1 25 37 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2973/53172/PBellC2501.jpg 1c91622f45e09b368f871dabf7ee13bc https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2973/53172/ABellC250331.mp3 674e417a8d02de77c5d5e84feff3e0b5 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 Bell, Colin Description An account of the resource One item. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell (b. 1921, 124149 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 608 Squadron. 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 2025-03-31 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 Bell, C Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document NM: So it’s Monday the 31st of March 2025 and I’m in the, my name is Nigel Moore. I’m in the RAF Club in London with, with Colin Bell, a Mosquito pilot. So Colin, firstly thank you very much for your time this morning for doing this interview. Can you — CB: Well — NM: Can you start by telling us when you were born, where you were born and about your childhood growing up? CB: Yes. I was born on the 5th of March 1921 and I at the time I was, my mother was living in Shooter’s Hill, Woolwich. So I suppose that it’s fair enough to say that the, my place of birth was Woolwich. NM: And you went to school there. CB: Sorry? NM: Tell me about your school days. CB: Oh, my school days were very varied. My mother had a restless spirit and we were, we were continually on the move. Sometimes we lived in south east London and then at the end of six months we might be living down in Bournemouth. As a result my school days were, well a little unusual to put it mildly. I went to numerous schools. I had, when I was very young I had governesses. When I was older I had tutors. It was very varied. But of course it all changed when I volunteered for the RAF at the age of, that was in 1940 so I was nineteen at the time. I volunteered for the RAF and I got called up in, in 1941. Early ’41. NM: So you volunteered for the RAF. What was the background to your volunteering for the RAF? CB: Well, really I, the Battle of Britain raged in the skies above where I was living with my father and mother at the time which was in East Molesey, Surrey. We were just on the other side of Hampton Court Bridge and as I say the Battle of Britain was raging in the sky and I suppose like every young man of spirit, and I had spirit [laughs] I wanted to be a fighter pilot. So, but I was encouraged to, I was encouraged to volunteer because one evening as I was walking towards Hampton Court Bridge looking forward to an evening with my girlfriend a Heinkel bomber came over, swept over and I can see him now in my mind’s eye. He released a bomb which was aimed at Hampton Court Bridge and it missed and it landed on the other side of the road to me. Well, there was an enormous flash and the violet flash and everything and everybody nearby got covered in dirt and rubbish and I’ll say now it was a good job it was a light bomber else I shouldn’t be here talking to you and I thought well this isn’t right. So if I’d had any hesitation in volunteering for the Royal Air Force that would have given me added impetus. I hoped that one day I’d catch up with the chap but of course I never did. NM: So what did, what did your mum and dad think when you volunteered for the RAF? CB: My father, well by that time I’d moved down to Devonshire because my mother was a very nervous woman and she moved down to a place called Combe Martin in Devonshire to avoid the bombing. And I went down and joined them eventually and my father, well first of all they didn’t think I’d be accepted for the RAF because my brother who was the apple of their eyes had volunteered and he’d been turned down. And when I said that I’d volunteered I thought that, I don’t think they thought for a moment that I’d be accepted. And when I came home and said I had been accepted my father spent two hours talking to me, walking me up and down Combe Martin High Street asking me to withdraw my application because of course he could see further than I could and he remembered what happened to the pilots in World War One where the average life of a pilot was six weeks and bless his old heart he, he was very worried. But I didn’t withdraw my application and I went ahead. MV: Colin, tell them about the interview you had for — CB: Oh, well I had an interview up at Oxford to see whether they would accept me. I volunteered for aircrew as a pilot and at that time I suppose for every application, every twelve people applying there was probably one vacancy so they could afford to be very picky and I wasn’t doing very well at the interview. I think my odd education sort of didn’t assist me and there were three people there. There was a group captain who was the chairman and on his right was a shrink and on his left was an engineering officer and the engineering officer I think thought he’d get rid of me and, because the atmosphere in the room was pretty chilly and so he said to me, ‘You tell me that you could strip down a motorcycle engine and put it back together again.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ve done it.’ And he said, ‘Well, in that case — ’ because quite obviously he didn’t believe me, ‘In that case you will have no trouble in telling me how fast the cam shaft runs in relation to the crank shaft.’ Well, I said, ‘Half time,’ because of course that was the right answer and he looked very put out but the group captain laughed and when the group captain laughed everybody laughed. I was in. NM: Good answer. Good answer. So talk me through your training. How did you progress from being — CB: Well, my training, first of all when I got called up at the beginning of ’41 I was sent to Scarborough to what was known as an ITW. An Initial Training Wing which was square bashing and generally making you fit. Well, I thought I was fit before I got there but after I’d been there about a fortnight I felt I could demolish a brick wall with my fist. Well, it was a good job I didn’t try. But after I’d been there about three weeks the sergeant came in and he said to us, twelve of us, ‘Well, pack your bags because you’re all being posted out in the morning.’ And so I said, ‘Well, where are we going, serg?’ And he said, ‘Well, you’ll find out when you get there.’ Well, what had happened was that an American general, General Hap Arnold had offered training facilities for a limited number of British cadets of which I was one and the training would be carried out by the American Army Air Corps in America where the weather of course was so much better than in the UK and where incidentally we only had limited training facilities. So in the morning off I went and via, up to Scotland, on to a steam ship. I remember it well. It was the Empress of Scotland and it went whirring across the sea, U-boat infested sea but of course it went so fast and of course Bletchley Park was warning where the U-boats were and so we went up north around via Iceland and then we swept in and landed in Canada. And then we took a train down from Canada. Where was it? Well, anyway wherever it was we landed and went down to Toronto and then I was formally discharged from the RAF because the Americans weren’t in the war and if I’d gone out down there as an airman I would have been a, I would have been a sort of caught under the Neutrality Act. And so I had, theoretically I was, I went down there as a civilian although of course I did have my uniform in my kit bag but that’s neither here nor there. And eventually as I said after I left Toronto I found myself at a place called Lakeland in Florida where I learned to fly on the Boeing Stearman. Which was a bit like the Tiger Moth but significantly more powerful and I think really to be fair a better aircraft than the Tiger Moth. But when I finished there I then moved on to a place called Macon in Georgia and I flew what was known as a Vultee which was a monoplane as distinct from the Boeing Stearman of course was a biplane. And when I finished in Macon, Georgia I went to the Advanced Training School at Dothan, Alabama where after a period of about nine or twelve weeks I forget quite how long, I graduated. I got American wings, I was commissioned and I was ready to go home but at this point life took an odd turn. I had been out to, back to Toronto to collect my uniform and one thing and another but then in Toronto I was told to go back to Dothan and report to the station commander. And when I got there the station commander said to me, ‘I suppose you thought you were going home.’ And I said, ‘Well, what else?’ And he said, 'Well, you know we’ve had Pearl Harbour and the Japanese have attacked us and we are now at war with Japan and we’re in effect an ally of the UK against the Germans.’ He said, ‘We’ve got this big expansion training scheme on and we’ve trained a number of your chaps and we’re now going to retain a limited few, a half dozen or so to be instructors to our cadets. And I said, ‘Yes?’ And he said, ‘Well, you are going to be one of them.’ And I said, ‘Just a moment, sir.’ I said, ‘Yesterday, I was, as it were I was a cadet.’ I said, 'Today I’m now commissioned with American wings and you tell me that tomorrow I’m going to be an instructor.’ And he said, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ And I said, ‘Well, sir. With respect it’s going to be the blind leading the blind.’ And he said, ‘I don’t care what you think.’ He said, ‘In the morning you’ll go down on the flight line and there will be six American cadets waiting for you. You will be their instructor and you will be responsible for them.’ And he opened the door and kicked me out into the night. And that’s how I became an instructor and I remained an instructor for eighteen months. And then I was told I had got to go home which I was very delighted to do and the self-same station commander at that point gave me a certificate that read that one Pilot Officer Bell, that was me had completed the course of instruction to be an instructor to advanced single engine aircraft. Well, in point of fact I never had a day’s training as an instructor. It was all, it was all rubbish but there we are. That’s the way the Americans ran things and as always they made it work and I, I think I was a tolerably good instructor. My method was a bit different to the Americans. The Americans held over you the threat of expulsion if you did anything wrong right up to the moment that you got your wings. Well, I told my cadets that unless they did something diabolical they could assume right from the beginning that they would all graduate. So of course they were very much on my side and, but that was that. So in 1943 I came home and I wanted to be a night fighter but, and I completed a night fighter course at Grantham, a place called Spitalgate at Grantham and then I waited for a posting to a night fighter squadron. And I waited and I waited and I waited and there were no vacancies and I was getting restless. And then one day a man arrived on the station known as Group Captain Mahaddie. Now, Group Captain Mahaddie was Pathfinder Don Bennett’s recruiting sergeant and he called us all into a hall and he said, ‘Look, if there’s any one of you with a thousand hours or more I’ll recruit you straightaway into the Pathfinder Group of Bomber Command, Number 8 Group and you’ll be flying Mosquitoes in the Light Night Striking Force.’ Well, I thought, well that’s for me. So I went straight down to see the adjutant and signed a piece of paper and off I went to RAF Warboys to team up with a navigator and then here again an interesting slant. We were in a room. Fifty pilots, fifty navigators and the wing commander said, ‘I’m coming back in an hour and I shall expect you all to have crewed up. One pilot, one navigator, bomb aimer.’ And he went out, closed the door and some chap jumped up on a stool and said, ‘Who wants a drunken navigator?’ And I thought well I don’t want him. And then people started crewing up all over the place and I didn’t see anybody I particularly wanted and nobody seemed to want me. And then I saw over the other side of the room a rather strong tall chap with a Canada flash on his shoulder looking miserable and I thought well he’s old. He must have been all of twenty-eight and I thought being old he’s probably had experience. So I walked across to him and I said, ‘Have you found yourself a pilot?’ ‘Nope,’ he said. So I said, ‘What’s your experience?’ he said, ‘What’s yours?’ Fair question. So I said, ‘Well, I’ve been an instructor to American cadets and British cadets incidentally out in America.’ And he said, ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve been a navigation instructor in Canada.’ So I said, ‘You’ve found yourself a pilot.’ And so we teamed up and I have to say it was a wonderful choice because he was a brilliant navigator. He wasn’t much fun because well he wasn’t. He didn’t laugh much but then I wasn’t interested in a man that laughed. I just wanted him to be a brilliant navigator and he was all of that. I told him I was very lucky to have him and then I said modestly he was probably lucky to have me. So [laughs] it worked and he was with me for the whole of our tour of operations. Eventually we got to RAF Wyton where I was checked out to be a Mosquito pilot and I remember being taken around by a chap called Squadron Leader [Isaac?]. He said, ‘I’ll take you on a circuit of the airfield. We’ll take off and land and then you can have a go.’ So he took me around and I watched him and he said, ‘Alright. Now, you do it.’ And I took him around and landed. He said, ‘That’s alright. You’re now checked out to be a Mosquito pilot.’ [laughs] Then after that we went down for a period of familiarisation to RAF, by that time I think although the checking out took place at Warboys I think the actual familiarisation took place at RAF Wyton and we were there for about two or three months and then eventually we got posted to RAF Downham Market. That’s when life took on a more serious slant. Although it has to be realised that not only do people get they lose their lives during operations but they also lose their lives during training. I mean we lost a number of pilots and instructors while I was at Dothan in Alabama and, and of course the same thing to a certain extent happened when we were on familiarisation at Wyton. I know for certain we lost one crew because we had to go out in rather bad weather and then there might have been two. But then of course we moved on. Doug, that was his name, Doug Redmond and I, my navigator, we moved on to the RAF Downham Market and as I said a moment ago that’s where the rather more serious activity took place. NM: So, what was, what was squadron life like at Downham Market? CB: Pretty [pause] pretty rough. The conditions were, were far from ideal. We lived in a Nissen hut. There were about twelve of us in a Nissen hut. Hardly officers’ accommodation but that was the best they could do. The food and drink was acceptable but nothing like of course that I, as that I had in America. I mean the food in America after being at ITW up at Scarborough. I mean it was an environmental shock when I went out there because the last meal I’d had at Scarborough would be a mug of cocoa, a doorstep of bread and a piece of flour, margarine and if I was lucky a scoop of jam out of a tin. When I went out to America of course I walked into a canteen, it was about a quarter of a mile long it had got sides of beef on it, leg of lamb, southern fried chicken. Well, anything and everything and when I said to the guy, ‘What can I have?’ he said, ‘Well, you can have anything you like.’ So that, that was quite an environmental shock but of course it also worked the other way because when I came back to this country I was back on, well I wasn’t back on doorstep of bread and, and flour and margarine exactly but food was pretty, pretty basic you know. Lots of baked beans and lots of Spam and very very little in the way of eggs. It, I mean, and aircrew of course got the best of, the best of everything but it still wasn’t very good. MV: And it was quite cold Colin, wasn’t it? CB: Hmmn? MV: It got quite cold in the wintertime. CB: It got exceedingly cold in wintertime and all we had was a stove which, which was just sort of heated with lumps of coke. But the difficulty was to get the coke burning and we had lots of trouble getting wood to get the coke to burn but there were all sorts of stories about that [laughs] yeah. NM: And between operations what was social life like? CB: What? NM: Social life on the station. Did you — CB: Oh. NM: Entertainment? CB: Social life. When we were not operating we used to go down to the Crown Public House in Downham Market and, which was nice. We used to, I mean we all mixed together sergeants, officers, WAAF. It was, it was very convivial and if we wanted on a night off we could have a choice of either going out to pubs in Kings Lynn or if we wanted and could afford it we could go down to Cambridge and get a cracking meal in a Greek restaurant because of course they were, they were well and truly into the black market and provided you’d got the money you could get, you could get almost anything. You could get a steak. You could get chicken. You could get eggs. It was a lot of fun. So we had a choice. But of course I, I was very fortunate in some ways and I found that I found a home in Downham Market where the, the father who was a chartered surveyor and his wife were kind enough to let me have the whole of the upper floor and I had my wife join me there together with a six week old baby. And so when I came home at night, back from operations I would go and you know once I’d checked out I’d go home and stay with my wife and I mean if you had to fight a war in the air there was no better way of doing it than being on a Mosquito and having a wife just off the station to sort of keep you warm at night [laughs] NM: So tell me about your operations. Your tour. CB: Well, nobody can tell you what it’s like to go operating. You have to experience it for yourself and our first target was Hannover. And we went out to Hanover in rather bad weather and when we arrived there we flew on the last stages on dead reckoning. But Doug of course got it well and truly sorted and he said to me, ‘Right. We’re here,’ and almost immediately the searchlights opened up. It was all coming through the clouds and not only did the searchlights open up but anti-aircraft fire came up. So it was a bit scary but we didn’t really know what to do. We were looking for some flares that the actual markers because we weren’t markers, that the actual markers had put down and we couldn’t see any and we stooged around which was really a very silly thing to do but there we are and we were, we were naïve. We were brand new. And then all of a sudden I saw when I could go down through the cloud and we bombed on that and we set off home. And on the way back the sky cleared and this was the one time my wonderful navigator let me down because he took a course that took us over Emden, the German naval base and we as we approached Emden we didn’t realise we were doing it but we saw some shells exploding ahead of us and Doug said to me, ‘I wonder what that is all about.’ Well, a few seconds later we knew because the German gunners were very proficient and they proceeded to give us a hell of a plastering which frightened the life out of us and I put the aircraft into a dive. We were at twenty-five thousand feet and I put it into a dive and we didn’t come out until I was doing a speed far in excess of the limits of a Mosquito and and we were at ten thousand feet and they could have brought our careers to an end there and then but it didn’t. But we worked our way back home and we were thoroughly shaken up but we worked our way back home and lived to fight another day as they say. NM: So a sobering initial experience then. CB: Huh? NM: A sobering initial experience. CB: A sobering experience. Yes. But no one can tell you as I say what it is like to be shot at. You have to experience it yourself and of course I’ll come back to this a bit later on, fear kills. But I think in our case once we’d sort of got over that first trip we became more accustomed to flying over Germany, dealing with searchlights, dealing with anti-aircraft fire and generally doing what we were required to do. Our worst trip actually was over Berlin because Berlin was a very nasty place to fly over. They had got eighty-eight guns, eighty-eighths there that could plaster you at a colossal rate per minute and they made sure that as you came over that the searchlights would pick you up and they had radar-controlled searchlights and the, the radar-controlled searchlight wouldn’t switch on until it had got you. So once it switched on you were there in the beam and then you would be picked up by non-radar searchlights and the radar searchlights were linked to anti-aircraft guns and of course immediately you were picked up by the radar searchlight the anti-aircraft guns would open up on you and they’d give you a hell of a plastering going into Berlin. Over Berlin and out. And of course you must understand that if you were in a, coned by searchlights the whole of the interior of the cockpit would be bathed in light so you completely lost your horizon and the only way of flying the plane was flying on instruments. So it was quite a dodgy business and, but also of course the Germans because they knew that no propeller-driven night fighter could catch a Mosquito they used to put out at about thirty thousand feet Focke-Wulf 190s. They called them Wild Boar Squadrons. They used to put up these chaps at about thirty thousand feet and then they would dive down on you and try to pick you off. But it wasn’t too much of a problem because we could usually see them coming and we could avoid them and once that passed by they, they’d never pick you up again. I’d go down and they wouldn’t be able to catch you up. But on the, and I think it was on our fifth trip we had a very nasty experience. We’d got bracketed by shell fire and one shell exploded underneath the aircraft and it lifted us and interfered, I didn’t realise what had happened but I knew what the result was. In fact, it had interfered with the flow of gasoline and temporarily when we got lifted up by the sheer explosion we lost power on both engines and the props were just windmilling around but without any power and my navigator, Doug leaned across to me and said, ‘What do we do now?’ Which I thought was a bloody stupid question. I said, ‘Well, we wait.’ Because that’s all we could do. I put the aircraft into a glide and we continued to get pummelled by anti-aircraft fire but hallelujah the, the power came on and at that point having we’d already dropped our bombs I sort of angled the aircraft away from Berlin and headed for home as fast as we could. And at this point I leaned across to Doug and said, ‘You weren’t frightened were you, Doug?’ And he said, ‘No, I wasn’t frightened. I was bloody terrified.’ [laughs] And I think that pretty well summed it up. But when we got back to base and landed the following morning we went down and inspected the aircraft and the whole of the rear section I should think from about three or four feet behind the cockpit it was like a colander. It was full of holes. How nothing happened and how no wires were severed I really don’t know because if anything like that had happened we’d have been a goner. But it didn’t happen. But my fitter came to me and said, ‘Would you like to have a memento of last night, sir?’ And I said, 'What do you mean?’ And he said, 'Well, we found these.’ And he handed me two shell fragments, I suppose about three or four inches long and I looked at them and I said, ‘Where did you find them?’ He said, ‘They were in the parachute you were sitting on.’ Which made me a bit thoughtful [laughs] NM: Yes. I can imagine. CB: Yeah. NM: I can imagine. So what was your coping mechanism about the contrast between station life and operations? How did you cope with the contrast and the risk you were taking at night? CB: Well, this is, this is where I was coming to when I was going to tell you that fear kills. I, it was just my makeup that I wasn’t particularly fearful. I am, there was a chap who was a very famous Battle of Britain pilot and his name was Sailor Malan and he said, ‘In my experience,’ he said, ‘A survivor is those who persist without too much imagination.’ And I don’t think I had much imagination. Some people say, ‘Do you mean you were thick?’ And I say, ‘Well, probably that’s true.’ Anyway, I just concentrated on doing the job and I can’t say that I was particularly fearful. I just saw it as a job to be done and that’s something you know. You see, we had to win the war. The Germans had got some very nasty things on their menu of what they were going to do to us if ever they came over here and subjugated us. Well, of course they never did get over here thanks to the heroics of Fighter Command and I saw my job as to literally destroy their manufacturing capacity and I always liked to make the point that the the objective of Bomber Command was to destroy the German manufacturing capacity to attack us and when I say us I mean our men and women and our children. And I think by and large Bomber Command did a pretty good job. I always cite the case of Peenemunde where the Germans were developing V-weapons and the Lancasters went over there and bombed the hell out of the place and set back the development of V-weapons for quite a number of months. But when the commandant of Peenemunde who’d been lunching with Hitler heard there had been a raid on his base he hot footed down there and when he saw the damage that had been done he was so overcome that he had a seizure and dropped down dead which I found sort of deeply satisfying. But yeah, Bomber Command I think did a very good job. It attacked the V-1 bases, it attacked the V-2s, it even, it even neutralised the V-3s that not many people know about but yeah, full marks to Bomber Command. NM: So when you operated did you always operate as part of the main force or did you ever go out on single missions? CB: Oh well, all our missions were single missions. We, ahh with the exception of one. We did on one occasion mount a raid against a place called Duisburg. There was an engineering base in Duisburg. I don’t know what they were making but the Bomber Harris decided this had got to be wiped out and we did a daylight raid on that at ten thousand feet in formation. And why formation? Well, because navigation had to be exact and there was one aircraft that was fitted with equipment known as Oboe and Oboe was very very accurate. I think it was accurate within a few yards on the ground and we all formatted behind this Oboe Mosquito and we sidled on at ten thousand feet which meant you were very vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. And as we approached the target the Oboe Mosquito called out sort of saying, ‘Approaching target.’ And then he said, ‘Bomb doors open.’ And we all opened our bomb doors and he said, ‘Now.’ And when he said, ‘Now,’ we all jettisoned our bombs and I’m told it it literally wiped out the engineering works but it wasn’t a nice experience at all. I hated flying in formation and we lost at least one aircraft due to anti-aircraft fire. I think we conceivably lost two but I know for a fact we lost one. I saw him going down and so that was rather sad. But then in wartime you know people get killed. It just happens. It’s, it’s the price of waging war. NM: So that was your only daylight operation. CB: Huh? NM: That was your only daylight operation. CB: That was my only daylight operation. Well, my only operation in formation. NM: Downham market had FIDO didn’t it? CB: Yeah. NM: What was that like? Landing. CB: [laughs] Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. You must understand that FIDO was very expensive. FIDO consisted of pipes on either side of the runway through which they pumped sixty thousand gallons of petrol an hour. Sixty thousand. And it, but you only got, you only got it switched on when all the other bases in the UK were similarly fogbound because if your base, like Downham Market was fogbound but there was some other airfield somewhere else that was reasonably clear they didn’t switch on FIDO they just diverted you to the other base. But if you had the whole of the UK covered in fog on came FIDO and as I said it was, it was an absolute godsend and you would come back and you would see this great blaze of light. Even when you were over the North Sea you could identify it and, but you would be still in cloud and you would do what was known as a standard beam approach in fog. You, I mean all you could see was a great glare of light but you couldn’t see the runway or anything like that. But you’d do the standard beam approach and as you came in on your landing run as you went over the outer marker you would hear this booop booop booop noise in your earphones and as you went over the inner marker it would go beep beep beep beep and then all of a sudden there was the clear runway in front of you and you would land and hallelujah. But by the time you got towards the end of the runway of course you, you were out of FIDO and you were into the fog again. But there was always a jeep with a WAAF with torches to take you back to dispersal. I had, I think I had three landings on FIDO but they were, it was quite straight forward. A bit, a bit worrisome on the first occasion but after that you know it was almost routine. NM: Now, when I heard you speak in January you mentioned the fact that you used to nap off. Have a little sleep on the way back from operations. CB: [laughs] Well, that’s perfectly true. NM: Tell me about that. CB: You see, the Mosquito hadn’t got auto pilot but if you were at twenty-five thousand feet and you trimmed it up it would almost fly itself and you’ve heard me say that there was no German propeller-driven aircraft that could catch you. The only aircraft that could catch you was the jet and we’ll talk about that in a minute. So yes, I would trim the aircraft up and I’d say to my navigator, Doug, ‘Give me a nudge if we stray off course and I’ll trim it up again.’ And I used to carry a little pillow with me and I used to put my pillow against the side of the cockpit and put my head down on it and I used to have a catnap. I’m very fortunate in the sense that I can literally go to sleep without any difficulty wherever I am and almost whatever the circumstances. I think I’ve got this in common with Sir Winston Churchill. He had the same ability. Probably the only thing I’ve got in common with him but still that’s it. So, yes. It worked tolerably well. NM: What did your navigator think the first time you did that? CB: Oh he, he used to bellyache but then he used, but he did say, he did say that as a result of this that he thought he could fly the aircraft as well as I could. Well, he got his chance on one occasion when my oxygen supply failed. Now, you can’t stay, you can’t stay conscious at twenty-five thousand feet without oxygen and when my oxygen failed well I fell unconscious and I eventually woke up at ten thousand feet and we were going in a descending spiral and my navigator, Doug was nearly going berserk trying to resuscitate me with an emergency oxygen bottle. I never let him forget it [laughs] NM: Very good. So tell me about the ME262 that you encountered once. CB: Oh, we knew that towards the end of my, towards the end of ’44 I think it was that the Germans had got the ME262. We knew that had been operating in daylight but we also heard that they had a limited number at night and if these devils ever got a visual on you you were dead. I mean they had such enormous fire power that you would be turned literally into confetti. I was reading the other day about an American pilot who incidentally shot down an ME262 and he said he saw one of these chaps operating in daylight against B17 bombers and he said within a space of about a minute and a half that pulverised three B17 bombers which went down almost immediately. Anyway, to get back I was over Berlin and these things always happen over Berlin, I was over Berlin and I was picked up by an ME262. Or at least I think I was picked up by an ME262 because when the ME262 turns on his air to air radar it causes a white light to operate on the instrument panel of the Mosquito that I was flying. It had got a device at the back that detected it and of course as soon as this happened I tipped the aircraft over on its side and I dropped down from twenty-five thousand feet to ten thousand feet just as quickly as I could at which point my navigator started bleating and saying, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ And I said, ‘Well, didn’t you see the white light come on?’ ‘Well, yes,’ he said, ‘I did,’ but he said, ‘It’s gone out.’ I said, ‘Of course it’s gone out. Because we’ve lost him.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know, but —’ he said, ‘I’ve heard that these white lights occur through ghosting and when really it’s not an ME262 at all.’ So I said, ‘Well, do you want me to hang around and find out?’ Which quietened him down a bit but he was not convinced and every, all the time that I was taking evasive action because the white light would reappear and I again I would take evasive action he was bleating around and saying, ‘Well —’ he said, ‘I can’t see him.’ And I said, ‘Well, thank your lucky stars you can’t see him because if you could see him he could see us and we’d be dead.’ So anyway I paid no attention and, but he would even, even to the, even when we got back to base he still wouldn’t accept that it was a bona fide interception. Well, eventually some years later I met up with that wonderful man, that Naval pilot, Captain Winkle Brown and I described the incident to him and he said, ‘I have no doubt at all that you were being intercepted.’ He said, ‘You’re just bloody lucky to be alive.’ I wish I’d had Doug with me at that point but there we are. So that, that’s the story of the ME262. MV: An interesting point there Nigel is that Colin flew most of his fifty operations in two aircraft. So there was K for King which he had that day. The other one was L for Leather but L for Leather didn’t have this detection system in the tail so when you think of those flip of a coin moments that leads to your survival that was definitely one of them. That he was flying — NM: The right one. MV: K for King that night. NM: The right one. CB: Very interesting point, Mark. But then of course life is a series of odds and ends you know. I could have been sent home at the end of my tour. At the end when I graduated. I could have been sent home straight away instead of becoming an instructor. Had I not been out there for a further eighteen months and amassed sufficient hours to qualify to fly on a Mosquito, had I come home as soon as I got my American wings the likelihood is that I’d have been in Bomber Command flying Stirlings. Now, if you were a captain of a Stirling commencing your tour with three other captains also commencing tours and you were all in the same room at the same time within three months you would be the only one left alive. The other three would be dead. They would either have been shot up by night fighters or they’d have been downed by anti-aircraft fire. I think perhaps five percent of them might have bowed out successfully but you know the odds were horrendous. You, you didn’t have a fifty fifty chance of survival. So I mean it is an instance that as an example of how you know life is full of quirks you know. I think it was Machiavelli who said, ‘Fifty percent of your life is luck and the other fifty percent depends on yourself.’ I’ll come back to the matter, the question of, or the matter of fear because you raised it. Fear does kill. I’d done about thirty operations and a new crew, a young Canadian crew joined the squadron and I say at this point that the Canadian crews were the bravest of the brave and what I’m going to tell you now is in no way denigrating the performance of Canadian aircrew. As I said a moment ago they were the bravest of the brave. Very skilful. Very dedicated. But this young couple that arrived on our squadron were obviously very fearful and we were in the crew room and when the curtain was drawn and they saw what the target was, remember this would be their first operation, the target was Berlin and they just, they looked even further discomfited for want of a better term. And I could see that they were looking very upset so I walked across to them and I said, ‘I’m a bit of an old hand now. I’ve done thirty ops. Anything I can do to cheer you up or tell you about?’ And they, the captain said, or the pilot said to me, ‘I know I’m not coming back from this trip.’ And I said, ‘What makes you say that?’ I said, 'I’ve done thirty ops. I’ve come back. Why shouldn’t you do thirty ops and come back?’ And I couldn’t get anything out of him other than he kept saying, ‘I know I’m not coming back.’ So I eventually gave up and I walked back and I spoke to my Canadian navigator and I said, ‘I can’t get anywhere with the guy.’ I said, ‘He’s one of your compatriots. Perhaps you would like to go and have a talk with him.’ And Doug went across and he talked to him and I suppose he must have been with him for a good five minutes and I could see him keep shaking his head and he came back to me and he said, ‘I can’t get anything out of the guy. He keeps saying, and it’s all he would say over and over again, ‘I know I’m not coming back from this operation.’ And they never did. So what happened to them? Were they shot down by anti-aircraft fire, did they spin out of control when they got coned by searchlights because that could happen unless you were proficient on flying on instruments. What happened to them? Well, we’ll never know because people that don’t come back can’t tell you can they? But that I think was an instance where fear kills and I shall always remember that one. NM: So you finished on fifty operations. CB: Yeah. NM: At what point of the war was your last operation? CB: The point of the war of my last operation. Well, I think it occurred on the 4th of March 1945. A day before my birthday and, well I was relieved. I thought well anyway I finished my tour and [laughs] when we first arrived incidentally on the station the flight commander said to us, ‘Why don’t you sign up for two tours now and I’ll give you more interesting work.’ And I thought hmmm so I looked across at Doug, my elderly navigator and I said, ‘Well, how do you feel about it, Doug?’ And he said, 'I want the Victory Medal. Not the VC.’ [laughs] So I said to the flight commander, ‘Well, you’ve got the answer haven’t you?’ So we only signed up for one operation [sic] and on the 4th of March 1945 it came to an end. NM: So what happened after that? Where did your career go then? CB: Well, Doug went back to Canada and I didn’t see or hear anything of him for many many years after that. But I do know that he took a degree at McGill University in forestry and then I think he went on to become President of the Forestry Commission. So you can see he was a lumberjack to start with. A lumberjack and a fireman. So you can see the calibre of the man that I had and he must have saved my life on many occasion and I must have saved his. Most noticeably the ME262 incident. NM: Indeed. So you stayed on. CB: I stayed on and I was given the job of flying newly built Mosquitoes from London Ontario where there was a de Havilland factory building. Flying newly built Mosquitoes back to this country. I flew three I think. I think it’s correct. Three. And I used to go on what was known as the Great Circle Route. I used to fly up to Goose Bay in Labrador. I used to then fly on to the West Coast of Greenland, a place called Bluie West One which is still there but under a different name which was a staging post run by the Americans and then I used to fly on to Reykjavik in Iceland and then finally into Prestwick in Scotland. The Americans wouldn’t allow us to fly other than in good clear weather which I found a bit frustrating but so therefore sometimes a single trip would take ten or fifteen days. But we had no control unless the meteorologist would give you clearance. You had to stay until you got clearance. MV: It was not without its risks, Colin. CB: Huh? MV: It was not without its risks was it? Either icebergs or something. CB: Well, yes and my friend Mark is reminding me of occasion when I was flying out to, via Goose Bay to Bluie West One on the west coast of Greenland and I was in fog and I thought well I need to identify the fjord that I needed to fly up on the west coast of Greenland. I had a useless navigator. Not a chap like Doug. I had a useless navigator so I thought I’d, I would do my own navigation and, but I was in a sort of a cloudy foggy conditions so it was necessary to let down and get below this so I could fly in clear weather and I lowered the aircraft down and down. But I wasn’t too worried because I knew I was over the sea and I actually broke cloud at about three hundred feet. But as I broke cloud I swept past an iceberg that was sticking out of the sea [laughs] I won’t say I nearly hit it but if I’d been a bit lower and a bit over more towards the port then I would have done and I often think well, if I disappeared people would have said, ‘Oh, Colin was a pretty experienced pilot. I wonder what happened to him?’ But you see, like my frightened Canadians nobody knows. You disappear and nobody, there’s nobody to tell the story. MV: Colin, there was also, there was also the risk of saboteurs in the factory wasn’t there? CB: Yes. In London Ontario there was a saboteur and he was doing some nasty things to the aircraft. One particular instance which we discovered he was screwing down the safety valves on the air bottles. The air bottles would contain the compressed air that worked the hydraulics. They had a safety valve because the pump was going all the time but there were, as soon as it reached a certain level then the escape valve would open up and release the excess. Well, this guy devised a scheme whereby he could screw down the safety valve and once the aircraft, well once the safety, once the safety valve was screwed down the air bottle would explode and blow out the side of the aircraft. We found out because on one occasion he couldn’t have done the job too well. The aircraft, the Mosquito was landing at Prestwick and the air bottle exploded while the guy was landing and he landed quite successfully and then of course there was a postmortem on the whole thing and that was how they discovered what had happened. Whether they ever found the guy or not I don’t know. Fortunately, he never, he never exercised his tricks on my aircraft. If he had who knows. Once again. NM: Yeah. CB: I might not be here talking to you. MV: And Colin, you haven’t I don’t think talked about the role of Bomber Command in the sense of the strategic missions like Dresden which inevitably comes up in conversation about Bomber Command. CB: Well, yes. I am. I always like to correct misconceptions and Mark has reminded me quite correctly about the, what is spoken or what people have been saying over the years about the bombing of Dresden. It was put out that the bombing of Dresden was quite unnecessary because it wasn’t a, it wasn’t a proper target for attack which of course is quite wrong because by 1944 I think it was when Dresden was attacked, it could have been ’45 but anyway it was February. Either February ’44 or February ’45. Dresden was a highly developed manufacturing base. They’d got ten thousand war workers. They were producing cockpits for the Luftwaffe. They were producing devices for fitting on U-boats. They were, they were really a very very active. It was a very active centre for war production but more than that of course they had got this enormous marshalling yard, railway marshalling yard through which I think about twenty thousand troops were being ferried through to the Eastern Front and wounded people being brought back each and every day and the Russians were screaming for Dresden to be neutralised. So yes, it was a, it was a proper target for attack and we attacked it at night and our American allies attacked it in daylight. But there are a lot of misconceptions and until a few, ‘til about, oh I suppose five, six or seven years ago some of the younger and ignorant members of our population, what I call the do-gooders and holier than thous used to take the moral high ground and cite Dresden as an example of the iniquity of Bomber Command in killing innocent civilians. I always say that I can understand in a way people who don’t know taking the moral high ground but then when having reservations about Bomber Command’s activities but I think that they would have probably had reservations about living as slave labourers under a German machine if we hadn’t won the war. And Bomber Command didn’t win the war but it contributed a significant force in achieving the defeat of the Germans and I’m very proud to have been associated with it albeit in a very tiny way. MV: And Colin, maybe this, it would be helpful for you to explain what your single ship raids were designed to do. CB: My? MV: Single ship raids. The siren raids. The — CB: Oh yes. Well — MV: Spoof raids. CB: Part of our, part of our duties at Downham Market as the Light Night Striking Force was to go on spoof raids. We would go around as single aircraft and attack a city like Hamburg where the main force were going to Nuremberg but we’d throw out masses of Window, these metallic strips and drop perhaps a bomb or a flare to simulate an attack by a main force. And then the German night fighters would come haring after us but by the time they realised that they’d been spoofed they had to go back and refuel and it would delay their attack on the main force as I said that might have been going down to Nuremberg. So that was one job. Yeah. Yeah. And the other one was merely to go around to various cities and just for the purpose of, again solo just for the purpose of upsetting the war production because as soon as we arrived the German war workers would have to, would go down to the air raid shelters and stop production. So we used to call them Siren Tours. We’d go around about a half a dozen different German cities, manufacturing cities doing just that. It was all worthwhile and just, just something else contributing to the defeat of the Germans. Yeah. MV: And one of the other amusing situations, Colin was when Military Intelligence would post a radio operator on — CB: Oh yes. MV: An aircraft. CB: I believe that one. I wasn’t party to it but the Germans would direct their night fighters not in code but in open, open traffic you know. Just open instructions and on one occasion I know, on more than one occasion I think we sent a Lancaster over with a device that would tune in to the German night fighter system and when the German night fighters were giving instructions from the ground we would break in and say, ‘Pay no attention to that last instruction. The Englanders have got an aircraft up above which is tuned in to the same wavelength so disregard it. Don’t go to 090 at thirteen thousand feet. Go to 180 at ten thousand feet.’ And then of course the, immediately the Germans would come in and say, ‘Pay no attention to that. That’s the Englanders speaking.’ We’d go backwards and forwards, ‘No. No. No. Pay no attention,’ you know [laughs] Anyway, eventually they brought in a woman to speak and of course but we’d anticipated that. We’d got a woman on board in the Lancaster [laughs] So it was really quite a lot of fun. Eventually we played, I gather in a Lancaster, we’d got a recording of Hitler having one of his rants so we suddenly started broadcasting that and it blew all the, all the instructions from the ground out of the window [laughs] MV: And Colin, just, just finally the Mosquito, a wooden aircraft. Lots of different types of versions of the Mosquito you know, what was it like to fly compared to say a Spitfire? CB: Yes, well I did fly a Spitfire once and inevitably I was asked how does this compare with flying a Mosquito? And I said, ‘Well, there’s nothing that the Spitfire can do that the Mosquito can’t do. They’re both fully aerobatic but the Mosquito has got two Spitfire engines so as far as I’m concerned no contest.’ [laughs] I think that really finishes me. Yeah. NM: Very good. CB: Yeah. NM: So you left the RAF in 1946. CB: Correct. NM: Was that standard demobilisation or — CB: Yes. That’s when I was doing that. I stayed on as a Reserve for fifteen years flying Chipmunks. It was like belonging to a Flying Club and having everything paid for. They even gave me a bonus at Christmas. Ludicrous really but after fifteen years they woke up to the fact that I wasn’t value for money and they finally struck me off from the Service. But when I left was the RAF in ’46 I resumed my civilian career and I qualified as a Chartered Federation Surveyor. I worked with the government until I was sixty and then I turned, instead of being a gamekeeper I turned poacher and I ran my own practice until about five years ago. And well, here I am now. NM: So you retired at ninety-nine. CB: Hmmn? NM: You retired when you were ninety-nine. CB: That’s right. NM: Very good. That’s right. So you’ve hinted at it already but when you look back at your time in Bomber Command — CB: Sorry? NM: When you look back on your time in Bomber Command what’s your overall feeling when you look back and reflect? CB: Well, I think it was a job that needed doing. A very worthwhile job. I [pause] I feel sad for those people, wonderful young men that lost their lives. If you’re looking for heroes don’t look at me or people that flew the Mosquitoes because our loss, our losses were miniscule compared to the slow flying heavy four engine bombers. They were the heroes. No question. Starting with the Stirling, Wellingtons. Ridiculous aircraft like Whitleys and of course right up to the Lancaster. I mean, I say that there was nothing really that the Mosquito couldn’t do whether it was night fighter, whether it was Coastal Command attacking the U-boats, whether as Pathfinder Mossies that I was on. But there was certain things that the Mosquito couldn’t do. It couldn’t drop the bouncing bomb that’s demolished the dams and it couldn’t drop the earthquake bombs that destroyed the Tirpitz and, nor the earthquake bomb that tilted the V-3 complex on its side and made it unusable. For these things you needed a Lancaster. So yes. I look back on it all and I simply say it was, it was a very unfortunate business waging war but it was a war that we had to win and we did and thank God we did. NM: I think that’s a very suitable note to finish on. CB: Hmmn? NM: I think that’s a very suitable note to finish the interview on. So thank you very much it’s — CB: That’s alright. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you. NM: Well — CB: I hope that some of what I’ve said will, will be of interest to people that come along and consult your records and I hope too that people will understand how vital defence of our country is. Defence ought to be the number one priority of any government. I’m not concerned with other governments. I’m concerned with our government. But I think that for example you’ll find that the Poles spend over four percent of GDP on defence and we’re talking, until recently we were talking about increasing it to two point five percent when we could afford it which is absolute rubbish. You’ve got to spend enough on defence to deter despots like Putin and before him of course Hitler and if we had spent enough on defence in the ‘30s who knows Hitler might never have come into being as the leader of the Germans. It’s, it’s worth thinking about. NM: Very good. Well, thank you again for your time and your thoughts and your memories. It’s been much appreciated. CB: Yeah. You’re welcome. NM: Much appreciated. 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 Colin Bell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nigel Moore Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-03-31 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 01:23:18 Audio Recording 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 ABellC250331, PBellC2501 Description An account of the resource Colin Bell spent eighteen months as a newly qualified pilot instructing trainees in America. He completed 50 operations as a pilot on Mosquitos on the Light Night Striking Force. Colin talks of his entry interview into the RAF, his time at an Initial Training Wing, and his tuition as a pilot in the United States. After the American entry into the war, he went from being a newly qualified pilot to being an instructor, as well as transporting Canadian built Mosquitos to the UK. In 1943 Colin completed a night fighter course and was recruited into No 8 Pathfinder Group’s Light Night Striking Force. Colin details how he dealt with the rigours of operations by copying a fighter pilot’s plan of not having much imagination. During an operation to Duisburg he thinks that two aircraft were lost to anti-aircraft fire. He describes the bombing of Dresden and why it was targeted, the use of ‘Window’, and how Military Intelligence would use radio operators to misdirect the enemy. He was demobbed in 1946. Also present was Colin's friend, Mark Vickers. Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940 1941 1943 1944 1945 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 Germany Great Britain Greenland Iceland United States Atlantic Ocean Alabama England--Cambridgeshire England--Lincolnshire England--London England--Norfolk England--Yorkshire Florida Germany--Berlin Germany--Duisburg Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony) Germany--Hannover Ontario--Toronto Scotland--Ayrshire Ontario--London Ontario Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Carolyn Emery Claire Campbell Requires A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence. Colin Bell witnessed the Battle of Britain raging overhead when living with his parents. It was particularly brought home to him when he was walking near Hampton Court Bridge and a Heinkel dropped a bomb near him. It spurred him on to volunteer for the RAF when he was of age. He was trained as part of the Arnold Scheme in America but when he thought he would be returning to the UK he was recalled to the base and informed he was going to be a flying instructor. When he did return to the UK he responded to the invitation of Hamish Mahaddie to apply to the Pathfinders squadron. His application was successful and he was posted to 608 Squadron at RAF Downham Market. After one particularly challenging operational experience when both engines of the Mosquito failed he managed to return to the UK. The ground staff asked him if he would like a souvenir which was two large pieces of shrapnel that had become lodged in the parachute he was sitting on. He also lost consciousness on one flight when his oxygen failed and after losing ten thousand feet in a steep dive he woke as his engineer was desperately trying to resuscitate him with an emergency supply of oxygen. 608 Squadron 8 Group aircrew anti-aircraft fire Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986) bombing crewing up fear FIDO Fw 190 ground crew ground personnel Initial Training Wing Me 262 military living conditions military service conditions Mosquito navigator Oboe Pathfinders perception of bombing war pilot RAF Downham Market RAF Grantham RAF Prestwick RAF Warboys RAF Wyton recruitment searchlight Stearman superstition training V-weapon https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2708/51087/LStreetDO123026v1.2.pdf 780f9ab75ad158c631ec66258b199518 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 Street, Denys Oliver Description An account of the resource Three items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Denys Oliver Street (1922 - 1944, 123026 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, photo and portrait. He flew operations as a pilot with 207 Squadron and was killed 6 April 1944. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Peter and Derek Sinclair and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Denys Oliver Street is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/122546/">IBCC Losses Database.</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-04-12 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 Street, DO 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 Denys Street's pilots flying log book Description An account of the resource Denys Oliver Street’s Pilot’s Flying Log Book covering the period from 22 April 1941 to 29 March 1943, detailing his training and operations flown as pilot. He was stationed at USAAF Miami (Oklahoma) (3 British FTS), RAF Grantham (12 PAFU), RAF Upper Heyford (16 OTU), RAF Wigsley (1654 HCU) and RAF Bottesford and RAF Langar (207 Squadron). Aircraft flown in were Cornell PT-19, Valiant BT-13, Harvard AT-6, Oxford, Manchester and Lancaster. He flew on ten night operations with 207 Squadron. Against the 10th operation entry is noted ‘missing’. Targets were Nurnberg, mining, St Nazaire, Berlin, Stuttgart, Essen and Duisburg. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1943-02-25 1943-02-26 1943-02-28 1943-03-01 1943-03-08 1943-03-11 1943-03-12 1943-03-26 1943-03-27 1943-03-29 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. France Germany Great Britain United States England--Leicestershire England--Lincolnshire England--Nottinghamshire England--Oxfordshire France--Saint-Nazaire Germany--Berlin Germany--Duisburg Germany--Essen Germany--Ruhr (Region) Germany--Stuttgart Oklahoma Germany--Nuremberg Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay England--Berkshire 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. Log book and record book Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One booklet Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LStreetDO123026v1 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 Terry Hancock Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Review Oct 2024 16 OTU 1654 HCU 207 Squadron 3 BFTS Advanced Flying Unit aircrew bombing Cornell Flying Training School Harvard Heavy Conversion Unit Lancaster Manchester mine laying missing in action Operational Training Unit Oxford pilot RAF Bottesford RAF Grantham RAF Langar RAF Upper Heyford RAF Wigsley RAF Winthorpe Ruhr Campaign (5 March – 10 July 1943) training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2851/50817/LMilsonAE754001v1.1.pdf 0a91d1a9ffd249578872ea2e7b8b731d 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 Millson, Albert Edward Millson, A E Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Millson, AE Description An account of the resource 78 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Albert Edward Millson DSO DFC and Bar (1921 - 2009, 754001 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents, news clippings and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 101 and 102 Squadrons, and in the Far East. After the war he served in Transport Command. The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Wendy Eaton and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-10-05 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. 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 Millson’s Royal Air Force Pilot’s Flying Log Book Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LMilsonAE754001v1 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. Description An account of the resource Albert Millson’s Pilot’s Flying Log Book from 16th April 1940 until 27th November 1952. Initial pilot training at No. 7 Elementary Flying Training School, then Nos. 10 and 12 Service Flying Training Schools. Posted to 12 Operational Training Unit in April 1941. Operational posting to 101 Squadron in June. Attended Beam Approach Training course in September/October. May 1942 posted to 21 Operational Training Unit. Posted to 1652 Conversion Unit in August 1943 before operational posting to 102 Squadron. In September 1944 posted to 46 Group Headquarters, Transport Command. In April 1945 posted to Air Command, South East Asia. Served at RAF Desford, RAF Tern Hill, RAF Grantham, RAF Benson, RAF West Raynham, RAF Oakington, RAF Honington, RAF Moreton-in-March, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Pocklington, RAF Broadwell, RAF Ratmalana (Sri Lanka), RAF Swinderby. Aircraft flown were Tiger Moth, Anson, Wellington Ic, Wellington III, Wellington X, Halifax, Oxford, C-47 Dakota, Proctor, Auster, B-17 Flying Fortress, York, Mosquito, C-54 Skymaster, C-45 Expeditor, Sunderland, Varsity. Undertook 40 operations with 101 Squadron (2 day, 38 night) to targets including Rotterdam, Cologne, Bremen, Brest, Bielefeld, Osnabruck, Kiel, Hamburg, Mannheim, Hamm, Essen, Hannover, Duisburg, Berlin, Turin, Frankfurt, Wilhelmshaven, Munster, Lubeck, Dortmund, Rostock. One operation was the search for the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, and a second was a meteorological operation over the North Sea. Other than himself, his pilots were Squadron Leader Colenso, Sergeant Gaunt and Pilot Officer Todd. Whilst at 21 Operational Training Unit he flew 4 night bombing operations to Cologne, Essen, Dusseldorf and Bremen. At 102 Squadron he flew 21 night bombing and mine laying operations. Targets were Modane, Hanover, Mannheim, Bochum, Kassel, Dusseldorf, Ludwigshafen, Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Meulan, Trappes, Le Mans, Helgoland, Kiel Bay and Courtrai. During the operation on the night of 3rd November 1943, his aircraft was hit and set on fire. Sergeant Doherty managed to put out the fire and was later awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal as described in a newspaper clipping in the log book. On the night of 19/20th February 1944 their aircraft managed to shot down a Ju-88. Log book includes various photographs and newspaper clippings. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force 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 Text Text. Log book and record book Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Multi-page printed book with handwritten entries, newspaper clippings and photographs. Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Review Oct 2024 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940 1941-06-17 1941-06-18 1941-06-21 1941-06-26 1941-06-27 1941-06-28 1941-06-29 1941-06-30 1941-07-01 1941-07-02 1941-07-05 1941-07-06 1941-07-09 1941-07-10 1941-07-20 1941-07-21 1941-07-24 1941-07-25 1941-07-30 1941-07-31 1941-08-01 1941-08-02 1941-08-05 1941-08-06 1941-08-07 1941-08-08 1941-08-12 1941-08-13 1941-08-14 1941-08-15 1941-08-17 1941-08-18 1941-08-31 1941-09-01 1941-09-07 1941-09-08 1941-09-10 1941-09-11 1941-09-12 1941-09-13 1941-09-20 1941-09-21 1941-10-15 1941-10-16 1941-10-22 1941-10-23 1941-10-24 1941-10-25 1942-01-10 1942-01-11 1942-01-22 1942-01-23 1942-02-12 1942-03-08 1942-03-09 1942-03-13 1942-03-14 1942-03-22 1942-03-25 1942-03-26 1942-03-28 1942-03-29 1942-04-07 1942-04-08 1942-04-09 1942-04-11 1942-04-12 1942-04-14 1942-04-15 1942-04-22 1942-04-23 1942-04-24 1942-05-30 1942-05-31 1942-06-01 1942-06-02 1942-07-31 1942-08-01 1942-09-13 1942-09-14 1943-09-16 1943-09-17 1943-09-22 1943-09-23 1943-09-24 1943-09-29 1943-10-22 1943-10-23 1943-11-03 1943-11-18 1943-11-19 1943-11-22 1943-11-25 1943-11-26 1944-01-06 1944-01-07 1944-01-20 1944-01-21 1944-02-03 1944-02-04 1944-02-11 1944-02-12 1944-02-19 1944-02-20 1944-03-02 1944-03-06 1944-03-07 1944-03-18 1944-03-22 1944-03-26 1945 1946 1952 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Cambridgeshire England--Gloucestershire England--Leicestershire England--Lincolnshire England--Norfolk England--Oxfordshire England--Shropshire England--Suffolk England--Yorkshire Atlantic Ocean--Kiel Bay Germany Germany--Ruhr (Region) Germany--Berlin Germany--Bielefeld Germany--Bochum Germany--Bremen Germany--Cologne Germany--Dortmund Germany--Duisburg Germany--Düsseldorf Germany--Essen Germany--Frankfurt am Main Germany--Hamburg Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia) Germany--Hannover Germany--Helgoland Germany--Kassel Germany--Kiel Germany--Leipzig Germany--Lübeck Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein Germany--Mannheim Germany--Münster in Westfalen Germany--Osnabrück Germany--Rostock Germany--Wilhelmshaven Netherlands Netherlands--Rotterdam Belgium Belgium--Kortrijk France France--Brest France--Le Mans France--Meulan France--Modane France--Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Italy Italy--Turin Sri Lanka Sri Lanka--Ratmalana Atlantic Ocean--North Sea Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Nick Cornwell-Smith 101 Squadron 102 Squadron 12 OTU 1652 HCU 21 OTU aircrew animal Anson B-17 Berlin Campaign (23 August 1943 – 25 March 1944) bombing bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942) bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943) C-47 Distinguished Flying Medal Flying Training School Gneisenau Halifax Halifax Mk 3 Heavy Conversion Unit Ju 88 mine laying Mosquito Operational Training Unit Oxford pilot Proctor RAF Benson RAF Broadwell RAF Desford RAF Grantham RAF Honington RAF Marston Moor RAF Moreton in the Marsh RAF Oakington RAF Pocklington RAF Ratmalana RAF Swinderby RAF Ternhill RAF West Raynham Scharnhorst Sunderland Tiger Moth training Wellington York https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2856/50683/SBondS-VandervordDv10014.MP3 c2a45cedaf0bae39b3e69248cdc82e6c 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 Vandervord, David Description An account of the resource 15 items. Collection concerns Sergeant David Vandevord who flew operations as a Wellington second pilot on 218 Squadron. Collection contains his pilot's flying log book, an oral history interview and photographs. The collection was licensed to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation 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. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-01-18 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 SBondS-VandervordDv1 Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document SB: Well, this is an example of what I would do just so you can see what I do. DV: You’ve written it. SB: Yes. So — DV: Different aircraft. [tea talk] DV: I see. Tell the story. We know that Germany [unclear] as well have you? SB: Yes. What I like to do is to write some stories but really with lots of personal stories. Not just the historical what aircraft did what when. DV: I thought you’d like — SB: That’s from the chap — DV: Details of the aircraft? Not particularly. SB: Well, it’s more what you, what you did and what you experienced and those sorts of things. DV: Oh. Yes. Right. SB: So the reason I’m doing this — DV: The thing is I only did thirteen. Thirteen missions. SB: Right. DV: And I was second pilot. I never flew the aircraft over enemy territory at all. Two, two pilots. I was merely there in case the other pilot got injured or killed. SB: Right. DV: If it so happened and I was the one if he didn’t. So you want the whole history. Well, as I’ve got it. SB: Yeah. So you were on well let’s do the operations. So you were 218 Squadron. Is that right? 218? Or have I got that wrong? The squadron that you did your ops on. DV: It says in there. SB: Yes. 218. DV: Right. SB: Yeah. Ok. DV: [unclear] in that lot. Now, that, that bit there is a leaflet. Only half of it. Only first half of it. I’ve lost half of it. In the early days we dropped leaflets instead of — SB: Nickels. DV: [unclear] yeah. Yes, we dropped leaflets before bombs. SB: Yes. DV: These were the early days. SB: Sure. Sure. DV: I don’t know if that is any interest to you. It is relevant of course. SB: Absolutely. Yes. Well, let’s start in the beginning then. So you joined up in ’39. Is that right? DV: Well, shall I start at the beginning? SB: Yes, start at the beginning. DV: Over here in Rochford. SB: Right. DV: I joined what was called the Civil Air Guard. SB: Yes. DV: Which was an organisation that the government had set to give people to have the courage, for people to learn to fly. SB: Yeah. DV: And I joined the Civil Air Guard and the government paid half your fee. You paid the rest of it. And then while I was over there for a time the RAF, well I made my first solo over there. SB: What were you flying? DV: Tiger Moths. No, actually at that time it wasn’t Tiger Moths. It was similar aircraft. I don’t know what it was. SB: Ok. DV: I did my first solo over there before I was even in the RAF and then I picked up half of my training fees and the government paid the other half. And then the RAF opened up a unit there, an RAFVR unit and I thought oh I’ll transfer to that and I paid all my training fees instead of having to half of it [unclear] Then suddenly the war happened and everything stopped. SB: Yes. DV: We were there for several months [unclear] we used to go down to the front unit and every two weeks they’d take my pay. That was, that was my war [laughs]. So eventually we, we went to Bexhill. No flying and we were just, just wasting fuel. SB: Was this at ITW? DV: Yes. It was just drill. SB: Yeah. DV: No flying. Nothing to do with flying. The fuel side of the RAF and that was it. De la Warr. Do you remember the De la Warr pavilion perhaps? SB: I know of it. Yes. Yes. Right. DV: You see it on pamphlets [unclear] and we were there. SB: Yeah. DV: Then after a time there eventually started [unclear] the next thing I went to a place called Desford. Have you ever heard of that? SB: Yes, I have. Yes. Yes. DV: So, that was my, I was flying Tiger Moths there. That was the initial. It started again from scratch as it were. SB: Yeah. DV: And went through a period with that on Tiger Moths. Then I went to Gran [pause] Grantham was it? SB: Yeah. Grantham. Yes. DV: Grantham. You’ve got that have you? SB: Yeah. DV: You know about Grantham. Yes. Grantham. I was flying Ansons. And there were, there were Battles there and Ansons. The people flying Battles came through and became fighter pilots. The ones on Ansons went on, on bombers or other aircraft. SB: Yeah. Yeah. DV: So I had a period, a period there and then I went [unclear] SB: Harwell after that. DV: Sorry? SB: So was it 15 OTU Harwell came after that. Is that right? DV: Oh yes. SB: Yes. DV: Yes. Yes. SB: Yeah. DV: Oh you’ve got quite a long list there. SB: Well, I’ve got your list here. DV: Yes. More than I can remember rightly. SB: Right. And there you crewed up presumably. At Harwell. Yes, at Harwell. DV: Oh, no. Not at Harwell. No. SB: Did you not? DV: Well, what was Harwell? No. It was a — SB: Harwell was the OTU. DV: Oh yes. Yes. SB: Yes. DV: Yes. Oh, yes. That’s right. Yes. SB: Right. DV: No. No. There wasn’t any crew there. No. I was just. I think I was flying. Flying [pause] what’s the names? SB: Wellingtons. DV: Yes. SB: Yes. Yeah. DV: Yes. It’s got there it’s got one particular one when I was shot up and wounded. I expect you have found that have you there? SB: What? While you were still at OTU you mean? DV: Oh no. No. SB: No. Ok. So you, well let’s, so you finished on OTU in December 1940 and then went to 218 Squadron at Marham. December 1940. DV: Yes. SB: Right. Ok. DV: Yes. SB: And Flying Officer Anstey. He was your first pilot was he? Anstey then changed to Agar. DV: Agar. That’s right. Yes. That was the one I was with. Yeah. I was second pilot to him. As I say I never, never flew the aircraft — SB: Right. DV: Operationally at all. There wasn’t any need to with two pilots. I was just there in case the first pilot got killed or wounded so then I took over. SB: Right. DV: But that never happened fortunately. SB: Right. DV: We could have. We did get shot at. I was the one of the crew didn’t [unclear] the pilot who was flying the aircraft low. SB: Would this be, you’ve got one here February the 11th ’41. Bremen. Low cloud over target. Crash landed in field. DV: Oh yes. SB: At Bassingham. Is that the one? DV: No. No. No SB: That was another one. DV: That was another one. SB: Right. DV: Well, shall I tell you about what happened there? SB: Yes, do. Yes. DV: I’ll tell you that part. This is the second one actually. SB: Right. DV: Yes. We came back with our bombs. We couldn’t see anything. Low cloud over Germany and over here. SB: Right. DV: So we, so we brought our bombs back and we decided now what shall we do? Shall we go up? Take the aircraft up and jump by parachute. System George. You know, George was the automatic pilot. Take it out to sea or something to crash. Or shall, I say we I wasn’t following the aircraft that was the pilot, Flying Officer Agar should he, should he try to dip through. You could look, over the cloud you could look straight down. It was a big, the earth quite close you know flashing by. But coming from the pilot’s seat I couldn’t easily, couldn’t easily see. SB: Right. DV: Through. So, it was decided that he would, he would try to dip through. See a gap in a cloud. Dip through again in the cloud. Very low this is of course. We were only a few feet above ground level and [unclear] he came down and the next sort of thing there was a tree in front of him. He lifted up over the tree. There was a ploughed field. Wheels up. Made what they called a belly landing. You’ve probably got it recorded there again somewhere. SB: It just says, “Crash landed in a field.” Yes. DV: Yeah, that’s right. SB: Yeah. DV: Yes. SB: Yes. DV: This was a ploughed field on a, on a wheels up of course. SB: Yes. DV: As you probably know if you had the wheels up you did a [turtle] quite a belly landing as it was called. Oh, first of all I should have said dropped our bombs live over this country. SB: Over this country. DV: We didn’t want to land with bombs so we did that in case they went up. So we brought, had to bring all the bombs back. We couldn’t see anything. Anywhere to drop the bombs. SB: Sure [Thank you very much. Thank you.] Right. So you just jettisoned them somewhere on the way back did you? DV: Yes. SB: Yes. DV: I don’t know quite where. They’re probably still there. To drop them live you had to produce a pin. SB: Yes. DV: They didn’t explode. SB: Right. DV: But you wouldn’t have wanted them to land on their heads. SB: Well absolutely. So was everybody ok after that forced landing? DV: Oh yes. Yes. I recall we didn’t know where we were. We just all traipsed out. Found a road not far away. We walked along the road, found a, found a little house or a cottage or something. Knocked on the door. We must have scared them stiff I suppose seeing airmen. They’d think the Germans had arrived. But they, well they then phoned up. They must have gone through the RAF police [unclear] I suppose and they sent us transport and took us back there and eventually got word back to Marham. SB: Right. Right. What sort of state was the aeroplane in? DV: Well, I don’t know exactly. It wasn’t bad. Not terribly. It could be repaired I should think. It was in a bit of a state. SB: Right. DV: As the landing it was called a belly landing. It was a — SB: Yeah. Yeah. DV: Obviously damaged quite a bit. SB: Oh sure. Yes. Yes. DV: I dare say they recovered it by repairs. SB: No. I think this must be the other one that you started to talk about. This is March the 13th ’41. DV: That was where we were shot up. SB: Yes. DV: Yeah. SB: Can you — DV: When I was wounded. SB: Can you talk me through that? DV: Yes. Yes. Well, first of all we went to, I expect I’ve got it down there. German — SB: It was Berlin the night before. DV: No. SB: And then it was Hamburg this target this time. DV: Well, that’s [unclear] We went, we went to Hamburg. [unclear ] the coast of Holland and then around the [pause] I’m not sure of the river. Elbe? SB: Yes. DV: Maybe yeah. Down to Hamburg. SB: Right. DV: Which, which everything went alright. Dropped our bombs there and it was decided to come back over land. SB: Right. DV: This is going out. I don’t know why. Anyhow, we got as far as the Zuiderzee in Holland. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Zuiderzee. SB: Oh, yeah. DV: It’s not, I mean there’s no sea there and I think they recovered it. But over the Zeiderzee. Got caught in searchlights and waited a little bit on the searchlights and then two German Messerschmitt 110s, a twin engine they used as night fighters attacked us. Actually I’ve got the details there. And it’s fantastic how the aircraft survived. I think we shot down one of the aircraft and then Agar who was flying the plane dove right down to ground level. I got, I got, yes that’s right. I was standing in the astro hatch and I don’t know whether you are aware at the time of the fact that they that they had built in some, some doors. Bullet proof doors which are halfway through the fuselage. SB: Right. DV: And they were on a, on a hinge with a pillar which was in the middle halfway across the fuselage and the doors either way. SB: Right. DV: And they were sort of flapping backwards and forwards but at the time of the attack I think they must have been back. I was standing behind them in the astro hatch which was these things were just behind the, they were just behind the astro hatch. It was amazing how close that aircraft came, the German fighter came because I remember looking through the astro hatch and we [could have touched] they came that close. SB: Really? DV: Fantastic pilot all the time. I was the only one who got wounded. But the aircraft was shot to pieces but still kept on flying. One engine was on fire. So we came quite close to the Zuiderzee so we went out over the North Sea heading for Marham one engine on fire. [background chatter] DV: The petrol gauge was showing zero because what would have happened when I say the engine was on fire I think the fuel supply to one of the engines had been severed. SB: Right. DV: And it was sort of [pause] on fire every now and again. Then the speed of the aircraft sort of blew it out then it ignited again but apart from that we were losing petrol of course being that the fuel supply was severed and the petrol tank wasn’t, the engine was getting much petrol. SB: Right. DV: So virtually we came back over the North Sea with one engine. One engine, one engine on fire intermittently and landed at Marham. But I didn’t see much of it of course because I was, I was wounded in the leg. I went straight to hospital. I was told that the aircraft was in a hell of state, you know. It was still flying. I feel, feel that was due to the structure. SB: Yeah. DV: I don’t think most aircraft could have survived the punishment that the aircraft had had. SB: Right. Right. DV: Does anyone else — [background refreshment chatter] DV: [unclear] SB: Right. DV: I went straight to hospital so I don’t know quite how. I was told the aircraft was in a hell of a state but still, still flying. That was that. That was first and then the other one’s landing in the field. SB: Right. DV: Was afterwards. SB: Right. Ok. DV: Now, I got to thirteen missions. SB: Yeah. DV: And I then asked to come off. I thought it seemed useless to me. There I was I’d done thirteen missions and never, never flown the aircraft. Never flown the aircraft over enemy territory. SB: Right. DV: And I asked to come off Bomber Command and to go on to I think I asked for fighter. Fighters but — SB: Right. DV: Anything else. But as I say I was taking all the risk and nothing. Anyhow, one thing or another. Either come off flying or carry on as you are. I had to make a quick decision. I was just seconds. didn’t say well think about it and told me. I said, ‘Alright, I’m not flying,’ and that was the end of my flying career. SB: Really? DV: After thirteen missions. So, I haven’t got any stories to tell you. SB: What did you do after that then? DV: Oh, I joined a unit. I forget what it was. We went, we went out in a group of people. we were deciding, we were taking reading of the [pause] what was it? There were two bombs they were sending over. SB: Oh the V-1 and V-2. DV: Yes, that’s right. So, we were, we were I think it was the, I don’t know which it was we had to take readings of the [pause] we were a wireless unit and we recorded the [pause] from where we were the angle, you know. So somebody else was get the angle and tell them to get across and we would tell them where it was. But at the time unclear] someone was sent to bomb them and they’d moved. But still — SB: Right. DV: That was our job. SB: Right. Right. Yes. Ok. DV: And we got up quite close to the German lines and quite close so that was, that was nothing much. That was nothing to do with flying of course. I had longed to fly. SB: When did you eventually leave the Air Force then? DV: Oh, not ‘til the [pause] sometime after the end of the war. SB: Right. DV: I was demobbed. SB: Just going back to the ops certainly early on in the war there was no, as you know there was no co-ordinated main force that Bomber Harris brought in when he came along. So at the time you were flying your ops was all your squadron going off at the same time or was it up to the original skippers when they, when went off and navigate? Would you navigate on your own or were you navigating as a force? DV: No. All at the same time. SB: You were. DV: More or less. SB: Right. Ok. DV: I do recall when we went to Berlin the squadron leader they had, most of the aircraft were Bristol engines I think. SB: Yeah. DV: Hercules. But I do remember this. There was one aircraft that had Merlin engines on it. SB: Right. DV: And the squadron leader. When we all went out the squadron leader was way back and in bed before we got back. He got back much quicker with the Merlin engines. SB: Right. Right. DV: But there was only one aircraft that had Merlin. Had Merlin engines. SB: Oh, that was on your squadron. DV: Yes. SB: Oh. DV: Only one aircraft on the squadron. SB: Yes, because the Mark 2 Merlin engine wasn’t that common an aeroplane was it? DV: Probably not. No. SB: No. What did you think of the Wellington? DV: Oh, it was, I remember the experience. SB: From your experience. DV: It was easy enough to fly. I could fly it quite easily. I did, I did fly quite a bit but not operationally. SB: Right. DV: I remember one occasion my brother was in the Army and he was in a searchlight group not far along the coast of Norfolk. On one occasion I went out and I sort of shot him up. Then my wireless, my wireless operator came to me. He said, ‘Do you know our trailing aerial is out?’ SB: Oh no. DV: You never told me that [unclear] or I wouldn’t have [unclear].’ [laughs] SB: Yes. DV: Not operationally. SB: No. I understand that. DV: No. SB: No. A friend of mine had a similar experience actually. He was flying the Fairey Hendon just before the war and then moved on to Wellingtons. DV: Oh. Yeah. SB: And he was a wireless operator. He, he’d left the trailing aerial out similarly. DV: Oh really? SB: And they were beating up Duxford. DV: Yeah. SB: And when they got, and that, that was Marham as well actually. DV: Was it? SB: 38 Squadron. Yes. DV: Yeah. SB: When they got back to Marham there was a very irate phone call from a very irate man at Duxford to say his trailing aerial had done some damage to the CO’s Hawker Fury or something like that. DV: [unclear] We didn’t do any damage when I flew around. Our wireless operator said to me when I was flying, he said, ‘Do you know the trailing aerial is out?’ I said, ‘No. I didn’t know that. No one told me.’ [laughs] SB: Now, all your ops were night ops then. You didn’t do any daylights. DV: No. No. SB: Ok. DV: No. The only beyond me they had [pause] I had great admiration for which Flying Officer Agar who was the first pilot. After you see I joined them when I came out of hospital. In actual fact, he, they’d had while I was in hospital even after that they had obviously a placement for me. A replacement for me and they were lost while sending an SOS over the North Sea. Never heard from — SB: Really? DV: Yeah. SB: How long after you left them was that? DV: Oh, I don’t remember. SB: Not long? DV: I think it was while I was in hospital or — SB: Oh right. DV: Perhaps I was just out. I’m not sure. SB: Oh, gosh. Right. DV: But the thing is had I not, pretty obviously had I not been wounded I would have been still with them and I would have been dressed with them and been killed with them. SB: Yeah. DV: It’s all a question of, all a question of luck. SB: Absolutely. Yes. Yes. DV: Some survived. Some didn’t. SB: No. That’s right. DV: I just happened to be the lucky one. As I say if I hadn’t been wounded, in hospital. Whilst I was in hospital another fellow came in. He was a New Zealander. He was a New Zealander pilot and he came into the ward when I was and I said, ‘What are you doing here now?’ He turned around and showed me the rear of his trousers. There was a hole in the trousers where he’d been shot in the bottom. SB: Oh really? Oh dear. DV: So he was in hospital. And afterwards obviously they went back. SB: [McNeill] DV: [McNeill]. I joined up with him and flew with him and we did a few missions with, I flew a few missions with him. SB: So he was a New Zealander. DV: Yes. SB: What about the rest of the crew? Were they a mixture or were the rest of the crew all British or — DV: Oh, I think they were all British. SB: Yeah. DV: Yeah. SB: And in your first crew was it all British was it? DV: Yes. SB: Yeah. DV: I think so. Yeah. SB: Ok. DV: I don’t know [unclear] SB: Well, yeah I’ve got a great deal. It’s very very good. There’s a couple of others you might recall. 7th of May with Sergeant McNeill you went to Brest. DV: Oh yes. SB: To target the Scharnhorst. DV: Oh yes. SB: And then it says that you landed at Boscombe Down. DV: Oh yes. That’s right. Yes. SB: Was that for any particular reason or was it weather or were you damaged or what? Can you recall? DV: We weren’t damaged. SB: No. DV: I don’t know why. But it was a very long flight from where we were. We came across the English coast before we could get to Marham. SB: Sure. Yeah. Weather maybe then — DV: I don’t know. Whether it was we came back to refuel perhaps before we got to Marham. SB: Right. Your last one sounds quite interesting as well. May the 10th Hamburg. Your target was the Blohm and Voss Shipyards. DV: Oh yeah. SB: And you’ve written here, “Large fires observed. Very heavy flak and searchlights. Many fighters.” That sounds [laughs] like an interesting time. DV: Where was that to? SB: Hamburg. DV: Oh, that’s right. SB: The Blohm and Voss Shipyards. DV: Oh, there was another time we were there because at Hamburg we got shot up. SB: That’s right. Yes. Indeed. DV: I don’t, I can’t remember that especially. SB: No. [pause] SB: Marvellous. Ok. Now, what have you got here? DV: I’ve got some pictures. RV: Right. DV: That’s me. SB: That’s you. Right. Are you happy if I take photographs of these? DV: Oh no. No. Yes, I mean. SB: Yes [laughs] I took your no as being yes. DV: But I’ll tell you what [unclear] at all I think. Can I just see them. SB: Oh, of course. Of course. Of course. DV: I can tell you. That is one of me. SB: Right. DV: At the controls. That is the [pause] now I’m not in that. That’s, that’s the crew I was with I think and that was, that’s flying officer Agar who I was with although I’m not in that. SB: Right. Can you put names to any of the rest of them? DV: No. SB: No. Ok. DV: I suppose it’s, it’s just a general photograph of me. SB: Right. DV: That is and that is. SB: And what rank were you when you were demobbed? DV: Sergeant. DV: Sergeant. It says it is one of the crew. Now, this is the New Zealander. SB: Oh, this was McNeill on the left. DV: McNeill. Yes. SB: Right. And you next to him. That’s rather good. DV: That again I think was another one. There’s me there. There. SB: Right. DV: There. SB: That’s McNeill again. Yes. Yeah. DV: [unclear] SB: Right. Very nice. Very nice shots. DV: Yeah. Yes. [unclear] any of them. SB: Well, yes. Yes, I’ll — DV: That’s the German leaflet. SB: Yes. DV: The leaflet in German. I don’t know where we dropped. Oh yes. Only half of that. SB: Yes. Did you routinely carry Nickels or only occasionally? Leaflets. DV: Oh, no. Only at the beginning. SB: Right. DV: When we first started off. Leaflets. No. SB: Try it this way. That’s better. Yeah. DV: It goes better like that. SB: Well — DV: Do you get the light? SB: I’m trying to avoid the reflection of the [pause] let’s try up here. No. Better where I was. We’ll be ok. That’s better. [pause] What did you do after you came out of the Air Force? DV: I had been working in a firm in London. Wholesalers. They don’t have wholesalers now but we were selling all kinds of things and went back to the firm. SB: Right. DV: For a year or so. Then I started out in, I got a business on my own. SB: Oh right. DV: It was a shop. SB: Oh, what sort of a shop was that? DV: Well, ladieswear. SB: Oh, right. DV: What I was in in the wholesalers I left with the sort of thing I knew. It seemed a bit strange coming from [unclear] into ladieswear but still. Then I stayed there for a little while and I then opened a retail business of my own. A [unclear] service I was in. A retail business of my own. SB: That was locally to here was it? DV: No [unclear] SB: Oh right. DV: I had that for thirty eight years. SB: Did you really? Goodness. DV: Yeah. But then I also had another one down here at [unclear] for a time. SB: Yes. DV: It was a time when my wife Pamela joined. Came to work for me. Then we eventually got married. SB: Oh right. DV: My story is I got married to cut my wage bill down. Those things there are the little leaflets sort of handed — SB: Messages for use in the air. Yes. DV: Yes. To, to by the navigator to the pilot. SB: Yes. DV: On where to fly. SB: Yes. DV: I don’t know if that’s of any interest. SB: Oh, absolutely. [pause] DV: Oh yes. Now, that, that is a thing in the early days they had on the flat here they had a unit they had there. SB: Oh, tell us about your Battle for Britain. Battle of Britain. Is that it? DV: Oh yes. That’s it. Yes. Yes. I’m in that photograph somewhere. You can’t [pause] is it that there? Oh, this is the earliest days when all the people that were waiting to be, going into training. SB: Oh right. DV: That was Southend front there — SB: Oh right. DV: I photographed it. I’m in there somewhere. But where the hell I think I’m on the top there. I’m not sure. SB: Oh right. DV: Yeah. There was a newspaper cutting. SB: Yes. Ah, got your Mess bill here from Grantham. DV: Oh, yes. Yes. SB: One pound six shillings and six pence. DV: Yes [laughs]. SB: I hope you paid it. Oh, it says you did. DV: Oh, it says paid does it? SB: Yes. DV: Well, there I was. I wasn’t, we were in the Officer’s Mess there although I wasn’t, oh that one there is interesting. That’s me in a glider. SB: Oh, I saw you had a glider certificate. DV: The earliest stages we had a, before I started with a unit or anything I think it was a weekend. We could spend a weekend and that was sort of shot off a hill. SB: And where was that? DV: I’ve forgotten the name of the place. It was [pause] Oh, there’s wedding photograph there. I’ve got it here. SB: Right. Now, let’s have a look at the detail in here. [pause] SB: So Flight Lieutenant Wills was your regular instructor it seems. DV: Was he? I don’t remember that. What was that on? SB: On the Tiger Moths. DV: Oh yes. Yes. That was — SB: Yes. DV: At the earlier stages I didn’t know whether I would become a fighter pilot or a bomber pilot. SB: Right. DV: But I always remember they sent me up to do a slow roll. You know what a slow roll is do you? SB: Oh, yes. Yes indeed. Yes. DV: And I made such a blooming mess of this slow roll they thought I’d better fly bombers. SB: Oh really? DV: Rather than fighters, I think. That was the thing. One exercise was a loop and a roll at the top. SB: Right. DV: Are there several people you’ve interviewed? SB: Oh yes. I mean perhaps I should explain why I’m doing the Wellington. I mean the twenty odd, twenty five years of interviewing people — DV: Yes. Is it? SB: Oh yes. And I’ll tell you the reason why I do this. I joined the Air Force in ’73. DV: Right. SB: Now, at that time there was still people serving who had served during the war. DV: Yeah. SB: So you’d hear people talking and interesting chats in the Mess. DV: Yes. SB: And that sort of stuff so I got to the point I thought I really ought to start recording this. So I started just having a tape-recording running while I was talking to people and eventually I thought, ‘Well, what am I doing with all this?’ So I spoke to the chap who runs Grub Street Publishing and said, ‘Look, I’ve got all this stuff.’ ‘Oh yes Great idea. Let’s put something together.’ DV: Yeah. SB: So, that was the result but that only used about ten percent probably. DV: Oh really. I didn’t know that. SB: Of all the, I must have used — DV: A whole load of information you must have. SB: Oh yeah. DV: Yeah. SB: I mean interview is too strong a word. Chats. DV: Yeah. SB: I must have about a hundred and fifty now I should think. DV: Oh God. SB: So and then since that one I’ve done three other books and then I, he said to me, ‘What are you going to do next then?’ And I just suddenly thought of the Wellington. If you think of all the major wartime types that had been, had books about them the Lancaster is done to death and the Spitfire is done to death. DV: Yes. Yeah. SB: But the poor old Wimpie has never really — DV: No. SB: Been done very well. DV: Never. It annoys me they never retain one. One Specimen. They recovered some from the sea or something. SB: Well, there was. There’s two actually. There’s — DV: True. SB: Theres one which is normally at Hendon but which is at Cosford being refurbished at the moment and there’s the one they got out of Loch Ness. DV: Yeah. SB: Which is at Brooklands. DV: I’ve read about that one. SB: Yeah. Well, that is being restored. But that’s it. DV: Yeah. SB: Yeah. DV: But never sort of live something. SB: No. No. DV: Not one. SB: That’s right. So I said, ‘Well, I’d like to do the Wellington.’ So I had a look to see what I already had in the can so to speak and I had about seven or eight Wellington chaps I’d spoken to I suppose. So I thought well now is the time to do it, you know. Now or never. So I put out an appeal on one of the websites contact me if there is anybody who either flew, maintained, wireless operators, gunners, whatever of Wellingtons or relatives or whatever and within a week I’d had contact from about twelve. DV: Oh. SB: And well [pause] these are all the people I’ve contacted for this book and there must be forty there on the left. So I’m currently going around doing this. DV: Forty one now [laughs] SB: But the thing is I want to cover not just the obvious bombing stuff and, and the Middle East of course. 205 Group. A lot there. Coastal Command, Anti-U-boat stuff, Far East, Transport. There’s mountains of stuff to put up. DV: You mean all Wellingtons. SB: All Wellingtons. DV: All Wellingtons. SB: Oh yeah. Yeah. So — DV: I don’t know why they wouldn’t transfer me. I mean I’d have gone to Coastal Command. As I say I felt being a second pilot going thirteen missions and never flying the aircraft what a waste of time. SB: Yes. It does seem strange doesn’t it? DV: [unclear] SB: Yeah. DV: Taking risks without any point in it. SB: Yeah. Yeah. It does seem very strange. Although strange things do happen. One of the chaps I spoke to a few weeks ago was a navigator on 9 Squadron. DV: Yes. SB: And he did similar to you. He did seventeen ops. DV: Yeah. SB: And this was on 9 Squadron at Honington and I said, ‘Well —’ and he kept saying, ‘We had a great time. It was great fun. We loved it.’ DV: Did he? SB: Strange, you know. DV: Yes. That is strange. SB: It was tremendous fun. DV: Fun? SB: Yeah. He said it was fun and they had some pretty hairy moments too. Anyway, I said, ‘’Well, how come you only did seventeen then? What, why did you stop?’ And he said, ‘Oh, we got back from an op somewhere and I was called to the Medical Centre and was told you’re going to RAF Hospital Ely to be interviewed.’ DV: That’s where I went. SB: Oh right. DV: Hospital. Yeah. SB: So you went there to be interviewed by a psychiatrist. DV: Oh dear. SB: After which he was taken off ops. So — DV: He was. SB: Whether they thought he was a bit too gung-ho. DV: Too keen. SB: Yeah. Too keen. Yeah. DV: They must have thought it was a bit odd. I mean anybody who ever said they were never frightened. Well, I can’t believe it because — SB: No, that’s right. DV: I was frightened and I don’t know then some people didn’t show it. I don’t think I showed it for that matter. SB: Well, no. Of course, as you say. Everybody was. But everybody I speak to is incredibly modest and says, ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything.’ Well, yes you did. DV: Well, I didn’t do anything. SB: But you did. You did. DV: I say I was standing, well from where I was shot. Oh I didn’t, did I mention I don’t think I did in the middle of the aircraft they built a bullet proof door. SB: Oh yes. DV: Did I tell you this? SB: Yes, you did. Yes. It was hinged. DV: I was standing behind the middle [unclear] when I got shot. SB: Yes. DV: As I say looking at the Astro hatch the aircraft came so close. The German fighter came so close you could almost put your hand out and touch it. SB: Really? DV: How on earth we survived that I don’t know because that aircraft was firing its guns going all the time. We did see a little bit afterwards a little fire. We were, we were at ten thousand feet and see that little fire below us and I think it was we had shot down, the rear gunner I think had shot down one of the aircraft. I’m not surprised because he came, the German fighter came very close to us. SB: Right. DV: Made himself very vulnerable for our gunners. I think we shot down one anyway. SB: Right. DV: I don’t know if I mentioned this was it pat of the flying, there you go. From that position being caught in the searchlight dive right down low to the ground. And I remember looking out of the astro hatch. I saw a fishing boat going along the Zuiderzee. SB: Really? DV: Yeah. SB: Gosh. You were pretty low then. DV: Yes. SB: Yeah. Yeah [pause] One I often find when I’m having chats like this that they lead on to something else. Do you know old so and so — DV: Yes. Yes. SB: And I must tell you this story. You’ll like this. I was interviewing or sort of chatting to a chap in Ascot a couple of months ago. DV: Yeah. Yeah. SB: And he was a 40 Squadron chap and a fascinating career. He had a long career with BOAC after he came out and — DV: Yeah. SB: So on. And he said to me, ‘Oh, do you know my friend Terry Bulloch?’ DV: Yeah. SB: ‘He lives in the next village,’ sort of thing. DV: Yeah. SB: I thought I know that name. Anyway, to cut a long story short he said, ‘Oh, he was in Coastal Command. Flew Liberators and sank four U-boats.’ Really? DV: Yeah. Yeah. SB: So I went to see this chap about a month or so ago and he has the record for the, the number of U-boats sunk by an aircrew. DV: Yeah. SB: A tremendously modest chap. DV: Yeah. SB: And going through his logs and going through his photographs and he came to a bit like that. A newspaper cutting from 1943. DV: Yeah. SB: Which said nine U-boats attacked. Two sunk. No. Sorry. Four U-boats attacked and two sunk in nine hours. DV: That was him. SB: There was all this, yes it was him, this was all on one pop. Oh yeah. Yeah. He said he didn’t do anything much you know. DV: No. SB: But the funny thing that that the final point of the story was in his scrapbook he had a signal from AO CnC Coastal Command. DV: Yeah. SB: “Congratulations on your success. Next time be more careful how much ammunition you expend.” DV: Oh. SB: Because in his report he said to sink the second U-boat he had to make four passes with depth charges. DV: Yeah. SB: So he got a telling off for using too many depth charges. DV: Too many depth charges. Ridiculous. SB: Yeah. DV: They weren’t short of them surely. SB: Well no. That’s right. DV: Extraordinary. SB: Was there anything else that you could think of David I haven’t asked you that, any little stories which you might remember? DV: Did I, did I finish off the column? The bulletproof door. SB: No. No. DV: Well, they had this bulletproof door. It was on a hinge in the middle and flaps and we could lock them. SB: Right. DV: Blocking the whole of the, but it didn’t do that. SB: Right. DV: But it tended to flap backwards and forwards. SB: Oh right. Right. DV: And when we were attacked we were lucky technically for me where I was standing but they must have been opened. In spite of that I got somehow or other got shot and I got shot really because I had this in front of me but had I, of course when of course I was lucky. My head was completely exposed. SB: Yes. DV: [unclear] that way but after a time I believe after I came off I believe they took those away. SB: Why? DV: I think Bomber Harris decided that if you take them away you can have another bomb on. He was more concerned about bombs than he was about the life of the crew. So they were, I understand they were taken out. SB: I’ve not heard about those before. They were intended to protect the pilots obviously. I guess that was the position just behind the pilots was it? DV: Oh, no. No. SB: No. DV: This was the middle of the — SB: Oh, the middle. DV: Just close. Pretty close to where I was, I was standing. SB: Right. DV: In the astrodome. SB: Oh, the astro. Oh, ok. DV: Yes. That middle — SB: Right. DV: Covered the whole of the centre of the fuselage. SB: Oh right. Right. DV: Yeah. I believe they did away with it afterwards. SB: Oh right. DV: Because he could get another bomb on. SB: I need to take a picture of you I’m afraid David if you don’t mind. DV: No. No. SB: Just for the record. Another one just to be sure. Thank you very much. DV: Oh, taken it have you? SB: Oh yes. DV: I thought it would flash. SB: No. No. DV: It doesn’t flash. SB: Well, it does but it tends to sort of bleach everything out of you. Yes. Well, that’s super. Could I ask you to sign a couple of things for me. DV: Yes. SB: Please. If you’d be so kind. 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 Vandervord Description An account of the resource David Vandervord explains that, as a Wellington second pilot, he never actually handled the aircraft on operations. He mentions leaflet dropping. He, initially, joined the civil air guard and started pilot training but this was interrupted by the war. He describes basic, advance and OTU training before being posted to 218 Squadron at RAF Marham in December 1940. He recalls the names of the first pilots he flew with. He recounts an operation where they had to jettison bombs over England and were then forced to land in a field. He recalls another operation where they were attacked by two Me 110s which damaged the aircraft and wounded him so they flew back on one engine. David states that he flew thirteen operations and then asked to be removed from Bomber Command. He talked a little about subsequent postings. He comments on the qualities of the Wellington and states that all operations were at night. He mentions that his crew were lost while he was recovering from a wound. He talks about his crew, mentions an operation to Brest to target the Scharnhorst and landing at RAF Boscombe Down. He concluded with discussion over photographs. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource S Bond D Vandervord Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940-12 1941-02-11 1941-03-13 1941-05-10 1941-05-07 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Bexhill England--Leicestershire England--Oxfordshire England--Norfolk England--Lincolnshire Germany Germany--Hamburg France France--Brest Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay England--Wiltshire England--Sussex 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 Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 00:47:28 audio recording Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending revision of OH transcription Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SBondS-VandervordDv10014 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Maureen Clarke Julie Williams 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. 15 OTU 218 Squadron aircrew Anson bombing forced landing Me 110 Operational Training Unit pilot RAF Boscombe Down RAF Desford RAF Grantham RAF Harwell RAF Marham Scharnhorst Tiger Moth training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2856/50599/SBondS-VandervordDv10009.1.pdf 291b862b229de584dd470964a3907df1 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 Vandervord, David Description An account of the resource 15 items. Collection concerns Sergeant David Vandevord who flew operations as a Wellington second pilot on 218 Squadron. Collection contains his pilot's flying log book, an oral history interview and photographs. The collection was licensed to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation 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. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-01-18 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 SBondS-VandervordDv1 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 Conversation with David Vandervord Description An account of the resource Edited transcript. Begins by recalling joining up and pilot training on Tiger Moth, Anson and Wellington. Posted to 218 Squadron at RAF Marham as second pilot, and mentions the first pilots he flew with. He recalls an operation where they had to jettison bombs over England and then crash landed. He continues with details of an operation to Hamburg when they were attacked by two Me 11, during which he was wounded and the aircraft had an engine on fire. He was&nbsp; <br />recovered to RAF Marham with damaged aircraft. He took part in 13 operations as second pilot and then asked to leave Bomber Command. He talks about his subsequent ground job. He was asked about, and commented on, squadron operations and flying the Wellington. He was also asked about a couple of operations, one to Brest to target Scharnhorst and his last trip to Hamburg. He concludes with a conversation about a bullet proof door in an aircraft which did not prevent him being shot. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-10-16 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1939 1941-02-11 1941-03-13 1941-05-07 1941-05-10 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Leicestershire England--Norfolk Germany Germany--Bremen Germany--Hamburg France France--Brest Atlantic Ocean--bay of Biscay England--Wiltshire 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 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource S Bond D Vandervord Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Memoir Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Four page printed document 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 SBondS-VandervordDv10009 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 15 OTU 218 Squadron Anson bombing forced landing Me 110 RAF Boscombe Down RAF Desford RAF Grantham RAF Harwell RAF Marham Scharnhorst Tiger Moth training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2856/50595/SBondS-VandervordDv10011.1.jpg 54085a7853f800b9665f574796535ba9 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 Vandervord, David Description An account of the resource 15 items. Collection concerns Sergeant David Vandevord who flew operations as a Wellington second pilot on 218 Squadron. Collection contains his pilot's flying log book, an oral history interview and photographs. The collection was licensed to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation 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. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-01-18 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 SBondS-VandervordDv1 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 Officers Mess bill Description An account of the resource Mess bill for £1.6.6 made out to Cadet Vandervord for September 1940 at No 12 FTS RAF Grantham. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940-09 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940-09 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire 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 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Printed form with handwritten entries Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SBondS-VandervordDv10011 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. mess military living conditions RAF Grantham training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2856/50585/SBondS-VandervordDv10001.1.pdf e12f15b614645e9a749cbc5c4c1aeb82 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 Vandervord, David Description An account of the resource 15 items. Collection concerns Sergeant David Vandevord who flew operations as a Wellington second pilot on 218 Squadron. Collection contains his pilot's flying log book, an oral history interview and photographs. The collection was licensed to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation 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. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-01-18 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 SBondS-VandervordDv1 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 David Vandervord’s Royal Air Force Pilots Flying Log Book 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. Log book and record book Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Multi-page printed book with handwritten entries Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Review Oct 2024 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SBondS-VandervordDv10001 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force 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. Description An account of the resource David Vandervord’s Royal Air Force Pilots Flying Log Book from 22nd July 1939 until 14th May 1941. Initial pilot training at No. 34 Elementary and Reserve Flying Training School, No. 7 Elementary Flying Training School, 12 Service Flying Training School, 15 Operational Training Unit. Operational posting to 218 Squadron. Served at RAF Southend, RAF Desford, RAF Grantham, RAF Harwell, RAF Marham. Aircraft flown were Tiger Moth, Anson, Wellington. He flew 12 night bombing operations with 218 Squadron as second pilot. His targets were Boulogne, Rotterdam, Hannover, Bremen, Brest, Berlin, Hamburg, the Scharnhorst, Mannheim. His pilots were Flying Officer Anstey, Flying Officer Agar and Sergeant McNeil. His aircraft force landed in England after the operation on 11/12th February 1941. His aircraft was attacked by two Me110’s on the night of 13/14th March 1941 which result in a minor injury to himself. This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available. Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1939 1940-12-29 1941-01-09 1941-02-07 1941-02-10 1941-02-11 1941-02-12 1941-03-02 1941-03-12 1941-03-13 1941-03-14 1941-05-03 1941-05-04 1941-05-05 1941-05-06 1941-05-07 1941-05-08 1941-05-10 1941-05-11 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Essex England--Leicestershire England--Lincolnshire England--Norfolk England--Oxfordshire France France--Boulogne-sur-Mer France--Brest Netherlands Netherlands--Rotterdam Germany Germany--Ruhr (Region) Germany--Berlin Germany--Bremen Germany--Hamburg Germany--Hannover Germany--Mannheim Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Nick Cornwell-Smith 15 OTU 218 Squadron aircrew Anson bombing Flying Training School forced landing Me 110 Operational Training Unit pilot RAF Desford RAF Grantham RAF Harwell RAF Marham RAF Southend Scharnhorst Tiger Moth training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2827/50185/SBondS-MercerTv10001.2.pdf 76e2cf4106f0476989d7ea0bf7cef30d https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2827/50185/SBondS-MercerTv10002.2.jpg ff273e6b3e143fb260cce1c4942929fc 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 Mercer, Ted Description An account of the resource One Item. Collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Ted Mercer DFC, a pilot he flew Lancaster on 83 and then 44 Squadron as well as instructing between operational tours. Collection contains a transcript if a discussion. The collection was licensed to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation 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. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-01-18 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 SBondS-MercerTv1 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 Conversation with Ted Mercer Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource T Mercer S Bond Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003-07-08 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1941 1944 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Buckinghamshire England--Milton Keynes England--Cambridgeshire England--Lincolnshire England--London England--Newquay United States Florida--Clewiston England--Rutland England--Bristol England--Nottinghamshire England--Northamptonshire Florida England--Cornwall (County) 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 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Two page printed document 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 SBondS-MercerTv10001 Description An account of the resource Includes brief outline of service career. Mentions joining up in 1941, training in England and the Florida in the United States. Comments on being quarantined on return and training prior to joining 83 Squadron on Lancaster. Mentioned flying curtailed due to appendicitis. Then went to 44 Squadron at RAF Dunholme Lodge. Then flew instructors tours before returning to 44 Squadron as a squadron instructor. Comments on troop repatriation and Cook's tours. Finally ended up at RAF Silverstone instructing on Wellington. Includes contemporary colour photograph of Ted Mercer. 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. 14 OTU 1654 HCU 1660 HCU 17 OTU 44 Squadron 5 BFTS 83 Squadron Advanced Flying Unit aircrew Cook’s tour Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit Initial Training Wing Lancaster Lancaster Finishing School Operation Dodge (1945) Operational Training Unit Oxford pilot RAF Cottesmore RAF Dunholme Lodge RAF Grantham RAF Silverstone RAF Swinderby RAF Syerston RAF Wigsley RAF Wyton Stirling training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2804/49825/SBondS-LambLSv1.pdf b811560bb34dc4df67e3354a7b797afa 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 Lamb, Lennox Stanley Description An account of the resource One item. Concerns Squadron Leader Lennox Stanley Lamb who flew many types of aircraft before the war and was a 9 Squadron Wellington pilot in 1939 at the outbreak of war. He was killed in a mid air collision while training in October 1939 without having flown on any operations. Collection consist of his flying log book. <br /><br />The collection was licensed to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Dr Steve Bond and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /> <p>Additional information on Lennox Stanley Lamb is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/216029/">IBCC Losses Database.</a></p> 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 2022-01-18 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 SBondS-LambLSv1 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 Squadron Leader Lennox Lamb’s Royal Air Force Pilot’s Flying Log Book 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. Log book and record book Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One booklet Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Review Oct 2024 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SBondS-LambLSv1 Description An account of the resource Lennox Lamb’s Royal Air Force Pilot’s Flying Log Book from 24th November 1930 until 27th October 1939. Initial training as a pilot at Nos. 3 and 2 Flying Training Schools. Posted to 99 Squadron in January 1932. Between January and August 1933 posted to Iraq with 70 and 203 Squadrons. 1935 saw a posting back to England with 24 Squadron and then the Home Aircraft Depot Ferry Flight and Ferry Squadron. Posted to the Central flying School in August 1937 followed by No. 11 Flying training School. Posted to 9 Squadron in November 1938. Served at RAF Grantham (Spitalgate), RAF Digby, RAF Upper Heyford, RAF Hinaidi, RAF Shaibah, RAF Hendon, RAF Henlow, RAF Cardington, RAF Upavon, RAF Wittering, RAF Shawbury, RAF Stradishall, RAF Honington. Aircraft flown were Vickers Victoria, Westland Wapiti Float Plane, Blackburn Monoplane, Fairey Gordon, Hawker Audax, Fairey Seal, Avro Tutor, Gloster Gauntlet, Fairey Swordfish, Handley Page Heyford, De Havilland Queen Bee, Vickers Vildebeeste, Avro Prefect, Tiger Moth, Fairey IIIF, Hawker Hart, Hawker Hind, Hawker Fury, Vickers Valentia, Bristol Bulldog, Vickers Vincent, Westland Wallace, Blackburn Shark, Boulton Paul Overstrand, Avro Anson, Vickers Wellington, Miles Magister, Handley Page Harrow. This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Bedfordshire England--Cambridgeshire England--Lincolnshire England--Middlesex England--Oxfordshire England--Shropshire England--Suffolk England--Wiltshire Iraq Iraq--Baghdad Iraq--Baṣrah Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Nick Cornwell-Smith 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. 203 Squadron 24 Squadron 70 Squadron 9 Squadron 99 Squadron aircrew Anson Flying Training School Harrow Magister Martinet pilot RAF Cardington RAF Digby RAF Grantham RAF Hendon RAF Henlow RAF Hinaidi RAF Honington RAF Manston RAF Shaibah RAF Shawbury RAF Stradishall RAF Upavon RAF Upper Heyford RAF Wittering Swordfish Tiger Moth training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2685/47770/LSinclairND42897v1.pdf 2b92d2c0b38a9add2c13fe66cfb5e828 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 Sinclair, Norman Denys Sinclair, ND Description An account of the resource Three items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Norman Denys Sinclair DFC (42897 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 540 Squadron. The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Peter Derek Sinclair and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-04-12 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 Sinclair, ND 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 Norman Denys Sinclair’s Royal Air Force Pilot’s Flying Log Book Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LSinclairND42897v1 Description An account of the resource Norman Sinclair’s Pilot’s Flying Log Book from 16th August 1939 until 5th October 1945. Pilot training started at No. 9 Elementary Flying Training School, No. 1 Flying Practice Unit, No. 12 Flying Training School. Became a flying instructor at the Central Flying School and No. 1 School of Army Co-operation. Posted to 309 (Polish) Squadron in November 1940. Operational posting to No. 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) in May 1941, which in September 1942 became 540 Squadron. Shot down on 28 March 1943 over Norway by two Me 109’s. After capture flown to Germany in a Ju-52. He was held in Stalag Luft III from 5 April 1943 until May 1945. On returning to England undertook refresher training at No. 17 Service Flying Training School, before postings to 525 and 187 Squadrons. Served at RAF Walsgrave, RAF Anstey, RAF Grantham, RAF Meir, RAF Upavon, RAF Old Sarum, RAF Renfrew, RAF Benson, RAF Gibraltar, RAF Bathurst (Gambia), Freetown, RAF Leuchars, RAF Coleby Grange, RAF Wymswold, RAF Syerston, RAF Membury, RAF Netheravon. Aircraft flown were Tiger Moth DH82, Anson, Hind, Hector, Tutor, Master, Lysander, Magister, Proctor, Battle, Spitfire, Blenheim, Hornet Moth, Maryland, Swordfish, Hudson, Boeing Clipper, Sunderland, Mosquito, C-47 Dakota, B-24 Liberator, JU-52, Lancaster, Oxford. With 1 PRU and 540 Squadron he flew as the pilot 102 photoreconnaissance operations all in daylight. His targets included Tarifa, Casablanca, Oran, the Spanish Coast, Lisbon, Straits of Gibraltar, Tangier, Cartagena, Majorca, Cadiz, Cape St Vincent, Rabat, Minorca, Dakar, Tambacounda, Kaolack, Bambey, Saint Louis, Bergen, Narvik, Stavanger, Danzig, Gdynia, Stettin, Skagerrak, Trondheim, Egersund, Oslo, Kristiansund, Copenhagen, Stadlandet, Tromso, Gibraltar, Algiers, Toulon, the Balearic Islands, Tarragona, Kiel, Namsos. He was involved in photographing Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Prince Eugen. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1939 1940 1941-08-12 1941-08-13 1941-08-14 1941-08-15 1941-09-04 1941-09-06 1941-09-07 1941-09-10 1941-09-16 1941-09-29 1941-09-30 1941-10-02 1941-10-03 1941-10-05 1941-10-06 1941-11-14 1941-11-15 1941-11-16 1941-11-19 1941-11-24 1941-11-25 1941-11-27 1941-11-30 1941-12-06 1941-12-11 1941-12-12 1941-12-13 1941-12-15 1942-01-09 1942-01-10 1942-01-13 1942-01-14 1942-01-15 1942-01-18 1942-01-19 1942-01-20 1942-02-26 1942-03-03 1942-05-17 1942-05-19 1942-05-22 1942-05-29 1942-06-02 1942-06-06 1942-06-19 1942-06-25 1942-07-03 1942-07-08 1942-07-11 1942-07-15 1942-07-29 1942-08-04 1942-08-08 1942-08-10 1942-08-17 1942-08-26 1942-09-06 1942-09-14 1942-09-26 1942-09-28 1942-10-11 1942-10-13 1942-11-01 1942-11-05 1942-11-06 1942-11-07 1942-11-10 1942-11-14 1942-11-19 1942-11-25 1942-12-01 1942-12-03 1943-01-06 1943-01-08 1943-01-10 1943-01-14 1943-01-24 1943-01-26 1943-02-03 1943-02-04 1943-02-06 1943-02-09 1943-02-23 1943-03-07 1943-03-09 1943-03-12 1943-03-14 1943-03-20 1943-03-22 1943-03-28 1945 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Berkshire England--Leicestershire England--Lincolnshire England--Nottinghamshire England--Oxfordshire England--Staffordshire England--Warwickshire England--Wiltshire Scotland--Fife Atlantic Ocean--Skagerrak Gibraltar Gibraltar France France--Toulon Germany Germany--Kiel Portugal Portugal--Cape Saint Vincent Portugal--Lisbon Spain Spain--Balearic Islands Spain--Cádiz Spain--Cartagena Spain--Tarifa (Cádiz) Spain--Tarragona Poland Poland--Gdańsk Poland--Gdynia Poland--Szczecin Denmark Denmark--Copenhagen Norway Norway--Bergen Norway--Egersund Norway--Kristiansund Norway--Namsos Norway--Narvik Norway--Oslo Norway--Stadlandet Norway--Stavanger Norway--Tromsø Norway--Trondheim North Africa Algeria Algeria--Algiers Algeria--Oran Morocco Morocco--Casablanca Morocco--Rabat Morocco--Tangier Gambia Gambia--Banjul Senegal Senegal--Bambey Senegal--Dakar Senegal--Kaolack Senegal--Saint-Louis Senegal--Tambacounda Sierra Leone Sierra Leone--Freetown 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. Coastal Command Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Log book and record book Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One booklet Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Nick Cornwell-Smith 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. Review Oct 2024 187 Squadron 309 Squadron 525 Squadron 540 Squadron aircrew Anson B-24 Battle Blenheim C-47 Flying Training School Hornet Moth Hudson Ju 52 Lancaster Lysander Magister Me 109 Mosquito Oxford Photographic Reconnaissance Unit pilot Prinz Eugen prisoner of war Proctor RAF Ansty RAF Bathurst RAF Benson RAF Coleby Grange RAF Gibraltar RAF Grantham RAF Leuchars RAF Meir RAF Membury RAF Netheravon RAF Old Sarum RAF Renfrew RAF Syerston RAF Upavon RAF Wymeswold Scharnhorst shot down Spitfire Stalag Luft 3 Sunderland Swordfish Tiger Moth Tirpitz training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2674/47319/SGrewB[Ser -DoB]v10001.pdf a998df9dc3ca1bc65026c4d037bac81e 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 Grew, Bobbie Grew, B Description An account of the resource Eight items. The collection contains log books and medal sets belonging to different people. A log book belonging to D Hinshelwood, a log book and medal set belonging to A Steele, a log book belonging to H Maddox, a log book belonging to G W A White, a medal set belonging to H Dawson, and a medal set belonging to A A Waller. The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bobbie Grew and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-03-06 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 Grew, B 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 Archibald Steele’s Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot’s Flying Log Book Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SGrewB[Ser#-DoB]v10001 Description An account of the resource Flight Sergeant Archibald Steele’s Flying Log Book as a pilot and flight engineer from 20th April 1943 to 10th September 1945. Flying training started with 19 Elementary Flying Training School then at 12 and 36 Service Flying Training Schools in Canada. June 1994 saw a posting to No. 2 PRC in England. Further training at 12 Advanced Flying Unit. In December 1944 he completed a flight engineer’s course at No. 4 School of Technical Training changing role from pilot to flight engineer. Posted to 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit. Posted to 106 Squadron for operations in March 1945 and then in May to the Pathfinder Training Unit. Served at RCAF Virden, RCAF Brandon, RCAF Penhold, RAF Woodley, RAF Spitalgate, RAF St. Athan, RAF Wigsley, RAF Metheringham, RAF Warboys. Aircraft flown were Tiger Moth, Cessna Crane, Anson, Oxford, Magister, Lancaster I, Lancaster III. With 106 Squadron he flew 6 bombing operations (4 night and 2 day) to Bohlen, Wesel, Farge, Plzeň, Flensburg and Tønsberg. He also flew 2 Operation Exodus (Rheine) and 1 Cook's Tour. His pilot on all operations was Flying Officer Page. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1943 1944 1945-03-20 1945-03-21 1945-03-23 1945-03-24 1945-03-27 1945-04-16 1945-04-17 1945-04-23 1945-04-25 1945-04-26 1945-05-10 1945-05-11 1945-06-08 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Berkshire England--Huntingdonshire England--Lincolnshire England--Nottinghamshire Wales--Glamorgan Canada Manitoba Manitoba--Virden Manitoba--Brandon Alberta Alberta--Red Deer Region Germany Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia) Germany--Bremen Germany--Flensburg Germany--Rheine Czech Republic Czech Republic--Plzeň Norway Norway--Tønsberg Germany--Böhlen 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. Log book and record book Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One booklet Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Nick Cornwell-Smith 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. Review Oct 2024 106 Squadron 1654 HCU Advanced Flying Unit aircrew Anson bombing Cook’s tour flight engineer Flying Training School Heavy Conversion Unit Lancaster Lancaster Mk 1 Lancaster Mk 3 Magister Operation Exodus (1945) Oxford Pathfinders pilot RAF Grantham RAF Metheringham RAF St Athan RAF Warboys RAF Wigsley RAF Woodley RCAF Brandon RCAF Penhold RCAF Virden Tiger Moth training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2624/46954/OPextonRD72150-190124-010001.2.jpg 74b4dc25ddf19e07d7fce73cebafc956 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2624/46954/OPextonRD72150-190124-010002.2.jpg 16c98a8ad84dc58583d08c5209c86292 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 Pexton, Richard Dunning R D Pexton Description An account of the resource 32 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Richard Dunning Pexton DFC AFC (Royal Air Force) and contains an interview, his log book, correspondence, documents, and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 61 Squadron which he commanded. The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anthony Pexton and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-01-24 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 Pexton, RD 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 Richard Pexton's RAF Identity Card Description An account of the resource RAF Form i250, an identity card issued to Richard. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940-11-27 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 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 double sided printed card with handwritten annotations Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OPextonRD72150-190124-010001, OPextonRD72150-190124-010002 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 aircrew RAF Cranfield RAF Cranwell RAF Grantham RAF Kenley RAF Sealand https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2624/46862/LPextonRD72150v1.pdf 70c0a93f22241e86b9587f8098b49f74 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 Pexton, Richard Dunning R D Pexton Description An account of the resource 32 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Richard Dunning Pexton DFC AFC (Royal Air Force) and contains an interview, his log book, correspondence, documents, and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 61 Squadron which he commanded. The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anthony Pexton and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-01-24 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 Pexton, RD 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 Richard Pexton’s Royal Air Force Pilot’s Flying Log Book Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LPextonRD72150v1 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. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Canada Alberta Alberta--Medicine Hat Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Nottinghamshire England--Oxfordshire England--Shropshire Scotland--Montrose Belgium Belgium--Kortrijk France France--Boulogne-sur-Mer France--Brest France--Caen France--Châtellerault France--Donges France--Givors France--Hesdin France--La Pallice France--Le Havre France--Paris France--Villeneuve-lès-Avignon Germany Germany--Ruhr (Region) Germany--Darmstadt Germany--Düren (Cologne) Germany--Hamburg Germany--Kaiserslautern Germany--Kiel Germany--Munich Germany--Nuremberg Germany--Rüsselsheim Germany--Urft Dam Germany--Wilhelmshaven Netherlands Netherlands--Tilburg Netherlands--Vlissingen Norway Norway--Moss France--Thiverny France--Châtellerault Atlantic Ocean--Oslofjorden France--Rollancourt France--Villeneuve-Saint-Georges Russia (Federation)--Kaliningrad (Kaliningradskai︠a︡ oblastʹ) Russia (Federation)--Kaliningrad (Kaliningradskai︠a︡ oblastʹ) France--Pas-de-Calais 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. Log book and record book Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One booklet Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1943 1944-07-14 1944-07-15 1944-07-18 1944-07-19 1944-07-20 1944-07-21 1944-07-23 1944-07-24 1944-07-25 1944-07-30 1944-08-09 1944-08-10 1944-08-11 1944-08-12 1944-08-13 1944-08-15 1944-08-19 1944-08-25 1944-08-26 1944-08-27 1944-08-31 1944-09-05 1944-09-11 1944-09-17 1944-09-26 1944-09-27 1944-10-05 1944-10-07 1944-10-11 1944-10-19 1944-10-20 1944-11-11 1944-11-16 1944-12-10 1944-12-11 1944-12-28 1944-12-29 1945-01-07 1945-01-08 1945-05-29 1948 1949 1950 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Nick Cornwell-Smith Description An account of the resource Richard Pexton’s Pilot’s Flying Log Book from 3rd October 1943 until 31st March 1950. Posted to No. 34 Service Flying Training School to train as a flying instructor. Posted Beam Approach Training Flight December 1943. February 1944 saw posting to 16 Operational Training Unit and then 1661 Heavy Conversion Unit and No. 5 Lancaster Finishing School. Operational posting to 61 Squadron occurred in July 1944. Posted to No. 2 Flying Instructors’ School in March 1945 and No. 5 (Pilots) Advanced Flying Unit in April. Served at RCAF Medicine Hat, RAF Spittlegate (Grantham), RAF Upper Heyford, RAF Winthorpe, RAF Syerston, RAF Montrose, RAF Tern Hill. Aircraft flown were Harvard, Oxford, Wellington, Stirling, Lancaster, Anson, Walrus, Spitfire, Auster. Wing Commander Pexton flew 29 operations (14 day and 15 night) with 61 Squadron and a Cook’s Tour with No. 5 Advanced Flying Unit. Targets were Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, Caen, Thiverny, Courtrai, Kiel, Donges, Paris, Châtellerault, Givors, Rüsselsheim, Gilze-Rijen, La Pallice, Darmstadt, Konigsberg, Rollancourt, Brest, Le Havre, Boulogne, Kaiserslautern, Wilhelmshaven, Flushing, Nuremberg, Harburg, Duren, Urft Dam, Oslo Fjord, Munich. Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Review Oct 2024 16 OTU 1661 HCU 61 Squadron Advanced Flying Unit aircrew Anson bombing bombing of Luftwaffe night-fighter airfields (15 August 1944) Cook’s tour Flying Training School Harvard Heavy Conversion Unit Lancaster Lancaster Finishing School Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944) Operational Training Unit Oxford pilot RAF Grantham RAF Montrose RAF Syerston RAF Ternhill RAF Upper Heyford RAF Winthorpe RCAF Medicine Hat Spitfire Stirling tactical support for Normandy troops training Walrus Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/2513/43534/LDavyFR1108748v1.2.pdf 5dfaf0d8b52f13656728108e8d47146b 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 Davy, Frederick R Davy, F R Description An account of the resource 21 items. The collection concerns Frederick R Davy (b. 1912, 1108747 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 625 Squadron. The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frederick Popoff catalogued by Barry Hunter. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-05-30 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 Davy, FR 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 Frederick Davy's pilot's flying log book. One 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. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force 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. Log book and record book Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One booklet Description An account of the resource Frederick Davy’s Pilot’s Flying Log Book from 14 December 1940 to 30 March 1943 detailing his pilot’s training at 22 EFTS, 12 SFTS, 15 FTS and 15 AFU. Served at EFTS Cambridge, RAF Grantham, RAF Cranwell, RAF Kidlington, RAF Kirmington, RAF Watchfield, RAF Caistor, RAF Leconfield. Aircraft flown were DH82 Tiger Moth, Anson, Tutor, Oxford, Magister. Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940 1941 1942 1943 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England England--Cambridgeshire England--Lincolnshire England--Oxfordshire England--Wiltshire England--Yorkshire Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Nick Cornwell-Smith Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LDavyFR1108748v1 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Review Oct 2024 1656 HCU 28 OTU 625 Squadron Advanced Flying Unit aircrew Anson C-47 Flying Training School Halifax Halifax Mk 2 Halifax Mk 3 Heavy Conversion Unit Horsa Initial Training Wing Lancaster Lancaster Finishing School Lancaster Mk 1 Lancaster Mk 3 Magister Operational Training Unit Oxford pilot RAF Cranwell RAF Finningley RAF Grantham RAF Hemswell RAF Hullavington RAF Kelstern RAF Kirmington RAF Leconfield RAF Lindholme RAF Tilstock RAF Torquay RAF Uxbridge RAF Watchfield RAF Wymeswold Tiger Moth training Wellington Whitley https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/559/42906/BBlacklockGBBlacklockGBv1.pdf 1141bb2ce07d176fdab70288e3d24b89 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 Stephenson, Stuart Stuart Stephenson MBE S Stephenson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Stephenson, S Description An account of the resource 84 items. An oral history interview with Stuart Stephenson MBE, Chairman of the Lincs-Lancaster Association, and issues of 5 Group News. The collection was catalogued by Barry Hunter. In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, some items are available only at the International Bomber Command Centre / University of Lincoln. 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. 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 Half a Life, Half Remembered An Autobiography by Group Captain GB Blacklock Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BBlacklockGBBlacklockGBv1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource GB Blacklock Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Germany Great Britain England--Skipton Scotland--Bedrule England--Northumberland England--Yorkshire England--London England--Appleby-in-Westmorland Egypt--Alexandria Egypt--Aboukir Bay England--Chester England--Newmarket (Suffolk) Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Guernsey France--Marseille Northern Ireland Scotland--Montrose Germany--Wilhelmshaven Germany--Hannover Germany--Bremen Germany--Kiel Germany--Helgoland Germany--Wangerooge Island Germany--Bremen Germany--Hamburg Germany--Borkum England--Wisbech England--Weybridge Norway--Bergen Norway--Stavanger Germany--Ruhr (Region) Netherlands--Rotterdam France--Givet Belgium France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais) France--Hazebrouck France--Dunkerque France--Socx Germany--Duisburg Germany--Karlsruhe France--Salon-de-Provence Italy--Genoa Germany--Essen Germany--Lünen Wales--Hawarden Germany--Baden-Baden England--Eastleigh Scotland--Stranraer England--Doncaster France--Brest Germany--Berlin Germany--Cologne Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony) Germany--Lingen (Lower Saxony) Germany--Düsseldorf Germany--Magdeburg France--La Pallice Germany--Karlsruhe France Europe--Frisian Islands Atlantic Ocean--English Channel Egypt North Africa Italy Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending text-based transcription Description An account of the resource Group Captain Blacklock writes of his life, from his youth to the award of his DFC by the King. 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 Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Memoir Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 87 printed sheets 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 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Maureen Clarke 101 Squadron 115 Squadron 12 Squadron 142 Squadron 148 Squadron 149 Squadron 15 Squadron 2 Group 3 Group 311 Squadron 4 Group 5 Group 7 Squadron 9 Squadron 99 Squadron air gunner aircrew Anson anti-aircraft fire Blenheim bomb aimer bombing Boston Chamberlain, Neville (1869-1940) Churchill, Winston (1874-1965) Distinguished Flying Cross Distinguished Flying Medal entertainment fitter airframe flight engineer Flying Training School George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952) Gneisenau ground crew ground personnel Halifax Hampden hangar Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984) Harrow Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945) Hudson Hurricane incendiary device Lancaster love and romance Magister Manchester Me 109 Me 110 mess military living conditions military service conditions Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy Mosquito navigator Navy, Army and Air Force Institute observer Operational Training Unit Photographic Reconnaissance Unit pilot radar RAF Benson RAF Boscombe Down RAF Catterick RAF Cosford RAF Cranwell RAF Debden RAF Duxford RAF Finningley RAF Grantham RAF Halton RAF Hendon RAF Henlow RAF Honington RAF Leeming RAF Lossiemouth RAF Manston RAF Mildenhall RAF Netheravon RAF Newmarket RAF Oakington RAF Sealand RAF Silloth RAF South Cerney RAF St Eval RAF Stradishall RAF Tangmere RAF Upavon RAF Upper Heyford RAF Uxbridge RAF Waddington RAF Warmwell RAF Waterbeach RAF West Freugh RAF West Raynham RAF Wittering RAF Wyton Scharnhorst shot down Spitfire sport Stirling Tiger Moth training Wallis, Barnes Neville (1887-1979) Wellington Whitley wireless operator Women’s Auxiliary Air Force https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1956/41446/SKnoxRW[Ser -DoB]v80004.jpg abdbfead53476c5ca546e710ec06edc0 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 Lancaster ED908 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 2017-09-29 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 Lancaster ED908 Description An account of the resource 97 items.&nbsp;The collection concerns the crew of Lancaster ED908 and contains documents, photographs and research. The 582 Squadron aircraft was shot down on 20 July 1944 on the bombing run over the Fôret du Croc V-1 flying bomb site.<br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Robert William Knox and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on the crew of the aircraft is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/?aircraft-serial=ed908&amp;forename=&amp;initials=&amp;surname=&amp;select-search-options%5B%5D=surname&amp;select-search-options%5B%5D=initials&amp;select-search-options%5B%5D=forename&amp;select-search-options%5B%5D=aircraft-serial-number&amp;_token=MouMFSKbujwVGA8McbrW87SwUvUDeA02R4JHIVXF&amp;losses_form=7f8a0f6148&amp;orderby=surname&amp;order=asc ">IBCC Losses Database</a>.<br />The crew were:<br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/200878/">AUNGIERS, Graham Bice</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/202820/">BOWER, Thomas Charles</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/209570/">FOULSHAM, James</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/211186/">GRESTY, James</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/217360/">MACARTHUR, George Reginald</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/222794/">PRATT, Edgar Walter</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/227383/">SWARBRICK, John</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/229832/">WEIGHTMAN, John Bentley</a> 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 Squadron Leader John Bentley Weightman DFC Description An account of the resource An extract from Ben's service record. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain Scotland--Montrose Iceland--Reykjavík Norway--Trondheim Norway--Stavanger Iceland 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 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 printed sheet Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SKnoxRW[Ser#-DoB]v80004 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 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Lancaster ED908, John Weightman 582 Squadron 8 Group Air Gunnery School Air Observers School aircrew Anson Distinguished Flying Cross Flying Training School Hudson Lancaster master bomber Pathfinders pilot promotion RAF Abbotsinch RAF Bishops Court RAF Bridgnorth RAF Cranage RAF Grantham RAF Little Staughton RAF Manston RAF Prestwick RAF St Athan RAF Uxbridge RAF Warboys RAF Wick Scharnhorst training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1956/41444/SKnoxRW[Ser -DoB]v80002.jpg 727a45ce530dd78a124db34ad6684630 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 Lancaster ED908 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 2017-09-29 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 Lancaster ED908 Description An account of the resource 97 items.&nbsp;The collection concerns the crew of Lancaster ED908 and contains documents, photographs and research. The 582 Squadron aircraft was shot down on 20 July 1944 on the bombing run over the Fôret du Croc V-1 flying bomb site.<br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Robert William Knox and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on the crew of the aircraft is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/?aircraft-serial=ed908&amp;forename=&amp;initials=&amp;surname=&amp;select-search-options%5B%5D=surname&amp;select-search-options%5B%5D=initials&amp;select-search-options%5B%5D=forename&amp;select-search-options%5B%5D=aircraft-serial-number&amp;_token=MouMFSKbujwVGA8McbrW87SwUvUDeA02R4JHIVXF&amp;losses_form=7f8a0f6148&amp;orderby=surname&amp;order=asc ">IBCC Losses Database</a>.<br />The crew were:<br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/200878/">AUNGIERS, Graham Bice</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/202820/">BOWER, Thomas Charles</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/209570/">FOULSHAM, James</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/211186/">GRESTY, James</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/217360/">MACARTHUR, George Reginald</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/222794/">PRATT, Edgar Walter</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/227383/">SWARBRICK, John</a><br /><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/229832/">WEIGHTMAN, John Bentley</a> 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 John Weightman Description An account of the resource John in flying kit, captioned 'No. 3 Flying Training School, Grantham, 1936'. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1936 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1936 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Grantham 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 Photograph Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One b/w photograph Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SKnoxRW[Ser#-DoB]v80002 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 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Lancaster ED908, John Weightman aircrew Flying Training School pilot RAF Grantham training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1921/41091/PHenningtonAJM17060004.2.jpg ed84b5f20f63ff75e718c611911c1246 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1921/41091/PHenningtonAJM17060005.2.jpg 7d481b8e232bd6495cbf22b35a68bb75 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 Henington, A J M Henington, Albert John Maurice Bertie Henington 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 2017-08-10 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 Henington, AJM Description An account of the resource 32 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Albert John Maurice Henington (1604946, 154960 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, diary, photographs and documents. He flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Tim Henington MBE and catalogued by Barry Hunter. 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 Relief Map of Lincolnshire's Bomber Airfields Description An account of the resource A relief map with bomber command airfields marked with their elevations. There are two copies. This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire 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 Map Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Two copies of a coloured relief map Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context PHenningtonAJM17060004, PHenningtonAJM17060005 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 RAF Balderton RAF Bardney RAF Barkstone Heath RAF Bottesford RAF Coningsby RAF Cottesmore RAF Cranwell RAF Digby RAF Dunholme Lodge RAF East Kirkby RAF East Retford RAF Finningley RAF Fiskerton RAF Grantham RAF Harlaxton RAF Hemswell RAF Kirton in Lindsey RAF Langar RAF Lindholme RAF Manby RAF Metheringham RAF Newton RAF North Coates RAF North Luffenham RAF Peterborough RAF Saltby RAF Scampton RAF Skellingthorpe RAF Spilsby RAF Strubby RAF Swinderby RAF Syerston RAF Waddington RAF Wigsley RAF Winthorpe RAF Wittering RAF Woodhall Spa RAF Woolfox Lodge https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1977/38298/LPalmerRAM115772v1.1.pdf 8db94aa59370f323eee064d0d42ec158 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 Palmer, Robert Anthony Maurice R A M Palmer 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 2017-10-30 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. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Palmer, RAM Description An account of the resource 38 items.&nbsp;The collection concerns Squadron Leader Robert AM Palmer VC, DFC and Bar (115772, Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs, fact sheets, newspaper cuttings, documents, correspondence and a substancial history of his last operation. <br /><br />He flew one hundred and eleven operations as a pilot with 75, 149&nbsp; and 109 Squadrons and was killed 23 December 1944 when leading a daylight operation as an Oboe marker.<br /><br />The collection also contains 51 items in a <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2178">Photograph album</a>.<br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Penny Palmer and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Robert AM Palmer is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/221528/">IBCC Losses Database</a> 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 Robert Palmer's pilot's flying log book. One 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. Log book and record book Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One booklet Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LPalmerRAM115772v1 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. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940-11-18 1940-11-20 1940-11-23 1940-12-04 1940-12-05 1940-12-08 1940-12-09 1940-12-16 1940-12-17 1940-12-23 1940-12-28 1941-01-02 1941-01-09 1941-01-10 1941-01-29 1942-01-30 1941-01-31 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource David Leitch Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. France Germany Great Britain England--Leicestershire England--Lincolnshire England--Norfolk England--Oxfordshire England--Suffolk Atlantic Ocean--North Sea Atlantic Ocean--English Channel France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine) France--Boulogne-sur-Mer France--Lorient Germany--Bremen Germany--Düsseldorf Germany--Gelsenkirchen Germany--Hannover Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein Germany--Mannheim Germany--Wilhelmshaven Scotland--Moray Germany--Ruhr (Region) Description An account of the resource Robert Palmer’s RAF Pilot’s Flying Log Book from 12 April 1940 to 12 May 1942 detailing his training and operations as a pilot and instructor. He was stationed at RAF Desford (No. 7 Elementary Flying Training School), RAF Grantham (No. 12 Flying Training School), RAF Harwell (No. 15 OTU), RAF Feltwell (75 Squadron), RAF Mildenhall (149 Squadron) and RAF Lossiemouth and RAF Lakenheath (No. 20 OTU). Aircraft in which flown: DH82 Tiger Moth, Anson, Wellington, Magister. Records 3 night operations with 75 Squadron, and 9 night operations with 149 Squadron on the following targets in France and Germany: Bordeaux, Boulogne, Bremen, Düsseldorf, Gelsenkirchen, Hanover, Lorient, Ludwigshafen, Mannheim and Wilhelmshaven. His first or second pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Horton and Pilot Officer Gilmore. Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Review Oct 2024 149 Squadron 15 OTU 20 OTU 75 Squadron aircrew Anson bombing Flying Training School Magister Operational Training Unit pilot RAF Desford RAF Feltwell RAF Grantham RAF Harwell RAF Lakenheath RAF Lossiemouth RAF Mildenhall Tiger Moth training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1406/36693/LRosserLV745193v1.1.pdf 84ee2e9b8c47d7d10b2df11be8b9c907 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 Rosser, Lewis Victor L V Rosser 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 2019-05-17 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 Rosser, LV Description An account of the resource 154 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Lewis Victor Rosser (b. 1919, 745193 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, a diary of his operations, notebooks, documents, correspondence and an album. He flew operations as a pilot with 35, 58, 51 and 115 Squadrons. <br /><br />The collection includes a <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2133">Photograph album</a> with photographs of people and aircraft, artwork cards, newspaper cuttings and documents. <br /><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ann Godard and Joy Shirley and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. 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 L V Rosser’s pilots flying log book. One Description An account of the resource Pilots flying log book one for L V Rosser, covering the period from 4 March 1939 to 19 July 1943. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Kidlington, RAF Woodley, RAF Grantham, RAF Kinloss, RAF Topcliffe, RAF Linton-on-Ouse, RAF Dishforth, RAF Abingdon, and RAF Chipping Warden. Aircraft flown were Magister, Anson, Hind, Whitley, Halifax, Wellington, Martinet, Lysander, Defiant, Wellington, Hind and Hurricane. He flew a total of 24 night time operations, 6 with 35 Squadron, 11 with 58 Squadron and 7 with 51 Squadron. Targets were Bremen, Cologne, Schleswig, Duisburg, Hannover, Kiel, Rotterdam, Emden, Le Havre, Mannheim, Dunkirk, Frankfurt, Berlin, Brest, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, and Wilhelmshaven. He flew as a second pilot on operations with Pilot Officer Ogilvie, Flight Sergeant Holden, Flying Officer James, Sergeant Hammond and Sergeant Goodwin. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Great Britain. Royal Air Force Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1939 1940 1941 1941-05-11 1941-05-12 1941-05-16 1941-05-17 1941-05-19 1941-05-20 1941-06-11 1941-06-12 1941-06-15 1941-06-16 1941-06-17 1941-06-18 1941-06-20 1941-06-21 1941-06-25 1941-06-26 1941-06-27 1941-06-28 1941-06-29 1941-06-30 1941-08-14 1941-08-22 1941-08-23 1941-08-27 1941-08-28 1941-08-29 1941-08-30 1941-09-07 1941-09-08 1941-09-13 1941-09-14 1941-09-29 1941-09-30 1941-10-01 1941-10-02 1941-10-12 1941-10-13 1941-10-20 1941-10-21 1941-10-22 1941-10-23 1941-10-24 1941-10-25 1941-11-15 1941-11-16 1942 1943 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. France Germany Great Britain Netherlands Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay Atlantic Ocean--English Channel Atlantic Ocean--North Sea England--Berkshire England--Lincolnshire England--Northamptonshire England--Oxfordshire England--Yorkshire France--Brest France--Dunkerque France--Le Havre Germany--Berlin Germany--Bremen Germany--Cologne Germany--Duisburg Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony) Germany--Frankfurt am Main Germany--Hamburg Germany--Hannover Germany--Kiel Germany--Mannheim Germany--Nuremberg Germany--Schleswig-Holstein Germany--Stuttgart Germany--Wilhelmshaven Netherlands--Rotterdam Scotland--Moray Firth England--Kidlington England--Woodley (Wokingham) England--Grantham Germany--Ruhr (Region) 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. Log book and record book Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource One booklet Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LRosserLV745193v1 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 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Mike Connock Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Review Oct 2024 10 OTU 12 OTU 1668 HCU 19 OTU 26 OTU 35 Squadron 51 Squadron 58 Squadron 77 Squadron aircrew Anson bombing Defiant Flying Training School Halifax Halifax Mk 1 Heavy Conversion Unit Hurricane Initial Training Wing Lysander Magister Martinet Operational Training Unit Oxford pilot RAF Abingdon RAF Chipping Warden RAF Dishforth RAF Gamston RAF Grantham RAF Kinloss RAF Linton on Ouse RAF Shenington RAF Topcliffe training Wellington Whitley https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1881/36356/SChristianAL29160v10121-0007.2.jpg 4535935b74b9a92ede72a77c401ca8e6 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 Christian, Arnold Louis A L Christian 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 2017-06-26 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 Christian, AL Description An account of the resource 93 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander&nbsp;<span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian&nbsp;</span>(1906 - 1941, 29160 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operation as a pilot with 105 Squadron and was killed 8 May 1941.<br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Steven Christian and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />Additional information on <span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian</span>&nbsp;is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/204958/">IBCC Losses Database.</a> 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 Belgian Machines visit Grantham 1931 Description An account of the resource Four photographs of Breguet XIX of the Belgian Air Force visiting Grantham. #1 and 3 are port side views. #2 is a port side view of four aircraft. #4 is a front view. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1931 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Grantham Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Photograph Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Four b/w photographs on an album page Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SChristianAL29160v10121-0007 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 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1931 aircrew RAF Grantham https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1881/36355/SChristianAL29160v10121-0006.1.jpg 55618f992accc830149302960551a37c 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 Christian, Arnold Louis A L Christian 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 2017-06-26 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 Christian, AL Description An account of the resource 93 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander&nbsp;<span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian&nbsp;</span>(1906 - 1941, 29160 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operation as a pilot with 105 Squadron and was killed 8 May 1941.<br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Steven Christian and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />Additional information on <span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian</span>&nbsp;is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/204958/">IBCC Losses Database.</a> 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 Bristol Fighters and Bulldogs, RAF Grantham Description An account of the resource Four photographs of two different aircraft. #1 and 3 are port side views of a Bristol Fighter. #2 and 4 are front and port side views of a Bulldog. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Grantham England--Lincolnshire 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 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Photograph Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Four b/w photographs on an album page 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 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SChristianAL29160v10121-0006 RAF Grantham https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1881/36354/SChristianAL29160v10121-0005.2.jpg 31c3ef6a38dcb56c3681161659aca87d 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 Christian, Arnold Louis A L Christian 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 2017-06-26 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 Christian, AL Description An account of the resource 93 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander&nbsp;<span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian&nbsp;</span>(1906 - 1941, 29160 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operation as a pilot with 105 Squadron and was killed 8 May 1941.<br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Steven Christian and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />Additional information on <span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian</span>&nbsp;is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/204958/">IBCC Losses Database.</a> 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 'D' Flight RAF Grantham Description An account of the resource Three photographs of Armstrong Whitworth Atlases. #1 a port side view #2 two airmen shaking hands at the front of an Atlas #3 a port side view of an Atlas with a Hucks Starter vehicle at the front. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Grantham England--Lincolnshire 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 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Photograph Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Three b/w photographs on an album page Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SChristianAL29160v10121-0005 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 aircrew RAF Grantham service vehicle https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1881/36353/SChristianAL29160v10121-0004.2.jpg e591d35e5e7b46cbea99fd3e02c4d311 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 Christian, Arnold Louis A L Christian 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 2017-06-26 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 Christian, AL Description An account of the resource 93 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander&nbsp;<span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian&nbsp;</span>(1906 - 1941, 29160 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operation as a pilot with 105 Squadron and was killed 8 May 1941.<br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Steven Christian and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />Additional information on <span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian</span>&nbsp;is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/204958/">IBCC Losses Database.</a> 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 'C' Flight RAF Grantham Description An account of the resource Three photographs of Armstrong Whitworth Siskins. #1 and 3 are port side views. One aircraft is J-8869. #2 is a front view. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Grantham 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 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Photograph Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Three b/w photographs on an album page Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SChristianAL29160v10121-0004 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 RAF Grantham https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1881/36352/SChristianAL29160v10121-0003.2.jpg 968f705d28f88dc6a6e07c8198e0f849 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 Christian, Arnold Louis A L Christian 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 2017-06-26 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 Christian, AL Description An account of the resource 93 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander&nbsp;<span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian&nbsp;</span>(1906 - 1941, 29160 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operation as a pilot with 105 Squadron and was killed 8 May 1941.<br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Steven Christian and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />Additional information on <span>Arnold Louis</span> <span>Christian</span>&nbsp;is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/204958/">IBCC Losses Database.</a> 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 'A' Flight RAF Grantham Description An account of the resource Three photographs captioned A Flight Hawker Tomtits. Arnold is in the third photograph. One aircraft is J-9781. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Grantham 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 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Photograph Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Three b/w photographs on an album page Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SChristianAL29160v10121-0003 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 RAF Grantham