Interview with Colin Bell

Interview with Colin Bell

He discusses his eight months in the United States as an instructor and his 50 operations on the Light Night Striking Force, as well as transporting Canadian built Mosquitos to the UK. (Also present was Colin's friend Mark Vickers).

2025-03-31

01:23:18 Audio Recording

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ABellC250331, PBellC2501

NM: So its Monday the 31st of March 2025 and I’m in the, my name is Nigel Moore. I’m in the RAF Club in London with, with Colin Bell, a Mosquito pilot. So Colin, firstly thank you very much for your time this morning for doing this interview. Can you —
CB: Well —
NM: Can you start by telling us when you were born, where you were born and about your childhood growing up?
CB: Yes. I was born on the 5th of March 1921 and I at the time I was, my mother was living in Shooter’s Hill, Woolwich. So I suppose that it’s fair enough to say that my place of birth was Woolwich.
NM: And you went to school there.
CB: Sorry?
NM: Tell me about your school days.
CB: Oh, my school days were very varied. My mother had a restless spirit and we were, we were continually on the move. Sometimes we lived in south east London and then at the end of six months we might be living down in Bournemouth. As a result my school days were, well a little unusual to put it mildly. I went to numerous schools. I had, when I was very young I had governesses. When I was older I had tutors. It was very varied. But of course it all changed when I volunteered for the RAF at the age of, that was in 1940 so I was nineteen at the time. I volunteered for the RAF and I got called up in, in 1941. Early ’41.
NM: So you volunteered for the RAF. What was the background to your volunteering for the RAF?
CB: Well, really I, the Battle of Britain raged in the skies above where I was living with my father and mother at the time which was in East Molesey, Surrey. We were just on the other side of Hampton Court Bridge and as I say the Battle of Britain was raging in the sky and I suppose like every young man of spirit, and I had spirit [laughs] I wanted to be a fighter pilot. So, but I was encouraged to, I was encouraged to volunteer because one evening as I was walking towards Hampton Court Bridge looking forward to an evening with my girlfriend a Heinkel bomber came over, swept over and I can see him now in my mind’s eye. He released a bomb which was aimed at Hampton Court Bridge and it missed and it landed on the other side of the road to me. Well, there was an enormous flash and the violet flash and everything and everybody nearby got covered in dirt and rubbish and I’ll say now it was a good job it was a light bomber else I shouldn’t be here talking to you and I thought well this isn’t right. So if I’d had any hesitation in volunteering for the Royal Air Force that would have given me added impetus. I hoped that one day I’d catch up with the chap but of course I never did.
NM: So what did, what did your mum and dad think when you volunteered for the RAF?
CB: My father, well by that time I’d moved down to Devonshire because my mother was a very nervous woman and she moved down to a place called Combe Martin in Devonshire to avoid the bombing. And I went down and joined them eventually and my father, well first of all they didn’t think I’d be accepted for the RAF because my brother who was the apple of their eyes had volunteered and he’d been turned down. And when I said that I’d volunteered I don’t think they thought for a moment that I’d be accepted. And when I came home and said I had been accepted my father spent two hours talking to me, walking me up and down Combe Martin High Street asking me to withdraw my application because of course he could see further than I could and he remembered what happened to the pilots in World War One where the average life of a pilot was six weeks and bless his old heart he, he was very worried. But I didn’t withdraw my application and I went ahead.
Other: Colin, tell them about the interview you had for —
CB: Oh, well I had an interview up at Oxford to see whether they would accept me. I volunteered for aircrew as a pilot and at that time I suppose for every application, every twelve people applying there was probably one vacancy so they could afford to be very picky and I wasn’t doing very well at the interview. I think my odd education sort of didn’t assist me and there were three people there. There was a group captain who was the chairman and on his right was a shrink and on his left was an engineering officer and the engineering officer I think thought he’d get rid of me and, because the atmosphere in the room was pretty chilly and so he said to me, ‘You tell me that you could strip down a motorcycle engine and put it back together again.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ve done it.’ And he said, ‘Well, in that case — ’ because quite obviously he didn’t believe me, ‘In that case you will have no trouble in telling me how fast the cam shaft runs in relation to the crank shaft.’ Well, I said, ‘Half time,’ Because of course that was the right answer and he looked very put out but the group captain laughed and when the group captain laughed everybody laughed. I was in.
NM: Good answer. Good answer. So talk me through your training. How did you progress from being —
CB: Well, my training, first of all when I got called up at the beginning of ’41 I was sent to Scarborough to what was known as an ITW. An Initial Training Wing which was square bashing and generally making you fit. Well, I thought I was fit before I got there but after I’d been there about a fortnight I felt I could demolish a brick wall with my fist. Well, it was a good job I didn’t try. But after I’d been there about three weeks the sergeant came in and he said to us, twelve of us, ‘Well, pack your bags because you’re being posted out in the morning.’ And so I said, ‘Well, where are we going, serg?’ And he said, ‘Well, you’ll find out when you get there.’ Well, what had happened was that an American general, General Hap Arnold had offered training facilities for a limited number of British Cadets of which I was one and the training would be carried out by the American Army Air Corps in America where the weather of course was so much better than in the UK and where incidentally we only had limited training facilities. So in the morning off I went and via, up to Scotland, on to a steam ship. I remember it well. It was the Empress of Scotland and it went whirring across the sea, U-boat infested sea but of course it went so fast and of course Bletchley Park was warning where the U-boats were and so we went up north around via Iceland and then we swept in and landed in Canada. And then we took a train down from Canada. Where was it? Well, anyway wherever it was we landed and went down to Toronto and then I was formally discharged from the RAF because the Americans weren’t in the war and if I’d gone down there as an airman I would have been a, I would have been a sort of caught under the Neutrality Act. And so I had, theoretically I was, I went down there as a civilian although of course I did have my uniform in my kit bag but that’s neither here nor there. And eventually as I said after I left Toronto I found myself at a place called Lakeland in Florida where I learned to fly on the Boeing Stearman. Which was a bit like the Tiger Moth but significantly more powerful and I think really to be fair a better aircraft than the Tiger Moth. But when I finished there I then moved on to a place called Macon in Georgia and I flew what was known as a Vultee which was a monoplane as distinct from the Boeing Stearman of course was a biplane. And when I finished in Macon, Georgia I went to the Advanced Training School at Dothan, Alabama where after a period of about nine or twelve weeks I forget quite how long, I graduated. I got American wings, I was commissioned and I was ready to go home but at this point life took an odd turn. I had been out to, back to Toronto to collect my uniform and one thing and another but then in Toronto I was told to go back to Dothan and report to the station commander. And when I got there the station commander said to me, ‘I suppose you thought you were going home.’ And I said, ‘Well, what else?’ And he said, 'Well, you know we’ve had Pearl Harbour and the Japanese have attacked us and we are now at war with Japan and we’re in effect an ally of the UK against the Germans.’ He said, ‘We’ve got this big expansion training scheme on and we’ve trained a number of your chaps and we’re now going to retain a limited few, a half dozen or so to be instructors to our Cadets. And I said, ‘Yes?’ And he said, ‘Well, you are going to be one of them.’ And I said, ‘Just a moment, sir.’ I said, ‘Yesterday , I was, as it were I was a cadet.’ I said, 'Today I’m now commissioned with American wings and you tell me that tomorrow I’m going to be an instructor.’ And he said, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ And I said, ‘Well, sir. With respect it’s going to be the blind leading the blind.’ And he said, ‘I don’t care what you think.’ He said, ‘In the morning you’ll go down on the flight line and there will be six American Cadets waiting for you. You will be their instructor and you will be responsible for them.’ And he opened the door and kicked me out into the night. And that’s how I became an instructor and I remained an instructor for eighteen months. And then I was told I had got to go home which I was delighted to do and the self-same station commander at that point gave me a certificate that read that one Pilot Officer Bell, that was me had completed the course of instruction to be an instructor to advanced single engine aircraft. Well, in point of fact I never had a days training as an instructor. It was all, it was all rubbish but there we are. That’s the way the Americans ran things and as always they made it work and I, I think I was a tolerably good instructor. My method was a bit different to the Americans. The Americans held over you the threat of expulsion if you did anything wrong right up to the moment that you got your wings. Well, I told my Cadets that unless they did something diabolical they could assume right from the beginning that they would all graduate. So of course they were very much on my side and, but that was that. So in 1943 I came home and I wanted to be a night fighter but, and I completed a night fighter course at Grantham, a place called Spitalgate at Grantham and then I waited for a posting to a night fighter squadron. And I waited and I waited and I waited and there were no vacancies and I was getting restless. And then one day a man arrived on the station known as Group Captain Mahaddie. Now, Group Captain Mahaddie was Pathfinder Don Bennett’s recruiting sergeant and he called us all into a hall and he said, ‘Look, if there’s any one of you with a thousand hours or more I’ll recruit you straightaway into the Pathfinder Group of Bomber Command, Number 8 Group and you’ll be flying Mosquitoes in the Light Night Striking Force.’ Well, I thought, well that’s for me. So I went straight down to see the adjutant and signed a piece of paper and off I went to RAF Warboys to team up with a navigator and then here again an interesting slant. We were in a room. Fifty pilots, fifty navigators and the wing commander said, ‘I’m coming back in an hour and I shall expect you all to have crewed up. One pilot, one navigator, bomb aimer.’ And he went out, closed the door and some chap jumped up on a stool and said, ‘Who wants a drunken navigator?’ And I thought well I don’t want him. And then people started crewing up all over the place and I didn’t see anybody I particularly wanted and nobody seemed to want me. And then I saw over the other side of the room a rather strong tall chap with a Canada flash on his shoulder looking miserable and I thought well he’s old. He must have been all of twenty eight and I thought being old he’s probably had experience. So I walked across to him and I said, ‘Have you found yourself a pilot?’ ‘Nope,’ he said. So I said, ‘What’s your experience?’ he said, ‘What’s yours?’ Fair question. So I said, ‘Well, I’ve been an instructor to American Cadets and British Cadets incidentally out in America.’ And he said, ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve been a navigation instructor in Canada.’ I said, ‘You’ve found yourself a pilot.’ And so we teamed up and I have to say it was a wonderful choice because he was a brilliant navigator. He wasn’t much fun because well he wasn’t. He didn’t laugh much but then I wasn’t interested in a man that laughed. I just wanted him to be a brilliant navigator and he was all of that. I told him I was very lucky to have him and then I said modestly he was probably lucky to have me. So [laughs] it worked and he was with me for the whole of our tour of operations. Eventually we got to RAF Wyton where I was checked out to be a Mosquito pilot and I remember being taken around by a chap called Squadron Leader [Isaac?]. He said, ‘I’ll take you on a circuit of the airfield. We’ll take off and land and then you can have a go.’ So he took me around and I watched him and he said, ‘Alright. Now, you do it.’ And I took him around and landed. He said, ‘That’s alright. You’re now checked out to be a Mosquito pilot.’ [laughs] Then after that we went down for a period of familiarisation to RAF, by that time I think although the checking out took place at Warboys I think the actual familiarisation took place at RAF Wyton and we were there for about two or three months and then eventually we got posted to RAF Downham Market. That’s when life took on a more serious slant. Although it has to be realised that not only do people get they lose their lives during operations but they’d also lose their lives during training. I mean we lost a number of pilots and instructors while I was at Dothan in Alabama and of course the same thing to a certain extent happened when we were on familiarisation at Wyton. I know for certain we lost one crew because we had to go out in rather bad weather and then there might have been two. But then of course we moved on. Doug, that was his name, Doug Redmond and I, my navigator, we moved on to the RAF Downham Market and as I said a moment ago that’s where the rather more serious activity took place.
NM: So, what was, what was squadron life like at Downham Market?
CB: Pretty [pause] pretty rough. The conditions were, were far from ideal. We lived in a Nissen hut. There were about twelve of us in a Nissen hut. Hardly officers’ accommodation but that was the best they could do. The food and drink was acceptable but nothing like of course that I, as I had in America. I mean the food in America after being at ITW up at Scarborough. I mean it was an environmental shock when I went out there because the last meal I’d had at Scarborough would be a mug of cocoa, a doorstep of bread and a piece of flour, margarine and if I was lucky a scoop of jam out of a tin. When I went out to America of course I walked into a canteen, it was about a quarter of a mile long it had got sides of beef in it, leg of lamb, southern fried chicken. Well, anything and everything and when I said to the guy, ‘What can I have?’ he said, ‘Well, you can have anything you like.’ So that, that was quite an environmental shock but of course it also worked the other way because when I came back to this country I was back on, well I wasn’t back on doorstep of bread and, and flour and margarine exactly but food was pretty, pretty basic you know. Lots of baked beans and lots of Spam and very very little in the way of eggs. It, I mean, and aircrew of course got the best of, the best of everything but it still wasn’t very good.
Other: And it was quite cold Colin, wasn’t it?
CB: Hmmn?
Other: It got quite cold in the wintertime.
CB: It got exceedingly cold in wintertime and all we had was a stove which, which was sort of heated with lumps of coke. But the difficulty was to get the coke burning and we had lots of trouble getting wood to get the coke to burn but there were all sorts of stories about that [laughs] yeah.
NM: And between operations what was social life like?
CB: What?
NM: Social life on the station. Did you —
CB: Oh.
NM: Entertainment?
CB: Social life. When we were not operating we used to go down to the Crown Public House in Downham Market and, which was nice. We used to, I mean we all mixed together sergeants, officers, WAAF. It was, it was very convivial and if we wanted on a night off we could have a choice of either going out to pubs in Kings Lynn or if we wanted and could afford it we could go down to Cambridge and get a cracking meal in a Greek restaurant because of course they were, they were well and truly into the Black Market and provided you’d got the money you could get, you could get almost anything. You could get a steak. You could get chicken. You could get eggs. It was a lot of fun. So we had a choice. But of course I, I was very fortunate in some ways and I found that I found a home in Downham Market where the, the father who was a chartered surveyor and his wife were kind enough to let me have the whole of the upper floor and I had my wife join me there together with a six week old baby. And so when I came home at night, back from operations I would go and you know once I’d checked out I’d go home and stay with my wife and I mean if you had to fight a war in the air there was no better way of doing it than being on a Mosquito and having a wife just off the station to sort of keep you warm at night [laughs]
NM: So tell me about your operations. Your tour.
CB: Well, nobody can tell you what it’s like to go operating. You have to experience it for yourself and our first target was Hanover. And we went out to Hanover in rather bad weather and when we arrived there we flew on the last stages on dead reckoning. But Doug of course got it well and truly sorted and he said to me, ‘Right. We’re here,’ and almost immediately the searchlights opened up. It was all coming through the clouds and not only did the searchlights open up but anti-aircraft fire came up. So it was a bit scary but we didn’t really know what to do. We were looking for some flares that the actual markers because we weren’t markers, that the actual markers had put down and we couldn’t see any and we stooged around which was really a very silly thing to do but there we are and we were, we were naïve. We were brand new. And then all of a sudden I saw when I could go down through the cloud and we bombed on that and we set off home. And on the way back the sky cleared and this was the one time my wonderful navigator let me down because he took a course that took us over Emden, the German naval base and we as we approached Emden we didn’t realise we were doing it but we saw some shells exploding ahead of us and Doug said to me, ‘I wonder what that is all about.’ Well, a few seconds later we knew because the German gunners were very proficient and they proceeded to give us a hell of a plastering which frightened the life out of us and I put the aircraft into a dive. We were at twenty five thousand feet and I put it into a dive and we didn’t come out until I was doing a speed far in excess of the limits of a Mosquito and and we were at ten thousand feet and they could have brought our careers to an end there and then but it didn’t. But we worked our way back home and we were thoroughly shaken up but we worked our way back home and lived to fight another day as they say.
NM: So a sobering initial experience then.
CB: Huh?
NM: A sobering initial experience.
CB: A sobering experience. Yes. But no one can tell you as I say what it is like to be shot at. You have to experience it yourself and of course I’ll come back to this a bit later on, fear kills. But I think in our case once we’d sort of got over that first trip we became more accustomed to flying over Germany, dealing with searchlights, dealing with anti-aircraft fire and generally doing what we were required to do. Our worst trip actually was over Berlin because Berlin was a very nasty place to fly over. They had got eighty eight guns, eighty eighths there that could plaster you at a colossal rate per minute and they made sure that as you came over that the searchlights would pick you up and they had radar-controlled searchlights and the, the radar-controlled searchlight wouldn’t switch on until it had got you. So once it switched on you were there in the beam and then you would be picked up by non-radar searchlights and the radar searchlights were linked to anti-aircraft guns and of course immediately you were picked up by the radar searchlights the anti-aircraft guns would open up on you and they’d give you a hell of a plastering going into Berlin. Over Berlin and out. And of course you must understand that if you were in a, coned by searchlights the whole of the interior of the cockpit would be bathed in light so you completely lost your horizon and the only way of flying the plane was flying on instruments. So it was quite a dodgy business and, but also of course the Germans because they knew that no propeller driven night fighter could catch a Mosquito they used to put out at about a thousand feet Focke-Wulf 190s. They called them Wild Boar Squadrons. They used to put up these chaps at about thirty thousand feet and then they would dive down on you and try to pick you off. But it wasn’t too much of a problem because we could usually see them coming and we could avoid them and once that passed by they’d never pick you up again. I’d go down and they wouldn’t be able to catch you up. But on the, and I think it was on our fifth trip we had a very nasty experience. We’d got bracketed by shell fire and one shell exploded underneath the aircraft and it lifted us and interfered, I didn’t realise what had happened but I knew what the result was. In fact, it had interfered with the flow of gasoline and temporarily when we got lifted up by the sheer explosion we lost power on both engines and the props were just windmilling around but without any power and my navigator, Doug leaned across to me and said, ‘What do we do now?’ Which I thought was a bloody stupid question. I said, ‘Well, we wait.’ Because that’s all we could do. I put the aircraft into a glide and we continued to get pummelled by anti-aircraft fire but hallelujah the, the power came on and at that point having just dropped our bombs I sort of angled the aircraft away from Berlin and headed for home as fast as we could. And at this point I leaned across to Doug and said, ‘You weren’t frightened were you, Doug?’ And he said, ‘No, I wasn’t frightened. I was bloody terrified.’ [laughs] And I think that pretty well summed it up. But when we got back to base and landed the following morning we went down and inspected the aircraft and the whole of the rear section I should think from about three or four feet behind the cockpit it was like a colander. It was full of holes. How nothing happened and how no wires were severed I really don’t know because if anything like that had happened we’d have been a goner. But it didn’t happen. But my fitter came to me and said, ‘Would you like to have a memento of last night, sir?’ And I said, 'What do you mean?’ And he said, 'Well, we found these.’ And he handed me two shell fragments, I suppose about three or four inches long and I looked at them and I said, ‘Where did you find them?’ He said, ‘They were in the parachute you were sitting on.’ Which made me a bit thoughtful [laughs]
NM: Yes. I can imagine.
CB: Yeah.
NM: I can imagine. So what was your coping mechanism about the contrast between station life and operations? How did you cope with the contrast and the risk you were taking at night?
CB: Well, this is, this is where I was coming to when I was going to tell you that fear kills. It was just my makeup that I wasn’t particularly fearful. I am, there was a chap who was a very famous Battle of Britain pilot and his name was Sailor Malan and he said, ‘In my experience,’ he said, ‘A survivor is those who persist without too much imagination.’ And I don’t think I had much imagination. Some people say, ‘Do you mean you were thick?’ And I say, ‘Well, probably that’s true.’ Anyway, I just concentrated on doing the job and I can’t say that I was particularly fearful. I just saw it as a job to be done and that’s something you know. You see, we had to win the war. The Germans had got some very nasty things on their menu of what they were going to do to us if ever they came over here and subjugated us. Well, of course they never did get over here thanks to the heroics of Fighter Command and I saw my job as to literally destroy their manufacturing capacity and I always liked to make the point that the the objective of Bomber Command was to destroy the German manufacturing capacity to attack us and when I say us I mean our men and women and our children. And I think by and large Bomber Command did a pretty good job. I always cite the case of Peenemunde where the Germans were developing V weapons and the Lancasters went over there and bombed the hell out of the place and set back the development of V weapons for quite a number of months. But when the commandant of Peenemunde who’d been lunching with Hitler heard there had been a raid on his base he hot footed down there and when he saw the damage that had been done he was so overcome that he had a seizure and dropped down dead which I found sort of deeply satisfying. But yeah, Bomber Command I think did a very good job. It attacked the V-1 bases, it attacked the V-2s, it even, it even neutralised the V-3s that not many people know about but yeah, full marks to Bomber Command.
NM: So when you operated did you always operate as part of the main force or did you ever go out on single missions?
CB: Oh well, all our missions were single missions. We, ahh with the exception of one. We did on one occasion mount a raid against a place called Duisburg. There was an engineering base in Duisburg. I don’t know what they were making but the Bomber Harris decided this had got to be wiped out and we did a daylight raid on that at ten thousand feet in formation. And why formation? Well, because navigation had to be exact and there was one aircraft that was fitted with equipment known as Oboe and Oboe was very very accurate. I think it was accurate within a few yards on the ground and we all formatted behind this Oboe Mosquito and we sidled on at ten thousand feet which meant you were very vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. And as we approached the target the Oboe Mosquito called out sort of saying, ‘Approaching target.’ And then he said, ‘Bomb doors open.’ And we all opened our bomb doors and he said, ‘Now.’ And when he said, ‘Now,’ we all jettisoned our bombs and I’m told it it literally wiped out the engineering works but it wasn’t a nice experience at all. I hated flying in formation and we lost at least one aircraft due to anti-aircraft fire. I think we conceivably lost two but I know for a fact we lost one. I saw him going down and so that was rather sad. But then in wartime you know people get killed. It just happens. It’s the price of waging war.
NM: So that was your only daylight operation.
CB: Huh?
NM: That was your only daylight operation.
CB: That was my only daylight operation. Well, my only operation in formation.
NM: Downham market had FIDO didn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
NM: What was that like? Landing.
CB: [laughs] Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. You must understand that FIDO was very expensive. FIDO consisted of pipes on either side of the runway through which they pumped sixty thousand gallons of petrol an hour. Sixty thousand. And so, but you only got, you only got it switched on when all the other bases in the UK were similarly fogbound because if your base, like Downham Market was fog bound but there was some other airfield somewhere else that was reasonably clear they didn’t switch on FIDO they just diverted you to the other base. But if you had the whole of the UK covered in fog on came FIDO and as I said it was, it was an absolute godsend and you would come back and you would see this great blaze of light. Even when you were over the North Sea you could identify it and, but you would be still in cloud and you would do what was known as a standard beam approach in fog. You, I mean all you could see was a great glare of light but you couldn’t see the runway or anything like that. But you’d do the standard beam approach and as you came in on your landing run as you went over the outer marker you would hear this booop booop booop noise in your earphones and as you went over the inner marker it would go beep beep beep and then all of a sudden there was the clear runway in front of you and you would land and hallelujah. But by the time you got towards the end of the runway of course you, you were out of FIDO and you went through the fog again. But there was always a jeep with a WAAF with torches to take you back to dispersal. I had, I think I had three landings on FIDO but they were, it was quite straight forward. A bit, a bit worrisome on the first occasion but after that you know it was almost routine.
NM: Now, when I heard you speak in January you mentioned the fact that you used to nap off. Have a little sleep on the way back from operations.
CB: [laughs] Well, that’s perfectly true.
NM: Tell me about that.
CB: You see, the Mosquito hadn’t got auto pilot but if you were at twenty five thousand feet and you trimmed it up it would almost fly itself and you’ve heard me say that there was no German propeller driven aircraft that could catch you. The only aircraft that could catch you was the jet and we’ll talk about that in a minute. So yes, I trimmed the aircraft up and I’d say to my navigator, Doug, ‘Give me a nudge if we stray off course and I’ll trim it up again.’ And I used to carry a little pillow with me and I used to put my pillow against the side of the cockpit and put my head down on it and I used to have a catnap. I’m very fortunate in the sense that I can literally go to sleep without any difficulty wherever I am and almost whatever the circumstances. I think I’ve got this in common with Sir Winston Churchill. He had the same ability. Probably the only thing I’ve got in common with him but still that’s it. So, yes. It worked tolerably well.
NM: What did your navigator think the first time you did that?
CB: Oh he, he used to bellyache but then he used, but he did say, he did say that as a result of this that he thought he could fly the aircraft as well as I could. Well, he got his chance on one occasion when my oxygen supply failed. Now, you can’t stay, you can’t stay conscious at twenty five thousand feet without oxygen and when my oxygen failed well I fell unconscious and I eventually woke up at ten thousand feet and we were going in a descending spiral and my navigator, Doug was nearly going berserk trying to resuscitate me with an emergency oxygen bottle. I never let him forget it [laughs]
NM: Very good. So tell me about the ME262 that you encountered once.
CB: Oh, we knew that towards the end of my, towards the end of ’44 I think it was that the Germans had got the ME262. We knew that had been operating in daylight but we also heard that they had a limited number at night and if these devils ever got a visual on you you were dead. I mean they had such enormous fire power that you would be turned literally into confetti. I was reading the other day about an American pilot who incidentally shot down an ME262 and he said he saw one of these chaps operating in daylight against B17 bombers and he said within a space of about a minute and a half that pulverised three B17 bombers which went down almost immediately. Anyway, to get back I was over Berlin and these things always happen over Berlin, I was over Berlin and I was picked up by an ME262. Or at least I think I was picked up by an ME262 because when the ME262 turns on its air to air radar it causes a white light to operate on the instrument panel of the Mosquito that I was flying. It had got a device on the back that detected it and of course as soon as this happened I tipped the aircraft over on its side and I dropped down from twenty five thousand feet to ten thousand feet just as quickly as I could at which point my navigator started bleating and saying, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ And I said, ‘Well, didn’t you see the white light come on?’ ‘Well, yes,’ he said, ‘I did but it’s gone out.’ I said, ‘Of course it’s gone out. Because we’ve lost him.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know, but —’ he said, ‘I’ve heard that these white lights occur through ghosting and when really it’s not an ME262 at all.’ So I said, ‘Well, do you want me to hang around and find out?’ Which quietened him down a bit but he was not convinced and every, all the time that I was taking evasive action because the white light would reappear and again I would take evasive action he was bleating around and saying, ‘Well —’ he said, ‘I can’t see him.’ And I said, ‘Well, thank your lucky stars you can’t see him because if you could see him he could see us and we’d be dead.’ So anyway I paid no attention and, but he would even, even to the, even when we got back to base he still wouldn’t accept that it was a bona fide interception. Well, eventually some years later I met up with that wonderful man, that Naval pilot, Captain Winkle Brown and I described the incident to him and he said, ‘I have no doubt at all that you were being intercepted.’ He said, ‘You’re just bloody lucky to be alive.’ I wish I’d had Doug with me at that point but there we are. So that, that’s the story of the ME262.
Other: An interesting point there Nigel is that Colin flew most of his fifty operations in two aircraft. So there was K for King which he had that day. The other one was L for Leather but L for Leather didn’t have this detection system in the tail so when you think of those flip of a coin moments that leads to your survival that was definitely one of them. That he was flying —
NM: The right one.
Other: K for King that night.
NM: The right one.
CB: Very interesting point, Mark. But then of course life is a series of odds and ends you know. I could have been sent home at the end of my tour. At the end when I graduated. I could have been sent home straight away instead of becoming an instructor. Had I not been out there for a further eighteen months and amassed sufficient hours to qualify to fly on a Mosquito, had I come home as soon as I got my American wings the likelihood is that I’d have been in Bomber Command flying Stirlings. Now, if you were a captain of a Stirling commencing your tour with three other captains also commencing tours and you were all in the same room at the same time within three months you would be the only one left alive. The other three would be dead. They would either have been shot up by night fighters or they’d have been downed by anti-aircraft fire. I think perhaps five percent of them might have bowed out successfully but you know the odds were horrendous. You didn’t have a fifty fifty chance of survival. So I mean it is an instance as an example of how you know life is full of quirks you know. I think it was Machiavelli who said, ‘Fifty percent of life is luck and the other fifty percent depends on yourself.’ I’ll come back to the matter, the question of, or the matter of fear because you raised it. Fear does kill. I’d done about thirty operations and a new crew, a young Canadian crew joined the squadron and I say at this point that the Canadian crews were the bravest of the brave and what I’m going to tell you now is in no way denigrating the performance of Canadian aircrew. As I said a moment ago they were the bravest of the brave. Very skilful. Very dedicated. But this young couple that arrived on our squadron were obviously very fearful and we were in the crew room and when the curtain was drawn and they saw what the target was, remember this would be their first operation, the target was Berlin and they just, they looked even further discomfited for want of a better term. And I could see that they were looking very upset so I walked across to them and I said, ‘I’m a bit of an old hand now. I’ve done thirty ops. Anything I can do to cheer you up or tell you about?’ And they, the captain said, or the pilot said to me, ‘I know I’m not coming back from this trip.’ And I said, ‘What makes you say that?’ I said, 'I’ve done thirty ops. I’ve come back. Why shouldn’t you do thirty ops and come back?’ And I couldn’t get anything out of him other than he kept saying, ‘I know I’m not coming back.’ So I eventually gave up and I walked back and I spoke to my Canadian navigator and I said, ‘I can’t get anywhere with the guy.’ I said, ‘He’s one of your compatriots. Perhaps you would like to go and have a talk with him.’ And Doug went across and he talked to him and I suppose he must have been with him for a good five minutes and I could see him keep shaking his head and he came back to me and he said, ‘I can’t get anything out of the guy. He keeps saying, and all he would say over and over again, ‘I know I’m not coming back from this operation.’’ And they never did. So what happened to them? Were they shot down by anti-aircraft fire, did they spin out of control when they got coned by searchlights because that could happen unless you were proficient on flying on instruments. What happened to them? Well, we’ll never know because people that don’t come back can’t tell you can they? But that I think was an instance where fear kills and I shall always remember that one.
NM: So you finished on fifty operations.
CB: Yeah.
NM: What point of the war was your last operation?
CB: The point of the war of my last operation. Well, I think it occurred on the 4th of March 1945. A day before my birthday and, well I was relieved. I thought well anyway I finished my tour and [laughs] when we first arrived incidentally on the station the flight commander said to us, ‘Why don’t you sign up for two tours now and I’ll give you more interesting work.’ And I thought hmmm so I looked across at Doug, my elderly navigator and I said, ‘Well, how do you feel about it, Doug?’ And he said, 'I want the Victory Medal. Not the VC.’ [laughs] So I said to the flight commander, ‘Well, you’ve got the answer haven’t you?’ So we only signed up for one tour and on the 4th of March 1945 it came to an end.
NM: So what happened after that? Where did your career go then?
CB: Well, Doug went back to Canada and I didn’t see or hear anything of him for many many years after that. But I do know that he took a degree at McGill University in forestry and then I think he went on to become President of the Forestry Commission. So you can see he was a lumberjack to start with. A lumberjack and a fireman. So you can see the calibre of the man that I had and he must have saved my life on many occasion and I must have saved his. Most noticeably the ME262 incident.
NM: Indeed. So you stayed on.
CB: I stayed on and I was given the job of flying newly built Mosquitoes from Ontario where there was a de Havilland factory building. Flying newly built Mosquitoes back to this country. I flew three I think. I think its correct. Three. And I used to go on what was known as the Great Circle Route. I used to fly up to Goose Bay in Labrador. I used to then fly on to the West Coast of Greenland, a place called Bluie West One which is still there but under a different name which was a staging post run by the Americans and then I used to fly on to Reykjavik in Iceland and then finally into Prestwick in Scotland. The Americans wouldn’t allow us to fly other than in good clear weather which I found a bit frustrating but so therefore sometimes a single trip would take ten or fifteen days. But we had no control unless the meteorologist would give you clearance. You had to stay until you got clearance.
Other: It was not without its risks, Colin.
CB: Huh?
Other: It was not without its risks was it? Either icebergs or something.
CB: Well, yes and my friend Mark is reminding me of occasion when I was flying out to, via Goose Bay to Bluie West One on the west coast of Greenland and I was in fog and I thought well I need to identify the fjord that I needed to fly up on the west coast of Greenland. I had a useless navigator. Not a chap like Doug. I had a useless navigator so I thought I’d, I would do my own navigation and, but I was in a sort of a cloudy foggy conditions so it was necessary to get down and get below this so I could fly in clear weather and I lowered the aircraft down and down. But I wasn’t too worried because I knew I was over the sea and I actually broke cloud at about three hundred feet. But as I broke cloud I swept past an iceberg that was sticking out of the sea [laughs] I won’t say I nearly hit it but if I’d been a bit lower and a bit over more towards the port then I would have done and I often think well, if I disappeared people would have said, ‘Oh, Colin was a pretty experienced pilot. I wonder what happened to him?’ But you see, like my frightened Canadians nobody knows. You disappear and nobody, there’s nobody to tell the story.
Other: Colin, there was also, there was also the risk of saboteurs in the factory wasn’t there?
CB: Yes. In Ontario there was a saboteur and he was doing some nasty things to the aircraft. One particular instance which we discovered he was screwing down the safety valves on the air bottles. The air bottles would contain the compressed air that worked the hydraulics. They had a safety valve because the pump was going all the time but there were, as soon as it reached a certain level then the escape valve would open up and release the excess. Well, this guy devised a scheme whereby he could screw down the safety valve and once the aircraft, well once the safety, once the safety valve was screwed down the air bottle would explode and blow out the side of the aircraft. We found out because on one occasion he couldn’t have done the job too well. The aircraft, the Mosquito was landing at Prestwick and the air bottle exploded while the guy was landing and he landed quite successfully and then of course there was a postmortem on the whole thing and that was how they discovered what had happened. Whether they ever found the guy or not I don’t know. Fortunately, he never, he never exercised his tricks on my aircraft. If he had who knows. Once again.
NM: Yeah.
CB: I might not be here talking to you.
Other: And Colin, you haven’t I don’t think talked about the role of Bomber Command in the sense of the strategic missions like Dresden which inevitably comes up in conversation about Bomber Command.
CB: Well, yes. I am. I always liked to correct misconceptions and Mark has reminded me quite correctly about the, what is spoken or what people have been saying over the years about the bombing of Dresden. It was put out that the bombing of Dresden was quite unnecessary because it wasn’t a, it wasn’t a proper target for attack which of course is quite wrong because by 1944 I think it was when Dresden was attacked, it could have been ’45 but anyway it was February. Either February ’44 or February ’45. Dresden was a highly developed manufacturing base. They’d got ten thousand war workers. They were producing cockpits for the Luftwaffe. They were producing devices for fitting on U-boats. They were, they were really a very very active. It was a very active centre for war production but more than that of course they had got this enormous marshalling yard, railway marshalling yard through which I think about twenty thousand troops were being fed through to the Eastern Front and wounded people being brought back each and every day and the Russians were screaming for Dresden to be neutralised. So yes, it was a, it was a proper target for attack and we attacked it at night and our American allies attacked it in daylight. But there are a lot of misconceptions and until a few, ‘til about, oh I suppose five, six or seven years ago some of the younger and ignorant members of our population, what I call the do-gooders and holier than thous used to take the moral high ground and cite Dresden as an example of the iniquity of Bomber Command in killing innocent civilians. I always say that I can understand in a way people who don’t know taking the moral high ground but then when having reservations about Bomber Command’s activities but I think that they would have probably had reservations about living as slave labourers under a German machine if we hadn’t won the war. And Bomber Command didn’t win the war but it contributed a significant force in achieving the defeat of the Germans and I’m very proud to have been associated with it albeit in a very tiny way.
Other: And Colin, maybe this, it would be helpful for you to explain what your single ship raids were designed to do.
CB: My?
Other: Single ship raids. The siren raids. The —
CB: Oh yes. Well —
Other: Spoof raids.
CB: Part of our, part of our duties at Downham Market as the Light Night Striking Force was to go on spoof raids. We would go around as single aircraft and attack a city like Hamburg where the main force were going to Nuremberg but with masses of Window, these metallic strips and drop perhaps a bomb or a flare to simulate an attack by a main force. And then the German night fighters would come haring after us but by the time they realised that they’d been spoofed they had to go back and refuel and it would delay their attack on the main force as I said that might have been going down to Nuremberg. So that was one job. Yeah. Yeah. And the other one was merely to go around to various cities and just for the purpose of, again solo just for the purpose of upsetting the war production because as soon as we arrived the German war workers would have to, would go down to the air raid shelters and stop production. So we used to call them Siren Tours. We’d go around about a half a dozen different German cities, manufacturing cities doing just that. It was all worthwhile and just, just something else contributing to the defeat of the Germans. Yeah.
Other: And one of the other amusing situations, Colin was when Military Intelligence would post a radio operator on —
CB: Oh yes.
Other: An aircraft.
CB: I believe that one. I wasn’t party to it but the Germans would direct the night fighters not in code but in open, open traffic you know. Just open instructions and on one occasion I know, on more than one occasion I think we sent a Lancaster over with a device that would tune in to the German night fighter system and when the German night fighters were giving instructions from the ground we would break in and say, ‘Pay no attention to that last instruction. The Englanders have got an aircraft up above which is tuned in to the same wavelength so disregard it. Don’t go to 090 at thirteen thousand feet. Go to 180 at ten thousand feet.’ And then of course the, immediately the Germans would come in and say, ‘Pay no attention to that. That’s the Englanders speaking.’ We’d go backwards and forwards, ‘No. No. No. Pay no attention,’ you know [laughs] Anyway, eventually they brought in a woman to speak and of course but we’d anticipated that. We’d got a woman on board in the Lancaster. So it was really quite a lot of fun. Eventually we played, I gather in a Lancaster, we’d got a recording of Hitler having one of his rants so we started broadcasting that and it blew all the instructions from the ground out of the window [laughs]
Other: And Colin, just, just finally the Mosquito, a wooden aircraft. Lots of different types of versions of the Mosquito you know, what was it like to fly compared to say a Spitfire?
CB: Yes, well I did fly a Spitfire once and inevitably I was asked how does this compare with flying a Mosquito? And I said, ‘Well, there’s nothing that the Spitfire can do that the Mosquito can’t do. They’re both fully aerobatic but the Mosquito has got two Spitfire engines so as far as I’m concerned no contest.’ [laughs] I think that really finishes me. Yeah.
NM: Very good.
CB: Yeah.
NM: So you left the RAF in 1946.
CB: Correct.
NM: Was that standard demobilisation or —
CB: Yes. That’s when I was doing that. I stayed on as a Reserve for fifteen years flying Chipmunks. It was like belonging to a Flying Club and having everything paid for. They even gave me a bonus at Christmas. Ludicrous really but after fifteen years they woke up to the fact that I wasn’t value for money and they finally struck me off from the Service. But what I left was the RAF in ’56. I resumed my civilian career and I qualified as a Chartered Federation Surveyor. I worked with the government until I was sixty and then instead of being a game keeper I turned poacher and I had my own practice until about five years ago. And look at where I am now.
NM: So you retired at ninety nine.
CB: Hmmn?
NM: You retired when you were ninety nine.
CB: That’s right.
NM: Very good. That’s right. So you’ve hinted at it already but when you look back at your time in Bomber Command —
CB: Sorry?
NM: When you look back on your time in Bomber Command what’s your overall feeling when you look back and reflect?
CB: Well, I think it was a job that needed doing. A very worthwhile job. I [pause] I feel sad for those people, wonderful young men that lost their lives. If you’re looking for heroes don’t look at me or people that flew the Mosquitoes because our loss, our losses were miniscule compared to the slow flying heavy four engine bombers. They were the heroes. No question. Starting with the Stirling, Wellingtons. Ridiculous aircraft like Whitleys and of course right up to the Lancaster. I mean, I say that there was nothing really that the Mosquito couldn’t do whether it was night fighter, whether it was Coastal Command attacking the U-boats, whether as Pathfinder Mossies that I was on. But there was some things that the Mosquito couldn’t do. It couldn’t drop the bouncing bomb that’s demolished the dams and it couldn’t drop the earthquake bombs that destroyed the Tirpitz and, or the earthquake bomb that tilted the V-3 complex on its side and made it unusable. For these things you needed a Lancaster. So yes. I look back on it as normal and I simply say it was, it was a very unfortunate business waging war but it was a war that we had to win and we did and thank God we did.
NM: I think that’s a very suitable note to finish on.
CB: Hmmn?
NM: I think that’s a very suitable note to finish the interview on. So thank you very much it’s —
CB: That’s alright. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you.
NM: Well —
CB: I hope that some of what I’ve said will, will be of interest to people that come along and consult your records and I hope too that people will understand how vital defence of our country is. Defence ought to be the number one priority of any government. I’m not concerned with other governments. I’m concerned with our government. But I think that for example you find that the Poles spend over four percent of GDP on defence and we’re talking, until recently we were talking about increasing it to two point five percent when we could afford it which is absolute rubbish. You’ve got to spend enough on defence to deter despots like Putin and before him of course Hitler and if we had spent enough on defence in the ‘30s who knows Hitler might never have come into being as the leader of the Germans. It’s worth thinking about.
NM: Very good. Well, thank you again for your time and your thoughts and your memories. It’s been much appreciated.
CB: Yeah. You’re welcome.
NM: Much appreciated.