Interview with Frank Mouritz

Interview with Frank Mouritz

Frank was born in Australia in 1923 and joined the RAAF in 1942. After initial training as a pilot in Australia and Canada, on Tiger Moth and Anson aircraft, he arrived in England. Over the next 12 months he progressed from Oxford to Wellington to Stirling to Lancaster aircraft. He compares the difference between the Stirling and Lancaster to a tractor and a Ferrari. Deployed to 61 Squadron, he flew as second pilot ("second dickey") on a number of daylight operations before undertaking night time operations. He feared the intense anti-aircraft fire but considers the German fighter with its upward firing cannon as the most dangerous. Frank describes, in detail, the various exit ports used in an evacuation of the aircraft and the difficulties for some crew members. He recalls that a tour consisted of 34 operations, which was followed by six months as an instructor, then a second tour, except for the pathfinders, who did 35 operations but were not required to carry out a second tour. Of his own tour, Frank carried out nine area bombings, 12 rail yard bombings, six primary target bombings and seven army support missions, and dropped 290 tons of bombs. One of the memorable missions was in February 1945, the bombing of Dresden which he bombed at 23.00 hours. On his return flight he could see the flames from 120 miles away. During the German offensive in the Ardennes, he flew missions in support of US troops. After VE day he was trained for the Tiger Force and assigned to Okinawa but VJ day prevented his deployment. After his return to Australia he kept in touch with his former crew and his last reunion with them was in Lincoln.

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00:17:43 Audio recording

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Interviewer: We have with us Frank Mouritz and I’ll ask him his name, date of birth and which service he was in.
FM: My name is Frank Mouritz. I’m presently residing in Basildon. I was born in 1923 at the town of Gnowangerup in the wheat Belt. I joined the RAAF in June 1942 and served for about three and a half years. I trained as a pilot and served over two years overseas in the United Kingdom.
Interviewer: Where? Where did you do your training in Australia before you went to the United Kingdom?
FM: I did all my training in Australia up to the stage I was a sergeant pilot when I left to go overseas. I trained in both Cunderdin and Geraldton and went overseas from Melbourne in 1943.
Interviewer: What type of aircraft did you train in?
FM: I trained on Tiger Moths and Ansons.
Interviewer: Now, when you moved to the United Kingdom were you assigned to an Australian squadron or an individual in an RAF squadron?
FM: When I arrived in the United Kingdom we had a considerable amount more training to be done but firstly we didn’t know European weather and we had to be trained on other aircraft. I did virtually about twelve months more training in the United Kingdom before I went on operations.
Interviewer: Under which command were you assigned?
FM: I was assigned, I flew with Bomber Command 5 Group which was an independent group in Bomber Command. We had our own Pathfinder force. In fact, the 617 and 9 Squadron were Special Duty Squadrons were part of our organisation.
Interviewer: And the squadron you finished up with was it a mixed Commonwealth squadron or was it Australian?
FM: The squadron I finished up with was 61 Squadron. We were actually the City of Lincoln Squadron. It was a mixed squadron in that about fifty percent of our aircrews were United Kingdom, Royal Air Force and the other fifty percent was made up of a fair amount of Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and the odd one from Africa and Kenya and places like that.
Interviewer: What was your relationship with those from other Commonwealth countries?
FM: Oh, we got on very well together actually. We had some good discussions and a very interesting group of chaps to be with.
Interviewer: And what type of aircraft during this period were you flying?
FM: When I was in the UK I first trained on Airspeed Oxfords. That was initial training just as a pilot. After this, after training on Airspeed Oxfords I went to an Operational Training Unit where I crewed up and joined the men. We met and we formed a crew and we then flew on Wellingtons. Training on Wellington bombers. Then onto Stirlings which was a four-engine bomber where we picked up the seventh member of our crew. The flight engineer. And after some training on Stirling bombers we went to a Lancaster Finishing School which was only for a couple of weeks learning to fly Lancasters and then we were assigned to a squadron.
Interviewer: With the Stirling and the Wellington there were some deficiencies in the aircraft compared to your final Lancaster?
FM: Well, the Wellington, the Wellington bomber was quite a nice bomber. It was one of the earliest of bombers that had flown during the war. At that time the Wellington had been taken off operational flying. It was purely used as a training aircraft although it was still operated in the Middle East and it flew in the Middle East right throughout the war as a Wellington bomber. The Stirling I went in to had been, was the first of the four-engine bombers at that time, had been taken off operational flying and was only used for training. The difference between flying a Lancaster and a, and a Stirling bomber was something like driving a five-tonne truck to a Ferrari. Quite a remarkable difference in the two aircraft.
Interviewer: Now, tell us about the planning and the actual events of your first operation out to Germany.
FM: When you arrive on a squadron the first thing they do is send you on another as a second pilot, as a second dickie purely as an observer with an experienced crew. I went with an experienced crew and I think it was about their twentieth trip. That was about a five hour trip and purely as an observer and see what was going on the trip before I went on my main with my crew.
Interviewer: When was the first occasion you were subjected to anti-aircraft fire or to enemy fighters?
FM: The first trip I was subjected to anti-aircraft fire was actually a daylight trip. Daylight bombing to the German town of Wilhelmshaven. That was our first trip against fighters.
Interviewer: Was it skill that made Bomber Command switch to only night bombing?
FM: Bomber Command started in the very early stages of the war in the first probably twelve months of the war with daylight trips and they were complete disasters against the German fighters. After that all of Bomber Command’s operations were night until some daylights trips at the last stages of the war. Short daylight trips.
Interviewer: Would you be subject to any fighter attacks in a night raid?
FM: Yes. The German Luftwaffe had a very extensive fighter operation. Mostly twin-engine fighters, JU88s and ME110s. At the latter stages of the war the last twelve months of the war, last eighteen months of the war the JU88 was probably our worst enemy in that they had a pair of upward firing twenty millimetre cannons mounted in the roof and with their extensive radar equipment which was at that stage better than ours they could sneak up underneath us and shoot us down from underneath.
Interviewer: What was the effect of German anti-aircraft fire? Did you fear it or did you just fly through it and hope or was it inaccurate?
FM: The German anti-aircraft fire was extremely, extremely accurate. If you got, if you got predicted flak if you didn’t take evasive action you could get, you could be hit by the second or third shell for sure. Evasive action was fairly ok against it if you could dodge it. What we did we carried silver paper which we dropped out which could blank out their radar but it didn’t blank it out the way your radar did. It didn’t blank it for your aircraft it blanked it out for the aircraft behind you. So in the target area it was all what they called barrage flak in that the guns shot up, their radar was completely blocked out by the Window and they just shot up a barrage into the air with timed shells that exploded at certain heights in a big box barrage. We were just, we just flew through it. The quickest way through was to just go straight through it.
Interviewer: When you say you took evasive action would that break up the formation of our attacking bombers?
FM: No. We never, flying at night we never flew in formation at all. In fact, the bomber stream which could be so we were operating with 5 Group probably two hundred and fifty aircraft we’d be a stream about thirty odd miles long and about three or four miles wide. It was quite possible to go out on a night trip and apart from over the target area which was light hardly see another aircraft at all. We flew completely independent.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: The casualty rate of aircraft. What was the average over the various missions?
FM: When flying with 5 Group we had about two hundred and fifty. Around about two hundred and fifty aircraft on a night trip. The main, main Bomber Command with the follow up at that time could put up around about a thousand aircraft. That’s mostly Lancasters and Halifaxes.
Interviewer: What percentage of losses would be regarded as unacceptable and that type of mission not done again?
FM: Bomber Command’s losses varied. Varied throughout the war. initially they got knocked to pieces very bad in the early days. Up to two and a half percent was considered as a, as a reasonable loss on a, on a night trip. There were a little bit of a fiddle with these too because when Bomber Command announced over the radio that they had eight hundred aircraft out and they’d lost sort of sixty aircraft were missing but they didn’t take into account all those that had come back damaged, all those that crashed on landing when they came back. And you’d get sixty or seventy aircraft actually missing but there would be twenty or thirty more with crews shot up because they weren’t actually missing. They’d got back alright.
Interviewer: Now, the crew itself when an aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft or fighters were most of the crew able to bale out or were a considerable number killed in the process?
FM: In a fighter attack there’s a fair probability that some of your crew could be wounded and that you wouldn’t really attempt to bale the crew out unless the aircraft was in its last stages of going down because the Lancaster was fairly robust and she’d hang together on, on a piece of string really and you had a fair chance of getting back if you didn’t have the fire on board. As far as getting out of the aircraft with the seven crew on board the rear gunner, he sat on his parachute. He could get out fairly easy by rotating his turret ninety degrees and then rolling over backwards. The rest of the crew, the wireless operator and mid-upper gunner got out through a rear escape hatch and had to go about twenty or thirty feet down the aircraft to get out. The bomb aimer, engineer and navigator and pilot got out through a lower escape hatch in the bomb hatch. The pilot being the last one out the pilots had on, they sat on their ‘chutes but the other members of the crew apart from the rear gunner had a clip-on ‘chute so if they had to abandon the aircraft they had to clip on their parachutes first before they abandoned the aircraft. We carried a fair bit of escape gear in that I carried a set of photographs taken in civilian clothes and it could be put on to an identity card. I carried a full instruction on how to fly a Focke Wulf 190 aircraft and a little pamphlet showing me how to be able communicate in French and other languages to various other people and although we didn’t know how to contact the Underground that information was kept secret.
Interviewer: I believe eventually Bomber Command laid down the number of missions a crewman should do before he was released to another task. What was it in your time?
FM: When I flew I flew thirty four operations which was considered as a tour. Bomber Command you did your first tour and if you survived you went back as an instructor to a training station for about six months. Then you were re-crewed up again and flew a second tour. If you joined the Pathfinders they did forty five trips straight through and there was no compulsion to go back to fly again, operations again after that.
Interviewer: Was there any cases where individuals could break down as a result of the stress of flying and the stress of possibly being shot down?
FM: We heard a lot about it but on our squadron I’ve got no knowledge of anybody actually going what they called lack of moral fibre.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: During the thirty four operational missions you did with Bomber Command tell us about some of the objectives you went to in Germany and why you went there and how effective you think they were.
FM: During the thirty four trips we probably dropped something like two hundred and seventy tonnes of bombs including high explosive bombs and incendiaries. We burned about fifty thousand gallons of high-octane petrol which is enough to keep going in a car for a lifetime. We did nine trips area bombing which was area bombing of towns or cities, twelve trips against harbours, installations, canals and railways, six trips against oil refineries and seven trips against Army support.
Interviewer: Would you ever get any indication on how effective your bombing was on each particular mission?
FM: We got a reasonably effective photograph because after we dropped our bombs we had to fly straight and level for a certain number of seconds depending on our height and a photoflash was dropped and an exposure which took a photograph which should have been of where our bombs dropped providing we flew straight and level.
Interviewer: There’s been a lot of study done on one of the raids you did which was to the historic town of Dresden. Can you tell me the background and the results of this raid?
FM: Dresden was bombed in the, in February 1945. It had never been bombed before. The Russian troops were advancing probably within about less than a hundred miles of the, of the city of Dresden and advancing fairly quickly. It was full of refugees and Bomber Command was ordered to bomb the city by the people in charge. I guess to obliterate the city and try and prevent the Germans advancing through it. Acting as a good staging post for the, against the, to assist the Russians. We as 5 Group we were the first ones to bomb actually. The first stage of 5 Group we bombed the town about, the city I should say at about eleven or 12 o’clock at night and we could see the [unclear]. We normally flew at low level coming home and we could see Dresden burning from about a hundred and twenty miles away. On the way back it was like a sunset in the sky. The remaining eight hundred aircraft of Bomber Command bombed it about three or four hours later and the Americans bombed it again the next day at about nine or 10 o’clock the next morning. All of the town was completely, the town was completely wiped out.
Interviewer: Bomber Command supported many times the infantry or ground forces over France and in Germany. Did you participate in any of those operations?
FM: We did some. A couple of bombings during the Ardennes because the winter of ’44/45 and we bombed some support troops there in the Ardennes site at a place called Houffalize where we bombed some American ,sorry some German tank emplacements. How successful that was we never knew and we also we bombed the Rhine on the German side of the Rhine when Montgomery’s troops crossed the Rhine. That we understand was a very successful operation.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: There were some figures on the casualty rate of bombers and crew during the four years duration of Bomber Command. What was it?
FM: The Bomber Command lost about fifty five thousand air crew and the casualty rate overall with the survival rate was about one in five. At the time I was on the squadron we had four crews which one finished a tour and we lost twenty two crews gone missing. Not saying that all those who were missing were all killed. Quite a few of them could have been prisoner of war but we wouldn’t have had any records of that. Figures.
Interviewer: After victory in Europe everyone was geared up to finish the war against Japan. What was your group’s participation in the proposed Japanese efforts?
FM: 5 Group which was, as I say again a section of Bomber Command went under the name of Tiger Force who were planning to come out to bomb the Japanese mainland, or the Japanese islands and mainland based on the island of Okinawa which at that time had still been, was still in Japanese hands. So that was to be taken by the American troops. We were going to be retrained or regrouped from the Lancasters —
[recording interrupted]
Interviewer: Shall we now have a look at the relationship and camaraderie of the aircrew of a particular aircraft and how long they stayed together.
FM: In the training system when a pilot went to Operational Training Unit he met the crews from the other categories which would be air gunners, navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators formally come together to make a crew. These would have come from various training stations. The Empire Air Training Scheme was active in Canada. A lot of British chaps were trained in, were trained in Canada. Some were trained in South Africa. We all came together at these Operational Training Units where you formed into a crew. As the pilot was going to be the captain of the crew it was his privilege to approach other members of the other categories to form a crew and once you formed a crew unless for some medical reasons or for some reason why they couldn’t get on together or maybe technically couldn’t do the job they were supposed to do the crew remained together right through their operational training and right through their operational flying.
Interviewer: Did this promote a spirit of camaraderie or looking after each other?
FM: This promoted a very great spirit of camaraderie because you, you flew together, you lived together and you went out drinking beer together over a period of twelve months and it was almost at the stage of being married. Being a marriage between you.
Interviewer: After the war was over and everybody had been discharged were there any activities whereby your old aircrew could have reunions or other method of sticking together?
FM: Yeah. I’ve fortunately been able to keep in touch with most of the members of my crew. In fact, all of them over the last few years. Particularly I’ve kept in touch with my navigator because I married my navigator’s sister so he’s now my brother-in-law or has been my brother-in-law over this time. The other members of the crew we’ve all kept together and the last we’ve had one reunion here in Western Australian in 1992 where five members of the crew attended and last year we had a crew reunion in Lincoln in association with the squadron annual reunion which six members of my crew attended. The seventh member died about fifteen years ago.
Interviewer: And my final comment. You mentioned thirty four operational missions was the requirement. Was it possible to volunteer for further missions or if you went to a training job could you go back to operational flying at a later date?
FM: Normally we were committed as Bomber Command. Volunteers to Bomber Command. We were committed to do two tours of operation. The first one being around about thirty, thirty plus and the second one possibly being maybe twenty which would be at a Special Duty Squadron or with Pathfinders because you were a very experienced upgrade at that time.
Interviewer: After discharge did you ever take up flying a civil aircraft again?
FM: I flew Tiger Moths in the Aero Club for a short while but no . No more since then. No.