1
25
165
-
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2da817f413b6647ed28396a427d55138
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/15030/EHicksDonaldsonDW[Date]-010002.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Officers' Mess
R.A.F. Station,
Foulsham,
Norfolk.
R.N.Z.A.F.
Brighton.
Wednesday.
Dear Winco,
Just a short note from me to say cheerio to you & very many thanks for a happy time spent at 192 under your command.
We are leaving here tomorrow for Blackpool where we are staying for a week before embarking for home. We are going on the “ANDES” I think but have not much idea of which way we are going. There are going to be 1500 N.Z.ers
[page break]
going on this liner & they hope to have everyone home around Christmas.
Chaos reigns supreme down here as you can imagine but they are muddling their way through. However seeing the powers that be learned of it all only a week ago I don't suppose they are doing too badly.
One of the lads down here from Foulsham told me of about your bar to the D.S.O. My very heartiest congratulations to you on receiving it.
[page break]
Please give my regards to Ken, adj & the rest of the crowd there.
I hope to be able to get to Derby and see my wife again before I go as I've still a few things to clear up. They gave us no notice of this boat & I have to get my brother-in-law to sell my car for me.
I must close now wishing you all the very best in the future & I'll always remember the happy months spent at 192 with all of you.
Goodbye & good luck
Yours sincerely
Trevor Hicks.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to David Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
Thank you from a former 192 Squadron member Trevor Hicks who is leaving shortly to return to New Zealand. Congratulates David on Distinguished Service Order award. Sends regards to all.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
? Hicks
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three page handwritten letter
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EHicksDonaldsonDW[Date]-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Frances Grundy
192 Squadron
Distinguished Service Order
RAF Foulsham
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/272/1150/PBubbGJ16010131.1.jpg
83d6c0dee7e7da70d5a996b9182ba206
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/272/1150/PBubbGJ16010131.3.pdf
8324e3ad1c4d71065ab037e623526ff9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bubb, George. Album
Description
An account of the resource
32 items. The album contains photographs, propaganda, service material, memorabilia and research concerning George Bubb's service with 44 Squadron at RAF Spilsby.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bubb, GJ
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
44 Squadron and the Wesserling Raid 21/22 June 1944
Description
An account of the resource
Six page document courtesy of the late Allen White - 44 Squadron Historian. Reproduces narratives from three 44 Squadron crews involved in the operation. Overall the operation lost 37 crews from 120 launched against Wesserling oil refinery near Cologne. 44 Squadron dispatched 16 aircraft of which 6 were lost. Germans successfully interfered with Oboe of pathfinder Mosquito aircraft and the operation disintegrated. First narrative recounts experience of Squadron Leader Cockbain who lost control of his aircraft after attack by night fighter. Some crew baled out before he regained control and after a struggle successfully returned to base. Second narrative recounts experience of Cockbain's flight engineer, Walter Faraday. Reports on damage and that rear gunner is stuck in malfunctioned turret. Describes recovery to base and feelings next day. Final account from this crew is from the mid upper gunner Albert Bracegirdle who baled out and awoke in a forest. After evading he hands himself in due to injury and the fact he is deep in Germany. He notes that two other squadrons on the operation lost six crews. He notes that plan was standard 5 Group low level marking technique but bomb on H2S if no markers. However operation bore the brunt of successful night fighter action. An account of the loss of Pilot Officer R Woods aircraft is given by W/O A Sergeant Royal Australian Air Force. This was their second operation and they were hit by night fighter and had to bale out. Recounts crew struggling with parachutes while others are injured or dead. Three crew members survived and were caught the next day. The final account of the operation is from Sergeant F Preston, one of the only three crew to survive from Pilot Officer J W Sholtz crew. He recounts he was blown clear after the aircraft exploded and opened his parachute and landing with some small injuries. He then headed for southern France. The final account is of Ric Green a navigator on 44 Squadron who did not fly on the attack but reported his feelings the next morning on finding so many crews missing from the previous night. There follows a role of honour for six crews lost on the operation. Notes that the first crew on the list, Flying Officer R Wood Royal New Zealand Air Force was the only Bomber Command crew lost that contained members of all three commonwealth air forces plus a representative from the United States Army Air Force.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
207 Squadron association
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One album page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBubbGJ16010131, PBubbGJ16010132, PBubbGJ16010133, PBubbGJ16010134, PBubbGJ16010135, PBubbGJ16010136, PBubbGJ16010137
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
United States Army Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-21
1944-06-22
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
44 Squadron
5 Group
619 Squadron
bale out
Distinguished Flying Cross
final resting place
H2S
Ju 88
Lancaster Finishing School
Mosquito
Oboe
prisoner of war
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Syerston
shot down
target indicator
training
V-weapon
Window
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1971/41510/MMcGaughranJE427410-171017-010002.1.jpg
66345a9f680d0198af08a7cbb76cd4d8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
McGaughran, James Emmett
J E McGaughran
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McGaughran, JE
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. The collection concerns James Emmett McGaughran (b. 1917, 427410, Royal New Zealand Air Force) and contains documents, photographs and postcards. He served as an air gunner.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Nichola Spencer and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
73rd Squadron Graduation Banquet & Dance
No. 3 Wireless School
Description
An account of the resource
Jim's copy of the programme for his graduation. It includes a list of all the graduates and their town and country of origin.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
73 Squadron
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-01-26
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Manitoba
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One double sided printed sheet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MMcGaughranJE427410-171017-010001, MMcGaughranJE427410-171017-010002
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-01-26
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
aircrew
entertainment
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1376/24336/MFordTA1585520-170411-31.2.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ford, Terry
Ford, T
Description
An account of the resource
135 items. The collection concerns Terry Ford. He flew operations as a pilot with 75 Squadron. It contains photographs, his log book, operational maps, letters home during training, and documents including emergency drills. There are two albums of photographs, one of navigation logs, and another of target photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Julia Burke and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ford, T
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] BATTLE ORDER – NO. 75(NZ) SQUADRON – 6/7TH DECEMBER,1944. [/underlined]
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
E*
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/O Glossop
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
Sgt McNeil
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
F/S Mace
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
P/O Meehan
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Harvey
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Killick
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Haworth
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
A
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/L Barton
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
F/O Birch
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
F/S Semple
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
F/O Stuart
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Smith
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Moore
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Williams
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
B
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/O Abraham
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
F/O Glengarry
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
F/O Jones
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
Sgt Davies
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Hughes
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Makin
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Evans
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
D
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/O Leadley
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
Sgt Day
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
F/S Gill
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
F/L Galloway
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Clare
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
F/S Baker
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Heslop
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
Y
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/O Ford
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
F/O Weeden
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
F/O Chapman
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
F/S Tredinnick
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Muller
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Glover
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Fitzwater
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
X
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/O Gawith
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
F/O Baker
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
P/O Taylor
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
F/O Picsse
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Jones
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Caldwell
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
{blank]
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
S
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/O Kilpatrick
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
F/O Tate
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
F/S Cattenack
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
Sgt Devonport
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Barton
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Halladay
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Olive
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
R
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/O Atkin
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
F/S Coulson
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
F/S Thurston
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
F/S Curtis
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Jones
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Madden
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Johnstone
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
X JN **
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/L Waugh
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
P/O Woonton
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
P/O Swetland
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
F/S Kidd
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Southgate
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
F/S Nickells
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
F/S McDonald
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
O JN
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/S Jones
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
Sgt Jacob
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
F/S Petrie
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
F/S Humphrey
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Hall
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Talbot
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt McManus
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
F JN @
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/O Williams
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
F/S Sim
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
W/O Duncan
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
W/O Harrison
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Round
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
F/S Harrington
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
F/S Smith
[underlined] Aircraft [/underlined]
K JN
[underlined] Captain [/underlined]
F/O Simpson
[underlined] Navigator [/underlined]
P/O Woodhouse
[underlined] Bomb Aimer [/underlined]
F/S Hemingway
[underlined] W/O/Air[/underlined]
Sgt Dibbs
[underlined] F/Engineer [/underlined]
Sgt Johnstone
[underlined] MU/ Gunner [/underlined]
F/S Thomas
[underlined] R/ Gunner [/underlined]
Sgt Chippendale
*2nd Pilot P/O Parsons. **2nd Pilot F/S Wood. @2nd Pilot F/O Clements.
Reserve aircraft AA ‘N’ and JN ‘P’. Reserve crew – F/L Yates.
Times: Meal LUNCH. 1st Briefing 1400. 2nd Briefing 1500. Bus to aircraft 1605
[underlined] DUTY PERSONNEL [/underlined]
Officer i/c Flying: W/C Leslie D.S.O A.F.C. Engineering Officer: W/O Murphy. Sigs. Officer: F/O Jenkins. Radar: F/S James, Sgt Holdsworth. Electrical Officer: F/S Melhuish. Armourers: Sgt Conner, Cpl Moon, AC Spingham. Stores: LAC Elmore. Compass Adjstr: Sgt Dalby. Photo: LAC Sanders. I/Reprs: Cpl Pritchard, AC Thornton. W/Mech: Cpl Robinson, LAC Wooly. Electricians: Cpl Peel, AC Griffiths
[signature] F/Lt.
for Wing Commander, Commanding,
No. 75 (NZ) Squadron, R. A. F.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
75 Squadron Battle Order
Description
An account of the resource
A battle order for 6/7 December 1944 detailing aircrew and aircraft involved in the operation. The target was Merseburg synthetic oil plant.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
75 Squadron
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-12-06
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One typewritten sheet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MFordTA1585520-170411-31
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Merseburg
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
navigator
pilot
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/239/3384/ACouperAJ151208.2.mp3
ac37331c622356f58e50bdab1d0f435e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Couper, Allan Joseph
Allan Joseph Couper
Allan J Couper
Allan Couper
A J Couper
A Couper
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Allan Joseph Couper [d. 2022]. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 75 Squadron.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Couper, AJ
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Alright. Here we go. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre with Allan Couper who was a 75 Squadron, New Zealand Squadron bomb aimer which is an RAF squadron during World War Two. The interview is taking place at Cabrini Hospital in Brighton where Allan is unfortunately a patient. My name is Adam Purcell. It is the 8th of December 2015. Allan, we may as well start. Start from the beginning. Can you tell me something of your early life, how you grew up, what your education was like and what you did before the Air Force?
AC: Well my family, the Coupers. C O U P E R S. The Coupers had dairy farms at a place called [unclear] South. Somewhere between Leongatha and Mirboo North. Actually, my great grandfather selected land at Mirboo way back in the eighteen, probably the 1880s. And my grandfather, the son selected land at [unclear] South. A hundred and sixty acres I think it would have been. It was completely forested. Now, in that family there were four boys and three girls. It’s of interest to me that the first boy, son was out crawling around the veranda of what might have been the house, it was probably only a two roomed affair on the, on the farm. He got bitten by a snake and by the time I got him to the doctor he’d passed away. Always been very careful about snakes in my time. Well they [pause] yeah they milked cows for a living shall we say. I’ve been told that at the very beginning when there were no separators, cream separators, what they used to do was put the milk [pause] they used to put the cream in these big basins and then skim the, or put the milk in the basins and skim the, skim the cream off. What they did with this cream I’ve never actually found out. But obviously they must have sold some of it. Well, as time went by and the boys grew up, they acquired adjoining farms. Or their father did, I think. And so it became, and my uncles and aunts et cetera were all dairy farmers including my father and my mother and we endeavoured to make a living. It wasn’t really very successful for all sorts of reasons. By the time I, oh I went to school at the local primary. [unclear] south number 3356. I can still remember that. Initially I got there, I walked and then we moved to another farm and I then had to ride a horse. I had the experience a couple of years ago of going to a grandparent’s function at the school where my grandchildren are now attending. They were doing an interview of the grandmas and grandpas and on this particular occasion a question was asked of me, ‘How did you get to school, grandpa?’ And I said, ‘I rode a horse.’ ‘Oh. Why would you ride a horse, grandpa? Why?’ Why? I explained why. Of course, they all were driven there these days in a motor car. Anyway, in those days we were examined at eighth grade, which is what the primary school went to and we got the, whatever it was called — the merit certificate. It was decided by my parents that I would continue on doing year nine but I would do it by correspondence which was a bit of a challenge to me. Particularly if you are doing French and I didn’t have anybody to talk to in French. Anyway, after about one term of that we moved to Melbourne and I went, from there I went to the Box Hill High. I was there for two years, more or less. Left when I got my intermediate because by that time my father had enlisted in the army in the Second World War. Money was very scarce. Almost non-existent. So I got a job working as a junior clerk at a place called James McEwan Hardware Stores in the CBD. I have to say that was a new experience for me. Anyway, after a few months I saw a vacancy for a job in the State Electricity Commission as a junior clerk. I applied and got it and I was taken on. Worked there in what was called the overhead main section. The overhead main section was responsible for building the transmission lines from, for example [unclear] to Melbourne from what do they call their key, not key but [unclear] that was up in the hills where they had a hydro station and I sort of did all sorts of odd things. Then one day I saw, oh I started doing English and maths 1 at night school. That was also my mother persuaded me to take on doing mechanic studies. I was spending more time at night time going to school than anything else in the city. Then I saw an advertisement in the paper. It was just a point of time when the Japanese were, had come in to the war. I saw an advertisement. They were advertising for cadets for the Air Training Corps. I made an application. I was accepted. And then for the next two years I went a couple of nights a week to the Camberwell Boys Grammar School I think it was, for lessons. Now, how am I going?
AP: Very well.
AC: Enough detail?
AP: Very well. This is —
AC: Ok.
AP: This is excellent.
AC: Ok. One of the interesting things about that was that each morning it was my job to change the blotter on the desk of one of the senior engineers that worked on the same floor as I was working. That was in a building in the, in the city. He happened to be a chief education officer for the Air Training Corps. And it so happened that I was able to, whilst changing the blotter have a look in to his inwards tray and see what was going on in the Air Training Corps [laughs] So I was well briefed there. Nobody else would have been. Eventually, I was coming around to being eighteen and I was accepted by the RAAF. It also just happened, not that it really advantaged me, it just happened that the chief of the RAF, RAAF recruiting was a gentleman called Sir Harold Buxton. He had been the mayor and he was the senior director of James McEwan. And because of his role in the Air Force his secretary used to get me to take correspondence et cetera up to Sir Harold’s office which was at the corner of [pause] Little Collins and Queen Street. That didn’t really have anything to do with me except just that that did happen. Sir Harold had been in the, well the equivalent of the RAAF in the First World War. Obviously, he would have been a pilot. As I said before he had been the mayor. Lord Mayor of Melbourne. Well, whilst we were in the Air Training Corps we did quite a few things. Like on Saturdays on one occasion I remember we went down to Laverton. It was a great thrill for us boys of sixteen, seventeen to go down there and see the planes. Many of them being, of course almost obsolete. I remember on one occasion we were asked to go to the Hawthorn Town Hall. They were having a loan function. It was for advertising how they needed money to pay for the Second World War. Me and the boys, we all went. Made up the audience of course. That was the idea of it but on the platform we had some very good speakers. One of them was a well-known correspondent, war correspondent who’d just been to New Guinea and had experienced the traumas of the Kokoda Trail. He talked about that. Of course nobody in the audience really knew anything about the Kokoda Trail but he sort of filled in. Another one that spoke was a lady. I can’t think of her name now. But anyway her mother, she was the mother of a gentleman who was in the RAAF who later on made his name when he came and brought an aircraft home and flew underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He later on went on to be involved with publishing. How are we going?
AP: Yeah. That’s alright.
AC: Alright.
AP: We were talking, I think Peter Isaacson you’re talking about.
AC: Yeah.
AP: Yeah.
AC: Isaacson.
AP: Yeah.
AC: And also, at the end of the evening we had the pleasure of hearing Sir Robert Menzies speak. And then subsequently answer questions. And whilst I was only seventeen, I was fascinated by his ability to answer questions. Talking of questions, on one occasion, one Saturday afternoon we were all brought together and the gentleman that I spoke of who was the chief educator for the Air Training Corps and who worked at the SEC and whose inwards I used to inspect every now and again came to sort of make a visit. I suppose to check us over. The interesting thing about it I said, prior to him coming we had a series of questions asked of us and funnily enough those same questions were asked when the gentleman [laughs] the chief training instructor was there. Of course we, we all knew the answers. Anyway, eventually when I was just before I was eighteen I asked to attend the RAAF recruiting I suppose. It was in a building on the corner of Little Collins and Russell Street I recall. Had the name of Piston Motors or something like that and went through a series of interviews. Had medical examinations. And one of the examinations, oh yeah, the medical examination I had one of the doctors conducting it recognised me. A couple of years before, after I’d been attending a church service shall we say, I fell off my bike. He happened, his surgery happened to be opposite the church in Surrey Hills and he looked after me and when I got into this medical in the RAAF he recognised me. Anyway, he passed me. Well eventually a few days after I was eighteen I reported to this place in Little Collins and what was it again? Russell Street.
AP: Yeah.
AC: We all came together. All swore on the bible. My father must have accompanied me and I recall he’d come back from the Middle East by this time. I recall him saying to me, ‘Now don’t go, go to Victor Harbour. Don’t go to Victor Harbour, Allan.’ Victor Harbour was another training area like Somers I mentioned about. Victor Harbour was in South Australia and of course it was I suppose a business of an eighteen year old one day going into the State and not being able to come home. Anyway, we were marched off down to the station and went off down to Somers. Will you want to know anything about Somers?
AP: Oh yeah. Yeah, that’s, we’re getting up to pretty well my next question was talking about your Initial Training School. So tell me. Tell me what you did at Somers.
AC: Well, when we got down to Flinders, no — Frankston Station, got on a bus, went down to Somers. We must have got there by about lunchtime and probably had a bit of lunch and then we were taken to the equipment room. And one of the first things I remember happening there was that they pointed to a pile of hessian bags and then a pile of oats, not oats — hay and said, ‘That’ll be your bedding for the night.’ Anyway, we got our blankets and I suppose a pillow and then would have had equipment to sleep in or sleep on and shown where which hut we were going to be in. And then, probably the next day we would have been lined up and allotted to our class. I think I was in B Flight. A B A B C D E F. I was in B flight. That’s right. And we started a lecture series. Going, going over some of the things we’d already been taught at the Air Training Corps but you have to remember that most of the people involved with that course, course 35, Somers, Initial Training School — most of them were, hadn’t been in the Air Training Corps schools. Hadn’t been with the Air Training Corps. So, I think, I think I’ve still got a letter. I was number two from my, second one in from my squadron. And so, you know it was very, in one sense very early days. Well, we did all these various things. Did a lot of drill. Did physical exercises. Went to the pictures occasionally. Every morning we had to line up and go onto the parade ground. Do our parade. [pause] One of the things I remember about it was we all had to do eye tests and my, apparently my, I had some problem with my vision that hadn’t shown up before. And I was put through a series of exercises to try and improve the situation. It may or may not have. I’ll mention it later. One of the other interesting things that happened there was at the time somehow or another I broke my upper false teeth. Cracked. So I went to the dentist and must have been home on leave at the time of the break. Of course it was very sharp and I couldn’t really wear the two pieces of teeth. It was very sharp. So I got a nail file and I relieved the situation. When I went back to the dentist he couldn’t understand why the teeth didn’t sort of come together like they used to. But nobody was, nothing was revealed. As a consequence I got a new set of, new set of teeth. Well, eventually we finished the three months. We finished the course. In the process we had been and had a series of interviews. Now, the adjutant at that, for our squadron was the cyclist. What was his name? Famous cyclist. Went into parliament later.
AP: Opperman.
AC: Yeah. It was Hubert Opperman. He was a very nice fellow. Treated us all very well. At the end of the three months our flight went out to dinner at some café along the coast down at Somers. One of the things I remember about that was they asked Oppy to give us a bit of a talk about his, when he was the cycling in various tournaments. And he made mention of a twenty four hour ride in Paris. And when he’d finished one of the smart boys got up and said, ‘Sir. How did you cope with your wee wee problem riding a bike for twenty four hours?’ I can’t remember [laughs] what he said.
AP: But that’s the best bit [laughs]
AC: Anyway —
AP: Oh dear.
AC: In the process we were selected out to be either pilots, observers or wireless air gunners. And then we were sent off to the appropriate station and I went to Western Junction as a trainee pilot.
AP: As a trainee pilot. Right. I sense there’s a story here if you were a trainee pilot.
AC: Well, at the time. I wasn’t in the end.
AP: Did [pause] so ok so how, how far did you get through the pilot course?
AC: I got to twelve hours.
AP: Did you solo?
AC: No.
AP: Bugger. That’s always my, my next question really for anyone who went through pilot training. I always ask them about their first solo. But you can probably tell me something about the Tiger Moth. What did you think of it?
AC: What?
AP: You can probably tell me something about the Tiger Moth. What, what did you think of flying the Tiger Moth during your brief time pilot training?
AC: Well I’d never flown in anything else. Didn’t know anything about it. It was the standard training plane. We had to start the damned things by twisting the propeller. But it wasn’t, the trainee had already got into his cockpit. He didn’t do that. It was somebody else that did it. But the fundamental reason for me getting, we used the term scrubbed, was the eyesight problem. The judgement. The judgement on landing. It was very important to be able to precisely know whether you were three feet above the ground or thirty feet. So that was my understanding of it. Well then I, we were shall we say stood down. I wasn’t the only one. About twenty five percent of them were. And I’ll mention that in a minute. And then we were stood down and just sort of re-allotted quarters and put on to digging trenches because still at this time the Japanese, the Japanese event was very much to the fore. And the fellow that was in charge of us, I suppose he was a corporal or something had been in Darwin in charge of much the same thing but had obviously been re-allotted. Given the boot I suppose. And that’s what we did for a while. But eventually I was interviewed by the wing commander in charge of the squadron, or the base and I was made, re-allotted to being an observer and then transferred up to Cootamundra to the Air Navigation School for further training. It turned out that most of the people that went there were scrubbed pilots. So obviously it was part of a plan. Every hundred pilots and twenty five would be given the boot and then sent on to the air navigation. That’s how it worked as I understand it. Shall I keep going?
AP: Absolutely.
AC: Well —
AP: What we might do. I’ll just let you talk. Keep talking until you run out of things to talk about and then I’ll go back and fill in the gaps later. Like you when you get to the end I’ll go back and see if there’s are any other questions that I need to ask you. So just, just keep going. There’s good, there’s good stuff actually. This is really good.
AC: Well, we went to, I went to Cootamundra and met up with, of a course a different set of people. Fellas. Mostly they came from Queensland and New South Wales. We weren’t there very long before we were put on to air training in the Avro Ansons. Two, two trainees would go up with a pilot and stooge around doing different things. I remember one of the things we had to do was, say go to [pause] the name just comes to mind, Lismore and do a sketch of the Lismore township as we flew over. That was all part of the training. I think we got down to Mildura on one occasion on training. And one of the things I do now remember is we went over to the coast. There’s a place with an inlet, a big inlet. River coming in. And we had to do a sketch of that. It was near Merimbula, but you had to be pretty quick. And on that particular exercise one of the planes, I don’t, didn’t ever find out what happened but failed and would have crashed and one of the trainee navigators or, trainee observers they were, parachuted but hadn’t done the straps up under between his legs and he, of course he couldn’t control his fall and he was killed. There was a story, I don’t know that it had any truth in it but the other one, there were two of course, the other one was in the UK over Wales. Much the same happened. He’d forgotten to do his straps up. Just don’t believe it but I did hear that story. Anyway, we worked our way through the course. It was as cold as buggery being in the winter. There was no real heating. And eventually we had our exams. I did well. I came third in the class. Got above average. Very happy with my role in life. I would have been the youngest there because of the Air Training Corps bit. And from there we were shifted on to number 3 BAGS — Bombing and Gunnery School. That was at West Sale. Yeah. All the new, all the new, no, all the boys from New South Wales, Queensland et cetera went off up north to another training station there and I was sort of well, I didn’t know anybody initially at BAGS. We did a month on gunnery training. We did a month on bombing training there. For the bombing we flew in, well Oxfords I think. I can’t remember whether Ansons or Oxfords. And for the gunnery we flew in Fairey Battles. Well that was an experience. A Fairey Battle. Terrible. And one of the things that used to happen was the pilots, of course it was pretty dull for them just flying alongside an aircraft towing a drogue which we were supposed to fire at. And after the exercise was over they’d do a few aerobatics. Well, I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy the aeroplane. One of the exercises we did was low level bombing. Had to drop ten bombs on a, on the target. This was all out near the coast at Sale. I had to drop ten bombs. The little fellas. And the pilot and I managed to get all ten on target which was quite an achievement. It had a lot to do with the pilot mind you. Thinking about it there were no real highlights when we were there. Oh. From there, that’s, we got our wings there. I don’t know why but we did. Then we went on, I went on, I went on to the Air Navigation School at Nhill.
AP: Right.
AC: Where we learned to fly by using [pause] what did we use? [pause] It’ll come to me.
AP: Astro?
AC: Eh?
AP: Astro?
AC: Yeah.
AP: So, so a sextant.
AC: Yeah.
AP: Presumably. Yeah.
AC: We were there for about a month using the astro navigation. Learning where the stars were et cetera et cetera. Yeah. On one of the missions I got lost. Course we were all sort of over Mallee country. There were very few features that we could sort of identify. And then we had the exam. As a result of the exam I got a below average. It didn’t mean, I don’t know whether it meant much. So then we were put on to leave for re-direction as qualified aircrew. Had to report in to the Spencer Street Station every day for instructions. Of course I was at home. I lived in ‘Bourne at the time. Eventually we were put on a train to Sydney. It turned out there was a couple of others I must have known. We eventually got to Sydney. Caught the train out to some station. Well known station north of Sydney. Got off the train. The station must have been next door to the RAAF station I think. When we got to the RAAF station we were about to go in [pause] there was a fellow I knew there. A trainee who’d been at some of the places I’d been to. ‘Hurry on,’ he said, ‘Hurry on,’ he said, ‘Hurry on, I’m making a selection. Hurry on.’ So we sort of picked up our bags and went down to where there was a line up. It turned out that we were lining up to be exported the next day to San Francisco. We dashed around to get a bit of clothing and that sort of thing. The next day put on a bus and put on a ship. It was an American transport. Something Vernon. Mount Vernon comes to mind. Put on there and away we went. Now then. What are your questions?
AP: Your wings.
AC: Eh?
AP: Your wings you said you got at West Sale. Did you have an O or a B or something else?
AC: Oh a B. No. No. No. No. I had an O to start with. I had an O.
AP: When did that —
AC: Observer.
AP: Yeah. When did that change to the B? And do you know how it sort of happened? Or did someone just kind of give you another one and say you’ve got these ones now.
AC: Well, how it happened was when we eventually got to the UK we went to Brighton which was a personnel depot. Once again we were all lined up. And they called for volunteers for bomb aimers. Saying that they needed this sort of background, that sort of background et cetera et cetera, and there would be an immediate posting. So the group of us, half a dozen of us who had been mainly Cootamundra put our hands up and about two days later we were on a train to a place up in — Wigtown, I think it was. Wigtown. Up in Scotland. That’s how we became bomb aimers. Or how we started off being bomb aimers. And then after we’d been there we went to what they called the Operational Training Unit at Westcott. The navigation leader said, ‘You shouldn’t be wearing those O’s you should be wearing a B.’ That’s how it came about.
AP: Alright. Presumably this is the first time that you’ve, you’ve been overseas.
AC: Oh yes.
AP: Yeah. What did you think of the US? You probably weren’t there for very long but —
AC: Well we were there for about a fortnight. The US. Well we got to San Francisco. We were put into a US army station which of course it would have been a permanent place. Well-equipped and everything. We had a couple of days. Might have, might have been more than that in this camp. We were allowed to go into San Francisco. I remember going in to, somehow getting in to an ice skating rink [laughs] and doing some ice skating. Then we were put on the train and set off. Well, we didn’t know where we were going of course. We thought we might be going to Canada which a lot of people, a lot of them did. Anyway, we set off late in the afternoon and had to go over the Rockies. And one of them, and of course it was a troop train. It just had us. It would be about three hundred I think. There were probably others in addition to the, you know the navigators, the air observers et cetera. I can’t remember though. Probably we never even mixed with them. I always remember when we got sort of up to the Rockies it had been snowing and all the boys were crowding at the window, windows looking out at the snow. Course some of them had, the Queenslanders and that had probably never seen snow. Don’t know whether I had either. Well, we continued to look out at the snow for the rest of the journey to New York. Eventually we got to New York. We had stopped off in Chicago I remember but we hadn’t got off the train. We went to, got from Chicago to New York. The last bit of it we were filing down the Hudson River which was ice-bound. Ice topped. We got to New York and we were taken to some sort of a gathering place. Christmas Eve 1943. And there we were allotted out to homes in New York. Probably two by two. And I don’t recall but we must have been put in a taxi. We went to this place, American family where we had a meal. And then went to the pictures about 1 am in the morning. And the next day had Christmas lunch. And one of the things I remember about that is I think the, the father there was a stockbroker or something. Something like that. Anyway, he had a couple of bottles of wine on the table. My mate who would be only my age you know, I don’t suppose he’d ever drunk wine said, ‘Oh I don’t drink wine.’ So the poor fella took the wine bottles off. So it must have been a disappointment for them. Anyway, we had a couple of nights there. We went back into New York and sort of got accommodation in the basement of the hotel. And we had a, we had a — we managed to get to an opera that we didn’t pay for. And then eventually we gathered together. We were taken to another army, US army place. An island it was in the Hudson River somewhere. We were put on a ship. The Ile de France. Oh, from there we were put on a ship the Ile de France which had been under repair. We were there for two or three days down at the, right down the bottom of the ship. One of the things I do remember about it is that they were able to broadcast BBC news. I remember a story being told over the wireless of course how the RAF had bombed some place in Germany and they’d lost, I think it was sixty nine aircraft. Something like that. I thought my God. What are we letting ourselves in for? Well, the Ile de France had some problem. Engines perhaps didn’t work or something. We were taken off. Taken back to where we’d been. A couple of days later we were taken off again and put on to the Queen Elizabeth. We had much, much, much much, much better accommodation [laughs] It was pretty crowded. Supposedly there was sixteen thousand on board. I well believe it. Queues for the meals ran all day and night. Anyway, we set off, not knowing where we were going but we could guess. About two days out, at about 1.30 am in the morning the captain comes on the, shall we say the loudspeakers, ‘I want everybody to put their life jackets on immediately.’ Which of course we did. Well, it turned out, later I found out, I met a fellow that was on the, up on deck on the sort of, what do they call it the viewee. Sort of had got to know what had happened was there had been a submarine scare and obviously the Queen Elizabeth had been diverted. Just as well wasn’t it? Well eventually we got to Glasgow in the UK, in Scotland and were taken down to Brighton by train where we were, get back to the, we were accommodated for a few days and then sent up to this place in Scotland where we started our real training as bomb aimers. Much the same as what we’d done as observers. Out over the Irish Sea. Of course, one of the issues there was it was a matter of getting to know the signals and all that sort of thing. All the specialities of the RAF.
AP: What do you mean by signals?
AC: Oh. When you got to point B there’d be an orange light flashing three times. You get to the point. This wouldn’t be for the UK but this was for training. When you got to the next point there would be one end that be flashing orange, blue or something. And all, and of course we were all the radio, we didn’t do the radio but you get to know the radio bits and pieces. The landing arrangements and all that. But in between we did a lot of bombing practice. Bombing practice.
AP: What did you think of the UK in wartime?
AC: What?
AP: What were your impressions of the UK in wartime? Particularly England.
AC: [pause] Impressions. Well of course the place was absolutely over run with troops because when we got there they were getting ready for the invasion. And where we were down in Brighton there were mostly the Canadians were stationed there. Lots and lots and lots of Americans. Lots and lots of Brits. And what people don’t realise is, you know there was a fair sprinkling of Poles and that sort of thing. Well, there was food rationing. Very severe food rationing. The roads were [indecipherable] on occasion, not all the time, on occasion tanks and that sort of thing. A lot of women in uniform. We were restricted to where we could go. When we were, when we were at Brighton we were sort of fenced in. You could go to there or there. So one day some three or four of us got on a bus, went there and met up with the RAF boys, men. They took our names and we were put on a charge. It wasn’t very far but we were sort of, hadn’t listened to the instructions. It was really sort of unbelievable actually. And of course another issue of there was the number of aircraft.
[telephone ringing]
AC: You’ll have to excuse me.
[recording paused]
AC: Where were we?
AP: We were talking about wartime England.
AC: Oh yes.
AP: And you said it was pretty amazing.
AC: Well it was [pause] Yes it was, well of course it was all geared and I made the point that everywhere, everywhere there were aircraft training. At our time, for example when we were in Brighton it wasn’t, we weren’t there very long. About seven or eight days I expect. But it, perhaps every afternoon a formation of Fortresses or Liberators would be coming back and coming over where we were. And other aircraft would be coming and going all the time. So yeah, it was all go go go go. So were the pubs. All go go go. There were six hundred pubs reputedly. There were reputedly six hundred pubs in Brighton. Alright. Well, eventually where did we get to? We, did we get up to Scotland?
AP: Yeah. Yeah.
AC: Yeah.
AP: You were at Scotland.
AC: Oh we’ve done that.
AP: That’s where you started training as a bomb aimer. Yeah.
AC: Well, ok.
AP: I think you got to OTU next.
AC: Yeah. The time came for, to be re-allotted and the next station was the Operational Training Unit and I was allotted to one at Westcott. Down near London. Westcott. And on the, I and another fella from where we had been were sent to Westcott. He was a New Zealander. And when we got to Westcott we were there apparently ahead of schedule before they formed up the next course. We had [pause] I had two or three days on my own shall we say. I met up with an another New Zealander. And whilst we were filling in time we went off to London which was something new to us. And then we, we went back and they had enough to make, make up a course. I can’t remember the course number. And shortly afterwards we were all brought together and the pilots in the group were asked to form a crew by going around, seeing if he had any friends or knew anybody or something or something. That was all very deliberate of course. And I was asked by a gentleman — Mr Boyer, Len Boyer, if I’d be his bomb aimer. And with others we made up, we made the crew. Except for the flight engineer who was to come later. And as a crew we were allotted a hut. A hut. Very tenth, tenth rate beds. Out in the mud because where we were, oh, sorry I’ve got the wrong. I got ahead of myself. We were in huts. In huts. I don’t think we were in Westcott. Yes, we were in huts as crews. That’s right. That’s right. And we did a lot of training as a crew. A lot of bombing, a lot of navigating and also learning how to fire the guns and so it went on. We were sent off to another station for a while. Probably because there was better landing or something like that. Eventually we, oh in particular we were supposedly being trained to go to the Far East. This particular, this particular OTU was supposedly training crews for the Far East. And we did quite a bit of familiarisation there. And when it came time very few went to the Far East but some must have. Or one crew must have because when I was coming home on the Athlone Castle, when we got to Bombay one of the fellows that was at Westcott walked up the gangway [laughs]. I never actually met him because he went somewhere else. But, well Westcott of course was very challenging because of all the different exercises we had to participate in. Very, very challenging. We were learning to be a crew. Each one was learning to do their bit and we allowed for flying in the dark. One thing or another. Well the time came to move on. We probably had a bit of leave then and the New Zealander who came in to the crew who was the wireless operator I recall he and I went off down to London. The others went home because they were Poms. Well, then we were re-allotted again. This time we went to a service training school I think it was called where we went on to four engine aircraft. Stirlings. I can’t remember off-hand the name of the station. It was very, very, very rough put together. Obviously one of the stations built during the Second World War. We did about six weeks there flying the, the Stirling which was an aircraft we were very pleased to move on from. It didn’t have much height. From there we were re-allotted to the final training school. Lancaster. The LFS. Lancaster Flying School. It was a pre-war job. Good accommodation and everything. We were only there about seven or eight days just to learn how to fly the Lancaster and learn how to, what all the knobs meant. I suppose we did a couple of bombing exercises. And then one day we were put in a truck. Two crews. We went off and found ourselves at the Mepal Station which was the station for 75 NZ. And my crew, we had been allotted a hut and from there we were met up and I probably, oh yeah we went out on a few training exercises to start with. Two or three, I think. We were doing just, once again learning the various calls and signals and so forth. The etiquette on the airfield. Then we went on our first trip. We were allotted for the first trip. That was to an airfield in Holland. At Eindhoven. Now this was late August, early September 1944. The Brits and the Canadians had just broken out from where they’d been held up in the invasion point. They were moving up to Holland, through Belgium to Holland et cetera and the Americans were moving up towards Germany. I suppose Eindhoven at the time had seen everything of the German Air Force and we were to bomb the airfield. Well, now it became quite a saga because as we were setting off of course Mr Boyer had a very nervous crew. As we were setting off, about a minute and a half after we started on track the navigator announced that we were doing the reciprocal of what we should have been doing. So we immediately of course turned back onto the right course. That, in a sense, meant that we were three or four or five minutes late which subsequently became a real issue. Anyway, we set off what we were supposed to be doing. Somewhere over Holland, don’t know really where, we got attacked by anti-aircraft in very great volume because we were the only one [laughs] flying relatively low. But we managed. Well the pilot managed to get out of that by [pause] had a term for it. Diving left and right. We went on, eventually got to the airport, aerodrome. We were the only ones there. Dropped our bombs. I don’t know whether we hit anything. Then turned. Turned to port. Left. And managed to join up with another attack. Probably our squadron was taking Eindhoven and some other squadron was taking the next German airfield sort of down the road. We joined up with them and we were with, you know sort of with company and we got home ok. That was the first trip. Now, it was said, it used to be said that if you managed to survive the first three trips you had a fair chance of surviving. That was a fair illustration [laughs] of what the first three trips was all about. Terrible. Ok. Well, what do I do? Keep on going?
AP: You can keep on going if you feel like it.
AC: Number one to Eindhoven. I have to say the bomb aimer didn’t have a very high opinion of the navigator to start with [laughs] His confidence slipped a bit after that. Anyway, that’s another story.
AP: You were a fully trained navigator yourself.
AC: Well there’s that.
AP: The same course as the observer. Yes.
AC: I was.
AP: Understood.
AC: Of course, that was his bad luck. Anyway, we went on and did more. Most of the ones we did, the next three or four we did were down in to France. For example, I think we went to Boulogne. That’s the way you pronounce it. German troops holed up there. We went. We attacked the German front line somewhere. It would be in France. But somewhere around there. Down. Then eventually after trips, probably four or five we went on to night trips into Germany. Here, there and everywhere. Well, they were at night and you didn’t see much [laughs] Eventually of course you got to the target. The navigator would, largely got you there. We would, we had Pathfinders in those days. The Pathfinders would be dropping or have dropped target signals. Colours which we would have, we were, had, the idea was we bombed the target indicators. Sometimes we would get instructions to say allow for another hundred, hundred yards or something. As the targets, the target indicators were, had been dropped short or something like that. I wouldn’t have liked to have been the master bomber in all that. Well, that went on until about the seventh or the eighth flight. We went to a place on the Rhine. No. Yes. That’s right. I just can’t think of the name. It started with S I think. On the Rhine. And I haven’t told this story. Whilst we were training, at Westcott I think it was, we used to do night vision exercises. That was to, we used to sit in a sort of a hut or something. The lights turned on and some mythical light would, the idea was that gradually you recognised features. Follow me? Ok. Well it became obvious that the rear gunner had much better night vision than the rest of us. Well it became obvious to me anyway. Well, no notice was taken of it because it was just another exercise. But this particular night, after we’d left the target, he sighted a fighter attacking us and he called out to the pilot, me and to do a dive. Which he did. The gunner did get his machine guns going. Anyway, we managed to dive out of it. But I’ve always seen it, maybe not be correctly, seen it as his better eyesight. Because not many of us survived the fighter attacks. Anyway, we got out of that and got home. Well, we continued on doing these here, there. For example, we participated in the two trips that went to [pause] Driffield. Driffield. No. That’s [pause] they put on two bombing raids on this Northern Ruhr city for the one day. I was told later the idea was to show the Germans that we had the capacity to do that sort of thing. They were thousand bomber. Or one, the first one was a thousand bomber raid. We were part of it.
AP: Dusseldorf perhaps.
AC: Eh?
AP: Dusseldorf.
AC: No. It wasn’t Dusseldorf.
AP: Dortmund. Dortmund.
AC: Eh?
AP: Dortmund.
AC: No.
AP: No.
AC: Driffield.
AP: What else is there? No. Driffield is in the UK.
AC: It might come to me.
AP: Anyway.
AC: Anyway, we did, also did the night flight. We were, you know [laughs] we were sort of up for so many, so many hours. When we got home the thing that I always remember we were offered a small drink of rum and I don’t know what else [laughs] That was that one. [unclear] North end of the Ruhr anyway. Well, we had to get to thirty. That was the target. The next problem we ran into we had to stay for, oh one of the flights we did was to fly to the Dutch coast and drop bombs on the walls that were holding the water back from the Dutch land. We dropped bombs on the walls and the water flowed in and eventually we managed to kick the Germans out because the Germans couldn’t sort of operate their units. Well we had that. Feltwell. Not Feltwell. No, it wasn’t Feltwell. We did that. That was in a sense relatively simple. I believe we killed six hundred Dutchmen in the process though. Later on, just perhaps a week later on we had another of these flights to the south of the island which was on the coast of the estuary that led into Antwerp. And what they were really trying to do was to get shipping into Antwerp to supply all the troops and they had to get rid of the Germans. Well anyway, this city, town, on the south, we had to do this bombing exercise which we did relatively low and as we were leaving, turning around to go home the rear gunner said, ‘The aircraft behind us is going into the sea.’ Which it did. At the same time within seconds I suppose but might have been a half a minute one of our engines failed. And of course that wasn’t the best but we got rid of the bombs and that, that got rid of a lot of the weight. Anyway, the pilot tells us to don our parachutes which of course were here and there. But luckily, he managed to keep it all going and we got, we got home alright. The thing that always struck me, has always stayed in my mind is I was at the front of course, lying down, looking out. I’m looking out down there at that bloody great sheet of water. But we missed that. I mentioned, I should have mentioned earlier on one of the early flights that was going to France. We lost an engine on take-off with a full bomb load. Eighty thousand pounds I think it was. A full load. A lot of bombs. We were a fully laden aircraft. And we lost the engine on take-off. Well, normally the pilot would have gone back. First of all he would have had to get rid of a lot of the petrol and then he would have gone and landed it. But our friend Mr Boyer decided that the trip wasn’t all that bad. That we’d go on. And we went on and did the mission on three engines. You have to give him credit. You have to give him credit. So anyway, eventually we, we get to thirty two because at that stage they were increasing the number of missions as the casualties were sort of falling. And we were stood down at thirty two. And then from there we were all sent off to places for re-allotment and I was sent to, with some of the others, sent to a station in Scotland. And from there I was allotted to another station down near Coventry where I became a navigator. When I was, we were being used, well not used, our role there was to check the accuracy of signals on runways and each day, or each day and a half or something we would be allotted an aerodrome somewhere in England or Northern Ireland or Scotland to go and check the accuracy.
AP: So, this is like a standard beam approach.
AC: Yeah.
AP: That’s the signal you’re talking about.
AC: Yeah. They did have names for them but I can’t remember.
AP: You’d probably be interested to know they still do something very similar to that.
AC: Oh, they’d have to.
AP: Yeah.
AC: And they do it here. Here. They do it in Australia.
AP: Yeah. They certainly do.
AC: They’d have to.
AP: I’m an air traffic controller. They’re a pain in the backside but that’s another story. Anyway, cool. So how long did you do that for?
AC: Well, I got there about January. And I left about October.
AP: Ok.
AC: It was really, for me, of course I’m only nineteen at that point. To me it was one of the best things that ever happened to me because the people that were at this station they were all very, they were all trained crews. All very experienced crews. They’d been all over the world three times [laughs] They’d done everything. They were very experienced and, you know their backgrounds. But mostly, hang on. I was the only Australian. I was the only Australian on the station. There was a Canadian for a while. There might have been one or two or three New Zealanders. The rest were all Poms and of course they were all, they’d all been long term hadn’t they? Some of them were permanent people. Very interesting it was. And as a consequence, of course we went all around. All over England and all over Scotland and Ireland. And Northern Ireland. I was talking to a lady here this morning she was a New Zealander but spent quite a bit of time over in the UK. Some years actually. And she’d been up to, spent time in the Hebrides and all that. Well very, well I wouldn’t say it was the making of me but very interesting.
AP: From, I’m just interested on the bomb aimer side of things.
AC: The what?
AP: Just interested on the bomb aimer side of things.
AC: Yeah.
AP: What did a target indicator actually look like? Can you describe seeing one burst and what it looked like in front of you?
AC: Oh, it was just a big flame really. And I mean we’ll talk about night at the start. At night it was just down there somewhere. There. There. There. There. It was just a sort of a big flame. A big light. A big light. And of course, there’d be hopefully two or three of them in close proximity. Not always. Far from it. In daytime [pause] well they must have shown up in the daylight.
AP: Big and brighter I suppose, yeah.
AC: Eh?
AP: Even brighter than the first.
AC: Well, must have.
AP: When, when you’re, you were saying that the master bomber says you know aim at the reds.
AC: Yeah.
AP: Or aim at the greens or something. Could you as the bomb aimer actually hear that over the intercom?
AC: Oh yes. Yes.
AP: So it was patched over the intercom.
AC: Yes. Yes. I and the pilot probably. At that point in time it only lasted minutes. At that point in time the pilot and the bomb aimer were, shall we say running the show. But after the bombs had been dropped et cetera the navigator would give you a course to steer. With us though, just to make the point, for it was never explained to me, but I think some of it reverted back to our pilot. We were given the task of having special photography which meant that we had to fly what they termed the straight and narrow. Straight and level. Straight and level for, it might have been say fifty seconds. It doesn’t sound long [laughs] but up in the air under those conditions it was a bloody long time. Well we got, some of us got anointed with that somewhere after we’d started and we stayed in that role the whole time. It was something that the rest of the crew weren’t very keen about I can tell you [laughs]
AP: I can imagine.
AC: I don’t know. They weren’t very keen on that. I don’t blame them either.
AP: I’ve, I’ve seen a letter that was written by a wireless operator.
AC: Yeah.
AP: A friend sent home during the war. He described his bomb aimer as, ‘our best passenger.’ You know, ‘We carry him thousands of miles so he can drop his eggs and then he has a sleep on the way back and asks us how the flak was like.’ That’s probably a slightly jaundiced view. But what, what did you do as a bomb aimer when you weren’t actually in the nose with your finger on the tit?
AC: Well, in the first place, as a bomb aimer I was in the nose all the time. Except on one occasion where our pilot had to go to the toilet which of course was quite an experience for everybody. I was on my belly lying in the front of the aircraft. I was also theoretically the alternative front gunner but we didn’t use those. I used them accidentally once. I didn’t tell anyone.
AP: Yeah.
AC: But you lay there. You were the sort of assistant navigator. For example, if you were crossing the coast or you’d tell the navigator, ‘We’re now crossing the coast.’ Or crossing here or something over there. If you saw anything like it’s, well I used the word cathedral because we used Ely Cathedral all the time when we were coming back, as a landmark. You’d sight, sight the cathedral and you were watching out for aircraft, enemy aircraft or our own aircraft because they were a menace too. And also we in our squadron anyway I was the one that operated what was called the H2S. H2S. Have you heard of that?
AP: Yes. I have.
AC: And while on operations we didn’t use H2S too often. Well, it wasn’t encouraged actually because the enemy apparently put a locate on it. I did use, I did two or three times have to get up in the main cockpit and use the H2S. So that’s about it really. Yeah. Well, in a way the fellow was right but not really. You know. Because I see, well the whole thing sort of revolved around emergencies didn’t it? Of one sort or another. The example of an emergency was the pilot and the toilet. Yeah. In some cases and there were two on our squadron I don’t really know what happened to them but the pilots were wounded and the bomb aimers took over. I knew both of those. They took over and they managed to land. Don’t know how [laughs]
AP: So —
AC: Well, you see with me I’d done, I’d done the pilot training for twelve hours. That got me to the point where I could sort of fly an aircraft. We did a lot of the make believe training on the, we had these make believe aeroplanes. Did that all the time when we were on the squadron. So in a way I I wasn’t exactly dim witted, in the sense I’d done it all. But let me just say that this time when Lenny boy had to go to the toilet it starts off with, ‘Allan could you come up?’ I suppose, so, ‘I need to go to the toilet.’ That means I’ve got to sort of get out of where I am. Get up. We’ve got to get him out of his seat. Equip him with a parachute which must have been hanging somewhere. Get him fitted out with an oxygen mask because he couldn’t, couldn’t go to the toilet without oxygen. He’d never come back. We were in formation. Three other, I think three aircraft. We were on what was then termed, I think GH. That was another form of navigation. We were in formation and we were in cloud. And when we got home three aircraft didn’t come home on that trip. You can see how dicey it was.
AP: Very much so.
AC: Terrible.
AP: Speaking of dicey you mentioned earlier you accidentally used the front guns. I sense a story.
AC: Yeah. What? How did I do it?
AP: Yeah. What happened there?
AC: Well I must have been setting them into position or something and I must have pressed the trigger.
AP: In flight, or on the ground?
AC: On the ground.
AP: Oh dear.
AC: Going around. We was going around the tarmac. We had been at a night and it had all happened in a second.
AP: Very good.
AC: Not really.
AP: No. Not really at all [laughs] So anyway you’ve told me about your operational flying. When you weren’t on ops on the squadron or elsewhere in England what did you do when you weren’t on duty?
AC: Well so some of us stayed in bed. Some of us went to the pub. My navigator used to go sleep with his girlfriend. We all had bicycles. And on the squadron we would be, you know, we were very close to the place. Ely. Ely. Ely Cathedral. We used to go in there on occasion. Once or twice we went to the pictures there. When I was at the, where I went to the last operation. Come in.
[recording paused]
AC: Well, you know the last station we [pause] well I have to say we spent a lot of our time in the pubs.
AP: I would like to ask you about that soon too.
AC: But also we, I anyway, I and some of the others we used to go into Birmingham, big city, and go to the piccies. And also Stratford on Avon wasn’t very far away. And well say there was a Padre. The Padre used to organise small groups to go to the theatre et cetera [unclear] or a night. Went there quite a few times. And of course we used to go on leave every six weeks. Now, I had relatives in the UK. My mother came from England. She was English. And not every time I went on leave but about half I used to go and stay with them. That would be about it I think.
AP: You said you spent a fair a bit of time in pubs. Describe your favourite English pub. What happened there and what was it like?
AC: Favourite English pub. Oh I suppose that, the answer to that is that one that was nearby the Mepal [pause] Station. It was very close. It was very sort of friendly because I mean all the other crews or some of the other crews would be going there. We wouldn’t stay there very long. But that’s where we sort of spent a bit of time. I can’t remember. They had a snooker, billiard table in the mess. We used to play a lot of that. That would be in the off times. I don’t know whether that fills in.
AP: Yes. That’s alright. Alright, we might, we might, we’re getting fairly close to the end of my, my short list here. What, how did you find readjusting to civilian life when you came back? What did you do and how did you readjust?
AC: Well I worked for the State Electricity Commission. When I left I was a junior clerk. And at that time, in the era, all the people that went into the service were guaranteed their jobs back. SEC of course very big and I just went back to the job I was in when I went in to the Air Force. Nothing. There was nothing different. Nobody ever asked me any questions. But there were a lot of us doing the same thing. And then after a year or two I thought, you know I need to move on somehow or another. And I applied for a couple of jobs and got one of them and left the section that I was in. I went into what was called the audit branch which was totally different. And that had different demands et cetera. Used to spend quite a bit of time away from Melbourne doing audits in the country. Then I got another job as a trainee which gave me a broader horoscope. I spent a month with this group of people or that group of people. Or three months or six months. It was over a period of three years all around the place being trained up. Once I, one of, one of the jobs I was given was to be a meter reader. I did that for about three months. Later on in my work life I found myself in the role interviewing people for jobs. Different scene altogether. Anyway, this particular job that was being interviewed for was a meter reader’s job. Somewhere up in Mallee or Wimma or something. Outback place. The fella being interviewed probably didn’t understand what was going on. The question was asked by me about, something about the meter reading. Some technical point. He said to me, ‘You ever read any meters?’[laughs] I was able to say, ‘Yes. I’ve read quite a few.’ And that sort of [laughs] killed his further, further questions. I know. Oh well. Then I got a series of other jobs stepping up all the time. And that Frank Sims that was there with us that day he and I sort of started together. He was in a different role to me but we sort of finished together. He was in the Air Force. In the [regulars?] He’d been to not Pakistan. He went to [pause] We now called it whatever they call it. What they invaded. I’m terrible. Anyway, Frank and I sort of we stayed in the SEC all our working lives and for one reason or another we managed to get a few promotions. And I’ve got a problem with the teeth and well as far as I was concerned it was very success. It was very successful. It was hard work. Very demanding. Managed to eventually [laughs] eventually retire thankfully. But I did a lot of things subsequently. Did a lot of things.
AP: So perhaps the this is my final question, perhaps the most important one. For you personally what’s Bomber Command’s legacy and how do you want to see it remembered?
AC: Well we forget one aspect of it. As a marvellous well-organised organisation that achieved great things against great odds. It was a marvellous organisation. I haven’t said this to anybody else but the RAF, compared to the RAAF, of course there were all sorts of reasons for that were so far ahead. Technically and everywhere else it was hard to believe that we were both doing, in one way, the same thing. And whilst they haven’t picked up too many accolades in, not recent times but over time, over time it was a very very efficient organisation. Does that help you?
AP: That’s yeah. Yeah, that’s very good. How, how do you want to see it remembered?
AC: Remembered? [pause] I think along with the other groups, Fighter Command, not the Fleet Air Arm, what’s the one that went out to sea? And Transport Command. They all made the, a significant contribution to the, well the finalisation of the Second World War as they did. What people don’t understand is, for example one of the reasons that the Germans gave up was they ran out of petrol. They ran out of petrol because we constantly bombed their refineries and as a consequence of, this has got nothing to do with that, as a consequence of bombing their refineries we lost three aircraft on that mission I talked about. And we lost eight on a previous mission where I think we filled the gap. That was the oil refineries. Of course, the oil refineries naturally enough were extremely well defended. So they all made their contribution along with the RAAF and the RCAF. The Royal New Zealand Air Force. But it was a very big contribution that sort of got lost in the upsets after the war. I don’t know. Will that do?
AP: Very good. I think that’s a very emphatic way to finish actually. I think that’s, that’s quite good. Well, we’ve done pretty well. That’s an hour and fifty minutes. That’s not a bad effort. So, thank you very much. Let’s turn the tape off.
AC: Well, in a way, when you look back it’s a minor event but it wasn’t to us I have to say. It wasn’t to us.
AP: I don’t think it was a minor event at all. I’ve just spent the last two months interviewing ten of you guys and you were all —
AC: Of course none of them knew what they were letting themselves in for.
AP: I’ve heard something along those lines as well.
AC: Well we didn’t. When I applied to go into the Air Training Corps [laughs] it was a fun thing. Sort of.
AP: That’s awesome. Very good. Alright, I’ll stop the tape.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ACouperAJ151208
Title
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Interview with Allan Joseph Couper
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:43:17 audio recording
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-12-08
Description
An account of the resource
Allan Joseph Couper grew up in Australia and joined the Air Training Corps as a teenager. He was employed by the State Electricity Company until he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. He was accepted for aircrew training as a pilot and later as an observer. On the ship over to the Great Britain he heard a radio announcement that the RAF had bombed a city in Germany and had lost 69 aircraft. At that point he wondered what he had let himself in for. He later remustered as a bomb aimer and flew operations with 75 Squadron at RAF Mepal. On one occasion, their aircraft lost an engine on take off but the pilot decided to proceed and they completed their operation on three engines. On another occasion the rear gunner said that he had witnessed one of their aircraft go into the sea. Couper looked out over the sea and considered their vulnerability. He recalls looking out for sight of Ely Cathedral to know they were nearly home.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Cambridgeshire
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Victoria--Melbourne
Victoria
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
75 Squadron
aircrew
Battle
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
H2S
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operational Training Unit
RAF Mepal
RAF Westcott
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1971/41531/MMcGaughranJE427410-171017-15.2.pdf
00346e302d403dd87bdedde9fb585c5c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
McGaughran, James Emmett
J E McGaughran
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McGaughran, JE
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. The collection concerns James Emmett McGaughran (b. 1917, 427410, Royal New Zealand Air Force) and contains documents, photographs and postcards. He served as an air gunner.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Nichola Spencer and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
WAG Mag no. 3
Description
An account of the resource
A magazine for wireless operators.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Airmen of No. 3 Wireless School
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-07
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
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21 printed sheets
Identifier
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MMcGaughranJE427410-171017-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-07
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
aircrew
mess
sport
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/750/10749/PCookJA1701.1.jpg
4edc3babf103787302f8c18e56801b42
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/750/10749/ACookJA170918.2.mp3
4978e3d53a8f638857ee98dfc90168c8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cook, Jack Alexander
J A Cook
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Jack Cook (b. 1919, 1893192 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 158 and 267 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jack Cook and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cook, JA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: Ok. I think we’re ready. Ready to go. So [pause] Ok. I think we’re ready to start. This is Andrew Sadler interviewing Jack Cook in his home in Uxbridge on Monday the 18th of September 2017. Thank you for allowing me to come, Jack.
JC: You’re very welcome.
AS: Can you tell me how you got involved with the RAF in the first place?
JC: Well, in the first place I was in a Reserved Occupation. Instrument maker. So, of course when the war broke out I was safe. Or shall we say safe. And in the end I just would not, I would not stay in there. I mean I didn’t want to see the war going on in somebody else’s backyard. I wanted to be involved so I volunteered. And the only thing I could volunteer for was Bomber Command. They wouldn’t take any for anybody else. So, of course I was glad. Glad enough of that. And I, I was, how can I say? I got, I finally, anyway I finally, they accepted me and I went. Went for training. Usual training. Bomber Command training. And when I finished that the, we naturally went to get crewed up. There I met my, my crew. The other people there. Bill Walsh, he was a New Zealander. I think there’s a picture of him somewhere here. And then the, the other. The other lot. I forget all their names now. Excuse me for that. But yes we, we then, after we’d finished our first lot of training you know we had to learn to fly the things of course and all about them. And as an engineer, what I was going to be a flight engineer I had to know a lot more because, you know you have to know the ins and outs of the aircraft. Anyway, we finally got through our training. From our early training and they put us on, on operations in Lissett. A place called Lissett in Yorkshire. We were flying. We were flying Halifax 3 machines and they were a lovely machine mind you because as an engineer I knew all about that. But we, we finally got sent in to York. A place in Yorkshire where we did, we did, started our operational flying. Of course, then it was straight on to, you know when the when the guns really did go bang. And we, I think we got through [pause] I think got about twelve or thirteen and we, we caught a wallop on the way back and then we had to crash in to, to Carnaby. That’s the big crash ‘drome. Carnaby. And from then of course it was easy going because we’d got another aeroplane by then. And we, we just did short stuff then from then on because we were practically at the end of the war by then. Fortunately, because you know when I did get into the war I got a bit of the war in [laughs] where a lot of people went through the really thick stuff, you know. But anyway, the end of the war we all demobbed. And that’s a painting done of us. And there’s not really anything. Then I went back into industry of course as an instrument maker. But beyond that. What —
AS: Where were you stationed?
JC: I was stationed in Lissett. A York, in Yorkshire. We first of all went on to, we went on to, you know our initial training in Yorkshire. But then we finally, when we finally, when we finally passed out on our initial training they posted us to 158 Squadron in Lissett and we, I think we managed to get off about twenty three operations. Twenty three trips through. I think it was about twenty three. Without my book I’d have a look and we then of course the end of the war we separated and although we kept in touch for a long time but we gradually lose you know. But yes. We did very, we were very lucky. We did get one. One went in on the way back and we got a terrific bang in the old what’s the name wing. And the shell had come up and knocked, you know hit the wing, the wing of the aircraft and sort of knocked us into a spin. We sort of fortunately were able to get back out again and get back. Limp back into Carnaby. That was a special place with extra long runways to, you know for a crashed aircraft to get in there safely. But otherwise and that we just gently cruised through the rest of the war and that was the end of it. We kept in touch for a while. But people —
AS: Were you just, were you just in Halifaxes?
JC: Sorry?
AS: Were you just in Halifaxes?
JC: In Halifax 3. Yes. Oh, a lovely aeroplane. No doubt about that. We trained. Trained of course on the earlier version. Well, you know the old, old stuff for the trainees. And then we transferred to the Halifax 3 which was as I say was a lovely aeroplane. But spoiled it by the end. We blew half the wing off [laughs] You know we were just at the end of the war and then we all sort of went our own separate ways.
AS: Can you tell me about your training as a flight engineer?
JC: Well, yes. I when I, when I was an I was an instrument maker, you see. And of course when I decided I wanted to, wanted to do something a bit more than this I tried to get in and the only thing they could put me on was a wireless operator. Well, you know I thought I’m going to have a go at anything. You know. To get in. And I went on a wireless operator’s course but of course for some reason or other I couldn’t take Morse. You know. I just couldn’t take, couldn’t get it down quick enough. They had to transfer me over. I was lucky because they just happened to be just short of flight engineers so they put me on a flight engineer’s course and I went down to Wales, St Athans in Wales and trained. I went through the training. Got my, got my logbook. It’s around somewhere. And, and then we went on after. After we got our initial training they posted us to a proper Squadron. 158 Squadron in Yorkshire. And that was at Carnaby. Near Carnaby. And then we flew. What did we, I think about twenty three I think before we finally ran out of war. So of course at the end of the war of course we all went our own separate ways.
AS: Can you remember the missions? The missions that you went on?
JC: Pardon?
AS: Can you remember the missions that you went on?
JC: Oh yes. Well, I’ve got a logbook here somewhere.
Other: He’s got his logbook there.
Other 2: Oh yes. Oh. Here we are. Yes.
JC: Yes. Yes. It’s, it’s a bit more interesting I suppose.
Other: Pass it over, Jack.
JC: Where are we? [pause] Yeah. There we are. Flight engineer, on. With the effect on the 18th of January ’45. So, you see we were running out of war quite fast I’d say.
AS: When do you think you actually go in to the Air Force?
JC: When did I go in to the Air Force?
AS: Yes.
JC: Oh [pause] To be perfectly honest I can’t remember when we —
Other: It’s no good looking at me.
JC: Because I tried to get in to the, first of all anything that would take me. Then the only thing you could get from, I was an instrument maker. The only thing I could get to come out from that was aircrew. But I mean I just didn’t believe I was sort of capable of going aircrew. But anyhow I went and they trained. First of all it was rather unfortunate. They put me as a wireless operator. Well, alright but the trouble was I just couldn’t take Morse quick enough. You know. I just couldn’t get it down so no good as that. So, you know you can’t say that, ‘Oh, would you mind running it again? We didn’t hear it.’ So you know I, I transferred then with a bit of luck as a flight engineer. I flannelled my way through. They said, ‘What do you know about cars and engines?’ And all that. And I flannelled. I didn’t know the first thing about how a car worked. But anyway I talked. Talked them into letting me start. So I went to St Athan’s and did the original early training. Then I finally sent up to Yorkshire where I did the operational. What they called the operational training where you have your final polish of all your work and learn how to really cope with aircraft. And then from then straight on to 158 Squadron. Quite a posh Squadron I must say. 158 Squadron in Yorkshire. Near Bridlington. And we, I think we managed to get about twenty three. I’m not quite sure how many it was. About twenty. I think it was twenty three and then we ran out of war. So we all went our own separate ways. I’ve got a few bits here but not, you know. Here’s sort of our crew. Oh, we’ll go through. We’ll go through our crew. Yeah. I’ve got Bill Walsh who was a New Zealander. He was the pilot and he was a smashing bloke. The other one there was [pause] we had two gunners. Reg. Reg Simpson and Nick Nichols. Funny that. And Ray. He was a [pause] he was the navigator. Ray. And the other one was the bomb aimer. And as I say we, does it say how many we got? See what we’ve got in the book. We did, we did catch a packet in one place and managed to land. I’ll show you in a minute anyway. We were coming across Holland somewhere I think. We got, we got hit. That threw us into a spin. And the, the pilot, brilliant pilot, old Bill, a New Zealand lad got us out of a spin, you know. A skinny lad really. And then we managed to sneak across the North Sea and came in at Carnaby. A big, a big crash aerodrome at Carnaby. And, [pause] but anyway as I say we went on from then. We got properly, got through the whole lot. I think it was about twenty three [unclear] But yeah we were lucky. We were very lucky. We had one or two. One or two clips, you know where you know, bits of holes appear in the wings and lumps come off. But on the whole we got away with them. Except on that one occasion when we nearly went down. But [pause] yeah. Otherwise, you see the photograph.
AS: Wow.
JC: Hit by a shell and it actually exploded in the wing.
AS: What, what was life like on the base when you were between missions?
JC: Sorry?
AS: What was life like on the Air Force base between, when you were between missions?
JC: Oh. Wonderful really because we as a crew of seven we tended to, well we were sort of all put in our own hut separately and so of course we lived as a family of seven. I mean there was, there was sort of we had a warrant officer pilot and a warrant officer navigator and the rest of us were all just sergeants. And there was no muscling about. We all went in together in the same hut and oh it was, it was really a lot of, a really a tight camaraderie between us. You know. We were a crew and as they were our right hand. Right arm. You know. It was, of course at the end of the war unfortunately we went our own separate ways and I lost touch.
AS: How long did you keep in touch with your crew mates?
JC: Oh well, first of all of course it wasn’t, it was quite a while and then gradually we sort of got writing to each other. But it was long, it was quite a long time since I’d seen them or heard anything. Yeah.
AS: When you —
JC: We understand that the navigator and Bill the pilot were both New Zealanders. They went back of course to New Zealand. The rest of us we just dispersed. What we had to, I can’t remember you know, we had the rear gunner was [pause] I forget what he was. He was just, just one of the bods you know. Like myself.
AS: When you finished and you came out of the RAF what did you do then?
JC: Well, I went back into the factories of course. It was a bit of a, you know it was all a bit of a wrench from being you know under orders as to getting back. Getting back on sort of your own peace. Your own job. But I went back in to the factories and became an instrument maker and finally a tool and mould maker. When I retired I was tool and mould maker. You know. All the stuff, you look around you has all my fingers on it.
AS: Oh right. And did you find it difficult to assimilate back into civilian life?
JC: No. Not really. I suppose we missed, missed the company for a start but of course we all went our own separate ways and kept quite tightly in touch for, you know for the first year or so but gradually it wandered off and to tell you the honest truth I’m never quite sure where they all are now. But —
AS: Did, did you, you didn’t fly any aircraft other than Halifaxes.
JC: Oh well, after yeah after the, after the war first of all, of course we did our training on a, on a sort of a clapped out Halifax. Then we did our operations on a brand new one. A lovely brand new one. And we spoiled it though. We blew a lump out of the wing. But then after that it was just a matter of pottering around. Aircraft wanted to be delivered from one place to another. I used to have to fill in as a flight engineer. But gradually you sort of get I finally got as I, sort of let out. They discharged. I don’t think I can offer much more than that. As I say because when I came out of course I went to try and pick my old threads as an instrument maker which I was virtually in the same sort of job I finally finished with.
AS: Were you involved with the RAF Associations afterwards?
JC: Oh. Involved with them. Well, not for a very long time. I didn’t realise that there was anything, you know. Anything like that. But it was just down the road wasn’t it from RAF, RAF Uxbridge? There was a, I met one or two people down there. I went in. I got in with them. And we used to meet down there sometimes didn’t we? Well, Olive didn’t but I used to go down there lunchtime. Friday lunchtime wasn’t it? Friday lunchtime I think it was I used to go down there and we’d meet together. But of course I don’t think [pause] I don’t ever really met my crew again. I’ve got a feeling I did meet one of them but you know being as we were a very close knit seven you know. A very, very close knit lot and when you all go your separate ways it’s surprising you are separate and that’s it. But yeah. We had a good crew. A jolly good crew. Have you had a look at the —
AS: No. Maybe I’ll —
JC: Not a lot, not a lot in there really but —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jack Alexander Cook
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Sadler
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACookJA170918, PCookJA1701
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:21:17 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Wales
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Beginning the war in a reserved occupation, Jack eventually volunteered for the Royal Air Force, however, it would take the majority of the war before he joined. Eventually being called up for Bomber Command in 1944, Jack trained as a wireless operator before becoming a flight engineer. He was sent to RAF St Athan initially for training, before joining 158 Squadron at RAF Lissett to fly Halifax bombers. Throughout his operations, Jack completed 12 operations before his plane was damaged over the Netherlands, having to make a crash landing at RAF Carnaby. He then continues to give information on the Halifax bomber, recounting his experience being hit by a shell during a flight. Jack recounts his time at RAF Lissett as wonderful, living with ‘his own family’, his crew, a family of seven. Reaching the rank of sergeant, he believes he completed 23 operations in total. When the war ended, Jack returned to his pre-war occupation as an instrument maker, keeping in contact with many of his crew throughout the years. He states that it was easy to return to civilian life, but the one thing he missed most was the camaraderie. He is currently involved with the RAF Association.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
158 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
military ethos
RAF Carnaby
RAF Lissett
RAF St Athan
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/27/143/PFilliputtiA16010054.2.jpg
3c07a50de1378330b0e3613d07f032bf
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Filiputti, Angiolino
Angiolino Filiputti
Alfonsino Filiputti
A Filiputti
Description
An account of the resource
127 items. The collection consists of a selection of works created by Alfonsino ‘Angiolino’ Filiputti (1924-1999). A promising painter from childhood, Angiolino was initially fascinated by marine subjects but his parents’ financial hardships forced an end to his formal education after completing primary school. Thereafter, he took up painting as an absorbing pastime. Angiolino depicted some of the most dramatic and controversial aspects of the Second World War as seen from the perspective of San Giorgio di Nogaro, a small town in the Friuli region of Italy. Bombings, events reported by newspapers, broadcast by the radio or spread by eyewitnesses, became the subject of colourful paintings, in which news details were embellished by his own rich imaginings. Each work was accompanied by long pasted-on captions, so as to create fascinating works in which text and image were inseparable. After the war, however, interest in his work declined and Angiolino grew increasingly disenchanted as he lamented the lack of recognition accorded his art, of which he was proud.
The work of Angiolino Filiputti was rediscovered thanks to the efforts of Pierluigi Visintin (San Giorgio di Nogaro 1946 – Udine 2008), a figurehead of the Friulan cultural movement, author, journalist, screenwriter and translator of Greek and Latin classical works into the Friulan language. 183 temperas were eventually displayed in 2005 under the title "La guerra di Angiolino" (“Angiolino’s war”.) The exhibition toured many cities and towns, jointly curated by the late Pierluigi Visintin, the art critic Giancarlo Pauletto and Flavio Fabbroni, member of the Istituto Friulano per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione (Institute for the history of the resistance movement in the Friuli region).
The IBCC Digital Archive would like to express its gratitude to Anna and Stefano Filiputti, the sons of Angiolino Filipputi, for granting permission to reproduce his works. The BCC Digital Archive is also grateful to Alessandra Bertolissi, wife of Pierluigi Visintin, Alessandra Kerservan, head of the publishing house Kappa Vu and Pietro Del Frate, mayor of San Giorgio di Nogaro.
Originals are on display at
Biblioteca comunale di San Giorgio di Nogaro
Piazza Plebiscito, 2
33058 San Giorgio di Nogaro (UD)
ITALY
++39 0431 620281
info.biblioteca@comune.sangiorgiodinogaro.ud.it
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Filiputti, A-S
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
New Zealand aircrew captured by elements of the Todt Organisation
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFilliputtiA16010054
Description
An account of the resource
An airman with a parachute trailing on the ground behind him is surrounded by a boy and two military personnel. A farmer is standing nearby. The men in uniform are pointing guns at the airman whilst the local boy is moving towards him. Two aircraft are flying in the distance. A black car is parked on the left-hand side and a village is close by.
Label reads “114”; signed by the author; caption reads “9 Giugno 1944. Elementi tedeschi dell‘Organizzazione Tod ai lavori sulle piste aeree di Lavariano-Sammardenchia-Risano, catturano un componente dell‘ equipaggio neozelandese lanciatosi con il paracadute.”
Caption translates as: “9 June 1944. German members of the Organisation Todt working on the Lavariano, Sammardenchia, and Risano airstrips captured a New Zealand aircrew who had bailed out.”
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Angiolino Filiputti
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Francesca Campani
Alessandro Pesaro
Helen Durham
Giulia Banti
Maureen Clarke
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One tempera on paper, pasted on mount board
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Italy
Italy--Lavariano
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-09
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Artwork
arts and crafts
bale out
forced labour
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/609/8878/PMcNamaraL1502.2.jpg
1a52a0cc7a6a6bd8198d87fbb16b0d28
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/609/8878/AMcNamara150722.1.mp3
d96debe0280ffed1ce08c4e80939bcf2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
McNamara, Len
L McNamara
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McNamara, L
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Len McNamara (1924 - 2020, 1814123, 185344 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 10 and 75 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-22
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok,so, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody, and the interviewee is Len McNamara. And the interview is taking place at Len McNamara's home, in Southport, on the twenty second of July two thousand and fifteen. So Len, if you would just tell me a little bit about your childhood, background, and then how you came to join the RAF.
LM: I was born in Bristol in nineteen twenty four. My father was a chef, or cook as they called them in those days, and he worked at Fishponds, Bristol Mental Hospital, which is at Fishponds, on a very huge estate there, and my mother was a mental nurse. I was the eldest of three boys, I had a normal Elementary School education, went to night school, and when I was, left school at fourteen I was an apprentice plumber. Joined, as most lads I was associated with, joined the Air Training Corps, which had a very strong following in Bristol, and after going through, suffering, seeing the bombing of my home town, Bristol, I decided, if I could, I would like to join the Air Force, and be a member of the bomber squadrons. In December nineteen forty three I volunteered for air crew, and I went down to Euston House in London on a three day selection board, and was selected for air crew, and was told I would be called up later. Um, in March nineteen forty three, on the twenty first, the day I was exactly eighteen and a half years old, I reported to Lords Cricket Ground ACR-
AM: (interrupting) Nineteen forty four.
LM: Nineteen forty three.
AM: Forty three or forty four?
LM: Forty three.
AM: Ok.
LM: Um, after spending about three weeks in London, Earls Court Road, being kitted out and doing elementary field programmes, I went up to Bridlington to Air Gunners ITW. The course up there lasted approximately six weeks, and from there I went down to (pause) um, Elementary Gunnery School which was at Bridgenorth. Actually, did nothing at all there, cos they were just setting it all up and it was just hangers. From there I went to number one ATS at Pembrey, in Wales, did my gunnery course, and we were flying on, doing the gunnery on Blenheims, with Lysanders towing the drogues.
AM: So you, you were shooting at drogues.
LM: Yes, shooting at drogues. I passed out and was presented with merit honours in August of forty three, and from there I went to 10 OTU at Abingdon. At Abingdon it was crewed up, the skipper being Pete Catterswife, who was a Canyan, navigator was a-, from Taunton, and the wireless operator air gunner was an Australian, Bob Wright, and I can't think of anybody else who was crew at that time.
AM: How did you get together? Who approached who?
LM: We just all went into just a big room, and all I remember is being introduced to the crew. I don't know whether it was the navigator, or what, because (unclear), and he was West country, from Taunton. It could have been that. Anyhow, we crewed up there, that's right, navigator (pause), oh, and the bomb aimer, who was an ex Glasgow policeman, Bob McLuer. And I think we spent about two to three weeks at Abingdon, flying on Whitleys, and once the crew, skipper was solo on the Whitleys, we then went out to the satellite airfield at Stanton air, air, Stanton Harcourt. On completion of the OTU we then went up to Marston Moor, and did our conversion on to Halifax. Then they were flying Haliax ll's, which weren't all that clever, but nevertheless, the Halifax was a very well built aircraft, and more crew comfort than some of the others. On completion of the course at Marston Moor, we then went to Driffield on an escape and evasion course. I think it was about two weeks there, doing all sorts of things, getting over barbed wire, crawling through ditches, you name it, and we finished up with an escape and evasion exercise where we were dropped off in pairs on the North Yorkshire Moors, and then had to find our way back to Driffield. One, two of the Australians had a good experience, they got as far as (pause) oh, seaside town. Scarborough.
AM: Scarborough.
LM: And they found an army vehicle which was unattended, and drove back in that. I think the outcome was that it was some army Major's transport. Anyhow, they did that. And we, some of us got to Norton. We jumped on the train there, and when it got, not to Driffield station, to one of the minor stations before, we got out the wrong side and back in to Driffield without being stopped or caught. Um, after doing this escape and evasion, we were posted to the Shiny Ten Squadron in January nineteen forty four at Melbourne, just outside York. There were several crews went there, and we did two mine laying operations from Melbourne. On one of them the aircraft was shot up a bit by ack-ack, but the only comment was 'several holes in the aircraft, no member of crew hurt' (chuckles). From there, one five eight at Lissett were converting to the Halifax lll's, and also they'd lost one flight, C Flight, which went to Leconfield to form another squadron. So there were four of us, new crews of us at Shiny Ten who were then posted to Lissett. And we went there, and were on B Flight. Lissett was a very happy station. Everybody was very sociable, and a good atmosphere all round. While there I was having sinus problems, so I went up to the hospital at North Allerton, and had to go and have a minor sinus operation. As a result of that I was limited to flying below ten thousand feet. At that time I, with my own crew, had completed seven ops, and because of my sinus problems I was grounded from flying on operations, so they had a spare gunner in my place. On one of those trips to Tournai on (unclear) they got shot down. Three of the crew bailed out, the navigator and the flight engineer became prisoners of war. The rear gunner who had taken my place as a spare, he bailed out, but his chute failed to open, and he was found in a lady's, in France, in a lady's back garden, and his chute pack with him unopened. So it was quite a shock for the lady concerned. I have visited where the crew crashed, and also where everybody was found. I went with my son, er two of my sons and a grandson, and we found the local mayor was very cooperative, and showed us everything they could. The crew, the other ones who didn't survive, are buried in a small plot by the War Graves Commission in Meharicourt, and I have made a few visits there. There are quite a few members of 158 buried there, also the famous air gunner VC, Jan Mynarwski is buried there. From then I spent the rest of my time at Lissett as a spare gunner. Fortunately I was in the position of, I did fly with some crews for quite a period. One was Ted Strange. His air gunner, rear gunner had appendicitis, so I flew with them on their last seven ops, and they were a very fine crew, and I got on very well. I then was crewed up with Sam Weller, B Flight commander. Trips with him were few and far between, but I did, I then was crewed up with another Australian crew, and I did their last six ops with them. I did a couple of odd spare trips, and, but very quiet time really. I did fly with one crew, Canadian crew, which I wasn't happy with, and when I got back I said to the (unclear) that I didn't wish to fly with them any more because there was too much talking, and not enough attention paid to the job in hand. He assured me I wouldn't fly with them any more, and I didn't, and tragically, they did lose their lives on an operation not long after. In the October of, correction, in September of forty four I was then crewed up with a Canadian crew, and I flew with them for my last trips, my remaining trips of (unclear). I did, I think it was five or six with them, and then one day we came back form a daylight raid on Cologne, on thirtieth October, that was, and the Wing Commander, Wing Commander Dobson, came out to meet me, and said, 'congratulations, you've finished your tour now, and your commission is through'. The crew only had about three more ops to do to finish their tour, and I said, 'oh, I'll stay with you if you want', and the Wing Commander said, 'you've had enough, done enough. You've had nine months continuous operational flying, you've done your share, you're going to have a rest'.
AM: So that was that.
LM: From then I was posted to Langar, just outside Nottingham, as an instructor. Wasn't enjoying that very much , and a call went out for two second tour gunners, and Tony Dunster was an ex 4 Group gunner like myself, on Halifax's, we were posted, he volunteered, and we went down to Wolfarts Lodge to crew up, and we crewed up, the crew we crewed up with, the skipper was on his second tour, he was a New Zealander, and the rest of the crew, the wireless operator, the bomb aimer and the navigator, and flight engineer, had all been together on their first tour, flying Stirlings, as had the captain. And, I must admit, none of us were very enthusiastic about the Lancaster. Those of us on Halifax's said that the Lanc was a Woolworth's effort, and the Halifax was the Marks and Spencers, In all honesty, the Halifax was more favourable to the crews. It was easier to get around in, and easier to get out of in an emergency. Neither the Stirling boys, nor Tony and I liked the Lancasters at all. One incident we had with the Lancaster, was we were down at, way down in, er, Germany, I can't remember the target at the moment, this conversation, but it was way down, oh, Magdeberg, it was, and we were just doing the run in on the target, and we had an engine go up in flames. Nothing to do with any enemy action, it's just we had a glycol leak which caused a fire in the engine, and the engine couldn't be, it wouldn't feather, so we went all the way back to base with an engine, a prop just windmilling, and got back an hour after everybody else.
AM: Safely, though.
LM: Safely. One of the best jobs we ever did was the Manna Operations to Holland, dropping food. We loaded our crews ourselves, they had like a hammock in the bomb bay, and we loaded everything there, then we went over and dropped the food. And that was the most, the best thing we ever did.
AM: How many drops did you do on Operation Manna?
LM: Two.
AM: You did two.
LM: Yes
AM: How low were you flying?
LM: Oh, practically ground level. It was amazing because (pause)
AM: Could you actually see the people?
LM: Oh yes. As you were flying over there were people in their boats, and that, waving like mad to you, and some of them waving that enthusiastically they could tip over, but it was really fantastic to see it, and doing it.
AM: As a contrast to what you were doing before.
LM: Oh yes. Before, I mean before it was a question of destruction, but this question was saving lives. So, and (pause)
AM: Going back to the destruction, if you like, what, what, what did it actually feel like for you, there in the, as a, you were a rear gunner?
LM: Yeah, rear gunner. Well, actually it's amazing because being the rear gunner you never saw what you were going in to, you only saw it as you were coming out of it. And I was one of the gunners, there was loads of us, we never looked for trouble. Some, you had some people were gung-ho, drawing attention to themselves, but I was always taught, and others did, never draw attention to yourself. Just sit there quietly watching, and keeping your eyes open.
AM: Did you actually ever use the gun?
LM: Never.
AM: Never?
LM: No. I seen them, but you, just you sit there quietly, keeping an eye on what-
AM: But you could have done if you'd had to.
LM: Oh yeah.
AM: And what was it like in the suit, when you were all plugged in? Were you always warm, because it was really cold, wasn't it?
LM: Yes, but I really enjoyed it in the rear turret. You were in a world of your own there, you were your own companion. The only thing, it did get very cold, but then we had electric suits, and something we could never understand, ICW at Bridlington, you had to strip a Browning down, blindfolded. It's all laughable when you think of it, because in the turret it was minus forty, if you'd touched any metal you'd have frostbite, so why did we have to do all that?
AM: But you could, if you had to? With gloves on.
LM: Yes, if you had to. (laughs) But that was er-
AM: What, what do you think about the bombing now? You know, in retrospect.
LM: Well, it's more accurate, isn't it. I mean, you've got all the aids.
AM: No, sorry. I mean about when, when you were actually doing the bombing, dropping the bombs , what, what do you think about that now, in thinking about-
LM: I, I've still no regrets about it at all. Having lived and seen my own city destroyed, with no problems at all. And all I can say, it's like people are on about it all, what all the fuss and bother's about. There has been a book written since then, which I have. Written, I forget the name of the author, but he had, once the Communists had gone from Eastern Germany, and all the records came out, there was a lot going on there, all the equipment for submarines being manufactured there, it was a big staging post for the Eastern Front. There was loads of military there, and we were quite justified. I don't know what, all this outcry afterwards. It's easy to be wise after the event.
AM: And you got the DFC?
LM: Yeah, yeah.
AM: For the number of tours.
LM: Gary has got a letter that shows-
AM: Has he?
LM: Yeah. But there were, I mean, I had, I know I flew with numerous crews, but with the exception of the odd one or two, I was fortunate, I flew with very good, well experienced crews, and some of them had had an horrendous time. In fact, er, can we have just a (unclear).
AM: Yes, of course. (rustling noises)
LM: When Douggie Bancroft, Flying Officer Bancroft, who I did quite a few, they, they got badly shot up, and they landed at Hurn Airport, in, er, outside Bournemouth, and nobody ever understood how they managed to get the aircraft back there. In fact the instrument panel is in Canberra, in a museum in Australia, from that aircraft, and obviously the crew that survived, er two of the crew, they never found, never found their bodies. They reckon they must have fallen through the hole in the aircraft where it was badly burnt. And they all got immediate awards, DFMs and DFCs. They thoroughly deserved it. But they were a fantastic crew that I had the privilege to fly with for the remainder, the rest of their tour.
AM: Yes. So, I'm looking at all the different ones. So you had a Kenyan pilot, Canadian pilots, Australian pilots, New Zealand pilots, English pilot. You went through the lot.
LM: Yes, yes. I was lucky.
AM: Any difference? What were the differences of the nationalities? Other than the obvious ones about language.
LM: Yeah, there isn't no difference at all. They were all first class captains. Very happy crews, and, you can't explain the comradeship with your crew. You were closer than you were with your own brothers. I suppose the reason, you depended on each other for your lives. We had a good social life together, and that's it.
AM: Did you get down to Bridlington, from Lissett?
LM: Yeah, yeah. I've walked back from there many a time.
AM: You've walked? From Bridlington to Lissett?
LM: (laughs)
AM: How far's that?
LM: About eight miles. Eight, ten miles. Yep. Come back many a night in the crew bus, not on the seat, but on the floor (laughs).
AM: You enjoyed it, then?
LM: Oh yes. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
AM: And then, as, after that, you ended up with 75 squadron?
LM: Yeah.
AM: And then, I'm just looking at a sheet of paper here than Len has given me with all his pilots on. So, 75 New Zealand squadron, you were there 'til the end of the European war.
LM: Yes. Yes.
AM: So what was it like at the end, then? What was your last tour? Were they Operation Manna? Er, not tour, sorry, your last operation.
LM: I don't know.
AM: Because the Operation Manna ones would have been, May forty four?
LM: They were May time, weren't they. Because the war finished, I think it was in May. It was May, wasn't it?
AM: Yeah.
LM: I know because everything went mad on seven five squadron at Mepal, but (pause) that was fantastic, because when we come back off leave from seventy five New Zealand, all of us crew, we all used to come back, meet up in London, before coming back to Mepal, and have a night in London. But we used to go to Mepal village. Lovely, all the Kiwis getting to do their war dance in the bar. It was great.
AM: So what was it like at the end, then? What, how did it, for you, how did it end?
LM: It was just like a, really a bit of a let down. I thought we weren't treated very good. I know the New Zealanders were going to go out on, I forget what they call it, they were going to go out to India, and that. They went to Scampton, all the Kiwis, and all the English people, we were shipped up to Snaith, in Yorkshire, just to be selected to ground jobs, and I finished up at Ringway, on the parachute school, to initially, to be instructor. But I thought, 'no thank you'.
AM: No? You hadn't enjoyed it the first time round.
LM: So that was that.
AM: So what did you do.
LM: I can't, I'm trying to think, 'what did I do?' (Pause) Oh, yeah. I finished up, from there I went out to India, that's right, went out to Karachi, and we did nothing. Christmas, it was. Christmas of forty four, that's right. Arrived in Karachi, and there's four of us in a tent there, and we were just doing nothing. We used to go in to Kara-, it was Mauripur Airport. We used to go in to Karachi, and there was a club there, and that. We used to go in gharrys as they called them, the horse drawn taxi there, and we were told not to say anything as they went through some areas, let the driver sort I out, and that was that. But-
AM: How long were you there for? Was that forty four or forty five?
LM: That was forty four.
AM: Forty four. So that was before the Operation Manna, then?
LM: No, it was after everything.
AM: Oh, ok.
LM: Let's see. (pause) The war finished, I finished my tour and ops in October forty four, no, this was forty five, of course it was.
AM: So it was forty five.
LM: Forty five.
AM: I'm just trying to get my chronology right.
LM: No, forty five, it was. We went out to there, and then from there we went across to Ceylon, and then we went up to Kandy.
AM: What were you actually doing?
LM: Nothing!
AM: Oh, right.
LM: We were just shipped out the way. And we finished up at Kandy with a few more bomber, ex Bomber Command people, and then they decided to give us a three months Officers admin course. (chuckles) And then at the end of that we were shipped out to Singapore, we went on the Cape Town Castle, it was. Yeah. From Ceylon to Singapore, and I finished up on the embarkation unit there, working. But my sinus problems came out again, and I went in the hospital there. And the hospital was at Changi, which used to be, as I understand it, was a mental hospital, and of course all the Japanese were in (unclear) all around the beds, cleaning and that. And then I was sent home from there, repatriated.
AM: How did you get home?
LM: They flew me home.
AM: On what?
LM: A York. Flew me home, in stages, you know staging all the way through. Landed at Lyneham. Where did I go after that? Oh, then, (pause) that's right when I got back (pause), I missed that out, yeah, we went through Compton Bassett, and we did a code and cypher course, and we were all told when we went there, irrespective of what happens, you will pass the course, and we weren't, we were allowed to go to the Officer's Mess to collect our mail, and we had to pay the Officer's Mess bill, but all they did, they curtained part of the airman's dining hall off, and gave us that as a lounge with a field telephone to the Officer's Mess if you wanted any drinks. Obviously we never bothered, we always used to go into the local (unclear) and that. I'd forgotten about that, it'd all gone.
AM: I'm dragging it all back out.
LM: Yeah, I forgot all about that. 'Cos we, we went there before we went out to Ceylon, er, out to Karachi, and that.
AM: To go to Ceylon, and Karachi, and Singapore, to do nothing, just-. How many of you?
LM: Oh, there must have been hundreds of us. We were treated like dirt, at the end of the war, irrespective of your rank. We were just shipped out there out the road, out the way. The Navy got rid of all their surplus air crew. The RAF hung on to all of us.
AM: Why do you think they did?
LM: I don't know. I mean, I, because I'm a number, a (unclear) a number, I wasn't demobbed until forty seven. May forty seven.
AM: Could you have been, if you'd have wanted to go earlier?
LM: No. We weren't given the choice. We were all just shipped out, well we all thought personally we were just pushed out the way. They didn't know what to do with us.
AM: Was that RAF in general, or just Bomber Command?
LM: Well, I don't know, it was RAF, to do with RAF, not Bomber Command.
AM: They were still paying you?
LM: Oh yeah, yeah, but it was disgusting. That's right, I forgot about that. Yeah, that's right, I went-
AM: Seems a long way to go to do nothing.
LM: Well, it was, I mean, finished up at, in fact, the Officers Mess, embarkation Officer's Mess was out, Karikal House it was, and it was out by number ten dock gate, and in a beautiful big house and grounds. And a Japanese Admiral died there earlier, he's buried in the grounds of this big Karikal House, beautiful, and huge grounds. But, er, but, it's like the food we had there, it was all dehydrated stuff. And chicken, we used to see them coming in crates.
AM: And then they had to sort of wet it to cook it?
LM: Oh yeah. But, it was horrible.
AM: So what happened when you were eventually demobbed?
LM: I went, I was, we went up, I forget where it was, it was up Lancashire way somewhere, and just went up. A nights stop there. And just give the uniform in, and the suit, and that was it. It's a big laugh, because, because of the weather back here, there was a shortage of vegetables, and that, no potatoes, and all that jazz, but, I can't even remember the name of the camp where we were, when we were demobbed. Somewhere in the Lancashire area, I don't know where it was.
AM: What did you do afterwards, Len?
LM: I went back to finish my apprenticeship. I went back to finish my apprenticeship in plumbing. What happened, you went back and finished it, and you got full tradesman's rate, but the firm was compensated by the government for that. Got my indentures, and that was that. And then, I got fed up. I wished I hadn't of come out. The reason I come out was we were going to get married, and my wife wasn't keen on the service life, as she thought. So, I come out, and I thought, 'I'm fed up with this, I want to go back in'. So I went and they said, 'oh, you'll have to come back in as an airman, because your commission’s gone'. And I thought alright, I'll come back in the air traffic control branch.
AM: So this was after you'd finished your plumbing apprenticeship.
LM: Oh, yes. I was working as a tradesman.
AM: So you worked as a plumber?
LM: Yes, but I was getting fed up with it, and I was missing service life, and I wanted to get back into it. And the pity of it is, once I got back in, with the travel you did, and that, my wife thoroughly enjoyed it.
AM: Where did you meet your wife?
LM: Oh, I met, during the war we were at Bristol, we went out to Bath in the building business, working on bomb damage repairs, and we were doing work, just at the bottom of the road (unclear), and we were working on it, and that's how I come to meet her. She was fifteen and I was seventeen then.
AM: So that was before the RAF, even? You met her before you joined?
LM: Oh, yeah, oh yeah.
AM: And when did you get married? What year did you get married?
LM: Got married in forty seven, June forty seven. We were engaged, and that was that. Well, after I come out, I come out in May forty seven, and we got married in the June.
AM: When you went back in, then, so you did your plumbing, and then you went back in to the RAF, what did you do? What sort of things did you do?
LM: Air traffic control.
AM: You were in air traffic control.
LM: Yeah, air traffic control, straight on. And it was fantastic. Everybody was so kind to me. Don't matter what rank, station commanders, it was just what ribbons I had, and I was better treated then than we were at the end of the war, at Compton Bassett, and places like that. Because they were all wingless wonders there.
AM: So how long were you in air traffic control for? (pause) Ish.
LM: Oh, from fifty three to seventy one.
AM: Oh, right through.
LM: Yeah, I enjoyed it. Lovely. Yes, I trained on GC, ground control approach as a director, what they call a director, on that, and then became a local controller.
AM: Which airport were you based at?
LM: I was at, down at (pause) down at (pause), oh I can't think, it's where all the helicopters are down south, Chinooks and all that, I'll soon tell you.
AM: It's gone.
LM: Odiham! I was just going to pick the tankard up, because when I left there they presented me with a tankard. I was at Odiham, and, oh, that's right, because while we were at Odiham we had a mobile x-ray that come round, and they found Renee had TB. So she went into a sanatorium that way, and they transferred her to one outside Bath. Of course, we had young children, and mother, not, two of my sister in laws lived in Bath, one had the two girls, we had two girls then, and then there was two boys, and mother had the two boys in Bath. So I was then posted to, I'd been at Chivenor, that's right, I'd gone from Chivenor up to Colerne outside Bath, so that's it, they moved me to Colerne on compassionate grounds, because my children were in Bath, and they did that. And then from Colerne, when everything was, my wife was back and that, went up to Dishforth. Dishforth, Dishforth out to Germany, Wildenrath in Germany. So that was that. That's where I, and then I come home from Wildenrath in Germany, and, where did I go? Trying to think. (long pause). Oh God, no, I can't remember where I was when I came home.
AM: Oh well, it doesn't matter. What was it like being back in Germany?
LM: It was lovely. I was at Wildenrath, and the Dutch people we used to go on a roam on, and the German people were alright. In fact, on Wildenrath they had what they called GSO, German Service, and oh they were using what they had, huts and that, as married quarters. It was great. I enjoyed it. I can't think where I was. Oh, of course I was, I was down at Halton when I finished. Yeah, that's right, I went to Halton. I was the sole, all they had a Halton was a grass airfield, and Chipmonks for air experience for the cadets, you know, the apprentices, and I was the sole controller there. It was lovely. Had a fantastic time there.
AM: Brilliant. Well, thank you very much. That was really interesting.
LM: Sorry I couldn't remember names going through.
AM: Oh, don't you worry about that.
LM: But they're all down there, and Gary's got a copy of the recommendation for the DFC.
AM: Thanks, Len. I'll make sure we take a copy of that, then.
LM: Oh, I think I've got another spare copy.
AM: We'll find one. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Len McNamara
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-22
Format
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00:40:20 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMcNamara150722
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Len McNamara was born in Bristol in 1924. An apprentice plumber, he joined the Air Training Corps and volunteered for aircrew. Discusses his initial training at various stations, the gunnery course he passed with merit and honours, an escape and evasion course he attended, and crewing up with Pete Catterswife, a Kenyan. He flew Whitleys and then then converting to Halifaxes. Len was posted to 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne. He discusses mine laying and bombing operations, aircraft damage, social and service life at RAF Lisset, military ethos and the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross. After sinus problems, he was a reserve gunner going on operations with various aircrews. Len was posted to RAf Langar as an instructor, but volunteered as second tour gunners and was posted to RAF Woolfox Lodge to crew up with a New Zealand pilot on Lancasters. Discusses engine problems, Kenyan, Canadian Australian, New Zealand and English pilots, talks about Operation Manna and discusses 75 New Zealand Squadron. At the end of the war he finished up at RAF Ringway as parachute instructor.
Len was then posted to various locations abroad, did a code and cipher course and was demobilised. He went back to his plumbing apprenticeship, got married, settled in Bath but wanted to get back to service life. He started back as an airman and went into the air traffic control branch serving at different stations in Great Britain and Germany until he retired in 1971. Len was into post war meetings and memorial visits.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Germany
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Cheshire
England--Rutland
Sri Lanka
Singapore
Temporal Coverage
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1945
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
10 OTU
10 Squadron
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
demobilisation
Distinguished Flying Cross
escaping
evading
final resting place
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Abingdon
RAF Langar
RAF Lissett
RAF Melbourne
RAF Ringway
RAF Woolfox Lodge
recruitment
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1515/28684/MDryhurstHG1332214-160608-05.1.pdf
1930a80a69df4a40a02296ac8f736d1e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Dryhurst, Harold Gainsford
H G Dryhurst
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dryhurst, HG
Description
An account of the resource
42 items. The collection concerns Harold Dryhurst (1923 - 1967, 1332214 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, letters, memoirs, documents, newspaper cuttings and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 103 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Glen Dryhurst and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Recollections – Warrant Officer BF Hughes (Service No NZ402870
RNZAF)
[black and white photograph – Bernie Hughes]
Shot down 28th August 1942. Halifax BB214 - Sgt H G Dryhurst
Date Target/Duty S/N Rank Initials Surname Age Hometown Service Missing POW
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 Sgt HG Dryhurst POW
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 Sgt JW Platt 25 Liverpool. RAF M
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 Sgt AA Roberts RAAF POW
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 P/O VMM Morrison 19 Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada. RCAF K
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 F/S JJ Carey 22 Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada. RCAF K
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 Sgt BF Hughes RNZAF POW
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 Sgt JL MacLachlan 21 RAFVR K
This article was written by Bernie Hughes and sent to me by the Hughes
family some years ago. It was published in the RAF Elsham Wolds Assn
newsletter in 2007. In view of the renewed interest in the crew of BB214, I
have added this to the web site. Many thanks to the Hughes family for
submitting this interesting item. DF 26th June 2014
“Although the details of what happened within the plane the night we were
shot down are still vivid in my mind, I am rather vague about such things as
the target for that night and the number of aircraft taking part. I have a dim
[page break]
recollection that the target was Nuremburg, that the number of aircraft was
about 800 and that for the first time we were dropping bombs not pamphlets
on that city. I could be mixed up with the stories shared by us later in our
P.O.W. camp in Ober-Silesia of course, but it is my recollection that
Nuremburg was our target.
We had an uneventful flight across the Channel until we reached the French
coast where all hell broke loose. Very heavy anti-aircraft fire was
encountered and we had n extremely busy time trying to avoid being hit.
Eventually we had escaped it and pressed on towards our target. Along the
route we saw heavy outbursts of gunfire on both sides of us, but apart from
two or three awkward patches we seemed to be having a charmed run. I was
just congratulating myself that we were going to have a rather easy trip
when without warning there was a shattering sound of bullets cutting
through metal, an explosion, flames everywhere and much coloured smoke.
I was normally the tail-gunner in the crew but on changing over from
Wellington bombers to Halifax bombers, I asked to change over to midupper
turret for a few flights to see what a difference it made. Underneath
my feet in the fuselage, flares were exploding, there was a lot of smoke and
flames, and I could not see out of my turret. The plane was now in a dive
and I slid out of the turret to get my parachute and clip it on to my harness. I
have always been afraid of heights often “freezing” when climbing a ladder
to get on to a wall or roof, and I had sworn that I would always stay with my
plane as I felt I would be too terrified to bale out. However, when your life
is out on a limb you forget your fears quickly and your main aim is to do
anything to preserve yourself. I attempted firstly to get through to the front
of the plane to contact the skipper. Finding this impossible I then tried to
open the door into the rear-gunner’s turret but this seemed jammed and
would not budge. By this time I was praying, cursing, laughing and crying. I
tried to open the entrance hatch to make my escape, but it would not move. I
kicked, screamed and yelled and after what seemed an eternity I finally got
the hatch open. I turned onto my stomach to slide out into space and my
harness caught on a jagged piece of metal as I went through the hatch. I
found myself pressed against the fuselage like a fly on a wall while the
plane plunged towards earth. I consider only God got me off that hook.
When, after what I consider the worst few minutes in my life up till then, I
finally broke free from the plane. I found everything so peaceful that I
delayed pulling the handle of the ripcord. When I did it was to find a forest
of trees coming up to meet me. I landed in a wheat field completely
surrounded by trees. I could hear machine gun fire in the skies above me and
the barking of dogs through the trees. I rolled up my parachute, and together
with escape documents that I tried to tear up, hid them under a wheat stack
and proceeded through the trees on to a road, which sloped downwards. I
started to walk down this road when I was suddenly confronted by a youth
who peacefully but urgently tried to stop me and pointed in the
[page break]
opposite direction. He kept saying, what I figured out later when I had learnt some
basic German words, “Deutschen Zoldaten”. Later on when I had time to
think more clearly I figured out that he must have been the son of a foreign
worker forced to work in Germany, and that he was trying to warn me to
make off in the opposite direction. Later when I saw him in the crowd that
gathered as my captors brought me to headquarters I smiled at him but he
ignored me. I must have been in a state of shock after my escape from the
plane and parachute descent because I did so many stupid things and took no
evasive action.
I continued down the road, around a bend, and without warning two German
Air Force soldiers stepped from behind the trees and with rifles pointed at
my back, they shouted at me to halt. They marched me down to what
seemed to be part of a monastery building that presumably had been
commandeered for war purposes. I was told there was a night-fighter base
nearby and that the pilot who had shot us down was from that base.
My interrogation was conducted firmly but courteously. I gave my name,
number and rank but refused to provide further information. I was advised
by my interrogators that they knew my squadron, but merely wanted my to
verify the information. I said if they knew so much there was no need for me
to add anything further. I must add that their information was pretty accurate
but I refused to tell them so. Being still a little shocked might have helped
me. I was told that Harry Dryhurst, the Skipper, had his parachute caught in
the trees and had to unbuckle himself and drop into a canvas sheet held by
his captors. Also that Roberts, the Navigator, was captured and was being
interrogated, that the plane had dived into a lake and was on the bottom, and
that the bodies of the crew had been recovered. From the information they
gave me later I thought that only one body remained in the plane, John
Carey, the Canadian front-gunner.
After the interrogation we were taken by train the next day to a P.O.W. entry
camp. Here we were put in solitary cells. I spent about five or six days in
solitary. I think the idea was to break you down a little so they could obtain
further information from you.
I recall in the cell next to mine the window was open and I could hear the
inmate giving lots of information about life on his squadron and how
bomber crews reacted to raids, and how big the turnover was in aircrew. I
still think this was a plant because I was interrogated not long after that and
told I should co-operate more like many of my comrades. In case it was not
a plant I mention the matter to the senior British officer when we were
released into the main camp after solitary confinement. Solitary
confinement, though not harsh or cruel, was very unnerving to young men
coming straight from the free and easy camaraderie of an RAF squadron.
[page break]
Release into the main camp was like an unexpected holiday. Here one could
talk, read, play games, enjoy comradeship and have more satisfactory meals
(Red Cross parcels, not German black bread, watery vegetable soup and
ersatz coffee). Perhaps the greatest release was the feeling of space and not
the claustrophobia of being shut up within four narrow walls.
After a short stay at this quite pleasant camp we were entrained and taken by
rail to the huge P.O.W camp Stalag V111B – Lamsdorf, in Ober-Silesia on
the border of Poland. This camp contained P.O.W.s from practically every
war front commencing from the British Expeditionary Force in France up
till Dunkirk, Greece and Crete, the Desert, the Mediterranean, Sicily and
Italy. There were British, Anzacs, Canadians many captured after the
abortive Dieppe raid, South Africans, Ghurkas, Americans and
representatives from all the nations involved on the British side in the war.
Although it was mainly an Army camp there were naval men and members
of specialist groups such Parachutists, Commandos, Desert Long Range
Groups and approximately one thousand Air Force men. From memory
there were about ten thousand men in the camp at any one time, plus a total
of nearly ten thousand men in various working parties attached to the camp
for administrative purposes.
The camp was divided into compounds with approximately one thousand
men in each, living in stone barracks with concrete floors and wooden
shutters covering the window openings. In the middle of each barrack was a
washroom containing cold water, washbasins and a stone copper for boiling
water when wood was available. About a hundred men lived in each half of
a barrack with three-tiered bunks in rows on one side of the room and
wooden trestles with wooden frames on the other side. There was an outside
latrine (a forty-holer we called it) built from the same materials as the
barracks and with a covered sump at the back. Periodically, a horse-drawn
wooden tank was brought into the compound, the wooden covers of the
sump were opened and the human waste pumped into the tank. The tanks
was then driven from the camp into the surrounding fields and used as
manure. In the summer the latrine smelt to the high heavens. In the winter it
was a severe penance to go to the latrine as it was icy cold, there being no
doors nor shutters over the windows. As it was not permitted to go outside
the barracks at night a wooden tub was positioned inside the porch for toilet
purposes. Barrack inmates were rostered each night to carry out the tub and
dispose of the waste. It was not a pleasant duty but luckily only happened
two or three times a year for each man.
Life in each compound varied according to circumstances. At normal times
the gates of each compound were opened at 9.00am and locked at 4.00pm in
the winter or 6.00pm in the summer. Inmates of one compound could visit
inmates of another or go to lectures in the school building, or play sport on
[page break]
the two clay sites set aside for this purpose, or go under guard to the shower
block on their rostered day of the week. Some nights there were stage
performances in the theatre building and different compounds, whose turn it
was that night, were escorted under guard from their compounds to the
theatre and back afterwards. Roll call was taken in the morning and
afternoon to coincide with the opening and closing of the compound gates.
Normally this took 10 – 15 minutes but every so often if there had been an
escape from the camp or radio sets, which were strictly forbidden, had been
found in the barracks then the compound inmates could be kept out on
parade for hours. On one particular occasion we were kept on parade from
9.00am until after mid-afternoon with only the proven sick allowed to sit on
the ground for short periods of about 10 minutes. There was a strong protest
by the senior British representative but this was ignored by the German
control, as were other protests. There were frequent interruptions to the
normal running of the camp when compounds were kept locked. Classes,
lectures and the theatre were shut down and apart from visits to the latrine
under guard no movement was permitted between barracks in the same
compound. This was also a grim time as Red Cross parcels were not allowed
to be distributed and the inmates had to exist on German rations such as
watery vegetable soup, or fish soup with fish heads swimming in it, black
bread, ersatz jam, or fish cheese (a vile tasting and smelling concoction) and
black ersatz coffee.
Perhaps one of the worst periods for the camp was just after the Dieppe raid
by the Canadians. Some of the German prisoners captured by the Canadians
after their initial landing were found dead on the beach with their hands
bound behind their backs. The Germans at first thought they had been bound
and then shot by the Canadians and it was not until later they realised they
had been killed by flying bullets, probably from their own side, when the
Canadian attack was repulsed and the few who escaped were driven from
the beach.
However, in retaliation, for what the German Command at first thought was
a British atrocity all Air Force personnel in the RAF compound at Lamsdorf,
as well as all Army personnel, in the other compounds of the rank of
Corporal or over had their hands tightly bound with very strong string from
early in the morning till evening. They were not permitted out of their
barracks except under guard to the latrine. German front rank troops from
the Russian front, who were on home leave, were brought in as extra guards.
Armed with quick-firing rifles with bayonets attached they patrolled four to
each end barracks. They were fine soldiers, unable to be bribed like normal
guards, who once bribed, could be forced to bring into the compound
forbidden items such as parts of a radio, tools, clothing etc.
[page break]
These soldiers were not at all happy about doing guard duty in a P.O.W.
camp but they did it with quiet efficiency, firmness and no cruelty. This
period lasted for four to six weeks. With the demand from various war
fronts for more experienced troops these guards were pulled out and
replaced with the normal camp guards posted outside each compound. The
string around our wrists was replaced by handcuffs. These were brought in a
large tray into each end barrack by two guards. Each P.O.W. had to put on
his own handcuffs and keep them on until they were unlocked at the end of
the day. Gradually, the mean learned to open the handcuffs with a nail or
similar shaped object and the whole operation became a farce. In the end the
guards were bringing in the trays, leaving them in the porch and collecting
them in the evening. This particular period of reprisal occupied several
months before dying out. The next major disruption in the camp took place
at the end of December 1944.
The Russians were breaking through on the Eastern front and the Germans
decided to move the occupants of StalagV111B westwards. Each occupant
was issued with a Red Cross parcel of food and told to carry whatever
clothes and personal item he could manage. Under armed guard we started
to march westwards through the cold and snow of a severe eastern European
winter. We were billeted overnight wherever room could be found for each
group in large buildings, other unoccupied camps, churches and factories.
Many of us contracted Dysentery, various types of stomach ailment, feet
troubles and because of lack of bathing, lice.
Eventually with another RAF friend and a British Army friend of his, we
escaped from the main march, and after a series of adventures we contacted
a party of Polish foreign workers on a party complex. With their help and
guidance we hid up in a barn where they kept a farm tractor. For over a
week they smuggled food and drink to us when they came each morning to
collect the tractor. The last day they advised us that American troops were
approaching the area and they would have to lie low to avoid being caught
in any military action. That night there was a fierce battle. In the morning
we could hear tanks rumbling along the road, then the sound of motor driven
vehicles approaching the barn. We buried ourselves deeper in to the hay.
The doors were flung open and an American voice called out, “Okay fellows
you can come out now. The Americans are here.”
It was April 9th, the greatest day in our prisoner of war life. The outfit that
rescued us was the Second Battalion Combat team 23, Second Division
(Infantry), 1st Army, Officer Commanding Lieut/Colonel William A Smith.
I have his autograph and I have kept it since the war years.” Bernie Hughes
This item is courtesy of the Hughes family in New Zealand.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recollections - Warrant Officer B F Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
Account of operation to Nuremberg on 28 August 1942 in Halifax where aircraft was attacked and shot down by night fighter. Continues with account of capture, interrogation and transport to prisoner of war camp. Describes camp occupants, situation, facilities, barracks, compounds, roll call. Continues with conditions/retaliations after Dieppe raid. Concludes with short account of long march as Russians approach.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany
Germany--Nuremberg
Poland
Poland--Łambinowice
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
B F Hughes
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-06-26
Format
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Six page printed document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MDryhurstHG1332214-160608-05
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-04-09
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
Dulag Luft
Halifax
prisoner of war
RAF Elsham Wolds
shot down
Stalag 8B
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45951/SSmithRW425992v10002-0002 copy.1.pdf
12af6b6dff947f6f4e21b0dbbb02f12a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, RW
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bob Smith's Memoirs Book 2
Description
An account of the resource
23 pages of Bob's memoirs.
Covers his training.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bob Smith
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Brighton
England--Sidmouth
Scotland--Aberdeen
England--Salisbury
Scotland--Stranraer
Scotland--Ailsa Craig
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland--Paisley
Scotland--Glasgow
France
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
Australia
New South Wales--Sydney
Queensland--Bundaberg
Queensland--Brisbane
New South Wales--Cootamundra
United States
California--San Francisco
Canada
Alberta--Edmonton
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Scotland--Gourock
Victoria--Melbourne
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Ontario--Trenton
Ontario--London
France--Châlons-sur-Marne (Arrondissement)
France--Caen
Germany
Germany--Kiel
France--Gironde Estuary
Poland--Szczecin
Netherlands
Netherlands--Eindhoven
France--Le Havre
Germany--Neuss
France--Calais
France--Pas-de-Calais
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Leverkusen
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Netherlands--Veere
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Fulda
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Heinsberg (Heinsberg)
Nova Scotia
Manitoba
Poland
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
23 printed pages
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Pending review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SSmithRW425992v10002-0002
1653 HCU
3 Group
467 Squadron
5 Group
84 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
crash
crewing up
flight engineer
Gee
Hampden
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
mess
mine laying
navigator
Nissen hut
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Normandy deception operations (5/6 June 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Andover
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Bridlington
RAF Cardington
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Cranwell
RAF Desborough
RAF Feltwell
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Harrington
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Silloth
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tempsford
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
RAF White Waltham
RAF Wigtown
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45953/SSmithRW425992v10003-0002 copy.1.pdf
2b2498c35c56b9b3f87fd35ee89aa604
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, RW
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Tour of Operations with RAF Bomber Command No XV/15 Squadron Mildenhall
Description
An account of the resource
The third book of memoirs by Bob Smith.
Covers his operational tour and bombing operations.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bob Smith
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Heinsberg (Heinsberg)
France
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
United States
Michigan--Detroit
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
France--Châlons-en-Champagne
France--Caen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Flensburg
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Sylt
France--Somme
France--Aire-sur-la-Lys
France--Amiens
France--Gironde Estuary
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Brest
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Braunschweig
France--Falaise Region
France--Royan
Poland--Szczecin
Great Britain
Scotland--Glasgow
Russia (Federation)--Kaliningrad (Kaliningradskai︠a︡ oblastʹ)
Sweden
Denmark
Sweden--Malmö
Netherlands
Netherlands--Eindhoven
France--Le Havre
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Düsseldorf
France--Calais
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
Europe--Kattegat Region
Norway
Norway--Oslo
Denmark--Frederikshavn
France--Strasbourg
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Emmerich
Netherlands--Nijmegen
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Cologne
Belgium
Belgium--Antwerp
Germany--Essen
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Belgium--Charleroi
Germany--Leverkusen
Netherlands--Veere
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Aachen Region
Germany--Düren (Cologne)
Germany--Jülich
Germany--Fulda
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Osterfeld
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Australia
Victoria--Melbourne
New South Wales--Sydney
Queensland--Brisbane
Scotland--Inverness
England--Blackpool
England--Colchester
Germany--Merseburg Region
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Text. Personal research
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
98 printed pages
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SSmithRW425992v10003-0002 copy
1 Group
115 Squadron
149 Squadron
15 Squadron
186 Squadron
195 Squadron
218 Squadron
3 Group
5 Group
514 Squadron
6 Group
617 Squadron
622 Squadron
75 Squadron
8 Group
90 Squadron
aerial photograph
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
Battle
Blenheim
bomb aimer
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
Distinguished Service Order
escaping
flight engineer
Gee
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground crew
ground personnel
H2S
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Ju 88
killed in action
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 3
Master Bomber
Me 109
mess
mine laying
Mosquito
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
propaganda
radar
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Feltwell
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Lakenheath
RAF Lindholme
RAF Mepal
RAF Methwold
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Sealand
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Uxbridge
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Weston Zoyland
RAF Witchford
RAF Wratting Common
RAF Wyton
Spitfire
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
target indicator
target photograph
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45959/SSmithRW425992v10004-0002 copy.1.pdf
8c565c94f5bd602d984256cc89676d7a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-03-25
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Smith, RW
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Bob Smith's Memoirs Book 4
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Bob Smith
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Scotland--Aberdeen
Scotland--Paisley
England--London
England--Thetford
Norway
Norway--Oslo
Germany
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Switzerland
Germany--Stuttgart
England--Ely
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Chemnitz
England--Brighton
Netherlands
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Liverpool
Malta
Egypt
Egypt--Suez Canal
Western Australia--Fremantle
Victoria--Melbourne
New South Wales--Sydney
Queensland--Ipswich Region
Queensland--Maryborough
New South Wales--Cootamundra
Canada
Alberta--Edmonton
Nova Scotia--Halifax
England--Sidmouth
Nova Scotia
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Royal Australian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
United States Army Air Force
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Describes his service after completing his tour and the journey back to Australia.
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Format
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40 printed sheets
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Pending text-based transcription
Pending review
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SSmithRW425992v10004-0002 copy
149 Squadron
15 Squadron
3 Group
617 Squadron
622 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Cook’s tour
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
Gee
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground personnel
H2S
Lancaster
love and romance
mess
mine laying
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
radar
RAF Desborough
RAF Honington
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tempsford
RAF West Freugh
Special Operations Executive
sport
V-2
V-weapon
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45995/MSmithRW425992-230825-02.2.pdf
934a1d70a17a0697f9ce5b48153226fb
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Smith, RW
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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Prologue
Voices of the Past
O, There are voices of the past
Links of a broken chain
Wings that can bear me back
To Times
Which cannot come again
Yet, God Forbid that I should lose
The Echoes that remain. Unknown.
March 2003
Five years ago, after listening to friends, young and old, as well as journalists, editors and historians requesting War Veterans and Pioneers to write their memoirs I realised that perhaps it was a duty to my descendants that I should do so. Accordingly, I ‘bit the bullet’ and started a draft of “My Service during WW11 in the Royal Australian Air Force”.
It soon became apparent that I should have done so many years ago when the memories were still fresh, although there could be some wisdom in the fact that sometimes the perspective is better if viewed from a distance. Much time has been taken in getting back in contact with old mates and crew members to ensure that what I have written is as historically accurate as possible. I have even had researchers and historians in the UK verify some of the detail, as well as refer to a few publications that have covered the period of my ‘Operational Tour’ on XV/15 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command. I did keep a diary for a while, but discontinued same when I started Operational Training in the UK, as diaries were then forbidden. I did have, however, a good diary in the form of letters home and which my Mother kept. Unfortunately these were lost or mislaid before she died in 1979. I do have all my logs and charts as well as photos, other items and notes from mates that have assisted greatly. On a few matters the original draft had to be amended, but after a few years of revision and the acquisition of a computer I was able about six months ago to commence on the final record. There will no doubt be some further amendments and additions as more confirming information comes to hand. I will cover same in a ‘summary’ at a later stage.
The question will be asked, “Why didn’t I write my Service History soon after the war?”, and why have so many not put their experiences to paper? Some did, and they are to be congratulated and thanked for their efforts. For many there was the old service adage that it was “Infra Dig to Shoot a Line”. I consider it was a common decision of most who returned from active service in any theatre of war to get on with life and leave the war behind.
My father served in WW1 as an ‘original’ in the 41st Btn A.I.F. and went through a number of the great battles in France & Belgium. He was wounded 3 times and gassed. His younger brother was in the 9th Btn A.I.F. that landed on Gallipoli on 25th April 1915, where he was severely wounded, and later fought in France & Belgium. Their youngest brother, after whom I was named, died on active service in France after being wounded 3 times. As a boy I often wondered why Dad and his brother never talked much about the war except between themselves and other returned soldiers. I now understand. I have now been in the same position. With your mates who survived you can recall facets of your experiences in an atmosphere of mutual understanding.
War has made me a realist. Indeed there is a season for all things. Yesterday is history and there is nothing you can do to change it, although we do see some historians trying to sanitise the past. It is to-day that is God’s Gift in your hands, and Faith that gives you hope for tomorrow.
I hope that what I have written about my service in the Air Force will be a valuable record for someone in the years ahead.
Official Identity Card for the Royal Australian Air Force
Date of Issue 23 December, 1942
Letter from Employer Giving Approval to Enlist in the Airforce
Enrolment in the Reserve
Certificate of Enlistment
Enlistment in the RAAF
Rookie-AC2
When war with Germany was declared on 3rd September 1939 I was a student boarder at the Ipswich (Boys) Grammar School in my ‘Junior’ years of study. I had been enrolled at I.G.S the previous year under a Qld R.S.S.A I.L.A Scholarship that I had won because my father was a returned soldier from WW1 and I had attained a qualifying standard in the 1937 State Scholarship exams. At that early stage, although under the age of 16, I had ambitions of joining the Air Force if the war were to carry on for many years, which it did.
After sitting the “Junior Public Exams” at the end of the 1939 school year, which I passed with above average results (4 A’s, 4 B’s and 1 C) I was accepted for employment in The National Bank of Australasia Limited at its Harrisville Branch. I took the place of Gordon McDougall who had enlisted in the RAAF. He went on to graduate as a pilot and lost his life in a flying accident in East Lothian, Scotland on Monday 6th September 1943.
The war did continue in Europe through 1940, and in early 1941 when I turned 17 years of age I took the opportunity to enrol as a correspondence student with the Air Force Cadets. I received educational material and exercises in Physics and Mechanics, incorporating the theories of flight and navigation etc. Exams were set for each lesson and in my case these were checked and marked by the Headmaster of the Milora State Primary School where I attended and sat the 1937 State Scholarship exam. Early in 1942 on reaching the age of 18 I was given the opportunity to make a formal application to enlist in the RAAF, subject to parents’ and employer’s consent. I made the application to the Bank and their approval was forthcoming on 31st January 1942, subject to a few qualifications as I was still a temporary clerk on probation which meant that my re-employment after the war would be subject to reassessment at the time. My parents gave their consent on my promise not to start smoking or drinking in the Air Force until I reached age 21. This promise I kept well beyond that time, as I have never been a smoker, and only a moderate drinker since into my 30’s. When I returned from active service in 1945 I realised what an enormous stress I had placed on my parents, particularly as my father had seen active service on the battlefields of France & Belgium in WW1 and my mother prayerfully relied on the strength of her Faith. Her prayers were answered.
Armed with the necessary consents I forwarded my application to the RAAF Recruitment Centre in Brisbane and on 13th February 1942 had completed the RAAF’s Form P/P/39A for Air Crew entry I was now on stand-by as it was policy for actual flying training not to commence until the recruit was of age 19.
In 1942, after the entry of Japan into the war and posing a real threat to Australian territory the government of the day was actively engaged in calling up qualified males into the Militia Forces. Apparently to keep a priority on Air Crew ‘hopefuls’ the RAAF instituted a call-up of those on ‘the reserve’ by creating the mustering of Air Crew Guard in Queensland, New South Wales & Victoria. It was under this mustering that I received my call-up to report to No.3 RAAF Recruitment Centre in Eagle Street, Brisbane on 21st May 1942. My position at the Bank was taken by John Neville Keys, the son of the then Manager at Boonah Branch, Neville Keys. He went into the next RAAF call-up, was given the number 426112 got his ‘wings’ as a Bomb Aimer and lost his life with No.466 Squadron Bomber Command on 11th April 1944 when shot down by a German night fighter on a raid on the railway installations at Tergnier in the lead up to the “D” Day invasion of Europe. I reported to No.3 Recruitment Centre along with 191 other recruits who were passed medically fit and duly enlisted, with service Nos from 425819 to 426010 inclusive, and proceeded on posting No.3 Recruit Depot at Maryborough, Qld with the rank of AC2. Authority P.O.R.135/42. I was given the No.425992, placed between No.425991 Bill Washbourne and 425993 Des Webster. Bill came from the Warwick district and Des from the Kilcoy area. This was to avoid surname of Smith under consecutive numbers. The same applied to the Jones & Murphies. The only Smith who remained in strict numerical order was 425891 Robert Angus Martin Smith.
We proceeded by train that evening to Maryborough where we were issued with uniforms, dungarees, boots, toothbrushes, razors etc and settled into barracks with palliasses and introduced to the Air Force life on 6 shillings a day for 7 days a week with free meals, accommodation, medical & dental treatment. In those days the Bank made up the difference in pay, which was not great but amounted to a bit of compulsory saving.
I Settle Into Life as a Recruit
Soon settled into a daily routine of a route march early in the morning while there was frost on the ground before breakfast, drills, lectures and vaccinations. Leave was granted most evenings and over the week-end. It was quite a common practice for the airmen to commandeer a push bike after going to the pictures in town, ride it out to the station gates and leave it there. The recruit depot was situated on the Maryborough aerodrome. Maryborough in those days was a town where everyone rode bikes, and the locals soon got to know where to look for their missing mode of transport. After three weeks intensive initiation into air force life we were passed as suitable recruits for Air Crew training and were split into several groups and posted to various RAAF stations in Queensland & New South Wales to serve as Guards until posted to an Initial Training School.
Bill Washbourne, Des Webster, Col (Snow) Wheatley and myself were posted to No.1 A.O.S at Cootamundra N.S.W. on 13th June 1942. Authority No,140/42. We travelled by train from Maryborough and arrived in Sydney only 2 weeks after the Japanese midget submarine attack on that city. We had to change trains in Sydney. At Cootamundra we were joined by Air Crew Guards from other States. Duties at Cootamundra included guarding the Ansons parked on the station aprons overnight, station perimeters, main gate guardhouse and the fuel depot about a mile out of town. Guard duties were usually 4 hours on and 4 hours off. The winter chill was a bit of a shock to the Queenslanders but we were treated generously with the issue of an extra blanket. Ice creams taken on duty at night to help you through your 4 hour shift could be left on a post, or tail of an aircraft and would not melt. If there was a sneaky wind blowing and the opportunity was judged safe we would crawl into one of the aircraft for a bit of a break. It was a fair risk that no one was doing the rounds to check on you.
Duty at the fuel dump was more relaxed. We stayed in a tent, and had trained the possums to eat fruit and chocolates out of our hands until they became a real nuisance. Horse riders, probably going home from the pictures or a dance in Cootamundra and travelling along the road that passed by the dump would be challenged “Who goes there?” Most took it in good humour, but occasionally one would get a bit stroppy but remain cautious in case we decided to fire a shot into the air and scare their horse. To relieve the monotony one night I fired a couple of shots at something flying overhead in the moonlight. Unfortunately these were heard back at the station and in no time a vehicle with more guards for reinforcement turned up. To the N.C.O who arrived I had to give a quick explanation. Told him I had challenged a person who had come through the fence, and when he didn’t stop but went back through the fence I fired a couple of shots after him. A bit of a recco of the area was made but nothing found, so I was instructed to report to the C/O’s office the next day. This I did along with others who were on duty at the time. They supported my account of events, but we were ordered to go to the rifle range for target practice and assessment. I was given 5 shots at the 200 yard range and scored 2 bulls and 3 inners, and explained further to the C.O that I would have fired close enough to the intruder to give him a fright. He ordered a close inspection of the site in daylight to see if there was any evidence of clothing caught in the barbed wire fence but nothing was found. I should imagine the C.O’s report on the incident would make interesting reading. Bill Washbourne was on guard duty with me at the time and at a reunion of the Air Crew Guards in Brisbane in the 1990’s he was surprised when I told him there was no intruder. He confirmed that at the time they all thought I was serious.
My first encounter with an aircraft accident and death was at Cootamundra on 21st September 1942. A Beaufighter from No.31 Squadron stationed at Wagga Wagga flew into our circuit and on turning to come in to land stalled and crashed about a mile from the station. The squadron which had been equipped with Beauforts had changed over to the Beaufighter only the month before. It was flown by F/Sgt. John Evan Jenkins (No.407435) and the second crew man, possibly the Observer, was Sgt. Vivian Sutherst (No.35755). Both were killed instantly on impact and are buried in the Cootamundra War Cemetery. I was with a few guards who were sent immediately to the scene of the crash, which we had to keep under guard for a couple of days. It was a sobering experience and I vividly remember the advice given to us at the scene by a senior sergeant that we were not to dwell on the death of the crew, but put it behind us, do our duty and get on with life. There was nothing we could do to change what had happened. That advice stood me in good stead through the experiences ahead and indeed through my life. It was while on guard duty at the crash site that we had some amusement shooting at rabbits. On one occasion a bullet ricocheted off a rock and as it whined its way across the country side it was amusing to see flocks of sheep scatter in its path.
The Presbyterian Church in Cootamundra had a very active Youth Fellowship Association to which I went with Bill Washbourne and other airmen. We were made most welcome and enjoyed many a happy time
On 16/9/42 we were officially attached to the newly formed No. 73 Reserve Squadron, but our routine on the station did not change.
On 11th October Des Webster and I were posted to No. 2 Initial Training School at Bradfield Park (Sydney) as our first step to Air Crew entry. There were also Air Crew Guards from other stations on the same posting, including Keith Mills, Noel Hooper and Eric Sutton who were at Maryborough with me. Since we enlisted our mustering was Aircrew V (Guard), with rank of AC11.
We were part of No. 33 Course at I.T.S. It was an intensive course of lectures on many subjects, but mainly on basic theories of flying, navigation, gunnery and bombing. Physical training played an important part and you were under constant observation for overall assessment as suitable for air crew and put through various tests to gauge reflexes and co-ordination before being interviewed by a selection panel to be mustered into a particular category.
A wide range of sports was available, including sailing, and evening leave passes were generous. Queenslanders who were issued with the tropical uniform were not allowed to wear it into the city (South of the Harbour Bridge), but that was not strictly policed. We would mostly go to the Anzac Club for a meal and then to a show. Then buy a packet of fruit, say 4 lbs (2 kilos) of Cherries for 2 shillings (20 cents) to eat on the train back to Lindfield and walk to the camp. If you fell asleep on the last train and got carried on to Gordon it was a long walk back to camp- had to hurry to make it by 2359 Hrs. Through the Anzac Club interstate and country servicemen could be introduced to residents in Sydney who were willing to extend home hospitality. I availed of this offer and came to meet Miss MacPherson, a retired Nursing Sister who had a unit on the slopes of the harbour at Neutral Bay. Mac’s place became a home away from home for a few young airmen. She was a dear soul and was like a second mother to a few of us. It was a great joy to visit, have a home cooked meal and occasionally sleepover on a Saturday night. She would make up a bed on the lounge and be amazed to find us sleeping on the floor in the morning. I kept up a regular correspondence with her while overseas, as did a few others, and 3 years later made a quick visit on my return in-transit back to Queensland after disembarking in Sydney.
While on the course a few of us including Keith Mills, Eric Sutton, Des Webster, Noel Hooper and myself were detailed to go to the University of N.S.W. where they were doing research into air sickness. We were good guinea pigs, as we were given vouchers for a meal of roast lamb and baked vegetables before the tests started. The tests involved being strapped into a stretcher and swung from ceiling to ceiling to see how long you lasted. I lost my meal after about 10 minutes as did most. As far as I can remember Noel Hooper was the only one who did not part with his meal.
The course finished on 1st January 1943 when we were assigned into various air crew categories for further flying training. The Selection panel tried to get me to accept a pilot’s course as my tests confirmed I was well suited to be a pilot. I pressed hard to be given a Navigator category as I was ‘interested in mathematics,’ and got my wish. Actually the main reason I applied for a ‘navigator’ was the good gen circulating at the time that those chosen for Navigator and Bomb Aimer courses would be going to Canada for flying training with the plan to go on to the U.K. to fly in Lancasters or Halifaxes. There was a proviso that you had to be 19 years of age by 10th January 1943, the date they would have to report back from pre-embarkation leave. (That was my 19th birthday and how I became to be the youngest of the draft). This was confirmed when we were given 10 days leave with instructions to report back at Bradfield Park No. 2 Embarkation Depot on 11th Jan 1943. As from 2nd Jan 1943 my mustering was Air Crew 11 (Navigator) and rank L.A.C. (Leading Aircraftman—not Lance Air Commodore).
It was not hard to take a weeks leave at home. It was a busy week visiting a few relations and then having to say farewells with many a prayer for a safe return from the war. I had made a good friend of the bank manager’s daughter, Jean Hall, and I had a feeling that many thought our friendship was more serious. I took Jean to a dance at the Harrisville School of Arts on the Friday night 8th Jan, but it was not like the old dances as it was overrun by RAAF and American airmen from Amberley which had now grown into a large air base servicing the Pacific war zone. Jean promised to write me while I was away and we did keep up a regular correspondence. A neighbour, Mrs Adams, gave me a poem with a sprig of white heather that I kept with me always. She had given the same to my father when he enlisted in WW1. My leave at home finished on my 19th birthday anniversary, Sunday 10th January 1943 as I left on the morning rail motor from Harrisville on my way back to Sydney, with a heap of goodies from home including a birthday cake.
At Home on Embarkation Leave with Mum, brother Alex and
sisters Margaret and Joyce – January 1943.
A Rookie Airman – No. 425992 ACII R.W. Smith
1942 – In Sydney
Embarkation Depot Sydney & To Canada
From embarkation leave at home I travelled on the “Kyogle’ line, 2nd division, from South Brisbane station arriving in Sydney and No. 2 Embarkation depot at Bradfield Park on Monday 11th January 1943. Leave was granted that night, so I went to visit Miss Mac with a piece of my birthday cake. The rest I shared with mates.
Leave arrangements while at Embarkation Depot were very generous. If no drafts for overseas postings had been issued and no particular duties allocated we were stood down after the mandatory morning parade until the next morning, or even over the week-end if it was on Friday morning’s parade.
The Waiting Period – Stand Downs, Outings and Farewells
There were a few of us who spent a lot of time together during this waiting period, mainly the youngest on the group to be sent overseas. Besides myself there was Keith Mills who had turned 19 only 8 days before me, Lou Brimblecombe whose 19th birthday was about 2 weeks previous to Keith’s, Eric Sutton who had his 19th birthday the previous August and Des Webster whose 19th birthday was in July. We all went on to train as Navigators and Keith, Eric and I became known as the 3 musketeers on the course in Canada. Des went on to train as a Wireless Operator. A few were over 30 years of age and we looked upon them as old fellows. Early in our stay Keith somehow met a girl whose father was a Fijian Envoy Representative in Sydney. Her name was Pat, and on the first Sunday there he asked me to join him and Pat and her friend Merle Green to spend the day at Cronulla and then go to Luna Park at night.
The next few days saw us assigned to some wharf duties at Waterloo and on Thursday 21st January we were detailed to the unloading of mustard gas bombs from an American liberty ship at Glebe Island. Keith Mills, Des Webster and I saw no future in this so we went A.W.L that night and stayed at the Allied Club in town. Stayed in town on Friday and went to the pictures at night with Pat and Merle. Took Merle home to Punchbowl and her parents insisted I stay the night with them. Went back to camp on Saturday morning to learn that we hadn’t been missed. As there was still nothing doing about overseas postings and leave had been granted over the week-end I went back into town, had tea and spent the night at Miss Mac’s. Went into town on Sunday morning to meet Keith, and we went with Pat and Merle for a train trip to Lawson in the Blue Mountains.
The next week saw the usual routine of parade, stand-downs, sports etc. On Friday we were placed on a draft with all leave cancelled and no telephone calls allowed. After lunch the unexpected announcement was made that leave was granted and extended to 1300 Hrs on Sunday 31st Jan. So I went out to Punchbowl to say my farewell to Merle and her family and thank them for their hospitality, and then on to see Miss Mac and the two girls who boarded with her. They insisted I stay for a home cooked dinner and stay overnight. Slept on the lounge room floor. Got back to camp at midday on Sunday to learn there was no further news on our embarkation and that leave had been extended to 0730 Hrs on Monday. As I had said my ‘Good-Byes’ I stayed in camp and wrote a few letters.
On Monday morning we were paraded and went on a long route march before breakfast and after lunch at 1300 Hrs given another stand-down. On Tuesday morning it was a swimming parade and early stand-down again. Wednesday morning was another swimming parade, a film on “Next-of Kin” after lunch and then stand-down until the next morning. Keith had got word out to Pat that we were still around, so we arranged to meet Pat and Merle in the evening and take them to the Prince Edward theatre to see “Reap the Wild Wind”. On Thursday morning we had another route march, pay parade (“The Eagle sh.. on each 2nd Thursday”) and stand-down at 1330 Hrs. It was the usual swimming parade on Friday morning, 5th Feb, and another stand-down after the 1330 Hrs parade until Monday morning. By this time we were beginning to wonder if were ever going to get on board a ship.
With a free week-end ahead I took the opportunity to contact Merle and meet her in town after work and go to the pictures and then see her home to Punchbowl. Again her parents insisted I stay over the week-end. On Saturday morning I went into town to buy a few magazines etc for the trip over to Canada and back to camp to change into tropical uniform of khaki shirt and shorts and back into town to spend the afternoon in the Botanical gardens and go with Merle to the pictures at night to the State Theatre to see “They all kissed the Bride”. Slept overnight at the Green’s and had a very quiet day on Sunday playing draughts and reading a very funny publication titled “One Big Laugh”. On the way back to camp that night the M.P’s boarded the train at Wynyard station and anyone wearing tropical uniform had to surrender their leave passes and were ordered to report to the guard house the next morning. Big trouble?? Wearing of shorts in uniform was not allowed south of the Harbour Bridge.
The Wait is Over
Monday 8th Feb 1943 dawned with guards on all gates at No. 2 Embarkation Depot, an early call to parade and orders given for clearances to be completed. All leave passes were cancelled, so no further use for the passes that were taken from us the previous night. This is it at last. After attending to clearances we were instructed to report back on parade with kit bags packed and ready to move on to buses at 1700 Hrs for transport to Woolloomooloo to embark at 1900 Hrs on the troopship “U.S.S. Hermitage”. It was a ship of 23000 tons which cruised at 18-20 knots. It was formerly the Italian cruise ship “Count Ciano” that travelled around the Mediterranean Sea as a floating casino on pleasure cruises. It had been captured by the American forces and had taken part in the landing of allied troops in North Africa and was on its way back to the west coast of America. We embarked as planned and had a good night’s sleep on board.
We were up at 0600 Hrs on Tuesday morning, detailed on to mess duties and instructed in ‘Abandon Ship’ drills while we lay at anchor in Neutral Bay to take on fuel after taking aboard fresh water, fruit and vegetables and other food supplies at Woolloomooloo. Spent the night at anchor in Neutral Bay and at 0830 Hrs on Wednesday 10th February it was ‘up-anchor’ and away, waving to the passengers on the ferries and sighting many hammer head sharks in the harbour. It was not long before we were out through ‘The Heads’ and setting course Nor-Nor-East into choppy seas with two Dutch Destroyers in escort. I started to feel a bit squeamy? But yes, managed to hold on to my breakfast. We are now under American terms for troops in transit—only two meals a day, but the canteen is open for an hour twice a day. As the Australian landscape slowly dipped from view everyone bravely sheltered their own feelings-generally a mixed feeling of adventure and uncertainty. Everyone realised and acknowledged that as we all went into flying training and operations over enemy territory not all would be returning to see their homeland again.
The destroyer escort left us at 0600 Hrs the next morning and we continued on a zig-zag course through choppy seas in light rain. I was detailed on to mess duties that afternoon and issued with Aussie Comfort Fund parcels. Soon settled into a routine. Those not on mess duties had to attend lectures-a good bit of armed forces psychology to keep the troops moulded into a unit with a common cause of complaint. A couple of albatrosses followed us for the first few days but they then peeled off formation on us. Sharks and flying fish were sighted and on Saturday a pod of whales was sighted on our port side. On Sunday morning we had church parade at 1000 Hrs and then ‘stand down’, but I was detailed on guard duties. Certain duties were allotted to the troops in transit such as mess duties/kitchen hand, deck patrol and shifts on the ack-ack gun at the stern. The ship’s officers were a bit concerned about the Aussies on the ack-ack gun as they were too keen to shoot at the ‘Met’ balloons that were released at regular intervals.
Monday 15th February, 1943, a memorable 2 days. We crossed the International Date line. So, we had Monday twice and the thought of only one day’s pay was given much discussion. Sufficient to record here that after our arrival in Canada due submission was made to RAAF Headquarters and suitable adjustment was made in our paybooks. A compensating adjustment was made on our return to Australia in October 1945. One of the Mondays was the end on my guard duty detail and the idea of lectures to fill in the day did not appeal, so I took a stroll around deck without my life jacket and was promptly apprehended and given 3 day’s kitchen duties, along with a couple of others who realised the opportunity to avoid lectures and enjoy more than two meals a day as we passed along the corridors with trays of hot food yelling “Hot Stuff” to warn others to be careful.
Pango, Pango
On Tuesday morning we sighted land ahead. American Samoa. Berthed in Pango Pango harbour in the late morning to take on fuel, fresh water and unload canned food for the American troops based there. Also embarked a contingent of American Marines. Those not on duties were allowed ashore for a couple of hours but had to remain in the vicinity of the wharf. As I was on kitchen duties I had to take on the scene from the deck, watching some of the fellows enticing the native girls in bright floral dresses to climb the coconut trees. Don’t think they were interested in the coconuts. Cameras were not allowed, under very strict orders, but some did manage to take a few snaps from the ship. We left Pango Pango at 0820 Hrs next day, Wed 17th Feb, and I finished my kitchen duties after midday. Had first good bath and change of clothes for a week, then strolled around the deck again minus life jacket and got another 3 days in the kitchen. Good Show!!
The next morning we sighted a cruiser and a passenger ship heading south-west, the opposite to our north easterly route. There was a rumoured submarine alert that night as the ship’s engines were stopped and we drifted for some few hours. Woke early on Friday morning to the sound of the ship’s fog-horns but there was nothing in sight. Crossed the equator that day with King Neptune coming aboard to put the rookies through the customary initiation ceremony. We all got a liberal coating of shaving cream. On Saturday morning I finished my kitchen duty ‘penalty’ and as the news on the bush radio was that we would be calling into Honolulu by Tuesday next, decided to stay away from penalty duties in case shore leave was granted. Lectures had been toned down a bit by now to make the days less boring. On Sunday, church parade was held at 1000 Hrs and then all were given stand down. So the “Bum Nut” club gathered around Russ Martin’s gramophone to hear Glenn Miller playing “In the Mood” for the umpteenth time, along with ‘Corn Silk’ and other hit tunes of the time. Just can’t remember how the group got the name “Bum Nuts”. Probably from Gum Nuts sitting on their bums on the deck listening to that one record and almost for sure would have been one of Russ Martin’s screwy ideas. Monday 22nd Feb saw the celebration of George Washington’s birthday with dinner of roast turkey, baked vegetables, salads and ice-cream. A welcome variation from the usual navy beans, saveloys and sauerkraut. A concert was held in the afternoon when we were presented with our ‘Crossing the Line’ certificates.
Honolulu
Sighted land early on Tuesday 23rd Feb and at 1000 Hrs berthed in Honolulu. Half of the RAAF contingent was granted shore leave that afternoon. I was in the other half who were given ‘liberty’ from 0830 hrs to 1200 Hrs the next morning.
So we were up early on Wednesday and down the gangplank at 0830 Hrs. I went with Keith Mills, Russ Martin and a few others primarily to buy new gramophone needles. On shore, the first thing we noticed was the number of shop assistants of Japanese descent and the heavily armed guards on all premises with a strong naval and military presence on the streets. We were wearing our tropical uniforms of khaki shirts and shorts and were taken as ‘boy scouts’ by many Americans, which did not go over too well. It was our first encounter with vehicles driven on the right hand side of the road and the ingrained habit of ‘look right’ before crossing soon had to be adjusted. I went very close to being hit by an army truck being driven by an Afro-American. It was a close shave, but fortunately my parents were not to receive that dreaded telegram.
Nowhere could we find gramophone needles-sewing needles, knitting needles. All sorts of needles, but no gramophone needles. Then it dawned on Russ Martin to give a play-acting role of a record spinning around on a turn table. And the shop assistant with a very serious expression said “You mean Phonograph needles”. Problem solved and mission completed. So the old record was going to cop a hiding for a few more days. There was other shopping to do, so we split up and went different ways. I stayed with Noel Hooper and we met an American Army Officer who took a real interest in us and invited us to have a look at the Pearl Harbour Naval Base. After going through a few check points, and might I add, given star treatment, we had to explain that we had to be back on board by 1200 Hrs and by then there was not enough time to go any further. We did get a view of the harbour and the devastation that had been caused and he agreed to take us back to the ship.
While we were ashore many seriously wounded and shell-shocked G.I’s from the Pacific Island battle zones were embarked for repatriation to their homeland. Many required full time medical attendants to apply necessary therapy to teach them to walk again and regain normal physical co-ordination. The ship was now crowded for the rest of the trip.
A band played on the wharf during the afternoon, and then it was ‘Aloha’ as we sailed away to strike rough seas and cold weather all Thursday and Friday, which kept us in our bunks and under blankets for most of the time. We were issued with sheep skin vests from the Australian Comforts Fund which were well received. The seas calmed down a bit by Saturday morning so I was able to enjoy breakfast of beans and an apple. Got some entertainment in the afternoon with the ack-ack guns firing at flak bursts. The Aussies also got some entertainment hearing the G.I’s calling their mates ‘cobras’ after hearing us call ours ‘cobbers’.
On Sunday 28th February, four days out of Honolulu, complaints were lodged about the breakfast because it was not hot. The weather was still cold and rainy. Church parade was held at 1000 Hrs. At 0100 Hrs we had advanced clocks by 30 minutes. In the afternoon I sewed some badges on Ben Smith’s overcoat and was rewarded with a sandwich-can only guess that he got it from the canteen. Clocks were advanced by 30 minutes at 0100 Hrs on Monday morning. We again woke to cold and cloudy weather but the sun managed to break through late in the morning. To keep us on our toes we were put through ‘Abandon Ship’ drill which didn’t go over too well with the American troops who embarked at Honolulu.
Up on deck after breakfast on Tuesday morning 2nd March to see a convoy ahead and a welcome to the sea gulls that had started to circle the ship as we moved towards land. Soon as it was a very spectacular view as we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge to enter San Francisco harbour and berth on the southern side opposite the famous Alcatraz prison island at 1600 Hrs when the tide was favourable. We were promptly disembarked, assembled on the wharf and marched to a ferry terminal to board the ferry across the harbour to Oakland where we were entrained and departed at 2000 Hrs for Vancouver.
We enjoy Our Trip to Vancouver Through to Edmonton
After a bit more than 3 weeks on the ship, it was luxury accommodation and service on the train, and I really enjoyed a good night’s sleep. It was breakfast in style on Wednesday morning as we sped through the foothills of the Cascade mountains, and we enjoyed the view of snow capped hills and frozen lakes for the first time. We descended on to the plains and farming communities of Oregon, fruit, chocolates, ice-cream papers and magazines (you name it) all available from the waiters on the train. We went through Roseburg, and on to Eugene, Albany, Salem (the Capital) and arrived in Portland just on dusk, with the snow capped Mt. Hood on the eastern horizon. The things we noted most during the day were the absence of fences between houses in the towns and cities, and the lack of paint on nearly all the wooden houses. Of course the Queenslanders could not help but notice the luxury of the train travel at speeds and stability that were unknown on the Queensland railways at that time. After such a full day of interest it was no trouble to settle back into the bunk for a good sleep as we travelled on overnight to Seattle and on to Vancouver.
Thursday 4th March was another memorable day. Woke at 0700 Hrs in Vancouver, had breakfast at the station then a pay parade to be issued with Canadian Dollars. Leave was granted from 1130 hrs until 1800 Hrs when we had to be back at the station. The Canadian hospitality came to the fore as we were approached by a Mr Keeler who introduced himself as a Rotarian (my first contact with Rotary) and offered a lift for a few of us into town to the tourist bureau and the YMCA where we enjoyed a meal for 5 cents. He arranged with us to call back at 1400 Hrs to pick us up and drive us around the sights of Vancouver and back to the station by 1800Hrs. There were three of us and as far as I can remember, although I am not sure, the other two may have been Ben Smith and Russ Martin. We were taken over the Lions Gate Bridge, through Stanley Park with its Indian Totem Poles and views of the snow capped Lions Head mountains as well as past the Houses of Parliament and through a few suburbs to be back at the station on time. After tea (what the Canadians called the evening meal) at the station we left by train at 2100 Hrs via the Canadian National Railways route through the Rockies to Edmonton.
We woke the next morning to be greeted by the most spectacular scenery as the long train snaked its way alongside frozen rivers and lakes and snow laden conifer tress in the foot hills, climbing all the time. All around were the majestic Rockies with not a tree on them but capped in snow. It was cold outside but we were in heated carriages with the same service that we enjoyed on the train from Oakland to Vancouver, but the waiters were Canadians. When we did stop at a station for the engine to take on water we could not resist the temptation to jump out and romp in the snow. Most were wearing their dungarees over the singlet and underpants, so it didn’t take long before the freezing temperatures scuttled them back to the warmth of the carriage. At our stop at Avola for 20 minutes it did not take long for a snow fight to develop and by some fluke or by accident a hard packed snowball hit the window of a carriage and broke it. (Jim Bateman it was). Anyway it made that carriage too cold for comfort so the occupants herded into adjoining carriages when we got under way again. Then we saw a bit of organization that you would not see on the Queensland Railways. As we pulled into Jasper the train stopped with the broken window right beside a ladder and a couple of tradesmen with the necessary tools and materials to repair the damage. In less than 20 minutes the new window was installed. We had now climbed to a good height and at Jasper there was a lot of sheet ice on the ground which caused us a few problems to stay on our feet. Three young boys gave us a bit of amusement as we threw our spare Aussie halfpennies along the ice and into snow drifts. After Jasper we crossed the Athabasca River and the highest point on the trip. From there it was downhill on to the prairies of Alberta. We had to stop for some unknown reason near Edson, before going on to Edmonton where we arrived early in the morning of Saturday 6th March 1943.
Avola – Where a carriage window was broken
Jasper – Where the window was fixed
During our 20 minute stop
We stayed on the train until 0600 Hrs and the arrival of a few canvas topped 3 ton trucks on to which we were loaded. The temperature was Minus 23. Fahrenheit and I soon realised that the best option was to be among the first to throw your kitbag in and jump in after it with others piling in after you to keep the cold at bay. We were taken immediately to No.3 Manning Depot (as the RCAF called it), given breakfast and allotted to barracks. We then had to assemble in the ‘Arena’ for a lecture on what to expect in our future movements and to remind us that in the RCAF the flag in front of HQ had to be saluted. This did not impress the Aussies. After that we were given leave until Monday morning. As a general rule most of the trainees under the Empire Training Scheme in Canada were given leave over the week-end. After a shave and a shower I teamed with an Ian Scott (RCAF) and went into town to the pictures and then to a dance at the Memorial Hall. It was very cold coming back to camp on the tram.
On Sunday morning we slept in until 1100 Hrs, then shaved, showered and had dinner before a few of us went into town to the YMCA which was well equipped with a ten-pin bowling alley, heated swimming pool, gymnasium, dance floor and dry canteen. Came back to camp reasonably early with Ben Smith and John Honeyman.
It was down to business on Monday morning as we were issued with flying suits and other gear needed. Photographs were taken for Identity Cards, Dental & Medical checks after dinner and then back into town with Bub Sargeant for a while before coming back to camp to write a few letters to home. On Tuesday morning we were paraded at 0900 Hrs and those mustered for training as Navigators were transported to Edmonton Airport where No.2 Air Observer School was situated, to be signed in, allotted to barracks and issued with text books and settled in after a quick trip into town to buy a few necessities. Three Australians-Jim Bateman, Bill Bowden and Geoff Cohen were assigned to Course No.71N1 along with a number of New Zealanders and Canadians. The remainder of the Australians, including myself, were assigned to Course No.71N2.
Navigators Course No. 71N2
No. 2 Air Observers School - EDMONTON, Alberta, CANADA
On Tuesday 9th March 1943, one month after embarking in Sydney, we started on the above course for training as Air Navigators. It was a rather quiet day, with the issue of text books and some navigation instruments. Even had time to write my first long letter home.
The following day however saw the start of what was to become a regular routine of breakfast, parade, lectures, dinner (at midday), more lectures, tea (evening) and study at night, interrupted on occasions with sport’s afternoons and later on with daylight and night flying. All interspersed with visits to the canteen where we soon learned to enjoy waffles with maple syrup, coke and ice-cream. On Friday at the end of the first week we experienced a very heavy snowfall, got issued with our navigation watches and had our first ‘Dry Swim’ as navigation exercises in the classroom are called. Leave was granted over most week-ends.
On Saturday morning we had another ‘dry swim’ to prepare us for our first flight and then it was stand-down until Monday morning. Church parades were always held on Sunday mornings. Went shopping on Saturday afternoon with Bub Sargent and to a show “Journey for Margaret”. Had a sleep-in on Sunday morning to 1100 Hrs, then shaved and showered and had a big dinner before settling down to write a few letters. Bub Sargent was doing the same and Keith Mills came by to try to get us to go out for tea.
On Monday 15th March we had the usual lecture periods, a pay parade at which the Red Cross managed to get a donation of $5- from us; study at night to keep up with the course. Between lectures the next day we were paraded for issue of battle dress, during which there was more snow fighting. For some reason Bub Sargent and I missed out on the issue that morning-they had probably run out of RAAF-Blue battle dresses in our size. Went to the pictures that night to see “In Which We Serve”. Bruce McGiffin came over from the Manning Depot while we were at lectures on Wednesday just to see how we were going. He was still awaiting a posting on to flying training. He was one of the “Bum Nut Club” on the troopship coming over. Got a letter from cousin Danny, in the Army in New Guinea, and answered it that day as well as writing home again. Lectures on Thursday included one on the camera which was very good. Made a visit to the barber before tea. On Friday we had more ‘dry swim’ exercises and at 1500 Hrs had a Wing’s parade for passing-out of earlier courses of Navigators and Bomb Aimers. Bub and I were issued with our battle dress, had a ‘signals’ lecture and I was put on my first duty on “Watch parade”. Cannot remember for sure now, just what that involved, but I think it meant you were not granted leave over the week-end. Had our usual lectures on Saturday morning, during which there was some excitement when a Boston crashed on the ‘drome. There was a false fire alarm in the barracks that night, probably something to do with Ben Smith smoking in bed. Was not feeling 100% and could feel the flu coming on. Still not feeling well of Sunday, just mooched around and went to bed early.
I Have a Spell in Hospital
On Monday 22nd March I was quite sick and stayed in bed, and was admitted to the Station Hospital with a severe attack of ‘flu. Bub Sargent and Ben Smith visited me after tea. The next day in hospital gave me something to write home about, particularly to Jean Hall who was a nurse in the Ipswich General Hospital. A nurse came and stripped me to the waist to wash me down, as she said, as far a possible. Then does likewise from the other end to wash me up as far as possible. Finally says “I now have to wash possible”. Slept most of Wednesday. Keith Mills and Ron Etherton dropped in with some mail that had arrived and on Thursday. Scotty Gall dropped in with some writing gear so that I could write a letter or two. Got discharged on Friday morning-missed the C.O’s parade. A couple of lectures in the afternoon and early to bed. Recuperated a bit on Saturday morning by sleeping in (no lectures) and then went into town after dinner with Bub Sargent. Met Ben Smith at the YMCA and went to a show at night. On Sunday morning did some study to catch up and after dinner went for a walk with Keith Mills and Ron Etherton, playing with some kids ice-skating in the frozen over gutters on the way.
Woke on Monday 29th March, (sister Margaret’s 18th birthday) to a great blanket of snow. 9 inches had fallen overnight, so the snow fights were alive again. This was when we experimented and discovered that an orange left on top of the ground froze solid in a very short time, but if buried in the snow took a long time to freeze We were due to have our ‘orientation’ flight the next day after muster and pay parade. The weather was dirty however, and this was scrubbed. Instead, we were given lectures on the layout of the Avro Anson, (the “Aggie”), and the 2nd navigator’s job of winding up the undercarriage after take-off, some 130 odd turns of the handle. For our training flights we were paired, the 1st Navigator did the log and plot charts and the 2nd Nav practiced map reading. I was paired with Scotty Gall, aged 30. After tea Keith Mills, Ron Etherton and I went to see “Random Harvest”.
Airborne at Last
Wednesday 31st March 1943 Whooppee!!! Airborne, Took off at 0907 Hrs in ‘Aggie’ No.6074 with bush pilot Mr Anderson on a flight plan: XD (Edmonton)-Wetaskiwin-Camrose-XD. Landed 1034 Hrs. What a familiarisation flight!!. Got a bit airsick and no wonder. The pilot thought the ‘Aggie’ was a fighter plane and shot up the school house at Looma where his girl friend was a teacher. Circled it a few times and could see through the windows as we flashed by.
Next day was April Fools Day but avoided being caught out as we had a packed day of more lectures. Then on Friday we had a few lectures and reported to the Records Office to have our fingerprints taken. Then in the afternoon we had our first photo flight taking hand held obliques. We were given a number of landmarks to photo and the pilot just went from one target to the next which was always in view because of the good visibility and the pilots local knowledge. No directions from the navigator were needed. In spite of the many banks & turns involved I did not get airsick, but others did suffer effects.
It was back in the air again on Saturday morning for another photo flight. This time it was taking vertical cross-country line overlaps from the school house at Namao to a bridge 2 miles S-W of there. Good fun-watch the drift. On these flights the duties of 1st and 2nd navigator were shared. Under strict instructions of course, not to let go of the camera when taking obliques out of the rear window. In the afternoon we relaxed—Ron Etherton, Keith Mills, Russ Martin, Lou Brimblecombe and I went into town, had two games of ten-pin bowling at the YMCA (Won the 2nd game), had tea at “Tony’s” and went to the pictures to see “One of Our Aircraft is Missing”. Back to barracks on the 2140 Hrs bus. As the weather conditions earlier in the week had set back the flying programme, some time was made up on Sunday. Church parade was held in the morning, and after dinner we were briefed for our first navigation exercise which was a flight of about 3 hours with 1st and 2nd Nav duties shared. Route was: XD–Fort Saskatchewan–Camrose-Lougheed-Mannville-Lake Yekau-XD. Took off at 1400 Hrs with Mr Ireland as pilot.
Training Continues
Included in lectures on Monday 5th April was a special talk from a Squadron Leader on the conditions prevailing in Britain. A signals lecture was held after tea, but I did not attend. On Tuesday morning, more lectures {classes on various subjects}, and after dinner we were transferred from “D” Barracks to a new barracks building across the road. Real ‘5 star’ accommodation, with central heating and bathroom/toilet facilities incorporated as well as the sleeping quarters. We still preferred to have some windows open and a bit of fresh air coming in, and Ben Smith still smoked in bed. It was quite a change, as before we had to run from the bath/toilet block back to your hut in temperatures that were unfit for brass monkeys. It was supposed to be a sports afternoon, but that had to be scrubbed.
On Wednesday morning we had another photo flight, this time with a female passenger, probably a friend of the pilot, Mr Lawrie. Then on Thursday we had a review and discussions on our first photo flight, as all the films had been developed and printed. This was followed by practice on the drift recorder. Leave was granted after dinner, from 1400 Hrs, but most of the class stayed in camp to catch up on studies and letter writing. After lectures etc on Friday I was rostered on Duty Watch parade, strolling around that night in rain & mud. More lectures on Saturday morning and more studies in the afternoon as we prepared for “Maps and Charts” exam. Duty Watch Parade before tea. Sunday was still wet and miserable and we studied most of the day, with Duty Watch Parades at 1000 Hrs and 1800 Hrs. A football appeared from somewhere, so a few fellows managed a game in the mud.
Got mail from home on Monday 12th April, with the photos that were taken when I was home on pre-embarkation leave. As the weather was still unsuitable for flying on Tuesday and Wednesday we were occupied with more studies and lectures as well as a game or two of football in the mud. I had to go over to the Manning Depot to have a photo taken and more fingerprinting. Got back in the air on Thursday for a photo exercise with the Ft. Saskatchewan bridge as our target. It was a very bumpy flight. On Friday it was back in the air again on Nav. Exercise No.2: XD- Bremner-Willow Creek-Beynon-Millet-Yekau Lake-XD. A very good trip. Got a telegram from home, and as it was the end of Duty Watch was granted 48 Hrs leave.
So on Saturday morning it was into town to do a bit of shopping, and while browsing through the book department of the Hudson Bay Company store I met a Mrs Gillespie who had some association with Australia, and she invited me out to tea that night, which I gratefully accepted. Went back to camp for dinner, and catch up on a bit of washing etc. Then went to Mrs Gillespie’s place, met her daughter Marsh who showed me over the nearby University after tea. Walked back to camp-about 6 miles. Caught up with studies on Sunday morning, and after dinner a few of us went on a long walk out past the riding ranch. It was about this time that John Stopp was posted from the course to another A.O.S. to complete his nav. course. (He went on to No.166 Squadron, and was shot down and killed on 13th June 1944 on a raid on Gelsenkirken-would have been very early in his tour)
On Monday 19th April we had our first exam in the morning on “Maps & Charts”. Got some mail, including Don Grant’s circular to the Bank staff in the services. Lectures that night on the stars-introduction to astro-navigation. More lectures on Tuesday morning and study in the afternoon to make up for the Easter Friday holiday at the end of the week. Collected my RCAF ID Card. Into the air again on Wednesday on Air Exercise No. 3 Took off at 0830 Hrs on route: XD-Bremner-Lloydminster-Marwayne-Bremner-XD. Almost went without my parachute harness, but it was a good trip. Went with Keith Mills to the pictures at night to see “Reunion in France”. Lectures all day on Thursday, and preparation for Air Exercise No. 4 which we were to fly next Sunday (Anzac Day). Stand-down on Good Friday so went out to tea with Mrs Gillespie & Marsh and met Lin Gilmore, a friend of Marsh’s and a brother of a Mrs Cairns who lived in Ipswich. Lectures again on Saturday morning and went into town shopping in the afternoon, met Lin and Marsh. Had tea with them and came back to camp to study. On Sunday (Anzac Day) we flew Exercise No.4 which was the first time we did an air-plot-previous flights were mainly map-reading. Route was: XD-Ft.Saskatchewan-Hughenden-Czar(Recce)-Wainwright-Ellerslie-XD. In the afternoon the Australians and New Zealanders held a remembrance service at the Cenotaph.
On Easter Monday, 26th April we had lectures in the morning and a photo flight in the afternoon. Then on Tuesday we had lectures all day. In the mail I got a letter from Don Grant with news about the bank employees who were in the services. On Wednesday we had an exam on “Magnets & Compasses” and flew Air Exercise No.5 in the afternoon. To Trochu & Torrington with a ‘recce’ of Three Hills. A very rough flight and most of us got air-sick. On Thursday we started studies on Astro Navigation and had a good lecture on Radio D/F Navigation which was very interesting. On Friday morning we had an exam on “Meteorology”, pay parade and an informative talk on the war in the Middle East. Late in the afternoon we took part in a Victory Loan parade through the streets of Edmonton with a pipe band leading the parade, and all the services involved.
Then on Saturday morning we flew Air Exercise No. 6 which was quite an experience. Mr Lightheart was the pilot and the route was: XD-Bremner-Scapa-Coronation-Bremner-XD. We climbed on track through cloud and heavy rain. Good experience in D.R.Navigation and instrument flying for the pilot. Most of the aircraft turned back but we soldiered on. At E.T.A Coronation came down through broken cloud and there under us was a small town and railway station that the pilot thought was Coronation, but he wanted to make sure and made a low level run past the station to see if we could read the station name. Too close the first time, so around again and stood off a bit further, when we were able to confirm that it was Coronation. So back into the cloud and D.R. Navigation back to Bremner and Base. I think at the end he may have homed in on a radio beam, but anyway I was pleased with the navigation exercise, and earned some brownie points for it.
The rain kept up in the afternoon so I went into town with Noel Hooper where we met Russ Martin and Bub Sargeant, and went to a dance with ‘Ivy” and a few of her friends that Russ and Bub had chatted up. On Sunday morning wrote letters home before dinner and in the afternoon went with Scotty Gall and Alex Taylor on a hike with the 20th Century Club. Here we met Alice Grosco, Mary, Isobel, Helen, Joe and a few others. Had a great time making a fire to toast marshmallows, and spin a few yarns about the ‘hoop ’snakes, and ‘wampoo’ pigeons in Australia. Alice became quite a good friend and kept up correspondence with me until I returned to Australia. On later hikes with Aussies on later courses she met Jim Cossart, who was on a Bomb Aimers Course, and was a friend of mine at Ipswich Grammar School in 1938-39. Jim lost his life on 14th March 1945 flying with 106 Sqdn on a rai to the oil plant at Luitzkendorf.
On Monday 3rd May it was lectures as usual and a crack at a D.R. Test in preparation for a mid-term exam on Friday. More lectures on Tuesday morning and two sports periods in the afternoon, when I would go out to the university track for athletics with a Canadian middle-distance runner, who was a good coach and gave me some good advice on the tactics of 440 and 880 Yard running. Brought my times in the 440 down to about 51 secs and the 880 to just on 2 mins. Called into town on the way back to camp and did some shopping. After tea did study on subject of ‘Photography’. Had our photography exam the next morning, it was an easy paper. In the afternoon we did another D.R. Test - ‘dry-swim’ for a bombing raid on Duisberg. Little did I realise then that I would bomb this target twice in one day seventeen months later. After that, prepared for a flight scheduled for the next morning. But the weather conditions worsened on Thursday and flying was scrubbed for the day.
In terms of arrangements made with Alice last week-end I phoned her (No.83882) to make a date for Saturday night. On Friday morning we had a C/O’s parade and our mid-term D.R. exam. Weather remained bad and flight scheduled for that night was scrubbed. Saturday morning was filled with lectures and after dinner it was flying again on Air Exercise No.6 that so many did not complete on the first attempt (to Scapa & Coronation). I had the job of 1st Nav. again, leaving Scotty to wind up the undercarriage and get a bit of map reading practice this time. It was a rough trip. Then, as arranged, I took Alice to a dance at the YMCA that night. Walked home in the rain.
A ‘phone call diversion during the week. Early in the week during a lecture the ‘phone rang and it turned out to be a girl wanting to speak Eric Sutton, or one of his pals. Somehow, I got the job, probably because I was nearest the phone and Eric saying that she would be referring to either Bob Smith or Keith Mills as he had mentioned those names to her when he met her last week-end. Three of us were regarded as the 3 musketeers, Keith & I were the two youngest on the course, and Eric was only a few months older. We had all enlisted on the same day as Aircrew Guards, been on separate postings for a few months, and then re-united at No. 2 Initial Training School at Bradfield Park to commence training as aircrew and mustered together to train as Navigators. To come on this course we were required to be age 19 by 10th January 1943, which was my nineteenth birthday, so I just made it as the baby of the course.
So to the phone I go - “All for one and one for all”. She explained that she had two very good friends and wanted to know if Eric and his two mates would like to join them one evening and go ‘shagging’. With a bit of quick thinking and with survival uppermost in mind I asked her to hang for a moment while I checked. It called for some reference to our Canadian Instructor which caused a bit of hilarity among the class and a few remarks about how you can be so lucky etc until he explained that in Canada the term meant ‘dancing’. With that bit of clarification and referral to Eric & Keith, I told her that we would be happy to meet them on Sunday afternoon. Had the usual church parade on Sunday morning and after dinner set off with Keith and Eric as leader to meet Mildred, Charlotte and Maureen. Spent some time with them at the YMCA and came back to camp in time for our first night flying exercise. It turned out the three girls became very good friends, I partnered Maureen O’Connor who was a primary school teacher. Took off at almost midnight on what was called exercise No. 21 for a 2 Hrs 45 mins flight, sharing 1st and 2nd Nav duties with Scotty Gall.
Monday 10th May saw us sleeping in until dinner time as we didn’t land from our night exercise the night before until after 0300 Hrs. Had lectures after dinner. Did very well with mail from home over the next two days. On Tuesday morning we flew exercise No.7, as 2nd Nav this time, and in the afternoon got the results of our mid-term D.R. exam. I got a mark of 87%, with which I was pleased. Had lectures all day Wednesday and a late night studying. On Thursday morning flew Exercise No. 8 “navigation by track error”, as 1st Nav. After dinner we were given leave. Went out with Maureen to the Capitol cinema and walked home with Keith who had taken Charlotte out, after we had seen the girls home. Made it a late night as it was an hour walk back to camp. Got more mail from home on Friday morning and had lectures all day. Detailed on Duty Watch Parade that night. Spent Saturday (15 May) in camp as I was on Duty Watch Parade, studied in the afternoon and prepared for night flying Exercise No.22. Took-off at 2305 Hrs, but had to return to Base with trouble in the starboard engine. Changed over to a ‘photo’ plane and took off again at 0045 Hrs (Sunday) for a 3 hours solo night flight. Didn’t get to bed until 0500 Hrs, but up again at 1030 Hrs to prepare for Air Exercise No.9, as 2nd Nav, that afternoon. Took of at 1335 Hrs, with Mr Barnard as pilot for a fight of 2 hrs 55 mins.
Had lectures all day on Monday 17th May and wrote 7 letters to friends at home to catch up on some of my mail. Also had to prepare for Air Exercise No.10 scheduled for the next day. It was lectures in the morning on Tuesday, and Air Exercise No.10 in the afternoon. Took off at 1355 Hrs with Mr Luyckfassel as pilot for a flight of 3hrs 15 mins as 1st Nav. It was a bumpy trip but a good navigation exercise as the pilot flew the courses given and didn’t tend to track crawl.
Wrote more letters and cards that night. Had lectures all day on Wednesday, and after tea prepared for Night Flying Exercise No.23. Took off at 2300 Hrs with Mr Rathbone as pilot on a trip that took 3Hrs 15 mins down to Little Fish Lake. It was time off in the morning so we slept in. Had 2 lectures after dinner and went swimming at West End before tea. It was then more evening lectures and preparation for Air Exercise No. 11 the next morning. This consisted mainly of preliminary work on the flight plan. On Friday morning took off at 0855 Hrs for a 3 Hrs trip as 2nd Nav, enjoying the scenery and pretending to be map reading with the pilot Mr Neale keeping an eye on your performance, as the pilots had to file a report after each flight. Had two lectures after dinner, and as it was the end of my stint on ‘Duty Watch’ I went out with Maureen to the Capitol cinema and saw “Hitler’s Children”.
On Saturday and Sunday had 48 Hrs leave pass after duty watch. Went into town and banked $40 in to an account I had established with the Royal Bank, to bring my balance up to $80-. It was Red Cross day in town so I bought a fountain pen, then called on Maureen to say I could not go out with her that night as I had accepted an invitation out to tea with Mrs Gillespie. After tea went for a walk with Marsh while Mrs Gillespie went to the pictures with a friend. Slept in as usual on Sunday morning and did some preparatory flight plan work for a flight scheduled the next day. In the afternoon went hiking with the 20th Century Club and we were joined by several Aussie Sergeants from RAAF No.30 course who had their wings and were in transit through Edmonton.
On Monday morning 24th May 1943 we took off at 0830 Hrs On Air Exercise No.12 with Mr O’Hanlon as pilot. I was 1st Nav and was satisfied with good results. It was a 4 hour flight and we had to plot a square search and leading line search patterns. Study after dinner, and then after tea I did my laundry that had been soaking for a few days and wrote a few letters home. Lectures on Tuesday morning and sports in the afternoon when we played softball and got beaten by one run. After tea we were up till late doing Aircraft Recognition. Had lectures all day Wednesday and prepared for flight that night. Took off at 2355 Hrs with Mr Craig as pilot on a 3 Hr 15 min flight navigating by D/F. Not a very satisfactory result as the pilot was obviously track crawling. After the night flight slept in until dinner time and then had a couple of lectures in the afternoon. Before tea went round to the University for athletics training (running & high jump). Got a telegram from home and at night it was practice with the sextant shooting a few stars. Called on to C/O’s parade on Friday morning and a passing out parade for Bomb Aimers. Sent a telegram home in the afternoon and as I was feeling a few sore muscles after yesterday’s athletic training I had a rub down and went to bed early. Had lectures on Saturday morning and moved to new classroom in new G.I.S. Buildings. Attended a Highlands Games in the afternoon where I represented the station in both High and Long Jumping. With not much success, but our team managed to come second overall. Met Marsh Gillespie at the games, who was there with two friends Pat and Betty. Flying was scheduled for that night, but had to be scrubbed owing to bad weather. Usual sleep-in on Sunday morning, and after dinner Keith Mills & I went out to Maureen’s home. Walked home in the rain.
On Monday 31st May it rained all day, but did not interfere with a full programme of lectures, but did cause night flying to be scrubbed again. Wrote home, and at night went out with Keith and Charlotte; Maureen was unable to come. The girls were going to Vancouver the next day. Bad weather continued all day Tuesday, so it was lectures all day and study at night. Got a card from Maureen on Wednesday to say the girls had arrived in Vancouver, and also got a letter from my old boss, Mr Lindsay Hall. We were supposed to have an Army Co-op exercise but that was washed out. Aldis Lamp tests in the afternoon and study at night. Put my forage cap in for dry cleaning. On Thursday (3rd June) had P.T. first thing in the morning and the “Synthetics on Astrograph”. Cannot remember what that entailed, probably an astro navigation dry swim. A morse test in the afternoon and two letters from home, one form Jean Hall and the Bank’s ‘Nautilus’ magazine. Answered Jean’s letter and also wrote one to Merle Green. It was usual C/O’s parade on Friday morning and our 13th week Navigation Test in the afternoon. Got a letter from Maureen, and after tea went in to town, went to a show, came back to camp and wrote a few letters. On Saturday morning we had more lectures, and after dinner wrote a couple of letters and did my washing. Went out to tea at Mrs Gillespie and went in to town with Marsh, bought progress numbers of Journal and Bulletin to send home. Usual sleep-in on Sunday and wrote more letters in the afternoon. Study after tea and preparation for a flight schedule for tommorrow.
On Monday 7th June we had lectures in the morning and flew Exercise No. 13 in the afternoon, as a 2nd Nav. Took off at 1425 Hrs and were airborne for 3Hrs 15 mins. More study after tea. Lectures most of the day on Tuesday with sports in the latter half of the afternoon. After tea went for athletics training at the university and came back to camp to prepare for tomorrow’s scheduled flight. Took off at 0855 Hrs on Wednesday on Air Exercise No.19 with Mr Williams as pilot on a low flying exercise of 3 Hrs 20 mins. It was great-best trip yet. After dinner got a letter from Maureen which I answered and also wrote some letters home. Had lectures all day Thursday as it rained all day. More running around in the mud, and athletics training at the university was cancelled. Friday saw lectures again all day, and start of another duty watch which I hoped would be my last time. The weather cleared up in the late afternoon and we were able to fly night exercise that night. Took off at 25 mins after midnight (Sat morn) with Mr Real as pilot. Usual 3 Hr trip as 1st Nav, being a night exercise. It was an interesting one on which a few got lost. Didn’t get into bed until 0430 Hrs so slept in until dinner time. Studied all afternoon as the study load was getting heavier, and it was early to bed as we had a flight scheduled for Sunday morning. Took off at 0855 Hrs with Mr Real as pilot, as 1st Nav on a flight of 2 Hrs 50 mins. Had dinner when we landed and slept all afternoon. Wrote a long letter home after tea.
For the week starting Monday 14th June we had a heavy programme of lectures and study as the weather continued to be poor, scrubbing all flying. I was on Duty Watch until Friday. It was still drizzling rain at the end of the week and on Saturday morning we had more lectures. After dinner Keith Mills and I went to a show, and then after tea we went to another show with Charlotte and Maureen, who were now back from Vancouver. Walked home from Charlotte’s home through large pools of water and mud. Was able to tell Maureen that I had received her card that morning that she had posted the day before in Calgary on the way home. Usual sleep-in on Sunday morning and study in the afternoon. Went to tea at Mrs Gillespie’s with Ian Pender and Don Plumb. Ian was on another course, and I cannot remember how Don came to be invited. A night flying exercise was scheduled, but had to be scrubbed.
On Monday 21st June it was still raining, so we had another full day of lectures and study. Got 2 letters from home. After tea managed to go to the university track for athletics training as the weather cleared during the afternoon. This enabled us to get airborne on Tuesday morning on Air Exercise No.15. Took off at 0855 Hrs, as 2nd Nav, with Mr Stewart as pilot on a flight of 3 Hrs 05 mins and managed to get some practice with the bubble sextant by taking a few shots on the sun. Rain came on again in the afternoon, so went to a film on the station “Road to Tokio”. It was still raining lightly on Wednesday, so it was lectures and study during the day, and after tea met Maureen in town and went to see “China”. Lectures all day on Thursday and training at the university track after tea. Saw Maureen and Charlotte on the way home. Weather cleared on Friday and was good enough to fly, so at 1435 Hrs took off with Mr Rungel as pilot on Air Exercise No.16 which was for only 2 hours.
On Saturday we got called for 2 lectures in the afternoon. Got letters from both of my sisters. Just after tea Maureen and Charlotte came riding bikes past the barracks so we had a bit of a yarn with them, but could not go out with them that evening as we had a flight scheduled for early the next morning. Immediately after breakfast on Sunday morning took off at 0910 Hrs with Mr Tibbets as pilot on Air Exercise No.17 as 1st Nav on a trip of 3 Hrs 25 mins to Cremona and a look at the Rockies. A very good flight. More athletics training at the university in the afternoon and then over to a sports ground where Keith Mills and Eric Sutton were playing cricket. Maureen, Charlotte and Mildred were there watching them. Took photos.
On Monday morning 28th June, we had ‘magnetism & compass’ exam and after dinner two periods of instruction/educational films. Two letters from Aussie in the mail. More training at the university after tea. On Tuesday morning another exam on Instruments and D/F. Went to the pictures after tea with Maureen, Keith and Charlotte to see “Happy go Lucky”. Was supposed to do Aircraft Recognition that night but missed it. Lectures all day on Wednesday and at 2355 Hrs took off on Air Exercise No.26. This exercise had been scrubbed about 6 times owing to bad weather. It was a 3 hour flight, which meant we didn’t get to bed until about 0400 Hrs on Thursday morning. So it was a sleep-in until 1045 Hrs.
Thursday 1st July was “Dominion Day” After dinner went to a sports meeting conducted by the Southside Business Ass’n, at the Southside Sports grounds which had a straight 220 yard track and a lap of about 880 yards. Ran in the 440 yards race and won it, for which I received the grand sum of $80-00. Soon after competed in the high jump, but could only manage 4th, which paid nothing. This was my first experience of a professional sports meeting that also included cycling. Athletes were not permitted to wear ‘spikes’. The dirty tricks played by the cyclists in team events really opened my eyes. Maureen and Keith and Charlotte came to the event and we celebrated afterwards by going out to tea at the Royal George on my winnings. At the meet 3 parachute jumpers put on a very interesting display.
Friday saw us with lectures all day and flying Air Exercise No.27 at night. Took off at 2355 Hrs with Mr Lannon as pilot on a good flight of 3 Hrs 20 mins. At this time of the year in Edmonton it is nearly midnight before it gets dark, so night flying is fairly restricted. Usual sleep-in on Saturday morning after night flying. Saturday afternoon and Sunday saw the usual week-end chores, study and letter writing.
Monday 5th July saw the start of 2 weeks of intensive lectures, study, flying and exams to complete our course on time. In peace time the course would take over 12 months but in the urgency of the war situation had to be concentrated and focus on the essentials. Flew Air Exercise No.18 that morning. Took off at 0900 Hrs with Mr Real as pilot on a trip of 3 hours. Then on Tuesday afternoon we flew Air Exercise No.20. This was blindfold exercise that took us all over the map for almost 3 ½ hours. We took off at 0900 Hrs with Mr Filby as pilot. Air Exercise designated No.19 must have been cancelled. Bad weather prevented any flying from Wednesday to Friday. Got a long letter from my brother Alex on Wednesday and then one from Miss McPherson in Sydney on Saturday. Lectures all day on Saturday and study at night before flying Air Exercise No.28 which was a night navigation on the same course of daylight exercise No.10. Took off at 2300 Hrs with Mr Barnard as pilot. Flew through storms and cloud out to Frog Lake. Slept in on Sunday morning-you were excused from Church Parade if you were flying the night before. After dinner studied meteorology for an hour or so and then went to watch Keith and Eric playing cricket and then we all met Maureen, Charlotte and Mildred at the corner of 109th and Jasper later in the afternoon.
On Monday 12th July we had our final D.R. (Navigation) test. Wrote home and did preparation for more flying tomorrow. A large bag of mail from Australia came in but I did not score a thing. Maureen phoned just after tea. On Tuesday(13th July) took off at 0835 Hrs with Mr Luyckfassel as pilot on Air Exercise No.21, which was a special, incorporating evasive action, designed to prepare us for active service conditions. More lectures in the afternoon and studied meteorology at night. Supposed to fly on Wednesday morning, but this was scrubbed-raining again. So we had our final meteorology exam. The rain kept up through Thursday and Friday so time was passed with sessions of lectures and study more lectures on Saturday morning, usual laundry chores and letter writing after dinner and as the weather had cleared prepared for flying that night after tea. This was night flight over the route of Exercise No.9 that we had flown in daylight two months ago. Took off at 2355 Hrs with Mr Kellough as pilot and as 2nd Nav. I had to practice astro shots with the bubble sextant. That meant a sleep-in on Sunday morning and as we had some catch-up to do in order to finish the course on time another night flight was scheduled that evening. Took off at 2325 Hrs with Mr McCall as pilot on the route of Exercise No.11 that had previously been flown in daytime.
It was the usual sleep-in after night flying on Monday morning 19th July. In the afternoon and on Tuesday & Wednesday we had a few final written tests. On Wednesday night our final night flying test was scheduled. Took off at 2300 Hrs with Mr Cusater as pilot on the route of Exercise No.12 flown in daytime. This flight of 3 Hrs 05 mins was the final air exercise on which we were assessed. On Thursday 22nd July after dinner we were advised that all had passed the course, and got instructions to attend to clearances for medical and dental and to hand in any equipment that had been issued to us. ‘Wings’ passing out parade would be held on Friday 23rd July 1943.
On Thursday night Keith, Eric and I took the girls out to The Barn and then went walked them home. We invited them to the ‘Wings’ parade, but they could not attend. Friday was a big day with the presentation of our ‘wings’ and the sewing of Sergeant’s stripes on our sleeves. At the pay parade after ‘wings’ presentation I was given a slip of paper with the instructions “Here is your Commission, it is now up to you to arrange for the issue of Officer’s Uniforms etc”. Also commissioned off course were Ivan Biddle and “Inky’ Keena who were posted to other Air Observer Schools as instructors, Ken Todd, Ted Hall, John Honeyman, Noel Hooper and Les Sabine. Ben Smith was on line-ball about passing and had to go to a review committee as at this stage he had admitted he had put his age back to enlist, and he was in fact aged 35 Yrs-not 30 years according to the records. Ben did eventually go on the fly in Bomber Command and lost his life on night of 24/25 Dec. 1944 on a raid on Cologne with 166 Squadron.
With kit bags packed and left at ‘despatch’ as instructed, I went to Maureen’s for tea. Her father drove me to the station where we left Edmonton by Canadian National Railway at 2130 Hrs for Toronto.
Reflections on leaving Edmonton
Thoughts that would be shared by all now on their way to the European Theatre of WW11.
All shared a sense of satisfaction and relief that we had earned our ‘wings’ as Air Navigators after a very intensive course of 4 ½ months that involved a total of 75 Hrs 55 mins of daylight flying and 34 Hrs 45 mins of night flying for the average member, and instruction and exams in 12 subjects such as Navigation, Maps & Charts, Magnetism & Compasses, Instruments, D.F/Wireless Telegraphy, Meteorology, Aerial Photography, Signals, Reconnaissance, Armament and Aircraft Recognition. In all I managed an overall pass of 82.4%. A few found the going hard towards the end of the course, as it was not easy and acknowledged the support, encouragement and assistance given by the chief instructor F/O. Brown (RCAF). He did encourage a few to hang in and was rewarded with their dedication and success. All realised though that there was still a long way to go with further training after our arrival in the UK before we were fully trained to assume the roll of a navigator in a crew on Bomber Command.
The main memories most of shared:-
• The extreme cold and snow covered prairies when we first
started flying, which made it difficult to judge height from
the air.
• The mud and slush when the snow did melt, and the river
thawed, and the great swarms of mosquitoes-large scotch
greys.
• The fields turning to green when wheat was planted and to
yellow as the dandelions came into bloom.
• The brown bears coming in close to town in search of food in
the late winter and playing with their cubs who often got a
disciplinary clout.
• Gophers popping in and out of their holes in the field beside
our barracks.
• Young children ice skating on the frozen gutters in the streets’
• Our own first try at ice skating on a frozen flooded tennis
court and being conned into playing ice hockey, which was
good because it gave you a hockey stick for support.
• The pain that a few suffered from frost bitten ears- in spite of
warnings.
• The Indian quarters that we passed through when walking to
town.
• The hospitality of the people.
• On a few reported occasions being mistaken for “Austrians’.
• The beauty of snow laden trees early in the morning.
• For Queenslanders—the 4 distinct seasons.
• Saluting the flag in front of HQ. The furore caused when an
item of female underwear was hoisted thereon one night and
the Aussies had no objection to saluting that particular
standard.
• The skill of the ‘Bush Pilots’ They were all civilians who had
good permanent work because of the Empire Training Scheme, but they were very competent at their job. True Canadian Geese-born to flying.
• Waffles and Maple Syrup and Coke and Ice Cream in the
Station canteen.
• Strictly taboo. But some made it** Flying under the high level
bridge.
• The sports facilities at the YMCA.
• Ben Smith’s accidents from smoking in bed.
Personally, there was the joy of wonderful friends made. The gang of the 20th Century Club and at the YMCA where I met Alice Grosco who kept up correspondence with me for two years after the war, until I told her I was going back to Scotland to marry Alma. Alice did have a special reason to keep in touch, as from a later Bomb Aimer course she met Jimmy Cossart on one of the Club’s regular hikes. He came from Boonah and was a boarder with me at Ipswich Grammar School 1938-39 and she was quite surprised when Jim told her he knew me. Later I was to meet Jim at the Boomerang Club in London on a few occasions until in the last months of the war he lost his life in a raid over Germany.
Perhaps the most cherished memory was the wonderful friendship that Keith and Eric and I enjoyed with Charlotte, Mildred and Maureen. They really treated us more like brothers and I would say did not put any pressure on us for a lasting relationship. We were welcomed into their homes. They truly were three girls who enjoyed the simple pleasures, and were good companions to each other. What you saw was what they were.
As we left Edmonton we were all aware that we were now on the way to the big adventure with its inevitable risks. Also we would soon be split up to go various ways. In fact when we got to Embarkation Depot at Halifax, after leave, a few of us would move into the Officers Mess, whilst the rest would be in the Sergeant’s Mess. But for the period of leave, and until we got to Halifax, those who were commissioned would continue with Sergeant’s stripes on our uniforms and stay as a group. Most important in our minds was to enjoy leave as we journeyed to Halifax across Canada with a break to visit New York. We had completed a course of flying training, all with over a 100Hrs up, and without an accident and with no loss of life.
These Were Fellow Course Participants
Following is a summary of the participants on the course and a brief detail of the operational experience of most, with pertinent information on those who lost their lives in training and on operations over Europe as well as those who were shot down and were taken Prisoner of War, or, in one case evaded capture.
After the war I kept in regular touch with Keith Mills, and since the late 1980’s with Lou Brimblecombe. We were the three youngest on the course. Eric Sutton did his tour with 622 Sqdn which was also based at Mildenhall where I served in XV/15 Squadron. And I did not get in contact with him again until December 2002, when he was traced living in Victoria. Roy Olsen moved to Tasmania after he retired as a school teacher and we had contact each Christmas. Noel Hooper, who came from the Nambour district died a few years after the war. Scotty Gall returned to work with the Bank of NSW and on retirement moved to Cooroy in Queensland, where I resumed contact in the early 1990’s. After his wife died he sold his property and moved to a retirement village in Brisbane, where he also died in 1999/2000. In one of those co-incidences in life, Scotty (or Vernon as he was known to his family) turned out to a brother of a friend we have known in the church at Alexandra Headland for many years.
It is interesting to note the service history of the ‘Todd’ Brothers, Ernie and Ken. They were both schoolteachers from the Newcastle area (both born in Canada). They enlisted together and went through initial training and operational training together and served on the same squadron flying in Wellingtons out of Foggia in Italy. They returned to their pre-service vocation. Ken, who was shot down and taken POW, died is 1986 at the age of 71 and Ernie died in 2002 at the age of 89.
Don Plumb “Bluey” did a tour in Halifaxes and died of acute leukaemia about 1987.
Course No.71N2-EATS-at No2. A.O.S EDMONTON, Canada. All members of RAAF
Duration 10/3/1943 to 23/7/1943,
Instructors:- F/O.W.H.Brown & P/O. Pogue ??? (both R.C.A.F)
NAME Number Birth Enlisted Discharged D.O.Death Posting on Rank Awards SeeNotes
Discharge ***
BIDDLE Ivan R. 424905 13/10/1913 09/10/1942 09/10/1945 8 O.T.U F/Lt Instructor in Canada
Goulburn Sydney
BRIMBLECOMBE C.L. 425592 23/12/1923 25/04/1942 07/12/1945 9 A.H.U F/O (218/514 Sqdn)
(Louis) Brisbane Brisbane
ETHERTON Ronald H. 423088 02/11/1921 20/06/1942 13/08/1944 76 Sqdn F/Sgt ***No.1
Sydney Sydney
GALL V. Scott 424915 08/08/1912 09/10/1942 16/04/1946 1315 Flight F/O (467Sqdn)
Mosman NSW Sydney
HALL Ernest T 406976 17/02/1914 26/05/1941 25/02/1946 9 A.H.U F/Lt Instructor in Canada
Perth Perth
HONEYMAN John 429498 23/05/1923 08/10/1942 15/02/1946 1656 C.U F/Lt D.F.C.
Deepwater Brisbane
HOOPER R. Noel 425851 16/12/1923 21/05/1942 21/08/1945 1 P.H.U F/Lt *** No.2
Nambour Brisbane
KEENA Ilford N. 424870 12/10/1912 09/08/1942 22/06/1945 9 A.O.S F/O Instructor in Canada
Ballengarra Sydney
LEWIS John H. 423142 27/01/1923 20/06/1942 08/11/1943 3 A.F.U. Sgt. ***No.3
Broken Hill Sydney
MARTIN H. Russell 418289 28/12/1922 15/05/1942 13/12/1945 21 O.T.U F/O D.F.C
Melbourne Melbourne
MILLS Keith C. 425954 02/01/1924 21/05/1942 27/10/1945 78 Sqdn W/O ***No.4
Mackay Brisbane P.O.W
MURTHA Harold H. 429473 30/05/1922 08/10/1942 05/09/1945 12 O.T.U F/O (463 Sqdn)
Brisbane Brisbane
OLSEN Roy P. 429479 10/07/1920 08/10/1942 15/11/1945 640 Sqdn W/O ***No.5
Bundaberg Brisbane
PALFERY Noel J. 424920 16/05/1914 09/10/1942 18/07/1945 467 Sqdn F/O (467 Sqdn)
Brisbane Sydney
PLUM Donald A. 424934 17/12/1919 09/10/1942 17/12/1945 96 Sqdn F/O (466/462 Sqdns)
Inverell Sydney
NAME Number Birth Enlisted Discharged D.O.Death Posting on Rank Awards SeeNotes
Discharge ***
SABINE C.W. Leslie 426165 08/12/1917 23/05/1942 01/07/1946 466 Sqdn F/Lt. D.F.C.
Brisbane Brisbane
SARGENT Allan J. 410098 19/10/1918 08/11/1941 22/01/1946 1 M.R.U W/O ***No.6
(Bulb) Williamstown Melbourne 44 Sqdn-P.O.W.
SMITH Benjaminn H. 424891 24/03/1914 09/10/1942 24/12/1944 166 Sqdn F/Sgt ***No.7
Merriwether Sydney
SMITH Ian H. 423913 20/10/1922 18/07/1942 18/06/1944 115 Sqdn F/Sgt ***No.8
Katoomba Sydney
SMITH Robert W. 425992 10/01/1924 21/05/1942 12/12/1945 32 Base F/Lt (XV/15 Sqdn)
Brisbane Brisbane No.3 Group RAF Bomber Command
SUTTON Eric C. 425910 04/081923 21/05/1942 17/09/1945 84 O.T.U F/O (622 Sqdn)
Gympie Brisbane
TAYLOR Alexander 424804 04/08/1920 09/10/1942 02/01/9/1946 R.A.F. F/O
Arncliffe Sydney Dumbeswell
TODD Ernest 424942 30/12/1913 09/101942 10/08/1945 3 A.O.S F/O (142 Sqdn)
Canada Sydney Italy
TODD W. Kenneth 424878 16/07/1915 09/10/1942 06/12/1945 142 Sqdn F/Lt ***No.9
Canada Sydney
General Comments
All participants in the above course were members of the RAAF, and many were recruited under the “Air Crew Guard” category in May 1942. They left Australia (Sydney) on the USS “Hermitage”, departing on Wednesday 10th February 1943, arriving via Pago Pago and Hololulu at San Francisco on Tuesday 2nd March 1943, where they disembarked and then entrained at Oakland to go by rail, via Vancouver, to Edmonton in Canada where they disembarked on Saturday morning 6th March 1943 when the temperature was reading –23 (Fahrenheit).
Course No.71N2 started on 10th March at No.2 A.O.S at the Edmonton airfield with Avro Anson aircraft flown by civilian “Bush” Pilots. Passing out parade and presentation of wings with promotion to Sergeant was held on Friday 23rd July. Eight members were commissioned off course to rank of Pilot Officer. No casualties were recorded on training.
All but 3 were posted to “Y” (Embarkation) Depot in Halifax Nova Scotia (spending some time on leave in Montreal & New York on the way) where they embarked on the R.M.S “Queen Mary” on Friday 28th August 1943 and sailed to the Clyde in Scotland where they disembarked at Gourock on Tuesday 31st August 1943 and entrained for overnight travel to the RAAF’s No.11 Personnel Despatch and Reception Depot at Brighton. From here most were posted to various advanced training units to be incorporated into a crew and fly in Lancasters & Halifaxes of Bomber Command.
Postings as listed in the above schedule are the postings as recorded at the time the airman was recalled to No.11 P.D.R.C at Brighton for repatriationto Australia, or upon date of death, or at time of loss on operation and taken POW. Sqdn reference under notes is one they did tour with (where known).
Course 71N2- Details of Casualties, either loss of life or shot down and taken P.O.W, or Evaded Capture
No.1. Ronald Henry ETHERTON No.76 Squadron. In Halifax 111 LL578 MP-H Bar on night of 12/13 August 1944 took off from Holme-on-
Spalding At 2129 Hrs to bomb the Opel Motor factory at Russelsheim. Crashed 2Km N.E. of Hamm (Germany)
and all crew were killed. They rest in France in the Choloy War Cemetery, which suggests their graves were
investigated by an American Unit. Of the 297 aircraft (191 Lancasters, 96 Halifaxes 7 10 Mosquitoes) that took part
in the raid 7 Halifax & 13 Lancasters were lost. 6.7% of the force. Local reports stated the factory was only slightly
damaged.
No.2. Rupert Noel HOOPER No.463 Squadron. In Lancaster 111 LM597 JO-W on night of 24/25 June 1944 took off from Waddington at 2229
Hrs on their first ‘op’ to bomb flying bomb base at Prouville. Crew, with exception of the F/Eng, were all
RAAF; believed shot down by night fighter. B/A, W/O/P and both gunners were captured and taken POW
Pilot, F/Eng & Nav (Noel) evaded capture Pilot W/Cdr D.R.Donaldson RAAF was among the most senior officers
to evade capture in 1944.
.No.3 John Hedgley LEWIS The Course’s first casualty, in training, on 8th November 1943 at No.3 Advanced Flying Unit, Halfpenny Green.
Buried in Chester (Blacon) Cemetery, Cheshire, England. Section A Grave No154
.
No.4 Keith Cyril MILLS POW. No.78 Squadron. In Halifax 111 MZ692 EY-P on night of 22/23 June 1944 took off from Breighton at 2230 Hrs to
bomb railway yards at Laon. First operation for most of the crew. Shot down by enemy fire and baled out. 5 were
taken POW and 2 evaded capture. All the crew, with exception of the F/Eng, were RAAF. Keith was arrested in
France and taken into custody by the Gestapo, being held with other members of his crew for about 3 months in
Buchenwald Concentration Camp until ‘rescued’ by the Luftwaffe and transferred to Stalag Luft L3 Sagan and
Balaria. POW No.8018. 4 Halifaxes were lost on this Laon raid.
No.5 Roy Peter OLSEN POW. No.640 Sqdn. In Halifax 111 LK865 C8-Q on night of 27/28th May 1944 took off from Leconfield at 2356 Hrs to
bomb Military Camp at Bourg-Leopold. Shot down by night fighter and crashed 0228 hrs near Antwerp. Pilot,
F/Eng & M/U/G were killed. Roy was taken POW and held in L7 Stalag Luft, Bankau-Kruelberg. POW No.95.
No.6 Allan Joseph SARGENT POW. No44 Sqdn. In Lancaster 1 LL938 KM-S on night of 21/22nd June 1944 took off from Dunholme Lodge at 2325
Hrs to bomb synthetis oil plant at Wesseling. Shot down by night fighter Pilot, B/A, W/O/P and R/G were killed
and are buried in Nederweert War Cemetery. Bub was taken POW and held in L7 Stalag Luft, Bankau-Kreulberg.
POW No.236. Of the 133 Lancasters & 6 Mosquitoes that took part on this raid, 37 Lancasters were lost—27.8%
of the force. 10/10 cloud was encountered and planned 5 Group’s Low-Level marking of the target was not
possible so H2S was used with only moderate success. 44, 49 & 619 Sqns lost 6 aircraft each. This was the last
occasion on which Bomber Command would suffer such a severe loss in operations to the Ruhr.
It is believed that above crew was the only Bomber Command crew lost in the war that comprised airmen from the 3 Commonwealth & Dominion air forces, plus a USAAF representative.
No.7 Benjamin Hartley SMITH No.166 Sqdn. In Lancaster 1 NG297 AS-K2 on night of 24/25 December 1944 (Christmas Eve) took off from
Kirmington at 1515 Hrs to bomb railway communications at KOLN-Nippes (COLOGNE). Crashed in the target area. All the crew were killed and buried locally, since when their bodies have been interred in the Rheinsberg
War Cemetery.
97 Lancaster & 5 Mosquitoes took part—5 Lancasters were lost over the target area and 2 more on return to
England owing to bad weather. Oboe marking was used with very accurate results. Local reports showed that
railway tracks were severely damaged & an ammunition train blew up. Nearby airfield,(Butzweilerhof) also
damaged.
No.8 Ian Harrison SMITH No.115 Sqdn. In Lancaster 1 HK559 A4-H on night of 17/18th June 1944 took off from Witchford at 0102 Hrs to
bomb oil installations at Montdidier. Dived into the ground and exploded with great force at Gannes (Oise), 5 Km N of St-Just-en-Chausse. All lie buried in the Gannes Communal Cemetery.
317 aircraft (196 Lancasters, 90 Halifaxes, 19 Mosquitoes & 12 Stirlings) took part in this and a similar targets at
Aubnoye and St Martin-l’Hortier. Targets were covered by cloud. Master bomber called off raid at Montdidier after
Only a few aircraft had bombed. Above was only aircraft lost on this operation.
No.9 William Kenneth TODD POW No.142 Sqdn. In Wellington Bomber took off from Foggia in Italy to bomb airfield on outskirts of Vienna. On 10th
May1944. It was crews 10th “Op”. Shot down by fighter in target area. In hospital in Vienna for short period before
going to Frankfurt for interrogation and to Stalagluft 3 at Sagan. And later to Luckenwald from where they were
repatriated to England..
NOTE
About 4/5 weeks after the course started John Henry STOPP, No.419738, born 3/7/1915 in Cairns Qld, Enlisted 10/10/1942 in Sydney was posted to another A.O.S to complete a Nav Course from which he was commissioned off course. On the night of 12/13 June 1944, flying with 166 Squadron on a raid on GELSENKIRKEN their Lancaster crashed in Holland and all on board were killed They were buried on 16th June 1944 in the ZELHEM General Cemetery It would appear that would have been very early in their tour of operations. .John Stopp was transferred when his flying Training-partner was hospitalised. I think it was Doug Rogers No.424609 who was commissioned off a later course and served in No4 Group RAF Bomber Command in Yorkshire - he was attached to 41 Base before returning to Australia.
Three other trainee navigators who sailed to Canada in the same draft were assigned to Course No.71N1. They were Jim Bateman No.423042 (149 Sqdn- awarded D.F.C), Bill Bowden No.424728 (261 Sqdn) and Geoff Cohen No.424725 who was commissioned off course and remained in Canada as an instructor at No.3 A.O.S.
Course 71N2 - Empire Training Scheme
No. 2 A.D.S. Edmonton – Alberta – Canada
10 March 1943 to 23 July 1943
Back Row: Keith Mills, Bob Sargent, Lou Brimblecombe, Noel Hooper, Eric Sutton, Alex Taylor
Middle Row: Ken Todd, Ernie Todd, Don Plumb, Noel Palfrey, Ron Etherton, Roy Olsen, Les Sabine,
Bob Smith, John Honeyman, Harold (Roy) Murtha
Front Row: Russ Martin, Ted Hall, Scotty Gall, Ian Biddle, W.H. Brown, ? , Ben Smith,
John Lewis, I.N. Keena, Ian Smith
We’ve Got Our Wings – Rookie Sergeants
The “Three Musketeers”
Eric Sutton, Bob Smith, Keith Mills
23rd.July 1943
As an L.A.C. in Edmonton
In Front of Wilsons Stationery Shop in Jasper Avenue
24 April 1943
Air Photography Exercises “Spring”
Bridge Over North Saskatchewan River about 1 ½ miles S.W. of Fort Saskatchewan
Looking S.W. in Direction of Edmonton Which is Visible in Distant Background
Notification of Selection for Appointment to Commissioned Rank
Effective 23rd July, 1943
1st July 1943
Dominion Day Sports – Winning the 440 yds
Eric Sutton, Keith Mills, Bob Smith
- at University Sports Ground
Keith said the Wrong Thing!
Have Wings *** Will Travel
From Edmonton, Canada to Brighton, England
We left Edmonton, with “N” Navigator wings and Sergeant’s stripes sewn on to our tunics, by train, at 2130 Hrs on Friday 23 July 1943. After the busy day of Wings Passing-out Parade and getting clearances we soon settled down to a good night’s sleep. Woke up in the early hours of Saturday at Saskatoon and travelled all day across the prairies through what seemed like endless fields of wheat and grazing country. It was almost express through Watrons, Rivers, Portage, La Prairie and arrived at Winnipeg at 1845 Hrs. Had a stop-over there and left again at 2000 Hrs. Into the bunk at 2230 Hrs for another good sleep. The scenery was different on Sunday as we moved into Ontario with mostly coniferous trees and a few Indian settlements. Arrived in Toronto at 0830 Hrs on Monday morning where those of us going to New York detrained and wandered around to have a look through a few shops before catching a train leaving at 1330 Hrs for Niagara. Had a few hours there to look over the Niagara Falls and then catch a train that left an hour late at 2230 Hrs down the Lee-High valley for New York. This was another train trip in the U.S. that went too fast to even count the telephone poles as they flashed by, and with the best of service from the Afro-American waiters on board.
New York and Sightseeing
Arrived in New York at 0900 Hrs on Tuesday 27th July and most of us including Keith Mills, Noel Hooper, Roy Olsen, Lou Brimblecombe, Russ Martin, Ian Smith, and Eric Sutton and myself made our way to the Anzac Club (somebody had the directions) where accommodation was arranged at the Wentworth Hotel-on the ground floor. Settled in to our rooms and had something to eat somewhere before we went to Madison Square Gardens where a circus was performing. After that we went to the Stage Door Canteen for tea, where we received a hospitable welcome and were given complimentary tickets for a few tours and shows the next day. Met the actress Connie Hayes there. On Wednesday morning we went on a sight-seeing tour during which we called into a few shops and I purchased a 2 ¼ X 2 ¼ Voigtlander camera which gave me good service for many years. After that we went to the Empire State Building and rode the elevator to the top. What a ride that was and what a view from the observation deck at the top. Keith, Roy, Lou, Noel, Russ and I then went for a stroll around Central Park where I took the first photos with the Voigtlander and on to the Stage Door Canteen for tea and more free tickets. The show that evening featured Xavier Cougat and his orchestra, the Andrew Sisters and other acts. We then went to a broadcast at the CBS studios before going back to the hotel.
Stayed in the hotel until midday on Thursday and then went to the Rialto on free tickets and on to the Rochefeller Centre to view an exhibition. Had tea and came back to the hotel to write a few letters. We were on the ground floor and it was hard to get a good sleep, the street outside was as busy at 0300 Hrs as it was at 1500 Hrs.
We Return to Canada
Noel Hooper and I decided that we had better do something about our Officers gear in Montreal and to leave New York a couple of days before the others. So on Friday morning we went to the station to enquire about trains. Met two girls going to the Statue of Liberty so went along for the ferry ride, back to the Anzac Club and a show at the Roxy. Caught a train by the skin of our teeth at 1850 Hrs. Had to change trains at Depew at 0500 Hrs on Saturday morning to go on to Toronto where we arrived at 0915 Hrs and left 30 minutes later for Montreal where we arrived at 1910 Hrs, running about 30 mins late as the train had hit a woman walking on the track about an hour out of the city. When we arrived we went to the YMCA where they arranged accommodation for us at 1491 Bishop Street.
On Sunday morning, 1st August, we went for a circular tour of the city by tram, jumping off at places of interest. Noel was bit non-plussed by the priests stopping on each step of a long climb up the hill to a large cathedral at the top. They appeared to pause briefly on each step in prayer. So, he taps one on the shoulder and recommended they install an escalator-a suggestion that was ignored. Asking directions on the tram was almost useless as the conductors gave the impression that they only conversed in French. We had tea at the YMCA and then went for a walk through the heart of the town. We must have given the impression of two lost souls as two girls approached us and started a conversation. Their names were Dorothy and Kay. They were students at the McGill University in Montreal and invited us to meet them the next afternoon and they would take us up Mont Royal to view the town by night.
We did our shopping on Monday morning where RAAF uniforms etc were available. Got issued with P/O’s braid, badges and cap, but decided to leave issue of quality uniforms and overcoat until we arrived in England. Met Dorothy and Kay as arranged in the afternoon and went up the mountain. As we had to meet up with the rest of our course on a train leaving Montreal at 1930 Hrs the next day the girls agreed to have dinner with us and then meet us again the next day at 1730 Hrs to show us over the University where they resided in one of the colleges on the campus. This we did on Tuesday after more sight seeing around the town and checking out of our accommodation. After our visit to the University it was a quick trip to the station with the girls to see us off and to catch up with the rest and board the train departing at 1930 Hrs. On the way to No.3 ‘Y’ Depot at Halifax. That was the Canadian designation for an embarkation depot.
Wednesday 4th August saw us travelling all day along the St.Lawrence River with its lumber mills, log jams and fishing villages and arrive in Halifax close to midnight raining cats and dogs. We were settled into barracks. Those who were commissioned off course were directed to the Officers Mess and Quarters and all others to the Sergeants Mess.
Halifax
Our late arrival did not prevent us being paraded at 0830 Hrs on Thursday and then attend to usual clearances etc. It seemed that there were still clearances whether you were arriving or departing. After dinner we were put through decompression chamber tests to assess our reactions to lack of oxygen. It was quite an experience as the chamber was decompressed to a height equivalent of about 18,000 feet. We were equipped with oxygen masks. At this height we were instructed to take off our oxygen masks under the supervision of trained personnel and to see how many times we could write the alphabet on the paper that had been issued. Supervisors kept an eye on each individual. I can remember being very pleased with myself as I visualised the alphabet written about six times on my piece of paper before I was told to put my oxygen mask back on again. Then I couldn’t believe my eyes-there was the alphabet written once and then down to about ‘m’ or ‘n’ before the pencil trailed away into a real scribble. Your mind had been telling you that all was well, so the danger of losing oxygen at heights over 10,000 feet was impressed on us. Most of us were non-smokers and had very similar results, but the smokers capacity to cope was really restricted and a couple had to be put back on oxygen very quickly.
On Friday we had a C.O.’s parade at 0800 Hrs and then it was back into the decompression chamber again for 2 hours, with oxygen masks kept on and listen to the supervisor giving more information on what we could expect flying for more than two hours at heights of over 20,000 feet. During this exercise the chamber was decompressed to a height equivalent of over 25,000 feet. After dinner it was P.T. exercise and games. Wrote a letter home and attended to a pile of washing that had accumulated.
Games of tennis and softball filled in most of Saturday morning. After dinner went into town with Ken and Ernie Todd (Ken had been commissioned off course but his brother Ernie was not) to the Anzac Club to give it the once over, and see what services and freebies were available there. Back to camp for a wash and change into clean clothes and after tea went back to a dance at the Anzac Club for a couple of hours. Slept in late on Sunday and spent all afternoon writing letters.
On Monday, 9th August, we were called on parade at 0800 Hrs for P.T. exercises and games. After dinner we underwent night vision tests, which I had trouble in passing and then back to more letter writing to catch up with my correspondence. Got a letter in the mail that day from Maureen. What seemed to be the established routine of parade, P.T. and games was the dose on Tuesday morning. For games, a rugby league match was organised for the Aussies and Kiwis between the Officers and the N.C.O.’s. It was a match that Keith Mills has not forgotten. I was playing on the wing for the Officers and going flat out for a certain try. I heard Keith behind me call out, “here Bob” when he had no chance of catching me. Not thinking I passed the ball back to Keith, who promptly propped, turned and set off back in the other direction. Unfortunately for him however, I was being supported by Kiwi P/O. Simon Snowden, of Maori descent and well built, and who was in the right position to effect a heavy tackle. Simon and I became good friends after that. Keith, I am sure learnt a lesson and did not appreciate the obstacle course we were put through after dinner.
On Wednesday morning, to keep us fit, we were employed on trench digging, and after dinner some of us were put through another night vision test. With a bit of assistance from a mate I did better than the test on Monday. Night vision was for gunners and not for navigators. Did my ironing after tea as we did not have the luxury of a batman yet.
Did well with mail on Thursday - 6 letters from home. After dinner went on a harbour cruise. I was on duty as Reception Officer that night and didn’t get to bed until 0430 Hrs on Friday. Received a telegram from home on Friday morning and another letter from Maureen. We had pay parade after which I went into town to buy a suit case, and did some ironing at night. On Saturday morning we had a lecture on ‘Rehabilition’ and I spent the afternoon writing letters to reply to those I had received during the week. Sunday was a very quiet day and a few of us went to a concert in the evening at the Anzac Club.
Monday 16th August was another good day for mail with 7 letters in the morning and 1 in the afternoon. So my correspondence was not up-to-date for too long. Pictures in the Officers Mess at night, “Desert Victory” and “The More the Merrier”. Usual parade and P.T. on Tuesday morning and into town after dinner for shopping and on to the Anzac Club for tea and a dance at night. More P.T. on Wednesday morning as we were waiting for a draft to embark. Went to see “Stage Door Canteen” at night with Simon Snowden. Since our football match we had spent a few times together looking around the sights of Halifax. Although he was of Maori blood, because of his surname he had become known as “Snowy”. Thursday afternoon was set aside for more sports and in the late afternoon we marched through town with a brass band at the head of the procession. It was into town again on Friday to buy a dressing gown and then to pictures at night to see “Jungle Book” Football practice occupied some time on Saturday morning. The bush telegraph was passing on a rumour that the “Queen Mary” was on the way from New York and would be calling within a few days, so I packed one of my kit bags in the afternoon. Slept in late on Sunday morning and after dinner went for a walk with Les Sabine around Mt Pleasant Park, and to the pictures in the Officers Mess after tea.
After mandatory parade at 0800 Hrs on Monday 23rd August we had lectures and a test on Aircraft Recognition. Managed to pass the test, but only just. After dinner went into town with ‘Snow’, met one of his mates and went to the Anzac Club for tea and a show afterwards. It was P.T. on Tuesday morning and we were given notice to be on parade again after dinner. That was a fair indication that a draft had been issued for embarkation. The draft was read out and as far as I can remember all the navigators from Course 72N2, except for a couple who did not come on to Halifax, were on it. We would be embarking within 48 hours. Broke off parade to have medical examinations, and then it was into town with ‘Snow’ again, who was also on the draft, for tea and the pictures to see “Song of the Islands”. On Wednesday morning we had to take our ‘Not wanted on Voyage’ baggage on parade and complete clearances. A few of us went to the Anzac Club that evening just to say good-bye to the place.
On Thursday 26th August 1943, we had pay parade in the morning, dinner and then our final parade with our ‘Wanted on Voyage’ baggage. We were then transported to the harbour and embarked on the “Queen Mary”. I was billeted in Cabin A24 with 14 others.
We Sail to the UK
Sailed early on Friday morning into good seas. It was back to two meals again while ‘in transit’. The ship had taken on a large contingent of American Servicemen in New York and it was very crowded. With such a large number on board, all were assigned to particular areas with coloured lines to follow to different venues to which they were allowed, such as sleeping quarters, bathroom facilities and Recreation and Entertainment areas. We had a limited deck space allotted to us and yellow lines to follow to the dining room and other colours to the toilets etc. On the lower decks the ‘other ranks’, mainly American troops, were assigned to sleeping areas on a shift basis.
The “Queen Mary” proceeded at full speed of over 30 knots on a zig-zag course and was unescorted. If you were walking down a passage-way when ‘she’ changed course by about 30 degrees you were pinned against the wall until ‘she’ got on a steady course again for another 15/20 minutes or thereabouts. You certainly had the feeling that a submarine would have very little chance of a torpedo attack. Time was passed playing cards, listening to music, reading the daily newspaper that was printed on board, writing letters and attending entertainment provided on board, which mainly favoured Officers. The seas stayed good all day on Saturday and at night most of us in Cabin A24 followed the relative coloured line to the large theatre on board to see a movie. Church Parade was held on Sunday, and another show in the theatre at night.
We continued to zig-zag through good seas at full speed all day Monday and enjoyed a concert in the lounge at night. On Tuesday we came around the north of Ireland and were greeted by friendly aircraft overhead and land in sight by mid-morning. This first sight of ‘the Old Country’ will remain in the memories of most on board for the rest of their life. There was a band of The Royal Marines on board and as we sailed up the Clyde past Arran with the Scottish coast of Ayrshire on our starboard the band played “Land of Hope and Glory”. As indeed it was at that time in history. There were not too many dry eyes on the decks, even among the American troops. We weighed anchor off Greenock and at 1900 Hrs were disembarked onto barges to be entrained at Greenock to travel to Brighton by rail.
Brighton, England
Travelled overnight and got our first encounter with a country at war with the blackout. Early in the morning the train steamed into the large railway yards at Crewe, then on to Rugby and the outskirts of London where we witnessed bomb damage for the first time. Arrived in Brighton at midday and were transported to No. 11 Personnel Despatch & Receipt Centre. Have never been able to work out how the despatch came before the receipt. We were assigned to billets. The N.C.O.’s to either the ‘Metropole’ or ‘Grande’ on the esplanade near the famous West Pavilion and the Officers to the Lions Head a bit further along to the east. Those establishments had been commandeered by the War Department and allotted to the RAAF’s No. 11 P.D.R.C, which had been transferred to Brighton from Bournemouth. So, on the 1st September 1943 we were officially disembarked in the United Kingdom. We spent the next two days attending to the requirements of reception, records, leave passes etc, and writing letters home as we awaited delivery of our ‘Not wanted on Voyage’ baggage.
In Central Park, New York
Roy Olsen, Keith Mills, Lou Brimblecombe, Bob Smith
Along the St Lawrence River - Part of the Aussie Contingent
Ross Martin and Ian Smith at the ‘Door’ in Tropical Uniform
In the Gardens – Halifax
P/O Bob Smith
Advanced Training-United Kingdom
Brighton, Sidmouth (Devon), West Freugh (Scotland)
Settling into No. 11 P.D.R.C. at Brighton, by midday on Saturday 4th September 1943 I had completed most of the requirements for reception and after lunch (now back to the system of calling the midday meal lunch and the evening meal dinner) I was rostered on my first duty as O.I.C. of one of the light ack-ack batteries on the esplanade, from 1400 Hrs to 1800 Hrs. Almost got court-marshalled when I gave permission to the two N.C.O.’s on the guns to fire a couple of rounds to test them. An English Army Major was soon on the scene to check on ‘the emergency’. After a bit of discussion he accepted my explanation and didn’t take the matter any further. After dinner I met ‘Snow’ who had also come over with the R.N.Z.A.F. contingent on the Queen Mary and who were also billeted with us in Brighton. We went to a dance at ‘The Palais’ that night. Had a very interesting conversation with a girl aged in her early twenties who came from Israel and was working her way through to a degree at an English University, as well as a couple of other girls who were more interested in ‘Snow’. They seemed to think he was a real heart throb. He was a good looking and good natured bloke.
This duty on the gun positions got me out of an awkward position on Sunday. We had Church Parade in the morning, usual roll-up, with quite a few Roman Catholics joining the Presbyterians. After lunch, by chance or design, Snow had met one of the girls we were talking to at the dance on Saturday night, and she suggested that he bring his friend along (that was me) as she had a friend to come with her and we could go to the pictures at night. Being a good friend I went along with him to the cinema on this blind date. Her friend turned out to be about 40 and did not appeal. There was no way I was going to be involved so I called Snow aside and explained the position. He saw my point of view and then backed me up with the explanation that I could not stay as I was rostered to go on Gun Duty in less than two hours. So I made a diplomatic departure and beat it post haste, feeling rather satisfied. Saw Snow the next morning and he told me I had made a wise decision.
On Monday morning I had more matters to attend to at reception. Mostly this was to deal with the issue of Officers uniforms etc. Got measured for my great-coat which was to be made by a tailor on Saville Row and issued with headgear-Officers for the use of.
Up to this point I had kept a small pocket diary since leaving Australia but discontinued the practice forthwith when it was brought to our attention in lectures and sessions held in connection with our reception at Brighton that diaries were not to be kept. This would be particularly enforced once we got on to operational squadrons. As a result from hereon I have to rely on memory and reflections with mates as we recalled our experiences in later years. For the next few weeks it was a daily routine of morning parade to hear who had been drafted to advanced flying schools etc, rostered on to duties such as the gun positions, or orders to attend lectures on the Brighton Pavilion. The beaches were heavily mined and this kept us on our guard when we were on gun duties, particularly when a stray dog wandered on to the beach. The Pavilion was also booby-trapped and was accessible only by walking a plank from the Esplanade.
When not on duties and on stand down we made regular trips to London on the train to get acquainted with the Boomerang Club in Australia House, and enjoy some food that was not available elsewhere. It also gave us an opportunity to explore that area of central London that was within walking distance and included many of the well known and historic buildings and landmarks. Here also, I was introduced to the Overseas Club whose members hosted Commonwealth servicemen on leave. I also had to go to London to be fitted and issued with my Officers Uniforms and Greatcoat. We were also introduced to sirens signalling an air-raid alert and ‘all-clear’, and the lives of Londoners who slept in the underground stations platforms. At Brighton the only enemy action I saw was one day when a German twin-engined bomber came in low over the channel, climbed to about 1000 feet over the town and as it circled around the outskirts dropped a stick of bombs and headed out to sea again. It was all over in less that two minutes and the gun batteries on the esplanade did not get a chance to fire at it.
I Go to Scotland On Leave
On 11th September 1943 I was given 7 days leave (authority POR 174/43) and headed off to Aberdeen to stay with Jim and Nan Joss to whom I had been referred by the Overseas League at the Boomerang Club. I wished to go to Aberdeen to have the chance to visit Kintore where by father and uncles spent leave during WW1. It was a wonderful introduction to Scotland, and the fore-runner of a few more happy times there when on leave which eventually led to meeting a lass who stole my heart, but more about that later. That’s in the future still. Got back from leave to learn that some of the course had been posted to Advanced Flying Units. Keith Mills and Eric Sutton and a few others had been posted to No. 4 Observer A.F.U. West Freugh, Scotland and John Lewis and Lou Brimblecombe had been posted to No. 3 A.F.U. at Halfpenny Green. A few weeks later John was to be our first loss of life when he was killed in an accident flying over Wales on a training exercise. A few days after I got back Noel Hooper, John Honeyman and myself were instructed to attend Course No.14 Aircrew Officers Training School at Sidmouth in Devon.
With necessary travel warrants and instructions we arrived in Sidmouth on Sunday 26th September. The three of us were impressed with the beauty of the English country side as we travelled through Hampshire and Dorset to Devon. It was hard to realise that the country was at war, until you passed an airfield or a large military establishment. We were met at the station and transported to the Training School that was situated in a stately mansion that was probably an up-market holiday resort in peace time.
More Training in Devon
The course was an intense period of lectures on Air Force Rules and Regulations, Physical Exercises, Field exercises with live ammunition, escape procedures and parade ground drills under an iron-fisted disciplinarian R.S.M. from one of the Guards Regiments, whom we referred to as the ‘screaming skull’, but not to his face. None of us was that brave. We were put over an obstacle course on the second day there and only a few of us managed to complete it in the approved time. I was still reasonably fit from athletics training and managed to go over all the obstacles except one, but within the time allowed. After 23 days we were put over the same course again and everyone passed, all the fittest they had ever been.
Field exercises included live ammunition with shots fired at medium range, hand grenades, firework crackers etc and it was our observation to identify the type and direction from which the detonation was heard and make quick decisions on evasion tactics. We were also given exercises in techniques of camouflage and the use of the terrain to move and avoid detection. In the event of being shot down over enemy territory it was your first duty to avoid capture. Parades and Parade-ground drills were real masterpieces with the R.S.M. in charge. The short straw must have had my name on it when it came to parade-ground drills. When we were given duties for colour parades and reviews. I landed the duties of S/M of Parade, Adjutant of Parade, C/O of Parade and Reviewing Officer of Parade. It is a mystery how I was not promoted immediately to rank of Air Commodore or above. Noel and John felt sorry for me-like b.hell they did!
On our first day we were fitted out and issued with khaki battle dress, army boots etc, and this was our standard dress for the course, except for evening meals when the traditions of dining in the Officers Mess were observed. A few got postings from the course either to A.F.U. or back to their unit. I remember one Aussie pilot who was sent to the course as a disciplinary measure after he pranged a ‘Wimpy’ on take-off at an O.T.U, apparently without injury to any of the crew. After about ten days he was posted back to his unit to take up further training with the crew. Nine Aussies started the course but there were only five of us there at the end. Leave was granted most nights and at week-ends, so we were able to spend some time in town and go to the pictures or a dance. Met a girl, Irene Collins, at a dance one night who asked me to escort her home-what a walk; I think it must have been to the next village. She worked in a shoe shop in town, and I did see her a couple of times after that when I went down town.
Most vivid memories of the course relate to small arms firing practice, throwing live hand grenades, and the cross country exercises when we somehow managed to make tracks through an apple orchard, stuff a few into our jackets and get back to discover that we had a sort of crab apple used for making cider. Also tried our hand at toasting chestnuts, but not much satisfaction there either. Drilling the squad when under the instruction of the ‘screaming skull’ provided a bit of entertainment, particularly when he decided to take over and show us how to do it. He would give the order ‘Quick March’ at the top of his voice and let the squad get down the road about 70/100 yards before giving the order ‘About Turn’. By the 50/60 yard mark the squad had agreed that from a certain person forward they would disregard the order, the ones at the crucial point would hesitate, and behind them they would do the about turn. That really curled the ‘mo’ and sent a string of invective over the countryside, when the ones in front said they did not hear him. He didn’t fall for it-had been through that mill many times before. We got the feeling that he would liked to blame the Aussies and give them a bit of extra drill, but as they were of higher rank he had to play it cool.
At week-ends we were given leave, although the whole course was de-facto stand-in for the local Home Guard Unit, we were given details of the mined areas on the beaches, most of which were at the base of high cliffs and difficult to reach. Generally it was the area immediately below these cliffs that were not mined. On our first Sunday Noel and John and I headed off west close to the coastline along the tops of the cliffs, almost to Exmouth from where we could see Torquay in the distance. As we had been walking for a bit over 2 hours, we decided to veer north to a village that had golf links nearby where we found a café and had lunch. We crossed a railway line, into a village called Otterton and followed country roads and lanes back to Sidmouth. The next Sunday we headed north towards Honinton and got as far as Aflington. On this walk, following roads and lanes off the main road we stopped to talk to some villagers to enquire if a village about 2 miles further north had a café that was opened on Sundays. They did not know, had lived there all their lives and had never been to that other village.
We would have walked about 20 miles on each of those Sunday hikes, and that kept us in good physical condition. Knowledge gained on the Sunday hikes proved very valuable later on and was put to good use. On the Tuesday of the last week we had our final test on the obstacle course. No problems for any of us, even up and over the poles that were fixed horizontally at varying heights between the trunks of two pine trees to a height of about 30 feet, the only obstacle that stumped me on our run over the course on our first day. I did not go over the top then, but under it. The next day we were given our final test of escape techniques. We were despatched at 0830 Hrs to go to a spot near the village of Axmouth which lay just south of the road to Lyme Regis and north of the seaside town of Seaton. It was up to us whether we went singly, or in small groups like a crew from an aircraft that had been shot down. But we had to get to the destination without being observed by the instructors who would be in positions at a couple of points along the way. The sergeant in charge of the exercise, when informed that Noel and John and I would stick together and go as a team for the exercise said that was a good idea and even recommended to the others to learn from these Aussies who often did well in this exercise. We did well, but it involved a bit of cunning.
Our plan was to let the field get away and ahead of us while we went to a café for morning tea to formulate our tactics. We had to be at the ‘target’ by 1600 Hrs. That gave us a bit over 7 hours to do about 9 or 10 miles measured in a straight line. We had prepared a bit beforehand, and by fair means or foul John had obtained a woman’s hat and shawl. After morning tea we set off walking to the village of Sidford less than 2 miles north of Sidmouth where we knew we could get a taxi and were sure that no scouts would be stationed along that route. I have a suspicion that John had had a discussion with a taxi driver in this village on one of our Sunday walks because we found him very co-operative and willing to help, although he was going to use up a bit of his petrol ration. Sometimes crosses my mind if he got a voucher from John to say his taxi had been commandeered for defence purposes. For him it was going to be a round trip of about 20 miles. I cannot remember what the fare was, but probably in the 5/10 Pounds range, and that was probably the best fare he had made on a Wednesday in war time. In the taxi we set off on the main road towards Lyme Regis and after about 5 miles turned right along a road that went past a quarry and then north-east to Colyford our destination for the taxi. On this last stretch we had a fair idea that scouts would be stationed, so John donned the hat with the shawl over his shoulders and sat up and surveyed the scene while Noel and I crouched down so as we could not be observed. With a bit of luck John spotted our friendly Sergeant sitting under a tree about 15 yards inside a field with a ditch between him and the road. No other scouts were seen. We left the taxi at Colyfield and walked the last mile or so to Axmouth and the designated meeting place. No one was expecting escapees to come in from a northerly direction so we arrived without being spotted to the amazement of the team that had congregated there. We timed things so that we did not arrive until just after 1530 Hrs. A few had already arrived carrying flags to indicate they had been spotted by one or more look-out scouts. Not long before 1600 Hrs the Sergeant, and other spotters arrived and were about to announce that no one had spotted the 3 Aussies, when he looked around to spot us and cried “How the hell did you three get here??” We told him we did not spot any other look-outs, but we did see him under a tree and where he was.
We had our story ready that we were coming up a ditch beside the road when we spotted him and realised we could not pass along that ditch without him seeing us, so we back-pedalled a bit using trees along the road as cover, and then crossed the road and away a bit to the north, which brought us in from that direction. We told him we were within the length of 2 cricket pitches from him, and that really had him flabbergasted. Somehow or another he got the correct information by Friday morning, and told us he was not very impressed, but couldn’t decide whether to admonish us for not entering into the true spirit of the exercise or just acknowledge that we had exercised initiative that we had so often been instructed to do.
Sunday 24th October saw the completion of our Air Crew Officers Training School, and on Monday morning we set off by train back to Brighton. We went via Salisbury where we had a stop over to have a look around the town and visit the famous cathedral. During WW1 my father had been billeted on Salisbury Plains with 41st Battalion A.I.F. and used to talk about the Cathedral and his visits around the area. I did not know it then, not even until the 1980’s, that my paternal great grandparents had come from East Hagbourne in Berkshire about 20 miles from Reading in the area that we were to-day travelling through.
Back at Brighton on Tuesday it was a return to the usual routine of morning parade, lectures and stand-downs as we waited for a posting to an Advanced Flying Unit. During this time we were attending a lecture in the old ball room on the Pavilion when the whole pier was rocked by an enormous blast. Someone had detonated one of the booby-trap mines on the end of the pier and really started some activity. We were evacuated very quickly. Never heard any more reports and whether there were any casualties apart from a few sea gulls. At Brighton a new contingent of EAT’s N.C.O.’s and Officers had arrived and the duties on the ack-ack guns had been assigned to them which gave us more time to take visits up to London.
My Posting Comes Through - Scotland
On Parade about 6th November my posting came through to No. 4 (Observers) Advanced Flying Unit at West Freugh, near Stranraer in Scotland. There were other navigators on the same posting that were on a course after No. 71 and arrived in Brighton about a month or so after I did. These included Keith Nunn, Hector Craig and Soapy Campbell. Noel Hooper and John Honeyman were posted to an A.F.U. affiliated with No 5 Group Bomber Command. I seemed assured to going into No. 3 Group which operated in East Anglia.
Those going to West Freugh left Brighton by train on Monday 8th November, travelled overnight, changing trains probably at Carlisle, and arrived in Stranraer and on to West Freugh by RAF transport on Tuesday to attend to the usual requirements of reception for a course that was due to start the next day. Keith, Hector, Soapy and I were all billeted in the same Nissen hut in the Officers quarters.
We certainly got our introduction to the Scottish weather coming into their winter. The famous Scotch Mist just hung on and on, in fact for the first six weeks we were there we never saw the sun from the ground, but at 2,500 feet you were above cloud and in clear sky. For the first few days we were kept in the lecture rooms for revision in most of the subjects we had studied at Edmonton and talks on what to expect as we moved on to become acquainted with new navigation aids etc that were coming into use in Bomber Command. Our air exercises at West Freugh over the 8 weeks we were there comprised 30 Hrs 35 mins of daylight flying and 18 Hrs of night flying atSS heights between 1500 feet and 5000 feet. The air exercises over routes as detailed in my log book were mostly over the Irish Sea area to landmarks in Northern Ireland, Wales and the Carlisle area to the East. In most cases the exercise started from Ailsa Craig, a landmark island in the Clyde Estuary. You had to be wary of your height and track to ensure you did not come to grief on the Isle of Man.
A great advantage of flying with RAF Staff Pilots was they flew the course given to them. They couldn’t see the ground anyway most of the time. This gave good experience in D.R. navigation and was a great help in charting an air plot. They were mostly very experienced pilots who had served with the RAF in India as well as on operations at home and were very experienced in flying Ansons and Oxfords.
Some Flying “Incidents”
The starting point of Ailsa Craig nearly caused an accident on one of our exercises. We had climbed through cloud and on course etc, when I said to the pilot we would proceed on our first course of the exercise from E.T.A. Ailsa Craig, which would have been not far out because of the short distance we had flown. He insisted on going below the cloud to get an accurate fix from which to start our exercise. Our course was nearly too accurate, as when we broke cloud at about 800 feet Ailsa Craig was almost dead ahead, and the faithful “Old Aggie” as we called the Anson flew past the cliff face too close for comfort. The pilot circled the island, flew a bit north of it and then came back on the course we were to fly on the first leg and climbed back into the cloud over the island with a satisfied look on his face.
On another exercise the first course was eastwards to Wigtown, and then on to Silloth, past a mountain that was about 1500 feet high near Gatehouse-on Fleet I think it was called ‘Crefell’ and it had claimed a few aircraft crashing into it, so we had to make sure we were at least at 2000 feet. For the exercise we had been given ‘met’ winds of 30/49 Knots from the west. By the time we got near Gatehouse-on Fleet it was obvious that the true wind was over 70 knots and in response to radio message we were recalled.
A flight of less than 30 minutes out took over 2 hours on the return with the Aggie at maximum air speed. Coming over the top of one of those high mountains you had the feeling you could just have jumped off like from a moving tram. A night exercise was scheduled to fly to Newcastle to give us navigation experience and the air defences there some dry-swim practice. Before we got as far as Silloth we were recalled as Newcastle was in fact being raided by the Luftwaffe. Sometimes I have wondered about the co-incidence. It was on one of those exercises that I had a bout of air sickness and on landing the pilot put it in his report. The O.C. Training ordered me to report to the M.O. for an assessment. I cannot remember what his examination involved but I was not scrubbed from flying.
On 30th December we were detailed on navigation exercises flying at 5000 ft. Two navigators were assigned to an exercise flying over the Irish Sea due south to Holyhead in Wales and then north west to Ballyquinton Point in Northern Island. This had the Isle of Man along this path. The two navigators on this route were Keith Nunn and Harold ‘Hal’ Peters, both graduates of No. 74N course. Most of the route was covered in cloud with base at about 1000 feet. It turned out to be a tragic day. The aircraft in which Hal Peters was flying must have descended through the cloud too soon and crashed into a mountain on the island. Hal was 33 years of age and came from Bentleigh in Victoria. He was buried in Andreas (St Andrew) Churchyard on the Isle of Man. My last navigation exercise at West Freugh, a week later, was over this same route.
Another flying incident at West Freugh that remains in my memory concerns the crash of a Hampden twin-engined bomber. A few of the RAF pilots were discussing the flying capabilities of this aircraft, a few of which were stationed at West Freugh for coastal surveillance work. A F/Sgt. pilot was arguing that the aircraft would not pull out of a spin. One of the ex-India RAF Officer pilots disagreed and said when the weather was clear enough he would take one up to about 5,000 feet, put it into a spin and pull out. He did this a few days later in sight of a few onlookers - but unfortunately the aircraft did not pull out of the spin and went down to crash into the sea. One of the ex-India pilots was heard to remark “That is only four of us left now”.
Leave in Oldhall – I meet Alma
As I had advised Jim and Nan Joss in Aberdeen that I had been posted to West Freugh, Nan wrote back to say that she had been in touch with a Friend/Cousin in Paisley and she and her husband would be happy to host me if I went to Glasgow. We were given 48 leave pass one week-end so I took the opportunity to go by bus, getting off at Oldhall between Paisley and Glasgow to visit Ronnie and Molly Whyte and their daughter Alma who lived at 39 Tylney Rd, Oldhall. This led to many enjoyable leaves in Aberdeen and Paisley when I came to be accepted freely by both families over the times ahead and which was eventually to see Alma and I marry. I think that we would both agree however that it was not love at first sight.
Hector Craig, who had some relatives in Glasgow came with me on the bus on our two week-end leaves. We were not happy with the smoke filled busses filled with farm workers in heavy sweaty smelling clothes, and not a window opened. It was winter, damp and cold, but some fresh air was desirable, so we would open the window a bit near our seat to get a look that only a Ranger’s fan would give a Celtic fan. Ronnie Whyte was a staunch Ranger’s follower and I was soon to learn of the rivalry between those two sides. The passion for football, what we called soccer, was new to us.
Our course at West Freugh was completed on 7th January 1944. Our posting came through the next day and we were given a few days to complete clearances-the usual medical, dental etc and pack our Officer issue steel trunk for despatch to our new station. Keith Nunn and Hector Craig and I were posted to No. 84 Operational Training Unit at Desborough in Northamptonshire. We realised then that we were destined for No. 3 group Bomber Command that was equipped with Lancasters. We were given 7days leave and travelling time and had to report to Desborough by 24th January (Auth POR 2/44). Travelling warrants were issued at the Adjutant’s office on 11th January, a day after my 20th birthday anniversary, and I went on leave to Aberdeen for a week and then to London for a few days to catch up with mates at the Boomerang Club.
Now it was on to joining a crew, further training as a crew with more advanced aircraft and at heights above 10,000 feet. As it turned out it was to bigger and better things and experiences that made men of us. ......
West Freugh – Laundry Hung Out to Dry In Our “Heated” Quarters
At Aircrew Officers Training School
Sidmouth, Devon
Noel Hooper, Bob Smith
Bob Smith, John Honeyman
Training as a Crew
Crew Formation at No. 84 O.T.U. (Operational Training Unit)
Desborough, Northamptonshire
For operational training I was posted to No. 84 O.T.U at Desborough in Northamptonshire, an Operational Training Unit under the control of No.3 Group, (RAF Bomber Command) as from 25th January 1944. This Unit was flying ex-operational Vickers Wellington X’s, with unit identification “IF”. This was our introduction to flying above 10,000 feet in aircraft equipped with oxygen. Radio I/D was “Foodramp”.
Along with Keith Nunn and Hector Craig I was accommodated in the Officer’s Quarters and went through the usual reception procedure. A programme of lectures and ‘dry-swim’ exercises started immediately and went on for two weeks. Flying exercises started on 15th Feb, crewed with a staff pilot and flying as a 2nd navigator under supervision, to gain experience on new special navigation equipment and flying at heights of 10,000 to 15,000 feet, wearing oxygen masks. Instructors, mostly with operational experience, assessed our work and passed us as satisfactory to proceed further into the formation of a crew and on to further training towards posting to an operational squadron. Over that first month lectures and tests occupied a lot of time, and were most interesting as we were instructed in new equipment coming into use, some of it still on the secret list. During that second fortnight we flew 2 daylight flying exercises and 1 night exercise of between 4 and 5 hours each. On 28th February after flying a special daylight exercise of 4 ½ hours at 15,000 feet all the aircrew under operational training were assembled at 1700 Hrs and told to sort themselves into crews by the next afternoon.
On 1st March 1944 our crew was formed. In the morning pilot F/Sgt. Ron Hastings approached me to see if I had been claimed yet and when he said he had obtained another Aussie as a Bomb Aimer and two RAF fellows who had come through a gunners course together and wanted to be together in a crew, I agreed to join them. Soon afterwards we approached a Wireless Operator who had many flying hours to his credit and had come from a unit where he was an instructor. So, for the time being we had a crew, with a Flight Engineer to be added when we went on to conversion to four engined bombers:-
The Crew:
Pilot F/Sgt Ronald William Hastings RAAF No.423112 Born 11 Nov 1922
Nav. F/O Robert Wylie Smith RAAF No.425992 Born 10 Jan 1924
B/A F/Sgt Harold Edward Burns RAAF No.422144 Born 5 Nov 1915
W/Op.F/Sgt Victor Frederick Pearce RAF No.1196145 Born 17 Jul 1920
M/U/G Sgt George Henry James Malyon RAF No.1432616 Born 7 Jan 1923
R/G SgtDonald George McFadden RAF No.1387716 Born 26 Feb 1923
All aircrew were volunteers, so the RAF fellows were in the RAF Volunteer Reserve. Between ourselves we were called respectively, Ron, Smithy, Bobby, Vic, Mike and Mac.
On 2nd March most of the newly formed crews, including us, were sent to the satellite ‘drome at Harrington, about 4/5 miles away, to fly a high level bombing exercise in daylight and then about 6 hours on circuits and bumps (which gave the navigator nothing to do) over 2 consecutive nights, and on the next night 2 ½ hours on high level bombing. Having completed these exercises it was back to the main ‘drome on 8th March to start a very intense month of flying training in daylight and at night. These exercises were always over approved set routes, sometimes with an experienced pilot as we went on long night flights, fighter affiliation exercises and high level bombing. Lectures still continued at times during the day and there were breaks for sports and evening/week-end leave.
Dealing With an Emergency
On 13th March, flying in an older Wellington 111 No. X3995 and letter coded “U” for Uncle we had an emergency forced upon us on take-off after lunch. Just as the aircraft started to lift off the runway the flap over the port wing fuel tank inlet sprung open, causing that wing to stall. As that wing started to drop it was only the quick corrective action by Ron that saved us from disaster. It took the combined effort of him and the Bomb Aimer who was standing beside him to hold the joy-stick hard over to starboard to keep the plane on level flight. The control tower had noticed our wild take-off, and before we could gather our wits they contacted us with a call “Foodramp Uncle-are you in trouble”. Ron replied with a brief description of the problem and immediately got a message back to circle if possible and come into land immediately as they would have emergency vehicles standing by. An experienced pilot was put in direct contact from the control tower to assist Ron. Although we did not know it at the time, sirens were sounded on the ‘drome and a fire tender, ambulance and crash wagon were rushed on to the tarmac. Ron instructed me to keep the runway on our starboard wing in sight and guide him around to the downwind end. Then, as he lined the aircraft up on the runway and started a landing approach he ordered all except “Bobby” Burns, the B/A, to take up crash positions, leaving the intercom to all positions open. With the two gunners I took up the crash position. Vic, the wireless operator, was tuned into a BBC radio broadcast and was not aware of the emergency, although he admitted later he thought the flying was a bit rough. I learned a lesson from this as I should have tapped Vic on the shoulder as I went past him to the crash position and beckoned him to join me.
Ron and Bobby managed to control the aircraft sufficiently to make a reasonable landing although it gave a severe lurch to port as we touched down, causing Mac, who was next to me in the crash position and had started to get to his feet as soon as the wheels touched the ground, to fall against me and force my head on to the side of the fuselage resulting in a bit of a lump on my right temple. Mac thought for a minute that he had severely hurt me as we both ended up lying on the floor. This lurch caused Vic to look around and see Mike, Mac and myself in the crash position and to wonder what was going on. So we had a bit of explaining to do. We were all O.K, and saw a certain humour in what happened next. As soon as we came to rest Ron contacted the control tower with their sign and the message “Foodramp Uncle here—we have pancaked”, only to get the immediate response “Foodramp Uncle, if you have pancaked you have not pancaked here”. A quick look around and we recognised the surroundings—we had landed at Harrington, the satellite strip. As they say, all is well that ends well, (in spite of Murphy’s Law). Transport was immediately sent out to the aircraft to take us back to the base ‘drome for a quick medical assessment, but we said we were O.K. The M.O told me I would probably get a black eye if any bruising came out and that my flying helmet had probably saved me from more serious injury. In reflection, it is possible that if Ron had attempted a full 360 degree turn back to the runway we had just taken off from, the outcome could have been much worse.
The M.O did not say anything about not flying for a day or two. The experience certainly strengthened our confidence in and respect for Ron, and taught us valuable lessons. We did not hear what happened to the ground crew responsible for fuelling the aircraft and ensuring that the wing flaps were properly secured. Probably went on a charge and received some form of punishment. The aircraft was given a thorough inspection, before it was moved and flown back to the base ‘drome. The undercarriage must have experienced some stress when we touched down. We flew again in the same aircraft four days later on a high level bombing exercise and had no problems.
By 8th April we had completed all the requirements of the course at O.T.U and were passed as fit material to proceed to conversion to four engine aircraft. We were given about 11 days leave (Auth POR 15/44) and instructed to report to No. 1653 H.C.U (Heavy Conversion Unit) at Chedburgh in Suffolk on 21st April. A signal had come through that a crew was required for an Australian Squadron in No.5 Group with a condition that it must comprise at least 4 Aussies in the crew. The only one to qualify on our course was P/O. George Edwards (Pilot) who had crewed with Keith Nunn as his navigator. Both had known Ron Hastings prior to this time. Keith had known Ron and his father before the war. Both Ron’s father and Keith were employed in the then Union Bank of Aust- later to become the ANZ Bank. Ron & George had trained together as pilots. That crew eventually went on to No.467 (RAAF) Squadron at Waddington in Lincoln and were shot down on their second ‘Op’ on 29th June 1944, bombing the flying bomb base at Beauvoir in France. George was killed and Keith was captured and taken POW. After the war Keith resumed his career with the Union Bank. I have no recollection of where Hector Craig and crew were posted to.
Previous Service history of our Crew members
Pilot “Ron”
When he was born in 1922 his family surname was ‘Heuzenroeder”. His father was employed in the Union Bank and in the mid-1930’s with the world scene focussing on the Nazi regime in Germany, and the bank considering his transfer to Manager of a country town, they requested him to change his surname. Ron was in secondary schooling at the time and chose the name ‘Hastings’.
Ron enlisted in Sydney on 20th June 1942 and was posted to No.2 I.T.S. at Bradfield Park. On 15th Oct 1942 he went to No.5 E.F.T.S at Narramine in N.S.W and on 17 Jan 1943 to No.8 S.F.T.S at Bundaberg in Queensland. On 7th May 1943 he graduated with his pilot’s wings and posted to No.2 Embarkation Depot with rank of Sergeant. Embarked in Sydney on 25th May 1943, travelling via the USA and arrived in the U.K. on 7th July 1943 at No.11 P.D.R.C at Brighton. On 7th Sep 1943 posted to No.15 (Pilot) A.F.U at Andover before posting to 84 O.T.U at Desborough on 25th January 1944.
Nav. “Smithy”
Enlisted 21st May 1942 at No.3 Recruit Centre, Eagle St, Brisbane in an intake of ‘Aircrew Guards’ and posted same day to No.3 Recruit Depot Maryborough Qld. On 13th June 1942 posted as ‘Air Crew Guard to No.1 A.O.S. Cootamundra N.S.W. where on 16th Sep 1942 was posted into No.73 Reserve Squadron. On 11th Oct 1942 posted to No.2 I.T.S. Bradfield Park , Sydney and on 2nd Jan 1943 to No.2 Embarkation Depot, Bradfield Park. Embarked Sydney on 8th Feb 1943 on troopship “U.S.S. Hermitage” to San Francisco and then by train to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. On 7th March 1943 posted to No.2 Air Observers School at Edmonton. Graduated with wings as a Navigator and granted a commission on 23rd July 1943. On 4th Aug 1943 posted to No. 1 “Y” (Embarkation) Depot at Halifax, Nova Scotia. On 26 Aug 1943 embarked on the “Queen Mary” to the UK. Disembarked on 1st Sep 1943 at Gourock, Scotland, and then by train to Brighton, England and posted to No.11 P.D.R.C. on 2nd Sep 1943. On 27th Sep 1943 attended Air Crew Officers Training School at Sidmouth, Devon, for a 4 week course. Posted 0n 9th Nov 1943 to No.4 (Observers) A.F.U at West Freugh, Scotland and on 25 Jan 1944 posted to No.84 O.T.U, Desborough,England.
B/Aimer ‘Bobbie’ or ‘Rabbie’
Enlisted on 25th April 1942 at No 2 Recruit Centre in Sydney and on same day posted to No.2 I.T.S at Bradfield Park. On 15 Aug 1942 posted to No.2 Embarkation Depot at Bradfield Park. And on 21st Aug 1942 posted to No.1 E.D. at Ascot Vale, Victoria. Embarked in Melbourne on 7th Sep 1942 and ‘disembarked’ No.3 Manning Depot, Edmonton Canada on 2nd October 1942. On 11th Oct 1942 posted to No.5 A.O.S at Winnipeg and on 29th Dec1942 posted to RCAF station at Trenton, then on 21st Feb 1943 posted to No.4 Bombing & Gunnery School at Fingal and on 16th May 1943 to No.4 A.O.S at London Ontario. On 13th Oct 1943 posted to No.1 ‘Y’ Depot at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Embarked at Halifax on 22nd Oct 1943 and ‘disembarked’ 31st Oct 1943 at No.11 P.D.R.C. Brighton, England. Posted to No.4 A.F.U. West Freugh, Scotland on 23rd Nov 1943 and on 25 Jan 1944 to No.84 O.T.U. at Desborough, England.
W/Op. Vic.
Enlisted in the RAF 2nd Dec 1941. Commenced flying training in August 1942 after transfer to the RAF V.R. After completion of Wireless Operator’s course was posted to Bobbington as an instructor prior to posting to No.84 O.T.U. Desborough on 25th Jan 1944
M/U/G. ‘Mike’
Enlisted in the RAF on 5th May 1941, in the RAF Regiment. Initial Training at Cardington, and on 30th June 1941 posted to White Waltham and Cranwell for a ground observers course before posting to the Outer Hebrides and Orkney Islands. In June 1943 volunteered for flying duty (R.A.F.V.R) I.T.W Bridlington ,Yorkshire and Air Gunnery Schools in Shropshire and Bishopscourt, Northern Ireland. Graduated with wings in Dec 1943 and posted to No.84 O.T.U, Desborough on 25th Jan 1944.
R/G. ‘Mac’.
Enlisted in the RAF on 5th Feb 1942 and served in the RAF Regiment until June 1943. when he volunteered for flying duties and had the same postings in flying training as ‘Mike’, which is why both wanted to stay together in the same crew. Both came from London.
The Crew in front of a ‘Wellington X’
Ground Staff
Mac, Vic, Mike, Bobbie, Ron Smithy
Hours flown at No.84 O.T.U.
Daylight – 34 Hrs 30 mins Night – 30 Hrs 30 mins
No. 1653 H.C.U. (Heavy Conversion Unit)
Chedburgh, Suffolk
This unit was equipped with ex-operational Stirlings 1 & 111. Unit I/D. H4.
On 21st April we were posted to No. 31 Base (No.3 Group R.A.F.Bomber Command), Stradishall, Suffolk, under whose administration were No.1653 H.C.U. and No.3 L.F.S. Feltwell for training in 4 engined heavy bombers. A Flight Engineer, straight from training at a Rolls Royce training school, was appointed to the crew. As a general rule this was a Flight Engineer’s introduction to flying. Sgt. Ron Partridge was added to the crew, and immediately earned the nick-name ‘Pheasant’ by Ron. His training in the Merlin engine at the Rolls Royce establishment was not put to use while we were flying Stirlings with radial engines, but was going to be valuable when we graduated on to the Lancaster Bomber. Ron was destined to stay with our crew only for our first 6 operational sorties.
After 3 weeks of extensive lectures, introductions to and instructions on the special equipment that we would be using on a squadron, most of it specialist to a particular crew member, and general information that applied to all given by experienced personnel on what to expect on operations over Europe as well as survival and escape techniques it was back to practical flying exercises. At first these were with an experienced pilot for dual familiarisation flights of circuits and bumps and then on to a high level navigation and bombing exercise before Ron was allowed to go solo with his crew.
We did not escape the now accepted ‘emergency’ that can crop up on training flights. On our last ‘dual’ flight on the morning of 18th May we had a F/O. Gill as Captain. On take-off he cut one engine to give Ron the necessary experience in that situation. It almost backfired as the aircraft we were in, R9287 H4-Y (Yoke) was rather sick on 3 engines and refused to climb while the under carriage was still down. Fortunately Chedburgh was on a plateau and the ground fell away from us. The under carriage was retracted and we did manage to gather a bit of speed to give us a safety margin above stalling. The ‘killed’ engine refused to re-start, so Ron also had experience with landing on 3 engines. An eventful 25 minutes. After lunch we were transferred to another aircraft and Ron was allowed to go solo with the crew for 2 hours of circuits and bumps.
Involved in a Diversionary Flight at Time of Normandy Landing
Over the next 18 days and nights we did a number of special cross country navigation and bombing exercises and then flew what was an ‘Op’, but it was not credited as such. It was on the night of 5/6th June 1944, the eve of “D.Day”. We took off at 2310 Hrs on a special exercise flying at 12000 feet which took us out over the North Sea, approaching the Belgian coast near Ostend and at about 20 miles from the coast altered course to roughly Nor-East for 15 mins, before turning to port and then heading back to base crossing the English Coast near Orfordness. We had been on a diversion raid to draw attention away from the landings on the Normanby Coast of France. When we got back over Suffolk we were given a triangular course to fly, still at 12,000 feet, until it was all clear for us to descend and land. Below was an extensive procession of aircraft heading towards France, so we soon realised that the invasion of German occupied Europe was under way. We landed about 0130 Hrs on 6th June, “D.Day”, and were informed that General Dwight Eisenhower would be broadcasting a special announcement later in the morning.
A day or two later we were paraded and given the duty of scouting through a near-by ‘wood’, as there had been a report that a parachutist had been seen to jump out of a German aircraft that had flown over. About 30 to 40 airmen hiked through that wood and surrounding fields, but found nothing. Later in the afternoon two farmers walked up to the guards at the station’s main gate with a suspect in tow. One was carrying a hay fork in a menacing manner. They found him on the edge of the wood, probably waiting for night to fall before moving on. Never did hear what the sequel to that was.
On 12th June, in the afternoon, we were detailed to take an aircraft on a flight test. On arrival at the aircraft we were met by a senior officer who informed us that an important passenger was on board who we had to deliver to Tempsford, the base of No.161 Special Duty squadron, and to fly below 500 feet all the way there and back. So I had to prepare a quick flight plan to Tempsford. When we got on board we discovered that our passenger was a very attractive young French lady, probably in her early 20’s, who was to be parachuted out over France that night on a special mission. What a girl?
No. 1653 Chedburgh – Suffolk
F/E Sgt Ron Partridge Added to The Crew That Went to “Ops”
Smithy, Bobbie, Ron, Pheasant?,
Mac, Mike, Vic
Two days later we completed out training at Chedburgh with a high level bombing and fighter affiliation exercise which involved corkscrews for which the Stirling was not particularly suited, and neither was my stomach. I have to admit that I did suffer some air-sickness on such occasions. On 14th June we were advised of our positing to No. 3 Lancaster Finishing School at Feltwell in Norfolk and to attend to our clearances from Chedburgh.
Hours flown at No.1653 H.C.U.
- Daylight 27 Hrs 25 mins, Night 20 Hrs 25 mins
No. 3 L.F.S. (Lancaster Finishing School)
Feltwell, Norfolk
Still under our posting to No.31 Base, Stradishall we were attached to No.3 L.F.S from 18th June 1944 for a concentrated 10 day course of lectures and instructions and our introduction to the “Lancaster 1”. The squadrons of 3 Group were equipped with the Lancaster 1 and Lancaster 111. The course was mainly for the pilot. Instructors were pilots who had completed tours on the ‘Lanc’.
P.O. Treasure was assigned to our crew for 3 hours of dual and solo circuits and bumps in daylight on 23rd June and for the same at night the following day. The next day we were on our own for a test flying a triangle over Norfolk for over an hour and 2 days later flew a cross country navigation test of over 3 hours.
It was a great thrill to eventually get on to Lancasters. A vast improvement on the Wellington and Stirling and truly the most successful heavy bomber of WW11. It was a ‘plane that gave the crews a feeling of confidence. Its power and manoeuvrability and load carrying capacity exceeded all others at that time. As far as I was concerned I had reached my goal. After some operational experience, you wee convinced that every one who operated in the light and medium bombers in the early years of the war deserved a ‘gong’.
On 27th June 1944 we were advised that we were posted to No.XV/15 Squadron at Mildenhall, Suffolk, a permanent RAF Base and one of the jewels of Bomber Command.
Hours flown at No. 3 L.F.S.
- Daylight 4 Hrs 20 mins, Night 6 Hrs 20 mins
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Bob Smith's Memoirs
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Bob Smith
Date
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2003-03
Spatial Coverage
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Turkey
Turkey--Gallipoli
Australia
Queensland--Brisbane
Queensland--Ipswich
Queensland--Maryborough
New South Wales--Cootamundra
New South Wales--Sydney
New South Wales--Wagga Wagga
New South Wales--Lindfield
New South Wales--Blue Mountains
New South Wales--Neutral Bay
American Samoa
American Samoa--Pago Pago
United States
Hawaii--Honolulu
California--San Francisco
California--Alcatraz Island
California--Oakland
Canada
British Columbia--Vancouver
Oregon
Washington (State)--Seattle
British Columbia--Vancouver
Alberta--Edmonton
Alberta--Jasper
Alberta--Fort Saskatchewan
Germany
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Alberta--Calgary
Germany--Cologne
Tasmania
Italy
Italy--Foggia
Great Britain
Scotland--Gourock
England--Brighton
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
France
France--Laon
Belgium
Belgium--Antwerp
Germany--Wesseling
France--Montdidier (Picardy)
Austria
Austria--Vienna
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Queensland--Cairns
Saskatchewan--Saskatoon
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Ontario--Toronto
North America--Niagara Falls
New York (State)--New York
Québec--Montréal
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Scotland--Greenock
Scotland--Aberdeen
England--Sidmouth
England--Salisbury
Scotland--Ailsa Craig
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland--Gatehouse of Fleet
England--Newcastle upon Tyne
Wales--Holyhead
Scotland--Paisley
France
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
Queensland--Bundaberg
Victoria--Melbourne
Ontario--Trenton
Ontario--London
Saskatchewan
Québec
Nova Scotia
Manitoba
Coverage
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Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Bob's memoirs from his early training until he became operational.
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Format
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107 printed sheets
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MSmithRW425992-230825-03 copy
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
106 Squadron
115 Squadron
142 Squadron
15 Squadron
1653 HCU
166 Squadron
3 Group
4 Group
44 Squadron
467 Squadron
49 Squadron
5 Group
619 Squadron
622 Squadron
640 Squadron
76 Squadron
78 Squadron
84 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aerial photograph
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
Beaufighter
bomb aimer
bombing
Boston
crash
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
flight engineer
H2S
Halifax
Hampden
killed in action
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Master Bomber
mess
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Mosquito
navigator
Nissen hut
Oboe
observer
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Breighton
RAF Bridlington
RAF Cardington
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Cranwell
RAF Desborough
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Feltwell
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Harrington
RAF Kirmington
RAF Leconfield
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Silloth
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tempsford
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
RAF White Waltham
RAF Wigtown
RAF Witchford
Red Cross
sport
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
training
V-1
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1918/45592/MCrawfordJ416818-170808-13.2.jpg
986e8da1c92e18cc153f44587d697a66
Dublin Core
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Title
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Crawford, Jack 416818
John Crawford
J Crawford
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-08
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Crawford, J
Description
An account of the resource
18 items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer John "Jack" Crawford (416818 Royal New Zealand Air Force) and contains his diaries, documents, correspondence and photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator/ air gunner with 189 Squadron and was killed 4 March 1945. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by john Herbert and catalogued by Lynn Corrigan.<br /><br /><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW220471175 BCX0">Additional information on John "Jack" Crawford</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW220471175 BCX0"> is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/105207/">IBCC Losses Database.</a></span>
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Title
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No. 2 Wireless School
Description
An account of the resource
A list of the 48th entry graduates including John 'jack' Crawford.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
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Canada. Royal Canadian Air Force
Date
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1943-02
Temporal Coverage
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1943-03
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Alberta
Alberta--Calgary
New Zealand
New Zealand--Hamilton
Coverage
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Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Service material
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One leaflet
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription
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MCrawfordJ416818-13
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
aircrew
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/621/8890/PParryHP1609.2.jpg
b7df933b79f45737f7c38a9f7b59ea8c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/621/8890/AParryHP161011.1.mp3
2d504a390d6a64c19871b79350c9f428
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Title
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Parry, Hugh
Hugh Pryce Parry
H P Parry
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Parry, HP
Description
An account of the resource
20 items. Two oral history interviews with Hugh Parry (b. 1925, 2220054 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs and newspaper cuttings. Hugh Parry flew operations as an air gunner with 75 Squadron and then as a photographer and air gunner with 90 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Hugh Parry and catalogued by Stuart Bennett.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HP: And then, you want me then to carry on through my life story?
CB: Yeah.
HP: But I can’t, wouldn’t be able to give you the end.
CB: That’s all right.
Other: Haven’t got there yet.
JB: I think we’re quite pleased about that Hugh.
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today we’re with Hugh Parry in Abingdon and the date is the 11th of October 2016 and Hugh’s going to talk about his life and times with the RAF. But what are your earliest recollections of life, Hugh?
HP: Well, I was born in Oswestry on the 22nd May 1925 to Sam and Nora. Sam was the manager of the local furniture shop. A branch of Astins. He had the, a travel gene and he had spent some time in Canada and America. His father before him had spent some time in Australia. And that gene persists in the family to date. I had a sister who was older than me. At the age of five — no — four, I went to Bellan House Preparatory School. Left there at nine, ten and went to Oswestry School which was then Oswestry Grammar School which is the second oldest school in the country founded in 1407. Got my, I was a bit precociously young. Did my school certificate at the age of fifteen and by the contact with my mother’s brother who was the manager of the local Midland Bank got a job with a firm of accountants there. And at the age of sixteen was articled to a chartered accountant. Joined the Air Training Corps and the National Fire Service was part time. In the Air Training Corps I was the youngest of a group of friends who were all going to volunteer and be on a squadron as soon as they possibly could. When they all went and volunteered they all went for PNB. Consequently they all got long deferred service. They were still taking air gunners. Well, being the youngest I went and, initially to Shrewsbury which was a joint recruiting centre for the three services. Moved from there to Birmingham which was for the aircrew medical and volunteered for air gunner. There was a height limit of six feet for air gunners. I made sure, knowing this I made sure I wore baggy trousers because I was slightly over six feet. And I joined the RAF on the twenty fifth anniversary of its formation on the 1st of April 1943 and for call-up at the age of eighteen and a half which duly came in December 1943. And I had to report to the ACRC at St John’s Wood. Well, the usual thing of queuing up for injections and blood tests and the usual introduction to that which baffles brains, and in January got posted to ITW at Bridlington where my principal memory is of PT on the sands without getting the sands wet because the rain came across the North Sea horizontally. But it was not the most comfortable of places. From there moved on to ITW at Bridgnorth in Shropshire and all just totally routine. From there to, [pause] No. We’d been to Bridlington. From there to Bridgnorth. Yes. Bridgnorth we’re at. Elementary Air Gunnery School. And from there to Pembrey on the South Wales coast. Not too far from Llanelli. Then passed out from there on the 1st of July 1944 which was unfortunate because automatic promotions came annually and if I had been told of passing out on the 30th of June I would have got an extra promotion. Sods law. Can’t say. Moved then to Woolfox Lodge. No. I tell a lie. To Westcott. In Buckinghamshire. Not too, not too far from Aylesbury where we were crewed up. There for approximately three months and it was Paddy Goode and his crew. We were an all NCO crew. And on the 7th of October we were posted to aircrew school at Stradishall which was just to keep us out of, out of people’s way until the 28th of October. From there go to 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit at Woolfox Lodge. On the 11th of February 1945 got posted to 75 Squadron at Mepal in Cambridgeshire. 3 Group. Not 5 Group. Repeat. Not 5 Group. On the first operation it was normal for the pilot, skipper, to go as a second dickie with an experienced crew on the first trip. Our CO’s crew were on holiday so he took us on our first trip. His name was Wing Commander Baigent. He was an old man of twenty three at the time. I think he got his DSO when he was with us and he died in 1953. I think that’s what my memory said. It was —
[Loud bells from chiming clock!]
HP: 75 New Zealand Squadron which doesn’t appear on a lot of Bomber Command memorials because it was New Zealand Air Force. We were posted there because there was a shortage of replacement crews coming forward and there was several, not too many, UK crews there. They were a wonderful, friendly people. They had comforts sent to them from New Zealand which were, was not in such an austere state as this country and they shared. Shared them always with us. Leave, of course, was compulsory on a squadron every six weeks. Things got easier. We had five leaves in four months which didn’t do us any harm. When you went on leave you get, got an extra five shillings from the Nuffield Fund which, added to the eight shillings which you got there, was a welcome addition. Looking back forty pence a day to be an air gunner does not seem an overpayment. Anyway, we stayed there until the 16th of June ‘45 and did half a tour there. The last one being the first air drop under the Operation Manna which was very different to the others because we had to go over there on a specified route at three hundred feet which was, we were told, it had been agreed with the Red Cross. We were not told it had been agreed with the Germans because on that date it hadn’t and we were followed by flak guns who were lining this route. That part of Holland was, at that stage, still occupied by the, by the Germans. The reason for Operation Manna was that twenty thousand Dutch people had died from starvation. So the affect, you can well imagine, was very great on all the rest. Despite their German occupation they were out in the streets. Out on the rooftops waving their flags and generally cheering and waving us and that was quite remarkable. Because we were on the first one we didn’t have packs to put the sacks of food on. They were just loaded on the bomb bay doors and they were dried egg, dried milk, flour. Really basic things. And you did it at three hundred feet. You just opened the bomb doors and there they went. And of course coming back it was so wonderful to have been giving life instead of taking life. An earlier but totally different memory results from the publication in the newspapers of the Belsen camp being liberated. With piles of corpses and piles, and people walking. Well walking or sitting. Skeletons. Slowly starving. We seldom but very occasionally would wonder where our bombs had dropped because there was an inevitable meeting between the bombs and hospitals and children and so forth and so on. And this was at the back of your mind wondering where they had been because I mean you couldn’t possibly see where they’d been. But once we saw the pictures of Belsen it had two effects on us. One was horror. And the other one was it removed any feeling of guilt. So on the 17th of June we were posted to 90 Squadron because 75 Squadron was going to be repatriated or go out to the Pacific or somewhere. And that was at Tuddenham and we were there on operational review which was photographic survey of the whole of Europe. We were, we believed that we were going out with Tiger Force to Okinawa in September ‘45. We were never officially told that but when the bombs dropped in August ’85 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a tremendous cheer went up because we knew that we were not going to be done again. There were one or two crews who hadn’t been on any ops who were a bit disappointed perhaps.
[Recording paused]
CB: Right. We’re restarting now.
HP: We left 90 Squadron and the crew was dispersed on the 30th October 1945 and we were sent to Catterick. Some of us. So I think the pilot and the navigator were posted to Transport Command and the rest of us were spare. And there was a holding unit at Catterick where, it was there until it was decided what we’d do with us and we were there for a month until the 28th of November ’45 when we were posted to Silloth for work at a, at a Maintenance Unit. And I found myself in the guard room in charge of a guard dog and walking around. And since I was of an equal or higher rank than all the rest of the policemen that was quite a pleasant occupation. Just walking around the camp. And I made sure I had the dog with me. On the 3rd of January, possibly because of my background in accountancy, I was sent to the School Of Accountancy Training at Kirkham which is not too far from Blackpool and finished there on the 31st of January. Moving from there to an Equipment Disposal Depot, 276 Maintenance Unit at Burton Wood. From there on the 27th of February at my last posting to 268 MU which was an Equipment Disposal Depot at Marston Moor in Yorkshire. People have heard of Marston Moor. And if I had obeyed orders I would still be there now because I was told to report to the demob centre on the 31st of April 1947. So I didn’t. I went there on the 1st of May and therefore left the RAF. Now, from a family point of view in March, no, May, 1945 I met the girl who was going to become my wife and we got married in October 1946 and managed to get a flat together on our demob. And in May 1948 the first child was born who was described by the local Scottish GP as, ‘A wee demob present.’ I returned to the firm where I was articled because it was a five year article. I had just done two. About two years before going in the RAF. Concessions due to people who’d been in the forces. The five years was reduced to three so I had a year to do then and I had the exams to do. You got exemption from the intermediate or consideration on two subjects in the final. I decided to opt for the consideration of the two. This was done by correspondence course. There was no tuition other than the occasional Saturday morning lecture in Liverpool. Took the final exams in November ‘48 and got the results in January ‘49. It was easy to find out what your result was. We were on the second floor of this block of flats and you knew what time the post came and it came down and just went through on to the floor down there. You had a careful look and if it was a thin envelope you had failed. If it was a thick envelope it had the application for membership and you knew you’d got through. So from there having moved from a very small practice in Oswestry. You know, which was local firms, farms and nothing. Small. Needed to go for some experience on bigger stuff so we moved to London. Lived in Raynes Park and I got a job with Price Waterhouse. No. I beg your pardon. [Pitt Mark and Mitchell?] which was audits on a big scale including, I can say, Fairey Aviation at Hayes, which was interesting. Having done that for a year I decided I would rather make my own mistakes than find other people’s so got a job with United Dominions Trust which, at that time was the main hire purchase business and their premises were in Thames Street. They were just by London Bridge in London. I stayed there for two years and it was, it was a boring job and then the travel gene came out so I got a job with the India General Navigation and Railway Company Limited founded in 1847 which provided river steamers up and down the Ganges and the Brahmaputra with a head office in Calcutta. So went there. Obviously in the accounts department. The scale of it was rather surprising. There isn’t a bridge on the Brahmaputra for the first seven hundred miles because there isn’t enough stable bank. One of the principal activities was bringing tea down from Assam. There were a lot of general cargo but that was a bulk one. And in the month of October which was the busy month we would bring down from Assam to Calcutta for loading up from the port six hundred thousand eighty pound chests of tea which is a lot of cups full. The passenger vessels were licensed to carry more passengers than the Queen Mary. Two and a half thousand. Perhaps not quite in the same standard of comfort but it was an important link in the travel of East and West Bengal which were now separated. East Bengal at that stage was East Pakistan. Later changed its name to Bangladesh when it separated from what was then West Pakistan. In the December of that that year we moved from Calcutta to Dakar where an office was being set up because of the split of all the various companies following the devolution in 1947 and had to set up, from scratch, an accounts department there. Fortunately, twelve Hindu clerks were content to come with me even though they were moving to a Mohammedan country which had been a lot of unpleasantness in the recent past and I was very appreciative of that. They stayed for about four or five months whilst I got the furniture for the office and recruited seventy local people with a minimum qualification of a B-Comm and generally speaking an M-Comm. That meant that they were able to express a third as a percentage or the other way around. There, until the [pause] sorry. In Calcutta we were in partnership with the River Steam Navigation Company which was the same company that ran the British India Steamship Company and they were, ran joint services but they had separate marine engineering accounts and all the other departments and it was decided it would be better to set up the joint ones. At that time I was posted to Chittagong and there to sit in an office for six months drawing up the procedure and the layout of the books and all the things for the joint accounts department in Calcutta. Having done which, posted back to Calcutta to make the bloody thing work and stayed doing that until 1957 when, by that stage having had another child out there and where the expat community was tending to diminish. It was, when I went there in 1952 there were ten thousand British expats in Calcutta. All with, all in management jobs. Decided it was better to come back to the UK. Decided then not to work north of a line from the Mersey to the Wash. Not London. And the Black Country. Got a job just outside Abingdon which was in Berkshire with Ameys which was a building material company using sand and gravel quarried stone, concrete, concrete products. I stayed there from 1958 until retirement in 1985 at the age of sixty.
[Recording paused]
CB: Just doing a recap on a number of things now, Hugh. In your earliest stages you talked about your friends volunteering for PNB — Pilot, Navigator, Bomb aimer. What happened to them?
HP: They were called up, sort of, eighteen and a half, nineteen. Sometimes just a bit over nineteen because they initially were put on deferred service but when they were called up they were given ground jobs as aircraft and general duties. And none of them completed any flying training or ever got to a squadron. So my decision to go for air gunner although it was thought a much lower and lower class occupation than the rest of the aircrew I was fortunate enough to get all the way through and became their envy. I got paid slightly more which was a bit expensive when they were on leave and I was at the same time.
CB: To what extent did you keep up with them during the war?
HP: Very little.
CB: You didn’t know where they were I presume.
HP: If you were on leave at the same time you did but I mean your life was very full.
CB: Yes. Ok.
HP: And you, you were meeting new people all the time.
CB: Yeah.
HP: And you didn’t make too many intimate friends as such because you were aware that their, of their life expectancy and that there was this distance. Certainly between crews and to an extent within a crew.
CB: Ok so —
HP: You were very close together. If one chap had any money you all had money. But as far as mixing with families goes — no. The bare minimum.
CB: Now you mentioned crews. So this is moving ahead a little but you crewed up at number 11 OTU at Westcott and what happened there? You arrived at Westcott. Then what happened?
HP: The day after arrival all the various un-crewed up members were assembled in a hangar. The pilots then sort of cruised around accumulating a crew. And there didn’t — there was no logic about it. There was no question of people being placed with one or another. It just happened. In the American Air Force I think they were posted together by order of their superiors but with us we just accumulated and that started off as a period of trust.
CB: And what was your pilot like?
HP: Paddy Goody was basically of Irish descent. He was, I think he was a flight sergeant there. He got a commission in the end of March I think it was. ‘45. We were all from very much the same background. You know. Sort of Grammar School or equivalent.
CB: Ok. And was he a good leader? [pause] Or you just followed what he —
HP: Well we worked together as a crew. There wasn’t conscious leadership as such. We moved as a unit. Not as six people commanded by the pilot
CB: Right. And then what about the other members of the crew? Should we? What about the bomb aimer?
HP: The bomb aimer. Taffy Williams. We knew him as grandad because he had his twenty third birthday when he was with us and he came from not too far from Rhosllanerchrugog. Try and spell that.
CB: That’s an easy one. Yes. [laughs]
HP: The navigator, Roy Wootton came from Nottingham. The Gilly, the other air gunner, he was a Londoner. The flight engineer, he joined us when we were at Heavy Conversion Unit and he was a Geordie. The wireless operator, Gilly — no. Harper. Gilly was the other gunner. Harper. Harper he was. He came from Grantham. Now he was a bit of an oddity. After an operation he would sit on his own in the mess not talking to anyone and he ended up by more or less excluding himself from a crew. So he left us and we were joined by another wireless operator who was a spare on the squadron. I can’t remember his name. We weren’t together all that time. Otherwise, as a crew if one had a pound you all had. You all had a drink, you know. And it was very much a crew spirit.
CB: So the crew spirit at the OTU.
HP: That’s where it generated.
CB: Was pretty good was it? It’s just that when you got to the HCU that you had this difficulty with Harper.
HP: No. That was on the squadron.
CB: On the squadron. Right.
HP: Yes.
CB: Ok.
HP: Because after an operation he would sit separately.
CB: Ok.
HP: Not after a flight.
CB: So why did he move? Was he — did somebody say, ‘Right. That’s it.’ and say, ‘We’ll have somebody else,’ or, how did that happen?
HP: Well as because he was part of the crew the rest of us said, agreed with the pilot, that he would go and see the chap in charge of the wireless operators, you know. Which was a sort of separate wireless operators section. There was a gunnery section, a bomb aimers section and say, ‘Look we think it is better from his point of view as much as from ours if he doesn’t stay with us.’ Now, he was eventually posted but we made sure that he didn’t carry with him the horrible initials of LMF with which I’m sure you’re familiar.
CB: I was going to ask you about that. Keep going. Yes.
HP: Yeah. Yeah. We made sure that he was just posted and not, not labelled.
CB: Ok. So what we’ve talked about is going back a little now. You joined at Shrewsbury. Was that a recruiting office?
HP: Yeah. Shrewsbury was the combined recruiting office for all three services.
CB: Right. And what did they do there? You knew you wanted to be RAF but —
HP: Oh yes. Yeah. So you went, you went to the RAF section. You said what you wanted to do. You had the normal medical which everyone went through and you had an interview and if you were considered reasonable at that level you then went to Birmingham for the aircrew medical and aptitude tests and recruitment and where you got your shilling.
CB: Now. The shilling’s important. We’ll come back to that. But you said aircrew tests. You’d already indicated you wanted to be an air gunner.
HP: Yeah.
CB: Were you on that stream?
HP: Yes.
CB: And what were the —
HP: No. No. You were on an aircrew stream.
CB: Aircrew stream.
HP: At that stage.
CB: Right. Ok. So what tests did they give you there?
HP: Oh. Extra medicals. Extra sight tests. Hand and eye coordination with which you’re familiar. The test.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Ok.
HP: And aircraft recognition. All sorts.
CB: Then when you went to ACRC, the Aircrew Reception Centre in —
HP: St John’s.
CB: St Johns Wood was there any repetition of what you’d done or was it a different? What did you do there?
HP: You went there to be kitted out and punctured.
CB: Yeah. Inoculations.
HP: Yes. And if you were in one particular requisitioned block of flats you actually went to eat in Regents Park Zoo.
CB: But not eating the animals. The —
HP: Not. You didn’t know.
CB: [laughs] So then you went to ITW at Bridlington. That was an ITW was it? Bridlington.
HP: It was.
CB: Pardon?
HP: Yes.
CB: It was. Right. So that was when you were on the beach and you’ve got the driving rain.
HP: Yes.
CB: What was the main activity there?
HP: Aircraft recognition. The guns with which you had to be familiar. Both from the point of view of their components and their stripping and very limited amount of firing. Law, discipline and just general background to assimilate you in to the air force with a view to moving on to air gunner training.
CB: So what were the guns you were using? Were they ones that were used on the ground like Bren guns and rifles? Or —
HP: Yes. They tended to be. But that was a minor point. I mean using live ammunition was not that very serious.
CB: Ok. Then you went to Bridgnorth. Now this is the, [pause] a gunnery school is it?
HP: Number 1, Elementary Air Gunnery School. Number 1 EAGS.
CB: Ok.
HP: No flying there at all but just taking this, taking the ITW disciplines a stage further.
CB: So how were they teaching you air gunnery there? For instance to what extent did they use clay pigeon shooting?
HP: I don’t think we had clay pigeon shooting there. We might have done but it was just more intense of stripping and reassembling and, say, aircraft recognition and you did a limited amount of astronomy so that, you know, you could do that and a limited amount of what might happen on an escape and evasion. I don’t remember much more.
CB: Ok. And the guns there. Were they the type that would be in the aircraft? In other words Brownings. 303.
HP: I think it was there we were first introduced to the Browning 303.
CB: In a turret? Or in an open deck?
HP: I think we had possibly a very limited amount of turret manipulation but very limited. And yeah and following a dot which was put around a darkened chamber through the gun sight.
CB: Right.
HP: To get the turret manipulation.
CB: So your next move was Pembrey on the, on the [Caernarvon?] Coast.
HP: South Wales Coast.
CB: Cardigan Coast is it? Anyway. The edge of Cardigan Bay.
HP: Yeah.
CB: So that’s —
HP: No. No. No. South Wales.
CB: South Wales. Right. So where —
HP: Yeah. Overlooking the Bristol Channel.
CB: Oh. Over the Bristol Channel. Right.
HP: Yes. Yeah.
CB: So what was the activity there? What did they teach you there?
HP: Well again just a development but at that stage you would have four trainee air gunners going off in an Anson firing live ammunition at a drogue towed by a Miles Magister or a Master. I can’t remember. I can’t remember which. And when the tow was over the drogue would be dropped on the runway and it would be picked up by the four trainee air gunners from the Anson. Having landed before they got, they got to it and that would be taken into a hut with a long bench and you would then identify the bullet holes which you had made. Not that anybody else had made. Now the, I think the firing was two hundred and fifty rounds for each. It was made up in a belt of four lots of two fifty. Three had their gun, their round tips dipped in a colour and the fourth one didn’t have any colour at all. So you had traces of the colour in the drogue and you counted the number of holes and divided them by two. One for the bullet to go in. The other one for the bullet to go out. And that gave you a score. You also had fighter liaison with the camera gun where you were practising deflection and bullet trail and all the other various parts. And with the target aircraft diving, moving, doing mock attacks. And those, the film from those camera guns was then assessed as to your ability to be able to fire directly.
[Recording paused]
CB: We’ve talked about your training there in the Anson and you mentioned deflection shooting. Could you just describe what that means?
HP: The only point blank shooting which was shooting direct at an aircraft would be one which was immediately behind you and travelling at the same speed and not changing direction. From there you could aim straight at it. If it were in any position other than that you had to put the bullet where the aircraft would be when the bullet got there and this would involve both speed and direction. It might be climbing — losing speed. It might be diving and gaining speed. So you had to rapidly assess which you thought it would be and in your gun sight there was a point and a circle. Within the circle you would draw a line in your mind from the point to the edge of the circle that the plane would be coming in to and you then had to assess how many of those radiuses you needed to move according to the speed of the aircraft relative to the speed of the one you were in. Apart from that there was one other complication that your own aircraft could well be manoeuvring violently as well.
CB: Yes. So in practical terms then the amount of deflection, the amount you aim ahead would depend, to some extent, on the relative position of the other plane.
HP: Yes. And what it was doing and what your own plane was doing.
CB: Right. So what might your own plane be doing?
HP: Might be diving, climbing, turning.
CB: What about corkscrew?
HP: Well if if you went into a corkscrew it was most unlikely that the attacking aircraft would follow you because it wouldn’t be able to. That was the point of the corkscrew. If he could follow you through into a corkscrew well there was no point in corkscrewing.
CB: Right. So could you just describe how you’d get into the corkscrew and what was the corkscrew?
HP: The cork.
CB: Who would call the corkscrew?
HP: The gunners would usually call the corkscrew because they would be the ones seeing the attacking aircraft who were aft. And you could corkscrew to the port or to starboard. A corkscrew to port would be when the pilot would dive port and having done that for a matter of some seconds. Ten, fifteen perhaps. He would then turn the aircraft and dive starboard. He would then climb starboard and then climb port and then he would dive port. And that would repeat a circular movement which can adequately be described by going along and describing a pass, a corkscrew in the air.
CB: And the fighter would normally be closing at a higher speed or the same speed?
HP: He would, if you were corkscrewing the fighter would probably stand off because his chance of being able to hit you when you were corkscrewing were the same as your chance of hitting him when you were corkscrewing.
CB: Right.
HP: That was the point of doing a corkscrew.
CB: Right. So we are at Pembrey and you’ve been getting all this training. What happened then? How long was that? Relatively short period?
[Recording paused]
HP: The Air Gunnery School was from the 25th of March 1944 to the 30th of June so that was three months which was the longest period there.
CB: Ok. And from there you went to the OTU.
HP: Yes.
CB: We talked about crewing up. What did — because there were all the disciplines except flight engineer at the OTU what were the tasks you did as a crew?
HP: Well we were flying in Wellingtons so we had to become familiar with the Wellington. When walking down the gang plank from forward to aft or aft to forward you had to make sure you didn’t, you didn’t let your foot slip on either side because it would go through the fabric of the fuselage and that would cost you five shillings to the ground crew to mend when you got back. And since your pay was four shillings a day you were very careful walking. It was familiarity with cross country flying with the wireless operator then. It was everybody becoming more familiar with their trade and doing, for the first time, practice bombing runs with practice bombs on bombing ranges which might be on the ground or they might be just just on the coach.
CB: And were you — as far as the gunners were concerned that wasn’t a task you were directly involved in but were you doing fighter affiliation?
HP: Oh yes.
CB: As well?
HP: Yes.
CB: And how would that normally take place?
HP: Generally more. Generally with, not with drogues but with cameras. And not — and with fighter aircraft because it was part of their training. So you were helping a fighter, our own air force fighter aircraft to do the same thing so they would have their camera guns on you.
CB: Now the number of airfields was very high so what area would you be doing fighter affiliation work? It was?
HP: Well you could fly out over the sea or you could, or you could go west because if you went west say from [pause] oh a line drawn up north south through Birmingham there was plenty of air space there and there was, or went beyond Yorkshire there was plenty.
CB: Right.
HP: Or over the sea.
CB: So you were at Westcott for three months and at the Number 11 OTU. And then you go to the HCU. At Westcott did you know where you were going to be posted or did that only emerge —
HP: No.
CB: At the last minute?
HP: Well it only, in fact it only, when you got your orders through the post because you were probably on leave. You just reported.
CB: Right. So you’d finish your OTU training and go on leave and then find out. In this case that you were going to Woolfox.
HP: Yeah.
CB: So what happened there? What was the aircraft?
HP: From there to the Lancaster which was of course a lot bigger aircraft. You had your flight engineer.
CB: He joined you then.
HP: He joined you there and it was just more cross country. More. Just more of the same but I think we went on one diversion raid to Calais. We would. You did that to sort of draw off the German Air Force from the intended target. They would have a force going there and we got, I think we got shot at over Calais which was a bit unfair we thought because we were only training.
CB: Yeah. Not fair at all. [laughs] So those sorties. Would they, what sort of flight time would you have there? Would they be fairly short because you went to Calais and back? Or would you then go on somewhere different to make up the time?
HP: Excuse me while I look up.
CB: That’s fine.
HP: Woolfox Lodge. We did a lot of circuits and landings, rated climbs, fighter affiliation, a run on H2S, cross country’s or practice bombing and general fighter affiliation. Yeah.
CB: Ok. We’ll stop there just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok. So you finished at Woolfox Lodge and you were then posted to Mepal in Cambridgeshire. What, what were you impressions when you arrived there? The squadron and the station.
HP: Well we were made very very welcome.
CB: This is a New Zealand squadron.
HP: Yes. And we were still at that stage an all NCO crew. We didn’t have any problem. You had the traditional two crews to a Nissen hut and everybody had a bike so that they could get to the mess and they could eat. Everything was relatively informal but the discipline all through the training became more and more your own discipline and the crew discipline. You weren’t ordered to do many, to do things in detail. You knew you had to report at a certain time every day to the gunnery section or what, if you weren’t doing anything else and you just did it. As you would any job in Civvy Street. There was a high degree of discipline but it was self-imposed of necessity.
CB: And tell us about the crew. So they had a motto and the squadron was supposedly New Zealand but what was the composition?
HP: I don’t follow the —
CB: Right. So what was the motto of the New Zealand Squadron? 75.
HP: That was, that was the motto of the New Zealand squadron Ake Ake Kia Kaha.
CB: Right. Which meant?
HP: “For ever and ever be strong.”
CB: Right. So why were there, why were there British crews as well?
HP: Because there weren’t enough New Zealand crews coming forward to replace the casualties.
CB: Right. And what about the ground crew?
HP: All British.
CB: And what association did your crew have with the ground crew?
HP: Well, we had the same aircraft all the time and it was friendly without being really familiar. They wouldn’t want to become over familiar with the crew because they didn’t want to lose their crews. But they tended to, if you were on an op, they would wait to see if you came back before they went off on leave.
CB: And what was the chief, the chief of the ground crew, the chief — the crew chief. Who did he liaise with in terms of the aircraft?
HP: Well he would liaise according to the trade which was involved. I mean you had air frame, you had wireless, you had gunnery. You know. Engines. They had, the ground crew were a team of specialists who tended to reflect the trades of the aircrew. On return from a flight of any sort whether it be training or operational a report would be made to the ground crew of any problems or anticipated problem.
CB: And who would do that in your crew?
HP: Depends on the speciality. There’s no point in anyone trying to inform the problems of another one’s trade because he wouldn’t know.
CB: Right. So in the crew there are people at the front, people at the back and people in the middle. As the mid-upper gunner who had the best perspective?
HP: When you say perspective you mean the greatest all-around view?
CB: When you’re flying.
HP: Oh yes. No doubt about it. The mid upper gunner because you could turn through three hundred and sixty degrees and you could look upwards and downwards.
CB: And in your position how many guns did you have?
HP: Two.
CB: And how often did you fire them on operations?
HP: Seldom.
CB: Was there a reason for that?
HP: Yes. Nothing to fire at as we were mainly on daylights to synthetic oil plants.
CB: Ah.
HP: Bombing on GH which you are aware of.
CB: Yeah. On —
HP: And we had close escort of Mustangs and high escorts of Spitfires. So we didn’t have a lot of trouble with fighters. We had the odd rocket one would come through. Go up and, you know, firing as it went up and firing again as it came down.
CB: ME262 er 163.
HP: 163.
CB: 163. Yes.
HP: Yes. The 262 was the first —
CB: Jet.
HP: Jet. And the target areas were heavily supported by flak. The reason we were going there was to — obviously so that there was no oil available. No fuel available. And it became apparent from the shortage of fuel for tanks and aircraft that we were achieving what we set out to do.
[Recording paused]
HP: That is shortly going to go twelve.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ask the question.
JB: I was just wondering how it was that you met your wife and what she was doing.
HP: I was, I was on leave and I was friendly with a family called the Morgans. Morgan family. And we used to tend to go to the same places. This was the Queen’s Hotel. She was friendly with a female member of that family. I was familiar with one of the boys. I went in there. Met for the first time in April ‘45 and it just moved on very naturally from there.
JB: Oh right. And so was she working?
HP: Yes. She was working in a chemist’s.
JB: In the hotel?
HP: In a chemist’s shop.
JB: Oh right.
HP: She wasn’t a qualified pharmacist.
JB: No.
HP: But she did a lot of dispensing from the prescriptions.
JB: Right. Right. Did she develop that after the war? Did she carry on? Did she?
HP: No. We were. No. We were married. She was the mother of the children.
JB: Yes. That was a time when you did. You did. Your job was to be mother of the children wasn’t it?
HP: Yes.
JB: So that’s something that I don’t think people these days quite cotton on to. Apparently.
CB: We’re going to stop because we’re coming to the 12th hour.
HP: Yes.
[Recording paused]
CB: We’ve restarted now just to pick up on an item which was to do with the wireless operator and we didn’t really go in to it but LMF, lack of moral fibre was a particular stigma. So how did you see it and how did it affect your crew?
HP: You were aware that this was a sanction. You couldn’t be put on a charge for refusing to fly because you were all volunteers. There had to be a sanction for those who deliberately avoided it or demonstrated any signs of cowardice. It would, a lot depended on the squadron commander and the medical officer as to the sanction which would be applied and to the history of the individual and what he actually did to possibly justify an assessment. If somebody was — appeared to refuse to fly out of sheer cowardice he could be classified as LMF. That was put on a rubber stamp on all his documents. He would be posted to an aircrew disciplinary school at Sheffield and the same thing could apply to a total crew if a total crew went, as a unit, LMF and those initials would follow them as a matter of disgrace all the way through. So because you couldn’t be disciplined for refusing to fly you had this as the alternative which was shame. And it was shame that would accompany you for the rest of your time. So to what extent this stopped people taking actions which would possibly declare them LMF of course can never be known.
CB: And in the case of your crew — what happened there?
HP: Nothing.
CB: But you had a man, a wireless operator —
HP: We had a man who we could no longer get on with and he was isolating himself. He carried out, he carried out his job reasonably well but became incompatible with us and for that reason we made sure that although we made arrangements with him to be replaced that there was no stigma attached to him.
CB: Yeah. He was posted elsewhere was he?
HP: Yes. I think so. But no —
CB: But nobody. Nobody knew.
HP: Yes. He left but we don’t know where he went or what or how.
CB: And the new man? How did he react to joining the crew in these circumstances?
HP: He was glad to be back in with a crew. He was no longer a spare man.
CB: And why would people be spares?
HP: Well he was on either his second or his third tour.
CB: Oh.
HP: And I think the rest of the crew had finished, finished a tour and he had a few more ops to do to become tour expired. So spares.
CB: Yeah. Now in your case 75 gave way to 90. What were the circumstances of that?
HP: Well 75 Squadron, as far as we understood it, was going to be returning to New Zealand.
CB: So the war has ended in Europe.
HP: Yes.
CB: 8th of May.
HP: Yes.
CB: 1945. How soon after that did they —
HP: Well beginning of June we were posted to 90. I don’t know when 75 actually moved back to New Zealand.
CB: And there was the Maori motto but were there Maori members of the crew?
HP: There were.
CB: And what did they do in the aircraft as a task? Do you know?
HP: Well, any. Any job.
CB: So they were pilots.
HP: Yes.
CB: Yeah. The whole span.
HP: Probably fewer pilots because of the length of training but there was.
CB: Yeah.
HP: Yeah. And they were a wonderful friendly people.
CB: And they had a boost to their rations. How did that work?
HP: Who said they had a boost to their rations?
CB: Well because they, they received parcels from New Zealand.
HP: Oh all. The whole of the New Zealand squadron.
CB: That’s what I meant.
HP: Got home comforts.
CB: Yes.
HP: Yeah.
CB: What did they get mainly?
HP: Oh you got cigarettes fully packed in tissue paper, silver paper and cellophane covered cardboard boxes and I think there were chocolate and so forth. Nothing very major but sufficient to make the non-New Zealand crews feel that they were welcome. That they, it wasn’t that a whole group of people got something that you didn’t get and that there was a gap between you.
CB: Yeah.
HP: There was every attempt to keep it as a unit.
CB: Yes. So they were supplied by New Zealand but everybody, regardless of origin on the squadron —
HP: Yeah.
CB: Took. Was able to benefit.
HP: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Your final operation before the war ended was Operation Manna which was supplying food to people in Holland.
HP: Yes.
CB: You talked about your, the first op. What other operations did you do there? Was that the only one or did you do several other Manna drops?
HP: No. We did the first one on, it was a Sunday. The 29th of April and then it got other squadrons. It was a privilege to actually be able to do it and other squadrons and other crews were involved. There was a limited number to start with.
CB: What was the significance of flying at three hundred feet rather than a different level?
HP: If you’re dropping stuff in sacks you want to drop it from not too high otherwise the sacks would burst.
CB: No. I meant, I meant rather than two hundred or one hundred because the impact is so high.
HP: I wouldn’t know.
CB: No.
HP: You might have had pylons going up to two hundred and fifty. Who knows? But I mean that — somebody had to fix that.
CB: Yeah.
HP: You couldn’t do it, fly at ground level even though Holland is pretty flat.
CB: Because you never knew which windmill was coming up next.
HP: Yes.
CB: Right. So how many sorties did you do? Operations did you do on Manna?
HP: As far as I know, oh only one on Manna. And I think we did fourteen bombing operations I think it was.
CB: Yeah.
HP: And then one on Manna.
CB: Ok. And —
HP: And we only did one night operation. That was to Kiel.
CB: Ok.
HP: That was the night the Scharnhorst sunk. We of course sank it.
CB: Yeah. Of course you did. Yeah. Everybody did.
HP: The other nine hundred aircraft on the operation missed.
CB: Everybody did. Yeah. That’s it. So 90 Squadron now. So you’re in 90 Squadron what’s the brief there?
HP: Well. Carry on with operation review which was the —
CB: This is the mapping. The film mapping.
HP: This is the mapping of Europe. Yeah. Generally long distance flying. Anything up to eight hours.
CB: And at what height would you be flying there?
HP: I think the, it was because of the cameras I think we were at twenty thousand feet above ground level.
CB: Oh.
HP: So the height varied.
CB: And it’s a big place. Continent of Europe. So what was the focus that you had geographically?
HP: Well, not a particular focus. You just went. Went where you were told the following day.
CB: Yeah. But did it tend to be any consistency like —
HP: No.
CB: Going over —
HP: No.
CB: France or whatever.
HP: No. I mean over France. We went once to Norway and there you were supposed to get there at first light before the clouds formed. Norway at first light. The fjords, the fjords, the bottom of the fjords were in darkness so we had to wait until that was light. As soon as that was light the cloud started up and down so we went and had a look up the fjords and we were flying up one and turned around to the left and stopped. S we just managed stopped so we just manage to scrape over the top.
CB: Crikey. Yeah.
JB: Nasty moment.
[Recording paused]
HP: That was on the 5th of September.
CB: So your mapping work took some time. How long did that continue until?
HP: Well I’ve no idea how long other people carried on.
CB: No.
HP: We did our last mapping trip on the 5th. On the 5th of September.
CB: Right. And then after that did you stand down?
HP: We were made redundant.
CB: Pardon?
HP: We were made redundant.
CB: Oh you were. Right. Ok. So that’s when you went to the —
HP: Yeah.
CB: Other places. Catterick.
HP: You had, you had a lot of newly trained crews you see. Moving forward.
CB: Right. And they wanted to use them.
HP: Well they were just replaced those who became redundant.
CB: Yeah. Right. Ok. Good.
HP: And of course squadrons were disbanded.
CB: Yes. [pause] But 90 carried on.
[Recording paused]
HP: On Bomber —
CB: Just going on to equipment. We touched briefly — you mentioned H2S the scanning radar. So what was it, how did it work and how did you use it?
HP: We didn’t use H2S. We were bombing on GH.
CB: Oh. On GH. Right.
HP: And
CB: Why didn’t you use H2S?
HP: Because it wasn’t as accurate as GH. We were daylight bombing on synthetic oil plants which were not vast areas and the, you had special training to familiarise yourself with, with this and specially equipped aircraft and on, on a squadron going one in three aircraft would be equipped with —
CB: GH.
HP: With GH only. And two aircraft would formate on that. So you went out like that because I think the question of the strength of signals. I don’t know much about GH but we went on a course where the navigator/bomb aimer were familiarised with this method of accurate bombing through cloud or through anything else like that and you had to maintain a steady course to go over this which was helpful for the flak.
CB: Absolutely, because this is running on a lattice system and, right — so talking about flak to what extent did you get damage from flak?
HP: You usually came back with holes of some sort. We came back once with two engines gone on one side which was not particularly healthy. Another occasion I knew I was dead. I was doing a search there. I’m fairly tall. If I was looking up the back of my head would be pressed against the Perspex of the turret at the back and there was a loud bang where my head was touching this. I turned around and there was a hole about the, about the size of a penny. So I felt the back of my head. Nothing. Looked around at the hole. It was definitely there and if I wasn’t bleeding and didn’t feel any pain therefore I was dead. Now, this lasted for perhaps a half a minute, a minute before you realised that it was a large piece of, large piece of flak had ricocheted off. But bearing in mind you’ve been on oxygen and heated, you’re cold, you’ve got temperatures of minus thirty, minus forty and there was stress. So for that short period of time I knew I was dead. But you came back with holes almost practically anywhere.
CB: And in your turret which way would you normally be facing? Was it —were you rotating it?
HP: Aft.
CB: All the time? Or mainly aft.
HP: Yeah. Yeah. The normal position of a turret was facing aft because you didn’t have to rotate the turret to see.
CB: Yeah. So when those engines went out you would be looking backwards so you wouldn’t see them being hit.
HP: Well you wouldn’t necessarily see them being hit because they would be from underneath and since the engines were underneath the wing.
CB: No. I’m just wondering whether you happened to see as both went out. Whether you happened to experience that.
HP: I can’t remember. I can’t remember.
CB: Right.
HP: You soon knew it had happened.
CB: Yes.
HP: There was a change in sound immediately.
CB: We talked about GH is was the navigation system also used for bombing but from earlier in the war the H2S with the bulge underneath was introduced. My question there was why wouldn’t you use it?
HP: Because the fighters could, 1 — because the fighters could home in on it. 2 — it wasn’t as accurate for the targets which we were detailed to bomb and there weren’t too many squadrons on daylight bombing.
CB: Right.
HP: In Bomber Command.
CB: Right.
HP: We were.
CB: Good. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Hugh Parry. One
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-11
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AParryHP161011
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Hugh Parry was born in Oswestry and joined the Air Force in April 1943 and volunteered to be an air gunner. Knowing that there was a height restriction on air gunners of six feet he hid his height by wearing baggy trousers. After training, he was posted to 75 NZ Squadron and then to 90 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham where his crew carried out photographic reconnaissance over Europe. Among his operations Hugh’s crew were also one of the first to take part in Operation Manna. After the war Hugh returned to accountancy. For a while he lived and worked in Bangladesh before returning to the UK.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
India
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Rutland
England--Suffolk
India--Kolkata
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Format
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01:09:30 audio recording
11 OTU
1651 HCU
3 Group
75 Squadron
90 Squadron
aerial photograph
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
animal
Anson
bombing
crewing up
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
guard room
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
Me 163
military ethos
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
P-51
perception of bombing war
physical training
RAF Bridlington
RAF Mepal
RAF Pembrey
RAF Silloth
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Westcott
RAF Woolfox Lodge
reconnaissance photograph
Spitfire
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/824/10808/PFlynnRA1601.1.jpg
df15476726e07004ffdc65eb00a4b68d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/824/10808/AFlynnRA161229.2.mp3
cbef9bfc20e19cf0f0945b2cdcabc96f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Flynn, Ron
Ronald Albert Flynn
R A Flynn
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ronald Flynn (b. 1924, 1811716 Royal Air Force). He completed a tour of operations as a flight engineer with 75 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-29
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Flynn, RA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: This is an interview with Ronald Albert Flynn at his home at Backwell, near Bristol on the 29th of December 2016 at 14.40. Can you tell me a little bit about your time before you joined the RAF?
RF: I was at an ordinary elementary school for quite some time and lived in north, or south, yes South London. No. North London. Sorry. I was actually at a factory making furniture or assisting people to make furniture. And the, after looking at the papers and seeing what was going in the world I thought of joining the army or the air force. The air force. I decided air force would do me. And I, with a friend went to a place, a place just outside Enfield to volunteer. We were given an address to go and we were received by RAF officers that would put you through the paces of cleaning everything. How to wash and shave. We knew that already. And we were sent to a unit in London where the officers were there to take any volunteers. I’d been eventually accepted in the air force. They gave me a uniform and gave me oh a history of the air force and what they did. And also I went through a programme of keeping myself clean. Cleanliness. Which obviously I’d already knew. From there they sent me to, or to report to some offices in North London where we met quite a high ranking officer and he told me that everything was ok. If they would, they would think about where you would be placed. I eventually got notice that I had to report to a training. On a training course at Cosford. It was, it wasn’t, there were no aircraft there at Cosford.
Other: And what did you do there, Dad?
RF: Where did I go from Cosford?
Other: What training did you do there?
RF: Cosford was an introduction into the history of an airman. Even told you how to wash. But I went from there to [pause] is it Stettin?
Other: No.
RF: No. Not Stettin. That’s German that [laughs] Beckford. Deptford. A place. A camp in Norfolk. And it was, it consisted of men who had just volunteered and what they were going to do or what they, what they thought they would be able to do. And I wanted to be — I wanted to fly. But I wasn’t too sure about how or who I wanted to be with. But they posted me to a unit with literally hundreds of other airmen. I forget what the name of the place was but I had an idea that it was an overseas unit.
Other: But how did you learn to be an engineer?
RF: I [pause] I applied. Prior to that, being posted to that station I had volunteered for aircrew. But they didn’t seem to take any notice of that and I thought I’m in line for, to be posted to North Africa which I didn’t very, like very much. But suddenly an officer came to the head of the group and said, ‘Will the following men fall out.’ And my name was mentioned. And I was posted on an aircrew course. [unclear] lesson. I decided the job I would like on the aircraft was the engineering and we went on a course of Merlin engines which was very interesting. Like I say where the engines lived at the, put on the Lancasters. And fortunately I was, they said, ‘Fall out.’ They’d accepted me. Which I was very pleased. From there they posted me to a, I think that was Cosford to experiment on engines. The Merlins. The Merlin engines which, which was very interesting. Merlins of course were the aircraft in Lancasters and I was hoping that that would be the case. I’d be chosen to go on Lancasters as a flight engineer. And fortunately they did post me to a station where I would meet a crew. And I was interested in a New Zealand crew. For what reason I don’t know. But when they called my skipper, new skipper’s name out, Smith — I thought oh I haven’t got my right —
Other: New Zealand.
RF: New Zealander. But it turned out that he was. He was New Zealand. And the rest of the crew were his, all New Zealanders which I was very grateful. The Stirlings was a fine aircraft but it was too massive. And everything seemed hard work. But nevertheless they were safe enough and, but I was looking forward to doing the same thing on Lancasters. Which I did eventually. And they posted me on a flight engineer’s course which was of course to learn all about engines. There was a, as again and also air frame. Of course I would be responsible for engines and the general working pieces in the aircraft. And looking after the whole, the whole crew really. I can’t think much of the reception. I can’t remember the reception. But arriving at Mepal I was amongst all aircrew that spoke the same language. I, we had to, we had to get some practice in the Lancaster and — which lasted oh a fortnight probably before we could do, start doing any, any operations. But the crew I had was excellent. So I had no real bother joining them and performing my duty to stand by the, next to the skipper. Taking orders from him. And at the same time making sure that the remainder of the crew were happy and or could I help them in any way. The two gunners were English. And the rear gunner was quite elderly actually and, but he enjoyed it and he wanted to carry on. Eventually he finished the same time as myself so he set off. He’d enjoyed it. I can’t see why but [ laughs] He, he — the other four members of the crew were from New Zealand and very nice. Very good people. One was the bomb aimer who was a little bit scatty [laughs] He amused me because I stood just above him, behind him so there was always a bit of conversation. The skipper was wonderful. I didn’t, my job was to look after the engines of course and take instructions from the skipper. Everything was fine. So I thought to myself I’m going to like this. And I did. I can’t —
[recording paused]
RF: Little things do happen that are unexpected. Like on one occasion we were leaving Berlin and we were hit by bullets from a fighter aircraft and caught the outboard, off side outboard engine alight. Which I had to put out of course. From there I had to do some adjustments with the various instruments of keeping the, keeping the kite in the air. But we were quite happy and ok, on three engines. But we had a long way to go of course and I had to manipulate various units and petrol. But we were doing quite, quite well. When we did reach home —
Other: The skipper wanted you to restart it.
RF: Well, yeah. But, yeah prior, prior to — no this, I’m sorry. On the way home the skipper said, ‘I think I’ll start that engine Ron.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so skipper. You shouldn’t. We’ve got no means of putting the fire out if it catches fire.’ He said, ‘I’ll put it out.’ ‘It’s entirely up to you. You’re the, you’re the captain.’ So he started the engine and of course it caught fire again. So I said, ‘Up to you. Down to you skipper.’ So he put put it in a nose dive at about three hundred mile an hour and blew it out. He was successful in his wisdom but it didn’t help me. But —
Other: When you got back.
RF: When we got back we were, everything seemed ok and we were on the approach to land and the engine that was, we’d had trouble with packed up again. And we were, we also a slight problem with the offside inner engine and of course we had no chance of getting to the airfield. We came down. Fortunately we weren’t too high at that. We came down into a, a cabbage patch just outside the aerodrome and pushed through the fence and finished up in the middle of the aerodrome. And of course, the old engineering officer the following day called me to his office and said, ‘What’s the idea of bringing the kite back in that state?’ So I had to explain to him what had happened. But he was quite ok after that. There were one or two other incidences which I —
Other: What about when you had to circle and drop your bombs?
RF: Well, that —
Other: And somebody who was not as good as your skipper was not quite so keen to come as low. He was dropping his bombs from a higher —
RF: Yeah.
Other: Above you.
RF: Yeah, I mean. I can’t —
Other: And what it —
RF: Well, that one I’ve already explained to you at Stettin. When the engines went. That there was the funny one about dropping that bomb on the water. I’m sorry. That was the Stettin one which I’ve already mentioned actually.
Other: I think that’s where he —
RF: Came. We were hit. We were hit by a shell which came through the roof and took the toilet with it, in the bottom, out of the bottom. Which I had to inform the skipper that he can never go back and use it [laughs] That’s how I went back to see that there was a hole in the top there in the sub fuselage and a hole down the bottom and it had taken the toilet it. So I said to the skipper, ‘You don’t want to go to the toilet because we haven’t got one.’
[recording paused]
RF: Not really. No. When you were away from the bombing area you did relax. If you’d got a sandwich you would have a sandwich or something like that or a cup of, a flask of coffee or something. But one, one incident was quite funny when suddenly a hole came in the aircraft.
Other: You told —
[recording paused]
RF: The thirtieth op.
Other: Can you remember dad?
RF: I can’t remember the thirtieth op. They call a tour thirty. And when they, when the engineering officer told me that I’d got one more to do I just said, ‘No thank you. I’ve had enough.’ And that’s, that’s the end. Not a very exciting station itself. We had to go downtown.
Other: And what did you get up to dad?
RF: Oh, we used, I used to go with Paddy — the mid-upper gunner. We did drink. We did drink quite a lot. Unfortunately, the police didn’t like it when we were walking along. Came up a road in Cambridge and he arrested us. And I must agree that it was wrong but I’d had too much to drink. So being as we were in uniform this police realised who we were and just put us to sleep in a room to sleep it off. Which we were very grateful. But we got to, got up in the morning and went to camp and had to go in front of the commanding officer. It’s, you know I daren’t repeat what he said to us [laughs] And that was it. Paddy and I used to, we used to drink quite a lot obviously but we also went dancing. And some of the people there were quite happy but one or two didn’t like us so they called the police. And the police, we had obviously had too much to drink but the police lifted me up. One arm. One policeman on one arm, another policeman on the other arm and led me down to the cells. And Paddy was the same thing. But we slept overnight there and we just got told off in the morning and they said, ‘Don’t do it again.’ And we went back to camp.
[recording paused]
RF: Not that I can remember. No. None that I fancied [laughs] but I wasn’t, I wasn’t interested in going out with women. I don’t know why. Don’t ask me. That’s unusual I know. But probably the women didn’t want to go out with me [laughs] But no. Paddy and I used to like a drink and we often got into trouble when we went into Cambridge.
[recording paused]
RF: They of course asked us what we would like to do. I thought I would like to do a bit of driving. And they sent me to a driving school and it was quite interesting. Also, I made friends with Paddy. Paddy Flynn. Same name. So, and he was typical Irish. Lovely chap but he drank too much. And of course I was with him and we very often got into trouble with the. Paddy came with [unclear] too.
Other: Yeah. You had to —
RF: Yeah. Eventually, after the end of the driving school the commanding officer asked me to, or he informed me that I was being driven down to Cornwall. ‘Would you do me a favour and take Paddy with you?’ I said, ‘No.’ Anyway, ‘It’ll be alright. I’ll take him.’ When we were in Cornwall it was, Paddy unfortunately really didn’t grasp this driving job and I had to [pause] he could, he could drive but you wouldn’t say it was safe driving. And so I really tried to avoid any passengers getting in his car to drive down to the town.
Other: What about when you took the teams out in the coaches? You and Paddy.
RF: Yeah. On one occasion the commanding officer said, ‘You’ve got two people to take to town.’ I forget the name of the town. But he said, ‘You take one bus and Paddy will take the other one.’ So I said, ‘Alright. That doesn’t sound good to me.’ But he insisted and that was all I could do. ‘Just take it easy.’ So I did. And Paddy did. But unfortunately coming back on those country roads and Paddy had had a few drinks I got home before him. And of course he didn’t arrive. So I had to go back and I found Paddy and all his occupants in a field [laughs] And fortunately nobody was hurt. So we got out of that one but, and Paddy wasn’t driving any more. We finished up in Newquay in Cornwall which was very pleasant. [unclear]
Other: Can you remember — ?
RF: In to the motor trade. Motor garage trade.
Other: And insurance assessing, didn’t you?
RF: I went, yeah I did a bit of — I went into the motor trade. Just in Welwyn Garden City.
Other: No. That was —
[recording paused]
Other: Do you remember dad? The driving —
RF: An assessor. But I mean Paddy was —
Other: Oh yeah. Nothing to do with him. Nothing to do with him.
RF: No. I got, I made enquiries about being an assessor for accident repairs to cars. For which I was introduced to a repair garage at, in Welwyn Garden City. No.
Other: In London.
RF: Oh dear. It was obvious that I feel, not unsafe but when I was in the air force I knew the crew. So there was no fear. We were looked after in many ways. But —
Other: Tell Dee about when, when you had that truck and you drove off to a tip to try and get a new bit for your exhaust and then they called you in when you got back. What did they think you were doing?
RF: Well, this was when the war had ended and I was — what did they call it? [pause]
Other: You had like a little —
RF: I remember working at this ‘drome. If I can remember the base. Anyway, it was the Queen’s Flight and we were given the job of when the Queen was —
Other: Flying.
RF: Flying anywhere. We would, in a fire tender drive down the side of the runway and with the Queen’s aircraft until it was airborne. Which wasn’t too often. But we were there just in case. But on another occasion I took the jeep because the exhaust was blowing. So I took the jeep out to the scrapyard. Just away. Just a short space. A short drive through. About a quarter of a mile. I did find a bit of an exhaust. I didn’t know if that would do but I took it just in case. When I got back the warrant officer in charge collared me and said, ‘Where have you been?’ I said, ‘I’ve just got some components here that I might have to put on the jeep.’ He said, ‘Yes, I’ve heard that before.’ He said, ‘You’ve been running people down to the station on leave.’ I said, ‘No. I wasn’t.’ I said, ‘No. Certainly, you’re wrong there.’ And for that reason I suppose he advised the authorities to take my rank away of warrant officer. Down to, back to flight sergeant. So, I said, ‘Oh yeah. Do what you like,’ I said, ‘I’m not worried. I’m going home shortly.’ And that was it.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ron Flynn
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Denise Boneham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AFlynnRA161229, PFlynnRA1601
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:33:17 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Ron Flynn was living in London before he volunteered for the RAF. He trained as a flight engineer and joined a British / New Zealand crew. He was posted to RAF Mepal. There was at least one occasion when a fire in the engines was extinguished by the pilot doing a steep dive. When they returned to their base they crashed through the fence at the airfield.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
75 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crash
flight engineer
Lancaster
military discipline
military living conditions
RAF Mepal
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1103/11562/ARogersLC160822.1.mp3
ad21d284dbbdd015f55a5a200970cce9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Rogers, Lawrence Clark
L C Rogers
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Lawrence Clark Rogers (1063761, 189969 Royal Air Force). He completed a tour of operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 75 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Rogers, LC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: Right. I’m interviewing Lawrence Clark Rogers at xxx in Huddersfield, and it’s the 22nd of August 2016 at 8.30pm and we’re in the interviewee’s home. Lawrence, could you tell me a little bit about your life and how it, how it is with the RAF?
LR: Yes. I think I can. If I can remember I will tell you of course. But schooldays, after schooldays. Well school, I went to school and I wasn’t over keen on school at all, but I decided, at the age of seventeen, that I’d like to — I knew that I would be called up. So, I didn’t want to go in the Navy, I can’t swim, I didn’t want to go in the Army, so I thought, right, I’ll go in the Air Force, so, I went down to the Drill Hall in Huddersfield and volunteered. I told my Father, I told my Mother, who wasn’t at all pleased, but she said she would, alright in the Air Force as long as I didn’t fly, which I promised. And from there on, I went to East Kirby – West Kirby, sorry, near Liverpool, and I was there for the training. I remembered the time when we first joined. When we first entered there, we got a good meal, and then the day after, we were signed in and the sergeant who took us out said, ‘Now, you’ve not got a name. You’ve got a ‘B’ number’. So, we did quite a lot of drill there, on the parade ground, the aircraft engine in the distance was going so all the shouting, this, that and the other. And from there I went to Wigtown in Scotland where I was an instructor. Oh no, sorry, I went first of all because I signed up for a wireless operator when I volunteered. They asked for volunteers, we put our names up, our hands up, and we went to Blackpool for the wireless. Did our drill on the bottom prom, all the holidaymakers on the top prom watching us. And then we went to Yatesbury, which was the station for aircrew and we did the radio wireless training there, and then from there, I got posted to Wigtown. No, I think I got that out of context a little. Wigtown in Scotland, I was there, posted there as an instructor on wireless operation. This went quite normally. It was a nice station. They provided us with a bicycle and this, that and the other, food wasn’t too bad, and we flew in Ansons. And on one trip, which the, it was usually from Wigtown down to Anglesey and back, all the time. Most of the time they sent us up north a bit and we got a recall. It was a bad day and we got a recall and he asked the navigator, pupil navigator where we were, and he didn’t seem to know. So the pilot said, ‘I’ll fly five minutes west and then come down over the sea’. We flew five minutes west, we didn’t come down in the sea. We crashed in the Kingsborough fleet, I think they called it Hibble Hill – the place where we crashed. We were there quite for a while in cloud, probably twenty four hours, something like that, till the clouds broke in the morning and I was flashing, there was aircraft about. I was flashing my aldis lamp and I couldn’t, I couldn’t transmit but I could receive. It had been damaged in the aircraft. If we’d have missed this part where we should have, where we did crash then missed that, we’d have gone nose first into higher mountains just further on. But anyhow, that didn’t happen. The group captain came over in his Tiger Moth and dropped us a big parcel of food which was, I don’t know, a cheese sandwich in — it was supposed to be, I don’t know how thick. Two big slices of bread, it was terrible. Anyhow, later on, after a few hours, they climbed up the, and brought us down. We didn’t get survivor’s leave, I don’t know why, but we didn’t. Anyhow, I was stationed there for two years actually, and we tried our best to get down to, to get on the squadron. Eventually we were sent to OUT, I think it was Chedburgh, and from there, we were posted to 218 Gold Coast Squadron, Woolfox Lodge. I did about eight or nine, about nine operations from there, and then we lost our pilot. He had an accident. Not a flying accident but an accident on the road, and we were transferred to 75 New Zealand squadron. We were approached by a squadron leader, we were given a new pilot, Squadron Leader Rogers, a New Zealand pilot, and he was in charge of, I don’t know, I think it was A group pilot. We got all the dirty jobs, of course. used to pass us, ‘You, light the fire’, and this, that and those things, didn’t want to delegate too much. And we did the rest of the operations there. I did thirty two, if I remember correctly, operations, because I had to do two operations with another pilot who hadn’t got a wireless operator. And on the thirtieth operation of mine, I could have packed in, but the crew wanted me to carry on, and do the, do up to the thirtieth, so I did two more, of course, which I did thirty two. From there, we were posted down to London, to go overseas. They messed us around quite a bit. At first, we were going to sail from there, and then they said we were going to fly from there, I can’t remember the place where we flew from, but we flew from there to Karachi. I was stationed in Karachi for quite a while. There was a, what was the first [pause], what it was? I forget what it was – the first job I was doing, but the second job was when we were posted to Singapore just before the capitulation by the Japanese. We went by landing craft, which was going back to Australia, and we landed in Singapore at roughly, on the same day as the capitulation came up. And I was accommodation officer for one of the forward, I went over in a landing craft that was going back with twenty four drivers and escorts, doing the chapatis on the desk — on the deck and things like that. I met a good friend from Pocklington, I’ve forgotten his name now, oh dear. Anyhow, we were together in India all the time, and I got, I wasn’t there too long actually. We sailed back to England, I don’t remember [pause], if I remember correctly, it was after, after the capitulation by Germany, and after VJ day as well. And whilst I was there in Singapore, it was arranged between Audrey and myself, my late wife, that we should get married, and we came back to Lichfield, and from there, I had two or three different intervals, because I didn’t want to go back to the job where I were, which was a travel agent. But we had two or three interviews, I had two or three different jobs, short jobs, two or three weeks jobs and then I got a job. A choice of jobs between textiles again and engineering, I decided to go in for engineering and I worked at the engineering firm, which was WC Holmes at that time, at Huddersfield, for thirty two years, I think it was, something like that anyhow. And I retired there at sixty four, voluntary redundancy. I’d been trying for redundancy since I was sixty, and at sixty four, I got it. A new director came up, which was very friendly with me, and he called me to the office. He said, ‘Lawrence, do you want to be made redundant?’ I said, ‘Yes please’. He said, ‘You’ll be first on the list tomorrow’, which I was. And since then, I’ve had a great retirement. I still drive at my age of ninety four, I still play bowls for the league, and I play snooker for the league also. And I’ve really enjoyed my retirement. I’ve been retired now thirty years, I think it is, and I’ve got four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren and we’re quite a happy family. I, regretfully, I wanted my eldest son Graham, to go down and get, and go inside the Lancaster. My wife went with me down to Hendon years ago, and they allowed us to go in. I wrote to the people first, and they said, ‘Just make yourself known’, but when I went down to Hendon again, they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t let us go in the aircraft at all, but they did put a platform up, so that we could go up and look in through the pilot’s window, but we couldn’t see where the wireless operator was, of course. And just shortly after that, my son got very ill, had a major operation and he died some ten weeks ago, 10th of June this year, and I’ve now got two great-granddaughters that look after me. They do, they really look after me. I have a youngest son who now lives in Wales, I get invited down there, and he comes up here regularly, reasonably regularly anyhow, and we get — he’s a very good son. Just no distinguishing between the two really and I treated them both the same, and that’s about it. I’m still here and there we are.
[recording paused]
There was one incident whilst I was in the Air Force, that I was home on leave and I was on a squadron at the time, and I met my friend at the bus stop, as I was going back off leave. Kenneth Richardson, they called him, and he was, I didn’t know, but he’d joined the RAF, and he joined Bomber Command. And he went out, I don’t know whether it was his first or his second trip, but he never returned, and he’s never been found as far as I know, anyhow, and, you know, I would have liked to known what, you know, what happened to him. But it’s a long time ago and there we are.
[recording paused]
Yes, and another addition, that I was just looking at the photograph of my crew in front of the Lancaster. There was George, who was a Cockney from London, he was the oldest man of the crew. Next was Ron Brown, who was the flight engineer, and a very good friend of mine. Even after the war, we used to see each other and visit each other. Then there was Brian, who came from Birmingham. He was, well he was the joker of the family, I mean, at one time, we were in the station going back off leave, and he went up to this woman and asked her how she got her fur coat, but that’s beside the point. Harry was the pilot, Harry Sheldon, he lived in Nottingham. He was a nice fella. He moved to Canada and he’s since died, you know. Ron has also passed away, next one along is myself, and then there was Tom, Tom Brook, Tom [pause], I’ve forgotten his last name. He was the rear gunner and I don’t know roughly where, I’ve not heard from him. And then Don was the navigator, Don Whittaker. He has since passed away, of course, but he was a very nice fella. He lived very close to me and I used to visit, and during the war, he ran a small car, actually, and he used to pick me up at Stockport and take me down. We used to sleep halfway, and about 5 o’clock in the morning, there used to be a knock on the window. It was the land girls who went on duty, and they used to wake us up, to, so we could continue the journey. And that’s about it. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Lawrence Clark Rogers
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Denise Boneham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARogersLC160822
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:14:31 audio recording
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Singapore
England--Rutland
England--Suffolk
England--Staffordshire
England--Lichfield
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Lawrence Rogers joined the Royal Air Force at 17, and trained to become a wireless operator. He served with 218 Squadron at RAF Woolfox Lodge and then with 75 Squadron, flying in both Ansons and Lancasters, He eventually completed 32 operations with Bomber Command. Lawrence tells of being stationed in Karachi and Singapore, the latter just before the Japanese capitulation. Reminisces of coming back to Lichfield for his wedding. Lawrence tells of his retirement from WC Holmes Engineering Firm - playing bowls, snooker and still driving at the age of 94. He talks about his family and his visit to Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon with his wife and son.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Language
A language of the resource
eng
218 Squadron
75 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crash
Lancaster
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Woolfox Lodge
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1118/11609/ASeckerFE170815.1.mp3
47cfe21bac4401a2c3fc946d0008bae1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Secker, Frances Elizabeth
F E Secker
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Frances Elizabeth Secker (b. 1923). She lived near RAF Feltwell during the war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Secker, FE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: I’m talking today to Frances Elizabeth Secker, who lives in Feltwell, on the 15th of August 2017 and it is currently 14:45 hours. Elizabeth, I know you’ve lived in Feltwell all your life and you were here during the World War Two. Can you tell me a little bit how you interacted with the Bomber Command boys on Feltwell station?
FES: Well, I got on well with all the boys on Feltwell station, had quite a few friends, yes, yeah, a lot of them through a friend of mine and I got introduced to them, yes. We’d go to the dances at the gym, we’d go to the cinema in the camp, yes, uhm. Then I met a lot of the airmen, the New Zealand airmen coming to the fish shop where I worked, quite young, yes, and what I can really remember about them was they had egg and chips quite a lot but not when I get the time, quite often three [laughs], yes, so sometimes they had to be cooked in the chip pan because they wanted so many. There’s two eating rooms there and I was the person that waited the tables quite a lot, yeah, all very friendly, yeah, nice people to work for, yes. I had a few boyfriends, in the Air Force here [laughs]. [file missing] The actual uhm New Zealanders flew from Methwold, didn’t’ they? Yeah, the first one, yeah, flying from here I suppose but I think the actual first one that flew in Feltwell was a Harrow, yeah, is that right? Yeah. I was at school, yes, and we had the Wellingtons after that, uhm was it the Venturas? Yeah. I don’t, the Lancasters flew from Methwold, I think, didn’t they? They didn’t fly from Feltwell, yeah. Yes, I can remember that, remember when one or two of them crashed round, yeah. Another thing I can remember is seeing the, the [unclear] be New Zealanders a lot, a lot, I think, going off to Methwold, sometimes in an open truck, sometimes in a coach, and I was working at the fish shop, they would quite often stop at the post office next door for some reason [laughs], yes [laughs], yeah, yeah [unclear] she met them she met them, I know she did Charlie, they went into the shop and she get a date, she would say, [laughs], so yeah and then we went out with a couple of officers, [unclear] different ones but really they were more casual dates, yeah, just, you know, at the gym we met quite a lot of them, yeah, and dances on camp yeah and I can remember cycling to Methwold uhm where they had dances in the Nissen huts, yeah, we went there, cycled there, [laughs] yeah. Another thing I can certainly remember is watching the funerals, yes, [unclear] yeah, which is very sad, yeah. And I went to, uhm when they unveiled the memorial for them, went to that, yeah, and when they, this is recently in, the one by St Mary’s, I went to that when they put that there, yeah, went to their little service, yes, yes, very friendly, yeah, we did have a very nice time although it was wartime, yeah, we did, yeah, ok. Well, he took us to Brandon fair we cycled, my friend Pam and me, Pam, he asked me for the next date, so we went on [unclear] but he was stationed, he came here in ’47, to, was it, a flying training school, he was, uhm, I didn’t know really, I didn’t know him then, and actually I never saw his logbook so anything until after he died, uhm, never talked about that much really, apart from talking about his, the crew he was with but yeah, I never saw his logbook so I knew [clears throat] that he said once they crashed at Mepal was when he had his first cigarette [laughs], yes, yeah, yes uhm. So, he was here from ’47 till ’50, then he came out, air traffic control and that was at Methwold, yeah, yeah. About things up here, in the mess his friends, yes, one there, he wasn’t in the forces, I don’t quite know what his position was but he kept a few hens and turned a bit laugh and say, he came into the mess at breakfast time and said, my hens are not laying very much and Joe Bowman would come in and say, would you cook, this egg for me? I think it was [unclear] [laughs] so that’s why his hens weren’t laying much for him, yeah, lots of fun times really, yes, he had some. Charlie’s a big sportsman, yes, he played for station, yeah, and the one time he played for Yarmouth but when he was in the Air Force he played different stations, yeah, a big sportsman, football, this I’m talking about, yeah, yeah, well, any other sport he was interested into, yeah, yeah. Yes, new Zealander the pilot, two Canadians, yeah, they were British, Charlie and his crew, Charlie was the rear gunner, Flight Lieutenant Keen was the pilot a new Zealander, Flight Lieutenant Brown Canadian, Flight Lieutenant King Canadian, Flight Sergeant Spilsbury, Sergeant Elms and Sergeant Smith were British. I think, his skipper, as he called him, thought quite a lot of Charlie, made quite a fuss of him, although they couldn’t eat in the same mess, they were quite friendly, yes. They’d done thirty-one tours, yes and then that was it for them, were very lucky, yeah, to survive, yeah, [unclear]. Charlie kept in touch with the Canadians, Flight Lieutenant Brown and Flight Lieutenant King for a while, yeah, heard all about their lives and what they’d done after they’ve come out of the service, yeah, yes. Charlie came to Feltwell in ’47 with the, uhm, training [unclear], flight training, for that he was air control at Feltwell and Methwold, yes, stayed in the Air Force until 1950 from when he took a job with Pearl Insurance, ok, that was Charlie’s bit [laughs] [unclear] uhm, yeah, not the land army as such but land work in the Fens, near the village, where we cycled to work, everywhere we had to cycle if we needed to go anywhere at that time [laughs] yes. And work, uhm, we picked potatoes [laughs], planted potatoes but by machine, we picked potatoes by hand what else did we do? We do celery, bit in the harvest fields, yes, at that time, yeah and no cow, yeah, no, no cow, horses there, at that time till we got to practice machine, yeah. Yes, I’d done that for until mum [unclear] died I stayed home, yeah, I then went back to fish and chips [laughs], yeah, till I retired almost, yeah, different ones, yeah, [unclear]. Yes, Charlie would talk about Queenie, Q for Queenie, apparently his favourite aircraft. One thing he talked about was when they crashed at Mepal, he had his first cigarette [laughs], yes, he never talked much about the operations, unless he saw something about Germany on the television and he would say, I think I know where that is [laughs], and that was all he’d say about. His logbook I never saw until after he died. So that was Q for Queenie, his favourite aircraft. Going back to the fish shop, they were packed, it was packed in those days, two eating rooms full and the actual shop, there was no queue, everybody trying to get in front [laughs], calling out what they would like, very happy times although it was wartime, yeah, yeah. Yes, I think that they had fish too, yeah, but I remember that, I used to go with Mrs [unclear] the shop to, have you heard of Wearham? Little village? Yeah, used to go there and get these trays of eggs, yes, because I suppose having the shop, they could get them, couldn’t they? And yeah, I don’t know whether they got them on the campus match, anyway they left their eggs and chips, [laughs] and fish and chips [laughs], yeah, and that was it, egg and chips and fish and chips, and bread and butter [laughs], yeah. I don’t think we’d done fish, we’d done cups of tea, no, I think it was just fish and chips, and egg and chips and frittles [laughs], no, I think we were too busy really, we working and then, yeah, then on the corner, uhm, just by the camp gates on the right hand side, I think it was The Sally Ann if I remember rightly, the one, yeah, yeah, then there was The Blade, I think that was open at the time, I think they’d done, they’d done food there, yeah, looks, yeah, shop, yeah, cause it’s not a shop anymore, my lifelong friend from schooldays, her mum and dad had a shop, she went into the ATS, her mum died suddenly so she came home, and helped her dad in the shop, a grocery shop, this was where she met a lot of the airmen [laughs], this is where we made, made up our friends, most of them, at the time [laughs], mostly casual but Pam married Ted King, he was a, stationed at Feltwell, Pam met him and married him and she was quite young, and they were quite young, yeah, and from then on she travelled with him, yes, so they went a lot of different places in the country, yeah, we always stayed friends, great friends until she died last year, at the beginning of this year, actually, yeah, yeah, Pam and Ted, I’m friendly with her daughter, yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Frances Elizabeth Secker
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Denise Boneham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASeckerFE170815
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:20:07 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
Germany
Description
An account of the resource
Frances Elizabeth Secker is a lifelong resident of Feltwell. She was still at school when RAF Feltwell opened in 1937, and she remembers the Harrow being the first aircraft to arrive, followed by Wellingtons.
Elizabeth has clear memories of attending dances and the cinema at both RAF Feltwell and RAF Methwold, along with her friend Pam. She was employed as a waitress in the local fish and chip shop, which brought her into direct contact with the New Zealand airmen stationed at nearby RAF Methwold. The airmen’s love of egg and chips is a particularly fond memory. She had several boyfriends, but nothing too serious. Open trucks and coaches full of aircrew being transported to and from RAF Methwold is another memory that has stayed with her.
She didn’t meet her husband to be until 1947 after he was posted to RAF Methwold to retrain in air traffic control. They met when she cycled with her friend to Brandon fair. Charlie had been a rear gunner. His crew was made up of a New Zealand pilot, Flight Lieutenant Keen, two Canadians, Flight Lieutenants Brown and King, along with Flight Sergeants Spillsby, Elms and Smith. The crew were a close-knit unit and they carried out 31 operation, and remained in contact long after the war. He spoke fondly about his favourite aircraft, Q for Queenie, but he did not talk about his operations. Elizabeth only discovered his log book after Charlie’s death. His only comment about his experiences came when an item on Germany made the news, and he would indicate that he knew where the location was. She does remember Charlie told her he had his first cigarette after the aircraft crashed at RAF Mepal. Charlie demobbed in 1950 and was then employed by Peal Assurance.
Elizabeth also worked on the land. Planting potatoes by machine, but picking by hand. She also helped at harvest time. Cycling to the fields where all the heavy work was carried out by horses.
Her friend Pam married Ted King. She was quite young, and although Pam and Ted moved around, they remained in contact throughout their lives until Pam passed away. Elizabeth worked at the chip shop throughout her life until her retirement.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1937
1947
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
aircrew
bombing
crash
Harrow
love and romance
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Feltwell
RAF Mepal
RAF Methwold
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1918/45591/MCrawfordJ416818-170808-11.2.pdf
21e349bda35334992b54472f39ed9541
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Crawford, Jack 416818
John Crawford
J Crawford
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Crawford, J
Description
An account of the resource
18 items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer John "Jack" Crawford (416818 Royal New Zealand Air Force) and contains his diaries, documents, correspondence and photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator/ air gunner with 189 Squadron and was killed 4 March 1945. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by john Herbert and catalogued by Lynn Corrigan.<br /><br /><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW220471175 BCX0">Additional information on John "Jack" Crawford</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW220471175 BCX0"> is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/105207/">IBCC Losses Database.</a></span>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
So short a time
Description
An account of the resource
Jack's wife recollecting meeting Jack, their marriage and her later life. She describes meeting with Jack's surviving crew members, pilot Tom Dykins, Sergeant Bert Price, Sergeant Doug Looms and Stan Jones, who had been held as prisoners of war after baling out. She explains the circumstances of the deaths of her husband, wireless operator and air gunner Warrant Officer John 'Jack' Crawford, rear gunner Flight Sergeant D F 'Red' Cook and navigator Flight Lieutenant Paul E Thompson who died in the operation.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Edna Ruth Crawford-Harris
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1974-06-11
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-03-03
1943-03-04
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Oxfordshire
Germany
Germany--Hörstel
New Zealand
New Zealand--Hamilton
Canada
Alberta
Alberta--Calgary
Québec
Québec--Montréal
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
11 printed sheets
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCrawford J416818-170808-11
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
final resting place
ground personnel
killed in action
Lancaster
love and romance
missing in action
navigator
Operational Training Unit
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Barford St John
wireless operator / air gunner
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2038/34232/SKingEJ182986v10109.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2038/34232/SKingEJ182986v10112.1.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
King, Edward James
E J King
Description
An account of the resource
46 items. The collection concerns Sergeant Edward James King (b. 1920, 1377691, 182986 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, photographs and an album of charts and newspaper cuttings. He flew operations as a navigator with 96 and 15 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Patricia Joan Potter and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-11-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
King, EJ
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] LINZ EUX [/underlined]
[underlined] P – Plane Base 9th July, 1944 [/underlined]
Airborne 1220
Landed 1615
Full cloud cover over target so bombed on instruments.
[page break]
[map]
[inserted][underlined] LINZEUX. [/underlined][/inserted]
[page break]
[map]
[page break]
Bomber Command aircraft attacked military installations in Northern France, and laid mines in enemy waters last night without loss.
A REDUCED FORCE OF 50 LANCASTERS WENT OUT YESTERDAY AFTERNOON TO A CONSTRUCTIONAL WORKS AT LINZIEUX FROM THE FOLLOWING SQUADRONS:-
15 SQDN – 13 DETAILED, 11 PRIMARY, 1 RETURNED EARLY, 1 BROUGHT BOMBS BACK.
622 SQDN – 12 DETAILED, 9 PRIMARY, 1 MISSING, 2 BROUGHT BOMBS BACK.
75 SQDN – 25 DETAILED, 25 PRIMARY.
VERY POOR WEATHER WAS ENCOUNTERED AND FORMATION FLYING WAS REPORTED 'TRICKY'. OVER THE TARGET THERE WAS 6-8/10THS CLOUD WITH A FEW GAPS AND MASTER BOMBER INSTRUCTED CREWS TO BOMB ON GEE OR D.R. AND THEN TOLD HIS DEPUTY TO TRY TO MARK. A FEW ORXXX FEW CREWS SAW THE T.I’S WHICH QUICKLY DISAPPEARED INTO CLOUD AND THE MAJORITY BOMBED ON GEE AND A FEW VISUALLY THROUGH BREAKE [sic] IN CLLXXX IN CLOUD. BOMBING WAS DESCRIBED AS WIDESPREAD AND THIS IS BORNE OUT BY THE PHOTOGRAPHS IT HAS BEEN POSSIBLE TO PLOT, THESE BEING SPREAD OUT FROM 3 – 7 MILES MAINLY TO SOUTH-EAST OF TARGET. PLOTTINGS GIVEN BELOW.
THERE WAS LITTLE FLAK OVER THE TARGET, BUT F/75 WAS HIT AND FELL 5000 FEET BEFORE RE-GAINING CONTROL, THE M/U GUNNER BEING WOUNDED. NO FIGHTERS WERE SEEN.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Four items, Edward's brief description of the operation, the second his navigation plot, third is a map showing the target and fourth part of an official report of the operation. This includes the number and squadrons of the aircraft that took part, the weather which gave heavy cloud cover which in turn led to poor accuracy. It also includes a summary of the operation and there is a very short press cutting reporting raids on Northern France.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Edward King
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-07-09
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
France--Hesdin
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Map. Navigation chart and navigation log
Map
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two text documents, a navigation plot, a map, a press clipping
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SKingEJ182986v10109, SKingEJ182986v10110, SKingEJ182986v10111, SKingEJ182986v10112
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-07-09
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Title
A name given to the resource
Linzeux, Edward King's 23rd operation of his tour
15 Squadron
622 Squadron
75 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Mildenhall
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mills, Gordon Albert
Albert Gordon Mills
G A Mills
A G Mills
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-10-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mills, GA
Description
An account of the resource
25 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Gordon Albert Mills (b. 1921, 1448361, 196610 Royal Air Force). He volunteered for aircrew as air gunner and completed operations on 149, 218 and 75 NZ Squadrons on Lancaster and Stirling in 1944/45 and stayed in the RAF after the war. The collection contains his log book, documents, photographs and decorations.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by L A Barker and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Gordon Mills sortie record sheet number 2
Description
An account of the resource
Lists thirteen sorties 16-28 on Lancaster of 75 Squadron as air gunner. Records eight wartime operations and five after the end of hostilities.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
G A Mills
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two sided printed document handwritten filled out
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MMillsGA1445361-201003-05
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Essen
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Regensburg
Netherlands
Netherlands--Hague
France--Reims
Belgium
Belgium--Brussels
France
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-03-11
1945-03-18
1945-03-27
1945-04-09
1945-04-13
1945-04-20
1945-04-29
1945-05-01
1945-05-09
1945-05-12
1945-05-16
1945-05-28
1945-05-29
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Lancaster
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mills, Gordon Albert
Albert Gordon Mills
G A Mills
A G Mills
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-10-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mills, GA
Description
An account of the resource
25 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Gordon Albert Mills (b. 1921, 1448361, 196610 Royal Air Force). He volunteered for aircrew as air gunner and completed operations on 149, 218 and 75 NZ Squadrons on Lancaster and Stirling in 1944/45 and stayed in the RAF after the war. The collection contains his log book, documents, photographs and decorations.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by L A Barker and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Gordon Mills sortie record sheet no 1
Description
An account of the resource
First five operations on 149 Squadron Stirling, then one operation on 218 Squadron before he Joined 75 Squadron on 16 January 1945. List 15 operations as air gunner on Stirling and Lancaster.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
G A Mills
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two sided printed form handwritten filled out
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MMillsGA1445361-201003-06
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
France
France--Morlaix
France--La Rochelle
France--Brest
France--Blois
France--Paris
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Norway
Atlantic Ocean--Oslofjorden
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-05-25
1944-05-28
1944-05-30
1944-06-02
1944-06-06
1944-08-28
1945-01-28
1945-01-29
1945-02-01
1945-02-16
1945-02-18
1945-02-19
1945-02-23
1945-02-24
1945-03-07
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
149 Squadron
218 Squadron
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Lancaster
mine laying
Stirling
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Gorfunkle, Norman
N Gorfunckle
N Gorfunkle
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gorfunckle, N
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. The collection concerns Sergeant Norman Gorfunkle (1920 - 1942, 1260360 Royal Air Force) and contains photographs and documents. He flew operations as an observer with 76 Squadron and was killed 7/8 November 1942. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Lester, Russell Gellman and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on Norman Gorfunkleis available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/210756/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1st Allied Airplane Crashed in Haute-Marne, Bomber Halifax Mk II DT515
Description
An account of the resource
An account of the crash written by the pilot, George Thom. The report includes part of a police report.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
George Thom
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Italy--Genoa
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
France--Dunkerque
Belgium--Ostend
France--Reims
France--Chaumont (Haute-Marne)
France--Aube
Switzerland
France--Perpignan
France--Paris
France--Vosges Mountains
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Wehrmacht
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Text. Personal research
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three printed sheets
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MGorfunckleN1260360-170801-030001,
MGorfunckleN1260360-170801-030002,
MGorfunckleN1260360-170801-030003
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-11-07
207 Squadron
4 Group
76 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
bombing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
crash
escaping
evading
final resting place
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Lancaster
navigator
pilot
RAF Linton on Ouse
Resistance
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/763/10760/ACunninghamAB171104.1.mp3
9f16a8efcb1e7748a3ad23a726fc2d16
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cunningham, Bruce
Argyle Bruce Cunningham
A B Cunningham
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Bruce Cunningham (1920 - 2020, 424433 Royal New Zealand Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 514 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cunningham, AB
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GT: It is the 4th of November 2017 and today I’m interviewing Mr Argyle Bruce Cunningham at his residence in [long beep] in Kilbirnie, Wellington, New Zealand. With me is the New Zealand Returned Servicemen’s Welfare Advisor Kaye Pointon. And Kaye has introduced me to Bruce, Bruce Chapman err Bruce Cunningham and Bruce has agreed that I can interview him today for the IBCC Digital Archives. Mr Argyle Bruce Cunningham was a pilot for the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and he flew on 514 Squadron as a pilot in Bomber Command, England. So, Bruce can you please tell me a little bit about where you were born and when and therefore your age? And how you got to join the New Zealand Air Force. Please.
BC: I was, I was born in Marsden. 1920. And then I, I left school when I was thirteen and a half. I worked for a firm for four or five years and then I decided to go back to school. To short trousers and a school cap and so forth. Taken two years instead of three. When I was, the last year I was at school the school children came back from the town saying the head prefect’s name’s in the ballot. And the principal called me in and said, ‘I believe your name’s in the ballot. I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well you’re not going on any ballot. You’re sitting matriculation.’ He used to be a lieutenant colonel in the army. But just after I sat I did go into the Territorials and I spent my time digging holes in the sand and so forth. And I decided that there are other better things to do than that so I decided that I would join the, something else. I then applied. Made enquiries about the Navy. And then on second thoughts I thought no. I’d spend years being seasick so I’d better go in to the air force. So, off I went into the air force. Up at Rosewood they said, ‘We’re short in the course before. Is there anybody, would anybody like to go out of this place in half time?’ And I thought — no. I’ll leave that to the boys who’ve got all the brains. But they didn’t do it that way. They set some navigation exercises and it was decided on your results on those whether you went out of Rosewood in half time or not. And I scored, believe me it was 98.5 or something. So I was assisted to get out of the place. But I wanted to get out because I’d developed impetigo and then I used to go to the doctors. [unclear] they’d paint me with green paint. They ran out of green paint and started painting me purple. So I walked around Rosewood looking like a Red Indian looking for my lecture places which had been changed. And I was very pleased to get out of Rosewood.
GT: So, so Bruce you, joining the air force they assigned you your service number of NZ424433.
BC: Yes.
GT: Is that correct?
BC: That’s right.
GT: So what, what did you go on to do then to end up being a pilot?
BC: Yes. I went down. First of all went to Bell Brock and New Plymouth and did eighty hours there on Tiger Moths. And then I went to Wigram and got my wings in Wigram. Not in Canada. I got my wings in Wigram.
GT: Yeah. What year was that please Bruce?
BC: That would be in [pause] was it ’43? Was it? It was ’43. I didn’t wait a long time to get into the air force. I was, I knew I had to go to a war but I wasn’t particularly keen on getting into the air straight away. It got to the stage where I waited far too long. In the finish I had to ring up Wellington and say, ‘Goodness gracious me. How much longer?’ But finally I got in and I went to Wigram and got my wings. And then we had, we did the final leave and went up to Auckland and I thought I will probably get on a big boat. Walk up the stairs onto this boat that would be so big. But when I got there I got the impression that the boat was so small I walked down the thing instead of up. When we, before this, before the boat took off we were speaking to one boy on the staff there and then we were asking him about going to England by boat. And he said this is the third sister ship. The name was the Empire Grace, I think. And he said, ‘This is the third sister ship.’ And we said, ‘What about the other ships?’ ‘Well, they all went on their third trip. They were sunk.’ And I was, so of course someone asked the question, ‘What trip is this?’ Of course the answer was, ‘This is the third trip.’ [laughs] Well, as the lights of Auckland disappeared I thought well that’s the last you’ll see of her [laughs] But first of all we didn’t go straight to Panama. We went south. Went down the Southern Ocean and that. It had the largest consignment of cheese that had ever left New Zealand. And they’d built some bunks in it and took about fifteen air force crew over then. But then, and then we went to Panama and we had leave on Panama and we went into town. Pitch black. 10 o’clock the lights turned on all over the town and then to it. That was a big night in Panama for everybody. A strange place.
GT: So, how long did it take you to sail to England then Bruce? How long did it take you to get there?
BC: From memory I think it must have taken about five weeks. I can’t recall back then. I remember going across the Atlantic. We, we were on our own. We weren’t escorted. We got nearer to England and we had to do drills and all sorts of things. Quite a long way. German aeroplanes coming out to bomb us. We went out over the top of Ireland and down. Right down to Avonmouth where we finally disembarked.
GT: Was that Southampton?
BC: Avonmouth. Yeah.
GT: Ok.
BC: Yeah. Avonmouth.
GT: So once you got to England then where did they send you? What, what OTU and bases did you go to?
BC: Well, we went to, New Zealand troops in those days were sent to Bournemouth. It was very good at Bournemouth. But later on they decided to send us to Brighton which wasn’t so good. But Bournemouth was a lovely place. Also, my first introduction to Bournemouth was on Sunday afternoon a Focke Wulf came over from Germany and blasted the place. Sunday afternoon. And we were crouching down on the floor and I thought afterwards what’s the good of that? I remember they bombed a, a Bobbies café and a woman who used to watch us drilling every morning she stopped a bullet from that trip. They came over very low level and frightened everybody. Then I went to several stations flying Oxfords at that. And then after we finished Oxfords we then went on to Wellingtons. Flying Wellington. Wellington 1Cs.
GT: What station was that at Bruce? Can you remember?
BC: That was at OTU at Westcott. And to me I always look back and think that station was more, it was more dangerous being there than being on operations. The aeroplanes used to remind me of old, old rental car. If you got there you were lucky. The chance of getting there without a breakdown were pretty remote. And, and I had the diciest do ever in my life was at Westcott. And how I survived I’ll never know. But it is, it was a very dicey business Westcott. If you got out of Westcott there was a fair show you’d live. But most of New Zealanders must have gone through Westcott. Bomber Command. 11 OTU. And then I left that station with good marks, but boy was I ever lucky. I learned to listen. Never be first off in training. Never, never do that again. Never be first off. That’s because leave it for someone else to do the finding out. I took off and I wasn’t far up in the air before an aeroplane in the [pause] flew over the top of us and ruined all our radio equipment including the artificial horizon at night time. And then, and I couldn’t see the ‘drome. That was, we should never have taken off. So I had to do what I thought was a circuit. No artificial horizon. All that missing. Did a circuit and land only to find the runway was over there. So I do an overshoot. In those aeroplanes the 1C’s you didn’t do an overshoot in the middle of the day let alone at midnight. Green as the grass surviving then. So do another circuit. Just one. The runway’s over there. So I kept on doing these circuits. That’s right. I found out later on that they could hear me but I couldn’t hear them or the other way around. Something right. So they turned on lights to tell me where the front of the runway was. After all the lights all they did was lit up the air but I’ve forgotten the colour that I could see. And I, somehow or other made a landing. When I landed the official procedure was to ring up and say you’d landed. The whole damn ‘drome knew I’d landed but the RAF says you ring up and say you’ve landed. That’s what you did. So I picked up to ring up but my tongue wouldn’t work. My tongue wouldn’t work [laughs] and boy was I lucky to get down. But everybody else was sitting down there waiting for me to land. And that’s when I learned never be first off in future. Someone else had got to find out what the weather was like. But it wasn’t made any better by someone flying over the top of me ruining all my radio and [pause] and radio, and. I was lucky to get out of Westcott alive. After that I, they put me sent me off to fly Stirlings and Stirlings were very big and you were about twenty feet up in the air. And when you started to fly that you were never knew whether you were two feet above the ground or two feet under.
GT: So, so Bruce, was it at Westcott you formed up with your crew? Did you get crewed?
BC: At Westcott we signed up with five of them and subsequently we got the other two. But it was amazing you should mention that because how you got crewed up was a great way. It worked for some reason or other. It’s a thing that you wouldn’t want to do a second time. Like getting married. You’re just shoved into a room and something happened made you. And here you see I picked on a fellow who finished up boss or second boss of [unclear] of Great Britain. You could drop a bomb behind him and he wouldn’t shake. He was a wonderful fellow.
GT: Can you tell us their names please?
BC: Eh?
GT: Can you tell us their names?
BC: Yes. I could.
[pause]
GT: Bruce is opening his very well-worn diary. It’s an awesome piece of history.
BC: Incidentally, I drew that myself. I couldn’t do that now. The navigator was Bob Ramsay. The bomb aimer was Brailsford. Reg Brailsford. Radio operator Sergeant Stone. The rear gunner Sergeant Roberts and the mid-upper gunner Fred Brown. And then the engineer would have been [pause] But Roberts was a, he swore that we were shot down by another Lancaster. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was just reading before you came in here how I went over to Wales after I came back from the war and Taff was in the same pew in the church that we’d had sat in before I went missing. And then he and his family told me that he wouldn’t budge. Budge from that.
[Telephone ringing. Recording paused]
KP: The war —
GT: Ok.
KP: Again.
GT: Right. I’ve just had to turn that off. That was Bruce’s daughter just ringing on the phone.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, so, Bruce if, if we could —
BC: Go back to —
GT: If we could just go back to the point where —
BC: Fair enough.
GT: Now, you’ve just named your crew and I need to point out that Bruce has read all the names in his diary on pencil without glasses. So for a ninety six, ninety seven year old man that’s pretty awesome that you’re doing that without your, without any reading glasses. So, so Bruce, now you moved on to your Stirlings. Who else did you pick up for your Stirling crew? And where did you fly and learn to fly the Stirlings?
BC: I picked up the crew and joined up with the mid-upper gunner and the engineer, at [pause] I’ll tell, I’ll tell you later. It wasn’t the engineer that we were shot down with. That, our own engineer was injured.
GT: So you learned to fly the Stirling. What station were you at for that?
BC: I can’t remember. Stradishall was it?
GT: Stradishall. Could have done. Yeah. Ok.
BC: It’ll come to me.
GT: And that was, that was a Heavy Conversion Unit.
BC: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Do you remember the number of the HCU? 1685 maybe?
BC: I can get it if you want it.
GT: Alright. Yeah. Well, we can, we can add that in later on. That’s fair. So how long did you spend on Stirlings? And was it then you were sent to a Lancaster squadron was it?
BC: Yeah. When I was, they were going to, they were going to send us to 75 but then they changed their minds and sent us to 514 and we went on to Stirlings. Mark 2s. On to Mark 2 Lancasters. And they were a wonderful thing to change there. It reminded me of an old Vauxhall motor car. Mass produced but wonderful. And I was flying again, and I seemed to recall I went, the bloke said to me, ‘Well, you can go solo now.’ And I said, ‘I think I’d like one more circuit.’ And he said, ‘Ok,’ but even after that I think I was first off with all the [unclear] I took to those. They were good. They were very good indeed.
GT: So, you, you flew Lancaster Mark 2s. Did you ever fly a Merlin powered Lancaster?
BC: No. No. No. But when I got back to England after the war they were on Merlins. They built three hundred Hercules motored Mark 2 and it was the number three hundredth that we got out of.
GT: So, now how many sorties did you manage at 514? How long were you on 514?
BC: Oh, I was only there for a couple of months at that and I did about ten or a dozen at that. But I got about three weeks before the invasion we were sent over to France and Belgium and Holland to smash up all the railway yards and so forth.
GT: So, this was about May. June.
BC: Just before the invasion.
GT: 1944. Yeah.
BC: And that’s when I got caught.
GT: So what base were you at? What station were you at?
BC: Waterbeach.
GT: Waterbeach on 514.
BC: Yeah. Just out of Cambridge.
GT: Ok.
BC: Peacetime ‘drome and we [unclear].
GT: And, and you got to your twelfth or thirteenth operation.
BC: About ten or a dozen. I can’t remember. A couple of boomerangs. I can remember one boomerang. We got a half way across the North Sea. Sparks were coming out of the motor. And that’s not nice being up there in the middle of the night. You don’t know what to do or what’s going to happen. That was most annoying to have that. Another time we hadn’t been going long before we were sent in immediately after the Pathfinders which I thought was very good for a green crew. I was sat in the aeroplane, revving it up and a great big magneto drop. And I tried all I could do to clear that magneto run but I couldn’t do it. So I had to turn the motors off and I called up. You weren’t allowed to speak just before you took off because they knew you were, people were listening to you in Germany. Call up, ‘M-Mother, engineer,’ and out came a squadron leader, ‘Start the motors up. You pilots are all the same.’ So [laughs] so started the motors up and he started to run the motors up. And he ran and he ran and he ran and my engineer was telling him the cylinder head temperatures were way above what it should be. And he kept on trying to clear this magneto drop and at first couldn’t do it at all. He had to turn the motors off. But he never apologised. Nowadays, of course you’d, you’d get stuck in to him but in those days you couldn’t start to, telling a squadron leader what to do or you’d be on the outer for some time.
GT: So what rank were you at Waterbeach?
BC: I was a, I was a, when that happened I was probably a flight sergeant. And you didn’t, you didn’t tell the squadron leader because — especially an English one.
GT: So on the sorties you did they were all night operations.
BC: Every one. Yeah.
GT: Every one. And did you manage to engage any night fighters? Do any corkscrewing? That kind of stuff.
BC: No. No. No. We didn’t. On the night we were shot down we were just left the target and then something came through the mid-upper. The, the starboard inner. If I had trouble with the aeroplane it was always the starboard inner. Always. And the starboard inner ran a lot of the things all over the aeroplane. That’s where the source of power came from. And I can remember the tracer bullets coming through like that. Power over the ground. And when I became a prisoner of war the interrogator was trying to find out all sort of things from me. He said, ‘You were shot down by flak.’ Now, I wasn’t shot down by flak. I was shot down by something in the air. And Taffy reckoned it was another, another Lancaster but over the years I’ve seen all sorts of reasons why I was shot down. I was shot down by — somebody claimed me, flying a Focke Wulf. Another one claimed me, flying I think it was a 109. And somebody else claimed me. It was the old story. Someone was trying to jack up their shooting downs and they were all claiming me.
GT: Enemy kills. So, so you saw tracer coming through your aircraft.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Straight and level. Or —
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Horizontal and level.
BC: Yeah. It come from the back. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. So could it have been machine guns or cannons?
BC: Yeah. It couldn’t have been anything from the ground.
GT: Ok. But the cannons were a lot larger mass —
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Of incendiary coming through. Whereas the bullets, 303s in calibre are smaller.
BC: The poor, the poor rear gunner. He he he was one of three who got home. Managed to get home. And he went on operations again. First operation with a pilot called Gilchrist. Flight Sergeant Gilchrist. Blown to smithereens. And that —
KP: It’s ok [pause] It’s alright. Keep talking. Glen just went to answer the door.
BC: Who was that? Who was that? Yeah. He was blown to smithereens. Do you know what it was? Bombs from a Lancaster up above him. Poor old chap. He was coming out to live in New Zealand after the war. But he, he used to be a, well he was an orphan. And the week before, the Sunday before he was shot down I was over Wales. I went to this small church in Blaenau Ffestiniog. And I said to Taffy after the service, ‘Taffy, that preacher was talking about you and me in your lingo. What was he saying?’ He said. ‘Yeah, he was.’ Yeah.
GT: Bruce, can you describe the night you were shot down then? That was about your twelfth. On your twelfth operation thereabouts you were saying. So, how? And you described that you were shot down possibly by enemy aircraft. More than likely. So, so what happened then? Did the crew bale out? Run us through what happened.
BC: They, I — the thing was on fire and the fire was spreading. I asked the engineer to push the graviner switch in. I’m not sure what happened after that. I think he, he was a bit worried that after the war too he was in England. He was an Englishman. He went up to Lincoln and sat in the aircraft to try and recall had happened on the night. He was very worried about it. And I can remember a friend of mine connected with gliding in England and he wrote and said, “I see your name in the “Aeroplane” or “Flypast” or something in England. And this is what it said — ”. And I said, ‘Well, that’s wrong. That’s not true.’ My mid-upper gunner in Adelaide, he read it too. He said, ‘I’m not putting up with that.’ So he started looking for him in Adelaide. That took him a day. He found this bloke. He said, ‘You’d better retract that mate. It’s not good what you said in that.’ But then —
GT: So the graviner you mentioned there. The graviner switches.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: The graviners were the fire extinguishers. Is that right?
BC: I don’t know what happened about that. What he did about the graviner switches but on one trip we went to Karlsruhe. We went to the briefing and, you know sort of from memory the Met man waved his hand from Spain to Sweden and said, ‘There’s a cold front there. It’ll be gone when you get there.’ Of course the damn cold thing wasn’t gone at all. There was a cold front as soon as we got into France and we spent most of the time flying to Karlsruhe in, in, in ice and so forth. I see on that something happened a few minutes ago when there was no stuff on the wings to stop the icing. And we were flying in pitch black and then bang. What had happened is ice came off the propeller through the Perspex and laid the engineer out. He got up to have a look around and so help me another lot came through and hit him and he finished up in hospital. They thought he was going to lose his sight, but he didn’t lose his sight. He certainly wasn’t a POW either. He got out. We got another engineer who was a, who was a, whose pilot was in hospital. I think they shifted him from ‘drome to ‘drome and they came cropper on a motorbike and the pilot finished up in hospital. But then —
GT: So, when, when you gave the order to bale out once the aircraft was on fire.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Was that how it worked?
BC: How I got out I don’t know because I said to the engineer, put my parachute, ‘Get my parachute off the ground.’ It annoyed me. The RAF did something I didn’t like. They took pilot type parachutes off us. ‘Chutes that you sat on. And gave you an observer type which you put down on the floor behind the seat. Now, that’s not good enough. But I had to say to this engineer, ‘Get me my parachute.’ So, he gets the parachute and plops it down on my knee. I said, ‘That’s no good. Put it on hooks will you.’ I’ve got, all the trims for the aeroplane are gone. And you’re holding a Lancaster there with no trim. You’ve got a problem. Your feet hard down and you’re not holding the stick like, you’re holding the stick like, like — the minute you took your hand off the aeroplane started to turn over.
GT: Yeah.
BC: Now, I knew, I knew that blokes that were near me had got out but I wasn’t sure about the two at the back. And I spent some time sitting there ringing them up saying, ‘Are you there? Can you hear me?’ They never did answer. One of them afterwards, I said to him after the war. ‘You didn’t tell me you were going. I sat here for some time in a burning aeroplane while you didn’t tell me.’ ‘Oh yes I did.’ I didn’t, no you didn’t [laughs] But he, he got hit by the tail plane when he was getting out so he had that then. And of course then after after they’d all gone there was one hook on this parachute I had to put on myself and I couldn’t spare any hand. I had to put the thing on otherwise the parachute wouldn’t work. And of course the minute I get out of the seat the aeroplane started to roll over. Now, to get out I had to virtually dive underneath the dashboard. There’s a small hole which is not as, everybody acknowledged it wasn’t big enough. Now, to get through that hole and turn the aeroplane at 1 o’clock in the morning you’re pretty lucky to get out. I think it was a jolly good dive, never mind that.
GT: So you got out the hatch in the nose. In the floor of the aircraft.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when I got down a very stupid thought passed my mind and people can’t understand how it did but I didn’t understand it either and I was on the roof of this place, two storied roof looking up. At that stage we weren’t flying high. Five, six, seven or eight thousand feet only. And I could see the first flying home and I said to myself, ‘What the heck am I doing here when all those blokes are going home for eggs and bacon?’ And down the west coast of New Zealand they seem to enjoy that crack.
GT: Yeah. Did you lose many when you were on the squadron? Any. Many aircraft?
BC: Yeah.
GT: Had you lost quite a few as a squadron?
BC: No. All go on time.
GT: So, when, when you managed to get out of the aircraft how did you pull your parachute? You had a rip cord. A handle.
BC: A ripcord. Yeah.
GT: You managed to find —
BC: I can remember a friend of mine. I went all through the air force with him and then he got crewed up and then he went on his second dickie. You know what a second dickie is?
GT: I know but please tell people.
BC: He, he went with an experienced crew and the whole lot of them killed on the first trip. That, that was rather shaking. Ken Drummond from Lower Hutt. But then his crew crewed up with another Englishman who wanted his crew to salute him every day. And Ken, Ken’s navigator was a the fellow with some Maori blood in him and he took this pilot aside and sort of put him right. But they finished a tour. They were very lucky. They finished a tour. Yeah.
GT: Fascinating. Ok. So you managed to get your parachute open. And did you manage to steer yourself anywhere? Could you see where you were going to land?
BC: No.
GT: Or was it just pot luck that you ended up on top of a house?
BC: It was completely black. So I suppose you couldn’t see where you were landing that was probably a good thing. But I sat on the top of this roof. It was a small building with a very, very steep roof and the parachute was caught over a chimney otherwise I might have slid off the roof. And I heard a story after, after the war that I wouldn’t be, I refused to come down off the roof. Where they got that story I’m daft if I know that. But what would I want to refuse for? But finally they got me down me down through a trap door in the roof. Two stories up. And so help me there was a, oh must have been at least a dozen or eighteen young Germans and one rope. I used my French for the first time in my life. The only time I ever used my French. I wanted to find out had the aeroplane landed on houses or in the fields. I can remember that much French. I found out the aeroplane had landed in fields. That’s how I knew that I hadn’t killed anybody.
GT: So, where, where did you crash and land please?
BC: Where did I crash? I landed at a place called Rixensart at about sou’ southeast of Brussels. I always thought it was a pub I’d landed on. And I thought it was quite strange that I should land on a pub and be a teetotaller [laughs] Yeah. But it wasn’t a pub. It was a café. And I went back in 1996 to collect my beer. But only to find out the place is now a bank and the Brussels newspaper thought that was highly funny. That I came back to collect and I couldn’t [laughs]
GT: So, the Germans immediately took you as a prisoner of war.
BC: Yeah.
GT: What happened then?
BC: I became a prisoner of war and I was — the next thing I went to Frankfurt for interrogation. And I was there for several days. I don’t know. It might have been a week. And they questioned you on — they were able to tell me more about my squadron than I ever knew myself. I learned a lot from that bloke. And he surprised. He threw, he threw across the table a photograph of a Mosquito aeroplane and he said, ‘See that aeroplane?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I flew that yesterday.’ And I said, ‘Yeah?’ ‘Yeah. What a wonderful aeroplane,’ he said, ‘Pity you can’t make more of them.’ I must have said, ‘Can’t we make more of them?’ He said, ‘No. They’re made of wood.’ And then I suppose he was a, he might have been a pilot who was resting or something and that’s they were giving him a job while he was resting. But I can remember seeing marks on the wall that people had made in there with thumbnail and fingernail. And that was the number of days they’d spent there before they got out. I can remember being on the Frankfurt Railway Station. There was a German corporal looking after about a half a dozen of us. And while we were on the station there was an air raid. And of course everybody in Frankfurt decided they’d get in to the railway station to be safe. And of course the crowd got bigger and bigger and it got more closer and closer to us. And this poor little German corporal he was dead scared that the public might tear us apart and he’d be responsible. I can remember him flapping good and hard at that. He might have been in trouble but then after we left there we were put in these sort of cattle trucks and then began the long, long trip across. Across Germany to, to Sagan. Which now is back in Polish hands. But, but it was a long, long trip and it was terrible. Terrible. I suppose we were lucky.
GT: You, you were interviewed by the Luftwaffe or by the Nazis? Or Gestapo.
BC: The Luftwaffe. Yeah.
GT: You think that was a lucky —
BC: When, when I — on my first trip the squadron said to me, the squadron commander said, ‘We’re going to Berlin tonight. If you don’t want to go just say so. No questions will be asked if you say no, that you don’t want to go.’ But that. Who? Who would want to, not want to go he said. Off we go to Berlin. And I can remember the next morning on the newspapers in England. Big headline, “RAF fools German defences.” The RAF didn’t know where it was that night. They sent out winds which were wrong. Someone going towards Berlin had to change and they, they didn’t fully accept the changes. They made some sort of amendment. And everybody of course got lost. And they went over Berlin. And then if you read in the book, “The Great Escape,” you’ll find they, they held up escaping because there was a raid on Berlin. That was my first trip. The worst Berlin trip during the whole of the war. Seventy three aeroplanes missing. So we all come back and we came back, slap bang in to the Ruhr and one of my crew said, ‘There’s more searchlights here than Berlin.’ Navigator said, ‘Oh, there’s darkness in between a couple of them.’ I said, ‘Mr Navigator, we’re flying, changing course. We’re flying due north.’ I flew due north whatever it was. And then turned west. We find out the next day some came out south of the Ruhr. And they didn’t know where they were that night. The winds got them all mucked up that was the last big trip they did on Berlin. They didn’t do any more. They couldn’t afford to lose, lose men like that. Seven in each aeroplane and seventy three aeroplanes missing. Although subsequently and I’ll always remember standing on the railway station at Waterbeach and, and I didn’t know at the time but that night they, they went to Nuremberg. And they lost ninety three in the air. That was the biggest loss of the war. I went on leave that morning otherwise I might have been there.
GT: So that would have been July 1944.
BC: That was at — no. That was before May. I went missing on the 11th of May. That was before then.
GT: Right. And the targets that you flew for what were they? Was it cities? Oil refineries?
BC: No. They were mostly cities. At Cologne and then Berlin. Karlsruhe. Just before the invasion there were, there were two or three or four stockyards. Messing up a stockyard. After we were shot down they were doing daylight raids. They were, they were mighty costly too. Very costly. But I don’t know, at night time you just flew an aeroplane. You didn’t know what was around you. You couldn’t see. You might find, shake a bit and that was someone flying across your nose. You could have hit him. You wouldn’t know. In the daytime you must have been very frightened seeing people get trapped. Night time you couldn’t care because you didn’t know. But there must have been quite a few accidents in the air. People hitting each other. So.
GT: What was your standard bomb loads? Did you have incendiaries or the high explosive. Five hundred pounders? Cookies? What was your standard bomb load you took?
BC: My first trip was an eight thousand pounder. Fancy sending a green man like me with an eight thousand pounder. I took an eight thousand pounder at another aerodrome too. Used to take off with about six tons. And people say that Bomber Command didn’t do much of a job during the war but you try following six hundred people over a city. Each aeroplane’s got six tons. That’s three thousand tons of bombs on a flight. That must make some difference eh? Night after night. On my second dickie trip and that, that’s what’s on there. Always reminded me. That photo there that’s what Stuttgart looked like. It was more of a second dickie trip. They decided to go to Stuttgart and the previous losses was three aeroplanes so everybody decided it was about time they did an operation. The last time was only three. That night it was thirty two. And that was like daylight that night and that always reminds me of it.
GT: Now, your dickie trips. Did you get to know the captain and the crew very well or were you just told to stand there, shut up and don’t touch anything?
BC: Oh, the second dickie. Funny you should mention that. I’m looking around. Before we took off I’m looking around the aeroplane. Doing a sort of inspection. Casual inspection. And I see the rear gunner with an empty bottle of beer. I said, ‘What the hell is going on here mate?’ He said, ‘Oh for Lords sake don’t tell the captain.’ He said, ‘We drop one over the target.’ He said, ‘They make a terrible noise when they’re going through the air.’ But that, there’s a photo over there there’s one, there’s a book called Strike and, Strike and Sure, something like that.
GT: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll have a look at that later on.
BC: At the end. Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: Now that fella’s grandfather was a rear gunner on that aeroplane which I flew.
GT: Ok.
BC: That —
GT: Yeah.
BC: That fellow who wrote that book on 514 Squadron. His grandfather was killed on an aeroplane. That one over there. Yeah.
GT: What was the side code numbers of your aircraft? Do you remember the numbers of your aircraft?
BC: Yeah. I’ve got them wrote out. JI something. 819 was one of them. And that. But I always had trouble with that, with the starboard inner. I mean one aeroplane we came home with had [pause] I was very fortunate when I got home. I was green, you know, a young pilot. Always was, the big shots won’t like my coming home early. I used to say, ‘If you’re only over the North Sea and you’ve got trouble go back home and you’ll come back tomorrow night. But if you go ahead you know you could kill yourself.’ But we got quite worried about sometimes about boomerang. But in that particular case, the flight commander’s aeroplane and they had to take the motor out. Yeah. Yeah. That pleased me [laughs]
GT: Just showed that —
BC: Yeah.
GT: Going back was the best option in this case. Yeah.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Definitely. So once you were a POW how, what happened then? You ended up in Sagan. Did you have a POW number assigned?
BC: Yeah. 5150 — my POW. I remember that number. When you got to the POW camp of course you had to be checked over. You might have been a ring-in. And that happened occasionally. Yeah. That’s true. I didn’t, I don’t think that happened in our camp but that did happen. And —
GT: So you’re meaning that there was a Nazi infiltrator. That they planted people in.
BC: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. Wow. And they called them ring-ins.
BC: Eh?
GT: Did they call them ring-ins?
BC: No. I called them that. I was able to tell them about a bloke there who was on the squadron before. Before I got shot down. He was able to confirm that I was quite legitimate. But, but in that POW camp of course you, you had guards inside the camp and out and, and bringing their beautiful Alsatian dogs. But the goons were interesting people. The guards would come into the camp. I remember a fella coming into camp once and he’d lost his ticket to get out. Word went around, ‘If you’ve got his ticket will you bring it to the gate so he can get out’ [laughs]. Everybody had to take, wait a damned long time before they handed that in [laughs] That’s that. That’s oh, that, yeah up to all sorts of mischief when you were a POW. They were underneath you. Underneath the floor checking up on you and crawling out on the [unclear] and they call you out to check where the radios were. We had, they had one fella who was going to, he was in our room actually. I don’t know where he was going to escape from but he was going to. He had an escape all jacked up. But I think it was called off in the finish because of some reason or other. But he was going to go down the road and steal an aeroplane. Yeah. There was, next, next door to the prisoner of war camp there was a big paddock. I’m not sure whether they used that for sport or not but I do recall a very small Welsh pilot who was a, he was a lawyer. And he went into this paddock and picked up a shovel and and a handful of wood and an old hat and decided walk out. Unfortunately [laughs] unfortunately they got him before he got very far. And I’ll never forget watching Wing Commander Tuck. As they were walking this bloke out he was dropping all the escape gear on the ground and Wing Commander Tuck was picking it up [laughs] Yeah.
GT: So Bruce, you were mentioning a Wing Commander Tuck. So, as we were talking earlier you had some very famous aircrew with you in Sagan. So, can you tell us a little about the people that were with you? And in this case Wing Commander Stanford Tuck.
BC: Wing Commander Tuck. He was a prisoner of war there and he, he — we were in a section called Tuck’s Mansions which were infected with those what do you call them? Bedbugs. And you go to bed at night, wake up in the mornings and your back was all bloody. And they tried many times to get rid of these roaches but they were, they had long lives these roaches. Yeah. There was one fellow in there they reckon at one stage he he flew an aeroplane up the streets of Berlin. I don’t know whether it was up the streets or not but I’ve a feeling he was pretty low. He was a, he was a [pause] At the prisoner of war camp I had a good record for bowling and cricket and then I quite often tell people that I had a very good record for bowling and cricket. They said, ‘Oh yeah. You must have been amongst the Sunday afternoon players.’ And I said I don’t think the Captain of Western Australia would like to be called that [laughs] The blokes from the West Indies. They wouldn’t like to be called that. We had, in my room we had a book. A line book. If you shot a line it got, it got put into the line book. Tuck was in the room one day and he made the comment, ‘All my flight commanders have become group captains and so forth since I was shot down,’ into the line book. And another squadron leader was shooting the line that he said, ‘So I pulled up, I pulled up over the hill and the flak was so and so thick you could have walked on it.’ That’s that.
GT: So Stanford Tuck was stuck down in Europe.
BC: I think he was. Yeah.
GT: Ok. And he ended up in your, in the same POW camp was it? Did he become the POW senior commander or was that someone else?
BC: No. There was a group captain there with a, a little fella with a big moustache. A groupie. And he was, he was, he was the commander. There were, there were lots of wingcos in there. It was a camp, a compound that was started off they got the ringleaders of the escape and shot them to [unclear] . That was the focus of the [unclear] compound. After that it was prisoners from recent trips and of course they were Nuremberg and Leipzig and Berlin. They were pretty heavy losses so the, you know blokes who were prisoners of war quite often didn’t have very many operations. It wasn’t their fault. I can remember one night around about 12 o’clock at night the word came out we were going to be shifted out of the camp. So, we had to, we had to move out. And that was the worst winter in Germany for eighty years. Snow outside. Marching. We marched in the snow. And then it wasn’t very pleasant at all. At the — I can remember one, one stop at, my friend I was with, a boy from Eton he could speak any old language at all. He talked to some people who lived in Germany and we got a damned good meal. I’ll always remember. Kept going back to the great big room where we were housed. It was dark and we had to crawl across all these bodies to get to where we should have been and put our knees in people’s noses, and all sorts. Frightening thought. But then we, we got out. Finally got up to a place called [pause] sou’ southwest of Berlin. A very big camp and they shifted us out of [unclear] or Sagan because they didn’t, they didn’t want the Russians to get us. Otherwise there might be, might be thousands of aircrew available to, you know, send back to England to fly again. So they didn’t want the Russians to get us. So that’s why they marched us away. But they couldn’t stop. Once we got to up south of Berlin. Couldn’t stop it. The Russians came. And they became our captors. And the Yankie, the Yanks used to send up trucks every day to cart us away. The Russians wouldn’t let them go. Wouldn’t let them go away. So they wanted, they said, ‘We’ll take the wounded and sick away.’ The Russians wouldn’t allow that either. So, I don’t know what the Russians had in mind at all but they wouldn’t let, they wouldn’t let the Yanks take us away. It was at that stage that I said to Guy one day, ‘I’ve had this place. I’m getting out of it.’ That’s when it all started again. But we got caught. Yeah. I always remember finally we got to the, we got a correspondent in a jeep picked us up. Guy and I. After we escaped.
GT: I’m sorry. Guy who?
BC: Guy Pease. And he picked, the correspondent picked us up in a jeep and he took us west to a, to a, to some trucks manned by negro drivers who then decided to take us west. And we got to the old brew hut only to find the bridge was manned by Russians who said, ‘Take them back, boy. You’re not crossing here.’ So these negro drivers said, ‘Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.’ So they turned around to go further north to find another bridge — manned by Russians. Finally get a bridge that was manned by Yanks and we got across. And I’ll always remember those front line American troops putting chewing gum and toothbrushes in to my, our pocket. And you know for years later I wouldn’t have a word said against the Americans at all. Front line troops doing that. That’s that. Yes.
GT: Many of those Americans had liberated many of those camps and must have seen some awful sights so obviously they had great compassion for you and their own boys too. They had a lot of people in POW camps themselves didn’t they? The Americans.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, they, they managed to get you across into allied lines. How did you get back to England? And when was that?
BC: That was in [pause] that must have been in May. And we were flown back from Brussels. I got flown back in a Dakota. But my rear, my mid-upper gunner he was a flight sergeant from another camp. He got to Brussels before me apparently and he, so help me got flown back by a 514 pilot. 514 aeroplane. Yeah. That’s that.
GT: So, we must, must go back then and ask you about your crew. So all your crew managed to bale out. That’s seven members.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Did they all survive the war and were they made POW or did they evade?
BC: Three of them. Three of them got back to England. The bomb aimer, the rear gunner and a radio operator. Apparently the radio operator got caught. He was two or three feet away from being caught, and he doesn’t know how he got away with it but he got home. Another two they were on the loose for six weeks before they got turned in by infiltrators. There was a group who helped prisoners of war get back but that group got infiltrated by somebody and he turned the whole damned lot in. And I think he left, he left that, what — he left somewhere but he came back. He came back and he worked in a pub in Paris. And some Yank spotted him and I think finally they got him and killed him in a chuck run. I’ve got a note of it somewhere. His name. He had several aliases. But that, but that was a bit frightening anyway to be turned in. And my navigator the Gestapo got him at night time. Very difficult if you’re — you know kids can give the giveaway you know. Get to school at that, ‘Oh we’ve got a man at home,’ and so forth. It could have been worse I suppose. When I was in Frankfurt the Germans made a comment that there are so many people on the roofs in the air force that so many people on the roofs they weren’t able to stop the population taking a, you know a pitchfork to people who landed. I suppose that happened occasionally. But in the, in the front of this book here I’ve got a note of the, the service when that, all those people were killed. Do you remember that Great Escape? Hitler said they were all to be shot. Somehow or other somebody else said half of them will be shot. At the service, I’ve got a note of the service there. Incidentally, a few years later, a few years ago I read some of that to the Girls Guides at the RSA laying of poppies at Karori. I read some of that. I don’t know. I don’t know what year it was but I’ve got a note of it here.
GT: Did you, did you know any of those prisoners of war that escaped and then were shot?
BC: No. No.
GT: You didn’t. Right.
BC: No. I didn’t know.
GT: So, when you managed to get back to England then when you flew back to England where did you land and what did they do? Did they —
BC: I can’t remember where we landed.
GT: Did they medically check you and then —
BC: I think they did. Yeah. We weren’t very, we weren’t in very good health but on the boat coming back it was a big boat. We, I think we won the tug of war on the boat and it always amazed me how underfed people like us could beat the rest of them. We didn’t cheat [laughs]
GT: And that was only a few months after the war finished. You managed to get a boat back to New Zealand.
BC: That’s right. Yeah. 1980 went to the Girl Guides. 1980.
GT: Wow. Yeah.
BC: Forty years ago.
GT: Goodness me.
BC: But you’d be very interested to read some of the comments from that.
GT: Thank you. I will do. Yeah. So, from, from that time when did you arrive back to New Zealand? Was it mid 1945? Something like that?
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. And the —
BC: On the way back I think the Japanese tossed it in. I was on the boat when they tossed it in, I think.
GT: Ok. You were very lucky then.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Did you stay in the New Zealand Air Force or did you keep flying?
BC: No. I I got out. They asked me in Brussels why I didn’t stay in the air force and I made a comment and after I made it I was very frightened it would get back to my friends in the New Zealand. They said, ‘Why didn’t you stay in the air force?’ And I said, ‘I don’t want to be a taxi driver all my life.’ If that gets back to my friend in New Zealand. Of course I had a lot to do in aviation after the war.
GT: So then please tell us about that because once you arrived back did you take up a new trade? Did you carry on flying? What? Please tell us what you did there Bruce.
BC: When I came home from the war I [laughs] When I came home from the war I went to the powers that be and I said, ‘I want a bursary to go to university.’ They said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘Commerce.’ They said, ‘There’s no bursaries for Commerce.’ It was in the rehab, opposite, upstairs opposite [unclear] and they said there’s no. I said, ‘I’m not interested in what you say. I want a bursary to go back. The war has ruined my life. I went back to school and I didn’t go back for nothing. I want a bursary.’ They said, ‘You’re not having it.’ I said, ‘I think you might be wrong mate,’ and I said, ‘Who’s above you in this joint?’ And I can remember saying, the fella said to me, ‘The lecture’s at night. What would you do in the daytime? Go around Oriental Bay?’ And I said to him, ‘You say that again and see what happens then.’ I pestered. In the finish the pushed me out. They said, ‘You’ve got a bursary for one year only.’ I said, ‘Thank you very much.’ I forgot who it was who helped me get that. A bloke. Turner I think. I’ve forgotten who. In the end I went back and I said, ‘Now, I want a bursary to go to university next year.’ They said, ‘You’ve had one for a year. You were told for one year only. You’re not having another one.’ I said, ‘Who’s above you in this joint?’ So [laughs] so, finally I enrolled at the university and I went down. By this stage I’d have got to top man in New Zealand. A fellow called Colonel Barrington. A little fellow. And thank goodness for him. He was the top man. We started [laughs] we were swearing at each other. And then, and then I said, ‘I want a bursary. I’m not clever but I’m pig headed enough to want to get somewhere.’ And then finally he said to me, ‘Ring me back at 4 o’clock. What are you doing now?’ I said, ‘I’m up, my books are on the table in the library right now. Up at the university.’ ‘Ring me at 4 o’clock.’ So he gave me a bursary for a second year. And, and I found out that’s not the way to study. It’s not the way to study. Doing a three year course in two years is no way to. It’s wrong. Fundamentally wrong. It’s very wrong. You shouldn’t do that. But I finally got my accounting work from somebody. Then went on my own. And I spent a lot of my time on aviation. I was at the aero club and I was at the aero club for, I don’t know, sixteen years. And then and then the Royal New Zealand I was up for the whole of New Zealand. And then gliding for forty five years. New Zealand Secretary of Gliding for forty five years and I’d the only aerial topdressing company in Wellington. I was the secretary of that. I used to go up to Martinborough, every month for a director’s meeting with that John Rutherford whose family owned the dominion. John with his great big moustache, his Benz car. When you closed the door you thought you were closing a strongroom door.
GT: Wow. So, so for gliding became your passion in the end. Forty. Forty five years.
BC: Captain of the secretaries. Yeah. I had another secretaryship. Sixty years. My daughter said to me one night, ‘Come into town. We’re going to have a meal.’ That happened quite often. But they put one across me. When I got into this, this restaurant I knew everybody there. It was a party for me. To give me a New Zealand life membership of the painters. The only one ever given to a bloke who’s not been on the New Zealand Executive. I got life membership with the painters after sixty years secretaryship. That’s a long time.
GT: So you were a painter and paper hanger. Or —
BC: No. I was the secretary of it.
GT: Just became the secretary of it.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Wow. Without even being in the industries per se.
BC: That’s right. I was a, I was secretary of Wellington for six years. I was a life member of Wellington and I’m a life member of the New Zealand too. In fact when I got that life membership that was my eighth. I’ve got eight of them.
GT: Fabulous.
BC: I had about forty years in the motion picture industry too. I was the auditor of the motion pictures, the cinemas for New Zealand. And then I became a secretary. And I was the secretary of the — and I used to run all the conferences up at Rotorua and Hamilton.
GT: So, this is a direct result of you pushing to get your bursaries and you did a degree in Commerce.
BC: Yeah.
GT: This is a direct result of all of that.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: I got a, I got a BComm and then I got my accountancy and then they decided that the Institute of Secretaries, there was a, I thought I might as well become, get my secretarial exam too. And they said if you sit this exam and pass it by the New Zealand you are automatically become a chartered secretary of England. So, we sat this, we sat this exam for, for the secretarial and I remember sitting in a church hall in town. I sat this exam and got it all done in about nine hours flat. Three three hours papers. Everybody, everyone was there to get in the back door. And I got home and I found out that one question I got all the, I made the list correct but I put the wrong heading on it and I thought oh, I had to finish that. But they gave me that and now I’m with the Chartered Institute of Secretaries too.
GT: What a fabulous thing. So, now tell me please about your family. You married and had children and when?
BC: Yeah. Well, when I went back to school in, in the class of a family called Derwent and I finished up by marrying her. She was a wonderful chorist. When I went back as a pupil when I was nineteen. And she was, her mother and father were, they were headmaster and headmistress of a Maori school in Turangi and it was pretty amazing rather. He was born in Scotland. A white man buried as a Maori chief. And when they buried him out came the cloak with the kiwi feather. Reserved for Maori chiefs.
GT: The rangatiras.
BC: They were around the Ataahua. All her family were, too [unclear] out. she was, she was white but a great honour for a white man to be buried as a Maori chief.
GT: So you met her before the war and when you came back you married.
BC: I married. Yeah. When I got back I married. I was twenty nine when I got married and I’ve got a wife and three children. That’s my wife there.
GT: She’s got a nurses uniform there.
BC: When I married her she was a theatre sister at Wellington Hospital. Blood and guts.
GT: Fair enough too. And then you lived here in Wellington.
BC: Yeah. I’ve always been in Wellington. Yeah. Ever since the war I’ve been in Wellington. I’ve got a daughter in Wellington. A son in Wainuiomata and a son in England.
GT: So how many grandchildren have you now?
BC: I’ve got two.
GT: Two grandchildren.
BC: Two boys. My daughter’s got two boys and my son in England has got two girls. And that’s my grandson on the right there. He put in for a job in Wellington in New Zealand. Eight hundred put in for it but he got it last year. Three days after he got it he told me he didn’t want it. That, that crowd in Melbourne sent for him and he’s over there. He’s not been long there before he got, he’s got promotion already and the woman in England with that firm wants him in England, and I hear two days ago the boss in Jakarta wants him. He’s, I don’t know, he’s something. I don’t think he’ll finish up in that firm. I think he’ll finish up like John Key making his money out of money which is not good. He just, that’s his father in the centre. He’s a lawyer in Wellington. And his, his father was an All Black. That there.
GT: Really?
BC: Incidentally, do you know what that thing on the left is?
GT: I’m looking at a shield type plaque and it is [pause] it’s the Caterpillar Club.
BC: You wouldn’t credit my name’s on the back of that would you?
GT: Now, Bruce is showing me his Caterpillar Club pin and it is, his name is engraved on the back of it and he’s kept it in a ring, in a ring holder so, and it’s on a small very delicate chain. So it’s a very prestigious thing to be wearing and still have your Caterpillar Club pin. Has it got one eye or two?
BC: One.
GT: It’s got one eye. Yeah.
BC: That’s enough.
GT: Yeah.
BC: What was that?
GT: Yeah. It’s got, yeah it’s got two eyes. Two little red ruby eyes.
BC: I used to think the coloured, two different coloured eyes but that, I believe that’s not true.
GT: Yours has both red. I can see that.
BC: They used to say the, the green eyed one was if you were shot down over the sea but I believe that’s not true. Yeah.
GT: I’ll find out for you, Bruce. I don’t know about that. So, so now, I’m sorry in chatting with you earlier you mentioned your wife had had a stroke and died. And how long ago was that, Bruce? When was that? Your wife died of a stroke. Was that correct?
BC: No. She had a stroke. But she had that. When I brought her home from England they sent her up to Taihape Hospital and she was there for thirteen years. I used to see her every day. Get her out on a Friday. Take her back. But that got too much for me. I used to, she insisted I do her washing. I used to do her washing every day and then do my shopping. And then I’d, it was always late at night. Then a few years ago, three years ago I was working full time. Still working ‘til midnight every night and enjoying it.
GT: At ninety. In your early nineties you were still working.
BC: Most. Yeah. Ninety four. Most of my life I didn’t have a doctor. I went for an insurance policy once and they said to me, ‘What’s your doctor’s name? We want to check up with your doctor?’ I said, ‘I haven’t got a doctor.’ ‘What’s his telephone number?’ I said, ‘Didn’t you hear me? I can’t give you a telephone number because I haven’t got a doctor.’ So, finally I gave them the name of Bill Treadwell. That was a doctor at Wadestown. Used to be a rugby doctor. So when I went down there to be tested a woman tested me. A woman doctor. I spent most of my life without a doctor but I’m very fortunate.
GT: And you’re looking very healthy. Bruce, you also mentioned that you’ve been a very long-time member of the RSA.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And, and that includes Rose and Poppy days. Please tell me about that.
BC: Yes. All together I did a hundred collections for that. They used to have a Poppy, a Rose day which was in, on Armistice Day in November. That stopped in the early 80s but I did, between sixty four and thirty six, that made a hundred. A hundred poppies.
GT: You did thirty four Rose Days and sixty six Poppy Days.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. I did.
GT: Because in England right now, England right now many service people are collecting for poppies and donations.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: I have many friends that post saying they’re doing that.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And you were also the treasurer for the RSA.
BC: I was treasurer for the RSA. Yeah. Before that. That was twenty two years. And my wife was twenty eight. That made a century. That’s a good way to have it.
GT: That’s a good way to have it.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Now, you also mentioned to me a story about someone come up to you while you were collecting.
BC: Oh yes. He said the money doesn’t go to the RSA.
GT: But the gentleman said to you the money doesn’t go to the RSA. So, he was trying to have a go at you.
BC: Right.
GT: And what was your reply?
BC: My reply was that you picked on the wrong one. Of all the collections in Wellington you picked on the wrong one. I’m the treasurer [laughs]
GT: ‘And I know where that money goes,’ you said. Right.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah. and in New Zealand the value of the returned serviceman’s association in New Zealand is all about what? What does the RSA do here in New Zealand?
BC: Looking after ex-servicemen and their families. That couldn’t be much more important because after all those blokes that not only did they lose their lives but their families lives were all mucked up too. And, you know I think in Europe there must have been over fifty million people killed. And there would be another fifty million were affected. Growing up without their father or mother or brother. And the same number in the east. And, and now we have a fellow sitting up there going to drop a bomb on it. Up in North Korea. I don’t know.
GT: Yeah. Pretty, pretty strife. Now, you also mentioned you knew Phil Lamason. Can you tell me about knowing Phil Lamason because he was another famous Lancaster pilot.
BC: Yeah. Well, he was, he rolled up in the prisoner of war camp after being in, he’d got out of Buchenwald and he [pause] I think he should if ever a man should have had an award it was him. He found out that they intended doing them all in the next day. He unfortunately got caught just before the invasion and, and he was shifted in to Fresnes Jail. And the Germans decided that all those in Fresnes Jail should be sent to Buchenwald. And that’s how he got there by mistake. But when they said that when he told us that he was air force they I think they struck him. And he used to be a prize fighter himself once. In fact in the book, the book about one of those spies he’s referred to as Lamason with a, with a pugnacious nose. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Because Phil Lamason he, he was featured in some news articles several years ago but sadly he’s since died so it was of interest to hear you mention his name.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Just recently so. And although you say you’ve been in very good health have you suffered a stroke recently yourself?
BC: No. In 1994 I was very fortunate. I’d just had breakfast and my daughter came around to my home and I said, ‘My breathing’s not working too well.’ She said, ‘I’d better take you to the doctor.’ So we went to the doctor and I finished up by being sent in to Kenepuru for about I don’t know must have been about ten or eleven weeks. But I wasn’t there very long before I was ready to run up and down the corridor. I was shown how to fix the strap. I was ready to run. And then I had a late [unclear] stroke in there. It cost me about eleven weeks at Kenepuru. I’m lucky to be here. Very very fortunate. Most amazing how that happened. Got in here so quickly. And I know somebody in St Giles, in St John’s Church they enquired about coming here and they were told eighteen months. So I was very fortunate.
GT: Certainly very fortunate because in 1996 you went back to Belgium. So, please tell us a little about your trip back to Belgium to meet the people that were in the village where you landed that night.
BC: I did. I can’t recall. All I can recall when I landed was that all these young Germans. It was 1 o’clock in the morning. That’s all I can remember at, in that place. They, they pitched. I had, for some reason or other I had my pilot’s badge was stuck on with a safety pin. Why I don’t know. But that was stolen. And then —
GT: Your pilot’s brevet you’re talking —
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Your wings.
BC: Yeah. That was stolen.
GT: And what about your parachute? Where did you parachute end up?
BC: I don’t know where my parachute ended but that one I got I think was my radio, I think it was my radio operator’s. The silk in it you see was what they wanted for her wedding dress. And —
GT: So there was a woman in the village that used the parachute for her wedding dress.
BC: She gave it. I lifted her a foot off the ground when she gave it to me.
GT: So you went back in 1996.
BC: ’96.
GT: And there’s a lovely photogaph in the Belgian paper articles you’ve shown us.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And she is showing you her gown made from the parachute —
BC: That’s right. Yeah.
GT: Of your wireless operator’s.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: And you have a piece of that leftover, of that parachute here in your possession now.
BC: That’s correct. Yeah.
GT: So you still have that. That’s fabulous. So, you were treated, treated very well when you went there. Was that right? You were treated very well, Bruce.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. When I went, when I went in I went over to London for the — incidentally at the you know in London there were about twelve members of the royal family there. Most amazing. And when the English government wouldn’t give a cent towards it. Twelve of the royal family there.
GT: Yeah. Bruce this is the next and the last thing we’re going to talk to you about. And I’d like you to check and tell us that how you managed to get to England in 2012 for the Bomber Command Memorial of London’s opening. Which I was there too and I remember you there now. Please tell us how you got there and, and what happened.
BC: Well, it started off by a client of mine, I’ve still got him as a client, a few days prior said, ‘Are you going to London?’ And I said, ‘What for?’ He said, ‘The Memorial.’ I said, ‘What’s that all about?’ He told me about it so I decided to apply but unfortunately I made my application the day before they closed and they, the bloke said, ‘I’ll give you a — I’ll give you a week to get it in.’ So, finally I got it in and and and they were pretty strict with the medicals. They didn’t want anything to happen to you while you were — and one poor fella he passed all that and when he got up to Auckland just before his take-off there was another little medical. He got chucked. He got chucked altogether. And at that stage I was sitting on a stool. A three pronged stool. And I had to take, I had to take that with me. Now, at Kuala Lumpur I’m sitting on that stool talking to a doctor and then, and I — what was I talking about? I think I said, ‘We’re all in this life for some reason or other.’ The next thing I’m on the floor and they thought I’d thrown a heart attack. And I got up. I said, ‘Don’t worry about me. Have a look to see if the floor’s damaged,’ [laughs] And you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t credit it. That thing had three prongs on it and it cracked right across there. You wouldn’t believe it. How it came to crack. And my Kiwi rep said to me later on in the night, ‘I found you one of those seats.’ I said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ She said, They’re for sale in the front of this beautiful big hotel.’ I said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ So, that night we went and had a look. And they had this little shop. Only about half the size of this room. They had two of them so I bought the two of them and, but how it came to break I never. It’s unbelievable how it broke.
GT: So you nearly didn’t make it. So, so a slight bit of background for the folks listening, listening to us is that the New Zealand Bomber Command Association in 2011 got a team together to look to getting as many veterans and their families to England as possible.
BC: Yeah.
GT: For the 2012.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: And in the turn of events the New Zealand government took it off of the Bomber Command people and they organised a 757 of the Royal New Zealand Air Force and their crew. The Chief of the Air Force, Mr Peter Stockwell went as well. And there was thirty three of you chaps selected and each of you were assigned a New Zealand Veteran’s Affairs and a New Zealand Army medical staff person.
BC: Yeah. That’s right.
GT: So they looked after you to get over there. So you flew from New Zealand to England via the Middle East and on the 757 and you stayed in England for about a week or ten days. You were very well looked after. They gave you the best of hotels and you also joined in with us of the 75 Squadron Association’s New Zealand and UK.
BC: That’s right.
GT: And we had a grand day at Mepal and dinner. And also Newmarket and, and at Feltwell. So, can, can you please tell everybody because you were sitting up front next to her majesty and Prince Charles. And did you get to meet them?
BC: No I didn’t. I didn’t feel too well at that and I was sitting a bit away from the front otherwise I would have met them. I did enjoy my night at the Guildhall. And that was my, my son’s mother in law said to me, ‘The Guildhall. Not many people get into the Guildhall,’ and I said, ‘No.’ And I spent a long time speaking to the treasurer of the whole place. Yeah. I found out he was the treasurer.
GT: And you would have gone to the RAF Club as well. Did you go up in to the RAF Club?
BC: No. No.
GT: Across the road.
BC: I can, I remember the Guildhall very well. That was a great night there. When I came home they had a service at the National War Memorial for those who couldn’t go. But the odd one or two blokes who went to London did go and at the last minute I got turned up for an interview. And that, occasionally I read it on the internet and it’s —
GT: So, what did you think of the Memorial, Bruce?
BC: Oh wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah. I’ve always, the night before we went to, the day before we went to the Memorial we were driven around and we had a look also at the Memorial that was for Sir, was it Keith Park?
KP: Yeah.
BC: And I was very disappointed at that. Yeah. They didn’t give him a fair go did they? They just didn’t give him a fair go. And I thought that, I thought there’d be a big Memorial for him. You know, you go around London there’s blokes sitting on horses with spears up in the air and yet this very small thing was for Keith Park who did a wonderful job at the start of the war.
GT: He was the saviour of the Battle of Britain, wasn’t he?
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, so the statue of the seven airmen. Did they represent you guys do you think? Was their images awesome or —
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did. I did that. I’m very impressed with that.
GT: Did you see you up there? Because they’d got the pilot standing up front.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Represent you alright?
BC: It cost about six or seven million. I don’t, I don’t know what it costs them every year to run. Do you know?
GT: There is an upkeep. The Benevolent Fund has the upkeep for that memorial and the 75 Squadron Association —
BC: Not far from Buckingham Palace.
GT: That’s correct.
BC: Yeah.
GT: It’s through the park. Yeah. Yeah.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So Bruce what, our interview with you today has been for the digital archives at the International Bomber Command Centre.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And they’re based in Lincoln. And early in 2018 their brand new building will be opened and that will house a lot of the Memorial and the records of you gentlemen. You, our famous Bomber Command people. And this interview that I’m recording for you and with you now will go towards that digital archive.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, I think we’ve been speaking for well over an hour and a half so I’ve run right through a lot of the things. Is there anything else you’d like to point out or say?
BC: No. I’ll think of it later on.
GT: Yeah.
BC: I’ll think of something.
GT: You’ll think of something later on but I probably will have gone but —
BC: People say I should write a book but I don’t know. They say I should write a book but I don’t —
GT: You endured so much Bruce. What about the fact that the Bomber Command role could — could Harris have done it any other way?
BC: No. I don’t think so. Aircrew liked him. I don’t think he got a fair go. I don’t know whether he hit it off too well with Churchill. I can’t be sure about that. And I have an article somewhere in my records where that trip to Nuremberg was that it should never have happened. I’ve got that. I think they, they knew we were coming. Lamason made the comment before they went to Nuremberg on that trip he said, ‘This is suicide. We shouldn’t be going this long straight trek with no changes of course. Something fishy here.’ And I’ve seen an article where that might have been. Mind you if it is true it probably saved lives but the air force had to pay. You see, for a long time the Germans thought — they took the word of that spy who said the invasion’s coming from Calais. And they kept all the bigger German equipment around Calais waiting for the invasion. Rommel pleaded for that stuff to be sent down south so he could use it. And they said no. It’s all coming finally at Calais. Of course that was just a big hoax wasn’t it? They had no intention. That might have been the reason why we lost a lot at Nuremberg. The spy told them the route and everything. They were waiting for the RAF that night. But I don’t know whether that’s true or not.
GT: The fabulous thing is you survived.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And I’m very honoured to be talking with you here today. And we’ve got Poppy Days coming up but I know that you’ve retired from that. Yeah.
BC: That bloke who took over from me on Poppy Day he died a couple months ago.
KP: Yeah. That one.
GT: Yeah. Oh gosh. So, so the Bomber Command gentlemen, and your numbers are dwindling very quick and I’m so privileged to be able to come and talk with you today in your place and I —
BC: I don’t, I don’t think I’ll be interviewed again in my lifetime now.
GT: Well, you can be rest assured that the people listening to these recordings, this recording with you will sit back and be very honoured to listen to what you’ve had to say to us today.
BC: I bought one of these things before I came here. Never used it and it’s gone. I don’t know where it is. I asked my daughters a couple of times where it’s gone but they don’t remember.
GT: One last thing then, Bruce. What do you think of the Lancaster Mark 2?
BC: Oh marvellous. I’ve seen the fellow [unclear], an engineer on the Mark 2 said they suited him fine. They were much more powerful and they were better. Stood much more damage but they wouldn’t go up quite so high and on a long trip they couldn’t quite take so much ammunition because they needed more petrol. That’s right. They needed more petrol. But I can remember seeing a Mark 3 take off on our short runways once and when they got to the end of the, then end of the runway [unclear]. We used to take off in the middle of the night six ton of bombs aboard on those short runways. And they were much more powerful. My garage clients put a heated, about the make-up of the different engines. He said the Bristol motor was much much better. A better motor.
GT: Wow.
BC: And he’d know all about engines and that.
GT: Yeah. And your aircraft was the three hundredth off the production line.
BC: That’s right. Yeah.
GT: That you were shot down on.
BC: Yes.
GT: That was last one produced.
BC: Yeah.
GT: You were saying to me.
BC: It must have been a costly business running a war with all those aeroplanes. The cost must have been absolutely fantastic. Was that what crippled England after the war? I don’t know.
GT: It did. Well, Bruce I think it’s time that we, we sign off our recording now. And I I must thank you very much. And for Kaye who’s been sitting here listening and in awe of Bruce’s story as well. For introducing me to Bruce here. So, I’m going to say thank you very much. It’s now quarter past five on the evening of the 4th of November 2017 here at Bruce Cunningham’s place at the Rita Angus Retirement Village in Kilbirnie, New Zealand. And I’m sure that dinner awaits down below so I’m going to say thank you very much for, for chatting with us and I will make this recording —
BC: I wish as well. I don’t know that it will be. I hope it is.
GT: You can have the last word Bruce.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Thank you very much, Bruce. Yeah.
BC: Thank you.
GT: Thank you
BC: Thank you.
GT: Alright.
[paused]
BC: I have a great deal of trouble with electronics. Hunter aeroplanes.
GT: Did you? Hunters.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: And he started off to be a lawyer in New Zealand and [paused] in charge of 707s.
[recording paused]
BC: And when people ask me, when they ask me I don’t think I should say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’ If they ask you a question. Tell them. Get on with it.
GT: Yeah.
BC: You know in POW you didn’t even speak about what you did during the war. You didn’t know and couldn’t care. My brother he was in the army. I didn’t know what he did. He didn’t know what I did either. My family don’t know what I did. They haven’t got a clue. If they asked me I’d tell them. They don’t ask me. I don’t tell them. It doesn’t arise.
GT: Many choose not to speak so I’m honoured that you’ve spoken to me today. Thank you.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah. Now, actually I’ll take a picture of you two.
KP: Oh no. Don’t take a picture of me. I don’t like being photographed. Bruce, would you like me to go out and ask them to bring your tea in here?
BC: No. No. No. I normally go out a little bit later but I’ll catch up. They’re old people. They take a while to eat and talk too much. I’m not. I’m only ninety seven.
GT: Bruce, I’m going to take a picture of you by yourself because I’ve got a picture here. Actually, if I just put that there so that’s Bruce Cunningham and you’ve got your Lancaster pictures up above you.
KP: He’s Lancaster pictures all over the place.
GT: Which is fabulous and I love that. Now similar with the other gentleman. Jack Meehan.
BC: Eh?
GT: Remember Jack Meehan who was on the trip in 2012.
BC: Oh, I remember the name. Yeah.
GT: Jack died at Christmas time. Dick Lampier. He died a couple of years ago. Dick was in the wheelchair.
BC: Oh yeah.
GT: Was he ok? Some said he wasn’t.
KP: Oh I remember. He was a Wellington man wasn’t he?
GT: No. Lancaster.
BC: Where I —
GT: Jake Wakefield.
KP: No. No. I mean Wellington. Wellington city.
GT: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
KP: Yes. I remember. He was a very difficult man.
BC: I went to see my son and he gave me a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful photo of — what was the double VC bloke’s name?
GT: Oh Upham.
BC: Upham. Yeah.
GT: Charles Upham.
BC: Oh beautiful photo. Gold lettering, and he said, ‘Take that back to New Zealand with you.’ Big one. Great big photo. And I said, ‘I don’t know whether I can get it on the aeroplane.’ He said, ‘Take it back.’ I gave it to a doctor who was, got a very high rank in New Zealand. In the army. Oh terrific rank. Right at the top. I said this is, this is a very high rank. He said well I had to give it up to come over here. I gave it to her and she bought half, and the last I saw of it in Auckland. She waved me and went out and said here’s the picture. And I think, I think it might be in the boss’s office of the Vet’s Affairs in Wellington.
KP: Oh right.
BC: I’m not sure.
KP: Oh, I don’t think —
GT: And you haven’t seen it.
KP: I’m just going to tell them that you are late for tea. I’ll be back in a moment.
GT: And you haven’t seen it since.
BC: Yeah.
[pause]
GT: Ok. Ron’s in that one. [pause] Ron was there.
BC: My crew are there somewhere.
GT: Have you still got your logbook?
BC: Eh?
GT: Have you still got your logbook?
BC: Yeah.
GT: And your medals.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Are your medals on here.
BC: Yeah. I don’t know. I never wear my — I don’t like wearing medals. I don’t like wearing them.
GT: No.
BC: I don’t. I don’t. I don’t like wearing my medals for some reason or other.
GT: Did you, did you get all your medals though?
[pause]
KP: You still haven’t seen the magic book that was the start of all of this. You’ll just have to come again.
GT: Yeah. I will.
BC: At one station I was at I was quite, quite a green sort of a pilot and the flight commander called us in and said, ‘I want to do something. I want to help you people. If you mention a word about it I’ll kill you.’ I said, ‘Well, what’s the story.’ He said, ‘The wing commander wants to come for a flight tonight and I’ve been asked to give him a crew so he can test fly. But I don’t want to do it that way. I want you to draw lots as to who takes the wing commander.’ Because Joe Soap loses the, loses it, what’s the name. I had to take the wing commander. It was the best thing I ever did during my air force. I took him. We got over the place and we couldn’t bomb it because of cloud and the navigator said, ‘Oh hang on.’ — do this, do that, do that. ‘Bombs away.’ We took a photo and it was very difficult thing to get in Wales and it came out and we won the bombing competition.
GT: Oh wow.
BC: [unclear] But to have our photo taken in front of an aeroplane. And the wing commander was so full of himself he was going around the officer’s mess saying how he’d bombed this place in Wales. In Wales. ‘Well, you all you did, you were a passenger.’ They took the photo and it didn’t come out did it? The next station I said, ‘I want my photo back.’ And that’s it.
GT: That’s it there.
KP: Oh.
GT: Your crews too.
BC: That’s it.
GT: Right. Ok. So I’m going to take a shot of that but what —
BC: When we were at Kuala Lumpur we were held up for the plane to be fixed or something and I went away from the rest of the crowd and I sat on my own. And some girls came over and they were security girls at Kuala Lumpur. And I took a liking to them and they did the same for me. Finally they called us all to the aeroplane and she grabbed my arm and walked me towards the aeroplane. Now, now people on either side of the aeroplane watching. And the squadron leader called out, seen me walking with this girl arm in arm. ‘What’s going on here?’ I said, ‘Jealousy will get you nowhere, mate. I’m not going back to New Zealand.’ He said, ‘Oh you’ve got a new girlfriend have you?’ That’s them.
GT: That’s them there is it? Lovely.
KP: Oh right.
GT: I think she was blinking though.
KP: Oh, who cares.
GT: That’s right. The one behind’s even lovely.
KP: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: We did a couple of trips to Malaysia. I’ve been with the Sky Hawks.
BC: Athletic champ while I was at college.
KP: So that’s —
GT: Very nice.
BC: That’s where I [pause] that’s where I’m nineteen. Head prefect.
GT: You were destined. Now — oh is that you?
BC: Yeah.
GT: Oh gosh. I’m going to have to keep taking photographs. I wish I’d brought my scanner actually.
[pause]
KP: This is a really good photo. Who are you talking to there?
BC: Oh, that’s the bloke that put me in the Wall Street Journal.
KP: Oh right.
GT: I think you like interviews.
BC: Has she finished?
KP: Isn’t that a neat photo because it’s a doing things photo. Right.
BC: She finished up in the Wall Street Journal.
GT: Leaning up against the, that’s a really good story isn’t it?
KP: Yeah. It’s just —
GT: I’m surprised you bought another couple of three legged stools after that one breaking on you.
BC: Yeah.
KP: And there’s the, yeah here’s the lady with the parachute silk.
BC: Yeah. The woman who made her wedding dress.
GT: One thing we didn’t discuss Bruce was when you took your commission.
[pause]
KP: Here’s one taken here. Here by the look of it. Oh there’s another.
BC: Oh she was a —
KP: That’s a different one.
BC: She was a Countess that one. That’s in Belgium. At the reception.
KP: Oh.
GT: That was ’45. That was June ’45 as well.
BC: Yeah. One of those blokes, I’m not sure which one, air commodore. Prisoner of war.
GT: So when did you get your commission?
BC: Eh?
GT: When did you get your commission because you’ve got an officer’s —
BC: Yeah.
GT: Suit on there. You said you were a flight sergeant.
BC: I wanted to go to the New Zealand forces club and a fellow at Bennington, from Marsden said, ‘You haven’t got a commission. Why haven’t got one?’ The next time I see him he said to me, ‘Put in for it. You’ll get it straightaway.’ I said, ‘Oh you’re talking rubbish.’ He said I’d take it anyway. Next time I was in London he said, ‘Haven’t you put in for that yet? Put in. You’ll get it straight away. I’m telling you.’ I didn’t realise at the time that he must have been in the know for something. I decided yes, I’ll put in and so help me it came through straight away. They had, they had a church service on Waterbeach and I didn’t go and all those who didn’t go were given drill to do. And while I was doing it a bloke came over to me and said, ‘We can’t drill you any longer. You’re an officer.’ I thought that’s funny. After all my connection with the church I get in to trouble. I get some drill for not going to church. That’s unusual. All my connections over donkeys — a lifetime in the church. And now I’m in trouble for not going to church. But of course when I got pulled out for the drill everyone said boo hoo hoo, ‘Why are you getting off for and we’ve got to stay here and do the drill?’
GT: People are really strange, aren’t they?
KP: They are strange. Yeah.
GT: [unclear] what they do.
KP: Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Bruce Cunningham
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Glen Turner
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-04
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACunninghamAB171104
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
Format
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02:02:42 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Bruce Cunningham was born in New Zealand. After initial training as a pilot he was posted to RAF Wescott Operational Training Unit and flew operations with 514 Squadron at RAF Waterbeach. His first operation was over Berlin. On one operation they were shot down and as he landed on the roof of the house he looked up at the sky as the other aircraft were heading for home. One lady from the village used the parachute silk for her wedding dress. He became a prisoner of war and was sent to Stalag Luft 3.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Nuremberg
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
11 OTU
514 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Caterpillar Club
crewing up
Dulag Luft
evading
fear
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
memorial
Operational Training Unit
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Stradishall
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Westcott
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
Stirling
training
Wellington