Interview with Ken Oatley
Title
Interview with Ken Oatley
Description
Initially too young to enlist at the outbreak of war, Ken Oatley served in the Home Guard until he was able to enlist in October 1940, when after initial training he undertook pilot training. After basic flying training he went onto Canada training on Oxfords. It was whilst there Donald Bennett was forming the Pathfinder Force. Five pilot trainees were taken from each course to retrain as navigators and Ken was selected for transfer. Eventually posted to 627 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa on Mosquito aircraft, Ken flew a total of 22 operations. He describes how 627 Squadron operated within Bomber Command operations, explaining how their role was to arrive and illuminate the designated targets for the following bombers. This included the operation on Dresden in February 1945. At the end of the war, Ken served with the Bomb Development Unit at RAF Marham, before being demobbed in 1946.
Creator
Publisher
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
2017-03-21
Contributor
Ian Whapplington
Rights
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
01:03:33 audio recording
Language
Type
Identifier
AOatleyK170321, POatleyK1701
Conforms To
Spatial Coverage
Collection
Citation
David Kavanagh, “Interview with Ken Oatley,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed January 19, 2021, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/11430.
Item Relations
This item has no relations.