye tooth for a score like that. Probably would have gotten a DSO and a DFC. AS: [laughs] there are a lot of unsung deeds in Bomber Command. HH: Anyway then we finished up in October ’43 and I got sent up to 6 Group, it was a Canadian crew. AS: With the Canadians. How did you? HH: And they wanted everybody to be Canadians, you know. They didn’t want an English instructor so I got, I quickly got posted down to 3 Group. And AS: Somewhere along the way you, you picked up the DFM. Was that during your first tour? HH: Yes, was the first tour. AS: And what was the story behind your DFM? HH: I don’t know really. It’s not in the book even, not even in the, my citation is not there, there’s a book of DFMs in the RAF, book of DFCs and DFMs. And I think there was an Australian, called Cameron, he found this book of DFMs but I don’t know, I think Gus Walker probably. You see, I’d broken my left foot, I’d broken a bone in my left foot and what with having leave, we were due for leave I went on leave on with my foot in plaster, came back and had the plaster taken off and then I fell off my bicycle [laughs]. Didn’t help. So, the doc said, ‘Right, I’m going to keep you in hospital until your foot’s cured. I don’t want any arguments.’ And the following day Sam came in, he said, we are on tonight, [unclear] and they want me to take a spare navigator and I said, ‘No way, Sam, let’s go and see the doc.’ The doc was in a good mood ‘cause he was going on leave. So, have you read all this before? AS: No. HH: So, [pause] he said, ‘Alright you, you can go this time, but’, he says, ‘Provided you come back into hospital as soon as you get back. If you get back’, he said, ‘If you get back.’ So, he then went on leave. Anyway, I duly arrived at main briefing, done my navigation briefing, I think we came at main briefing and Gus Walker was on the door. And Gus said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m on crutches you see. I’m going on ops.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t where my crew is going, I don’t want them to go without me.’ ‘Well, oh alright then.’ So I went in and we went to Berlin that night. And when I got back, Gus was still on the station. ‘Cause he was in charge of three squadrons, wasn’t he? Up there. And he said, ‘Right, young Hughes,’ he says, ‘I’ve been hearing all about you, he says, ‘It’s alright, I’ll take you back to the hospital myself.’ And then I got in his car and he tore me off a bit of a mild strip for being irresponsible and some of that and then as I got out, he said, ‘Bloody good show anyway, Hughes.’ And I think it was he who recommended me for a DFM, I don’t know, probably. AS: Excellent. It’s a wonderful, wonderful story. What happened, you said, you tried the book in the RAF club to find your citation. Have you explored anywhere else, to try and find the DFM citation? HH: I did write to some time ago, I don’t know, I think they did, you get from RAF records I think. AS: Okay. HH: Because I wrote to them the other day and asked them if, ‘cause I had a letter from them to say that I could retain the rank, substantive rank of flight lieutenant when I finished in the reserve and use the courtesy rank of squadron leader. But I’ve never used it. So I thought it would be a nice thing to have on my tombstone, so I wrote and asked them if that still pertained, shall we say. AS: And you are still waiting for a reply. HH: Well, they wrote back to me and said that I’d have to give them some more proof of who I was, you know, passports, et cetera so I sent them up a copy of my, one of my utility bills and my council tax demand. AS: Well, hopefully that’s good enough. HH: It only went off last week, so we will have to wait and see. AS: You mentioned briefings. I know the targets were different and the weather was different, but could you give me some idea of an average preparation for a mission from waking up in the morning to taking off. Is that possible, that sort of things that? HH: Yeah, because you went down to the, you went down to the flights and you stood in the apron outside the squadron offices and at ten to ten on the dot, if you were on that night, the phone would ring. You knew you were on that night then and then, but if you waited and waited until ten past ten the phone would ring again to say the squadron’s stood down by which time we had all disappeared ‘cause we’d all. Didn’t want to go to on a bloody route march or something [unclear]. AS: So it was all incredibly secret but the routine gave it away. HH: Yeah [laughs]. AS: So if the phone call came at ten to ten, you knew you were on ops that night, what would happen then? HH: Well I did, we’d go down to our aircraft and check all the equipment in it and then if necessary you take it up on an air test and then you were back on the ground again by, about eleven, eleven thirty, and then you’d either come back and go to lunch and or else you’d and then after you’d had lunch you’d go on for navigation briefing at about two o’clock. AS: So the navigator was the first person in the crew to know where you were going, what timing was. HH: Yes, we knew where we were going, yeah. AS: Was that a very full briefing, with weather? Is this when you drew up your courses, you got your turning points and what not? HH: Sorry? AS: Was this a very full briefing? HH: Oh yeah, well, the navigation briefing, yes, you got your various tracks you had to go on to and hopefully they’re taking you around the defended areas you know. AS: The flak and the searchlights, yeah. Was there a lot of work involved for you to prepare your charts? HH: Yes, it took quite a time. You were mainly with your bomb aimer to help you, you know. Harry Hoover, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator, he trained in South Africa I think. AS: So, you two were the only ones that knew at the navigation briefing the target. Was it difficult to keep it secret from your skipper and your crew? HH: Oh no, you didn’t have to keep it secret but you just told the rest of the crew where we’re going so all this business about being a gasp when they, when the curtains were pulled across from the map. AS: Probably you already knew. HH: We all knew where we were going by that time, at least my crew did. AS: So, you’ve done your navigation briefing and what happened then? Just sit around waiting for the main crew briefing or did you have duties to do? HH: No, we just, by the time you finished doing the nav, it’s about time for the main briefing and then having done the main briefing you then went for an ops breakfast. The ops breakfast, which was bacon and eggs, baked beans, all the things you shouldn’t eat. AS: Baked beans? HH: Yeah. AS: And you’re flying at twenty thousand feet. HH: Yeah. AS: Oh, that could have been interesting. What was the atmosphere like? Was there a lot of tension? Was there a lot of horseplay? Was there a lot of fear? What was the atmosphere like? HH: I don’t know, I can’t remember now, there was a feeling of are we gonna make it or not, you know. AS: Was that a personal thing or something that you talked about with the crew? HH: I would never, never, never, never, my mid upper gunner, he, one day, we were in our room, I shared a room with him and he packed up all his biscuits on his bed and folded up all the blankets and sheets. What are you doing that for? And he said, ‘I don’t think we are gonna come back. So I’m putting the things in order now.’ And he got all his paperwork out and everything, letters and everything to his wife and things. AS: What did that do to your morale? HH: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t very happy about it but it was a scrub that night anyway. Then he said, afterwards he said, ‘God, good job we didn’t go to [unclear] because we weren’t going to come back.’ He knew. AS: But after that on future trips he was fine. HH: Well, I said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again, Jackie, I said, ‘You never do a thing like that again.’ AS: Tempting fate. What about off duty, what sort of things did you, you guys get up to that you can talk about? HH: Sorry? AS: Off duty, did you get much time off to yourself? Or to yourselves as a crew? HH: Yeah. We, I used to go out with, mainly with another crew ‘cause all our crew, our skipper was commissioned, so we were all and the rest of them, Jackie Miles he lived in Leeds so when he had an evening off, he went back to Leeds and the rear gunner was the same, he was somewhere just outside Leeds. Sam was from Leeds as well, the pilot, so it was only the engineer and myself. AS: So you latched onto another crew for the, HH: Yeah. AS: The social element. HH: Yes, [unclear] crew, yeah. I was pretty friendly with his navigator but he got killed. AS: And did the rest of the crew come back? HH: Yeah. AS: And brought him back? HH: They brought him back, yeah. AS: Your, we were talking about your navigation training and astro, during your time, your first tour on ops, did you start to get Gee in the aeroplane or any other navigational aids that you used? HH: We had Gee. AS: You had Gee. HH: Right from the start, yeah. We had the Mark 1 Gee which was, used to have to tune it, the narrow knobs on the side and you had to tune it to get a signal and it’s like tuning one of those. Televisions, you know. AS: Keep wandering off. Did you, was it as a big revolution in navigation as people say? HH: The Gee was, yeah. AS: The Gee was, it really did make a difference. HH: Yeah, well, it did make a difference because, but you didn’t get it beyond the Dutch coast, it wouldn’t work beyond the Dutch coast but you had we, well, you had LORAN later, in Mosquitos we had Gee and LORAN. In fact, it really annoys me now to hear the met men talking about the jet stream because we found the very first jet stream. I found a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots at thirty thousand feet. AS: Tailwind. HH: Hundred and ninety five knots and when we got back, I told the met man, I said, ‘I got a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots and you were forecasting forty five to fifty knots.’ He said, ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it!’ So he went to Group headquarters and the Group headquarters said we don’t believe it. They went to Command headquarters and the met people up there said they didn’t believe it either. But then everybody else came back with these winds and they suddenly realised what was called jet streams but now they talk about jet streams all the time. And what they mean is where the warm front, the warm tropical front meets the polar maritime front and all the way along that you get depressions form and then, and with it you get this so-called jet stream would form as well. Ah, so which comes first? The frontal systems or the jet stream? AS: Must be the fronts, must be the fronts. So, when you are doing your tour, you’d had the nasty experience of being bombed twice by your own people, probably 5 Group above you. HH: Yeah. AS: Was that the limit of the difficulties you had? Was the aeroplane mechanically reliable or did you suffer? HH: Oh, we, came back on three engines more times than we came back on four. AS: Really? HH: Yeah. I think we came back on three engines eleven times out of our tour. AS: And what did your ground crew chief say to that? HH: Well, it wasn’t their fault, necessarily, well, he didn’t think it was anyway. AS: It’s just overstraining them, is it, full fuel, full bombload climb to heights. Coming back from the raids, what was your pilot like? Was he one of those that, wanted to pour on the coal and get home early or did he stick to heights and courses as briefed or? HH: Well, he couldn’t do much else with a Halifax. But when I was on Mosquitos, with our New Zealand pilot, we were always first back [laughs]. Yeah. AS: Becomes a matter of pride. On your first tour still perhaps we can talk a bit more about that. As you got towards the end, did the, you knew presumably you were going to stop on, what, thirty trips? HH: Well, I did twenty six in fact. AS: Okay. HH: Which we were screened two trips early. I would have done twenty eight for my first tour, ‘cause the pilot had already done two second Dickey trips to start with. [door bell rings] That’s my taxi now. AS: Okay. HH: So I’ll just pause this. [recording paused] We were just talking about your tour length. The question I was going to ask is did you feel a real rising tension as you got towards the end of your tour? HH: But we didn’t know we were towards the end, we thought we had another two trips to do. AS: Okay. HH: But, I remember Sam coming in and he says, ‘I have some good news for you, we’re screens and you’re off on leave from tomorrow. You are all going on leave tomorrow.’ AS: What did that feel like? HH: Mh? AS: What did that feel like? HH: Ah, it was good feeling but I forget what happened now. When I was on Mosquitos I think when I was doing my last trip on Mosquitos ‘cause you had to do fifty on Mosquitos you see for a tour. AS: So, you finished on 102 Squadron and were there many crews that went all the way through like yours did? HH: No, not a great deal, I wish I had the [unclear] I’ve got it somewhere, might be in that case there, book of all the losses, you know. 102 Squadron losses. AS: Oh, perhaps we can look at that tomorrow or now if you like. HH: Well I, it might be in that case, I’m not sure. AS: Let’s pause this and we’ll go and have a look. [recording paused] AS: Harry, good morning, it’s day two of our interview sessions. It’s very good of you to agree to this interview. Can we start by going back to your first tour of operations during the Battle of the Ruhr on Halifaxes. Were you conscious at the time that this was a major battle or was it just one job after another? HH: We were trying to hit Germany where it hurt, ‘cause we didn’t only go to the Ruhr and we went to places like Pilsen, and then we did Nuremberg and Munich and. AS: Were you briefed on specific targets in these cities and told what you were going after? HH: Oh, we knew that Essen was the Krupp works, yeah, and we were given a good, pretty good briefing by the intelligence officer what we were gonna hit because one time we went, we were going to. There was almost a mutiny one day because they were sending to some place I forget, Gelsenkirchen or somewhere, I forget where it was now, and [pause] AS: What happened then? What was the mutiny all about? HH: Well, the intelligence officer said that he didn’t know why we were going there, there was nothing there, there was just a spa town that we were going to hit but what we didn’t know, of course, it was a leave centre for the Gestapo and the place was full of the Gestapo officers and but you know initially we said, no, why are we going there, you know? And there was almost not exactly a mutiny but it was a fear of you know, why are we bombing this place, we probably would just hit a lot of women and children. AS: So, this was 1943. So even at that stage. HH: This is ’45. ‘43 rather. AS: So, even at that stage there were some concerns amongst the crews about what you were doing and where you were going. HH: Yeah, we didn’t, the Hamburg raids for example. That’s the first time there was a real firestorm and we went on three or four of those raids, I forget now, it’s in the book, Hamburg in July ’43. That book is falling to bits, isn’t it? AS: Well, it happens to all of us, doesn’t it? As we get older. Here we go, 24th of July ’43 and the 27th of July ‘43. Ops Hamburg, yeah. And then the 2nd of August. HH: Yeah, the 2nd of August when we, we’d already realised that the firestorms, you know, in then, we were dropping our incendiaries first and setting fire to places and then dropping four thousand pounders, two and four thousand pounders on top of the fires which, that’s why it’s called the firestorm, the blast from the comparatively thin-cased two thousand pounders and what have you, would suck in the air and the oxygen, you know, and cause these firestorms. AS: So, the thin-cased bombs would blow the roofs off and then the incendiaries would go inside and. HH: Well, you know, in that, wish I could find that, you could sit and watch that, the CD I’ve got somewhere in there of. AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid? HH: Pardon? AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid? HH: Yes, the first or second of the Hamburg raids which caused the firestorm. And I remember watching this from over the bomb aimer’s shoulder and watching these fires spreading and I remember saying, I felt very sorry for the people down there. AS: At that time. HH: At that time, yeah. In fact I said a little prayer for them. AS: Is this something you discussed with the crew or any of your friends? HH: Not really, no. I just said a prayer to myself, yeah. AS: And was that really specific to Hamburg or to? HH: Just to Hamburg, yeah. ‘Cause that was where the firestorms first started. Well, it was worst then Dresden actually. AS: I believe so in the numbers lost. So, your first tour was absolutely in the thick of what we call the Battle of the Ruhr and extremely, extremely difficult and dangerous missions. HH: The people who came after me, they’d done Hamburg and the Battle of the Ruhr, and then they had to follow on doing the Battle of Berlin. You can find my very last trip was to Berlin I think, no, it was Hanover. It was one of my last trips was to Berlin, that’s when I went on crutches, yeah. AS: Home on three engines, that one? HH: Was that Berlin? AS: Yes, 23rd of August. And then you did a Munich and a Hanover. What was Berlin like? Was it special, was it the HH: Pardon? AS: Was Berlin perhaps the best defended target? What was Berlin like? HH: It was the length of the trip really. You know, on heavies, on Lancs and heavies it took us eight and a half hours there and back. What’s it say there? [paper rustling] AS: Seven hours fifteen, that’s still an incredible time. People talk about eight hour days, and that was a full day’s work at night. HH: Was a full day’s work was being shot at too. AS: And, I mean, was Berlin the best defended target, do you think or was that the Ruhr, perhaps? HH: No, I think, I don’t think it was as bad as the Ruhr but it was, there was plenty of activity there but mainly a lot of fighter activity there over the target, over Berlin. AS: And you, you could see the enemy? HH: Oh yeah. They were coned and searchlights one time I was on Mosquitos, there was two Mosquitos, an Fw 190, and an Me 109, all on the same cone. AS: Wow! HH: And there is a painting of that somewhere. I described it, you know. And there is a painting somewhere that is called Berlin Express. And [unclear] have got the original. AS: Okay, I’ll look for that. HH: [unclear] then. AS: Okay. Some trips to France as well. Le Creusot. You weren’t after a saucepan factory there were you, what was, can you remember what that trip was about? HH: Oh yes, that was, they were manufacturing parts for tanks and things, I think. AS: Gosh, here, after Le Creusot, Muhlheim, home on two engines. HH: Yeah [laughs] AS: What’s the story behind that? Did they just pack up or was it flak or? HH: Yeah, they just packed up on us yeah, these Merlins were you know they were way overstressed on the Halifax and we came back on two on that occasion, yeah. AS: After a lot of, after the Hamburgs that we talked about and Berlin, Munich. Now, can you remember that trip? September ’43 to Munich. HH: Yeah. AS: First off, first back, in your log book, eight hours, fifty five minutes. Did the stream hold together, the bomber stream hold together over these long distances? HH: Yeah, you we were all given certain times, you know, you had to be at certain times on all the way along the track, at the various turning points, you know. And I think it did help, you know, no doubt about it and then with the advent of Window of course, it just threw their ground tracking, we had a little device, did I tell you, a little device called Boozer in Mosquitos. AS: No, you didn’t, no. HH: We had a little device which, when they were tracking you from the ground, a little yellow light used to glow. But when they were tracking from the air, a red light used to glow. And one night, we were coming back, and somewhere around about the Hamburg, sorry the Bremen Hanover gap, and this red light came on very bright and we knew the red light meant we were being tracked from the air you see. And then suddenly over the top of us, about the height of this building, just came two, I think they were Me 263s, AS: The jets? HH: The jets, yeah. Right over the top of us. And they didn’t see us. I got a photograph of a Mosquito somewhere I don’t know what she’s done with it now. I meant to ask her that when she was in last night. AS: No worries, maybe today. So, this, the 262s had the speed, they were the only ones with the speed to catch you, really. HH: Yes. They were doing about a hundred knots faster than us. Fifty to a hundred knots faster than us. And they just sailed over the top of us and disappeared in the distance. There were four jets, two of them. AS: So they had radar airborne in the jets. HH: Yes. AS: That is a pretty dangerous development, isn’t it? That was another one of your nine lives gone, really, wasn’t it? HH: Yeah. AS: Your slices of luck. Back to your first tour, you, when did you come off ops? HH: I went to a conversion unit, at a place called Wombleton. AS: Okay, was that Stirlings? HH: No, it was Halifaxes actually but. AS: Okay. HH: Canadian group, they are mainly on Halifaxes. AS: In 6 Group, how did you get on with the Canadians? HH: Not very well. AS: Really? HH: No. They are very, they didn’t want to know us, you know, they just wanted to get rid of us as quickly as they could. AS: I’ve heard this that they were running, HH: They wanted to run their own show. AS: [unclear] as part of the Canadian. HH: I remember getting one crew and I said, I wanted to send them back for further training because the navigator was absolutely hopeless. He really was, he couldn’t, it was like putting, I don’t know, he was thick as two planks, he couldn’t. So, I said if you’re sending this crew with this navigator they don’t stand a chance of getting through, not a chance at all. They’ll be shot down on, within their first five operations, they’ll be shot down. AS: And do you know whether that came to pass? HH: No. They didn’t like this, you know, the fact that I’d criticised one of their Canadian crews and I was posted down to 3 Group and, which suited me, and the crew got to squadron, got to a squadron and they did one trip and got hopelessly lost and I heard it afterwards that the CO of the, I think it was Lane, what was his name? Lane. He said, what the hell are you doing sending us crews that are, they should have been send back for further training. And I had recommended that. AS: Had you been commissioned by this point? HH: Yes, yeah. AS: Okay. HH: I was commissioned at the end of my first tour, I think. AS: What sort of process what that? How did that take place? HH: Pardon? AS: How did, what sort of process what that? How did that take place? HH: I just had an interview, I don’t know, who I had an interview with now, I can’t remember. And I mean after the interview I was then a pilot officer but I was a flight sergeant before and my pay was sixteen shillings a day as a flight sergeant but as a pilot officer I was only going to get fourteen and four pence a day. So they said, oh, we can’t have that so they gave me a six pence rise, six pence a day rise so I was getting fourteen and six a day as a pilot officer. And then eventually when I was a flight lieutenant after a couple of years, I was out in India by that time, and I got, well I was on Indian rates of pay anyway so, it didn’t factor. AS: Back to the instructing. You finished an operational tour, had some leave and presumably your crew dispersed. HH: Yeah. Pilot went to Rufforth converting many French Canadians and to go to Elvington, French, I mean French crews rather, French crews to go to Elvington, to 77 Squadron. AS: Did you keep in touch with any of your crew members after? HH: I came up to York a couple of times and met Sam, Jackie Miles I used to see and my gunner and Harry [unclear] the, the last time I’ve heard from him, he was up at near Shrewsbury. AS: You all went to instructors jobs, do you? HH: Yeah. AS: Did they teach how to be an instructor or did they just send you off? HH: No, I just went in and just talked to them and told them where they were going wrong, you know, and how to waste time and things like that. AS: In the air this is. HH: Yeah. AS: So, did you do any formal classroom training of these chaps or was it just, what, supervising in the air and on the ground? HH: Yeah. AS: Supervising? HH: Yeah, just going through their logs and charts individually with them and showing them where they’d gone wrong. AS: And I believe the same sort of thing used to happen on ops, that when you came back your nav leader would go through your charts, is that right? HH: Yeah. Yeah. AS: Okay. HH: They’d assess your, that’s the assessment on each one there. AS: That we saw before. HH: The little design on his wall, Charlie had, he had sort of a little square beside each one of you and you had two dots for very good, one dot for reasonably good, no dots at all for AS: Average. HH: Just average. Yeah. AS: That’s his way of keeping track. So, on 3 Group, is this when you went to Stirlings? When you were training? HH: Pardon? AS: When you left the Canadians and went to 3 Group, that was, what was that, Stirlings, was that the Conversion Unit there? HH: Yeah. AS: Okay. HH: Yeah, it’s down at Chedburgh. AS: Okay. HH: And, yeah, Chedburgh, near Bury St Edmunds. There was a beer drought down at that time and we used to cycle miles to find a pub with beer [laughs]. Then we’d keep very quiet about it [laughs]. AS: It’s not too bad. HH: Me and a Canadian called Connors and we wanted to, we’d heard about that 8 Group wanted Mosquito pilots and navigators, so, we both applied to go, we both applied to go back on ops together. So, our first application, we were turned down because, being in 3 Group on Stirlings, you know, they were rather short of crews, and so we were turned down anyway. So we waited a couple of weeks and we applied again and we got turned down again. So that night, I got a tin of black paint from the stores and I wrote a message, a letter on the ceiling of the mess to the group captain, quite a polite letter, would you kindly pull your finger out and get us posted back on ops. We’re fed up with this instructing so could we please get back in so and so and signed it Connor and Hughes. The following day we were up in front of the old man and he said, ‘Right, you’re both going back, no way you’re going on the same crew or on the same squadron. In fact, you go back first, Hughes. Connor will follow you in about two- or three-weeks’ time.’ And this is what happened. AS: It’s amazing. So you weren’t actually instructing for very long, were you? HH: No, from October until July, so I suppose six months. AS: Okay. HH: And you’re supposed to have six months, at least six months rest, you know? From operations. Between tours. AS: Okay. And then, in July having arranged your own posting really, you arrive at 1655 MCU. What’s MCU? HH: Mosquito conversion unit. AS: Okay. HH: At Warboys, yeah, and Weston [?]. AS: I imagine this must have been a completely different sort of navigating. Was it? HH: Oh, just very quick, but you, you wouldn’t think it now but I was very, very neat and tidy in what I did. I knew exactly, I used to keep my pencils in my flying boots, my dividers as well, [unclear] my Douglas protractor I kept in my hat with my dividers, which was behind me and my Dalton and, and then we used to take as your [unclear] fix, as soon as you got airborne, you got to operational high I’d take fix, fix, fix, every three minutes, then work out a tracking ground speed wind velocity and then another three minutes later another fix, a nine minute tracking ground velocity plus the sixth, the latest sixth one and another one, further on, six, and I can tell you exactly which way the wind was going, how far out the met was on their winds. AS: And these fixes would be visual fixes or Gee fixes or both? HH: Gee fixes. AS: Gee fixes. HH: So I’d take fix, fix, fix, you worked really hard to get the timing, you know, of the. AS: Whereabouts was the Gee screen in the aeroplane? You were sitting on the right in the [unclear] HH: I was sitting on the right and the Gee was behind me and LORAN as well. AS: Okay. So. HH: Gee and LORAN which was behind me. AS: So, could you operate the equipment with your harnesses done up? HH: Oh yeah. AS: ‘Cause you just turned your head and⸻ HH: I just turned my head. It was just like there, behind me, there, but I could turn easier then and it was there, you know, just behind about there, about that angle to me. AS: And it is just, as you say, second nature, three minutes, three minutes. HH: It didn’t take long to take the fix but it took a long time but we, we had charts with the letters, lines of the Gee chart superimposed on top of it. So, this really worked very well. AS: So, what came up on the Gee screen? What allowed you to compare the screen to the map? HH: Pardon? AS: What was the presentation on the Gee screen? What actually came up? Was it numbers or? HH: Yeah. Well, you just, you could, you worked out, you knew what, you strobed the whichever signal you wanted to take, you know, and then you, you strobed the two of them and then fix and then you just read it off. AS: I guess it’s, so you gotta an alphanumerical printout did you virtually. HH: Yeah. AS: Wow. So that could be done quickly. HH: It’s quite, it’s very quick to work it all out, yeah, to work it out to get, to actually calculate the winds on your Dalton. AS: How did you operate at night, because I imagine you had no lights in the cockpit? HH: Well, we had enough. AS: Okay. HH: We had a red light and then, what’s his name? Anderson, our group navigation officer, he found that red, you couldn’t see the red markings on your chart. So, that was all orange and green. AS: Which was easier to see. HH: Yeah. AS: Okay. So, when you’d done your Mosquito conversion unit or at the Mosquito conversion unit, you must have crewed up with a pilot, how did that go? HH: Well, I had already wanted to fly with this Australian so, when this New Zealander came along, I thought, he’ll do, I crewed up with him. AS: As simple as that. And did you do, did the aeroplane Mosquito take some getting used to it, so different from a heavy bomber, with different performance and. HH: Oh yeah. AS: What was she like to fly in? HH: It was nice and reasonably fast. And I don’t think you really noticed it until you were doing some low flying. AS: Shall we take a pause there? Okay. [recording paused] HH: The Mosquito was, it was terribly difficult for a navigator to get out of. AS: Why was that? HH: Well, you had to, first of all you had to get hold of your chute and you kept that on, then you had to jettison two hatches to get out, AS: Underneath. HH: Underneath, yeah. Slightly forward towards the nose, yeah. And but by which time your pilot probably gone out of the top and you were spiralling down and the chance of you getting out was pretty slim. AS: This hatch underneath must have been very close to the starboard propeller. HH: Yes, we, yeah. Yes, it was quite close, yeah. AS: Did you practice this on the ground a lot? HH: No. I don’t think they thought you were, it was worth the risk. But the, a friend of mine used to fly with a man called Gill and he went down, got killed, Ronnie Knaith went down with his aircraft, and Gill got out and came home and he went to see Ronnie’s parents and they just slammed the door in his face, they wouldn’t talk to him. ‘Cause they had thought that he’d should have stayed onto the controls until Ronnie got out. Which is really what one was supposed to do. AS: I hadn’t realised that the drill for the pilot was to go out of the top. HH: Yeah. AS: Because there’s a tailfin behind. HH: Yeah, you jettison, you jettison the hood I think, the whole hood went. And theoretically the navigator could’ve gone out after him, I suppose, but. AS: I think overall the losses were less on the Mosquito. HH: Oh yeah. AS: I think you were safer flying in a Mozzie than in a Halifax. HH: Yes, I mean, there’s somewhere I got the losses in Hamish’s book, in Hamish Mahaddie’s book, all the losses in 8 Group and you will see that 692 do feature quite regularly, you know. AS: Yeah, so you were posted to 692 Squadron after the conversion unit. You’d had, I suppose, eight months away from ops by then, ten months, had things changed a lot in that time? HH: I don’t think they’d changed all that much for the heavies, no. And we operated separately and we used to do Window opening for the heavies, we used to do, we used to fly out with the heavies and used to meet up with them at Reading, they’d all congregated there, what’s that? There is something squeaking, did you hear? AS: I don’t know, let’s pause the tape.[recording paused] Well, Harry, we discovered what the squeak was, it was the smoke alarm. We were talking about Window opening and you meeting the heavies over Reading. HH: Yeah. We used to fly down with the and meet up with the heavies and then we’d weave in and out of them, stream, you know, and you could see the strength of the stream then because, you know, there was just a whole block of them all over the horizon. AS: And these are daylights. HH: Yeah, in daylight, yeah, it would be. And then somebody in one of the heavies would be signalling to us, you lucky bastards or words to that effect. So I was sent back, been there, done that [laughs]. AS: Fair do’s. Because you could fly a lot faster and a lot higher than they could. HH: Well, we used to be, weave in and out of them, you see. And then, then when you got to the coast, you climbed very rapidly above and you got to your operational height. If we were going to say, if we were Window opening say for Stuttgart, we’d probably do a, you go to Cologne first and drop a few bundles of Window there making them, making them think that was the target, you see. And then we’d go along to wherever, Stuttgart, and where the main force were going, and we’d, we’d do Window opening for the first wave of Pathfinders going in. AS: Okay. This was the, was this the main role of 692 Squadron? HH: Pardon? AS: Was this the main role of 692 Squadron? HH: Yeah, well, we were the light night striking force, yeah. AS: Okay. HH: But our main role was to bomb Berlin every night. AS: Oh, you were involved in this Berlin shuttle? HH: Yes. So, we used to drop our cookie, we used to drop Window for the heavies and then we’d go along to Berlin and drop our four thousand pounders, keep them awake. AS: Ah, so, did you have those special Mosquitos then? HH: Yeah. AS: Those with the pregnant bomb bay? HH: That one there, isn’t it? AS: Yes. Yeah. HH: Yeah. AS: So, who got to drop the bomb? Was it you or the driver? HH: Me. AS: You. HH: Yeah. Unless we were doing low level. And even then it was me up on the front, up in the nose. AS: How did you, how did you drop Window from a tiny little aeroplane like Mosquito? HH: We had a chute, little wooden chute which used to go through the two doors and we just dropped bundles of Window through that. Remember to grab the string as it went down, otherwise you’d just drop bundles [laughs]. AS: You don’t want them falling on someone’s head and hurting them, do you? HH: No [laughs]. So, it’s a nice day now, isn’t it? AS: It’s wonderful out there. It’s great. So, sometimes you were operating with the main bomber stream and sometimes as 8 Group by yourself or squadron by yourself? HH: Individually, yeah. AS: Individually too? HH: We used to fly, we used to sing, I made up, there was a song going round at that time sung by Hildegard, I walk alone, to tell you the truth I’ll be lonely, I don’t mind being lonely, when my heart tells me you are lonely too. So, I made up the words for our squadron, we fly alone, when all the heavies are grounded and dining, 692 will be climbing, we still press on, it’s every night, though they never will give us a French route, for the honour of 8 Group, we’ll still press on. AS: That’s fantastic. HH: It’s always a [unclear] no matter how far, one bomb is slung beneath, it’s twelve degrees east, one engine at least [laughs]. It’s a pretty horrible little song. AS: it’s brilliant. It sums up what you felt. HH: Not as good as some of the songs, you see, erks used to make up in India and down in Burma, you know. One they used to sing, rotting in the jungle, on a [unclear] marshy shores, dysentery, malaria and bags of jungle sores, living around in a bloody great heap, our beds are damp, we cannot sleep, we’re going round the corner, we’re going round the bend, two trips to Meiktila, maybe three or four, AOL’s a keen type, he thinks we’re doing more. When we get back as you can guess, we’ll put this effing kite US [laughs] and we’re going round the, and there’s about two more verses to that, I can’t remember, that’s when the mail arrives, and there’s two for you and f.a. for me you know [laughs]. AS: I think we will have to try and get you a recording contract. This could be an excellent CD on the wireless. HH: I don’t think they’d allow it to be broadcast. AS: Probably not, probably not. But see, you, it sounds as you had very high morale on the squadron. HH: Oh yeah. But, yes, this was when I was on ferrying. AS: And on 692, as you say, opening with Window and then lots and lots of trips to HH: Berlin. AS: To Berlin. Did you ever get involved in a double trip, I believe some people, some crews did two trips to Berlin in one night. HH: Yeah, we did, on one occasion we did. I think we did Duisburg in the morning and Berlin that night. Came back, and refuelled and bombed up again and we were away again. AS: There must have been, I would expect, a cumulative tiredness at that level of operations. I’ve seen your ops on your second tour are very close together. HH: Yeah. AS: First of October, third, fourth, fifth, two on the fifth, very, very very close together and then Berlin followed the next night by Cologne. Did you, were you conscious of getting tired? HH: Well, no, because when you’re off, you went into town and into Cambridge and I met up with my girlfriend and she was lovely, my girlfriend, I must have a picture of her, I did have a picture. She was beautiful, she was lovely red hair and creamy skin, you know, and green eyes, oh, she was beautiful. I used to walk down the street with her and everybody would stop and stare, at her, not at me [laughs]. AS: I was going to ask that. And you met her when you joined the squadron? HH: When I joined 692, yeah. Yeah, we were walking, you remember, do you remember the Red Lion in Cambridge? AS: I don’t know Cambridge well. I know where the airfield is. HH: There used to be a passage where you could go through, you’d start off in the Baron of Beef, down by the river there and, and then you go from there to the Bun Shop and to get to the Bun Shop you have to walk through the Red Lion right, right the way through there, the foyer, there is a bar, two bars there and when I walked through there one night, there was Red sitting there with two of her friends and as I walked through, I said, ‘Cor’ to who I was with and I caught red hair and no drawers, and I said, ‘I’m in’ [laughs]. And she followed me through to the Bun Shop and that’s how I met up with her [laughs]. AS: Excellent. Probably best not pursue that story too much further, I think. So, you’ve got here on a trip to Berlin, landed Woodbridge. Now⸻ HH: Yeah. AS: I know that Woodbridge is one of the emergency landing grounds. HH: Yeah, well we, very often we had to land, when we took S-Sugar, which is a bloody awful aircraft with a terrible fuel consumption, if we took that to Berlin, we would end up, always end up landing short of fuel at Woodbridge. In fact, one night, when Harris was on this station, we were the only squadron operating that night, so he came to our briefing. [phone ringing] AS: I’ll pause there. So, after the phone call, we were talking about S-Sugar and its ability to drink fuel. HH: Yeah, on this night Harris was at the and [unclear] Northrop, our CO was reading out the battle order, you know, and he said, came to, flying officer Mormo, S-Sugar, ‘S-Sugar?’ said Roy, ‘What’s wrong with our Robert?’ ‘Well, that’s got a mark drop on the starboard engine, you’re going to have to take the spare.’ ‘But S f for Sugar, sir, that bloody kite flies like a brick shithouse!’ [laughs] and old Harris was standing there, and he was trying his best not to laugh, you know, his moustache had a twitch and [laughs] you could he’s gonna laugh every minute, you know. But he didn’t, he held it in [laughs] AS: What was Woodbridge like? Is an emergency landing ground very different from a normal airfield? HH: Oh yeah, you, huts with the roof off, you know, half off and snow would come in, on a snowy night, yeah. AS: Not finished? HH: No, they had just blown off. That’s a nuisance that thing, isn’t it? AS: Your smoke alarm, yeah. As we got to this time or you got to this time in the war, this was late 1944. HH: Yeah. AS: Had the scene changed in terms of aids to navigation, things like Sandra lights and Darky and ground organisation, was there a lot to help you? HH: [unclear] Much on the ground I think, mainly H2S, Oboe, things like that, you know. And G8, wasn’t it? G8. AS: G-H, yeah. I didn’t, I don’t know how that worked, I never had that but we were quite content with LORAN. In fact, I got a wind over, going down to, I forget where I was going, Berlin I suppose, but yeah, we were going over to Berlin I think and I got a wind just north of the Ruhr, a hundred and ninety five knots. AS: Wow! HH: And what we’d done, we hit a jet stream, you see, and but when I came back, I said to the met man, I got a wind of a hundred, impossible, impossible, impossible, and it went to Group and Group said impossible as well, went to Command and Command said impossible well then when everybody started to get them, they suddenly realised there was something in this jet stream. Now they talk about nothing else but the bloody jet stream and it annoys me that because they ignored their existence during the war, the met people did and we kept telling them, look there is something up there and it didn’t last very long, you see, you were in it and then you were out of it, you know. So you couldn’t use it as a general wind to carry on to Berlin, shall we say for example, and nor could you use it when you were coming back. You might hit it again but it’d be in a different place slightly and. AS: It must have meant that you had to be on your toes with your fixes all the time. HH: Yeah. Anyway we, AS: In your logbook, it suddenly goes from duty as nav to duty nav b. What was the significance of? HH: Well, I stood in as bomb aimer as well. AS: Ah, okay, that’s what it was. Tremendous number of operations over the winter of ’44-’45. HH: Yeah. AS: So I presume you must have flown in most weather with the nav aids that you had. HH: Oh yeah, I remember one night, I don’t know if I should say this because it’s a bit derogatory to somebody who’s now dead, and that’s to Don Bennett. He was in the control tower on this particular night and we were getting hoarfrost all along the wings of our, as we taxied out we were getting hoarfrost develop all along the wings, so Roy got onto control and he says, ‘Could we have the de-icing bowsers out, please?’ And Bennett said, ‘Never mind about the de-icing bowser, just get off the deck.’ Well, we didn’t go, we said, ‘No, no. It’s too dangerous.’ Anyway, another aircraft came after us and they ploughed into the end of the runway and they were both killed of course when their bomb blew up. And Bennett never said a word to us afterwards, he was, we came back for briefing that night and he’d left the station. We came back and got the de-icing bowser and got cleared of the hoarfrost. He literally left, you see. And then we went to Berlin that night, I think. AS: I should think, with fuel and a four thousand pounder you must have needed all the runway to get off. HH: Yeah, well, there is another tale attached to that, the, you see, we started off with four thousand pounders, I think we were the first squadron to have four thousand pounders, and then they put fifty gallon drop tanks on each wing which were increased eventually to seventy five and then a hundred and then, and then we ran out of four thousand pounders and we had to borrow four thousand pounders from the Americans, which were four and a half thousand pounds. So another five hundred pounds to get off the deck. But the old Mozzie just used to take it all in its stride. No bother. AS: You had no concerns. HH: No, and I remember one day when I’d finished tour. I was sitting in the crew room minding my own business and the CO, a Canadian called Bob Grant came in and he said, ‘You doing anything Hughes?’ I said, no. He said, ‘Grab yourself a ‘chute would you and I’ll see you out at the aircraft.’ I said, ‘What do you⸻’ ‘Just bring a local Gee chart and local maps, would you?’ So when I got out to the bay, they were loading a four thousand pounder and I said, ‘Well, what fuel have we got?’ ‘You’ve a got full load of fuel and two hundred gallon drop tanks.’ And there’s a wind blowing right the way down the 330 runway which was fourteen hundred feet or something compared with two thousand feet on the main runway. I said, ‘What are we gonna do then?’ He said, ‘We’re gonna see if we can get off with this wind, the scale blowing, see if we can get off on this, on the fifteen hundred runway.’ So, we got to the end of the runway, and he waited until there was a gust of wind blowing, until the airspeed indicator was indicating about fifty or sixty knots. And we went. And I dropped the cookie on the live bomb target in the Wash and then we came back. And he got a report and said it wasn’t possible. I said, ‘Well, thanks for telling me.’ [laughs] it wasn’t possible. And he said, ‘No, no, no,’ he said, ‘I don’t think the crew, you could expect the whole crew to wait’, the whole squadron rather to wait until there was a lull, that’s turned till there was a gust of wind which would get them off the deck. AS: It’s a good example of leading from the front though, isn’t it? HH: Yeah. AS: Doing the test himself. HH: It was old Bob Grant, he’s dead now, he married a Yorkshire, he was CO of 105 Squadron, amongst other things and he was, when he got back to Canada, of course he was made up to brigadier, I think. He was a group captain here, so he was a brigadier. That was equivalent to air commodore, wasn’t it? AS: I think so, yeah, yeah. HH: I don’t know. AS: And, ah, there it is Group Captain Grant, 19th of March 1945, bombload take off fourteen hundred yards. That was pretty much the end of your operational flying, I think, wasn’t it? HH: Yeah. AS: On the Mosquito. Last trip, February, February ’45. HH: Hanover, wasn’t it? Or Hamburg, Hanover. AS: Frankfurt, I think, Frankfurt in your log. And did you know that that would be your last trip or you’re just told you’re screened? HH: Yeah. You knew you had to do fifty on Mosquitos. So. AS: And what did happened after that? Did you go back instructing or? HH: No, no, we were sent on leave and when we came back, we’d been posted, several crews had been posted down to Pershore to ferry Canadian built Mosquitos across the Atlantic. And I crewed up with a different, Lloyd had gone back to New Zealand and he used to fly with Air New Zealand after the war. And thanks to me, because someone had put a bottle through his hand and all the tendons had gone. And so he couldn’t, when we were taking off at Whiten once doing a cross country, we got airborne and suddenly the throttle went back and he grabbed hold of them and held it with his hand and because you had to keep the throttle up so loose ‘cause of this weakness in his left hand. So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Roy, from now on I’ll tighten the throttle knot for you when you’re ready. As soon as you want, you just say, throttle knob and I will reach through and grab the throttle knob and turn it and tighten it for you.’ And we did that every trip. And but I, ‘cause I had to reach over, I couldn’t strap in, so I did all my trips without strapping in [laughs]. I never strapped in again, not with Roy flying. So he’d of never, I mean, he was flying with Air New Zealand afterwards he’d never have passed their medical if he’d of disclosed it, you know. AS: But eventually, not in a Mosquito, but he’d be flying with throttles on the other hand, wouldn’t he? So the problem, HH: Yeah. AS: The problem would go away. So you’d had some leave, you were posted to fly to Pershore to fly Mosquitos. H: Yeah. And we were sent on indefinite leave, Pershore sent us on indefinite leave. And I thought, oh God, I’ll be grounded for sure. So, I got on a train and went up to Air Ministry and saw a wing commander there and I said, look, there is a war going in in the Far East [unclear] aircraft ferried out there, coming back for maintenance and what have you. And he said, what a good idea, you know, come back in the morning, will you? And I got the whole lot posted out to the Far East. Fifteen or eighteen, I think I told you this before, didn’t I? AS: I think so but we didn’t get in on the tape, I don’t think, no. HH: No. AS: I bet you were popular. HH: Fifteen, oh God, when I got down to Lyneham they were moaning, ‘I’m just due for demob for God’s sake, why the heck do I have to, due for demob any day now.’ AS: I bet you kept quiet. HH: And here I am, so I kept very quiet. And so, I mean I wasn’t due for demob for some time. AS: So here we are, Lyneham in July ’45. A huge trip as a passenger on a deck. Thirty two hours flying. HH: Yeah, back to Karachi, yeah. AS: So by going, going East, you, did you, before you went, did you see, did you go on any of these trips over, over Germany to see all the destruction? HH: No, no. AS: Okay. HH: I missed all that. AS: You’d said earlier that you said a prayer for the people of Hamburg. What, at the end of the war, did you reflect at all on the, or during that, on the bombing? And what were your feelings about being involved in it in the war? HH: Well, I’ve spoken to our vicar about it, you know, and said, do you think Saint Peter’s gonna let me through the gates? Or not. So she sat and he said a prayer for me. Lady vicar of course. Anyway, but I was invited out to Hanover as a guest of the mayor and the local newspaper to commemorate the 60th anniversary of when we bombed them. AS: And you went? HH: So I went over, yeah, well, I was asked to volunteer and I remember, at the Bomber Command meeting they said, did anybody go to Hanover, I said, well, I did. When I got home, I found out I’d been to Hanover about eleven times and [laughs] so I was well qualified. AS: And are you pleased you went, did it turn out well? HH: Yes, they were very, very, very nice, I like German people. AS: So do I. HH: I got two of them coming over now. Here any day now. I think. They stay up at [unclear] castle, ‘cause he’s paraplegic, he can’t get down my steps. AS: Yeah. HH: He’s, he had polio when he was a youngster. But they come over by air this time so he couldn’t bring his invalid scooter with him so I don’t know whether he’s gonna hire one when they’re here or not, I don’t know what they’re gonna do to get around. AS: That should be possible, I think. HH: Yeah. AS: And these are friends you made when you went to Hanover? HH: Yeah. Well, they were both reporters with the Hamburger Allgemeine. And anyway I was, the last day I was there in Hanover I was there for about three or four days, I had to attend a meeting of all the survivors from the raids and all the students from university there and the colleges and what have you and a little girl gets up and question time you see and she gets up and says, can I please explain what was the duty of the navigator? Well if you ask me a stupid question like that, I’m gonna give you a stupid answer, for sure. So I said, ‘Well, the reason why we carried a navigator, because we had to have someone on board who could read and write’ [laughs] and their mouths fell open, he went like this, everybody, so I said to my interpreter, I said, ‘Tell them, it was a joke, will you?’ ‘Ah, a joke, yeah, we got no sense of humour, we Germans, we’ve got no sense of humour at all.’ [unclear] So then, later on somebody, one of the survivors said, ‘Why did you bomb the city?’ So I said, ‘To be perfectly honest, we couldn’t hit anything smaller but just remember this,’ I said, ‘Right in the centre, almost within half a mile from the centre of Hanover there was the biggest rubber factory in Germany, so it made Hanover a very legitimate target.’ ‘Yes’, this man says, ‘But you didn’t hit it, did you? ‘Cause it’s still there!’ [laughs]. I said, ‘Well, and you tried to tell me that the Germans got no sense of humour?’ [laughs] And then I was on their side from then on. AS: I’ve lived there for eleven years. I’m with you. I’ve lived there for eleven years. HH: Have you? AS: Yeah. They’re great people, great people. I think. HH: In which part were you? AS: I was in Munich for five years. HH: Yeah. AS: And then in Bonn and Cologne, in the Rhineland for about six altogether. Some of the places you visited by air, in fact. That’s the feelings of the Germans. How, there’s been a lot of controversy about how Bomber Command were treated after the war. Have you got any views on that? HH: Well, I think, first of all, we should never, never have bombed Dresden, I think that was the biggest mistake we made. And Portal should have stood up and said, no! But he didn’t have the guts to do it, he didn’t have the guts to stand up to Churchill and it was Churchill who, on his way to Yalta, he stopped off at Malta, And they’d agreed to bomb five cities within reach of the Russian lines, you know, and I think Dresden was one and what’s that? And Leipzig and one other I think. Anyway he sent back this signal to Portal saying, from Malta saying, where is my spectacular, get on with it. So, Portal looked at the charts and he consulted the Met people and the only target available that night was Dresden. I didn’t go to Dresden, I went to Magdeburg, Magdeburg that night, you can see it on there, in that book there. AS: You believe it was, that Dresden was the turning point and that? HH: Mh? AS: You believe that Dresden was some sort of turning point? HH: Yeah. AS: How Bomber Command were treated? HH: Yeah. AS: Did you, do you feel now that it’s changed with the memorials and the clasp? HH: Yeah, I think so. I think, there was a time just after the war, when the people who were against us were the people who were in the Air Force or in one of the forces and they felt that we were, they didn’t want us to have any publicity, you know. AS: After the war. HH: Yeah. And then, and then since then, they’ve suddenly realised that you know, we had the highest losses of any unit in the, our forces, fifty five thousand killed, which is quite a lot, wasn’t it? AS: Yeah. Fifty five thousand, five hundred and seventy three. HH: Yeah. AS: And you’ve seen a, well, or you see a change in attitudes now. HH: Yes, I think, younger people are much more inclined to want to hear about it and talk about it and understand why we did it and there is no good saying, well, we were under orders to do it, because that’s what the Germans excuses were, you know, for their treatment of the in the concentration camps. We were under orders. AS: And you did it because it was right? HH: Well, we did it because we thought we were, ‘cause we were shortening the war and therefore less people would be killed. AS: Is it, I agree, you say, that now people want to hear about it, is it good for you and other veterans to be able to talk about it after all this time? HH: It’s getting more and more difficult, there’s so many books have been written on there, now. AS: And you are actually in one of the books. HH: Yeah. AS: Steve Darlow’s book. How did all that come about? Did you get involved with him? HH: I don’t know. He wanted, I think I was recommended by probably Bomber Command, you know, Dougie Radcliffe. AS: Oh, the Bomber Command Association. HH: Yeah. AS: Have you always played a big part in that? HH: No, no, I was mainly in the Pathfinders Association. AS: Oh, okay. HH: We were separate from, we were separate from the Bomber Command Association, but I’d already joined the Bomber Command Association when we disbanded. I’d already been a member for several years. AS: And do you belong to your squadron or 102 Squadron association as well? HH: Yeah. Yes, it’s, I’ve written a letter to, when I went to the VJ-Day celebrations⸻ AS: Yes. HH: We had to fill out a form travelling expenses and I got three hundred pounds from the Lottery Fund. AS: Excellent. HH: And my son Jeremy, who’d driven me up there and then he got three hundred pounds as well. And I don’t, I hope he hasn’t. So I wrote a letter to the Big Lottery and said, thanking them for their, I said, so, twice a year I’ve got to go to, up to Pocklington in Yorkshire, which is rather expensive for me now ‘cause you got to go up Virgin cross country you know, right the way up to York and it’s a long journey that. It’s an interesting journey but there’s no, there was a little old lady pushing the tray along, pushing the trolley along, you know, that’s all that you get to eat with some coffee and a fruitcake or something. AS: It’s not the same as a full dining car. HH: I like the dining cars on, I’m going up on the 22nd of October I think, coming back on the 23rd, I always travel back down on the dining car which, on a train with a dining car which leaves at seven o’clock in the evening. AS: Do you still have wartime comrades that you’ll meet in Pocklington? HH: Oh yes, yeah. Most of them are dead now but. AS: So, a lot of reminiscing and’ HH: Yeah. There’s a friend of mine, who was a previous chairman, Tom Wingate, who, he wrote a book called Halifax Down, ‘cause he was shot down on his second tour, and I used to have a copy but I can’t find it now. I don’t know what I have done with it, I lose things all the time now. AS: I have a copy at home, I can send you one. HH: Pardon? AS: I have a copy, I can send you one. HH: You got a copy of that? AS: Yeah, I have. HH: Halifax Down, yes, it’s not a bad book, actually. Except that he joined the squadron the same time as I did, his crew did. And he’s quoted in his book, as if he was there three or four months before me. He’s quoted various trips and he’s got these out of those old war diaries, wish I could find that. I wonder where I put it? AS: Well, you’ll have to take your logbook the next time you meet him. HH: Oh no, he’s dead now. AS: Okay. HH: That’s why I’ve taken over as chairman. AS: After you came off ops, you did this trip out to the Far East, did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes? HH: In what? AS: Did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes? HH: Oh yes, yeah. AS: Okay. HH: It’s quite a lot really. My very first trip was down to Akyab, on the Arakan coast. I think I told you, didn’t I? AS: Yes, but not into the tape. So, what happened on that trip? HH: I don’t think that particular trip’s in there, actually, I looked for it the other day and I can’t find it. I must have left it out for some reason. AS: This was the trip with the Japanese. HH: Yes, all the way around us were Zeros, you know. We could hear them yacketing away and then this Indian crew comes on with their Hurricanes and the Japanese just disappeared. AS: What was the radio conversation about with these Indian squadrons, red flight? HH: Pardon? AS: What was the radio conversation story about the? HH: Oh, well, the Indian crews? ‘Yes, red leader to yellow leader, how do you read me, over? Yellow leader to green, you are not red, you are green, you know? Red leader to yellow leader, I am not green, I am red. And this Aussie voice comes up by the blue, you are black, you bastard’ [laughs]. AS: So, it’s still a combat area that you’re flying replacement aircraft I suppose in to the squadrons? HH: Yeah. AS: Did you get involved in flying damaged aircraft for repair? HH: Oh, I used to fly back from say Kamila or with two Pratt & Whitney’s engines in the back and a load of ENSA girls as well amongst them [laughs], sitting where they could and trying not to get greasy, ‘cause these, and yeah. AS: Yeah. Shall we, pause there I think? HH: Yeah. AS: And wind it up. Thank you that, It’s been absolutely wonderful to hear. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Harry Hughes Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Sutch Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-10-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AHughesWH151021 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 02:28:15 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Description An account of the resource Harry Hughes volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1940 and trained in America, where he was washed out as a pilot and then retrained as a navigator in Canada, flying Ansons and Wellingtons. In 1942, he converted to Halifaxes and flew operations over Germany with 102 Squadron, being awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying an operation to Berlin whilst on crutches. He recounts the routines of preparing to go on operations and his use of navigation aids including Gee, LORAN and, later, Boozer in Mosquitos. He was bomb struck twice during operations. He completed 26 operations, including the bombing of Hamburg which he describes as a firestorm and recalls saying a private prayer for the people of Hamburg below. After his tour finished, he then instructed before applying to go back on operations with 8 Group, flying Mosquitos with 692 Squadron and dropping Window for Pathfinder forces in 1944/45. In 2004 he visited Hanover and discussed the raids with survivors of the war. He was a member of several post war service associations and kept in contact with his crewmates. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Peter Schulze Carolyn Emery Maureen Clarke Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Canada Germany Great Britain East Asia England--Cambridgeshire England--Yorkshire Germany--Berlin Germany--Dresden Germany--Essen Germany--Hamburg Germany--Hannover Germany--Ruhr (Region) United States Alabama--Montgomery Alabama Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940 1941 1943 1944 1945 102 Squadron 3 Group 6 Group 692 Squadron 8 Group aircrew Anson Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986) Berlin Campaign (23 August 1943 – 25 March 1944) bomb struck bombing bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945) bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943) briefing Distinguished Flying Cross Distinguished Flying Medal faith Fw 190 Gee ground personnel Halifax Halifax Mk 1 Halifax Mk 2 Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984) incendiary device intelligence officer Ju 88 Me 109 Me 110 Me 262 medical officer meteorological officer military service conditions Mosquito navigator Operational Training Unit Pathfinders perception of bombing war Portal, Charles (1893-1971) promotion RAF Chedburgh RAF Harwell RAF Riccall RAF Wombleton RCAF Rivers Ruhr Campaign (5 March – 10 July 1943) Stirling training Wellington Window https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/919/11164/ALastRR151125.mp3 1549212534df145caa24e82c2fc713ce Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Last, Ronald Roland Ron Last R R Last Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Ronald Last (1921 - 2016, 160501 Royal Air Force). Ronald Last flew operations as a bomb aimer with 466 Squadron before his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-11-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Last, RR Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Sutch Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AS: This is an interview with Ron Last, a bomb aimer on 466 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Honiton, Devon for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. Also present is his daughter Sheila. Ron, thanks ever so much for agreeing for this interview. I’d like to set the scene by asking you about your life before the war. Before you joined the air force. Can you tell me a bit about where you were born and your family? RL: I was born at Wimborne in Dorset. That was where my grandmother lived. My home address was in 2 Waterloo Road, Bournemouth. I was, I left school at fourteen and I joined the Bournemouth Gas and Water Company as an apprentice gas fitter. When I, when I was, war was broke out I volunteered for the Marines. And the recruiting sergeant laughed and told me to go home and grow up. Well, I was only, what? Sixteen or something like that. AS: Sixteen. What’s your birthday? When’s your birthday? RL: I went to the army recruiting office and they looked at me and said, well, ‘Go on home and grow up.’ Well, in the end I volunteered for the RAF. Aircrew. They called me up for a couple of days to go to Uxbridge. Uxbridge, where they gave me a medical and it was a rather funny thing. They wanted to know whether my lungs were strong enough and they offered me a U-Gauge. That, yes, they put water in the U-Gauge you see and of course you blew that up and after you’d done that they filled the U-Gauge up with mercury and gave me the tube to blow up. And of course, I can only hold my breath for a few seconds. And then they told me to sit back, you know and take a real blow and I got a good reading on the thing. And they told me I had to hold my breath for a minute. Well, I blew it up, of course and with mercury being a heavy kind of thing — phew. But I passed that. Well, when you think of it mercury is a poison. It’s not exactly the thing to play with. I was sent home with a paper to see a dentist locally. So, I made an appointment with a local dentist, dentist and he gave me some fillings or whatever had to be done. I was then on the sort of a waiting list to be called up. One day I received a notification that I was to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. So, saying difficult goodbyes to my wife and things. I got up to Lords Cricket Ground and I go into a Sector L. I was supposed to be given a uniform there but all I received was a respirator and a forage cap. Well, apparently, they never had the equipment to give us but we all had some indication of uniform. Well, we used to go for our meal to Regent’s Park Zoo. And one day, and we were living in the flat by Regent’s Park, well one day we were told we were going to have inoculations and things like that. That was really something. We were marched there to a big house with iron fire escapes and when we got to this base of this thing we were given a cap. Kit bag. And we were told to strip off all our top clothing. Well, we gradually moved up this stairway and we got to the building. Then we got to a room where there was a doctor and a medical bloke. One, the idea, the medical johnny was filling up with vaccines or whatever it was and passing them to the doctor who would put it in your arm. Well, it was just like a factory. Now, if you didn’t move after you had it just as likely you got another one, see. The best part about it there was a cast iron radiator in this room. Well there was a lot of people passing out kind of thing and of course this cast iron radiator didn’t do any problems. Well, we had two or three inoculations and then we had one on the chest. Well, of course when we finished we all went on the town that night to some, well the first time we’d seen, were the Regent’s Park and the ambulance bells were ringing like mad where people were passing out. Well, when you were on a respirator the straps went across where you’d been vaccinated which didn’t, I didn’t have them to call. No trouble. Well, after two or three days in there we got a bit more kit but not a full uniform, you know. One day we were told we were going to be on the move so we found out we were going to Newquay. So, bright and early on Monday morning we were all paraded up here. And we waited for hours before we moved off. And we no sooner got moving and I’ll never forget it, coming towards us was a platoon of Guardsmen. Guardsmen. Now, of course they were in step but we, we were come clattering along you know and these guardsmen just walked on by. Well, we got on this train and we still waited and waited. Then all of a sudden we go off. We got, we got on this train and we chugged off from the town, and [pause] No. I beg your pardon. That’s not Newquay. We went to Pwllheli in North Wales. That’s a correction. And then when we got there it was a gunnery school but they never knew anything about what I was going to do so we, we spent time. They never had a gunnery course [pause] Maybe I’m getting confused here. AS: Did you go straight to gunnery training or did you do some flying first? RL: We didn’t [pause] no that’s not [pause] Can I just — that was where you were going to do your training. How to walk properly, how to turn around, who to salute and all that kind of thing. But they must have had the foundation to be able to do anything. They marched up and down like that. Well, the officers in our, like platoon were school teachers. They didn’t appear to have any training. They were just brought in as school teachers. We did arithmetic and English and, like that. Well, that was alright in some respects but it, we used to feed. Now, in Newquay, as a fishing port, we used to live on fish. I’m sure that if I’d have stayed much longer I’d have got flippers. It used to be very annoying to walk around to these empty hotels which are our class rooms and then to come out and you could smell this fish cooking. Well, we used to go in to, to the dining room. You didn’t sit where you wanted to. You just filed in and sat on the — and I was unfortunate to be at the end of a line. And of course, the duty NCO came in with the officer. ‘Any complaints?’ And I didn’t think about being me but I was on the end of the line so I was, ‘Yes sir. We think this fish is bad.’ So, he says to the NCO, ‘Get me a portion.’ So, a fish portion was given to him on a plate with a fork and he daintily pushed his fork in to this fish and he’d only had a tiny bit like that and he licks it. ‘I don’t think it’s bad.’ Three night’s fire-watch for doing that. I never sat on the end of a line after that. Well, it was the, these officers they have never been through an officer’s course. I reckon they were just given the uniform as they’d retired. I mean church parade. Act your age in front. And instead of walking by the main road to the church they took us down the road a bit, left turn, right turn and we went ziggyzag, you see. Well, by the time they got to church they only had a half a platoon because when they went around the corners the back people skived off. Prior to this when we were announced we had church parade a Cockney recruit said he was an atheist. The sergeant didn’t argue with him or anything like that. We paraded, you see. When we got down to this church all the other people walked into this church and the sergeant said to this bloke, ‘Stand over there.’ By a wooden seat outside. So, as soon as the service started, he said to this man, ‘Attention.’ And the bloke had to stand to attention all the way. All through the service. And of course, the sergeant was sat down on the seat with his newspaper and fag you see. Funny, that bloke had religion the next week. AS: When was this? When did you join the air force? [pause] RL: There are some dates there. AS: Ok. So, this was in April, 17th of April you went to Uxbridge. RL: Yeah. AS: And then you went arsydarsy [ACRC] in London in September ’41. RL: Yeah. AS: And Newquay in October ‘41. So, in October ‘41 all this was going on. RL: Yes. AS: Yes. Did you — RL: And — AS: Did you do exams after these lessons of maths and things? RL: Did we do what? AS: Exams. Examinations at Newquay. Tests. RL: Well, sort of but I mean we, I suppose these school teachers made their reports. We were all trainee air crew in those days. Obviously, we were all, all was going to be pilots. As we thought, you know. Let me just have that back again will you, please. [pause] AS: Can we wind back a bit? RL: Yeah. Well, we got then we went from Newquay we went to Sywell. That was a Tiger Moth flying station. AS: Ok. RL: It was a private aerodrome. We were all dressed up as airmen. Our flying kit in those days was a silk undergarment, a capote over garment and a canvas over jacket. Goggles. Helmets. Sea boot stockings and flying boots. That’s the first time I’d worn all this. Now, it was a beautiful day and you sat outside this, like, clubhouse kind of thing and all of a sudden somebody would come up and call your name and, ‘I’m your pilot,’ you see. Now, you wobbled out to one of the aircraft, lath and plaster kind of thing and you climbed in it. You no sooner made yourself comfortable, well, semi comfortable. By that time you were sweating. It was running off you. Oh, you had goggles on then. Well, he takes off, you see and, ‘Ever flown before?’ ‘No. No.’ He said, ‘Well, I’m going to do a spin.’ And he showed me, you know, you’ll see the artificial horizon come up. You’ll bring that up,’ he said, ‘And you’re going to stall. And you kick the left rudder and you go to the right,’ or something. Yeah. And then he pulled out, you see. Well, all he was doing is looking in his mirror to see whether you were sick or alright. Course no. I was decided. Seeing this spinning around like this. Yeah. Then come back. Then we did it for the next time. And of course, it was lovely seeing the earth spinning around, you know. You didn’t, you didn’t do anything without being told. So, we landed, you know. Well, we were going through our course when we were, one bloke told us to go back to our classroom. And the commanding officer looks up and said, ‘The air force are introducing another crew member.’ So, we said, ‘What is that?’ And he said, ‘Bomb aimer.’ So, we asked a lot a lot of questions, ‘What’s the pay?’ Right. And that kind of thing. And he said, ‘I want volunteers.’ So, nobody volunteered. They all wanted to be brylcreem boys, you know, and that. So, he said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Transport will be outside. They’ll take you back to your civilian accommodation.’ He said, ‘You’ll collect your kit and we’ll — AS: How many hours flying had you done as a, as a pilot. Very few? RL: Very few. There was, oh apart from going into the classroom. There was one fella that was going on his solo and we were all watching him and he landed after a series of bumps but pulled up. But I think he got, went on with flying duties but that’s, as I say. So, we, he volunteered us all for the [pause] Well we got down to this, excuse me I’ve got a [pause] We got down to Penrhos. That was a gunnery school kind of thing. AS: Ok. RL: And they had not heard about a bomb aimer you see and they didn’t know really what to teach us. So, in the end we started flying around and dropping nine pound spent bombs on the bay just outside there. It was daft really. Ansons. We had a sight and we had to clip this sight on to a spigot. Well, the pilot would go towards the target and you had to give the corrections. You know. Well, you never had a Perspex panel. You had a metal panel used there. Well, the idea is you drop this bomb and you had to mark on a chart where it hit, according to the floating target and there was also a bloke on the headland there. Well, it shows how daft it was. We clipped on our bombsight on to this spigot and opened this door. Well, to drop your bomb you had to inch yourself forward to there. That released the bombsight on the spigot and of course we lost a few bombsights. So, in the end they decided to give us a lanyard. So that nearly pulled you out of, out of the bomb place. Well, we, we did a few night flying and things like that and we always used to drop a five hundred sand filled bomb into the sand pits prior to landing. Well, we never had such a record of this but I [pause] I passed out on that. And apparently, to my log book I had above average. So that wasn’t bad. Well — AS: What else did they teach you? Did they teach you navigation? Or, or gunnery? RL: Pardon? AS: Did they teach you any navigation or gunnery? RL: Well, yes but only, how can I say? Basics, you know. We [pause] not really in as much as when we used to go out on sort of bombing runs. Like we flew around the villages and had to take a photograph of the church which we bombed, kind of thing. That was, that was bloody silly. Well, looking back it was a bloody silly training. And see, when we used to go around to these villages or sights. There was eight of them. Eight sights you’d go around. Well, you’re up at the front of this bloody Anson, kind of thing. No intercom. You would go on to the skipper like that and come straight up and you’d get these where you were going to drop your bombs. Well, you’d perhaps give them, ‘Left. Left. Steady. Steady,’ blah blah. Right. AS: All hand signals. RL: Like that. When you wanted to bomb that meant the photograph and you had this bloody great box in front of you and when you’ve got to it, then you’d turn this bloody handle to take the photograph and then when you finished you wanted to say, ‘Bring her around,’ but they wouldn’t come up, you know. No. And of course he’d be bringing it up and the camera would go back into your turret. Well, when you’d done about six of these you weren’t exactly feeling very bright. If you’ve managed to do eight, get out of the craft, out of the aircraft and rest your back up against it and take a breath you were alright. Of course, if you were sick they used to cost you five bob to clean. For somebody else to clean it up or you had to do it yourself. Well, we spent quite a nice time down there. Apart from being in a classroom kind of thing. And at the end of this day we’d missed the transport to send us back to our billets and of course you weren’t exactly feeling like that but we were billeted in garden sheds. The funny thing, it’s a safe bet if you walked down the main street, about the only street there, and you saw a bloke coming towards you it was a safe bet if you said, ‘Good afternoon Mr Jones.’ They were all Jones’ there. AS: Did you lose any aircraft on training? Crews and aircraft, on training. RL: No. They were a bit shaky. They had a lot of Polish pilots that were on relief and I think it was an insult to those men to get put back for relief. All they wanted to do was to fly the enemy. They did some crazy things. You’d go out some nights with one man. If we circled around a village and his girlfriend lived in that village there would be a light come up, you know. They were, they were absolutely [pause] well I think they thought of it as an insult to be took out. AS: Ok. RL: But — AS: When you’d finished there did you have a passing out parade and get your brevet? Did you have a big parade when you finished your training and get your brevet? RL: No. No. AS: How did that happen? RL: We went in as LACs one morning and we were just given a brevet and sergeant’s stripes. I know we went up to Harwell next. That was an Operational Training Wing where you were all crewed up. And then [pause] oh you did more flying. Sort of over to the Isle of Man and things like that. AS: Ok. RL: That was normal flying. AS: How, how did you crew up? How did you choose who you were going to fly with? RL: How did you choose? AS: Who you were going to fly with. How did you choose your crew? RL: Well, how can I say? We mucked in together, kind of thing where I’d get in there and you saw different blokes. You mucked in with or, ‘Do you want to be in our crew?’ Kind of thing. It was sort of, well look at the blokes faces and say, ‘Well you’re not a bad chap, are you?’ No. There was no, no official crewing. No. There wasn’t like, well as I said, I was above average. I don’t, I don’t think we looked for above average crew. I mean, we just mucked in. And then we went down to Driffield for a time. That’s where 466 was starting. That, that was a place where well we didn’t do much there and we were moved up to Leconfield. I was in crew number 3. AS: That was Healy’s crew was it? RL: No. That was on squadron. AS: Yeah. Was Healy you pilot? Was that your, your crew? With, with Healy? [pause] RL: Yeah. AS: Ok. Let’s just pause there for a minute and we’ll get your logbook, I think. [recording paused] AS: Right. We’re, we’re back after a break and Ron, I’d like to ask you some questions about joining the squadron. What, what was that like when you’d finished OTU and joined the squadron? RL: Well, we [pause] we all sort of mucked in and did a lot of crewing. I was, a Flight Sergeant Healy was my pilot for a time. But after a time, a very small time, I couldn’t tell you the date, he was taken off flying. AS: Was he sick? RL: What is that — Sheila. Sheila: Yeah. RL: What was that letters? Sheila: Lack of moral fibre. RL: Lack of moral. AS: Oh. How did that turn up? RL: Well [pause] we [pause] we flew with him. Well, we did our first op in 466, 13th of January ’43 and he [pause] he put in a rear turret u/s going to Kiel. Then he had a starboard oil pressure return to base. And then he suddenly disappeared. You couldn’t find out what happened to him but lack, lack of fibre we think. AS: Ok. RL: I mean he was here one day and gone the next. AS: He never, he never discussed these things that went wrong with the aeroplane, with the crew. RL: Well, we wondered whether, well, he faked it or not. And this lack of moral fibre, well you, there wasn’t any information. But we, we wondered whether that was it. It wasn’t, it was as though he was sick. I mean, he would, one, one day he was worse and then the next day he wasn’t. Now, it’s a horrible thing to have been labelled that. But I don’t know whether I had [pause] I’ve got so much bumph here, I don’t — AS: Did you all live together? Were you all sergeants? Did you all live together as a crew? Were you all sergeants or some officers? RL: At Driffield we lived in the married quarters. Three of us — the rear gunner, a wireless op and me. We lived in, like the master bedroom. Now, we got a ration of coal to light the bedroom fire up. AS: Yeah. RL: But it was so bloody cold. The only time I ever wore my Irvin suit. We used to light this fire up and take it in turns to undress and put on our Irvin trousers and jacket and climb into bed. Well, Kurdy was something to do with transport and the food thing. So, we decided one night, as the coal ration wasn’t enough, we would break into the coal thing and get some more coal. So, off we go with the wire cutters. Real, real professional, you know. Cut the wire. Got in. Filled up this sack, you know, with coal, kind of thing. And then we realized we couldn’t carry it. You know [laughs] Well, all of a sudden the tannoy came on. And you’d never seen anything like it. Kurdy was only a little bloke. He gets this sack on to his shoulder and he scarpered with Bob and me, we were following on. When we got back to the house there Kurdy was by the fire [breathing heavily]. But, I mean, we could have got court martialed for that. We were warned. But I don’t know. You see, when we were called up — like, like on a train. Now Bournemouth is a, was a big town. If you went for a, on a train for a journey to go up to Southampton well you couldn’t afford it really. But once you got on the train and you kept along and you came to the another station and a bloke gets on. He’s as bewildered as you are so you talk, don’t you? By the time you get to the next station you’re friends. I mean, but I mean some of the poor blokes got on. They were, well, like farm labourers. They’d never been in a train. Get in to a train and look at everything going by. That’s marvelous. I mean three meals a day they got. They didn’t get three meals a day at home, did they? AS: No. Not at all. No. RL: They thought they were in heaven. AS: So, you’ve done OTU with your crew and then the whole crew get posted to Driffield. To the squadron. RL: Yeah. AS: And then, this is September 1942. And then it seems the squadron did a long time training. A lot of training was it? RL: Oh yes. Yeah. We had lots of training [pause] I wonder where that got to. AS: What, what was that all about? Was it because you were all new crews that there was so much training going on? RL: Well, 1942 [pause] Where have I got that from? Oh, I expect when they went to sign it — AS: Not enough room for the stamp. Yeah. RL: Yeah. AS: Ok. Can I borrow that back? So, it took about three months before you went on operations. This was on what? On Wellingtons you had. RL: Yeah. Well, we had, most of our training was at, flying training was at Leconfield, wasn’t it? [pause] Captain, crew. January. [pause] AS: I’ll just pause it there for a second. [recording paused] AS: Back after another pause. Ron, I’d like to ask you about being a bomb aimer. What your duties were in the aeroplane on a, on a mission. What — RL: Well, I used to sit on the right of the pilot. My duties were — I used to keep an eye on the instrument panel for any, well, any sort of [pause] well — AS: Deficiencies I suppose. Yeah. Anything wrong. RL: Any sort of fault — AS: Yeah. RL: That arises. With the Wimpy I always had to turn on the nacelle fuel tanks. That meant I used to, well if we were on oxygen I’d take a bottle of, a small bottle of oxygen and plug in because I had to go down the aircraft, over the main spar to where these toggles were at the side of the aircraft. Now, these toggles were connected up by wire to the nacelle tanks and it was my duty to, when the fuel tanks were nearing the emptying point the skipper used to tell me to go down the back and I’d sit down at the back by these toggles. Now, when he told me to switch on these toggles I had to pull on the toggle and engage a ball bearing that was welded on them into a keyhole slot. It wasn’t very clever. AS: How many pairs of gloves were you wearing? RL: And you’d no sooner, he’d say, ‘Starboard,’ and you’d pull on the starboard and you couldn’t get the ball back enough in there when you were tugging. And he’d say, ‘Port,’ and you’d have to grab the other one and pull. Well, we used to say to the, on the, ‘Slow down skipper. Slow down.’ Thinking that if he didn’t go so fast the wings wouldn’t bow out and after you’ve got them in you were [reading for gas then?] AS: Yeah. So, the flexing of wing — RL: Yeah. Well — AS: Was making the cable tight. RL: Yeah. AS: Yeah. RL: I mean it was straight down and we used to feel we bleeding wanted him to slow down so that the wings would go back. It was [pause] it was a horrible feeling because when you’ve got both of them you were pulling like mad, you know. And of course it was only like a keyhole that took the ball. It was rather frightening. Now, a thing we [pause] we didn’t do according to regulations. Of course, you all know that you, you know better. Well, when he used to say to us, ‘Right. Go on down the back there. Instead of putting our portable air line on we used to go [breathe in deeply] go down the back there, you know. When you got to this main spar you had to put your leg up over and it’s true when you go to put the next leg down you can’t push it down to the ground. And then when you do get down you get down to the port and your fumbling for the air line. That’s like the electro light. The maintenance panel. AS: Bayonet fitting. Yeah. RL: You swear that they’re going into each other but they’re not, you know. But we, and I often thought if I’d have passed out nobody would have known. AS: What else were your duties? Apart from the tanks what else did you have to do? RL: Well, I went to, going over the North Sea to the target I would switch on the bombing panel and get the bombs off, off safety. AS: When would you do that? RL: Pardon? AS: When do you take the bombs off safe? RL: Well, they had split pins. AS: Yeah. RL: In these things. And if you got back to camp the bomber, bomb aimer mechanic, he would collect these things. There was a gadget used to come down — and pull. Engage on the split pin on the bomb. Pull it out. But that meant when I dropped them, they were live. AS: Was this gadget electrical? RL: Yes. AS: Ok. RL: As I say if you got back to camp and you never had these split pins you dropped the bombs safe. I don’t mean they wouldn’t go off but quite a possibility that they wouldn’t go off. AS: So, you, you made the bombs, you armed the bombs over the North Sea. RL: Yeah. AS: Ok. RL: Well, like when we came back, we’d switch on the panel and if we got the lights on one place we’d got a hang up so we had to get rid of that over the North Sea because we didn’t like landing with a bomb on board. Sometimes that used to be just a matter of jigging up the switch or rocking the aircraft. When the light went out you knew you were alright. AS: So, you’ve switched, you’ve turned on the bomb panel. You’ve set the bombs. You’ve armed the bombs. When did you take control of the aircraft? When was it your aeroplane to steer? RL: Well, as you approached the target it was the pilot. We used to drop our bombs on a red flare or green. Whatever they told us. So, if the pilot, should I say aims at perhaps this odd one or clutch of red bombs and then you sort of took over. I mean the pilot [pause] the pilot could see the target so I mean he was going, he was going for it all the time. It was only when, as I say you got near enough to, ‘Left. Left.’ The next time you were there it might be oh just about, ‘Right. Right. That’s enough.’ It was only an adjustment. AS: How, how did your bombsight work? How did you bring it on to the target? What, what were you looking for? RL: How? AS: How did the bombsight work? What were you looking for? RL: Well, we never had these H2S. We just had a sight. As long as you put the wind on to direct and things like that that’s all you could, that’s all you did. I mean, as the war went on it wasn’t just a matter of bombing some guns or searchlights. I mean [pause] well you see it on television and on the pictures where the target was ablaze but when you see this target in front of you and its ablaze. I mean, I might have been a poor bomb aimer and not, and not should I say, knocked over these factories but there was a lot of people that had to change our underwear. You see [pause] it was just destroy the city or a town. AS: Yeah. RL: And then [pause] I mean it’s amazing for someone. We were on the second wave. AS: To Hamburg? RL: Pardon. AS: Second wave to where? Hamburg? RL: Well we used to go like the first wave and then there’s the second wave. AS: Yeah. RL: Was there. Well, when you could see, well, miles of flames leaping up it was unbelievable. The night that I was shot down there was the Germans shooting up flares and it was just, well can I just say going through [Exeter?] main road with all the street lamps on and you were going up to it and you’re going to raid, and you’d spend. AS: These were fighter flares. Yeah. RL: Yeah. With all this stuff. I mean they, they couldn’t miss us. AS: When you, because you flew as Bomber Command was getting better and better and better. RL: Yeah. AS: And better at its job. So, did you notice the difference in the effect from when you started bombing to, you know, say the Battle of Hamburg, the Battle of Berlin. Were the fires getting bigger? RL: Yeah. I mean the first time I saw, saw it, when we went back home the rear gunner was talking like you could still see the glow in the sky. Not a, not just a low glow. A big glow. And when I, when I was shot down it was my turn to open the escape hatch and my turn to go out first. You’d jump out of the aircraft but in a way that would be silly. There was an open gap there and I stepped out in it but my back thing gets caught on the — AS: On the edge. RL: The edge of the, and I can remember, ‘Push me. Push me.’ And they pushed me. Well. Then I dropped. I can’t remember counting three and putting on the, I must have pulled it then. And on this day, ‘Oh bloody hell. I’m going to drop in to that lot.’ The bloody fire is burning isn’t it? Then of course the common sense — oh the wind will blow me off and you gradually saw it was. But I mean. AS: Yeah. I’ll come to when you were shot down. When, when you were flying over these targets could you feel the heat? RL: No, I can’t say, I can’t say I ever thought of that. Or what the feelings were. AS: Did you feel, what did you feel about the bombing? The people underneath. Did it worry you at the time? RL: Well, they’d bombed London, hadn’t they? AS: Yeah. RL: And we were only giving them back what they’d done to London. That’s basically what it was. AS: Yeah. RL: You, well when I pulled my parachute and I saw, ‘Oh bloody hell I’m going to drop in that.’ Now, we do know that the firemen, if they saw a parachute coming down in the fire and there was a German raid on they would turn their hoses away from him. I mean they would let them drop in the bloody fire. Well, flying, flying kit you never really wore. How can I say? I never wore my flying trousers on then. I flew, I had my submarine sweater, socks, flying boots, an ordinary uniform and an open neck shirt with a lady’s scarf tied in a knot. And if I had [died from it] they were dress clothes. Now, I can remember floating down on my parachute and untying this knotted scarf because we were told the Germans could catch hold of each end and strangle you. I can remember dropping it and letting it float down. My palm of my hand started itching. Take off my glove. Scratch my palm. Put my glove back on again. Going down. I landed in — there was some wires going along as I got closer to the ground and I surmised these were tram wires. So, I pulled on my chute when I got near straight down. I can’t tell you which hand, you know. I landed in the back garden of this house. Well, to release your parachute you had a buckle. You clamp it and turn it. Well, I was doing this but the wind had got into my parachute and taking me back. AS: Dragging you down the road. RL: And a German soldier was there with a long bloody bayonet [laughs] I said all three masses [laughs]. And then he got me there and I put my hands up and he released it. Now, we took, we were took into the house. Obviously a mill had been and there was a man and his wife and this huge German. He had the small, small tin hat on a big head and he had this red and black armband. Like a Home Guard I suppose and he started yanking at me and he slapped me two or three times. There was this man and woman. I think it was a man and wife. And you know the Moses baskets? AS: Yes. RL: Where the two halves go together. Well, there was a baby in each and I’d thought he was having a go at me for bombing babies and things like that and I’ve never, so. Oh, one of the babies opened its eyes and let out a yell. Oh, that was a beautiful sound but in the end this soldier seemed to be frightened of this man. Seemed as though I was a spar as far as he was. He’d captured an airmen you know and that. But, oh I never oh that baby crying [crying noises] AS: And were you, were you still in the middle of this bombing raid? Was it going on around you? RL: I was on the, I was on the outskirts of the thing. AS: What did it sound like being underneath it? What did it sound like? The bombing raid. When you were on the ground. [pause] RL: [unclear] AS: Did you hear the vibrations and the noise? RL: I can’t [pause] I was taken to a, I suppose the picket post. AS: Were you injured? RL: Yeah. I was injured but that’s, that’s a funny thing. I was injured. Well, a lot of that there was the bang and there was a hole in the aircraft. I didn’t think any more about it. I went down without feeling any pain. I got to this picket post. I was amazed. There was a German soldier and he talked like an Australian — ‘Hi cobber,’ you know. ‘The war for you is over.’ And he searched me. Well, we’re not supposed to take any documents but I mean I had a wallet. A picture of my wife. A few lucky charms like silver thre’penny bits there. That was the other thing. AS: They worked. RL: I don’t know whether this ought to be on tv. He saw a little square envelope and he opened it. He puts it in his pocket kind of thing. Well, then the ambulance is called after he took this — name and number. All that. And I was feeling then my wound. I wasn’t in pain but I, there was something wrong and the blood was trickling down my trousers. Well, when this [unclear] ambulance came, they wanted me to lie down on the stretcher. No. No way was I going to. I wanted to be sat up so I can do something if something comes along. And this flaming soldier drove the ambulance down the main road and he kept on saying, ‘Kaput. Kaput. Kaput.’ And all I could see was the front of a building standing and there was nothing behind it, you know. We drove down this main road and we come to the archway. AS: Oh, the Brandenburg Gate? RL: Yeah. Just before we come to that archway we saw FW Woolworth’s and that, but you know on seeing Woolworth’s, well we turned left and we go up the road or we got to a part of it. We stopped at a private hospital. And they didn’t want to know. They didn’t give me any treatment. They had enough of their own I suppose. So, we drove into this hospital and they took me through a line of Luftwaffe people and I couldn’t believe it. There was, well there weren’t soldiers that you could put on a drill squadron. I mean there was one bloke who was a hunchback but I mean he was in the German army. He could do something couldn’t he? And they sat me on the corner of a desk and the doctor put a pad or a dressing on my wound. And in came an immaculately dressed Luftwaffe officer. Dagger, and dirk. Everything. Looked beautiful. He introduced to me as a German master at one of our universities before the war. And he talked to this doctor man and then he talked to me and he said, ‘Your name, number,’ and of course I gave it to him. Well, I didn’t know that leading up. You see the next thing was, ‘What were you flying?’ Now, this doctor, whatever he had to do to my wound he did. I’m not, he didn’t hurt me intentionally. He just did what he had to do and of course instead of saying ooh, you said, ‘Oh Halifax,’ you know. Then I realized what I had to do. Every time he asked me a question I had to say, ‘Oooh.’ And you get this after he gave me a pencil and piece of paper, ‘You have to write home.’ So, what can you do? You can’t put down, “Hello, I’m in Germany. In Berlin. Sincerely, Ron.” You wrote a lot of piffle really. That letter got home. AS: It did. RL: Yeah. Then that went through the German postal system. Wasn’t anything to do with the POW form or anything like that. Amazing. They took me on to the hospital and apparently linen bandages were like a gold mine and the outer bandages was crepe paper. Well, they’d fitted me out with a nightie. A long nightie, you see. As I say this crepe paper, I was, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and breathing heavy and of course it just fell on the ground. They cleaned me up again and they gave me a shirtie nightie. Well, you go to bed and you think to yourself I wonder what they’re thinking at home, you know. But it was amazing. AS: Were you obviously frightened parachuting in to Berlin. When did the fear leave you? When did you think that you’re alright? You’re safe. They’re going to not kill you. When was that? RL: I think, when I got to the Luftwaffe hospital. Now, in the room with me there was a squadron leader and a flight lieu. The flight lieu was a Aussie. Now, he apparently had got blown out of his aircraft and badly wounded his arm and things like that. Well, the ointment that they had to use, kind of thing, it used to stink. Old Smithy used to, well we used to call him Smithy, but he said, ‘Oh cut it off doc. Cut the bloody thing off.’ I bet if that had been in England I reckon they would have took it off. And the surgeon said, ‘No. No. I’ll send you home with an arm.’ Well, this surgeon came in one night and he was dressed up in his dress uniform. And of course we were all ‘whoo ooh,’ and this kind of thing. Well he came in to see Smithy and Smithy did get repatriated with his arm. He can’t use, well he can use everything but he hasn’t got an empty sleeve. They were marvelous. I mean, I suppose it’s the code. If you need attention you got it. But — AS: Did all your watch and your clothes disappear? RL: My flying boots disappeared. My, my sweater. No. That was just all stained in blood. We couldn’t have been treated better in that hospital. And there was a nurse. [unclear] a nurse. She did everything for me and on, at home, there’s a picture of my mum’s mum and if you could just remove the head gear on the painting and put the nurse’s uniform in. AS: The same. Yeah. RL: That was my grandmother. But she used to do everything. Like, the other two bods complained. They wanted something to clean their teeth with so she appeared with three toothbrushes. Well, a man who has got it, and I had a kiss. But I think she was great. AS: This was January 1944. RL: Yeah. AS: What was the food like that you were given in Germany? RL: The food? AS: Yeah. RL: Well very sparse. I think we got what the German hospital [pause] I was dead lucky in getting into this Luftwaffe hospital. The food. If you had a soup plate with a pattern on the bottom and you had soup in it if you could see the pattern in the soup. Now for the first day, the first two or three days in hospital I was given white bread as my [unclear] but it turned to the black bread. How can I describe it? The soup was very thin, you know. If you say it was chicken soup it was only like a chicken left the water, running. AS: How long were you — RL: Various sorts of sausages. We never, we never had any cooked food. The only one that I could say no to was the blood sausage. I couldn’t. But when you get hungry you eat it. I mean it’s gorgeous. AS: How long were you at the hospital for? RL: A couple of months. AS: Really. So, you were quite badly hurt. RL: And I — but one thing I never had any dog tags. AS: No dog tags. RL: It’s a bloody silly thing. You see, you’re on a squadron. One day you look at the notice board and listed up is R Last is commissioned as a pilot officer. AS: Yeah. RL: So, you had to take all your kit back in to the stores. They take your dog tags but they don’t give you the new one. You have to sort of wait about. Well you would have thought they would take the old one, stamp the new ones and that’s that. Well, I never, I never bothered with them. I didn’t think I was going to get shot down. AS: It’s bloody dangerous though. Flying without them. RL: Well yeah. AS: Anyway, you had no dog tags. RL: But the person in the hospital bed, there was a siren goes off and you see these two other blokes. They can’t move in the daytime but they start moving. And you don’t think anything of it you know. They were directly in the bed. Well, apparently, there was one siren that says planes are coming towards Germany. Then there was another siren that said they are coming in our direction. Then there’s another siren saying, well we’re the target. Well, the Germans naturally take their own staff down to the bombing shelter. And of course, if they can’t get us down we’re left up there. Well, it’s not funny laying on a bed. When you say you can’t move you think you can’t move. Then all of a sudden you hear [bomb noise] and the bed sort of jumps up and down. Then the curtains get blown in. Then the windows. Then a fire seems nearer than it actually is. You think to yourself — crying out loud, there was nine hundred bombers on the night I was shot down. AS: What was the noise like when you were on the ground with all the aircraft over you? RL: Well, that was them. It was the ones that you heard. Something like, it was only, a falling [pause] like a huge tree coming down, you know. I mean, I could [pause] we, we back to our beds and our skipper had been brought in. AS: Your skipper? RL: Yeah. And he had something wrong with his leg up here. And he had had this leg tied up. This was the second night when I managed to get out to the bomb part. And when we come back we heard, ‘Help. Help.’ He’d had the [pulley?] out the bloody ceiling and he’d gone under the bed. Under the bed. He was going, ‘Help. Help.’ AS: Yeah. So, you saw your skipper again in the hospital. RL: I only saw him about twice. AS: Ok. What about the rest of your crew? Tell me what happened when you were shot down. When you had to bale out. What happened that night in the aeroplane? RL: Well the aeroplane went on for another ten miles before it crashed. AS: But what got you? Was it flak that got you or a fighter? What got you? RL: It was a fighter. AS: Ok. RL: I’ve got a write up there somewhere but I normally flew, or sat right of the pilot. But the night we were shot down we had a second dickie. Now, that is a pilot of a new crew coming in. He comes, he comes for, more or less, experience. Well, that meant that I was in the bomb aimers place. Now, you can’t see much other than in front of you. So, instead of doing my normal duties I was down in the bombing panel [pause] What was we talking about? AS: What happened when you were shot down? So, you weren’t the second dickie. You weren’t sitting next to the pilot. You were in the bomb aimer’s position. RL: Yeah. AS: What happened then? RL: Well, I can’t see much. And I’ve not got the tie in with what’s gone on with the skipper. I know I’ve got my intercom but that’s only to, that’s not the chattering. That’s how to, emergency if you are on target. So, I didn’t see any of the journey. By that, he didn’t get injured that sat in my place. So, I was down on the bombing panel. There’s the mid-upper turret gunner there and the rear gunner there. Now, the aircraft must have come up from there. AS: From underneath. Yeah. RL: Gone in there and into my back. AS: Ok. RL: Now, I didn’t hear what was, any — I didn’t hear anything about that. I mean, as I say your intercom is basically for emergencies and I imagine that the rear gunner saw this plane come in, and he fired and the plane killed the two — AS: The gunners. Ok. RL: And then it stopped with me. AS: So, the two gunners were killed in the attack. RL: Well, we assume so. The wireless operator was injured. Oh the navigator. I think. The rear gunner. Mid-upper gunner. Navigator. They were killed. So, it must have come up from there. AS: Yeah. RL: And I was on the last line. AS: Yeah. So, he attacked from the underneath on the right hand side. RL: Yeah. You see, they, they didn’t know at that time that some of the German planes had a gun that pointed upwards. AS: Schrage musik. Yeah. Yeah. RL: Now, I don’t think the attack came in from underneath. I think it came in from the, that got, as I say there was three members of the crew that were killed. The wireless op, he was a POW. The engineer was a POW. And the navigator was killed. AS: Did the aircraft catch fire? RL: Pardon? AS: Did the aircraft catch fire? RL: No. All I’ve got is it crashed. AS: Ok. RL: Ten miles. AS: With the bombs still on board? RL: I’ve got it all. I’ve got so much. AS: Don’t worry. Just tell me were the bombs still on the aeroplane when it crashed? RL: That I can’t tell you. AS: Ok. RL: I just had, worried me for a long time. I think they’d gone. They must have gone otherwise it would have been burned to hell wouldn’t it? I mean, no, you see they must have gone because we used to carry a lot of incendiaries. It would have blown up over Berlin. AS: Yeah. RL: I must have done but I can’t, you know, I often bring it. AS: It’s not surprising. There were a lot of other things going on at the time. RL: Yeah. AS: Yeah. On, on these big raids could you see a lot of other aircraft around you? RL: No. It’s amazing but you, until you left England you saw a few but no. I mean, I’ve often wondered and it sounds bloody silly but you got four hundred and fifty planes in the air, over a town at one time. Now, it’s bloody dark and I could never understand this but, ‘Bomb doors open,’ and then, ‘Left. Left. That’s right skip.’ Then go on, ‘You’re alright skip. Left, left.’ We’re doing alright. Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed. And then he turns to the left, doesn’t he? As I say, going for home. But every aircraft has got an altimeter. Now, it was supposed to be flying at twenty thousand feet. That doesn’t mean to say that we’re all twenty thousand feet. There are some lower. There’s some higher isn’t there. According to what you left base with. I’ve often wondered how many planes had been lost. I mean, you would have thought that after they heard, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors shut.’ They would have gone on for certain, well a mile or a couple of miles before but you see all the aircraft flying and [unclear] and you — bam. I reckon, I reckon we must have had thirty percent shot down by our own bloody aircraft. AS: Really. RL: Yeah. Well. I mean, the sky’s full of it and I’m telling you we’re not all level. It isn’t like we were flying, this one could go under. This one could go over, couldn’t it? AS: Yeah. RL: It always seemed to me. It seemed as though it was a ritual. Bomb doors, bombs gone, bomb doors closed. Bam. AS: Did he wait for the photograph? RL: Eh? AS: Did he wait for the photograph? RL: No. AS: He didn’t. RL: I mean that was automatically linked with the bombs gone. And the time that we were going to drop. Oh no. I mean it isn’t as though we had to wait for the photograph. I mean that was automatically tuned in. AS: Ok. [unclear] When you let the bombs go did you have to let them go in a certain order? RL: No. No. No, they, all the bombs went as one. The load went. AS: Just drop the lot at once. RL: Yeah. AS: Salvoed the lot. Ok. When you were operating I think the master bomber started. RL: Yeah. AS: Could you hear him on your, could you, as the bomb aimer hear him or —? RL: No. AS: Who heard him? RL: Every crew might have been in contact see. AS: Ok. RL: But I didn’t hear anything about. And they weren’t so good as they thought they were. AS: No. I wonder because he’s, the master bomber is circling, talking to the aircraft and I don’t know who heard him. Whether it was the pilot. RL: The, the master bomber is talking to the bombers where they’re dropping the flares. He’s more, he’s more or less more scientifically geared to make his underlings drop the bombs say, to the left more or to the right. But it was a, it wasn’t exactly all that correct was it? I mean, when the Mossies got in to it there was a great improvement. When the Mosquitoes took over like. AS: Ok. When you were flying, you started flying Wellingtons to Germany. Were you always at the bottom of the heap? Were all the other aeroplanes above you. What sort of height did you fly? RL: No. I suppose, the only thing was the Wellington is a beautiful aircraft. It’s, I don’t know, it always seemed to be. It was a lovely aircraft, the Wellington. I enjoyed that more than I did with the Halifax. But no. I think we, we all bombed at the same height. AS: Ok. RL: I’m sure we did. AS: Ok. RL: The only snag with the Wimpy — when we used to go to briefing you’d see the track and you’d see another pin out in the North Sea and that told you when your petrol was finally out. Now, if the commanding officer went on a raid which he only used to do once in a while but they’d sometimes they’d think, ‘Oh let’s have a go,’ and off they went. When they got back to base, they’d be calling out from the North Sea somewhere. ‘Hello. Charlie one. Come in. When is my turn to land?’ ‘Your turn to land number one,’ you see. And when you get back to base you called the base, they’d say, ‘Oh circle at four thousand feet,’ you know. And you were, the rest of the crew knocked some off. ‘Oh bloody hell. What a load of crap. What a load of crap.’ That meant we’d more or less circle. Now, you’d say, ‘I’m on my emergency fuel. I’ve been on it twenty minutes. I’ve only got ten left.’ See. AS: Just to jump the queue. RL: Yeah. But the skipper would always, he would wait in the North Sea and we were dancing around waiting to get down. I think that would be with the Wellingtons. AS: With the — RL: You were more or less going to drop out of the sky. AS: With the Wellingtons you did a lot of mine laying as well. RL: Yeah. AS: That must have been bloody dangerous. Low level. What were your, did you, did you map read for the, for the dropping the mines. RL: Yeah. We, we used to go out to the Frisian Islands. We did the first, the first op I did. The first op that 466 did was to do the Frisian Islands. You used to get a landfall and then go [pause] and at landfall it was like you were so many degrees and one minute to drop your mines. AS: Time and distance. Yeah. RL: We had one aircraft that flew in to the building. Well, it was lovely, you see. Mine laying you were low flying. What it said on the panel and we’d been flying over the water and the spray had been hitting the underside of my panel. It’s a lovely feeling but apparently one of our aircraft got off the North Sea and he got to the building and he went into a building. So low. AS: So, you had to trust your skipper. RL: Eh? AS: You had to trust your pilot. RL: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, when we, we were on a test flight. I suppose the aircraft had been in for its usual maintenance thing and we drove along the cliff. You know. Where the girls were sunbathing. I know they were mined, a lot of the beaches but there was gaps open and we were going at low flying, got it so we were and the skipper for some reason decided to go home. He goes home and then there was a hay making cart. You know the bloke in the hay with the forks putting the hay out with a bloke standing on top. I thought we’d cut his head off. Luckily, being so low and so fast they, they didn’t recognize it but I mean, well, we’d have been in Colditz. Or Colchester rather. 20105 AS: Colchester. Yeah. How long was it before you got a regular pilot and a regular crew after you’d lost your first skipper? ‘Cause you flew with quite a lot of different people. Were you a spare body on the squadron? [pause] RL: Well, I became [pause] I flew from quite a different lot of pilots. When [unclear] Healy got off. I, I stepped in to, like if a bomb aimer was sick, I’d step in. That wasn’t very popular. You see, if you flew with any, any established crew they didn’t like it. They didn’t know how you were going to react, I think. And no, I flew with about seven different pilots. I mean, I flew with the commanding officer one night. The flight was, the navigator was a squadron leader. The gunner was a flight lieutenant. AS: It must have been like flying with God. RL: Yeah. Even with the commander called me in, ‘Would you fly with me with tonight’s flight?’ ‘Yes sir.’ And he told me all. I thought what, do I stand to attention? And so they would arrive, you know you but — AS: I, I should imagine that you didn’t like flying with a spare crew. RL: No. It wasn’t liked. For the simple reason you’d probably not been mentioned with them. You just, you know, knew that you were one of the squadrons crew and that’s that. If you’d have known one of them it would have been different. But there wasn’t. It wasn’t a nice thing to do. AS: How did you pick up with Coombs, your skipper? How did you meet him and form a crew? ‘Cause you did a lot of your operational flying with him, didn’t you? RL: Yeah. AS: How did you meet him? RL: You don’t half ask awkward questions don’t you? AS: That’s my job [pause] In July you, July ’43 you started flying with Coombs and then he became your regular skipper. RL: I don’t know. I don’t know how we met. AS: It doesn’t really matter but you then became a part of a crew again. RL: Well, it obviously came with Andy the wireless op. A navigator. And the rear gunner, Butch. Butch was the only married Aussie, and he died. Well, I think, I think we were just detailed. AS: Yeah. Put together. RL: The mid-upper gunner, the engineer, me. We were just allocated to that crew coming in. Didn’t know them. I mean, we were really up in arms against the Aussies. AS: Really? RL: Well they used to call us, ‘You pommie bastards,’ you know and we didn’t like it. So, we had to teach them. AS: Some manners. RL: Yeah. But no. No, I think that we were just allocated. AS: Was your skipper an Australian? Was Coombs an Australian? RL: Yeah. AS: Ok. RL: Yeah. AS: Yeah. Back to when you were shot down. You were, what happened after the hospital? Where did they take you after hospital? RL: Down to Frankfurt on Main. AS: Ok. RL: That’s a, that’s a sort of — Sheila: Interrogation. AS: Oh, is that Dulag Luft? The interrogation place. RL: After they had gathered all of them and then allocate them to the different camps. AS: Ok. How did they treat you there? RL: Yeah. Well that wasn’t a very comfortable journey. I only had the remains of my kit. The blood stained jersey smelt stinky. But we, we’d gone down there on our first trip to leave hospital. And we all got in this utility ambulance. People lined up in slings and me laid on a stretcher and then we got down to this Berlin Railway Station and the driver opens up the back door and all these walking wounded type of thing got out and he shut the door. And I could hear this train noises and things like that. I waited some time and he came back, opened the door and he said, ‘We go back there.’ Apparently, this nurse said that I wouldn’t last the journey and she had created such a stink that they brought me back. Of course, I was going to be one of the last taken out of the thing. Well, German trains didn’t have upholstery. They had the plywood seats with all those holes driven through. Well, I don’t think I would have lasted. But that night we went down that’s what we were in. There was a coach with these hard wood seats. It was bad enough to sort of try and keep up. But you know what happens. You go to sleep and when you’re [makes snoring noise] it’s all a moment [unclear] Then there was all the language under the sun. You’re taken up to an interrogation centre. You’re in a cell, eight foot by about four. And if you wanted to go to the toilet you released a metal arm that went down the side. AS: Like a railway signal. RL: Yeah. AS: Yeah. Ok. RL: And the German soldier who was sat at the top he ought to take you but the snag was he never used to worry about you, you know. If he was reading his paper, well he’d read the page. You know. You were interrogated there by the SS. And I think I was dead lucky again. By then I was in Germany for a couple of months so I was old stuff to him. AS: Yeah. RL: My wounds were covered and aircrew in those days, we were given an escape kit. Poly [pause] You there Susan? AS: Polyurethane is it? Like a plastic. RL: What’s that, Polyanthus? Polyan? AS: Polyanthus is a plant. RL: No. AS: Never mind. RL: Pandora. AS: Pandora. Ok. Yeah. RL: Pandora pack. AS: What was in Pandora. Yeah. What was in that? RL: There was a silk map. A compass button. Vitamin tablets. Things like that to help you escape. Well, this officer, SS officer, took off the bandage to see whether I’d got any of these escape things there. And of course, he didn’t stick the bandage back. Well, in this cell you had an ersatz pallias. AS: Like a mattress. Yeah. RL: It’s not like an ordinary sack. It’s made up of, like straw. These things. And of course, the pallias got stuffed with sawdust. So, you have a heater in this room up there. And barbed windows. So, you sit on your bunk and it’s cold so you’ve got all your clothes on. You doze off and it’s hot as hell. They’ve got the heater on, see. Well you take off your jumper and of course you dry yourself off like a towel. And then you go to sleep again and it’s off. Well, that doesn’t improve you. But when, and this fellow, he interviewed me and he said, ‘I’ve seen you.’ And that’s that. I didn’t get asked questions which are two months ago. So, I got away with it. Well, you, then you were released. You marched down the road to a reception centre where they give you a kit of clothes. I mean they gave me a, I only had carpet slippers for walking in the snow, you see. So, they give me a leather belt and I had a pair of American trousers given me. The only thing they didn’t, they didn’t give me was underclothes. Funny thing. I can’t understand that because, I mean, well they’re the things that smell don’t they? They want washing. AS: Yeah, RL: And if you’ve only got one pair it’s — AS: Did you meet up with a load of other prisoners then? RL: Oh yeah. They were, we were given a medical by this German doctor. They asked if anybody wanted medical attention and I said yes. And when he saw my wound he went bloody mad. Picking, picking sawdust. AS: From the mattress. Yeah. RL: I think that hurt more than the wound itself. But they sent us up to the camp. AS: A POW camp. RL: Yeah. AS: Yeah. RL: I’ve seen, I’ve seen a flight lieutenant that was in charge of that. I’ve seen him since. AS: Did you? RL: Yeah. In Bournemouth. There’s a municipal college and I was walking past there one day and I saw a bloke and as he passed I turned and he turned. And that was the bloke. AS: Good lord. RL: Yeah. AS: So which prisoner of war camp was this that you went to? RL: Stalag Luft III. AS: At Sagan. Ok that’s the Great Escape camp isn’t it? RL: Well, they, I got there just before they escaped. AS: But you weren’t a part of that? RL: No, no. No. No. They were, oh they were clever. I’ve often wondered whether the men are in prison for what they got up to in those days. AS: What, the Germans? RL: Yeah. I mean they engraved. They made rubber stamps. In German. After the Great Escape [pause] The Great Escape was run by what they called Big X. Now, I was in the room where Little X was. AS: His deputy. RL: Now Little X coming up and he said to me, there was also in my room a bloke from Bournemouth. Ron. So, I was called Junior. And Little X said to me one day, he said, ‘Can I interest you in helping us with the escape system?’ ‘Well, yeah.’ So, he took me to another hut and I couldn’t help noticing after passing a certain bloke he started going to me like that and pointed here. Sort of strange but of course they was also, they were looking for the German guards, you see. They, they had one type of guard, he was called a ferret and he would go under buildings and all that. So, they were watching him. They were. We got into the bathroom. They had a bathroom in every block with a concrete floor, a soakaway and a shower which was a bit of a pipe up with a tin on the top, you know. All calmly walked in here and there was a bloke in his birthday suit in there. And all of a sudden they lifted up this drain cover and they started baling the water into the bath. Yeah. And of course, I didn’t know. I was watching and all of a sudden they drained off the water in to the bath, dirty water and they pulled up a concrete slab and I could get down there. And when I get down there there was a store room. It was a tunnel, it started off as a tunnel but the Germans built another compound on so that was a waste of time. There was three rifles in there. How did they get rifles down there? And I had to get some ink and I got this thing up and all of a sudden, the slab goes into position see, and the water from the bath is bunged in it. Now, I’m in this place with the candle. Well, one of the goons got a bit near it, you see but then they get rid of him by offering him a cigarette around the corner out of the way or something. And then they pull up the slab and I’m still there, you know. And you see them so they dropped the slab down and the bath that had the dirty water was pulled in. Sealed up. Well I mean — AS: Can you —? RL: They made clothes out of, out of blankets and things like that. Made rubber stamps. Documents with a sort of German old markers they’d got. I reckoned if they’d have started up back when they got home they’d be inside. AS: Can you remember, because you were, you were in the camp when the news came about what happened to the fifty officers —? RL: Yeah. AS: Can you remember what happened then? What it was like? RL: Well, we were all called into the camps and told this. It was unbelievable. I mean they would, we all said what the group captain said, ‘How many wounded?’ So, you know, we were shocked. They said fifty officers were shot. And so, we wanted to know what happened to the other twenty six, seven. Were they wounded? But there was no wounded people. When that, the morning of that escape we were all brought out of our huts and opposite there was this hut where it all happened, and over here kind of thing they set up a German machine gun — pointed. I didn’t like that. They could have, I would have been one of the first to get it. But I mean we were dumbstruck. How could fifty get shot trying to escape? AS: What was the attitude of the German Luftwaffe officers in the camp? RL: Well, you see, every camp, that was one of the biggest camps of Germany. They were always escape proof but I mean I think it was only quite bad luck that the tunnel was found. I’ve got an idea it was like a German soldier wanting to take a leak, it was found, you know. I mean, but you wanted guts to escape. I mean here we were in Poland. It’s alright if you were fluent in German language. But if you only knew the basic German you wouldn’t, couldn’t get away. Not from Poland. I mean, they wouldn’t have had a chance. I mean all I knew about was ‘Kaput.’ ‘Ser kaput’ [unclear] I would have been buggered wouldn’t I? AS: Yeah. Did that stop escaping when that happened? RL: Well, afterwards, yes. It sort of put the, I think the people regarded it as dangerous. I mean, all you can see, I mean all around Sagan all leave was cancelled wasn’t it? They were all looking for the prisoners of war camp. I know it’s a simple thing but a soldier who’s lost his leave he’d get quite angry wouldn’t he? I mean, I would have in this country. AS: What was life like in the camp? Was there any homosexuality for instance? RL: Well there was, they had a theatre. That was marvelous. They had instruments, band instruments. In the cold weather they used to flood the football pitch. I mean the football pitch was only a bit of ground. No grass on it. But they used to flood the place. They had skates and, you know, they played basket, base — AS: Baseball. RL: Baseball. AS: Yeah. RL: They founded, like different teams like East Canada against West Canada. You know, all that kind of thing. They had, I was in there one Christmas and somebody in the room said, ‘Have you seen the cake they were demonstrating? No, it’s all kind of - height. Thing is beautiful. Cake decorations, you know, cor bloody marvellous. A wooden cake. It was corrugated cardboard down. And they had a wonderful [pause] from the American [pause] AS: The Red Cross. RL: American boxes. AS: Oh yeah, parcels. Yeah. Ok. RL: They, there was klim powdered milk and they’d, how can I say it — iced a cardboard and the decoration was all in colour. Do you want a colour to be, have a kid’s paint box? AS: Fantastic. RL: Yeah. And they’d take some of the blue kind of thing and mix it with this thing. And it bloody marvelous. I’m not a cake [unclear] But you see, I didn’t know until after the war but you could take an OU course there. And one, for some unknown reason if you want to go on exercise around the camp you went anti-clockwise. AS: Yeah. RL: Well, when I came out, back out of the service and was a gas fitter I was going up Atkinson Avenue and I had to go into a certain number in this street but I wasn’t sure. So, I pulled up against the curb. Sat on me bicycle. So he locked up the car, you know. He turned like that. I thought bloody hell. I know that ass. So, the bloke mowing his lawn and he was going up that way, you see. So, I waited for him to turn and come back. Yeah, I’d seen him. So, I got off me bike and went up to him, ‘Morning sir. You were a wing commander, were you?’ ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I don’t remember your name.’ But I think he mentioned it. I said, ‘You were in Stalag Luft III.’ ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I think I walked behind you many times, sir.’ I told him. I, as you were like [unclear] we would come out of our hut and we’d join in the, you’d be talking to somebody or walking on your own. I said, ‘Well I recognized your backside sir.’ And I told him and he said do you want to come in here and he called his wife. I don’t know but he didn’t have a peculiar walk or anything but it was just the thing. AS: Just something that stuck with you. Yeah. So, you were there for over a year in the camp. RL: Yeah. AS: What happened at the end of the war? How were you liberated? RL: Well we were, knowing we were, the Russians were near us. So, we were told that we were leaving the camp. And of course, like everything else, things get altered, don’t you. We’re moving soon. Somewhere. Then another hour. Well we moved out in the morning. Apparently, we were all given a Red Cross parcel. I didn’t get that. I don’t remember that but you see we all went out with what we could carry. AS: And this was winter time was it? RL: Yeah. It was snowing outside. AS: God. RL: Bloody cold. But we never had plastic sheeting or anything like that. I mean I was in the normal uniform. A sweater and battle dress and a coat, overcoat and a pair of boots. Or socks and boots. Well and we went out in the early hours of the morning and we walked in this slashing snow. I mean the cold, you know. And we stopped on the edge of a moor. And they crowded us into a barn. And somebody said well no lights to be shown, you know because there is straw in there and we could have knocked off quite a few. And I always remember a flight lieutenant gunner. He said, ‘Come on,’ he said. Cuddle up with me.’ And we cuddled up together. AS: Share warmth. Yeah. RL: Just to share warmth. And of course, when daylight came we started to get the doors open. Of course, they wouldn’t. But all we wanted to do was get out of the barn and light up for a brew and just to get warm. Had those moments. AS: So, can you remember what month this was? Was it early 1945 or [pause] It doesn’t matter. It’s just interesting. It was snow on the ground and really cold. RL: Yeah. Late ’44 or early ’45. AS: Ok. And how long did this go on for? On the move all the time. RL: Well, the next day we stopped at a village. I remember, like a corral. AS: Yeah. RL: And there was, and there was this bloody horse blanket all made up of all different materials, you know that. There was all these village policemen and, I don’t know — I’m going to grab that blanket, you see. And I got it. You know, I mean, when he wasn’t looking I’d swiped it. I smelled like a horse but I was warmer. Then we, well I’ve got it in a write up there. We went on to another place. They turned out a cinema, and they bundled us in there. Well that was out of the wind but then the toilet facilities was a bit overdone. Then we made it down to a station where they put us on a train. In the cattle trucks. That wasn’t fun. You only had room to sort of sit down. Somebody’s legs would be up the side of you. If you wanted to go to the toilet that was horrible. You see you had to step over bodies and you could, well there wasn’t a place where you could put your foot down. That was, you moaned and groaned. Then the outer, they could open a shuttered door but there was a feeling you shouldn’t pee in the wind. AS: You get it back. Yeah. RL: But the poor blokes that were by that door. They were in trouble. No, but you see I’ve heard, like when we were in that barn or when we were in German hospital, people were crying out for their mums. And you can’t do anything can you? AS: No. And people who were sick and couldn’t keep up. What happened to them? RL: Well, they had some German party picking them up. I think we had [pause] I think our guards were friendly. I mean even on the march if somebody had a cart there were a half dozen on the other cart and there was a German soldier whose rifle and pack had been put up and he’d be pushed with us. I mean, it got, I think it got to that stage that they really knew they’d lost the war. And I mean we were on a farm when we were released to the British army and these German guards had given themselves up, you know. I mean, I think they only took away their guns and said, ‘Well, muck in,’ you know. I mean, one or two were quite slobs. Friendly enough. They were seen to. AS: So, you were, you were liberated by the British army. RL: Yeah. Well, not the British army. A motorbike and sidecar, you know. No fighting. Just come out. It was an ideal farm or an estate. You know. The Russians were all the working labour you know, but [pause] no. AS: How did you get back to England? Did you fly or go on a ship or what? RL: Well, you will, you were told you would go on a lorry, you know. Convoy. You were going to. Well at the end of the day you stopped and you were put in a field. British army gave my mum and my wife enough sheets, enough towels and soap. We got a town so that every time we stopped, no food. AS: Yeah. It sounds like the army. Sounds like them. RL: We never, we got to Lunenburg and then there was like a big barn sort of with the army. We were told to put down all your gear you don’t want. Go over there and get a meal. A meal. So, people just dropped their bag and when we got over there it was a white bread sandwich. And it was horrid. We’d been used to this black bread which filled you up. When we got back to the shed all our kit had gone. British army stole it. So we formed a band and we went out looking for them. AS: Did you find it? RL: We found it. AS: Yeah. RL: We were absolutely starving. A lump of black bread would have been a treat, you know. In the end they took us by Lancaster. AS: Oh wow. RL: Over to an aerodrome in England and of course put the usual spray up [unclear] and they’d laid on tea, you know. Afternoon tea. Well, little cakes. But I mean while we were waiting for the planes to come there was a British airman there who gave me a tin of peaches. Well, I got the tin open. You know what peaches was like, don’t you? Went in your hand. AS: It’s all the syrup isn’t it and the juice. Yeah. RL: [laughs] It’s greasy, you know. You wanted something to anchor it down. And of course, it had gone on the ground. I picked it up slid it up. It was lovely peaches after you’d eaten them but — AS: Yeah. So, you flew back to England. What happened next? Did you go back to your family or did the air force take you somewhere? RL: They took us down to the railway station. Where ever it was. And I always remember when the Dunkirk came they put all these soldiers into schools and they had our soldiers around the outside. So that they were, until they’d been processed they were. They didn’t have to do that. We got sent down and surrounded by British soldiers. AS: Wow. RL: We couldn’t talk to the natives. AS: Extraordinary. RL: They took us on then up to Cosford aerodrome. Oh God. They gave us a meal and rice pudding afterwards and given a bath and hospital clothes, you know. Dressing gown. And we went to bed. Oh, a proper meal we had. We woke, we woke up the following morning. Now, in the RAF or any service if you move from one station to another you had to get a clearance chit. Well, when we woke up all our, all our dirty clothes had gone, you know. So, you walked around with this sheet of paper. You were warned somewhere along the line you’d have to give a sample. Well you walk around. I imagine they got every service doctor within a certain radius of the thing. So, we walked around. He looked in your right ear. Of yeah, that’ll be alright. Then somebody would look in your left ear. And you were marched into a hut, pay hut. You know, how much do you earn? You know. Well you go on through. You had to give a sample. Well you walked through the hut, wooden floorboards and there’s a huge kitchen table. And there’s jam jars, sauce bottles, any jar, but the snag is they’re all full, you see. So you want to pee and you can’t find an empty one. So, what happened? This is absolutely brilliant. They pour out in there. Pour some there. Some bloke came out and he said, ‘That looks a nice colour,’ and he takes that out as a the sample, see. There was ever so much pee floating off the table on to the floor. Stood up in it. I mean they only wanted an eggcup full. But you couldn’t find one. Then you’d go on and in a hut with blankets held up. A B C D and that. [unclear] stools and the idea was to come out of B. The next one would go into B. And I don’t understand some people were coming out of one hut and [unclear] and he would pass it on down. I didn’t take on. I got back to the mess and a bloke came up to me and he said, ‘Is she in there?’ And I said, ‘What do you mean is she in there?’’ Oh, the WAAF officer.’ I looked. ‘No. I couldn’t see her. No.’ I couldn’t see her. He said, ‘Oh, I’ll come in then.’ Apparently this strip room, where you drop them. And you know what happened there. A bloke hadn’t seen a woman for years and he dropped them and [unclear] a strip through, it perks up on it’s own doesn’t it? You know when I was demobbed you get your kit. You had a brown pinstriped suit or a blue pin striped suit. So, I got a blue pin striped one. So I, when it come to the shorts well I want a white or a blue, you know. It’s either a red or a green, you know. I’d think to myself, well got to take something, you know. We got on this train after about [pause] and there was all this changing out of our uniform into civvies. Well, when we got off in London we looked like gangsters, kind of thing. I mean nothing matched. I mean my trilby was brown, you know. I only, I took what was on offer. I didn’t go in and say bugger it, you know. But nothing, nothing matched. We were going, people were going to the train. ‘Got a new, got green shirt?’ You know, just to, but when we got off it was horrible. AS: So, you were demobbed very quickly after coming back to England. RL: Oh yeah. AS: Did you get a pension because of your injuries? RL: No. Not then. AS: Oh ok. RL: I did it later. AS: Ok. RL: A colleague at work, my supervisor but he was a good friend too, he had got a pension. ‘Why don’t you put in for it?’ I didn’t think I’d get it but I put in the forms. The doctor came home to see me. He gave me a medical examination, asked me about my hearing. Well, I lost my hearing in the war. And he looked at my bony knee. I can use it but I can’t throw a cricket ball. I could no more, well I’d collapse if I pick up a ball and throw it. And I got a pension. AS: Excellent. RL: And it’s very good. AS: Did you ever keep up with your squadron colleagues or go to reunions or anything like that? RL: No. No. Well, I think the attitude I won’t even go on a Christmas one. That was the, I’m back in civvy now and that. I often wish I had but it’s only through my daughter what’s got on to this you know. AS: When you look back now at that time how do you regard it and the air force? Was it something you’re glad to have done or did it steal your youth or how do you feel about, about that period of time? RL: Well, I regret sometimes. You see, the war took apart my youth. AS: Yeah. RL: I was a boy. I didn’t become a young man. I got thrown into the service. I’ve often wondered what it would be like. I mean, I was what? Twenty I suppose. Twenty to twenty six. That’s sort of lost years isn’t it? AS: And you married during the war didn’t you? RL: Hmnn. AS: Yeah. RL: Yeah. Well, you see they used to say if you get married you’d go for a burton. AS: Yeah. RL: Comes to a hard [pause] well, decision. Yeah. We wanted to get married. I didn’t think about prisoner of war. I suppose I thought I could get killed. But in, you see a lot of us kids got married. Well, we were only kids. Well, the husband can say, ‘Well, I’m flying tonight.’ Didn’t tell her when. Probably didn’t know at that time. And then he’s flying as far as, let’s say, Berlin. Now, those girls that were in digs they would count the number of aircraft that goes off and they would count the number of aircraft that land. AS: Yeah. RL: But their first worry is oh perhaps he’s landed but he’s not landed here. He’s landed somewhere else. I mean they’re, they’re only babies really. AS: There’s a wonderful play by Terence Rattigan called “Flare Path.” Have you seen it? RL: No. AS: That’s, that’s about the wives waiting at a hotel near, it’s a Wellington squadron actually. It speaks to that very much. RL: You see, they’d count the aircraft come back. But then get somebody — is flight lieutenant so and so? ‘We haven’t heard anything at the moment.’ Well that’s just a put off isn’t it. And the you see this young girl, she’s miles away from home. The landlady is perhaps not, not helpful. No. It’s not — AS: And she has nothing to do all day except wait and worry. Yeah. RL: Yeah. AS: How soon did your wife know that you were safe after you were shot down? RL: A chimney sweep came and told her. AS: A chimney sweep? RL: Yeah. He tuned into the [unclear] news and apparently they used to give petty officer so and so was washed up ashore. On the — AS: On the German radio? RL: On the Thames Estuary. And they gave out that PO Last was a prisoner of war. And this chimney sweep apparently told my mum. AS: Wow. RL: It’s [pause] — AS: I think we’ll stop there Ron. It’s been amazing talking to you. I’d like to come back and talk again someday but we’ve been going for four hours. RL: Have we? AS: Yeah. I think we’ll, I’ll thank you very much. RL: Bloody hell. AS: We’ll pause there. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Ronald Last Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Sutch Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-11-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ALastRR151125 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Description An account of the resource Ronald Last grew up in Dorset and worked as an apprentice for the local gas and water company before volunteering for the Air Force. He attended the reception centre at Lord's Cricket Ground and describes the medical tests and inoculations recruits were given. He trained at Newquay and had started his flying training on Tiger Moths when he was posted away to train as a bomb aimer. He discusses his training in Ansons, dropping practice bombs and the duties of a bomb aimer including the bombing run, mine laying and dealing with hang-ups. He flew operations in Wellingtons and Halifaxes with 466 Squadron from RAF Driffield and suggests that his first pilot was taken off flying due to lack of moral fibre. On 28/29 January 1944, his Halifax was shot down by a fighter pilot and three of his crew were killed. He baled out and became a prisoner of war. He describes his descent by parachute, his capture, treatment for his injuries and the conditions at prisoner of war camps including Stalag Luft 3. He describes the escape tunnel 'Dick' and recalls hearing the news that 50 officers who escaped as part of the Great Escape had been shot. The camp was evacuated as the Russians advanced, and he took part in the Long March from Poland to Germany. He was eventually liberated by the British Army and returned to England by the RAF as part of Operation Exodus. After the war he worked as a gas fitter. Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Australian Air Force Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Germany Great Britain Poland Atlantic Ocean--North Sea England--Berkshire England--Cornwall (County) England--Yorkshire Germany--Frankfurt am Main Germany--Oberursel Poland--Żagań Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 03:09:07 audio recording Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Maureen Clarke 466 Squadron aircrew Anson bale out bomb aimer bombing crewing up demobilisation Dulag Luft escaping Halifax lack of moral fibre master bomber military living conditions military service conditions mine laying Operation Exodus (1945) Operational Training Unit perception of bombing war prisoner of war RAF Driffield RAF Harwell RAF Leconfield recruitment sanitation shot down Stalag Luft 3 the long march Tiger Moth training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2577/45175/MBaileyAW143799-190123-03.2.jpg f878a00a5aaf65889a9e2afd81991ba1 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2577/45175/MBaileyAW143799-190123-04.2.jpg e33cd0d80405d6b3e8d9a6f1d6d9f738 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2577/45175/MBaileyAW143799-190123-05.2.jpg f3bcf2685ea854b0b72f32e64f593bd9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bailey, Arthur Wilfred A W Bailey Description An account of the resource 71 items. The collection concerns Pilot Officer Arthur Wilfred Bailey (143799 Royal Air Force) and contains correspondence, documents, and photographs. He flew a tour of operations as a flight engineer before being killed in a training accident 7 September 1943. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ralph Sellick and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on Arthur Wilfred Bailey is available via the&nbsp; <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/200974/">IBCC Losses Database</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-01-23 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bailey, AW Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Loss of Halifax DT524 Description An account of the resource A copy of records held by the RAF on the loss of Arthur's Halifax. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Air Historical Branch Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1943-09-07 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Service material Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Three printed sheets Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context MBaileyAW143799-190123-03, MBaileyAW143799-190123-04, MBaileyAW143799-190123-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending text-based transcription Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Yorkshire 1658 HCU air gunner aircrew bomb aimer crash flight engineer Halifax Halifax Mk 2 Heavy Conversion Unit killed in action navigator pilot RAF Breighton RAF Riccall training wireless operator https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2154/37724/MRidingRH1525125-210923-20.1.jpg b85c78f1fe051a2b9a0d1bb0d2ef2939 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2154/37724/MRidingRH1525125-210923-33.2.jpg 1c3c6358c805591970d54afa0cf696a1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Riding, Ronald Holford Riding, RH Description An account of the resource 45 items and five photograph albums. The collection concerns Ronald Holford Riding (b. 1921, 1525125 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, correspondence, documents, photographs, and service material. He flew operations as a navigator with 69 Squadron before he was shot down in France. He evaded and worked with the resistance before crossing the Allied lines in August 1944. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Lyn Elizabeth Jolliffe and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-09-23 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Riding, RH Transcribed document A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document [crest] [italics] Headquarters, [/italics] TRANSPORT COMMAND ROYAL AIR FORCE. 130563 Flight Lieutenant Ronald Halford RIDING. [italics] Your name has been brought to my notice. I am authorised to signify, by the award to you of this Certificate, my appreciation of the good service which you have rendered. I have given instructions that a note of your devotion to duty shall be made in your Record of Service. [/italics] [italics] Date [/italics] 15 APR 1947 R.A. Cochrane Air Marshal [italics] Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief [/italics] [page break] From: R.A.F. Station, Dishforth. To: R.A.F. Station, Oakington. Date: 5th May, 1947. Ref: DIS/2017/9/p.l. [underlined] 130563 F/Lt. Riding, R. H. [/underlined] Please find enclosed Certificate of Good Service for the above named officer. [signature] F/O for Group Captain, Commanding, [underlined] R.A.F. Station, Dishforth. [/underlined] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ron Riding's Certificate of Good Service Description An account of the resource A certificate issued to Ron for his good service and an accompanying letter. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1947-04-15 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Transport Command Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Service material Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One printed sheet with typewritten annotations and one typewritten sheet Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context MRidingRH1525125-210923-20, MRidingRH1525125-210923-33 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1947-04-15 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Cambridgeshire England--Yorkshire Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sue Smith aircrew RAF Dishforth RAF Oakington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/3076/57475/EOCRAFRecOfNorthA420428.jpg 463465b878f80cefb54b9d628f76e72c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource North, John Leslie Graves-James John Leslie Graves North James North Description An account of the resource Twenty-five items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer John Leslie Graves North (1378280) and his brother Flight sergeant James North (620700 Royal Air Force) and contains John's log book, correspondence, documents, and photographs.<br /><br />John North flew as a wireless operator.<br />&nbsp;<br />James North flew operations as a wireless operator with 9 Squadron and was killed 25 April 1942. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Marsha Turner and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on James North is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/117402/">IBCC Losses Database.</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-07-04 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context North, JLG-J Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Letter to Mrs A North from RAF records branch Description An account of the resource Informs her that her son Sergeant James North was missing, the aircraft in which he was radio operator failed to return on 25 April 1942. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Air Officer Records Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1942-04-28 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1942-04-28 1942-04-25 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Gloucestershire England--Gloucester England--Yorkshire England--Bradford (West Yorkshire) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Civilian Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Correspondence Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One page typewritten letter Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending text-based transcription Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context EOCRAFRecOfNorthA420428 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. aircrew missing in action wireless operator https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1247/16364/PLeckieW1901.1.jpg 66b1611784af6fa1e98248f944c26165 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1247/16364/ALeckieW190301.1.mp3 185254f66ba9edae008767004775a37b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Leckie, Bill William Leckie W Leckie Description An account of the resource Two oral history interviews with Bill Leckie (1921 - 2021). He flew operations as a pilot with 216 and 77 Squadrons. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-03-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Leckie, W Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AM: Right. Bill, good afternoon. How are you? BL: Fine. Kind of alright. AM: Right. BL: Kind of alright. Not that brilliant. AM: Right. BL: I’ve just come back from, I had a couple of days with our son and we spent two full days as it were travelling. AM: Right. BL: And they took me to one of my old haunts where I used to spend as a young boy on my holidays in the summertime because it’s where my granny lived. AM: Right. BL: So I spent summer with my granny down at the seaside. Down in a place called Drummore which is in Galloway. AM: Right. BL: It supposedly has the name of being the most southerly village in Scotland. AM: Right. And it’s called — BL: Drummore. AM: Drummore. Right. I know where it is now. BL: There’s another one in Ireland, Northern Ireland but it’s got a different spelling. AM: Right. BL: But it’s still Dromore. Yes. AM: Right. Let’s check that, see how it is. [recording paused] AM: Right. I’m sure that will be fine. I’ll put it further over. There we are. Okay. Right. So there, so it was a bit sluggish to fly. BL: Oh yes. It was but I mean it wasn’t a fast aircraft, plane but it was nice to fly. AM: What about the landing in water? What was that like? BL: Well, it was different to landing on the land although not that you’re [unclear] any different but you’re along the floor in period because you’d such a long runway. AM: Right. BL: But, but you still had you know a certain distance to land in as I say but most of the landings float landings and again as I say I enjoyed flying. It was, I was sorry I didn’t get on to a squadron. So I mean when I finished the conversion in that way I then had to go back up to Canada. Up to Prince Edward Island to do a reconnaissance course. You had to do that as part of your training as a conversion for Coastal Command. AM: Right. You said a reconnaissance course. Was that in the air? BL: Yes. AM: And was that also in the Catalina? BL: No. Oh no. AM: No. BL: We didn’t do any Catalina flying once away from Pensacola. AM: Right. BL: That was the end of it. We went on to Stearmans. AM: Oh right. BL: And I had to do another course in that way. It was a funny way. A terrible waste of time that was. It took me nearly four years to get to a squadron. AM: Yes. [unclear] yeah. BL: I came back then but I came back to Harrogate and I was stationed in Harrogate for I think about six or eight weeks. AM: Right. BL: Waiting to get a posting. AM: And presumably at this stage you assumed you were going to go to Flying Boats. BL: We were still supposed to be going. That’s why we were being held up in Harrogate. AM: Right. BL: Waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. It was okay but I’d rather have been on and get on. But anyway, it didn’t happen and I’d to do another course and this was on the [pause] I ended up on the early Chipmunks. I forget where we went to [pause] Oh, it’s the Central Flying School now. What do you call it down there? AM: Was it the Empire Flying School or — BL: Possibly it was, no it wouldn’t be the Empire Flying School. It was. My memory is elusive. AM: And whereabouts was this? BL: This was still in the Harrogate area. AM: Oh you’re still in the Harrogate area. Right. BL: Yeah. As I was — AM: So it’s in Yorkshire. BL: Yes. It was all still classroom work. AM: Right. BL: Until eventually I got posted to [pause] where was it? I’ve forgotten some of that. AM: Don’t worry. BL: The next thing that comes to my mind I was posted up to the north of Scotland up to a place called Forres. AM: Right. BL: And we had to do flying there. Again, I was in for Bomber Command I had lost the Coastal Command. Come out of, been posted out of that and into Bomber Command. AM: And when you were in Forres what aircraft were you flying there? BL: When I got to the end of [unclear] [pause] see, I’ve forgotten. AM: Was this part of the Conversion Unit to Bomber Command? BL: I guess it would be. Would be [pause] no, I’ve come to a stop. AM: So when did you move on to the Halifax? BL: What? AM: How did that come about? BL: Well, that came about after the posting back down south when I was posted to York. AM: Right. BL: And from York I stayed around York all the time. I never left 4 Group. AM: Right. BL: Because that was the Halifax Group and I was always on the Halifax and I stopped there. AM: So where did you, where did you join up? Or when did you join up with your crew? And how did you go about selecting your crew? BL: I can’t remember the name of the place but I think it was probably Harrogate. AM: Right. BL: And we just sort of, you know mingled around and you know the lads who were looking for a skipper and I’d be looking for somebody and you’d get talking to somebody. You’d ask them if they were looking for a skipper and I mean if you had thought to yourself well he would do and the crew, he’s in, and if he said okay well then that was it. AM: Right. BL: That was the way off. You picked your own crew. AM: And did you have a sort of mixed nationalities on your crew? BL: It started off that I was going to have, try to get a Scottish crew. AM: Right. BL: And I managed to a point up ‘til finding a wireless operator. I couldn’t find a Scottish wireless operator. AM: Right. BL: But the usual happened when I finally made my decision on a chap the following day a lad came up, a Scottish lad came up to me to say, ‘Are you looking for a Scottish the wireless operator?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I was up until today.’ And I’d I mean I’d already agreed with the other chap and he was an English chap. Nice chap. I mean I liked him well enough but that would have been the whole crew would have been Scottish and — AM: Right. That would have been pretty unusual I would have thought. BL: Might have been. Yes. Might have been. And so my wife, who wasn’t my wife then. We were just engaged. But she bought scarves. Little Scottish scarves there. The Clan MacGregor scarves. And each one of the crew got one. AM: Right. BL: She bought a scarf for each of them. AM: I have to ask you why was it the Clan MacGregor? BL: Because that’s my clan. AM: Right. Right. BL: I’m [unclear] the Clan MacGregor. AM: Right. And everybody was quite happy to wear the MacGregor tartan then. BL: Oh, I never thought any the [unclear] [laughs] AM: So, so what was the sort of conversion period with your crew like? I mean presumably you were probably the oldest in the crew. Was that right? BL: I would say. AM: Yeah. BL: I would. AM: And you must have also been very unusual to be engaged. BL: Yeah. Well, I’ve, I’d known my wife for, or my future wife when I was seventeen to eighteen and that. She was seventeen and I was eighteen. AM: Right. BL: When we first went out on holiday. AM: Right. BL: And we just stayed together. I wouldn’t get married. We didn’t get married until after I’d finished. We just stayed engaged. AM: Until, when you say after. You mean after the war. BL: After the war. Yes. Right. AM: Right. BL: Yeah. AM: And was that fairly commonplace for aircrew to delay getting married until after the war? BL: I wouldn’t say it was commonplace. No. In fact, I think it was possibly the other way. AM: Right. It was what you both were comfortable with. BL: Yes. We were. My wife was of the same mind as myself. There was no point in doing something [unclear] the way I was. I didn’t know how long I could last and she would have been a widow. So, but it never came to it but we stayed friends. I don’t know. AM: So after your conversion period with your crew you went to your first squadron. And what was your first squadron? BL: 77. AM: 77. So that was at, was that at Elvington? BL: It was actually but I only spent about ten days there. AM: Right. BL: And we were all moved to Full Sutton. AM: Right. BL: To give Elvington over to the Free French. AM: Right. BL: The Free French squadron went to Elvington. AM: Right. So how did you feel about leaving Elvington for Full Sutton? BL: Didn’t like it. AM: Why was that? BL: Well, Elvington was a peacetime station. Full Sutton was new. AM: Right. BL: It had just been put up for the wartime so it wasn’t the same. Wasn’t the same accommodation. AM: Right. BL: But it was okay. We liked everything else but I mean I preferred Elvington. AM: So tell me about some of the sorties you flew from Elvington or, or Full Sutton while you were still in Bomber Command. BL: I feel — AM: Do you want me to stop it for a wee bit? BL: Ah huh. AM: You can have a wee rest anyway. [recording paused] BL: [unclear] up to a point I think that was the last flight I did. AM: Okay. BL: That was five hours and thirteen minutes and — AM: Just a wee — BL: It was a raid. It was just part of a raid. AM: Okay. I’ve switched it on. Bill, tell me just, tell me just a little bit more about your time on 77 Squadron at Full Sutton and what the kind of operational missions that you did there. What were the main types of target? BL: Well, according to one that is printed in here they were flying bomb sites. AM: Right. BL: The first one I visited was at the forest of Nieppe in France. And the next one again that was the same one. Nieppe, in the same place. That same one. So that was twice I visited that. On the 5th and then on the 6th of August. AM: And were these day sorties or night sorties? BL: Day sorties. AM: Right. BL: Yeah. They were day sorties or was it a night sortie? Which was something to do with the German Army. AM: Right. BL: It was [unclear] AM: Would that be — BL: France. AM: Would that be supporting the invasion troops? BL: That was on August the 7th. AM: Right. ’44. BL: ’44. AM: Yeah. BL: And then I did another trip back to France. Back to a different oil storage dump. And then the next target we flew was on the [unclear] There was one on the 9th. The next one was on the 11th. It was the railway repair shops. And then on the 12th I went to a place, a flying bomb factory at Russelsheim. AM: Right. Before you did these sorties were you given on any briefing on the flying bomb itself and what its role was or — BL: No, we never. Oh no, we knew about the bomb, what the flying bomb was alright but apart from that — AM: It was just a target. BL: It was a target yes. AM: Right. And particularly on the day sorties did you see any enemy fighters or — BL: No. I was, no. Not at all. AM: Right. BL: No. Never intercepted. AM: And what about the flak on the night sortie to Russelsheim? BL: Yes. There was some we had. I don’t know where it was. We went out to the bombing more or less the bombing altitude was high bombed then after we had bombed we made a crash dive to get down to five hundred feet or a thousand feet. AM: Right. BL: And came back. Low level flying all the way. So we did. AM: Tell me before you went on a mission like your last one to Russelsheim what was the sort of feeling like in the squadron and what was the attitude of people like? BL: I don’t remember. AM: No. What about your own crew? How did they — BL: Like myself I think they accepted the fact that it was part of the job. AM: Right. BL: We were going. AM: Right. And — BL: I mean you never knew until you went to the briefing room where you were going. AM: Right. BL: We didn’t know the target. So we went to the briefing for it. AM: And by this stage in the war were you, were you aware of the extent of Bomber Command losses or was it something that wasn’t talked about? BL: I’d say that we were aware of it alright. Yes. It was because the posting came through to go elsewhere and I was quite happy to go. AM: Right. BL: Because I was getting out and being posted overseas. I knew that. AM: Right. BL: I was going overseas. I didn’t know when but it just it turned out it was Italy. AM: And how, how did you find it’s difficult to remember this perhaps but what was the morale like on the station at Long Sutton at this stage of the war? Was it fairly buoyant or — BL: Well, I would say it was. As I say I wasn’t one for, I wasn’t one for mixing. AM: Right. BL: So — AM: So what, what was mess life like for instance? BL: Well, it was just you went and you had your meal and chatted to somebody or other and you got to know them. AM: And what rank were you at this stage? BL: I would be a sergeant. AM: Right. BL: At that stage. AM: And by the way were all your crew NCOs or did you have — BL: Yes. No, I had no officer crew. AM: Right. BL: No. AM: And was that, how did that compare to the rest of the squadron? Were there a number of all NCO? BL: No idea. AM: No. No. I don’t think I would. So I mean the sergeant’s mess was obviously a kind of lively place. Would you — BL: Oh yes. That’s right. Yes. Well, I mean I went right through from sergeant all the way up to flight lieutenant in the end. AM: Right. BL: So that was just the way it worked. AM: So you said you were selected to leave 78 Squadron and go overseas. How did that come about? Do you remember? Was that a surprise or —? BL: Oh, it was a surprise. Yes. Well what it was, it wasn’t a surprise entirely but it was a surprise as to where I went. I didn’t know where I went. It was just it was put on the notice board that there was two or three crews who were wanted to go overseas. And I thought to myself well this is just, you know the being in the UK and in the bombing stream you were a sitting target all the time and it was, it was danger. As much danger up there from other aircraft as you were as from the anti-aircraft so I thought that was kind of a thing you know. Time to get out of it and get overseas which is what happened. AM: Right. And did you go overseas as a crew? Did your whole crew go with you? BL: Yes. AM: Right. And where did you go to? BL: Started off in Naples. AM: Right. BL: And then we were sent from Naples to Brindisi. AM: Right. BL: And that’s where we stayed. AM: Right. BL: Until we finished the operation. AM: Right. And what sort of sorties on the understanding you were no longer technically part of Bomber Command but you were still flying a bomber aircraft. The Halifax. BL: Oh yes. That was the Halifax. AM: Right. And what, what were these sorties? BL: Well, the sorties were just to different parts mainly in Yugoslavia that the partisans had occupied for a certain time. AM: Right. BL: But they were well within the German lines. Behind the German lines. AM: Right. BL: But there was, no there was never much activity in the German lines at all. AM: And were you flying these as a single aircraft or as a — BL: A single aircraft. AM: Right. And what, what sort of things were you dropping? BL: Oh, mainly ammunition or rifles and food as well. AM: Right. BL: General. General supply aircraft so you would. AM: And were these dropped, were these drops down from medium altitude or relatively — BL: Yes. AM: Right. BL: About eight, eight hundred to seven hundred feet. AM: Oh, seven hundred feet. So that was quite low really. BL: Oh yes. I had to come down to eight hundred, between that and five hundred. AM: And was this by day or by night? BL: Sometimes by night but usually if it was by night it would be by moonlight. AM: Right. Because presumably you had to try and drop really accurately. BL: Well, yes. You had to do your best. AM: Right. BL: It was up to the bomb aimer really. AM: Right. BL: You know. AM: And this was all in 148 Squadron. BL: No. No. That was in 77. AM: 77 Squadron, sorry. Right. And that’s all still in the Halifax. BL: Oh yes. AM: Was it the same version of the Halifax that you had flown on as a bomber pilot? BL: Yes, it was. AM: Right. BL: But we soon changed to the, well you might say the Mark 2 Halifax. AM: Right. BL: But I did fly the Mark 1 Halifax for quite some time. That was the one with the triangular tail. AM: Right. BL: Instead of the square tail. AM: Right. Okay. BL: Yeah. And it wasn’t so good for stability. AM: Right. BL: Putting on the square rudders at the end when they made the change helped a lot. AM: Right. And had they changed the engines as well at that stage or — BL: No. AM: That same engine. BL: That came later. AM: Right. BL: [unclear] AM: Right. And as well as dropping supplies and weaponry did you drop any personnel? BL: Yes. Joes we called them. Yes. AM: What did you call them? BL: Joes. AM: Joes. Right. BL: Joes. AM: And did you have anything to do with them or were they just cargo. BL: The person who had to deal with them was the chap who was the mid-upper gunner in the original crew. He was a dispatcher. He was known as the dispatcher. AM: Right. BL: He did a dispatcher’s course. AM: Right. BL: They had a special area in where the, these chaps who were coming in and they were going to be dropped you know by parachute so most of them had never done any parachute training you see so they had to be trained. AM: Right. BL: And so our dispatcher had to go along on a course. AM: Right. BL: A training course because he had to see them out and he was the one who organised them for getting out of the aircraft. AM: And was it usually just one of these Joes or did you sometimes drop a couple of them? BL: Oh, we dropped three or four of them. AM: Right. BL: Sometimes. Yeah. AM: Right. Gosh. That must have been fascinating to say the least. BL: I must say I never actually saw any of them. AM: No. BL: You know, the only one that, I mean the dispatcher was the one who would speak to them generally speaking but very often they were local people. They weren’t really English speakers. AM: Right. So they would, they would be Serbs or Croats or — BL: Aye, could be. But it was the dispatcher who had to speak or did speak with them. None of the other members of the crew were involved. AM: Right. BL: And there was only one instance I remember where he talked, the chappie he had been speaking to could speak any English and we knew more or less where we were going. You know, once we had been given a target and it seemed as according to this chap we were passing the town where we were going to be dropping this chap and he lived in that town and his wife was still living there. AM: Gosh. BL: And there were some lights in the town funnily enough. It wasn’t completely blacked out. And so we were dropping, dropping zones up the hillside on a plateau. AM: Really. BL: The village he was heading for was down the road. AM: Right. BL: Eventually, well not eventually the word came back or we got word back that they didn’t make it and they complained that we had dropped them not in the right exact spot. But we dropped them where we were told to drop them and the reason that was given, nothing was officially said but the reason that we got to know about the fact that we dropped them according to as far as the lad said we had dropped him in the wrong place and that was done on purpose because they didn’t want the Germans to know there was anybody down on the ground who could see there was going to be a drop in this area. So that was that. So the actual dropping spot wasn’t known until we were briefed that night to go. AM: Right. Right. BL: So — AM: And did you do any, any drops over southern Germany or — BL: I couldn’t tell you that. AM: No. I remember reading somewhere — BL: I don’t think so. AM: I remember reading somewhere that you were involved with a drop that took place near Berchtesgaden. BL: Yeah. No. I didn’t do anything like that. No. We were in the Balkan Army. AM: Right. BL: That was all that we were in. AM: Right. I think somebody said you were involved in this project called, which became the film, “The Monument Men.” Is that correct? BL: Oh yes. They did portray that. Yes. AM: Right. So what happened with that? What was the story behind it? BL: Oh, well it was to do with the Germans had, had captured a lot of stuff. Hitler’s souvenirs or whatever you call it and they wanted to come through. I mean this was at the time when Jerry was in retreat, you know, moving back. And they were supposed to destroy a collection of paintings and one thing, and artifacts and one thing or another which were being held in this area. And the chaps we were dropping they were going down to safeguard these things. AM: Right. BL: They were being dropped in the areas so we dropped them in the area and they then made their way down in to the village and I think, I don’t know what really happened after that but they was lads that we had dropped down. They were supposed to be going down to and they were going to take over and [unclear] or something. I don’t know. Something to do with safeguarding these supposedly at the point priceless things that Hitler had, you know — AM: Requisitioned. BL: Requisitioned. Yes. AM: Right. BL: Yeah. AM: Gosh. So you finished the war still in in the Balkans flying. BL: Oh yes. Yes. AM: Right. BL: I was posted from there down to, you know Italy. Down to Brindisi. AM: Right. BL: And what was lifelike in Brindisi at that stage of the war? AM: Very [pause] very easy I think. There was nothing much different about it and we sort of in some ways you made your own amusement and whoever your friends were and as I say I was much of a loner. I didn’t go out much at all. So I didn’t go down into the town of Brindisi like some of the lads would go down there and they didn’t know where they were by the time the night went out. I’m afraid that was never my style but — BL: So what was it like the sort of the day or the couple of days around when the war actually came to an end? What was the atmosphere like? AM: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t in the squadron. I was on 216 Squadron at that time. BL: Right. So you’d moved on from the Halifax. AM: I’d moved on from the Halifax. I was flying a Dakota. BL: Right. And — AM: And that was immediate. BL: Right. So you moved before the end of the war. AM: Oh I did. Yes. BL: From Brindisi to Italy. AM: Yes. That’s right. BL: Right. Right. AM: So that’s quite a change going from the Halifax to the — BL: Oh of course. I quite enjoyed that because I’d had quite a bit of flying in the Dakota anyway. AM: Right. BL: Before that. AM: So when the war came to an end you were in Italy. BL: Yes. AM: And you were a flight lieutenant by now. Is that right? BL: No. I was a pilot officer. AM: Pilot officer. Right. Sorry. Right. So where were you when you were commissioned? Were you in Italy or in Egypt? BL: Italy. AM: Italy. Right. BL: I think. [pause] Yes. I was in Italy because I had to go across to Algiers to get my uniform. AM: Right. Was it your uniform was made in Algiers? Your uniform was made in Algiers. BL: I don’t know about being made there but — AM: But that’s where you had to go. BL: That’s where the stores were. AM: Gosh. So you took an aeroplane over to get your uniform. BL: I had to go. AM: That’s brilliant. BL: As a passenger. AM: Right. BL: Yeah. AM: So how long did you spend in Egypt on 216 Squadron? [pause] AM: I can switch this off for a minute. We can have a wee rest. [recording paused] AM: Bill, I know you’re looking at your logbook at the moment but what was the total number of operational hours that you flew? BL: Two hundred and sixteen you might say in round figures. AM: Gosh. So when you retired from the Air Force you were flying — BL: Well, I didn’t. I was in the Reserve and stayed on in the Reserve and I would do weekend flying. AM: And what aeroplane was that on? BL: That would be on the Tiger Moth. AM: Right. Right. BL: Later on [unclear] I went on to Chipmunks. AM: Right. Which must have been quite good fun. BL: Oh yes. It was a much improved. Much improved. AM: And just to conclude tell me a little bit about the latter part of your life because you went back into professional flying didn’t you? BL: Oh, I did. Yes. I did. Yeah. AM: And what did you do? BL: I was flying the thing it was just a transport squadron. Not a squadron. It was a, I was down for flying at the weekends when I first went back having finished in the Air Force as such. But I went to [pause] to Perth and we got there at the weekends and flying up there and did some link work for one thing. And then eventually a staff pilot’s job came up which I applied for and got and that started my career. AM: Right. BL: And started flying fully on the full time in Perth. AM: And which, which company did you go to fly with? BL: Airwork. AM: Airworks? BL: Ahum. AM: Right. And after that? BL: That was it. AM: Right. Did you not move to Aer Lingus? BL: Oh yes. Sorry. Yes. I left Airwork and went to Aer Lingus. That’s right. AM: Right. And what, what was your, what was your final aeroplane with Aer Lingus? BL: The three hundred. The Boeing. AM: Boeing 737. BL: The Boeing 737. That was it. Yeah. AM: Right. And that was your, if you were to, this is a terrible question but if you’d to fly one aeroplane again what would you choose to fly? BL: What would I choose to fly? [pause] Well, I always enjoyed flying a large aeroplane. That’s what I wanted to do and what I got to do. So I suppose you might as well say the [pause] I think possibly the Dakota would be the aircraft — AM: Right. BL: [unclear] to fly because it was a nice aeroplane to fly. Very tricky to land but not much. You could make a mess of it. So, you could. So I’d say the Dakota. AM: Right. Well, Bill Leckie, Captain Bill Leckie, Flight Lieutenant Bill Leckie, thank you very much indeed. That’s it. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Bill Leckie. One Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Alastair Montgomery Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-03-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ALeckieW190301, PLeckieW1901 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 00:38:00 incomplete audio recording Description An account of the resource Bill would spend his school holidays with his grandmother in Scotland. He went to St Edward Island in Canada to do a reconnaissance course, after which he went to Harrogate to await posting. He completed another course on Chipmunks before being posted to Scotland, leaving Coastal Command to join Bomber Command working on the Halifax. His crew, which joined 77 Squadron at Elvington, were all Scottish. They mainly carried out operations to Yugoslavia dropping weapons, food and, occasionally, personnel by parachute. The crew went overseas south of Naples. He was posted to Brindisi and then spent time in Egypt with 216 Squadron. Bill ended his RAF career as a pilot officer and was commissioned while in Italy. Post-war, he got a full-time pilot’s job with Airworks before moving to Aer Lingus, flying Boeing 737. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Canada Prince Edward Island Great Britain Scotland England--Harrogate England--Yorkshire Italy Italy--Naples Italy--Brindisi France France--Nieppe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sue Smith Julie Williams Maureen Clarke Carolyn Emery Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Air Force. Coastal Command Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1944 216 Squadron 77 Squadron aircrew bombing crewing up Halifax Halifax Mk 1 Halifax Mk 2 pilot RAF Elvington RAF Full Sutton Resistance Special Operations Executive training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1247/17040/PLeckieW1901.jpg 66b1611784af6fa1e98248f944c26165 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1247/17040/ALeckieW190322.mp3 ed629a3eb9fa65452055ce8345280bde Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Leckie, Bill William Leckie W Leckie Description An account of the resource Two oral history interviews with Bill Leckie (1921 - 2021). He flew operations as a pilot with 216 and 77 Squadrons. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-03-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Leckie, W Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AM: Right. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Alistair Montgomery and the interviewee is Mr Bill Leckie, Flight Lieutenant Bill Leckie or Captain Bill Leckie. The interview is taking place at Bill’s lovely home in Troon. Bill, good afternoon. BL: Good afternoon, Monty. AM: Bill, tell me just a little bit about your family background and where you lived prior to joining the Royal Air Force. BL: Well, to go back to where I was started living. That was Glasgow. I was born in Glasgow. I lived there for about seven years and then my father, he suffered with bronchitis. He had been a heavy smoker and that’s his problem. It was his problem, and he was told he would have to get away from the city so he got a transfer to the more or less the country which was fine because he was a country born himself and brought up in the country, and same with my mother. They were both country people so they were quite happy and there was, he got a place with a bit of ground attached to it which he, he never really managed to make it, you know [pause] you know, a living from. But he got some a poultry farm he ought to expand it in to but it never took place. So, I was brought up on that basis in the country, and then that was fine. And when I was, oh what would I be now? I think I would be what, eighteen when I joined the Air Force. I did want to join as a boy service but my mother and dad wouldn’t agree to it, and so I had to wait until the war came along and I was called up. AM: Right. BL: And I spent five years in the Air Force. AM: So, when, when you were called up where did you go for your, for your basic training? BL: That was mainly [pause] I’ll get the name in a minute. Babbacombe. AM: Babbacombe. Right. BL: Yeah, Number 1 ITW. Babbacombe. AM: Right. By the sea. BL: By the sea. AM: Right. BL: That’s where I did my ITW as they called it. AM: Right. So — BL: I was called up and I went to St John’s Wood in London. That was my first full time encounter with the Service as such. From being called up and going along and signing in and being asked what I wanted to do, that was about I think about three months before I finally went to, well I went to St John’s Wood first of all. AM: Right. BL: As a reception. And from St John’s Wood I went down to Babbacombe to do my ITW. AM: Right. And what was that like? BL: That was fine. That was good. Quite, fairly intensive, but I don’t think we were, we were too badly done by. AM: Right [laughs] and did you know at that stage that you were going to undertake pilot training? BL: I knew at that stage. Right from the beginning. AM: Right. BL: Because that’s what I asked to be, you know at the initial call up. They said, ‘Oh, what would you like to be?’ And I said, ‘A pilot.’ They sat reading my papers and fortunately enough my name must have come out of the hat. I don’t know. AM: Right. I mean did you do any specific tests to assess whether you were better as a pilot or as something else then? BL: No. No. AM: Right. BL: No. I went straight on to the pilot course. AM: Right. So when you finished your square bashing what happened then? BL: Oh. What did we do after that? Oh, yes. We rolled up to, oh what was the place? The aircrew centre at, near Manchester. AM: Right. BL: And I spent, I expected to spend quite some time there. Instead all I’d spent was three days and I was put on a, you know, what would you call it? A group, and we were told we were going overseas. AM: Right. BL: And simply because they came up to, to Greenock, I mean I recognised the place. I knew where I was, but I was just when we got off the train and then straight on board the ship, you know. AM: Right. BL: The train ran out on to the jetty where the ship was moored. AM: Right. BL: And that was me on my way across the water there over to Canada. We arrived in Halifax. AM: Right. And was the, was the sea crossing uneventful? BL: Uneventful. AM: Right. Thank goodness for that. BL: Yeah. We had a fast ship and we had another ship which kept us company. AM: Right. BL: It wasn’t, you know a Navy ship or anything like that. A ship that had been converted into I think, what did they call them? AM: A troopship. BL: Yeah. A troopship. Yeah. AM: Right. BL: I think so. Yeah. Well, there was our ship and then another ship. I don’t know what the other ship was carrying but I think it was a troopship as well. AM: Right. BL: And we had this ship escorting us. AM: Right. BL: And we eventually finished up in Halifax. We got on the train in Halifax and that took us down to Detroit. We went to Detroit from there, and we spent what you might say initial training in Detroit, probably part of it, and when we finished our time in Detroit which was a kind of square bashing effort we moved down to Pensacola. AM: Right. BL: That’s where we started to do our flying properly. We did a few trips in Detroit so we did on a, it was an old biplane to begin with and then we got a slightly newer Stearman. But anyway down to Pensacola and there we flew the old MP1 as it was called which was an aircraft that the American Navy had built themselves. They built aircraft during the war, but they were original aircraft, and then we got off them on to more modern Stearmans and finished our flying then. AM: And how did you find the flying training? Was it a challenge or did you find it fairly straightforward? Or — BL: Oh, no. Well, to me it was a challenge. I had to keep myself, you know [pause] I never found it easy. No. No. No. AM: What was the element that you found hardest? Was it instruments or aerobatics or — BL: Aerobatics. AM: Right. BL: Aerobatics. I don’t think I could have been a, you know, a fighter pilot. I don’t think so. AM: Right. BL: So, I got what I wanted. The big aircraft. And that’s what I got. I actually didn’t. I mean, I had, when I was chosen to go on to the Flying Boats that was what I had in my mind and I thought I’d got them but no. AM: But you did some Catalina flying in America. BL: Oh, yes. That’s right. AM: Tell me a wee bit about that. What that was like? BL: It was just all training. There was never any, you know actual what you might say offensive work but it was all these long trips training. I think that the longest trip we did, in my mind anyway was the twelve hour trip. AM: Oh gosh. BL: And they were just in a sense letting you see what it was like to travel [laughs] You know. AM: And was it easy to fly? The Catalina. BL: No. It wasn’t easy to fly. It was a very sluggish aircraft. AM: Right. BL: If you wanted to make a left or a right hand turn you had to think about it, you know quite a little while before you went into the turn and that because even though you used the controls she was very slow at responding to them. So you were always, in a sense you had to be ahead of yourself but other than that they were fine. Yeah. AM: So, so then you finished in the Catalina is that when you came back to — BL: Yes. AM: To the UK. BL: Sent back to the UK to wait for a posting to a Boat squadron. AM: Right. BL: I never knew whether I would. I was to be going on a Short Sunderland or the Catalina again and I didn’t know. We were, we stayed in Harrogate for, I think for six weeks waiting on a posting. AM: Right. BL: We came back to Harrogate from the States. AM: So there you are in Harrogate fully expecting to become, to become a maritime pilot. To become a Flying Boat pilot. BL: That’s what I expected to go on to. AM: Right. So, tell me what actually happened then. BL: I don’t know. It just happened. There was no postings came up for a Boat squadron. AM: Right. BL: And I then had to go to Little Rissington and convert in to the Bomber Command. AM: Right. BL: From, oh I forget now. What was the [pause] it doesn’t matter, I think. No. The flying, the Flying Boat commander. What was that called again? AM: Maritime. BL: It was maritime anyway. AM: Yeah. BL: Yeah. So, as I say I went to Little Rissington, converted on to an, on to an Oxford and then from the Oxfords I finally got posted to a squadron to do an OTU which was up in the north of Scotland at Lossiemouth. AM: Right. BL: I think it was. AM: And what, what did you fly at Lossiemouth? BL: Wellingtons. AM: Right. BL: To begin with it was Whitleys. We had a Whitley to begin with. AM: And did you have your own crew at that stage? BL: No. No. Not all of it. And I never flew in a Wellington. That’s not right. I flew the Whitley and I had a part crew. AM: Right. BL: I think I was missing an engineer. Yeah. I think it was the engineer and then from, from there I was posted down to York. And then from York I was posted to [pause] no. I must have done another. Before that happened I was posted to Stoke Orchard for some AFU flying. AM: Right. BL: And then from there I was posted up to Forres actually. More so than Lossiemouth. I didn’t fly from Lossiemouth. It was Forres I flew from, and I flew the Whitley then. AM: Right. BL: And then from there I was posted down to Harrogate and then I joined 77 Squadron. AM: Right. And what, what aircraft did they have then? BL: There they were the Halifax. AM: Right. The Halifax. BL: Yeah. That was Group. 4 Group. And 4 Group were Halifaxes. AM: Right. And had you crewed up by this stage? BL: When I got to Harrogate that was when I picked up my engineer. AM: Right. So how did, how did, tell me a little bit about this process of getting your crew together then. BL: Well, that was left up to ourselves to pick who we wanted and I had it in my mind I wanted to have an all Scottish crew. AM: Right. BL: And I nearly achieved my purpose. I had all, I had I would say six crew plus myself and I had five, and needed an engineer. No. A sparks. I had an engineer. There was a sparks I was missing. AM: Right. BL: A wireless operator you know. AM: Right. BL: I couldn’t get anybody who was Scottish. This was what was, we were given, I think we were given a week, I can’t remember but they had to be, you know, you had to get it done. If you didn’t get it done yourself then they would do it for you. Whoever was in charge. And I had got the five and I got left with one and that was the engineer and I had a day to go. That was all. So, I thought well I’ll have to pick on somebody. I did ask a chap and he was quite happy. Yes. That was okay. He would come and join them and blow me down but the next day a chap came up to me, a Scottish lad and this chap who had asked to come as, you know the last member of the crew he was English and the lad who came up to me the next day was Scottish. I just missed out on having an all Scottish crew. AM: Right. BL: So I don’t think there would have been too many of those, you know. AM: No. I don’t think so at all. So, by the time you got to the squadron about how many Halifax sorties had you done on the OTU, roughly? BL: I would say very few. I mean my first operational trip was to a place called Russelsheim in Germany. And I only did I think three or four trips altogether when I found myself in the CO’s office saying to me that there was a posting he would like to, ‘Would you like to go on a posting somewhere else?’ He said. And I said, ‘Yeah. I don’t mind.’ He says, ‘Well, we’ll have you posted and your crew and you’ll be leaving tonight.’ Just like that [laughs] And that’s what happened and we moved, we flew down to [pause] it’s a Transport Command station in the south of England. Still in operation today and I can’t think of the name of it. AM: Was it, was it Lyneham? BL: No. No. No. It wasn’t far from Lyneham but it wasn’t Lyneham. It was another name. So we spent a night. Yeah. We spent the night there. We flew down there and spent the night and the following night we boarded a Hudson not going, not knowing where we were going. Just going on to, there was, you know another crew and ourselves and flying out as passengers. Nobody told you where you were going and it wasn’t, the first place we touched down at on the way out was Gibraltar to refuel and get breakfast. We had breakfast of bacon and eggs. AM: Right [laughs] BL: And then we took off and we flew along the north coast of Africa until we got to [pause] I can’t remember now though I did, I think we [pause] yes we landed at what was called Cairo West. It was an airfield. The airport or the airfield was in the desert. AM: Right. BL: And that’s where we landed and that was with 216 Squadron, which was the squadron that I had been posted to. That’s where it operated from, this squadron in the desert. AM: And this was still on the Halifax. BL: And they were flying DC3s then. AM: Right. BL: Left the Halifax behind. AM: But you flew the Halifax in Italy did you not? BL: When I went up to, when I went up to there. When I got posted there. From there I got posted up to Naples and then in Naples I was posted down to Brindisi and they were fitted out with Halifaxes. AM: Right. Which Mark of Halifaxes was that? BL: It was the Mark, the Mark 2 I think it was. AM: Right. And what was the, what was the role of that squadron? BL: That was a special duties squadron. AM: Right. BL: So that was simply feeding the guerrilla fighters, if you like with guns, ammunition, and food and clothing and they would go and do drops wherever they set up a dropping zone. AM: And was, whereabouts were these drop zones? Yugoslavia or — BL: Mainly in the Yugoslav. Mainly in the Balkans. AM: Right. BL: Various places in the Balkans and usually they would be somewhere in a clearing in the hills. There was usually hills around about you. AM: Yeah. BL: You seldom got a, you know a dropping zone which was clear. AM: And were these drops being done by day or by night? BL: By day. AM: Right. And what sort of height were you dropping from? BL: About eight hundred to five hundred feet. AM: Oh, my God. And was it mainly stores or people or both? BL: No. There was some people. Joes we called them. We went some, there was two or three flights with Joes on board but mainly it was air supplies. AM: Right. BL: It was. And — AM: I understand you were involved with dropping some of the agents involved with the recovery of the Nazi art, is that correct? BL: That’s right. Yes. That was as I say. That took place. Not that I knew it at the time but there is a book written about it. AM: Right. This one. “The Monument Men.” Is that it? BL: The, “Monument Men.” Yeah. AM: Right. BL: Right. Yes. I flew them in to where we had to drop them off and where they were going was we landed on a plateau and as I say it was Norway. We didn’t land on the plateau. We dropped them off over the target. AM: Right. BL: And it was snow covered at the time. It was in the wintertime, and we left them at that and where they were going was down in to the valley and we could see the lights. AM: In to Berchtesgaden area was it? BL: Pardon? AM: Was that at Berchtesgaden in southern Germany? Or was it — BL: No. That wasn’t the name. There’s another name for it. It’s mentioned in the “Monument Men.” AM: Right. BL: But I can’t think of it. Anyway — AM: Did you ever have a chance to talk to these people you were going to drop? BL: I didn’t but my mid-upper gunner did. AM: Right. BL: Well, that was his previous job. That’s what, he’d been trained as a mid-upper gunner but when we were flying as the special duties which is what we did most of, as I say, we had only done I think three or four bombing trips. He got talking the odd time but most times the people, they didn’t speak English or they wouldn’t speak English whatever way it was. They didn’t say anything about what they had to do. AM: Right. BL: There was, there was one story came back to us. I think it really came back to us. One story came back saying we’d dropped them in the wrong place and well as far as I was concerned and the navigator was concerned we dropped them where we were told when we got our briefing before going off on the flight. And sometime later we discovered that it was a habit of the ops people that they would be there telling us where we were going. Not telling us where we were going but telling us a false place. In other words the idea that was that somebody had been talking to us, or we inadvertently said something about where we were going to do the drops but we wouldn’t be there because that was all changed. AM: So it was a decoy really. BL: It was a decoy. Yeah. AM: Right. BL: And the final dropping zone we got when we went to our final briefing, not until then. AM: Let, let me just take you back a bit to your, your early bombing sorties on, on the Halifax when you were still based in, in Yorkshire. BL: York. AM: Yeah. At Elvington and Full Sutton. What was your first bombing sortie? Was that a day sortie or a night sortie? BL: No. It was a night sortie. AM: Right. BL: I went as a second pilot actually. AM: Right. And what was that like having for the first time — ? BL: We were bombing from I think about ten thousand feet and that was just you know all the lights and everything else. I’d never seen anything like it. AM: No. There was a lot of flak. BL: Yes. There was some flak. Yes. But I just did the one trip, you know. AM: Right. And then you went off with your own crew. BL: Yes. AM: And what were the first bombing sorties you did then? BL: Well, again that was just the [pause] the next day. I never knew what we were dropping you know in a sense of what our bomb load was. AM: Right. BL: Never, never sort of saw into that. The only thing was that there was one trip we had to do and that was daylight trip. We were supposed to be bombing behind the British lines but before we got there. I mean in France this was. AM: Right. BL: But before we actually got to the, where we were supposed to be dropping these behind the British lines, as it were word came through the radio operator that we had to return home and drop our bombs in the Channel. The operation was off. It was cancelled. And of course they didn’t want you landing with live bombs. AM: No. BL: At the airport. So that’s what happened. That was the only time it did happen and we dropped them in the, in the Channel. AM: Right. So these were sorties to support the British troops in Normandy. BL: That’s right. AM: Right. And did you do any sorties against the V-1 sites or — BL: No. No. Aye. Probably we did. But I didn’t — AM: You mentioned Russelsheim in Germany. BL: Yeah. That was the very first trip I did. AM: Right. BL: That was a night trip. AM: Right. BL: But I think that’s why it sticks in my mind. AM: I can imagine. And were most of those sorties you did at that stage day trips? BL: No. No. Only because, only, we only did three or four trips. I should go and get my log book and look it. AM: Yeah. You can do. [unclear] BL: That’s fine. That’ll do it. [recording paused] AM: Perfect. BL: I think it was Full Sutton. That was where I was at, look. AM: Yeah. Bill, if you can just tell me a wee bit about what life was like at, at Full Sutton. BL: Well, I can’t say that there was any outstanding other than just if there was an operational on we’d get our briefing during the day we had, spent at you know in the camp or went in to York [pause] Like I say I spent a lot of time on my own. I didn’t go around with a group of lads. AM: Right. BL: I was, I suppose I was considered a loner. AM: Right. BL: So there was nothing. AM: So, what was, what was the social life in the mess like? BL: Well, it was alright. I mean, I just met up, you know, I knew a few lads. There was one other chap that we were, I was quite, kind of friendly with that kept in touch after the war as well but he has died. He died several years ago. AM: Right. BL: I’m trying to remember now. Something about [pause] you see my memory’s gone now. AM: I think all of us suffer a bit from our memories fading a wee bit. BL: My memory’s gone for lots of things. AM: So when you, when you, when you left the RAF and, and joined the Reserve where did you move to then? BL: Well, we used to go to Grangemouth. AM: Right. BL: And we’d go there, you know for I would not only get there on a Sunday I didn’t get there every weekend and I never spent a weekend at Grangemouth but I went there and did fly in a Tiger Moth over there. AM: Right. BL: So that was really what we did at Grangemouth. AM: And what sort of flying was that in the Tiger Moth? Was it flying cadets or — BL: No. AM: Just training. BL: Just training. We had a good commander there. You’d go off, off solo. AM: Yeah. BL: You know, you passed out and I mean most of the flying was done solo so that was interesting. And you know as I say was [pause] I’ve forgotten the name of it. AM: And where were you working at this stage? BL: Well, to begin with, before I joined up I was working in a cinema as a projectionist. AM: Right. BL: And when I came back I went back to the company and I got a job back again as a projectionist. And then from there I left that and I went to work at the Hoover people in the Hoover factory. That was just simply a production job. I was just checking out the, the [pause] what would you call it now, what would you call it? The electric. They were making electric motors. AM: Yes. BL: And that was a question you had to check. Just, I mean it was a dead simple job. AM: And was this at Cambuslang? BL: That was at Cambuslang. AM: Right. BL: That’s right. AM: So, what did the people around about you think about having an RAF pilot working in the Hoover factory? They must have remarked on it. BL: Well, I don’t think anybody knew. I don’t think anybody were any the wiser. AM: No. BL: I never talked about it. AM: You never told them. BL: No. AM: Right. That’s amazing. Right. I suppose that must have been quite common after the war. That people went from being, you know aircraft captains. BL: Oh aye. AM: To being, working on a shop floor. BL: Yeah. Well, you see I was lucky enough, I don’t remember now but I mean as I say I joined up in the Reserve, and there was an exhibition in Glasgow in the Kelvin Hall and the RAF VR had a stand there. So naturally I went along there and talked to them and that’s when I joined up again. AM: Right. BL: Went back into the Reserves and then started going to Grangemouth and doing some flying from Grangemouth. And then Grangemouth closed down and I went to Perth. Again, it was just weekend flying for a wee while but eventually I got a job in Perth as a staff pilot. AM: Right. BL: That’s what started me off. AM: Right. BL: You know. Up until then I was just sort of dodging around. I really hadn’t a proper job, a fixed job when I came back. AM: And were you married by this time? BL: I’d got married by then. Yes. AM: Aye. So you needed a steady job. BL: Yeah. AM: So where did you go from Airworks? BL: Aer Lingus AM: Right. So you moved to Ireland. BL: We moved to Ireland. Yes. AM: Right. BL: That’s right. AM: And when you started with Aer Lingus what were you flying? BL: A DC3. AM: Right. So, back to something you knew. BL: That’s exactly. That’s why I got the job. AM: Right. And how long did you fly the DC3 with Aer Lingus for? BL: Quite a long while. AM: Right. BL: Because that’s all they had. AM: Right. BL: Were DC3s but eventually they got — AM: Was it a Viscount? BL: Viscounts. AM: Right. BL: Viscounts. That was it. They got the Viscount and then they got the others. What was that called? It was a Dutch plane. F something. AM: Oh, F-27. BL: F-27, that’s right. AM: Yeah. BL: I knew those so I flew those. AM: Right. Nice aeroplane. BL: It was. Yes. And what did I do after that? AM: Did you not finish on the Boeing? BL: I might. I finished on the Boeing at Aer Lingus. Yes. AM: Right. So, it was the first — BL: When I went to Aer Lingus that was the last employer I had. AM: Right. And what, was the Boeing 737 the first jet aeroplane you flew? BL: I would say so. Yes. AM: I think that’s fantastic. BL: Yes. I went to the States to convert on to it. AM: Right. BL: Yeah. Yeah. So it was, in fact it was the first 737 to be flying in Europe. So it was. AM: Right. BL: At that time. AM: Right. So that’s quite an accolade to go over and pick up the first 737. BL: Yeah. AM: And when you retired you were on the Boeing 737. BL: Yes. AM: Right. BL: Yes. I never left them. Oh, well I did actually. I flew the 70, 720 for a while. I did, oh I spent the best part of a year I think, six months or a year as a navigator. They were short of navigators. AM: Gosh. BL: At one period when they were flying the Atlantic and they were using the 720 I think it was. And I flew in that as the navigator. Didn’t fly as a pilot. AM: Right. BL: I was a navigator because I had my navigator’s licence. AM: Right. BL: And then when I finished that section I got moved into the pilot’s seat. The co-pilot, and just continued from there and eventually moved in to the captain’s seat. AM: Right. BL: Finished my time as a captain. I wish in a way you know it was all down in writing and not up here. AM: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. BL: Because I can’t remember. AM: Yeah. BL: I can’t remember now an awful lot. My memory is actually worse now than it used to be. AM: Bill, it’s a remarkable story and it’s been a great pleasure listening to you, and meeting you and hearing the story of your life. BL: I’ve been [pause] It’s been an enjoyable life. AM: Yeah. BL: I’ve been lucky. Very lucky, with all the different places I went to. Were able to fly from. AM: Yeah. BL: With different aircraft. AM: And flown some lovely aeroplanes. Bill, thank you. I’ll switch that off now. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Bill Leckie Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Alastair Montgomery Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-03-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ALeckieW190322 PLeckieW1901 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 00:39:32 audio recording Description An account of the resource Bill Leckie was born in Glasgow but moved to the countryside, as his father suffered from bronchitis. Initially, working as a cinema projectionist, Bill joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 18, enlisting at St John’s Wood in London as a trainee pilot. Bill undertook basic training at RAF Babbacombe in Devon before being sent overseas to Halifax, Canada. He was then sent onwards to Pensacola for flying training, where his flying training included Stearmans. Bill found aerobatics hard and thought he would prefer flying the flying boats. He flew Catalinas, which he describes as sluggish and slow to respond to control inputs. Bill was then sent back to RAF Harrogate waiting for a posting, expecting to be sent to fly flying boats as part of Coastal Command. Instead he was sent to Bomber Command at RAF Little Rissington where he trained on Oxfords before being sent to an operational training unit at RAF Lossiemouth. There he flew Whitleys and Wellingtons. Bill was then posted to 77 Squadron in Harrogate to fly the Halifaxes. With his Scottish crew, he took part in a handful of operations from RAF Elvington and RAF Full Sutton. Later, Bill was flown to Cairo, via Gibraltar, to join 216 Squadron. Bill was also stationed at Brindisi in Italy, flying the Halifax Mk2 as part of a ‘special duties’ squadron dropping supplies and agents, mainly in the Balkans. He took part in dropping agents sent to recover the Nazi’s looted art works. After the war, Bill returned to his job as a cinema projectionist and then later joined Hoover, working in production. Later, Bill moved to Ireland and flew with the airline Aer Lingus, where he flew several types of aircraft, including the Douglas DC-3 pilot and Vickers Viscount. Before his retirement, Bill was flying some of the first Boeing 737 jet airliners in Europe, having been trained in the United States. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Andy Shaw Julie Williams Maureen Clarke Carolyn Emery Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Canada Nova Scotia Nova Scotia--Halifax United States Florida Florida--Pensacola England--Devon England--Yorkshire England--Gloucestershire England--Harrogate North Africa Egypt Egypt--Cairo Italy Italy--Brindisi Ireland Florida Great Britain Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1944 216 Squadron 77 Squadron aircrew bombing C-47 Catalina crewing up Halifax Halifax Mk 2 Heavy Conversion Unit Oxford pilot RAF Elvington RAF Full Sutton RAF Little Rissington RAF Lossiemouth Resistance Special Operations Executive Stearman training Whitley https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1358/22527/PGrahamJ1701.2.jpg 03356d596bab678bf0be72fb90daba8c https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1358/22527/AGrahamJ170927.2.mp3 412f4cb7442925548a15d9c754948cc3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Graham, Jimmy James Graham J Graham Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Jimmy Graham DFM. He flew operations as an air gunner with 567 Squadron. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-09-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Graham, J Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document JG: The job I had — AM: I just, I just have to say a wee bit at the beginning. JG: Yeah. AM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is — JG: Yeah. AM: Alistair Montgomery. Monty. And the interviewee is Warrant Officer Jimmy Graham. The interview is taking place at Mr Graham’s home in Kilwinning, Ayrshire and his daughter Alison, is present. Jimmy, just to start could you tell me a little bit about your family background and where you lived before you joined the Royal Air Force. JG: Yeah. I was born in Irvine, and I went to school in Irvine. And there I got myself a job there when I grew up. The job was a Reserved Occupation. The war itself had now [pause] the war, the job that I was after it was a Reserved Occupation. To get in to the Air Force along the line I went up to Glasgow to volunteer and told a pack of lies. Yeah. Because, well the reason for that is none of us wanting to join the Royal Scots Fusiliers. That’s where, that’s the one you got shoved into, and so in the end I was taken on in to the Air Force and I got posted once I’d joined joining up side, I got posted up to Leuchars. And that was the start. And then I left Leuchars and went to Ireland. AM: Right. JG: RAF there. I had a job there, what was it. I was working in flying control there as well. And — AM: So, you went to Ireland with the Royal Air Force. JG: Aye. AM: Right. JG: And so in the Royal Air Force in there I volunteered for aircrew and I got all the medical side done in Ireland. AM: Whereabouts in Ireland? JG: What? AM: Whereabouts in Ireland? JG: Oh, it would be about [pause] about seven mile out of Belfast. AM: Right. JG: There. AM: Ballykelly or something like that. JG: What? AM: Ballykelly. JG: Nutts, Nutts Corner. AM: Right. JG: That’s it. Nutts Corner. Yeah. And well, I volunteered for aircrew and I got posted. I did some training, believe it or not in Lord’s Cricket Ground. AM: Right. JG: But all the Air Force took it over and some of the big houses. We got put in the houses until we got timed to get in to the big stuff. The next things. What’s the possible thing, Finningley? I went to Finningley, and I got all the training you need to get there to start off, and you, you graduated a wee bit higher up, and I went there and then I went off. AM: And were you flying at Finningley or was it all on the ground? JG: Oh no I was flying there. AM: Right. JG: Yeah, I learned away from, I think I was in to, I was at Leuchars and I left Leuchars and then I started flying from Leuchars, and so it was a case of training, training, training until you go on to a squadron and that was you away. AM: Right. And did you want to be an air gunner or were you told? JG: I was told. AM: Told you were going to be an air gunner. JG: I was told. I had no option. AM: Right. JG: Yeah. I think they were losing too many. AM: Right. What, what episode stands out the most during your training period? Was there anything that was really memorable? Or — JG: And on the training side [pause] I think that went pretty well. That period there. Everything was good about Finningley in all that time, the whole time we was there, and then we moved on after that on to the next one. Other: After Finningley. JG: Aye. Other: Blyton. JG: Blyton. That’s it. Yeah. AM: At what stage did you join a crew? An operational crew. JG: Oh, that comes at, once I left those two places. I went down to, down to, into Scotland. I got posted down to, I think it was, where that was, but what happened there was that they had a good method of crewing up people. Let’s say there’s a hundred altogether and a, it’s in a big hangar. AM: Right. JG: And they kept moving about and moving about, and they were, let’s say there’s a hundred pilots, and a hundred navigators around the same and that’s how the pilot there he’s looking around for someone to make up his crew, and that goes on and on, and on sand on until you’ve got seven there. That’s a good system that, and it worked. AM: And once you had crewed up did you stay with that crew? JG: Oh aye. AM: Right. Tell me just a little bit about the very first time that you flew an operational sortie. JG: The first time. I think it was intentional you got one that teach you just in to France and no more. Just in and out. AM: Right. JG: And that was the pattern. AM: AM: Right. JG: But the first operation I did. The big one. The Capital. AM: To Berlin. JG: Berlin. Aye. It was the. It was big. Well, they learned then that there was, a thousand aircraft at a time [unclear] yeah. A thousand. Yeah. The reason for the thousand is that Harris, who was the boss of the RAF. He had the same approach as America had when America dropped an atom bomb. The reason for dropping the atom bomb was to stop the war, and they did. Harris tried the same with the RAF, and the hundred at a time to be sitting there in the air, but then, again the, the average, no not the average, it was two to three hundred at a time used to go and do ops. There was about a thousand for Berlin. That was his idea. In fact, I’ll show you ahead now. The war is finished, and Churchill has now gone on to see things you see and he saw the mess of the big city, and he were very cunning. He didn’t want anything to do with that. It wasn’t me that did that. And that’s how the RAF don’t like Churchill because all the bosses of the Army and the Navy and that they were all [unclear] and the Air Force boys got nothing, and that. So that took me into the big stuff. AM: Just Tell me a little bit about this. About how you felt about going on your very first mission to berlin. You know, from, from, from meeting in the operations room, getting to the aeroplane. JG: Yeah. There was never any sign of dozing off. You were, you were alive all the time, oh aye. Oh, very much. Oh no. It was even towards the end I was very much alive all the way. AM: Right. JG: Oh aye. AM: And what sort of flying clothing did you wear? JG: I I was a rear gunner so I could connect up electricity and get warm. I had a complete suit. AM: This is an electrically heated suit. JG: Yeah. AM: Right. And did it work? JG: Oh aye. Other: It was interesting the time we saw the Lancasters down at Prestwick, and, and the crew were out and being very supportive of the veterans and he said of course we didn’t have that when they had the Perspex bubble, and we said that was taken away very immediately, because the discovered that in the sky you got oil slicks on there so the gunners couldn’t see anything. That’s why that was taken away. JG: Yeah. Other: So, you were basically sitting out in fresh air. JG: Aye. Other: Hence the need for the electric suit. JG: Aye. AM: Tell me about the, the first time you saw flak coming up at your aeroplane. JG: It may sound daft, you know, but you saw these things coming up at the side, and I had, I think [unclear] but, you know at that altitude, ‘Oh he’s missed. He’s missed me. He’s missed me.’ but, no the thing was that I forget the thing that we got. We’d got a tablet before. It was to make you, you know, there was no sign of sleeping or anything like that. You got a wee tablet for that. Other: Do you have any idea what the tablet was? JG: I forgot, Alison that side of it, but we got a tablet about nearly half an hour before you had to the big one. AM: Right. Was this Benzedrine or — JG: I forgot the name of it. AM: Right. JG: But we definitely, we all got the tablet. I don’t know about the pilot but I know all the gunners we got a pill. AM: And did it work. JG: Oh aye. AM: Right. Right. And what was it actually like seeing flak for the first time? JG: It, it was queer to begin with in terms, to me the fact for the first time is, I found the result together. The feeling now, that we’re safe enough now, because of the, the volume of, of Lancasters and that. To the picture that town with that up there, a thousand. Churchill, meant that Berlin was hammered. It was in a big mess, and Churchill was very cunning, it was down to him. AM: Tell me a little about this manoeuvre called the corkscrew. JG: Oh. AM: Did you ever have to do that? JG: Aye. At the [pause] Certainly, anyway, I’d better put it this way as well, on our way back from doing a job I, I was the gaffer. The reason for that is the pilot cannot see in front. He cannot see. So, I tell him what to do because I can see and do everything. He’s flying. I’m just defending. And everything the boss called Murray? come to a raid that we did, but we just had left having got to bomb and head for home when two Germans got behind me and they were flying this way on that trip. So, I, I said to Charles, ‘Hold it. Hold it, just now.’ I said, ‘We’ve got company now,’ for some time, and it went on and on. And I said to Charlie, ‘Charlie, I want to get down and fly on the roofs of all the houses.’ And he wouldn’t have it but I bawled at him and made him do it, and my attitude is that they’re not going to come down and fire on me. They’ll maybe hit Germans. AM: And was this a day sortie or a night sortie? JG: Oh no, mostly the night. AM: Right. JG: Oh aye. Yeah. AM: And — JG: Then when I got him to fly right down all the way to, to, in to, in to France, and then we, when we flew along the North Sea side, we had only two engines. He’d shot two off and we landed West Malling in Kent. AM: Tell me a wee bit more of this attack that shot out two of your engines then. What exactly happened? JG: When, when we were shot. AM: Aye. JG: That was, there was two of them firing away like hell. My turret got jammed, on, when I was out, and I was stuck that way, and what had happened they, they had hit all, the boys had hit the hydraulics and I couldn’t move it. So, I was able to talk to him but, the, the pilot and me got along great. Aye. And as I say we landed at West Malling in Kent, and we saw the aircraft the following morning and it was riddled, and there wasn’t a bullet that hit any seven of us, up to it finished. AM: Had you thought at any time you might have to bale out? JG: Did we what? Did you think at any time you would have to bale out? JG: I’m not so sure I can answer that rightly. I never thought about baling out. I was, as I said early on, I was dreading I would bale out, and the reason I was dreading it was that, the inside of a Lancaster, let’s see, it’s the length of the house here, and I’m the rear turret, but to get out the aircraft, I had to go halfway along, you see. Now, yeah, and then there was a, there was part of the strength of the, the aircraft, there’s a kind of, a kind of metal that height. You had to jump over it. AM: So, it was the main spar. JG: That’s it. Aye. AM: Right. JG: And then that were my biggest fear is that I had to, I had to get out of there and put it this way they’ve now made a parachute for a rear gunner and you can sit on it. AM: Right. JG: And — AM: But your parachute was at the front. JG: No. It was hanging, I took it out into the middle of the aircraft, and it was hanging up. I had to take it there. AM: Right. Was that in a Mark 1 Lancaster? JG: We each had the they were all in one. It was the outside of that metal bit inside. AM: Right. JG: To go to get through the plane. Yeah. Yeah. AM: And was there any trip that you flew that you really thought you would have to abandon the aircraft a lot. JG: Oh, we got, there was no question about that, you know. Let’s face it. You can go and do a trip to Germany and France and nothing happen. That can happen. And as I say you’re locked in, but I thought many a time that, what the hell do I do here now. The, the main thing is with me is that, and my life even now, don’t panic, don’t panic at all, you give that up, and. So put it this way if I had to, I could cope. Oh aye. AM: What did you think when you saw another Lancaster in the stream being shot down? JG: In what way? AM: Well, I mean [unclear] AM: I’ll just put it off a second. [recording paused] JG: But that, there’s no question about it, you’re lucky if you miss the flak, because it’s coming all the time. Yeah. That, and, it could be curtains then if you’re hit then, but no I certainly didn’t panic. AM: No. JG: No. AM: And of all the many missions that you undertook were there any that really stood out from the others? JG: In what way? AM: Well, in terms of being more dangerous or extremely long or very difficult. No. As I said earlier that I was quite calm in, in the turret. You know that, I was moving about, moving about, and I was quite calm. Other: Dad, of all the different things you did is there one particular mission that you remember most vividly? JG: Oh aye. I was touching on it a wee while ago there. It was in Germany. These two aircraft fastened on to us. I had a hell of job on now, and that’s when I said to the skipper. Get down on the top of the roof, and we’ll see all the way and flew all the way across the continent down that level all the way. That was the one time that. Well, there was one or two. Let me think. Other: What about Mailly? JG: Eh? Other: What about Mailly? You know, which one of the many things you did stands out most strongly in your mind? JG: Oh, wait a minute. I’ll come to it. Well, have you heard of Mailly le Camp? AM: Yes. JG: I see. I thought that. To begin with whoever thought up that he should be bloody shot. The reason is that, you’re a sitting duck just doing that. The, the ideal thing was that they should have made a triangle, fly A, B, C, actual flying, on the raid, but we were all set up for the fighters, the night fighters. I mean, I was in amongst it. There were, I was seeing two Lancasters flashing each other. Oh aye. But I think there’s a wee bit in there, it was fierce fighting in the whole war. Mailly. It was the worst in the whole war. Mailly. AM: And do you know why you were sent to that target? JG: Oh aye. Well, the Germans had brought all the big tanks, from let’s say in France to, to that part. It was like an invasion now to get all these big super tanks and they had many of the men there who were Russians, aye, but they were prisoners and the Germans used them for maintenance on, on the, and most of them got killed and, but that, that was at, what, what. There was the Free French who kept phoning us to say that’s another ten there, that’s, and they kept saying you have to do something. That’s what it was built up to. They were going to try to stop us coming. AM: And why do you think you were sent in to an orbit? JG: I don’t know. Now, the guy, I mean in this in a way, the guy that thought it out should have got shot. I mean, the fact that you were doing that you’re stuck the one the area. Fighters can come from everywhere to that one bit and that’s what happened. Well, I’d have said, ‘Right. You got Kilmarnock. You go to Ayr. And you go to Girvin.’ And if we had kept doing that that would have worked but that was that. It was mad. AM: How long were you over the target for? JG: Well, wait a minute. Time. Oh, a hell of a time, sat. You see one of, one of the things, we were circling around because we had what we call they sent the people to find the actual target, so they were to go and they’re circling round, and when they find it, they’ll drop colours there. AM: A marker. JG: Aye. A marker. That’s right, and, but we certainly weren’t an hour away from that bit, but that was it. We were told it should be one of the things that happened there as well is the Germans, the Germans arrived, and they cut off our connection. So, the only thing we got was American dance music. AM: So, so— JG: That was the way to dance. AM: The Gee beacon was cut out. Is that it? Right. JG: No, the Germans did that themselves. They did change it to the national stuff and we couldn’t we couldn’t contact each other. AM: So, the radio was jammed. JG: That was done to begin with. Aye. Yeah. Yeah. Towards the end at the tape that they put on or something changed, and we got back, but that was the worst time. I heard, and the feeling was then was, ‘To hell with this. I’m going in.’ And so, the whole lot of us went in, didn’t wait on the colours, you could see that a lower column we went into that spot and then did our jobs. Aye. AM: Gosh. JG: But that, at that time, but at that time, it was frightening that one. It was incredible watching two Lancs. Yeah. I think earlier, but when I was on at that, the young German pilot, he shot three down right away, and he noticed, and he was on his own aircraft that he needed fuel, so what he would, when was near his own airport, he went down and topped up and came back up and got another two. He got five. What a mess. But all doing this. And I say that’s when I heard, I can remember that voice saying, ‘Oh to hell with this I’m going in.’ [thumping noise] And we all went, and that was that, yeah. It’s the worst, I might be able to read into it a bit, bit in there, but that was the worst in the whole war, the whole war. That one. AM: Tell me a little bit about, about your crew. Tell me about the rest of your crew. Those that you can remember, and what were they like. JG: I can — AM: How you got on with them. JG: I got on all right with them. The system was, the operation on, so you all met in this big hangar and it was full, all the place and you’re inside, and when you’re in there on the wall is that, that that, you’re going there. And if you were away a certain distance my bomb aimer took diarrhoea. That’s true. He couldn’t go, that he couldn’t go, so they had to get somebody to take his place, aye. Even now as I say you bastard, oh aye, that was that. But no. Mailly — Other: You kept quite good contact with your crew. JG: Oh aye. Other: Over the years after the war. Oh aye. The pilot. [unclear] We were going to, to Lincolnshire once a year to commemorate the Mailly thing, and my bomber he lived in Gainsborough which was next to the aerodrome, but as I say, I got along alright with him, but certainly when he saw where were going to land, he took diarrhoea, and the mid-upper gunner, was very slow, he didn’t see a thing at all and he was up there and I never did anything. And that was that. But I got on with the pilot very well and even I was offered to do a second tour and I turned it down. So, he crewed up, and I went on a second tour but when the war was all finished, he phoned me to go down and visit him. Anyway, he lived in [unclear] not far from Carlisle, and so I saw him quite often. The navigator, sorry for him, he an excellent navigator, super. But he was Canadian but the family had two houses. One in America and one in Canada, and he was in the, he was in America he got an [unclear], and when he finished flying with us, he volunteered and joined the pilot and the American war with Japan. Yeah. So I went to visit him and he was completely shattered. Oh aye. That was two wars. Aye. He was in a mess. AM: Gosh. JG: Ah huh. Yeah. And not the same man. But, and the pilot, I saw him very often, but the navigator. The wireless operator. A hell of a good lad. A great bloke. He had a job on the railway at one time and, but that was the only reason for him and his diarrhoea. AM: Now, as a crew did you, did you go out socialising at all? JG: Oh aye. AM: And was that in to Lincoln or — JG: Oh, no. We had for example you had your own fitter looking after your aircraft and you took them out but they were doing a good job for you all the time but — Other: So where did you all go? Where? JG: We went Doncaster. Other: Doncaster. JG: Aye. AM: Was that when you were at Elsham Wolds? Was that when you were at Elsham. Right. JG: Maybe sound daft, but come the time when the you, you crack so you go down there, and it’s all aircrew, it’s in there now, the whole lot, and all with. Wilson had a hell of a dram, and in fact I went to a funeral and I met with another fella, navigator, and when I was leaving him, I said I’ll get you in the [unclear] Thursday, that’s where all the [pause] In fact, I thought the other day I’ll get a card from him, and I tried to say I’ll see you on Thursday in the [unclear] but they were there to get drunk. Oh aye. AM: Was that the best the pub in Doncaster then? JG: In that area. That’s right. AM: Right. Right. You mentioned the, the ground crew. JG: The — AM: The ground crew that looked after the aircraft. JG: Oh aye. AM: I mean apart from going out to the pub did you see a lot of them? JG: Oh aye. Yeah. Aye. Ah huh. Oh, and of course there was what you call the NAAFI. AM: Right. You know you would get them in the NAAFI, and they would sit there [unclear], and they were quite good. AM: And what was, what was the social life like in the, in the sergeant and the warrant officer’s mess? JG: I thought it was ok. No. as I say, I got to WAM: O, and I was quite happy there. What were you when you, what did you finish up as? AM: I was a pilot. JG: Aye, but were you a warrant officer. AM: A group captain. JG: Were you a group? AM: Hmmn. JG: By golly. I should be standing. AM: [laughs] Jimmy what was your, what was your favourite airfield? JG: Elsham Wolds. It was a, everything was good about it, it had everything that I needed there, it was quite good. But we the other crew that was on with us the fact on 103 that’s what they were at. And — AM: So, there were two squadrons there. JG: There were two there and we used to take the mickey out of each other at the NAAFI, and we I’ll do it while we’re here, is that, 103 [sings] ‘103, they aint what they used to be. 576 are the best.’ [laughter] AM: And how did 103 take that? JG: Not very good. AM: No. I can imagine that. JG: Now, believe it or not, it seemed daft but, let me see if I can say it, but, you were both of you have been out, and places, and come back in and two of their [unclear] come back, things like that, that’s the thing, and you certainly, you feel, you know, what, what you normally do then is that maybe they get caught, maybe, maybe things are in their favour. Maybe get back. But, but no, they got on pretty well, the two squadrons but all that was the bit we used to sing to them. AM: Tell me during your tour of operations when you had some leave did, did you go home? JG: When I left when I left home. Yes, I did aye, because I wasn’t too far away. AM: Right. JG: I was down at Wigan. Down there. AM: Is that where your parents were? JG: That’s where, I was staying, I stayed at Irvine at the time. AM: Oh right. JG: So when, when I got into aircrew I got a posting, it was deliberate I think it was, nearer home and I made good use of that, you know that, because a firm [unclear] did all the washing. Laundered stuff. And [unclear] I got home then. AM: Right. JG: And things like that. AM: There’s quite a big difference between your life in the air and then coming to visit family. JG: Oh aye. AM: How did you feel with that? Was it difficult or — JG: No. It wasn’t difficult. No. No. AM: How did your parents feel about the fact that you were aircrew? JG: Well, they were quite happy. They looked at it as their boy was a lot bigger now than their little boys, or something like that, and they had wings on, or something on, thing up there. AM: Right. JG: Same as you with your four-ring belt, [unclear] too many steps there, I’d have got the uniform. Other: Dad, did you ever go to spend time with one of your crew who lived near Lincolnshire? JG: What? Other: Was it the Carters? JG: No, no. I think I mentioned it. [Tug] the navigator. He, he settled all together with one another. The navigator was [unclear] but and on top of that, the fact that they lived half and half in America he was accepted in to the American Air Force. And he went in there was the pilot and he had a rough time. But, but the thing with that was two, two lots of fighting here and in Japan, it was on out there. He had a rough time, could tell, he went inside the house what he was like but, he was, he was a very smart looking boy, so he was [unclear] but, and then his wife was the same. And the pilot and myself went to visit him. Other: Who was it in your crew who lived in Lincolnshire? Was it the bomber? JG: Left us altogether — Other: No. Who lived in Lincolnshire? Was it — JG: Nick Carter. Other: Nick Carter. Right. JG: Aye. Aye. Other: And what did he do? JG: He was the bomb aimer Other: He was the bomb aimer. JG: Aye. He was. Other: So sometimes when you had leave, you went to stay with him and his family. JG: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Other: Yes. AM: Jimmy, when was your last operational sortie? Can you remember it? JG: My last one. I’ll tell, you you’ve got me beat. AM: I’ll just. JG: Thats’s right. AM: Where was it to? JG: Hmmn? AM: Where did it go to? JG: Stettin. AM: Right. Right. JG: That’s the, that’s the town, isn’t it? AM: Yes. JG: That’s it. AM: So how did you feel when you — JG: In Germany, but knowing, leaving and [pause] you’re optimistic, you know. It was my last one and I went to a few but all in all it I enjoyed the whole of the Air Force. I really did enjoy my time there. AM: After you, after you finished flying at the end of 1944. JG: Yeah. AM: What did you do between then and the end of the war? JG: I got the air traffic control at Wigan. AM: Right. JG: I finished up there, and I could get home in, in minutes. AM: Right. JG: Yeah. AM: So how did you feel when the war was finally over? JG: Well, what I was feeling about that for some time I was at Prestwick. I think I said earlier that I thought Prestwick had a future. And the reason at the time was that there was no RAF at Glasgow, and we thought it was all be taken to, to Prestwick. And then I, I realised early on that Prestwick would never take off again, and I never changed my mind about it. AM: Jimmy, is there anything about your, your time in the air as a Lancaster air gunner that you’d like to tell me that I haven’t asked you, or you’d like to share with me? JG: That I haven’t what? AM: Is there anything we haven’t talked about you’d like to add? JG: Let me think now, [pause] no, put it this way. When, when I went on the aircrew side of things that was my life. It was at, give you an idea. It’s been on TV an awful lot. Sorry I’ll get the name. Group captain, and so on. What the hell, Sir John, wait a minute. AM: Just pick that up. JG: I was at Mailly, [unclear] he got the VC. Then later on I found out there were two or three of them got the VC. I’ve got one gripe about this one here, is that I, all, all the crew, all the crew were decorated to DFM, and all that [unclear] I couldn’t find out for you coming, but they were all out showing the medal, you see. And, why the dam, I thought it was disgusting because they all got medals, I doubt that [unclear] my last, I’ll tell you that was the worst one. Mailly le Camp. We didn’t all get medals for that, yeah. But you see the Dambusters, there was a film made, so it was a different atmosphere to the country about that. And I thought it was totally unfair that there were medals and medals, and we didn’t get medals. That didn’t happen at other places. That was my one gripe at the time about that. The other thing about it is that, I wasn’t flying that day but I knew it was on. I think there were about twenty of us hanging about that day. They said it, we all said it, the damage they did to the dams would last about three weeks yeah, yeah. But they started the film to give you this, to get the bomb to bounce and bounce and that all, and do it again. But in the actual bombing the Germans repaired it in three weeks. Yeah. I think the four of them got VCs. That’s, the Germans were very clever. And that’s what we said right away. That they would repair that in no time, and did. AM: Any other stories you’d like to, you’d like to add or — [pause] AM: Any other stories you’d like to add? JG: Any other stories? AM: Right. JG: I’m trying to think now. Other: I think one of the things which I think is quite funny is that all these years after the war, it must be now about ten years ago my late husband engineered a meeting between my father and a German night fighter. Do you remember meeting Werner in Spain? JG: That’s right. Other: And after the initial discomfort of the meeting they settled down to chat. JG: Ah ha. I took him in there. Ok we’re, he was a German night fighter, and the War finished, and they were having a hotel built. Other: In Spain. JG: Aye. And then, I got word from David that he knew him so I’ll get an introduction to him, and right away I go, I had to go and have dinner with him and his crew. Yeah. I think that’s the beauty about aircrew everywhere, that there’s a kind of feeling, that he’s a pal. Other: Fencing, and then you were starting to say where were you? Where were you? Were you there? Were you there? AM: Do you think you ever shared the same piece of sky? JG: Aye. Oh aye. AM: Yes. They did. JG: Aye, yeah. Now, I, I was on that night, yeah [unclear] now as I say there was a feeling that there was no bad feeling between us. That’s all I’ll say. Come and have a meal. That’s the subtle difference. We both took it that way. Other: Then his own history was quite interesting, because he said he was shot down three times in the war and he said the first twice, he was unlucky because he was shot down over the Channel and the Germans picked him back up, put him in a plane, and sent him off. And it was only the third time that he was picked up by the allies and shipped off to Canada. AM: I didn’t ask you do you think you ever shot down a German fighter. JG: Did I think what? AM: Did you think you ever shot down a German fighter? JG: Oh aye. AM: Tell me about that then. JG: No, I shot. I shot down, I shot two down. AM: Right. JG: I shot one down, this is quite a good one. It was Russia. There was a bit of a problem with the, their Navy all sitting waiting to get out, they couldn’t get out, before the Germans what do you call the water, you know where the coastline goes like that, in and out, [pause] the name for it, German name for it, no not a German name. A Norwegian name. Fjord, yeah, Fjord, yeah. So, the Russians went in there, but they want out, and the Germans come along and they plant their, their Navy in there, the big one. And Russia asked us is there was anything we could do to shift him, and then we took that one on. AM: Was this the Tirpitz? JG: Eh? AM: Was this the Tirpitz? JG: Well, that leaf, that level. Yes. You’ve got it there have you? It will be in there, I think. AM: I’ll just — JG: The German [unclear] done away with them so they asked us to help out and they, what we did was [unclear] when the Russians asked us we’ll help. I can’t remember, about three of us hundred went. We took mines with us, and there was only two can fit the, the bay and we were told that you don’t drop them in, you have to fly them in at, because they might explode if you drop them so, this is the. For me, I always admired them, how good a fliers they were going there, they can fly away down there, [unclear] and they did it. Now, to me they were hard to beat. Oh aye, and anyway we, we did that, and we dropped our mines in there, so you can imagine it was almost a thousand mines that the Germans have got to clear to get out, and so we left them and came back home, and I went down through Poland and to France and in France I said to Charlie, Charlie, hold it. We’ve got company, and a 109 it was. So I shot it down, fatally. The place where we are. That was in France. AM: Right. JG: From Russia. That was it. To try and get the Russians out of the water. AM: Was that the first time you’d shot another aircraft down? JG: No. No. No. No. That was the first one. The other one, one of them things. I know it sounds daft now. Turn it off. AM: Right. JG: But I couldn’t claim it. You know there’s a drill they have, if you, if you shoot an aircraft down when you come back from an operation you get interrogated and if you say you shot an aircraft down they will not log it because if the three hundred have left to go there, so three hundred have got to come back. So, and you say that you shot down one there, and then, so, all he’d done is put down the time and the place. And he gets confirmation from other ones that all the ones that are flying back that cannot see them. So, they’ve all been trained, if you see a light, or if you see anything record it. So maybe about twenty of them saw the lights of mine, and I shot him down. That’s how it was done. That’s why at Mailly le Camp, I did one there, but the point was that, what was going on at Mailly. You know, you say what the hell can I do, the aircraft coming. Aircraft. I mean, it’s all happening, between out here and here, it’s all happened. So, but nobody has got time to write that they saw that at the time. Yeah. AM: Jimmy, Warrant Officer Graham, Legion D’honneur. Thank you very much. JG: I’m pleased to meet you. AM: And you. I’m honoured to meet you. No, please. [recording paused] Other: I rather thought that would be the case. AM: Jimmy, you didn’t tell me you had a Distinguished Flying Medal. Perhaps you’d like to tell me why you’ve got a distinguished, why you’ve got a DFM. JG: Well, it wasn’t because I’d, I’d shot down two. Yeah. AM: There you are. Sit down. JG: I shot down two. Yeah. AM: And who awarded your medal? JG: What, what they did they stopped royalty doing it because they felt they were doing too much of there, and that and that sort of thing, and it was well one of the big chief. What do you call them? AM: An air marshall. JG: Air marshall’s, aye. AM: And where was that done in? JG: That was done in, the Doncaster one. AM: Elsham Wolds. JG: Elsham Wolds. AM: Right. JG: Was that, and they came to do that, before they were, obviously their job was taken them everywhere. AM: You must have been very, very proud. JG: Oh, I was. When I came in [unclear] yeah. AM: Superb. JG: I felt good. That’s another of me there. Wireless operator, up, mid-upper gunner, who was that? Anyway, there was me, there’s me and Mick, he, he was the flight engineer, and the bomb aimer[unclear], and I used to pull his leg because — AM: Jimmy, tell me about you’ve just showed a photograph. Tell me what the bomb aimer did. JG: The bomb aimer did next to nothing. He doesn’t even help to put a bomb onto the plane, and the rear gunner on our way to the target is lying doing nothing. And then we were getting other players, he’s on our run now to where he was going to drop his bombs. ‘Left. Left. Left. Left. Left. Left. Bombs away.’ And then he lies down, and did nothing. He lies down until he gets home. Aye. AM: Well, I’ll say this again. Jimmy Graham, Distinguished Flying Medal, Legion D’honneur, thank you. That was brilliant. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Jimmy Graham Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Alastair Montgomery Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-09-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AGrahamJ170927, PGrahamJ1701 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:00:17 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Description An account of the resource Jimmy Graham was employed in a Reserved Occupation but volunteered with the RAF as potential aircrew. He began his training in Northern Ireland and was, eventually, qualified as an air gunner. He was posted to RAF Elsham Wolds. He took part in the operation to Mailly le Camp, which he considered to be the worst raid of the war. After the war he met a former German night fighter and they became good friends. After his tour of operations, he was posted to flying control. Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1943 1944 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. France Germany Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Yorkshire France--Mailly-le-Camp Germany--Berlin Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Maureen Clarke 103 Squadron 576 Squadron air gunner aircrew bombing bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944) Lancaster RAF Elsham Wolds RAF West Malling training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/4088/58708/PRichardsonH2501.jpg d507d8acf09d7b1928c2d9e668412369 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/4088/58708/ARichardsonH250626.mp3 befb668f968a370edb51256c822133e4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richardson, Harry Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Harry Richardson DFC (b. 1918, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 149 and 59 Squadrons. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-06-26 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Richardson, H Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AM: Right. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is a chap called Alistair Montgomery, that’s me, Monty. The interviewee is Flight Lieutenant Harry Richardson, Distinguished Flying Cross and we’re sitting in Harry’s lovely home in Ochiltree in Ayrshire with his daughter Penny. Right. Harry, tell me a wee bit about your life before the Royal Air Force. You know, where you lived and your family. HR: Well, I lived in several places with mother, dad was a power station engineer supervisor and he seemed to get moved around so the first place was I take it you can edit [laughs] this tape. Where was it first? Well, I was born in Leicester. AM: Right. HR: So obviously he worked there. Then the first place I know was Derby. He worked in a power station there and then we went to Derby. Did I just say that. Yeah. We were about seven years there. I remember bits and pieces like, you know these green things at the end of the street with all the electrical stuff in. That’s one of my first memories is on a Sunday morning a gang of blokes, about a half a dozen all in white cricket or tennis wear playing around with this thing. That’s about my first memory. AM: Right. HR: And the next would be in front of a pub. They opened the doors and rolled the barrels of beer down with ropes. I don’t know whether you ever saw it done. AM: I have done. Yeah. HR: So those are my first memories. I must say we were at Derby there — AM: And where did you go to school? In Derby? Other: No. HR: No. Next we went to, dad went to Bolton, Lancashire and that’s where I did all my education. AM: Right. HR: Primary school, secondary and so on and then we moved down to Wembley and I got a job. Gosh, it’s a long time ago. I should have written all this down. Oh, I signed on. I decided to go into Customs and Excise — AM: Right. HR: Because I knew a family and I spoke to the dad a lot. So I signed on the dole and I started a correspondence course for Customs and Excise and every week went to the [brew?] and one of the days, twice a week I think it was, on one of the days we drew our dole money but one day they said, ‘We’ve got an interview for you.’ Oh. So, I was interviewed by this chap and it was one of two brothers that ran a motor car sales place and repair shop. So there were three of us and I was picked for the job because mine was the only handwriting they could read [laughs] So that was my first job. Ray Abbott Limited, Harrow Road. So after that — Other: RAF. HR: Yeah. The reason they wanted somebody at that time was because one of the partners was studying for Grand Master of the Mason Lodge. AM: Right. Good. HR: So that’s why I got my first job. One of the reasons. And then what did you say, Penny? Other: It was the RAF after. You got called up after that. HR: No. No. No. Let’s have a [pause] let me think. AM: So which year did you join? HR: Pardon? AM: Which year did you join? HR: Which? Other: ’39. HR: ’39. AM: ’39. Other: 1939. AM: Where did you join up? HR: Well, I tried to join two weeks before the war. Other: It’s, it’s — HR: I went to Hendon and I said — Other: In here. HR: I said, ‘I want to be a pilot.’ Other: There you are. HR: ’Oh, we’re not taking for pilots.’ Other: That’s his call out paper. AM: I’ll take a picture of that. Yes. Other: Yes. HR: ‘We’re not taking people for pilots.’ So I went to Hendon. Other: It says May actually. HR: And got the same answer and then the war started. Within a week I got this thing through the door. I was called up. So I was, I had an interview didn’t I? ‘Do you want to be a navigator or something like that?’ I said, ‘No. I want to be a pilot.’ So I stuck out and I got taken on as a pilot. Oh no — AM: Where did you start the pilot training proper? HR: It was — Other: It was at Perth. HR: Yes. Yeah. Other: Perth. AM: At Perth. Yes. HR: At Perth. AM: Yes. HR: Yes. Perth. On Tiger Moths. AM: Right. HR: And after that it was Montrose on Miles Masters. After that it was Lossiemouth on Wellington aircraft. And after Lossiemouth I got my first posting to 149 Squadron at Mildenhall where I completed a tour of operations over Germany. AM: When you, when you, tell me how you formed a crew on the Wellington. HR: Ahh, that’s going back a bit now. We went to — AM: Was that down at the OTU? HR: Lossiemouth. AM: At Lossiemouth. Right. HR: Went to Lossiemouth. That’s where I formed the first crew and we completed [pause] completed the course together and then I was posted to Mildenhall on ops. AM: Right. HR: And I completed thirty trips which was a tour and I went to Lichfield then. AM: What was the Wellington like to fly? HR: Oh, it was very nice. Very nice. A bit slow but it responded fairly quickly to your controls. AM: When you arrived at Mildenhall I think I read somewhere they were making a film, “Target for Tonight.” HR: Yes. AM: Right. Tell me about that. HR: Yeah. Well, the, “Target for Tonight,” the front gunner did his second tour with me. AM: Right. HR: Yes. [Dickie Bird]. AM: Right. HR: Well, I [laughs] [didn’t call] Dickie. AM: Isn’t he just. HR: Yeah. So that was — AM: When you got to a typical mission, not there probably was a typical mission but when you arrived at operations to fly. HR: Yeah. AM: What was the procedure like? How did, how did people feel? HR: Well, you’d go to this briefing a few hours before and be told where you were going and the first, the first half of my tour we did our own thing. Some liked to fly at sixteen thousand feet. Some people flew lower. AM: Right. HR: I preferred eight thousand feet because the light, the light flak, flak being anti-aircraft stuff finished about eight thousand feet and the higher levels sort of were, didn’t really get going ‘til about sixteen thousand feet. AM: Right. Was that where the night fighters were? HR: Well, the first half of the tour there was neither night fighters or radar. When radar came in you soon found out about it [laughs] because you got more attacks. I actually think I shot one down. Shot an enemy fighter down. AM: Right. Tell me about that. HR: The reason, the reason was that we were being attacked and so I could be a little bit more manoeuvrable I decided to drop my bombs. So I pulled this toggle at the bottom of the instrument panel and that was supposed to drop the bombs. Anyhow, we got home safely and halfway through the debriefing one of the maintenance guys, the fitters whispered in my ear and said, ‘You’ve brought your bombs back.’ I said, ‘What?’ So I had to think because I’d seen this explosion when I had the go at the night fighter. What I did I sort of, he attacked me and I thought well he didn’t do too much damage so I thought he won’t give up. He’ll keep going. It was a dirty black night and you couldn’t see a thing. I thought well he’ll take so long to come back on my tail and I gave the order to the rear gunner when I thought he’d be behind me and I said, ‘Fire.’ Through the hosepipe which he did and a few, a minute later there was an explosion on the ground. I thought that’s him. No. Sorry. What am I doing? I’m getting lost. Yes. AM: So what you thought was your bombs going off — HR: No, that’s right. AM: Was him hitting the ground. HR: I dropped my bombs and said, ‘That’s my bombs.’ But when I got back and was debriefing this mechanic said, ‘You’ve brought your bombs back.’ So what else could it be? It would be the fighter. But he never turned up again [laughs] AM: Right. What was the, I mean you attacked a lot of targets in Germany. HR: Pardon? AM: You attacked a lot of targets in Germany. What was the, what was the most difficult one? I’ve heard you mention Essen before. HR: Well, the furthest I had to bomb was Karlsruhe. AM: Right. HR: Sort of southeast of Berlin. I was never on Berlin. I think, I think they waited for me to go on holiday and then they picked Berlin because there were three, at least three Berlin raids when I operated and I missed them all. So that was that. AM: Did you, did you do any day sorties or only night? HR: Only night. AM: Only night. HR: Yeah. AM: Right. That’s interesting. HR: Oh, sorry. We did a bit of shipping. AM: Right. HR: Off the Dutch and Belgian coast. AM: And was that bombing shipping or dropping mines? HR: That was bombing. AM: Right. HR: Bombing ships which were supposed to be all German. So that was that. AM: What was, what was the life like at Mildenhall in 1941/42? [pause] HR: That was Bury St Edmunds I think was our leisure place and I had a relative down there which was quite useful. So [pause] AM: Was there much interaction on the station — HR: Yes. AM: In your off-duty periods? HR: Off-duty periods? Well, it was usually going out. Going out dancing. Other: Bury St Edmunds. HR: Sorting out the girls. AM: Yes. HR: Seeing the lads. That’s us. That’s where I met my wife. It wasn’t there. Other: No. That was later on. HR: That was later on. AM: Right. HR: We used to go to the dances at the weekend. AM: Did you ever have a trip home to see your parents in that period? HR: Oh yes. I think we had a week off every six weeks. AM: Right. HR: Oh yes. We had to go and see our parents. My parents. We were living at North Wembley at that time so they had more, they had more bombs exploding than I did. AM: What was it, you told me one story about when you brought your bombs back. What was it like when you got back to Mildenhall at the end of a sortie? A six, eight hour sortie. HR: Yes, well, we were, we were debriefed. Told our, the story of the trip and that was it. Then we went to bed. Getting too tired for that. AM: I bet you were. I bet you were. Was the trip [pause] that’s not a good question. What was the most dangerous trip that you took part in during your time at Mildenhall? HR: Ah. I think around Karlsruhe. The first obstacle was along the coast. AM: Right. HR: Holland and Belgium. Hundreds of searchlights. Other: A bit of Wellington. AM: Right. Right. HR: Yeah. There were a lot of searchlights and anti-aircraft guns. That was, that was sometimes it was the hardest part to get through but I was only, I was only hit once fortunately. That’s the result. AM: And that’s a bit of it. HR: That’s a bit of it which the mechanics kindly gave me when they mended it. AM: When, when we read about bomber missions you know quite often pilots talk about having to fly the corkscrew manoeuvre. HR: Oh, well we, we didn’t fly in a straight line. I mean if they’re going to fire at you they’re going to get you eventually in your tour. So you just flew around and you changed your height. AM: Right. HR: And that sort of thing. So you weren’t just sitting there with your feet up. AM: So, so you finished your first tour at Mildenhall. HR: Yes. AM: Tell me what happened then. HR: Well, I went to Lichfield I think. Other: No. Did you not go to Montrose? HR: No. Other: On Ansons. HR: No, we’d been there. Other: Oh, right. Ansons. HR: Oh yes. Yeah, I, for a time I went on to Ansons flying all the students around and doing their first countries and checking. You know, toughening up their skills. AM: That must have been a bit of a change. HR: Oh, it was. It was lovely [laughs] Yes. Feet up. Sometimes you would, you would let their second pilot sit in so you took two learners flying the aeroplane because they were very easy to fly. AM: Right. HR: So that was good fun. Other: Didn’t you do the first two bomber, thousand bomber raids from there? Are we still — HR: From Lichfield. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They were quite easy. Not much trouble at all. AM: Was this the attack on Cologne? HR: Pardon? AM: Was this the attack on Cologne? HR: Yes. AM: Yeah, right. HR: Yeah. Yeah. Other: He did the first two. AM: So did you do that while you were instructing on Ansons? HR: Yeah. AM: And pick up a Wellington to do the trip. HR: That’s right. AM: Right. Gosh. HR: Yeah. AM: Yeah. HR: Yeah. AM: That must have been a rude awakening after — HR: Yeah. AM: Flying students around. HR: Yes. I’m glad they didn’t send us in the Anson. AM: You’d still — Other: [unclear] they didn’t have. AM: You’d still be flying I think. You’d still be flying. HR: Yes. AM: Now, when you finished on Ansons you converted to the Liberator. HR: No. The first time I converted to a Wellington. AM: Right. HR: And then, oh gosh I volunteered to go overseas and that’s when I went on to Liberators. AM: Right. So after the Anson you went back to the Wellingtons for a bit. HR: No. AM: No. You went straight to the Liberator. HR: Yeah. AM: Right. And where did you do your conversion onto the B-24? HR: [unclear] AM: Right. HR: Right in the middle of India. AM: Yes. HR: Yeah. AM: I read about flying a Liberator and a lot of people say it’s not an easy aeroplane to fly. HR: Well, once you learn how to fly them they’re no bother. I mean flying is usually all you’ve got to do is this sort of thing [laughs] AM: I’m told on take-off it was quite heavy. HR: Take-off. Well, of course you have everything. All your power on. That’s the most dangerous part of flying. When you, when your engines are on full power but no. No. But it’s not that difficult once you’ve trained. AM: To try to — HR: I think people try to make this flying business you know they pump it up and say [pause] my logbook says [laughs] the first entry in the flying after the first month it’s got, “Below average pilot.” But the last entry, “Above average pilot.” So it’s all how you learn it. how quickly or how slowly but you get there in the end. AM: Tell me a little about some of the Liberator missions. HR: Oh, Liberator missions. Oh well, the longest we did, the most difficult was to Penang. AM: Right. HR: We dropped mines between the Penang Island and the mainland and that was an eighteen and a half to twenty hours. AM: Gosh. That’s a long trip. HR: Yeah. AM: A long trip. HR: Eh? AM: That’s a long trip. HR: It was indeed. Yeah. AM: And that was on 159 Squadron. HR: That was 159 Squadron. Yes. AM: I noticed — HR: Wing Commander Blackburn. AM: That’s Wing Commander James Blackburn. Is that the chap — HR: Pardon? AM: James Blackburn. HR: James Blackburn. AM: Yeah. HR: He did about five tours. AM: Gosh. HR: He did two, two in the Middle East. Well, he was a university guy and they, some of them flew with the RAF while they were at the university and I think most of them became officers straightaway when the war began. Blackburn, he did, he did two tours supply dropping in the Middle East and I think he did about two tours over Germany and some out east. An affable bloke, most unassuming but he didn’t care. He was very handsome but he never, we never saw him with a woman. I don’t think [pause] I don’t think he liked women you know. He was the other side but he was a very courageous bloke for all that. AM: Definitely. HR: Yeah. AM: Now, I understand that your Liberator had a name. Queenie. Is that correct? HR: Queenie. AM: Yes. HR: Yes, one of the, one of the mechanics or somebody painted this. This woman. AM: Right. HR: This sexy woman, you know on the side of the aeroplane. AM: So, it wasn’t you that chose the name. It was the ground crew. Is that right? HR: Oh, no. It wasn’t me. It was one of the, one of the ground staff. AM: Right. HR: Yeah. AM: And did you do all your missions in the Far East in Queenie? HR: Pardon? Oh. AM: Did you all your missions in that aeroplane? HR: Oh yes. AM: Right. HR: Yes. AM: So tell me about what happened when the war came to an end then, Harry. HR: Ah. That’s what happened [pause] Oh, I did a bit. Did a bit in Transport Command — AM: Right. HR: Out in India. Ferrying people around. AM: What aeroplane was that on? HR: A Liberator. AM: Still in a Liberator. Right. HR: Yeah. C-87. AM: Right. HR: The passenger version. AM: Right. HR: Yeah. Yes. AM: What about, what about the day the war actually ended. What happened then? Nothing? HR: Not, not a lot. No. Yes, the war ended while I was out there and, oh gosh my memory is terrible [pause] Yeah. We, yes I was in Transport Command then. AM: Right. HR: So I carried on for a bit. Then we came home. AM: Just out of interest what was — HR: Eh? AM: What was Calcutta like? HR: Calcutta. Well, it was alright. It’s a town. AM: Yeah. HR: Or city. [unclear] oh gosh. I’ve forgotten the places we went to. There was a pretty good red light district I’m told. AM: You’re told. Yeah. HR: I never experienced it myself. Other: Because he was married by then. HR: Yes. I was married. AM: So, when did you get married? Other: 22nd of May 1943. HR: ’43 was it? Other: It was ’43. HR: Oh sorry. I thought it was ’42. Other: And I was born a year later in 1944. HR: Yes. AM: So while you were in Calcutta your wife was still in England. HR: Penny will tell me. Other: Yes. In Wallasey. AM: Right. HR: Was I married then? Other: Yes. You were. HR: Of course I was. Yeah. Other: Yeah. Mum was pregnant. You went out in the January. HR: Yeah. Other: January ’44. HR: Yeah. Other: To India. HR: That’s right. You were — Other: By ship. HR: You were a year and a half before I saw you. Other: No. Before you saw me but I was born in May. HR: Yeah. Other: You left in the January and I was born in the May. AM: So you got married while you were flying Ansons. [pause] HR: Yeah. Other: There’s Queenie. HR: Yeah. I think so. Other: There’s Queenie. AM: Oh right. Good. Yeah. So when you completed your time at transport command how did you get back to the UK? Was there, did you bring Liberators back or — HR: I think I flew back here. I went out by ship. AM: Right. That must have been an interesting trip. HR: Yes. Yes. I remember going through Suez and we brushed alongside an American. a heck of a noise. [unclear] two ships through it. It was very good. The food was super. Smashing. Other: Yeah. AM: So you got back to the UK. HR: Yes. AM: And tell me what happened then apart from meeting up with your family for the first time in a couple of years. HR: Oh dear. Other: Yeah. HR: Leconfield. Other: I don’t really know anything — HR: Yeah. I went, I guess I was [pause] Leconfield comes in my mind and instructing — AM: Right. HR: Yeah. AM: What were you instructing on? HR: On, on Wellingtons. AM: Right. HR: Yeah. I was at — Other: Was it Letchworth? HR: I joined, transport, Transport Command. AM: Right. HR: As I say C-87s. That was passenger air. The Wellington. Yeah. I enjoyed my stint. AM: And when were you commissioned? HR: When was I commissioned? Other: That would have been when you were out in India. HR: No. It was when I was on Ansons. AM: Right. Other: Oh right. HR: They wanted more officers. AM: Right. HR: The — Other: That was when you became a pilot officer was it? HR: Yeah. Other: You were a pilot officer when you got married in 1943. HR: Yeah. If not ’42, ’43. Yeah. AM: And the one thing you don’t mention, you’ve not mentioned to me is your Distinguished Flying Cross. HR: Yes. AM: Tell me about it. HR: Yeah. One day one of the flight commanders came to me and he said, ‘Would you write citations out for about ten bods getting medals.’ So [laughs] I found it very difficult but I did it and of course I said I can’t write one for myself. So, I handed these things in and waited with bated breath and eventually I was awarded one as well. AM: Right. HR: Yeah. AM: Wonderful. And where were you at that point? HR: I was at, I think I was at Lichfield. AM: Right. HR: Yeah. AM: Right. You must have been very thrilled. HR: Yes. Yeah. AM: Deservedly so. HR: Well, compared with some of the guys I’d written for I don’t class as much as them. AM: Yes. Good. Very difficult though isn’t it? HR: Yes. AM: And the people you flew with particularly on the Wellington did you meet any of them after the war? HR: No. No. Other: I thought you met one at that reunion. HR: Yeah. Sorry. Other: At the Mildenhall reunion. HR: Freddy. Freddy [Reece]. Yes, I met the navigator. AM: Right. HR: Yes. He lived somewhere in London I can’t remember and oh yes we got on really well. He never got me lost. AM: Just as well. We can’t say about my navigators [laughs] now is there anything I’ve not asked you about that you really think I should know? [pause] HR: That is difficult. [pause] The only, the one thing I remember the first trip. It was late evening. The light was just going. We were over the English Channel and I looked back and saw the southeast of England there. The Thames and all that. And I went through and wondered would I see that again. That was the only time I’ve thought anything like that but I can still remember it. I can still see the southeast coast of England. AM: Right. HR: It stays there. AM: I’m not surprised. That’s remarkable. Well, Harry. That’s your lot of questions so I’ll close this down now and we can just have a chat if that’s ok. So, Harry Richardson, Flight Lieutenant Harry Richardson, Distinguished Flying Cross, thank you. HR: My pleasure. [recording paused] AM: Right. I’ll just say Harry tell me about Lichfield. HR: Yes. Well, I was, yeah posted to Lichfield. Billeted with a guy called Tim Yates and he said, ‘Would you like to come dancing tonight?’ So I said ok. And he said, I wasn’t quite ready so he said, ‘I’ll go and pick up the girls.’ And off he went and I got ready. He came back with the girls. There were three girls sitting in the back and they had left the front for me but there was a blonde who was Tim’s girlfriend and there was another woman and then another woman who was a brunette, a lovely smile and that was Margaret. We got on very well and to cut a long story short she eventually became my wife. She came to live at Wallasey. She was the daughter of an architect and quite a nice lady and eventually, well we got married. That was Margaret Rivers. AM: Brilliant. Lovely. Thank you. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Harry Richardson Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Alastair Montgomery Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-06-26 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Air Force. Transport Command Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 00:43:41 Audio Recording Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending revision of OH transcription Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ARichardsonH250626, PRichardsonH2501 Description An account of the resource Harry describes his early life and operations on Wellingtons with 149 Squadron and then on Liberators in the Far East with 59 Squadron. Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1939 1943-05-22 1944-01 1945 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Germany Great Britain Malaysia India Atlantic Ocean--English Channel England--Bolton England--Bury St. Edmunds England--Derby England--London England--Staffordshire England--Yorkshire Germany--Cologne Germany--Karlsruhe India--Kolkata Malaysia--Pulau Pinang (State) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Tompkins 149 Squadron aircrew Anson anti-aircraft fire B-24 bombing briefing debriefing Distinguished Flying Cross entertainment love and romance military service conditions mine laying nose art pilot RAF Leconfield RAF Lichfield RAF Mildenhall Tiger Moth training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1494/58188/MElsonA751538-160401-01.jpg 3218591703620e515c7cb81c643fcca7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Elson, Albert A Elson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-04-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Elson, A Description An account of the resource Six items. The collection concerns Albert Elson (751538 Royal Air Force) and contains his correspondence, documents, and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 115 and 75 Squadrons and became a prisoner of war. The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Janet Elson and catalogued by Andy Fitter. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Albert Elson postings and aircraft flown Description An account of the resource A list of the postings Elson was given when training, on operations and when instructing. Also a list of six aircraft types he flew in - Tiger Moth, Hawker Hart, Dakota, Folker, Stirling, Wellington. A small newspaper cutting is included, reporting that Elson is a prisoner of war. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Albert Elson Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1939 1940 1941 1942 1945 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Cambridgeshire England--Norfolk England--Shropshire England--Yorkshire Scotland--Ayrshire Scotland--Ross and Cromarty Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Personal research Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One page of typewritten text with a newspaper cutting Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context MElsonA751538-160401-01 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending text-based transcription 115 Squadron 75 Squadron aircrew C-47 demobilisation Distinguished Flying Cross Operational Training Unit pilot prisoner of war RAF Bassingbourn RAF Catterick RAF Cosford RAF Evanton RAF Feltwell RAF Marham RAF Pershore RAF Prestwick Stirling Tiger Moth training Wellington wireless operator / air gunner Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource An00509 Description An account of the resource Nine items. Collection concerns a Flight Sergeant (1924 - 2018) who flew operations as a navigator and wished to remain anonymous. Contains an oral history interview as well as two biographical books and photographs. The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins. This item has been redacted in order to protect the privacy of third parties. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-04-24 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context An00509 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Autobiography Description An account of the resource An00509's autobiography., consisting of 17 chapters and an epilogue. Chapters 1-4 deal with early life and schooling; chapters 5-14 - the war years; and chapters15-17, post war. This item is available only at the International Bomber Command Centre / University of Lincoln. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource An00509. The author wished to remain anonymous Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 129 page printed doument Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Memoir Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BAn00509An00509v1 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Civilian Royal Air Force Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. France France--Paris Germany Germany--Nuremberg Great Britain England--Devon England--Barnstaple England--Bristol England--Cambridgeshire England--Cambridge United States New York (State)--New York Canada New Brunswick--Moncton Québec--Montréal Manitoba--Portage la Prairie Manitoba--Winnipeg England--Yorkshire England--Harrogate England--Staffordshire England--Northumberland England--Buckinghamshire England--Northamptonshire England--Lincolnshire New York (State) Québec New Brunswick England--Gloucestershire Manitoba Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1939 1941 1942 1944 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Maureen Clarke aircrew Anson crewing up Gee Lancaster navigator RAF Halfpenny Green RAF Hemswell RAF Silverstone RAF Turweston Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/253/3400/PFellowesD1501.1.jpg e88ffe00536dab58919683f9b4889b66 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/253/3400/AFellowesD150406.2.mp3 2e0bb6d3e178d0c61e40d54ef14a6507 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fellowes, David David Fellowes Dave Fellowes D Fellowes Description An account of the resource 20 items. Two oral history interviews with Flight Sergeant David "Dave" Fellowes (Royal Air Force), documents and a photograph. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 460 Squadron. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Fellowes and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Additional items were licensed to the IBCC Digital Archive by Dr Steve Bond and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. This collection was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive. Collection contains photographs, pages from log book and an oral history discussion with partial transcript. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-11-25 2015-04-06 2016-08-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Fellowes, D Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document (AP) This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Andrew Panton. The interviewee is David Fellowes. Mr Fellowes was a rear gunner in a Lancaster aircraft. The interview is taking place at The Princess Marina House in Rustington, West Sussex on 6th April 2015. Apologies for the poor sound quality at the beginning of the interview due to static on a tie clip microphone. (DF) [Static] I’d just passed out of gunnery school number 1 ATS at Pembury South Wales and we all went on leave as brand new young Sergeant air gunners. Whilst we were on leave, we received our postings where we were going to go and what was going to happen to us. In my case, I was posted to 30 OTU in in a place called Hickson in Staffordshire. So I left home [unclear]. The first stop was Crewe and I got to Crewe, we had to change trains to go to Stafford. On the train, there I was sitting alone and all a sudden three Australian Flight Sergeants pilots came bustling in. Well we soon made up a little conversation and I asked one of them whereabouts in Australia do you come from and he said: ‘Sydney.’ I said: ‘Oh yes.’ I said: ‘I know it’s a long shot I have an aunt in Sydney. She went out there after the First World War with her husband and have a sports business.’ ‘Oh,’ he said ‘Do you know what part of Sydney?’ ‘Yes in the district called Marrickville.’ ‘Oh,’ he said ‘That’s funny now I used to live in Marrickville. What road did she live in?’ I told him: ‘Illawarra Road and her name is Mrs Ivy Evans.’ Well he made a rather quick Australian [phone in background] good word and he said: ‘Well that lady happened to be my mother’s best friend. Chapel friend.’ So he said: ‘Well we also have something no much in common so will you be guarding me, we’re gonna be on the same course.’ So I said: ‘Yes, why not indeed.’ So when we did get to Hickson we were on the same course and, of course, I crewed up with him. We made the backbone of the crew. The two of us. Flying at 30 OTU, of course, on Wellingtons you didn’t require a Flight Engineer. When we were posted from Hickson, we went up to 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit to convert from the Wellington on course onto the Halifax. It was here up at Lindholme that we gathered the seventh member of the crew, our flight engineer. In this case we didnt have a choice, we were sitting on one side of the large room and the flight engineers were sitting on the other and names were rung out the captains name and then the Flight Engineer’s name and we were getting a bit close towards the end and there was this very old looking gentleman sitting down over there and I said to my skipper: ‘Hey Art I bet we get the old [unclear] over there.’ And, of course, what happened they called his name out: ‘Sergeant Shephard Flight Engineer you will fly with Flight Sergeant Whitmarshand crew.’ So we got this old gentleman. He was a family man already and, in fact, his trade was, in fact, a master baker, would you believe, but he was an excellent Flight Engineer. He really did know his stuff and we were very well pleased to have him but, of course, he was the daddy of the crew. If I remember rightly, he was about 38 years old. [Mobile phone ringing]. We passed out from the Conversion Unit at Lindholme and it was - we were destined to go to a Lancaster Squadron. So we had to go Lanc finishing school [mobile phone ringing] which was relatively a quick changeover from a Halifax to the Lancaster for the benefit of the pilot. Most of the rest of the crew especially the gunners had had experience on both kinds of turrets on each airplane. Anyhow, so it didn’t really worry us too much. Anyhow our skip did ask us if we could – how we felt going to an Australian Squadron, so we said: ‘Arh yes,’ because we knew there were advantages to going to Commonwealth or Colonial Squadron, and that was they were all on permanent RAF stations and had good quarters, married quarters so when you got there you never saw Nissan huts, wooden huts and things like that. You stayed in a married quarter. Married quarters, of course, were empty because wives weren’t allowed to be on the station during the war. When we got to Binbrook, we were allocated Number 13 Airman’s Married Quarters and it was there that we set up house. When one got to the Squadron, one of course had to check in, you went around with your arrival chit with all the different departments getting the signatures so they knew you were there. You reported and found out what flight you were going to and we went to B Flight which was in Number 1 Hanger. Well we were very lucky. It was a good flight. There was a lot of happy old people there and, of course, before we went on ops we did a training flight and then normally what happened was your skipper would go off with an experienced crew to see what it was all like. Well, low and behold that wasn’t going to happen to us. The Station Commander, Group Captain Edwards VC, DSO, DFC and bar said: ‘Oh, I’ll take Whitmarsh and his crew to Friesburg.’ Well ‘course word gets around the station about who you’re gonna fly with they say : ‘Dear oh dear oh dear.’ ‘Cause he had got a bit of a reputation. Quite a good one really but nevertheless he set off and took us to Friesburg. Coming up before we got to Friesburg , well way before Friesburg before we got to the bomb line we passed over an American sector. AnAmerican sector for some unknown reason didn’t care for us flying over their sector very much and opened fire on us and we did in fact got hit by flak. Well this rather upset the Group Captain [chuckle] which is quite understandable. He – no he wasn’t impressed with that. He did mention something about dropping a little bomb on them to keep them quiet but it didn’t happen. Anyhow the trip went on we did as we did – should have done and then coming home before we came home he had to go down and look at the target to see everything was alright and then, of course, we turned round and came home. My role in Bomber Command as an Air Gunner was to protect the crew from any form of enemy fighter attack. Now in the – I volunteered to go into the rear turret. I erh didn’t want to go in the mid upper turret, my other gunner fortunately did. He didn’t mind sitting up in the turret that would turn 360 degrees all the way round. I much preferred to sit in the rear turret by myself with four Browning 303 machine guns. It was a cold lonely place, yes, it was, it used to get very cold. It could be down to minus 14. Icicles would hang from your oxygen mask and erh – we were lucky though we did have an electrically heated slippers and we also had electrically heated gloves. These weren’t too good because it made your fingers too thick and bulky if you wanted to do anything but nevertheless I survived in the rear turret, though on one occasion while I was in the rear turret we’d gone to Stuttgart and as we were coming out there were two Lancasters signalling down, just behind us on the port side andthere was a Halifax on the starboard side. We did have wireless operator looking out through the astrodome checking on any fighter activity and also to make sure that nobody was going to drop any bombs on us which could happen. We had spotted a Wolfe 190 cruise over us so we thought hello there are fighters about. Then all of a sudden around the back of these two Lancasters, which were just a bit lower than us and on the port side, a JU88 came right in close. I opened fire, the mid upper opened fire and we gave the order to climb port but I can still sit here and see bullets and cannon shells ripping right alongside me into our aeroplane. Well, the tail plane was pretty well damaged and so was one of the fins and rudders, the - one of the fuel tanks was ruptured, the starboard wing fuel tank was ruptured and unfortunately our mid upper gunner got hit in the neck[?] which meant he had to be taken out of the turret, put onto the rest bed, given morphine and well looked after until we got back home. The fighter that I’d had the combat with I maintained firing at it all the time until all of a sudden it flipped onto its port wing nose went down and it went straight the way down and it looked completely out of control. Well we reported all this is our debriefing when we got back home. Made out a gunnery-you know - slip, and then, er, we did hear later that we had it confirmed that we got that JU88. The 7th of January 1945 is a day that I shall perhaps never forget in all my life but we were scheduled to fly to Munich in O-Oboe. Now O-Oboe was in fact our aeroplane. It’s a fact that on our squadron after you had proved yourself and you were doing your job properly and looking after things, you were given your own aeroplane to look after. That meant also you had a ground staff looking after that aeroplane as well. This particular night we were scheduled to fly to Munich which is a fairly long way into Germany. On the main sector down to the River Rhine we were scheduled to fly at 14000 feet so we stuck to the rules be flying at 14000 feet but when we got down to the area just prior to the River Rhine in Alzey[?] which, of course, used to be German territory we found ourselves in very thick nasty cloud and we were bumped around all over the place and you could feel the airplane being kinda damp. It wasn’t very pleasant. It wasn’t very nice at all. Our skipper said that he thought that we perhaps oughta climb and get out of this bad weather and also to get away from any icing up. Well the crew all agreed and so, I do remember him asking the flight engineer for climbing power. I can remember hearing the engines increase in power and away we went to climb up out of the cloud. As we came out of the cloud at the top, I don’t know what the exact height, it must have been about another 15 thou - to 15000 feet or more, there were other aircraft who’d already gone up there and it was quite clear but all of a sudden there was a great big thump – a bump. Well we - somebody said: ‘Christ, we’ve been hit.’ And we were, in fact, hit by another Lancaster coming out the cloud and as we were fly along just above the top of the cloud the other Lancaster came out and put his port wing into our fuselage. Er, our starboard wing we lost round about six foot and we think, we think it just went into their flight deck because that airplane just peeled off and went straight down and we can remember the explosion. Now our aeroplane had received this big thump. We went into a spin for 3000 feet and eventually the skipper got it out. He then ordered bombs to be dropped safe, so the bombs were dropped safe. That just meant that they wouldn’t explode when they hit the ground and from then we sorted it all out and climbed up to 20000 feet, above icing level and we took stock of what had happened. We had, in fact, possibly lost about six foot of the starboard wingtip, the starboard airline[?] was all chewed up and there was hole in the fuselage from the trailing edge of the starboard wing virtually back to the door and floor side of the fuselage and the floor had disappeared. Miraculously the mid upper gunner was still up in his turret. It was decided by the Flight Engineer and the Wireless Operator that they could get him forward ‘cause there was the possibility that the turret could have fallen through. They got him out and up to the front. Well that left me down in the back in my little turret which as still operational ‘cause it worked off number one engine and as I said we were going to go back to the UK to land at Lymonsea[?] Airfield, Manston and it was here on the way that the skipper said to me: ‘You know David that the tail’s swinging. Perhaps you oughta think about bailing out if you wish.’ ‘Cause otherwise, my chances of getting away would have been pretty slim but I declined this offer. I said: ‘No, I can’t do that and can’t leave you lot on your own.’ Besides that there was still the possibility that we could get jumped by a night fighter. So we flew on and flew on at a reduced speed until we got to the French coast. We could see Manston and there we made a long approach. A flapless landing at Man – at Manston. On landing at Manston, a follow me truck went out and we followed that down to where they wanted us to park the aeroplane. The crew in the front of the aeroplane couldn’t get out through the back because of the damage that had been done – the hole – so they had to forward the forward escape hatch. I, myself, was able to vacate my turret and just got out the normal way down through the rear door. They took us up to then the – to be debriefed, but had a look at the aircraft first and we thought Dear God. How did we get this aeroplane back? We were so grateful the fact that all the control rods of the aeroplane ran down the port side of the aeroplane. It was all the starboard side, of course, had sustained all the damage. So, yeah, we considered ourselves very very lucky. Went back up to flying control where we were debriefed, given somewhere to sleep and the next morning we had hoped that one of our own airplanes from the squadron would come down and pick us up. But, unfortunately, bad weather set in, both in Manston where it snowed and also at Binbrook. So, we were stuck there for a couple of days and we were playing snowballs larking about. Nothing to do. And all of a sudden, a voice called out: ‘Right you lot, you’re going back to Binbrook by train.’ So there we were all manner of dress. God, it was really terrible, really. And they gave us some money. We went down to Margate first of all. Got a transport down to Margate to get a train to London. When we got into Margate, we decided well – we hadn’t had a shave for about three days. So we hopped into a barbershop which was run by ladies. Their husbands were looking – had gone off into the army and these ladies were looking after the shop. Anyhow, we sat there and would you believe they gave us a reasonable shave with safety razors. Anyhow, after having a shave and bit tidied up, we went up to – we thought we better have a photograph taken of all this. So we went into a photographers and we got this photograph taken and we all signed it. We’ve all got one each and then got the train up to London. When we got up to London – oh dear oh dear – well you can imagine the state of us holding our parachutes, Mae-Wests, helmets over your shoulders still, flying boots some, some not. And, of course, there happened to be a service policeman and, of course, he stopped us and asked what he thought we were on. Well, our skipper Arthur Whitmarsh he really told him what we were on in good Australian language and we didnt hear any more about that. And from there, of course,then we back up by train up to Binbrook and we were – well, of course, they were pleased to see us again, but inside a week we were flying again. 23 of March 1945 we were briefed for a daytime raid on Bremen. Everybody thought we’re in for a straightforward flight. We were told that if anything went wrong we would have to fire off the colours of the day and the American fighter escort, of Thunderbolts and Mustangs, would come down and give us a close escort. We flew, no problem, through to Bremen. We then dropped our bombs right on target. We were running out of the target and all of a sudden, we were badly hit by flak between the two starboard engines number three and number four. Well they both stopped. They had to be feathered. Then, of course, we started to lose height and, of course, we weren’t so fast either. All the other aircraft were overtaking us. To – we then fired off the colours of the day which was done partly to alert the US fighter boys to give us fighter cover. Unfortunately we didnt see a thing. We were, if I remember rightly, flying round about 20000 feet and, of course, well we weren’t all that far from home anyway Bremen, so we set course back to back to base and well the poor old skipper up the front there, besides having full on rudder on to keep the aeroplane straight and he turned round and said when he landed, he said: ‘I’m sure I got one leg longer than the other.’ But we got back home alright. We made a good two engine landing at Binbrook again. No big problem. There was occasions particularly one unit we went to Hanover[?] when we discovered that the German ME262 was being used in operations against Lancasters. Now we did, unfortunately, have an occurrence where in the area of the raid the ME262, the German jet fighter, was quite prominent in action against Lancasters. Now, we had thought about the best way of combatting this, bearing in mind, of course, that the ME262 was a much faster aeroplane than the JU88, ME109 and the other aeroplanes Wolfe 190 and that we only had a 50 mile an hour overtaking speed gunsight[?],that the best thing to do was to take good avoiding action. But but we did this. The matter of fact if you’re flying straight and level and you spot an aeroplane, shall we say, on your port quarter high when he makes an attack he’s got to make a double back, like this, to get onto your tail and it was when he did that double back that you would then, if he was high, climb port therefore he couldn’t follow and so he’d have to break off the engagement. [Pause] This attack by the Germans JU88 was again, of course, at night time. It was - although it was night time it was very light because I can remember the cloud the way we looked down was covering the German countryside was quite still white and it was quite light up there, but soon as the attack started the JU88 open fire and his, his firing was more continuous. My reply was in short bursts round about four five seconds. This is done deliberately because a you don’t want your guns to overheat. You want to conserve ammunition, of course, as well if necessary. But I could still see the bullets from - well they weren’t bullets in his case, they were cannon shells whizzing past me and , damaging the aeroplane, where my 303 bullets which included tracer firing directly into him. One of the problems we had in aerial combat was that the enemy in German Luftwaffe aircraft they had far better and more powerful guns than we did. They had cannons point 5 where to us all we could offer was the ordinary 303 rifle bullet. Although, we - in our every three bullets that we fired there was one bore, one armour piercing, one err ahh incendiary – (AP) Lets do that one again. (DF) - one. Our bullets, we were set in a series of five. We had the ordinary ball bullet. We would have an incendiary bullet; we had an explosive bullet and a tracer. And there – that was repeated all the way along, this way you could see where your bullets were going and also, of course, if they were converged at the right angle at the right time, of course, they could do quite a little bit of destruction. Initially our gun sights was straight forward, ring and bead. That was a fixed ring that had a bead in the centre. This could be lit up at night time and when you rotated your turret, either way, of course, the gun sight went with it. Also, if you elevated your guns the gun sight, of course, went with it. We did later on towards the end had some experimental gun sights involving radar and gyros. We had the Mark 14 gyro sight which, of course, was a much improved version and it even guaranteed 98 per cent hits. So that was a big advantage to us. It – but unfortunately it all came in too late. It didn’t come into the beginning of 1945. [Pause] What did we did really do when we got out to our aeroplane? Well, normally we would have a chat with the ground staff crew and we’d have a last cigarette ‘cause we never smoked inside the aeroplane and normally wanted a quick pee. The usual place was against the tail wheel. Everybody eventually get into the aeroplane and take up their positions and carry out the checks that they had to do and there you’d sit until okay you were given instructions to taxi the aeroplane. The pilot would then taxi the aeroplane away down the taxiway onto the runway. He’d get a green from the runway controller and you’d open the throttles and you’d tear down the runway and Grace of God you got yourself airborne. Now from that onwards, that point onwards sitting in your rear turret well you did have a lot to do. First,you’d done all your checks before you’d take off. You’d done that. And you’d keep a watch out first all for other aircraft coming in towards the bombers stream. So you – you know you would try to miss any other aircraft that were flying around in the stream. Further than that you go on to occupied Germany and there then you’d have to keep your eyes open and look for enemy aircraft. We did this by basically turning the rear turret where search – where you’d turn from port to go right the way round starboard, lift up a little way and right the way back round again and you’d do a square search right up as far as you could see and then start all over again. This way, of course, then your chances of – well you wouldn’t miss any aircraft coming in towards you. Further to that, in our crew we used to roll the aeroplane a little bit to make sure that there was nothing coming up underneath. So you can see, you sat there and you were doing something all the time. This way, of course, prevented you feeling too cold. You were kept active all the time. Your skipper would call you up about anything around every 10 to 15 minutes. ‘Are you alright?’ The main thing being, of course, are you still getting your oxygen which was an important thing? (AP) What about the bit about beneath the aircraft - the attacks – vulnerable? (DF) Well – (AP) Would you talk a little bit about that? (DF) The - they started to use – the Germans started to use the JU88 – I can’t remember the name of it – something music. (AP) Shraeder music. (DF) Shraeder music. And, of course, they came up, to hit you not in the body of the aeroplane because if they did and the aeroplane blew up, they’d most likely get blown up as well. They really aimed at your fuel tanks in the wing and once they were really afire, well of course, your chances of doing anything about it were not very very good. Some aeroplanes towards the end did have armour piercing protection and have [unclear] so that the tanks wouldn’t catch fire – but, no, that music, we just used to roll the aeroplane just so we could see underneath. (AP) I mean, the bit about removing the Perspex? And the flak, the flak must have been going off. Little pings. (DF) Yeah but you didn’t think about it. (AP) No. (DF) You accepted it, you know. Part of life’s rich pattern. [Unclear] What you wanna talk about first? (AP) Hang on. (DF) To aid your vision we thought that it’d be a good idea to remove a lot of the Perspex from your rear turret. Now, there was good reason for this as well – as well as including good vision the Captain and the Flight Engineer used to clear their engines round about every 20 minutes to half and hour, that means they would take them up to full power and, of course, it burnt off carbon which used to fly out from the exhaust. Now, we didnt like this because it would give away that you was an aeroplane somewhere there and the other was those little specks of carbon would stick on your Perspex, and if you had a little dot on your Perspex you’d immediately think it was a fighter. An enemy aircraft. So, to get out of all of this we asked to have all the Perspex taken out. And they took the Perspex out and there it solved the problem. But also, yes, it was a little bit colder but the other good thing was you didn’t have a lot of Perspex to clean. (AP) What about the noise and ping-ping? (DF) When one was approaching the target I often used to think that, there was the Pilot, the Flight Engineer and the Bomb Aimer up at the front of the aeroplane they could see all what was happening. They could see searchlights up ahead penetrating the sky often in groups of three or more with blue and one which was a master searchlight and the others were attached to it. The akk akk often was a bit more fierce [unclear] as you approached the target and, of course, there was always the risk of other airplanes dropping bombs on you or you colliding with them. Flak in itself used to come up. You’d hear the bang. Then you’d often hear ping. Ping as the little pieces of the shrapnel casing penetrate the aeroplane. The ground staff used to count these when you got back home, but also you could sometimes smell all the cordite from the shells themselves when they exploded. I used to sit in my turret and, of course, I didnt see all of this until, as we had - the bomb aimer dropped his bomb we’d flown straight and level for the required length of time, so we got a photo flash and then, of course, I said to myself : ‘Good God. Did we go through all that lot?’ You know, say ‘Oh well. That’s it.’ But, of course, by that time the skipper dropped the nose down and we’re turning round and we’re off back home which – prior to going on any raid it was important that before you went for your briefing and crew meal before the flight that you got as much rest in as you can. So normally, you would go and have a good lie and a sleep before you went for your crew meal in the mess and then went to the debriefing. Now, of course, there was all of you together, the seven of you and you were chatting away. You weren’t – never showed any signs of fear or – can’t think of the real word – but they all felt quite pleasant, happy about what we got to do and you got into your aeroplane and you settled down and comfort relatively and away you went. I don’t think we ever thought about it. How long it was except you knew it would be good when you got back home and had another crew meal and, of course, the promise of a large glass of rum, which was an incentive. [Chuckle]. People wonder about why we did all this. Well first of all, of course, we volunteered for this kind of work. The RAF couldn’t make you fly as aircrew. So we knew what we were going into. We knew that there would be short trips, heavily defended; we knew there’d be long trips to do and it was part of the day’s work. We knew what – we knew what we were up to and people just didnt really think about the bad side of it. You just got on and did a job of work which we were paid for. In our particular crew, we did a lot of training. We made up our minds we were gonna survive and, of course, we did. (AP) And you – (DF) And I think a lot of that was due to the fact that our attitude to the job. (AP) You you never felt that terror or fear? You just got on with it? (DF) No, no but also one of the other things of course, some of us would have in mind, of course, that terrible thing called if somebody got to a stage where they didnt want to fly any more, they’d had it. They’d go LMF Lack of Moral Fibre, but, of course, the hardest part of that was going to the CO and admitting it, it was a big thing to admit. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AFellowesD150406 PFellowesD1501 Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dave Fellowes Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource eng Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 00:38:49 audio recording Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Andrew Panton Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-04-06 Description An account of the resource From Number One Air Gunnery School at RAF Pembry, Dave was posted to Number 30 Operational Training Unit at RAF Hixon on Wellingtons. He crewed up with an Australian pilot who knew his aunt. They went to 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Lindholme to convert onto Halifaxes and gained their flight engineer. Following Lancaster Finishing School, there were posted to RAF Binbrook to join an Australian unit, 460 Squadron. Dave describes how the station commander took their training flight to Freiburg where they were hit by flak from the American sector. Dave discusses his role as rear gunner, the temperatures, guns and bullets. He explains why they removed the perspex in his turret. He notes how he avoided other aircraft in the stream and the faster Me 262 German fighters. He comments on the danger of “Schräge Musik” and how it was countered. He also describes the sounds and smells of enemy fire. Their aircraft was damaged by a Ju 88 on their way to Stuttgart but Dave shot it down. In January 1945, when there was thick cloud on their way to Munich, another Lancaster hit them and exploded. Their aircraft had significant damage and had to land at RAF Manston. Their starboard engines were also hit after reaching the target in Bremen. Dave outlines the crew’s positive attitude and how Lack of Moral Fibre would be a difficult thing to admit to the commanding officer. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Kent England--Lincolnshire England--Staffordshire England--Yorkshire Germany--Freiburg im Breisgau Germany--Stuttgart Netherlands Germany Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1945-04 1945-05 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Gemma Clapton Maureen Clarke Sally Coulter 1656 HCU 30 OTU 460 Squadron air gunner aircrew bombing Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit Ju 88 lack of moral fibre Lancaster Me 262 mid-air collision military living conditions military service conditions Operational Training Unit RAF Binbrook RAF Hixon RAF Lindholme RAF Manston Schräge Musik taxiway training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/510/8412/PDunnG1501.BMP 505c4b2651ad5389c9a6458077b498ac https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/510/8412/ADunnG150405.mp3 d86cd9b1133884331255b8b76f63465f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dunn, George George Charles Dunn G C Dunn Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Dunn, GC Description An account of the resource 28 items. Two oral history interviews with George Dunn DFC (1922 1333537, 149315 Royal Air Force), a photograph a document and two log books. He flew operations as a pilot with 10, 76, and 608 Squadrons then transferred to 1409 Meteorological Flight. <br /><br />There is a sub collection of his&nbsp;<a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1610">photographs from Egypt.</a><br /><br />The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. <br /><br />Additional items were licensed to the IBCC Digital Archive by Dr Steve Bond and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br /><span>Collection contains an oral history, photographs, maps and documents.</span><br /><br />This collection was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AP: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Andrew Panton, the interviewee is George Dunn, Mr Dunn was a RAF pilot who flew various types of aircraft during the Second World War, the interview is taking place at [redacted] Rustington West Sussex, on the 5th April 2015. GD: My name is George Dunn, I was seventeen years of age when the war broke out and I was born at Whitstable on the North Kent coast, so I saw quite a lot of the Battle of Britain and being facing the Thames Estuary all the hoards of German bombers that were coming in to bomb London, when the London Blitz started, at, I joined the Local Defence Volunteers, and then that became the Home Guard, and when I reached the age of eighteen I volunteered for aircrew. I was interviewed up at Chatham and I originally registered for wireless operator/air gunner, but they said to me would I consider pilot training, which I agreed, and after a written exam and a selection board, I was advised that I could take up pilot training. First aircraft I flew was a Tiger Moth because I did all my training in Canada, the first place was at Saskatchewan, a little place called Caron west of Moose Jaw and then from there I went on to Avro Ansons at a place called Weyburn again in Saskatchewan. When I came back to the UK in September 1942 I was then posted to Chipping Norton which was a satellite of Little Rissington on Airspeed Oxfords this was to acclimatise us to the flying conditions in this country, we had been used to flying with full town lights and city lights, but this was of course flying in blackout conditions. From there I was posted to Lossiemouth which was number 20 OTU, and formed my crew, and we did my OTU on Wellingtons. AP: So can you say a little bit about the Wellington bomber, how you found it to fly and what you did [inaudible word] GD: Well the Wellington bomber I found was a nice aircraft it wasn’t difficult to fly and we had quite an easy course on it. AP: What about ops with the Wellington? Can you remember any? GD: No I didn’t do any operations on Wellingtons. AP: So from the Wellington, where did you go next? GD: From Wellingtons I was sent to Heavy Conversion Unit which was at Rufforth just outside York, on Halifax aircraft. AP: And was that your first op aircraft? GD: No, surprisingly enough, normally if you went to a Heavy Conversion Unit, you had, you flew a certain number of hours and then you were seconded to a squadron where you had to do two operations with an experienced crew, but in my case I was sent to number 10 Squadron at Melbourne to do my two second dickie trips as they were called and believe it or not I had not set foot in a Halifax aircraft until that first raid. First raid was Essen, which was rather a heavy place to go to, to start with but we got through that alright and the following night I did my second, second dickie trip to Kiel, so I got two fairly good targets under my belt to start with. AP: And could you talk a bit about the experiences you had on those trips, I mean did you engage fighters, flak, ack-ack, searchlights? GD: What when I was on my own crew? AP: Yes. GD: Yes, our first trip as a crew was to Dortmund, and right throughout our tour we were fairly lucky we were never attacked by a fighter but we were coned at one stage. AP: So can you talk about what that means? GD: Yes, coning is when you initially get trapped by a blue searchlight, a radar searchlight and once that’s on to you the white searchlights form a cone so you could be, you might call it sitting like a fairy on a Christmas tree, and the only suitable manoeuvre to get out of a coning, is by a corkscrew method, if you can do that then you’re okay, but on this occasion we managed to get away from the, from the cone. AP: And ⸺ GD: Yes if you are coned the thing is, is to keep your eyes on your instruments, don’t, don’t look outside because you will get blinded by the light. On the 17th, 18th of August 1943 I was based at Holme-on-Spalding Moor south east of York and on this particular afternoon the first thing we noticed when we got to the briefing room were there were extra service police on the door which we thought was rather unusual, and when we got into the briefing room and they drew the curtains across we saw this red ribbon going all the way up to Denmark up the North sea, across Denmark, missing the North German coast because of the heavy flak and then we saw this tiny little place on the Baltic coast, and we thought what, what’s going on there, what’s this all about, never heard of it. When we were briefed we were only told that it was a secret research station connected with radar, at no time were we given any indication of the real work that was going on there. The chilling remark that was made at the end of the briefing was that the target was so important that it should be destroyed that night, otherwise we were told quite firmly that we would go back the following night, the night after that until it was destroyed, and you can imagine the feeling we had knowing what reception we would get if we had to go back on the night after. After the briefing of course we went back to our usual pre-op dinner or meal, bacon and eggs usually, and eventually to the parachute room picked our parachutes up, and into the crew room, dispose of all our wallets and anything that might identify us, and took off, reached our climbing height, and proceeded through the Yorkshire coast up towards Denmark. Included in the main force was a low number of Mosquitos which were used as a spoof raid on Berlin, this was to make sure that the German authorities were thinking that the main force was going to Berlin, and of course as we got nearer the main force veered off to Peenemünde, and the Mosquitos carried on to Berlin. This caused quite a lot of consternation amongst the German aircrew controllers because they weren’t sure where the main force were, and when the German night fighters were alerted they had no idea what was going on, the German ground controllers were in a bit of a state and one German pilot realising what was going on proceeded to Peenemünde without being told, so of course by the time the German fighters had got there the raid was virtually half over. We were fortunate we did our run in from the Island of Roden which was about a five minute run in from the north, and we went in on the first wave, the target was well marked we went in at about seven thousand feet it was a brilliant moonlight night and my bomb aimer got quite excited because this was the first time that he had actually been able to identify the target because normally we were bombing from eighteen or nineteen thousand feet, so this was quite an occasion, and I can remember telling him ‘Don’t get too excited just concentrate on what you are doing.’ So we moved in no trouble at all the flak was very very light we were able to, despite the Pathfinder markers we were able to identify our aiming point visually, dropped our bombs and came out without any problem. We were very lucky that we were in the first wave because we were able to bomb and get away from the target before the fighters arrived, in the original plan, 4 Group which I was a member of, was scheduled to go in on the last wave, but because they were frightened of smoke from the ground generators obscuring our aiming point we were reverted to the first wave which was very fortunate but not so fortunate for those who were transferred back from the first wave to the last. There were three aiming points on Peenemünde itself and our aiming point was the living quarters of the scientists and the technicians, and one wag on our squadron said there would be a prize given to the first aircraft back with a scientist’s spectacles hanging from its undercarriage. Once you begin your final run in you are really under the control of the bomb aimer because he can, he’s the one that can only see the actual line of path to the target so he will be giving you instructions, such as, right, left left, right right, steady, until you actually came to the point where he’d say bombs gone. We were only told that it was a, as I said before, a secret radar station, and it was some time afterwards before it was revealed that it was for rocket research. So, of course the best thing was that the day after, it was only after a Spitfire reconnaissance which evaluated the amount of damage that we knew with some relief that we were not going to have to go back that night. The aftermath of course was what was the overall result and it was generally recognised that the rocket programme was put back by at least two months, and in his book “Crusade to Europe”, General Eisenhower said that the second front would have been seriously compromised had the Peenemünde raid not taken place when it did. It is possible that the raid on Peenemünde could have taken place a lot earlier, because in May 1940 a note was pushed through the door of the British Naval attaché in Oslo, from the writer claiming to have very important information connected with German activities, and if the intelligence people were interested would they put a coded letter or word in the broadcasts that were made usually to the resistance, this was done and another letter was pushed through the door and the sort of information the writer indicated that they had, was to the intelligence people so ludicrous that they thought it must be a hoax, and it was ignored, and it was many many, well this was 1940, it was some years later when snippets of information came through and two German generals who were in a, they were prisoners of war, were in a bugged room and amongst the things that they discussed was that they couldn’t understand why Peenemunde had never been bombed, this of course brought it to the notice of the authorities and from then on every endeavour was made to secure other bits and pieces of information, to ascertain whether this was true. The final answer to the problem I think was when a WAAF intelligence officer very keenly spotted a launching ramp on one of the reconnaissance photographs, and this really was the, was the result of good reconnaissance, and it really gave the answer that there was really something going on at Peenemünde, and from then on of course a committee was formed Mr Churchill appointed Duncan Sands to chair this committee and eventually after a few meetings it was then that they decided that this would, Peenemünde would have to be bombed. Of course one of the things was how were they going to do it, Air Vice Marshal Cochrane of 5 Group whose Group had been used to some time and distance bombing wanted to go in with about, I think about 150 Lancasters, it was also discussed that a small force of Mosquitos would go in, but Sir Arthur Harris the chief of Bomber Command, he felt that if a raid was going to take place it would have to be successful one hundred percent at the first go, and he made the decision that it was going to be a maximum effort, so all Groups of the Bomber Command were going to take part. Consequently almost six hundred aircraft were sent and probably the decision was right because the the place was destroyed, virtually destroyed on the first raid. Four days after the raid on Peenemünde, the place was visited by Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and Albert Speer the armaments manager and they, after a survey Hitler himself decided that the place would not continue to operate, at least on the scale that it had done, and it was then that the whole project was moved to various places particularly the Harz Mountains. Of course the success of the raid was not achieved without some loss and unfortunately the total aircraft loss was forty and two hundred and twenty aircrew were killed, mostly occurred in the last two waves of the, of the raid so as I said before we were very very lucky that we had been moved from the last wave to the first wave, because we were virtually in and out without any problem. Of course the success in some ways of flying on operations is the team work, the crew have got to work together and I was very fortunate I had a very good crew, we originally formed up at OTU at Lossiemouth, it was a question of one person getting to know another. I well remember my bomb aimer coming up to me and saying ‘Have you crewed up yet?’ and I said ‘No.’ ‘How about crewing up with me?’ ‘Yeah sure do you know any navigators?’ ‘Yes I know a navigator’ and that’s how it went on, so we finished up with five, and later on we acquired a mid-upper gunner and a flight engineer who was actually allocated to us. We were lucky in this respect because my flight engineer’s wife and mother ran a pub just outside Horsforth in Leeds so on our nights off all seven of us used to pile into a Morris Eight, and go off to the, to a night out and as you can imagine the customers made a great fuss of us, and we were never short of free drinks [laughter] I can well remember the only time when my navigator did suffer from, well I don’t know what it was, but he suddenly came up on the intercom and said, ‘Skipper we’re about ten miles off course’, and my reply was ‘Well look we can’t be, I’ve been steering this course that you gave me without any deviation, so get your finger out and get us back on course, otherwise I’ll get the bomb aimer to take over the navigation’. This really put the wind up him and he, he got us back on course, don’t ask me why but whether he’d made a mistake with his Gee box fixing it turned out okay at the end. Of course most of our navigation was dead reckoning but the saviour that we had, but it was only I think to about five degrees east that the Gee box from where we could get a fix on our position enabled us to keep to a reasonable course. Of course whilst the aircrew got most of the glory, it was the auxiliary staff that really supported us people like the parachute packers, the ground crew, as far as we were concerned we had an excellent ground crew on our aircraft, everything was tickety-boo, the windscreen was all polished they went completely out of their way to make sure that the aircraft we were flying was in one hundred percent condition, and the only way we could reward them was by taking them down to the pub on the occasional evening and buying them a few beers, it was our way of saying thank you to them. I well remember that on our last night our very last raid which was a castle, outside the control tower there was a whole host of personnel waving to us a lot of air cadets and when we got out to the runway for our final take off the crowd round the caravan way, a crowd outside the caravan the controller which gave you a green light when it was ready for you to take off, and then finally opening the throttles for what you knew was going to be your final operation, and wondering how it was going to go, but of course at that time you were really concentrating on getting the aircraft safely off the ground. I well remember, I don’t know which raid it was but probably my fault we had not secured the front escape hatch properly, and on take off it blew open, my oxygen mask was, tube rather was ripped off and I had to borrow the mid-upper gunner’s oxygen tube, he had rather an uncomfortable flight trying to breathe his oxygen having given up his tube to me, but we did get over it, and we did manage to close the escape hatch with some difficulty, I must take full responsibility for that error. Yes on that final flight when you got the green light knowing that this was going to be your final operation, you had that feeling of great support from those people that were standing there, they knew that it was your final op, and they were willing you to go on and come back safely and that was, that was really comforting, but of course you were more or less concentrating on the take off at that time because the, that was a very dangerous time for a fully laden, fully fuelled, fully bombed aircraft, until you what you reach was known as safety speed, where it was, you were then able to climb to your normal altitude. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with George Dunn Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Andrew Panton Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-04-05 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ADunnG150405, PDunnG1501 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Civilian Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 00:25:12 audio recording Description An account of the resource George was born at Whitstable and was 17 when war was declared. He joined the Local Defence Volunteers, which became the Home Guard. When he reached 18 he volunteered for aircrew. He was interviewed at Chatham and sat an exam and selection board to train as a pilot. All of his training was in Canada and his first aircraft was a Tiger Moth. When he returned to England, he was posted to RAF Chipping Norton on Oxfords flying in black-out conditions. From there, he was posted to RAF Lossiemouth, Operational Training Unit on Wellingtons. He was then sent to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Rufforth on Halifaxes. George was posted to 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne. He flew operations to Essen, Kiel and Dortmund. On 17/18 August 1943, while based at RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor, he took part on the bombing operation to Peenemünde rocket research station. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sue Smith Maureen Clarke Carolyn Emery Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain Canada Germany England--Chatham (Kent) England--Kent England--Oxfordshire England--Yorkshire Scotland--Moray Germany--Dortmund Germany--Essen Germany--Kiel Germany--Peenemünde Germany--Ruhr (Region) Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1942 1943-08-17 1943-08-18 10 Squadron 20 OTU 4 Group aircrew bombing bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943) briefing civil defence crewing up Gee ground crew ground personnel Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit Home Guard intelligence officer military ethos Operational Training Unit Oxford pilot RAF Chipping Norton RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor RAF Lossiemouth RAF Melbourne RAF Rufforth searchlight Tiger Moth training V-2 V-weapon Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/253/18670/PFellowesD1501.jpg e88ffe00536dab58919683f9b4889b66 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/253/18670/AFellowesD160830.mp3 dd47a976b8ab40995415cad343d49553 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fellowes, David David Fellowes Dave Fellowes D Fellowes Description An account of the resource 20 items. Two oral history interviews with Flight Sergeant David "Dave" Fellowes (Royal Air Force), documents and a photograph. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 460 Squadron. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Fellowes and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Additional items were licensed to the IBCC Digital Archive by Dr Steve Bond and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. This collection was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive. Collection contains photographs, pages from log book and an oral history discussion with partial transcript. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-11-25 2015-04-06 2016-08-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Fellowes, D Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AP: Ok. DF: Why did I join the Royal Air Force? Well, we’ve got to go back in time. As a young lad my interest, or one of my main interests was in fact aeroplanes, my father was an engineer and he and I used to build model aeroplanes and fly them in the local fields. So I had this interest in aeroplanes, later I got, I had a bicycle, and when I had a bicycle I was able to ride out to various airfields, places like Brooklands, White Waltham, Cobham and see aeroplanes take off and land and I used to be this happy, happy little boy, well later on as I grew older the ATC was formed and I thought to myself, this is for me, so I joined the Air Training Corps and whilst I was in the Air Training Corps I did pass the air crew certificate of training and when I was seventeen I nipped up to the recruiting office and volunteered for the Royal Air Force. After a very short space of time I was sent off to a centre where I was given various tests and I was passed out as on a PNB course, they said, go home, oh and they gave me a VR badge and a number and that was it, I went home until the time I got called up. AP: Right, so, when you were called up, can you go through the next bit? DF: After having been called up I had this railway warrant, to send me to London to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground or somewhere very similar, to ACRC that’s the Air Crew Receiving Centre which were in fact large blocks of flats in the St John Wood area and also of course quite adjacent to London Zoo and it was here that we first got kitted out into uniform and one of the things I can remember about this uniform being kitted out, we went to Lords and we got our greatcoats and we were all standing in a long line with our greatcoats on and a corporal with a yardstick came along the back to make sure that every greatcoat was the same, bottom of the greatcoat was the same distance from the ground, this caused a little bit of a laugh really among some of us but anyhow we did it and then from there of course whilst we were at ACRC so we did various tests, night vision tests, various medical little tests to make sure that we were fit for aircrew. AP: How about the next bit when you went to Crewe Station, how you managed to get into the RR, RAAF, Australian side? DF: After I had passed out I was on, first of all let me go back, I was posted to an ITW down in Newquay and it was here that we did all our basic ground training for pilot, navigator, bomb aimer training, things like meteorology, how an aeroplane flies, everything appertaining to the Royal Air Force and aircrew. We learnt the Morse code, but not very well I might say. After ITW you passed out, you were sent then to a grading school and I went to number 15 flying Tiger Moths up at Longtown and it was there that I passed out and I went to Heaton Park outside Manchester, it was winter time, it was a horrible place, it was full horrible corporals, and we did nothing, there was a hold up on convoys going across the Atlantic or down to South Africa and whilst I was there a notice went up on a board and said, you can be an air gunner in four weeks or something like that, and I thought, that’s for me, if I want to get into this war, that’s what I’ll do so I did. I went to the orderly room, remustered and then I got sent down to number one AGS and it was here that I passed out and after passing out, sent home on leave, there I was, a sprog sergeant air gunner and I had a posting then down to 30 OTU at Hixon in Staffordshire. One of the places where we had to change trains was Crewe, to go then, go into Stafford, put on the train and in tumbled three Australian flight sergeant pilots, we got talking as one would and I said to one, whereabouts do you come from in Australia? And he said Sydney. I said, oh, I said, that’s a bit of a coincidence, but I have an aunt and uncle in Sydney they went out after the First World War, they have a sport shop. So he said, well, whereabouts do you know? I said, yes, they live in the district called Marrickville and the road is called Illawarra Road. Mh, he said, this is good, he said, what’s the name of your aunt? So I said, Mrs. Ivy Evans. Mh, he said, you wouldn’t like this, he says, my mother’s a chapel friend. So we had something in common, so he said to me, would I fly with him? And I said, yes, no problem, so there we were in a 30 OTU at Hixon, I was in his crew, the first one, then we set about looking for somebody else, we picked up an Australian wireless operator, Jack Wilson. We also picked up our bomb aimer, he was a Scot, from Glasgow, he was an apprentice telephone engineer, he was a handy lad cause they had a method of back dialling so we got cheap telephone calls, which was pretty good and our navigator, we looked for a studious looking lad, he was, he had a blonde hair, bushy eyebrows and he was a damn good trombone player, which was something else that we had in the crew. Then we found another gunner, after OTU, well, OTU lasted in two sections, first of all there is ground school and daytime flying, you go on leave for a week, come back and then we did night flying and more ground school. We did get into a bit of trouble there, I don’t think we were the best behaved crew, I know the worst case was our wireless operator, we were sitting in the Wellington waiting to take off and he was fooling around with his radio and he managed to pick up Glenn Miller playing In the Mood and of course he put it through to all our crew stations so we could hear it but alas also the authorities picked it up and oh well, we was in trouble for that but we got over it. And then from there we were posted up to 1656 I think it was, Heavy Conversion Unit on Halifaxes and there we converted onto Halifaxes and then from Halifaxes the skipper was told he was going to go onto Lancasters, so we did a three day course, I think it was the same place, could have been Finningley on the Lanc finishing and it was there that our skipper said, you boys had you like to come to an Australian squadron? And we all said, oh yes, that’s a good idea, why not? And so we were fortunate and we got posted to 460 Squadron at Binbrook. Now this was good because Binbrook was a pre-war station and had married quarters, all lying empty because you weren’t allowed to have your wives or families with you, so each crew was allocated a married quarter and ours was number 13, well, we weren’t superstitious so we settled in, you got a coal and coke ration, you went to the mess for your meals and otherwise you were just left to your own desert. The normal procedure when one joined a squadron was in fact that first of all the crew would be allocated to a flight, in our case we went to B Flight, Bob Henderson was the Flight Commander, he was a very nice chap, he then sent us on a, a nav-ex I suppose you could call it, we went on a long training trip, when we came back, what normally happened would be the captain, your skipper would go with a qualified crew on his Op to see what it was all about, but that didn’t happen to us, the Station Commander was a gentleman by the name of Group Captain Hughie Edwards VC DSO DFC and quite a character, and he turned round and said, oh, take Whitmarsh and his crew on their first trip on block, well, he did, the trip in fact that day was to Freiburg, down in South West, yes, South West Germany and away we went, it was very good, he was very good, he just called us by our Christian names and away we went, and we got just past the bombline, this was in 1944, and we were passing over an American sector, apparently, when all of a sudden we got hit by flak from the Americans, well somehow in those days there wasn’t such a very good feeling between the Americans and the Australians and also it upset us Brits too at the time [laughs], anyhow he did talk about dropping a bomb on them, keep them quiet but he didn’t. On we went to Freiburg but were warned that of course when we got there, you’d most likely do his usual trick, go down and have a look to see how main force were getting on. This he did and then of course, after he’d done what he wanted to do, we climbed back up and flew home. And that was my first introduction to operations. On 460 Squadron after you had kind of settled down, proved that you were up to the work and up to the job and you’ve done about five or six ops, you were given your own aeroplane. In our case our aeroplane was O-Oboe. Now the crew that flew Oboe previously came to see us off and we took it over on our first op in Oboe, when we got out there of course one of the things we were introduced to was the ground staff of which there were four, there was an Australian sergeant, he had lovely black, curly hair, he looked more like an Australian gypsy than anything else but he was in charge of the aeroplane, we also had an armourer, engine fitters and airframe fitter, now those boys were always there before we took off, they were always there when we got back and we were part of the team. They used to call themselves the dayshift, we called ourselves if you like the nightshift and it worked very well and of course the sergeant we used to see in the mess, no problem at all but the others, airmen, we used to take out, oh, every ten days or so, we used to take them down to the village pub and have a few beers together, we were part of a team. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Fellowes. Two Description An account of the resource <p>David Fellowes tells of how he used to build model airplanes and fly them in the fields when he was a boy. The son of an engineer, he first joined the Air Training Corps and then volunteered for the Royal Air Force at the age of 17. David describes his training at various stations and converting onto Halifaxes at 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit and then onto Lancasters. He remembers being posted to 460 Squadron at RAF Binbrook, from where he flew his first operation as an air gunner, when they were targeted by friendly fire on their way to Freiburg. He emphasizes the sense of comradeship developed between the aircrew and the ground crew.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Andrew Panton Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AFellowesD160830, PFellowesD1501 Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Australian Air Force Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Peter Schulze Maureen Clarke Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Germany Great Britain England--Cumbria England--Lincolnshire England--London England--Manchester England--Staffordshire England--Yorkshire Germany--Freiburg im Breisgau England--Lancashire Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1944 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 00:13:55 audio recording 1656 HCU 30 OTU 460 Squadron air gunner aircrew bombing crewing up ground crew ground personnel Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit Lancaster military ethos military service conditions Operational Training Unit RAF Binbrook RAF Finningley RAF Heaton Park RAF Hixon Tiger Moth training Wellington