Interview with Frank Dennis. One

Interview with Frank Dennis. One

2014

02:34:32 audio recording

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ADennisF090301

FD: As a quick preamble as to why I was eligible to volunteer as a flight engineer in the RAF I ought to say that to start at the beginning I left school at fourteen in 1937 and it was decided I ought to try for some sort of clerical career so I went to work in a clerical capacity with Perkins Diesel in 1937. But although there was a lot to learn there, it was interesting as a firm I only stayed for ten weeks because a better position came up at Baker Perkins. One for which I’d applied for earlier and that was in cost accounting and stores accounting and that sort of thing. So I went to work at Baker Perkins in Peterborough and started on [unclear] occupation which went along very happily and smoothly until September the 3rd ’39 when as you know war broke out and it was all change from there on. Very rapid change. From being general engineers Baker Perkins producing all sorts of bakery equipment and vending machines and that sort of thing into an armaments factory. This manufacturing a wide range of heavy artillery generally and anti-aircraft guns. So I served my, well what happened then was that a large numbers of the people in the offices there were no longer wanted since they were an armaments factory and were released. Some stayed on to replace people who were called up as reservists. Younger blokes like myself were offered apprenticeships in the factory if we wanted it. Having words with my father about it he, he said, ‘Well, there’s not much else going now. It’s all changed. Things in a state of flux. So you could try engineering apprenticeship if you like but I don’t think you’d like it much.’ So I did. From starting as I did at Baker Perkins as a clerk at 9 o’clock in the morning finishing at five, a nine to five occupation, it was half seven in the morning until half five in the evening and often much later than that. But I did like it. I found that I could adapt to it and I quite enjoyed working as an engineer or apprentice engineer and that’s how it was. But at that time I still stayed in the Scouts. The Air Defence Cadet Corps I was in. Strangely enough they closed down on the outbreak of war, reformed four years later as the Air Training Corps. And then I was in the Auxiliary Fire Service. Press ganged into that literally as a Scout. We attended the first Scout meeting after war broke out and this was all pre-arranged. It must have been. They said, ‘Right, those over fourteen, over the age of fourteen will report to the fire station in Old Fletton, Friday evening at 7:30 and you’ll be told what to do. [laughs] It wasn’t a question of would you? Would you mind? You were.
Interviewer: You are. You are in.
FD: That’s how it was in those days.
Interviewer: Yeah. Brilliant.
FD: And so that was another of my activities. Anyway, that is all by the way. So when a four-year apprenticeship was up on my twentieth birthday I volunteered. Went along to the Recruiting Office in Peterborough and volunteered as a flight engineer. A pal of mine came along showing a little interest but not that much. He wouldn’t put his name down but when we got outside of this Recruiting Centre he said, ‘You’ve done it now, [Bard.]’ Bard was my nickname. I won’t tell you how I came by that.
Interviewer: I shan’t ask.
FD: It’s a bit complicated.
Interviewer: Righto.
FD: And he said, ‘You’ve done it now.’ I said, ‘Yes, I have.’ Anyway, I was soon called to [pause] for tests and appraisal at Cardington. Three days of medical examinations, mental examinations, adaptability tests etcetera and at the end of that you’re interviewed. I was told that I’d done reasonably well and I was offered pilot training if I wanted it and I said, ‘Right. Sounds attractive. How long will it be before you want me for training?’ ‘Oh, about six months.’ They thought. ‘And what about as flight engineer?’ ‘Well, if you want you are almost straight away.’ ‘Right. Ok. I’ll stick to what I originally volunteered for. Flight engineer.’ Calling up for training was delayed a bit. Well, I was called in September but my father had an accident. He was in the Auxiliary Fire Service too. He had an accident in the Fire Service and was hospitalised. Mum was rather upset so I delayed my entry by about ten days, then reported to the Aircrew Receiving Centre in London which was at Lord’s Cricket Ground and from there we were billeted in St John’s Wood. In the flats there overlooking Regent’s Park. This was a question of being kitted out, being sworn in, learn how to march a bit and polish shoes and all that jazz. Then it was not too bad. The problem was lack of sleep. You were raided every night thereabouts by small numbers of aircraft comparatively but quite a nuisance. The anti-aircraft guns were just at the back of St Johns Wood and we, we could hear it all night long. And then on about the third day we were in the Air Force there walking along for our meal at, in Regent’s Park. The restaurant there was used for our meals actually and we had to go along there for breakfast and the other meals. We marched along which wasn’t too far from St John’s Wood. One day that, all that day, the third day in the Air Force the sound of aircraft engines getting lower and lower which was unusual when all the balloon cables were up as they were. But this Dakota came out of the cloud with about eight to ten feet of its port wing missing, obviously in trouble and he was looking for somewhere to put down which was difficult in a city like London. But he thought he could get down in Regent’s Park. After doing a wide sweep around this balloon came up. He tried to put it down but in doing so crashed into the Monkey House in Regent’s Park and up she went in flames. All perished. Which was a bit off putting having just got into the Air Force. So the monkeys incidentally had been evacuated from London to other zoos and, as all the animals were in Regent’s Park Zoo they had all gone. We were there I would think about three weeks I think it was going through all these preparations and then posted off up to, a whole trainload of us to a place called Usworth in County Durham I think it was. It might have even been further north than that. An isolated airfield. Inhospitable cold place. We were only there for a week fortunately before being sent off to Bridlington on the Yorkshire coast. Bridlington ITW. Initial Training Wing. There we had to operate Aldis lamps, signally to each other along the sea front using the Morse Code. We were given instructions on the Lewis gun and the Browning gun. Stuff like that. Learning how to march properly. Most important of course. And that’s how we spent six weeks. Pardon me. We were in private houses. Billeted there. There were quite a number of private houses that had been evacuated. They had run up from the sea front these various rows and most of them were used by the RAF and Air Cadets. At the end of the six weeks we celebrated by, oh we used to go down to the front quite often and walk along the sands if we had any time off. And on the last Sunday we were there we went down, it was a nice warm balmy sort of day and we went for a game of football actually on, on the beach. Which was most enjoyable and somebody said at the end of it, ‘The last one in the sea is a –’ so and so. Everybody made a rush. And this was December and it was rather chilly so we didn’t stay in very long and ran all the way back to the billet to dry off. We finished there. We got a bit of leave but we were told to report to Number 4 School of Technical Training at St Athans in South Wales. We had to report there on the 23rd of December. That seemed a bit much. Christmas. The day before Christmas Eve. But no they insisted that we had to be there then and we did get Christmas Day off. Then we started ten weeks of basic training in flight engineering which was hard going in actual fact. You started at 8 o’clock in classes which were held in hangars in groups and you were taught by corporals generally. Some of them were ex-teachers and used to teaching and were quite good. Others didn’t teach or lecture very well at all. But there you are that’s how it was. It was a six day week. Saturday was a normal working day. Sunday morning was various things like how to prepare an engineer’s log and how, aircraft recognition lessons we had, first aid which flight engineers must know how to do and all that sort of thing. Sunday morning was spent like that. Sunday afternoon we had off believe it or not and, but I didn’t always. Like a mug I volunteered since I used to play in the Boy Scouts band that I belonged, in the Boy Scouts and played in the band the kettle drum they needed someone for the station band. So I volunteered for that. So that meant I was busy on Sunday afternoons as well sometimes but it was quite enjoyable. And then we got a leave of about a week I think it was at that point after ten weeks. And then when we went back we had to choose. Choose, we weren’t told, choose which type of aircraft we wanted to specialise in. A pretty wide range of choices. Of course, first of all was the Lancaster and the Halifaxes. A few were wanted for Stirlings. A few for Fortresses, Coastal Command Fortresses. A few for Liberators. A few for Sunderlands and a few for Catalinas. Coastal Command Flying Boats and the [pause] no, just the Sunderlands, and the Catalinas were reserved for the more elderly flight engineer trainees. Those over thirty years or so. Thirty up to thirty five possibly. We volunteered for the others. Well, I’d already given some thought to this actually. Quite the most popular was the glamour aircraft, the Lancaster everybody wanted to try was the Lancaster. But it was about that time there had been this raid on Nuremburg of course. The infamous Nuremburg raid. They’d lost ninety odd. There had been a raid on Berlin. Sixteen lost to those. Another sixty were lost over the Ruhr one night and Bomber Command’s losses were quite high in numbers and the aircraft of course were quite depleted. Well, it didn’t look a very rosy future quite honestly but at St Athans which was a huge military establishment there were about three different MUs there. That’s Maintenance Units. As well as the Flight Engineer’s School there was a Radio School with Ansons. And the Maintenance Unit, one of them dealt with Halifaxes which were intended for Coastal Command. These were the older Mark 2s and they’d been modified so they had a long slender nose. They were all white, four bladed props. The old-fashioned style of fin and rudder and they looked magnificent. I thought I wouldn’t mind flying in those. My chances of probable survival were slightly better in those.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Than they were, than in some of the other aircraft. I was thinking what’s the use of being a dead hero if you could carry in flying in Coastal Command?
Interviewer: Yeah. Sounds good to me.
FD: So my friends in the hut where we were they had a group of us who were very friendly with each other they asked me what I was doing and I told them and they, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ And eventually they could see the sense of it because a group of about eight of them also decided to do the same thing and put down the Halifax Mark 2s and Mark 5s. That was –
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: The Mark 5 being the same as a Mark 2 Halifax except that it had Dowty hydraulics and undercarriage, undercarriage gear as opposed to the Messier that the others had. They had Halifax Mark 3 was flying at that time so quite a number opted for that. Anyway, that decision was made and so we had another fifteen or sixteen weeks I think it was specialising on one particular type of aircraft. Getting to know it inside out and how it operated and how we fitted into the scheme of things. That ended of course in, I think it was end of June, early July, ’44. A little bit of leave which was [pause] we were in need of that actually because it was a concentrated course and I found after that first ten weeks I couldn’t really absorb any more. I needed a break from it. You reached this learning plateau where you could absorb so much and that was it. But so the leave was very welcome then. I did reasonably well on this course. There were two hundred or more of us on this course. Just over two hundred. Well, there were about two hundred and twenty odd initially but a few were weeded out during that time so it was about two hundred of us left and ten of us achieved the seventy percent on the course. If you achieved seventy percent or more you automatically got an interview for a commission. So, I had to go before a Commission Interview Board which wasn’t very enjoyable but nevertheless I went through it and afterwards I said, ‘What happens now?’ And they said, ‘Well, when you get to the squadron see your flight engineer leader and tell him that you’ve had an interview for a commission and listen to what he says.’ I was surprised I got the commission interview actually because I’d been in trouble once or twice and got jankers for it. One time was because at the evening meal there was a lot of cake put out as an extra ration but you weren’t supposed to take it out of the hut. I didn’t hear those instructions so I took a chunk out in my battledress. I thought it would be nice for my supper rather than a NAAFI bun or something like that. I was picked up by the corporal who marched me off to the guardhouse and I didn’t get a chance to explain at all. I just said, ‘I didn’t hear.’ ‘Well, you should have heard.’ So I spent, spent the night in the Glasshouse. Went before the CO in the morning and got I think it was ten days jankers which means you have to report at 6 o’clock in the morning in full kit and do a bit of marching and then you’re told that you’ll report in the evening.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: About 6 o’clock and you spent three hours washing up dirty tins and things in the cookhouse. Not very pleasant. And the other time was there were quite a number of Australians on this flight engineer’s course. They were pretty wild boys. We got very friendly with them and went out one night with them to a village, the next one up from St Athans, Cowbridge I think it was called and we had a few drinks in the local and came back with them quite rowdy and the corporal in charge of our huts started to lay down the law. One thing and the other. So we got fed up with this and I said, ‘Get stuffed, corporal.’ Well, that was it. I was up on jankers again [laughs] Another week confined to camp and all the rest of it that goes with it. Anyway, I’ve still got this, this interview. Incidentally, I’d had my first flying experience. My first flying experience at, at St Athans. The Radio School would take up flight engineers for a little while just to give them air experience because many like me had hardly been airborne at all before. Just to let us see what it was like. So I spent fifty minutes in an Anson over the Bristol Channel and that was it. That was the sum total of my flying experience. And at the end of the course we were given this leave and of course while we were on leave we had the sergeant’s tapes sewn up and a flying engineer’s brevet sewn on and we thought we were great. And then we had to report to the Heavy Conversion Unit at Topcliffe. Topcliffe. So, I assumed that Topcliffe was a Coastal Command place up in Yorkshire somewhere. So reported to Topcliffe. Yes. Saw some Halifaxes about but they weren’t white and there was an awful lot of Canadian officers and their crew about. It suddenly dawned me that we weren’t going to be in Coastal Command. But it turned out that we were at a Heavy Conversion Unit. One of two that belonged to the Canadian bomber group. 6 Group. So that’s how it turns out. What do they say about the best laid schemes of mice and men?
Interviewer: Just slightly yeah.
FD: So I hadn’t been as clever as I thought I’d been actually here. Anyway, we had to crew up and the way this was done was that the engineers were told to report to the Flight Engineer’s Section. Flight Engineer Leader said, ‘Go outside on the green there and have a game of cricket.’ So we did. Didn’t need to be asked twice.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: We went outside there and had a game of cricket. But apparently we were being watched. We didn’t know at the time. And after this game a tall lanky Canadian came up and said, ‘Hello.’ He said, ‘I’ve been watching you,’ he said, ‘How would you like to be my flight engineer?’ I said, ‘Fine. Who are you?’ I’m Ron Cox. Pleased to meet you. Shelburne, Nova Scotia.’ Old Ron. I met the rest of the crew as well. Of course, they all met up at the Operational Training Unit. They’d been flying Wellingtons at Wellesbourne in Shropshire not far from Stratford Upon Avon. It might have been Staffordshire. Not far from Stratford anyway and I think they spent six or seven weeks there in training. They were a crew already. I was someone extra who joined them at Con Unit. But they’d had all this experience. I didn’t even know for instance that when you had your flying helmet on and your microphone and your oxygen mask that you could switch it on and off. I left it on originally. As you can imagine the four Merlins in a microphone.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: But that just shows how ignorant we were. I wasn’t the only one. We’d never received any training like that.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: Basic stuff.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Done the advanced training but not the basic stuff.
Interviewer: The basic stuff.
FD: Well –
Interviewer: You had to learn as you went on.
FD: That’s right. So anyway we crewed up. First of all, well various members of the crew or the skipper and the flight engineer anyway had to be attached to another more experienced crew and I had two cross country’s as a second engineer watching the other bloke doing his job and the skipper did the same. He was second pilot and then it was up to us. Off we went. As with the whole of the course there was always a sense of urgency. Everything had to be done quickly. Leave cut down to the minimum. We were rushed through as quickly as possible. So here at Topcliffe which is a very pleasant station incidentally we weren’t billeted on the station. We were in a country mansion about twenty miles away. Not too far from Ripon I don’t think that was and there were transports to and from during the day from this mansion to Topcliffe. So we did about sixty hours flying in three weeks which included a fair amount of night flying and then also we got our first taste of ops after a fashion. It wasn’t really ops. We were, we did bullseye diversions as they were called and we had to fly up to the Dutch coast. Up and down the Dutch coast releasing lots of metalized strips code named Window which was designed to confuse the enemy radar and put them off so they couldn’t read it. Not particularly dangerous although some, some aircraft were lost over there. So after that we were posted to a squadron but there were problems. Other problems at the Conversion Unit. On one occasion we were in an aircraft. We were going on this bullseye diversion but I wouldn’t take it because the starboard inner was acting up badly. The oil pressure was low. Oil temperature was high. Beyond the norm, far beyond the norm and obviously it was, it was going to be troublesome and the mag drop also was excessive. They said they couldn’t fix it so ok but assured me that there was nothing wrong with it. Well, I knew there was. Anyway, they said, ‘Well, take the spare aircraft. The time was getting on so we were rushed over to this spare aircraft and shouted, ‘Get in and get away. Get airborne. Everything is ready. Off you go.’ So we got in, taxied around, started to go down the runway, take off. Suddenly, no airspeed. We hadn’t gone too far fortunately so we were able to cut them, put the brakes on and just about stop before the end of the runway. I suspected what the matter was. I went out and there was a pitot head cover still on.
Interviewer: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
FD: So, it wasn’t all ready for us to take. Well, I couldn’t reach it but they came around with a van. They could reach it –
Interviewer: Yes.
FD: And get it off. So once again we went off eventually. But problems like that. I did actually watch a lovely Halifax coming into the land. I could see that he hadn’t, hadn’t got his wheels down. He was well on the approach start. I told the skipper, ‘Look. No wheels.’
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: He got over to the control tower and they warned him but it was too late. He just started to put them down as he touched down.
Interviewer: Too late.
FD: Too late. And came in on his belly.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: It did happen.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: You know.
[recording paused]
FD: So much for Heavy Conversion Unit at Topcliffe then and we were posted after that. No leave at this stage. Straight to a squadron. An operational squadron. So we along with three other crews were posted to Middleton St George in County Durham. Two went to 419 Squadron and two to 428 Squadron both on Middleton St George. Incidentally this was the end of August ’44 and by Christmas ’44 I was the sole survivor of those other three flight engineers. They’d all gone. But the point is having arrived at Middleton we were there not to fly Halifaxes but they had Lancasters at Middleton St George. Not only that but they were the Canadian built Mark 10 Lancasters. I’d never been inside a Lancaster before. ‘I’d spent all this time preparing to fly Halifaxes which I quite enjoyed but no. These were Lancasters. Well, I had one day Ground School learning where all the tanks were and how to operate them and other details about the Lanc. I did one cross country as a second engineer again watching the other chap operating all the taps. The skipper did the same with another crew and there we were ready to go. So we did a few days crew training and the strange thing that struck me about the first flight in a Lancaster was that the skipper hung on to the brakes quite a bit when I was doing this as a second engineer as a demonstration I think and opened up. And when the brakes were released it hits you in the back. The acceleration was enormous on this Lancaster. I was very impressed. Mind you it was very noisy too. The Halifax on its Merlins had got a manifold exhaust system and it did silence things a bit. But in the Lancaster they were just short exhaust stubs and they were very very noisy. Anyway, after this little bit of training we got on with our bombing practice. Air to air firing, fighter affiliation, cross country’s. All the stuff that you do when you were working at being prepared for ops. And then we were ready to go. At least that’s what we were told. But I had my doubts. I still felt green as grass in a Lancaster. Had two hours.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: But there you are. So the first op turned up. It was going to be an easy one on one of the flying bomb sites in Northern France and we were taxiing. We were marshalling ready to take off. Following each other around the take-off point. I was looking out, down and just glanced at the wheel, make sure it wasn’t falling off you know.
Interviewer: Absolutely. Is it still there then?
FD: But I saw something on the tyre. Looked like a bit of white paint or something. Came around again. That’s not paint. That’s metallic. So I asked the skipper to stop. I wanted to check the tyre. See what that was I could see. So disconnected the intercom, climbed past the bomb aimer, past the navigator, over the main spar, all the way through the fuselage and out. And of course I couldn’t see anything. So I waved the pilot on. He moved on a few more feet and stopped. And there was the head of a bolt. Looked like a three eighths of an inch bolt. The head was showing in the tyre.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: We had, we didn’t have a full fuel load but we had eight tons of bombs on board. I didn’t think that was a very good idea.
Interviewer: Yes.
FD: The engineering officer is always around at take-off. I called him over and he came and had a look, ‘No. Scrub.’
Interviewer: Yeah, scrubbed. Yeah.
FD: ‘You’re off.’ Ordered us to taxi on to the grass.
Interviewer: So everything else could carry on.
FD: Yeah. That’s right.
Interviewer: Can’t get in the way because obviously you would have stopped all the taxiing of all the other aircraft.
FD: Didn’t want us holding them up.
Interviewer: Yeah. Well, just –
FD: So just pulled off and my, my friends went off on their first op and there we were stuck. But actually, if that hadn’t have blown on take-off that tyre it certainly would have done on landing.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yes.
FD: So you can see the point in not. Not flying.
Interviewer: Well, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
FD: So I didn’t know whether to take this as an omen not getting away on my first op. Perhaps I should have done. We did get away on an op. I think it was one on the flying bomb sites in Northern France. Bomber Command did try if it was possibly [coughs] pardon me to put you on an easy op for your first one if it was possible. They would do that. And that was an easy one. But the next one wasn’t. We went to Bottrop in the Ruhr Valley. A daylight. A fair amount of flak. We were thrown about quite a bit in the flak. I suppose it was something that I had to get used to. Flying through flak. Anyway, by the time we’d left the target one of the engines was vibrating rather badly. I tried to find out which one it was by throttling back in turn. Didn’t eliminate it completely.
FD: So, skipper was frowning at me as much to say find out what the trouble is. So I did the same again and throttled right back actually completely one engine at a time. Then it was, I think it was the starboard inner that was the trouble. I didn’t want to feather it in case I had trouble with the others so I, we ran on that one with all the way back and the vibration [unclear]. But it turned out that a bit of flack had taken a chunk out of one of the –
Interviewer: So it had unbalanced it, yeah.
FD: Unbalanced it and that’s what was causing the vibration. And then I think we did one more easy op to Northern France and then we were off to Bergen on a daylight in Norway. U-boat pens. We were due to take the Ruhr Express. RZ I think it was. Now, the Ruhr Express was the first Canadian built Lanc. It was a load of trouble. There were always faults. There was always things wrong with it and there was this time. I think the starboard outer, the mag drop was terrific. It was obviously faulty. Now, the point was on this op we had to fly at sea level all the way to evade radar detection and when the Norwegian coast was in sight then we had to climb hard with quite a heavy bomb load of armour piercing bombs to reach at least fourteen thousand feet I think it was in order for these armour piercing bombs to penetrate the U-boat pens. Well, this old kite of ours would never make fourteen thousand feet with an engine like that. So, we had to unpack everything and get out and take the reserve aircraft. There was always a reserve and we took that one but we were half an hour late leaving and obviously we wouldn’t be with the bomber stream. We would be going over entirely on our own over the target which is not a good thing. But nevertheless we had a fighter escort actually. A Mosquito. Two Mosquitoes. One on each wing tip. Fighter Mossies.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: Escorted us all the way there.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: Yeah. I remember seeing the mid-upper gunner in his turret rubbing his hands like this.
Interviewer: Absolutely.
FD: Yeah. No work today.
Interviewer: Yes, absolutely [unclear]
FD: Magnificent are these Mossies. Anyway, of course they left us when we had to go in. Into the target and bomb. We weren’t bothered too much. The flak wasn’t too severe. The others had been bothered because there was a fighter airfield just south of Bergen at Stavanger and they came up and had a go at some of the others over the, near the target and, but of course they thought everybody had gone.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: By the time we arrived.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. So you actually went in at that on your own then.
FD: Hmmn?
Interviewer: You were on your own.
FD: Yes. But we got away with it at the time.
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
FD: In actual fact [pause] The idea was on this op that maximum bomb load, minimum fuel and you’ll be diverted to an airfield in Scotland to refuel on the way back. In any case they thought County Durham airfields would be out of use anyway. They expected a lot of bad weather.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: So we had to go into Turnhouse at Edinburgh or those other airfields. Kinloss was one. Another one at, near Wick in Scotland. One of those. Refuel and then come back when the weather permitted. But on the way back we had a radio message telling us head for base. The Scottish airfields were closed. Well, we hadn’t got much reserve but getting the message at that stage we were able to turn and head for base.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And had a better chance than the others and we made it but didn’t have a lot left actually. One of our crews had been hit over the target or near the target. A number of injured on board apparently. A crippled aircraft. Couldn’t hold height. Were lost and flew into the top of the Cheviot. The highest –
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: The highest hill near the Tweed in the border country.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: Straight in and apparently the navigator was killed I think and they didn’t know where they were. Others were injured anyway. That, that happened. I knew them very well. It was all rather, rather sad.
Interviewer: Yes.
FD: So, I thought at this time I should mention to the flight engineer leader that I’d had a commission interview and all that. He said, ‘Oh yes.’ I said, ‘I don’t know what happens here.’ ‘I’ll tell you what.’ He said, in an ironic sort of way, he was a Canadian, there weren’t many Canadian flight engineers. Flight lieutenant of course. The whole gunnery leader, navigation leader were all flight lieutenants.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: That was their rank.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: He said, ‘Come back and see me when you’ve done ten ops. Then we’ll have a chat about it.’ Well, of course there was a fair chance, more than a fair chance that he wouldn’t be bothered with me again with me so –
Interviewer: No, well absolutely. Yeah.
FD: He was right.
Interviewer: That’s right.
FD: But actually after ten weeks I was called for interview. After ten ops rather I was called for interview and this time it was with the squadron commander and his crew —
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Who questioned me.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: The way the Canadians did it, at least out on my squadron the crew asked me questions about their job that they did in the aircraft.
Interviewer: Right. Yeah.
FD: And I’m young enough and keen enough to tell them what to do or what they did. For instance the, the navigator said, ‘Have you operated the Gee set and what can you tell me about it?’ Fortunately, Blair Lindsay had let me have a go once or twice so I knew a little bit about the Gee set. And the radio operator I think they were a total of about seventeen aerials, different sorts on a Lancaster and the wireless op, ‘Name me twelve of the aerials that there are on a Lancaster heavy bomber. [unclear] the rest of them.’ That sort of thing. The gunners talked about deflection and ammunition, rate of fire, capacity of the ammunition boxes etcetera etcetera.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Which I was always interested in anyway. I mean it was fascinating really so it was, I thought it was reasonably successful. Anyway, we’ll leave that for now and we’re up to October now in 1944 and we did a trip to Stuttgart. Which is down in southern Germany of course. That was a different type of operation. It was cloud. Complete cloud everywhere. And at twenty four thousand feet we were still in cloud. But we bombed on H2S. That’s the airborne radar system and what happens is that when you bomb through a bombsight there’s a photograph taken of your aiming point. And likewise when you bomb on H2S there’s a camera takes a picture of the screen when the —
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: When the bomb aimer presses his tit and that photograph is taken on the H2S screen.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: So you can see exactly what you’re aiming at.
Interviewer: Right. Right.
FD: So as you’re bombing Stuttgart you are actually on the screen the outline of the city.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And what you are aiming for there. But after bombing there was flak. You could see flashes around but it was in cloud and we stayed in cloud and we seemed to pick up ice even at that altitude which was unusual but it’s not unknown and we seemed to lose our way a bit. The navigator thought after a while and worked out and he said, ‘We should be approaching Strasbourg before very long.’ He said, ‘You should know about it if we are.’ It was always heavily defended. Strasbourg.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Because although its French really the Germans occupied it. [unclear] So yes we were because all hell let loose before very long. We were over Strasbourg so we got the bearing there in the end.
Interviewer: Right. An extreme way of doing it I suppose.
FD: We couldn’t get in at base. We were diverted to Stradishall in Norfolk or Suffolk. I can’t remember now. Suffolk possibly. There were three halls. Mildenhall, Stradishall and Coltishall. That’s right. We were at Stradishall and that was we found was a Heavy Conversion Unit for Stirlings. I had no idea that Stirlings were still being used. They weren’t being used in Bomber Command but apparently they were excellent glider tows.
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
FD: And some were also being converted as transports for carrying cans of fuel and this sort of thing.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: For the invading force. Anyway it was very interesting there except that base remained closed. We couldn’t get away that day. It was only late on the third day when we got away. Which is rather fitting really because my sister was getting married to a Canadian and I got permission after they got back from this op to nip off for the day to the wedding. Well, of course –
Interviewer: Discovered in a different part of the country.
FD: Yeah. I couldn’t make it and they realised what had happened.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: And the skipper knew this. He knew that I couldn’t. I couldn’t make it so he said what we’ll do Frank Blair will set us a course for Peterborough and we’ll do a low pass over the church. And sure enough they commented on this. They said, ‘We heard a Lancaster that was terribly low as we were in the church in Peterborough.’ In Peterborough. So I was there in spirit if not actually in person.
Interviewer: Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah.
FD: And when we got back. The Ruhr. We did Essen. One night operation and one daylight operation on Essen which was still operating apparently after all the bombing that had taken place. But we got early on target and since the navigator didn’t have much to do he popped out to see how things were going. Looking ahead he could see this huge black cloud in the sky which we were heading for and he commented, ‘Holy Christ,’ he said, ‘Have we got to go through that?’ [laughs] Back he went to his desk, closed the curtain, he didn’t want to know any more.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: Actually. But we did the same to Cologne. One day op and one night operation and quite honestly daylight ops always seemed easier than the night operations as well. You could see where you were going. You could see what was coming after you. It was [pause] none of them were easy.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: But I think it was much harder at night then what it was during the day.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Seemed to be that way anyway. At this stage in the war perhaps [unclear] actually. October of ’44. Anyway, from the Cologne night operation we were diverted again because as often happens in the Vale of York and north of the Vale of York industrial haze and smog and everything blanked out the airfields. In fact, it was apparently getting pretty grim everywhere over the UK. We were diverted to a little airfield in, this was in Norfolk.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: At Little Snoring. When the radio operator got this he said, ‘If this is somebody’s idea of a joke I might punch them. There ain’t no such place.’
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: But Blair had a look at his charts and he said, ‘There is you know. There is a Little Snoring. An RAF station.’ So in we went and the fog was coming in off the North Sea quite rapidly. We made one approach on this Little Snoring but it was only an eight hundred yards of runway and we weren’t even anywhere near touching down halfway along it.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: Open up. Full throttle, maximum boost, wheels up, off we went around again. But it began to get rather dim down there.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: The fog was drifting in. The skipper said, ‘We’ve got to get in this time.’
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Or we won’t be in anywhere.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And of course fuel doesn’t last forever. Incidentally, we were just given a half an hours reserve of fuel. It was calculated what we would need to get to the target and back.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And just got half an hour reserve. Alright, you could cover, in half an hour you can cover a hundred and twenty miles say. But it doesn’t take into account the amount that you use in the circuit.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: That sort of thing. We had to do overshoots.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: To get right.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: So there wasn’t a lot to spare but there was some. Anyway, the skipper put it down on the, on the second attempt but we overshot the end of the runway and there was a fair sized overshoot area that we finished up in bearing in mind [unclear] shift the Lancaster it had got bogged down. Anyway, a cheerful bunch of erks you know arrive ‘Oh, right. Don’t worry. We’ll see to it. We’ll tow it out for you. You go off and get your beer.’ So we left them to it and we went and this was a Mosquito airfield. It had a half a dozen Mossies. The bomber variety.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And this was where the Mossies that went to Berlin every night got to. Four thousand pounder on there and came back. And they were in mourning because they’d lost one the night before. One Mosquito. I couldn’t understand this. I thought it’s part of the course I suppose losing one. ‘No, we hadn’t lost any aircraft before. Never. It doesn’t happen.’ ‘You’re lucky. We reckoned to lose an average of one on each op.’
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Sometimes more but the average was about one, you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: [unclear] aircraft flying down.
Interviewer: Yes.
FD: They were absolutely appalled. Anyway, they treated us very well. They got the cook up out of his bed. This was 2 o’clock in the morning.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: And they cooked a marvellous meal. Lots of tea and coffee. They wanted to stay up all night talking.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: We were feeling rather weary.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: The intelligence officer debriefed us of course.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: As far as he could. And, you know they were a very nice lot there. A very pleasant lot at Little Snoring. Apparently it’s got a full name which is never used and that is Little Snoring in the Mud [laughs] It was just Little Snoring on the map actually. So that was October. On the 1st of November —
Interviewer: We shall have to pause this for a minute.
FD: Yeah. Yeah.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: And we just —
FD: Just get on to page three of fourteen. This is going to go on for a while.
Interviewer: That’s not a problem.
FD: Isn’t it? Well, first. Yes. They finished in October. On to November. 1st of November ’44 the op was Oberhausen. Ruhr Valley again. It was a travel centre. A lot of roads lead to Oberhausen so do a lot of railways. A Communication Centre but we were at this one and it wasn’t too bad over the target. A bit of flak but we missed it but we also missed a turning by a few seconds. Probably about twenty seconds or so after we left the target which put us slightly outside the bomber stream I suppose. There weren’t many aircraft on this. It was 6 Group. But we were attacked and at eighteen thousand feet there were two bursts of a night fighter. One from three quarters rear which raked us from the rear turret right up to well just behind me. Through the fuselage and then came in behind and I thought he must have emptied his magazines because he went away or seemed to this one. This long burst. Long old burst. He was a bit too close to do complete damage because you could see the cone of fire from the guns meeting in front of us. But of course having said that there were a number of the shells hit the inner engines and other parts of the aircraft. The first thing that happened was the starboard inner must have caught it because that burst into flames but the Graviner extinguished it. It worked and put out the fire and [unclear] at the same time. The starboard inner. A lot of thing happened here. The skipper seemed to have difficulty in controlling his end but we’d lost the intercom, we’d lost the flying panel and most of the other instruments had gone. He shouted at me, ‘I may not be able to hold it, Frank.’ And ‘You’d better get your ‘chutes on.’ So I told the bomb aimer who was still down in the nose, we’d only just left the target. ‘Better get your ‘chute on Tony.’ Tony apparently couldn’t see. He was blinded by hydraulic oil. The pipes in the front turret had fractured and there was oil everywhere and somehow or other he managed to pull the ‘chute in the nose. It probably caught on, there was a lot of jagged metal around and it billowed out and started burning like everything else was burning. The navigator’s table was burning and the curtains and anything that was combustible was burning. But we managed to get that out. But of course poor old Tony was very upset not having a ‘chute now. Very upset. So I said, ‘We won’t jump, Tony. We won’t jump.’ I took mine off and he seemed to quieten down a bit then. But a lot of things happened in a short space of time there. I thought I’d better go back and check on what things were like. Coincidentally the, the navigator had been hit. He’d passed out. He’d been hit in the face. His oxygen mask was buried in his face. But he came around from time to time and once when he came around he asked me for a fire extinguisher which I took from the front of the aircraft and he sprayed the leading edge of the starboard wing which was burning. It had burst open and all the cables and stuff were burning there. He sprayed that and got himself burned a bit in the process and, but put it out and then he came back inside, back inside and flopped out on his table again. I went back to see what I could find and the mid-upper was not in his turret. He was on the floor with one leg hanging out of the very large hole in the floor where the H2S was. It was just open now. The wireless operator had been hit badly. He was only semi-conscious. I called the mid-upper back in. He was still unconscious. I didn’t know what the matter was. I couldn’t see any serious injury but obviously the detonators, his turret was just above the detonators in the H2S which is supposed to detonate the explosives if you crash land in enemy territory. It was policy. But they’d been hit which had blown the H2 right off. And the explosion had blown him up apparently I found out afterwards up in his turret. Knocked him out. He just flopped down. I went to see if I could see the rear gunner. I couldn’t see him. He was still in his turret. I thought probably he was in a poor way. He can’t get out. Well, there’s a handle. Dead man’s handle they call it sometimes.
Interviewer: They do.
FD: Rotate. Rotate the turret by hand. But it had jammed. I couldn’t move it so I had to leave him for the time being. And had a look at the wireless operator who had been hit in the stomach, hands and arms. Bleeding badly. So I got the ambulance kit out which was quite a good ambulance kit. There was a lot of things, a lot of stuff in it including ampules of morphine. He must have been in pain and I wanted to give him one but he wouldn’t have it. So I cut his clothing off his arm and his hands. He was in a bad way. You could see the bones of his hands and his arms were badly injured as well and he’d been hit in the face too. He couldn’t see out of one eye. So I patched him up with the ambulance kit to try and stop the blood flow which at eighteen thousand feet on a cold winter’s night isn’t too difficult. It had congealed. Then I dashed back up to see how the skipper was getting on and as I did that the port inner caught on fire and once again the Graviner worked which surprised me really that anything worked but it did and it put the fire out and feathered that one which just left the outer so we put those up to maximum cruising at twenty seven fifty, twenty six fifty plus seven. [unclear] on half an hour. Not more. And then the starboard outer started to act up. Missing, missing now and then. Fuel starvation I suppose. Of course he couldn’t hold height. Not in a crippled aircraft. Whether the bomb doors were open or the flaps had opened because of the hydraulic failure I don’t know but [unclear] . Anyway, a lot of things I say happened. The mid-upper had come around and he didn’t seem too bad. A bit dozy. And he said he’d go and try and get the rear gunner out. Ok. Then I talked to him and the wireless op again I wanted to give him the morphine. He was obviously in pain. He wouldn’t have it. I wanted to get the dinghy set and try and get some interference through from that letting them know. To get some information through to let them know we were in trouble. So I left him at that actually and by this time I’d been able to talk to the mid-upper and say if we have to bale out and I’m at the front I’ll signal you with a torch just to bale out. Of course, we decided to head for Woodbridge [unclear] which wasn’t on our course at all. It was a long way across the North Sea and baling out over the North Sea in wintertime we wouldn’t stand much chance anyway. A minute chance. Anyhow, we couldn’t hold height so we gradually sank down. Jack couldn’t get, Jack couldn’t get Tony out of the rear turret either but he did get himself out shortly after and he was in a poor way too. Hit in the face, hands, feet. Couldn’t see very well. And they stayed in the middle of the fuselage with their ‘chutes on and I said, ‘If we do have to bale out, there’s no alternative I’ll try and signal you with a torch.’ But anyhow, shortly after that the, the aircraft dropped into cloud at about fourteen thousand. We’d lost four thousand feet by that time and no instruments, crippled aircraft we dropped into a spin quite quickly. When the rotations built up and were very steep and tight the G force is tremendous. Sitting on the end of the navigator’s bench actually and I couldn’t move from there. But I did manage to get my torch out of my tool bag and I thought well I don’t think we’re going to get out of this. I got ready to signal. And when we broke cloud we were about five thousand feet still spinning I tried to signal but the torch wouldn’t work either. [unclear] whether they could have moved and got out is a matter of conjecture. I don’t know. But you could see the moonlight patches on the sea going around and around and around getting closer and closer. And [unclear] this is it, you know. Let’s get it over with quickly and the skipper was yelling for me to try and help to pull it out of this but I couldn’t move. But I passed out then because obviously he did get it out in the denser air, the air rather. The controls started to work. He must have done because when I came to we were going like a rocket to four thousand feet or more. About four thousand feet. So obviously we’d never make Woodbridge so we turned back to the Dutch coast with the three badly wounded on board. We might have been able to put it down on the seashore or the Dutch borders or something like that and that’s what the plan was. But at four thousand feet the loss of fire [unclear] and we were still losing quite rapidly. So we creeped along the Dutch coast and someone near Zeebrugge they opened up with flak, anti-aircraft all over the place so we had to sheer off out to sea. We’d had enough trouble as it was. We’d got no choice. We crept back to the coast again but obviously we’d never make it all the way down to where the occupying invading forces were. But as we got to the pas de Calais area there we could see the searchlight coming over Manston. Manston was an emergency ‘drome as well like Woodbridge and they’d still got their cone up which surprised me. You could see it from the other side of the Channel. The skipper said, ‘Do you think we could make it over to there, Frank?’ I said, ‘I don’t know how the fuel is. I’m really not sure but it’s worth a chance. It’s worth trying. I can’t say it’s not worth trying.’ So low level we went across the Channel and across the Kent coast at about two hundred feet and I’d arranged with Tony the bomb aimer to fire off reds going into Manston. Showed him how to operate the verey pistol [unclear] but he couldn’t see properly and fortunately the wireless op was conscious. He showed Tony what he should do. So Tony was firing reds off.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: On the approach. What the speed was on the approach I’ve no idea. I managed to get the undercart down with, the emergency system worked on the undercarriage. That came down. I don’t think we used flaps if I remember rightly. We had to come in at a fair leg. It must have been about a hundred and fifty knots I would say. And the runway was three widths of a normal runway and was divided into three. We were signalled to come in. They’d lit up the centre part so we came in on that one but as soon as the wheels touched down first the starboard folded. We came in on the rims actually because both tyres had been damaged. So the starboard folded which flung us around. I was thrown all over the place and then the port folded and off we went across onto the grass. Still got a terrific rate of speed on. Straight through a hedge and eventually came to a rest. And of course the first thing was to get the wounded out. Things started to burn although there couldn’t have been much fuel left at all. But we were down at Manston. Anyway, the emergency services were soon there. Fire engine, ambulance and all that. They were very quick but they’d been warned by the reds being fired off.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Told then so. And starboard outer was burning so I put some foam on it but there wasn’t much point really because there wasn’t a lot to do.
Interviewer: True. True.
FD: No.
FD: Anyway, the old U-Uncle looked in a very sorry state. It was full of holes, Perspex missing. The fabric control services were non-existent, in some cases in tatters and how it all held together in that spin I don’t know how an aircraft stood up to it. Enormous strength but it did. Anyway, three seriously wounded were carted off at 3am in an air ambulance to RAF Halton Hospital and we, we were given a room but I don’t think we felt like sleeping much, any of us. Then they had, they had a look at Jack, the medical people and at Tony. Bathed his eyes and that sort of thing. And that was it. I [pause] I went down the next morning to have a look at the old crashed aircraft, what was left of it and found a [pause] I took a, I ripped a piece of elevator fabric off of this in tatters in the breeze. I took that as a souvenir and found this twenty millimetre shell in a pool of oil in the nose which hadn’t exploded. So I took that as well as a souvenir. And we were, had to take the train back up to, up north to Middleton but we got a lot of frowns from our fellow passengers on the train because we carried all our gear. We couldn’t leave it. We had to take it with us. It was badly bloodstained sort of thing. Railing at us. They didn’t like this at all. But anyway we got back up there. I was hobbling about for some days after this because whereas everybody has a crash position in the aircraft except the second pilot and the flight engineer. Well, the pilot is strapped in and the flight engineer isn’t.
Interviewer: You rattle around like a [unclear]
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: That sort of landing you’re thrown about quite a bit but I didn’t report it. It seemed so minor compared to what the others had to have.
Interviewer: What had happened to the others that’s right.
FD: So I missed that as it was.
[recording paused]
FD: Well, I hope I didn’t dwell to long on that one operation but it was [pause] it was quite the worst operation of the lot. There was quite a few problems on other operations but that was by far the worst. Some relevant points I may have missed out inadvertently and although the memory is still clear of course and some of what took place may not be in strict chronological order particularly during the first hour following the attack. There were so many things to attend to and do but basically that was it. Well, I had some much needed leave after that and I didn’t fly again until December. And we started training again [pause] and Jack was fully fit then after his concussion and what not so he joined. We got a new rear gunner, Pete Wiens who was the sole survivor of a Stirling crash. He was the rear gunner in his turret which broke off and off the aircraft and the rest of them were killed in the crash. So we had a crew. A scratch crew of sorts and some of us stood in for missing crew members. I was classed as a spare engineer at some times and had to attend briefings. If you weren’t immediately required to stand in for somebody else then you’d either go to your room, lock yourself in because you knew exactly where they were going and when. The route they were taking and everything. You had all the vital information so you had to isolate yourself and you weren’t supposed to emerge until after the target had been bombed. Then you could come out. I did that three or four times and I did fly one op as a spare engineer. You weren’t very welcome really because superstition had it if there was someone, not a regular member of the crew flying in that op, on an operation then you would go down. It often did happen actually when a spare was flying with a crew. So the spare trip I did was to Cologne but I knew the crew very well because they were right there or they were there before we were but I knew the crew very well and I knew the flight engineer very well I was replacing. A chap named Roper. But the bomb aimer, Tony he stood in with another crew and this was a trip to Hemmingstedt. Nearby was a night fighter base and 419 were detailed to bomb this night fighter base from about six thousand feet. In range of light flak anyway. He didn’t come back and he’s buried in [pause] my friend Steve found this out somewhere I think that he is buried in the military cemetery near Hamburg. Strangely enough Tony was the only married member of our crew. All the rest of us were quite young. He was a little bit older and he was married and I think he had some children as well. I tried to contact his family when I was staying with my sister in Chatham, Ontario and his name was Palanek. Tony Palanek. Or Palanek. And he was known, all the family was known in Chatham because the Palanek’s, there was a doctor Palanek and there was also a sister and other relatives. But the only one surviving was down in, down in Florida. I was holidaymaking down there so I just contacted them. Anyway, with our scratch crew we, we did ops on [Opladen?], Gelsenkirchen, Nuremberg, [unclear] near Frankfurt. The, that was still December. Not far from January I think. Nuremberg was tough as it always was. It was a heavily defended target and sometimes difficult to find because it lies in a valley. We pranged it quite well I think. A lot of heavy flak and night fighters were out. It was Nuremberg that [pause] there was a lot of night fighters around before we reached the target so they must have suspected where we were going in spite of all the doglegging to try to confuse them. But they were there and normally you didn’t see night fighters over the target. They wouldn’t go in to their own flak. They were probably wise. But there was an ME163 which had just been introduced into service and I saw this 163 on the starboard side and below us there were some Halifaxes. Four of the Halifaxes quite close. You had to get over the target which is being hit with incendiaries even at twenty thousand feet it’s pretty high. It’s not that. You could see this 163 gliding down looking for a target to knock off but they’d seen him first. The mid-uppers on these Halifaxes had seen him and they all seemed to open up at once and he must have been carrying some I presume peroxide and stuff, fuel left because it just disappeared. This huge plane had gone. They didn’t have any choice in the end. That was the way they attacked and rockets up to thirty thousand feet and then glide down the big aircraft on, near or over the target which is what he was trying to do. Anyway, Nuremberg was a long way from Middleton St George. That was a long trip and we joined the circuit coming in to land on the instructions to land on the short runway. Somebody had pranged on the main runway and so we were coming in on the short runway. Twelve hundred yard runway. And in front of us was an aircraft which, well what turned out was that it was the Ruhr Express. And apparently it hadn’t got any brakes. It had been hit over the target and no brakes and true to the Ruhr Express it brought back two cans of incendiaries which they couldn’t release. Normally, if you get a hang up you released manually on the way back. They tried that but nothing worked. No brakes. And the contractor working on the airfield had left his [unclear] at the end of this runway which the Ruhr Express went straight into of course. Up she went [pause] The crew managed to get out without serious injury. We had to overshoot of course. We couldn’t go in there. So wheels up, maximum engine boost and around. Well, join the circuit again. We had to await instructions to land. But as we passed over we could see people diving out of the escape hatch. They all got out without serious injury. I think one broke his arm as he fell on to something or other as he dived out. That was it. And we were airborne for another half an hour or more which is a bit worrying because fuel was getting low at that point. We’d been airborne for nine hours. So we were glad to get down. We got permission to land and went and there couldn’t have been a lot of fuel left I don’t think after that trip. But there was all hell let loose actually the next day at Middleton St George. The idea was that the Ruhr Express would be put on easy targets until it had got fifty ops up which wasn’t very, it didn’t have far to go actually. And then it was going back to Canada and being put on display and eventually in the museum. And of course it couldn’t go back now so the top brass are all up from London. Squadron commander, station commander, group commander all assembled and they were very annoyed that this had happened but what could you do? It was, they asked for all-out effort and there we were. We had to keep the squadron numbers up. They had to send this. But they were very upset about it and heads must roll and strips must be torn off and this sort of thing. But there wasn’t much alternative to it as far as I could see. But that’s what happened to the Ruhr Express. Did one more trip with Ron, Ron Cox, the skipper and this was another long one. This was the one to Hanau near Frankfurt. Down in southern Germany again. He began to look quite [unnatural] the strain was telling at the time and he suffered from nasal trouble. Couldn’t breathe very well and particularly when you’ve been on oxygen. Of course we were on oxygen most of the time. He had sinus trouble and it was aggravated by flying on ops. So the MO picked him out in the Mess after that trip and said, ‘I suggest you go on leave young man to Canada for a while. Have a rest.’
Interviewer: Right.
FD: So that broke the crew up actually then because we were all odd bods really after that. Towards the end of 1944 some new crews arrived on the station. Flight engineers who were trained and qualified as pilots. And apparently there began to be a surplus of pilots and those who were deemed suitable for flight engineers and wanted, and were willing to be retrained as flight engineers which must have started way back in 1944 I suppose were trained as flight engineers. And they were quite pleased to be coming on to a squadron to go on ops. When four engine aircraft began to arrive at Bomber Command it was hoped that there would be sufficient ground crew from the engineering trade, that is fitters, mechanics, riggers etcetera who would be willing to train as flight engineers. But most of these people were serving on squadrons or bomber training units and were quite aware of heavy losses suffered by the squadrons and so the majority weren’t very keen. But a few did. Some of them did. Some ground crew did including one or two Canadian ground crew did actually and so, but there weren’t enough so that’s why direct entrants as we were called were taken out of civilian life. Incidentally, all aircrew were volunteers. You weren’t, no one was made to fly. I was in a Reserved Occupation we were talking about and the only way to get out of this Reserved Occupation was to volunteer for aircrew or the Royal Navy Submarine Service. So that’s, that’s how I was able to leave in 1942. But there was always a shortage of flight engineers apparently so these chaps were very welcome. Incidentally, once you have volunteered it wasn’t easy to reverse what you had already agreed to. You were expected to go through with it. There was a way out [cough] You could withdraw but you lost your rank, weren’t allowed to wear a brevet, you were taken down to AC2 and in one or two cases I heard this was done publicly which was a terrible thing because some people did actually feel an awful lot of strain obviously.
Interviewer: It certainly was the case in certainly not in the Canadian and Australian squadrons. But certainly in the RAF squadrons if you were, if the aircrew were classed as LMF they would be. It would have been a full parade before the whole squadron. They certainly did it. Yeah. I read that was —
FD: Yes.
Interviewer: Because they didn’t have to do it in the Canadian or the RAAF.
FD: No.
Interviewer: They didn’t do it in those. Certainly in the RAF in Bomber Command RAF squadrons it was done.
FD: Yes. I think the Aussies and Canadians and New Zealanders they watched their own very carefully.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Going on ops. As in the case of Ron. He’s almost [pause] and then became a danger in actual fact.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: To fly. They weren’t fit to fly. So, but one of these retrained pilots that came onto our squadron, a very nice young chap I got to know quite well. Sergeant Reid. I met him once on the train. He’d been on leave and so had I. We were going back up to Darlington to join the squadron again and got to know each other quite well but he went down on one of his early ops actually. He didn’t last for very long as often happened on the squadron. A very nice chap. But strangely enough several years later when I was a school master a colleague at the school where I taught, a chap called Al Reid knowing that I had served in Bomber Command said, he told me that his older brother had been a flight engineer on a Canadian squadron and he was a retrained pilot. Trained as a pilot and retrained as a flight engineer. So I thought I knew who he was talking about straight away strangely enough. There was no mistaking the fact that this was the Sergeant Reid that I knew. I told him what I knew about his brother but towards the end of our conversation obviously he was very upset. He was very fond of his brother apparently. His older brother. And he was very upset just talking about it and he didn’t choose to talk about it any more after that which is understandable really. That’s rather strange that that should happen. Just one incident.
Interviewer: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
[pause]
FD: You must excuse me I’m having a bit of a cough.
Interviewer: Do you want to stop and have a quick tea or something?
FD: Yeah. Perhaps at the —
Interviewer: I can do that. No problem.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: So we’re off.
After the skipper, Ronald Cox was sent home what remained of the crew split up and I was allocated to a new crew while we were on the squadron skippered by a Flying Officer MacNeill who for some reason or other were without a flight engineer. I think they did have one but what happened to him he probably went sick. I don’t know. So, they were a young crew. A pleasant lot. We did some training flights and were soon ready for ops. The next weekend after this because of the atrocious weather over the whole of the country the whole of Bomber Command was stood down which was a very rare occurrence and we were told that we could leave the station even until Sunday evening. Which was also something that rarely if ever happened. I said that I thought I would pop off home to Peterborough. Catch the train in Darlington, straight down the east coast line to Peterborough. I asked what they were going to do and they said they would stay on the station and take it easy they said. ‘Ok, see you Sunday evening.’ On my return Sunday evening someone in the Mess said, ‘Pity about your crew, Frank.’ So I said, ‘Well, what have they been up to? Been in trouble with the law in Stockton or Darlington?’ ‘No. No.’ he said, ‘They went missing on ops Saturday night.’ ‘There weren’t any ops. We were stood down.’ Well, apparently the Russians needed some help in Eastern Europe and they got to Bomber Command and asked squadrons to get as many crews together as possible for a raid on Dessau it turned out to be and which is quite a long trip. So it was their first trip, a spare flight engineer, many hours over enemy territory. It was atrocious weather. The chances weren’t very good but they were reduced and it wasn’t surprising that they wouldn’t come back in actual fact. Would it have made any difference if I had been there instead of a spare flight engineer? I often wondered. It may have done. I’d done quite a few ops by then and we were a crew. I don’t know. But Steve found out that two of that crew did survive. One was a POW and the other one escaped and got, got through to friendly territory. But the flight engineer didn’t. So that was very sad. I was crewless once again. And I was then posted to 47 Squadron at Leeming and I was checked out by a Squadron Leader [Deegan] and he asked me to join Flight Lieutenant Schmidt’s crew. They were all second tour bods. All commissioned as I was then by the way. I didn’t know that I’d been commissioned until I met one of the admin people from Middleton in Darlington. The sergeant in charge of admin at Middleton and he said, ‘Congratulations, Frank on your commission.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘You’ve been commissioned. You’re a pilot officer now.’ No. I didn’t know but that’s how things were. We were forgotten about actually in the Canadian bomber group. British flight engineers. There’s another story about that I can tell later actually. So we were actually an all-commissioned crew in that case which was rather, rather rare. In fact, I don’t know of any other crew that was all commissioned. Certainly not on 427 there wasn’t. Nor on 419 for that matter. Most unusual. So there we were and the rest of the crew had all flown, or most of them had flown with Schmidt on his first tour on Wellingtons at Croft which was a satellite of Middleton St George of course and he was known as Indian Schmidt. Known as Indian Schmidt because, well he was a half breed in actual fact. His mother was a pure-bred Indian squaw, his father was a German immigrant to Canada. He’d got two gold teeth [laughs] and he’d got a sort of pallid complexion in actual fact but he was a pre-war bush pilot in northern British Columbia and the Yukon Territory and [pause] and is probably, well he’s, he’s probably the best pilot in actual fact I flew with in actual fact. But it was a revelation flying with him. He was very competent. Very skilful. Quite fearless and a hard man. That was Indian Schmidt. And I think they did have a flight engineer when they went through at Heavy Conversion Unit and I was told that the flight engineer refused to fly with him again. That’s how I came to be with the Flight Lieutenant Schmidt DFC. I’ve got a photograph of this all-commissioned crew. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not.
Interviewer: Yeah, you’ve shown me that and I remember you saying which one was Schmidt.
FD: About the same, yeah.
Interviewer: You have.
FD: You can quite often judge a pilot’s competence by the way he taxies an aircraft. Weaving and winding around the perimeter tracks. He could do it. Just taxi around at about thirty knots manoeuvring with the two outer engines [unclear]
Interviewer: Perfect. Yes.
FD: But he appeared to be part of the aircraft.
Interviewer: Yes.
FD: Which he was. What he could do. Very confident in his own ability and he had every right to be. He was first class actually. It doesn’t sound so spectacular being able to do that but it did. It takes manoeuvring. There was a time he had to use breaks and weave and stop and start and manoeuvre around. He could in no time at all. No problem. But then. And his skill in the air was no less spectacular as I found out to my cost. After a flight involving air to air firing by the gunners in bomber practice we returned to Leeming and as he was taxiing back Indian said, ‘I think I’ll practice some circuits and bumps.’ He was obviously the last person who needed any sort of flying practice and I suppose I should have realised this at the time. That something was afoot here that I wasn’t aware of actually. But at this point the rest of the crew all got out. It was just left the pilot and the flight engineer to fly the Lanc. Again, 6 Group rule this is. You must have at least pilot, flight engineer, navigator and wireless op. That was the minimum but we were just the two of us. But that didn’t make any difference to Indian Schmidt. So as we taxied back for take-off he was telling me that when he was at Croft he could take a Wellington off and turn it inside the perimeter track at the end of the runway. I thought that would take some doing. I can’t see that happening. So. ‘But I want to see if I can do the same with a Lanc.’ [laughs] I don’t know. oh my God. You know. He said, ‘Now, maximum revs and boost of course,’ he said, ‘Ten degrees of flap will do fine,’ he said, ‘But the moment we’ve left the deck get those wheels up. Must get those up straight away. Don’t hesitate a second.’ So anyway, I did as I was told and at the end of the runway he whipped it around just off the deck in a vertical bank and you could look down and the wing wasn’t that far off the deck. And the old Lanc started to shake and vibrate. I thought oh God we shall be going in here. We’re not far from a stall. But he got around safely. He didn’t turn inside the perimeter track but just outside of that ran the old A1.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: He turned inside that which I thought was pretty good going.
Interviewer: This was at Leeming.
FD: This was at Leeming. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: This was a Mark 3 Lanc that was.
I mean the A1 runs right at the side of it. Right inside there. Yes. It is.
FD: The perimeter.
Interviewer: [unclear]
FD: Yeah. In fact, I think some of the dispersals crossed the A1. One or two of them in actual fact. But there wasn’t a lot to spare and the control tower saw this and came through and the controller said, ‘D-Dog. D-Dog, I advise you to save aerobatics until you get some altitude.’ This upset Indian and he swore back over the intercom to the control tower. Well, there’s WAAFs there. It’s none of my business. He says, ‘Never mind George,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you what. When I was Wombleton,’ he said, ‘We used to have a lot of fun.’ He did his Heavy Conversion Unit at Wombleton, he said, ‘I know everybody there. We’ll go and have a bit of fun.’ So off we go. Over the York Moors and up to Wombleton. Sheep to running in every direction. And we get to Wombleton and he starts to pretend he’s a Spitfire going behind these Halifaxes doing the circuit tatatatat. Then another one and he goes to the control tower and starts doing these vertical patterns around the control tower. Very low. I mean you could look into the control tower and some old boy came out on to the veranda shaking his fist like this. Shaking his fist at us. And of course Indian could see this chap and he said, ‘Christ, I don’t know him.’ [laughs] We’d better get off.’ So off again. Back over the moors, you know. By the time we were back at Leeming they’d heard all about this and we were hauled into the squadron commander’s office and had a right telling off and he said, ‘I blame you for this. I blame you Dennis for this.’ I said, ‘It’s nothing to do with me. I wasn’t flying the thing.’ He said, ‘When everybody else got out you should have got out.’ And you couldn’t fault it really could he. So I said, ‘Well, no. That’s wrong. I didn’t know what he was going to do.’ ‘You should have known that he was up to something.’ [laughs] Anyway, the pair of you will go to the Sheffield, the Sheffield disciplinary, Aircrew Disciplinary School together. Well, I’d heard about this place.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: [unclear]
Interviewer: It’s the old, they were the old First World War Barracks up at Redmires. It’s a bleak hole now.
FD: Oh dear [coughs] anyway, he said, ‘We’ll deal with that tomorrow.’ And tomorrow came. Ops on Bremen. All-out effort for 6 Group. So he said to Indian and myself, ‘You’re going to have to go up and have a good show here today.’ He said, ‘If you do put on a good show we’ll forget about Sheffield.’ So it was ops on Bremen. A daylight op on Bremen but as mad as ever. We were flying on ops. This was at about seventeen thousand feet. He was stripped down to his [unclear] flying this and smoking.
Interviewer: Oh.
FD: And the place we took aviation.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Through [unclear]
Interviewer: I can understand the other engineer actually.
FD: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah [laughs] [h] but he could really fly. He could bring the old Lanc in and you didn’t even know you were down. [unclear] sitting there at the time. Well, we, we weren’t sent to Sheffield after that actually and so we did one more op actually after that [pause] Yeah. One more op after that. [Juist] and Wangerooge Islands. They were holding out and the Navy or transports couldn’t get into the North German ports because they were smothered in guns these Wangerooge Island and protected the entrance to all the ports and they were holding out and they weren’t going to give up so could Bomber Command blast them out? Well, that was one of the last ops of the war actually so I think it was all of 6 Group and part of 4 Group were sent on one of these. It, there was a fair amount of flak and they were well armed down there. Plenty of anti-aircraft guns. The problem was the targets were very small. Then you had to converge after the bombing run and as they did some aircraft got caught in the slip stream which you tried to avoid whenever possible. Pardon me. And I saw four go down. Halifaxes go down on this trip. I only saw ‘chutes come out of one of them. I saw them burning on the sea, two of them which I thought was terribly sad. The last, almost the last ops of the war. A target like this in daylight like that. A great shame. But anyway they did and we came back and that was my last op of the war. But I think the war actually finished a few days after that. Four or five days after that in early May and right, we thought after peace was declared as I say we thought we’d have a celebration in the Mess that night. So I was talking about this and the skipper said, ‘We’re not having any celebrations. Not tonight.’ I said, ‘Why not. No ops.’ ‘Briefing tomorrow morning half seven. Be there.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t have to [unclear]’ He said, ‘You’re going. We’re going to pick up some very sick POWs on an airfield near Amiens in Northern France. They’ve got to be flown back quickly. So you’ll be up at six, you know for first briefing.’ And off we went. And the airfield, oh it had been battered. They’d filled in shell holes and bomb holes on the runway but oh dear holes still all over the place. It was only a short runway. Managed to get down but I was having trouble with the port outer. One of the checks, one of the things that you have to do when you are on the downwind leg of the circuit the Lanc is well you do fifteen degrees of flap on the countdown. A little more flap. Open radiators, shutters because just in case you have to have [unclear] it might be full revs and boosts. This was a hot day and the engine temperature on the forward outer was up. I thought that was strange. Why should that one be on? Operated again. No, it still started to climb. So in a Lanc if you put your head right up in the canopy you could look out and see the whole of the four engines and the radiator shutter was closed.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: So, we throttled that one back and went in on three and a half sort of thing. There was no trouble bringing it together. But I wasn’t happy about taking off with twenty sick people on board on a short runway on a hot day. The engine could seize because you need maximum revs and boost even with no bombs on board.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: On a short runway sort of thing. So no, we can’t do it, Indian. So we, we got a lift back to base with another aircraft and brought our ground crew the next day down. They scrounged some trolleys and spanners from somewhere or other. Had a look. Couldn’t fix it but we can wire it open so it stays open permanently [unclear] And we flew it back like that actually. That was the problem. And then [pause] we did, after that it was we were on a lot of cross country’s. French and German cross country’s showing the flag really that we were about and did a lot of photographic work over German targets and in the [unclear] all the 6 Group squadrons with the exception of 427 flew back to Canada. But then after we cleared our own bomb dump some of the bombs had been stored a long time both incendiaries and all kinds of high explosive bombs. They were too dangerous to transport by road or rail. It had to be taken and dumped either in the Irish Sea or the North Sea and in certain areas we had to dump them over deep water. And we did a good job on Leeming. So good that we were then told we had to try and remove, do the same thing with all the other 6 Group ‘dromes where the bombs were stored. So went back to Middleton St George one day and cleared theirs as a squadron. Did two trips. And at Croft actually and some of the others. There was Tholthorpe, East Moor, Skipton on Swale. There were one or two others. I’ve forgotten the names of that were in 6 Group but we cleared them. The bombs and that, garbage runs as we called them went on through June, July and August interspersed with more cross country flying and a bit of formation flying. But Schmidt and his crew as I say were second tour they were sent home in early June. I flew with many other crews. I crewed up with a warrant officer, Phil Wright who hadn’t got a flight engineer. Well, he asked me. I flew with him once on one of these garbage runs and he said, ‘I haven’t got a proper flight engineer, Frank.’ He said, ‘Would you join my crew and be flight engineer?’ I said, ‘Yeah. Sounds fine.’ It didn’t matter that he was a warrant officer and I was a pilot officer. When he was airborne he was captain.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: As I say it doesn’t matter if a group captain was there.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: The pilot was the skipper.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Now, he was also a pre-war aviator. He was a sergeant pilot in the RCAF before the war and a good one apparently. So good that when war broke out he was made an instructor and he was an instructor on the Empire Air Training Scheme as they called it.
Interviewer: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
FD: But he was desperate to get on ops.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Before the end of the war and eventually they released him but he didn’t quite make it and missed out. He was a good pilot. Did everything by the book. But he had so much flying he was fed up of piloting the aircraft so he would hand over at every opportunity. The first time we did it he said to me, ‘Frank, you know how this bloody thing works so you fly it.’ He said, ‘Make sure I haven’t got to fill in a log or change tanks or anything like that. I’ll go and have a have a kip. Come on, you take over from me.’ ‘Oh, alright then [laughs] I’ll fly it.’ Mind you when we weren’t flying flight engineers had to do a fair amount of training on link trainers. That was all logged as well.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: So, and I’d taken over once or twice before anyway.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: Ok. Well the first time we did this I took over and he was having a nap. We were on a cross country when this was going on. [unclear] or somewhere and there was the usual summer cumulus about and I thought [unclear] at five thousand feet we were flying, carefully weave over one of these summer cumulus and of course there is still a lift coming over the top of that.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: You take a Lanc through that and of course he jumped up. [unclear] ‘I told you [laughs] I told you not to wake me up.’ [unclear] ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Tell me how you feather an engine.’ How to feather an engine. Ok. ‘Suppose I do feather the starboard inner.’ ‘I don’t think you should.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because it drives the altimeter and we really need that as well as other ancillary. Best with the altimeter on that.’ ‘Alright. What about the starboard outer?’ ‘Well, that’s alright. It only operates the [unclear] lights and things like that. We can do without that.’ ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I want to feather that and you have got to trim this aircraft and fly straight and level. Ok?’ ‘Oh ok.’ We did that. I trimmed out and he said, ‘What about if I feather another?’ I said, ‘[unclear] if you’re going to feather another one you’d better come here.’ He said, ‘What about if I’m feathering this one then?’ [unclear] ‘Better let me do that actually because you can [unclear] You’ve got to catch it. That’s it. You’ve got to set the revs and the boosts at just the right, the right second to catch it and then ease it up gradually to it. If you don’t do that it can overspeed [unclear]. So he came and took over. But he did like to experiment just to liven things up a bit. One of the things he practiced was a three-engine overshoot he wanted to do and this aircraft was not a very good one. It was V-Victor on the squadron and it wasn’t up to par and actually when we did this overshoot on the three engines and opened up the three to come away again [unclear] opened. So I had to rapidly unfeather that engine which was perfectly [unclear] it was a pretty poor aircraft. Some of them were ropey like that actually. They did vary quite a bit. But what he did want to do once was we were down to flying and he said, ‘I’ll take it over Carnaby and then what if we then try it on two engines.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s ok,’ I said, ‘It can fly on two alright.’ On maximum cruising you can hold height. He said, ‘What about on one?’ I said, ‘What about on one?’ He said, 'Well, would it hold height?’ I said, ‘I don’t think so. Not on maximum cruising.’ I said it was alright flying but we would be over Carnaby just in case.’ [unclear]
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And we didn’t tell them what we were doing.
Interviewer: No.
FD: By the time we got two feathered apparently they had got their ‘chutes on and the door open.
Interviewer: Yeah. They were ready [unclear]
FD: But on one nicely cruises it only lost at that altitude ten thousand feet. It lost a hundred feet a minute and it would lose even less than that too going down. But this was fairly lightly loaded. No bombs.
Interviewer: Yeah. Ok.
FD: Talking of this, this sort of thing, Indian Schmidt was the only pilot I flew with who would stall an aircraft only for a short time and even he made sure he’d got six thousand feet before. The first time he did it of course I wasn’t quite ready for this [unclear] I wasn’t ready. [unclear] verey cartridges or [unclear] and this Lanc had got a full fuel load. That’s nearly two hundred and one gallons [unclear] on board. Still all the ammunition on but no bombs [unclear] And you needed most of that six thousand feet to recover. He’d say, ‘We’ll go up and do it again. I want to show you something.’ This was Schmidt. We were up to six thousand feet. He said, ‘Now look.’ No joy. ‘No joy,’ he said, ‘Nothing at all.’ I was ready. He gathered speed but it takes an awful long while for it to pull out. In the Lanc if you were toppled by a slipstream for instance the Lanc always went into a dive, tended to go into a spin and took a lot of getting out the other side. An awful lot of time. Whereas the Halifax, I only flew a Halifax and the one target was in Halifax. Somehow or other it pulls itself out. It pulls itself out quite easily without any trims in it. It had got that inherent stability which the Lanc —
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Hadn’t necessarily got. Although the Lanc was a better aircraft.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: To fly.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: In many ways.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: But that’s just one way I had a different reaction.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: So, in this time with [pause] with Phil Wright we did a trip down to Italy to try again. The 8th Army [unclear] Operation Dodge [unclear] flew in to [unclear] near Naples or Bari on the Adriatic Sea and fly back at low, below six thousand feet or mor for Bari. Of course, both Phil and I thought this was terribly boring all this low flying aircraft. So I flew for about five hours. He flew it for four on this trip. He used to like to go down and chat to the other chaps. The other chaps at the back. [unclear] The others kept on, ‘Who’s flying this thing then?’ [laughs]
Interviewer: Exactly.
FD: Yeah. ‘Oh, the flight engineer. It’s alright. It’s alright.’ I quite enjoyed it. He’d could take it over the Apennines and over central Italy. And then obviously the west coast. Flew over the west coast and I’d take over there. Took it across the, well that’s the Elbe. That’s where you turn almost due west. Past the tip of Corsica heading for [unclear] then. [unclear] Look over from my seat [unclear] then he would take over again. But we were flying on main tanks all that time.
then [[ he would take over again. I mean flying on main tanks all that time.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: But they were getting drained.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: I’d just switch tanks. You shouldn’t drain tanks when flying [unclear] Because on a Lanc two engines run off one tank but drain that tank on one side.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: It would actually swell up. If you catch it you can whip it over to number two tank. Yeah. Without any loss of power it’s catching. Providing they don’t, both sides don’t drain at the same time. I took a chance on that actually. But if you flew although it says empty on them you flew for [another half an hour] and drained it completely and then whip it over. So that when we landed at a place in Norfolk again [pause] a place called [unclear] but he had to go in to this airfield to drop off passengers and also for Customs. It was well equipped for customs because they suspected that some contraband would be brought in which it was of course. You could buy lovely wine. Even champagne. Chianti was very popular [unclear] bottles then. You’d buy a basket, strap it to the main spar, climb up the nacelle on [unclear] there’s a space there.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: In the nacelle [unclear] the tank and latch it to the main spar and it kept beautifully on the way home and the Customs men were there but if you hadn’t got to refuel and at [unclear] fuel tanks you hadn’t you could get off without too much delay.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Whereas you would have been waiting ages. So we went off and got back at a reasonable time but we were all very weary flying one time and somehow we were overlooked that we had radio QDM. That is you know the margins of it. That base [unclear] but it was dark by the time we were on the way and [unclear] I was flying and didn’t realise it [unclear].
Interviewer: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
FD: It wasn’t my job to remind them about QDM. I used to find the wireless op [unclear] trailing aerials at this end.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: [unclear]
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: I forgot about the QDM as well. So I did some training training some Canadian flight engineers which tied up in some way. They hadn’t flown Lancs before. And it was then time for them to depart and for me to depart. We said our goodbyes and I had my last flights. Squadron Leader Deegan he was still there. The bloke I met when I first went there and he was still there. He wanted to train one pilot in night flying. So we were in the cinema watching, the station cinema watching a film [unclear] flying all night.’ Can you join me with another pilot [unclear].’ So I think we did about a couple of hours take offs, landings [unclear] And that was it. That was the last flight. And then 1st of November off I went. I got a spot of leave actually after all that and went home. For once I didn’t have to see all my relatives. They wanted to see me you know. It wasn’t so important you know. so I went to a dance at the Town Hall on the 1st of November and there I met a very pretty brunette across a crowded room. You know how it happens, don’t you? And she thought I was Canadian since I’d been with them fifteen, sixteen months [unclear] We got on very well. We married eighteen months later [unclear]
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: In the meantime I had oh it was a series of tests. Adaptability tests, intelligence tests and God knows what. For some reason or other they said, ‘We think you would make a good equipment officer.’ [unclear] ‘Yeah. Yeah. We want to send you on a course to Bicester. A six week course.’ He said, ‘We see you come from Peterborough.’ I said, ‘Yes. That’s right.’ ‘Well, you’ll have to move around a bit to learn the job but as soon as we can we’ll get you as near to Peterborough as possible.’ ‘Fair enough. ‘So I did that moving around all over the place. One of them was a rehabilitation for ex-POWs who were perhaps psychologically a little bit unbalanced. [unclear] some help but they were a very happy lot really. That was at a place called Newbold Revel not far from Market Harborough. That was quite a good posting that one. And I closed down a place in London that had been used by the RAF as a sort of hotel and block of offices which was quite good. I did enjoy that much. And then went to other places. Heaton Park near Manchester which there wasn’t much too. And then this posting came along. Well they rang me up actually whilst I was at Newbold Reval and said, ‘Do you like this equipment officer lark then?’ ‘Yeah, it’s alright. It’s not bad at all. It’s when you become involved in it it becomes very interesting,’ I said. ‘Yes, I quite enjoy it actually.’ ‘Right. Ok.’ Not so long after that I was posted to the RAF hospital at [Ely] [the psychiatric had quite a big place there] And I was the equipment officer there and that carried a flight lieutenant’s rank. I was very happy there. Got on well with all the medical staff and when my time came [unclear] prepare me for Civvy Street I was posted to Marham to do a training course there. They would have liked me to stay there. Take a short service commission. Something like that. You’ll do very well. Yeah. You feel you’ve been wielding death and destruction all over Europe and that sort of thing it encourages you to do something worthwhile. Teaching seemed quite good. Yeah. I think I’ll do that. Yeah. That’ll do. So that’s what I decided to do. And as you can see even after the war there was a lot of fun and excitement with flying. Not wartime conditions but it wasn’t dull by any means.
Interviewer: No.
FD: At least I didn’t find it so. I enjoyed that part of it very much. Yeah. And something worth talking about I think. Thank you Steve, very much.
Interpreter: Thank you.
FD: I wish they’d put it on record.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Thank you very much for all that you’ve done.
Interviewer: Absolutely.
FD: I’ll let you know if there’s any way —
Interviewer: Absolutely my pleasure.
FD: Oh, very good.
Interviewer: I’ve got this various bits and pieces we need to do for [pause] I can’t remember with some of these if you’ve seen them or not but I’ve done some copies of some bits. Obviously, did I give you the copies of the raids? I can’t remember but anyway —
FD: I think you did actually.
Interviewer: Well, I’ve got some [unclear]
FD: You did.
Interviewer: There were some notes that I made about the royal Canadian air force. Just a list of the losses but it was from a Bomber Command at War book.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: Well, the reason I’ve done copies of these because pictures from, they’re just photographs but that’s the Calais raid. The 25th of September.
FD: Oh yes.
Interviewer: Let’s have a little look.
FD: [coughs] Pardon me.
Interviewer: There’s another one. Wangerooge. The same raid. The 25th of April.
FD: Yes.
Interviewer: ’45. Just a couple of pictures that I couldn’t remember if I’d done you copies of but —
FD: I’ll look at them.
Interviewer: There you go. There’s that one that’s the same picture but it’s not [unclear] the island.
FD: You see.
Interviewer: But you can’t see make out what’s —
FD: Well, we were right close together.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: On that raid.
Interviewer: And then again you’ve got that’s the same raid again. Frisian Islands but it’s like saying about the Halifaxes.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: That’s actually one of the Halifaxes that had its tail chopped off somewhere in mid-air.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: As far as I could see.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: Such a shame to see them go down. It’s obviously quite a, quite a good book. This is a general guidebook and I just had a, I just happened to flick through it. It’s all there and obviously, that’s the —
FD: Yes.
Interviewer: The chapters from the from the book. The others are more of the same copies.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: And then I went through the information I could find which is the same in RCAF book. It’s all the different airframes with the numbers and then the dates that they were written off or whatever. Obviously, I then went through it again. The same thing. U-Uncle there.
FD: Yes.
Interviewer: There’s the others. All the others.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: Absolutely.
FD: I must have flown in some of those others, you know. [unclear] Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah, and of course we did the same thing. There’s that there. This is what I did find out. The old birds and the aircraft but what I did find that’s unusual the Focke Wulf 190s were used early on in the war. Wild Boar tactics. They just sent them up and said go and find the bomber stream and look after it by yourself but it wasn’t very successful. So they ended up using the Tame Boar which is where they used the Junkers 88s predominantly but also used Dorniers [unclear] and they used those. They actually using radar in the attack. That that was much more successful. 109s and Dorniers.
FD: 110s.
Interviewer: 110s sorry.
FD: 110s they always used.
Interviewer: But what they did then later on was they reactivated the Wild Boar tactics but there was only a couple of night fighters units did it. They were absolutely the top-notch night fighter chaps.
FD: Yes.
Interviewer: So the chap who who went after you was absolutely top of the line. There’s no doubt about it.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: And I did actually write to the German night fighters, well German Fighter Pilots Association and said, “Have you got any information? I had a unit but unfortunately I got no reply from them. I basically said, “Have you got any information of any claims from the 1st of November? Particularly this one particular unit that was operating 190s. Fokke Wulf 190s and that was Nachtjagdgruppe 10. But I’ve had no reply from them. But that was the letter where I wrote. There’s also a letter that I wrote about the two chaps that we know [unclear] They had no, they had no information either unfortunately. That was also a letter I sent to —
FD: Yes. Yes.
Interviewer: Basically even if it was just something like yes it was that unit. Yes, we think it was this chap or whatever. The problem is that most of the personal records have been lost just after the end of the war.
FD: Yeah. Did I tell you Steve that we had an intelligence room? Well, we had these on stations and aircrew were encouraged to meet. And after, I used to go up there quite often and read all the reports because all the conversations between ground control and aircraft were recorded and typed out. You could see what happened on that particular night and on the night that we were pronged there was some information that was given to a night fighter from a night fighter ‘drome to take off and search for an aircraft which was flying at about eighteen thousand feet heading for a certain heading due west or [unclear] west and investigate what it was. Well, there wasn’t any other except us.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: That must have been us.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And locate it. Locate it and shoot it down. Well, at that time we were losing height and that’s when we lost height that [unclear] so when he got there —
Interviewer: You didn’t —
FD: Fortunately.
Interviewer: Absolutely. Absolutely.
FD: So you can see.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: What would have happened.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yes, well I’ve tried. Yes. Yeah.
FD: On ops.
Interviewer: That was the problem the first time.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: And the second. The second attack.
FD: Yes, quite. It’s amazed me you could find these things out [unclear] I was tempted to tear that out of the report and keep it. But I didn’t. Other people might want to look at this actually. But it was definitely a 190. I mean —
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: There was nothing else it could have been. [unclear]
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And firing. They were well set out in the wings.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: In actual fact.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And he certainly was a crack fighter pilot by the way he raked us.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: On the first burst all the way up into the fuselage.
Interviewer: Yeah. He tied himself close really because I actually I can’t find this very very sketchy details and I managed to find it referred to very much in talking in passing in one, one book basically and I’ve not been able to find any further detail than that. But it certainly was. They were the chaps who had done it using Wild Boar tactics. They didn’t use the Tame Boar.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: They wanted to, they were completely using them to go after the Oboe Mosquitoes. They realised that the Oboe sets were pinpointing the target marking and they set specifically to go after the Mosquitoes. These aircraft obviously had got the speed to get them which at the same time you’ve got 100 Group going after the German night fighters. So they were using day fighters, equipping them with some night kit to send them up after 100 Group.
FD: Yes.
Interviewer: There’s got to be cat and mouse versus more cats and more mice until the quarry gets everybody else. This unit’s job was specifically to go after Mossies and obviously you happened to be there when he was around but they were definitely top notch people that they had doing that. It was definitely the peak that they got.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: To stick it back on. On to what was essentially a day fighter [unclear] night fighter kit. But that’s all that I’ve been able to find out on there. It was a bit of a long shot writing to the German Fighter Pilots Association but it was worth a try.
FD: Certainly, and thanks very much Steve.
Interviewer: Oh, my pleasure. Pleasure. Absolute pleasure. And obviously one thing I was very very pleased to be able to do was to get you in contact with the chaps in Canada.
FD: Yeah. I was really really pleased with myself. I wasn’t sure that you’d got. Steve said he’d been in touch with them.
Interviewer: My pleasure.
FD: It was a bonus to see Ron Cox actually and he was then, I knew he came from Sherborne, Nova Scotia. I know the last address I had of him was in Toronto and he’d married Louise. You know the girl that he met. And that was the last I heard from Ron and that and then he was still with Louise, his wife [unclear] across from Vancouver Island there. It was great that was. It really was. I was very pleased to see that Blair, Blair Lindsey you could hardly tell he’d [lost his nose. Plastic job at the end of it.] Poor old [unclear] lost that eye. He didn’t [unclear] that well and his hands were badly scarred obviously [unclear] like seeing an old friend. I shan’t be going this year. We’re going up to Portmoak to a squadron reunion [unclear] for this year but next year I’ll get across. See them and their family. Well, Steve. Thanks very much for all your efforts once again.
Interviewer: Pleasure.
FD: I’m glad that’s done actually.
Interviewer: It needs to be.
FD: It should be done I suppose before. It’s not much of a story. Some have got a lot more to tell than what I have but that’s Bomber Command as I saw it, you know for three months.
Interviewer: Yeah. I think what sort of comes across is that obviously doing a lot of research and looking where to find things is that a lot of the sort of books that have been written are interested on the [unclear] in the war so the bomber battle because they think the bomber battle almost seems to be people look at it and think well by the time that you got the invasion of Normandy it was a done deal. It had finished. But of course if you look at the [unclear] if you look at the Bomber Command Losses books when you think between ’42 and ’43 that’s ’44 and ’45. Proportionately those books are thicker than the others.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: And of course that’s you know each one [unclear] that’s when aircraft [unclear] and stuff. And that I think that is a shame that that sort of thing it’s not looked upon as being that it was all still happening which of course it was.
FD: Yes, and of course I don’t have a [unclear] for Bomber Command. You had to be flying before the invasion in the official term of ’44.
Interviewer: Yes.
FD: You had to be flying to qualify for the Bomber Command. You see, I didn’t qualify to get one. Crazy.
Interviewer: They were being very arbitrary the way they —
FD: Yes. Well, I certainly lost a lot of friends and colleagues in that time obviously. On the other hand a great pal of mine Jackie Green who I did see after the war [unclear] a flight engineer. I encouraged him to go on the Halifaxes and he finished up at, I think it was Skipton on Swale I think it was on Halifax Mark 3s. He went right through a tour of ops in no time at all. He didn’t have a flak hole in his aircraft. I don’t think he even saw any fighters.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: To be able to do that.
Interviewer: Yes.
FD: That’s the only one I met who did that.
Interviewer: Yeah. I met one or two others.
FD: Yeah. There was one squadron from East Moor. Jackie Crowther was the flight engineer I knew. I came across him when he was crossing over from the Sergeant’s Mess. ‘Jackie, what are you doing here?’ Well, of course [unclear] ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘I live here.’ He was telling me two ops before that. I don’t know where it was but there was another aircraft had been hit and was all over the sky, blind and knocked out one of their engines completely. The engine was knocked out in the aircraft as well as other damage to the aircraft. But they managed to get it back. But there you are it was still flying. Whether he survived the war or not I don’t know. [unclear] East Moor. Now, that was a temporary drome. A wartime one. I was lucky. I should have said this on tape I suppose. All of the ‘dromes after that were pre-war bases.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: Properly built. Brick built administration blocks all these sort of things. Proper hangars and that was at Middleton and Leeming and also at Topcliffe was.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: So I was lucky in that respect. I was in a Nissen hut to begin with and one of the other chaps there he was in it before I was but he came back to see us. He was injured actually. A mid-upper gunner. He got hit by flak which I think got his back. Straight through his backpack. A ten inch scar. Lost a lot of blood and put down at Woodbridge. The emergency ‘drome. Got attention straight away. In six weeks he was back on the squadron. [unclear] He was very young I suppose. He was only just eighteen then I think and had gone through that. [unclear] and had been on leave [unclear]. We spent a lot of time at [unclear]
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: So he didn’t fly again but he did survive that attack. Yeah. A shame. Of course, you could enlist at seventeen and a quarter [unclear]. They could rush you through your training and you’d be on ops before you were eighteen because they had [unclear]
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: [unclear] that sort of thing. Gunnery training was about three months and then it takes you through very rapidly and some of them even enlisted underage. [unclear] Well, I don’t think there’s any retrospective modifications I’d like. It does happen sometimes. Yes, from time to time. That’s factual as it happens.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And thanks very much helping me record it.
Interviewer: It’s ok.
FD: I don’t know whether you opened those at all. If they would help you, if you have any —
Interviewer: We’ll take a copy of them. That would be alright. They go through a lot and what I’d like to do is obviously I’ll do a transcript. The first thing I’ll do is I’ll do a copy of all this.
FD: Well, I was thinking if it’s not clear enough you might be able to pick it up from here.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: That’s page one to four.
Interviewer: They’ve got numbers.
FD: Five to eight.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: And then follows.
Interviewer: Yeah. That will [unclear] nine to twelve.
FD: Nine to twelve.
Interviewer: [unclear]
FD: Thirteen, fourteen. These are just brief notes I’ve made there.
Interviewer: Right.
FD: Which are contained in here. These are some asides.
Interviewer: Yeah. I was going to mention that [unclear] Yeah. Yeah. [unclear] ok then.
FD: Yeah. Whether you can read that alright I don’t know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
FD: [unclear]
Interviewer: Obviously what I’ve done is you’ve seen some of the notes and bits and pieces I’ve got. The transcript, well the first thing I’ll do is I’ll be [unclear] copies of this. I’ll do that straight away. Then I’ll go through it and type the transcript and then what I will do is tie up as you have mentioned stuff. I can then tie that up with the stuff in there and there’s also some other bits in there and tie it all together so I can get, you’re saying something on the transcript. I can then put something on. A bit more information and tie all the bits together into one big. I’ll do that.
FD: There’s one thing you may be able to help with. Did you see the Lancaster picture. I don’t know whether you saw it before.
Interviewer: I didn’t notice to be honest but —
[unclear]