2 25 254 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1438/56814/EBaldwinER-GummersallTBaldwinER-GummersallTv1.pdf 5c5c767bfb02b81252b2796acfde4023 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 Baldwin, Eric Russell E Baldwin 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 2018-07-29 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 Baldwin, ER Description An account of the resource Seven items. The collection concerns Eric Russell Baldwin (b… 1923 Royal Air Force) and contains documents and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 467 Squadron. The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mary Hallchurch and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Transcribed document A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document LANCASTER CREW AT WAR ERIC BALDWIN & TOM GUMMERSALL [underlined] 467 SQUADRON [/underlined] [Squadron badge] R.A.A.F. RAF WADDINGTON LINCOLN 1943 – 1945 [underlined] FRONT COVER [/underlined] Crew of PO-K 467 Sqn RAF Waddington Back Row – Wally Bradbury – Jack Clemons – Stuart Anders – Eric Baldwin Front Row – Frank York – Tommy Gummersall – Les Chalcroft Lancaster PO-K 467 Sqn – Air and Ground Crew Checking Aircraft Lancaster PO-K 467 Sqn with Kangaroos and Bombing Raids [page break] [italics] Transcribers Note; As a member of the City of Lincoln Aircrew Association it came to my attention that Eric Baldwin had, once before, had these notes typed up. He had subsequently loaned the booklet to another, whom he cannot remember, and unfortunately they had not been returned. I managed to obtain a copy of the handwritten notes and spent several hours typing them up (and re-typing them when I lost 5 pages in a computer glitch!) then arranging them into a book format. This I consider, a small price to pay for the dept we all owe. [/italics] Kenneth E Moore Flight Lieutenant Royal Air Force Born 1958 [page break] [underlined] Eric Baldwin’s Notes [underlined] Returning from a raid to Politz, we had completed our bomb run, but met lots of German fighters waiting for us plus ack-ack shelling as we came away from the target. From our corkscrew evasive action, it must have toppled our giro compass, for instead of being on our homeward course we were flying in the wrong direction to the course given by Navigator to the skipper, until the compass settled down. Then suddenly the Bomb Aimer discovered we had two bomb hang-ups and the bomb doors would not close fully. Breaking radio silence we were given orders to divert to Lossiemouth in Scotland. The decision to land with the bombs on board, rather than bail out, was discussed by all the crew and agreed. We landed safely amid lots of panic among the crew and also the service personnel on the aerodrome. Stayed overnight and the ground crew working on the aircraft safely remover the bombs and we returned to Waddington the next day. On another occasion we just taxiing for take off and with my mid upper guns pointing to the rear, as routine, I noticed the port rudder had fallen off. I yelled over the intercom to the skipper and we managed to abort “take off” and headed for dispersal. The ground crew spent time reassuring us, that they could not have seen that the bolts holding the rudders were worn and weak. All the same, in about 5 minutes we would have been airborne losing a rudder, there was a good chance we would have crashed with a full load of fuel and bombs on board. But as “luck” would have it they found a replacement aircraft and we took off about 40 minutes late, and we somehow got permission to fly to France over London and meet up with our squadron with the help of a Mosquito aircraft which flew alongside us and, waggling his wings indicated that he wanted us to follow him to join the formation. There was a sight to behold with “gaggles” of 60 to 100 planes as far as the eye could see. The reason was for a special operation to bomb the hell out of the Germans in the ‘Battle of the Bulge’. When I saw the film ‘The Battle of the Bulge’ with Humphrey Bogart and the Americans winning the battle, I was sure that could not have done it without the RAF and in some way, a little help from PO-K. On a raid to the Mittelland Canal we had a ‘second dickie’ pilot with us on his first operation as we had progressed to a senior crew status. All went well, the weather over the target was clear and the canal was breeched. On the return leg, planes started going down left, right and centre so we were extremely vigilant and then our skipper decided to air his knowledge and explain to our ‘second dickie’ pilot about the use of ‘scarecrow weapons’ by the Germans to give the impression that lots of planes were being shot down, to scare us, but that he knew all about them and not to worry. This was completely wrong as 5 Group lost 13 planes that night out of a force of 165. So our skipper did not offer his experienced knowledge freely again as we could not confirm any sighting of ‘scarecrows’. During an early evening raid on Duren we were just short of the target when the Pathfinder, who was acting as “Master of Ceremonies” called us down from 16 000ft to 10 000ft to get below the cloud level. When we broke through at 10 000ft we thought there was something wrong as there were only about a dozen planes at this level so we thought we must have been one of the first to arrive and the rest were on their way down. We were close to the target when I saw a load of bombs come through the base of the cloud heading for a Lancaster that was about 300 yards ahead of us. I started yelling corkscrew but we were on our bombing run and the Bomb aimer was staying on the intercom saying ‘steady, steady, right a bit, steady – bombs gone’. The Lancaster in front was hit by the bombs falling from above and there was a fierce explosion as the plane’s own fuel tanks and bomb load blew up and I remember seeing the starboard wing being blown off the plane which [page break] was replaced by a cloud of black smoke as we flew through it with the bombs from above still falling all around us. A 4000lb bomb passed so close I could almost have touched it. Only a few moments ago there had been a Lancaster with seven men on board as the shock waves hit us. We did not get any explanation as to why the other bombers did not come down to 10 000ft as instructed by the Master Bomber. Here is a story not directly about our bombing raids, but the German reactions to our attacks and how they would respond on occasions against us. It was customary on the nights we were not flying to adjourn to the Waddington village pub, The Horse and Jockey, together with our ground crew with whom we were very friendly. On this occasion, after a long session, we staggered from the pub. Tommy, our skipper and Paddy our engineer, managed to separate themselves from the rest of the crew as we headed back to the aerodrome. Our Lancaster’s were just returning from a raid and we had be warned, for some time, that enemy planes could follow the bomber stream back to England and attack our planes as they landed. On this night as we were in two separate groups one of our planes passed overhead and we could see an enemy fighter positioning himself behind for an attack. We could see the tracer bullets going towards the bomber and we were shouting from the ground below, to no avail. Then another fighter started shooting up the aerodrome and Paddy and our skipper raced towards the control tower where there were guns mounted and somehow fired a few shots going everywhere but not hitting the enemy fighter. The rest of the crew, myself included, reached the aerodrome and were suddenly confronted with the fire tender being driven by the commanding officer. He ordered us to climb onto the running boards to be driven to the bomb dump as the enemy fighters has started a fire among the incendiary store. With the help of the C.O. we started throwing them away from the main explosive bomb racks as fast as we could. Next day, at the main parade of all station personnel, the C.O. praised the efforts of the Gummersall (our skipper) crew as we stood in line, dishevelled and unshaved with hangovers from the night before, trying very hard to look like heroes, to all those present. It must be remembered, that this was our night off flying and really not at war, dodging anti-aircraft fire and cannon shells as we did during our many raids. We did not have to stick our necks out trying to save the station bomb dump, but we did this as the crew of PO-K. [page break] [underlined] The Ups and Downs of a Bomber Crew Tommy Gummersall – his story. (1993) The PO-K saga. From September 1944 to April 1945 [/underlined] Cast: Frank York – Australian, Bomb Aimer, at 32 was the eldest of the crew. A cool and calm father figure, especially to me. Lecturer at the New South Wales Department of Agriculture. Tom Gummersall – Australian, Pilot, at 20 years of age was the youngest of the crew and had the responsibility to see that everyone of the crew wore their winter underwear and put on their anti-freeze cream. Did his best but was not outstanding in leadership material. Jack Clemons – English, 23 years, Flight Engineer, a permanent member of the RAF. Transferred to flying duties and was with us on our first 10 trips until he contracted pneumonia. He collapsed on a raid to Dortmund-Ems. At the time of writing the author had just resumed contact with him after 45 years. W.H. Todd – Paddy Todd, Irish, Flight Engineer, another permanent RAF member. He replaced Jack Clemons and completed 24 trips with us. His brogue was so thick that every time he asked a question I could only nod and say ‘Yes’. As luck would have it I seem to have given him the right answer every time. Les Chalcroft – Australian, Navigator, 28 years. In civilian life he was a manager for Niall Products in New Zealand. He was rather brilliant and became excitable at times. He did no [sic] enjoy bombing raids. He would come out from behind his blackout curtain to see what it was like over the target, said ‘Jesus Christ!’ and disappeared back to his navigating position never to re-appear again for the rest of the tour. Stuart Anders – Australian, Wireless Operator, 23 years, steady and reliable. He was the only WOp on the squadron to receive a change of wind direction for a target area despite severe electrical interference. We are still close after 50 years. Eric Baldwin – Australian, 24, Mid Upper Gunner and: Wally Bradbury – Australian, 26, Rear Gunner. Eric and Wally were inseparable. I really do not remember how I picked them for my crew. I think they picked me, not because I was a good catch, but because they were told that as soon as they had a pilot they could go on leave. I have never regretted their choice for they were excellent gunners. They were rebellious and would not accept authority. Being leader of the crew, any strife they caused then C.O.s would come down on my head. [page break] [underlined] Chapter One [/underlined] [underlined] To Bomb or not to Bomb? [/underlined] It all started on the evening of my Aunty Denise’s birthday – 26th September 1944. I was on the list to participate in the raid against Karlsruhe as a second pilot to Flying Officer Layton. The position of second pilot was created to give novice pilots target experience. The trip was exciting but uneventful. The real excitement came a number of days later when as a new crew we were listed for an attack on Walcheren Island. I wasn’t too worried as we had already been on an attack to Walcheren Island, knocking a hole in the dyke wall that surrounded the island and so let the ocean in and in the process flood the island and deny its use to the retreating Germans. It turned out to be a very quiet and successful attack; we breached the dyke and so flooded a large area of the island. I always felt sorry for the little boy who put his finger in a hole in the dyke wall and saved the island. Here was I smashing a great gap in the dyke and it wouldn’t matter how many fingers the boy had now, he wouldn’t be able to save the dyke. This time the target was changed; instead of the dyke wall it was to be anti-aircraft gun emplacements on the isthmus that protruded from the island. They were opposite the mainland where Canadians had established a beachhead to harass the retreating Germans, but from where the Germans on the island could lower the barrels of their guns and cause havoc on the beachhead across the narrow strip of water separating the island from the mainland. Our job was to take out the guns. There was only one flaw with the plan, some bright spark in the planning section of the Air Ministry had decided that it would be an excellent idea if we attacked in a formation known as line astern. I think his mother must have been frightened by an old sea captain fro [sic] line astern belongs to the Navy. We were to fly just short of the target then form up line astern on the Flight Commander, all nicely behind each other with about 50ft or 60ft below the plane in front. We did this without too much trouble, the leader at 6000ft and us, as the junior crew, at the end of the line at 5500ft or thereabouts. It looked good on paper but in practice it didn’t work, I was lucky to manage 5000ft. When we were lined up we proceeded to the target area, I had a great view of the formation, with all the planes holding position more or less until the leading plane reached the target area and the Germans let him have the lot. The poor bagger could not hold position and dropped down, his slipstream hitting No2 in the formation. No 2 did some crazy aerobatics and his slipstream caught No 3. No 3 then dropped down and his slipstream played havoc with No 4 and so it went on down the line until it got to yours truly at the end. What with the anti-aircraft fire and the wild manoeuvres because of the slipstream instead of going through the target at 5500ft I most vividly remember seeing 3300ft on the altimeter as we went through the target. I do not remember where the rest of the formation had got to. The next thing that registered on my shell-shocked brain was that of flat green fields as we flew over the middle of Walcheren Island. It was so peaceful and quiet that I would have been quite content to stay in the same spot for the rest of the war. That is, until Frank’s calm slow voice over the intercom, informing me of the fact that we were just coming up to a hospital and why didn’t we drop the rest of the bombs on it? I looked out and sure enough a building with a big red cross on it was just passing below us. Next moment Les’ very excited voice came on stating the fact that we couldn’t bomb hospitals as it was against the Geneva Convention, or some such thing. I told Les that Frank was only joking and anyway we had passed the hospital. [page break] But it was Franks comment about the ‘rest of the bombs’ that brought me back to reality with a shock. We were to drop half our bombs, then stay in formation and make a second bombing run on the target dropping the other half. The only trouble was that the rest of the formation had stuck to the plan and here we were left on our lonesome in the middle of Walcheren Island. I was waiting fo [sic] a sound from the rest of the crew wanting to discuss the wisdom of making a second bombing run but there was only a very painful silence. So figuring that I must be the only coward on board I turned the plane around and headed back to the starting point of out [sic] bombing run. I lined the plane up and with my head down I headed for the target. I remember thinking that with any luck the rest of the squadron would have knocked out most of the guns. Some hope! The Germans threw everything but the kitchen sink at us and I am more than sure that I saw that go flying past the cockpit. The next minute or so we were through and after checking that everyone was alright I turned the plane around and headed as fast as I could back to England. On the way back I started thinking that we must be in for some praise about what a good job we had done and how we had hung in there as a crew and seen it through, except for a few moments of doubt about myself which I was sure would disappear with experience. It only remained to get back to base an [sic] relate our experiences to the rest of the squadron and even if we were not welcomed as heroes, at least to congratulate us for a job well done. Upon landing we had a welcoming committee consisting of a senior pilot who considered the plane that we were flying as belonging to him, and here was this novice letting the Germans blast holes all over it. He took me around poor PO-K and showed me all the holes in the bomb bay doors and the fuselage. Even though I pointed out that most of the 64 holes would only take a finger, with a few where you could put a fist and one or two that would take your head, it meant that he would have to fly a strange plane whilst PO-K was patched up, everybody seemed to agree with him and our apologies didn’t seem to make any difference. So it was a very subdued novice pilot who fronted up at the Mess that evening with very little conversation being directed his way. Luckily things changed as the senior pilot finished his tour and over the months I became a more senior pilot myself and PO-K gradually became mine and no novice pilot was game to damage him. [page break] [underlined] Chapter Two [/underlined] [underlined] Run Rabbit Run. [/underlined] One afternoon about two or three weeks later we were briefed for a raid, I cannot remember where it was but I remember the rest of details very well. We had just been dropped at the dispersal area by the truck and being a little bit early walked over to the plane that was still in the process of being bombed up. The six 1000lb and six 500lb bombs were already hanging in their positions in the bomb bay of the plane. It only required the 4000lb ‘cookie’ to be slotted into the space left among the other bombs to complete the bombing up. We were all standing around, just trying to keep out of the way of the armourers, the cables were attached to the ‘cookie’ and it was being hauled up into position when there was a jarring noise and a yell. I looked up and saw the ‘cookie’ falling from the bomb bay and landing on the tarmac with a sickening thud. I gave Frank and Stuart at least two or three yards start, but after about fifty yards, even though I was hampered by carrying a parachute which, in my panic, I had never thought of dropping I was a good five or six yards in front when the thought hit me that it hadn’t gone off. I stopped, and the sight that met my eyes was of people running everywhere plus others lying in any shallow depression in the ground or behind any small rise. Then, there was Wally and Eric peering over one of the landing wheels at the ‘cookie’ on the ground in front of them. But worst of all was the sight of the armourers rolling all over the place laughing their heads off. They were the only ones that knew that the ‘cookie’ was not armed! [page break] [underlined] Chapter Three [/underlined] [underlined] Round and Round the Roaring Flames the Ragged Rascals Ran [/underlined] On the 6th of December, on a trip to Giessen, I was sitting back as relaxed as I could be, heading for the target that the Pathfinders had marked. The first wave had started bombing, everything was as bright as day. I could make out other bombers in the bomber stream through the searchlights on the clouds and the flames already started. Then there on our port side was this FW 190, a single engine night fighter, 50 feet away just below us and travelling parallel. He hadn’t seen us but we had all seen him. Stuart, Eric and myself were deciding whether Eric should have a go at it or leave it alone and maybe he might find someone else to get excited about. Just then, he turned his head and saw us, he was out of there fast. He sat about 800yds astern but didn’t attack at once. He was waiting for us to drop out [sic] bombs knowing that our bombs could blow him up if he attacked and shot us down. We figured that we had an old hand waiting to have a go at us, we decided to carry on as if we hadn’t noticed him and a [sic] soon as we had dropped our bombs, go into our corkscrew defence to port which if we surprised him, just a little bit, would make his first attacking angle too sharp and maybe we might be able to get away. Not that a bomber is any match for a fighter but we had previously been attacked by a JU-88 twin-engine night fighter and had beaten it off with a ‘damaged’ claim to our credit. All this had been agreed upon in a matter of seconds. I wondered if we were not being too blasé or over-confident and if we got out of this I thought to have a chat to the boys about over-confidence, not that we ever lowered our guard but sooner or later we must be on the receiving end. I was brought up with a start as Frank started his bombing run, after a series of ‘left, left, steady, s-t-e-a-d-y’, ‘bombs away’. On ‘bombs away’ I put PO-K into a dive to port saying ‘Down port’ and at the same time reaching for the lever to close the bomb doors. The only ones speaking were Wally, Eric and myself. Wally and Eric were carrying on a running conversation about distances and angles to aim their guns. I don’t remember the correct sequences, but say, when I put the plane into ‘Down port’ Wally and Eric knew that they had to aim their guns at the one o-clock position. ‘Up port’ was four o-clock, ‘Up starboard’ was seven o-clock and ten o-clock coincided with ‘Down starboard’. All this was to take the guesswork out of aiming their guns and send the bullets on the right trajectory to hit the enemy plane. I was doing my corkscrew and heading for the cloudbank below as fast as I could when the FW-190, with smoke and flames pouring out of it, beat me to it. Quite a number of other planes saw it disappear into the clouds. When we got back to base we claimed ‘destroyed’ but as nobody had seen it hit the ground we were only awarded a ‘probably destroyed’. Still I was very proud of Wally and Eric, who were armed with only .303s and a range of 300yds against the fighters 20mm cannon armament and 600yds range, we all agreed that they did a marvellous job and I never did get around to delivering my ‘over-confidence’ speech. But we were not out of the woods yet. Getting a course from Les to head for home I set it on the compass. I put down the fact that we had to fly over the target again to the evasive action with the enemy fighter that must have taken us to the other side of the target. It wasn’t until Les wanted to know why we were wandering all over the sky that it dawned on me that I had been over energetic in my evasive manoeuvres and this had ‘toppled’ the compass. While it was settling down I had been following it and flown in a half circle. Setting a new course on the compass we once again flew through the target area but the searchlight crews, anti-aircraft guns and enemy fighters must have gone home. I think they must have got tired of us fooling around and had given us away as a bad job. [page break] For me I was very glad that at last we had worked out which way was home [underlined] Chapter Four [/underlined] [underlined] Some You Win, Some Just Disappear [/underlined] Some time later we were down for an attack on Politz that was on oil refinery on the German-Polish border. It was an uneventful trip out, though quite long, with little opposition. Over the target they had one gun and about 50 searchlights that upset me no end. Once they locked onto you they made you feel quite alone and vulnerable. We had just dropped our bombs and I was sitting there minding my own business and contemplating the long trip home when this bloody big hole appeared through the cowl covering the port inner engine, which immediately gave up the ghost. Down to three engines we slowly limped back home and arrived there a good hour and a half to two hours late. I cannot remember if they had our fried egg waiting for us or not? The next day I found that my shirt, socks and underwear were missing. Items like this, when roughed up a bit and taken to the quartermaster’s store, if lucky, could be replaced with new articles. I must have been a bit luckier than most because for weeks later people kept turning up with pieces of my clothing saying that they had ‘turned up with their laundry’ [page break] [underlined] Chapter Five [/underlined] [underlined] Humphrey, PO-K and Crew [/underlined] We had just started taxiing out for take off when there was a yell from Eric that the port rudder had just fallen off! On the ground there was pandemonium with the ground crew blaming themselves. We spent a great deal of time reassuring them that they couldn’t have seen that the bolts holding the rudder were weak. All the same, in another 15-20 mins we would have taken off. Being just àirborne and losing a rudder there was a fair chance that we would have crashed. With a full load of bombs on board it would have taken an awful lot of work to find us. But as luck would have it there was a spare plane already bombed up which we were transferred to as soon as possible. As fast as everybody was [sic] were well and truly late. Somehow permission had been granted for us to take a short cut and fly to France over London to meet up with the Squadron. We flew over London, which was something special, as nobody was allowed anywhere near it. Over France it was a sight to behold, as far as the eyes could see there were formations (or as we knew them ‘gaggles’) in groups of 60 to 100 planes. After flying up to a couple of formations to check their squadron letters with no luck, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, I was just about ready to give up and just join up with one of the nearest formations when a Mosquito aircraft flew over, and waggling his wings, indicated he wanted us to follow him. After diving under half a dozen or so formations he led us to our squadron where we made room for ourselves and we were on our way. I forget to tell you at the start that all these planes were going to bomb the hell out of the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge. Sometime later I saw a film on the Battle of the Bulge with Humphrey Bogart and the Americans had him winning the battle. But I am sure he couldn’t have done it without the RAF and PO-K, or at least its crew. [page break] [underlined] Chapter Six [/underlined] [underlined] What Goes Up Must Come Down [/underlined] A few weeks before Arnhem, we were down for a fighter affiliation exercise, where a Spitfire or Hurricane would attack us and we would take evasive action. The results would be examined later as we both would be armed with camera guns. On this exercise we had about six or eight paratroopers coming along for flying experience. As mentioned earlier the Arnhem invasion had not yet taken place. We met the Spitfire above the clouds at about 12 000ft and started our corkscrew manoeuvres. All was going fine but on the top of the ‘Up starboard’ section of the corkscrew the airspeed fell off too sharply (I had not allowed for the extra weight and the change in the centre of gravity of the plane that the paratroopers had made). We stalled and plunged down in a dive so steep that the airspeed indicator went straight round to 360 m.p.h. and stopped at the pin; it couldn’t go any further. I was pulling back on the control column with all my might, to no avail, I also put my feet on the instrument panel and pushed with my feet, it still made no difference, just then Jack wound back on the tail trim for the elevators and we came out of the dive. If it weren’t for Jack we would all have perished. Les reckoned we had 10 to 12 seconds left before we would have hit the ground. Back through the cloud we hurtled to the surprise of the Spitfire pilot who couldn’t work out what had happened to us. I didn’t enlighten him but we finished the rest of the exercise very gingerly. I often wondered how many of those paratroopers survived the Arnhem fighting not knowing how close to death they were with me. [page break] [underlined] Chapter Seven [/underlined] [underlined] Don’t Worry – They Are Scarecrows [/underlined] For weeks before the raid the intelligence people had been telling us that the Germans had invented a new weapon nicknamed ‘Scarecrow’. It was a psychological weapon which when fired at the bomber stream exploded and fell to the ground in flames and was supposed to look like a plane being shot down. On the evening of the 21st February 1945 we were on the list for an attack on the Mittelland Canal. We had a Flying Officer (F/O) Hudson on board as ‘second dickie’ so you can see we had progressed to a senior crew status by this time. F/O Hudson and I went back a long way in Air Force terms, we had done our initial training together. We were still together on the same course flying Hirraways (?) at Deniliquin. One of the highlights of our training at Deniliquin was the inspection of the bombing range, which consisted of the outline of a ship in white painted sandbags. We were walking over the range, which was covered in the remains of thousands of practice bombs. I was walking along with Hudson and a chap called Kirkpatrick in the middle of us. As I remember it was Kirkpatrick who picked up the front end of a practice bomb, at the same time Hudson picked up the tail fin section of the bomb. He then proceeded to screw them together. ‘How about that? They fit’ he remarked, then tossed it over his shoulder. The following explosion was exceptionally loud and Hudson and Kirkpatrick collapsed on the ground. I stayed upright but staggered around a bit. A truck was brought up and we were all bundled in and taken to the hospital on the base. Hudson and Kirkpatrick were in a mess and were hospitalised. I had about a dozen small pieces of shrapnel taken from my legs and allowed to go. Hudson recovered after about six months but Kirkpatrick was invalided out of the Air Force. Being six months ahead of Hudson when we met again I took him on his first trip. As I was saying before I got diverted with the Hudson explanation. We were on an attack to the Mittelland Canal. All went well, the weather over the target was clear and the canal was breached. Everything was going along just fine until on the return leg of the trip planes started going down left, right and centre. We doubled our under aircraft search but when we didn’t find any enemy aircraft underneath, not relaxing our search, I decided to air my knowledge about the German’s use of ‘Scarecrow’ weapons for the benefit of Hudson. I explained that even though they looked like planes being shot down it was more likely to be the German’s use of ‘Scarecrow’ weapons and were supposed to upset us psychologically. ‘Not a worry’ I said. Whether it was our vigilance with our under aircraft search or just pure luck, we didn’t get attacked. Planes still kept going down all around us and as for my superior knowledge? It turned out to be 100% wrong. No 5 Group, which was us, lost 13 planes that night out of a force of 165 and F/O Hudson never asked me for any more advice. As a matter of fact I don’t remember him ever speaking to me again and I never did see a ‘Scarecrow’ in action: [page break] [underlined] Chapter Eight [/underlined] [underlined] Bombs Away! or I’m Not That Keen On Soup! [/underlined] I always thought that the rudder falling off – Duren – and the Battle of the Bulge, were all on the same raid. But Stuart has it down in his logbook that Duren was the raid where we were the target. Stuart is most likely to be right for he wrote an article about our raid on Duren for the Victorian Railways Institute magazine just after we came back to Australia. I am only going by my memory and my memory could have played up after Duren. It was a daylight raid and we were just short of Duren. The Pathfinder, who was acting as ‘Master of Ceremonies’ (we were very advanced at this stage of the war) called us down from 15 000ft to below the cloud level at 10 000ft. When we broke through the cloud at 10 000ft I immediately thought that something was wrong as there were only about a dozen planes at that level. I thought that we must have been one of the first to arrive and the rest were on their way down. We were getting close to the target when I saw a load of bombs come through the base of the cloud heading for the plane that was about 800 yards ahead of me. Next thing that happened was that Eric and Stuart started yelling at me, one to go to port the other to go to starboard. Not knowing which way to go I froze on the control column. Then the bombs falling hit the plane ahead of us. There was a fiery explosion, as the planes own bombs blew up. I still remember seeing the starboard wing being blown off the plane, which had been replaced by a cloud of black smoke as a result of the explosion. The wing fell like an autumn leaf to the ground. From the shouts coming from Eric and Stuart the bombs falling on us passed that close that they could make out letters painted on them, with a 4000lb bomb coming so close that Eric felt he could have reached out and touched it. I flew through the black cloud of smoke that a few moments ago had been a Lancaster with seven men on board. A few bumps where the shock waves hit us then, as in a daze, I heard Frank’s voice over the intercom saying ‘steady, steady, right, a bit more right’, ‘s-t-e-a-d-y’, ‘bombs away’. I never did find out why the rest of the planes didn’t come down and I was too upset to ask many questions. All I do know is that it was about a week before I could get a spoonful of soup to my mouth without spilling it everywhere. [page break] [underlined] Chapter Nine [/underlined] [underlined] Ten And A Half Hours To Nowhere [/underlined] We were Off to see Father Christmas at the North Pole or rather we were going to Trondheim in Norway which was 64 degrees north, only four or five degrees short of the Arctic Circle. I was quite excited by the prospect for it had us flying at 60ft above the North Sea so we wouldn’t be picked up by the German Wurtzburg radars. This legalised low flying appealed to me immensely although I wasn’t too sure If I would feel the same after four or more hours of it. It was in the early afternoon when we started and it was getting close to dusk when we reached the point where we had to start climbing over the land. Then, loud and clear over the earphones came a voice belonging, I would say, to one of the Pathfinders. He was broadcasting to anyone listening – our target – what height we were to bomb – course we were to take to the target – what exactly our target was (submarine pens) and how we were not allowed to drop our bombs if there was a chance of Norwegians being killed. With his transmit button pushed to the ‘On’ position nobody else could transmit and tell him to shut up! As a result the Germans were ready for us when we reached Trondheim. They had laid a smoke screen all over the submarine pens and the amount of anti-aircraft fire they put up was amazing. I had never seen so much tracer arcing across the target at our bombing height. The Pathfinders were down amongst all that mess trying to mark the target. It was a terrifying thought that they might soon might [sic] start calling us down to have a go at bombing. I couldn’t see how we could do it. Then, after what seemed like an eternity of stooging around in wide circles over the target they found that they couldn’t mark the target. If we did start bombing without the target being properly marked then bombs might go astray and kill Norwegians, which they were most desperately against doing. So in the finish they decided to call it off and send us home. ‘Go Home!’ It sounded just right to me but as Les informed us not too much later that if we wanted to make home we would have to drop our bombs in the North Sea, which we did. Some time later he further informed us that we could not make home and that it would be advisable to head for the nearest aerodrome which turned out to be Lossiemouth at the top of Scotland, so it was agreed. That was a long trip back to Lossiemouth with the petrol running low and the feeling of loneliness in the darkness. It all depended on Les to get us to this strange aerodrome, which he did – right on the button. Now it was my turn, to land us at this aerodrome, which turned out to be easier than I thought it would. The aerodrome was covered with snow and the runway made a straight black line on it even though the runway disappeared into the sea at one end, Lossiemouth being a seaplane aerodrome. We landed without too many hassles and were taken to a dispersal area, then after debriefing we were taken to the Mess. It was good to relax in the warmth of the fire and over a beer wonder about the ten and a half hours of getting nowhere. In the morning a young WRAF driver took us out to PO-K. Having some time to spare I decide to hop over the aerodrome fence and on to a road running past the ‘drome to have a bit of a look around. After walking a few hundred yards to the top of a rise all that was visible was a very barren land, strewn with boulders, and some very hardy but miserable looking sheep all covered with snow. I was quite content to turn around and go back to the plane. What I couldn’t get over was that people lived and worked here. It was simply [page break] amazing. I never did hear what happened to the Pathfinder that caused all the trouble, most likely a rap on the knuckles that is if they ever found out who it was. One more thing, with all that roaming around the skies near the Arctic Circle I never did see Santa Claus nor his sleigh, let alone reindeers flying through the sky pulling it. It wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t exist! [page break] [underlined] Chapter Ten [/underlined] [underlined] All You Need is Luck, Luck and More Luck [/underlined] Towards the end of our tour we were returning from a raid and still well and truly over Germany when we saw this strange phenomenon on the ground in the darkness ahead, a searchlight was going in a 360 degree circle level with the ground. My first reaction was that the war must be over and they had forgotten to tell us, then following on from that, that somehow this was a trap. Then wishing we had a bomb left in the bomb bay so we could give them some hurry-up. ‘Check that out’ said Frank ‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’. I agreed I hadn’t and put PO-K into a tight turn above it. After circling above it for a few more minutes everybody gave up trying to guess what it was and we headed for home. At debriefing later that night we explained to the Intelligence Officer what we had seen and what we had done. ‘You must be the luckiest crew in bomber Command’ he said ‘What you were circling around was a night fighter assembly beacon’ he said in disbelief ‘You must have dodged them or they were away attacking someone else. Very lucky’ He couldn’t get over it and broke off the debriefing to tell the other intelligence officers. They all agreed ‘Very lucky’, ‘Very lucky’ over and over again. Looking back over my time with the Air Force I can see that I had all the ingredients of an accident waiting to happen. The only thing I had in my favour was incredible luck and a crew that more than made up for my stupidity. With luck and all of them looking after me we got through. [page break] [underlined] Chapter Eleven [/underlined] [underlined] I Enter the ‘Hall of Fame’ [/underlined] One last story and I am going to ‘blow my own trumpet’ this time as it is the only time that I did anything that the rest of the Squadron wasn’t able to do. We had just returned to base and found it all fogged in with all the Squadron’s planes circling around unable to land. As luck would have it I was the only one circling above the fog layer. I remember we were at 1600ft while the rest of the Squadron were in the fog at 1000ft unable to see a thing whereas I could make out the layout of the drome, perimeter track and runways by looking directly down. The rest were trying to look through the fog and failing to make out anything. Attempt after attempt was made with nobody being able to land. I received permission to try and land and, being able to see the layout of the ‘drome, did my usual landing circuit procedures making sure I stood well back at the funnel entrance to the landing runway. Then, making very sure I had the runway exactly lined up I let myself down into the fog flying by the gyrocompass with Les calling out the airspeed and height. We hit the runway right on the nose, apart from a small adjustment on landing. It was with more than a little pride I was able to interrupt the calls from the other planes, asking for a diversion to another ‘drome, with my transmission of ‘PO-K, clear of runway’. The reason why the control tower persisted with the landings was that Air Vice Marshall Wrigley was waiting for a plane to land so he could have the film of the bombing results developed. This was to see if we had destroyed the target or if they needed to send another force back that night to finish the job off. I am happy to say that we had breached the target, which was the Ems-Weser Canal, vital to the Germans at that time as the only means of getting supplies through to their troops. The trains, trucks and other means of transport being completely wiped out by Fighter Command aircraft of the Air Force and American Air Force. A sequel to this story was the fact that on the white washed wall of the urinal of th [sic] ‘Horse and Jockey’ pub in Waddington village was the phrase in pencil – ‘Gummersall is a know-all bastard’ showing that somebody didn’t appreciate my marvellous effort. Knowing how many times these old pubs get renovated, it could still be there! [page break] [underlined] Chapter Twelve [/underlined] [underlined] Unsung Heroes [/underlined] This story is one where I don’t take centre stage. It was customary on the nights that we weren’t on the list for a raid to adjourn to the Waddington village pub ‘The Horse and Jockey’ together with our ground crew, with whom we were very friendly. After a number of drinks, the sergeant in charge of the ground crew, who was also an Australian and also named Tom, would demand that he and I change tunic jackets, whereon he would move around the pub, dancing with various lasses, trying to impress them with his new uniform. On this occasion, after we staggered from the pub I somehow managed to separate myself from the rest of the crowd and wandered back to the aerodrome on my own. Our planes were just returning from the raid and we had been told for sometime that the enemy fighters would try and follow the bomber stream back to England and attack out [sic] planes as they were landing. On this night, as I wandered back to the ‘drome, one of our planes passed overhead and I could see an enemy fighter positioning himself for an attack from behind. ‘Weave you fool, weave’ I cried out at the top of my voice. I could see tracer fire from the fighter going towards the bomber as I danced and screamed from the road below. Then another enemy fighter started shooting up the aerodrome. I hurried to the control tower and there found Paddy, who was as drunk as I was if not worse, firing the machine gun that was one of two positioned either side of the tower, with bullets flying everywhere. ‘Where are the rest of the boys?’ I shouted. ‘Gone with the CO to the bomb dump’ he screamed ‘The bastards have set it on fire’. From the stories the boys told me later, the CO took the fire tender with PO-K’s crew standing on the sides. When they arrived at the bomb dump, the enemy fighter had started a fire amongst the incendiaries, which with the CO helping, they started throwing them away from the main explosive bomb racks. Next day at the main parade of all the members of the station, the CO praised the efforts of the Gummersall crew who were standing in line dishevelled and unshaven with hangovers from the night before, trying very hard to look like heroes, which they were. The thing that must be remembered is that this was their night off and they were not really at war. After dodging anti-aircraft fire and cannon shells from night fighters, they did not have to stick their necks out trying to save the Station bomb dump on their night off! Some people might cruelly say it was done as a spur-of-the-moment thing from under an alcoholic haze. I prefer to think of it as just another way that the crew of PO-K won the war – definitely – UNSUNG HEROES! [page break] [underlined] Chapter Thirteen [/underlined] [underlined] Epilogue [/underlined] Though it may seem from these writings that PO-K and ourselves won the war, don’t forget that the war had been going on for just over five years and thousands of very brave men had lost their lives before we arrived at Waddington to do our bit. The bravest men in my opinion, not that all the airmen, especially those who had died, were not brave but the bravest of the brave were the first aircrews who flew in antiquated planes facing losses of 60-70% in 1939-41. It wasn’t until 1942-3 that we started to get on top of the Germans even though our losses were still very high. In 1944-5 we were really dishing it out to them. It has been worked out that more tons of bombs were dropped in 1944 than in the whole of the war until then, owing to the fact that more planes were getting through as the opposition got weaker and weaker. All I can say is that I am very glad that I was too young to be in the war any earlier as I am sure that I wouldn’t have been emotionally strong enough to have been able to stand up to the stress. [page break] Seal of the Governor General Commonwealth of Australia [underlined] HONOURS AND AWARDS [/underlined] [underlined] DISTINGUISHED FLYING CROSS [/underlined] [underlined] FLYING OFFICER THOMAS ALBERT GUMMERSALL [/underlined] [underlined] (428308) [/underlined] [underlined] CITATION [/underlined] Flying Officer GUMMERSALL has completed a large number of operational sorties. In OCTOBER, 1944, he was detailed for an attack against FLUSHING. His aircraft was damaged by anti-aircraft fire over the target but, nevertheless, he made a second bombing run and successfully completed his task. On two other occasions, his aircraft has been attacked by enemy fighters, but each time he has beaten them off. This officer’s cool courage in the face of the enemy has inspired confidence in his crew. [italics] Authors note: This medal, although made out to me, is a disgrace, as it should have been given to all of PO-K’s crew. I have informed the rest of the crew of my feelings on this subject and have awarded each of them a seventh part of this medal, which I am please to say they have accepted. [/italics] [page break] [underlined] [a] DATE [b] TARGET FOR TONIGHT [c] AIRCRAFT [d] COMMENTS [underlined] [a] 6.10.44 [b] Bremen [d] F/O Gummersall. T.A. 2nd pilot with F/L Broad. [a] 7.10.44 [b] Walcheren Dyke [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 11.10.44 [b] Flushing [c] LM100 PO.D [a] 14/15.10.44 [b] Brunswick LM100 PO.D [a] 19/20.10.44 [b] Nurnberg [c] NG197 PO.G [a] 23.10.44 [b] Flushing [c] DV396 PО.В [a] 6/7.11.44 [b] Ems Wesser [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 11/12.11.44 [b] Harburg [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 16.11.44 [b] Duren [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 21/22.11.44 [b] Ladbergen [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 23/24.11.44 [b] Trondheim [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 26/27.11.44 [b] Munich [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 4/5.12.44 [b] Heilbronn [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 6/7.12.44 [b] Giessen [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 8.12.44 [b] Urft Dam [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 27.12.44 [b] Rheydt [c] PB762 PО.B [a] 30/31.12.44 [b] Houfalize [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 1.1.45 [b] Ladbergen [c] PD362 PO.Y [a] 13/14.1.45 [b] Politz [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 14/15.1.45 [b] Mersburg [c] LM677 PO.V [a] 16/17.1.45 [b] Brux [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 1/2.2.45 [b] Siegen [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 2/3.2.45 [b] Karlsruhe [c] NG196 PO.R [a] 14/15.2.45 [b] Rositz [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 19/20.2.45 [b] Bohlen [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 21/22.2.45 [b] Gravenhorst [c] ME487 PO.H [a] 24.2.45 [b] Ladbergen [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 5/6.3.45 [b] Bohlen [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 7/8.3.45 [b] Harburg [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 11.3.45 [b] Essen [c] NN805 [a] 16/17.3.45 [b] Wursburg [c] LM642 PO.K [a] 4.4.45 [b] Nordhausen [c] RP139 [a] 6.4.45 [b] Limuiden [c] RF139 A428308 Thomas Albert Gummersall. DFC and crew posted to 467 Sq 25.9.44. Completed 33 ops by 8.5.45. On their first solo op attacking the Walcheren Dyke the A/C was hit by flak but then made a second run over the target to successfully hit the aiming point. On two occasions, the crew had successfully beat off determined fighter attacks. 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 crew at war Description An account of the resource Memoirs of Eric Baldwin and Tom Gummersall of 467 Squadron RAAF RAF Waddington. Eric Baldwin recounts several of his experiences as a mid upper gunner including flying in the wrong direction due to compass problems, parts falling off his aircraft on taxi out, experiences on other operations to Germany. Concludes with anecdote about off duty incident. Follows "The ups and downs of a Bomber Crew" - Tommy Gummenrsall his story. List his crew 'Frank York bomb aimer, Tom Gummersall pilot, Jack Clemons flight engineer, W H Todd flight engineer , Les Chalcroft navigator, Stuart Anders wireless operator, Eric Baldwin and Wally Bradbury air gunners'. Provides details and experiences of operations to Walcheren Island, a 4000 lb cookie falling out of bomb-bay of parked aircraft, engaging night fighters on operation to Giessen. Experiences on operation of Politz. Includes citation for Distinguished Fly Cross for Tom Gummersall and a list of their 33 operations. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Baldwin E Gummersall T Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1943 1944 1945 1944-09-26 1944-10 1944-10-06 1944-10-07 1944-10-11 1944-10-14 1944-10-15 1944-10-19 1944-10-20 1944-10-23 1944-11-06 1944-11-07 1944-11-11 1944-11-12 1944-11-16 1944-11-21 1944-11-22 1944-11-26 1944-11-27 1944-12-04 1944-12-05 1944-12-06 1944-12-07 1944-12-08 1944-12-27 1944-12-30 1944-12-31 1945-01-01 1945-01-13 1945-01-14 1945-01-14 1945-01-15 1945-01-16 1945-01-17 1945-02-01 1945-02-92 1945-02-02 1945-02-03 1945-02-14 1945-02-15 1945-02-19 1945-02-20 1945-02-21 1945-02-22 1945-02-24 1945-03-05 1945-03-96 1945-03-07 1945-03-08 1945-03-11 1945-03-16 1945-03-17 1945-04-04 1945-04-06 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire Czech Republic Czech Republic--Děčín Germany Germany--Mittelland Canal Germany--Düren (Cologne) Germany--Karlsruhe Netherlands Netherlands--Walcheren Germany--Giessen (Hesse) Netherlands--Vlissingen Germany--Braunschweig Germany--Nuremberg Germany--Mittelland Canal Germany--Harburg (Landkreis) Germany--Steinfurt (North Rhine-Westphalia) Norway Norway--Trondheim Germany--Munich Germany--Heilbronn Germany--Giessen (Hesse) Germany--Euskirchen Germany--Rheydt Belgium Belgium--Wallonia Poland Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie) Germany--Meersburg Czech Republic Czech Republic--Most Germany--Siegen Germany--Altenburg (Thuringia) Germany--Leipzig Germany--Essen Germany--Würzburg Germany--Nordhausen (Thuringia) Netherlands--IJmuiden Scotland--Moray Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Australian Air Force 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 Twenty-two page printed document Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context EBaldwinER-GummersallTBaldwinER-GummersallTv1 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 Steve Baldwin 467 Squadron 5 Group air gunner aircrew anti-aircraft fire bomb aimer bomb dump bomb struck bombing up Distinguished Flying Cross flight engineer Fw 190 ground crew ground personnel incendiary device intelligence officer Lancaster master bomber Mosquito navigator Pathfinders pilot RAF Lossiemouth RAF Waddington Scarecrow searchlight Spitfire wireless operator https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/107/1042/EGrayHMGray[Wi]440628.pdf e75077450668c64b98e07427fea214ba 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 Gray, Herbert H M Gray Bertie Gray Description An account of the resource 13 items. The collection relates to the career of Sergeant Herbert M Gray (1593562 Royal Air Force), It contains his log book, three photographs, a handwritten account of his first flight, six letters he wrote to his wife between 28 June 1944 and 6 August 1944, and his medal ribbons. Herbert Gray was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron at RAF Elsham Wolds. The collection was donated by his daughter Ann M Gregory and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-07-26 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 Gray, HM Transcribed document A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document (4.) No. 12 [inserted] 7 [/inserted] Sergeants Mess, RAF Elsham Wolds, 28.6.44 So Win wants to know what it feels like to go on a bombing raid. No doubt she will have seen the scenes on the News films of the raid on La Havre. [sic] Well I took part in that raid which was my first “day-light” although it was almost dusk by the time we were over the target area. That would give her a pretty fair idea of what the target area looks like when the bombs are bursting across it and also of what the flack looks like as it is pumped up into the sky. However, as we usually operate in the hours of darkness perhaps I had better try to give a picture of what it feels like under those conditions. - Continued on p.5 [page break] 5. [inserted] 7 [/inserted] After a trip or two one soon ceases to experience any special emotion at being told, perhaps in the morning, that one is on “ops” that coming night. Except perhaps a feeling of relief to think that we shall soon have completed another trip which will be one nearer our 30 for our tour. Briefing usually provokes a feeling of excitement, relief or apprehension according to the target and our route out and back. Even this feeling is of brief duration and one is soon too busy with the many pre-flight matters to have a thought for what lies ahead. From take off to shortly before we arrive at the target area I am very busy indeed at my various tasks so again there is no time for idle thoughts. This is a great blessing and helps a lot. However about 10 minutes before we are due at the target area my job is to do nothing but stand beside the pilot and use my eyes to see anything and everything which is to be seen on my side of the kite. For we must be on the look out that we do not collide with any of the many friendly bombers we know are surrounding us; that there is not one immediately above to drop its load of bombs on us, nor one below for the same reason; that there are no enemy fighters in the offing; to locate searchlights and flack bursts in the sky. In front of us we can see literally [page break] 6. hundreds of searchlights probing the sky with their slender fingers. Our target, we know, lies right in the middle of these and it seems impossible that we could fly through without being picked up. We see that already a few Lancs. have been picked up and are now in the centre of a collosal [sic] cone of slowly moving searchlights. This is bad for them but good for us as it means that fewer searchlights are looking for us. In the distance we see the flack coming up and bursting looking like so many pretty fire works but it is bursting right on our line of flight. Then we realise that flack is bursting all around us but it now looks more like a puff of white smoke when it bursts (in daylight the smoke looks jet black!). One thinks of those near and dear ones at home and says a prayer for them. For oneself one only prays for courage and that “God’s will be done”. [sic] I think at these times I am afraid not of death, but of not being dead if we are hit. I rehearse in my mind what I must do if any of the engines, fuel tanks, etc. are hit and pray that I may make no mistakes. I measure with my mind just how long it will take me to fit my parachute and leave the plane if the skipper ever had to give the order – and I reckon I could do it in 3 to 4 seconds. But afraid I am as I think we all are to a greater or lesser degree. After what seems like years we hear the skipper asking the bomb aimer if he [page break] 7. [inserted] 7 [/inserted] wants the bomb doors opening. Although we can now plainly see the target illuminated in the light of the first bombs to fall upon it the bomb-aimer quietly replies, “Not yet Skip”. More years go by and then the bomb doors are opened and eventually we hear the bomb-aimer say “Bombs going ….”. What an age it seems after that before we hear him say, “Bombs gone. Bomb-doors shut”. During this while we have felt the kite shudder, almost as if some huge hand was banging up underneath the kite, as our rain of death leaves the gaping maw of the bomb bay and goes cascading down. We are still among the searchlights and the flack somehow feel amazed that we have passed through so much of it and been neither hit nor picked up in those revealing beams of light. Our fear changes, I think, at this point to a kind of anxiety lest the good fortune which has attended us so far through the worst of the carnage should now forsake us. The ever alert eyes of our gunners discern the shadowy shape of an enemy fighter and a sharp order sends the plane diving, climbing and twisting away into the night. Perhaps because the fighter never managed to get into a [page break] 8. position to open fire before loosing sight of us accounts for the fact that we have not felt afraid at least not like we were over the target. Once the enemy coast has been left well behind we all, I think, heave a big sigh of relief though we remain as vigilant as ever for there is always the danger of that lurking fighter which may strike at any time even when we are at last circling our home base. It is strange perhaps that one of the most loathed sensations on an “op” is one to which attached very little if any, real danger. That is getting into the slip-stream of a kite in front (= very rough air created by passage of aircraft). This has to be experienced to be believed – it can be awful, even “George” the automatic pilot, cannot cope with it. Something else which has to be experienced to be believed is the unbelievable sweetness and warmth of that cup of coffee from our flask after crossing our coast – home. That is the picture as far as any poor pen can draw it. Love to you all. May God bless and keep you. Darling, yours always and absolutely, [underlined] Bertie [/underlined] P.S. Thanks again for your letter Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Letter to his wife from Herbert Gray. No. 12 Description An account of the resource Starts with suggestion that a recent news film of daylight operation to Le Havre, which he was on, gives a good idea of what bombing is like. However as most of his operations were at night he goes on to describe these. Describes emotions and preparations for a typical operation. Provides a detailed description of activities, fears, emotions and activities. Includes looking out for other aircraft on run up to target, describes searchlights and anti-aircraft fire, the wait for bomb release, engagement by night fighters and crew response. Describes most loathed sensation as being caught in another aircraft’s slipstream and delights of welcome cup of coffee when crossing English coast. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bertie Gray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1944-06-28 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Five page handwritten letter Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Correspondence Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context EGrayHMGray[Wi]440628 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire Atlantic Ocean--English Channel France--Le Havre France Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1944-06 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Andy Hamilton anti-aircraft fire bombing faith fear Lancaster military ethos military service conditions RAF Elsham Wolds searchlight https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/201/10044/BBaileyJDBaileyJDv1.pdf 3a146f510c94f18f8643a8ac43ad6772 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bailey, John Derek John Derek Bailey Bill Bailey John D Bailey John Bailey J D Bailey J Bailey Description An account of the resource 17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Derek "Bill" Bailey (b. 1924, 1583184 and 198592 Royal Air Force) service material, nine photographs, a memoir and his log book. He flew a tour of operations as a bomb aimer with 103 and 166 Squadrons from RAF Elsham Wolds and RAF Kirmington. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Bailey and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-12-07 2017-01-13 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bailey, JD Transcribed document A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document [centred] “WAS IT ALL A DREAM” [/centred] [centred] The Memories of a Wartime Bomb Aimer Bill Bailey with No. 1 Group Bomber Command February 1942 to April 1947 These things really happened. I now have difficulty in remembering what I did yesterday but happenings of Fifty-odd years ago seem crystal clear, or Was it all a dream? [/centred] [page break] Chapter 1. Enlistment – Royal Air Force Training Command. The story begins on 2 February, 1942, my 18th. Birthday, when I rushed off to the recruiting office in Leicester and enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as potential aircrew. Being a founder member cadet (No. 6) of 1461 Squadron Air Training Corps was a help. I passed the various medicals, etc[sic] and was sent to the aircrew attestation centre in Birmingham for the various tests for acceptance as aircrew. Like most others I wanted to be a pilot but on the day I attended I think they had that day’s quota of pilots. It was said my eyesight was not up to pilot standard but I could be a navigator. I was said to have a ‘convergency’ problem and would probably try to land an aircraft about ten feet off the deck.. I was duly accepted for Navigator training. The procedure was then to be sent home, attend ATC parades regularly and await further instructions. This was known as ‘deferred service’ and with it came a letter of welcome to the Royal Air Force, from the Secretary of State for Air, at that time Sir Archibald Sinclair, and the privilege of wearing a white flash in my ATC cadet’s forage cap which denoted the wearer was u/t (under training) aircrew. So it was that on the 27 July 1942 I was commanded to report for service at the Aircrew Reception Centre at Lords Cricket Ground, St. Johns Wood, London. I was now 1583184 AC2 Bailey, J.D., rate of pay two shillings and sixpence per day. We were billeted in blocks of flats adjacent to Regents Park and fed in a vary[sic] large underground car park at one of the blocks or in the restaurant at London Zoo. Talk about feeding time at the Zoo!! A hectic three weeks followed, issue of uniforms and equipment, dental treatment, numerous jabs, endless square bashing - the ATC training helped. Lectures on this, that and everything including the dreaded effects of [page break] VD, the latter shown in glorious Technicolor at the Odeon Cinema, Swiss Cottage. Not that this was of much consequence at that time because we were reliably informed that plenty of bromide was put in the tea. One day on first parade I and one other lad from my Flight were called out by the Flight Corporal, a sadistic sod, who informed us we had volunteered to give a pint of blood. Apparently we had an unusual blood group and some was required for what purpose I have never really understood. Having completed the aforementioned necessities it was a question of what to do with us next. The next stage of training was to be ITW (Initial Training Wing). but there was congestion in the supply line from ACRC to the ITW’s so a “holding unit” (this term will crop up from time to time) had been established at Ludlow and it was to there that we went. Ludlow consisted of three Wings in tented accommodation and was progressively developed into a more permanent establishment by the cadets passing through, using their civilian life skills. We were allowed (officially) one night in three off camp so as not to flood the pubs, of which there were many, with RAF bods, and cause mayhem in the town. Four weeks were spent at Ludlow. It was said to be a toughening up course and it was certainly that. Next stop from Ludlow was to an ITW. Most ITW’s were located in seaside towns with the sea front hotels having been requisitioned by the Air Ministry. In my case I was posted to No.4 ITW at Paignton, Devon where I was to spend the next twelve weeks living in the Hydro Hotel, right on the seafront near the harbour. Twelve weeks of intensive ground training. At the end of this period I was at the peak [handwritten in margin] followed (needs a verb[?]) [/handwritten in margin] [page break] of fitness and having passed my exams was promoted LAC – pay rise to seven shillings a day. One of the subjects covered at ITW was the Browning .303 machine gun and I well remember the first lecture on this weapon when a Corporal Armourer giving the lecture delivered his party piece which went as follows: “This is the Browning .303 machine gun which works by recoil action. When the gun is fired the bullet nips smartly up the barrel, hotley [sic] pursued by the gases …”. Applause please! Another subject learned was the Morse Code and here again the training in the ATC stood me in good stead. The next phase would be flying training, but when and where? On New Years[sic] Day 1943 we were posted from Paignton to yet another ‘holding unit’ at Brighton. The move from the English Riviera to Brighton was like going to the North Pole. At Brighton we were billeted in the Metropole Hotel. More lectures, square bashing and boredom, until, after about three weeks, on morning parade it was announced that a new aircrew category of Airbomber had been created and any u/t Navigators who volunteered would be guaranteed a quick posting and off to Canada for training. Needless to say, yours truly stepped forward and within a week had been posted to Heaton Park, Manchester which was an enormous transit camp for u/t aircrew leaving the UK for Canada, Rhodesia or America for training. They used to say it always rains in Manchester and it certainly did continuously whilst I was there. Anyone who has seen the film “Journey Together” will have seen a departure parade at Heaton Park in pouring rain. I am told that on the day that film was shot it was fine and the fire service had to make the rain. Sods Law I suppose! [page break] Chapter II. Canada – The Empire Air Training Scheme. Next, after a farewell meal of egg and chips (In 1943 a delicacy), and a few words from the C in C Training Command, it was off to Glasgow to board the “Andes” for our trip to Canada. The ‘Andes’ was said to be jinx ship in port. She didn’t let us down. In the Clyde she dropped anchor to swing the compass and when she tried to up anchor a submarine cable was wrapped around it. After a couple of days we finally left the Clyde and I endured six days of seasickness before arriving in Halifax, Nova Scotia and then to yet another enormous transit camp at Moncton, New Brunswick where we enjoyed food that we had not seen in the UK since the start of food rationing. It was in a restaurant in Moncton that I had my very first ‘T’ Bone steak. The first task at Moncton was issue of cold weather kit to cope with the Canadian winter and Khaki Drill to cope with the very hot Canadian summer. We were at this time in the middle of the winter and colder than I had ever experienced before.. The next stop should have been to a Bombing & Gunnery School but before that there had to be the inevitable ‘holding unit’. So it was off to Carberry, Manitoba, five or six days on a troop train, days spent seeing nothing but trees, frozen lakes, the occasional trace of habitation and the odd trappers cabin. At intervals on the journey across Canada, people were taken off the train suffering from Scarlet Fever. It was believed that this disease came from the troopships. As we passed through Winnipeg on our journey, for the first time we were allowed off the train and as we went from the platform to the station concourse we were greeted with bands playing a huge welcome from the good people of Winnipeg. They had in Winnipeg the “Airmens Club” and an invitation to visit if there on leave. They [page break] had a wonderful system of people who would welcome RAF chaps into their homes for a few days or a weekend when on leave. This was to stand me in good stead as you will hear later. Shortly after arrival at Carberry I fell victim to Scarlet Fever and spent five weeks in isolation hospital at Brandon after which I and a fellow sufferer by the name of Peter Caldwell had two weeks sick leave in Winnipeg and the Airmens Club arranged for us to stay with an English family. Wonderful hospitality. The Canadians were wonderful hosts to the Royal Air Force. Carberry and Brandon were, of course, on the Canadian Prairies and whilst in hospital at Brandon, one night and day there was a terrible dust storm and despite the usual Canadian double glazing, everywhere inside the hospital was covered in black dust. This is probably of little interest but to me at the time was an amazing phenomenom. Now it was back to reality and a posting to 31 Bombing & Gunnery School at Picton, Ontario. A two day journey by train around the North Shore of Lake Superior to Toronto and Belleville and then twenty plus miles down a dirt road to Picton. The airfield still exists, on high ground, overlooking the town on the shores of Lake Ontario. The bombing targets were moored out in the lake and air gunnery practice took place out over the lake. The weather during this spell was very hot and flying was limited to a period from very early morning until midday. Canadian built Ansons were used for bombing practice and Bolingbrokes, which were Canadian built Blenheims, were used for air to air gunnery practice. The target drogues were towed by Lysanders. Nothing outstanding took place at Picton except perhaps for our passing out party which we held in Belleville. In my case, being full of Canadian rye whisky of the [page break] bootleg variety I literally passed out and for many years afterwards could not even stand the smell of strong spirits. Having recovered from the passing out the next stop was No. 33 Air Navigation School, RAF Mount Hope, Hamilton. Ontario. Mount Hope is now Hamilton Airport. Navigation training in Ansons was fairly uneventful and ended with us receiving our Sergeants stripes and the coveted “O” brevet. (Known to all as the flying arsehole) The “O” brevet was soon to be replaced with brevets more appropriate to the trade of the wearer, ie “B” for Airbombers, “N” for Navigators, etc. Next it was back to Moncton for the return to the UK. The return voyage was on the ‘Mauritania’ where there were only 50 sergeant aircrew who were to act as guards on the ship which was transporting a large number of American troops. O/c. Troops on the ship was a Royal Air Force Squadron Leader. To our amazement when the Americans boarded the ship they had no idea where they were going. Most seemed to think they were going to Iceland and when we told them Liverpool was our destination they could not believe it. We were asked where we picked up the convoy and when we told them we did not go in convoy this caused a great deal of consternation. All the troopships going back and forth between the UK and North America were too fast to be in convoys and fast zig zag runs were made across the Atlantic. It was very long odds against the likelihood of encountering a U Boat.. Having safely arrived in Liverpool our next temporary home was yet another ‘holding unit’. [page break] Chapter III. Flying Training Command. This time it was the Grand Hotel in Harrogate overlooking the famous Valley Gardens. The RAF had taken over both the Grand and Majestic Hotels. Sadly the Grand has now gone. I rcall our CO at the Grand was Squadron Leader L E G Ames the England cricketer. Time at Harrogate awaiting posting was filled by swimming, drill, the usual time filling lectures, etc. We did, of course, get what was known as disembarkation leave. I went home and whilst there my granddad, with whom I had always had a very close relationship, took ill and died at the age of 85 and I was very grateful that I had been able to talk to him and to attend the funeral. Christmas was spent at Harrogate, there being a ban on service travel during the Christmas period. On, I believe, Boxing Day, Maxie Booth and myself were in Harrogate, fed up and far from home, when we were approached by a chap who asked if we were doing anything that night, to which we replied “No”. He then said he was having a small party at home that night and had two Air Ministry girls billeted wit6h his family and would we like to join them. We readily accepted and when we arrived at the party we found that one of the girls was Maxie’s cousin. Small world! Still at Harrogate on my birthday 2 February, now at the ripe old age of 20. My room mates contrived to get me very drunk. I will spare you the details. After a short time we were posted to Kirkham, Lancs to yet another holding unit, for a couple of weeks and then onward to Penrhos, North Wales, 9(O) Advanced Flying Unit for bombing practice. We were using Ansons and 10lb practice bombs. In Canada the Ansons had hydraulic undercarriages but at Penrhos they were Mk1 Ansons and it was the Bombaimers job to wind up the undercarriage by hand. A hell [page break] of a lot of turns on the handle – not much fun. Next move was to Llandwrog, Nr. Caernarvon for the Navigation part of the Course. Same aircraft flying on exercises mainly over the Irish Sea, N. Ireland, Isle of Man, etc. Llandwrog is now Caernarvon airport with an interesting small museum. [handwritten in margin] museum since closed [handwritten in margin]. Llandwrog was unusual in that the airfield and our living site were below sea level, a dyke between us and the Irish Sea. Because of this there was no piped water or drainage on our site and it was necessary to carry a ‘small pack’ and do our ablutions at the main domestic site which was above sea level. I, and a pal or two went into Caernarvon for a weekend in the Prince of Wales Hotel to get a bit of a civilised existence for a change. However our stay at Llandwrog was quite brief. The 1st. March 1944 was very significant in that it marked the move from Flying Training Command to Bomber Command. 83 Operational Training Unit at Peplow in Shropshire. Never heard of Peplow? Neither had I, it is a few miles North of Wellington. [handwritten in margin] Peplow was formerly Childs Ercall – renamed to avoid conflict with High Ercall airfield, nearby, I understood. [handwritten in margin] We arrived by train at Peplow, in the dark, station ‘lit’ by semi blacked out gas lamps. Arriving at Peplow were Pilots, Navigators, Bombaimers, Wireless Operators and Gunners from different training establishments. Somehow, the next day, we sorted ourselves out into crews of six, Pilot, Nav, Bombaimer, W/Op and two gunners and were ready to start the business of Operational flying as a bomber crew.. We had never met each other before but were to spend the next few months living together, flying together and relying on each other, and developing a unique comradeship.. Peplow was notable for several things. From our living site, the nearest Pub was five miles in any direction. Having twice walked in different directions to prove the [page break] mileage we quickly acquired pushbikes. At that time there were no sign posts. One night doing ‘circuits and bumps’ in a Wellington we were in the ’funnel’ on the approach to the runway, skipper put the flaps down and the aircraft started to make a turn to port which he could not control. He ordered me to pull up the flaps and he then regained control. We then climbed to a respectable height and skip asked me to lower the flaps. The same thing happened again, an uncontrollable turn to port and quickly losing height. Flaps pulled up and normal service resumed. Skip then got permission from Air Traffic to make a flapless landing which he managed without running out of runway. We taxied back to dispersal and on inspection found that when the flaps were lowered only the port side flaps came down. Apparently a tie rod between port and starboard must have come apart. Could have been nasty! On a lighter note, when cycling back to camp from Wellington one night I had a problem with the lights on my bike and was stopped by P.C Plod and booked for riding a bike without lights. Fined 10 shillings. Another incident clearly imprinted on my mind was one day in class we were being given a lecture on the dinghy radio. I had heard all about the dinghy radio so many times I could almost recite it. I was sitting on the back row in class and I put my head back against the wall and must have dropped off. Suddenly a piece of chalk hit the wall at the side of my head. I awoke with a start and the guy giving the lecture (A Flying Officer) said, “I suppose Sergeant, you know all about dinghy radio”. To which I foolishly replied “Yes Sir”. He then said “In that case you can come out and continue the lecture”. Even more foolishly I did. When finished I was asked to stay behind to receive an almighty bollocking for being a smartarse. Finally whilst at Peplow a young lady I met in Wellington gave me a red scarf for [page break] luck and after that my crew would never let me fly without it. We were now getting down to the serious business of preparing for actual operations and on the 24.5.44 we were despatched on an actual operation which was known as a ‘nickel’ raid, leaflet dropping over France, a place called ‘Criel’. 4 hours 35 minutes airborne in a Wellington bomber. [Where is chapter IV?] Chapter V. No. 1 Group Bomber Command. On the 26th. June we were on the move again, ever nearer to being on an operational Squadron in Bomber Command. This was to 1667 Conversion Unit at Sandtoft where we were to convert to four engine aircraft ‘Halifaxes’. These were Halifax II & V which were underpowered and notoriously unreliable and had been withdrawn from front line service. In fact Sandtoft was affectionately known as ‘Prangtoft’ because of the large number of flying accidents. One of my pals from Harrogate days, Harry Fryer, got the chop in a Halifax that crashed near Crowle. So that I do not give any wrong ideas, let me say, the Halifax III with radial engines was a superb aircraft and equipped No. 4 Goup. It was here at Sandtoft that we acquired the seventh member of our crew, a Flight Engineer, straight from RAF St. Athan and never having been airborne. We obviously survived ‘Prangtoft’ and then moved on the 22 July to LFS (Lancaster Finishing School) at Hemswell, which supplied crews to No. 1 Group, Bomber Command, which was the largest main force group flying Lancasters. We were only two weeks at Hemswell, the sole object being to familiaise[sic] with the [page break] Queen of the skies, the LANCASTER. A beautiful aeroplane, very reliable, able to fly easily with two dead engines on one side, and to withstand considerable battle damage and still remain airborne. Chapter VI. The Tour of Operations. 103 Squadron. Now for the real thing. On the 10th August we joined 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds, in North Lincolnshire. At this point I should like to introduce our crew: P/O George Knott. Pilot & Skipper. F/Sgt. Ron Archer. Navigator. F/Sgt. Bill Bailey. Bombaimer. F/Sgt. Gus Leigh. Wireless Opeator. F/Sgt. Wally Williams. Flight Engineer. F/Sgt. Jock Greig. Midupper Gunner. F/Sgt. Paddy Anderson. Rear Gunner. After a bit more training we eventually embarked on our first operation on the 29th,. August. I now propose to go through our complete tour of Operations as recorded in my flying log book and other documents. Before doing that perhaps I should give an insight into Squadron procedure. We were accommodated in nissen huts on dispersed sites in the vicinity of the airfield, two Crews to a hut. The huts were sleeping quarters only and were heated by a solid fuel stove in the centre. Bloody cold in the bleak Lincolnshire winter. The messes were on the main domestic site. Every morning (provided there was no call out in the night) [page break] it was to the mess for breakfast, check if there was an Order of Battle and if you were on it. If not, we made our way to the flight offices and section leaders. I would go to the Bombing Leader’s office where we would review the previous operation and look at target photographs. Releasing the bombs over the target also activated a camera which took line overlap pictures from the release point to impact on the ground.. We would then return to the mess to await the next orders or perhaps take an aircraft on air test, although after ‘D’ day this practice was discontinued because the aircraft were kept bombed up in a state readiness. Temporarily at least Bomber Command was being used in a close support role to assist the Armies in France. When a Battle Order was issued, the nominated crews assembled in the briefing room at the appointed time and when everyone was present the doors were closed and guarded. On a large wall map of Europe in front of us was a red tape snaking across the map from Base to the designated target. The length of the tape dictated the reaction of the assembled company. Pilots, Navigators and Bombaimers did their pre-flight planning prepared maps and charts ready to go. Each crew member received a small white bag into which he emptied his pockets of everything. The seven bags were then put into one larger bag and handed to the intelligence office until our return. We, in turn, were given our ‘escape kits’ and flying rations. The escape kit was for use in the event of being shot down and trying to evade capture and return to England. We also carried passport size photographs which might enable resistance workers in occupied countries to get us fake identity documents. Phrase cards, compass, maps and currency notes were also included. The flying rations issued were mainly chocolate bars (very valuable at that time) also ‘wakey wakey pills’, caffeine tablets to be taken on the skipper’s orders. All ready to go. Collect parachutes, get into the crew buses and be ferried out to the [page break] Dispersals A visual check round the aircraft and then climb aboard. Start engines when ordered, close bomb doors, complete preflight checks and taxi to the end of the runway. The airfield controller’s cabin was located at the side of the runway and on a green lamp from him, open the throttles and roll. We were on our way. The Lancaster had an all up weight for take-off of 66000 lbs and needed the full runway, into wind, for a safe take-off. The maximum bomb load on a standard Lancaster was 7 tons but operating at maximum range the bomb load would be reduced to about 5 tons to accommodate a maximum fuel load. On return from operations, after landing and returning to dispersal, shut down engines, climb down and await transport back to the briefing room for interrogation by intelligence officers. Hot drinks and tot of rum available and back to the mess for the customary egg, bacon and chips.. At this time were confined to camp because of the possibility of being of being[sic] called for short notice operations. THE TOUR OF OPERATIONS. No. 1 29.8.44 Target – STETTIN. Checked Battle Order to find our crew allocated to PM-N. Briefing for night attack on the Baltic Port of Stettin. Bomb load mainly incendieries.[sic] The route took us across the North Sea, over Northern Denmark, S.W. Sweden and then due South into the target, bomb and turn West to cross Denmark and the North Sea back to base. The force consisted of 402 Lancasters and 1 Mosquito of 1,3,6,& 8 Groups. It was a very successful attack and 23 Lancasters were lost. We suffered no damage from anti-aircraft fire and saw no fighters. Whilst crossing Sweden there was [page break] a certain amount of what was called friendly flak, shells bursting at about 10,000 ft whilst we were flying at 18000 ft This was my first sight of a target and something I shall never forget, smoke, flames, bombbursts, searchlights, anti-aircraft fire. It was also very tiring having been airborne for 9 hours 25 minutes and flown some 2000 miles. Used full quota of ‘wakey wakey’ pills. No. 2. 31.8.44. Target .Flying Bomb launch site. AGENVILLE France. Daylight attack, Master Bomber controlled This was one of several targets to be attacked in Northern France. Seemed like a piece of cake after the long trip to Stettin. Not so! We were briefed to bomb from 10,000 ft on the Master Bomber’s instructions. On approaching the target area there was 10/10 cloud and the call from the Master Bomber went like this: “Main Force – descent to 8,000ft and bomb on red TI’s (Target indicators). – no opposition” We descended to 8,000ft and immediately we broke cloud there were shells bursting around us, Fortunately dead ahead was the target and I called for bomb doors open and started the bombing run.. At the appropriate point I pressed the bomb release and nothing happened. A quick look revealed no lights on the bombing panel. Whilst I was checking the main fuse the rear gunner was calling “We are on fire Skip – there is smoke streaming past me” The ‘smoke’ proved to be hydraulic fluid which was vaporising. We climbed back into cloud and assessed the situation. Whilst in cloud we experienced severe icing and with the pitot head frozen we lost instruments which meant skip had no way of knowing the attitude[?] of the aircraft and for the one and only time in my flying career, we were ordered to prepare to abandon aircraft and I put on my parachute pack. However we emerged from cloud and normal service was resumed. We had no [page break] electrics, no hydraulics, bomb doors open and a full load of bombs still on board Skip decided to head for base via a North Sea designated dropping zone where I could jettison the bombs safely. This was accompanied by going back along the fuselage and using a highly technical piece of kit, a piece of wire with a hook on the end, pushing it down through a hole about each bomb carrier and tripping the release mechanism. Having got rid of the bombs it was back to base, crossing the coast at a spot where we should not have been and risking being shot at by friendly Ack Ack gunners. We arrived back at base some one and a half hours late. Now for the tricky bit. The undercarriage, in the absence of hydraulic fluid, had to be blown down by compressed air. This was an emergency procedure and could only be tried once, a now or never situation. Now we have to make a flapless landing and hope that the landing gear is locked down and does not collapse when we land. Not being able to use flaps means the landing speed is greater than normal and then we have no brakes. Skip made a super landing but once on the runway could only throttle back and wait for the aircraft to roll to a stop. This it did right at the end of the runway. On inspection after return to dispersal it appeared that a shell or shells had burst very near to the bomb bay and shrapnel had severed hydraulic pipes and electric cables in the bomb bay. I should think we were very close to having been blown to bits. This trip was a little bit sobering to say the least. The aircraft resembled a pepper pot but luckily no one was injured. No. 3 3.9.44 Target Eindhoven Airfield, Holland. Daylight Operation. Allocated to PM-X (N having been severely damaged on our last sortie) A straight forward attack on the airfield, one of six airfields in Southern Holland [page break] attacked by.675 aircraft a mixture of 348 Lancasters and 315 Halifaxes and 12 Mosquitoes, all very successful raids and only one Halifax lost. This was my first experience of the ‘Oboe’ target marking system now used by Pathfinders flying Mosquitoes.. A very accurate system – the markers were right in the middle of the runway intersections. Very impressive. No.4 5.9.44. Target – Defensive positions around LE HAVRE. Aircraft allocated PM-W. Bomb load 15,000 lbs High Explosives. Daylight operation. This attack was in support of Canadian troops who were demanding the surrender of the German garrison. The first phase of Lancasters orbited the target awaiting the outcome. This was negative and the attack took place. In clear visibility our riming point was 2000 yards in front of the Canadian troops and the area around the aiming point was completely destroyed. No.5 10.9.44 Target – LE HAVRE again. Daylight operation. Aircraft allocated PM-E Bomb load 15000 lbs High Explosive. Daylight operation. 992 aircraft attacked 8 difference German strongpoints only yards in front of Canadian troops. All were bombed accurately. No aircraft were lost. No.6 12.9.44. Target FRANKFURT. Night operation. Aircraft allocated PM-G. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries. This was an unusual operation in that we were one of several crews who were briefed to bomb 5 minutes ahead of main force, identifying the aiming point ourselves. The [page break] object was to occupy the defences whilst the pathfinders went in low to mark the aiming point for main force. Our route to target took us South into France, near Strasbourg and then a turn North East towards Frankfurt. Our navigator Ron at some point realised we were well off track because he was getting wrong positions due to distortion of the ‘Gee chain’, wither by jamming or almost out of range. As well as being bombaimer I was also the H2S radar operator and so I switched this on to try to verify our position I managed to identify Mannheim on the screen and was then able, with Ron, to fix a course to the target. As we approached the target there were hundreds of searchlights but instead of combing the sky they were laid along the ground in the direction of our track. It took a few minutes to realise that what they were doing was putting a carpet of light on the ground so that any fighters above us would have us silhouetted against the light. Gunners be extra vigilant! I dropped the bombs and we headed for base without incident. Intelligence reports said it was a very successful attack. No. 7 17.9.44 Target Ammunition Dump at THE HAGUE, Holland Daylight. Aircraft allocated PM-B, Bomb load 15000lbs Gen. Purpose bombs. This attack by 27 Lancasters of 103 Squadron only and was carried out without loss. No. 8 24.9.44. Target CALAIS. Close support for the Army. Daylight. Allocated aircraft PM-B Bomb load 15000 lbs GP Bombs. 103 & 576 Squadrons were chosen to attack this target, gun emplacements, at low level (2000 ft) in the interests of accuracy. The weather was atrocious, almost as soon as we got off the runway we were in cloud. However we set course for Calais flying [page break] at around 1000 ft so as to keep the ground in view. As we approached the Channel the cloud lifted a bit and we were able to climb to 2000 ft but as we approached the target the cloud base lowered again and we had to descend again to 1000 ft for the bombing run. A we approached the aiming point, I was lying in the nose and could see everything on the ground. And being in the best position to see what was going on. could see where I thought the worst of the anti-aircraft fire, and indeed small arms fire was coming from.. I therefore ‘suggested’ to skip that when I say “bombs gone” you put her over hard to port and get down on the deck. Bugger the target photograph, we’ll have a picture of the sky! George did this and where we would have been if we had gone straight on whilst the camera operated, were shell bursts. We got out of that unscathed. Of the 27 aircraft that started that attack, one was lost, 8 landed away with various degrees of battle damage and of the remainder only 3 aircraft returned to base undamaged. “B” was one of them. As Ron recorded in his notes “Oppositions – everything”. No. 9 26.9.44. Target Gunsites at Cap Gris Nez Daylight. Allocated aircraft PM-B Bomb load 15000 lbs GP Bombs. This was a highly concentrated and successful attack with very little opposition. Obtained a very good aiming point photograph. No. 10 27,9,44. We were briefed to bomb in the Calais area again on 27th. Sept but this operation was aborted due to the bombsight being unserviceable. This ended our operational career at 103 Squadron. Only two of our operations had been at night. Ourselves and one other crew from ‘A’ flight were transferred to 166 Squadron at [page break] Kirmington, one of the three stations forming 13 Base, to form a new ‘A’ flight at 166.Squadron. As a matter of interest, Kirmington is now South Humberside Airport. Before moving on to the next phase I should explain that operational aircrew were given six days leave every six weeks which will explain some of the gaps in the story. Chapter VII. The Tour of Operations. 166 Squadron. 166 Squadron, Kirmington, Lincs. When we arrived at Kirmington we were allocated a hut on a dispersed site in Brocklesby Wood, about as far as could be from the airfield. Primitive living arrangements, but not too far from the Sergeants Mess. By now we were no longer confined to camp and “liberty buses” were run from camp to Grimsby and Scunthorpe. Most of us used to go to ‘Sunny Scunny’ where there was a cinema two well known pubs, The Bluebell and The Oswald, the latter became known as 1 Group Headquarters. This establishment had a large function room with a [page break] minutes after other aircraft had set course. We took part on second aiming point and catching up 20 minutes on round trip landed No.3 back at base. No. 14 28.10.44 Target COLOGNE Allocated aircraft AS-D Bomb Load 1 x 4000 lb Cookie plus incendiaries. Daylight operation. 733 aircraft despatched to devastate residential areas in NW of the City There was heavy flak opposition and our aircraft suffered some minor damage A piece of shrapnel came through the Perspex dome in front of me whilst I was crouched over the bombsight It hit me on the shoulder on my parachute harness but did me no harm. This was a very good operation as ordered. No. 15 29.10.44. Target Gunsites at DOMBURG. Walcheren Island, Holland. Allocated aircraft AS-M Bomb Load 15000 lbs HE. Daylight attack. 6 aircraft from 166 squadron together with 19 others attacked 4 aiming points. All were accurately bombed. There was no opposition. No. 16 30.10.44. Target COLOGNE, Night operation. Allocated aircraft AS-K Bomb Load 1x4000lb Cookie plus 9000 lbs HE. No. 1 Group was assigned to attack aiming point which was not successfully attacked on 28th. October. Over the target there was clear visibility, moderate flak opposition. This was considered to have been a very good attack. It was on this operation, whilst we were on the bombing run an aircraft exploded ahead of us. At least I believe it was an aircraft although the Germans used a device which we called a “scarecrow”. This was a pyrotechnic device which exploded to [page break] simulate an exploding aircraft. Presumable meant to put the frighteners on us! On the 31,.10.44 we were again briefed to attack Cologne but having climbed to operating height a crew check by the Skipper revealed that Paddy our rear gunner was unconscious in his turret. Gus, wireless op went back and pulled him from the turret and onto the rest bed in the centre of the aircraft. He fitted him up with a portable oxygen bottle and skip made the decision to abort and return to base where an ambulance was waiting to whisk paddy[sic] off to sick bay. Apparently the problem had been a trapped oxygen pipe in the turret. We had been airborne for 2hrs 15 mins. To depart for the moment from the tour of operations, it was about this time when I developed at[sic] rash on my face which turned to a weeping eczema which meant that I could not shave and I had to report sick. The Doc took a look and said, “OK You’re grounded”. I replied “You can’t do that Doc, my crew will have to take a spare bombaimer and I shall have to complete my tour with other crews”. After pleading my case Doc agreed to allow me to continue flying provided each time before flying I reported to Sick Quarters and had a dressing put on my face so that I could wear my oxygen mask. The Doc was treating me with various creams which had little or no effect until one day the WAAF medical orderly who applied the treatment said to the Doc “Why don’t we try a starch poultice”. The Doc suggested that was an old wives remedy. However as nothing else had worked he agreed to let the Waaf[sic] give it a try. I know not where this young lady learned her skills because I gathered she was a hairdresser in civvie street, in Leicester, my home town. She applied the said poultice and the next day I reported back to sick quarters where she removed the poultice and whatever was clinging to it. I went back to our hut and very carefully shaved. The starch poultice had done the trick. I thought frostbite had probably caused the [page break] problem in the first place but I was to learn some months later the real cause which I shall reveal later in the story. No. 17. 2.11.44. Target DUSSELDORF. Night operation. Aircraft allocated AS-C. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie and 9000 lbs HE. “C” Charlie was now to become our regular aircraft, for which we developed a great affection and a very special relationship with the ground crew. 992 aircraft attacked Dusseldorf of which 11 Halifaxes and 8 Lancasters were lost. It was a very heavy and concentrated attack with extensive damage and loss of life. This was the last major Bomber Command raid of the war on Dusseldorf. At about his [this] time friendships were struck up. In my case I was returning from leave and whilst waiting for my train at Lincoln Station to Barnetby (where I had left my bike) I met a Waaf, also returning from leave and who was, surprise, surprise stationed at Kirmington. I asked how she was getting from Barnetby to Kirmington and she said she was walking. No prizes for guessing that she got back to Kirmington on the crossbar of my bike. (No it was not a ladies bike). We became good friends and she along with others, would be standing alongside the airfield controllers cabin at the end of the runway to wave us off on operations. Also at about his [this] time George and Gus acquired friends from the Waaf personnel, one of whom was a telephonist and the other a R/T operator in the control tower. When returning from operations George would call up base as soon as he was able, to get instructions to join the circuit. First to call would get the 1000’ slot and first to land. The procedure then was to make a circuit of the airfield around the ‘drem’ system of lights, report on the downwind leg and again when turning into the funnels on the [page break] approach to the runway. We would then be given the OK to land or if there was a runway obstruction, go round again. I understand that word was passed to those who wished to know that “Knott’s crew were in the circuit.” No. 18. 4.11.44. Target BOCHUM. Night operation. “C” Charlie. Bomb load. 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 9000lbs HE. 749 aircraft attacked this target. Unusually Halifaxes of 4 Group slightly out numbered Lancasters. 23 Halifaxes and 5 Lancasters were lost. No. 346 (Free French) Squadron, based at Elvington, lost 5 out of its 16 Halifaxes on the raid. Severe damage was caused to the centre of Bochum, particularly the important steelworks. This was the last major raid by Bomber Command on this target It was about at this on return from an operation, I felt the need of a stimulant and so, instead of giving my tot of rum to Jock, I put it into my ovaltine, which curdled and I ended up with something resembling soup and a chastising from Jock for wasting ‘valuable rum’. No. 19. 11.11.44. Target DORTMUND Oil Plant. Night operation. “C” Charlie. Bomb load, 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 9000lb HE. .209 Lancasters, all 1 Group, plus 19 Mosquitoes from 8 Group (Pathfinders) attacked this target. The aiming point was a synthetic oil plant. A local report confirmed that the plant was severely damaged. No aircraft were lost. No. 20 21.11.44. Minelaying Operations in OSLO FJORD Norway. [page break] Aircraft AS-E. Bomb load 6 x 1800 lb Accoustic[sic] and Magnetic Mines. Six Lancasters from 166 Squadron and 6 from 103 Squadron detailed to plant ‘vegetables’ in Oslo Fjord. AS-E to mine a channel half a mile wide, between an island and the mainland. This was to catch U Boats based in the harbour at MANNS. The attack was carried out at low level and required a very accurate bombing run.. It was a major sin to drop mines on land as they were classified Secret This was a highly successful operation with no opposition and no aircraft lost. Time airborne 6hrs 45mins No. 21. 27.11.44. Target “FREIBURG” S.W. Germany. Night operation. “C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries. Freiburg was not an industrial town and had not been bombed by the RAF before. However. No. 1 Group 341 Lancasters, which was maximum effort for the Group, plus 10 Mosquitoes from 8 Group, were called upon to support the French Army in the Strasbourg sector. It is believed the Freiburg was full of German troops. The target was accurately marked using the ‘OBOE’ technique from caravans based in France. 1900 tons of bombs were dropped on the target from 12000 ft in the space of 25 minutes. Casualties on the ground were extremely high. There was little opposition and only one aircraft was lost… On this operation we carried a second pilot as a prelude to his first operation. He Was Charles Martin, a New Zealander and he and his crew were to claim “C” Charlie as their own when Knott’s crew had finished their tour. Martin’s wireless operator was Jim Wright, who now runs 166 Squadron Association and is the author of “On Wings of War”, the history of 166 Squadron. This crew completed their tour on “C” Charlie and the aircraft survived the war. [page break] No. 22. 29.11.44. Target DORTMUND. Daylight operation, “C” Charlie. 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 9000 lbs HE. This was no ordinary operation, 294 Lancasters from 1 Group plus the usual quota of Mosquitoes from 8 Group. At briefing we were told that as Bomber Command had been venturing into Germany and particularly Happy Valley in daylight, and, unlike the Americans, had not been attacked by large numbers of fighters, there was concern that because of our techniques in Bomber Command, each aircraft making its own way to the target in the Bomber stream, we might be very vulnerable to fighter attack. We could not possibly adopt the American system of flying in mass formations and do some boffin somewhere had come up with the ‘brilliant’ idea that we should indulge in gaggle flying. No practice, mind, just – this what you do chaps – get on with it.. The idea was that 3 Lancasters would have their tail fins painted bright yellow and would be the leading ‘Vic’ formation. All other aircraft would take off, find another squadron aircraft and formate on it. Each pair would then pack in together behind the leading ‘vic’ and the lead Navigator would do the navigating with the rest of the force following. The route on the flight plan took us across Belgium crossed the Rhine between Duisburg and Dusseldorf then passing Wuppertal and North East into the target area. All went well until we were approaching the Rhine when the lead navigator realised we were two minutes early. It was important not to be early or we would arrive on target before the pathfinders had done their job. The technique for losing two minutes was to do a two minute ‘dog-leg’. When ordered by the lead nav, this involved doing a 45 degrees starboard turn, two minutes flying, 90 degree port turn, 2 minutes flying, 45 degree starboard turn and we were then back on track. [page break] Unfortunately the apex of the dog-leg took us directly over Dusseldorf, a town which was very heavily defended. All the flak in the world came up, especially among the three lead aircraft and suddenly there were Lancs going in all directions. I actually saw a collision between two aircraft which both spiralled earthwards. Once clear of this shambles we found we were now in the lead and so we continued to the target and there being no markers down, apparently due to bad weather, I followed standard instructions and bombed what I could see. We had suffered slight flak damage but nothing to affect “C” Charlies[sic] flying capabilities and we arrived back at base 5 hours 35 mins after take-off. Six Lancasters were lost. This was our one and only experience of ‘gaggle flying’. No. 23. 4.12.44. Target KARLSRUHE. Night operation. “C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries. The railway marshalling yards were attacked by 535 aircraft. Marking and bombing were accurate and severe damage was caused. A machine tool factory was also destroyed. 1 Lancaster and 1 Mosquito were lost. No. 24. 6.12.44. Target Synthetic Oil Plants “MERSEBERG LEUNA” Nr. Leipzig. “C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000 lb Cookie 6000 lbs mixed HE. 475 Lancasters and 12 Mosquitoes were called upon to destroy Germany’s largest synthetic oil plant following numerous ineffective raids by the U.S. Air Force. This was the first major attack on an oil target in Eastern Germany and was some 500 miles from the bomber bases in England. “C” Charlie and crew were detailed to support pathfinder force (We were now considered to be an experienced crew). This meant we were to attack six minutes before main force. Weather conditions were [page break] very poor and marking was scarce and it was thought the attack was not very effective. However, post raid photographs showed that considerable damage had been caused to the synthetic oil plant and it was later revealed that the plant manager reported that the attack put the plant out of action and the second attack on 14.1.45 was not really necessary. 5 Lancasters were lost. No.25. 12.12.44. Target ESSEN. Night attack. “C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie 10000 lbs HE bombs. This was the last heavy night raid on Essen by 540 aircraft of Bomber Command. Even the Germans paid tribute to the accuracy of the bomb pattern on this raid which was thanks to “OBOE” marking by pathfinder Mosquitoes. 6 Lancasters lost. No. 26. 13.12.44. Target Seamining [?] KATTEGAT. Night operation. “C” Charlie. Bomb load. 6 x 1800 lbs mines. 6 aircraft from 166 Squadron and 6 from 103 Squadron were detailed to lay mines in the Kattegat. This force took off in poor visibility but over the dropping zone the weather was good. On this occasion the mines were to be dropped using the blind bombing technique. I was to use the H2S radar which was a ground mapping radar. The dropping point was a bearing and distance from an identifiable point on the coast which gave a good return on the radar. On reaching the dropping point the pilot had to steer a pre-determined course and I had to release the mines at say, one minute intervals. The H2S screen was photographed so that the intelligence bods back at base could check that the mines had been put down in the right place. In this case – spot on!! We then received a signal from base informing that the weather had [page break] clamped and we were diverted to Lossiemouth. We landed at Lossie having been airborne for 5 hrs 45 mins. At Lossie we were given beds and of course food, with the intention of returning to Kirmington the following morning. The next morning we were given the Ok to return to Kirmington and went out to the aircraft. One engine failed to start and a faulty starter motor was diagnosed. A replacement was to be flown up from Kirmington. There we were dressed in flying kit with no money or toilet requisites and not knowing when the aircraft would be serviceable It certainly would not be today. We managed to secure a bit of cash from accounts and towels, etc from stores. That night Jock and I decided to go out on the town breaking all the rules about being out in public improperly dressed. However we got away with it. On the 17yth. “C” Charlie was serviceable and we were permitted to return to Kirmington. When we joined the circuit we could see Flying Fortresses on our dispersals having been diverted in the day before. The weather was certainly bad in the winter of 44/45.. The Americans crews allowed us to look over their Fortresses and we in turn invited them to look at our Lancaster. Their main interest centred on the Lancaster’s enormous bomb bay compared with their own. 21/12/44/ Seamining BALTIC Night operation. Aircraft AS-H. Bomb load. 5 x 1800 lb mines. This operation was aborted shortly after take-off due to the unserviceability of the H2S which was essential for the accurate laying of the mines. The visibility at base was very poor and we were given permission for one attempt at landing and if unsuccessful we were to divert to Carnaby in Yorkshire which was one of three diversion airfields with very long runways and overshoot facilities. We therefore [page break] jettisoned fuel to reduce the landing weight and made the approach. The airfield controller was firing white Very lights into the air over the end of the runway to guide us. We crept in over trees in Brocklesby Wood, trees which had claimed other Lancasters coming in too low, and made a perfect wheeled landing. It does not bear thinking about what would have happened if the undercarriage had collapsed, we were sitting on top of 9000 lbs of High Explosive. Good work skipper! Did not count as an operation. The Squadron had a stand down at Christmas and on Christmas Day there was much merriment and a fair amount of booze put away and we went to bed a bit the worse for wear. It was therefore a bit upsetting to be got out of bed at 3am on Boxing Day morning, sent for an Ops meal and told to report for briefing at some unearthly hour. So to operation No. 27. No. 27.. 26.12.44. Target “ST-VITH” Daylight operation. Aircraft ‘B’. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie and 10000lbs HE. “The Battle of the Bulge”, the German offensive in the Ardennes was in progress. A large force from Bomber Command was called upon to support the American 1st. Army trying to stem the German advances in the Ardennes. The attack was concentrated on the town of St. Vith where the Germans were unloading panzers to join the battle. The whole of Lincolnshire was blanketed in fog with ground visibility of only a few yards. After briefing we went out to the aircraft, climbed aboard and waited for the time to start engines. Just before time there were white Very Cartridges fired from the [page break] control tower which indicated the operation was scrubbed. We returned to the mess and were given a new time to go out to the aircraft. Another flying meal. We went out to the aircraft again and had a repeat performance. Third time lucky, we sat in the aircraft and although there was still dense fog, time came to start engines. This time no scrub. A marshall appeared in front of the aircraft with tow torches signalling us to start taxying and we were guided to the end of the runway. A glimmer of a green from the airfield controller and we turned onto the runway, lined up, set the gyro compass and we roared off down the runway at 1.15pm. Airborne and climbing we came out of the fog at about 200 ft and it was just like flying above cloud. We set course according to our flight plan and visibility across France and Belgium was first class. No cloud and snow on the ground. We did not really need navigation aids, I was able to map read all the way to the target. Approaching the target area there were a few anti aircraft shell bursts and it was apparent the Germans had advanced quite a long way. We bombed from 10000ft and the bombing was very concentrated and accurate. In fact it was reported that 80% of the attacking aircraft obtained aiming point photographs. It was now time to concern ourselves with the return to Kirmington. The fog was still there and the only 1 Group airfield open was Binbrook, high up on the Lincolnshire Wolds, which stuck out of the fog like an island. The whole of 1 Group landed at Binbrook. There were Lancasters parked everywhere. Whilst we were in the circuit awaiting our turn to land, I was looking out of the window and noticed a hole in the wing between the two starboard engines. When we had landed and shut down the engines, we went to look at the hole. On top of the wing it was very neat but on the underside there was jagged aluminium hanging down around the hole. Obviously a shell had gone up and passed through the wing on its way down, without exploding. [page break] An airframe fitter looked at the damage and said the aircraft was grounded. This meant that after interrogation we were allowed to return to Kirmington by bus and proceed on leave. Our next operation was not until 5.1.45 but some of us returned early from leave to attend a New Year party in the WAAF mess which was actually situated in Kirmington Village. No.28. 5.1.45. Target HANOVER Night operation. “C” Charlie. Bomb load. 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus incendiaries. 325 Aircraft of Nos. 1 and 5 Groups were briefed for the second of a two pronged attack on Hanover. Nos. 4 and 6 Groups had bombed the target two hours earlier with bomb loads of mainly incendiaries. When we crossed the Dutch coast, the fires could be seem[sic] from at least 100 miles away. Our track took us towards Bremen and was meant to mislead the enemy into believing that was our target. However we did a starboard turn short of Bremen and ran into Hanover from the North. The target was well bombed and rail yards put out of action. I don’t know what we did right but “C” Charlie arrived back at base 4 minutes before anyone else. No. 29. 6.1.45. Seamining. STETTIN Bay. Night operation. Aircraft AS-D. Bomb Load 6 x 1500lb Mines. Knott and crew started their third and final gardening trip (As seamining was known) 48 aircraft of Bomber Command were detailed to plant ‘vegetables’ in the entrance to Stettin Harbour and other local areas. The enemy was able to pick up the force 100 miles North East of Cromer because bad weather condition forced us to fly at 15000 [page break] ft to the target instead of the usual 2000ft,. As a result of this early warning enemy fighters were waiting and the target area was well illuminated by fighter flares. It was believed that the enemy thought this was a major attack on Berlin developing. Knott and crew dropped their vegetables in the allotted area, securing a good H2S photograph and again returned to base first. No. 30. 14.1.45. Target MERSEBERG LEUNA (Again) Night operation. “C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000 lb Cookie plus 5500 lbs HE. 200 Aircraft attacked this target to finish off the job started on 6th December. A very successful attack. No. 31. 16.1.45. Target Oil refinery ZEITZ Nr. Leipzig. “C” Charlie. Bomb load 1 x 4000lb Cookie plus 6000 lbs GP Bombs. This was the one we had been waiting for, our last operation. We went into briefing and were told by the intelligence officer that although we were being briefed the operation might be cancelled because a large force of Amercan[sic] Fortresses and Liberators had been to the target earlier in the day and a photo recce Mosquito had gone out to photograph the target and assess the results. Before the end of briefing it was confirmed that that[sic] the Americans had missed and our operation was on. At 1720 on the 16th January we took off on this operation. Over the target there were hundreds of searchlights, the markers were in the right place and we completed our bombing run. The target was well ablaze and there were massive explosions. At one point Paddy called out “We’re coned skip” meaning we were caught by searchlights. [page break] It was briefly very light in the cabin but the light was caused, not by searchlights but by the explosions from the target. Of the 328 Lancasters that attacked the target, 10 were lost. When we returned to base all of our ground crew, including one guy who had returned early from leave, were there to welcome us and join in a little celebration. George Knott was awarded an immediate Distinguished Flying Cross, said to be a crew award for completing a tour of operations. All seven of us were posted from Kirmington, on indefinite leave to await our next assignments. Apart from activities in the Officers and Sergeants Messes, and trips into Scunthorpe where the “Oswald” was the central drinking point, the main point of activity was the pub in Kirmington village. The “Marrow Bone & Cleaver” or the “Chopper” as it was known, was the meeting place for all ranks. The pub is now a shrine to the Squadron, there is a memorial in the village, lovingly cared for by the villagers’ and memorial plaques in the terminal building at Humberside Airport. There is also a stained glass window in Kirmington Church. I have mentioned our off base activities but, of course, a lot of time was spent in the Mess and the radio was our main contact with the outside world. I think the most popular program was the AFN (American Forces Network). They had a program which I believe was called the “dufflebag program”. Glen Miller and all the big [inserted in margin] this sentence needs a verb! [/inserted in margin] bands of the day. The song “I’ll walk alone” was very popular and was recorded by several singers. The British one was Anne Shelton, an American whose name escapes me and another American called Lily Ann Carroll (Not sure about the spelling of that name). This girl had a peculiar voice but it had something about it. [page break] Since the war I have not been able to find anyone who ever heard of her but I did hear the record placed on one of the archives programs on BBC, two or three years ago. If anyone knows of Lily Ann Carroll I would love to know. I can’t remember where it was but on one occasion when we were out together as a crew, someone asked what the “B” meant on my brevet. Quick as a flash Paddy jumped in “It means Big Bill Bailey the bastard Bombaimer”. The completion of our tour of operations was of special relief to Gus Leigh, our wireless operator who incidentally had a few weeks earlier had[sic] been commissioned as Pilot Officer. Gus was married and his wife Enid was pregnant and lived in Kent. George our skipper had relatives who lived near Thorne which was quite near to Sandtoft and not really too far from Elsham and Kirmington so it was arranged that Enid would come to stay with George’s relatives and Gus would be able to see her fairly regularly. As we approached the end of our tour you can appreciate the tension. I was to hear later that after we had left Kirmington, Enid had a son and then suffered a massive haemorrhage and died. What irony, a baby that so easily could have been fatherless was now motherless. Before leaving the scene of operations, so to speak, I would like to clear up one or two points. I have often been asked the question, were you frightened? I can only speak for myself and maybe my crew. I don’t think ‘frightened’ was the right word, apprehensive, maybe but except for a very few, I believe all aircrew believed in their own immortality. It was always going to be the other guy who got the chop, never yourself. Had this not been the case then we would never have got into a Lancaster. [page break] Ron Archer used to tell me he thought we were the luckiest crew in Bomber Command. There were, of course, a very few aircrew who lost their nerve and refused to fly. All aircrew were volunteers and could not be compelled to fly but if that became the case then they would be sent LMF (Lack of moral fibre) and would lose their flying badge and be reduced to the ranks. Much has been said and written in recent years about the activities of Bomber Command and in particular our Commander in Chief, “Bomber” Harris. I believed then, and still believe that what was done was right. I did not bomb Dresden, but had I been ordered to do so, I would not have given it a second thought. [page break] Chapter VIII. Lossiemouth. I was at home in Wigston, Leicestershire and my 21st birthday, the 2nd February was fast approaching. Parents and friends were trying to organise a party, meagre rations, permitting. They need not have worried because I received instructions to proceed immediately to 20 OUT Lossiemouth, At 9.30 pm the eve of my birthday I caught a train from South Wigston station to Rugby and then onto a train bound for Scotland. I arrived at Lossiemouth at 11pm and following day. What a way to spend a 21st birthday! The next day having completed arrival procedures I duly reported to the Bombing Leader for duty. At the same time I discovered that George Knott had also been posted to Lossiemouth as a screened pilot. I flew with him ocassionally[sic] when he needed some ballast in the rear turret when doing an air test. The role of 20 OUT was to train Free French Aircrew, again flying Wellingtons and my job was to fly with them on bombing exercises to check that they were using correct procedures. I used to say, “Patter in English please”, which was alright until they got a bit excited and lapsed into French. Bombing took place on Kingston Bombing Range, on the coast East of Lossiemouth. One of my other jobs was to plot the bombs on a chart using co-ordinates given by observers at quadrant points on the [page break] range. These were phoned through to the bomb plotting office. The student bombaimer then came to the office to see the results of his aiming efforts. 10 lb smoke bo9mbs were used for daylight bombing and 10 lb flash bombs for night bombing. In the summer at Lossie, night flying was almost impossible due to the short night in those Northern parts. It was quite common to take off after sunset and then see the sun set again. After a few weeks I was attached from 20 OUT to 91 Group Airbomber instructors school at Moreton in Marsh for 3 weeks before becoming an official instructor. I returned to 20 OUT and shortly afterwards was again sent off on a course, this time to the Bomber Command Analysis School at Worksop. Here I became an alleged expert on the Mark XIV Bomsight.[sic] This was a gyro stabilised bombsight [sic] which was a tactical bombsight [sic] rather than a precision bombsight.[sic] It consisted of a computor[sic] box and a sighting head and obtained information of airspeed, height, temperature and course from aircraft instruments plus one or two manual settings and converted this information into a sighting angle. The only piece of vital information to be added was the wind speed and direction which had to be calculated by the Navigator. The bombaimer was then able to do a bombing run without the necessity of flying straight and level.. It took account of climbing, a shallow dive and banking. The sequence of events when bombing was, when the bomb release (hereafter called the ‘tit’ [)]was pressed several things happened, the bombs started to be released in the order set on the automatic bomb distributor, so that they were dropped in a ‘stick’. The photoflash was released, the camera started to operate and as the bombs reached the point of impact almost immediately beneath the aircraft, the photographs were taken. Having used this equipment for the whole of my tour of operations I can vouch for its performance. The Americans had their much vaunted Norden and Sperry Bombsights [sic] [page break] which were claimed to be very accurate but required the aircraft to maintain a straight and level flight path for an unacceptable time against heavily defended targets. The Mk XIV was so good that the Americans adopted it for their own aircraft and called it the T1 Bombsight. Many T1’s were used by the RAF in lieu of the MkXIV. A matter of production I guess. On my return from Worksop, with glowing reports from my two courses, the Bombing Leader said “OK Flight Sergeant you had better apply for a commission.” This I did and after going through all the procedures was commissioned in the rank of Pilot Officer (198592) on the 5th June, 1945. Of course ‘VE’ Day took place on the 5th May after which it was only a matter of time before the OTU’s were run down and in the case of Lossiemouth this was to be sooner rather than later. The Wellingtons were all flown down to Hawarden in Cheshire for eventual disposal, I must record one tragic incident which happened whilst I was at Lossiemouth. One Sunday morning a Wellington took off on air test and lost an engine on take-off and the pilot was obviously trying to make a crash landing on the beach to the East of Seatown. He didn’t make it and crashed on top of a small block of maisonettes killing most of the inhabitants who were still in bed. A tragic accident! The question now arose as to where next we would all go. We were given the option of being made redundant aircrew, going to another OTU or going back to an operational Squadron. My problem was solved for me, ‘Johnnie’ Johnson, ‘A’ Flight Commander, came into the plotting office and said “I’m going back on ops, I want a bombaimer”. Thus I joined his crew and other instructors made up a full crew with the exception of a flight engineer, all having done a first tour. Johnnie had to revert [page break] from his Squadron Leader rank to Flight Lieutenant. All the other members of the crew were officers. Chapter IX Tiger Force. On the 6th. July we went to 1654 Conversion Unit at Wigsley, were not wanted there and were sent to 1660 Conversion Unit at Swinderby. It was necessary to do a conversion course becaused[sic] Johnnie had done his first tour on Halifaxes and needed to convert to Lancasters. We also picked up a Flight Engineer who was actually a newly trained pilot, who had also done a flight engineers course, there now being a surplus of pilots. He happened to be a lad I knew from my ATC days. We were now part of “Tiger Force” which was 5 Group renamed and we were to fly the Lancasters out to Okinawa to join in the attack on Japan. The Lancasters would shortly be replaced by the new Lincoln bombers which were bigger, more powerful and had a longer range. We commenced our training, for my part I had to familiarise myself with ‘Loran’ which was a long range Gee for use in the Pacific. I did say earlier in the story that I would tell you about my ‘rash’. At Swinderby I had a recurrence and immediately reported sick. The Doc took a look at me and said “Oh! We know what that is, it is oxygen mask dermatitis, when you sweat your skin is allergic to rubber. We will make you a fabric mask. Problem solved. The new mask was not needed, however, [page break] because the war ended and with it my flying career. VJ Day was a wild affair, In the “Halfway House” pub at Swinderby my brand new officer’s cap was filled with beer when I left it on a stool. In a final salute to the mighty Lancaster, Swinderby had an open day to celebrate the end of the war and the Chief Flying Instructor, the second on three, the third on two and finally the fourth on one engine. What an aeroplane! What a pilot! Chapter X The last chapter. There followed a strange period. First to Acaster Malbis, nr York where all redundant Aircrew handed in their flying kit. Then to Blyton, Nr. Gainsborough where we were given a choice of alternative traded. Seldom did anyone get their first choice and I was chosen to become an Equipment Officer and after a brief spell at Wickenby was posted to the Equipment Officers School at RAF Bicester. A four week course and I was meant to be a fully qualified equipment officer. I was posted to Scampton but not needed there and so was posted on to RAF Cosford where I was put in charge of the technical stores. The Chief Equipment Officer was fairly elderly Wing Commander who took me under his wing and kept a fatherly eye on me. The Royal Air Force was beginning to return to peacetime status and Wingco[sic] warned me that it was probably not a good idea to fraternize with my ex Aircrew NCO’s in the “Shrewsbury Arms”. If you must, get on your bikes and go further afield, was his advice. [page break] One Monday morning I was called up to the WingCo’s office to be asked “Where is F/Sgt. Brown (Not his real name) this morning”. “I don’t know sir” I replied. “Well I will tell you” he said. “He is under arrest at Shifnal Police Station” This particular ex Aircrew NCO lived in a village quite near to Cosford and had permission to ‘live out’. It transpired that almost everyone in his village had new curtains made from RAF bunting and quite a few people were wearing RAF or Waaf shoes. I was ordered to do a stock check on my section and for his part he was charged by the Civil Police and at Shifnal Magistrates Court received little more than a slap on the wrist. No doubt his war service stood him in good stead. Because he had been dealt with by the Civil Courts he could not be charged and Court Martialled by the RAF and all that happened was that he was posted away from Cosford and released early into civvie street. At the time, lots of POW’s were passing through Cosford on their way from POW Camps in Europe to their homes. Monthly “Dining In” nights were also resumed in the Officers Mess. Due to officers leaving the station or being demobbed, at every “Dining In” we were “Dining Out” those departing., always ending in a wild party. I remember one night which was extremely boisterous ending with Bar Rugby, footprints on the ceiling, the lot. I had better leave to the imagination how the footprints on the ceiling were achieved. That night I went to bed at about 3 am and when I went in to breakfast the following morning the mess was immaculate. The staff had obviously been up all night cleaning up. On the 4th. November 1946 I received my final posting from Cosford to Headquarters Technical Training Command, at Brampton Nr. Huntingdon to be Unit Equipment [page break] Officer. The Headquarters Unit consisted of a Squadron Leader C.O., a Flight Lieutenant Accountant Officer, a Flight Lt. Equipment Officer and their staffs. I had a hairy old Sergeant Equipment Assistant who I believe was a regular airman and probably looked upon me as not a real Equipment Officer. However, his knowledge and experience were invaluable. I enquired as to the whereabouts of my predecessor to be told that he had already gone having been posted abroad. There was, therefore, no handover of inventories. The next surprise was even greater, I was told that I also had RAF Kimbolton to finish closing down. I took myself to Kimbolton to find a ‘care and maintenance party’ of three airmen and one Waaf. Two were out on the airfield shooting rabbits and the other two were dealing with some paperwork. The entire camp had been almost cleared, barrack equipment to a storage/disposal site, fuel to other sites and/or the homes of the local population. Legend had it that a grand piano from the Sergeants Mess had gone astray. One day a Provost Squadron Leader came into my office and said: “Bailey, I want you to come with me to St. Neots Police Station to identify some rolls of linoleum which they have recovered from a farmer”. We went to St. Neots and a police sergeant showed us several rolls of obvious Air Ministry linoleum standing in a cell. I examined the rolls and could find no AM marks so I told the Provost that I could say the rolls ere exactly similar to AM Lino but I could not positively identify them as AM property. The provost told the police sergeant to give the lino back to the farmer. Heaven only knows how many houses had their floors covered in Air Ministry lino in the Kimbolton area. No doubt this sort of thing was happening all over the country. The politicians were so anxious to get servicemen back into civvies street that establishments were seriously undermanned. When I, a mere Flying Officer, did the final paperwork for RAF Kimbolton I raised a [page break] write off document well in excess of £1 million at 1947 prices and this only involved equipment known to be missing. With regard to Brampton itself, the winter of 46/47 was extremely severe with heavy snowfalls. Even the rail line between Huntingdon and Kettering was blocked. When the snow thawed there was severe flooding. One weekend I went home and returned to Camp on Sunday afternoon to find that the previous night there had been a severe storm with gale force winds and Brampton was a scene of devastation. Trees had been blown down crushing nissen huts. The camp was flooded and the sewage system was completely useless. The following morning I located a stock of portable loos (Thunder boxes so called). A four wheel drive vehicle was despatched through the flood waters surrounding Huntingdon, to RAF Upwood to collect these things. Things gradually returned to something like normal but it was a terrible time. The Officers Mess at Brampton was in the large house in Brampton Park and the Headquarters Staff from the C in C Technical Training Command down, were housed in Offices adjacent to Brampton Grange. There were far more senior officers at Brampton than junior officers because of the very nature of the place. The PMC of the mess was a Group Captain and one day he came to me and said “Bailey, we are going to have a Dining In and I thought it would be nice if we could have some proper RAF crested crockery and cutlery”. I informed the PMC that these items were not on issue whereupon he suggested that I use my initiative. It just so happened that whilst I was a[sic] Cosford I learned that in the Barrack Stores the very things I was being asked to get were in store, having been there throughout the War. I spoke with the Wing Commander, my former boss, who agreed to release a quantity of crockery, etc. I informed the PMC of my success and he arranged for a De Havilland Rapide aircraft from our communications flight at nearby Wyton to take [page break] me to Cosford to collect the two heavy chests of crocks. I am sure the Rapide was overloaded on the flight back to Wyton but the mission was accomplished and the PMC was able to show off his ‘posh’ tableware at the next Dining In. I was shortly to have to make a major decision, the date was fast approaching for my release back into civilian life, I had agreed to serve six months beyond my release date and had made an application for an extended service commission which would have kept me in the Royal Air Force for at least another six years. However my civilian employers became aware that I had done the extra six months and were not amused. I, despite having access to ‘P’ staff at Brampton could not get a decision from Air Ministry and I made the decision to leave the service. On 1st. April, how significant a date, I headed off to Kirkham in Lancashire to collect my demob suit. A very sad day. This is the end of the ‘dream’ but not quite the end of my love affair with the Royal Air Force. But that, as they say, is another story …… [page break] Two photographs in RAF uniform; one in 1942 aged 18 and the other in 1945 aged 21. [page break] 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 Was it all a Dream The memoirs of Wartime Bomb Aimer Bill Bailey Description An account of the resource Bill Bailey's wartime memoirs detailing enlistment, training in UK and Canada and details of each of 31 operations in Bomber Command. After completion of his tour he was transferred to RAF Lossiemouth to train Free French aircrew, after which he was offered a commission. Later he trained for Tiger Force ops at RAF Wigsley and RAF Swinderby. When the Force was cancelled he became an Equipment Officer at RAF Bicester then RAF Cosford, RAF Brampton and RAF Kimbolton. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bill Bailey Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 45 typewritten sheets and two b/w photographs Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Memoir Photograph Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BBaileyJDBaileyJDv1 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 United States Army Air Force Free French Air Force Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Canada Germany Great Britain Norway Poland Atlantic Ocean--English Channel Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea) England--Birmingham England--Devon England--Leicestershire England--Lincolnshire England--London England--Yorkshire France--Domléger-Longvillers France--Calais France--Cap Gris Nez France--Le Havre Germany--Bochum Germany--Cologne Germany--Dortmund Germany--Düsseldorf Germany--Essen Germany--Frankfurt am Main Germany--Freiburg im Breisgau Germany--Hannover Germany--Karlsruhe Germany--Leipzig Manitoba--Carberry Netherlands--Domburg Netherlands--Eindhoven New Brunswick--Moncton Norway--Oslo Nova Scotia--Halifax Ontario--Hamilton Ontario--Picton Poland--Szczecin Netherlands--Hague France Ontario New Brunswick Nova Scotia Netherlands Germany--Ruhr (Region) England--Warwickshire Manitoba France--Pas-de-Calais Europe--Ardennes Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sue Smith David Bloomfield Maureen Clarke 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. Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1 Group 103 Squadron 166 Squadron 1660 HCU 1667 HCU 4 Group 5 Group 576 Squadron 8 Group 83 OTU Advanced Flying Unit Air Observers School aircrew Anson B-17 Bolingbroke bomb aimer bombing Bombing and Gunnery School briefing Distinguished Flying Cross flight engineer Gee ground personnel H2S Halifax Halifax Mk 2 Halifax Mk 3 Halifax Mk 5 Heavy Conversion Unit Initial Training Wing intelligence officer lack of moral fibre Lancaster Lancaster Finishing School Lincoln Lysander master bomber medical officer memorial mid-air collision military living conditions military service conditions mine laying Mosquito Oboe Operational Training Unit Pathfinders perception of bombing war prisoner of war promotion RAF Acaster Malbis RAF Bicester RAF Binbrook RAF Blyton RAF Brampton RAF Cosford RAF Elsham Wolds RAF Hawarden RAF Hemswell RAF Kimbolton RAF Kirmington RAF Llandwrog RAF Lossiemouth RAF Moreton in the Marsh RAF Paignton RAF Penrhos RAF Peplow RAF Sandtoft RAF Scampton RAF St Athan RAF Swinderby RAF Worksop RAF Wyton Scarecrow searchlight superstition Tiger force training Victory over Japan Day (15 August 1945) Wellington Women’s Auxiliary Air Force https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1568/35500/BFreemanWFreemanWv1.pdf 3f3caa442d86d0abdb3348aa0c6b5c21 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 Freeman, Bill William Freeman W Freeman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-12-07 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 Freeman, W Description An account of the resource 11 items. The collection concerns Bill Freeman (1806695 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book memoir and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 550 and 300 Squadrons. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Monica Snowball and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Transcribed document A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document [underlined] 1 [/underlined] 5TH APRIL 1943 SAW ME LEAVE TWICKENHAM to REPORT FOR SERVICE IN THE ROYAL AIR FORCE. MOST OF MY FRIENDS HAD ALREADY BEEN CALLED UP, SO IT WAS A RELIEF TO BE JOINING THEM AT LAST. EVEN SO IT WAS A WRENCH TO BE LEAVING HOME. I MADE MY WAY TO LORDS CRICKET GROUND NEAR REGENTS PARK IN LONDON, UPON REPORTING TOGETHER WITH MANY MORE, WE FILLED IN MASSES OF PAPER WORK & WERE KITTED OUT. FIRST A MASSIVE KIT BAG & EVERYTHING ELSE WAS JUST SHOVED IN. IT WEIGHED A TON. AFTER LUNCH WE WERE PARADED IN SOME SORT OF ORDER & MARCHED TO VICEROY COURT. A RECENTLY BUILT LUXURY BLOCK OF FLATS, WITHOUT ANY LUXURIES. THE FLOORS WERE PLAIN CONCRETE, THE ROOMS CONTAINED 1 BED AND 1 CUPBOARD PER BODY, OF WHICH THERE WERE ABOUT 1 DOZEN PER ROOM. WE WERE INSTRUCTED TO UNPACK OUR KIT, CHECK EVERYTHING FOR SIZE. ANYTHING NOT FITTING WAS TO BE EXCHANGED THE FOLLOWING DAY. PARADE THE FOLLOWING MORNING, IN UNIFORM WAS AT 8 AM, BREAKFAST WAS AT 7 AM BED HAD TO BE MADE UP IN ARMY FASHION, READY FOR OFFICER’S INSPECTION. A DRILL SERGEANT WAS ASSIGNED TO INSTRUCT US AND INFORM US ABOUT WHAT WAS TO BE EXPECTED, THERE WAS ABOUT 20 OF US IN OUR FLIGHT. OUR FIRST DAY WAS TO BE TAKEN UP WITH MEDICAL & INJECTIONS. SO OFF WE WERE MARCHED TO SOMEWHERE NEAR THE ZOO. WE WERE A RAGGED LOT, BUT HAVING DONE TRAINING & DRILL WITH THE HOME GUARD IT WAS EASY FOR ME TO FIT IN. THE MEDICALS & INJECTIONS & LUNCH TOOK ALL MORNING QUITE A FEW OF THE LADS WERE OVERCOME & LAID OUT ON BENCHES. THE SERGEANT WASN’T TOO PLEASED AT THIS, HE [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 2 [/underlined] THAN THE OTHERS, COULD YOU FIND YOUR WAY BACK TO VICEROY COURT?” I SAID “YES SERGEANT” HE SAID “VERY WELL, MARCH THOSE THAT CAN WALK BACK, I WILL HAVE TO GET A WAGON TO TAKE THE OTHER SHOWER BACK”. STAY IN YOUR BILLET UNTIL I COME BACK” I TOLD THE OTHER LADS WHAT WAS GOING ON & THEY ACCEPTED THAT IT WAS BETTER THAN HANGING AROUND FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS. SO OFF WE WENT AND IN 15 MINUTES WERE BACK AT VICEROY COURT. THE LADS WERE GLAD TO LAY ON THEIR BEDS FOR THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON, I MANAGED TO SEE THE SERGEANT IN THE KITCHEN AND SCROUNGED TEA & BISCUITS, WHICH WENT DOWN WELL. THE DRILL SERGEANT WAS QUITE HAPPY ON HIS RETURN TO SEE ALL HIS FLIGHT WAS ACCOUNTED FOR & DISMISSED US UNTIL 8 AM PARADE THE FOLLOWING MORNING, BUT WE HAD TO REMAIN IN QUARTERS, NO TRIPS INTO TOWN. THE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS TAKEN UP WITH CLASSROOM WORK ON AIRFORCE PROCEDURE & WORKING. AFTERNOON FREE TO GET OVER THE EFFECTS OF THE INOCCULATIONS. THE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS TAKEN UP WITH DRILL & MARCHING, AFTER A WHILE THE SERGEANT PULLED ME OUT & TOLD ME TO TAKE OVER. HIS WORDS WERE “LETS SEE JUST WHAT YOU DO KNOW”. SO THE HOME GUARD TRAINING WAS COMING IN USEFUL & ALL WENT WELL. IT WENT SO WELL THAT FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK I WAS GIVEN THE JOB OF DRILLING THE OTHERS WHENEVER THE NEED AROSE. TO MY ASTONISHMENT THE LADS TOOK IT WELL – WE HAD NO TROUBLE. MAINLY BECAUSE AT THE END OF THE DRILL SESSION WE WERE ALWAYS FIRST IN THE QUEUE FOR MEALS. WE WERE POSTED to [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 3 [/underlined] of THE WEEK. BEFOR [sic] WE LEFT, THE DRILL SERGEANT SAID “GOOD LUCK, YOU’VE HAD A GOOD REPORT ON YOUR RECORD, THIS WEEK HAS BEEN AN EASY ONE FOR ME.” BRIDLINGTON OUR BILLET WAS A HOUSE IN RICHMOND ROAD. THE COURSE WORK WAS AIRCRAFT RECOGNITION MORSE CODE SIGNALLING & GENERAL DRILLING ETC. THIS LASTED 6 WEEKS. THOSE THAT PASSED THE TEST WERE POSTED TO BRIDGENORTH IN SHROPSHIRE. HERE WE WERE INSTRUCTED IN THE WORKINGS OF THE FRAZER NASH TURRET & THE BROWNING 303 MACHINE GUN, AIRCRAFT RECOGNITION WAS AGAIN A MUST. ALL WAS CLASSROOM WORK WITH A MAJOR EXAM AT THE END OF A FUTHER [sic] 6 WEEKS, THEN OFF TO STORMY DOWNS IN SOUTH WALES. STORMY DOWNS WAS APTLY NAMED. THE DROME WAS ON THE HILLS CLOSE TO THE SEA & THE AIRCRAFT WERE AVRO ANSONS WITH A GUN TURRET MIDWAY ALONG THE FUSELAGE. THE PILOTS WERE THOSE BEING RESTED AFTER A TOUR OF OPPERATIONS. [sic] ALL OF US CADETS HAD NOT FLOWN BEFOR [sic] & THE PILOTS TOOK GREAT DELIGHT IN THROWING THE AIRCRAFT ABOUT TO SEE IF THEY COULD MAKE US AIRSICK. FORTUNATELY I STOOD UP TO IT PRETTY WELL, AND WHILST FEELING A BIT SQUEEZY AT TIMES, MANAGED TO KEEP THINGS UNDER CONTROL. HERE WE DID AIR TO AIR FIREING [sic] & PRACTICE CINE CAMERA GUNNERY, WITH OTHER AIRCRAFT ATTACKING. HAVING AT LAST GOT THE RUDIMENTS OF WHAT AIR GUNNERY WAS ABOUT, WE WERE EXAMINED & PASSED OUT AS AIR GUNNERS, GIVEN 3 STRIPES & THE RANK OF SERGEANT AND SENT ON 7 DAYS LEAVE. I [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 4 [/underlined] AIR GUNNER, ALL IN A MATTER OF 5 MONTHS OF JOINING. THE LEAVE WENT QUICKLY & I HAD BEEN NOTIFIED THAT I WAS TO REPORT TO HIXON IN STAFFORDSHIRE, TO BE CREWED UP, & SO IT WAS AT THE END OF AUGUST ’43 THAT I WAS TO MEET THE CHAPS I WAS TO FLY WITH. IT WAS A QUEER MEETING. WE STOOD AROUND IN OUR VARIOUS GROUPS WIRELESS OPS, BOMB AIMERS, NAVIGATORS, & AIR GUNNERS THE PILOTS THEN APPROACHED EACH GROUP AND ASKED INDIVIDUALS IF THEY WOULD LIKE TO JOIN HIS CREW. BY THE TIME HE CAME TO THE GUNNERS HE HAD ALREADY GOT THE OTHERS TOGETHER. HIS OPENING LINE AS HE CAME UP TO ME WAS “CREWED UP YET GUNNER?” I LOOKED UP TO SEE A CHAP OF MY OWN AGE, FAIR HAIRED & WITH A BIG SMILE AND A TWINKLE IN HIS EYES, AND A SERGEANTS STRIPES ON HIS ARM. WHY I ASKED MYSELF WAS HE ONLY A SERGEANT. MOST PILOTS WERE OFFICER RANK. I REPLIED THAT I WASN’T CREWED UP, HIS NEXT WORDS WERE OFF PUTTING “HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BECOMING A HERO & WINNING MEDALS” HE SAID. “NO THANKS” I REPLIED “THE ONLY MEDAL I WANT IS THE LONG SERVICE ONE” HE LAUGHED AND SAID “YOU’LL DO, COME AND MEET THE OTHERS” WITH THAT WE INTRODUCED OURSELVES. THE PILOT WAS RON JONES FROM BRIGHTON. HE HAD BEEN PUT BACK TO SERGEANT PILOT BECAUSE HE HAD UPSET too MANY “BIG WIGS” THE NAVIGATOR WAS ART CRICHE CANADIAN FARMER. THE BOMB AIMER ANOTHER CANADIAN DAVE BREMNER A YOUNG COLLEGE BOY FULL OF FUN THE WIRELESS OPERATOR WAS KEN SMITH, SHORT, TUBBY FROM DEWSBURY & A COMIC. SO [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 5 [/underlined] GET THEMSELVES INTO A TEAM, FOR THE ESSENCE OF A BOMBER CREW WAS EACH TO HAVE THE CONFIDENCE OF THE OTHERS. HIXON WAS AN OPPERATIONAL [sic] TRAINING UNIT. FLYING WELLINGTON TWIN ENGINE BOMBERS, OR WIMPYS AS WE LOVINGLY CALLED THEM. WE FLEW AS A CREW MAINLY. PRACTISING TAKE OFFS & LANDINGS. HIGH & LOW LEVEL BOMBING CROSS COUNTRY NAVIGATIONAL TRIPS OF 4 TO 5 hours AND GUNNERY EXERCISES. I ALSO HAD TO GO ON A SPECIAL GUNNERY COURSE & RECOGNITION COURSE AT THIS TIME MY SHOOTING WAS NOT VERY BRILLIANT, BUT THANKFULLY IMPORVED BEFOR [sic] IT WAS NEEDED. GRADUALLY IN THE WEEKS AHEAD, WE BECAME RELIANT ON EACH OTHER, WE WORKED HARD TO BECOME A TEAM, UNTIL WE ALMOST KNEW WHAT THE OTHERS WERE THINKING. SOCIALLY WE HAD VERY LITTLE CONTACT WITH EACH OTHER, BUT ONCE A WEEK WE HAD A CREW MEAL IN A LOCAL PUB, THE 2 CANADIANS BEING OFFICERS, PAID FOR THE MEAL & THE SERGEANTS PAID FOR THE DRINKS. OUR OTHER CONTACT WAS ONLY DURING FLYING TRAINING, WHICH WE ALL TOOK SERIOUSLY AND IT PAID OFF LATER ON. MY SPARE TIME, MOSTLY EVENINGS WAS SPENT IN STAFFORD, DARTS SNOOKER & DRINKING IN THE LOCALS. I HAD MADE FRIENDS WITH ANOTHER GUNNER NAMED TONY. HE WAS ABOUT THE SAME AGE AS MYSELF. A BLONDE, BLUE EYED, HANDSOME FELLOW. AN ONLY CHILD OF DOTING PARENTS & VERY SHY. I DONT THINK HE HAD EVER HAD A DRINK BEFORE JOINING THE AIRFORCE. MANY TIMES I HAD TO TAKE HIM BACK TO CAMP WORSE FOR WEAR. DURING ONE OF OUR EVENINGS [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 6 [/underlined] GIRL FRIEND, WE USED TO GET THE LORRY TO TAKE US IN TO STAFFORD, THE [sic] INTO THE PUB FOR DRINKING DANCING. HE WOULD GO OFF WITH HIS GIRL & I WOULD PLAY DARTS OR SNOOKER, UNTIL IT WAS TIME TO GO BACK TO CAMP. ALL OUR MATES WOULD PILE INTO THE LORRY, IN VARIOUS STATES OF INEBRIATION ESPECIALLY TONY, TOWARD THE END OF OCTOBER ’43 OUR CREW HAD BEEN ON A CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT OF ABOUT 5 hours AND WERE READY TO LAND, WHEN WE SAW THAT THERE WAS A PLANE ON THE GROUND ON FIRE. WE WERE ALLOWED TO LAND & IN THE FLIGHT OFFICE WERE TOLD THAT THE CREW WAS TONY’S & THAT THEY MANAGED TO GET OUT, EXCEPT TONY IN THE REAR TURRET BEING TONY’S MATE I HAD THE TASK OF COLLECTING HIS PERSONAL BELONGINGS AND PRESENTING THEM TO HIS PARENTS WHEN THEY CAME TO CAMP. I VOWED THEN THAT I WOULD NOT GET INVOLVED IN ANY CLOSE FRIENDSHIP WHILST FLYING AGAIN & NEVER DID. THE EVENING AFTER THE ACCIDENT I WENT INTO STAFFORD, INTO THE PUB WHERE I KNEW HIS GIRL FRIEND WOULD BE. AS SOON AS SHE SAW ME ON MY OWN SHE KNEW THAT SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED. THERE WERE NO TEARS AS I TOLD HER. WE FINNISHED [sic] OUR DRINKS AND SHE JUST SAID “THANKS BILL” & OFF SHE WENT WITH HER CROWD. SHE HAD SEEN IT HAPPEN BEFOR [sic] & NO DOUBT WOULD SEE IT HAPPEN AGAIN, AS WE ALL DID. A WEEK LATER WE HAD OUR LAST FLIGHT AT THE OTU it was TO BE A TRIP OVER SOUTHERN FRANCE. WE WERE LOADED UP WITH [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 7 [/underlined] DETAILING ALL THE NEWS OF THE PROGRESS OF THE WAR. ALSO WE HAD BUNDLES OF FOIL STRIPS WHICH WERE TO BE RELEASED AT A GIVEN TIME AT A GIVEN PLACE, THESE FOIL STRIPS REFLECTED THE SIGNALS OF GERMAN RADAR & GAVE THE APPEARANCE OF A HUGE FORMATION OF BOMBERS, IT ACTED AS A DECOY & DREW FIGHTER AIRCRAFT AWAY FROM THE TRUE BOMBER FORCE. WE ACCOMPLISHED THIS MISSION WITHOUT MISHAP & WERE THRILLED THAT AT LAST WE HAD BEEN PART OF A RAID. THEN IT WAS A 14 DAY LEAVE. IT WAS DURING THIS LEAVE THAT I CELEBRATED MY 21ST BIRTHDAY ALBEIT, A LITTLE EARLY, BUT AFTER FLYING IT SEEMED QUEER NOT TO HEAR THE ROAR OF AIRCRAFT ENGINES. ALSO THE FLYING ROUTINE WAS MISSING, SO WHILST IN [sic] WAS NICE TO BE HOME WITH THE FAMILY I WAS NOT SORRY TO BE GOING BACK. THERE WAS MORE TRAINING TO BE DONE & I HAD TO GO FOR A WEEKS GUNNERY COURSE TO BINBROOK. THIS WAS AN AUSTRALIAN BOMBER STATION, VERY OPPERATIONAL [sic] & THEIR LOSSES WERE HIGH. THE FIRST PERSON THAT I MET AT BINBROOK WAS A CHAP I HAD DONE MY INITIAL TRAINING WITH AT STORMY DOWNS. A WELSHMAN FROM TREDEGAR & AN EX POLICEMAN NAMED VICTOR JONES. VIC & I HAD BEEN PUT FORWARD FOR OFFICER SELECTION AS WE HAD TOPPED THE COURSE TABLES. THERE WAS ONE OFFICER PLACE PER COURSE. I WAS NOT OVERKEEN & THOUGHT THAT ONLY 5 MONTHS DID NOT JUSTIFY BEING MADE AN OFFICER. THE BENEFITS [sic] OF BEING AN [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 8 [/underlined] WHEN SHOT DOWN YOU WOULD BE ENTITLED TO BETTER TREATMENT. VIC GOT THE OFFICERSHIP, MUCH TO MY RELIEF. AFTER THE DAY’S GUNNERY PRACTICE, I USED TO MEET UP WITH VIC, BORROW HIS SPARE UNIFORM & WE WOULD HAVE A DRINK OR TWO IN THE OFFICERS MESS, WHICH WAS VERY ENJOYABLE. AFTER A WEEK I LEFT BINBROOK THANKFULLY MY SHOOTING HAD IMPROVED & I WAS MORE CONFIDENT IN MY JOB. SADLY I HEARD A FEW MONTHS LATER THAT VIC HAD BEEN SHOT DOWN I REJOINED MY CREW AT BLYTON 1662 CONVESION [sic] UNIT. WE WERE TO FLY HALIFAXES. ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS AND CONTRARY AIRCRAFT AND SO EASY FOR INEXPERIENCED PILOTS TO CRASH. HOWEVER, RON, OUR PILOT MASTERED THE BRUTE & WE COMPLETED 10 DAYS THERE. DURING THIS TIME OUR CREW INCREASED BY 2. THE FLIGHT ENGINEER CALLED GEORGE, I NEVER DID KNOW HIS SURNAME. HE WAS A LONDONER & HAD WON HIMSELF THE GEORGE CROSS MEDAL FOR HIS PART IN THE BLITZ. OUR PILOT TOOK AN INSTANT DISLIKE TO HIM & ALWAYS FELT THAT GEORGE WAS ONLY WAITING TO WIN MORE MEDALS, WHICH WAS AGAINST OUR CREWS WAY OF THINKING. WE ALWAYS SAID THAT OUR JOB WAS TO REACH THE TARGET DROP THE BOMBS & GET HOME IN ONE PIECE. HOWEVER GEORGE WAS GOOD AT HIS JOB & WAS NEVER GIVEN THE CHANCE TO PLAY THE HERO. – MUCH TO HIS DISGUST - . THE OTHER MEMBER WAS THE MID-UPPER GUNNER JOHNNY JOHNSON, SHORT & [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 9 [/underlined] HIMSELF TO HIMSELF & CAME FROM NORTHAMPTON OUR ORIGINAL 5 NEVER REALLY GOT USED TO BECOMING 7. BUT WE ALL DID OUR JOBS AND MADE A DECENT CREW. WE TRANSFERED [sic] (MUCH TO OUR RELIEF) to LANCASTERS AT HEMSWELL FOR A WEEK AT ELSHAM WOLDS AFTER A COUPLE OF FLIGHTS IT WAS FINALLY ONTO 550 SQUADRON AT NORTH KILLINGHOLME NEAR GRIMSBY, OUR FIRST TASTE OF OPPERATIONAL [sic] LIFE. IT WAS NOW MARCH 1944. KILLINGHOLME KILLINGHOLME [sic] HAD ONLY JUST OPENED UP IN JAN 44 & THE FACILITIES WERE VERY SPARTAN & WE HAD TO ROUGH IT FOR SOME TIME. SLEEPING ACCOMODATION [sic] WAS A NISSEN HUT, STRAW MATTRESSES ON IRON BEDS & TWO COKE STOVES FOR HEATING, BUT AS THE C/O SAID “YOU’LL BE PLENTY WARM ENOUGH, FLYING.” WE SETTLED IN WELL TO SQUADRON LIFE. WE STILL HAD TO TRAIN DURING THE DAY. WE WORKED WELL TOGETHER & DEVISED A SYSTEM SO THAT WE WERE AS EFFICIENT AS WE COULD BE. THEN ON THE 10TH APRIL 1944 OUR PILOTS NAME APPEARED ON THE FLIGHT LIST. THE ROUTINE THEN & IN FUTURE TO BE REPEATED OFTEN, WAS, 10 AM IN THE MORNING, CREW BUS TO THE AIRCRAFT WE WERE TO USE. Q-QUEENIE, EACH OF US CHECKED & RECHECKED HIS PART. THE ENGINES WERE RUN UP & THE PILOT CHECKED EACH ENGINE SEPERATELY. [sic] ANYTHING HE DIDN’T LIKE WAS ATTENDED TO & CHECKED AGAIN THE WIRELESS OP. CHECKED HIS EQUIPMENT. WE [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 10 [/underlined] HAD TO CHECK MY GUNS WERE IN WORKING ORDER AMMUNITION RAN SMOOTHLY INTO THE GUN. THE AMMUNITION BELT WAS FOLDED INSIDE THE FUSELAGE & RAN IN TRACKS INTO THE TURRET. COULD NOT AFFORD A JAMMED BULLET, IF NEED AROSE, TO MESS THINGS UP. THE TURRET HAD TO WORK SMOOTHLY THE HYDRAULICS FREE FROM LEAKS & AIRLOCKS THE ELECTRIC HEATING FOR MY FLYING SUIT HAD TO BE WORKING, FROZEN FINGERS AT A CRUSIAL [sic] MOMENT to BE AVOIDED. THE INSIDE PERSPEX WAS CLEANED so THAT VISION WAS CLEAR. EVERYTHING CHECKED & RECHECKED, THEN & ONLY THEN THE PILOT WAS ADVISED THAT EVERYTHING WAS O.K – THE BOOK SIGNED. WE HAD A FIRST CLASS GROUND CREW & RARELY FOUND A FAULT, WHEN WE DID, IT WAS PUT RIGHT. BY FINDING OUT HOW MUCH PETROL WAS BEING PUT IN & THE WEIGHT AND TYPE OF BOMBS WE COULD WORK OUT THE DISTANCE AND TYPE OF TARGET of the opperation. [sic] ALL WAS TO BE REVEALED AT THE BRIEFING ABOUT 2 hours BEFOR [sic] TAKE OFF NO ONE WAS ALLOWED OUT OF CAMP UNTIL TAKE OFF. AT THE BRIEFING it WOULD BE DISCLOSED THE TARGET, THE COURSE to BE SET TIME OF TAKE OFF, TIME OVER TARGET & TIME BACK. WE WERE ISSUED WITH AN ESCAPE KIT IN CASE WE HAD TO BALE OUT & CHOCOLATE & CANNED DRINK FOR THE JOURNEY. ALL RELEVANT INFORMATION WAS GIVEN & DIJESTED. [sic] THE NAVIGATOR THEN HAD TO WORK OUT HIS FLIGHT PLAN. OUR NAVIGATOR WAS SLOW & METHODICAL. I NEVER KNEW HIM TO [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 11 [/underlined] ON, TOO SOON OR TOO LATE MEANT THAT YOU WERE ON YOUR OWN & EASILY PICKED UP BY RADAR, SEARCHLIGHTS or FIGHTERS, SO THEN TO TAKE OFF. OUR TARGET ON THAT FIRST TRIP WAS MARSHALLING YARDS AT AULNOYE. TAKE OFF 23.35 time over TARGET 02.25 WE PILED INTO THE CREW BUS WITH 2 OTHER CREWS & WERE TAKEN OUT TO OUR AIRCRAFT THERE WAS A BIT OF LAUGHING & JOKING & AS EACH CREW LEFT, IT WAS “CHEERIO, SEE YOU AT BREAKFAST”. WHEN OUR AIRCRAFT WAS REACHED, WE ALIGHTED, SAID “CHEERIO” to the GROUND CREW & CLIMBED ABOARD, THE JOKES STOPPED & WE WERE EACH LEFT TO OUR OWN THOUGHTS “HOW WOULD WE COPE UNDER FIRE” WE SHOOK EACH OTHERS HAND, PATTED THE SIDE OF THE AIRCRAFT & MADE OUR WAY TO OUR POSTS. MINE WAS A LONG WALK TO THE REAR, STOWING MY PARACHUTE OUTSIDE THE TURRET I SWUNG MYSELF IN, PLUGGED IN MY ELECTIC [sic] HEATER, CHECKED IT & SWITCHED OFF, RUNNING THROUGH ALL THE CHECKS I REPORTED OVER THE INTERCOM THAT ALL WAS O.K. EACH MEMBER IN TURN REPORTED AND ALL WAS SET. AT THE APPROPRIATE TIME THE ENGINES WERE STARTED & CHOCKS AWAY WE WERE MOVING TO THE END OF THE RUNWAY. GIVING THE THUMBS UP SIGN FROM THE GROUND CREW SERGEANT. ONE PLANE AFTER THE OTHER WERE SIGNALLED OFF & SOON WE WERE AIRBOURNE [sic] & REACHING 20,000 FT [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 12 [/underlined] LIKE A TRAINING EXERCISE. SOON IT WAS OVER THE FRENCH COAST & COURSE SET FOR TARGET TARGET [sic] REACHED SPOT ON TIME. FEW SEARCHLIGHTS AND A BIT OF “ACK-ACK” GUNFIRE. THE BOMB AIMER LINED UP HIS TARGET & GAVE THE PILOT DIRECTIONS. I FELT THE AIRCRAFT RISE AS HE REPORTED “BOMBS GONE SKIPPER” THE PILOT REPLIED “THANK YOU BOMB AIMER, LETS GO HOME” & AS WE PASSED OVER THE TARGET I COULD SEE A SERIES OF EXPLOSIONS, FIRES BURNING & SEARCHLIGHTS TRYING TO PICK US UP, VERY LITTLE “FLACK” SUGGESTING THAT THERE WERE A NUMBER OF NIGHT FIGHTERS ABOUT. I REPORTED THIS TO THE SKIPPER. HE SAID “KEEP YOUR EYES WELL PEELED GUNNERS. THE WORST IS BEHIND US.” WE HAD A QUIET JOURNEY BACK. LANDED. REPORTED IN & WENT TO BREAKFAST. ALL OUR CREWS WERE BACK SAFELY AFTER WHAT WAS A RELATIVELY EASY TRIP. BUT AS ONE OLD CREW SAID IT DOESNT HAPPEN OFTEN, COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS BREAKFAST WAS A GOOD FRY UP AND SUDDENLY I WAS TIRED & SURPRISED TO SEE IT GETTING LIGHTER IT WAS 6 AM THE TRIP HAD TAKEN 5 hours NO REPORTING UNTIL 12 NOON AND SO TO SLEEP. AS IT HAPPENED WE WERE NOT OPPERATIONAL [sic] AGAIN FOR OVER A WEEK, BUT THERE WAS NO SLACKING, WE STILL HAD TO PRACTICE AND WERE ALWAYS KEPT INFORMED OF DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES BEING USED. IF WE WEREN’T REQUIRED FOR FLYING WE COULD GO INTO GRIMSBY FOR CINEMA, PUBS & ENTERTAIN [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 13 [/underlined] WHICH WAS USED BY THE RAF, AND NICKNAMED THE “MUCKY DUCK,” NOISEY & SMOKEY. IT WAS THERE THAT I FIRST MET UP WITH THE “YANKS”. WE GOT ON REASONABLY WELL ONCE WE WERE USED TO THEIR WAYS, BUT COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND WHY THE WHITES WOULD INSIST ON BLACKS BEING FORCED TO DRINK ELSE WHERE, AND ANY TROUBLE USUALLY AROSE BETWEEN THE TWO. BACK IN CAMP WE KEPT LOOKING AT THE OPPERATIONS [sic] BOARD AND AT LAST ON THE 18TH APRIL WE WERE DETAILED. OUR ROUTINE CHECKS OF THE AIRCRAFT WERE DONE AND ABOUT 8 pm WE HAD BRIEFING. THE TARGET WAS ROUEN. THE DOCKS & MARSHALLING YARDS. AGAIN EVERY THING WENT WELL. WE STAYED OUT OF TROUBLE, DID THE JOB AND CAME BACK TO BASE. TWO NIGHTS LATER WE WERE FLYING AGAIN, THIS TIME TO COLOGNE IN THE RHUR. THE HOT SPOT OF GERMANY. THE LARGE MUNITIONS FACTORIES OF KRUPPS & STEEL WORKS WERE ALL ALLONG [sic] THE RHUR. WELL DEFENDED. THIS TIME IT WAS NO JOY RIDE. WE SAW IT ALL. SEARCHLIGHTS “FLACK” AND THE AIRCRAFT TOSSED ABOUT BY NEAR SHELL BURSTS. NO DAMAGE TO WORRY ABOUT. WE SAW OTHER AIRCRAFT BEING ATTACKED BY NIGHT FIGHTERS & GO DOWN IN FLAMES. THE TARGET WAS ONE MASS OF FIRES & BOMB BURSTS. IT SEEMED ENDLESS. BUT EVENTUALLY WE WERE THROUGH, BOMBS DROPPED & TARGET BEHIND US. THE SKIPPER CHECKED EVERY ONE WAS O.K. APPOLOGISED [sic] FOR THE BUMPY RIDE & SAID “I’LL BUY YOU ALL A BEER WHEN WE GET BACK”[missing words] [page break] [underlined] 14 [/underlined] A COUPLE OF SCARES FROM NIGHT FIGHTERS, BUT MANAGED TO EVADE THEM AND LOSE OURSELVES INTO THE DARK NIGHT SKY. THE C/O HAD BEEN RIGHT, IT HAD BEEN PRETTY WARM FLYING NO NEED FOR COKE FIRES. TWO NIGHTS LATER WE WERE IN THE RHUR AGAIN TO DUSSELDORF. MUCH THE SAME HAPPENED, BUT WE RETURNED O.K. NO DAMAGE. THEN KARLSRUHE A COUPLE OF NIGHTS LATER, WE HAD A BIT OF DAMAGE, BUT MADE IT HOME, BUT THAT WAS A LONG TRIP AND TOOK 6 1/2 hours. MOST OF IT TRYING TO KEEP OUT OF TROUBLE, WE HAD TO PICK UP ANOTHER AIRCRAFT FOR OUR NEXT FLIGHT TO ESSEN ON THE 26TH APRIL. BY NOW WE HAD EXPERIENCED IT ALL. EVERYTHING THAT COULD HAPPEN AND THOUGHT WE WERE BEING LUCKY TO GET AWAY WITH IT. WE HAD DEVELOPED A GOOD WORKING SYSTEM BETWEEN US GUNNERS WHICH KEPT US OUT OF THE WORST OF IT. THE REST OF THE CREW ALWAYS CAME AND SAID THANKS ON LANDING GEORGE WOULD HAVE PREFERED MORE ACTION. ON THE 27TH WE WERE BRIEFED FOR FRIEDRICHAFEN AFTER ABOUT 30 MINUTES ONE ENGINE BEGAN SIEZING UP AND HAD TO BE CUT, THE SKIPPER SAID WE WOULD HAVE TO GO BACK. GEORGE WANTED TO CARRY ON ON [sic] THREE ENGINES BUT RON WAS AGAINST IT & TO GEORGES DISGUST TURNED THE PLANE ROUND AND HEADED HOME. RON RADIOD [sic] BASE & WAS TOLD TO JETTISON THE BOMB LOAD OVER THE NORTH SEA. THIS WAS DONE AND WE [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 15 [/underlined] ENGINE WAS PLAYING UP, SO IT WAS A RELIEF TO PUT FOOT ON LAND. ON THE 30TH APRIL WE WERE BRIEFED FOR A TRIP TO MAINTENON MARSHALLING YARDS IN FRANCE THIS TIME A NEW TECHNIQUE WAS TO BE USED. WE WERE INSTRUCTED TO ARRIVE AT THE TARGET AREA AT A GIVEN TIME. TARGET INDICATORS WERE BEING DROPPED (YELLOW FLARES) AND WE WERE TO CIRCLE UNTIL ORDERED TO OUR SPECIAL TARGET (GREEN FLARES) OTHER AIRCRAFT WERE GIVEN (BLUE FLARES OR RED FLARES TO BOMB ON. EVERYTHING WENT ACCORDING TO PLAN AND THIS WAS THE BEGINING [sic] ON THE PATHFINDER TECHNIQUE AND PROVED A GREAT SUCCESS FOR PINPOINT BOMBING. THE AIRCRAFT USED WERE THE MOSQUITO’S WITH A 2 MAN CREW THEY WERE FANTASTIC. THERE WAS, HOWEVER, TO BE A SERIOUS SET BACK A FEW DAYS LATER A PERIOD OF FULL MOON HAD JUST BEGUN, AND USUALLY THAT MEANT A STAND DOWN. WE WERE THEREFOR [sic] SUPRISED [sic] ON THE 3RD MAY TO SEE THE ROSTA UP FOR EVENING OPS. AND OUR CREW DETAILED. WE DID OUR USUAL CHECKS IN THE MORNING. EVERYTHING O.K AND THEN BRIEFING ABOUT 8 PM. WE WERE INFORMED THAT THE TARGET WAS MAILLY-LE-CAMP IN FRANCE JUST SOUTH OF PARIS. THIS WAS A GERMAN PANZER TANK TRAINING CAMP AND WITH THE IMPENDING INVASION WAS BETTER DESTROYED. THERE WAS TO BE TWO TARGETS. WITH OUR NEIGHBOUGHS, [sic] GROUP 5 TAKING THE FIRST. OUR GROUP [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 16 [/underlined] TO DROP TARGET INDICATORS AND EACH GROUP TOLD WHEN TO ATTACK AND WHAT COLOUR FLARE TO BOMB ON. GROUP 5 ARRIVED AND CIRCLED ON YELLOW MARKERS UNTIL GIVEN THE ORDER TO BOMB. THIS THEY DID SUCCESSFULLY. GROUP I (OUR GROUP) ARRIVED, SOME A LITTLE EARLY AND WERE INSTRUCTED TO CIRCLE OVER THE YELLOW MARKERS UNTIL GIVEN THE ORDER TO BOMB. IN THE MEANWHILE GERMAN FIGHTERS HAD ARRIVED AND GIVEN BRIGHT MOONLIGHT AND LANCASTERS FLYING AROUND IN CIRCLES, HAD EASY PREY. THE PATHFINDERS ORDERED THE PLANES TO KEEP THEIR POSITION AND THE AIR WAS BLUE WITH PILOTS REMONSTRATING, IT WAS PANDEMONIUM. OUR PLANE WAS APPROACHING THE AREA AT THE CORRECT TIME AND THE PILOT DECIDED TO CIRCLE SOME WAY AWAY FROM THE ACTION UNTIL WE HAD THE ORDER TO BOMB ON THE RED FLARE. THIS WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH DUE HASTE AND ACCURACY. ONCE THROUGH THE TARGET WE WERE CONTINUALLY HARRASSED BY GERMAN FIGHTERS. ONE IN PARTICULAR CAME FROM AFAR AND I COULD SEE HIS TRACER BULLETS GOING OVER THE TOP OF US. AS HE GOT WITHIN RANGE I OPENED FIRE AND HE PEELED OFF. I KNOW SOME OF MY SHOT HIT HIM. HE WHEELED ROUND AND CAME IN AGAIN, WELL OUT OF MY RANGE. BUT AGAIN HIS TRACERS WERE HIGH AND I SAT THERE FULLY EXPECTING TO GET THE FULL IMPACT. OUR PILOT WAS TWISTING AND TURNING [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 17 [/underlined] SUDDENLY HIS FIRING CEASED AND ROUND HE WENT AGAIN. THIS TIME HE JUST SAT OUT OF RANGE, WAGGLED HIS WINGS AND FLEW OFF. – WHY? – EITHER HE HAD RUN OUT OF AMMUNITION, OR HIS GUNS HAD JAMMED, EITHER WAY, IT WAS A RELIEF AND I SAID A FEW WORDS OF THANKS TO OUR GARDIAN [sic] ANGEL WE HAD OTHER ENCOUNTERS AFTER THAT BUT ARRIVED BACK WITH ONLY A FEW GASHES. ALL OUR OTHER CREWS ARRIVED BACK TO BASE AS WELL, AND HAD FARED [sic] IN THE SAME MANNER. OUR GROUPS LOSSES WERE 28 AIRCRAFT AND GROUP 5 LOST 14. WE WERE LUCKY BUT NONE OF US WOULD EVER EXPERIENCE ANYTHING LIKE IT AGAIN – OR FORGET IT – THE PATHFINDERS NEVER AGAIN MADE SUCH A MESS OF THINGS AND WENT ON TO BECOME A GREAT SUCCESS. THERE WAS A STORY THAT WENT AROUND SOME TIME AFTER. THE SPECIAL DUTIES FLIGHT AT BINBROOK UNDER COMMAND OF SQUADRON LEADER BILL BREAKSPEAR HAD BEEN AGAINST THE RAID BECAUSE OF THE BRIGHT MOON AND CLEAR SKY AND HAD SAID SO TO HARRIS, BUT HAD BEEN OVER RULED. AT THEIR NEXT MEETING BREAKSPEAR STORMED OUT OF THE ROOM WITHOUT SALUTING, HARRIS CALLED HIM BACK AND SAID “DON’T YOU SALUTE AIR CHIEF MARSHALLS” BREAKSPEAR REPLIED “NOT STUPID ONES – SIR,” HARRIS WAS NOT NAMED THE BUTCHER FOR NOTHING AND APPEARED NOT TO CARE ABOUT LOSSES OF MEN. AFTER MAILLY WE HAD A REST FOR A [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 18 [/underlined] WHICH BY NOW WAS BECOMING A WAY OF LIFE RENNES (FRANCE) DIEPPE (FRANCE) ORLEANS (FRANCE DORTMUND, AACHEN (GERMANY) TWICE ACHERES (FRANCE THIS WAS ON THE 6TH JUNE (D. DAY). WE TOOK OFF JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT AND RETURNED 5 1/2 hrs LATER TO BE TOLD THAT BRITISH & ALLIED TROOPS HAD MADE A SUCCESSFUL LANDING IN FRANCE. ALL OPERATIONS AFTER THAT WERE TO FULLY SUPPORT GROUND TROOPS FLEURS [Flers] (FRANCE) ON THE 9TH ACHERES (FRANCE) 10TH THEN ON THE 13TH JUNE CAME THE SHOCK. WE WERE TO BE POSTED TO 300 (POLISH) SQUADRON TOGETHER WITH 5 OTHER EXPERIENCED CREWS IT SEEMED THAT 300 SQUADRON WERE LOSING A LOT OF AIRCRAFT AND WAS UNDER STRENGTH NO ONE WANTED TO LEAVE KILLINGHOLME WE HAD BUILT UP A GOOD REPUTATION LOSSES WERE LOW MISSIONS WERE ACCOMPLISHED AND WEIGHT OF BOMBS PER AIRCRAFT WERE THE HIGHEST IN THE GROUP. HOWEVER, ORDERS WERE ORDERS AND WITH MUCH MISGIVINGS WE WENT TO FALDINGWORTH NEAR LINCOLN. WE ARRIVED AND WERE SHOWN OUR QUARTERS, SAME NISSEN HUTS SAME TYPE OF BEDS NO OTHER COMFORTS THEN TAKEN TO THE MESS FOR A MEAL. TO PUT IT MILDLY POLISH FOOD HAD LITTLE ATTRACTION FOR US AND WE SETTLED FOR A GOOD FRY UP OF EGGS AND BACON. WE MANAGED TO INSIST ON AN ENGLISH MENUE. [sic] THE AIRCRAFT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO FLY WERE A DISGRACE AND FALLING TO PIECES [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 19 [/underlined] to FLY THEM AND OUR C/O BACKED US UP. WITHIN 2 DAYS WE HAD NEW LANCASTERS DELIVERED AND ON THE 14TH DID OUR FIRST OPERATION FOR 300 SQUADRON TO LE HAVRE. THE STATE OF THE OTHER AIRCRAFT THE POLES WERE FLYING GAVE US A GOOD IDEA WHY THEIR LOSSES WERE SO HIGH. BUT WITH OUR SUPPORT THINGS WERE TO CHANGE AND NEW AIRCRAFT ARRIVED ALMOST DAILY. THE POLES WERE A FRIENDLY LOT. VERY QUICK TO BUY A DRINK FOR THEIR ENGLISH FRIENDS, WE HAD BEEN WARNED NOT TO DISCUSS POLITICS, AS PART OF POLAND HAD BEEN HANDED OVER TO RUSSIA IN A DEAL BETWEEN ROOSEVELT CHURCHILL & STALIN. WE SETTLED IN VERY UNEASILY TO OUR NEW SQUADRON. MORE THOROUGH CHECKS ON EVERY NUT AND BOLT. WE DID OPPERATIONS [sic] TO AULNOYE (FRANCE) RHEIMS (FRANCE) AT THIS TIME LONDON WAS BEGINING [sic] TO GET ROCKET ATTACKS AND WE WERE SENT OUT WITH PATHFINDERS MARKING TARGETS, TO THE ROCKET SITES, THESE WERE MAINLY IN WOODLANDS HIDDEN BY TREES AND HEAVILY CAMAFLAGED [sic] WE STARTED DAILIGHT [sic] BOMBING. SOMETHING NEW FOR US. WE WERE USED TO BEING ON OUR OWN, NOT FLYING IN FORMATION. WHICH WAS FOR US, DOWNRIGHT DANGEROUS & DISPENSED WITH RIGHT FROM THE START. THE “YANKS” HAD OUR ADMIRATION FOR THE WAY THEY FLEW IN FORMATION AND IT WAS LAUGHABLE WHEN, AS [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 20 [/underlined] IN PRETTY PATTERNS AND OUR STRAGGLY LOT ALL OVER THE PLACE. IT WAS ABOUT THIS TIME I WAS PROMOTED TO FLIGHT SERGEANT THIS MEANT A LITTLE EXTRA CASH AND WAS MOST WELCOME, AS VERY OFTEN WE HAD TO VISIT A RESTAURANT IN LINCOLN TO GET A DECENT MEAL. I BECAME QUITE A REGULAR CUSTOMER AT MRS HOLDEN’S FOR HER DELICIOUS CHICKEN LUNCH, AFTER WHICH AN EVENING IN THE SARACENS HEAD. OR AS IT WAS AFFECTIONALLY KNOWN “THE SNAKE PIT”. BY NOW THE 2ND FRONT WAS GETTING ESTABLISHED AND WE WERE ATTACKING TARGETS SUCH AS AULNOYE (MARSHALLING YARDS) RHEIMS (TROOP PLACEMENTS) SIRACOURT (ROCKETS) VIERZON (TROOPS) ORLEANS ROCKET LAUNCHERS IN DAYLIGHT, ALMOST EVERY DAY AND NIGHT WE WERE OUT. SOMETIMES RUNNING INTO FIGHTER AIRCRAFT, SOMETIMES HEAVY GUNFIRE BUT WE STEERED CLEAR OF TROUBLE. THEN CAME CAEN ON THE NORMANDY FRONT. THE BRITISH TROOPS WERE BEING HELD UP IN THEIR ADVANCE AND THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR US, WERE TO BOMB A VERY HEAVILY DEFENDED TOWN AND PANZER DIVISION. THE PATHFINDERS WERE TO GO IN FIRST AND DROP THEIR FLARES AND GIVE US INSTRUCTIONS ON WHICH COLOUR TO BOMB WE TOOK OFF AT 8 PM AND STILL VERY LIGHT WE COULD SEE ALL OUR OTHER LANCASTERS MAKING THEIR WAY TO DIFFERENT TARGETS, THERE WOULD BE 20-30 PLANES ON 1 COLOUR FLARE [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 21 [/underlined] WAS STILL LIGHT. OUR USUAL BOMBING HEIGHT WAS 20,000 FT FOR THIS ONE WE STARTED OFF AT 10,000 FT. BUT BECAUSE OF CLOUD HAD TO DECEND UNTIL WE COULD SEE OUR FLARE. BOMBING HAD TO BE SPOT ON BECAUSE OF THE NEARNESS OF BRITISH TROOPS ON THE GROUND. WE COULD SEE THE HOUSES, TROOPS, EVERYTHING – ESPECIALLY OTHER AIRCRAFT CONVERGING ON THE SAME TARGET SOME LOWER SOME HIGHER, THOSE THAT WERE HIGHER WERE OPENING THEIR BOMB BAYS RIGHT OVER HEAD OF US, AND AS I HEARD OUR BOMB AIMER SAY “BOMBS GONE” I COULD SEE ABOUT 3 OTHERS HIGHER, RELEASING THEIRS. I JUST SAT THERE AND PRAYED. THE BOMBS WERE FALLING ONE AFTER THE OTHER AND THANKFULLY MISSED THE TAIL, BY HOW MUCH I DONT KNOW BUT IT LOOKED PRETTY CLOSE. OUR LOSSES DURING THAT TRIP WERE PUT DOWN TO OUR OWN. WE WERE TO DO A COUPLE MORE TRIPS LIKE THAT. ON ONE WE EVEN GOT DOWN TO 1500 FT WHICH WAS VERY, VERY LOW. THEN ON THE 31ST JULY WE WERE TO DO OUR 30TH TRIP AND THE LAST ONE OF OUR FIRST TOUR. THEN ON TO 14 DAYS LEAVE. WE TRIED NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT UNTIL WE HAD OUT FOOT ON ENGLISH SOIL AGAIN, THIS TIME A ROCKET SITE. NO HASSEL. [sic] NO FLACK. NO FIGHTERS ONLY ON THE RETURN DID AN ENGINE PACK IN, AND WE HAD TO LAND AT A DIFFERENT BASE. WE WERE DEBRIEFED, AND WHEN THEY HEARD IT WAS OUR [missing words] [page break] [underlined] 22 [/underlined] THE AIRCREWS CAME OUT. IT WAS ABOUT 3 AM IN THE MORNING. WE HAD A BIT OF A PARTY BUT WE WERE LOOKED UPON LIKE FREAKS THE QUESTIONS WE WERE ASKED, IT WAS ALL A BIT OVERPOWERING. NEXT MORNING WE WERE NOT ALLOWED TO FLY BACK TO BASE THEY SENT A CAR TO TRANSPORT US AND A FRESH CREW TO TAKE OUR PLANE. ON ARRIVAL BACK AT FALDINGWORTH WE WERE DROPPED OFF AT THE C/O’S OFFICE TAKEN IN HAD A SHOT OF WHISKEY WITH HIM, SHOOK HANDS AND TOLD THAT ON THE FOLLOWING DAY WE WERE TO START OUR LEAVE. GET EVERY THING PACKED. THAT EVENING WE MET UP AS A CREW FOR THE LAST TIME. HAD A DRINK OR TWO AND SAID OUR CHEERIO’S. THE FOLLOWING MORNING RON, OUR PILOT & I WENT TO LINCOLN STATION CHANGED TRAINS AT PETERBOROUGH AND HENCE TO LONDON. THERE HE WENT OFF TO BRIGHTON & I TO TWICKENHAM. JOB DONE, - NONE OF US MET UP AGAIN. [page break] TAILENDERS END TALES. [circled 1] IT WAS DURING OCTOBER 43 THAN [sic] OUR PILOT CALLED A CREW MEETING. HIS OPENING WORDS WERE “WE HAVE BEEN TOGETHER LONG ENOUGH, I TAKE IT THAT WE ARE HAPPY WITH THE WAY WE OPPERATE [sic] TOGETHER”. WE ALL AGREED. HE CARRIED ON. “AS I SEE IT. I AM JUST THE DRIVER. ART (NAVIGATOR) GIVES ME THE COURSE. I FLY IT OVER THE TARGET. DAVE (BOMAIMER) [sic] GIVES ME DIRECTIONS. – I FLY IT -. KEN. [deleted] YOU [/deleted] I RELY ON YOU TO GIVE ME CORRECT MESSAGES THAT COME OVER THE RADIO. AND I ACT ON IT. BILL. – AS GUNNER, YOU ARE OUR EYES. ANY TIME YOU SEE WE ARE BEING ATTACKED, YOU GIVE ME DIRECTIONS FOR EVASIVE ACTION. – STRAIGHT AWAY. ALL OF YOU, TELL ME, I WILL FOLLOW YOUR ORDERS WITHOUT QUESTION OR HESITATION. – ANY QUESTIONS NOW.” DURING PRACTICE RON & I EVOLVED A SERIES OF MANOEVERS [sic] FOR EVASIVE ACTION. THAT THEY WORKED WAS ONLY DUE TO THE WAY THE LANCASTER WAS BUILT. [circled 2] ONE NIGHT WHILST ON A TRAINING FLIGHT WE RAN INTO AN ELECTRICAL STORM. LIGHTENING FLASHED AND THE AIRCRAFT WAS TOSSED ABOUT BUT WHAT WAS MOST FRIGHTENING WAS THE WAY SPARKS WERE LEAPING FROM ONE METAL OBJECT TO ANOTHER. RUNNING THE LENGTH OF THE GUN BARRELL AND ALL ROUND THE TURRET I WAS GLAD WHEN WE WERE OUT OF IT. [circled 3] ON SQUADRON THE GROUND CREW WERE FANTASTIC [page break] THE SERGEANT WAS THERE IN THE MORNINGS AND THERE WHEN WE TOOK OFF AT NIGHT. – AND THERE AGAIN ON OUR RETURN, WHEN HE SLEPT I DONT KNOW. BUT THEY WERE DEDICATED TO GIVING US THE BEST SERVICE. [circled 4] OUR SQUADRON BASE AT KILLINGHOLME WAS CLOSE TO THE HUMBER RIVER. THE PORT OF HULL ONE SIDE AND GRIMSBY THE OTHER. VERY OFTEN BOTH PLACES WERE SUBJECTED TO HEAVY BOMBING BY THE GERMAN AIR FORCE. QUITE OFTEN THESE RAIDS CO-INCIDED WITH OUR TAKE OFF TIME, SO THAT BOTH AIRFORCES WERE IN THE AIR OVER GRIMSBY AT THE SAME TIME AND WE WERE OFTEN CAUGHT UP IN OUR OWN SEARCHLIGHTS. WITH THE NEXT GROUP OF SEARCHLIGHTS HOLDING A GERMAN BOMBER IN ITS BEAMS. WE HAD TO SIGNAL IN MORSE TO THE GROUND FOR THEM TO SWITCH OFF. [circled 5] DURING THE TRIP ON AACHEN AT THE END OF MAY, ART, OUR NAVIGATOR ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS ALWAYS SO BUSY PLOTTING THE NEXT COURSE AFTER THE TARGET, THAT HE HAD NEVER THE CHANCE TO SEE THE TARGET. THE NAVIGATORS CUBBY HOLE WAS ALL SHUT IN BECAUSE HE HAD TO HAVE LIGHT TO WORK BY. ON THIS TRIP HE DECLARED HE WOULD GIVE THE PILOT THE COURSE TO FOLLOW BEFORE HAND. SWITCH HIS LIGHTS OUT AND SEE WHAT WENT ON. THIS HE DID. IT HAPPENED THAT IT WAS A HECTIC NIGHT. AND THE FIREWORK DISPLAY WAS BRILLIANT. WE HEARD ART GASP. [missing words] [page break] I WOULDN’T HAVE COME.” I DONT THINK HE PEEKED OUT AGAIN. [circled 6] 3RD MAY. THE PERIOD OF FULL MOON. WE TOOK OFF CLIMBED THROUGH BILLOWING WHITE CLOUD AT 10,000 FT INTO FULL MOONLIGHT. THE SIGHT WAS BREATHTAKING THE MOON SHONE ON THE CLOUDS LIKE DRIFTS OF SNOW. YOU COULD SEE FOR MILES, LANCASTERS ALL OVER THE SKY. OUR PILOT WAS SO CARRIED AWAY AT THE BEAUTY OF IT, HE FLEW THE AIRCRAFT LIKE A SLEIGH, SKIMMING THE TOPS OF THE CLOUDS AND WHOOPING LIKE A COWBOY. IT WAS INDEED A GRAND SIGHT. PITY IT WAS GOING TO BE SPOILT LATER THAT NIGHT. [circled 7] AFTER WE HAD FINISHED OUR TOUR AND THE CREW HAD GONE OUR DIFFERENT WAYS, I WAS TO BE POSTED TO BRIDGENORTH AS INSTRUCTOR. IT WAS THERE THAT I WAS INFORMED THAT I WAS ELIGIBLE FOR 2 SERVICE MEDALS. THE 1939/45 STAR. AND THE AIRCREW EUROPE STAR AND CLASP. MY THOUGHTS IMMEDIATELY WENT TO GEORGE. HE MUST HAVE LAUGHED HIS SOCKS OFF. 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 Bill Freeman's Service Career Description An account of the resource A detailed account of Bill's time in the RAF, starting with drill at Lords, training at RAF Bridlington and RAF Bridgnorth then RAF Stormy Down. He passed the course and, on return from leave, reported to RAF Hixon for crewing up. He describes training and his social life. He then transferred to RAF Binbrook, followed by RAF Blyton, RAF Hemswell, RAF Elsham Wolds and RAF N Killingholme. He describes individual operations in detail. He and his crew were transferred to RAF Faldingworth where the condition of their aircraft was poor and were quickly replaced with new aircraft. His crew successfully survived their 30 operations, never to meet up again. He concludes his memoir with seven tail-ender tales. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bill Freeman 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. Memoir Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 25 handwritten sheets Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BFreemanWFreemanWv1 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--London England--Brighton England--Dewsbury Canada England--Stafford Wales--Tredegar England--Northampton England--Grimsby France--Rouen Germany--Cologne Germany--Essen Germany--Düsseldorf Germany--Karlsruhe Denmark--Frederikshavn France--Maintenon France--Mailly-le-Camp France--Rennes France--Dieppe France--Orléans Germany--Dortmund Germany--Aachen France--Paris England--Lincoln France--Le Havre Poland France--Pas-de-Calais France--Caen France--Vierzon France Germany Denmark France--Reims Germany--Ruhr (Region) England--Northamptonshire England--Yorkshire England--Lincolnshire England--Staffordshire England--Sussex Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending text-based transcription. Under review 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 Tricia Marshall Maureen Clarke Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1943-04-05 1944-03 1944-04-10 1 Group 1662 HCU 300 Squadron 5 Group 550 Squadron air gunner Air Gunnery School aircrew Anson anti-aircraft fire bomb aimer bombing bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944) bombing of the Le Havre E-boat pens (14/15 June 1944) briefing Churchill, Winston (1874-1965) crewing up entertainment flight engineer George Cross ground crew Halifax Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984) Heavy Conversion Unit Lancaster mess military living conditions military service conditions Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy Mosquito navigator Nissen hut Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944) Operational Training Unit Pathfinders pilot RAF Binbrook RAF Blyton RAF Bridgnorth RAF Bridlington RAF Elsham Wolds RAF Faldingworth RAF Hemswell RAF Hixon RAF North Killingholme RAF Stormy Down searchlight Stalin, Joseph (1878-1953) tactical support for Normandy troops target indicator training Wellington Window wireless operator https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/205/3340/ABatesP151009.mp3 f5fd2ef009e496cfc1da092a451f6c89 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 Bates, Philip Philip Bates P Bates Description An account of the resource One oral history interview with Philip Bates (1307447 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 149 Squadron until his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-10-09 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 Bates, P Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Mr Philip Bates at home in Urmston, Greater Manchester on Friday 9th of October at 2pm. Mr Bates could you please confirm your full name? PB: Yes. Phillip Bates. BW: And your rank. PB: Sergeant when I was shot down but warrant officer when I returned back from being a prisoner of war. BW: Ok. And do you recall your service number at all? PB: Yes 1307447. BW: It’s surprising how that - PB: And I can tell you my prisoner of war number as well BW: Ok. PB: 222803 BW: 222803 PB: Stalag 4b. BW: Ok. And what squadron were you on, sir? PB: 149 at Lakenheath. BW: Ok. So if you could just give us an idea of what your life was like prior to joining the air force so where you grew up and any sort of significant movements before joining the RAF and what prompted you to join. PB: Yeah. Well I’m a native of Burnley, Lancashire, a cotton weaving town, until I was employed as a junior clerk with a local manufacturer but once the war started I was keen to get in and immediately after the fall of France I volunteered for the air force. And - BW: So this would be May 1940. PB: This would be May 1940 and went to Blackpool for a fortnight square bashing. BW: Ok. PB: Those of us who were on that particular course were then posted to Cosford and - BW: Ok. PB: Nobody thought about anything in those days except the imminent invasion of Britain and we who’d been in the air force a fortnight were given the job of defending Cosford against German paratroopers which was the most farcical thing you could ever imagine so a friend and I very quickly sneaked away to the orderly room and volunteered for training as flight mechanics and we both - BW: Ok. PB: Trained as flight mechanics and then as fitter 2E’s and my friend was posted to 149 squadron where I met up with him in 1943. I went to 86 squadron, Coastal Command flying the Beaufort torpedo bombers and moved from there to Scotland and eventually I was sent to Sealand to a huge maintenance depot on a six month potential NCO course with the intention that when I returned back to my unit I’d be made a corporal but whilst I was at Sealand a Manchester landed and this was June 1942 and I went to look at this Manchester. I’d never seen anything bigger than a, than a Wellington before and this thing was stood there with its bomb doors open and this was a few months after Butch Harris had taken charge and I looked up into that bomb bay and I said to myself. ‘Bomber Command is no longer a joke. It’s big. It’s getting bigger. I’ve got to be part of it,’ and so the next day I volunteered for training as a flight engineer. BW: Ok. PB: And I trained early in 1943. Posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit at Waterbeach where I was crewed up with a crew who had just finished their OTU on Wellingtons and we went from there. BW: And so just thinking back to your decision to join Bomber Command. You’d already had some technical training - PB: Yes. BW: At that stage. PB: Yes. BW: And so you wanted to further that as a flight engineer. PB: Well the obvious job for a fitter 2E was to be, was to be a flight engineer. BW: Ok. PB: And it didn’t require a great deal of training to bridge the gap of course. BW: And there were a number of guys who went through Halton. Did you do any training for flight engineering at Halton or not? With [?] PB: No. St Athan. BW: Right. PB: St Athan. BW: So you weren’t one of Trenchard’s brats or anything? PB: Oh no I wasn’t a brat. I was too old to be a brat [laughs]. BW: And so it was the sight of the Manchester that prompted you to join. PB: Yes. BW: Properly Bomber Command. PB: Yes, yes. BW: Were you able, at that stage, to volunteer for flying duties or did that come later? Did you foresee that as being part of that trade as a flight engineer? PB: Once I became a flight, once I became a flight engineer obviously I was going to go into Bomber Command. BW: Ok. And - PB: When I arrived at St Athan I was given choices I could train to be. I could train to be on Stirlings or Halifaxes or Lancasters or Sunderland Flying Boats or Catalina Flying Boats. Now, as a fitter I’d always worked on radial engines and so I chose this, I chose the Stirling for the reason that it was Bomber Command and it had radial engines. It perhaps wasn’t the wisest choice. I’d have been better off on Lancasters probably but I I I liked the radial engine so that’s why I chose Stirlings. BW: Speaking as an engineer how did you find the radials then? Were there, were there particular properties about them that you liked? PB: Yes. They, they, they were more powerful than the Merlin for starters and they were more dependable and they could take more, they could take more damage. BW: That’s er that - PB: When I when I was a boy very keen on aircraft now to me the inline liquid cooled engine was just a big motor car engine. The radial was a proper aeroplane engine. BW: Ok. PB: That’s what it was all about for me. The radial was a proper aeroplane engine. The other was just a big motor car engine. BW: I’m sensing there there’s a difference between the aerial engine and flying. Did you have a wish to fly at an early age? PB: Well as a fitter whenever I worked on an aircraft and a pilot came along to do a test flight I invariably asked if I could go up with him so I flew on, I flew on Lysanders, Blenheims and Oxfords as a passenger. BW: And which of those was your favourite? Which was - PB: Oh the Lysander. BW: Really? PB: Oh gorgeous. You’re going, you’re going along and there’s a slow, you heard a terrible creaking noise and the slots and slats worked and the flaps come down. BW: Ahum. PB: And you could practically stand still. Wonderful aeroplane. Wonderful. BW: They used that - PB: Aeroplane. BW: On special duties - PB: Yeah. BW: Squadrons. PB: Short take off, short landings. BW: Yeah. PB: Yeah. BW: But they were, they were a lovely aircraft to be a passenger in. PB: Oh yes. BW: Was it? PB: It was a marvellous aeroplane was the Lysander. I loved it. BW: Did you get many flights in those? PB: Yes quite a few. Yes. I was on, I was on an ackack calibration unit. We worked in concert with the defences of Edinburgh the Forth Bridge and the Rosyth dockyard and I was once in a Lysander where we did dive bombing exercises on the Forth Bridge which was fantastic. BW: Brilliant. PB: Absolutely fantastic. It was like being in a JU87 almost. BW: And this was just to calibrate the ackack guns as you say. PB: Yes. BW: To make sure they had the right sort of - PB: Yes. BW: Ranging or - PB: Yes. Yes. BW: Distance. There were no rounds fired in these - PB: No. No. No just - BW: Just to make sure. PB: Calibration yeah. BW: Right but either way the pilot imitated a dive bombing manoeuvre on a PB: Yeah but we had a real clapped out aircraft. BW: So having had some experience of Lysanders, a single engine aircraft and Oxfords the twin engine. PB: Yeah. BW: You then - PB: All radial engines of course. BW: And radial engines yeah you then opted while you were at St Athan to go forward for Stirlings. PB: Yeah. BW: And what was the course that lead you from St Athan to your squadron? How, how did you go about getting that? PB: Well, we, we completed our course and we got our brevies and were posted to, to Waterbeach Heavy Conversion Unit and I was introduced to a pilot, a Pilot Officer Cotterill and he was my skipper and I then met the rest of the crew and we took it from there. Did our heavy conversion training. BW: And how long did that take? Roughly. PB: Not very long. Maybe about eight weeks I suppose. Something like that. BW: And was most of that or all of it daylight sorties or were there night time - PB: No. BW: Ops involved as well? PB: We did, we did two four hour sessions of daylight take offs and landings, circuits and bumps. Take of twenty minutes to take off and land for four hours. And having done eight hours of that in daytime we did another eight hours at night and then after that we did, we did cross country flights. BW: And when you met your crew at this point did you stay together from the conversion unit through to, on operational squadron as the same crew or were the members interchanged? PB: We lost two members. We lost two members shortly after we joined the squadron. BW: And was there a reason behind that at all? PB: Yes. Our first, our first navigator, Geoff was a regular soldier stationed in India when the war broke out. Browned off. To escape he volunteered for training as air crew. He had a stammer which didn’t help and he was a useless navigator and we knew he was useless and our first trip was a very simple mine laying in the North Sea and he flew us straight through the balloon barrage at Norwich coming back and the next day he packed his kit bags and left us. BW: And was that his choice or - PB: No. No, that was forced upon him. BW: Right ok so it wasn’t something there like a moment of self-awareness. He decided to leave. PB: No. No, he told, he told us he said, ‘They decided I’m not suitable for Bomber Command. I’m being posted to a Coastal Command station.’ Well I think that was just a face saver on his part. I can’t imagine what happened to him but he couldn’t navigate for toffee. Even, even, even with a Gee set he was useless. BW: Ahum. PB: And then we did two mine laying trips. We did a lot of fighter affiliation exercises and our mid upper gunner [Bolivar?] a Londoner was brilliant during, during fighter affiliation. Now, Len, Len the wireless operator was always sick. He spewed up everywhere and I sat there and think, ‘Why don’t you crash the bloody thing and get it over with.’ That’s how bad I felt and Bob was as happy as could be but we did two mine laying trips. One in the North Sea - BW: Ahum. PB: And one in the river estuary at Bordeaux and then our first target was the opening night of the Battle of Hamburg. 24th of July. BW: This would be 24th of July 1943. PB: Yeah. The next night we went to Essen. The next day our mid upper gunner reported sick with air sickness. Now, how he suddenly became air sick overnight I do not know but that was the end of him. So we had a new navigator and a new mid upper gunner. BW: Sometimes after raids like that men would be removed if they were felt to perhaps have broken at some stage. Do you - PB: Oh yes. BW: Do you think that might have been an impact? PB: Yes. He was still, he was still on the station when we were shot down and I’ve often wondered what he made of it that morning when he woke up and found five empty beds. BW: And so if I can just touch again on the fighter affiliation. What kind of exercises were carried out there? PB: Well either, either a Spitfire or a, or a Hurricane would make mock attacks on us and the gunners would give instructions to the skipper as to what evasive action to take and it was quite, it was quite, because our bomb aimer was a failed pilot who could fly, fly a Stirling perfectly well and the Stirling had dual controls so him and the pilot used to work together and we could really throw it about. Really throw it about. You could never have done that on a Lancaster what we did with a Stirling, BW: No. There was only a single set of controls. PB: Yeah. Oh it was a wonderful aircraft. Wonderful manoeuvrability aircraft. Couldn’t get very high but by George it could, it could manoeuvre. BW: And so you mentioned about the raid on Hamburg. That was pretty close to being your first operational sortie. PB: That was our first target yes after two mine laying trips. BW: And what, what do you recall about that at all because it was Operation Gomorrah, the raid on Hamburg was pretty significant. PB: It was operational. What, what, what was most fascinated me most was the colours. The colours of the lights. Reds, greens, yellows. Searchlights, blue searchlights, tracer shells, flak it was an incredible sight. An incredible sight and when you see, when you looked down and someone had just released a string of four pound incendiaries you’d get this brilliant white light like that and then it slowly turns red as the fire gets going. An incredible sight. BW: So you’d see a sort of a line of white which would - PB: Yes. BW: Presumably be the magnesium - PB: Yeah. BW: In the incendiaries - PB: Yes. BW: Setting fire to the building which was then of course - PB: Yes. BW: Catch turn orange and burn. PB: Yes it was quite remarkable. BW: And did you only make the one raid on Hamburg or did you return because there was - PB: We, we, we - BW: Four days I think. PB: In ten days this was our introduction to the target. In ten days we did four Hamburgs, an Essen and a [Remshite] BW: Wow so you flew right through the raid on, or the operation against Hamburg - PB: Yeah. BW: In that case. PB: And the second night of course. The night of the firestorm oh, deary deary me, that was terrible. BW: Were you aware at all of what was, what was going on? It seems a lot of information has come out subsequently. What were you sort of aware of the damage at that time? PB: Well where - BW: While flying. PB: On the second night when we were back over the sea I went up into the astrodome and looked back and there was only one fire in Hamburg that night. It looked to be about three miles across and it came straight up white, red and black smoke thousands of feet above us and I said over the intercom, ‘those poor bastards down there.’ I couldn’t help myself. It was a terrible, terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it on any other target. BW: At once it’s a spectacular sight but it’s also when you see that sort of thing - PB: We, we, we killed forty thousand people that night. BW: When did that, when was that made aware to you? When did you become aware of that sort of statistic? Was it pretty soon after or was it - PB: Well the newspapers reported it a couple of days later and gave the number of dead. BW: Right. PB: And quite honestly I was disappointed. I thought from I saw it must have killed more than that. BW: It sounds like they might have underestimated. PB: Yeah. But forty thousand people were killed that night. BW: Ahum. PB: Compare that to how many were killed in London in the entire period of the war. There was no comparison. BW: No. It’s different isn’t it? PB: But we never, we never, we never achieved anything like Hamburg again until Dresden of course and in Dresden it only killed twenty odd thousand. BW: And so Hamburg has obviously made quite an impression for that reason. PB: Hamburg, I think was undoubtedly Bomber Command’s greatest success of the war. I’ve just, I’ve just read a book by Adolf Galland who was in charge of the German night fighters and the things he says about what the consequences of Hamburg and what it meant to the High Command and the changes it was, it shattered them. Completely shattered them. BW: So it had, it had certainly had ramifications on the ground but it had more ramifications for the Luftwaffe High Command is what you’re saying. PB: Yes. Yes. It terrified the German fighter defence to pieces. Terrified them. BW: And did you see many night fighters at this stage over Hamburg? Were they active? PB: No because it was it was the first, it was just the introduction of Window and everything was at odds. BW: And so Window was the anti-radar - PB: Yeah. BW: Jamming mechanism. PB: Yeah. BW: Where they chucked out strips of aluminium. PB: But they recovered, they recovered from, from Window very very quickly and they got, they got a new form of defence which was more effective they forced it out before, before Window and I’ve read the German view that Window did more harm than good for Bomber Command in the long run because it completely organised their defences. BW: But at least on that night or on those nights that you were flying over Hamburg the fighters were ineffective because - PB: Yeah. BW: Of the use of Window. PB: The first night there were eight hundred aircraft and we lost twelve. BW: Wow. PB: And most of those were lost because they were off course. Separated away from the protection of Window. BW: Were there any hits from the ackack below? German anti-aircraft fire was renowned as being very accurate. Did you feel that as you were flying over there? PB: The one thing, the one thing that fascinated me about ackack was that the smell of cordite filled the aircraft. You were flying through clouds of the stuff but when we landed the bomb aimer and I always got our torches and we searched underneath the aircraft and if there was no damage we were disappointed. We expected to have been hit. BW: So that, that, sort of, I suppose summarises or encompasses your first few trips on operations. What happened after Hamburg? What were the next - PB: Well we flew on - BW: Significant raids for you. PB: We flew on the last two raids ever carried out on Northern Italy and we flew twice to Nuremberg which we always regarded as a particularly important Nazi target and we did a few other various towns in the Ruhr and then on the 31st of August we went to Berlin and that was something else. That was an absolute complete fiasco. BW: And this was still 1943? PB: Yeah. Yeah. BW: In August ’43. PB: Yeah. The raid on Berlin on the 31st of August. Well the trouble was we’d been, we’d been to Monchengladbach the night before and we quite often did two nights, two consecutive nights. Well, you do Monchengladbach you get very little sleep, you go for briefing and you’re told its Berlin. There were howls of rage from all the air crews and that manifested itself later because that night about eighty aircraft ditched their bombs in the North Sea and returned early. Biggest number ever ‘cause people weren’t prepared to go. BW: That, that almost sounds a bit like a mutiny in a way doesn’t it? PB: It’s not far off. BW: Down tools. PB: It’s not far off really but the raid was also badly planned. All the damage to Berlin had been in the west and it was intended that this raid should do damage in the east and so we were sent to a point south of Berlin. There was Berlin on our left. We expected to fly seventy miles east. Split-arsed turn, fly seventy miles back and approach Berlin from, from the east. Now, nobody did it. The pathfinders put their markers down two miles south of where they should have been and we all approached from the south so the creepback extended miles and miles and miles. We killed less than a hundred people in Berlin. We lost over two hundred airmen killed and over a hundred prisoners of war. It was a complete and utter fiasco. BW: Wow and that simply stemmed from, as you say, the pathfinder markers being dropped two miles south. PB: And we’re coming from the south. BW: Yeah. PB: You can imagine it, practically no bombs and the Germans that night for the first time put down these parachute flares. It was like driving down the Mall with all the lights on. It was an incredible sight and it’s such a big place to get through. It takes forever. BW: And so the gunners clearly with those parachute flares they could have a clear sight presumably of the bomber stream. PB: And you’ve got day fighters looking down. BW: Wow. PB: As well as the night fighters looking up and you’ve got the schragemusik by this time as well. BW: Which are the cannons in the back of an ME110 to fire vertically underneath the bomber yeah. PB: Yeah or a JU88. BW: Yeah. PB: Or a Messerschmitt 110. BW: Yeah. PB: Seventy degree angle, in between the inborn engine and the fuselage hit the main tanks. All you’d see is a great big flash in the sky and that’s it. It was gone. BW: The crews often said they didn’t know they were there. PB: No. BW: Those who survived didn’t see them. PB: You could see an aircraft flying peacefully and then the next second it’s a ball of fire and you’ll see no tracer and a myth arose and the myth was that the Germans were firing a new type of bomb, a new type of shell which we called a scarecrow and it was designed not to shoot aircraft down but to explode and give the impression of an aircraft blowing up and for months navigators would log these and they weren’t scarecrows. The Germans never had a scarecrow. They were aircraft blowing up. BW: Actually the aircraft themselves. PB: Yeah. BW: And - PB: And the irony of that is that in the First World War the British had upward firing guns to attack zeppelins. BW: Ahum Yeah. PB: [laughs] They never learn. BW: Because they were difficult to shoot down as well. But so ok from, from there that’s two operations on the trot really. Monchengladbach and Berlin. PB: Yeah. BW: You mentioned those airmen killed. Were any of those from the squadron? Did you know any of those guys at all? Were there Stirlings in that lot that were shot down? PB: Er we there was a raid on Berlin on the 24th of August as well but we were on leave but a crew that we trained with went missing that night and a friend of mine got shot down on the night we were on. A fella called Lew Parsons. He was shot down on the 31st . BW: Luke Parsons? PB: Yeah. L E W, short for Lewis. BW: Oh I see. Lew Parsons. PB: He was a flight engineer. BW: And he was shot down on the 31st of August. PB: Yeah. Yeah. But it, it was a dreadful night. Anyway, the next day our skipper and our navigator were commissioned officers and so the next day we met up with the skipper and he said Johnny’s reported sick and Johnny was our navigator. Flying Officer Johnny [Turton ]. A fantastic navigator. Absolutely fantastic and he’d gone sick and later in the day we were given a replacement. Another flying officer but a New Zealander by the name of McLean and he was the exact opposite from Johnny. Johnny was a big outgoing personality who radiated confidence. This chap had no, no, no personality whatsoever. He was with us five days. We scarcely ever saw him. We scarcely ever spoke to him. We never even learned his Christian name. And he got us shot down. BW: And that was, of course then going to be your last - PB: Yeah. BW: Last flight. PB: Yeah 5th 5th of September. Mannheim. BW: Ok. I was just going to ask a question there and it’s just gone from my memory but I’ll probably come back to it. So, oh yes how far into your tour were you at that point? It sounds - PB: That was our fifteenth trip. BW: So exactly halfway through. PB: Exactly halfway. We knew with Johnny we could do, we could do the tour because he was so brilliant but without him we were lost and he finished his tour. He joined another crew, finished his tour got his DFC, survived the war. He was brilliant. BW: It’s strange how fate goes isn’t it? PB: Yeah. Yeah. BW: Before we move on to your experience of being shot down I would just like to ask about what it was like for you as a flight engineer in the sort of preparation and flying out. What sort of things you would do? Perhaps if you could give us a sense of preparation you would go through to - PB: Yes. BW: To board the aircraft. PB: Yes. BW: What it was like to then go up in a Stirling. PB: Well to begin with once we got out the aircraft there were a great many pre-flight checks to do. One of them was to go up onto the main plane with a member of the ground crew. Now, we had fourteen petrol tanks on a Stirling. Sometimes we only had the four main ones. Sometimes we had fourteen. Sometimes we had a mixture but my job was to go up on to the main plane with a member of the ground crew and he would open up the filler caps on all the tanks that were supposed to be full and I had to check visually that they were full to the, to the brim. Now, every night I’m stood on the leading edge of a Stirling. I’m twenty feet above the ground. I think when he moves to the next one and I follow, if I slip I’ll roll down the main plane I’ll fall fifteen feet to the tarmac and at the very least I’ll break an ankle and I’ll be alive tomorrow morning and I always, always considered that thought. I never did it of course. The thought was always there. It was in our own power to be alive tomorrow morning [laughs]. But once, once in the air my two main jobs was one to monitoring engine performance making sure the pressures, temperature etcetera were as they should be and that we were flying at the right airspeed and the right revs and the other was calculating every twenty minutes I had to calculate the amount of petrol used from whichever tank doing the past every twenty minutes recorded so that I always knew how much petrol remained in each tank because they weren’t over generous with their petrol allowance and people did run short very often. So that was, that was important, to keep, to know exactly how much petrol you had and where it was. BW: So even though you’d done inspections and the ground crew had correctly filled the tanks presumably you could encounter unknown winds and like a headwind. PB: Yeah. BW: And use your fuel more quickly. PB: As I understand it the calculation was made. This is your track. It’s so many miles. You’ve so much petrol. We’ll give you so much and we’ll give you another three hundred and twenty gallons as a, as a reserve. BW: Reserve. PB: But of course you get off track, winds are against you, anything can happen. You can’t hold height, you’ve got to get into rich mixture to climb again. All sorts of things could happen to make you use more fuel. BW: And that would include of course having to take evasive action over the target or anything like that. PB: Yes, evasive, any time when you had to open up the engines and go into full fuel. We were using a gallon a minute. BW: That’s pretty significant and that’s just through one engine. A gallon a minute through an engine. PB: No. It’s, that’s the aircraft. BW: Oh, the aircraft. Ok. PB: A gallon a mile through the aircraft. BW: Oh right. PB: A gallon a minute through each engine yes. BW: And I think you said the Stirling was a, was a lovely aircraft to fly. What was your experience generally of the environment in which you were having to work? Was it cramped or was there enough room to do your job? PB: I’ve only been in a Lancaster once and it horrified me. There’s no space to breathe. You could hold a dance in a Stirling. It was huge and because of the short wingspan it was so highly manoeuvrable. It was a beautiful aeroplane but it couldn’t get any height. Couldn’t get any height. BW: A limited ceiling. PB: We had to fight to fly at thirteen thousand. On the last night at Hamburg. The night of the big storm we did two runs over Hamburg at eight thousand feet with the bomb doors frozen up. BW: Wow. PB: That was a terrible night. BW: Just out of interest the air supply gets pretty thin around ten thousand feet. Did you ever have to use oxygen? PB: It goes on automatically at ten thousand feet. BW: Right. PB: Ten thousand feet, oxygen on and skipper charges into S gear. BW: Into S gear. PB: Yeah. BW: And does that give you extra boost through the engines? PB: Yeah. Yeah. BW: Ok and were you able, in some cases crews had to stow their parachutes. Were you able to move around with your parachutes on or did you stow it? PB: No it was always stowed. Always stowed away. BW: How did it feel when you were actually bombed and fuelled up ready to go and you’re at the threshold of the runway and you’d got the green light. Could you just talk us through that? PB: Well - BW: What you were feeling there and what you were doing? PB: I experienced three feelings. Between briefing and going out to the aircraft, absolute terror. Once we delivered the bombs and the photoflash had gone off, wonderful. Once back eating bacon and eggs very, very satisfied. Those were the three emotions that I suffered. BW: How did it feel when you were given that that green light? Presumably as a flight engineer you followed the pilot through on the throttles. PB: Yeah. BW: And you feel this surge of power of the engines going. PB: Yeah all all the while was concentrating on getting the thing up because the Stirling had a violent swing. It had this ridiculous undercarriage and because of the torque of the engines it swung to starboard and you had to correct that swing either on the throttles or the stick. Now, if you got a cross wind as well that swing could be quite dramatic and it went like that and then like that. BW: So a violent swerve either way. PB: The undercarriage just collapsed you don’t want an undercarriage collapsing when you’ve got a thousand - BW: No. PB: Incendiary bombs stuck in the belly [laughs]. BW: Were there any incidents where aircraft were unable to take off because of that? They perhaps didn’t control the swing or there was a cross wind. PB: Oh yeah. The very first Stirling on its very first flight in the hands of a very skilled test pilot on its very first landing wrote its undercarriage off. BW: Simply because of the swing due the power in the engines. PB: Yeah. BW: And the imbalance. PB: Yeah. BW: And yet it looks from, as you say, the size of it - PB: Yeah. BW: It looks a very stable beast to fly. PB: It’s incredibly strong that way. It’s not very strong that way. BW: So longitudinally strength. PB: Yeah. BW: And laterally not so good. PB: It was a very strong undercarriage but it’s so tall it [put a side strain on it] like that. BW: Yeah. PB: It goes. Time and time again. BW: And of course these are pure manual controls. They’re not power assisted in any way. PB: Oh no. No. BW: So, but it was generally very smooth to fly and very easy to fly once you were airborne. PB: Oh it was a beautiful aeroplane to fly. Beautiful. It really was. It was like a [? ] You could do anything with it. BW: How many were, were in your crew? There were normally seven in a Lancaster. PB: Seven yeah. BW: The same in the Stirling. PB: Yeah. BW: And you had initially for your first part of your tour you had Johnnie [Turton] as your navigator. PB: Yeah. BW: And your pilot. Who was your pilot? PB: Pilot. When I joined him in May it was Pilot Officer Bernard Cotterell. BW: That’s right. PB: By the time we were shot down he was Acting Flight Lieutenant Bernard Cotterell. BW: Is that C O T T E R - PB: Yeah. BW: I L L? PB: Yeah. E L L. BW: E L L. And so who are the, you mentioned your wireless op. PB: Yeah. BW: Um, who was Len - PB: Len Smith. Bomb aimer was Alan Crowther. BW: Alan Crowther. PB: Yeah the rear gunner was John [Carp?] a Scotsman. BW: John [Carp?] PB: He was always known as Jock rather than John. BW: Jock. PB: And the new, the new mid upper gunner was a Newcastle lad called Ray Wall. BW: Ray Wall. PB: Yeah, Ray Wall. There were only five of us, as I say, left from the original crew and of those five I was the only survivor. The mid upper, the mid upper survived and this new navigator survived? BW: And so from there we’ve looked at sort of the raids and the preparation for them. What sort of things would happen on the return to base? You’d obviously be debriefed but what form would that take? PB: Well, we, we, we always flew at the recommended airspeeds which got you the most miles per gallon. A lot of people just simply flew back as fast as they could regardless of wasting petrol so we were invariably the last aircraft to land which meant we always had to queue up to wait to be de debriefed which was a nuisance but then of course it was the bacon and egg lark. Bacon and egg time and off to bed. BW: And what, what was the accommodation like? You were all crewed up. Were they in nissen huts. Was there a crews either side or was it - PB: We, we, we were in a nissen - BW: Different. PB: Hut and I think we shared it with two other crews and one morning, one morning you would find that half the beds are made up and all everything’s gone because they had disappeared but the thing is you never, you never associated with anybody outside your crew. There was no point to it. BW: Really. PB: No point to it at all. A crew was a very. very tight little, little group. We did everything together. BW: And so even though there would be two other crews in the, in the nissen hut with you you would still socialise only with your own crew. PB: Oh yeah we never bothered with anybody else. Very rarely spoke to anybody else even. BW: And where did you go during your off-duty hours? Where did you socialise? PB: Oh the village pub in Lakenheath. BW: Do you recall the name? PB: No, I don’t actually. No. BW: Ah. PB: But I do remember there was a Mrs Philips who used to provide us with suppers some times. Just across the road. She used to put on bacon and egg suppers. I don’t know where she got the bacon and eggs from but she used to put on bacon and egg suppers. BW: Just as a special treat for you. PB: Yeah. BW: And the rest of the crew. PB: But you know you sit in the village pub at night and you were surrounded by farmers and butchers and bakers and all the rest of it. People for whom the war was just something they read about in the newspapers and you were just so happy, you’re so happy. It’s wonderful. There’s nothing like a crew. Nothing. Incredible relationship. Incredible. BW: And did you have opportunity to mix with other locals? Not just the, the tradesman there, if you like, the farmers and the bakers or whatever? PB: No. The only time we went out, off the camp was to go in to the little pub. On the nights we weren’t flying. We were in there every night we weren’t flying. BW: Were there station dances at all or anything like that? PB: No. There was no station. You’d the airfield there, you’ve the mess here and your billet over there and something else over there. If you didn’t have a bicycle you couldn’t exist in Lakenheath. BW: So quite a distance between - PB: Distances are immense. And I’ve visited it since the war. It’s an American town now. BW: Yeah. It’s, it’s a huge place. PB: Oh it’s a big place and when I, when I was there talking to them they produced some information about the wartime use and they spelt Stirling as if, as if it was the bloody currency [laughs]. BW: Were there, just out of interest, were there other crews in the pub where you went or was it pretty much just you guys? PB: Well no doubt there were. BW: Right. PB: But we just sat in our corner and nothing else existed. BW: Right. PB: Nothing else existed. BW: So tucked away in your own - PB: Yeah. BW: In your own little world. PB: And there my skipper named my first daughter. BW: Right. PB: My skipper. I don’t know how we got on, how the conversation got around to that actually but one evening for some reason the skipper said if my wife and I were to ever have a daughter we were going to call her Penelope. I never forgot that and so very many years later when my first daughter was born she simply had to be Penelope. I had no choice. BW: Well. As you say it obviously comes from being a tight crew. PB: Yes. BW: And that connection. PB: Yeah. BW: Ok. You mention then about your trip to Mannheim and this New Zealand navigator. PB: Yeah. BW: About your, of your crew. PB: Yeah. BW: Who, who got you shot down? PB: Yeah. BW: Just talk us through that if you would, please. PB: Well we had a full petrol load which means a minimum bomb load of course. We were briefed for Munich and when briefing had been completed the CO said there’s a Mosquito on its way to Munich at the moment because it’s feared the weather may break down there so we’re going brief you for a possible alternative for Mannheim. So we had a second briefing then. Now, we’d no idea where we were going which meant of course the navigators had two flight plans to prepare. They’d doubled the work in the limited amount of time so they were under stress from the start. So we, we, we retire to our aircraft. Do all our pre-flight checks and the CO comes around in his van and says Munich is scrubbed. You’re going to Mannheim. So off we go. Immediately we cross enemy coast we were hit by flack. Now this had never ever happened to us before. He’d taken us straight over a, straight over a gun batt. I was shocked and I thought I’m going to spend, I’m going to spend the next hour checking the fuel in the hope we were losing fuel and we could turn back. And I went and did a meticulous check on the fuel but we weren’t losing fuel of course. Now, the raid was cleverly designed. You’ve got Ludwigshafen, the Rhine, Mannheim. If you fly over Ludwigshafen into Mannheim a creepback occurs. You get two targets for the price of one. And so that was the way we were to enter. So, to make sure we got it right for each wave of the attack the pathfinders was putting down a red marker. Now if you turn on a red marker on to the right course you flew straight over Ludwigshafen straight to Mannheim. So as we, as we were approaching the point where we could expect to see the flare the navigator says, ‘Keep your eyes open now. You should be seeing a red flare any time now.’ And suddenly there’s a red flare there and another red flare over there. BW: So one to your left and one to your right. PB: Yeah. So which, which is, which is the correct one? Only the navigator knows which is the correct one. ‘That one,’ he says. BW: On the left. PB: Nearer to the target. We get to the target five minutes early. The skipper makes what I still think was the right decision. He said we’d been hit by a bomb once at Nuremberg so we knew that. You’re either the only one over the target or the bombs are coming down from Lancasters. The skipper did an orbit but unfortunately the radar picked us up and as soon as we start to go in a blue searchlight comes straight on. BW: Which is the radar guided one. PB: Yeah and then then the column builds up and we’re flying straight over with the bomb doors open. So we continued like that until the bomb aimer got a sight and then you let the lot go in one go and we didn’t wait for a photograph. And over a target I always went up in to the astrodome facing backwards to help the gunner search for fighters and I was up there [ and we slowly began to pull away? ] and there were only a couple of searchlights on us and I thought I’d better check on my engines cause they’re getting a terrible thrashing. You’re only allowed a few minutes on full power so I get down, I get down from the pyramid and have a very long, I have a very long lead on my intercom so I can, don’t have to keep plugging and unplugging and I get down and I’m just going over to the instrument panel and suddenly there’s a terrible screaming and Len, Len the wireless operator had been just behind the main spar pushing out pushing out the window came running up through the main spar screaming, tripped over the pyramid, fell across my lead, pulled it out so I lost all communication and he fell at my feet and then this huge fire broke out in the fuselage and I’m steeling myself to stand and step over Leonard’s body to get to the fire extinguisher and out of the corner of my eye I see the mid upper gunner get out and put his chute on. I turn around. The navigator’s already on his way down the steps so instead of going for the extinguisher I go for my parachute and follow the navigator. I get to the top of the steps, the hatch is open. The navigator’s gone. I slide down. I get my feet through. The bomb aimer had gone up in to the second pilot’s seat to help the skipper. He started to clamber down from the, from the seat as I go past. I get my legs through. I feel a pressure on my back. I turn. Alan’s got his knees pressing in my back, tap him on the knee and go and as I go I feel the aircraft break in two and Alan never got out. So the rear gunner and Len were killed by the fighter. The skipper was wounded by flak that also set the port inner on fire and the skipper and Alan never had a chance of getting out because the aircraft had broken in two. The tail unit with the rear gunner’s body in it landed a considerable distance away. The main wreck landed right on the German Grand Prix racing track at Hockenheim. BW: Wow. PB: I have the map. I have a map showing the exact position and I saw the fire. It was a huge. We’d over a thousand gallons of petrol on board. We had enough petrol for Munich and the three in the aircraft were completely destroyed. Only, only fragments of bone left. The air gunners body was complete and so in the cemetery now at [Bad Tolz?] there’s a, there’s the rear gunners grave there, then there’s a headstone for Len, a headstone for the skipper, a headstone for Alan but what bits of fragments of bone there were are all buried in front of the skipper I’m sure. It was just symbolic. Never, never let the relatives know that of course. Never mention fire to the relatives but those two graves were empty and what bits there were were in front of the skipper which is right and proper. BW: And you, you must have been pretty close to the ground when you baled out yourself. PB: No. Oh, no. I was about ten thousand feet. BW: Oh right. It was, it was the sense I was getting that it was almost a last minute sort of thing where you were able to escape. PB: No. No, the aircraft broke in two very quickly. It was a tremendous. What happened I think the JU88 killed the rear gunner and then from, there’s a pump on the starboard engine, and dual pipelines to the rear turret that power the turret. Now I think it hit those pipelines. You’ve got hydraulic oil pressure, high pressure, high temperature came out and that’s what caught fire. The fire then came underneath the mid upper gunner, hit Len when he was doing the window in and stopped before it reached me but it was, it was a terror, it certainly was a fire and although I didn’t know till much later virtually simultaneously flak knocked out the port engine and the port inner engine and wounded the skipper and Ray, Ray told me later that when the skipper gave the order to bail out he [signed to say] as if he was badly hurt. BW: And then at that point, the stricken aircraft, it must be almost I guess vertical if it’s broken up at that point. PB: It didn’t, it didn’t go like that when it hit the ground it was it just come straight down like that. BW: Yeah. PB: I dare say some of it is still there buried under that racetrack. Some of the engine. But later I had a friend in Germany who was, who was in Ludwigshafen. He lived in Ludwigshafen. He was a schoolboy in Ludwigshofen. He may well have been on the flak gun that night for all I know. BW: That would have been a coincidence wouldn’t it? PB: Well after, he worked for the postal service after the war and when he retired he set himself up as what he called an air historian and he excavated a lot of shot down bombers and he was very keen on Bomber Command and he provided me with a lot of information and he produced a woman who’d been a schoolgirl in Hockenheim and on the morning after we crashed, after we were shot down, a neighbouring woman knocked on her door and she had what they described as a Canadian airman with them. It was in fact a New Zealander and the girl’s mother gave him a drink of water and later in the day the girl’s interest was aroused and she and a girlfriend went out to look at the crash and she provided me with a map of the actual crash site just by the, so whenever the German Grand Prix comes on I always, always watch it for a few minutes. I don’t like grand prix racing but I always watch it for a few minutes. BW: Just that particular one. PB: Yeah. That’s where it crashed. BW: And have you been back to Hockenheim at all? PB: No. No, I’ve not. No, I’ve not. BW: But the information’s come through to you. PB: Yeah. BW: As to what’s happened. PB: Peter provided me with a lot of information. BW: What’s the air historian’s name? Do you recall? PB: Peter Mengas M E N Mengas G A S. BW: G A S. PB: Peter. BW: And is he still around? PB: I don’t know. I’ve not, I’ve not heard from him for a year or two now. BW: So you’ve managed to get out of the aircraft yourself. PB: Yeah. BW: And this is night-time. About ten thousand feet over Germany. PB: Yeah 1 o’clock. It was just about midnight on my watch. It was 1 o’clock in the morning German time. BW: And you pulled the rip cord and - PB: Well, no. This was the problem when I, when I first joined the squadron I got a harness which could be adjusted. Now, I moved about a lot in the Stirling. I’ve controls there, there, there and there. BW: All around the - PB: And I used to [bend down?] around number seven tank and the shoulder strap would fall off and I thought I’ll get this fixed but I never did of course so when I baled out I was terrified of falling out of my parachute so I daren’t open it until I got myself you know [? ] as I could. BW: Sort of braced against the straps were they? PB: And when I opened it and I felt oh that’s it but it wasn’t that was just the parachute pulling the pack off my chest and then bang. BW: The snap of the canopy. PB: And I took all the weight there. The shoulder straps were up here. I came down in agony. I don’t know why it didn’t castrate me. BW: Because of the tight grip around the - PB: Yeah. BW: Groin area where the - PB: And then when I eventually I saw the ground rushing up and I rolled myself into a ball as I’d been taught and this buckle took two ribs with it. BW: On the left hip. PB: Yeah. Broke, broke two, broke two of my ribs and so I, it was, it was very painful. Very painful. And this is funny really by the next day my left side had seized up and I’m walking in a westerly direction trying to get to France [laughs] and, I don’t know and there was just one house which I had to pass and I thought, I thought a girl stood in the window had spotted me. I wasn’t certain but I thought she had. Anyway, I kept going and suddenly I hear a shout and I turn around and there’s this chappy running towards me and running behind him is a woman, presumably his wife and the two things I didn’t believe. I didn’t believe that fighting men put their hands above their heads like the baddies in the cowboy films and I didn’t believe the Germans went around saying. ‘Heil Hitler,’ to each other but as this chappy approached without any conscious effort on my part my hands went up. This one went up. This one wouldn’t. BW: Your right one. PB: He saw me like. He stopped running [?]and, ‘Heil Hitler.’ BW: So because you can’t raise your left arm you can only raise your right arm he thinks you’re doing the salute. PB: He thought I was a Luftwaffe chappy. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he said [laughs] Well, I just I was in a pretty perilous state by this time. I just collapsed in to hysterical laughter. I just stood there and laughed and laughed and laughed and his wife came along and she sized up the situation immediately. She put her arm around me, took my weight on her shoulder and led me towards the town and the very first house we came to she made a very, very cross old woman let me into her kitchen, sit me down and made me a cup of coffee. So this woman very unwillingly gave me a cup of coffee. I hadn’t drunk anything for twenty four hours and I took a sip and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, I can’t drink this. It’s absolutely disgusting,’ and I thought, ‘Well if I don’t drink it it’s a great insult to this woman who’s been so incredibly kind to me,’ so I had to drink it. That was my introduction to the German diet oooph [laughs]. BW: And so you managed from a rough landing in a loose parachute in God knows where - PB: Yeah. BW: To get yourself together. You didn’t meet any of the other crew at this point because you obviously talked about - PB: The - BW: Yourself. PB: The mid upper gunner landed right next to a railway signal box and was arrested within seconds. The navigator landed in a tree and had to be rescued. So they were captured very quickly. Both of them. BW: So there was just you on your own at this point. PB: I was on my own. BW: Were you knocked unconscious or, or did it take some time to come around? I mean you’ve obviously had to get rid of your chute and - PB: No I, I, I was shocked. I was shocked obviously and I was in pain from these ribs but I said I’ve a duty to the RAF and that was to get to Gibraltar. [Laughs] It’s a long way away. BW: Yeah. PB: I’d got the Rhine to cross for one thing. That’s not, that’s not easy. [laughs]. BW: And so the, the people that, that met you I mean you talk about heading west towards France and Mannheim is, is quite deep in western Germany. PB: Yeah. BW: So you’re actually being met by Germans at this point. PB: Yeah. BW: But they assist you. PB: Yeah. BW: So what then happened? Did they, they pass you on? Or - PB: Well this couple took me to the police station where the other two were already held although I didn’t know it and we were kept there for about three days and a couple of Luftwaffe chappies arrived to take us up to Frankfurt to Dulag Luft interrogation camp and when we left we were given a bundle of the rear gunner’s clothing and his flying suit had hundreds of holes in it. The cannon shells must have hit the turret and exploded, it was absolutely riddled and his helmet and his, his oxygen mask was soaked in blood and there were the four guns from the rear turret as well. So we had that to carry. And we had, we had an adventurous journey. We couldn’t, it, this was the most successful raid on Mannheim Ludwigshafen at that time and it was complete chaos and we had to go by train in to a big detour so we travelled that day and went to a Luftwaffe camp and stayed the night in the guard room there and the next day we go back to the railway station and it was a, it’s a station something like Victoria in Manchester. A long corridor with steps going up to the various platforms. We were on the platform and what I call a typical Daily Express German came along, feather in his hat and oh he was furious he was furious and Hitler had issued an order to all military and police units that if civilians get hold of airmen before the authorities do the authorities were not to interfere. They must leave it to the discretion of the civilians what to do with them and this one was stark raving, oh he was angry. And in the air force there’s an offence known as silent contempt. You don’t do anything but you look at an officer who’s ticking you off and look at him and make it obvious you think he’s [lowly?] and it’s a serious crime in the air force. Well Ray and I were giving this chappy the silent cont and the navigator said, ‘Stop being a bloody fool.’ He was a good deal older than we were and eventually this chap storms off and we thought, ‘Oh that’s shown him.’ A few minutes later he’s back at the head, the head of a posse and they’re obviously, obviously intent on doing us serious bodily harm but fortunately there was, there was a train on the other side of the platform. Now, whether it was a troop train or not I don’t know but half a dozen soldiers got out and ranged themselves between us and the, and this crowd and our two Luftwaffe chappies whipped us down the stairs, along the corridor and up another platform and hid us in a room that was obviously used by guards full of red and green lamps and flags and so on and we hid in there until our train arrived and then ran back as fast as we could and got put on the train. But it was, when we thought about it later we were very nearly hanged or beaten to death or kicked to death or something very near but it was only, it was only those soldiers who saved us and that was contrary to Hitler’s orders. BW: Because the RAF crews at this time presumably were being christened terror flieger. PB: Yeah. Oh yeah. BW: And so the civilians were - PB: Yeah. Yeah. BW: Properly against them. PB: Well there were a hundred Bomber Command people were killed by Germans and more than two hundred Americans because Americans, there were a lot more Americans. They had ten to a crew. BW: And at this point in a station as you mention they’ve reunited you with the navigator and - PB: Yeah. Well they were in the police station. Unknown to me at the time. BW: Yeah. PB: I met them when we got out of the police station. But before I left they gave me a shave. A fierce little barber came in and then he got out this razor and I thought, ‘I hope to God the air raid sirens don’t go off.’ [laughs] BW: Yeah ‘cause he might, he might stop shaving you and decide to use the razor for something else. [laughs]That’s the only time I’ve been shaved with a cut throat razor. I don’t want to ever experience it again. [laughs] BW: So they’ve tidied you up and reunited you as a crew. PB: Yeah. BW: Presumably they didn’t interrogate you at this point even though you were in a police station. The Luftwaffe officers took you over and put you in a transport. Is that right? PB: Yeah. We were taken, we were taken to Dulag Luft at Frankfurt and there I was put in a cell there. Quite a big cell really. It had, it had, it had a very long radiator attached to one wall and there was a bed attached to the floor alongside a radiator and there was a table and two chairs and there’s a bucket in the corner and two windows with shutters on from outside and a very dim light. No ventilation and all I could do was lie flat on my back with these ribs and although it was mid-September the heat on the radiator was turned up full. So I lay there for three days getting hotter and dirtier and stickier and the air getting fouler and fouler and then suddenly somebody opened the shutters. A very smart Luftwaffe officer walked in with a couple of files under his arm, put them on the table opened the windows wide and motioned for me to join him, poured two cups of English tea, a plate of English biscuits, a packet of English cigarettes and then the interrogation started. BW: And at this point is there just you and this Luftwaffe officer? PB: Yeah. BW: In this cell? PB: Yeah. BW: And so he’s expected you to get up from the floor to the chair to sit in front of him. Nobody has assisted you at this point? PB: No. No. No. BW: So presumably your body’s quite stiff as well. PB: Very very stiff indeed. Very stiff. I never - BW: Well - PB: I never had any medical attention at all. Never. I’ve got a great knob of bone there that will never heal. BW: And so the interrogation begins and presumably, from what you’re staying, this is daytime at this point. PB: Yeah. When he put these files down on the table there were two of them and the top one said Royal Air Force Bomber Command 149 squadron. I thought, ‘How the hell does he know 149?’ I said, ‘I wonder if the others had been forced to talk,’ and I had pictures of Humphrey Bogart being tortured by [laughs] but it was obvious the rear part of the fuselage wasn’t burned and the letters OJ. So, he gave me, he have me a great deal of information. First, generally about the air force and then specifically about 149 squadron. BW: And because the letters on the aircraft had not burned through. PB: No the - BW: So the squadron’s code OJ were still visible. PB: OJ means 149. They knew that so as I understood it he was trying to do two things. He was giving me a lot of information most of it factual but some which he picked up and he hadn’t had checked yet [or someone had corrected] and from my reaction [he got?] and then he picked up bits from me that he could put. That was the whole purpose of it. I don’t know what did affect the war effort. I don’t think very much. Anyway, eventually he finished and this was the middle of September and he said, ‘Are there any questions you want to ask me?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘What’s been happening in the war in the last few days?’ He said, ‘Italy has surrendered.’ I said, ‘Oh good. One down, one to go.’ [laughs] Well he didn’t like that [laughs] so he picked up his files and he left. BW: You weren’t tempted to salute him either. PB: But when we, when we were being transferred by cattle truck from Dulag Luft to Saxony to Stalag 4b we were in these cattle trucks and we had a German guard in with us and we had with us at one stage the only German I ever felt sorry for. He’d been born in Germany and when he was a very small child his people had gone to America. He’d been brought up in Brooklyn. He had a tremendous Brooklyn accent and he’d, they’d never taken American nationality and early in ‘39 or late in ‘38 they’d come to Germany on holiday and he was immediately conscripted and there he was [laughs]. Oh dear. So I’d never known anybody feel as sorry for himself as that poor fella. He said, he described his comrades, he said, ‘Bloody mother f***ing, c**k s***ng krauts,’ and those were his comrades [laughs]. BW: And they didn’t speak American - PB: Deary, deary me, BW: So he got away with it. PB: Oh he did feel sorry for himself. And I’ve often wondered what happened to him because when the Ardennes offensive took place Hitler put a lot of American speaking Germans into American uniforms and of course they were shot immediately if they were captured. He was an absolutely perfect candidate for that job. BW: Yeah. Quite possible. PB: So I don’t know what happened to him but oh deary me he did feel sorry for himself BW: And so it seems a fairly, alright it’s uncomfortable but it seems a fairly civil interrogation from the Luftwaffe officer before you - PB: Oh it was very friendly. Very friendly very friendly. I mean I’d been lying in there for three days thinking about Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart and it was nothing like that [laughs]. No, he was charming. Really charming. BW: And how soon after the interrogation ended and he stormed out did you then leave for er - PB: Well I left the cell then went to the main part of the camp and stayed there for about a week until there was enough of us to make up a wagon load. BW: And this was still at Dulag Luft. PB: Yeah. BW: In Frankfurt. PB: Yeah. BW: And so you’re there a little while longer transferred to Saxony. PB: Yeah and we were lucky and we were unlucky. We were unlucky in the fact that all the luft camps run by the Luftwaffe were full and so we were sent to the biggest prison camp in Germany which was run by the army. It contained about ten thousand permanently and it had scores of working parties attached to it so that prisoners used to come in and get recorded and then sent out to work in mines or factories or quarries or whatever so there was a regular turnover. There was about ten thousand of us there permanently but a tremendous lot of Frenchmen, a couple of thousand Russians who were starving to death and various other nationalities and of course the German army didn’t have the same relationship with us that the Luftwaffe personnel would have had. In fact they hated us. BW: Was there any, any ill will directed towards you because you were air force? PB: They didn’t like us. They told us, they said, ‘When Germany wins the war you’ll spend the rest of your lives building the cities that you’ve destroyed but if Germany lose the war you’re soon to be shot.’ That was their attitude. BW: And even though this was an army camp they, it sounds as though they weren’t just, were they just military personnel? The ten thousand French and Russians were they soldiers that were captured? PB: Well I don’t know what they were. BW: So they could have been. PB: They were dressed in civilian, some in civilian clothes, BW: Yeah. PB: Some in bits of clothes. Some were in military uniform but we were lucky too because this was September. Italy had retired from the war. The Germans had taken over the Italian prison camps and they set up two new compounds in 4b. An RAF compound and an army compound. Now, a couple of thousand Desert Rats who’d been prisoners in Italy came in just as we did. Now, without them we’d have been in a right mess because the Germans gave us nothing. BW: So you were on low rations and you were, were you made to work at this stage as well? PB: No. No. They couldn’t make us work. Not with our ranks. BW: Right. PB: But you know we were put into a hut which has three tier bunks to sleep a hundred and eighty men. They gave us a sack which contained something or other which was supposed to be a mattress, two pre- First World War blankets and that was, that was all they gave us. No knife, fork, spoon, no cup, no plate. Nothing. And yet the food comes up, a great big vat of soup and all you’ve got’s your bare hands. So the army helped us a lot there. BW: Presumably because they were allowed or brought with them their kit and they shared it. PB: They brought with all their kit, yeah. Yeah. I mean they’d been prisoners years some of them. BW: So they knew, they knew how it worked. PB: They knew the ropes so yeah they knew the ropes alright but the difference between the army and the air force was, was, was incredible. The army compound was run like a barracks. There was a sergeant major in charge of each hut. Total control. And each morning at 7 o’clock there was roll calls outside in decent weather. The roll call in the army compound took fifteen minutes. The roll call in the RAF compound could take two hours. That was the difference in our attitudes. The army would say, ‘We’ll show them what real soldiers look like.’ and we’d say, ‘We’ll cause them so much bloody trouble they’ll wish they’d never been born.’ Different attitude of mind altogether. BW: And so this is the, the British army in their compound. PB: Yeah. BW: Organising themselves to do their roll calls - PB: Yeah. BW: Like that. PB: Yeah. BW: And the RAF took the view well we’re there to - PB: Yeah. BW: Make a nuisance of ourselves. PB: That’s it exactly. One day the Germans got so exasperated they brought the senior sergeant major and they stood him there and we’re all lined up in fives and he starts telling us we’re a disgrace to the bloody nation, we’re a disgrace to the air force and the replies he got. He’d never been spoken to like that in his life before. Never, ever, ever. He just went redder and redder and redder. Eventually, he turned on his heel and went and we never saw him again. BW: Gave that one up as well. PB: I know we really, we really did everything we could and we tamed the Germans eventually and it went whenever a German entered our hut whoever saw him first would shout, ‘Jerry up’ and whatever you were doing you could get away. At the end of the war the German would walk in to the hut, he’d stand at the door and shout, ‘Jerry up’ and wait two minutes before he walked in. BW: It’s interesting you, you made a comment just before that although the Germans gave you nothing they didn’t make you work either because of your rank. PB: Yeah. BW: And the thinking was in the, in the early days with the RAF aircrew was that if they were all sergeants they would be treated better in prisoner of war camps. PB: Not treated better, just treated differently in that they didn’t work. BW: Right. So it was a case of you’re not made to work you were just - PB: Yeah. BW: Well you were just there and you exist, sort of thing. PB: Yeah and the food of course was disgusting. The flour was ten percent what the Germans optimistically called wood flour. Which was sawdust. We, we, we had soup at lunchtime. A great vat of soup. We had [minute?] soup which was disgusting. We had [mara?] soup which was even more disgusting and most disgusting of all we had a soup that apparently was made from what was left of sugar beet after the beet er after the sugar had been extracted and we got a handful of boiled potatoes, usually rotten. That was the midday meal and then in the late afternoon you got a piece of bread to be divided between five people and a blob of white stuff which was supposed to be butter, it was about ninety percent water, and a spoonful of jam apparently made from beetroot or swede or some such and you’d get this piece of bread and it’s not a big piece of bread and it’s got to be shared between five people and every, every one of the five pieces had to be absolutely identical with the other four so we picked the man with the best irons and steadiest hand and he cuts the bread up and he gets last choice and the five pieces and he gets the last choice. BW: And it went on like that for days. PB: But we had the Red Cross parcels fortunately. BW: How often were they delivered? Were they regular? PB: Every Monday we got a Red Cross parcel. BW: And were they delivered intact or were they interfered and inspected by the Germans. PB: They were delivered intact until it was decided that they were being used in escapes and so after that they were all opened and every tin was punctured so that it had a limited lifespan. You couldn’t, you couldn’t store it up. BW: And you see in war films, popular war films, the sort of black market operating in a prison camp and trading and bartering. Does that, did that ever happen? PB: Oh yes, it was all, with cigarettes you could buy anything. Now in the RAF compound we had two people. We had an English and an Italian name. A chappy called [Gargini] BW: [Gargini] PB: Now he was, he was a skilled technician in British, in BBC television and he was an absolute wizard with the electricity. He built at least two radio sets and he also made a succession of heaters, immersion heaters, which you could put in a cup of cold water and fire up in no time at all. And we had another chap who was in fact was a civilian. Terry Hunt his name was. He worked for British Movietone news or some similar company and if you went to the cinema in England during the war from time to time to time on the newsreel you’d see shots taken from the nose of a light bomber during attacks on France. Now Terry was one of the men who took those photographs. He was given a degree of training. He was given an RAF uniform, he was given a RAF number, an RAF rank just in case he was shot down and captured and he had a camera. He had it inside a hollowed out bible with a little hole in the spine through which he took his photographs. Two quite remarkable men there. BW: And that, that bible with the camera in he used in the aircraft and he kept with him in the prison camp did he? PB: No. He got it whilst he was in the prisoner. BW: Oh made it in the prison right. PB: How he got through well cigarettes you could get anything with cigarettes. You could buy a woman for three cigarettes but there were no women. BW: And in that case there must have been some sort of interaction with the German guards at that point - PB: Oh yes. BW: To be able to bribe. PB: You waited. You waited until after dark and then you went out and found a guard and said [?] ‘Yah yah yah,’ out it came from a bag in his gas mask case gave him this bit of bread ‘[?] cigarettes?’ ‘Nein. [?]Nein. Deutschland caput’ [laughs] BW: A piece of bread for twenty cigarettes. PB: But you could buy anything with cigarettes. BW: And did you partake in that yourself, did you? PB: Oh yeah I was out most nights if I had cigarettes buying bread. It was, it was much better bread than we had. It was rotten bread but it was much better bread than we had. BW: And did you, did you feel able to strike up a rapport or even an element of trust with some of these guards. Were you always meeting the same one or did you have to interact with others? PB: No, whoever happened to be walking around the compound at the time. Some relationships must have been, must have been formed because big items were bought and of course if there were ever workmen in the camp all their tools were raided. They soon [? ] their tools. BW: So there were, there were guys in the camp who were raiding the Germans’ tool sets. PB: Yeah you see we, we had, you know, you got hundreds of air crew. You’ve got a couple of thousand senior NCOs in the army. You’ve got every talent. You’ve got architects, musicians, dancers, journalists. You got all sorts of people and it was amazing what could be done. BW: And I believe they had classes in the prisoner of war camps as well to keep the men occupied. PB: Oh yes. We, we had a little library in each hut. Some of them manned by professional librarians, we had lecturers. We had, we had a theatre group and a radio theatre group. We had people who went around individually giving lectures. The most popular lecturer was a chappy, an army man, who’d worked for a very prestigious London undertaking firm and the stories he had. Oh deary me. Deary, deary me. He was a popular lecturer he was. BW: And so was your days, were your days regulated in any sense? Was there a structure put to you? PB: No. You had a roll call in the morning, a roll call in the evening. That was it. And then you had the food arriving at mid-day and again about tea time and other than that you were on your own. BW: So would you have about two meals a day then? Your main midday meal and a meal in the evening? PB: I don’t think we ever had a meal at all really [laughs]. BW: Well, yeah. PB: But yeah that’s the way it worked. BW: Yeah. PB: On Fridays, on Fridays, Friday was a big day. On Friday you got pea soup and pea soup was so good we didn’t get any potatoes on Friday. Well pea soup was the only soup we ever really ate. The pea soup was quite good. BW: And do you still like it to this day or does that remind you? PB: I like pea soup. Yes. BW: Yeah. PB: But we Lancastrians had a Red Rose Society. The Yorkists had a White Rose Society and there was a motoring club for people interested in cars or motorbikes. There were all sorts, all sorts of things set up. Every hut was given the name of a British football team. My hut was Wolverhampton Wanderers and a league was set up and matches were played and points scored and then in the RAF compound we formed the rugby pitch as well, I played a lot of rugby. BW: Even, even though you’d had a bad injury from parachuting you were still able to play rugby. PB: Eventually. It took, it took, it took about six months until I felt really free but - BW: Did you manage to get any medical treatment from the British - PB: No. BW: While you were in the camp? PB: Never. Never. I never bothered the British. By then it was healing. They even, even tried to play cricket but that didn’t work. The ground was too soft. BW: What sort of ground was it? Was it sandy? PB: It was sort of sandy soil, yeah. BW: So and we’ve probably all have an image here of Sagan and the Great Escape - PB: Yeah. BW: And the sandy - PB: Yeah. BW: Sort of soil PB: Yeah. BW: And it was pretty much like that was it? PB: When I played rugby every time I I got a graze and there was any blood it always went, always went rotten. I always had to go and get it, get it drugged up always, always went rotten. BW: And what sort of drugs could they give you? Was there penicillin? PB: Red Cross. Red Cross I don’t know what they were but the Red Cross provided drugs and we had, we had certain medical. We had a couple of army doctors as well. We had an English woman in the camp. BW: Do you recall her name at all? PB: Well we knew her as Mrs Barrington. She was an English woman. I don’t know whether she was divorced or widowed but sometime in the 20s or very early 30s she had a son called Winston and they had a holiday in Switzerland and met a German who got on very well with and they went back again a few months later and she married him and she and her son went to live in Germany. And then when, when 1938, ‘39 came along and war was obviously imminent she sent her son back to England to live with her parents and in due course he joined the air force in Bomber Command, got shot down, wrote to her where she was living in Vienna and she wrote back and eventually she decided she wanted to be nearer to him then that so she left Vienna and went to live in Muhlburg which was about five kilometres from the camp. BW: Muhlberg. PB: Muhlberg yeah and by this time her husband was a very high ranking Luftwaffe officer and when she moved to Muhlberg her husband came with her and we know that he visited the camp and we know that he met the commandant but we don’t know what happened there of course. We don’t know whether some informal arrangement was agreed between them or whatever but it was a fact that airmen were never allowed outside the camp because they’d just disappear but Barrington got outside the camp with French working parties several times, met his mother in Muhlberg and by early 1945 she was getting worried about what her fate would be when the Russians arrived and he reported that to the, to the escape committee and they decided she should be brought into the camp and the next time he went out he took some spare clothes [and met her] she came in to the camp, put in to RAF battledress and was hidden away under the stage in the theatre and stayed there for a few weeks till the end of the war. Not only until the end of the war but until we got away from the Russians but it took us a month to get away from the Russians. BW: So you mention there about hiding her under the stage in the theatre - PB: Yeah. BW: In RAF battle dress uniform. PB: Yeah. BW: How did the, the tide of war affect you because many prisoners were forced on the long march but presumably if you were in Saxony in sort of lower - PB: Yeah. BW: South eastern Germany. Were you part of that of that - PB: No. BW: To evacuate the camps. PB: No we weren’t in Poland. We were in Germany. Now, by this time the air was full of British and American fighter bombers. Everything that moved was attacked and the commandant gave us the opportunity, ‘If you want to be marched west across the Elbe we’ll take you,’ and the Poles of course jumped at that chance. They didn’t want to be with the Russians. And we said, ‘No. We’ll stay where we are until our allies arrive.’ [Laughs] Our allies. BW: So you all managed to stay in the camp without being evacuated. PB: Yeah. BW: And so this Mrs Barrington stayed in the - PB: Yeah. BW: Theatre at this time. PB: Yeah. BW: Under your protection. PB: Yeah she kept hidden. Eventually, when the, when the Russians arrived they made no arrangements whatever for us and so all we could do was break down this perimeter fence and stream out into the countryside to search for food and that went on for about three days and then the Russians got themselves organised and clamped down on it. We came and got a bargaining counter. They held thousands of British and Americans and there were tens of hundreds of thousands of Russians in the west and the Russians wanted them back. Many, many of them even wore German uniforms and they knew if they went back they knew what their fate would be so they didn’t want to go back so there was a lot of bargaining and we were part of the Russians strong hand and then they marched us out of the camp, marched quite a considerable distance and they put us into what was obviously a big maintenance depot full of huge workshops and we were billeted there and still nothing was happening so we began to drift off in twos and threes and tried to make our way across the river on our own which eventually we did. We, we were relieved by the Russians on St George’s Day, the 23rd of April and I reached the American lines on my 24th birthday. The 23rd of May. Exactly one month later. And then it was like moving from hell in to heaven. I lived for a week on steak and ice cream. BW: You didn’t, you’d been on such bad rations there was no problem moving to that sort of - PB: No. No. Never had any - BW: High protein diet. PB: A lot of people spent a lot of time sat down with their trousers around their ankles [laughs] BW: You obviously had a tougher constitution. PB: Yeah - BW: So it didn’t affect you. PB: It didn’t affect me. But oh it was great with the Americans. Even went to the cinema. They had a mobile cinema. I saw a film about a book which I’d read whilst in Germany. And then, then we were flown by Dakota to Brussels and handed over to the British. We arrived in Brussels on a Saturday afternoon. The British gave us a ten shilling note and a handful of Belgian coins and turned us loose on Brussels for a Saturday night [laughs]. And the next day we climbed on board a Stirling and flew back to Kent and from Kent we went up to Cosford which was a receiving centre and Cosford had been my first station in 1940. BW: So this was almost a reverse of your trip out there because you’d gone out on a Stirling. PB: Yeah. BW: And then you were flown back from Brussels to Kent in a Stirling. PB: In a Stirling. BW: How did it feel to be back on your old sort of type of plane again? PB: Oh it was funny really. About, about four Stirlings and one Lancaster landed and everybody but me and two other fellas ran for the one Lancaster. [laughs] I was more than happy to get into a Stirling. BW: And that, that night in Brussels when you’d got a ten shilling note in your hand. PB: Yeah. BW: And a few Belgian pennies that must have been pretty memorable. How did it, how did it feel? PB: I had a terrible emotional shock. There was a great big underground convenience and I was stood in there weeing away and in walked two women cleaners [laughs] and that rather set me back. I don’t remember much about what happened that night actually. I know I’d no money left at the end of it. BW: Justifiably lost in celebration I think. PB: Yeah. BW: And so you were only twenty four at that stage. PB: I’d just had my twenty fourth birthday, yes. BW: And you, I guess you got, in retrospect, you got back to the UK pretty quick. I mean the war had only been over sort of three weeks when you were then passed over to the, to the British. PB: Yeah. BW: In May. PB: Yeah. BW: ‘Cause obviously some guys in service had to wait a long time to be repatriated. PB: Oh some didn’t get back until well after the September. BW: And so when you get back to Cosford. PB: Yeah. BW: What happened then? Were you able to, I mean, were you still in touch with your other crewmates at this point in your - PB: No. No. Long lost them somewhere along the way. We were, first of all we were made to give a written description of how we were shot down which seemed to me to be to be a waste of time and then we were medically examined and bathed and haircuts and kitted out with new uniform and then we were sent on six weeks leave on double rations and by this time of course I’d been, I’d been qualified long enough to have become a warrant officer. And I had a lot of back pay. Got paid all the time. BW: And how, how did they pay you? ‘Cause now it goes straight into your bank account but then did they give you cash? PB: Cash. BW: Or did they give you a cheque? PB: I can’t remember. I can’t remember. I didn’t have a bank account so I don’t, I don’t really know. I know I had a lot of money to come. Several hundred pounds. I’d earned it. [laughs] BW: Absolutely. PB: I’d done more damage to German morale as a prisoner than I ever did as - [laughs] BW: If I can, if I can just hop back to a point you made in the camp. You said there was an escape committee. PB: Yes. BW: And as I say they’re sort of impressions of, of “The Great Escape” come to mind. Were there any escape attempts made there? PB: Oh yes there were people escaping all the time. BW: Successfully? PB: A couple of hours, two days. Maybe a week if you were lucky. BW: So there was quite an active escape - PB: Oh yes, yes. BW: Committee from the RAF there. PB: Oh yes there was a lot of escaping. What, what, what was a popular thing from time to time a British soldiers would come through the camp to be registered and recorded and photographed etcetera and then sent out on working parties and some airmen got the idea it would be easier to escape from a working party then from the camp and so they exchanged identities and this in the end caused tremendous confusion to the Germans because there was a New Zealand soldier, a Desert Rat who’d been captured and held in prison in Italy and he’d escaped and got in with a with a group of partisans and as he was the only professional as it were amongst the partisans he soon became their leader and he carried out minor acts of sabotage and he became a sort of Robin Hood and rumours were circulated about this new Zealander who was doing this, that and the other and the Germans got to learn of this and eventually they captured him and they decided to send him to Germany for trial but it wasn’t known whether he was to go to Berlin or to Leipzig so as 4b was about halfway between the two he came to 4b and was locked up in the [straflagge] and there he made contact with French working parties. French used to work in there regularly and the French notified the British and it was known that if he went to either Berlin or Leipzig and was put on trial he’d be found guilty and he’d be shot and so they decided that he had to be rescued and a plot was formed and the French removed a window from the room where the showers were in the [straflagge] and put it back in a temporary position and he was briefed that when it was known that he was going to leave he was to insist upon having a shower and he was to go in to the shower room and escape from this window and be smuggled in to the camp and one day quite out of the blue we were all told to get over to the French compound as quickly as we could and to start a riot and we all got there and started fighting and jostling and messing and shouting and all the German cars were rushing to the French compound and this chappie escaped and he was hidden above a ceiling in a hut up in the dark, in the rafters and remained hidden until the end of the war. And the gestapo arrived and they made our lives hell for a week and they tore the camp to pieces and eventually we put about the rumour that he’d now left the camp and was on a train going to Switzerland so they all moved out to Switzerland [laughs] to the railway lines then and we were left in peace but he remained in the camp until the end of the war and eventually got back to New Zealand. BW: Wow. PB: Remarkable story. BW: I mean yeah he was - PB: I’ve got his name somewhere in a book but I can’t remember it off hand. BW: It would be interesting to, to find his name and look him up. PB: Well I can get it for you. BW: Doesn’t, doesn’t need to be straightaway. We can get that afterwards. PB: I can get it for you in a flash. BW: Ok well just pause the recording for a moment. PB: So we’re just looking at a book here called “Survival In Stalag Luft 4b” BW: Yeah. PB: And his name is Tony Hunt. BW: Terry. PB: Terry. BW: Terry Hunt. [pause] PB: 136 [pause] PB: Frederick William Ward he’s called. BW: Frederick William Ward. PB: Yeah. Born in February 1912. Captured in North Africa in July ‘42. [pause] That will tell you about him there. BW: Yeah. PB: Fred Ward and this is, this is in the book by Tony Vercoe um which I’ll look up. PB: Yeah. BW: Um it says that he, he was captured and then interrogated and then will go into more detail about the activities with the French workers as you say. There’s a description there. PB: Yeah. BW: And then this lady you mentioned is called Florence Barrington. PB: That’s right. Mrs Barrington. BW: With a thirteen year old son, married a German photographer and that also gives us the correct name of, just so that I’ve got it right, Muhlberg M U H L B E R G so that helps identify - PB: Yeah. Muhlberg. BW: The camp. PB: Muhlberg on the Elbe. BW: Yeah. What I’ll do if you don’t mind I’ll have a look at this separately and sort of off air of the recording. PB: Yeah. BW: But that, that’s great that is good information. PB: Yes. You’ve got the full story there. BW: So we were talking just briefly before about some of the escape attempts and how you’d helped to rescue this New Zealander from, from being shot. PB: Yeah. BW: Were there any other memorable attempts at all? PB: Yes. Yes, there was one other memorable one. I had a friend, Fred Heathfield, who was a Halifax pilot with 51 squadron. He’d been shot, he’d crashed landed a Halifax on three engines in the pitch dark in Belgium and lived to tell the tale and I think the only thing that kept him alive was that he had his parachute on his chest and that took the main force of the impact. He got two black eyes and a broken nose. He was eventually captured in an hotel in Paris but he was, he was a pilot. I was a flight engineer. There was a Luftwaffe field a few kilometres away from the camp and Fred and I decided that if we could steal a JU88 we could fly at low level to Sweden and we, we started to try to get some information about German aircraft but by this time the Germans had issued a warning to all prison camps saying that because of the seriousness of the war situation there were certain areas of Germany which could not be identified but which were of importance to the, to the safety of the country and anybody caught in such an area without authority would be shot out of hand so we decided not to bother and we gave what information we had to an Australian pilot. What was his name? I’ve got a book by him in there. Anyway, this Australian pilot had a Canadian bomb aimer in his crew and I think he’d been brought up in the French speaking part of Canada because he spoke French like a native and also had quite a good knowledge of German and they decided that they would put this plan into operation but instead of flying to Sweden they would fly east and land behind Russian lines and give themselves over which to me sounded like a suicide note. And they left the camp. They went they went out with a work, we agreed to provide cover for three days so for three days the Germans wouldn’t know they were missing and they went out with a working party and disappeared and it was the night of Dresden. The night they went out was the night of Dresden and they, they, they walked. They were stopped several times and were able to convince whoever stopped them that they were French volunteers who were being moved from one job to another job and were on their way there and they got to this airfield and they lay up in the woods surrounding the airfield to watch what was going on and a JU88 landed and it was refuelled and they thought that’s it. So they find a log of wood and they picked it up and put it on their shoulders and marched to the edge of the airfield, put it down, got inside the JU and, what was his name? Anyway, he sat in the cockpit looking at the instruments and the controls and sorting out what’s what and the ground crew come back and said, ‘What are you doing in here? Foreign workers aren’t allowed in German aircraft. Clear off.’ And they got out, they picked up their log of wood. They walked back to the camp and I remember it plainly I was stood at one end of the hut and the door was at the far end and suddenly, Geoff his name was, Geoff and his bomb aimer Smith come walking down the hut and the Germans never knew they’d been away. Never knew they’d been away. And they’d been sat in a JU88. BW: And they’d nearly got away with it. PB: If they’d landed. I mean the Russians didn’t ask questions. If you got out of a German aircraft they shot you. BW: Yeah. PB: It was the daftest idea I’ve ever come across in my life but that’s what they’d decided on. Geoff Taylor. He was, he was, he was a journalist in Australia and he wrote a book called “Piece of Cake” which had a forward by Butch Harris of all people. I’ve got a copy in there and that was the most audacious escape but of course like all other escapes it came to nothing in the end. BW: And were there quite a few others who tried and - PB: Oh yes. It was sport. BW: Captured. PB: It was sport. This notice that the Germans issued said escaping is no longer a sport but that’s what it had been. When you read about people who spend all their time organising an escape they’re just a bloody nuisance to everybody. They ruin life in the camp. Everybody has to give way to them. They’re not going anywhere. They might be out for a week but they’re back. BW: And in the meantime everybody else is perhaps suffering. PB: Everybody’s inconvenienced, yeah. BW: Yeah but they’re getting more inspections presumably. PB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To have a fella like Bader in your camp must have been hell. Absolute hell. BW: That’s why they decided to put him in Colditz. [pause] BW: And you hadn’t been tempted to try yourself. You were making yourself a nuisance in the camp you made life - PB: Only this - BW: Miserable for the Germans. PB: Mad plan we had to fly to Sweden which we gave up on. It was impossible. But we had an Australian pilot killed in the camp in a flying accident. This Luftwaffe camp was only a few kilometres away and once the airmen there realised that there were now airmen in 4b occasionally they’d come over and give us a bit of a, a bit of a thrill. They did and they’d come across in a JU86 which was an obsolete bomber based on a, on a civil aircraft. It was a bit like a Hudson it was and it were coming over the camp in a shallow dive right along the full length of the French compound which was the biggest and climb away and all the airmen in the compound would be going like this. BW: Waving. PB: And the army went mad. The army said, ‘You’re going to kill us all the way you’re going.’ You know, these lads know what they’re doing. Anyway, one came over one day and it wasn’t an 86 it was an 88 a powerful, big, powerful machine and he came perhaps a bit steeper than usual and when he pulled up his tail mushed in and his tail went into a wire fence and it dragged about twenty feet of wire and two or three fence posts with it. The tail plane hit this, hit this Canadian pilot who was walking around the compound. Killed him instantly. One of the posts hit his companion and badly injured him and I was in our own compound and I could see through the French huts and I saw this thing. It was no higher than that. I don’t know why the airstream wasn’t tucked in the ground and eventually it climbed away with all this wire streaming behind him and the Luftwaffe gave a splendid funeral to this Australian and we were told that the pilot had been stripped of his brevvy, stripped of his rank, and posted to the eastern front as a common foot soldier. I think, it think they just told us that to pacify us. I can’t believe for a moment that that’s what happened but that’s the story they gave us but to be killed in a flying accident walking around a prison compound it’s a bit much isn’t it? BW: Yeah and as you say there’s got to be some for the tail wheel to be that close to the ground that there’s got to be the plane itself has got to be very, very low. PB: It was no higher - BW: Ten feet or less PB: Than that. I don’t know why the airstream wasn’t hitting the ground. BW: And that you’re indicating’s about two foot - PB: Yeah. BW: Three foot. PB: Yeah I just saw it go I could see it between the huts. BW: Wow. PB: And then it just climbed away with all the stuff just trailing behind it. Beautiful piece of flying. Wonderful skilled bit of flying. BW: Just unfortunate consequence. PB: Yeah. So we did get excitement from time to time. BW: How did it feel when the Russians came to liberate? I mean - PB: Oh - BW: You must have had a pretty limited amount of information getting through and an impression of what the Russian forces were like. How did it feel when they - PB: Well - BW: Came into the camp? PB: Well the first thing on the newsreels I’d seen pictures of refugees in France and suddenly early in April we got German refugees going past the camp and it was, it was an incredible sightseeing German refugees like that and they were streaming past the camp to get over the Elbe. And then we could - BW: The Elbe must have been quite close to the camp PB: Oh it was only about five kilometres and then we heard gunfire and then on St George ’s day early in the morning someone rushed into our hut shouting, ‘The Cossacks are here,’ and we went out and on the main road there were four of the scruffiest most dreadful looking men I’ve ever seen in my life. On horseback. Oh they did, they looked murderous, every one and they were loaded down with sandbags full of food and ammunition and God knows what and they just sat there and later in the day the infantry arrived and they made no provision for us whatsoever. Nothing. So we just broke out of the camp to steal food and steal drink as well and steal women as well no doubt but the Russians clamped on that and then they started to register us and they were going to send us to a Black Sea port, Odessa or some sort of place, and sail us home from there they said. When the Americans are only five miles away. The other side of the river. And they started to register us and they had great big women, great big fat women, tables outside, taking the records, and they got some funny ones. There was a Micky Mouse and James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and it became chaotic and eventually we just said oh blow this and they packed it in and then they moved us, as I say, out of the camp and up into this maintenance depot. BW: So they realised you were giving them some spoof names - PB: Yeah. BW: And not helping at all PB: We sat in this maintenance depot about five of us who were all together and suddenly the most horrible screaming and I said the Russians have either got a woman or they’ve got a pig let’s go and to find out which it is. So we followed the noise and we came to a place and there were two Russians. There was one dead pig lying down and there’s another Russian with a pig like a cello with his hand way inside of it and the pig screaming away and we sit and we watch all this and we’re thinking they’ll give us something and we watch and we wait and eventually they killed it and they cut off the ears and gave us the ears. They took two pigs and gave us the bloody ears off one of pig. BW: And kept the rest for themselves. And in general when they, as you put it, got their act together in terms of organising the camp presumably they re-erected the fence post that had been torn down. PB: It became a far, far, far worse place than it had ever been. BW: Yeah. PB: They turned it into a punishment camp for German civilians. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of Germans died in that camp over the next five years and so the natives at Muelburg are attached to us really. We both suffered in that camp. It was a dreadful place. What it must have been like when it was dreadful when we were there. What it must have been like. BW: And they weren’t bringing the civilians in while you were there? PB: No, no. BW: They presumably - PB: No. It was after, after they’d repaired it and repaired all the damage we’d done. BW: Yeah. PB: And I think it was about five years they had it as a punishment camp. Must have been hell on earth. Hell on earth. Hundreds if not thousands died and this was just because of complaining about some regulation or other that the Russians had imposed. Anything at all, straight in there. Shocking that. BW: But they didn’t, did they impose a regime on you as RAF crew waiting to be repatriated during that sort of interim period of April, May. PB: Well it was all chaos. It was all chaos. I had quite an experience on VE day. They had their VE day a day later than ours because apparently they weren’t satisfied with the arrangements that the west had made so they decided to have their own, their own VE day the next day and I was, I was walking in the German town. Why I was alone and not with any of my friends I don’t know but I was alone and I was walking through this town and suddenly two Russian officers grabbed me and took me to their mess and gave me a huge meal. All, all looted German property of course. Animals, vegetables. The lot. And a particular sweet which I learned later was made from sour milk and it was absolutely gorgeous and after the meal they took me to a public hall where there was to be an address by a general followed by a concert and it was full of full of Russian soldiers, men and women, in all sorts of different uniforms and this general came onto the stage and I got, I got an example of what it was it was like being in a totalitarian state. He made a speech and the only words I heard were Churchill and Roosevelt every now and again he’d pause and somewhere at the very back of the, of the gallery [clapping sound] and immediately everybody’s clapping and immediately they all stopped like that. BW: As if somebody was coordinating it. PB: Someone’s coordinating. The whole thing was coordinated and eventually the speech finishes and we had this concert and it was absolutely fantastic. Oh the music and the dancing and the singing unbelievable. Unbelievable concert. It was terrific. Now what happened when it finished I’ve no idea. I haven’t a clue what happened to me that night. Not a clue. Not the slightest idea. I know I joined up with my friends the next day but what happened that night I don’t, I’ve no idea but I’ve never seen anything like the performance that these women who seemed to just move like that. BW: Gracefully across - PB: No, no leg movement at all. BW: The stage yeah. PB: And the Cossacks down on their heels kicking. Oh it was a fantastic concert and the singing and the balalaika playing. A night to remember that was. And that was VE day. VE day Russian version. BW: How had you managed to celebrate it in the camp at all? You mentioned it was quite different to our celebration were there any – PB: Well we didn’t know. We didn’t know it was VE day. BW: So the only indication you got was from the Russians when they - PB: Yeah. BW: Held their celebrations. PB: And as I say by this time we weren’t in the camp and in fact we’d broken and were trying to get across to the Americans on our own. BW: And you mention you were in the town at this stage in Muhlberg. PB: Ahum. BW: What, what was it like what was your sense of being in the town? Were there, firstly, was it damaged but also were there German civilians who might be hostile. PB: No. BW: To the RAF at all. PB: The civilians couldn’t get us in to their houses fast enough. We were never we were never short of somewhere to sleep or somewhere to wash. BW: Right. PB: Because I think the theory was if ten drunken Russians hammered on the door at midnight looking for women we would go to the door and say it was under British occupation you’ll have to go next door. It never worked out in practice [thank God] but that was the theory I think. They couldn’t get us into their houses fast enough. BW: So a bit I suppose a bit of a protection there for them if the - PB: Yeah. BW: If the Russians had seen western RAF aircrew in a house - PB: Yeah. BW: They would be less likely - PB: Yeah. Yeah. BW: To interfere with it. PB: And we slept we slept on a feather bed with a feather bed on top of us with a great big bed oh it was wonderful. BW: And the Germans managed to put you up in the sense that they would feed you as well. PB: Yes. Yes, BW: Even though they would have probably been rationed at this stage and - PB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they couldn’t do enough for us. BW: And did you get to go back to Muhlberg in the intervening years? PB: No, because I don’t know where we were. I don’t know where the Russians had moved us to. BW: Right. PB: The, the Stalag 4b Association organised trips to Muhlberg later and they became very popular because the Muhlberg people themselves were in the same boat but I never went. In fact they had a trip this year starting off in Berlin and moving down to Muhlberg. BW: And when you came back to the UK we picked up the story at Cosford and we picked up the extra pay that you’d been awarded. PB: Yeah. BW: And you were washed and brushed up. What then happened to you sort of post war from Cosford? PB: Well I was given three options. I could come out immediately or I could go to oh what’s the Yorkshire town, the spa town? BW: Harrogate. PB: Harrogate. On a rehabilitation course and then come out or I could opt to stay in until my normal release date. Well I thought there was still a chance of getting back on flying and getting out east and bombing Japan so I opted to stay in and I got posted to a, to a Mosquito squadron near, near Newcastle and there, there I became in effect the squadron warrant officer. I sat in an office all day doing nothing but we had a very, very good rugby team. Our sports, our sports officer was a first class scrub half and we had a very good rugby team and we won the group cup without any difficulty and we got drawn in for the semi-final of the national cup and we got drawn away against Ringway and we came down to Ringway and we found that although paratroopers are army the people who trained them were airmen and practically every one of them was a rugby league professional. So, we turned out on a rugby pitch at Ringway about six hundred red cap paratroopers lying around the pitch cheering their side on. We were up against these great hulking fellas who were fit like butchers dogs. Oh they murdered us. Absolutely murdered us. BW: And do you still retain an interest in rugby league despite that? Do you follow - PB: Not rugby league. I don’t like rugby league but we were, they were playing rugby union but they were rugby league professionals. BW: Right. PB: But when we got back, when we got back to Acklington I thought that’s it. There’s nothing, nothing doing for me now so I asked to be released and I was released within days. BW: And was that in 1945? PB: That would, no, it would be 1946. BW: ’46. PB: Yeah. BW: From Acklington and from then on what happened in your civilian life? PB: Well, I couldn’t settle. BW: Your post war life. PB: I couldn’t settle. I got I got a job as a clerk with a, with a big chemical manufacturing company and I was in this office with about six other people who were as dull as ditchwater, been there forever and all I was doing was calculating lorry loads [eight car loads used to go there and six car loads to go there?] making up that and oh it was absolutely soul destroying. I stuck it I think for three months and then I thought I can’t, I can’t, I can’t settle to this so I then decided I thought the only way to get some companionship again, get some comradeship again was if I joined the police force so I went to, I went to the police station in Burnley and they said, ‘We’ve no, we’ve no vacancies but we can put you in touch with our central organisation.’ So they did and I was called for interview at Wallasey and got into the Wallasey force with three other people and when we went to the police training school we found that three people on the course were Burnley recruits. Burnley. But this gave me my first insight into the police they were recruiting people but they wouldn’t recruit Burnley people. They wouldn’t have anybody who lived in the town going into the police force. So that was the first lie from the police. I worked hard. I came out top of the class and we got to Wallasey and for the first fortnight I was sent out on patrol with another policeman who’d been on patrol for years and I learned how to, I learned which cafes you could sit in the back rooms of and drink coffee and I learned all sort of tricks that really you shouldn’t be doing and it was a complete and utter waste of time and in a small force like Wallasey the opportunity for promotion were very, very few and far between. You had people who had been pounding the beat for fifteen years. They’d passed their sergeants examinations, they passed their inspectors examinations and they were still pounding the beat and the only way you could get on was to curry favour. Start oozing up to some officers and telling tales. It was the exact opposite of comradeship. Everybody’s telling tales about everybody. I thought I can’t stick this so I resigned from that and I was playing rugby in Burnley then and one of the team was a cotton mill owner and he said, ‘If you ever want a proper job I’ll give you a job in a cotton mill,’ so I went to work in his cotton mill and that was no good. And all the time I’m in touch with my bomb aimer’s father. Had regular correspondence and I said to him, ‘I can’t settle I’m going to go back into the air force.’ And he said, ‘Well don’t do anything for the next fortnight,’ and I received a letter - [interview transmission interrupted] BW: Alright, so we’re only, we’re only a couple of minutes from the end and I was just asking Mr Phillip Bates that after the end of the war in conclusion he’d said that he’d had a good war but it had had its moments um that were not entirely enjoyable but that overall he’d enjoyed it, his service in the RAF but I was asking just about the commemorations and the national, now centre, at Lincoln and you mentioned that you’d been down to London for the unveiling of the memorial there. PB: Yeah. BW: At Green Park. PB: Yeah. BW: And you got to meet Camilla as well did you say? PB: Yes Camilla and the Prince of Wales. I got to shake both their hands. The Prince of Wales surprised me really. It was probably, it was probably the hottest day of the year and everybody had taken his blazer off and I was wearing my Raf Ex-Pow Association tie and the Prince of Wales came along and immediately recognised my tie which surprised me. And as he shook my hand he said, ‘Where did they keep you?’ I said, ‘Stalag 4b, sir.’ He said, ‘Were you a digger?’ I said, ‘Oh no I wasn’t a digger, sir. No. I left that to other people,’ and he was quite jovial and then of course he moved on and made his way down the line but I was amazed that he recognised my tie instantly. BW: That’s a very nice point that, you know, he’s identified you by that. PB: Yeah. BW: And spoke to you particularly because of it. PB: And part of the Royal Air Force. I’ve got photographs of it all. BW: And how about now that there’s a centre for Bomber Command in Lincoln? PB: Well yes he’s lost his football again. I was due to go there and a friend of mine, Dominic was taking me but when it came to it I wasn’t fit to go. I couldn’t have sat in a car for three hours. I just couldn’t. And then another three hours coming back. And Dominic also had a cold so we were ashamed to admit it and then again it’s Lincoln. It’s Lancasters. Bugger the Lancasters I say. BW: Well perhaps it didn’t prove as reliable as the Stirling because it didn’t fly. They were trying to get the Lancaster flying for the Friday unveiling but they didn’t and I think it may have flown - PB: Yeah. BW: The day after but - PB: What annoys me they chopped up every Stirling. Now, you think they could, it was the first four engine aircraft we had. You’d think they could have had two or three for museums wouldn’t you? BW: Ahum. PB: But no they chopped up the lot and that really does grieve me. BW: And even now they’ve got a Halifax in Elvington. PB: Oh I’ve seen that. BW: Which is nicely renovated and so on. PB: Yeah. BW: Doesn’t fly. PB: And it’s got, it’s got the Stirling’s engines in it as well. It hasn’t got Rolls Royce in it it’s got Hercules. It’s a mark iii. It’s that one. The mark iii. BW: That’s the picture on the wall yeah. And there is a Halifax that they dug out or pulled out of a Norwegian fjord in 1973. PB: Yeah. BW: And that is in the Royal Air Force Museum in London. PB: Yeah. Well for years we hoped that they’d would find a Stirling somewhere but er somewhere in Holland but they never did. BW: Ahum ahum. PB: A great shame because it was a beautiful aeroplane. BW: Could take, from what you were saying, could take a fair bit of punishment and keep flying. PB: Yeah it was a lot bigger than a Lancaster of course but it had some disadvantages you see. It couldn’t fly high and it couldn’t carry big bombs. It didn’t have a bomb bay. It had three separate ones which gave immense strength to the fuselage because you had these girders running the full length but you could only get a two thousand pound bomb in it so we mostly carried incendiaries. BW: So just thinking in brief terms about the structure of a bomber formation in that case because you’d see that the pathfinders were going first to mark the target. PB: Yeah. BW: Presumably the Stirlings would then go in with the incendiaries. PB: No. No, we were our main raid was either five or sometimes six waves. BW: Right. PB: And the Stirlings were always in the third wave. We got some protection from the first two waves going out and some protection from the last two waves coming back because we were a bit slower than they were. So we were always in the third wave. BW: Right. PB: Except, except Peenemunde. Now, that, that’s a terrible story. The night before Peenemunde we went to, we went to Turin and somewhere our radio packed in and we didn’t get the message telling us that East Anglia was fogged up and we had to land in Kent or Sussex. Wherever we could. We didn’t get that message so we arrived back at Lakenheath and asked for instructions to land and they said. ‘You can’t land here. It’s totally fogbound but if you get over to Oakington you might just get down.’ Well, we got over to Oakington, the other side of Cambridge and we just landed. They closed the, closed the airfield immediately we landed and they debriefed us and fed us and provided us with beds and in the early afternoon we went down to the airfield and the Lancasters of seven group were being bombed up and we knew we were on again that night and we were going on leave the so next day so we weren’t anxious to go bombing that night. Anyway, we’d no choice we started the port outer. Come to the port inner, nothing. The starter motor was dead. The starter motors they had in Oakington would fit a Lancaster, it wouldn’t have fit us so we rang Lakenheath to tell them. Eventually a lorry arrives with some fitters and a new starter motor and we landed at Lakenheath just as the squadron is taxiing out for take-off and we were very, very happy because we were going on leave the next day and then I discover we’d missed bloody Peenemunde and at Peenemunde the Stirlings went in first at five thousand feet in brilliant moonlight and all the fighters were circling in Berlin because Mosquitos were dropping target indicators on Berlin. The Germans got away scot free. Eventually the Germans twigged what was happening and got the fighters over and shoot down forty Lancasters and Halifaxes. Stirlings, scot free. BW: And because you, they’d have been in the first wave. PB: Yeah. BW: They got away with it. PB: There were three, there were three targets. The first one was at the very southern end was all the housing and the Stirlings destroyed that and then the next waves destroyed the science laboratories and then the assembly works and we missed it and it’s grieved me the rest of my life. I’d have given anything to have been on that raid and we were so happy that we weren’t. Oh, a friend of mine got shot down that night. No. I’d have loved to have been on Peenemunde. BW: I mean that was, that was announced at fairly short notice. It was, you know sometimes a raid has to be planned quite well in advance. PB: Yeah. BW: But this was because of the intelligence about the weapons. PB: Yeah. BW: They were developing their short notice. PB: The crews weren’t told, they were told that they were attacking an experimental place for new radar [and the better job of the radar they’d better defend themselves because they destroy all the latest airborne radar] that was the story that was given to aircrews. BW: Interesting. PB: Oh I’d have given anything to have been on that raid. Anything. Five thousand feet, brilliant moonlight and you were the first in. BW: As you say it’s how fate goes isn’t it? PB: Yeah. BW: But - PB: I’ve just been to the funeral of a friend of mine. George. He trained in Canada as a navigator. As a Mosquito navigator which is a specialised navigation job. He qualifies, he gets his brevvy, he’s ready to join the squadron and the war stops. They never even, he never even saw a Mosquito. Oh what a terrible thing to have happen to you. Terrible. BW: Gone through all that. Well, I was reading in the prep really that they launched a raid on Peenemunde. PB: Yeah. BW: And just looking here at some of this um yeah it says here that 149 squadron took part in the early offensive against Germany. PB: Yeah. BW: And took part in the first thousand bomber raids with Stirlings. PB: Yeah. BW: Made a significant contribution to the battle of the Ruhr, Battle of Hamburg and the raid against the V weapons experimental station at Peenemunde. PB: Yeah. BW: And then between February and July ‘44 and in addition to dropping high explosives on the enemy the squadron helped supply the French maquis with supplies, arms and ammunition by parachute. PB: Yeah. BW: Of course that would be after you’d been shot down. PB: About eight weeks after we were shot down Stirlings were taken off German targets completely. Some of them converted to Lancasters. Those that kept their Stirlings were used to drop supplies in France and to do mine laying and later to tow, to tow gliders but they never went to Germany again. The loss rate was unsustainable. I’d been on raids where we lost one in every five Stirlings. You can’t, you can’t keep that up for very long. BW: No. No. Not at all. Do you think there was a particular weakness perhaps in the Stirling that the losses were so high or was it just good - PB: You couldn’t get any altitude. BW: Just because they were restricted to - PB: Yeah, yeah. BW: Low ceiling. PB: Altitude. I mean, I had friends who flew at twenty two thousand feet. On a good night we would get thirteen. On a poor night we would get eleven. Everything that was thrown up reached the Stirlings and everything that was coming down reached the Stirling as well [laughs]. BW: I think you mentioned at one point a bomb hit your aircraft. A bomb - PB: Yeah. BW: Dropped from the aircraft above. PB: This was the Nuremberg. I think it must have been a thirty pound incendiary because it went straight through. If it had been a four pound I think it would have stayed in the wing and burned. If it had been [eighty] it would have taken the wing off. Left quite a sizable hole. BW: I would just like to show you this. There’s a photo here of a Stirling crew of 149 squadron based at Lakenheath. PB: Oh. BW: And I just wonder whether you might recognise any of the names. It’s only a longshot. PB: Oh. BW: But there’s - PB: As I say we never bothered with other crews really. BW: No. PB: Except the ones we trained with at - BW: But it looks like it’s outside the mess at Lakenheath that picture. PB: Yeah I don’t recognise the photograph. Crowe, that’s a familiar name, Crowe. Oh he was a POW that’s why I know him. Was he a flight engineer? I knew a Tweedy in prison but he was a soldier. I don’t recognise the faces at all. Don’t know why their wearing uniform instead of battledress but there we are. Battledress were far more comfortable. That’s interesting. 27th of September. Oh well they would have been newcomers on the squadron when we were there. The average life expectancy was only six weeks. I had two friends, both on Halifaxes - BW: Thank you. PB: Both shot down on their first trip and my friend who were in training, a flight engineer on 15 squadron did four operations and got shot down twice. BW: Right. I think that sort of brings us to the end as I say unless there is anything else you want to say. PB: Well I hope I haven’t bored you. BW: Not at all sir. No not at all there’s plenty of information. Some really interesting and diverse experiences. It’s been very kind of you to share those with me. PB: It’s a pleasure. BW: So thank you very much - PB: A pleasure. BW: For your time um what I’ll do is I’ll come to the signing of the release form now and a couple of photos so I’ll end the recording there and we’ll sort out the paperwork. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ABatesP151009 Title A name given to the resource Interview with Philip Bates Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource eng Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 02:13:03 audio recording Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brian Wright Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-10-09 Description An account of the resource Philip volunteered for the Royal Air Force in May 1940. After a short time in Blackpool, he was posted to RAF Cosford where he volunteered for training as a flight mechanic and then fitter. At 86 Squadron, Coastal Command, flying Beauford torpedo bombers, he witnessed a Manchester and decided to train as a flight engineer. Philip did his training at RAF St Athan and chose Stirlings because of his love of radial engines. Philip outlines his duties as a flight engineer and his admiration of Stirlings. Philip was posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Waterbeach where he crewed up. He was posted to 149 Squadron at RAF Lakenheath. After two mine-laying trips, Philip’s first operation was to Hamburg, as part of Operation Gomorrah. In the space of ten days, they did four operations on Hamburg, one on Essen and one to Remscheid. Philip discusses its impact and the use of Window. Other significant operations were to Northern Italy, Nuremberg and the Ruhr. Philip describes the badly planned raid to Berlin and Germany’s use of parachute flares and Schräge Musik, with the resultant explosions wrongly attributed to Scarecrow. Philip’s 15th operation, and final trip, was to Mannheim with a replacement navigator. They were shot down and only three crew members survived. As a result of his loose parachute, Philip broke two ribs. He was captured and taken to Dulag Luft in Frankfurt and interrogated. After an eventful journey, he was taken to Stalag 4B as all the other camps were full. It was run by the army, although a new compound was created for the aircrew. Philip describes the poor conditions, the bartering, and the escape attempts. There were, however, libraries, lectures and several different group activities, including rugby. Philip recounts the stories of Mrs Florence Barrington, and a New Zealand soldier, Frederick William Ward, who were both hidden in the camp. An Australian pilot was killed by low level flying from a nearby Luftwaffe camp. When the Russians arrived, they left and made their way to the American lines before flying in a C-47 to Brussels, then a Stirling to Kent and Cosford. Philip became a Warrant Officer. He was posted to a Mosquito squadron but asked to be released in 1946. 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 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Cambridgeshire England--Shropshire England--Suffolk Wales--Vale of Glamorgan Germany Germany--Berlin Germany--Essen Germany--Frankfurt am Main Germany--Hamburg Germany--Mannheim Germany--Nuremberg Germany--Remscheid Germany--Ruhr (Region) Italy Poland Poland--Tychowo Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Sally Coulter Maureen Clarke 149 Squadron 86 Squadron aircrew anti-aircraft fire Berlin Campaign (23 August 1943 – 25 March 1944) bomb struck bombing bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943) bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943) C-47 crewing up displaced person Dulag Luft entertainment fear final resting place flight engineer ground crew ground personnel Heavy Conversion Unit home front incendiary device Ju 88 Lysander Manchester Me 110 military living conditions military service conditions mine laying Mosquito Nissen hut prisoner of war promotion RAF Lakenheath RAF St Athan RAF Waterbeach Resistance Ruhr Campaign (5 March – 10 July 1943) Scarecrow Schräge Musik searchlight shot down sport Stalag 4B Stirling training Window https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/604/8873/AMarlowR160422.mp3 7b39c99798f2fb3bc68968136aaa9aff https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/604/8873/PMarlowR1601.jpg de4cfb427a0d5ccc2eefc2c8776a90c3 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 Marlow, Ronald R Marlow Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Marlow, R Description An account of the resource Two items. An oral history interview with Ron Marlow (1924 - 2019, 1592700 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He trained as a wireless operator / air gunner and flew operations as rear gunner with 50 Squadron and as a mid-upper gunner with 466 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 2016-04-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy. Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Warrant Officer Ronald Marlow at quarter to two on Friday 22nd of April 2016 at his residence in Lytham, Lancashire. With me as well this afternoon are his daughter Pat Darby, her husband Frank Darby, Ron’s son in law, and great grandson James Foster. So, Ron, if you’d like to start us off please just if you would like to confirm your service number and your date of birth for the record please. RM: Yes. Well my service number is 1592700. My date of birth was 10 11 24 and I was born at Middleton, Leeds and brought up there at the time of meeting my future wife Pat. BW: And how large was your family? How many brothers and sisters did you have? RM: I hadn’t any. Well I had one brother which he was born and then died before I arrived so there was nobody I knew. So there was just my mother, father and my father who was an invalid. He’d, for some reason, I never knew how or why but he’d lost the use of his arms and used to just sit there like that day in day out which I didn’t know any background to. BW: So you didn’t know whether he was in the army or anything during the First World War. RM: No. BW: Industrial accident. RM: There was nothing ever mentioned at all about him and future forces or anything that could have possibly caused it. Yeah. BW: So you were pretty much raised as an only child then weren’t you? RM: I was. Yes. Yeah. As I say my father as long as I can remember from my school days and he was just sat in a chair. Used to just sit there day in day out. My mother obviously had to do everything for him which of course things like that I didn’t fully understand. I was a bit too young for that kind of thing but she had to do everything for him and his actual date of losing him. That I don’t know. Or my mother. But that was just the way it went. That was my life. As I say I was the only one and brought up, schooling and I started work. BW: How, how did you find school? What was it like? RM: Well it was Middleton Council School which of course we only ever played rugby. We didn’t play football or any other sport. We just played Rugby League so of course if you was in the team you were top of the tops. And I mean I played rugby with the school and they played cricket in the summer time and that was it. But it was, as a school it was just an average sort of a school. It was a council school which of course indicated that there wasn’t many people went from there to higher education and there was not many people could afford higher education because we were all working class people. So that was school as it was. Yeah. BW: And did you leave at fourteen like everybody? RM: I left at fourteen and started work at, was it Forgrove Engineering in Dewsbury Road. Forgrove. F O R G R O V E. Forgrove Engineering and I fully think some, some names. Mr Thompson was the boss. And all I was doing was we had machines that packed buttons on to strips of wire for the tailoring trade which of course Leeds was a big tailoring department and we used to just stand there and watch the buttons going down onto these, take them off, put new ones on. I mean not very exciting but that was it. I mean I suppose in a way at Middleton where I was born there was no industry. Just, you know a few shops. So I was lucky to get a job at Dewsbury Road there and I was there for quite a while until what, well yes until more or less my working days. Pardon me. Separated lifetime days because it was then that I eventually met Pat who, her parents, well they had a grocery and off licence business so I’d obviously got an eye in the right department. You know, I thought, well if they serve, that one day I met even get behind the bar which of course I did. You know, I used to eventually gave up and went and worked behind the bar when Pat lost her father and Mrs Finon was running the business which of course with being grocery and off licence it was open at 7 o’clock in the morning because a lot of the men used to get their Woodbines on their way to the pit and of course the bar closed at 10 o’clock at night. So, you know, I mean it was a full day and she was on herself with one of her neighbours helping and I eventually decided to, that with Pat in mind I would doing better for myself going into the business. I didn’t know whether it would one day become part of my life but at least it was a start. BW: And so you met your future wife at a pretty young age then haven’t you? RM: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean Pat and I, we both, I mean she of course with her parents being in business she went to Cockburn High School which of course you paid for which of course my parents couldn’t afford and she used to go to Cockburn High school. I used to go to Middleton Council School which it sounded very class. Middleton Council. But anyway it served its purpose. It got me that I could read and write. [laughs] BW: And where you were working it wasn’t an apprenticeship by the sound of it. It was a regular full time job was it? RM: It was a little engineering company and they just, I was lucky really to get in because they had this division where Mr Thompson ran these machines which just put the buttons on the threads ready to go to tailoring so I mean while there were tailors wanted buttons on these threads we were in business. BW: Right. RM: And of course I stayed there until such time as I eventually started giving Mrs Finon as she was, a hand in the shop and then eventually worked around towards going in the shop. BW: And so where were, where were you when war broke out? What do you recall of war starting? RM: I was at the shop. Yes. I was at the shop and I lived at home. Pat lived with her mother ‘cause I mean Pat used to go to, you know Torquay and places like that for her holidays. I used to go to Scarborough with my suitcase. [laughs] I think things were, they were all within your means you know. You couldn’t afford any more so you didn’t look to do any more. You lived and enjoyed what you’d got. BW: And did you have workmates or school friends who joined up? RM: Well funny thing was when I eventually joined up a good, I was more or less like on my own going into the RAF. None of the workmates or people I knew went and of course I was just like one off, one on my own and off I went into the RAF and that started my training. BW: And when did you decide to join? RM: Oh crikey. Now then. This is – BW: Was it something that you felt you wanted to do straight away? RM: Well no. I think the thing it was, it was inevitable I was going to be called up for the forces so I thought well the thing was you either get in first with what you want or you wait ‘til you’re called up and put where they want you and I thought well, you know, the idea of flying was, by crikey it was way way way. I mean in those days. So I just volunteered for the RAF, for the cadets and I was in the aircrew cadets for, for a while before I actually got into the RAF but I learned quite a bit there. BW: So when you say the aircrew cadets was this the Air Training Corps? RM: Yeah. BW: So this would be around about 1941/42 because the air cadets were formed in ’41 weren’t they? RM: Yeah. Well it was a bit later than that. BW: Yeah. RM: Yeah. BW: Yeah. And what was it that motivated you to join the RAF? What, what did you like about it? Did you want to fly? Did you want to be a pilot? RM: Well I think the first and foremost I knew that my education would limit me on what position I could undertake in aircrew and I thought well pilots, navigators. Then you come down a bit engineers and bomb aimers you know. They’re, they’re all just a little bit, and I thought well there’s one thing about it. As an air gunner you only learn to fire a 303 and once you can fire it that’s it and I mean the four guns were all linked up together. You pulled a trigger and they all went off and just a case of making sure you aimed in the right direction [laughs]. Oh dear. BW: So, you, you’ve joined up and they’ve sent you for training. Did you fly on Ansons and Whitleys at first or do you recall? RM: Wimpies. BW: Wimpies. RM: Yeah. Wellingtons. Yeah. BW: The Wellingtons. Yeah. RM: Yes ‘cause we went to London first of all. We were called up to London and the first flying we did was in Wellingtons. Well of course that was an advancement. I mean Wellingtons. Twin engine bombers. I mean ‘cause they were in service at the time. And it was just the fact that they had, you know, a rear turret, which they hadn’t a mid-upper, they’d a rear turret which of course suited what we were learning to, well wanted to be. So the two went together. BW: And at this stage you, did you volunteer for rear turret? Or – RM: I volunteered, I volunteered for aircrew and of course there was only really when you got down to the lower limits of aircrew you started with air gunners and worked your way up. Well of course I mean a lot of the training in air crew was much longer than air gunners because I mean air gunners if you could, as I say, if you could fire from a turret you was in. But of course I mean navigators, bomb aimers they all had an extended training period so I thought well if I’m going to be in it I might as well be in it as soon as possible as later. BW: Were you specifically attracted to flying as a gunner in the rear turret? RM: Well no it wasn’t really that. I think what it was it was just a case of, well I wanted to be in aircrew and then you know when things got whittled down as to what were available in air crew you realised well if I want to fly I can only fly with the capabilities I’ve got and that’s start at the back end and work forward [laughs]. Which of course they were all at the nose and you were stuck at the back end [laughs]. BW: Can you recall what it, what it was like the first time you fired your guns from a turret. Even in training? RM: Well yes I mean it wasn’t a case I don’t think as I can recall that I was aiming at anything. I think it was a case of I thought I’d seen something and of course I mean you always thought you saw something because you were looking for them and it was bound to be out there somewhere and I think it was just a case of, ‘Was that?’ Let it go just to be, I thought well if it is I shall shift him and leave us. BW: So, you, you passed out your training and were made sergeant which was standard for gunners. RM: Yeah. St Johns Wood was where we, we were trained up and brought up and got into our basics of gunnery school and then of course we went on to flying duties, learning flying duties and then getting crewed up and I think, you know at the beginning you thought well I hope they pick me, I don’t have to pick them and I think they did. They more or less just got a crew together and you got to know each other and you worked together and developed. Yeah. BW: Where was it that you met the crew? Was it at a conversion unit? RM: At St Johns wood because St Johns Wood was the recruiting centre for aircrew so we went to St Johns Wood and there was you know the different schools and you learned your basics there and then you were more or less drafted through schooling into meeting up with other crew members. Higher educated, well, educated yeah and you know you eventually got to the point where the skipper selected his crew. Well, I mean, you thought you’d been selected. I’m in. I mean it wasn’t a case of you was just the same as anybody else but, and then we got crewed up. More or less met up, introduced to each other. This is who I am. This is who you are. This is what you will be. And we formed a crew and then started you know I mean we started first of all without flight engineers because you didn’t really need them on the early training but once you got established as a crew then you got together and got a crew membership of the seven people and all developed together. Yeah. BW: And then from there you were posted to 50 squadron at Skellingthorpe. RM: Skellingthorpe. Yes. Yeah. BW: And did you pick up your flight engineer there when you got there? Or did you meet him before? RM: Yeah. The flight engineer was the last one that we picked up because I mean they were, you know, trained separately but we did some flying together just prior to going to the squadron so we did know everybody in the crew. Yeah. BW: And presumably this is at a Heavy Conversion Unit for Lancasters ‘cause that’s where you were first on wasn’t it? RM: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Oh yes. I mean once you, once you were going to be up there on the squadrons it was Lancasters and that was it until you either got the chop or you got through. Yeah. BW: And how was it when you were told you were going on Lancasters? Were you made up about that? Were, were you quite happy with that? RM: Well I think it was a bit of a false reaction. You thought this is it. I’ve made it and I thought, flipping heck. Where are we going? You know and you made your first trip and it probably a quiet night, a silent night. Nothing ever happened. Nobody attacked you. I mean a lot depended on the target. If it was a place that was heavily defended you could expect anything. Ack ack or even attacked by aircraft. If it was a small place which a lot of them were small I mean to us there wasn’t, you know it was a target and that’s what you were going for and that’s what we went for and of course it wasn’t heavily defended so there was no real defences. Just sat there and you know, ‘How long are we going to be before we go back?’ It went very well any rate. I mean, it was, it was a little bit novel to start with. You thought well if this is it it’s not bad. We’ll get through. Then of course bigger targets came and more defensive and offensive and you learned your ways. Yeah. BW: So I guess at this stage it’s now 1943 maybe in to 1944. Is that right? RM: Yeah. BW: When you start on ops. RM: Yeah. BW: And do you recall where your first op was? Where? RM: Well it’s all in the book there ‘cause I’ve got that it starts the full tour. BW: Right. RM: But then it also starts where I did the five trips, five trips on Halifaxes with a wing commander. BW: So you start in mid-May 1944. RM: Yeah. BW: And it looks like you’ve really, with a couple of exceptions where you’ve changed aircraft you’ve stuck with the same one. RM: Yeah. BW: Which was B. Did you have a nickname for it? RM: Baker. BW: Baker RM: Well yeah B for Baker. B for Bravo. I mean it was just a bit versatile. Of course one of the trips I remember was the fact Pat’s mum was in hospital, your mum was in hospital and they didn’t know just how she was going to come out of it and they scrubbed me off that trip and gave me a twenty four hour pass to go and see her which was very kind of them. Can you manage there? BW: Yes, thank you. RM: So you can see by that we didn’t waste a lot time by doing a trip and then having nights and nights and nights doing nothing. BW: Yeah. And your early sorties are mostly in France aren’t they? RM: Yeah. Oh yes. Yeah. BW: ‘Cause this was working up to D-Day. RM: ‘Cause when you’re thinking from Lincolnshire, straight down to the coast, across the channel it didn’t take long to get in to France, to some of the French targets. Places we’d never even heard of. So obviously from information there was something there. Something that was earmarked to the bomb aimers and pilots. The target is such, you know. That, that’s what you’ll go for and we used to go, get rid of them and let’s get out of here kind of thing. Yeah. BW: And as gunner did you attend those briefings with the other crew members as well? Were you all briefed together? Or – RM: Yeah. We were all briefed to go and then of course when we, when the trip was over we came back. There was a briefing but then if there was anything more in material that needed to be recorded for future trips then of course the crew just went to the briefing. That was it. BW: And so when it was revealed what your targets were going to be what was the reaction generally? Were you – RM: Well you see with a lot of them I mean some names you thought, oh my God. Flipping hell I don’t fancy going there. You know there were names that hit you straight away. There was obviously something there to be going for so we’d better look out. Some of the places which, if you look in there, some of the French targets we could have been in somebody’s back yard for what it was you know. There was I mean it didn’t mean anything to us at all. I mean the briefing was that there was probably some ammunition dump or some light ack ack there or some barracks or something. There was always something that they told us we were going for but never a lot of detail as to what it was. So it was just a case of well saturate bombing and hope you got rid of them. BW: And what happened during the preparations for the mission itself? Can you talk us through what you might do having had the briefing what would you then do to get to and then get on board the aircraft and sort your guns out? RM: Oh the thing was once you knew where you were going and what you were going for then that was pretty secret and that was a case of they told us and we didn’t tell anybody because somebody could have been listening that shouldn’t have been. So it was not a case of tell you and then you know you’d go for your tea about three or four hours later. Just a case of well you’d go for your meal, come back, briefing and more or less straight to the aircraft or within a reasonable time to the aircraft. So you couldn’t really, if you wanted to, you couldn’t really discuss it with people. It was pretty quiet. BW: And would you get changed? Would you get in to your flying suit before you go out? RM: Well you see the thing was your normal uniform. Then you ‘d to go to your crew room where you’re flying suit was which of course with us was flying suit and the mask and your mask and your harness and so forth which of course we took longer because I mean the crew at the front end they were, apart from a Mae West and that they had virtually nothing on where we of course had to put on a flying suit on, flying boots on, fasten it all up and harness round here and you know I mean when you walked you could hear it clunk clunk. [laughs]. BW: And did you, did you have a seat pack parachute or a carry carry on parachute? RM: Well the parachute. At the rear turret when you opened the outer doors you used to swing into the turret but you left your parachute there. Got in to the turret. BW: Inside. RM: And shut the turret doors. So if you did have to bail out you’d got to be quick enough to open the doors to get your parachute, bring it in and turn the turret and go out backwards. BW: Obviously never happened to you, that. RM: It never happened. No. Thank goodness. No. We were never got to that situation. Thank goodness. In reality, I mean we did a full tour and there was never any real time when we, ‘Be prepared we may have to bail out.’ We could if anything. We were very lucky. We were very very lucky in the fact that we completed a tour and we never had any calamitous happening where, ‘Get ready to bail out,’ you know. We were very lucky. We were. BW: And when you had got all your flying kit on and your suit and things did you take any mascots with you or have any good luck charms or anything? Had Pat given you anything to –? RM: Oh some of them did you know. I mean some of them had little bits and pieces. Oh I must, I must remember to take this, and I must take. At, I think we had, I think we. JF: Picture of grandma. [pause] BW: Oh right. That’s oh right this is a picture of Pat with an aircrew hat on and did you take that, did you take that with you? RM: Yeah. BW: Did you take the picture on board? RM: No. PD: Oh he did. JF: You did. RM: No. We didn’t carry anything with us in the turret because it was always a thought that if you did you’d want to get out as quick as possible and where have I put this, and have I got that? So we just left these in the billet. BW: Oh. RM: And got out as quickly as possible if we had to [laughs]. Tell you. So all in all I was one of the lucky ones. BW: Do you recall what you had to do when you, when you had got yourself in to your turret did you have certain checks to do on the guns or anything like that? What can you tell us about that? RM: Well the thing is you know your elevation and traverse, you know. BW: Yeah. RM: That they could go up and down and traverse and the turret was working. Obviously you couldn’t do anything with the guns but the fact was the turret was working. You could rotate the turrets, up and down the guns, everything was as it should be. It was just a case of would it be right at the time if necessary? So, you know you thought oh well everything’s working. Just sit there and keep looking around. BW: And did you have 303s on this particular turret? RM: Yeah. Browning 303s. Yeah. Four 303s. Yeah. [laughs]. And of course the, the change the bullets went down in front of you down underneath the turret into the fuselage. They don’t, they wouldn’t have lasted long if you’d have got four guns going but anyway we never had that requirement, thank goodness. BW: And I understand some gunners took out the Perspex panels because it made it easier to see. Did you ever do that on your turret at all? RM: No. I always left it in because I don’t know it was just one of those things that some did, some didn’t. And you believed that it was there for a purpose and you left it in. Yeah. I mean the thing was you could find that if there was bad weather and there was any rain or anything about it could, you know, look a bit obscure looking through it. Whereas you used to think, well I used to think well best left alone. Yeah. BW: You mentioned before the crew that you’d met and teamed up with and aside from yourself your pilot was Pilot Officer Pethick. RM: Yeah. BW: Do you recall the names and roles of the other crew members? RM: Now that I don’t. Pethick. BW: Was there a Philips? RM: Oh I must be honest I – BW: Flying Officer Philips. RM: I’m completely struggled when it comes to crew members. ‘Cause you see those that were officers you met them in the aircraft or any training but apart from that you didn’t see much of them because they were officers. You were NCOs. But in respect of other crew members [pause] I just can’t think. BW: Ok. RM: I’m sorry. BW: That’s alright. Did you, do you recall being a fairly tight crew? I mean you mentioned about socialising with other, I suppose ranks or whatever. Did you, did you stick together as a crew? RM: Oh you did if you were out and so forth but when you were on the station when it was practical I mean obviously it was a bit difficult, officers meeting up with NCOs, even though you were crew members. That was possible at times but generally speaking it was a case of them and us but I mean you’ve got to keep rank you know. I mean no matter what they were officers, you were NCOs and you could meet up when it was necessary as crew members training etcetera etcetera but you didn’t meet up socially completely. Yeah. BW: And when you were in the aircraft were you on first name terms? RM: Oh yeah. BW: With each other. RM: Yes. But I mean the thing was there wasn’t a lot of communication in the aircraft because the skipper would check on everybody. If you were in, in your position, in your situation, ‘Everything alright? Any problems let us know before we take off rather than later,’ and once everything had been checked throughout the aircraft with the skipper then you were on first name terms. Yeah. BW: And so when you, when you took off were you pretty much in silence unless you had to talk? RM: Oh you was. Yes, because there was no need to be talking. I mean you got to the end of the runway and you got the light and you turned on to the runway. The skipper said, ‘We’re going to take off,’ and that was the last words that were spoken when you went down the runway and climbed up, took off and you’d hear the skipper say, ‘Wheels up,’ and the engineer would get the wheels up and you would then be airborne and you were as a crew flying together. Yeah. BW: And naturally as a rear gunner you were first in the air technically weren’t you? RM: Oh yeah. BW: ‘Cause the tail would come up first. RM: When that tail lifted I was airborne. I mean I got more flying hours in than the others. Not that it was recorded as such. And I mean there was the occasion of course sometimes you know when you were glad to be back and he put the aircraft down and the tail wheel went down a bit heavy. You got a bit of a shudder. I’d think never mind we’re down. [laughs]. Oh dear. BW: And it’s on your list of ops that you flew on D-Day itself as well. RM: Yeah. BW: Regarding that were you aware during your briefings and operations prior to that that the invasion was forthcoming. Was it suspected or were you told. RM: It was indicated to us that this was a distinct possibility. That, you know, D-Day was very very imminent and that we would of course be more than likely to be called upon in or on D-Day so of course the last minute, if you will, last minute, ‘Well this looks like it lads. This is where we go.’ And nobody was, said this is D-Day but it was given to you well and truly to you that we were on the move. You, you know, you make your own decisions from here. BW: And yours was actually a night-time flight wasn’t it on D-Day? RM: Yeah. Was it? Yeah. BW: It wasn’t early in the morning. It was. RM: No. BW: Late at night. RM: Yeah. Oh dear. BW: I don’t suppose you got to see any of the forces going over to France on that day did you? RM: No, because as I say you see I was always looking back. I was looking at what had happened earlier. If there was anything left still going over that’s what I would see. The main force of course was ahead of me [laughs]. Still, never mind. BW: And on the, on these operations how would you describe your view out of the turret? Could you see any of the other bombers in the main force at all? RM: You could. Yes. I mean the thing is from a turret, either mid upper or the rear, you had a good out vision all the way around. I mean the thing is when you think of it while you were there you needed it. There was no good saying I could see you but I couldn’t see there or there could be somebody behind that. You’d got to be able to see all the way around through the, you know, the Perspex so really you’d a good view all the way around and you made sure that there was no little patches where you couldn’t see clearly. You know you got around. You got around. Yeah. BW: And was it pretty cold in the back? RM: Oh it could be. Yes. It could be. ‘Cause I mean the thing is there was no real heating on. I mean you’d your oxygen mask and your flying suit and all the rest of it. You were all connected up but I mean when you think the heat from the front end never really got to the back end to the extent that, ‘Oh it’s better now.’ You know it, I mean it was cold. I mean naturally you had to think it was cold because of where you were. You were at the tail end of the aircraft. There was not much coming through from there but anyway I mean you got used to these things after two or three times in the turret you just accepted what it was for what it was. You were there and hopefully with the grace of God you’d get through and finish a tour and hope that you didn’t get shot down before. BW: And were your gloves adequate? It was pretty cold obviously, as you say, in the turret. RM: Oh yes your gloves were electrically heated. BW: Nice. RM: Yeah. Clipped together and you know kept your hands because I mean well you can imagine back there I mean with your hands on triggers all the time because it was like a bicycle handlebars if you will. Small. But for operating both sets so you had to have your fingers free to be able to move them. Yeah. BW: How did you elevate and move the turret? Elevate the guns and move the turret? RM: You just – BW: Sort of twist your wrists. RM: That’s right. You twist the wrists to up, twist the wrists to down and then if you wanted to turn it you just tilted the handlebars and it moved the turret around. BW: I see, RM: Yeah. BW: So as you say it’s I guess like a motorbike handlebars. RM: You needed all your activities in your fingers. Your hands. Yeah. BW: And I believe that you got to warrant officer at one stage but then something happened. They decided you weren’t – RM: Yes. BW: Going to stay at warrant officer. What happened? RM: I’m trying to think. There was something that – JF: You got drunk. You went through the officer’s gate when you were drunk. RM: Pardon? JF: You went through the officer’s gate when you were drunk. RM: I can’t hear you. JF: You went through the officer’s gate when you were drunk RM: Oh that was it wasn’t it. Yeah. Went through the officer’s gate. BW: Went through the officer’s gate. RM: Which was not, was a case of non-entry to, to us. BW: So as an NCO you ended up – RM: I thought I was more than what I was. [laughs]. BW: But the reason was you’d had, you’d had a few drinks had you? RM: Well I suppose that could have been the main reason [laughs] Dear oh dear. Yes, you, I mean the thing was in those days it wasn’t so much that you could consume. It was just a case of a couple of pints and oh I mean you couldn’t afford more but by Jove you enjoyed it. BW: And so how were, how were you found out about this? Did somebody see? See you and – RM: Well you were walking through the gate BW: Report you? RM: And somebody said, ‘Where are you going airman?’ I said, ‘Airman?’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘This is not for you. This is the officer’s gate.’ So it was about turn and what number, rank and name. Yeah. I think there was about two or three of us got hobbled on that sin. BW: And did you have to go before the CO? RM: Well no it was just a case of you shouldn’t have been coming through that gate. It’s a non-entry to any other crew – JF: Gramps. You did. You went in front of the CO which was your pilot. RM: Did I? JF: Yeah. And he gave you a rollicking. RM: Oh my God, make it worse wouldn’t it? I tell you a lot of things are, you’ve brought a lot back to me but oh through my own skipper. Coming in through our gate. JF: It was at Driffield. RM: Pardon? JF: It was at Driffield. It was Hollings. RM: Yeah. JF: And he was the base commander and your pilot and he was the one that gave you the rollicking. RM: That’s it now. Wing Commander Hollings because as I remember now, thank you. I’m thinking about the other one first. He said, ‘You do realise that I’d put,’ ‘cause they were all officers apart from me, he said, ‘You do realise,’ he said, ‘I’d put you forward for your commission,’ he said, ‘but you’ve had that now.’ That was the end of that. BW: So this is when, this is when you’d finished with your first squadron and had transferred to 466 at Driffield. RM: This is when I’d gone on to Yorkshire. BW: Yeah. RM: Yeah. Yeah. I just I can’t think of any reason why I would want to go back on a second tour when I’d done a tour but I suppose I was stupid. BW: Well you, you’d done a good number of ops. RM: Yeah. BW: Already and you’d completed your first, first tour. RM: First tour completely. Yes. I was, I was on instructing. BW: And looking at your list of ops you mentioned when we were talking earlier your longest one being over eight hours this one is is there is one of nine but most of them are on average probably about four or five. RM: Four or five hours. Yeah. BW: ‘Cause they were French targets. RM: Yeah. BW: But there’s one or two here that are long trips and I suppose most of these would be in, be in Germany. There’s [Wiesbaden?] and Stuttgart. RM: Yes. Yes BW: What was Stuttgart like? Was it that a notoriously difficult target? RM: Well, some of them, it was surprising in a way. You could be over the target or approaching the target area and there was very little air defensive but there was a lot of, you know, ground attack like ack ack and so forth but fortunately I suppose from our point of view there was very little of like, you know we put up Bomber Command and they’d put up Bomber Command and we used to put Fighter Command up in opposition. There was very little from them so I suppose in a way we were very lucky. Yeah. BW: And you saw the flak and the – RM: Oh you could see the flak. BW: The ack ack coming up. RM: Yeah but I mean the thing was, you know they at the front could see it before obviously we did and they used to say, ‘Oh there’s flak ahead,’ and you’d think oh flipping heck here we go. [laughs] BW: It was notoriously accurate as well. Did, did you find that to be the case? RM: Oh yeah. I mean it was, you could many a time come back with little holes, you know, in the aircraft where small, nothing big, heavy but small anti-aircraft had exploded and done a bit of damage. I mean it could have in the right area but if it just damaged the wing or the fuselage it didn’t make a lot of difference thank goodness. [laughs] BW: And could you hear it when it hit the aircraft? RM: Oh yeah, you could hear a bang on the fuselage and you’d think, oh my God what had, what’s gone? And then you’d hear a bang, a bump and then it would be quiet. And it was gone. You’d missed it. BW: But they never caused significant damage on your aircraft. You didn’t lose – RM: No we were - BW: Engines and things like that. RM: Fortunately we were never damaged to the extent where we had to consider whether we would need to bale out or not. We’d, you know, I mean damage could have been just a couple of small little shell holes that they used to just stick a bit of paper over and go again. So we were lucky. We were very lucky. I mean you could see aircraft go down. You know, there would be some ack ack and there would just be a flash and that would have been one aircraft been hit, probably in the bomb bay when the bomb bays were open. Could have been hit there and that was it he was gone. But we were lucky as I say. Lucky. BW: And presumably over a target where there’s searchlights and things going you could, if you weren’t able to see the other bombers in the formation you could see them then. RM: Yeah. Yeah well I mean that was one of the big dangers. They used to say don’t look at the searchlights because obviously you know the searchlights, the brightness could affect your eyes and for a while afterwards you couldn’t see anything clear. So if there were searchlights about you were to keep away from them. It was all – BW: Did you ever get caught in a searchlight? RM: Fortunately no. We were very very lucky. I mean a little bit of slight damage but nothing of a serious nature that would have caused or could have caused, you know, serious thinking by the skipper. Do we need to get out? I mean the engines were still turning and bomb doors were opening and closing. Let’s get out of here kind of thing. BW: What was it like when you could feel the bombs had gone? You could hear the bomb aimer’s voice. RM: You could feel the aircraft lift. You know. You’d be going along and you’d say to the bomb aimer, you know, ‘When you’re ready,’ and he’d say, ‘Right. Right. Steady. Left. left a bit. Steady. Steady. Bombs gone.’ And you could feel the aircraft lift. Yeah. You used to think to ourselves thank goodness they’ve gone. Be glad of them out of the way. Oh dear. BW: And the Germans used blue searchlights as well. Did you ever see any of those? They used radar – RM: No. BW: Guided. RM: Not that I can think. No. I mean they used the, you know, the normal searchlights but I can’t think of any blue ones. What was the purpose of that? BW: I was just curious because they used the blue, the blue ones were radar guided and so they could lock on to a bomber. RM: Yeah. Lock on. Yeah. BW: And the other yellow or white ones. RM: The others were manually operated. Yeah. No. Not that I can think. No. Mind you I wouldn’t be looking for searchlights. I’d be looking the other way. BW: And you didn’t happen to see any night fighters around at all either? RM: No. BW: You’d be looking for those. RM: No, I, again I say we were very very lucky. Now whether there wasn’t sufficient up or whether they were going for other aircraft and not us but never at any time can I recall seeing a German night fighter which was a blessing. It was. BW: So I suppose it might be fair to say you didn’t actually fire your guns in anger. RM: No. No. I mean my guns were cocked. They had to be obviously but never at any time did I have to fire at anything on a trip so – BW: So I presume the only times you would fire them would be when you tested them over the channel on the way in. RM: Oh yes. Just give your guns, the skipper used to say, ‘Right. Give your guns a burst. See if they’re alright.’ And that was it. Yeah. BW: One of your targets here is Caen and that was in mid-July and that was at a time when they were really trying to push the D-Day forces on from the beach head. RM: Well probably. I mean getting rid of some of the defensive situations on the beaches would be a good idea wouldn’t it? BW: And of course at that, at that time at night you wouldn’t see anything of the city or anything like that so. RM: No. I mean the thing is – BW: No indication. RM: From where we were you could not look straight down. You could look out at the sides and the skipper used to say, ‘Don’t look down. That’s the bomb aimer’s job.’ But of course the bomb aimer used to be laid in the nose and telling the skipper, ‘Left a bit. Right a bit. Steady. Steady. Steady. Bombs gone.’ And as I say when you felt it lift you’d think thank goodness they’re out of the way. BW: And there was, there was one sortie where you were recalled. That was in June but it was presumably one where you were going to go to a target in France but you were recalled. Do you recall? RM: Yeah. BW: What, what that was. Was it a case of the target couldn’t be seen or something or – RM: Well I don’t know because they just used to say that the target has been cancelled. Return to base. Don’t take off or anything but there was no reason given. Whether it was, you know incorrectly or whether it was something had happened at the other side or what but it was just cancelled and that was it. BW: And so you’ve come through three months really. Almost three months to the day since you started on the 11th of May through to the 9th of August 1944. RM: Yeah. BW: You’ve had pretty consistent flying and presumably about thirty ops. I’ve not counted all these but there’d be about thirty ops. One, two, three – JF: Thirty two. BW: Thirty two. JF: From memory I think, thirty two. BW: And then you went on to gunnery instruction. RM: Yeah. BW: Was that something that your CO decided for you or did you volunteer for it or –? RM: Well you see the thing is they had to find somewhere for you. I mean you’d finished your tour so what was you going to do? Just be kicking around at some station waiting till you were called again or what? So you volunteered to go to a gunnery school and get linked up with, you know gunners that were coming through. It helped. Well it was something for you to do if that’s a way of putting it but it was something for you to do and rather than just being kicking around at a gunnery school doing nothing. Yeah. BW: And do you recall where that was? Do you know where you were posted to? JF: Market Harborough I think it was called. RM: Was it? It could have been. Thank you. JF: I think that’s right. BW: Market Harborough. RM: Market Harborough [laughs]. JF: It was 14 OTU I think. Number 14. Yeah. Market Harborough. BW: So do you recall anything from from that time of being an instructor? Can you recall what sort of things you would tell the other students to do? PD: You crashed. BW: Did you have a crash in a Wellington bomber at one point? PD: When you’d been training [do you mean] RM: Sorry but can you speak up a bit ‘cause I mean – JF: You crashed. RM: I’ve got a hearing aid in one ear which doesn’t work. JF: Wellington. PD: Landed in a Wellington in the woods and it split open didn’t it? RM: Oh yeah. PD: When you were training. RM: Yeah. Sorry. Can you just give that out? Yeah. A Wimpy that we came down in. Didn’t do us a lot of good but fortunately we were not injured or incapacitated in any way. It just came, I don’t know what it was. JF: You were, you remember, you told that skipper that you heard somebody on the radio saying that they were in trouble and they were going to go down? RM: Thank you. JF: And the skipper said, ‘Yes it’s us.’ RM: [laughs] Oh well. That’s being at the back end you see. You couldn’t hear things properly [laughs]. Oh dear. You’ll have to forgive me as I say. It’s a long time ago. I’ve done very well considering. BW: That’s absolutely fine. So you were on a, you were on a training mission. RM: Yeah. BW: In a Wellington and some problem or other developed. RM: Something. Obviously. Yeah. BW: And the pilot told you that you were going to have to crash land. RM: I mean the thing is when you look at it realistically I’m at the back end looking that way. They’re up there looking the other way to where the aircraft is going. What could I have possibly seen that was going to decide – BW: Yeah. RM: What the aircraft was going to do? BW: Yeah. So all, so all you knew was it was going down and - RM: Exactly, you know, am I going with it? BW: The pilot says, ‘It’s us.’ And so do recall this crash in the woods? Do you? RM: Well obviously it was nothing of the serious nature that anybody got seriously injured but the aircraft was obviously damaged wasn’t it? Yeah. Split open. Yeah. Split open. No. BW: So – RM: I mean when you think for what time I was in that wasn’t bad was it? BW: Yeah. To go through all of that over enemy territory and then to – RM: Yeah. Yeah. BW: Have to crash in your own country. RM: I mean the thing is you know I mean when you think of all those trips I did. What a hundred and twenty nine. To never be seriously damaged from enemy action that was very lucky. Yeah. You know, to be damaged by ack ack or enemy fighters which as I say to think if I ever saw one or two was the most. Yeah. ‘Cause you see I mean if there was ack ack fire going up they wouldn’t want the night fighters up ‘cause they could have been caught with that. BW: And you never found out what caused the Wellington to go down? RM: No. No. No it was probably some stupid idea that we’d got that something was going wrong. Probably an engine spluttered or could have been something and I mean we never went back to ask. You know. Crikey. Could happen again. Don’t find out. Never mind. BW: Were you near the base at all? Were you near your home airfield or was it some distance away? RM: It can’t have been that far away because I mean when you were ever doing any training flights in Wimpies you never did big long distance ones. You know they usually were within an area around the base so must have been pretty close. BW: And then from there you went to 466 squadron at Driffield. RM: Yes. BW: An Australian squadron. RM: Yeah. BW: Did you, did you meet a lot of Aussies? I mean this particular unit wasn’t fully – RM: Oh yeah. BW: Occupied with Aussies until later in the war but –. RM: Yes. Yeah. A lot of Aussies yeah. I mean as an Australian squadron it was basically Australian crew. Yeah. But as they, as they reminded me I slipped up with the going through the long gate, wrong gate. Thank you. BW: And your pilot was actually the wing commander. RM: He was the station CO. Yeah. BW: Station CO as well. RM: Yeah. Wing Commander Hollings. Station CO. BW: This is Wing Commander Albert Hollings. RM: Yeah. BW: Who had, who had a DFC but he was an Aussie. RM: Yes. Yeah. BW: What was he like to fly with? RM: Well I mean you couldn’t deny the fact that he was a wing commander which was way way way above me so I mean we only met when we had to do a crew training or crew instructions or anything like that. I mean other than that I mean when I’d, on the charge I was just marched in to the room. He was behind the desk, said what he had to say and said what he had to do and that was it. Me finished. Oh well. BW: And when he did that were you demoted from warrant officer? RM: Well I was. I was as I was. I stayed as I was. BW: Right. RM: I didn’t alter. I was going to go up but – BW: And this was where he said you were going to be put forward for your commission but because – RM: Yeah. He said, ‘I was putting you forward for your commission,’ he said, ‘But you’ve had that now.’ BW: Simply because you walked through the wrong gate. RM: I walked through the wrong gate. Yeah. BW: That’s harsh. RM: I mean the thing is apart from anything I was a foreigner. I wasn’t Australian. Oh dear. BW: And the aircraft you were flying this time were the Halifax Mark 3s. RM: Halifaxes. Yeah. BW: And you’d transferred from being a rear turret gunner. RM: Yeah. BW: To being a mid-upper. RM: Yeah. BW: Was that on the CO’s direction or was that just because there was a slot going? You wanted it? RM: No just to make up, as they wanted the crew as we got the position ‘cause as I say used to sit on the top there. I thought flipping heck. You’re completely exposed. You know, you’ve no protection around you up here. Anyway, that was all by the by. BW: Do you recall what your armament was? Were they, were they the half inch machine guns? RM: Two 303s, two 303 Brownings. Yeah. BW: On that version as well. RM: Yeah. BW: And did you meet or get to know the rest of the crew at all on this on this particular time. RM: Well with the Aussies of course I mean they more or less kept together and the Aussie officers, the Aussie officers stayed together and you just didn’t mix unless it was anything that required you all to be together. Anything like that you were but other than that it was a case of you go that way and I’ll go this way. Anyway. BW: So even, even though you’d been on a crew before where you might have mixed with a couple of the guys because you were the same rank. On this occasion there was even more segregation because – RM: Oh yeah. BW: The Aussies didn’t mix with you. RM: Well you see being the station CO and the squadron commander I mean he’d got a group of Australian officers with him. I mean I suppose in a way I was lucky to have got on the crew. Well never mind. BW: And how, how did you find flying in a Halifax compared to a Lancaster? RM: Well, to a gunner there wasn’t a lot of difference. You were sat. I mean from rear turret to mid-upper turret you were just sat there. Sat upright. You could rotate fully. You’d two guns that would go up and down so there wasn’t a lot of change. You know you were just in a turret same as you would have been with the others in a Lancaster. Yeah. BW: Did you feel there was more room though in a Halifax or a -? RM: No. Well I think, I think you felt safer this way. I mean you could unclip your seat and drop out whereas with the rear turret you had to undo your back door, back door open that out then slide out into the fuselage so it was a bit more difficult. Yeah. BW: And getting in and out of the aircraft in general did you feel it was a bit more roomy? RM: Yeah ‘cause – BW: Or easier? RM: ‘Cause the door was in the aircraft side. Little short steps you know. You just, everybody climbed up those and went either front or rear. Oh yes. No, no problem. BW: And was it, was it still as cold as before or was it a little bit warmer because you were nearer the nav? RM: Oh it was warmer because you weren’t right down at the back end you know. I mean it was bound to be warmer. I mean I suppose in a way you looked at these things but you used to think well I’ve got my clobber on, I’ve got my coat on, I’ve got my uniform on, leave it at that. Yeah. BW: And the difference this time is that it’s early 1945 now. RM: Yeah. BW: When you’re, where you’re on this part. RM: Yeah. On the Aussies. Yeah BW: And although your targets are still Germany was there still much opposition at the time? Were they still as active as you felt they had been before? RM: Well I mean one of the things was obviously that the opposition, that’s really, real opposition was much deeper into enemy territory. I mean you crossed on to France and it was pretty quiet you know. It had receded. So it was a bit safer in that respect. Yeah. BW: Were you aware of the war coming to an end? That it would end imminently. RM: I don’t think so. I don’t think you really looked at it like that respect. You know you just looked at it well I’m in aircrew and we’ll keep flying ’til and told not to. [laughs] BW: Just keeping going ‘til the end until they tell you to stop. RM: That’s it. Yes. BW: And so you’re on this, by this record there’s only five trips that were done between 12th March and 18th of April so that’s really only a month on this before you then stopped flying over, over Germany altogether. RM: Yes. That’s right. Yeah. BW: Were you involved in other, let’s say humanitarian ops like bringing prisoners of war back or dropping food? RM: No. BW: To the Dutch. RM: No. No. As we finished flying operationally we more or less finished flying and we were just on different stations with, you know, routine jobs. You know you’d still got your rank and you’d got your, whatever you were but you were not doing that anymore. You were just more or less filling time in with being with the services until it was your time to be demobbed. BW: And so when the announcement came that the war had ended and that you know and that was the end of operations what then happened? Did you celebrate the news and move on or -? RM: Yeah. Well of course I got my demob. Came home. Got back in to the shop and got that more or less sorted out. Yeah. I might have had a pint or two to celebrate. I mean it was on tap. [Voices in the background.] BW: I would imagine the Aussies had quite a big celebration. RM: Well I mean the thing is when you think Aussies in Cambridge I mean, er Canadians, they could go home. I mean we were home. I mean train, bus or something and you were home. They had a long way to go so it didn’t take long to celebrate. BW: And in some cases I believe the Australians and Canadians went home sooner or were demobbed much more earlier than the, than the British. RM: Well I mean the thing was if you look at it from a realistic point of view why not get them home. They’d further to go. Much further to go. Get them away. We were on the doorstep. We could go home at weekends. Go home for seven days leave. I mean they couldn’t so it was practical to get them, you know on the move as quick as anything. Yeah. BW: And to be honest you weren’t yourself that far from home. I mean if you were at Driffield in North Yorkshire. RM: Crikey no. I mean. BW: Back to Leeds. It’s not that far at all is it? RM: No. No trouble at all. No. No I could get home very easily. BW: And during all that time did you manage to get to see Pat during the time. RM: Oh we got leave. Yeah. PD: Can I say something? BW: Yeah. Yeah. Go on. PD: You used to get a penny platform ticket, get on the train [unclear] with your penny platform ticket. RM: You’re not supposed to talk about that [laughs] BW: So you used to get a ticket just for the platform and jump on the train instead. [laughs] RM: [laughs]. Well we hadn’t much money you see had we? BW: You had to economise. So even in between ops and I guess with not having that tight a crew where you’d socialise together I guess most of your opportunity to take time off you went home and spent, spent with Pat. RM: Well that’s it you see I mean the thing is you either went out with the lads which are all more or less equal rank, you know, Sergeant, flight sergeant and so forth or if you were in the upper half you went with the boys so of course we just more or less as you say me being on home territory I could, if necessary, at times, get home. Yeah. BW: And where, where were your favourite haunts? Did you go in to Leeds or any of the nearby towns? RM: No, because Leeds was probably too near home to be, you know. [laughter in the background] Shut up. I mean the thing was if we were in you know, the other places like Lincoln well I mean Lincoln was farther away but I mean you know if they said, ‘Right there’s no ops tonight,’ Well we all just you know have a mass exodus down to the nearest pub. PD: Drink chug a lug. RM: Yeah. Get around a table and drink chug a lug. Drink chug a lug. Drink chug a lug. BW: And you mentioned when we were talking before you mentioned that sight of Lincoln Cathedral when you were going out. RM: Yeah. BW: And seeing it on the way back. RM: Yeah. BW: So that seems pretty prominent in your memory. RM: Well as I say we used to say well where you are in the rear turret it’s the last thing you see. I mean everybody’s looking forward apart from the mid-upper and I mean he’s probably just thinking where the heck are we going? We were looking behind us and the last thing was the two towers and then when we landed just before the tail wheel went down was to see the two towers again. We used to say, you know, ‘Thank goodness we’re home.’ [laughs] BW: So that for your personally was quite significant wasn’t it? RM: Those two towers meant an awful lot to us. BW: And so I guess just jumping forward a bit that where the Memorial is now at Canwick Hill the Bomber Command Spire and it overlooks the valley to the Lincoln Cathedral. That’s quite appropriate isn’t it? RM: Yeah. Are you digging in your basket again? JF: You see, you’re distracting him now. PD: I’m just looking at some photos. RM: Oh sorry. BW: So you finished your second tour, you’ve been demobbed, you’re back home at the fruit and veg shop. RM: Off licence. BW: Off licence. RM: Yeah. Fruit and veg didn’t come into it. BW: Oh. I beg your pardon. PD: Groceries. RM: And then we decided that, you see, Pat didn’t want the business. The wife didn’t want the business at all. She wasn’t going to go into it so it was a case of me and I would have had to take staff on so Mrs Finon would have been living off the business, we’d have been living off the business and there would have been staff. So that’s when we decided that we would come to St Anne’s and we moved to St Anne’s just by the railway station. St Anne’s. And that was a complete turnaround then of our family away from Leeds. Yeah. BW: And so even immediately post war and this was would be 1945/46 presumably. So you’ve moved out this way to Lancashire. RM: Yeah to to St Anne’s and then in to Lytham and oh two or three places anyway. PD: Blackpool and – RM: Yeah. BW: So you’ve been in this part of the world for the best part of seventy years. RM: Oh yes. Yes. Yeah. Much, much more. Yeah. Yes it’s been, it’s been most of the time here hasn’t it? Yeah. [pause] Well I hope we’ve helped you. BW: I’m sure you have. You have. Yeah. You’ve given a lot of, a lot of good information. And when you went to the Memorial last year was that the first time you’d seen a Memorial to the men of Bomber Command or had you been to London? RM: No. We’d been before hadn’t we? No. PD: No that was the first time. RM: That was the first time. Yeah. FD: You also went to Skellingthorpe PD: While we were down we went. FD: No before then. We went to the Skellingthorpe Memorial. PD: With you. FD: When they, when they commemorated it. JF: Was that in ’89? PD: Yeah. FD: Something like that. Yeah. PD: Yeah. That was when he went last year it was a beautiful day. BW: Yeah. Yeah. It was great wasn’t it? PD: And James as I say arranged that. [pause] That’s his. That’s his original photo. BW: Right. That was my grandma’s. It’s still in its original frame. BW: Yeah and that’s the same as the photo album. PD: ’Cause they used to paint the colours on then. BW: Yeah. PD: Because they were black and white so that’s – BW: Yeah. PD: So that’s the original. The frame’s falling to pieces a bit I’m afraid. Who’s that young man? BW: That’s [a sergeant?] RM: This old man. This old man. PD: My dad is only seventeen years older than me. BW: Right. PD: Aren’t you? RM: Yes. PD: When I take him to hospital they called me Mrs Marlow. I say, ‘No. I’m his daughter.’ And James. JF: Yeah. PD: That bit about dad’s dad. He was in. JF: He was in the Flying Corps. PD: He was in the Royal Flying Corps his dad. He was in the army and went into the Royal Flying Corps. BW: Right. PD: Do you remember you had his Royal Flying Corps cap badge? RM: Yeah. PD: In your RAF cap and you lost it didn’t you? RM: Yeah. I did. PD: You lost it. Yeah. BW: So your dad used to be in the Royal Flying Corps. RM: That’s probably where the feeling really came from of being, you know, airborne, if you will. Oh dear. BW: So your dad was in the Royal Flying Corps. RM: Yeah. I don’t know what he was but – PD: He was in the army wasn’t he? And then he went in the royal flying. RM: Yeah. But he never talked about it. Well I mean bless him he just sat there for day in day out. Never talked about anything. I suppose in a way he felt that there wasn’t much for him to talk about. I mean I don’t know. I know when he came out he was a tailor’s presser. Now whether the big operating steam presses that they had any effect upon him I’ll never know. PD: And I have a sister as well. There’s two of us. BW: So you had a son and two daughters. PD: No. Just two daughters. BW: Sorry. Two daughters. PD: Two daughters. Yeah. My sister’s five years younger. RM: Yeah. PD: Yeah. I’d have liked a brother but it never happened. BW: And so I guess you’re quite chuffed that there is a Memorial going up to the Bomber Command crews in Lincoln. RM: Oh I mean as far as I’m concerned they’ve earned it. I mean it says down there how many were, how many were lost. Where is it? JF: Fifty five thousand [unclear]. BW: Yeah. RM: A heck of a lot were lost. PD: And they didn’t get the recognition did they? RM: No. PD: They never got the recognition. RM: No. BW: You’ve got your medals and Bomber Command clasp as well. RM: Yeah. BW: And – PD: He had to buy that one. BW: Which is this? PD: That’s, that’s one they had to buy. BW: Right. PD: It’s not. I don’t think recognised as a – BW: Yeah. It’s not formal issue Bomber Command medal. PD: No. No. There are his formal issue ones. BW: Yeah. PD: So – BW: Ah. Thank you. PD: And that was the, that was the recognition one he got. BW: Yes. PD: Which I think is rubbish to be honest. I think it should have been a proper medal but there we go. BW: Yeah. There hasn’t, there hasn’t been recognition for – RM: For air force, aircrew. No. PD: For Bomber Command. RM: No. BW: But hopefully the, this Memorial and the Centre will go some way to it. RM: It will mean a lot. It will mean a lot to people. Yes. BW: Did you say there’s guys on there that you knew? Are there, are there any names of guys on there that you knew on the Memorial walls? RM: Well there’s always a possibility. BW: Or not. JF: There’s one in Edinburgh Castle. PD: Yes. There’s one lad. His name’s in the book in Edinburgh Castle. JF: If it’s 5 Group isn’t it? PD: What was his name? JF: [just a minute?] Taylor PD: ‘Cause you told me to have a look in the book. JF: Taylor. PD: Is it Taylor? RM: Could be. I forget love. PD: [unclear] JF: [unclear] PD: You know when the crews split up wasn’t it because of the night vision. JF: Yeah. PD: They all went with different crews and a lot were missing presumed killed and he was killed. JF: Yeah. PD: And he’s in the book in Edinburgh Castle. JF: Yeah before he had, his first crew was obviously Pethick at Skellingthorpe. Before Pethick he had another crew but the pilot’s night vision had gone a bit iffy so it says in the, that the pilot was sent to London for re-evaluation so the rest of their crew was all spilt up and gramps was the only one of that crew that actually survived the war. The others all throughout the period of the war were shot down and killed. We’re unsure of the pilot. We could never find out what happened to the pilot. PD: No. BW: And so these guys on this picture. The crew. The pilot there you say was Pethick. PD: Yeah. RM: Yes. JF: All that crew stayed there together didn’t they? PD: And Tom’s there. After the war. RM: Yeah. That’s Tom. Yeah. PD: Tom was the one that died a couple of years ago. My dad was at Lincoln with Frank. BW: Right. PD: And he used to whistle all day long and he was whistling. This gentleman said, ‘I know that whistle anywhere,’ and they met up again. They’ve all gone now apart from dad. RM: Yeah. Oh dear. BW: And so those were the guys from – JF: 50 squadron. BW: 50 squadron. RM: That flew with 50 squadron. Yeah. PD: Sad isn’t it but people grow old don’t they? BW: But as you say at least they all came through the war. They all survived it. RM: Oh yes. We all, we all came through together. Yeah. PD: Pethick came over from Canada twice to see you didn’t he? RM: He did. Yeah. PD: But of course he’s not now but yeah he came over. RM: Well of course I mean skippers of course they were older weren’t they? PD: Yes. Well you were the youngest one. You were only eighteen. RM: Yeah. FD: And after 50 squadron well after you’d done your tour Pethick then went on to Fighter Command didn’t he flying fighters. RM: He probably did Frank. You probably remember more. FD: Yes he did. Yeah. He went on to Hurricanes. RM: Yeah. FD: Yeah. Hurricanes. PD: But dad was eighteen when he volunteered so he was quite young really. Married with a family and – BW: Yeah. That’s quite a lot of responsibility at a young age. [pause] Ok. Very good. Well I think that’s all the questions I have for you Ron. RM: Well I’m very pleased. I hope it satisfies what you’ve been looking for. Some background to – BW: Yeah. RM: The likes of me. Yeah. BW: It does. It’s been very good. It’s been very good to talk to you. So – RM: Thank you. BW: On behalf of the Bomber Command team. RM: Yeah. BW: Thank you very much for your time. RM: Thank you. My pleasure. Yeah. Very nice to meet you. BW: Thank you. FD: Have you ever heard of a Peter Lonk. BW: A Peter. FD: Lonk. PD: No. He’s from Belgium. FD: He’s a Belgian. Well, he’s in America now isn’t he? PD: Yeah. He used to find wreckages of aircraft and – BW: Right. PD: He used to keep in touch with you didn’t he? RM: Yeah. PD: Where am I? My dad is Mr November in the calendar. [laughs]. British Legion calendar. BW: British Legion calendar, yeah. PD: Yeah. You look a bit pickled there dad. JF: He probably was. RM: What day was that on I wonder? PD: I don’t know. It’s got different ones in. FD: Alright there James? JF: Yeah. PD: From different. They came and asked could they take his photo. BW: So this is the British Legion. PD: I think it’s the British legion. I’m not sure to be honest. I think it is. BW: Very good. So you’ve made it to November. PD: Yes. Mr November. One of the calendar boys. Yes. BW: Brilliant. Thank you. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Ronald Marlow Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brian Wright Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-04-22 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AMarlowR160422, PMarlowR1601 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:21:28 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Description An account of the resource Ronald Marlow went to Middleton Council School, then worked at Forgrove Engineering. He joined the Air Training Corps before volunteering for the Royal Air Force training in London at St John's Wood. He became an air gunner and flew Wellingtons, followed by a post to Heavy Conversion Unit. Ronald was sent to 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe where he flew Lancasters on both night-time and daytime operations in France during the Normandy campaign. After 32 operations as a rear gunner he was sent to gunnery instruction, crashing into woods near RAF Market Harborough, with a Wellington. At RAF Driffield (466 Squadron) he served with Albert Hollings flying in Halifaxes Mk 3 as a mid-upper gunner. He carried out operations in Germany to Wiesbaden and Stuttgart. When demobbed, he moved to Lytham St. Anne's and Blackpool. Ronald discusses many aspects, including: operation cancellations with return to base; flights and preparation; reasons for joining; volunteering; crewing up; service and off-duty life; secrecy; mascots; rank structure; military service conditions (temperature at high altitude and heated gloves); military discipline; anti-aircraft guns; aircraft damage during operations; searchlights; memorials; decorations and Bomber Command recognition and reunions. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lancashire England--Leicestershire England--Yorkshire England--Lincolnshire England--London England--Lytham St. Anne's England--Blackpool Germany Germany--Wiesbaden Germany--Stuttgart France France--Caen Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending revision of OH transcription Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Maureen Clarke 14 OTU 466 Squadron 50 Squadron air gunner aircrew anti-aircraft fire bombing crash crewing up demobilisation Halifax Halifax Mk 3 Heavy Conversion Unit Lancaster memorial military discipline military ethos military service conditions Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944) Operational Training Unit RAF Driffield RAF Market Harborough RAF Skellingthorpe searchlight superstition training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/656/8929/AWilsonJ161231.mp3 930df0a00d934d17a8714a098fe71eb3 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 Wilson, Joseph J Wilson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Wilson, J Description An account of the resource Four items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Joseph Wilson (1923 - 2019), 1486434 Royal Air Force), his log book, identity card and a photograph. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 102 and 76 Squadrons before being posted to 624 Special Duties Squadron where he dropped supplies and agents to the resistance in Southern Europe. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jenny Wilson and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-12-29 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. Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer Joe Wilson at 3.15 in the afternoon on Thursday 29th of December 2016 at his home in Billinge. Joe, can you confirm for me please when and where were you born? JW1: When and where? Oh, I was, I was born in Orrel Road, Orrel, 18.5.23. BW: And how many other family members were there in, in your family? Did you have any brothers and sisters? JW1: Oh yes. I had, I had a brother and sister. BW: And were you the middle child or — JW1: I was the youngest, the youngster [slight laugh]. JW2: You, you had step-sisters and brothers. JW1: But they weren’t — JW2: They were older, weren’t they? JW1: Oh yeah, they weren’t — as you say, step-sisters. They weren’t my — JW2: They weren’t yours but they all lived together. JW1: All lived together, yeah. BW: With me during this interview — JW1: I beg your pardon? BW: With me in this interview is Joe’s daughter Jenny, who will also be, um, prompting further information and assisting Joe with, with some of the answers just to help his recall of memory. So what was your early life like Joe, growing up round here? JW1: What was? JW2: What was your early life like? How would you describe it, growing up round here? Was it a normal happy childhood or — JW1: You mean, as a civilian you mean. BW: yes. JW1: I had a very, very — I was getting five bob a week as a — JW2: As a child? JW1: As a child, yeah. JW2: As a child — is it OK for me to — as a child you, um, your father was a miner. JW1: Pit. Yeah. JW2: And your mother — JW1: A school teacher. JW2: Was a school teacher. JW1: Yeah. JW2: And your mother married her sister’s widower. JW1: My mother married — JW2: Your mother married your sister’s, your, sorry, her sister’s widower. JW1: Who was that? JW2: So, um, that was Nellie died and William married Agnes, your mother, and then had three more children and you lived in a semi-detached house, 176 — JW1: Orrel Road. JW2: Orrel Road. That was when you were five. Before that you’d lived in a, in a terraced house. So when you were five you lived in 176 where you stayed for quite a long time. JW1: That’s OK. JW2: That’s right, yeah. But you had a happy child — would you say you had a happy childhood? JW1: [slight laugh] Not really. JW2: No? JW1: No. BW: Were your parents strict Joe? JW1: I beg your pardon? BW: Were your mum and dad strict with you? JW1: Not really. My father worked in the pits, down the pits, five shillings a week and my mother was a school teacher, wasn’t she? JW2: Yes. BW: And where did you go to your school yourself? Do you remember? JW1: Nearby, yeah. It was a Catholic School, St James’s, Orrel, yeah. BW: And what did you like learning there? Were you there until age fourteen or did you leave? Was it a primary school and you left to go to another school or what? JW1: I was, I was there most of the time I suppose, yeah. Not altogether. JW2: Do you recall that you, er, left — when you left St James’s do you remember which school you went to then? JW1: After St James’s. You mentioned the name [unclear]. JW2: I think there was three children from St James’s from your year that went to West Park Grammar School. JW1: Grammar School, St Helens, yeah. JW2: And one of them was John Orell, who was your friend from Rock House in Upholland, and the other was Brenda Green. JW1: Brenda Green. JW2: And John Orell also went into the RAF during the war. JW1: Was he lost in the war? JW2: He was. You told me that the, um, time you had at the grammar school was limited because a lot of your teachers were conscripted. Would you like to say something about that? JW1: Conscripted? What do you mean by that? JW2: They went into the war. They, they had to sign up for the war when you were at West Park Grammar. JW1: Oh yeah, yeah. JW2: You told me that you wanted to leave school because you didn’t like art and you had to do art and lost some of your favourite subjects. JW1: That’s true. BW: What didn’t you like about art Joe? JW1: I couldn’t draw. JW2: Didn’t like it. BW: Didn’t like it. What were your favourite subjects then? JW1: Mathematics, I suppose. My mother was a school teacher. JW2: And her nickname was? JW1: Eh? JW2: What was her nickname? JW1: I don’t know. JW2: Mrs Metric. JW1: Was it? I’d forgotten. JW2: And she was very literary, as you are, and you loved poetry. JW1: Oh yeah. Loved poetry. Yeah. BW: Do you recall what were you doing when war was declared? Were you at home that day? JW1: Well, I was at school that day wasn’t I when war was declared? JW2: I don’t know. JW1: 1939. Born ’23. I was probably in the top class, sixth form, er, sixth form. I was — BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer Joe Wilson on the afternoon of Thursday 29th of December 2016 at his home in Billinge, Lancashire. With me is his daughter Jenny Wilson who will also be adding information, prompting and asking questions of Joe to help clarify some of the information. So, we were just talking before, in the first part of the interview Joe, about you being a trainee pharmacist and you’d heard that war had been declared and you decided to join the RAF and there were two reasons. One of which was pay and the other of which you thought was glamour. Is that right? JW1: Probably. BW: And you thought the uniform would help you attract more girls? JW: Yeah. BW: I believe you wanted to train as a pilot? JW: Yeah. I was, I was in a reserved occupation there but yeah, pilot only, yeah. In fact I wasn’t allowed to — because I got, I got [unclear] I wasn’t allowed to apply for anything else. Pilot or observer, they were both the same, er, price, wage, same wage. BW: And it was more money than what you were on as a pharmacist? JW1: As a pharmacist. It was do you mean fully trained? BW: Yeah. JW1: I was about, I was getting about two pounds a week then but, er, I worked till half past seven through the week and, er, 9 o’clock Saturday night. That was what I should have done but I, I always had plenty of — what do you call them? What do you call them where they — JW2: I’m not sure. Oh, they had a lot of outlets? JW1: The Air Force. JW2: Oh, the Air Force. I’m not sure. Barracks? JW1: Eh? JW2: The barracks. JW1: Before I joined — I’ve forgotten. I was, I know I was a, I was a, so they say a laughable airmen [?] really. BW: Where did you sign on or sign up? Did you sign you in Wigan? Was the nearest recruiting office in Wigan? JW1: Yeah, oh yeah. BW: And where do you go from there? Do you remember where did they send you for training? JW1: It, it was overseas but I can’t remember where? JW2: Initially, I don’t think it was overseas. I think you started your training in this country. JW1: I probably started, yeah, but I didn’t finish. BW: Did you actually get on to do pilot training in the first stage or were you drafted to be an observer instead? JW1: Well, I was, I had, um, I wasn’t considered good enough to be a pilot really. BW: Did you actually get to learn to fly a plane at any stage or were you just told that at the beginning? JW1: No, I never saw, never saw an aeroplane in those days. JW2: He did [emphasis] get to fly. BW: I think you said you flew a Tiger Moth, didn’t you? JW1: Oh, well yeah. Yes. What do they call it when you do a couple of hours just to see whether you were going to be air sick or, you know, not suitable, really. That was the idea. It wasn’t, it wasn’t to teach you anything really. [JW2 talking quietly in the background] BW: So, you started on a flying course in this country doing a couple of trips on a Tiger Moth and then you were told you weren’t suitable to be a pilot. Is that right? JW1: Yeah. BW: And from there you went on to train as a bomb aimer instead. Is that correct or did you go into air gunnery? JW1: No. I wanted to be a — no I wasn’t a gunner because the pay was terrible. It was terrible as a pilot but it was better than an air gunner’s pay. JW2: Joe, your grandson recalls you saying that you learned, you were learning how to fly in Hamptons and Wellingtons? JW1: Hampdens. JW2: Hampdens, sorry. And Wellingtons. Is that correct? JW1: Yeah. I know I went solo as, as, er, training to be a pilot when I was about, well I’d only be eighteen, that’s all. BW: You were flying solo? JW1: I was, I did, to be in a flying job really. I was but I only did a very, very short time. BW: What do you recall about your training to be a bomb aimer? JW1: I didn’t like it [slight laugh]. I didn’t like joining it but after a while it became a better, better paid job, slightly paid better, but that was about all really. BW: And I believe you went up to an Operational Training Unit at Lossiemouth, number 20 OTU? JW1: Number 20. Yeah. BW: Would that have been 1942? JW1: Probably. Yeah. ’42. I was born in ‘23. I was nineteen then. BW: What do you recall of your time up in Scotland? Anything? JW1: Well, I had relatives close by. My wife was a Scot, eventually. JW2: Event— but you hadn’t met her then. JW1: No. I hadn’t. JW2: You hadn’t met her then. Later on you had relatives in Scotland but when you were nineteen I don’t think you had relatives in Scotland. JW1: I didn’t like it then [slight laugh]. I’m surprised anybody cares these days about it. BW: From then on I believe you went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at Pocklington, 1652 HCU is that right? JW1: Pocklington. Yeah. BW: And do you recall the people you met there? The crew you met there? JW1: I don’t recall it but some— somebody, one of them was here and mentioned it to me to bring it back to me, I suppose. That’s all. Five bob a week wasn’t much working about fifty hours or more. That was all I got. Five shillings. BW: Your log book shows that you were training on Wellingtons and your pilot was Sergeant Griffiths. JW1: Yeah. BW: What do you remember about Griffiths? JW1: Nothing really but if, if somebody mentions something it would bring it back to me. He was a Scot, I know that. I don’t remember. I don’t remember. BW: You did a lot of cross country training and some of it was at night, flying Wellingtons. JW1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. BW: And you’re up at the front in the nose. JW1: Yeah. BW: What, what was like that? JW1: Bloody cold. It was — we got all the breezes there. It was considered, it was quite laughable to everybody that I was a pil— I was going in for a pilot, yeah. I’m trying to think what we called it. Nobody has ever talked about it since then so I don’t remember. BW: So, from your log book you left training on the Wellington on the 20th of September 1942, having done just under twenty-three hours day flying and thirty-one, sorry, forty-seven hours night flying? JW1: How many years, forty-seven? BW: Forty-seven hours, forty-seven hours. You then joined the conversion unit early in 1943 and you learned to fly Halifaxes. And your pilot on the Halifax was a Sergeant Griffiths. Do you remember the names of the other crewmen at all? JW1: Not off-hand, no, but if anybody mentions them it would bring it back to me. JW2: Can you remember anything about somebody called Marsh, Wilf Marsh? JW1: Wilf Marsh. He was an observer. He wasn’t very athletic really. He was quite a fat lad. JW2: He was married wasn’t he? JW1: Oh yeah. JW2: Was he the only married one on your crew? JW1: As far as I recollect, yeah. JW2: Right. BW: There was another crewman, Flight Engineer Charles Walker? JW1: I don’t remember that. BW: No. Navigator, er, Anthony Holmes, or Tony Holmes. JW1: Do you know, I don’t remember that even. BW: No [clears throat]. JW1: I don’t know why they are interested. JW2: It is interesting dad. BW: It looks like your regular aircraft was code letter P. Do you have any recollections of P? Did you have a nickname for the aircraft at all? Was it — JW1: I don’t recollect P. I’ve forgotten what you were — Other: Is he talking about the nickname for the aircraft? JW2: Yes. Other: It was something ghost. Something ghost related. JW1: What’s that? JW2: Can — did you call the Halifax — did you have a name for, a nickname for your aircraft? Your grandson seems to remember that it was something related to ghosts. JW1: I don’t remember. JW2: You can’t remember. JW1: I don’t remember. BW: So, you haven’t done many trips. You’ve done about nine or ten trips maybe, in the early part 1943, most of them in March. Do you remember where you were flying to, what your targets were, in March ‘43? Were you flying to the Ruhr, Ruhr valley? JW1: I can’t [clears throat] recollect them but if someone jogged my memory and told me, gave me a name, I might. JW2: Do you recall that you did — you got some time off when you did a reconnaissance trip. Can you remember that? JW1: I got what? JW2: You took some very good photographs of a target or your plane did and, um, they were so helpful that they gave you some time off. Can you recall that? JW1: No. JW2: Well, you told me it was an armaments factory at Essen? JW1: Essetene [?] JW2: No Essen. JW1: Oh, Essen. Oh yeah. JW2: And you told me they were so pleased with the helpful photographs for target information that they gave you some days off. JW1: I can’t remember. JW2: You can’t remember that, no, no. It might have been Krupps. JW1: Krupps. JW2: Might have been Krupps. Does that sound — JW1: I think we lost, if I remember rightly, fifty-five one night, from, mostly from — JW2: Bombing. JW1: Yeah. BW: There are some details, some brief details here. Your second operation, in March 1943, was gardening. JW1: Was what? BW: Gardening. Which means mine laying. JW1: Oh yeah, gardening, yeah. BW: Do you remember anything about dropping mines in the water? JW1: No. It was cushy but no. I mean, we were not didn’t go on trips anything like as dangerous as that was. They, they were all mine laying operations, just round, round the drome, that’s all. BW: And then your third op at night was to Essen, followed by three days later Nuremberg. JW1: We lost about fifty aeroplanes. BW: On the Essen raid? JW1: Yeah. BW: And then you went a few days later to Nuremberg. JW1: Oh yeah. That was a long one. BW: That’s deep in Germany. And then the night after that you went to Munich which is in the south of Germany. JW1: I remember the name but I don’t remember anything about it really. BW: You then had one raid at Stuttgart, followed in April by another trip to Essen and this is, I believe, is interesting because your comment in your log book says you were coned for eleven minutes. You were in the searchlights for eleven minutes. Do you remember that? JW1: No. BW: And you got back to base and you had to go and see the CO, the station commander, following that and he took you up for a flight. His name was Gus Walker. JW1: Oh, ay. I don’t remember. I remember the name, that’s all. Yeah. BW: I believe what happened, you were lucky to survive the raid over Essen, being in the path of the searchlights for so long. JW1: Lost fifty, fifty planes. JW2: But then when you got back the station commander took you and the rest of the crew up for a flight to show you how to, to show your pilot Griffiths how to take evasive action. JW1: Oh yeah. I don’t, don’t remember anything about that either. JW2: I think, I remember you saying that, um, you weren’t sure — you wanted to call him, ‘Sir,’ and he said, ‘Call me Gus.’ Can you remember that? JW1: Who, who was that, Gus? Who was it? JW2: Who do you think it was? JW1: I don’t know. JW2: Gus Walker. JW1: Oh yeah. Little fella. BW: Air Commodore with one arm. JW1: Was it? Oh yeah. He was quite well famous then, really. Gus Walker. JW2: He showed you how to do evasive action. JW1: Yeah. Throwing the plane about, yeah. JW2: You told me that you that you’d waggled your plane before you learned how to do evasive action. JW1: Yes. I did that. That were evading. BW: Just dipping the wings. JW1: Yeah. Yeah. Why do they want to know all— JW2: Can I — I think that it’s something that would be quite interesting for — you were doing your bombing trips and you, you had a strategy that you think helped you, your crew to survive. Can you remember what your strategy was because I think Brian would be interested? JW1: Just dropping markers, you know, that’s all really. We, we didn’t bomb anything then, we just gave the impression that we were going to go that way and they all turned and went that way and we went the other. JW2: You told me — is it OK to — you told me that when you were in the briefings you always took a great interest in why they would navigate a particular way and you asked a lot of questions so sometimes you would say so why, why would we take that route and not this route and you seemed to be asking pertinent questions about the route. JW1: Oh yeah. JW2: You did use the stars. You said that you used the stars and sextants to work out where you were and you felt your mathematics helped with the navigating because your role was a navigating as well, wasn’t it? JW1: Yeah. JW2: But you told me as well that your aim as soon as you knew where you had to go to was to get there as quickly and efficiently as you could. So I don’t think that you always went with the column when you flew with your crew. Can you remember? JW1: Well, I only remember it as much as you’re, you’re talking about now but — JW2: Tell me what you remember about not flying with the column. JW1: Well nothing really accept — JW2: That’s a shame. JW1: Where was it? Where was that? JW2: You told me that you had that as a strategy that you would, you didn’t fly with the column. JW1: Oh yeah. JW2: And that it was such large numbers that did happen, that people would go astray and then return to the column further on. You told me that on occasion you would still be circling the target when the Pathfinders arrived so by the time the target was marked — do you remember what would happen? What you would do? JW1: No. Go on. JW2: You told me that you would bomb it and you would be on your way back when the rest of the column was arriving. JW1: Yeah. I [clears throat ] I wasn’t — I hadn’t been in the Air Force but I knew more about navigation and, you know, the work of the pilot or whatever, flying, in those days. Yeah. JW2: There was a question about why you were chosen to do — work with 624 because 624 was special ops and the dangers were very different. You could fly into a mountain if you did not know where you were going so there was a question about whether you were chosen for the special ops work because your navigation was so good. JW1: I think that’s probably true. JW2: Because you tended to reach your target and come back before the others. JW1: But I was a bomb aimer, not navigator. Bomb aimer. JW2: No you weren’t but you told me you that helped with the navigating. JW1: Oh probably. JW2: So you were the bomb aimer, yeah. And you felt that your matriculation helped you with the navigation. JW1: Oh yeah. I just got — JW2: Was the observer not bomb aimer and navigator. BW: Observer was a generic name. The trades tended to be, um, how can I say? Co— combined, in that you could be called a — it dates back to the First World War when the pilot was also listed as an observer but then the trades began to separate and some of them retained the old title of observer as well but, strictly speaking there would be, in the Halifax, there would be the pilot, navigator, wireless operator, um, bomb aimer and three gunners, front, back and mid upper so — JW2: Did I speak too much then? Was that too — BW: No, that’s alright. That’s alright. [clears throat] I believe when you were flying on operations before you went to, um, the briefings that you would take communion as well as a Catholic? JW1: Oh yeah. BW: So did you attend services every time or just occasionally? JW1: Well, all the time then, yeah. BW: And do you feel your faith gave you comfort or, um, support? JW1: I think so, yeah, yeah. Support, yeah. BW: Did the other crew members go with you or not? JW1: No, they didn’t. They were — I was the only Catholic there. I don’t know what you’d call them. BW: But they I believe also felt reassured when you — JW1: They what? BW: They felt reassured when you’d been you to the service and had communion as well. Is that right? JW1: Say that again. They felt what? BW: They felt reassured that you’d had communion before you went flying. JW1: Oh they liked that, yeah, yeah, yeah. BW: Did that make them feel they feel like they had God on their side? JW1: They thought it was a safety movement really. BW: So you was bit of a talisman for them. You were a bit of good luck charm. JW1: Very likely, very likely, very much likely because I was quite young then. In 1940 how old would I be? Twenty-three? Born in ‘23 to ’40. Oh, phew — BW: Seventeen. JW1: Seventeen would it be? BW: But you were slightly older than that. You were nineteen and twenty when you were on these operations. JW1: On ops, yeah. BW: Did the rest of the crew have good luck charms or mascots? JW1: I don’t know. I’ve forgotten. BW: No? But with that and your skill as a bomb aimer/ navigator they must have felt they were going to come back every time with you on board. JW1: Oh yeah. It was, it was the relationship with the pilot and the bomb aimer and the navigator in between, yeah. BW: And when you were over the target didn’t you have control of the aircraft? JW1: Oh, I sat next to the pilot to help him with it. He sometimes he’d take so much evasive action he, he would be out of action, you know. He’d lose control of it really. BW: And were there any instances over the target when you had to take control if he lost it? JW1: Well, no. I was alongside, alongside the side of the pilot. I’m trying to think now. We were the first to bomb there usually, you know, because I was — well I’d been in the sixth form at the grammar control, you know, as a mathematician so what they thought was difficult wasn’t to me. BW: You obviously have a logical or engineering type, mathematical type thinking pattern or brain, don’t you? You were a, um, pharmacist before the war but then you had this mathematical/ logical skill to see them accurately and quickly to the target and come back. And what was it like for you over the target being in the front, very front of the Halifax? Can you remember what you would do? JW1: Well, not really but bomb aimer, navigator or observer was two people. BW: Did you feel you worked well as a team then? JW1: Sorry? BW: Did you feel you worked well as a team? JW: I think so, yeah. I knew more mathematics than any one of them in the crew, even the pilot ‘cause I’d been in the sixth form at the grammar school. BW: You had to lie prone in the front of the aircraft, looking through the nose, looking through the glass canopy down at the target and tell the pilot to stay on course or to manoeuvre so that you could drop the bombs accurately. You also had to keep the aircraft on course for another thirty seconds so a photograph could be taken, didn’t you? JW1: Yeah. Yes. BW: And did you take the photograph? JW1: Pardon? BW: Did you take the photograph? JW1: Well, I told them when they should be, er, marking the, you know, the ground, what you call it? Phenomenon, ground — I don’t know what you call it really but they weren’t con— weren’t considered worth talking about, um, bomb aimers, you know — they thought we knew nothing about navigation and flying, flying an aircraft. BW: And do you recall what you might have seen on the ground below you when you were over the target? Could you see searchlights and fires? JW1: Oh, searchlights, yeah, yeah. They would very often have, where the target was, um, stations nearby where they could light the, you know, they could light the searchlights in the hopes that anybody up, up above would think they were the target. I weren’t. I didn’t. I knew more navigation than the navigation officer because I’d got through to sixth form in grammar school in mathematics. BW: But you could tell the difference between decoy fires, which is what you’re talking about, and the actual target you were aiming for. JW1: Yes. The fires and the decoy would still be there after we’d done about half a dozen or more of them trips because it would still be there lit but, er, I don’t think any of the others knew anything like as much navigating as I did you know. They, they just obeyed, obeyed the lights really. BW: Do you recall the different colours of searchlights that you would see over the target? JW1: No. No recollection, no. BW: There was one, called a master beam, which was a blue beam and it was radar controlled so if it locked onto an aircraft all the other yellow or white lights would, would lock on, would switch over and lock onto it. JW1: Yes. That’s true, yeah. BW: Did it happen to you at all? JW1: Sorry? BW: Did it happen to you and your crew at all? JW1: I don’t remember really. BW: You talked of a raid on Essen when there was over fifty aircraft were lost. Did you see any of the other aircraft being shot down? JW1: Yes. All the time. All the time but, er, we made a good partnership, the pilot and observer and myself and we used to go higher up than they did so really the anti-aircraft shots were at a lower level really. BW: So you flew above the level of the flak. That’s what you’re saying. You flew above the range of the guns. JW1: Did I say that? I don’t remember that. BW: Well you flew, you say that you flew higher than the rest of the aircraft presumably because you were then higher from, above the guns. JW1: So we could dive down and allude, well, the defenders, you know, down below, really. Yeah. BW: And when you were briefed about the target did you question the height and the positon at which you were going to bomb these targets? Did you think you could do better? JW1: Did I question what? BW: Did you question what they were briefing you about when they, when they told you where you should bomb the target, what direction you should come from and what height? Did you try and do it differently? JW1: Did I what? BW: Did you try and do it differently? JW1: I forget really. We were a lone aircraft. One, you know, we — and all the rest of the bombers went on the official target I suppose but I didn’t. BW: And what made you do that? Why did you decide to do that? JW1: Well, I’d been long before I joined the Air Force we studied the tactics, you know, we knew what was expected of us really, I suppose, so very often I could go in and out of the target and be on my way back from the target and not have any anti-aircraft anywhere near us, you know. BW: So your aircraft never got hit? JW1: Never got hit? I’d forgotten about that really. JW2: You did say, you did say that you got shrapnel in your face. JW1: I did yeah. Little sparks, yeah, but I could have been on my way, not at the target but defence, on the way to the target. I could have been miles away. BW: Do you recall when that happened? JW1: No. BW: But it wasn’t serious enough for you warrant you spending time in hospital? JW1: Well, I didn’t tell them I was hit. I didn’t lead the life that was expected of me from the rest. I was keeping clear of the rest of the bombing — what did we call the list of, tier? JW2: The column yeah. JW1: Did we call it a tier? BW: I don’t know. JW1: T I E R. BW: So while everyone else is flying the official route, while everyone is flying the official route and doing what they were told presumably you’ve given the instruction to the pilot as where to go and what to do, to stay out of the away from the main force? JW1: Tell the pilot to stay away from — oh the pilot of our aircraft you mean? Oh yeah. I was in and out of the target before the rest of them had started bombing really, very often. BW: Even before the Pathfinders arrived. JW1: Yeah, yeah. It was handy being a, a Pathfinder because we got extra defence, if you like, and we could bomb the target and then go and mark nearby and, you know and a lot of them would bomb where we dropped these markers, really. JW2: We need to clarify this but you told me that you had advised that it would be a good idea to drop false markers. JW1: Oh, we did that. Yeah. JW2: Who did that? Did you do that as, first of all, you requested that, that as a strategy? You put it forward? JW1: Oh yeah. JW2: And what happened then? JW1: Well it meant there were fewer bombers going to the target, fewer who should have been on the target, dropping bombs nearby and they were glad of it because it kept them out of serious anti-aircraft fire. I’m surprised they’re interested in this so many years after [slight laugh]. BW: That, that was about your time on 102 Squadron and you then moved to number 76 Squadron at Linton on Ouse and according to your log book you changed pilot. You then had Sergeant Povey. JW1: Yes. Les, Les Povey. BW: Les Povey. And your original crew at 102 Squadron apparently were shot down and killed after you left. JW1: Shot down what? BW: They were shot down, they were brought down and killed on a mission, weren’t they? JW1: Were they killed? Yeah. JW2: You were supposed to go on that trip and we, we — JW1: Which trip? JW2: It was a, a raid on an armaments factory in Stettin and it was a birthday present for Hitler. JW1: For whom? JW2: For Hitler. It was on the 20th of April 1943 and you were supposed to go on that trip but you had cold sores on your face and couldn’t wear your oxygen mask. JW1: No. I wasn’t allowed to go. JW2: You were not allowed to go but you did go to the briefing. JW1: Oh yeah. JW2: And someone else went to that briefing as well. We met him later. Tom Wingham wrote about it in a book called, um, “Halifax Down” and he said that people were very anxious about the trip because it was a full moon and they were advised to go high over the Channel and low over Denmark to evade anti-aircraft. So we, we read about that afterwards. So your crew were lost. You waited for them to come back. You waited on the runway for them to come back. JW1: And why wasn’t allowed? Tell me again why wasn’t allowed to go with them? JW2: You had cold sores on your face and you couldn’t wear your oxygen mask. Can you remember waiting for them? JW1: It’s coming, coming back to me yeah. Just a very slight recollection that’s all. JW2: You told me that beyond a certain time you knew that — JW1: They couldn’t get back, yeah. JW2: That they were either going to be prisoners of war or the plane had come down or there was a vague hope that they’d landed somewhere else in the country but you waited. JW1: That’s true yeah. JW2: Can you remember what happened when you saw your name with another crew after you lost your own crew? JW1: It was the pilot that was — JW2: No. After you lost your crew and you saw your name was put on a board with another crew ready to go off again. Do you recall what you did? JW1: No. JW2: You put it in your back pocket. You put your name off the crew list and in your back pocket and then what did you do? JW1: I don’t know. JW2: You went home. JW1: Did I? JW2: And when you walked down the front path your mother had just received a telegram saying you were missing in action. JW1: In action, yeah. They thought I’d gone with the crew, yeah. JW2: This was the same period of time that someone at The Stag asked if you were dodging the column. JW1: And he was chucked out the pub. JW2: He was because your father and the landlord knew why you were home. You were absent without leave because you’d lost your crew. JW1: Yeah. JW2: Can you remember seeing your crew’s families, going to see the crew members’ families? JW1: No, I can’t remember it. JW2: I think you wanted to tell them what had happened because you knew they wouldn’t learn for a long time. JW1: I can’t remember. BW: If I read you the names of the crew that were lost would that help? JW1: Go on. BW: Your pilot was Wilfred Ambrose Griffiths, the second pilot on that raid was Thomas Samuel Eric Bennett, a New Zealander. JW1: A what? BW: A New Zealander. He was from New Zealand. JW1: Oh yeah. BW: The flight engineer was James Thomas Smith. JW1: I don’t remember any of them really. BW: There was Wilfred Charles Marsh. JW2: Wilf Marsh. JW1: Wilf Marsh, yeah. I do remember him. I do remember. JW2: How do you remember him? JW1: I remember Wilf Marsh but I need some, for somebody to remind me what — BW: He was one of the oldest of the crew. JW1: Oh yeah. BW: He was thirty-one. JW1: Thirty-one? BW: The same age as, er, Tom Bennett. The other observer on the crew list was James Campbell, James Kenneth Campbell. You knew him as Ken. JW2: Ken Campbell. What do you remember about him? JW1: Nothing. BW: The — you mentioned this guy before, the wireless op, the wop, AG, Sergeant Arnie Jenkinson. JW2: Jinxy [?]. BW: Arnie Jenkinson. JW1: Yeah. BW: And the two gunners were Alex Cuthbert Weir. He was Canadian. Do you know if he was the mid-upper or the — JW1: Pardon? BW: Was he the mid-upper gunner or the rear gunner? The Canadian? JW1: I forget. BW: And the last one was Sergeant Bertram Charles John White. JW1: John what? JW2: White. JW1: I don’t remember. JW2: Can I try and jog your memory about Arnie Jenkins? JW1: Son. JW2: Son, yeah. You said that his mother had a haberdashery shop, 360 Ashton New Road. JW1: Yeah. JW2: Do you remember? JW1: It’s coming back to me when you mention it. JW2: What about your Magdalene? Your Magdalene used to make clothes and she knew that family didn’t she? JW1: I’ve forgotten. JW2: Or she met them through you, I don’t know. BW: Well, I had so many that I had to recall and the crews, but she would, I would expect this one to remember, you know, the one you — that parents, do remember, yeah. JW2: Ken Campbell was from Widnes. JW1: Was he? JW2: Yeah. JW1: I went there didn’t I? JW2: I think you went to — JW1: And they didn’t want to know me. JW2: You went to 360 Ashton New Road but that was Arnie Jenkins’ house. JW1: Jenkinson. JW2: Jenkinson, yes, sorry. But he was an only child and it’s a shame you didn’t go back. JW1: Was he lost? JW1: You, you told me his mother couldn’t speak to you. She was so upset and she had to hurry off the doorstep and when you got muddled up in your older age and you thought it was because you’d replaced, they’d replaced you but Arnie Jenkinson wasn’t replaced, wasn’t the replacement for you. Ken Campbell was and he was from Widnes. JW2: I’ve forgotten. JW1: I think it would be hard for anybody to see a familiar RAF uniform on the doorstep and know you weren’t going to see your son coming back. JW1: Yeah. I can understand that. BW: So, you went drinking in the local pub when you were at home called The Stag? JW1: Yes. They said I was dodging the column, the other people, yeah, so I left and didn’t go back there. BW: And was your dad a regular in the pub as well? JW1: He was but he wasn’t — he worked down the pit. He wasn’t a member of the crew really. JW2: Was he proud of you? JW1: Eh? JW2: When you came home in your uniform was he proud of you? JW1: Oh yeah, yeah. BW: Did your family ever worry about you when you were on the raids? JW1: Well, they wouldn’t acknowledge that they were bothered, you know, but they were. BW: And you used to cycle home to Wigan from Pocklington. JW1: I’ve forgotten. BW: Did your family make a fuss of you when you went home each time? JW1: Well there was only my parents really there. The rest were based either in the Army or the Air Force. I don’t know where they’d be. BW: So, you being the youngest, when you came home you were spoiled by mum and dad were you a bit. JW1: A bit yes. BW: Did your dad take you out drinking? JW1: Did what? BW: Did your dad take you out drinking or not? JW1: He did after a while but he, you know, he didn’t like me being in the pub really. JW2: You told me that he used to ask you to put your uniform on. JW1: Yeah, I know he liked it. You got special treatment in the pub even if they didn’t know you personally, you know. BW: Did people buy you drinks when you went in the pub with your uniform on? JW1: Phew. Not really, er, occasionally one might but, um, it was, er, it was — JW2: What can you say about the bottles of whisky that you used to bring home? JW1: I don’t know. I’ve forgotten. JW1: You told me that you were given bottles of whisky and you used to bring them home in a kit bag and give them to your dad. JW1: Where did I get the whisky from? JW2: I don’t know. I don’t know. JW1: I’ve forgotten myself. JW2: From Pocklington somewhere. BW: You were based at Yorkshire with 102 Squadron at the time the dams’ raid took place. JW1: A what? BW: The time the dam busters’ raid took place. JW1: Oh yeah. BW: Were you feted at all because you were part of bomber crews? JW1: Was I what? BW: Were you feted at all? Did people make a fuss of you when you went home at that time, simply because you were in bomber command? JW1: Oh yeah. BW: And did the uniform pay off? Did you attract many girls? JW1: No. I had a girlfriend of my own, Cathleen McGraw. JW2: I’ve been told that your half brothers and sisters had children who used to dote on you. So they would be your nieces and they used to dote on you and there was photographs hanging up in your brothers and sisters houses of you in your uniform. They all recall a particular photograph of you in your uniform. JW1: I can’t remember. JW2: But I was also told that you wore leathers like Marlon Brando and you had a motorbike. Can you remember having a motorbike? JW2: Did I have a motorbike? JW2: Did you have a motorbike then? JW1: I had a motorbike once upon a time but it was only for a few days and then — JW2: Oh right. OK. JW1: I got a little aeroplane [slight laugh]. I was lucky to survive really. BW: And you had a few months flying with 76 Squadron at Linton and then Holme on Spalding. JW1: Holme on Spalding where? BW: Do you remember much about that base? JW1: Pardon? BW: Do you remember much about that base? JW1: Not really. BW: There were some accidents, um, at Pocklington and at Holme on Spalding by Halifax crews coming back that crashed. Did you see any or hear of any crashes? JW1: No, I didn’t realise that. We were usually the first back because I, I’d studied navigation and mathematics at the grammar school, you know. I knew more about it than the navigation people on the squadron. BW: From your log book on the 10th of August 1943 you started flying with 138 Squadron at Tempsford. Now that’s down south in Sussex and it was a special duties squadron. Did you volunteer for special duties? JW1: No but I was — but they thought I was good enough for it I suppose. BW: So, somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said you’re going down south? JW1: Yeah. Mind you, it wasn’t as a hazardous a place as the squadron, going from the squadron, you know, up north. The German fighters would be patrolling along the coastline waiting for them to go. BW: Waiting for you to go out? JW1: Yeah. BW: And did they patrol waiting for you to come back as well? JW1: They would be, yeah, but we were, didn’t come back as a — BW: A squadron. JW1: Yeah. We came back individually all over the place. BW: Did you see any action with night fighters or — JW1: Oh yes. We saw them. We saw planes going down sometimes but my pilot, the second pilot I had, could get higher up than they, they were. JW2: Can you, can you recall why Les Povey was such a good pilot? JW1: No. JW2: Because he’d been a gold prospecting pilot before the war, in Africa. JW1: Was he? I’ve forgotten. JW2: That’s what you told me. He was a gold prospecting pilot so he was a very experienced pilot before he joined up. JW1: I’d forgotten that. JW2: And he was older as well. JW1: He was almost forty then. JW2: And he looked like Errol Flynn. BW: And you moved with him down to Tempsford. JW1: Yes. BW: So what happened to the rest of the crew? Did they just keep you and Les together? JW1: I don’t recollect what happened to them but they, very often, with other crews a very experienced person, trying to get them out of that aircraft and, you know, with the special squadron and we came in that category. BW: And you moved then in August ‘43 abroad. You went and flew to Blida in Algeria. JW1: Blida, yeah. BW: To join 624 Squadron. JW1: Blida was in, er, I don’t know what you’d call it now, with a lake. What do you call it now? BW: So, we were talking just before Joe about your transfer to the special duties squadron, when you flew to North Africa, to Blida in Algeria. What do you remember about that? JW1: Very little, if anything really, but because I’d been learning maths at school and, you know, they used to, even though I was one of the least experienced, er, air people, air crew they, er, still wanted me to tell them about it, you know. BW: And you conducted operations, again in a Halifax, but you were dropping supplies and spies I believe in different parts of Europe. JW1: Oh yeah, yeah. I’d forgotten about those. I’d forgotten details of them. JW2: You told me that you can remember, um, dropping agents that were also dangerous people. JW1: I’ve forgotten. JW2: And that they — JW1: They were let out of jail you mean? JW2: Yes and you told me that, that one of them — do you remember one particular case where he was dropped with handcuffs and when he landed he would be able to access the key to unlock himself because it was zipped up inside his outfit? Do you remember that, um, Jim Rosbottom was the despatcher? JW1: I’ll just have a sip. JW2: Jim Rosbottom was the despatcher. JW1: Jim. It wasn’t Jim. JW2: Jim Rosbottom. JW1: It wasn’t Jim though was it? JW2: Yes he was the despatcher and you said that he was the despatcher and you said he used to tie himself to the fuselage when he was dropping some dangerous people to ensure that he didn’t get pulled out of the plane as well. JW1: I’ve forgotten. JW2: And he also used to, he used do his own form of bombing sometimes by throwing whole packets out, of leaflets out instead of cutting them up sometimes. JW1: Oh yeah [slight laugh]. BW: Did you ever talk to these agents that you were dropping? JW1: I forget that really. I think they were kept apart from us, you know, in the aircraft so we wouldn’t do. BW: Were they put on at the last minute after you’d all been briefed and got in the aircraft? JW1: Not really. They’d been let out of jail to do that job. Is that my tea, love? Is that mine? I’ve got a recollection of it, yeah. BW: What did you do? JW1: I don’t know. I just put it inside my satchel with my shirt over it [slight laugh]. BW: So, you were told to leave your log book with the CO and you took it instead when he wasn’t looking. He nipped out the office and you slipped it under your shoulder and put your jacket over? JW1: Very likely. BW: And you flew, on these missions you flew to quite a few different places. You flew to Yugoslavia and you flew to the south of France, Corsica and Italy as well. JW1: And what? BW: And to Italy as well. Do you remember how you dropped the supplies to the resistance, the partisans? JW1: Not really. I’ve not thought about it. I’ve not kept the memory going. I used to know it. BW: But there was another member of the crew, Jim Leith. JW2: No he was a different. He was in 624 but they were not dad’s — BW: In a different aircraft. JW2: But dad, you told me about when you went over the — is it the Samarian Gorge, is that right? JW1: Go on. JW2: Is that right. Is it called the Samarian Gorge in Greece? BW: I don’t know to be honest. JW2: And you told me, you told me that your Halifax was so heavy with your load that you had to jettison it and when you got back you had a lot of explaining to do because you discovered what your heavy load was. Do you remember what your heavy load was? It was gold bullion but you didn’t know you were carrying it. JW1: No. JW2: I wonder whether that was an orthodox war practice and I wonder who found it. JW1: People used to, if you were dropping money or gold, they would to take a bit of it for themselves. JW2: Off the flight, yeah. Well, you would have crashed into a mountain, you would have crashed into the Gorge, if you hadn’t dropped it because you were losing height. JW1: Oh, happy days [slight laugh]. BW: Were all of these flights at night? JW1: Yes, as far as I remember. I think there may have been the odd one, overseas ones, that were in daylight. BW: How did it feel when you were flying these missions as opposed to being over Germany? JW1: Oh it was a lot easier. BW: Just because it was secret did you feel any heightened sense of danger? JW1: Not really, no. BW: Did you treat it like any other sort of job? JW1: Yeah. BW: And what was it like when you on the base in North Africa. What were the facilities like? Can you remember? Was it a rough strip? JW1: Not really but it was fairly close, you know, to Britain. JW1: Do you remember that you almost got into trouble one night because you snuck out somewhere to go drinking and, er, or for a night out and I think you missed your transport back and you had to come through territory that you didn’t know very well but you had to walk all the way through the night to get back on for parade the next day. JW1: I’ve forgotten. JW2: You’ve forgotten that? Do you recall, um, do you remember that you got fined and you thought it was a miscarriage of justice? JW1: No. JW2: What do you remember about the, the revolver that you left on the plane, the Halifax overnight? JW1: Nothing. I know, er, I took a revolver, you know, in case we were shot down and we — JW2: You left it on the plane and it went missing. JW1: Oh yeah. JW2: And you got hauled up for questioning about it and I seem to remember that you said in your defence — well they said you should not have left it on the plane because it was in your care, and you said, ‘Well maybe we should have taken the Browning off the plane as well.’ JW1: Take what? JW2: Maybe we should have taken the Browning off the plane as well because there’s an armed guard there. Anyway, they, they didn’t accept your response and they fined you. So you had to pay. Can you not remember what your fine was? You were fined a few pounds for losing that revolver or not looking after it so somebody took it but you were very annoyed about it. JW1: Yeah. JW2: Because there was an armed guard and it still went missing. BW: Your CO, when you were in North Africa, your CO was Wing Commander Stanbury. Does the name ring any, ring any bells with you? JW1: Oh, [unclear] . I remember the name, Stanbury, yeah. Because they had a shop or something then didn’t he? BW: No. No. JW2: Clive Stanbury? JW1: Clive, yeah. JW2: What do you remember about him? JW1: Not much. JW2: Do you remember him asking you to do another mission when you done your two tours? JW1: What did I say, ‘Bugger off?’ JW2: I’m not sure [slight laugh]. I think you said you didn’t have to do it. You told me at the time that you felt this particular one would be suicidal. JW1: I’ve forgotten that one. I’ve forgotten the incident. BW: So it was a case of one more trip but you said, ‘No.’ JW1: I bought these carpets while I was there. JW2: That was much later. JW1: Eh? JW2: Yeah. That was much than that, dad. JW1: Was it? JW2: Yeah. JW1: I thought it was from the Air Force? JW2: No, no they weren’t. JW1: Are you sure? JW2: Yeah. JW1: I’ve forgotten then. BW: Your last operations were in early March 1944 and then you flew back in a Dakota by quite a circuitous route, by the look of it. You got lifts here there and everywhere through Egypt and then you went down to Bulawayo in Rhodesia. JW1: Oh, yeah. Was I instructing there? BW: It doesn’t say so but did you come an instructor after the war. JW1: Afterwards yeah. For a bit until I was demobbed. BW: And what do you recall about being demobbed? Were you happy the war was over? JW1: I think I must have been but I don’t recollect much. Do you do many operations with people such as I? BW: Yes. JW1: And did as many aircraft, as many trips as I’ve done? BW: Some have but not many because usually after thirty ops that was it. That was the end of their service but you went on to do forty-seven. JW1: I did forty-seven trips? Amazing. BW: In total. JW1: Amazing. BW: And were you ever injured at all during that time? JW1: Sorry? BW: Were you ever injured at all during that time? JW1: No. BW: You mentioned that you received some shrapnel in the face. JW1: I don’t remember. BW: At one point. JW1: It’s gone out of my head. BW: It must, it must not have been a serious injury. What happened after the war? Did you continue in the RAF? JW1: Not really. I was chucked out. They didn’t want me then after the war. Well, I say they did but a group of them from the local squadron, er, knew who I was, you know, and I’ve forgotten anyway. BW: Do you remember when you left the RAF? JW1: No. What does it say there? BW: Would it be about 1946? JW1: ’46? BW: Would it be about that or was it ’45? JW1: Oh, forgotten. BW: What did you [clears throat] what did you do when you returned home? Did you — JW1: What job did I do? BW: What — did you meet up with your girlfriend? JW1: I’ve forgotten that even. What did I do when I came out of the Air Force? JW2: Well you’d broken up with Cathleen McGraw because you were a Catholic and she wasn’t and it was, it was irreconcilable I think and you went to teacher, you went to teacher training. JW1: Where at? JW2: Strawberry Hill in Twickenham. JW1: Where? JW2: Strawberry Hill. Richmond was it? JW1: Yeah. JW2: And you met my mother when you were teacher training. You were in her classroom. You were an assist— you were learning how to be a teacher and she was already a teacher. JW1: Where is she now? She’s not with us? JW2: No. Its twelve years since — JW1: How long since? JW2: Twelve years. JW1: Was it? JW2: Mm. [background noises] BW: [pause] Do you remember anything else from your teaching days? JW1: Did I what? BW: Do you remember anything from your teaching days? Did you back come up here to teach or did you stay down south in London. JW1: What’s he say? JW2: Well, you fell in love with my mum. JW1: Where was she? JW2: Well, she was down south and you decided to go, when everyone else was on rations, you decided to go and live in Rhodesia and you, you got married secretly in London. Your family didn’t know because you’d — it was complicated because you had broken up with your — someone who was still visiting your mother’s house and, um, you got married and then you went to live in Africa for five years, Rhodesia, and then you came back and had my brother John. And so after that you were teaching in Rhodesia, in Cyprus, Limassol, and Korea. JW1: I’ve forgotten that. JW2: That’s what you did. JW1: Runcorn [?] before you retired. BW: OK. JW1: That it? BW: What do you, er, what do you think of the commemorations being given for Bomber Command? JW1: What do I think about what? BW: The commemoration, the remembrance that’s being given to Bomber Command now? JW1: I don’t know. I think I went to one and I wasn’t allowed to — for some reason or other. The first one, early in the — I wasn’t allowed to join the rest of them because I, I was in civvies really. You know, to be in civvies, they wouldn’t acknowledge that, what we’ve been talking about now. BW: So did they not mention Bomber Command? Was, were you sort of side-lined a little bit? JW1: Yeah. They didn’t mention it. They were glad to see the last of me ‘cause I knew more about it than what they did, you know, being left in England. BW: But what about the respect or the commemoration that’s being paid to veterans of Bomber Command now. How do you feel about that? JW1: Never thought about it. JW2: We went to it dad. Were went to the celebrations. A statue showing several airmen on the way back from ops looking tired and dejected and, and, um, exhausted that was unveiled and it was very powerful. We went up there when the Queen opened it at Bomber Command and we, the whole family went with you to that and you went, you went up to the statue. After all the fuss had gone down and we had a few, we had some beers at the area where we were, and then we went just to look at it when the crowds had gone down but the crowds were still there. And there were a lot of people asking for your autograph and they wanted you to shake hands with other veterans and lots of photographs were taken. I think you were surprised at all the fuss then as well. But there was a big campaign to, to, um, to acknowledge the role that Bomber Command played in the war because some people think you were ignored or that you were demonised. Bomber Command did not get a campaign medal. JW1: No. JW2: And it took till a few years ago for you to get a clasp. JW1: I never got it. JW2: I need to apply for it yet. JW1: Eh? JW2: You are entitled it and I need to apply for it for you. JW1: You can have it if you get it. JW2: Right, thank you. I’ve got it on tape now. BW: It’s official. OK, well that’s all the questions I have for you and thanks to you Jenny for all your help. 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 Joseph Wilson Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brian Wright Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-12-31 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AWilsonJ161231 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review 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 Before the war, Joe was a trainee pharmacist with a love of mathematics. He signed up for the RAF and flew briefly in Tiger Moths, becoming a bomb aimer. He went to 20 Operational Training Unit at RAF Lossiemouth, followed by 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Pocklington where he trained on Wellingtons. He was posted to 102 Squadron. He was lauded for some excellent photographs of an armaments factory in Essen. They were coned by searchlights for 11 minutes and subsequently instructed on how to take evasive action. Joe would challenge the routes in briefing to ensure they got to the target in the most efficient manner. There is a discussion about searchlight colours and decoy fires, as well as flying above the range of the anti-aircraft guns. Unfortunately, Joe’s crew were killed going to Stettin when he did not fly. Joe went to a Conversion Unit on Halifaxes and joined 76 Squadron at RAF Linton-on-Ouse and RAF Holme-on-Spalding with a new experienced pilot. They went to 138 Squadron at RAF Tempsford. He joined 624 Squadron at Blida in Algeria, dropping agents and supplies in different parts of Europe. On one occasion, because of the weight, they had to jettison gold bullion to avoid crashing into the Samaria Gorge in Greece. Joe did 47 operations and, after demobilisation, taught overseas. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Christine Kavanagh Maureen Clarke Sally Coulter Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940 1942 1943 1944 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Yorkshire England--Cambridgeshire Scotland--Moray North Africa Algeria Germany Germany--Essen Germany--Ruhr (Region) Greece Greece--Crete Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:27:34 audio recording 102 Squadron 138 Squadron 1652 HCU 20 OTU 624 Squadron 76 Squadron Absent Without Leave aircrew anti-aircraft fire bomb aimer bombing Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit memorial Operational Training Unit Pathfinders RAF Blida RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor RAF Linton on Ouse RAF Lossiemouth RAF Pocklington RAF Tempsford Resistance searchlight Special Operations Executive Tiger Moth training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/845/10839/AGreenWG150911.mp3 ba6635496652503178b42beb5d3131ea 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 Green, Geoff William Geoffrey Green W G Green Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Geoffrey Green DFC and bar (176170 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner and gunnery leader with 100 and 625 Squadrons. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-09-11 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 Green, WG Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document AGreenWG150911 BW: Right. This is Brian Wright. I'm interviewing Squadron Leader Green at […], and it's Friday the eleventh of September, twenty fifteen, at two thirty. So, Squadron Leader Green, I understand you were a rear gunner in a Lancaster. WG: Yes, Gunnery Leader. Yes, I was in the rear turret, yes. BW: Could we just start with your full name and your rank at the time you were doing these operations. WG: Yes, it's William, do you want the [pause] name, when you say name, full name. BW: Yes please, yes. WG: What's the word I want for the Christian, ah, Christian names you want, do you? BW: That's right. WG: William Geoffrey Green. That's, er, Geoffrey is G E O double F R E Y. BW: OK. And what rank were you at the time, when you joined the squadron? WG: I was a Sergeant. BW: Sergeant. WG: I passed out as a Sergeant, yes. BW: OK. And, if you would, just describe for me, please, what your life was like prior to you joining the RAF. Where did you live, and what prompted you to join the RAF? WG: Yes. Well, I was born in Kings Lynn, Norfolk. [pause] BW: And how long were you living there before you joined up? WG: I joined up when I was seventeen and a half, officially, but as far as they were concerned, I was eighteen, because you had to be eighteen then. Yes, anyway, that's right, I joined up and then from there, I went to, oh dear, it's a long time ago [pause]. Well, I was being trained, you know, in various places; OTU's. BW: Yes WG: Operational Training Units, and all those sorts of things. The usual, the usual drill, you know, for a new boy, if you follow me. And, er BW: Did you come from a large family? WG: No, I had one sister.. [pause], I had one sister, was she in the WAAF? I don't think she was. Oh, it was you in the WAAF, oh no it wasn't? Laura: No. Mother. WG: Oh, your mother. Yes, that's right and then, oh, I've lost my train of thought now. BW: And what prompted you to join the RAF? There was obviously a war going on at the time. Why the RAF and not the other services? WG: Yes there was. I had a silly though that if I didn't [pause], if I didn't join the Air Force to fly, there was no point in joining it. That was the main reason. I didn't, I had no, all my friends at home, school friends and what-not were in the Army, and I hadn't anything, hadn't any keenness to join the Army. I always, I think I always wanted to fly, until I did, and then of course, I didn't want to [laughs]. My father used to say, 'I can't understand why you want to fly'. And of course, I thought that over, and I thought, 'you're dead right’. I don't know why I wanted to fly, because as soon as I started I was, not terrified, but bordering [laughs]. No, it's a bit of a line, that. I was pleased to fly. I realised I wasn't a Navy type, and I don't suppose they would have accepted me, anyway, because they were, the people they, the people that went into the Navy who I knew were all sort of special types, they'd got something to really offer that service. Well, I had nothing at all to offer the Air Force, but I just wanted to, I just thought it would be just nice to come home on leave, and walk up and down the High Street in my uniform. [laughs]. Oh dear. BW: And did the thought of becoming a pilot attract you, or was it something that you thought, I’d rather be in a crew? WG: Yes, it was. I got accepted, I was accepted under the PNB scheme, which stood for Pilot, Navigator, Bomb Aimer. In other words, if you failed as a pilot, they tried to train you then as a Navigator, and if you failed at that, you were trained as a bomb aimer. And if you failed at that, you were out [laughs], so I should have got out in the first place to save all that trouble. BW: So how did you end up, then, as a gunner? Because if you were on that scheme, and as you said, if you weren't successful in one of those categories, you were out. What then led you to be a gunner? WG: Well, that was the last thing I could be before I was out. BW: I see. WG: That was the lowest form of animal life, I suppose, and if you failed at being an air gunner, well they didn't want you. You can't blame them, I suppose but fortunately, I didn't fail. I often thought I would, but I wasn't good at maths and that sort of thing, you know. I did think of, I was mustering to train as a navigator, and then I realised that I would need a higher standard of maths than I could offer, so I just had to let them sort of guide me through the Air Force, sort of thing, without volunteering for anything. BW: And what were the tests like, that you had to sit during your training? Do you remember those? WG: Err, well yes, there were partly navigation, but very, very junior navigation stuff. Nothing complicated, because if it was, I wouldn't have got it but -. What else was it, oh, it's a long time ago. Err, aircraft recognition, that sort of thing, signals, and that's about all, you know. And then I, and then I was transferred on to do an instructors course, and I joined an instructors team to train the lads coming in, sort of thing, you know. But it didn't last very long because I, well, oh for about, maybe about six months, because I was not really the type to train people. I was too short tempered, I suppose. If they didn't, er, if they didn't sort of pick it up the first time, I didn't want to know, and I didn't give a second chance. I had many a second chance, but I didn't, I didn’t agree with that. Oh, I don't know. So there you are. BW: And what was life like on the base? You went through the training and the Operational Training Units, and you got to base. What was the accommodation like? What were the facilities like on the base at the time? WG: Excellent. You mean living accommodation and food, that sort of thing? Oh yes. Yes, in those days, aircrew had, aircrew had, er, they didn't eat with the non-aircrew type, if you follow me. You didn't actually have special food, I suppose, though I don't really know, but it was jolly good food, and you were built up a bit that way. I was a bit of a weedy lad when I was young, younger, so I was built up really, I suppose. BW: So you were well fed? WG: Well fed, yes, oh yes. BW: Your training and lifestyle really made a man of you in that respect WG: Oh yes, yes, and of course, when you'd finished in the daytime, you were really on the town at night, you know. The SP's were chasing you, or you were chasing the SP's [laughs], and being rude to people, I expect. Oh dear. BW: So where did you socialise when you went off base, where were the local towns that you would visit? WG: Oh, Grimsby. Grimsby, er, oh dear, I should have got the log book, I could show you my log book, if you wanted to see it, if it would be any use to you, would it? BW: If you have it, and it's not inconvenient, yes, that would help. WG: It's in the drawer, Laura dear, would you mind. That's very kind of you. Yes, what was I talking about? BW: Visiting Grimsby? WG: Log book, oh I remember, yes, I'm very forgetful nowadays, you've obviously noticed. BW: You were talking about Grimsby, and visiting towns. WG: Oh yes, Grimsby, Grimsby, Lincoln, er. Yes, I did a tour from Grimsby, I did a tour from Grimsby at a place called Waltham. Was it? Yes, Waltham. And then I thought, 'well that's that, I've finished my flying'. But I hadn't. Instead of being transferred to instructing, I think they realised I was no good at it, because I was interviewed, instead of being, er, what did I do then? I went to, I went to, I stayed on at Grimsby instructing, for a while, and then I went to two or three other stations in Lincolnshire, instructing, you know. And not only instructing, but giving talks on what it was like, if you follow me, you know. I suppose line-shooting, you know. BW: And was this with a view to encouraging new recruits to join the Air Force? WG: Beg pardon? BW: Was this with a view to encouraging new recruits to join the Air Force? WG: It was, yes. It was going round instructing to recruits, yes. I went round to one or two stations. Bircham Newton and Finningley, all in the Lincolnshire area, you know and then I, then I was screened, as they called it, taken off, and I thought, 'well that's that, I've finished the dicey part of flying'. But of course, I hadn't. I should think it would only be about six to eight months, and I was sent back again, which rather shook me, because I thought I'd done with all that nonsense. And I thought, ' well, this is tempting suicide', but it wasn't. I completed a second tour then and then I went back on to instructing again. And what happened then? It was getting towards the end of the war, I suppose. And it's difficult trying to remember what I did then. I stayed in Lincolnshire, I know. Mainly, I was always flying anyway as well as instructing, well, with instructing, you were flying as well. The new recruits, the new aircrew people and then I suppose the war ended. Well, no, it couldn't have done because I did a second, I was going back on a third tour. Voluntary, actually. Other blokes, er, I was no good at instructing, and I was interviewed for another instructors job, but I asked to go back on a third tour, but fortunately [chuckles] the war ended. So I didn't do a third tour. That's why I'm here, I suppose. BW: And so, you were doing the instructing in between your tours? You did your first tour, then had the instructor posts you were talking about. WG: That's it. BW:Then second tour. WG: Second tour BW: Followed by another post as instructor. WG: Well yes, but it didn't come off, the second, the second instructing bit BW: Right. So, just take us back, then, to that point when you met your crew. How did you join up as a crew, how did you meet and crew-up? WG: We went to, I can't remember the station, but it, as I say, it'll be in my log book, which is out there. Oh, Laura's got it. Thank you very much. I, er, oh dear. Excuse me. Here we go. Oh, there's a five pound note there, Laura. Is it yours? Laura: No. WG: That's something, isn't it? I'm glad you came [laughs]. Would you like to look at this yourself? BW: Yes, we can have a look through. I'll just put the recorder on pause while we pick out one or two points in the log books. WG: Alright. This is 'Results of Ammunition Courses and Remarks'. That's the one, that's it. There you are, there's a good write up here [laughs], though my mother wouldn't agree, 'could have done much better had he tried harder' [laughs]. That's what the school people used to say. 'Over confident, needs watching'. One signed by a Squadron Leader, here it is, 'could have done much better had he tried harder'. 'Over confident, needs watching'. That's that bit. And then here, [paper rustling] oh dear, oh dear, here we are. Here we come to the nitty-gritty stuff. These are all the, this is Seventeen Air-gunners School, Stormy Down, Bridgend, Glamorganshire, South Wales. I was a trainee here. Here I was training on Whitley's, Defiants. Whitley's and Defiants, yes, and that was headquarters training with number 17 AGS. And then in nineteen forty three, I was on number 28 OTU, Wymeswold, Leicestershire. Er, circuits and landings, and what-not. Cross countries, landings, formation flying, air test, cross country, bombing, exercise, and all that business. What's all this? Oh, exercises, bombing exercises, circuits and landings, circuits and landings, at night, circuits and landings, cross countries, cross countries, bombing, that was all night flying. [unclear] Then I went to heavy conversion unit, Number 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit, Lindholme, Yorkshire, where I flew on Halifaxes, Lancasters. Circuits and landings, cross countries, oh dear, they were a bind. BW: What did you think of flying in the Halifaxes and Lancasters? You'd previously flown in, say, Whitleys, how did that? WG: Well, it was really, really nice to be on them, because it was a step up, if you follow me. Halifaxes, I didn't like Halifaxes, except that there was plenty of room down in the rear turret. You could move about a bit, you know. In fact, they seemed to me to be too big, quite honestly but they were much better, in my opinion, they were much better than the Lancaster. The Lancaster, you were a bit cooped up, you know, it was a bit difficult to move. They were hard to get into. To get into, you got in the back door and then you lifted up onto a sort of a table, a long table, then you had to get, you had to hang on with your hands at the back, and get your feet on to this table, and push yourself forward until you got to the doors of the rear turret. And then you got into the rear turret and closed your doors, and you really felt trapped in, sort of thing, but once you started flying, you, I overcame that. I don't know about others but I overcame it. BW: Is it correct you had to leave your 'chute outside of the turret? You had to put it on the side? WG: Yes, on the left hand side. In a clip. You couldn't, with the Lancaster, you couldn't get your, that was a snag, you couldn't get your parachute actually in with you. If you had to bale out, you had to centralise the turret, turn it to starboard, open the door, open the doors, and you really were, as you opened the doors there, you were outside in the thin air, you know. But with the, that was with the Lancaster, but with the Halifax, it was a bit different, to a point anyway, but it was all a bit, it was all a bit nerve-wracking to begin with. And then you suddenly got used to it, and you got used to people saying, 'well, you shouldn't have joined', sort of thing, you know [chuckles], which of course was very true. But too late. [laughs]. I was looking back, well it's different looking back, but at the time I used to think to myself, 'I'll be glad when this is over', but when it was over, I was rather pleased that I could think back on those days, and the people I knew. They all seemed different from the, this is, shouldn't really say it but they seemed different from your ground crew friends, you know. Different type. As if when you were being selected for flying, that they were looking for something. Which they found [laughs]. Oh dear, yes. BW: And how did you feel being a rear gunner, when there were other gunners on board. I mean, being a tail gunner is perhaps traditionally thought of as, er, a job a lot of people wouldn't want. WG: Very true, yes. I felt safe in the rear turret because it was, in my opinion, I think, when I got in and got the door shut in the training, I thought, well, at least if anything happens, I've only got to turn this to port or starboard, half turn, and do that, or do that, and the doors automatically opened, and you go out backwards. Once you got your parachute clipped on, you know. Er, yes. What was that question you asked me? BW: Originally, how did you crew up, how did you meet? At the Conversion Unit. WG: Oh yes, that's it. We went to an Operational Training Unit, and they said, 'right, you're going to, there are either seven or nine crews of you'. In other words, there were either, there were seven to a crew, so there were either forty nine of us, which was seven to a crew, oh, I forget. I can't forget how many there were in the other lot. And then we were put into, we were put into an operations room, and said, 'right, well there are seven aircrew positions amongst you, and each, each aircraft has seven men', seven different types, gunners, signallers, all that nonsense, and we were told to pick our crew. And you sort of looked round at people, and I found myself with another bloke, just stuck. Nobody seemed to want us, we were just standing there. Everybody else had got, had been picked, as a crew, you know. Which I suppose is rather fortunate, because I, that's how I met Ron Clarke, who I've kept in touch with ever since. But he's dead. He died suddenly. He and his wife died. But we, and then there were six of us who were there that, later on, on my second tour, were picked for going up to Air Ministry for being decorated. And [chuckles], yes, that's right yes, we went up to Air Ministry, and so many of us got a DSO, I got a DFC. And then, let's see, after that I was posted to Bircham Newton, I think it was, training staff, training aircrew, you know, which was a bit of a bind, so I volunteered for a third tour, but it never came off because the, it was quite obvious that the war was ending, and it did, and I didn't do a third tour. Which perhaps was a good thing. That's why I'm here, I expect [laughs]. BW: You mentioned going up to the Air Ministry to get a Distinguished Flying Cross, and they were only awarded to officers at that particular time- WG: I beg your pardon? BW: They were only awarded to officers at that particular time, a DFC. Do you recall what the event was that led you to be decorated? WG: Er, oh yes. Yes. It was, there were several air, several air, several Lancasters were lost, and it was, all I could really say was, it was a very dodgy period. It was, well in my case you were frightened. Quite often. You didn't just think you were frightened, I was frightened, but you overcame that, I overcame that to the point where, I wasn't pleased to go on Op's, but I used to wake up in the morning thinking, 'well, if we're on Op's tonight, is it going to happen?' That's how it got me in the end, and I used to wonder if I would lose my life, you know. Which I didn't, of course, but there you are. And then after my first tour, as I say, I went on instructing, and I was going on for a third instruction course, but I was selected for another tour of Op's, and I took rather a dim view of that, because I thought to myself,' you could go on too long', you know. There's a limit to it. Lots of blokes, I knew several people, several blokes who were, who had done two or three tours, but it was a bit dodgy, you know. So fortunately, I went back on to instructing, went on to instructing, oh, and then I went round, then I went round to schools, in the Lincolnshire area, I suppose, in other words telling them how brave you were [laughs]. And they seemed to believe it [chuckles]. Yes. And after that I was taken off flying. I think I got a bit 'flak happy', as they called it. If you'd done too much operational flying, you were getting a bit round the bend, you know, and you were doing silly things, and taking too many risks, I suppose. And then, yes after the instructing, I suppose the war ended. I don't know when it did end. BW: You mentioned about, er, thinking about whether you were going to be on Op's the next night, and so on, and it was popular for crews to take mascots, or lucky charms, or have certain rituals. Did you have any of those? WG: No. I had no faith in lucky charms. BW: Did any of the crew that you flew with have anything? WG: Yes, they used to take things that, usually belonged to their wives. My navigator had a, what was it, oh, a little paper, not paper, a little doll about as big as that, that she'd had as a kid. And I suppose they thought, 'well, if I take this, I shan't get killed', sort of thing. That's how you thought of it in those days, you know. You thought, I half expected, I didn't think I would get through, quite honestly. I never thought I'd get through a second tour, and when I was half way through my first tour, I said, 'well, if I get through my first tour, I'm not going to volunteer for a second tour'. But I did. I volunteered to stay on [laughs]. BW: And it was usual, for pilots certainly, who had completed thirty operations to be awarded the DFC? What did you get your DFC for? WG: No, it wasn't [pause], you're right in saying up to a point, but my skipper was awarded a DFC, but not for doing a second tour. There were, there were, I did know one or two blokes who got them for doing a second tour, but nobody ever seemed to know why. We took a dim view that you joined, you went as aircrew, and that was your job. So of course, of course, you were flying on op's, and bombing Germany and all that sort of thing, but to be decorated just for becoming aircrew, I thought was all wrong. But that was all besides the point, I suppose. BW: And was yours awarded because you'd completed a number of operations, or was it for a single action? WG: No, I shot down- oh dear, what did I shoot down? An ME109, I think. I've got it in here somewhere. I've got it in here somewhere. Yeah, I shot down [pause], I don't know if I'm boring you? BW: No, no. Not at all. WG: Kelstern to form. Oh yes, I went to Kelstern then, to help form a new squadron. 625 Squadron, with two other aircrews. And we went on another, we went on, we went on to, we formed 625 Squadron, at Kelstern there, and then I got an immediate award. I've got it here in red ink. See previous page. 'Doug Wheeler badly wounded'. He was the bomb aimer, he was badly wounded. And I went up onto the [coughs], there was a bed in the aircraft, just before you get into the pilot's area, and the navigator's, the front part, and he was badly wounded, and they took him up onto the aircrew bed, and I sat with him and [coughs], that’s right. and Warrant Officer Clarke was the pilot, and he was awarded the DFM as well, and the flight engineer was as well. The three of them were awarded the DFM, because they were all NCO's then. And that's about all there. BW: Your bomb aimer was badly wounded, and you went up. WG: The bomb aimer was badly wounded, that's right, yes. The bomb aimer was badly wounded, and he lost quite a lot of blood. And it was thought, not by me, but it was thought by, I think it was the bomb aimer, er, I think it was the wireless operator relieved me sitting with him, and he seemed to think that he was losing too much blood, so he couldn't last much longer. But he did, of course. And he and I left together, and I remember, I remember walking down to Grimsby railway station, and our kit was already there. We were being posted. I was going home, home on leave, and he was going home on leave, and it was on the railway station, that's right, both of us on the railway station, and we both said goodbye as our various trains, as our trains came in, and that was that. I kept in touch with him, we kept in touch with each other, but I did not see him again. I went to his home town in, I went to his home town and I met his mother, his father was dead, and I think I met his brother, who had already been accepted for aircrew, but was still a civilian. And then from there I went somewhere else instructing, so I thought, well, I couldn't keep on with this instructing business, because I was never good at it really. I was the wrong temperament. And I volunteered for a third, I volunteered for a third tour. But it was quite obvious the war was ending, and I was never called back to do a third tour. And that was that, I went on a further instruction course, and I was going to join, I was going to be transferred to the er, transferred to the American Air Force, with others but, who were stationed in Lincolnshire, but it never materialised, fortunately. I went to, oh I forget where I went then. Laura: You went to India. WG: Oh, I went touring. Touring round various stations, Army and Navy, no, not Navy, but Army and Air Force stations telling them what it was like on operations, sort of thing, you know. You shot a line [chuckles]. BW: Now, you mentioned on that particular instance when you were looking in your log book, that the pilot and the flight engineer were also awarded medals. The pilot got a DFC and the navigator got a DFM. Was your DFC awarded on the same raid, because they got those medals as a result of their actions over Mannheim. WG: No, I got mine, yes, Mannheim, wasn't it, I got mine after I'd left them. I was on my second tour then. I think I'd started my third tour, quite honestly. But I don't really, it'll be in the log book here. Yes, yeah, I can't remember really. BW: Ok, do you recall that night when you flew over Mannheim. It was a particularly notable instance, but what were your recollections? WG: It was, sorry? BW: It was a notable raid that night. WG: It was indeed, yes. BW: What were your recollections of it? WG: Er, perhaps being more frightened than I normally was. Yes, when you're running up to, the bomb aimer, as you obviously know, was right in the front, I mean, the bomb aimer's nose was there, and there was the fresh air, there, sort of thing, you know. And when you're up the front there, I suppose I was more frightened, but it did pass off, you know. Because I thought, well, if I'm going to frightened like this, I'm going to be no good to the aircrew. They won't want me. That's when he was taken down to the bed, and I went down there with him as another member of the aircrew. Immediate award of the DFC to Warrant Officer Clarke, and the DFM to flight engineer. Warrant Officers and Officers, if they were decorated, got a DFM, and, oh yes [unclear], oh I don't remember, but it's not important. BW: You mentioned that you'd shot down a ME109. WG: Yes. BW: And was that while you were over Mannheim? Or was that on a separate raid? WG: No, it wasn't when we were over Mannheim, no. Everybody thought Mannheim was going to be a killer, sort of thing, but it wasn't, so it must have been another. No, it wasn't Mannheim. [reading]. 'Immediate award of the DFC, immediate award of the DFC.' Oh yes it was, it was Mannheim. It was Mannheim that we got it, the three of us. We were badly shot up by night-fighters. We were coned, we were coned in searchlights. The searchlights, when you're coned in a searchlight, it switches on twice, a certain searchlight. You see the searchlight in the distance, or I would see them at the back of me, being in the rear turret, creeping up at you on the back, and they would switch on and switch off, twice, and the third time when they switched on, they'd got you. And it was just like this in the turrets, daylight, you know. And of course, that's when the fighters see you and they come in to attack. But we weren't attacked, but we were coned, and it was, it was just like daylight. [Reading] 'Night-fighter, night-fighters, coned in searchlights', that's right. And, that's right, yes, that's it, we were hit there because it says here that we were, 'coned in searchlights and riddled with flak. Upon landing aircraft broke in two', oh yes, and on landing our aircraft broke it's back. And we went, I think Clarke took it into a hedge, because we were still going pretty fast down the runway, having just landed, and we went off the runway, dead ahead, and into that hedge, sort of thing. Which obviously stopped us, and nobody, no sound and nobody moved, it was just as though the whole lot of us were dead [laughs]. It wasn't until we crawled out, feeling very sorry for ourselves [laughs]. BW: And you were saying about the flak on that, on that mission, that it was accurate, and it was at the height that you were at, and it sounded like hail on the side WG: That's it, the flak, the flak, the flak that was coming up from the ground to the fighters, was coming down onto our aircraft as well, and we could feel it. It shook, it shook the aircraft a bit. That was particularly frightening, I suppose, but only for a while. I'm convinced that, I'm convinced that many times, I never spoke about it, to see if others witnessed it, but many times I was so, so frightened to a point where I was frightened back to normality. I used to think to myself, 'Christ, I'm frightened. This is no good.' And then suddenly, it was suddenly clear, and I would be quite happy to be sitting there, waiting for it to happen. It was as simple as that, you know. You were so frightened, you would be glad to be hit, and shot down. That was the truth, I suppose. Up until then, up until then, when you knew Op's were on, and you were getting up and shaving and what not, you thought, 'well, what's going to happen, I wonder, today.' And, 'tonight', rather, and so often nothing happened. We were only attacked twice, I think. I did fifty five, I did, yes I did fifty five bombing raids on Germany, nine on Berlin, and that was pretty frightening. I was frightened going over Berlin, because they really were a crack lot, the German, the German fighters. I mean, once they'd got you in their sights you could imagine them saying to themselves, 'I've got him this time’. And they would, you see, you'd see others being shot down, of your own type. I saw quite a lot. BW: You saw quite a lot? WG: Well, I say quite a lot, less than a dozen, but you know, if you look across at somebody by your side, you see maybe a mile away, and then you see a ball of light on this aircraft, and it gets bigger and bigger, and then suddenly it blows, and that's frightening, you think, 'well, it could happen to me, this’. But, it didn't. But it was frightening to see somebody else, some of your own people shot down. And, I suppose, to see others, the enemy shot down, because you think, well they've all got mothers and fathers. What are they going to say when they get home, you know. BW: Some veterans talk about it being relatively isolated in the formation, in other words, they would fly a mission and not see other aircraft, perhaps until they were over the target. Was that something you saw as well? WG: Sorry? BW: Some veterans say that they didn't see other aircraft in the formation until they were perhaps over the target. Do you, was that something you experienced as well, or were you aware you were in a formation all the time you were on the mission, or did you only see them over the target? WG: No, we weren't so much together, in a heap, going over. You didn't see any of your own aircraft, seldom saw. The only time you saw other aircraft, or I saw other aircraft, was when German aircraft were firing at our aircraft, in the sky somewhere, but not actually firing at ourselves. So rightly or wrongly, I thought, 'well, thank god they're firing at them and not us’, sort of thing. You know. I didn't feel sorry for the others, I was just pleased for myself [chuckles]. BW: Were you able to pick out enemy night fighters at the time? WG: Yes. Not so much fighters, but Heinkels. Bombers. We flew alongside, they flew alongside us, or we flew alongside them, same thing, for quite a while and you didn't open fire, I didn't at least, the other two gunners in our aircraft and myself didn't open fire, because you thought, well they're not firing at us so they haven't seen us, so if we fire at them, they're going to see the light from our shots going out, you know. BW: The muzzle flash and the tracers. WG: Pardon? BW: They would see the muzzle flash and the tracers. WG: Exactly, yes. You'd be giving your position away. And you just called up the pilot, and he would usually do a power dive, which could be quite dicey because you never knew if you really would pull out of a power dive. Especially if you'd still got your bombs on board. So the practice was for the bomb aimer to jettison his bombs, no matter where he was, where we were, but to jettison the bombs to lighten your load and increase your speed a bit, in a dive, you know. We'd been down as much as below a thousand feet, which is a bit of a bind, in a way. You get away from them, but you've got the bind of the slow climb up where they could see you, they could see your engines lit up, you know [pause], yes, they could see you more clearly then. BW: And I believe you flew a couple of raids over Italy as well. WG: Oh yes, that's right. Oh yes, so I did. I flew over [reading] Munich, Stuttgart, Hanover, Berlin, Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, Mannheim, er, Hamburg, Nuremberg, Milan. There you are, Milan. Peennemunde, Leverkusen, Berlin, Nuremberg. Oh yes. Did not complete operation. One of the engines was hit. It started a fire, we thought, but it didn't. And Berlin again, then Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, Mannheim. Mannheim was a bad place to bomb. They were very good there, with their night fighters. Hagen, Munich , Stuttgart, Hanover. Oh dear, so it goes on, so it goes on. Stettin, er Russelsheim, Stettin again. Oh, yes, then we went on to the V2 sights. They were in daylight, which was particularly bad. Frankfurt, Danzig, mining. mining Danzig Bay, that was a long trip, that was nine hours there and back. Westkapelle, daylight, Calais, daylight, Cap Brunet, daylight, three hours fifteen, oh dear, oh dear, Westkapelle, damn-busting, daylight. Saarbruken, Stuttgart, six hours fifty five minutes, Essen, five hours thirty, Cologne, oh dear, oh dear, I didn't know I'd done all this [chuckles]. BW: This must have been in nineteen forty four. WG: Yes it was, November. November forty four. Gelsenkirchen, Van Ickel, that was in the Ruhr, Dortmund, er Maasberg, wherever that was, I don't know. That was on the second tour. Er, Marseilles. Yes, that's about it. The rest of it's all Transport Command stuff. Getting toward the end of the war then. And, er, and, that was it. Calcutta. Delhi and Calcutta, Delhi and Calcutta, Bangalore, Yellow Hanker. BW: What were you flying there, in Transport Command? In India. WG: Er, Lancasters. I was always on Lancasters. Except in training, when I was on Lancasters, and oh, what do you call the bloody things? [unclear] I've forgotten what they're called. [pause]. They're all Lancasters there. They're all Lancasters. BW: You spent a lot of time. obviously, over the Ruhr. So your aircraft, when you were at 100 Squadron, the Phantom of the Ruhr, was appropriately named, wasn't it? WG: Yes, yes. Sorry? BW: I say your aircraft, the Lancaster, was called the Phantom of the Ruhr. WG: That's right, yes. BW: It was appropriately named, you spent so much time over it. WG: Yes, the navigator, no, not the navigator, the bloke next to the pilot, the flight engineer, did a very good etching of the scene. What was it was called? BW: Phantom of the Ruhr. WG: Oh, that's right, yes. He did, he actually drew a phantom, the head, you know, of a phantom, then underneath he wrote, ' Phantom of the Ruhr'. Yes, I had a photograph of that, I don't know what happened to it. I've lost lots of things I wish I'd kept. Um. Yes [pause]. Yes, there were good and bad days, you know, good and bad days. I often thought, many times, I should never have volunteered, and then I thought, well, if I don't volunteer for flying, there's not much point in volunteering for the Air Force. And I couldn't volunteer for that, I couldn't be an Army bloke. I couldn't have been in the Army. I wouldn't have wanted to be a soldier. BW: I have a photograph here of the nose-art of the aircraft. WG: Oh, that's it. The engineer did that. BW: I think this was after your time on the aircraft, it went on to fly over a hundred sorties. WG: Yes, that's right. BW: I think the crew pictured here, unless you recognise any of them, are from the end of the tour, because there's quite a number of – WG: I don’t think I’ve seen this. Yes, here you are. BW: - bomb markers on the side, there, to indicate the number of sorties. WG: May I just show this to Laura? You can come over, it's all right. That's, our flight engineer drew that, and I stood, er, I stood, this is the front of the aircraft, as you'll appreciate and I stood beneath the aircraft here. I stood on a [slight pause], what do you have with Scotch to drink? Laura: Tonic? WG: Tonic. I stood on a Schweppes, an empty Schweppes tonic box and held the paint, held the point, no, the pint, held the paint up like this, while he dipped it in and drew that. Laura: Very clever, wasn't it? WG: Yes. He was standing about here, and I was over on this side, and, yes, well, that's nice, that. And then he would, and then I held the thing, whatever he wanted, his paint, when he painted the first half of those, they were all the bombs we dropped. And then our aircraft, we were taken off, and our aircraft went on to another crew, and that was their bit that they did. Laura: My word. WG: Yes. Now what was in there, oh nothing. There was something in there I was going to show you. But it's not important. Sorry about that. BW: That's alright. There's another photograph here of your skipper, stood at the back of the aircraft, which has damage to the starboard elevator plane. WG: That’s it. BW: And there's your turret at the back, with a hood over it. It shows some of the damage that was received to the aircraft on that particular raid over Mannheim. The holes that the shells caused. WG: Oh yes. That's it, yes. Oh yes. Yes, that's it. That's dear old Ron Clarke. He was a Warrant Officer then. There's his Warrant Officer's rank badge, there. BW: Yes, on his right sleeve. WG: Pardon. BW: On his right sleeve. WG: That's it, yes. And of course there're the holes in the aircraft that the flak caused, that shot up at us. And that was covered up, that was covered over for some reason or other. They were usually covered over, turrets, if they bought somebody back dead, you know. They were taken down to a special hanger for any repairs to be done, and for whoever was in the turret to be taken out, and then they'd, as a mark of respect, they covered it over. Thank you. Yes. [Pause] BW: Do you have any other information in the log book, at all? Do you have any other photos or descriptions, that you particularly recall? WG: Oh, I don't know [unclear[ [pause]. No, all I've got is a letter from the Under-Secretary of State for Air, presents his compliments [chuckles], and by command of the Air Council, has the honour to transmit the enclosed awards granted for service during the war of nineteen thirty nine, forty five. That was that. I don't know what this is. This is, Squadron Leader in correspondence from reserve [unclear], oh, The Council, the Air Council desires me to convey to you their warm thanks for the services you have rendered to the Royal Air Force, which they greatly appreciated. They have granted you permission to retain the rank of Flight Lieutenant under the terms of paragraph three oh two of Queens Regulations and Air Council Instructions, but this grant of rank does not confer the right to any emoluments. Your attention is drawn to the attached memorandum, and also to the enclosed extract from Queens Regulations regarding the occasion on which officers who have been permitted to retain their rank, wear uniform and the badges of that rank. So I always keep that in case. I used to, I used to go on parades when I was still in the service, um, on uniform parades, but you couldn't do that unless you'd actually got permission to actually do that. Thank you. Well, sorry about all this, this is a non-issue. BW: That's alright. That's no problem. You mentioned that you joined as a sergeant, and at some point you've obviously been commissioned. WG: Yes. BW: Do you recall when and how that happened? WG: Well, I didn't actually join as a sergeant. I joined, I joined. War was declared on the Saturday. I was in the kitchen, helping my mother with getting the food ready, and war was declared at eleven o' clock on that Saturday, and I asked mother if she could lend me some money to get a ticket to go to Lincoln to volunteer for aircrew. And she, yes she did, she gave me the money. She wasn't, and of course my father was very, well, not very annoyed. He said, 'I can't understand it’, he said, ‘why don't you wait until you're called up?' [laughs] I said, 'if I wait, if I wait until I'm called up, I've been advised that they will put you anywhere in the crew, but if you volunteer, you can more or less choose if you want to be a rear gunner, or a signaller, or navigator', though I hadn't got the brains for that, navigator. But if you volunteered, you could choose more or less where you were going to fly, but if you didn't, you were put anywhere in the aircraft, where they wanted a spare bod, I mean. A Lanc would come back with, maybe with somebody killed in a turret, so they'd whip him out and stick you in, sort of thing. Filling in space, you see, that sort of thing, so that was the reason I volunteered, so that I could volunteer – I felt very happy in the rear turret. I never felt, I don't think I felt really frightened, once I got up in the air. But waking up in the morning, knowing that that night we were going on operations, I did feel a bit dodgy, but it wore off once I got on to the squadron, sort of thing. But until then I did feel a bit, I thought, well it could happen, and that sort of thing, and what's mother going to do, you know. BW: What was your social life like on the squadron? You mentioned, you wouldn't be on op's every night. WG: Oh no, no, The amount of flights I did, it's in the log book. Most op's was four nights in seven, following on. You see, you go on op's, and you might be on again tonight, and you were on again tonight, and you'd say, 'well, we can't be on tomorrow night'. But of course, when you woke up you found you were on, you know, I used to, even though I was not commissioned then, we did have a batman who used to look after us and keep our buttons clean, usual thing, you know, and they would do various things for you. I've forgotten what I was going to say, never mind, it doesn't matter. BW: And did you get time to socialise? You mentioned going out to Grimsby and places, did you socialise in the mess, the Sergeants Mess? WG: Oh yes. If you'd got a bit of money in your pocket, you would go out of the mess, into town, where'd you'd girlfriends, and that sort of thing, you know. But if you'd, if you hadn't got money, you would stay in the mess and use the facilities there, the bar, they usually specialised in supplying you with a good bar. I mean you paid for it, you had to buy the stuff, but there was a bar in every mess, and if you hadn't got much dough you would go into the bar in the mess because you could book it. And you didn't have to pay until the end of the month, when you got your money. Until then, you had to pay for it there and then. BW: And did you socialise really with your crew? Did you go out together, or did you socialise with your other friends, who were gunners on other aircraft? WG: Very seldom. If I socialised with anybody, which I did, it would be with those of my rank and air-crew calling. You know, air gunners would go with air gunners, and navigators with navigators, and that sort of thing. Occasionally I would go out with Clarke, my pilot. Quite often, I suppose really. He was an extremely nice bloke. And we used to go, er, we used to go, I suppose boozing. But not to get violently drunk, you know. Because it was too expensive, anyway [chuckles]. Otherwise we would never have been sober. BW: And I believe you liked doing crosswords, as well, is that right? WG: I beg your pardon. BW: I believe you like doing crosswords. WG: Yes, I used to do a crossword in the turret coming back quite often. It was advised not to in case we were followed back, and we were seen by whoever was following us back that we weren't really, that the turret wasn't moving. So that once you got up, once you left the shores of the country, you never kept your turret still. You always went backwards and forwards, up and down. So that if you were seen by enemy aircraft, they would see that you weren't asleep, you were alert, sort of thing, you know. That was the idea. BW: And I believe that on the way back from a raid on Mannheim, when you had actually been shot up, and the searchlights were still on you, and following you away from the target, you joked that you had enough time to finish the crossword, because there was a light in the turret. WG: No, at night time it isn't that dark. When you're flying, when you're up in the air at night, even if you're the only aircraft in the sky, the sky's still light. Not like this, but you know, you can be seen. [Noises off as someone knocks to come in] BW: Yes, I'll just pause the recording here for a moment. BW: So, we're just looking through one or two things in the log book at the moment. Would you mind if I read a couple of extracts from it? Would that be alright? WG: Say what? To read it out? Oh yes, yes. BW: There's, [pause] firstly there is a description here for seventeenth of August nineteen forty three, a night mission to Peenemunde, codenamed Hydra. And the description underneath, which you've indicated, reads, 'six hundred aircraft, Lancasters, dropped sixteen hundred tons of high explosives. This prevented the stockpiling of five thousand V2's, which Hitler intended to be dropped on London simultaneously, in one day’. And there's a quote in a short section from the Daily Telegraph magazine which indicates that in general, the raid, Bomber Command's raid was an outstanding success, and a shattering attack on Peenemunde research and radio location factory, Germans biggest development centre for air defences. In a message to Sir Arthur Harris, Chief of Bomber Command, the Air Minister says, 'photographs prove the outstanding success of your attack’, and goes on to say, 'the accuracy of the bombing, in spite of a smokescreen, and of fierce fighting over the target, testifies to the skill and determination of your crews, and to the effectiveness of your planning and tactical methods’. And that was dated the fifth of June nineteen forty three. So that was obviously a very well defended target, but notable because of what was achieved as a result, in hitting the V2 sights. The other description in here comes from, erm, the forth of November nineteen forty four, which I think must be your second tour. WG: Yes, yes it was the second tour, forty three, forty four. BW: When you went on to 625 Squadron, based at Kelstern. WG: Yes. We formed there, I think. BW: And, I believe it was C Flight from 100 Squadron that formed 625. WG: That's right. Yes. BW: The description here says that it was a raid on Bokum, and that, in brackets, a jet aircraft, ME262 confirmed, and the description goes on to say, 'awarded the DFC. This was their fastest and latest fighter, and the first to be shot down at night by Bomber Command, and confirmed’. WG: Yes, that's right. I shot it down, yes. BW: That's particularly notable because firstly, it was a jet aircraft, and secondly, it was at night. WG: Yes. BW: Do you recall how you recognised the aircraft? Did it appear to be a jet, were you able to recognise it? Or was it just another target for you? WG: Well, when I was on then, on both tours, the only [pause] if it hadn't got four engines, which were easy to pick out, even at night, because it's not as dark as all that up there at night. But it is dark, of course, but if it hadn't got four engines, you had a go at it. Because it shouldn't have been up there, sort of thing, so it must have been an enemy. Must be an enemy. You didn't recognise it perhaps as an enemy, except that it had only got two engines. Otherwise, it would have four. Which meant it was one of your own. BW: And who saw who first? Do you think. WG: Well exactly, yes. BW: Who saw who first on that occasion? Did you see him? WG: That I can't remember. I don't, I only remember being attacked maybe a couple of times, but that was in the early part of the war [pause]. It's difficult [pause]. Yes it’s, you could pick them out, quickly. But even if you didn't, you still fired at them, because you couldn't take the risk. If you didn't fire at them and they were enemy, they fired at you, it would be too late because they might hit you. But it was better to take a chance, and sometimes a wrong chance. On occasions your own being shot down. That has happened. I don't know how it was proven, but it all comes out at, it all comes out when you come back, and you're interrogated. And you really are interrogated, I mean, you don't stand a chance, even if you want to, to shoot a line or tell a load of lies, because they'd soon find out, the way they interrogate you. They aren't aircrew themselves, they're ground crew, and really, really trained for that job of sorting out the truth from the shooting a line business. BW: And so when you landed, how soon after landing would you be debriefed? WG: Straight away. You'd be taken in transport straight away. You wouldn't even speak to your ground crew, be allowed to speak to your ground crew. The, er, as soon as you landed, the first people you spoke to were the ground crew, the ground crew, er, oh dear, questioning you, interrogating you [pause]. BW: And were you debriefed as a crew together? Or were you debriefed individually? WG: You were all put in the debriefing room, and each aircrew department were briefed by their own people. And then you were together briefed as a crew. And it was there to make sure there was no line-shooting, you know. Well, I suppose it was, that's what it was done for. They could easily say, well you're telling us this story, but your mate is telling us this story. That sort of idea, you know. BW: By line-shooting, you mean telling them something inaccurate. WG: Telling lies. Yes, telling lies and lies that could never happen, you know. You were boosting up your bravery perhaps, I suppose. If that's the word, yes. I don't know if you could say that many of us were brave. It was just one of those things. You'd volunteered to do it and you were there, so you'd got to do it, but I don't think that I looked upon it as bravery, I looked upon it as being a bloody idiot for being there [laughs]. BW: What I'd just like to do now, is just to show you a list of the crew, and you've talked about Ron Clarke, and there's your name at the bottom, this is when you were on 100 Squadron. WG: Oh yeah. That's right. BW: Yeah? And there's one or two other names you've briefly mentioned. Are there any particular instances or things you would remember about each of those men that you flew with? WG: There's Ron Clarke. I think Clarke got a second DFC, but I'm not sure. Bennett got a DFM, that's right. Flight Engineer. Sidell, Jim Sidell. Well, Jim Sidell was killed, the navigator, so he got nothing. Wheeler, the bomb aimer, didn't get anything. Easby, the wireless operator, didn't get anything. Simpson didn't get anything. And then there's myself, yes. No, that was the crew. And er, what was the question, what did you ask me? BW: Do you remember anything other about the other members of the crew, anything else about them? What sort of chaps they were? WG: No, we didn't. I don't remember any of us really teaming up when we weren't flying, and going out together. We used to sort of go on our todd, so if we got up to something we didn't want too many people to know [laughs]. Which was my idea, anyway. I don't know about Clarke, But no, Clarke didn't, he’d be doing something. He'd be studying, I expect. He was a studing type [unclear]. Easby's very ill now. I don't know if he's still living. I intend to phone up and speak to his wife, but- BW: Do you know if Harry Bennett is still alive? WG: Bennett, Bennett. Where's Bennett's name here? Bennett, yes, Flight Engineer. No I don't actually. I don't even know, I don't even know where Bennett came from. BW: I believe he came from Preston. In Lancashire. WG: Now that's a point, yes. Somewhere up North. Yes, he was a north country chap. The Flight Engineer. He was a good bloke. He could, if something went wrong, he would get out of his seat up front, next door to the pilot, and walk down the aircraft with his tool kit, and if anything was wrong, and he could do something there, he would stay down there and mend it, and do all that sort of thing. He was a very brave bloke [coughs]. BW: Do you recall how he got his DFM? WG: Who? BW: Bennett. WG: Bennett. No, no I can't. No. BW: There's a description that when you were over Mannheim one night, and because you were heavily hit by the flak, it severed the flying controls to the ailerons. WG: Oh yes, so it did. BW: And there was a lot of vibration going through the flying controls, which meant the pilot couldn't handle the aircraft properly. WG: That's right. That's it. BW: And the story goes that Bennett took out his penknife, and bearing in mind you were probably at five thousand feet at night over Germany and France at the time, apparently he took out his penknife and severed the starboard trim control cables. WG: That's right, he trimmed the controls, that's right. I don't know if it was his penknife, but he did sever controls, yes, which steadied the aircraft, and it was, well everybody was, we all were scared when this, when the aircraft was really shaking, you know. And then it suddenly stopped, and after, we realised that dear old Bennett had done that. He'd gone down and put his, put his breathing apparatus thing on, and stopped the vibrating. BW: That's quite a thing to have done. WG: Well, yes. BW: Firstly, to know what to do, and then to be able to see it and cut it. WG: Yes, yes. Yes. It doesn't say anything there, but I think Bennett was decorated as well. There were, there were, there were three of us decorated to my knowledge, I think he could have been the fourth one, but I'm not really sure. But three of us were decorated, and as I say, I think he was the fourth one, but actually, getting down and stopping the vibration, which it was thought could have prevented the aircraft being flown properly [coughs] or safely. Safely was the word, not properly. Same thing. BW: And the other description that I just wanted to read on the back of the log book that you've got here; on the tenth of January nineteen forty five there's a description in here from a Squadron Leader, which looks like a Flight Commander of 626, in relation to your proficiency and assessment says, 'this', oh. WG: This officer? BW: 'This officer [pause] that knows his job, which he does well, this officer that knows his job, which he does well, put up a splendid show whilst on this', I can't make out the last word, but it says underneath, 'awarded the DFC'. Does that description- WG: Which bit? Oh, 'whilst on the squadron'. Whilst on the squadron, yes. What does it say there, then? BW: It says, 'Our officer, that knows his job, which he does well, puts up a splendid show whilst on this squadron. Awarded DFC'. WG: Oh, I see. Yes. BW: That would be your second one. WG: That's right, yes. [Pause} Laura: You’ve not drunk your tea, Pops. WG: Pardon? Laura: Your tea WG: Pardon? Laura: Your cup of tea? WG: Oh yes, my cup of tea. Oh there's a cup of tea, look. BW: From these tours, then, what happened after, towards the end. WG: Sorry? BW: From, after completing these two tours, or three tours, because you completed a hundred operations, didn't you? WG: Yes, I think so. Something like that. Yeah, well two and a half tours. BW: And what happened after that? When you, when the war ended, and you stayed in service, but you went out to India and the Far East. WG: Oh yes, I did, yes, Yes, I went out to, I went out to Delhi, and Calcutta, and Bangalore. Erm. I wasn't instructing. I can't think what I was doing. I wasn't lecturing. Well, I was lecturing in Bangalore, but not for very long. I asked to be taken off because I wasn't any good at it. I was, you know, if the blokes you were instructing weren't sort of, didn't cotton on, I used to get bad tempered, so it was no good [long pause]. Yes, looking back, they were good days. When you're there, they're not, really. You wonder, why did I do it? [pause] BW: And when the war ended, and you'd been in India, what then happened? You came back and you left the Air Force at some stage, did you? WG: Yes. I came back from India. I was, where was I, I think I was in Calcutta then. Oh yes, that's what annoyed me, was that when I went out there, I flew out there and was there a fortnight, and when I came back, I didn't come back quickly in an aircraft, I came back on a boat, and that took about three to four weeks to get back to the country, which I thought was rather bad. Because they flew me out there quickly, and then it took a long time to get me back home. BW: They wanted you out there quickly, but didn't want you back home so fast [chuckles]. And did you come home to get married, and raise a family after that? WG: Yes, I came home and, I don't know, yes, I came home, what did I do [pause], I don't know where I met Betty. Oh, we met, yes, I was with a group of blokes somewhere, and we saw a group of WAAFs, and we teamed up with these WAAFs, and I went off with mine. I don't know what happened to the others, but I never met them again, but I went off. I forget where we went, and we stayed together for some time. She was , she was a plotter. She used to plot enemy aircraft, and that sort of thing. In Bomber Command. And, I went to Bomber Command for a while, and asked to be taken away, but until then, that was where we met each other [Pause]. BW: And when did you get married? WG: That's a point [pause]. BW: Was it soon after the war? Or was it a few years after? WG: No, the war was still on, I think. Is my log book here? Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I don't know if it tells me in here. I don't know, I must, I don't know when I got married [pause and paper rustling]. 'Slightly above average', and, 'above average'. That's slightly above. No, I don't know. [More paper rustling]. What was I looking for? 'Screen, after twenty sorties, second tour.' Laura: Pops. I think you got married on the thirteenth of April, it was a Friday, and I think it was nineteen forty five. Would it be? WG: Oh, nineteen forty five. Laura: I think. It was forty four or forty five, I think. Before you went to India. WG: Oh, that's right, before I went to India, wasn't it. Laura: Yes WG: Yes [pause]. November forty four, Bokum. Oh yes. Oh, I don't know [pause]. BW: When you left the service, what did you go on to do then? WG; Well I, er, before the war I joined the firm that my father was the secretary for, at Kings Lynn. A timber importing firm, Patrick and Thompson’s. And I was going out to, I was going out to India. We had a branch in India. In, where was it, Bangalore, no, not Bangalore, oh I don't remember now. And I don't quite know what I did. I didn't do what I expected to do, or what they said I was going to do and I think that the way the war was going, it was felt that soon it going to end, so it was a pretty cushy time for us all. Because we weren't, there wasn't very much to do really, and I didn't know whether to stay in or not, and I wasn't keen on going back to my father, to the firm where my father was, so I stayed in. And I was going to get, I hadn't got a permanent commission then. I was on, not a part-time commission, I forget what the word was for it, but it wasn't a regular commission, and I thought, well, if I'm going to stay in the service, I must get a regular commission, or else they can get me out any time. But with a regular commission, provided I'm playing it straight, I haven't got to bother about a job, because I'd got a job. And it was quite well paid. I was a Flight Lieutenant then. And when I went to Bangalore, I was promoted to Squadron Leader, and then when I came back, when I came back, I was demoted to my previous regular engagement commission. It wasn’t an active one. But then I decided that with how things were going, I wasn't very keen. I was getting into spots of bother, and that sort of thing. I was made a personal assistant to an Air Vice Marshall, which was a bit of a bind because you're always on duty, you know. You could suddenly be in bed, and your batman would come in, and give you a shake, and say,' the old man wants you’, and you could get up at any time of the day. Yes, at any time of the day and night. Because if you'd been flying at night, you'd be asleep during the day, and you'd have to go down to see what he wanted, and all that sort of thing. And his wife would, many times when I was in their house, she would come in and say, 'Geoffrey, just nip down to the butchers will you, and get so and so’, that sort of thing, you know. That wasn't my cup of tea, really, not what I'd joined to do [laughs]. Walking back with strings of sausages round me neck [laughs]. BW: Well, I think you've been very open, and it's been a great pleasure to listen to you, sir, and to all your experiences, so I want to thank you on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre for doing that, and it's probably an appropriate place to leave your reminiscences, with a string of sausages round your neck [laughs] WG: Thank you very much indeed. BW: Thank you. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Geoff Green Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brian Wright Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-09-11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AGreenWG150911 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:34:43 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Air Force. Transport Command Description An account of the resource <p>William Green was born in Kings Lynn in Norfolk and joined the Royal Air Force when he was 17 and a half at the outbreak of war, becoming a rear gunner on Lancasters and, eventually, rising to the rank of squadron leader.&nbsp;He tells about going on to help form 625 Squadron at RAF Kelsternand his training for rear gunner, which included some navigation and aircraft recognition. William tells how he was sent on an instructor course to train new recruits but admits he did not have the temperament to do this for very long. In 1944 he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for shooting down the first Me 262 aircraft, whilst coming home from an operation to Mannheim. It was the first confirmed shooting down of this particular aircraft and it was during a night operation. William tells about a particularly bad operation to Mannheim, when he helped with a badly injured bomb aimer, whilst being coned by searchlights and coping with anti-aircraft fire. He also recalls a flight where the aircraft was hit and flying controls to the ailerons were severed, meaning the pilot had trouble controlling the aircraft. The flight engineer picked up a toolbox and acted on the starboard trim control cables with a penknife, allowing the pilot to land. William completed two full tours with Bomber Command, flying over 100 operations, including 55 bombing operations on Germany alone, and his aircraft was nicknamed ‘Phantom of the Ruhr’. He tells the story of how he helped with the painting of the nose art. Towards the end of war, William was in India with Transport Command, particularly in Delhi and Calcutta.</p> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Vivienne Tincombe Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire Germany Germany--Mannheim India India--Kolkata India--New Delhi Germany--Ruhr (Region) Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1944 100 Squadron 1656 HCU 28 OTU 625 Squadron air gunner aircrew anti-aircraft fire bombing bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943) coping mechanism Distinguished Flying Cross fear flight engineer Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit Lancaster Me 109 Me 262 military service conditions nose art Operational Training Unit operations room pilot RAF Kelstern searchlight superstition training Whitley https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/858/11100/AHarrisHST150909.mp3 0644ea5d3fae401b624fe3f915057fc0 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 Harris, Harry Harry Stracan Thomson Harris H S T Harris Sam Harris Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Harry Stracan Thomson Harris (162261 Royal Air Force). He flew two tours of operations as a navigator with 103 Squadron and later with 105 Squadron. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-09-09 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 Harris, HST Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document BW: Alright. This is Brian Wright and I’m interviewing Mr Harry Harris on Wednesday the 9th of September at 2:25 in the afternoon in his house. So, Harry, you were in the RAF, in Bomber Command. What was your rank when you left? HH: Flight lieutenant. BW: Ok. And start us off. Just please tell me about your home life before the war. HH: Well in 1939 I lived in ‘Trose and I went down to London to start a chef’s course at the Westminster College for Cookery and I stayed with an aunt who lived in London. I was there during the Blitz and then my, my cousin and I didn’t agree so I was evacuated to Exeter as an evacuee. BW: Right. HH: But I didn’t like it at Exeter and I came back to London. Started, re-started on the course and I lived in a sort of YMCA place beside the River Thames and it was the centre of the bombing there and, but I liked it. I went out every night to watch the bombers. But then I had to leave and I found out later, my aunt had been paying for my education and she had to stop work and look after her parents. So, I had to go home and I worked for a year in a mental, the hospital of a mental asylum. BW: And what year was that? HH: That was in 1941. And then when I became seventeen and a half — it was 1940, I came back. And when I became seventeen and a half I volunteered as a pilot at Aberdeen. Then I went to Edinburgh about July to do the course. The tests and things. And they drilled me then as a navigator and I found out much later, when I was at the RAF flying college that if you got a certain, they did a maths test and if you got above a certain number you automatically qualified as a navigator. Under that you became a pilot or an air gunner. And we used to, when we found out we used to call them the dim pilots [laughs] because they couldn’t pass the test. But then I went to, went to London to Lord’s Cricket Ground. That was where we think we met. And then went down to Torquay. Babbacombe near Torquay, for the first course. Training course. And then from there to Eastbourne for another course and from there went to, to South Africa for our flying. We landed at Cape Town and went up to Pretoria and then down to Port Elizabeth where we did our course. Our flying course. And then passed out and got our wings. I got mine in November 1942. BW: And this was your navigator wings. HH: Navigator. Yes. BW: Right. What prompted you to become a navigator? I think you mentioned earlier you wanted to be a pilot. HH: A pilot. Yeah. Well when I went — BW: Why the change? HH: When I went to this board at Edinburgh. I forget what they called the board. Screening board. And we did, you know, oral interviews. We had written tests and one was a maths test and apparently that’s when the heavy bombers were coming in and they wanted navigators and so they did this by choosing above a certain percentage in the maths test. You were automatically selected as navigator. BW: Ok. And when you went down to Cape Town for the, for the flying was that the navigational instructional part of flying? HH: Yes. BW: So you were put in an aircraft and learned to navigate. HH: That’s right. Yeah. We flew in Oxfords. Yeah. BW: Ok. HH: At Port Elizabeth. And there used to be three u/t navigators in an aircraft. One was navigating. One was sitting beside the pilot and using the wind to find out the winds and the other one did the Astra. And — BW: The Astra being the star navigations. HH: Astra navigation. Yeah. And on the second last one of our course we flew out over the sea and our course commander was an ex-naval officer and we flew over the sea and we saw all these lifeboats. A tremendous number of lifeboats. We couldn’t communicate with them so we came back to Port Elizabeth and they sent out a boat and picked up all the survivors. But the next day we went out again. This time I was sitting in the front with the pilot and I saw a boat. It was a U-boat. BW: Right. HH: And the pilot, the South African pilot and he turned towards this U-boat and started diving. Now this U-boat came up, there was three gunners at the far end of the boat with a gun and they were firing at us and the shells were just going two or three feet above us because they weren’t allowing for us going down. So we carried a depth charge and as we got closer the three men ran towards the conning tower. As we got closed the conning tower was closed so they couldn’t get in. We dropped the depth charge and at this time we were only about fifty feet and this time we turned. There was nothing left. The U-boat had gone. And years, years later I met the course commander and, you know I asked if anything had happened about that. And he said, ‘No. They never confirmed the loss of a U-boat.’ Yeah. BW: So you weren’t sure whether it had dived and avoided it or whether it had been hit. HH: No. We didn’t know. BW: There was no trace of it. HH: No. BW: Right. And that was just on, that was just on the training. HH: [laughs] Yes. On training. That was our last trip. Funny. We went back to Cape Town and then, I forget where and we got on the boat again to come home. And we were in the South Atlantic when we, the ship ran into the wreckage of a ship that had been torpedoed. We lost a propeller and had to go in to New York and we got there on the 26th of December. And we were there for three weeks. Beautiful. BW: Very good. And so, you then must have come back from America. HH: We came back to New York. BW: At some point. HH: Back to Glasgow. Yeah. And then we did more flying at Wigtown on Ansons. Just to get acclimatized, you know, with the country. And then we went to the Operational Training Unit and it’s all written down there. That’s where we met the first of the crew. The pilot was Ken Murray and he’d trained in America and he wanted to fly on fighters. And when he found he was going to be flying on bombers he wasn’t a very happy chap I can tell you. But we got on well. BW: Good. HH: And the first day there they had to crew-up and at the end of the day there was twelve of us hadn’t crewed-up. That was two crews. So we want to the pub in Loughborough and somehow we got together and we stayed together. BW: And this was The Golden Fleece in Loughborough. Is that right? HH: Yeah. And the other crew that were there that night they were killed at the Operational Training Unit. They crashed on take-off and they were all killed. So if I’d gone with the other pilot I wouldn’t be here today. BW: That’s fate isn’t it? HH: It is. Yeah. BW: So you were based in, in Lincolnshire. HH: Yeah. Elsham Wolds. BW: Or Leicestershire. About there. Is that right? At that time? HH: Pardon? BW: You were based around Leicestershire at that time if you were in Loughborough. HH: At that time. Yeah. We must. We did our first operation from there. BW: So where were you, where you were based at this point on — had you joined operations at this stage? Now you’d crewed up. HH: No. No. We, we went. We did our flying training on Wellingtons. Wellington 1Cs. And at the end of the course we went on an operation to Dunkirk. And it’s all written down there. And when we got over the target we got hit by flak but we managed to get back home. The hydraulic system had gone. So had to wind down the undercarriage. Wind down flaps. And the next morning the engineer came and said that the shell had missed the fuel tank by three inches [laughs] And we wouldn’t be here. BW: Wow. HH: Yeah. He had it all. He said three inches. BW: And so the early part of your flying career then you were flying in Wellingtons. HH: Yeah. Wellington 1Cs. Yeah. BW: And from then on, I mean we understand that you went on to fly Lancasters. HH: On to Lancasters. Yeah. BW: How many operations did you fly on Wellingtons? HH: One. Just the one. BW: Just the one. HH: Yeah. BW: And how was the change made, or the decision made for you to fly Lancasters? HH: Well we, from the Wellingtons we went to train on Halifaxes. And then when the pilot was capable of flying the Halifax we went on to Lancasters. And then when they were satisfied that he was fit then we went to 576 Squadron, Elsham Wolds. BW: And Elsham Wolds is also in Lincolnshire isn’t it? HH: Yeah. Lincoln. Lincolnshire. BW: And how did you find that change from Halifaxes to Lancasters? Was there— HH: Oh, I loved the Lancaster. Yeah. That was, yeah. BW: And there are more, are there the same number of crew in the Wellingtons? HH: Yeah. Same number of crew. Yeah. BW: Ok. So you were able to keep the same crew together? HH: Oh yes. The same crew. Yeah. BW: And what were the living conditions like on base at that time? HH: Well, there was Nissen huts. I suppose we got used to them. Each Nissen hut got somehow fourteen, somehow twenty beds and you just got used to it. You had, well they just had the basics I suppose. BW: Just a bed and blankets. HH: Bed and blankets in them. BW: And a stove in the middle. HH: Yeah. Yeah there was three, I forget what they call them now. Three square things made up the mattress. Yeah. And that’s all there was. And the washing facilities were always outside. And in the wintertime there was no heating in the ablutions and so the water was freezing cold. Sometimes frozen altogether. And the heating inside the stoves [pause] well you used what you could. Logs or anything we used to use just to keep the place warm when we were there. BW: Did you have the hut to yourself or were you sharing with another crew? HH: We shared. Until we got to the squadron we shared with another crew. When we got to Elsham Wolds we had to wait until they got the Nissen ready. And we got the Nissen and we found out later that we had to wait because the crew that had occupied the Nissen had gone missing. And there was room for two crews actually but we only ever had the one crew in it. The losses was pretty heavy so we only ever had just the one. Just ourselves. BW: And were you fairly close to the aircraft? Or to the mess? HH: No. We had to get — BW: Whereabouts on the base were you? HH: We all had cycles. It was about a mile, a mile and a half to cycle. BW: Each day. Just to — HH: Yeah. Just to get up to the main part. BW: Right. HH: Yeah. Yeah. All the living accommodation was spread away from the airfield. BW: Right. I’m just going to pause the recording for the moment. [recording paused] BW: I just paused the recording there to allow us to just put the door to and avoid any background noise. So, continuing on you were at Elsham Wolds then. You were flying Lancasters. And you were living in Nissen huts. HH: Yeah. BW: At the edge of the airfield. What were your, or describe for me if you would please a typical sortie for a Lancaster operation from sort of getting ready to do the operation and then flying it and then coming back. What was that like? HH: Well we, we used to, every morning we went and got breakfast. Went up to the squadron offices and sometimes we would go ahead and do an air test and we’d wait until about lunchtime and then they would say whether the operations were on that night or not. That was usually around lunchtime. And then the briefing was with, there was a navigation briefing first. Just the navigator, the bomb aimer and the pilot there. And we got told the target, the route and I made out the flight plan. And when that was finished we went to the main operations room where the station commander, he would, all the crews were there and he would tell them where the operation was and that was the first they would know. We had known maybe half an hour, three quarters of an hour before but then they only knew then. And they went through the drill — what was happening, what the target was and any questions. And I can’t remember anybody ever asking a question [laughs] and then we went to the aircraft and took off at the allotted time. BW: It, it’s been said at certain times that aircrew had superstitions. Were there any that you were aware of on your aircraft or in your crew? HH: Any? Any what? BW: Superstitions or habits or, guys would take, for example personal items with them as lucky charms. Were there any instances like that? HH: See that picture behind you. BW: There’s a, on the wall is a picture of, like a little gollywog. HH: Yeah. BW: Was that yours? HH: Yeah. My wife, when we came back from South Africa my girlfriend, now my wife she bought me that and I wore that every time I flew. For the rest of my flying career I flew with that. BW: And what’s — HH: It’s downstairs. BW: What sort of size is, is that? Is it, it must only have been a little figure was it? HH: It was — high. Yes. It’s downstairs. BW: So about three to four inches. Yeah Three or four inches tall. HH: It just fitted inside the pocket. Yeah. BW: Right. So that was your lucky charm that you took on a mission. HH: That was my lucky charm. Yeah. BW: It seems to have worked. HH: The lucky charm and a box of matches in that pocket. And twenty cigarettes in the other one [laughs] BW: About — HH: I never ever flew again without that mascot. And I flew over nine and a half thousand hours. BW: Wow. And did the, did your other mates have any similar things? HH: Yeah. They had similar things but I can’t remember what they were. BW: Right. HH: But every one of them had a mascot. Every one [laughs] BW: So you get into the aircraft. You get into the Lancaster and prepare. What sort of things would you start to do and the others start to do to, to get ready? HH: Well, we, first of all we went to pick up our parachutes and Mae Wests. And then we got in a truck that took us out to the aircraft. We’d get inside and prepare. Like the pilot and the flight engineer would do all the checks. Checks. Myself and the bomb aimer, you know would get the flight plan and check all the other instruments were there. The wireless op was the same. And the air gunners, they would check all their equipment. And then it would be time to, to go to the take-off point. The take off point was a caravan and they gave a green light to take off. And beside that caravan, every time I can remember there was a crowd of WAAFs there. And airmen but mostly WAAFS would come to see us take off. And, and that, I was thinking back. That was the time that we were most frightened. Take-off time. Every time we talked it was, in case we would crash on take-off. BW: Because the aircraft is fully loaded and fully fuelled. HH: Fully loaded. Yeah. Had full fuel and we had a big cookie each. What was it? Two tonnes plus incendiaries. And one night we didn’t take off properly. We went through, past the end of the runway, through the fence at the end of the runway and luckily there was a quarry underneath and we went down in the quarry and came out at Brigg before we started to pull up again. BW: So if there hadn’t been a quarry at the end of the runway — ? HH: That was, we would have gone [laughs] That was, that was the worst one. Yeah. BW: Wow. HH: Yeah. That quarry saved us. And it was a long time it ever happened because we would fly over Brigg which was quite a few miles away before we started to climb. BW: And yet the other aircraft would have been similarly fuelled and armed. HH: Yeah but they — BW: And they got off all right. HH: Yeah. Yeah. Don’t know what it was. No. No. BW: So, on the flight out you’re now airborne heading towards the enemy coast. What sort of things are happening in the aircraft at this stage? HH: Well, on the Lancasters then we had a navigation aid called Gee. You know, where we could fix our position within, you know a half of mile. But once it got outside Britain the signal faded and the Germans were jamming it anyhow. So after that you relied just on, I don’t know the Pathfinders would pass winds and you used to use these winds because they had H2S which gave a map of the ground. But the winds weren’t always accurate. Sometimes a long, long way out. And so we, we just had this Gee. That was all. BW: And apart from that there was just dead reckoning presumably. HH: Dead reckoning. That’s all there was. Yeah. BW: Did you — HH: But then we got an aircraft. It was fitted with H2S [laughs] That was towards the end and that, that was absolutely different altogether. Yeah. BW: Made the job a lot easier. HH: Yeah. It did. Yeah. BW: So did you have to circle the airfield to form up? HH: Oh yeah. BW: Or did you meet the formation over a certain point? HH: No. We, you were given your take-off time and the first crews took off first so, and then you had time to set course over the airfield. That’s sometimes you’d get airborne and it was twenty, twenty five minutes before you got back over the airfield for the right time to head out. And it was strongly, they put, always had the new crews on there. They should have put the older crews on that but they didn’t. They didn’t in our squadron. BW: So you had, you had a separate take off time to be airborne. HH: Yeah. BW: And you then had to be overhead the airfield at a certain time to set course. HH: Yeah. All aircraft. Well if it was fairly light you could see the other aircraft. Otherwise you didn’t. BW: And did — HH: And I think there were some crashes there too. BW: And did you see much of the other aircraft throughout the rest of the sorties? HH: No. No. BW: Missions. HH: Not unless they were caught in the searchlights. No. BW: So — HH: We did, it was all night stuff we did. BW: So presumably then very rarely would you actually see other aircraft in the, in the formation. HH: No. You wouldn’t. No. BW: How did it feel then? Did it feel as part of a combined effort or did it feel pretty much as a lone crew out there? HH: Well it just, it was just the sort of thing you did, you know. I don’t know. As I said the only time we saw other aircraft was when they were caught in the searchlights. And over a target, you know when the target was all lit up then you could see other aircraft. Usually then there was full searchlights. But no. In the darkness we never saw anything. BW: So when you left the shores of England and you were flying out over the Sea were you able to see France or the Dutch coast at all? HH: No. No. No. It was always dark. Always dark. Never saw the ground. BW: Did you ever receive any attention from the flak guns on the ground below or from night fighters at all? HH: We once had night fighters and the rear gunner, he fired his guns but then I don’t know what happened. It just disappeared. That was the only time. BW: And so when it came to being over the target what would be happening in the aircraft then? HH: Well, the bomb aimer would be down giving directions. He’d find the [pause] the what do you call it? [laughs] The target indicator. And it was red, blue, whatever it was. And he’d find that and he’d head towards that and give directions to the pilot — left, left, right. And then the flight engineer and the pilot were in their seats. I would get out of mine and I would stand behind the flight engineer to see what was going on. And the, then there’s bombs gone and then they had to wait because the camera would take a photograph. So it was like forty seconds I think till the bombs went down and once the photograph was taken it was bomb doors closed. I would give the pilot the next heading and off we’d go. BW: And all this time on the run in to the target and the run out you had to keep straight and level. HH: Oh yes. BW: One, in order to, to allow the bombs to fall accurately but also to allow the photograph to be taken. HH: Had to be absolutely straight and level. Yeah. Yeah. BW: Were there times when that wasn’t possible? HH: The only times if you’d got behind another aircraft and then you’d go bumpety bump. That was awful. But when I was, later when I was in Mosquitoes and doing the bombing that was beautiful. The Mosquito could hold itself nicely. But the Lancaster, no. There was always aircraft in front. It was a bit bumpy, you know. BW: Just because of the turbulence — HH: Turbulence. Yeah. BW: From the aircraft ahead. And so once you’d dropped the, dropped the bombs and turned for home what sort of things were going on then? What — HH: Well, that was, I think that’s when we lost a lot of the aircraft but I’m not sure because the German fighters then, they were all from over the place, had gone. They knew where the target was and had gone there and there was lots and lots of fighters. BW: So the gunners were pretty active. HH: We could, we could see the other aircraft being shot down. We’d see the tracer bullets and this sort of thing. It’s quite a lot of, the worst one was on the Nuremberg raid where we lost ninety five. And on the way out it was a long, straight course and the fighters got up. And I was inside there, I didn’t see anything but the flight engineer was saying, ‘There’s another one,’ and the pilot said, ‘It’s only dummies. It’s only dummies. They’re just shooting dummies. There’s no aircraft there.’ And when we got back to base, at the debriefing he said, ‘And we lost an awful lot of aircraft on the way out.’ Oh [laughs] Trying to keep us from being frightened. Yeah. BW: When, during the flight back did you begin to feel safe again? HH: I think we felt safe all the way really. It was just we’d done the job and I was just getting back. BW: Ok. HH: I can’t, all I was worried about mostly was when we could pick up the navigation. Gee. You know. To be sure we were in the right place. But I, I don’t think we were. I could be wrong but I don’t think we worried too much going back. You know. It was going out. The very worst time was the take-off. That was, we all agreed that was the worst time. BW: So once you were in the air the nerves started to settle a bit with doing your job. HH: You were doing your job then. Yeah. BW: So, roughly how long would each sortie or each operation have been then? HH: About six hours. It’s all in there somewhere. Each one. About six hours I think. Yeah. But then after a while we started going to the French targets and that was, you know five hours maybe. And the very last one was on D-Day. We went to Vire Bridge in Northern France. And that was the first time that the bomb aimer had seen where the bombs landed. And two of them landed on the bridge. He was so happy we hit it. BW: What was the name of the bridge again? HH: Vire. V I R E. BW: Oh. I see. HH: Yeah. My eldest daughter’s, well she’s been going to France for years to a motorbike thing and she brought back a picture of somewhere around. There is a picture of Vire Bridge. BW: Obviously rebuilt since your bomb aimer put two bombs on it. HH: Yeah. Funnily enough on Mosquitoes I only once saw where the bombs dropped. It was a Cookie we carried. No, I wasn’t. Sometimes. And I can still see it. Yeah. There was a very, very wide road. A canal running along the side and a building with a massive door at the side. The bomb landed in the middle of this so it must have blown the door, must have blown the side off the factory. That’s what we were aiming for. The factory. That was the only once. BW: And the bomb hit. It landed on the road. Or landed in the — HH: Landed on the road. Yeah. It was halfway between the building and the canal. BW: But it still blew the factory down. HH: It would have. It was only about ten fifteen yards from the wall so it must have blown it right, right out. And the factory too, I hope. BW: And when you returned to base after a successful operation what then happened? You mentioned debriefing. HH: The debriefing. Yeah. You went in front of the intelligence officers and they, they mainly the questions, you know. They wanted to know anything and we just told them about the trip. BW: And what sort of questions would they ask? HH: Oh, about the Pathfinders. Did they drop the right, did they drop the right colours and that? Did you think they were in the right place? And this sort of thing. About the timing. Did you see any enemy aircraft and enemy gunfire? That was the sort of things they wanted to know. Just the defences. BW: And once you’d had the debriefing? What? What then? HH: Oh, we went back. Handed in our parachutes and Mae Wests and then went for a meal in the mess. BW: How did you spend your spare time between operations? HH: Well, we were at Elsham Wolds and it was quite, quite a long way to, Brigg was the nearest place. And Scunthorpe was beyond that. And we’d, initially we’d all go out together, all seven of us and we’d go to Brigg and drink in the pub there. And we had bicycles so we’d cycle there and cycle back. And then the pilot got commissioned so he sort of left us then and we split. We did the same as before. And then the bomb aimer and the flight engineer, they met a couple of people and they went to their home. You know and they sometimes stayed overnight if they could. And the two air gunners, they went on their bikes and they cycled all the way up to the Humber and they went together. So there was the wireless operator and myself and we just went our own way to the pub and the dance hall and back. That was it. Go to Scunthorpe. Got the train to Scunthorpe and get the last train back. BW: And were you on ops every night or were there periods — HH: Oh no. No. No. No. Very seldom it was two nights in a row. Sometimes there’d be a week’s gap or something. And every four days, every four weeks we had a week’s leave. But because of the losses sometimes we got leave every three weeks. Yeah. The losses were pretty heavy at the time. BW: How did you spend your leave when you got the opportunity? HH: With my wife. She, we lived not far apart in the village and we used to go out dancing and that sort of thing. That was all. In the summertime, well in the summertime then we had the bikes and we went biking, walking. But in the wintertime that was all there was because she was working all the time. BW: How did you meet? HH: Well we lived, my father and mother, my father was in the Royal Marines during the First World War and my mother was in the Women’s Royal Air Force near [unclear] in 1919. And they both lived in ‘Trose and they both went as nurses at the asylum, Montrose Royal Asylum. They both went as nurses. They met and got married and then I came along. And in that asylum, it was a small community and Mary’s father was the grieve. I don’t know, the head farmer. He was in charge of the farm. It was a great big farm. A really huge farm. So, you know, all the kids, we used to all play together and that in the grounds of the asylum. That’s how we met. BW: And so you’d knew each other for a while before the war started and before you joined up. HH: Oh knows, we played together and her brothers and that since we were five years old, you know, so. But it wasn’t until I was going overseas that I had a few days leave and I met her. And we just had a couple of days, you know going out and then we wrote and then it was another about fourteen months I think before we met again. Yeah. BW: And how did you re-meet? When did you — HH: Oh we kept writing all the time. Yeah. And then we got married in 1947 because I was going to be posted to an airfield in London, or near London. And I’d phoned the adjutant and he said accommodation was no problem. My wife would get a job. That was no problem. He guaranteed everything. So we got married. Went on honeymoon. Three days later we were going out the hotel and the porter came around and said I was wanted on the phone. I thought, ‘Oh. There’s only, there’s only the Air Ministry know I’m here.’ So I went and they said, ‘You’re posted to Singapore. You’re leaving in one week’s time.’ And so I went off to Singapore and at that time you weren’t considered married until you were twenty five. Well I was only twenty three. So it was eighteen months before she could join me. BW: Just because of the service rules. HH: Oh yeah. Eighteen months. BW: So just, I’d just like to go back. You mentioned about flying Mosquitoes. At what stage during your career, your service career did you change to Mosquitoes? HH: Well, when we finished operations on Lancasters I was posted to a Canadian run Operational Training Unit. They were flying Wellingtons. It was run by Canadians for Canadians but in this country. And the only RAF people there were the station commander, a group captain and a wireless operator. He’d done a tour of operations himself. But we were the only RAF personnel. And instead of lecturing I used to just to go up, fly with them in an aircraft with the trainees. And that was all that was done so I got fed up with this and I went and saw the station commander and said I wanted a posting. And he said, ‘No. No.’ And every Monday morning I went. In the end he said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve arranged for you to go before a commissioning board.’ And so myself and the wireless operator went before this commissioning board and got our commissions. And the next day I went to see the group captain [laughs] He said, ‘Now, don’t tell me.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And a week later he, he arranged for me to go on Mosquitoes. That was good. BW: And did you move onto that squadron on your own or were there any mates that went with you? HH: No. Just on my — BW: Just on your own. HH: Just on my own. Went to the, what do they call it where you all met? The pilots and navigators. And I crewed-up with this George Nunn. He crewed-up with me. He picked me [laughs] And so we flew together. We flew on Oxfords at first during this training and then on to Mosquitoes. And then on to the squadron. And then when the war finished in Europe I had a navigator friend, he was from the West Indies and he was going to London to meet his own people. So, I went down to London with him to this pub. It was full of West Indians and, but we had a good time. And then they said that 105 Squadron, Mosquito squadron was going to start training for the Far East. I thought — oh. So, I went back to thingummybob and saw the wing commander and I said I would like to transfer to 105 Squadron. And he went up in the air because he was organising this sort of, what do they call it [pause] West Indies. A big aircraft thing. Commercial aircraft. He was going to be the boss and he was looking for people to fly. And so I kept on and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You haven’t got a chance going by yourself. You have to find a pilot.’ Well, George wasn’t keen because he wanted to go back to his old job but when he, when he heard that he said, ‘Right. Away we go.’ So we got posted to 105 Squadron. And we were doing this, this new bombing aid they had. And we were ready. Just to be ready to go to the Far East when the war finished. BW: But you got, you got out there it must have been late 1945 then. HH: Yeah. BW: In that case. HH: Yeah. So 1945 finished with Mosquitoes and I went on the training on what they called BABS. It was a blind landing aid. And we went to various Transport Command stations and taught them how to fly this. And then I got, got married and then Singapore on 48 Squadron. BW: And what were you flying there? HH: Dakotas. BW: How long were you out in the Far East? HH: Just over two and a half years. I flew a lot to Hong Kong. India. Bangkok. A couple of times to Australia. It was quite good. A good trip. Yeah. BW: How did you find the change from navigating in Lancasters to Mosquitoes? Both aircraft have different, slightly different reputations. HH: Yes. Well — BW: What was the experience like for you? HH: The big, the big thing with the Mosquito was the space. It was the pilot sitting, like a pilot would sit, sit there. BW: Yeah. HH: And I would sit here [laughs] and he had all these instruments in front of him. And just down below was the bomb bay. So that, you know, after the space in the Lancaster, you know, a table this size you just had a thing you picked up like that. BW: A notepad. HH: It was a chart and everything there. BW: Yeah. HH: So it was quite different. BW: It seems different in the sense that when you were in the Lancaster you would be working as a single navigator. HH: Yeah. BW: But yet, when you were in the Mosquito you would be doing two roles because you were the bomb aimer as well. HH: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, we got trained on bomb aiming. Yeah. We got, we did our training, bomb aiming training on Mosquitoes and I remember flying over somewhere in Lincolnshire one day bomb aiming and something happened going towards the target and something happened and the bomb went. The bomb released. And [laughs] you saw it and it landed in a farm yard. So we went back and, you know reported it because there was maybe something wrong with the bombing. Anyhow, the next day we got a phone message from a farmer. He invited us all out for a drink [laughs] Because they’d gone to the farm, they’d apologised. He wanted to know who they were and he invited us all out. Not us but the whole squadron for a drink. So I don’t know what had happened. If he had insurance or something like that. BW: Was it a practice bomb that had dropped? Or — HH: A practice bomb. Yeah. BW: Yeah. HH: Fifteen pounds. You know. BW: Yeah. HH: Yeah. BW: And it just happened to come off the — HH: Yeah. BW: Off the release and into the farmyard. What sort of operations were you flying in Mosquitoes then? And how, how different were they to those on the Lancasters? HH: Well the Mosquitoes we did, I think it was fifteen trips to Berlin. We did nineteen trips altogether and fifteen to Berlin. And it [pause] it was, I don’t know. In some ways it was easier that a Lancaster trip. We never worried we’d take-off. That never worried us. And it was just a case of getting to the target and it was a lot shorter time. Four and a half hours to Berlin and back instead of nine hours. And now, you used to get down, do the bombing and never had any problems. BW: Were you part of the Pathfinder Force on Mosquitoes? HH: No. No. Not the Path, no. BW: Or were you — HH: We were just ordinary. Yeah. No, we had the Pathfinders in front of us. They dropped the target indicators. And it was, no, it was, I don’t know it was just the two of us there sitting like this, close together. And sitting in there somewhere we left Berlin one night and we were always they always got coned by the searchlights. Every time we went there. And I just, I used to like that because I could see inside the bomb bay, you know. See the bombs and everything. We never minded. And we were coming back out one night and the searchlights, you know and it was no good trying to dodge them and suddenly the searchlights stopped. They all dropped. And I looked. There’s was a blister at the side and I looked behind and I could see lights. Red and green lights and I thought, I said to George, I said, ‘There’s some silly bugger going in there with his lights on.’ I said, I said, ‘No. He’s overtaken us. I said, ‘Direct to starboard. Go.’ And George, and they were pffft. The cannon shells came right across. And one of them took the top off the aircraft. We went down and the searchlights had come on. George got blinded and we were going whoooa and essentially — BW: Apparently down. HH: There were, the heavy aircraft were bombing, I forget the name of the place and we could visualise that and he turned and got the aircraft right and then looked at the altimeter and we were only about fifteen hundred feet above the ground and we’d come from twenty four thousand [laughs] Oh God. And anyhow we made it back. And it was years later when I was at the RAF flying college I was reading about, you know this thing and on that night, at that time, at that place, this German fighter that shot down a Mosquito [laughs]. I thought that’s great. It was the exact time and everything as that. BW: If, if that’s the same account as I read about that was a raid over Potsdam. Near Berlin. Is that right? HH: No. No. That was. We were at Berlin actually itself. BW: Berlin itself. HH: Yeah. BW: And is it, was it right that the report said it was a Messerschmitt 262. It was a jet. A German jet. HH: Yeah. BW: So they were using those as night fighters. HH: Yeah. BW: And, and you were very lucky not to have put his bullets into the cockpit. HH: Yeah. Just lucky we dived in time and just in the, oh and one, one of the bullets had gone through the tail fin. Right through the middle. The next day the ground crew there were sticking sticks through it [laughs] I thought, oh my God, that was close. Yeah. It was nice. BW: I believe on that, on that particular raid on, as that was happening and you were spinning down you ended up upside down and you were on the, on the canopy. HH: On the top. Yeah. BW: So you were being pulled out of your seat. HH: Yeah. Oh yeah. BW: While the aircraft is upside down and you were on the canopy trying to get your parachute together. Is that right? HH: I undid my harness to, to go down and get my parachute and open the bomb doors. Open the exit place. And it wouldn’t open. And so I got back and then I was sitting on the seat and she went pffft. Yeah. On our first Lancaster raid we never got to the target. We lost two of the engines and we had a full bomb load and a fuel load so we turned back and headed for The Wash to jettison the bombs. And the bomb aimer thought, you know, we thought well in case anything happens we’d better get ready to bale out. He couldn’t open the doors. Just, it was the pressure and that, it just wouldn’t open. So if anything had happened we couldn’t have got out. But we jettisoned the bombs over The Wash and then jettisoned some of the fuel because it was a tremendous amount of fuel we carried. BW: But you managed to land safely. HH: Oh yeah. Yeah. We did. Yeah. BW: And were you ever caught in searchlights on other raids as well? You mentioned — HH: Oh yeah. Lots of times. Yeah. Especially on Mosquitoes. Every time we went near the target they picked us up because they had a lot, a lot of searchlights then. But on the Lancaster I think there was only two or three times we got caught in searchlights. Just for a short time. BW: Did the pilot have to take evasive action? HH: Well in the Mosquito, we stopped because we couldn’t get out of them. They were, you know coming from all sides and it didn’t matter. On a Lancaster he could get out of them. Yeah. BW: But you were never intercepted by fighters except for the, for the one occasion. HH: Except for that once. Yeah. And very lucky. BW: Were there other raids over France that you, that you recall? You mention one on the — HH: Vire. Yeah. BW: Vire Bridge. HH: The one, the worst one of all was [pause] oh my memory. Starts with an M. It was the marshalling yards in the north of France. Now, what Bomber Command didn’t realise was that the Germans were sending troops up to the battlefield and the big anti-aircraft was based at this railway station. And we went in. If I remember rightly it was ninety five Lancasters from Number 1 Group. And we went in and just it was murder actually. And I think we lost forty nine. It’s all there somewhere. This stuff. Ninety five and we lost about half of them. That German anti-aircraft unit was stationed there and we were, for the Lancaster we were flying, you know at fifteen thousand feet. Which is ideal for them. Yeah. That was a tremendous loss. BW: There’s a lot of reports I’ve seen of the German anti-aircraft fire being extremely accurate. It was always at the right height. HH: Oh yeah. Yeah. BW: But you never got hit yourself. HH: No. Just that once in a Wellington. You know, that first flight. That’s the only time we got hit. BW: You mentioned about flying on or around D-Day. Were you flying operations in support of D-Day? Do you remember anything about the build up? HH: We didn’t know anything about it. D-Day was the 6th of June. We went out to a target in Northern France on the 5th of June but we didn’t know. Nobody knew it was about D-Day. And coming back, on the H2S on the Channel I saw the Channel was full of ships. And I said, ‘It’s the invasion. It’s D-Day,’ and we went back to, to Elsham and they said it’s D-Day in the morning and we just all laughed. And I said we saw them, you know, on the radar. And of course it was. Next day was D-Day. It was tremendous seeing all these ships. Yeah. But then we did our last trip then and that was it. BW: And so very soon after that you finished flying on Lancasters. Just after D-Day. HH: Yeah. On D-Day. That was our last trip. Yeah. BW: And then you changed then to flying Mosquitoes. HH: Now the pilot, he went back on Lancasters in ’45. Mid-upper gunner and the rear gunner, they both went back on operations ’45. But the wireless operator he just got to a squadron when the war finished. And the flight engineer, he didn’t want to do anymore because he’d got married. BW: And did they let him? Let him — HH: He was training. Yeah. He was. Yeah. Oh yeah. He spent his time training. BW: But all the way through that you managed to keep together as a crew. HH: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then we met again in 1978. It’s all written down there. It’s a long long story. It was a young chap. He went to Bristol to see the boat racing there. And he was staying the night in a pub and he saw an axe hanging up behind the bar and he asked the barman. He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I used to break up aircraft after the war. During the war and after the war. And that’s from one of the aircraft.’ And he says, ‘Oh which aircraft?’ And he said, ‘Oh it’s got on it.’ And the bloke went and found out and it was our aircraft we used to fly in. And he lived in Kent. And he went to an air gunner’s meeting and met our air gunner and said, ‘Do you know, and it was our axe.’ And so from there you know we all got together then. It’s all written down there. BW: Yeah. HH: Bit by bit we wrote. And then they formed the Elsham Wolds Association. That’s how they got in touch with me from there. BW: And were there more than one squadron based at Elsham Wolds? HH: Yeah. Two squadrons there. 576. Was it 103 Squadron, I think? Yeah. I’m not sure. I think it was 103. BW: And were they both Lancaster squadrons? HH: Yeah. Yeah. [pause] BW: And so it seems you’ve had a pretty eventful and successful career and managed to avoid the, sort of impact of anti-aircraft fire. HH: Oh yeah. BW: And night fighters. HH: Yeah. BW: And all the sort of other dangers that people experienced in, and you — HH: I was really lucky. Yeah. Really, really lucky. BW: Did you ever know any crews that became prisoners? That had been shot down over France? HH: Yeah. BW: Were any captured? HH: I think it may be in there. If not I’ll — BW: Ok. HH: I tried to, there was thirty two of us passed out in South Africa. At the end of the war there was only eleven of us alive and three of these was prisoners of war. I contacted you know because like the magazines, aircraft magazines they used to print losses you know. Who was killed and that. And I used to keep a look out for it all. Yeah. There’s eleven and I met, you know I met all eleven eventually. BW: So you’ve done a lot of work to keep track of those guys that you met. HH: Oh yeah. Well that’s — BW: You keep in touch with them. HH: Yeah. BW: And that chance reunion in a pub down south with one of your, was it a bomb aimer who saw the axe over the, over the, at the pub? HH: No. No. It was another bloke. Just a chap who was out there. BW: I see. HH: He lived in Kent and he went, he went to the Air Gunner’s Association because he thought maybe somebody knows about this axe. And he was right. Our mid-upper gunner did. And so it was he was he that formed the Society at Elsham Wolds. John. He’s been here once or twice. John Wiltshire. That was his name. BW: John Wiltshire. And is he still around? Has he passed? HH: I don’t know. I don’t know. BW: Right [pause] Something I’m intrigued about if I could just ask. It’s your nickname. You have a nickname. Sam. Is that right? HH: Yeah. Well — BW: How did that come about? HH: Well when we were going out to South Africa on the boat we used to have drills. You know. We had rifles and bayonets. We used to do drills and one day we were doing a drill and I dropped my rifle. And the course comedian, of course he says, ‘Sam, Sam pick up thy rifle.’ That was a song that was going at the time. BW: I see. HH: That stuck with me ever since. ‘Sam, Sam pick up thy rifle.’ [pause] Then when I went to that Canadian OTU I got Jock then. Jock Harris. BW: Jock Harris. And you have the same surname of course. HH: Oh yeah. BW: As Bomber Harris. HH: Yeah. The RAF. BW: Was that ever put to you? The same nickname or — HH: No. No. No. BW: The RAF only had room for one Bomber Harris. HH: Yeah. Only room for one. [pause] BW: Are there any other sort of memorable operations or, or events that perhaps spring to mind? HH: Let’s think. No. I think we had it very easy really. [pause] No. The first Mosquito operation was fogged-in at base. It was fogged-in and we were running out of fuel and the pilot, George, he’d seen an airfield further back so we went back. We found this airfield and we were just, just wait to land and the engine stopped. Went bump on the runway and the fire brigade and that came out and got us out, you know. Bundled us out the aircraft and left the aircraft on the runway. And Lancasters, it was a Lancaster base and they were circling around the top because they couldn’t land. So we went and got debriefed and went to the mess and were having a cup of cocoa or something and there was a great thump on my shoulders. And I looked around. It was a chap who I lived next door to, we were born within three weeks of each other. We lived next door to each for about fourteen or fifteen years and he was on the one of the Lancasters. And he said, ‘Is that your heap of wood lying out there?’ [laughs] BW: Is that your heap of wood lying out there? HH: Yeah. BW: Yeah. HH: Jim Cassell. He’d got a mighty slap [laughs] BW: What a way to meet up after living all that time next door to each other. HH: Yeah. BW: And then bumping into each other. HH: Yeah. BW: Literally in the, in the debriefing room. Which was your favourite aircraft, do you think to fly? HH: The Lancaster during the wartime. But after that the Britannia was a beautiful aircraft. Yeah. That was the best one. But during the war the Lancaster. Yeah. BW: You mentioned when you went out to serve with 105 Squadron in the Far East and you continued to stay out in the Far East for about two and a half years. At what stage then did you leave the RAF and what prompted the move? HH: Oh 1968. I went to [pause] let me see. I left 48 Squadron. Came back to this country. I did a course, instructor’s course and then I instructed people to become navigators. In two places. And then I went to a place where they were training pilots on Meteors. I was a navigation officer and all sort of things. Then I went to RAF flying college as an instructor and was there for a while. Then went on Transport Command on Hastings, Britannias and VC10s. BW: So you pretty well stayed on multi engine aircraft. HH: Oh yeah. BW: All the way, all the way through. Even though when you were instructing navigators for Meteors. HH: Yeah. BW: You weren’t flying Meteors yourself. HH: Oh yeah. I flew in Meteors. BW: You were. Right. You flew Meteors as well. HH: Yeah. I, one of the blokes, he was a Polish bloke and at that time there were at the Farnborough thing. You know flying an aircraft straight up and then it would sort of come down, you know so he said, he got me flying. He said, ‘We’re going to try that today’ [laughs] We went up and the thing toppled over backwards and I was going to, I said, ‘I’m going to eject,’ and, ‘No. No. No,’ and he pulled it out then. BW: So instead of going up nice and vertical and coming back tail down there the same axis you fell out backwards. HH: Yeah. That’s the last time he tried it. Yeah. And I flew with Gus Walker on Canberras at the flying college. We did a trip to the North Pole from Norway but we ran out of oxygen just about seventy miles from the North Pole and we had to come back and we descended to the oxygen level and we landed at this place in Norway, Bardufoss. And as we landed we ran out of fuel and bump. She came down with a crash. BW: You were very lucky there again. HH: There. Yeah. Yeah. BW: Just made it home in time. HH: Just made it. BW: With no fuel. HH: Yeah. Gus Walker. He was a really nice bloke. Gus. We were up to the top there once before and the Canberra couldn’t get back in. We were going to land then further south and there was a Hastings there and no pilot except Gus and he’d never flown a Hastings before [laughs] And he says to us, he says, ‘Will it be alright if I fly it? And we said, ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ And he flew it down there. Flew it to Oslo. It was alright. One of the funny things was when we was on Britannias there was a scare over Germany where a German aircraft or something had buzzed a civil aircraft. And somehow it got arranged that newspaper people would come and fly in a Britannia and this sort of thing would be, would be happening. And I was a navigator and Gus Walker was in charge of this lot. And he came up to the flight deck and we were chatting there and forgot all the fact that everything was going through to all the passengers as well [laughs] And then I looked up and I said to the pilot, ‘That’s not the airfield. We’re at the wrong airfield. Another airfield across there.’ And then I thought oh my. And Gus Walker went back and when we landed all the press came out and then one of them come across. He said, ‘That was good. I listened to all that. That was really really good. I enjoyed that.’ But nothing came out in the papers happily. BW: So you managed to find the right airfield eventually. HH: Yeah. Gus Walker. Yeah. BW: Did you come across any famous pilots in the RAF at all? There were well known guys. People like Gibson flew Mosquitoes. Did you ever come across — HH: Douglas Bader. I met him twice. Once when he was doing the instructing on, just after the war. I met him down south somewhere. And then when I was on 48 Squadron in Singapore he, I don’t know, he came in there to the mess. I don’t know. I can’t remember. And he recognized me in the crowd and I thought [laughs] and everybody’s [pause] yeah. He was a nice bloke. BW: Ok. Is there anything that you would like to show us on the computer at all. But I think — HH: I think you’ve got it — BW: It might be a case of printing it. HH: I think it’s all on there. BW: Ok. HH: Wherever you have it. Yeah. BW: Ok. HH: It’s all there. I hope. But if there’s anything else just phone. I’ll get it. BW: Ok. HH: I’ll tell you about these logbook pages. [pause] BW: Just going to have a look at some logbook pages. [pause] BW: We’re just, we’re just looking at one of the logbooks. Would you just describe what it says on the citation there? It’s dated 8th of October 1946. Is that right? At the bottom there. HH: On 8th October 1946. Yeah. Something Headquarter 46 Group. Letter reference 46 at C250 something, something dated 20th of August 1946. BW: What does the, so it says at the top. “Incidences of avoidance by exceptional flying skill and judgement of loss or damage to aircraft or personnel.” And it says, “Flying Officer HST Harris DFC, whilst navigation instructor on an Oxford aircraft EB798 during — ” HH: “Exercise.” BW: “Exercise.” HH: “On eureka.” BW: “On eureka.” [pause] HH: “Eureka homings” BW: “Eureka homings from St Mawgan.” HH: “From St Mawgan. The starboard engine failed and was feathered by — ” BW: “By his skill.” HH: “In operating the radar screen he enabled his pilot to carry out the shortened BABS. Let down.” BW: “Guidance.” HH: “And made a good landing in conditions, bad weather and poor visibility after breaking cloud at two hundred and fifty feet with the runway immediately ahead. By his knowledge of his radio aids and his skill in the operation of these he helped his pilot to save the aircraft from —" BW: “Damage. Saved the aircraft from damage and the crews from —" HH: “Injury.” BW: “Injury.” HH: That’s a long time ago [laughs] BW: So that — HH: 1946. BW: Yeah. That is a citation that was presumably made into your logbook for skill in flying and avoiding an accident and injury to crew. HH: Yeah. BW: That’s very unique. HH: That’s this one here. BW: Well done. HH: In six — BW: So, 608 Squadron. HH: Downham Market. BW: Downham Market. HH: That’s operations. Yeah. BW: I’ll just pause again while you look for another document. [pause] BW: So — HH: This is a bit here. BW: So, for your services you were awarded the DFC. Was that because it was standard for aircrew or — HH: No. It’s — BW: For people to be awarded after so many missions or was there an act of gallantry. HH: There wasn’t anything definite. But all pilots, when they did a tour of operations, all pilots automatically got a DFC. But I did fifty operations and I suppose that’s why I got it. BW: Because you’d done over fifty ops. HH: Hmmn? BW: Because you’d done over fifty ops. HH: No. The war finished then. No. Yeah, I could have done a lot more. Yeah. BW: It’s quite something though to have come through so many operations. As you said before particularly because so many aircrew were killed during that time. HH: It was just less than two months ago on the television they were doing some sort of programme and they said only one aircrew member in forty [pause] only one aircrew member in a hundred was it, survived forty operations. I forget the exact number now. I know that was forty operations and there were very few people. BW: Yeah. HH: That had done that. BW: Yeah. That’s quite something. That’s quite an excellent sort of achievement really. HH: See these things here. You’ve seen them [pause] This. My navigation logs. That’s, I think, I don’t know which aircraft that is. Put that other light on. BW: So these are on, let’s have a look. [pause] BW: So these navigation logs are also recorded in — HH: Yes. BW: Wartime service so did you have to fill out effectively two logs. HH: Some of them. Some of them are. Not all of them I don’t think. I’m trying to see. BW: You Ok? HH: Yeah. Where’s the switch? Oh, it’s up here [pause] The light switch is on there. BW: So did navigators have to fill out another log as well as their own flying log? HH: No. BW: For operations. HH: No. BW: Or was this just done as an instructor? HH: This light doesn’t work now. Oh wait a minute. Maybe it does. No. It’s broken. That’s why it’s off. I think the bulbs gone. Yeah. It’s — BW: It’s alright. [pause] BW: Ok. HH: You’ve got that all on there. BW: So these records are all on the disc as well. HH: Yeah. Yeah. BW: Ok. HH: It’ll take a lot of printing out. BW: It looks like it. Yeah. HH: And that’s.— [pause] BW: Ok. I’ll just pause the recording while we look through for the documents. [recording paused] What I’ll do I’ll end the recording there. We’ve had a look through some documents and photographs of your time in the Far East. So all that’s left to do is, on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre is just to say thank you very much for your time Mr Harris. It’s very good of you. HH: You’ll find a lot of things in these. BW: Thank you. HH: These CDs. Yeah. BW: Yeah. We’ll arrange to get your CDs and documents copied by one of the other volunteers. They will send somebody out but they weren’t able to do that today. So we’ll sort that out for you. Thank you. [recording paused] BW: Very much so. Yeah. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Harry Harris Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brian Wright Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-09-09 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AHarrisHST150909 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Pending revision of OH transcription Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:19:59 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Description An account of the resource Harry ‘Sam’ Harris grew up in Scotland and volunteered for the Air Force. He trained as a navigator in South Africa. On the penultimate day of his training he flew over a multitude of lifeboats bearing the survivors of a torpedoed ship. The next day he flew over a U-Boat above water and the pilot turned the aircraft to attack it. On return to Great Britain he was posted to 576 Squadron at RAF Elsham Wolds. After his first tour he wanted to continue to fly and was posted to a Mosquito Squadron. He discusses being attacked by a Me 262. He notes that, of the 32 men who passed out with him in South Africa, only 11 were left after the war and three of those had been prisoners of war. After the war Harry stayed in the RAF and flew in a wide variety of aircraft. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Maureen Clarke Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. France Germany Great Britain Norway South Africa Arctic Ocean--North Pole England--Lincolnshire Germany--Berlin Scotland--Montrose Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1939 1940 1941 1942 1944 1945 1946 105 Squadron 576 Squadron 608 Squadron aircrew Anson bombing bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944) briefing C-47 control caravan crewing up debriefing Distinguished Flying Cross fear Gee Halifax Lancaster love and romance Me 262 Meteor military living conditions military service conditions Mosquito navigator Nissen hut Operational Training Unit Oxford promotion RAF Downham Market RAF Elsham Wolds searchlight service vehicle submarine superstition training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/348/3517/AWaughmanR150803.mp3 4b20ad44c8f089eeec0544eae42cc539 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/348/3517/PWaughmanR1501.jpg ea7d7d15f3b9f96826258b16ff6e1ae6 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 Waughman, Rusty Russell Reay Waughman Russell R Waughman Russell Waughman R R Waughman R Waughman Description An account of the resource Two oral history interviews with Russell Reay "Rusty" Waughman (1923 - 2023, 1499239 and 171904 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 101 Squadron. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-04-01 2015-08-03 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 Waughman, R Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document RW: All wrote a little letter and signed it and sent it to the station commander who interviewed us and said, ‘This constitutes mutiny.’ So, with all our explanations of what went on he accepted that the fact that we’d been left off the draft and the corporal [?] corporal from West Kirby was actually charged for taking bribes to take, put people on, take people off drafts and put friends on. So, there we are. There we are. We’ve got no records, no kit, no nothing so we had to start again. So we didn’t do the, so we went and did our IT, initial training, again at Stratford on Avon which was rather nice, very fine. Nice place Stratford. I think I had my first girlfriend at Stratford. She was a very, she was a nice little girl. I often whatever happened to all these creatures looking back on all these times but there we are. We did our initial training again and from there of course we had to learn to start playing with aeroplanes and to start with we had to make sure that we were alright and worth sending overseas. We had to go to Codsall at Wolverhampton and er on a Tiger Moth just go solo. As soon as you got, went solo that was it finished until you were posted overseas and we went, went over to Canada on the Empire Training Scheme on the little ship called The Battery a converted Polish ship which was very comfortable, very nice. Very congested of course. And we landed at St John’s in Canada, down to Moncton which was the holding unit and then we travelled all across Canada on a public train to Calgary and the little aerodrome there was called Dewinton, which was just south of Calgary. We’d been there, back there since and Dewinton is now a suburb of Calgary which is incredible when you think of it. And that was nice and we were learning to fly on Tiger Moths and the Stearman. The Americans, the Boeing people had sent up sixty Stearman to the air force for people to learn to fly on. So we trained on both the Stearman and Tiger Moths and of course having finished the course I was a bit slow learning so I was, I think they were a little concerned about what the state of flying was. I was, I’ve always been a slow learner and I had a wash out check with the CGI on the station who very kindly allowed me to carry on and really from that time I never really looked back. It was really quite remarkable. And for some reason, I don’t know why, looking back I don’t know why they ever asked it but they said, ‘What do you want to become? What do you want to join? Fighter Command or Bomber Command?’ And you can imagine about ninety nine percent of us said Fighter Command so I was sent to Bomber Command which meant going down, back down on to the prairies to Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw learning to fly on the Airspeed Oxford and we had great times there. One thing we learned there which helped us later on in flying experience was the fact that we used to go off on a cross country with two pilots, no navigator, just one acting as pilot and one acting as navigator and switched over halfway through and we saw on a lake, which looked rather nice, we said, ‘Let’s low fly over this lake,’ which we weren’t allowed to do of course, which we did. Little did we know that there were ducks on the lake which rose up and we clattered through these ducks. I ended up with a duck wrapped around my face. We had six duck in the aircraft. Fortunately, they ended up in the engines nacelles, they didn’t damage the engines and of course when we got back we had a right old rocket from the, from the boss but the fact that we got the aircraft back between us and landed they allowed us to carry on. But I had to go to the dentist the next day on camp and the dentist said, ‘Oh you were the bloke who flew that aeroplane.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘We had duck for dinner.’ And then I sat back. And of course that was sort of an experience which helped us much, much later in life, in flying life, which was quite remarkable. And so of course having finished that course you took the little white flash out of your cap which was indicated that you were UT aircrew and took that out and you sewed on your wings in and then, oh, you were a pilot which was quite, which was quite remarkable. And of course you had to get back home so we forgot all about aeroplanes for quite a little while, travelled right back across Canada down to New York where we joined the Queen, Queen Elizabeth to come back home on the Queen Elizabeth and that was, wasn’t in convoy. We just pointed east and set off. It was quite, so new to us. We were so naïve and that was just a wonderful experience except on the Queen Elizabeth there were seventeen thousand others and we had a first class cabin along with eight other people which, you were sleeping in bunks with a chappie’s bottom above you rubbing on your nose, you know. But it was a wonderful experience. Two meals a day and it was wonderful. We lost two people overboard er but the boat didn’t stop they just threw life belts over and, poor souls. But there were Americans, nurses, Americans, Canadians, all coming back, back to the UK. Got back to Gourock up on the Clyde and then of course we had to find somewhere to go and be rehabilitated. We went first of all to Harrogate and then down to Whitley Bay and then back down to Oxford where we had a little rehab course on Oxfords just to get your hand back in again on Oxfords. That was at Kidlington, at Croughton, just outside Oxford. And the course, then of course you had to go to OTU Operational Training Unit and that was an amazing experience when we were flying the Vickers Wellington, the old Wimpy. When we got there of course you had to get a crew. You had a get a five man crew for the Wimpy and the system as I’m sure everybody knows was the fact that they got all the pilots, all the navigators, all the wireless operators a gunner and no engineer at the time and but the, and the navigator and put everybody into this big room and said, ‘Sort yourselves out into crews.’ And they used to go around and say, ‘I haven’t got a navigator. Are you a navigator? Can you fly? Do you want to fly with me?’ and this sort of system is amazing and the system worked. It really was incredible. And my crew had, you had no idea of the background of these people and my crew turned out to be the most wonderful collection of blokes and we flew really as a crew and not just a skipper and bods behind we just, and it worked out wonderfully well. Just to give an idea what they were my bomb aimer up front he was, had a little gypsy existence over in Manchester, a dapper little man, he used to come on operations with a crease in his trousers which was unheard of. My engineer, we had two engineers, I’ll relay about that a little bit when we come to flying. Les, my, I shan’t give his name because it so happened that he couldn’t cope on operations. He was just more or less a young lad working in an office. My navigator Alec, Alec Cowan, he was a real, he was a wonderful navigator, wonderful navigator. He lied about his age to join up. He joined up when he was sixteen and he was operational flying with us at eighteen. We didn’t know at the time. We didn’t find this out until sixty years later which was just as well. We were sitting in the pub at, at Lincoln at our reunion and we were saying, we had just had our eightieth birthdays and we said. ‘Oh we just had our, when’s your eightieth birthday Alec?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s not for another two years yet.’ So that was the first time we, we found out what he was and he was just really more or less straight from school but he really was a most wonderful navigator. Taffy, a little wireless operator, he was a character. Oh, he was a mad little nut he was. We tried to find out where he was after the war and we discovered that his background was in Aberdare and his uncle had a pub and I think he was helping out in his uncle’s pub and I think he took that up for the rest of his life and I wouldn’t say he was a rebel, he was a wonderful character. His mischief, terribly mischievous bloke and we still keep in touch now. He’s a very, very close friend. A lovely little friend, Taffy. My engineer, I eventually had another engineer. A chap called Curly, Curly Ormerod and he was on the situation where he didn’t fly with his skipper who was shot down and killed and he didn’t fly that night he, because I had to get rid of my first engineer Curly was a spare engineer and he joined us and he was a, worked for the council in Oldham I think it was where he was a trainee engineer and just, only a young lad, he was twenty and my special duty operator because of the special duties he was my special duty operator, he was an Austin apprentice and he wanted to join the air force as a pilot but the waiting list for the pilot training then was quite long and he couldn’t wait that long so he volunteered to join as a gunner. We’ll explain a little more about Ted when we come to what they did in the aeroplane. Tommy, my mid upper gunner, he was a council worker in Rotherham and he was the old man of the crew. He was twenty six. The next one down was twenty. I was twenty at the time which was incredible when you think of our kids at twenty. You know, I’m sure if the same thing happened again now I’m sure the responses from the children, the young youth, would be the same but he was, he was married and he had a bit of leave on the station because his wife produced a baby. So, poor old Tommy, he had rather a tragic death after the war but still that Tommy. And my rear gunner, he was a Canadian. His father, an Englishman who had a funeral service, funeral service which he developed in Vancouver in America and Harry through his father’s English experience although he joined the RCAF he came over and joined the RAF as a Canadian. Again, these lads, you know although these vast different backgrounds we all gelled and we all worked together wonderfully well and what they did with us they kept us alive, you know and it really was wonderful. And I, myself, I couldn’t, I didn’t have any education at all. I went to school but because of my illnesses I went to school to start with at the age of five in Newcastle and then I became desperately ill and I was in bed for six months as a young teenager with TB so I couldn’t take place in sport or anything like that so when they came to doing exams when they did the scholarship in those days I went to school just before I was due to take the scholarship and of course I didn’t pass. So there I was. I was, I couldn’t go to a secondary school so I was sent to what they called a training school for the shipyards and it was a sort of engineering training school where at the age sixteen I started to learn about art and drawing, machine drawing and this sort of thing. It was, I enjoyed the school. It was nice but I had no exam, no exams at the end of it so when I, when I joined up I had no matric, no school cert, no exams at all. So how on earth I was ever passed. The only thing that helped I think when they were testing for the attestation was the fact that I became, I started off on the stage at the Newcastle Rep Theatre for a, for a year a bit while I got a position as a pupil surveyor at an architect surveyors office in Newcastle and there I used to do a lot of surveying work using angles and trade vectors and things which helped in the navigation exams and I think that helped me to pass the attestation exams in London. So there we are. There, you’ve got a crew. But we mentioned Ted, the special duty chap, Ted Manners, but he didn’t join the crew at OTU at all because we only had the five man crew and we didn’t know about, anything about special squadrons then of course and of course having finished at Operational Training Unit on Wimpies we were posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit which was at 1662 Conversion Unit at Blyton and of course with the demand for Lancaster aircraft and operational aircraft they had very few Lancasters available. The ones they had available were really the ones that weren’t fit for operational flying so we started to learn to fly four engine aircraft on Halifaxes, on ‘Halibags.’ A nice aeroplane to fly but not quite as amenable as the Lancaster from our experience later on but that was, that was nice, that was fine and of course on the station, on the same station they had what they called an LFS a Lancaster Finishing School so when we’d gone solo on the Halibag we went on to join this LFS, the Lancaster Finishing School and this was on Lancasters and they were a different aeroplane all together. It was a wonderful experience and experience we never expected to have in my life. But I had a little problem. Although my height was right I’ve got little short legs and when you’ve got twelve, four engines of twelve eighty horsepower all taking off with each engine, each propeller going around with three thousand revs you get a lot of torque, a lot of swing on take-off and with my little short legs I was having a hell of a job keeping these bloody black things straight down the runway on take-off so I was a little bit later finishing my training conversion than my friend Paul [Zaggy] who I’d trained with, been in parallel with for many, many months. And when we finished, when he’d finished his course he was posted to 101 squadron and when my turn came about two or three days later I asked the flight commander, ‘Can I go and join my friend Paul on 101 squadron because we’d been friends for a long, long time?’ And his response was, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s a special duty squadron and we only send the best ones there.’ And I said Oh God that was a bit of a comedown. Anyway, a couple of days later he said, ‘Right, Waughman, 101 squadron. Off you go.’ And I said, ‘Well what’s this special duties thing?’ He said, ‘Oh you’ll find out when you get there.’ He didn’t know actually from what we found out later. And when we got to the squadron the day we arrived on the squadron my friend Paul had been killed the night before. And that, you suddenly begin to realise this is serious stuff, you know and you didn’t really think about it beforehand but then it became realistic. You did a couple of cross countries to get your hand in on the squadron experience and then we were given a special duty operator. An eighth member of the crew who spoke German, a German speaker operator and he was flying, was using this equipment called ABC. This ABC equipment started down on the south of England where there were fifteen stations with very fluent German speaking operators who could talk to the German night fighter controllers and jam their signals to their fighters, instructions to their fighters but it only had a range of a hundred and forty miles so that didn’t cover the deep penetration raids in to eastern Europe. So, Sydney Bufton, one of the air ministry boffins said well let’s put it in an aeroplane so they put, started putting them in. It took about three thousand hours to fit this equipment in to an aeroplane and quite an expense and this was allocated to 100 squadron. Now, 100 squadron were also having H2S which was a ground scanning radar and the power unit on the Lancaster mean you couldn’t cope with the ABC and the H2S so they chose the next squadron down which was 101 squadron. So 101 squadron became the special duty squadron flying this ABC and what they called the stuff on the ground station was called Jostle and it had a code name of Corona. Hence it became the Cigar and it was known as ground Cigar and of course when they got it stuck into an aeroplane it became ABC which was Airborne Cigar and Bufton wrote to the air ministry saying that in future correspondence all reference to Airborne Cigar aircraft will be known as ABC in future correspondence so hence 101 squadron became the ABC of the RAF which is remarkable. What Ted had, he had a little three inch cathode ray tube where he could pick up the frequency of the night fighter controllers and lock a little strobe on these, on these, on his screen, cover that with the aircraft’s, aircraft strobe, lock that on and he’d locked on to the frequency of the German night fighter controller’s instructions to the fighters. Having decided that on another little switch where there was German speaking because there were Poles, Czechs and things, once he’d decided that he pressed another little button which blasted engine noise out on that frequency and jammed the signals. And it was a wigwog noise woooooo oooo oooo and the Germans called that, they had a name for this and it was called dudelsack and I think it’s quite an appropriate little description ‘cause dudelsack means bagpipes. And so we had this ABC equipment which is wonderful stuff and this started operating in September, in ‘43. We didn’t join the squadron until November ‘43 and on the first raid the first, one of the first instructions that the special duty operator received from the German signals was, ‘Achtung. Achtung. English bastards coming.’ And that was one of the first instructions they had but sadly, one of our aircraft on that first raid was shot down and the Germans had the system right from the beginning but even the [telephones] people knew of the system but they couldn’t really work out all the technology of it at all so that was quite the thing. That was one of the things that added to the attrition rate on our squadron, the fact that the German night fighters could home on to our transmissions ‘cause we were using their frequencies so they could home on to us and the ABC aircraft were used on every major bombing raid that went out and the idea was that our aircraft were staggered every ten miles through the whole bomber stream. We acted as a normal bomber aircraft with a reduced bomb load, only slightly, well I suppose so I don’t think it ever happened actually but the equipment weighed something like [six or seven hundred pounds] plus another operator so it knocked our bomb load down a little bit and we had three enormous aerials transmitters on the aircraft. Two on the top and one under the nose and these were nearly seven foot long. It didn’t affect the aerodynamics of the aircraft whatsoever. We didn’t, we wouldn’t have realised they were there and we just there we were and our first raid, when we went off on our first raid my little engineer, there was something strange about him he didn’t seem really with it at all. Anyway, so we found we were getting in a bit of a mess and got in the way so, with experience I think we could have carried on but being so inexperienced we came back, we aborted the trip. So, we were, this was just at the very start in November of the Battle of Berlin and this was a trip to Berlin and the WingCo wasn’t too happy about it, WingCo Alexander. And our next operation a couple of nights later again was to Berlin and Les, my little engineer, nineteen year old, we had an engine on fire, a starboard outer went on fire and he just couldn’t do anything he just sat on the floor and just shiver and shake he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t do any of his work at all and I had to, the graviner button on the Lancaster is down on the right hand side of the instrument panel and I had to half get out of the seat to cover all this lot. He couldn’t do any of the fuel control systems at all. So, anyway when we got back I reported this to the wing commander who said, ‘Well you know I suppose you’ve done the right thing,’ and Les, this, my little engineer left the squadron that day, that afternoon. Whether he was made LMF which they usually do in those days we never did find out but he never should have been because he never refused to fly and this is what happened to a lot of Bomber Command aircrew who were literally shit scared. They really were and that was really a physical thing as well and these lads who knew what the conditions was never, they’d rather face the guns of Germany rather than have the stigma of LMF stamped on their documents and this LMF stamped on their documents followed them wherever they went afterwards and this information is kept by the record office and isn’t being released until 2035 so by that time none of the people will be alive to get any slur on their character. So we lost our little Les and this is when we got Curly who didn’t fly with Les the night he was shot down so we acquired Curly as an engineer. Wonderful character. Again, another great tease at the, he was a nice man though but we gelled as a crew and really in those days you did become slightly insular because you worked as a crew and trained as a crew and you played as a crew and I must admit we, we drank a lot. Eight pints a night wasn’t out of the way you know and this was part of the relaxation system for the, for the air force. Because of this Harris wrote to all station commanders, again we found out this much, much later, only fairly recently, the fact that a directive had been sent to the station commanders saying that no Bomber Command aircrew must be used on station duties unless it affected the running of the station and intimated that the relaxation activities must be condoned. Which, as far as that was concerned, was young lads full of testosterone was beer and women and it sounds a bit crude but the girls and boys on the station were really wonderful. They were really good companions. They knew what the system was and they complied and they were really lovely. We had one little girl who used to look after us in our little hut, in our little nissen hut which was, which was just a corrugated iron nissen hut and she was a little Welsh girl with a little doggie and she was known as the camp bicycle ‘cause everybody rode it, you know and these are the sort of the things that went but it wasn’t pornography it was just an accepted way of release of stress and one of my friends who I knew very well he used to say, ‘Well, thank God for sex. It’s kept me sane.’ And this was just a means of release of stress on the aircraft. And a lot of it did happen in Bomber Command sadly and it caused people to lose their lives which is rather a shame but you know those lads who flew and knowing their condition like that they were really the bravest of the brave, you know. They really were. Wonderful. And it kept Bomber Command going. But LMF, they didn’t have so many LMF. I think there weren’t a huge number cases of LMF but it was a rotten stigma and of course then having been on the on the, on the squadron with our ABC equipment we were involved very much with the German night fighter system and this was organised by a chap called, oh I’ve forgotten what they called him now, I’ll think of it in minute but he organised that the, all of eastern Europe, western Europe would be split in to five boxes. The Kammhuber. Kammhuber, the Kammhuber Line and this in each box each controller had control of their fighter system and they had a couple of systems there where they had, called Wilde Sau and Zahme Sau which is Wild Boar and Tame Boar and with the Wurzburg radar they could direct a fighter in to the bomber stream and nearly always ME109s and they were the Wild Boar who could go and find their own aircraft to attack and the Tame Boar was with Wurzburg and Freya aircraft systems whereby they could direct an aircraft almost on to an individual aircraft which was quite alarming as it turned out. We had experience of that and they developed a system called Lichtenstein whereby you see these aircraft with German aircraft they nearly all the ME109s with an array of aerials around the nose and they could actually home onto an individual aircraft and because of our ABC equipment we were very, very vulnerable. They could home on to the ABC equipment and the H2S and they developed the system called Naxos and SN2 which was very, very effective indeed and they could home directly on to aircraft and counter, counter measures for our broadcast so we had, they had a system where they could home on to our aircraft. We had a system where we would counter measure their counter measures, counter measure their receptions and they developed a [Frensburg] which counter measured our counter measures and we developed counter measures that would counter measured their counter measures and so on and the electronic wall we learned afterwards really was quite terrific but the German night fighter system was, really was very good. And they had with their, with their Wurzburg searchlights, radar controlled searchlights, radar controlled guns they had what they called predicted flak and predicted searchlights and when you were flying along you’d see this characteristic big blue searchlight appear which would wave backwards and forwards and as soon as it picked you up on the radar it flicked on to you and you were flying in their searchlights and all the searchlights roundabout would come on. You’d have perhaps forty, fifty, sixty searchlights flying with you and you were flying in daylight and of course the night fighters used to get in amongst you then but we had systems of flying. We flew the corkscrew pattern which flying a corkscrew pattern more or less like a horizontal corkscrew. It was bloody hard work when you’ve got a fully loaded aircraft. You lost a little bit of height doing it but it was really effective and the sad thing is when gunners, some gunners saw these things and gave instructions like say, ‘Dive starboard go’ and something like this some of the captains said, well, ‘Why?’ And of course by that time it was far too late but this corkscrew pattern did help enormously to evade the things and on the predicted flak it was quite a characteristic burst of flak. They usually put out a box system of flak where they just covered this area completely with anti-aircraft fire and you had to fly through this box of fire but they had this predicted flak whereby they could send up the shell which would burst in the characteristic sort of development and if you saw this behind you, if you were lucky enough, you knew this was predicted flak so, and you knew it’d take forty five seconds for the Germans to reload their guns, fire their shells and for the shell to burst so you turned off forty five degrees, and flew for about forty seconds then turned back ninety degrees and hope the next one burst behind you. This happened to us once and we nearly ended up in the system for twenty five, twenty minutes just doing this evasion all the time. Similarly with the searchlights, the searchlights I caused a bit of hilarity one night when we got back to debriefing saying that we were attacked by searchlights over Hanover but we were in searchlights for nearly half an hour trying to get out of them which, but with these sort of things happened on raids and so of course there we are we are flying on a squadron and it was daily life of being on the squadron. When you woke up in the morning usually late, after breakfast or early after lunch you went up to flights and on the wall you saw a battle order and could see your name on the battle order and all the battle order told you was A) you were flying, the crew you were flying with, the aircraft you were flying in, and the time of briefing, and the time of meal and when you saw that the first thing you did was go and change your underwear which is, which is, it really was. To say that you weren’t fearful, you know, it was very, it was very anxious, became very anxious because you had no idea where you were going. It was just you were on the battle order that night. So we used to go up to flights and check the aircraft, the serviceability of the aircraft, meet the ground crew, wonderful ground crew I had, and there you’d ask what the petrol load was and what the bomb load was and if you had lots of petrol, not so many bombs you knew you were going a long way. Vice versa if you had lots of bombs and not so much petrol you weren’t going so far so you had some idea what the thing was going to, what the raid was going to be about and then at briefing of course, on the wall, we were all in nissen huts by the way, little tin huts, on the wall they had a big map of Europe covered by a map, a curtain and when you all sat down and all got collected together they drew the curtain back and there was the red line which was a tape showing the route to and from the target and if it was a long distance target, Berlin, Munich, these groans used to go up right through the briefing and then you were briefed by the various section leaders, the met officer, the armament officer, navigation officer and there of course then you had to get out to the aircraft so we went in to the crew room, got our kit on and the girls in the parachute section, [collect your] parachute section, they were great. One little girl one day said, ‘Let me have your battle dress.’ And she took my battle dress off, took my wings off and sewed a lucky three penny piece under my wing. And these are the sort of things that went on. Wonderful characters. And you had a locker where you kept your kit in the locker and when you were flying the rear gunner had what they called a Sidcot suit which was an electrically heated suit but the rest of the crew you could really manage with just a thick jumper and battle dress. Some wore some form of overall but the costumes were really quite, quite ordinary. You had flying boots. We had, originally we had the brown fur lined flying boots and after that we had the escape boots, black escape boots, whereby they had a little knife concealed in the boot where you could cut the top off and leave a little, like a pair of shoes when you got shot down. There we are. We’ve got our kit, we’ve got our kit we’ve got to get out the aircraft so the crew buses arrived and we had to get out in to the, in to the aircraft but the atmosphere was quite electric, you know. They had sort of two sort or reactions. Some people were verbose and talked and over talked which was out of characteristic and some were just clammed up and just didn’t talk at all. So, when you got to out to the aircraft you just checked and went around and did a normal flight check for the aircraft, waiting for the signal to taxi out and of course once you got there, once you got in the aircraft there was no outside communication whatsoever ‘cause the Germans could pick up. In fact with their radar system they knew that the raid was going to take place and they knew the height you were going to fly at, they knew the course you were going to fly and the speed you were flying at but they didn’t know where you were going. So, we were waiting at the aircraft for the verilight to tell us to go and taxi out and of course the other little superstitions, you know the old tale of just a bit of luck you wee’d on the tail wheel. The lads used to wee on the tail wheel. We never did of course but er [laughs]. My rear gunner Harry, being stuck at the back he didn’t feel a part of this the bombing lark at all so he used to take a couple of empty beer bottles with him and when we were over the target his contribution to the bombing was to throw out a couple of empty beer bottles. This, this on one occasion when we were waiting to get on the aircraft the station commander, Group Captain King used to come around and just say, ‘Hello lads.’ Wished them all best of luck. Thinking of a man like that knowing, sending all these lads you know that a third of them aren’t going to come back, you know. What went through their mind must be, must be awful. Anyway, when the group captain saw Harry without his beer bottles Harry explained. ‘Oh I haven’t got my bloody beer bottles.’ He said, ‘Right. Get in the car.’ Dashed down to the mess, got a couple of beer bottles and drove him back again so Harry had them. Whether he drank them or threw them out full we never did find out but Harry had his beer bottles. I had a little, I wasn’t superstitious, touch wood but my cousin Mary, I’m very fond of Mary I think our parents were getting a little bit worried but Mary she gave me a silk scarf, a little RAF silk scarf which I wore on every operation I went on and I wore long johns, used to wear the long johns on the flying and I thought well if I change my long johns I’ll, you know, I’ll change my luck. We had two pairs. One for wearing and one for washing. I never had mine washed and I wore the same pair of long johns for thirty operations and the lads used to say, ‘Well you took them off and stood them up in your locker’ and you can imagine the odour on the aircraft with all this sort of thing going on must have been pretty awful. You didn’t notice it at the time. But another thing I had was my dad, one of the talismans for naval people was a caul and the caul is a sack a baby is born in and my dad was given one of these when he, when he first joined, when he started operations in the navy in the First World War and I was on leave just before I was joining the squadron. They knew I was going to go on an operational squadron and I was standing, I was standing by the stove in the kitchen and my dad came up and he wasn’t a very effusive man and he said, ‘Here’s this,’ and he gave me his caul in a little tin box which I’ve still got and that’s over a hundred years old and he said, ‘There you are. Good luck. I love you.’ And that was really a three hankie job, you know. A wonderful little man. But there we are I had my caul and I didn’t take it on operations but it kept me alive and these are the sort of superstitions you had but we weren’t on because of the job we were doing we weren’t allowed to take any sort of document, photographs or anything at all because of the very secret nature of our, with the work we doing. It was treated very, we weren’t allowed to take any photographs on the squadron at all. We did. And everything was kept very, we weren’t allowed to discuss it anywhere outside but A) our aircraft was parked at dispersal, we were W which was far end of dispersal just by a fence and the main road was just outside and I don’t know what guarding they had on the aircraft but anyway part of the secrecy thing was not having to take any documentation. When we got our sandwiches they were wrapped up in newspaper so they had a good, they could have had a good idea what was going on. So there we were, off on operations and operational flying became to start with you were so inexperienced that you didn’t really realise what was going on and the casualty rate in the first five operations was something like forty percent which was as high as that and it really was. It became quite an alarming thing. We didn’t realise at the time. We only found out this many years afterwards. So our squadron were very vulnerable and once we got past the five operations squadrons, five operations you really became quite fatalistic. You just, you were doing a job and accepted what you had to do and you expected you were going to die and it was quite a strange relationship that you had and you had a bit, a little bit of sick humour and I’m sure folk know of the grim reaper, the old skeletal figure with his scythe and with his scythe you got the chop and we used to say, when you were talking, standing by somebody, put your hand on his shoulder and you said, ‘Death put his bony hand on your shoulder and [live] chap I’m coming,’ you know and if you were in the mess and one of your comrades has been killed and gone you used to drink his health and you used to say, ‘Here’s to good old,’ so and so, ‘And here’s the next one to die.’ So this sort of atmosphere existed. Some people had premonitions you know and my mother, my mother was an old witch really she used to have dreams and things and she had a dream one night that things weren’t going to go right and she tried to contact the station to see what was going on and of course she couldn’t because the station was completely isolated and that was a night when we had an awful lot of trouble. But she had this idea. And one of the girls on the squadron one of the little WAAF officers, on the Nuremberg raid, said to her fiancé Jimmy [Batten] Smith she said, ‘You’ll be over the target about ten minutes past midnight.’ She said, ‘Right, I’ll set my alarm clock and I’ll think of you when you’re over the target.’ She woke up about 11 o’clock, half past ten, 11 o’clock and knew something wasn’t right and she switched on her light and listened and couldn’t find anything, anything about it at all and Jimmy, over the target, as soon as he left the target, just at the time, he was shot down and killed so he never got back. There’s another, our Flight Commander, Squadron Leader Robinson he was a wonderful, he had very, very rapid promotion because our previous flight commander was killed and he was promoted from flight lieutenant up to, straight up to squadron leader within a matter of weeks and he became our squadron commander er flight commander. Wonderful little man. And he had a rear gunner who was seconded from the American air force and this American chappie still had his brown overalls and American flying kit and they were in the mess and the lads were playing crib and poker and he, this Jones a chap called Jones, won the, won the kitty and I can see it now a little pile of ten shilling notes which he won which he when he picked it up he said, ‘Shan’t be needing this.’ And gave it all away. That night, on the raid, on the twenty ninth raid they were all killed. So whether they had these sort of premonitions, you know, it was quite remarkable and one of the bomb, when I came off leave one occasion we only had a short, a few days leave the bombing, the armament officer, only a young lad, he looked strange and I said, ‘Are you alright, Geoff?’ And he said, ‘Well, funny thing happened,’ an aircraft had crashed on take-off and hit part of the bomb dump and he jumped in his little wagon to go out and see what he could do out there and when he got on the perimeter track near where the bomb dump was there was a chap waiting and saying, ‘Don’t go down in there. They’re all dead.’ This chap was covered in blood and whatever. He said, ‘Don’t go down in there. They’re all dead.’ But he said, ‘I must.’ So when he went down to see the, what was going on he found the body of the man he’d been talking to on the perimeter track dead in the hut. So, and within a few weeks he was white haired. And these sorts of strange things happened you know it’s a, it’s a, you didn’t realise at the time all the significance of all these things but there we are. One of the things that happened, on one of the early raids when we went and poor old Bomber Harris, he didn’t like the idea at all but they developed what they called the transport plan whereby they were bombing railway martialling yards, [tank?] depots, station er station signal boxes and train stations to stop goods going down for the pre-invasion, for the German pre- invasion and so this was the transport plan and Harris didn’t like this but we went off on one raid to a place called Hasselt which was on the Belgian/German border, railway martialling yards and we got within about ten minutes of the target. This was all at night. This was all night flying of course in cloud, mainly in cloud and my engineer who was looking out the window said a very rude word, something about fornicating in hades and the next thing we knew this other aircraft hit us slap on the side and we just crashed into this, the two aircraft just crashed together and we were, he was slightly underneath us and his propellers cut through our bomb aimer’s compartment, just behind Norman’s feet. He was lying down ready to bomb. His mid upper, his canopy, the other aircraft canopy took off our starboard tyre, his turret, which was sticking up at the top of his aeroplane carved through our fuselage at the back, left a big hole in the back. We lost part of the tale plane. Lost all our electrics. Harry, the rear gunner was knocked unconscious, only temporary and we were a bit of a mess and thereby we, we were sitting, I didn’t see all this going on but the crew saw what was going on and when we hit this aircraft we were literally sitting on top of it and his propellers were churning through our little bits and pieces and we were in a bit of a mess and afterwards I was asked to write a little resume of what happened in the collision just for purely records sake and to give it a title of the most significant thing that happened, you remembered, on the trip and the most significant bit was sitting on top of this other aircraft with no control over your aircraft whatsoever. All the controls were just limp and wobbly. So, nothing. So, I called this the title of this thing, ‘It went limp in my hand,’ which was highly censored. I wasn’t allowed to do that. So this report went through and in consequence we had to do, coming back, we had to do a crash landing. We had Fido on the station and the Fido system was a sort of a little triangular system with the fuel pipe on the top and the gaps of about ten metre gaps within each section and unfortunately our dud wheel skidded between the gap and the thing and the other one bounced over the top of the pipes and just put a little dent in the top and there was a casualty that night sadly. We were skidding towards the control tower in the dark and we were getting very close to the control tower and all the staff on the control or most of the staff on the control tower and the little girls, came out to watch this idiot bend his aeroplane and as we were skidding towards it one of these girls jumped back and sprained her ankle and that was the only casualty that night but there were sort of talks of decorations and things but it never happened so I was very kindly given a green endorsement in my logbook and mentioned in despatches. That’s in the logbook now still but if it had been a red one it would have been an adverse report but a green one was a pat on the back sort of thing so that was, that was quite nice but there of course that aircraft was written off. As far as the squadron it was written off it had to be repaired and rebuilt but we discovered that two main longerons going along the back of the aircraft were badly damaged and had we to have taken evasive action no doubt the aircraft would have broken up and we realised that a lot of damage at the back because we had a big hole in the floor and I told Harry, the rear gunner, I said, ‘Harry, pick up your parachute, come up front just in case anything else happens.’ And he said, ‘No. I’ll stay here and keep a look out.’ And these are the characters that they were. Wonderful characters. And that wasn’t the only thing that Harry did. We went on one long trip and his electrically heated Sidcot suit failed. He never said a peep, never said a word and when we got back seven and a half, eight hours later getting out the aircraft they said. ‘Where’s Harry?’ ‘Oh he must still be there.’ So I popped into the aircraft, opened his door and there he was sitting with an icicle from his face mask as thick as my wrist down between his legs. He couldn’t move and he’d never said a peep he just kept on doing his job. He was in sick quarters for nearly three weeks and that affected him for the rest of his life. And this is what these poor lads got up to. It really was wonderful. I was so lucky with the lads I had as a crew. Wonderful and very conscientious lads. So there we are. We got back and of course the aircraft had to be taken away and we had to get a new aircraft. Our first aircraft was W with the squadron letters were SR and we had a W, W ABC all the way through. We had W, so we had W and there was a song of the day called. “Coming in on a wing and a prayer.” So I thought. ‘Oh lets,’ and there’s a P O Prune character so I painted on the front of the aircraft this P O Prune character with wings and “On a wing and a prayer” coming underneath and of course that was the one that we crash landed. That disappeared. That went. And we get a new aircraft almost immediately. Well, they got another aircraft almost immediately straight from MU and, ‘What are we going to put on the nose. What nose art were we going to have?’ And when we got out of dispersal to see the new aircraft Jock Steadman or Willy Steadman, Willy Steadman our Scottish in charge, NCO in charge of the aircraft he’d already painted on the aircraft Oor Wullie and Oor Wullie was the cartoon character from the Glasgow Sunday Post and that was the aircraft which gets all the publicity now and we did more operations in the other one than we did than we did in this one but they were wonderful aeroplanes to fly. Really, really were. So, anyway, there we are. We’ve got a new aeroplane and another operation we went on was to Hasselt which was another transport plant target whereby 5 group and 1 group were involved. A hundred and seventy three aircraft from each group. We were scattered all the way through the raid, just our squadron, so we were going to Hasselt which was French had been French military base which was the biggest military base in Europe at the time right on the edge of the village of Mailly and we were briefed to bomb very, very strictly. We didn’t want to kill anybody in the village so we had to be very precise, we were told to be very precise with our bombing so, and we were to assemble at a point just north of Mailly called Chalon whereby you waited there to get instructions from the master bomber, Cheshire who was the master bomber to go and bomb. He was really being very precise as well and he wasn’t satisfied with the marking so when the first group of a hundred and seventy three aircraft from 5 group arrived at Chalon, encircling the beacon, circling the area, it wasn’t a beacon as such but circling the area and being, the aircraft being delayed and delayed and delayed this second group caught up with the first group so there was something like nearly four hundred aircraft milling around waiting for instructions to go in and there just happened to be three German night fighter stations handy and they got in amongst us and it really was chaotic. There really were all sorts of awful things going on. The result of the raid was a very successful raid but the loss was over eleven percent. They sent just under four hundred aircraft and we lost forty two but there was only one aircraft crashed in the village where a French man were killed so that was compensation in a way. So when we were circling this beacon the RT discipline disappeared. You weren’t supposed to talk outside because the Germans knew where you were going, where you were coming from but the RT discipline just went that night and a voice came over the air to the pathfinders, ‘Pathfinders. For God’s sake pull your fingers out. I’m on fire. I’m being been shot at.’ And a very broad Australian voice came over the air, ‘If you’re going to die, die like a man.’ And this was the sort of thing that went on. The problem was that the American force [AFM?]were broadcasting on a similar frequency and it was the signals weren’t getting through as well as they ought to but anyway of course, when we got the order to go in and bomb it was just like Derby Day. All these aircraft ploughing down on the target. It was successful but we had a problem. We’d just dropped our bombs and we’d had an aircraft, something rattle us about with an updraft coming up and that. It was a bit rough but we’d just dropped our bombs and Norman, the bomb aimer, lying down in the front, he didn’t have time to say anything he just said, ‘Oh Christ’ and an aircraft blew up underneath us and turned us over. We were upside down and I can say I half rolled a Lanc [laughs]. So there we were, upside down at eight thousand feet and coming out you just couldn’t pull it out like that because the high speed stalled the aircraft so it took us a little while to come out and we were down to about a thousand feet by the time we sorted things out. Going very, very fast way beyond the [all up] speed of a Lancaster. We were doing nearly four hundred miles an hour. Four hundred knots as it was in those days and, but the aircraft just had scorch marks and a little bit of creaky stuff but there we are. Once you got sorted out you checked on the crew. ‘Alright, Harry?’ The rear gunner. ‘Yes skip.’ ‘Alright, Tommy?’ ‘Yes.’ Wireless op. ‘Alright, Taffy?’ And the response I got was, ‘Blood. Blood,’ and I thought, ‘Oh Christ, what’s happened?’ So I pulled the curtain back and there’s Taffy wiping his head and that’s all we knew and, ‘Oh God, what’s happened to Taffy,’ and Taffy, what happens when you’re flying at those, those temperatures, those heights, temperatures, the lowest temperature we had was minus forty seven and you had an elsan at the back of the aircraft which if you went and used that if you sat down on the elsan like that and you left a bit of your behind, behind ‘cause it was like you’d have an ice cube sticking on your fingers. You couldn’t do that so what the lads had they had a large [fuel] tin with the top cut off which they passed around the aircraft as a pee can and this pee can was kept down by the wireless operator which was the warmest place ‘cause it didn’t freeze when it was down there. And Taffy said now you can still see this pee can arriving with negative gravity and tipping all over him. When we were falling, coming out, recovering from the dive which we got in to and of course when you got back there was no question of going to get cleaned up. You had to go straight to be debriefed and of course he wasn’t exactly flavour of, flavour of the month which was, which was poor old Taffy. Still gets his leg pulled unmercifuly about that. CB: I’m going to suggest we have a break. RW: Yes fine. CB: For a moment. So thank you very – [pause] CB: What it’s doing? We’re now recording again. RW: Yeah. CB: I’ve tried to do the playback but that didn’t work so we’re recording again now and I’m just hoping everything’s worked because it’s so good and I’m just looking at the numbers. [pause] CB: Right. So we’ve come to the point where you were inverted. RW: Yeah. Yeah. CB: Would you just like to describe before we go on to other things just how did you get the aircraft upright? RW: Well - CB: Because you can’t turn, roll it. Can you? RW: Well we had to, to a certain extent with being upside down. You just imagine an aircraft being upside down you had to get it the right way up and the only thing you can do is turn it around so while we were plummeting, plummeting downwards and getting rather fast we sort of half rolled the thing out. Sort of almost like a very poor barrel roll that we flew. So, we were upside down and you turned over and came out sort of in that direction so you didn’t do a full roll. It was sort of almost like a half roll like almost like a half missing out the last bit of a barrel roll. CB: Yeah. RW: Coming out but because of the weight it was hard work but you didn’t think of it as hard, you didn’t think of it as work at the time you just sort of had to get out of it. Get it back. CB: Yes, of course. RW: Flying again but, and you just couldn’t pull the stick back and get the aircraft flying again because you could develop what they called a high speed stall cause the wing stalls at fourteen degrees and if you’re mushing down it increases the angle of attack very rapidly and you get what was called a high speed stall so this is where the training came in with these other flying, these little experiences we had in training. So, we just really tried to come, come out as gently as we possibly could. You certainly had to pull back on the stick to get control but trying not to mush it down so you really tried to fly it out which we did in the end, going very, very fast. CB: You say we. Was the engineer helping you? RW: Yes, well all he could do was pull the throttles back or push the throttles forward apart from being spread, spread across the floor. You know, the poor navigators instruments are all over the place. In that respect think of the navigators instruments all over the place my little wireless op oh he was a little terror and my navigator and he were chalk and cheese, vastly different characters and one occasion my navigator asked for a QDM from the wireless operator and Taffy said a very rude word telling him to go away and Alec looked back and found there was Taffy with his radio set, the old 1154 55 bits of the set on the floor trying to repair it and he couldn’t give him a QDM but he said [?] [laughs] so that was the atmosphere but they were a great crew, great crew. But there you are. We pulled ourselves out and we got ourselves out and we got back with having done the crash landing as I say. But the raid that I think affected us more than anything was the Nuremberg raid. The raid on Nuremberg. It was the raid that really should never have happened but we just discovered this afterwards reading books and things the fact that the, the uncertainty in Bomber Command headquarters about whether it should go on or shouldn’t go. CB: It was to do with the fog, wasn’t it? RW: Pardon? CB: It was to do with the fog. RW: Yeah. Yeah, well apparently there was a front coming up over Germany and the idea was that the route was going to be clear and the target was going to be er the route was going to be cloud covered and the target was going to be clear but the movement of the front wasn’t right and of course the, all the route was clear and the cloud over the target and the winds were wrong, all wrong. CB: Oh. RW: And all the hundred odd mile winds and this sort of thing were going on and nearly all in the wrong direction. Even the pathfinders, even the wind finders didn’t get the right places for the right system for the wind and so some of the pathfinders were marking Schweinfurt and different targets and Alec, my navigator, who was insistent on being a very precise little man he got us to the target and we actually flew to the target but by the time we were flying out the operation was delayed. Put back, put back and put back twice. So, we were going to bomb about five past twelve sort of thing like this. And we went off, a little bit in daylight taking off and we got, when we got to the French German border we’d seen sixteen aircraft shot down and to do what you used to do you used to report this to the navigator and he’d log it so they could get a record of where the aircraft went down and when he got to sixteen Alec said, ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’ So, we didn’t tell him anymore but we saw no end of stuff and coming across we were supposed to come south of the Ruhr which we did but a lot of people went straight over the top of the Ruhr and the carnage there. And just on the controversial long leg, what they called the long leg which was from the French from France right across to northern, north of the target, north of Nuremberg there was a two hundred and sixty five mile leg which was unusual ‘cause you usually had diversions and that sort of thing and it just so happened that there were two German night fighter beacons on the route Ider and Otto and it just so happened that their night fighters were assembling at the beacons all at the right time for them. So, there we were, we were ploughing along. We were very, very fortunate. We managed to keep out of trouble. We did have trouble but nothing drastic so we carried on and what we saw over the beacons was quite considerable. Lots of aircraft being shot at. We could see the tracers, German tracers going on, and this was a raid where the Germans first used the system called schragemusik whereby instead of having guns firing directly at the rear gunner they knew that there was no ventral armament on the Lancaster at all so this very astute German chap said, ‘Well, let’s have the guns pointing upwards,’ so they had two 20mm cannons pointing up, about sixty degrees. So, they used to fly underneath you and you knew nothing. You didn’t know they were there at all until the shells started to fly past. We, we were lucky. On one occasion we saw the shells coming upwards to us just on our starboard side so we managed to take evasive action but we didn’t know what it was, we didn’t know why they were coming up that way until many years later when we discovered they had this schragemusik and one German shot down forty two aircraft using that equipment. He did five in one night which was amazing so this added to the attrition rate of the raid at all. We were very, very fortunate. Alec, the navigation was spot on and we passed a target which we saw in the distance Schweinfurt which was being bombed which we didn’t know it was Schweinfurt then but we said, Alec said, ‘That can’t be right.’ So we carried on and actually arrived at Nuremberg which was cloud covered and we just, Norman had just happened to see a break in the little clouds so we bombed there. I think we bombed Nuremberg. We were certainly over Nuremberg. Whether we actually bombed Nuremberg you can’t really say because we couldn’t take a photograph because of the photoflood. It wouldn’t show anything on the photo apart from cloud but there was a massive explosion on our, on our left hand side which apparently somebody had hit a munition train just outside Nuremberg and this had this enormous explosion so we knew something had happened. And of course we had to come back when it was a long leg. There was some fighter activity on the way back but it was such and the lads when they used to go on these raids the lads, I didn’t get involved but the lads used to have a kitty. They put some pennies in this kitty and the ones who guessed the most number of aircraft shot down or most accurate number of aircraft shot down got the kitty and Curly my engineer got it that night because he said a hundred. He estimated a hundred and when we got back for debriefing the intelligence people were very sceptical about the thing. Oh it couldn’t have happened no its near going to happen but when our squadron records came in we sent twenty six aircraft that night and we lost seven which was nearly a third of the squadron that night. Sixty people, you know, all gone that night and it left it was really strange. It was. We were like zombies, you know. We just walked around. Not upset. Just mind blown and we went back we couldn’t sleep. We just walked around until daylight and the squadron didn’t operate for a little while after that. But what happened with the, when we got back used to go for a flying meal when we, when we got back and when we got back to the mess there were no waitresses there at all. All the meals were left on the counter and a little notice on the wall saying, ‘Please help yourselves.’ And all these girls had gone into the restroom and they were crying their eyes out ‘cause of the losses on the squadron. You know, they really felt the effect of that. Moreso than we did in many respects. Norman, my bomb aimer, who was always girl mad for the ladies wanted to go and console them but the WAAF officers said. ‘No. Leave them to it.’ And so we had to help ourselves to the meal and this was the atmospheres they had on the squadrons you know. The thoughts of the people working. When you think of a squadron where you’ve got something like anything a hundred and eighty, two hundred aircrew you’ve got something like two thousand, two and a half thousand ground staff who without them we couldn’t have kept flying, you know. So they, and they don’t get the credit that they justly deserve and our ground crew were wonderful. Little Willy [Severn] and Nobby Burke and they were part of the aircraft, they were part of the aircrew and I kept in touch with them for many, many years until he died just a few years ago at the age of ninety seven. CB: Really. RW: Lived up in Glasgow and Perth, near Perth and when I visited him and his lovely wife Annie he used to sit in his room all by himself just looking out the window and saying, ‘Aye. Och aye. Aye. Och aye,’ and remembering all the things that were going on. We were very, very fortunate on the squadron he was on the squadron for many, many months. He joined the squadron up at Holme on Spalding Moor and he only ever lost two aircraft so we so lucky to be with him. Mind you, we lost an aircraft for him which was, didn’t go down very well. So, but again, again these characters you’d come back with holes and bits missing and they’d be waiting for you when you got back and they’d get these things sorted out and repaired more or less for the, for the next night so, in all sorts of weathers. The, being a dispersed camp we didn’t have any hangars to work in. All the aircraft were stacked outside and, you know, in February ‘44 we had something like three foot of snow and sixteen foot snowdrifts and the station was cut off completely and these lads were working on the aircraft changing plugs, doing servicing on the aircraft. They worked, Willy said they worked in pairs. When one was working and his hands got frozen he went and warmed up. Another chap took over so they were working outside in all these sorts of conditions. CB: There were hangars but they couldn’t put the aircraft in was it? RW: Well, there were hangars when they had major things to do. Engine changes - CB: Right. RW: And these sort of things. They would take them in for major servicing. [Eight star] servicing, for a major servicing but apart from that they were just kept outside in the cold and the wet and in the war it could be anything. CB: I’m going to stop there again because we are going to have a cup of tea. RW: Yeah. CB: Thank you. RW: Oh lovely. [pause] CB: Right, so we’re back on again now. RW: Yeah. CB: And we’re just doing the - RW: You finished the - CB: Rerun of the Mailly but I think it’s useful because I’ve heard this, somebody mentioned before. RW: Yeah. CB: Of the attrition - RW: Yeah. CB: And because of the milling around - RW: Yeah. Yeah. CB: So why was it that the marking was so delayed causing the traffic jam? RW: Well the again Cheshire was a brilliant pilot and a brilliant pathfinder and he was a perfectionist and again, forgive me if I’ve mentioned but the briefing that we had as the ordinary aircrew main force was to be very precise with the bombing because we didn’t want to hit any of the village. The village next door to the target. And he was being the same and he wasn’t satisfied with the markers that were going down and he said, ‘Well, don’t come in. We’re remarking.’ So he was re-marking the target to get in to the correct position for, for the [Mailly] raid and because of this it was delaying. It was, saying delayed you’re only talking about minutes. You’re not talking about hours, you know, but five minutes, ten minutes. An awful lot can happen in five, ten minutes and he was waiting until the markers got, really got them organised because there were two marking spots. One east and one west. One on the railway. One on the barracks because it was timed for midnight because this was the time when the people were coming back to their billets and were getting their, and they [wanted to kill the] troops. CB: Yeah, of course. RW: Troop concentrations so he was being as perfect as he possibly could and in consequence with the markers not being as accurate as he liked he stopped it and said we’ll remark again. CB: Because it’s a French target? RW: Because, well, not so much a French target. The target which was right next door to the French village. CB: Yeah. RW: And he didn’t want to kill - CB: That’s what I meant. Yes. RW: Didn’t want to kill, bomb the village. So, we were briefed and presumably they must have been briefed as well to be as perfect as they possibly could on their marking so as not to kill French people. CB: Course. RW: So this, and this came to light too, many, many years later here, by a little girl who was doing her degree at the Sorbonne in Paris relating to British and American efforts during the war and she came here and interviewed me here and stopped here for quite a little while and had a little chat about the Mailly raid and this sort of thing and she was quite concerned, you know. She was only what twenty, twenty one year old but she was only concerned about the fact that that attitude was taken to stop people, French people being killed. She got a first degree anyway which was rather nice. CB: You obviously briefed her well. RW: Yes, we still send Christmas cards to each other. I haven’t seen her for years and years and years. I wonder what she is doing now, whether she is married or what. But she was a nice little girl and I’ve got some pictures of her somewhere in there. CB: Yeah. RW: So, yes, so the, that was the result of the Mailly raid and the Nuremberg of course, raid, as well of course had although we’d had a lot of damage on other raids and quite traumatic things on other raids the Nuremberg raid left the biggest scar than any, mental scars was far, far greater than the physical scar and that really got sunk home when you realise what the attrition rates was. And the reports I think say there was ninety six, ninety seven aircraft shot down over the target but there were over a hundred wrecked completed so there must have been about a hundred and sixteen, a hundred and twenty aircraft written off altogether with all those, not all those aircrew but I think there was something like five hundred and sixty five, five hundred and five hundred and fifty aircrew killed that night, one night. The Nuremberg raid. And there were more aircrew killed on that one night then there was in the whole of the month of the Battle of Britain, which, you can’t compare the sort of flying that we were doing but the figures are quite remarkable when you think of what was going on. But being thickies as we were we knew it went on and we didn’t realise the implications of what was going on. We just got on with and had to do a job. But again, we had the trip, we had a little experience which was a trip to Munich. We were briefed for nine hours twenty five minutes petrol and we were given nine hours forty odd minutes petrol to fly on with instructions to land in the south of England if we had problems with getting back with the fuel consumption and it was again the weather wasn’t as forecast so we chugged off to Munich. Rather a long haul. A very long haul. Beautiful scenery over the Alps. We cross the Alps three times it was wonderful. Twice because it was twice the target and coming back we had problems. We lost part of a port wing, part of the leading edge of the port wing, we lost instruments, lost the pitot heads so that caused us little problems. Not exactly flying by the seat of our pants but - CB: But you had no air speed indicator. RW: So we were chugging back and as we say the leading edge of the port wing had disappeared somewhere and we’d had icing on the props. That was the amazing, we used to get icing on the propellers. And these were flying, the icing used to fly off and rattle against the side of the aircraft. It was just like flak for hitting the side of the aircraft and I’ve still got a bit of flak that came into my aeroplane. It’s on the table over there. Yes, so coming back it took a lot, lot longer than we anticipated and we were rather slow coming back to the extent that we were coming back over France in daylight and we were getting halfway across France and we saw these two little specks appearing flashing towards us and, ‘Oh Christ, what’s this going on?’ A couple of spitfires. They had been sent out to escort us back. So we were escorted back but with the engineers and navigation and fuel conservation we got back to Ludford having flown for ten and a quarter hours. CB: Wow. RW: But again the ground crew had that aircraft ready again for the next night which is, which is, what they get up to is wonderful. So they’re the sort of things that happened on raids. Another story, we came over Stettin one night. We lost two engines, two starboard engines. We managed to get one going half again so we came back from Stettin on two and a half engines. CB: Was that flak damage? RW: Yeah. Yeah. That was flak damage yes and when we got back Curly, he was a dreadful tease, he used to tease the WAAFs dreadfully and this poor little girl he teased her so much that when he was having his meal, operational meal she said, ‘I’m not going to serve you with your meal, cheeky bugger. I’m not going to serve your meal.’ He did get his meal of course but she wouldn’t serve him. And coming back off this trip we were so late we were, everybody, the committee of adjustment had been in and started to take our kit away. They didn’t think we were coming back but when we got back we got to the mess and this poor little kid was in tears, ‘Oh I shall never do that again.’ This was the atmosphere of these kids and girls. Wonderful. They were the sorts of things that happened. My last, very last operation was to again a transport plant target which was the original D-Day which was on the 4th 5th of June and like on the briefing we knew we were on the battle order but we had no idea where we were going and when we got out to the dispersal and asked what we were, what the petrol load and bomb load was Willy said, ‘Eeh,’ he said, ‘You’ve got full tanks and overloads and no bombs.’ And you were thinking, ‘Oh God. What’s going on? Are we going to Italy, Russia, whatever.’ No. What was happening we were flying a square circle around the invasion beaches giving false instructions to some of the shipping people imitate a convoy and also reporting on the fighter activity, German fighter activity to report back to help with the invasion and of course the invasion was put back twenty four hours because of the weather. So they took our overload tanks on, put a few bombs on board and we went off and we bombed Sangatte. Didn’t do a very good job obviously. So, that was our very last trip, Sangatte, and when we got back, because of the weather, very adverse weather we were diverted to Faldingworth which is only about thirty odd miles from Ludford, our base and we slept on a chair in the mess for the rest of the night and when we got up in the morning and having breakfast the station commander, Group Captain King arrived and he said, ‘Come on. I’m taking you back.’ I said, ‘Well I’ve got an aeroplane outside you know.’ And he said ‘You’re not touching another aircraft on the squadron. That was your last operation.’ So we just left the aircraft. How they got it back I don’t know but he took us back in his little hut, little, his little van. We went back and that was my last operation and mentioning our attrition rate on the squadron, in early 1944 our attrition rate was something like sixty two percent. CB: Gee. RW: Which was, you know, it’s unbelievable when you look. CB: This is because they were targeted specifically. RW: Yeah. Targeted. Very vulnerable. A) Because they could home onto our frequencies and B) Because we were on every bombing raid that went out. So there we are. The next morning I had to go and have a little interview with the station commander to give a pat on the back. He was a lovely chap Group Captain King. Curly, my engineer had finished because he’d done an operation with his previous crew he was finished the night before and he’d been out on the booze. Went down in to Ludford on the booze and when I had the interview with Group Captain King the following morning he said, ‘Your bloody crew.’ And, ‘Oh God. What’s going on?’ And he said, ‘Your engineer was down in the pub last night spouting about what he got up to and whatever and there just happened to be an intelligence officer there.’ And he just, no he was just pulling my leg really in a way but he said yes thank you very much for what you’ve done and I was given my green endorsement for the Mailly, for the raid where we had the mid-air collision and he had a curtain covering a chart on the wall which gave the crew statistics on the wall and he pulled the curtain back and he said, ‘There you are. You are the first crew that has finished as a crew for over six months’. Yeah. CB: Amazing. RW: And you didn’t even realise then. Appreciate what you - CB: Yeah. RW: What the attitude was but it really was remarkable and then of course I wasn’t allowed to touch a Lancaster again ever. Until 1977. Until the 101 squadron had a 60th anniversary of the formation of the squadron and they tried to get, I was asked. Martin Middlebrook was involved and he wrote a book and he was, he used to live not far away and then he was trying to get all of our crew together again and did I know where they were. And I had a few addresses so we managed to find 5 of us and we couldn’t find Taffy, could never find Taffy and we tried to find Taffy and we got in to contact with the people of his uncle who ran a pub and he wouldn’t tell us where he was and we assumed he was either in jail or in hospital but there, he’s still about but he never knew anything about it. But anyway, we had this meeting with five of my crew were there in 1977 in Waddington at 101. The Lancaster was there and at the dinner the previous night the PMC stood up and gave a little chat and said, ‘You’ve got the Lancaster here. It’s had an oil leak it needs an air test in the morning. We’ve got a crew here.’ So we flew in the Battle of Britain Lanc and did about a twenty, twenty five minute air test. CB: Fantastic. RW: In the Battle of Britain Lanc which was quite a thrill, quite a thrill. CB: Amazing. RW: And it’s wonderful that they’ve kept the thing going. CB: Yes. RW: It’s great. So after the war, I stayed in the air force after the war. CB: Yes excuse me for interrupting but after the ops what did you do then because we’re not at the end of the war? RW: Oh no. Yes. Yes. CB: We’re still a year away. RW: Yes. After the operations, yes normally you were, your crew tended to try and keep as much of the crew together and were posted away and most of the crew were posted to 28 OTU. And I was sent to 82 OTU. I never knew why or found out why. Typing error? Whatever. Anyway, I arrived at 82 OTU which was all Australian station and I was one of the very few Englishmen there as aircrew. One of the only aircrew there as an examiner, screen pilot, and they didn’t think much of this pommie bastard arrived in their midst and it wasn’t exactly a comfortable place to be but I’d only been there a couple of weeks when I had a bit of a problem, a symptom from the flying in the war. I had a perforated ulcer. Again, attributed to stress, whatever. So anyway, I had this haemorrhaging and I went sick, reported to the Australian doc, went sick and he didn’t think much of this whinging pommie bastard so medicine on duty. That was, that was, that was it. We just, and very shortly after that I was posted to Gamston where, which was a Wimpy OTU so I was flying in Wimpies there. Met my first fiancé there which was a lovely little WAAF in the camp. Audrey, Audrey Simms. Again, my luck held out, a lot of luck was involved on the squadron, tremendous lot of luck on the squadron and again my luck held out. My friend, Tommy Thompson, who’d been on operations, same as myself, screened and I was also the sports officer on the squadron and I had to do an air test as well and Tommy said, ‘Well you go and get the sports kit.’ On Wednesday afternoon the whole place shut down in those days for sport so I went to get the sports equipment and Tommy did my air test in a Wimpy and the Wimpy blew up and he was killed. Poor chap. Poor Tommy. And the only way we could recognise him when we found him was his ring on his finger. And he was a Geordie like myself and I was given the task of organising his funeral, went up to his funeral and because he didn’t get married during the war he got married very shortly after the end of his tour. He didn’t get married until after he’d finished his tour and his wife was expecting a baby, lived at Wallsend near Newcastle and of course I had to go to the funeral and there was this poor lass and it was rather sad. Yeah. So, these are the sort of things that happened and the luck you can achieve on these sort of things. So, anyway, because of my sins and flying I was due to go back on a second tour, supposedly on Mosquitoes, in early ‘45 but the attrition rate had dropped considerably at that time and there was a glut of aircrew coming though so they said, ‘Don’t come back on operations.’ So I was sent down to Lulsgate Bottom which was an instructor’s school. So I went down to the instructor’s school at Lulsgate Bottom which is now Bristol airport and I had a nice time down there learning to drink scrumpy which was, which was great. Lovely. Lovely. Lovely place down there. I enjoyed it very much. Again had little problems with the instructing. Flying with the instructor one night and the radial engine, the pot burst and the pistons were coming out through the through the canopy around the engine. So we had a little single engine landing there but that was fine. I ended up there and became an instructor. So the instructing I was sent to be a place called Desborough. I had the choice of going to Carlisle or Northampton so I chose Desborough and I was stationed there as a screen pilot and flying instructor, Wimpies. This story extends a little bit. A very good friend of mine who became my first fiancé her friend she was stationed, became stationed at Wyton, Cambridge and my friend and I used to go and visit her and he, Jock Murray, he was a married man. He had a girlfriend as well, a WAAF at Wyton so we used to go and stay at the George hotel at Huntingdon when she was there but sadly we were sitting on the banks of the river at Earith. I’d already bought the engagement ring and whatever and she said, ‘I’m sorry but that’s it’ and she went off with a married pilot on Wyton, pilot and that was it. I came back to Desborough rather tail, my tail between my legs sort of thing and my squadron commander, he knew what the situation, we were very good friends and he knew what was going on and one of the pilots who had been at Wyton on big stuff he was converting on to Dakotas and that’s what we were doing in Desborough and he came to Desborough to be converted on to Dakotas. He didn’t, I knew him but he didn’t know me and my flight commander, Lofty [Loader] he said, ‘You have him as a pupil.’ So I had this poor soul as a pupil. All the first details in the morning and all the last details at night. He complained to the boss and he said, ‘Nothing to do with me. Get on with it.’ But he was brilliant. He was a good pilot but he didn’t know anything about that at all. And again strange things happened at Desborough. When I was there another crew came through at, which er, yes this other crew came through whereby the pilot had a wireless operator who eventually joined the company I joined after, after the war as a wireless operator and I had to screen the crew on a cross country out over Wales. A claggy night. Not a very nice night at all and his skipper didn’t say, ‘I don’t think we ought to go. The weather.’ ‘Oh it’s all right,’ Well the weather we flew in the war we flew in all sorts of weather. They said, ‘Oh no it’s alright Alfie,’ So, off we went and coming back they asked to get a QDM and he couldn’t on his little set. He couldn’t get a QDM and fortunately I had been to the Empire Radio School and, and, and knew a little about electrics so I went back, got this bearing, give it to the skipper and when we let down there was Desborough the identification lights DE flashing, I said, ‘There you are. That’s how it’s done.’ And I had to give this wireless operator an adverse, not exactly an adverse report but not a very favourable one. He eventually became a director of the company I was working for and he didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t like me very much at all because I was one of the lower minions in the works and he was a director of purchasing. Not a nice, not a very nice chap. Anyway, there we are so that was, that was little situation but Desborough from there I went and was posted to Transport Command, had to go into Transport Command and there I was flying Dakotas and doing mainly conversion work flying Dakotas. I had some very nice jobs to do and stationed at Oakington. This was in 1947 when I first went to work in Oakington and I was the flying wing training officer for four squadrons 10, 27, 30 and 46 squadrons and this was early ‘48 when the thought of the airlift came into being and this was quite an amazing situation because the squadron as I say had this four, the unit had the four squadrons on board and I was working with all the four squadrons. Then when you are going on the airlift all the aircrew had to be completely categorised and had to have a current incident rating so I was kept very, very busy. One night well one month one day I did something like ten and a half hours flying testing just to get them ready to go on the airlift. So, there we went and when we got them all, got them all off we, the WingCo said, ‘Right have a few days left, go on the airlift for a month and have a rest.’ So that was fine so I thought now do I go home and see my mum and dad or do I go and see my fiancé. I was getting married in October. And I said, ‘Hmmn I’ll go and see my fiancé,’ which I obviously did. Went back on the airlift and when I got to [Rumsdorf] which we were then I went to see the flight commander chappie in charge of the flying and I said, ‘Where do I go for briefing?’ And he said, ‘You don’t.’ He gave me a piece of, a sheet of A4, ten sheets of A4 with all the instructions on and said, ‘Go away and read those, inwardly digest. You’re flying in the morning.’ And that was it. That was it. And it was strange how the flying did, is it alright talking about the airlift? CB: Absolutely. Yes. Yes. RW: Yeah, because this is forty, a long time after the war but there we are. How the airlift came about was the fact that the Russians had taken over Berlin and they wouldn’t allow any people into Berlin for about eight weeks. So nobody was going in and they really split Berlin in half. They took over the east sector but they had to keep the airlift going, had to keep the situation going because the embassies of the French, British and American embassies there so they had to keep flying going in. They couldn’t stop the flying but they could affect the roads. There were originally six corridors going in but the Russians said you don’t need six. So they cut out, cut the north one out and the south one out and the east one out so they only had three corridors going in. The Americans were doing the, the southern one and we were doing the north one and we all came out on the centre one. But when they started the airlift all this happened in a very, very short period of time. The Americans, a chap called Lucius Clay was in charge of the system flying then in Berlin and he called every possible aircraft back from the states, even from Alaska, to come down to [?] which was the southern part of Germany and, to organise the thing properly he asked a chap called [Tupper, Tupper?] who was in charge of the Burma hump flying over the hump in Burma and he was asked to organise that. The first trip he went on, this was the very, very beginning all, all the Americans were there first and they’d gone off he went off on one of these very first trips and when he got to, got to Berlin there they were going to land at Tempelhof. He found there were aircraft stacked from five hundred feet to five thousand feet and everybody, all the Americans, were clamouring like mad to get permission to land and there was very little organisation at all. Two aircraft, two of the American aircraft had crashed on the runway. One crashed on the runway and was being repaired, and went on the fire and the other crashed and gone over the end of the runway. Nobody was killed but [Tupper Tupper] realised what was going on. He sent all the aircraft back to base even with their loads and got landed himself at Gatow at er [Wunsdorf] and at Tempelhof, landed at Tempelhof and he wrote out orders and all regulations for all flying on the Berlin airlift. Each aircraft had a different speed, different height to fly and all, all went, all went off and when we were at [Wunsdorf] at the time and when you went off you flew to a beacon north of Ber, we flew to a beacon at [?] just north of Berlin where you, when you arrive there you gave instructions, or you were given instructions of how to land and what your load off and we flew in everything. Literally everything in to Berlin because when the Russians took over they closed their frontier and they closed the, all the rail, road and water transport into Berlin and there was something like two million two hundred thousand West Berliners with twenty seven days rations of everything they’d left and they’d taken the generators from the power stations away, they’d taken the gas and that was all rationed and these poor Berliners were left with twenty seven days of nothing. I was very fortunate. I gave a little talk to some aircrew at Leamington and one of the chaps brought along a German lady who had been a little girl, a young little at the time the Russians took over and she was, she spoke English quite well but a very, very strong German accent and she of course she was quite an elderly lady then and she said she and her elder sister, she was young teenager and her sister was seventeen, eighteen and they were walking through Berlin and the Russians came along, a group of Russians came along and they herded all the girls and women they could possibly find into this building. The older sister knew what was going to happen and she hid this young lady, was a young lady, hid her and all the rest were gang raped for the rest of the day and she said, she was telling me that her sister never ever spoke of that again. She couldn’t talk about it. There was something like two million women raped. Two thousand committed suicide. You know, and these figures you know and the Berliners were so appreciative of what we did. We literally flew in everything. Naughty story. When we were on taking a few coal fuel and flour everything in and when you got to the beacon as I say you had to call to get landing instructions and declare what your load was so you could be directed to the correct unloading bay when you landed and the Germans were doing this and they could turn an aircraft around in eight minutes you know. Incredible. So there we were we were going towards this beacon and I said to the wireless op cause I didn’t have a crew I had the nav leader and the signals and I said to Jacko, ‘Call up and get us instructions.’ So he gave instructions and they said, ‘What is your load?’ And he said, ‘Medical supplies. Mainly manhole covers,’ and they were all sanitary towels. It didn’t end there because when we landed we were directed to the heavy unloading bay and we weren’t exactly flavour of the month. We didn’t half get a rocket but there again when you were flying in there was no question of doing an overshoot and going around again. If you couldn’t land you just had to go back to base and start again. CB: Yeah. RW: And when you were there they had all your aircraft lined up. Your day was split into three eight hour shifts and you were doing as many raids, as many sorties as you could in eight hours and then you had the next 8 hours off and then you flew in the next 8 hours and this went on seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Day and night. There was only one day it never happened and that was through extensive fog. So, and when the aircraft were lined up the ground crew had to do a pre-flight test on every aircraft and part of their equipment the wireless operators, wireless, ground wireless operators were a pair of bellows and when they got on the aircraft they used the bellows to blow this, the flour and coal dust off the instruments so they could check them. So this was the sort of thing that was going on. When we were at [Rumsdorf] they also had the York there and the payload of the York was something like what fifteen thousand pounds and the Dakota’s about seven and a half and one of our skippers said, Flight Lieutenant Sheehan, he went off in the Dakota and he said, ‘It’s like a brick. It’s like flying a brick.’ And he had an awful job getting it off the ground, an awful job getting it there, an awful job landing it and when they landed it they found they’d put a York load on the Dakota so he was flying at double his all up weight. CB: Gee. RW: And it says a lot for the skipper and the aircraft you know. CB: Absolutely. RW: You know, these sort of things went on. Amazing. But that was a long time after, after the squadron. And on the squadron looking back and talking to people on the squadron about the squadron about the air force in general they said, ‘Well you know in our group, in one group we were losing seventy aircraft a month.’ Every Bomber Command station lost nine hundred aircrew. You know, it’s amazing the figures that went on like that and a gentleman did some statistics working out how it affected a hundred air crew and of the hundred aircrew fifty one were killed. Twelve were shot down and badly injured, five were badly injured so they couldn’t fly again, three were, so three were killed on landings back at base, twelve became prisoners of war and one escaped to come back and of the remaining of that hundred aircrew only twenty four remained. Nearly all with some medical problem afterwards which, is you know, is -, I had my share. The sort of things that happened they said personally the sort of things that happened to me afterwards apart from this ulcer which affected me for most of my life until I was here at Desborough, at er Kenilworth when I moved in here and one night I had a massive haemorrhage. I couldn’t get upstairs and the doc came and it was a peculiar system he had. I was not allowed food, I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed, I wasn’t allowed to do anything with work and I lived on an ounce of milk and water for six weeks. Couldn’t do anything and I remember sitting down where we are now sitting now watching the television, watching the cricket with the doctor, chatting about what was going on and it was amazing. In consequence I can eat anything, anything at all doesn’t bother me but alcohol doesn’t like me. I can drink it but I can enjoy it for about a week afterwards so you know I don’t drink very much now. I’ve had my share. But this is the sort of thing that happened and what still happens now. One operation we were on going on to the Ruhr and the Ruhr, the old Happy Valley and we were approaching the Ruhr and it really it looked deadly and the flak, there was an old saying, the flak was so thick you could get out and walk on it and it was like that searchlights, fighters going on and the first time I ever experienced terror and it was most peculiar. I’d heard about it but I’d never experienced it and I literally was shaking and really I couldn’t do what I was supposed to do so I dropped my seat so I couldn’t see outside and funnily enough I said a little prayer that I hadn’t said since I was about six years old. Mum and dad used to sit by the side of my bed and say this little prayer which ended up, ‘If I die before I wake I pray the lord my soul will take.’ Why I said it I don’t know, no idea but I said this little prayer and the terror disappeared and I raised my seat and I could just carry on. You’re still frightened of course but all the terror disappeared. And we had similar situations again afterwards but no terror so whether the power of prayer you know whether this happens or not. Some of the lads we used to take the mickey a bit ‘cause they used to kneel down by their beds and say their prayers or kneel down by the aircraft before they got on and said their prayers and thought they were a bit sissy until you had this sort of experience yourself and then you realise there’s something in it. It’s all, I’m sure it was all mental you know. Some of these sort of things happened. When I laid my head down on the pillow even now, not every, if I’ve been reading a books like some of the air force books and service books that come out now, if I’ve been reading these books about aeroplanes and I put my head down on the pillow I can see flak bursting and little sparks flying about. It doesn’t affect me. I’m fine. No problem at all and this sort of thing, you know, just reminds you of the old days and now talking about it so much now it’s almost like a myth, you know. As if you’re telling fairy stories. Did I really do it, you know but yes it does once you’ve experienced those sorts of things you never forget them. They’re always there. And some, some fixed more than others. We had one navigator who, they were badly shot up and some of the, a lot of the crew were injured. The aircraft was on fire and he got out of his seat to walk back to the, the aircraft was still flying, he walked to the back of the aircraft to jump out the back. No parachute. Some of the crew stopped him and said, ‘No. Don’t.’ He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t speak. He was just a zombie completely. Couldn’t speak and when he got back, they got back alright he never spoke. Never spoke at all. Went to the sick quarters for a couple of weeks. Never spoke, could understand a thing and he was sent to the service hospital at Matlock, the psychological hospital at Matlock and he was there for several, a couple of weeks and he never spoke until one of the nurses dropped an instruments in a tin tray and he woke up. He said, ‘Oh Christ, they’re on fire. They’re on fire.’ And he got his speech back again. He was invalided out of the service as you know unfit for flying. He was alright but that experience he had of these weeks of not talking you know and this is the sort of thing that happened to these sort of folks and, you know, when you think of the experiences you had and how bloody lucky you’d been all these whiles. And, your luck. Yes, I think you bought yourself your own luck to a certain extent. In my crew, were such that although vastly different characters, we were all great comrades and great friends. Great friends. And you know this helped enormously the operational flying, in my instructing and examining after the war when Oakington was closed down and all the four squadrons dispersed 30 squadron was posted to Abingdon and having, me being flying wing training, I thought I was out of a job. 30 squadron had taken over a VIP element from 24 squadron and for my sins I was posted to 30 squadron at Abingdon to become the training officer on 30 squadron and to get our qualifications, to get my, I had to go to Central Flying School to be examined and that was quite the thing. The fact that I had an instrument rating and the fact that I had done something like fifteen hundred hours instrument flying I was allocated a master green instrument rating and I became examiner and when I went down to the Central Flying School to become an examiner and a tester, an instructor, the instructor there, Flight Lieutenant Walker, a lovely man, when we finished the [CGI], said ‘There is a book. Take it away. Read the chapters about training and it’s all about what you learn about.’ And it was a book called the “Psychological Disorders of Flying Personnel” and the chapter on training illustrated the fact that you know even experienced people when being examined had a little bit of panic. It’s a bit of the white coat syndrome of the doctor with his stethoscope and things and you couldn’t really operate as you normally could and this was a chapter about that sort of thing. And this psychological business he gave me this book to take back home. And when I got back of course I used to examine all the crews but each crew had to be examined completely once a month. They had to do certain training exercises. One per month and the VIP pilots had to do the same as well but the VIP pilots were like a class apart. They wouldn’t have a, they insisted on having a separate crew room from us roughies and strange things happened with them. One occasion one of the pilots a chap called Van Reinfeld had to do a VIP trip the following day and he hadn’t done a little night, night flying exercise and I said, ‘Well it’s alright. I’ve got a spare navigator. You can do your little trip tonight. I’ll put you on early, you’ll be alright for tomorrow.’ And he said, ‘Well I can’t do it.’ He says, ‘My navigator has gone in to Abingdon and I don’t know where he is.’ I said, ‘I’ve got a spare navigator. It’s alright. It’s only a training trip. It’s not a VIP trip.’ And this chap, the replacement, a chap called Baxter who was a coloured boy wouldn’t fly with him. Refused to fly with him and I said, ‘Well you don’t, if you don’t fly with him you don’t get your trip tomorrow.’ He went to see Squadron Leader Reese the squadron commander and he said, ‘It’s nothing to do with me it’s to do with the training.’ And he went back and I said, ‘Well if you don’t do it. You don’t fly.’ And he went into Abingdon and scoured all the clubs and pubs, found his navigator, came back, flew late in the morning, early in the morning the next day and went off to do his trip the next day and that’s the sort of atmosphere they were. And the principal job of the Transport Command at 30 squadron were again, like all transport was glider towing and paratrooping and there was a big operation called Operation Longstop which was going on at Old Sarum and all the crews had to go down and join in the exercise and of course every pilot had to have an aeroplane. There wasn’t enough aeroplanes to go around and I was given an aeroplane and a pilot to fly with me who was a VIP pilot called [Ria.] He said, ‘I’m a VIP pilot. I don’t fly second dicky.’ And he wouldn’t fly. Refused to fly with me. Again, he saw the flight commander down at Old Sarum and the boss said. ‘Well if you don’t fly you don’t fly at all. Go back to base. Get back to base.’ He sent him back to base and these sort of characters they were an elite apart, you know. Brilliant fliers no doubt about it brilliant fliers and as I say we had to go down to Central Flying School to be examined and when you’re examined if anything went wrong and you didn’t fail any one part of the exercise two of the exams you had to write, reply a hundred percent. Safety and regulations, these sort of things and when you were, one of the exercises you had it do you were given all the met readings from various stations and you had to plot a synoptic chart and give a forecast for the next day, until midnight the next day, which I did and I said possibly get some rain by lunchtime tomorrow and whatever down the south of England and he called a Met man in and he said, ‘Oh that’s not going to happen. That’ll never happen.’ So I didn’t pass that exam so I had to go back, wait another month before I was going to be examined again. Blow me, the next day it started to rain so I rang up old Walker at Central Flying School and said, ‘Have you looked out the window?’ And he said, ‘You jammy bugger,’ he said, ‘I’ll put it in the post.’ So it was a great atmosphere. A wonderful atmosphere and 30 squadron had a wonderful atmosphere. Still has now. Still does wonderful work now. But the flying it left a great character in my life but I was married by then of course and we had a wonderful life with my wife in peacetime air force. Sadly, she became terribly ill when we were at Oakington and she started having terrible haemorrhages and this sort of thing and the, our local doc said, ‘You’d better take her home’ so we took her to her home in Desborough near Kettering and my mother who was a state certified midwife, she’d nursed all her life said, ‘You know the prognosis of this isn’t very great,’ you know and discovered that she had what they called a [? deformed] mole which is a pregnancy like a bunch of grapes and indicative of cancer. And they did scrapes they didn’t do scrapes in those days but they couldn’t find it and it was the cancer was deep seated in the womb and my mum said, you know ‘She can’t live very long.’ She was only about six months, nine months perhaps at the most so I resigned my commission to come out to look after her. Haven’t been, my last posting just about this the time this happened found was AOC far east to go VIP pilot, the AOC in the far east which I had to keep delaying, delaying, delaying because of Pat’s illness and eventually that was cancelled completely so I didn’t go. So, I resigned to come out on the condition that I renewed my qualifications every year and stayed on the reserve until I was, 1960 um and came out and poor old Pat died about ten months afterwards and with my lack of education I couldn’t get a grant to do any, I was hoping for a grant to go teaching but I couldn’t get a grant because I had no certificates or educational certificates. Fortunately, Pat, my wife’s father owned a factory. A packaging factory. So he said, ‘Come and work for me.’ So I went and worked in his factory on the marketing and sales. I can say for twenty seven years I travelled in cardboard boxes which was very kind of him. I got along very well with the old man. He was quite an eminent military man himself. Thinking of that sort of thing when I was at Abingdon, Oakington, I was going to get married and I was told I had to get permission to get married otherwise I wouldn’t get my marriage allowance ‘cause I was a little bit too young. So I was told I had to have an interview with the station commander which a chap called group captain [Byte Seagal] so I went and had an interview with him and my dad because of his health couldn’t do any serious work and he used to work for the Coop looking after the horses for the Coop stables so when we went for the interview with group captain [Byte Seagall], a peacetime group captain trying to get everything back to a peacetime protocol he said, ‘Who are you marrying?’ I said, ‘Well, Pat.’ ‘What does she do?’ And I said, ‘Well she does typing and bit of filing in an office.’ ‘Oh that’s interesting.’ ‘What does your father do?’ And I said, ‘He looks after horses.’ He said, ‘Newmarket?’ I said, ‘No. Coop.’ And this didn’t go down very well at all. And he said, ‘What about your father in law then?’ And I said, ‘Well he was colonel in chief of the Northamptonshire regiment. He got the MC in Gallipoli.’ ‘Ah now isn’t that interesting.’ I said. ‘My mother, my dad was in the navy. He got the DSM in the navy. My mother got the Royal Red Cross.’ ‘Now isn’t that interesting.’ Yes, I can get married. So I got permission to get married. And they were trying to get things back to peacetime protocol but after the war people like myself were asked to go up to Cranwell which was a training, a major training school then for aircrew and just to meet the people, not to meet, just to chat to the students and pupils and met one young man called, oh dear [pause] His dad was the president of the Nuremberg raids. Oh, what did they call him? Anyway, he was, he was his dad was this very eminent gentleman. Martin, [pause] oh dear, old age and memory don’t go very well together. Anyway, this gentleman he was on the Nuremberg trials. He organised the Nuremberg trials for the post war Germans and his son was on the Cranwell course and he eventually came down to 30 squadron and I said to him, you know, ‘What’s the last thing they taught you at Cranwell then?’ And they said, he said, ‘Don’t get associated with wartime commissioned officers.’ Because, in February ‘44 the directive came about saying all captains of heavy bombers had to be commissioned and my commissioning interview was with the accountant who gave me a cheque for ninety quid to go and buy a uniform with. Yeah. What do they call the chappie on the Nuremberg trials? Very eminent man. Very eminent barrister. CB: Yeah. I can’t remember. RW: Pardon? CB: I can’t remember. RW: No. Can’t remember. Anyway Martin didn’t like this system in the air force at all so he resigned and came out. But that was the sort of thing that was going on in those days and I was very, very fortunate to be able to have a job to work. I stayed and played with cardboard boxes. For two years I had to go to Marshals and be re-examined for, just to keep your hand in that all it was part of the condition for resigning. I did that for two years and the first time I went the instructor there said. ‘Well go on and do the exams and, what did you do?’ I told him what I did. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Bugger it. Go on. Take a little chipmunk and take off. So I used to fly over Desborough and around the school where I was teaching and [laughs] no that, and I started learning, I taught myself aerobatics because the transport flying which is dead straight and level sort of stuff and I’d never flown aerobatics at all apart from slow rolling the Lancaster. It was great fun. Great fun. But they only did that for two years because they said it’s getting expensive and we’ve got squirty things now and so - CB: Yeah. RW: Just keep on the register. CB: Yeah. RW: And I was in the reserve until 1960 so really I had a wonderful career. CB: Yeah, brilliant. RW: Wonderful - CB: Can I - RW: Experiences I’ll never be forgetting and played an awful lot of luck and met some wonderful people and wonderful friends and with my crew when the squadron formed the association from flying together in 1977 the squadron chappie called Goodliffe formed the squadron association and from then on we found all eight of my crew and all eight of us used to meet every year. CB: Fantastic. RW: Until 1990 when we all met at Ludford in 1990 and the Coningsby, the Battle of Britain Flight said, ‘Would you come down and do a little exercise down here with a full crew.’ And Tommy, my mid upper gunner, wouldn’t go so we never went and a couple of months later he died so whether he had some sort of premonition, you know. CB: Extraordinary. RW: But anyway nevertheless all 7 of used to meet until, and then the rear gunner dies and all eight of us, all six of us used to meet and a couple of years ago my special duty operator died so all five of us - CB: All five. RW: Are still round about and very, very different states of health and all creaking a bit. I was being very lucky. I had open heart surgery. CB: Oh, did you really? RW: It was only three years ago and got a zip fastener up the front but if it hadn’t have been for again like the services, like with family if it hadn’t have been for family and my mum looking after me with diphtheria when I was a little boy and my daughters and family looking after me afterwards when, when I had when I had the operation for the heart I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat and my daughter Catherine who is, she is now the ward manager sister at the coronary care unit at Warwick Hospital she took me into hospital on her day off and did an ECG and a blood test and the cardiologist just happened to be walking past and he said, ‘What are you doing here?’ You know, and he took the blood away and came back and he said your bloods alright but it’s not, you’re not going anywhere. Don’t go home. So within just over a week I’d had open heart surgery. CB: Gee. RW: And I was back home again. CB: Amazing. RW: Yeah, it’s amazing. CB: I’m going to stop you there. RW: Yes, that’s about it I think, Ok. CB: Because we both need a – [pause] right we’re restarting again after a brief comfort break and the bits I just want to ask you about, Rusty is first of all the ranking system. So you went in as an aircraftsman second class. RW: I went in as an AC2. CB: And how did the promotion system work until you were – RW: Yeah. Well, usually after about six months you were promoted an AC1 and then after another short period of time you became an LAC, leading aircraftman. And I was a leading aircraftman when I went and did my flying in Canada and it was from then after you’d finished and completed your training successfully that was when you were ordered your flying brevvy and you became whatever grant, whatever grade you were going in to. Fortunately, and with a lot of luck involved I became a pilot. And having, became a sergeant pilot. Some, about three or four of the course that we were on we lost about forty percent of the course on washouts. You know, it was incredible because the training was very, very precise. I must say it was very, very good. Looking back it was remarkable. So there I was a sergeant pilot and promotion as an NCO was roughly six months and you got an increase and promotions so by the time I was, got on the squadron I was a sergeant pilot and then I very soon became a flight sergeant pilot and that was in ’43. End of ’43. And in early ‘44 the directive came from the air ministry that all captains of heavy bombers had to be commissioned so I was given the cheque for ninety quid by the accountant and told to go and buy a uniform so there was no formal interview at all. It was just a thing that happened. In consequence, the social class, in a sense, disappeared because there were people commissioned from training and they tended to be a little bit elitist and some of the crews had done previous tours and tended to be all commissioned and usually flight lieutenants and all this sort of thing so they were nearly all a little bit aloof but we were just the roughs. Not like the pathfinders. Gibson and the pathfinder force really didn’t socialise with the NCOs at all. Didn’t speak to them, didn’t talk to them but it wasn’t like that on the squadron. Really, apart from doing your job you were all the same. And the, the, our WingCo was a wonderful man in that respect. He knew everybody’s name on the squadron. Ground crew and air crew. Wonderful man. Old Alexander. Wingco Alexander. CB: What sort of age was he? RW: He, he’d be getting on about. He’d be early 30s I think [laughs] so. He died not such a long time ago. A little story about Wingco Alexander which, of course, a little bit about the war. His batman, Ward, a little chap called Ward turned out to be a homosexual and he was sacked from the service because in those days homosexuality was virtually a crime and he was sacked from the service and when I used to go home on leave and my brother was being in the army my mum was nursing a very eminent north country barrister called Lambert, Pop Lambert. Mum used to, got the job to nurse him because she could swear as much to him as he swore at her when she put him to bed and he used to love my, my brother and I and my mum to go down and have dinner with him and it was finger bowls and butlers and things like this so it really was quite out of our class altogether and when we were sitting down having dinner this night and the butler came in with the finger bowls and he looked at me and said, ‘Hello Waughman.’ And I said, ‘My God. Ward. What are you doing here? You were Alexander’s batman.’ And that went on, he went out and Pop said, ‘How the hell do you know him?’ And I said, ‘He was our WingCo’s batman. He was sacked because he was homosexual.’ And the poor soul. Pop gave him the sack a week later. He just wouldn’t have him around and this was the attitude about homosexuality - CB: Yeah. Yeah. RW: In those days. The lads used to go out queer bashing. You know. CB: Yeah. RW: Yeah. There was no gay business in those days at all, sort of thing. But that’s the sort of thing that happened. So, anyway, I was flying, became pilot officer and on the squadron I became towards the end of my tour I got promotion to flying officer and ended my tour as a flying officer and subsequently with the jobs I got as the training officer, again it was timed promotion really in a way. I became a flight lieutenant and most of the screening and examining and training I did then was as a flight lieutenant until I was posted to Singapore and never got there, flying as a VIP pilot AOC Far East. I never got there. Had I, had I gone I would have been promoted to squadron leader. No. I would have got the rank of squadron leader. Which would be temporary acting unpaid. So when I left that job I reverted to my previous rank again so that would be a rank mainly because you were socialising with VIPs but that never came about. So whether I don’t think I would have advanced very far in the air force at that time because I was a Geordie like, you know from up north, a very uneducated man, and I don’t think I would have advanced too far in the service. CB: Ok. RW: Although I got on very, very well with the people. CB: Yeah. RW: It was great but I think the social side, the social class system would have meant that I’d perhaps have made wing commander but I don’t think I would have got any great senior rank. Again, partly that’s my thought. Whether it would have happened or not. My navigator, he was an educated lad and very good lad you see he lied about his age to join up, operational at eighteen. He stayed in the air force after the war, did very, very well indeed did all sorts of very important flying. He ended up as a squadron leader and stayed in the air force after the war and he was very well thought of in the service. Most of the other lads left the service. Except Taffy. He stayed in the service. He became, he stayed as a sergeant I think all his life and I think he drank his way through the service but er - CB: And he was always on the ground. RW: Always on the ground, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yes he did, he did fly a second tour. Some of the crews did second tours. He was on the second tour and he was on the last bombing raid that went to the Nuremberg and the Buchenwald raids. And Manna, Operation Manna. Norman, my bomb aimer, he stayed in the air force. He stayed although he had some elevating jobs he never rose above the rank of flight lieutenant because he was out in Burma and he was on the squadron in Burma. This was very shortly after the end of the war and the war was still going on in Burma and he was duty officer one weekend and the Scotch troop was getting knocked about in the jungle so he laid on a strike which was successful and got back. I think they only lost a couple of blokes which was really remarkable. Got everything back and he had to see the CO the next day who said, ‘You don’t, you didn’t have the authority to lay that on’ and he was court martialled and in the, in the court martialling that was it you know but he went on and he eventually when he got back to the UK, got sent back to the UK and he didn’t have a job and he had a friend who knew somebody who knew somebody and he went to work down at, down in Halfpenny Green down Pershore way working on TSR2 and he did some work on TSR2 and then did an awful lot of flying in Buccaneers, err Buccaneers um Canberra’s flying all over America doing line over mapping and this sort of thing. Got himself an MBE. So Norman who now lives in the tax haven Andorra is MBE DFC AFC, yeah. But lovely guy. CB: Ok so that’s a good intro thank you - RW: Yeah. CB: To the awards. RW: Yeah. Yeah. CB: So how did that come about for you and for him as well? How many of the crew were decorated? RW: Well the sad thing is I’ve still got it but thinking about the decorations for crews and that sort of thing I’ve still got a got a bit of a conscience about the DFC because at the end of the tour of operations nearly every skipper got a decoration and I got a DFC but the crew didn’t get anything and the crew were doing half the work. They kept me alive, they kept us all alive they were doing exactly the same job as I was doing, under the same circumstances. Same risks. The same with all the Bomber Command crew but none of them got a decoration. My engineer Curly did eventually get a DFM. CB: On the second tour - RW: But none of the - CB: Was it? RW: None of the crew got any recognition whatsoever I think what Harry did was the rear turret and think what rear gunners did sitting watching shells flying at you having a little 303 gun to fire back at a 20 millimetre shell you know um and the casualty rate for rear gunners was, really was something and there was a lot of decorations which should have been. We had one crew which were very, very badly knocked about and from what I gather afterwards the station commander recommended the skipper for a VC which, and the crew did all sorts of wonderful things the skipper was hit three times and all sorts of things went wrong and got the aircraft back but this was turned down and we gather that the reason was that he wasn’t just getting the crew and the aircraft back he was getting himself back as well. So five of the crew got CGMs that night so the decorations system I’m sure it’s the same in all the wars that a lot of people who deserved them didn’t get them because it was unknown. One, one situation whereby unless an action was seen by an officer it didn’t count. CB: Right. RW: So - CB: So the Queens Gallantry Medal. RW: Yeah. CB: The CGM. RW: Yeah. CB: Was a pretty good award. RW: Well it’s the next one down from the VC. CB: Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. The whole crew got it. RW: Yeah. Yeah. Five of the crew got it. CB: Yeah. RW: So you know the awards system obviously they have to have some rules and regulations, you know. I was told by, the by people afterwards after my crash landing getting the aircraft back the thought was the immediate award of the DFC but that didn’t come about. CB: So when did it happen? RW: That was in May, March CB: When you came to the end of your tour. RW: Oh, it was the end of the tour. CB: Was it? RW: Not at the time. Not immediately at the time. It wasn’t until anyway there we are. My DFC was given to me by the postman and there’s a nice little letter in there from King George saying I’m sorry, implying that he’s too busy too busy to see I’m sending it through the post but thank you very much. So, so that was given to me by the postman. CB: Extraordinary. RW: Subsequently, when I got I was very fortunate after the war I was awarded the MBE and - CB: But you got the AFC. So what was that - RW: I got the AFC. CB: So what - RW: I didn’t get the MBE I got the AFC. CB: The AFC, yes. RW: Yes, the AFC. CB: So what was the circumstance of that? RW: I’ve no idea. I’ve tried to find out but the only thing I’ve ever, people have been able to say meritorious service but I’ve no idea why. I think it was a brown nose job really you know, being in the right place at the right time. I can just imagine from what I’ve seen afterwards the air ministry would be issued so many medals to be issued to the command. Got down to group. Group allocated the medals out. Group was passed out to stations, stations allocated medals out, passed down to the squadrons and what was left for the squadron they had to find someone to give them to and I think I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. So, no reason why I - CB: No specific event that you can - RW: No specific event. Nothing - CB: No. RW: At all. No. So, it was again poor luck. CB: What about this other man you talked about who’d been in your crew before who got DFC, AFC? RW: Oh, Norman. The bomb aimer. CB: Yes how did he get those? RW: Well. CB: Did he get the DFC at the end of the tour? RW: Afterwards he, he - CB: Was he commissioned by then? RW: He eventually ended up on pathfinders. CB: Oh right. RW: Yeah, he did a second tour. CB: Ahh. RW: Didn’t do a full second tour but he did a lot of second tour on pathfinders and he got his DFC for that and he got his AFC for what he was doing in research down at Pershore down there and his MBE was for the work he did on TSR2 and the, and the work he was doing with the, with the Canberras. CB: Yeah. RW: Yeah and Curly my engineer he eventually got the DFM just after - CB: On his second tour. RW: After he left us he got the DFM and he from a very lowly back, we’re all from very lowly backgrounds, working class backgrounds his son Paul was at grammar school and there was a thing, a big trip they were going to do, which he could do which would have affected his career quite considerably from the school and Curly couldn’t afford it so he sold his medal. CB: Right. RW: To pay for his son to go through school. His son ended up as a very eminent statistician broadcasting, writing articles, touring the world doing this sort of thing and he still brings Curly to the reunions. CB: Oh does he? So he feels that’s good value. RW: Yeah. Yes, Yeah but poor old Curly he missed his medal a lot and a chappie called [?] it’s in there he bought Curlys medal. CB: Oh. RW: And there you are. He bought Curly’s medal. He was a medal collector and he also involved with [?] he’s a Frenchman working, working with the [6th airborne div] on the invasion things and he bought Curly’s medal and through the squadron he found out that Curly was on the squadron cause he got in touch trying to find out who’s it was and he invited Curly over for several years, every year to get his medal. Well the first year well he couldn’t get his medals back, well he didn’t, he was allowed to wear it but he very kindly let him wear his medal and showed him where his medal was and that’s the sort of thing, the sort of the lads they were. But - CB: Can I go back to a particular experience - RW: Yes. CB: You describe - RW: Yes, certainly. CB: And that was the collision. RW: Yes. CB: So you’re on top of another Lancaster. RW: Yeah. Yes. CB: What happened to that aircraft? RW: Well I didn’t see it at all. ‘Cause I was - CB: No. RW: A little busy keeping flying but apparently his propellers, as I said, chopped through our, just behind the bomb aimer’s feet and the bombing compartment up front. His mid upper, his canopy over the cockpit carved through our wheels and tore the canopy off. CB: Yeah. RW: And his mid upper gunner, his mid-upper turret was torn off as well and the boys said they saw Taffy who was looking out of his little window saw the aircraft falling away with the canopy falling off and the aircraft falling to bits so you can’t imagine what happened to the crew in the cockpit and the mid upper gunner sitting on top of the aircraft and they saw the aircraft falling away with no parachutes coming out. Of course it disappeared in cloud. CB: Ah. RW: And we were two thousand feet and then they saw the explosion on the ground. CB: Oh. RW: They found out afterwards that it was another Lancaster. CB: Right. RW: And they were able to identify what Lancaster it was and they were all killed of course. Unfortunately. How lucky can you be? CB: Yeah and none of your boys saw it coming because you hadn’t got any view of it of underneath. RW: No. Well the engineer was standing at his little window on the starboard side said he just saw it as it appeared and he didn’t see it at all. CB: So you were flying straight and level. RW: Yeah. Yeah. CB: And this came up from underneath you. RW: Yeah. Hit sort of sideways. CB: Oh sideways. RW: Sideways underneath. CB: Which is why you can’t - RW: Yeah and that’s why he cut across us and we sat on top of him. And that was, and you never thought about it you never thought about disaster at the time you were thinking preservation. CB: No. RW: And keeping the aircraft flying. We’ve got to fly. Yeah. Which fortunately it did. CB: And a different question each of the crew has a different recollection of what was going on because they had different jobs. RW: Yeah. CB: You’ve already mentioned the danger of being the rear gunner. RW: Yeah. CB: How many times did your gunners shoot at other aircraft? Attacking aircraft in other words. RW: In a way not as many as the attacks that we had because the idea was you didn’t use your guns unless you had to because it gave away your position so about what a half a dozen times, perhaps. CB: Yeah. RW: On one occasion we in the going over Germany we had [five] fighter attacks almost one after the other and if it hadn’t been for the diligence of the gunners we wouldn’t have escaped out of it, you know. CB: You did corkscrews to get away from it. RW: Corkscrewed out of it. And once you’ve started corkscrewing it’s no good, no point flying firing your guns. CB: No. RW: What did happen I was very fortunate I flew in both the, two of the aircraft who did the, the ton up aircraft who did over a hundred operations. One was in H How which was one of our squadron aircraft and the reason why I flew it was because our squadron was allocated the first two Rolls Royce turrets with the 2.5 guns in the back instead of the four 303s mainly we were the first one of the earliest ones to get it because of the attrition rate on the squadron we were given this the 2.5 and we were, WingCo asked us, well he didn’t ask us he told us to go on this operation and get into a position where the special duty operator could attract the fighter to us. CB: Right. RW: So we could try the guns out so we’re stooging along and there we are and Harry called up, he said, ‘Attack starboard quarter coming up.’ So we waited there and he got, when he got in the position where he pressed the guns, pressed the tits to fire the gun it didn’t operate. It didn’t go and we saw sparks flying past but fortunately there were lots of contrails around about so we nipped into the contrails and got rid, got corkscrewing and got rid of the fighter but when we got back the old boss was a bit concerned. CB: Yeah. RW: And he said, ‘We’ve got to have to find out what’s going on here,’ he said. And they discovered that they’d changed the anti-freeze grease on the guns and because of that we were told to go out the next night and try them out the next night. Which we did and unfortunately there were ten tenths cloud all over the place but we fired the guns and they worked alright. So that we flew and that was one of the reasons why we had the .5 guns. Because of the attrition rate on the squadron. CB: Were they also on the mid upper? RW: No. No, just the 2.5s in the mid upper gunner. CB: Yeah. RW: But again you don’t hear much about the mid upper gunners. CB: No. RW: But they were just as vulnerable as the others really. They were attacked from behind. CB: They were an important lookout. RW: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We were so lucky the diligence of my crew and we were good pals. It wasn’t the skipper sitting up front dictating things. They were telling you what to do. CB: Yeah. RW: You had to make the final decision obviously but you were just a crew. CB: What was the, what was the signaller doing? RW: [laughs] As little as possible [laughs] he was a wonderful character, very mischievous and he always swore he was going to come on operations drunk and towards one of our last operations we were in the crew room and we were talking and he crept up behind me and patted me on the shoulder [drunken talk imitation] and I turned around. He disappeared and I turned around and I said, ‘You bugger.’ And he’d left a couple of WAAFs standing behind me. [laughs] This is the sort of character he was. CB: This is an eighteen year old lad was he? RW: Nineteen. CB: Nineteen. RW: He was nineteen. No. He was twenty. CB: Oh was he? RW: Around then yeah and this was the sort of character he was and he used to get bearings when nobody else could and he when the skipper wanted a bearing, a particular bearing, he’d get one and there’s an emergency frequency which you had to keep off and he used to get right on the edge of this frequency and pick up bearings that you weren’t supposed to have. CB: So in practical terms. RW: Yes. CB: He was giving bearings all the time. RW: Yeah. Yeah. CB: Was he? RW: Yeah and again very different from, very different from the navigator and mischievous little devil and I always remember one of the occasions which we remember very vividly was at Waddington after the war when we had our squadron reunion and we’d all had quite a lot to drink and we were getting back into our taxi and we were going to drop him off at his pub, the Wheatsheaf in Lincoln and on the way back he was relating in his very drunken manner how Norman, my bomb aimer lost his virginity to Luscious Lill in Grimsby and there was a policeman walking past the car and wanted to know why. This was the sort of character he was. He drank like a fish and on one occasion we went into Louth to have drink and they used to run a crew bus to run us into Louth and pick us up at half past eleven when the pubs closed and we were coming back and Taffy disappeared. He didn’t know where it was until we had a call from the police station saying we have a wireless operator from your station. A chap called Arndale. He’s in prison. And what he did, he had a skinful, gone down a lane to have a wee and there just happened to be a policeman there and half wee’d on the policeman so they took him in. We were on operations that, had to be on operations that night so I had to into Louth and pay ten shillings to bail him out from the police station to get him back. This was the sort of, wonderful characters and we used to go down the pub and drink enormously playing Moriarty and again, it was a form of relaxation. CB: Yes sure. RW: Getting rid of stress. CB: Just a couple of things about the flying, excuse me. RW: Yes that’s - CB: What were you doing when you weren’t on operations? RW: Well occasionally you did an air test. And perhaps did a little bit fighter affiliation practice being attacked by a fighter but generally your, you were completely relaxed to do whatever you wanted. There was no, no station duties whatsoever. You’d perhaps go up to flight and see what was going on with the others. Down the pub. CB: But were you doing bombing practice in The Wash? RW: Yes, there were - CB: Were you doing circuits and bumps? RW: I think, I think it was a place called Wainfleet. CB: Yeah. RW: Somewhere about The Wash where we used to do practice bombing little eleven and half pound practice bombs you know, practice bombs. Used to drop those. CB: What height would you be flying when you dropped those? RW: Oh about eight, ten thousand feet. You weren’t flying at twenty odd thousand feet. CB: No. RW: In those days and yes we used to do little air tests and things. CB: Cross countries? RW: Pardon? CB: Cross country for navigation practice. RW: Err not so much. You did those when you first got on the squadron and you, when you got the feel of the squadron you did a couple of cross countries then but after that no we didn’t have to do any cross countries at all and your relaxation was really resting and down the boozer, down the pub and I used to get into trouble. When we used to live in a nissen hut, little corrugated iron nissen hut and when the condensation, used to get the condensation inside used to run down the ridges and in the winter used to form icicles. CB: Cause there’s no insulation. RW: Yeah. No. CB: No insulation. RW: No insulation. No. CB: No. RW: And all we had was a pot stove in the middle of the room a little cylindrical pot stove which we used to go and try and rob people of their ration of fuel and burn furniture and all sorts of silly things and of course there were no ablutions or watering inside. The ablutions were outside in another hut with a concrete bench with taps on and that was all you had. It wasn’t a, Wimpy built the station in eighty days completely and there were a main roads. There was a main road into the station, a main road with flights, a perimeter track and a runway and that’s about it. And all the rest we were walking around on grass and mud as a matter of fact being called Ludford Magna they nicknamed the place as Mudford which is a - CB: It was that bad was it? RW: It was that bad. CB: Right. RW: But it was, basically apart from the stress of what was going on it was a happy station and this was reflected on the senior staff. The group captain and the WingCos in that place. CB: But with the high attrition rate - RW: Yeah. CB: How, the senior officers would get shot down as well. RW: Yeah. CB: So how did the replacements work? Would it be somebody from the squadron already or would they post in a squadron leader or wing commander? RW: I think it depended on who was available. Perhaps one of the flight commanders would be promoted or could be promoted and our flight commander, Squadron Leader Robinson he was a fortnight before he was a flight lieutenant but the flight commander was killed and with rapid promotion he is made squadron leader. So he became a squadron leader and it has happened that when a station commander who’d gone on operations, well WingCo Alexander a wonderful man, he used to come and take on a crew that had just arrive on the squadron. Take them on operations. So if there were lost they’d perhaps try and promote somebody on the squadron, from the flight to become station commander or bring somebody in with experience. CB: Squadron commander you mean. RW: Yes, squadron leader. CB: Yeah. RW: Bring in one of the senior officers to take over the station which didn’t happen on our lot. I know it did, it has happened but then rapid promotion for whoever is on the flight. CB: Yeah. RW: Which Robinson was. He became from the - CB: Yeah. So - RW: Yeah so this rapid promotion business was well deserved but Robinson became the, the flight commander when he was twenty five, twenty six. Yeah. Well, look at Gibson. He was twenty six, he was a group captain and the group - CB: Yeah. RW: Group captain in the service, yeah. CB: Well did sometimes the station commanders fly on raids? RW: Not the station commander. I know some of them did. Ours didn’t. Old Group Captain King. As far as we know he didn’t because we didn’t know everything that was going on but the Wing Commander Alexander who was in charge of all the flying as I say a new crew would come on the squadron and he’d take that squadron, take that crew that night. Normally, he did a second dicky trip which was an experienced to get experience on flying but when we started at the end, end of of ‘43 started the Battle of Berlin when the operations were called Gomorrah which was maximum effort err old Squadron Leader Robinson flight commander called me in and said. ‘Right you’re flying tonight.’ I didn’t get a second dicky trip but thinking of that sort of thing we used to have jinx. People in the squadron. Used to have WAAFs, you know, somebody little transport driver if they’d been out with this particular WAAF nearly everybody who’d been out with her got killed so she became a jinx, you know. CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. RW: And we became a jinxed crew. CB: Yeah. RW: We took three different pilots on experience operations and all of them were killed. CB: Were they? RW: So they wouldn’t send any more people with us. CB: No. RW: Yes. Which is remarkable. So these jinx things did happen. CB: How many hours did you fly in your thirty by the time you’d finished your tour of thirty ops? RW: Something like a hundred and eighty three. Something like that. CB: On, on ops. RW: On ops. CB: Ok. RW: Do you want to see my logbook? CB: I do. Please. RW: Yes. When – CB: We’ll do that in a minute but overall how many by the time you left the RAF how many hours had you flown? RW: Oh that’s getting on a bit. I did something like two and half thousand hours. CB: Did you really? RW: Which, when you compare people flying now are talking about thousands of hours. Thirty, forty, fifty thousand hours. No, two and a half thousand hours I ended up with which was quite a long bit for, for the - CB: When the Canadian Lancaster came over last year - RW: Yeah. CB: The senior pilot there, he’s on airlines, had done twenty seven thousand five hundred - RW: Yeah. Yeah. CB: Hours. RW: Yeah. Amazing, yeah. CB: I’m going to stop there for a moment. Thank you. [Pause] CB: Right we’re starting again. RW: Right from the beginning. CB: And what I’d like to do is to ask Rusty just to talk about the time from his birth really to a point at West Kirby. RW: Yeah thank you. Gosh. That’s, well at ninety two it’s a long story. No, it’s not really but I was very fortunate in my bringing up. I was born in a place called Shotley Bridge in County Durham and my dad worked as a handyman on a colliery owner’s estate and there I don’t know whether it was because of the situation or what was going on we lived in a tied cottage and I got diphtheria. I was, I had mucous diphtheria quite a chronic illness in those days and my mum who’d been a nurse in a military hospital nursed me at home with that and mum and dad had quite different careers. My dad was in the navy. He was orphaned as a boy, a two year old boy and brought up by an elder sister who when he got a bit older didn’t want them so he was put in the navy in 1905 as a boy entry and he went through and became a naval diver. And my mum who was a nurse in the, a sister, a matron, assistant matron at a military hospital in Darlington. Went through the war and got herself a Royal Red Cross, Associated Red Cross which was one down from the nursing VC which was a considerable award. She was a wonderful lady. And dad with his naval experience on the Q ships got himself a DFM and he is a leading seaman which was rather unusual in those days ‘cause not very many lower rank NCOs, he wasn’t even an NCO, got a decoration. He got a DFM. CB: A DSM. RW: Yes a DSM. DSM, yes. CB: Yeah. RW: Distinguished Service Medal and he, having been orphaned, he didn’t have a home to go to and my uncle Stanley was in the navy as well and he brought dad home on leave up north to Newcastle and there he met my mum and my auntie and he married my mum which is, which is lovely but because of his health he couldn’t do any really serious work and he used to do handyman work on the colliery owner’s estate and eventually when he moved in to Newcastle he used to do shift work looking after the stable and the horses for the Coop and in those day they had something like four hundred and sixty horses in the stables. And the nostalgic smell of all that leather was, when I used to go to night schools to try and get some education his stables were just a bit up the road and I used to go and meet him at, class would finish at 9 o’clock, the stables used to finish at half nine. I used to go and meet him at the stables and have a cup of tea by the big stove in the kit room. Smelled wonderfully. Wonderful. And then we had to walk home two and a half miles. No question of buses. Walk home. And dad was, really was a very quiet, unassuming man. Mum was a nurse all her life stayed nursing as her career all her life and she really saved my life on more than one occasion. Nursing me at home with diphtheria and typhoid and then the consequence because we, because we lived in, had no inside toilet, it was only a cold tap and no electricity, gas, paraffin lamps. We had communal toilets outside on The Green at the back I obviously picked up the typhoid from there so my mum went out and set them on fire and burned them down. So there we are. I came back to Newcastle and lived in the city for a wee while and then as a young teenager then I got TB, I had a TB [?] and that kept me down very much so and I was in a wheelchair when I was twelve so my mum nursed me at home with the TB and in consequence my health suffered to the extent that I wasn’t allowed to play sport, I wasn’t allowed to go swimming, couldn’t do all the exercises that my brother used to do and because of the family teeth which weren’t very good and because of the medication I was taking my teeth were in a very poor state so I had all my teeth out when I was sixteen and in those days they didn’t put teeth straight back in away again they waited until your gums got hard and then they put some china teeth in in those days. China porcelain things and that ruined my early love life that did. Mind you I didn’t know what girls were anyway. As far as I was concerned they were the ones that danced backwards, you know, so my upbringing in that respect was very, very sheltered. In consequence I started to go to school when I was about four and a half in Newcastle on the City Road but soon becoming ill I had to stop school and when I did go back to school I was just, just under eleven when you took the scholarship exam at twelve and of course I didn’t pass the scholarship and I didn’t, my brother went to a grammar school. I couldn’t go to a grammar school. I went to a school where you learnt ship working and work on the, work with the prospect of going perhaps in to the drawing offices of the shipyard. All the local stuff. But there again I wasn’t allowed to join the scouts or play sports and yet and yet my dad used to love watching football and we used to go to Newcastle United and watch the football there from an early age, from about eight, so I got quite a bit of fondness for Newcastle United. So, there we are I was a very sickly child with very little education and of course in those days to join the services at the age of eighteen you were called up and you were directed into any of the services that they needed. Even go down the mines and become a Bevan boy which I didn’t relish so I told mum and dad my friend he was going to join up at seventeen and have some sort of choice of services you went into and dad having been in the navy I said to mum and dad I said, ‘I’m going to volunteer and I’m going to join the navy. Volunteer to join the navy’ And they said, ‘Yeah. With your health record you’ll never get in.’ So off I went down to the recruiting centre which was a school and in the navy classroom there was the navy recruiting officer and my own doctor, Doctor Wright and I thought. ‘If I go in there I’ll never get in.’ So, I went next door and joined the air force. And really they were very hard up. This poor chap with no teeth and a heart murmur and varicose veins and covered in psoriasis and I think the air force must have been very, very hard up and much to my amazement after going to West Kirby to sign on where you were attested and signed on and joined the air force at seventeen. And poor old mum wept buckets her poor little lad, her poor little innocent lad going to play soldiers um and of course from then you had to go down to London to ACRC, St Johns Wood to be attestation and see what air crew you were going to be. When you were first signed up and joined up I was told I could train as air crew which was amazing ‘cause, in view of my health. Anyway after being signed on and got the kings shilling, not that I got a shilling but had to swear on the bible down to ACRC where you had attestation where you had medicals and exams. The medicals we used to have were in the Lords Cricket Ground and used to line up just with your underpants on and arms akimbo with your hands on your hips and they were at the side with the hypodermic syringe and pumping this stuff into you and the doc used to come and do what they called an FFI, free from infection, whereby you walked down the front, dropped your trousers and they used to go down and examine you with a little stick and the back, they went around the back, they went around the back and said bend over and made me wonder what on earth was going to happen but there you are if anyone collapsed when you were there or fainted there they just produced all the work on the ground. They just gave the injections on the ground. So we being, being at the Lords Cricket Ground you know and of course the result of that, much to my amazement, I was told I could train as a pilot because when you first went there you were trained as aircrew UT aircrew with a little white flash in your cap to show you were aircrew, trainee aircrew. So there we are I was told I could train as a pilot. And of course from there you had to start learning about the air force so I was posted to Newquay down in Cornwall at the ITW Initial Training Wing where you learned about the air force, square bashing, how to salute and all these sort of things. The admin side of the air force. So having completed that we were posted to, I was posted to South Africa and issued with the tropical kit and off to East Kirby, West, West Kirby at Manchester er at Liverpool to catch the boat to go out to South Africa. And in the billets there when the time came all the people left except eleven of us who were left in the room all Ws. All Walls, Walkers all the Ws left behind and we were left there and the camp disappeared. They took all the men off the camp, all the operating men off the camp and there were just the eleven, we lived off the NAAFI for a week and not knowing what on earth was going on until the next posting that came in and they were all WAAFs. All the WAAFs came in and seeing eleven blokes in their billet you know wondering what on earth was going on. So did we. Then the WAAF officer said, you know, ‘What are you doing?’ Well. ‘We were posted to South Africa and we didn’t go.’ Ah draft dodging. So we were posted down to the B course at Brighton. The bad boys course at Brighton because of the because we were accused of draft dodging and down there we were up very early in the morning and booking in at half past eight at night which we didn’t take very much enjoyment out of this sort of thing and the parades were very, very strict and doubling and running everywhere and we complained to the orderly officer one day at a mealtime telling him, you know we shouldn’t be here. We haven’t done anything wrong and he didn’t believe it and he said, ‘Oh you carry on.’ So the eleven of us, we wrote a letter and we all signed it and sent it to the station commander who had us in his office and he said. ‘This constitutes mutiny,’ which is a court martial offence and when we’d explained to him what had happened he did a bit of an investigation, he said, ‘Oh that’s alright he said, ‘Alright just book in in the morning and come in at night time.’ So we had a few days, four or five day holidaying in Brighton just walking about and spending all our time in [Sherry’s] Bar I think it was and of course then we had to start again. And when we were posted we were posted to another ITW at Stratford on Avon but all our kit and all our records had been sent out to South Africa so nobody knew anything about us so we had to start again so we did all our ITW again at Stratford on Avon and that was very pleasant. We took over most of the hotels for lectures and bedding and I can say I was on the stage in Stratford on Avon which is quite a, quite a thrill mainly as we used the theatre as aircraft recognition. We had to go on stage to point out aeroplanes but that was quite an experience and of course having completed the course successfully there you had to go and prove that we could fly and go overseas so we were posted to a place called Codsall, just north of Wolverhampton where there was a civilian aerodrome where we were, had to go flying Tiger Moths and once we’d gone solo that was it, forgot about aeroplanes. Some of the poor souls couldn’t go solo and they were re-posted. So, fortunately, I managed it and on the Empire Training Scheme where they used to send trainees to South Africa, some to Australia even, some to Arnold Scheme in America. I was posted to Canada on the Empire Training Scheme and this was at a place called Dewinton which is just south of Calgary. CB: So this is, what date are we talking about here? RW: This, this was in early ’42. CB: Right. RW: Early ’42. CB: Can I just go back to what you said earlier? RW: Yeah. CB: You were selected for aircrew. RW: Yeah. CB: But you must have gone through some kind of process that suggested you were suitable for aircrew rather than - RW: Yeah. CB: A ground crew job. RW: Yeah. CB: So what was that? RW: Yes. When you were first signed on, volunteered as air crew, when you went to Padgate to be officially sworn in to the service you did some testing there. You did some examinations there and with, fortunately with my experience as a pupil surveyor doing vectors and things on the ground is a similar sort of thing they did in the air with wind resistance and this sort of thing and that helped me enormously to pass the ground exams and having done that minor exams there you were then told you could train as UT aircrew. CB: Right. RW: Becoming UT aircrew PNB. CB: Yeah. RW: If you couldn’t succeed as a pilot you could perhaps become a navigator or a bomb aimer PNB. CB: Yeah. RW: And I was fortunate to say I could train as a pilot. So we - CB: Just, just to put that into context. Earlier you talked about your experience of then getting to leave school. RW: Yeah. CB: How did you get in to bring the surveyor? RW: Ah the well I - CB: Which was the basis for your selection. RW: Yeah. Yeah. CB: For aircrew. RW: I had, the school I went to was a training establishment more than a school. Learning about draughtsmanship and this sort of thing - CB: Yeah. RW: To go on the shipyards and you had to leave there when you were fifteen, sixteen. So I left school, no idea of what sort of job I could get whatsoever. So my brother who was, he was a grammar school boy and very highly educated, a very clever lad, he used to work in his spare time at the Newcastle repertory theatre and this Christmas they were putting on a play called “The Circus Girl” and they were short of somebody to take the part of the monkey in the play and my brother said I’ve got a brother who is doing nothing maybe he’d be it so I became a monkey in the Christmas pantomime at the Newcastle rep which was great fun. The devils, they wore a uniform, skin monkey skin with not much else really. The devils used to put itching powder inside that actually. Not very nice. And of course then when the pantomime was finished they said, ‘What are you doing now?’ and I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ve got to look for a job.’ They said, ‘Would you like to stop on?’ So I stayed on the Newcastle rep for nearly a year as an assistant assistant assistant stage manager and with the girls doing quick changes at the side of the theatre you learned an awful lot about life but my aunt who had a very good friend who was, worked, had another friend who owned and ran an architect’s surveyors office said would I like to go and work for them. So I went and worked at the architect surveyor’s office and became a pupil surveyor. I was doing the exams for the Institute of Surveying, ISF, and I passed their preliminary exams but they didn’t count because I didn’t have a matriculation or school cert so I was going to night school four nights a week learning about mathematics and history and I wasn’t getting on terribly well. I don’t think I would have ever qualified completely but very fortunately the war came along and having volunteered to join up I left surveying and became, and joined the air force. CB: So that’s how you effectively qualified for being air crew. RW: Yeah. CB: Yeah. RW: Yeah. CB: Ok. Yeah. RW: So the fact that I qualified for air crew, the fact that, not so much my health record although the medicals I had were very comprehensive medicals the fact that the mathematics I was doing for the surveying helped me enormously with the navigation exercises we were doing in the thing so that, I think, helped towards the fact that I was allowed to train as air crew apart from the fact that they must have been very short of aircrew and they wanted somebody [to fill the boots]. Yeah, so - CB: Just a quick question about your initial training. RW: Yeah. CB: How many hours did you fly before you went solo? RW: When we first went solo at Codsall in Wolverhampton it was about eight or ten. CB: Right. RW: Something like that. When we got out to Canada you really had to start again and you were doing sort of fifteen, twenty hours before you really were allowed to go solo. CB: So I’m just interrupting now because this goes into the early part of the interview because it got missed. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AWaughmanR150803 PWaughmanR1501 Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rusty Waughman. Two Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource eng Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 02:55:47 audio recording Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Brockbank Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-08-03 Description An account of the resource Russell (Rusty) Waughman was born in Shotley Bridge, County Durham. Due to serious poor health as a child, his education was interrupted. He describes his training with the Empire Training School in Canada. He was posted to 101 Squadron which was a special squadron with the ABC system. He describes some of the unusual aspects of squadron life, such as premonitions, and the close connections between everyone on the station. He had many close calls, including having to right the aircraft which was flying upside down, due to being blown off course by a nearby explosion. On one occasion he managed to keep his Lancaster flying despite a collision with another aircraft. On another occasion the aircraft was again damaged during an attack on Munich. However, as they made their slow progress back they found themselves flying over France in daylight and were amazed to see, from a distance, two Spitfires which had been sent to escort them home. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain Canada England--Lincolnshire Germany--Berlin Germany Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Maureen Clarke 101 Squadron 1662 HCU 82 OTU aircrew anti-aircraft fire Berlin Campaign (23 August 1943 – 25 March 1944) bombing bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944) bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944) briefing C-47 control tower coping mechanism crewing up dispersal entertainment faith fear FIDO forced landing ground crew ground personnel H2S Heavy Conversion Unit heirloom lack of moral fibre Lancaster Lancaster Finishing School love and romance Me 109 mid-air collision military living conditions military service conditions nose art Operational Training Unit Oxford perimeter track pilot promotion RAF Abingdon RAF Blyton RAF Desborough RAF hospital Matlock RAF Ludford Magna recruitment sanitation searchlight Stearman superstition Tiger Moth training Wellington Women’s Auxiliary Air Force https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/722/10118/ABradfordS161031.mp3 18e10be05e692061bdfe7a521b7d2770 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 Bradford, Stanley S Bradford Description An account of the resource Nine items. An oral history interview with Stan Bradford DFM (1923 - 2017, 2216040 Royal Air Force) also includes his flying log book, service and release document, investiture ticket, newspaper cuttings and squadron photograph. He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner from RAF Scampton. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Stanley Bradford and Matt Ashamall and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-10-31 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 Bradford, S Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today I’m in Abingdon with Stan Bradford DFM and we’ve just been to the Remembrance celebration in the centre of the town. And Stan was a mid-upper gunner and we’re going to talk about some extra items that have come out of the earlier part of the interview done by Matt Ashamall. So the first one that was intriguing I thought Stan was how you came to join the RAF. Because of when you were going in your truck. SB: Yeah. CB: To Blackpool. You thought you’d — SB: Yes. CB: Go into the Recruiting Office. So just talk us through that could you? SB: Well, from what I remember it my foreman where I was an apprentice his name was Ervyn Jagger. And since the war I’ve been in management myself and one of the big things I felt I had to look at was his style of man management. And his man management was absolutely deploring. Now, our job. We were in a Reserved Occupation and our job was to repair fighting vehicles such as coaches that transported troops from station to station. If they had been involved in an accident we had to repair them and then deliver them to the old, back to the owners. And one particular day I was with a guy and he was an Irishman, his name was Mick Jagger. That was a good for you. Now, Mick was wonderful. But Ervyn Jagger, the foreman he came up to Mick. He said, ‘Mick. I’m going to take your lad off you.’ Which was me. And he said, ‘He’s big enough. And now the restrictions are lifted where you don’t need a driving test anymore,’ he said, ‘And I want him to take a Seagull coaches to Blackpool. Having repaired it now we’ll take it to Blackpool.’ And it annoyed me in so much that I was with Mick as a lad and I was doing pretty good. And it seemed to me that he was determined to stop me being so good because he had his favourites in the department. However, I got in the bus and we had to go through, I mean you will all have heard of Wigan Pier. And close to Wigan Pier we went through with this bus. And I thought, ‘Bugger. I’m going to go in the forces.’ My mates are in there that was in the village. It was a small village called Astley that had about a couple of hundred people and the local industry was a coal mine. However, I thought I’m going to have a go. So I went to the army guy and I said, ‘Can I recruit? Join the army.’ ‘Oh come in,’ you know, ‘We’ll take you on.’ Of course once he knew I was an apprentice he said, ‘No chance.’ He said, ‘You’re an apprentice in a Reserved Occupation. So,’ he said, ‘No chance.’ Well, for reasons best known to the service people there were three in a line. The army, the navy, the air force. So I’m now with the navy. So I went to the navy. And the navy bloke said, ‘Yeah. Come in.’ Once he started, Reserved Occupation, out you go. They wouldn’t have me. I thought well I’ll just as well fix the three up. I’ll go to the air force. And the sergeant in there said, ‘Yeah. We’ll have you. But,’ he said, ‘There’s only one place you’re going to be,’ he said, ‘Because I heard you talking about the guy down the street that you’ve been in a Reserved Occupation.’ I said, ‘Exactly.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘The only chance you’ve got of coming in to the air force,’ he said, ‘Is you go in aircrew.’ I said, ‘That’s alright. Put me down for aircrew.’ So off I went quite happily. Signed. And delivered the coach and then come back to my works where I was apprentice. Went home in the evening. I said, ‘Mum and dad, I’ve been and joined the services.’ My dad said, ‘What you done?’ I said, ‘I’ve joined the air force. In aircrew.’ He said, ‘What?’ he said, ‘Bloody nancy boys.’ [laughs] I said, ‘I’m afraid so, dad.’ Of course he had his say and it wasn’t very pleasant because he was a regimental sergeant major in the army in the First World War. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’ve done it. There’s nothing we can do.’ Within five days I had to go to a place which wasn’t too far from home called RAF Padgate. And there they did an attestation. So we had to sit an exam. Did we have a brain? We had an examination. Then we had a medical examination. A colour test. Make sure that we weren’t colour blinded because to get in aircrew you had to be spot on. Your hearing. And when they’d finished with you you could guarantee that you are a fit man. And from there within, we went home, and within less than a week I was in and back to Padgate. And I’ll always remember a funny story at Padgate. I said to the corporal who was in charge, we went to a wrestling match which they put on for the troops and this corporal, I said to this corporal, ‘Is there any chance of me going home?’ I said, ‘I only live just up the road.’ ‘Just the bloke we’re looking for. So what would I ended up? I was an usher ushering people to their seats. So, I didn’t get my chance to go home. And from there we went off to Lords Cricket Ground. So that was — CB: Yeah. SB: When I, why I joined. CB: Fantastic. Thank you very much. Now, in the process of your flying you were very successful in engaging aircraft. So, I wondered if we could just take a sequence out of the overall sequence of your kills and because yours is a very unusual situation and it would be really useful to be able to hear how this progressed because some of the people I’ve interviewed never even shot at an aircraft let alone shot it down. So your first engagement was what? SB: We were on the way to Nuremberg. And sitting up in the mid-upper turret you’d got a damned good view of proceedings and I happened to spot, when I was traversing the mid-upper turret [pause] a Lancaster blown up. And I thought Christ. I kept my eye on him. It was a 109. I kept my eye on him and I thought he appears to be swooping around towards us. And I thought extra alert on to him. So, I said to my pilot, told him there was enemy aircraft on our starboard beam. And astern and starboard beam is back of us. And lo and behold yes he was coming towards us. Well, one of the things in our training we had to know the aircraft that was we were engaging. We had to know it’s wing span. We had to know its speed. We had to know everything there was to know about who was coming so we could line him up in our sights and this 109 was coming towards us. And I thought right. I put my sights on him. Frightened to death. I watched him until he got within shooting range and then I gave him a burst. And hey presto I was lucky. I hit him and caught him straight in the engine and down he went. And I watched him go. I shouldn’t have done it but I did it. I watched him go down. We’re not supposed to look down at all. So, I watched him going down. And in between this what I told the pilot to, ‘Dive to port. Go.’ Now, a pilot never moved until the gunner said to him, Prepare to dive to port.’ And he always waited for the word, ‘Go.’ And you can imagine the suspense between the two of us. Him waiting for me and me waiting for him to [laughs] It was a little bit frightening but I did it. I did it. CB: So you shot it down. So the idea of then going the opposite way. In other words to port, to the left was to get out of the way. SB: Dive away from him coming in. Yeah. CB: Yeah. Because he might have got you himself even. SB: Yeah. Yeah. CB: Right. Ok. So which operation was that? Was that one of your early — SB: That was the very first. CB: Very first. Right. SB: Very first. From Scampton. CB: Right. SB: Yeah. Yeah. CB: And the second kill. What was that? SB: The second kill. Our rear gunner, he reported enemy aircraft astern of us and again he gave the pilot order what he wanted. I believe it was again dive starboard. And naturally it drew my attention to that situation. And Chick hit him. He fired at him. He hit him but he didn’t put him down. And I looked over as he went underneath us. I looked over and I thought well I’ve got to help him on his way. So, I belted him and he went down. CB: What was that? SB: I believe it was a Focke Wulf 190. And that was very close to the target. Nuremberg. Now, during this time obviously they the Focke Wulf in particular he shot at us and wounded us and he destroyed our navigational equipment. So, basically we come out the target the other end and we were lost. Ron, our pilot, he never kept anything from us. He always informed us of what was happening and he said, ‘Well, lads,’ he said, ‘You’ve done a good job getting rid of that lot. Now,’ he said, ‘We’ve got a problem. We’re bloody lost.’ However, this, what this did this brought in our navigator. He had what they called in those days a sextant. And this sextant it was taken from what they called the astrodome where the spare man, in this case it was our wireless operator in the target area looking for enemy aircraft to inform us if there was one about. But he relinquished the role and let the navigator go in there firing the sextant at the stars to get a fix. Where were we and whatever. And Tony got, Tony West his name was, he got a fix alright. And he seemed to get us somewhere near but we were all alone. By this time one of the engines had gone. We had three. And later on in the trip after probably maybe an hour, two hours we came out and Tony. He said, ‘I’ve got a feeling now, Skipper,’ he said, ‘We’re over the sea.’ He said, ‘I’m sure I see the enemy, the coast.’ So, he said, ‘Ron,’ he said, ‘If you’re looking for help,’ he said, ‘I would issue an SOS. Call up Darkie and say we’re lost.’ What are we going to do? So Ron did. He thought that was not a bad idea. He called out Darkie and SOSs and one thing and another. And before you could say jack’s a lad bump. Bang. We were over the Channel Islands and as is well known that the Germans invaded the Channel Islands and occupied it and the Germans were firing at us. We thought, Christ. It wasn’t very pleasant. But Ron stuck the nose down from what height we had and got well away as quick as he could. And after a little while an aircraft appeared and flashed his navigation lights. You know, the green and the red. And we picked him up by, well I picked him up. I said, ‘It’s a Typhoon bomber.’ I said to Ron, ‘It’s a Typhoon bomber.’ And he took a position. He was a little out of range of our guns. We only had a four hundred yards accuracy. And I said, ‘We aint going to have a go at him.’ However, I did identify him. He was a Typhoon. And he kept well out on [pause] of our range and he escorted us back. He was based at RAF Exeter. He guided us in. Wished us all the best. Did chatter. Got us on the runway. And we got to the end of the runway and the bloody engines packed in. Course the aircraft was knocked about like a colander. Well what they said to us when they got us out the aeroplane very quickly in case something blew up or whatever and debriefed us and then they took us for a meal. The old traditional egg and bacon. And the flight sergeant in the sergeant’s mess there was only two of us. Three of us, I beg your pardon. He took us into the mess and unfortunately the flight sergeant in the mess he’d just been informed that his son who was an air gunner had just been missing on operations. So he made a real special effort looking after us three. Two of us were gunners. And he said, ‘What about a drink lads?’ We were all dressed for flying so it was, thinking it was winter see keep warm so we kept the aircrew unit on and they took us into Exeter. We’d barely got out the van that he’d laid on for us into Exeter when the SPs got hold of us and whipped us back to base which didn’t please the flight sergeant. I think he doubted their parentage if I’m honest because of what they’d done and he told them what we’d gone through. And they said, ‘We’re doing our job.’ So it was all messed up. And the next day we flew back to Scampton where we picked our kit up and then off to East Kirkby. CB: When — SB: And then we had to wait a little while before 57 Squadron confirmed that we were credited with the two and they gave them to me. CB: Brilliant. On a slightly different note what was the relationship you had with the ground crew? SB: Perfect. Absolutely perfect. CB: So, when you brought a colander back how did they express their feelings about that? SB: I don’t think I’d like to come out with the language but can I just said Jesus Christ [laughs] CB: Over the Channel Islands that was flak that hit you was it? SB: The big guns. CB: Yeah. SB: Yeah. The big guns. Yeah. Yeah. And in point of fact some years later I said to my wife, we went on holiday into Weymouth and I said to my wife I spotted this sign, “day trip.” I said [unclear] ‘We’re going.’ And I went to see the old hospital and things like that. CB: Yeah. The underground hospital. SB: Just to bring back memories. CB: Yes. SB: Yeah. CB: And those coastal guns. SB: Yeah. CB: Yeah. SB: Yeah. CB: Fantastic. SB: Yeah. CB: Right. So that’s your first operation and you shot down two aircraft. SB: Yes. CB: So, we’re on the topic of the kills. What was the third victory that you had? SB: I think the Dornier 217. That was a fighter bomber. And I’ve got a feeling. I’m not certain where that, where he was. [pause] He was, all I can tell you he was persistent. He had a go at us two or three times and we, between us we dodged him with our tactics. Again, which was a lot of the training. CB: Yeah. SB: And our tactics beat him. CB: So, how did you actually get him in the end? In the fuselage? In the engines? Or what? SB: Straight in the pilot’s cabin. Yeah. I thought, well the bugger had got to go hadn’t he? It’s him or me. CB: Yeah. SB: Either kill or be killed. CB: What, what raid were you on then? What op? SB: I’ve got a feeling we were Berlin. CB: Right. SB: I’m sure. Berlin. CB: Yeah. So that’s number three. What happened with the next one? SB: I think again it was an ME 109. We was just approaching. Again Berlin. We were going in there. We hadn’t had a very pleasant trip in there and Munday decided well we’ve come this far. We’re going to go and we’re going to go in there and we’re going to do what we’re paid to do. And we did it. And just as we were coming out the other end he was waiting for us. So I thought well he’s got to go and all [laughs] So, yes. I did him. CB: So, we’re in the night and these are single-engine aircraft. They’re being directed by radar to you. SB: Yes. Yes. CB: Right. SB: Yes. Yes. CB: So how did you see him first? SB: I think I looked. I’m pretty sure I looked up and he was just hovering above. Obviously out of the way of the flak. And I identified him pretty quick and said that’s what he was. And I’m pretty positive in saying that as was the case with the last one he didn’t see us. CB: So effectively you got him — SB: I hit him. I hit him in the engine. And the last one I — he was flying on the beam and Dennis was in the, as I said earlier he, Dennis was in the astrodome looking. Helping the gunners. Looking for enemy aircraft. And he said, ‘Look on the starboard beam, Stan.’ I said, ‘Funnily enough I just got, I’ve just seen him.’ And with that I had him. I’d time to tell him to tell Ron what tactics were involved so a bit too late so, however, I had him. I shot the pilot. I could, I could even see it now. I had him. Full. No bother. CB: And at what distance are we talking about? SB: I’m talking of what two, three hundred yards. CB: Right. And in, I didn’t ask you but in the mid-upper turret how many guns have you got? SB: Two. CB: Right. SB: Two. CB: And they’re zeroed at what range? SB: The maximum we had was four hundred. Maximum. CB: Right. So, we’ve done three and four. How did you feel about it once you’d dealt with them? SB: Could you say elated in one sense. CB: Yeah. SB: And thanking my lucky stars in the other. CB: Sure. SB: Yeah. Yes. CB: Number five. SB: I’m not. Do you know I’m not certain. I’m not. I’m not a hundred percent certain so I don’t know if you don’t mind if I don’t comment on the one. I’m not. I’m not — it’s misty. No. CB: At what happened you mean? SB: Sorry? CB: You mean when it was and what happened. SB: Yeah. I’m a little bit foggy. CB: Yes. SB: I’m not a hundred percent certain. CB: But roughly. Just roughly. SB: Roughly. Roughly again — CB: Because they were all at night these things. SB: They had a go at us. CB: Yeah. SB: I’ve got a feeling one was on the way [pause] they had a clue from the — see being it was early this one. They were waiting on the borders. Before Sweden. And I think again it was a 109. Pretty sure it was. And — CB: Is this over Denmark is it? SB: Sorry? CB: Is this over Denmark? SB: Yeah. On the way in. CB: Yeah. To Berlin. SB: In to Sweden. CB: Yeah. SB: Because we flew over Sweden which unfortunately Winston Churchill denied that we were briefed to go that way. Again, strange enough it was one of the most frightening we did. Not being used to seeing streetlights and things like this. And also they had, the Swedish air force were equipped with Focke Wulf 190s — CB: Right. SB: As their front line aircraft. Fighters. And they kept just outside the four hundred yard mark at which are guns weren’t effective and your sitting there, ‘Is that bugger going to shoot at us?’ And you didn’t, just didn’t comprehend what, what was going to happen. Were they going, were they going to have a go at us or not? But fortunately they escorted us straight through Sweden to the other end and believe it or believe it not there was a searchlight pointing at to sea. Straight over our track. CB: This is on the return trip. SB: Yeah. CB: Yeah. SB: We’d done the bombing. Then we were coming home. CB: Yeah. SB: And it was unbelievable to think that — CB: They would do that. Yeah. SB: They was identifying the track. That’s the way you’ve got to go lads. CB: Fantastic. SB: And our man went. CB: Yeah. But your engagement with the fighter was before then. SB: Oh yeah. That was on the, coming into, into Sweden. CB: Yes. Oh you went over — SB: The had an idea from the — CB: You went over Sweden both ways did you? SB: No. No. CB: No. SB: No. No. Coming home. CB: Right. SB: Coming home. I’ve got a feeling one of them, because of the following wind it took us an hour and a half to get from take-off to bombing. CB: Really. SB: Yeah. CB: Gee. SB: And it took us six and a half to come back against the wind [laughs] CB: Blimey. Yeah. SB: I can always remember that you know. CB: Yeah. SB: Yeah. CB: So that was a very memorable experience SB: Yes. CB: Because of the lack of knowledge. SB: Yeah. CB: Of whether the Swedes would attack or not. SB: Yes. Yes. My very, very worst one was the one before the end. CB: Right. SB: We knew. We knew we were very very close to finishing. And we called it, it was christened the night of the high winds. And the wind blew us off track. And Tony West, he always put it down. He kept contact with Ron’s instruction. He kept contacting base about the winds. He said. ‘They’re not what you said they were going to be.’ And he kept on. On and on to them. And base kept saying to him there’s nothing wrong with the winds. And they wouldn’t accept there was anything wrong at all. However, it blew us off course and it blew us a hell of a long way off course and it blew us over the Ruhr. Now, in anybody’s language the Ruhr was naughty. CB: Happy Valley. SB: Yeah. Called, it was called Happy Valley. Yes. Now, what happened it was some pilots dream. An aircraft which we were the unfortunate ones. The aircraft were coned in searchlights. In total we were coned for thirty five minutes. Now, if you’re coned even for a few minutes you’re belted out, almost belted out the sky which they hammered us good and proper. We were shot. I think we had two engines in the end. And when I said about it being a pilot’s dream — if an aircraft was coned this was a signal for following aircraft to dive through. When they were coning you they couldn’t cone two of you together and it allowed the other one to shoot through. So they probably clapped their hands Christ thanked their lucky stars. Unlucky stars. But bless him, Ron my old skipper he threw that aircraft all over the sky and he got us out. Now, ‘Now, we’re free from that lot lads but,’ he said, ‘We’ve got another bloody problem.’ Fred Simmons, our engineer he said, ‘Ron,’ he said, ‘Unfortunately that little bit of a detour we had to have and all that you throwing it about the sky it’s affected our fuel consumption. So,’ he said, ‘We’ve got a decision to make as a crew,’ he said, ‘I always said and I always will stick to a decision that the whole crew make the risk. The decision whether we’re going to go back to try and get back to our original place on track or we come back over the sea.’ So, we said, well [laughs] we had different views but the vote was we came back by sea. And I believe we couldn’t make base because of we were short about I think we had two engines and I think we landed at Coltishall. CB: In Norfolk. Yeah. SB: Then a couple of days and fixed us up. Back to East Kirkby and Wing Commander Miller was our commanding officer and he said, ‘Because of the hairy situation you’ve just been in over the Ruhr,’ he said, ‘The trip that’s just coming up,’ he said, ‘Which I’m not going to put you on so you’re confined to camp.’ So we couldn’t go blabbing about where main force were going. He said, ‘I’m not going to put you on the Ruhr.’ He said, ‘I’m going to save you for a bit easier.’ Which wasn’t a bad idea really. In theory. So we attended the briefing for our last one. Lo and behold where was it? We looked at each other and said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ It was Nuremberg. Which was the infamous one that Bomber Command lost ninety odd aircraft. But between this I had been awarded my Distinguished Flying Medal. And we were briefed to go to Emden. And for some unknown reason, weather or whatever, they called it off. So, we were in our flying gear. I had a black and white silk scarf my mum gave me as a lucky mascot and buoyancy suits. We did look darlings. All grease all over the face where the buckles on your mask so you didn’t get frostbite. And so we were allowed in the mess because the trip had been cancelled so we were allowed in the mess in flying gear so we went in the mess for a jug or two. And I’d barely got a jug in my hand for a pint and the phone went in the mess and the page, paged me on the phone and it was my skipper. He said, ‘What the hell have you been doing?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I’m just having a pint.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’ve been doing summat,’ he said, ‘Because I’ve got to get you into Wing Commander Miller’s officer straight away.’ He said, ‘Now, I’m coming outside the mess to pick you up.’ He said, ‘I’m only just over the road at the officer’s mess,’ he said, ‘I’m, like yourself, having one.’ He said, ‘I’m going to pick you up. Down the flights we go.’ So he marched me in. After a little while he called me in. He marched me into Wing Commander Miller’s office and Wing Commander Miller looked at me. He said, ‘You sergeant are improperly dressed.’ I said, ‘I’ve got a tie. A scarf.’ He said, ‘You’re improperly dressed,’ he said, ‘Coming in my office.’ He tore me a strip off. Then he said, ‘I’m pleased to tell you, Sergeant Bradford you’ve just been the immediate award of the Distinguished Flying Medal. Now,’ he said, ‘Get in to Boston and have some bloody beer.’ So, Boston was our nearest place and he said I’ve reserved a couple of seats on the coach for you. So,’ he said, ‘In to Boston. You go and have some beer.’ And that was it. So that was the finish. CB: Fantastic. On the sequence we were talking about you shot down six didn’t you? SB: Yeah. CB: So, we’ve got to number five which was when you went on the trip that went via Sweden. SB: Yes. CB: What about the sixth one? What was that? SB: I can, yes. Well, yes he was. It was a Dornier 217. And whether you, the Germans allowed them to sleep or not I don’t know but there was two of them in there. And again we were coming out of the target a little bit higher than usual and he was up there and looking out for us as we were looking out for him. And I engaged him. He saw us at the last minute. I engaged him and, well the rest is history. He had to go. CB: Where was him in, where was he in relation to the aircraft? SB: Again, he was, he was — CB: High up. SB: Starboard up. Higher. Yes. CB: So, in the circumstances what would be the aiming point of that, on that aircraft? SB: I just shot at the aeroplane. CB: Right. SB: I just shot at the aeroplane. CB: So effectively it raked — SB: It blew up. CB: It raked the underside. SB: It blew up. CB: Did it? Right. SB: Yes. He did. CB: Yeah. SB: Yes, he did. Yes. He did. CB: So — SB: And then there was all this, ‘Well done, Stan.’ And in point of fact I got a book on the Battle of Berlin. CB: Yeah. SB: And my pilot, bless him he wrote in there, “A present to Stan.” Martin Middlebrook’s book. It was, “A present to Stan who saved our lives on many occasions.” CB: Brilliant. Yes. The planes you were, you shot down were a combination of twin engine and single engine. SB: Yes. Yes. CB: So the fifth one. Was that also a single engine? SB: Yes. A Focke Wulf 190. CB: That was a 190 as well? SB: Yes. CB: That was — SB: Yes. CB: Yeah. Ok. SB: Yes. CB: On the way to the target was it? SB: Yes. CB: Yeah. Ok. SB: Yes. They were over the target and on the approach as well. CB: Yeah. SB: Fighter planes. Get away quicker see. CB: Yeah. Yeah. SB: The big stuff like the Dorniers were outside the target waiting for us. CB: What sort of — when they saw you in advance what sort of range did they start shooting? SB: They was around the four hundred yards. They had — they, obviously they could. They had a bigger range than us. See, four hundred yards was the, a Browning 303. CB: Yeah. SB: Yeah. CB: Whereas what were they armed with? SB: Yeah. CB: What were they armed with? What guns did they have? SB: I don’t honestly know. CB: So they had 30 mill err 20 millimetre cannon. SB: I’ve no idea. CB: Right. As well as machine guns. SB: I’ve no idea at all. CB: Yeah. Ok. Good. Thank you. We’ll take a pause there for a mo. [recording paused] CB: So, Stan with six aircraft shot down. SB: Yeah. CB: In RAF parlance that made you an ace. SB: Yes. CB: How did they recognise that? SB: It was announced at briefing at East Kirkby that, ‘Gentlemen, we’ve got an ace in our midst.’ Miller. Wing Commander Miller. And I believe that there was another officer who was commanding officer of the whole of the group was Group Captain Taff. I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of him at all. CB: No. SB: He was — CB: Obviously Welsh. SB: I believe, again that [pause] I used to get on pretty, well he did with most aircrew. He was a damned good drinker [laughs] But he announced that it was his pleasure to shake my hand. And he said to everybody, ‘Here we’ve got him. He’s an ace.’ That. And it was as quick as that. CB: So, at Kirkby as everywhere else there was a gunner leader was there? SB: Yes. Yes. CB: And how did he react to that? SB: I’d like to use a word but I don’t dare. Can we call — [recording paused] CB: So, there was a gunnery leader. SB: Yeah. It was, it was the practice that the leader of each section, and I can only speak of 57 Squadron that the gunnery leader in my case, he said, ‘I’m going to rest you on the next trip,’ he said, ‘You won’t be going on the trip. I’ll be taking your place.’ Which rather dejected me and I went to my skipper and I said, ‘Ron, I’m not happy at all. My gunnery leader’s taking me off the trip and he’s going in my place.’ And Ron’s reaction was, ‘He bloody well aint.’ And he didn’t. CB: What rank would gunnery — SB: Flight lieutenant. CB: Right. SB: He had a thing about him. I can only again speak for my personal self and my other gunner, Chick who was a Canadian. I can only speak for the two of us. We never ever missed the opportunity to go out on the gunnery range and practice. Clay pigeon shooting and shooting from a, from a turret. From one like me I was in a two and he was in a four. We never ever, ever missed a session. Chick, he was the champion clay pigeon shooter and I was his deputy. CB: Very good. SB: Yeah. We never missed. CB: Right. SB: Now, so that gunnery leader should have talked to us and used us an example. CB: Exactly. So my next question was what the reaction? SB: He didn’t. CB: Of the other gunners. SB: He didn’t. Whether it registered. It must have registered mustn’t it? But he didn’t seem to take it on board. CB: Ok [pause] Thank you. Now, a couple of other things. One is that when you were at Scampton you met Guy Gibson. SB: Yes. I did. CB: Just, what was the, he was 617 but — SB: Yes. I was on my way. I can, again that’s one. Things like this never leave you. I was on my way into the sergeant’s mess. Right. And I think it was at mealtime and he was walking his dog. Naturally I had to throw him one up. Salute. And he called me over. And he had a thing. Gibson. About NCOs. He just [pause] he didn’t like them as much as he did officers. End of story really. I can honestly say that the aircrew — sergeants and flight sergeants, they weren’t his favourite people. CB: Was that related to the role they did? So, did air gunners come off worst? SB: I don’t know. I really don’t know. But he didn’t. He was against aircrew. Sergeants. CB: Yeah. SB: And flight sergeants. CB: What about his dog? SB: Friendly enough. Friendly enough. Them days the billets were just inside the gate and we were in one of those billets. There were two crews in the house. And he’d obviously been somewhere and come through the gates on the way to the mess when I met him. CB: But the dog was called? SB: I can’t remember it’s bloody name. Not Ricky. No. No. I forget. CB: And the dog was called N*****. SB: N*****. I went and looked at his grave this last year. CB: Did you? SB: When they called us up for our reunion. Yeah. CB: And was the dog allowed to wander around? Or what happened? SB: Yes. He did. CB: With the dog. SB: Yes. He did. CB: That mess up your shoes? SB: After I’d gone he was, he died. CB: Did it mess up your shoes a bit? SB: No. CB: Ok. Thank you. The other one is a contentious one and its one that nowadays is used to, is described a different way but in war there are all sorts of sanctions that are imposed. SB: [unclear] CB: In war there are all sort of sanctions imposed. SB: Sanctions. CB: According to circumstances. So you had a certain situation where one of the crew on one of the trips lost his bottle. What was the circumstances of that? SB: Ginger. CB: What happened there? SB: Well, that again was a Berlin. It was custom [pause] I would reckon that all pilots did it. When you were just before, well it was just before actually your bombing run you knew you were coming up shortly to your bombing run and pilots always lifted the nose of the aircraft slightly upwards. So that when the word, ‘Bombs gone,’ it automatically gave a lurch up and with it pointing upwards you took one hell of a lift up. And it was also custom that when the bombs had gone the pilot used to scream out, and it was a scream, ‘Full power.’ Now, the practice was that the engineer, the pilot had enough on his plate to steer the aircraft. So the engineer put his hand on the four throttles and pushed them forward and locked them. So they were screaming their guts out. CB: So they’re through the gate. SB: Through the gate. CB: Yeah. SB: And naturally the crew knew. We just took it as that was it. All glued to our seats. And when we got back Ron said to the crew, by which time Ginger had been left with intelligence but with the crew he got us all together and he said, ‘Well, lads,’ he said, ‘We’ve got a problem. We’ve got a problem. And,’ he said, ‘It’s not a pleasant problem. Ginger [pause] has gone LMF.’ He said, ‘You know from experience that it’s my job always to call for full power through the gate when we are coming out of the target to get us away as quick as we can and it’s unfortunate Ginger was hiding behind my seat. He couldn’t face up to it.’ So, he said, ‘There. You’ve got it.’ He said, ‘We’ve got no option but to report it to the commanding officer,’ he said. And well that was the end. He’d gone. Whether it was a stroke of luck. Fate. Is that what they call it? But we picked up another engineer within days because we, in them days it was essential we got as many bombers up there as they could and we picked up a bloke called Fred Simmons. And Fred, I always called him, he was point of fact we palled up. He was one of, my best friend. And what he didn’t know about an engine wasn’t worth knowing. He was absolutely brilliant. Now, Fred, he was with another aircraft and the crew he was with — Fred went sick [pause] And naturally if you had a sneeze in aircrew you were took off. So Fred was took off the trip and unfortunately the crew he was with didn’t come back. So we inherited Fred after a few days. We inherited Fred as our engineer. The replacement for Ginger. And he was brilliant. He was the kind of bloke that because I came from just outside of Manchester it was much too far for me to go home on a forty eight hour leave and [pause] he said, ‘You’re not going to stop on the station. That’s a certain fact,’ he said, ‘You’re going to come home with me. I live in Wisbech.’ Well, he was married. Unfortunately they couldn’t have children. And he lived with his mum and they kept the Railway Inn at Wisbech. So he and I used to go when we had a forty eight he used to take me and I used to help his mum. She was a widow by then. Incidentally Matthew took me to see the hotel. It’s still there. Other: It’s a house now isn’t it? It was a house now, I think. Someone lived in it. It was still there. Yeah. SB: Yeah. Yeah. Somebody lived in the house. What more can I say about Fred? We were absolutely — we lived in each other’s pockets. CB: Did you, did you keep up with him after the war? SB: No. I didn’t. CB: Who did — SB: Regrettably. CB: Yeah. Just come back to that but what happened? What? What rank was Ginger? SB: My rank. Sergeant. CB: Right. SB: Then, well naturally we progressed after a year. CB: Flight sergeant. SB: Flight sergeant. CB: And what happened to him after he was arrested? SB: I did contact him once. Something went wrong. He went to St Athan. South Wales. I believe it was an engineering. CB: It was an engineering school. SB: I believe. I don’t know. CB: It was the School of Engineering. Yes. SB: I don’t know. CB: Yeah. SB: I don’t. CB: Ok. I think just one other thing. Who did you keep in contact with in the crew after the war? SB: Only one. Ron. Ron Munday. I think that old Fred went. That’s all. CB: So immediately after the war you had no contact with anybody. SB: Market Harborough I went to. CB: Yeah. Right. We’ll stop there for a break. Thank you. [recording paused] SB: Gave me an order see. CB: Right. So what, we’ve talked about the dangers of what you were doing and clearly there was some amazing escapes, but the care, the aircraft was a colander on some occasions. The crew sometimes got wounded. In your case were you ever hit? And on what was the trip on which it happened? SB: Yes. I was. I was wounded. We’d been instructed to bomb Stettin. Which was quite close to the place where they was building doodlebugs. CB: Peenemunde. SB: And I was wounded in a rather delicate position. And I won’t say any more about that. CB: But in your role as a mid-upper gunner where were you in relation to the dangerous parts of the aeroplane? SB: Well, I was just forward — backward. Sorry. Backward it would be wouldn’t it? Backward of the bomb bay. You could say within feet. Within feet. I knew probably first one they dropped when they went up in the air the aeroplane went. CB: So of all the crew when the bombs went you were the one most relieved. SB: Yes. Yes. I was. CB: Yeah. SB: Yeah. On many occasions. Yeah. CB: Ok. And how many hours did you have to endure your discomfort after being hit on the way back? SB: Five or six. There was blood all in my flying boot. CB: There was a first aid kit in the aircraft. There was a first aid kit in the aircraft. SB: Yeah. You couldn’t get at it. Your parachute, you couldn’t get at that. CB: Right. SB: As a mid-upper gunner you know. CB: You sat on your parachute. SB: No. CB: Oh you didn’t. SB: No. That was the position. Just close to the rear door. CB: Right. But you couldn’t use the first aid kit. SB: No. No. CB: Ok. SB: I can well remember when I was wounded. They got me out the turret. My bomb aimer was one Taffy. Taffy Evans. I could hear him say to Ron, I was conscious enough at the time, and ‘We got him out.’ CB: So, they lifted you out of the turret. SB: Yeah. CB: Then what happened? SB: They took me to the — we had a bed. CB: Right. SB: Just by the main spar. And they just whacked me on the bed. CB: Right. SB: That was it. And then I went to sleep. CB: So nobody then went into the turret in your place. SB: No. CB: No. SB: There was nobody available. CB: When you got back to East Kirkby what happened then? What was the sequence of events? SB: I haven’t got a clue. When I say I aint got a clue I know because of what I was told. CB: Which was? SB: Our ground crew were there with the ambulance, well they didn’t drive the ambulance but they were there to assist getting me out of the aeroplane into the ambulance. There was no standing on ceremony. They whipped me off to RAF Rauceby. CB: Which is the hospital near Sleaford. SB: Yeah. CB: Yeah. SB: Yeah. CB: Right. And when you were in the hospital what happened there? SB: I don’t know. Well, when I say I don’t know. I’d been patched up by then. I’d also picked up another. Classed as a wound. I burst an eardrum. Ron came down quite quickly to assist me. So the story went. And in doing so I wasn’t breathing properly and I burst this. Dead as a doornail. And I can always, I always remember what they did it last. Repaired me. CB: Right. SB: I can always remember the guy that did it. I thought he was a brute. He drilled a hole through the bridge of the nose and put a tube in. He said it was a silver tube. Up, connected on the tube. And he put the ball part of it under his white gown and he said, ‘When I raise my finger,’ he said, ‘You raise yours that you acknowledge.’ He said, ‘That’s saying it’s gone around and around the head and blown it back.’ And he were pumping away and I [pause] and he looked at me. He said, ‘Good God man,’ he said, ‘You look as if you’re going to bloody faint. Go and stand in the corner.’ And that was that. A few days later I was back on flying. CB: Amazing. Thank you. Your dad. Yeah. SB: It’s not [pause] My dad was in the fire watching. He used to have a, they used to have a bit of string with a box on with a gas mask. And I said to my dad because he was, he worked at the coal mine issuing lamps for the miners. And he used to have to be up about 3 o’clock to get these for the people to start at six. But I used to say to my dad, ‘It’s pointless you being up for the bombing raid. The fire warden in the street. I’ll sit on the wall outside and I’ll do your shift for you.’ [laughs] Other: Really. SB: Yeah. I did. Yeah. Yeah. CB: Because this is the bombing of Manchester and Liverpool. SB: It was the bombing of Manchester or Liverpool. We were straight between them. I think it was like twenty eight miles to Liverpool. CB: And they flew near you because of the Manchester Ship Canal. SB: That’s right. Yeah. They used to be up and down the ship canal a lot. Or the River Mersey. The krauts were always up and down there. Of course, there was, you can well imagine I mean they didn’t get a free flight. They were always been shot at and the bloody shrapnel was around your house and — [laughs] You would get the odd broken window about. Yeah. Yeah. Those were the days Matt. Other: I suppose coming over from Germany they didn’t have to fly over much land ‘til they got, even over on the west side of the country there wasn’t typically a wide bit of the country to get over was it? That we’d notice. 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 Stanley Bradford Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Brockbank Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-10-31 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ABradfordS161031 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Pending revision of OH transcription Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:03:52 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Description An account of the resource Stanley Bradford was working in a reserved occupation until he volunteered. He tried to join each of the three services but the army and navy both rejected him because of his work. The RAF said that since he was in reserved occupation he could only join as a volunteer for aircrew. He duly volunteered and began training as an air gunner. He went on to shoot down five aircraft and was awarded the DFM. He was injured on one operation and as a result of the pilot’s rapid descent to help him, Stan also suffered a burst eardrum. After one operation their flight engineer had a breakdown and was replaced by another engineer whose crew had been shot down. Flying over Sweden they found themselves escorted by the Swedes and guided by a searchlight beam towards home. On another occasion they came under attack from anti-aircraft fire from the Channel Islands when their navigation equipment was damaged. They were met and escorted home by a Typhoon from RAF Exeter. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Maureen Clarke Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Germany Great Britain Sweden England--Lincolnshire Germany--Berlin 57 Squadron air gunner aircrew animal bombing Distinguished Flying Medal Do 217 fear Fw 190 Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944) lack of moral fibre Lancaster Me 109 RAF East Kirkby RAF hospital Rauceby RAF Padgate RAF Scampton recruitment searchlight superstition https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/766/10767/PDallDKM1601.jpg b5df8b4400540f0c29cf975e92f689ee https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/766/10767/ADallDKM161122.mp3 c8a57d5afd9ee10d16615f0067dd4195 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 Dall, David Kenneth McKenzie D K M Dall Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Warrant Officer David Kenneth McKenzie Dall (b. 1924, 1320652 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 101 Squadron. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-11-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Dall, DKM Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the, Tuesday the 22nd. DD: 22nd. CB: Of November 2016. And we’re in West Hendred with David Dall who was a 101 Squadron man and talking about his life and times. So, what are the earliest things you remember about your life, David? DD: Well, the first thing I remember was out in Nyasaland. Now Malawi. My father was a tea planter. He used to take me around the tea estate on the back of his motorcycle inspecting stuff. And from there I sort of grew, grew up a little bit more. God. This is very difficult. CB: We can start again. DD: Sorry. CB: Don’t worry. [recording paused] DD: My earliest recollections was living on a tea estate in Nyasaland. Now Malawi. I used to go around — I used to go across to my father’s factory most days accompanied by my boy who looked after me. An African whose name was Kaios. That went on ‘til I was about five or six, I think. And I was sent then to the convent to start my education in Limbe. Just outside Blantyre. I stayed there until I was about eight and then came over to this country when my father and mother separated. I was then, I spent one year acclimatizing, being acclimatized to schooling in this country. I went to Streatham Grammar School. And from there I went on to a public school in Suffolk called Framlingham. And I was there until 19 — was it — ‘42. And then my grandmother, my grandmother who was my guardian decided because of air raids around Suffolk that I was to go back to her but she lived in London. And of course the bombings was on at that time 1941/42. Sorry. Not ’42. ’41. Eventually she decided that it wasn’t worth staying there and she managed to buy a house down at Redhill in Surrey. I went down there and although I didn’t do any schooling I stayed there until I was about what seventeen and a half. And because of contacts my grandmother had with the RFC people during the First World War I got to know all the stories about the RFC now the RAF. And it sort of, you know I wanted to join up as soon as possible. And in 1942 I volunteered but I was seventeen. Seventeen and three quarters then. I volunteered for the air force but they turned me down. So I sort of thought about it and eventually I decided to go up to another place and volunteer there. And I got in. That was Croydon. It was, you know it was so busy there you could flannel your way through. So I was accepted there although I was three months under age. I waited and eventually I got a communication from the RAF to go for my interviews in Oxford. The main, the main part of that was in the medical side which I passed. And they sent me back and said wait. And the next thing I knew I was in. I started off — I think it was at Cardington. Yeah. I went through the basics there and got my uniform and all that sort of business. And I had volunteered for aircrew which I, you know I passed in my medical. Wait a minute. Can you stop it a second? [recording paused] DD: Not yet. CB: So we’re just doing an alteration now because it wasn’t Cardington. DD: No. It was Padgate. CB: So where did you go to the ITW? DD: Yeah. CB: At? Padgate was it? DD: I didn’t, I have to, I hadn’t — can you switch it off again. CB: Yeah. Yeah. DD: Cut that. It was from, where did I go? God, I can’t remember. It’s taxing my — [recording paused] CB: Back with Madley. DD: At Madley, I started, I did my first part of the wireless course. And then when I completed that I was posted as, to sort of a holding place at Pengham and Tremorfa in South Wales. From there I went back to Madley to do my, to commence my flying on Proctors and Dominies. When I finished there I went to Manby and did the gunnery course where I got my sergeant stripes and felt very good [laughs] I then went to Millom in Cumberland to do my AFU. And from there when I passed out there to Whitchurch and then on to the satellite at [unclear] to fly on Whitleys and train there. After we finished there and crewed up we then were sent to a holding unit at Boston. And from there we received our engineer and rear gunner to complete the crew. We did a — and went to — CB: That was at the Heavy Conversion Unit. DD: The Heavy Conversion Unit. Yeah. CB: Right. DD: And once we passed out there we went to Ludford and there we did — CB: Which squadron was that? DD: 101 Squadron at Ludford. CB: And what was special about 101 Squadron? DD: It was an ABC Squadron. CB: Airborne Cigar. DD: Yeah. Cigar. CB: What did that mean? DD: Well, it meant that we had to have an extra member in the crew who understood and spoke German. CB: Right. DD: I’ve told you that. CB: Ok. What happened when you arrived at Ludford? DD: When we arrived at Ludford we had to do a little bit more training and eventually we were informed that we were going to carry an extra member of the crew who spoke German and understood. His job mainly was to jam up night fighter stations and ground stations. After, after, after we finished our initial training there we were then unfortunately set onto the worst trip of all. Berlin. We did two Berlins on the trot. And we had a break and we did our third Berlin. And then we did, gradually went through different bombing raids until one I most remember was Nuremberg where unfortunately we lost seven aircraft. Which meant we lost fifty six people. And from there on we had quite a good run with the trips until we reached our thirtieth mission. We thought we were finished but that was the night before the night of D-Day and we volunteered for one extra trip. But there’s one trip I do remember. When they first started using the blue searchlights. We were in the front coming after we had bombed, on the way back we were suddenly caught in this blue searchlight and the next thing we knew we were diving straight to the ground to try and miss all the searchlights coming up. The blue lights. We ended up about two or three hundred feet off the ground. Yeah. That was from the height of about seventeen thousand approximately. I know my rear gunner was blinded by the searchlights as we passed through them going down. He just couldn’t see anything. He’ll tell you that too. That was a rather a nasty trip but going back to our last trip, coming back it was a most amazing sight. Oh, we did two trips around Europe drawing fighters away from the coast. You know, for D-Day. For the landings. When we’d completed those and we were returning to England we saw the invasion forces coming in and it was the most marvellous sight I’ve ever seen in my life. The hundreds and hundreds of ships in the Channel. It was beyond belief to see what was going on down there. And eventually we landed back at Ludford and that was us finished. That’s it. CB: When you were on the ops to draw the fighters away how did — was that daylight? DD: No. Night. CB: That was night. DD: Night. Yes. All night trips. CB: So what was the, were you bombing on that? DD: We did a bombing raid. Yes. As far as I can remember. Yeah. We did. Yeah. CB: And how effective was the drawing away? DD: Well, apparently very few fighters and bombers hit the beaches, you know. The numbers were, mind you they were, they didn’t have a lot of fuel for the aircraft in those days. The Germans didn’t have the fuel and they were running down. So in a way we helped a bit but not a great deal I don’t think. CB: So, when you went on the raids other squadrons would assemble and then get into the bomber stream. DD: We were spaced out. CB: How did your 101 fit in to the bomber stream? DD: Well, 101 was fit, was spaced out in the bomber stream. From the beginning to the end. CB: Right. DD: I don’t know what distances apart they were but different heights and different levels. But the one thing I do remember on the night of Nuremberg all the aircraft that we did see shot down. But we were told afterwards that they were oil bombs that blew up in the sky to, you know to frighten us. I think there was something, something there you could look into actually. But we thought, we were told that all these big sort of bursts of flame were oil, ack-ack and things. And you know at the time it really worried us actually. CB: Did it? DD: Because we thought it was all the aircraft going down. CB: How many did you see go down yourselves on that raid? DD: I never, I didn’t count them but it went on and on all night. Going to the target and coming back. But we were very lucky. But we were lucky we had what was called Monica which picked up, you know it couldn’t really differentiate between a fighter and a bomber except that the bomber was a bigger blip on the screen to the fighter. CB: So this was a rear looking radar detector. DD: Yeah. And which, which I was monitoring all the time. As soon as I picked up one I’d inform the pilot what to do. You know, whether to turn port, dive port or, you know, climb or something like that. But they were very basic. It was a very basic thing but it did help. And — CB: So when you saw all these planes exploding. DD: We thought were planes. CB: Yeah. How did you think — what did you think about that? DD: Well we were a bit shattered. CB: Were you? DD: I think the morale in the crew went down a little bit. CB: Did it? DD: But — and we weren’t really told much about it when we got back to base. CB: And did, when you got down to debriefing after a sortie what did you do? DD: Well, we told them all about it. Of course they were interested in that because they didn’t realise how many aircraft had been lost actually at that time. But the morale on the squadron the next day was rather low. CB: Was it? DD: Yeah. CB: Because they lost ninety. DD: We’d lost seven. We lost seven aircraft. CB: Ninety eight. Yeah. You’d lost seven. Yes. DD: Yeah. On that. CB: Yeah. DD: That was fifty six people and the messes were empty. Well, not empty but you know really reduced and it affected us a little bit that. CB: Now, your crew came from a variety of places. What, where, where —how many were Brits and how many were Canadian? DD: Well, we had three Canadians. CB: Who were they? DD: The pilot, the navigator and the bomb aimer. And the rest were British. CB: Right. DD: Although I was allowed to wear the Rhodesian flash. I got permission for that from Rhodesia House. CB: That was good. DD: Yeah. Because you see it on one of the photographs. CB: Yes. DD: You see my Rhodesia up there. CB: Right. And how many of the crew were commissioned? DD: One. CB: And — DD: Just one. CB: Who was he? DD: The pilot. CB: Right. DD: The navigator was commissioned after the tour finished I think. Yes. He got his commission just after. CB: And how many were decorated at the end of the tour? DD: Oh. The Canadians were. We weren’t. CB: Right. What did they get? DD: DFCs. CB: Right. DD: Or DFCs and DFMs. But the English crew we got nothing. CB: No. DD: Nothing at all. CB: Ok. How well did the crew gel? DD: Very well indeed. We all, when we were doing our training and our sort of air tests and all that sort of business we each took each other’s jobs. We learned them that way. CB: There was a purpose to that. So what was it? DD: In case. In case we were, you know someone was killed or wounded or something like that. We could take over. Someone could take over the job. But we went through all of them. We didn’t have much to do with the engineer. At least I didn’t. But I sort of knew the navigator’s job and did a bit with the bomb aimer. And of course gunnery I knew. And that’s the way we sort of carried on. You know, we kept on learning about each other’s jobs and I think that’s the reason why we got through. CB: Yeah. DD: Because we, you know we knew our jobs so well. Plus the fact that we had a very very good pilot. He was good. There was no doubt about that. CB: What age was he? DD: He was the oldest in the crew. Twenty four I think. CB: Oh really old then. DD: Yeah [laughs] he was. We used to think of him as the old man. CB: Yeah. Now, you were a wireless operator. So, what, what was your role? What were you actually doing on the sorties? On the operations. DD: On the operations I was taking the wind speeds because as, the wireless operator used to do a lot of work with the navigator. We were getting wind speeds from back in the UK from Group. And not only that we were monitoring on this Monica so you know sort of one side the other one there. Doing that sort of business. We were trained in Gee. You know — CB: Which was the plotting system. DD: The plotting system. CB: Yeah. DD: Yeah. And I used to help the navigator with that as well when I had a quiet period. Giving him some readings as and when he wanted. CB: Because that’s how he found on the lattice because it was a lattice system. DD: Yeah. Aye. CB: So that’s how you were following where — your location. DD: Our location on the ground. Yes. CB: And how far was that effective away from base? DD: It was quite — initially it wasn’t very good. But it gradually got better and better more or less each trip we did because information was coming in all the time and someone was looking into that. CB: And when you were — the Monica was designed to alert the crew to the appearance of night fighters. DD: Mainly the pilot. CB: Yeah. DD: As soon as I saw anything that came up on the, on the screen I would tell the pilot to dive port or dive starboard depending on which area the aircraft was coming in and get him sort of aircraft port quarter. CB: Right. DD: Starboard or something like that. Whichever way it was the pilot would dive down and do his, you know — squiggle [laughs] CB: Do a corkscrew. DD: The corkscrew. Yeah. CB: You had to hold on when he did the corkscrew. DD: You certainly did. Yeah. CB: Right. DD: Straight. Ray, Ray was a very energetic pilot I would say. CB: You had, as a signaller you had regular communication at a timed space. How did that work? DD: Timed space. Every fifteen minutes I would have Group. And then we could listen out for any other information that was coming in. CB: Which would be what? DD: Well, mainly to do with, well the wind. The windspeed was the Group one. When we got far away, you know some distance away from England we just kept to the Group and listened out to them for any information. CB: So — DD: Because as I say normally it was every fifteen minutes but if anything special came up it would come in between. CB: Now, you and the navigator were also yourselves were you measuring wind speed? DD: Well, he was. CB: How did he do that? DD: I didn’t do the windspeeds. The navigator did all that. One of the things I used to do was to stand in the astrodome to check out, you know aircraft. You know, when I wasn’t looking on the Monica. If it was quiet I’d be looking around and see what was going on. Sometimes you know if we were flying a bit low from there you could pick out features on the ground. If, if there was any light down there. See what — from the astrodome I could see any ack-ack. You know. Where it was bursting. Where the searchlights were. That all came into it. You know, you were talking all the time either to the skipper or the navigator. CB: And how often did you see other aircraft near you while you were on the op? DD: Not, not a lot until you got to the bombing stage. When you were on the run in. Generally the aircraft were all coming closer and you’d see people up there, down there. In fact one night we just missed a load of bombs that came out of an aircraft above us. CB: Did you make the call? Did you? To the pilot. DD: No. WT silence. CB: No. No. But I meant did you tell the pilot? DD: Oh, yes. Yes. CB: About the aircraft above. DD: Well he saw. Everyone saw it. CB: Oh right. DD: Except the rear gunner. He was out of it [laughs] CB: So, in that circumstance what does the pilot do? Does he, if it’s ahead does he throttle back or does he move? I mean, it’s — DD: Well, as far as I remember he kept steady. Steady on that route. CB: And just hope it didn’t hit you. DD: Well, you could see them coming down. More or less by the time you got to that spot you know you were clear. You could go through. But it didn’t happen very often but it did happen occasionally. CB: There’s a, there’s a famous picture somewhere of a Lancaster with no rear turret. DD: Yes. CB: Because it had been — DD: Yeah. Hit it. CB: Demolished from bombs from above. DD: Yeah. CB: So this was a constant. DD: It was a worry. CB: Yes. DD: But not only that actually. The prospect of a collision over the target was very real. CB: Right. DD: You know. You know, if you’re flying slightly off course and coming in you could sort of hit each other. CB: Yes. Did your pilot tend to fly slightly on the outside and then move in or was he always tried to be in the middle of the melee? DD: He was generally in the middle. Once or twice we had to go around again. Which wasn’t very pleasant. CB: You mean you didn’t drop the bombs. You went around. DD: We didn’t drop the bombs. No. CB: Or if you were too soon. DD: The ack-ack was too strong and we had to move away. CB: Right. DD: And go around again. CB: Right. DD: And redo our bombing raid. CB: So you were looking out for the flak. Were you looking for the flak boxes? DD: What do you mean flak boxes? CB: Where they had concentrations of flak in a particular height or a particular area. DD: Oh yes. Yes. Well, at that stage you were looking forward. To see, you know any boxes as you say. If you saw it dead ahead which obviously the pilot could see as well you didn’t say anything. But if you saw it off to the side then you would inform him. CB: Right. DD: Or even if it was behind you. CB: Because he couldn’t see it. DD: Because over the bombing, the bombing run, my job was actually to be in the astrodome to see what was going on around and inform everyone. CB: During the bombing run. DD: During the bombing run. Until we actually got to the bombing run. Even then when you came out of the bombing run well Ray always used to make a swish down. Out of the way. CB: Get to the — DD: Get to below the bombing, bombing height. So we went down about two or three thousand feet to get out and then he’d start climbing up a bit. But it varied actually. He, he decided what he did then. We didn’t of course. CB: But he would turn left or right after releasing the bombs? DD: Not always. Sometimes he went — CB: Just straight on. DD: Straight on and down. You know. Gently going down. Watching out for other aircraft if they were lower. Especially when, if the Halifaxes were low, or the Stirlings. You couldn’t go down to their level of course. You only went down about two or three thousand feet. CB: Still. DD: It was a bit different to that flak level which, you know it helped us sometimes because we, sometimes the rear gunner would say flak was on our trail. You’d see it bombing you know. Getting there. Because there were so many guns around. Well especially Berlin. There was something like sixty thousand guns. We never liked that [laughs] CB: No. DD: That was one of our horror trips. CB: How often did the aircraft get hit? DD: We weren’t hit at all actually. We were lucky in that respect. As I say the fact we had such a good pilot. He knew what to do exactly. Get out of the way of things. CB: And did you experience any night fighters behind you on any occasions? DD: On Monica. Yes. CB: Yeah. DD: But when you gave the order for the pilot to do something he got away from them [pause] CB: So you never got shot at by a pilot, by a fighter. DD: We did one night. The attack was starting but we’d picked it up on Monica and we got out of the way. He lost us. As I say Ray was such a good pilot he knew where to go and get out of the way of everything. CB: How did the crew respond to Monica? What did they think about it? DD: They liked it. The gunners. The two gunners loved it. You know. We could tell them exactly where to look. CB: Right. DD: Because when you’re looking into the dark all the time you can’t see. Your eyes get a bit blurry. But if you know where to look, concentrate on that, it was a big help. CB: Now, you’ve got the eighth man in the aircraft. To what extent did you link in with him? Because he was using electronic equipment. DD: Yeah. CB: And you were the radio man. DD: Yeah. Well, I I if I could pick you know in a quiet run anywhere if I could pick up a night fighter station anywhere I would inform him. I didn’t have a lot to do with him. They were kept separate to us. CB: Was he always the same man? DD: No. No. CB: Or did it vary? DD: No. Different one. Although we had one bloke I think we flew about three or four times with. But that was rather unusual. But he liked our crew apparently. And as I say they were a thing on their own. CB: What did you know about them? DD: Nothing. We were kept separate from them. CB: Did they speak to the crew in any way? DD: Oh, when we were in the aircraft occasionally but not during a flight. CB: Right. DD: They were completely on their own. CB: So where were they sitting? So — DD: They were sitting just behind the main spar. They had, I think there were three transmitters and two receivers. And they sat there. Opposite the rest bed. CB: And where was their aerial? What was it like? And where was it? DD: Don’t know. We had nothing to do with it. CB: No. But it was, it was sticking out of the aircraft. DD: There was one sticking out, yeah. CB: Yeah. DD: But we, we knew nothing about it. CB: That was the ABC. The airborne cigar. Wasn’t it? DD: Yeah. CB: Right. DD: I think so. CB: So on the ground then to what extent did you fraternise with any of the special ops people? DD: We didn’t. We didn’t fraternise at all. CB: Why was that? DD: Well, they were kept separate from us completely. CB: In, in what way? DD: Well, we just didn’t meet them. CB: They lived somewhere different did they? DD: Probably. We didn’t know anything. Once we got back on the ground and we went for debriefing we didn’t see them again. CB: Oh. Did they go into debriefing or were they — DD: No. CB: They were debriefed separately. DD: I can’t remember seeing them. CB: Right. DD: Maybe one or two did. I don’t know. But they were a law unto themselves as far as we were concerned. We had nothing to do with them. CB: So they were German speakers. How many of them did you think were not Brits anyway? DD: Well, we didn’t know how many there were but we had a few that were Brits. When I say a few I think over the whole course we probably had about three or four. The rest were foreigners mostly. CB: Native German speakers. DD: Well, yeah. Well, there were a lot of Poles, Czechs. No, we didn’t have much to do with them. CB: No. Going to your earlier time when you crewed up how did that work? DD: Very well indeed. CB: So what happened? DD: Well, we were put into this room and all everyone was milling around and talking to people. A couple of people asked me, you know if I was, you know wanted me to join them. I wasn’t. Actually, I saw Ray. I liked the look of him. CB: The pilot. DD: Yeah. So eventually I made my way across to him and had a talk. He brought in the navigator and we got on well the three of us. And that was it. We crewed up. CB: And then there was the third Canadian. I mean did they get together because they knew — DD: The bomb aimer. CB: They were Canadian or — DD: Yeah. Probably. CB: Just coincidence. DD: Yeah. He, he joined in at the end I think. There was a bit of a mish mash of things but you know, you’re all milling around and — CB: Yeah. DD: If you liked the look of someone or thought you they might be a good, you know crew mate you got on to them. But it was a strange affair but it worked well really. Then we, we all gelled. Yeah. HD: A good job you did. CB: So that was at the OTU. But how many crew were there then? That wasn’t the full. DD: No. We had the pilot, navigator, bomb aimer and one gunner. CB: Yeah. And then you. DD: And me. CB: And you were a wireless operator/air gunner. DD: Yeah. CB: What was the brevet you were wearing at that stage? DD: At that time it was the AG bridge. CB: And you had a flash on your sleeve. DD: Oh, you had a wireless. CB: Showing you were a wireless operator. DD: Yeah. Aye. CB: Right. DD: And then that changed did it? Later. CB: Well no. Not until I came, after I came out. DD: Right. CB: And then you — DD: They had the signals badge then. CB: Yes. Yeah. DD: I didn’t get that. I was a W/op AG. You see, I had the two jobs. CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So — DD: But the ones that came in afterwards. They all wore, the wireless people — CB: Yeah. DD: All wore Ss. CB: So, were you pleased to keep the W/op AG? DD: Yeah. CB: Rather than a signaller. DD: I was. CB: Right. There was a better badge of respectability. DD: [laughs] Well, I suppose it was in way. It meant you — CB: Well, you’d done more hadn’t you? DD: You were an older member. CB: Yes. Established member. DD: Aye. CB: So, when you got to the HCU then the flight engineer came. So how did he and the rear gunner, how did they get selected? DD: Oh the rear gunner was selected in the mish mash. We got him there. CB: You were short of one. One gunner. DD: Yeah. Mid-upper. CB: Yeah. Mid-upper. DD: Mid-upper. CB: Ok. So how did you get him? DD: He was sent to us. CB: Sent to you. DD: Sent. Yeah. CB: Right. What about the engineer? How did he come into the — DD: He was also sent to us. CB: Oh right. No choice. DD: No choice. CB: Right. DD: No. CB: And how did that do? How did they gel with everybody else? DD: Well, at first we weren’t very happy about it. The mid-upper gunner — it took a little bit longer to get to know him because he was a very strong Welsh chap. Very taciturn. We didn’t know quite what to make of him at first but eventually it turned out that he sort of relaxed a bit and he was, he was ok. You know, he gelled alright then. CB: And the engineer? DD: The engineer was a Cockney from London. Arthur Moore. He was, [laughs] he was a strange chap but we liked him. CB: And then — DD: But he wasn’t really part of the original crew. CB: No. That’s what I meant. Yeah. DD: It took a little while to get used to them both but eventually they did. They gelled in with us. CB: And had he been trained as a flight engineer or had he originally been a flight mechanic? An air mechanic. DD: No. He was trained as a, as a flight engineer. CB: Right. DD: Didn’t know a lot about him. He kept himself to himself. But I can’t — no. He was, yeah he was trained as a flight engineer. I’m pretty sure about that. Smithy can confirm that. CB: Now, thinking about the social side. So how did, how did that gel? DD: Well, we had a motorbike. CB: Oh. DD: And sidecar. CB: For all seven of you. Yeah. DD: There’s a photograph of it. CB: Yes. DD: We did one night get seven on it and got stopped by the police [laughs] It was a night out in Louth. Oh dear. CB: It must have been a good one. Yes. DD: It was a good one that. CB: Yes. DD: I can’t tell you. We were hanging out all over the place [laughs] But normally it was quite ok. CB: Yeah. DD: If we went into Louth to go in the cinema or something like that we used to get a taxi mainly. But this one night I don’t know why. I think, we didn’t go in on it. We came back on it, I think. CB: Who did it belong to then? DD: Pardon? CB: The pilot? Did it — DD: It belonged to, the navigator had some relations in Wolverhampton and they gave him the bike. CB: With the sidecar. DD: With the sidecar. And he brought it back to the squadron. Yeah. We had some good times there. CB: What happened on the airfield? Did they have dances on the airfield? Or did you — DD: Oh there were very few dances. Very very few. Normally when you had a stand down well you either stay in the station or went off into Louth or something like that. CB: Market Rasen? DD: Occasionally. Not so much. Mainly Louth we went into. CB: Any other places that you would consider? DD: Grimsby. CB: Grimsby. DD: Yeah. Cleethorpes. CB: Have a fight with the sailors. DD: No. Didn’t have any problems up there at all. Yeah. It sort of mixed quite well actually from what I remember. CB: Well, places like North Coates were Coastal Command so did you link — DD: No. CB: In any way with them on a social? DD: No. Not at all. CB: Didn’t come across them. DD: No. No. I can’t remember anything about that. CB: No. So you got to the end of the tour. Thirty one ops. Is that right? DD: Yeah. CB: Because you did the extra. DD: Thirty one there. CB: Then what happened? DD: Well, we just [pause] well for about a week after we finished and then we were all sort of posted off different places. We didn’t — mainly we, mainly we didn’t see each other again. I did meet up, when I was attached to a Canadian OTU I met up with the skipper then. CB: Where was that? DD: That was Gamston near Retford. CB: So, when you were at the end where were you posted immediately after? DD: Well, I was posted to Gamston. CB: Oh you were. Yeah. DD: There was a bit of a mish mash that happened from there on. We were sort of posted around. When the OTU closed we were sent off to Peplow. We were there for about a week and then oh we went all around different places for a about week or two weeks’ time ‘til eventually — where did we get to? Oh, I finished up at Gamston. Again. CB: Again. DD: Yeah. On ferry flight. We were ferrying the old Wimpies. CB: Where did you — DD: Down to Little Rissington. CB: Oh yeah. DD: There were hundreds down there. CB: They were breaking them up. DD: Breaking them up. Yeah. CB: And what did they do? Take you back with an, in an Anson or something. DD: No. Three aircraft used to go down. CB: Yeah. DD: Two were delivered. One brought us back. CB: Right. DD: It was alright until we had some bad weather and we landed at Cranwell and they didn’t want us there [laughs] We were all scruffy, you know. In our flying gear and everything. We had to go in to the mess like that and people’s faces were looking down at us. Oh God it was terrible. Oh dear. I shan’t forget. I was flying with, the pilot was a Flight Lieutenant Bristow. He was a Canadian and he and I really got [laughs] got on well. But the way they treated us. They couldn’t get rid of us quick enough. Although you know we’d landed on the grass airfield and this this Wimpy had sunk in. They didn’t like that. They didn’t like anything about us. CB: So when is this? This is late ’44. DD: This would be oh ’45. CB: ’45. DD: ’45. Anyway, we got out. We collected. We didn’t even stay the night there. We went off as soon as we could. CB: Yeah. So — DD: We were supposed to stay the night because of the weather but they, they pushed us off. CB: Yeah. So, I meant to say late ’45 because the war had ended then. Had it? DD: Yes. Because we were doing the ferrying and it had all finished. CB: Yeah. DD: And the Canadian OTU, they closed down and all the Canadians went back. CB: Yeah. DD: That’s where I met up with my skipper. CB: Right. DD: Because he came down there for three days. And — CB: By coincidence was it? Or did he come to say hello? DD: No. No. He was posted there because that was a holding unit before they went off. CB: Oh right. Ok. DD: To where ever they were going. CB: Yeah. DD: Yeah. I didn’t see him again until nineteen — no 2002. CB: What happened then? DD: Well, in between he’d, I was out in Africa. He was flying. He started off, he was in the, he joined the Canadian Air Force out there flying Sabres in Germany and then when he came out he joined a civilian — he became a civilian pilot. And whilst I was in Nyasaland and Rhodesia he was, he was coming to Zambia to try to catch each other. He tried many a time to get hold of me but we always seemed to miss each other. And in my second, in my second tour with the air force when I was out in Hong Kong he used to get a flight to Singapore. But I didn’t know that. Oh I just tried to get hold of him. CB: So, fast backwards or where we were just with Gamston. That was where they were repatriating the Canadians. DD: The Canadians. Yeah. CB: What was your role there? Just delivering aircraft was it? For — DD: Well no. I was only, only there was an OTU going on. CB: It was still running. DD: It was still running. CB: Right. DD: And we were getting English people in and I was an instructor there. CB: Before you did the — DD: No. The ferry flight came first and then we went back to the OTU. CB: Right. DD: That was it. CB: And how long did that go on for? DD: Not for very long because it closed down. And then — CB: Then what? DD: Eventually I was sent to Brize [pause] not Brize Norton. To Finningley. Bomber Command Instructor School. CB: And you were training instructors were you? DD: Well, yes. People who had finished their tours. This included pilots navigators and navigators. We had to teach them to be instructors. We had a few wireless people but not many. But their jobs were to go out then and teach others. CB: And how long did you do that for? DD: Oh, I was there for about a year. And then I, you know, the war had finished and it was getting a bit iffy so I decided, you know I’d come out and go back. My father wanted me out there. CB: So when did you actually leave the RAF? DD: The beginning of ’46. CB: You were demobbed in the normal way. DD: Well, not in the normal way. No. I got a class B discharge. CB: Right. DD: Which was an immediate. You know immediately coming out. CB: Yeah. DD: I had to wait three — I think it was three months until I got posted out to the Palestine Police stationed at Jenin. CB: So you’d volunteered then. DD: I volunteered for it. Yeah. CB: As you were serving out your demob leave was it that you volunteered? DD: No. No. I didn’t get any demob leave. I got a demob suit and all that sort of business but I had volunteered to transfer. That’s why I got a class B discharge. CB: Yeah. To the police. DD: Yeah. CB: So the motive of applying for the Palestine Police was what? DD: To get to Africa. CB: Right. How was that going to work? DD: Well, it was more or less although it was semi, it was more or less half. Half civilian and half [pause] not army but what do you call, what do you call it? CB: What? Military police? DD: Semi-military and half civilian. But you could, you know if you didn’t like it you could buy yourself out. That was the idea. Buy myself out and then I could get down to [unclear] and up to Nyasaland. CB: So what role was yours in the Palestine police? DD: I was only just a British constable. Just a basic. CB: So they gave you training there or in Britain? DD: Well, I didn’t have any training at all because I ended up in hospital. CB: Why was that? DD: I got Blackwater Fever? CB: Oh. How did you get that? DD: Well, the boats that used to come up from [unclear] had, you know sometimes they had mosquitoes in and they’d got a chap off the boat who was down with Blackwater Fever. Brought him to the hospital I was in. Probably the mosquito that had bitten him then bit me. I got it. So I was invalided out. And that was that. CB: To where? DD: I was invalided back to this country. And that was the end of that. CB: So that was the opposite way from what — DD: Yeah. CB: You wanted to go. DD: And that, it took me another three years before I could get a boat. As I told you. I got a job with the African, not the African Lace Corporation err what were they? They were tied up with the African lace. They used to send people out to do jobs in Africa. So I got a job with them because you know one of the people who, the person who wrote to me was a friend of my father’s. Had lived out in Nyasaland. CB: Right. DD: So he got me out there. CB: But it took three years to do it. DD: Yeah. It did. CB: What were you actually doing in that time? DD: Oh I got various little jobs you know. You know, I didn’t do very much. I joined actually a chap who did landscaping and a sort of a gardening job because I didn’t want to be inside. I got a job with him for a while. CB: Where was that? DD: That was Redhill. CB: You were staying with your grandparents, were you? DD: Yes. My grandmother. CB: Right. DD: It brought some money in. It wasn’t a well-paid job but I knew, you know eventually I was going to get back to Africa. So I couldn’t go for a decent job until after I’d been there a year. I did get a job with a garage. CB: Doing? DD: In Redhill. CB: Doing what? DD: Well, I was — CB: The electrics was it? DD: The electrics. Yeah. I was, I was looking after the batteries you know. The batteries and things like that. And then you know I got this. I kept an eye out for anything going in Africa and my father was trying to get me out there. But eventually I saw this advertisement in, “The Times.” Wrote off. Got the job. CB: What was it? DD: Oh, just a store keeper in a — working in a store. So it got me out there and — CB: Where? DD: Out to Nyasaland. CB: Right. DD: And I didn’t fancy that work at all. Obviously. So I repaid. I’d saved up money then and I repaid them and I bought myself out. And joined my father. That was it. CB: And what was he doing then? DD: He’d retired but he’d bought this place down in Rhodesia and no sooner than I did that — CB: This was tobacco. DD: Tobacco. Yeah. As soon as I did that I joined him. Got stuck in. Yeah. CB: So how was that, how was that managed? Was there a professional manager? DD: No, my father was looking after it. CB: He was still doing it. DD: Yeah. CB: Right. DD: He was doing it. But I gradually sort of started taking over the curing and sorting of the tobacco and selling it on the, in the auction houses. And after I’d been there a second year there we hit the highest price ever known because we managed to get some American tobacco seed which was called Hicks. And that produced a larger leaf and a brighter leaf which we, we managed to get an ounce of that. An ounce of seed. Grew that. And we were the first people to hit a hundred pence on the auction floor. At a hundred pence, you know, a pound. And then [pause] a little bit later that was, then my father passed on. CB: Oh. So — DD: I couldn’t afford, I hadn’t got the money because we were still paying. Paying out on the tractors and things. I couldn’t afford to, you know stay there. CB: What? To keep it rolling. DD: No. So I sold up and came back to this country. CB: So when you sold up was it a ready market for other — DD: Oh yeah. It was a good market. CB: Right. DD: Yeah. But actually you couldn’t get a lot of money back but we managed to just about break even. That was it. CB: Because you’d — the tractors and equipment were on loans were they? So — DD: Yeah. And all the fire equipment for the barns was expensive stuff. CB: Right. DD: Which you couldn’t buy outright. You had to buy, you know it was like a never never. CB: Yeah. So, what are we talking about now? That’s — it took you three years to get out there. DD: Aye. CB: So, that was 1949. DD: Yeah. ’49. And I was there ‘til ’54. Wasn’t it? HD: Well, I met you in ’56. DD: ’55. HD: Was it ’55? DD: ’55. Yeah. ’54 I came back to this country. Yeah. CB: Ok. So what did you do then? DD: Oh. Various jobs. I had a couple of jobs. One job I did or two jobs actually. One I lost the job because my son was born. I met Hilda and we married and had our first son and because I took a day off I lost the job. CB: Oh. DD: Yeah. Do you remember that? HD: Was that when I had Jan? DD: Yeah. When Jan was born. HD: Yeah. You took a day off didn’t you? DD: I was working at — what was it? Fields. And because I took a day off without telling them because Hilda started having Jan the night before. The Sunday night. And — HD: You took the Monday off. DD: I took the Monday off and I was sacked. Just like that. CB: A bit severe. DD: Yeah. It was severe. I thought — HD: I wouldn’t happen today would that. Would it? DD: Oh God no. CB: So what did you do then? DD: Well, I got a job. Where was it? As a salesman didn’t I? But I didn’t like that. Anyway, you know I could see there was no future in what I was doing so I decided you know the air force was. So, I went in and looked into that. They said they’d have me back. CB: When was that? DD: That was when? HD: 1959 that was. DD: No. ’58, wasn’t it? When I started. ’58. Because ’59 I went back in. CB: And what did you do? So, you left the RAF as a warrant officer. DD: Yeah. CB: Originally. And with all the trappings of that. When you returned what did they do about your rank? DD: My rank? It went down to corporal. CB: Oh. And what were you doing? DD: Well, I went, I didn’t have to do the basic training. I went straight in and went to Hullavington where I was on — was it — was it Parachute Servicing Unit. CB: Parachute School. DD: Yeah. I went there. CB: And what were you doing there? DD: Well, as a corporal I was a checker for the parachute packers. CB: Checking the quality of what they’d done. DD: Yeah. Yeah. I was there for about a year wasn’t it? About a year. Then I went to Watchfield. CB: And you got a quarter did you? Because you were married. You got a quarter, did you? DD: We got a quarter. Yeah. CB: As a corporal. DD: As a corporal. Yeah. CB: What was that like? DD: It wasn’t too bad. At Bicester. Was it? HD: No. It was quite nice. DD: Yeah. CB: At Bicester? DD: Well, we were at Bicester when it first — sorry. CB: Hullavington. DD: Hullavington. We went from Bicester, I went to Watchfield and then down to Hullavington didn’t I? That was it. And then I went back to Watchfield. CB: Right. So, Watchfield. What was going on there? Because it used to be the Air Traffic School in the war. DD: Yeah. CB: So what had happened? DD: They were dropping. Well, it was a training ground for dropping MSPs and also troops. CB: What’s MSP stand for? DD: What is it? Referring to parachutes MSP is a Medium Special Parachute. CB: Right. DD: The heavy duty ones. CB: Right. DD: Dropping Land Rovers and such like. HD: From Watchfield — DD: Yeah. HD: We went to Netheravon. DD: Oh that’s right. Netheravon. Oh God. Yeah. I’d forgotten about that. HD: We didn’t go to, we didn’t go to Hullavington until after we had [unclear] DD: That’s right. We went from — HD: Watchfield. The first time. DD: We went to Netheravon. HD: Netheravon. CB: And what happened there? DD: I was running a parachute unit. CB: And what rank were you by this time? DD: I was sergeant. CB: Right. So, were you a sergeant at Watchfield? DD: Yes. CB: Right. HD: You got made up at Watchfield. DD: Aye. I went to Netheravon. I was there for how long? About — HD: About nine month. DD: Nine months and then we went to Hong Kong. CB: Ok. And you were still a sergeant or have you got promoted again? DD: No. I stuck to sergeant. HD: You did ask to get a commission though didn’t you? DD: Yes. HD: To go for a commission. DD: Out in Hong Kong we had our own little parachute unit you know. To look after the aircraft coming in. CB: Right. DD: I had a small staff there. We were there for — what? Two and a half years. And then we came back to Hullavington. That’s it. Yeah. CB: So the parachute section out in Hong Kong. Did that require more common re-packing of parachutes because of the climate? DD: No. We didn’t. No. We didn’t. We kept emergency equipment for any aircraft coming in. That was the main job there. HD: Yeah. It was very interesting out there because the Vietnam war on at that time wasn’t it? DD: And we used to get all the Americans coming up from Vietnam. CB: Vietnam. DD: Yeah. HD: And the bombs going all around the island. DD: Oh yeah. Whilst we were there you know the Chinese started playing up a bit. And I was official machine gunner. CB: Oh. DD: One machine gun we had there [laughs] CB: Where did you keep that? DD: Well, I didn’t keep it. It was kept in the armoury. But I would have to go on the top of the roof and sit there with it. That was my job. CB: What kind of gun was that? DD: It was a Lewis gun. CB: With a rotating drum. DD: Yeah. That’s all. Oh it was, it was a funny place that. CB: That was on the airfield. DD: Not on the airfield. It was just on, it used to be the old seaplane unit. CB: Oh. DD: And, oh and then I took over the running of the cinema. It was, it was a glory job. HD: But you had a lot to do with, I mean when that plane landed didn’t you? DD: Oh yes. When we had the emergencies. CB: What sort of things? DD: Oh. CB: With aircraft you mean? DD: With aircraft. Yeah. They’d lost an aircraft out at sea and they thought it was shot down by the Chinese. And we had an Argosy out there that I had to go on it and be a sort of an observer. CB: Out at the crash site. DD: No. We couldn’t find it. CB: No. But you went out as an observer. DD: It was, yeah. CB: To find the crash. DD: To try and find it. See any wreckage or anything. CB: Yeah. DD: But we found nothing at all. I don’t know what happened there but it was something to do with some — we found out later it was something to do with some spies that had been on the plane. And that’s why they wanted to find the wreckage and find them I suppose. CB: Yeah. DD: I don’t know. CB: What sort of a plane was it? DD: An Argosy. CB: Oh right. DD: It was not stationed there but it had been there for a couple of weeks. It was due to go out the following week and they just asked for people to go on the plane to observe. CB: Because they needed lots of eyes to see. DD: Yeah. CB: So, how long were you in Hong Kong? DD: Two and a half years. CB: What was the quarter like there? DD: Well, we had, we started off in civilian flats actually in the town. CB: Oh. DD: And then eventually we got a bungalow on the airfield. CB: Yeah. Air conditioned? DD: No. Fans [laughs] CB: So, two and a half years later you returned to the UK. Where did you go then? DD: Hullavington. CB: Right. And what’s your new role there? DD: I took over the, I was in the office then recording stuff. Numbers of parachutes packed and all that sort of business. CB: Because you were the specialist parachute person. DD: Yeah. CB: Right. How long did that last? DD: I did a bit of time study there as well. CB: Oh right. They sent you on a course did they? DD: No. They knew I’d been on a course. When I, you know, when I was at Bradford I’d been on that course. Time study. I had it in my background so they got me doing that. Working out times for the packing of parachutes. CB: Then what? So, you were there at Hullavington how long? HD: Nine month. It was usually nine month everywhere we went really. DD: And then we went to — where was it? HD: Watchfield again. DD: Watchfield. Oh yeah. Back doing the same job as before. CB: Right. HD: Then about nine month there and we went back to Hullavington. DD: Yeah. And then got posted to Brize. Didn’t we? HD: No. We were never posted to Brize. We went to — DD: Not Brize. HD: To Abingdon. DD: Abingdon, yeah. To Abingdon, Sorry. CB: Ok. And what happened at Abingdon? HD: Oh we stayed there for — CB: It was a transport base by then wasn’t it? DD: Yeah. More or less the same. I was running, they were sending, I was attached to the parachutists. The parachutists again. We used to get the supplies up from Hullavington and then issue them out to troops. That was about it actually. CB: So when did you retire from the RAF? DD: ’81. CB: Ok. And where did you retire from? DD: From Brize. CB: Ok. From Brize or Abingdon? DD: Brize. HD: Well, I I stayed in Abingdon. CB: Yeah but you — HD: Because I I didn’t want to move the boys. DD: We had quarters in Abingdon but I was working at Brize. CB: Yeah. After Abingdon. Ok. And so you’d done a total of how many years in the RAF? DD: Was it four years during the war and twenty two? CB: Afterwards. DD: Second tour. CB: So, they gave you an RAF pension for that. DD: Yeah. CB: Based on — DD: That’s why, one of the reasons why I went in. CB: Yeah. Based on which rank? DD: Based on a sergeant. Yes. CB: Yeah. DD: They didn’t count the wartime because I was out longer. I was out too long. Although, when I was out I did join the Reserves and I was flying at Redhill. You know, just the little Ansons and Tiger Moths. CB: Doing what? DD: Nothing. I didn’t. I wasn’t, it wasn’t full time. I was part time. CB: No. No. But what were you doing? You were flying the aeroplane, were you? DD: Yeah. CB: Piloting it. DD: No. No. No. No. CB: No. DD: No. I did get to. I started learning to pilot. Yes. In fact, I flew from [pause] in a Tiger Moth from where was it now? Somewhere down, somewhere in Devon back to [pause] that was my only, not solo. I wasn’t solo. I had a pilot you know a chap who was with me. CB: Yeah. DD: He was teaching me though. CB: How long were you in the Reserve? It was the RAF VR rather than VRT. DD: Yeah. RAF VR. CB: Yeah. DD: Until I went out to Africa. And they wanted, actually they wanted me to come back. CB: So, you left the RAF in ’81. DD: Eighty. That was ’81 yeah. CB: Yeah. DD: And I didn’t have anything more to do with the air force then. CB: No. DD: That was the finish. CB: Right. What did you do after then as a job? DD: Oh. I got a job with a newspaper firm at Eynsham. CB: Oh. DD: That was it wasn’t it? CB: What did you do then? HD: Yeah. DD: I was on security. Sort of — that’s all I did actually. There was two of us there. CB: For how long? DD: Was it — how many years? HD: Not long. You weren’t there all that long. About three or four years. DD: Oh, it was more than that. HD: Was it? DD: Yeah. It was about seven or eight years. HD: Was it? DD: Of course it was. HD: I can’t remember. DD: [unclear] went bankrupt and his brother took over. Went on there. Yeah. About eight years. CB: And then? DD: That was it. I retired. CB: So, how was it that you went back up to Lincolnshire? HD: Yeah. Well we bought the house from — DD: We bought a house up there. CB: You liked the air. DD: Well, actually we got a council house in Abingdon. HD: And we had this buy to, you know the buy — Other: Right to buy. HD: Yeah. Others: Yeah. DD: So I bought that one and with the proceeds of that I bought the house up in Mablethorpe. That was it until the family wanted us. Wanted us back here. HD: You took ill didn’t you? And he couldn’t — I couldn’t, I had no support up there. CB: No. HD: So my family was still in Abingdon. So we came back down here didn’t we? DD: Yeah. HD: They wanted us back down here. So, although we got quite a bit, we did make some money from the house didn’t we? DD: Quite a bit. HD: But it wasn’t enough to buy down here so we had to go back into council again. I mean so we put the money in. We put the money away. DD: If you wanted we could buy this one. HD: Oh, we could now but we’re not going to bother. DD: No. HD: And so we’re quite reasonably off you know. CB: Yeah. HD: We’re not wealthy but — CB: Comfortable. HD: We’re comfortable. CB: Comfortable. HD: Yeah. DD: At least we can leave the children something. CB: Yes. DD: See, if we’d bought another house it would have meant selling it again and all that sort of business. HD: Yeah. We didn’t want to go through all that. DD: Whereas we can leave them quite a good amount. So they’ll be set for life then. HD: And they don’t have the bother of, you know with us. CB: Yeah. HD: They can hand it straight back. So that’s our life. Let’s hear yours now. CB: Very interesting. Thank you. [recording paused] DD: Searchlight business. CB: Yeah. Could you just go back to the blue searchlight? I’ll do it because of the, because of the searchlights they used blue lights. What was the significance of that? DD: That was the master searchlight. That was going more or less all the time. Waving around but being controlled from the ground. CB: By radar. DD: By radar. CB: Right. DD: And when they picked up an aircraft. CB: Yeah. DD: That would show up somehow. You know. We didn’t know too much about it but then the searchlights around it they were, you know. I don’t know how many there were around it. It would come up the beam to catch that plane. But we were — my pilot was crafty. He would [unclear] he went through it. CB: Straight down. DD: Straight down. We never got caught again. CB: So did he give a, make a call before he dived so deeply? DD: No. He didn’t say a word. He just [unclear] Just like that. We were hitting the roof. Oh God. Peter will tell you that. He has a vivid remembrance of that. CB: So this wasn’t designed as a joke. It was because he needed to take action quickly. DD: No. It wasn’t. No joke. No. His reaction was amazing. CB: So, what you’re saying are you is that when the blue light illuminated your aircraft it was necessary — how quickly did you need to respond to that? DD: Well, you waited until the searchlight started coming up. They went up, you know. Shining through the blue light. CB: Yeah. DD: To try and catch you. CB: Oh, I see. DD: So if you went [unclear] you did that you could bypass it. That was at the beginning. I don’t know whether it worked later. But it was a standing joke in the squadron about that. I think other aircraft, other aircraft behind us, you know must have seen it and possibly they did the same. Some of them. I don’t know. But we were one of the first to hit the [laughs] Other: What sort of angle of descent was it? DD: Pardon? Other: I mean you said [unclear] straight down. DD: Well, as far as I know it was straight down. Other: Oh really. DD: And then he gradually brought it out of the dive and we ended up about two hundred feet from the ground. Other: Oh. CB: Oh you went as far as that. DD: Oh yeah. Right down to the ground. CB: Right. DD: And then we skimmed all the way back to the coast. CB: Oh. This is after dropping the bombs. DD: After dropping. Yeah. CB: Yes. DD: After dropping the bombs. Yes. CB: Did you get coned by a blue light before the target? DD: No. No. We were once or twice in ordinary searchlights but we got out of them. But that blue. That was a nasty bit of work. It caught a lot of people. CB: Now, when, just going back to the bombing run, the bombing run is a sequence of lining up then dropping the bombs. Bombs gone. But then a photograph had to be taken. So — DD: Yeah. CB: How did you feel about that delay? Before you — DD: It was accepted. CB: Yeah. DD: We couldn’t do anything about it. You had to have proof. CB: Yeah. DD: Because if you didn’t have that proof they wouldn’t allow you to take it as an op. CB: Right. DD: It wouldn’t be counted. So everyone had to do that really. CB: So what was the delay? Assuming you were flying at eighteen, twenty thousand. What was the delay? DD: The delay was around about [pause] Oh I would say about, depending on the height actually it wasn’t long because a Cookie went down very quickly. CB: That’s the four thousand pounder. DD: Yeah. Four thousand pounder. To be quite honest I couldn’t, I couldn’t tell you. It’s under half a minute. CB: Yeah. DD: It wouldn’t be more. Around about that. CB: So, the key is that you’re trying to capture the explosion of the bombs on impact. DD: Once it went off then you were — CB: Yeah. DD: You could go. But it wasn’t — sometimes it was alright. Other times you know you were a little bit worried about it. CB: The sequence was though was it that the bombs went. DD: Bombs went. CB: Then, then the flash went. DD: Then the flash— CB: Down. DD: The flash went at the end of the bombs. CB: Right. DD: Bombs. And it took about a half a minute I suppose. CB: Ok. DD: Somewhere in that region. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t swear to it but it was somewhere in that region. CB: In your time on operations or perhaps any other time but what was your most terrifying experience? [pause] DD: I think it was that blue. Blue light. Blue searchlight. Because that was really frightening. Where you just, you were sitting there, you know going along normally and the next thing you knew you were up there [laughs] and looking down. Looking down at people. And it was amazing. Well, Peter was the opposite way around. He was looking up. Didn’t know where he was. CB: No. DD: But I think that’s about the most frightening thing. CB: What was the most pleasant memory that you had about being in the RAF? DD: Most pleasant. CB: Was it during the war? Or afterwards perhaps. DD: It was after the war. Finningley held an airshow and of course the Lanc was a sort of a main thing there. There were other aircraft but the Lanc was a bit of the — but they did a four-engined over shoot. Three-engined. Two. And we were supposed to do a one-engined. Yeah. Mind you that’s alright and the Lanc would fly on one. You know, if you were high. Mind you were dropping all the time down. CB: Dropping down all the time. Yeah. DD: Yeah. But they were going to do this over the runway and I was in that with the wing commander. And when he said, ‘I’m not going to do the one,’ [laughs] that was the most pleasant. Because had you, I was worried about that. CB: A sigh of relief. DD: Aye. I think that was the thing that really stuck in my mind. We did, you know the two engine. That was alright. No problems. But when he said one. Do you know I was really chuffed. CB: The final thing is we didn’t really talk about after the war and keeping in contact with the crew. Now, your rear gunner is the one, Peter Smith is the one you’ve kept in contact with. DD: Yeah. CB: What about the others? Did it fall away or did you never have? DD: It faded away actually. I met my pilot in 2002 because he came over here. Oh it was great seeing him again. But the others — HD: Peter. DD: Oh Code. You know the warrant officer. Warren. Warren Code. He died. Passed on. And also the bomb aimer. So those three you [pause] those three you know we had no contact with but Peter went over to America, to an aircrew meeting of some sort. I can’t — he’ll tell you that anyway. He’ll give you all the info. He met up with most of the crew there. CB: Yeah. DD: Except the English ones. He met up with the two Canadians. CB: Yeah. I meant that there was no link with the British side. DD: No. CB: Other than Peter. DD: No. We lost track completely. CB: Yeah. DD: I think that happened a lot of cases actually. CB: It did. DD: In the end. I think in a way you were glad you were finished with the air force in a way. CB: What was people’s attitude at the end? DD: Oh. Not very good. Aircrew were looked down on. CB: Were they? DD: Yeah. CB: By whom? DD: The populace. CB: What, what started that do you think? DD: Well, it more or less started about the bombing of towns. That was mainly their idea. They didn’t like that idea. We shouldn’t have done that. It should have been military targets all the time. But that couldn’t happen in the war. But aircrew were looked down upon. CB: Were they? DD: Yeah. And some of them had quite a rough time. CB: Did they really? DD: Yeah. Churchill ignored us. CB: Yeah. DD: Bomber Harris was kicked out. Went to south Africa. Yeah. He felt it too. CB: I’m going to stop there for a mo. [recording paused] CB: One thing we didn’t ask, David was you were trained as a wireless operator which was a real skill and after the war you might well have followed that up as a, in relevant areas. Why didn’t you use your new skill there? DD: Well, there were too, there were too many things going on in my mind at that time. Going back to Africa and how to get there. I didn’t want to tie myself down. I had to be free to be able to go at a, you know, quickly. CB: Yeah. DD: That was the main reason. I wasn’t really keen on being a wireless operator actually. I would have preferred being a gunner. I would. Because that’s what I volunteered to do. But they said no. Wireless operator/air gunner. So that was that. I was really forced into that. As I say I wanted to be a gunner. CB: Yes. DD: I’d have enjoyed that more. CB: You weren’t alone with that requirement but what, what was it that attracted you most to the thought of being an air gunner? DD: I think it was my grandmother who did this actually. During the First World War she had a lot to do with RAF sea people. And in fact one of them, what was his name? Ball, I think. Used to be a visitor to my — he shot down one of the zepps. And she was always telling me stories, you know. They told her. And it as a youngster I grew up on that. And I always fancied the idea of flying anyway. So when the war came along you know that’s the first thing I thought of. CB: You felt you wanted to give it to them directly. DD: More or less. Yes. Yes. Because whilst I was in London we had a, I’ll have to tell you this. My grandmother owned a very old Victorian house. You know, one of these three storey high things but it was attached to the next part. You know. It was split into two houses. And one particular night the bombing raids were on and I was always shoved down under the stairs. You know, by the gas meter and always the smell of gas. Horrible. Anyway, there was a lull and I wanted to go to the toilet. So I went upstairs to the first floor. Went to the toilet. Whilst I was sitting there a aircraft came over and dropped a bomb which landed just the other side of the next house. Cracked the pan. I ended up on the floor [laughs] That’s what happened to me. CB: A bit of a mess then? DD: It was a bit of a mess [laughs] I hated the Germans after that. CB: Of course. Who wouldn’t? Other: Disturbing the dethronement seems to the height of ignorance. DD: It was terrible that. I was frightened actually. CB: So, in the bombing in general because you were there before you joined the RAF what was your feeling about what was going on? DD: Well, I hadn’t really formed any thoughts but I thought then if they can do that to us we can do that to them. That was my idea really, I suppose. In a way. Knowing that people in you know in London had died as they had I suppose I wanted to retaliate. You know kids ideas are a bit different to what you think nowadays obviously. But I’ve never really thought about it but that’s, that’s I suppose that’s the way I thought. CB: To what extent did you have contact with people who had been in the raids? On the receiving end. DD: Well, in our street, or in my grandmother’s street there were about five or six houses that had been bombed. People we knew had died. I suppose that was in the back of my mind as well. You know a lot of things went on when you were a youngster. Especially in raids. Yeah. CB: What was the general public attitude during the raids? DD: People who were in houses, I think they were a bit frightened you know. Well obviously. But people who managed to get shelters, you know like the underground I think they didn’t think so much about it. But then there was that case of one shelter being bombed wasn’t there? That was terrible. CB: Cannon street. Yes. DD: Cannon street. Yeah. CB: So, did you grandmother have a shelter in her garden? DD: No. Not in the garden. No. She had one of these things that went under the table. CB: Right. DD: It was sort of a box about this high. You had to lie down to get in to it. But she had that. Because she was then about eighty something. She couldn’t have gone outside because most of them got water in them and no, she couldn’t have. She couldn’t have done that. But actually I put myself in. I went in there one night to try it. I didn’t like it. It was claustrophobic. Very claustrophobic. Because, you know it was so low really when you come to think of it. And you’d got all this wire. Wire netting around it and then the heavy iron on top and below you. They weren’t nice things. CB: They were designed simply to avoid being crushed. DD: Yes. More or less. Yeah. Or being caught in masonry. CB: Yeah. That’s what I — DD: At least it gave you some leeway. Give you some air. CB: Yes. DD: The idea was good. But I wouldn’t have fancied it. Staying in one. Even though there was the gas in that under stairs. I hate the smell of gas. Although gas in those days seemed to be much stronger than it is nowadays. CB: Well, it’s a different type of gas isn’t it? DD: Yeah. It was — CB: One other point about aircrew is you were in the, of the, based on the time, well fed. DD: Oh we were. Yes. Very well fed. CB: So, what was the food generally? DD: Well, it was more or less not, we didn’t have fancy food. It was straightforward nutritious food. CB: Before an operation what did you get then? DD: Oh eggs and bacon [laughs] and when we came back as well. In fact you got more or less egg bound the number of eggs you got. But everyone else only had, they would have one a week or something like that. I think my grandmother had one. One a week. CB: The civilian population had one a week. DD: One a week. CB: Yeah. DD: Something like that. I don’t think it was more than that. But we used to get cheese. And we used to get milk. Aircrew used to get a pint of milk a day and you used to go into the mess and go to the bar and say, ‘I’ll have my milk.’ You’d have that one then, one sort of lunchtime. One in the evening. Of course, when you went on trips, on ops rather, you would get your chocolate, Horlicks tablets, wakey wakey pills and some fruity sweets. Every time. And I never used to eat many of them at the time. I’d probably take them back and give it to people. CB: And, right and what did you drink? Coffee or tea? Or what was it? DD: It’s wasn’t a lot of, there was some coffee. You generally got that at the debriefing. CB: Yeah. DD: Coffee. It was generally tea you drank. CB: In a flask was it? [pause] Because it was pretty cold up there. DD: No. I didn’t get a flask. Do you know I can’t remember what we did there. We did have a drink but I can’t remember what it was now. It might have been coffee. To keep you awake. Because those wakey wakey pills you wouldn’t take them until you were getting near the actual target. CB: Right. DD: You’d take one then. And that would get you through the target and then one on the way back. CB: Because the trips were how many hours? DD: Oh it was varied. I think the longest we did was coming up to eleven hours. Ten and a half. Eleven. That was the longest. CB: Where was that to? DD: Now, where was that now? Oh God. Down the east. The east part of Germany. Where the hell was it now? Do you know I can’t, I can’t remember the name. CB: But on the Baltic coast area. DD: More or less up nearly up to there. Yeah. CB: Yeah. Stettin or — you didn’t do Peenemunde. DD: No. CB: It’s a pity your logbook was stolen isn’t it? DD: I know. CB: Because that’s an absolute travesty. DD: I’ve been upset all my life over that because it was all written out nicely and signed by you know wing commanders, group captains. We had all sorts of people signing them. I’ve always regretted that. But you’ll be able to get an idea when, if you go and see Peter. CB: Yes. [recording paused] DD: Well, one night when we bombed we didn’t lose the Cookie. CB: It didn’t go. DD: It didn’t go. CB: So the Cookie was the big four thousand pounder. DD: Yeah. The bomb. We were flying. Now, where was that? We were flying — not Nuremberg. Next one up there. Coming back from that district and we were flying north of Switzerland. The bomb aimer had to, you know come back. CB: Stuttgart was it? DD: It could have been Stuttgart. It think it might have been. Yeah. He had to release the bomb but when that bomb hit the ground there was the most massive explosion. We never knew what it was. CB: It had hit something. DD: It hit something. CB: Yeah. DD: Of course, there was no photoflash or anything but yeah it was interesting that. We never did find out what was, what it was. CB: No. Now, did you ever return to Germany after the war? DD: No. I didn’t go back. CB: And did you go on any Cooks Tours that they ran after the war? DD: No. CB: To see the bombing. DD: Oh, now on the, with the Lancs. CB: Yeah. DD: We took ground staff across to show them. Flew around France and Germany. CB: From the — DD: From the place up north [laughs – pause] I’ve forgotten the name again. CB: But when you [pause] what Granston? DD: No. No. No. Not Gamston. CB: Gamston I meant to say. DD: Finningley. CB: Oh Finningley. DD: From Finningley. Yeah. CB: Yeah. DD: We took — CB: In Lancasters. DD: Two or three trips we did actually across there. CB: So, what, who were the people you were taking on the trips? DD: Ground staff. CB: Your own crews. DD: Well, no we didn’t have our own crews then. CB: No. DD: That was only on the — CB: So, they were, what sort of people were they? DD: Well, anyone. CB: Anybody on the airfield who was interested. DD: Anyone on the airfield who wanted to go. CB: Yeah. DD: Really. More or less. CB: And when you got over you would fly at a higher level would you and then well you — DD: Well, normally. Yes. Come down. CB: And then ten thousand. Then come down. DD: If we were flying over the Ruhr we’d come down fairly low and let them see. CB: Yes. DD: Especially Cologne. CB: Yes. What height would you fly over there? DD: Oh, a couple of thousand feet. CB: Oh, I see. DD: Right down. CB: So people could see. DD: Oh yeah. CB: And what was their reaction to that? DD: A bit aghast. You know, they wouldn’t say very much. Probably they did say something when they got back on the ground. CB: Yes. DD: But you couldn’t talk very much. CB: No. DD: When you were up there. But I think they were a little bit shocked. Other: At the devastation. DD: Yeah. And that’s one of the reasons why I think aircrew were looked down on after the war. Not looked down on but, you know, ‘You bombed civilians,’ and that sort of business. But I heard one person say that. Which wasn’t very nice. CB: And of course the factories were in amongst the civilian population. DD: Of course they were. Yeah. CB: Because people didn’t commute. DD: They didn’t realise that. CB: No. 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 Kenneth McKenzie Dall Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Brockbank Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-11-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ADallDKM161122, PDallDKM1601 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Pending revision of OH transcription Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:30:58 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain South Africa England--Lincolnshire Description An account of the resource David Dall spent his early life in South Africa. He moved to the UK as a child to live with his grandmother and continue his education. He was enthralled by the stories his grandmother told him about the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War and so when it came time to volunteering, it was obvious that he would apply to the RAF. He had wanted to train as a gunner but was posted for training as a wireless operator/air gunner. He was posted to 101 Squadron at RAF Ludford Magna. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Maureen Clarke Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1942 101 Squadron aircrew bombing bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944) Cook’s tour crewing up fear military service conditions Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944) RAF Hullavington RAF Ludford Magna Scarecrow searchlight shelter training wireless operator / air gunner https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/875/11115/AHollisRE180111.mp3 e3e523e3265c6984d2c2ca159745a801 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/875/11115/PHollisAN1801.jpg 7fea6f1398cdeabc26833d102de46378 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 Hollis, Arthur Arthur Norman Hollis A N Hollis Description An account of the resource 56 items. The collection concerns Arthur Hollis (b. 1922) who joined the RAF in 1940 and after training completed a tour on 50 Squadron before becoming an instructor. At the end of the war he was deployed as part of Tiger Force. Collection contains a biography and memoir, his logbook, correspondence, training records, photographs of people, aircraft and places, his medals and flying jacket. It includes an oral history interview with his son, Richard Hollis. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Hollis and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-11-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Hollis, AN Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Thursday the 11th of January 2018 and I’m in Cowes with Richard Hollis to talk about his father Arthur Hollis. What were the earliest information you’ve got about your father, Richard? RH: Well, right from his, from his childhood through schooling. We know quite a lot. Quite a lot about the family. I’ve got lots of photographs and, up until when he was in the Home Guard and then joined up and joined the RAF. CB: So if we start with early on. Where his parents were. What his father did. And then take it from there. RH: His father got completely decimated in the First World War and was an office manager in an insurance company. He went into insurance really because it was about the only thing that he could do and my father’s mother was at home bringing up children. My father was the eldest. The eldest child. CB: His schooling? RH: And his schooling. He went to, he said not very satisfactory prep schools. And then my grandparents were left some money by an uncle who deceased and enabled them to send both my father and his brother to Dulwych College as day boys where my father said he rapidly learned how to work and the advantages of working and he, he did very well academically. He was also a keen sportsman. He played rugby. He was a very keen swimmer and he was an extremely fine amateur boxer. He then, well after he came out of school at sixteen after he matriculated and I think that was school certificate or, anyway and he then, my grandfather was very anxious, his father was very anxious that he’d, with the war coming that he’d have some sort of grounding for a profession which my poor late grandfather had not had and so he was articled to a firm of chartered accountants or accountants in the City called [Legge] and Company. I think Phillip, I think it was Phillip [Legge], I’m not sure. The, he, [Legge] had been a contemporary of my late grandfather in the First World War. He was there for a good couple of years and, and, but he wanted to join up. He was not, he couldn’t join the Army or the Navy for some reason but he went then, he opted for the RAF and but apparently at that time there was a bit of a blockage of new people wanting to be pilots. They obviously couldn’t process them fast enough so he was sent off to Manchester University to do higher maths and flying related subjects I think for about six months before he went off to learn to fly in Florida. In his memoirs he comments that the ship that they went out on which was to Nova Scotia had been used for, as a meat ship. I doubt if it was cleaned out very well. They just strung a row of hammocks across and people were very sick apart from him. And so he landed in winter time in Nova Scotia. They saw good food for the first time. In his memoirs he tells us that. And then they worked, went by train down through the United States into, into Florida which of course was beautifully warm. He went to an airfield called Clewiston and quite early on he was selected to be a corporal, acting corporal and to, one of the jobs was to maintain discipline. He was quite a disciplinarian anyway and so he seemed to be rather suited. His commanding officer was Wing Commander Kenneth Rampling and he got on extremely well with Kenneth Rampling and had a huge amount of respect for him. He finished his training there. He said when he was training the flying instruction in the air was excellent. On the ground it was very poor so they had to work extremely hard to, to make sure that they didn’t lag behind or or fail. When they had finished there he went back up to Canada and I think he received his commission on [pause] up in Canada. They then joined other people on a, on a ship, troop ship crossing the Atlantic and in, he said in his memoirs later on he didn’t realise at the time, he wouldn’t have known but it was actually at the height of the U-boat, U-boat war but they were all very jolly and he said, but it wasn’t always pleasant going. He said, ‘If the sea was rough,’ he said, ‘You imagine shaving with a cutthroat,’ which he did, ‘A cutthroat razer in a rough sea.’ He said, ‘I didn’t worry about it.’ He just got on. But anyway, he landed in, he landed in [pause] I think Liverpool but I’m not sure. That would have to be checked out. And then went down to, in his memoirs I think he said he goes down to the south coast to be kitted out. After that, we’ll check up in his logbook, he went to Little Rissington to start learning to fly twin engine aircraft. It would have been Oxfords. He then went, he then went on to, where did he go after that Chris? CB: Right. We’ll pause there for a mo. RH: Yeah. [recording paused] CB: The question [pause] Of course, when he was an articled clerk it’s the early days of the war and everybody was pressed into something. He’d had training, officer type training when he was at school. RH: Yes. He was — CB: So what did he do when he left? RH: He joined the Home Guard. He had a lot of respect for the other, his colleagues in the Home Guard. He pointed out to us as a family, he said, ‘Dad’s Army is not really a true picture of what it was like.’ He said, ‘These were people who had been a part of a, at the end of the First World War, if they’d survived the First World War, a fine Army and they could certainly shoot fast and straight. And in his memoirs he says that there would have been a lot of dead Germans. Anyway, he enjoyed himself in the Home Guard and thought it was very worthwhile. CB: Good. Thank you very much. And so that set him in good stead anyway when he joined the RAF because he already had — RH: Yes. CB: Military training. RH: Yes. CB: Now, in his logbook we have talked about him returning to Little Rissington. RH: Yes. CB: Returning to England and doing his twin engine flying. RH: Yes. CB: So that was to get him accomplished with A - twin engine and B - the British weather. RH: Yes. He does say in his memoirs that navigation was considerably harder in in the UK than it was in the, in the States. CB: Did he ever explain why? Why that was so much more difficult. RH: I don’t think so. Just that the terrain, in the States you could follow a railway line or something and there was very little. And the weather of course. So after Little Rissington — CB: He then went on to the Operational Training Unit. RH: Yes. CB: That was at — RH: He then went to Number 29 OTU at North Luffenham on Wellington Mark 3s. By this stage he had done two hundred and ninety five hours of flying and and it was during this period that he had an unfortunate incident. It was in December just before Christmas. December 1942. He had to bale out at two and a half thousand feet on the orders of the captain from the Wellington and he did not have his parachute done up correctly and it started to go over his, over his body. It caught on his flying jacket. It tore his flying jacket and he came down holding on to the, holding on to his parachute with his arms. He flatly refused all through his flying life to get the flying jacket repaired where it tore because he said, ‘That tear saved my life.’ He says in his memoirs that when he landed on the ground that he was met by some farmers, or farm labourers approached him and questioned where he was from. Was he one of theirs or one of ours and he said very strongly he was one of ours. He said they then plied him with tea in a farmhouse. He said he would like to have had something slightly stronger. Anyway, he continued his training there, then went to a short course, advanced flying, again on Wellington Mark 1s. And then in February, the beginning of February 1943 he joined 1660 Conversion Course at Swinderby. Swinderby, and was flying Manchesters, Mark 1s and he then and that’s where he picked up the rest of his crew. He had picked, when he was flying Wellingtons he had pilot officer then, Palmer as navigator, Sergeant Kemp as an air bomber, Cheshire, Sergeant Cheshire as a wireless operator/air gunner and Sergeant Jock Walker his rear gunner. And he was very very fond of Jock Walker. CB: What did he tell you about the crewing up process at the OTU on the Wellingtons? RH: He said that you just stand. There wasn’t any, he said you chose. I don’t know how it worked but you just chose your, I think he said that he chose. You chose your own crew and how you would know if they were good. I suppose if you got on reasonably well or you talked to them and you found out a little bit about them but those were the people that he had, I believe he had chosen. Later on in the Conversion Unit at Swinderby he was joined by Sergeant Bob Yates and sergeant [pause] who would that have been? Sergeant [Adsed], Don Adsed who was a flight engineer. Bob Yates was the mid-upper, upper gunner. So that made up the crew of seven. He did say, he told me that when he was doing his Conversion Unit converting to heavy bombers of all the people on the course he was the only one to have survived the Second World War. And that was born out by when the Memorial at Skellingthorpe was unveiled in the 80s. nineteen eighty — CB: Six. RH: 1986. A very old man came up to him and said, ‘Are you Arthur Hollis?’ And he said yes and he said and he was with my mother at the time who also witnessed this and this dear old man said to him, ‘Oh, I know one, I knew one survived. I’m so pleased to meet you.’ Which was very touching. Anyway, then in 1943 in March, March the 11th 1943 he started flying operationally at Skellingthorpe on 50 Squadron and straightaway we’ve got the first operation to Stuttgart. According to his logbook he flew a variety of Lancasters. They were Lancaster Mark 3s but his favourite, their favourite one appeared in March, at the end of March 1943 and that was D for Dog, ED475 which took them to Berlin and then on to St Nazaire the next night. Working through his logbook they did, they were flying some part sometimes to France. I know he planted, he did some mining in the Gironde on one occasion but then it was off to Kiel, [unclear] Stettin, Duisburg and Essen. On May the 12th 1943 they were setting off to go to Duisburg. He told me that quite often to gain height they would take off, fly over and go and fly over to Manchester to gain height and then, and then cross the North Sea with some decent height. But off the Dutch coast he was with, in collision with a Halifax. What had happened was that the Halifax apparently had been early and contrary to the strict instruction not to do a dog leg and join in with the main bomber stream the pilot of the Halifax had decided to turn back in to the main stream. Go head on into the main bomber stream. They collided. The Halifax with one of its propellers cut through and cut off six feet and damaged six feet of the starboard wing and put an engine out of action. The engine must have been on the starboard wing as well. Probably the outer. They both returned to, to England and he my father told me, I had asked him at one stage why he had not been recognised for, for bringing a damaged aircraft back with seven valuable men in it and he said because he wasn’t riddled with German bullets. But he was always extremely angry that the collision seemed to have been hushed up. There is correspondence about the collision from other members of his crew that looked at it, looked at it in 1979 and some photographs of the damage to the wing. But [pause] could we just stop there? CB: We’ll pause just for a mo. RH: Yeah. [recording paused] CB: So after the mid-air collision. RH: Well, he — CB: He got no recognition. RH: He got no recognition. In fact, it was, it was all hushed up which made him very angry because it was, he said it was two valuable aircraft and fourteen valuable men. Coming back they jettisoned the bombs. He managed to fly the aircraft he said. He told me he could just about keep it in a straight line and they jettisoned the bombs and I don’t know where he landed but he obviously did. So that was that. Then he continued on with operations. That was with ED475. Their favourite aircraft. In an article written by, or written in 1979 one of his crew which was [pause] who was that? Cheshire, his wireless operator praised my father for flying the aircraft back. But it was established that it was a Halifax because there were bits of the Halifaxes propeller wrapped around the wing of the aircraft and it contained wood and only the Halifax propeller I believe had, did contain wood. So, we then move on to [pause –pages turning], I think we’ve missed something here. We need to stop I think. CB: Ok. We’ll stop for a mo. [recording paused] CB: Ok. Restarting now. RH: There is another photograph of, a colour photograph of a Lancaster. It’s actually a flight of Lancasters and my father told me that he was asked to take up a flight, a flight of Lancasters with a photographer on another aeroplane. They were to do formation flying. In his logbook he says on the 23rd of July a formation flying nine aircraft. He did say that they weren’t trained to do formation flying and basically most of the aircraft the pilots couldn’t get near this photographer so most of the photographs were taken of my dear late father in his Lancaster and his crew and the photographs are there. That has been established that it was JA899, again D for Dog and photographs have been taken up by Lincoln, copied by Lincoln University. Shortly after that, that was on July the 23rd, on July the 24th he went to Hamburg and on July the 25th in the same aircraft JA899 they went to Essen. It was on this trip to Essen that he, they were caught in searchlights and I think my father said at that stage they now had radar controlled searchlights and they were damaged by flak. It said hydraulics were u/s in his logbook. Tyres burst. They didn’t know that until they landed. Following the attack they were attacked by a fighter whilst held in searchlights in the target area and Jock Walker the tail gunner was wounded by a cannon shell and one of his other crew, the mid-upper gunner was also slightly wounded. He managed to lose the, or get out of the searchlights and, and fly the plane home and there was also, it says in his memoirs there was no, they lost their intercom as well. So it must have been a pretty unhappy time. For that he was awarded later on the DFC. Then after another trip to Hamburg they were coming towards the end of their tour. By this stage he told me that his crew, he said he didn’t believe in luck. He wanted, he purposely throughout his tour never had a girlfriend and he was a very strict disciplinarian in the aircraft. He said that there were, there were good skippers of aircraft and there were popular ones but he did not believe that the popular ones were necessarily good and he maintained this discipline. By this stage the crew had definitely established that they wanted to be flying with him and were most grateful for that which they wrote to him in a letter in 1968. And in the letter, this was written by Tom Cheshire who had visited, who had made contact with Don Adsed and it said, “We had a nostalgic hour.” This was in 1968 when they met up, “We had a nostalgic hour during which time we came to the conclusion from our total flying times that you were about the best pilot and aircraft captain we’d, either of us had flown with. I will spare your blushes but I really mean that. I afterwards flew with a motley load of crews and missed the crew discipline which you always maintained. I’m sure this was a considerable factor in allowing us to take advantage of an average share of luck.” Can we pause there? CB: Yeah. [recording paused] RH: There is a photograph of, I would imagine it’s the entire squadron in front of a Lancaster. I know that my father is not in this one. I believe it was taken when he was on leave and that was at about the time of the, I think the Peenemunde operations. And he said that when he was on leave he came back and there had been such losses he arrived late in the evening and it was dark and he didn’t recognise anyone in the officer’s mess. He didn’t see anyone he knew and he said he seriously thought that he’d been dropped at the wrong airfield. And then he met someone and he said, ‘No, Arthur. I’m afraid we’ve had some, we’ve had some very bad losses.’ Moving on as they get towards the end of their, oh when Jock Walker was wounded so he didn’t do the last three operations but they were ending their, ending their tour and the last two operations were to Milan. My father told me that they were chosen, Milan was chosen because it was really getting to the stage where Italy had was on the point of, of getting close to giving up and Milan was perhaps a softer target, an easier target. They flew across France, over the Alps to bomb the marshalling yards in Milan. Unfortunately, my father told me that there had been a lot of instances where bombing raids tended to creep back from the target area as people pressed the button just a little bit early to, to get out and he wanted to demonstrate how not to bomb short. So he said to his bomb aimer, ‘You tell me when you’re ready and I’ll tell you when to press the button.’ He unfortunately got it slightly wrong and counted all the way to ten by which stage he’d completely missed the target they were shooting at, destroying the chapel where Leonardo da Vinci’s, “The Last Supper,” was on the wall in this chapel and Leonardo da Vinci’s, “The Last Supper,” was damaged but the wall stayed there. The rest of the chapel was completely destroyed and online you can, if you go online and look at the Leonardi da Vinci’s the “The Last Supper - war damage,” you can see some of my father’s handiwork. Later on, some years, some twenty seven odd years, thirty years later in his memoirs he tells us that he had, as a chartered accountant some Italian clients. He had quite a number of Italian clients. He never let on that it was he that had damaged that chapel or blown it to bits. But he was taken to see it and he quietly told my mother, ‘And guess whose handiwork this was?’ And he did also say later that he felt gratified, the fact that he had a whole lot of artisans work for the last thirty years. So that was his last operation to Milan and that was the end of his time at Skellingthorpe. CB: Right so we’ve ended operations. RH: Yeah. CB: How many operations did he do? RH: He, he did thirty. He did his full thirty. CB: And how many hours was his total by then? RH: And that, and that total by then was just under, was about six hundred and ninety. CB: Ok. We’ll pause there. Have you got some more? RH: Yes. CB: He, he just about when he was finishing at Skellingthorpe in his logbook he says a voluntary attachment to 1485 Gunnery Flight, Skellingthorpe and it was then that his dear rear gunner Jock Walker came back on to the squadron and he, he took Jock Walker up in a Tiger Moth because he thought it would just be fun and good for Jock to get back into flying again. Very sadly Jock Walker lost his life doing his last three trips with another aircraft and in his logbook he says he was a very experienced pilot but sadly they lost their lives. RH: Stopping there. CB: Yeah. [recording paused] CB: What was your — RH: With the situation with Jock Walker my father was asked by the station commander or senior officer whether he thought it would be a good idea if Jock Walker went back on to operations just to finish his tour because he only had three, three to do to complete his thirty trips and my father said that he thought that Jock would like that because he would be happy with that. My father later on a night explained that, he said it was one of the worst things he ever said in his life because as I’ve said poor Jock Walker went off to, to lose his life on one of those last three trips and Jock was the only child of, my father said, a very nice Scottish couple and to lose their only child was absolutely tragic. CB: The history of these sorts of things is that, seems that captains and others sometimes feel a sense of guilt when something’s happened to their crew that was actually beyond their control but nevertheless within their realm of concern and command. RH: Yes. So that was the end of his flying operationally. That. His tour of operations. CB: We’ll just stop there a mo. RH: Right. [recording paused] CB: So in training and during operations people formed all sorts of alliances, experiences and admirations and some of the senior people were very encouraging to the more junior ones. What experience did he have in that? RH: When he was, when he was, going back to Florida he had a great admiration for, for his Wing Commander Kenneth Rampling. And as I say he appointed him, he says in his memoirs course commander. “I was made an acting corporal unpaid and held general responsibility for the behaviour of the Flight. About fifty cadets.” He, he then went on to say that, at the end of his course, “We took the wings exam and qualified. On the evening before the Wings Parade together I, together with my two section leaders invited by three officers to a celebration at the Clewiston Inn where they stayed. What a night. I arrived back at camp wearing the CO’s trousers, mine having got wet in a rainstorm. The next morning the Flight was drawn up on parade and I marched up to Kenneth Rampling to report, ‘All present and correct, sir.’ He said, ‘Christ you look horrible.’ To which I replied, ‘Not half as horrible as I feel.’” Just as well the doting onlookers could not hear these remarks. Dear Kenneth Rampling, he was killed two years later as Group Captain DSO DFC CO of a Pathfinder Squadron. CB: Clearly made a really big impact. RH: Yes. CB: On him and an inspiration in his life. RH: Yes. CB: I’m stopping. [recording paused] RH: If I just refer back to his last trip, tour. His last trip of the tour was to Milan. His he said his usual aircraft was pronounced unserviceable rather late in the day. Group Captain Elworthy, later Marshal of the RAF, Lord Elworthy the then base commander was very anxious that I should finish on this trip. He therefore arranged for an aircraft from another station be made available and took me personally in his staff car to that station. My crew were taken there by bus. And he then goes on to talk about the bombing short. CB: So, when, when he went to Milan then he didn’t come straight back did he? He went on to North Africa. RH: No. They came straight back. CB: That was a different one. RH: That was a different one. CB: Right. RH: The North African was when he was bombing, a trip to Friedrichshafen. He says in his, in his memoirs if I can find it. [pause] I think we’d better just stop now. CB: Yeah. [recording paused] RH: Was when they, when they carried out raids on the U-boat pens at St Nazaire it was rather useless as the concrete was too strong for the bombs then carried. He also went to Berlin, Pilsen and Hamburg. An interesting trip was as a special force chosen to bomb Friedrichshafen where special radar spare parts were stored. “As it was then midsummer there was not enough darkness to return to the UK. We therefore went over the Med to North Africa. The personal map which I marked up and tucked in to my boots is in my logbook." CB: Stop there. [recording paused] RH: After his trip to Milan he used to dine out on the story but he maintained that he had taken Italy out of the war because they were so disgusted that a religious artifact was too much for them to cope with that and he recently, he said he recently told the story to an artist friend who remarked drily that the bomb damage was not half as serious as the damage inflicted by the subsequent garish and overdone restoration. [recording paused] CB: What other stories have you got that ties in with — RH: Well, my father, my father had a very [pause] he was quite careful what he would say to, to some people. Particularly, he had German and Italian clients but I remember on one occasion in the 1980s at a lunch party my father was sitting next to a very charming German lady and she asked the question, ‘Have you ever been to Hamburg?’ And, because she was from Hamburg and he said, ‘No.’ And she, this lady had to leave the lunch party early so she went and one of his other, one of the other people sitting beside him said to, said to him, ‘I thought you said you had gone to Hamburg.’ He said, ‘Well, I did go but I didn’t stop.’ He was very, he used to give talks on, about his experiences and he was very adamant that people should understand that, you know people said, ‘Oh well, you know the poor Germans,’ etcetera. He said, ‘Do understand this? That whilst Germany was completely obliterating Europe the —' perhaps we ought to be recording this actually. CB: We are. RH: Yes. We are. Good. That it, it turned people, some people said, ‘Oh the bomber, the bombing campaign didn’t do much.’ He said, ‘Just look at it this way. It tied up, it tied up about a million people. Manufacturing had to be geared for defending the German Reich not manufacturing shells for, for the Russian Front or tanks for the Russian Front. It tied up a huge number people as Speer said in his book.’ My father also used to refer to Speer and said that had there been nine other raids like Hamburg the Germans would have probably thought about giving up. But everything was, everything, the vast amount of armaments and work and planning was geared to the defence of Germany not the offensive. And he said, ‘If you look back in history no one has ever won a war on the defensive and we put the Germans on the defensive. That they were not going to win.’ So, and he was, people used to bring up, he’d give talks about, about the Second World War and he would, he would definitely make this point that, and he also talked about the, after the war he said, ‘I can understand the crooked thinking that the appalling and harsh lessons during the war our former enemies quickly became model citizens. I’d been delighted to share friendships with some admirable Germans and even one or two Japanese. But naturally there has always been during the war there were good Germans but the nation as a whole followed, took a disastrous turning during the 1930s and set about ruthlessly establishing itself as the master race and one must not forget that.’ [recording paused] CB: How many aircraft did he fly on ops? RH: In total he flew twenty different Lancasters and after the, after the war my mother did the research when it became available and found that only one of them survived the Second World War. All the others were either crashed or went missing which means they were crashed. Incidentally the Lancaster JA899 which was the Lancaster where he got shot up over Essen that was repaired. That was repaired three times. Damaged three times and eventually it was lost on the 22nd of June 1944. So it was quite clearly not a throwaway society. Right. CB: So after ops then. RH: After ops he went on to number 11 OTU at Westcott in Buckinghamshire and was flying, became an instructor and was flying Wellington Mark 1Cs. He used to tell us that they were grossly underpowered and quite honestly he thought at times that it was far more dangerous training people than it was flying over Germany which he absolutely hated by the way. Flying over the Ruhr. He then said, he says in his memoirs he was posted instructor’s duties to OTU Westcott. “I felt it was rather like leaving the Brigade of Guards for the Ordnance Corps but there was no choice.” Most of the instructions, instructors were New Zealanders. A very jolly bunch of chaps. His immediate senior and flight commander was one Squadron Leader Fraser Barron. DSO DFC DCM. A New Zealander who ranked at the age of twenty one as a Pathfinder ace and was killed the next year as a group captain. The immediate successor to Kenneth Rampling mentioned earlier in the narrative in my father’s memoirs. He told one amusing story about one New Zealander who said he was, father became what he termed as a shepherd. People who really couldn’t get something right and eventually were going to be, you know sent back to be an air gunner or something instead of a pilot they were given to him and, and he, he did his absolute utmost to make sure that they were, they, you know, passed. He said, but it was sometimes it was very sad because he said generally people who were poor pilots tended to get the chop first. He had one. One New Zealander. He said he just couldn’t believe how this man actually got his wings but he did. He disappeared and some months later he turned up back on the station and said, ‘Oh, hello sir.’ He said, he said, ‘Good God, what are you doing here?’ And he said, ‘I’ve come here as an instructor.’ He couldn’t believe it [laughs] He’d survived his tour. Anyway, he was also at Westcott. He was, spent a lot of time at the satellite station of Oakley which also had 1Cs. He said one night he was sitting next door in the instructor’s seat next to an Australian pupil pilot who was doing a cross country practice. On returning he made a rather mess of the landing approach and I said, my father said, ‘Go around again.’ Immediately ahead of the main runway was at Oakley was Brill Hill. He said, ‘Good pilots could clear it easily but my pupil was not in that category. After looking up at the trees as we went over Brill Hill I let him have another attempt at landing. He did the same thing again after which I said, ‘Up to three thousand feet and we’ll change seats.’ The aircraft cross country flying at Oakley had no dual controls. He said at one stage he did, I think on that occasion he did come back with some, a bit of branch or twigs or something in the tail wheel. When he was at Oakley he said in the late spring of that year he had the good fortune to meet one Betty Edmunds, one of the staff in the watch tower at Oakley. He was officer commanding night flying at the time. “We soon discovered that we both came from Carshalton and had many mutual friends. Our friendship developed. We used to play tennis together. She always won partly because she was a much better player than I but also because whenever she bent over to pick up the ball I was completely unnerved and my mind was not on the tennis.” They did eventually get married and my father said he thought they would wait until the end of the war and my mother said, ‘Oh, do you? I was thinking about the coming 2nd of December.’ They got married on the 2nd of December and, and they went away for a honeymoon in Torquay and there is a photograph of my father on honeymoon wearing, wearing a greatcoat and out of uniform. That hasn’t gone to the Lincolnshire. That’s a new one I found. But anyway, continuing on with my parents because it was a very important part of his life. He said they both wanted children. My mother wanted four but my father thought that would be rather too many to educate properly. He was particularly keen in his life that people should be educated properly thinking back of his own, of his own education. He said, “Thinking about things over the years and knowing my darling Betty’s quiet way of getting what she wanted I think she made up her mind to start our family on our honeymoon. I had no hesitation in helping.” And I think, I know life was very difficult for them there. My mother was, was still in the WAAF but, and found certain petty rules very very irksome and there was one time she was married, then married to my father said at a New Year, at New Year there was an officer’s dance at Oakley and Betty was only a sergeant. She had to get her COs permission to attend and this was refused. “My fellow officers were most indignant that the Oxford tarts were likely to be there but an officer’s wife was refused.” I didn’t particularly mind the signs that Betty was pregnant but there you are. I don’t know how he told that within a month but still [laughs] they then, they then got some accommodation, very difficult but later on they managed to get a council house or part of a council house. Two rooms in a council house at Brackley but more of that in a while. So he continued his, back to the flying he continued with his training as an instructor and there was one stage where someone started to write him down and when he went for tests in flying saying that he wasn’t very good. Fortunately, his commanding officer picked this up and realised that the man, the same man actually wanted to go out with my mother. He thought that he would be taking my mother out. So, but that was, that was picked up and he did finish up and he says in his memoirs that he finished up with a category, “After New Year I was telephoned, this was a year and a half on, “I was telephoned by Group and I was promoted to squadron leader and was to Command Instructors Flight, Turweston. A satellite of Silverstone. I had two months earlier been categorised A2 by a visiting examiner from Central Flying School. An A2 instructor’s category was rare and the highest one could obtain in wartime.” I didn’t know that. But there we are. So, after, after Westcott he then went to [pause – pages turning] Ludgate, Lulsgate Bottom. Number 3 FI [pause] FI5 or FIS? CB: FIS. RH: FIS. And I don’t know whether that, I think that must have been further, that must have been further training. CB: Let’s just stop there a mo. RH: Shall we stop? [recording paused] CB: Right. RH: Right. So after further training, advanced training as an instructor his European war ended on the 1st of May leaving Westcott. CB: No. Turweston. RH: Sorry. Leaving Turweston and he says in his memoirs when everyone else was celebrating VE Day he was with my mother and he had a miserable time because he’d just been told that he was going off to be an advanced party of Tiger Force then being formed to set up Bomber Command on Okinawa. But he was not allowed to tell my mother where he was going and he may or may not be coming back. So, he refers to that as, ‘The saddest day of my life.’ Do you want to know about Sue the dog? CB: Yes. RH: When he was, when he reached his twenty first birthday, as a little anecdote he, he was given an English bull terrier called, which he called Sue which he obviously loved. And when he got married to my mother they went to [pause] they found the two rooms in a council house in Brackley which was owned for the sake of it by a Mr and Mrs Blackwell. They didn’t, when father was posted away my mother who was heavily pregnant at the time went to live with, back to live with her parents in Carshalton Beeches and they didn’t know what to do with Sue. So they gave Sue the dog to Mrs Blackwell and my father used to say that every, every Christmas there and after they always had received a photograph of Sue the dog with Mrs Blackwell. He said they looked rather similar which looking at the photograph they did but Mrs Blackwell was always the one wearing the hat. He boarded a, he boarded a troop ship which had been formerly the Kaiser’s yacht and they were, they went through the Panama Canal. He found that fascinating. And they ended up they were in Hawaii when the bomb was dropped. The Americans, he said, didn’t really want us to, didn’t really want the British contingent which I think was about seven squadrons. They didn’t want them to be part of Tiger Force. The bomb was dropped and he said he and his fellow officers were horrified. Had mixed feelings. He discussed the situation with his fellow officers in his memoirs, “We were horrified that science had reached this far but grateful that our lives and probably about two million others had been saved.” They didn’t know what to do with them. They had a ship full of craftsmen, builders, and medical units, air sea rescue units etcetera. So after a certain amount of cruising around the Pacific they went to Hong Kong. He, they landed, they got to Hong Kong and it was about two days or so after, a day or so after the British Pacific Fleet. Before the Army had arrived and my father told me a story that it was after he arrived he said the crew on the Empress of Australia, the former Kaiser’s yacht, he said they were about, he said about the fourth rate scum that they’d dug out of the, out of somewhere in, somewhere in England. I think he said Liverpool. They had been cheating the, the servicemen on board by turning up heating and then serving them some sort of orange drink to which they would add a touch of salt so they wanted to you know, sell more. And he said they really were, they were very badly done by this group. When they arrived in Hong Kong he went ashore for twenty minutes and he came back and was speaking to a very worried sergeant, RAF sergeant who told him that the crew were mustering over there and, and they wanted, they were planning to loop the medical supplies that had just been unloaded from the ship on to the dock and what should he do? And he said it was the only time he took out his service revolver in anger. He said to the sergeant, ‘Sergeant, there’s a line there. Any man that crosses that line shoot him dead and I’ll show you how to do it.’ And he would have done too. But anyway, he, they had to keep the Japanese officers as fully armed because otherwise, he said the Chinese, the Hong Kong Chinese would have ripped the place apart and looted it but he said they gave, they gave away their food, their rations because there were other people who definitely needed it more. He said, ‘I scarcely slept for several days and was somewhat hungry as we had given up our rations to the ex-occupants of the internment camps. The Japanese were later used for hard work in repairing the colony. They lived in POW camps and were not overfed. And then after about a fortnight the Marine Commandos arrived and he did have, apart from the fact he was away from my mother and he did have a grand time, or a good time in Hong Kong. Although he’d never learned to drive he was given a jeep and he said that you had to guard it all times. If you left it for five minutes when you came back the engine would have been taken out. He said the Chinese, the Hong Kong Chinese were so resourceful he said they would, they used the engines for their, to power their junks. He was initially put in as supplies officer for the officer’s mess and he had an office in the Peninsula Hotel. He said that when you went into the Peninsula Hotel you turned right into a large room. In the middle of the room the room was completely bare apart from a desk, a chair and a filing cabinet and that was his office. He was supplies officer for the officer’s mess and he said he used to go out to the Navy ships to collect the gin. He said, ‘I always remembered going out.’ He always remembered going out but he never remembered coming back. He then, also in Hong Kong went on to do the rather unpleasant job of commandeering people’s houses for accommodation and he made some good friends from the Hong Kong Chinese for that. He said it was the most distasteful job. He also would do tribunals. Criminal tribunals. He said it was very difficult because the Hong Kong Chinese at that time would make things up and tell you what they thought you wanted to hear not what had actually happened. But I don’t know whether we can put that in. Anyway, he, my mother sent him some books to study, to carry on studying accountancy but he said that the social life was, it was difficult to study because the social life was rather too good. Anyway, back, then later on in it must have been I think it was May. In May 1946 he [pause] I’ll just get, we need to stop really. CB: Yes. [recording paused] CB: In July. RH: In July 1946 it was his turn to be demobilised and he set course for home by taking a passage in one of her, his majesty’s ships to Singapore and then got a place on, believe it or not the Empress of Australia again. He arrived at Liverpool one wet afternoon and the ship’s tannoy went, ‘Requiring the presence of Squadron Leader Hollis in Cabin —’ X. He proceeded there and was greeted by an air marshal who was there for the purpose of offering him a permanent commission. He said, ‘I’ve always been pleased that I didn’t accept. There were severe Service cuts a few years later and he has had a very interesting life.’ He went on to qualify as a chartered accountant. When he came back to England — do you want this? When he came back to England of course he then had to study. He had a young child. They had nowhere to live. They managed to find two rooms in the attic of a house in Dover belonging to a relative and he only spent the weekends there because he was studying during the week time in London living with his father which was, he said since his father liked to sit in silence it was the appropriate atmosphere but very poor for my mother. They literally had no money at all. Any money that they did, he got a small grant and any money they did have was spent on, on suits so that he was well dressed when he went to work. They then moved to a house of another, some cousins in Westcliffe on Sea in Essex but they were not, that did not go down. It did not work very well. But then in 1948 they found a flat to rent at the Paragon in Blackheath where they spent fifteen happy years and he passed the final exam and became a charted accountant. And my late sister Sylvia was born in 1949. Things got a bit better for him and eventually he was offered a partnership in a firm called Hugh [unclear]. A joint [unclear] with an assistant partnership prospects and he, in 1950 — do you want to continue in this? In 1950 he went out to Jeddah and he had some work in Jeddah to do and he said Jeddah at that stage was absolutely medieval. He said he felt that he was going back to the Old Testament. He did tell me one story that he was very keen on walking and one evening he walked out of the town and on to the outskirts of the town and got surrounded by a pack of dogs, wild dogs and he really did think that he was, that he was going to be attacked and killed. But he managed to find some sticks and stones and threw them at the dogs and he walked back into the town. But he said that was a very close shave. Unfortunately, my sister Sylvia when she was born was born very prematurely and was blinded by an oxygen, use of an oxygen tent. This was when he returned from Jeddah. He said it was very difficult. My other sister was doing well at school but he said, ‘How can you tell a child who says, ‘Will I be able to see next year? Or when I’m ten?’ ‘No. You won’t.’ In 1953 I was born. Unfortunately, my mother contracted polio whilst she was carrying me and it was another great burden on the family. My father and his career he worked hard and progressed well becoming a partner in [unclear] and company. He also took on the work from a small practice where the sole practitioner had died and the sole practitioner specialised in theatrical, in the theatrical and musical world and, and he met, and Yehudi Menuhin became a client amongst others. And Diana Sheridan, the late actress. He struck a great, had a great rapport with Yehudi Menuhin. Saved him from being clobbered by vast taxation and, and he was instrumental with others in setting up the Yehudi Menuhin School. He provided for us admirably. The family. We then in the early ‘60s moved down to a beautiful house down in Kent where he lived with my mother for fifty years and was very very happy there. He was highly respected and it was the house, he was highly respected in the village and became the sort of the elder statesman in the village. And he, my mother died in 2010 and in 2013 my father didn’t become ill he just one day went to bed and never woke up. And he was terrified of ever having to go into a home but he had his wish, he died as I say in his own bed in his own house and having lived an extremely full life. CB: What a fascinating story. RH: There we are. CB: Thank you very much. RH: Sorry, I’ve gone — 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 Richard Hollis Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Brockbank 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 2018-01-11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AHollisRE180111, PHollisAN1801 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:06:22 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Civilian Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Second generation Civilian Description An account of the resource Richard’s father, Arthur Hollis, went to Dulwich College as a day boy. He left aged 16 to join the Home Guard, then worked for a firm of accountants for a couple of years before joining the Royal Air Force. He was sent to Manchester University for about six months and then to Florida to learn to fly. He went to Nova Scotia and then travelled by train to Florida. Arthur was posted to Clewiston airfield and was soon selected for acting corporal. After finishing his training, he was posted to Canada where he received a commission. His next posting was to RAF Little Rissington to learn to fly twin-engine aircraft and then to the Operational Training Unit at RAF North Luffenham working on Wellingtons. He also went on a course for advanced flying and, subsequently, joined the conversion course at RAF Swinderby with Manchesters, where he picked up the rest of his crew. Arthur recalled December 1942 when he had to bale out at 1,500 feet on the orders of the captain. His parachute, not being fastened properly, tore his flying jacket and he came down holding the parachute with his arms. In March 1943 he started flying operationally at RAF Skellingthorpe with 50 Squadron. Off the Dutch coast he was in collision with a Halifax. It cut off and damaged the starboard wing and put an engine out of action. Arthur had brought his crew back safely. The crew continued operations flying to Hamburg and Essen. On one occasion they were caught in searchlights, attacked by a fighter, and damaged by anti-aircraft fire. They managed to get home and Arthur was later awarded the DFC. The last two operations were to Milan to bomb the marshalling yards. Arthur completed 30 operations and had flown 20 different Lancasters, of which only one survived the war. Upon completion of his tour, to No. 11 OTU at RAF Westcott and RAF Oakley, where he met Betty who became his wife. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sue Smith Julie Williams Maureen Clarke Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Buckinghamshire England--Gloucestershire England--Lincolnshire England--Manchester Canada Nova Scotia United States Florida Germany Germany--Hamburg Italy Italy--Milan Netherlands England--Rutland Germany--Hesse Germany--Ruhr (Region) England--Lancashire China--Hong Kong Germany--Duisburg Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia--Jiddah China Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1942-12 1943-02 1943-03-11 1943-05-12 1944-06-22 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending revision of OH transcription 11 OTU 1660 HCU 29 OTU 5 BFTS 50 Squadron anti-aircraft fire bale out bombing British Flying Training School Program civil defence crewing up Distinguished Flying Cross Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit Home Guard Lancaster Manchester mid-air collision Operational Training Unit RAF Little Rissington RAF North Luffenham RAF Skellingthorpe RAF Swinderby RAF Westcott Ruhr Campaign (5 March – 10 July 1943) searchlight training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/939/11298/AMackieGA171222.mp3 e9ca13049823098df01cd69c65a59715 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 Mackie, George George Alexander Mackie G A Mackie Description An account of the resource Nine items. An oral history interview with George Mackie (1920 - 2020, 855966 Royal Air Force) with his log books, diary extract, list of operations, battle order and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 15 and 214 Squadrons. The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-12-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Mackie, GA Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document GM: In that silence, revulsion of what Bomber Command did and a claim for what Bomber Command did, were in that silence, that trivial monument in Green Park is for the benefit of the multi-millionaires that erected it, in [unclear] in Flanders, every name of the dead is inscribed in stone, the only names inscribed in stone at Green Park are the millionaires names, the rest are painted, this cheap, cheap gesture on the part of about half a dozen millionaires, so, if you want to carry on with that knowledge of my opposition to monuments, I’d be CB: That’s fine. Did you go to the opening of that? Were you invited to it? GM: Of course not [laughs]. I wouldn’t be seen dead near that monument. CB: Did they invite you though? GM: No. CB: Right. GM: Very glad they didn’t. I wrote against it. It’s also a hideous piece of architecture. So, let’s talk about the war CB: OK, we’ll do that, I need to be able to. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 22nd of December 2017. We are in Stamford in Lincolnshire, talking to George Mackie about his experiences of life and the RAF. So, what are your first recollections of life, George? GM: I can’t remember. I think CB: You were born in Cupar, in Scotland GM: Yes, and I was in my teens, was waiting for the war to begin. CB: Right. GM: It began and I wanted to fly so I presented myself in Dundee at the recruiting office. On Monday because the war had started on a Sunday but nothing happened for weeks until I went back to Dundee school of art and then I was called down to a place in the Midlands for medical which lasted two days, Warrington and I wasn’t actually called up until June of 1940 and sent to Babbacombe near Torquay for a month or six weeks square bashing which I thoroughly enjoyed, squad of fifty people being drilled, CB: Yeah GM: And from there [unclear] Cambridge, St John’s college, lectures on navigation, meteorology and so on, contrast to Babbacombe and from Cambridge again a contrast to Stoke-on-Trent to begin flying on Magisters, very difficult conditions for flying because there was no horizon. A horizon is very necessary for learning to fly and there was none, was just smoke and no one said the absence of horizon is going to be difficult, so we thought we were [unclear] and but I got through. From Stoke-on-Trent to Cranfield which is a very inconspicuous place compared to today and we flew Oxfords and I started liking flying for the first time. I remember engine failure at a thousand feet [unclear] the fuel and diving down to [unclear] the fuel that was good, good stuff, that was exciting. And from Cranfield onto Wellingtons, a place twenty five miles south of Cambridge whose name escaped me, flying Wellingtons, one day a Stirling through across at a thousand feet, they were very silent, Stirlings, compared to other aircraft, they were huge, very impressive and I went straight to the adjutant and said, I want to go to the Stirling squadron, now, further or not, that had any bearing on the final decision I don’t know but the point was I was posted from the Wellingtons to 15 Squadron at Wyton, one of two squadrons with Stirlings and I have almost one thousand five hundred hours flying in Stirlings which I think is higher than anyone else. You have to switch thing off [unclear] CB: That’s ok. GM: So, there I was in 15 Squadron during 1941 and what I didn’t know was how appalling the mess was that Bomber Command was in, we was sent off solo, there was no such thing as a bomber stream, we went off fifteen minute intervals trying to find a target in Germany, we were hopeless at navigation, we were, my navigator had a sextant to try and navigate with, can you imagine? CB: I’ve used it [laughs] GM: We weren’t hitting targets CB: Right GM: And by the beginning of 1942 the retrenchment of Bomber Command and I was posted to a newly formed Heavy Conversion Unit to train pilots on the new four-engined aircraft, the Stirlings were just coming in and mostfully I was at Waterbeach for eighteen months in which time I only did three ops, they were the thousand bomber raids and I didn’t go back on ops until the Autumn of 1943 in 214 Squadron, so my eighteen months in Waterbeach was a wonderful period of learning to fly the Stirling cause until you instruct on an aircraft you don’t know it and I got to know the Stirling intimately, the most peculiar airplane, take-off, particularly take-off, the talk from the four engines plus the fact that the rudder was out of action until the tail was up in the slipstream meant that the take-off had a colossal urge to veer right off the runway, so the first thing you did was to put the stick fully forwards and open the throttles diagonally, now in Mark I Stirlings, the throttles were parallel, topped by large bulbs, large knobs, which my hand could not encompass CB: Right GM: So it was quite tricky trying to open the throttled diagonally nor could my legs reach the rudder bar because they were too short so I had to stuff a parachute behind me to reach the rudder bar so that couple with the Stirlings own eccentricities made flying the aircraft rather tricky. That I got to tell [unclear] sort of course, switch off. CB: The Stirling was a Marmite type airplane, was it? People either loved it or hated it? GM: What is Marmite? CB: You either love it or hate it. GM: Oh, I loved it because I survived in it and it was [unclear] in design, it was made to be, it was supposed to be the [unclear] version of the Sunderland flying boats with a wing span of a hundred and ten feet, in the event the wingspan was cut down to ninety-nine feet to enter peacetime hangars which were a hundred feet wide, of course, most of the maintenance was done outside anyway, day and night, and that made the aircraft most peculiar, a huge undercarriage and the angle of take-off was absurd CB: Well, you were sitting twenty-eight feet above the ground, weren’t you? GM: Well, yes. CB: So that meant the tail was very low in comparison with the GM: And until the tail was up, the rudder didn’t work CB: Yeah, that’s interesting GM: The [unclear] was switched CB: Yeah. What sort of speed would you have to get to, in order for the tail plane to get up? GM: Oh, maybe fifty CB: Right. And then, when you got to V2, what would you be taking off at? GM: Oh, ninety? CB: Right GM: [unclear] CB: Right, yeah, oh, one [unclear] GM: Well, a hundred with bombs CB: Yeah GM: A hundred and ten, it depends, it depends on the aircraft, they varied quite a bit CB: Right GM: And from Stirling to Stirling CB: Right. As we were talking about the HCU, what condition were the planes in at HCU, Stirlings? GM: They were all second hand, they were all ex operational, the groundcrews worked twenty four hours a day, we didn’t give them sufficient credit for what they did, we took them for granted, I’m sure you’ll find this a refrain from aircrew, we took them for granted. CB: And did, what was the reliability like, as they were clapped out? GM: Oh, various having an engine failure, no, the Hercules engine was extremely good CB: You mentioned thousand bomber raids, three of those or three ops to [unclear]? GM: Well the thousand one which has gone down in history CB: Yeah GM: That was a [unclear]. I remember standing by the Stirling while the Wellingtons were going out, dozens and dozens and dozens at about a thousand feet climbing. When we took off, I mean, across the North Sea, you could see a long distance away Cologne bombing, a clear night and we got to the target, we were towards the end of the raid, it was an excellent opposition, next to no searchlights, next to no flak and I had a telescope, I remember trying to identify Cologne through this telescope, we finally got the [unclear] bombed, it was an absolutely easy job, operation but militarily of no significance, psychologically yes CB: We’ll stop for a mo. So, the reason that the Lancaster and the Halifax didn’t have the yawring problem same was because their [unclear] were GM: Because they had two rudders CB: Two rudders GM: Directly in the slipstream CB: In the slipstream, yeah, whereas yours was part of the fuselage so it was blanked off GM: Yeah CB: Yeah. You mentioned that early on in your ops you flew as second pilot, what was the GM: Everyone did CB: Right GM: Was standard until in 1942 as part of the re-organisation of the Bomber Command was a man called Peirse, was before Harris, CB: Right GM: a disaster, a disaster of a man, I can’t tell you how badly organised Bomber Command was in 1941 CB: So how it operate there then? GM: Where? CB: In 1941, how was it operating on operations? GM: Well, CB: They didn’t use bomber streams, so what did they do? GM: Well, we went off at endurance, I should write this down CB: You should, yeah. You’re going to get this back as a written testament anyway GM: Mercifully Harris took over and he at least organised things, although he finished up there being a quite psychopathic about bombing German cities, that was, you know, in terms of military advantage it was a crazy, compared to what the Americans were doing CB: So, with Peirse, can I go just back to Peirse? With, you took off at intervals and GM: Very few of us, I mean, a maximum effort by Stirlings squadron in 1941 would be say half a dozen aircraft? CB: Out of GM: Half a dozen CB: Out of how many in the squadron? GM: Well, maybe ten and four only on serviceable CB: Right GM: I mean, compared to late, the late war, two Lancaster squadron were maybe forty, fifty aircraft CB: Yeah GM: That was a form of the fulfilment of Bomber Command CB: Yeah, a Lancaster squadron would typically have at least twenty, wouldn’t it? GM: Yeah CB: Yeah. But in your day, with the Stirlings, much less GM: The Stirlings was electrical and it was a nightmare to keep serviceable CB: Eh? GM: Everything was electrical and nothing but short, short brothers CB: Short brothers and short circuits. What was the most common reason for them going U.S.? GM: I don’t know. We took, I took no interest, I just put the thing U.S. and that was [unclear] CB: So, early in the war, you were still, you were using flight engineers on the aircraft. GM: Oh yes CB: And they were busy dealing with GM: Oh chiefly petrol, tanks, we had fourteen tanks so they kept on manoeuvring the petrol, two tanks for take-off and then after [unclear] minutes changed the tanks and also I believe the flight engineer held the throttles and things like that, never in my time CB: Right GM: I did it all, get airborne, get the throttles fully open, undercarriage up, up, CB: Electrical undercarriage as well, not hydraulic GM: Seems as they were [unclear] retract CB: Yeah GM: If it retracted. If it didn’t retract, it had to be done by hand, it took about fifteen minutes, yeah CB: Who would do the winding? GM: Oh, anybody, not the pilot CB: Right. So, initially, your first fifteen ops, you said were as second pilot, then you became the captain after that GM: I did two as a captain and then I was posted off ops, as were quite a few of us CB: Yeah GM: To become instructors CB: Right GM: At the newly formed Heavy Conversion Unit and as I said, I was there for eighteen months CB: Yes GM: Before going back on ops and when I did go back on ops, I knew the Stirling aircraft, down to flying it, I mean, intimately, and it increased my chances of surviving my second tour of ops CB: Yeah GM: And in 214 Squadron I had the great good fortune to start flying fortresses in a hundred group CB: Yeah GM: Radar, anti-radar [unclear], we accompanied the bombers, carrying no bombs and if I were a German night fighter pilot and he’s a Stirling, a fortress full of electronics, and here the Lancaster full of bombs, and go for the Lancaster, so we had very few fatalities on 214 Squadron with Fortresses CB: Because they knew they didn’t carry a bomb load GM: There’s a piece of paper with the rotors CB: Yeah. Here we are. So, we’ve got a piece of paper with your ops on and then GM: There’s the Fortress losses CB: Yeah GM: There’s the Stirling losses CB: Right, yeah. So how different was the Fortress to fly? GM: The Fortress was child’s play, the perfect aircraft, from mass production for mass produced pilots, the Stirling was the worst possible aircraft for mass produced pilots, it was like something unique, the Fortress, you pushed the throttles open, the throttles were perfectly attuned to your hand and it just took off like a dream and landed like a dream, child’s play, perfect for formation flying, stable, very stable, the Stirling wasn’t, the Stirling was agile, frisky, CB: Well, the Fortress was designed in the concept of formation box flying GM: It was designed for formation flying CB: Yeah GM: And it was perfect for formation flying CB: Yeah GM: It didn’t want to do anything but [unclear] flying CB: And on the Fortress, the B-17, did you fly with a co-pilot there as well? GM: Occasionally CB: But not normally GM: [unclear] second pilot just for one or two trips, for experience, the idea of doing fifteen as a second pilot was out by 1942 CB: Yeah. Because of the HCU GM: Was useless CB: Yeah. The HCU system dealt with that, HCU GM: Yeah CB: So when people joined the Stirlings, they, you said they were difficult to take-off, was there a high accident rate associated with that? GM: Hundreds. CB: Which did it, it bent the aeroplane but did it, were there fatalities linked to that or just? GM: No, just crashed, swing and take-off CB: What was the best thing about the Stirling? GM: Agility, agile, remarkable, remarkable manoeuvrability, unbelievable for an aircraft that size. I, mastered a stall turn, which is going up like this, can you imagine a large four-engine aircraft at this angle? And kicking the rudder bar stalled, I got quite a reputation for it at Waterbeach. CB: Was this proving a point or because it was exciting? GM: Just showing what the Stirling could do, stall turn, quite remarkable CB: So, a steep climb and then kick the rudder GM: Yeah. It had a very bad reputation, didn’t carry more than two thousand pounds weight of bombs, I mean, because of the bomb containers CB: The size of the them GM: What the Lancaster does was quite stupefying, the weight [unclear] CB: Yes GM: Stupefying, nothing in the world like it CB: Yeah GM: At the time CB: Yeah GM: I mean, Britain did lead the war [unclear], not like today leaving Europe CB: What was the crew’s reaction to the, your crew in 15 Squadron, how well did they work together? GM: They were [unclear], various of camaraderie CB: What were they frightened of mainly? GM: Death CB: But the aircraft or GM: Death, CB: Or just GM: Death, CB: The raid? GM: I mean, the whole squadron was infected by fear CB: Was it? GM: Oh, I think so. Cause when you are not doing anything positive CB: Yeah GM: Just being exposed CB: Cause this is part of, is it, what you were talking about earlier, the disorganisation of Bomber Command meant that it worked in a very inefficient way GM: [unclear] If you look at the dates of ops CB: Yeah GM: Quite absurd, the Stirlings just in service. July in 1941 the 6th and the 7th, then the 12th and the 23rd, 25th and then a month before August 25, then between August 25 and September 19th, October the 12th, the 24th, why weren’t Stirlings used more often? Yes, it’s frightful indictment CB: What was your conclusion about why they were not used more often? GM: Oh, we didn’t conclude anything, we didn’t even know the morale was bad, how do you know that morale was bad at the time? You don’t know CB: Right GM: You think, this was my first operational squadron CB: Yes GM: For all I knew this was normal CB: Right GM: In that respect, I know that morale was bad CB: So, can you talk me through a raid, starting with the briefing? How would this evolve over the course of the night? GM: Well, briefing didn’t change, it got more complicated CB: So the briefing was everybody together in the ops room to hear the target and the route, is that right? GM: Yeah. Well, that didn’t change, only towards the end of the war there were half a dozen streams instead of one, well, in fact, there were no streams to begin with, just [unclear] the target and the navigator worked it out how to get there CB: So in the ops room, in the briefing room you would be told what the target was and the route. GM: Oh yes. CB: Was the route, the navigator had to work it out but was the route straight or was it? GM: I think it was, I think it was [unclear] the navigator to work out how to get there CB: Oh, right. GM: Which is part of the amateurness of the role CB: Yeah. So, as the war developed then, none of the raids would have a direct route to the target. So in your day initially, what was the state then? GM: Well, I suppose, I suppose so. I suppose we knew where the concentration of searchlights were, but I don’t know. Later on in the war, you not only had different streams of bombers but you had dummy streams which 214 Squadron did, we set off on spoofs, half a dozen Fortresses charring out Window CB: Right. Yeah GM: To simulate five hundred bombers, that was quite important, quite a safe job too CB: It was safe because the Window secured the view of your aircraft, did it? GM: Well, the night fighters were after these real streams CB: Right GM: And we didn’t go far into Germany, we just went across Holland and then turned back home. 214 Squadron was so lucky, so fortunate with its Fortresses, that was a stroke of gigantic luck being posted to 214 Squadron CB: So, the crew is the same, was it? As the one [unclear] flown in GM: The one [unclear] to 214 Squadron CB: Pardon? GM: We were a mixed lot, New Zealand, Peruvian. My flight engineer was called Pedro Honeyman. Obviously of Scottish descent. Didn’t keep up with any of them. We had extremely good adjutant to 214 Squadron called George Wright, what George had done before the war I do not know, but he loved being adjutant to a bomber squadron, the aircrew, he loved the aircrew and they really good for us, so before my ops came to an end, I said to George, when I finish, I want to go on Transport Command. [unclear] Before I got a posting to Transport Command where I finished the war. And that was before I was sent to India and North Africa. It’s interesting. George Wright was seen after the war in 1951. My wife-to-be and I were on our way to Paris and we went into the 1951 exhibition on the South Bank and who was selling tickets? George Wright. [unclear] come down for you. I went back to art school CB: When were you demobbed? When you were demobbed? GM: Yeah CB: In 1946. GM: Yeah CB: Yeah. How long were you at art school? GM: I did my fourth year at Edinburgh College of Arts, post diploma fifth year, then a year of travelling scholarship was six years CB: How did you finance yourself in those days? GM: Oh, paid for, paid for. People don’t remember but we were privileged, we got no fees at university, a grant, I had a pension, three pounds, ten schillings a week, [unclear] for ten schillings a week, so I had three quid to spend, were privileged CB: You received an RAF pension because GM: No CB: Was it? GM: I suppose it was CB: Yes, because you started the war when it started, when, at the beginning of the war GM: Yeah, I suppose it was RAF CB: So, in that context, you weren’t VR, were you? You were RAF GM: I was RAF VR CB: Oh, you were VR GM: Yeah CB: Right GM: I’ve got the four-volume history of Bomber Command CB: Yeah GM: Which you really ought to know CB: I’ll just stop there for a mo. Yes. The History of Bomber Command GM: Harris, he is in this book CB: Did he? GM: Oh yes CB: Noble Frankland, and who is the other chap? GM: Sir Charles Webster CB: Yes GM: They’re both historians. Yes, you promised me your book, your [unclear] for it CB: I shall put, I shall get hold of it, cause these are really important and this links together with your testimony GM: You [unclear] and your job, you must have it CB: I do, yes, need it. They’ve got it at Lincoln. GM: Have they? CB: Yeah GM: It’ll be in the university library CB: Yes GM: Or it should be CB: Yeah. Well, we’ll check actually as you come to ask. Can I just go back GM: I was once in publishing so I can get things at cost CB: Ah, right. Can I go back to your comments about 15 Squadron? You said that the crew effectively lived in fear all the time, the fear of being shot down or the fear of the aircraft not performing? GM: No, the fear of not coming back. CB: Right. GM: I think that was general, the morale was low CB: Yes GM: When morale is low, you lose confidence CB: Yes. And what was the RAF doing about it in your perspective? GM: Nothing CB: Right GM: Nothing CB: And what was the squadron commander doing to get together? GM: Nothing CB: Right GM: Nor the Wing Commander. Everyone was tainted CB: Yeah GM: In my recollection. The crew I trained with, what’s the name of that place? CB: At Wyton, oh, at Bassingbourn GM: Bassingbourn CB: Yes. On the Wellingtons GM: Two pilots, flight engineer, navigator and bomb, gunners, I trained the guy called Metaxi, M-E, M-A CB: Yeah GM: So, when we got to Wyton a line was drawn under MA and I went as second pilot to an established crew, CB: On Stirlings GM: Metaxi crew went to a newly promoted captain, he had no training with the new captain, they disappeared on their first op, the first op, no training, Pierce, group captain wing commander, why? Of course they went down on their first op, they didn’t know each other. That was my introduction to operational flying. Nobody mentioned it. CB: No. And in the ops in those days, you went off as individual crews, you said, rather than in any kind of orderly fashion. What was the process of finding the target? GM: Looking at the ground [laughs]. CB: In the dark? GM: What you could see. CB: At what height were you flying in the Stirling? GM: As high as you could go. Which was sixteen, seventeen CB: On a god day GM: Right down to twenty. Oh, what a business. CB: And how did you, when you returned, you were debriefed by the intelligence officer, were you? GM: Yes, yes. CB: And what would you have to tell him? GM: [unclear] we always thought we bombed the target of course [unclear] the first target I properly identified was Cologne, the thousand bomber raid, CB: And at that stage you were at the HCU. At that stage you were at the HCU, weren’t you? For the thousand bomber raid GM: Yes, yes, yes CB: Yeah GM: Little diversion from training CB: Yes GM: The following day you, circuits and landings, circuits and landings again, I don’t know how many landings I did in the Stirling, it must be ten to hundreds CB: How did you feel about the student pilot flying it? GM: Oh, they all arrived in a state of great anxiety, the Stirling had a very bad reputation and so the first thing you did was to show them what it was in the air and then the New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans, all nationalities, the most democratic outfit Bomber Command became, I wouldn’t have missed it CB: What was the most exciting experience you had on operations or in the HCU? GM: Well, the most dangerous experience I had was five hours in icing cloud trying to get to Hamburg in which 1651 Unit lost four out of nine aircraft in one night through weather and that was touch and go in cumulus cloud. CB: So the icing cloud should never have been entered but how was it GM: We should never have set off CB: Exactly GM: Again it was a cock-up and no one of course was never held responsible but to lose four out of nine is quite a shock. But the following day, take off and landings, take off and landings CB: So that goes back to the point about debriefing, there was a met man who did part of the briefing, was there? GM: That, the North Sea was [unclear] of clouds and of course we dropped the odd bomb to try and get more height, couldn’t and that was just flying skill to survive that night and one of the survivors was Frazer Barron, to finish that was nineteen ops, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar, he lost his life later on of course, he was smaller than me, so how he could get the rudder bar I don’t know. Frazer Barron, one of the so-called Barron CB: Barn Brothers GM: Barnel Barnes [unclear] CB: So, when the crew went back to 15 Squadron, you talked about the low morale, in the off-duty times what happened, what did people do? Cause you are all NCOs in the aircraft, are you? At that stage GM: We did nothing. After time boring, there was no overall intelligence trying to further our training as bomber aircrew, it’s just, it was, the whole thing was inept. You know, we were losing the war like mad CB: And what were the senior officers doing? GM: I never saw them, I was in the sergeant’s mess. I mean, we arrived at Wyton by train, a bus from the station to the airfield, no welcome, put into such and such a fight, didn’t meet the flight commander, no one would tell you hello, this is 15 Squadron, this is what we do, we just arrived, oh, dear, oh dear, that was bad, it was shocking [unclear] CB: Wyton was an expansion period airfield, so what was the accommodation like? GM: Nissen hut. We took off from Alconbury, Wyton had no runways, so we flew the aircraft at Alconbury where it was bombed up, and then we went back to [unclear] and got briefly briefed at Wyton and then bus to the station light. I remember the bus going through Huntingdon, people going about their business, going into pubs and so on, where am I going? CB: Yeah GM: 21 squadron was quite different cause the war had been going on for years by that time, September 1943, Stirlings would have been taken off German targets, again the luck I had, being posted to a Stirling squadron cause they were being withdrawn and then we heard this extraordinary rumour going on [unclear] and the rumour proved to be true till, we got an American pilot with half a dozen landings and off we went solo, captain of a Fortress, throat microphone, all up to date CB: Yes GM: Electric flying suit, all up to date, American CB: The whole crew had the electric flying suit, did they? GM: I don’t know about the crew, I took the crew for granted. I hadn’t a warrant officer, my navigator was a flying officer and that was my two fingers up to the system, you see and it didn’t last long, I was a commissioned officer within weeks CB: We’ll stop now. How often did you get hit? GM: Once, oh, well, the aircraft got hit more than once of course CB: Did it? GM: I got hit personally once, over Leverkusen CB: Oh. GM: To an [unclear] squadron to Leverkusen to [unclear] as a souvenir, one of the aircraft came home with shrapnel quite often CB: So what was the wound that you experienced? GM: It was? CB: What wound did you get? GM: I didn’t get wounded, didn’t even draw blood. Spent shrapnel upper left arm. Colossal braw. If I hadn’t been strapped in, I’d be off my seat. CB: Was the explosion in the aircraft or just outside? GM: No, the shrapnel, piece of shrapnel. Flak CB: Did that hit you hard? GM: Flak I suppose. CB: Yeah GM: Didn’t even draw blood. The arm was swollen of course CB: Yeah GM: And that was nothing CB: What about other members of the crew, did they get? GM: Nothing CB: Nobody GM: No. A nasty surprise flying along in the black, suddenly shrapnel [unclear], flak and this enormous bash which as I say, would have got me out of my seat but for being strapped in CB: Amazing. This was in the Fortress, was it? Or in the Stirling? GM: Probably Fortress. CB: There was a bigger crew in the Fortress, so? GM: Yes. CB: That was more gunners. GM: The Fortress crew CB: Right GM: [unclear] CB: Have a look at that. So, with the Fortress, you, the Americans flew with two pilots but you flew with one pilot in the Fortress in the RAF fashion GM: Yes, yes. They flew by day, of course CB: Yes GM: What the Americans did was remarkable I mean, seeing them go down, we saw them going down in darkness CB: Yeah. Did you get any planes exploding next to you? GM: There were things, in Bomber Command we believed in a thing called Scarecrows CB: Ah, yes GM: Have you heard this word? CB: Yes GM: But there were no such things, they were actual aircraft and we kidded ourselves, another Scarecrow and some could be very close CB: So, the Scarecrow notionally was an enormous shell when actually it was a German fighter firing upwards with Schräge Musik GM: [unclear] bomber going down in flames CB: Yeah GM: But mercifully we didn’t know. I was never attacked by a night fighter and that may be part of the fact that wherever over dangerous territory I was endlessly weaving the aircraft, endless, to give the rear gunner [unclear] a vision of the area, a vision CB: You did that on both aircraft GM: Oh yes CB: Yeah GM: Oh yes CB: Same technique GM: Endless, gentle weave CB: And how many reports of air sickness did you get from the crew? GM: Oh, never. Weaving, that’s nothing, you don’t even know you’re doing it, didn’t know I was doing it, but it’s so far more. CB: Yeah GM: I’ve heard a Lancaster sitting a straight and level being shot at, not least by a member of who, by ex-member of my crew, he was shot down later on and we were attacked and the pilot froze, froze, that’s why we were shot down CB: Froze over the target or [unclear]? GM: Night fighter attacked, there was no evasive action team CB: I see, right. But you were trained in the corkscrew? GM: Oh yes CB: And could you do the corkscrew with the Fortress or not? GM: Yes, nothing like [unclear] nothing like this CB: A big aeroplane GM: Nothing like this, cleverly, let me have that logbook, thanks, US: That’s the last, this is the first one. Is this the one you want? CB: No, he’s just checking US: Do you want to have a look at it now? GM: Hey? US: Do you want to have a look inside it? CB: I’ll just stop there a minute. US: [unclear] Air Force for you. GM: We flew an aircraft from East Anglia to Belfast US: Right. GM: You get a cask of Guinness for a party. When you think of the cost of that pint of Guinness US: [unclear] CB: Amazing. But you did need that training experience, didn’t you? Was this from the HCU or the squadron? GM: From the squadron CB: Yeah GM: The things were so relaxed. I had the memory of the friend of my father’s came down from Scotland, Ed [unclear], wanted to go up in a Stirling so I just said, an aircraft needing a flight test such and such took off in fifteen minutes CB: What was the reaction of your family to your flying as a pilot in Bomber Command? GM: My father and I didn’t communicate, ever. CB: And you mother’s reaction wouldn’t be cause she GM: Stepmother CB: Stepmother, I meant GM: Stepmother, no communication CB: Right, ok. Any other members of the family you spoke to? Just stopping there again. Because your father had been in the trenches. GM: Yeah, I mean Bomber Command is admired beyond reason, the worst that could happen was five minutes in [unclear] alive going down, think of the trenches, think of my father survived after three years in the trenches compared to what I had, Bomber Command was lucky. We lived well CB: Yeah GM: You know, it’s over exalted but easy, easier, the troops after the invasion going up through Holland far, far worse than Bomber Command was. I didn’t see a dead body. My father not only saw dead bodies, he saw the remains all around for years, no wonder he didn’t speak about it. Bomber Command too much talk saving your presence. No, it wasn’t all that difficult, it wasn’t. CB: Now, when you went to 214, you had a completely different crew there, GM: Yeah CB: Because you’d come from the HCU GM: I inherited a crew CB: Oh, did you? Right, so how well did they gel together? GM: After US: You know, I can’t remember CB: Anyway, professionally as a crew GM: There was a romantic tosh spoken about Bomber Command crews how they gelled, how they drank together, how they did this together, how they did that, I suspect in many cases that just wasn’t true, wasn’t true in my case CB: But it also varied, it would appear depending on whether it was an entirely NCO crew or a mixed commissioned NCO crew, in terms of them socialising. GM: No, in my experience, socialising went on between commissioned and non-commissioned, there was no sense of division. No, no, Bomber Command was very democratic, a great mixture of people, no, no, there was no bullshit. No, no, none. I remember one parade, I can’t remember where, there was no discipline, in my experience, there was self CB: Self-regulation GM: Self-engendered discipline, there was no bullshit, no, none. You did your job in the air, you were left alone. Me, when I put that Tiger Moth on the [unclear], I didn’t even get a rap on [unclear] CB: So, when was that? When were you GM: Waterbeach CB: Right. So, what happened there, you borrowed it, did you? GM: I was in the mess, I had this aircraft flying over and landing and [unclear] and I went down to the flight centre, it was the wing commander giving ATC cadets a touch of flying experience and he saw me and he said, hey, Mackie, you take over. Well, I’d never flown a Tiger Moth and I took over. I took off with the first cadet, flew around and landed after a, a second cadet started getting too cocky, anyway, that’s how I got to [unclear]. It was a lovely summer’s evening and I was quite excited to land, there was earth, [unclear], trees and this great big wide river, flat, not a ripple on its surface, inviting, irresistible, I did a perfect landing, tail down CB: Yeah. Who was in the back? GM: I was on the front. I think, we passed over the back, we got to the surface and he was saying, do you mind, look at my dress to dance tomorrow! And I said, you shut up! So and so, I got worries of my own now, the wing commander’s aeroplane CB: So, were you actually practising an emergency landing or did you feel that you GM: No, I got in a high-speed stall CB: So, what were you doing in your manoeuvre at the time? GM: [unclear] trees CB: So you were really low, you were going round the trees GM: Breaking the law and all sorts of things CB: That’s right GM: But I didn’t know you had to increase the throttles, [unclear] control, high fifteen tons, you’re supposed to increase the engine revs CB: Right. In the Tiger Moth GM: Cocky CB: But you would have had to do it in the Magister anyway GM: I don’t remember doing high speeds, [unclear] the Magister CB: No? So what was the attraction in the river? GM: The flatness US: Yeah CB: But the people, what about the people in the river? GM: They [unclear] spectacle CB: So you were busy just GM: You’re alright? You’re alright? I said, yes, I’m alright, [unclear] job trying to get the parachute on board the, onto dry land, the weight of it [unclear] water CB: And they helped you pull the plane into the side as well? GM: No, the plane was just right in the middle of the river, I was completely submerged CB: And what was the result of this then? GM: Not, no, nothing happened. I was a confident Stirling pilot, that was the important thing CB: Right GM: This, the Tiger Moth just an aberration CB: So the wing commander said GM: Nothing. He wasn’t even crossed CB: And your logbook said GM: [unclear] somewhere, he was a very good man, he was the best wing commander I ever had, I had some poor wing commanders, he was particularly good, he was called Menaul and he finished up in charge of atomic bombing tests in the South Pacific just after the war and he lived quite near to where my elder daughter lives and she kept on saying, why don’t you look him up? And I kept on saying, no, no, and I wish I had. M-E-N-A-U-L, he’s a good man. I had the worst commander in 214 Squadron called McGlinn M-C-G-L-I-N-N, he didn’t take to me, part because I was a warrant officer I think and froze the normal distances of promotion and once the aircrew were altogether for a talk by him and he suddenly, said, Mackie, what does that mean? And he pronounced a long German word, you know, a multi syllable, multi [unclear] and I said, I don’t know, Sir, and I hope I never do, the squadron erupted. This is still a German prisoner of war camp name, I said what? Anyway, that was my come up and stand up to the wing commander. No, he wasn’t a good type. CB: So, you reached warrant officer and then when you went to the HCU, you were still a warrant officer, were you? GM: I became warrant officer at Waterbeach, yes CB: At the HCU GM: Not automatic [unclear], sergeant, flight sergeant, warrant officer, CB: Yeah GM: A good rank, taken miles CB: Absolutely GM: Have you heard that expression? CB: Yeah GM: Doesn’t exist [unclear] expression CB: No. And your commissioning took place when you joined two, joined at 214? GM: Having more than doubled the hours than any other pilot on the squadron then and the [unclear] ranking, it was this to the system, it was meant to be, I’d finished the war as [unclear] there was anything left [unclear] but they made me take commission CB: Was McGlinn, this, this CO, was he part of GM: The station commander intervened CB: Ah! GM: He saw, he told me, you’re taking commission, Mackie, which I knew was inevitable and [unclear] didn’t have to ask for it CB: So what was the process that you went through for that? GM: Nothing. A new uniform and that was it CB: But they took you off somewhere for a briefing, did they? Or selection? GM: I got five minutes CB: Ah, right GNM: At Mildenhall CB: What did they have, a board of assessors? GM: No, no, just one man, [unclear] after all be all the way as Mildenhall and all the way back for this formality, out of the comedy, tragicomedy CB: So there you had the opportunity to move into the officer’s mess GM: I had to and the airfield we shared with an American squadron and the first formal dinner evening took place, when I say formal, peacetime thing, towards the end of the war [unclear], towards the end of the German ascendancy and being the most junior officer, I had to give the royal toast and the toast to his, the president of the United States of America, not a single ring of having lost my [unclear] morale. No, there is one thing I want to emphasize, it was easy CB: An easy war for you GM: Easy war, an easy war for most of the crew, if you got shot down, five minutes. I mean, think about it, that’s quite a good way to go, five minutes. CB: Did you come across Guinea pigs, who’d been burned? GM: Yeah CB: And how did they take to flying after being Guinea pigs? GM: Well, I don’t know, I mean, well actually, I knew them, I met them, I saw them, never knew them personally CB: Right GM: But that was extreme. If you got killed, you got killed, in a burning aircraft, you know, you are going down. You see, in 15 Squadron, going out seven, half a dozen aircraft, one missing, that’s quite a lot of proportion, week after week, one again, one again, one again, one again. US: It is here, Tiger Moth [laughs] GM: Of course, nobody knew at the beginning of the war. Bomber Command did no night flying in peacetime CB: No. Were your original ops with 15 Squadron in daylight or were they always at night? GM: There were two daylight ops on Northern France with Spitfires and Hurricanes, protection. That was so-called circuses, supposed to engender combat between our fighters and their fighters, they never materialised, it’s a waste of time CB: And how did you feel like flying in daylight bombing on a, in a Stirling? GM: Well, glad that I missed it. By that time the RAF had learned the sense of not flying by day over Germany CB: No GM: To begin with, we thought we could do it with impunity, flying in formations of Wellingtons or, what’s the other aircraft? CB: Or in Blenheims GM: Blenheims. 50 percent loss, time after time, sheer incompetence, wasted for nothing, peacetime air force, but by [unclear] what a transformation in 1944, target could be identified and destroyed, terrifying, pinpointed by Mosquitoes, TIs, target indicators, and the [unclear] watching, watching, doing nothing CB: So in your two and four, flying your B-17 Fortresses, what was the activity going on in your aircraft? GM: I don’t know, I didn’t know, yeah, I took no interest CB: What was it supposed to be doing? GM: Jamming control, jamming communication between ground control and German night fighters, that was one thing, we carried a German speaking wireless op and in a minute he got on to this German night fighter frequency, he jammed it, I believe but there were other, we carried a [unclear] radar which is one reason why operational flying was so infrequent, it was the [unclear] in the world and constantly tinkering new this, new that, but it was so complex, I wasn’t interested. I was interested in one thing, survival. CB: And these German speaking operators, did they tend to be of foreign origin or were they? GM: They were German. CB: On the aircraft? GM: Yes. But I, when I looked back I missed, actually I should have been more interested in what they were and how they came to be aircrew in the RAF, they were perfect German speakers, I believe. Pedro Honeyman, how did he come to England from Peru? And no one charged him. Cause Honeyman is a Scottish name CB: He was a signaller, was he? He was a signaller. GM: He was my flight engineer CB: Oh, flight engineer. GM: We all smoked of course, like chimneys CB: In the aircraft? GM: Coming back, yes, once you’re over water, down to a thousand feet, open the window, switch off the oxygen, first cigarette, oh, the bliss, the bliss of that first cigarette CB: So, for non-smokers, explain please what, why it was such an important thing GM: Well, salvation, US: You’re a non-smoker. GM: You were over the North Sea, you’re at two thousand feet, in half an hour you can see the flashing beacons, you’re safe, you survived, you’re off the scaffold, that was why, and the nicotine in the blood stream. Oh, I was a confirmed smoker. I regret having, had to give it up, but I wish I hadn’t. My father smoked forty a day until his late eighties when he died. He had the right answer. Were you an ex-smoker? CB: No. GM: You’re both non-smokers? US: I smoke GM: What’s that? Pack? US: Rolling. GM: You’re rolling [unclear]. Oh yes, so did I. I used to have brown paper, cigarette papers, I’ve [unclear] CB: What made you start smoking? Did you start because of the flying? GM: No, before the war I started. CB: Right. And what made you give up? GM: Oh, slow asphyxiation. [unclear] for five before the war, the day’s ration. [sighs] Well, Chris CB: So you, that’s really good. We’ll stop for a bit. GM: Yeah. Fifty percent of Bomber Command aircrew died for nothing. There’s no way of proving it but that’s my feeling. CB: Do you mean particularly in the early days, do you mean? Because it was so disorganised GM: Yes, but it extended into the, towards the end of the war, how many aircrew did damage to Germany? One [unclear]. I’d have had been killed, the damage I had affected on Germany was minimal, minimal, at what expense? CB: Well, in your two and four days with the Fortresses, you weren’t carrying any munitions, so any bombs. GM: Were not very successful, CB: Oh GM: It was a colossal enterprise involving fighter squadrons, Halifaxes, Fortresses, but it never did enough damage, I suppose was expected. I mean the hundred fighter squadron used to go out at night and circle German airfields CB: The Mosquitoes, the Mosquitoes did GM: Yes CB: Yes US: Interesting CB: Interdictors GM: And they weren’t successful, I believe. And then Transport Command, when I think about the expense, six thousand feet all the way to Germany, straight to India, four days, bed and breakfast, North Africa, bed and breakfast, Palestine, bed and breakfast, Iraq, Karachi. CB: And what were you flying in Transport Command? GM: Stirlings, the Mark V, an extra ten miles an hour CB: And you wouldn’t want to get there too quickly, with all that nice hospitality on the way, did you? GM: Oh, just a routine bed and breakfast, you know. CB: What could the Mark V Stirling carry? What could the Mark V Stirling carry? GM: Sixteen passengers or so much freight, a lot of postal freight, you know, letters [unclear] was abroad CB: So, did you enjoy that, overall? GM: Oh yes CB: How did you come to be posted to Transport Command after 214? GM: I’ve told you, George Wright CB: Yes, but in the mechanism of the system, it just automatically GM: Well, George Wright got me posted to Transport Command CB: Yeah, as the adjutant GM: That was it CB: Yeah. There’d be a less smaller crew there cause you didn’t need gunners, so what did you have? GM: Oh, navigator and flight engineer CB: And that was it. No signaller? GM: Wireless op, possible, you see they were going a-begging, they weren’t needed CB: No GM: [unclear] CB: How did you meet your wife and when? GM: When did I meet her? CB: Yes GM: I don’t know the exact date although I can recount it in detail but I shan’t CB: [laughs] GM: My wedding was in [unclear], 1952 in the registry office in Scarborough, cost five quid, got back to Edinburgh that same day, that was the beginning of our marriage CB: Where did you meet her in the first place? GM: Edinburgh College of Arts CB: Edinburgh College of Arts, right. After the war, in other words. GM: Oh yes, oh yes, CB: Yeah GM: ’48 or ’49, the best thing I ever did. CB: And how many children have you got? How many children do you have? GM: Two daughters. CB: Right. Local? GM: Two daughters, two granddaughters, two great granddaughters. I don’t want any competition [laughs]. Let the name Mackie die CB: And no brothers or sisters of yours? You have no brother or sister yourself? GM: Well, no, my mother died after my birth CB: Cause you were the first child, right GM: And my stepmother had no children CB: We’ll stop there. Post-war, what career did you follow? GM: Well, I taught in a college of art for some years, I free-lanced, I became royal designer for industry, designing books for Edinburgh University Press, I am a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters and Water Colour, and now, I don’t know, that’s about it. CB: So, how did you get down here, in Stamford? GM: Retirement. Driving from London to Aberdeen, I took the wrong turn at Millhill roundabout, six bloody [unclear], following the A25, and then the A1, and Aberdeen seemed a long way away, roundabout, roundabout, roundabout. I came to a sign saying, Stamford, one mile and so help me. I turned off. [unclear] this is a wartime thing, I don’t know, a monumental thing to do, because it changed my life. The entry into Stamford from the south is the finest entrance to any town that I know. CB: Yeah, past Burghley. GM: It’s Extraordinary CB: Yeah GM: The George Hotel. So I kept on coming back and found a slum, I’ll let you see what it was like CB: When is this, 1980? GM: Yes CB: Ah, right. It had just been neglected GM: Completely CB: Yeah US: Of course, it’s a lovely building CB: And you said it was affected by a fire behind it GM: Oh, that was later on CB: Ah GM: When I saw it, I saw [unclear]. The fact is I made it. In Aberdeen I had a wonderful house with twenty, how many years? Twenty-four years there. Wonderful, wonderful. When it came to selling, it was valued forty eight. I said, nonsense, it’s worth seventy. I got in a week [laughs]. Forty-eight to seventy in 1980. And a bloody Scotch lawyer charges a thousand pounds for the convenience for half an hour’s work. CB: That was a bit much, wasn’t it? US: Yeah GM: I had an interviewer here and told him what I thought, he said, I’ve never been spoken like this before, I said, well, it’s high time. CB: Quite right. GM: Bugger CB: Yes GM: A thousand pounds, in 1980 CB: That was a hell of a lot of money GM: I mean, I sold it, I did the ad, I did the interviewing, I said, excessive, five hundred, even that, [unclear] enough, that’s a long time ago but still rankles CB: Yeah GM: Scotch avarice CB: Quite right. But you never got the GM: Anyway, then I could buy this and do tens of thousands of pounds on the house, new electricity, new walling, new this, new that, new [unclear], and it’s been a wonderful house for the family and [unclear] buggered up all went downhill CB: When your wife became ill GM: The worst possible conclusion. God, if he exists, is a master sadist. Oh, gentlemen, can I offer you anything now? CB: I haven’t had anybody else criticize Bomber Command GM: You haven’t? CB: No. But that partly for the reason perhaps that you mentioned earlier which is that you were there right at the beginning, when Bomber Command was in a powerless state, and the leadership clearly, from what you said, was lacking severely. The bit I forgot to ask you about because it links quite well with the early comments you made about lack of morale, because this comes out of it in a way, what about LMF? GM: Oh dear, LMF, how these initials frightened us. We didn’t quite know what it was all about, very effective CB: Was it? GM: Oh very, frightening words, frightening initials, and partially frightening because we didn’t quite know what it was. I only came across one [unclear], a commissioned officer, commissioned RAR cause he trained with me this man, the majority of us became sergeants, he became a pilot officer, [unclear] in a flying boat [unclear] blew a tool off and he had a history of early retirements CB: A pilot? GM: Pilot CB: Yeah GM: I never saw him again. CB: Do you know where they sent him? GM: He just vanished. But that was LMF. Poor man, is he still alive? The memory will be constant, he should have died. CB: Yeah GM: And of course, LMF was designed to make sure you died rather than anything else US: That was on the doorbell GM: Ah, thank you. CB: What would you say it did to the, what effect did it have on the crew? GM: Made them bloody sad, they wouldn’t be LMF. Tell me what lack of moral fiber, cowardice US: Right GM: Frightening initials. Till today CB: Sure GM: That was crude but that was effective and so unfair, it could [unclear] that someone that had done almost a tour and impact in, you know, he proved himself time and time and time again and you’d have reached the end of his [unclear] but LMF had no respect for that kind of achievement, oh, is cruel. We never talked about it. Never talked about it, never mentioned it. You must have found this is the constant in your interviews. CB: Yes, I have, had a number of people talk about it GM: Not mention saying what was mentioned CB: Right, so, it’s been mentioned, yes, by several people GM: Yeah CB: And the effect on the crew GM: Yeah CB: Because it’s very unsettling GM: Yeah CB: And also the deterrent effect, the objective of deterrence GM: It worked CB: Yeah GM: Yeah. Oh God, I’d have died rather than being labelled LMF, oh quite clearly CB: So, he was commissioned and vanished but what was your perception of what would happen to the sergeants, if they were? GM: What? CB: What would happen to the sergeants if they were labelled LMF? GM: They were stripped of rank of course and just vanished; I suppose. Anyway, I don’t know what happened to the commissioned officer, whether he was uncommissioned or I don’t know. The whole thing’s a mystery. CB: Yeah GM: Well, is it Chris? CB: Yeah GM: Sorry CB: It’s alright. GM: Well, you promised me that you will get access to these four volumes CB: Yes, absolutely GM: It’s not the easiest of reading but it’s right up your street CB: Oh yes, it is GM: There’s a whole appendix, giving the details about how many bombs fell [unclear] explode for instance [unclear] CB: Yeah GM: The bombs were inefficient CB: Yeah GM: So many things were incompetent CB: Yeah. It’s not as though it was new because they had a very high failure rate in the First World War GM: Yes CB: Of bombs and shells GM: My father never once asked me about Bomber Command, very most peculiar, I envy sons who had a good relationship with their fathers, CB: What was the main stumbling block would you say? GM: Well, losing his wife when he did, that buggered him, buggered him. Small town [unclear], like his father before him, like his grandfather before him and I would have been the starter, if the tractor hadn’t come, the tractor saved me. CB: What did the tractor do? GM: Made [unclear] redundant, no horses, mean this [unclear] two or three [unclear] all gone US: All gone GM: My hometown is like, Stamford, you know, agricultural market town. Have you always lived in Stamford, nearby the airfields? [laughs] CB: In the dark GM: Yeah, training CB: Right GM: Waterbeach, we were sent to other airfields, you see, and I [unclear] all apologetic but five miles apart the circuits overlapping CB: But it must have been quite difficult, how did you, coming back from an operation or any sortie, how did you identify your airfield in the dark? GM: Well, the flashing beacons, the Germans knew them all, out, you know, two initials, they never changed, the Germans must have known them all. And the three searchlights intersecting at two thousand feet all over the place, oh God it was a, what a performance! What [unclear]! CB: So every, when you returned, there was always the searchlight on, GM: Oh yes CB: Unless the Germans had followed the bomber stream in GM: Oh yes, and that should help from the German point of view, why they didn’t do that more often? What an advantage to have their fighters come across CB: It could’ve been a turkey shoot GM: It would’ve been a massive one. And they did it, well, they did it, when I was training the Wellingtons it happened once and it scared the daylights out of me, trying to learn to fly and at the same time, knowing there is an enemy aircraft around. Bassinbourn? CB: Yeah. So if GM: They missed a great opportunity CB: If there was a known interdictor, intruder, what did the airfields do, they turned off their lights, did they? GM: Oh yes. CB: Then, what did that leave you with? GM: That never happened to me. No, there was no trouble getting home, I mean, finding one’s way, I mean CB: Because of all these lights GM: Oh, the, and you had the radio beams and things, you know CB: Yes GM: I took no interest in, QDEM or something CB: Yeah, did you have DREM lighting as well? The DREM lighting round the airfield? GM: Yes, of course, I suppose so CB: They do GM: Round again that was nothing, I mean, you know, running at night, night flying was easy, it wasn’t difficult, above the weather CB: And fog? GM: As [unclear] it is, pilots, well, they know pilots, I when I was in an aircraft going to Boston one day, [unclear] stupid, so I wrote a wee note to the captain, I said, my last flight was from Gibraltar to Lyneham, sixteen passengers, height six thousand feet, and [unclear] speed a hundred and seventy five, can I come up to see you in your office? So the attendant sent up study staring into his cockpit CB: Ah, this is on a 747 GM: Was it? I don’t know what the hell that was. Anyway, there was a vibration, you couldn’t see a bloody thing and they are all rushing but half a dozen of them, I thought, this isn’t flying, nor is it, we flew through the weather CB: Yeah GM: Christ, we, I was flying, you were actually controlling the bloody thing. It was good, you were doing something. CB: God! GM: You were in control. CB: Yes GM: It was responsive. CB: How much did you use the auto-pilot on your aircraft? GM: What you had to do, it was a chore. Invaluable. That night, when I survived the icing cloud, that was thanks to the link trainer, there’s a record at the back of the books somewhere CB: Of the amount you did on link trainer? GM: Yeah CB: But on the aircraft itself, on the Stirling, did they have an automatic pilot? GM: Oh yes CB: They did? GM: I never used it, at least I did in Transport Command, but not over Germany, ever CB: Because you were always weaving GM: For a fraction of a second, you know, [unclear]. But the thing is, Bomber Command was never on air, [unclear] my father’s trench war CB: Yeah GM: It was boring, can you imagine spending eight hours most of which when nothing was happening, eight bloody hours, Stettin and back, nothing happened, what a bore, all the bombers over over valued because it was dramatic. What the trips, after the raids above Holland, 1944, is undramatic compared to what happened in the air, so Bomber Command was overvalued. Which is why you’re here. CB: Flying a B-17, how was that different from flying the Stirling? GM: You couldn’t Make the bloody thing maneuver, it didn’t want to, it just wanted to stay straight and level, which was its job CB: Yes, absolutely GM: I mean, the Americans, the Air Force, they didn’t fuck around CB: No GM: They [unclear] straight and level CB: In daylight GM: Flew it all in daylight, my word, that’s bravery CB: Absolutely GM: That’s bravery. Oh yes, we had it easy CB: And GM: We had it easy, too much a cream, CB: And simple comforts on the GM: All sheets of a kind [unclear] breakfast, drink, cigarettes, CB: In the Fortress GM: No, in the Air Force CB: OH, I see, yes, right, in the, GM: [unclear] CB: On the ground, yeah GM: And too much prestige, too much CB: In the war GM: Too much CB: Yeah GM: No [unclear], too much. I mean, think what a submarine is like compared to what we did, bloody weeks in the air compared to a submarine, we did a few hours then we were all back to civilisation, so we are overvalued, overestimated. It took me a long time to work this out, I’m convinced of it now CB: It’s unusual for people to have done more than two, one tour, you did two and then a third one. GM: No, I did less than two. I did forty-four ops CB: In total GM: Supposed to be fifty. I came back from a spoof, nothing, and the wing commander said, Mackie, not [unclear], he’d been a [unclear], Mackie, you’re finished. That’s it, [unclear], I’ll never forget, completely, Mackie, you’re finished CB: George Mackie, thank you very much indeed for a most interesting conversation GM: Thank you for coming Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with George Mackie Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Brockbank 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 2017-12-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AMackieGA171222 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Pending revision of OH transcription Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:39:10 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Description An account of the resource George Mackie served in the RAF as a pilot. He flew 44 operations, 15 as a second pilot. He was posted to 15 Squadron in 1941 and critically examines the state of Bomber Command at the time. He was posted to RAF Waterbeach for 18 months, where he flew three operations and took part at the 1,000 bomber operation to Cologne. George describes the Stirling, its characteristics and performance and compares it to the Flying Fortress. He remembers being hit once by anti-aircraft fire over Leverkusen but without being seriously injured. George was then posted to 214 Squadron, where he flew on Flying Fortresses. At the end of the war, he was transferred to Transport Command as an adjutant. He talks about low morale among the aircrew and mentions Scarecrow shells. George recalls his most frightening experience when he flew for five hours in an icing cloud on the way to Hamburg. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Peter Schulze Maureen Clarke Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Germany Great Britain England--Cambridgeshire Germany--Cologne Germany--Hamburg Germany--Ruhr (Region) Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 15 Squadron 1651 HCU 214 Squadron aircrew B-17 bombing bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942) fear ground crew Heavy Conversion Unit lack of moral fibre memorial Oxford perception of bombing war pilot RAF Cranfield RAF Waterbeach RAF Wyton Scarecrow Schräge Musik searchlight Stirling Tiger Moth training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/555/11526/APennyJA170905.mp3 9db10f0125c7c6b7a0fee8e200fdb6da https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/555/11526/PPennyJ1501.jpg fff42be023f2039d6a047d63b00ab006 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 Penny, Jim James Alfred Penny J A Penny Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Penny, J Description An account of the resource Three items. Two oral history interviews with Flight Lieutenant Jim Penny (b. 1922, 1345892 Royal Air Force) and his log book. He joined the RAF in 1940 and flew operations as a pilot with 97 Squadron from RAF Bourn. Targets included Nuremberg, München Gladbach, Berlin, Montlucon Dunlop rubber factory in France, and the Modane Tower Tunnel. His aircraft was shot down over Berlin 24 November 1943 and he became a prisoner of war. He was liberated on 3 May 1945 and retired from the RAF on 19 July 1971. The collection was catalogued by Barry Hunter. 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. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-08-16 Requires A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence. Jim joined the RAF in July 1940 on his 18th birthday. His ‘Flight’ was sent to the US to train under the ‘Arnold scheme’. He went to a variety of bases to learn to fly (detained in 1st interview), flying the PT17 Stearman biplane, BT-13A, AT-6A Harvard, Vultee-13, and then the Armstrong Siddeley, before returning on the Queen Elizabeth as a newly commissioned pilot with the rank of Sergeant. On returning to the UK, he was posted to RAF Shawbury (Shropshire) Advance Flying Unit. Jim’s next posting was to RAF Tilstock Heath where he ‘crewed up’. Complete with crew he arrived at RAF Sleap (an auxiliary station for RAF Tilstock Heath). On being asking if they would be willing to join the Pathfinder Force all agreed to accept the offer – PFF was elite after all. After HCU training at RAF Blyton je stated, ‘The Lancaster was the finest plane I’ve ever flown’. On 26th July 1943 Jim was promoted to Flight Sergeant. He remembered the RAF casualties and how their work affected their mental state, particularly the Squadron Casualties. However, the awareness that they were regularly striking at the heart to Nazi Germany left the with an enduring pride in being a ‘Armada’. Jim and his crew transferred to RAF Upwood – Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit then to RAF Bourne 97. Jim flew to bomb Nuremberg, München Gladbach, Berlin itself many times, Montlucon Dunlop rubber factory in France, and the Modane Tower Tunnel in France. He was involved in 2 flights that were ‘Boomerang flights’. One of the October operations was to be part of the decoy flight that was to draw fighters away from Kessel onto themselves, and bomb Frankfurt. In November 1943 they were judged to be a competent part of the PFF and were tasked to be a back-up marker crew – the ones with the GREEN flares. They flew to Dusseldorf, Manheim and Berlin. On 24 November 1943 they were hit by flak, managed to survive, became a POW until he was liberated on 3rd May 1945. On 6th October 1945 he reported to No 34 Maintenance Unit at RAF Montford Bridge. A year later he had refresher course at Moreton-in-the-Marsh, as a Warrant Officer. In 1948 Jim joined the City of Lincoln, Lincoln Squadron Bomber Command at RAF Waddington. He left Waddington to join the RAF Central Flying School as a flying instructor which he found very rewarding when he sent a pupil solo. Jim tried for a permanent commission while posted to RAF Ternhill but failed because he was tone deaf. Jim was offered a branch commission at the age of 37. He left RAF as Flight Lieutenant on 19th July 71. He had no regrets about serving in the RAF and was a part of the Shrewsbury RAFA and the Shropshire Aircrew. Claire CampbellClaire Campbell Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 5th of September 2017 and I'm in Shrewsbury with Jim Penny to talk about his interesting life and times. What’s your earliest recollection of life then, Jim? JP: Say again. My earliest recollections of what? CB: Of life? JP: I haven’t thought [laughs]I have no idea. [recording paused] JP: Well, my earliest recollections when I was four years old we had a Catholic school, a Catholic Church across the road from where we stayed stop and the canon used to walk up and down reading, I think his breviary in the morning and one day I went across there on my little tricycle and I said, ‘Are you the Canon?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘When are you going to be fired?’ And he burst out laughing and we were friends from then on and remained friends until I started school which is why I know I was four years old. That do? CB: Yeah. JP: Well, I was born in 114 Dixon Avenue, Glasgow on the 19th of July 1922 to William Penny and Elsie Ann Harvey who was born, dad was born in 1880 and mum in 1881. Both came from Aberdeenshire. My father had two brothers and five sisters all of whom immigrated to the dominions. My father to New Zealand. His plan was to send for my mother but realised he couldn't afford the passage. He bought his passage home to marry her. My mother had eight brothers but none of the Harveys emigrated. My father, my parents left school at eleven. My grandparents were crofters and in due course my dad became a ploughman. I soon discovered, I had four brothers my memories of them are being much loved and cared for. The twins Tommy and Lorney born [pause] born in 1905 were Scottish [pairs] champions for five years. Sandy, born in 1909 was a good scholar and Bill born in 1914 at one time was the twin’s coxswain. When he was eighteen the four brothers became a crew and I became their cox. I was aged ten and we were known as the Fourpence Halfpenny Crew. My memories are that we won most of the regatta's we entered. Coxing my brothers and sometimes other crews at regattas at their request gave me an early confidence with adults. I still think it was easier for me, easier for me to adapt to service life. Tommy became an engineer. Lorney and Sandy were carpenters and Bill was a draughtsman. When war came along Bill was employed in the shipyards and both Tommy and Sandy were conscripted for the same shipyard. Somehow Laurie who [unclear] was overlooked. He was conscripted for the Army at the ripe old age of thirty eight. I went to Aberdeen, no, Albert Road Academy when I was five years old. It had Infant, Junior and Senior sections. I was very happy there. I remember the great respect I had for Miss Muir, the infant teacher and Mr Wylie the head of the Junior School in a separate building, and the senior headmaster Mr Hamilton. I also had a great regard for three teachers Mr Moffett who taught maths, Mr Crawford who taught history, and Mr Shapiro who taught English. CB: How did your brothers treat you? JP: Well [pause] well, all terribly well. Sandy was the gentlest of them all. [unclear] alright? Bill didn’t like me at first. My mum had an unfortunate failing. She loved the babies and when I turned up he was eight years old and he’d been the apple of her eye for eight years and suddenly there was this little brat and he didn't like me at all to start with. CB: No. JP: But we actually, later on became the best of friends. CB: Yeah. JP: Much later on. CB: Yeah. JP: But at first he was not too happy. I think he started mellowing when he was eighteen and became part of the brother’s crew and I became the coxswain. CB: Yeah. JP: I was ten at the time. CB: Yeah. JP: And he started mellowing then. CB: Right [laughs] Yes. JP: But prior to that and actually funnily enough my [pause] Bill and his wife and Ursula, my wife were, the two wives were great pals and we would warn each of them. My mother, when my mother visited us, my home all she ever did was, to them was to talk about our kids. And when she came here all she did was to talk about their kids. This was, you know she was fixated on children. CB: Yeah. JP: She was lovely. Yeah. But that's by the way. Anyway. Now the next bit is going to be getting into the Air Force. Is that alright? CB: Yeah. JP: Yeah. CB: Why did you choose the RAF and not the Army or the Navy? You’re going to cover that? JP: That's in there. CB: Yeah. Okay. Fire away. JP: Yeah. You’ve got it in there. CB: Yeah. JP: Right. When the war came along in 1930 I was seventeen. I tried to join up and was told to come back when I was eighteen. From an early age I’d always wanted to fly. Probably from reading so many stories of World War One pilots. Instead of going back to school I got a job at Rolls Royce where I thought learning about aircraft engines might be helpful to a pilot. On my eighteenth birthday in 1940 I was accepted for the RAF at the Recruiting Centre. There were many delays before I was, I had had an aircrew medical in Edinburgh and it was the 28th of March 1941 when I was sworn in as a member of the RAF VR. The RAF Voluntary Reserves. I was ordered to report to London Aircrew Reception Centre on the 3rd of June 1941 and I’d be nineteen the following year. On the train to London I met Alec McGarvey and Johnny Thompson who were ex-policemen. Police had been a Reserved Occupation aged twenty four, twenty five, and over and permission being given that between twenty five and thirty could volunteer for aircrew. The number of ex-police I met at my time of entry convinced me that every policeman in the entire country had volunteered. At St John’s Wood the RAF had taken over hotels and blocks of flats. We were given uniforms and our civilian clothes posted home. We had to march, ate our meals at London Zoo restaurant and were vaccinated and had three injections. I need a pause. Can you — [recording paused] JP: Was six weeks in Newquay, Cornwall. In my Flight of sixty forty were ex-policemen. We had drill, PT, rugger, shotguns, skeet shooting and rifle. Lectures in meteorology, Morse Code, aerodynamics aircraft recognition and navigation. This last required maths. The school boys like me helped our ex-police for as one said, ‘You didnae need much maths in the polis.’ From ITW my Flight went to Canada on the Highland Princess. In Toronto we were issued with civilian clothes and went by train into the USA. My memory is that it took the best part of three days to reach Montgomery, Alabama passing no major city or town but six hundred civilians arrived at Maxwell Field near Montgomery. General Hap Arnold commanded the South East Army Air Corps. We were the sixth [pause] no, I beg your pardon we were the fifth [pause] Right. Ok. We were the fifth six hundred to enter the Arnold Scheme. RAF men were also being trained as pilots in Texas at civilian flying schools. Observers as navigators were then called were also being trained and Navy airmen by the US Navy. It has always been a matter of great regret to me that so little has been known to the British public of the invaluable aid when most needed despite the US Neutrality Act. In three weeks we learned American Army drill and customs though we also had an RAF liaison officer wherever we went. I was in the cinema in Americas Georgia on the 7th of December 1941 when the film was stopped. The manager announced that Pearl Harbour had been attacked by the Japanese. They played the US National Anthem. Then the film began again. The next morning we were told we were now allies and would wear RAF uniforms at all times. For basic training we went to Cochran Field, an Army Air Corps base manned by Air Corps ground staff and officer flying instructors. The Vultee was an old monoplane with a fixed undercarriage and a standard instrument panel suitable for night flying. I was in trouble from the start as the controls were heavy and my instructor was no GM Austin. He’d been my instructor previously. He was a brilliant man. With a change of instructor I did well again and the aerobatics with a more powerful engine were as much fun as in the Stearman. We had to fly at night and instrument flying under a hood in the air was also practised on the link trainer. A primitive forerunner of a more modern actual ground cockpits. For advanced training we went to another Air Corps base. Napier Field near Dothan, Alabama. We flew an 86A which the RAF named the Harvard. Again, I was in trouble for not only was it light on the controls but on the approach to landing I let the speed fall dangerously low near to stalling. A stall so near the ground could have resulted in a crash which could have killed both pupil and instructor. I checked [unclear] with three other senior instructors and failed each one for the same fault. I was sent back to Canada with some other washouts. At a Personnel Despatch Centre at Trenton, Ontario, I was interviewed by a flight lieutenant who asked why I had been washed out. I said I’d failed to adjust to the flight controls after the heavy Vultee and I thought it would have been better to go straight to the Harvard from the Stearman. He said an RAF team had been sent to the USA to investigate the large number of washouts that advanced and this was just what they had recommended and he would recommend that I should return to pilot training. So I was sent back to flying but on twin engine aircraft. That flight lieutenant even apologised for realised that like most I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Years later after the war I went to the RAF Central Flying School to become a flight instructor. In a Harvard the first thing my instructor said, ‘Always rest your hand lightly on the trim control to ensure your pupil uses it correctly for it’s very sensitive. And suddenly I remembered in the Vultee on the approach to landing the trim control was wound right back. This I’d done in the Harvard at advanced and this was the real reason of the dangerous fall in speed as the nose eased up on each approach to landing. I wonder how many others had fallen into the same trap. CB: Yeah. JP: At the nearby airfield [pause] Hang on. I missed a bit. Something has gone wrong here. CB: Ok. We’ll just stop a mo. [recording paused] CB: Right. JP: I was then sent to [pause] number 35 SFTS, North Battleford, Saskatchewan which is a long way north. Near there was a nearby airfield. We flew the Airspeed Oxford which was a low wing twin engine aircraft with a single fin and rudder. My instructor, Pilot Officer Henry Shackleton soon to be a flying officer was another excellent instructor. Quiet, patient and with a pleasant friendly manner which put one at ease. The Oxford, for me had no vices. Indeed, at one point Shackleton asked if I would mind if he recommended me to be a flying instructor. In the mood of the time and being young and stupid I said I wanted to go on operations. On the 25th of September 1942 we were awarded our coveted wings and promoted to sergeant. Out of over sixty only six were commissioned. Our next step was at the PDC at Moncton, New Brunswick. We were to return on the Queen Mary but on the 2nd of October 1942 she was , she hit and sunk a cruiser which had tried to pass in front of her. We came home on the Queen Elizabeth. Back in England we were billeted at the Grand Hotel in Harrogate for a month. Not then so grand and we were back to rationing. RAF Shawbury, Shropshire near Shrewsbury was the first English airfield I flew from on the 15th of January 1943. It was to be the last airfield I served at on retirement on the 19th of July 1971. It has a special place in my memories for it was always a happy station blessed with very good station commanders. Right. CB: Yeah. Yeah. JP: We were very popular in America with the civilian population. Despite our civilian clothes they knew exactly who we were and of course when we went into uniform it was even better. And they would collect outside and take us away for the weekend and it’s strange how most of them had nice pretty daughters who also seemed to like us. Will that do? CB: Just right. JP: With a minute. Hold on a minute. CB: Yeah. [recording paused] CB: So, you're in the Deep South really. JP: Yeah. CB: The American bit. So, what’s the reaction from a race point of view? JP: Well, yeah. What I was going to say was the story I've got in here. The negro waiter in the mess. CB: Oh, yes. JP: Would you like that one? CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. JP: Ok. While we were at America’s Georgia in the mess we had negro waiters. One day I was writing a letter. Everyone had gone and in a little compartment I was writing this letter but one of the waiters [pause] are you ready? CB: Yes. JP: One of the waiters came in and in a cultured voice asked, ‘Would you care for a coffee, sir?’ I was startled by his tone and choice of words, so different from the usual mess hall language and subservient attitude of the negro waiters. I said I would like a coffee and as he poured I commented on his educated tone and language and asked what he was doing here as a waiter. He said he was a graduate of a negro university and taught school for the local negro children in the evenings. He reminded me most courteously we were in the Deep South and the only jobs for negros were menial. He needed this job to support him while he taught. The white mess hall waiter overseer as you saw it, the white mess hall overseer was standing at the other end of the mess hall. I warned the waiter not to look around but to leave bowing low as he went. I gathered up my letter, drank the coffee and left. As I neared the overseer he asked in a hectoring tone what, ‘That n****r and I had been talking about.’ I told him I’d sent him for coffee and when he brought it I thanked him as was the British custom when someone did us a service. Is that what you were after? CB: Yeah. Very — [recording paused] JP: Another incident. CB: Yeah. Fire away. JP: We accepted an invitation to church services for afterwards we would certainly be invited to a meal which was a way to meet nice girls. Some were the most courteous and hospitable people to us. The church service on Armistice Day we were quite horrified when they read out the names of those who were killed in the last, in the First World War and when they came to a negro name they always put coloured after his name and we thought that was quite dreadful. CB: Yeah. JP: That one. [pause] [recording paused] JP: Back in the UK I first went to RAF Shawbury. We flew the Airspeed Oxford while they checked our competence as pilots and we were allowed to fly over blacked out Britain. Once again, I was asked if I would like to be recommended to be a flying instructor and again turned it down. For Oxford’s training we first went to nearby RAF Tilstock Heath, still in Shropshire. There we crewed up. This was a strange experience. In a large hangar were assembled pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators and gunners. The officer in charge said, ‘There you are gentlemen. Get on with it.’ And left. Everyone looked as stunned as I felt. How did one start? Thinking I might try and get a Scottish crew I walked over to a nearby group of bomb aimers and asked if any were Scots. Sergeant Campbell said he was from Glasgow and he knew a navigator from there. He fetched over Sergeant Jimmy Graham another Glaswegian. With him was a red-haired gunner who Jimmy introduced as Sergeant Red Dries, an American from New York who was in the RCAF saying that they wanted to be in the same crew. I was delighted and all I needed was a wireless operator. A little chap nearby said he was from Grimsby but would he do? I liked the look of Sergeant [Carnes] and said yes. I never knew their ages until long after the war. A kind lady at the Air Historical Branch gave me their, gave me these. Jimmy Graham was twenty eight. Bob [Carnes] was twenty three. Bob Campbell was twenty two. And much later from relatives I learned that Red was actually twenty nine. Dicky Fathers was twenty one. He was our flight engineer who joined us later at Heavy Conversion. We were sent to RAF Sleap, a satellite airfield a few miles from Tilstock Heath where we flew the Whitley, a bomber powered by two Rolls Royce Merlins. When we practised single engine landings I thought the Whitley had difficulty holding height on one engine. Returning to Sleap from a night cross country exercise we lost power on one engine and started to lose height. We were approaching the Pennines and with high ground to come, a black night and the possibility of altimeter error I told the crew to stand by to bale out if we fell below three thousand feet. Fortunately, we held height just above three thousand feet and made it safely back to base. That was when I found out that Bob Carne was terrified of having to bale out. It didn’t stop him flying. Now, that is courage. Navigator Jimmy, bomb aimer Bob and I were each assessed as above the average and were asked if we would volunteer for the Pathfinder Force. All the crew agreed for it was an elite force even though we had to agree for a first tour of forty five operations. We went next to Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Blyton. There we were joined by our flight engineer Richard Dicky Fathers who fitted in well with the crew. I flew a Halifax first and then a Lancaster. In this, my diary there is an entry, “The Lancaster is really fine. Much lighter on the controls than the Whitley and the Halifax. The finest plane I’ve ever flown.” On the 26th of July 1943 I was promoted to flight, acting flight sergeant and we left for the Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit at RAF Upwood. There we flew three exercises with a staff instructor aboard. I still remember one when we flew north above the Irish Sea between the Western Isles, around the top of Scotland and down over central Scotland and the Pennines. At ten thousand feet on a clear summer day it was the most pleasant flight I’d ever made. We passed inspection and were posted to 97 PFS Squadron at RAF Bourn in Cambridgeshire. CB: Right. We’ll stop there for a mo. [recording paused] JP: It was, right here we go then. It was customary to send a newly arrived pilot on two operations with an experienced crew as a second pilot. There was no dual control in a Lancaster. The flight engineer sat beside the pilot and the so-called second pilot stood behind him listening to the crew and observing what he could. My first second pilot was Pilot Officer Ken Fairlie, Royal New Zealand Air Force. On the 14th 15th of August Milan was a twelve hundred miles and took seven hours and forty five minutes and I was standing all the way. I was impressed with the crew’s intercom discipline. No chatter. All related to the task. The Alps were awesome in the moonlight. We bombed at eleven thousand feet and the flak seemed light and below us and the long journey home I was even bored. I was soon to find out that a boring flight was most unusual. For the next second pilot I went again with Ken Fairlie. This time to Leverkusen. Five hundred miles in to Germany. We bombed at thirteen thousand feet with both light and heavy flak shell bursts which I thought rather dodgy. We saw lots of flak enroute and I realised the navigator was doing a fine job keeping us clear of turns. The next op was to Berlin. They thought it unfair to send a crew on its first op to the big city so I went with Squadron Leader Savage. The flak barrage was very heavy and we were very conscious of the danger of fighters. I was to learn that flak was very heavy over all German towns with [unclear] getting heavier. One crew failed to return from that Milan, from that raid and five of the Leverkusen, the fifty six were from Berlin and we were distressed to learn that Ken Fairlie and his crew had failed to return from the Berlin operation. In August my crew and I flew three operations. Nuremberg, Munchen Gladbach and Berlin. On every op we flew we also arrived at ETA, Estimated Time of Arrival. This meant we bombed on time and our camera proved bombed on the aiming point the red and green target flares dropped by the leading Pathfinders. We always carried a cookie, a four thousand pound blast bomb, an assortment of a thousand and eight hundred and five hundred HE. High Explosives. Bombs. Some crews carried incendiaries. Circling base on the first return awaiting our turn to land my eyes were sore and blinking. The elsan too was at the rear and not available to a pilot. I solved the eye problem by alerting the crew over the sea, setting George the automatic pilot and closing my eyes for five minutes. It worked and at base my eyes were clear. The ground crew solved the elsan problem by fitting a large funnel to my seat leading to a tube fixed to the fuselage though extracting the necessary member from layers of flying clothing was not easy. A hundred and ninety five crews failed to return from those three raids and one was from our 97 Squadron. It now seems strange to recall that we could ignore the reports of the overall losses but one of our own cast a sharp gloom yet we really did not know any of the other crews. We were sufficient unto ourselves. In September 1943 we flew four operations and a routine air test which turned out to be very dicey. On the third, sorry on the third fourth, we always say third fourth because you took off in one day and landed in the next. CB: Yeah. JP: We went again to Berlin. The flak barrage seemed even more concentrated and we thought even more searchlights. Once again we arrived on time and bombed on the markers. This time we routed home north over the Baltic until latitude 58, level with the north of Scotland and south to base. It took longer but few fighters were reported and the twenty who failed to return were half the losses on previous Berlin raids. On the 3rd, 5th we were again on our way when less than an hour out we had a fire in the port outer engine and a runaway prop. We turned back and jettisoned the bombs in the North Sea. The [drag] created by the runway prop gave a very aching left leg by the time we got home. This is known as a boomerang and does not count as an op. I was rather pleased when I went to see the engineering officer and he congratulated me on landing safely with a runaway prop. On the 9th of September the squadron crews were at briefing but I was not on the list for that night and we were flying an air test. On return to base the windscreen was horizontal and the strong wind at right angles to the runway. Fair request to change the runway with refused and ordered the crew to crash positions before making the approach grabbing and rounding out at the last moment didn't prevent sideways movement and the starboard tyre burst causing the undercarriage to collapse. The undercarriage leg protruded through the right wing and the plane with a right off. Possibly the best approach for landing ever made it was seen by a Group Captain having just come out of briefing. When the duty controller admitted he had refused to change the runway the Group Captain relieved him of his duty and ordered him to leave the station that day. Is that one alright? [recording paused] CB: Right. We're re-starting now. September the 15th. JP: Yes. On September the 15th we were briefed to bomb a rubber factory at Montluçon in France. We were cautioned to be very accurate and there were only four flak guns. What was expected to be a nice safe cooperation turned out to be quite hairy. We were to bomb at four thousand feet but others from six thousand and eight thousand. Some of us might have must have got the timing wrong as on our approach to the target we saw bombs falling all around us. One aircraft was directly overhead. Indeed, some aircraft were hit by incendiaries. The factory was completely destroyed. The next day we went to bomb the Modane Tunnel in an alpine valley. The tunnel was a main route for returning military to France. The Alps seemed to loom alongside as we bombed at thirteen thousand feet. This time the long flight didn’t bore me. I was piloting, not standing. In October a mid-upper gunner Flight Sergeant Morgan joined us for his second tour. On the 2nd 4th and 5th we bombed Munich, Frankfurt and Stuttgart. Always on time and on the PFF flares confirmed by our camera. For us the raids were uneventful apart from the usual hairy time over the targets for the flak was heavy at all three. Losses were fairly light. Seven, ten and four but one was a 97 Squadron PFF crew. We set out to bomb Hanover on the 5th but this was another boomerang for there was an oxygen failure in the mid-upper turret so we turned around and jettisoned our bombs in the North Sea. Briefed again for Hanover on the 18th we bombed successfully. Of the thousand Lancasters seventeen were lost one of whom again was from 97 Squadron. The next target was Kassel but we were briefed to draw off fighters by a spoof target on Frankfurt. There we just entered the camera run when we were caught by a blue master beam and immediately coned by all the slave searchlights. I escaped by doing a stall turn. That’s to pull up the stick up in to a stall and kick full rudder. We dived sideways. The beam went ahead. The coned plane is usually shot down by slave guns. Routed past Kassel we saw a solid oval fire. For the first time I felt rather sorry for the folk below. I regret even more our spoof had failed for forty two were lost mainly to fighters. November 1943 again it was supposed to become a PFF crew, a PFF crew with after only eleven operations. Jimmy’s faultless navigation ensured we arrived over target on ETA and Bob’s accurate bombing was confirmed by our camera. From now on we would carry back-up green TIs as well as the cookies and high explosives. Dusseldorf. [recording paused] CB: Right. Target indicator. JP: The red — Other: I thought that was what you were talking about. CB: Keep going. Can you do that now because — JP: Yes. Yes. Ok. CB: So as Pathfinder then you are marking the target. JP: Yeah. Well, what happened — CB: So how are you doing that with, with coloured flares? JP: I’ve just done that bit we’d become Pathfinders hadn’t we? CB: Yeah. JP: Right. If we can cut in there where I’ve talked about being, becoming markers. Alright? CB: Yes. Yeah. JP: So I’ll explain that now. Ok. Right. The system was that the most experienced pilots dropped red, a red flare. They were the initial marking the target and this was backed up by the newer PFF crews like us. CB: Yeah. JP: With green flares. And the wind some would cause them to drift back so they would re-centre with a further red and then that would be backed up by further greens. Is that ok? CB: Yeah. JP: Is that? CB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. JP: Have we got — CB: Yeah. So, we’ve got that. JP: You’ve got that. Some other colours were used but not in my experience. Anyway, that’s ok. So we, we were back up. We were properly PFF crew as it were. CB: Yeah. JP: So, Dusseldorf on the 3rd 4th of November the flak seemed heavier and concentrated around the aiming point but Bob put our greens on the reds. Of five hundred and twenty five heavies eighteen were lost. We then went to Mannheim, Ludwigshafen on the 17th. These were twin towns separated by the Rhine. Eighty three Pathfinder aircraft took part guided by a new navigator aid which only navigators and bomb aimers were trained. Need to know. They didn’t tell the pilots. The raid was successful and only one was lost. On the 18th 19th we went to Berlin. The oxygen connection to the mid-upper turret was again broken. We were well on our way and turning back risked a head on collision for there were some six hundred aircraft behind us still coming. I ordered the gunner to the astrodome where he could at least keep a look out for fighters. On the bombing run I concentrated on my instrument panel ignoring the flak but I still remember Bob’s cool calm voice while looking through the flak shell bursts as he guided me to target. On the 23rd, 22nd, 23rd the Berlin as usual was dicey but Command reported bad weather and grounded German fighters and only twenty five were lost. Aircrew were of this acceptance of losses. The nickname Butch was in the black humour of the time for Harris was held in high regard and they were proud to be the Butcher’s men. Six hundred and fifteen aircraft took part. Two FTR were lost from 97 Squadron. CB: So, as Pathfinders — JP: Why I mentioned, why I mentioned them then was — CB: Yes. JP: When you came back you were conscious of an empty table at breakfast. CB: Of course. JP: Because crews ate as crews. You didn't mix with the other crews. There was one crew we did but I didn't put that in. Mainly because the pilot was from Canada and knew my aunt in Canada. CB: Right. JP: And we became friendly. CB: Yeah. JP: His crew and ours. But normally we didn't mix but I think because you know the empty table. CB: Yeah. JP: Put a bit of a gloom on you. CB: Yes. JP: But you ignored the others. What was happening elsewhere. It was our own squadron that mattered based, well as far as I was concerned anyway. Where have we got to? Oh, this bit about the acceptances of Butch. We’ve done that bit haven’t we? CB: Ok. JP: That was the 18th 19th. [recording paused] JP: Where would we put it? CB: Well, just now because you mentioned a bit earlier that you got a new mid-upper gunner. JP: Yeah. CB: So what happened there? What about the first one? JP: Well [Beattie] was the first one you see. CB: Right. JP: He was the first one we got. CB: A pilot officer. JP: A pilot officer. CB: Right. JP: And then the next day the group captain ordered him off the station because he had, wouldn’t buy a new, he wouldn’t get have a new he could have been given one but he was going to fly in that one. CB: Yeah. JP: And he insisted he was going to fly in that one and the group captain ordered him off the station. CB: So, the origin of this was that — JP: So, that was the origin of that. CB: Yeah. JP: So I then got another pilot officer. CB: Yeah. JP: Pro tem. CB: Right. JP: A mid-upper rather and I had a couple of I can’t remember I had the warrant for a couple of ops and then another for a couple of ops, you know. CB: Yeah. JP: Something different and then this chap arrived on his second tour. CB: Right. JP: And as he was a second tour man they thought they’d give him to us. CB: Yeah. JP: Which we were rather pleased about. CB: Yeah. JP: He wasn’t a bit pleased. CB: Oh. JP: No. He wasn’t a bit pleased. CB: Why didn’t he like it? He didn’t like your crew? JP: He’d done a tour in the Middle East. CB: Oh. JP: And he came back and he only had to do a couple of tours over, trips over Germany and he was experienced enough to know just how bloody dangerous it was. CB: Oh. JP: And I think he didn’t, that’s this is nothing. That’s not going on there but I reckon he disconnected his oxygen. He put his feet through it. CB: Oh. JP: And that’s why twice, the first time we came back but the second time we were on our way to Berlin and we were halfway, nearly halfway there and all these other, I wasn’t going to turn back against that lot. CB: No. JP: So, I went. I carried on without the mid-upper gunner put in the turret. CB: Yeah. What, just going back to Bates though. JP: Sorry. CB: The earlier one. Bates. What, the – JP: Oh Batey. CB: Batey. So he was outside the aircraft you said and the group captain — JP: We were sitting as we did. CB: What happened? JP: We had all gone out the aircraft. CB: Right. JP: And we were sitting around waiting to get on board you know because it was all timed when the group captain came around, saw his, I must admit it was a wreck. I mean there were no sleeves. it was a wreck of a whatsit but it was his lucky battle dress, you know. CB: Right. JP: He’d done his ops on it you see. CB: He’d already done a tour. JP: He wasn’t going to not, he was going to keep on wearing it because it was his lucky battledress. CB: Yes. JP: People were funny that way. CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. JP: I mean some chaps used to carry a little, I know one chap had a little — Other: Talisman. JP: A talisman he put at the side of the window, you know. It was a funny old time. Other: Well, it was dangerous wasn’t it? JP: Yeah. It was a funny old time. CB: Yeah. JP: But that’s why I had — CB: So the group captain, what did the group captain say to him? JP: He said, ‘Just, get a new battledress.’ You know. Get a proper, you know, battledress. And Batey, he should have said, ‘Very good, sir,’ and just gone on wearing it, you see. But he said, ‘No, sir. I can’t do that. I can get a new one but I’ll wear this one for my ops. It’s my lucky battledress.’ He said, ‘No. You’ll wear a new one.’ And when he refused the next day he ordered him off the station. CB: Oh. JP: And incidentally only just recently I found he had completed a tour with another squadron, gone out to Australia. It was Australian not New Zealand and he’d only, he died about oh a couple of years back. CB: Oh right. JP: Before I could get in touch with him. I didn’t find out until he’d actually died which was very annoying. CB: Yeah. JP: I would have loved to have met with him. CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. JP: But he completed his tour of ops and I bet he wore that bloody battledress. CB: How, how what was the cohesion of the crew like? JP: What was the —? CB: Was there good cohesion in your crew? JP: Brilliant. Oh, the crew were wonderful. My crew were wonderful. I come to a bit where I — CB: Ok. JP: I praise my crew. With the exception I must admit of the new mid-upper. CB: Yeah. JP: He never, he never became a member of that crew. He flew as the mid-upper gunner but he never associated. Basically, he kept himself to himself and none of my crew or myself were able to get through to him at all. CB: Not even on social. JP: Yeah. He was totally unsocial. CB: Oh right. JP: And I think, I think frankly he was intelligent, a very intelligent chap and he knew just how dangerous it was and rather objected to it. He’d rather, in fact, he’d rather, he shouldn’t have been posted to a Pathfinder crew. JP: No. CB: He’d have been better off in an ordinary crew. CB: Right. JP: That was that one. CB: Ok. JP: Anyways, that’s not going on there. CB: Let’s go on to that. JP: Now where did we get to? The third. So, we’ve only done that bit. CB: Right. JP: Right. Well, we know we are now. Ok. Here we go. On the 3rd 4th we went to Dusseldorf. The 3rd and 4th November. The flak seemed heavier and concentrated around the aiming point but Bob put our greens on the reds. Of five hundred and twenty five heavies eighteen failed to return. [recording paused] JP: Towns. We’d done that. CB: You have. Yes. JP: We’ve done the twin towns. We’ll jump a bit. Did we do the oxygen connection for Berlin being broken. Did we do that one? Other: No. CB: Oh. JP: Right. On the 18th 19th we were briefed for Berlin. The oxygen connection to the mid-upper turret was again broken. We were well on our way and turning back risked a head on collision. There were some six hundred aircraft behind us. I ordered the gunner to the astrodome where he could at least keep an eye. Look out for fighters. On the bombing run I concentrated on my instrument panel ignoring the flak but I still remember Bob’s cool calm voice while looking through the flak shell burst as he guided me to the target. On the 23rd , 22nd 23rd Berlin as usual was dicey but the Command reported bad weather grounded German fighters. Only twenty five aircraft were lost. Aircrew were aware of this acceptance, oh we’ve done this. The nickname Butch was in the black humour of the time for Harris was held in high regard and we were proud to be the Butcher’s men. Six hundred and fifteen aircraft took part. Two FTR were from 97 Squadron. On the 23rd 24th of November we want to get into Berlin. Stop. I just want to — [recording paused] CB: Ok. JP: We've done [pause] on the 23rd 24th of November it was again Berlin. This one was to be different and at ninety, I remember as if, oh [pause] perhaps you should say ninety five. At ninety five I remember as if it were yesterday. On approach to the aiming point Bob would say, ‘Two minutes skipper.’ I'd reply, ‘You have control.’ He directs, ‘Port a bit. Steady. Steady.’ As he was about to release the bomb his voice would rise to a crescendo, ‘Steady. Steady. Steady.’ This time he said, ‘They’ve re-centred skipper. It will be another two minutes.’ This time as his voice reached its peak a shell exploded in our bomb bay. A TI exploded and we were surrounded by Greek fire, green fire. All our regs were fused and I’d no intercom to order bale out. Dicky was down by Bob throwing out Window, the metallic strips for deceiving radar and he could see me. I released my seat straps, bent forward and waved to him pointing to his parachute which was behind my seat. I knew the cookie would explode but I’d full control and hoped someone might get out. I counted eighteen seconds and Dicky hadn’t reached his ‘chute. Then I was sitting in mid-air thinking, ‘Where's my bloody plane gone?’ A delayed drop would get me clear of flack but over the aiming point and with some two hundred aircraft still to come I pulled my rip cord to let the wind drift me clear of the bombing. Hanging from my parachute I’d only myself to think about. I remember that a shell exploded nearby could [candle] the ‘chute and make it fold up and I’d drop like a stone. Courage is a strange thing. I had accepted I would die with the thought that my mum would be distressed but hoping some of my crew might get out. Now, with only myself to think about I’d never been so terrified. [recording paused] JP: All my crew died. The impressive skills of navigator Jimmy Graham and Bob Campbell were the main reason we were so successful with the Pathfinders. Always on time and always on target. Robert Bob Cowan our wireless op quietly passed information on radio positions fixes and wind speeds and direction by notes to the navigator. Richard Fathers, our flight engineer was always alert and helpful. When the mid-upper turret oxygen was twice broken he went back using a portable oxygen bottle and was most upset when he was unable to repair the damage. Although our gunners never came into action we had faith in their ability. Red was very much a part of our crew and very popular from when we first came together. The US Air Force tried to recruit Americans serving with RCAF or RAF but Red refused to leave his crew saying he might think about it when our tour was completed. Seventy years later I can see them and hear their voices. Sergeant Mortham had completed a tour in North Africa. He made no attempt to mix with the crew. I thought he didn’t really want to do the second tour. That’s it. [recording paused] JP: Right. I mean, after the war when I crewed up again later on by that time I’d been, just been commissioned and I never had this, could never get the same rapport with my crew as I did during the war where we all, we would even sleep together. I mean Jimmy, they were in a one four bedroom house and a two bedrooms and Dicky shared the two bedroom with me. We were, you know, we ate together, we went out together. You know, we did everything together. CB: Well, you were the family, weren’t you? JP: We were very very close in that short time. It’s difficult to describe. Any ex-serviceman who has been in action can tell you the same thing. You become close to the people you serve with when you’ve been shot at. CB: Yes. JP: When you’re shooting back. The Army is the same thing. Any Army chap you are, they are the ones you are close to. CB: Yeah. JP: The ones you are concerned with. CB: But as the years went by and the months after the war and then the years went by how did you feel about the loss of the crew? JP: I can’t describe it. It’s just it’s there. It’s always with me that I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t do anything. I mean, what happened was out of my control and the fact I was blown out was a, was a sheer fluke. CB: Yeah. JP: As one wag said after the war to me, ‘You invented the ejector seat.’ And of course, I was sitting on a, I was sitting at the pilot’s seat. CB: Yeah. JP: I haven’t put in here that the group captain said they were going to give us cushions because it was uncomfortable sitting on the ‘chute. I said, ‘I don’t want a cushion.’ I explained why. It would mean that the, if I had a clip on tie my and that flight engineer would have had to come back, clip it on me, then clip his on and in the meantime he was blocking the others getting past him to get out. And I said, ‘You know, this is not on.’ CB: No. JP: ‘You’re going to block the crew getting out.’ And we’d have to, probably have to get out in a hurry you see. CB: You got used to sitting on a parachute did you? JP: Oh, it never bothered me anyway. CB: No. JP: No, it never bothered me but it wasn’t that. It was the fact that the idea of having to have a thing that would waste time. CB: Yes. JP: Of the crew getting out. CB: Sure. JP: Which was why I objected. And so he let me carry on wearing. If I hadn’t been wearing, I could have been sitting on a bloody cushion that night. CB: Yeah. JP: Fortunately, I wasn’t. CB: Yes. JP: But there we are. CB: Yeah. JP: Now, where did I get to oh just started — Other: You’d just blown out of the aircraft. JP: I’d just been blown out. Yes. CB: So, you’re falling down with your ‘chute which you’ve opened to drift away from the stream. JP: Yeah. Yeah. We’ve done that bit CB: So what happened next? JP: We’ve done a tour hadn’t we? Other: Did all that come automatically? JP: What’s that? Other: I mean you were, you woke, you woke up in mid-air. JP: In mid-air I was still virtually in a sitting position. Literally. And said, ‘Where’s my bloody aeroplane gone?’ I knew where it had gone actually but that was the thought. CB: Yeah. JP: And then as I say immediately unfortunately remembered that it was a shell burst near me which pulled up my parachute. But before I thought of that I think I thought about it after it was open but sitting there I thought, it’s amazing how your mind works quickly at the time. I was twenty one and I was sharp, shall we say then and I had two choices. To do a delayed drop through the flak or pull the ‘chute straight away to drift me clear because I knew the wind would drift me clear and I was right. Remember I was right smack over the aiming point when we were hit by flak. I knew what was still to come so that’s why I pulled the ‘chute straight away and I did in fact. I was I’m coming to that bit I was blown — CB: You knew what the wind was anyway. JP: I drifted clear of the flak. CB: Yeah. But what height were you? JP: Twenty thousand feet. CB: Right. JP: At the time. Yeah. But — CB: So you were a bit short of air at that height. JP: Hmmn? CB: A bit short of air at that height. JP: I don’t even notice it. Don’t forget I was [pause] you know, I wasn’t, didn’t, I didn’t notice being short of air at all strangely enough. I was probably above twenty thousand. I went upwards I think. Well, I know I did. CB: Yeah. JP: I know from my injuries what, what happened. I worked it all out afterwards. CB: Yes. JP: Sitting in a German cell that night. CB: Yeah. So you were dropping on your parachute. Then what? JP: Well, no. I’m on my parachute now. Right. CB: Right. JP: And we ought, and I’ve mentioned my crew. CB: Yes. JP: Right. CB: Yes. JP: Ok. Here we go. I landed in a suburban back garden well away from the bombing. The top of my head had been cut open. Later I concluded the steel panel on the pilot’s seat which was about there had first broken the Perspex but left enough to split my helmet. This must have been torn off my head when the side panel blew out. I was attached to that side panel with the intercom cord and the oxygen tube and my neck could have been broken. Instead, it was just very painful. I must have hit my legs on the wheel on the way past because my left leg was bruised black but the right leg was unharmed because I had a metal cigarette case in the front pocket which was bent in half [pause] That’s it. CB: Keep going. CB: That was really, I didn’t bother putting this in. I worked all, all that out that night in a police cell. CB: Oh right. Yeah. JP: It was pretty obvious what had happened and this was I was covered in blood because a head wounds bleed terribly. CB: Yes. JP: And on the way down the smoke covered in the sense that I must look as though I was badly burned when, when they saw me. CB: Right. JP: But I know I did because in this civilian house I was taken to by the chap that picked me up there was a mirror and I saw what I [laughs] I was in a terribly state. Anyway, here we go. I was quickly captured and with all too short a time taken by train to Dulug Luft, the Luftwaffe interrogation centre. At the Dulug they had no crew to link me with which confirmed my fear that all my crew had been killed. They thought I was a Mosquito pilot and their interrogation centred around the Mosquito and how much they knew. They kept showing me large folders with information they had on Mosquito squadrons made easy to keep schtum. Just repeat my name, rank and number because I knew sod all about Mosquitoes. I had three investigators one friendly, one neutral and one always threatening to have me shot. In between investigations, interrogations I was in solitary confinement in a small cell. One day my interrogator said, ‘You don’t like the Germans, do you?’ I broke my silence saying, ‘I was taught they were brave men and very clean people. I’ve been here a month and I still have blood in my hair.’ That afternoon a guard took me for a shower. It was a major psychological error for it gave me an enormous boost to have won that concession. A month later a guard took us to the officer’s mess to take tea with my interrogators. I was told I was to be sent to a prisoner of war camp the next day. They told me I had doubled the time spent in solitary confinement without giving anything away. I was puzzled at the time as to why they gave up on me when they did. Many years later I found a rising loss rate in January with three hundred and three POWs arriving from another Berlin bombing simply meant they needed my cell. The final Berlin raid in March cost seventy two aircraft lost with three hundred and seventy killed and a hundred and twenty to be became bombing Berlin was a battle lost. Despite my admiration for Harris I think he should have ended those Berlin attacks much earlier. Preferably before the 23rd 24th of November. CB: When you were shot down. JP: Yeah. Other: Yeah. JP: February 1944 I arrived at my first prison camp. Stalag Luft 6 which was for RAF and later American airmen, aircrew. Luft 6 was well run by Dixie Deans, the elected camp leader and a legend to all who knew him. With Red Cross parcels [unclear] we later lost at the Dulag on the Prussian border in July 1944 were moved as the Russians advanced. On the 8th of July we were at Stalag 357 at Thorne in Poland. An Army camp. The stalag number was transferred which makes me think that the Thorn camp was completely evacuated. Where the Army POW went I have no idea. On the 8th of August the RAF were sent to Stalag 357 at Fallingbostel in Lower Saxony in North West Germany. Another camp. Conditions deteriorated with the destruction of German transport. We ran out of Red Cross parcels, an essential supplement to the limited German rations. In a bitter winter cold we all lost weight and grew weaker. Now with an allied front we were moved again but not the Army. In groups of a thousand the RAF we were moved aimlessly around. My group from the 17th to the 19th of April 1945. On the 19th we reached a small town. We were issued with a Red Cross parcel each. Moving a few kilometres away we sat under the shade of trees to open our parcels. We were attacked by six Typhoons and a Spitfire. After the war I met one of the Typhoon pilots who confirmed as we had thought at the time they thought we were German troops hiding under the trees. Twenty nine were killed and fifty wounded. The wounded were taken to Bosenberg Hospital near [. I weighed between six and a half and seven stone and had diarrhoea. I couldn’t eat solid food for I had gingivitis, an inflammation of the gums. The British doctor sent with the wounded not fit to walk any further. The German doctor was excellent. Although three more died of their wounds he gave them all full care. He soon had me fitter and able to help with our wounded. On the 3rd of May I was sound asleep when a chap in a red beret woke me up. ‘You’ve been liberated lad.’ ‘About time too,’ I replied and promptly fell asleep again. A few years ago I learned that the chap in the red beret had been Brigadier Hill who commanded the [unclear] liberators. That morning there were tanks outside the hospital and we were taken to the Corps Field Hospital and then flew back to England in Dakotas. There’s that there. [recording paused] JP: We were taken to an airfield. CB: Yeah. JP: And flown home in a Dakota. CB: So you came home — JP: Landed somewhere in southern England. CB: Yeah. JP: I’ve no idea where. CB: You mentioned about a bit earlier that you were taken by truck over the Rhine. JP: Yeah. CB: An open truck. JP: Well from where we were to Fallingbostel, at [pause] oh dear. From hospital, from the German hospital. Have a wee second. CB: That’s ok. JP: I forget things. CB: Yeah. But you were in, you, they put you in a truck you said. JP: I gave the name of it didn’t I? CB: Yes. You mentioned it just now. [pause] CB: But what about — JP: I’ve not mentioned it without — CB: The point about you were in the truck and who else was in the truck? JP: Oh, it wasn’t a truck. We were in a sort of I don’t know what it was called but it was an open boat type thing. CB: Oh, yeah. A duck. JP: Quite large across. We were taken from the hospital, the German hospital. CB: Yeah. JP: Boizenburg. CB: Yeah. JP: I got the name, didn’t I? Boizenburg. From Boizenburg we were taken and we had to cross the Rhine and to cross the Rhine we had, went on this. CB: A barge. JP: This barge thing. It wasn’t a barge. It was a big floating thing. Very large. And there was a squaddie there shivering. He’d been in a tank which had blown up and I took my, I had an RAF issue coat, you know — CB: Yeah. JP: What do you call them? CB: A greatcoat. JP: Hmmn? CB: A greatcoat. JP: A greatcoat. CB: Yeah. JP: And I took it off and put it over the poor chap you see. CB: Because he was — JP: As a result it was a very windy cold day. I ended up with [pause] whatever it was I ended up with. CB: Yeah. JP: Flat on my back. CB: Right. JP: But we ended up in this field hospital and I have no idea where that is. CB: Yeah. JP: And from the field hospital we were taken to an airfield. I don’t know where that was. CB: Right. JP: And we were flown home in Dakotas to southern England. I don’t know where we landed. CB: No. JP: But it was in southern England. CB: Yeah. JP: I was put in a hospital near there for a couple of days and then I come to the next bit where — CB: You went back to Shawbury. JP: We went to Cosford. CB: Cosford. JP: RAF Cosford Hospital. Which then was an RAF hospital. CB: Yeah. JP: So where have we got to? CB: Yeah. That’s it. JP: Hmm? So back and yes so we’ve done that bit about the tank outside. Flown home in the Dakota. Yeah. So, ok, we can go then. So back in England after three weeks in RAF Hospital Cosford I was sent on indefinite leave and had a wonderful reception from my family in Glasgow. I knew I had a niece and found I had another niece and two nephews. All four and another nephew shortly arrived are still a loving part of my life. The RAF finally remembered me and I reported to Number 34 Maintenance Unit on the 6th of October 1945 and was there ‘til September 1947. RAF Montford Bridge was a vital posting for it was near Shrewsbury where I skulled with the Pengwern Boat Club. Thanks to another oarsman in 1940 I met Ursula. We were engaged in 1947 and married in 1948. Also in 1948 I was commissioned on the 2nd of February. Back flying and with a new crew we flew the Wellington at Operational Training. Much to my delight I then flew the Lancaster at Heavy Conversion again. September 1949, I joined Number [unclear], City of Lincoln, Lincoln Squadron Bomber Command at RAF Waddington. We flew the Lincoln. An enlarged version of a Lancaster. It flew higher, faster and further and carried a larger bomb load. For me it was not as manoeuvrable. Ursula joined me there in married quarters with our first born. We left Waddington October 1950 for me to go to the RAF flying, Central Flying School to become a flying instructor. My first posting was to southern Rhodesia and from May 1951 until November 1953 we enjoyed a happy country with perfect weather for flying. For flying training. A task I found rewarding when I sent a pupil solo. Our second son was born and we explored the country including Niagara Falls. Back home I was posted to RAF Ternhill. Again, near Shrewsbury. After a short time I went for a permanent commission medical and failed it as I was high tone deaf. I was quite heartbroken for I had loved flying. I was offered a branch commission in the [unclear] branch. I was thirty seven and loved serving in the RAF so accepted this gratefully. It carried the warning there was limited promotion. This turned to be no promotion and I finally left the RAF still a flight lieutenant on the 19th of July 1971 on my forty ninth birthday. I still have the letter offering me a further five years service but I had already decided to become a teacher. The RAF did not leave me. I’m a member of the RAF did not leave me I'll stop by the member of the RAF, Shrewsbury RAFA and the Shropshire aircrew. This can’t be raised because there are fewer, less of us. I went to Teacher’s College and gained my Teacher's Certificate. From 1972 to 1987 I taught English at Meole Brace Secondary School which became a, became a Comprehensive in 1981. From 1948 to 1983 I studied with the Open University and became a BA Hons. Purely an ego trip to prove to myself I could have done it in Glasgow Uni if the war happened intervened. Despite many separations between postings Ursula and I had enjoyed in many parts of our country, living in many parts of the country and also overseas in Germany. When we came home from Rhodesia with the aid of a mortgage we bought our house in Shrewsbury in 1956 and live here still. Aged ninety five and ninety when asked how we are we always reply, ‘We're still here.’ Anything else is boring. Our three sons and daughter have supplied us with five grandsons and seven granddaughters. Two married grandsons have supplied us with two great granddaughters. Another marriage is due next year and we have hopes for two who have partners. Throughout the year we have visits singly or in batches from some of the above. Every summer we have a clan gathering at our Shrewsbury home. All who can come. They all get along so well together the gatherings are joyful occasions. In 2018 we will celebrate our seventieth anniversary at the clan gathering. I am indeed the Lucky Penny. The title of the memoir I wrote and had printed in 2014. CB: Brilliant. Really good. JP: That does it. CB: Excellent. Thank you. JP: Is that alright? [recording paused] CB: What’s the first question? Other: Right. So many. I'm getting slow as well I have to say. [pause] Well I thought the bit about the being blown out of the plane I mean it's such a, not unique but I mean nearly unique experience. Is there anything you'd like to say more about that? People would be fascinated I'm sure. JP: No, it’s — Other: I mean you treat it as though it’s, well, you were trained. JP: Yeah. Other: For it and that’s why I asked you whether [pause] You automatically did the things you’ve been trained for didn’t you? When you were thrown out. JP: Well, I wasn't trained for being blown out. But I just think the mind works incredibly quickly when something like that happens. I had two options. Do a delayed drop to avoid the flak or, or open the parachute straight away to drift clear of what was still to come. Other: Yeah. JP: And that was the best option really. Other: Yeah. JP: Because I did as I say land in a suburban garden. Does that not work it out? CB: It is but I think a supplementary question there is when you landed in the garden what was the reaction of the owner of the house? JP: When I landed in the garden I fell over because I didn’t do the proper thing. I fell over because one leg was so badly bashed and I just couldn’t, could hardly stand on it. CB: Yeah. JP: And I fell over. It’s in my book. CB: Because of the steering wheel in the aeroplane. JP: And there was old Nick, horns and all looking at me against the fires of Berlin. And then the goat moved. I remember that bit. CB: Good. JP: And then I then I saw somebody. I was lying there. I couldn’t, oh my ‘chute was part over a tree so I couldn’t bury it as you should do and I saw a chap and then he went into a shelter. So I managed to get out but I kept falling over and I managed I think about two lampposts falling over and leaning up at the one post and this enormous German with a tin hat on picked me. He was a civilian, probably what do call them when we have them in this country? Other: Sort of a Home Guard. JP: Hmmn? Other: A Home Guard. JP: Probably a Home Guard, something like that picked me up, literally picked me up well I’m not very big. He carried me to an air raid shelter. A little like a little [unclear] you know, a little turning point and there was an older, an old lady, a young woman. The young woman looked like she would cut my throat. The old lady looked sorry for me. I remember her saying, ‘So jung.’ CB: So young. JP: And oh, when we came in he said, ‘Ah, Englisher.’ You know, no, ‘Englander.’ And I said, ‘Nein. Scotsman.’ CB: He’d have been insulted. JP: That was automatic in those days and then when the war you know when the bombing stopped they took me to their house. That’s where I saw the mirror and that was terrible. CB: Right. JP: That’s why they were all so sorry for me. CB: Yes. JP: I looked dreadful. I looked worse than I was in other words. And I was staggered to that. I could hardly walk with this leg. Then a couple of squaddies came along. Oh, incidentally just before I hit the deck the searchlight came on near me and let me see the ground and do a proper, you know pull up. Other: Clear up. JP: And a couple of squaddies came probably from the battery I should think and took me to a police station. At least I think it was a police station because it was a police cell sort of thing. One of them. I was there the night in the police cell. Then, the next day they took me to an airfield where they collected all the aircrew who had baled out that night and then took a train to the Dulag. And that was quite interesting because there was one chap on the way to the station, well, at the station there was a large, they were on the way in to the station. One chap was on a stretcher and three other blokes and me. By that time I was walking, was carrying this chap on the stretcher and the German, one of the civilian at the station came out at that stage and spat at them and the corporal in charge of us with his sub machine gun hit him right in the gut with it and pointed around with it. I don't know what he said but that crowd backed off. They were all civilians waiting to get out of Berlin and they backed off and he wasn’t having it. He took us into a big canteen through the one to the one at the back, sat down at a table. We put the chap, it was up to us to put this chap’s stretcher down. We sat at the table and I still remember to this day the waitress in German type what the waitress in the German type, what the waitress dress whatever it was came up with a dirty great tankard. One of the enormous tankards of beer and I think the four of us must have sat there like this [pause] probably because he laughed and raised his pint and another tankard to be shared between the four of us. And that was the German frontline troops. And at the Dulag apart from their, you know, their routine — CB: Yeah. JP: At the end they gave me this tea party as it were. Took the tea. And Dixie Deans, Dixie Deans incidentally had been shot down early in the war, spoke perfect Germany. He’d worked in Germany and he’d got the very good German senior officer in charge of the place, he’d got him under his thumb. He really, he was brilliant was Dixie Deans. CB: He was a wing commander, was he? JP: No. he was, he was, he was an airman. I don’t suppose he, well he would by that time be officially because you started as a sergeant. CB: Yeah. JP: You got promoted after a year to flight sergeant. I got promoted before then because I was going on to Pathfinders and then you became. a third year became a warrant officer. So Dixie I think by then would have officially been a warrant officer but as far as he was concerned he didn’t know that. He was still a sergeant. CB: Oh. JP: But the NCO aircrew were what’s the, where the officer’s dulag. The officer’s camp was. They were there. The NCO aircrew were there and then they opened this one at Fallingbostel and Dixie was marching. They all were assembled and the group captain who was a prisoner there Dixie had the chaps and gave a, they all marched down, Dixie gave an eyes right and he saluted and the British saluted back and the German in charge of the camp said, ‘They are soldiers.’ And our chaplain said, ‘Of course they are, you fool. They just don’t behave like that to you.’ Or words to that effect. CB: Yeah. JP: I was told this by, Dixie had the committee which were known as the Escape Committee but where we were well there were all sorts of stories there. They, you only want what, three feet down you hit water and we did get a tunnel out through the loo. Some brave bloke went in to this hole in the loo and got a hole in the wall above the water lever and got a tunnel out. And we did get a tunnel out there but I think only one chap got out. Fortunately, very fortunately the guard came who was patrolling outside spotted it otherwise it would mean another one. And when we went to the one in Poland it was an Army camp. Now where at [unclear] you double the whatsit and a long single bar there. Step over that you could [unclear] between the fire. When we got to the Army camp there was only that much difference between there and there and the huts we were in were about from here to there from the wire and there were six huts. There were other ones, but the first six huts and I reckon every hut there had a tunnel going out within twenty four hours of getting there. Fortunately, we were moved before we could finish. CB: Right. JP: Because it would have been a mass break out and they would have just shot them all. CB: Yeah. JP: As they did the officers earlier on. CB: Yeah. JP: So really it was just as well. But the ethos of the time you did your damndest to try and get out. CB: Of course. JP: But a lot didn’t. Some did. I asked Dixie about escaping. He said, ‘How’s your German?’ I said, ‘Non-existent.’ He said, ‘Well, until you can speak German the Escape Committee won’t help you. Only someone who speaks German has a chance of getting away. Anyone else, no.’ So it was very, one chap did get away and escaped and got picked up by the Russians eventually but he spoke fluent German and he was one that Dixie escaped whatsit. They used to, we had our own secret radio there at [Gutersloh]. So well organised and twice a week a couple of chaps would turn up, ‘BBC news chaps.’ And somebody went on the window and watch for safe and they’d read the BBC news which kept us updated with what was going on. It was terribly well [pause] and that radio. How they did it I’m buggered if I know. Mind you, don’t forget we were aircrew which meant we got a lot of wireless ops and also Dixie had the guards organised. First of all, he would or a [unclear] would be briefed. We were not allowed to just [unclear] and eventually got a guard who had taken some [ had got them to bring in some forbidden things like parts of the radio and that sort of thing. And when they got to them they pointed out that he had to do as he was told or they would be reported which meant the Russian Front you see. So Dixie and both these chaps had this all organised. New kriegies like me just ignored it. I mean we just kept schtum. Need to know basis. We didn’t need to know so we kept quiet but I went to a lot of, I know one, at least one chap who got a degree while he was in prison. He’d been shot down at the beginning of the war. He’d been there four years. Or been a prisoner for four years. CB: Yeah. JP: And he got himself organised and he got a degree. So there were chaps who had no interest in escape. They were just interested in surviving. Which was quite understandable. I was interested. Being young and stupid I was interested in escaping. But as I say, Dixie said, ‘No German, you’ve had it.’ Which was probably just as well because I was young and stupid in those days. I mean I turned down being an instructor twice which was a daft thing to do. I often wonder what would have happened if I had. If I’d have taken up in Canada I’d have been an instructor in Canada. Probably. But my instructor in Canada, in Cosford Hospital I met him. He'd come over. He’d done a tour and he’d been shot down. So I met him again. I wish I’d kept in touch. CB: Small world. Yeah. JP: I didn’t unfortunately but I was still an NCO, he was still an officer and there was a gap. I found that out when I became an officer. I could never get the rapport with my crew that I had with my crew during the war. It was, and yet it was quite common for sergeant pilots to have officer members of the crew like my first mid-upper. But the skipper was still the skipper. CB: Yeah. JP: You were still the boss. That was out of the time. CB: Just going back to when you landed. JP: Hmm? CB: Going back to when you landed by parachute. JP: Yes. CB: You said that the young lady was hostile. What happened after you came out of — JP: Well, they took me to, but they took me to, when the bombing stopped they took me to their house and that was where I saw the mirror. CB: Yeah. JP: And I was there, I had a drink of water I think. The big fellow was quite friendly actually. CB: Yeah. JP: And the old lady was quite sorry for the young fella. He said, ‘So jung. So jung.’ CB: Yeah. JP: And we were there for a very short time before the squaddies came to take me to the police station. CB: But did this young lady also go to the house? JP: Oh yes. She was the wife. CB: She was his wife. JP: She was the wife. Well, I don’t know this for sure. CB: Right. JP: But I would say this was a family, local family what we’d have, what would we have had in this country? These little — CB: Well, the Anderson shelter. JP: Yeah. CB: Yeah. It was like an Anderson shelter. CB: Yeah. JP: Very small. I don’t think there were any kids there. I think it was just the two ladies. The old, the old lady and the young lady. I think just the two and as I say the old lady was you know one of the, I remember her saying, ‘So jung.’ And I remember him carrying me in. I saw him in daylight saying, ‘Englander,’ and my immediate reaction was, ‘Nein. Schottelander.’ But — CB: So was this, had you drifted to the outskirts of Berlin. JP: Hmmn? CB: Had you drifted to the outskirts of Berlin? JP: Oh yes, yes that’s why I was — CB: So there was no bombing close. JP: I drifted in to a suburban garden. CB: Yes. JP: Basically, which must have been on the outskirts of Berlin. CB: Yeah. JP: Well away from the bombing. In fact, when I landed as I say I looked up when I fell over and I landed. I released my parachute. It was over a tree and I saw old Nick with his horns and then as I say the goat moved and that was the sort of, oh Nick. CB: Yes. JP: I’m dead. CB: Yeah. JP: And then the goat and I saw that head against the fires. CB: Yeah. JP: Of the fires of, you know — CB: Of the city. JP: Where the bombing was. So I was well away from it. CB: Yeah. JP: So pulling the ‘chute was the right thing to do. CB: It was. JP: But so that was, that was — CB: I’ll stop there. [recording paused] JP: These years with that — CB: With the knowledge of the trip. JP: Terrible regret that I couldn’t save my crew. CB: Yes. JP: I tried at the time. CB: Yes. JP: I knew I was going to die. CB: Yeah. JP: Because I remember thinking mum’s not going to like this or mum’s going to be upset. And the other thought was I wish I’d left a son behind. Which I thought was rather funny. I’d never actually known a woman properly. CB: Did you — JP: I’d courted quite a few but I’d never actually — CB: No. JP: I was still at that, my generation were. CB: Yeah. JP: Or at least a lot of them were. Some of them weren’t of course. CB: No. JP: A lot of my generation. I had four big brothers and they told me sod all. CB: Yes. Other: Yeah. JP: Literally, I knew, you know — CB: Yeah. Nobody enlightened you. JP: There was no sex education in those days and, oh, I remember my brother Sandy. Only one thing he said, ‘Jim, just remember those that would I wouldn’t and those I would don’t.’ That was my advice from Sandy. CB: Right. JP: It took me years to find out those I liked also did [laughs] But that took me a long long time to find out. Fortunately, as I say I met Ursula. CB: Can I just ask you again on this other topic because on a different interview I have done but did you feel in any way guilty in the fact that you were the sole survivor? JP: I think that was part of it. I think that was the — CB: Because you were the captain. JP: Yes. I think that was definitely part of it. That I was the only survivor and my wonderful crew, and they were a wonderful crew really. They were brilliant. I mean, we were good as a crew. We really, we deserved to be Pathfinders but I think now and I didn’t think even when I wrote the book I hadn’t had that thought I’ve had a lot more I know, in fact I do a talk. It’s over there. I do a talk with one of the squad things on the importance of Bomber Command. CB: Right. JP: It started off as a talk in my book. CB: Yes. JP: Which I did to a school and it went very well. CB: I bet. JP: And then with doing research I learned so much more and I learned just how important Bomber Command was. There were two crucial raids. One was that first raid on Berlin. What happened at the time, I’ve got it in my book, what happened was that a Luftwaffe pilot dropped his bombs on London. I don’t think he was meant to. I think the silly bugger got lost probably but this is, anyway someone bombed Berlin. CB: Yes. JP: And Churchill was livid and ordered the RAF to bomb, bomb London rather, the RAF to bomb Berlin. CB: Yes. JP: Approximately eighty odd aircraft set out. About twenty nine of them got there. CB: Yes. JP: The others couldn’t find it. CB: Yeah. JP: But they did bomb it. Hitler was livid and took the Luftwaffe off bombing the airfields and the radar stations to set up the Blitz and set up the Blitz on London. CB: Yeah. JP: If he’d not done that we could have lost the Battle of Britain. CB: Yeah. JP: Because they could have knocked out all those airfields. The Luftwaffe was very powerful at that time. CB: Yeah. Yeah. JP: They could have knocked, you know, it could have cost us the battle of Britain if he hadn’t done that. CB: Yeah. JP: And the second one was the thousand bomber raid. CB: On Cologne. JP: Because, on Cologne. No. It wasn’t Cologne. It was another one. Was it Cologne? CB: Cologne. On Cologne. Yeah. The cathedral. JP: The Luftwaffe immediately realised the significance of that. That we turned Germany in to, the whole of Germany into a battlefield and they had to bring, instead of supporting the troops in the field they had to bring back aircraft, pilots, thousands and thousands of the best anti-tank gun in the war. The German got the, it’s in the book. That that gun was also — CB: The 88 millimetre. JP: Hmmn? CB: The 88 millimetre. JP: Indeed. That 88 gun was a brilliant gun. CB: Yes. JP: I’ve been told. CB: Yes. JP: I’ve been told that even by soldiers as well. CB: Yeah. JP: Anti-tank. But they had to bring all those back and put them all over Germany as we knew because the bastards every time we bombed a city the flak was horrendous so there was lots of guns there. CB: Yeah. JP: And the men to man them. It could be argued but for that the Germans could have put Russia out of the war before our invasion was ready. CB: Yeah. JP: So, Bomber Command was vital. Yeah. Apart from the obvious that they bombed and Harris when he got, he put up that he was going to do area bombing and they were [pause] you see at the beginning of the war Bomber Command crews dropped leaflets on Germany. CB: Yes. JP: Men were lost dropping bloody leaflets on Germany. CB: Yeah. Yeah. JP: And they were also ordered not to bomb with slightest chance of killing a civilian at the beginning. We weren’t ready for war. CB: Right. JP: Mentally or otherwise and those early aircraft were bloody, I know, I’ve flown two of them. CB: Yeah. JP: They were — CB: Nightmare. JP: Hmmn? CB: Nightmare to fly. JP: Yeah. They were alright, but they weren’t, compared to the Lancasters you know they weren’t a patch on those. The Lancasters were brilliant. A really wonderful aircraft but as I say we weren’t, we weren’t ready for war and the same people who had us operating are now, I mean I’ve been asked if I wasn’t ashamed of being a bomber pilot. That’s one of the things that set me off on proving how necessary we were. The first was when I was doing my teacher training. A young, one of the other young chaps on the course said, ‘Weren’t you a bomber pilot? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ So I said, ‘Sprechen sie Deutsch?’ And he looked at me. I said, ‘Sprechen sie Deutsch?’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I said, ‘I’m asking if you speak German?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Well, you bloody well would if we hadn’t bombed the bastards.’ That was my attitude at the time. CB: Yes. JP: I was but not so long ago a teacher, a retired teacher at the prep school here, from the prep school here three of us went to, they have a very nice little service at the, Battle of Britain service privately at the school, the prep school and three of us went to that. One was an ex-Battle of Britain pilot, a pal of mine from [unclear] and one who was, who had been involved with Coastal Command on Mossies but was a bombers still. He was a Coastal Command Mossies. And this chap asked us, you know what we’d been doing and Brian who’s the talker amongst the three of us, Brian said, ‘He was a Battle of Britain pilot.’ ‘Oh wonderful. Oh yes.’ ‘What was yours?’ he said, ‘I was a Coastal Command pilot.’ ‘Oh.’ And Brian said, ‘He was a bomber pilot.’ And his face went. Oh. And I looked at him and I thought you don’t approve of me being a bomber pilot. No. Well, of course, ‘Why did we bomb Dresden? ‘I said, ‘I’ll lend you my book on it. You’ll see why.’ CB: Yeah. JP: Which I did. It’s up there. CB: Right. JP: The book on Dresden and it’s a different story. CB: Yes. JP: If you read that. CB: Yeah. JP: One of, one of the things that was so important was it was a [pause] what’s the word for it? A nice pleasant place. CB: Yes. Well, architecturally it was superb. JP: Yeah. But what people don’t know was that the railway feeding the Russian Front, the German troops to the Russian Front passed through there. So far as I know the Russians asked us to bomb. CB: They did. Yeah. JP: The other thing was why did we bomb so near the end of the war. At that time if you’d asked when the war would end they would say imminently, now or ten years, twelve years, twelve months’ time because there was no sign of Hitler giving up. So we didn’t, when I was in, I was in prison camp at the time so I had nothing to do with that but if I’d been flying I would have bombed the place I’d been told to. You just went to where you were told to do. CB: Well, they’d only just had the Battle of the Bulge. JP: Yeah. And also, don’t forget — CB: Yeah. JP: Is that the Americans also bombed Dresden. CB: Yeah. JP: We bombed it at night and the next morning — CB: The Americans did it. JP: The Americans bombed it. CB: Yeah. JP: But this was where the bad things come in and that same attitude which is Bomber Command was Churchill our hero at the time when he was giving his valedictory speech about the forces after the war carefully avoided any mention of Bomber Command. And there was no Bomber Command medal. There should have been. They’ve given us a stupid little — CB: The clasp. JP: The clasp. There should, there should have been a Bomber Command medal really. CB: Yeah. JP: When you think of the casualties that we had and the, there was such, so a few of us really. I was amazed really with how few of us there were overall. Over the whole lot and over a third of them got the chop. CB: Well, forty four percent were killed. JP: Yeah. Yeah. Well, there we are. CB: Good. JP: So Churchill I’m afraid — CB: Let you down. JP: I didn’t really approve of him. CB: No. JP: We’ve been virtually ignored all these years and yet, and yet from my research about Bomber Command played a vital part in the war. Very vital. CB: Absolutely. Yeah. JP: Yeah. CB: Yeah. JP: I think without Bomber Command we could have lost the war. We really could. Germany had enslaved the whole, just about the whole of Europe. There was a story told about, what’s the one part in the Alps there. Oh, what’s, what’s the country? The very [pause] oh God. The one between France and Italy. Not — CB: Not Switzerland? JP: Hmmmn? CB: Switzerland. JP: Switzerland. CB: Yes. JP: Switzerland. My memory is going by the way. CB: That’s ok. JP: Words disappear in mid-sentence. CB: Yes. I know. JP: You know. I’d like a cheese and [pause] and I couldn’t think of the word tomato until I went to the larder and saw it. I’m definitely going gaga. No two ways about it. But Switzerland there was a story told about the Nazi general said to the Swiss general, ‘What would you do if we invaded you with five hundred or six hundred men or whatever.’ The Swiss general said, ‘I would order all my troops to fire twice [laughs] CB: Go on. JP: The Swiss had his own rifle. CB: Yes. JP: Every Swiss was a marksman. CB: Yeah. JP: That’s what he was saying. If you try and invade us we will fight back. CB: Yeah. JP: And incidentally, by the way, again with my research Yugoslavia had a very good Army but the defensive point was there and that’s one, that part is for Germans. Because Germany after the war they lost the Rhineland which Hitler walked into without objection from anybody. They, they lost this part of Czechoslovakia. The name escapes me. It’s in there. CB: Sudetenland. JP: Hmmn? CB: Sudetenland. JP: Sudetenland. The Sudetenland. He walked, because when they lost Sudetenland that was their major defensive area so when he walked in there and took that over when they did go to return they no longer were in a position to defend themselves. CB: No. JP: And he assured before that happened he assured what’s his name? Our prime minister of the time. CB: Chamberlain. JP: Chamberlain. At the time and the French he had no further — Other: Intention. JP: To go any further. And Chamberlain, I heard Chamberlain on the radio saying, ‘And now we are at war with Germany.’ CB: Did you? JP: And I’ll swear that man was near tears because he’d fought in the First World War. CB: Yeah. JP: So, there we are. CB: Well, Jim Penny, thank you for a most interesting interview. Thank you. JP: Is that ok? CB: Yeah. Other: Fabulous. 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 Jim Penny. Two Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Brockbank 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 2017-09-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context APennyJA170905, PPennyJ1501 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Pending revision of OH transcription Description An account of the resource After volunteering for the RAF, Jim Penny began his training which also took him to USA. He was present when the announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbour was made and all RAF trainees could openly wear their uniforms as the two countries were officially allies. He found the steering difficult on the two training aircraft and was scrubbed from the course but when he was interviewed by RAF personnel he was reposted back on to pilot training. On returning to the UK to finalise his training he crewed up and was posted to 97 Squadron Pathfinders based at RAF Bourn. On one occasion, during a test flight, the winds were intense and his request to land at a different runway was refused. He ordered the crew to take crash positions and, on landing, the undercarriage collapsed. The CO witnessed the crash and when he found out that the change of runway request had been refused he dismissed the duty controller immediately. The mid-upper gunner was told on one occasion that he had to get a new flight suit because of the bad state of the one he was wearing, but he refused saying it was his lucky flight suit. He was dismissed by the CO and Jim was given a new gunner. Jim flew operations as a pilot with 97 Squadron from RAF Bourn until his aircraft was shot down over Berlin 24 November 1943 and he became a prisoner of war. All other members of the crew were killed. Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Canada Germany Great Britain England--Cambridgeshire Germany--Berlin Germany--Cologne France--Montluçon Germany--Ruhr (Region) France Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1941-12-07 1943-11-23 1943-11-24 1944 1945 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:30:58 audio recording Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Maureen Clarke 97 Squadron aircrew anti-aircraft fire Berlin Campaign (23 August 1943 – 25 March 1944) bombing Lancaster love and romance Pathfinders pilot prisoner of war RAF Bourn searchlight shot down Stalag 357 Stalag Luft 6 strafing the long march training Typhoon https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/882/11709/PHorshamES1602.jpg 67e67ad73fa2fc212dac0e588fd3a172 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/882/11709/ASymondsHorshamE170105.mp3 7d055b8f4144ed6db659e469c9e75ac0 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 Horsham, Eric Eric Symonds Horsham E S Horsham Description An account of the resource 14 items. An oral history interview with Eric Horsham (b. 1923), 9 photographs, and his memoirs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 102 Squadron from RAF Pocklington. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Eric Horsham and catalogued by Barry Hunter. 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 2017-01-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Horsham, ES Access Rights Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies. Permission granted for commercial projects Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 5th of January 2017 and I’m with Eric Horsham down in Warminster and he was a flight engineer. And he is going to talk about his experiences in life but particularly with the RAF. So, Eric what are you earliest recollections of life? ESH: Well, every year we went off to Devon for a holiday at relations because my people came from Plymouth and Devonport and this was held good right up until my teenage years. But early memories really, I suppose began at the age of about, serious memories, seven when we heard a very strange noise on one occasion and we all rushed out to see what it was. And do you know what? It was the R101 which was on its way to London and of course guided by the River Thames because that’s where we lived. In Plumstead. So it was logical. In fact the best view from Plumstead was the Ford Motor Works which had four big white chimneys and so that was a landmark. And following on from there it wasn’t until I was [pause] well I suppose fourteen really because that’s when I left school and they said, ‘Well, there’s a couple of jobs and one is — would you like to be a messenger in the Royal Ordnance factory?’ Which was right adjacent to Plumstead at Woolwich, you see and also the headquarters of the Royal Engineers. So that’s what I did for six months because it was destined that I should take the Railway Clerical Examination and join the rest of the family working on the railway. So that’s subsequent to that they sent me to train as a booking clerk. But I didn’t show up very brightly so they said, ‘No. We’ll send you to a goods depot.’ Which was rather like being banished, you know [laughs] because, can I be humorous at this point and say, well yes I was sent to a depot call Nine Hills which was in Vauxhall near Waterloo and on one side I had the Brand’s Essence and Pickle factory churning out pickle. And looking the other way we had horses because everything was delivered, delivered by horses, and drays at that. And on the other side we had the gaslight and coke company pushing out fumes so that was my early memory on the railway and then a friend of mine said [pause] well I told the friend of mine in the railway business that I was very unhappy there. So, indeed the friend said, ‘Well, we’ll try and rectify that,’ and apparently I didn’t shine as a booking clerk either. So they sent me to the estate office of the Southern Railway which was way out in the country at Chislehurst, but I digress because previous to — I mean we, talking about the year 1937. As you’ll appreciate if I was ’23 — born ‘23. ‘33, ‘37 that’s thirteen or fourteen years and 1939 came along. We can verify those dates and we had to join anything organised. All young people. So, but I think maybe I’m a bit previous to that because I went along to the Air Defence Cadet Corps. This would be somewhere about 1937 at least. So from there of course we went on to the Air Training Corps which was very much in evidence at Woolwich because we were, had the run of the Woolwich Polytechnic, and the chief there was indeed given the rank of wing commander in the Air Training Corps. Wing Commander Halliwell. So, that’s where I first got my, sort of my aircraft experience and of course it was a very good base for workshop practice. We all started off wanting to be flight — to be aircraft fitters. Fitters and turners. And the very basic things that we did were of course in connection with Tiger Moths where you really had the history of aircraft from very early days, and we had to learn all about turn buckles and things which kept the wings in place. But of course as time went by, here we are in ’39 and we were getting heavy bombers coming in, and if you’d, you had to decide, you know, really what you wanted to do because you were going to be called up for sure. And state a preference. So of course I did. And that was to be a flight engineer. Now, as an aside to this, engineers in the Air Force — flying, got twelve shillings a day. Now, you, you know seven twelves is eighty four. That’s four pound forty a week which is not to be, not to be sniffed at. But of course we also had to join something anyway. So, off I went to, to be called up but unfortunately there was a problem because I’d had a medical earlier for call up and the doctor discovered that one leg, ankle or calf, was slightly different to the other one. And of course yes it would be so because when I was born it was in a splint up until a year, eighteen months which straightened it out but it never did quite catch up with the other leg. Anyway, they said, ‘No. You’re grade three. We don’t want you.’ So off I went back to the estate office and soldiered on. Filing I think was our main job then because the railway had a vast estate. However, ok, come twelve months I was getting pretty fed up so I went up to the local recruiting office and said, ‘You know, I’m available. And I’m partly trained as an engineer. I want to join the Air Force,’ and they said, ‘Well that’s alright. You’re in the Air Training Corps. You should be alright.’ So they sent me off to Cardington and, for a medical. Went to Henlow actually. Adjacent. Just down the road from Cardington. Saw the top brass and he said, ‘Well, jump up and down there,’ and so I did. And he said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, off you go.’ So back to an interview at Cardington. The very, very modern method of identifying people. You had all these puzzles in a book, and you went through the book. A hundred puzzles and things like a bit of algebra, you know. And I knew a little bit. Anyway, I got the question right and I was the only one in that class who got it. So the squadron leader who was interviewing, and he was loaded with gongs, of course to a young man I couldn’t take my eyes of these gongs. Anyway, he put me through all the paces and he had a civilian officer too, with him, in the interview. And in his room he had every kind of aircraft and I was to — aircraft recognition. So I did very well at that because we were well trained in the Air Training Corps. So off I went then back to civilian life and then a little while later got called up for Aircrew Reception Centre at Lord’s. So we had a, we were very honoured because we had to be kitted out in the Long Room which was famous as you know. We had drill on the famous turf. Now, that lasted about three weeks by which time we were fully kitted up and said, ‘Right. Off to Torquay you go.’ We thought that was jolly good because Torquay was a lovely holiday centre wasn’t it? Anyway, we did, I did eight weeks there altogether. And we learned administration and the law of the RAF and the time came when they said, well, you know, off to the squadron — no. Off to the big training centre you go. And I remember I slept the night on Bristol Temple Meads Station because that was it. We were going to St Athan in Wales. And the train service being what it was we did arrive at St Athan with two kit bags by the time we got there. And humped them all the way up to the camp which we thought rather naughty. Anyway, we went through twenty six weeks, I think it was, of training throughout every facet of aircraft construction and the essential things that one would have needed to know. Like you had to be au fait with a very complicated system of petrol tanks. Now, each wing of a Halifax had six tanks. And this had to be in flying whittled down from, so that your main petrol was in the mid-section, in tanks one and three. Funny enough on the test training board they said, ‘No, you really ought to have another think about this. Go back and think for another week.’ So, then I passed out and they put a little white flash in my cap and they gave me papers for the Number 1652 Conversion Unit which was that Marston Moor. [Telephone ringing. Recording paused] CB: So we’re just re-starting now with St Athan and the rest of the things that you were doing in training there. ESH: Yes. I’ll go straight into leaving St Athan. CB: What else did you do in St Athan? Hydraulics. What else? ESH: Is that running? CB: Yes. ESH: Well, yes, you had your petrol system. You had the other power that was likely to be in aircraft which were accumulators. Now, not as you would think an electricity accumulator but this was liquid in a cylinder. Oil actually I think it was. And air was pumped in giving it a pressure and on selecting undercarriage down the accumulator would push it down. This is in the case of a Halifax which was either hydraulic or pneumatic. So the way to get services to operate was by his accumulator. But not only that of course because you did have [pause] now let me think. You had the port inner engine on a Halifax is the one that supplies power to your services and — CB: Electrical power. ESH: Yes. Some of it would have been electrical power. CB: But also hydraulic. ESH: And hydraulics had to be learned. Flaps were hydraulic. The other services control are foot and pedals by the pilot on the fin and rudder. And the elevators — well they would be hydraulic you see running a pipeline out. And flaps for instance. Fairly high pressure, well two and a half pounds I think were the standard pressure in the system but it was enough to push a big flap down against the airstream. And so electrics — you had to be au fait with the electrical services, and therefore you had to mug up on Ohm’s Law if you like in order to appreciate the power that you could get from electric motors. So, and then of course you had to know the different gauges of the stressed skin of the alclad which was a compound of the aluminium NG7. You see, the mind gets very hazy when it comes to the complete structure but you were able, by the end of six months, to walk through a mock-up of an aircraft with your eyes closed. You could have bandaged the flight engineer. He was the one who moved around and you were perfectly au fait with where the main spar came across so you could sort of jump over that. And of course the controls for your petrol were underneath the, what’s called the rest position which was a little sort of bunk for resting people. We didn’t go to sleep there actually but it was very useful. And then in the front of the aircraft of course you had the pilot with the wireless op immediately underneath him. And the navigator and the bombardier in the nose proper. So they, we were pretty well genned up by the time we left there. We could go anywhere blind folded within the air craft there and operate switches without thinking about it. So then they said, ‘Right. Here’s, here’s your ticket.’ You’re on your on your way,’ to a place called Pocklington — no. Sorry. Marston Moor. The sight of the famous battle actually was just down the road. And this was number 1652 Conversion Unit where all the crews got together as and made up as crews. Now, I hadn’t met our crew before then but we were very late. The mid-upper gunners and the flight engineers only met the crew, the other crew of four who’d come along from EFTS and their various ‘dromes where they had been instructed, to make up a crew. And it was strange because we assembled in the hall and the flight engineers and the gunners — mid-upper gunners, would be sitting in chairs and then in came the existing crews because they’d been flying Wellingtons which only required five people. And then — how do you find a pilot? They said, ‘Join up with somebody,’ so eventually, I think we were down to about two flight engineers and a chappie came along and said, ‘I need a flight engineer. You’ll be my flight engineer won’t you?’ And it turned out that he was a very very competent pilot. His name actually was, he was a Pilot Officer Francis then, who came from a village near where we are now called Stoke St Michael near Shepton Mallet. Anyway, he was quite stern. He always said that he’d seen our records but I don’t think he had. Anyway, he brought the crew along and said, ‘This is our flight engineer. Do you think he’ll be alright?’ So that was it. That was our crew. And so then we started training on the next day on circuits and bumps because this aircraft was totally new to our pilot. And while we’re on the subject of crew we had a very important chap in the crew who is of course the navigator. Now, we had actually in retrospect, having had thirty odd ops to prove himself, and we wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t have been for Oscar Shirley, who was our navigator, because you could turn him upside down. You could have umpteen course changes. He knew exactly where he was. Because it could be very, I mean I heard of crews who had navigators that weren’t too good and that was curtains. However, we won’t dwell on that. But, and while we’re on crew our bombardier was fresh from the first few months of a teacher training course. He was called Johnny Morris but not to be confused with the comedian. And Alan Shepherd was our wireless operator. Now, Alan Shepherd came from Ringwood, off a smallholding. Wonderful chap really. Did a lot of good work after the war. Who else have we got to account for? Oh rear gunner. Yes. Rear gunner, another Londoner. I’m just desperately trying to remember his name. You wouldn’t believe it would you? [pause] I’ll remember it in a moment. We’ll come back to that. Now, who haven’t we accounted for? Mid-upper gunner. Jimmy Finney from Hull. Lovely lad who later got shot up on one operation and had to pack it in. CB: And your bomb aimer? ESH: Ron Alderton was the name of the rear gunner by the way. He is still with us as far as I know but when I phoned him the other day he said, ‘I’m losing my marbles. I can’t come and see you.’ So, there we were. Crew set up. And then of course we all had our bicycles with us. Off in the van and off we went to — I think we went by train from Green Hammerton to York. And then York out to Pocklington, and the station yard was just gravel in those days. And then of course we walked over to the ‘drome which was quite close. Each of us had two kit bags and a bicycle. But we knew we were going to Pocklington and it didn’t have a very savoury sort of record. In fact they said, ‘Now you’re here you’ll be lucky if you last three weeks.’ Which was a throwback from — 1943 was a desperate year and here we are in January or February was it of ’44, at the Conversion Unit. And Pocklington had, sorry not the Conversion Unit. Pocklington — the actual RAF station and there was definitely a pervading sort of sense that this was a bit dodgy, you know. However, we were led into operations in around about, just before D-Day. We’d done all our circuits and bumps and cross country’s and they let us down very gently on short trips to France. I mean the first trip we did was to a place called [unclear] which was a P-plane place. P planes were coming in thick and fast so Churchill had said to our boss Air Chief Marshall Harris, ‘Look get your lads on this. I want it stamped out.’ Because they knew the 6th of June was coming up. So we continued to do that until right through until well after D-Day. To various places which you wouldn’t be able to find on the map because they don’t give, you won’t find them as places like Foret de Dieppe. Which is unheard of, I mean, but there you are. And then we started ops didn’t we? And of course our accent was on night bombing. Can you imagine having a sheet of aluminium stood up against the wall and you gathered up in your hand and [pause] gravel? Now, you threw the gravel at the aluminium. Now that’s just what it’s like when you’re being shot. If you’re near a shot. Because all the shrapnel comes and hits the aircraft like that and that is getting just a bit too close for comfort. However, they were nights. Now, what you don’t, what you can’t see you don’t worry about do you? Even though it was seven or eight hours sometimes. Or five or six to the Ruhr. Because we were concentrating on the Ruhr. I mean Essen after we’d been there and some of the other lads had been there previously there wasn’t one brick standing on another. And that’s where Krupps the armament works were ruined, you know — finished. Because we were mainly at that time after [pause] I mean our targets were decided by the Ministry of Economic Warfare. And they said, ‘Right. Wipe out Germany’s oil and that will end the war.’ So that’s what we did. We went to all sorts of obscure places trying, in bulk, to wipe out an oil plant. Because, I mean, you’re looking at a complex in the middle of a small area of a village. Now it took a lot of aircraft to plaster it so we did a lot of this up and down the Ruhr. I mean there were so many places I won’t bore you with that. But that’s what we did. But also we went to one or two further places like Brunswick. Way across east to Berlin. And then Hanover, Soest, Osnabruck and they were very well defended. And of course the night fighters hadn’t quite been been nullified as they were a little later. So we had, I suppose a charmed existence. And one of the deadly things the Germans did was to position a gun at a fixed angle — called a shrage gun and it would come out and go straight for the port inner. Once you got the port inner — well that’s where your services came from. And there’s no way really you could put a fire out. You’d try by diving [pause] but no really we had a charmed existence I suppose. And then D-Day came along and in preparation for that the squadron was busy but we didn’t actually get over Normandy until, I think it was July the 18th 1944 when it was, there were troop concentrations around Cannes. Now, if you remember Montgomery couldn’t shift them and everyone was looking to him and saying, you know, ‘You’re going to be a failure aren’t you? You can’t. You’re army can’t do it.’ So they whistled up the Air Force east of Cannes where Tigers tanks had dug in in expectation of a bombing raid. and of course we were there 5 o’clock in the morning and it soon became obscured by dust and smoke. And really it was pretty terrible for the Germans I’m sure because they staggered out of their bunkers and that, having been bombed by I think it was a thousand aircraft. Not all at once but over a period of about half an hour. Your concentration was so great yes you could time them and of course this was, in effect, an army cooperation. We had to be very careful because the army had to lay down a yellow barrier of flares with a given margin which they decided was safe so — and I do remember on that occasion I think as we were coming — as we were going out on that raid as you’ll realise Cannes isn’t that far from England. They were coming back. So, quite amazing you know to see these aircraft coming back and you hadn’t got there. Now, this was daylight of course because they switched us from night after a time because we went on to daylight because of course if you can see something it should be, you should be more accurate. Now, we did go on right through the summer. We went to one P-plane place seven days running. Foret de Dieppe. If you can find it on the map. Because one operation was preceded by Mosquito. Now the Mosquito could — it was planned he would be on a fixed from England on the exact spot. So we were trundling away there getting towards — and the secret was when he dropped his bombs everyone else would do theirs. And of course unfortunately we got up near the target and one aircraft opened its bomb doors and dropped the bombs and of course everybody else did the same. So really that was — the idea was good but it didn’t work in practice. Whether the Air Ministry would like you to know that I don’t know. But yes, it was so. So, we were largely on P-plane bases but then we went on, as I say, to daylight. Oil installations. Because at that time it was really beginning to show that the Germans couldn’t really put enough in the field because they hadn’t got the petrol. So, mainly of course we were up at the Ruhr at places like Gelsenkirchen where there were oil installations and that more or less saw the summer out. But one operation did stand out for us and that was army cooperation with the Americans who were trying to push into the Ruhr and we hadn’t yet, they hadn’t yet done it but there were three towns. Julich, Duren and Eschweiler, and I think they are adjacent to the [pause] now what was the name of the forest? CB: Ardennes. ESH: The Ardennes, yes. Indeed. The Ardennes and these Germans had all their batteries concentrated in that area and they could dig in these Tiger tanks and they were very difficult. I mean they were very difficult to move. And the crews also were dug in and ready to come into action as soon as the raid had passed over. Anyway, we went through the target and on our way out and we must have wandered. At that time of course to nullify guns you dropped out metallic strip, Window, which really foxed the German radar. And they were pretty good on this radar. And we did wander around to one side on the way out. Out of radar — out of the Window cover and you could see. I was lucky I had a little dome and I could look out as a flight engineer to the rear and you could see these black dots coming up, but you didn’t know whether that one was going to follow that one but it did. And there was an almighty bang and so skipper Francis knew what that was so immediately put it into a dive. Now we were about fifteen thousand feet I think and we ended up diving and ended up at eight thousand feet hoping that the Germans wouldn’t be able to follow us down but the place was full of smoke and cordite. The smell of cordite. If you’ve opened up a firework or let it off you’ll smell cordite and that’s what, that’s what was filling up the aircraft. So you couldn’t communicate. Everyone had gone deaf so you had to wait for your hearing to come back. But being a flight engineer I was able to walk around because we were at level flight by that time. Previous to that we’d been pinned in our stations. The G-effect being such. And so the first thing I saw — the aircraft looked like a pepper pot on one side, the starboard side, and daylight was streaming out. No flaps. And unfortunately Jim Finney in the mid-upper turret was pointing to his leg and the shrapnel had gone through at the thigh which rendered him, his control of his foot etcetera to be nullified. So wireless op and bombardier got him out of the turret and laid him down in the fuselage, bandaged him up and they cut his trousers first in order to find out where the where he’s bleeding. And they did a good job on him because you know if a chap’s losing blood he’s losing life blood. So, anyway, the skipper said to navigator, ‘Give me a course for home.’ He gave him a course irrespective of what we were flying over and he pointed the nose in the right direction and off we went and we were soon back. I suppose at — oh yes it was awkward because there was a mist coming up and a fog but we were pointed towards Orfordness and the aerodrome there which had FIDO. Fog Dispersal [pause] Fog Incandescent Dispersal Organisation. So we were able to fly around once firing off all the red flares that we had so they should know down below that we hadn’t got radio, we hadn’t got brakes. But it’s a long runway and it was called [pause] There were two — one was at Carnaby further up the coast. This was Woodbridge. Straight in off the sea straight on the ‘drome. So it was getting pretty misty and it was closing in. November is a bad month isn’t it? Anyway, we got down didn’t we? And we managed to take up the full length of the runway, ended up on the grass at the end. But nevertheless we were off out of trouble. And along came, well they knew full well that this aircraft was damaged. Couldn’t talk to us. So they sent out the wagon and dear Jim was soon in hospital. And we, along with a couple, quite a few dozen others descended on the cookhouse for a supper, you know. Which we did eventually get because they didn’t expected all these people to come in 5 o’clock in the afternoon. And so what do you do? We’re down at Orfordness there in the east coast of Essex. They gave us tickets back to London and then back to York which was an excuse for everybody to spend the night in London. But I was lucky because I could get an electric train just down to Woolwich as it were and back home. We never got pulled up. None of us had hats. Well, I think, I think the skipper did because he was very particular about carrying his nice peak cap, you know. However — yeah, so we, but that’s only one of about six different aircraft that we had on the tour. Some of the numbers are in the logbook. But where we had different problems — for instance on one occasion we had a seagull in the engine nacelle which put that out of action. So of course you didn’t use that aeroplane the next day. We had so many we could have a new one every day if necessary. As I say, we had about seven. We got the undercart. That went down alright otherwise we wouldn’t be here would we? But it could be things like that which would be, could be very dodgy. And we eventually finished our tour on oil installations. Let’s see [pause] towards the end. Towards the end. Towards the [pause] October. October. Through Christmas. Probably about January or February of ‘45 and that was the end of our tour. And we had done twenty daylights and about thirteen night trips which clocked up something like four hundred, five hundred hours flying. Full stop. CB: We’ll stop there for a — [recording paused] CB: So we’re just, we’re just doing a recap now which is on the damage on the aircraft. ESH: Yes. CB: So starting at the point of the big explosion. Then what happened and what was the effect? ESH: Well I hope I can remember. CB: That’s alright. [pause] ESH: Well we left the target area and unfortunately we may have erred to one side of the Window cover which of course blocks out their radar and nullifies their accuracy. But nevertheless they caught us up and in a flash there was an almighty bang and our hearing disappeared straight away and the skipper put it into a dive, And down we went. Down. Down. Down. Something like eight thousand feet I suppose before we levelled out and that was a relief but we were then, I was then able, as a flight engineer to move around and observe any damage and by jingo there was. Looking out the port side — the starboard side the flaps had disappeared. One important, very important thing. The whole side of the aircraft was peppered and daylight was, it was more or less a window. And our mid-upper gunner, now our hearing had come back and our visibility was quite goon— pointed to his leg and indeed he had caught, been caught by shrapnel right through his thigh from his turret. So that very shortly after our wireless operator and our bombardier came out and got him out of the turret and cut his trouser and stopped the flow of his blood. And we realised it was very urgent to get back to England because, fortunately our four engines are still turning over in spite of losing some major control of the aircraft, so on arriving at Woodbridge which was a mighty long ‘drome a mighty long runway and very wide too we had to circle. We had to tell the ground what was happening. And so there we were flying, running off red verey lights in case there were other aircraft in the circuit, but there was no issue. We did one. One circuit around the flying control and straight in to the funnel of the runway. Without — without radio we felt pretty helpless. The fog had closed in on the aerodrome now at this time but he was an A1 skipper and as I say one of his things that he was so good at was flying blind, he could fly in any condition. He got us down and we got Jimmy into the transport and away to the nearest hospital. [pause] CB: Was there any fire on the aircraft? ESH: No. Fortunately we didn’t have fire. Which is a pretty terrible thing. CB: So you had no, no hydraulics and you had no electrics. How did you get the undercarriage down? ESH: Well, it’s heavy, it’s a very heavy undercarriage. Massive wheels on a Halifax. Six foot high nearly. If I remember rightly the hydraulics had gone which serves flaps, bomb doors, undercarriage and, actually what happened is [pause] there is another precaution because if your — [pause] CB: You could wind it down could you? ESH: No. There was a precaution against it falling down which is called withdrawing the uplocks. This is a job that the flight engineer had to do. He would go down to what the rest position which is where our mid-upper gunner was. And there are two D rings. One each side protruding from the fuselage. The cable obviously comes through the back of the wing because the undercarriage would have been beneath the wing, and it was a simple system. Ok. You pulled the D ring which pulled a cable which released a sort of a gate bolt. This bolt, if you can imagine a gate bolt, held up the undercarriage. So the undercarriage would automatically fall down. So that’s obviously what the, as flight engineer, I did on approaching. We were fortunate in as much as that was all intact. I mean if the aircraft had lost its undercarriage earlier you not only would it have caused a lot more loss of fuel flying with an undercarriage down, total drag. But in this case no. The uplocks worked. Irrespective of any hydraulic system. And of course your warning lights came on here and there. CB: Ok. ESH: We covered that have we? CB: You have. Yeah. ESH: So therefore we got — we were on the ground, Jimmy’s off to hospital and we are left to go and find our supper again with another hundred bods as we used to call ourselves. The next morning we were given a pass to go back to Pocklington via London so everyone had a night in London if they couldn’t get home. We all seemed to arrive the next morning for the 10 o’clock up to King’s Cross, up to York and that was the end of that sticky situation. CB: When you had a night in London where did you stay? ESH: Well I was able to go back. Once we got to London I was able to go back to Plumstead to my folks, and one or two of the other crew had friends that they could call on. Or relations. In fact Skipper Francis had some relations down in Slough way. Now, Ron Alderton, the rear gunner, had Canadian friends temporary and he did a night of the rounds of whatever pubs he could find and night clubs. He had quite a roaring time. I mean we didn’t need to get a train before 11 o’clock from Kings Cross to get back to York. So, on the train back we were, you know, reminiscing. And I always remember I’d tried to write out something for the, for the skipper at the time when all our hearing had gone and it was an absolute shambles. Unfortunately, you couldn’t hear anything and I found I couldn’t even spell the word fuselage. What I should have done was “Jim hit.” Two words would have conveyed that but instead of that — in the event you do not act logically and you would find that you had difficulty in getting to grips with language. You could move about and you knew exactly what you should do but you couldn’t think it through. But we were all in the same boat weren’t we? We all lost our hearing for quite a time. CB: So you — ESH: But we got back. That was the thing. CB: You experienced the initial shock. When did the secondary shock hit you and what was that like? ESH: Well, we had a night’s sleep, as you will appreciate, in London and I suppose we were rehearsing the events in the train for five hours. But we well appreciated that we were very lucky. But I don’t think at that time that that sort of event had too much effect on a crew. We were all together weren’t we? Jimmy was unfortunate but he wasn’t killed. That would have been a terrible disaster. So therefore I think we’d already been used to five years of war. I mean I’m talking about ’39 onwards, you’ve already had four years and you became inured to stress, in effect. So although we went back over the ground again but we were as a crew, we were complete. We were very lucky. CB: How long before jimmy rejoined you? ESH: Jimmy, unfortunately was off to hospital in Oswestry and he was ruled out forever more as a flyer and we received then a young gentleman from Scotland called Onderson. He was very broad and I think mostly we didn’t call him Ian, I think we just called him Jock and he was quite happy with that. And he finished up something like five or six operations with us. He became one of us obviously. [pause] CB: Now, you were saying that you did thirty. In your tour there were thirty ops, twenty of them were daylight. How many of those were to do with the V weapons and what happened? ESH: Well, as we said the V weapons and the P-planes. The V weapon was of course outside our control. It’s a rocket and you don’t hear it coming, you don’t know it’s left the ground even. And if you were anywhere near it then it could destroy half a dozen houses at one time. So we were mainly concentrating on P plane sites because you could flatten them. Until they put them on lorries and then of course you couldn’t find them. So, yes. CB: So you were, you were in daylight but how easy or difficult was it to find the V1 initially and then V2 sites? ESH: Well, I don’t think that we could ever find — the V1 for instance was secreted in the middle of a forest and certainly fighters could eventually have a go because they could see them and once we’d identified, or the Air Ministry had identified the location they knew what they were looking for on lorries. They would shoot them up but of course V2 was purely a mobile rocket. But once it was off it was off and it would perform a perambular and no one knew it had gone and no one knew it was coming. And there was just a terrible explosion and five houses could be — disappear. CB: But the V1 sites, as you said, in forests — how effective would you say your endeavours were in dealing with those? ESH: Well you want the truth. A question like where would you find the P- plane sites in a forest? All we had to go on really was what came back from our agents by wireless. That there was this activity in a certain place which the Air Ministry would identify, or the sight would be identified and it would be marked on our maps, as I say, as a very obscure village in Pas-de-Calais. The only thing we could do was mass bombing. In fact I don’t remember a site which wasn’t bombed on each occasion with less than three hundred aircraft. So that you hoped that within that aiming point you would destroy it. And I think we did a lot but not all. CB: Saturation bombing. ESH: Yes. That was the idea. Saturation bombing [pause] Stop. CB: Ok. [recording paused] CB: Now, some of your endeavours at bombing these V1 sites perhaps were more effective than others. Was there one site you went to several times? ESH: What? A V1? CB: Yeah. In Dieppe. ESH: Yeah. Foret de Dieppe. Did I not mention earlier? CB: No. So, just, just cover that can you? The fact you went several times. ESH: Oh yes indeed. CB: Why did you go to that several times? ESH: Yes. In order to mitigate this nuisance of the V2, V1s of which many thousands were being aimed at England at the time on a fixed track. One morning, in fact five or six mornings continuously we searched out a fixed ramp in a forest called Foret de Nieppe. Which of course is in the Pas-de-Calais, if you can find it. And it took thousands of tonnes, must have done, to obliterate that site. But it was, it wasn’t able to fire off these V1s in rapid succession because, you know the Germans were very thorough and got it to a high state of proficiency but we did concentrate for many weeks and months on finishing off these P-planes because it was aimed at civilian population. CB: How many times did you actually see V1s flying towards Britain on your way to the target? ESH: Well fighter pilots did of course but not, not us. CB: You were too high up, were you, to see them? ESH: Yes. I mean they didn’t, they came in at about two thousand feet so I can’t say I saw one. But I saw the damage and I experienced a V2 standing on Albany Park Station which was on the, what’s called the Dartford loop line. Bexley Heath, Barnehurst and down there. And I was standing on the station and this thing dropped a quarter of a mile away and I had to ask the station staff what that was. I mean, you know, I didn’t see it. If I’d have gone along I’d have seen a row of houses demolished but that. No. CB: And what was their reaction to your question? ESH: Who? CB: The railway people. ESH: Well he sort of said, ‘Where have you been?’ Because it was — this is not live is it? Well he wondered where I’d been not to know that London was being plastered with P-planes bombs. That sounded by the way like a common 6oo cc motorcycle engine. CB: And you weren’t able to tell them what you were doing to counter this. You weren’t able to explain what you were doing, to the people in London. ESH: No. Well they could see — CB: Bombing. ESH: They could see I was in uniform. CB: Yes. ESH: But they were so busy with their ordinary lives that I was just one of two million servicemen. It didn’t rate more highly than that. CB: Right. Ok. ESH: Pause? CB: Yeah. [recording paused] CB: So what other events were noteworthy. ESH: Ah well, now what comes to mind straightaway is on the way in to a target to see an actual aircraft hit. And you must remember this has got a full bomb load of what ten [pause] what had we got — five twenty thousand pounds of TNT going up as well as the fire bombs, and it’s the most horrifying experience. But I do remember that occasion when — and the skipper was quick to point out that the Germans did send up what they called Scarecrows. But I’m sure this would be more than that because the whole sky around that aircraft was just bits, black bits in the sky. Now, you see a Scarecrow couldn’t put up that much material could it? I don’t think so. I think this was a very salutary experience but you didn’t dwell on it because, well, you know, it could be happening at night time and you never knew anything about it. CB: So we’re talking about night time now are we? ESH: No. Night time, other than someone standing and throwing grit at your aeroplane that was the only indication you would have had that there were some shells very close by, but you see what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve. Although you might feel the effect of it, especially if you’d another aircraft in front of you you’d be perhaps very difficult as a pilot to maintain your position because you’re right in his slipstream. And there’s a slipstream of four engines just in front of you. I mean there were so many aircraft in the sky that it’s a wonder and in fact we lost a lot of aircraft because of collision. Indeed we did if the truth is known. No, there’s a bit of variation. We also had some trips with mine laying. Now, what happens? Mine laying. Well we had a chap from the navy came up and showed us exactly what’s going to happen because these things are quite weighty. I think they weighed about a matter of hundred weights and I think the maximum we could carry would be two. But there would be a whole squadron perhaps, or a lot of aircraft from other stations, all on the same business, and so off we went out across the North Sea and in to the Baltic. We had to pass over an island called Bornholm. Now, how far it is into the Baltic I don’t know, not very far perhaps because we were after this shipping route between Swedish oil coming down to feed the German factories. But I do remember dear old Bornholm put up some ack-ack you know [laughs] as though they could catch us with it. One little gun you know. It was a bit of humour in a not too humorous event. But that made a change from flying over the Ruhr because actually the first time I saw the Ruhr at night, well you’d never believe it. We came into the south of Ruhr and there was a bank of searchlights for the next fifty miles. Up and curving around. And, you know, when the chaps had said you’ve got to avoid searchlights I can understand because once you get pinned or — [Mobile ring tone. Recording paused] CB: So we’re talking about in the Ruhr and the way they would have, the place was defended. ESH: Yes. Right. CB: And how they were able, in the dark to track where people were going. ESH: Well if I describe the scene. CB: Yeah. ESH: The first time you saw these early night trips that we did it took a bit of getting used to. And the first time I saw searchlights. Now, if you can imagine Kiel up in North Germany. Right around and come down through the rest of the Ruhr down to [pause] what town would be the south of the Ruhr? CB: Stuttgart. Stuttgart. ESH: Stuttgart. And Nuremberg. That is something like fifty miles isn’t it? Or more. CB: More. ESH: A solid ring of thousands of searchlights, it was like day. And it curved actually from the north right down. Facing England to the south. Stuttgart. Nuremberg. And even further south than that I think. A solid — banks of hundreds. And if, if you got near one they had one particular, in groups, they had one particular searchlight which was extra powerful and it used to show up blue, and, well we did get coned on one occasion. We were lucky because very often you couldn’t get out of it. There were so many and they could sort of follow your track and there was this master searchlight and everybody else was following. And what we did, we managed to get out by just diving and weaving. And I suppose we lost a few hundred feet and you had to make that up because you had a flight plan. You know, you didn’t depart from that flight plan. You just didn’t go off on your own doing your own thing. That was certain, certain tragedy that would be because you had whole squadrons of night fighters still and they were still able to fly. Although, they couldn’t do the training because they hadn’t got the petrol, so the petrol bombardment was beginning to show. I mean we’re talking now about mid-’45 aren’t we, you see? Sorry — CB: ’44. ESH: ’44. From ’44 to the end of ’44 it was gradually having an effect on German oil production, synthetic oil. And of course being as they were small patches they were very difficult to find. I mean, you might have one oil refinery and its ten miles from the nearest town. Now, you’ve got to be very accurate to get anything delivered to that site and — if you could get there, you know. But of course the German fighter production was going down so fast that I think we had a charmed existence from nineteen — from June ‘45 really to, or September ’45 to the end of [pause] ’44 to the end of ’44. I mean we were very busy D-Day time for the next three months, and then it sort of slackened off because you were limited to what you could do in the way of army cooperation. In fact the army didn’t want the Air Force to take full credit for having liberated Germany. So [pause] but raids were still being, operations were still being carried out by the squadron right through to mid-‘45. Or ‘til D-Day. CB: You talked about the intensity of searchlights. What effect did that have on the air bomber’s ability to identify the target? ESH: Well, searchlights. Yes. But you had visual and of course later in — from D-Day onwards the squadrons were equipped with H2S which was radar with the ability to show up features on the ground. To be able to distinguish between water and land. Now, if an oil refinery was situated just off a river that aiming point would certainly be able to be calculated and it left an aiming point for a whole squadron of aircraft marked by Pathfinders. You didn’t go on your own. It was, at that time, after D-Day, everything was Pathfinders and they would blaze the trail and you’d have a Master Bomber and he would come through your RT. I remember one occasion when the Main Force was given a name so it would come out rather like this. ‘Widow 1, Widow 1 to Main Force. Bomb the red TIs.’ And then a minute later, ‘Widow 1 to Main Force. Bomb the yellow TIs.’ Because of bomb creep. CB: TI being target indicator. ESH: Target indicator. Yes. So you had a whole spectrum of colours. Red. Green. Blue. Yellow. And they could be changed rapidly by RT from the master bomber to the main force so that he kept, you kept pace with bomb creep and you became more effective with that. In fact very effective in the end. I mean such people as Wing Commander Cheshire as he was then would be up the front there giving the, giving that RT direction. CB: Would you like to just explain what is bomb creep? Bomb creep. What is it? ESH: Bomb creep. Yes. What happens is that [pause] it creeps back rather than on to the target. How it happens — I suppose if you’ve got a conflagration then bombardiers could think that that was where you should be aiming. So a lot of aircraft, I mean, don’t forget there are five hundred aircraft on this job so that some of them would think that was the target. But, so the Master Bomber had to keep reminding people that it was creeping back and it shouldn’t do. He’s got to go on to his new target indicators. And he changed the colour of course. So you knew what to look for. Otherwise your bomb load was nullified. CB: Ok. ESH: Go on to [pause] CB: Yeah go on. So we’ll stop there for a mo. ESH: Yeah then — [recording paused] ESH: I said Cora’s mum and dad yes. CB: Yes. On a slightly lighter note clearly as a crew you had your, and personally you had your social side. So what did the crew do, and what did you do individually? ESH: Well, that’s what I did individually and didn’t take any part in any social activities with the crew. CB: Right. So what did you do? ESH: I didn’t go drinking, you see. CB: No. So what did you do? ESH: I spent most of my time in York. CB: Right. And what did you find there? ESH: This family. CB: Right. ESH: And I was made like a son. CB: Were you? ESH: So I didn’t — we all went as a family to the theatre one evening and we saw the famous lady who had just started acting. She was in, “Last of the Summer Wine.” Very famous. You chaps have got memories haven’t you? CB: We’ll latch on to her later. So, but but the family — ESH: I’d better jot her name down while I think of it. CB: Ok. Yeah. So you — ESH: Thora Hird. CB: Yeah. So the family was in York. What did the father do? ESH: He was invalided. He couldn’t do anything because of the start of silicosis. CB: Right, but what was his trade? ESH: That was — he was in charge. He had his own firm of plasterers. CB: Right. ESH: So I’ll go on to that. I’ll just make a quick note, Thora Hird. CB: And they had a son and a daughter. ESH: Yeah. Yeah. Famous restaurant in the middle of York. Still there. CB: But you’d go to that as well would you? ESH: Yeah. I’ve got it. Yes. CB: Go on. ESH: Ok. CB: Yeah. ESH: Live? CB: Yes. ESH: We were talking about the social life on the squadron. Well, as I say I think I was eighteen when I, nineteen when I arrived there, and went out into York and I met this delightful young lady called Cora. And she said, ‘Well, if I’m going out with you my people want to see you.’ So I went along and they became my mum and dad for that time. And her dad was a, had a plastering firm but he was suffering then from, I think, the start of silicosis and he couldn’t work but nevertheless they went out of their way to look after me, and of course the extra attraction was of course la belle Cora. And at that time there was a show going in York and who should be a young actress was Thora Hird. But I don’t think she remembers that herself now, bless her. She’s passed on hasn’t she? But Mr Parker’s claim to fame as a plasterer was the ceilings, for instance, in Betty’s Bar. Now Betty’s Bar is very well known in York and it’s still there. And if you go down into the basement you will find a mirror which is now cut up into three parts. And pretty well every famous flyer has got his signature on the glass having done with a diamond ring. And they’re all there. I think you’ll find Group Captain Cheshire left his mark there. And quite a lot of others passed through but they’re all on this mirror. So that’s down in the basement of Betty’s Bar. It’s worth going down to see. There’s history galore down there. So they looked after me like a mother and father, not withstanding the fact they had a son in the Middle East. With the 8th Army I think it was. But of course being really a dangerous occupation I had no business stringing this girl along. I mean I was her first boyfriend and you know the effect that has on young ladies. So, the crew were very good. They didn’t question me as to where I was spending all this time you see. Which brings us to — CB: How you broke it off. ESH: How we —? CB: Broke it off. ESH: Oh yes. I mean, we used to have, our famous perambulation was around the wall of York. And, you know it took quite a time so, and broke her heart I’m sure, but it had to finish. It would had been too traumatic otherwise. And we were then left to finish our tour which, there again was mainly oil installations. But come September of ’44 the CO called us all into the briefing room and said, ‘Now we’re all going to France tomorrow. We are bringing petrol to the army.’ The army was fighting at Eindhoven and so they said, ‘You are going to be loaded up with petrol,’ which they did. Each aircraft. Two hundred and fifty, five gallon cans stacked along the fuselage and tied in so they didn’t bounce around. Off we went to a German field which they’d laid out what’s called Sommerfield tracking to stop an aircraft or aircraft and vehicles bogging down in a puddle. So that was rather jolly. I mean there we were — flew a hundred feet all the way. And really that’s one of the nicest things to do, you know. Flying low level where we’d see haystacks with pigs on top because Jerry had pulled the plug on the dyke. Very naughty of course but you know it really devastated thousands of acres. And we had to fly over that into Brussels. Well into an area of Brussels called Melsbroek which was just a grass field. And it was very enjoyable. We landed there and fresh air and went to the village and do you know what? There were grapes growing on the trees. Oh grapes. Well, I mean who wants to leave there? Anyway, this so happens, you know that we tried to get off the next day, I’m sure it was the next day. So soon you could be accused of organising this. But we oiled up the plugs trying to get out of a big puddle and there’s no way you’re going to get out of it because what the wheels do and they’re big, they just churn a great gap, pit in the soil. So therefore that was, we were stuck there until you get a fitter out with a set of plugs to put it right, and I think all four engines were oiled up. Anyway, that meant that we had three days in Brussels. So what did we do? The first day we piled into a local tram and went into Brussels where we stayed at the Gare de Nord Hotel. And I was the only one who had any money [laughs] you know, because they said now any money you’ve got to change it. You’ve got to, sorry we had to change it for the currency that was wartime currency. And so of course our money was soon gone staying at hotels. And we went in to one, oh yes we, I must tell you a little story here. We went in to one hotel and up to the second floor and it was a night club with an amphitheatre and a stage and events, you know. Acts taking place. But on the way up the staircase in a corner there were two six foot six American sergeants and they had a lovely carton of cigarettes, a big carton. And they were presumably flogging them off. I mean if they could get another carton like that they’d make a fortune because there were no cigarettes in Europe. In fact, people would give you their gold watch for a packet of cigarettes but that — now our rear gunner being a sort of international type said, ‘No,’ we must find, he’d come from Canada on, he was trained for something else in Canada because he talked about Montreal. And he said, ‘We must see an exhibition.’ And actually it wasn’t what I fancied but anyway we didn’t get that far because there was no exhibition. So we met this old boy in the road and Ron says, ‘Exhibition?’ So, he didn’t speak French perfectly. The chap was quite happy. This old boy. ‘Come with me. Come with me.’ And off we went with this chap down the main thoroughfare and down some back entrances, back places, back roads, alleyways to a pub. And this pub was run by this aged lady who sat at the high stool and dished up what went, passed as beer. And there were us. We were all sitting around on stool, a continuous stool like in a queue. And I mean, you know, it was alright. A bit of light fare. And the skipper was there of course and he hadn’t taken his hat off that time. And in comes all th ese girls in bathing costumes. I mean, to eighteen year olds you know this is seventh heaven isn’t it? What’s next then? And they were sitting on our knees and some of them very shapely. And the skipper suddenly caught on, he said ‘Right. Here’s the gun. Out you lot.’ And we had to leave because it was a brothel wasn’t it? And he wasn’t, he wasn’t having his crew sullied by such goings on. So, that was, that was Brussels for me. CB: So you got two black eyes and you couldn’t hear anything either. ESH: [laughs] So. No. We had to make apologies to these young ladies and disappear. We would have liked to pass on perhaps a bar of chocolate. CB: Of course. ESH: But we didn’t go prepared. But it’s a pity. But Ron did — he went to a private family that night. I don’t know what the attraction was but anyway he did — no. Johnny Morris this is, ex schoolteacher. He obviously thought about it because he brought a bag of coffee back next time and made arrangements for it to be delivered to a particular curie. A priest at the local church who he had met somehow. But that’s the best we could do really. Normally you went in with your two hundred and fifty gallons. The army came up with a truck, unloaded [pause] and there we went off again. The next day with another load. So we were really kept busy bringing in something like two thousand gallons at a time for the army to use up at Eindhoven. Because they were six hundred miles from the port at that stage and just couldn’t keep going, you know. I thought I saw somebody moving out there but maybe I’m wrong. CB: So did you carry, did you then later deliver any other kind of goods or was it only petrol? ESH: Only petrol. But I believe later. Very soon. Our squadrons were engaged on dropping supplies to Amsterdam and it made a great impression on our Dutch friends. CB: That was food. Operation Manna. ESH: Yes. CB: Yes. ESH: We weren’t engaged on that but rather carried on with the last few trips into Europe. CB: So when you come to the end of your tour what happened then to the crew? ESH: Ah yes. Well, do you know on the aerodrome was an experimental department run by a squadron leader. And they, one of the problems with the Halifax was coring of the oil in the oil tank. Super cooling. And it was called coring. And every effort was being made, well funny enough in my tour I never came, never had the problem. I dare say we never flew in an icing. What you call an icing. CB: Weather condition. ESH: Yeah. You get icing conditions at certain heights and if you stayed in it it was very bad for the oil coolers but we managed to keep out of that. But a lot of experimental work was being done because a lot of the aircraft did — was affected. And so they, we worked for the experimental department there which was set up at Pocklington. Going on cross country’s with modified aircraft that in effect would fly through anything up to Scotland and back in the hope that we would be able to pinpoint the procedures to cure it. But unfortunately we had an aircraft, an aircraft engine go over speed for some reason so that rather folded up at that time. CB: Which kind of engine was that? ESH: Well, Halifax — a Bristol Hercules 100. That was the latest. But coring was a very difficult thing. So of course what was happening was that everyone was now asking us to be re-mustered. There was nothing for us to do except hang around. So — CB: Was there an option of going on another tour? ESH: Oh yes, that was always an option, yes indeed. But — and a lot of the chaps did but I think I was more anxious to go back to civilian life. But I was ‘Duration of Present Emergency.’ Or I was D of P E. CB: Yeah. ESH: And of course they were not giving out any commissions at that time. So there wouldn’t have been a lot of future in staying so I applied to be re-mustered. CB: And what happened? ESH: And then left Pocklington. CB: Ok. ESH: Being posted to whatever came up in the Air Ministry I suppose. And off we went then re-mustering at a famous station for the army in north Cornwall — north [pause] Catterick. Now, there was a little RAF station for re-mustering at Catterick in an ex-mine working. Anyway, my number came up eventually but in the meantime we were sent on indefinite leave. Now, I didn’t want to have to pay to go to the skipper’s wedding because train fare was quite expensive. But I gave his address on my 48. My seven day pass as it were. Or indefinite leave. The consequence of that will be explained a bit later. CB: Right. ESH: But from there I got a letter a little later being posted to the Isle of Man as an airfield controller. But it just so happened that my papers actually never got to my home. They got to the skipper’s address. Now, you can have a bit of a laugh if you’ve been in the service because this was six weeks later, or rather that was alright but it was the last seven days. I was absent without leave. But I turned up. I was on my way to the Isle of Man. Well, I got to the Isle of Man alright. Yes. And having got to the Isle of Man you got off at Douglas and, you know, looked at the local restaurant. Two eggs, steak and chips, that’s marvellous. Have some of that. So immediately dived in and had a good nosh as we used to say. And then you got a little local narrow gauge train up to the Isle of Man up to the north. Because I was going to be stationed at a little place called Jurby which was a good hopping off point for anybody going to or coming from Reykjavic. Which, I would then put three searchlights up to guide them in. But it was more disastrous from my point of view because what could the CO do? He has a chap seven days adrift. The first — I went to the guardroom and he said, ‘We’ve been looking for you. You’re seven days adrift.’ So, go up before the CO. Very nice chap. By the way first of all you have to be vetted by the station WO and he actually said, ‘Do you know I’m awfully sorry to have to do this but you’re up before the CO tomorrow.’ So, you march in, in the usual way with the, you know, left right left right left. Turn right. ‘So young man. What do you want to do? A court martial or do you want my punishment?’ ‘Well your punishment sir. Thank you.’ ‘Right. Seven days loss of pay.’ And do you know what? You can imagine the scene can’t you? Pay parade. And you announce yourself before the cashier’s table, ‘1869854 Horsham. Sir.’ And he would say, ‘Three and sixpence.’ This went on for weeks at three and six pence a week it takes quite a time to get to four pounds forty. Seven days pay you see. You can clue that if you like but its [pause] but indeed I think because we had a chap at High Wycombe and he was called Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Harris and of course they did think twice before they shoved the book at one of Bomber Harris’s boys. And I think I was saved by that because it’s a heinous crime in the air force to be AWOL anywhere. Anyway, we carry on from there because I enjoyed the time on the Isle of Man. Being in charge of the airfield. Not a lot went on but we did [pause] we were a home for stray aircraft and of course the station was very busy training the rest of The Empire Air Scheme for training navigators. And we would use, or they would use Ansons. So of course we had a squadron of Ansons to fulfil the contract. And of course my job, one of the jobs, mine and my crew — I had a crew by then of Scots lads that were setting up a parking area with glim lamps every day, because they were doing night flying, and these glim lights were fuelled by accumulators and shone a red light. And you had to put them in a certain order because then the aircraft on the way back knew where they were to park. And they used to get it in the neck if they ran over a glim lamp. Other than that when we wasn’t flying we were all in flying control and we used to do a shift where we had two and a half days off. They still do that in the police force apparently, here. Afternoon, next morning or night, off the next day and the next day and the following morning. So that enabled you to go and see the local sights. Peel Castle on the Isle of Man. And of course we did get busy aircraft and they would come in some awful times from Reykjavik and sometimes I was, what did they call it? Duty officer? Duty. Yeah. Duty officer. And I had to find them accommodation so I had to lay the law down. Pull rank on whoever was in charge of the blanket store so that these chaps had a night’s sleep and could get, we would — the cookhouse would provide a supper for them. That broke up your time. So, in effect, eventually they sent us back to the mainland. To top — I was stationed at Topcliffe which was an ex-Canadian station and underneath every table and ever chair was chewing gum [laughs] That’s how I remember the Canadians. But there was no flying going on which was a shame because we [pause] I was only thinking these chaps had applied for discharge and therefore I was in charge of an airfield with no aircraft. We kept the grass nice and tidy. But as I say we could go into, no, we couldn’t go in to Topcliffe for two eggs, steak and chips. It was unheard of. But what you could do is you could go to a local village called Topwith . Now, there are two brewers in Tadcaster. One is Sam Smith and one is John Smith. Now, you’ll know John Smith because his beer is everywhere but what we ought to have down here is Sam Smith’s which was thick and black. And it was as black as your coat. Black as night and it was the next best thing today to Mackesons. But you could get quite squeamish, not squeamish — quite drunk on it. So then you met up with a lot of other interesting aircrew and you absorbed their experiences, and then gradually, one by one, they disappeared. As I did one day. On the 2nd of January 1947, in the bleak midwinter. It was very bleak down south anyway and there had been a lot of snow around. One interesting side now, talking about cold. We were very cold in Pocklington so we could burn, burn bicycle tyres in the hut. But old Jim said, ‘Do you know what,’ Jim Finney that was then [pause] now wait a minute I’m wrong. Jim has already had that shrapnel in his leg. But anyway, there was another member in the crew. It must have been Alan Shepherd, the wireless op. He said, ‘I know. There’s a bottle of petrol over there.’ And somewhere someone had left a bottle of petrol. And it was a hundred octane. So he said, ‘Stick it in the stove to get it nice and warm.’ And it did. It blew the whole thing apart [laughs] Which wasn’t very clever was it? Anyway, we’ve left. We’re at Topcliffe aren’t we? And then, sooner or later, ok the 7th of January or thereabouts I found myself out on my ear having been discharged at, somewhere near Preston. And we asked for a taxi and do you know that’s the only time in my life so far that I ever have driven in a Rolls Royce. There was a very famous place near Preston. If it wasn’t Preston it was Southport where there was a big demob place. Anyway, that’s where we ended up, in a taxi going to Preston Station. And home on indefinite leave still. Well, no a fortnight wasn’t it then? Fourteen days and that was it finished. Now, the thing is then going back to the old firm. Now, I found myself in the railway estate office before long but they didn’t really want me I don’t think. They said, ‘You can go up to Victoria Station and go to the archives.’ Temporarily. So that was a fill-in job. Going back through papers going back to 1900 where people had to pay for a sort of fly privilege to bring a pony and trap on to the station property and they had to enter into an agreement. Time goes by awfully quickly doesn’t it when you’re demobbed? So I stuck with the estates office for [pause] until 1957. And I didn’t seem to be going anywhere much so I went out into the big bad commercial world. And went to a builder’s merchants called Roberts Adlard who were quite famous in the southern counties. Their headquarters were Southampton. I had this friend of mine who was a rep and that’s how I got there. But, and mind you I’d left London so it was a big change to go to work in Rochester Cathedral, Rochester, the ancient town on the Medway. Rochester Cathedral. Yes. And this builder’s merchants wasn’t going anywhere so Horsham said to himself, ‘Look. Hadn’t you better find a job with a pension?’ So I had experience in the estate office which was very similar to the housing department of Rochester City Council. And applied and got the job as a rent collector of all things. Going around collecting. They had five thousand houses all broken up in to thirty different schemes or so. So that enabled a transition from that to a more permanent sphere. And of course the only way you can get up the scale in local government is either by passing a lot of examinations or becoming a professional man, like, I don’t know, an accountant which is a good solid five years work. But no there we were at Rochester with several other ex-service people especially from the navy, being next to Chatham. And so we said, you know, ‘What about a rise?’ They said, ‘Oh no. No. No. We can’t give you that but if you take a certain examination there will be money in it for you.’ So the one I took was the simple one. It was the clerical division of local government. That is talking about local and central government. Writing an essay etcetera. And after six months we took the exam and we all passed. So we thought go and see the governor again now. A different kind of governor. And for passing the examination I think — I was paid five ninety in those days. So he said, ‘Yes. Well, you can go up to five ninety five.’ A five pound a year increase. So we’ve got to do better than this. So you had lists of jobs you see, circulated. And the next port of call was Maidstone Borough Council as a senior rentable assistant in charge of five rent collectors and proving the books every weekend. Now Rochester City was a purely written system. Now I got to Maidstone and it was all done by a machine called a Powers - Samas punch card accounting. And a dreadful business because my collectors used to go out with a run off. The rent for various properties. And they would put X Y Z here and they wouldn’t put anything on their sheet. So, immediately you were what –? Two pound fifty out. I used to be there at half past nine, 10 o’clock at night on a Friday balancing the books because you had, in effect, over thirty different schemes so you had to sit down and balance these schemes to find out where the error was. Which was good training wasn’t it? CB: Amazing. Yes. ESH: I remember the deputy who we worked under. You never saw the treasurer. He was the high and mighty. The holy of holies. But I saw the treasurer on one occasion. He said, ‘Horsham,’ he said, ‘How is it that you spent all this overtime?’ Four hours on a Friday night, you know. I said, ‘Well you know. The chaps put one thing on the sheet and then put another in the book.’ He said, ‘Horsham you really should consider the propriety of asking for overtime.’ It’s not much of a thing to a chap who’s just put four hours extra sweating his guts out. Anyway, that’s another aside isn’t it? Next thing is of course to get promotion isn’t it? And where did I go from there? Yes. I applied for a job in the County Council’s office, in the planning department. Which is where I ended up in 1978. Yeah. 1978. And then took a sort of early retirement. CB: How old? How old were you when you took early retirement? ESH: In ‘78. I was born in 1923. CB: Oh right. ESH: ’23. CB: Fifty five. ESH: Just short of sixty. Oh there’s a bit more to come isn’t there? CB: Go on then. ESH: Yeah. Well then [pause] I go back, to retrack a little bit. Going back to my days at Maidstone Borough. Wasn’t getting much anywhere and a friend of mine, who lived adjacent to us said, ‘Why don’t you come into the poultry business with me?’ He said, ‘We could then step the production.’ Because he was, he was managing single handed two thousand layers. So we promptly put some new housing up and I put all my wealth into it and we ended up with eight thousand head of poultry. Not quite as big as JB Eastwood who came along and said, ‘Look you chaps. I don’t care, I’ve got millions of birds. And I don’t care if I only get a farthing a head. I shall still make a profit.’ Which was quite true but it was disastrous for us because we couldn’t compete with that although we did very well. I mean we had a neighbour a few miles away and he was able to keep five thousand which was less than we had. And he could work in the mornings and take all the afternoons off and play golf. That’s what he did. We thought that’s a good idea. But we were saddled with our eight thousand and with fowl pest in the offing if we didn’t look after it then we’d be sunk. Nobody else was going to look after it. So you put in a fairly, a fairly full day. Eight till five minimum. But it was very good experience because it sort of taught me that come what may I could always get a job because you’ve got some skills. Especially you’d be very valuable to a poultry farmer if you could go in and say, ‘I can go in and look after ten thousand.’ He’d say, ‘Well, you know, I’m like Mr JB Eastwood. I’ve got millions.’ But nevertheless it was the same principal. So we didn’t make a fortune but we didn’t lose our shirt. I say we being collective. And then what did I do next? Well, I went back to the old firm didn’t I? Back to local government. Into the planning department this time, of the County Council. And my draughtsmanship experience came in very handy because we dealt with maps all day long. And so in 1974 I got the most marvellous job because the ministries were all on to local governments and County Councils to find out how many, what land have you got. You don’t even know what you’ve got to build houses on. And he said, ‘Well Horsham. The job’s yours. And we will depict it on a twenty five hundred scale ordnance survey sheets,’ which was a bit better than what you get on your deeds, you know. You could even show a rainwater pipe on a twenty five hundred scale. And Kent had forty seven, forty eight District Councils which I had to visit one after the other because if you didn’t carry the local authority with you you’d be sunk. They hated County Council. And they hated them because they put extra on their rates didn’t they? So that was a very enjoyable job. So thirty nine, forty, forty one, forty two [pause] No. What do I say? 1974 — 5 — 6 — 7 - 8. It took four years to do but at the end of the time we could show in the planning department that we had fifty two thousand units of accommodation each housing three people. That was your capacity then but of course a lot of it was land that you wouldn’t want to release straight away. I mean there was something like fifteen, twenty acres at Folkestone on the golf course. I know because I lived looking over these lovely green fields but you couldn’t release it all at once but that was my job. CB: And you enjoyed it. ESH: I enjoyed that. I never — it’s a time when I was glad to go to work because it was so, it was my job and it was interesting and I had to fulfil this promise made to the governor that it would be finished in a certain time, you know. And then we, we retired officially. CB: When? ESH: In 1978. 1978. Yes. Yes and went off to live in Cornwall for seven years. Froze the pension which was the thing to do. So I froze mine for another eight years so I had to go and get a job to keep the wolf from the door. CB: Yeah. ESH: Which I did. In Cornwall. CB: Doing what? ESH: Well, I saw an advert in the paper to the effect that, “Handyman wanted,” and they gave the telephone number and it turned to be at what was the Ritz Cinema which is now a bingo hall. And the idea was that I was going to look after all the maintenance. Well, it was rather nice to do something different if you’ve done the other jobs for forty years, you know. So I did that for two or three years. The firm was called Mecca. You’ll know Mecca. They’ve got them everywhere of course. All your Ritz cinemas now have gone to bingo halls. I had to do many things. Change all the lights and there was a lot of lighting. Also you had an emergency system on what was it? Ten volt accumulators which you had to cut in if your mains failed you had your own generator as well. So you had that system and you had emergency lighting if all else failed. So I enjoyed that job really. CB: ‘Til when? ESH: About three years later. Right up until about 1981. In that time my and a crew of two or three lads we painted the whole of the inside of the cinema including the ceiling. Which pleased the powers that be because they said, ‘Well done Horsham. We will send you to Tenerife for a fortnight for you to recover,’ [laughs] So that was something that came out of the blue. Yes. You see every year they have competitions and whoever wins the competition probably wins a place to summer holiday. And this time it was Tenerife. So there were about a hundred of us went off to Tenerife. All found, you know. Very nice indeed. Now, you wouldn’t get bonuses like that in local government of course. Since then I haven’t done much of anything have I? CB: Throughout this time you were — ESH: Hmmn? CB: Throughout this time you were supported by this lovely lady. Ellen. ESH: Yes. CB: Where did you meet her? ESH: I met her the first day I went to work for the railway. She was going on the same train. There is a station south of London called New Cross. So that people from further down went up to New Cross on the train and then down to where the estate office was evacuated. It was at Chislehurst. Now there was a big house at Chislehurst called [Sidcup?]. And it was on an elevated position and there’s the railway coming up and there’s the tunnel. Elmstead Woods Tunnel. So that’s, I met her in the train and she was busy there with her needles and you know sticking her little fingers stuck up like that click click click. And so that’s how it started. Her and her friend actually. Her friend was called Winnie Glover and I suppose she thought, ‘Well, she’s done alright for herself,’ [laughs] And that’s, we’ve been going ever since. CB: When did you marry? ESH: 25th of May 1946. CB: And how many children have you had? ESH: Two girls. CB: So one’s called Gillian. ESH: One’s Gillian. Yes. CB: Yeah. ESH: And she trained and became a teacher and married a headmaster. And then she went, they went off to Hong Kong and taught for seven years. And now she lives in an old mill on the Vienne River just outside Chauvigny. Whereas Alison trained as a nurse here and she trained in Weymouth and Dorchester and then went on to the hospital at Warminster. Hence the reason that we’ve came somewhere near her in old age. CB: And she married a — ESH: She married a — CB: A doctor? ESH: A sergeant in the MOD police. A young sergeant who is now or rather shocking really some year ago he went in one Monday morning and they said, and he has twenty five years’ experience as a policeman and by that time as I say, he was a sergeant. No. She didn’t marry a sergeant then but he became a sergeant. And they said, ‘We don’t want you anymore.’ Made him redundant, just like that. So, but funnily enough he still works as an instructor for the police. Driver. He trains their drivers and that’s what he’s doing today. Alison’s just finishing up her last eighteen months as a nurse. CB: Well I think many many thanks, Eric. ESH: Pardon? CB: Many thanks, Eric for two and a half hours of interview. And absolutely fascinating. ESH: Well it’s one man’s experience isn’t it? Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Eric Horsham Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Brockbank 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 2017-01-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ASymondsHorshamE170105, PHorshamES1602 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending revision of OH transcription Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 02:07:40 audio recording Description An account of the resource Eric Horsham was born in East London in 1923 and, after leaving school aged 14 he was a messenger at the Royal Ordnance factory before working for the railways. In 1937 he joined the Air Training Corps and learned about aircraft maintenance. On his first attempt to join the Royal Air Force he failed the medical but a year later was accepted for flight engineer training. Eric describes his basic training in London and Torbay then recollects his technical training at RAF St. Athan. He then went to 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Marston Moor and joined his Halifax crew. In 1944 they were posted to 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington where they were told that they would not last three weeks. Eric and his crew carried out a vast range of strategic bombings, including daylight operations on V-1 sites, night operations on the Ruhr and Essen, night and daylight operations to oil targets, minelaying in the Baltic. They also provided tactical support for Allied troops near Caen and in the Ardennes, where they were badly damaged by a fighter and the mid-upper gunner received serious injuries. After landing at RAF Woodbridge in fog using FIDO he was hospitalised and did not fly again. The crew also supplied petrol to troops in Belgium, enjoying the low-level flying on these trips. Eric describes the sound of shrapnel hitting the aircraft, recalls a bomber exploding in flight, but dismisses the Scarecrow theory. He describes the use of Schräge Musik against the bombers; how search lights in the Ruhr operated, the use of H2S and how the master bomber controlled the rest of the formation. At the end of his tour Eric re-mustered and was posted at RAF Jurby as airfield controller. From there he went to RAF Topcliffe and was demobbed in January 1947. Eric went back to the railways for 10 years before working in local government. He retired in 1978, moving to Cornwall. While at RAF Pocklington he dated Cora, noting that her parents made him feel like a son, but he then ended the relationship because, with his own life in such jeopardy, he thought it was unfair on her. After the war he married Ellen, who he had met when starting his first job with the railways. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Andy Fitter Maureen Clarke Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--London England--Bedfordshire England--Devon England--Suffolk England--Yorkshire Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man Wales Wales--Vale of Glamorgan France France--Caen France--Pas-de-Calais France--Nieppe Forest Germany Germany--Essen Germany--Ruhr (Region) Atlantic Ocean Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea Denmark Denmark--Bornholm Europe--Ardennes Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1923 1937 1939 1940 1944-01 1944-02 1944-07-25 1944-09 1945 1946-05-25 1947-01-02 1957 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1981 102 Squadron 1652 HCU Absent Without Leave air gunner aircrew anti-aircraft fire bomb aimer bombing crewing up demobilisation FIDO flight engineer forced landing H2S Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit Initial Training Wing love and romance master bomber military living conditions mine laying Mosquito navigator Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944) Pathfinders pilot radar RAF Pocklington RAF St Athan RAF Topcliffe RAF Woodbridge recruitment runway Scarecrow Schräge Musik searchlight tactical support for Normandy troops target indicator training V-1 V-2 V-weapon Wellington Window wireless operator https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1165/11730/ATownsleyH180314.mp3 24a47333c28c33c487d7aace5982444b 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 Townsley, Henry H Townsley Description An account of the resource Four items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Henry Townsley DFM (b. 1920, 994575 Royal Air Force), a memoir, list of operations and artwork. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 97 Squadron. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Henry Townsley and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-03-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Townsley, H Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document CB: I’ll just do the introduction. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 14th of March 2018 and I’m in Diseworth near Derby, talking to Henry Townsley DFM, about his life and times as a flight engineer. So Henry, what are your earliest recollections of life. HT: Well, I think being born at a place called Harrington, Workington. I was born there in 1920. CB: And what do you remember about that? HT: Well, I can remember it being quite depressing in those days, a lot of unemployment. CB: What was the main local employment? HT: Well, steel working, place called Moss Bay was a steel plant and It was iron and steel. Of course it was, there was quite a bit of coal mining and the mining of the ore at Egremont, a few mile away and then there was the land so we had all the ingredients for the ore in the area. CB: Right. And what did your father do? HT: Well, my father was the, was a chauffeur for quite a long, got the chauffeur uniform, many years, yeah. CB: SO there was the town, but fairly countrified as well. HT: A town of twenty six thousand. CB: Was it? Right. HT: Yeah, so it was fairly large town. CB: And where did you go to school? HT: Ordinary elementary school until I was fourteen. And then of course I left school and I think perhaps I was in the air force before I started other things moving. CB: And when you left school at fourteen you must have gone to something else. What did you do? HT: Well, I, at fourteen I left school, went into a local garage as a vehicle fitter, to serve an apprenticeship as a vehicle fitter. Quite a large garage, there were six, employed there, six craftsmen, so it was quite large: Whitehaven. CB: In Whitehaven. HT: Whitehaven. CB: Yeah. And this is 1934. HT: Yes. CB: So that’s a long way off the war. What, did you keep working there or did you do something else? HT: Yes, until I was seventeen. And, until, unitl the war started. I was there until war started, yes. CB: Okay, and did you do any more education while you were working in the garage? HT: No, I didn’t do any of that. CB: Did you do any night school? HT: No. No, no didn’t do any night school. It was after I left there. CB: So you, when the war started in ’39 what did you do? HT: ’39? Well I was actually working in this garage at that time. I just forget now what, yeah, what I just. CB: I think we’ll stop, just for a mo. HT: Yes, it’s just a blank there really. CB: Okay. HT: I was on the water vessel Chesapeake, a tanker, ten thousand ton and that sailed form Swansea, in South Wales, and I was a junior engineer, there were three. Three juniors, and there was the three senior engineers and I believe there is a chief engineer, on the water vessel Chesapeake. CB: And that was ten thousand tons. HT: Ten thousand tonnes, yes. CB: How did you get into that? HT: Well, I er, well, I was working in this garage, I think I said, at Whitehaven at that time. CB: Yes. HT: And one of the customers, his brother in law was the engineer, chief engineer on the ship. That’s how I started, the customer coming in this garage where I was. [Laugh] He was, he was of course working as a second engineer he was at the time, and of course he was the bloke who pushed me in. CB: Was he? HT: Yeah. The Anglo American Oil Company. CB: Oh yes. And what was real the tipping point that made you want to join the Merchant Navy? HT: I think perhaps the fact that the, my family were seafaring, before me, so, my mother’s family were all seafaring. And it was, it was that what, it was my mother’s side of the family, not my father’s were seafaring people, and so that’s why I joined the, the Navy. CB: Before that, when you were working in the garage, then you were studying engineering. At night school. HT: Well yes. CB: What was that course? HT: [Telephone] It was the Workington Technical College. Yeah. On the National Course. CB: Right. HT: ONC. CB: Yup. HT: The Ordinary National Course. CB: And did that specialise in a particular type of engineering? Was it marine? HT: Engineering. Several types of engineering. Several types. CB: Yes. Was it, any of it in construction or was it all in vehicles and ships? HT: Well vehicle engineering, yeah. CB: Yes. So when you joined the Merchant Navy, what did they do about training you, about shipping engineering? HT: Well, I will have had to sit me tickets for me certificates there, you know. But of course as I say, I didn’t, I wasn’t there long, only a few months, and then, of course, I moved into the air force. CB: So what prompted you to volunteer to join the RAF? HT: Well, I wasn’t too keen on the sea: I was sick! [Laugh] So it didn’t agree with me constitution! So that was the main reason. [Laugh] Had I been able to stand the sea sickness I would have stuck it! That’s why I didn’t stick it. Quite obvious! CB: Well you might have joined the Army, what made you join the RAF? HT: The air force well, I think it was the chance of flying really, yeah, it was the senior one of the two. Aero engineering was the, seemingly the coming thing, of course naturally I felt okay, seems to be the thing to go for. CB: Did you get recruited immediately for aircrew, or were you recruited for ground crew to begin with? HT: Oh, for on the ground, yeah. CB: So what was the course that you did? HT: Oh, I don’t know exactly, I did engineering courses, on the ground, yeah. I did several courses on the ground before I moved, yeah. CB: And where did you go for that? HT: [Laugh] Locally, it wasn’t too far out of, I just forget now, but it was somewhere local, you know. CB: Well if you were, if your ship was based in South Wales did you go to St. Athan? HT: Yes, I did some courses there, at St. Athan, South Wales, yeah, yes, certainly. You know you’ve left it a bit late. Mind is not as quick as it was. CB: You’re doing okay. So they were training you initially to be on engines was it or - ? HT: Yes. Yes. CB: Okay. Engine mechanic. HT: Engine, yeah. Engine fitter I think. CB: Right. HT: Was it? I’m not sure if it was fitter or a mechanic, I think it was fitter. I did a fitters course. CB: Yep. Okay. HT: So I may have done both. I have a feeling I did a mechanics course, have you got it, flat mechanic? And then I went back and did a fitters course which was three months, three or four months there were, during the war. CB: Yup. HT: So I did both courses. So I was a fitter, a fitter engines. CB: So we are talking about your joining in April 1940. HT: Yeah. CB: And things were warming up then, in the war. HT: That’s true, that’s true. CB: So what prompted you to become - HT: Aircrew. CB: Aircrew. HT: [Laughter] Now then. I suppose there, the fact that there was fairly quick promotion really, you know! Was probably one of the things that did it! CB: And more money. HT: If it hadn’t been for the promotion and that, I might not have done it! But they were all, you were pushed up to sergeant you see. So of course, naturally, that was the recruiting agent for aircrew. CB: For flight engineers. HT: You all had the rank of sergeant, yeah. That’s, yeah, that’s all I think. You got the pay with it, so. CB: So you were well schooled already in the basics of automotive engineering and then aero engineering. HT: Well, I’d been, the, in working, yeah, on ordinary car engines for some years. CB: Yeah, quite. HT: Five years probably, five or six years. CB: Six years. HT: So I was well based in the base of engineering. CB: Yeah. And when you came to volunteer for flight engineer you had a different training from the ground engineer. What do you remember about that? HT: Training about the flight engineer. I every, fortnight’s training, CB: Oh. HT: [laugh] For me anyway, it was a fortnight’s training for me, and that was it. CB: Right. HT: As a, at my particular status, all I had to do was a couple of weeks. CB: Right. HT: I passed them and was through. Others had to do three months. CB: Yes. HT: Particularly a fitter 2A, if he was only an airframe. CB: Yes. HT: Only did the airframes and not the engines. But if he’d been a 2AR just. In those days, yeah, an airframe fitter, he had to do an engine course. CB: Yeah. HT: So his course was three or four months you see. CB: Yes. And you’d already – HT: But I was already an engine fitter so I only had minute training to do you see. CB: So on the aircraft that you were, you were being trained to fly in four engine bombers. HT: Lancaster, yes. CB: Yes. Stirling, Halifax and Lancaster. HT: Yes, that’s right, I did a bit on Stirlings, yes. CB: So - HT: I may have done one trip on Halifaxes, which I think I did, one. But I did a few on Stirlings, I did a few trips on Stirlings, probably six or eight and then on, moved on to the Lancaster. You know, finish the training. CB: Yeah. Just going back to this earlier training for flight engineer. You were already proficient on the mechanical side, of engines. HT: Yes, absolutely. CB: So what were the other aspects that you needed to focus on for flight engineer? HT: For flight engineer well, there was the airframe side of the aircraft. CB: Yup. HT: Which I had to know a little about. CB: Hydraulics. HT: Yes, hydraulics. Well of course, yes the undercarriage, yes. But mainly, well the airframe is part of the airframe you see. So I had to be reasonably, have a reasonable idea about the airframe side of the aircraft as well. CB: Yep. And then the electrics of course, and electronics. HT: Yes, electrics, yes. Oh yes. They were part, involved with the engine side as well. CB: Right. Okay. So from your training at St. Athan, then where did you go after that? HT: Yes, I was trained at St. Athan, and, I don’t know it’s down - CB: So then you moved on to Swinderby. HT: Swinderby, yeah, that’s in Lincolnshire, yes. CB: And according to your log book, you were flying in the Manchester. HT: That’s right. CB: What was that like? HT: That was a twin engined Lancaster, really. CB: Right. HT: The same, the same airframe as a Lanc, but twin engines, that was the Lancaster. That was the Lancaster, yes. CB: The basis for the Lanc. The Manchester was the basis for the Lancaster. HT: Basis for the Lanc. CB: And were the systems the same on that, in both aeroplanes? HT: Yes, pretty well. yeah. Yes. CB: So you went on to Swinderby, and then what did you do? HT: Well I moved from Swinderby on to a squadron. On to 97 Squadron. Is that right there? CB: Right. Well, it looks as though you went to Winthorpe. You went to Woodhall Spa, on to the Lancaster. HT: Yeah. CB: From Swinderby. HT: Yeah. CB: We’ll just stop there for a mo. CB: [Cough] So we’ll take this in bites. So is it, better for you to - do you need your glasses? Is it better for you to have look at this or I’ll just take you through? HT: Yes, I can go through. CB: But here, [cough] as you say, [cough] 94 Squadron, at Woodhall Spa. HT: 97. CB: 97 squadron I meant to say. HT: Yes, yes. CB: And from there you did quite a few ops. HT: That’s right. CB: Yeah. So we’ll just go on from there. HT: So poor old Munro he got killed, yes. CB: So his name was Munro was it? HT: Yeah, Munro, the pilot, yeah. CB: You were going to say, Jessie. [Other]: I was going to say, yeah. There’s a couple of things that I found interesting, that you said, when we was at the Battle of Britain Anniversary, you spoke about the lights that came up that dazzled you. Do you remember those lights? CB: Oh, searchlights? HT: Yeah. That’s right [Other]: The searchlights that dazzled you. We was, we was all sat round listening how you got out of such, such a situation. HT: Absolutely, yeah! [Other]: You was diving, diving to get out of the searchlight. Which was amazing! CB: Right. Yeah. CB: Was that the first or second tour? HT: Well there was a time when we were, coned as it were. CB: Let’s just cover that. So I’ll just ask you a question, you can tell me. [Pause] Having talked about your activities on the raids, on the ops, what, what would happen, as we talked about you going near the target. What was the most difficult thing about being near the target? HT: Well, it was just the, the flak, you know, over the target area then you were getting all the flak, that they were shooting up all around, you see. CB: But how did they identify where you were? HT: Well, they could see us. CB: What, with searchlights? HT: Above, well, yeah. CB: So what were the searchlights like? HT: Well they were quite bright, they were quite good, the searchlights. CB: Hmm. And so. HT: So what happened, if the, one searchlight caught us, then they put another on, and then another [laugh] so they cone us in searchlights, and then, they would shoot, up in to the searchlights. So he wasn’t very happy, it wasn’t very happy when they did that. CB: Right. HT: Yes, that’s what happened, that was. CB: So, so what did the pilot do about it? HT: Well all we can do, if we were at reasonable height: we could - down. The only thing we could do. Down! [Laugh] CB: And how did he go about that? HT: Well he just did [emphasis] that. CB: What, vertical? HT: In effect. CB: Would he put it – HT: Down as quick as we could. CB: Would he put it into a vertical – HT: Nose down and down as quick as we could! Got out, yeah, it was the only way to do. CB: And how far would he go down to do that? HT: Oh, probably a thousand feet, if possible. Maybe not. Maybe. CB: More than that? HT: Maybe. No, we wouldn’t go any further than that. But we’d get out of it about, probably have to go down to a thousand to make it out. CB: To one thousand feet, or by one thousand feet? HT: One thousand feet. CB: Down. HT: Down to one thousand feet. CB: To [emphasis] one thousand. Having got there, then what did he do? Continue flying at a thousand feet or did he - ? HT: Oh yes, until we got out of the flak area, till we got out of the area, you know, the flak area and then we would rise. CB: This is on the way to the target? HT: Yeah. Yes. CB: What I’m getting at is did you get coned on the way to the target, or only at [emphasis] the target? HT: Well, you’re talking about the target, when we’re over the actual target. Dropping the bombs. CB: Yes. CB: Well, it wasn’t really often, you know, that we dropped right down to the bottom. CB: No. Not then. HT: Not then, no. CB: No. Because you’d get bombed. So could you see other aeroplanes near you? HT: Oh yes. Yeah. CB: In the dark? HT: Yes. CB: Because of the fires was it? HT: Well, er yes. The fires would light it all up. Yeah. Yeah, oh yes, you could see some of the aircraft. CB: And when the fighters came to attack you, that was outside the target area was it? HT: Generally, yes. They could attack us in the target area. But generally yes, you were out, outside. CB: So when you are flying along and you’re not filling in your log book, what are you doing? HT: Er, not filling in the log book? CB: Not filling in the log. HT: Well generally I’d check - CB: The flight log. HT: I’d check. Used to check, often, not indiscriminately, often. CB: Yeah. HT: Probably every ten minutes or quarter of an hour at least. CB: And what are you actually checking? HT: Well, check the oil gauges for pressure and, for temperature, check the gauges for temperature and pressure mainly, you know. Yeah. And then there’s the fuel, the coolant, you know, the coolant system, you got to check that, that. Yeah. Yes. CB: And to what extent are you helping as a lookout? HT: I was a lookout, yeah, quite a lot, I would say yes. Definitely. CB: And what are you, are you looking out for fighters or are you looking out for other bombers getting too close? HT: Well both. Any aircraft that’s going to get in the way, or a, or a fighter. CB: Yeah. HT: Oh yes. You keep a check out for any bother, anything. Make sure you’re clear of it. CB: So how often did you have to move out of the way of other bombers? HT: Well, it depended, you know, on circumstances, where you were, where you’re flying. It depends, if you were in a jumble, if you’re in an area where you’re jumbled up, landing, it’s something like that, you’ve got to keep a check. CB: What would you say was the most vivid experience you had of being on an operation, on a raid? HT: Well, I’ve got a thought, but I don’t know, it, quite a few. I’ve left it too long you see. CB: Yes. I’m sure, yeah. We’ll stop there for a mo. HT: That’s going, isn’t it that, Air Marshal. CB: Now, 97 Squadron was a standard bombing squadron, but at one stage then it became Pathfinder. What happened there? HT: That’s right. Pathfinder, yeah. CB: Yes. What happened there? HT: Yes, it was a top squadron. 97, alongside 617, we were there together on the same base, 97, on the same [emphasis] base. CB: At Woodhall Spa. The Dambusters were at Woodhall Spa on the same base. CB: And from Woodhall Spa the squadron then moved to Bourne, why did it do that? HT: Bourne. Move to Bourne. CB: In Cambridgeshire. HT: That would be after the war was it? CB: That was 19, May 1943. This is because the Pathfinder operation was transferred to there. HT: I can’t say I, I forget a lot you know. CB: Yeah. HT: It went on, yeah. CB: Okay stop there. HT: I forget, a lot of the things, I’ve forgotten. CB: Of course. HT: But generally, some of the, quite a bit I remember you know, after the stint I did. CB: So in your Pathfinding then, in July ’43, your pilot, Munro, was awarded the DFC. HT: Yes. CB: Any other members of the crew awarded a distinction? HT: I just forget, now let’s see. I think the navigator, I think he got a, an award, navigator. Yeah, the navigator, and the bomb aimer and the pilot all got awards before the rest of us. The bombing team should we say. They’re the bombing team. CB: Yeah. HT: The bomb aimer, the navigator and the pilot. Depended entirely on them, when the bomb was dropped, as a team. CB: Were they officers, or only the pilot? HT: Well. some were officers, some were pilots. Some were, I think generally on my second crew I was the only one, that was, I was a warrant officer all the rest were officers. C: Were they. HT: That’s in the second crew, yeah. And of course the first crew, well I, after about two or three months, three of them were commissioned. So I never bothered, you know, it didn’t worry me. I made it through, I made it through, I didn’t bother. CB: The pay was all right? HT: Oh yeah, I was happy. I wasn’t bothered at all. So er, and I wasn’t pushed, I wasn’t pushed to be responsible for anything. So I was happy, and I mean the commission that I may have had would have had some responsibility pushed on to me, you know, but I wasn’t, so, so I didn’t. CB: So, just keeping on the first tour, and the crew, how did they gel together? HT: The first crew, that was Munro the pilot, and Hill the rear gunner, Bennett the mid upper gunner, and er, there was - CB: Signaller? HT: Watson the bomb aimer. CB: Watson. HT: Yeah. Suswain he was the Suswain, the first was the first bomb aimer was Suswain, in me first crew, Watson was the second crew bomb aimer. CB: What about the flight, the wireless operator? HT: Yeah. the wireless operator was, just forget now, the er, one of them was only an NCO, was only a flight sergeant. A warrant officer probably. CB: But when you joined the first crew, that was at the Heavy Conversion Unit. HT: Munro. All sergeants together. CB: Yeah. But how did they get on as a crew? ‘Cause you joined when they were already a crew. HT: Well Munro. When I joined we were all sergeants, and they moved ahead, and Munro undoubtedly got, was commissioned first, whilst we were flying together. Three were commissioned, there was Munro was commissioned, the navigator was commissioned and the bomb aimer was commissioned. And that was it. Three. So they were what they called the bombing team. They were responsible for dropping the bomb, you see. That’s why they commissioned them. CB: Right. HT: ‘Cause navigator, pilot, and the bomb aimer. They worked as a team, together. CB: Yes. HT: So of course that was an excellent team. CB: Hmm. And socially, how did the crew get on together? HT: Quite well, on the, on my crews I can’t remember any, any obstruction in any way. We all hit it off pretty well. CB: What did you do for relaxation? HT: Oh well, I, that’s easy, I can tell you, normally we had a drink, you know, occasionally, not tremendously, but occasionally, we would have a drink, as a crew, to get together, be together. CB: Was that in pubs, or - ? HT: Eh? CB: In pubs or on the airfield? HT: Oh that’s outside. In the evening probably. In a pub, in the local, you know. We rarely bothered, rarely had a drink on the airfield. CB: Right. HT: We always used to move out to have a drink. CB: What was the accommodation like? HT: The accommodation wasn’t too good at Coningsby, too large a base. But er, wasn’t too good. CB: So what were you housed in? HT: I was in the, I was in the sergeants mess, the sergeants part, I was lucky. I had a room of me own! I used to come out of my room, walk along the passage and I’d be in the bar. [laugh] That was a mess, the sergeants mess, so I was lucky at Coningsby. My room was next door, next door to the bar! Well, I came out of me place, then along to the right and there I was in the bar area. CB: And when you went to Woodhall Spa, what was the accommodation like there? HT: Well that was, what I was saying, it was a permanent accommodation, you see, permanent mess, you know, everything was peacetime establishment and I was, my room, I had a, there were rooms along, there were passages along you see. CB: Yes. HT: Outside the main area and I was in one of the rooms. I was in the nearest to the bar. CB: This is Coningsby and your second tour. HT: Coningsby, yeah. CB: But in your first tour - HT: Yeah. CB: You were at Woodhall Spa. So, what accommodation did you have there? HT: Oh, nissen huts [laugh], nissen huts. Old nissen huts. CB: The whole crew’s there. How many crews in a nissen hut? HT: Oh that one. CB: One each? HT: One crew would be in a nissen hut, yeah, oh yeah. Sometimes you were split, you know, sometimes you might have, you were spit up. But that was where they was a satellite airfield. Coningsby was permanent, you see, the structure there. CB: Hmm. HT: Yeah. Oh yeah, we were split. CB: What about the food? HT: Yeah, the food. I would say was reasonable, I can’t complain. The food was reasonable. CB: Lots of fry ups? HT: I think the food was fair, fairly good, off hand, yeah, from what I can see, particularly at Coningsby, in the sergeants mess. It was supposedly better than the officers so, there we go, [laugh] so they reckoned anyway. They reckoned so. Some of the lads that were commissioned, you know, and left the sergeants mess, they told us it were bloody rubbish in the officers mess. They were worse off, worse off, they could be, I agree. Yes. CB: So at the end of your first tour, then you were rested, effectively. HT: Six month. I decided I’d be off six month and I had six months off. CB: Yeah. So your six months off was at a Heavy Conversion Unit at Winthorpe. HT: That’s right. Six months, yeah. CB: And so, at Winthorpe what were they doing there, and what were you doing? HT: Winthorpe? Well, it were the same as we were doing anywhere. CB: You were training people, weren’t you. HT: Training, yes, same as Coningsby. CB: Right. And what was your role in the training at the Heavy Conversion Unit? HT: Me? I was a senior instructor, I suppose. Was responsible for a schedule of people coming through, to see that their training was completed properly and in order. So I was, er, yeah, I think I was fairly responsible really, for the training. CB: So you had ground school, did you, as well as flying? HT: Me? Yes. I was a fitter, so I did a mechanics course: four months, and then went back and did a fitters course. CB: No, I’m, I’m talking about Winthorpe, when you were at, after your first tour. HT: You have to be first – CB: You were then training other aircrew at Winthorpe. HT: Oh, training the aircrew. CB: What were you doing to them there? You had, gave them tuition on the ground, did you? HT: Tuition, yeah. CB: And in the air, as well as in the air? HT: Yes, we, they were given tuition in the air as well. Yes. On some occasions, not on all, but on some, yeah, they were. That was the part of the job we weren’t very keen on [laugh] to be quite honest. Oh no. So we had er. CB: ‘Cause the nature of the heavy conversion unit was that the crew would already have been together from the operational training unit. HT: Yes. CB: And then [cough] then the flight engineer joined, the crew. HT: That’s right, at the Conversion Unit. That’s right, yes. And the gunner. CB: And the extra gunner. HT: Yeah. They joined the crew at the Conversion Unit. Yeah. CB: Yeah. So what are you actually doing with the flight engineer who is under training with you? Are you monitoring what he does or are you telling him what, showing him what to do? Or what is happening? HT: Well he, I suppose instruct him, telling he’s a good idea though. He’s worked there as a flight engineer before he’s reached us, so he’s got some good idea of what he has to do. Any instructions you can give him you do. Yeah. CB: So after your period, so what we’re talking about at Winthorpe, is, you joined that in October in ’43, and that went on until February ’44. HT: Yeah. CB: Then, from there you went to Warboys. HT: Warboys, yes. CB: So this was the NTU, so here we’re talking about getting into Pathfinding again. Is that right? HT: Well, Warboys, an NTU, yeah, Navigational Training Unit. CB: Yes. So it’s more specific navigation. HT: Navigation, yeah. Is the - CB: Is the idea. HT: Well, that’s the, the main reason for it, navigation, yeah. So you are training the navigators generally. CB: And this is when you now start, after that, you go to Coningsby, and this is where you are doing your Pathfinding with a new crew, and your pilot is a chap called Baker DFC. HT: Jeff Baker, yeah. CB: So what do you remember? HT: Baker’s an Aussie. CB: Is he? HT: Yeah. Australian, yeah. Jeff Baker, yeah. So that was at – Coningsby. CB: That’s Coningsby. HT: That’s right, it was. CB: So what squadron is that? HT: 97 CB: It’s still 97 HT: I was with 97 all the time. CB: Right. But it’s the beginning of your second tour. HT: That’s right. Yeah. CB: So what stands out in your mind about some of the operations there? ‘Cause we are talking April ’44, before D-Day. HT: I had quite a, a fair amount of time for Baker. He was, I hit it off pretty well with him, he was quite a decent pilot from what can recollect of him. So, we didn’t have any breaches, we managed to do the tour complete. CB: You said all the crew was commissioned except you. HT: Yeah. CB: How did the crew gel? HT: How did the? CB: How did the crew get on, how did they gel? HT: Well there was, let’s see, there was, I suppose they applied for a commission, most of them. CB: No, no how did they get on together as a crew, flying as a crew? HT: Oh absolutely, no trouble, no real trouble anyway, no real trouble. CB: Were they all second tour people? HT: Er, they would be, yes, yes, they were. CB: By definition, for Pathfinder they’re going to be second tour. HT: Absolutely. Yes. CB: So you all got your Pathfinder badge. HT: Yes, you did, had to do so many trips, and you were awarded the Pathfinder badge. I don’t think it was many, one or two. Then of course you had to do a certain number and you were issued the Pathfinder badge permanently. CB: Right. Now a lot of your flying is daylight as well as doing night time. HT: That’s right, yeah. CB: So how did you feel about the daylight raids? HT: Well, there wasn’t many, there was only three I think, was there? CB: You’ve got a good, you’ve got quite a few. HT: Have I? Daylights? CB: Well actually, a lot of it, I take that back. HT: I thought I only had about three or four. CB: Yes. It’s all to do with, yup, okay, a lot of it is actually to do with flying in the UK, daylight. HT: Oh I see. That’s right, yeah. CB: What stands out in your mind about the second tour particularly? HT: I think probably the pilot that I had, he seemed to get on well with, with, Baker. I hit it off pretty well with Baker, Jeff Baker. He was the Aussie, a flight lieutenant. CB: Did he become a master bomber? HT: Baker? Yes. He was the flight commander, deputy flight commander. CB: Right. HT: He was a flight lieutenant. CB: Yeah. HT: The squadron leader was the flight commander you see. CB: Yup. HT: And then they’d have a wing commander as the squadron commander CB: Squadron commander. Well quite a bit of the bombing at that time was of France. HT: Yeah. Quite so, France mainly, yes. CB: And the end of the tour was twenty five ops, you said. HT: Twenty? CB: You did twenty five ops on your second tour. HT: Yes. Thirty on the first, twenty five on the second. Fifty five all together. CB: Yeah. HT: Yeah. It’s all down there, I think. Yes. CB: So that takes us to – HT: You won’t find many like that: two tours. CB: No. More on Pathfinder. HT: Absolutely. Oh well, of course. You’d get them, more on Pathfinder, system, yeah. CB: So this took you through to October, the end of September ’44, didn’t it. HT: Yes. CB: Then where did you go after that? You went to somewhere, something different. HT: Did I? What’s it got on the top there? CB: It, it’s got you flying with all sorts of different pilots. And that’s when you started flying Stirlings, so. HT: Oh, I was on a Conversion Unit. CB: Yes. HT: Yeah. That’s 16 61, it’ll be down there at the end. CB: Right. Okay. HT: 16 61 Conversion Unit. CB: Where was that? HT: Winthorpe. CB: That was also Winthorpe. HT: Yeah. CB: Okay. HT: That’s near Newark. CB: And the Stirling was used as a, this is October ’44 – HT: As a substitute. On the Conversion Unit. CB: Yes. And then they converted to Lancasters, is that right?. HT: That’s right. Yes, they pushed them into the Stirling initially and then of course they were trained secondly on the, on the Lancaster, yeah. CB: Hmm. And what was the Stirling like compared with the Lancaster, completely different aeroplane certainly. HT: Absolutely. CB: So what was that like? HT: Well, that was interesting. That was really interesting, I’m pleased I didn’t do my operations on it! It was disgusting. The damned aircraft would only go up to about sixteen thousand feet. CB: Right. HT: Seventeen. So it had the, it hadn’t the altitude that it should have had, you know. I wouldn’t have liked to do operations in, no way. Twenty was my, twenty thousand was mine. CB: You were happier up there. HT: Lanc. Yeah. CB: Hmm. What was the work load? How was it different from the Lancaster workload as a flight engineer? HT: On the, er? CB: On the Stirling. HT: Well. On the Lancaster you were sat together with the pilot in front and had all the controls in front of you. CB: Yes. HT: On the Stirling you weren’t, you were at the inter part of the fuselage, you had the flying panels there. So you weren’t, the bomb aimer, the pilot sat together, at the front, so you had the control panels in the, seemingly in the centre of the aircraft. CB: With your own seat. HT: On the Stirling. CB: With your own seat. HT: That was the Stirling. CB: Because the Lancaster you didn’t have anywhere to sit. HT: The Lanc you were right, you were at the front, all together you see with the pilot. You had all the controls there, the flight controls were on the left, and [emphasis] you had the throttle controls– CB: In the middle. HT: Between you. And you had the, the propeller controls you know, as well, together, four, for the revs, rev counters, and the undercarriage that was between you, between the pilot and you. The flaps, that was between the pilot and engineer, both could operate them. So, er, yeah, so that was that. CB: But you, but you spent a lot of time standing in the Lancaster. HT: Absolutely. Yes. CB: Behind the pilot with your dials on the wall, didn’t you. HT: Well, no. We, I had a seat and I could let it down, alongside the pilot. CB: Right. Yeah, but the stuff behind you. HT: In many cases I did a lot of standing as well. I didn’t sit down on take off, anyway on that rig. I always stood, so er - CB: Yes. You felt safe enough with that? HT: Oh yes. CB: Even on landing. HT: I was quite safe enough, yes, and ready for the run in…[laugh] Not really, no. I managed quite well there. CB: But on the Stirling, then you’ve got effectively your own office. HT: On the stern? CB: Stirling. HT: Oh the Stirling! CB: You’ve got your own office, effectively, haven’t you, your seat and all your controls in front of you. HT: They’re all in the centre. Yes, the engineer’s got a seat there in the centre as far as I’m aware, yeah. I did a few hours on Stirlings, flying, because we had them on the Conversion Unit. CB: Yes. HT: We were using them initially. And then moving them from there on to the Lancaster you see. CB: Yeah. What was the most difficult thing about the Stirling? HT: The Stirling. Well, I wasn’t actually involved with the flying of it. But I preferred the controls where they were on the Lanc, half way down the fuselage. And another thing you had about twelve tanks on the Stirling. [Laugh] CB: Oh did you? HT: Six on each wing. So that’s bit of trouble. You had the, you know, had the intermediate, you had the fuselage running between the it, between the two fuselages you could move one off for taxi and one on the other side, you were hid. So there was, yeah, so there was quite a lot of juggling going on in the Stirling. [Laugh] Them bloody tanks were disgusting! On that thing there. CB: In what way? HT: Well there were about, there must have been a dozen tanks! And both, more probably. There were quite a lot of tanks on Stirling, yeah. CB: So how did you manage the fuel on the Stirling then, that was different from what you did on a Lancaster? HT: Well, you had all, had all the, the systems all there just, pretty well, you know. The tanks were all properly joined, they were all joined up, you moved one from into another sort of style, you know, several tanks you could, there was your initial tank, you used for providing the engine with fuel and that was the tank that you moved all the fuel into initially. CB: Like the Lancaster, it also had wingtip tanks, did it, which you drained early? HT: The Stirling? Yes, there was tanks in the wings there, I don’t know exactly where, but there were tanks in the wings there. And tanks in the fuselage as well. CB: Ahead of the bomb bay? HT: In the Stirling, yeah. CB: And er, how did the pilots like flying Stirlings? HT: Well, I don’t think, I wasn’t too keen on them, so I don’t suppose they were, no. I would rather have the Lancaster any time! CB: What about reliability? HT: The Lancasters were much easier, you know, to control. They were far easier to control than those things. And you know, you had twelve tanks, twelve, at least twelve tanks, maybe fourteen. You had a lot of tanks, they were all in each wing, and all tied up together. Crossed over. CB: On the, the Stirling, how reliable were they [emphasis], compared with Lancasters? HT: Oh, I’ve not time for the Stirling compared, the Lancaster was a much better aircraft, far better. On the Lancaster three tanks in each wing, and you had two tanks linked together. The two inner tanks, the outer tank there was, you could only move it into the inner tank. CB: Right, yeah. To the main tank. HT: The main. You couldn’t use the fuel, I think you had to move it. CB: Into the main tank. HT: Into the main tank. CB: But on the, the Stirlings were not used too much on raids later. But what was the condition of the aircraft you were using for the training at Winthorpe? What sort of state were they? HT: Oh okay, I think, quite good. CB: Were they. HT: I was quite happy with the system, the maintenance, yeah. Of course we didn’t use them too much I don’t think, they were, we, just a small amount of the training, you know, initial, you know, initial training before they moved on to the Lanc. CB: So, your time at Winthorpe, on this Heavy Conversion Unit went past the end of the war. HT: Yes. CB: What do you remember about the end of the war in Europe on the 8th of May 1945? HT: The 8th of May. CB: That was the end of the, the Germans surrendered. HT: Yeah, the end of hostilities. CB:Were there celebrations on the, at Winthorpe, or what happened? HT: Not to any great extent, no. I think, suppose we probably had a drink [laugh] out of the camp area, you know, to celebrate, but I think it went down normally, you know. CB: We’ll pause there for a mo. CB: So you had a considerable time on Stirlings but then you went, at Winthorpe, but then still at Winthorpe you went on 16 61 Heavy Conversion Unit. You went on to Lancasters because they had the Lancaster finishing school there. HT: Well generally I worked on the Lancs most of the time. CB: Did you. HT: I can’t recollect really being involved with the Stirling at all. I may have been slightly, you know, I was slightly but not to any great extent. CB: But almost each time you flew with a different pilot because of what it was, so how was that? HT: If I was at Winthorpe, then yes, I’m afraid so. CB: That was because they were trainee pilots. HT: That’s right. So I, I wasn’t flying all the time there, of course, but I did fly some of the time. Yes, we all had to do a certain amount of flying. CB: Right. So it looks as though in August 1945 you gave up being there, at Winthorpe, and then you went to Honiley, in Warwickshire. HT: Oh. That was after the war. CB: Yes, September, so we are talking about much later. HT: Oh yes, much later. CB: That was when you were in – HT: I returned to the air force in 19, 1948. CB: Yes, so we’ll just cover that. It says here, total hours on release of, from the RAF on the 2nd of February 1946 was 734 total, of which 342 were daylight. HT: Yes. CB: A lot of that was because you were training other people. HT: That’s right. CB: So you left the RAF in ‘46. HT: Yes. And returned again in 1948. CB: But what did you when you left the RAF, in 1946? You were demobbed then. HT: Yeah. What was I doing, yeah. CB: Because you were an engineer of course, in the air force. HT: I don’t know what I was. CB: I’ll just stop there for a mo. What made you go back in the RAF? HT: Well the job I was doing wasn’t of any real, you know, value. CB: Right. HT: So I thought I’d be better, better re-enlist in the mob, in the service. CB: Yep. In September ’48 you returned, to the RAF. HT: Well I went as a corporal, you see, I think I was, when I returned to the air force. I wasn’t at the bottom of the ladder like, at least, so I was, and it was a year or two, so of course I, I didn’t drop. I should have had, if I’d been older I wouldn’t have done it, you know. CB: No. HT: I was only young you see, early twenties. CB: Twenty eight. HT: Now had I been any, you know had I been any younger, any older, I might have had more, more about me, but er, yeah. CB: So what did you do when you returned to the RAF? HT: In 1946. CB: The flying you did you would appear just to have been a passenger. HT: Oh, I was – CB: Was that because you were doing air tests. HT: Oh I was fitting. CB: Fitter. HT: Fitter, yeah. I said I’d back, didn’t I, fitting, yeah, I was fitting. CB: How long did you stay in the RAF after rejoining in 1948? HT: Well I signed for three years. CB: Ah. HT: And of course I was in there fifteen months and then they posted me abroad, after fifteen month. CB: Right. HT: They kept me for four years, because I liked it a lot, I had twelve months extra to do, it was one of those things. So I got kept for four years. I got posted abroad, and I was in, where was I? I got posted to, to er, Mirpur is it? Mirpur, that’s part of India. That’s Pakistan I should say, I went to Pakistan. CB: Which was an independent comp, country by then. HT: It was independent yeah. India. CB: What were you doing? Training Pakistani - ? HT: I don’t think was doing anything there. I just passed through think, maybe there for a week or so. CB: I’m just going to stop for a mo. [Other] CB: So you dropped, stopped off in Pakistan for a week or so you said, and you’re a ground fitter. HT: Yeah. I was a corporal. CB: A corporal airframe fitter. HT: Engine. CB: Engine fitter. So where were you going? HT: Well I did a tour, I believe I was out in Malaya. CB: Oh were you. Right. CB: So I was at Penang. Have you heard? CB: Yes I know it. HT: In the north, on the coast, of Malaya. I was there. That was the, that was the rest centre, I was there on several occasions, in Penang and I was actually on the island, Singapore. CB: Oh, were you. HT: Yeah. CB: Do you, what sort of aircraft were you - ? HT: I can’t recollect. CB: So you left the RAF again in 1952. HT: Yeah. CB: And what did you do after that? HT: In 1952, yes. CB: Because you’d signed on for three years but they made you do four. So that takes you to 1952. HT: 1952, yeah. CB: So you went into engineering in civilian life did you? HT: 1952 I don’t know what I was doing. CB: Because you’re aged thirty two by now. HT: Yes, thirty two. CB: What age did you get married? HT: Oh, I was only twenty three. CB: Were you. And where did you meet your wife? HT: Oh, I met her at the RAF, the RAF at the RAF station. She was working in the NAAFI. CB: In your, where you were stationed? HT: Where I was stationed, yeah. CB: In ’43? HT: It would be ’42, yeah. CB: ’42? HT: Yeah. CB: Right. So this was before you? HT: It would be ’42. CB: At Woodhall Spa, or Swinderby was it? HT: Er, it was, er - CB: Anyway, you were chatting her up in the NAAFI were you, and that’s how it started? HT: In actual fact no, what happened, I, there was a dance going on CB: Oh! HT: At the station. So of course, I was in the sergeants mess having a drink and I decided to, that I’d go out and see what was going off in the dance you see. So I came out, and I was on me own, and I came out and there was these girls, come down from the NAAFI would be about four of them, so I tagged on to one of them then she became me wife [laugh]. CB: Never looked back did you. HT: So she never looked back, she didn’t! So I tagged on to one of them and she was me wife! [laugh] CB: What was her name? HT: Iris, she was only on the NAAFI a couple of month. CB: Oh. That’s in ’42. HT: That’s in 1942, yes. CB: And she, was she a WAAF, or was she a civilian? HT: No. Civilian. Yes. CB: And what did she do, after you met her? Then where, did she stay on the station or do something else? HT: No, she was married then, married for life. CB: When did you marry her? HT: I think was it 1942 or 3? Yeah. CB: So it was fairly quick. HT: Oh yes, she had a family quickly, yes. So we were married, well married. We had one or two before the war finished, so it was, we had one or two kids before the war finished, two probably. Yeah. CB: How did you manage to keep in touch, with your operational and training flying, with your wife? Did she live nearby? HT: Yes. CB: Her parents, what? HT: For two, I would say that for a couple of month she lived on the unit, she was working in the NAAFI. CB: Right. HT: So of course after that, she left, and of course she was home you see, with her parents. CB: Yes. But where was home for her? HT: Her home was in Condover. Condover, you’ve heard of Condover. You’ve heard of Hera CB: Oh yes, Condover. Yeah. I know, in Shropshire. HT: Yeah. It’s a couple of mile from Hera. Condover. Can you remember where I lived? [Other]: Not sure. Near Condover. HT: You can’t? CB: HT: In Derbyshire CB: I’ll stop for a bit. CB: When you left the RAF then where did you go? What did you work for? HT: Rolls Royce. CB: How long did you work for Rolls Royce? [Dog bark] HT: Twenty six years. CB: Did you. HT: Yes. CB: Was that a good job? HT: Reasonable I think. I was, I was in charge of the job you know. It wasn’t well up but it was, I was in charge. CB: Were you on Merlins engines still or had you moved on to jet engines? HT: Merlins. I was on Merlins engines most of the time I was there. Jet engines, I just don’t know, I think I probably moved on to them. CB: Bit later. HT: In the end. But I was in charge of the job, yeah. CB: That’s how you came to live in this area, was it, originally? Did you live in this area when you worked for Rolls Royce? HT: No, I lived in Poulton. CB: There was a Rolls Royce plant there was there? HT: No, Poulton le Fylde. No, I used to travel into Derby. CB: Oh, in to Derby. HT: Poulton isn’t far you know, from Derby, so I travelled from there, yeah into Derby. CB: Okay. We’ll stop there thank you very much. [Other]: You went to Africa. HT: That’s right. CB: Now, on one occasion we missed, so lets pick up on this. You had to fly to Africa. HT: That’s right. CB: So what was the situation there? What were you bombing in the first place? HT: Well we were bombing – CB: Northern Italy, Spezia. HT: Spezia, weren’t we. On the way back we bombed Italy. CB: Yes. But the plane was not in a good state. HT: Yeah, I can remember we, what was it, we were bombing in Italy, we were bombing somewhere, in Italy. Anyway, I er, we had to land in the, North Africa. CB: Right. HT: To refuel and then we could return to Britain. CB: Okay. HT: So when we landed there, I found that the aircraft was unserviceable and I left a note for the Chief Engineer to sort it out, and they did bugger all. So I thought well, I’m buggered if I’m stopping this dump here. [Laugh] So I got, the rear gunner says I’ll give you a hand to the bloody cowlings, take ‘em off, so. CB: The cowling. HT: The cowling. CB: Of the engine. HT: The engine, yeah. So the cowlings were off very quickly and the magneto points were out, and when Henry got the magneto points out they were solid, [emphasis] they were welded. [Loud laugh] You know what I mean, don’t you. CB: Yeah. HT: You’ve got a point on the mag. Like. CB: Yeah. And they’re closed. HT: You’ve got a pivot here. Have you got it? The pivot. Solid. CB: Yeah. HT: Points wouldn’t move. [laugh] Solid. So, what, so we looked at the aircraft next door that was cat AC, that had landed and was damaged. CB: Right. HT: So he took the bloody points out of one of the engines there. I didn’t ask. I took the points out. So I took the points out and put them in my aircraft. CB: Yeah. HT: And took off, had it not been for that, and had I left it, and I would have been there until the ground crew repaired it, and I would have been there for another three or four days. CB: Yeah. HT: So I didn’t want that. CB: No. HT: I wanted to get back. So that was the only thing I could do and I did. So you know, how many would do that? How many. [emphasis] Very, very, would do that, very few. I wouldn’t be the only one, I’d be, but there’d very few. I took the bloody points, even the points weren’t there for me to, I had to go to another – CB: Another aircraft. HT: I couldn’t use them, I had to go and get them from another aircraft. They were solid. CB: Yeah. Which was a damaged one. HT: They were welded, they were solid. CB: That was the heat, was it? HT: Oh, the heat, yeah, solid, so I couldn’t do anything. CB: No. Did the engines overheat occasionally? HT: Occasionally, yeah. But okay, that, okay that was quite an issue. CB: Bit of initiative that was. HT: And I, I left it for the chief engineer. I left the job for the engineering staff. And it reached the point where I had to do it myself or, stop, and remain there for some days. CB: What was the pilot’s attitude to that? This is Munro is it, or Baker? HT: It was either one or the other, I think it was probably Munro, so we, it was Jimmy Munro I think, yeah. So of course we were there and I, I did the job got it. Flew back. I got the, didn’t get a pat on the back, didn’t get any thanks. Bugger all. I might just as well have not bothered. CB: But you got back. HT: But we got back and that was what I wanted anyway. I wanted to get back. CB: Now, just going back, further, sorry, go on. HT: So, you know, I, I, the aircraft didn’t stop me, [emphasis] the aircraft was unserviceable and there was no one to repair it. I did it. CB: Because you were the engineer. HT: And I could do most of the things. CB: Of course. HT: So of course, naturally I, and if it was possible for a human being to do it, I could do it. And did. CB: Having been ground crew originally. HT: On occasions I did, and that was one occasion. In never got any credit for it or anything you know. CB: What you did get credit for was for doing two tours, when you were awarded the DFM. HT: Well I didn’t get the award, I didn’t get the DFM until I had completed forty five trips. CB: Right. HT: So I was on the way to doing two, I hadn’t completed two. CB: No, you hadn’t finisheded two. HT: Before they, before they suggested I should have the award, I had completed forty five. CB: Yes. HT: And then of course It came through before I properly finished you see. CB: Yes. What about the rest of the crew? Were they all DFCs or only your pilot, Baker? HT: Well I was on. Oh, Baker, Baker was a DFC. CB: Already, yeah. HT: And bar. CB: Oh, and bar. And what about the rest of the crew? HT: I think probably the navigator would, his navigator would have some, would have had a DFC. CB: But at that stage you were flight sergeant rather than a warrant officer. HT: I was a flight sergeant, I was a warrant officer probably, when, when I joined up with them. CB: And wouldn’t you have got a DFC if you were a warrant officer? HT: Well, yeah, I was a flight sergeant as you say, initially, but I moved on to warrant officer of course. CB: But it was actually awarded to you, technically - HT: That would have been awarded to me before. CB: - when you were a flight sergeant. HT: When I received the award. CB: You were a warrant officer. HT: Well I was told it was going to be, I had the opportunity of moving it to DFC! CB: Oh you did! HT: Yeah, I did, yeah. CB: And what stopped you? HT: Me, I said DFCs were ten a penny! There’s more, double DFCs than they had to DFMs. That’s the only reason. [Laugh] CB: Right. Now you also got - HT: So there you go. It’s true, what I’m telling you! CB: Yes. HT: You know, okay, a DF, they had far less DFMs, so they’re more important in my opinion. For the same, purely the same, one was an airmen’s award and they cut it out initially, they stopped it, it was wrong. CB: Did they? HT: Well, it wasn’t right, was it? CB: No. No. HT: So of course it was stopped. So I, so I got the DFC, DFM. CB: DFM. You also received the Belgian Croix de Guerre. What prompted that? HT: Yeah. Hey? CB: What caused that? HT: The Belgian Cross of War. I don’t know what happened there, I’m sure. The Belgians. CB: Gave it to you yeah. HT: They were the ones. CB: And then you got Legion of Honour from France, fairly recently. HT: I got that recently, didn’t I. And it was French, it was the French that - CB: Yeah. Did that. CB: Awarded me that. It was the MP what gave it me. He was the MP, he was the Member of Parliament for my area. CB: Oh was he. HT: Recently, Cumberland of course, you know, further north. [Other}: Hope. CB: Yeah. HT: And I went there, and he presented it me. I don’t know what, he, he was an important joker, this MP; [laugh] he was an important bugger. What was he? I just forget now. CB: You can say what you like Henry. [Laugh] HT: His family and he were of some importance! CB: If you want to take down MPs that’s fine! HT: So I chuffed him up. [Laugh] I chuffed him up grand, yeah. CB: Right. Henry Townsley, DFM, Croix de Guerre, Legion of Honour thank you very much for an interesting time. HT: [Guffawing] It’s true! 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 Henry Townsley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Brockbank 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 2018-03-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ATownsleyH180314 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending revision of OH transcription Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:12:56 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Description An account of the resource Henry Townsley was born near Workington, left school aged 14 and started work as an apprentice vehicle fitter. After a spell as a junior engineer in the Merchant Navy, in April 1940 he volunteered for the RAF, rather than the Navy as he suffered from sea sickness and fancied the prospects of flying. He also felt that aero engineering was the coming thing. Recruited as an engine fitter he trained at St. Athan and then volunteered for flying duties as it was a quick promotion. Because of his engineering background his flight engineer training was reduced to two weeks. He was posted to RAF Swinderby to fly the Manchester and then to 97 squadron, which became a Pathfinder squadron, at RAF Woodhall Spa alongside 617 Squadron. In May 1943 the squadron moved to RAF Bourne and he was promoted to warrant officer. Henry was happy to stay as an NCO and did not welcome more responsibility. After his first tour he was rested for six months as a senior instructor at 1661 HCU unit at RAF Winthorpe flying the Stirling. He compares flying the Lancaster and Stirling in some detail. He returned to operational flying and recalls bombing La Spezia and landing in North Africa where his aircraft went u/s but he repaired it himself in order to return home. Henry remembers that there were no great celebrations on VE day and he was demobbed in February 1946. After a period in civilian life, Henry re-enlisted in the RAF in September 1948 as a corporal fitter and was posted to Malaya and Singapore. He left the RAF again in 1952 and then worked for Rolls Royce for 26 years, working on Merlin engines. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Anne-Marie Watson Terry Holmes Maureen Clarke Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Cambridgeshire Wales--Vale of Glamorgan England--Nottinghamshire England--Lincolnshire Italy Italy--La Spezia North Africa Singapore Malaya Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940 1942 1943-05-19 1943-05 1940-04 1946-02 1948-09 1952 1661 HCU 97 Squadron aircrew bombing Distinguished Flying Medal fitter engine flight engineer ground crew Heavy Conversion Unit Lancaster Manchester Navy, Army and Air Force Institute Pathfinders promotion RAF Bourn RAF Coningsby RAF St Athan RAF Swinderby RAF Winthorpe RAF Woodhall Spa searchlight Stirling training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1187/11760/PWatsonJ1501.jpg 5e82adc2824b4bab6c98c732b381cc02 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1187/11760/AWatsonJR180202.mp3 f81235f23e0bc02c8249edb6f60394e4 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 Watson, John Robert J R Watson Description An account of the resource Seven items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer John 'Jack' Watson DFM (b. 1923 Royal Air Force) his log book and photographs. He flew three turs of operations as a flight engineer with 12 and 156 Squadrons. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Watson and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-08-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Watson, JR Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 2nd of February 2018 and we’re in Eastbourne talking with John Watson, Jack Watson DFM about his times in the RAF and before and after. So, Jack what are your earliest recollections of life? JW: It’s quite a strange one really. I had to go to Great Ormond Street when I was about three years old to have my tonsils out. And my father was in bus work all his life. He, he was in the First World War driving an ambulance. The [pause] I forget the name of the unit now but I’ve got a picture of him somewhere with his, standing by his ambulance. And he was at this time driving for a company called Fairways. They used to drive down to Worthing from London daily. And he came to collect me and my mum in his coach and I can remember the cab was just half the, the bonnet was just outside. He sat me on the bonnet, put his arm around me and drove off [laughs] And in the back of the coach was a little pedal car he’d bought for me. And the other recollection, I can remember that quite plainly the other recollection we were living in Acton although I was born in Putney at my grandmother’s house. All the family were born there except my dad but I can remember the R101. I was out in the street in Brouncker Road in Acton. CB: The airship. JW: And watched the R101 go over. And I can still marvel at the size of it because it wasn’t all that high and of course it went on to crash in France didn’t it? CB: It did. Yeah. JW: And, but then my father was the manager, manager of a coach company running coaches from High Wycombe to Oxford Circus to High Wycombe and Guildford. And when Mandelson’s grandfather Morrison decided he would nationalise because London was full of one man buses he’d nationalise it all. In those days it was a bit cut throat but they did. They put a coach to Guildford in front of my father’s coach. One behind it. And of course customer loyalty only goes so far. They see a coach comes along. And of course they ran him off the road. But they gave my father a job as a chief inspector at Dorking. We moved down there for two years. And after that we went to, he moved, took him to a bigger garage at Guildford which is where he stayed through the war. And then while we was, it was I’d just left school and I heard about the Air Defence of Great Britain Corps which was the forerunner of the ATC and they were at Brooklands Aerodrome. And I told my father that I wanted to join it and there was, I think that he could see the fact that the war was coming on. I think the war had just started actually. Yeah. And he’d seen what went on in the war, he didn’t want his son — we had arguments galore. Eventually he relented and I used to cycle over to Brooklands, about a twelve mile run on a Sunday morning and joined the ATC , the Air Defence of Great Britain Corps. And it was very much, me a working class boy in amongst, there were a lot of well-educated young men there and I must admit I felt a little bit out of place. But anyhow I stuck it out. But then of course they formed the ATC and I was able to transfer to Guildford. And I wanted to join the Air Force badly. I wanted to fly. I mean I’ve, as I said, I wanted to do my bit and save the world but that’s a lot of nonsense. I [laughs] I wanted to fly. And I, again because I was serving an apprenticeship my father, ‘No. You’re not going to join the Air Force. You’re not going to.’ I kept nagging nagging nagging. In the finish he said, ‘If Mr Biddle,’ who was the one of three brothers who owned the printing company where I was apprenticed, ‘If he says you can break your apprenticeship I’ll agree.’ ‘Fine.’ So immediately I went and saw Mr Biddle. I said, ‘Look, my father has given me permission to break my apprenticeship but I need your authority as well.’ Well, of course I forgot that dad being in charge of transport when his buses were late he used to phone around to the different companies so that the men didn’t lose money and they’d known each for some time. Of course it came that neither of them would give me permission [laughs] So the following Saturday at the top of Guildford High Street was an RAF Recruiting Office. I walked in there and joined up and then went back and said to dad, ‘I’ve joined the Air Force.’ I think if they’d have realised it they could have but I don’t think they, I presented them with a fait accompli. Anyhow, I then got about a week later to go to Abingdon for an interview. And I walked into this office and there was a whole range of high ranking Air Force officers sitting around and in front of them was a huge table with a map on it. They asked me very, and funnily enough they said, ‘Why do you want to? Why do you want to join in the Air Force?’ I said, ‘Well, firstly I want to fly and the other thing is I want to get my own back because in Guildford although it wasn’t badly bombed there was one night a bomber went over. A German bomber and just, I think there was a searchlight at Stag Hill by the Cathedral. He got caught in that and he just dropped his bombs. They came down and one of them hit the house next door. In a terrace. One fell opposite. And I was sleeping in that room downstairs but it was the curtains had been pulled across. It was rather like a bit of a bay and the curtains were back a bit but the bomb going off of course blew all the glass and shattered it and shredded the curtains which saved me. So anyhow I, they started asking questions and then one of them said, ‘Can you find Turkey on that map?’ Well, you know it’s a big place Turkey, isn’t it? And there’s a piece of Turkey below the Dardanelles. That’s the only bit I could find. I suppose it was nerves really. And anyhow, he said, ‘Any more?’ I said, ‘No.’ Anyhow, they said, ‘We think you’ll be better off as ground crew.’ So I went out and I thought, right. Ground crew. Wireless operator. I can transfer straight to air crew. So I went in and I sat in front of this corporal and he asked me some questions. He said, ‘Do you know the Morse Code?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah.’ But the rotten so and so bent down and picked up a Morse Code key and said, ‘Right. Take this down.’ [laughs] And of course the only thing I knew about Morse Code was how to spell it. So he said, ‘I think we’ll put you in as a flight mechanic.’ So which is what I went in to and I was called up in September or August. August of ’42. Went to Blackpool. Oh, Penarth first and although you considered yourself fit they gave us your kit you never had the strength to lift it. You dragged it back to your billet, got changed, put your kit into a little suitcase with your name and address on. Sent it off home. And then we started doing the square bashing in Blackpool. Well, the first morning we all lined up and we started a run to go to from Blackpool north to Bispham. Five mile run. I met them half way back. And I thought this is ridiculous. So the next morning as we used to start off there were some steps up to some public toilets. So the next morning I’d got a penny in my hand. And they all ran and I ran up because I’d sussed this out. You stood on the lavatory seat and looked through the little window and you could see them coming back. As they came back I came down joined then on the back and then I was fit enough to do all the exercises that they were going through. And this, I got away with this morning after morning and, but I just could not see the point. I’ve never been a runner or a sportsman of any kind and I certainly wasn’t at that stage. But the little Irishman sergeant we had in charge of our squad had got his stripe, his third stripe on the strength of the way he’d turned out his previous squad. So he had something to prove and he was a bit of a martinet. But when it was raining, I don’t know whether you know Blackpool. CB: Yeah. JW: But there’s the three promenades. He used to take us on to one of them and he’d lecture us on women. Quite an interesting character. But he didn’t ask us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. When we went on the, so it was Stanley Park in Blackpool on the assault courses we were all in PT kit. He was in full uniform and he went with us and he ran the whole way there and back. I forget his name now but he was a real character. We went from there. When we left there we were put on a train. We had to go to Manchester and change. We weren’t allowed to take the kit bag and all the back pack off and we were, but when we changed there we then got on another train which took us to Wendover because we were going to Halton. And when they marched us from Wendover up to the camp with a kit bag on the back it was nothing. We were that, it really got us fit. And while we were there the, there was a chap there he’d been a drummer in a band and he said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve found a set of drums,’ he said ‘We can form a drum corps to march the people down to the workshops and back.’ So he said, ‘You’re excused other duties,’ like Home Guard type duties. So that was it. It was going to be a get out of that. We wouldn’t have to go out at night. So we joined up and we had a practice room in one of the cook houses. And of course you gave a load of seventeen eighteen year olds a set of drums it, it was half an hour before he could make himself heard [laughs] And anyhow, he did. He did make us into a reasonable drum, we used to play these drum tunes. March them down to the workshops. March them back at lunchtime. Of course the advantage was you were at the lead so you were the first one in the cookhouse for your meal. And we used to go to Battle of Britain weeks where they used to go around the towns with an RAF, an RAF band. We weren’t allowed to play with the band. He used to the drumming with the band but we used to do, when they had a break we’d do our bit for the raising money for Spitfires. And while I was on the course for the fitter, for the air training mechanics course suddenly a notice went up on the board they were looking for flight engineers because obviously they were trying to take people off the squadron. They didn’t want to take too many because they were depleting their ground staff but equally the ground crews were watching what was coming back and thought well I don’t want any of that. So they were, except they would lower the standards like they did it didn’t affect me in that way and I applied. Went to Euston. And the night before we went to Euston a crowd of us went out and we went to see Lou Preager at the Hammersmith Palais and we got knocking back beers and stuff. The next morning we go for a young, there was a young flight lieutenant and I stripped off, I got on the scales he said, ‘Get back on them scales.’ I was only nine stone. Then we come to the dreaded holding the mercury up and after, after the night before I was [pause] and suddenly I was halfway through. I suddenly, and he looked around whether by accident or not I don’t know so I was able to take another breath and hold it up again and ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘You’ve passed.’ And I had to go back on the fitter’s course and passed all that before going down to St Athan for the flight engineer’s course and passed that with, with I think about seventy five percent. It was quite a, I was quite pleased with that result. And then we went up to Lindholme. Oh the first thing was the, when we finished our course for a week they sent us up to Ringway. Ringway. Where they were building the Lancs. To show us what was going on. And it was incredible. They took us all to Pointon. We all got off these coaches and we were met by all these girls. We all paired off and I met a fair headed one. I’ll never forget her name. Yvonne. She taught me more in that week about the facts of life and I thought well this is better than sliced bread [laughs] And so yeah the obvious happened. And I should have kept in touch. Her father was a manager of a printing company in Manchester. But I don’t know whether it was we didn’t think it was a proposition for somebody going into aircrew to get involved in a serious relationship. But anyhow we left there and we were sent back to St Athan. Then we, from there a couple of days later we went up to Lindholme and got all our flying kit and everything and then because I was going down to Faldingworth which was south there was only me and another chap going south. The rest, all the other people. So we had to go to Faldingworth with all the kit and then make our way from there back which was a nightmare. But anyhow we had a week’s leave and got back to Faldingworth and all shoved in a big hangar because my crew had been a Wellington crew. They hadn’t been on ops at all but of course they needed a mid-upper gunner and a flight engineer. I walked in and I was just wandering aimlessly about. I hadn’t got a clue what I was looking for and this wireless operator come up and he said to me, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’re looking for a flight engineer,’ He said, ‘What’s your name?’ I said ‘John.’ ‘Right, Jack.’ And I became Jack. All the Air Force life and all my working life. And it’s only the family that call me John. And anyhow I was introduced to the crew. And it was, it was quite a strange thing really because we all took to each other straight away. The pilot was, he was a month, he was only nineteen anyway. I mean, we was all only nineteen. He was a month younger than me. And the first thing, we got to Faldingworth was two days later he said to me, ‘We’re going up on fighter affil, on familiarisation tomorrow. Only me and you.’ So we picked up the screened pilot and walked out to the aircraft [pause] and I looked and I said, ‘I’m trained on Lancasters. This is a Halifax.’ I said, ‘Not only don’t I know anything about this it’s the first time I’ve seen one.’ I said, ‘Where’s the screened, the screened engineer?’ ‘Oh, we haven’t got one. You’ll be alright. You’ll be ok. Just the three of us.’ Well, we took off and we were flying at about four thousand feet and he said, he called me up, ‘Engineer, I want you to change the fuel tanks,’ he said, ‘Listen carefully.’ I said, ‘Well, first of all where are they? The controls.’ ‘Under one of the rest beds in the fuselage.’ Because the Lancaster and the Halifax are two totally different aircraft. So he said, ‘Under the rest bed,’ he said, ‘There’s two levers each side,’ he said, ‘Now, listen carefully. Turn off the lever on number one on the port side. Turn off the number one on the starboard side. Turn on the number two on the port side. Turn on the number two on the starboard side.’ Well, something didn’t sound right there. But anyhow I thought well I’d better follow what he says. I don’t know how the system works. So I turned off the number one. By the time I’d got across to the other side the aircraft did a nose dive. I carried on and set the tanks and then it picked it up. Well, of course he told me he should have turned off number one turned on number two. He told me the wrong way. He apologised very profusely. I said, I said, ‘Apology would have been a bit late wouldn’t it if we’d been two thousand feet lower?’ And he couldn’t, he couldn’t have been more contrite. And as I say I cut the fuel but it soon picked up. Anyhow, from then on I never ever had a screened engineer go with me. I was always on, but when we landed I went to stores and got the manual for the Halifax. And I spent the whole, I never even go for any meal. I spent all that afternoon, all night going through that manual. The next morning when we went out to the Halifax again I knew what I wanted to know about it. But it was a stupid thing he did. And I should have had a screened engineer with me. Especially being a, a — CB: A complete rookie. JW: Complete. Yeah. I mean to, I can’t imagine what I was thinking to even agree to go. Because in the flight of the Lancaster you sit alongside the pilot. In a Halifax you sit with your back to the pilot. So the whole thing was completely different. But anyhow we got away with it. My guardian angel was sitting on my shoulder. But we, we went from there to, we got a posting to 12 Squadron at Wickenby. And it’s only about five miles so it was a crew bus to go, and as we drove in two Lancs were on the side of the perimeter track. One screwed into the back of the other. As they were taxiing around apparently one stopped, one didn’t. But luckily nobody got hurt from it. And then they took us to our billet. And I can see it now. Walked in the billet and it was as the crew had left. The beds were unmade. Sheets just drawn. And I looked over to the bed that I’d picked and it was the pilot’s name. Sergeant Twitching. And years later a chap, you’ve heard of Currie, the pilot who wrote one of the books, he phoned me up because I’d phoned him up about something else previous and he said, ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I’ve been asked to write something about strange happenings to people who were flying.’ And I told him how I’d joined and I said to him, I said the, I never forgot the name of that man, Sergeant Twitching. He said, ‘What an unfortunate name for a bomber boy.’ And when I went years after the war, I’m digressing a bit I went to Lincoln Cathedral and saw the volume and I asked them if they could open that book at this man’s name. I said I felt as though I needed to make some sort of tribute to him. And they were all killed. I think it was either Leipzig or Stuttgart. One of those. And anyhow we started off. Went on our first op and when we were, you were convinced that going from what the instructor’s told you that you were never going to make your first op. And it was at Brunswick on the 17th of January ’44. And we took off and as we took off nothing happened. We got our, we were going past I think Hanover and I looked down and the whole of the cloud, it was all cloud but it was all lit up with the searchlights shining through and I called up and I said, ‘Bill there’s a Lanc down on the right hand, on the starboard side there,’ I said, ‘He’s about three thousand feet below us.’ ‘Oh, that’s good,’ He said, ‘They’ll be watching him and they won’t see us.’ And I thought, cor what a man. What a pilot. You know, we’re alright here. We went to Brunswick. Got back without any problems at all. And we did, it was the next thing was on the second trip was to Berlin. An eight and a half hour trip. We called up at Wickenby on the way back when we was coming for to permission to land and they said yeah ok. We were in the circuit and there was low cloud. As we broke cloud, it’s unbelievable to think they talk about near misses, Another Lanc alongside of us on our port side broke cloud at the same time with about six feet between the wing tips. And our pilot, we went that way, he went that way. So, you know. Anyhow, we carried on and landed. And Bill called out, and he said, oh. ‘Clear of runway.’ And there was a few minutes silence and then a voice said, ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ And we had landed at Ludford Magna. CB: Oh right. JW: Which was an adjoining. In that sort of taking that evasive action thinking we were joining the circuit again we weren’t. Anyhow, they kept us for about four hours then before the let us fly back to, to Wickenby. And the next thing was that we did a trip to Stuttgart. And we had the most fantastic mid-upper gunner and he didn’t have a brain he had a computer. We were going in to, on the bombing run and he suddenly said , ‘Dive port, Go.’ Bill just went. And as we did I watched tracer go over the top of the aircraft. And we got, we got the, it dipped, it broke away and didn’t make another attack. We got back ok and our wireless operator said, ‘We owe our lives to Appy and Bill.’ And we, because we were so close a crew we didn’t have engineer and pilot it was Bill and Appy and Ollie. I was Watty. That’s how. But it worked for us because we all knew each other’s, as soon as we spoke we knew who it was talking. And we got back and the next thing we had was a raid, we were walking down to briefing and I was on my own and there was a spattering of [pause] this was in February, there was a spattering of snow on the ground. I was walking down to the briefing room on my own funnily enough. I don’t know why but I just, going through some trees and I suddenly stopped in my tracks. And it was the most strange feeling. I knew that if we didn’t leave Wickenby we wouldn’t survive. It was the most strange feeling. We went in and again the target was Stuttgart. And we got there and back without any problems. But two mornings later we were called into the flight commanders office and he’d got us all around standing in a row in front of him. I can see him now. He said, ‘You’ve got two options,’ he said, ‘You’re going to either volunteer for the Pathfinder force or we’ll send you.’ [laughs] Now, having experienced that strange feeling two nights previously that was the answer for me. The two navigators weren’t, the bomb aimer and the navigator weren’t all that keen but they decided to go along with it and we didn’t fly any more ops from there. We were sent down to Warboys for the Pathfinder Training Unit. And it was going to be straight, the bomb aimer was going to become the second navigator. The flight engineer was going to be the bomb aimer and also I had to learn some navigation. So we did all these necessary courses. About nine days I think we were there. Nine, ten days something like that. And we went in to see the navigation officer and he said to me, ‘Ask me some questions.’ I had to learn to take an astro shot with a sextant. I did that. And he said to me, ‘What’s the difference between a planet and a star?’ As, yeah a planet and a star. And I thought I don’t know. All I could think, going through my mind was, “Twinkle twinkle little star,” and I thought what an idiot. And I said to him, and I thought this is going to get [pause] I said, ‘A star twinkles.’ He said, ‘That’s correct. A planet is a steady light.’ And I thought it was [laughs] and I didn’t let him know that it was the nursery rhyme that got me out of trouble but it did. Anyhow, when was, we’d done all the courses we had to do the practice bombing with the triangle and the fuel and and you had to get to within about a yard of that. We did. But of course at two thousand feet having got it and hit it we then, this is, we was doing a bit of low level flying we came across a field and there was a load of sheep. Well they nearly beat us. As the aircraft suddenly came, all these sheep suddenly [unclear] from shock. But one of the instructions when, when they said after we’d finished when I was sitting chatting to one of them and he said what squadron are you going to?’ I said, ‘156.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘The rebel squadron.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘They’ll fly ‘til the cows come home but,’ he said, ‘Lectures or anything like that they can never get them in to them.’ He said, ‘As soon as there’s a stand down they’re off. And it was like that. It was like that. It was. They were all really, years later a friend of mine, I was sitting chatting to him he was, he was the same as the rear gunner. He flew with about ten different crews. One of the bravest men I knew as a rear gunner and I said to him, ‘How did you manage to do all that with all those different — ?’ He said, ‘All the crews on 156 were good.’ And they were. And the number of them who got killed because they didn’t finish when they could have done. Just went on like we did. You know. And but anyhow [pause] he said, ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘They can’t seem to do anything [unclear],’ he said, ‘But they’ll fly night and day,’ he said, ‘All week.’ But anyhow at that point they, because they’d transferred 156 from Warboys to Upwood, and Upwood which was to be a, in to a Warboys and we got to Warboys just as they changed. But we did quite a few. We never did any more Berlin trips. The first one we did from Upwood was to Essen and the next one, our thirteenth trip and it was, it was only a little sometime later that I realised this, we were flying in M-Mother. Thirteenth. That was the alphabet. Our thirteenth trip. It was Nuremberg [pause] and we noticed we were giving off contrails so we decided to lose height until we found a height where it wasn’t affecting us. But a lot of crews just carried on. I mean it’s not surprising that so many of them got caught. Some probably didn’t have a chance to, there was another crew of course Tony Hiscock was the skipper and he was, he was talking to me. He said. ‘Yeah, we had those contrails. We just, when the rear gunner told me we was leaving them,’ he said, ‘We just changed height until we realised we were stopping.’ But we never saw anything on that trip other than other than other aircraft going down which our gunners were reporting to us. But it was — oh, hello love. This is my daughter Suzanne. CB: We’ll stop there for a mo. [recording paused] CB: Getting out of them. JW: Yeah. And we, we had some [pause] a couple of trips where we were, on one trip we were coned. CB: With searchlights. JW: Searchlights. And I was actually on the bombing run. I was, ‘Left. Left. Steady.’ And suddenly the lights caught us. But Bill never hesitated. We were at eighteen thousand feet and he just went down in a dive and of course I shot up into the front turret. I was fixed. I couldn’t move with the gravity. He pulled out at six thousand feet and I come crashing down over the bombsight again. And ten minutes but he got us out of us. He got us out of the, out of the, those searchlights. And we then finished up,. We bombed. We went around again and bombed at twelve thousand feet. But it was another one we did was to Lens, and this was the night when the flying bombs were coming over. The V-1s. We could see all these lights coming below us and hadn’t a clue what they were but it was not ‘til we got back the next day but it was, it was in France. But going down we were going down at, going through at seven thousand feet. We came on the target so quick. [recording paused] CB: Right. JW: As we were going I was giving him the instructions. Suddenly — CB: As the bomb aimer at that time. JW: As the bomb aimer. CB: Yeah. JW: Suddenly realised that we got on the target before we realised it and I said to him, ‘Dummy run, Bill. Go around again.’ But it was, it was years later before I realised what had happened. Came back. Coming on to the target and I could see all these black shapes going past me in the corner of my eye. Anyhow, that time I got the target on the marker. The target markers. Dropped the bombs and when I looked I thought to myself [unclear] the operational record books, one of the sheets I’ve got and when I looked I realised he didn’t go around again he did a u-turn and we were flying into the bomber stream. And I thought strange. How did we do that? Then I looked. In that turn he lost two thousand feet. We bombed from five thousand feet. Everybody else was coming over at seven but how we flew through all that lot. All the bombs going. I don’t know. But [pause] I’m just trying to find it. As I say it was the number of times. Three times at least on the bomb aiming run I called dummy run. CB: We’ll just stop again. Hang on. [recording paused] CB: You bombed at five thousand feet. JW: Yeah. CB: And everybody else did it at seven. JW: Yeah. CB: Which was what you were briefed to do. JW: Yeah. CB: So this is part of your lucky escape — JW: It is. Yeah. CB: Series, isn’t it? Extraordinary. JW: But, as I say on at least three occasions on the German trips I called dummy run, and not once did I hear one murmur of dissent from any of the crew. You read reports from people, ‘Oh, get rid of it,’ you know. But none of our crew did that. We had complete faith and trust in each other. But, yeah on at least three occasions we did a, we did a dummy run to go around. On one occasion when we were at Wickenby and I think that this is when we came to be on Pathfinders, because Hamish Mahaddie used to go around picking crews and he must have looked at this particular order and it was this. On debriefing it said we were six minutes early so we put the flaps down and did dog legs to lose six minutes. And this was on Stuttgart. I mean [laughs] but it was, we were told to get there and our pilot he always said there was a lot of talk about some of the crews were throwing their bombs in and either banking and then so that they didn’t actually fly over the target. And I know that when that happened Bill said, ‘What the hell’s the point of going all that way without going over and doing it properly?’ But he was, he was a fantastic pilot. He was a fantastic. He was the only man I have ever known apart from people like Alex [pause] Grimshaw? What was his name? The test pilot at Ringway. He did — CB: Oh, Henshaw. JW: Henshaw. CB: Yeah. JW: Well, I think he did it. He did a rate four turn on a — CB: On a Lancaster. JW: On a Lancaster. CB: Crikey. JW: And he did it to come up, we were on fighter affiliation and we were being attacked by a Spitfire but instead of doing the normal corkscrew he did this rate four. We came up behind the Spitfire. And unbelievably — CB: In the Lancaster. JW: Unbelievably the Spitfire pilot complained and he called, our CO called Bill in and he said, ‘You’ve got to stick to the rules.’ And he had, I think he had a grin on his face as he was saying it. Bill said if that had been a Messerschmitt we could have shot it down. Yeah. But he, and it was the most I can see it now. You’re standing there and you are horizontal but you’re not falling. Yeah. But he was, he was, we loved him. And when, when I looked to see that I think that report as I say going around to Hamish Mahaddie I think that he read that and thought well we need crews who are going to be there on time and this is what, this is what we’ve been looking for. CB: Yeah. Extraordinary experiences. Yes. JW: The, but then of course when we got to, I did one spare bod trip. I got caught. I think it was the flight commander. Wing Commander Scott. He was a New Zealander. His engineer went sick and two SPs came down and saw me. Engineer. Right. I had to fly with him. It was to Stuttgart again. But on the run in did the bomb aiming, came out of the target and I looked at the inspections bit and the cookie had held up. CB: Oh. JW: So I said to him, ‘Skip, go around again. We’ve got the cookie.’ Well, our own pilot would have been natural enough just to go round but what he called me. He was questioning my sanity as well apart from insulting my mother and father but you didn’t take any notice of that. So I said, ‘I’ll go around and try and release it manually.’ And there used to be a little flap above the cookie that you could pull back. A little slide and release the bolt that held it. And I’d got a, made a little sort of little light there. I was just, I suddenly saw the bolt start to shudder and pulled my hand back just as this thing shot across. He pulled the toggle on the instrument panel and dropped the carrier, the lot. Didn’t look to see where we were. He just opened the bomb doors. And he started weaving as we took off and he was still weaving until we landed. Oh, he was complete nerves. And — Other 1: Gosh. JW: Yeah. Wing Commander Scott. He was posted shortly after that. But I made sure I didn’t do any more of those. There was one occasion when they, knew they, what they were looking for a flight engineer. So I went up in the loft and [laughs] ‘Flight Sergeant Watson here?’ ‘No. He’s gone out. He’s gone into Peterborough.’ ‘Oh alright.’ And I was up in the loft like this. I lifted it up just to listen [laughs] because we had arranged we weren’t flying. I was going out. But I wasn’t going to do another, and I’d already done halfway through my third tour so I was well away to saying no. But the other — CB: Would you class him as a dangerous pilot then? JW: Who? CB: Because of his nerves. JW: Well, I didn’t. I didn’t have any confidence in him. I wasn’t, I wasn’t frightened at all but I thought to myself, no. I didn’t like flying with a strange crew anyway. None of us did. But that’s what made me admire my friend in Southampton. He was, the number of times he went with strange crews. But we’d done that lot and I thought well half way through a third tour because we finished a second tour, we was all in the Red Lion in Ramsey, and we were all celebrating and Bill came in and it was, there were never enough seats and we were all sitting around on the floor with pints of beer. And he said, Bill said, ‘How about carrying on?’ ‘Yes.’ So the next morning he said, ‘Don’t forget,’ he said, ‘We’re going to carry on.’ ‘Oh alright.’ But we wouldn’t have let him flown with anybody else anyway. So that was the mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator, myself and Bill. As I say the two navs packed up and we had a range of rear gunners after he’d done forty one trips. And we finished the third tour and he pulled the same stroke again. So we was in a [laughs] we was on, the last trip was the master bomber trip to [pause] Munster. And it was a day like this. Really beautiful sunshine and we were just lying round and we got, this is a twenty second trip with these two Canadian navigators and there was an anti-aircraft gun. Obviously you could tell who the master bomber gunner was because brilliant daylight. Not a cloud in the sky. And the shell went off alongside of us. And I said to Bill [unclear] we went down five hundred feet and they put a shell in the same place. So when he did that we went back up. And they put one where we were. And this went on. It was [laughs] it was ridiculous really. But anyhow we got away with it but when, when we were sort of circling around doing, Bill was directing the raid one of the navigators came out from behind the curtain. He took one look. We were surrounded by shell bursts. And he said, ‘Jeez, let’s get out of here.’ And Bill said, it was the only time I ever heard him raise his voice, ‘Get back inside.’ And he scuttled back in behind the curtain. I mean, navigators never came out and if you came out like that and you see. Because it is a bit of a shock seeing those shell bursts. The first daylight we did got to the target and you could have walked on the shell bursts there was that many. And I thought we can never fly through that. But we did. Got away with it. CB: How many times did you actually get hit by flak? JW: About four times I think. Five times. But none of us ever got a scratch. CB: What sort of damage did the aircraft — JW: Holes in the bomb, in the bomb bay doors and some in the fuselage, but not enough to [pause] There was one that we did get hit and I think it took a bit out of the engine. It was on the raid Trossy St Maximin when Bazalgette got his VC. It was on that raid. It was such a heavily defended target. It was a bomb bay, V-1 bomb dump and as we went in we dropped. I think we just dropped the bombs. There was suddenly this hell of a bang. A tremendous noise and we just went into a dive and I thought we’d been hit but anyhow, I looked. We had a clear blister on the nose of our Lancs. You could put you head in and I could look through and I could see that the, both engines, all four engines were still in sync so there was obviously nothing wrong with them. So I called up and said, ‘Engines are ok. I’ll check Bill.’ I went up and he was ok as it turned out but he’d just, when that and they knew they’d got the range he just went into a dive but that took a piece out the side of one of the engines. But the engines still worked. Other 1: Extraordinary. JW: We didn’t even know there was anything wrong with it. But that was, going back to the Nuremberg raid when we landed we landed at Marham and on the way back as we left the target I noticed one of the oil instruments wasn’t working. Now, that could mean you’ve lost power. Anyhow, the engine, I didn’t say anything because I kept a check on it and noticed that there was no, the engine was not giving any reports of any failures so it was obviously the instrument that was at fault. So when we landed the next morning when we were going to take off again and the number of Lancs at Marham was unbelievable. It was just everywhere and it was a grass drome as well, the [pause] I said to Bill, ‘There’s no point in reporting this fault because they’ll never get anybody to —’ I said, ‘I’ll go out and check the oil to make sure there’s no lost oil.’ Because sitting on the engine that’s been going for eight hours I was covered in oil when I got back. Sitting on the engine dipping the tank. And it was, there was no loss of oil so I said to Bill, ‘No. There’s no point. We can take, we’ll never get away if we report that.’ And we took off. Got back and reported it when we got back. But the other thing was we had to take up on the flight from Upwood, we were going up on a night flying test and we were asked to take up a senior RAF [pause] I forget what rank he was now. Quite a high rank. Anyhow, suddenly one the port inners started. The starboard inner started playing up and I couldn’t control the pitch of the propellers so I said to Bill, ‘We need to feather it.’ He said, ‘Ok.’ When we landed he said, ‘What’s wrong?’ Now, I can’t tell you the name now but it was one of three things it could have been inside the nose, the hub of the propeller and there was one main one and I said, and one thing that they taught you when you went on Pathfinders, you’ve got to think quick and you’ve got to act. You can’t dither. You make a decision. Right or wrong you make a decision. And that way. And I said to Bill, oh it’s the so and so. So when we landed chiefy come around. The sergeant in charge of the ground crew and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Why is the engine feathered, skip?’ Bill said, well because this [laughs] he named the part that was broken. And the chiefy looked at him in amazement and said, ‘With respect, sir,’ he said, ‘How do you know that?’ And I could have wanted the ground to open up. ‘Because my engineer told me.’ But luckily I was right. I got it right. And it was at [pause] we had to abort one. We got they gave us the trip because we got within fifty miles of the target. We had boost surge. We just could not cure it. And when we got back I said, ‘I think there’s something wrong with the camshaft.’ Ha ha ha — that was the laugh I got from the engineering officer. But they couldn’t find it either. So they sent the engine back to Derby and they found a cracked valve which was obviously after the cam shaft. CB: We’ll stop there for a mo so you can have a bit of your coffee. JW: Yeah. [recording paused] CB: On the Munster trip. Yeah. JW: Yeah. We got — CB: Yeah. JW: Back from there. Landed. And we were walking back to debriefing and one of the rear gunners saw another crew came running up. He said, A signal’s come through to say that Cleland’s crew are to be taken off operations immediately and not allowed to fly on any more ops.’ We never knew why. Because we didn’t have one abortive trip. We’d always bombed the target. Everything. And yet the only thing I could think was that we’d been flying for fifteen months without any break. CB: That’s extraordinary. JW: And I think they thought that we were [pause] and I’ve often thought that they saved our lives. The next trip could have been. Other 1: Easily. JW: The one that we would have — [pause] CB: How did you feel about that? JW: Well, we were choked because we knew they were going to split the crew up. But we thought we might be able to carry on as a crew for a little while but within a week they posted us all off. They sent me as an instructor to a Wellington OTU. A flight engineer. They don’t fly flight engineers on Wellingtons. And that was really a case of I was there for a little while. Then they decided to post me to a Maintenance Unit. 56 MU. Except it should have been 58 MU. 58 MU was at Coventry. About twenty miles away. 56 MU was at Inverness. So I went all the way up to Inverness and I had an aircrew sergeant with me. He’d never done any ops because the war had finished as he finished training. He was going with me and he lived in Edinburgh and so he said, ‘Right. We can go to Edinburgh.’ We had three days in Edinburgh where he lived. Went off up to Inverness and we got out from the station and I can see it now. As we went through Perth and that area. Beautiful scenery because by this, it was an overnight trip. Anyhow, we found, couldn’t find what we were looking for. We couldn’t find the unit at all. We suddenly spotted an airman and I said to him, called him over and I said, ‘Tell me where — ’ ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘It’s in a garage down here.’ Which is what it was. A garage. And he said, and he said to me, ‘Watch the station warrant officer,’ he said, ‘He’s a bit of a martinet. He’ll find something for you to do.’ Anyway, we had to report to him so he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We’re closing down.’ He said, ‘I don’t know why they sent you here.’ Somebody had misread [laughs] Anyhow, he said, well he said, ‘I’ll put you in charge of the police for a week.’ Well, they had about a half dozen coppers there. RAF police. And I walked in. I said to them, ‘What are you all doing here?’ Well, they said ‘There’s nothing to do.’ So I said, ‘Right, you three have three days off. You three cover the whole lot. Three days later you go on three days leave.’ They thought I was the best thing since sliced bread [laughs] But we got back from there and as I say I got to this other MU and it was at [pause] on the mainline. CB: Near Coventry was it? JW: No. This was, it started with an N. Not Northampton. Anyhow, I called up. Phoned up the unit and said, ‘Is there any transport to, out to unit?’ She said, ‘Where are you?’ I said, ‘On the station.’ She said, ‘On the up or down line?’ She said, ‘Well come out,’ she wouldn’t have known that which part.’ She said, ‘Look to your left. Can you see a black building about four hundred yards?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘That’s us.’ And it was where they made the lawnmowers. They made, well it wasn’t making them then but as we used to have to go in private billets as we were going down to them their lot was coming away and it was just a track. But all on bikes of course. But yeah that was quite a, and what I had to do there it was the Queen Mary’s there. The long low loaders. And I had to work out the next week how many were going to be off and with what fault. And I thought bloody silly. How the hell can anybody work that out? But it quite surprising. It worked. The system they’d got. So that so many would be off with flat tyres. So many would be off with this. And I had all these sheets that I had to fill in with all the, one for each of the loader. A lot of them were a way out in different places on locations. But then from there they sent me to Skellingthorpe and there it was, it was ridiculous. It was as though they’d forgotten you. In fact, you were just milling around. I did take over the, they couldn’t find anybody to take the sergeant’s mess over and I knew that you can’t run a pub which was what it was and lose money. And I discovered that they were getting five pounds to go to the NAAFI at Waddington to stock up from the [pause] So I said to the, saw the officer in charge of the mess and I said to him, ‘Can I have twenty pounds?’ ‘Twenty pound. What do you want twenty pound for?’ I said, ‘Well, people want to buy toothpaste.’ I said, ‘There’s none of that in there or domestic things.’ So got in the van, went over to Waddington and I spent this money and I thought the ration was Players cigarettes and I thought no. They’re going to be Churchills. So I bought a load of Churchill fags. When I got back I said to them, I said, ‘Sorry lads. The ration’s Churchill fags but I have managed to buy some Players. But I had to pay over the odds for them.’ [laughs] I made a fortune. I came home. After a week I came home. I had managed to pay somebody to look after the mess bar for me, and I came home with a suitcase with a little attache̕ case with two bottles of whisky and two bottles of rum in it and, oh yeah I made quite a bit out of that. In fact one night one of the ground staff, he’d been in the Air Force years and years. Before the war. He came in. He’d been in to Lincoln and he was, well he’d had quite a skinful. And he coolly asked for a pint and he held it up. He said, ‘That’s off. That’s cloudy.’ So I said, ‘Oh, ok sir. I’ll get you another one out of a different barrel.’ ‘Ah that’s better.’ So when the, the officer in charge of the mess came in the next morning I said to him, it was the, he was a warrant officer ground staff and I said to him, ‘Warrant officer,’ so and so, ‘He’s complained and said that barrel’s off.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We can’t have that, he said. We’ll write it off.’ But it was half full. I think there was about nine gallons in it. And the next night I knew there was nothing wrong with it. The same warrant officer came in. He was sober this time. Poured him a pint from the same one. Now, that’s lovely,’ he said, ‘That’s great.’ So I had nine gallons and I had three days of my demob leave on that barrel with some of the mates I’d met. Oh dear. Yes. It was, it was quite a, but because of the way it went I decided to come home on leave. I was milling around. I went and saw my governor and I said to him, ‘Can I come back to work?’ So, ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘You can come back.’ So I went back to work. And got paid for it. Not a lot but it was because it was only apprentice’s wage and, but about a fortnight one of my mates phoned up and he said, ‘Come back quick he said. They’re sending everybody home.’ So I went back, got demobbed to come home. But I had a couple of, a couple of near squeaks with the CO there. But the mess was just a hut and the bar was a cabinet which stood about that high. About that wide. And 12 o’clock at night I’m in there with a couple of other sergeants and we got bass sitting on our knees and the orderly officer walked in. ‘I said, ‘Do you want a drink, sir.’ Silly thing to say wasn’t it? I was under open arrest and in front of the CO the next morning. But I went round and managed to say, ‘You saw the bar was locked, the cupboard was all locked up, didn’t you?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ Well, because it was all locked up I got away with it. But another time I went home on I used to go on the pay parade on Thursday, special pay parade and go home. And I used to catch the quarter past ten from Lincoln because pay parade was about, no it was a bit later than that. The pay parade was at 9 o’clock. I had time to get paid because it was only a short pay parade, walk into Lincoln and get the train down to Kings Cross and then across to Waterloo and home. Now, I did this this particular week and then on this particular Thursday I’d just got in and a telegram arrived at the door. “Report back to base camp immediately.” I thought that’s funny. So I phoned up one of my mates there and I said, ‘What’s happening?’ ‘Oh, you’re in dead trouble. You were the witnessing officer at pay parade.’ He said, ‘Half the camp stayed for food that they weren’t prepared for. The other half went home and left the pay, the witnessing the officer with the money with all that money he didn’t know what to do with.’ Anyhow, I got back. I went round and I reported, saw the RTO at Guildford station. Reported to him and told him that I was allowed to go back and I’d, I said, ‘I’ve only just got home.’ This was the Friday of course. The day after. And got — [doorbell and knocking] [recording paused] CB: We’re talking about the pay parade. The fact you’d gone home. JW: Yeah. I got back. I got back on Friday night. Reported to the orderly officer and was put under open arrest. The next morning we went in to see the CO and he said, ‘You went home on Thursday, Watson.’ And he was a wing commander ground staff. Been in the Air Force about forty years. I said, ‘No sir,’ I said, ‘I went home on Friday morning.’ ‘Why did you go on the pay parade on Thursday then?’ I said, ‘Well, I knew that I wanted to get away on Friday, sir.’ He said, ‘But didn’t you read the DROs?’ Well, I knew that it was a crime not to read them but looking through the King’s Rules and Regulations the night before I discovered that it’s not a crime if you read them and forget them. So I said, ‘I did read them, sir.’ I said, ‘And it went right out of my mind.’ I said, ‘I just forgot it completely.’ And of course he went through and he said, ‘Watson, I know you went home on Thursday.’ ‘No. Sir.’ I said, ‘I left here and,’ I told him the times. ‘I caught the train down to — ’ and because I was in a billet which was just on the edge of camp, had my own room there nobody could see me leave. And I said, ‘I caught that train just after ten. I got to Guildford,’ I said, ‘And the telegram arrived as I got home,’ I said, ‘I turned straight around and came back,’ I said. ‘In fact, I reported to the — ’ Anyhow, we went on and he said, asked me another. In the finish he said, ‘Right. Watson, you stay here. Everybody else go out.’ And he said to me, ‘Watson, I know you’re lying.’ He said, ‘I know you went home on Thursday but,’ he said, ‘I can’t prove it.’ He said, ‘But you’re not going to get away with it.’ He said, ‘You’re going to do three weeks of orderly officer.’ He said, ‘If you go out of camp I will know.’ And I knew he would do as well. I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry sir but,’ I said, ‘You’re wrong. I did go home on Friday.’ [laughs] But it was complete bluff. If he’d have said to me, ‘Swear on the bible,’ I don’t know what I would have done. But, yeah. I did discover that, you know. You can read. If you can’t, if you don’t read them it’s a crime. But read — Other 1: And forget. JW: And forget. You can’t, you know the loss of memory, it’s [laughs] but, and I got away with it. But he never held it against me because he gave me quite a good report when I left. He signed my release book. The next — CB: But you did have to do the orderly officer. JW: I did, yeah. Religiously did and the funny, it was quite funny really because I went in the mess one night and they’d just had a delivery come in. I said, ‘You got any Guinness?’ They said, ‘Yeah. We got a crate in today.’ ‘Right,’ I said, ‘I’ll buy the lot.’ ‘You can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Yes I can.’ And of course as a warrant officer and he’s a sergeant he’s not going to argue is he? I bought the lot. And then a chap came in. He played football for one of the Division One teams. Blackburn Rovers was it? And he sat down. I said to him, ‘Do you want a Guinness?’ ‘Oh yes please.’ So we sat there and but he was as wide a boys as me. He had got hold of you know the Lindholme dinghies that they used to drop the crew in? They had, they had the big main dinghy and then either side you had four flotation units. Two that side. They used to drop it so that it would spread and drift down to the crews that were ditched. He’d got hold of one of these and we sold it off. We even had the dinghy. I don’t know where he got it from but he got the dinghy. But our nerve failed us when we tried to get rid of that because we didn’t realise that all the surplus was going to be sold off after the war otherwise we’d have sold that and all. But — CB: Who were the people who wanted to buy these things? JW: All people in the camp. CB: Oh right. JW: Yeah. Other sergeants and other aircrew. And there I finished up there with twenty three German prisoners of war under my charge. CB: On the airfield. JW: Yeah. And they were quite clever. They used to make light bulbs and put ships and, and cliffs and lights inside the bulb. I don’t know how they did it. Built it up with the cliffs and the lighthouses in there and a little ship. Fantastic. And one of them made it, I bought it off him. It was a crocodile and in front was a little bird. And as you pulled it along the crocodile opens up and came like that and as it did the bird shot forward. I should have had enough sense to realise it was a money maker. I bought it for one of my friend’s little kiddies. Other 1: Dear. CB: What was their role? What did they do as prisoners? JW: Cleaning and doing odd jobs you know around the camp. The American. The, their sergeant in charge of them he’d been, spent time in America and he spoke, spoke like an American. And I shall never forget he said to me we were talking one day and he was quite an educated chap and he must have been about a year or so older than me and he said, ‘I can’t understand the swear words,’ He said, ‘You talk about using the F word. F table,’ he said, ‘You know. It’s ridiculous.’ And I said to him, ‘Yeah. I agree with you.’ You know. He was always saying about language. The way it’s used. But, but he was, he was quite educated and he spoke without any German accent at all, and he was a [pause] I know that one of them one night somebody had taken some stuff out of the mess. And I just warned them. I said, ‘I don’t know which one of you it is but you’re in dead trouble if it happens again.’ It didn’t happen again. They did, they learned their lesson. But no it’s, as I say when it came to getting demobbed I was so disillusioned with the discipline and everything else that, and I knew I’d got an apprenticeship when we were on the, at Faldingworth taxiing round. Because aircraft were going off the end Faldingworth was a mud bath. If an aircraft went off the edge it would go down in to the mud to its axles and it would take days to get it out. So what they did they were fining crews a half a crown each which was half a day’s pay. So as we were taxiing around on the perimeter track I’m watching the wheel. I suddenly looked up and we were coming up against, it was, it turned out to be the engineering officer. He’d parked on the perimeter track and gone into one of the huts. And of course by then I said to Bill, but you can’t stop a thirty ton aircraft and the outside prop and it was one of those Hillman Tilts with the framework and the canvas and the outside was going over. It went right through all the canvas and ripped it and I thought I hope no one is in there. There wasn’t fortunately but Bill was on, he was pulled up for it. And I said to him, I said, ‘Tell them I was the one that was at fault,’ I said, ‘You couldn’t see from your side anyway and he shouldn’t have been parked there.’ ‘No.’ he said, ‘I’m the skipper. It’s my fault.’ And he got a mild reprimand. But that was the sort of bloke he was, you know. And as I say but it was [pause] we would have, well we’d have done anything for him really. We certainly wouldn’t have let him fly with anybody else if it had meant we had to carry on flying. Which is the reason we carried on. And it was years that we couldn’t find him after the war. Years later we tried to find him. And then my Appy, the mid-upper gunner phoned me up one day and he said, ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I’ve been told that Bill lives at a place called Hilmarton near Calne in Wiltshire. So I said, ‘Well, the next time I go down to see my sister I’ll go down that way. Well, Hilmarton is, it’s, it’s a funny little place. You go through and there’s just a little turning to the church. I didn’t realise we go down that turning. There’s a school and then houses, part of the village. I went into the pub and I said, ‘Do you know anybody called Cleland?’ I said, ‘He was, he was with BOAC.’ ‘No.’ Turns out, Bill said, ‘I don’t know how they didn’t know that,’ he said, because Frances, his daughter used to go and help out in the bar.’ Anyhow, I went into the little garage on the main road and they didn’t know. But they said, ‘I’ll tell you what, he said. In the little bungalow next door but one there’s a chap there. He knows everybody in the village,’ he said, ‘He can probably tell you.’ Knocked on his door. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘He lives just around the back here. The other side of the church.’ So we drove around and I knocked on the door and Bill’s wife answered and I said, ‘Does Bill Cleland live here?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Is he in?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘I said will you tell him his flight engineer’s here.’ She went in. He was, he was going, supposed to be going out to a meeting. But he said we’ll go and have some lunch. He was so pleased. And of course from then on we kept in touch and, but he’d gone on to, he’d been seconded. In fact we were both demobbed the same day. I met up at Uxbridge. And he’d been seconded to BOAC. He’d actually, he got the King’s, yeah the Kings Commendation while he was with, or the Queen I can’t remember which one it was. He got it for his efforts in flying. Because I know he said to me, he said, ‘You just sit there. Press the button. It takes you to that point. Press another button it takes you to the next point. ‘He said. Oh that’s when he told me he met the wing commander that I flew with as he was. He met him in Canada. He said, ‘We were both going through,’ He said, ‘I know that he recognised me. ‘He said he was a, he wasn’t a nice bloke at all. When they were on the squadron when you looked to see in 156 there was a little number of people who were doing all the master bomber trips. Who had been the master bombers and the, we eventually got on to them but, and Bill went in one day and he said they were all pilots because you had a room each of pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, engineers, wireless operators, air gunners and he said to this wing commander, he said ‘Is it fair that Cocky’s doing all the master bombing?’ He said, ‘Can somebody else take a turn?’ And I think he thought Bill was saying he ought to do it. He wasn’t. He was saying look, you know, some of the others can do it because it’s amazing that the same few were doing them and a lot of them were on dodgy mostly French trips. And anyhow he said, ‘Everybody out.’ He said, ‘Bill, not you.’ He said, ‘I’ll decide who does the master bombers, and their deputies not you.’ and Bill, ‘I wasn’t suggesting that.’ ‘Shut up. Get out.’ He said, ‘I know he recognised me but,’ he said, ‘He completely ignored me.’ And he didn’t do any master bombers himself because it wasn’t a very nice job to do. You know. You’re putting yourself, sticking your head over the parapet. But if you were briefed to do it. We did a couple of deputies and I know one of them we was doing it was on Frankfurt, we was the deputy master bomber. Daylight raid. And our mid-upper gunner suddenly spotted an aircraft in trouble above us. He called up to our skipper and we went up alongside of him. It used to be, it turned out to be one of our own. And they’d been hit by flak in the bomb bay and the engineer’s leg was hanging off and [unclear] hole in the bottom of the fuselage. The mid-upper gunner got out of his turret and stepped straight through the hole. They found his parachute, handed it in when they landed back so obviously, he was, he was obviously killed. The mid-upper err the engineer had been a medical orderly in the previous so he was able to show them to put morphine into him to stop the pain. He got the CGM for that. And after the war another one of the, of our Association lives in Southampton his father was killed on 156 but he collided with another aircraft. And he went, this pilot was in a home alongside them and they came in, knew him. They went to see him and he mentioned that and he said, ‘Yeah. I remember that when he came up alongside of us.’ He mentioned the fact that our, we went up alongside of him. We were the master, deputy master bombers. CB: Could you describe what, how the master bomber, what his role is and how it works please? JW: He, he was very often either he or the deputy would do the marking. They’d decide that first. Usually the master bomber would do the, he had a special like we did. You had an eight man crew if you were a deputy or a master. He would then go and mark the target having originally, you would have supporters dropping flares to illuminate the target providing of course down to the weather. And then that would light up, the master bomber would then go in low and find out the target, mark the target and then he’d circle around and he’d watch the way the bombs were falling. And if they were falling short he’d tell them to overshoot the markers and he’d call in the deputy visual centrerers which were following through the raid to keep those markers backed up. And we had backers up and visual centrerers, and he’d call them up and tell them where to drop the, if his markers were a bit off and then he’d direct the raid and tell main force. He called main force up, overshoot to the markers by two seconds to stop the creep back because you always got creep back. People always dropped their bombs short. As one, as Bill used to say, ‘If you’re going over for God’s sake do it properly.’ And you were there the whole of the raid. [doorbell and knocking] CB: Just stopping a mo. [recording paused] JW: He could, the bomb aimers were pretty good at it and the bombsight we had was really good. And he would then call up [pause] We had backers up, visual centrerers, backers up that would drop flares too because obviously they would gradually go out. Other 1: Yes. JW: You know, so he’d call up these people. Their bomb aimers were also good and they would be then bombing on, dropping their flares on the original flares. But if they were slightly off the master bomber would then tell main force. Sometimes they’d put a dummy one up about ten miles away but he’d tell them to ignore that and then he would call them up and say, ‘Overshoot by two seconds,’ to stop as I said the creep back. You always got the creep back. The newer crews used to be at the back of the [unclear] through the raid. CB: Of the stream. The back of the stream. JW: Always dropped their bombs short and you could see. You could see that by the way they were falling. So he would tell and they would adjust that and keep the raid going. When we went to the one at Munster, when we got there they was bombing and Bill really called it up and really coated the life out of them. Called them all sorts of things. Concentrate on where the bombers were going and brought the raid back to make it a successful raid. CB: Why was there bombing creep? JW: Probably inexperience of the bomb aimers. Nervousness. Perhaps when they were coming along they suddenly, I think it was a natural reaction that they dropped. They got the bombsight coming up to the target and if they think that it’s there but you had to get that, it was a [pause] The gradual was like a red cross on plastic about four inches by two inches that looked. CB: On the bomb sight. JW: On the bomb sight as you looked through that and that arrow had to go straight the way through and if it was, this was why sometimes you get thrown off course by slipstream or different things and if, if that happened I used to call dummy run. And then go around the target and come back again. As I say I think that happened about three times and this was on German raids but it was so concentrated and you were oblivious of everything that was going. Other 1: Yes. JW: It was quite incredible really. You know. But if you’re not concentrating that much it’s easy enough to press the bomb tit. CB: So as the bomb aimer you effectively are in control in the last how long? Two minutes or — JW: Yeah. CB: Something like that. JW: Yeah. CB: And the master bomber you said goes down to make his mark. JW: Sometimes they would go down. Sometimes they would bomb from the same height. CB: Right. But then to control the raid. JW: They’d fly around. CB: They’d fly above it, would they? JW: Yeah. CB: Fly over above everybody else. JW: They’d fly, they’re coming back at the same height, and they’re usually on the edge of the target and circling around. CB: Right. JW: And I mean it was a pretty dangerous job because there was quite a lot of master bombers got shot down because obviously they could pick them up on radar. They’ve got one aircraft going around and around and around. Other 1: Yes. CB: Now the master bomber marked in red did he? JW: It depended. Mainly in red. CB: And the follow ups would mark in green. JW: Green. Yeah. CB: Any other colours? JW: Yeah. The reds and greens. Sometimes red and greens. Reds. But I don’t think there was any other colours. CB: So how far back would the green be for doing the marking because this was for the re-energising of the marking wasn’t it? JW: Well, the master bomber would call that up when he see the, if he sees his flares beginning to fade. CB: Yeah. JW: He’d call up and some of them were briefed to go in anyway. CB: Yeah. JW: But he would, he would control it from that. CB: Now, when you did call dummy run what was the actual procedure for getting out and then rejoining the bomber stream? JW: You just went. We just carried on. Bill, Bill would pull the, close the bomb bay doors. Go on, circle around and come back and join the bomber stream and then do another run on the — CB: Would it be a standard procedure? You’d always turn left or always turn right or what would it be? JW: I don’t know. I think we always turn left. CB: Right. And you’d go out how far because the bomber stream’s quite wide? JW: I couldn’t tell you that. I don’t know. That would be up to the pilot. CB: I’m thinking on seconds. So, a minute or — to get out of the stream. JW: Well, it’s difficult to measure or think about the time. We’d just do it until we get back in. CB: Yeah. JW: I don’t think it took that long. CB: Because you can’t see the other aircraft. JW: Oh no. occasionally you would see them if you come up. On one occasion I I looked out. I was down in the nose of the aircraft looking and I suddenly see this face in front of me. And I was looking at the rear gunner of another Lancaster. I called Bill up and we were so close to him it was, I could see him. See his face. CB: What was his reaction? JW: I don’t know. CB: He didn’t wave? JW: No [laughs] CB: Hello mum. JW: I think he was clenching his buttocks [laughs] CB: Can we just go back to, because you’re a flight engineer but you’re effectively changed to do bombing. JW: Yes. CB: Because you’re trained as supplementary. JW: Yeah. CB: To a bomber, bomb aimer. Your lying prone and you’ve got your head straight down effectively with the bomb sight and the the — JW: You’re oblivious to everything else. CB: Yes. And you’ve got the blister that you’re lying in effectively. You’ve got your head in. JW: Yeah. No. You only put that in afterwards. CB: Right. So what is, what’s the pattern and what are you seeing and how do you react to what you see because you’re looking at the inferno? JW: Yeah. You’re looking at, you’re looking at the marker, the indicators, target indicators. CB: Right. JW: And you’re getting your cross going through that, those markers and you’re concentrating on that, ‘Left. Left. Steady. Steady. Right. Steady,’ until you get that cross on there and then you press the button. Bombs gone. CB: So, on your run in you’ve got two minutes effectively when you’re as it were in charge. The navigator is giving you the drift is he? How do you, how do you — JW: It’s purely and simply, you either, the way the aircraft’s flying. The pilot is just keeping it if he knows you’re steady he’s going to keep that line. CB: He knows what the drift is. JW: Yeah. CB: So — JW: But you’re telling him that. CB: Right. JW: But when we went to, we went and did a raid on Nantes in France we did five. Five dummy runs. CB: Did you really? JW: Yeah. Because it was so difficult to see with cloud and everything else. And I think that’s in there. CB: Is this daylight? Or — JW: Night flight. Night. CB: Night. Yeah. JW: It would be. CB: What I was trying to get at was there’s the, what you might call the professional aspect of this, of lining up and then calling, ‘Bombs gone.’ JW: Yeah. CB: But what’s your feeling as you look down into this. Are you busy concentrating on the markers — JW: You’re oblivious of everything else. I used to be concentrating so much that I didn’t even realise what was going on outside. CB: So in practical terms there’s a huge barrage of flak bursting all around. Above, below and the side. You’re oblivious to that are you? JW: Yeah. Yeah. If you’re doing your job properly. Yeah. CB: Yeah. JW: Yes. And this is my, perhaps the feedback if suddenly a shell bursts near somebody and get rid of the bombs but — CB: Because the navigators are actually sitting in a cubicle with a blanket hanging down so they can’t see anything. JW: No. CB: That’s what you meant earlier isn’t it? JW: Yeah. Yeah. CB: So it’s a bit of a shock to them to see what’s happening around them. JW: Our other two navigators never came out. And it was the last trip that we were fated to do although we didn’t know it at the time when this, this Canadian navigator came out. I mean it’s a bit of a shock if you’ve not seen anything and then you see the shell bursts around you and know that one of those too close is curtains. I suppose yeah it did shake you. CB: What was the main difference between flying daylight and flying in the night? JW: Well, flying at night you couldn’t see other aircraft normally. Daylight you can see what’s going on. You can see the shell bursts. You can see fighters coming in. I know that my friend in, on his, it was on his last raid at Hamburg and he watched one of our aircraft go down. Funnily enough his brother lives in, when he’d seen that picture in the paper he got in touch with the paper and said, ‘My brother was on 156.’ CB: Really? JW: ‘Can you give me that man’s name?’ CB: Yeah. JW: They said no. They gave me his number. But he watched him go down and they were then attacked by a German jet fighter. And he said he watched it come in. He’d never seen anything move so quick in all his life. He was, the jet fighter opened up with cannons, It shot bits of the tailplane off and never touched Rupert. CB: That’s the tail gunner. JW: Yeah. CB: Yeah. Extraordinary. So you had a huge variety of raids that you went on. The normal standard was thirty ops and then when you get on to Pathfinders what is the, what is a tour? JW: When you went on Pathfinders, because of the extended training that you’d had you had to do two tours straight off. CB: Right. JW: And because on main force it was thirty trips then you had six months rest and sometimes they called you back sometimes they didn’t. You did another twenty. But on Pathfinders you had to do forty five. But like all of it they were the goalposts. You see I did fifty [pause] fifty two I think to do my two tours because they suddenly brought in a points system. You got five points for a German trip, three points for a French trip and then you had to do [pause] you had to get a hundred and fifty points to finish your first tour. So if it was all French trips it would be more than if it was all French err all German trips. But the, yeah it was, I know there was joke going around about it. If you get shot down over France is it only three fifths dead? Which is, some wag came out with that. CB: In your case you got the DFM. When did you get that? JW: It was first promulgated I think in November ’44. I got it in February. 1st of February when I was first noticed it, first notified. CB: Yeah. ’45. And what about the rest of the crew? What did they get? JW: The pilot got the DSO and the DFC. CB: The DSO. At the same time? JW: No. Different times. DSO, DFC. The two navigators both got the DFC. [pause] The mid-upper gunner got the DFM and the Belgian Croix de Guerre. CB: Yeah. JW: I got the DFM and the Croix de Guerre err the Legion of Honour. CB: Did you get the Croix de Guerre as well? JW: No. CB: Oh, right. JW: And, and of course the Pathfinder award. We all got the Pathfinder award. CB: Yes. When did that come out? JW: After you had, when we finished on the squadron. CB: Right. And as well as getting the scroll what did you get as far as the medal part? There is, there is a, you get a separate badge for Pathfinder. JW: Yeah. You got that. When you’d done six marker trips you got the temporary award of the Pathfinder badge. You were allowed to wear it on your, you weren’t allowed to wear it on your battledress. CB: No. JW: Because if you got shot down and they could see even the holes where [pause] that was your lot. CB: Yeah. JW: So, but that’s, as I say that’s the Pathfinder badge. That’s, after the war people were wearing it and some of the jumped up people in the offices said in the higher ranks, ‘You can’t wear that. You can’t wear that anymore.’ But Bennett was a lot cleverer than they thought because when he promulgated it it was promulgated as an award. Not as a badge. It’s an actual award. So they couldn’t stop them wearing it. CB: This is Air Marshall Bennett. JW: Yeah. CB: The CO CNC Pathfinders. JW: Yeah. CB: Did you meet him many times? JW: I never met him. You met him if you went, if you applied for a commission. Then you met him. But I wasn’t interested in a commission. A, it meant a drop in pay for six months and I didn’t fancy that [laughs] CB: And then you changed messes. JW: Yeah. CB: You had to change messes. JW: Yeah. CB: We’ve talked a lot about the action but what about in the time off? What did you do then? Did you, did you go out as a crew? JW: With the — CB: Socially. JW: The mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator, myself from the time we met we used to go. We were never out of each other’s company. We even arranged our leave passes. They lived in Newcastle. I lived in Guildford. But we managed to get our leave passes that worked when you, when you looked at it it went from Burradon which was just outside Newcastle to Guildford. So we’d get, when we had leave every six weeks we’d go to Newcastle for three days. We’d get out at Newcastle and say, ‘Oh, we’re going on to Burradon later.’ So you kept your ticket. When we got to, going back there after three days we’d go back to Guildford. We’d get down to Kings Cross and of course you’ve got, you’ve got to go over to Waterloo to get to Guildford. But we used to buy a ticket from Waterloo. It was only about a shilling. Something like that. And so we used to be able to go three days in one place. Three days in the other and — CB: Overnight travel. JW: Yeah [laughs] it was, but we used to, all used to go and so our leave was together. Going out we’d be out as a crew. We’d usually meet girls as well. So the only time we were apart is when you were in one corner they were in another [laughs] But we used to go out. We used to go out and drink. You never used, sometimes you did get a bit tipsy. You never went out to get drunk which is what seems to be the norm today. But you went out, you got drunk but because of what you were drinking. You didn’t sit there swilling it to get as much down you as you could. CB: No. But was the social aspect of life on a squadron partly an antidote to the experiences of raids? JW: Well, it’s, it’s like I say you used to go out every night you could. We were getting around about seven guineas a week I think at that time which was a lot of money. Beer at a penny err a shilling a pint you know. And — Other 1: Chris. CB: Right. We’ll turn off a mo. [recording paused] CB: Seven guineas a week. JW: Yeah. That’s what I was getting then. CB: And beer was a shilling a pint. JW: A shilling a pint. Yeah. But it was, some days you’d have do in the mess. Perhaps a dance or something like that but mainly we used to go out if we could. I know when I spoke about the discipline on 156, they decided, they had a group captain Airey there who was a station commander and he’d lost three court martials in a row. So that meant he had to be posted but they put in charge a man for discip. A disciplinarian. A man called Menaul. Menaul. And group captain Airey, he was an elderly man but he used to go out on ops occasionally and, but Menaul, I don’t think he ever did. One thing he did do I found out afterwards was when they were bringing prisoners of war back he’d do those trips all right. But on one occasion there was the mid-upper, Bert, Appy, Bert and myself and the rear gunner of another squadron, another crew. A chap called Ron Smith and we going up to Ramsey. To the camp. To the aerodrome. The first entrance you got to was the officer’s entrance what went past the station commanders house. And then you went on another couple of hundred yards to come to the main gate. But this particular night we’d been down, we weren’t drunk we’d been and had a couple of pints each. We decided to go in through the officer’s entrance and we were quite a way along it and suddenly a car pulled up behind us and a voice yelled out, ‘Airmen.’ We knew at once who it was so we scarpered. I went over a fence. The other, I don’t know where the other two went. And then the car, he was looking around. He couldn’t see anybody because it was dark. And the car drove off and then I heard a voice say, ‘Where the bloody hell has he gone to?’ And of course I was on the other side of the fence and walked up and frightened the life out of them. But then we carried on walking and we had to go past the airmen’s billets because this was a peacetime ‘drome so it was all brick buildings. But every time a car came in the main gate we were in open ground. So we had to go down on the flat. We knew what was going to happen. The next morning he had all the squadron into this room and bearing in mind his, his war record was I think one tour as a fighter pilot towards the end of the war and he insulted, he called us all the names under the sun. Now, at this time we’d got something like sixty trips in between each. Appy was fuming. But everybody on the unit knew who the people were except him. Even the adjutant knew. And two of Appy’s mates are sitting on either side of him holding him down. And if we’d have owned up God knows what he would have done. But he couldn’t do the whole squadron so, but do you know what? After the war that man, somebody was writing a book about [pause] I’ve not been able to find a copy of it. I had a copy but I leant it to somebody and I never had it back. It was, they were talking about the airfields in Lincolnshire and round in Cambridgeshire and he had, they’d, they’d interviewed him and he said in there that on that occasion we had gone up to his front door, frightened his wife, urinated against his front door. I wanted the book back because I was going to take the author something about, for libel. Slander. Whatever it is. But anyhow I never got the book back so I could never see it. But they’d actually quoted him verbatim in there. Saying that we’d frightened the wife, his wife and daughter and urinated against his front door. Now, what idiot could do that sort of thing? But that’s in the book. So if he had known who we were, this was written after the war our names would have been there. CB: Extraordinary. JW: But funnily enough a friend of mine who was on the squadron with me he lived in Brighton and he lived near Hamish Mahaddie and he went to see Hamish and he was talking about Menaul to Hamish. ‘Don’t talk to me about that — ’ so and so, he said. So he was not only liked, disliked by the rank and file he was utterly disliked by his peers. CB: There are occasions when very, when senior officers, group captains did fly. JW: Yeah. CB: And that’s how they got them in the prison camps. JW: Yeah. CB: In some cases. So under what circumstances would they do it, and what would they do? JW: It was up to them. They decided what they’d do, where they’d go and what they — CB: And would they be the pilot, the captain or would they just be there for the ride? JW: If they took over the crew they were the captain. But if they went as the supernumery the pilot is always the captain. CB: Yes. JW: Even if he’s a sergeant and he’s got flight lieutenants in his crew he is still the captain. CB: Yeah. So these people would be flying as the pilot normally would they? The group captains. JW: No. Not necessarily. They’d go along, you know. CB: Just to get the experience. JW: Yeah. Just to get to [pause] but I know that Group Captain Airey went on at least two or three. They weren’t supposed to so it was done surreptitiously. CB: Might have been a good defence in the court martial. JW: Yeah [laughs] CB: What would you say was your most memorable recollection of being in the RAF in the war? JW: Just the odd occasion when, to get away with as many trips as we did you had to fly a lot of trips where there was nothing happening. There was no, you know, you got away with it. You dropped your bombs you got back, and [pause] But of the probably eight or nine instances when we were attacked by fighters or got hit by flak [unclear] [pause] Probably the time when I looked up and see that bloody aircraft above us with his bomb doors open. CB: Yeah. Yeah. You talked about the Nuremberg raid a lot of which was in bright moonlight. What did you see in terms of aircraft exploding? JW: Well, we were, it was our second trip on the Pathfinder squadron so we were acting as supporters, which meant we were right at the front of the — with the master bomber. CB: Right. JW: And we were following three Mosquitoes that were doing a spoof raid up to Hamburg I think. Somewhere up there. And we were right behind them so we think we got that through before they realised where the raid was going to go. So what was happening was behind us. I mean the gunners were calling out and saying that they could see aircraft going down but where we were we, we thought it was dangerous because I think the last two hundred miles was a straight leg, straight down to Nuremberg and there were searchlights nearly all the way down there, but so, from our point of view being at the front of the wave of bombers meant that the fighters only took off when they were behind us before they realised where we were going. CB: Yeah. JW: And when we got down to come back, lower down in Germany by that time they were down on the floor refuelling. So probably that’s the reason why we got through again. CB: What was your understanding of the term scarecrow? JW: Well, they said they were sending up these huge it was like a big dustbin if you like coming up, and they were explaining but in actual fact what they never told us was though they must have known about it was upward firing, the up firing guns and we didn’t know about them. they weren’t, we weren’t told about it. CB: The Schräge Musik. JW: Yeah. It was [pause] I know on one occasion on, it was, I think it was on the Nuremberg raid, our mid-upper gunner told me this there was a, the wireless operator had Fishpond. What was called Fishpond. It was an offshoot of H2S and it would pick up fighters. CB: Trailing behind you. JW: But the fighter, the fighter disappeared when it got within a hundred and fifty feet, and the wireless operator and the mid-upper gunner were, he was telling him where it was. That he could see it. And then suddenly it disappeared and then Appy said that as we were flying along another Lanc alongside of us, and it used to go over about that sort of speed as you were going over. As it got underneath us it suddenly blew up. And what we think was that that fighter was beneath us firing at us and this other Lanc came in underneath and got blown up instead of us. That’s what, that’s what our mid-upper was thinking, you know. That’s what he thought. He said, it was the fact it disappeared from the Fishpond meant it was within a closer range to come off where it wasn’t showing up and he said this other Lanc, it was, it used to be ok, you used to see it going very slowly underneath you but as it did, as it went underneath suddenly it went up. CB: Did you feel the blast? JW: No. No. I don’t know what sort of, you know, I didn’t see the aircraft going under us. CB: No. JW: But him being the mid-upper gunner he was, he was up at the top. He could see quite a lot. CB: You talked about the wing commander who flew in a weave. To what extent were you aware of LMF? JW: I don’t know of anybody who was accused of it. All I know is that any aircrew never condemned anybody as LMF. It was only some little jumped up merchant in an office sitting behind a desk who’d never even seen a gun let along had one fired who decided this. But I can understand at the top stating it, because they said that if it was easy enough to just pack up the threat of LMF was [pause] but the way they treated them when they were. I mean people had done two or three trips. But not everybody’s the same, and some people just couldn’t. You know, it’s quite, it was quite terrifying really at times. Obviously. I don’t know what we’d have done if it, we were lucky enough not to get hit but, but even so you were quite aware of the fact that you could easily get killed if, you know. You put it out of your mind but you knew really deep down that that was, that was an option. You’ll have to excuse me. CB: Yeah. We’ll stop for a mo. [recording paused] JW: Well — CB: Now, you you also relied on the ground crew and you talked about the chiefy earlier. What was the relationship between the aircrew and the groundcrew? JW: Well, that was, well funnily enough I don’t know any of their names. because we had [pages turning] CB: The ground crew would often look after two aircraft. JW: That is in, that picture is in quite a few places. And that’s the ground crew. I tried to find out the names of them and I couldn’t. I hoped somebody would be able to find them by publishing it but they couldn’t. CB: And how did the, how did you get on or did you not talk to them much? JW: Oh you, we didn’t socialise with them. As I said we didn’t socialise with anybody except our own crew. CB: Quite. JW: And it was only the three of us. CB: Who did it. Yes. But the officers would tend to socialise separately from the airmen wouldn’t they? JW: Yeah. CB: Anyway. JW: Anyhow, there’s [pause] When we were getting dressed we’d get our flying kit on. CB: Yeah. JW: We used to sing [pause] it was, I forget the artist who sing it. “My mother done told me when I was in knee pants.” [laughs] We used to sing that as we were getting ready. CB: And then when you got to the aircraft what rituals were there there? Like watering the rear wheel. JW: No. We never did that. I don’t think there were any. We used to, I know that with all the checks that we used to have to make, about seventy checks but all the ones outside I never used to let the ground crew see me doing them because I always thought they would think I wasn’t trusting them. So I used to walk round and you could, you could check them yourself without which let them see that you trusted them to do their checks as well. The ones inside the aircraft of course were ok. Other 1: Was there a very close relationship between the ground crew and the flying crew? JW: Not as close as you would think. Other 1: Because there’s a huge amount of reliance or — JW: Oh yeah. You trusted them completely. Other 1: You’d have to. JW: Yeah. I’ll tell you what though. One thing that was happening when we, we were going. A we were taking, got around, suddenly Bill said, ‘We’ve got no brake pressure.’ So he said, ‘Do we need it in the air?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well we can carry on then.’ I said, ‘Yeah’ You don’t use your brakes in the air do you? So the only thing we had to be careful of was taxiing around behind other aircraft. And we took off and when was it that [pause] it meant that when we got back they wouldn’t let us land there. They sent us over to Woodbridge. But on another occasion we were on the short runway and this is when I, you heard say, Bill flew the aircraft by feel as well. On the short runway and there was something wrong with the speed. CB: Airspeed indicator. Yeah. JW: Because it was showing a completely different reading on the, on the instrument to what was and he could feel that according to the reading you could take but he didn’t, he flew it without and by the feel and when he felt it could take off on the short runway and I knew that the airspeed cover had been taken off because I’d checked that myself. CB: Yeah. JW: And I said to him, ‘There might be an insect in there or something.’ Anyhow, I said, ‘Right. We’ll go through all the checks. Every check that we normally do inside.’ And one of them just in front of the door at the back was it was about that size. A rubber thing with a hole in and there used to be plugs put in that. So you had to check to make sure the plugs were out and I knew that if one was out they’d both be out. The only way I could check it was to sit with the door open and reach along the side of the fuselage and I could just reach it. I knew I could. So what I did I put my parachute on because I realised I could get sucked out. I had Bert hanging on my legs in the fuselage. Opened the door. And when I told Ed Straw who used to fly the Lanc that we’ve got now he said, ‘You bloody idiot,’ he said, ‘You could have been killed. If you’d have got sucked out,’ he said, ‘The tailplane would have hit you.’ I said, ‘I know. That’s why I — ’ Anyhow, I did try that and went on and did all the rest but I couldn’t see the other side. I said to Bill. I don’t know what I was going to do. He didn’t say anything so I thought good. But yeah it was quite funny really. CB: And the result was? JW: It was, it was, it was as I knew it would be. The plug wasn’t in there. But this was at ten thousand feet over Guildford. CB: Oh right [laughs] JW: And I thought if I fall out I could go home. CB: Go home. Yeah. Ideal. Yeah. Did people fly with lucky charms? JW: Yeah. I think they did. I used to have a white scarf I used to carry with me. A silk scarf. Because you couldn’t wear your tie because if you came down in the water it could shrink and choke you. But — Other 1: Yes. CB: And did you have any weapon on you? JW: They issued us just after D-Day. They issued us all with revolvers. CB: 38s. JW: Yeah. The aircrew NCOs could only wear, they had to carry them in camp. But officers had to carry them at all times because they thought that the Germans might drop parachutists on to the aerodromes CB: Oh. JW: And, but the other thing that I had was a six inch bowie knife. I had them both tucked in me, in me flying boots because I always thought, it never occurred to me if we got shot down that I’d get killed. Didn’t occur to me that. And I thought, and afterwards we used to go on these three day weeks and I thought, I looked, we went out on a trip on the Rhine and I thought, you thought you were going to get across. You can’t bloody swim and you were going to get across there. What sort of daydream were you in? I mean it goes on forever. The width of it. Doesn’t it? CB: Yeah. Other 1: It does. CB: When the war finished did you do any Cook’s Tours? JW: No. No. We’d been slung off. We were taken off. In April posted away from the unit and never got near an aircraft after that. Oh. I went up. I went up once with, when I was posted, first posted to the Wellington OTU. And they wanted you to go up and they wanted somebody, you need somebody sitting in the tail of a Wellington. I said, ‘I’ll go with you.’ With the pilot and the navigator. We came down and had a look around over where I lived. But — CB: Not in Germany. JW: No. CB: Where did you meet your wife? JW: Oh, this was, we were working. Both working in the same firm. Works outing actually. We went. They took us all down for Brighton for the day. Two coaches. And we went in to, I didn’t even know she was working there, went in to lunch and suddenly this girl looked around and she had the most beautiful blue eyes. And I thought cor, you lovely blue eyes. Anyhow, I didn’t expect to ever see her again. But in those days the coaches used to go and park somewhere, then they’d come along the front, creep along very slowly and you picked your bus, your coach out and got on as it was going along. And when I got on she was sitting on the front seat. I said, ‘Anybody sitting with you?’ ‘No.’ It was a right curt. I thought I’ll sit down anyway. Got chatting and halfway back we stopped at a pub and had a drink. A couple of drinks. And we got the bottom of Waterloo Road, the factory was. We stopped outside there. We all got off the coach. And she said, ‘You’re not leaving me here on my own are you?’ I said, ‘No. Where do you live?’ She lived just around the corner from the Elephant and Castle. Anyhow, she said, ‘Come and have a cup of tea.’ So I was in there when all the family came back. They’d all been at the pub at the top of the road. Met the family. That was quite strange because when it comes time to say cheerio she went down and presented her sister and her husband had the bottom flat and they had the flat above. And I shall never forget, I said to her, ‘Can I kiss you goodnight?’ She said, ‘I’d have hit you if you hadn’t.’ [laughs] By this time although she was very curt to start with by this time we’d sort of got some rapport and I arranged to meet her again in a week. But when I got outside there was a rail strike on and so I couldn’t get back to Guildford but I was staying with my grandmother at Putney. I got outside and I thought bloody hell how the hell do I get to Putney? All I’d got in my pocket was a half a crown. And I hadn’t got a clue where I was. Anyhow, I walked up to the main road and I see a taxi. I hailed him. He said, ‘I’ve finished mate.’ I said, ‘Oh I’m in trouble, trouble here,’ I said, ‘I’m trying to get back to Putney and I don’t know where it is,’ I said, ‘I’ve only got a half — ’ ‘Get in,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you to Putney Bridge which was, I knew where I was then. And he did. And it was ever so good of him. But then we went out and then later on we decided to get married. CB: When did you get married? JW: In September the 1st on 1956. CB: What was the company you were working for then? JW: It was Cockayne and Company. CB: Who? JW: Cockayne’s. CB: Oh Cockayne. JW: C O C K A Y N E. The chap who owned it used to drive around. He used to have a chauffeur with a Rolls Royce and his chauffeur wore a peak cap, gaters, polished gaters. And occasionally he would come around. At Christmas usually he would come around and say hello to everybody. I forget his name now. But they had a factory in Eastleigh in Southampton. And we went down once to play football with them. A football match. Clever they were. Treated us all to a bloody great lunch. And then their team arrived didn’t it? We were playing football on a full stomach. CB: Different people. Yes. Gamesmanship they call it. JW: Yeah. Yeah. We were married for [pause] She died in 2013. CB: Oh dear. Was she younger than you or — JW: She was five years younger than me. CB: Well, Jack Watson. A really interesting conversation. Thank you so much. JW: I’m glad you enjoyed it. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with John Robert Watson Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Brockbank 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 2018-02-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AWatsonJR180202, PWatsonJR1501 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 02:04:35 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Description An account of the resource John Robert Watson joined RAF Bomber Command in 1943, volunteering after he witnessed his next-door neighbour's house being destroyed by a bomb. Against his father's wishes, John joined Bomber Command, initially, as a wireless operator, before transferring to a flight engineer course. Travelling to RAF Ouston, John flew in Lancasters and Halifaxes. His first operation took place on the 17 January 1944, which he did not believe he would survive. His second operation was to Berlin and featured another close call, in which he almost crashed into another Lancaster. He remembers his crew fondly, stating that they did well throughout the war because they trusted one another so much. Joining the Pathfinders force, John travelled from RAF Wickenby to RAF Warboys, changing crews and being put through extra training. Completing over 40 operations John recalls several operations, including one over Nuremberg which featured another close call. John was then moved again and became a flight instructor for Wellingtons. He also gives information regarding his crew; being a flight instructor; his scariest moment whilst flying; the impact of lack of moral fibre; and master bombers' roles. He also relates several humorous stories of his time at RAF stations and his run-ins with higher-ranking service members. During his service as a Pathfinder, John received the Distinguished Flying Medal, the Legion of Honour and the Pathfinder badge. When he was demobilised, he became disillusioned with discipline within the RAF and continued his apprenticeship, meeting and marrying his wife in 1956 and living with her until she passed away in 2013. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Huntingdonshire England--Northumberland Germany Germany--Berlin Germany--Nuremberg Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1943 1944-01-17 1956 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sam Harper-Coulson Julie Williams Maureen Clarke Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending revision of OH transcription 12 Squadron 156 Squadron aircrew bombing crash Distinguished Flying Medal fear flight engineer Halifax lack of moral fibre Lancaster master bomber mid-air collision military ethos Pathfinders RAF Faldingworth RAF Ouston RAF Warboys RAF Wickenby recruitment Scarecrow searchlight training Wellington https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1010/11777/AWilliamsVD170403.mp3 8a621ee7029aea31c03d42b2eea0d61f 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 Williams, Vivian V D Williams Vivian David Williams 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 2017-04-03 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 Williams, VD Description An account of the resource Two items. An oral history interview with Corporal Vivian Williams (b. 1920, 616291 Royal Air Force) and one photograph. Vivian Williams served a a fitter with 56 Squadron at RAF North Weald and various training units. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Vivian Williams and catalogued by Barry Hunter. Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Monday the 3rd of April 2017 and we’re in Fiskerton in Lincolnshire talking with Vivian Williams about his life and times. What are your earliest recollections of life then, Vivian? VW: A new house I should think. We lived in a small village called Tonyrefail — T O N Y R E F A I L where they had they, they had built, just after 1920, a new housing estate. It was semi-detached houses most of them, and they were rough cast in those days. And they had a bathroom. That was another something I remember. And they were, well at that time they were ten years before their time you know. And so that was one of the highlights. The next one was the oil lamp in the middle of the table. It had this gold filigree base, cast iron base, and a beautiful blue resin. Then shortly afterwards — yeah, that was, I must have been about four then. And shortly afterwards they actually put electricity in. As early as that, you know. And I can remember fooling about watching the electrician doing it, you know. And they had the old tumbler switches on and you screwed the cap off you know. The front of it off. And so I saw the bloke doing this and he was poking around with a screwdriver when he was connecting all the leads up. So I put my mother’s scissors in there. I leant on a chair, put my mother’s scissors in and got knocked across the room. Why I didn’t get killed I don’t know [laughs] but it was what kids I suppose. And I’d say the next big thing was the 1926 strike. And we were kept alive on charity in those days. And after that we moved to Pontypridd and stayed there until I was left school at fourteen. Elementary school. And then I was the only one in the family that could get a job. Because you got a, you went down the mine, of course everybody went down the mine so you went down the mine at fourteen and you went with a skilled man called a collier for five years. And then when you were nineteen they give you the sack and they’d give him a new boy. So, I said to my mum, I’d finished school at the end of July when the August holidays break up and, ‘When am I going to go down and get a job?’ And so she said, ‘ No, you’re not. You’re going up to London to live with my gran.’ So that was the next move. Up to London. And then the family moved up seven months later and we settled there. Had various jobs. Usually outside jobs because I couldn’t stand the factory you know. And, and then in 1938, in 1938 I joined the Territorials and I was on a searchlight detachment for a year. And then I said — I got fed up with that. I lost my job because just before, at the end of 1938, around about 1938, just say the end — they had a, had a slump in engineering and you couldn’t get a job anywhere. On the Great West Road where I worked. The factory there and all the factories were putting people off. And I was on shift work and they put off our shift. And the other shift went on to day work with the rest of the factory. And they sacked sixty four of us. You went to get your pay on Friday night and they gave you your cards. Your pay and your cards straightaway. Not an hour’s notice even. PW: Which firm was that? VW: Tecalemit they were lubrication specialists. Because cars in those days had umpteen grease nipples all over the chassis and everywhere. And it was an industry on its own, you know. And I was home for about three weeks getting under my mother’s feet and I said to our corporal, met corporal, I said, ‘I’m going to join the army.’ Because I just had to get away, you know, and nobody could get a job just then and so he said, ‘Don’t join the army,’ he said. He said, ‘I’ve done fifteen years in it and it never did me any good,’ and he said, ‘Join the RAF.’ And I said, ‘No. I can’t join the RAF.’ Because those days to get in you had to have a school certificate which I presume is something like four or five A levels you know. PW: O levels. CB: O levels rather. And he said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘You’d be surprised.’ So I went up to Adastral House where you applied. And I found that they had started an expansion scheme in the RAF and had created new trades and a flight mechanic, which is what I was, was one of them. And they just dragged you in by the short and curlies you know. And that was it. And I was in the RAF then for — well ‘til the end of the war. I did what, because this was July ’38, so I did seven and a half years instead of the six that I signed for. But, yeah — CB: Where did you go to join the RAF? VW: The recruitment depot was at Aldwych near The Strand. And it was called Adastral House. So I, that was the first place I went to in the RAF. We were there overnight and, no, we were sent home and go back the next morning. Picked up the train to West Drayton. And that was the induction depot. And that’s where we were sworn in. Had our hair cut. They gave us ten bob which we thought was very nice. Except it was only an advance on your next weeks’ pay. They never told us that [laughs] The next morning we went to Uxbridge for our square drill. Did all our square drill, at Uxbridge. CB: How long did that last? VW: Twelve weeks. CB: So in addition to drill what else were you doing? VW: There. Nothing really. Oh we had, the only other thing that happened we had two weeks off completely because they had the scare in September of 1938 and we were filling sand bags. And nobody ever hears of it but we was almost on alert you know, then. Then we put the complete automatic telephone exchange in. We were humping all the, carrying all the various bits and pieces for 11 Fighter Group which was right behind our dining hall. And of course it’s down steps. Lots. Have you seen the hill? The complete thing is in the hill. And we were only allowed to carry all the equipment and everything to the top of the steps and they had their own team then that took it down in to the bottom. So we never saw the inside of it at all. CB: This was the underground fighter control. VW: Yeah. 11 Group. CB: Position. VW: 11 Fighter Group. CB: Yes. It’s open to the public now. VW: Yeah. It is is it? CB: It is. Yes. VW: Yeah well. I humped all the cabinets and all the equipment that went down in there. And we had a fortnight off for that. CB: Right. VW: Yeah. CB: So you’re doing drill. Did you do PT? VW: Oh yes. Oh yes. CB: Now what about classroom work? VW: No. Just drill. We did just drill. PT. We did. We had — they give us an introduction to show that you were in the RAF. And they had two old fuselages, just fuselages, in the MT section and they were bolted to the wall, or chained to the wall but the engines were serviceable. And they used to just take us over there and after about a fortnight and show you. This sergeant and his corporal starting them up you know. But no it was just drill and ceremonial drill and we — PW: Tell them about running those engines. Starting those engines. VW: Oh yeah. They, the funny thing we were down in Old Warden and they had a — what was that one they started Phil? PW: Oh that was a Camel. VW: A Camel. And he started it by swinging the prop in reverse. And this is what the sergeant used to do. Swinging it in reverse. And we heard later on that he got killed doing it. But yeah but that was the only diversion if you like. The rest was just drill. Drill all the time. CB: And you had twelve weeks of that. VW: Yeah. CB: In total. VW: Well, yeah except for the – CB: The two weeks. VW: Two weeks I was out. Yeah. But we lost that. CB: At what stage did you know what trade you were going to take? VW: Oh right from the first. Because they said, give me the choice of being a flight mechanic or a flight rigger. And I said I’d be a mechanic. So that was put on your docs straight away. CB: And when did they describe what was involved with that? VW: Oh at the first interview. CB: Right. VW: At Adastral house, you know. CB: So what was it that the flight mechanic was designated to do? VW: As a mechanic he was responsible for the day to day maintenance of whatever engine or aeroplane he was put on. CB: So after Uxbridge where did you go then? VW: Well, we went down to Manston in Kent. But it was on a course that was actually obsolete but we were a small flight. Instead of being a hundred and forty four we were only sixty four and I think they lost us somewhere and they posted us to Manston on this course which was three weeks on engines and three weeks on air frames and as I say it was called a fitter’s mate’s course. You were only qualified to hand the spanners out, you know on that one. But it was obsolete anyway and then from there we went to Henlow in Bedfordshire to do a basic engineering course for six weeks there. And then from there we went to St Athans. Got to St Athans on January the 16th in 1939. And they were, we were there until the end of July and — close to the end of July and then we were given eighteen days leave. And then I was posted to 56 Squadron. Fighter squadron. And at North Weald on Hurricanes. CB: When you were at St Athan that was basically an engines course was it? VW: Yeah. It was. Yeah. CB: So what variety of engines did you deal with then? VW: Pegasus. Bristol Pegasus and Rolls Royce Kestrels. And of course the Kestrel was obsolete then wasn’t it? CB: Did you have any Merlins there? Or — VW: No. No. No. CB: So the first time you came across Merlins was when you went to the Hurricanes? VW: Well, we had three. We had three Hurricanes there. That was the nearest I’d came come to the Merlin. But to work on, no. It wasn’t until I got to 56 Squadron. As I say that was my job. I was responsible for the day to day maintenance of the aeroplane that they put me on which is actually hanging in the roof of the South Kensington Museum. CB: Is it? Right. VW: And — CB: It survived that long VW: Yes. Phil would know. PW: It’s a miracle survivor. CB: It’s a Mark I Hurricane. PW: Yes. VW: Two. CB: Mark 2 is it? VW: Yeah. CB: Right. PW: No, it was a Mark 1 dad. VW: Was it? PW: Yeah. it’s L1592. VW: Yeah. CB: So what was the serviceability like of the squadron? There were how many aircraft in the squadron first? VW: There was twelve aircraft. CB: And what — VW: Two flights of six. CB: Yeah. VW: Twelve aircraft. A flight and B flight. Yeah. CB: And what was serviceability like? VW: Very good because they’d only been equipped with new Hurricanes some months before I got there and I think they didn’t fly very often but I think they must have been restricted. Looking back. You know, for saving the fuel because, you know, they knew what was going to happen. But they would only fly perhaps two hours a week. CB: Amazingly low. VW: Hmmn? CB: Amazingly low. VW: Yeah. CB: So what — VW: They had to keep their hours in, you know. CB: Yes. The pilots had to keep enough hours. VW: Yeah. CB: To be able to qualify. VW: Yes. That’s right. For their logbook. CB: So how much leave did you have at the end of St Athan? VW: Eighteen days. CB: Oh eighteen days. VW: Yeah. CB: Right. So we’re in August. VW: Yeah. CB: When you get to North Weald. VW: Yeah. CB: Right. And how long did you spend in North Weald in total? VW: We moved. The squadron moved in October. Yeah. In October and we moved to Martlesham Heath in Suffolk. They were, they were on convoy duty for the convoys. Shipping in the North Sea. They had a sector to patrol. CB: Right. VW: And, but we, but everything was very quiet. Very quiet, you know. They only had one, our own squadron only had one tussle with a reconnaissance flight, you know. A Dornier. One of the Dorniers’. Something like that and that’s the only time we saw the gun patches blown off the guns, you know, like that. But other than that it was very quiet. We had nothing very much to do at all. Just wait. They just did patrols and nothing else. CB: So you got there in October ’39. VW: Yeah. CB: How long did you stay with that squadron? VW: Until Christmas. CB: Right. VW: I only stayed with them six months altogether. CB: Right. VW: The first six months of the war. CB: Then what? VW: Then I went on a conversion course to be a fitter. CB: Where was that? VW: At Hednesford in Staffordshire. CB: To be fitting what? VW: Pardon? CB: A conversion course to be a fitter. VW: Yeah. That meant that — CB: Specialising in what? VW: Yeah. But you were only allowed to do certain things as a mechanic. Like, as I say, the day to day maintenance. CB: Right. VW: Which was nothing much more than filling the tanks and doing the ground runs in the morning. And then while, when I first went there they used to have all the cowlings off on a Friday morning. Just once a week. CB: Right. VW: Just to see that nothing had fallen off. Or you know, nuts loose on the, the exhaust stubs. Check them all around and that sort of thing. And mostly it was observation. CB: Yeah. VW: You had the run every morning. You would check the, just check the mag drops and that. CB: So you’d run them up every morning. VW: Oh yeah. CB: How did you make sure that plugs didn’t oil up? Because if all you were doing was running it up. Did the plugs oil up doing that? No. No. You didn’t get plugs oiling up at all. CB: So you didn’t do plug changes because the planes weren’t flying enough. VW: Oh no. No. Because that wasn’t my job. But when I went on a conversion course as a fitter. CB: Yes. VW: Instead of being on the flights. CB: Yes. VW: Out on the aerodrome. We were in the hangar and we you doing inspections. And these inspections came around at pre-determined intervals. And then of course you did things like plug changes and oil filters. CB: Oh, they were done then. Right. VW: Yeah. And well anything that was going. Anything that could be done on the station and we couldn’t do a lot because we were a mobile squadron and we had to be away completely in an hour and forty minutes. CB: Oh did you? VW: Yeah. CB: Right. VW: Shifted. Gone. So our stores was in a big box in one of the annexes in the hangar, you know. Instead of the usual thing of a separate building. PW: Yeah. VW: Like you get. But we had to carry everything with us. CB: What were the trucks that you were using for that? Crossleys. VW: We had, we had a three ton Albion lorry. Yeah. And a Bedford artic flat bed. And that took all our stands and that you used for propping up the plane when you’re doing jobs on them you know and that sort of thing. Any equipment that we had which was very little so we couldn’t do a lot. But as a fitter you were qualified then to go into what they called maintenance and you just went into the maintenance hangar and you did whatever was scheduled as maintenance on that particular aeroplane or that particular engine. CB: So, on this course at Hednesford. VW: Yeah. CB: Then that was on specific aircraft. Which one was that? VW: No. No. Just engines. CB: Just in general. VW: Just engines in general. Yeah. CB: Ok. How long did that last? The course. VW: Well from Christmas. Christmas ’39. I went there on Christmas Day 1939. And we left there to do, did part of the course there and we finished it off at Cosford. And I carried my [unclear] when we went there. Somewhere about halfway through the course. And we left on the 30th of May and I got posted to the Channel Islands. Because that’s the first flying school that I went to. The School of General Reconnaissance. And they were at Guernsey. But we were only there a fortnight. We had to get out anyway because the Germans were coming in. But we should have, the flights were at Guernsey and we should have been posted to the parent unit which was at Thorney Island. And they mixed it up again so we had another fortnight’s holiday on Guernsey until we had to pack up and go. And went back to Thorney Island there [pause] We were there at Thorney Island [pause] PW: What dad’s not telling you — VW: Until — we were there, I can’t remember when we left but we were there but we were there while Dunkirk was on. CB: Right. VW: Because everybody had to have, no matter where you went you had to have a Lee Enfield and fifty rounds of ammunition. CB: Oh. VW: Everybody. Everybody on the station was armed. You know. Ready for anything like that. And we left there to go to a place called Hooton Park up near Liverpool. Well Wallasey. And the day after we left they flattened the hangar. CB: At Thorney Island. VW: Yeah. CB: Did they? VW: Yeah. Flattened it. So we were dead lucky there. CB: Well, Dunkirk was the end of May so perhaps you went to Thorney Island a bit earlier — to Guernsey a bit earlier than that. VW: [pause] Yeah. It’s a long time ago. CB: It doesn’t matter. VW: Yeah. It’s a long time ago. CB: It’s all around the same time. VW: Yeah. CB: What — at Thorney Island what were you supposed to be servicing there? VW: Ansons. CB: Oh right. These were shipping reconnaissance were they? Or what were they doing? VW: Well, it was the school. It was called the School of General Reconnaissance. CB: Oh I see. Right. VW: It was. It didn’t have a squadron number. CB: Yeah. VW: It was the School of General Reconnaissance. CB: Ok. VW: And shifted us up to Hooton Park. CB: Yeah. VW: Which was just across the Mersey from Speke Airport. CB: Right. VW: And from there we went to Blackpool. We missed the blitz on Liverpool. CB: Right. How long did you stay at Hooton Park then? VW: Oh just a matter of a couple of months I should think. CB: Right. VW: And then [paused] we were posted to Blackpool. And that’s a date I remember because when I was posted from Blackpool to South Cerney in Wiltshire. CB: Yeah. VW: It was on the 18th of October. PW: Gloucestershire. CB: Yeah. That’s where I joined the RAF. VW: Sorry? CB: That’s where I joined the RAF. VW: Where? CB: South Cerney. PW: South Cerney. VW: Yes [laughs] PW: 1 FTS. CB: So, so, yeah. 18th of October ’40. VW: Yeah. CB: At South Cerney. What was happening there? This was a different unit was it? VW: Oh yeah. That was 3FTS. Number 3 Flying Training School. We were doing conversions. Taking the pilots from the Empire Air Training Scheme. Canada and South Africa. CB: Oh yes. VW: And converting them from like Harvards onto twin engine Oxfords. Airspeed Oxfords. CB: Right. VW: Yeah. CB: Because these were people all destined for bombing. Bombers. VW: Yeah. CB: Ok. VW: They were introduction to multi engine. CB: Yeah. And how long did that last? That posting. VW: That posting lasted till Christmas again. 1942. CB: Right. VW: Nearly two years there. CB: And during that time you were dealing with the, what were the engines on the Ansons? VW: The engines? Oh the Cheetah 9s. CB: Cheetahs. Yeah. VW: Cheetah 9s. And then when we left South Cerney we went to 17 AFU. Advanced Flying Unit at Watton in Norfolk and we were on Masters 2s. Fighter trainer. CB: Did they have other planes as well? VW: No. Just them because we did engine changes all the time. I was in, in the maintenance hangar there was a fitter. CB: Yeah. VW: I passed out as a fitter so I was in the maintenance hangar and we did what — they used to come around to the maximum number of between inspections and we just changed engines all the time. CB: It was quicker. VW: Yeah. CB: What were the engines? VW: It was easier for us to change the engines and send them back to places like Alvaston in Derbyshire and they did a complete overhaul of them. CB: Right. VW: In the factories. CB: What were the engines? VW: Mercuries. Bristol Mercuries. CB: So how long at Watton? So from Christmas ’42. VW: To [pause] now my dates are a bit [pause] I can’t remember my dates after that. CB: Ok. Where were you posted to after you’d finished? VW: At Watton? CB: At Watton. VW: We cleared out everything. All our backlog we cleared that up and the Americans moved in and it became a bomber ‘drome then I suppose. One of these bombardments groups would be there. And it was all grass when we were there and they put thousands of tons of cement in one hangar and they put obviously concrete runways in, but we’d gone by then. CB: So personally where did you go to? VW: We went to a little ‘drome near Crewe called Calveley. C A L V E L E Y. Calveley. And doing the same thing there. Training pilots, you know. A lot of them from overseas. Australia. New Zealanders. And then we went — CB: What were the planes? What were the aircraft there? VW: Master 2s. CB: Right. VW: They were the same squadron like. 17 AFU. CB: Oh right. VW: And then we went to Spitalgate near Grantham. That was 12 FTS. Yeah. PW: No. 12 PAFU. VW: Oh yeah. Yeah. Probably yeah. Yeah. Advanced Flying Unit. Yeah. And from there we moved up to, that would be around about the end of 1944. And we went to Hixon in Staffordshire. Hixon. And was there about two months and then I got posted to Lyneham on Transport Command. That’s when I finally got out of flying Training Command. That’s when we went to Lyneham. And we were flying Yorks there. CB: At Transport Command. VW: Transport Command. Yeah. CB: What were you doing at Hixon? VW: Just on the same, 17AFU. Doing the same thing. CB: Yeah. VW: But not much at all. CB: Right. What was the aircraft? Because it was an Advanced Flying School. What was the aircraft were they using? VW: Oh the same as we had at Grantham. CB: Oh. VW: They were Blenheim 4s and they were obsolete too. CB: Yeah. VW: The first time I saw them was at Martlesham. One of the first bombing raids of the war and it was a flight of five from two squadrons, 110 and 107 and they flew over and they bombed the islands off the German coast. Silt and Bochum. Like that. And they surprised them, 110 Squadron, Yeah. They surprised them and lost one. When 107 Squadron’s five went over they lost four out of the five. That was some of the very early casualties. CB: And that was from Martlesham. VW: Yes. Yeah. I think they hadn’t got that much of a range and I think they were at Wattisham and they lobbed down at Martlesham and filled the tanks up. CB: Right. VW: Topped the tanks up. Yeah. But — and then I was demobbed from Lyneham. CB: When was that? VW: January the 26th 1946. CB: Right. How did you feel about that? VW: Actually, I was enjoying myself and we were, I was a corporal and I was offered to be made sergeant if I signed on. My wife put her foot on that and, ‘No. Not likely,’ she said. ‘You’re coming home.’ By that time we had my daughter and Phil and his younger brother who is just over from Australia. And they were there so she’d had the three of them from 1940. My daughter was born, and he was ’44. PW: I was ’44 Ted was ’46. VW: And Ted was 46’ PW: Yeah. VW: So I had to get home and take my responsibilities. CB: So the rank of sergeant eluded you. VW: Oh yeah. Yeah. CB: But you’d looked forward to that had you? VW: Well yeah because I was enjoying myself there. It was a very nice station and also we had chances of — they used to fly out as far as Japan, you know, taking engines and equipment to all the stops that Transport Command from Lyneham used to stop at. They used to go from Lyneham to Gibraltar. Gibraltar to Cairo West. From Cairo West to somewhere in what was then Persia, Iraq. PW: Habbaniya. VW: Yeah. And then Karachi and then Singapore. But they did fly, I remember they flew a prop to Japan. I think it was for the Lancaster. You know. That went all around the world after the war. CB: Oh yes. VW: They were trying to sell them. CB: Yes. VW: You know, so they were on a promotional tour and they had several with a prop in Tokyo. And they flew the prop out there. CB: Yeah. The Argentinians bought fifteen. VW: I didn’t know if they sold any. CB: They did. Yeah. VW: Because it wasn’t all that long. Well I say it wasn’t all that long. They [pause] I was at working as a civilian on the Maintenance Unit at 5 MU at Kemble. CB: After the war. VW: On Lancasters. CB: Yeah. VW: And it wasn’t, I was there for about a year and we would bring them in from the, from the service and they would examine them. The inspectors would go over them to see what was wanted to be done and they had a list of things to be done. And then they would mothball them to a certain extent. Put them out and then when the RAF wanted them they’d bring them back in to our hangars, the preparation hangars. And we’d do everything that was on the list, like that. And they’d go back into service. New paint job. And, but that didn’t last very long and the next thing they were out on the park and they just chopped them up. Got rid of them all. CB: Well how full was Kemble Airfield? How full was it with these things? VW: How? CB: How full? How many aircraft on it? VW: Oh. Must have been about a hundred I should think. CB: Oh right. VW: Easy. And Hants and Sussex Aviation just took, they broke them all up. CB: Yeah. VW: And took them for scrap. And we say now there were rows of four Merlin engines there all over the place and if they’d seen them today. The people who need them, you know. CB: Yeah. VW: They’d cry. CB: Yeah. I bet. VW: Should be here somewhere. CB: I’ll just stop the, stop this for a mo. [recording paused] CB: We paused just for you to get your prized screwdriver. Could you just describe. We’ve just had a picture of you with it. Could you just describe the background of it? Please. VW: Yeah the screwdriver is basically a Merlin blockstud. CB: Yeah. VW: And the ends have been re-formed to make it into a chisel. And the handle is carved out of, shaped out of a solid block of aluminium. And the machinist shaped the handle and then he put, he drilled it to take the squared end of the, the square taper in to that. And he put the shank, the stud in the lathe and — the other way about. The handle was in the lathe and this was in the turret of his capstan lathe like that. CB: Right. VW: And he just pulled the capstan handles and — CB: Put it straight in. VW: And it never moved. CB: No. VW: At all. CB: Now that engine stud. How would that have been formed in the aircraft? On the engine. Because you had the block and the head separate didn’t you? VW: Yeah. CB: So how, how did this work. VW: This end was screwed in to the crank case. All you got was the crank case itself with the holes in it to take this and that was screwed in to there. Then you slide the cylinders on, right. So the end, this end, threaded again would protrude above the top of block. CB: Yes. VW: And then the head itself would slide down over that as well and this is just long enough then so that you get enough thread on the end to take the nut that holds the whole lot together. The three pieces together like that. CB: Ok. VW: And it’s in a block like that because it’s a V engine. So you have two rows of these down one side and two down the other side like that for the other block. CB: So getting the block on is a heavy job. PW: Yes. VW: Well it’s yeah but — CB: Sorry the cylinder head I meant to say. VW: The cylinder is not so bad. Getting the block is the bad job because you have to introduce six pistons in to the bottom of the cylinders. CB: Yes. VW: As so all six have got to be in the right place and you’ve to gently feed them in, feed the rings in. Squeeze the rings to go in and then you just work it down very carefully because what makes it worse it’s on an angle anyway, you know, like that. CB: Yes. A V12. VW: It’s suspended you know and the block is on an angle going down because of the V of the engine. CB: Yes. VW: But — yeah. CB: So these wet liner engines are they? PW: Yeah. VW: They, well Phil knows more about them then I do. CB: They are. Effectively that’s why you’re putting in the — VW: Yeah. CB: Cylinder and then putting the head on. VW: Yeah. Yeah. CB: Right. VW: Yeah. Because — CB: Ok. And then for each part of the V. VW: Yeah. CB: Because these are V12s you’ve got six cylinders. Each. How many studs are there per cylinder? VW: Four. CB: Right. So that’s twenty four. VW: Yeah. CB: And you’re trying to thread the head over that. VW: You’ve got rows like a porcupine. PW: It’s like there are four studs per cylinder. VW: Yeah. PW: But between the cylinders the studs are shared. CB: Right. PW: If you can imagine. CB: Yeah. PW: You know, you have four studs for this one and then two of them become two of the four for that one. CB: Right. Ok. PW: So you got fourteen studs on each side. CB: I see. Ok. PW: Yeah. CB: Right. [recording paused] CB: Now, when you were at Lyneham what was the excitement you had there? VW: I was in a little section. And I had a gang of four airmen and they were split into groups of two in a little workshop alongside the hangar. And when the, the engines had done a certain number of hours in the aeroplane they were taken off the whole, what we called a power egg right from the wing, the front of the wing, you know from the firewall. CB: Yeah. VW: The big bulkhead. CB: Yeah. VW: And they’d take the lot off. Just undo all the connections and then they’d put it in a special stand with four wheels and they’d bolt them in there like that. And then they’d link them all up together and then the David Brown would bring them up to our place. CB: A tractor. VW: Yeah. Bring them all to our place and I went up two of them. And the other corporal in the hangar he would have the other two for his four blokes. And they used to have two on each and then we would take the engines out and then renew any, anything that controlled our pipes. You know. Various things in the, that was left, you know, in the engine bearer. Any oil pipes, fuel pipes, coolant pipes, perhaps put a new coolant tank in which is just over behind the prop. Anything like that that had to be renewed. And then put a new engine in, like that. And then they’d go back in into hangars straight on to the Yorks. CB: Now the York was essentially a Lancaster with a different body. What about the engines? Were they different? VW: It had Lancaster things on it didn’t it? CB: Were the engines the same as the Lancaster? VW: Well, no not really because they were Merlin 24s that we had. CB: Was that more powerful? VW: No. I don’t think so. Were they Phil? PW: They were slightly more powerful yeah. The general run of the mill Lancaster Merlin was twelve fifty horsepower or thereabouts. VW: Yeah. PW: And these were, I think they were slightly more. About fourteen hundred so a little more powerful. But they had different characteristics. The supercharging was slightly different on them. So, you know the York’s flew a different profile to the Lancaster and the engines were suited to that characteristics. CB: And they didn’t fly so high. PW: Didn’t fly so high. VW: Yeah they went through. PW: Yeah. CB: So fast forward now to Kemble. So you’re a civilian there with 5MU. How long did that last? VW: Two years. CB: Then what? VW: This isn’t — do you need this? CB: Well, it’s just to know what people did after the war really. VW: Oh yeah. CB: Because you learned a lot in the war that you didn’t know before. VW: Yeah. CB: How did that impinge on your career until your retirement? VW: Yeah. Well I went straight into a garage you know, because knowing engines. And I had four years, yeah, four years in the garage. That brought me up to 1950. And the Suez Crisis happened. CB: ’56 that was. PW: No. You’re getting confused with Berlin dad. CB: So 1948 was Berlin. So the Korean War was 1950. Did you called in to the Korean War? VW: Maybe. That was — CB: I’ll stop that just for [pause] yeah go on. VW: The — anyway the petrol went back on the basic ration. CB: Yeah. VW: So lots of people took their cars off the road and they sacked twelve of us. CB: Right. VW: In the garage. Because they had no work. I went to the, what they used to call then the Labour Exchange for a job and they said, ‘What did you do in the war?’ I said, ‘I was an aircraft mechanic.’ They said, ‘We’ve got a job for you,’ and they sent me out to Kemble. To the MU. And I was there for two years. And then I had various jobs. Short term. Taxies. I drove a taxi. And then I went from there to driving milk tankers for the Co-op Milk Department. And I had six years. No. Eight years. Eight years with them. PW: A long while with them. VW: Eight years with them. And actually in the first year wasn’t on the tankers. It was picking up the milk from farms in churns. You know. And then I went from that on the tankers for what we used to call long distance. Our long distance was a hundred miles a day I think at the most. Because you covered all the south of England. But yeah, and in 1962 I went into the factory in Swindon building motor bodies for British Leyland. And I was there then ‘til I retired. CB: Which was when? VW: 1984. CB: So just to get the sequence because we changed it slightly. Did you go from Lyneham into working as a garage mechanic? VW: Yeah I — CB: Before, before you went to Kemble. VW: Oh yeah. Well that was when I was demobbed. CB: Yes. VW: From there. CB: Yeah. Ok. Right. I got it the wrong way around. What year were you married? VW: 1940. Yeah. CB: And how did you meet your wife? PW: Teenagers really. VW: We were fifteen when we married because she was just nine months older than me so we were both about fifteen. Yeah. PW: That was when you met wasn’t it? VW: Pardon? PW: That’s when you met. VW: Yeah. PW: Because you said when we were married [laughs] VW: Oh no. When we first met. Yeah. We married in 1940. Sheila was born in ’41. CB: She lived near you. VW: Pardon? CB: She lived near you did she, is that how you — VW: Yes. In the locality yes. CB: Yeah. Good. Right I’m going to stop there for a mo. Thank you very much. [recording paused] CB: So just, just going back a bit Vivian. VW: Yeah. CB: When you were in the Territorial Army and you working at Tacalemit VW: Yeah. CB: What did you do in the Territorial Army? VW: I was on a searchlight detachment and we, we had a ninety centimetre light and we had six lights altogether and I was on, I was always on what was called the home light. So I was on the centre and all the other five, yeah the other five, they were three or four miles away in a ring around as me in the centre. Like that. They were disbursed about three or four miles. And we used to have two girls fly a Dominie from, a Dragon Rapide in Croydon as the target. So the the detachment would be two spotters laid out at forty five degrees from the light. They are there. The lights here. I’m on the end of the long arm with the wheel, the wheel elevates it and to go around you just walk forwards or backwards, you know, like that. Very primitive. And then I had an earpiece and we had a telephone line to what they called the sound locators. They were sort of wooden horns. And they were on a stand and you could move them that way or around. You know. PW: Azimuth. VW: Circular movement you know. And also you’d get the elevation to get the sound. And then there was a corporal who was, lance corporal who was in charge and he was shouting in the other ear. And so you know we didn’t know where we were half the time and it was like [Fred Carnell’s?] outfit. It really was. All the other lights were all over the sky like waving corn you know. Like that. And then the girls would, they’d be flying without navigation lights, you know and they’d get fed up and switch the navigation lights on [laughs] and everybody was on to them. CB: And suddenly you’d get them. Yes. VW: And we’d cone them in the aeroplane you know. Great stuff. And they would switch the navigation lights off again and we were all lost. We were all over the sky again you know. CB: These wooden detectors were pre-radar weren’t they? VW: Oh yeah. CB: So this was the only system they had. VW: They came out the ark I should think. CB: Yes. And they didn’t work. VW: No. No. CB: So how often did you actually acquire a target with a light? VW: I don’t think we ever acquired one at all. Only when they switched the navigation lights on [laughs] CB: [laughs] Right. VW: And I was on that for about nine months I suppose. CB: Yeah. VW: We used to go out to aerodromes. Down to Aldershot, you know. Any military establishment like that. We used to go and spend a weekend. CB: You’d take the lights. VW: Take the lights. CB: Yes. And how — VW: And then we’d — pardon? CB: All six would go would they? VW: Yeah. And the lorries that they were transported with were Tilling-Stevens Petrol Electric. CB: Right. VW: You might, I think you’d have to go online to find them. PW: Yes. You would. VW: They were — that’s what they were called. Petrol electric. How that worked I don’t know but they would, they had this damned great generator on them. And we used to [pause] then he had a long cable. Oh it must have been about fifty feet at least. And he’d got to link up this cable so you don’t hear anything of the generator going at all. And [pause] and as I say I’d be on the home light and as I say we never, never really caught one at all. We were always all over the sky you know. Only when the girls switched the nav lights on. But it was, it was fun really. We were having a good time. You know. Not really working at it you know. PW: Not taking it very serious. VW: For us it was so impossible to find them. CB: Well it was always peacetime wasn’t it so there wasn’t exactly an incentive to do a lot. VW: Yeah. Yeah we used to go and do aerodromes and army. CB: What was the unit called? VW: The unit was called [pause] my army number was 2052042. Sapper. Sapper Williams. 339 Company. 26th London Electrical Engineers. R E, Royal Engineers. We come under Royal Engineers. PW: Only the army. VW: Yeah [laughs] yeah. CB: This is before they really got the searchlight detachments operating. VW: Well then they had the big ones you know. CB: Yeah. VW: They also had a hundred and twenty sized. A hundred and twenty centimetres but they were the same, just a larger light. And they were carbon arc lights. And then of course I went on crush guard somewhere near Spalding and they had a searchlight detachment there and it was a radar controlled light. This was some years later in the war. And it was radar controlled and it must have been a hundred and eighty, nearly two hundred metres, you know. Like that. CB: Centimetres. VW: Radar controlled. CB: Yeah. VW: That was I don’t know how successful they were but we were bloody hopeless. PW: Pretty good. CB: So you enjoyed it. VW: Oh yeah. The Terriers. You know. It was adequate. It was an opportunity to get dressed up. CB: Yeah. VW: We used to get a few raspberries here and there, you know. Saturday night soldier. CB: Yeah. VW: But no I quite liked being in a crowd you know like that. In the company. Yeah. CB: And when you joined the RAF how different was that? VW: It was, it was much the same. I liked being with the company of other people. You know. I quite liked it in the early times you know, like that. And it wasn’t until I come across — I ran fowl of this engineer, warrant officer. That spoiled me for the RAF and I wasn’t interested after that. CB: So what happened there? When was that? VW: What? CB: When did you meet this difficult person? VW: October 1940. Yeah. October 1940. CB: So what happened there? VW: Well the School of GR was at Blackpool and they got posted to South Africa and — but they had this idea that you were going to get your wives out there so you had to be earning a certain amount, certain level of pay to cope with the cost of living out there. And I wasn’t. I was thruppence a day short because I wasn’t an LAC then. And so there was twenty of us I think that got then posted to different units in the UK. And I went to South Cerney. And I was there two years. You know. CB: But you mentioned this warrant officer. PW: This guy was — CB: What was the significance of that? VW: Well he was the engineering warrant officer of that and he, we just got off on the wrong foot. And I became bloody minded and I was always in trouble. I was always up on a charge. And in the end the engineering officer had us both in the office and he got as much of a bollocking as I did there, you know. He said it himself, he said, ‘This has got to stop.’ He said, ‘Getting him on,’ me, ‘Putting on a charge on trivial things,’ he said, ‘It only makes a man bloody minded.’ And he coined the phrase. PW: And he was exactly right. VW: And, yeah, and after that instead of being recommended for your classifications you had to take a board so he couldn’t do anything else but give me the opportunity to have a board. He comes up to me in the hangar and he said, ‘You’ve done very well.’ It took him a lot to actually congratulate me on it. It must have been hard for him. CB: Dented his pride a bit did it? And the result of the board was what? VW: I became an LAC then. And then a little while later I got posted from there to 17 AFU at Watton. And the engineering officer said, ‘What’s that thing on your sleeve?’ And I said, ‘It’s a good conduct stripe.’ He said, ‘How long have you been an LAC?’ I said, ‘Not very long sir.’ And he said, ‘Right,’ he said, he said, ‘You should have been a corporal by now, you know, at least.’ And I said, I didn’t, I just sort of bluffed it over, you know. Didn’t say what had happened obviously. CB: No. VW: And he said, ‘We’ll soon do something about that. And then in two months I was a corporal. PW: I bet he found out what had been going on. VW: I don’t know, he must have, yeah. PW: ‘Cause it would have been, it would have been on your records. VW: He must have looked on my docs. On my records. PW: On your records. CB: Trouble is that warrant officers are difficult to challenge. VW: Yeah. Yeah. And the thing was you see then you were getting, frequently getting overseas postings. Well, we were, I was actually living out in Cirencester. Being a married man. CB: Yeah. VW: And so they, the sort unspoken rule then was that all these overseas postings were filled by single blokes. You know. And he was living out as well so you know we were in the same boat. He couldn’t treat me any different you know and so we got away with it like that. Made it so much easier. CB: What would you say was the most memorable point about your RAF service? VW: Memorable. Oh my first flight. CB: Because we haven’t talked about that. So, ok, so first flight. VW: Yeah. CB: What was that? VW: In a Magister. We were supposed to have an air experience flight at the end of the technical course at St Athans but there were so many entrants there, you know. People coming off the courses. They were pushing them through as fast as they could and they just didn’t have enough aircraft to give everybody this air experience flight. And that was in a Magister. So we got to the squadron on 56 Squadron and suddenly one of the NCOs there found out that none of us airmen had flown. And our CO was quite surprised you know because we were in the air force. We obviously should have had at least had, as I say the air experience flight. The initial flight. So our CO borrowed a Magister from somewhere. And each pilot then took his crew up. And bring up and then all the way back and that was the best thrill I think I’ve ever had. You know. CB: Right. VW: And most memorable that was. Frightened I to death but I was hooked after that and I used to fly in anything on air test. A lot of blokes, you know would say you know, ‘I won’t fly in that bloody thing you know.’ But if a pilot went up I would. CB: Yeah. VW: I just loved flying. Still do. CB: How many hours do you reckon you got on doing those air tests? VW: I must have done seventy or eighty air tests and they ranged from ten minutes to an hour on the Lancs. CB: Yeah. VW: At Kemble. That’s the way to fly. On the Lancs. CB: Now the RAF was actually desperate for air crew. Particularly early on. So people were asked if they’d like to volunteer. What happened to you? VW: Well, as I say, you know I just — they just put my medical back a month but they said, ‘We’ll keep your posting open,’ but I never heard any more, you know, at all. And I didn’t push it because my wife said no. CB: Can we go fast backwards a bit? So how did you come to volunteer for aircrew in the first place? VW: To get away from that engineer warrant officer. CB: Right. Good. VW: The attitude in the hangar. I just lost interest in it you know. That’s how he affected me. I thought I couldn’t do anything right. Although a lot of it was my own fault but no. CB: So when you — VW: Actually you see then they were losing so many aircraft towards the end of 1942, or the middle of 1942 and I thought then, I mean I could have been posted to Stirlings or something like that. CB: Yeah. VW: And I wouldn’t have stood a hope in hell’s chance of coming through it. CB: Yeah. VW: And I hadn’t, my daughter then she was born. She was born in 1941 so — he wasn’t born till ’44. But — CB: So after you volunteered what was the next step? What did they do? VW: Oh I just got posted away. CB: No. No. They — what I meant to say was when you volunteered they then gave you some tests. So what was the first thing they did? VW: Well you were posted away on a gunner’s course. CB: Yes. VW: And, and you did that and I don’t know — perhaps their way of thinking. But you didn’t get your medical until you’d finished your gunner’s course. But our MO just took it into his mind, ‘Oh I’ll give you your medical now.’ You see. When we were clearing out our what’s the name, flew around. PW: Yeah. You go around getting cleared from the station. VW: You go around station and clear everything you know like that. Of course one section is the MO and as I say if he hadn’t given me my medical then I’d have gone through, you see. CB: Yeah. VW: I would have gone to the air gunner’s course and then back up to Penarth to the medical before I got sent on the, on the conversion course because I would have been the flight engineer. CB: What was the hiccup with your medical? VW: The fact that I had this paralysis. CB: Where? VW: And he knew how long it would last. CB: Where? What? VW: Before it, my face came back to normal again you see, like that, and he said, ‘We’ll keep your posting open,’ but they never did and we never pushed it. CB: ’Cause you wife wasn’t in favour. VW: No. No. She wasn’t. CB: Unsurprisingly. PW: If you knew my mum you’d understand just how much of a brick wall that was. VW: Yeah. I mean — CB: But looking back would you have liked to have converted to aircrew? VW: I would have liked to yes but looking back — CB: Ok. So — VW: I could weigh up the chances looking back. CB: Yeah. VW: And then never even thought about being shot down. CB: No. VW: Or anything like that. CB: No. You were invincible. VW: In retrospect, I mean I would, I could easily have been one of fifty five thousand. CB: And which planes would you have wanted to have flown in? VW: Oh the Lancaster. Yeah definitely. A Lancaster. Because the other went — I only know one of them. He was my mate there at Cerney. Name Lou Boyd. An Irish kiddie and he went and he did his conversion course at Swinderby. CB: Right. VW: On Lancs. I don’t know where the others went. I mean on one of them, on one of them. PW: 1660. VW: One of them was the sergeant in the hangar and he was thirty five PW: Yeah. VW: And he was the same as me. Just didn’t like our warrant officer. Never got on with him. And he went. Yeah thirty five he was. CB: And how many ops did he do? VW: I don’t know. I lost touch with all of them. I really did. CB: Right. VW: I only met Lou once. He came back and sorted us out and he was half way through his first tour then. CB: So he — VW: That was the, they told us when you lose an engine from mechanical failure. You don’t see it. You don’t realise it. The engine is not working. CB: Because it’s wind milling. VW: It’s wind milling. CB: Yeah. VW: And the thing is that it windmills. The revs stay the same. CB: Do they? VW: Yeah. The revs. The oil pressure stays the same, and that. You don’t get anything off the dials to indicate that it’s not running. The pilots afterwards said that there was, he felt a slight drag on that one side. But the first indication the engineer got, the flight engineer was the oil temperature goes down. CB: Right. VW: But everything else is the same bar the oil temperature. CB: Because the pilot can feel it yawing. PW: Just a little. VW: Yeah but he would just take that as the engines getting a bit out of sync. Perhaps. You know. CB: Right. VW: Like that. Yeah. CB: Actually that’s a point. How, yes, on the ground did you go through the procedures for synchronising the engines. VW: Well you get the throttles and your boost gauges as near as damned synchronised and then when it comes to revs you [pause] you set the revs by synchronising the two. Either starboard engine or the two port engines or two starboard engines. So you get one engine up to what do you call it [pause] economical cruising. And then you look through the propeller. The inboard propeller so that it’s superimposed on the inside of the outboard propeller and if its strobes they’re out of sync. CB: Right. VW: And you use then the prop control. CB: The pitch. VW: Pitch controls. CB: Yeah. VW: And when that stops and it’s superimposed and just stops inside the other and then you do the same with the other side. With the other two engines. CB: Just going back to your earlier point— if you lose an engine, you feather it and put it in — VW: Yeah. You can feather it yeah. CB: And what pitch can you put it in. What is the description of the pitch that you can put it in? VW: Neutral. CB: Right. VW: Because it’s just the blades are just dead on to the slipstream. CB: Yeah. The side of the blades. VW: Yeah. Yeah. CB: Yes. Good. Thank you very much. We’ve done really well. PW: I really enjoyed that. VW: Is that ok? CB: Absolutely fascinating. VW: You can edit. Edit it. CB: They will but the fact is that they will be letting you have a cd. Listen to it and if you want to alter anything you can let them know. VW: Yeah. CB: But eventually they will edit it. Initially they will copy it. VW: Well I shan’t bother. CB: Now, you may remember what I said to you was it would be helpful if we’d any supporting stuff. That picture. PW: The photograph that’s up there. Just on the end. CB: That would be really good if we could borrow that. Yes. Have you got your wedding picture handy? PW: No. We haven’t at the moment. VW: No. We can’t find it. CB: If that can come later. PW: No. Dad hasn’t got it. PW: I will find the pictures for you. CB: Will you? PW: And I will sort this one out as well. CB: So there’s just one other form then which is to say that you’re happy. You authorise them to donate a copy of the picture and let you have the thing back. VW: Yeah. That will be alright. CB: Ok. How did you come to settle in Fiskerton? You were never stationed here. VW: That’s another story in itself. We were, Phil got demobbed from. PW: Waddington. VW: Waddington. CB: Yeah. VW: And settled here in Metheringham and we used to come up on weekends for a weekend like that and we liked it up here. CB: Yeah. VW: And — 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 Vivian David Williams Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Brockbank 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 2017-04-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AWilliamsVD170403 Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Description An account of the resource Vivian joined the Royal Air Force in July 1938 as a flight mechanic and served for seven and a half years. After square drills at RAF Uxbridge and a course at RAF Manston, he did a basic engineering course at RAF Henlow. After six months at RAF St Athan, working on Bristol Pegasus and Rolls Royce Kestrel engines, Vivian was posted to 56 Squadron at RAF North Weald on Hurricanes and their Merlin engines. He spent six months at RAF Martlesham Heath before doing a conversion course to be a fitter at RAF Hednesford and RAF Cosford. Vivian was posted to the School of General Reconnaissance on Guernsey and Thorney Island before going to RAF Hooton Park and Blackpool, followed by No. Three Flying Training School at South Cerney. After two years, Vivian went to No. 17 Advanced Flying Unit at RAF Watton, where he changed engines on Masters. He went on to RAF Calveley, RAF Spitalgate and RAF Hixon before going to Transport Command at RAF Lyneham. Vivian was demobbed in January 1946. After the war, he worked for a year on Five Maintenance Unit at RAF Kemble. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Sally Coulter Maureen Clarke Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Fighter Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Bedfordshire England--Cheshire England--Cornwall (County) England--Essex England--Gloucestershire England--Kent England--Lancashire England--Blackpool England--Lincolnshire England--Norfolk England--Shropshire England--Staffordshire England--Suffolk England--Wiltshire Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Guernsey Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Channel Islands Wales--Vale of Glamorgan Atlantic Ocean--English Channel Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1938-07 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:20:43 audio recording Advanced Flying Unit fitter engine Flying Training School ground crew ground personnel home front Hurricane Lancaster mechanics engine military service conditions RAF Calveley RAF Cosford RAF Grantham RAF Hednesford RAF Henlow RAF Hixon RAF Hooton Park RAF Kemble RAF Lyneham RAF Manston RAF Martlesham Heath RAF North Weald RAF South Cerney RAF St Athan RAF Thorney Island RAF Uxbridge RAF Watton searchlight training York https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1303/18066/PDeverellCRE1901.jpg 950416d1c0bc8ddd5d7e83d96d0bcca5 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1303/18066/ADeverellCRE190722.mp3 011ccd66271ee51e3abd56830e71714f 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 Deverell, Colin Colin Ray Edwin Deverell C R E Deverell Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Colin Deverell (b. 1923). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 51 Squadron. The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-07-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Deverell, CRE Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document CJ: This is Chris Johnson and I am interviewing Colin Deverell today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Colin’s home and it is Monday the 22nd of July 2019, and thank you Colin for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present is Colin’s daughter, Liz. So Colin perhaps we could start by you telling me about where and when you were born and something about your family please. CD: Yes, well I was born in Thornton Heath, Croydon, on the 28th of November 1923, at number 13 Camden Way. It was a council house. I had a father who was on the buses as an inspector and a mother who worked jolly hard at home doing the washing and everything else in those days. I went to school locally, Elementary school, Ingram Road, that was quite close. It was quite a good school actually. And later on, I failed, I failed, I have to say I failed the grammar school, the exam for the grammar school, so I failed that and I went to a secondary school so that was up until I was aged fourteen, when I left. Okay. And then on from there, and on from there what to do as a job. This is the trouble with boys, they didn’t really know what they wanted to do you see, but I was very keen on aircraft but at that stage you couldn’t get anywhere with aircraft but I went to, worked at a firm called Oliver Typewriter Company, Oliver typewriters – I have one upstairs actually - and I was making those and that was the best bit of engineering I did really, to learn how to, how to drill through metal, how to put a thread in a hole for a bolt and things like that and stamping out pieces for the typewriter, you know, all the arms that come down, everything like that. So that was, that got me into Imperial Airways, my father worked hard to get me in to Imperial Airways in some way and became a rigger, just an amateur rigger, you know, to start off. Well the reason I’d got there was because I had got all this information from the typewriters, engineering, and I learnt a lot from these aircraft, putting parts into the aircraft, doing this, that and the other, dogsbody, making coffee for the people that worked there, that’s what boys had to do and I watched other engineers soldering wires together and that sort of thing so I learnt from that you see, and that went on, until, well that was all these Handley Page aircraft, big bi-planes with four engines, fixed propellers that didn’t move at all and it flew at about four thousand miles, er four thousand feet at about a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty miles an hour and took two and a half hours to get to Paris. So the steward on board, they had stewards then, cooked them a meal, all of them a meal, you had a proper meal. So that was quite a nice little trip for them at four thousand feet. So that’s what they did. Well that went on until the war started and I’m afraid it went out of business of course and I was there till about November 1939 and I was told well I’m afraid the apprentice had come to an end, so that was the end of that and I lost my job as well so I had to find something else. I searched round and there’s a lot of little firms at Croydon aerodrome, lot of hangars down there and one of them was named Rollason Aircraft Services, and I went there and yes I got a job there, I was drilling and doing all sorts of things, working on bi-planes Hawker Hectors, Demons and Audaxes and all obsolete aircraft and that was a wonderful period. Of course the war was on unfortunately. So what happened, by July, July the 10th, July the 10th 1940 the bombing started on airfields and Biggin Hill and Kempston and Kenley and all these got a bashing. Croydon got it on the 15th of August, 15th of August 1940 at 7pm in the evening. These Messerschmidt 110s came over and there’s a picture up there, and I’m sorry to say, well I was underneath an Airspeed Oxford, it’s a twin-engined wooden aircraft, now we had to get this aircraft out - this was seven o’clock in the evening - we had to get this aircraft out of the hangar by the morning because they were bringing some Hurricanes in that needed repairs, so I was underneath there with another chap doing some wiring when all these bombs came down. At the back of our factory there was a Bourgeois scent factory and I think about fifty girls got killed there, we lost about, well there were sixty, sixty were killed or injured in Rollasons, so I was, I mean how lucky can I be [emphasis] to be underneath that aircraft, glass, metal came down, the glass went through the wood, it’s a wooden aircraft, through the wood, into the metal tanks, into the metal tanks to glass [emphasis], thick glass, yeah, so I think I would have died, I don’t think I would have been here you know if I had been outside. But I don’t know if you want more information on that but thing is, I was covered in muck and glass and stuff, you know, and severely dazed, the place was on fire, the little canteen had been bombed and there was a bottle of Tizer - I found a bottle of Tizer - and took the screw off and poured it over me head and I don’t recommend that to anybody because it’s very sticky! So I had a sticky head, so that’s my Tizer. Anyway, I had a new bike, my father bought me a new bike for two pound seven and sixpence, two pound seven and sixpence, and I thought to myself where’s my bike. Oh this, you know it went on during the evening, we were told to go down to the air raid shelter and went down there and after a few minutes we’re told to come up again, because the siren hadn’t gone, you know, before the raid. No one knew it was happening. Nobody, nobody on the gun, ‘cause a Bofur gun there, nobody, nobody there to operate it to shoot the aircraft down. Anyway, so I got on, oh I found my bike, that’s right, leaning against the wall and it was all right so I cycled home and at that stage we were living in Thornton Road, Croydon, a little flat there, and when I got round there I saw my mother leaning out of the window actually, ‘cause she knew the place was being bombed you see, she thought I’d have had it. I mean seven o’clock it happened, it was about ten o’clock when I got home. Just imagine, how pleased she was to see me. Sadly for her we were bombed, the house was damaged quite badly and she died on Christmas Day in 1940, all the ceiling in the kitchen came down on her head and damaged her brain, so I lost my mother quite early in my life, which was very sad really. Anyway, I moved to another, to a friend of mine in Streatham, and that’s when I went to this new school, and then eventually. Sorry, I’m going back a bit here, but that’s when I left to go to erm, the, oh sorry, when I went, oh the yeah, sorry, after the raid we, they treated me very well – Rollasons - I went back to them, I was very dazed as you can imagine, being bombed as a boy, I was only fifteen and I went to the office they said and well we’ll keep you on pay for the time being and we’ll let you know what happens. So I went home again and eventually we were told we were going to Hanworth aerodrome in Middlesex, funny little aerodrome actually, it was just a sort of almost a private, just grass, you know. They had a few Fairey Battles there. Anyway, we still continued repairing Hurricanes, but they felt there were one or two bi-planes left over from Croydon, they put these on a lorry and I remember sitting in the cockpit of a, I think it was a Hawker Demon and went all the way from Croydon to Hanworth and I was waving to people as I went by like that, [laugh] and I think they thought it was quite funny. [Laugh] I mean it’s all obsolete aircraft. But you know, we went back on to Hurricanes. How did we get there, you know, each day, because I was living in Thornton Heath still, in Thornton Road. They had put a coach on for us, from West Croydon station and any of us living there, took a tram for a penny, a tram in those days, for a penny, up to West Croydon station, went over there, went over and sat in the coach and it took us to this aerodrome, and at the end of the day they brought us back again, another penny on the tram to get back home. So that’s how, that’s how it went on. That went on all the way through 1941 and I thought to myself I want to join, I’m going to join the RAF to get my own back, my mother died, you know, so I had a sort of grievance feeling about all this. So I went to the Croydon, the Croydon agency and they said ‘Well, we’re sending chaps down, down the coal mines as well as the army.’ I said ‘No, no, I’m working on aircraft, I want something to do with aircraft, I want to train as a pilot.’ ‘Don’t they all,’ she said, I remember, she said don’t they all! And there was a three month waiting list, okay, for, to train as a pilot, but she said ‘We’re desperately in need of flight engineers’, and they did have them on Imperial Airways actually, so it goes back a long way, on four-engined aircraft. So I said, ‘Yes, okay, I’ll do that’, so within the week I was called up. I was, I went to Lord’s Cricket ground, that was fun! “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” was the sign up there. We picked up all sorts of stuff there and we, we went to, were put into flats, in Viceroy Court which is just outside a zoo, so we could hear the monkeys laughing at us and we were there for a couple weeks, or something like that. We went to Torquay from there, Torquay and did all the physical training: clay pigeon shooting, physical training, running, sports, anything, you know, just to keep our mind off things. But I used to like the running, cross country running as I got used to that, you know. Clay pigeon shooting – I got good at that - swimming I was never very good at, but anyway we’ll pass over that won’t we. One of the things we had to do was go to the quayside there, and there was a place there, it was about, oh about the height of the ceiling down to the water. And the idea was to jump off there with a Mae West on you see, and to swim to the shore. I wasn’t very happy about that, you can imagine, but I did it and I managed to get to the shore, so that was fine, but I never have been a very good swimmer. Anyway, so I joined up and within a week I was, sorry, I’m getting muddled here, I went down to Torquay, that’s it, Torquay, and I was there for six weeks, did all these familiar things, the running and the sports and everything else. And then as flight engineers we had to train at St Athan’s in South Wales and we had to choose between a Lancaster, oh no, Stirling, Lancaster, Halifax and the flying boat. The flying boat, what was that? CJ: Sunderland? CD: Sunderland, Sunderland. So it was three, four, yes, there were four we could choose from. I don’t know why, but I liked the idea of the Stirling because of the radial engines, I knew something about those you see, so I decided to train on those. So that’s what I did at St Athan’s I trained on these Stirlings. It was, you know, a full day, a really full day, training and I was there for, I was there for some, some weeks, I can’t think how long we were there now. Anyway that was in ‘40, ‘42, yes. The Stirling was a strange sort of aircraft really, it was all electric, all the other aircraft were hydraulic controlled and even the undercarriage you had wiring and a solenoid, which introduced a control there I think you would call it and the flaps. We had fourteen petrol tanks and this was the flight engineer’s job, he had to look after those, all different amounts in each tank, you can just imagine. It was all levers and wheels, nothing, no buttons you know, like you have today and with the undercarriage the pilot switched the switch down, this was as we were coming in to land, to get the undercarriage down. No, let’s start off by going up. So if we, the undercarriage was down obviously, we’d take off, the switch goes, switch up, and a lever up like that and the undercarriage should then come up, if it doesn’t the flight engineer would have to go back to the middle of the aircraft, to the control machine there and you had to wind the undercarriage up and it could be up to five hundred, five hundred turns! Yeah, so that’s, occasionally I was doing, the flights in Stirlings, I had to just start it off. This is where you had to be careful, if you’d started it off, you see, and if I said to the pilot try it now and he switched it, he switched it up or down, whatever it is, the undercarriage, it would go round and round, and the handle and you’d break your wrist and some flight engineers did break their wrists doing that. So you had to tell the pilot: do not touch that switch until I tell you to! So that’s all, that was the operations. You’re in flight coming down, so switch down, lever down, the undercarriage should come down, if not, put the switch back again, go back to the and wind it for a little while, then tell, take your hand away and take the handle out and tell the skipper to switch the, there, switch it down, [unclear] so it was quite a complicated business really, so I don’t think anyone recommended the idea of electric aircraft, but they’re all electric now, aren’t they, everything’s electric, even cars! So that’s what we had to do. It’s a very long, long aircraft. There was an Elsan at the back of the aircraft if you wanted to go to the toilet, but who would want to go all the way down there in the dark to the toilet and then be shot at by a fighter, you know, when you’re sitting on the toilet so we never did use it, we found other means. It was fairly slow really, I mean we used to cruise at about a hundred and seventy miles an hour, whereas a Lancaster could do much more than that. And height, height was a problem: we could only get up to ten thousand feet, so anyone going to Tunis, Milan, which they did in the Stirlings, they had a job to get over the mountains of course, so ten thousand feet was about the limit really. And of course you took all the flak, you know, if it was Stirlings and Lancasters, us Lancasters we would be up there, we used to be at seventeen thousand feet in a Lancaster, and the Stirlings were down here, ten thousand feet and they got loads of flak. So they lost more Stirlings, including the number that actually flew, they lost far more Stirlings, so that’s the, that was my choice. We went to Chedburgh for training on the aircraft as the flight engineer, and the pilot and we had the instructors with us, we took off and did all that we needed to do at Chedburgh. And then eventually we were appointed to a squadron and on this occasion it was Wratting Common, which is quite close. I don’t know if you have, no, anyway Wratting Common was the place. Oh! Terrible place, it was all mud, it had been raining like mad and it was all mud everywhere and on one occasion I walked through the WAAF quarters ‘cause it was much drier and I was told off, oooh you can’t do, can’t do that, you know, mustn’t do that, ooh no! Anyway, the first operation we did was to the Frisian Islands, the Frisian Islands off Germany there, dropping mines, that was uneventful, came back. The second trip was to Kiel, Kiel Harbour, yup. And we had mines to go down there because the U-boats were in there, you know, and I think probably they hadn’t got the pens completely ready so I think we probably did knock out some of the submarines there. So that was the second. Now the third trip was to Lorient, L O R I E N T, Lorient on the south coast of France. Lorient was a place where they had U-boat pens and they had built them there, and they were very, very thick concrete so how they thought we could, well actually it was, we dropped mines, so we were hoping that the submarines coming back would hit one, I mean that’s what it was all about really, but bombs wouldn’t really, wouldn’t really have done anything to them. But what happened with us there, we nearly got the chop there, because off the island, I think it was about a mile, two miles, two miles off, there was an island called Isle de Croix, Island of the Cross, and our bomb aimer, he took over you see, when we were going to drop the mines, the idea was to go around the island, but we went over the island, quite low down actually and there were all these Bofor guns there, these, like onions, red hot onions on chains coming up each side of us. How they missed us I do not know! We got over the island safely and then we had to go round the island again, round [emphasis] the island and then drop these mines. But that was a close, very close, you know, for a third trip but that was what the sprog crews do, the wrong thing, you see, that’s why you always get the chop in the early days, I’m afraid. Now what did I do after that? I think we went on to Lancasters after that, we did a conversion, that was it at Tuddenham or Wratting Common. I’ve got an idea that might have been Wratting Common. The Stirling was taken off because the chop rate was so heavy; they couldn’t continue like that, and it didn’t carry much of a bomb load anyway. So that was the end of that. But of course they were in use quite a bit later on – I’ll tell you about that later. So what we do we went on to Lancasters, and that’s what we really wanted really because we knew it was much faster, it could go up much higher, seventeen thousand feet was quite usual, we thought we’d be out of the range of their flak, we hoped, so that was what we did. Actually I went to Derby with my pilot to do I think it was a couple of days on the Merlin engine, so that was, that was quite useful and I did that without going on leave. Some went on leave you see, but I decided I wanted to learn something about the Merlin, so that was done, I came back. What was my first trip, was a – can you switch off a minute because I – [recording paused] CJ: So what was your first operation when you’d converted to Lancasters? CD: Well, it took us by surprise actually, it was Duisburg in the Ruhr. Course that was a very important area round there: they were producing aircraft, tanks and everything else. So on the 25th June ‘43 we went to the Ruhr valley, Duisburg which we knew would be heavily defended. We took off from about ten pm and made for the Dutch coast where we met some flak, raced on to about fifteen thousand feet ahead of us we could see lots of activity in the air as we approached the Ruhr. The Ruhr was important for Germans because it was full of heavy industry and so we need to prang it hard. We had on board four thousand pound bomb, shaped like a large cannister, and ten one thousand pound bombs and loads of incendiaries. The Pathfinders were dropping their coloured flares and the master bomber told us to bomb a certain colour – I can’t remember which colour it was – anyway we were now approaching the target when all hell was let loose as flak and searchlights were each side of us, we could hear shrapnel hitting the sides of our aircraft, this is the dreaded moment as our skipper opened the bomb doors, at this stage we were unable to manoeuvre: we just had to keep straight and pray. Skipper says to our two gunners, Dave Maver and Ronnie Pritchard, ‘Watch out for any night fighters’, not that we could do much about it at this stage. The bomb aimer now took over: left, left, steady, right, steady, at this stage the chewing of gum was speeding up, it was sheer terror. ‘Bombs gone’ says Epi, our bomb aimer. Skipper closes bomb doors and our chewing is reduced in intensity. Our pilot banks to starboard and loses height to get out of the way of the searchlights and flak, this is another time when night fighters are looking for us. Our navigator gives a new course for the Dutch coast, but we do a dog leg, zigzags to try and fool the fighters. We had been watching aircraft going down in flames which makes us all a bit nervy, well it’s not like a holiday flight to Tenerife is it! - I said in brackets - We saw a small aircraft to port and a bit above us but we did not think it had been, had seen, had seen us, this was a German aircraft we thought because just twin engines but then he suddenly disappeared, we were now in thick cloud and it was raining. Let’s hope we don’t collide with another aircraft. As for me as flight engineer, I was trying to keep a fuel log in the dark and with all the activity going on it was not easy. I kept a note of throttle changes because that makes all the difference to the amount of fuel one uses, plus temperature outside at our height. As we had eight – I’ve got fourteen – as we had eight [emphasis] tanks I didn’t want one to go dry, causing an engine to stop and possibly create an air lock in the system: my name would have been mud. I also kept control of the engines in orders from my skipper. I’m able to tell you that we got back safely to base and I found out later that my petrol calculations were just about right, we landed back at four thirty am, that was six and a half hours. Just over four hundred Lancs and Halifaxes took part and we lost six point one percent of the force, twenty five aircraft. Later we understood that reconnaissance had shown that much of the industry in Duisburg had been destroyed. We lost one aircraft on our squadron. On 27th of June we were due to go to Cologne, so, on 27th June 1943 we were briefed to go to Cologne in the Ruhr, but it was called off at the last moment because of foul weather over target. We briefed again, briefed again on 28th of June with a slightly different route to try and fool the enemy. Over the Dutch coast the Germans had dropped chandeliers to light up the sky and so we expected to be mauled by the German night fighters. We climbed to eighteen thousand feet hoping to avoid them, but no such luck, a fighter came up on our rear, probably an Me110, a twin-engined fighter. Ronnie, our rear gunner called to the skipper: ‘Corkscrew port skip’ which my pilot did immediately and we went down to ten thousand feet and came up again in the corkscrew to fourteen thousand feet. Tracer bullets had gone just over the top of us at the beginning of the corkscrew, but when we settled down at fourteen thousand feet, we felt we had lost him, a really nasty moment and very nearly the end of us. We pressed on to Cologne and ran in to thick cloud, the master bomber told us to bomb a certain colour and we couldn’t see them. We could see some fires below so we dropped our bombs and incendiaries on those fires and hoped for the best. We returned to England mostly in cloud and landed at about five am. We were shocked to learn that forty aircraft failed to return. The next three nights we were on shorter trips to France. Marshalling yards in Paris and a place called Wizernes where they were making these V2s I believe, if I remember rightly and it was heavily defended. Dusseldorf, went to Dusseldorf on 12th of July. Dusseldorf was another heavily defended place, because all industry, and if you killed people down there, they were probably working in the industry anyway you see. It was a heavily defended town because of the amount of industry there. We went through the usual procedures briefing and a meal et cetera, I think take off was around ten pm. We met flak and searchlights over France I remember, and even more so as we entered Germany. Our skipper told us, the gunners, to look out for night fighters as they were bound to be operating. Eventually we could see ahead the Pathfinder’s flares and as usual in the Ruhr, a wall of flak and searchlights. As flight engineer I had to do several jobs at the same time: keep looking out of the cabin for the position of the searchlights, help the skipper with the engine controls, keep a close watch on the fuel we were using, and write up my log so that I would know when to change the petrol tanks; all this on twelve shillings per day, and as a bonus we were threatened by death at any moment. Ah well, I did volunteer! Yes, turn it off. [recording paused] CD: Yes, one of the raids we went to was Stuttgart, this was another heavily [pause] sorry, have to cut that out, yes, we pressed on to Stuttgart and dropped our bombs on target. We bombed the coloured flares dropped by the Pathfinders, skipper did a sharp turn to starboard and nearly hit another Lancaster, it was only just a few feet away from us, as it climbed in front of us. We climbed to seventeen thousand feet in clear skies when suddenly Ronnie Pritchard, our rear gunner, shouted over the intercom ‘Corkscrew to port skipper’ and down we went to twelve thousand feet. It was another case of an Me110 was still on our tail, so up we went to starboard and then down again to port. I think we’ve lost him. Another thing, this sort of activity is not good for one’s stomach! And also trying to work out the fuel we’d used, anyway, I did the best I could. But that was a pretty grim trip because we nearly crashed into this other, this other Lancaster. Yeah, yeah. On 17th of August 1943 we were given a very important mission. Apparently our spy planes had detected some rockets at a place called Peenemunde, in northern Germany. It had been known for some time that the Germans had been producing hard water at Peenemunde, which is used in atomic weapons, but of course these weapons had not been produced by any nation at that time. But the future would have looked bleak if they had been able to carry on their research, the powers that he, told Bomber Harris, oh the powers that be that he had told Bomber Harris that Peenemunde must be obliterated. Almost six hundred bombers, almost six hundred bombers would take part and we expected heavy losses as we felt it must be heavily defended. We flew by night of course, and the flight arrangement was as follows: two hundred Stirlings would go in first at eight thousand feet, followed by four hundred Lancasters at ten thousand feet. The Pathfinders would be there first, dropping flares to light up the area. By good fortune a feint was going on over Berlin, with twin engine Mosquitoes, the Germans thought Berlin was therefore the main target and sent night fighters there. The Stirlings went in to Peenemunde and dropped their bombs, and then turned for home without any losses. The German night fighters realised their mistake and turned back to Peenemunde just as the Lancasters went in to bomb the place. I remember a great deal of chaos, as aircraft after aircraft was shot down. It was, [sigh] it was very unnerving to see so many Lancasters on fire, we dropped our bombs on the target and fled the area and got back safely. Forty Lancasters - actually it was forty two – forty two Lancasters were shot down that night, ten percent of the force. Analysis later showed the bombing effort had been reasonably successful. Spy planes would keep an eye on the place in case another attack was necessary. My squadron lost one Lancaster out of twelve despatched. On the next night we were on the flight list again. At briefing we found we found the subject was Bremen. Well, that was fairly cushy compared with Peenemunde. Yeah. At Peenemunde was a very important town for us to destroy because the V2s they were producing would have been ready before D-Day, and you can just imagine what would have happened if that had happened: the D-Day wouldn’t have been possible, you know. As it was, on D-Day one never saw a German fighter because they mostly had been destroyed, but Peenemunde was the, the town to get, we never had to go back there because they moved the whole lot to somewhere else in Germany which we kept bombing later on, but that was the most important one for D-Day, was Peenemunde, okay. At a briefing on the 23rd of August 1943, we learned the worst, yes, the worst, yes, it was to be the first big night raid on Berlin, by six hundred and fifty Lancasters and Halifaxes. Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, had said that no foreign aircraft would be allowed to fly over the capital of the Third Reich, well we’ll have to see if he’s right. We were all rather depressed about this operation as we knew that Berlin was considered to be the most heavily defended of all German towns. We were taken out to the aircraft at nine pm and I remember we sat around the aircraft waiting for start up time and nobody hardly spoke a word. We took off at nine thirty pm and we would be amongst the first wave into the attack. Berlin’s thirty five mile area was dotted with lights, so that it was hard to distinguish the bursts of anti-aircraft shells below from the coloured markers dropped by the Pathfinders. The first thing we had to do was fly through a wall of searchlights, hundreds [emphasis] of them in cones and clusters. Behind all that was an even fiercer light glowing red, green and blue and over there millions of flares hanging in the sky. A huge mass of fires below. If this is Hell, then I have been there. Flak is bursting all around us at fifteen thousand feet, there is one comfort, and that is not hearing the shells bursting outside because of the roar of the four Merlin engines. We flew on and it was like running straight into the most gigantic display of soundless fireworks in the world. The searchlights are coming nearer now all the time. As one cone split then it comes together again. They seem to splay out then stop, then come together again and as they do there’s a Lancaster right in the centre. Skipper puts the nose down, more power he asks, and I increase the throttle and we are pelting away at a furious rate as we are coming out of the searchlight belt more flak is coming up from the minor defences. A huge explosion near our aircraft: it shakes like mad. Skipper asks everybody to report that they are okay. I thought that the aircraft must have been hit somewhere but everything seemed to be working as far as I could tell: engine revs okay, oil pressure okay, petrol gauge okay. Would we get out of this hell alive? Hello skipper, navigator here, half a minute to dropping zone, okay says skipper, bomb doors open, bomb aimer now takes over, okay, steady, right a bit, bombs gone, bomb doors closed, keep weaving skipper, lots of flak coming up, I tell him, going to starboard something hits us, but we don’t know what or where. I report to skipper that a Jerry fighter has just passed over us from port to starboard, our mid-upper gunner also reported a fighter, we keep going out of the main area of searchlights. I take a look at the furious fires below and masses of flak and Pathfinder flares, a mass, a mass of other Lancasters and Halifaxes has to get through. Looking back we can see aircraft going down in flames, thank god we are out of the main firestorm I say to myself. Skipper through the intercom tells everyone to watch out for night fighters as they are bound to be active. I give my log a good check in as we couldn’t be short of fuel at this stage, but everything seems to be okay, the oil pressure was a bit low on two starboard engines, I wondered if flak had damaged them. I report this to our skipper, keep an eye on it he said. Away back over the Baltic, so different to the way we came. There seemed to be flak coming up from all over the place and so we are not out of trouble. We knew there were fighters about as they were dropping flares. Suddenly Ronnie, our rear gunner said corkscrew starboard skip, down we went and I fell, I fell out of my seat and hit my head and was stunned for a bit. Up we came to port a tracer bullet skimmed the side of our aircraft, Ronnie took a pot at the German fighter but I don’t think he hit him. We levelled out at eight thousand feet and we were now in cloud and we stayed in it to dodge the fighter. We came out of the cloud over the Channel, oil pressures on two starboard engines were getting too low, so it was decided to land at Woodbridge, just on the border of Suffolk, it had a long runway for situations like ours. We landed at five fifteen am after a horrendous night. I thought that Bomber Harris might well obliterate Bomber Command as well as Berlin! Our aircraft had been damaged by flak, including two engines so it was unserviceable. We were taken by coach back to, was this, this is where we went wrong, I’ve got Wratting Common but it should be Tuddenham I think. The squadron had lost another Lancaster, a total of fifty eight heavy bombers were lost that night, fifty eight, and so ended our first trip, and our last I hoped, to Berlin, the big city as it was called. Our aircraft would be out of service for a week, but we were given a new aircraft that had not been flown on ops. Our wireless operator Charlie Higgins didn’t like the idea as he was terribly superstitious, hence the rabbit’s foot in my pocket. Charlie had to come round to the new aircraft, or leave the crew. He came round to it. Right, now this is the crunch, our thirtieth and final operation, but what a momentous time it has been over the last few months: a lot of airmen have died. Once again we were briefed on 28th of August and we were out at the aircraft when it was cancelled. And so back to the de-clothing area, this was always very stressful and our nerves start to give us trouble by a slight shake and very noticeable when holding a cigarette. The 29th of August 1943 was to be our last trip and hopefully we will return. Briefing was at four pm, we all sat down and then stood up when the Group Captain entered the briefing room at four pm. The door then locked, he stood on the stage and said ‘Captain answer for your crew’, and ‘Beware if you’re not there, you’re in trouble’, anybody not there would be in dead trouble. The curtain pulled back and lo and behold the target was Stettin, on the Baltic, a very long trip and so I’ll have to be very accurate with my petrol calculations. Stettin was a large port and apparently the Germans were bringing men and war weapons back from Norway to put to the war in Russia. The idea was for us to blast the ships in port and anything we saw moving. It was going to be a long night with full petrol tanks and loads of bombs, and, no incendiaries, just bombs. Take off at nine pm. Stettin was partly on the way to Berlin, but a bit further to the west and a somewhat longer trip, we hoped the Germans would think we were going to Berlin and send their fighters there. We went through thick cloud at first, but over Germany it was clear skies and we had to watch out for the German fighters. We got caught in searchlights but the skipper managed to weave and corkscrew out of them. Heavy flak, shrapnel shells hitting our aircraft, we dropped our bombs by the reflection of the water, so there were no Pathfinders for this raid. We managed to leave the area safely and flew into the cloud again where it was pouring with rain, better than being attacked by a night fighter when flying in in clear skies. Sadly our Squadron Commander, Squadron Leader Warner failed to return from this op to Stettin, a total of twenty three Lancasters were lost out of three hundred and fifty on the operation. And now my crew sort of split up for a time here, we went on two week post-operational leave. Now, after, I returned to Scotland after some leave and did several weeks as flight engineer instructor. One day, my friend Jack Ralph, a pilot, came up to me and said as his flight engineer had been injured, by shrapnel I believe, would I be willing to do, to be his flight engineer as he only had four operations to do. Jack was somewhat older then I was at the time as he was thirty and I was still nineteen and he had a lot of experience and had earned the DFC. Without thinking of the possible consequences, I said yes. Being so young I didn’t really see the dangers ahead, anyway that was my decision. Jack’s crew accepted me okay and that was the main thing. My first operational briefing with Jack was on 23rd of September 1943, Mannheim, a big industrial town, well in, that was the usual thing; fifteen Lancasters were lost there, and then Hannover, I think we lost an aircraft there. Turn it off just a moment. At this stage in my tour of operations – thirty two to date - I was becoming decidedly jittery, a nervous twitch perhaps. I felt I was getting to the end of what I could take, nevertheless I never showed this in my behaviour, but it was just that I felt it inwardly, after all I was still only nineteen years old. Us bomber chaps often wrote poetry, some have been published and at this moment I would like to quote one of mine. I found it amongst my papers a few years ago, and it was written by me during my tour of operations in 1943. It might seem a bit naive now but it was how I felt at the time. Viz: “What think you airman when you fly so proudly there in heaven’s sky? Do you exalt in your great might as you go onwards through the night? I think of death beneath my wings, and of the load my bomber brings. My spirit flinches from the thought, that of this carnage may come naught. I pray that soon the day will come when at the rising of the sun that man will offer man his hand and peace prevail throughout the land. I face up to my moments’ task, but three things God, of thee I ask: please help my flesh and mind to stand the strain and protect me Lord this once again. And if this cannot be your plan, give me the strength to die a man.” So that. I wasn’t sleeping too well at this particular time, and I had a sort of of foreboding about the future, it was only one more operation to do, strange how the mind works. On the morning of 18th of November, I woke in the usual way and had breakfast. I went to the aircraft and had a chat with the ground engineers. No problem with the engines, there were full tanks, two thousand one hundred and forty gallons and full bomb load. In fact I worked out that our full weight would be way [emphasis] above what it should be, but it was often like that. No chance of survival if we had engine failure on take off. Briefing was at four pm when we found that the target would be Stettin again, on the Baltic coast, and it’s a long hard journey ahead as you would know from above. I had been there before. Stettin was a very important town for Germany because it was the embarking point to Norway. Stettin was heavily defended by guns, searchlights and night fighters. At the briefing we found out that we were to use new tactics by flying low over the North Sea, under German radar with a moonlight night and then to sweep across Denmark and up to the Swedish coast and then down to Stettin, hopefully we were told we would hit Stettin from a different angle and take the Germans by surprise. As we left the briefing Jack said to me let’s hope they are right! Take off at nine pm. Fourteen Lancasters from our squadron would take part. We had our supper in the usual way and collected our rations: chocolate and chewing gum. We then collected our flying clothes, harness and parachute. The padre was there to wish us well and safe return. Well that was something to help me anyway. We were taken to the aircraft in the liberty van, as we called it, would take us in to Newmarket, it took us in to Newmarket when we were not flying. We got ourselves into the aircraft and made sure everything was in order. The skipper and I did what we called pre-flight checks, as nothing was left to chance. A Very light was fired from the caravan at the end of the runway for take off. We queued up and then our turn came. Skipper opened up the throttles and then I took over to giving him full power as we were overloaded, we sped down the runway, hoping we could make it into the air and we did. Skipper pulled the aircraft off the ground and did a circuit of the aerodrome, before speeding off and crossing at Cromer and then over the North Sea. We flew at five hundred feet towards Denmark. As we crossed the Danish coast E-boats were firing at us but fortunately missed. We were now on the way to Stettin, we saw one Lancaster crash into a windmill because it much too low. Before I continue I must mention something about Stettin. This town manufactured consumer goods, including cosmetics. At the end of 1943, there were still six million Germans employed in consumer industries. The Armament Minister, Albert Speer, his efforts to cut back consumer output were repeatedly frustrated by Hitler, personal veto. Eva Braun intervened to block an order banning permanent waves and manufacture of cosmetics. Apparently Hitler was so anxious to maintain living standards. Anyway back to our flight. After leaving Denmark we had to climb to fifteen thousand feet, because we were approaching the Swedish coast and they were neutral as far as war was concerned. We were using our new radar equipment – H2S – so our navigator was able to pick up the town of Stettin. We flew over the southern tip of Sweden and apparently the authorities complained about this to Churchill through the Swedish Embassy. We now flew south and I could see heavy flak ahead so I knew we would be in for a pasting. We could see the Pathfinders were there this time. Flares and the master bomber was telling us to bomb a certain coloured flares. Suddenly we got caught in two cones of searchlights, but skipper Jack Ralph acted quickly and down we went to starboard and we escaped. But was a close run thing again. Flak was bursting all around. We dropped bombs okay on a mass of flames below us. We left the target area which looked like hell below. After a short time the flak seemed to quieten, so we knew night fighters were in the area. Suddenly a loud shout from rear gunner on the intercom, corkscrew port skipper, and down we went, but unfortunately the Messerschmidt 110 night fighter caught us underneath our aircraft. The tracer bullets through, ripped through the underbelly and caught our port inner engine, which caught fire. We also had a fire in the fuselage, just, just beyond the mid upper gunner. The hydraulic oil that feeds the turret had spilled into the fuselage and that was what was on fire. The turret in fact became useless. Skipper had brought the aircraft out of the corkscrew and levelled off at about eight thousand feet. The fighter did not follow us down. So, what were our problems at this stage of our flight? A – port inner engine on fire. B – fire in the fuselage. C – what damage had been done underneath us? D – mid upper turret not now working. C, sorry, E – losing height and another three and a half hours to home base. F – outside temperature minus forty degrees centigrade possibly too cold to bale out. G – if attacked again no chance of survival on three engines. H – have we enough fuel to get home? So the action we took was this: 1 – my skipper feathered the propeller on the duff engine. He operated the fire extinguisher in the engine and fortunately the fire went out. All this has to be done within seconds of course. I attached an oxygen bottle and my mask and took a fire extinguisher with me. I found my way down the fuselage to the fire, which was looking quite fierce, especially everywhere was dark. I connected up my intercom and told skipper what I had found. Should we bale out he said? No, I said I think I can put the fire out – [wry chuckle] I had not brought my parachute with me from my position by the pilot! It was stacked up there. I didn’t think I had any chance of survival if the fuselage broke up anyway. Anyway I played the extinguisher on to the fire but it didn’t all go out. The aircraft was full of smoke but fortunately we all had our masks on and I used my official goggles for my eyes. There was some tarpaulin or something nearby and so I placed it on the fire but some of the flames shot up and I burnt both of my hands. I struggled with the tarpaulin and the fire went out. My hands were very painful though as you can imagine, but I wondered at that time whether the airframe had been weakened by the heat. I told the skipper what I had done and what I had, and that I had painful hands. Thank god you have put it out, he said. I crawled back to my station by the pilot. He was trying to keep the aircraft at eight thousand feet, we were then on three engines. Somehow or another I had to write my log to see how much petrol we had left. The navigator said he would be back at base, we would be back at base in three and three quarter hours, keeping in mind that the aircraft was slower on three engines, but of course only three engines were burning fuel. I worked out that our speed at that time, our height and propeller revolutions and no more corkscrewing we would have thirty minutes fuel left on landing. My hands were now very painful but there was nothing I could do about it as we had no creams to put on them or water to plunge them in to. I kept thinking to myself, why did I volunteer for another four operations? Well, here we go, back to base. We were at eight thousand feet and flying through thick cloud and it is raining hard, we are all wearing our masks and goggles as there was still a lot of smoke in the aircraft. I wondered if any damage had been done to the aircraft framework. Was it weakened in any way? Best not to be negative, I must be positive about getting us back to base. The skipper was aware of the fuel situation, and kept the engine power to the minimum, keeping in mind that we only had three engines working. After two hours we came out of the thick cloud and all the buffeting, we were now over Holland and we could see lots of flak near the coast, so we needed to avoid that. A big aircraft flew near us and we thought it was another Lancaster, we hoped. Our navigator picked up a couple of towns on the new radar H2S, very useful because we couldn’t see anything below due to haze. I checked the fuel situation but it was difficult writing as my hands were so painful. The navigator told the skipper and myself that with our speed and the outside wind we would be at base at about one hour forty five minutes. I began to sweat at that bit of information as it was longer than he had given some time before. Anyway, I worked out my fuel usage and then told my skipper that we had two hours twenty minutes fuel left so we should make it okay if something, if nothing else happened. Well fortunately nothing else did happen, we got through the flak on the coast of Holland, and we were now over the North Sea headed for England and hopefully safety. Skipper got in touch with control, with the control on my squadron and told them of our situation. Would the wheels come down? We still didn’t know. Skipper was given emergency landing procedures so we crossed the East Anglian coast. We operated the landing gear and it came down okay and locked itself in the down position. In one hour fifty minutes we were down and so my petrol calculations were spot on. At this stage I was beginning to feel a bit faint what with the pain, considerable stress and smoke. When we landed most of the smoke had disappeared. I got out of the aircraft at five thirty am, eight and a half hour flight and sat on the ground, exhausted. Skipper Jack Ralph lit me a cigarette, which was wonderful. Suddenly everything everywhere was quiet except for the singing of birds in some nearby trees, the dawn chorus. Two aircraft failed to return to our squadron out of fourteen at take off. Although later we found out that one aircraft had landed at another aerodrome due to damage to their aircraft. Thirty aircraft failed to return all told. I believe four hundred Lancasters went to Stettin. Jack Ralph’s tour of thirty had ended and I had done a total of thirty four operations. I was still only nineteen. What happened to me next? Once I was returned to base, well, I was taken to the first aid area and my hands were cleaned. I was then taken to the hospital in Bury St Edmunds where I stayed for two days. My hands were treated there and it was found that the burns were first degree and so I wouldn’t need any skin grafts: that was the best news I could receive. I forget what they did, but I remember my hands being wrapped up with bandages and lint. Within three days I was back on the squadron, where I was put on light duties. The bandages were removed after two weeks and I believe, but my hands were very sore and still a bit painful, but being exposed to the air was going to be helpful. After a few weeks I received a call to see the Station Commander at certain time of day. My memory defeats me, I was a bit nervous about this, but of course I went. The Group Captain asked me about my hands and he said that I had done a wonderful job. Now I was told two wonderful things to cheer me up: first offered a commission in the Royal Air Force, wow, me, an officer in the RAF. He told me all about it and what I would have to do as my extra duties. Also he said to go and see the Station Adjutant as he would give me all the details about buying my uniform and the money. He said I would have to start a bank account once I was an officer, just think of it, me born in a council house, I left school at fourteen and now I’d become an officer in the RAF. An even greater thrill was that I had been recommended for a decoration, namely the Distinguished Flying Medal, for helping to save the aircraft and enabling the whole crew to get back to England. That was definitely the icing on the cake. My skipper Jack Ralph was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross because he displayed leadership and he was an officer, I was a flight, yes I was a flight sergeant, I had a medal. I would meet up with Jack Ralph again in my career. Within a week I was up in London to buy my clothes. [Unclear] Well I was informed after a time that they were wanting Stirling crews at Tuddenham, my old base. As you will have read above, I had already done some special duties during my tour and so I jumped at the idea and made an important, an appointment to see our squadron commander. He said I don’t know anything about it. Of course, of course that’s what they always say. Anyway he did check up and found it was true. I got an immediate posting back to my bomber station and I met up with my, part of my old crew, so I joined up with them. While there we got a couple of gunners, rear and mid upper, and a wireless operator. I told Doug and Dick about my adventure into the fire what I did on my last trip. I did some revision on the workings of the Stirling as I had not flow them some time. We also did some circuits and bumps. Early 1944 a briefing was arranged and I believe there were twelve crews all together. We were informed that we would have to do a lot of practice low flying over the Norfolk Flats – no hills anywhere - we were also told that the job would entail flying on moonlight nights and between five hundred and a thousand feet. Of course our particular crew had already done a few of these trips as we had already earlier in our tour so we knew what to expect. It was clear that D-Day was coming soon and so they wanted us, they wanted to get us, as much more, as much equipment as possible to the resistance people, agents were being dropped in France at night from the Lysander aircraft. We started our flying practice during the day, over the low flying over the flats of Norfolk. We hoped that Dick’s navigation and map reading would be as good as hitherto. Well he seemed to find his way around the flats okay. We did many days of this type of flying. I think they thought we were up there having fun, as for me I would have to get my petrol calculations right as I wouldn’t, it wouldn’t do to have an engine failure at five hundred feet, which is what we were going to have to do. We did low flying over long periods to get it absolutely right at night. The night came for us to do our first mission and operation. It was a full moon and clear sky on 21st of April ’44. The technique for crossing the French coast was to cross at eight, was to cross at eight thousand or nine thousand feet to avoid a heavily defended coast. When our skipper thought it was safe he descended to about five hundred feet. I must say that we actually went all the way down the French coast, not over Pas de Calais because the Germans were still there, so went down the French coast, round Cherbourg, down to Boulogne. It was just below Boulogne where we crossed. When our skipper thought it was safe, he descended to about five hundred feet so we’re over the coast and down we went. At five hundred feet however, all hell broke loose. There seemed to be a gun firing dead ahead and another to our starboard. Skipper flung the aircraft to port but he couldn’t do much because we were so low down; we were hit on the starboard side and underneath. Fortunately the tracer was small calibre so not a lot of damage. But there was a hole in the starboard fuselage and a hole near the skipper’s foot. We think [clock chimes] we were hit underneath too, but we were all okay. To the port side of us we could see a Stirling being hit at very low altitude, maybe about two hundred feet and then crashed, fortunately the crew of that aircraft survived and were taken prisoner. Well we pressed on, very low level, as low as two hundred feet at times, towards the eastern side of France, near Lyon. We followed roads and rivers and contours of the land, we knew that we could easily get lost, and some crews did. We had a good navigator and I did a lot of map reading myself when I wasn’t watching the petrol situation, as I said before. I couldn’t let a tank go dry and an engine stall at two hundred to five hundred feet. Anyway, we arrived at the area and the next thing was to look for a torchlight shone by one of the French Resistance, Maquis. If they were caught by the Germans they were usually tortured for information about others and then shot and of course we would easily have been shot down and too low for parachutes. We found the light after circulating the area. I then went to the back of the aircraft and opened the trap door in the floor. On instructions from the pilot I pushed out the big boxes which were on parachute and as we were at five hundred feet they landed reasonably safely, I hoped. After that we made our way back to the coast. That was another difficult part because if we crossed at five hundred feet, we could have been shot up by German E-boats which were all along the coast. Climbing to seven thousand to eight thousand meant that we would be easy prey for German fighter planes, but we did climb to eight thousand feet and got over the coast safely and we arrived at Tuddenham, our base, exactly eight hours later, but the undercarriage wouldn’t come down. We tried all the usual methods, like thumping the solenoid and pulling the wires, but nothing happened. I might have mentioned it earlier, just to say that as the Stirling everything, oh yes I have mentioned it by electricity, in the Lancaster it was hydraulics. The final thing to do was for me to go half way down the fuselage where there was a motor winding gear. I asked the skipper to switch off the undercarriage switch on the dashboard and then I started winding. I knew that if I had to wind it all the way down it would be five hundred and forty turns, phew! Anyway, I wound twelve times and I asked the skipper to trip the switch down and wonderful, the undercarriage started to descend and it went all the way down, and locked. What a nightmare, had it not come down and locked we would have had to belly land. We landed safely and we reported to briefing. We mentioned that a Stirling was shot down near us; it was reported later that it was David [unclear]. The ground engineers on our aircraft found that the undercarriage gears had been damaged by the coastal gunfire and so we were lucky to get the undercarriage down. Well two nights later we were due to go again, when the moon was high, so. CJ: So Colin, after your ten missions on Special Duties, what happened to you next? CD: Well, I was an instructor for a time, which I got bored with; you had to have a sprog flight engineer. But by July, er, no, August, August 1944, these V2s and V1s were becoming a bit of menace. And so, they’re clever people, they said these are not operations, ‘cause there are no German fighters about but what we want you to do is take over a sprog flight engineer to train him, and go behind a Mosquito. The Mosquito went in first, okay, he had this new radar called Oboe, and that was marvellous, picked out, picked out different places there, and when he dropped his bombs, the idea was we dropped ours. I think there were about four Lancasters at a time went with this Mosquito, and so that’s what we did. So we did that for [pause] some time I think. I’m still on aren’t I? Yes. And then eventually that came to an end and I went back on instructors again. I went up to Leconfield, up in Yorkshire, goodness knows what I went up there for, ‘cause I can’t remember whether I ever did anything! I came back again anyway, to Mildenhall. I was just really an odd bod, an instructor, that’s what I was and I was called an instructor and I became a - oh, yes, eventually, before, before I went on to Transport Command, we had a, there were aircraft called a York, it was a passenger aircraft, and they wanted to find out what the centre of gravity was because of all the weight of the luggage and everything else on board. So that was my job, with a senior chap. We had all these, all these Yorks in a hangar, several of them, with the tail out, you know, finding the centre of gravity. I can’t remember what I did now, but we found it and I think that did the job and I was made a flight lieutenant for a time, while I was on, to give me some authority. Wasn’t that nice of them! There we are, that’s what I did. But at the end, right at the end, two weeks before the end I went on Manna from Heaven. And there we are, I’ll show you a picture of that. And what we did, these little food parcels, there was sort of some rubberised, they were very good at doing things like that, I think it was probably Americanised, but rubber stuff and all these sweets, powdered milk, powdered egg and all that was inside each one of those, each one of those. No parachute or anything like this. We were very low, I think we were about two or three hundred feet when we went in and we dropped all the stuff, and they were warned to keep away because if one hits you it could knock you out you see. There’s another one coming in, another one back there. This went on for several weeks. It was known that some Germans were firing on the Yorks as they flew over, no Lancasters, we were on Lancasters then, Lancasters. They were firing on the Lancasters and the colonel was warned [emphasis] if you allow that to go on you’ll be up in court, you know. So I think it stopped after. The Dutch have never forgotten it. If you speak to a Dutchman now, they’ll tell you: oh yeah, the RAF did us a good thing. I think I’ve got something here from a Dutchman if you’d like to, hang on, here we are, shall I read it. After the war and after Manna from Heaven food parcels arrived, a letter from a Dutch person. “We shall never forget the nights when your squadrons passed us in the dark on the way to Germany, the mighty noise was like music for us: it told us about happier days to come. Your passing planes kept us believing in coming victory, no matter what we had to endure. We have suffered much but Britain and the RAF did not disappoint us, so we have to thank you and with you the British nation for our living in peace today.” So there we are, that was nice, wasn’t it. So I think - CJ: So towards the end of the war Colin, where did you go next? CD: In August of 1945, we as a crew of five with Jack as a captain, Jack Ralph, joined 51 Squadron at Leconfield, near Minster in Yorkshire. We were to have a period of training there on Stirlings, yes Stirlings, which was our old wartime friend. The powers that be were so short of passenger aircraft that they took the gun turrets out of the Stirling and put some seats down the length of the aircraft. The whole idea was to bring back servicemen from the Far East, including hopefully, some Japanese prisoners of war who had a dreadful time as prisoners. I think the Stirling had about forty seats, down the length of the fuselage with a galley for food and toilet facilities. The aircraft would fly at about eight thousand feet, no oxygen, and so it would have been quite cold and miserable. I remember saying to myself, that if the Japs don’t kill them, then perhaps the Stirling would. But at least they would be coming home and after the business of the Japanese camps I felt they would put up with anything. There was my crew, there were so many pilots back from Canada after training, and the war was over, and of course missing the war, authorities didn’t know what to do with them. Well many of them were trained as stewards, they didn’t like that really, to look after the passengers, to feed them et cetera and so we had one in our crew, but he wasn’t very happy about it. The time came for us to make our first overseas flight. We took off from Leconfield on 20th of August, and made for Stoney Cross, an airfield near the New Forest in Hampshire. We picked up all sorts of equipment, including a refrigerator which was fitted at the rear for use when we picked up passengers. On 22nd of August we took off for Luqa in Malta, which took seven hours thirty five minutes. On landing we were amazed at the bomb damage, we just wondered how they survived. We took off the next day for Castel Benito, which was an airfield in Libya, North Africa. The temperature in the sun on arrival was one hundred and nineteen degrees Fahrenheit. [Laugh] Phew! We were able to have a quick look at Tripoli, and we were amazed at the number of ships sunk in the harbour. The ships were bombed when the Germans were there in 1942, ‘43. On the next day we took off for Tel Aviv in Palestine; this took us six hours thirty minutes. I was very impressed by, with Tel Aviv, a wealthy town and populated mostly by Jews from all over Europe. We had time to spend an afternoon on their lovely beach, but we were pestered by beach sellers who tried to sell us anything they thought we would wealth, they thought we were wealthy like the population. At that particular time there were battles going on in Jerusalem, so it was out of bounds to us RAF. Their troubles are still going on today, sadly. I mention above about the wealth in Tel Aviv, being a Jewish town, but just outside there was a village called Tel Avivski which was populated by Arabs, who were growing lemons and oranges. Their homesteads were very poor indeed, and what a contrast to Tel Aviv. The next day we took off for Basra, in Iraq which was very much, very much in the news in recent years. The aerodrome was called Shaibah which was outside Basra. Shaibah was a terribly hot place. It was always between a hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. It had a good population - of flies! The billets were poor and so it was a good thing we were only there one night. Tea had a peculiar taste and the food wasn’t terribly appetising. Have I painted a nice picture I say to myself. I must say that the people were very friendly and of course this was 1945 and maybe they aren’t so friendly today. Any airman ground staff could only stay in Shaibah a maximum of six months of the year because after some of them started to go mental called Shaibah blues. As flight engineer I had to supervise the refuelling of our aircraft. They used what they called a bowser and we just hoped that it was filled with a hundred octane fuel to give us plenty of lift and power. At least we could get cold beer in the officers mess, just like in Ice Cold in Alex. The next day, 24th, we took off for Karachi. The badge I have on my, on my coat that I had on just now was bought in Karachi, in Pakistan although in 1945 fortunately it was still in India. The aerodrome was called Meri, Moripoor, this aerodrome was quite modern compared to Shaibah. We would be there for two days and so we had the opportunity to visit Karachi. I quite liked this town, but like most Indian towns it was full of markets selling just about everything. Of course you never paid the price they asked and so quite a bit of time was spent bargaining with the vendor but he made you comfortable by giving you something soft to sit on then bring you a glass of coca cola which fell apart, no sarsaparilla, sorry, a coco cola, a coco cola or a glass of sarsaparilla, not so nice. I remember buying a pair of shoes which fell apart in a few days and an Indian wool rug which was very nice, I sold it at home for a good profit. The main street in Karachi was called Elphinstone Street, named after Lord Elphinstone who lived in Hastings and there’s a street named after him there too! This was the end of our first flight abroad which took us four days. On 27th of August we flew back to Stoney Cross, many passengers, mainly army personnel and they didn’t like the cold in the Stirling after being in a hot country, still I am sure they were pleased to get home at last. When we arrived back at Stoney Cross we found that we had been posted to Stradishall in Suffolk. This was, and still is, a pre-war RAF station and so at least we had food, accommodation and a batman. The batman, I had was shared with two officers to separate rooms. It was jolly good because he did lots of jobs for us, cleaning our shoes, looking after our laundry and making sure we had everything we wanted. The real benefits of being an officer! The downside was that we had to do Orderly Officer duties from time to time. One of the duties, one of the duties was checking on the food in the general mess. As I went on the Sergeant of the Day which called out ‘any complaints,’ usually there was silence but on one occasion one of the erks said, ‘I have been given very little meat, sir.’ It looked very small and so I got the cooks to give him another slice of meat. I think the erk had eaten quite a bit before I got it, got there. Of course the Orderly Officer was actually in charge of the RAF station when the Group Captain was away at night time too. So it was quite a responsible job if anything went wrong at the station. We had parties there, with plenty of girlfriends, lots of fun with booze. I think we’ll leave it at that now. CJ: So on these long trips Colin, with Transport Command did you meet any interesting people? CD: Well one of the people I did meet was at Cairo. We stopped at a hotel called the Heliopolis, Heliopolis Palace and I think we were on the third floor. Now, King Farouk, he somehow or other he didn’t like the British, I don’t know why, I don’t know why. But he would, you would see him belting through the streets in the middle of two guards in a sort of jeep type of vehicle, you know and be crouched in there. We actually met him actually, at a reception at Heliopolis Palace and he sort of didn’t want to really say too much to us, us chaps you know. He wasn’t a, wasn’t a good leader, he liked pornography, he had loads of pornography, you wouldn’t believe it, stuff he had. Well eventually he was ousted of course, wasn’t he. I think it was Nasser came in after him, wasn’t it. He was dead scared of travelling around, he thought he’d be shot any moment, you know, they didn’t like him. So that’s King Farouk, so I’ve met a king, okay. CJ: So when did you leave the RAF Colin? And what did you do after that? CD: Well I was there during that very cold winter and it soon after that actually. By May, May 1947, May 1947 I said farewell to my friends at Lyneham, I took the train to Preston in Lancashire and that was my demob station, okay. So I came out and there I am, and that’s what, various documents including identity card, ration book and some money, so that’s what I got for putting my life on the line. But still, it was better than nothing. I’ve now signed off from the RAF and I was given a sort of dowry, but I can’t remember how much it was, but I don’t think I felt it terribly rich. I came back to London to stay with my, an aunt for a time. I stayed at, I stayed with my grandmother in Beckenham. She had a son that was employed at the Standard Bank of South Africa and I was very friendly with him, because he played cricket and all that, in his job, and he said well, what about getting into shipping, the Union Castle Line near me, where I am, I know they’re looking for young men. I said yeah, that sounds interesting to me, shipping, well I don’t want really to fly again I said and, and that’s what he did. I went up for an interview and I got the job. I think it was about two hundred and fifty pounds a year. [Laugh] I thought you see, I could train perhaps as a purser eventually and I wouldn’t mind going out to South Africa and stay out there for a bit as I was single, as easy as it was then. So that’s what I did and I started 15th of May I think it was, 15th of May. First up yes, I would be employed in an office down, oh I was employed in an office down in the East India Docks for a time, Blackwall, yes, at a salary of two hundred and fifty pounds per annum. I bought a month’s season ticket on the Southern Railway at the cost of one pound fourteen shillings and that would take me from Elmer’s End to Beckenham or Cannon Street in the city. I used it seven days a week, I used it at weekends. Arrived at the office on the first day at nine fifteen am and met up with the manager at the docks office. Really old buildings, it’s real east, sorry about that, just chuck it aside, sorry. Yes, it was very, sort of worn out buildings there, everything was sort of archaic really, you know. Big, you had a big shelf to write on. And a stool. And if you’ve ever seen any Charles Dickens films, just like that really. Goes back to those days you see. CJ: And what was your job there? CD: Just as a clerk, to start with, just as a clerk, did a lot of writing, oh and I got the job of going down to the docks to meet the ships, with a senior man first, but then eventually I went down myself, to the West India Dock, King George the Fifth Dock, Queen Victoria Dock in London, don’t exist any more of course, and Southampton went down to Southampton. Yes. So that was the most interesting part of being with the Union Castle actually, going down to the ships, so I enjoyed that, yeah. Now eventually we were hearing rumours you see, that oh they united with the Clan Line, that would have been a few years after and eventually we could see that the end of the line was coming because people were flying to South Africa and East Africa. We didn’t have an empire any more, you know, Uganda, Tanganyika and all these places, so I decided I think I’d better change because I had two young daughters at that time and I thought I’d better think about changing. So I got a job with Beecham Research Laboratories in their offices. I did a few jobs outside in hospitals and took on that job, in Kent, that’s why I’m down here. I used to visit the consultants, so that was interesting. Yeah. CJ: So after the war did you manage to keep in touch with any of your old crew? CD: Yes I did. I was the secretary, we used to have reunions up at Tuddenham, Tuddenham and there’s a building there that we used to use, it was more convenient than Mildenhall really, although we used to go to Mildenhall. But I was the secretary, so I did the newsletters, it was great and yes, I was given a glass bowl at the end which is upstairs. And gradually blokes eventually died off and that’s very sad. CJ: How do you feel Bomber Command veterans were treated after the war, for example by the government? CD: We were treated very badly. We were treated very badly. You know, Churchill never thanked us, he thanked every other, every other side of the war, Army, Navy, Coastal Command, but not Bomber Command, Fighter Command, but not Bomber Command, never Bomber Command, and yet he was the one that said early part of the war we will bomb every town in Germany and make them pay for what they’re doing to us. That’s what he said, you know, and that’s wanted us to do. But it all came to a head with Dresden, didn’t it. And of course that wasn’t Bomber Harris’ idea at all, he didn’t want to do it because it was too far for his crews, it’s really the Russian, the Russian general out there. He, he told Eisenhower that the town was full of German troops and weapons, you see. And he said would you, could Bomber Command bomb the place. Eisenhower got on to Churchill and Churchill got on to Bomber Harris and Bomber Harris said well it’s just too far for my troops, I don’t want to do it. You’ve got the order to do it, you must find a way of doing it, so that they get there and back. That’s, you know, that’s the sort of attitude he had you see. So, it came about and of course it was found that it was mainly full of refugees rather than troops, so you know, but that’s the one, if you mention Bomber Command, that’s what people mention. What about Dresden, you know. But it’s no different to any other town, what about all the towns in England? And if he’d had his way V2s would have obliterated London completely. So yes, I don’t think we, it’s only since we’ve had the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park that things have softened quite a bit now. People, when they hear I’ve been in Bomber Command they’re quite impressed, you know ‘cause there’s not many of us about are there. So I think the attitude has changed a bit you know, but I was a great admirer of Churchill you know, during the war, because he gave us that feeling of we were going to win you know, that’s what we wanted really, someone behind us, but he never stayed on at the end. I could never understand why really, never understood why. Never understood why. The Queen Mother always supported us and I went to the, the church in the Strand, what’s the name of that church in the Strand, I can’t remember it, anyway it’s the RAF, it’s the RAF church and it was Bomber Harris’ monument that was being built there, next to Dowding, the two of them there you see. And you wouldn’t believe it, all these layabouts were shouting at us: murderers. The Queen Mother she always supported us and she said take no notice of them, I was standing right next to her, actually, take no notice of them. One chap there had got his uniform on, had red, red paint thrown over him you know, that’s how we were treated. Yeah. It was pretty grim really. And the police didn’t sort of do much about it really, they’re just yobs he says, what can you do? CJ: But on the other hand I gather you’ve been honoured by the French. CD: Yes, absolutely. I have also at our do on Tuesday night I said I want to send a toast to the President of France, President Macron. So I don’t know if he ever got the message but I mean you’ve read the letter, yes. CJ: This is the letter that confirms that you’ve been made a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honeur. CD: That’s right, Nationale, Legion d’Honeur. First introduced by Napoleon in 1802 and used extensively during the Battle of Waterloo, 1815. He used it, he used it for his highest gallantry award. So whether it’s still used as a high gallantry award I don’t know. ‘Cause it wasn’t used in the second world war because they gave in you see right at the start. But it was used in the First World War, oh yeah. CJ: So what else keeps you busy nowadays? CD: The garden! Try to. Well I belong to Probus. I belong to, I’m the president of, honorary president of the Royal British Legion, in Tenterden. Church too, I go to church so I made lots and lots of friends there. We have different little dos from time to time you know. I go to the day centre here on a Tuesday, that’s tomorrow. They come and pick me up, then I go and have lunch there. CJ: You’re living in Tenterden and there’s a heritage railway I think you had some involvement. CD: Oh Kent and East Sussex Railway! Oh my goodness, yes! I’d forgotten about that. In 1967, we came to live here in 1966 you see, and in 1967 well we heard that there was a railway coming along, didn’t know much about it then, down Station Road, so we thought we’d go and have a look and they had a couple of little engines down there, one was called Hastings and there was another one down there as well. And I went to the meeting, they had meetings you see to try to get the railway started somehow. Oh, the rows that went on! You know, between the secretary and the president, and the chairman, had different views from each other, you know. They were told: if you don’t get your act together you’ll never run a railway. Of course you wouldn’t, not like that. But eventually it all settled down but interesting meetings. I’ve still got [unclear] upstairs, amazing! CJ: You were volunteering on the railway, you were helping? CD: Yes, I did a signals course in 1968 I think, ‘69 something like that, ‘69, nothing like what they do today, it’s much more. But then they said well we really need somebody in the booking office to get it started, so ‘cause I’m married, two children, you can’t spend too much time. Anyway, I took it on. I ordered these little tickets, cardboard tickets as you push in the machine: boom boom. It puts the date on it, you know, that’s what it was. Quite cheap as well you know. At that stage, 1974 it opened, 1974. Bill Deedes came down, he opened it. Just went as far as Rolvenden, that’s as far as we could get. It took another two or three years to get to Wittersham Road. Ted Heath, oh yeah, he came and opened it, Ted Heath, yeah, and to Bodiam and Northiam, so it took many many years, it was quite a few years after. Opened in 1974, about ‘88 something like that I think, it got to Bodiam. The Lottery I think paid for it, paid for part of that between Northiam and Bodiam. But they were always short of money, you know, no matter what, you know. A new boiler costs at least ten thousand pounds you see, for an engine, everything is so costly now, I’m afraid. So that was my job. So I did do things, I didn’t just sit at home doing nothing! CJ: Well, you’ve certainly led an interesting life, Colin, and thanks very much for talking to us today. 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 Deverell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chris Johnson 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 2019-07-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ADeverellCRE190722, PDeverellCRE1901 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 01:38:13 audio recording Description An account of the resource Colin Deverell was born in Croydon. Upon leaving school, he worked for Oliver Typewriter Company, where he gained engineering skills. He became an amateur rigger for Imperial Airways, before finding employment with Rollaston Aircraft Services in 1939. His mother was killed in a bombing on Christmas Day 1940, motivating him to join the Royal Air Force in 1941, and train as a flight engineer. Colin completed 30 operations based at RAF Wratting Common and RAF Tuddenham. He details the engineering differences between Stirlings and Lancasters and recollects the events of operations to Kiel, Lorient, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Peenemünde, Berlin, and Szczecin. He then completed a further four operations, filling in for a crew with an injured flight engineer. On his 34th operation to Szczecin, they were attacked and he burnt his hands extinguishing a fire on board. By 19, Colin was promoted to flight lieutenant and awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal. In 1944, he undertook 10 special operations that required low-flying, to release boxes of equipment according to light signals from the French Resistance. In 1945, he took part in Operation Manna, before joining 51 Squadron to return servicemen from the Far East on converted Stirlings. Finally, he recalls his career following demobilisation in 1947, the treatment of Bomber Command, and attending reunions at RAF Tuddenham. As the Honorary President of the Royal British Legion in his hometown of Tenterden, Colin has also been awarded the Legion d’Honneur. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Tilly Foster Anne-Marie Watson Carolyn Emery Maureen Clarke Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Croydon England--Suffolk France France--Lorient Germany Germany--Berlin Germany--Duisburg Germany--Düsseldorf Germany--Kiel Germany--Peenemünde Germany--Stuttgart Poland Poland--Szczecin Netherlands Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea Germany--Ruhr (Region) England--Yorkshire Wales--Vale of Glamorgan Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1939 1940-07-10 1940-08-15 1940-12-25 1941 1942 1943-06-27 1943-08-17 1943-08-23 1943-08-29 1943-09-23 1944 1945-08 1946 1947-05 51 Squadron aircrew anti-aircraft fire Berlin Campaign (23 August 1943 – 25 March 1944) bombing bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943) Distinguished Flying Medal flight engineer H2S Lancaster Me 110 Mosquito Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945) perception of bombing war promotion RAF Leconfield RAF St Athan RAF Tuddenham RAF Wratting Common recruitment Resistance searchlight Stirling training V-1 V-2 V-weapon https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/275/3428/AHughesAM151001.mp3 1e4c41fe15e110071c21f1366db28182 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/275/3428/PHughesAM1507.1.jpg dc0f50c199ecb3d1a768a5afff785dff Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hughes, Angas Angas Hughes Angas M Hughes A M Hughes A Hughes Description An account of the resource 29 items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Angas Murray Hughes (b. 1923, 417845 Royal Australian Air Force), his logbook, prisoner of war identity cards and dog tags, two memoirs and 21 photographs. Angas Hughes flew 32 operations as a bomb aimer with 467 Squadron from RAF Waddington. One of the aircraft he flew in was Lancaster R5868, S-Sugar, now at RAF Hendon. He was shot down in September 1944 and became a prisoner of war. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Angas Hughes and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-10-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Hughes, AM Access Rights Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies. Permission granted for commercial projects Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document CB: This is an interview being carried out at the Riseholme College for the International Bomber Command memorial. The interviewer is Clare Bennett and the interviewee is Mr Angas Hughes, who was with 467 Squadron, and it is the 1st of October 2015. Well Angas, um, an Australian who, um, joined the war at the age of eighteen. But what was your home life like in Australia? What did you do as a youngster? AH: Oh, as a youngster, I naturally I went to school but in the beginning we were partly brought up in the first of the — or last of the big depression but fortunately I came from a family that, er, didn’t suffer that much during that time. I after, after leaving the primary school I went to a college and I passed my examinations there and, er, for a short time I worked at the Imperial Chemical Industries that led eventually, on my eighteenth birthday, I joined the Air Force Reserve. CB: What year would that be? AH: It was 1941 and I was then — eventually I was called up on I think it was 12th of June 1942 but in the meantime between ‘41 and ‘42 we were on the reserve. We went to, um, a high school under the RWAF and doing navigation. We did exercises on, on maps etcetera until we joined up in, er, until we were called up in 18— 1942. CB: What were your feelings about joining up? You know, was it adventure? Was it because everyone else was doing it. What, what inspired you to join? AH: Well I think times then were a little bit different to what they are now and it was all king and country in those days. And, er, my father was in the, er, First World War and, er, I thought it was my duty to, er, join up and I was a little bit, er, dubious [?] with Biggles at that time and the Air Force was the one for me. CB: And your family were happy for you to join or did they discourage you in any way? AH: Oh, they tried to discourage me but, er, at the age of eighteen we had the option to volunteer so I did. They weren’t too happy about it which I think all parents were the same. CB: So you embarked at eighteen on a ship and — for England, is that right? AH: Yeah, we trained in Australia. We flew in a — navigation school was down at Bowen [?], the original ATS was at Victor Harbour, and from there we went to the navigation school at Mount Gambier flying in Ansons. And then we went to the bombing and air gunnery school in Port Pirie flying Fairey Battles. And the last one was at the Aeradio [?] School in Nhill, Victoria, flying Ansons there. And by that time we, we had finished our training in Australia and eventually we were posted overseas. We were on our way to Canada but when we got to — we went across the, er, Pacific. It took about six weeks to get across there. We landed at San Francisco. We went by Pullman up to Camp Myles Standish at Taunton, Massachusetts. We stopped there for about six weeks and eventually we caught the, er, Queen Elizabeth from New York to Greenock in Scotland which took about six days to get across. CB: Were you worried at that time on that crossing, U-boats etcetera or was it just youth and — AH: I think it was just youth and also it was such a fast ship that that was fairly safe. We had no escort or anything. And from there we went to, er, Brighton, down on the south c— down on the coast. We were there for a few weeks and eventually we finished up at Whitby Bay doing a six weeks commando course with the RAF Regiment and from there we were posted to, er, West Freugh Scotland for bombing, and then to an OTU at Lichfield where we were crewed up. From there we went to — we were there for three months at, er, Lichfield. Then we went to Swinderby, Scampton for a month training on Lancs, eventually to, er, 467 Squadron at Waddington. CB: And your other crew members, were they Australians? AH: Six, there were six Australians and the flight engineer was an English— Englishman or Welshman, his name was Taffy [slight laugh], Taffy Barnes [?]. I don’t know what his Christian name was. [laugh] CB: So you started on what amounted to thirty-two ops so what were the sort of raids that you did? AH: The first one we was with S for Sugar. We went to a place called to Portiers down in the south of France and, er, from there on I did Germany, ops on Germany and also on various places in France, mainly flying-bomb sites in France, and marshalling yards. CB: And you were a bomb aimer at this time? AH: I was the bomb aimer all of the time, yes. CB: And you were happy with that or did you — AH: Oh yes. I was there. I had no choice then. [laugh] CB: Didn’t you yearn to be a pilot or anything? AH: No. No, I wanted to be a navigator right from the beginning so bomb aimer was, was fairly close to — well we were navigators as well as bomb aimers so, er, I used to always plot the course myself as far as — to know where we were anyway, plus the navigator, I was able to assist him along the line. CB: Was this in, er, Lancasters? AH: This was in Lancasters, yes. CB: Did you fly in anything else on the bombing raids or — AH: No, I only flew with Lancs on bombing raids. On training we flew on Wellingtons and St— and Stirlings for training plus the original Oxfords and, and Ansons. CB: So you, you flew in, er, Stirlings? AH: Yes. CB: Because they were notorious. What did you feel about them? AH: I never like them myself. The pilot didn’t like them. None of the crew liked them but fortunately we were only there for a month. [laugh] CB: So it was a relief to get on to Lancasters. AH: Oh yes. They were a beautiful plane. Plenty of — they were fairly easy to fly apparently or the pilot said that they were fairly easy to fly. He had done flying before the war. He was much older than what I was. He was the oldest of the crew. CB: How was old was he? Do you remember ‘cause you was what about twenty at this time? AH: I was nineteen, twenty, yes I was twenty ‘cause I had my twenty-first birthday after I was shot down. Dusty would have been twenty-nine to thirty. CB: He was the pilot? AH: He was the pilot yeah. And, er, on our thirty-second trip we got shot down on the way to Karlsruhe. We were at eighteen thousand feet. That was out last trip actually I believe. We had the gunnery — the gunnery leader of A Flight of 467 squadron on board. I think Clarkson [?] had done sixty-two missions. CB: As the bomb aimer, um, it’s obviously your responsibility to drop the bomb where it should be dropped and you have to take over the plane, not flying obviously, but you have to give the pilot the orders to drop. AH: I gave the pilot instructions where I [unclear]. Also the, er, bomb aimer right from the beginning he would assist the navigator by map reading where he could and giving points and also the direction of searchlights over, over various, er, targets and that, dodging the searchlights, which, er, stopped the flak getting too close to us. CB: ‘Cause you would have to fly straight and level for the target point wouldn’t you? What, what did you feel when you saw the flak coming and, you know, the lights and — AH: Well your, your mind was mainly on the target and bomb site. It was — I suppose the fear was there but, er, you didn’t actually feel it. You had a job to do and if you didn’t do it probably that, er, that might have been the end. CB: You obviously had confidence in your — Dusty the pilot. You were a good crew together? AH: Ah, yes. We had a terrific — the seven of us were, were all great friends. When we went out we all went out together and we were very — all just like a group together all the time. CB: A band of brothers if I can pinch an Americanism? AH: Mm? CB: Band of brothers? AH: Yeah that could be the term to use, yes. CB: Do you remember before you were — the flak got you, do you remember near misses or the — you know, any — AH: Ah yes. We had — I remember once at — we went to a — it was about our seventh op I think — it was an oil place at Gelsenkirchen in Germany. We nearly got the chop there that night and with the fighters but fortunately we were lucky to get out of it. CB: Did the gunners have to fire or was it manoeuvres or — AH: I think it was mainly manoeuvres we got out with the rear gunner. He could tell where — or he would have instructed the pilot as he, as he tried to knock him out of the air. CB: So we come up to the, the operation, your thirty-second, how come you did an extra two? Do you know ‘cause the usual — AH: I don’t know. It’s just that we — well, I always thought with the tour was thirty but they must have made it longer or — I’m not sure, but I knew that was gonna be our last, that to have the gunnery leader on board. CB: Mm. So as you neared your thirtieth operation you didn’t think, ‘Oh this is it, this is our last one,’ and then you’re given two more? AH: No they hadn’t told us. CB: Right. AH: They didn’t tell us that it was on the thirtieth trip it was our last. They may have even extended the length, the number of flights for the tour. I’m not sure. CB: So what happened on this, on this fateful thirty-second operation? AH: Well we were just flying at 1800 feet. Everything was very quiet. CB: And Karlsruhe, I believe, was your target? AH: Karlsruhe. That’s it. Just out of the blue one of the engines got hit and the wing was on fire. I had no idea that there was flak around or anything. We couldn’t even see the — I didn’t even see the flak from the front. So we just had to, er, get ready and bail out. It was at mid— about midnight I think from memory. And eventually I — I didn’t meet any of the other crew. I was on the loose for about approximately three nights I think from memory. CB: So your, your parachute deployed with no problems? AH: Oh no. The parachute opened alright and, er, I eventually got down to the Rhine and there I was caught walking along the Rhine by one of the, er, German’s equivalent of the home guard in England. And from there on I was caught in jails and I had my twenty-first birthday in a German jail. CB: In a Stalagluft? AH: Er, no. It was a kind of a jail. CB: Oh right. AH: And then eventually we went to the interrogation camp up at Frankfurt. I think everyone went there. And then I got posted to Stalagluft VIIB which was over near Poland. I think it was in — I’m not sure if it was in Poland or on the Polish border. And from there — we were there until January and then we moved on the long march to, er, south of Berlin to a place called Lucken— Luckenwalde. CB: How long were you in the Stalag? AH: We were there from — well I was shot down on the 27th September I think it was and then we moved out of Bankau in, er, January and we got liberated by the Russians in April then. I think it was April. CB: What was life like in the Stalag? Were you with any of your crew mates? AH: There were a couple, a couple in there but where I was just in with some Canadians and some English and even some of the boys from — pilots or the glider pilots from Arnhem were there. CB: What was life like? AH: Oh, it wasn’t rosy but, er, it was nothing like “Hogan’s Heroes”. [slight laugh] CB: Did you know of any attempts to escape by — you know, tunnels, or was there talk of escape or — AH: There was talk of tunnels and — but, er, where we were there was no point of escaping because the Russians were coming one way and — CB: How did you know they were coming? Was it — AH: There was a wireless on in the camp. CB: So you knew that they were on their way and — AH: Yeah, we were told that and eventually you could, you could hear them. Or you could see them in the distance, many miles, there were flashes and that but I [unclear] good night. CB: So on this January day the Germans come and say, ‘Get your things, you’re going lads.’ AH: ‘Pack up. You’re on your way.’ And we just left. CB: Were you expecting this march? Or what were you expecting? AH: Yeah we were expecting it but we didn’t know when. We were told one day and we were told another day and then bang! It happened. Well it’s a lot — several of the boys got a — tried to escape on the way. There was no point escaping through the snow and the ice. You had nowhere to go. A lot of them were killed and a lot of them died. CB: What did you do for food? Did you find any of the population giving food or anything? AH: No, no, they had no — very little food. I’ve got a, I’ve got a map which shows the amount of food that we, that we had. Occasionally we’d have, have a — some bread and some, er, kind of a porridge mix. Very little really. CB: And how long was it that you were walking, do you think? AH: It was about three weeks roughly. CB: Where did you sleep? AH: Well we slept in barns and in with the cows and the pigs and they — anyway it was quite warm actually in there with the cattle but, er, we were mainly in the barns, as they call them, cow sheds or — I don’t know what they called them in Germany. CB: The guards were obviously have to walk with you. What was their attitude to this and — AH: The older guards were quite good. The younger ones were the, er, were the ones you had to watch. I think the younger ones were ruthless while the older ones were the — out of the German army. I don’t think they were touched with the Nazis as much as the younger ones. CB: Did you know where you were walking? AH: We didn’t have the faintest idea. We crossed the, er, Oder at a place called Breslau, or near Breslau. I think it’s called something else now. It might be called Wrocław I think now. I might be wrong there. And then we eventually finished up in this place called Luckenwalde. I don’t know if I pronounced that right but — CB: I think Luckenwalde is about right, yes. So you walked all the way? There were no trains or — AH: We walked. The last — I don’t know how long it would be but we were on a train in the, in the end. That was the — I don’t know how long that would have been, we were in it about a day, I suppose. We were, we were just in carriages, we were in carriages just like a cattle truck, all closed up each side. CB: Food and water provided? AH: Oh no, just, er, just space. CB: So you got to Luckenwalde and then, um, it was another camp I presume? AH: Oh, it was a big camp? CB: And had the other marchers, marchers, or the men had they joined and everyone arrived at Luckenwalde. Was that it or did you join the other people? AH: There was, I think there was every nationality in the world at this Luckenwalde. It was a huge camp. A lot of Russians were there. There were French. There were Americans and a lot of Australians and a lot of the other Air Force people too, English people. CB: And how long were you there? AH: We got there — oh heavens — it would have been about February, about the beginning of February, and we were there for — ‘till April when the Russians liberated the camp and just after that the Americans came to take us so they must have broken through there. But the Russians wouldn’t let us go and eventually the Americans took us in, took us away in, er, June. That would be ‘45, June ’45. So we were there approximately a month under the Russians. CB: How did you feel at this point? Were you frustrated with the — AH: It didn’t matter that much because we used to go out of the camp. I went through the records what the Germans had left there. I kept — I’ve got my records and a few of the other boys got theirs too. CB: So from, from there the — AH: We just woke up one morning and there was no, no Germans there. They’d all gone. [laugh] CB: And the Americans just — what did the Americans do with you then? Was transport arranged? AH: Well, the Russians wouldn’t let us go originally and then, er, when we were actually liberated by the Americans the second time we went to a place called Halle Leipzig by truck and then we caught planes to Belgium. We had a night in Belgium. They supplied us with some money. The only things we went to was the pubs and, er, the next day we flew back to England. Then we went to — under the auspices of the Australian Government, the RAF there, and we went to down to Brighton and I eventually got back to Aus— to Australia in December. CB: A long time. A long time after being liberated. AH: Well they looked after us quite well for a while there. Anything we wanted we could have virtually. [slight laugh] CB: So you’re back home in Australia and what did you do after the war? AH: Oh I went back and did — finished my accountancy and I, er, got registered by the Australian Government as a tax agent and I had my own practice in Adelaide and I finished up in — I retired in ‘83. CB: What do you think of the war and the aftermath? Did it affect you? AH: It was hard. I found it hard to settle down. Some could settle down quite easy and I found it hard to settle down and — but eventually I overcome that I think. CB: What is your, what is your attitude to how Bomber Command was treated after the war? AH: Oh, nobody knew much about Bomber Command, especially in Australia because we were Australians in England and it was mainly — and Australia was mainly Japan. CB: Do you think people didn’t understand what you’d been through? AH: I’m certain they didn’t. I don’t even think the Australian Government knew. I think they do now but at that time, er, I don’t think they realised what the, er, what it was like in England in those days. CB: How did that make you feel? AH: I just had to take it. I couldn’t do much about it in those days. CB: And your Bomber Command medal. Would you have liked a medal? AH: Well, looking back I think there should have been a Bomber Command medal but after, after seventy years we got a clasp. [slight laugh] CB: Do you think that was, you know, better than nothing or was it just too late? AH: Well, it was too late for a lot of them unfortunately because, er, I was one of the younger ones but a lot them would have been over thirty — Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AHughesAM151001 Title A name given to the resource Interview with Angas Hughes Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource eng Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 00:28:00 audio recording Conforms To An established standard to which the described resource conforms. Pending review Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Clare Bennett Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-10-01 Description An account of the resource Angas Hughes was born in Australia and served as a bomb aimer with 467 Squadron based at RAF Waddington. He describes initial training in Australia as a reserve and after call-up in 1942. He was transported by ship to Scotland via the USA and Canada. He flew all the operations on Lancasters and was shot down over Germany on the 32nd operation. After about three nights he was captured near the Rhine and spent his 21st birthday in a German jail before being transferred to an interrogation camp near Frankfurt and, eventually, to Stalag Luft VII. After about three months the camp was evacuated and the long march to Luckenwalde began. He gives a detailed description of what the long march entailed, arriving at Luckenwalde, after about three weeks. He describes hearing and seeing signs of the Russian advance before the camp was liberated. However, it was the Americans who took them away. On returning to Australia, Angas took accountancy exams and set up his own practice in Adelaide. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Royal Australian Air Force Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Australia Canada Germany Great Britain Poland England--Lincolnshire Germany--Luckenwalde Poland--Tychowo United States Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1941 1942 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Christine Kavanagh Maureen Clarke 467 Squadron aircrew bale out bomb aimer Dulag Luft Lancaster prisoner of war RAF Waddington searchlight shot down Stalag 3A Stalag Luft 7 the long march training https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1186/18578/SWatsonC188489v1-1.pdf 41dce93a36a706458878ffce711dc143 https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1186/18578/SWatsonC188489v1-2.pdf 78bceef44f30c4e1a4f2d533cd690cd9 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 Watson, Clifford C Watson Description An account of the resource Five items. Two oral history interviews with Flying Officer Clifford Watson DFC (1922 - 2018, 1384956, 188489 Royal Air Force), a memoir, his service and release book, and a scrapbook containing photographs and documents. He flew operations as an air gunner with 150 and 227 Squadrons. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Clifford Watson and catalogued by Barry Hunter. 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 2017-06-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Watson, C Transcribed document A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document Photograph JUST ANOTHER TAILEND CHARLIE CLIFF WATSON DFC HUNTINGDON JUNE 1989 [page break] [underlined] SEQUENCE [/underlined] [underlined] File [/underlined] [underlined] Page [/underlined] [underlined] Location [/underlined] [underlined] GROUP O [/underlined] D 3 Joining up [underlined] AC2 [/underlined] 4 Babbacombe - 11 ITW Newquay [underlined] LAC [/underlined] 8 Troopship HMT Mooltan - Freetown - Capetown G 7 Southern Rhodesia - Bulawayo [underlined] LAC [/underlined] 8 EFTS Belvedere Scrubbed TIGER MOTHS [underlined] AC2 [/underlined] 10 A/G Course, Moffat ANSONS [underlined] LAC-Sgt [/underlined] 11 Polsmoor Transit Camp [underlined] Sgt [/underlined] J25 14 HMT Monarch of Bermuda 15 West Kirby - Bournmouth 17 25 OTU Finningley - Bircotes - WELLINGTONS 18 30 OTU Hixon - Sieghford 19 Leaflets to Paris Wedding J26 21 West Kirby - HMT Johan Van Vanderbilt K1 23 Algiers - Blida - 150 Sqdn WELLINGTONS K2 27 Fontaine Chaude (Batna) [underlined] FIt/Sgt [/underlined] LT 32 Kairoaun LU 35 On leave in Tunis, Chad in Jail MT 46 End of First Tour - 47 raids 47 2 BPD Tunis - 500 mls. by lorry to Algiers HXM Capetown Castle - Greenoch - West Kirby NS 49 Screened 84 OTU Desborough 50 Norton, Sheffield Discip. course 53 W.O - 6th June D Day [underlined] W/O [/underlined] OS 55 Aircrew Pool, Scampton - HCU Winthorpe STIRLING 56 Syerston Lanc. conversion LANCASTERS P 57 227 Sqdn. Bardney – Balderton [underlined] P/O [/underlined] 60 DFC [underlined] F/O [/underlined] 63 End of Tour - VE Day Q 67 Redundant - Photographic Officer, Farnborough 68 u/t Equipment Officer 61MU Handforth [underlined] GROUP 4 [/underlined] 69 Lager Commandant, Poynton prison camp 2W 75 Civvy Street, Whitehaven Relay Service [underlined] MR [/underlined] . 79 Development Manager, Metropolitan Relays London 44 83 To Kenya, Kirksbridge Farm, Kiminini Kitale 48 85 HM Prison Service Asst. Supt. gr2 555 95 Civil Aviation Radio Officer 556 Mbeya Radio Supt. 557 103 UK leave PMG1 – Flt/RO lic. C. & G. 670 104 Eastleigh - Mwanza 107 Royal visit 680 113 UK leave 114 Entebbe Telecomm. Supt 115 Kisumu 700 123 Nairobi Comm. Centre Ast. Signals Officer 720 129 UK leave 750 134 Nairobi HQ & retirement 800 135 Laikipia Security Network 96 151 Pye Telecommunications, Cambridge Project Engineer [page break] [underlined] ILLUSTRATIONS [/underlined] 12A Air Gubber Coiurse 24 CAOS Moffat 15A Finningley Reg. Whellams 20A Bride & Groom 1/3/43 CW in flying kit CW & HF at Richmond 26A Stan Rutherford with Hilda & Cliff at Richmond Bill Willoughby (NAV) at Whimpey port gun position Bill Willoughby & Stan Chatterton in their pits at Blinda 44A Pantelleria target photographs 48A CW with Mum, Barnoldswick Skipper & B.A. with Hilda at Richmond Skipper & Hilda at Richmond 48B Skipper& [sic] B.A. with Cliff at Richmond Stan Rutherford in the snow, at Bircoates Outside Chalet at Blida Wimpey at Kaircan 48C At Richmond CW & Hilda 52A Warrant Officer parchment 54A three of Aircrew peeling spuds at Scampton incl. Frank Eaglestone 56A F/O Forster DFM 2nd tour Nav. C.W. W/O Foolkes at rear of NJ-P 64A Crashed Remains of 9J – O 64B F/O Cheale, F/O. Bates S/Ldr Chester DFA with F/O Cheale, W/O Foolkes & F/O Forster DFM 64C More of 9J – O 64D F/O Ted (Ace) Forster DFM, CW & W/O Pete Foolkes 64E CW with rear turret of 9J – O CW with motor-byke Sgt. Geoff (Doogan) Hampson, Flight Engineer 64F Newspaper cutting Start of Second Tour – Frank Eaglestone, Ted Forster & Pete Foolkes More of 9J – O 64G Ted Forster Ready for Gerry? Lunchtime over Homberg [sic] 64H P/O Bates (My last tour Skipper) Part of F/O Bates’ usual crew 64J F/LT. Maxted (Gunnery Ldr) Pete Foolkes and F/O Sandford (spare gunner or Sqdn Adj?) More of 9J – O 64K Doogan again More of 9J – O 64L DFC Citation 64M Apology from H.M. 64N F/O Croker’s Lanc. on Torpedo dump at Wyke Christmas Dinner at Wyke Reverse of Pete’s Xmas Card 1989 Part of F/L Croker’s letter with Xmas Card 66A-H Examples of Battle Orders [page break] [underlined] DEDICATION [/underlined] The section dealing with my R.A.F. career is dedicated to Lady Luck who shows no compassion, is completely immoral and yet cannot be bought. After a remarkable interview on television recently, Raymond Baxter asked of Tom Sopwith "To what do you attribute your tremendous and unparalelled [sic] success over such a long period?” In his 94th. year he replied “Luck, pure luck”. His reply was the same when asked again at his 100th. birthday party. This must apply to every aspiring aviator, and I was no exception. [page break] [underlined] THE EARLIEST YEARS [/underlined] My first ten year or so were spent in Yorkshire, having been born on the [deleted] 22nd [/deleted] [inserted] 11th [/inserted] of February 1922, at 45 Federation Street [inserted] the home of my paternal Gt Grandparents [/inserted], Barnoldswick almost opposite nr. 26 where my Grandparents lived, and about two years after my father was demobbed from the Kings Own Yorkshire Light lnfantry after the Great War. My sister Winifred Sofia was born almost two years later on the 2nd. of January 1924. About that time the family moved to a shop at 33 Rainhall Road where my father established a wireless business. I attended the infants school only 50 yards away, often joined by Winifred. At the shop, my father built radio receivers of the "Tuned Radio Frequency" type, (TRF), a good 10 years ahead of the superhet. At the same time he held one of the first radio amateur licences in Yorkshire, with the callsign 2ZA. His aerial was a wire to the top of a 50 ft. pole in the back yard and starting with a spark transmitter his first radio contact was with another amateur in Colne, whose transmitter output was connected between the gas and water pipes, He had no means of measuring his frequency but thought it was somewhere around 300 KHz. (1000 metres) He soon progressed to using valves and gradually higher frequencies, though almost everything was really trial and error. When communication progressed to "working" other countries the prefix G was added to UK call-signs. He once told me that his first telephony transmission was achieved using a GPO carbon microphone in the aerial circuit. The only receivable broadcast wireless station at that time was the BBC's 2LO and when people heard it for the first tine there was indeed great wonderment and excitement In 1926 came the general strike. Money was very scarce and people were hungry. There was no money coming in and the shop closed down. The family moved to a house in Rook Street, close to the railway bridge and opposite the cobler's [sic] wooden workshop. Most of us wore clogs in those days, with leather tops and laces, and iron-shod wooden soles. Before going to war my father had served an engineering apprentiship [sic] , and worked with steam engines. With outstanding debts at the shop and a wife and two small children to support, he volunteered to work with L.M.S. railway company, and drove a train between Barnoldswick and I think Skipton. The engine was pelted with stones at some of the bridges and he was very unpopular with the strikers, althought [sic] many of them were quite happy to use the train. Thus the family was sustained and he received a letter of thanks and a medalion [sic] from the chairman of L.M.S. When things returned to normal the family moved again, to nr. 14 School Terrace in Dam Head Road and Winifred and I attended the infants and Junior Schools across the back street. My mother was able to resume working at the mill as a cotton weaver with her sisters Molly and Annie. Their brother Jim -my uncle- was a 'twister', that is he connected the cotton threads on the warp to tails ready for applying to the loom for weaving. The noise. in the weaving sheds was deafening and weavers were quite adept at lip reading. This had a great influence on their broad northern accent. Most weavers operated six looms, loading manually the weft into the shuttles before changing them. My uncle Charlie -the brother of my paternal grandfather=- was a manufacturer employing about a hundred people running 500 or so looms. I remember the big warehouse doors and the lift which was operated by water pressure. To go up, just turn on this tap!. Going down transfered [sic] the water back into a holding [page break] tank. There were two offices, large wooden boxes, one on each side of the big doors and just under the ceiling. Accessed by ladders. One office was for uncle Charlie and his clerk, and the other for the more junior staff. When I called to see them in 1941 I noted the intercom. system between the offices. It comprised, at each terminal, two empty Lyle Golden Syrup tins one for speaking into and the other for receiving. they were connected by two lengths of taught string which vibrated the diaphragms being the bottoms of the tins. I was surprised at their effectiveness. There was also a loop of string pulled manually between the two places with a small box attched [sic] for transferring documents. I was impressed. Uncle Charlie said he would consider changing the strings after the war. At School Terrace my father carried on building wireless sets in the attic and also helped his friend Tom Shorrock who owned the local radio relay service. This comprised a wireless receiver and amplifiers connecting some hundreds of houses with a pair of bare wires to loudspeakers at a cost of ninepence per week for each loudspeaker. The idea appealed to my father and he was able to instigate some technical improvements. By then the wireless manufacturing industry had become well established and radios became readily available. My father had paid off his debts and was discharged from bancrupsy [sic]. At this stage we moved into a new house at 25 Melville Avenue. which was nearer to Fernbank Mill for my mother but also had an inside toilet and bathroom. It also had electricity mains in place of the more customery [sic] gas lighting. An electric soldering iron must have seemed luxurious after heating a copper bit on a gas ring. Our school was only a few minutes walk from home. Gisburn Road Council School. I remember it and the teachers very well, Mr Alfred Green Petty.the Headmaster, Miss Housen who tought [sic] music english and poetry, and above all Mr Heaton who tought [sic] arithmetic, citizanship [sic] and physics. Miss Housen did not think much of my efforts, I couldn’t sing and disliked poetry, but I got on fine with Mr. Heaton, who also tought [sic] my father over 20 years earlier. Over a fairly long period he gave me extra homework in arithmetic most nights, generally a problem or two and he checked the results next day. It was almost private tuition and thanks largely to him, I excelled in the subject. I think children’s attitudes' in the main were very different to those of the present day. Discipline was strict by consent, not fear. Reward was achieved by effort alone and there was friendly competition between us. Most of us got the cane for some minor offence like climbing over the school wall, in my case refusing to stand in the front of the class and recite ‘the wreck of the Hesperus’. We did respect our teachers. About this time we moved to a house in Headingley for just a few weeks and then on to. Fence, which we knew as wheatley Lane. During that period my father was working in London at Stag Lane fitting the electrics in Rolls Royces. My mother worked at the cotton mill nearby and Winifred & I were looked after partly by Mrs. Ingham who had a sweet shop. Our stay in Fence was also [deleted] m [/deleted] of short duration. Tom Shorrock was a friend of Mr. Ramsbottom who was struggling with a one programme radio relay system in Keighley. He already had thriving electrical business and Tom introduced my father to him. So we moved yet again, to Keighley, and my father became Engineer and Manager of Ramsbottoms Radio Relay Service in the centre of Keighley. From 33 Lister Street, the Receiving and Amplifying Station the wires branched [page break] out on the roof tops in all directions. By then there were two BBC programmes, Home Service on 342 mtrs, and the Light Programme on 1500 mtrs, so they converted to two pairs for two programmes. We were living at 25 Lawnswood Road but soon moved to a new house at 21 Whittley Road. I recall helping Leslie Wright – Dad’s foreman to erect a garage which cost £7.10.0 to house the new Austin 7 which cost £75 taxed and insured. The other personality I remember well was Walter Spurgeon, chief wireman. Winifred and I attended Holycroft Council School. Some of the lessons were by listening to the radio, an innovation in those days, and it was my job to check the radio was working, each morning. It was in Keighley that Mrs. Alice Kilham, my father’s secretary came on the scene. She lived in Oakworth with her daughter Mary, her husband being in a sanitorium being treated for TB. During very cold winter around 1933 the snow was six feet deep and they came to live with us at Wittley Road. Winifred and I were in the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts respectively and we decided to take the Signaller badge which meant sending and receiving the morse code. We were told the speed required was 12. Having established a battery and buzzer, and a morse key and headphones by the beds in each bedroom, we soon memorised the code and communicated with each other, quickly reaching 12 words per minute. Eventually we progressed to 18 words per minute and then went to take the test. Only then did we find that the speed required was 12 LETTERS per minute, not words. 12 letters is only 2 words per minute. However this faux pas proved very useful about eight years hence. After just a few years in Keighley, the system was working well and no longer presented a challenge. My father was approached by a group of businessmen from Norwich who were interested in the “wired wireless” system. They were owners of radio busineses [sic] who felt they shouId have a stake in the competition and bank managers hoping to earn a quick buck. All the bank managers were Yorkshiremen. So Norwich Relays Ltd. came into being with premises in St. John Maddermarket, and my father became Engineer and manager, taking with him his secretary and foreman Lesley Wright from Keighley. Allan Moulton joined the firm and was responsible for obtaining wayleaves, that is obtaining permission from owners to put wires on their property. He was a popular figure in Norwich, his main qualification for the job was that he played cricket for Norfolk and knew most people who mattered. Leslie died whilst in his thirties in Norwich. Once again we moved house, to 119 Unthank Road, and Mrs. Kilham and Mary moved into a cottage in Blickling Court near Norwich Cathedral. Winifred I went to the Avenues Council School initially but not for long. I remember getting a prize for my ‘lecture' on how a TRF wireless worked, showing them the working radio I had made. Probably not very accurate but there was no-one present who could contradict me, fortunately. At 13 I changed to the Norwich Junior Technical School in St. Andrews. Soon after we moved house yet again to a new house, “Wayside", in Plumstead Road, on the boundary of Norwich Aerodrome. Winifred then joined Mary at St. Monicas private school. On Saturday mornings I attended Art School on the top floor. I achieved very little there, the art master quite rightly concentrating on pupils who showed some potential. For an enjoyable two years we concentrated on technical [page break] subjects, woodwork, maths, physics, Chemistry, mechanics, technical drawing, metal and woodwork etc. The masters I remember well, ‘Chemi’ Reed the principle, Mr. Abigail, Mr. McCracken and Mr. Lishman. At the end of two-year course I transfered [sic] to Unthank College in Newmarket Road, joining the 5th. form. This was big change for me, the emphasis was on classical subjects, in English literature we spent a whole year studying Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream and Spencer's Fairy Queen. I couldn't: get interested in either but I later achieved a credit in the School Certificate by answering questions on A.G. Street’s Farmers Glory which I read in bed the night before the exam. Mr. Bertwhistle the English Lit. master was furious. For Physics and Mechanics I had tuition from Mr. Horace, the Principal's son and on Wednesday afternoons I visited “Chemi” Reed's house at 33 Britannia Rd. for tuition. In early 1939 my father, Mr. Moulton and Mrs. Kilham acquired six run-down relay firms and the Nuvolion loudspeaker factory in South London from a Mr. Olivisi, a Frenchman. My father moved to Stretham to a flat in Pullman Court and Mrs. Kilham and Mary and to duCane Court in Balham where the Moultons also had a flat. My mother and Winifred moved to a house in West Norwood and I became a boarder at Unthank College. Soon after taking the School Certificate I joined my mother in London and we moved to a flat in New Southgate. I became articled to George Eric Titley, a Chartered Accountant in St Paul’s Churchyard, commuting to the city 6 days a week by underground. Rail fare was tenpence return per day and I was paid ten shillings per week. Fifty pence in 2004 currency The firm was Gladstone Titley and Co. at 61-63 St. Pauls Churchyard and I was the junior with qualified accountants Joe Oliver, Clarke and Jenkins, and Miss Miller the Secretary. It was amusing 6 years hence when I barged into a Board Meeting at 69 Lavender Hill, Sqdn/Ldr Jenkins still in uniform was sitting there when F/O Cliff Watson appearedstill [sic] in Battledress. Jenkins was called up in 1940 as an Account Squadron Leader. On the 3rd. of September 1939 War was declared and any plans we all had for the future were kiboshed. During the blitz in 1940 to be nearer my father and to help out at Relays we moved home to Ascot Court in Acre Lane, Clapham. [page break] [underlined] JOINING UP [/underlined] . The outbreak of war found me as a clerk articled to a Chartered Accountant in St. Paul's Yard. London. At the age of 17 1/2 it went without saying that within a year or two my occupation would be changed way or another. In the family Radio Relay business men were already leaving to join to Forces. My father was on an army reserve and expected to be called up at any time. I felt my best course was to abandon accountancy for the time being and try and help out; so I joined the firm as a General Factotum. During the Blitz on London my job was fault-finding and replacing the overhead lines, knocked down by Jerry bombers where buildings and whole streets were destroyed. The Radio Relay Service, a two programme four wire system in those days, linked the BBC with some tens of thousands of homes in South London, homes where the radio was never switched off. The system carried air raid warnings also. All too frequently the radio was interrupted by an announcer at Scotland Yard with “Attention please, here is an important announcement, an air raid warning has just been officially circulated". There were occasions when bombs were dropped before the sirens sounded, but never before the announcement was made on our Radio Relay System. September, aged 18 1/2, I found my employers were trying hard to register me as being in a reserved occupation. The Manager, Allan Moulton, had already been successful in his own case, which was reasonable. Someone had to run the firm and my father had sailed off to Abbysinia [sic] in March. At the time I was working literally 18 hours per day and my fifty bob per week hardly paid for digs. On a very rare afternoon-off I was walking down Kingsway and tried my luck at the R.A.F. Recruiting office. One look at an applicant for aircrew wearing glasses brought an instant decision from the man at the door. I walked along the Strand and down Whitehall, and having removed my spectacles tried the Royal Navy. I completed the application form and was told that I would be called for interview eventually, but there was a very long waiting list. I tried the R.A.F. again about a week later having left-off my spectacles for several days, and an application form for training as a pilot was completed. Had I previous flying experience? Yes. Fortunately I was not asked for details, as a passenger with Alan Cobham's Flying Circus might not have carried much weight. - In 1936 we had lived at a house called "Wayside” in Plumsted Road, Norwich, on the Mousehold aerodrome boundary, with a panoramic view of the aerodrome, and I was fascinated by it all like most boys of my age. It was to be three months before I heard from the R.A.F. - the Navy had missed the boat – I was to report to the Aircrew Selection Board near Euston station, on the appointed day about a week hence, for 'medical and academic examinations'. The letter added that in the maths exam `log tables but not slide rules are permissable [sic] ’. The great day arrived, and at 8.30 am. with about 80 other applicants we were told there would be three one hour written exams, Maths, English and General Knowledge, followed by a medical and a brief interview. Maths was a typical 5th. form end of term test, and English an essay with a wide choice of subjects. General knowledge was mainly common-sense. One of the questions I recall; "Is the distance from London to Warsaw nearer 100, 600 or 2000 miles?”. The Medical Exam was carried out by about 6 examiners, probably Doctors, on a production Iine basis. 3 [page break] Then the interview after a delay of some hours. Three uniformed R.A.F. officers who had obviously been places in previous wars. "Why do you want to fly"? I have forgotten the particular piece of flannel I used, but it brought no comment and another member of the Board fired his shot, "Which is colder, minus 40 Centigrade or minus forty farenheit [sic] ? Instant answer to that, I'd hear. it before somewhere. The third member asked "that does your Father do" I replied "He is an officer in the R.A.S.C. fighting the Italians in Abbysinia [sic] ". This brought a chuckle from two of them for some reason and the interview was over. I would be advised by post of their decision after the exam. results had been studied. A week later I was told to report to Euston for attestation, actual reporting for duty would follow after some weeks. There was a brief ceremony and I was given a document which stated that " AC2 Clifford Watson 1384956 has been accepted for training as a pilot in the R. A. F. and is to be prepared to report for duty of a few days notice". It went on to state further that his teeth should receive the earliest attention, one extraction and two fillings. About three months later my call-up papers arrived, and meanwhile I had met two other local lads whose paths had converged with my own and were to stay parallel for the next six months or so. Raymond Colin Chislett, the son of a Battersea butcher, .and Tom King., of Wandsworth. The three of us reported to the R.T.O. at Paddington and joined a party bound for Babbacombe near Torquay. During the week at Babbacombe we were issued with uniforms, introduced to drill and Service discipline, lectured on the history of the R.A.F. and told something of what the future held for us. We were made to feel that we really belonged and were indeed priveleged [sic] to be chosen to follow in the footsteps of 'The Few'. We were perhaps more than a little naive to think that we were all destined to become fighter pilots, but we were made to feel that the fate of England and the empire rested entirely with us. The Bombers were taken for granted and were not in the forefront of than news at that time. In any case we Londoners had seen our Fighters in action and - we admit it - imagined ourselves in their shoes. There was a tremendous urge to get on with it and to make a success of it. A great sense of urgency prevailed. I remember well that first day in the Royal Air Force. We were advised to write down our Service numbers so we wouldn't forget them, and above all, we had strawberries and cream for tea. The last I saw of strawberries and cream for about eight years, and as for forgetting one's Service number...! Perhaps it was intended as a joke, but we were taking everything very seriously. At the end of the week there was another Pep talk, very well delivered by a Squadron Leader - and equally well received. He remarked that about Babbacombe, people will say "Never in the History of human conflict, have so many been burgered [sic] about by so few". A misquotation of those immortal words. He went on to say that the two most important weeks in your R.A.F. careers are the first and last, and "you have already survived 50% of them, Good Luck chaps, and have a good trip". There was probably a lot more feeling and sincerity behind those words than we realised at the time. He had seen it all and been there 'in the last lot'. "Have a good trip” was to have real meaning in due course. A short journey by train took us to no. 10 Initial Training Wing at Newquay for 8 weeks of ground training. We were accommodated in [page break] Trenance Hotel, one of many taken over by the R.A.F. Another hotel was used for lectures in Navigation, Airmanship, Aerodynamics, Engines, Aircraft Recognition, Signalling, R.A.F. Law and Administration, etc. etc. some drill and P.T., and swimming in the local baths. The sea and beach were out of bounds due to mines and other surprises awaiting the enemy. I had to concentrate hard in the classroom on everything, except signalling. The required speed for sending and receiving morse was 12 words per minute and I had been happy at 18 w.p.m. in the Boy Scouts. The 18 w.p.m. came about through a misunderstanding. My sister Winifred (a Girl Guide) and I were learning morse for our Signaller badges and were told that a speed of 15 was required, so we practiced until we were competent at 18. It was only when we took the test that we learned the required speed was 15 letters and not words per minute. However this mistake was now serving me well. The only part I did not enjoy was the cross-country runs, but someone had to be in the last three. After two weeks we were told now that we had smartened-up a bit we would wear white flashes in our caps so we would not be mistaken for real airmen. There was great speculation as to where we would go for flying training. Maybe stay in Britain, or was it to be Canada, U.S.A., South Africa or Rhodesia, and was there not a possibility of it being Australia?. Meanwhile we must concentrate on passing the current hurdle, it could not by any means be taken for granted that we would all pass the course. In fact after only four weeks, four out of the original 50 were "scrubbed" - a new word to add to our rapidly 'increasing vocabulary. After about 5 weeks we were issued with some flying kit, boots and Sidcot suits, goggles, helmet and a full issue of gloves - silk, wool, chamois and gauntlets. 4 pairs worn together, and a fifth, electricalIy heated, yet to came. We were not to know that it would be 15 months before we wore any of this. I doubt whether our destination was known to anyone at I.T.W. except that it was overseas somewhere. Seven days embarkation leave and the entire course was posted to West Kirby, no. 1 P.D.C., near Birkenhead on the Wirral. We were joined by about 300 other u/t Pilots from other I.T.W.s and it was just a matter of waiting for the draft. There were parades each morning and we were allowed out of camp at mid-day. It was here that Tom, Ray and I teamed up with John Heggarty, a u/t Pilot who had been at 11 I.T.W. in Scarborough. He was from Birkenhead, of Anglo/French parentage. The four of us visited Liverpool every evening, a place crowded with Navy, Army and Air Force types mostly in transit to somewhere or other. Scores of ships were loading in the Mersey, but after a couple of weeks it was a special train for us to Greenock on the Clyde for immediate embarkation on the "Mooltan", a merchant ship of same 30,000 tons. Our 350 were accomodated [sic] on "D" Deck, just above the water-line, where we spent most of our time, not by choice but by order. Some slept on the mess tables, others under them, with the top layer of bodies in hammocks, a crippling device. To realise that hammocks were the traditional sleeping arrangements for British sailors left me unimpressed and I felt that something far more superior could have been devised. However, navies of many countries seem to favour them. Once aboard, there was no going back. On the second day aboard we were tugged down the Clyde and next morning counted over 40 big ships steaming very slowly in a north- 5 [page break] westerly direction out at sea. Obviously we were bound for Canada, hence the heavy flying kit .and four pairs of gloves. A week ought to see us in the St. Lawrence. How wrong we were. the convoy was shepherded by some very impressive naval ships, Cruisers, destroyers etc. and Sunderland flying boats were in constant attendance for the first few days. After three weeks of steaming in all directions, first into the freezing cold, then warmer and finally very hot indeed, at 0500 one day the engines slowed and finally stopped; a rattling of chains and then silence. All very dramatic but a buzz on the P. A. system told us we had arrived in Freetown. Portholes were to remain closed. We may go up on deck but on no account were we to remove our shirts nor buy anything from the natives. By mid-day the temperature below decks was almost unbearable and there was no respite from that for a further two weeks. Salt water showers were available at all times, it was just a matter of stripping and walking through the shower. No need for a towel, but in any case that was reserved for absorbing perspiration and we became accustomed to the salt water. Food on board was very good under the circumstances. Two orderlies from each "table" would collect it from the galley (vocabulary still improving) and dish up, and after the meal two more orderlies would clean the tables and wash up. The chores were shared on a roster basis at each table, and each had some duty to perform every few days. We were very fortunate in that we were cadets and not yet real airmen we spent some of our time attending lectures in the second class lounge. We estimated there were about 3000 troops aboard. There was lots of talent for the almost daily concerts. A daily newssheet called "DER TAG”, together with the P.A. system kept us up-to-date with the news. The 9 o-clock news was a must. Five weeks out of Liverpool it who getting cold again, even below decks, and greatcoats were essential deckwear for the endless lifeboat drills. There were lifeboats but for most of us it was a matter of parading on deck near a stack of Carley floats. The subject was better not discussed, there was no satisfactory answer to abandoning ship. The Mooltan carried one gun mound at the stern above the propellers, manned by a RoyaI Artillery crew in transit. It seemed to be of about 4" calibre but was not fired during our voyage. It was said the deck would cave in, but this might have been an exaggeration. There were also two ramps off the stern for depth charges of which there was a supply near the ramps. The sixth week was really cold and wet and we estimated our position as somewhere in Antarctica. We then turned more or less north and after a total of seven weeks dropped anchor late one afternoon a few miles out at sea, with much speculation about our location. At about 7 pm. the shore was like Blackpool illuminations. Wherever we are, don`t they know there's a war on? A buzz on the P.A. system told us we would be disembarking next day and our British currency would be of no use to us in this foreign country. We should hand-in all currency, and get a receipt which would be exchanged for local currency when we got ashore. Next morning we entered the docks and disembarked. It was only then we found we were in Durban and were taken straight to the Transit Camp at Clairwood. The army contingent remained on-board and were understood to be bound for action in the Middle East. So we had arrived in South Africa, and a very congenial and pleasant place it turned out to be. [page break] [underlined] SOUTHERN RHODESIA [/underlined] . Clairwood Camp was just a few miles from Durban and there we spent 7 days, very enjoyable, but for the first two days, stoney broke. We had handed in all our money aboard ship but it was to be 10 days before it was exchanged for local currency. However, we seemed to get into Durban every day and we were made very welcome in the Service canteens and clubs. Before I left England, I was given a card which stated that LAC Cliff. Watson was the son of a respected member of the Battersea Rotary Club and any co-operation afforded to him would be greatly appreciated. I noticed the Rotary insignia at the doorway of a Barclays bank in Durban and asked to see the manager. Could I please borrow £5 and I would refund it as soon as I was paid. 45 years later I would certainly not undertake such a venture. It happened to be the first Friday in the month which was the day of the monthly Rotary luncheon. The three lads from Battersea were invited to lunch and each given £10 on condition that we did not refund it. This was hospitality indeed. Several times in Durban we were entertained by the local people, and of course the environment was completely strange to us, so were the bunches of bananas, pawpaws and other fruits. After about a week to regain our land legs, we embarked on a train and steamed north. The train was a coal burner and we were aboard for 3 days bound for Bulawayo. Food on the train was really first-class. At one stage we were told to disembark for a spot of exercise [sic] and whilst this was in progress the train moved off. We were marched in a direction at right-angles to that of the train and met up with it about an hour later. This was my first experience of African trains, and the 4-berth cabins, rather superior to even today's "sleepers" in Britain. Looking back on it 35 years later when I was concerned with radio communications between trains and stations in the U.K., - my firm was trying to Introduce a communications system-, I recalled chatting with the Radio Officer in his Radio Cabin on the train whist he was on the morse key in contact with the station at Mafeking. It was many years later that communication with trains in Britain was established. After a very pleasant three-day journey, we arrived in Bulawayo and buses took us to Hillside Camp, formerly the Agricultural Show Ground. We were accommodated literally in what had been the Pig Sties. These were merely wattle poles supporting corrugated iron roofs with hessian round the poles to represent walls. The whole structure was whitewashed and with plenty of fresh air the accommodation was ideal. There must have been about 600 trainee pilots at Hillside Camp, and we embarked on a second I.T.W. course of ground training. There was however a single Tiger Moth on which we learned to swing the prop. and start the engine. So at last we had sat in an aeroplane although it wasn't going anywhere. At least it was supposed to be anchored down, but an Australian did taxi it a hundred yards or so after an evening of celebration. Our stay in Bulawayo was certainly very pleasant, we visited Cecil Rhodes grave at Matopas, the ancient ruins of Zimbabwe, spent weekends on farms, enjoyed the swimming and so on, but our minds were on the war of which we were not feeling a part. Pearl Harbour had brought the 7 [page break] Americans into the fray, several Capital Ships had been lost and things were going badly 'up north'. In January came a very welcome posting, to 25 E.F.T.S. (Elementary Flying Training School) at Belvedere, on the outskirts of Salisbury. Here the day started at 0400 and we enjoyed tea and toast of our own making before assembling at 0425 for two-mile march to the airfield. By 0500 half the course would be standing-by for flying and the other half lectures and more ground training. Breakfast was between 0900 and 1030 hrs. which included the 2 mile march each way, and after breakfast the two halves of the course changed over. Flying started on the sixth of Jan. with what was to be a typical day, with 30 minutes of flying instruction at 0515, and lectures after breakfast. Addresses by two ex-fighter pilots F/O Newton and a Flight Sergeant whose left leg was in plaster. The following day I managed to get in an hour’s flying with P/O Bentley, concentrating on turns, glides and climbing. From the outset the instructor frequently cut the throttle without warning sometimes deliberately putting the aircraft into a spin. then telling the pupil to get on with it. My next flying session was with Ft/Sgt Oates as P/O Bentley was on leave and in six weeks of flying instruction managed 12 hours with 7 different instructors. A final three hours was spent with F/O Newton in one hour sessions and I was full of confidence and looking forward to the C.F.I.'s test the following day. Maybe in retrospect I was over confident, even though most of my friends had been "scrubbed", including Hancocks, Robinson, Morgan, King, Barlow, Vivian, Bolton, Friend, Britton, Jones and Fry. Having made what I thought were two acceptable circuits and landings, the C.F.I.'s final remarks were "Sorry old lad, but as a Service Pilot you make a bloody good rear gunner". I did not regard these as being the words of the Prophet, but so ended my career as a u/t Pilot after 9 months in the R.A.F. All was not lost however, like all the others whose Personal file was stamped "wastage", I found myself at Disposals Depot, which also happened to be at Belvedere, and in good company. All of us were sadly disillusioned and disappointed at failing the Pilot's Course, and the reasons given for the apparent failure were seldom accepted. Where do we go from here in the long term was the main question, and the opportunity to influence this came at an interview at Group H.Q. in Salisbury. The only guidance came from others who had already had their interviews and were awaiting a posting. The alternatives appeared to be many, we could opt out completely and remuster to ACH GD, reduced to the lowest rank of Airman 2nd. Class and thence take pot luck with no trade and no personal ambition. But we had joined the R.A.F. with too much purpose for this to be acceptable. We could apply for training as Observer which at that time embraced both Navigator and Bomb Aimer duties, but we were meeting chaps just starting that course who had waited six months for it after failing the pilot's course, and this indicated that it could be a year more before we qualified. The most logical answer appeared to be the Air Gunner Course which lasted only six weeks, and apparently with hardly any waiting list, so in less than two months it seemed we could become a sergeant with half a wing, not quite what we set out to achieve, but a far cry from where we stood at the time. At the interview at Group H.Q. I asked why I had failed and was shown the comments made by my instructors. With the exception of the [page break] C.F.I.’s comment they were all favourable and I became a little argumentative. For the first time I learned that on the C.F.I. test I had climbed at less than full throttle but at the correct air speed with the normal rate of climb. What I should have done apparently was give it full throttle, keeping the correct air speed and letting the rate of climb take care of itself. On the training aircraft the emphasis had been on speed and rate of climb whereas it should have been on speed only and full throttle. I remarked that the C.F.I.'s aircraft was more like a Gladiator than a Tiger Moth. The alternative careers were as we had deduced amongst ourselves and I applied to remuster to u/t Wireless Operator/Air Gunner and to do the A/G course as soon as possible. This was approved on the spot, and my file was endorsed “Watson requests an A/G course merely for the quickness in getting onto ops." I was supposed to start the course the following week. It was to be three months before I was actively posted to Moffat to do the Air Gunner Course, and the greater part of this was spent on leave, returning to camp periodically to check progress. We had only to walk along the road away from town to be offered a lift which generally meant spending the rest of the day with new friends, and quite often arranging to spend a week or so with them. It was on the 15th. of Feb. Tom King and I were spending 10 days leave with our hosts Mr. & Mrs. Bedford at Poltimore Farm, Marandellas that we listened to Churchill's speech, with the dreadful news of the fall of Singapore. This led to a general discussion on the likely future plans of the war and it was generally felt there would be an allied landing at Dakar with the assistance of the French, and the forces would move north and then east to catch Rommel in a pincer movement. Not too far out in our argument, only 2000 miles, but we had the general scheme and timing right. Later we were shown around the tobacco "barns" where 12,000 leaves were drying in each of 10 barns. My diary records that "one of the most interesting things we were shown was the castrating of 300 pigs" A rather messy business", perhaps I was less squeamish in those days. Later about 2000 head of cattle were dipped including 3 wicked looking bulls. The two children tried to keep us amused, and with great success. We repaired their bicycles, small car, swing and dolls' house furniture, the dolls house being about 20 feet square. We carved out the names Wendy (8) and Cliff (20) on a tree and really began to enjoy the Rhodesian way of life. We cycled over to Chakadenga Farm and had tea with Mrs. Nash and also met the local jailer. We tried to repay all this kindness by making ourselves generally useful, and I recall changing the oil in Mrs. Nash's Chevrolet and repairing the lights. We also refitted the long-wire aerial on the house radio and refurbished the engine house which accommodated the lighting plant and batteries. We tried to spend.as much time away from camp as possible, our idea being 'out of sight, out of mind'. Occasionally the S.W.O caught up with us and we were detailed for guard duty on the aerodrome, a 12 hour guard working 2 hours on and four off. The complete guard comprised 6 airmen, 4 on standby in the guard room, one cycling around the aerodrome and one standing in a sentry box at the side of the double gates which were normally closed. There were neither fences-nor ditches linking the gate posts and it was easier to drive a car onto the airfield on the wrong side of the gate posts than to bother with the gate. Generally the Orderly Officer carried out his inspection about 7.pm. but on one 9 [page break] occasion suddenly appeared about 3 am. from the direction of the airfield and drove up to the main gate on his way out, parking so near the gate it could not be opened. I turned out the guard, which took about 5minutes and we were treated to a tirade and lecture covering several subjects including how utterly futile the guard was. One of the chaps said “you are absolutely right Sir" which made matters worse and he stormed back into his car. The headlights had been left on and the car wouldn't start, so we leaned our rifles against the sentry box and pushed the car backwards so we could open the gates. Finally the entire guard pushed the car forward and it started without trouble, but headed back towards camp. We decided to remain at the open gate, and a few minutes later the car returned at great speed, and disappeared through the gate in a tremendous cloud of dust without further formality. We had good laugh but it did little for the morale of chaps whose ambitions had been thwarted and who felt they were wasting their time in the R.A.F. and, even more so in guarding a gate which had no real purpose with blank ammunition and rifles which it would be too dangerous to fire. By the end of March the aerodrome guard was taken more seriously and comprised 24 Europeans and about 60 Africans, which meant the remustering aircrew trainees were on guard every few nights. I was given the job running the Post Office and Stores which exempted me from guard duties but also curtailed my leave periods. On the 3rd. April Tom King and 20 others were posted to 24 C.A.O.S. at Moffat, near Gwelo, about half-way between Salisbury and Bulawayo, for their Air Gunner Course. The intake was 50 per month and we wondered where the other 40 had come from. Meanwhile Ray Chislett the other member of the Battersea trio- was doing extremely well at Cranbourne flying Oxfords. Root and Robertson were killed the previous day in a Harvard whilst officially on practice instrument flying but actually beating up a tree and misjudging matters On the 1st. of May, I was posted to Moffat and started the A-G course. Things seemed to be happening in our favour at long last; and had been delayed because of a large influx of remustered ground crews who had got out of Singapore just in time, and also another large influx of Aussies for Air Gunner training. It was good to see Tommy King pass out as a Sgt. A-G and for Cpl. Luck to receive his commission. On Sun. the 10th. of May there was a church parade in best blues and khaki topee, held in Gwelo. Two days later L.A.C. Chick Henbest, u/t A-G ex u/t Pilot shot a large hole in his own aircraft's tail. When he as charged with the offence he brought an expert witness, the Station Armament Officer ! - to state that such a thing was technically impossible. The Air-Gunner training was partly intergrated [sic] with that of the Navigator's, and on the 13th. May on such an occasion 'Ace' Buchanan and another A-G, piloted by Sgt. Reed, force-landed near QueQue and were missing for 5 hours In the four weeks at Moffat we carried out 9 hours of Air firing in Anson aircraft using a Vickers Gas Operated gun of .303 calibre. This was mounted on a Scarfe ring with the gunner standing and firing at a drogue towed by a Miles Master aircraft. 200 rounds were fired during each exercise [sic] , the 3 "pans" of ammo. having been filled by the gunner and then 'doctored' by an armourer with faulty rounds, and other simulated faults. The only turrets available were on the ground, and comprised an ancient Frazer Nash, Daimler and electrical Boulton & Paul. A total of 4 hours was spent in them. We were supposed to swing the [page break] turret aiming at moving light images on the wall but in practice the bulbs in the ring-sights were all faulty. On the 29th. May we graduated and were presented with brevets and tapes. The course was posted to Capetown but I had to report to Salisbury to give evidence at Gooding's Court Martial. Gooding had stolen my Agfa Carat camera and scores of other items in Bulawayo. Meanwhile on the news, 1000 Bombers over the Rhur [sic] again and 37 missing. A few days previously the very first raid on this scale was made on Cologne with 44 aircraft missing. The Middle-East war was becoming more intensive and in Russia Jerry was in real trouble, but we seemed a very long way from it all. One of my friends on the Pilots course was Ian Smith who lived in Salisbury and with whom I used to go looking for buck in the early mornings. Ian had failed the course like most of us but being a Rhodesian had obtained his discharge locally and joined the Southern Rhodesia Light Battery currently at the K.G. VI barracks. I went to the barracks in the afternoon and saw Norman, and was introduced to Solomon, Slim and other Rhodesians in the S.R. Army Medical Corps. After tea in the mess we went to the local bioscope to see 'East of the River'. On the 13th. of June I managed to get another 19 days leave which was spent with Mr. & Mrs. James at their farm at Gilston, about 16 miles south of Salisbury. With three Aussies we had a wonderful holiday, riding, cycling, tennis, swimming, all at the farm. We rode up to the bushman's caves in a copje 4 miles into the bundu and photographed them. To the Aussies it was like being home and I concluded there was no alternative to this sort of life. On my return to Disposals Depot my stolen camera was returned to me and I found that Gooding was on yet another charge,- stealing a W/T Set - . A few more days leave to say cheerio to all my friends in Salisbury, and I returned to Gwelo to find that I was posted to Bulawayo to give evidence at the Court Martial. I stayed with Mr. & Mrs. Rose for a week or so and spent some time at the Cement works where Mr. Rose was Manager. I was offered a job there if I would return after the war and for a long time this formed the basis of my post-war plan, but a great deal was to happen before that time came. The Court Martial was a very formal affair, and Gooding was charged with theft on about 45 counts. He had not disposed of anything he had stolen for personal gain, and pleaded Kleptomania. He was sentenced to dismissal from the R.A.F. after immediate return to U.K., and recommended for psychiatric observation. He survived the war, certified unfit for Military service and resumed his career with a firm of solicitors in Surrey. The case was finished just in time for me to join the rest of the course on the 1st. of July at Bulawayo station. In Gwelo I had bought a tin trunk which was now nearly full of presents, pyjamas for Hilda, stockings for Mum, embroidering material, tobacco, cigarettes, jam and so on. After a 55 hour train journey we arrived in Kapstaad and enjoyed Iunch with John Heggarty before joining another train to Retreat and the drive to Polsmoor Transit Camp by bus. It rained heavily for a couple of days and the activity was just one big reunion. I met friends I had not seen since Newquay. Dicky Aires and Jack Frost were there as Sgt. pilots, Howard Iliffe (1090111) and Bob Hildred also, having trained as pilots at George, in the Union. Arthur Brittain a Sgt. Observer and Stewart Evans who was in the Officers Mess at Kumalo. In the next four 11 [page break] weeks we spent most of our time in Capetown, making a beeline for the Soldiers Club. The welcome we received from the South Africans was positively overwhelming, and people were literally queueing up to entertain us. On the 4th. of July a group of four of us including Ray Chislett and two Maltese soldiers met Mrs. Williams and had tea at her flat. After tea we motored out to a vineyard and got quite merry on four glasses of their own wine. On the way out one of the tyres was punctured and it took us less than three minutes to change the wheel. In the evening we went to the Odeon Bioscope at Seapoint with complimentary tickets which appeared from out of the blue. Howard. Iliffe, John Heggarty and I spent a great deal of time together in Capetown where Howard & I met two young ladies. One of them, introduced as Cheri de la Chene said she was French and had spent five years in Paris, but she could not understand my efforts at speaking French. John Heggarty had quite a brainwave and I introduced him as a member of the Free French Forces,-L'Aviation Francais Libre-. John was absolutely fluent in native French and soon discovered that Cheri was neither French nor a University student, but a schoolgirl of 14 at the Convent. Whilst in Capetown I met Binedall with whom I used to correspond before the war, and he gave me a large matchbox which I left with Mrs. Williams' mother to be collected after the war. I have left it rather too late. The climb up Table Mountain with Ray was very interesting and from the top we had a wonderful view of Muizeuburg. This reminds me of one night during a trial blackout at Muizenburg, Heggarty and I met Mrs. Macbeth who invited us to dinner on the following day. We gladly accepted and on arrival at the house next day referred to her as Mrs. Shakespeare. This was laughed off and we spent a very enjoyable evening. After dinner we went to a show in Muizenburg and met a lady who had lived near Battersea Park. In 1952 in Mbeya in Tanganyika I was talking to another 'Radio Ham' in Muizenburg arid mentioned my faux pas with Mrs. Macbeth's name. He said he was living in Mrs. Macbeth's guest house and she had related the story at dinner only a few days previously. Stuttafords of Adderley Street provided a very interesting experience for Heggarty and me. We wandered into a tea-room the likes of which we had never seen before, it seemed the ultimate in luxury. We asked mildly for just two cups of tea but up came the whole works of silver teaset with lots of pastries and cakes. We said no thankyou, really, just two cups of tea, but the lady was adamant. We said it was jolly nice but funds were limited and the cakes were beyond our means. She said she would be very cross if we didn't have at least half a dozen cakes and then gave us a bill -for 1/3d. Fixed charge for two, she said. Wonderful people, it was embarrassing at times. We called in a Milk Bar for a milkshake and they insisted it was on the house. We would buy a bunch of grapes for a 'ticky', -3d- and they refused payment. One Saturday Ray and I spent the day with the Brandt family who lived at Rosebank . We went for a run with them in the car in the afternoon, round Table Mountain and took some very good photographs. They also drove us to the Lion Match Company's factory in Capetown, where we were given a tour - and quite a lot of labels- a wonderful finale to my first trip to Africa. After meeting up with our old friends whose paths had taken many different ways and finally converged, but not without the loss of several due to accidents, the resentment at failing the pilot's course had just about worn off. The original crowd of rookies at Newquay were still basically together and covering all aircrew 'trades'. Someone had [page break] [photograph] [underlined] AIR GUNNER COURSE [/underlined] [underlined] APRIL 1942 [/underlined] [underlined] 24 C.A.O.S. MOFFAT, GWELO. [/underlined] [underlined] S. RHODESIA [/underlined] [page break] [underlined] POSTSCRIPT [/underlined] The A/G course was rather an anti-climax after the concentration and determined outlook on the pilots course. Most of us felt we had wasted our time and had been let down. During a "lecture" on the Browning gun by Cpl. Paddy Gilligan he noticed correctly that my eyes were closed and pointing to me, yelled "You, what was I saying?", I replied "You were saying 'as the breach block moves to the rear the cam on the rear sear rides along that on the barrel extention [sic] . . . ' There followed a discussion on my detailed phraselogy [sic] and he wound up by shouting "Your problem Watson is you don't speak effing english". I replied that I try to speak the King's english Cpl! and that did it, he swore to fix me. Study of the Browning gun comprised learning parrot-fashion the sequence of events and other odd statistics such as effective range and rate of fire. There was a drawing on the wall which gave us some idea of what it looked like, but the Browning was something for the future, the R.A.F. currently uses the V.G.O. or so we were told. The following day Gilligan told me to go to the billet and make sure the African had cleaned all the lampshades, including the one in his little room. This I did and two hours later reported they were all clean. The next day with no preamble I was told to report to the Orderly Room immediately. I was marched in to the C.O. and charged with failing to carry out an order, and also making a false report. Gilligan gave evidence and said the lampshade in his billet was filthy, I could not have checked it. The C. O. accepted this and I was given a severe rep. and 7 days jankers. I went straight away to the billet and I asked the S.W.O. to accompany me. He delegated a Sgt. Clerk and together we checked the offending lampshade. Sure enough it was filthy. I found the african cleaner and he swore that he had cleaned the shade but the Cpl. had then made him change it for one in the next but where they were all dirty. We all trooped next door and saw that all were indeed filthy except one. The Sgt. could see what Gilligan was up to and endorsed my written report addressed to the C.O. which also applied for redress of grievance. The result was that my Severe Rep. was cancelled and so was the balance of the jankers. At the end of the course the exam. papers were marked by Gilligan and he gave me 61% in all subjects which was the absolute minimum for a pass. Again I wrote to the C.O. and he agreed that Gilligan was up to his tricks again. He changed the exam. results to an average of 93% If I had not been so argumentative I could very well have "failed the course" 10A [page break] to fly the thing, but there was a lot of other work to be done also. A cutting from the Rhodesia Herald whilst at Moffat spelt it out:- I wished to be a pilot, And you, along with me; But if we all were pilots, Where would the Air Force be? It takes guts to be a gunner, To sit out in the tail, When the Messerschmitts are coming, And the slugs begin to wail. The plot's just a chauffeur; It's his job to fly the plane; But it's we who do the fighting, Though we may not get the fame. If we must all be gunners, Then let us make this bet; We'll be the best damn gunners That have left this station yet Nearly half a century later it does seem somewhat corny. 13 [page break] [underlined] OPERATIONAL TRAINING. [/underlined] And so to the 2nd. August 1942; we boarded HMT J/6, The Monarch of Bermuda and were shown to our cabins, stowed our kit and were issued with passes to go ashore until 1500 hrs. A last look at Table Mountain and Kapstaad and at 1630 on the 3rd. we left South Africa, hoping and firmly intending one day to return. The 10 day voyage to Freetown was a very pleasant cruise, escorted by two Battle Cruisers and three Corvettes and accompanied by The Empress of Russia, we ploughed along at a steady 12 knots. Our favourite pastime was reading the inter-ship messages on the Aldis lamps. Among other things we learned that one of the Empress's boilers was u/s and shut down. Which limited the speed of the whole convoy. There were several U Boat warnings during daylight and these coincided with lifeboat drills, which were taken very seriously. The accommodation was very good, all the R.A.F. NCOs being accommodated six in each cabin. The cabins were equipped as they had been for luxury cruising pre-war, each with a toilet room with saltwater shower. The portholes remained open the whole time, but this time we were on 'A' and not 'D' Deck. In the Sgts Mess Italian P.O.W.'s waited upon us, and make a very good job of it. All fatigues are carried out by them and they caused no trouble at all. The vigilance of the Polish guards probably influenced that, their bayonets being fixed ALL the time, and there were few words passing between the guards and prisoners, just a few gestures with the bayonet. The Poles had been in action since August 1939 and were a long way from home, first defending their country, evacuating to Yugoslavia, and then making their way to Abadan to join the British. There were 1800 Italian prisoners aboard, mostly captured in Bardia and Tobruk about two years previously. They were a meek and miserable-looking lot. One of our 'stewards' who we called 'Grandpa' was a Cpl Major, and had medals for the Bolshevist and Abbysinian [sic] wars. He spoke very little English, but excellent French, and in return for a few cigarettes made me a bracelet in which he put photos of my fiancee [sic] , Hilda, and me. The material was similar to duralumin and he claimed it was a piece from a shot-down British Bomber in Abbysinia [sic] , a most unlikely story. His only tools were a pen-knife, a razor blade and a 4” nail for engraving. The Italians were confident the Axis would win the war and were expecting Stukas, Fokker Wolfe Condors and 'U' Boats to appear at any time. There were several hundred European civilians aboard, mostly evacuees from Alexandria and Cairo, who seemed to think they owned the ship. Many of them were ducked during the Crossing the Line ceremony, we claimed exemption, being old timers at that sort of thing!! There was some form of entertainment almost every evening; mainly variety concerts organised by the troops. During one of these I recall a wounded ex 8th-Army Soldier impersonating Stanley Holloway in his Northern accent with a poem, "The Reason Why" The unity of Empire .is seen in ships galore, As they plough in convoy fashion, to Britain's island shore, Across the world's big oceans, around continents as well, The Bulldog breed keeps up the creed that history will tell. We've roughed it on this convoy, we've lived like herded sheep, Yet all can see, it's got to be, if freedom's cause we'll keep We're mixed like breeded cattle, the R. A. F. as well, [page break] That R.A:F. who two .years ago Just drove the 'uns to 'ell. They say the good ship Monarch, J6 her tag, goes back to Afric [sic] shortly, but always behind that Flag. The Flag we're fighting Jerry for, the Flag of which we're proud, the Flag which may be a tattered rag, but with honoured blood endowed. In that environment and atmosphere this was pretty stirring stuff. On the 14th. of August we dropped anchor in Freetown. Just as a year ago, it was very hot and humid, with an overcast sky. This time we were not restricted to below decks, but enjoyed the freedom of the ship and were able to trade with the natives. Sunderland seaplanes were seen patrolling out to sea, with Walrus amphibeans [sic] doing about 60. m.p.h., around the harbour. There was lots of signalling between ships and we could cope with the morse, but the semaphore was too advanced and clever for us. Sunday the 16th at 0600 the Monarch and the Empress slipped out of Freetown and rejoined the Royal Navy out at sea. We were a little concerned for an hour or two, as the sun was rising on the port beam, but we eventually turned right and the sun returned to it's proper place, astern. We expected to reach England by thursday, but rumours of the invasion of France were rife and my diary actually records that this might delay us a little!. The general topic of conversation was what would it be like going through Customs. We were advised on the P.A. system to hand in any unauthorised arms and ammunition, including loot taken from the enemy. I had 3 kitbags, a tin trunk, suitcase and issue R.A.F. webbing and packs, and somewhere in that lot was 25 lbs. of sugar, 10 lbs of tea, 8 pairs of silk stockings, 2 dress lengths, 15lbs. of jam, lady's pyjamas, 2000 cigarettes and other dutiable material. I also had a very small .22 revolver in my pocket and decided to risk it. It was really a toy, hardly a weapon of war. In the very early hours of the 26th. of August we docked at Greenoch. An hour later our party of 240 or so assembled on deck with a mountain of kit, all newly trained sprog aircrew sergeants. The train pulled in to within 100 yards of the ship and in less than 30 minutes we were on our way by train to Glasgow, then on to London. Whilst changing stations in London, I telephoned the office, BATtersea 8485, at 0730 and was disappointed that Hilda was not yet at work! We arrived at no. 3 P.D.C. Bournemouth and moved into luxury hotels, expecting to be sent on leave immediately, hardly worth unpacking, but this was not to be. We were interviewed several times, medically examined, kit reorganised and generally messed about for a week. According to my pay book, I was a Sgt. Air Gunner, u/t Wireless Operator, and at one interview I was told that this could not be so. Either I could stay as a Sgt. A-G or lose my tapes and become an AC2 u/t Wireless op., eventually doing a wireless op. course. It was emphasised that the whole business of training was highly organised into streams, and once in the main stream it was better to drift with it rather than to try and change course. Streams could not cross, but only merge. All very academic and enlightening so it was agreed that u/t wireless op. would be deleted from my paybook, and of course, having done a couple of tours as a rear gunner I could always apply for a wireless course. 15 [page break] That's what the man said and I was in no position to argue, 'Just a couple of tours'. A week later we were on leave, and Hilda met me at Waterloo after just over a year apart. We had a few hours in London before going up to Barnoldswick to take my mother by surprise. After five rather hectic days of visiting relatives and friends we returned to London and met Hilda's parents and relatives, for just one day before returning to Bournemouth. We were billeted in an attic at Ocean Lodge and took our meals at the Vale Royal. The food was the most unappetising and uninteresting we had seen in the R.A.F. so far. Life in Bournemouth consisted entirely of parades, square bashing, P.T. drill, lectures and swimming, each activity taking place some miles away from the previous one. Bournemouth was full of sprog air crews, 90% Sergeants, few realised what the future might hold, and; in retrospect, I don't recall even thinking about it. We were clear of Bournemouth on the 2nd. of October, and posted to 25 O.T.U., Finningley. near Doncaster. The first 14 days were spent in lectures, practical work on guns in the armoury, and in firing on various ranges. We were introduced to the FN20 rear turret and relieved to have the opportunity of stripping the .303 Browning guns. We who had trained in Rhodesia did not advertise the fact that we had never actually seen a real Browning gun, only a wooden model, all our air-firing having been carried out on V.G.O.'s [Vickers Gas Operated) guns. We had spent several hours in a turret on the ground in Rhodesia. A Boulton & Paul electrically operated mid-upper type as fitted to a Defiant but bearing no resemblance to the rear turrets of Wellingtons and Whitleys. 11th. November was relatively peaceful at Finningley. In the world outside the Allies had landed in North Africa and occupied the coastal strip from Casablanca, through Oran to 50 miles east of Algiers where the big build-up was taking place. Jerry was being pushed towards Tunisia and Rommel's Afrika Corps was in full retreat in Libya, having been pushed out of Egypt, The Huns marched into hitherto unoccupied France and hard fighting was still going on in Stalingrad. Madagascar was in British hands. My diary records that Jerry lost over 600 aircraft in two days, according to the B.B.C. Nearer home I also recorded that "I flew today for the first time with my pilot, Sgt. Rutherford, and with Sgt. Bishop, W/optr., on circuits and bumps. Our Navigator Allan Willoughby is at Bircotes doing cross-countries". For some of us the pace was slow, and some of the time was spent in 'Brains Trust' sessions. Here a team of experts would sit on the platform and questions on any subject would be asked by the rest of us. In reply to the question "How do you think we should deal with the Huns after the war?", the M.O. replied "Castrate the bloody lot, the R.A.M.C. could do that in only a couple of weeks". Most of the discussions however were in a more serious vain. Over this period the weather was not very good. No 14 Course crews have been helping the Landgirls digging up potatoes and 12 Course chaps were heaving coal, We then had coal and coke allocated and delivered to our billets, which eliminated the need to pinch it from the Officers' Mess. we were accomodated [sic] in the peace-time married quarters close to their Mess. One of our Wimpies from Bircotes crashed into a Beaufighter near Caernarvon where my sister was stationed in the W.A.A.F. There were no [page break] [photograph] [photograph] [underlined] REG WHELLAMS [/underlined]] 1333520 [underlined] AT 25 OTU FINNINGLEY [/underlined] (10 FORSTER RD. WALTHEMSTOW E.17 ) 16A [page break] survivors. A Defiant crashed near my home in Barnoldswick and we pressed on with the routine of local flying, stripping nothing more interesting than guns, and lectures and so on. My diary records that on the 9th. December, after a little over two months we were taken by lorry to Bircotes to fly as a crew. Losses were high, on a Bullseye on London we lost three aircraft. One of them apparently ditched without trace near the French Coast, the only clue to this being their dinghy which would have been released automatically striking the water. A second crew headed by Ft/Lt. Anneckstein crashed into the watch office, killing the Bomb Aimer who was stretched out in the bombing position. A third crew crashed on landing at Bircotes, without fatality, but with the crew rather shaken-up. We were living Nissen huts about 2 miles from the 'hangars' and 3/4 mile from the in the other direction. The place was a sea of mud in parts and we generally washed AFTER breakfast for some reason which eludes me after 45 years One point in favour of Bircotes, it was on the Great North Road and just before Christmas I enjoyed a 48 hr. leave with Hilda in London! I met Tommy King in Battersea who was a Rear Gunner on Halifaxes with three ops. to his credit, all to Italy. A brief respite and back to Bircotes. The flying aspect was proving more interesting now, I could see a little beyond my own situation and get involved to some extent in the general carry-on of working as a crew. We had a first-class Skipper, Sgt. Stan. Rutherford, a down-to-earth tough New Zealand sheep farmer. Our Navigator Allan Willoughby from the West country whom we regarded as the Academic member of the crew, but who suffered greatly from air sickness. On those occasions our Bomb Aimer Stan Chadderton from Liverpool took over the navigation without any problems. Stan trained as an Observer - which included both Bomb aiming and Navigating in the U.S.A. and we were thus very fortunate in having a standby navigator. Our Wireless Operator Harry Dyson was from Huddersfield possibly the socialite of the crew, and fancied his chances in the rear turret, giving me a welcome change on occasions. I started the New Year well by having four runaway guns, over Missen, the bombing range, splattering a main road. The safety catches were 'off' and the guns ready for instant action almost all the time the air, and the reason the guns fired has not been fully explained. I vaguely put it down to a build-up of hydraulic pressure in the triggering system. This did not fool the Armourers who put it down finger trouble on my part - literally. By the 7th. of Jan. we had completed all our day-flying details of cross-countries, bombing, air firing etc. and were suddenly posted to 30 O.T.U. Hixon, in Staffordshire to complete the night flying excercises [sic] . It took three days visiting various sections to obtain signatures on a Clearance Certificate before we were free of Finningly [sic] , and the after we arrived at Hixon, we were despatched to the satellite airfield at Seighford. A week later we were still without aircraft at Seighford and when the Skipper, Navigator and W/op went to Finningley to collect one, Stan Chadderton & I took French leave and shot off to see respective Hildas. It was on that leave that Hilda and I decided to get married and arranged for bans to be called in Seighford and Battersea. On the 24th. Jan, our night-flying excercises [sic] almost completed we enjoyed a new experience. We were put on the battle order and briefed for an attack on Lorient. Everything was rushed and finally when 17 [page break] boarding the aircraft -which was u/s-, the raid -or our part in it- was cancelled. We were to have dropped six 500 lb. bombs in 10/10ths cloud and were warned about the fighters and lots of flak. We found later that the Americans had bombed Lorient in the afternoon followed by 121 aircraft of Bomber Command that night. One Stirling was lost. In early Feb. we were doing a 6 hour cross-country operational excercise [sic] simulating a real trip and towards the end of it were joyfully bombing what was thought to be our target on the bombing range. After dropping two sticks of 11 1/2 lb. practice bombs the "target" lights were extinguished and although we remained over them for a further 20 minutes they did not come on again. Thirty minutes later "W" William landed at base amid great consternation. Apparently the O. C. Night Flying had thought we were lost and had been sending up rockets. These were seen by the Stafford Fire Brigade who came dashing out to Seighford expecting a major disaster. On reporting to the Watch Office the Skipper was congratulated upon a successful bombing attack on Hixon aerodrome. A few nights previously Jock King and crew had crash-landed on the Yorkshire moors. They were over the North sea, badly iced up and losing height gradually until they ran out of it on the moor. The aircraft was a complete write-off and the Rear Gunner very badly injured by the Brownings crashing into his chest. On the 7th. Feb. the whole crew went to the local church and heard the Banns called. Two aircraft were lost from our unit the previous night, one piled straight in at Hixon, all killed, and Sgt. Browning bounced off the runway and finished upside down in the adjacent field. The 11th. Feb. was my 21st. Birthday and the Crew got absolutely sloshed in Eccleshall. It was a memorable party and the Skipper and Bomb Aimer got themselves lost on the way home and spent part of the night in a ditch. On the 14th. we completed the last of our cross-country details. The pages of my diary covering this trip are indistinct having been submerged in water in 1949, but there were problems. The first 4 hours were spent on accurately flown courses, but there was difficulty in keeping to specific heights. The aircraft seemed to climb and alternately lose height for no explicable reason and this distracted the Skipper from the required accuracy. Eventually with only 60 gallons of fuel indicated, the Skipper called "Darky Darky this is Nemo xx .....". Up came a 'gate' of two searchlights and signalled the direction of a friendly runway. 10 minutes later we all developed an instant inferiority complex, we had landed at Wyton, the home of 109 Squadron Pathfinders. One Wellington Mk.111 bombed up with four small practice bombs, was parked amid Lancasters, Mosquitoes and B17 Fortresses. However we were made very welcome and at 0400 hrs. thoroughly enjoyed the bacon, egg, fried sausages, toast and marmalade etc. Had I known then, that 40 years hence I would be retired and settled within 4 miles of Wyton I would have been a happier man. Aircraft on the first raid of the war had taken off from Wyton. The next two weeks were very active with little actually achieved. We were briefed almost every day for something which was cancelled every time but with one exception. We were told to do an air test on an aircraft which was parked near the perimeter fence. The rear turret was almost touching the fence at the other side of which was a haystack and chicken coop. The ground was muddy and rather more revs than usual were needed to free the wheels and move the aircraft forward. The hurricane strength wind created completely demolished the hen coop and the haystack, and many of the hens became airborne as never before. There [page break] was no time for recriminations however, on landing we went straight to the briefing room and learned we, were on a Nickel that night. The Oxford Dictionary gives a different meaning, but to Air Crews 'Nickel' is a generic term for a bum fodder or leaflet raid. It did imply that someone had some confidence in us, maybe. The target was Paris. At last we were over enemy-occupied territory, still on our side of the Rhine, and still a long way from it, but we were getting nearer and there was no lack of confidence, at least initially. Problems developed, first my ring-sight ferrel broke off, so there was no hope of accurate aiming if attacked, then my intercom microphone ceased to function. The fault was later found in the Rotating Service Joint below the turret. We had a standby signalling system of push button and lamp, but that too was out of order for the same reason. I could hear the skipper calling me on a routine check but had no means of replying. Receiving no reply, Barry Dyson crawled back to the rear turret to check up, not knowing what to expect. He had overlooked the fact that we were at 15.000 feet - the highest we had been at that time- and almost passed out due to lack of oxygen. He reconnected his adapter to the system just in time. He was also inadequately clothed for a temperature of -18C but putting 1800 lbs of leaflets down the flare chute restored his circulation. Di banged on the turret door and we exchanged greetings. He returned to his office and reporting my situation to the Skipper. Meanwhile I was incommunicado for the rest of the trip, but I could hear the others conversing. Shortly after that I felt the rotation of the turret was becoming sluggish and I tried to fire a short burst. Three of the guns fired one round each and then stopped, but number one was working. I cocked and recocked the guns several times, tried firing them manually and eventually three were working. I fired a short burst and regained a little confidence. An hour after leaving Paris the turret rotation would not respond to the hydraulics so I ensured that manual operation was still possible. I knew that to bale out I would have to open the turret doors, then the aircraft bulkhead door, grab my parachute pack, drag it through both doors and into the turret, rotate the turret onto the beam, fit the 'chute, open the doors, disconnect the intercom and oxygen and go out backwards. I decided to give it a try except for actually bailing out - and decided it was probably not feasible in the time available, but I did get the parachute into the turret and tucked it down the side. I learned a lot that night, more had gone wrong in my department on that one trip than during all my training. Di learned the odd lesson too, to wear more clothing in case he had to move away from the hot air system under his table. The following day we were advised that our O.T.U. course was completed and the Skipper was asked to state the crew's preference either to join a squadron bombing Germany or to go overseas. Our preference for Germany was unanimous; after all, I was getting married and most of us had already been overseas!. And so we went our separate ways on 7 days leave March 1st, 1943 perhaps the most important day of my life, Hilda and I were married. Staying at Hilda's home I took my cousin Frank to Trafalgar Square and showed him the Lancaster bomber, then on to St. Pauls Churchyard where I used to work and showed him a Stirling Bomber. He was thrilled with London and with the aircraft in particular. At 1pm we met Mum and Topsy at duCane Court and lunched in Balham, and whilst Mum and the others went to meet Hilda's folks, I went on to the Church, 19 [page break] St. Mary's in Battersea. Some years later when I saw the photographs I realised I was wearing a white shirt with my airman's uniform. Hilda joined me at the Alter [sic] and looked absolutely lovely in her white wedding dress. The service was grand and the organist played two hymns. The church bells remained silent, they were reserved for signalling a possible enemy invasion. We enjoyed a wonderful reception at Hilda's home and on Monday we went to Lancing on honeymoon, the guests of Mr. & Mrs. Pittock at 10 Orchard Avenue. After a few days at Lancing I returned to camp and somehow organised more leave. At 0300 on the 10th. however the police delivered a telegram-which stated "Report to Hixon immediately, posted overseas". I tried to convince them that it was a joke on the part of the crew, and I was not stationed at Hixon in any case. However, at 0700 Hilda accompanied me to Euston where we said goodbye on the platform for the last time for several months at least. One night spent at Hixon, and the following day we travelled by train with two other crews to no. 1 P.D.C. West Kirby. [page break] [photograph] [photograph] 1st. MARCH 1943 (WHITE SHIRT) 25 O.T.U. FINNINGLEY [photograph] SECOND HONEYMOON SEPT ‘43 20A [page break] [underlined] SECOND TIME TO AFRICA [/underlined] At West Kirby we handed in our blue uniforms and were issued with army Khaki battle dress and tropical flying bowlers and helmets. Within a few days we embarked on a Dutch Vessel, the Johan van Vanderbilt in the Mersey, and were allocated first and second class cabins still equipped to. peace-time standards. Service in the Dining Hall was fabulous, staffed by natives from the Nederlands [sic] East Indies. The cuisine was superb, there was white bread and butter and sugar on the tables. A full breakfast at 0800, a peacetime lunch at 1300, tea at 1630 and dinner at 1900. Coffee was available in the Snr. N.C.O's lounge at any time during the morning. The Army Privates' quarters were similar to those we had experienced on the Moultan, sleeping in the same place as they eat, scrubbing everything by 0830 and with lots of bull. They had to wear greatcoats at all times whilst on deck and carry their life-jackets and water bottles. They not only manned the guns but were also detailed for lots of guard duties. Everything seemed to be guarded, but the reason was generally obscure. The cabins were shared with the Army Snr. N.C.O.s and they felt it quite a change to enjoy such comfort. The main topic of conversation was speculation about our destination, North Africa, Middle East or Far East? At a lecture on the 20th. March a senior Army Officer gave us a talk in the big second-class lounge, a very interesting run-down on the state of the war in all theatres. He dealt at some length with the North African campaign and said that very shortly the 1st. and 8th. Armies would meet and a few days after that Jerry would be slung right out of Africa. He wanted to dispel all rumours that we were part of a force invading the south of France. I cannot recall whether we were actually told in so many words, but we expected our destination was either Algiers or Bone. The armourment [sic] on the Johann was comparatively small. We had about 10 Lewis guns, .303 calibre, and a naval gun at the stern, all manned by the army. There were about 16 ships in the convoy, with troops and cargo, protected by 5 Cruisers and Destroyers, and 2 Corvettes. Not as impressive perhaps as in August 1941, but a more wartime environment. It was a feeling not entirely new to us, we knew by calculation that it was the 21st. of March and we were sitting comfortably in the First Class Lounge enjoying a coffee, but whereabouts on the Atlantic ocean was the ship? We know we had been heading east all morning so the chances. were we are heading for Gibralter [sic] , it was not warm enough for Freetown to be our destination. Where we were bound was open to speculation like most other vital factors affecting us. What were we going to do when we get to wherever it was? We were a Wellington crew which did not rule out finding ourselves on a Boston or Mitchell doing close army support work. And what after we had completed a tour of ops.? Chad the Bomb Aimer and Di the Wireless op. were both keen to remuster and train as Pilots. Allan Willoughby said he was 'marlish' and quite happy to carry on navigating. I felt the war would be over before we had finished our first tour. The Skipper said little but probably thought we were a bunch of dreamers, comparing us with his sheep back in N.Z.. We were not in fact approaching Gibralter [sic] , we had passed through the Straits during the night. At 0300 on the 22nd. we were approaching the minefield off Algiers and were attacked by a Ju88 torpedo bomber. We heard the Johan's guns open up 21 [page break] and the Windsor Castle received a direct hit from a torpedo on her stern, three members of her crew being killed. She also lost her steering and means of propulsion. Efforts were made to tow her into Oran without success but she sank at 1700 the same day. The Service personnel and remainder of the crew were taken aboard destroyers. Hurricanes arrived within minutes of the attack, but just too late and not ideal aircraft for the job at 0300 hrs. My diary - written up a few days after the event,- refered [sic] originally to The Duchess of Windsor and this was changed a few years later to the Windsor Castle. There was no longer any secrecy about our destination. Di said the R.A.F. had opened an O.T.U. in Algiers, and we were destined to do another course. There were lots of rumours, but one fact was established, we had been in the R.A.F. over two years and we felt it was high time we did something towards the war effort. [page break] At 0300hrs. on the 23rd. March we were paraded on deck thankful for our greatcoats, which we were still wearing with great discomfort when we disembarked at 1100. A brief stop at an Aircrew Reception Centre, a large hotel on the sea-front, before going to the Aircrew Pool at Surcouf, about 30 miles from Algiers. There was no great feeling of urgency here, the Allies had landed at Algiers on the 6th. of November and the Germans had already been driven some hundreds of miles, to the East. It was just a matter of waiting, something that most servicemen became very good at. We could not take the initiative and start our own war, but could only make the best of it. Quoting from my diary, "Life at Surcouf is perfect, we share the officers' mess and enjoy typical French peacetime meals. Lots of Bully Beef but the Chef - a French Civilian - certainly knows how to camouflage it. Our chalet is literally on the beach and the sea never more than 20 yards away. We could swim all day long without the formality of swimming trunks, or walk around the village. Sometimes we hitch-hike Into Algiers". There was very little to do in the village, and I recorded that I found the French very unhelpful and generally impolite. We all carried side-arms of course. There was practically nothing to buy except strange local booze, the Americans had seen to all that when they passed through, and the bars seemed to be open all the time. Algeria was, politically, a part of Metropolitan France in the eyes of the French, it was home to many Frenchmen, and they probably realised it might never be quite the same again. After a three-week rest at Surcouf we reported to 150 Squadron at Blida, about 30 miles south of Algiers. This place was most certainly at war, there were Wellingtons, Hudsons, Hurricanes, Commandoes and Albacores for squadrons of Bomber, Coastal, Fighter and Transport Commands, and the Fleet Air Arm. With the exception of Transports and 142 and 150 Wellington Squadrons, all aircraft were controlled by Coastal Command. We were part of the North Africa Striking Force - so we were told. Life was good at Blida, most of the food was tinned and we enjoyed eggs and bully beef every day in the mess. Generally in the evenings we would have a fry-up of eggs and bread with more bully on the primus stove in the billet. The Mess Hall was used as both dining hall and lounge. The arabs wandered round the camp selling eggs and oranges but prefered [sic] to exchange them for food -- more bully beef. The currency in use was the French Franc with an exchange rate of 200 to the £1 sterling in which we were paid. BMA (British Military Authority) notes were also in use but the most popular currency outside the town was the tin of bully. We were billeted in chalets formerly the peacetime living quarters of the French Air Force. Each chalet had four large rooms-and accommodated two Wellington crews. It was very pleasant to sit out on the verandah [sic] . My rather battered diary records that on the 28th. March 1943 we were discussing what we proposed to do on completion of our first tour. Rather naive, we would have little or no say in the matter. We had been allocated an aircraft, "F" for Freddie, but it was a case of one crew to one aircraft and its present owners had not quite finished their tour and were reluctant to part with it. For two days they had been bombing and straffing [sic] a large German convoy bound for Bizerta which was not left alone even when part of it had docked. We finally took over the aircraft and for five days were airborne for several hours each day. On the afternoon of the 5th. April we took off 23 [page break] in "F" for Freddie for an hour's fighter affiliation excercise [sic] with two Hurricanes. Employing violent evasive action to make things difficult for the fighters, we crossed the coast about 10 miles east of Algiers at 3000 feet and passed directly over a British destroyer. The Navy was wide awake and saw a heavy bomber being chased by two Hurricanes, immediately opened fire on us with considerable light flak. The pilot of a third Hurricane which was on an operational patrol saw the mini-battle and joined in. When he saw that one of his chums was only 100 yards from my rear turret and happy to stay there, he realised that we were in a different ball game, peeled off and, carried on with his patrol, finally returning to Maison Blanche. On the night of the 6th. April we bombed the Marshelling [sic] yards at TUNIS, with 3500 lb. and 54 30 lb. incendiaries. We bombed in one stick from 8000 ft. and surprisingly were held in searchlights which we lost at 3000 feet. Not a very good effort on our part, the bombs overshot the target but hit the aerodrome 3 miles north according to the timing point photograph. All 28 aircraft returned safely, two of them damaged There was little light flak but some heavy stuff said to be radar controlled. For an hour on the return journey I changed places with Harry Dyson, our Wireless op. On the 7th. we attacked troop concentrations at night making several bombing passes at low level and finally coming in very low firing 7 Brownings. Chad the bomb aimer used the two guns in the front turret, I had four in the rear and we carried beam guns on these occasions. Only the front gunner could see what he was firing at. One aircraft of 142 Squadron, G George was shot down by light flak. On the 10th. we raided MONSERRATO aerodrome in Sardinia, an aircraft was seen over the target with navigation lights on, visibility was good and we moved away hoping the runway lights would be switched in. The aerodrome remained in darkness and we dropped our bombs singly. There was no light flack from the aerodrome to worry us, and the aircraft with lights on was not seen again. After a further 30 minutes of stooging about we returned to Blida. There was a reasonable amount of heavy flak which we learned on return had downed one aircraft of 142 Squadron. - 2 in 2 nights-. On the way back a searchlight opened up a few miles ahead and the skipper put the nose down so we were at 2000 ft. when we passed directly over the searchlight. Stan Chadderton in the front turret opened fire and the Skipper told me when to open up, aiming straight down. The light stayed on after we had passed, pointing vertically, maybe we did a little damage, probably not. Inside the aircraft however, the dive had caused the Elsan lavatory to come loose and scatter it's contents over the floor. The following morning, fearing the wrath of the ground crew when they saw the Elsan, we stayed in bed until noon and breakfasted in the billet. Eggs and fried potatoes, fried bread and tinned pears and fresh oranges, served by the wireless op. and rear gunner to the Skipper and the rest of the crew still in bed. In the afternoon we were stood down and Joe Shields (Sgt. Rimmer's Rear Gunner) and I went into Blida to try and find presents to take back to England. The bigger French shops were all closed - no stocks- and we scrounged around the Arab quarters, without success. I mentioned earlier that we always carried side-arms and several times we were crowded by the Arabs. Production of the revolver dispersed them but it could have been very tricky. On the 14th. April we raided MONSERRATO for the second time, the first run-in at 8000 feet and then 6000 feet. Direct hits were seen on [page break] the aerodrome this time with 1000 and 250 pounders. No incendiaries were dropped but 10 minutes was spent 8 miles north of the town dropping leaflets. The leaflets were the "laissez-passer" type printed in German instead of the more usual Italian. An aircraft over the target area sporting an orange light seemed to be signalling to a searchlight. We assumed it was acting as a decoy for a night-fighter and the only one of us keeping an eye on it was the navigator standing at the astrodome. The rest of us searched the allocated parts of the sky according to the book!. All our aircraft returned safely and reported good aiming. Photographs confirmed the success, but we had borrowed "M" Mother which was without a camera. The return journey was uneventful and crossing Mare Nostrum Di tuned in to the 9 o-clock news from London. The announcer Alvar Lidell read "Algiers reports that the R.A.F. Strategical Airforce in North Africa has continued to batter aerodromes in Tunisia and Sardinia, damaging runways and destroying aircraft on the ground, without loss to themselves". Someone remarked "That's one way of looking at it"!. Actually a few nights ago 142 Sqdn. had lost 2 in 2 nights. 150 Squadron had lost one but the crew bailed out. Four of the crew managed to get through the enemy lines but the Rear Gunner was wounded and there was no news of him for several weeks. The docks at TUNIS received our attention on the night of the 17th. April, with very careful placing of 500 and 250 pounders. Direct hits were observed in the docks area and there was concentrated heavy flack. It didn't worry us, we were well below it at 6000 feet. There was lots of light flack mostly concentrated on an aircraft displaying red and green navigation lights. At one stage this aircraft came to within 600 yards on the starboard beam and we converged to about 300 yards. We clearly identified it as a Wellington and gave it a long inaccurate burst from the rear turret. On this occasion every fourth round was a tracer. The nav. lights were extinguished and the aircraft was not seen again. There was no satisfactory explanation as to the identity of this aircraft. A captured Wellington perhaps acting as a decoy but attracting most of the flak. Possibly one of ours with the lights switched on accidentally, one shall never know. Two aircraft are missing, piloted by Sgt. Chandler of 150 and Sgt. Lee of 142. One sent out an SOS and ditched but there was no signal from the other. On our return to Blida there was a blanket of cloud over the whole area and our 23 aircraft were diverted to Maison Blanche. One aircraft was known to have a damaged undercarriage, which collapsed on touch-down and was a write-off but there were no injuries. Road Transport was waiting to take us the 30 miles or so back to Blida and we finally got to bed at 6 am. We shared the lorry with Sgt. Leckie's crew who had bailed out over Tunisia on the 14th. The Squadron Leader had flown to Sousse and brought them back to Algeria. Leckie had himself crash-landed the aircraft with no hydraulics and only one engine, somewhere in Allied-occupied Tunisia. On the 23rd. April my diary records a tedious week of activity which achieved very little. Every day we were briefed for a night op. and every day we did our Daily Inspections and air tests, but in the late afternoon the Sirocco came up suddenly and the trips were cancelled. During the week, two Albemarles crashed on the runway, both from Gibralter [sic] carrying supplies which included mail from U.K. Our uniform since leaving West Kirby has been British Army Khaki but with shoes and no putees. Our R.A.F. blue shirts with collar and tie and also blue forage caps were not exchanged. We have no tropical 25 [page break] kit and it is getting very warm here. Our aircraft "F" for Freddie, has been grounded all week with "G" George, both with a trimming box problem. The policy is still one crew to an aircraft, and we enjoyed a very easy week. On the 28th. we managed to borrow "D" Donald and bombed DECIMONANU again, this time with a 4000 lb. 'blockbuster’ and a few incendiaries for good measure. After bombing we stooged around for 30 minutes having a close look at fires on the ground. Searchlights waved about apparently aimlessly and the light flack with tracer seemed equally haphazard. At 3000 feet we were caught by one searchlight and within seconds were held in a cone of five. The lights were dazzling and the three of us manning guns all fired point blank, it being impossible to aim. In theory a combined rate of fire of over 8000 rounds per minute should have hit something worth while, but after a very short burst my four guns jammed, a problem seldom experienced. At only 3000 feet we were quickly out of range of the searchlights. We were over Blida at 0700 hours which was covered in fog and diverted again to Mason Blanche. We were not very popular at Maison B, everyone had-their own problems which were not always appreciated by others on different types of aircraft performing widely differing types of work. We were in bed at Maison B. by 1000 hrs. probably without the knowledge of the 'owners' of the beds who had spent the night in then; and there we stayed until 1700. The tinned steak pie for tea made a very welcome change. Our aircraft "F" for Freddie still had a faulty-trimming box. It was only in the air we were able to listen to the Radio News from London, although we had a reasonable supply of current newspapers brought out by the steady stream of aircraft from U.K. On the 29th. we logged another trip to BIZERTA, this time in "T" Tommy with a 4000 pounder. Take-off was at 0005 hours and the weather the worst for flying we had yet experienced in Africa. The target was the docks and all was unusually quiet. The coast-line was visible through about 4/10ths cloud and on our first run over the docks we dropped incendiaries. Positive identification of the target, so round again to release the 4000 pounder which the press were refering [sic] to as 'cookies'. It seemed that over Germany the lads were dropping 8000 pounders. The flak and searchlights opened up simultaneously and was relatively intense. We found later that we were the first to bomb. Some had difficulty in finding the target due to cloud and the enemy was trying not to attract our attention. Again there was low cloud at Blida and we were diverted to Maison Blanche. Two aircraft were lost on the Bizerta raid, one landed at Bone (now renamed Annaba) with one engine u/s, and a 142 Sqdn. aircraft did a belly-landing on the grass at Maison B. On our return we found that Sgt. Leckie, operational again after being shot down in Tunisia, had crashed into the mountain immediately after take-off. Another 150 Sqdn aircraft crashed on take-off, barely getting airborne, and it was assumed that he had engine failure. Two of the crew actually survived the explosion. It had been a fateful night, we were briefed for take-off from west to east, with a left turn onto course. Just before take-off a strong wind developed from the west causing the duty runway to be changed from 09 to 27 and we took off from east to west. Sgt. Leckie turned left instead of right, straight into. the Atlas mountains, all killed instantly. Our own Bomb Aimer Stan had flown on a raid with Sgt. Leckie only two nights previously. When I revisited Blida on business in 1978 I was astonished to appreciate just how near those mountains were to Blida aerodrome.. [page break] [photograph] WITH HILDA & THE SKIPPER SEPT ’43 RICHMOND ON THAMES [photograph] BILL WILLOUGHBY NAVIGATOR AT THE PORT BEAM GUN POSITION [photograph] NAVIGATOR & BOMB AIMER IN THEIR PITS 26A [page break] The following morning an aircraft of 142 was seen to be making a peculiar approach, and just before touchdown. one engine cut and the other was going flat out, resulting in a spectacular disintegration at the side of the runway, in which no-one was seriously hurt. By the end of April we had four aircraft all Wellington Mk.10s equipped for carrying 4000 pound bombs. Bomb doors had been removed and they were said to have a special main spar. On the 5th. May it was farewell to Blida, the war was moving east. Each crew was issued with a First World War Bell tent and this together with official stores and personal effects was piled into the aircraft. I remember the Wireless Op. Di and I putting our (stolen) palliases [sic] aboard for our Ground-crew passengers to rest on during the flight. A very thoughtful act on our part said the Skipper. It was just that Di and I intended to sleep in the manner to which we were accustomed. Our destination was Fontaine Chaude, about 250 Kms. ESE of Blida. About half way in deference to our guests we opened a tin of spam and served slices of spam followed by stewed plums from a large tin we had been hoarding. Our destination was a stretch of desert near a tiny village. After landing we pitched our tent and organised our palliases [sic] into beds with the help of a dozen or so empty boxes. Meanwhile vehicles were arriving with our squadron personnel, more stores, aircraft and by late evening we had a small township. A small marquee served as a Sgts. Mess and on the first evening we enjoyed stew and green peas followed by pears and real cream. These had been provided by the Americans on an emergency basis. The following day was spent partly on an aerodrome inspection. The war had passed through Fontaine Chaude and it was possible the Arab scavengers had overlooked bits of war material which could do damage to aircraft, particularly the tyres. There were no runways, only sand with some coarse grass. Back to war next day and Group Captain (Speedy) Powell briefed us for a raid on TRIPANI, a naval base in Sicily. We were 30 minutes late on take-off due to delays in bombing-up. We carried only six 500 pounders instead of eight, and some incendiaries. We were 20 minutes behind the bomber stream of 26 Wellingtons. 'The bomber stream'!. This was an expression used by a newly joined crew who were very displeased with having to finish their tour in North Africa after starting it over Europe. They treated our desert war with some contempt after their recent experiences over Germany, but were reported missing about three weeks after joining us. We were in cloud shortly after take-off and nearing the target came out of it at 12,000 feet. We moved over towards a concentration of heavy flak bursts and the bomb aimer thought he had found a pinpoint through breaks in the cloud. The bombs were dropped into the area of flashes and fires on the ground but it was not a satisfactory raid. We lost two aircraft. One was seen to go down in flames over the target having been coned by searchlights. Sgt. Pax Smith, a New Zealander and crew ran out of fuel in pitch darkness and had strayed too far to the west, over Algeria. My diary records "They bailed out in an airmanlike manner but the Bomb Aimer was concussed and the Rear Gunner broke both legs on hitting the ground and rolling down the side of a hill. Three of the crew are in the rest camp at Constantine and the two inured in hospital in Algiers". The reader might be surprised at apparent navigation errors such as this, but the only nav. aid available was a QDM (course to steer) to reach in this case Algiers, which would not have helped. We had no M/F 27 [page break] Beacons on which to take bearings. The Navigator worked on his dead reckoning plot backed up by a visual pinpoint from the bomb aimer map-reading if visibility was suitable. Quite often the only aid was the Rear Gunner taking a drift reading from his turret. Over the sea the Wireless op. would drop a flame-float down the flare chute, which would burst into flames on striking the sea. The Rear. gunner would rotate his turret and depress the guns, holding the flame in his ringsight for ten seconds, then read off the drift on the indicator by his side. There was sometimes a drift indicator in the 'Nav. Office' also. The same procedure was used over the desert during the day using a smoke bomb in place of a flamefloat. We learned that Sgt. Leckie who was killed hitting the mountain was Commissioned two weeks before his death and had also been awarded a D.F.C. for his crash-landing in Tunisia. So Sgt. Leckie was really P/O Leckie D.F.C. and didn't know it, but the end result was the same. He and our own Skipper, Sgt. Rutherford 416170 R.N.Z.A.F. had been great buddies for a long time. (or what was regarded as a long time in those days) May 10 my diary states, a Boomerang lastnight. We took-off with a 4500 pound payload for delivery to PALERMO, the Capital of Sicily. About 30 min. after take-off the petrol cover on the port fuel tank came open and the Skipper had great difficulty in keeping the left wing up. There was no option but to jettison half the bomb load in the sea and return to base. There was an enemy air-raid in progress at Bone and we kept a few miles to the east of it with the I.F.F. on. Our own night-fighters operating from Maison Blanche were known to be very active and we had great faith in our I.F.F. We were first back of course - not really having been anywhere!- and we waited for the others in the debriefing tent. To no avail, they had been diverted and returned the following afternoon. We enjoyed an afternoon and evening off, and went by lorry to Batna, a small town about 30 miles from our base. There was little to be seen and nothing to buy and no sign of any social activity. Conversation with the natives was difficult and they were not interested in the war. On the night of the 12th. it was the turn of NAPLES again, 21 aircraft with 90,000 lbs. payload bombed within five minutes of each other. It was a lovely night, visibility 30 miles and not a cloud in the sky. As we approached Naples we could clearly see Mt. Vesuvius and convinced ourselves we could see the thin column of smoke drifting from it. Our last pinpoint on the way out was the Isle of Capri and we gave it a short burst of .303 for good measure. A futile act but the guns had to be fired occasionally. At NAPLES we went straight in, the target was clearly visible and the one stick straddled the railway yards and industrial area. My diary records that flak was intense and said to be some of the hottest in Europe, and reading that after a lapse of 45 years causes me to question the authority for such a statement. It was a small target compared to some of those in Central Europe, and the 40 searchlights at Napoli were quite effective, but would have been more so if it had been dark. All our aircraft returned safely after a 7 1/2 hour flight, not a bad effort for Wimpies with no overload tanks. As the W/op describes it, we climbed into our pits just as dawn was breaking. By 0900 we had the option of discarding our mosquito nets and being pestered by the insects, or enjoying a turkish bath due to the heat. Our 1916 vintage bell-tent was reasonable for our crew of five although in earlier times it accomodated [sic] , goodness knows how, 22 soldiers. [page break] At about 1400 we were happy to get airborne again on an air test where we could cool down, but at 1700 it was briefing again. A "maximum effort" - another phrase. imported from our colleagues bashing away in Central and Northern Europe, on CAGLIARI, a port and industrial town in Sardinia. All 26 aircraft were over the target area within minutes of each other, again visibility was near perfect. Bombing heights were staggered and we bombed from 6000 feet. Our 4000 pounder landed just north of the railway yards among some tall buildings and started a fire. Our W/op Harry Dyson claimed at debriefing that he could feel the heat from our own fire when we turned in again to see the damage. Di was prone to exaggeration by this time, perhaps due to frustration of monitoring broadcasts from Base and seldom touching the morse key. We came back over the target at 2000 feet and the flames were leaping high. We could still see the flames from 70 miles away at 8000 feet on our way home. Listening to the B.B.C. we learned that American bombers had raided Cagliari earlier that day, "wiping the place out". They also claimed they could still see fires burning when they reached the African coast. In daylight too; our W/op was not alone in the exaggeration stakes. However, it was a very satisfactory raid. We were in a shallow dive when the bomb was released and is thought to have scraped the fuselage under the aircraft where there was damage to the geodetics and six feet of fabric had been torn off. On the 15th. our crew was stood down for 24 hours and I received four letters from Hilda, the first for many weeks. At this rate of completing ops I should be home in less than three months. It was very tiring night after night, particularly as is [sic] was not possible to sleep comfortably in the heat of the day. The target was PALERMO, and three of our 25 aircraft failed to return, including Sgt. Rimmer, and Sgt. Alazrachi, the latter a Free French pilot. It is not known what happened to any of them except that one aircraft was seen to go down in flames over the target. Rimer's Rear Gunner was Joe Shields, one of the best, and the crew had been with us since O.T.U. at Finningley. Polfrey the Navigator, Cave the Bombadier [sic] and Jack Waters the Wireless-op, all very keen types. On the 16th. it was our turn to make a fragment of history. For the very first time, the R.A.F. bombed ROME. Rome, we were told was an open undefended city, and we were briefed to fly from the mouth of the River Tiber, over the city dropping leaflets, and return at 5000 feet dropping more leaflets, then bomb the LIDO DI ROMA near the mouth of the Tiber. Our first bomb went in the river and the last one in the sea, but the rest of the stick neatly straddled the buildings at the Seaplane Base. Over the city itself, there was considerable light flack with tracer, aiming point- blank without result. Not bad at all far an open undefended city, but we were forbidden to display any hostility except dropping leaflets. Even the lids of the Small Bomb Containers loaded with leaflets were secured with wire so as not to fall on the Romans. Later the B.B.C. claimed there was no flak over Rome. An easier trip the following night which after the event gave me a slight suggestion of a guilty conscience for the the [sic] very first (and last) time. "Your target" said the Group Captain, "is the German 'U' Boat refuelling Base at ALGHERO, in Sardinia, put paid to it". Our bomb load was 7 x 500 pounders, 4 S.B.C.'s of 30 lb. incendiaries and 2 x 250 pound bombs. We overflew the target at 4000 feet and first dropped several sacks of 29 [page break] leaflets. These were in Italian and told the people of Alghera that when we very shortly occupied their country and liberated them from the beastly Germans, they would be treated better than ever before, provided with medical aid and food, and every other possible benefit. All we need is a little co-operation and understanding from them. Having spread the gospel, we made three bombing runs over Alghero, at 3000, 1500 and 700 feet, all perfect O.T.U. practice type runs. On the last bombing run, Allan Willoughby manned the port beam gun, Dyson the front turret and the [deleted] the [/deleted] three of us fired our 7 Brownings at point-blank range into the chaos below. The sole opposition comprised two small-calibre machine guns which were soon out of action. Maybe it was a U Boat refuelling base, but only in the sense that it was a small fishing village and happened to have a jetty where drums of oil could be trundled down to a U Boat at the end of it. Our vision of a Sardinian type Lorient or Brest was soon dispelled. The BBC reported 'our bombers based in North Africa attacked targets is Sardinia lastnight'. [page break] For a couple of days our conversation had centred around an incident over the Lido di Roma. A seaplane base consists mostly of water; on our first run over it we had difficulty in locating the buildings and were hoping to see a tidy straight line of parked seaplanes. The Skipper decided to drop a flare and asked the Wireless Op. to arm no. 1 of 4 already in position in the flarechute. As he removed the safety pin the flare ignited and the top part of it shot through the roof of the aircraft with flames pouring out of the lower end, streaking past the rear turret. The blinding light startled Stan Chadderton at the Bombing panel and he instantly jettisoned all the flares, undoubtedly preventing a major disaster. How easy it was to be shot down by one's own flare. According to Intellegence [sic] reports, there were 1,100 casualties in our raid on Cagliari on the 13th., most of them having been caught by a single bomb. This figure is highly suspect but it originated from an Italian report. On the 21st. it was a stooge over Sicily with 18 250 lb. bombs. A convoy was within range of the Ju88 Torpedo bombers based in Sicily and our task was to try and keep them on the ground, or if they did manage to take off, prevent them from making an airmanlike landing on return. Aircraft took off singly starting at 1700 hrs.; we were the 24th. at 2045 hrs., with two others to follow. A direct flight to Castelvetrano, identify the aerodrome and one bomb away, then set course for Ciacco, same procedure, and on to Borezzo. If a flare path is seen anywhere give it priority and stooge around in that area for a while. All the bombs were dropped on the three targets and no flarepaths were seen. We concluded there were no enemy landings or take-offs, but one aircraft was seen to go down in flames into the sea; probably Sgt. Williams of our squadron who was on his first mission from Africa, although he had done several over Germany. At Castelvetrano there was lots of light flak using tracer, and we felt the heavy flak in some areas was predicted. We were not experiencing the 'thick carpets' of flak ever-present over Germany, perhaps ours was more personal, just a few batteries carefully aiming at one or two Wimpies. It was all go, and on the 23rd. we did an easy 3 1/2 hour trip. 2 hours of which was over Africa. We crossed the Tunisian coast and reached Pantelleria 20 minutes later, an island only 7 miles in length with an aerodrome on the western side. Visibility was poor, but we went straight in and dropped 4,500 lbs. in one stick. These were plotted later as just to the south of the aerodrome. We cruised around out at sea for 20 minutes at 7,000 feet, studying four barrage balloons clearly visible at 5000 feet. On our return however there was no support for this theory from anyone else and we were told it was only heavy flak. This was of course quite possible, in poor conditions and with tired eyes imagination can take over. Within a week however, it was generally accepted that the enemy were deploying barrage ballons [sic] although not in great numbers. Most of our aircraft were not fitted with cable cutters on the leading edge of the wings. Pantelleria was an easy trip and we were advised that it would count only as half a trip towards our 35. We had generally assumed the first tour was 30 trips but it did not seem to worry anyone. The day. after the Pantelleria trip, the Squadron mascot, Wompo, or Wimpy. a pedigree Heinz 69 was killed in action. Whilst he was 31 [page break] merrily chasing some small creature he was accidentally hit by a jeep driven by F/O Langlois, a pilot of 150. He was so badly damaged that one of the lads put him down with his Smith & Wesson .38. On the 24th. we staggered off the desert in "F" for Freddie heading for Sardinia carrying eight 500 pound bombs and some incendiaries and it seemed ages before we reached even 100 feet. I was not aware of the drama in the front office, both the Skipper and Bomb Air were struggling even to keep us airborne. At about 500 feet it was not possible to maintain height and the Skipper had no option but to lighten the load quickly. Two 500 pounders were released and seconds later there was a tremendous bang from down below, but the aircraft began to maintain height. We were just within sight of the Sardinian coast with the engines overheating when the Skipper jettisoned the remaining bombs and nursed the aircraft back to Fontain Chaude. That was our second boomerang. Had we been carrying a 4000 lb. cookie the episode would have had a very different ending. By the 2nd. of June we had completed 6 more trips and moved camp further east, to Kairouan. Our patch of desert was about 6 miles west of the walled City, said to be the fifth most holy in the Moslem world. The place was very dry, and the well 100 yards from our tent was out of bounds. The R.A.M.C. and the Afrika Korps had both marked it as poisoned by their repective [sic] enemies. It was said to contain human remains, but tests carried out just before we moved on showed the water had not been polluted and was 100% fit for drinking. Meanwhile our water was delivered by two water bowsers each of which travelled 30 miles east to Sousse several times each day. Many years later the record shows that neither the Germans nor the Allies polluted any water supplies. After all, both hoped to recapture them and put them back to their own use. On the first night from Kairouan we were credited with one more trip, having completed two halves! That is, two trips to PANTELLERIA. We took off in waves of 3 or 4 throughout the night, arriving over the target 45 minutes later. Our aircraft was "C" Charlie which carried one 4000 pounder. On the first run in we overshot, but came round again and in a typical OTU practice run, Stan Chadderton placed the bomb neatly in the centre of the small town. A 45 minute flight back to base and an hour's respite whilst the aircraft was checked, refuelled and bombed up, then the mixture as before. On the 27th. we were piling into a lorry to go out to the widely dispersed aircraft; the nightly German raid on Sousse was in full swing when a single Ju88 came over to look at our flare path. He was clearly visible and stooged around at will for about 10 minutes before making a run at about 1000 feet dropping 3 bombs in a salvo 300 yards from the Sgts. mess. Nothing was hurt except our feelings and there was no material damage. We had no A-A guns, so the Luftwaffe did not receive the same energetic welcome handed out to us. We relied on Beaufighter squadrons for defence. The R.A.F. policy was reasonable, as the aircraft were dispersed over a wide area and a single stick of bombs would be ineffective against a single aircraft as a target on the ground. We took-off half an hour later for a tour of Sardinia, again with a payload of eighteen 250 lb. bombs. Our only brief was to stooge around between aerodromes and generally make a nuisance of ourselves. There were no allied troops in Sardinia yet so no special care was called for. Our bombs were expected to be released on aerodromes, searchlights and guns. The [page break] main object was to keep the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica on the ground. These trips were not very popular and provided good practice for Ju88 night fighters. We were stood down on the 3rd. June after doing two ops the previous night. We slept all morning and in the afternoon crowded into a lorry and went to the seaside. Monastir, near Sousse and we had our first baths since leaving Blida. We were in good company and had Mare Nostrum to ourselves with tens of thousands of other Allied troops. I have been there several times since and always think of the mass of naked troops in the sea. A good target for the the [sic] German aircraft? Not really, the scores of light A-A guns made it a very dicey target. The Allies must have had well over a thousand aircraft of different types in the area. The Arab town of Monastir was out of bounds to the Army but not, for some probably invalid reason to the R.A.F. We had a 'shufti' and two of us invested in a sort of haircut. Most of the inhabitants seemed to be French, Monastir having been the fashionable part of the Sousse area, The night of the 4th. June was an unlucky one for 150 Squadron. We lost three of our 16 aircraft on the ground without intervention from the enemy. The aircraft were bunched fairly close together, having been bombed-up and ready for take-off. During a final check, a Bombadier accidentally released a flare which lay on the ground. He dashed off to find an Armourer to make it safe but within minutes the flare ignited. Within 15 minutes the whole area was ablaze and three aircraft, M Mike, A Able and P Peter, each complete with over two tons of bombs and full petrol tanks blew up. Our aircraft which was to have taken us twice to Pantelleria that night 'N' Nuts, together with seven others, was severely damaged. About half the squadron went to Panteleria [sic] , 2 half-trips and in full moonlight reported a couple of Ju88's circling the island. One aircraft returned with about 40 square feet of fabric torn off. The following night a new target was added to our growing list, SYRACUSE in eastern Sicily, only a little light flak was encountered, and it was just a matter of bombing the water front. Our main task was in fact to drop leaflets on several of the coastal towns, working our way anticlockwise round Sicily. We passed slightly to the west of Pantelleria on the return leg and saw the Wimpies from the Western Desert squadrons bombing the island. The exact words written in my diary are "bashing hell out of the island". Our own Group Captain - "Speedy" Powell also went to Pantelleria but complained that his bomb did not explode. We riled him that it went into the sea. We were now seeing a great deal more of the British army and the Americans and we were realising just what small cogs we were in all the activity. We had an American guest with us when he ran us over to the Ops. Room in his personal jeep to collect lastnight's aiming point photograph. He noticed in the caption at the bottom of the photograph "280 deg.T" and remarked "Geez, mighty hot up there aint [sic] it?". It refered [sic] to our course, not the temperature, but we did not add any further complication to trying to explain. 33 [page break] in the next 12 days we carried out only two raids, the first an easy one to PANTALARIA [sic], which surrendered the following day, and the second to a new target, MESINA [sic], the straits between the toe of Italia and Sicile [sic] . on the way out we passed very close to our favourite island and across Sicily to the target. The target was already marked with 14 flares by the Western Desert squadrons, and for the first time in North Africa that part of the job was done for us. I noted at the time that "the A-A defences were baffled by the number of aircraft over the target at the same time. There were 34 aircraft and only F/Lt. Langlois ran into trouble. He was caught in the searchlights from both sides of the straits and dropped from 11,000 to 2,000 feet to escape them. In doing so he flew through the balloon barrage, but without further incident. My diary has recently been opened for the first time in over 42 years, so I have not pondered over its accuracy. 34 aircraft simultaneously over the target probably did seem like a thousand bomber raid to us!. Our Bomb Aimer that night was Ft/Lt. Casky, our own being in jail in Tunis. After our last trip to 'the' island we went to Tunis on a 48 hr. verbal pass. The Skipper had the trots, which we all suffered from time to time, and he tried to rest in the tent nearest the toilet trench. Willoughby the Navigator, Stan Chadderton Bombadier [sic] , Harry Dyson the Wireless Op and myself, Rear Gunner. We were each issued with two boxes of American "K" rations, and hitch-hiked first to Sousse and then to Tunis. The first leg was in the back of an Army lorry and the main leg up the coast road by R.A.F. "Queen Mary" which carried about a hundred of us. The whole trip took only 6 hours. The town of Tunis had been in Allied hands for 4 days and there were still a few Germans in hiding. We had given no thought to accommodation which did not seem to be important. Leaving Stan and Di in a canteen abandoned by the Germans, Wally and I eventually found an hotel near the docks area where we were able to book two rooms. I cannot recall the name of the hotel, but the address was 49 Rue de Serbie. The hotel was in very poor condition, no water, all the windows had been blown out, doors smashed, walls cracked and so on. No catering but we had our 'K' rations. Opposite the hotel was a bombed church and all around the buildings were either destroyed or severely damaged. The docks had been our main target in Tunis, and they were destroyed, with all the warehouses practically levelled out. One cargo vessel was beached and two others rested on the bottom. The Arabs were mostly friendly and told us the bomb damage in town was done mainly by 4 engined bombers is daylight, which let us off the hook. The European French were not so friendly, possibly many of them having lost comfortable homes. Some were quite abusive verbally but to others we managed to explain that we flew Chasseurs, pas des bombardiers. In our minds we had liberated the people of Tunis - and the rest of North Africa - from the Germans. We did not fully appreciate that the Arabs saw it differently. The Inglisi and Americans were no different to the Germans and Italians, and they in turn did no less for them than the French. They lived for the day when they would be left to manage their own affairs. In our wanderings around town we met a Tommy who was a Prisoner of War on a ship which had. been bombed at night a few miles out of Tunis. The ship was Italian, homeward bound and had been straffed [sic] by Spitfires during the day. The ship was spotted by two Wellington crews during a night raid on the docks, and the ship was [page break] bombed, then straffed [sic] from a few hundred feet. The vessel came to a halt and the 20 or so Germans and Italians abandoned ship. Three of the several hundred British prisoners had been regrettably killed in the action and all the others managed to get ashore in lifeboats and floats in the final days of the Axis evacuation of North Africa. The ship was without lights which should have been carried. Another 8th. Army private told us he was a P.O.W. being transferred from a lorry onto a boat about a week ago when about 30 Spitfires and Kittyhawks arrived and caused chaos with their 20 and 40 mm. cannon. The guards were overpowered and most of the 500 or so P.O.W.’s managed to get away. He spoke highly of the fighter pilots, convinced the attack was a very well-planned sortie to release the P.O.W.'s., not just to blaze away at anything German that dared to move. He could very well have been correct, On our last evening in Tunis the four of us shared a battle of wine with a meal at a roadside cafe. When we were paying the bill we found there was money left over and asked for another bottle of their excellent wine. As the wine was brought over, a Sgt. M.P. standing behind us shouted "no more wine for them", after which Stan told him to mind his own business. The M.P. then grabbed Stan's arm and held it to his back, but seeing threatening movements from the rest of us, released it. Stan then turned quickly and thumped the M.P. who promptly disappeared. Shortly afterwards two R.A.F. Sgt. S.P.'s came is and asked if we had had some trouble and if so would Stan like to put in a complaint to the Provost Marshal? This seemed like a good countermeasure to a possible charge made by the Sgt. M.P. and Stan accompanied the two R.A.F. S.P.’s to the Provost Marshal's office. In reality this was the jail and as they entered the door the Sgt. M.P. set about Stan who gave as good as he got. But this was inside the jail, Stan was at a big disadvantage and about to spend the first of three nights in it. The jail was is fact next door to our hotel is Rue de Serbie. Willy and I did not suspect that Stan was in trouble, we assumed our S.P.’s were just being helpful, so we sat down again with the bottle. Perhaps Di's conscience was not quite so clear, and when he saw the S.P.'s coming he made himself scarce. We caught up with him later asking an M.P. where he could pinch a Jeep. The M.P. humoured him and directed him to an American car park with lots of Jeeps, but Di had seen a tramcar and decided to pinch that instead. Fortunately the tramcar was off the rails, and he changed his attention to the French tricolour on top of a derelict building. He climbed the building and removed the flag, then Willy and I managed to get him back to the hotel. Di's condition was not due to a session of heavy drinking, we had seen very little of anything alcoholic for a long time and two glasses of local wine would have been more than enough to really get him going. The three of us hitch-hiked back to Kairoaun and reported the loss of one Bomb Aimer to the Skipper. The following day Squadron Leader Miller D.F.C. flew to Tunis and demanded Stan's release from jail. He had a major row with the same Sgt. M.P. who started it all and who was asking what authority the Squadron Leader had. The Squadron Leader pointed to his 2 1/2 rings of rank and the D.F.C. and asked the M.P. whether he thought they were scotch mist. Stan was released and back at Kairoaun was charged with causing an affray, resulting in a Reprimand. The Sgt. M.P. was charged and given a Severe Reprimand and reduced to Corporal. 35 [page break] By the 16th. of June we were operational again as a crew. the target was again NAPLES, a 6 hour 15 min. stooge and rather tiring. There was a full moon and visibility was 25 miles. We could clearly see Pantelaria [sic] to port, and later, north of Sicily, the small island of Maritimo, just the tip of a mountain sticking out of the sea. The Isle of Capri provided a good pin-point. Over the target area there was 9/10ths. cloud so we bombed from above the flares. Flak was moderate and widely spread. There was slight consternation when one of my turret doors fell off for no apparent reason. I wondered what else would fall off but everything else seemed to be intact so it was just a matter of strapping myself in - which according to the book should be so in any case. Just after "bombs gone" I reported a twin-engined aircraft starboard quarter up at 1000 yards. The Skipper started to weave gently. and Di went to the astrodome position to search above the horizontal whilst I -theoritically [sic] at least-- concentrated on below the horizontal. This is not an easy task when the rear gunner is expected to ignore one fighter leaving it to his colleague whilst searching for others. Di became somewhat emotional to say the least, said it was not a fighter but merely flak, and then went on to give a commentry [sic] on searchlight activity and flak at least - by then- five miles away, and of only historical interest. Whilst in a turn to port the other aircraft was directly astern and I identified it as twin engined and without the high tail fin of the Wellington. The Skipper did a diving turn to starboard and we lost the other aircraft. Di claimed it was another aircraft not to be confused with the one he identified as flak! Normally Di stayed at his radio position, it was better that way. On the return journey, either there was a raid on Trapani or someone had strayed off-course. On the 18th. it was again to SYRACUSE, an exceptionally clear night, almost no cloud and a full moon. We could have dispensed with the flarepath on take-off and we felt as if we were doing a day trip. Over the target there was tracered flak up to 7,000 feet and we were geared up to bomb from 5,000 feet. We expected night fighters, and even day fighters, so went straight in at 5000 feet, bombed and straight out again, down to 3,000 feet for a quick tour of several nearby small towns and villages where we dropped leaflets. We were glad to get home that night, such met. and lunar conditions were hazardous. SALERNO again on the 21st, a routine trip, but on the 24th. of June I got a message to call at the 'Orderly Room', which in reality was the bell tent next to the C.O.'s tent. There was great discussion on which particular crime had caught up with me, but it was all very innocent. I came out of the bell tent as a Flight Sargeant [sic] much to the annoyance of the Sgt. Skipper and the three other Sgts. in the crew. It didn't help very much when I told them they need not call me Flight Sgt. ALL the time, just once in the morning and again in the evening. In the early hours of the 26th. June we bombed the naval base of BARI in S. E. Italy, and it was an almost complete fiasco. It was not possible to see the ground due to haze, and the Western Desert aircraft had dropped the marker flares in the wrong place. Fires were started over an area of about 60 square miles, maybe one or two on the target by sheer chance. The target was a small oil refinery built especially to deal with the crude oil from Albania. Important to the Axis because that particular oil needed special treatment which, we were advised, only Bari could provide. We were now spending more and more time over the Italian mainland, for the first time we were seeing concentrations of [page break] lights in the form of a triangle which were assumed to be Prison and Internment Camps. On the way out we saw Trapani being bombed by our colleagues from the Western desert. The following afternoon it was too hot to sleep and I flew with Sgt. Whitehouse, a new pilot from Britain, in a brand new aircraft, 'D' Donald. We traced the path of the 8th. Army to beyond the Mareth line, at about 2500 feet. There were few battle scars; It was hard to appreciate that this was a place of such dreadful carnage so recently. Kairouan was placed out of bounds due to Typhus, and there was nothing in the walled city to tempt us to ignore the order. The Arabs were less friendly and our revolvers were not looked upon merely as a taken of authoriity [sic] . According to a report in a Daily Mirror which took a few weeks to arrive, the lads were reported to have been given a hearty welcome by the French people in the Holy City of Kairouan. Actually there were only a handful of French remaining. Another Daily Mirror headline we found amusing was "BLOCKBUSTERS ON BIZERTA". It went an to say that "Lastnight our Bombers based in North Africa again pounded Bizerta; During the entire raid, blockbusters were dropped at the rate of one every two minutes. Absolutely correct, it was a raid from Blida, but it did not say that the raid was of 2 minutes duration and that we had only two aircraft able to carry the blockbusters. However, we looked forward to reading even an old Daily Mirror and to listen to the B.B.C. when airborne. Some of the stock phrases brought a chuckle at times 'Fires were left burning..', "Rear Gunners straffed [sic] the target..." "All opposition was overcome.." "Many two ton blockbusters ...." etc. etc, It appeared far more impressive in print than in reality doing it. Generally all we saw were explosions and dull red glows, tracer coming up and curving away passed us, and being blinded sometimes by searchlights. We did not picture at the time the loss of life down below and the damage caused to factories and buildings of all descriptions, in any cases, mostly houses. Straffing [sic] was invigorating and served to let off steam, but the supporting arithmetic was disappointing. An aircraft travelling at 180 m.p.h. (264 feet per second) over a target 360 yards in length would take 4 seconds to traverse the target. A .303 Browning has a rate of fire of 1200 rounds per min., the four in the rear turret having a combined rate of 4800 per min., or 80 rounds per second. There is time only for a 4 second burst of 320 rounds - not a lot - The Reargunner sees nothing of the target until it is passed and needs to be told when to open fire by someone in the front office. On straffing [sic] details it is likely the front turret with two guns, and one beam gun would be in use, increasing fire power by 75%, Possibly even a four-second burst once experienced at the receiving end might cause the enemy to duck next time we come by. This was an acceptable technique along a straight road. The aircraft was often fitted with two beam guns, one on each side, but only one was manned. Vision was poor from the beam positions and normally we would pass to one side of the target with one wing low. The gun on the other beam would have been aiming upwards. On the 28th 150 Sqdn. was stood down for 24 hours, but the previous night we paid a visit to SANGIOVANI on the southern toe of the Italian mainland: This was a daylight trip with four squadrons of Wellingtons to the train ferry terminal, a dock or lock which the ferry would enter and the water level be adjusted such that the level of the rails on land and ferry coincided. The train would then be shunted an or off the ferry as required. Flack was intense for 37 [page break] Italian targets and there were trains both on-the ferry in dock and onshore. The whole lot was successfully reduced to a shambles but 6 of our aircraft failed to return. Our heaviest loss yet in a single night. The 30th. of June was Willie's birthday and we celebrated it over MESINA. According to the B.B.C. we are blitzing both sides of the straits, Mesina to the west in Sicily and Sangiovani on the Italian mainland. The straits are only 3 1/2 miles wide, and carry the greater part of all enemy traffic to Sicily, entirely in German control with concentrated light flack [sic] from both sides and from ships in the middle. A trip lasting 5 1/2 hours. The whole crew is beginning to feel the strain of long periods of intense activity. Although most of the memories are of the actual bombing ops., that was only a part of it. Aircraft had to be inspected daily on the ground and also air tested ready for the next trip, before bombing up. The Navigator had to prepare his flight plan prior to take off and this was done also on the many occasions when trips were later cancelled. All of us spent at least some time in the Intellegence [sic] Section to keep up-to-date with the position of the front line and the general trend. It was perhaps in some ways easier for us than for our counterparts in Europe. We had fewer distractions. There was no looking forward to a pint in the local pub. nor getting home to the family for a day or two. Not even the local cinema. There was very little booze to be had, I seem to remember a ration of one bottle of beer per fortnight which I used to take up on an air test to cool it down, and then give to the Armourers after landing. The batman was not going to ask "which suit and shoes are you wearing tonight Sir? " as he did later at Spitalgate. Evening wear was the same as for the rest of the day, shorts, perhaps a shirt, certainly no socks, and sandals on the feet. On the few occasions when we went out of camp we generally wore khaki battledress which we wore also of course on ops. I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep my eyes open at night for long periods, and finding it very tempting to rest my head on the guns and have a doze, but to do so would be absolutely unforgiveable. The Skipper was under an even greater strain and a six hour trip was 6 hours of concentrated effort. On one or two occasions he dozed off for maybe just a few seconds, but fortunately by his side most of the time was Stan Chadderton the Bombardier who very quickly realised the position and watched points up front. The amount of nattering in the air was on the increase, also. It was standard procedure to use oxygen at night regardless of altitude, and the microphones with their electrical heaters were built-in to the mask. Everyone was connected to the intercom system all the time except for the Wireless op. who was able to switch out his own connection when using his radio. Microphones were switched as required by individual wearers. The Skipper's microphone was switched on all the time and so too was the Rear Gunner's in danger areas. Procedures were relaxed somewhat in our particular theatre of war; we could get along quite nicely without oxygen below 10,000 feet and I don't recollect flying much above that height. Whenever I reported anything Di dashed to the astradome [sic] and objected. If the rotation of my rear turret was not rythmical [sic] both the Skipper and Navigator objected. The turret and guns presented an assymetrical [sic] shape to the slipstream with a consequent rudder effect. If I kept the turret facing starboard for too long the aircraft would do a gentle flat turn to starboard. Meanwhile the Skipper was trying to maintain a course determined by the [page break] Navigator who was keeping a watchful eye on his compass, perhaps not appreciating that it was the rear gunner making things difficult. Although the sides of the turret were clad with perspex, it was difficult to see through it with the degree of clarity required. In fact the perspex in front of the turret had been removed to provide a clear vision panel. Even on the ground the whole crew was getting very irritable with each other. For almost a year we had lived worked, ate and near enough slept together almost without a break, the same endless routine, and anything to which we could look forward seemed an awful long way off. Whose turn to carry the water, became a very important issue at times and would lead to an argument [sic] . After some very harsh wards we would agree that it was stupid to argue about such a trivial issue, which in turn led to a bigger argument on who started the argument in the first place. I remember Chad the Bombardier putting paid to the row one day by getting off his bed - known as a pit - and announcing "Well, I've get to go for a **, anyone care to join me'? The loo comprised a trench, 20 feet long, several feet deep and about one foot wide over which one crouched. There was a choice of direction in which to face, and one or two of the bigger chaps preferred to straddle the trench. There was no need to interrupt a conversation in going to the toilet. By the end of June the length of tour was clarified. First it was to have been 30 trips as in Britain, then it had been increased to 40 as some trips were not very hazardous, then some of the trips counted only as halves, and the tour was again changed to be 250 hours of operational flying. The Western Desert tour was said to be 40 trips or 250 hours, whichever was the less. However, there were other things to think about. Sgt. Lee and two other pilots were paraded before the whole squadron Air Crews and called "Saboteurs" by the Group Captain, having between them written off five aircraft in taxiing accidents. Group Captain 'Speedy' Powell was a very keen type and conducted all the briefings himself, was generally the first one off the ground and first back in time for debriefing. Whilst we were resting he would sometimes return to the target in an American twin boomed lightning to try and assess the damage - or find what we had actually bombed! On the night of the 30th. June we were stood dawn and watched 142 Sqdn. take off for southern Italy. The starboard engine of one aircraft cut a few seconds before the aircraft should have get airborne. The aircraft swung and crashed into a jeep which was waiting to cross the 'runway', killing both American occupants and breaking it's back, a complete write-off. My diary makes no mention of the fate of the crew. We had just been issued with a new aircraft, 'B Beer' and I spent most of the day cleaning the guns and turret which were still all greased up as when they left England. Normally this work was carried out by the Armourers, but I was expected to take an active interest in the guns and turrets. The guns were removed, stripped, soaked in petrol, thoroughly cleaned and reassembled, replaced in the newly-cleaned turret and then harmonised. In Britain the harmonising of guns was carried out by placing a board at a predetermined distance in front of the turret and adjusting the ring-sight and guns to line up with specific paints or circles on the board. In North Africa we placed a can or any handy object on the ground 300 yards away and pointed the guns and ring-sight at it. 39 [page break] Another day-off on the 2nd. July and Jumbo Cox, a Navigator on 150 Sqdn. and I hitch-hiked into Sousse and spent a few hours in the sea. After our dip we queued for 20 minutes at a huge marquee and enjoyed the most wonderful mug of tea of all time. I have thought many times in the last 40 years of that mug of tea. The 4th. of July turned out to be the-hottest in temperature we had experienced for a long time. We had bombed TRAPANI in the very early morning. Intensive flack and searchlights with tracer up to 5000 feet. At 2000 feet the temperature was 95 Farenheit [sic] and not much lower at 9,000 feet, our bombing height. I was wearing only trousers and a shirt and was soaked in perspiration. Even the slipstream felt hot when I put one hand outside. Apart from the oppressive heat, it was a routine trip, and we managed to sleep most of the following afternoon, in 130 deg. in the shade. The wind was from the south-west, straight off the Sahara, and several airmen passed out with heatstroke. Metal parts of the aircraft were too hot to touch and a Wellington on the ground of 37 Squadron went up in flames. On the night of the 6th, we were briefed to attack aerodromes in Sardinia, and Sgt. Chandler piloted the first aircraft off. Both engines cut immediately after take-off whilst his undercarriage was still lowered. With full fuel and bomb load he somehow managed to avoid the inevitable and landed in a cultivated area at the end of the runway. Some of the crew suffered minor injuries, but it was 40 minutes before the rest of us were given a green to take-off. The wrecked aircraft was directly under the take-off path. Seven aircraft failed to get off the ground, including ours, all due to engines overheating after running for over 40 minutes on the ground. We had also lost air pressure for the brakes. Of the aircraft which did take off none was successful in finding the target, flouted by bad weather over Sardinia. Sgt. Valentine was above 10/10ths cloud with engines overheating and deemed it necessary to jettison his bombs "over the sea". We were not generally briefed with the positions of Allied shipping convoys, but were routed away from them without being given the reason. Sgt. Valentine decided to return by the shortest route and when has bombs whistled down on the convoy the Navies took a very poor view and let fly with everything they had. This was a well-established practice on the Navy's part, so there was no cause for complaint. In all, that night was a waste of 30 tons of bombs, 4000 gallons of petrol and over 150 flying hours. On the 7th. we visited an aerodrome at COMISO in Southern Italy, delivering 4500 lbs, of bombs. It was a new target to the R.A.F., and apparently undefended, Only three of us managed to locate it and we were lucky in the timing of our 3 flares in obtaining a pinpoint. We obtained good aiming point photograph which showed our stick of bombs had straddled the dispersal area, with the last two landing in the olive groves. Nearly half a century later I wonder why we did not use the radio for communicating with other aircraft in providing mutual assistance. We had no V.H.F. but the TR9 H.F. R/T would have been adequate. Observing Radio silence I feel was taken to extremes, our signals might indicate our presence to the enemy, but they were aware of that in any case. They might home onto us, but our transmissions would have been brief and on a frequency initially unknown to the enemy. They were not equipped to respond fast enough to information gleaned by monitoring, neither was the area covered with direction-finding [page break] stations. I feel this was one of the matters where a principle had been established and which was not reviewed often enough under changing circumstances. On the evening of the tenth of July, just before briefing we heard aircraft engines and it was like being at a cinema show. Wave after wave of Dakota transports thundered overhead on their way to Sicily. It reminded me of the film "An Engishman`s Home" and the massive formations of German bombers, but these aircraft were American and British and were definitely not making a film. At briefing Groupie put us in the picture. "Accurate timing and accurate bombing, more so than ever before" was his opening phrase. We were briefed to bomb a specific part of SYRACUSE whilst paratroops were being dropped close by and other paras were already in position ready to capture our target immediately after the bombing. Flares were dropped accurately and the target successfully bombed, although some bombs went in the sea because of its close proximity. We noted a very large fire at Catania and "a number of queer lights which suggested fifth column activity" according to my diary. 45 years later I wonder how I reached that conclusion. Looking down from about 9,000 feet on the southern coast of Sicily on the return journey, we saw the Navy shelling the coast and several searchlights on shore began to sweep out to sea. One of the searchlights located a ship and held on to it, whilst the others went on sweeping. From another ship there were just three flashes of light, and seconds afterwards, three flashes on shore, one in front of the offending searchlight, one slap on it, and the third behind it. That was one searchlight out of action, and the others switched off in sympathy. The Navy carried on firing without further interruption. My panoramic view of the action from nearly two miles above gave no indication of the destruction and agony caused by those three shots. The following, night it was the turn of MONTECORVlNO in western Italy, a new German aerodrome. Over the target we narrowly missed colliding with Jack Alazrachi in `Q' Queenie. His starboard wingtip scored our port wing and my diary records "a very shaky do". Our stick straddled the aircraft parking area and we took an excellent aiming point photograph of 15 aircraft an the ground. It was later confirmed officially that our two squadrons destroyed 40 aircraft and damaged many more. On the 13th. at briefing, Group Captain Powell grinned and glanced down at his flying boots and said "Yes chaps, we are in for an interesting trip, Jerry is landing a massive convoy at MESINA and we are instructed to smash it." We went out at 6000 ft. above sea level which, over Sicily averaged about 2000 feet above ground. I found it difficult to concentrate on a formal rear-gunner type search, there was so much activity. Ground detail could be seen very easily and the Tactical Air Force was observed bombing all over the island. There were flares everywhere, bombs creating havoc, flak barrages and intensive shelling by the Navies. Over our target, the flak was intense but scattered. Sgt. "Pax" Smith's aircraft was holed, something went through his bombing panel and made two big holes in the front turret. This crew, like most did not include a full-time front gunner, the Bombardier occupied the turret as and when expedient and on this occasion had just returned to the second dickie seat when the aircraft was holed. One aircraft was seen to crash and another, in flames, exploded on hitting the ground. At debriefing we learned that one Wellington of 142 Squadron was missing, 41 [page break] and this was manned by six officers, five of whom had completed one tour over Germany. The sixth, flying as 'second dickie' was on his very first trip. Another new target to us, on the 15th, CROTONIA, an aerodrome on the east coast of the toe of Italy. A routine trip out, good visibility and straight in to the taget [sic] . There were four flak batteries, but Sgt, Mickie Mortimer was just ahead of us and his first stick silenced all four. Our single stick straddled the aerodrome and enlarged the existing fires among aircraft on the ground. We stooged around for a little while watching aircraft blowing up and more bombs adding to the havoc on the ground. When all was quiet we dropped to 250 feet and went in with guns blazing and between us fired about 4000 rounds into the fires, We must have hit something. There were dummy fires to the north and south-east of the aerodrome, very unreal and no-one was fooled by them. On the way out of the target area we were followed. by an aircraft sporting an orange light, and at one stage took light evasive action, but he did not attack. Several other rear gunners reported the same experience, non [sic] was actually engaged. We were routed back round northern Sicily, as usual Trapani was being attacked and other targets nearby were being bombed. We were hoping to see the 142 Sqdn. aircraft with the blue light which we nearly shot down returning from Salerno. The Bombardier in the second pilot's seat reported two aircraft ahead, one with a white light which we assumed to be a decoy. We expected the aircraft to allow us to overtake, and whilst the one with the light drew our attention his chum would sneak is from another dirction [sic] . We lost both the other aircraft for a minute or two, then the aircraft with the light - this time a blue one - reappeared on the starboard bow at about 500 yards. Meanwhile Chad had taken over the front turret, but held his fire. He identified it as a Wimpey. The Skipper altered course and we passed about 100 feet below the Wimpy. I got a plan view of him and confirmed the identification. As he fell behind I flashed dah dah dit, dit dit dit on my inspection lamp. There was no reply from the other aircraft but it landed 15 minutes after us and taxied towards 142 dispersal, On that same trip two of us saw an aircraft at 800 yards on our port quarter up which closed in to 500 yards. He was at too great a range for our .303s, but we were ready for an instant dive to port. He surprised us by turning away to port at about 400 yards, and again two of us identified it as a Wimpey. Enemy aerodromes continued to take up most of our effort, and on the night of the 17th. it was three hours each way to POMIGLIANO near Naples, passing round Vesuvius with it's dull red glow. The target was initially very quiet and consequently not easy to locate. On our first run in at 6000 feet, we were a few minutes early, but dead on time at 4000 feet on our second run. We were caught and held in searchlights, and the light flak was point-blank. Allan Willoughby claimed he could smell it when the Skipper asked him for a course for home after the second run-in. When Stan the Bombardier announced that we still had nine 250 pound bombs aboard, someone suggested we should jettisson [sic] them on the town. Allan suggested we strike at a village a few miles ahead but Stan refused to drop them anywhere except the aerodrome at Pomigliano. The third run-in was at 5000 feet and the searchlights got us again as soon as the bomb doors were open. We were in a cone of eight and it seemed we had the aerodrome to ourselves. The bombing was accurate and we lost height to 2000 feet, all quiet again. My part in all this had [page break] really been that of a passenger listening to and witnessing the drama, and I was not popular when I suggested to the Skipper that we go back at low level and put a few lights out. Chad was in favour and had the front turret in mind, Allan was not keen and didn't like the smell of flak, and Dyson thought the idea was 'plain stupid'. Dyson was probably right for the wrong reason, but the Skipper was thinking we had got away with it for well over 30 trips so far, and there was no point in tempting providence. A three hour stooge back to Blida with nothing but silence on the intercom. Other aircraft were seen in the circuit and our TR9 radio was out of order. This was a very low power transmitter/receiver operating between 4 and 8 MHz. and used by the Skipper to contact Air Traffic Control at Base. If we still had an acceptable reserve of fuel we would have gone away and returned in 30 miniutes [sic] , but fuel was low and the Skipper decided to land without any formalities or delay. This aroused the wrath of the Flight Commander who tore a terrific strip off him next day. Our report at debriefing was very different to that of Sgt. Whitehouse and crew, who said it was a wizard O.T.U. run, bombs slap on the runway, no flak, no searchlights and the whole thing was 'a piece of cake'. He had in fact been to the wrong aerodrome, Crotone, which we had pranged on the 15th. where the defences stayed silent in order not to attract attention. - an old Italian custom -. The reason for the accuracy of the searchlights was a layer of cloud at 10,000 feet, a full moon and clear visibility. We were silhouetted against the cloud even without the searchlights. Two nights later Sgt. Whitehouse, this time officially and with the rest of us, went again to CROTONE. We were all very tired and I found it difficult to keep awake. Visibility was 15 miles with a nearly full moon and on the way out for long periods we actually enjoyed the visible company of other Wimpies. On arrival at CROTONE we were surprised to see fires already started and spent a good five minutes in ensuring that it was indeed the target, Two bombing runs were made, at 3000 feet and 1500 feet, dropping nine 250 pounders each time. The bombs were seen bursting among aircraft on the ground, some of which were already ablaze. 400 yards from the burning aircraft was a small wood which had obviously been hit and was burning merrily. My diary records "from the ground it would have seemed like Nov. 5th. Rockets were going up and verries by the score. Someone had pranged a pyrotechnic store." We made a third run at 200 feet and spent some 1500 rounds at the aircraft on the ground. Other gunners did the same. We were amazed to find everything so easy, and no opposition as far as we know, our raid on the 15th. should have given them a good idea of what to expect. There were no dummy fires and still they make no effort to disperse aircraft. The absence of fighters was strange; even day-fighters would have been very effective under those conditions. One crew reserved an odd bomb for the village south of the arodrome [sic] . It had a 36 hour delay and landed in the centre of the village. Not a very nice thing to do, and an act certainly not in accordance with our leaflets. Sgt. Pax Smith the intrepid Kiwi was on the last trip of his tour and elected to hit a railway bridge near the coast. It also had a' 36 hour delay fuse and missed the bridge by 50 yards. The British army was not at all happy with Smithy's effort, they planned to use the bridge within a week or two and were going to some considerable trouble to make sure the enemy 43 [page break] didn't blow it up. They hadn’t counted on Smithy, but fortunately he wasn't quite up to scratch an that last trip. One night off and then back try the 'Big City" , the capital of Italia, not to be confused with the really big one, the Capital city of Deutchland, with which there was absolutely no comparison. It was over two months since we had been to Rome, and it was still supposed to be an 'Open, undefended City'. Our specific target was PRACTICA DI MERE, an aerodrome just to the southwest of Rome. The Groupy had made it very clear at briefing, that nothing must be dropped on Rome itself. The target would be marked by flares positioned by W/O Coulson of 142 Squadron. We had no target map but the the [sic] aerodrome was plotted on the map of Central Italy - probably half million scale -. As we were passing the island of Maratimo, Chad was in the second dickie seat, map in hand and decided to get a clearer view of Maratimo by opening the sliding window at his side. The map disappeared out of the window, but with Allan's D. R. navigation we reached the target as Coulson's flares went down. Target marking at that stage of the war in Italy was in its infancy and was carried out with flares designed for lighting up the ground. These were very different from the coloured Target Indicators used to such great effect over Germany. Bombing was not particularly accurate, but well clear of Rome itself, where there was plenty of light flak and searchlight activity which exploded the myth about an undefended city. This activity extended down the Tiber to the Lido di Roma, where the Radio Station was still operating. The Vatican was blacked out very effectively On the 25th. we started 8 days leave, taking an aircraft back to Blida for an engine change and major inspection. We took advantage of the stores at Blida and were issued with new uniforms, shoes and anything we wanted, just a matter of signing for it, it was two years before the system caught up with me and I was debited with the cost. [page break] [bearer document in English and arabic] [page break] [photograph] [photograph] TWO OF OUR AIMING POINT PHOTOS 44A [page break] The first three days were spent in Algiers with Harry Dyson at the Hotel Radio Grand but the inactivity - or something - was too much for Harry so we returned to Blida, only to find the rest of our party had adjourned to the rest camp at Surcouf. I spent most of my time in the next few days in Blida, partly with a French-Arab family Iloupcuse Moka Mourice Bijoutier, at 11 Rue Goly, Blida. 30 years later I was able to find the area but no-one recognised either the name or the address. Like most places, Blida had changed a lot in the intervening years. I remembered it as an almost typical French village, beautifully clean, tables and chairs outside the cafes, and a very pleasant atmosphere. After 20 years or so of independence it was a very different story, and I thought a rather sad one. I made several excursions into Algiers where the Yanks had become very well organised. They had-taken over and re-organised six cinemas, all with continuous shows for about 12 hours per day, and open house to Service personnel. I visited all six. The N.C.O.'s Club in Rue d'Isley was our base camp in Algiers, where we enjoyed endless cups of tea and cakes. The Malcolm Club, exclusive to R.A.F. personnel provided a good hot meat each evening. It was on this leave that I visited the local Match Factory at Caussemille, being an ardent Philumenist - collector of matchbox labels-. The factory was at that time owned and operated by the French and I was given a conducted tour of the factory. Most of the labels presented to me at the factory are in my collection to this day. My next visit to the factory was 37 years later, when I met with a very cool reception. The French had gone long ago, only their name remained. In that area of Algiers, all the street names were written on the street signs in Arabic except one, Caussemille. This was the name of an old French or Belgian family of match manufacturers possibly difficult to translate into Arabic. I met several of the chaps from the Rhodesia training days, one had joined Coastal Command and was detached from 'U.K. to Maison Blanche on White Wimpies. It had taken him six months to complete 100 hours and he was rather gloomy about the next four hundred to complete his tour. He was in fact rather nervous, his job being mine-sweeping; I asked him "what height do you fly at?" He replied that `it was a two-dimensional job, no such thing as height'. Causing magnetic mines to blow up by flying over them at very low level could not have been very pleasant. Maison Blanche is now known as El Beda, the International airport of Algeria, not so well organised as it was in 1943, and not half so busy! Blida aerodrome is the Headquarters of the Algerian Air Force and is a prohibited area to foreigners. At the end of our 8 days in comparitive [sic] civilisation, we were glad to collect our newly serviced Wimpey and return to Kairouan. I was immediately recruited to fly with Sgt. Stone to MARINA DI PAOLA. We stooged over northern Sicily is daylight and very close to Trapani our old favourite which had been severely bashed about. During the invasion it was subjected also to heavy Naval shelling. Being with a different crew perhaps made things more interesting, seeing how they reacted to various aspects, and I thought they had a rather strange and formal appoach [sic] . We did not see our bombs burst and our photoflash failed to go off. There was none of the usual binding we experienced with our own crew, everyone was pleasant, courteous and cheerful. At debriefing Group Captain Powell said "Good Show chaps, I expect you are glad to get onto ops at last, and that's the first one done". I was speechless but thinking about their next 44, maybe they were also. I can see "Speedy Powell" very clearly making 45 [page break] that statement, a memory revived recently in the film "Target for Tonight" in which he was the Flight Lieutenant taking the briefing; the same very distinctive and distinguished voice. On the night of the 4th., the crew not feeling particularly refreshed after its leave, our target was BATTAPAGLIA. It was daylight almost to the Italian Coast and we arrived with 20 minutes to spare, circling the target area. 'Bang on time we dropped the flares, but there were no bright lights'. The twenty minutes of sight-seeing had upset the routine and the flares were dropped on 'safe', and therefore failed to go off. We still had two flares so went down to 3000 feet and dropped the bombs through 9/10ths cloud using individual flares. 90 seconds after bombing, Stan identified the target 4 miles ahead. We had neither bombs nor flares left, and were depressed at putting up such a rotten show on what turned out to be the last trip of our tour. We could have done a spot of straffing below cloud, but instead called it a day. The following night we waved the boys off to MASINA, and we felt rather sad that we were no longer operational. Sqdn. Ldr Garrad and crew were also no longer operational, having failed to return from MASINA. Someone suggested staying and doing another tour, but Dyson thought the idea was "stupid" - like most other ideas - and with deep regrets we said cheerio to our friends on 150 and 142 Squadrons, and climbed in the back of a lorry bound for Tunis. Pax Smith and Mickey Mortimer and crews were with us and we sat back and enjoyed the scenery, some taking pot-shots at nothing in particular with their revolvers. We had in fact lots of unofficial ammunition of 9mm. calibre, captured from the enemy. This fitted nicely into our .38 Smith & Wessons and differed from the .38 ammo. only in that it had no ejection flange at the end of the cartridge. This had the effect that we could use captured enemy ammo. but they could not use ours because of the flange. We arrived at no. 2BPD in Tunis just in time for dinner and a cold shower, the first shower for about nine months. During our week or so in the Transit Camp, we had a sort of parade each morning and then were free for the day. It was on one of these parades that our Skipper's name was called to approach the C.O. "Sir, 416170". With no prior warning, the citation was read out and he was presented with the D.F.M. Next it was the turn of Mickey Mortimer to march up and also receive a D.F.M. I seem to recall that he did a somersault before saluting in front of the C.O., or was it a back somersault after receiving the award? either of which today seems quite incredible. Pax Smith had already received a D.F.M for his earlier exploits. My one other recollection of the Transit Camp was an old Italian Water Tanker which was used as a static water tank. It held 10,000 gallons of water and must have weighed over 53 tons when full. All 24 wheels were firmly embedded in the sand up to their axles. It was when we departed from Tunis by lorry for Algiers that one of the Canadian officers decided to hitch-hike back to U.K. and to rejoin the party at the Reception Centre. I learned later that he flew first to Algiers with the R.A.F. and then flew to U.K. with the Yanks. He was an old hand at that sort of thing, having hitch-hiked from Blida to New York and back with a colleague in less than a week. Meanwhile the rest of us travelled the 500 miles to Algiers by lorry along the coast road, and after a few days in the transit camp boarded a troopship, the Capetown Castle, a passenger liner of the Castle line. We were accommodated in 4-berth cabins with full peace-time fascilities [sic] . [page break] each cabin was allocated one Italian P.O.W. who slept outside the door, and attended to the cleaning, dhobi etc. We were not impressed by the Italians as fighting men, but had no complaints of their ability and willingness in the job they were then doing. It was a very comfortable voyage and we lived it up in a manner to which we were certainly not accustomed. After a very pleasant and restful 10 days or so we disembarked at Greenoch and I recollect forming up on the key [sic] prior to joining a train for Liverpool and West Kirby. A rather pompous redcapped Military Policeman called us to attention, right turn, at the double, march! It was more astonishment than lack of discipline which caused everyone to stay put. He was told to get his knees brown and get a few other things too, and we walked to the train, deliberately out of step. Our first steps back in England were certainly not going to be at the double ordered by Red Caps. This was my fourth visit to West Kirby, where we were rekitted, saying cheerio to our Khaki battledress and tropical kit, documents checked, medical exam. and then disembarkation leave. It was at West Kirby that our Crew was really disbanded, very sad after working as a team for so long, but another phase of our careers was completed. Of the Crew? Stan Chadderton was commissioned on his second tour and we have met several times in the past 40 years, but I have no news of the Skipper and the rest of the crew. Stan met the Skipper, then a Flight Lieutenant at Brise [sic] Norton at the end of the war on his return from a German P.O.W. camp. We can only hope he returned safely to New Zealand and was able to return in the farm. Allan Willoughby is thought to have ended the war as a Squadron Leader. My association with the Wimpy was not yet over, however, it was still in use in large numbers in the U.K. for operational training, and was to remain so until the end of the war. More "Wimpys" were built than any other operational. bomber. 47 [page break] [document from C-in-C] [page break] [photograph] C.W WITH MUM BARNOLDSWICK [photograph] [photograph] HILDA WITH THE SKIPPER AND BOMB AIMER 48A [page break] [photograph] [underlined] WITH THE SKIPPER & BOMB AIMER – SECOND HONEYMOON SEPT. 1943 [/underlined] [photograph] [photograph] [underlined] AT OUR CHALET AT BLIDA [/underlined] WATSON – RUTHERFORD- DYSON – CHADDERTON & PADDY (MORTIMER’S FRONT GUNNER) [photograph] [underlined] OUR 150 SQDN. SKIPPER SGT. STAN RUTHERFORD 416170 RNZAF [/underlined] [underlined] A WIMPEY AT BLIDA [/underlined] 48B [page break] [photograph] AT RICHMOND SECOND HONEYMOON [photograph] 48B [page break] [warrant officer parchment] 52A [page break] [underlined] Screened [/underlined] . September 1943 saw me at 84 O.T.U. Desborough, a Flight Sgt. with 43 ops under my belt, and that wonderful feeling of being ex-operational. For the next six months or so I was to be a "Course Shepherd", responsible for 12 Air Gunners. Desborough was a typical Operational Training Unit where, in the main, newly-trained aircrew were introduced to operational aircraft and the techniques of dealing with the opposition which was by no means limited to the Germans. There were three courses running simultaneously which gave ample scope to the Captains in making one of their most important decisions, that of selecting their crews. For the first two weeks or so the training comprised mainly lectures and familiarisation with equipment. Air Gunners were generally able to make an early start with the flying where even on circuits and bumps an extra pair of eyes was to advantage. The Course Shepherd ensured the smooth-running of the Air-Gunners training. There were specialist instructors for lectures on subjects such as guns, turrets and tactics, but the C.S. supervised their flying aspects and work on the range, in detail. I particularly enjoyed the Fighter Affiliation sessions, where trainee gunners would take over the rear turret whilst being attacked by one or two Miles Masters or any other "Playmate" who could be cajoled officially to co-operate. I would stand at the astrodome guiding the gunner with the timing of his advice and instructions to the Pilot. The standard evasive action (referred to later in 5 Group as "Combat Manouvre [sic] ") was the corkscrew, well known to, and anticipated by, the enemy, I might add that until I arrived at 84 OTU I had never even heard of the corkscrew. During the OTU excercises [sic] the fighter pilots were generally sporting enough not to press home their attacks with too much determination, but to allow the bomber sometimes to 'escape', thus giving the rear gunners - or some of them-- the false impression that they actually stood some chance of survival. I felt quite at home in the "Wimpy" and encouraged the pilot to throw the aircraft around, and make the corkscrews rather more violent to simulate a real attack, where a quick getaway was the only solution to survival. For fighter affiliation excercises [sic] , the turret was equipped with an 8mm. Camera Gun, fitted in place of one of the four .303 Browning machine guns, the remaining three Brownings being de-armed. Each gunner plugged-in his own personal film cassette, and results were assessed the following day in the cinema. Air firing excercises [sic] were supervised, where the speed of the Wellington was reduced, and a Miles Master would overtake about 3 or 400 yards abeam, towing a drogue. The gunner would be authorised to fire when the towing aircraft was outside his field of fire. He would then fire off about 200 rounds from each gun (five 2-second bursts), at the drogue. It was more than likely that air firing during his initial training had been carried out using a single gun not mounted in a turret. Air to ground firing was limited to a single exercise on a range near the coast, there being little scope for this type of work for heavy bombers over Deutchland. Not very popular with the coming of Winter weather were the exercises at the firing butts or range. Six trainees would each be given a rear turret, together with four belts each of 200 rounds. He would 49 [page break] mount the guns and fit the ammunition belts. Take-off procedure with safety catches 'on', then firing a few short bursts, landing procedure, clear the guns, etc. . Generally a few faulty rounds were deliberately built-in to create gun stoppages which the trainee had to clear. Finally he removed the guns from the turret and stripped and cleaned them ready for the next trainee. All this took about three hours and it was on one of these sessions that unpleasantness developed with one of the trainees. Of the 12 Air Gunners in my little flock, eleven were Sergeants and one was an Acting Pilot Officer on probation. Like the others, his previous flying experience was limited to about 8 hours, and he had not yet been within 10 miles of an operational aircraft. He had been top of his course at Gunnery School and granted a Commission. I found that one of the Sergeants had fitted the guns in the turret and armed them with the belts of ammunition for him whilst I was busy with the others. He had managed to fire-off the rounds, and eventually, with some assistance the guns were removed. He flatly refused to clean the guns, claiming that it was an inappropriate task for an officer. I put it to him that although on a squadron the guns would be lovingly cared for by the armourers, he must still be fully au-fait with every aspect of guns and gunnery. He firmly refused to touch the guns and soil his hands and I told him that unless he gets on with it, we should be late for lunch. Four of the sgts. each took a gun and cleaned them. Some very cryptic comments were made by the Sergeants and I told the Ag. P. O. he was foolish. Later that day, to my absolute astonishment, I was marched in front of the C.O. and charged on a form 252 with insubordination. I was advised that an N.C.O. does not give orders to officers and I replied with something to the effect that I was the instructor and the officer the pupil, giving orders was an essential part of the job. Nevertheless, I was severely reprimanded. I had on several occasions applied for a posting back to operations, and the following day the Station W.O. told me my request had been granted and I was going to a squadron at Norton, near Sheffield in Yorkshire. Which squadron and with what type of aircraft was unimportant. I had never heard of Norton, bit hush-hush they had said. I should have realised that something was amiss, I was not being posted, but only detached. On arrival at Norton I found I was on an Aircrew Refresher Course which I was slow to realise was a correction or discipline course, a form of punishment. There were about 150 aircrew at Norton, from Flt/Lts to Sgts, almost all operational or ex-operational. At least I was among friends. The day started with a call at 0600, on parade at 0630 , march to breakfast and an inspection at 0730 with greatcoats, followed almost immediately by a further inspection without greatcoats. This was followed until 1800 by sessions of drill, P.T. and lectures, with a break for lunch. Drill was just ordinary uninspiring square -bashing, wearing aircrew-issue shoes, and not boots. The instructor, said to be an L.A.C. Ag-Sgt. shouted commands and abuse, and was indeed very smart and probably efficient at his job, but utterly ignorant and useless off the barrack square. There was no rifle drill, and requests to introduce it were rejected. It was too easy for us to obtain .303 ammunition. P. T. was equally uninspiring and great emphasis was placed on recording improvement in performance as the training progressed. Lectures were farcical and covered most aircrew subjects, including navigation, gunnery, bombing techniques, target marking, etc. etc. There was not a [page break] flying badge among the instructors and obviously none had any flying experience in any capacity. No-one could possibly take the lectures seriously and there must have been some hair-raising answers in the written tests. The main problem was that at the slightest provocation one could be put on C.O.'s report. This was not a formal charge - which would have been on record - but an interview with the C.O. which would generally wind-up with an award of an extra 3 weeks at Sheffield. My policy was to keep my head down, or in modern parlance, to maintain a low profile. I generally managed to be near the back of the classroom and in the rear ranks on the drill square trying to be invisible. We were allowed out of camp after 1900, with an inspection at the gate, but lights out was at 2200, not allowing much scope. Most evenings were spent in the mess comparing notes and discussing our "crimes"; the instructors were conspicuous by their absence. I recall no-one admitting to flying or taxiing accidents, or misdemeanours whilst flying. Most of the reasons seem to have been absence without leave probably through boredom-, saying the wrong thing in an off-guarded moment or making someone more senior look silly. There was no connection between Norton and aircrew who were alledgedly [sic] L.M.F. or those who were reluctant to fly. Rather than charge a man formally with an offence, the easy way out was to send him on a "refresher course" with no reference to alleged crime or punishment. Operational aircrew discipline is often quoted as having been unique. All jobs were carried out with the same degree of dexterity, and responsibilities in the air within a trade were the same irrespective of rank. The Pilot was the Head Man, whether Squadron Leader or Sergeant. In the air, there were no formalities. The Pilot was 'Skipper' and no-one called anyone 'Sir'. This was generally so on the ground within the confines of the crew, but if it was a non-crew matter or there were V.I.P.'s about, a low-level type of formality might be introduced. Neither was there time for formality in the air where an attack may start and finish - one way or another - in seconds or less. On sighting a fighter at 300 yards a Rear Gunner in a film picked up a microphone and was beard to say "I say Skipper, I think we are being followed". A Guardsman might come up with "Permission to speak Sir", but life's not like that in the air. Nearing the end of the 3-week course at Sheffield came the farcical final exams. I sailed through everything except P.T. where we were required to run 100 yards in 14 seconds. I was feeling fitter than I had for many years, but that 100 yards took me 17 seconds. Not good enough, try again. The second attempt took 19 seconds and the third attempt 24. I was told that "we would keep doing it all bloody night until I achieved it in 14 seconds". I merely said there was no point in attempting the impossible and I refused to carry out an unlawful order. So for me it was C.O.'s report next day. The C.O. said it was within his power to grant me an indefinite extension to the length of my course. I realised that to argue was probably futile and I recall being contradictory by saying something to the effect that "I have nothing to say except to remind everyone there is a real war going an out there and the sooner some of us get on with it the better". I don't know why I said it or thought what it might achieve, but I was easily provoked. I was awarded an extra 3 weeks at Sheffield, and was very surprised next morning when I was issued with a railway warrant to leave that morning with the others on my "course". I was convinced this was a mistake and succeeded in remaining invisible until I was well clear of Sheffield. 51 [page break] Most of us felt the invasion of Europe was imminent and we had discussed our plans in the mess within earshot of the 'instructors'. When the balloon goes up, we return to base regardless of the opposition on the grounds that it was our duty to escape from captivity. In retrospect this was not entirely logical thinking but it might have influenced the C.O., I don't know. As far as I know there was no mass exodus and I have no idea how or when R.A.F. Norton was finally closed down. Suffice to say that it was a disgrace and an insult to aircrew, it would have been far more British to charge a man if he had allegedly done something wrong rather than take this easy way out. In general, training and lectures were taken very seriously by air crew and it could be claimed that the type and standard of lectures at Norton were in fact dangerous. Most of us realised it was just a load of absolute rubbish and did not take it seriously, and we had learned long ago to assess the value of the spoken word relative to the background and qualifications of the speaker. The question of L.M.F. is an even more deplorable but entirely separate subject. Books have been written about it and it became a highly controversial issue. There were indeed some chaps who took such a bashing they felt they had had enough and to continue would increase the risk to the aircraft and crew or even crews. Most other operational aircrew have no less respect for them for admitting it and asking to be excused. L.M.F. and R.A.F. Norton were totally unconnected. However, feeling very fit physically, and mentally ready to deal with the Ag. P. O. who knew all about the form 252 but couldn't strip even a Browning gun, I returned to 84 O.T.U. Desborough. A written request for an interview with the C.O. was given to the S.W.O. within minutes of arrival. I saw the Gunnery Leader and learned that I was to resume charge of the same course but less the sprog officer who was last seen on his way to Eastchurch as L.M.F and unsuitable for operations. I found later that he had been reduced to the ranks. It seems the other instructors had given him a very hard time all round, and particularly with combat manouvres where he was sick every time he flew. It was just not done to issue 252's but his chances of survival were improved. The C.O. agreed later that a mistake had been made and on paper my case had been reconsidered and the severe rep. withdrawn. Sheffield could not be undone and would have to be written off to experience, but he would see if he could hasten my promotion to W.O. and a posting to a real squadron. At this time, the O.T.U. instructors were all crewed up and ready to back up the operational squadrons if necessary. Many of us were getting restless seeing a great increase in ground activity to the south and southeast. Lots of real aircraft, Lancasters, Halifaxes, Mosquitoes, Gliders etc. etc. and our status with the Wimpies as ex operational did little for our ego, making us feel like the 'has beens' we really were. At about 0200 on the 6th. June, now a Warrant Officer, I was Orderly Officer and asleep in the duty room. The Duty Officer, a Ft/Lt. was flat out in the other bunk. A message was delivered marked "Top Secret" and I awakened the Duty Officer. He told me to open it. The message caused his to open a sealed envelope from his pocket and his exact words were "Christ, it’s started". 'It' was "Operation Overlord". Within a minute the Tannoy was blaring "All Duty Flight personnel to their flights immediately" 'All sreened aircrews to the Briefing Room 53 [page break] at 0500," and so on. There followed a day of intense activity; air tests, bombing up, briefing, changing the bomb load, rebriefing, and the job of Orderly Officer went completely by the board. In July, the great moment arrived, and our complete second tour crew of five was posted to Aircrew Pool at Scampton en route ultimately to a 5 Group Squadron. [page break] [photograph] [photograph] [photograph] AT AIRCREW POOL SCAMPTON AUG ‘44 54A [page break] [underlined] SCAMPTON [/underlined] For Wellingtons we were indeed a complete crew, but we were not destined for Wellingtons, but Lancasters, and we needed either a Navigator or Bomb-aimer and another Gunner. Our Pilot and Observer had already completed tours on Blenheims and were good material for Mosquitos. They said cheerio on our third day at Scampton and were posted to a Mosquito Conversion Unit. The remaining three of us had ceased to exist as a crew and had become “odd bods”. We began to feel like members of staff but eventually we went our individual ways. Indeed I was put in charge of the Night Vision Centre for two months, until I met a pilot who was a Flight Lieutenant with a tunic that had obviously seen some service, and he had over 3,000 flying hours to his credit. With him was a Flying Officer Observer plus DFM, obviously clued up and who looked the academic type, a cheerful Flying Officer Bomb aimer and a Pilot Officer Rear Gunner. Four clued-up characters forming the nucleus of a gen crew. Somehow or other I became their other gunner and we were joined by a second tour F/Sgt Wireless operator and a Sgt. Flight Engineer ex fitter. A few days later we were posted to Winthorpe to 1661 Heavy Conversion Unit and settled into a course on Stirlings, flying together for the first time as a crew. Familiarisation with a four-engined aircraft was the main purpose of the course; important to the skipper F/Lt. Chester who had been a Flying Instructor on Tiger Moths in Canada for a long time. He was about 8 years older than the rest of us and we were happy with his rather more mature approach to the job. The Flight Engineer, Sgt. Hampson, whom we called Doogan for no apparent reason, had flown on Liberators over Burma and nothing seemed to worry him unduly. F/O Pete Cheale was successful on two or three practice bombing sessions, and to F/O Ted Foster DFM it was all just routine stuff. F/Sgt. Frank Eaglestone’s radio was the same as on his previous tour, the good old R1155 and T1154 (still in service in 1960). The Rear Gunner was P/O Harvey who nattered endlessly about a chunk of flack [sic] still embedded somewhere about his person, and his first tour in general. He knew it all, or thought he did, but it soon became apparent that his experience was very limited and he had yet to do his first trip against the enemy. Because of this I insisted that he should have the mid-upper turret, and as Senior gunner, pulling a negative seniority in rank, I would take over the rear turret. He didn’t like that at all, and he left the crew. What became of him I don’t know, but Flt/Sgt Foolkes appeared from somewhere and took his place. Pete was one to take everything in his stride and was welcome to either turret. He preferred the mid-upper, possibly finding it more comfortable, being much taller than the average rear gunner. As for me, one rear turret was very much like another, the same Frazer Nash FN120 we had used on the later Marks of Wellington. A few mod cons perhaps, such as Hot air central heating in the turret. I recall that when we touched down on the runway at Winthorpe, the rear turret was still over the graveyard on the other side of the main road. Whilst at Winthorpe, I found that 150, my old squadron, was about 20 miles away at Hemswell. I paid them a visit, but their only real link with the 150 of North Africa was the squadron number. 150 Squadron had been disbanded in Algiers though it’s final station was Foggia in Italy. I left 55 [page break] it at Kairouan just before the move to Italy. Later it was re-formed with Lancasters and in theory had been in action since the beginning of the war, having been at the forefront with Fairey Battles in 1939-40 in France. After about three weeks of routine and not very demanding training we graduated to the “Lanc” Finishing School” at Syerston. There we converted to Lancasters with about 14 hours flying, circuits and bumps, the odd practice bombing exercises, fighter affiliation and a Bullseye over London, co-operating with searchlights. Just what the Londoners down below thought of this aerial activity without an air raid warning was probably misconstrued. We were still in one piece, feeling fit, very confident and ready to join a squadron. Our next move was to Bardney, near Lincoln, about 160 bods, and judging by their ranks and gongs, a rather experienced bunch, mostly second tour types. Bardney was the home of 617 and 9 Squadrons, rumours were rife of course. Were we obvious replacements for 617, where prestige was high and directly proportionate to the losses, - the highest in the Command? Our luck held, we were to become a new squadron, 227, just an ordinary Lancaster Squadron to enhance the might of 5 Group. It transpired that we were to become “A” Flight, and the Skipper was promoted to Squadron Leader. Meanwhile “B” Flight was forming at Strubby. [page break] [underlined] 227 SQUADRON [/underlined] The first op. by aircraft of the newly-formed 227 Squadron was on the 11th. of October 1944 and most of us at Bardney were not even aware of it. Only three aircraft of "B" Flight, forming up at Strubby, were involved, a short early afternoon trip to FLUSHING. Three nights later "A" Flight provided three aircraft and "B" Flight four aircraft on a more typical raid by 240 aircraft of 5 Group on BRUNSWICK. The Squadron was beginning to take shape and on the 17th., two aircraft of "B" Flight joined 47 others on a short excursion to breach the dyke at WESTKAPELL. Two nights later was a 5 Group effort to NUREMBURG, with "A" and "B" Flights providing seven and five aircraft respectively. This fourth raid by 227 aircraft was only "A' Flight's second involvement, the aircraft and crews really becoming attached for this purpose to 9 Squadron. On the 21st. October we were transferred to Balderton, at the side of the A1 near Newark and joined the crews of "B" flight. Our Skipper had been promoted to Sqdn/Ldr. in command of "A" Flight, and was very such absorbed in getting his half of the squadron organised and operational, with little time left for actual flying. Our crew was kept busy in their respective sections, particularly Navigation, Bombing and Wireless, but there was not a great deal to be done in the Gunnery office: The Gunnery Leader was Flt/Lt. Maxted who occupied a small office in a sectioned-off Nissen hut. It was barely furnished with a desk and a few chairs; posters on the wall amplifying the vital issues and a notice board. The state of readiness of each aircraft and gunner was displayed with a record of daily inspections completed. The D.I. 's were an important part of the routine, and the gunners generally took part in the air tests prior to bombing up. Our first mission as a crew was to Bergen in Norway. It was also a personal first trip for the Skipper, Bomb aimer and Flight Engineer. It was my 46th. op. but also my first in the mighty Lancaster. The Navigator, Wireless op. and Mid-upper gunner were all veterans having carried out their first tours on Lancs. Our flight out over the North Sea which used to be called the German Ocean by some was uneventful, and Bergen was approached from the east at 10,000 feet. With the target ahead and in sight to those in the front office, all was quiet except for engine noise through someones [sic] microphone which had been left switched on. Peace was shattered by an almighty bang and shudder, confirming we had been hit, and the nose of the aircaft [sic] went down. I was forced against the left side of the turret unable to move, and found later the speed had built-up to over 370 mph. The Skipper was shouting for assistance. Ace the Navigator somehow managed to crawl forward a few feet and found Doogan with his head in the observation blister admiring the view of Bergen above. The Skipper had both feet on the dash trying to pull the aircraft out of the dive. The only control Ace could reach was the trimming wheel on the right of the Skipper's seat and he turned this to make the aircraft tail heavy. The nose came up and so did the target. The Flight Engineer added his contribution by exclaiming "Coo, i'n' [sic] it wizard". That was his opinion, but we were heading straight up the fiord and Ace brought this to the attention of the Skipper very smartly. Our height was down to 1500 feet and Ace and the Skipper somehow managed to turn the aircraft through 180 57 [page break] degrees without hitting either the sea or the hills. Still tail heavy, we gradually climbed away to the west, and for the first time I saw the target, dead astern, always a welcome sight, and I set about sorting myself out from the intercom. leads, electrical heating cable, oxygen pipe and also checking that the turret doors would still open. Silence was broken about 100 miles from Bergen by our brash young Canadian Bomb Aimer, Pete Chiele, "Skipper, we still have the bombs-aboard". I think It-was Ace, who pulled the jettison toggle. At least my turret seemed intact and I took the opportunity of the lull in the drama of opening the turret door with my elbows, leaning backwards into the fuselage and making sure I could reach my parachute pack. Then a quick reversal and I was again "on the job” after a break of less than ten seconds. On the Wimpey and Lanc. the Rear Gunner had a choice of exits, either through the rear escape hatch inside the fuselage, or direct from the rear turret. I was well rehearsed in the latter method, first to rotate the turret dead astern, using the manually operated handle if there was no hydaulic [sic] pressure, then to open the sliding doors. These never failed to open on practice sessions, but an axe was provided inside the turret just in case. Then to remove the parachute pack from its housing and drag it carefully into the turret, placing it above the control column. Off with the helmet complete with oxygen mask, intercom, 24 volt supply and associated pipes and cables and also the electrical heating cable connector. The parachute pack was then clipped on, the turret rotated onto either beam, lean backwards and push with the feet. The alternative exit gave one more room to manouvre [sic] , but the escape hatch itself was rather narrow for a Rear Gunner wearing his full flying kit, particularly the 1944 version of "Canary suit", so-called because of its colour. There was also the phsychological [sic] aspect of deliberately entering an aircraft which was probably on fire. On the Wellington Mk1C with an FN20 turret and only two guns, there was provision to stow the 'chute pack inside the turret. Also the doors were hinged, opening outwards and they could be jettisoned. Although I mentioned being well rehearsed, drill was carried out with the aircraft stationary and upright, not quite the same as in an anticipated emergency bale-out. My only excuse for claiming the checking of my 'chute as practice was that I felt I should be doing something more useful than just sitting there, whilst there seemed to be so much happening up front. There was even more drama unfolding, the Wireless op. had passed a coded message to the Navigator instructing us to divert to Holme on Spalding Moor in Yorkshire, but only the W/op was issued with the code-sheet of the day. The Skipper did not receive the message in plain language until we were in R/T contact with Balderton, which was closed due to thick fog or very low cloud. However, the Navigator knew our exact location and there was fuel in the tanks. Eventually we re-joined the tail-end of the gaggle and landed at Holme. I recall spending the rest of the night on the floor in the lounge of the Sgts. Mess. The following morning we took a walk around the hangars and Doogan chatted with some ground crews who were changing an engine on a Halifax. He actually told then they were not going about it properly and their reaction was quite startling and informative. Our second trip as a crew was two days later, to WALCHEREN in daylight. This was more reminiscent of our raids from North Africa except that 110 aircraft, including 8 Mosquitoes, took part. From North Africa our "Maximum Effort" had been two squadrons, a total of 26 aircraft, which [page break] seemed a lot at the time!. 12 aircraft from 227 took part, each having its own specific target, ours being a gun battery which was already completely submerged in water when we arrived. Just ahead several aircaft [sic] were bombing the sea wall and the Skipper decided to back them up, bombing from 3500 feet. The wall was breached and the sea poured through, but our bombs were all fused for delayed action which would not have amused the natives. In fact too much damage was done which, according to a story in Readers Digest, took over six months to repair. However, the main object was to silence the German artillary [sic] and this was achieved. This particular trip had been our introduction to the "formation" known as the "5 Group Gaggle". Pilots were not very practiced at Straight and level flying, it had been seldom recommended, and it seemed to me as a Rear gunner that everyone weaved along in the same direction, taking great pains to stay as far away as possible from other aircraft, but remaining in the stream. Two days later Ches. and Co. joined 16 other crews from 227 on an afternoon excusion [sic] to an oil plant at HOMBURG. The ground was mostly obscured by cloud and visibility at 17,000 feet was poor, about three miles. Approaching the target a Lancaster in front of us was hit by flak and one engine was on fire. The aircraft passed below us and the fire was extinguished, but its no. 2 engine was stopped. It remained just behind us until we were over the target. The target was marked by 8 Mosquitoes of 8 Group, but marking was scattered over a wide area and out of the 228 Lancasters only 159 bombed. Results were poor, a recce. next day showed that most of the bombs had hit the industrial and residential areas. One Lancaster was lost, due to flak. The following night 15 aircraft of 227 joined a total force of 992 aircraft on DUSSELDORF. Our Skipper flew as Second Dickie to F/L Kilgour, and the rest of us kicked our heels. This was the last heavy raid on Dusseldorf by Bomber Command, and 18 aircraft were lost. F/O Croskell and crew failed to return, our first 227 Sqdn casualties, but news was received shortly afterward they were safe in Allied hands. They were operational with the squadron again in Feb. On the 11th. of November, we surprisingly found ourselves on the Battle Order for an evening raid on the Rhenania-Ossag oil refinery at HARBURG, close to the battered Hamburg. This was a 5 Group effort with 237 Lancasters and 8 Mosquitoes. 7 Lancasters were lost, including 9J"S" with F/O Hooper and crew. F/O Bates' crew reported that "oil tanks were seen to explode at 1924 hrs". but German records make no reference to the oil tanks, only that 119 people were killed and 5205 others were bombed out. Flak was not intense and the bombing appeared to be mainly on target. There were fighters about but the return journey was uneventful for us. Once again we were beaten by the fog at Balderton, and as our new F.I.D.O. was not yet operational, we were diverted to Catfoss. The night was spent in the chairs in the Sgts. Mess, but the officers among us were luckier to find beds. For most of the following four weeks we were without either a Skipper or a Navigator. The Skipper was detached "on a course" and then spent a couple of weeks on a Summary of Evidence. Ace the Navigator was detached to Newmarket racecourse to clue up on some new equipment or technique. For three days I was detatched [sic] to Waddington as a Witnessing Officer at a Court Martial, which I found depressing. It seemed that at Waddington there had been an old car which was used by anyone who could find some petrol to run it. It was the property of an unlucky aircrew 59 [page break] member who failed to return one night. The car was very useful, but whilst having neither licence nor insurance it was eventually involved in a serious accident, and the R.A.F. took over where the civilian court left off. 0n the 6th. December I had a letter of complaint from my mother, enclosing a newspaper cutting from the Barnoldswick & Earby Pioneer, showing a photo of me and referring to my award of a D.F.C. Why had I not told her? I don't think she ever believed me when I claimed that her letter was the first I knew of it. On Dec. 11th., with Ace still at Newmarket, we became 'Dambusters' - of a sort - for the day. Bomber Command Diary states " "233 Lancasters of 5 Group and 5 Mosquitoes of 8 Group took part. Hits were scored on the dam but no breach was made. 1 Lancaster lost". The squadron diary reflects a successful sortie, in that direct hits on the dam wall were observed, but the 1000 lb. bombs were too small for the purpose. My own recollection of the raid was quite different. We were stooging along just above cloud in company with scores of other Lancasters when the others were seen to be doing a 180 degree turn. Within seconds the sky within my range of vision was empty and in all directions no-one could see another aircraft. The mid-upper and I advised the Skipper that we were now unaccompanied and for 20 minutes we tried to impress upon him that we were extremely vulneruble [sic] (or words to that effect). We were just a few hundred feet above and silhouetted against a layer of stratus and I asked him to fly just inside the cloud, or at least just to skim the tops, but he replied that it was too dangerous, too much risk of collision. The mid-upper gunner agreed, collision from Gerry fighters. Vocabulary worsened and finally the Skipper realised we were 40 minutes and over 200 miles from the rest of the gaggle, we turned round. It has been suggested that as Flight Commander he must display a press-on attitude, and we were all in favour of this, but there was no-one around to impress and it was pretty obvious to the gunners that either Frank had missed a diversion message or we were in the wrong gaggle. Bomber Command Diary disproves the latter, but there is still uncertainty in my mind about that particular operation. Both Pete in the mid-upper turret and I realised that if we were attacked by fighters the Skipper would not take the slightest notice of our requests or advice. We were not disputing that the Skipper was in charge and the one who makes the decissions [sic] , but in our situation he had no choice other than to take advantage of the cloud. We regarded this as an expression of no confidence in the gunners, and we made it very clear to him both then and later that it was no way to finish a tour. It was 10 days before we flew again, our 6th. trip with 227 embarking on their 22nd. trip as a squadron. The target was the synthetic oil plant at POLITZ, in the Baltic. 207 Lancasters and 1 Mosquito were detailed, including 13 Lancasters of 227. Two from 227 experienced mechanical failure and aborted soon after take-off. This was a long stooge, and 3 Lancasters were lost, plus a further 5 which crash-landed in England. The raid was successful, the main chimneys having collapsed and other parts of the refinery being severely damaged. On return to eastern England we were again unable to land at Base due to weather, and were diverted to Milltown, in Scotland. Fuel gauges were reading zero or less when a weary Ches. and crew finally landed after a trip lasting 10 hrs. and 15 minutes. F/O Croker in 9J"K" wound up at Wick, in Morayshire, his aircraft being so badly shot-up it was declared [page break] a write-off. The following morning we flew to Wick to join F/O Croker and crew and give then a lift back to Balderton. Among others, there was a Met. Flight at Wick, equipped with B17s, Flying Fortresses. It was their job to climb to a great height, making Met. observations, and some of their trips exceeded 12 hours duration. I recall the armourers at Wick cleaned and polished our three turrets and 8 Browning guns without being asked, and making a very good job of it too. Everyone was provided with beds, and it seems the officers were so comfortable the Skipper decided to stay at Wick over Christmas. The town of Wick was "dry', no pubs, but among the N.C.O's, this made no difference, we had no money with us. Normally on a diversion we didn't need any money, but for a several day stop-over it was embarassing [sic] to be absolutely without. We would like to have taken our turn in paying for the drinks is the Mess. I seem to recall trying to obtain an advance from Pay accounts without success, accompanied by the other two W/Os in our crew. I was reminded of one incident at Wick by Ace, our Navigator; We were not like most other crews, sticking together as a crew. The Commissioned officers kept to themselves, the three Warrant Officers maintained their own little triangle, and Doogan prefered [sic] his own company despite the W/O's efforts to get him to join us. It seems that one night at Wick we carried him and his bed outside and he awoke next morning in the middle of the parade ground which was covered is snow. I have no personal recollection of this, but there it is in black and white in Ace's book, 'Just Another Flying Arsehole'. We returned to Balderton on the 27th., with 14 of us aboard, and did not see the ground until we actually touched down. For the first time we landed with the assistance of FIDO, which was probably very scary for the pilot. In the rear turret I just got an impression of landing in the middle of a fire. The following night we missed a trip to OSLO, our squadron providing only 5 of the force of 67 Lancasters. On the afternoon of the 30th. we were briefed for an evening take-off to HOUFFALIZE, a total force of 154 Lancasters and 12 Mosquitoes. German Panzers had broken through the American lines in a desperate attempt to thwart the Allied advance, in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The weather gave the Germans the advantage, low cloud and thick fog prevented the 2nd. Tactical Air Force from playing its part to the full. With almost 100% Allied air superiority in the area, Typhoons and other fighters operating on a cab-rank principle responding in seconds to detailed requests from the chaps below, Gerry was learning what it was like to be at the receiving end of the slaughter he started is 1939. But not for that few days at the end of 1944 in the Fallaise gap. The close proximity of Allied troops called for great accuracy in bombing and straffing [sic] , and this was not possible in the prevailing conditions. Because of the bad weather in the target area, take-off was postponed every few hours but we were eventually relieved to get airborne about 0230. Conditions over the target were quite impossible and the flares dropped into the murk below probably caused hearts on both sides to miss a few beats. Some crews did bomb, but Chas. quite rightly felt it was too risky. We had not been briefed for any secondary target so our bombs wound up in the Wash. Finally, we landed at about 0830 after 24 hours of effort of one sort or another. Nothing really achieved, but at least we had tried. It was about this time that my father visited the Squadron for a few days. He was a Captain in the R.A.S.C. recently returned from East 61 [page break] Africa and awaiting release on medical grounds. He was very impressed with what he saw but we could not obtain authority for him to actually fly with us. On the Sunday morning he watched our parade and later mentioned that as the W/O called out names, one Ft/Sgt responded to at least five of them. Also that some were in best blues, some in battledress, one or two with greatcoats and one even with a raincape. Two were actually standing on parade with bicycles ready to shoot off somewhere immediately after the parade. His thoughts at the time were how can such an undisciplined lot perform any serious task. Later that morning sitting in the Gunnery Office, gunners came in with more of a wave than a salute, a brief word from them and I would put a tick on the board against their aircraft. I explained to my father that this was their way of reporting that their turrets and guns had received and passed the daily inspection. After lunch in the mess he noticed a great deal of activity and movement, and a clear but quiet sense of urgency. He asked what was happening and I showed him the Battle Order. The following day he said how wrong was his first impression. Everyone had a job to do, they know what was required of them and they got as with it without any shouting of orders or people stamping around. I was Duty Gunnery Leader that night, as was my lot quite often over that period, and was able to show my father what made a squadron tick. He thoroughly enjoyed his stay, but I don't think he met the Skipper. In fact I don't think we saw anything of our Skipper during the whole month of January, by the end of which 227 had completed 33 ops. "A” Flight Commander's crew had totted up only 7 as a crew and some of us were not at all happy with this performance. On the 2nd. Feb. F/O Bates was short of a Rear Gunner and I could have kissed him when he asked me to deputise for WO Bowman. This was an experienced and popular crew who had already completed 14 trips of their second tour. Bowman was in fact the only one outside our crew I had known a year ago. We had carried out our first tours together on 150 Sqdn. Wellingtons, and he was the only other 227 bod with an Africa Star. I cannot recollect why he was not available that night. Our target was KARLSRUHE, a 5 Group effort of 250 Lancasters and 11 Mosquitoes, of which 19 were from 227. Cloud up to 15000 feet and the consequent difficulty in marking caused the raid to be a failure. 14 Lancasters were lost, including 9J"D" with F/O Geddes and crew. The total effort of Bomber Command that night was 1252 sorties. Targets included Wiesbaden's only large raid of the war, and Wanne-Eickel, neither attack was regarded as a success. Very little was achieved that night for a loss of 21 aircraft. On the night of the 7th. Feb., F/O Bates was airborne again with 11 others from Balderton in a total force of 188 aircraft, to the Dortmund-Ems Canal. All 227 Sqdn. a/c returned safely, but 3 were lost in all. I was not with him this time although W/O Bowman was not available. After about 5 hours sleep the Battle Order for the coming night showed 18 crews from 227 sqdn., including F/O Bates, with F/O Watson as Rear Gunner. It felt great to be doing something useful. The weather en route was clear and there were still fighters about, largely responsible for the loss of 12 Lancasters, but the bombing was extremely accurate. According to Speer, the German armaments minister, the oil refinery was kaput for the reminder of the war and a big setback to the German war effort. All 227 sqdn aircraft returned safely, one, F/O Edge's 9J"B" having aborted with problems on 2 engines and landed safely at a farm in Norfolk. It was in fact F/O Bates’ 18th. and final trip on [page break] 227 sqdn., a very satisfactory finish. It was a satisfying night too for 'our own' Navigator, Ted Foster who flew as a 'spare Bod' Navigator with F//Lt [sic] Pond. On the 14th. Feb., 6 weeks into what surely must be the final year in the war against Germany, we were no doubt startled to see our Skipper and crew on the Battle Order. A 5 Group effort, the target was ROSITZ oil refinery near Leipsig [sic] , a force of 232 Lancasters and Mosquitoes, including 12 from Balderton. Our aircraft was 9J"H" and a couple of hours or so after take-off the Skipper found he could not come to terms with his magnetic compass, the performance of which was erratic. An hour or so later the Giro compass also started to play up and fortunately the Skipper did accept the advice of the Navigator and turned back, navigating solely on "Gee" back to base. It was not possible to carry-on navigating to the target on "Gee", we would have [inserted] 14/2/45 Rositz [/inserted] been out of range long before the target was reached. 9J"G" skippered by F/O Tate had engine trouble just after take-off and returned on three engines. We were the second aircraft to abort on that trip. There were some ribald comments next day when the Instrument Section reported there was nothing wrong with either compass. The comments were not facetious however, no-one would seriously accuse either the Skipper or an experienced Navigator like Ace of pulling a fast one. Both I am quite sure would have preferred to take part in the destruction of Rositz This was in fact the Skipper's final trip, although we did not realise it at the time and still regarded his as our Skipper for the next two months. The record shows that in the following four weeks Ace did three spare bod trips whilst the rest of the crew passed the time somehow. The spell was broken for me when F/Lt Hodson asked me to take over his rear turret on the 14th. of March. Ace had already done his last bombing raid although he too might not have realised it at the time. His grand finale, quite fitting was a daylight 1000 plus Bomber raid on DORTMUND on the 12th. of March, as Wing Commander Millington's Navigator. It was also to be the Wingco's final trip before swapping his duralumin pilot's seat with a little steel armour plating at his back, for I think a wooden one in the House of Commons where his back was probably just as vulnerable. Our target was another oil refinery, at LUTZKENDORF, a typical 5 Group effort of 244 Lancasters and 11 Mosquitoes, 15 of the former being from Balderton. We enjoyed the company of F/O Howard as 2nd. Pilot. In fact five aircraft from 227 Sqdn. carried 'Second Dickies' that night. Out of a total of 18 aircraft lost, two were from 227 Sqdn., both with Second pilots. It was feared by many that carrying a Second Pilot increased the risk, but I did not share this concern. The Second Pilot it is true would take the place of the Flight Engineer who would either stand between the two pilots or sit on the dickie-seat. Some drills had to be slightly modified for the occasion, but I would have thought the presence of an extra bod would tend to put the others more on their toes. The crew I was with were on their 18th. trip and had been with the Squadron from the outset. Nothing untoward happened to us, there was the usual flack and searchlights, maybe fighters but one saw none. Bombing seemed reasonable well concentrated and photo-reconnaissance next day showed that 'moderate damage' was caused. On the 7th. of April the squadron completed its transfer to Strubby, and was detailed for action the same night. I was favoured to fly once more with F/Lt Hodson and crew, LEIPZIG again, this time to the 63 [page break] Benzol plant at MOLBIS. 13 Lancasters of 227 joined 162 others and 11 Mosquitoes, all from 5 Group. The weather was good, bombing accurate, and the oil plant put completely out of action. No aircraft were lost and the raid was considered a 100% success. After a few hours sleep we were briefed for an attack on LUTZKENDORF, the same target as on the 14th. March. It had been attacked the previous night by 272 aircraft from 1 and 8 Groups who caused only moderate damage. I was detailed to fly with W/O Clements and crew who were on the 5th. trip of their first tour, in 9J"Q". On take-off the starboard outer engine failed and Ace who waved us off said he saw the aircraft sink to within a few feet of the ground; but that few feet made all the difference and the Skipper was able to gain height gradually until it was safe to jettisson [sic] the bombs in the sea. The trip was aborted and a safe landing made at Strubby. Subsequent inspection showed a fuel leak from no.2 port tank and oil leaks from the two outer engines. 242 aircraft were on this raid, and 6 were lost, but another oil refinery was put out of action for the rest of the war. The 19 aircraft put up by 227 all returned safely and were diverted to the west because of weather. Two nights later, on the 10th. I was again with W/O Clements, to the Wahren Railway yards at LEIPSIG. The force of 230 aircraft comprised 134 Lancasters, 90 Halifaxes, and 6 Mosquitoes, of which 1 Lancaster and 1 Halifax failed to return. Immediately prior to take off I had trouble with the turret sliding doors, they wouldn't close, but I rotated the turret onto the port beam as was general practice for take-off with the doors open. This was spotted from the ground and the Skipper was told on R/T soon after we were airborne. I had to get out of the turret and through the bulkhead door to fix them, but finally managed to get then to slide. If I had failed to fix then nothing would have made me admit it, it would just have been a little draughty. The trip went very well, the marking was accurate and the bombing concentrated. Some flak and plenty of fighter flares about but we saw no fighters. It was a quiet return trip and all 227 aircraft returned safely. That was my last trip and also the last for W/O Clements and crew. It was the 57th. involvement by 227 Squadron which was to carry out 4 more bombing raids, terminating with BERCHTESGADEN itself, on the 25th. of April. The war in Europe was virtually over, but our impression was that 5 Group was to form the nucleus of Tiger Force to help finish the job in the Far East and we would be a part of it. It was with these thoughts that I went on leave on the 26th. April, a spare bod without a pilot, but still expecting to fly again with the squadron.. [page break] [photograph] [photograph] [photograph] 64A [page break] [photograph] [photograph] F/O. CHEERFUL CHEALE R.C.A.F. [photograph] [photograph] F/O BATES F/O PETE CHEALE (BA) W/O PETE FOOLKES S/LDR CHESTER (PILOT) F/O FOSTER 64B [page break] [photograph] [photograph] [photograph] 64C [page break] [photograph] F/O. TED FOSTER D.F.M. C.W. PETE FOOLKES MID-UPPER [photograph] [photograph] 64D [page break] [photograph] CLIFF’S OFFICE [photograph] [photograph] OUTSIDE OUR DES. RES. C.W. & GEOFF HAMPSON (FLIGHT ENG 64E [page break] [newspaper cutting of D.F.C. award] [photograph] 227 SQDN W/OP – NAV – MID- UPPER [photograph] 64F [page break] [photograph] [underlined] TED (ACE NAV) FOSTER D.F.M. BALDERTON NOV 44 [/underlined] [photograph] [underlined] RUNNING UP ON HOMBERG 1/11/44 AT LUNCHTIME [indecipherable word] [/underlined] 64G [page break] [photograph] [underlined] F/O. BATES [/underlined] [photograph] [underlined] F/O BATES W/O JENNERY (NAV) SGT. WESTON (FLT. ENG) [/underlined] FEB 45 64H [page break] [DFC citation] 64L [page break] [letter from HM George VI] 64M [page break] [Sgt Mess Wick Christmas Menus 1944] [photograph] F/O CROKER’S LANCASTER AT REST IN TORPEDO DUMP XMAS ‘44 64N [page break] [inside of christmas card] CHRISTMAS CARD FROM PETE IN CANADA 64P [page break] [photograph] STIRLING AT H.C.U. WINTHORPE [photograph] AT BLIDA [photograph] LANCASTER AT SYERSTON 74A [page break] [letter of introduction to airfield manager in Iran] 154A [page break] [photograph] F/LT. MAXTED (GUNNERY LEADER) PETE FOOLKES & F/O SANDFORD (SPARE GUNNER OR SQDN ADJ) [photograph] TED FOSTER WITH BITS OF 9JO [photograph] 64J [page break] [photograph] GEOF. HAMPSON FLT. ENG. [photograph of 9J-O] [photograph of 9J-O] 64K [page break] [christmas card] CHRISTMAS CARD FROM PETE IN CANADA 64P [page break] [typewritten letter] [underlined] PART OF F/L CROKER’S LETTER WITH XMAS 1990 CARD [/underlined] 64Q [page break] [location map for 1994 reunion] [page break] [underlined] FINAL LEG [/underlined] Recollections of events in my final 15 months in the R.A.F. are reasonably clear but somewhat hazy of detail and of the order in which they took place. I was still with the Squadron on VE Day, the 5th. April, on leave in London with Hilda. I recall going up to Leicester Square by tube train with my father, Alice and Hilda to join the celebrations and actually walking back the five miles to Lavender Hill in the early hours. This would explain why I had no knowledge of the Victory Parade at Strubby until I was shown a photograph of it many years later. I was on leave again in London in early August when the Americans dropped the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and suddenly the war was over. I was still in uniform and had to await my turn for demob. I have no recollection of attending a Reselection Board when I was made redundant from flying, nor of actually leaving the Squadron. I think my first posting after the Squadron was to Gravely, as a Squadron adjutant. I had always thought that the Squadron was 106, but according to the Bomber Command War Diaries 106 was never at Gravely [sic] !. There is no mistaking the actual station, however, it is only 4 miles from my present home and parts of it are still recogniseable [sic] . I was astonished to find many years later that 227 Sqdn had transferred to Graveley about the 8th. of June and was disbanded there on the 5th. of September. I was there for about 6 weeks during which time we closed the Sargeants’ [sic] Mess and did a very little paper-work. We had neither aircrews nor aircraft, it was just a matter of holding office and very little else!. I probably spent most of it on leave. I then became a Photographic Officer u/t and did a very interesting course at Farnborough which lasted 8 weeks. One of the instructors was a Sgt. Peter Clark, a leading Saville Row fashion photographer before the war and Hilda’s first employer. I went on leave yet again and was eventually told to report to 61 M.U. at Handforth in Cheshire as a u/t Equipment Officer. I duly reported to the Station Adjutant at Handforth feeling very much out of place. Of the hundreds of service types around only the ex-Air-Crew were in battle dress, the others were either in best blues or dungarees. I had always thought that battledress was the working uniform of the R.A.F., but it was not so at Handforth. I felt more as if I was in the Luftwaffe. The Station Adj. took me to see the Chief Equipment Officer, who was a Wing Commander and this feeling became even stronger. I reported formally and the C.E.O. said “And what the hell are you supposed to be?”. Those were his exact words and I did really wonder whether we were in the same air force. I replied that “I am here as a u/t equipment officer Sir”. “MM what’s your trade?” “Rear Gunner” – without waiting for the ‘Sir’, he exploded and almost shouted “That’s not a trade, it’s General Duties”. He was technically right but raising his voice unduly went on to add “You are supposed to be able to sit here and do my job, you’d feel a bloody fool doing my job, wouldn’t you!”. Fascinated by the smirk on his face and hypnotised by the Defence medal on his breast I just stood there in disbelief at this outburst and quietly laughed. “Well?” He wanted an answer and I said in a rather light vane “Yes Sir I would, but less of a bloody fool than some would have felt doing my job for the last three years”. That was it, he stood up and said “Right, come”. We went along the corridor and straight in to see the Station Commander, a Group Captain. The WingCo[sic] was very agitated and without preamble 67 [page break] told the Groupie of my ‘gross insubordination’. He recited the dialogue in accurate detail and the Group Captain asked for my account. I agreed with the C.E.O.’s account but said that I was provoked, there was no reason for his outburst and I grinned only because I didn’t think he was being serious. Invited to comment the WingCo said he had been affronted by my being improperly dressed. I made no further comment and the Groupy told the WingCo that he would deal with the matter. The WingCo saluted and left, and I thought I was for the chop. The Group Captain sported R.F.C. wings and had obviously seen his share of action. He stood up and extended his right hand in friendship. “Sorry old chap, I didn’t get your name, do sit down”. I was back in the R.A.F. He asked “Where were you in Africa?” Not an idle question, followed by “Did you know Group Captain Powell?” Yes Sir, he was our Base Commander of 142 and 150 Squadrons, Speedy Powell of “F” for Freddie”. Speedy had been the Briefing officer in the film ‘Target for Tonight’. I mentioned some of his exploits and finally his loss, and the Group Captain was distressed. He told me that like the other 12 ex-Air Crew on the station, I was a square peg in a round hole, but to make the best of it and to go back to see him if I had a problem. In the mess that evening I met the others and soon found we were all on duty every day and every night. u/t Orderly Officer, then Orderly Officer, and through the whole range of Asst. Duty Officer, Duty Officer, Fire Picket, in-line Fire picket, Cyphers, Security, etc. etc. Only the ex Air-Crew Officers performed these tasks and after two weeks of this we agreed something must be done. One period of 24 hours I was Duty Cyphers Officer. This was just a title, there was neither Cyphers Section nor Intellegence[sic] Section and I found that for almost all the duties we were allocated there were no instructions. Several of us individually addressed the Station Adjutant in writing and one even enquired whether he should draw-up his own set of procedures for inclusion in Station Standing Orders. For reasons that could only have been sour grapes, there was a measure of ill-feeling between the ‘permanent’ equipment and Admin officers, and the air-crew types. Many of the former had spent the entire war at places like Handforth, and there is no doubt they did a vital job, and maybe were still doing it. In our case, the war for us was over, and after our experiences of the last few years there was a limit to the amount of being messed around that we were willing to accept. We discussed having fire drills with real fires and creating a few incidents for practice, but finally we drew lots and two of us applied through the C.E.O. to see the Group Captain. The C.E.O. refused permission so we made our request through the Station Adjutant. This was approved and we told the C.O. what was happening, we were being “imposed” upon from a great height. He called in the Station Adj. and told him that all Air Crew Officers would go on indefinite leave the following day. He told the two of us to ensure that all application forms were with the Station Adj. by 3 pm. And for me, it was straight to Whitehaven, in battledress. I had applied for release from the Service under “Class B”, having an immediate job to take up which would in itself create work for 5 other ex-Servicemen. Hilda was in fact holding the fort in Whitehaven, and nothing came of the application. It was about four months before I was recalled to Handforth, and immediately detached to no. 7 Site at Poynton to take over as Equipment Officer i/c and also as Officer i/c. the Prison Camp. There was an Equipment W/O running the Stores with about 200 Airmen and I agreed with him that it could [page break] stay that way. The Stores comprised 8 massive hangars full of equipment. I regarded my main job as O.C. the Stalag with its 1000 P.O.W.’s (750 Italian and 250 German) and my staff of 15 Air Crew N.C.O.s who had all been kriegsgefangener themselves. The Senior German prisoner was a Warrant Officer who spoke excellent English having studied it for 5 years in prison camps. Most of the prisoners, including the Italians, had been taken in the Western Desert. The Germans were very smart indeed, in contrast to the Italians, and the two axis partners had as little to do with each other as they could arrange. Gangs of prisoners were guarded by some of the 200 Airmen, supervised by ex-AirCrew NCO.s. The prisoners were not interested in escape, there would have been no point, but I put an immediate stop to their sneaking out of camp at night to try their luck. The German and Italian messes were separate from each other and staffed by R.A.F. cooks. The Germans asked if they could do their own cooking and I agreed but with nominal supervision of two airmen in case we had visitors. I made the same arrangement for the Italians but initially they refused. I appointed one of the Corporal Majors as Senior Iti [sic] and made him responsible. I threatened to fully-integrate them with the Germans if there was any nonsense, and with that some of them nearly burst into tears. They were a lazy shower. I had the Officers’ Mess all to myself, but that’s another story. It was a very cosy three months, with most long week-ends spent in Whitehaven where Hilda had taken-over the Relay system. It was also a tremendous anti-climax to the previous five years. Eventually when the magic number 26 came up, I reported to R.A.F. Uxbridge for demob. and collected my pin-striped suit and a cardboard box to put it in. I realised then that my career in the R.A.F. was initially over. Straight to Whitehaven by train, still in battledress. [page break] [underlined] FIRST TOUR TARGETS [/underlined] [table of targets and bomb loads] 71 [page break] [table of targets and bomb loads continued] [page break] [underlined] 2nd TOUR [/underlined] [underlined] 227 SQUADRON [/underlined] [table of targets and bomb loads with additions] [underlined] 227 SQUADRON [/underlined] After flying Beaufighters from Malta the Squadron folded in August 1944. The new Squadron was formed in 5 Group on 7/10/1944. Flying Lancasters from Bardney, Balderton and Strubby. Flew 815 sorties and lost 15 aircraft (1.8%) in 61 raids. 2 were also destroyed in crashes. 73 [page break] [underlined] Back to Civvy Street [/underlined] By early 1946 the great transition from War to Peace was taking place and many of us were gradually realising that we could now plan some years ahead with a very good possibility of surviving to carry them out. Of my colleagues at Metropolitan Relays, only Reg. Weller had paid with his life, having been killed in action in Italy, with the army. Allan Cutbush had been taken prisoner at Tobruk and spent some time in a prison camp in Italy. Eventually he escaped and spent a couple of years as an Italian farm worker. Soon after the invasion at Anzio he rejoined the Allies and had the greatest difficulty in convincing them that he really was a Private in the Royal Signals. Alan was first to be demobbed and rejoined the firm as manager of a newly aquired [sic] group of branches in the Mansfield and Retford areas. George Holah had left in 1939 to join the army, and spent the next six years in India, returning as a Major in the Indian army complete with an Anglo-Indian wife and family. George did not return to Relays, but joined the Metropolitan Police, and in 1975 was a Clerk in the Central Registry at New Scotland Yard. How he managed to transfer from being a private in the British army to a Commissioned Officer in the Indian army I don’t know, assuming it actually happened. I have not met George since 1939. In June 1945, my father, Mrs. Kilham and Mr. Moulton bought privately another run-down radio relay system, West Cumberland Relay Services, Ltd., in Whitehaven, and I was invited to develop it. Although Germany had capitulated, the war was not yet over. Japan might have seemed a long way off but was still our Enemy and the job had to be finished. Meanwhile Hilda moved to Whitehaven and set-up home in the flat above the shop at 49 Lowther Street. Colin was then 9 months old and it was a further year before I was demobbed, but during that period I seemed to have spent most of my time in Whitehaven. Hilda kept the Relay ticking over, with very limited assistance from the staff, until March 1946 when I was given indefinite leave on compassionate grounds. The relay was well and truly run down, with about 400 subscribers each paying 1/3d per week for two radio programmes. It was losing money fast, the entire network needed rewiring and the amplifiers and other equipment were just about a write-off. I had with me the name-plate from my office door at Poynton. One of the German prisoners had made it for me, a notice which proclaimed in Gothic characters Obr. Lnt. Cliff. Watson D.F.C., LAGER COMMANDANT EINTRITT VERBOTTEN I put this on my new office door, but drew a line through the bottom line. Sorting out a fault on a 100 watt amplifier, I asked the engineer, Joe, for a soldering iron, and he said he never used one but preferred the special solder in a tube, which he handed to me. In that single sentence he had proved to me that his technical knowledge was just about zero. I demonstrated the solder’s futility by proving that it was not even an electrical conductor. Consequently all the equipment was full of dry joints and I spent a whole night in soldering connections. The stuff Joe was using out of a tube was for repairing small holes in pans and kettles. I was very disappointed in Joe, his technical 75 [page break] knowledge was effectively less than zero. The next weekend he claimed to have worked all day Sunday clearing a line fault. He had deliberately caused this fault on the previous morning and I traced and corrected it myself within an hour of his doing so. He had shorted out two wires on our own roof and on Monday morning went straight onto the roof to remove the short. I was there waiting for him and sacked him on the spot for sabotage and dishonesty. I thus took over the technical side but also looked closely at the system of collecting and keeping records of accounts and customers. The only record of payments was in the collector’s field book and there was no record of where the customers or relay installations actually were. I spent a week with the collector who was very reluctant to assist, and Hilda and I drew up a set of records and established a working system. In the next two weeks I found so many fiddles and had proof of so much skulduggery that I sacked the collector without notice. I found installations where the user claimed to have made one outright payment to the collector who had pocketed the money, a hundred or so loudspeakers recorded as being “on loan” which had in fact been paid for and all manner of other private arrangements. The collector was easily replaced, and Mr. Fee joined us. I was fortunate too in meeting Bert Wise, ex Royal Navy P.O. Telegraphist who had been on Submarines, and who took over the technical aspect including the outside lines. Bill Campbell, ex Royal Army Service Corps driver/mechanic was very quickly trained on installations and line work, assisted by John Milburn, a school leaver. John had a very broad Cumbrian accent and initially I found communication difficult, “As gan yam nar marra” meant “I am going home now chum”. I felt I ought to be replying in French or something other than English. Bill Campbell’s first job was to take the train to London and bring back a vehicle. It was a new Hudson NAAFI wagon completely fitted out by Met. Relays and full of cable, bracket insulators etc. My first act was to buy a set of maps covering the area to a scale of 1:10,000, and display it on the wall. The idea was that if we could establish exactly where we were we stood a better chance of knowing where we were going. A basic plan for the overhead lines was derived and we worked as a team, stripping out old wiring, checking and replacing where necessary, and keeping a record of installations connected. When an installation was serviced and documentation complete we fitted a capacitor in the loudspeaker for technical reasons and a new programme selector switch. The capacitors were to prove very useful later. The service we had to offer at that time was poor, and although it was gradually improving, we were spending far too much time on fault-finding, diverting us from the main program. Within a month it was very clear that our top priority was to rewire and re-equip. I managed to convince the London Office of this and they sent me a team of 3 wiremen from London, led by Dennis Horton who was inherited as a foreman at Mansfield, complete with two Dodge trucks and tons of installation materials. For four months this team concentrated on rewiring for four programmes, gradually reducing and finally almost eliminating the line faults. The receivers and amplifiers were at Harras Moor in a cottage, but this was at the end of a two mile line, too far from our main load. We ran a 6-pair cable the whole distance and used these as 600 ohm lines, to feed five 1 KW amplifiers at Lowther Street. A bank of 6 AR88 receivers was installed at Harras Moor and two “straight sets” on loop antennas for the BBC Home and Light programmes. In town we had 210v. DC mains and had to fit rotary [page break] invertors. We also installed a 9KVA petrol/paraffin engine-driven alternator for use during power cuts, which were all too frequent. I could never understand how the grid system could sustain power through seven winters of wartime industrial production and as soon as the war was over we had to live with power cuts. Harras Moor was providing us with four good radio channels, Home, Light and Third BBC, Radio Eirein, Luxembourg, Paris, New York and others from around the world. We were getting organised and I was able to concentrate on sales, keeping our own gang of three busy on new installations. Within two years we had 2,200 installations, including the two Music Halls, cinemas, and all the factories. In addition we were doing more than 90% of all the Public Address work in Cumberland, some of which were quite memorable. At Grasmere Sports the events included a Fell Race and the first year we gave a running commentary over our P.A. system. The runners were out of sight near the top of the fell, so for the following year we applied to the Post Office for permission to use an H/F radio link to cover the gap. This was refused, “you will have to apply for a telephone”! The following year Bert Wise and John Milburn climbed the fell with an Aldis Lamp and battery, and established themselves where they could see the runners at the top and the ‘ops room’ on the showground. I too had an Aldis lamp and Bert flashed me the numbers of the runners as they reached the top of the fell. This delighted the spectators but completely upset the bookies who alone had the complete information in previous years. The Post Office were also upset, claiming they had a monopoly on signalling, but declining to put it to test in court. I suggested that to try and licence boy scouts to signal in morse code with torches was ludicrous. I enjoyed the atmosphere of these events and went to quite some lengths to obtain the appropriate marshal music. At a Conservative Party fete one particular rather rousing piece was played several times and I was asked by a retired General why the Hell I kept playing the Red Army March Past.!! A month after taking over, Hilda and I went for a walk - with the pram - to Hensingham, about three miles inland, and I was surprised to see Relay wires between chimneys and lots of downleads. I had not expected to find another system so close and I checked at some of the houses, asking who provided the system! I was told it was owned by a builder called Leslie but it hadn’t worked for several years. Leslie was the fellow from whom the company had bought West Cumberland Relays, and on checking with him I found it was part of the ‘system’ we had taken over. Further search showed a line of poles stretching for about two miles across the fields which had originally linked the village to the lines in Whitehaven. It also showed that a whole area of Hensingham had no electricity, ideal for relay. There was already a big housing estate and this was being extended, and I decided there was adequate potential in the village, but to replace the trunk route to it would be too expensive. We compromised by obtaining four modified 50 watt Vortexion Amplifiers and four receivers from London. Fred Wright brought them by road in his small van, the logo on the side of which was “Radio Trouble-shooting Service”. I did my very best to put up a case for keeping the van, to no avail. The next day we installed the equipment in an air-raid shelter at Hensingham, as a temporary measure, and immediately started connecting subscribers. Within a few weeks the wiring reached the side of the village where the lines from Whitehaven went across the fields, and we began to replace one pair all the way to link with Whitehaven. With this in operation on the third channel we were able to switch 77 [page break] off one of the Hensingham amplifiers. Later all four programmes were fed from Whitehaven and the station in the air-raid shelter dismantled. The amplifiers were put to use at Whitehaven Hospital and the Workhouse. Both places were wired for 4 programme relay, but at the flick of a switch microphones could be switched in for announcements, and in the case of the latter, to broadcast concerts from the stage. It was at Hensingham that I found a row of about 30 terraced houses, all without electricity and all wired with three twin cables of different sizes. This rather intrigued me and I enquired further. Most of the houses had battery driven wireless sets which used a 75 volt dry battery for H.T., a 2 volt accumulator for L.T. and a 9 volt grid bias battery, and in one case I found one of these sets without batteries but connected to the 3 pair cable. The old lady owner said it had not worked for several years. I quickly found the man who recharged the accumulators and he confirmed that the cables I had seen were once used for providing power supplies to radios. I think the system must have been quite unique. Shortly afterwards, the houses were connected to the relay system. My only regret is that I didn’t buy up those radios and store them for 50 years. As more and more installations were connected on the Woodhouse estate, the load on the five mile line gradually became too heavy with a corresponding reduction in line voltage and therefore volume. To overcome this we rented an air-raid shelter from the British Legion on the estate and fitted 4 amplifiers to take the load. These were fed from the incoming line itself, but for emergency use we also fitted receivers. Later the receivers came in useful for about three months during reconstruction of an area over which our main line had been fitted. One of the radio dealers found that we were using local receivers and that they were subject to radio interference from vacuum cleaners, so he had a sales drive in the immediate area of our receiving station with rental vacuum cleaners at 1/- per week. Reception gradually deteriorated but after three months of emergency operation our main line was again complete and the receivers switched off. Reception then was near perfect on our system and dreadful for the rest when the vacuum cleaners were being used. He had put a lot of time and money into trying to wreck our system, and had a double-fronted shop in Lowther Street, but I was sorry to see his shop with a bicycle in one window and a Bible in the other when I left Whitehaven.. On a new housing estate where 5 new houses were commissioned each week, we took a gamble and wired them all. When the first tenants moved in the loudspeaker was playing and the tenant’s radio problems were resolved. After 3 or 4 weeks I would go along and generally sign them up. Some of them of course compared it to their own ‘wireless’ if any, which could not possibly reach our standard of reproduction and reception. There are very few places in and around Whitehaven where we had not fitted microphones and radio, and after reaching near saturation in two years there was little scope for further development. Whitehaven had been a very satisfying experience, but was marred by the Williams Pit disaster where 160 miners were trapped underground and lost their lives. John Milburn’s father was among them. It was traditional for the eldest son to take over where the Dad left off, and we were very sorry indeed to lose John. Hilda had run the office and “showroom” assisted later by Connie Sim from St. Bees. Bill Campbell was still our mainstay on the lines. [page break] I handed over to Bert Wise, still wearing his Navy P.O.’s hat, and moved to Wandsworth as Development Manager for Metropolitan Relays. A flat was available for us above the shop at 111 Garratt Lane, but on arrival we found it occupied by squatters. For several weeks we lived with Hilda’s parents until the squatters moved to the second floor and we took over the first floor. They were a decent couple in their forties, and had been desperate for accommodation. Our shop had been empty so they moved in, knowing that when an eviction order was issued by the court, they would be allocated a council house or flat. It was a short-cut to the top of the housing list, and the firm had to go through the motions of demanding court action. The ground floor was established as a showroom, even with T.V. in the window, an impressive amplifier room and an office with the same old sign on the door, Lager Commandant! The original plan was to develop the area working outwards from Garrett Lane and to use the linesman from H.Q. at Lavender Hill, but there was line work to be done from the very outset and it was this part of the job which would be the limiting factor in our rate of progress. I insisted that we employed our own gang of wiremen. Bill Cutler was my wayleave expert, and having planned the main basic routes of our main lines, it was Bill’s job to find out who the landlords were and to obtain their formal permission to fit our wires on or over their property, generally between chimneys. The easiest way was first to sell the relay service to the tenants and their order was used as the reason for our request to fit the wires. We started to run four main lines, no.1 along Garrett Lane to link up with the Lavender Hill system at West Hill. No 2 made a beeline west along Garrett Lane to a Council-owned housing estate which at the time had no electricity. No 3 went due south to Southfields and along Merton Road, over the Redifon buildings and on to Putney, and No. 4 went north towards Wandsworth Common. Everyone on the staff except me, but including Bill Cutler and the linesmen was given five shillings commission for each new customer they signed up. The average wage at that time was £7 per week (in London) and there were few days when the gang did not hand in the paper-work and deposits for customers they had signed up and probably already installed in addition to the day’s work allocated to them. Quite often we would have thousands of leaflets distributed to houses in a particular area which was proving difficult but which they needed to cross. At about this time, my father retired and went to East Africa, settling at Kirksbridge Farm, Kiminini, 10 miles west of Kitale on the Kakemega Road, and about 260 miles from Nairobi.. He sold his controlling interest in Metropolitan Relays to Seletar Industrial Holdings, Ltd. and their representative, Colonel Slaughter, took over as Chairman. Mr. Moulton became Director & General Manager and I was Development Manager with sufficient shares to qualify for a seat on the board. At the time T.V. was still in its infancy, though beginning to catch on, but the main background entertainment would be the wireless for some time to come. Transistors were still in the experimental stage and Radio Relay provided an alternative to cumbersome and relatively expensive valve radios, with near perfect and trouble-free reception. As Development Manager I made sure I was not bogged down with routine day to day running, and at the outset established a reliable Manager at Garrett Lane, Jack Thompson, whose knowledge of the business was gleaned entirely from Bill Cutler and myself with on-the-job training. Bill had been with Radio Relay since about 79 [page break] 1930, except for during the war when he was a technician in the R.A.F. on Link Trainers. I was asked to have a look at Yeovil in Somerset and see whether it appeared suitable to establish a relay system, and if I felt it so justified, to spend some time there making a detailed study. I spent a week studying the layout of the town, types of housing, probabilities of future development, the people and their attitudes and in discussion with the Borough Surveyor and Town Clerk’s office staff. I realised that Colonel Slaughter had been a senior army officer and also a senior civil servant for a long time, and that my future relationship with him depended to a large extent on the impression he gained from my first formal report. I recommended that it was a border-line proposition and included a financial budget for 5 years. It would be three years before the system was breaking even and this was too long. The Capital required was too high unless the system was subsidised by another well-established branch. I felt we could find better places to apply our efforts. The Colonel decided to have a look for himself and I went with him to Somerset a week later. Alone, he met the Council officials concerned and one of them agreed to support our application if a relative of his was given a seat on the board of the new company!. I had known of that before the meeting but thought it better not to be involved, nor to include thoughts of that nature in my report. The Yeovil proposal was dropped and I turned my attention to Maryport. Whilst Bert Wise was on holiday Bill Cutler and I went to Whitehaven for two weeks to relieve him and also to investigate Maryport. I had known Maryport for some years and I already knew that it would be a goer from the outset. With lots of Council houses (no wayleave problems on them), a working type population, even with an element of communism. It had known major unemployment and soup kitchens and was still a little Bolshie. We had many friends in the area and a good popular working system in Whitehaven as an example. In that two weeks I produced the same type of report as for Yeovil, but recommended we should go ahead immediately. We saw the Council Officials and agreed a draft agreement with them, found suitable accommodation for a shop in town and a receiving station just out of town to which we could run our own lines. Two weeks later I returned with the Colonel and together we met the Council Committee and completed formalities. From then on it was all systems go. Bill Cutler asked if he could get it organised and he did a very thorough job, using the labour and resources from Whitehaven. He stayed on as Manager and a few years later took-over Whitehaven also when Bert Wise ran-off with his secretary, Connie Sim. Meanwhile Garratt Lane was running smoothly, and number 1 line had reached East Hill. In a junction box on the wall of a block of flats we had two four-pair cables, one from Lavender Hill, and the other from Garratt Lane, and on an experimental basis we linked the two together, isolating the line at Garratt Lane. We were thus able to monitor the Lavender Hill system in our Control Room, providing their service to our installations on the way. The Garratt Lane amplifiers were fed by Post Office line from Lavender Hill, and each amplifier could provide 1 kilowatt of audio power, sufficient for 3000 loudspeakers. Most of the loudspeakers were switched to no. 2 channel, the Light Programme, still referred to as the Forces programme by the majority. Channels 3 and 4 were very lightly loaded and we were able to switch off the Garratt Lane amplifiers on these channels for most of the time. At that time my family [page break] home was the flat above the showroom at Garratt Lane, and was guarded by Rex, a huge Great Dane/Alsation [sic] hybrid. Only Hilda and the children could handle it, presumably because they fed it regularly, but everyone else - including me - had to be very cautious. Eventually it took a bite out of the Manager’s wife and was returned to Battersea Dogs’ Home. I was spending more time at Garratt Lane where progress was losing momentum, and extending our no. 3 line over West Hill to East Putney was proving difficult. Near Putney Bridge, still a mile from our lines was a highly suitable area of small houses and it was going to take a year to reach them at our current speed. Without much fuss we established a station in the basement of a shop in the middle of this area, using 4 receivers built by Fred Wright’s dept. and 4 small 50 watt Vortexion amplifiers. This station was identical to the one fitted at Hensingham. We then had a sales drive in that part of Putney with the emphasis towards West Hill, and in 4 months were able to link the two systems. I was interested to recall that for monitoring our four programmes we used a modified aircraft type automatic bomb release mechanism. This was a uniselector type of relay unit which clunked round and changed programme every 30 seconds instead of releasing bombs. All my staff were ex-Servicemen and there was a dynamic no-nonsence [sic] approach. In contrast to this, our General Manager Allan Moulton based at Lavender Hill, had a stock answer to any serious proposal for action put to him, of “Wait a little while and see what happens”. My attitude was that we know what we want to happen and it wont unless we make it. He didn’t like my Lager Commandant notice on the door either but there it stayed. In 1948 the war was not forgotten by most of us and many satisfactory business deals were made in that spirit of comradeship and trust. In Feb. 1949 I found that someone called Fry had studied Belfast on our firm’s behalf and had strongly recommended starting a relay service there. The report came to me quite by accident and at the same time I found he was surveying Bath, introducing himself as Development Manager in Relay Association circles. I tackled Colonel Slaughter about it and he said it was news to him, but he took it up with Moulton to whom Fry was reporting. I found that Moulton resented the fact that I was responsible direct to the Chairman, and also that my contract detailed my renumeration including commission which was the £1500 per year, 4 times the average wage. To clear the air we had a formal meeting and I put forward my prediction for future development. I forecast that within 2 or 3 years a general rundown of the system would be inevitable with the increase of television; further that it would be prudent to reduce expenditure on “wired wireless” and to develop the rental side of both radio and T.V., but to reconsider with Fred Wright - who was not at the meeting - the policy of manufacturing T.V. sets. My prediction became factual and was influenced also by transistor radios of which we had no knowledge at that time. There was 33% Purchase Tax on most things including T.V. sets. This was payable at the point of sale and not on rentals. As our sets were never sold but remained the property of Met. Radio & T.V. Rentals Ltd. no Purchase Tax was payable. This loophole was soon to be closed, as forecast, and tax was payable on the rental itself. It became cheaper to buy sets from the big manufactures than to actually make them. 81 [page break] The Colonel remarked that as Development Manager I was really saying we should stop developing, and I agreed. This set the scene for further discussion well outside the intended scope of the meeting. The Chairman asked Moulton for his views on likely technological advances, but Moulton had none and said we can only try and stay afloat, seeking support from Fry. The Colonel shot down Moulton completely and asked Fry to detail his relevant qualifications. After a silence Moulton was told to study the content of my prediction and not to go off at a tangent on development nor without reference to him. Fry was sent packing and the meeting was closed. I learned quite a lot from Colonel Slaughter, he had spent a long time in the Royal Engineers and one of his attributes was building a flat-bottomed boat on the Nile, one of the biggest in service. His personality was such that when he looked up and down disapprovingly at an obvious ex-Serviceman leaning over a bar, the man immediately took his hand out of his pocket and squared himself up. I actually saw this happen in Maryport, he had that effect on people. (That was in 1948, it might not be the same over 40 years later). No more was heard of Fry, and I never did join the Board, I was too busy getting on with the job, but it was time for reflection. I realised that when my father was Chairman he had the engineering and technical aspects at his fingertips and he took care of them. He was succeeded by the Colonel who was a business-man but who had no backing on the engineering side. My brief was the Development of the Radio Relay Systems, I regarded technological changes as a matter for the General Manager, Moulton, but I was not responsible to him. I met the Colonel again privately and I said it seemed that I was Development Manager in a firm which was not going to develop any further. Although there was plenty of routine work to be done I felt the Electrical Trades Union would soon start making things very difficult as it was doing in the Post Office. In view of the probable technological changes, I felt that Colonel Slaughter would rather sell-out than try to steer a ship without a rudder. I was being rather outspoken but straightforward and the Colonel approved of this. I told him I would like to call it a day and try my luck in Africa, Kenya was said to be a land of opportunity. If that failed there was always a job in Bulawayo 2500 miles further south of the Cement Works with Mr. Rose. The Colonel agreed I could leave when convenient but if I wanted to return within 6 months, to drop him a line. It was four years since the war in Europe had ended. Britain was changing and so was the attitude of many people some of who were very disillusioned. Hilda and I agreed it was time to make a move. And so in July 1949 I went to Africa for the third time, but with Hilda and the two children, not knowing what sort of a career I was seeking, but nevertheless full of confidence, and still with my Lager Commandant board. The following year, Colonel Slaughter retired and Seletar’s controlling interest in Metropolitan Relays was sold to British Relay Wireless which later became Vision-Hire. Within a further 12 years the wired-wireless or Relay industry in the U.K. closed, being overtaken by technology. [page break] [underlined] KENYA [/underlined] The flight to Nairobi was a very pleasant trip by Argonaut, calling at Rome, Benina, - which we had known as Bengazi [sic] -, Cairo, Khartoum and Entebbe. On the last leg of the flight we flew very low at times, quite unofficially to give us our first views of big game from the air. The flight was very enjoyable, in very easy stages, and in retrospect the Argonaut was about the most comfortable aircraft we were to fly in, in our many subsequent flights to Africa. It was I think the first and only time we travelled in first class. We were met in Nairobi by Duncan Fletcher, a friend of my fathers, and spent the night at Torr’s Hotel, in Delamere Avenue, the leading hotel at that time. The Stanley Hotel across the road was being refurbished to become the New Stanley, and within a few years Torr’s was closed and became the Ottaman [sic] Bank. I recall the strawberry and cream cake for tea at Torr’s for which it had been famous for many years. The following day we journeyed the 260 miles by bus to Kitale. This was a road we would take many times in the years to come. The first half was tarmac, 100 miles of which from the top of the Nairobi escarpment, through Naivasha to Nakuru, having been built by Italian prisoners of war. From the top of the escarpment there was a wonderful view of the Rift Valley and Mount Longenot [sic], an extinct volcano, and to the west over the plains towards Mau Forest and Kisumu. The bus took us down the escarpment, dropping about 2000 feet to the floor of the Rift Valley, passed the little Italian church built by P.O.W.’s, and northwards past Lake Elementita and Nakuru, then the rough murram road to Kitale. The journey took about 10 hours, but was far from tedius [sic], there was so much to be seen. Kitale seemed like a typical american western type of small town, the roads were not made up and the sidewalks were made of wood. Many of the buildings were made of timber clad with mabati - corrugated iron - and most europeans wore khaki drill. We were met at the bus station by my father and completed the remaining 9 miles of our journey to our new home, Kirksbridge Farm, Kiminini where a guest house had been built for us, about 100 yards from the main house. Colin and Wendy, aged 6 and 4 were introduced to the Ayah, the african nurse, called Nadudu, who spoke only Swahili and her tribal language, Kitoshi, but within a matter of days was communicating without difficulty with the children. Nadudu had her own rondavel, a thatched roundhouse on the lawn at the side of the guest house, and took care of all the children’s needs. 83 [page break] [underlined] Hoteli King George [/underlined] Life on the farm had provided a welcome anticlimax to just about everything that had gone before, but it could hardly be a long-term solution for a young couple with a growing family. We did not appreciate at the time the serious effects of the political unrest and changes which were beginning to take place. We thought that common sense would prevail and most of us felt we had a good working relationship with the Africans; only a misguided few claimed to really understand them! Neither Hilda nor I felt we were achieving a great deal on the farm and we agreed it was time to look further afield. In April 1950, after almost a year in Kitale, I responded to an advert in our national newspaper, the East African Standard, for Prison Officers. Salary £550 per year, uniform and furnished accomodation [sic] provided, generous leave etc. Military experience advantageous, with the rank of Asst. Supt. of Prisons. One pip! At least the job would get us to Nairobi where most of the action was, and we would have an opportunity to look around, but it was also to give me an insight into a very different and often sordid aspect of life. My application was successful. Our family, Hilda and myself, Colin and Wendy, with Paddy and Jeep our two Alsations all crowded into the Austin A70 and once again made the now familiar safari to Nairobi. 150 miles of murram road, through the Transnzoia, and the plains around Eldoret settled almost entirely by South Africans from the Union, winding around ravines to Mau Summit, up and over the 11,500 ft. mountains at Timbarua to Nakuru then 100 miles of luxurious tarmac through Naivasha with its flamingoes [sic] , passed Elementita an extinct volcano, up the escarpment to Nairobi. The tarmac road was built by Italian prisoners of war in W.W.2, the best stretch of road in East Africa. We also took with us Edward Ekeke, an African driver who had been with my father in Abbysinia [sic] during the war. Although a Kikuyu he was a trusted servant, and if left alone by the politicians and other agitators would have stayed loyal, but tribal and other pressures on chaps like Ekeke were great, and in retrospect it was foolish of us to trust them. Ekeke returned to Kitale with the Austin for more personal effects and re-joined us after a few days. I think he must have finally returned to the farm by 'taxi', as the african buses were called. As it claimed in the advert., accomodation [sic] was provided. It could have been described as a three-bedroomed chalet, the walls and roof being of mabati (corrugated iron), and was built on stilts about a foot off the ground. We learned that is [sic] was originally built at the other side of the prison and had been carried to its current location by 200 prisoners. As far as I remember, we moved straight into the 'house', and roughed it until Hilda made it comfortable. There was a bathroom, but the loo was a 'thunderbox' at the end of the back garden with a bucket which a gang of prisoners dealt with about 5 am. every day. The kitchen was a Colonial type near the back door, with a wood stove, and an adequate supply of kuni (firewood) provided by more prisoners. The prison was totally enclosed within a high stone wall, designed to hold 700 prisoners, but with a prison population of about 1900 Africans, 180 Asians, 20 Somalis and 12 Europeans. Quite separate was a small compound for the Wamawaki, (women), with about 20 African and 1 Asian inmate (in for murder but only men were eligible for hanging, so she was serving life). The whole 2000 or so were in the care of about 9 European officers and 200 African Askari. The 85 [page break] Officer i/c was 'Major' Martin M.C., W.W.1 Veteran,as [sic] Snr. Supt., his number 2 was Henry Thacker with 3 pips as a Supt. Henry spoke fluent Kikuyu in addition to Swahili, and in fact had a Kikuyu 'wife'. He had been in the Prisons service for 36 years at that time and sported one medal ribbon, on his right breast. Legend had it that it was awarded by the Royal Humane Society after he saved a cat from drowning, but Henry was on a totally different wavelength to other Europeans. Sid Swan with 2 pips was i/c the stores and accounts, having spent the war in the Kings African Rifles, and having been demobbed as a Major. Other junior officers like myself included Bunty Lewis, rather effiminate [sic] but nevertheless an ex Royal Artillery officer who had a Kenya-born wife; Paddy McKinney, a large hairy ex Irish Guards Sergeant; Jimmie Vant, ex Kings African Rifles, the son of a Keswick lawyer turned Kenya farmer. Jimmie and his wife Dulcie regarded themselves as Kenya settlers and claimed to spend most of their time at the ranch on the Kinankop, hence their landrover vehicle. Another officer, Whitehouse who joined about the same time as me seemed to spend most of his time off sick and did not stay with us very long. There were three other officers whose names elude me but they were all ex-service, and all lived just outside the wall of the main prison. The Duty Officers i/c worked a shift system, 0600 to 1800, assisted by a "day-duties" officer during more or less office hours. The Duty Officer was responsible for the day to day activity in the main prison. We were each armed with an enormous ancient revolver of 0.45 calibre and six rounds of ammo., issued by Mr. Thacker. I objected to the rounds of ammo., pointing out they were dum-dums, the bullets having been filed down to within 1/8" of the cartridge cases., and they contravened the Geneva convention. I remember Henry saying "there is nothing in the Prisons Ordinance about the Geneva Convention, and that's all that matters"! We were ordered in writing to wear the revolver in its holster at all times when on duty, and I thought of my four Brownings of long ago to deal with one enemy, compared to a ridiculous revolver in a compound with nearly 2000 potential enemies. It was in fact general practice, strictly unofficial, to carry the revolver but to leave the ammunition in the safe, and the prisoners knew this. I did carry a loaded Czech. .25 automatic in my pocket of which the prisoners were not aware. Some months after I joined, the Snr. Supt. inspected Paddy's revolver and put him on a charge for not carrying ammunition, "contrary to station standing order number something or other". Paddy was eventually charged before the Commissioner of Prisons and pleaded not guilty, asking to see the written order. This was produced and the charge dismissed. The order refered [sic] to the revolver only, and not ammunition. All very childish, but Paddy of the Irish Guards was not one to be messed about. He produced his dum-dum bullets to the Commissioner who was astonished, and all the dumdums were withdrawn. Paddy also pointed out how ludicrous it was for a lone officer to carry firearms in a crowd of hundreds of prisoners, but the order remained. He was a likeable fellow and when the C.O. quoted the book of rules, Paddy made a detailed study of it. In addition to the Prisons Ordnance, we also had Station Standing Orders which gave Paddy ample scope for playing the barrack-room lawyer. He was seen one night at a party in the Military Police Snr. N.C.O.'s mess, and was put on [deleted] a [/deleted] two charges by Martin. Before the Commissioner he was charged with sleeping off the station and drinking whilst on duty. Again Paddy asked for the rule-book and pleaded not guilty. The book stated that an officer would not sleep off the station whilst [page break] on duty. Paddy agreed he had been at the dance all night and did not in fact sleep anywhere! case [sic] dismissed. Station standing orders also stated that an officer would not partake of alcoholic drink whilst on duty, but a further order stated that an "officer was deemed to be on duty at all times". It therefore followed that all Prisons Officers were required to be completely teetotal, and that was an unlawful order. Martin had met his match and was told to edit Station Standing Orders. The day started at 0630 by unlocking the European cells and counting the inmates, whilst the Askari dealt with all the other prisoners. There was no point in an escape attempt by Europeans, they would not have got very far before being picked up, but for other races it was a different matter. They were guarded very closely. The four main racial groups were quartered separately for sleeping and eating, their customs and diet and indeed their whole culture differing considerably. Only the Europeans slept on beds, the others were not interested and prefered [sic] the floor, some with very thin mattresses. The Europeans wore shoes, the Somalis heavy boots, Asians wore flipflops and the Africans stuck to their bare feet which were generally tougher than any footwear. European food was probably similar to that in U.K. prisons, and with each race having its own traditional food, this was not a case of discrimination, each prefered [sic] its own. Each group also provided its own cooks. Some of the Asians in fact opted out of Prison food and had it sent in, but it was very thoroughly checked. Uniforms differed too, some compromise between standard prison garb and ordinary native dress. Europeans wore K.D. slacks and shirts with arrows printed on them. Africans wore white shirt and white shorts held up by string. Two or three hours were spent in the early morning preparing prisoners for court, generally about 50 of them. Some were on remand, and others were convicted prisoners who were required to give evidence in cases where they were involved as witnesses. In the late afternoon all were returned to the prison possibly with changed status. The paper-work had to be watched very carefully, confusion could arise where one prisoner might have a conviction warrant on one case, a remand warrant on another and possibly a production order to appear as a witness in an entirely different case. It was not unknown for a prisoner to be involved in two cases under different names. Language sometimes presented a problem. The courts conducted the business in English and Kiswahili, but there were many tribal languages and quite often interpreters had to be employed. One such case was when 60 prisoners of the Suk tribe were charged with murder having massacred the District Commissioner and his staff of 12. The only interpreter who could cope with the Suk language translated into Kitoshi, and a second one translated from Kitoshi into Swahili. All 60 were hanged at the prison in due course. They seemed very young to me and I doubt if they really knew what it was all about. They were the ones rounded up by the Police after spears had been thrown at the D.C.'s party from a crowd of 2000 whilst he was reading the Riot Act -literally-. Relationships between officers at the prison were generally very good, with the exception of Martin who thought he was playing soldiers and Thacker for whom we felt rather sorry. 36 years as a prisons officer must have warped his mind somewhat. After about two months I decided to be like the other officers and wear my medal ribbons, and that was when I first fell foul of Major Martin. He asked me what the first medal was and I told him. He said he 87 [page break] had not authorised me to wear it and I laughed and said I didn't need his authority, the King's was good enough. Shortly after this I was on duty when 45 new African prisoners were admitted, but there were 50 warrants. Some were convicted on Capital Charges, (murder, manslaughter, rape etc). My Chief Warder had signed for 50 bodies and 50 warrants, but there were only 45 bodies. It was 5 pm and my obvious priority was to determine which 5 prisoners were missing. It took until 6.30 to sort it out, no-one was missing, the Court was at fault in issuing two warrants each to five prisoners, instead of one warrant and one production order each. Only then did I get around to locking up the European prisoners for the night, 30 minutes late, and I entered this in the log. The next day an Asian prisoner complained to an Asian Official Prison Visitor that the Europeans were not locked up until 6.30 whereas the Asian prisoners were locked up on time. This was racial discrimination and the official visitor reported the matter direct to the Commissioner. I was charged by Martin for failing to carry out a particular standing order in that I failed to lock up the Europeans at 6 pm. 'How do you plead?' saith [sic] the Commiss. 'I don't', I replied, 'I request the case be taken by the Member for Law & Order'. He was the member of Legislative Council equivalent to the U.K. Attorney General, and this was a genuine option available to an officer charged before the Commissioner, same sort of procedure as an Airman on a 252 asking for a Court Martial rather than take his C.O.'s verdict. The Commissioner suspended the charge for the time being and asked Martin why the charge was brought. I was then asked why I had failed and I said that I was the Officer responsible and in unusual circumstances I concentrated my action in what I considered the most important aspect, which was resolving the problem of the 5 apparently missing prisoners. I consider I acted correctly, regardless of Station Standing Orders. Martin said he had not known that and I suggested that he should read the duty log before signing it as seen, next time. I also suggested that an amendment be made to the standing orders to the effect that nothing contained therein would prohibit an officer from using his initiative when he felt it necessary. Anyhow, I went on, it is an unlawful order in any case, and that will be my alternative defence with the Member for Law & Order. The commissioner was intrigued and read out the order "You will lock-up the European prisoners at 6 pm.", looking to me for comment. I said it was an impossible order, locking-up people involves work which takes time, 6pm is a moment of time in which by definition no work can be done. I said the whole set-up is childish and the Commissioner asked Martin to withdraw the charge. It seemed I had joined Paddy in his war of attrition against Martin. Our two alsations, Paddy and Jeep had settled-in very nicely, with only their hereditary training. Their self-appointed task of guarding Hilda and the children was unending. When the family was inside the house, one guard would remain with them whilst the other maintained watch on the verandah [sic] and patrolled outside in the garden. When the children were in the garden whilst prisoners were working in the area, either Paddy or Jeep would deploy themselves between the two groups. Only by instinct our dogs knew the prisoners were not to be trusted and were watched very carefully, but the African askari were regarded as allies. The prison was very close to the boundary of Nairobi National Park, and grew cabbages two feet in diameter in what must have been some of the most fertile land in Kenya, receiving all the effluent from the 2000 odd inmates. Late one afternoon an african prisoner in a work gang fancied his [page break] chances and made a run for it, sprinting along the road passed [sic] the house hotly pursued by about six askari. The askari were at a disadvantage wearing heavy boots and jerseys, but they were joined by Paddy and Jeep who caught up with the prisoner and arrested him in the Game Park. When the askari caught up with them they found the prisoner literally with his pants down, leaning exhausted against a post supporting a notice "Stay in Your Car, Beware of Lion". It was essential but sometimes difficult not to become involved emotionally with the prisoners, almost all of whom had in their eyes suffered a grave injustice by winding-up in jail. One afternoon whilst I was on duty the Chief Immigration Officer, a Mr. Pierce, came to the prison and required me to serve a Deportation Order on a European Prisoner, Major Melbourn. I read the document first and found that Melbourn had been declared an 'undesireable [sic] immigrant' and was therefore to be deported within 5 days. Melbourn had in fact served about 12 months of a three year sentance [sic] for bigamy and would be required to complete the term in the U.K. He was 'undesireable [sic] ' because he had changed his job without permission. I remarked that this was a very lame excuse for such drastic action. After an exchange of views I said I had not sought his permission when I joined the Prisons Service and he advised me to do so without delay! A few days later I was detailed to escort the prisoner to Mombasa, and hand him over to the officer i/c of the prison at Fort Jesus. Meanwhile I had studied all the Melbourn files and they showed a good example of how a fellow could slip up over small technicalities which produced major consequences. Melbourn was a British Army officer serving overseas for almost the entire war. During the Blitz, his wife was in a Convalascent [sic] home in Liverpool which received a direct hit and she disappeared without trace like many others. He had been drawing a marriage allowance in the normal way and eventually reported to his C.O. that it should be discontinued because he believed his wife had been killed in an air-raid. He was advised that until he had proof of this the allowance would continue. He should have applied to the courts for it to be deemed that his wife had been killed but the environment of the Burmese jungle and other wartime pressures were not conducive to that sort of logic and he let the matter rest. After the war he made enquiries in Liverpool without result, and was eventually released from the Army having served for 30 years. Several years later he became engaged to the daughter of the French Consol [sic] in Nairobi, and when they were married he declared that he was a bachelor. They were Catholics and had he referred to himself as a widower, there could have been difficulties and the authorities would have required proof in any case, which he could not provide. Soon after the wedding someone who had been a clerk in the Pay Corps spotted the reference to 'Bachelor' and thought it rather odd that Melbourn had claimed a marriage allowance during the war. He reported this and the subsequent enquiry led to Melbourn being charged with bigamy and convicted. Whilst it was essential that justice must be seen to apply equally to all races, Europeans were the Bwana Mkubwas and were supposed to set an example. White men in jail were an embarassment [sic] to Government and wherever possible they were returned to the U.K. Melbourn had slipped-up on a second trechnicality. [sic] In the U.K. After [sic] demob. he and two ex-Army colleagues, all of whom had served in East Africa in 1945, decided to establish a business in Kenya, and the three applied for Entry permits, Employment passes, Dependants [sic] passes in two cases, and Residence permits. Complete with ambitious plans for the future and proper documentation 89 [page break] the trio arrived in Nairobi and set about organising their new enterprise, one of the first acts being an application to register the name of their company. Whilst this was 'going through channels' problems came to light which could not have been foreseen and their plans had to be abandoned. Melbourn remained in Nairobi and obtained employment, and his two colleagues returned to U.K., disillusioned by the red tape. Whilst looking for a reason to declare Melbourn an undesireable [sic] immigrant the application for permission to work with a firm which did not exist came to light and provided the necessary ammunition. On the night train to Mombasa Melbourn was very chatty, we were both in civvies, he was allowed to use his own money and I felt the best policy would be to let him have a few drinks and to sleep it off. He undertook to behave and understood that at the first sign of being unco-operative he would be handcuffed to his bunk. He told me his story which was the same as gleaned from the files, and added that he had made arrangements to escape at Suez and join the sister of one of the Somali inmates. I handed him over at Fort Jesus, wished him luck and had a look around Mombasa before returning to Nairobi on the night train. About two months later we learned that he had indeed jumped ship at Suez and was working as a Newsreader at Oomdemaan on Egyptian International Radio Broadcasts. I bought some brass plates from him in Nairobi which today are displayed at Wendy's home in Cherryhinton [sic] , and which remind me of the injustice metered out to one who served for 30 years in the British Army. Another European prisoner, on remand, had been arrested for vagrancy. He was a British merchant seaman who felt like a change, had legally entered Kenya with proper documentation and had taken a job driving a native bus. The authorities deemed this was not a suitable job for a white man, declared him undesireable [sic] and deported him, by ship. He would have been quite happy to have joined a ship at Mombasa as crew-member or paid his own passage. He most certainly did not meet the definition of vagrancy, he had more than adequate means of support. I recall his bitterness when he said it was fair enough to drive a bloody army lorry for five years but not an african bus. For nearly six months I relieved Ron Woods as officer i/c the Tailoring section of Prison workshops, whilst he was on home leave. In the workshop 200 prisoners beavered away sewing and stitching, 100 with sewing machines and the other half working by hand. We produced uniforms for all Government departments and also for prisoners and were allowed to undertake private work for anyone willing to provide their own material. One of the European prisoners had been a tailor in civvy street and he was very helpful. There was also a 'mechanical workshop' employing about 100, mostly producing articles in metal for Gov't departments, but also repairing and generally working on motor-cars. I took the opportunity of turning them loose on my father's Packard and they did a very good job. The Tailoring section even produced some seat covers for it without being asked. Shortly after the car was finished, a Salvation Army Major came to me and said that Johnson, a European prisoner who had worked on the car, had seen the light after several months of Bible study and was now determined to go straight. He was serving five years for armed robbery, having held up a taxi in Mombasa. The Major asked for my support for his application to the Parole Board and was in fact going to great lengths to secure the Prisoner's release. I declined my support, and told the Major he had been spoofed, Johnson would never go straight. However, the appeal [page break] was successful and Johnson suggested to me the night before his release that for a small fee he could arrange to 'steal' the car and drop it over Nairobi escarpment for me. Such were the people we were dealing it, [sic] [inserted] with [/inserted] but what finally became of him I don't know. After several months we moved to a much nicer house in the prison officers' compound. Hilda was doing photographic retouching and finishing work in the city for Arthur Firmin, and life was without undue pressures. On saturday [sic] evenings we occasionally went to see our friends George and Iris Dent at the Oasis pub. George was an engineer with the Army Kinema Corporation and a very keen 'ham', VQ4DO, ex ZS6DO. At their parents' Pub George showed films which provided entertainment. This was before the days of television in Kenya. It was on the evening of one of our visits we were sitting in the Dent's home, Wendy was stretched out asleep on the couch and Iris's little boy was playing with his toy cap-gun. This reminded me that the pain in my rear was caused by my .25 automatic in my trouser pocket, so I moved the gun to my jacket pocket. Iris saw this move and said it looked a far nicer gun than her .38 and asked to see it. I handed it over, having checked there was no round up the spout and it was on safe. To our absolute astonishment, Iris cocked it, off with the safety catch and fired. The bullet demolished the leg of the couch less than a foot from Wendy's head. The song "Pistol-packing mamma" didn't seem at all funny any more. Colin was with us and had attended Nairobi Primary School for about two months. Wendy was looked after during the day by Nadudu, the Kitoshi ayah we had taken with us from Kitale. The children called her Bundudu. With the withdrawal of the British Army from Kenya, George and Iris returned to South Africa, George taking up employment with the S.A. Broadcasting Corporation. Today the Oasis pub is thriving, still on the main Mombassa [sic] Road and close to Nairobi airport at Embakasi. I was concerned only with Nairobi prison, but there were prisons in 8 or so towns, backed up by several camps. Later when Mau Mau really got under way, there were many more much bigger 'internment' camps. Some of them in my day were known as rather tough places. Hard Labour was still the prerogative of the courts; It meant exactly that, and was invariably stone breaking. A gang would be given a task of smashing up a number of very large boulders and feeding the fragments through a screen before putting them onto a lorry. Only when the task was complete would they be marched back to the living area. One of our camps was at Lokitong, about 450 miles north of Nairobi, and it frequently happened that prisoners had to be returned from there to Nairobi to attend court. There was no telephone, the only communication with the camp was was [sic] by a telegram to Kitale prison and thence a letter by bus and camel to the camp. It was generally a three-week process, so six weeks was needed to produce a prisoner from Lokitong to a court in Nairobi. I put up a written suggestion that in the absence of telephones we should establish a number of radio stations. I could undertake to establish the stations myself using ex-army 21 sets, maintain them and also to train the operators. The suggestion was submitted through Mr. Martin but addressed to the Commissioner, and according to the Chief Clerk went straight into Martin's waste paper basket. A few days later I delivered a copy direct to the Commissioner's office with a covering letter with my estimate of costs, about £100 per station plus my time and travelling. 91 [page break] I promised instant communication with the camps but it was too revolutionary and there was no provision in the budget for it. About four years later the job was done for them by the Police at a cost of £700,000 with recurring annual expenditure of over £100,000. A lot of money in those days. Jimmie Vant became the Prisons Dept. Telecommunications Officer with no knowledge whatsoever of the subject. He didn't really need any, all the work was carried out by the Police which was staffed entirely by technicians on secondment from the U.K. Home Office. Such is the price of progress and sophisticated over-engineering. No doubt in the 1990s they will be able to spend even more millions and do the job via satelite [sic] . Returning home one afternoon having collected Hilda and two other ladies from the city, and Colin from school, we found the prison surrounded by armoured cars and light tanks with hundreds of Police and Army personnel. Apparently there was a rumour of a pending mass breakout, but it was only a rumour. I regarded it as a show of strength for the benifit [sic] of the unruly. The job in the Prisons Service was like no other I have held either before or since. It was work which started and finished according to the duty roster and activity was determined and limited by the various orders laid down. For every minor detail there had to be a written authority. The Prisons Service had become established about the turn of the century and the antiquated system did nothing to inspire enthusiasm. On one occasion Paddy Mc.Kinney and I were taking a five minute breather in the office and enjoying a coca-cola, when Martin came in and without preamble ordered us to put leg-irons on Mchegi, then stormed out again. Mchegi was a "casi kubwa", a 6'3" Kikuyu in a condemned cell. The leg-irons were a reprisal for Mchegi's offensive the previous day. Martin, on his round of inspection had moved aside the 6" square observation panel in the door of Mchegi's cell to look inside, and received the full force of the contents of the choo (night soil!) bucket in his face. Mchegi was awaiting hanging and had nothing to lose. He was a very dangerous individual who had already killed and because of his violance [sic] often remained in his cell during excercise [sic] periods. Putting leg-irons on this tough character was a formidable task and Martin knew that. Paddy startled me by suggesting that I should open the door of Mchegi's cell, and he would wait at the open end of the corridor where it entered the prison yard. I replied that I would rather he opened Mchegi's door and I would wait in the yard. However, Mchegi had no personal animosity towards me and Paddy's complete plan appeared rational. I opened the cell door with the greeting "Mjambo Mchegi", and he stepped out of the cell, seeing a clear passage to the prison yard and beyond to the open gate in the outside perimeter wall of the prison, with neither officer nor askari in sight. Mchegi recognised his chance to escape and made a dash for it. It was at the end of the corridor that Paddy stepped out hit him and simultaneously an askari tripped him up. Before Mchegi recovered four askari had rivetted on the leg-irons and dragged him back to his cell. A few minutes later Paddy and I were finishing our cokes in the office when Martin came in and remonstrated, "why haven't you carried out my order?" Paddy said we had done so and Martin exclaimed "impossible". When Martin was told just how it had been done we were both on a charge once more. The Commissioner reminded us that striking a prisoner was a very serious matter but when Paddy said it was the preferred alternative to shooting him, there was no answer, and the matter was dropped. Mchegi gave no more trouble and apologised to Martin for his indiscretion, and [page break] Paddy saw to it that Mchegi received his full ration of excercise [sic] time in the prison yard. It was about three weeks after the choo bucket incident that Paddy was in the yard and attacked from the rear by a prisoner with a pair of 12" scissors. Fortunately Mchegi was watching and although still in leg-irons tackled the assailant, overcoming him just in time. Paddy was still cut, but there was no doubt that Mchegi had saved his life. He took a great interest in Mchegi and asked why he had been a condemned prisoner for so long, just waiting for the death sentance [sic] to be carried out. Paddy saw to it that the stabbing incident received a great deal of publicity, and eventually Mchegi was released from jail. Some years later I found he was a Snr. Warder at the prison. About the same time, a new recruit joined us, with the same rank, Asst. Supt. Gr.2, but we found his salary was in fact 2 increments (£120 per annum) higher than ours and we wanted to know the reason why. We were told that he had been in the armed services and was awarded two increments for war service. We, apparently, had been under the average age of entry for the Prisons service at the time of our war service. Our next move was to try and compare our respective efforts during the war, but the new recruit was very reticent about his service career, and somehow didn't seem to speak the language of the soldier. It was several weeks later we found he had been in the German Army and the rest of us felt this really was too much. Regulations on war service increments however did refer to the "armed services" and made no mention of which side a fellow was on. We were not still fighting the [deleted] a [/deleted] war, but we were a uniformed service after all. The Gerry could see he was not wanted and resigned. After 12 months as a Prison Officer I was very disgruntled with the way of life and went to see the Commissioner and gave him one month's notice. This he accepted and on my return to the prison I was handed a letter terminating my appointment with immediate effect, signed by Martin. I then set about thinking of another job, there was lots of scope and on the air next morning my father suggested I should go and see Joe Furness who was Director of Civil Aviation. Later that day, in prison uniform, I called to see the Personnel Officer of D.C.A., one Bert Leaman, and found there might be a possibility of joining the Telecommunications section, and arranged an interview for the following day. [page break] [underlined] CIVIL AVIATION [/underlined] In April 1951 I joined the E.A. Directorate of Civil Aviation as a Radio Officer on a salary of £610 per year. I had no relevant qualifications for this job but I could cope with the morse code at 25 words per minute and had aquired[sic] a general background of aviation during the war years! The first two weeks were spent at R.A.F. Eastleigh studying the workings of the Telecommunications and Air Traffic Control systems, after which I was posted to Mbeya near the Tanganyika/Northern Rhodesia border at 6500 feet above sea level. The journey down to Mbeya was by road, 900 miles, and in the middle of the rainy season. Much advice was received, “all the hotels are closed”, “the roads are waterlogged and blocked”, “there is no petrol beyond Arusha” and so on. We decided to do the trip in four short stages of between 200 and 300 miles per day, with night stops at Arusha, Dodoma and Iringa. Our 1949 Ford Prefect, KCC13, with 60,000 miles on the clock was reshod at a cost of £10. Recapped tyres were the vogue at that time, a practice which has since stopped, being said to be dangerous. However, those recaps. did 22,000 miles on some of the worst roads in the world, without problems, before being replaced, a better performance than the original new tyres. With the car loaded with household equipment, and with Colin and Wendy lying on blankets near the roof of the car we headed south down “the Great North Road”. The first 100 miles was tarmac and no problem in the pouring tropical rain. Always to the south of us -dead on track- were towering thunderheads of cumulo [sic] -nimbus, but nearing the end of the tarmac the rain stopped. Indeed for the next three days the rain stopped falling about twelve hours ahead of us, but also remained on our tail. On the second day, deep ruts in the road caused a broken rear spring near Dodoma, but this was repaired overnight at George’s Garage; very well equipped with spare springs was George. Crossing the hundreds of fords, or drifts was exciting and at times quite hilarious, many being over 100 years wide and comprising merely a strip of concrete 10 feet wide on the bed of the river. Most of them were covered by water, hiding the concrete and the only clue to its location was provided by the poles at each side of the drift. More often than not the river bed at the side of the concrete was worn away creating a drop of a foot or so. A piece of thick wire fixed to the front of the car together with a vertical line on the windscreen, could be lined up with the centre of the two distant poles. By ignoring everything else and having implicit faith in the navigational instrument, we always reached the other side without going over the edge. Without this blind faith there would have been a tendency to keep a little to the up-stream side of the drift. To go over the edge on the other side could have been disastrous. In two places on the second day we were really bogged down in mud but we quickly mastered the technique of driving in reverse over the worst parts, thus becoming front-wheel drive. The most interesting village we passed was Kondor Arangi, between Dodoma and Iringa, on the third day. A beautifully painted and spotlessly clean Arab village, probably unchanged for centuries and almost completely independent of the world outside. After over 35 years I can still recall the aroma of freshly-baked bread, and the welcoming atmosphere of the village. On through Iringa and the final leg of 250 miles of the beautiful scenery of Southern Highlands, completely unspoilt by development. After a night at the Iringa Hotel, we had made our usual early-morning start and reached Mbeya by mid-day. Straight to the Railway station in 95 [page break] Mbeya, a typical East African Railways and Harbours station complete with platforms, but the nearest railway lines and trains were over 400 miles away. A search for Paddy and Jeep, our two alsations, which had been put on the train five days previously in Nairobi, was to no avail. It was to be a further three days before they reached Mbeya, very hungry and very thirsty. After a night in ‘Links’ Salter’s Mbeya Hotel we inspected our new home at the airport. Known as Wilson Airways Rest House, built in 1932 for use by British Airways – before the change of name to Imperial Airways, and B.O.A.C. – It was ‘U’ shaped with 2 kitchens and 10 bedrooms. No electricity of course but a dozen or so paraffin lamps took care of the lighting problem. An african [sic] was provided to carry water from a tap about four hundred yards away to keep our small tank topped-up. The house was very convenient at the side of the runway, actually the grass landing area. It was very pleasant to sit on the verandah[sic] where there was a wonderful view of Mbeya Peak. We had only two neighbours, the Claytons from Burnley who were ‘refugees’ from the groundnut scheme at Kongwa and now in charge of a tipper unit with the Public Works Dept., and Bwana Grigg, an old-timer who had been a prospector and was then a Weights and Measures Inspector. Mbeya was our home for 2 1/2 years, the aerodrome had been up-graded from a one-man to two-man station open from 0600 to 1800 hrs. every day. My colleague was George Hanson, who originally hailed from Selby in Yorkshire, an ex-wireless operator in Royal Signals during the war who had joined E.A. Posts and Telegraphs as a Radio Officer in 1947. George had spent 3 years in Burma during the war and returned to Selby in 1946. To find his fiance [sic] in the arms of two Italian prisoners. According to George he gave the Italians a thrashing – which would have been very true to character – and left them with their heads jammed in the railings, to be released later by the fire-brigade. The Law caught up with him and George was given a dressing -down by the magistrate who said “We don’t want ruffians like you in this country”. George claims he told the magistrate to get some service in and his knees brown and the case was adjourned. At that time the Crown Agents were recruiting for East African Posts & Telegraphs Dept. and George felt it was time to emigrate. All aeronautical communications were handled by E.A.P. & T. until the end of 1950 when they were taken over by the Directorate of Civil Aviation. George and I had to cover 84 hours each week between us, thoeoretically[sic] a 42 hour week, but there was no provision for sickness, local leave, and the many chores which required both of us, like being in three places simultaneously. We were assisted by an african [sic] wireless operator, a Kikuyu 1200 miles from his home, a cleaner, a watchman, and a diesel mechanic, Kundan Singh Babra, all of whom lived on the station. George and I agreed our individual responsibilities, we would each carry out our 42 hours per week on watches, which included R/T to aircraft on HF and VHF, an aerodrome control function, W/T to Nairobi as required, originating meteorological reports each hour and coding them into Aero format, and customs duties. In addition, he would deal with all the admin., and I would see to the technical aspect of keeping the station on the air. The station had been established in 1932 and the original Marconi M/F Beacon, a type TA4A was still in use and in immaculate condition. We had a stock of MT16 valves enough to last for another 30 years. We also had an ex-South African Air Force T1190 of 1933 vintage, fitted in 1940, and four ET4336 transmitters for working aircraft on R/T and Nairobi on W/T. Everything was in very good condition and gave me no problems. Our “office” was at the D/F [page break] (direction finding) station, and was fitted with one of the original DFG10 Marconi recieivers [sic] . We could not see the runway from the office, which rather limited our scope in controlling it. Each week, Mbeya had only 4 East African Airways scheduled Dakotas and Loadstars, on the Nairobi-Dar es Salaam route, plus a Beaver of Central African Airways from Blantyre in Nyasaland and one R.A.F. transport from Johannesburg to Nairobi. There were also up to a dozen or so charters which sometimes arrived with little or no notice. Our M/F Beacon was the only navigation aid for some hundreds of miles in all directions. The D/F Receiver was not in use and had a faulty power unit. This I serviced and used the receiver for monitoring Tabora’s M/F Beacon. We were operating also on 6440 KHz, the Salisbury F.I.C. channel, unofficially, to keep in touch with the Beaver aircraft which were not fitted with Nairobi F.I.C. channels. This proved very useful and also gave us a rapid link with Salisbury Ndola and Blantyre. One day and R.A.F. Anson called on [underlined] 6440 [/underlined] and reported his MF/DF receiver, - in his only [inserted in margin] NOT 6440 BUT 5190[?] [/inserted in margin] navigational aid – out of order. He was over mountains, - he hoped – in cloud, could we give him QDM’s, (courses to steer) on M/F ?. I told him to transmit on 333 KHz, the standard frequency for this purpose, and it took only a few seconds to retune the DFG10 to this frequency. For the next 2 1/2 hrs. I gave him a QDM every three minutes. The weather was bad and the aircraft eventually landed at Mbeya, staying overnight. The Navigator was visibly shaken, he did not know his position, only that if he acted on the QDM,’s he would eventually reach Mbeya. Only after landing could he calculate his ground speed, about 70 knots. On arrival over Mbeya the crew were able to see Mbeya Peak above cloud, This was five miles to the North of us and with a cloud base of 3000 feet above the aerodrome they were able to descent and land. All this would of course have been totally unacceptable to a civilian aircraft which would have possibly returned to it’s starting point. The R.A.F. aircraft without any Nav. Aids had really no option. Some weeks later we received a letter from the R.A.F. thanking us for the assistance we had given the Anson crew in providing M/F bearings thus preventing a possible disaster, etc. etc. Unfortunately this letter was also copied to D.C.A. H.Q. with another asking if the facility could be retained. The next mail brought a letter from our own boss, the Director of Civil Aviation.. “Whilst complimenting and thanking you for taking the initiative on this occasion…”. The letter went on to point out the legal significance of giving information to pilots and of undertaking to provide a direction-finding facility with 20-year old equipment and no spares. I made sure I could provide an alternative power supply of 2 and 130 volts which did not take much imagination and adapted some modern valves – type 6C4 – with bases to replace the original 1930 vintage triodes. There were not used in my 2 1/2 years in Mbeya and we continued to give bearings to the R.A.F. unofficially. About 2 years later a Pye VHF set was fitted together with a D/F antenna and also a modern Redifon M/F Beacon, both with an effective range no better than 25% of the 1932 equipment. This was not the fault of the manufacturers. In the case of the D/F the reason was the difference in propagation characteristics and with the M/F Beacon it would have been better to retain the original 1932 Marconi type antenna. I have no notes of this period, but memories are many. I recall seeing a Cheetah on the grass landing area we called a runway, whilst carrying [page break] out a runway inspection. As I approached, the cheetah ran off. My foot was hard down doing 58 m.p.h. just behind it, but the cheetah gradually drew away. Daily inspection of the ‘runway’ was necessary. Ant-Bear holes appeared quite often, and just one of these was sufficient to wreck an aircraft. Africans had free access to the runway except when aircraft were actually using it. One evening a grass fire started and swept first along the windward side of the runway where the grass was long, and then crossed it in a line of flame and black smoke the whole length of the runway. Hilda and I were on foot at the other side of the runway and witnessed literally hundreds of snakes fleeing from the fire. There were lots of snakes and other creatures in that area which after all was open African bush. This was again highlighted at 6 am one morning when I drove to the D/F station and opened up the radio. It was still dark and there was a very pungent smell of pigs. I assumed there was a dead animal outside but within a few minutes it was daylight and having established contact with Nairobi on w/t and confirmed there were no overnight disasters requiring my attention, I went outside to investigate. There were elephants all over the place, standing there, and looking just as surprised as I was. I made a strategic withdrawal smartly into the D/F station and bolted the door. On my way to the office I had met the African nightwatchman who was waving his arms about and saying something about ‘tembo mningi sani”. The word Tembo was generally associated with Elephant Brand Beer, which was more a part of everyday life in our immediate area than the animal after which it was named. I assumed he had been drinking and thought no more of it. The africans too were soon awake and trying to chase the elephants out of the maize, throwing tin cans, stones and even pangas at them. Three africans were killed in the process. Meanwhile I telephoned the police who said it was not their shouri (affair), “tell the Game Warden”. It was then 6.15am. and the Game Warden would not take the matter seriously, claiming I was drinking too much, “see the M.O.”! There was a scheduled Dakota due at 7 am. and I asked the pilot to overfly the runway and make sure there were no elephants on it, and this he agreed to do. I gave him the surface wind and QNH and landing clearance, and he came straight in and landed, without checking. He too thought I was not being serious about the elephants. It was mid-day before the elephants left of their own accord and moved back towards the mountains to the south. The Africans said the elephant movement was a sure sign that Rungwe, our local dormant volcano was about to erupt, and the elephants had already received warning. They took me to the fire trench round the Shell petrol dump which was 10 feet deep, and showed me the alternate layers of volcanic ash and sandy soil, starting at the bottom with four inch layers. At the 5’ level about 8” layers, gradually thickening as compression decreased to a 12” layer of ash and finally, 18” of soil at the top. There was no record of the date of the last erruption,[sic] probably some hundreds of years ago. We did experience several earth tremmors [sic] in Mbeya, but it was a nice life and we decided to stick it out! Colin and Wendy were attending Mrs. Maugham-Brown’s infants school in the town and were making very good progress. Hilda was doing retouching of photographs for Arthur Firmin which were sent to and from his Nairobi office by air mail. It was in Mbeya that I built my first amateur transmitter with bits and pieces from the junk box, and was soon in daily contact with the outside world on the morse key. On the sixth of Feb. 1952 I called my chum in Liverpool as usual and he told me that all U.K. stations were closed for the day in deference to King [inserted] G6YQ George [/inserted] [page break] George VI who had died during the night. Later that day Hilda and I went to Mbeya School to see Colin, expecting the football match to have been cancelled. I expressed my surprise to the Provincial Commissioner (the King’s direct representative) that the Union Jacks were not at half mast and the game still on. He told me not to spread rumours and he would deal with me after the game. Just after half-time a Police askari despatch rider drove onto the field and gave the P.C., who was referee, a message. The P.C. stopped the game and announced that the King was dead. He was very annoyed indeed that I had received the message direct from U.K., many hours ahead of the official channels. Mbeya had a local telephone service which did not connect with any other. It was also at one end of a single-wire line of about 1000 miles which was used for passing telegraph messages. This linked about 30 places ‘up-country’ with Dar es Salaam, the Capital. There was no other way officially of telecommunicating with Mbeya. It so happened that I had a pair of ex-military amplified telephones, which were battery powered, press-to-talk operation and which gave an amplification each of 20 dB (100 times). I sent one of these to Jimmie Waldron in Dar es Salaam and by arrangement he called me one morning at 0545 on this line. We had a first-class conversation which was truly remarkable. This was possible only because the operators at the 30 or so other stations were still asleep, and not interfering. I have no doubt this particular exploit would compare very favourably with the record longest telephone conversation over a single wire and earth, if indeed a record has been established. George Hanson and I got on very well with each other, both being from Yorkshire and both being ex-Service, but eventually his tour of 2 1/2 years was completed and he was succeeded by Doug. Clifton, who was ex-PTT and R.A.F. ground wireless operator. We moved into the cottage vacated by George and family, near to the transmitting station, and I ran a mains cable underground between the two. This gave us 230 ac. Power for 12 hours a day and at night whenever the radio beacon was required for overflying aircraft. 99 [page break] One quiet morning the Provincial Commisioner [sic] asked me to his home to discuss a problem, and on arrival I was told that the Governor, Sir Edward Twining was convalescing in Mbeya, having just arrived, but could stay only if he could speak regularly with the Chief Secretary in Dar es Salaam. The Police and Posts & Telegraphs Departments had already been approached and could not assist. I was authorised to cut clean across any rules and regulations in order to set up a communications channel. Back at the D/F Station I sent an official message on the Aeronautical W/T channel to CHF ZHTD (Officer i/c Airport Dar-es-Salaam) asking him to pass a message to Jimmie Waldron, P.T.T. Chief Engineer’s office. I told Jimmie of the Governors request and the powers bestowed upon us, and that I would call him on 7151 KHz which was just above the upper limit of the amateur 40 meter band. I would install a receiver at the P.C.’s house. Would he advise me of his transmitting frequency. Meanwhile I got the local P.T.T. to connect my second aerodrome telephone line to the second line to the P.C.’s house. This automatically provided a microphone for the P.C. and enabled me to make a simple connection to my amateur transmitter at the airport. Half an hour later I received a message on the aeronautical channel “Loud and clear on 7175, Dar es salaam calling you on 8775. A check on my local receiver and indeed there was Jimmie. I then drove to the P.C.’s house and retuned the receiver to 8775, and we had first class duplex communication. A lady’s voice came on “Is that you George?” “No Love, this is Cliff”. “Oh dear, this is Lady Twining, is my husband George there please?” I handed him the telephone and restrained myself from saying “It’s for you George, I thought your name was Edward”. For the next two weeks the link was in constant use and another letter of thanks was sent from D.C.A. in Nairobi. Why the fuss one might say, but in 1952 it was the very first time [inserted] H E [/inserted] H.H. the Governor had spoken by private radio telephone to his Chief Secretary from outside Dar es Salaam. This was another ‘first’, also on an amateur basis. At Mbeya Post Office I was introduced to the Manager of New Saza Gold Mine, which was about 100 miles north of Mbeya. He said his radio link with Mbeya had not worked for four years although experts from all over East Africa had tried to fix it. It was a simple w/t link to Mbeya Post Office where there was an operating position and transmitter set up on 3900 KHz which seemed to be a reasonable frequency for the job. “Fix it and you can name your price”, and I agreed to have a go on a ‘no pass, no fee basis’. I first set up a spare DCA transmitter keyed from the D/F station, rather than rely upon co-operation from the Post office. My own DCA operator would monitor. I called the local Post office from the aerodrome but there was no reply. This was the rainy season and it would be a three hour drive through the bush to New Saza, so I lost no time over the Post Office and set off in my Ford Prefect complete with two amateur transmitters and two receivers, any combination of which could do the job if all else failed. On arrival, their station appeared to be working and with adequate output, but I soon found the output stage was doubling to 7.8 MHz. and not amplifying straight through 3.9. A higher tapping on the coil fixed that and I called Mbeya Post office. No reply. Then I called ZEQ3, my own office at the D/F Station and my operator came up trumps. We were in contact with 556 [page break] Mbeya. I asked my operator to ring the Postmaster asking him to kick his wireless operator. He found the transmitter had the wrong crystal in it and the receiver was also detuned. Having corrected this, all three stations were in contact. The station receiver at New Saza was a pre-war ‘straight set’, that is, not a superhet, and was not ideal, so I added one of my own receivers. In addition, I fitted a second operating position, with my own equipment and separate aerial, as a standby. The manager was delighted and I was rewarded handsomely. Only once in the next 18 months did I need to visit New Saza for a minor fault. Electrical and mechanical power for the mine was derived from a very old wood-burning steam engine of pre-1914 vintage and German manufacture. On the road about half way to the mine, was Chunya, a typical American-type western one-horse town, the main street being unpaved and 200 feet wide. The place was almost derelict, a few prospectors still panned for gold in the stream, but in years gone by it had supported a population of over 2000. There was a Police post which sported a telephone connected to Mbeya Post office. The overhead line ran at the side of the ‘road’ and I had this in mind for emergency use. A field telephone was part of my standard safari equipment in the car. Later on I carried a transmitter on the aeronautical H/F channels in addition. Communications was often the key to survival. One very hot day, about noon, George Blodgett, an American tourist, took off from Mbeya in his Cessna 180 with his wife and another passenger, continuing their round-the-world holiday. The aircraft carried the same load as when it took off from Dar es salaam without problem a week or so previously. But Dar was at sea level, and Mbeya at 6500 feet. Dar had a proper concrete runway with a clear flight path. Mbeya had a grass ‘runway’, much shorter and with a small hill at one end and a mountain within 4 miles at the other end. It was the slight banking to avoid the small hill which caused the aircraft to stall and plough along the ground, writing itself off. It took me several minutes to reach the wreck, to find a bewildered trio shaken-up, but physically unhurt. There was a strong smell of petrol which came from a 5 gallon can INSIDE the aircraft. The can had a hand pump and hose which fitted on the drain cock of a fuel tank inside the port wing. Transferring the petrol was achieved by opening a window and leaning out to fix the pipe. This rather surprised me as George was a very experienced pilot and was in fact the first to cross the Andes in Peru, solo, where some years later he went missing without trace. His life-story was written up in Time & Life and referring to his accident in Mbeya, it said he had crashed in the bush and the Despatcher from Mbeya trecked [sic] all night to reach the aircraft, to find George and his passengers surrounded by lions and tigers. Lions were a possibility but the only tigers in Africa are [deleted] a few imported ones in captivity. [/deleted] [inserted] in West Africa and are not tigers as we know them. [/inserted] Mbeya was a peaceful place, and to a large extent we were able to plan our lives. Occasionally we became involved with the local tribesmen, particularly after one of their frequent skirmishes. Generally a small group would appear at the house bearing the injured on bicycles with blood all over the place, and asking me to take the casualties to hospital. The first time this happened I took them by car to the African Hospital and not really knowing the system, gave them my name. Some weeks later I received the bill. Subsequent deliveries were made in the name of Ramsey Macdonald! Soon after joining DCA I noticed on one of many flight plans received the name of Iliffe as Captain of an incoming Dakota. When the First Officer 101 [page break] called me on VHF I requested him to ask the Captain if the number 1090111 meant anything to him. Back came the reply, affirmative. I gave him my first service number 1384956 and after he had landed, went over to the Terminal Building to see him. There wasn’t much time for reminiscing but he marvelled that I had remembered his first service number. It was on a pay parade in Bulawayo that Howard’s name was not called with the others in alphabetical order. It was called at the very end when he gave his ‘last three’, somewhat disgruntled, as “Sir, One one bloody one”. We had seen a great deal of each other on the troopship going to Durban and until our ways parted at Belvedere where Howard got his wings and my records were stamped ‘Wastage’. After his training at Belvedere, he completed S.F.T.S. on Oxfords and in U.K. converted to Dakotas. His war was on Transport Command, flying Dakotas. We met several times in the next 15 years, the last time being in 1965 when Howard was the Captain of a Comet of East African Airways returning to the U.K. After 2 1/2 years in Tanganyika our tour was finished and we were due for 6 months leave in U.K.. We opted to travel by air rather than sea but did not realise when making the decision that this referred to trunk travel to U.K. from the International Airport of the territory in which we finished our tour. It was unlikely that we would return to Mbeya after leave, my successor expecting to stay for the full 2 1/2 years. All our effects were crated up whilst we spent the last week in Mbeya Hotel. The car was left with the Postmaster and Paddy our Alsation [sic] boarded with Mrs. Maugham-Brown. And so with four children, Christopher a baby of 4 months, we said farewell to Mbeya at the railway station, not by train but by diesel-powered bus - referred to as a ‘taxi’ by the Africans. The first leg took us the 250 miles through Southern Highlands to Iringa, where accommodation was reserved at Iringa Hotel. The next day was very similar, by another ‘taxi’ to Dodoma. The drivers were Africans, probably ex-Kings African Rifles, and their driving was of a very high standard considering the state of the road. There was some tarmac in the towns, but otherwise the road surface was graded murram, a well-packed reddish sand. This was apt to become corrugated after rain and scarred with deep wheel ruts. Ruts made by lorries could be quite deep and dangerous to cars with little clearance below. The ‘taxi’ took us direct to the railway station at Dodoma where we had been advised to request compartments as near to the engine as possible, where the sway is minimum. The first job was to wash all the nappies and as we had two compartments it was easy to sling a couple of lines and hang up the nappies to dry. It was very hot in Dodoma, and the carriage windows were all open because of the heat. In the evening the engine got up steam and the train moved off amid clouds of thick black smoke, most of which seemed to come in at the windows. For 18 hours we chugged across the plains with its tens of thousands of many different types of wild animals, gradually descending to the coast and becoming progressively hotter. Arriving in Dar es Salaam at about 4 pm., the temperature in the shade was 120 deg.f. and it was a great relief to flop onto the beds in the air-conditioned hotel. The evening was spent in trying to clean up our clothing and indeed ourselves, with Christopher’s nappies hanging on lines in the hotel room. The nappies dried within an hour but were still filthy. After a browse around the big stores in Dar, we handed in our 480 lbs. of baggage and placed ourselves in the capable hands of B.O.A.C. 556 [page break] Our flight home was by Arganaut, [sic] 16 hours flying, stopping at Nairobi, Entebbe, Khartoum, Benghazi and Rome. Plenty of seat room, excellent food and a very comfortable flight. One engine developed trouble approaching Italy and we were delayed for 24 hours in Rome. The Romans were hostile to the British at that time, I cannot remember why this was so, but we enjoyed a conducted tour of Rome and first-class hotel accommodation. At breakfast next morning I thought I recognised a fellow at the next table. He was under the same impression and when he spoke to us there was instant recognition. He was the B.O.A.C. Rep. in Rome and we had seen a great deal of each other on the squadron in North Africa. He was then W/O Woolston, a pilot on 150 Sqdn. We arrived in London 24 hours late, but there were no complaints. B.O.A.C. had made the trip very enjoyable. The greater part of our leave was spent in London with Hilda’s parents, and I took the opportunity of spending 12 weeks at the School of Telegraphy in Brixton, for an Intermediate C. & G. in Telecomms and a P.M.G 1st. Class licence. I was also on a course of Dexedrine to reduce my weight, eating very little and actually losing it at the rate of 1lb. per day, for 44 days. Peter Gunns, another D.C.A., Radio Officer had been at the school for 6 months and was doing the complete 12 month course for a P.M.G. second class licence. I decided to give it three months and take the first class ticket. The Principal at the school advised against it, almost everyone first obtained a second-class ticket before trying for a first. For three months I swatted hard, long into the night and then went to Post Office H.Q. in St. Martin-le-Grand and applied to take the P.M.G.1 licence. The Chief examiner asked to see my second-class licence and when I said I didn’t have one, he said “look son, try for a second class and if you pass, come back in a few years time and try for a first”. I replied that I was not interested in anything second-class and he shrugged his shoulders and booked me to take the exam. three days hence. The exam. took from 9 am to 5 pm., written and practical and was quite intensive. The final part was the morse test at 25 w.p.m. and the examiner was wearing an R.S.G.B. tie. I took a chance at the end of the test and sent, on the key ‘QRA? De VQ4BM’ and after an exchange of greetings he asked me if I was returning to Kenya. I replied “yes, but only if I pass this exam”. He sent QRX3 and left the room, returning with a smile and said “strictly off the record, you could book your ticket”. The next three days were taken up with City & Guilds exams, and I was delighted when my P.M.G. licence arrived by post. The following day, feeling on top line, Hilda and I went to M.C.A. Headquarters at Berkeley Square and I applied to take the Flight Radio Officer’s exam. I found this was held only twice yearly and by sheer coincidence the next one was the following day. I was told to just fill in the form, pay £3 and come back at 0830 the next day. I saw the Chief examiner and told him I wasn’t quite prepared for the exam. at such short notice, it was many years since I had studied the S.B.A. and Navigational aids. He told me not to worry about them and to check through the last 5 exam. papers, copies of which he lent me. They could be bought openly from the “shop” downstairs, but this was already closed. He also said “bear in mind that everything has its own natural frequency”. I spent until 5 am next morning making sure I could answer all the questions on those papers, and doubly sure of the compulsory questions. I noticed that 103 [page break] year 4 had the same compulsory questions as year 1, and year 5 the same as year 2. Year 6 was to be my lot and if this was to be the same as year 3, on cathode ray tubes, all would be well, and I had a couple of hours sleep. It had taken me a long time to realise what the Chief Examiner had meant by “it’s own natural frequency”. The exams were spread over a period of two days and I failed two of them. The first was a three-minute test writing down the phonetic alphabet and I wrote “Alpha bravo coca delta foxtrot golf hotel etc.” The examiner looked over my shoulder and remarked “what on earth have we here, have you never heard of able baker Charlie?”. I thought this was a catch and I said “yes but that went out three years ago when I.C.A.O. introduced this one”. It seemed that Britain was three years behind the rest of the world on this simple issue. I had however quite rightly failed on R/T procedure. All went well on a simulated flight from Manchester to Jersey when I received a chitty that both engines had stopped and we were on fire. There was already a M’iadez in force from another aircraft and I broke radio silence and put out my own “M’aidez” without the Captain’s authority and that was the end of the exam. FAILED! on two counts. I had passed two three hour written papers, a two hour practical exam., an hour’s morse at 25 w.p.m. and failed on two ridiculous details. I said I was sufficiently experienced to anticipate the Captain’s instruction to send out an SOS but the book does say that only the Captain has the authority. However, I paid another £3 which I could by then ill-afford and resat the two parts the following morning. The licence came by post a few days later. The R/T Procedure test was the same as before, and when we reached the point where I had put out my M’aidez I just sat tight. I heard the other aircraft transmit his SOS again and it was acknowledged by Jersey Approach. Without authority to transmit an SOS I could not break radio silence according to the regulations and I continued to sit tight. One minute of real time was equivalent to 10 minutes of ‘flying’ and after 30 minutes of theoretical flying time I removed my headphones and placed them on the table. The examiner did likewise and asked me what I thought I was doing. I just said “swimming to the surface”. He laughed and said O.K. at least you didn’t originate a M’aidez. In the practical M.C.A. exam the equipment in use was the T1154 and R1155 and the main object of the examiner seemed to me to be one of getting me confused, argumentative and thoroughly rattled. Thanks maybe to the dexedrine I realised what his game was and remained very calm indeed. He admitted afterwards that he was trying to get me rattled, remaining calm and composed was all important in the air!. I cast my mind back 10 years but said nothing. Meanwhile Peter Gunns was still plodding on and becoming very discouraged. I urged him to take the PMG2 the following week, there was little point in further delay. I spent a week with him going through every paper set for 5 years, and he was successful in the exam. A few weeks later we returned to Nairobi together. About 10 years later Peter died of a heart attack whilst on night duty in the Nairobi Communications Centre. He was taking a short break and read in the newspaper that Pinnocks had folded up. He had £15,000 invested with them, and the loss was too much to bear. After a few weeks at Eastleigh I was posted to Mwanza on the southern shores of Lake Victoria, again in Tanganyika. [page break] Our car, a Ford Prefect KCC13 (new price £400) and Paddy our alsatian, were nearly 1000 miles away in Mbeya and I was able to scrounge a flight as supernumery [sic] crew with East African Airways. The return journey by road with Paddy took 30 hours non-stop except for refuelling and for half an hour at dawn when driving was dangerous. The work in Nairobi was operating air/ground channels on R/T and W/T and also at the D/F station giving H/F bearings to aircraft on the Khartoum and Johannesburg sectors where navigation aids were few and far between. It transpired later that the D/F station was adjacent to the Mau Mau graveyard. I recall one day looking out of the door and seeing the police askari guard fast asleep with his loaded rifle on the ground beside him. More for security reasons than mischief I took the rifle inside the building and it was still there when I closed the station at 1830. But there was no sign of the askari, so I put the rifle in the loft of the small building, intending to do something about it next day. Somehow I forgot all about it for two weeks and then handed in the rifle at the R.A.F. guardroom and questioned why the police had taken no action. The askari had just disappeared without trace. Once again our household effects were packed into crates, and despatched by ‘rail’ to Mwanza. We had exchanged our Ford Prefect for an Austin A70 and motored via Kitale (my father’s farm) to Kisumu where we boarded the M.V. Rusinga. The Rusinga ploughed clockwise round the lake shore calling at Musoma, Mwanza, Bukoba, Entebbe, Jinja and complete circle to Kisumu. Her sister ship the M.V. Usoga called at the same ports, but went anti-clockwise round the lake. A third ship, the M.V. Sybil was smaller and more or less a reserve vessel. Lake Victoria was the second largest inland sea in the world, and became the largest when its level rose 8 feet with the building of the dam at Jinja a few years later. The voyage of about 200 miles took a very pleasant 30 hours with one halt at Musoma. We were met at Mwanza Port by Johnny King who I was relieving. He said he expected to return to Mwanza in 6 months as it was his station and his wife’s father was Government entomologist permanently stationed there. His wife’s family were German, very domineering and forceful. I didn’t mind the mother’s clay pipe but took an instant dislike to her Bavarian-type husband. I insisted upon a proper formal take-over at the airport which was just as well, and the proper storage of King’s personal effects at P.W.D and not in the transmitter room. For a couple of weeks we stayed at Mwanza Hotel and then moved to a delightful house at Bwiru, facing north with a wonderful view over Lake Victoria. Palm trees in the foreground, paw paw trees in the garden and - we discovered much later - leopard in the hills at the back of the house. The water supply came from a storage tank half a mile up the hill via a metal pipe on the surface of the ground, and was always hot enough for a bath without further heating. The water had to remain in our roof storage tank for some time before we could regard it as being a cold water supply. Water and electricity could not be taken for granted in East Africa, but the house was connected to the town electricity supply. The airport was a fairly new one about 10 miles east of town, by the lake shore, the single runway 18/36 being of grass. It was a neat little place, the transmitters being in the room below the Control Tower with two diesel engines and fire station being in a custom-built building 50 yards away. The 105 [page break] transmitters were two RCA ET4336s, a G54 Redifon M/F Beacon and an ex-R.A.F. T1154. In the Control Tower was a Pye PTC704 VHF set with a direction-finding antenna. There were only 6 scheduled aircraft per week and an average of about 10 charters. This was a ‘one man’ station and my working hours were long. Perhaps the highlight of the tour was the four-day visit of H.R.H. Princess Margaret. The ten mile road to town was ‘tarmaced’ [sic] a few days before her arrival. The original murrum (red sand) surface was first graded and then covered by a quarter inch layer of chippings and sprayed with tar. The cost was £11,000 which was charged to my aerodrome maintenance vote. For the few days of the visit the road looked really superb, and then just a few days later it rained and the remains of the “tarmac surface” were cleared away by grader, the surface reverting to murram once more. [page break] Every effort was being made by the Administration to make the Royal Visit a success and the costs were covered somehow. The M.V. Sybil was in dock for 6 months at Kisumu being completely refitted so the Princess could spend just a few hours on the lake. An R.A.F. Shackleton flew down from Aden to provide an escort for the Sybil. Four radio stations were established on the boat, each with an operator, to contact the Police on H/F W/T, Aircraft on VHF, Mwanza Airport on H/F R/T, and E. A. Railways & Harbours. Just about every vessel afloat on Lake Victoria seemed to be milling around outside the harbour waiting for the Sybil and the Princess. A Widgeon aircraft, the only amphibean [sic] in E. Africa, was detailed to position itself at the end of the runway at instant readiness for take-off. The Shackleton took-off to patrol an hour before the Sybil was due to leave harbour, Captain Chris Treen positioned his Widgeon and stayed put with engines idling. All the Sybil's radios were tested and people were getting excited. We were then advised that it was a case of not tonight Josephine, H.R.H. had a headache, the trip was cancelled. The Shackleton, looking remarkably like a real Lancaster landed on my murrum runway, and the Widgeon had to be towed in backwards, the engines having over-heated. In company with all the other Colonial officials I had been given six pages of foolscap telling me how to address the Princess and how to conduct myself in the Royal presence. There was also an application form for a Permit to be at the airport for her arrival and another application form regarding my being presented to the Princess. It was the two application forms which bugged me. I refused to apply for a permit to enter the airport where every aspect was my responsibility, if anyone denied me access, be it on their own head. "Before applying to be presented", the write-up stated, "You must qualify under at least one of the following headings:- 1. Be a Government Servant on a salary exceeding '£x' 2. Be a serving officer of H. M. forces, 3. Be a retired officer having held a rank above 'Y' 4. Hold a Civil Decoration equivalent or senior to an M.B.E. 5. Hold a military decoration. 6. Have already been presented to another member of the Royal Family. There was virtually an order to apply if one qualified and this decided me to ignore the whole issue. I was not in favour of the pomp and circumstance and the relatively vast expenditure involved, and I was never any good at playing charades and other party games. Just before the Royal Visit a gang of workmen turned up at the airport and were starting to fit a toilet suite in the 'Crew Room'. This was a small room where aircrews could relax and enjoy a little privacy between flights. Toilet facilities were quite adequate without specially converting the crew room for the Princess. I vetoed the plan, and finally the toilet wing, already with four Asian type and four European type loos was enhanced with one new and rather superior loo. The superloo did come in useful however; whilst the Princess was inspecting the guard of honour, the bare-chested Engineer of the Widgeon aircraft appeared inside the Terminal building, 107 [page break] looking quite incongruous in his filthy shorts and sandals. I told him to keep out of sight until Princes Margaret had left. He did, and hid in the superloo. After the visit, someone fixed a royal coat of arms an the door to which I had the only key. I was tempted to replace the heraldry with a replica of the board made for me by one of the German prisoners at Poynton. written in Gothic characters "Lager Kommandant, Eintritt Verbotten". The Royal Visit was the highlight of the decade for Mwanza, the road to the aerodrome was closed for three hours and all the Police were concerned only with the visit. It was during that three hours the villains broke into many European houses. We lost all our shoes which were not actually being worn at the time, some clothing, and all our clocks including a time-switch I had just repaired for someone. There was one charter aircraft based at Mwanza, the Widgeon piloted by Chris Treen. It was a very busy aircraft, being an amphibean [sic] , going relatively short flights mostly around the lake shore. Chris had a full-time engineer who was not very co-operative, and the operation proved to be uneconomical although Chris tried very hard. He was on Transport Command during the war and later flew in the Berlin Air Lift, then flew the Widgeon from U.K., 6000 miles to Mwanza. The airline had its moments, on one occasion the Provincial Commissioner was climbing out of the aircraft at Ukerewe Island into a dingy which collapsed and he was nearly drowned. Submerged rack. and crocodiles added to the excitement One of the busiest aircraft at Mwanza was a Miles Magister which, was owned privately and which has also been flown out from England by its owner, an official of the Lint & Seed Marketing Board, who also had an Aircraft Maintenance Engineers' licence. It became the main asset of the Mwanza Aeroclub and was very active at weekends. The tribe an Ukerewe Island had it's own language, and the story goes that the District Officer studied the language and wrote a dictionary and grammar for it. Having done so he applied for the £60 per year "language competency allowance", and to qualify had first to pass the Official Colonial Office exam. in the subject. The Colonial Office department which organised such matters was duly asked to prepare an exam. and find an invigilator for it, but was not given the identity of the candidate. There was no record of anyone being able to speak the language, and they approached the obvious source, the District Officer Ukerewe. As a part of his normal chores he was pleased to prepare the two papers as 2 hours of translation each way between English and the native language of Ukerewe. On arrival in U. K. on leave, he received a letter from another Colonial Office department, addressing him by name and asking him to invigilate at as examination, giving the venue and date. Shortly after, yet another office wrote to him advising him that an examination had been arranged and wishing him luck in the exam. He hardly needed it, reporting as directed in his official capacities as both invigilator and examinee. Not only that, but he had also prepared the examination papers. He was the only European who knew the language and he got his £60. per annum. The common language with the natives was of course an up-country impure Swahili, as in all parts of East Africa. I had studied Kiswahili in the Prisons Service and from books, but the grammatical version was spoken only at the coast and on the radio. The [page break] Africans in the Prison Service and those I worked with spoke the up-country version, almost completely ungrammaticaI. The further one went from the coast the more it became a matter of joining words together. Nevertheless, it was an interesting and descriptive Ianguage. Beautiful words like 'maradadi' which in fact is an adjective meaning 'beautiful', and 'tafadahali', said to mean 'please' , but I never actually heard an African use it. ' Asanti' meaning thankyou was frequently used. Calling someone a "shenzi" hardly needs translation. The Caspair Lake Service operated daily. Based at Entebbe, a DeHavilland Rapide flew to Kisumu, Musoma, Mzanza, Bukoba and back to Entebbe. It called at Mwanza three times weekly and remained on the ground for 4 hours. Paddy O'Reilly was the most colourful of the pilots and on one occasion was missing when the aircraft was due to take-off. He had borrowed a native canoe and paddled out into the lake for some peace and quiet. He was very soon asleep and when he awoke he found he was two miles off-shore without a paddle. He was soon rescued and took off two hours late. I had a very good African Assistant at Mwanza, Zepherino Shija, and he was a tremendous help in making things run smoothly. In fact my African staff were all good types, far from home, politicians and the trouble-makers to be influenced by them. It was at Mwanza that I really became involved with radio repairs, and once I had repaired a few, word quickly spread and I was inundated with them. Many of the 'dukes' -shops- in town sold radios but hadn't the vaguest idea how they worked or how to repair them. Most of the radio owned by the Africans were powered by dry batteries, using a 4-pin plug on the power lead which was very often forced the wrong way into the socket on the battery. This instantly blew all four valves for which the shops charged 25 shillings each. I bought valves for 3 shillings each in quantity and sold them in sets of 4 for forty shillings, throwing in a new and better type plug. I must have repaired over a thousand radios in two years, plus many bigger sets for Europeans. Before very long I met Mr. Manning, the American Head of the African Inland Mission in the Province, and he showed me a room full of equipment, domestic radios, car radios, record players, tape recorders, transmitters, P.A. ampIifiers etc. etc. Every item was faulty. I was invited to repair what I could, keep what I wanted and throw out anything that was past it. Three trans-receivers were very attractive and they needed only setting up. Independent transmitter and receiver units powered from 115v a.c. but with rather limited frequency coverage of 5 to 8 MHz. I used them on the air for a couple of weeks and they were then taken by road to African Inland Mission stations in the Belgium Congo where they had a network on 7150 KHz. These sets were to prove very useful within a few years during the Congo rebellion which came with "Independence". It took me 6 months to empty the room, and all except three or four units were returned to use within the Mission organisation. Those three or four units caused a misunderstanding with Mr. Manning. I said "These units are U/S, best place for them is in the lake", and I could see that I had upset him. He associated my expression 'U.S' . with Uncle Sam, or the United States, but when I explained it meant ‘unservicable’ in English Service jargon a crisis was avoided. 109 [page break] I met a fellow called Nawotsey, supposed to be a Belgian, who was making a fortune killing crocodiles for their skins. He had just about wiped them out on Lake Rukwa. His technique was to use an infra-red lamp and sniperscope at very close range, typically six feet. His equipment gave a lot of trouble and I charged him well over the odds for repairs. In reality he was German, and ex-German army. There were many of them in ex-German Tanganyika but few had the guts to admit it, and there was not a nazi among them, in theory. Eventually one of the dukas offered me £50 per month cash if would stop doing radio repairs. This was not far short of my salary and quite a compliment, but not accepted. We became very friendly with one German, Dr. Schupler, who had been a wartime Medical Officer in the Luftwaffe. He was serving in Dresden the night of the 13th. of February 1945 when it was attacked by over 800 R.A.F. bombers, followed by over 300 American Fortresses the next day, causing between them 137,000 casualties including an estimated 50,000 killed. A doctor somehow seemed to be in a different and acceptable category, but our talks had reminded one of a period I had almost forgotten, and about which I had stopped thinking. One good point in East Africa's favour, there was very little to remind us of the war. A row of ribbons perhaps on a police uniform, or a retired senior type using his old rank, but there were few occasions when we compared, notes on our respective war efforts. The Germans were supposed to be super-efficient, a myth already exploded, but in the main they were still mostly distrusted. Mwanza was a peaceful place, there was only one murder during our 2 years residence, and that was committed by a mad african from Dodoma, 400 miles away. I could not have visualised at the time that within twentyseven years this nice little airport would be bombed by the Uganda Air Force. I can picture now the little bakery where the murder was committed. It was in same road just before we left that a hyena was running down the road to meet us. We were in the Austin A70 which already had a damaged right. wing and I put on full speed. We met the hyena head-on, relative speed about 70 and he was thrown completely over the car. He lay on the road for about two minutes, then picked himself up and loped off into the bush. We had ringside seats watching an interesting battle between hyena and baboon one evening. Our bungalow was on the hillside and the bedroom windows on one side were 15 feet above ground, and level with the tops of the pawpaw trees, heavily laden with fruit. The baboon were taking the fruit and being attacked by about a dozen hyena which were being thrown around by the baboon. The fight finished suddenly for reasons best known to the combatants. They might have sensed the presence of a leopard, which was very likely, but we were not aware of the leopards ourselves until a few weeks later. In the middle of one night we were awakened by a scuffling outside the window and there was the most obnoxious stench. There was the so-called laugh of the hyena and a deep sawing sound which we were told was a leopard. It seemed that a hyena had been dragging an old carcass along when it was disturbed by a leopard. The carcass was dropped outside our bedroom window and later one of them returned to collect it. Apparently baboon are the favourite diet of the leopard and everything including baboon and leopard dislikes the hyena. One of them cornered a neighbour’s dog in our garage and [page break] chewed off it’s vital parts before help arrived too late. Snakes too were in abundance around Mwanza, and a European girl had been crushed, but not fatally by a python near the lake shore. One of the houseboys hacked a monitor lizard to death, thinking it was a snake. Hilda recalls the occasion when I encountered a leopard on the driveway to the house and I got out of the car to tell her!. There was the occasion too when Paddy, our Alsatian was aware of a leopard outside the front door and Paddy's hair literally bristled. The leopard was probably aware of Paddy's presence also. I was away in Nairobi at the time Some months before the end of our tour, we received a telegram from Les with the sad news that Hilda's father had died. At about the same time the Kenya Education authorities informed us that as we were no longer resident in Kenya, Colin and Wendy would have to leave Kitale School. The alternative was Kongwa, a school established at the time of the groundnut scheme, a British Government fiasco then almost fully wound up after wasting eighteen million pounds. Kongwa was about 400 miles away and difficult to reach from Mwanza, and as it would be only a temporary measure in any case, we felt it better that Colin and Wendy should return to U.K. We saw them off on the Dakota on an hour's flight to Entebbe where they were met by Flossy and Pi Reed. The following day they flew to London and stayed with Mum at Korella Rd., in Wandsworth. In early June `57 it was time for home leave again and once more we packed all our household effects into huge crates ready for shipping to our next station which had not yet been decided. I had been promoted to Radio Superintendant [sic] in Mbeya and later to Telecommunications Supt. having passed departmental exams for the two lots of promotion. I was finally relieved by Sailor Seaman who immediately objected to the long working hours. The way of life on the outstations had a great deal to commend it. There was no television but we always had a good radio set. There was not the pressure we were to experience in later life and we made our own entertainment. It would be nice to go round again. 111 [page break] Before leaving Mwanza I had ordered a VW Beetle on the home leave scheme stipulating the date and time that I would collect it in London. This resulted in a considerable saving. The cost was £330 delivered London whilst the price in East Africa was £1250. Colin and Wendy were already in Britain, only John and Chris were with us on this trip. From Mwanza we should have returned via the capital, Dar es Salaam, as we did from Mbeya, but for some weeks I had been pointing out the futility of the extra 1600 miles via Dar, when the the [sic] aircraft would go via Entebbe in any case. Sanity prevailed and we flew by DC3 to Entebbe, a nice lunch at the Lake Vic. and a 10 hour flight to the U.K. with one stop at Benghazi. I think that was our first trip by Jet aircraft, a Comet. I have flown in many jets since then, but none as comfortable and roomy as the Comet. The following day we went to Lower Regent Street and collected our new VW Beetle, which came into the showroom one minute ahead of schedule. I was very impressed by the German organisation. I was taken into a workshop and given some useful tips about the car which was to serve us well for over 200,00 miles most of which was on murrum, our reddish East African sandy soil. In the following six months we made good use of the car, visiting my mother in Barnoldswick, the Yorkshire Dales, and whilst up north had a rendezvous avec Ace (Ted) and Mary Foster, Ace having been our second tour Navigator. Ted recalled this many years later and remembered an incident in a Southport restaurant. We were sharing two tables with Ted and Mary and their three children, making a party of 4 adults and 7 children. Ted alleges the waitress exclaimed “By gum are these all yours?” and claims I replied “No, they are from the local orphanage, we are just taking them out for the day”. She said that was right champion and gave us a discount! I went to Liverpool also and en-route noticed that a Police car had been right behind me for several miles. I slowed down to 30 for the next five miles and eventually the blue light came on and I was stopped. “What speed were you doing Sir?” An instant reply, “29.5 m.p.h. “The officer agreed with that and said “Why, it’s a lovely road and there’s no speed limit. When you slowed down from 80 to 30 we thought you had a problem, enjoy your visit Sir”. I had a “Visitor to Britain” sticker on the back which was supposed to help a little. In Liverpool I met Stan Chadderton, our First tour Bomb Aimer. I called at Stan’s house and his wife Hilda directed me to the Gladstone Dock where Stan was working, I seem to remember being introduced to his boss and Stan was given the rest of the day off. We adjourned to the Lord Nelson Pub and reminisced well into the night about our efforts in North Africa. We had made another acquisition whilst in Mwanza. Clearly a base was needed in Britain even if my work was to be in East Africa. Les told us of a house in Glyn Neath called Glaslyn going for £1850 on the balance of a 999 year lease. I offered to buy it if the freehold was available. It was very quickly ours at a total cost £1910 and £25 solicitor’s fees. Hilda’s Mum moved into Glaslyn and Colin and Wendy had already joined her. Glaslyn was a comfortable and handy sort of place, only a few hundred yards from Aunt Doll’s cottage. In early December I was told to report direct to Entebbe Airport to relieve Henry Day in charge of Telecommunications. I wrote to P.W.D. in Mwanza and asked them to send on our boxes and car by Lake Steamer to 113 [page break] Entebbe, and completed other arrangements. Just before Christmas I handed over the new car to the A.A. near Tower Bridge and paid £75 for shipping it to Mombassa [sic]. Then with our four children and a mass of baggage we once again booked-in at Victoria Air Terminal and shortly afterwards we realised we had just been home for six months and were then in Entebbe. The Comet aircraft was flown by Howard Iliffe, 109011! but I discovered this too late to meet him. At Entebbe we were met by Henry Day who had been in charge for six months in an acting capacity and he made it clear that as he was now demoted – with loss of acting pay – I could not expect any co-operation from him. For 10 days we stayed in the Lake Victoria Hotel, luxurious but not at all homely and with it’s population of some hundreds of cats living on the roof. We then moved into a house with a red mbati (corrugated iron) roof. Between the ceiling and the roof was a foot of sand and if the builders had been designing an oven it would have taken some beating. The red iron absorbed the heat from a tropical sun and it was retained by the sand. Entebbe was a pretentious place, not the capital of Uganda, which was Kampala 20 miles north, but where most of the senior Gov’t officials lived. The airport was a minor one to U.K. standards but trying very had [sic] to appear important. I found the whole place docile and yet offensive, “toffee-nosed” is the phrase which comes to mind. The job itself was not at all demanding, I had a team of about 8 Engineers including Frank Unstead and Gibby. Also three Radio Officers including Henry Day and several Africans to operate the teleprinters and radio links to Nairobi. There was little for me to do personally. Airport Management was taken care of by Uganda Government officers. The East Africa High Commission, of which the Directorate of Civil Aviation was a part, was responsible for Air Traffic Control and telecommunications. About six airlines had their own Station Managers and there was a great deal of empire building which led to over-manning and inefficiency. An individual’s importance was determined by the number of his subordinates and the extent of his warrant to incur expenditure. There was a great deal of ill-feeling too, between the officers of Government and those of the High Commission, later more appropriately renamed the East Africa Common Services Organisation. The latter was responsible for all communications in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, except for the actual maintenance of roads. It included E.A. Posts & Telegraphs, Railways & Harbours, Fisheries, Meteorlogical [sic] Depts., Civil Aviation and several Medical Research establishments. Politically, the scene was complex, Kenya was a “Colony & Protectorate” – some of each – Tanganyika was a Protectorate with a United Nations mandate and Uganda a combination of twelve Kingdoms formed into a ‘State’ with 12 Kings, a Prime Minister and also a President. It had its political problems but they were not mine. Dickie Dixon was Senior Air Traffic Controller and therefore Officer i/c Navigational Services in which capacity I was his deputy. As I was not at that time a qualified Air Traffic Controller, this led to friction, and as I have already implied, Entebbe was not a happy place. The crunch came when I was told by Dickie to compile all the Annual Confidential reports, including those for Air Traffic Controllers. I told him that I did not think it proper that I should report on officers whose qualifications I did not hold myself. He should do them himself and I would write them for all the Telecommom [sic]. [page break] staff. The previous year he had reported on the Telecomms staff and I disagreed strongly with his findings in one case, that of Gibby who, he wrote, “was slow in carrying out a job”. He was indeed slower than most, but was also the most thorough engineer in the Department. When repairing an equipment he not only repaired the current fault but also brought it right up to the manufacturer’s specification. My personal relationship with Dickie deteriorated rapidly, and rather than speak to me he would write me memos. In one of his many memos he “required” a technical explanation of a particular problem, and I replied to the effect that “as the conductivity between the two points was less than half a mho, this was inadequate for proper operation”. He wrote to my Chief in Nairobi complaining that I was taking the Mickey, and this brought him a rude reply. I could have referred to “a resistance greater than 2 ohms” instead of “a conductivity less than half a mho”, which would have been more helpful, but I made my point. One major problem at Entebbe was the absence of schools for European children, and Colin and Wendy had to go to Nairobi and Kericho respectively, as boarders. This would have cost little had I been stationed in Kenya and paid the statutary [sic] Education Tax, but as I was stationed outside Kenya and had not paid the Kenya tax I had to pay the full boarding fees. I was not alone in this of course, it was a problem for all families of the E.A. High Commission living in Uganda. However, I learned that in June 1958 Dinger Bell was finishing his four year tour at Kisumu in Kenya, and I managed a transfer for myself, handing-over Entebbe to an officer returning from a U.K. leave. At that time we had two cars, and I remember taking the Austin A70 to Kampala and selling it in a bar to a consortium of five Africans for £25, each chipping in with a hundred shillings. We travelled to Kisumu by road, our effects going by lake steamer. It was an easy day’s drive round the north-east shores of Lake Victoria, through Jinja, with its crocodiles at the source of the Nile. This was in the days before the level of the Owen Falls dam was raised by eight feet. It was refreshing to arrive at Kisumu, and we were pleased with everything we saw. We spent the first week in the hotel, then moved in to Dinger Bell’s house at 55 Mohammed Kassim Road, near the African Broadcasting Service transmitting Station. Kisumu Airport had been established about 1932, and had, like Mbeya been a scheduled stop on the Empire Air Route of (the original) British Airways. The lake was ideal for the Empire Flying Boats and our staff pilot, Capt. Casperuthus had many stories of flying Hannibal biplanes into Kisumu. During the Second World War it was taken over by the R.A.F. and used extensively by Catalina amphibeans [sic] and Sunderland seaplanes. R.A.F. aircraft of most long and medium range types were regular visitors, together with the 3-motor Junkers 52 transports of the South African Air Force. With two excellent murrum runways and four hangars, it had seen some service one way and another. The Control Tower was a small two storey building of 1932 vintage, the ground floor being taken up completely by the transmitting room. The first floor comprised the Control “tower”, a small office, and store. Originally there had been a second floor with a glass top for good all-round vision but this had been removed at the end of the war and replaced with a tiled roof. The second floor became the loft and housed the VDF antenna. I 115 [page break] found the transmitters had been sadly neglected for many years. Two RCA 4336 types were used on R/T., a third on W/T., and a new Redifon GR49 NDB. There was also a dual transmitter which was not on the inventory and which had in fact been ‘liberated’ from a Catalina, before it joined the other two scuttled in the lake at the end of the war. This set was the best of the lot, and certainly my favourite. It was complete with a 110v ac supply of 600 Hz, not 60 and within a month I had modified an old T1190 power unit to drive it. The M/F section was put into use in place of the Redifon beacon, and the H/F section performed wonderfully on the amateur bands. Being a ‘one-man station’ my working hours were long, 7 days a week and seldom a whole day off, but I had a workshop and bench and put my waiting-for-aircraft hours to very good use, mostly repairing domestic radios. The transmitters were giving a lot of trouble. As an example, whilst tuning a rotary inductance on a 4336, a two inch nail providing an electrical contact dropped out and had to be bodged up again. The GR49, although nearly new, was using modulator valves at the rate of a pair every two weeks due to a missing relay and associated wiring which had actually been left out at the factory during production. Fortunately there was a good old T1154 which acted as a standby for all transmitters except VHF, so I was able to take each transmitter in turn out of use for as long as was necessary whilst I overhauled them. As this progressed I was enjoying the practical work and decided to make use of a three-foot cabinet which was not on charge. (I inherited quite a lot of useful ‘junk’ at Kisumu!). At the Fisheries office on the lake shore, also on the airport, I found that a vehicle had demolished a rondaval (a 12 ft. diameter building constructed of aluminium). I volunteered the services of my crash-tender crew to clear up the mess and to take away the wreckage. A few days was spent by the crash crew in cutting the best of the aluminium into 19” panels of standard sizes, and suitable chassis. One of the ET4336 transmitters was going to be off the air for several weeks waiting for spares, and in order not to delay my overhaul programme I built a two-stage transmitter on one of the 3 1/2” panels. This was a 6V6 crystal oscillator driving an 807 to a dipole antenna. The operator at Nairobi reported our signals as very good and better than they had been for a long time. 20 Watts in place of 400, but it was the dipole antenna in place of a random length of wire which made all the difference. Within three weeks the 3’ cabinet contained 4 transmitters and was providing all services except VHF and M/F Beacon. The overhauling programme was completed, the official transmitters finally tested and then switched off. For the next 18 months we operated almost trouble-free. My monthly engineering reports to H.Q. in Nairobi were mainly negative and referred to “routine preventative maintenance only”. However, Sid Worthy, Chief Telecomms. Engineer was not fooled, and in due course he wrote and asked why my monthly electricity bill was only a quarter of what it had been for many years. Before I had plucked up enough courage to reply, Sid arrived unannounced and went direct to the Transmitter room, finding the four big transmitters switched off. In the Control Tower he saw my all-purpose cabinet, and to put it lightly, he was not amused. I suggested to Sid that we should make our own single-purpose transmitters and dispense with the old uneconomical general-purpose types. He agreed there was no good technical or financial argument against this but what would he do with his army of 50 [page break] or so engineers? He compromised and allowed me to leave my own equipment in use provided I removed it a month before I left Kisumu. One of our friends at Kisumu, Jimmie Sanson was a very keen constructor of model aircraft and several he had made were lost in the lake. His final model was a rather superior type with six-foot wingspan and single engine using alcohol as fuel. The rudder was radio-controlled on 27MHz. and the aircraft made some very impressive flights at the airport. On one occasion it went up to about 2000 feet before it ran out of fuel and for almost an hour Jimmie kept it turning over the airport. The aircraft was trimmed slightly nose-heavy but apart from turns, he had no other control. Eventually it was so far down-wind that it was lost to sight and last seen heading for the mountains. After a period of calm, the wind changed in the early evening and Jimmie and I were standing outside the Control Tower lamenting his sad loss when one of the crash Crew shouted “Bwana, Ndegi ndogo narudi”. His eyesight was far superior to ours, we saw nothing until the aircraft appeared over the end of the runway and actually landed, after a record flight of over three hours. Up-dating the radio control was the next stage and two months and about £200 later an eight function system was completed, giving control of the engine, elevators, ailerons and rudder. The machine could then be made to taxi out, take off and carry out aerobatics. The engine was used in short bursts and as there appeared to be a permanent thermal over the runways during the warm days, thirty minute flights were quite routine. Eventually the aircraft was lost over Lake Victoria and probably joined the three Catalinas on the bottom. Perhaps one day a Catalina will be recovered from their fresh-water grave, but the Sanson special was lost for ever.. My official work ran quite smoothly, with a little excitement occasionally. At 3 am one night, Nairobi Flight Information Centre phoned and asked me to open up the VHF and call Alitalia 541 which was three hours overdue in Nairobi, from Khartoum, and with no radio contact for four hours. I sped through town doing over 70 m.p.h. to my Control Tower, switched on and called the aircraft. There was a weak signal in reply and I managed to get a class C bearing of 270 degrees. A second transmission confirmed this and I told the operator he was probably over the Congo, but certainly well to the west of Kisumu. I told him QDM Kisumu 090, but the pilot would not agree and said he was east of Kisumu, not west, and approaching Mombassa [sic]! His signals faded right out and I telephoned F.I.C. asking them to log the QDM of 090C that I had passed to the aircraft. After half an hour, whilst F.I.C was sending frantic messages to all points west, I heard the aircraft calling Kisumu and was soon in good contact giving QDM’s, his signals gradually improving. It was just 0530, 20 minutes before first light when I heard the aircraft and sent out the boys to light-up the gooseneck flares. Then he was overhead and decided to carry on to Nairobi. This was rather disappointing, and in fact the wrong decision, his endurance being insufficient for any further diversion. I was told much later that the Captain and Navigator had a row before take-off and were not on speaking terms. The aircraft was a DC8 and the Italian crew and passengers had been very lucky indeed. The police followed me through town and I was charged with speeding, but the fine of 60 shillings was refunded later by the court when the urgency became known. 117 [page break] Some weeks later Nairobi F.I.C. phoned again, about 4 am., an Air Liban DC6 from Cairo was lost and was not within the scope of Nairobi VDF. The aircraft had made a brief contact on the area cover VHF through Lodwa, and another aircraft north-east of Kisumu had heard the DC6, but of course had no idea of range or direction. This time I went through town at a more reasonable speed, opened up the radio, and called Air Liban. The crash crew was called out and the boys started dispensing paraffin and setting out the flares right away. I called Nairobi on 5680 H/F R/T to establish my station was on the ball, and every two minutes called the Lebanese Airlines aircraft. About 20 minutes later the aircraft replied to my call and I gave him a QDM of 225, and was satisfied there was no risk of it being the reciprocal. Three minutes later I measured 230 and then 235. He said his Giro compass was u/s and his magnetic compass erratic, and that he would use a standby giro, set to my figure. He turned 10 degrees to port and the QDM increased, 10 degrees to starboard and the figure decreased, so he was heading for Kisumu, and not going away from it. The bearings were given every two minutes and were reasonably steady, and after about 25 minutes the pilot said he thought he could see the coast, meaning the shores of Lake Victoria. It was still very dark but a clear night (not a contradiction of terms) and the boys hurtled out to light up the goosenecks. I told the pilot the wind was north-easterly at 15 knots, he was down wind, duty runway 06. I reminded him of the very high ground 2 miles to the north of the airport and he replied “O.K. Bud, Thanks a lot, I’ll come straight in on 24, hope youv’e [sic] got some gas, we shure [sic] ain’t [sic]”. A few minutes later he made a good landing and parked outside the 1932 wooden terminal building. The Captain of the Air Liban DC6 was an American pre-war Veteran. I had completely forgotten to tell the East African Airways agent but did so at 0545. There was no catering at the airport so he found some buses and the passengers were taken to the hotel. I was also late in phoning the police who dealt with immigration, but they hadn’t a clue how to deal with 60 international transit passengers. Similarly, it was a new experience for Customs, so both departments decided to pretend it hadn’t happened. The Captain asked me to tell the non-English-speaking African Shell Assistant to put 3000 gallons of 100 octane into the tanks. I translated to the startled assistant “Bwana Mkubwa anataka gallon elfu tatu, pipa sabini na tano”. That was 75 drums of petrol to be pumped by hand. Finally he compromised with 400 gallons, but it was still quite a task, even with only 10 drums. The Captain was concerned about the limited fuel and lack of a reliable compass and we double-checked that the met. conditions to Nairobi were near perfect. A scheduled DC3 of East African Airways came in at 10am. And was taking off for Nairobi at 11 am. The two pilots talked together at length and studied the map. The DC6 took-off three minutes after the Dakota and the two remained in visual contact until Nairobi was in sight. Surprisingly, the DC6 did not carry a radio compass for M/F but relied entirely on VHF, which, in East and Central Africa was quite inadequate. I was criticised by DCA for not informing them in detail of progress, and was conscious of this at the time, but had I done so, they would have confused the issue with lots of advice. A civilian airliner without a reliable compass would be a major issue. I operated an “aerodrome [page break] advisory service”, not being an Air Traffic Controller. F.I.C. would have tried to control my detailed activity, but with a bit of common sense, things worked out well. The visit of Her Majesty the Queen Mother to Kisumu went off smoothly except that two European Police Inspectors on the airport main gate refused permission for me to enter without a permit. One of my passengers, an R.A.F. Wing Commander leaned out and said he was the Queen’s Pilot, better open the gate old chap. Police had been drafted in for this event from hundreds of miles. I remember little else about the Royal Visit, or it’s main purpose. On these occasions most of the senior officials climbed in on the act, establishing their own importance. I do remember in detail the visit of Billy Graham. My brief from the organising committee was to provide the Public Address systems. The main system had to cope with an audience of 30,000 people, with three microphones for which I borrowed a 300 watt amplifier from Twenche Overseas Trading Co. in Nairobi and used my four 100 watt loudspeakers. In addition there were six other systems for separate areas where the audience spoke only their tribal languages. Each of the six would hear Billie Graham plus one interpreter translating into the appropriate tribal language for that particular group. There were nine microphones on the platform for the evagelist [sic] and 8 interpretors [sic]. In addition the Post Office ran a special line about a mile at the end of which they connected a candlestick type of telephone with a carbon microphone and place it with my nine microphones. This relayed the proceedings to another mass meeting in Nairobi. The microphone was ineffective until I connected the P.O. line direct to the main amplifier output via a suitable transformer. Billie Graham had a very efficient team. Harley and Bonnie Richardson are two I remember, both very hard working and leaving nothing to chance. They were backed-up by representatives from most church denominations. The following Christmas, the missionaries approached me again, could I use my loudspeakers at the Church to simulate bells on Christmas morning. An interesting proposition, and someone had written to Bradford Cathedral to scrounge a tape of the Cathedral bells. I had to edit the tape considerably, as every two a rich Yorkshire-accented voice was superimposed with “You are listening to the bells of Bradford Cathedral”. I set-up the amplifier and loudspeakers at the Church at about 7 pm. On Christmas-eve and tested the system with a record of carols. Within minutes, people began to gather and joined in. The Vicar asked if I could connect a microphone and in no time at all he was conducting an impromptu carol service with a bigger congregation than he had enjoyed for a long time, well over 1500. At 7 am next morning I relayed the bells of Bradford Cathedral, but could not resist pre-empting them with a verse of ‘Christians awake’. The loudspeakers were in constant demand and were in use every day for two weeks during H.H. the Aga Khan’s visit. Events included H.E. the Governor’s barazas, opening a ginnery and so on, all official requests from the Provincial Commissioner. I was spending so much time away from the airport that I fitted a TCS12 Transmitter and a good H/F receiver in the car to work aircraft and keep in touch with the airport. At the African hospital I fitted a receiver and 50 Watt Vortexion amplifier imported by my father, and installed 30 loudspeakers round the wards. This was followed by a similar 119 [page break] job at an American mission hospital about 30 miles from Kisumu, but more ambitious with microphones, tape recorder and record player. At the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Kisumu I fitted an amplifier and loudspeakers with microphones on the Altar and pulpit. Another system was fitted at the African Community Centre in Kisumu and one way and another I was kept very busy indeed. The transmitter in the car was used also on the 40 metre amateur band to keep in touch with my father and amateur chums in Nairobi and other parts of East Africa. On one occasion Tom Mboya took an interest in it and was quite impressed. Tom was a Luo by tribe and a party leader of the Kenya African Democratic Union, a very nice chap with an attractive wife Pamella [sic], daughter of Mr. Odede, a Kisumu lawyer. Tom wanted to buy the transmitter but for me to sell it to him would not have been wise. Later Tom was shot and killed in Nairobi. Kisumu was fairly well populated and within 10 miles or so of town we saw very few wild animals. The two exceptions were the protected herd of impala in Kisumu township and the hippo which abounded on the lake shore. They came ashore at night to graze and I encountered them on the aerodrome several times. One rather amusing occurrence, the airport was wide in area and Africans frequently trekked across the runway and even drove their cattle over it at most inappropriate times. On several occasions I impounded the cattle after due warnings and charged the owners with trespass under section 69 of the Colonial Air Navigation Act. When I found the offenders were getting six month’s imprisonment and losing their cattle, I stopped charging them and the Police insisted upon taking over this task. Finally they agreed to drop the practice, when I told them that I doubted whether the Colonial Air Navigation Act really applied in Kenya and in any case I had invented the content of section 69. However, the runways had to be watched carefully and checked every time there was an aircraft movement. One morning at Kisumu a uniformed Prisons Askari I had known at Nairobi Prison in 1950 came to my Control Tower and after a smart salute handed me a note saying it was from Bwana Mkubwa ya Ndegi. It was from Commander Stacey-Colles R.N. Ret’d., my former boss and previous Director of Civil Aviation. He had arrived at Kisumu Prison only two hours earlier, and was serving a three year sentence. He had been found guilty of receiving money, a refund of an airline ticket issued by the High Commission and which he did not use. At the time he was in Britain having travelled home on a complimentary ticket from Air France. The official ticket was handed in to East African Airways and a refund obtained which was paid into his bank instead of the High Commission’s account. He claimed no knowledge of this and most of us believed him. He would not prejudice his career and Navy pension in this way, someone had fixed him. The note was a list of things he wanted, which I soon assembled and took to him at Kisumu prison, where I found I knew the Prisons Officer from 1950. A very embarrassing situation. I met Stacey and gave him the radio, writing materials, money, cigarettes and cakes from Hilda, on the first of many visits. Three days later the Askari was back with a long message in code for Muriel Pardoe, his former secretary in Nairobi. I sent this off straight away on the aeronautical W/T channel, addressed to HKNCHQPA, the ICAO address which would reach Miss Pardoe from any airport in the western world. HK was Kenya, NC Nairobi City, HQ DCA [page break] Headquarters and PA Personal Ast. To the Director. The code was in five letter groups with a double substitution of letters, a similar system to that used during the war. The message was decoded by Muriel who obtained whatever it was Stacey was asking for and gave it to Capt. Casperuthus who was DCA pilot of the Avro Anson. Casper gave it to the Controller at Wilson airport who passed it to a pilot about to depart for Kisumu. The pilot handed it to me at Kisumu and I delivered it – whatever it was – to Stacey in prison the same day. Three days later the radio set came back to me with the askari, not working. Two of the valves had been swapped over, and I noticed a piece of paxeline had been fitted neatly inside the bottom of the set, forming a false bottom. Under it was a note asking me if I could fit a B.F.O. into it. This was a beat frequency oscillator and Stacey could want it for only one reason, to monitor morse, probably on the Prisons channel, to see what was happening. There were two spare holes for valve holders on the chassis and plenty of space for fitting a mains power supply, vacant in this case because it was a dry-battery receiver. I fitted the B.F.O. as requested, and also another valve as a flea-power transmitter, using just a channel freq. crystal about 6.5 MHz and a tuned circuit on the anode. Maybe 50 mW output, I had no means of measuring it, but I tested the set at a range of 2 miles using 3 feet of wire for an aerial it was received at the control tower. The morse key was just a matter of touching a wire to the chassis. I returned the set to Stacey personally and explained the switching of the B.F.O. and transmitter keying. He was delighted and agreed to be very careful, taking absolutely no-one into his confidence. About six weeks later I met my former colleague the Prisons Officer in town and he told me there was some concern over the prisoners getting confidential information before he received it himself. He quoted that a week ago a prisoner asked if he could change cells and share with a particular prisoner who would be transferred to Kisumu with three others on a date a week hence. He said the four arrived that day, how could the prisoner have known a week ago? It should have been obvious, there were many ex-service personnel who were good W/T operators and the Prisons Radio on 7 MHz could be monitored by anyone, the signals being in plain language morse. I said nothing. Stacey’s frequency was monitored at my office where I had a similar tiny transmitter. It was used at a specific time of day on only two occasions for test purposes, but he found it satisfying and consoling to have a personal and totally clandestine link to the outside world. It gave him a great deal of satisfaction and from my point of view did no real harm. Stacey was a great organiser and motivator. The African Inland Mission in Mwanza had colleagues in the Sudan [author indicates with X and page footnote that it is Kisumu not Mwanza] who visited Kisumu frequently in their Cessna aircraft. They desperately needed two transmitters in the Sudan but were not able to obtain import permits. They could however get a permit to re-import a transmitter if it had been sent out of the country for repair. I suggested to them that they should send me a piece of otherwise useless equipment which might look like a transmitter to the uninitiated and send it to me as a transmitter for repair, together with the appropriate paper work. This was done and in an antenna tuning unit they brought me, I built a 10 Watt transmitter without changing it’s outward appearance in any way. A few weeks later a second one was built and the two did a very useful job in the Sudan for about six [KISUMU NOT MWANZA] 121 [page break] months until the African Inland Mission stations there were closed, and the missionaries withdrawn. The missions’ aircraft were also licenced on that frequency and I contacted them occasionally. It is most reassuring to be able to communicate with someone in times of trouble, and plenty of folks in Africa were in that situation. But trouble was also brewing in the Belgian Congo, just across the Lake. Six months earlier, the Belgian Government had advised the missionaries and other settlers to leave, but many were dedicated to their work and some felt they were quite indespensible [sic]. The Belgiauns [sic] had handed over the reins of Government and administration hurriedly to a totally ill-equipped and unprepared Congolese. The consequences of withdrawal by the Belgians were clearly predictable but they succumbed to political pressures from all directions. There was human slaughter on a big scale, and the only information coming out of the Congo was on the frequency of 7150 operated by Mission stations, and also shared with East African amateurs. It was in Kisumu that I received a message from a mission at an Agricultural Station which read:- “We are being menaced by 100,000 hostile savages. We have their chief as hostage and expect annihilation within one hour. We have ammunition but no guns, please advise Kamina”. The amateurs among the DCA staff in Nairobi, of whom Viv Slight was one, had set up a W/T link to the Belgian Coast Station at Ostend, using a communications booth in the D.C.A. Communications centre and a powerful DCA transmitter at R.A.F. Eastleigh.. I relayed the message direct to them on the aeronautical W/T channel, and Nairobi passed it straight to Ostend, with a steady flow of other messages. Ostend relayed it to Brussels who passed it to the Military where it was relayed on it’s final leg back to Africa, to the Belgian Paratroop Base at Kamina. Within 20 minutes of my receiving the message at Kisumu, the paratroopers were airborne and the Agricultural Station was liberated. Hardly had I cleared the message when I received a correction to it which advised: “Not one hundred thousand savages, only ten thousand” When I passed this to Nairobi, the reply was “What’s the bloody difference” There were many such stories during the evacuation of Europeans from the Congo. Uganda was the main escape route and DCA Nairobi asked that any aircraft available and pilots who could make it, should get to Entebbe and help in the evacuation regardless of Certificates of Airworthiness and Pilot’s licences. One of my ex-pilot friends evacuated about thirty people in several trips in a Rapide aircraft. The last aircraft he had flown was a Beaufighter during the war. Some thousands were got out from the Congo, one way or another, mostly via Kampala and Kisumu. The Kenya Girls’ High School in Nairobi (known as the Boma) was turned into a Medical Reception Centre the records of which show the dreadful experiences and medical remedial action taken. Wendy reminded me that she and all the other girls who were not taking G.C.E..s were sent home a week before the term was due to end, to maked [sic] room for the refugees. At Kisumu I met many who came out by road. Two middle-aged ladies came to my Control Tower and one phoned her parents in [page break] the United States with a terrible story of pillage and rape. A third, more elderly, who had three American Doctorate degrees – Medicine, Divinity and a PhD. – had devoted her entire working life to helping and teaching Africans, but she said a lifetime had made only a superficial advance from their savagery. Most of our memories of Kisumu were of happier days. There was an excellent social club but we were not members due only to the lack of time. The children made good use of the swimming pool, the lake being too dangerous, not only with its hippo and crocs. but with Bilharzia and hook worm. Hilda enjoyed her painting and drawing and we even managed to take a few photographs. After nearly three years at Kisumu, Colin was still at the Prince of Wales School in Nairobi and with Wendy at the ‘Boma’ we were not seeing very much of either. And so a transfer was arranged and we packed up our household once again and moved to Nairobi, to a lovely house in Nairne Road, near Wendy’s school. 123 [page break] [underlined] D.C.A. HEADQUARTERS [/underlined] It was then June 1960, the Mau Mau emergency was still with us, but 84 Squadron had finished their bombing of the Aberdares which had raised the eyebrows of a few ‘hasbeens’ like myself. I had talked with the crews of the R.A.F. Lincolns some time earlier at R.A.F. Eastleigh and it all seemed very unreal to me. Perfect weather, ceiling and visibility generally unlimited and no enemy opposition from either the air or ground. Bombing over the bush was a matter of a timed run at a specific speed from a firmly identified point on the ground. Hardly a challenge for the Chaddertons and Fosters of this world and I don’t know what comprised a tour. It reminded me of O.T.U. where I saw the log book of a fellow-instructor with 40 ops. to his credit. His first tour ops were shown in the normal way, Benghazi 0340, Benghazi 0345, Benghazi 0342, Benghazi 0350, about 6 pages of Benghazi and no other target. But then, there are those among us who never bombed B.G., so the song goes. I could visualise the log books with several pages of ‘Aberdares 0125…”. Some of the Africans reckoned it was “mzuri sana” (very good) for the terrorists, the bombing just laid on a supply of fresh meat without their having to hunt for it, but there was probably more to it than that. My place of work was the Communications Centre in the High Commission Building, on the top floor, above the Inland Revenue office. My duties were those of Telecomms. Supt. i/c a watch, responsible for the operation of the telecommunications system. We were not really concerned with aeroplanes, only messages about their movements. We had Radio Teleprinter circuits with Johannesburg, Khartoum, Der es Salaam, Entebbe, and Gan, and teleprinters on line to R.A.F. Eastleigh, Wilson Airport, Nairobi (Embakasi) and the Flight Information Centre next door. Our internal communications, that is within East Africa, were mainly by W/T links, to Iringa, Songea, Mbeya, Mwanza, Tanga, Dodoma, Arusha, Kisumu etc. Every teleprinter link had a standby W/T channel and most of these were resorted to in the early mornings, about 4 to 6 am. Brazaville [sic] and Leopoldville in the Congo were only on W/T but there was little traffic to the west and none to the east except Gan. With Gan, we operated an emergency channel with a test message every twenty minutes, to supplement the R.A.F. network if required, but they seemed to manage quite well without us. We handled about 20,000 incoming messages per day in the Tape Relay Centre, and apart from one or two all had to be relayed out again and logged. We also had three ground to Air operating booths, two of which were always manned, working aircraft, one on HF/RT and the other HF/WT. The European Radio Officers preferred the latter, where often three messages per minute were handled for long periods. As soon as an aircraft left, say, Khartoum, a message would be sent on the Fixed Service by RTTY to the Tape Relay centre which should reach F.I.C. within a few minutes of being originated, requiring two relays, at Khartoum and Nairobi Tape Relay Centres. The system was that the pilot would not need to call Nairobi until he reached the Flight Information Region Boundry [inserted] Boundary [/inserted] at 4 degrees North, as Nairobi F.I.C. should have already received all the information by teleprinter. However, this being Africa and therefore supposedly not very efficient, the pilot would call Nairobi as soon as he could after take-off, on HF/RT. On the older propeller jobs, (the real aeroplanes), this would have been 125 [page break] carried out by the Radio Officer on W/T., where just a few groups in code meant a great deal, for example:-. ZGU de VPKKL Nairobi this is VPKKL QTN STKM 0201Z I departed Khartoum at 0201 GMT QAH 24 TTT QBH My height is 24,000 ft. below cloud QRE HKNA 0718 I am estimating Nairobi Airport at 0718 QRX FIR I will call you again at the Flight Information Boundary The Radio Officer would write those 14 groups onto a pad and his Clerk would put two copies through the hatch to the Air Traffic Controller. The Clerk would spend most of his time putting carbon paper between the pages, it was fast going during the busy periods, but was even faster before HF/RT was introduced. The aircraft would remain in constant contact with Khartoum on VHF until it reached 4 deg. N. when Nairobi would become responsible. Many aircraft were still using W/T at the time. There was no really conscious use of code, it was as commonplace as plain language and to a radio operator the two were synonimous, [sic] as were the many technical and other abbreviations. One example which comes to mind was at a Board of Enquiry into an accident where an aircraft had crashed into Mt. Kilimanjaro. An elderly judge asked the Ground Radio Officer if there had been any radio message, and the R/O replied “Yes, I last worked the aircraft on C.W. at 0247” “What is C.W.?” asked the Judge, and the reply “C.W. is Charlie Whisky your worship” and the Judge nearly gave up, maybe thinking whether Irish or Scotch. Some Radio Officers preferred to transcribe the morse and speech messages straight onto a teleprinter which produced a simultaneous page copy in front of the controller, but this method was not very popular. With several aircraft calling at the same time it was easy to make a mistake but too slow to correct it on the teleprinter. The F.I.C. Controller operated the VHF himself. The whole set-up was very well thought out and we were very well equipped. Communications were our line of business and we were highly organised. The tour of duty was rather longer in Nairobi, where one had to work for 4 years to earn 6 month’s leave, compared to only 2 1/2 years in Tanganyika. I believe there was some reduction for the Kenya coastal strip. These were the rules established when East Africa was supposed to be an unhealthy and hostile place, and most of the Europeans were Administration officials. I always felt the home leave terms were over-generous, as we also enjoyed three weeks of “local leave” each year with railway warrants provided to any part of east Africa. Where there was no railway to our particular ‘holiday resort’ or we chose to travel by car we could claim car mileage costs. Most people preferred to go on leave by sea, depending upon the time of year, possibly home on a 10 day voyage via suez, returning on a 3 week cruise via the Cape of Good Hope, on Union Castle liners. Some preferred the long way round both ways, spending as much time at sea as possible and thus economising [page break] on accommodation costs in the U.K. My only experience of sea travel had been the four troop-ships and Hilda claimed she couldn’t swim; we wanted to spend as much time as possible with the folks back home so we chose to travel by air every time. Within a year of our return to Nairobi, June 1961, political unrest was well to the fore and getting worse. Alice, my step-mother, was a Senior Secretary to an African Minister in the Secretariat, and felt it was getting too dangerous to remain. Luigi and Mary had already retired to Italy and Alice was preparing to join them. Most of us were expecting the balloon to go up at any moment and people were getting jittery. We had been close to the hiatus in the Congo and the more recent mutinies of the armies of Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda, and Europeans were beginning to leave. The weight of evidence of impending disaster was overwhelming and towards the end of June Hilda returned with the four youngest children to U.K., Colin remaining at the Prince of Wales School as a boarder. Alice and Brian returned to Italy shortly after and my father moved in with me at Nairne Road. My father and I had become very involved with emergency communications for the settlers up-country, which dominated our lives for the next few years, but this is a story unto itself and is dealt with in the chapter “Laikipia Security Network”. The mutinies referred to occurred soon after the British Forces had left Kenya, and the emergency was declared officially over. Some European Service personnel remained as advisers to the Kenya army - there was no Kenya Navy and the Kenya Air Force existed mainly on paper but with a few light aircraft. We awoke one morning to the news that the three separate armies many hundreds of miles apart, had thrown out their European officers and declared themselves independent of any authority. Within 48 hours and before they could organise themselves and cause any damage, very small forces of British troops appeared simultaneously near Nairobi, Jinja and Dar es Salaam, subdued and disarmed the lot, without any loss of life or limb. I recall a cartoon in the East African Standard, showing Jomo Kenyatta with both arms raised to paratroopers dropping from aircraft and the caption “How good it is to welcome old friends” - His arch-enemies for 10 years or so. I saw several hundred African soldiers sitting on the grass at Wilson Airport with three European soldiers guarding them with machine guns. There was a large pile of rifles and other weapons nearby, also guarded. Life was not all traumatic, however, we had the occasional laugh. One of our officers, MacDonald, was on official leave of absence quite frequently and we understood he was masterminding a very hush-hush communications link direct to U.K. from Government House and even satellites had been mentioned furtively. This was before the days of the Sputnik when satellites were a part of science fiction. He was one of the [underlined] firt [sic] [/underlined] to retire and as he was leaving he let us into the secret. Mac. had indeed spent a great deal of time at Government House. He was a master baker and was responsible literally for the icing of the cake. He told us also that when he joined the Dept. he stated that his qualifications included a final City & Guilds Certificate. They did, he confided, as a Master Baker, but not in telecommunications. One Sunday morning in October on duty at the Comm. Centre I found my African Supervisor was monitoring Reuter on teleprinter, and looking over his shoulder I read on the page copy that thousands of Africans armed to the teeth were surrounding the High Commission building and holding hostage the 127 [page break] Europeans working inside. The report gave more detail of riots and demonstrations and gave the impression that we were really in trouble. I went out through a window and onto the flat roof of the High Commission building and gingerly looked over the parapet entitled to expect a hail of bullets. On the road was a police car with two officers watching a group of about 20 Africans, some of them supporting two banners on which was written “Wazungu Rudi Uliya” (Europeans return to Europe). That was the extent of the demonstration reported to the entire world in Reuter’s message. Had it occured [sic] in Cambridge it would not even have received a mention in the free local papers. My tour of duty ended in December and I relinquished the house, my father moving into Plums Hotel. A nine hour flight to London, and I was home for Christmas. [page break] [underlined] Dec. ’61 ON LEAVE [/underlined] Hilda and Anne came to London and I met them at Paddington. We intend to spend a week with Joan and enjoy a holiday in London, but Hilda had a rather worrying cold so we limited our stay to two days. The next six months or so were spent on leave. With the exception of Colin who was in the R.A.F., the whole family was together in Wales at Glaslyn. My father was in Nairobi, and his regular letters referred to increasing unrest. He was working flat-out in building the ‘Watson Wonders’ and he asked me to take back 500 B7G valve holders and 150 modulation chokes In May ’62 I said goodbye to the family and returned to Kenya. As I was unaccompanied, Sid Worthy the Chief Engineer asked me if I would housewarm for him whilst he was on his 6 months leave. This meant that he paid the rent but could just walk out without packing up his household and walk back into the same apartment on his return. There was a tendency for senior officers who were permanently based in Nairobi to try and retain the same house or apartment once they had found the right one. Rent was in fact 10% of salary and it was well worth it. My father moved in with me and together we carried on with the transmitters, having rented a workshop next to Stephen Ellis in Victoria Street. After only 3 months in the apartment I received a letter from Sid telling me he was returning immediately, could he please have his flat only a few days hence!. The following morning we were going up-country and I could see my father was a more than little depressed. He was driving like a madman down the Nairobi escarpment and I insisted that he let me do the driving. He told me he had to go to Mombassa [sic] next day, having received a telegram from Alice that she and Brian were returning on the Union Castle. This was supposed to be a surprise to him and I did not doubt that it was so, but Alice admitted later that she had in fact booked return tickets on the homeward trip. She had been totally dishonest in her statements about her intentions which had resulted in Hilda and the children staying in Wales. Our safari was cut short and we returned to Nairobi the same day, a 500 mile round trip. Alice’s return meant a complete change in plan; clearly she and my father expected to share my accommodation but with Sid’s return they had no option but to move into an hotel again. They were lucky in obtaining a couple of rooms at Plums, after only two nights in the flat. I moved into Woodlands Hotel, but applied for a housing allocation as my family had decided to return to Kenya. Hilda and the children rejoined [sic] me and we moved into a house at Likoni Lane, resuming a normal life except that it was dominated by the Laikipia network and work at the Comm. Centre. Within a year of my return I was promoted to Asst. Signals Officer and took over from Mike Harding As [sic] Officer in charge of the Communications Centre. This I had tried to avoid for a long time, not the responsibility, but the working hours. The new post meant working office hours and for the first time in my life I was working a five-day-week. On watches it had been a four-day cycle of say monday afternoon, tuesday morning and all tuesday night, then off duty until friday afternoon. The 2 1/2 days off within every 4 days had suited me very well and was a very popular roster with everyone. Office hours curtailed my visits up-country except at week-ends, but I did have every evening free. Very soon, each European Radio Supt. In charge of a watch had an African trainee assistant. Shortly afterwards one joined me. They were all supposedly bright boys from Secondary School and we delegated the routine work to them as much as possible. Their presence was resented by the old-timers among the 129 [page break] wireless operators, who knew what they were doing and were very good operators, but their educational background was inadequate for the senior posts. Africanisation was the policy dictated to us and we bowed to the inevitable. I trusted most of my Africans, and there were about 180 of them working on the 4-day Watch roster at the Communications centre. Although many of them had served with the British Army both during and after the war, I could not completely lose sight of the fact that some had taken part in the Lare massacre when an African village was set ablaze and almost everyone slaughtered as they tried to escape. The majority of my staff were from the three main problem tribes, the Kikuyu, Meru and Embu, and a few of the Luo tribe from Nyanza. My father’s farm had been abandoned long ago. It was not possible to obtain reliable labour during the Emergency, and the whole of the European settled areas was to be handed over to the Africans. There were already very few farmers left in the Trans-Nzoia and the Eldoret areas, the latter being mainly from South Africa. The Laikipia farmers were the last to hold out, except perhaps for the bigger ranches near Athi River. Our next home leave was in June 1964 and the story of my activity over the three years leading up to it is synonymous with that of the Laikipia Security Network. The network seemed to priority over everything, but lives were at stake. Occasionally Hilda and the Children would go up-country with me, and one memorable week-end was spent with Tony Dyer and Family at their lovely home facing Mount Kenya. One afternoon Tony asked the children if they would like to go to a polo match and they took off in Tony’s Cessna from their own front door, landing at the side of the pitch. One of Tony’s sons was killed some months later whilst taking a gun out of the back of his vehicle. It was never discovered how the gun came to be loaded and with the safety catch off. Hilda and the children stayed too at the farm of Dr. Anne Spoerry, at Ol Kalau. Anne’s loo was a traditional type in the bushes down the garden, very comfortable and lined with bookshelves, full of the Lancet and other medical journals. Anne was a wonderful character. Only once did we go to the coast for a holiday, and this was two weeks spent at Likoni, near Mombassa [sic]. Unfortunately we chose to go in the rainy season but it was a welcome break. We took Chippy, our cockerel, and it followed us around everywhere, afraid of absolutely nothing. Chippy returned home one day in Nairobi with a broken beak and was unable to peck for food. Fortunately Jean and Dick Chalcroft came to stay overnight with us and Dick fitted a new lower section to the beak with the plastic resin we used in making dipole aerials.. It took an hour to cure, or set, and Jean and Dick held Chippy during that period, and again whilst they filed down the surplus plastic and polished the result. Chippy was ravenous and began to feed straight away, but was very aggressive towards humans, except for Jean and Dick, who took him back to their farm at Molo. I saw Chippy several times after that at the farm, lording it over the hens, and not another cockerel in sight. One day I bought a petrol/paraffin engine-driven alternator and a bank of batteries, a complete 32 volt lighting set in fact, too good to miss for £25 in Nairobi. The dealer said the engine wouldn’t start although it had just been thoroughly overhauled. I knew that Jean and Dick were without power on their farm although their house was wired for a 32 volt DC system such as this. I knew too of Jean’s prowess with anything mechanical and I took the whole lot straight up to the farm at Molo. At 10pm. on the Saturday Jean started stripping down the engine whilst I was linking together the 26 alkaline cells [page break] and checking the house wiring connected to my car battery. Jean, assisted by Dick slogged on until 5am. in the light of an Alladin lamp, but she had discovered the trouble long before that. The timing was exactly 180 degrees out of phase. At 5am, just before dawn, the batteries being flat, Jean cranked the engine which roared into life, literally, we were deficient of a silencer for the exhaust. The batteries were taking a charge and we changed from petrol to paraffin and switched on a few lights in the house. The following evening the Chalcrofts were very proud of their lighting system. That sort of effort and co-operation did give one a great deal of satisfaction. My recollections of work in D.C.A. over that period are very few. We seldom talked of the war, but in the middle of one night I somehow got chatting to the F.I.C. Controller, Sqdn Ldr. Anderson DFC & Bar, who had also been in 5 Group on Lancasters. Andy said we were sometimes like a lot of sheep, he recalled one night having reached his ETA, all was very quiet except that markers had been dropped 20 miles to the south. Within minutes bombs were crashing down so Andie turned south for five minutes and joined in. Next day it was found that the target was 20 miles north of where most of the bombing had taken place. My reply was just “Politz”, we had done exactly the same thing, followed the flock. We talked together of flying during the war, several times, but my memories of the actual events are more vivid now, after 45 years, than they were 25 years ago. Perhaps because there was not a great deal in East Africa to remind me of it, compared to today, living 4 miles from Wyton on the approach to Alconbury. To see the Lancaster of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight fly over gives me rather more than a lump in my throat at times. Pathfinder House is not what it was with Don Bennet, either, it is now the place where I pay my rates, but they at least have a picture of a Lancaster on the wall near the Cashier’s office. A couple of years ago I asked one of the cashiers why it was called Pathfinder House, she had no idea, I asked what the aeroplane was and the answer was the same. I let the matter drop. I had taken over the comm. Centre from Mike Harding who had retired prematurely, and his immediate predecessor had been “Bing” Crosby, ex Royal Signals. Bing was in Headquarters just along the corridor and came into my office every day to inspect an object pickled in a sealed jar which he had left on the shelf when he was promoted. Although he urged us to take good care of it, he used to look at it and say to it “You useless ruddy thing”, or words to that effect. Finally, on retirement, he came and collected it and let us into the secret, with the parting words “Oh don’t worry, the other one’s fine, you only need one you know”. Alice and my father had left in May for Italy, to stay with Mary and Luigi. My own feelings were that he should have stayed in Kenya, possibly up country with Jean or with one of his many other friends among the Settlers. He had worked unceasingly on the network for over 4 years, but Alice insisted upon their return to Europe. In June ’64 it was time for home leave again. We were reluctant this time because there was so much happening up country and we expected it to be our final tour in East Africa together, unless I returned and carried on with communications on a commercial basis. This was still an option, communications had kept me very busy and with lots of ‘job satisfaction’, but it was DCA who had paid my salary. I still had a family to support, and there was a great deal of uncertainty in Kenya. And so it was we flew to London yet again, and joined Hilda’s Mum at Glaslyn. 131 [page break] [underlined] ON LEAVE June 1964 [/underlined] Before leaving for Wales we bought a second-hand Vanguard from a dealer in Putney which was to prove very useful in the next few months. At the end of our leave it was sold to the local Policeman for the same price. A month or two before we returned, the house next to Aunt Doll had become vacant and was put on the market for £500. It was small and in shocking state, but a real snip so we bought it. Five months was spent in refurbishing it, building a bathroom, kitchen, replastering, new fireplace, rewiring etc. I remember John mixing at least a ton of concrete manually, he was a tremendous help. Electricity at the house had not been used for many years, and what little wiring remained, mostly twin flex, we ripped out. Electrical contractors quoted £900 to rewire, which was totally ridiculous, and finally John and I did it in one day, having spent about £50 on materials through an advert in Exchange & Mart. We tried to buy the field - or even part of it - at the back - of the house, but our lawyer said it was quite impossible to find out who owned the land. Many years later it transpired that it had in fact been owned for at least a hundred years by members of his own family. Visits were paid to my other in Barnoldswick and to Joan and Ken in London, but the greater part of my leave was spent on the ‘new house’. At the end of April Hilda’s Mum moved into her new home and made comfortable. From the house there was a wonderful view of the mountain separating the Neath and Rhonda valleys, with the river within 25 yards in the foreground. Perhaps it is only fair to mention the road between the house and river, but when the bypass was built a few years later this road carried little traffic. In November ’64 I returned to Kenya unaccompanied, and being so, moved into Woodlands Hotel. The following day I was in touch with Laikipia and also back at work. I relieved Mike Harding as Asst. Signals Officer in Headquarters, Deputy to ‘Spud’ Murphy who was Telecommunications Officer (Operations). The job was just a matter of dealing with the steady flow of paper-work. Every piece of paper coming in was registered in Central Registry and filed by the Clerk. If he couldn’t decide which file to put it, he would open a new one. The file was then delivered - and booked out - to the officer thought to be the one who should deal with it. The officer would either add his comments as a minute and pass on the file to someone he thought might not return it to him, or if he felt he was authorised to make a decision, draft a letter for his immediate superior. Very occasionally, on an external matter he might even sign the letter “for the Director of Civil Aviation”. I was expected to finalise all matters concerning the operational aspect of the Telecommunications side of DCA, including all staff problems, their examinations and promotions. Europeans were leaving the Directorate almost every week and being replaced by Africans. Those with African proteges training to take over the senior posts were most vulnerable. The Africans thought it was easy to sit back and authorise someone to go on leave, or to promote or reprimand another. The newcomers could read the many returns and forms but whereas a European officer could do every job subordinate to his own, the assistant had neither the experience, qualifications nor ability to do those jobs. In some cases the African was promoted and his former boss remained as his assistant. It was [page break] obvious who did the actual work. I found the work uninteresting, mainly it seemed just a matter of going through the motions and staying out of trouble by being non-committal, which was completely out of character. My main thoughts were with the 5190 Network, something that really mattered. Sqdn. Ldr. Anderson was still with us and when he went on two week’s leave to the coast he asked me to sleep at his house, which made a welcome change from staying at the hotel. At about 3am on the third night there was a hullabaloo outside and a pounding on the door. “Police, open up”. I opened up, 9mm. Mauser ready, to be greeted by an African Police Inspector and about 15 Askari with enough weaponry to start a rebellion. Andy had told the Police he would be away for two weeks and would they please keep an eye on the house? I told them he had asked me to sleep there but they were not convinced. All my documents were at the hotel and eventually the Inspector ‘phoned the Acting Director of Civil Aviation at his house - Dickie Dixon, my old antagonist from Entebbe. Dickie was not amused, he never was, with me, but the Inspector was satisfied. A few nights later, about 10pm. I was lying on the bed reading, the house in darkness except for a small reading lamp. I heard footsteps on the gravel outside and quickly extinguished the light. I heard a key turning in the lock of the pateo [sic] door. By this time I was off the bed and standing at the bedroom door, left hand on the hall light switch and my Mauser in the right, cocked and with the safety-catch off. When the outside door opened I switched on the light and was startled to identify the intruder as Jimmie Sanson, whom I had not seen since we were in Kisumu. If he had been carrying a gun I might have blown his head off before it became unrecognisable. Andy had done it again, asking Jimmie also to keep an eye on the house. That night my car had been in Andy’s garage. On the following nights I left the car in full view outside, and with the a few lights in the house switched on. For several years I had held one of the very few Flight Radio Officer Licences in the Department and frequently flew as Radio Officer first on the Anson VPKKK and later on its replacement, the Heron. On my last trip on the Heron we did a “tour of inspection” with visiting officials from ICAO in Montreal. Whilst supposedly inspecting the runways here and the Met. Station there, a V.O.R., D.M.E. and other aids to Aviators, in reality we enjoyed a visit to Zanzibar, flew around inside the Ngoro-ngoro crater, an extinct volcano well stocked with wild life, witnessed a specially-staged lion kill in Tsavo West National Park, and entered into the spirit of a very expensive ‘Cook’s Tour’. A few weeks later I did another tour of airports, inspecting the Telecomm. aspect and also giving morse tests to operators who were otherwise already qualified for promotion. I knew most of the staff and the stations also. 16 years previously I had first visited Iringa, which was then run by ‘Blossom’, Mrs. Brown, the only lady Radio Officer in DCA. Blossom was an ex-WREN officer who had specialised during the war in Japanese morse. I think she told me there were about 120 characters in their morse alphabet, and she used to transcribe in Jap. characters for hours on end. It was someone else’s job to translate them into English. Blossom had left some years previously. The morse tests were interesting, first the candidate sent for 10 minutes at 25 w.p.m. of 5-letter and figure groups, which was recorded on tape. The second test was 10 minutes of plain language, and the third receiving for 10 minutes of automatic morse. The fourth test was for the candidate to receive the morse recorded in the first two tests, without telling them of it’s origin. Many complained that the 133 [page break] fourth test was unfair, the morse being very poor and difficult to read. Some found it difficult to believe the poor morse was their own! In general, the morse was, in fact, very good, most of the old-timers having been British Army trained, during the war. Soon after the invasion of Zanzibar I flew there in the DCA Anson piloted by Capt. Casperuthus. The two Air Traffic Controllers had been deported to Mombassa [sic] and almost all the Telecomms. equipment was faulty. The teleprinter on line to Dar es Salaam still worked, however, and this was taken over by an African from Tanganyika. Zanzibar and Tanganyika became known as Tanzania and for the very first time customs and immigration formalities were introduced between the two. I recall paying customs duty in Dar es Salaam on 200 cigarettes bought in Zanzibar, although the price was the same in both places, and duty had been paid already to the same authority, the new government of Tanzania. There was no rational explanation to some of the politics in East Africa. Rumours were rife that a huge Russian biplane bomber made secret trips at night without contacting DCA, the aviation authority, and the machine was said to be in a particular hangar. We were intrigued by this and taxied very close to the hangar, a ‘deliberate mistake’, and took photographs of the aircraft. It was a biplane about three times the wingspan of a Tiger Moth, but we were not able to find anyone who had actually seen it airborne. By May 1965 I was recovering transmitters from Settlers who were leaving the country, and these sets were more than meeting the demand for new ones. I felt that by the end of the year there would be very few Europeans left, and in that atmosphere of intense anti-climax I gave 6 months notice of my retirement. The leave earned would take me to just over my 44th. birthday when compensation for loss of office would be at its peak. Looking at this in more detail, compensation would have been reduced by £2,000 per year of delay. There was really little choice but to go. [page break] [underlined] JOB HUNTING [/underlined] I returned home finally on the 11th. of November 1965 and joined Hilda and the family at Glaslyn, except for Colin who was in the R.A.F. in Aden. My father and Alice were settled in Voghera in Northern Italy. There was plenty of time to look for a job, as I was on full pay for about six months and could not really afford to start work until April. Had I started before that, it would have meant paying income tax at the U.K. rate for the previous year on my world income, so I was advised, probably wrongly. I wrote many letters, one offering my services to O’Dorian of Redeffusion [sic]. They were at that time considering establishing a Radio Relay system in the African areas of Nairobi. Other firms were also interested and the City Council was monitoring a pilot scheme which I.A.L. had fitted about a year previously. The pilot scheme had been put out to tender and my father had submitted a bid to provide for a four-program system. The contract went to I.A.L. on the grounds that they had shown confidence in Kenya by being established there for many years and were a reputable firm. My father was invited to comment and said I.A.L.’s presence was nothing to do with confidence, they were wholly-owned by B.O.A.C. and were there to do aircraft radio maintenance for E.A. Airways also owned by B.O.A.C. As for being a reputable company, so are Marks and Spencers but like I.A.L. they have no experience in Radio Relay. I had seen the pilot scheme at Kaloleni. Each house had a loudspeaker on the wall with volume control, and the system was wired in D8 cable and flex, with no protective devices. Reception was poor and quality was that of a typical bus station P.A. system. I gave O’dorian [sic] a detailed report of what I thought could be achieved in Nairobi and also the whole of Kenya, together with the engineering detail, resources required, budgets etc. The report was mainly the result of my father’s efforts of two years previously, updated. I included my report of I.A.L.’s one programme pilot scheme the performance of which could induce the Council to reach only one conclusion about Radio Relay. One of not to bother with it. Transistor radios were then on the market at 40 shillings giving good world-wide reception, Moscow being a necessity. I mentioned too the near to impossibility of collecting payment from individual subscribers. Payment would have to be made by the authorities. O’Dorian thanked me for my interest and appreciated the report and said he would be in touch. About a month later he wrote again and said they had decided not to pursue any interest in Kenya. I also tried West London Telefusion who I knew at working level in 1947, and had an interview in Blackpool with their M.D., and Personnel Manager, for a new post as Development Manager in Taunton, Somerset. The job was to establish a cable T.V. system. I was offered the job after a prolonged interview and at a good salary. I accepted there and then and was advised to start looking for a house around Taunton. Only the starting date was uncertain, but they agreed to confirm the appointment in writing and provide a detailed Terms of Reference. I was very surprised indeed a few weeks later when a letter from Mr Wilkinson said he was very sorry but had decided not to proceed with the Taunton project and all development was under review. I realised that cable TV was popular in fringe areas but more and more repeaters were being provided and the need for cable was reducing all the time. I am writing this in 1993 and the concept of cable TV has developed from the 1966 “amplified aerial” to a single coaxial cable providing over 30 T.V. channels, radio and telephone, and 147 [page break] most recently, scanned T.V. Security Systems. The technological advances in Relay since its inception in my father’s time, around 1928 have meant many fresh starts for the industry. I had an interview with Aero Electronics at Crawley – to whom I had a letter of introduction, and was offered the job of Development Engineer & Manager! I felt this was aiming rather high. The interview took place in a large country house, alongside which was a fairly new factory with lots of activity, and a sketch of which appeared on Aero Electronics letter heading. I later found that the factory had no connection with Aero Electronics, which was in fact a one-man show. The job would have been responding to overseas enquiries received mainly via the Board of Trade, designing a system and providing equipment, winding up with a quotation. On the face of it a very interesting prospect, but with no back-up of any sort, and relying upon other firms’ equipment. I felt it to be somewhat dicey, particularly when I was asked if I could type! I had to say it was a job for a team, not one man. From Crawley I went to see G.E.C. at Coventry for interview as a “Production Team Leader”. The job turned out to be the leader of a team of about 12 assemblers and wiremen constructing telephone exchanges – one at a time. I was shown one being assembled and spent an hour with the Team Leader on one particular exchange which comprised thirty 7’ racks of relay panels, counters uniselectors, jack fields etc. As far as I could see it was just a matter of ensuring each item was in the right place and wired-in correctly. Turning down the job was the right decission [sic] for the wrong reason. There seemed to be thousands of people around all moving at the same time, and the environment depressed me. Although I was only vaguely aware of it at the time, that type of system would be giving way to electronic exchanges within a year or two. Next stop was Redifon in Wandsworth, who were advertising for Test and Installation engineers. The job was described accurately but was basically testing H/F and M/F equipment at the end of the production line, with very occasional trips into the field on installation and commissioning work. There was great competition for the field work. I was offered the job but the Personnel manager told me to think very carefully, Wandsworth was a terrible place to live in. I was given two weeks to think it over, and turned down the offer. I asked the Personnel Manager what happened to the job I was offered in 1957. The requirement was for an engineer who had a PMG1 licence to operate on ships and an MCA Flight Radio Officers Licence to operate on aircraft. He was to take equipment to sea and into the air to ensure there were no problems, and if there were, to resolve them. That job really appealed to me and could very well have become what I cared to make it. Maybe. He looked up my file and told me the vacancy was not filled and the post was withdrawn. I saw a job advertised for a Telecommunications Engineer for Gambia, 18 month tour, £3500 per year + 25% gratuity, and applied for it. A week later I was called for interview. I didn’t think there was the slightest chance of this happening, having applied out of interest and an expences [sic] paid trip to London. The interview went well and soon after my return to Wales a letter arrived asking me to confirm my acceptance on a salary of £2500. I was in a quandry [sic], I didn’t really want to go to Zambia, but wrote to the Crown Agents and pointed out the discrepancy between the advert of £3500 and offer of £2500. [page break] They regretted their mistake in the advert, and on those grounds I was able to decline I applied for an advertised post of Signals Officer at the Ministry of Aviation’s Communications Centre at Croydon for which my D.C.A. experience fitted me well. The interview went off very well and I found that in some respects E. Africa was more up to-date than was the practice at Croydon. At the end of the interview they said they would write to me. About a week later their letter arrived and advised that I had not been selected but only because a more senior post would shortly become available and I was already short-listed for it. Good news indeed, but having heard nothing further after four months by which time we had moved house to Cambridge, I wrote to them. In their reply I was told that the letter offering me the job had been returned to them marked “Gone away”. As Communications Officer in charge at Croydon life would have been rather different. Becoming more and more disillusioned with U.K. I went to see the Overseas Services Resettlement Bureau at Eland House, Victoria. I saw a Mr. Williams who was ex-Malaysia P.& T and we chatted for a while about the prospects of settling down to a job in the U.K. I had to agree that after 18 years in East Africa I was not impressed with what I saw in Britain nor with the people who occupied it, it was a vastly different place to the one I had left in 1948. He was quite right in saying that I first had to decide whether I wanted to stay and if so to make the best of it. What job did I want? I told him I had hoped to join Pye Telecomm’s technical sales dept. I knew Pye aeronautical equipment and felt I could fit in there, but had written and been advised there were no vacancies. “Did I still want the job?”. Having replied yes please he picked up the phone, and said “get me Ernie Munns at Pye”. Moments later he greeted someone in what I assumed was Malay, then switched to English “look Ernie, I’ve another bloody Colonial here, thinks Pye’s the ultimate., When can you see him?” We agreed 2pm the following day at Pye Telecommunications, Newmarket Rd., Cambridge. More words in Malay between them and he wished me luck. I liked the friendly environment at Pye and was interviewed by Ernie Munns, head of Systems Planning Dept. and his deputy, Cyril Foster. The interview was constantly interrupted by the telephone and people barging in for instant decisisons [sic]. I recall Ernie asking whether I would be prepared to write a paper for a semi-technical customer on the relative merits of conventional VHF links and Tropospheric scatter and I said “yes”! Fortunately the phone rang and both interviewers were involved, which gave me a few minutes to think about it. I had heard of Tropo-scatter, but that was about all. I awoke to the question of “how would you go about it?” I replied that I would read up the subject in the Pye library. It must have been written up many times, I would study it and probably be able to quote a learned authority. I agreed that I didn’t know all the answers, and Ernie said “Thank god for that, one or two around here think they do”. I was told that my application was opportune, if I joined them I would be in the Aeronautical team headed by Cyril, which was currently preparing a factory order for equipment to re-equip 22 airports and several other sites in Iran, plus a lot of other orders for aviation equipment. Basically the job was block-planning of systems to meet the customers’ operational requirement, prepare quotations, to engineer the job in detail and to project manage the order to its conclusion. This was the sort of job offered by 149 [page break] Aero Electronics but at Pye there was full backing from experts in all fields. The second part of the interview was with Cyril and the Personnel manager who said he would write to me with the result. The letter arrived a few days later offering me the post at £1250 per year and to start preferably on the first of April. This was gladly accepted. Hilda and I went to Cambridge and after a week’s run around by Estate Agents we found a nice 4-bedroomed house at 14 Greystoke Rd. near Cherry Hinton which was to be ready by the end of March. [page break] [underlined] AT PYE TELECOMMUNICATIONS [/underlined] The first two years at Pye were spent as a Project Engineer in Systems Planning Dept, not in the Aviation team as hoped, but in Duncan Kerr’s team doing general systems. Also in the team were Jim Bucknell, Ian Douglas, and Mike Bavistock who had also joined Pye on April first. Duncan was away most of the time drumming up contracts with the Scottish Police forces but on our first day Mike and I did meet him briefly and he gave us two pink files. ‘Take one each’ said Duncan. ‘Turkey 10th Slice is now an order and needs a flimsy, and the Libya quote needs revalidating’. Mike and I hadn’t a clue on Pye methods and we decided to work together, providing a mutual back-up. It quickly transpired that we had something in common, Mike had been in the Gambia for three tours whilst I was in East Africa. I told him of my experience with the Crown Agents for the Gambia job and he had seen the advert for what had in fact been his post. He was not amused when he saw his £2500 a year job advertised with a salary of £3500. Of the 36 people in the department, no-one was particularly helpful, in retrospect mainly because they were themselves under great pressure and had problems of their own. I saw the Chief Clerk, - later known as the Admin Group Leader – and said ‘Duncan wants me to do a flimsy, what’s a flimsy?’ He was most unhelpful although he was responsible for the admin. aspect of many hundreds of them. His philosophy was that he wasn’t going to help anyone who was on a bigger salary than his own. I had to go to Export Sales to find out what a flimsy looked like. It turned out to be an all-singing and dancing instruction to every dept. detailing all the action required in designing, manufacturing inspecting packing shipping and invoicing and even installation of a customer’s order. All the information available was entered on the forms and circulated around the departments. The initial circulation was programmed to take six weeks. The system was designed in detail and all the engineering information added with ammendments. [sic] Eventually there were so many ammendments [sic] I had to completely rewrite the flimsy after six weeks, and finally there was an issue 4. The job was eventually engineered by Dickie Wainwright – ex East African P.& T., following a departmental re-organisation, and I picked it up again at the delivery stage having moved to the Systems Installation Dept. My performance on my first task in Pye was not at all brilliant, and about 18 months later when the installation was finished I issued a memo entitled “Lessons Learned on Turkey 10th Slice”. I started with saying that a week of training in Pye methods would have saved a great deal of cost and misunderstanding and went on to discuss the contract itself. The contract stated that ‘The Turkish Version of the contract shall be deemed to be the official version’, and it seemed there were many anomalies all to the advantage of the Turks, in particular to our agent, a chap called Avidor, who in fact translated the Turkish contract into English!. The system originally quoted was for a microwave chain the length of Turkey with a dozen or so links carrying teleprinter and telephones. We were awarded only the links, the radio parts of which were main and standby. One rediculous [sic] requirement in the Turkish version was that they wanted the main link in one place and the standby in another. We were providing main and standby transmitters etc within a link, not a completely seperate [sic] standby link. The whole thing was quite rediculous, [sic] no 151 [page break] wonder it was given to one of the new boys and everyone else steered clear. The title of the contract simply meant that it was the 10th slice – or part – of a multi-million dollar allocation of N.A.T.O. funds. I don’t know how many slices there were, but one was enough for us. With Mike’s first job, revalidating a quotation might on the face of it seem more straight-forward. It is just a matter of extending the date on which the offer expires, or is it?! The engineers who did the quotation with many versions over a period of 10 years, and the half dozen salesmen involved over different periods had all either left or moved on somewhere. Now they were all out of picture, it was Mike’s job, and he was on his own. Revalidation implied that he must thoroughly understand the customer requirement. The quotation comprised 18 volumes of A4 size, each 2” thick, plus a mountain of minutes of meetings and correspondance [sic] over a period of 10 years. Undertakings made in good faith years ago could well be quite impossible to honour, requiring endless variations to the tender document. Every change required approval from others in Pye. Every aspect had to be checked. Equipment from other manufacturers was included and confirmation of availability and price had to be obtained, every move documented and absolutely every aspect of the tender was Mike’s direct responsibility. When I think back to those days, I remember how every letter and memo originated had to be written out in longhand for the team’s typist to action. I understand the office system did not change in the next 25 years although there is much less of it. Mike asked me to sit in at his very first meeting on this project, the main purpose of which was to put him in the picture and answer any queries he might have. One item in the quote was ‘2 years Bavister £2000’ What’s that asks Mike. The finance dept man said it’s an accountancy term, just leave it in but add 10%. Two others had totally different ideas and finally a fellow woke up and said “I’m Bavister, I’m supposed to go out there for two years to help the customer”. There followed a discussion on the price of whether it was 2 or should be 20 thousand and which department accepted the responsibility. Mike asked why we are using scramblers bought from Redifon at £1200 each when we can make them. It turned out they were actually ours, produced in Cambridge for T.M.C. who sold them to Redifon who in turn mounted them on a panel with their label, and sold them back to Pye at about 10 times the price. The Libya communication system itself was very good, a policeman on a camel with a hand-held portable could talk through a local Base station and several UHF links and an HF SSB link to his HQ 3000 miles away if required. Mike Bavistock saw the project through two revalidations and the tender’s final acceptance, and the production stage, over a period of 4 years. He went on to do many other big projects before deciding to resign and return to Africa to try and regain his sanity. When I joined the department, one half prepared quotations and everything else with the exception of the detailed engineering. The other half were responsible for engineering and nothing else. The system was sound, one person should not have to divert his thinking from conditions of sale to pricing to shipping to the specific connections on a 131 way socket. After a while the system was changed whereby one man did the lot, and with a dozen or more projects on hand at any one time constant re-orientation was getting me down and I asked for a transfer to Systems Installation Dept. Meanwhile I pressed on [page break] doing many quotations and made sure I did not get involved with detailed engineering design or anything else which could delay my transfer. In fact I feigned some excentricity [sic] and got away with it. The pressure however was high and there was a great deal of jeolousy [sic] and backbiting in the department. At one stage I did a couple of Fireman’s callout schemes and these were done on the electric typewriter by a typist who normally did only the conditions of sale. The only difference was in the number of base stations and portables, and the finance. Together using the same basic tape we could rattle off a quotation in half an hour. We made about 20 spare copies and sent them to Home salesmen who were not already in the know, to help them secure orders from their local fire services. This was very rewarding to Pye. One monday [sic] morning I was given the job of providing a quotation to meet a requirement for the Yugoslavian police, to be ready by 4 pm on friday [sic] . It was a big job and I would have three chaps to assist me but I was not to make a start until the go-ahead was received from International Marketing Dept. At 2.15 pm I was told to forget it, it would not be possible to complete it in time. On Wednesday at 10 am I was told the job was on and vital, top priority. Drop everything and get on wth [sic] it. I would not have any assistants and would have to complete it myself. So one man had two days and two nights to do a job which was too much for 4 men in 5 days and 4 nights. I worked almost non-stop, all day and all night, mostly at home, and on the thursday [sic] I asked for a typist to be available for friday [sic] night. By 5 pm on friday [sic] the document was ready for typing, a very long technical description and equipment schedules. The prices had not been agreed with the finance dept, so I used standard Export price with 15% mark-up for luck. No signatures of approval were obtained from Snr. Management although a quote for over £100,000 needed signatures from three Directors and finally the Company Secretary. I did ‘phone Bert Ship who was responsible for determining delivery time and I put 5 months instead of his 9. The typist did not materialise, and as a last resort I took an office typewriter to my daughter Wendy’s home and she typed it overnight. At 7 am on the saturday [sic] I assembled a batch of relavant [sic] publicity material and technical leaflets, and made 10 copies of the whole document, four of which I signed and gave to the Salesman at 9 am. He translated the Technical Description and schedules into Italian on his way to London Airport by road and to Milan by air. It was retyped into Italian on the Sunday and presented to the client in Rome on the Monday [sic] , by Pye Italy. A month later the Salesman told me we had got the job and thanked me, but there was no other official recognition. I was amused to have signed it myself, having cut through all authorities and proceedures. [sic] One copy of the file was circulated around for approvals by Mike Loose and this was completed a few days before we got the contract. Not all jobs were like that. One particular quotation was done for Frank Mills, a salesman responsible for dealing with government departments in Wales. I had first known Frank when he was Provincial Police Signals Officer at Mwanza in Tanganyika when I was in charge of the airport. Prior to that he had been a Radio Officer with D.C.A. in East Africa. Frank had told me of his lucky escape when he went to Musoma on a routine inspection. An african [sic] sold him a live snake in a sack for a shilling and Frank decided its skin would make a good present. An 8 foot python for a shilling. First the python had to be killed and whilst still in the sack was placed in an empty 40 gallon storage drum. A pipe was connected between his 153 [page break] landrover [sic] exhaust and the drum, and the engine left running. After an hour the python was removed and made ready for skinning, but first let’s take a few photographs. Off came Frank’s bush jacket, and the python wound round his chest and neck, with Frank gripping the snake’s head and looking it square in the eyes. The photos were taken and the snake lowered to the ground. It was sweaty work and Frank sat on the back of the landrover [sic] drinking a cool beer. After a few minutes the python slid away into the bush. However, Frank had arranged to collect the quotation at 1.30 pm. and as the hour approached it was ready in triplicate except for the three front labels. All the typists and secretaries were enjoying their lunch break, most of them sitting at their desks knitting or reading. Not one of them would type the labels, so I used a spare manual machine and typed them myself. It was their right to stop work between 1 and 2 and they would excercise [sic] that right regardless of everything else. Most of them didn’t speak to me for weeks. This childish attitude was only too prevalant [sic] throughout the organisation and was completely foreign to me. However, Frank collected his quotation and we had a short chat about old times. Tragically he was killed in a road accident next day whilst on the way to see his customer with the quotation. After my 2 years or so in Systems Planning, Bill Bainbridge one of the two Field Controllers in Systems resigned to start his own business, Cambridge Towers, and I was fortunate in succeeding him. At the same time Harry Langley Head of Systems Installation moved into Sales and D.A.D. Smith took over as Manager of Systems Installation Dept., (S.I.D.). I got on very well with Harry Langley, he had been with the Kenya Police as a Radio technician seconded from the Home Office. Howard (Jimmie) James was the other Field Controller and between us we managed all S.I.D. projects, mainly installing and commissioning systems in the field, about 60% being overseas. In theory we had a Project Engineer heading each Installation team but as each was involved in several jobs at any one time it was never possible just to sit back and let the P.E. get on with it. He was likely to be abroad when most required. [underlined] IRAN [/underlined] One of the first jobs allocated to me in S.I.D. was the Iranian Airports project, Pye being a member of a consortium with Marconi, C & S Antennas, Redifon, G.E.C. and S.T.C. All came together as the Irano-British Airports Consortium to re-equip the major airports and aviation facilities in Iran. This was the project mentioned to me at my interview when applying to join Pye and Cyril Foster and Allan Breeze had devoted their last two years entirely to it, and much of 5 years before that. Allan in fact eventually went to Iran to commission the F.I.C. console. I had a great respect for him when we went to Iran together and whilst I was struggling along in French he was talking in Farsi with the hotel staff. He had been quietly studying it in Cambridge and could even read it, which was a tremendous achievement. I became suspicious when I received a memo from D.A.D. Smith the Departmental Manager enclosing a change-note and asking me to confirm that we could still carry out our installation committment [sic] in Iran for the £85,700 he had quoted. A change-note was a notification from a Lab. making a minor change in the design or manufacture of a piece of equipment. In this case it refered [sic] to a resistor which would make no difference to anything except the parts list. [page break] [photograph of the head and shoulders of a man] [Arabic writing] [stamp] [Arabic writing] G. Watson [Arabic writing] [signature] [Arabic writing] JSB/100/14/6/T [Arabic writing] 154A [page break] Not “will the change-note make any difference?” His subtle phraseology was making me responsible for the whole installation amount, not just a possible minor differe [deleted r [/deleted] nce. His figure was derived by taking 5% of the factory transfer price of the equipment which had no real relationship to the cost of fitting it, and was totally unrealistic. I studied the draft contract and drew up an installation plan, and after a few days replied to my manager that “if the work can be carried out in the 12 month time scale as in the contract my estimate of costs is not £87500 but £250,000. I believed the work would take at least 5 years, it would not be possible to co-ordinate the many scores of officials with their different loyalties and the organisations involved. The final cost could very well be double the £250K. The end customer was the Iranian Director General of Civil Aviation, represented by Aerodrome Development Consultants Ltd., (A.D.C.) apparently a private firm, but wholly-owned by the then British Board of Trade and staffed by their officials. They were more than loyal to their Iranian masters. After a great deal of arguement [sic] with A.D.C. and other Consortium members about methods, division of responsibilies [sic] , consequential losses and costs etc., the quotation was accepted including my price of £250K, and the contract signed. I was to live with that contract for exactly 10 years and have been sorely tempted many times to record the frustrations, stupidities and almost impossible business of working with the Iranians whilst retaining any degree of sanity. It was the custom in Pye at the time, and a very good one, that before work was started on a major quotation, the comments of people with recent similar experience were sought as to its desireability, [sic] and with the question “Do we want the job?”. The file, an informal one came to me and in answer to that question I wrote in a light-hearted moment, “pas avec un barge pole.” I didn’t know that our masters Philips in Holland were involved until a minute came from them asking ‘vos ist ein barge pole’? This surprised everyone as the Dutch generally have no sense of humour where money is concerned. One year from the signing of the contract, bang on time, we airfreighted the 26 racks of equipment and a mass of other material for installation at Meherabad airport, a direct flight from Stansted to Teheran where it was to be fitted. The pilot spent 36 hours under armed guard first for not having a “Certificate of no objection” from Iranian Airlines and secondly for paying a parking fee for only a 12 hours stay. There were many problems with that first consignement [sic] which provided a good pointer to the difficulties to follow. It was 12 months before the equipment was released from Customs and then it was stored in the open air outside the Meherabad receiving station for 6 months. Soon after that first air shipment I returned to Iran and spent 6 weeks studying the first 12 airport installations, including Meherabad, and re-formulating detailed plans. Meherabad was the main International Airport and included the Flight Information Centre. One problem at the F.I.C. was how to fit a 24 ft control console manned by 6 people whilst maintaining a full service on the old console which occupied the same floor space. In addition the contract stated that 12 racks would be fitted in the old equipment room on the fourth floor and 14 in a new equipment room on the second floor. This really was quite impossible and I was keeping the problem to myself. When I was discussing with the Iranians the work involved in their own equiupment [sic] room, 155 [page break] they became extremely worried because their wiring was an absolute shambles with hundreds of multipair cables actually threading their way in and out and through racks which we had to replace with no interuption [sic] in the service. They finally startled me by laying down the law and insisting that we stay right out of their old equipment room, and they would knock down walls between six offices on the second floor to house all 26 racks. This area was very close to FIC and made our job not only possible, but easy. Also the change was their firm requirement and we charged them £17,500 extra for the priveledge [sic] . On Kushi Nostrat mountain, Marconi were to fit a Radar scanner, which we were to link to Meherabad by a 7GHz link, but the only way to reach the site was by helicopter, unless one was a mountaineer. There were no civilian helicopters in Iran and it was only when I put the problem to A.D.C. that I found the Radar stn. was to be at Kushi Basm and not Kushi Nostrat, a totally different mountain. This had an access road and Meherabad was a line-of-sight path of 32 miles. At a critical distance was a salt pan and we were supposed to go round this desert on a dog leg using a microwave link repeater. There was no suitable location for the repeater because of the “change” in location of the Radar site. This resulted in another variation to contract for a frequency and space diversity single link, less equipment than in the original contract but we got away with charging £18,000 more. Some of the problems were pathetic, others amusing. When I checked the earthing and lightening arrestor system at Meherabad I found the one inch copper earth lead was terminated not with an earth mat in the ground but to a spike stuck in a concrete plantpot on the first floor verandah. That was and probably is still there and highly dangerous. Incredible but true. At Bandar Abbas Airport I prepared a detailed installation plan which together with others was discussed later at a monthly progress meeting in London. It bore no resemblance to a plan prepared by Redifon two years previously and we realised that since Redifon’s visit a new airport had been built about 9 miles away. More variatons [sic] to contract. There were 260 of them finally. At Bandar Abbas, the port of which was the main base of the Iranian Navy, I was with the Provincial Governor, an Iranian Air Force General and the Airport Manager. All three agreed it was permissible for me to use my camera. Later when an army corporal confiscated the camera they all denied it and simultaneously lost their ability to speak fairly good english, resorting to french in discussion with me. I had already met the works manager in charge of the extensive building operations who spoke excellent english and was apparently all-powerful. He not only recovered my camera from the army but also gave me a fine selection of photographic prints together with detailed architect plans of all the buildings. I did not see the three senior chaps again but the works manager put a car and driver at my disposal. I think he must have been related to someone important, maybe the Shah-in-Shah, or maybe he was a member of the secret police, there is no knowing. A consignment of Redifon transmitters was held up in Customs for over two years with a documentation problem, and even the fixer employed was quite ineffective. To clear through customs it was necessary to get 120 signatures and rubber stamp impressions on the release document and this had to be done in a single day. This was finally achieved after the Shah had decreed that the equipment must be released, but the chap on the gate seemed to resent this interferance [sic] and refused to release it. The document with the signatures was out [page break] of date the following day so the man’s boss supported him and the equipment remained a part of the scenery. A week or two later, another department came into the act and gave notice that if Redifon did not remove it within 7 days, it would be sold off by police auction. Redifon did not appreciate my suggestion that we should go to the auction. The problem had arisen because one small item of equipment was refered [sic] to as a “tone transmitter”, the word transmitter being anathma [sic] to Middle east types. It did not appear on the schedule [deleted] d [/deleted] of approved tranmitters [sic] and was regarded with grave suspicion. It took four months to amend the contract to exclude the tone transmitter and substitute a tone oscillator, - the same thing -, but even then 36 copies of the invoice had to be changed and re-submitted. The Consortium offices belonged to the G.E.C.O.S. agent who kindly trebbled [sic] the size of them at the Consortium’s expence [sic] . All the members’ staff in Iran moved in and made themselves comfortable. About three weeks later a gang of workmen with demolition equipment reduced the new buildings to rubble and said “sorry, no planning permission”. Two months later the lawyers proved that all the proper authority and permissions were completely in order. The gang returned and said “sorry, ok you build”. Despite all the red tape in Iran it was generally possible to get results eventually, the main difficulty was often finding out just which palms had to be greased. Our man in Iran for three years was Mike Cherry and he was successful in getting an amateur radio licence, with the call-sign EP2MC. Mike fitted an SSB125 transceiver in the office in Teheran and I was in daily contact with him from both my house and the office in Cambridge. By using very carefull [sic] phraeseology [sic] I was kept right up to date with progress in the field. I was talking with Mike from the office one evening on 14 MHz when Dr. Westhead the Chief Executive came in and asked who I was talking with. I replied “to Mike Cherry, our man in Teheran, Sir”. He grimaced and said “Ah well, ask a stupid question..” The public telephone system to Iran was diabolical most of the time. I used to book a call for 4.30 am the following day and take it from home, which saved a great deal of time in both places. Teheran time was 2 1/2 hours ahead of U.K. On most occasions the Post Office telephoned several times during the night to confirm the call or advise of delays, which was very tiresome. Monthly progress meetings were held in London, and at one of them I was asked to quote for additional work at Esfahan during the 2500 year celebrations, which were to take place before the new equipment was fitted. They required to talk with aircraft and I suggested they should do so on a mobile set which would be quite adequate. Our team would already be on site with the mobiles so without any fuss I quoted £300 which was put forward. At a board meeting a week later this was confirmed and the Pye member of the Board, Pat Holden who was also our International Marketing Director promptly withdrew it as I had not gone through the proper channels. The next day he sent for me and instructed me to cancel my quotation, and with a great thumping of the table told me to increase it £3000. Then followed a lecture that “we are here to make money, add a nought”. I told him the job would take about an hour and £300 was more than adequate. £30,000 was utterly rediculous. [sic] I told him “I was doing no such thing, put it in writing through the head of my department and meanwhile you are clear to return to earth”. I then excused myself and left him 157 [page break] to it. I returned to my own desk 20 minutes later to find a note asking me to go and see the boss, not surprisingly. I told him exactly what had happened and he laughed. I said I thought I had burned my boats with Pat Holden and David Smith my boss said “far from it, he admires you for standing up to him and asks you to forget it.” I took no further action in this and in the event there was no income at all, but the job took only 30 minutes for one engineer. Another equally challenging job was the installation and commissio [deleted] m [/deleted] ning of a UHF system within the London Stock Exchange. This employed 520 adjascent [sic] channels. The Base Stations in the basement comprised a transmitter and receiver for each channel, all being combined into one “radiating feeder”. About 600 pocketphones on the Stock Exchange floor were used by dealers working into this system. An invitation to tender for this job had been received by Pye about two years previously and comments invited from all technical departments. It was unanimously agreed that the job was quite impossible and must not be attempted. Pye did not quote for it and the contract was awarded to S.T.C. Mobile division. Nearly two years later Pye or Philips aquired [sic] that organisation and half the installation had been fitted. About 60 channels were in use and very unsatisfactory. Dealers received messages intended for others and signals faded out at the crutial [sic] moment. Firms were receiving wrong messages and transfering [sic] and buying shares erroneously through these faults. The task of bringing the job to a conclusion was allocated to me and I chose my favourite team of Nick Fox, Aussie Peters and Jack Faulkener. There was a local Service Dept. depot at the Stock Exchange of four engineers who were struggling to get the system working and we took over from them. On arrival there was a flap on, a dealer had acted on a false message and bought some tens of thousand shares for which he had no client and he was stuck with them. He said he was going to sue Pye for his loss. He dropped that idea next day when he sold them at a profit. The main problem was loss of signals into the pocketphones on the Stock Exchange floor but we were not allowed onto the floor during dealing times to make tests. Eventually we were given an ultimatum to either fix it or remove it and face an enormous claim for damages. This was very serious indeed and I reported back to Cambridge. The Engineering Director, Frank Grimm showed me a copy of his comments of two years ago when he said the job was quite rediculous [sic] and impossible, and that was the end of it. No-one wanted to know, “It’s your problem Cliff, get on with it”. So it was back to the Stock Exchange, and I demanded permission to see for myself what was actually happening by being on the floor during dealing hours, otherwise there was nothing more we could do. The Chairman gave permission, quite unprecedented and we were then able to make a more scientific approach. We stayed on that evening and with Jack Faulkener in the basement at the transmitters we measured signal strengths which were astonishingly high and with no blind spots. Jack reduced the base station transmitter power at the input to the antenna system until even with the antenna completely isolated the signals were far more than adequate. This provide the mathematicians were all wrong and we were all barking up the wrong tree. We then carried out the most elementary test of all, whilst receiving properly on a pocketphone we transmitted on other pocketphones – on other channels – at a distance of ten feet. We had found the reason for the problem, simple R/F blocking which should have been checked in the Lab. at a very early stage. That evening we modified 6 [page break] pocketfones [sic] , fitting a 2 pf. capacitor at the receiver input and completely bipassing [sic] the transmitter output stage. They worked perfectly, and with no blocking even at 2’ distance between portables. We had found the answer and the next day, friday, [sic] we recovered all the 160 pocketfones [sic] and over the weekend modified the lot. Everything worked as it should and the customers were delighted. We had received no co-operation from anyone in Cambridge but word soon reached Cambridge that all was well. We deliberately kept them in the dark until I issued a formal report. I had of course no authority to modify equipment but deliberately flouted this on the grounds that someone had to do something constructive or we would have been thrown out of the Stock Exchange. It did not improve my popularity with the people who could influence my career. In 1979 after being responsible for some dozens of major projects three more Field Controllers were appointed, Dave Buller Mike Simpson and Clive Otley and I felt that a change was long overdue. Relationships with the Departmental Manager and his yes-man deputy Joe were deteriorating rapidly. I transfered [sic] back to Systems Planning Dept. and overnight became a specialist in Radio Frequency propagation. I was in a small team headed by Dave Warford, and including Lewis Wicker and John Ewbank, and a trainee. Our job was to plan Radio Links and area coverage systems, within the parameters laid down by D.T.I. At the outset my knowledge of R/F propagation (or Electromagnetic Radiation) was limited to my practical experience of what had been achieved and what had failed to work. The theoretical aspect was highly mathematical but fortunatly [sic] the subject was well written up and the principles well established. Dave Warford and Lewis Wicker were a great help in getting me onto the right lines. A typical job would be a request from a salesman asking whether a radio link on a particular frequency band would work between two specific sites and if so what aerial height would be required? The first step would be to study the Ordnance Survey maps of 1:50000 scale, and plotting all the contours on the direct line between the points. From this information a profile of the earth’s surface would be prepared including the earth’s curvature [inserted] To be continued [/inserted] 159 [page break] [underlined] Dresden 13 – 14 February 1945 [/underlined] At the end of January 1945, the Royal Air Force and the USAF 8th Air Force were specifically requested by the Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff to carry out heavy raids on Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig. It was not a personal decision by Sir Arthur Harris. The campaign should have begun with an American daylight raid on Dresden on February 13th, but bad weather over Europe pre-vented [sic] any American operation. It thus fell to Bomber Command to carry out the first raid on the night of February 13th. 769 Lancasters and 9 Mosquitoes were dispatched in two separate attacks on Dresden and at the same time a further 368 R.A.F aircraft attacked the synthetic oil plant at Bohlen near Leipzig. A few hours after the RAF raids 311 bombers of the 8th US Air force attacked Dresden. The following day (15 February 1945) the USAF despatched 211 bombers to bomb Dresden and a further 406 bombers on the 2nd March. As an economic centre, Dresden ranked sixth in importance in pre-war Germany. During the war several hundred industrial plants of various sizes worked full-time in Dresden for the German War machine, Among them were such industrial giants as the world famous Zeiss-Ikon AG (Optics and cameras). This plant alongside the plant in Jena was one of the principle centres of production of field glasses for the Armies, aiming sights for the Panzers and Artillery, periscopes for U-boats, bomb and gun sights f or the Luftwaffe. Dresden was also one of the key centres of the German postal and telegraphic system and a crucial East West transit point with its 7 bridges crossing the Elbe at its widest point. In February 1945 the war was far from over. The Western Allies had not yet crossed the Rhine, Germany still controlled extensive territories, and Bomber Command lost more than 400 bombers after Dresden. The war was at its height, the Allies were preparing for the land battles which would follow their crossing the Rhine, the Russians were poised on the Oder. This destruction of Dresden meant a considerable reduction in the effectiveness of the German Armed forces. The Germans followed Hitler even after the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945 when its horrors were broadcast to the world. They continued to follow Hitler even after they watched the thousands of living skeletons from concentration camps being herded westward in early 1945. A quote from former POW Col H E Cook (USAAF Rtd) "on 13/14 Feb 1945 we POWs were shunted into the Dresden marshalling yards where for nearly 12 hours German troops and equipment rolled in and out of Dresden. I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars …. transporting German logistics towards the East to meet the Russians.” [signed] Jim[?] Broom [/signed] [page break] [curriculum vitae page 1] [page break] [curriculum vitae page 2] [page break] [autographed photograph of Lancaster bomber] [page break] [history of Jack Railton and Emma Sharpe] [page break] [history of George Henry Watson] [page break] [history of Herbert Kilham] [page break] [history of Herbert Kilham continued] [page break] [photograph of male] [page break] [history of George Henry Watson] [page break] [history of Jack Railton and family] [page break] [history of Jack Railton and family continued] [page break] [history of Cliff Stark’s early years] [page break] [letter from LMS railway to C.W. Watson page 1] [page break] [letter from LMS Railway to C.W.Watson page 2] [page break] [letter from LMS Railway to C.W. Watson] 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 Just Another Tailend Charlie Description An account of the resource A memoir written by Cliff Watson (divided into 20 chapters.) It covers his life events, from birth to his career in the RAF and beyond. It provides details of his family life in Yorkshire, before relocating to London. Having joined the RAF, he underwent training in Torquay and Newquay before sailing to South Africa to train as an air gunner. In August 1942 he sailed back to the UK, where he was sent to Bournemouth for assessment, then on to RAF Finningley for training then RAF Bircotes for operations. Next was a move to RAF Hixon and its satellite airfield at Seighford. He married Hilda on 1st March 1943 during a week's leave. He was sent to Algiers for further training and continued operations into Italy. At the end of this tour he sailed back to Greenock. He has included a letter in Arabic with instructions to take the bearer to British soldiers for a reward. After some leave Cliff's next posting was at Operational Training Unit RAF Desborough where he helped train new gunners and his next was operational base was RAF Scampton, then RAF Winthorpe for its Heavy Conversion Unit on Stirlings, followed by RAF Syerston on Lancasters then RAF Bardney, where he joined 227 Squadron. During this period he was awarded the DFC. His squadron was transferred to RAF Gravely at the end of the war, where he did a photography course and was transferred to RAF Handforth. After leaving the RAF, Cliff returned to Whitehaven to revitalise a radio company and details the improvements made. Wired radio services were set to become less popular and financially worthwhile so, looking to the future, he and the family decided to emigrate to Nairobi. He held various positions in several African countries, before returning to the UK in 1964. The document includes various photographs of aircraft and crews. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cliff Watson DFC Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-06 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 192 typewritten sheets and photographs Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Memoir Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SWatsonC188489v1 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royal Air Force Royal Air Force. Bomber Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Huntingdon England--Yorkshire England--Norwich England--London England--Torquay England--Newquay England--Birkenhead Scotland--Greenock Sierra Leone--Freetown South Africa--Durban Zimbabwe--Bulawayo South Africa--Mahikeng Zimbabwe--Harare Singapore South Africa--Cape Town England--Bournemouth France--Paris Algeria--Algiers Tunisia--Tunis Italy--Sardinia Italy--Cagliari Tunisia--Bizerte Italy--Monserrato Italy--Decimomannu Italy--Trapani Italy--Palermo Italy--Naples Italy--Rome Italy--Lido di Roma Italy--Tiber River Italy--Alghero Italy--Castelvetrano Italy--Pantelleria Island Tunisia--Sūsah Italy--Syracuse Italy--Messina Italy--Salerno Italy--Bari Italy--Comiso Italy--Crotone Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco Italy--Paola Italy--Battipaglia England--Desborough Norway--Bergen Netherlands--Walcheren Germany--Hamburg Norway--Oslo Belgium--Houffalize Germany--Karlsruhe Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal Germany--Leipzig Germany--Dortmund Germany--Berchtesgaden England--Whitehaven Kenya England--Yeovil Kenya--Nairobi Kenya--Kitale Tanzania--Mbeya Tanzania--Mwanza Uganda--Entebbe Kenya--Kisumu England--Cambridge Germany--Dresden Germany--Braunschweig Germany--Düsseldorf Zimbabwe--Gweru Zimbabwe South Africa Sierra Leone France Algeria Tunisia Italy Netherlands Germany Norway Poland Belgium Tanzania Uganda Iran North Africa Germany--Nuremberg Iran--Tehran Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie) Netherlands--Vlissingen Germany--Homburg (Saarland) Tunisia--Munastīr Tunisia--Qayrawān Germany--Ruhr (Region) England--Cambridgeshire England--Cornwall (County) England--Cumberland England--Devon England--Hampshire England--Huntingdonshire England--Norfolk England--Northamptonshire England--Somerset England--Lancashire Italy--Capri Island Italy--Sicily 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 Peter Bradbury Maureen Clarke 109 Squadron 142 Squadron 150 Squadron 1661 HCU 227 Squadron 25 OTU 30 OTU 5 Group 617 Squadron 84 OTU 9 Squadron air gunner Air Gunnery School aircrew Albemarle Anson anti-aircraft fire B-17 B-24 Beaufighter bomb aimer bombing bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945) C-47 Defiant Distinguished Flying Cross Distinguished Flying Medal ditching FIDO flight engineer Flying Training School Gee ground personnel Halifax Harvard Heavy Conversion Unit Hudson Hurricane Initial Training Wing Ju 87 Ju 88 lack of moral fibre Lancaster mess military discipline Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy Mosquito navigator Operational Training Unit Oxford Pathfinders prisoner of war RAF Balderton RAF Bardney RAF Bawtry RAF Bircotes RAF Blida RAF Catfoss RAF Desborough RAF Eastleigh RAF Farnborough RAF Finningley RAF Graveley RAF Greenock RAF Handforth RAF Hemswell RAF Hixon RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor RAF Kairouan RAF Milltown RAF Norton RAF Scampton RAF Seighford RAF Strubby RAF Syerston RAF Waddington RAF Wick RAF Winthorpe RAF Wyton searchlight Spitfire sport Stirling Sunderland Tiger force Tiger Moth training Wellington wireless operator / air gunner Women’s Auxiliary Air Force https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1671/30465/BCameronDCameronDv1.pdf b0bff7f94bf1612f872c86b64efb811e 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 Cameron, Don D Cameron 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 2020-08-20 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 Cameron, D Description An account of the resource 90 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Don Cameron (173516, Royal Air Force) a pilot who flew Lancaster on 115 Squadron. Collection contains his log books, a memoir, a aircrew categorisation card and photographs. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Neil Cameron and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Access Rights Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies. Permission granted for commercial projects Transcribed document A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document [Illustration showing Lancaster Bomber with following text superimposed] World War II & Flying Memoirs by Donald Cameron [handwritten] To Neil & Diane With love from Dad Don Cameron June 6, 2000 [/handwritten] [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] [Photo of man in RAF uniform] [bold] How did I get to be in Scotland and England for 15 years? [/bold] Most of you will have heard this story already, but just in case, here it is again. In 1937, my sister, Miriam arranged to spend her summer holidays with a visit to Scotland. I went with Mum and Dad to see her off at Union Station. I don’t think the train was out of sight, when Dad said, “Let’s go off to Scotland too”. I told them that I could not really go, because I had promised to go to a boys’ camp at a farm just north of Klienburg, as nature study leader. This camp was got going by one of my brothers Ken’s friends, Al Richardson. The boys were mostly from Dufferin St. Baptist Church. We had cycled up there quite often in the spring to get things all set up. Of course Ken could not go either, because he was already working. Well my parents quickly arranged for Mrs Mascall to be our housekeeper while they were away and Mum and Dad took off for their holiday in Scotland. 1938 was the year of the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow Scotland and I was hoping that somehow I get to see it. We had friends, Dr. Ernie and Bella Pallet. We knew them as Uncle Ernie was a government veterinarian. He suggested that I should work my way to Scotland on a cattle boat. I went for that in a big way, so he 2 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] arranged the whole thing. I was to start my trip at the stock yards at St. Clair and Keele Street, where I was to get aboard the caboose of the cattle train. Actually I first had to climb up into the shunting engine, while they were hooking up the train, great fun for a sixteen year old. Then I climbed down and changed into the caboose. This part of my journey cost $2.00. There were three of us in the caboose, me and an old Glasgow man, as well as the regular guard. It was quite a ride. Canadian Pacific had started their express freight trains, which was something new at that time. I was surprised to see a spanking new passenger engine on the front of our train. I was able to sit up top and look out over the train and all around as we took off along the CP line across the city just north of Dupont St. very close to home, then out through Agincourt on the line that still comes through Whitby. As night came on I was given a mattress to sleep on and it was on top of what looked like a storage chest, with a flat top. Everything was just dandy until the engineer decided to slam on the brakes. This was no stop like on a passenger train. I went sliding, mattress and all right off the bed place and hit the front of the caboose. The guard had a good laugh. So did I, once I realised that nothing was wrong. This happened just near Trenton. Next day, I had to arrange about signing on as part of the crew of the cattle boat. Apparently I was the youngest of the lot. They decided that that I should be pantry boy and that did not please me at al. I had hoped to be looking after the cattle. Strangely, the cattle were breeding stock. Usually, I thought, Canada imported breeding cattle from Europe, but apparently it worked both ways. One of my duties was to take the brass ventilators off the officers’ cabin doors, polish them, and put them back on. I had them all set up in the pantry, perched myself on a high stool and started to clean them up. Well, the captain came by and started yelling at me. I hadn’t a clue was [sic] he was saying, although I found out later that he came from Port Gordon in Banffshire where my mother was from. Anyway, I got fired as pantry boy and was put with the other cattlemen. I was happy about that. We had a real nice smooth trip across the Atlantic. It was like a mill pond. A big Basking Shark seemed to follow us all the way. I had never seen one of them before. There were all sorts of surprises; we were not strictly a cattle boat; we had other cargo as well. I remember watching as they loaded all sorts of stuff. I remember that there were crates marked Singer Sewing Machines. As we sailed up the Clyde, I was surprised to see the big Singer Sewing Machine factory on the banks of the Clyde. We docked at Princess Dock in Glasgow, right in the centre of the city. We were told to wait board until Customs and Immigration came aboard to clear us. Well I sat for a good half hour and then decided that nobody seemed anxious to see me. So off I went. I had an address to go to and started off on a tram. I was meeting Emily Gault, one of the women who made our house their meeting place. These women were in Toronto in domestic Service. Emily worked in Rosedale. We got together alright and I made some visits to the Empire Exhibition. Then Emily was to take me north to 3 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] visit her family in Thurso, right up in the very north of Scotland. I remember that I had a hard time realising that it could possibly be 11 p.m. and still be quite light. [blank space - missing photo?] My big memory from his visit was my first flight in an aircraft. The lane was a DeHaviland bi-plane with a crew of one, the pilot. The door to the cockpit was left open and I wondered how this guy could fly this plane and take pictures of the WWI battleships that had been scuttles in Scapa Flow back in those old days. After that I went to visit all my relatives in Buckie and Aberchirder. Finally I settled in Aberdeen with Aunt Miriam and Uncle John. I had a great summer holiday. My father had asked me to look at a course with the North of Scotland College of Agriculture. We intended to go into a horticulture business together, once I graduated from my training. I really did not want to train in Scotland and told him that I would much prefer to go to Niagara College for my training. The result was that I suddenly realised that I was due to report in Glasgow for my return trip to Canada, but had never gone to see the college in Aberdeen. Their head office was in an old Victorian building at 41 ½ Union Street on the 5th floor. The elevator was an old fashioned wire covered affair, which did not impress me at all. I took a look at the big mahogany door with frosted glass and gold lettering and decided this was not for me. Before I had turned to come away a woman came up behind me. She said, “You want the North of Scotland College of Agriculture? This way.” She seemed to almost push me through the door. I know she did not actually, but anyhow I was in. Well they did have a good course. One of my spur of the moment decisions made me sign up for the course. So there I was a guest of my aunt and uncle which my Dad had arranged if I should decide to stay. Before I could start my course, they required a year’s experience working in horticulture. If I wanted, I could work without pay, in their experimental gardens at Craibstone. I started almost immediately. As Craibstone was about 5 miles from where I lived in Aberdeen, I soon got permission to buy a bicycle. I well remember the day war was declared. On Sunday, September 3rd, 1939 I came out from morning 4 [page break] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs worship service to find that special editions of the Press and Journal were being sold on the street corners. Britain had declared war on Germany after they refused to withdraw from Poland. We had been reading about their Blitzkreig tactics throughout their take over of so many countries in Europe. I thought, “They will sink this little island!” By this time I had finished my year at Craibstone. I started the course and I did finish my first year. Of course by this time Britain was at war with Germany. The government wanted to increase food production as much as possible. I was asked if I would postpone my training until after the war. I told them that I felt sure the answer would be, “Yes”, but as I was here at my father’s expense, it would have to be his answer. His reply to my cable agreed. The college then employed me at Craibstone as one of their gardeners Britain had conscription, so one by one the workers were absorbed into the armed forces. I gradually took over different jobs. The last one I took over was to operate their big Dennis power mower. The lawns were to be cut with light and dark stripes and very straight. Mowing one direction I would make a light stripe. Going back the opposite direction it showed up as dark. The job was to keep all lines straight. Mr. Cox, their head gardener wondered whether I could manage this task. I was willing to try. He watched as I did a few lines and decided that I could do the job just fine. I must admit that they did look good. My age group came along for conscription. I reported, showing my passport to show them my age. They told me that I was not a resident, just a visitor and could not be conscripted. I was amazed and asked if anything could stop me from volunteering. No, I could certainly do that. I made my way to the RAF recruiting office and volunteered for the RAFVR (Volunteer Reserve). Eventually I was asked to report at Lord’s Cricket Grounds in London. We were in a holding centre until we could finally be sent to an ITW (Initial Training Wing). They were really pushing pilot trainees through at this time and all ITW’s were going at capacity. I was sent instead, to a bomber airfield, Hemswell in Lincolnshire, where the education officer did his best to teach us what we had to know. I did manage to pass, although more than half of our course did not make it. They were sent to a regular ITW. After finishing my ITW course at Hemswell in Lincolnshire, I was eventually posted to a holding centre in the Metropole Hotel in Brighton. This seemed to be a place where trainees were kept until somewhere would be available to start them on their flying training. In all I was there for 16 weeks. It was a case of being present for morning parade, where a roll call ensured that you were present. This was followed by a march along the promenade, for no better reason than there was nothing else to do with us. It did not take long for a few of us to find that being in the tail end of this parade, we could easily vanish down a side street and be lost. There was a convenient Lyon’s café, that had delicious crumpets and marmalade. The local YMCA, I think it was, had a good billiard table. I became pretty good with billiards and snooker during this period. I did get a task to do in the post office in the hotel. Apart from sorting out the mail for inmates like myself, we also collected the old newspapers for 5 [page break] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs disposal. I started doing the Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle, which developed my liking for good crosswords. We did get really fed up down in Brighton. A posting to Rhodesia came up, so I volunteered to goo there for my flying training. After getting various inoculations for all sorts of diseases, I got a week’s embarkation leave. Then I was told that since I came from overseas, I could not be sent overseas for my training. Apparently they had lost one or two who had just vanished once they were away from Britain. Eventually I did get a posting to an elementary flying training school at Booker, near Marlow in Buckinghamshire. I was happy at last to be flying, but it had taken until March 23rd, 1942 to get to this stage. I thoroughly enjoyed flying. Apart from my actual training there are events that I will never forget. Early in my training my instructor was flying us to an auxiliary field. I decided that my harness was not tight enough. I pulled the release and began to pull them tighter when I noticed that the horizon was beginning to slowly go around. He was doing a slow roll. I had no time to even attempt to do up any of my harness. All I could do was to brace myself on the sides of my cockpit and hold myself from dropping out as the ground went slowly pas as I looked down at it. When I told him what had happened he had a good laugh. Again, early in my flying, it might have been my first flight (but I’m not sure about that), my instructor, an ex-fighter pilot got together with a Boston fighter bomber. The two of them decided to have a mock dog fight. It was great fun, but my poor stomach. It was not accustomed yet to this kind of thing. I sat, holding my stomach, but enjoying the whole thing. My first experience at night flying was quite something. We took off into the inky blackness of the blackout. The idea was to fly a square pattern to the left after getting up to 1000 ft. Then as we turned to complete the square, we should find that we were approaching the landing strip again ready for descending to make a landing. It was a scary feeling, to think that we were actually doing this with no navigation aids at all. However after several circuits it gradually became just the thing to do. I was in real trouble on Easter weekend. The day before the weekend I was flying solo doing circuits and landings. I came in to land, right in front of the commanding officer’s office. There was a gusty sort of wind and I had trouble getting the plane to land. Right away I remembered the important instructions. With any difficulty in landing, give the engine full power and go round again for anther[sic] circuit. I opened up the throttle and got the shock of my life. My port wing just dropped and hit the ground and the poor old Tiger Moth flipped right over, nose to the ground, leaving me hanging upside down in my harness. I quickly released my harness and dropped onto the ground. Then I remembered – turn off the ignition switch. I crawled back under the plane and did so. I was to report to the commanding officer right after Easter weekend. I went into London for the weekend, and spent the time with my brother, Ken. He was stationed at RCAF 6 [page break] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs headquarters in London at Canada House. Unfortunately I forgot the the[sic] last train from Marlebone Station left 5 minutes earlier on Sunday nights. I just missed it. In fact I saw it pulling out of the station. We went to Ken’s place overnight, and I got up and made my way to the station, but the train I got was not the first one in the morning. I was on the mat for not being back to base by 11:59 hrs. I had to see the Commanding Officer about that. Well it turned out that he gave me 7 days jankers for that. Then I had to wait to see him about my upside down landing. I was really down in the dumps, thinking I would probably fail as a pilot. What a surprise when he sent a message out that he did not want to see me about this, as he had watched my attempted landing and said I had done everything right. What a relief. I didn’t mind my 7 days of picking up litter etc. after that. After 41 hrs. 5 min. of flying training at Booker there was another change of policy. There would be no more flying training in Britain. All training would be overseas. All pilot trainees were to have a flying test after 8 hours flying to judge whether they should continue as pilot trainees or switch to some other aircrew training. I was told that I was to be sent to the U.S.A. for my training. We got the impression that they were sending the better flyers to the “General Arnold” scheme. I don’t think I was any better than most, but my 8 hour test was done after 41 hours flying. Primary Training, Lakeland Florida. PT 17.(Stearman) I finished flying at Booker EFTS on May 10th, 1942. We were sent overseas in the old ‘Leticia’ which had been converted into a troop transport. We soon found ourselves in Moncton, New Brunswick, awaiting posting to get flying once again. I somehow found that we would be two or three weeks, so applied for leave to visit Mum and Dad in Toronto. I got it! It was great to see them again and to visit with lots of people that I knew. Then it was back to Moncton where we found a good swimming hole beside a railway line, not far from our base. Finally we boarded the troop train, which was to take us to somewhere in the southern States. One of our stops turned out to be in the Union Station in Toronto. It looked as though we would be there for a while, so I phoned home and told Mum which platform we were stuck on. She came down and was able to meet a good few of my friends who were training with me. I think she was able to spend about an hour talking to us all. 7 [page break] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs Fourth row, fourth from right: [photograph] Course 43B Lodwick School of Aeronautics[?] 1942. 8 [page break] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs worship service to find that special editions of the Press and Journal were being sold on the street corners. Britain had declared war on Germany after they refused to withdraw from Poland. We had been reading about their Blitzkreig tactics throughout their take over of so many countries in Europe. I thought, “They will sink this little island!” By this time I had finished my year at Craibstone. I started the course and I did finish my first year. Of course by this time Britain was at war with Germany. The government wanted to increase food production as much as possible. I was asked if I would postpone my training until after the war. I told them that I felt sure the answer would be, “Yes”, but as I was here at my father’s expense, it would have to be his answer. His reply to my cable agreed. The college then employed me at Craibstone as one of their gardeners Britain had conscription, so one by one the workers were absorbed into the armed forces. I gradually took over different jobs. The last one I took over was to operate their big Dennis power mower. The lawns were to be cut with light and dark stripes and very straight. Mowing one direction I would make a light stripe. Going back the opposite direction it showed up as dark. The job was to keep all lines straight. Mr. Cox, their head gardener wondered whether I could manage this task. I was willing to try. He watched as I did a few lines and decided that I could do the job just fine. I must admit that they did look good. My age group came along for conscription. I reported, showing my passport to show them my age. They told me that I was not a resident, just a visitor and could not be conscripted. I was amazed and asked if anything could stop me from volunteering. No, I could certainly do that. I made my way to the RAF recruiting office and volunteered for the RAFVR (Volunteer Reserve). Eventually I was asked to report at Lord’s Cricket Grounds in London. We were in a holding centre until we could finally be sent to an ITW (Initial Training Wing). They were really pushing pilot trainees through at this time and all ITW’s were going at capacity. I was sent instead, to a bomber airfield, Hemswell in Lincolnshire, where the education officer did his best to teach us what we had to know. I did manage to pass, although more than half of our course did not make it. They were sent to a regular ITW. After finishing my ITW course at Hemswell in Lincolnshire, I was eventually posted to a holding centre in the Metropole Hotel in Brighton. This seemed to be a place where trainees were kept until somewhere would be available to start them on their flying training. In all I was there for 16 weeks. It was a case of being present for morning parade, where a roll call ensured that you were present. This was followed by a march along the promenade, for no better reason than there was nothing else to do with us. It did not take long for a few of us to find that being in the tail end of this parade, we could easily vanish down a side street and be lost. There was a convenient Lyon’s café, that had delicious crumpets and marmalade. The local YMCA, I think it was, had a good billiard table. I became pretty good with billiards and snooker during this period. I did get a task to do in the post office in the hotel. Apart from sorting out the mail for inmates like myself, we also collected the old newspapers for 5 [page break] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs disposal. I started doing the Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle, which developed my liking for good crosswords. We did get really fed up down in Brighton. A posting to Rhodesia came up, so I volunteered to goo there for my flying training. After getting various inoculations for all sorts of diseases, I got a week’s embarkation leave. Then I was told that since I came from overseas, I could not be sent overseas for my training. Apparently they had lost one or two who had just vanished once they were away from Britain. Eventually I did get a posting to an elementary flying training school at Booker, near Marlow in Buckinghamshire. I was happy at last to be flying, but it had taken until March 23rd, 1942 to get to this stage. I thoroughly enjoyed flying. Apart from my actual training there are events that I will never forget. Early in my training my instructor was flying us to an auxiliary field. I decided that my harness was not tight enough. I pulled the release and began to pull them tighter when I noticed that the horizon was beginning to slowly go around. He was doing a slow roll. I had no time to even attempt to do up any of my harness. All I could do was to brace myself on the sides of my cockpit and hold myself from dropping out as the ground went slowly pas as I looked down at it. When I told him what had happened he had a good laugh. Again, early in my flying, it might have been my first flight (but I’m not sure about that), my instructor, an ex-fighter pilot got together with a Boston fighter bomber. The two of them decided to have a mock dog fight. It was great fun, but my poor stomach. It was not accustomed yet to this kind of thing. I sat, holding my stomach, but enjoying the whole thing. My first experience at night flying was quite something. We took off into the inky blackness of the blackout. The idea was to fly a square pattern to the left after getting up to 1000 ft. Then as we turned to complete the square, we should find that we were approaching the landing strip again ready for descending to make a landing. It was a scary feeling, to think that we were actually doing this with no navigation aids at all. However after several circuits it gradually became just the thing to do. I was in real trouble on Easter weekend. The day before the weekend I was flying solo doing circuits and landings. I came in to land, right in front of the commanding officer’s office. There was a gusty sort of wind and I had trouble getting the plane to land. Right away I remembered the important instructions. With any difficulty in landing, give the engine full power and go round again for anther[sic] circuit. I opened up the throttle and got the shock of my life. My port wing just dropped and hit the ground and the poor old Tiger Moth flipped right over, nose to the ground, leaving me hanging upside down in my harness. I quickly released my harness and dropped onto the ground. Then I remembered – turn off the ignition switch. I crawled back under the plane and did so. I was to report to the commanding officer right after Easter weekend. I went into London for the weekend, and spent the time with my brother, Ken. He was stationed at RCAF 6 [page break] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs headquarters in London at Canada House. Unfortunately I forgot the the[sic] last train from Marlebone Station left 5 minutes earlier on Sunday nights. I just missed it. In fact I saw it pulling out of the station. We went to Ken’s place overnight, and I got up and made my way to the station, but the train I got was not the first one in the morning. I was on the mat for not being back to base by 11:59 hrs. I had to see the Commanding Officer about that. Well it turned out that he gave me 7 days jankers for that. Then I had to wait to see him about my upside down landing. I was really down in the dumps, thinking I would probably fail as a pilot. What a surprise when he sent a message out that he did not want to see me about this, as he had watched my attempted landing and said I had done everything right. What a relief. I didn’t mind my 7 days of picking up litter etc. after that. After 41 hrs. 5 min. of flying training at Booker there was another change of policy. There would be no more flying training in Britain. All training would be overseas. All pilot trainees were to have a flying test after 8 hours flying to judge whether they should continue as pilot trainees or switch to some other aircrew training. I was told that I was to be sent to the U.S.A. for my training. We got the impression that they were sending the better flyers to the “General Arnold” scheme. I don’t think I was any better than most, but my 8 hour test was done after 41 hours flying. Primary Training, Lakeland Florida. PT 17.(Stearman) I finished flying at Booker EFTS on May 10th, 1942. We were sent overseas in the old ‘Leticia’ which had been converted into a troop transport. We soon found ourselves in Moncton, New Brunswick, awaiting posting to get flying once again. I somehow found that we would be two or three weeks, so applied for leave to visit Mum and Dad in Toronto. I got it! It was great to see them again and to visit with lots of people that I knew. Then it was back to Moncton where we found a good swimming hole beside a railway line, not far from our base. Finally we boarded the troop train, which was to take us to somewhere in the southern States. One of our stops turned out to be in the Union Station in Toronto. It looked as though we would be there for a while, so I phoned home and told Mum which platform we were stuck on. She came down and was able to meet a good few of my friends who were training with me. I think she was able to spend about an hour talking to us all. 7 [page break] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs Fourth row, fourth from right: [photograph] Course 43B Lodwick School of Aeronautics[?] 1942. 8 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] While flying Oxfords, I was sent to Docking in Norfolk to practice the use of radio beam approach. Off to one side of the beam the radio signal was the letter ‘A’ in Morse code. On the other side it was ’N’. When the dot?dash merged with the dash/dot, they made a constant continuous signal and that was right on the beam. My flying at Windrush was completed on July 20th, 1943. I was given a 72 hour pass, before reporting to No. 26 OTU (Operational Training Unit) at RAF Station Wing. On the train heading up to Aberdeen, a fellow asked what I was doing on this leave. I told him that I only had a three day pass and had no idea whether I was going to my wedding or not. I soon found out. Mary and I were married on July 24, 1943. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday too. It was in the middle of the Aberdeen Trades Week holiday and there were no facilities open for the reception. We had 14 at the reception in Mary’s Aunt’s tenement flat, next door to where Mary lived. My Aunt Barbara happened to be in Aberdeen that weekend. I insisted that she come to the wedding. She said she was ‘Black Affronted’ she had nothing to wear. I insisted that she come in whatever she was wearing. We, of course, had nowhere to go for even a brief honeymoon, but another friend, Jean, got on the telephone to another friend, Jeanie. Jeanie had the hotel in Huntly. The phone call was hilarious. It started something like this, “Is that you Jeanie? Well this is Jean. There’s this couple just newly married. They just have this weekend. Could you put them up?” When we got to Huntly, (incidentally, my Aunt Barbara travelled with us on her way back to Buckie) we found that Jeanie had cleared out the Bridal Suite for us. (Short but sweet, the honeymoon). 13 [page break] [photograph] Operational Training Unit Strangely enough, I was a day late in reporting to No. 26 Operational Training Unit, and even more strangely, nothing was ever said about it. Here, at RAF Station Wing, (Little Horwood) I was crewed up and we flew Wellingtons Mk. 3’s and 10’s. Our flying began on August 16th 1943. We worked up to our special exercise, dropping leaflets on Rouen in France. I have included this with my operational flying in detail. During some of my night flying, I had a new experience. While taking off one night one of my tyres burst. I did manage to get the plane off the ground, but called up to let control know about it. My flight commander came on the 14 [page break] radio and told me to just circle until all night flying was completed. My crew were of differing opinions as to which tyre was gone. I felt that it was the port main wheel. My bomb aimer was sure it was the starboard wheel. I decided to go with my own decision, because I was flying the plane, and it certainly felt like the port wheel. After many tedious hours of circling the airfield I got instructions to land. My flight commander spoke to me, giving me very detailed instructions as to what to do. I was to land using the starboard wheel to land on. I was to try to keep my port wheel off the runway as long as possible. I could expect the plane to veer off the runway as once the port wheel came down. I had to repeat everything back to him. Then he wished me a good landing, and said that he would be right behind me on his motor bike when I landed. Well I got it down on the starboard wheel, but as soon as we lost all lift the port wheel came down we veered into inky blackness. When we finally came to a stop, he was right there. I was calling each of the crew to make sure they were OK. He yelled to me to get out in case of a fire. Luckily there was no fire, but I did find the end of my port propellor imbedded about six inches behind my head. Nobody was hurt! It was while we were here that Mary sent me a telegram telling me that grandmother had died. She did not specify that it had been her grandmother, so I figured I might get some time off. I went in to the commanding officer with the telegram and he gave me a 72 hour pass. I could leave in the morning after finishing all my night flying that night. By the time I arrived in Aberdeen, I had fallen asleep in the train. Mary had come to the station, but no Don. The cleaners came in, because the train had to leave again, so luckily they wakened me and I arrived at 31 Justice Street not very long after Mary and her uncle. That crew of mine was split up after my navigator, Hugh Maher (pronounced Marr) RCAF, was invalided out of the air force and sent home to Montreal. I was posted to No. 17 OTU at Silverstone, to take over a headless crew. Neither they nor I were very happy about this, but we soon got to know each other. They had not completed their OTU training, so I flew with them until they had all completed their various exercises. We advanced from OTU first to 1651 Conversion Unit at RAF Station, Wratting Common, where we all had to get familiar with flying the Short Stirling. We flew the Stirling Mks. 1 and 3. I did not like the Stirling. This took us to January 5th, 1944. 15 [page break] So much for the Stirling; we were off to 1678 C.F. Waterbeach where we were introduced to the Lancaster Mk.2. My first flip in the Lancaster was familiarisation with F/O Coles. Again we had a burst tyre. F/O Coles made a beautiful landing at Newmarket Race Course. On January 25th, 1944 we were sent to 115 Squadron at Witchford, near Ely. I was now a flight sergeant. October 4th, 1943: Special Exercise This was my first flight over enemy occupied Europe. I wondered how I would react. Fortunately I was O.K. On this night there was a raid by 406 aircraft on Frankfurt, with a diversionary 66 Lancasters bombing Ludwigshafen. There were 12 Mosquitoes went to Knapsack power-station, 1 mosquito to Aachen, 5 Stirlings did mine laying in the River Gironde, 8 O.T.U. sorties. There were no losses on the Ludwigshave [sic] raid. On the Frankfurt raid there were 10 RAF aircraft lost, 5 Halifaxes, 3 Lancasters, 2 Stirlings. One of 3 American B17’s was lost. I was one of the 8 O.T.U. sorties. We were not aware of these other activities. At this time I was doing my operational training, flying Wellingtons, at RAF Station, Wing. We were to go on a special exercise, our first time over enemy territory. We were to fly to Rouen in France, then up wind, a distance predetermined by the winds at the time. Then we were to drop our leaflets which would float down to Rouen to inform the French people a bit of what the Allies were doing 2. It was a funny feeling to be flying over enemy controlled territory for the first time. Our route was planned for us, but unlike later bombing raids there was no exact timing. We were to fly south to the Needles (Isle of Wight), then across to Fecampe on the French coast, south to Rouen, and then west, almost to Le Havre, where we were to drop our leaflets. Then we were to turn north east to Fecampe once again, then home via the Isle of Wight. The weather was fully overcast, but the clouds were quite low. We climbed into bright sunlight and headed for the needles. I had a rough idea of how long this should take us and was soon asking my navigator, Hugh Maher (pronounced Marr) if we were nearing our turning point. “No, not yet,” came the reply. It seemed to me that we must have passed the 2 I have included a copy of this leaflet in these memoirs (see page 16). 16 [page break] Donald Cameron: World War 11 and Flying Memoirs [page written in the French language] [page break] needles when I asked again. He had not yet fixed our turning point. Eventually I said to Hugh that by now, I was sure that we must be right across the English Channel and over the Cherbourg Peninsula, and asked what his air plot told him. He told me that he had not maintained his air plot, because this aircraft was fitted with GEE. He had been unable to get a fix with GEE. Great! Now I felt certain that we were lost somewhere over France. After establishing that there was no way he could work out any reckoning of where we were, I had to resort to radio. The Wireless Operator called for a fix – no reply. I asked him to try again with a priority. This he did. Yes, we were over the Cherbourg Peninsula of Normandy. I then told Hugh that we would fly north east from this fix. He was to use only dead reckoning navigation, no GEE. When we reached our intended crossing route of the Channel, he would guide us to Fecampe, Rouen, up wind to dropping point, back to Fecampe and so on. This we did. How ever after leaving the French coast, Hugh decided to get himself a fix using GEE radar. He was really worried. He came on the intercom telling me that he had just got a fix with GEE. We were not over the English Channel, but were over the North Sea. A fix with GEE is a definite thing. I began to doubt Hugh’s ability with his dead reckoning navigation. To reach base we should fly roughly west south west. He gave me the course to fly. Eventually he told me that we should be crossing the cost. It was pitch black but there was no sign of a coastline even though the clouds were no longer below us. I told Hugh that we were certainly not crossing a coastline, but he assured me that he had been doing an air plot, dead reckoning since the Fix. Well I said that we should get an answer on the R.T. That was my job, so I called. No answer, I called using the distress call, “May Day”. No reply. At this point I asked the Wireless Operator to ask for a fix using a priority. No reply. We were fairly low on fuel by this time so I said, “Same again with S.O.S.” Back came an immediate fix. We were over Brittany, in France. To get home I had to turn almost 180 degrees. Then I gave my crew the serious news. One wing was completely empty of fuel. Both engines were using the almost empty port wing tanks. We still had a 60 gallon tank full, not much to fly very far. When the engines stopped we would pull the cross feed to use both engines on this 60 gallon tank. If they stopped after that was gone we would bale out. Once again we were over 10/10 cloud, and as things turned out, this helped up. The airfield at Christchurch, near Bournemouth was having problems with their lighting. My bomb aimer was the first to see clouds off to starboard with lights going on and off, lightening them up. We headed straight for them and I called up to get permission to land, asking what the cloud clearance was. I also told them I was very short of fuel. They told me that I had 800ft clearance under the cloud and told me to land. As we broke through the cloud, incidentally now using the last 60 gallon tank, I found right in front of me a beautiful runway lit with green lights at the beginning, white along the 18 [page break] sides and red towards the far end. I did not care what airfield Command station, Hurn. Later in my career I was based at this field with B.O.A.C. Poor Hugh! Once back at OUT, the navigation boys did a thorough review of his night’s efforts. They credited him with successfully flying to the target area and to the dropping point. It was the GEE fix that was the big error. The chain of stations were designed for the east coast of Britain. They were useless off the south coast, where we were flying. Previously he had suffered a severe bash on his head, coming out of a crew bus with his equipment. The rear slanted doors had slammed on his head. Later, while flying with another crew doing practice bombing with smoke bombs, they apparently had a very heavy landing, which set off one smoke bomb they had not dropped. He was standing in the astro-dome and figured the quickest way out of what seemed to be a burning aircraft was to bash his way through the Perspex dome. They found that he no longer had the ability to navigate. He was invalided out of the RCAF and sent home to Montreal. My entire crew was split up. I was sent to R.A.F. Station Silverstone, where I took over a crew which had no pilot. January 30th, 1944 This is the night I first went on a bombing raid. I did not pilot the aircraft. The pilot was F/Lt. Hallet. He was a Newfie and really wonder how he ever qualified as a pilot. When we crossed the enemy coast on the way home, he this was, I just landed. It turned out to be a Coastal asked me whether I would like to fly right back to base, which of course I gladly did. As we came in to make our landing, he asked me what the green light was, just before the runway. “There has always been a red light there before.” The light, of course was the glide path indicator. If you were high it shone amber. If you were too low it shone red. Right on the correct glide path it shone green. I explained to him what it indicated. On his next bombing trip, he actually hit the top of one of the Drem light poles on the way in. However he was terrific as an operational pilot, and I picked up some valuable tips from him. He pointed out the slight difference between our Pathfinder markers at the target and the decoy markers dropped by the Germans. He also showed me a Lancaster going down in flames and the German oil bomb which simulated this. We called them Scarecrows. Since the end of the war, we found that the Germans had no such things as these scarecrow bombs. They had, however a type of gun and gun sight which fired up from below on an angle. They called it in German, “Slant Music.” Maybe this is what we saw. Before the briefing, we knew it was to be a long tripfull load of fuel. However, it was still a shock to walk into the briefing room. There was a big map of Europe with a red tape running from our base at Witchford, across the North Sea, over Denmark and the Baltic Sea. Then there was a 90 degree turn south to Berlin. The homeward trip was right across Germany, south of Brunswick and Hanover, north of the Ruhr, across Holland and back to our base. I really believed that this was to be the last day of my life here on 19 [page break] earth. Yet there was no thought of not going. After all, this is what all my training had been for. In fact this was some final training for me before I took my crew with me. It proved to be an excellent training trip. I did not know any of this crew I was flying with, but they did a very good job. F/Lt. Halley made a point of showing me various things, some of which I have mentioned. At interrogation after the trip they did a good job of giving an accurate account of what happened. I felt ready now to tackle such a sortie on my own. However on 115 Squadron new pilots always did two trips as second pilot. My next trip would be on February 15th, 1944. This raid was made up of 534 aircraft. There were 440 Lancasters, 82 Halifaxes and 12 Mosquitoes. 33 aircraft were lost, 32 Lancasters and 1 Halifax or 6.2% of the force. February 15th, 1944 This was my second sortie as a second pilot. This time I flew with a crew, every one of which had the DFM (Distinguished Flying Medal). The pilot was an excellent flyer, but in my estimation, not a good captain of his crew. I honestly believe they probably got their DFM’s in their fabulous interrogations, or de-briefings. I was really amazed at what I heard. Fortunately it was a quiet trip, as far as contact with enemy fighters or flak were concerned. Again, the target was Berlin and we flew a very similar route to the one on January 30th. All the way along there was very little silence between crew members. One would talk to another and so on. My crew were never like that, even on local flights. On the ground we were just a great bunch of guys, but once inside the aircraft they were a real good crew. There was a very unfortunate occurrence. After we had turned south from the Baltic and were flying towards Berlin, the intercom system broke down. There is a system of light signals for the bomb aimer to let the pilot know how to approach the target, to replace the, “right right” or “left” verbal instructions. Instead, the bomb aimer shouted his instructions from his position down by the bomb sight. The pilot couldn’t hear properly what he had shouted, turned the plane fairly quickly. The bomb aimer presumed they were being attacked by a night-fighter and jettisoned all our bomb load. There was quite a mix up until they set off for home, with bomb doors closed. As I recall, the intercom did come on again, so things settled down more or less. In my judgement, our load of bombs were dropped well east of Berlin. Of course we were not told of other activities that night, but I did see a raid in progress in Frankfurt-on-Oder. I think our load was somewhere between these two targets. Back at base we were ushered in for interrogation. According to that crew we had been attacked while running up to the target. The bomb aimer had taken an opportunity as we levelled off to drop our bombs, he claimed, pretty close to the markers etc. etc. I could not believe my ears. Mind you, from my point of view, I could not have had two second pilot trips with better teaching. The first on January 30th showed me how; this one showed me how not to. From now on I would be skipper of my own crew. 20 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] There were 891 aircraft on this rain, 561 Lancasters, 314 Halifaxes and 16 Mosquitoes [sic]. The records show that on this night, apart from this raid, 23 Mosquitoes [sic] attacked 5 Night-fighter airfields in Holland, 43 Stirlings and 4 Pathfinder Halifaxes carried out mine laying in Keil Bay. Also 24 Lancasters made a diversionary raid on Frankfurt-on-Oder. Total sorties this night were 1070. 45 aircraft were lost, (4.2%). February 24th, 1944 - February 25th, 1944 On the 24th, I flew with my own crew for the first time. We bombed the ball bearing factory at Schweinfurt. Then, on the 25th, we bombed Augsburg. On the Schweinfurt raid there were 734 aircraft involved, 554 Lancasters, 169 Halifaxes and 11 Mosquitos. This was the first Bomber Command raid on this target. On the previous day 266 American B17’s had raided this target. Bomber command introduced a new tactic on this night. 392 aircraft and 342 aircraft separated by a two hour interval. The first wave of bombers lost 22 aircraft, 5.6% of the force. The second wave lost only 11 aircraft, 3.2% of the force. Total losses were 33 aircraft, 26 Lancasers [sic], 7 Halifaxes - 4.5% of the force. These sorties were very similar and the same thing happened to us on both trips. It was a weird sort of route and seemed to last forever. Actually it was 7 hrs 45 min on the 24th and 7 hrs 15 min on the 25th. On both occasions we were routed over France and almost to Munich, before turning north to our targets. Many of our bomber stream wandered over Switzerland in error, The Swiss, true to their neutral position, fired anti-aircraft flak, apparently well away from any planes, but giving no excuse for the Nazis to say they were favouring the Allies. We ourselves did not track over Switzerland. Our problem was with the searchlights around Munich. Both nights they got me coned in what were obviously radar controlled lights. One lit up on me and immediately the manually controlled lights swung right onto me as well. So there I was, very new to this job and feeling very naked; on view to the whole of Nazi Germany. To say I was scared would be putting it extremely mildly. I immediately threw the Lancaster into a violent, “Corkscrew” manoeuvre. This is what was drilled into us once we started flying bombers. Mind you, I had never actually done it before, and luckily for me, we were taking part in a second raid that night, on Schweinfurt. What I managed to do was to keep the fires of Schweinfurt somewhere in front of me as I threw that aircraft down to port and up changing to starboard and so on. It seemed like hours that I was in those searchlights. Luckily the smoke from the target area blacked out some of the searchlights, and by this time the radar-controlled lights would be trained on some other unlucky aircraft. Ever since those two sorties I have had a strong aversion to searchlights of any kind, even those used in advertising. Another incident happened on the Augsburg sortie. Before we were caught in the serachlights, I noticed out of the side of my vision that, “Taffy” Jones had his arm up in 22 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] the air. What made me look round, I’ll never know, but we were very fortunate that I did. Taffy was obviously the only one who saw a Messerschmitt 110 attacking us from above and starboard. He was apparently speechless with fear, which is not really surprising, but could have killed the lot of us. As I looked round to see what Taffy was doing, I realised what was happening and gave the stick a quick shove forward. With the Lancaster II, with Bristol Hercules engines you can cut all engines by doing this. I must have dropped a few hundred feet, but we saw all the cannon fire pass overhead. I spoke to Taffy after we got back to base. I asked him to try to poke me, or something if he couldn’t speak. On the Augsburg trip someone had timed our searchlight ordeal. We were coned in searchlights for 10 minutes. Taffy was a very good and very thorough flight engineer. Once we were back at base, my thoughts were to get through our interrogation, then our bacon and eggs and off to bed. Taffy, of course had to give a full report which included dial readings of quite a few dials. He always was last one off the plane. I was always trying to egg him on. Once I had finished our tour, my ground crew, “Chiefy”, told me that they estimated we would last only about three or four sorties. They thought I was always arguing with my flight engineer. Mind you, I felt that we could not possibly get through any of our sorties, even before we got airborne! March 24th, 1944 We set off on March 22nd for a sortie to Frankfurt, but had to return to base shortly after take off because of the failure of our port inner engine. On March 24th, our next sortie was back to Berlin for me and first time for my crew. As it turns out this was the last major bombing raid on Berlin. 811 aircraft took part in this raid, 577 Lancasters, 216 Halifaxes, and 18 Mosquitos. 72 aircraft were lost, 44 Lancasters and 28 Halifaxes - 8.9% of the force. In spite of strong winds which were not forecast, we had no difficulty in reaching our target. Our route home was the one I had followed during two previous trips to Berlin. This was south of Brunswick and Hanover. Jog around the north end of the Ruhr, etc. If we had followed the route given me by my navigator, Rex Townsend, we would have flown right across the Ruhr with all its flak. Fortunately, many ahead of us made this mistake, and it was strictly because of a serious error in the forecast winds. At any rate, using the Ruhr searchlights for guidance, we successfully negotiated our way. After that things began to go wrong. First of all our oxygen supply ceased to function. I maintained our height until we crossed the coast and were over the North Sea. This was very likely the cause of our troubles; 20,000 ft is far too high without oxygen. 23 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] [missing photograph or text] [four obscured words] Once over the sea, we came down to under 10,000 ft so that we would not suffer any effects of lack of oxygen. Another unforeseen thing happened. Low cloud had formed over all of East Anglia We must have passed fairly close to our base, judging from the talk we heard on the RT. However my navigator was not able to get us to Witchford, in fact, according to his findings we were still a good distance from Witchford. On we flew, my RT signals were getting fainter. When Rex told me we were approaching base, I realised we were nowhere near and were getting a bit low on fuel. Fog was forming on the ground. As it turned out we were very close to Ludford Magna in Lincolnshire. They were equipped with FIDO, the fog dispersal system of gasoline fires along both sides of the runway. I called up and received permission to land. It was nice to get down onto the ground that night. If this trip of ours to Berlin sounds a bit tame you should watch the video, “Night Bombers.” This is about a sortie to Berlin just a week or so before this. You would get some idea of what all our bombing trips were like. How I Became a Commissioned Officer Sometime between April 14th and April 18th, 1944 I no longer was F/S (flight sergeant) but became P/O (Pilot Officer). This is a crazy, almost unbelievable story. Up until this time on 115 Squadron I was a flight sergeant. My crew were all sergeants. We all used the Sergeants’ Mess. We all lived in one Nissen Hut. This was a very good way to live. 24 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] Our flight commander, Squadron Leader, George Mackie wanted all his pilots to be Commissioned Officers. I was well aware of this, but was quite happy living together with my crew, so did nothing about it. George Mackie was a typical air force guy, complete with a big handle-bar moustache. Incidentally, he was from Aberdeen. His family owned Mackies Dairy in Aberdeen. I got pretty good at avoiding this little business of applying for a commission. However, one morning I made my way to the flight office. Very unusual, the office was empty, except for Mackie. As soon as I went in he said to me. “Ah Cameron, just the man I wanted to see. Take a seat at my desk.” I could see the forms all laid out for me to complete. Mackie went over to a filing cabinet, took out his revolver, put in a full six rounds and pointing it towards me said, “Now fill in those forms.” He was laughing and so was I by this time. I told him that he could very well be court martialed [sic] for threatening me with his revolver. Who would they believe with such a story, you or me?’ Well I pretty well had to fill in the forms for him. This is how I advanced from an NCO to a Pilot Officer. One strange thing about my flight commander, he was not a pilot. He was doing his third tour as a Bomb Aimer. The pilot of his crew never got beyond the rank of Flight Sergeant. They were lost on a trip to LeMans on May 19th, 1944 after he finished his 25 sorties. Apparently, our crew were the only ones who reported seeing a Lancaster going down in flames on that trip. Mackie must have had access to all the interrogations. He told me that I was the only one reporting this. As you can imagine, he was very upset. He asked me whether there was a chance of any survivors. I had to tell him that if they were in that plane, none of them could possibly survive. It just blew up. I was sent on 7 days leave at this time, so that I could purchase my new uniform. A friend of mine, who was in the RCAF, P/O Don McKechnie said that I should not travel in a NCO’s uniform, now that I was a P/O. Mary and I had our photograph taken during this leave. We have it on the wall in our front room. A careful look would show you that the pilot wings are actually RCAF and not RAF. May 9th, 1944 This was a very short trip, just across the Strait of Dover to Cap Griz New. We carried deep penetration bombs. Our instructions were to bring back the bombs if we could not identify the target. Our target this time was one of the rocket launching sites for the V2 rocket which could not be avoided until they exploded in London. 25 [page break] Donald Cameron: World War 11 and Flying Memoirs [photograph] 26 [page break] We found the whole area was covered with 10/10ths. cloud, so we returned with our full load of bombs. Of course, we were still far too heavy to land. Our instruction were to jettison some of our fuel load, so this is what we proceeded to do. We emptied two tanks, one in each wing. One tank emptied just fine, but the other one emptied into the wing. The fuel ran into the bomb bay. The fumes from this fuel filled the whole aircraft. I didn’t realise that these fumes were affecting the crew, except the rear gunner, who was sealed from things in his gun turret. It was not until I started to make my final approach that I began to realise that these fumes had made me a bit drunk. I certainly did not fancy landing without my full capacity to know what I was doing. Don’t ask me why, but I had not brought along my goggles. In any case I had to stick my head out my side window to clear my head. Mind you I had to more or less close them to just a slit because of the speed. Never mind, we made a good landing with our full load of bombs. I made sure that I had my goggles with me after that These are a few other incidents that happened to us during our Bombing tour. Here are one or two incidents during some sorties. Dusseldorf: April 22nd, 1944 597 aircraft took part in this raid. There were 323 Lancasters, 254 Halifaxes, 19 Mosquitos. On each night bombing raid, one or two squadrons were given the task of being a support to the Pathfinder squadrons, who mark the target for the main force. We still had to try our best to bomb the target aiming point, but this was not our main function. We had two jobs. One was to give the Pathfinders a bit more cover. The other was to toss out lots and lots of, “Window.” Window was strips of foil, the length of which were designed to appear on radar as aircraft. I believe the first time it was used was on a raid to Hamburg. It succeeded, making the German radar showing millions of aircraft. This provided cover for the main force coming behind us, but not for us. We had to try and bomb the aiming point, either by the markers, if available, or by our own recognition of the target. There was no problem; the Pathfinder Force were doing a good job. This was entirely different from bombing with the main force. We were accustomed to a barrage of anti-aircraft fire, but this time it was not a barrage, they were aiming at individual aircraft, and that included us. This was much more scary; this was much more close generally than we were used to. Duisburg: May 22nd, 1944 510 Lancasters and 22 Mosquitos carried out the first large raid on this target for a year. 29 Lancasters were lost, 5.5% of the force. 27 [page break] Most of this trip was like any other trip, but two things stick out in my mind. The first was as we approached the target. There were Lancasters circling everywhere, and cloud seemed to cover the whole target. They were obviously having trouble in finding the target. I instructed my Bomb Aimer, Attwood, that we would open the bomb doors as we ran up on the centre of the brightly lit clouds. If the worst came to the worst he should let them go as near to the centre of the searchlights as possible. Actually, this strategy worked in our favour. I soon found out the reason for all the circling. As we approached the centre of the lit up clouds, there was a big hole right down to ground level, and there, right on our path were the target markers. We were able to get an aiming point on our photograph. I was glad that we did not have to circle and try again. Coming out of the target area, we had one of our many narrow escapes, and so did a German night fighter, who was heading into the target area to see what he could do. If he had been even six inches (15 cm) lower, or we had been that much higher, I am sure that we would have scraped each other and probably both planes would have been badly disabled and would have crashed. As he whizzed over us we felt the bump of the change of air pressure. That was the closest I ever got to a Junkers 88. Cologne: April 20th, 1944 357 Lancasters and 22 Mosquitos took part in this attack. 4 Lancasters were lost. After our Berlin Raid on March 24th, there was a change in the role of Bomber Command. Although Harris was still our commanding officer, he now came under General Dwight Eisenhower. This meant that the emphasis was no longer that of knocking out German industry, but was more designed to help with the coming, “Second Front.” We had trips to Ville Neuve St. George on April 9th, and Laon on April 10th. We had some flak damage on this trip. Then it was Rouen on April 18th. These were mostly railway marshalling yards, making railway transport more difficult for the Germans. However, on April 20th, it was back to industry in Cologne. The Lancaster we were flying had one bad failing. It was very slow in climbing. All planes had various quirks, but I did not like this one. Our route to Cologne took us to a point due south of Cologne, then we turned north to the target, climbing from 18 to 20 thousand feet. I knew that our aircraft would have no hope of making this climb and keep on time, so I instructed Rex Townsend, my navigator, to make our time at the turning point one minute ahead of the scheduled time. Unfortunately we arrived there one minute late. I could not possibly climb to height without falling behind the bomber stream. I maintained our speed, but we could not gain much height at all. 28 [page break] We went ahead and dropped our bombs on target and were immediately hit, I presumed, by flak. Two fires developed, one in the port wing outboard of the engines. The second one was in the starboard inner engine nacelle. I gave the order, “Prepare to Abandon the Aircraft.” Then several things happened. My indicator light came on which tells me my wheels are down and locked. (I knew they were still up). Another light told me that I had the wrong supercharger gear on for landing. (Good, at 18 thousand feet I was not landing) Through my mind flashed the briefing we had before take off. The winds over the target are from 270 degrees. If we all bailed out, we would float right back into Cologne in our parachutes. I made a spur of the moment decision to blow up with the aircraft along with all my crew. We had it drilled into us that the maximum time we would have was 2 minutes, before the plane would blow up. Even today, I wonder how I could decide to kill all 7 of us. I guess it was the thought of floating back into Cologne in our parachutes. Taffy Jones, my flight engineer, had clipped on his parachute in preparation for bailing out. He had the presence of mind to drag my one out from behind my seat and was holding it up for me to put on. You see, I was one of many pilots who did not have a pilot’s parachute. Instead, I had the same harness as all of my crew. This was clipped onto the chest when being used. Of course there was no room for me to wear mine, while I was flying the aircraft. I said to Taffy, “Just put it down there,” pointing to the floor beside my seat. Taffy told me, when we eventually landed, that when I said that, he was no longer afraid.” If he only knew! Well the fires soon seemed to be dying down and both went out together. A pencil through the covers on my warning lights gave us darkness in the flight deck once again. However what would happen when I landed was anybody’s guess. Would my wheels lock down. I decided to head for our emergency landing field at Woodbridge. This had a runway three times wider than our normal airfields and it was much longer as well. It was also lit up like a Christmas tree. Two bright searchlights pointing up and converging welcomed aircraft that were in trouble. We could see these as we left the enemy coast. We were given permission to land. I instructed all my crew to take up crash positions as I made the approach, which they did. My wheels and flaps seemed to functioning normally, but we could not be sure. Then thankfully we made a perfectly normal landing. What a great relief! Next morning my ground crew were flown in to examine the aircraft – C-Cameron. I never used the call sign C-Charlie. One of my ground crew decided to get up onto the wing. Hoe thought he saw something wrong from the ground. We watched as he reached down through a hole in the wing. He pulled out a live British incendiary bomb from one of our fuel tanks. We had not been hit by flak, but by incendiaries from a plane above us. 29 [page break] D Day: June 5th/6th, 1944. The Normandy Coastal Batteries This day 1012 aircraft took part in raids on the costal batteries at Fontenay, Houlgate, La Pernelle, Longues, Maisy, Merville, Mont Fleury, Pointe-du-Hoe, Ouisterham and St-Martin-de-Varreville. 946 aircraft carried out their bombing tasks. Three aircraft were lost, 2 Halifaxes on the Mont Fleury raid, and 1 Lancaster on the Longues raid. Only two of the targets – La Pernelle and Ouisterham were free of cloud; all other bombing was based on Oboe marking. At least 5000 tons of bombs were dropped, the greatest tonnage in one night so far in the war. Our target was the coastal batteries at Ouisterham. Although we took off in darkness this trip turned out to be our first daylight bombing. We did not use any different tactics which turned out to be a little bit scary. As we flew towards the target it began to get closer to daylight, I remember another plane from 115 Squadron came alongside me and we continued in a sort of loose formation towards the target. Others about us were doing the same, so that when we reached the target and tried to fly over the markers, we would have all collided. I was fortunate that I was able to drop my bombs on target, but there was no way that I could say my photograph would show this. As soon as the bombs were dropped, I climbed above the crowd to avoid collision with other planes. I was due to go on leave on June 6th, but because of this trip, all leave had been cancelled. Mary and I had arranged to meet at Kings Cross Station in London, but instead I was on my way back across the Channel and into bed at Witchford. Fortunately I found someone trustworthy to waken me if leave was on again. As soon as he woke me, I was off to London. I was not too worried about Mary, as she knew where we had arranged to stay. Instead, when Mary arrived at Kings Cross, she saw hundreds of service people but no Don. Somehow she saw this woman in air force officer uniform, but with a different cap to the WAAF of the RAF. She spoke to her and asked whether she were Miriam my sister. Of course she said yes, and that she was there to try to meet Mary. I had not been in touch with Miriam, but of course she knew of our arrangement to meet at Kings Cross. They spent most of the day together. Miriam took her to her office with the RCAF, and introduced her to some of the people she worked with. Mary and I had a very happy week together. We stayed with Mrs. Clark who had a house in the Elephant and Castle area. We had a lucky escape with this leave. The night when I put Mary on the train for Aberdeen, while I made my way back to Witchford, the room we had slept in was demolished by a German bomb. I think it was one of their Doodle Bugs, the ones you could hear approaching and hoped would pass you before its engine stopped. Our room was upstairs. Fortunately Mrs. Clark lived one level below street level, but level with the back garden. She was not hurt, but had to be taken to a decontamination centre to get all the oil cleaned off. This was another of our narrow escapes during WW2. 30 [page break] After D Day June 14th, 1944. Le Havre. There were 221 Lancasters and 13 Mosquitos taking part in this raid. It was in two waves, one in daylight and the other later in the evening in darkness. We were in the second wave. The objectives were the fast German motor-torpedo boats (E-boats) and other light naval forces which were threatening Allied shipping off the Normandy beaches only 30 miles away. Both waves were escorted by Spitfires. 1230 tons of bombs were dropped including 22 Lancasters from 617 Squadron, each loaded with a 12000-lb. Tallboy bomb. The E-boat threat to the invasion beaches from this port was almost completely removed by this raid. I reported no problems on this raid, but next morning, Chiefy Williams asked me what had happened. One of the propeller nacelles was bashed in, with the paint from a British bomb on the bashed part, another lucky escape that we were not even aware of at the time. Including this raid on Le Havre, after D Day we did seven night bombing trips, mostly to railway marshalling yards. We also took part in 4 daylight raids, the last one on July 10th, completed our tour of operations. The final six or seven, although quite short trips were very worrying. We all felt that we could not possibly make it to the end of our 30 trips with 115 Squadron and the end of our tour of operations. No. 3 Lancaster Finishing School. RAF Station – Feltwell, etc. After completing my bombing tour at Witchford I was sent to Feltwell. This was not far east of Ely. I was to be an instructor at this school. Crews came here after finishing their operational training, to get enough experience flying Lancasters before going to a bomber Squadron. I had to get experience in handling a Lancaster from a right hand seat, usually occupied by the flight engineer. They extended the connection of the wheel across from the regular control, for the instructor to use. The seat normally was fastened to the pilot’s seat and was clipped onto the right hand side of the aircraft when being used by a flight engineer. It was far from being comfortable. My complete training for this consisted of one afternoon, lasting 1 hour, 5 minutes. Now, I was an instructor. Now that I was no longer flying with a bomber squadron, I found a room in a farmhouse about 5 miles from Feltwell in Methwold. This village consisted of 1 street, with 6 pubs. Our room had one 15 watt bulb for light. The floor slanted down from each side to a sort of trough along the middle. Mary came down from Aberdeen to stay with me. I told her that when I was finishing my flying for a day, I would fly over this house, and rev. up my engines, so that she would know I would be home shortly. This worked just fine until I once did an air test with another of the instructors. “Oh that’s where you live.” Mary never knew when I would be finishing. All my friends would rev their engines over the house. 31 [page break] Mary, from about 500 miles north, could not understand the old man who owned the house. I, from 3000 miles away had to translate. The Norfolk dialect was really different to most English accents. His daughter and her husband kept house for him. They farmed a piece of land not attached to this property. The old man would sell her eggs from his chickens, as well as apples. In turn she would sell him any produce from their land. This was a new kind of family for us to experience. When we went on leave, to Aberdeen the old man would give Mary some apples. “Don’t tell Annie that I have given you these.” Annie had to buy her’s from him. What a way to live. Some of the old Lancasters we flew at Fetwell were in very bad shape. Feltwell was not a paved airfield. We had to land on a grass landing strip. I had taken one crew to a bomber airfield for some experience. We were recalled because some fog was beginning to form at Feltwell. I took over the controls and flew back to base. They had lit some fire flares alongside the landing strip, but I had no difficulty in making my approach and landing. As I tried to turn the plane to starboard into where I was being guided, I could get no power from my port outer engine. I shouted to my guide to look at my port outer, as I could not get any power from it. He shone his light and yelled back that there was no engine there. It had dropped off as we landed. Years later I visited the aeronautical museum in Ottawa, with David, Patricia, Graeme and Heather. David and I were up looking into the cockpit of a Lancaster on exhibit there. Mary spoke to a man who was sitting on a bench looking at this Lancaster exhibit. Mary asked him if he had flown Lancasters. He said that no he had never flown, but he had worked as ground crew on them. He said that he had worked at No. 3 Lancaster Finishing School all the time it was in operation. I asked whether he had been there when the pilot of a plane that had just landed, asked the person directing the plane to shine a light on the port outer engine as he could get no power, and he said there was no engine there at all. He said yes, in fact he was the fellow who told me that there was no engine. What a small world. He belonged to an air force club in Oshawa and was very keen that I should join as well when he found that I lived in Scarborough. These clubs usually turn out to be just a drinking club, so I never did go near it. After January 23rd, 1945, I was transferred to RAF Station Lindholme, near Doncaster in Yorkshire. This was a training station for Lancasters. We flew with crews who had not yet flown heavy bombers. They had a much more involved course of training. I made a point of never looking at the students’ log books. I judged their flying ability from what they did for me. That was until I had one student, a flight lieutenant whom I thought was a danger to his crew. I looked in his log book and found that in his flying career he had never had less than, ‘Above Average’ in his records. I thought perhaps there was something wrong with me, so I asked the flight commander to take him up. He failed this man after a single trip and thanked me for letting him take him for a test. On April 4th, 1945 I was sent on a flying instructors course at F.I.S. (Flying Instructors School) at Lulsgate Bottom, near Bristol, flying Airspeed Oxfords, where I did about 20 hours flying. This consisted of flying with only one 33 [page break] engine, steep turns, really low flying, stalls, flapless landings, and forced landings (no power) – something called precautionary landings. This turned out to be really great fun. I felt that this is how we should have been taught to fly Oxfords when I first started flying twin-engined planes. After this I became a category “C” instructor. While I was here, Miriam, my sister came from London to visit. We were able to take a tour through Cheddar Gorge and the cave. It was very interesting. The course lasted until May 4th, 1945, so of course Glen was born while I there. I was given 7 days leave to visit Mary and Glen in the Osborne Nursing Home in Aberdeen. They had to stay in the nursing home quite a long time because Mary developed a fever. They called it Milk Fever. She could not feed her baby, so he had to be brought up on National Dried Milk. While on my way north I heard the announcement over the loud speakers at Crewe Station, that the war in Europe was finished. Then it was more instructing at Lindholme for a short time. During this short time, I took some air cadets up for a trip in an Oxford. I was still flying Lancasters as an instructor. However there was one interesting break. On July 6th, 1945 I took some passengers on what they termed a Cook’s Tour. The war in Europe had come to an end. My passengers were all service personnel from Lindholme. I took them across the North Sea to the Rhur in Germany, and we flew down over the Rhur to see what Bomber Command had done to German Industry there. In comparison, you would say that London, with it’s blitzes had hardly been scratched. It was absolute devastation. On July 17th, 1945 I was sent to Bomber Command Instructors School at Finningly in Yorkshire. This is here I was paired with John Cooksey. Frankly, this is where I really learned how to fly a Lancaster. This even included how to land a Lancaster with no engines. Mind you, for safety’s sake the engines were left just idling, so that if I goofed we could soon have power. The instructor did the first no power landing and then asked me to try it. I came in with more speed than usual, thinking I was avoiding a stall. But when I leveled[sic] off for a landing I could not hold it down. It just ballooned up and I could do nothing about it. All he said was, “Do you know what you did wrong?” I of course said that I had approached too fast. He told me to try once more, and this time I had no problem. John Cooksey and I got along together just fine. Neither one of us were really interested in becoming instructors. So I would put him through each exercise and he would do the same for me. If we did them OK and we did, we would spend the rest of the time exploring the countryside and coast around there. We were both upgraded to category “B” instructors. This is the highest anyone could be graded at this B.C.I.S. I went back to Lindholme until I was sent to RAF Station, Snaith. This was a B.A.T. flight, where I was introduced to making a beam approach. The beam is a radio beam. On the beam we could hear a constant signal. If we 34 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] were off to one side we heard the morse code for “A” on the other side it was the letter “N”. One was dot - dash. The other was dash - dot, so that when they came together you heard a constant sound. This was done with Oxfords and Link Trainers. 1332 HCU (Heavy Conversion Unit) RAF Station Dishforth In February 1946, I was posted to Dishforth, where I flew the Avro York. This was just until I was familiar with handling this aircraft. Transport Command. 246 Squadron. Holmsley South. On March 9th, they sent me to 246 Squadron at Holmsley South. I was now a F/Lt. (Flight Lieutenant) in Transport Command, with my new crew. For the first time in my flying career, I had eco-pilot, and a really good navigator. They made sure that I was familiar with such [photograph] My Transport Command Crew at Cairo (jack Easton, Geof Sames, Gordon Megson, Me, Johnie Ottewell) April 26th, 1946 things as 3 engine landings and overshoots, flawless landings, ground controlled approach. This also included a GEE let down for bad weather approach. Then finally on April 15th, I started my first overseas trip. My route was from base to Castel Benito in North Africa and on to Almaza at Cairo. 35 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] Incidentally, my entire cargo was Sunday newspapers As we stopped at Castle Benito the ground crew were keen to get a copy of some. I told them not to meddle, but said I was off to see about my flight on to Cairo. They were pretty good; the cargo did not appear to be tampered with, but I am sure we had a few less papers. We staged at Cairo for two days, picking up the next plane to come from Britain. From there we flew to Shaibah at Basra. Then a long hop to Mauripur at Kirachi [sic]. Then another two day in Kirachi [sic]. Our next hop was supposed to be to Palam at Delhi, but we were asked to land at Jodhpur. This was my first experience of using a runway which was just a black strip of thick oil. Well I made quite a good approach to land right at the beginning of this strip, because it did not look to be very long. As I arrived over the [photograph] Almaza, Cairo June, 1946 hot black strip ready for a three point landing - the aircraft started to float upward with the very hot air rising from the runway. I was determined to get the plane down so I just waited until we stopped floating up, then gave her lots of power as we started to fall. Hey, we made a nice safe landing after all, even if it was not too smooth. I was glad I had quite a bit of flying experience by this time. On the way home from Delhi, we made the same stops, except for Jodhpur, but when flying on the final stretch across the Mediterranean, we had to call up the station at Istres in the south of France for permission to carry on, depending on the weather in England. We were asked to land, so we had an extra day on our trip. My next trip was the same route, but straight from Kirachi [sic] to Delhi, no stop at Jodhpur. Again we were asked to stop at Istres on the way home. No. 242 Squadron, Oakington The next trip, we carried passengers, service personnel of course. This involved first flying from our base to Lyneham, which was an international base, complete with customs officers. We had seats fitted. They did not look too comfortable to me. We carried troops who were being sent to relieve some who were coming back to Britain. This trip was only to Cairo. On our return journey we were bringing one stretcher case, complete with a woman medical officer. The man had a brain tumour. One officer, a Naval Captain, which is a fairly high rank, did not turn up on time. Well I refused to hold up the trip for him, telling the staff that he could pick up 36 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] his luggage at Lyneham. I felt that getting my stretcher case to hospital in Britain was more important. There were a few fighter pilots among my passengers too. When we landed at Castle Benito, the plane just rolled smoothly along the runway with no kind of any bump. This was a rare thing for an Avro York. They could not be landed without a bump of some sort. My air quarter master (Steward) bragged to these fighter guys that I did this all the time. I reminded him that I still had to land them at Lyneham. By this time I was sure that Istres always asked us to land no matter what the British weather conditions before leaving Castle Benito. Sure enough, they asked us to land. However I told them that I was carrying an urgent Stretcher case and wanted to get him to a hospital as soon as possible. They did not hesitate to allow me to proceed. I realised that I had made one goof. The troops were all wearing tropical dress and wanted to change, but did not wish to embarrass the woman medical officer. I brought her up front with me and had told her that she could hear the various info. I received as we flew. When I pushed for not landing at Istres, she told me not to fly on if the weather was bad. The invalid was not that urgent. I had to tell her that there would be layers of cloud when we got there and maybe a bit of drizzle, but nothing to make it a dangerous landing. Actually we didn’t even have the drizzle, but did I ever bounce in on my landing. Then I was sent with another crew to get some route experience for a trip to Singapore. F/Lt. Audis was the pilot. Well, after we left Basra and were flying down the Persian Gulf, I went back to have a rest. I don’t think I was really asleep, but suddenly I became aware that something was wrong. Even though the aircraft was cruising OK, I went up front and asked what the trouble was. Well the port outer engine was not functioning, something wrong with the supercharger. The pilot had decided to fly lower, so that he could see more closely things at ground level. However at the bottom of the gulf, we would have to climb to over ten thousand feet to get over some hills, before flying along to Kirachi [sic] over the sea. He got permission to land at Sharjah, where we would wait until a replacement engine could be flown to us. We were there from August 19th. to September 1st. Strangely enough a friend from my days on bombers flew the engine to us in a DC3 (Dakota). Apart from one more flight along with another pilot, just doing an air test, that was my last flight with the RAF. I had flown total of 1201 hrs 50 min. My flying with British Overseas Airways Corporation While at Aldermaston, back at school, in training for my various licences, I flew once with Captain Green on an air test in a Viking aircraft , just for 1 Hr 20 min. This was strictly off the record and is not included in my log book. I also went up for an air test in a Dakota with Capt. Levy. This lasted !hr. 30mn. As we approached for a landing he suggested that I try the landing. I didn’t even know the speed to make the approach at. He told me the speed and said to go ahead. I would find that it would pretty well land itself. So I did land it and with a nice smooth landing. I had to do some flying in the York again, which included landing fully loaded. I was sent on a cross country 37 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] flight with another First Officer, F/O Clink. However I was to be in charge. We had all sorts of different personnel on board. They came and asked if I was ready for dinner. As I was in charge, I was to them Captain. Well you have no idea of the fancy treatment I was given. Of course the stewards were also in training and were being watched. I have never been so handsomely treated to a meal before or since. When I was fully qualified I was sent to Turn, near Bournemouth. My first trip as First Officer started on November 23rd, 1947. Captain Phillips was in charge. We flew to London. On the 24th our route was first to Bordeaux and then to Castel Benito, then on to Lydda. This was a staging Post for the crew. The plane flew on with a different crew. On November 28th we took over a different plane on to Basra and Kirachi [sic]. On November 30th we were off again, this time with a Cast. Maltin. We flew to Dharan at Delhi. When we took off from Delhi, as we were gaining speed for take off, Capt. Maltin suddenly shut the throttles right down and exclaimed, “Holy cow!” This surprised me to hear him say a thing like this, but when I looked to see the problem, there was a cow strolling slowly across the runway. I laughed and said to him, “I have never heard that expression used correctly before.” Captain Maltin flew us as far as Lydda on the way home. We found ourselves as supernumerary crew. In other words there were two crews, but only one plane, so we flew on in the same plane, but with a different crew. That saved us a day, as we stayed with the plane right through to Castle Benito, but were delayed a day, I think by a sandstorm before returning to base. The next flight started on December 24th, 1947. We had two children by this time, so Christmas arrived a wee bit early, but, neither Glen or Patricia were aware of that. The name of the plane was Macduff. G-AGOF. We flew to London late on the 24th. Our take off was on the 25th. None of us in the crew were happy about this. Neither were most of the passengers. Captain Kelly came aboard and looked around at the long faces, and asked the steward if we had Christmas Crackers on board. We did, so he asked that a cracker be given to every passenger and every crew member. There was a tiny decorated tree just at the entrance, which on the York was mid-way up the passenger cabin. When we all had our crackers Captain Kelly said, “Now all of you pull your crackers and put on the paper hat.” That broke the ice and we had a great trip after that. We made landings at Bordeaux for lunch (Christmas Dinner), then on to Castel Benito and Cairo. Both passengers and crew had an overnight stop in Cairo. Then in early morning we flew down to Khartoum. A lovely breakfast was waiting for us in Khartoum. As we flew south from Khartoum, Captain Kelly asked me to go back into the passengers to point out any wild game. He purposely flew fairly low and I pointed out large animals like giraffe and elephant and such like. Two little girls, about nine or ten years old, latched onto me at this time. They had a great time as I showed them quite a few animals on the ground. 38 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] As for me, I was very interested in not only seeing all this wild game, but also we flew low over the Murchison Falls on this branch of the Nile River. We arrived in Nairobi on December 27th and were treated once again to another Christmas Dinner. I am afraid the two little girls ended up sitting on my knees, one on each knee. This was hardly airline etiquette, but by this time passengers and crew were just like one huge family. When we finally returned to base, we received no less than 5 letters, commending the crew for a great trip. Most were being sent out from England on a scheme to grow ground nuts (peanuts), which turned out to be a complete flop in the end. None were very happy about going. After Nairobi we flew past Kilimanjaro, quite a nice sight to Mombasa, on the coast of the Indian Ocean. Then we headed south over Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. This was our final destination and my first crossing of the equator. There were no celebrations on board. Our return trip was still in the Macduff as far as Cairo. Then we staged, flying on December 31st in a York called Marston, G-AGSO. Between Cairo and Tunisia Captain Kelly gathered the whole crew up front. The radio was tuned to the BBC in London, and as the new year came in we had a bit of a celebration. We were unable to land in London because of fog and were diverted to our base at Hurn. Here was still a lot of cloud below us, but I suddenly spotted our base and gave Cpt. Kelly a nudge. He was determined to land at base, but the passengers must have wondered what was happening. To say the least it was not a normal approach, although to us up front it was certainly not dangerous. So we came to the end of one of my most enjoyable trips. On January 22nd 1948, I did the same route again with Captain Bennett. Then my final trip was to India once again with Captain Buxton. This time we went one more stop after Delhi, to Calcutta. I am not sure which of these trips this incident happened, but on one of our stopovers in Cairo, we arranged with a local man to take us from the Bentley Hotel (I think that was the name) to the Pyramids and Sphinx, with a tour up inside the Great Pyramid. We would pay him for the entire trip. We settled on a price. Everything went very well. I opted to ride an Arabian horse instead of one of their moth-eaten camels. All went very well including the climb up inside the pyramid, until nearly down inside. Then this guide decided he would like a bit more money. If we wouldn’t give him this he would leave us in the dark. He had been lighting our way with magnesium strips. Needless to say the poor guy was completely surrounded by us, and told he had better not try any tricks like that. I think he thought we would take the magnesium and leave him behind, but anyway we got out okay. By this time, my left eye had really started to go blind. I realised that I could not renew my licence and so resigned from BOAC. My total flying time, including air force and civilian was 1455 hrs 55min. 39 [page break] [italics] Donald Cameron World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] [medals and other insignia photographed on a black background] [top] [RAF wings] [1st row L to R] [1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star; 1939-45 Defence Medal; 1939-45 War Medal] [2nd row] [Bomber Command Tribute 1939 – 1945] 40 [page break] Campaign Stars, Clasps and Medals instituted in recognition of service in the war of 1939 – 45 [list of awards] [award certificate for those who served in Bomber Command 1939 – 45] 41 [page break]] [italics] Donald Cameron World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics] [bold] Footnote to My Flying [/bold] Mary and I were at our trailer up near Norland, when we received a phone call from our daughter, Patricia. She asked us what we would be doing on August 19th 2000. I looked at our calendar and told her that we had tickets for the theatre in Lindsay. We were going with some friends. Well we were told to cancel these arrangements. Our three children had combined to give me a trip up in the Lancaster at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton. They had joined to purchase membership in this museum for me ($75). As well, they paid $1000 for a flight of about 45 minutes in the Lancaster. It was a real thrill to be back in a Lancaster once again. [colour photo of man and woman in front of a stationary Lancaster] 42 [photograph of Donald Cameron wearing his war medals] [article from the ‘News Advertiser’ dated 3rd September 2000, including photograph of Donald Cameron in front of a Lancaster aircraft] High times for veteran flyer Second World War pilot revisits his glory days By Jane McDonald staff writer When Don Cameron headed towards a certain aircraft on a sunny Saturday, Aug. 19, it was as though 55 years suddenly melted away. “He strutted over that tarmac like a 20 years old,” says Pat Boocock of Ajax, the 53-year-old daughter of Mr Cameron who, with her two brothers arranged for her father to fly once again in a famous Second World War Lancaster. Mr Cameron wasn’t quite 20 years old when he joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. Originally from Toronto, he’d gone to Scotland in 1938 to study at an agricultural college. After war broke out the following year, he tried to join the air force when he reached the age of conscription. “They told me, ‘No, you’re not a resident’” recalls the almost 79-year-old Whitby man. He joined anyway as a volunteer and headed for the southern United States to train as a pilot. And although he qualified as a fighter pilot, by the time he got back to England, he was posted to 115 Squadron, part of the RAF’s No. 3 Group Witchford. This meant flying multi-engine aircraft like the Wellington and Stirling. But his favourite by far was the Lancaster. Mr Cameron remembers, with the help of his log book, his first operational trip to Berlin when he piloted a Lancaster, the heavy four-engine bomber, many of which were built at Victory Aircraft, the Canadian Crown corporation at Malton, Ont. [photograph with caption “Don Cameron still hadn’t come back to earth after flying in a Lancaster bomber, the same plane he flew as a pilot with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He went up on Aug. 19.] “I flew five different (Lancaster) planes,” says Mr. Cameron of his time on operational missions. “Then somebody would take one up (when he was off duty) and not come back.” He had his own close calls like a particularly ‘nasty trip’ he made to Cologne, the city in northern Germany on the Rhine River, when his plane had two fires burning as he struggled to get his crew back to England. “Cologne was the scariest,” he admits. It turned out to be British incendiaries that landed on us. We were coming out of Cologne and I gave orders to prepare to abandon the aircraft. Then the whole (pre-flight) briefing came back to me … I realized then that it would be better to blow up there than bail out and drift back into Cologne. That decision saved our lives.” Another time, after landing successfully on a grassy strip, Flight Lieutenant Cameron asked a ground crew member to shine his light on the port outer engine which he thought might have something wrong with it. “There is no engine,” answered the man. But the plane he went up in Aug. 19 had all four engines. Lovingly refurbished by a dedicated group of volunteers, the pride of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at Mount Hope Airport in Hamilton is the only airworthy Lancaster in Canada. “I just heard about it on the radio three or four years ago,” says Mrs. Boocock. “I tucked it away in my mind but when my father started having heart problems, I thought we’d better do it soon.” She contacted the museum and was told her father could go up in its Lancaster for a ‘donation’. She and her two brothers came up with $1,000, which she says will be their father’s “birthday and Christmas” gift. Mr. Cameron says he found the flight to be “quite similar” in many respects. “The only thing missing was the piece of armour plating that used to be behind my (the pilot’s) head,” he adds of the 45 minute flight that took him over Niagara Falls. And although it was “bumpy”, there was no need to worry about anti-aircraft flak hitting this Lancaster. One night in 1944, his plane came back from a sortie with 47 holes in it and he lost an eye after the war as a result. “I really haven’t come down to earth yet,” says the happy and grateful family man. “It’s something I just never expected.” 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 World War II & Flying Memoirs - Don Cameron Description An account of the resource Don describes travelling to Scotland before start of the war and then joining the RAF Volunteer Reserve. He continues with an account of training in England before going to Lakeland Florida, for primary flying training, Cochran field for basic training and Napier Field (Dothan Alabama) for advanced training on Harvard. He recalls his further training at various UK bases. Don recounts his first operation, 4 October 1943, over Germany while still training at RAF Wing. He then went to 115 Squadron at RAF Whitchford and describes operations undertaken in February and March 1944, as well as operations to Germany and in support of D-Day. He describes his subsequent role as an instructor at RAF Feltwell. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource D Cameron Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Sussex England--Brighton England--Buckinghamshire England--High Wycombe United States Florida--Lakeland Georgia--Macon Alabama--Dothan England--Gloucestershire England--Buckinghamshire England--Suffolk England--Northamptonshire England--Cambridgeshire Germany Germany--Schweinfurt Germany--Düsseldorf Germany--Duisburg France France--Normandy England--Norfolk France--Le Havre Florida Alabama Georgia Germany--Ruhr (Region) Libya--Tripoli Libya North Africa Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1942-03-23 1942-05-10 1942-08-11 1943-05-21 1944-01-05 1944-01-25 1943-10-04 1944-01-30 1944-02-15 1944-02-24 1944-02-25 1944-04-14 1944-06-05 1944-06-06 1944-06-14 1944-06-15 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Thirty-eight page printed document with b/w and colour photographs Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Text. Memoir Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BCameronDCameronDv1 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 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 David Bloomfield Maureen Clarke 115 Squadron 1651 HCU 1678 HCU 17 OTU 26 OTU aircrew bomb struck bombing bombing of the Le Havre E-boat pens (14/15 June 1944) bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944) Cook’s tour crash Flying Training School Gee Harvard Heavy Conversion Unit incendiary device Initial Training Wing Lancaster Lancaster Finishing School Lancaster Mk 2 love and romance Me 110 Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944) Operational Training Unit Oxford pilot promotion RAF Dishforth RAF Feltwell RAF Hemswell RAF Lindholme RAF Silverstone RAF Waterbeach RAF Windrush RAF Wing RAF Witchford RAF Wratting Common Scarecrow searchlight Stearman Stirling Tiger Moth training Wellington Window York https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/1368/23113/PThomasAF20050044.jpg f8f40716b1e0d4efc903737be0c257e2 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 Thomas, Arthur Froude. Album 4 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 2020-02-11 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 Thomas, AF Description An account of the resource 42 items. An album containing photographs of 149 Squadron aircraft and personnel as well as pictures taken in 1946 of some of the bomb damage to German cities. Transcribed document A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document [photograph] 297 Squadron R.A.F. [indecipherable word] 1947. [indecipherable word] L to R. P/O [indecipherable letters and name] D.F.C. D.F.M. F/Lt. J. [indecipherable name], W/O Rowlands, F/O Price, F/Lt [indecipherable name] D.F.C., F/Lt Downing, P/O [indecipherable name], F/O [indecipherable name], F/Lt ?, P/O Staves, P/O Powell, F/O [indecipherable name]. [page break] [inserted] D/TELEGRAPH. 1/10/91 [/inserted] Dresden protest over ‘Bomber’ statue By Robin Gedye in Bonn and Jenny Rees DRESDEN’S Lord Mayor appealed to the British Ambassador to Germany yesterday to press for the scrapping of plans to erect a statue in London of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who masterminded wartime air raids. Officials in other German cities which suffered bomb damage have also protested at plans to put up the statue in the Strand next year. A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said it had “no position” on the honouring of a man known in Germany as “Butcher Harris”, and did not wish to become involved. Herr Herbert Wagner, Lord Mayor of Dresden, said the memorial did not belong in the Europe of 1992. “I do not wish to mitigate Germany’s war guilt, but Harris’s carpet bombing against civilians was not militarily justifiable.” He said that on Sir Arthur’s orders, Dresden, Würzburg and Pforzheim, bombed in the last months of the war, were turned into “skeleton cities”, with the loss of 35,000 lives over two nights in Dresden, and 20,000 lives over several days in Pforzheim. A campaign to lobby the British Embassy was started by the mayors of Würzburg and Pforzheim, who appealed in letters to Sir Christopher Mallaby, British Ambassador, to help stop the erection of the memorial “in the name of countless victims of bombing attacks against civilians”. The £100,000 statue was commissioned by the Bomber Command Association, and the money raised by its members and those of the RAF Air Crew Association. It is to be unveiled by the Queen Mother next May and will stand opposite an existing statue of Lord Dowding, wartime commander of Fighter Command, outside the RAF Church, St Clement Danes. Group Captain Ken Batchelor, 77, chairman of the Bomber Command Association, which has 7,500 members, said yesterday: “Quite frankly, why does Dresden think they were the only people bombed during the war? What about our own towns and cities, such as Coventry? “It is sheer ignorance to suggest that this is honouring retaliation. We are not erecting this statue to glorify war, for the members of our association are the ones who never want to see war again. “It was not a question of retaliation. The Ruhr was full of armaments and industry from one end to another, and we had to bomb urban areas, with Dresden as the focal point, to destroy the German war potential. We were fighting for our survival.” Gp Capt Batchelor said the erection of a statue of Sir Arthur was “long overdue”. It was intended to be a memorial to the 55,000 air crew of Bomber Command who died. He added: “We regarded Sir Arthur as a forthright commander, who was carrying out the orders of the British War Cabinet. We want this memorial to him because the post-war government denied him his peerage, and we were denied our campaign medal.” [Photograph] Sir Arthur: Germans called him ‘Butcher’ [New article] “General Sir Arthur Harris” Dear Sir, 6th April 1982 I would like to say what should have been said many years ago. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me courage and hope after we had suffered the devastation of the ‘May Blitz. Bombed out, no light or water in the house, windows broken, shelter useless, our family evacuated to Blackpool but there was no telephone out of Liverpool, no postal service and no direct railways working. We went to the Cinema and heard you on the newsreel giving your sympathy and promising that what we had had would be as a little zephyr to that which you would inflict on the enemy. The tears rained down my face and my despair vanished, I said to my husband, at least someone cares. After that my courage never flagged. Mr. Churchill’s blood, sweat and tears didn’t affect me, but your words I have never forgotten although I am now 83 and my husband 84. Thank you once again. E. A. McKnight (Mrs.) Great Crosby.” Ed: Such was the boost to civilian morale in the darker, hopeless days of war. [New article] [inserted] DAILY TELEGRAPH. 2/10/91 [/inserted] Remembering Bomber H THE PLAN to erect a statue of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, wartime C-in-C of Bomber Command, outside the RAF church of St Clement Danes in the Strand has incurred the wrath of the Lord Mayor of Dresden, who has appealed for the project to be abandoned. Herr Herbert Wagner’s view may command some sympathy even in Britain, among those who today regard the RAF’s strategic bombing offensive against Germany as a serious blunder or even a war crime. Yet it would be ironic if Sir Arthur, by any standards a notable wartime commander, were to be denied a public memorial, while Whitehall, for instance, remains dominated by equestrian statues of Earl Haig and that 19th-century military booby the Duke of Cambridge. Sir Arthur was not the architect of “area” bombing. Churchill, Lord Cherwell, Sir Charles Portal and others embarked upon the air offensive when Britain possessed no other means of carrying the war to Germany. Sir Arthur was appointed to execute the policy, and did so with extraordinary, even obsessive, single-mindedness. If his superiors judged that he exceeded his orders, it was in their power, and was indeed their duty, to remove him. This was never done. Although Dresden featured prominently on Sir Arthur’s target lists in February 1945, it was Churchill, rather than Bomber Command’s C-in-C, whose concern to impress the Russians before Yalta precipitated the devastating attack. Just as killing British civilians in the Blitz did not break Britain’s will to fight, so killing or “de-housing” far larger numbers of German civilians did not break that of Germany. But it is not good enough, half a century later, to seek to equate, for example, the mass murders in Germany’s concentration camps with the RAF’s bombing of Germany. There was no doubt then, and there remains none today, of the strategic military purpose that underpinned the bomber offensive, however uncertain its achievement. Sir Arthur was tough, even ruthless; but also a formidable leader of great forces. He passionately believed that his men’s efforts were bringing Germany to defeat. He deserves to be commemorated, not least for the satisfaction of his surviving aircrew, who revere his memory, and whose courage and sacrifice were beyond praise. The Lord Mayor of Dresden may be forgiven for uttering sentiments that might be expected of his office. But he should not be heeded. [New article] [inserted] 2/10/91 [/inserted] Bombing was justified SIR – While appreciating the feelings that have prompted the Lord Mayor of Dresden to call for the plans for a statue of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris to be dropped (report, Oct. 1), I am afraid that he does not realise the context in which the bombing offensive was launched. The decision was a political one made by the War Cabinet and backed by the Americans. Without it there would have been no re-entry into Europe in 1944. Back in 1940 Europe was conquered. The British Army had been defeated. The Royal Navy could only just keep the crucial Atlantic lifeline open; it could not conceivably blockade Germany which, with access to all the raw materials he wanted, Hitler was building into an impregnable fortress. The war had to be carried to Germany, and the bomber was the only means available. As a result of the vast quantity of resources and manpower diverted to the defence of Germany – 900,000 men for searchlights and ack-ack alone – it acted as the equivalent of a second front from 1941. Most important of all, together with the U.S. 8th Air Force, the bomber offensive forced the Luftwaffe to come up and fight – leading to its final defeat. When the Normandy invasion began, there was not one German aircraft over the beach. Had their bombers been there, I doubt it would have succeeded. Of the 55 million lives lost in the war, 35 million were those of civilians. The bomber offensive accounted for about 500,000. Every day that the war lasted, an average of 10,000 innocent men, women and children were exterminated by Hitler in his concentration camps; and as it progressed, that extermination programme accelerated, a very different story from Dunkirk. Inevitably, in a life and death struggle of such magnitude, mistakes are made. One of them, in my view, was Dresden. But it was a mistake made in good faith, because it was based on intelligence reports, some of which proved to be false. The city lay only 50 miles from the advancing Russians, who had asked for maximum bombing along the whole line. At the same time the appearance of the German jet Me.262 signalled to us that the tide of the air war could be turned if it were produced in large numbers, and brought an added sense of urgency to finish the war as quickly as possible, in Germany’s true interests as well as that of the Allies. Had we not returned to Europe in June 1944, I shudder to think what would have been. All the same, everyone in Bomber Command regrets the mistakes and wishes, to this day, that some other means of prising open Fortress Europe could have been found. Group Captain the Lord CHESHIRE London SW1 [inserted] D/TELEGRAPH [/inserted] 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 Four Newspaper cuttings Description An account of the resource Item 1 refers to a protest from Dresden over a statue to Sir Arthur Harris. Item 2 is a letter thanking Sir Arthur Harris from a couple bombed out of their home in Liverpool. Item 3 is an article titled 'Remembering Bomber H'. Item 4 is a letter from Group Captain Lord Cheshire arguing the bombing was justified. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Daily Telegraph Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991-10 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Four newspaper cuttings on an album page Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context PThomasAF20050044 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 United States Army Air Force Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe British Army Royal Navy Royal Air Force. Fighter Command Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Germany--Dresden Ukraine--I︠A︡lta Great Britain England--Liverpool England--Coventry Germany Ukraine England--Lancashire England--Warwickshire 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. Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1991-10 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource David Bloomfield Anne-Marie Watson bombing bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945) Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992) Churchill, Winston (1874-1965) Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984) perception of bombing war Portal, Charles (1893-1971) searchlight https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/87/2148/WoolgarR [Pesaro].jpg 6696b37cde158c2d6a039b276028b19f https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/files/original/87/2148/AWoolgarRLA160614.mp3 b9431c15a89852018320c9d130b2f688 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 Woolgar, Reg Reg Woolgar R L A Woolgar Jimmy Woolgar Subject The topic of the resource World War (1939-1945) Bombing, Aerial Description An account of the resource <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/browse?collection=87">17 items</a>. The collection consists of an oral history&nbsp;<a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/2148">interview</a> with air gunner Reginald Woolgar DFC (1920 - 2024, 139398 Royal Air Force), correspondence to his father about him being missing in action and subsequently rescued from the sea, his <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/2205">log book</a>, <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/854">service and release book</a> and nine photographs.<br /><br /> He flew operations as an air gunner with 49 and 192 Squadrons.<br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Reg Woolgar and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle. <br /><br />This collection also contains items concerning John William Wilkinson. Additional information on John William Wilkinson is available via the&nbsp;<a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/125319/">IBCC Losses Database</a>. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Woolgar, R Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-06-04 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. Requires A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence. Please scroll down to see all X items in this collection. Reg ‘Jimmy’ Woolgar was born and schooled in Hove. He began working life as a valuations assistant and was training to be a surveyor, which was interrupted when, in December 1939, he joined the RAF. Although he had aspirations to become a pilot, he trained as a wireless operator/air gunner instead. His wireless operator training was carried out at the wireless training school, RAF Yatesbury. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/87/849/PWoolgarRLA1609.2.jpg His air gunnery training on Fairy Battle aircraft was conducted at RAF West Freugh. On 15 November 1940 he was promoted to sergeant and posted to No 10 OTU at RAF Upper Heyford. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/87/845/PWoolgarRLA1601.2.jpg Initially flying Anson aircraft and then Hampdens with C Flight, he had his first ‘Lucky Jim’ moment, on 6 February 1941, when his Hampden aircraft was forced to crash land in a field near Cottesmore, in Lincolnshire. The aircraft was written off, but he and the pilot survived with minor injuries. At the end of operational training, instead of going directly onto operasations, he spent the next 5 months as a screen operator instructor. Eventually, on 1 September 1941, he was posted to 49 Squadron, Hampdens, at RAF Scampton https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/852 where his very first operational trip (described as a baptism of fire) was to Berlin. With headwinds going out and coming back, and nil visibility, it was likely the crew would have to bail out. Fortunately, the skipper found a break in the clouds and the aircraft landed wheels down in a field near Louth. The aircraft had to be recovered back to base, transported by road, on a low loader. On another occasion, on a mine laying operation to Oslo Fjord, his aircraft was peppered with anti-aircraft fire, it returned to base with 36 bullet holes in the fuselage and mainplane. A bullet had also passed through the upright of his gun sight while he was looking through it, whilst another tore through his flying suit. The nickname ‘Lucky Jim’ was beginning to stick. In February 1942, on an operation to Manheim, the port engine, hit by flak, cut dead. Despite jettisoning all superfluous weight, which unfortunately included all the navigation equipment, the aircraft rapidly lost height, and the pilot ditched the aircraft in the English Channel. Whilst the crew had struggled to keep the aircraft airborne, (on a single engine), it had steered on a massive curve and unbeknown to them was headed down the English Channel, before it ditched. The crew scrambled out onto the wing and managed to inflate the dingy, then had to cut the cord attaching the dingy to the aircraft using a pair of nail scissors, moments before it sunk. In the water for hours, the crew thought they were drifting near the Yorkshire coast, but were rescued by a motor anti-submarine boat, much to their surprise, near the Isle of Wight. Operational flying was intense, Reg would feel wound up before take-off and there was much apprehension on the way out to the target. Often, they flew through intense flak that was sometimes so close they could smell it. There was always a sense of sense of relief once they came away from the target. In between operations, each day was treated as it came along with many off-duty hours spent socialising in the local hostelries https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/853 After his first operational tour (he completed two) he was commissioned and became gunnery leader with 192 Squadron in 100 Group. After the war ended, he signed on for an extra two years and was posted to Palestine as an air movements staff officer. Luck was again on his side when, one day, he was on his way to an Air Priorities Board Meeting at the King David Hotel when the hotel was bombed, resulting in many army and civilian casualties. After a short tour in Kenya, as Senior Movements Staff Officer, he returned to Palestine flying with 38 Squadron until August 1947. In his flying career he amassed over 1000 flying hours. For services to his country Reg was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/858 He was released from the RAF in September 1947. Initially employed as an assistant valuations officer, he studied to become a Chartered Surveyor and secured a job as a senior valuer with the City of London. He later became the planning valuer of the city. After 14 years he was made a partner at the firm St Quintin Son and Stanley. Reg retired in 1971. 08 December 1939: Joined RAF as a wireless operator/air gunner 28 August 1940: 145, 3 Wing, RAF Yatesbury - Wireless Operator training 29 October 1940 - 15 November 1940: RAF West Freugh, No 4 Bombing and Gunnery School, flying Battle aircraft November 1940: Promoted to Sergeant 15 November 1940 - 20 August 1941: RAF Upper Heyford, No 10 Operational Training Unit flying Anson and Hampden aircraft 02 September 1941 - 24 March 1942: RAF Scampton, 49 Squadron, flying Hampden aircraft 28 April 1942 - 24 June 1942: 1485 Target Towing and Gunnery Flight flying Whitley and Wellington aircraft 02 July 1942 – 3 July 1942: RAF Manby, Air Gunnery Instructor Course 4 July – 10 July 1942: RAF Scampton, Air Gunnery Instructor flying Manchester and Oxford aircraft 25 July 1942 – 10 August 1942: RAF Wigsley, Air Gunnery Instructor flying Lancaster aircraft 3 October – 27 October 1942: RAF Sutton Bridge flying Wellington and Hampden aircraft 28 October 1942: RAF Sutton Bridge, Gunnery Leader Course End of 1942: Awarded RAF Commission 09 Nov 1942 – 18 March 1943: RAF Fulbeck flying Manchester aircraft 14 May 1943 – 11 June 1944: RAF Sutton Bridge flying Wellington aircraft 20 June 1944 – 27 July 1945 RAF Foulsham, 192 Squadron flying Halifax and Wellington aircraft 29 April 1946 – 30 August 1946: Palestine, Air Movements Staff Officer 01 September 1946 – 21 January 1947: Kenya, Senior Movements Staff Officer 30 January1947 – 10 June 1947: Ein Shemer, Palestine, 38 Squadron flying Lancaster aircraft 13 July 1947 139398 Flt Lt RLA Woolgar released from Service. Transcribed audio recording A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice. Transcription Text transcribed from audio recording or document DE: Start the, start the interview. RJW: On our seventieth wedding anniversary my grandson stood up and said Papa, Reg, Jimmy because they had all three, all three generations there. Sorry. Sorry. DE: Ok. So this is an interview with Reg Jimmy Woolgar at the International Bomber Command Centre in Riseholme Lincoln. It’s for the IBCC Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin. It is the 14th of June 2016. Reg. Jimmy. Just for the start of this tape could you tell me about your early life and your childhood before you joined the RAF. RJW: Well before I joined the RAF I left school in Hove and I joined the rates department as the junior clerk and it was really the office boy who made the tea but I became a valuations assistant in the valuation department there before the war and started to train as a surveyor and in 1939 on the 8th of December I went to the Queen’s Road Recruiting Office and I joined the RAF and there I was in a few days on my way to Uxbridge with about five or six other guys all from office appointments. When I joined I, like everybody else who wanted to join the RAF, I wanted to be a pilot. Well I actually went to the Queen’s Road office in September and they wrote to me and said, ‘We have an influx of pilot training but we can take you as air crew.’ I went to see them, asked what that meant. They said, ‘Well you will fly as a member of an air crew.’ I said, ‘Well can I ever become a pilot?’ ‘Oh yes,’ they said, ‘Once you’ve trained as air crew you can become a pilot.’ But of course it never happened because it just seemed to be that whenever I, wherever I went I eventually became an instructor and after being trained as instructor they didn’t really want me to be a pilot or anything else so I concentrated on doing wireless operating/air gunnery. That really is what happened to me before the war. Is there anything else you’d like to know? DE: Well, yeah. What was, what was training like? RJW: Pardon? DE: What was training like? RJW: Training. Ah. Well now we went to Uxbridge for the ab initio course, the square bashing. Famous words which you’ve used, heard before, you know the sergeant who comes in to the billet and says, ‘Anybody here play the piano?’ ‘Oh yes, I play the piano.’ ‘I play the piano.’ ‘Oh well you two go and move the piano from the officer’s mess to the sergeant’s mess.’ Having got all through all that, off we went. First of all we went to Mildenhall doing absolutely nothing because there was a bottleneck of getting to the wireless training school so we spent about three or four weeks at Mildenhall doing guard duty. Sometimes going in the cookhouse even and then we went to a station called North Coates Fitties on the east coast and we, we mainly did guard duty there. We were, it was a fighter squadron and we were sent out to guard the beacons around, around the runway, all that sort of thing. Waste of time but never mind. That took us until the early part of 1940 and then we were posted down to Yatesbury, wireless training course. I think that took, I can’t be absolutely certain, the dates are in my logbook but I think it must have taken us until about April, oh, yes, it took us ‘till about April and then we went to West Freugh on the east coast er west coast of Scotland for gunnery training and low and behold we all became sergeants. I can always remember the advice given to us by a warrant officer, the peacetime warrant officers and people of that ilk they did some, a little bit resent that air crew would automatically become sergeants but they did try to knock us into shape and I remember we had a cockney warrant, station warrant officer who tried to guide us on etiquette in the sergeant’s mess and he said, ‘Ah, er, you will be at liberty to invite ladies to a mess dance but make sure you invite ladies [emphasise] and not ladies.’ And he said, ‘Now you’ve got three stripes, the girls will be chasing you but just be careful who you pick if you marry them,’ and he gave jolly good advice, he said, ‘Take a good look at her mother because what she’s going to be like in twenty to thirty years’ time.’ Anyway, off we went. They sent us on leave and said that we would be, receive instructions for posting and we did. We, we, a new, another bottleneck for OTU so in the meantime we went to Andover. Now, Andover, I was there at the time of Dunkirk. I remember that because going into the local town, cinema and that sort of thing the local army chaps that were coming back from Dunkirk were a bit fed up with the RAF because they hadn’t seen any Spitfires so it wasn’t a very comfortable time but from there we went to OTU. Now that was number 10 OTU at Heyford, Upper Heyford. We had our first real flights. Started off in Ansons, staff pilot taking a delight in trying to do aerobatics in an Anson to see how many guys they could make sick but anyway [laughs] we, we were supposed to crew up but it was a bit of a haphazard thing. You found yourself in one crew one week and another crew the next week. I had my very first Jimmy escape there. Um, it had been snowing and we were grounded and then suddenly there was a break and we were sent off and I was sent off with a New Zealand pilot, Sandy somebody. I can’t remember, and he was a bit dodgy. Anyway, we took off and the cloud base came down, fog or, no, cloud base and I couldn’t get a peep out of the wireless set, I couldn’t get a DCM back to base so we stooged around for a bit and he said over the intercom, ‘Jimmy I’m going to land in a field.’ ‘Oh ok.’ I decided, I came out of the rear upper turret and I crawled back and I sat up behind him. He came down to a field, through a break heading for some trees I thought but he put his wheels down and of course it was a ploughed field underneath the snow. He came in very fast and we went, tipped right over, right over. At the very last moment apparently, I never remember doing this, I leaned over his shoulder and knocked his, the quick release of his harness and he flew out of the cockpit and down. He hit the ground, he broke a rib I think, and the aircraft went over and I shot back, right back to the back bulkhead and I had a bit of a head wound but it wasn’t very much and the aircraft was a right off. Right. It didn’t catch fire thank God. We were called away. When we had the inquest with the CO I got a right rollicking 'cause I couldn’t get through to base on the radio but I couldn’t get anything out of it but I even got a bigger one for releasing his harness and they said, ‘That was, you should never have done that but you saved his life.’ They said that, ‘Had you not done that he would have broken his, he would probably, he probably would have broken his neck or broken his back.’ So it was a good thing that it happened but it shouldn’t have done [laughs]. I had another, I was in another crash there where we ran up behind another aircraft and damaged it and injured the rear gunner but I was at the far end so I was ok. But this seemed to happen to me for some reason or other and I don’t know why, at the end of the course instead of going off on ops with a crew I was what they called screened. I was a screen operator instructor and I flew in Hampdens and Ansons with crews coming through. Just looking after them actually. Making sure that the wireless operators did what they should do or got through if they couldn’t and that sort of thing. I was there for oh far too long. I didn’t arrive on to the squadron, 49 Squadron, until the 1st of September 1941. My very first trip was to Berlin. The very experienced pilot, Pilot Officer Falconer, who was quite elderly, he was twenty six so we called him uncle [laughs]. He eventually, he became a wing commander, he commanded a squadron but he was killed unfortunately. Very nice guy. Anyway, after we went to Berlin and on that occasion it was quite a famous one. Head wind going out, head wind coming back. Ten tenths cloud and nil visibility coming in. Being given the order to go on to 090 and bail out so we got there and Uncle Falconer said to the crew, ‘We may have to bail out chaps.’ So then squeaky voiced me from the back said, ‘Oh skipper, I’ve pulled my chute.’ Actually I’d pulled it on the way out and I was more scared of having a DCO that is, Duty Not Carried Out, DNCO and being responsible for returning than actually taking my chance with the chute so I kept mum, I didn’t say anything. And when I told him I can’t actually repeat for the tape exactly what he said but it wasn’t very polite and I don’t blame him. In actual fact he found a break in the, in the overcast and he landed with wheels down in a field at a place called Withcall. Withcall near Louth and um, er, near Melton Mowbray. It was under some high tension cables and it was so tight they couldn’t fly the aircraft out. They took the wings off and put it on a loader to get it back. That was my first trip. Baptism of fire. Every trip, nearly every trip has an anecdote but the ones that stand out are, we went up to Inverness or somewhere. I can’t remember. It’s in the logbook. Inverness or somewhere like that to do a trip to Oslo Fjord laying mines, being told, ‘Chaps pick the right fjord because if you don’t you’ll come up against a blank face of rock and you won’t be able to turn around.’ Anyway, we did. It was almost daylight all the time. Up we went, down the fjord, laid our mine. Coming back, on the headland, as we passed across the headland em we were fired on. Some light tracer stuff came up. Very small. I said, I was at the rear of course as the wireless op. I said, ‘Oh, let’s go around and shoot them up because there’s other guys behind us.’ And the skipper said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ So we circled around, we came back and all hell let loose. They peppered us. We had thirty six holes on our starboard side wing, starboard fuselage mainplane but it didn’t affect the aircraft. I think the flak was a little bit dodgy but anyway came back all right. As I got out of the aircraft the ground crew came and they said, ‘Hey sarge,’ they said to me, ‘Have you seen your cockpit?’ I said, ‘No, what’s wrong?’ ‘It’s got bullet holes in it.’ ‘It’s got bullet holes in it?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ And they said, ‘Look your flying suit’s all torn’. And there’s a bullet hole at the back of me and then you know after I’d been sent to recover [laughs]. They next came to me and said, ‘You’re never going to believe this.’ The upright of the gun sight on my VGO twin guns had a bullet hole through it like that. The armourer gave it to me. I had it for many, many, many years. Unfortunately, it was lost but it was, I was proud to be able to show a bullet came out [?] as I was looking through it [laughs] so you know why the name lucky Jim sticks doesn’t it? DE: Yeah. Definitely yeah. RJW: Well that was then. We were, er, we tasted one of the first delights of the master searchlight. They introduced a blue central searchlight beam, radar controlled I think and all the other beams came on it and we were over Hamburg and we caught that and we had a hell of a pasting with the flak but old Allsebrook was very good and he got us out of that. We had one or two other things but like everybody else did. You never got, you couldn’t get through trips without having some sort of trouble sort of thing. DE: Sure, sure. RJW: Anyway, my last, no, next to last trip of course was by ditching which I’ve written about. Would you like me to — ? DE: If you could talk about that for the tape that would be wonderful as well. Yes please. RJW: Oh yes. DE: Yeah. RJW: Well here goes. We took off about, I don’t know when it was. We were on Hampden G for George A397. We em, we were going to Mannheim. I think it was our twenty third trip and by this time we were a bit blasé. We thought going to be a piece of cake this. Mannheim. Yeah. That’s alright. So we weren’t really worried about it. The trip out was perfectly alright, over the target there was some flak but it wasn’t heavy flak, it wasn’t very much and we didn’t think that we’d caught any but just as we left the target our port engine cut dead and Ralph wasn’t able to do the relevant, it just stuck there. So we started to lose height. We lost height, we were somewhere about seventeen, eighteen thousand feet and we came down to four thousand eventually. In the process of doing that we got rid of all the heavy stuff we could think of. The guns. The bombsight. Unfortunately, Bob, the navigator, Bob Stanbridge stuck all his nav gear into parachute, one of the parachute bags that he used to take it out there, opened the doors in the navigator’s position, they swing inwards and to get rid of the bomb sight and the nav bag went out as well so we didn’t have any —. Anyway, off we went. Ralph was getting cramp in his leg holding the opposite rudder because of the loss of the port engine. Bob tried to tie the rudder pedal back with a scarf but couldn’t. Then I had a go. That was the scariest moment of all 'cause I had to unplug my intercom and had to crawl underneath in the dark but I did — I did actually manage to tie it up and that lasted for a while. I sent a plain language message out while we were still over France to say that we’d lost our port engine and may have to bail out, and although I was never a good wireless operator and I hated being a wireless operator, that message got through [laughs]. Anyway, eventually the fuel was down to zero and Ralph said, ‘Well, we’re over the sea, we’re going to ditch.’ So by this time of course we’d got all the hatches open because we’d been ready to bail out so all the sea came in. Anyway, he made — he made a good landing on top of the fog to begin with [laughs] but after that he made a jolly good landing and down we went. We scrambled out on to the wing, on to the port wing. The dinghy was supposed to burst out of the engine nacelle because of an immersion plug but of course it didn’t but Bob knew the procedure and with the heel of his flying boot he dug into the port engine nacelle and pulled the plug and up came the dinghy and started to inflate. It didn’t fully inflate but it started to inflate and by this time the four of us were standing on the, on the wing. All our ankles were awash in water. We then saw that the dinghy was attached by a cord disappearing into the engine nacelle and one of us said, ‘Well if the immersion plug didn’t work this won’t work, we’ll be pulled down,’ and Ralph said, I don’t know whether he said, ‘Just a minute chaps,’ but I think he might have done. He undid his flying jacket, went into his tunic pocket, pulled out a little tiny leather case out of which he took a pair of folding nail scissors, he then — he cut the cord, he did the scissors up, put them back in the case, back in to his pocket and he stepped into the dinghy with the rest of us. As we shoved off dear old G for George went down under the waves and there we were. We had to pump the dinghy up with the bellows because it wasn’t fully inflated but we managed alright. We were absolutely enhanced with the rations that were actually sealed in the bottom because there was a notice on it that said “Only to be opened in the presence of an officer” [laughs] so we said, ‘Well good for you Ralph.’ He was a pilot officer. And come daylight, in the far distance we did just spot what we thought were high tension pylons and some cliffs and we thought, well we were heading for Scampton of course, we thought oh well perhaps we’d drifted too far north, over-compensated and we were off Yorkshire, Whitby or somewhere like that. Anyway, not long after that that disappeared, we drifted around. We used the coloured dye, fluorescent dye in to the sea to identify ourselves and paddled and paddled around and eventually came back and found we were at the same spot again. The sun came out in the morning. It was very cold and very choppy. It was the 14th / 15th of February. It was cold. Anyway, we suddenly saw a school of porpoise and that was light relief until one of the crew said, ‘Yeah it’s all very well but what happens if one of these guys comes up underneath the dinghy?’ he said. Furious paddling away. We weren’t really gloomy, I don’t know why. I seem to think oh yeah, well we may get picked up but for no particular reason. We did see an aircraft which we thought was a Beaufighter in the distance but it didn’t see us. We sent the flares up but it didn’t do any good and then quite late in the afternoon we heard an aircraft engine and out came a Walrus. Circled round, waggled it’s wings, stayed with us, only a short time and off it went and it was almost two hours later when a motor anti-submarine boat pulled up and dragged us aboard. Eh, first question was, ‘Where are we?’ And somebody said, ‘We’re off St Catherine’s Point.’ ‘Oh, St Catherine’s Point. Where’s that?’ ‘The Isle of Wight.’ [laughs] And instead of being off Yorkshire we’d taken a huge curve and we’d been flying down the channel so luckily our fuel had run out when it did and we didn’t go too far out but the other thing was that the navy crew told us, ‘You’re dead lucky because you’re near a minefield. If you’d been in a minefield we wouldn’t have come out.’ So it was jolly good. We um, we survived all that, all three of us. Jack had frostbite. I remember cuddling his feet under my jacket actually ‘cause he was very cold. He got frostbite because he’d been sitting in the tin and he’d had the hatch open all the way but that was the only casualty that we had but it was quite a week because if I remember rightly at the beginning of the week we went to Essen, which was never much of a cup of tea that place, it was always pretty hot. And in the middle of the week we went on the Channel Dash. The Channel Dash was when the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau left Brest and that was quite curious because we’d been standing by for several days and we’d been given a sector. Our sector was off somewhere near Le Havre. If they ever got that far we were told that we would have to go out. On this particular morning after a while on standby we were stood down from the Channel Dash and the weather wasn’t very good but our bomb load was changed from armour piercing to GP bombs and we were sent off on a night flying test possibly for ops that night. We were recalled while we were actually in the air and sent off but not to Le Havre but off the coast of Holland because the ships had gone that far and been undetected and off we went. We didn’t see the ships but we saw, we think, an armed merchantman or something or other which was firing away but we didn’t really get near. The weather was so bad we really couldn’t see. What we did see, we saw a Wellington and we didn’t know that Wellingtons were on the trip but later we discovered that there was an armed, an unmarked Wellington which the Germans had captured and they were using it as an escort for the ships and it was coming in and some crews actually did encounter it firing you know. We only just saw it. We didn’t get through [?]. Anyway, it was uneventful for us in actual fact. I think we lost four crews out of the twelve that were sent up. I think I’m right about that but it’s in our journal. One more trip we did together as a crew and then later I’ll talk, I’ll talk about my rear gunner. DE: Ok, yeah, yeah. RJW: Our pilot, J F Allsebrook was posted away, the crew was split up. I think Bob Stanbridge was also posted but myself and Jack Wilkinson, Jack Wilkinson, he was the rear gunner we were left hanging around to be crewed up as wanted. Anyway, we started to crew up with Reg Worthy. A very competent pilot and we were very happy with that and in March we were crewed to go with him on ops. Unfortunately I had contracted sinusitis. Oh I remember. I’ll talk about that later, I’d contracted sinusitis and at times I got it very badly. It was very painful so I went up in the morning to sick call [?] — sick bay to try to get some inhalations to help me and they tested me and grounded me. They said, ‘You’re not flying like that. You won’t be able to hear anyway.’ [laughs] I protested a lot because I wanted to do the trip but no, no and when I broke the news to Jack he was extremely despondent. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to opt out. ‘I don’t want to go without you Jimmy because you’re lucky.’ I persuaded him that he’d be alright and, because I was replaced by McGrenery [?] who was a very competent WOP/AG who’d flown with me on a number of occasion and he was a hell of a nice guy. Sadly, the trip was to Essen and they were caught by an ace night fighter pilot called Reinhold Knacke on the way back, off the coast of Holland, just on the border and they were shot down. All killed. Reg Worthy and McGrenery were buried in Holland and Jack was washed up off the coast of Denmark. It’s quite amazing actually. And he’s buried in Stavanger. So there’s sad [?]. I had this sinus trouble. It was because much earlier on, on a trip to Brest we were in the target area and we lost oxygen and when you lose oxygen you dive down so we did a very steep dive very quickly and apparently my left frontal sinus became perforated. This bedevilled me a lot. In fact the problem was if you went through the medics with it too much you got yourself grounded and of course you lost your rank as a sergeant, you lost everything. So you didn’t sing too much about it. I remember that after the, after ops I was posted to a couple of training units. One at Wigsley. I’ve forgotten the name of the other just for the moment but it’s in my logbook, anyway, not far out of Lincoln and I can remember later on my wife came out to live in Lincoln. I remember we sought a doctor up in Lincoln in private practice to try and get some treatment for this sinusitis and you’re leaping right now to the end of the war. At the end of the war I was posted to air ministry, movement’s branch and I still had sinus problems and so I thought I’d seek the advice of the air ministry doctor. I got a good guy there. His advice was, ‘Well we can drill, we can drill a hole through the roof of your mouth for drainage but I don’t advise it. It may not be successful but if you had a couple of years in a warm dry climate that would do you good,’ and as a result of that I had a medical post for an extended period of two year service and I went, of all places, to Palestine of course but after that to Kenya but I’ll talk about that later on. DE: Sure, yeah. RJW: Anyway, coming back to 1942, during the ops period the intruders started following aircraft coming in and landing and so air crew were billeted out. We were sent to small holdings. I was sent to a small holding, an absolutely delightful elderly couple who had strawberry fields there. Very nice indeed. I spent one night there. I told them, ‘Take the payment but I’m not going to be here. If anybody wants to know, oh yes I’m here but I’ve gone to town.’ And with a friend of mine, Mick Hamnett from 83 Squadron, we found a couple of rooms in the City of Lincoln pub in, in the centre of Lincoln and whenever possible we actually spent the night there. It was quite a pub. It was run by a lady by the name of Dorothy Scott whose husband, Lionel I think his name was, was a nav, was away in the RAF as a navigator. Anyway, it was an air crew haunt. At the back of the pub she had converted what had been a store room into a very cosy bar and that was where air crew from various squadrons accumulated. In fact at the end of 1942, towards the end of 1942 my wife came up and we, we lived there, lived out there. Unofficially of course. And one night while we were out there was an incendiary raid on Lincoln, huge chandelier flares and the City of Lincoln was hit with a fire bomb, particularly our bedroom but the local fire brigade did far more damage with their water then the actual firebomb. Anyway, coming back to the ops period, I’m sure that you’ve heard all these stories before but of course we were bounded with rumours and things like that. The first thing we heard was that oh the vicar of Scampton did a hasty retreat when war started because he was a Nazi spy [laughs]. The other story was of the policeman who was standing at the erm, at the Stonebow one evening and the aircraft were taking off, going off and he made a remark to a passer-by, ‘It’s going to be pretty hot in Berlin tonight.’ It so happened that they were going to Berlin and he was removed. But the other story, well whether that was true or not I don’t know but the other tale which is perfectly true. There was a hotel by the Stonebow called the Saracen’s Head which we called the Snake Pit for some reason. Very good. Good food. You could get a steak there. Very nice. There was a barmaid there by the name of Mary. She was a New Zealander and she was older than any of us. She was probably late thirties, early forties. She was a charming lady and she had an amazing memory and she was our local post box because we’d been to OTUs either to Upper Heyford or Cottesmore. We’d got pals on that and then we were posted to squadrons around, different squadrons around Lincoln and you wanted to know how your pals got on and you could, you could tell her. She knew, you know, you know that George Smith or somebody would say, ‘Did he get back? He was on 44 on Waddington.’ ‘Oh yes he’s alright.’ All this sort of thing you see and the story goes and I think this is in one of Gibson’s books that at the time of the 617 training at Scampton Mary was lifted out of the bar and sent on some paid leave down at Devon. I don’t know whether you’ve heard that story before. Yes. It’s written down somewhere but I can tell you that that wasn’t a rumour. That was true. The other delightful story is really good. In those days there was a lady entertainer by the name of Phyllis Dixey. She was a fan dancer. Probably the first stripper in England right, and she was performing at the Theatre Royal. Some lads, some air gunners got hold of a twelve volt acc and an aldis lamp, got themselves up into the Gods. The end of the act was the dear lady removed her fans strategically as the curtains closed and they shone the aldis lamp [laughs] which I gather was true. Anyway, going on from Scampton and Lincoln I was posted, I was sent on first of all air gunner instructor’s course at Manby. Came back from there and instructed at Wigsley and then sent to Sutton Bridge on a gunnery leader’s course. I did rather well on the course simply because I think I was able to drink as much beer as the course instructor [laughs] and we, I got an, I got an A which meant I was a gunnery leader A and when I came back to base the gunnery leader said, ‘Oh you can’t be a, you can’t be a gunnery leader A, you can’t be a gunnery leader as a sergeant. You’d better apply for a commission. Fill these forms in.’ So, this is true. It was incredible. I filled the forms in and I said something about, ‘Oh I can’t remember,’ and he said, ‘Oh don’t worry about it they don’t check anything,’ he said, you know, I thought this was a bit casual. Anyway, anyway I did remember what was necessary and my interview, however I was, I had a sort of an office, well not really an office, a place, kept stores [?] and things like that where I operated from. Schedules of flying and things like that looking after air gunners as an instructor and one day a little guy came in, in to my office with some papers and in some flying overalls and one of the epaulettes was flying down like that so I didn’t know what he was actually and he started asking me questions about the, about the commission you know like, ‘What’s your father do?’ And that sort of question, you know. Anyway I suddenly looked at his other shoulder and he was a wing commander and it was the famous Gus Walker and this was before he lost his arm. I was on the station when some incendiary bombs were, no photoflashes or something, something went wrong with an aircraft out in dispersal and he rushed out from flying control in a van to try and get the crew out and the bombs went up and he lost his arm. He was a hell of a nice guy. So informal it wasn’t true. I think he became an air marshal, air chief marshal or something. A big rugby referee. And I think that’s about all I can think of that of that era but then when I went to, when I, yes when I was commissioned, commissioned, gosh when was it? Probably the end of ‘42 beginning of ’43, almost immediately I was sent back to Sutton Bridge as an instructor instructing gunnery leaders and then we stayed there. Oh well that was quite good. We had a number of Polish pilots who were really very good pilots and we did a lot of low level flying quite illegally. There was one stretch where a road and the canal and a railway was spanned by high tension cables and if you felt like it they’d fly underneath them if they could and pray they weren’t found out. But these guys were really, really low level and we used to, we had a front, there was a guy in the front, we were flying Wellingtons mainly, sometimes Hampdens but mainly Wellingtons and put a guy in the front turret and aim for a group of trees you know [laughs]. Dear me. Those were the days. And then we moved station from there up to Catfoss and there when I was at Catfoss my pilot, old pilot Ralph Allsebrook came back, landed one day and said, ‘Jimmy, I’ve joined 617 Squadron. It’s a special duties squadron.’ We didn’t know, I didn’t know anything about the, we didn’t know about, it was before the dam raids but we didn’t know what they were doing but he said, ‘I’d like you to be in the crew.’ So I said, ‘Yes. Good. Fine.’ I was a flying officer by that time and so I said, ‘How do you go about it?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Leave it to me, I’ll push the buttons and see the CO.’ Well he did but they were adamant that I wouldn’t go. He said, ‘No, you can’t go. You’re an instructor, a trained instructor here. We want you as an instructor and,’ they said, ‘In any case Trevor Roper is the gunnery leader of 49 Squadron. They don’t need two gunnery leaders. So I didn’t go. Ralph wasn’t on the dam raid because I don’t think he was finished training, whatever it was but he wasn’t on it but much later on he was on another raid, I think it was the Kiel Canal and many of the aircraft were lost including him. It was bad weather I think mainly. So I was lucky again, I didn’t join them. But I did get a bit fed up with not, not being allowed to go back on ops and we had a guy, one of our instructor’s, fellow instructors, a chap called Griffiths I remember, he went to, left us and went to Bomber Command headquarters I think it was. Either to Group, no, it was Bomber Command headquarters that’s right and he came back, he visited the squadron one day and I said, you know, ‘Could you get me a squadron?’ You know. And he said, ‘You want to do a second tour Jimmy?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t mind doing a second tour.’ He said, ‘Yeah, leave it with me.’ So I got posted to 192 Squadron at Foulsham. I got, I got a rollicking from the CO at the, at Catfoss because of the gunnery wing, CO of the gunnery wing. He eventually found out that I’d, I’d wangled it through Griffiths you see but anyway I went. I arrived on the squadron which was fairly newly formed. It had been a flight before. I can’t, off the back of my head I can’t tell you the details of that but it was a flight and it had become a special duty squadron. It was doing radar investigation. We carried special operators. They were civilians dressed in RAF uniform just in case they were prisoners of war and at the same time David Donaldson joined the squadron. A hell of a nice guy. And it was a very happy squadron. We shared it with, I can’t remember the actual number of the squadron, six something, six hundred and something Australian squadron shared the station with us at Foulsham. A bit primitive but it was alright and I had about fifty gunners. We had two flights of Halifax 3s and a flight of Wellingtons and we also had some Mosquitos and a couple of Lightnings and we would fly with main force, carrying bombs of course. Not all the time but we did carry bombs and we were endeavouring, or the special duties operators were endeavouring to discover radar frequencies and wireless frequencies on which the enemy were operating. Early warning systems and the fighter aircraft they were using and that sort of thing. It was quite interesting. All highly secretive. They had a lot of gear set up in the centre of the fuselage and it was all screened off with canvas. You couldn’t get at it and you couldn’t get any gen out of them about what happened, but it was pretty good. We initially we flew as a crew. The leaders David Donaldson, Roy Kendrick the navigation leader, Churchill, he told me his name was Churchill actually, he was the signals leader I remember that. Anyway, and Hank Cooper who was the head of the special, the special duties guys and anyway, and myself as gunnery leader and 100 Group put a stop to that because they decided that if they lost the aircraft they lost all the leaders so we were “invited”, inverted commas to occasionally fly with a crew that might have been a bit dodgy to try and put a finger on if there was a weakness. So from flying with the very best pilot on the squadron suddenly found yourselves with the worst one but it didn’t amount to anything. It was ok. I didn’t have any scary times. My logbook shows the trips I took. We did the normal things with the main force. I didn’t do any Berlin ones. A bit late in the day for that I think but they were the ordinary trips that everybody else was doing. Oh well, there were occasions. We did stooge off from main stream. I think the theory, the theory was that if, they didn’t mind if we attracted the odd fighter so they could find out what they were operating on. Now look, here’s is a really good story. We had on the squadron a pilot by the name of H Preston [?] who was quite a joker. I flew with him on a trip and we got diverted on one occasion to a station down in 3 Group. Stirlings I think. And we had the usual eggs and bacon breakfast and all that sort of thing and we wanted to get back to base in the very early morning and when we got out to the aircraft we had quite a lot of air crew on the station walking around it because we had antennae sticking out all over the place, you see. So Hayter-Preston was asked about a particular thing that was coming out of the back and he said, ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘That’s marmalade.’ They said, ‘What?’ ‘Well haven’t you got that? They said, ‘No, he said, ‘What does it do?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘If a fighter comes up behind you and that’s turned on, it stops their engine.’ ‘Oh,’ he said. Anyway, off we went back to base and went through briefing and about half way through the morning a loud shout from the CO’s office, ‘Hayter-Preston’s crew to my office immediately.’ Off we trot to his office. David Donaldson said, ‘HP, what’s all this thing you’ve been talking about down at,’ wherever we were.’ ‘I don’t know sir.’ He said, ‘I’ve had Group on to me.’ He said, ‘Crews down there are on to their CO, been on to their Group, been on to 100 Group.’ He said, ‘They might have even got the Bomber Command, I don’t know, but they all want marmalade.’ See. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I was pulling their leg.’ [laughter] Anyway, we walked out of the CO’s office, walking off. David sticks his head out of the door, ‘HP. Why marmalade?’ He said, ‘Well I thought I’d be topical because we’ve been doing jamming.’ [laughs] You know. DE: Of course. Yeah. RJW: I did find, I must say I found my second tour very much easier than my first tour. Mind you I was privileged I suppose, in actual fact. I recognise that but it was a time when all the heavies were going. The raids were very heavy indeed but I didn’t, I didn’t seem to run into any trouble at all. Anyway, we were, we were flying on the very last trip. I flew on the very last trip to a place called Flensburg which was very near to the something lunars, is it? I can’t remember the name. The place where the armistice was signed on the Danish peninsula on the night before. The idea was to make sure they signed it. We were one of the last aircraft to return and there’s always been a bit of a fight as to who was the last aircraft over the target in the war. All I can say we might have been one of them. [laughs] Anyway, war ended and we started having, we started taking station personnel on tours. Flying, flying over the cities and back again. We did two or three trips. We landed over there at some of the stations. Went to Northern Germany and I don’t know, somewhere in Denmark I think in actual fact. We were taking people and coming back. Anyway, by about the middle of, probably a bit later then by the middle ‘45, July maybe, something. I don’t know. We were being posted to various parts and we were asked what would we to do. Anything we’d particularly to do before we were demobbed and so I said I’d like to be a, what do they call them, Queen’s courier, you know, King’s courier. That’s right. Thought that would be interesting. No. No. Can’t do that. Eventually I got sent to Air Ministry in High Holborn in the movements branch. It was at the time when there was some big food crisis going on and lots of VIPs were going backwards and forwards to America and we were finding aircraft from Blackbushe to get there. We were dodging around all over the place setting up aircraft, setting up things. Anyway we, I was there for a while and I was conscious of the fact that my sinus was still with me so I thought I’d take the opportunity to get the, unless I’ve already said this. DE: Well you said you’d come back to it so, yeah. RJW: Oh I see. I’d take the opportunity to get the air ministry doctor people to say what I could do about it and one of them suggested that they could drill a hole through the roof of the mouth which was painful and not necessarily successful and he did suggest a warm dry climate would probably heal the perforation. Anyway, eventually I signed on for an extra two years and I was posted overseas. Of all places my initial posting was to Palestine. There I was, there I was air movement’s staff officer, they called me and I was secretary and chairman of the air priorities board. Because there was a lack of civilian passenger aircraft we were providing passages through UK for the army, navy, air force and the other government people. The Air Priorities Board would look at applications and give them the priorities as they needed them and that was the job that I was doing. I remember I was, we had our officer’s mess and the hospital overlooking the mass cityscape [?]. The whole city was out of bounds to us which meant of course we went there [laughs]. At various times we had to be armed and it was quite, quite a time in actual fact but the one big thing that did happen we had a number of atrocities by the Stern gang and the Ernham vi [?] Lohamei. They were trying to get rid of the British. Didn’t seem to be any trouble between the Arabs and the Jews. It was the Jews and ourselves and they were pretty aggressive. Anyway, on one, we had our Air Priorities Board at army headquarters which was in the King David Hotel and one day I was being driven up there to an Air Priorities Board meeting and there was a loud bang and big piles of smoke went up and my driver said, ‘I think we’ll turn back sir.’ I said, ‘Yes, I think we will.’ And of course it was the King David Hotel that was bombed, sent up and a lot of army people were killed, and civilian people. Great tragedy actually because so I understand and read that the Jewish guys that did it they stuck bombs in milk churns and they actually ‘phoned and told them that there was bombs there but they said ha ha you know, took no notice of it. Very bad. Anyway, after a while I angled for a posting to Kenya. My brother was there. What had happened to him was he had joined the war, joined the RAF before the war and he was a fitter 2E. He’d been to St Athan’s and he, early in the war he was posted to the Far East. The ship was torpedoed off Mombasa and he got ashore and he was sent to Eastleigh there and he stayed there throughout the war. He married there, English girl there and so he was there and after the war he joined an aircraft company. East African Airways I think but he was a, he became a senior engineer, became chief engineer of a Safari Airways eventually. So I angled for a posting there and I got it. They called me SMSO Senior Movement Staff Officer. I knew nothing about, I knew about air movements, I knew nothing about road and rail. I signed an awful lot of documents [laughs] but I, you know, had no training for it at all. It was, it was a very nice posting. A very easy posting. Originally, we were billeted out in hotels but there was a housing shortage there and all that sort of thing and they thought as an example we ought to have an officer’s mess so an older hotel we took over we used it as headquarters and we had an officer’s mess set up and I can remember we had a very easy going AOC who was a non-flyer. Actually a peacetime guy but a nice guy, very easy going and he never seemed, never seemed to send for you in his office, he came to see you and one day he came to my office and he said, ‘Woolgar I’ve a job for you.’ ‘Yes sir.’ ‘I’m going to make you the mess secretary.’ I thought, ‘Well yes sir but you see I do have to go to Cairo once a month for conferences, air conferences and I also have to visit stations around, you know, Aden, Eritrea and places like that periodically. I am away from base quite a bit.’ ‘Oh, oh alright, I’ll think about it.’ So comes back the next day and he said, ‘Jerry Dawkins is mad with you, Woolgar.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Cause I’ve made him the secretary of the mess,’ you see, ‘But I’m going to make you the PMC.’ So I was the president of the mess committee and I knew nothing. I really didn’t know anything, you know. There was much older people than me, senior to me to do it but anyway they all dodged it and I couldn’t dodge it the truth was but it was interesting because it was in the days they did a lot of entertaining and this AOC he entertained the army guy, the naval guy and on one occasion the Aga Khan. I met, I met a lot of people. I don’t know whether I should put this on the tape but Mrs AOC was a pain in the head. DE: Right. RJW: The flowers were never right, or she sat in a draught, or the meat was tough, ‘Flight Lieutenant I didn’t like –’ [laughs]. DE: Oh dear. Oh dear. RJW: But you know, you know I was only in my, I was in my twenties, middle twenties and I always thought it was good because it taught me a lot. It gave me experience which I never would have had otherwise. Anyway, eventually I went to Ein Shemer I thought I’d like to do a bit more flying. I went up to Ein Shemer in Palestine to join number 38 Squadron. I was the gunnery leader come armament officer, come radar oh everything. Everybody was leaving and they said, ‘You can do this.’ ‘You can do that.’ And a bit of a mixture I think but the main role of the squadron was finding illegal immigrant ships. Illegal ships were probably like what’s happening now but these ships were coming with Jewish people from the Balkans you know and from the middle of Europe and they were coming in to land in Palestine because the intake was on quotas and the idea was that 38 Squadron should locate them by radar on patrols and then get the navy to intercept them and when we did find them the navy used to miss them and they landed and the army picked them up. They put them in detention centres, that sort of thing, for a while but that is, that is what we were doing and I was there until about August, August 1947 and then I came home. Do you want to hear what happened to me after that? DE: Yes, please, yeah, yeah. RJW: Well I came back to the Hove Corporation. They’d promoted me to become the assistant valuation officer. I wasn’t qualified. Two hundred and fifty pounds a year. God. [laughs] Salary. And I realised I had to become qualified quickly. There were two exams. The Chartered, Chartered Auctioneers and Estates Agent’s Institute and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, so I got my head down and fortunately both organisations and others I believe, they introduced special war service conditions. I was able to take the direct final which was good. It was a three year course but I did it in eighteen months. Ah yes. I put my family, my wife, my daughter through hell because we didn’t do, I didn’t go out, I didn’t do anything. I just studied because I realised that I wouldn’t get anywhere unless I did and having passed and become a chartered surveyor I marched off the council and said ah you know and they said, ‘Ah well yes, we don’t think you’ll be any more service to us as a chartered surveyor than you were before Mr Woolgar.’ Twenty five pounds a year increase in your salary and we’ll give you a grant of twenty five pounds towards the cost of your studies. Well that prompted me to search for another job and I was very fortunate. I went to, I secured the job of the senior, a senior valuer in the city planning department of the City of London. So from knocking the hell out of Germany I came back to rebuilding the fire bombed city which was very, very interesting. It was a fantastic job in actual fact. I dealt with Barbican, St Paul’s area, all the war damaged areas. I was fourteen years there. I — I eventually I was deputy and the boss left and I got his job. For five years I was the planning valuer of the city and it was really good but that’s a whole book. DE: Yeah, I can imagine. RJW: About what happened. Various things, lots of public enquiries, you had some very famous people of course and QC’s and things like that and we had a New Zealander who was the city planning officer called Meland[?] and he was a very informal guy. Not a bit like the city fathers were and his famous words were, he was under cross examination by a QC at a public enquiry and he was asked why it was necessary to compulsorily acquire a group of buildings to put a road through and he said, ‘Well you see the bombs didn’t always drop in the right places.’ [laughs] You know. Anyway, after, after fourteen years I was poached by a firm by the name of St Quintin Son and Stanley to become a partner there and to be responsible for all their planning work and that was very good, very interesting because I, having negotiated with the partners as the valuer for the city I was now negotiating with my deputy who had come up on the opposite side. He often said, ‘Yeah but Jimmy you said, so and so'. I said 'Oh well yeah' [laughs]. But that was, I’ve had a very, very interesting life really. The city was full of tradition. Full of everything. That’s a whole book really. Having dealt with Barbican, the redevelopment of Barbican, the city — DE: Yes. RJW: I was now dealing on behalf of developers for developing other parts of the city. The idea, the main idea the city leased most of its land out on ninety nine year building leases by tender. So the developers all had to make a tender, ground rent condition and the design of the building and that sort of thing. That’s really the way it worked and from time to time there were planning enquiries and I was instructed sometimes by clients as a valuer, as a planning valuer to deal with various appeals for land, on land that they wanted to develop which the city didn’t want them to and or they were local protests and got myself in the witness box and highly cross examined by very clever QCs but also roamed around the country because we had a lot of clients in the city that were elsewhere in the country. We acted for the Bank of England, we acted for the Stock Exchange and the, and quite a number of the banks, Midland Bank and Lloyds, people like that and so it was, it was all done at a high level. It’s kind of amusing some of the things that I was asked to do which I knew nothing about [laughs] and I always remember a firm Denis firm [?], they were in the sand and gravel business they always wanted to extract sand and gravel from the best agricultural land by rivers you see and there was always objection to it. Anyway, I fought one or two appeals for them quite successfully, fortunately, and one day the chairman asked me to value their mineral reserves and so, ‘I can’t do that, I’m not the minerals man. I know nothing about it.’ ‘Oh that doesn’t matter,’ he said, ‘I just want, I just want you to value it for me.’ I said, ‘Well I don’t know how to value it.’ ‘You’ll find a way.’ I particularly wanted to do it and I got the impression that we might lose them as a client if you know, if it didn’t [?]. My junior partner and I we put our heads together and somehow or other we found a way and he said, ‘Ah, it doesn’t matter. Nobody else will challenge it because they don’t know the way either.’ [laughs] Anyway, we, what did we do? Well leisurely [?] we, during that time the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors celebrated its hundredth year. I had a bit of a role in that as chairman of one of the committees that dealt with it which was very interesting. Oh yes. I was, I was picked up by a building society and became a non-executive director. It was called The Planet, and over the years, I joined them about 1963 I suppose, as soon as I became a partner of St Quentin and over the years we merged with the Magnet Building Society, that’s right and then we took over a midland society that had called itself the Town and Country Building Society so we then adopted that name and eventually, for the last three years I became chairman of that. I had the most interesting time because we had overseas conferences. Notably one in Washington which was extremely good and oh and Cannes. They really looked after themselves these that was the international thing you see. DE: Wonderful. RJW: Very nice, very pleasant and during all this period we had various dinners in the Mansion House, dinners in the Guildhall and in 1971 St Quentin firm celebrated it’s sesquicentennial which is their hundred and fiftieth year. DE: Thank you for telling me. RJW: Yes. Right. So by that time we were three joint level senior partners right and we split up the duties of what we were going to do. We had a year. I got the job of having the dinner in the Guildhall. I was manager, because the city surveyor was a friend of mine he managed to get us, we were the first outside body to have a dinner in the Guildhall and we had it and got the governor of the Bank of England as a principal guest, Lord Donaldson, the Master of the Rolls, Lady Donaldson his wife who was to become, he was the sheriff at the time and it was a pretty high ranking do. It was very good but I’m telling you the story because it’s kind of amusing. We had a chap in the firm who looked after all those sort of things you know. He was very good. He got the nuts and bolts done for us. So I said to him, ‘I think you’d better go tell the police up at John Street Police Station that we’ve got some VIPs coming to the Guildhall on this particular date because they might want to take some precautions. So he takes the guest list up, goes up to John Street. He sees a cockney desk sergeant and this desk sergeant looks at this list and he says, I’ve forgotten his name now, the governor of the Bank of England, ‘Oh no he don’t rate.’ Master of the Rolls. ‘Oh no he don’t rate.’ Lord something, I don’t know and he went down and at the bottom it had Her Majesty’s Band of the Royal Irish Guard. ‘Oh my Gawd,’ he said, ‘George, got the Irish Guards coming. Full emergency.’ And because the Irish guards, it was at the times of the troubles and because the Irish Guards were coming they had all sorts of precautions. These chaps had to come in individually in civvies and all that sort of thing you know, by themselves and yeah. I thought that was rather amusing. DE: Crikey. RJW: Anyway, I retired in 1971, no 1973 that’s right. 1993 at the age of seventy three, got it right. We spent a lot of time cruising. We like cruising. We went on quite a few cruises. We got, we had a place in Majorca, an apartment there. A little place on the coast which was very nice. We spent quite a bit of time out there. That’s really it. Just got older. A bit more infirm, you know. The wheels don’t grind as well as they used to. I hope I haven’t bored you. DE: No. It’s been absolutely wonderful. There’s — RJW: I haven’t given you an opportunity to ask any questions. DE: Well, I’ve as you’ve seen, I’ve jotted some questions down. I mean, again they’re quite, quite broad questions. What, what was it like flying in a Hampden? RJW: Well you see, strangely enough there was no comparison was there because I’d flown in an Anson which was alright but the next type aircraft you flew in was a Hampden so it was, it was alright. Probably thought all flying was like that but for the wireless operator, rear gunner it was a bit dicey I think. People don’t really know this, you have a wireless set in front of you and what they called a scarff ring with twin VGO guns with pans of ammunition on them, right and a cupola which closes down over the top of it over the guns but in order to operate the guns the cupola has to be back which means when you’re over the other side you’re in the open air and you were standing up to be vigilant. Well I mean you couldn’t see sitting down. You wanted a turret standing up and eventually you have an electric motor on it but originally there wasn’t. It was [unclear]. There was a heating pipe came off the starboard engine I think, exhaust or something. Unfortunately it used to burn the living daylights out of you down on the ground and it was ice cold when you got up top [laughs] but you know. So it wasn’t that comfortable and the other position, the rear gunner was in a belly thing. A blister underneath and that was very, very difficult. You were hunched up, you know, you would get cramp in it. It wasn’t very nice but you know other than that it was alright although I must admit that when I mention to people, RAF guys, I was in a Hampden they say, ‘You were in a Hampden?’ They say, ‘You flew in Hampdens and you’re still alive.’ [laughs] No, no, no. They weren’t, they weren’t that bad really. I think our pilot like any, Ralph, he was quite happy with it. I don’t know whether the navigator was. Sorry. DE: No. No. That’s, that’s wonderful. So what was, what was your favourite aircraft to fly in? RJW: Sorry. DE: What was your favourite to fly in? RJW: The — DE: What aircraft was your favourite to fly in? RJW: The other aircraft. DE: Yeah. What other aircraft? RJW: Oh well I flew in Halifax 3s. Wellingtons. I think I flew in a Mosquito once or twice. Ansons. Passenger in a Tiger Moth. That sort of thing, you know. Oh and Lancaster, Manchester. Manchester and Lancaster yes but I didn’t do any ops in a Manchester or Lancaster. The Manchester was the forerunner as, you know about that. Yes. Yes. We had them on, they were introduced on 49 Squadron in about, I think about September 1942, something like that. One of the early ones and then fairly quickly replaced by the Lancasters. Oh the Lancaster were marvellous. I flew in the Lancasters of course in Ein Shemer. They were Lancasters. Yeah. DE: I see, right, yeah. RJW: They were good. We had, at Ein Shemer I’ve got to tell you one of the duties there was to provide an airborne lifeboat at Malta so we had a little jolly there for three weeks and so. A couple of aircraft with airborne lifeboats stationed at Valetta. You were on twenty four hours standby. Then twenty four hours down the pub [laughs] that was quite good and we did one, we did one exercise, the exercise was that we were taken out by the navy, cast adrift in a dinghy and the other crew had to home on it and drop the airborne lifeboat and the crew in the dinghy had to get in to it and sail it back in to Valetta harbour. We were the crew in the dinghy. We got told off for eating all the rations [laughs], but you know it was fun. It was quite good. Malta was nice too in those days. Post war you see. DE: What was –? RJW: Oh and Cyprus. That was another place we had to go to. We went to Cyprus. Yes. Sorry. DE: What was, what was it like, what was the difference between being a sergeant and becoming an officer? RJW: Oh well. It was quite good. It was more comfortable. The sergeant’s mess was very good. The food was always good. I never grumbled about the food. I think the air crew seemed to get additional rations or something. It all went in altogether but somebody once told me you get more dairy products because as air crew or something like that. I don’t know. But being an officer obviously was more comfortable. You didn’t have to make your bed [laughs]. You had a batwoman, batman or batwoman. You know a WAAF who did it for you. Cleaned your shoes that sort of thing. The chores. You had more chores done for you I found, but yes it was it was comfortable. Flying. Right. Oh I forgot to tell you an incident which is recorded in David Donaldson’s obituary. We were flying on patrols to locate the launching pads of the V2. In fact, we saw, I was with David Donaldson, we saw the first one go up and we got a fix on it and that is quite interesting because we told the special operator and he got his head down and we tried to get a lot of information out of him when we got back as to what he found. We got nothing out of him of course but of course what we did eventually find out and this is public knowledge now it wasn’t radar controlled. It was clockwork controlled but Churchill insisted that the patrols continued so even after they found out we were still going up and down on the line and on one occasion, daylight. It was on daylight a couple of, I don’t know what they were, I can’t remember, mix them up, I can’t remember what the aircraft were. A couple of German fighters. I can’t remember what they were now, a couple of German fighters came up, come up and we were just about to take evasive action when they tucked them in, they tucked themselves in the wing and the pilot went like that. DE: Waved at you. RJW: Waved at David. David. You know. Like that. Like that and then they peeled away and off they went. This was over Holland and they were quite friendly. This would have been, oh I don’t know, probably March, April something like that 1945. And do you know I remember that so well for years and years and years and I wonder sometimes did that really happen or did I dream it? And then in David Donaldson’s obituary it was mentioned and I thought goodness that is true, it did really happen. I meant, I should have told you before. DE: No. That’s, that’s wonderful. What was, what was David like? RJW: Yeah. Actually of course they’d, if they’d, if they’d have split up you know they would have, they would have had us you know, in fact. DE: Sure. RJW: Yeah. Yeah. DE: What was David like? RJW: Sorry? DE: What was David Donaldson like? RJW: Oh lovely. He was a hell of a nice guy. Easy going. He was a good CO. Firm, right. Never panicked. He was a solicitor by profession and he was very calm. We did the first FIDO landing at Foulsham. We went to Gardenia [?] and did our stuff there and incidentally on the way back, was it Balcom [?] Island, the Swedish island on the Baltic, fired various tracer bullets up in a V sign [laughs]. Nobody went near of course. Anyway, when we got back it was fog and David said, ‘Well we’ve got an option of landing on FIDO or being diverted.’ He said, you know, he said, ‘What do you want to do chaps? Do you want me to land or go somewhere else for your eggs and bacon.’ ‘Oh no David,’ you know and he did a perfect landing. Real, you know. The risk of FIDO was that you veered off it but, perfect. Yeah. He was like that. He said, ‘What do you want to do?’ [laughs] DE: Wonderful. Yeah. So when you saw these two fighters — RJW: Yeah. DE: Were you mid-upper upper or were you the rear gunner? RJW: Sorry? DE: Were you mid-upper gunner or the rear gunner? When you saw the two fighters. RJW: Yes. DE: Were you the mid-upper gunner or the rear gunner? RJW: I was in the mid upper. DE: Ah huh. RJW: Yeah. DE: Was that your –? RJW: I was, yeah because I, the mid upper was the controller, in other words we used to take evasive action. If you were in daylight you take evasive action and once you had come back you’d take control. You would tell him corkscrew right, corkscrew left because the pilot can’t see. DE: No. RJW: They can’t see. They come in on a curve of pursuit like that and you’d corkscrew in, down and roll and up the other way you see, but if they split up either side you’d had it. DE: Yeah. Did you did you ever fire your guns in anger? RJW: Hmmn? DE: Did you ever shoot at a fighter? RJW: Ever see a fighter? DE: No. Did you ever shoot at one? RJW: Oh yes. DE: Yeah. RJW: At night time. Well I hoped it was a fighter [laughs]. No. Once or twice you know you saw the thing come out of, but never, I never had a sustained fight. Never had something come in two or three times but I can’t remember. Not on the Halifax. Never had anything on the Halifax or the Hampden. Fired the guns several times on the Hampden but I can’t remember exactly when they were. Sorry about that. DE: That’s quite alright. Yeah. Yeah. Did you, which did you like better the night ops or daylight ops? RJW: Oh we didn’t do much daylight. We did very little daylight. We did some mining in daylight but it was nearly all night ops. We always thought daylight was a bit scary but [laughs] but no I suppose the scariness really was in the middle of the flak. Then you really, in a Hampden you could hear it, you could smell it and you could see it. Puffs of puffs you know if you got there. If you were — Essen and Hamburg they were, they were the places that you got, and of course Berlin but I only, I only did one trip to Berlin. My first one. But that wasn’t very good because it was covered in cloud anyway. If you, when you, when we went to France, if we were bombing France if you couldn’t see the target, initially anyway, you had to bring your bombs back and that’s recorded quite a bit. DE: Yeah. RJW: By the way have you got “The Hampden File?” DE: Yes. RJW: Harry Moyle? DE: No. Yes. We’ve got a copy of that. RJW: That’s very good. Have you got, “Beware of the Dog”? DE: I don’t know about that one. RJW: 49 Squadron history. The whole history of 49 Squadron written by John Ward and Ted Catchart. It was actually published by Ted Catchart. If you get in touch with Alan Parr, you know Alan. He’ll tell you where and how you can get a copy of it. You should really have a copy of that. DE: Yes. RJW: Because that details everything. DE: Yeah. Wonderful. I will do. Thank you. RJW: Yes. It’s called, that’s our crest you see. DE: Yeah. RJW: Cave Canem. DE: Yeah. RJW: So — DE: Yeah. I’ll make sure we get a copy for the library. RJW: Yeah. DE: Yes. RJW: Yeah. And the “Bomber Command Diaries.” You’ve got those. DE: Got those. Yeah. RJW: Yeah. I’ve got all those. DE: They’re worth, worth a bit as well, they are as well. How how did you cope with flying nights? RJW: How did I cope? DE: Yeah. Flying nights. What —? RJW: How? DE: Flying operations at night how, how — RJW: Finding them? DE: Yeah. How did you, how did you cope, you know with interrupted sleep patterns and —? RJW: I’m not quite with you sorry. DE: No. Flying operations at night — RJW: At night time. DE: Yeah. Your sleep was interrupted. RJW: Oh sleep. DE: Yeah how, how did you, how did you —? RJW: Oh well yes you went to briefing in the morning if ops were on. No not briefing. You’d do a bit of exercise and that. Go to the flight and then you’d have an early briefing and then you’d have a rest, have your eggs and bacon and then night time you kept awake. There were tablets they used to give you to keep awake. I can’t remember the name of them now but they didn’t do much good I don't think. And then of course after de-briefing when you came back, eggs and bacon and you had a long sleep. Sometimes you were on the next night but not very often that happened. Not in my day. It did later on of course. DE: Yeah. RJW: It did later on. DE: Did you, did you take tablets to keep you awake? RJW: Yes. DE: Yeah. RJW: I can’t remember the names now. DE: Wakey wakey tablets. RJW: Yeah. I can’t remember what they were. Caffeine. Yeah I think it was — DE: Yeah. RJW: Something like that. You could, if you wanted them you could have them but I can’t remember the name of them. DE: Was it, was it Benzedrine? RJW: Yeah. Yeah but I never found. You were wound up. Let’s put it, let’s be honest about it. Everybody was. You were apprehensive. DE: Yes. RJW: Ok. You knew the target. You kitted up. You went out. You were taken out to the aircraft and you fiddled around with all your gear. You had to make sure everything was ok and eventually you took off. Sometimes you often, sometimes you took off in twilight so you could see the setting sun as it were, you know. See Lincoln Cathedral. And because you were in the rear you were looking west you were seeing some of the light and ok you got a bit of jitters maybe you know. A bit. Apprehension more than anything else but you had to be very alert. Very alert. You had to be watching all the time and you reported back anything you see. Getting over the target, doing the bombing run. That was a bit of a wait you know. Flying steady, straight and steady and hearing the navigator or the bomb aimer going to the skipper. Everybody else was quiet. You could see the activity going on but if there was cloud below or the flashes coming up and everything else. If you were near flak as I said you could smell it and see it and all that sort of thing. Got away from the target. There was always a sense of relief once you come away from the target but of course it was just as dangerous coming away. You couldn’t — you couldn't relax or you shouldn’t relax, let’s put it that way. Probably that’s what did happen. You just had to be on your toes all the time but on the way back over the sea, over the North Sea coming back you were a bit relaxed then. Coming in to land of course you had to be very careful. You could have intruders, you know. You really, you couldn’t sit down. You couldn’t take a rest. And you know there were times and I’m sure others have told you this, you had a very dicey trip and you say, ‘If I get back I’m not going to come again.’ [laughs] Why come back? If I get out of this one that’s it, but you did, you know. You didn’t, you didn’t think much about, you didn’t think too much about it on the ground. At least I didn’t. You didn’t dwell about it. You didn’t think. You got wound up for ops. Then they were scrubbed so you were off to the pub you know it’s not oh, everything goes and you just, you just tended to live for that night, that night. You were in the pub with your pals drinking away and you didn’t give many thoughts to the fact that you would be doing the same thing tomorrow. At least I didn’t and I don’t think many other people did either. Some might have, but I didn’t. You just treated each day as it came along. You got scared, of course you got scared you know, got scared out of your life when you were in the dinghy but you thought, oh well, you know, something will happen. I’ll get out of it. Eventually you did. I don’t know but the greatest thing [?] was though, to be honest was to see your pals go although because in the main you didn’t know whether they were killed or not. They didn’t return. They were missing. Right. Failed to return. And there was always the hope that they’d be prisoners of war or they’d landed somewhere else but it, it didn’t sink in. It wasn’t like that, being in the army and seeing the person next to you killed. That didn’t happen unless your own aircraft, you could see an aircraft gosh I can’t remember the number of lucky breaks I had. Yes. On the, on 49 Squadron when I first joined Allsebrook I was a bit concerned and this is not against the guy at all but it is recorded somewhere this happened. He came to the squadron. He had flown into a balloon barrage under training and he was the only one that got out. On the first trip with him he was very keen, they’d made him the photographic, he wasn’t the, he wasn’t the station fellow, he was some sort of, something to do with photography and he wanted to hold the aircraft straight and level over the target to take the photographs [laughs]. So you know that was my first trip or second trip, I can’t remember which and I got a bit, a bit concerned about it and there was a sergeant pilot, or flight sergeant pilot that I’d been drinking with or knew quite well and he wanted a rear gunner and I thought, he wanted a WOP/AG, I thought. Well ok I’ll go and see if I can get switched into his crew and I went to see Domestra [?] who was our flight commander, Squadron Leader Domestra and he he said, ‘Oh no, I’ve done the crew schedules for the night,’ he said, ‘Come and see me tomorrow.’ His name was Walker this chap. He took off behind us. Engine cut. Went straight in. The bombs went up. Killed them all. I thought, I didn’t know it was him at the time. I saw it. When I got back we said, ‘Who was it that went, that went in?’ It was him. I thought oh my God, you know. Strange isn’t it? I must have somehow had a lucky penny. Oh yes and you will have heard this story and Eric will have told you. Others will. We had, the CO was called Stubbs. Wing Commander Stubbs. One day after briefing for ops, we were going on ops. ‘All the NCO’s will remain behind,’ remain behind. We got a real right rollicking about our form of dress, not wearing regulation boots or shoes. All sorts of things you know. Slovenly behaviour. Then he said, famous words, ‘Just remember the only reason you’ve got three stripes on your arm is to save you from the salt mines in case you are taken prisoner of war.’ Have you heard that? Oh yes. Yes. Yes. He said that. He said that and he got the name of Salt Mine Sam. Sam Stubbs. That is recorded somewhere but Eric Cook he was with me. I was on the squadron when Eric Cook was there you see and but he famously used to quote that quite often actually but yeah and it’s quite well known. There was a guy that was, I don’t know what his name was now but he was, he was an honourable bloke, honourable, he was a sergeant pilot and he was a bloke, he was an odd bloke, he refused to take a commission. I can’t remember his name but he was some sort of landed gentry of some sort and he was able to talk in high places as you did and we got a very meagre, half-hearted well it wasn’t an apology it was some sort of, you know it wasn’t really meant sort of thing you know. Sorry about that. DE: No. That’s wonderful. I’m going to, I think I’m going to draw the interview to a close because you’ve been talking for nearly two hours. RJW: Oh gosh. Have I? DE: Yeah. That’s — RJW: Have I really? DE: Yes. Yeah. RJW: I’m sorry. DE: No, it’s – RJW: I’ve probably bored you stiff. DE: No. It’s absolutely marvellous and I’ve said nothing on the tape so it’s fantastic. RJW: Eh? DE: I’ve not spoken at all. It’s all been you so — RJW: Do you, it’s funny everything else is going but that memory. DE: It certainly is. Yeah. It’s fantastic. Yeah. Well I’m going to – RJW: And while I’ve been talking to you Dan I’ve been living it visually. DE: I could tell. Yeah. RJW: I can see it. DE: Yeah. RJW: I can see the incidents right there. DE: Yeah. RJW: As you know. DE: It’s been an absolute pleasure. RJW: I didn’t realise, I didn’t realise it was — DE: Two hours look. So I shall, I shall press pause and stop it. Thank you very, very much. That’s absolutely wonderful. 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 Reg Woolgar Description An account of the resource Reg Woolgar was born in Hove. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force in December 1939 and trained as a wireless operator/air gunner. He flew Hampdens with 49 Squadron. His aircraft was damaged by anti-aircraft fire on a mine-laying operation to Oslo Fjord, including a bullet that passed through his gun sight. He recounts ditching a Hampden in the English Channel and being picked up by the Royal Navy off the Isle of Wight. He describes evenings out in Lincoln at the Saracen’s Head. After his first tour he was commissioned and became gunnery leader with 192 Squadron in 100 Group. Reg Woolgar was posted overseas in 1945 and recalls a bomb exploding near the King David Hotel, in Jerusalem. He also recounts tales of his time in Kenya and provides details of his career outside the Royal Air Force, as a planner and valuer for the city of London. He retired in 1971. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dan Ellin Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBCC Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-06-14 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julie Williams Chris Cann Maureen Clarke Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 02:00:47 audio recording Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AWoolgarRLA160614 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. Atlantic Ocean--English Channel Great Britain England--Lincolnshire England--Wiltshire England--Lincoln England--Norfolk England--Oxfordshire Germany--Berlin Germany--Essen Germany--Mannheim Middle East--Jerusalem Middle East--Palestine Germany Germany--Kiel Canal Germany--Ruhr (Region) Atlantic Ocean--Oslofjorden Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1941-09-01 1942-02-14 1942-02-15 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. 10 OTU 100 Group 192 Squadron 49 Squadron 617 Squadron 83 Squadron aircrew Anson anti-aircraft fire ditching entertainment fear FIDO final resting place Gneisenau Goldfish Club Hampden killed in action mine laying missing in action Operational Training Unit RAF Foulsham RAF Scampton RAF Upper Heyford RAF Yatesbury Scharnhorst searchlight training Walrus Wellington wireless operator / air gunner