Interview with James Sampson

Interview with James Sampson

James Sampson volunteered for the RAF and trained as a navigator and became a specialist on H2S. He survived three write offs of his aircraft including once when the wheels had been shot away. His bomb aimer had a very near miss when shrapnel hit the microphone on his face mask denting it. On one occasion their aircraft ended up nose down in a ditch and the gunner couldn’t understand what had happened and so he threw himself out of his turret only to find himself on a very long fall to the ground. James also made tea for Lord Trenchard when he made a visit to the aerodrome. There are some technical issues with the recording.

2015-08-21

01:59:45 audio recording

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ASampsonJ150821

JS: That one. Right. Let’s have a —
DB: That’s wonderful so far. Loving it so far. Because I can’t speak you’ll find my face is —
JS: Yes.
DB: Going up and down —
JS: Which one is on?
DB: Just press this one again.
JS: Press engage.
DB: And it should restart it.
JS: So come back to that. This will be getting cold.
DB: No. No. No. That’s —
JS: Is yours alright?
DB: Yeah. I’ve been, I’ve been able to drink while you’ve been talking but —
JS: Yes. That was a hell of a coincidence.
DB: A very very big coincidence.
JS: Yeah.
DB: So he was the pilot.
JS: Bill.
DB: Yes.
JS: But he was a sergeant.
DB: No, that’s fine. If you, when you restart it if you could mention that at some point.
JS: Oh, yes. Yes.
DB: So, but, because [pause] that would be wonderful. Actually, while, while you’ve got it switched off —
[pause]
DB: It does help if you take the cap off.
JS: Oh, yes. Yes. Don’t mean a thing if you don’t pull the string as they used to say.
DB: That’s right. The trouble with this lens is it’s quite big.
[pause]
DB: That’s lovely [camera shutter click] don’t play me up. Got that [camera shutter click] That’s lovely. I like to take photographs of my veterans as I call them. Take one of you and Joy together later as well. But it’s lovely with the clock just ticking in the background as well. It’s really, it’s really quite old fashioned and nice.
JS: Yes.
DB: So —
JS: Don’t be surprised if a fox suddenly appears out here or a muntjac deer.
DB: Oh. Oh, I like muntjac. Yeah.
JS: We had one in the garden yesterday.
DB: I live, I live on the edge of a training area just, just outside Thetford.
JS: Oh, my grandson used to go there regularly.
DB: Yeah.
JS: his picture’s over there. He was a captain in the Welsh Guards.
DB: Oh. Right. Okay. Well, basically we get muntjac, we get fallow.
JS: Yes. You would do there wouldn’t you?
DB: I’m sure we get foxes as well. Not that I’ve seen one. But I’ve seen a badger and I’ve seen stoats.
JS: My son in law was standing looking out of the window not more than about four weeks ago and he said, ‘My God.’ A fox leapt out and grabbed a rabbit.
DB: Oh. Yes.
JS: Yes.
DB: Yeah. We caught, well, my dog quite often finds dead rabbits which I think must be foxes or badgers. So I can understand what you’re saying but yeah it’s lovely and quiet out here.
JS: Yeah.
DB: So, but —
JS: Let’s go on shall we?
DB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
JS: I’ve lost my track.
DB: That’s alright. Take your time. Have a think about it and then —
JS: One day [pause] I’ll show you something. This is a lot of development work that I did on radar.
DB: Oh right. Okay.
JS: You know the principle of radar?
DB: Yeah. My, my dad was an air trafficker.
JS: Was he?
DB: Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
DB: In the air force so I know —
JS: They had a cupola under the aircraft.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Which sent out signals and they bounced back and you got a reflection.
DB: Yes.
JS: If they landed over water they kept on going. If they hit land —
DB: It would, it would bounce back up to you.
JS: We went, I shall come to it shortly. We went out one night —
DB: Yeah.
JS: This is Oslo. Look, there’s the Oslo fjord there.
DB: Oh right. Okay.
JS: Oslo’s there.
DB: Yeah.
JS: That is the [Horton] Narrows which are a bit further down and we laid mines there.
DB: Oh, you did some vegetable sowing did you?
JS: We did. Yeah. That’s right. Yes. Narcissus and daffodils. And apparently we bottled up troopships with twenty six thousand German soldiers.
DB: Wonderful.
JS: Who were going down to the, meet the boys coming up from Normandy.
DB: Oh, well you’ll have to mention that one when, at some point.
JS: Yes. Well, that’s the sort of work that I did. Which —
DB: Yeah.
JS: Gus Walker kept me back for.
DB: Oh wonderful.
JS: What we did was I’d, luckily I had a team. There was a warrant officer who couldn’t fly any more who was quite knowledgeable and the sergeant who ran the photo section. And I wanted to be able to demonstrate to new crews the new equipment. H2S as it was called.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve heard of it.
JS: And so eventually what we did was we had the screen there and we got a frame.
DB: Yeah.
JS: That fitted and we had a little Brownie camera on the end of it there.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And we got the right focal depth, distance there and when you got wherever you wanted to take pictures you just swung it around and it clipped on. This is all our thinking did this and you, the light time took to go around it was, twice round was the exposure time.
DB: Right.
JS: It went dunk dunk and we got these photographs so not only were we able to tell whether they’d been there and done the job.
DB: Yeah.
JS: But also we used this for the aiming point.
DB: Yes.
JS: What we didn’t, if you look at the middle where it comes down.
DB: Yes.
JS: You get a concentration of signal there.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And it gradually thins out as you come around there.
DB: Yeah.
JS: So, in the middle that’s where the aeroplane is. There.
DB: Right.
JS: In the middle.
DB: Yeah.
JS: That’s the distance ring.
DB: Yeah.
JS: That’s the bearing.
DB: Yeah.
JS: You turn that around and —
DB: Yeah.
JS: So what we used to do was in the middle like this it’s very difficult to see exactly in the mush there where the middle is.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: That’s not. It’s more like that there.
DB: Yeah.
JS: So you couldn’t be totally accurate so what we used to do we used to take a bearing in the distance from another point.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And fly the screen up there.
DB: So you’d triangulate.
JS: Well, yes but if we wanted to lay a mine there.
DB: Yeah.
JS: We had a headland that stuck out like that.
DB: Oh right. Okay.
JS: Instead of flying there.
DB: Yeah.
JS: The navigator was able to, ‘Left. Left. Right. Right.’ and fly a bearing in the distance which he set up before he took off.
DB: Yeah.
JS: When I look at that piece of land and it‘s at a certain angle and a certain distance away from me I’m there.
DB: That’s, that’s very clever.
JS: So we did that.
DB: Very clever
JS: I’ll show you that later. Anyway —
DB: Yeah. Well, that’s lovely. They’ll be really interested in what you just said there because that’s really unusual. That’s not the sort of thing that people talk about so —
JS: Well, no, it’s, it’s the work we did quietly just the three of us. We actually then developed a radar trainer for the chaps so that they weren’t very good on, look if you tried to find out the detail of which town is which there and which piece —
DB: Yeah.
JS: Of the town it is it’s a mess because this was very elementary equipment.
DB: No. That’s really, that’s really interesting that is.
JS: So, we had a link trainer for the pilots. Remember the old link?
DB: Yes, I’ve seen the link trainer at —
JS: We had one for the navigators where we actually had a crab that used to crawl across and so they could, and then we used to make a plate with the coastline and what, what they might expect to see based on what we’d already found out and so on. So that the, it appeared exactly the same on the screen over this tank of water.
DB: Yeah.
JS: With some sand in it.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Which sank to the bottom that it would when they got and saw the actual thing.
DB: Oh wow. Oh yes. You must tell them about, about what you did with that.
JS: Yes.
DB: Because that’s very unusual. That’s very unusual stuff.
JS: So —
DB: But —
JS: We ought to, let’s have a look at the notes here [pause] Yes. Because I haven’t said, I should go back and say a bit more about the lead up to the joining. I could do that later.
DB: Yes. Perhaps, use it as a, like a, almost like a conclusion. But —
JS: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[pause]
JS: Yeah. I haven’t said anything about weather, have I?
DB: You started to talk about it but you didn’t, you didn’t finish off talking about it.
JS: Can I play that bit again back then? Just that last bit.
DB: Let’s, let’s see if we can. Let’s see if we can play it back.
JS: When I asked you if you were a vegetarian?
DB: I’m just trying to remember how to —
[recording paused]
JS: I think we should say a bit more about the weather because it was so vital to the whole of the operation and people will have a good idea what I’m talking about because they look at their television every day, two or three times a day and they can see the kinds of charts and things that are produced. Particularly the ones with the biometric pressures shown on them and they can see the, where the low pressures tend to be more accurate than the high pressure systems and therefore the wind speeds are very much different as well. If you want an extreme look at a cyclone or a tornado they are acute low pressure systems. If you want to think about high pressure systems look at when you are getting five days or six days of sunshine, virtually no wind at all and you’ll know that’s a high pressure system. And so they tend to match each other out of the way. If they come from the northeast they’re usually pretty cold and, and, and sometimes damp. If they come from the northeast from Scandinavia or Russia they are usually damp, cold and dry and the reverse is true with the southwest and the southeast. So you can see the difference it made to us. I mean coming back from trips what was the weather going to be like? Were we going to be able to get in at base? Had we got enough petrol left in the event we were shunted off somewhere else? All these things came into play and particularly so in the case of when the Germans were pushing in the Ardennes with the Battle of the Bulge. It was foggy all over Europe so we couldn’t possibly operate satisfactorily. But fortunately, at Carnaby in the northeast and in Suffolk at Woodbridge we had two lame duck aerodromes where they could land God knows how many aircraft because it was about five aircraft wide and several miles long with overshoots and undershoots. They’d landed them there and they also had the fog dispersal apparatus there. FIDO. Like a row of giant Bunsen burners to lift the fog up high enough to get underneath it. So it wasn’t impossible to overcome it but for the ordinary chap coming in fog could be a hazard as it was the day we ploughed up the potato field landing at the wrong end of the runway when it clamped down. But people should understand the effects of wind. They should understand the effects of, of the whole weather system indeed because in truth our meteorological officers didn’t have a great deal at their disposal to forecast themselves. So we found out when we took off and sailed in to it. Wind, wind speed could vary enormously and with height because it moves faster up there than it does down on the ground. The most I’ve ever had was one night we were flying on a particular mine laying operation and we climbed above a dreadful cold front whereas the other four or five aircraft came below it and had lightning dancing all over the props for ages. And we had new engines on the Halifax at the time and up we went to twenty four thousand five hundred when we came out at the top and coming home it was like coming down Everest, you know. It was a giant white sheet in front of us of cloud and the windspeed believe it or not was a hundred and forty knots. We got home in record time. We were down, debriefed, had our meal, had a bath and gone to bed before the next aeroplane got back but it was also minus fifty five degrees centigrade. People don’t realise that the air temperature depreciates by an average of two degrees centigrade per thousand feet. So if you’re up at nearly twenty five thousand feet and it’s minus fifty centigrade less than it was on the ground when you took off and it was damned cold when we took off so, and there’s no heating in the aircraft. The rear gunner had an electrically operated suit but the rest of us shared a so-called hot air pipe that was, I mean our aircraft were only a thin skin of of aluminium or the like and acted like a refrigerator on the [unclear] without what was going on outside. So life could be pretty uncomfortable sitting there trying to use a pen and, a pen and pencil and various little instruments that required a rather delicate touch. And even now, today I can’t touch anything hot because the skin started coming off my fingers. However, the weather really and the weather systems are really a study all on their account but it was part of our training and part of our safety device that we should know all about it. There was another night and I think it was the night of the Nuremberg raid when losses were pretty high several of us who had the advantage of H2S we only had one flight out of three on our squadron that was equipped with it for a long time. Some squadrons had nothing at all. It was because we had that one flight that we got most of the mine laying operations but this particular night we were asked, the navigators who had the advantage of that to send, as they crossed the enemy coast back the wind speed and directions that they were finding. I think I sent back a windspeed of about ninety seven and it was a little bit more than that even but a lot of chaps were finding, saying, ‘Christ, I’ve gone wrong here somewhere. It can’t possibly be.’ And it ended up with a lot of Bomber Command losses because aircraft who received that information and used it were blown, I’m sad to say miles and miles and miles off to the portside and down into Europe and ran out of petrol. They must have done. There again we’ve said that the weather is really a subject on its own when of course so is radar. We were lucky at Pocklington when I arrived because the flight that my pilot was in command of as from arrival at Pocklington were equipped with H2S so I was learnt to use it willy nilly and was grateful to get it because every time we crossed the coast it was like reading a map sat there in front of me. It didn’t help you much once you got in line, in land because the definition as you’ll see from those pictures there isn’t all that wonderful. You know there’s a town there but it’s difficult to pick up the information you required to bomb accurately with it. I mean, now it’s so different. I came back from one of my journeys to the east and the pilot knew that I had been flying during the war with Bomber Command as he had, and he called me up and sat me down in the third pilot’s seat and he showed me their radar when we were leaving Cairo Airport. He was able to point and say, ‘That is the toe of Italy.’ He could see that the range was that good. Our ranges were nothing like that whatsoever and the definition certainly wasn’t so you could see they never really needed navigators on commercial airlines as we badly needed them in Bomber Command. We didn’t say as much as we should have done I think possibly about the efforts of Bomber Command in the early days of the war. We mentioned that they didn’t do very well because sadly they, they didn’t have the means of doing anything else. The poor old air observer. What could you see on the ground at night which he was trained to do because he was only a very elementary navigator but a very good map reader. If you can’t see anything you can’t map read. One of the, one of the most well known was, oh what was the name of that fellow who did, “The Sky at Night.”? Moore. He was an air observer and pretty proud of it too and always said he was an air observer and stuck to his old brevet with the circle and the O but the facts were that Bomber Command needed good navigators and in fact the whole trip was really a navigational exercise. They were all, everyone was a part of that operation in a sense but Bomber Command were landing bombs and decoys at the Germans in fields and never never it seems on the actual target and they had a script put under them that said, ‘Either you do better or you won't exist.’ And that's when we go back to the formation of the courses for straight navigators. Which even so it was very difficult to find a navigator on any one of the squadrons who was, got any higher than a flight lieutenant. I think now if you look you find one or two who reached the dizzy heights of perhaps a wing commander or a group captain. But of course, the pilots themselves are coming under attack now because we've got drones and other means of flying aeroplanes that don't require them. They fly a desk as they call it now. Sit there and twiddle knobs.
[pause]
We’ve done, we’ve dealt with Met. We dealt with the question of when the penny dropped in London to that they put paid to the, and I suppose now what we should really do is to talk about one or two things in particular. Pocklington. 102 Squadron. Because we had that H2S tended to land most of the mining laying operations. Now, the Halifax could cope with that. The Halifax wasn't designed as a bomber. The Halifax was designed as a transport and converted. The Lancaster was designed as a bomber and therefore built if you like around a damn great bomb bay where they could get really big ones in. We couldn't. But we could get four sea mines in if they gently wound up, not hydraulically raise the bomb doors because they didn't quite close. So we could take four sea mines and with that equipment, the H2S we tended to get most of the mine laying jobs which were all very well in their way but they were a bit lonely. They often took place when no one else in Bomber Command was flying because the weather wasn't good, the moon was up or whatever so you must have appeared on German radar as big blips. And we did three in particular. We did a trip to Oslo where we mined the entrance at [Horton] to the Oslo fjord and bottled up troop ships. We did one which was quite a trip to block up the Kiel Canal at the Hamburg end at Brunsbüttel which I know well because my career in shipping afterwards took me across to Hamburg quite regularly. But we laid mines across there and there were only the four of us on the, on the trip. We took mines and we took some bombs and the idea was that the mines would disappear in the water. No one would know about those but if the mines did go a bit astray because it was a very small target they were being aimed at and we had some bombs on the Germans might think this is a bombing raid rather than a mine laying raid. But apparently we did get one or two in between us. Actually, I’ll always remember that trip because the curtains parted when we were on the approach and the startled face of my bomb aimer said, ‘A Focke Wulf 190 missed us by that much.’ And we think he had been vectored on to us and we were in cloud. When we came out he came out but we were gone and so was he. He'd never be able to turn and get back at us. We reckon that was probably a narrow squeak. And then on another night we went down to Bordeaux and we mined the river and blocked in four German destroyers down there. So, you know minelaying was quite an operation and apparently a lot of ships were sunk in the Baltic because there was a big trade. The Germans with their ball bearings from Sweden for example. Mind you we had ball bearings from Denmark. My company was involved in running ball bearings from Denmark in a couple of fast torpedo boats and I talked to the captains about it. They sort of came out of harbour in the dead of night and at some enormous speed, belted their way across back home with the ball bearings. So there was that one but we did many many others and always felt quite lonely doing it. But apparently, we did them to the Navy’s satisfaction because as you know because you mentioned it the narcissus and daffodils and that was why we called it gardening. Not mine laying. It was always we were going gardening. So we're really coming to the point where we might discuss or look back perhaps more than anything. I will always remember Bomber Command came in for a hell of a lot of criticism and most of it totally unfairly. We were given the job to do by Churchill and the job was done most satisfactorily and if you read Albert Speer's book you'll see that he confesses in there that in the early days he could just about cope with the damage being caused to industry in Germany but latterly he didn't have a hope in hell of, despite what he did going into the mountains and caves and things of keeping up. It was a losing battle. You've had comments from Eisenhower, Montgomery, General Alexander, saying, ‘Thank you, Bomber Command for the tremendous cooperation we received from you.’ The Navy. We’d laid all those mines at the request of the Navy and it's clear from the records now that the Bomber Command sunk more German capital ships and submarines than the Royal Navy. Not disparaging the Navy's efforts in the North Atlantic which were marvellous but simply because we could get at them where they were gone in for supplies, where they had gone in for repairs, where they were being built, didn’t let them get off the stock and apparently we sunk a tremendous amount of shipping at the same time. So, you know, Bomber Command wasn't just a sweet face it was doing a hell of a job and that Dresden business was a debacle. Poor old Churchill came back with an earful of Stalin who wanted Dresden because Dresden, he was advancing from the east as much as we may have disliked it. But Dresden was being used as a giant marshalling yard. You also had people like Zeiss. Volkswagen had a place or there was a motor car industry there. So it was a legitimate target. But Churchill had come back and said to Harris, do Dresden. But the Americans did it the day before. The RAF did it at night and did it again after. So it wasn't just Bomber Command. So it was most unfair. But looking back well I was lucky I supposed to come out of it. I had moments. I was in three total write offs. When Bomber Command days finished or the war in Europe finished I was crewed up with the squadron commander to go and do another tour. But it meant that we were automatically on call to go to the Far East when the war in Europe finished. And that wasn't a very pleasant thought because the Japanese tended to chop your head off if you were an airman and caught. But fortunately, two atom bombs later and that finished as well. But in the meantime we had been posted from Pocklington to Bassingbourn where we became 53 Squadron. We converted to Liberators because they were a longer range and we were going trooping. They sealed up the bomb bays and put seats in there for soldiers. And it was on one of those trips landing at Tripoli in North Africa which was the first staging post. The wind caught us as we came in. The Liberator had, didn't have the strutted undercarriage we had like a fighter. It was just one big oleo leg and the starboard one hit the end of the runway which was about that much concrete and tore it up. So we careered along on one wheel until we lost speed and went around and around like a Catherine Wheel but we managed all of us to walk away from that one. I had the one where I explained we finished up in a potato field landing at the wrong end of Pocklington runway and we had another one where we did, the only time Bomber Command did a daylight raid we went to Homberg. It was basically 4 Group that did it and the flak was enormous. It was like a carpet of black. And when we got back it was dusk when we landed. Usual drill. Wireless operator went down to one of the side windows underneath the wing. ‘Yes skipper, the undercarriage is down.’ ‘Okay. Thanks.’ In we came and of course you know we still did the old three point landing. Not like the American tricycle undercarriage which was much better and we held off and held off and held off. We thought, God we've got to touchdown soon. And when we touched down it was on the hub caps. On the hubs. We’d had our tyres all shot away, both of them so we had nothing to land on and it was like having a pneumatic drill up your earpiece and we swung off the runway and eventually ploughed up and finished there so we walked away from that one. So having walked away from three write offs you know one shouldn't tempt Providence I would think. I think one or two other things I could go on to talk about but coincidences, yes. Yes, I was coming off a train at Kings Cross Station on the Metropolitan Line walking up the stairs and who should I come face to face with passing a corner but my old pilot, Squadron Leader [Gutcher] who was going home from his boring job in Air Ministry. Fortunately, it was right outside the door of a little bar so we went in there and and talked about old times but I don't think he was treated as well as he should have been with his record anyway.
DB: Perhaps you could tell me a little bit about the other characters in your crew.
JS: The other characters. Oh yes, there was, well as I said there was Bill Barlow, a big shambling man who was a ballroom dancing champion in his spare time strangely enough who really was a lovely man but was killed on that one trip that he did. The, Alan Gaye the pilot we finished with he and I corresponded. He lived in Brisbane in Australia. Very dour sort of a fellow but a very honourable gentleman. My wireless operator was absolutely the personification of Mr Barraclough in “Porridge.” He was determined because you know before the war we were coming through a most dreadful recession and life was pretty rotten for most people and jobs were hard to get. I left school with a school certificate which was a bit unusual in those days as there weren't very many of them around and took from July to October before I found a job and I joined a firm called the Ellerman Line. They were a gigantic shipping group with about eight companies in the group and was lucky to get a job there on a pound a week. When you think about it a pound a week and they said to me, ‘And Sampson each year you will get an increase of five shillings a week. So when you're four years into your employment here you will be earning two pounds a week and then the sky's the limit.’ Little did I know that the sky wasn't the one they were thinking about that I finished up with and it was about that sort of time that I was walking home with my mother from, we'd been out visiting, perhaps I was a few years younger. And it was a time when a little bit of gentle rearmament was in the air and there was a searchlight practising and eventually it caught a lone aircraft and lit it up in the sky and I said, ‘Look at that. It's amazing, isn't it?’ And little did I know about three years later I myself was caught in searchlights a time or two. And we had a wonderful drill the boffins said to us, ‘Now, if you're caught in searchlights,’ mind you they weren’t the ones going out to do it, ‘If you are caught in searchlights sit there and count fourteen seconds because that's how long it takes for them to transfer the information from the search, master searchlight to the gunners to lay the guns and pull the trigger.’ So we were expected, us boys to sit there counting and I must say first of all being coned it's like being lit up on a stage in a theatre that's totally unoccupied. Suddenly there you are for the whole world to see. And if they thought we were going to count to fourteen they had to think, we actually started religiously counting, we got to ten and we said, ‘We're going to peel off now. We're not hanging about here.’ And we lost the searchlights and that happened more than once. But being coned in searchlights was a great leveller. You suddenly felt totally naked. And unfortunately for us the majority of our trips were into the Ruhr which was the most heavily defended piece of Germany you ever invented. If you looked on our maps in the briefing rooms the searchlights were in yellow plastic, anti-aircraft in red and the Ruhr was a lump like that of red and yellow. There were odd patches in other places like Berlin, Hamburg and so on but that one. And we finished our tour with two trips to Duisburg in one night. Yeah, we gave Duisburg a real pasting. We were on target a winter’s night. We were on target the first time but I think I’ve got it here. In the late evening and we got back and they said ‘Don't go to bed you’re going back again.’ And they were the last two trips that we had to do so we did two in one night. We considered ourselves very lucky. I’ve marked one or two little bits here. Where was it? [pause] So we did our two trips to Duisburg and finished our tour. And it was rather amusing later in life when the 102 Association sent me a letter from the Mayor of Duisburg saying, talking about what had happened and would I care to comment on it. Expecting me to be conciliatory I think. And I said, ‘For a lad who didn't want to fight, who spent five years in the Air Force having to fight because of Germany,’ I said. ‘And who night after night after night after night had to come home in the Blitz. Crossing the river from Waterloo to Charing Cross where they closed the underground for safety reasons and having to walk across Hungerford Bridge.’ Do you know Hungerford Bridge by, it runs alongside Charing Cross mainline station? ‘Is a very lonely thing when you're on your own, the waters lapping down on your right hand side and there are aircraft bombing overhead and you're hoping to get in to the Charing Cross Station the other side keeping your head on your body.’ I said, ‘If you think I'm going to say I'm sorry. I'm most certainly not sorry. You had it coming to you and you got it. With a bit of luck you won’t try and do it again.’


An experience I would like to mention is that towards the end of our tour we were being supplied with American bombs. The short squat ones as opposed to our longer, what appeared to be more done streamlined version and when we came back one night in our circuit we had to get very close to the circuit at Elvington and we noticed there was a fire on the runway. And it transpired it was the commanding officer of one of the Free French squadrons who coming back had had a hang up, a bomb frozen up in the thing so to all intents and purposes it was hanging free and when they touched down it fell, came through the bomb doors and, and blew up. And so the next day two crews, one was ours was selected to go out into the North Sea with a selection of a thousand pounders and five hundred pounder American bombs and we were under instructions to drop fifty percent live, fifty percent safe, you know. When we were approaching the target the cry would go up and I would have to log it, ‘Bombs fused and selected.’ By selection a hook came down and caught in the loop of a wire which held a locking plate on the end of the bomb to stop the fins. And so when you got back they would merely open the bomb doors and look to see if all the bits were hanging there and see if you'd done your job and dropped them all out. So we had to drop fifty percent live and fifty percent [pause] What's the word I'm trying to think of? Safe. Live and safe. Which we did and you have to remember of course that when a bomb comes out of an aeroplane it travels forward at the speed of the aircraft for a while and then loops down in a, in a parabola and then you drop a bomb from twenty thousand feet it's two miles before it hits the deck. So our old lumbering Halifaxes by the time we had dropped them we were ordered to drop them from a thousand, or was it five hundred feet [pause] and each one we dropped, live and safe they all blew up. So it looked as though there were some fault which was a bit harsh because don't forget people were handling those bombs on the ground saying, ‘Alright they’re safe. Don't worry lad.’ And we got a terrible jolting from a lot of those when they went off I can tell you. And the other aircraft which was under the command of a South African didn't come back and we thought perhaps he’d had copped it from one of these bombs and gone in. We had a big sea search for them. Found nothing but I had, was brought into the discussion because relations of crew members got in touch with me to say, ‘You were on that. There were only two aircraft. What can you tell us?’ And I had to say what I've just told you but in later life it transpires whether old Tommy went on a crusade of his own but his aircraft wreck was found in Holland. So whether he said, ‘I've got a load of bombs on board some bugger is going to get these and I don't care who it is.’ And I've got the story written there because we had on our, we were a very cosmopolitan squadron 102, in brackets Ceylon Squadron, that's why Kularatne’s father was posted. He was the only Ceylonese we ever had actually. And one night we had eight South Africans arrived from the South African Army Air Corp. Lovely fellows all of them and Thompson was one of those. Eight came. Four didn't go back. If you look at this, the “War Diary of Pocklington” you'll find that on two nights Pocklington who operated twenty five aircraft as a maximum effort lost eleven and when you think there's seven in each one of those you go in and the mess is like a morgue. And then all the new crews arrive and you think Christ why are there so many of us new crews arriving? They’ve had a clear out have they? You'll find one or two like that when we lost five or four or three but you know we we didn't fly at any great speed. We flew out of the target at a hundred and forty seven knots. And the Rolls Merlin engines that we had they changed them. Being a base station with a big repair reception and repair hangar there we were one of the first to get them. They put Bristol radial engines in. The radial engine is where all the cylinders are on the outside instead of in a line like a motor car engine and they were absolutely marvellous. They made a fabulous difference to the old Halifax. When I told you about the mine laying trip that we did, climbed above it because we had those new, new engines that we could, instead of staggering to the enemy coast to try and get to ten thousand feet we could do it over the aerodrome by going twice around with them. I realise now that I got stuck on Jack Jarvis the wireless operator. We were explaining life was very difficult in the ‘30s in finding jobs and he had an uncle that was a prison officer and he was born out of wedlock which was something in those days. He would never apply for a commission because it might come up so we got him promoted to warrant officer very quickly and he said he’d got a job lined up. His uncle would get him in to the Prison Service so when he got back to his home in Battle, he lived in Battle down where the 1066 and all that sprung from he was going in to the Prison Service. And as I said if ever there was a Mr Barraclough it was old Jack telling us stories about how he had his leg pulled by these, some of these prisoners. There were different prisoners in those days. They didn’t carry knives and guns or anything like that and they used to call him Mr Jarvis you know which made him feel quite good I think. And they used to have to take them on jobs outside prison to do painting and decorating and that sort of thing and leave them while they got on with it and go back for them later. He said he met one of these chaps later on in town and said, ‘Mr Jarvis, you never knew that when you used to leave us doing that painting job for that lady my wife was still running my builder’s business and she used to send a bloke along to take over from me and while he was doing my painting I was learning to fly.’ [laughs] And whenever we saw, “Porridge,” we always called him Mr Barraclough was Jack Jarvis. So that was dear old Jack. Marvellous fellow. The two gunners. The youngest, I mean to demonstrate that we were really boys in a sense the mid-upper gunner we had Donald Blyth who, now here’s another strange job. He worked for an undertaker and he was the man who walked in front with the black clobber on with tapes, black tapes in the back of his hat seeing the coffins safely on their way. But when he finished his tour he was still only just about nineteen years of age. Our flight engineer. Yes, the other. We had a rear gunner of course who went a bit funny on us at the end. His nerves got the better of him but it was only for the last couple of trips and he visualised fighters and he got us corkscrewing across the sky with his gun in a fixed position with the tracer making coloured rings going around. And our flight engineer Leslie Coolidge was an East End boy who eventually came home and went to work for de Havilland. But otherwise, I lost total touch with them until quite late on when I was approached by Donald Blyth who was the mid-upper gunner who got me together with Jack Jarvis and the three of us became quite good companions. Donald unfortunately never made it up here but Jack Jarvis came to ours and stayed with us two or three times and we went down and stayed in his prison officer’s house just at the back of Lewes jail. So, that was my crew but we really were a tightly knit community as a crew and I would never hear a word against them by anybody at all.
DB: It must have been very frightening for your mother when you were, when you were in London.
JS: Yes.
DB: When you were in the air.
JS: I think a little more about the pre-war days is useful because it was a very difficult time. Not only did we have the back end of the terrible economic situation where as I said I had a school certificate but it still took me from June until October to find a job. When I did have a stroke of good fortune because an old school friend of mine who was in the first year in to the school which had only just opened, I was in the third year in to the school but his father had got him a job with the Ellerman Lines. His father worked for the Board of Trade which became the Ministry of Shipping and he’d heard of a couple of jobs which had two chaps in the second year in to the school who took with the Ellerman Line and I was the fourth. And I worked for a firm, one of the companies engaged in the Mediterranean trade and it was another world. I joined as a post boy which meant that that you ran letters all day long around the streets. You ran backwards and forwards to the cable office. You went around emptying all the out-trays, filling up all the in-trays on, on the managers’ desks. You literally were at everyone’s beck and call. If my managing director wanted a sandwich out you went and you got him a sandwich. If he wanted his library books changed at the smutty library that some of these businessmen used my job was to go there and hope I could get out with my tail of my shirt still where it ought to be because some of the girls always wanted to help you choose the books [laughs] It was quite amusing. And then you, what you did you got when the time came you filled the vacancies in the department so you paid your money and you took your choice but the wages were of course at that time a pound a week. If you asked somebody to work called Dave for that sort of money I don’t know quite what they’d say today. But this is a case of looking back and seeing an entirely different world in which people lived and strangely enough they weren’t all unhappy with their lay in life because they simply didn’t know anything different. We were pretty hard up and happy. My mother worked like a trooper to make sure that we didn’t get rushed off by some well thinking social worker in to the kind of a workhouse situation that she’d been brought up in. My sister worked in a factory in Hampstead. A big paper firm it was Mansell, Hunt and Catty. They made bon bons, they made serviettes, they made doilies all that kind of thing. My brother went off to work when he was fourteen and he worked for a firm called Curry and Paxton who made spectacles and ground lenses and that kind of thing which kept him out of the thing but he worked twice as hard as most people because every night he came home and went down to the ack ack battery down on Kingsbury Green as it were. Managed to get home in time for breakfast and then back to work again. So really that was the sort of life we were living. But I went back to Ellerman’s after the war. I came out of the air force as a senior flight lieutenant earning about seven or eight hundred a year and I went back to Ellerman’s earning two hundred and thirty five pounds a year which was a bit of a shock. Fortunately, in between times a friend of mine who also went in the air force with me, we joined up on the same day, he played the piano and we formed a band and we used to go out playing and in fact could have played almost every night of the week because everyone danced their lives away in those days. Played right up until I went in to the air force and we got together again when I came out because a couple of members of the band were in reserved occupations and didn’t get called up so they had things lined up for us and I did that again for a few years. So I managed to get by. I met my first wife in Jersey on holiday and we were married. Sadly, she died when she was twenty six. She had a diseased heart which they couldn’t do anything about in those days. And I can remember the specialist saying to her because they’d just done, old Barnard had just done the first heart transplant at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town which in later years I passed by often when I was out there and he said to my wife, ‘If you could only hang on for a year or two I’ll give you a new heart.’ Sadly, she couldn’t and she died giving birth to our second child. We’d already had one son who was Richard but Christopher didn’t last more than a few weeks beyond his mother so he died too. And then I was very fortunate. A secretary came to work for me in Ellerman’s who has now been my wife for the last sixty years. Sixty next year actually, mustn’t boast and we finished up Richard my eldest son is still around. He lives down in Sheringham now he’s retired. A daughter, Ruth, who is a senior officer in the taxation business and a son who is qualified at just about everything. A barrister, a solicitor, he has got more letters after his name than the Pope I think. And so we are a very happy family. We’ve got five lovely grandchildren and now we’ve got two great grandchildren so we shall celebrate with all of them next year on our sixtieth and look forward to a happy time.
[recording paused]
But looking back on my brother and sister they were really children very much of their time because you could leave school at the age of fourteen then. As I said you couldn’t work before 7 o’clock in the morning if you were under eleven but that must seem rather strange to people when you talk about that. I did the paper round of course from the age of eleven to the age of eighteen but my brother and sister went into factories. In fact, I had a very large paper round and collected the money in every Sunday morning for which they paid me a shilling in the pound and I earned as much doing the paper round as my poor old brother did commuting down into Campden Town every day to grind lenses for Curry and Paxton. By that means I stayed at school and so at the end of the day it was very much worth it. Sadly, my mother only lived to see the first of the grandchildren because my brother had no children, my sister had one daughter who became a Tiller Girl. One of the old Tiller Girls who is now knocking on a bit herself of course [laughs].
[recording paused]
So back to my days after the war when I went back to Ellerman’s, I was lucky that I’d done well in the RAF and I was given a chance of going into every department in the company and I learned. I did every job technically that the company had to offer. All the way through the Accounts Department, the documentation departments. We were a large shipping company trading with most of the world and I eventually was put in to what we called the Far East Department where I became the assistant manager. I went to the Far East and I travelled the length and breadth. I was out there for three months to start with literally flying somewhere every second day and took over as the manager from there. I was given other managerial tasks including the prime South African trade and ultimately finished up as the managing director. So I went from post boy to managing director. So all the earlier privations were very much worthwhile. The only sad thing is that it wasn’t all done at the time when I could have done something a bit more for poor old mum who’d had a pretty hard life.
[pause]
JS: Can you think of anything I haven’t touched on?
DB: Perhaps life in the mess or in the local Pocklington area or, you know.
JS: Oh, I owned a local pub [laughs]
DB: Oh well that sort of thing. Perhaps have, have your sandwiches and you can have a think about what you’d —
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: Seems to be a year for wasps. I had three in my room the other night.
JS: Hmmn?
DB: It seems to be a year for wasps. I had three in my room the other night.
JS: We just had a nest done.
DB: Oh right. Maybe we’ve got a nest in our block somewhere.
[pause]
DB: What made you choose this house?
JS: Well, we’ve always had a house up here. Apart from probably a gap of one year. The kids thought they’d got too old we virtually we lived on the beach in Sheringham. We lived on Cliff Road. Had a house in Cliff Road then.
DB: I know Cliff Road. Not very —
JS: We could just cut through down two ways straight on to the beach.
DB: Yeah
JS: We had a big dinghy I brought from a toy shop in Germany. Quite a big thing but we had a bloody great rope on it so we never let it go more than about fifteen yards.
DB: Yeah.
JS: But it we put everything in that to take to the beach.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Down to the beach and then back you know when we’d finished. Hot baths for the kids and a jolly good meal and they absolutely shone. They were. And they came up every day of every holiday.
DB: Oh wonderful.
JS: Christmas included. And we got to love Sheringham.
DB: I like Sheringham better than Cromer.
JS: No life in Cromer.
DB: There’s much more character in Sheringham because I used to live, I used to live in Walsingham so I used to go to to Wells on a regular basis.
JS: Yeah.
DB: So, so I knew Wells better.
JS: Our Lady of Walsingham. We haven’t been to Walsingham for quite a while have we? She used to live there.
JS2: Difficult to park there isn’t it?
DB: Oh, it is. Yeah. Right. I was a housekeeper at the abbey so —
JS2: Oh right.
DB: I didn’t have any problem.
JS2: The last time we went we went to there’s a new church, sort of out of town. We went there for a concert at night.
DB: Yes. I know, I know which one you mean. But —
JS: See that picture there.
DB: Oh, with the Queen Mother.
JS: The one nearest, the little boy nearest the camera is our grandson.
DB: Oh wonderful.
JS: He became leading soloist there in his last eighteen months.
DB: Oh really? Wow.
JS: So we had two grandsons went to St Paul’s.
DB: Right.
JS: My eldest grandson, his picture’s over there holding his little boy and he’s in that picture at the back where he’s passing out. The one on the right is him. The other one on the left is the other singing brother.
DB: Right.
JS: And the one in the middle is our granddaughter.
DB: Oh.
JS: Who has just presented us with a little grandson called Toby.
DB: Oh.
JS: But the eldest boy became a part of Prince Charles’s staff. He was an equerry to the Prince of Wales.
DB: Very nice for him.
JS: Playing football with Harry and —
DB: Harry and William.
JS: William up at Sandringham. Did his stuff in Afghanistan like most of them do these days.
DB: Of course. I did Iraq not Afghanistan fortunately so [pause] I was there for six months. That was interesting.
JS: When was that?
DB: 2003. I was there Gulf War Two. So —
JS: They never, I mean one has to say history repeated itself with the Germans. Which looking back on it now you can say how could they have made such a dreadful mistake? How could there have been so many appeasers and self seekers and people who never did any fighting anyway who led us into a position where we went to war against Germany totally unprepared? We had nothing.




DB: There’s a really good book called the, “The Right Of The Line.” And the guy who wrote that, and I can’t for the life of me remember what name, what his name is at the minute but he, he covered that in extensively and I just can’t believe like you say that we let it get that bad.
JS: We paid the price.
DB: Yeah. We can’t let it get that bad. Did you have anything to do with the Short Stirling at all?
JS: No. No. We didn’t.
DB: No. You didn’t. Because I know you were quite early on with your flying training so it wasn’t until later that they used —
JS: Stirlings were still going.
DB: Yeah.
JS: But nobody wanted to fly in the bloody things. They couldn’t get above about fifteen thousand feet. I mean we could at least get the old Halifax up to about eighteen. The Lancs were up around twenty thousand but of course at the end of the day the Halifax was faster and could climb better than the Lancaster. They were beginning to put Bristol engines in to the Lancasters, some of them.
DB: So I, one of the gentlemen who I visited who used to live near me he was, he was a Halifax pilot and he was saying that he was involved with the Halifax 3 when it was being tested and he said it was a really good plane.
JS: Yeah.
DB: The Halifax 3. Even in comparison to the Halifax 1. So [pause]
JS: The difference was phenomenal we started off and found that we’d got Hercules engines instead of the Merlins and within about it couldn’t have been much more than about another two months at the outside they were going. We’d got the Centaura engines.
DB: Right.
JS: Which was even better. As I said to get one up to maybe twenty five thousand feet was quite something.
DB: That’s stunning that is. Very unusual. So the, I presume the Liberator you didn’t like that quite as much as the Halifax then?
JS: No. No. They were very comfortable. They were almost palatial on the flight deck with carpet and God knows what else. But they could only do a hundred and thirty seven.
DB: Right. Mind you they were a different role weren’t they than the, than the Halifax?
JS: We were going up with a load. Latterly we could have gone out oh I should think probably twenty five knots better than we used to with the old Merlin engine.
JS2: You didn’t tell Dee where your escape hatch was on your plane.
DB: Oh, what? The Halifax one.
JS2: And how you had to get out.
DB: Oh yes. You must. You must tell me about that.
JS: What was that, Joy?
JS2: I said you didn’t tell her how, where your escape hatch was on the Halifax.
JS: Oh, I see. No.
JS2: And how you could have got out.
JS: You’ve been on a Halifax, have you?
DB: No.
JS: You haven’t been in the one at York?
DB: Not yet. I’ve been up. I’ve been up to Elvington because one of the squadrons that I have sort of adopted is 466 squadron and they were Halifaxes. So last year.
JS: But not in 4 Group.
DB: No. No. They were--
JS: Were in 6.
DB: They were in 6 Group.
JS: The Canadians?
DB: No. No. They were Australian.
JS: Were they?
DB: So I went up to, to Elvington because I’d never seen a Halifax but I’d like to go inside her just to see the difference.
JS: I put a little money in as most people or a lot of people did. And I asked, I was wanting to go up. Well, we were going that way and eventually after a lot of hoo hah because there was some bloody woman there whose husband had done quite a bit of work on the Halifax as a volunteer and she thought she owned it and she would decide who went in and who didn’t go in but eventually I got agreement which she tried to frustrate even at the last minute. And I took, we had our neighbours next door this way who were great pals he was a jet pilot and a friend just up the road and the six of us went over the Halifax. It’s rather strange. Everything looks a little bit toy. You know you go to an aerodrome and all the buildings look smaller than they did. Just imagination. So Joy’s been all over the Halifax.

DB: I’ve been, I’ve been inside the, I’ve been inside the BBMF Lancaster.
JS: Yes.
DB: I’ve also been inside Just Jane. The one at East Kirkby. And when I went over to New Zealand to visit some friends I actually inside the one at the Museum of Technology and Transport there as well. So —
JS: What have they got there? What planes?
DB: Theirs is a Lancaster as well.
JS: A Lanc. Yeah.
DB: Yeah. They’ve got a Lancaster.
JS: Yeah.
DB: But I’d love to fly in the BBMF Lancaster but it’s not going to happen. I might have to wait ‘til Just Jane. [pause] I know, I know the Lancaster‘s a different aircraft but it must have been nice when the Canadian Lancaster came over.
JS: Yes. The Canadians have got a Halifax too.
DB: I know they have. I know they have but unfortunately it’s just static isn’t it? They’re just like, just like, well, and although I think doesn’t Friday the 13th have working engines or, or am I dreaming?
JS: I don’t know.
DB: I’ve got a funny feeling her engines —
JS: You know how the one came about in York?
DB: Yes.
JS: A chap touring Scotland on a croft. He saw the central section being used as a chicken run.
DB: I’ve actually got a book about it.
JS: Have you?
DB: Yeah. When I went up there I bought. I bought the book. The book about how she came about which is why I’d like to go inside her because I’d like to compare the two. But so, but yeah it’s because in some ways they’re similar. In other ways they’re very different. So, but yes it was a bit of a labour of love. I think you can, I think you can just pay to go in her now.
JS: Can you?
DB: Yeah. But if you’re a veteran I think you get in free of charge. If you’re the family of a veteran you pay a little bit. But if you’re not connected to a veteran.
JS: [unclear] Yeah.
DB: Then you pay a lot more but you also have to arrange it before you go up so —
JS: But the Halifaxes they tended to have a flight deck whereas the Halifax the wireless operator’s down the step. Literally under the feet of the pilot. And then there was a navigation cabin. Or not a cabin.
DB: Yeah.
JS: But a piece. And then the bomb aimer was in the nose.
DB: Right. Okay.
JS: But the way out was under the navigator’s feet but that was alright in a sense. What you had to do was to lift the seat and clip it back.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And push the table up and clip it back.
DB: Yeah.
JS: So that you could get at the hatch.
DB: Yeah.
JS: But of course —
DB: That would have —
JS: What happened was, they put a radar set up there.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And a radar set up there. And another piece over the top here that we used.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And the table couldn’t be moved. So you had to crawl under the table and get this bloody great thing up and the aircraft might be upside down.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Trying to get out.
DB: Or going like this.
JS: Yeah.
DB: In which case the pressure is going to be —
JS2: [unclear]
JS: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. And your, and your flight suit as well which wasn't exactly thin. It needed to keep you warm.
JS: Of course you had a Mae West and a harness on as well.
DB: Yeah. Not an easy, not an easy task at all. I got asked recently because the sole VC that was on our squadron he did wing walking and he was supposed to have gone out through this hatch and I got asked by somebody to find out whether it would be even possible in a flight suit et cetera et cetera. So, we knew roughly what height he was and all that sort of thing so I wrote to the people who, who’d got the Wellington at Brooklands and they said, ‘Oh yeah, it would be just about possible for him to get out with —' you know because they said he’d got his Mae West and his parachute on when he, when he did this wing walk and they said, ‘Yeah. He'd just about be able to squeeze through but it would be difficult.’ So —
JS: I could mention here that one day, we always got these jobs. I always thought, I'm quite sure we got a lot of these mine laying jobs because of my dexterity on the H2S set and virtually instructing on it. I don’t know whether my career would work that one out but we're all alive so it doesn’t matter.
DB: No. I'm glad you were all alive and you were all —
JS: One day the squadron commander grabbed us all. He said, ‘Got a job for you.’ And somebody had persuaded Bomber Command to give a trial to the American flak suits.
DB: Right.
JS: Have you ever seen them in them?
DB: I probably have.
JS: And they sort of lifted up at the bottom —
DB: Right.
JS: So you can sit down in the things. But we tried out. So the idea was that you had your ordinary flying clobber.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Then you put on this flak suit.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Then you put on a Mae West and then you put on a parachute harness as well.
DB: Oh my God, I would imagine.
JS: It’s impossible.
DB: Yeah, I should, I was going to say it sounds impossible.
JS: And I had the job of writing a report on it.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And at one of the big squadron meetings in the big meeting room there they were talking away there and someone said, ‘Could I ask you a question, sir?’ The CO said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘What happened about those flak suits? Didn't we carry out a trial and you got a report on it?’ ‘Report?’ He said, ‘It’s more like a bloody article for Punch.’ [laughs]
DB: Very, I like that. I like that. You'll have to tell them about that one. Oh dear.
JS2: You didn’t tell Dee how you met up with your crew. I mean not to start with. At the end.
DB: You did mention. He did mention that one of, one of the air gunners contacted him.
JS2: Oh, you did.
JS: Yeah. I dealt with that.
DB: It was while you were doing the sandwiches, Joy.
JS: Oh right.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. He mentioned that. Which is, I mean it is great that you managed to get together and at least you had some contact with your pilot as well because a lot of people they just bomb burst that was it. You never heard from them again so —
JS: The fault was in the system. We finished our tour of operations.
DB: Yeah.
JS: The Canadian crew finished the same night. We were the first two to finish in months so there was a big celebration.
DB: Yes, I can imagine.
JS: I can tell you how it finished. I was great friends with a warrant officer who worked with me. He lived out and he lived at the pub.
DB: Right.
JS: And so we took a big room that they had over the pub and we had a hell of a party. And it finished up with about four big hairy buggers grabbing hold of me, turning me upside down and said, ‘We’re taking you on your last flight.’ So zooming me around the room.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And suddenly somebody shouted out ‘flak flak flak’ and they brought bottles of beer shoved down the leg of my trousers and went wump wump wump. And Ethel the landlady said she could still remember me standing there and saying, ‘Ethel, can I come and pay tomorrow?’
DB: I think you ought to tell them that one. I like that story. I like that story. Hello Mr Squirrel.
JS: [unclear]
DB: Mr Squirrel.
JS: Oh, buggers. Yes
DB: Yeah [laughs] A pity it’s not a red one but —
JS: No. If it was a red one I wouldn't mind at all.
DB: No.
JS: Have I put in there anything about Sir Arthur Harris's speech?
DB: No, you haven't.
JS: We should because —
DB: Yes
JS: Posterity. It's on record.
DB: Yes, it is. Yes. Yes. Is that the, is that the one where he sat behind the desk?
JS: Park Lane Hotel.
DB: Oh.
JS: No.
DB: After. Post war.
JS: Yes.
DB: Post war one. No, you haven't mentioned that. I’m sure it probably is written down but it would be nice to hear your view on it, let's put it that way. Your reaction. That’s the word I’m looking for. Yeah
JS: Well, I think it’s something that's not repeated often enough.
DB: No.
JS: For people to realise exactly what it was all about. He summed it up very succinctly, I think.
DB: Yes.
JS: It was funny because he was, I was in shipping as I told you. And he was in shipping too.
DB: Oh right. Okay.
JS: He was one of the directors of the original, what’s, States Marine Corporation I think they called them.
DB: Oh right.
JS: Which eventually turned in to the national line for South Africa. South African Marine. Corporation.
DB: Right.
JS: And he’d been the director of it and I had a lot to do with SAF Marine people.
DB: Yes.
JS: Who had an office across the road from us in the city.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And great pals with a chap called Frank Smith who was their general manager.
DB: Right.
JS: And he used to come to me and say, ‘You wanna watch it. I’m having dinner with your old boss tonight.’ And they would go down and call on old Butch who lived down at Goring on Thames or somewhere down there.
DB: Bless him. Yes, he fought. Fought all the way for his, for his boys but unfortunately —
JS: It was a hell of a job he had to do.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Because when you think that at one period we were losing I would have thought perhaps on average seventy eighty aircraft a night. That must have played on his mind terribly.
DB: I'm sure it did. I'm sure it did. Because he, because he felt very strongly about you guys.
JS: Yeah.
DB: He felt very strongly but —
JS: But it didn't matter, I mean what part of it you were when people took off they all took the same chance.
DB: Oh, definitely. Definitely.
JS: Have you had enough dear?
DB: I’ve had plenty. Thank you. Shall I take these out to the kitchen for Joy. And there you go. I’ll pop these into the kitchen for you Joy.
JS2: Oh, thank you.
[pause]
JS2: I’ll have to show you as she goes out.
DB: I love the sign about the lovely old lady and the grumpy old man.
JS2: That’s my granddaughter did that. She came in with it one day.
DB: I think that’s brilliant. So [pause] it seems to still be playing. That’s not right.
[recording paused]
JS: Is it on? That thing on. Did I talk about Ellerman’s?
DB: Yes. You did.
JS: To you or to there?
DB: To there you. Yes, you did.
JS: Okay.
DB: Because you were talking about your family and you were talking about Ellerman’s then
JS: Yes. Yes.
DB: But perhaps you could talk about the incident you were telling me about when you finished your —
JS: Tour.
DB: Yeah.
JS: What else was it?
DB: That you were going to say about the next morning. You were sheepish, sheepishly talking to the —
JS: The night. That was the night.
DB: Yeah. Yes, because they had the two different types didn't they? They had the bomb —
[recording paused]
DB: Something interesting.
JS: Would it ever have finished?
DB: I don't know. I don’t know.
JS: I mean look what the Germans had up their sleeves. They had the V-1. They had the V-2.
DB: Oh yes. Mind you I suppose we were, I mean we were inventing our own things as well. I mean —
JS: Yes.
DB: It might have been they dropped an atom bomb on the Germans if —
JS: Yes.
DB: If it hadn't ceased before that.
JS: I mean, as it happened and I’m glad they did they dropped two on the Japanese and it demonstrated to the world what they could do rather than just write about it and people saying, ‘No. It won’t be like that at all.’
DB: No.
JS: It was like that.
DB: Yes. It was exactly like that.
JS: And because the Japanese would never have surrendered if their emperor hadn't taken the bull by the horns and said, ‘It stops.’
DB: One thing that’s, maybe you want to talk about is what happened, how did you celebrate VE Day? Were you at home or were you, where were you for VE Day?
JS: We were here. Oh, VE Day.
DB: Yes, the actual VE Day rather than, rather than the celebrations seventy years later.
JS: I don’t know to what extent it was over celebrated. I really don’t.
DB: Were you, were you still on the squadron at that point? No. You’d left at that point, hadn’t you?
JS: I was demobbed by then.
DB: Okay.
JS: Just been demobbed by that time.
DB: Right.
JS: I came out in midsummer and that was in —
DB: It was in August, wasn’t it?
JS: August. Yes.
DB: So, so you weren’t in London at that point. You didn’t go out to central London or anything.
JS: No. No. No.
DB: No.
JS2: You didn’t say anything about they wouldn’t let you have a medal until just recently.
DB: Oh.
JS2: And that Bomber Command wouldn’t be recognised.
DB: Oh, you mean about the Bomber Command clasp? I totally agree with you. Totally agree with you.
JS: I won't wear those campaign medals. They're the most disgusting thank you that anyone could, if you compare it with I'm lucky enough to have a DFC. But if you, how would you wear those against those bits of tin that the government.
DB: Yeah. One of my, one of my Warrant Officer friends, a guy called Jim Wright is still writing to the government and trying to get a proper medal so —
JS: We’ve got one.
DB: I know you’ve got the clasp but —
JS: No. I’ve got a Bomber Command medal.
DB: Oh right. Yeah.
JS: We’ve got our own.
DB: Yes. I know you created, created your own but he’s trying to get an official.
JS: Yes, I know.
DB: Government one.
JS: Yes, but that would be another piece of tin.
DB: Yeah. I don't think he'll succeed.
JS: No. No.
DB: I don’t think he’ll succeed,
JS: I'd rather not I'd rather not have it quite frankly. I won’t have mine made up in to a row.
DB: Yes.
JS: I've got the miniatures.
DB: Yes.
JS: But I won’t have them made up in to a row until such time as we can put the Bomber Command one in there.
DB: Yes.
JS: Next to the Aircrew Europe medal.
DB: Yeah. Sounds fair to me. Sounds very fair to me.
JS: Because they sound tinny when people walk along. Typical government response.
DB: Yes. Oh yeah. Definitely. It's all about these —
JS: They've got to do it so they do it in the cheapest possible fashion.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: So all the thanks people have got.
DB: Have you were you involved in D-Day because you, were you flying at that point?
JS: Yes.
DB: You were.
JS: Yes. But all we did and I say all we did was because it was just an extra doddle as it were we went over and we had a job of carpet bombing.
DB: Right
JS: Ahead of the British forces.
DB: Right. So have you.
JS: That went wrong with the, it was the Canadians who bombed their own troops.
DB: That’s right. Yes. I remember that.
JS: So fitted next to the navigator’s desk was a cut out switch and the bomb aimer couldn't drop anything until the navigator put that switch on.
DB: Right. Okay because have you, have you claimed your Legion d’honneur?
JS: [laughs] Are they lobbing them out are they?
DB: They're giving it to people who were involved in D-Day whether they be in the air, land or sea.
JS: Oh, I didn't know that.
DB: So I should claim it. If you were involved in any way you can put the claim form in for it.
JS: Yeah. How can you get a Legion d’honneur?
DB: Well, they’re basically, I think they’ve waited until there’s not that many of you. [JS laughter] But I don't think they realise just how many there are and it's taking some time. So but if you go onto the government website you can download the claim form and send it off so —
JS: Legion d'honneur.
DB: Yes. In fact, some of the —
JS: [humming La Marseillaise]
DB: Some of the, some of the Australian pilots had theirs given to them by the ambassador from France in Canberra the other, the other week.
JS: Oh really. Yeah.
DB: So, they’re doing it properly. They’re doing it properly.
JS: Yes. Well, we’ll give him a pennyworth if he comes up and does it up here.
DB: Why not?
JS: Yes.
DB: He’ll enjoy, he'll enjoy the countryside.
JS: Yes.
DB: The other thing is have you heard about Project Propeller?
JS: No. What’s that?
DB: Right. Project Propeller is a different, different charity and what they do is they arrange a day every year where they fly aircrew into a, a particular point and, and then they fly you back again. So for you they'd probably get you too, where is the nearest small airfield that a private pilot —
JS: Oh, the smallest? Is there one at Creake, Joy.
DB: Yes. I think there’s one.
JS: North Creake.
DB: Yeah. They'd get somebody to pick you up from, from there or from Norwich or wherever you, wherever you wanted to be picked up from and fly you to wherever the venue was and then fly you back.
JS: Do they fly wives as well?
DB: Yes. Yeah. Oh yes, definitely. Basically, it’s you and the person or carer depending on whether your carers —
JS: What does that do? I mean —
DB: Basically it —
JS: How does that benefit a charity?
DB: They, they raise the money for the charity to do this and it's to basically to honour you guys but if you like I'm quite happy to give your name to the guy who organises it who is a friend of mine.
JS: Yes.
DB: And I will get him to contact you and tell you and tell you all about it but I can also write down the website for you so that you can.
JS: Well, we're not great on websites and things.
DB: Okay.
JS: I won’t have anything, having dealt with all this —
DB: Yeah. Well, he’ll quite happily email you.
JS: Joy does a bit.
DB: Right. Okay. He will quite happily email you, Graham.
JS: Yes.
DB: Or ring you. Whichever.
JS: How are we supposed to get back to you by the way as a result of your e-mail?
DB: Oh.
JS: Because Joy looked at, looked at it and she doesn’t profess to be an expert.
DB: Right.
JS: By any manner or means and said, ‘I don’t know how to get back to her.’
DB: Oh, there’s a, there’s a little thing that says. Well, you click on something. It depends which, which one you use. But there’s something you click on that says, ‘Reply.’
JS: Oh [laughs] I didn’t —
DB: So, but basically, I wanted, I wanted — to contact you by e-mail to give you the chance to go and do exactly what you did do. Talk to Helen and just make sure I was exactly who I said I was.
JS: Yeah.
DB: So I was quite happy for you to do that actually. So that’s but do you, do you do you use it on a computer or do you do it on a tablet?
JS: Joy’s got a laptop.
DB: Oh, okay. So is it Outlook that you get your emails from?
JS: Don't be technical.
DB: Okay. Is it a separate software programme that you go in to or is it on the Internet that you go into it?
JS: On the Internet.
DB: On the Internet. Okay. Each of the, each of the programmes it is slightly different. But usually there's a little thing that says, “Reply,” and you just click on that. You can either reply to just one person if there is just one person or you can reply to all if there's more than one person. That sort of thing. So you just click reply, type your e-mail and then click send.
JS: We couldn't see anywhere and that's why I phoned and —
DB: Oh no, that’s fine.
JS: I left a message there to say.
DB: That’s fine.
JS: We're not that technical. We've never had to reply to these things.
DB: No. That's fine. It actually worked quite well that way anyway. So, let me see if, I don't know if I’ve brought my booklet from —
JS: Your colleague phoned me back.
DB: Oh, Helen. Yes.
JS: Oh, Dan.
DB: Oh, Dan.
JS: It was Dan, I think I spoke to.
DB: Oh, was it Dan that spoke?
JS: He phoned me.
DB: Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, Helen was the one, the one that emailed me but no, Dan’s lovely. Yes. Dan's lovely. Have you been invited to the unveiling of the Spire?
JS: Yes. I think they said something and I said if it involves a lot of walking and that sort of thing and it, I mean I had Joy and I had front row seats for the Memorial thing.
DB: Oh right.
JS: Which my son, old Charles there —
DB: Yes.
JS: Was attending because he was attending on the royal couple anyway.
DB: Right.
JS: And I said to him, ‘Where's the nearest toilet?’ And he said, ‘A long way away.’
DB: Yeah. The nearest, the nearest one was the RAF club but that’s that’s —
JS: Yes. That’s bloody miles away.
DB: Across the road. It is across the road but I’m sure, but they had, they actually had some temporary toilets there as well.
JS: Oh, did they? Well —
DB: Yeah. You would have loved it it was a fabulous day. An absolutely fabulous day. I was able because I’m a member of the Bomber Command Association.
JS: Yes.
DB: I got two tickets and I took the secretary of our 75 New Zealand Squadron Association. The secretary to it.
JS: Well, I phoned old Doug down at Hendon.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Because I used to live just up the road from there anyway.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And said, ‘Doug, you know from what I hear I don't think this is on for us. Thank you very much. Let someone else have them.’
DB: Oh, no. No. You would have been alright. You would have been alright but, but hey. Have you been down since?
JS: No.
DB: No. Oh it’s lovely. I go down as often as I can. And I’ve got friends who go down once month if possible as well. So –
JS: Yes.
DB: We have a little service every, every year on the anniversary and we had the third anniversary service this year. Then we go across the road to the RAF Club and have a chat to the veterans who turn up and that sort of thing.
JS: Yes.
DB: So there was a Polish gentleman there this year who was on 311 Squadron.
JS: Yeah.
DB: So he flew Wellingtons and Liberators.
JS: Yes.
DB: So, that, that was really interesting. So, but yes I’ll give you, if you’re happy for me to do it.
JS: Yes, thank you.
DB: I’ll give Graham your details.
JS: Just give me the option. Tell him that —
DB: No. No. That’s —
JS: Yes.
DB: No. He won’t. He won’t make the assumption.
JS: Yes.
DB: He’ll just say, you know this is what’s involved. If you're interested I'll put you on the list to be invited. And then you can say if you don’t feel up to it on the day because what they do is all the pilots are private pilots. They’re not military ones.
JS: No.
DB: They're all private pilots. They all, they pay for the privilege of taking you there to, with their own fuel and that sort of thing. The only thing that the Project does is pay for the landing fees. And last year we were at, well we were at this year sorry we were at Cosford so because I help him find people who aren’t already on his list he lets me go. So, but we flew from Cambridge to Swansea to go and pick up a veteran and his, and his brother and then flew from there to Cosford and then flew back to Swansea and then back.
JS: Yes.
DB: To Cambridge. But the pilots —
JS: What do they do when they've landed?
DB: They transport you in a minibus to where, the venue and then you chat to, chat to other people. They have, they have a buffet lunch, they have speeches and then when you when you’re all socialised out they, but they also take pictures of all of you and that sort of thing and, and then you come home.
JS: Yeah.
DB: So it’s, it’s a very social day. And you might catch up with people from 102 or from —
JS: Yes.
DB: Sorry. What was it? 53.
JS: 53.
DB: Yes. 53.
JS: I was only on 53 for a few months.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Because it was just playing out time to get —
DB: Yeah.
JS: Demobilised.




DB: But you might find that there are people from 102 or 53 and what he does do is he tries to get people who’ve been were on the same squadrons together so that they can talk about squadrons.
JS: I mean, you mustn't take this wrong at all but I’m not a great reunion person in that.
DB: Oh no. No.
JS: In the sense that Joy and I went to one at Pocklington.
DB: Right.
JS: And the first thing they want to do is have a march past.
DB: Oh no. They don't do that. No. They don't do that.
JS: That’s, that’s not up my street at all.
DB: No. Well, I think, I think a lot of the reunions nowadays don't bother with those sorts of things because —
JS: And also the other thing was —
DB: A lot of veterans can't do it.
JS: At the squadron reunion I think two thirds of the people there were not at aircrew.
DB: No. No.
JS2: They were ground crew weren't they?
JS: All wearing fancy blazers and with big badges and all that sort of thing.
DB: Right.
JS: I don’t mind.
DB: No.
JS: But —
DB: No, and the majority at Project Propeller are aircrew. There might be the odd ground crew member.
JS: The Aircrew Association closed, didn't it? I was a member of that.
DB: There’s a lot of the, some of the branches are still around because I know there’s one down in the Chilterns because a friend of mine is a member of, Tom Payne is a member of that one so there's the odd ones but a lot of them like you say have closed down because obviously there's just nobody to go to them now.
JS: I always laugh about my neighbour John who is a wonderful friend but he was, he did his national service learning to fly in Canada.
DB: Oh, right. Okay.
JS: Because the Korean War was buzzing around there.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And he was good company to talk to.
DB: Yeah.
JS: But I said to him, ‘There’s a difference you see’ I said, ‘Because when you went to Canada you were already a pilot officer.’
DB: Yeah.
JS: I said, ‘I wasn't. I was an aircraftsman second class.’ We travelled steerage. He travelled first class.
DB: Yes, I can —
JS: When I came back from Canada we were in a single cabin.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And there were, there must have been at least eight of us in it. In bunks —
DB: Yeah.
JS: Up the side of the wall. I know we were having, we were allowed one case.
DB: Yeah.
JS: They were stacked on the bath.
DB: Yeah.
JS: So when you had a bath you had to get a couple of blokes to come in and you slid in under the suitcases and they held the suitcases back in case the ship did a bit of that and you had to duck as the suitcases —
DB: Oh, I like that. Can you, can you talk about that for me? Yeah. Do talk about that one for me.
JS: Yeah.
[recording paused]
JS: That one. I pressed the wrong one I think.
DB: That’s alright. We’ve managed an hour and forty.



JS: Is that alright?
DB: Yes. Lovely. That’s absolutely brilliant. But I mean unless you, unless you can think of anything else that you want to talk about we’ll leave it at that. But —
JS: Well, do you want to lay your hands on that?
DB: I’ll have, I’ll have a look at it certainly but [pause] I’m sure I can probably pick up a copy from somewhere.
JS: Well, they have it at the library, sorry, in the museum at Elvington I’m sure.
DB: I’m sure. I tend, I’ve got about three different websites that I get books from. And —
JS: So are you permanently attached to Lincoln University?
DB: No. I’m, I’m just a volunteer for them.
JS: Are you? Yes.
DB: I’m just a volunteer for them. Dan is employed by them.
JS: Yes.
DB: And Helen is employed by them but I’m just, I’m just someone who has volunteered to help out. Sometimes I go along to air shows to help with.
JS: Yes.
DB: With veterans at those because sometimes some of them go for signing sessions.
JS: Yeah. Excuse me. May I please just have a look?
DB: Please do.


JS: I don’t know whether it was here was it? That was a different, a different one. Yes. The first bit of course is 102 were not there
DB: Yeah
JS: They moved. As I said the squadron were lodgers.
DB: Mary [Collingham]
JS: Yes. Well, when we had our reunion after the war I was one of the organisers.
DB: Yes
JS: With a pal of mine and one of our big guests we had there was Leonard Cheshire.
DB: Oh wonderful
JS: Leonard got his first gong as pilot officer on 102.
DB: Did he?
JS: Yeah.
DB: Yes. Before he went back.
JS: Yes.
DB: Way before he went to 617, wasn’t it?
JS: Yes.
DB: But you said it was about May 1942. But yes. Such a shame when the crews were killed. 405 Squadron were there as well.
JS: That’s right. Yes.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Pocklington’s being demolished bit by bit.
DB: Yes.
JS: To make way for a trading estate and that sort of thing.
DB: Yes. Unfortunately, it’s happening with a, it’s happening with a lot of them, a lot of RAF stations at the moment. Spilsby there’s not much left of.
JS: Well, of course our big one is Coltishall.
DB: Yes.
JS: And they’re still working out.
DB: What they want to do with it.
JS: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
JS: We get announcements and you think well that’s it then.
DB: Yeah.
JS: What was the latest with Coltishall, Joy?
JS2: I can’t remember. A housing estate wasn’t it?
DB: I know at one point they were talking about doing a, doing a solar panel —
JS: Yes.
DB: Farm or something.
JS: That’s another one. Yeah.
DB: Solar farm.
JS: We’ve got one of those building.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Up the road or going in up the road.
DB: Yeah. “Mine laying.”
JS2: Then there was going to be a prison and they said it was too near all the people
DB: Yeah. I think it’s the people in Coltishall complaining I think. But I thought they had actually opened an open prison there or something
JS2: I think they have done something to it now. Part of it anyway
DB: “Corporal O’Reilly fell off her bike in Pocklington.” Oh.
JS: [laughs] It wasn’t Peggy O’Neil who had a bike with one wheel
DB: Oh really. “Corporal [unclear] which is in SSQ with a subarachnoid haemorrhage in spite of —” Oh dear. Bless him. But this is the one with [unclear] in it [laughs] I like that. Yeah. I like that. With an old —
JS: That was the old Halifax with the oath on it.
DB: Yeah. Yes, a very famous poem. “Lie in the Dark and Listen.” Was, was you mentioned about Patrick Moore. Was he was he at [pause] was he at —
JS: I don’t know where he was.
DB: You don’t know where he was.
JS: No.
DB: Okay. Because there was somebody else who died recently who was in the air force. He wasn’t aircrew though, I think. He was ground crew, I think. The man who played Arthur Daly.
JS2: Oh, George Cole.
DB: George Cole. Yeah. He was, he was air force as well.
JS: There’s a piece in there about the station was visited by the father of the Royal Air Force Lord Trenchard.
DB: Oh, yes.
JS: Well. it’s funny when they say that but I was I’d been on a long trip the night before and I’d sort of just got up and we’d landed well after dawn.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And had a bath and changed and was sitting in the mess all on my own.
DB: Yes.
JS: In front of the fire and something tapped me on the shoulder. And I looked around there was this bloke you couldn’t see for the rings around his hand. I leapt up immediately.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And it was old Trenchard. I received Lord Trenchard. They didn’t mention that. And he said could I organise him a cup of tea.
DB: Oh bless.
JS: Which I went outside and did.
DB: Yeah.
JS: But hurriedly got on the phone to the CO to say, ‘I’ve got news for you mate.’ [laughs]
DB: You’ve got a visitor [laughs]
JS: Yeah.
DB: I think he liked just turning up announced, unannounced.
JS: Yeah.
DB: Didn’t he?
JS: Yeah.
DB: Because I think that’s the way, the way he found about things. The way things were.
JS: Well, he was Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police wasn’t he before he got involved.
DB: Yeah. So he was like, he liked creeping up on oh probably taken to Coltishall. That’s a connection. Munchen Gladbach. My father was at RAF Bruggen and we used to go shopping in Munchen Gladbach.
JS: Yes.
DB: It’s a very modern city nowadays but [pause] Oh, I see. Yeah. The DFC came later while he was on the squadron. They put it on there.
JS: Who was that?
DB: You put Wing Commander SJ Marchbank DFC.
JS: Oh yes. Old Marchbank. Yeah.
DB: And you put, you’ve put, ‘Came later.’ They’ve grounded —
JS: You haven’t met him have you?
DB: No. No. No.
JS: He was a bugger.
DB: Was he [laughs]
JS: Yeah. To our great pleasure he was all mouth, rah-rah-rah.
DB: Was he? Oh, right.
JS: And he swung on take-off and broke the aeroplane up.
DB: Oops.
JS: He was lucky because they had a full load on.
DB: Really? Oh goodness.
JS: Yeah. it kept him quiet for a bit though.
DB: Yeah [pause] Castle. Yes.
JS: I was watching it. We’d only, hadn’t arrived on the squadron all that long.
DB: You, you mentioned about, oh God, not Hamburg, not Homberg [pause] began with a D.
JS: Duisburg.
DB: Not Duisburg. There’s another one.
JS: Dusseldorf.
DB: No. You said there was a lot of aircraft knocked down on that particular one.
JS: No. At Nuremberg there was lots.
DB: Nuremberg. Was it Nuremberg? No. I don’t think it was Nuremberg. It might have been Nuremberg. But we lost five aircraft that night.
JS: Did you?
DB: On 75 Squadron.
JS: Yeah.
DB: Yeah, that was, no seven aircraft.
JS: [unclear]
DB: We lost seven aircraft that night. Yeah. Kiel.
JS: Yes. That was the big one.
DB: And Magdeburg]. Yeah. [Magdeburg]
JS: Three. Four. Five. If you turn over —
DB: Yeah.
JS: They caught a packet the next night.
DB: Yeah. That was true.
JS: Yeah. The other way wasn’t it? [pause] There.
DB: Yeah. Not good. Not good.
JS: Two nights.
DB: Magdeburg. Yeah. Berlin. Pilot officer Kularatne.
JS: Kularatne. Yes.
DB: That was the Ceylonese gentleman.
JS: Yes. Yes.
DB: Oh right.
JS: He’d been in touch with my son.
DB: Control tower. “Post operations drink usually laced with rum.” I bet you needed that didn’t you? Just to, just to help to warm you up.
JS: We had a, we had a padre, crafty bugger.
DB: Oh go on.
JS: Used to dish out the rum.
DB: Yeah.
JS: But he made sure that umpteen of the blokes didn’t want it so all those went into his kitty [laughs] What’s that one there?
DB: Group Captain RH Russell DFC took over as station commander.
JS: Yes [pause]
And of course a lot of people in the war depended entirely on when they were born. I mean I had —
DB: Oh, here we go —
JS: In my class at school who were dead before I went in because they happened to be nearly a year older than me. They were at the other end of the —
DB: Yeah. End of the school year.
JS: Entry. Yeah.
DB: Lord Trenchard, the father of the Royal Air Force.
JS: Yes.
DB: Visited the station.
JS: Where I got his afternoon tea for him.
DB: Yeah. Met him in the mess. How about that?
JS: Well I didn’t actually. He met me in the mess.
DB: Yes. He came and tapped you on the shoulder.
JS: Yeah.
DB: I like that story. I like that story. Fort Leopold Military Camp. Kattegat in Norway. There are so many names here that I recognise.
JS: We went to the cemetery at Barmby Moor. Barmby Moor is just on the other end of Pocklington aerodrome.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And strangely enough the padre, or the priest was a lady.
DB: Oh right.
JS: And —
DB: Yeah, I always call them padres.
JS: Yes.
DB: Don’t worry.
JS: Was a lady and when I saw her name I thought I know that name and sure enough she was the daughter of one of our captains. Oh, what on earth was the name I’m thinking of? I think it would have been, sometimes I remember something and then immediately after if I’ve stopped I’ve forgotten.
DB: Yeah. No. No. I understand.
JS: He had a brother in the company as well.
DB: Yes.
JS: His brother was a senior in London.
DB: Right.
JS: And he was the captain who told me the story about the ball bearing run to Sweden because he, he was one of the captains on one of those trips.
DB: Oh right, okay.
JS: On the ball bearing run. Yes.
DB: Oh wow. It must have been a fairly unusual name then.
JS: This was a good old Yorkshire name they mentioned. I can’t think of it.
DB: [unclear]
JS2: I think they have a lot of RAF burials there.
JS: What?
DB: Oh.
JS2: The church.
DB: Yeah. Almost certainly.
JS2: Wasn’t it, wasn’t it the RAF church or something? We went and had a look at the burials.
JS: That’s right. Yes.
DB: Yeah.
JS: I was, I was going to say that. Of course, there are, oh [pause] I think there were probably twenty graves there of RAF personnel.
DB: Oh right. Okay.
JS: And I don’t think there’s one more than twenty three years of age.
DB: Well, the average age was only twenty one, wasn’t it?
JS: Yeah.
DB: I mean, I mean you were a lot younger when you started but most of the, and certainly most at the start of the war they tended to be older but as as the time went on they tended to be twenty one or twenty two.
JS: I mean in those terms I was becoming an old man. I was twenty three when I left the air force.
DB: Yeah. Yes. “We wrote our kit off.” Oh.
JS: Kite.
DB: Kite off. Sorry.
JS: Yeah.
DB: “Tyres shot away.” Oh, that’s the one you were talking to me about.
JS: Yeah, where we —
DB: Yeah. Opposition moderate. Some heavy flak.
JS: Yeah.
DB: Five aircraft damaged.
JS: It was like walking on a bloody black carpet, [ping pong ping!] I can remember the bomb aimer turning around to me and he’d got a dent in the microphone of his face mask where a bit of shrapnel had hit him.
DB: Oh gosh.
JS: It whizzed past us and whooo.
JS2: Have you told the one about was it the rear gunner that jumped out?
JS: No.

DB: No.
JS2: When you were in the potato field.
JS2: No.
JS2: He didn’t realise he was twenty feet up in the air.
DB: Oh right. He jumped out early did he?
JS2: He jumped out and he thought he was still on the ground.
JS: Oh yes [laughs] No that wasn’t our crew. No. It was, yes a different one. There was an aircraft that went nose up in a ditch at Pocklington.
DB: Right. Right.
JS: And the rear gunner opened the doors and threw himself out. Didn’t realise it was at that angle.
DB: Ouch.
JS: Thought he was never going to land and it was our own rear gunner who, I told you his nerves went.
DB: Yes.
JS: And towards the end he used to race out the aeroplane [breath] bang.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Bang.
DB: Yeah.
JS: Well when we got these radial engines because they hung round instead of in a line the ones underneath if you weren’t careful you might get a residual fuel left in the bottom there. When they started it could damage the piston.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
JS: Next to there. So the idea was you had to run them up and then cut it off.
DB: Yeah.
JS: So he was out there when the aircraft went ‘woooo’. When we went out he was in a hedge like this looking at the cricket ground of Pocklington Grammar School [laughs].
DB: Oh, wonderful.
JS: Poor old Dougie.
DB: I really ought, I really ought to record those. Those two incidents. I really ought to record those two. Those are the sort of little, little snippets. Another South African.
JS: Oh yes and the other. Another lovely one. Our sergeants. Our sergeants had their own site. Living quarters.
DB: Yeah.
JS: They were all in Nissen huts there with these big stoves.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And they shared it with another crew. The end of this one, and they’d lit the fire there. They used to light the fire when they got back in the evening so it warmed up nicely.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And all hell bloody well broke loose. When we went outside there was the stars shooting out of the chimney. A member of the other crew had been stealing Very cartridges from the aircraft.
DB: Oh no.
JS: There was going to be an inspection. He had them in a bag and he dropped them in the fire.
DB: Yeah.
JS: And forgot he’d dropped them in the fire. Nearly blew the bloody fire apart. You know one of these big iron —
DB: Big pot belly. Oh my God. Oh, we ought to.
[recording paused]
DB: Do you want to just quickly re —
JS: Oh, no. That’s the eight South Africans.
DB: The rear gunner, et cetera and the —
JS: Is it on? [pause] The change of engines on the Halifax from the inline Merlins to the radials did cause one amusing incident where our rear gunner had leapt out of the aircraft to light his customary after operational, soul receiving, nerve placating fag when the engines on the starboard side where he was standing were being run up as part of the run up run down drill. When we came out the aircraft we were not at all surprised to see him spread eagled in the bushes at the back of the aeroplane. Another little incident was a member of a crew who’d been helping himself to Very cartridges and had them in a bag which he’d hidden in a fire and to his great surprise he forgot to tell anybody and they lit the fire and they had the biggest firework display down on the sergeant’s side that I think they’d ever seen. And I’ve been asked to mention that the aircraft, the Halifax went nose down in a ditch with the tail standing feet up into the air when the rear gunner wondered what on earth had happened and decided the best way out was to open his doors and threw himself out little realising the height that he was falling from and he got a very rude awakening when it took him about three days to land.
[recording paused]
DB: That was wonderful.
JS2: Yes. It was very like him because if he’d been in the bed it would have, it was our own shell from that gun because when we took it in to the police station they said it was an English shell so obviously it had come, because we always used to go out in the road and pick up the shrapnel from all over the place. I can remember doing that with my brother.
DB: And all his toys were were —
JS2: Yes. He had little soldiers along his bedroom shelves and they were all on the floor and dust everywhere. Yeah.
DB: And then a land mine not long after.
JS2: Yes. But that, you could, you know, when they come down you’d hear the noise coming. Well all the bombs, a sort of whistling noise and then this complete silence. And that’s the end and you know it’s landed. And the doodlebugs were the same, you know when they came along because if you watched them and they suddenly stopped you knew they were going to come down.
DB: Oh dear. Thank you. Okay. I did wonder whether you’d had experiences because you were sort of just about the right age.
JS: Come here, you.
DB: Yes boss!