Description of crew and ground crew
Title
Description of crew and ground crew
Description
Describes leisure time activities of crew including personal transport and fishing. Mentions groundcrew and their electrician who flew with them on short operations. Page numbered '6-2'.
Creator
Language
Format
One page printed document
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
BPotterPLPotterPLv30002
Transcription
[Description of crew and ground crew]
These were all fine gentleman, although Tom, Ron and myself became close, spending more of our leisure time together. Tom spent leave 'With us on Dad's farm in Fingringhoe. According to Jimmy Jackson Tom's family were related to Henry Ford but I don't remember Tom saying anything about his relatives.
Ron Wood and I spent our stand-downs travelling around either in the Lagonda RGB or on his Ariel Square Four. We took the car if there were more than two people. A straight 12, it had 2 brass straps to hold each of the three sections of the bonnet flaps down. It had massive brass headlights, plush red leather upholstery and I ran it on a mixture of TVO[Tractor Vaporising Oil] and 100 octane which was kept in the air raid shelter at our dispersal pad. Sometimes we would all go out together. At Hixon we went fishing and Jimmy Jackson fell asleep. We saw a dead goldfish in a shallow and put it on his hook, wound the line around a stone and threw it out. The tug on the line and the splash woke Jim and he reeled in the dead goldfish, crowing all the time about his expertise at the sport. When the goldfish surfaced, he suddenly went quiet. The rest of us shouted 'wen done' and took a photo of him, looking at the tiny fish, dumbfounded.
Our ground crew were dedicated tradesmen. They did a fantastic job of maintaining F2, our Lancaster. When we were on stand down, we would all often go out for a drink to a local pub or to Lincoln.
Our electrician was George Gant. Some years after the war I met him on Mersea Island, Essex, where I was living at the time, and found he was also a resident and working for the Electricity Board. His family still live in the district I understand. He was one of the best and we owed our lives to him and the rest of our ground crew. Whenever circumstances allowed we would take one of them on a short trip Op. George flew with us on a flying bomb raid (VI) and the others to other targets. We only took one person at a time. On two occasions the CO came with us, once unofficially.
These were all fine gentleman, although Tom, Ron and myself became close, spending more of our leisure time together. Tom spent leave 'With us on Dad's farm in Fingringhoe. According to Jimmy Jackson Tom's family were related to Henry Ford but I don't remember Tom saying anything about his relatives.
Ron Wood and I spent our stand-downs travelling around either in the Lagonda RGB or on his Ariel Square Four. We took the car if there were more than two people. A straight 12, it had 2 brass straps to hold each of the three sections of the bonnet flaps down. It had massive brass headlights, plush red leather upholstery and I ran it on a mixture of TVO[Tractor Vaporising Oil] and 100 octane which was kept in the air raid shelter at our dispersal pad. Sometimes we would all go out together. At Hixon we went fishing and Jimmy Jackson fell asleep. We saw a dead goldfish in a shallow and put it on his hook, wound the line around a stone and threw it out. The tug on the line and the splash woke Jim and he reeled in the dead goldfish, crowing all the time about his expertise at the sport. When the goldfish surfaced, he suddenly went quiet. The rest of us shouted 'wen done' and took a photo of him, looking at the tiny fish, dumbfounded.
Our ground crew were dedicated tradesmen. They did a fantastic job of maintaining F2, our Lancaster. When we were on stand down, we would all often go out for a drink to a local pub or to Lincoln.
Our electrician was George Gant. Some years after the war I met him on Mersea Island, Essex, where I was living at the time, and found he was also a resident and working for the Electricity Board. His family still live in the district I understand. He was one of the best and we owed our lives to him and the rest of our ground crew. Whenever circumstances allowed we would take one of them on a short trip Op. George flew with us on a flying bomb raid (VI) and the others to other targets. We only took one person at a time. On two occasions the CO came with us, once unofficially.
Collection
Citation
P Potter, “Description of crew and ground crew,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed April 18, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30872.
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