Interview with Alan "Jock" Richardson. Two

Title

Interview with Alan "Jock" Richardson. Two

Description

Alan Richardson begins half way through a story of an aircraft losing wings flying through the Needles. S Bond then tells a couple of stories about crew who ditched a Wellington and an air gunner taken off ops. Alan finishes with some comment on log books not telling the whole story.

Language

Type

Format

00:05:56 audio recording

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.

Identifier

SBondS-RichardsonAv10015

Transcription

AR: Measurements wrong and he went through and lost both his wings.
SB: Through the Needles.
AR: Yeah. The wings came right off and it was only the tips that were caught but they were all killed of course.
SB: Good grief.
AR: Stupid.
SB: Oh dear. You’re saying about that another, another chap I knew he’s dead now sadly, another Wellington chap they had some sort of engine trouble or fuel starvation trouble coming back from an op and they were somewhat, they knew they’d got across the Channel and it was night obviously and they ditched. Got into the dinghy. That was fine and they thought well hopefully somebody will come along and rescue us and they were bobbing around in this dinghy. It was a very very dark night, low cloud, for several hours and when, when light came up they were about that far from the shore on the Isle of Wight.
AR: Really?
SB: Awfully close. Somebody stepped over the side and the water only came up to their knees. They’d been sitting in the dinghy all night.
AR: Yeah. You never know with these guys.
SB: No. No. That’s right.
[pause]
AR: I sometimes wish I’d kept my logbooks better.
SB: Really?
AR: Yeah.
Other 1: Steve.
AR: It was just a case of making it up, you know. Sorry?
Other 1: What do you have in your coffee?
SB: Oh, standard please.
Other 1: Ok.
SB: Thanks.
AR: It’s a case of at the end of the month everybody was still, ‘Get your logbooks made up.’ So you’d just make them up but in actual fact there was an awful lot of stuff lost.
SB: Yes.
AR: Because you just put in a raid on so and so and that was it.
SB: Yes.
AR: There was no story.
SB: Right. Oh, no. That’s right.
[pause]
AR: For some reason Malta was best for that because we had more time to do things.
SB: Really?
AR: I don’t know why.
[pause]
SB: Another chap who made me laugh who I saw a little while ago he’s ninety nine year old this chap and he was air gunner on 40 Squadron.
AR: Yeah.
SB: And he did seventeen ops and then stopped.
AR: Yeah.
SB: And I said to him, ‘Well, why did you stop?’ And he didn’t do any flying after that. He just stopped and I said, ‘Why was that?’ ‘I really don’t know,’ he said. So it sort of moved on a bit. I said, ‘What did you think when you were flying?’ ‘Oh, we loved it. We had, we had a great time during our ops. Really looked forward to it, enjoyed it.’ And I thought that’s a bit strange. So I said, ‘Well, how come you stopped then?’ He said, ‘Well, I came back on the 17th —'
AR: Yeah.
SB: ‘And the adj called me in the next morning and said, ‘You’ve got an appointment at the RAF Hospital at Ely tomorrow.’’ So they sent him down to Ely. He was interviewed by a psychiatrist who took him off ops. Yeah. Whether it was his gung-ho don’t care attitude.
AR: Yeah.
SB: I suppose it must have been but very strange that one.
AR: Amazing.
Other 1: You’d have thought they’d be delighted that someone was enjoying themselves.
SB: Well, you would wouldn’t you?
Other 1: Perhaps it was a little strange.
SB: Yes.
Other 1: Yeah. I say it takes all sorts.
SB: Well, indeed. Of course it does. Yeah.
[pause]
[drinks made and talking about the dog]

Collection

Citation

S Bond and A Richardson, “Interview with Alan "Jock" Richardson. Two,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed February 12, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/50274.

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