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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2052/33662/ASouterKP210710.1.mp3
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Title
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Souter, Kenneth Place
K P Souter
Date
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2021-07-10
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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.
Identifier
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Souter, KP
Description
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30 items. An oral history interview with Kenneth Souter (b. 1919, 129001 Royal Air Force), his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a fighter pilot with 73 Squadron in North Africa and as a test pilot. After the war he flew Lancasters during the filming of The Dam Busters film in 1954.
The collection was catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TS: For coffee. Ok.
[recording paused]
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell and the interviewee is Ken Souter. Ken’s son Tony Souter is also present and the interview is taking place at Mr Souter’s home in Morden in Surrey on the 10th of July 2021. Ok. Ken, maybe you could start off by saying a bit about what you can remember about where you were born and growing up and your childhood.
KS: When I was born?
DM: Yeah.
KS: Oh. Well, that must have been 1918 I think, and I was living, my parents were living in Amberley Street. That’s in, well not the rough end but you know not very much up and up in Sunderland. Eventually moved to a better house, and still in Sunderland, but by Seaburn was the seaside part of the operation. From there I went to school there at the Argyle House, I don’t think. I can’t remember the name of the school. It’ll come to me maybe.
DM: Yeah. Don’t worry.
KS: Something. But it was just a private school, and I stayed there until I was about probably fifteen, sixteen, and we moved to various houses. Moved from one house to another, but still in Sunderland and my father had a, well it was a big company for buying and selling props. What are called props. The props were —
TS: He was importing timber wasn’t he from Finland to be used as pit props in the mines?
KS: Pardon?
TS: He was importing timber from Finland and Norway.
KS: Correct. Yeah.
TS: To be used as pit props for the, for the coal mines in the area.
KS: For the what?
TS: The coal mines.
KS: Correct.
TS: Yeah. Yeah.
KS: That’s right. Yeah.
TS: So, he had, he had a couple, I think he ended up buying a couple of ships and whatnot.
KS: I think to cut it short we, did we move to, the family moved to Spain?
TS: No. That was much, much later. You moved to Chester. Chester le Street, Chester le Street, which is just down the road from Sunderland.
KS: Oh yeah. Yeah. And then I remember, I remember —
TS: Yeah.
KS: Not much about it.
TS: No. And then you, you went. You joined up. You went to the Air Flying School didn’t you at, were you, actually you were involved in boxing for a little while, weren’t you? You joined a boxing club.
KS: Yeah. That’s right.
TS: Because we had a picture of you.
KS: What? In the, in the, my father’s company where these pit props were imported. They’d come by ship.
TS: Yeah.
KS: And then what they do the pit, they called it the yard which stores all the timber. And then the boxers used to come and train there.
DM: Right.
KS: Yes. Because it’s hard work, you know. You get a lump of props and they put them on their shoulder and stack them up. And I worked with them for exercise, because a lot of the boxers came just for exercise. And from there I can’t really remember very much. I can’t remember very much.
TS: But—
DM: Did you, after you finished education did you go straight into the Air Force or did you do something else first?
KS: I couldn’t say.
TS: I think you worked for your dad for a while, didn’t you? You worked in your dad’s company for a little bit.
KS: Yeah. Not very much.
TS: Right.
KS: Perhaps a year.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Something like that.
TS: Yeah. My memory is that you ended up in Cambridge at the, at the Flying School for aspiring pilots. Is that, would that be correct?
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
DM: What, what, can you remember why you decided to learn to fly? What prompted you?
KS: I’ve no idea. I was a —
DM: Just a young man’s fancy, I expect.
KS: Yes. It was a toss-up between that and the, and the college for drawing, for art because I was keen on drawing then. And, so I went to work for my father which is quite, well it’s difficult in a way because as the boss’s son I don’t, I hadn’t been naughty with him and all this sort of stuff, you know. You can imagine it. And I just remember then going to South Africa.
TS: No. That was, that’s a long time later.
KS: Was it?
TS: Yeah. A lot happened before you went to South Africa. The Second World War for a start.
KS: Oh.
TS: No. The chronology is much later but maybe David might be interested in what happened when you went to flying school at Cambridge. Ken’s brother was, his older brother joined the Army and became a captain eventually during the war but Ken went off to Cambridge to, to train as a pilot.
DM: Do you have any memories of Cambridge and learning to fly?
KS: Yes. A little bit. Not very much. It’s all boring stuff with biplanes.
DM: Yes. Of course. Yes. Because this would have been in the 1930s, wouldn’t it?
KS: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
TS: I have your first, first flight here, in a, air experience flight on the July the 5th in 1939.
KS: Oh really?
TS: And you were in a de Havilland 82 which is probably a Tiger Moth I should think, isn’t it?
KS: Pardon?
TS: In a de Havilland 82, which might well be a Tiger Moth.
KS: A Tiger Moth. Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s when you started your training.
KS: Started what?
TS: That’s when you started your training on the Tiger Moth.
KS: Yes.
TS: And then you went solo. You went solo. It’s here somewhere. First solo in June the 4th in 1940. That was your first solo.
KS: Oh. My solo. Yeah.
TS: Ok.
DM: So, you learned to fly. You got your pilot’s licence. You were in the RAF. Can you remember where you were posted first of all? What, or what job you did? You know, what, were you, did you go into Bomber Command then or was that later?
KS: No. No. It was later. Once you qualified on Tiger Moths and Harts you remember Hart.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Harts. That was the Tiger Moth. Hart. And then the aeroplane you’re going to fly. I forget what it was. It’s just an upbeat from the Tiger Moth. I don’t know what it was.
TS: Yeah. You were on Harts.
KS: Harts.
TS: Yeah. Your first solo on a Hart was in July 31st in 1940.
KS: Yeah. I joined the Air Force. It was around about that time, I think. I did training. Funnily enough down here, across the road there was my initial training where at the time there were not all that many pilots around so you could apply to go as a pilot, or not. I’m wrong. I said that wrong. You could apply to, at school you could apply to go into various things and I applied to [pause] I forget what it was now. I can’t remember.
TS: So, the Cambridge flying was like a, like a Cadet Corps presumably.
KS: That was training.
TS: Like a training Squadron.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. And looking at your logbooks here when you went on to the Hart —
KS: Yes.
TS: That was when you had started serious fighter pilot training and they taught you aerobatics, and combat flying and all that sort of stuff on the Hart.
KS: That’s correct.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, at some time, you must then have been trained to fly multiple engine aircraft because you ended up flying multiple engine aircraft so you would have.
KS: Sorry. I’m not with you.
DM: Well, you were flying single engine aircraft. Learning aerobatics and all that.
KS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DM: And then ultimately you ended up flying aircraft with four engines. So, you would have had some additional training.
KS: Yes.
DM: Before that happened.
KS: Correct. Yeah.
DM: But that wasn’t at Cambridge, or was it?
TS: If I could help you out here. It’s, there was a long gap between him flying fighters and bombers.
DM: Right.
TS: The fighter pilot stuff was all during the Second World War, and you can come on to where he was —
DM: Yes.
TS: Later on.
DM: So, in, in the Second World War when you’d completed your training what, what did you get? What were you flying then? What were you posted to fly?
KS: The heaviest one I flew I think was a Hart. A Hart. It’s a sort of forerunner of the Spitfire I think really. It was very difficult. It was difficult to fly. Yeah. So that’s, and then, I was on the BNF.
TS: Yeah. You went on to, I mean Harts and I think the Audax, which I think were similar aircraft. And from the Hart you went on to, to fly Hurricanes.
KS: Oh. Was it?
TS: Yeah.
KS: Oh.
KS: So, in October 1940 you were on, converted on to Harvards, training aircraft.
KS: Oh.
KS: And then from Harvards you went. Your first flight was on a Hurricane was on October the 20th 1940. So, you were training on Hurricanes for quite a while before you got posted.
KS: The forerunner to a Hurricane.
TS: No. No. You were on Hurricanes in, in October 1940.
DM: And where was that?
TS: Just having a look [pause] 43 Squadron.
KS: 43 Squadron.
TS: Yeah. Does that ring a bell?
KS: Oh yes. Yes.
TS: So, I think, I think all is, at some point he was posted to 43 Squadron with Hurricanes and completed his training on those.
KS: Yeah. 43 Squadron. You’ve got to remember there weren’t all that many aeroplanes available.
TS: No.
KS: And the people like the guy that [pause] I don’t know. A lot of famous people, I can’t remember who they were.
TS: Well, in the meantime there was the Battle of Britain, of course.
KS: That’s right. Yes.
TS: Which you missed out on.
KS: Yeah. I was stationed down at, after —
TS: There you go.
[pause]
KS: I was stationed at the, on the, all the pilots of the Battle of Britain were based around London.
TS: Yeah.
KS: And I was on, I was flying there but I wasn’t, I wasn’t —
TS: You weren’t part of the Battle of Britain because you were still training.
KS: No.
TS: Yeah. Ok. So, I’ve got you flying with 43 Squadron until January the 9th in 1941, when your Squadron was shipped out to North Africa. Do you remember that?
KS: No.
TS: Yeah. You do. You’ve told me often about it.
KS: Eh?
TS: You’ve told me a lot about it in the past so —
KS: Have I? [laughs]
TS: Yeah. You were put on an aircraft carrier.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. You remember that.
KS: Just. Yeah.
TS: So, tell us about that.
KS: Well, I got a lot of my grey hairs there on this aircraft carrier. It was terrifying [laughs] because you go balling down the runway and the end of ship approaches very quickly, and you sort of quickly visualise going under the water [laughs] It’s terrifying.
TS: So, I’ve got your logbook here. You ferried your Hurricane down to Tangmere.
KS: Tangmere. Yes.
TS: Yeah.
KS: That was a big Battle of Britain station.
TS: And then in, as I say in January 1941 your Hurricanes were put on board HMS Furious.
KS: Furious. Yeah.
TS: On the way to North Africa.
KS: Yeah. David, do you want all this small talk?
DM: Oh yes. That’s fine.
KS: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. It’s all interesting stuff.
TS: Right. So, so, you were bundling along in the aircraft carrier. At some point —
KS: Yeah.
TS: Some guys flew off to Malta along with your best mate who went to Malta and you went a little further and flew off to Africa.
KS: Yes.
TS: And through a very circuitous rate ended up in the, in the northern desert.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Led by a, it says, your logbook says you were led by a Blenheim. So, at some point a Blenheim must have picked the Squadron up, and led you on this circuitous route through, through Nigeria and parts of Africa.
KS: We were led because a lot of the part was no, no maps.
TS: Yeah.
KS: So, you followed the Blenheim. That’s why they were there.
TS: And hoping that they didn’t get lost.
KS: Yeah.
TS: The Blenheim presumably had a navigator on board.
KS: Yeah.
TS: With a map.
KS: Correct. Yeah.
TS: Ok.
DM: Do you have any memories of your time in the desert?
KS: Pardon?
DM: Do you have any memories of your time in the desert?
KS: Well, yeah. There’s not much to write about. Sand and more sand and more sand, and then it gets into the trees. Yeah. I remember it very well. Lived in tents. [unclear] I just continued flying training and we, I think we, yeah, I don’t know how long I flew in the desert. About six months, I think. Or a year.
TS: Yeah. You joined 73 Squadron in the desert.
KS: Oh. Did I?
TS: Yeah. Yeah [pause] but you also did a lot of test flying didn’t you of repaired aircraft that you were flying quite a bit? The photographs that we have from that time shows you flying a number of different types of aircraft that had been repaired.
KS: I think I must have flown into Africa like we just discussed and eventually went back to England.
TS: Well, that was much later on so we’re going to cover the time in the desert now.
KS: Well, there’s not much to tell you really.
TS: Right. It was just routine operational stuff in the desert.
KS: Yes.
TS: Patrols and —
KS: That’s right.
DM: Yeah. Looking at the logbook it’s —
KS: Yeah.
DM: It’s patrols and convoy patrols and —
KS: Yes. Routine stuff.
DM: Patrol over enemy prison camp. I assume that was a prison camp where —
KS: Yeah.
DM: Your enemies were rather than enemy. And I see you flew to Tobruk.
KS: Tobruk.
DM: Yeah. So, all the sort of and Sidi Barrani, and I see you’ve got, you’ve written down here in your logbook which was in April 1941, “Chased some JU87s but too late.”
KS: What’s it say?
TS: Chased, “Chased some JU87s.”
KS: Oh yeah.
TS: But too late.
KS: Oh [laughs] really.
DM: So obviously they were too far in front of you. And then you say on the next day you got hit by Jerry ack ack.
KS: Oh, was I?
DM: You had quite an eventful time really. And then there was a gentleman. You said Bill Wills was killed by ground strafing.
KS: Yes.
DM: Was he —
KS: Where was he killed?
DM: While ground, while ground strafing. So, he obviously crashed, or was shot down, I imagine.
KS: What was his name?
DM: Bill Wills.
KS: Oh yes. I remember him very well. He was a very nice guy. Was he shot down?
DM: Yes. And killed it says.
KS: Oh.
DM: Yes.
KS: Well, there was a period of [unclear] weather.
DM: Yeah. And then I don’t know if you remember this at the end of April you went sick with acute tonsilitis.
KS: Got what?
DM: Acute tonsilitis.
KS: Tonsilitis.
DM: Yes. Probably the dry air or something I expect and all that sand.
KS: Really?
TS: Yeah. He had a big issue which dogged him right through his flying career of ear infection which probably was about that time and he ended up in Cairo Hospital and was off flying for quite a while. And, and that eventually when he, when he returned to civil flying much, much, much later that eventually did him and he had to give up his licence because of his ear problem. What’s interesting, I don’t know whether, whether Ken will be able to remind you of he had a big accident with his Hurricane trying to take off in a sand storm. Do you remember that?
KS: What was that?
TS: You had a big accident in your, in your Hurricane while trying to take off in a sandstorm and you hit a truck.
KS: Oh.
TS: And the story goes.
DM: Oh yes. It’s in here. That was on the, that was an eventful month, April. That’s was 8th of April in 1941, “Wiped off Hurricane taking off in sandstorm.”
KS: Ah yeah. I remember.
TS: The back story, do you want to hear the back story of that?
DM: Yeah.
TS: If you remember something, just cut me off and butt in but the story you told me a while ago —
KS: Couldn’t be reliable.
TS: Was that you were, one of your pilots had landed out in the desert and you and another pilot had seen where he was and you were going back to pick him up. And there was some urgency to get back there and hence you were committed to taking off in this sand storm which was in hindsight probably not a good idea. But the idea was to go and rescue this other pilot, and apparently that used to happen quite a bit. Pilots used to land out and they’d climb in another, sit on the other pilot’s knee as they flew back. So, I think that’s, if I remember rightly that’s what you were doing at the time. And there are some interesting pictures of what you did to the Hurricane. And the clock that I have of yours came from your crashed Hurricane if you remember.
KS: Yeah.
DM: That would be one of the famous Smith’s clocks, would it?
TS: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
TS: I’ve not got a picture of it here but I’ve got it at home. Yeah. It was one of a number of accidents actually [laughs] he had out there because he was, he was test flying repaired aircraft and there are pictures in his albums of him landing with a trail of smoke out of the engines and engines catching fire and all sorts of things.
DM: Yeah. And I see in here that you started to fly other aircraft. Particularly when you were posted to the Met flight in Khartoum. That’s when you started to fly Lysanders. A Valencia on one occasion.
KS: Oh really? A Valencia.
DM: And Blenheims as well.
KS: Oh God.
DM: So, you were starting to get some practice on different aircraft then.
KS: I don’t remember much of that. Where was that? In Africa?
DM: That was in Africa. That was still, that was in May 1941.
KS: ’41.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Oh right.
DM: Yeah. You had a few hours on all, on all of those. And then that continued on into June. You sort of, I guess this is when you were starting to test aircraft because in, in June you flew Hurricane, Blenheim, Valencia, Tomahawk, Blenheims again, and then back to the Hurricanes again. So, you know, you were, you were flying a multitude of aircraft. Mainly the Hurricane.
KS: Yes.
DM: Mainly.
KS: It was. Yeah. It was mainly Hurricane.
DM: So, you, how do you remember when you came home from Africa or did you go somewhere else first?
KS: No. I came straight back to the UK. I can’t remember when it was.
TS: You flew to Portugal, I think. In a Sunderland.
KS: Oh, that would be taking me home.
TS: Yeah. This is what we’re talking about.
KS: Oh yes.
TS: I think after your ear infection I think you were taken off flying duties and —
KS: Yeah.
TS: Is that right?
KS: Probably something to do with that.
TS: Is that right. Yeah. There are pictures of you in Cairo Hospital with lots of nurses around.
KS: Oh yeah [laughs]
TS: And the odd, according to your photo album, the odd floozy here and there.
KS: Was what?
TS: The odd floozy. Which is a term we don’t hear nowadays.
DM: Yeah, because you were still flying in December 1941 in the desert. You were, you were sort of doing a lot of test flying on Hardys, Kittyhawks, Tomahawks which you seemed to fly in Tomahawks quite a lot.
KS: Yes. It was at one time. I can’t remember why.
DM: Test flights I think it says.
KS: That would make sense to me.
DM: Yeah. Yeah. On one occasion in a Kittyhawk it says you overshot into bushes.
KS: Oh no. No. Really?
DM: It doesn’t sound like you, does it? No. I can’t believe that.
TS: I’m surprised they had bushes in the desert actually.
DM: Well, yeah. Well, I think —
TS: There can’t have been many.
DM: I don’t know where we are now. We’re obviously still out there somewhere.
KS: Yeah. There are. Little clumps.
TS: Yeah. Little, little shrubs aren’t they?
KS: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: It mentions Wadi Halfa.
KS: Wadi Halfa, yeah. I remember that.
DM: And it says you flew something called a Lodestar as well.
KS: A lodestar.
DM: Yeah. L O D E S T A R.
KS: I don’t remember that.
TS: An American transport plane, I think.
DM: Oh right.
KS: Possibly.
DM: Obviously, you must, I think, I mean there’s a gap. So, you were continually flying in the desert up until February 1942.
KS: Yes.
DM: And then you don’t fly again until May. So that may well I presume have been when you were in hospital probably, do you think?
KS: It’s possible.
DM: 1942.
TS: I think.
DM: Yeah.
KS: I probably went home to the UK.
DM: You were, well once you started again you were still. No. You were still [Wadi Natrun] or something. So you —
KS: Wadi Halfa.
DM: Wadi Halfa. Yes. You were, you were, after your, your enforced break you were still out there in June 1942. So, you were away from home for a long time.
KS: Yeah. I spent quite a bit of time in the desert.
DM: Yes.
TS: Look, that’s Ken in 1942.
DM: He looks like a film star.
TS: Doesn’t he. Yeah. Do you recognise him?
KS: No.
TS: No. Ok.
[Needs to be excused. Recording paused]
DM: Ok. So eventually you came back to the UK.
KS: Yes.
DM: And according to your logbook the first part of the journey was in a Sunderland. In a Flying Boat.
KS: Yes. That was when we went to [pause] where’s that holiday resort?
DM: Lisbon No. No.
KS: Yeah. There. Around there.
DM: Yeah. And then you sort of, you came home. You came home from there. So it says here that you flew from Cairo to Khartoum.
KS: Yeah.
DM: Then from Khartoum to Lagos.
KS: Oh, Lagos. In the desert.
DM: Yeah. Then to Bathurst which I always thought was in Australia, but there’s obviously another one somewhere. And then from Bathurst to Lisbon. Then from Lisbon to Foynes in Ireland.
KS: To where?
DM: Foynes in Ireland. I expect it was a refuelling stop.
KS: Sounds —
DM: And then, then to Poole. I imagine the one in Dorset where all the rich people live.
KS: [laughs] I don’t remember much about that.
DM: So, I assume when you came back you must have had some leave.
KS: Yeah.
DM: And where, were your parents, where, would they still be living up in the north east then?
TS: I think so because his dad would be a Reserved Occupation wouldn’t it, for the —
KS: Yes.
TS: For the coal mines.
DM: Yeah, and he might have been a bit old anyway then.
KS: Yes. Up north. Up north. Sunderland.
DM: Yes.
KS: That’s right. Yeah.
DM: So then after —
KS: I went to Usworth.
DM: Right.
KS: There. Where is that near? Usworth. Have you heard of it? Usworth.
DM: I was waiting for you to tell me where it was near because —
KS: Eh?
DM: I’ve heard of it but I’ve no idea where it is.
KS: That’s, well, it’s northeast. Newcastle. That way.
DM: Right. Yeah. You don’t sound like a Geordie, you see.
KS: No. But there was [laughs] I don’t, I don’t suppose I was home long enough to get the accent.
DM: No. That’s probably true. That’s probably true. So, after that you started, I think you did some test flights and reconnaissance flights and some photography flights as well in a, in a Prefect which I always thought was a car but obviously there was —
KS: A what?
DM: Was there an aircraft called a Prefect. Do you remember that?
KS: Yeah. I’ve heard of that. I can’t remember what it looked like. A Prefect.
TS: If you look at the front there’s some pictures of the planes he flew on. I don’t know whether it’s there.
DM: What have we got? Let’s have a look.
[recording paused]
DM: So, you come back home. Had your leave and then you start sort of like a new chapter in your Royal Air Force career, and I see that one of the things you were doing was target towing.
KS: Oh yes.
DM: Was that in Scotland?
KS: Yeah. I think so. Yeah.
DM: Did you have any sticky moments with people hitting the aircraft or anything like that?
KS: I don’t think so. No. No. I don’t [laughs] There might have been. I can’t remember having one.
KS: And I imagine that was mainly low-level stuff.
KS: No. No. Not necessarily. I think. No. It was just normal flight, you know. Perhaps maybe up to ten thousand feet. Something like that.
DM: Right. And then you did a lot of, you have to help me out here one of you, CCG duties. Is it coast guard or something do you think?
KS: CCG?
DM: Yeah. It was in a Martinet.
KS: CCG. Was it a flying thing?
DM: Yeah. It says that the duty was CCG.
TS: It would be Coast Guard, wouldn’t it?
DM: I think it must have been. Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Yeah.
KS: I don’t know what it, what it stands for.
DM: It must have been Coast Guard work I would imagine.
TS: So, it was up near Scapa, well the Orkneys would have been Scapa Flow, isn’t it? Up in that direction?
DM: And then there’s a lot where you’re doing, obviously I assume this is a route. Some Y Line, Z Line, X Line. Things like that.
KS: What?
DM: Y line, Z Line, X Line. I don’t know what they would have been. Whether they were patrols perhaps. They were all about an hour, an hour and a half long.
KS: What did it say?
DM: So, for example, “July the 13th 1943 Martinet. Self and second pilot McGilvary. McGilvary. Y Line. 1 hour.”
TS: Was that to do with target towing do you think? Maybe it’s —
DM: It’s listed among the coast guard stuff so I don’t know.
TS: Whether that’s a patrol route or something. Or —
DM: I think it must have been.
KS: I don’t think it must have been very important.
DM: I think it’s a job for Mr Google.
TS: Yes.
DM: But it was mainly flying the Martinets, and mainly target towing. You did a lot. You seemed to have done a lot of that. Do you remember who you were providing target practice for? Was it, I suppose it was trainee fighter pilots was it? Or was it for bombers?
TS: I think a lot of it was for the Royal Navy, wasn’t it?
DM: Oh right. Well, that would make sense because it was obviously over the sea by the sound of it.
KS: I don’t know. Yeah. Maybe, yeah. Maybe target. I don’t know. Is it in Scotland?
DM: Yeah. We’re still in Scotland, I think. Yes.
KS: Yes.
TS: You had a great times in the Orkneys, didn’t you? There’s a, in your albums there’s a number of pictures of you up in the Orkneys, and you quite enjoyed it there.
KS: What?
TS: You quite enjoyed your time in the Orkneys, in Scotland. I remember you saying because in your albums there’s quite a few pictures of you up there. Usually with floozies of some description.
KS: A what?
TS: I think you had a girlfriend up in, in the Orkneys.
KS: Yeah. I had.
TS: Yeah. And a dog whose name you remembered I think when I last discussed it with you.
KS: Yes.
TS: And here’s the picture.
KS: Oh yeah. That’s the dog.
TS: Yeah. What was the name of the dog?
KS: Butch, I think.
TS: I think it was. You’re right. Yeah.
KS: I think it was Butch.
TS: Yeah. I think it was.
KS: Yeah. That was in the Orkneys.
TS: Yeah. Yeah.
KS: A nice girl.
DM: So, you were up, you were in Scotland for quite some time, and then in 1944 you were doing a lot of air tests of various Martinets and Ansons. It was basically. And something called curve of pursuit crops up from time to time which, is it some sort of navigational exercise maybe? I don’t know.
KS: What is it? What did you say?
DM: Curve of pursuit.
KS: Don’t know.
DM: No.
TS: But that would be some aerial manoeuvre wouldn’t it be? Do you think?
KS: Does it say a lot of that?
DM: There’s a fair few of them.
KS: I must remember then.
DM: So, like in a Master with pilot officer Bullen, curve of pursuit. With Sergeant Clark, curve of pursuit. Always with a different co-pilot or passenger, so it could have been a navigation exercise or something, I guess.
KS: Yeah. I think so.
[pause]
TS: Well, unless there was some sort of protocol for vectoring pilots onto enemy aircraft or something. There was some sort of protocol for that.
DM: Maybe. I don’t know where you are now when you, when you’re doing this. I imagine you’ve left the Orkneys. We’re in 1944.
KS: Yes.
DM: And then we, we sort of, you then had a, you had a couple more flights in a Hurricane in 1944, in August 1944. Local it says, so —
TS: Does it mention the Seafire in there somewhere?
[recording paused]
DM: So, I see from your logbook that in 1945 —
KS: Yes.
DM: You started flying, you were seconded I imagine to the Fleet Air Arm. To 771 Squadron.
KS: Yes. I remember that.
DM: Do you remember what you did?
KS: No.
DM: Were you testing aircraft? Was that, was that why you were there?
KS: Yes. We were testing aircraft and it was at Oxford. Oxford? The airport near London. Where was —
DM: Right.
TS: Not Duxford?
DM: Oh. Could be Duxford. Duxford?
KS: Where?
DM: Duxford.
KS: Don’t know.
DM: It’s not far from London. It’s Cambridgeshire.
KS: The name seems to ring a bell but I don’t know why.
DM: I mean you were doing all sorts of things there. Like it’s got, “Destroyer. Anti-aircraft. Winged target.” Whether they winged you or you winged them I don’t know.
KS: Oh yeah. Yeah. That was an aeroplane towing a target and the following that is an aeroplane testing out its guns if I remember rightly.
DM: Right.
TS: On the Seafire business there’s an interesting picture here in his album. It’s a drop tank. Drop tank trial on the Seafire Mark 15.
KS: What’s that?
DM: Right.
KS: Drop tank trial on the Seafire.
TS: Yeah. That was part of your NAFDU work, I think.
KD: Oh yes.
DM: Yes. Which we think stood for — NAFDU.
TS: Naval Air, Naval Air —
DM: Force.
TS: Force.
KS: Fighter Unit.
DM: Fighter.
TS: Yeah. Fighter Defence Unit.
KS: Fighter Unit, NAFDU.
DM: Right. Right.
KS: NAFDU. Yeah.
DM: Can you remember what a DBX was?
KS: Pardon?
DM: A DBX. Because you did a, you did three flights to DBX Duke of York which is obviously a ship or a land base because —
KS: No. I don’t know what that is.
DM: DBX. I don’t know what that is. Do you know how you can, this is a very unfair question but do you know how you came to be seconded to the Royal Navy? Why that happened?
[pause]
TS: It’s perhaps on the back of your test pilot work in North Africa maybe.
KS: Hmmn?
TS: Maybe on the back of your test pilot work in North Africa. I think you had a reputation.
KS: I don’t know. What was the question?
DM: How you came to be in the Royal Navy. Why they moved you across to the Royal Navy.
KS: I don’t know. I think probably it was from the Air Force. Royal Air Force that. I really don’t know.
DM: No.
KS: I don’t know.
DM: You probably, you probably volunteered in inverted commas. That’s what it was. I mean looking, looking at your logbook from the war, so your first stint in the Royal Air Force there are, you’ve, you’ve compiled a list in the back of the aerodromes that you visited during your service.
KS: Oh yes.
DM: And there’s a hundred and twenty three of them.
KS: No.
DM: Yeah. A hundred and twenty three.
KS: I didn’t think there were that number.
DM: No. Range and that’s sort of like ranging from Cambridge of course. In fact, the first one was a place called, it’s near Newcastle. Walsington.
KS: Usworth.
DM: No. It says Walsington here. Or Halsington. I can’t see if it’s a W. I think it’s a W. Walsington I think. But then it was Cambridge which of course was where you did your training as we’ve already seen. And then eventually of course you end up in 1941 in Lagos and that was when —
KS: Lagos.
DM: You started out there.
KS: Yes.
DM: And then so many places out in Africa until you make the flight back via Lisbon and Foynes. And then after that you make your way up to Inverness and then to Tain which I imagine is the place in the Orkneys.
KS: Tain.
DM: T A I N. Tain. It’s in Scotland. It says it’s in Scotland.
KS: Yeah. It rings a bell somehow. Yes.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Tain.
DM: Yeah, and then various places in Scotland, and then ultimately in 1945 you end up in places like Gosport, Westhampnett which is obviously when you were with the Fleet Air Arm.
KS: Yes.
DM: And then I think the last place in the logbook is a place called High Post. Where ever that was.
KS: Is what?
DM: High Post. That was probably part of your demob, I would think. Probably where you flew to finish. So, you did, were you given the opportunity, can you remember at the end of the war?
KS: Yes.
DM: And as you visited a few German airfields and places obviously after the war ended.
KS: Yes.
DM: But were you offered a commission to stay on and refused it or —
KS: I think I had, a commission. I was a flight lieutenant.
DM: Right.
TS: I think that was after the war. When, when you re-joined the RAF for the second time.
DM: Right. So, anyway, you left the Air Force at the end of the war, didn’t you? You took a break from the Air Force.
KS: Take a break. Yeah.
DM: Yeah. What —
KS: I went civil flying.
DM: Right. Right. And what, what, who were you flying for?
TS: I think you’ve got the order mixed up because you went out to South Africa. Do you remember? To visit —
KS: Yeah, with —
TS: With Harry. Your brother.
KS: The family.
TS: No. No. No. With your brother.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Who had a business out there and I think you worked with him for a few years in his engineering business.
KS: I think so.
TS: Yeah. Which was when I was born in 1949. Out there.
KS: Were you born there?
TS: Yeah. And then we came back.
KS: Yeah.
TS: I think the following year. In 1950 or something. And then later on, I think ’54, I think you re-joined the RAF.
DM: It says ’51 in here.
TS: ‘51. ’51.
DM: Yeah. ’51.
TS: That would figure because I was born in ’49 and we came back in 1950 to the UK.
KS: Did I, did I re-join the Air Force then?
TS: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. According to your logbook you re-joined the Air Force, well, you started flying again in March 1951. And the first aircraft that you flew was a Lincoln.
KS: Was it?
DM: Yes.
KS: Lincoln.
DM: Which was quite a new aircraft then. A new type. Well, I mean I know it’s a version of the Lancaster.
KS: Yeah.
DM: But it was a new, a new type.
KS: That’s right. It was.
DM: And a new thing and it was familiarisation and landing, and stalling and asymmetric feathering, and all the multi-engine type stuff, I imagine.
KS: Yes. It was quite a handful.
DM: Yeah. Do you, can you remember why you joined the air, re-joined the Air Force?
KS: I don’t know.
TS: I think you were probably looking for a job, weren’t you? I imagine getting a job in those days was —
KS: Yeah. I, yeah, I thought that why I joined the Air Force was to get some flying in so that I could go civil flying.
DM: Right. That makes sense.
KS: Yeah.
DM: Hence the Lincoln of course because —
TS: Yeah.
DM: It’s a big aircraft.
TS: Yeah. There’s some letters we have in the album from the Air Ministry actually signing him up for his second stint, and with it came a commission to flight lieutenant, and you were signed up for twenty years’ service at the time. And you actually, at the advent of the, of the dawn of the, of the V bombers they were downsizing the Air Force, and they were making crews redundant and I think you took a golden handshake. Early retirement. So, you didn’t actually do the twenty years. You baled out before that.
KS: Silly thing to do, wasn’t it?
TS: Well, not really because that was the beginning of your civil flying career.
KS: Oh.
TS: After that.
KS: Oh, I see. Yeah.
DM: I don’t know. It’s difficult to see from the logbook where you were based. Tangmere is mentioned quite a lot but I don’t think that was your base.
KS: No.
DM: You were flying to and from Tangmere and doing, doing air tests and so on.
TS: I don’t know whether you would get a Lincoln, would you, into Tangmere?
DM: Well, it says [pause] where are we? I can’t find it now, can I? Yes. Oh no. You’re quite right. That was in an Anson. The first, the first Tangmere venture.
TS: Right.
DM: Which would make sense.
TS: I’m only guessing because Tangmere was a fighter, fighter squadron, wasn’t it?
[recording paused]
TS: Yes. You were. You’d, they put you in Bomber Command, and the go to bomber at the time was, was the Lincoln which was a derivation of the Lancaster. A later model of the Lancaster. So, a lot of your time, early time was spent refamiliarizing yourself with a multi-engine plane and doing all the tests. All the tests, and test flying that are associated with flying big heavy bombers. And I think eventually, I mean David will correct me, I think you ended up at Scampton and Hemswell up in East Anglia. In Lincolnshire.
KS: Scampton.
TS: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s right. I think, and that would have been 83 Squadron, wouldn’t it?
TS: Yeah.
DM: That was your Bomber Command Squadron was 83 Squadron, and I think they were based at Scampton at one point. And it mentions here in 1952 you did some Battle of Britain flypasts. Or you did the Battle of Britain flypast. You did a rehearsal.
KS: Yes.
DM: A couple of rehearsals. Including landing at Biggin Hill.
KS: At Biggin Hill.
DM: Yes.
KS: Oh.
TS: It just so happens I have the picture here.
KS: Eh?
DM: Oh yes.
KS: Oh, is that, is that what it is?
TS: That’s the Battle of Britain flypast.
KS: Oh, that’s me in the middle.
TS: In 1952.
KS: That’s 414. That’s right.
TS: Is that right David? Does that tie up with —
DM: That’s the right date. Yeah.
No. But the aircraft.
KS: You can see, you can see the cutback where the bomb —
DM: It’s a Lincoln and it says —
KS: The bomb went out there.
DM: 414.
TS: Yeah. No. No. This was a Lincoln which was, the thing you’re looking at is a radar dome under, under the aircraft. For the Dambusters you use, you use a Lancaster but this is a, this is a later aircraft so the big bulge under the fuselage which you, I think you thought was the bomb is, is a radar dome.
KS: Oh really.
TS: So, this is in 1952 and the, the Lancaster was then redundant. It was obsolete.
KS: Redundant.
TS: Yeah. And this was, this was a new version of it.
KS: Oh.
DM: Basically, I mean we’re continuing on to 1953, and of course you were operational but there was no war on, and it’s mainly instrument testing and sort of just flying from one place to another. But that was when you were based in Hemswell.
KS: Yes.
DM: A number of exercises in crew training and that sort of stuff.
KS: Yes.
TS: Was that a concrete runway at Hemswell then?
KS: Oh yes.
TS: It was.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So —
KS: All the interesting ones are while the war was on.
DM: Yeah. Although, of course, there is a very interesting one coming up which was when you ended up flying for the film of the Dambusters.
KS: Oh yes.
DM: And you were sort of in charge of the group of pilots who were, who were flying the planes for the film, weren’t you?
KS: That’s right. Yes.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
TS: But prior to that he was in Malaya doing, doing the stuff in Malaya which you’ll probably come across.
KS: What?
TS: Do you remember going to Malaya? To Singapore.
KS: Pardon?
TS: You went out to Singapore with your Squadron.
KS: Yes.
TS: And you were based in Changi. Do you remember that?
KS: Yeah.
TS: And you were doing bombing missions over, over Malaya to try and suppress the communists who were trying to take over the country there. So, I remember you telling me that you used to, there was a lot of partying going on, and then you would get an instruction to go and bomb. Drop some bombs on some bombs on some coordinate in the jungle on some poor people who were trying to reclaim their country back from the, from the United Kingdom. And then you go back and finish partying. Is that right?
KS: I can’t remember.
TS: No. I shouldn’t think you can.
KS: I can’t remember.
DM: So, that, that’s what they called the Malayan Emergency, wasn’t it? And were you based in Singapore then? Or —
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
TS: So, you must have flown out. It must be a long trip out from the UK because I remember when we joined you out there for a year we flew from, I think from Croydon in some, some Hermes or something, and it took us about three or four days to reach Singapore going via India. So, when you flew your Lincolns out there it must have taken quite a while to get there. Do you remember that?
KS: I remember going out. Flying the Lincolns out.
TS: Right.
DM: So would that have been in —
KS: Well, we landed at Changi.
TS: That’s right. Yeah.
DM: I’m trying to find out when? Can you remember what year that would have been?
TS: Fifty [pause] fifty. Well, the Dambusters was ’53, I think. So it must have been early 50s.
DM: Oh no. Here we are. No. the Dambusters is ’54 and this was, it was ’53. So you were in the UK in July ’53 doing various RAF Review rehearsals for formation flying and then you were off to Habbaniya in August 1953.
KS: Off to where?
DM: Then to Mauripur, Negombo and then to Tengah, in brackets Singapore.
KS: So, was this flying out there?
DM: Yes. You see, that was, that was your route out I imagine. So, you took a Lincoln. 672 was the aircraft.
KS: Yes. I remember the number.
TS: Do you? Really. That’s his Squadron, David when he was out with the Lincoln.
DM: So, yeah. You had five crew and three passengers on the flight out there.
KS: Oh, was it?
DM: So quite a crowded aircraft I would imagine. And you arrived in, on, I think you finally arrived in Singapore on August the 26th 1953.
TS: So how long would that take to get there?
DM: They set out [pause] I guess it was the 21st so it was [pause] they flew to somewhere called Idris then, and then from Idris to [Habbaniya] the next day. And then the next leg was [Habbaniya] to Mauripur. Mauripur. And then the 24th was Mauripur to Negombo which I assume is in North Africa.
TS: Yeah. Sounds like it.
DM: Sounds like it doesn’t it? Yeah. And then on the 26th from Negombo to Tengah stroke brackets Singapore.
TS: Gosh.
DM: And then it’s —
TS: It must have been a very boring flight.
DM: Well, yeah. And then you didn’t fly for five days after that, and then on the 31st you and the five crew did a cross country navigation exercise.
KS: What was that?
DM: That was, so after you arrived in Singapore, they gave you five days off.
KS: Oh.
DM: And then you went on a navigation exercise.
KS: Oh.
DM: And then four days later was your first bombing mission. So, you [pause] and then, then still out there you did a Battle of Britain flypast in September.
KS: Where?
DM: Well, I assume you were still, you must have still been still been out in Singapore because there’s no mention of any transit flight or anything. I suppose, outposts of the empire.
TS: Yeah. Yeah.
KS: Yeah. I don’t remember that.
DM: Frighten the locals you know [laughs]
KS: I don’t remember that at all.
TS: I remember visiting the airfield when you were there and they had an aircraft called a Beverley which was a huge transport aeroplane, an ugly thing, and they used to do parachute drops over the, over the airfield which for a, you know for a young kid was very exciting.
KS: I don’t remember.
TS: Well, you were probably off doing something else but it was a very busy airfield. It’s now, it’s now of course the main international airport in Singapore.
KS: At Singapore.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, in 19, on the 13th of November you probably won’t remember this but I’ll give it a go. You were involved in an air sea rescue search off Singapore.
KS: Oh.
TS: I don’t remember that either.
KS: I don’t remember.
DM: Two and a half hours that was.
KS: How long did it last?
DM: Two and a half hours. It doesn’t say you found anybody but, and then you did some more strike flying and then —
KS: Air Sea rescue.
DM: Yeah. Somebody must have come down in the drink, I guess. You went to Hong Kong in December. And then you, you came home in January 1954 and again that was another very long flight. You took off on the 7th of January from Tengah to Negombo. Then from Negombo to Mauripur the next day. Mauripur to Bahrain. Then Bahrain to Fayid. Fayid to Idris and Idris to Hemswell. So, you were actually six days flying back.
KS: Really? Six days.
DM: These days you’d be about eleven or twelve hours wouldn’t you, you know?
TS: Yes. Yeah.
DM: So then then you were back home and you were made a flight commander. Do you remember that? In February 1954.
KS: What was it?
DM: You were made flight commander.
KS: Oh, I can’t remember.
DM: Do you have a recollection of that?
KS: No.
TS: What does a flight commander do? [pause] Apart from commanding a flight.
KS: Commands a flight [laughs]
TS: Ok.
KS: Yeah.
DM: I suppose that would explain why you were the man in charge of the seconded people and some civil pilots too who were doing the Dambuster film. Because you were a flight commander so you, you were sent there to keep them in order and take charge.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, you did a number of air displays and various other things and you were, it’s interesting actually. Obviously, you started flying Lancasters again. So, you’ve been flying the Lincoln and the Lancasters were mainly sort of, you did some low flying practice and various other things and then you were attending air shows and doing flying displays. So almost an early version of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, I would imagine. Something similar.
TS: So that was about the same time as the Dambusters film though.
DM: This was May 1954. And then [pause] yeah. So, the actual, yes, no, you’re right. The dam, so there was some local familiarisation flying and some display flights. There was display flying in the Lincoln. Local familiarisation flying in the Lancaster, and then you started practicing for the Dambusters film on the 8th of April 1954. Low flying practice.
KS: Oh, was there?
TS: Because, because according to the book about the filming of the Dambusters they had to get the Lancasters out of mothballs. They were mothballed in various places, weren’t they? And then —
KS: Yeah. They would be, wouldn’t they?
TS: They were.
KS: Yeah.
TS: There were four aircraft all together and I think they —
KS: Four?
TS: Well, there were four. Three and one spare, I think.
DM: Yeah. And I remember, remember reading that each aircraft was painted with a different number on the side so they could duplicate six aircraft with the three that they were flying. Yeah. So filmed from one side it looks like one aircraft. Filmed from the other side it looks like another. Do you have any recollection of how you got involved in that? Was this another case of sort of somebody telling you, you were going to do it or —
KS: Yes. I can’t remember that.
TS: I think it was mainly due to your flying. Flying prowess that you —
KS: Oh yeah probably because —
TS: Because you’d got —
KS: All this flying.
TS: Yeah. You got good reports in your logbook for your flying skills.
KS: Yeah. I think something like that. Yeah.
DM: I mean you were still flying the Lincoln from time to time in, during filming. So, to do an instrument rating test on the Lincoln in the middle of flying on the Battle of Britain, the Dambusters film. I know there was a lot of very low flying involved in the Dambusters film.
KS: Oh yes.
DM: And I’ve read in the book about it that you took some exception to that at one point because you thought it was too dangerous.
KS: What was that?
DM: You, apparently you had a bit of a set to with the director, or one of the assistant directors because you felt you were being asked to, you and the other airmen were being asked to do things that was somewhat dangerous.
KS: Yeah. It was all dangerous. I remember bad things. Over the, over the lake, and where we were practicing prior to the big show I came along the water. I was sort of almost touching the water and ahead of me was a hill and I left it too late and I got myself into the position that I’d got to climb over the hill and I took on too much. And I said often this flying over the hill, and the crowd got closer and closer. As I was going up the hill it was becoming bigger. Oh dear. I was, I was right on the ground by the time I’d got to the top of the hill. I was almost scratching the top. I said to myself never again. How could you be so stupid to take on things like that? Because it had a certain amount of power, but not all that much. I remember that very well.
TS: Because I think the director, at the sixty feet that you were flying at over the water I seem to remember you saying the director thought on the camera it didn’t look that low so he asked you whether you could go even lower.
KS: Right. Yes.
TS: And you said you’d give it a go.
KS: Yeah.
TS: And I think at some point you were so low that the prop wash was whipping up water off the lake surface.
KS: Yes. That’s right.
DM: Yeah. That may well be. It doesn’t, doesn’t mention the incident but on the 22nd of April you were low flying and being filmed over Lake Windermere. So that that could well have been it I would imagine.
TS: Yeah.
DM: And those fells are pretty steep.
TS: Yeah.
DM: Aren’t they? Around the lakes out there.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, you survived the war but nearly bought it when you were making a movie basically.
KS: Yes.
DM: Do you have any other memories from that time about making the film?
KS: Making a film.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Oh yes. I remember. Yeah. I remember making a film but it was fairly straightforward like over, flying over Lake Windermere, you know. Just a normal flight. Only it was low. But that was the only difference. It was quite fun. Quite, quite fun.
TS: Well, I think for pilots who like, you know if you want to fly low, it was legal during the filming but probably —
KS: That’s right.
TS: Not otherwise.
KS: Yes.
TS: I remember you telling me a story about going mushrooming in a Lancaster. Do you remember this? I’ll remind you. Then maybe you might remember. You were, I think you were at Kirton Lindsey because of the —
KS: Yeah.
TS: The original road went off a grass runway.
KS: Yes.
TS: And both Scampton and Hemswell were concrete runways.
KS: Right.
TS: So, I think you went to Kirton Lindsey, didn’t you?
KS: Yeah.
TS: And I think between takes of the filming, you were just sitting around and being very high up in the cockpit you could spot these. I remember these massive horse mushrooms you used to get on airfields.
KS: Oh.
TS: And you used to trundle about with a Lancaster looking for these mushrooms, and then the tail gunner would nip out when you found one. Out of the back door, grab the mushrooms and then you’d go to the next one.
KS: Yeah. That’s right.
TS: But, and you told me a story about the station commander banning you from the airfield because of the, the hairy flying that you were doing.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Do you remember that?
KS: Yeah.
TS: Can you tell David what happened?
KS: Yes. Well, I mean, it wasn’t all that big.
DM: No.
KS: Kirton Lindsey. And to get right back as far as you could get, and turn the aeroplane around and right brake, flaps down, and all the rest of the trip because there was not much space and putting the power on, and we started. We were here. That’s the end of the airfield.
TS: Yeah.
KS: And here were the offices. The officer —
TS: Officer’s mess.
KS: Offices as a, as a —
TS: Oh the —
KS: Not a person but the office, you know.
TS: Yeah.
KS: And we got balling up to this, and it seemed to be so long that we were on the ground and this office was coming up getting bigger and bigger and eventually I lifted the thing off the ground, and you usually get a bit of side kicking if you haven’t got enough speed and we just scraped over that one. Seemed to be living, I don’t know I make it sound very dangerous but I suppose it was really.
TS: So, so, so what happened when the CO called you in and said that you —
KS: Oh, we were banned.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Don’t come back.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, you were quite a long time on the filming weren’t you because looking in your logbook you’ve still got Dambusters, and still flying 679 mainly, the Lancaster. At the end of August, you’re still, still going strong doing various filming and things. And then I think it looks as though it was about, yes still September still flying the Lancaster. You must, must have got very familiar with it as an aircraft.
KS: Oh yes. Yeah.
DM: How did it compare to the Lincoln?
KS: Well, virtually it was the same as far as I was concerned.
DM: From the pilot’s perspective. Yeah.
KS: Similar.
DM: And then you, then again in September 1954 you were back on the Lincoln.
KS: Yeah.
DM: To do the Battle of Britain flypast, but you actually rehearsed in the Lincoln and did it in the Lancaster, so I suppose because they decided since they’d got the plane they decided they’d do the flypast. Then you also had a spell with the Lancaster again while they’d got it. You did an Air Ministry Film Unit photo, photoshoot in the Lancaster in October 1954.
KS: What was that?
DM: “Air Ministry Film Unit. Photos and ferrying,” it says.
KS: Air Ministry?
DM: Yeah. I suppose while they’d got the aircraft up and running they thought they’d take a few pictures of it for posterity or something like that.
TS: Yes.
KS: I don’t remember that.
TS: We’ve got some stills from the film which are also in the book, and there’s one of a, I think it was a Varsity they used for the filming, air to air filming and there’s a picture of the cameramen in the cockpit or something but which has been mislabelled in the, in the book I think as you and it’s not. It’s actually a film unit. This was a camera platform they used, and they used a Varsity aeroplane to have the camera in to do the aerial shots from the, from the, you know air to air shots of the Lancasters.
KS: Oh yes.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Well, they had the camera out of the window.
TS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
DM: So, it would seem that after you’d finished you did a little bit more flying in the Lincoln in October 1954, but then there was a gap in your logbook until 1955 and then you had a trip in a Vampire. That was your, I think that was your first flight. Yeah. You were second pilot in a Vampire. Circuits and landings.
KS: Was I?
DM: And you were cleared for solo flying in a Vampire on the 17th of January 1955.
KS: A Vampire. I don’t remember flying that.
TS: I think this must have been the beginning of your conversion on to, I think the Canberra bomber had come on stream, and I think all that early jet stuff with the Vampire and the, I don’t know what other aircraft there was. A Meteor, I think. I think that was part of your conversion on to the jets from the Lincoln.
KS: I think it would be, yeah.
TS: Prior to flying the Canberra.
DM: Yeah.
TS: Yes.
DM: And then you were out in the Far East again.
TS: Right.
DM: Well, Changi. In a Valetta. You obviously didn’t fly there because you did a flight from Changi to Labuan. And then Labuan. And then Labuan to Clark Field. That was at the end. That was in a Valetta.
TS: Really? I don’t remember that.
DM: Yeah. And then in February 1955 you flew from Clark Field to Kai Tek, Kai Tec to Saigon and Saigon to Changi. You weren’t doing much flying then. And then back. Then in March you were back on the Vampire and that’s when you started to fly the Vampire all the time. Although again not many flights. The flights seem to have been very few and far between on the Vampire. Probably hadn’t got enough fuel or something.
TS: Do you remember the Vampire? It was a —
KS: I remember the Vampire. Yeah.
TS: It was quite a small aircraft with a twin boom tail.
KS: Yeah. I never flew it.
TS: Yeah. You did. It says in there. But I remember you telling me it was a very nice aircraft to fly.
KS: Oh really?
TS: Yeah.
KS: I don’t remember flying it.
DM: I’m not sure where you, yeah you were flying it out in the Far East. You were flying it at Changi. You were based in Changi and you also flew a Valetta while you were out there.
KS: A Valetta. Yeah.
DM: And then you came back home in [pause] so you, obviously the flying was a bit fewer and further between then, because in January you were, in 1956 in January you were still out in the Far East. And then you don’t fly again until April, and that’s when you were flying at Boscombe Down and Andover in April 1956.
KS: Boscombe Down. What’s that? Was that an airfield?
DM: Yes. It’s an airfield. Yes.
TS: Test Pilot’s School.
DM: It’s where you were and you were flying. You were flying an Anson. And then in May 1956 you started to fly the Meteor.
KS: Meteor.
DM: I’m sure you remember that.
KS: Yeah.
DM: Quite a dangerous aircraft by reputation, I think.
KS: The Meteor.
DM: Yeah. I mean quite a few pilots came unstuck in Meteors, didn’t they?
KS: Oh really. I didn’t know that.
DM: I think so. Yes. There were quite a few crashes. Particularly early on.
TS: Were they difficult to handle then? Or —
DM: I think there were problems with them.
TS: Problems with the —
[recording paused]
DM: So anyway, you really got back in to flying in May 1956, and that’s, that’s when you were, you were actually usually the second pilot but sometimes the first pilot in a Meteor and it was obviously when you were doing your training then.
KS: Doing my —
DM: Doing your training in the Meteor in 19 —
KS: I think so.
DM: Yeah. And still in June and you were up to the type 7 and the type 8 Meteor by then. I don’t know what the differences were. Did you enjoy flying a jet?
KS: Yeah. Yeah. That’s —
DM: Still young enough to enjoy it.
KS: Yes. It was alright. It was good fun.
DM: I imagine that everything happens very fast when you’re flying a jet.
KS: Oh yeah.
DM: You’ve got to have your —
KS: Very fast.
DM: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. If you’re taking off and something goes wrong, and you’re just off the ground what do you do? Go straight ahead.
DM: Yes.
TS: But did they have ejector seats in those days? In the early days of — did they have ejector seats in the early days of jet flying, or was that a later development?
KS: Yeah. I think they had.
TS: They had. Ok.
KS: I think so, yeah.
TS: Right.
KS: Yeah. As they, as they used to drop people in behind the, behind the lines. The German lines.
TS: Yeah. But I don’t think [laughs] that’s quite the same thing I don’t think.
DM: No. So latterly in your Air Force career I see you were flying the Canberra.
KS: The Canberra. Yes.
DM: Yes. You did a lot of flying in the Canberra, which I suppose was all good practice for when you went into civil aviation after you left the Air Force really. It doesn’t say where you were based. I don’t know where you based.
KS: I was based at Scampton.
DM: Oh right. 61 Squadron it says for one of them.
KS: I can’t remember the number. I was based there. Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Basically, a lot of the war I’d go away and come back. Go away and come back.
TS: There’s the, there’s the Canberra. Do you remember that one?
KS: Oh, oh yes.
TS: Yeah. It’s a pretty aircraft actually. And there’s one here of you in Gibraltar with someone.
KS: Very easy to fly a jet. No big problem.
DM: Yes, that was 61. After you had done your training, you were in B Flight, 61 Squadron. Had you been promoted or were you still a flight lieutenant then?
KS: No. I never got any higher than a —
DM: That was it.
KS: Flight lieutenant.
DM: That was the ceiling of your career.
KS: Yeah.
DM: Too much of the bad boy. You probably answered back too much. Yeah. So —
KS: Yes. There’s not much you can take out of that really is there?
DM: Well, no. I mean we know that you signed up for twenty years in the Air Force.
KS: Hmmn?
DM: You signed up to do twenty years in the Air Force the second time you went in but you didn’t do twenty years, did you?
KS: No.
DM: You, you sort of, I suppose these days it was, you’d say you took voluntary severance.
KS: Yeah.
DM: And that, that’s when you went into civil aviation was it?
KS: That’s what?
DM: When you went into civil aviation.
KS: Yeah, well, I can’t remember the date.
DM: No.
KS: 1950, was it?
DM: Well, you were still in the Air Force in ’58. I think ’58 was when you came out of the Air Force.
KS: Was that it?
DM: Yeah.
KS: Oh.
TS: His, his first job if I remember rightly was with Napier’s. And —
KS: Sorry?
TS: Your first job when you left the RAF was as a test pilot for Napier’s flying, quite coincidentally, flying a Lincoln that had been kitted out with a dorsal wing. A wing coming out of the top of the fuselage which they were doing experiments about de-icing on the wings, so they had all sorts of nozzles and cameras and stuff.
KS: Yes. Yeah.
TS: And I think you had to go off and find some clouds that were, you know likely to be to be, to precipitate some icing.
KS: Cumulonimbus.
TS: Yeah. So, so you did that for a while, and in your album there’s a letter of thanks at Napier’s for your time test flying with them.
KS: Who was that?
TS: Napier’s. The, well, the aviation people. They used to make engines, didn’t they?
KS: Oh, did they? Such a lot. I don’t remember it.
TS: Well, you crammed quite a lot in so it’s difficult to remember all the detail. I’ve been pouring over your logbooks so I probably know more about it than you, and David’s found stuff that I didn’t even know about so I need to go and have another look at them.
KS: Yeah. What you just said. Something about [pause] what was it?
TS: I was talking about Napier’s and test flying.
KS: Yes.
TS: For the de-icing rig that they had on, on a Lincoln.
KS: Yes.
TS: And I think that worked quite well because you’d been flying Lincoln and so you could, you know you were quite useful to them, I think.
KS: Yes. I don’t remember very much about that.
DM: No. You weren’t with them very long I don’t think.
KS: No.
DM: But I can remember coming to visit you at Cranfield Aerodrome which is now, it’s —
KS: Where?
DM: Cranfield.
KS: Oh.
DM: In Bedfordshire. Which is where you were based and flying from.
KS: Oh right.
DM: And at the time I don’t know if it’s relevant to this, but at the time when you were flying, I used to wander around the hangars at Cranfield.
KS: Oh.
TS: And at the time it was a kind of overspill for the Imperial War Museum.
KS: The what?
DM: For the Imperial War Museum, and what later became the RAF museum at Hendon.
KS: Oh really?
DM: And the hangars were stacked full of German aircraft.
KS: German.
DM: Which had been captured.
KS: Yeah.
DM: And also some experimental aircraft that were there. There was, I remember seeing a seaplane. A jet seaplane that was there. And I think all this stuff eventually were, was transferred to the RAF museum at Hendon. But as a young kid it made quite an impression.
KS: It’s a wonder they let you get out alive.
TS: Well, yeah actually.
DM: So, just to finish up you’ve left. You left the Air Force. You worked for Napier’s doing testing.
KS: Yes.
DM: And various other things. Where did you go after Napier’s?
[pause]
TS: That’s a tricky one.
KS: I was flying for [pause] I was flying for what was that? Oh, how could I get it out?
TS: Well, the executive.
KS: Pardon?
TS: The executive flying you did.
KS: Yes, the executive.
TS: But before that, before that you were going around job hunting. Doing various jobs flying where ever you could find them. And I remember you used to go to air shows and you’d be flying a, something like a Rapide, to giving people just, you know joy flights.
KS: Yeah.
TS: At air shows and I think you did that, you know where ever you could just to keep your hours up.
KS: What?
TS: Just to keep your hours up.
KS: Yes. That’s right.
TS: Just to keep your flying hours up.
KS: Yes.
TS: And I remember going on a trip with you once in a Rapide with all these people who hadn’t flown before.
KS: Oh.
TS: And then I think you got a job and I’m not sure how you got the job and I’m not sure how you got the job but you got a job with a merchant bank flying a de Havilland Dove, that they’d bought as an executive eight seater aircraft or something, and you were based at Hatfield which was a de Havilland or Hawker Siddeley, it became. It was their airfield so you were based there with this Dove.
KS: Yes. I was there a long time.
TS: Yeah. So off you go with the Dove. Do you remember. Do you remember flying the Dove? I used to fly with you a bit.
KS: Yeah.
TS: In the Dove.
KS: Yes. I remember.
TS: So, so you’d be flying what? To mainly in the UK with these merchant bankers doing —
KS: Yeah. A lot in the UK but on the continent.
TS: Ok.
KS: Quite a lot in the continent really.
TS: It was a nice little aeroplane I seem to remember.
KS: Hmmn?
TS: It was a nice little aeroplane.
KS: Yes. It was.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. I remember we used to go at weekends. We used to go to [pause] I can’t remember the name. There’s an airfield.
TS: You used to go, you used to go to Norfolk quite a bit, because the head of the merchant bank had an estate there and they used to go shooting, didn’t they? They used to have shooting parties and things.
KS: Oh yeah. That’s right. But that’s not the one I’m thinking of. I was thinking of Manchester. That way.
TS: Oh right.
KS: I remember taking, in a Rapide, a group of ladies.
TS: Oh, this was doing your joy flying.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Your air experience flights.
KS: That’s right. Anything to get a few coppers.
TS: Yeah.
KS: But this, they these ladies their average age about forty five, I suppose and their weight was about the same in stones [laughs]
TS: They were matron, matron type ladies, were they?
KS: What?
TS: They were kind of matronly ladies.
KS: Yes.
TS: Of some girth.
KS: Oh yes.
TS: That’s right.
KS: I doubted how many of there, because I was only flying a Rapide, you know, and it’s not, not a very big aeroplane, and it turned out I think there were about four or five of them. I thought Jesus. I wouldn’t like to have this weighed you know. It wouldn’t be allowed I wouldn’t think. Anyway, they were all happy and merry, you know. All off. They’d been saving up to go to London I think it was. Somewhere. And it was all right. I took off. It didn’t take too long to get off. I thought it might take the whole runway but they were very sweet ladies [laughs] and that was it. Weekend flying.
TS: Yeah. I remember you did quite a bit of that, I think just, just to make ends meet.
KS: Yeah. Anything like that. Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Because I remember, I remember you telling me that, you know being a pilot, being a civil pilot in those days was feast or famine. They either had too many pilots or not enough and I think you probably hit a period when a lot of the RAF pilots were out trying to find work, and I think work was quite difficult to find.
KS: Right. Yes. It was.
TS: So, after the Dove. Do you remember what, what happened after the Dove? They bought a Hawker Siddeley 125. A jet aircraft.
KS: A 125.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. That’s right.
TS: Yeah, and then they shared that with, with Beecham’s, the pharmaceutical company.
KS: That’s right.
TS: And —
KS: That wasn’t a jet. It was a propeller, wasn’t it?
TS: No. No. No. It was a jet. The propeller was the Dove.
KS: Eh?
TS: The propeller driven aircraft was the Dove. That was a twin engine propeller.
KS: Yeah.
TS: And then you went on to the Hawker Siddeley 125 which was a jet. One of the first executive jets that were, that were around.
KS: Was it?
TS: Yeah. We have a model of it somewhere.
KS: Really? I can’t remember.
TS: You can’t remember [laughs] and you did a lot of European flying I remember with that because —
KS: A lot of European.
TS: Yeah. Because eventually you went to work for Trusthouse Forte. Do you remember that? And they had holiday villages all over Sardinia, and all over Europe so you were doing quite a lot of European flying then.
KS: A lot of work was what?
TS: You were doing a lot of European flying with Trusthouse Forte.
KS: Yeah.
TS: The hotel group people.
KS: Yes. Yeah.
TS: And then you, then you retired from that. I think you had another bout of problems with your ear if you remember.
KS: Probably.
TS: You were getting ear infections from the damage that was done way back in the war, and I think eventually you chucked it in because you were, you were, you know you were having problems with it.
KS: Yeah. That was —
TS: I don’t know how old you were then. Probably, what, in your fifties?
KS: Sixty.
TS: Yeah. There’s, there’s, a civil flying logbook there somewhere.
KS: Oh, is there?
TS: And that was that.
KS: Oh. That’s in there.
TS: And I tried to get you in to a glider to go flying.
KS: Hmmn?
TS: When I was doing gliding at Lasham.
KS: Yes.
TS: I tried to get you in to a glider to take a trip, and that was the, that was the first time you would have flown for quite some time, I think. Apart from going on an airliner.
KS: Yeah.
TS: And I remember you saying that you’d survived the war, and years of flying with the RAF and you weren’t bloody getting into a plane with no engine.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
KS: It could be.
TS: Yeah.
DM: So, when you retired that was it. You didn’t fly again after that. Not as a pilot at least.
KS: No. I never really retired. I stayed and I’d do some —
DM: Just stopped.
KS: I could do weekend flying there.
DM: Right.
KS: And I went to fly for Trusthouse Forte for their top brass and there was some money there. But they were all very nice people really.
DM: And I guess once you did retire. You left Trusthouse Forte and retired, you, you were able to sort of have a life of leisure.
KS: No.
DM: Did you take up, did you take up art again because I know you were a very keen artist.
KS: What?
DM: You were keen on art, weren’t you?
KS: Oh yes.
DM: And so you did some of that when you retired.
KS: Yes. I’m still doing it.
DM: Right. Oh, that’s good.
KS: Done that one up there. That painting.
DM: Yes.
KS: Here you are, David. The —
DM: Oh right. So, this is your, this is your civil aviation logbook. From London Heathrow to Swansea. Something you don’t see very often. Yeah.
KS: When was that?
TS: What?
KS: Finished flying.
TS: It’ll, David will tell us. It’s in your logbook there.
DM: I can’t find a year.
TS: No. I couldn’t either.
DM: I can tell you it was October. Oh, 1970. We’ve got 1970. I think 1970 it looks like it finishes.
KS: 1970, was it?
DM: It looks like, unless there’s any more lurking at the back. No.
KS: No. There wouldn’t be.
DM: 1970. So, you would have been just over fifty, wouldn’t you?
KS: Fifty?
DM: Yeah.
KS: I was looking for a job.
TS: But you, did you miss flying? I don’t think you did, did you?
KS: I think I did in a way. Yes.
TS: You probably missed the travel and the high rolling lifestyle.
KS: Pardon?
TS: I think you missed the travel and staying in nice luxury hotels when you were flying but I remember you saying that you know you’d done, you’d done so much flying that actually you didn’t miss it that much when you finished.
KS: Yeah.
TS: But where some people I know, and certainly when I was at Lasham they, you know some pilots couldn’t get enough of it you know. They they’d retired and they wanted to carry on flying so they went and bought Tiger Moths and other aircraft so that they could keep going.
KS: Oh really? I think if they’d been flying like I was with commercial flying, I think at the end of the day I think you’ve, I think you’ve had enough.
TS: Yeah. I think you probably had the best of it actually, because I think flying these days is probably not, not that interesting or it is certainly safer though.
KS: Yeah. They’ve got all the aids. Yeah. I still, still —
TS: So, so, what, what was your favourite aeroplane out of all, all the aeroplanes you flew?
KS: The Spitfire.
TS: Right. That’s what everyone says.
KS: Eh?
TS: That’s what everybody says.
KS: Oh really?
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. It was a nice aeroplane.
TS: What about the Hurricane?
KS: Yeah. It was, yeah. Well, I didn’t fly the what the, what was it called?
TS: What? The Hurricane?
KS: Hurricane. I flew that a lot.
TS: Yeah. You did. Yeah.
KS: But —
TS: You didn’t fly the Spitfire that much.
KS: No. There’s not all that difference.
TS: Because you were with a Hurricane Squadron for most of the war.
KS: Yeah. That’s right.
TS: Yeah.
KS: But the Spitfire was nicer.
TS: Yeah.
KS: To fly in.
TS: But what I didn’t know was, I mean reading some of the books that you’ve got is that the Hurricane made up the bulk of the aircraft during the Battle of Britain, you know, there were far more Hurricanes weren’t there?
KS: Yeah. That’s right.
TS: Then there were Spitfires. It was a much easier plane to make, I guess and repair.
KS: Yes. As I say it was a jack of all trades.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. It was a nice aeroplane.
TS: And did you, I mean when you, when you moved to bombers was that, was that, was that interesting for you because having handled a fighter aircraft, bombers were very sluggish and a very different type of flying, I imagine.
KS: Not really. I wouldn’t notice any difference.
TS: It was, because, as you said before, you know it was a job, and you know it seems very glamourous now but at the time it was just run of the mill flying, I guess.
KS: Right.
TS: Is that, would that be fair?
KS: Yeah. But I mean to fly a Hurricane or any of these fighter aeroplanes they were owned by the government. I mean, the fighters, and you didn’t really get a look in unless you were in that part of the world.
TS: Yeah. I think you cost them quite bit of money with the planes that were written off through no fault of your own but —
KS: Yeah. We don’t talk about that.
TS: No. I remember reading about the Hurricanes in Malta which they, they didn’t have very many and they had to keep them flying at all costs.
KS: Yeah.
TS: And they repaired them and repaired them.
KS: Yeah, that’s right.
TS: And they became unreliable.
KS: Yeah. That was in Malta.
TS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Do you remember your mate who flew off the aircraft carrier at the same time as you and went to Malta? The Scottish guy.
KS: Yeah. I can’t remember who they were.
TS: No. Your best friend went to Malta, didn’t he?
KS: Yes.
TS: Yeah. Do you remember his name?
KS: No.
TS: Because I don’t either.
KS: Eh?
TS: I don’t. it’s in the back of my head somewhere. He was probably called Jock because he was from Scotland. So —
KS: He was a Scots. A Scotsman.
TS: He was. Yeah.
KS: Yeah. His picture was on one of those.
TS: In one of those books. Yeah.
KS: One you brought.
TS: Yeah.
KS: The photographs.
TS: But he flew off the aircraft and you never saw him again did you because —
KS: No.
TS: He was killed in Malta not long after.
KS: No. I didn’t. I didn’t. I don’t know what happened to him.
TS: Well, I did explain to you he, he his engines started leaking oil, and he was trying to get his aeroplane back to the airfield because they were short of aircraft and then I think he was very afraid that it was going to catch fire which they often did apparently.
KS: They were afraid.
TS: That it was going to catch fire. That the oil was going to ignite.
KS: Oh, I see.
TS: And, and so he, he baled out, but he wasn’t high enough and his parachute didn’t open.
KS: I never heard that version.
TS: Yeah. I’ve told you before about it but you’ve probably forgotten.
KS: The latest I heard that he was flying from Malta and he got shot up and he got back but it was a job to get back. But he died soon after, so whether he was shot out there. Bullets in him I don’t know.
TS: No. Whether he, whether he got shot up and the engine was damaged. That could have been the story. But, unfortunately, he did, it was reported at the time because someone witnessed the accident. He tried to bale out and he wasn’t, didn’t have enough height and that happened quite a lot apparently in Malta, and it certainly wasn’t the first incident like that and —
KS: It could be but I, I thought, I thought one of the stories was that I was stationed out, not in Malta but where ever.
TS: In North Africa. In Libya.
KS: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
KS: That he, he got back, because someone told me that he had a job walking up getting in and out the aeroplane. I was all muddled up.
TS: I think that’s probably somebody else, but certainly the accounts that I’ve read in the two books, one is, “Hurricanes over Malta.”
KS: Yeah.
TS: And the other one which was called, “Scramble,” which is —
KS: “Scramble.” Yes.
TS: Takes in a fair chunk of Malta but that’s what happened to him. That he baled out and his parachute didn’t open but whether he’d been shot up before that and his aircraft was damaged but he, they had a lot of problems with reliability with the engines.
KS: Well, yeah. There was. They didn’t have all the —
TS: Well, they didn’t have spares for a start.
KS: That’s right. They had, it was very hard to keep them airborne.
TS: Yeah. So, when did you hear about him dying? Was it after the war or did word get back to you at the time?
KS: No. I think the war was still on.
TS: Right. Ok. Because he’s buried in Malta. There’s a —
KS: Hmmn?
TS: He’s buried in Malta. There’s a naval cemetery there.
KS: Yes.
TS: And a lot of the Hurricane pilots ended up in, in that cemetery.
KS: Yeah. I’ve never heard that one before.
TS: Yeah. it was in the book.
KS: Oh really?
TS: Yeah.
KS: It’s a good bet that there were a lot of killed.
TS: Oh, they had a hell of a time. They really, you know, I mean it’s just, you know amazing.
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 Ken Souter
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-07-10
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
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01:32:07 Audio Recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
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
ASouterKP210710, PSouterKP2131, PSouterKP2132
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 Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Kenneth Souter was born in Sunderland. His father ran a business importing wooden pit props. Kenneth learned to fly at Cambridge, and his first air experience flight was on the 5th of July 1939, and after training he went solo on the 31st of July 1940 flying a Hawker Hart. After completing advanced training he joined 43 Squadron flying Hurricanes. He flew off HMS Furious to North Africa, and joined 73 Squadron. After flying many aircraft types and on fighter operations and having to contend with flying in the desert he flew back to the UK. He was posted to RAF Usworth on his return. He was attached to the Royal Navy target towing with Martinet aircraft, and in 1945 he was seconded to the Royal Navy flying amongst other aircraft the Seafire. He left the RAF after the war, and re-joined in 1951. He took part in Battle of Britain flypasts and in 1953 took part in bombing missions flying Lincolns against the communist insurgents during the Malayan Emergency. Whilst flying as a display pilot he took part in the filming of the Dam Busters film flying Lancasters which involved low flying. He flew Canberras in 61 Squadron and he continued flying after he had left the RAF.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1951
1952
1953
1954-04-08
1955
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Malaysia
Malta
Singapore
North Africa
England--Lincolnshire
England--Sussex
Singapore
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
43 Squadron
61 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Hurricane
Lancaster
Lincoln
Martinet
Meteor
pilot
RAF Tangmere
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1196/11769/AWicksteadE180621.2.mp3
203f6f41bcfbd6aad654cb037fc709c4
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
Wickstead, Elizabeth
E Wickstead
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Elizabeth Wickstead (b.1928). She was a child in Sussex during the war. Her sister was a nurse at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead and used to bring burned airmen home.
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
2018-06-21
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Wickstead, E
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DM: Oh, I know. [unclear] OK. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Elizabeth Wickstead. The interview is taking place at Mrs Wickstead’s home in Crawley, in Sussex, on the 21st of June 2018. So, Elizabeth, if could you start of by saying where you were born, a bit about your early family life and then the outbreak of the war.
EW: OK then. I was born in Brighton. My father was a Brightonian. My mother was from Surrey but they actually, er, lived, we then lived in, we lived to start with in a tiny village called Lindfield in Sussex, and Cuckfield as well. We moved to several local villages near Hayward’s Heath but at the time of the war, having been born in 1928, I was eleven years old and we were living in Lindfield. Now, I can remember the September ’39. I can remember the announcement to the war. I suppose at eleven I, I was very interested in what was going on and, um, well the first thing I remember is the family being around and then I can remember schooldays and the arrival of the London evacuees. That seemed to be the first thing that happened. They came by train, by bus, arriving at the little village hall with their little gas mask cases and very different to us, um, seemed to be a different world that they came from, likewise, you know. They were taught in the same school as us but separate, so the school became very full, of course, with teachers and children. They had their own little clubs that — and then we paid a penny and joined in the clubs and the fun and soon got friendly with each another. But they were kept separate from us because they had their own teachers and everyone with them. I suppose that was my first memory and then, naturally, at the same time the, er, Army arrived and the first, first contingent [?] that I remember was the Royal Scots Fusiliers who, er, had returned from India and they were wearing dress uniform at the time because it was the beginning of the war, and my father was very keen, ex-World War 1 soldier and used to go out and try and bring the young fellas in for tea etcetera, so we got to know one or two quite well. They were there for a while and there, there was lots of large houses that were taken over, um, estates, you know, estate hou— houses, various houses, and various places in the village. All their equipment came, all their lorries, everything and from a tiny village we became an Army barracks. And, um, even in our — well that’s the Royal Scots. While they were there they had to go into Army khaki uniform and they had to get rid of their dress uniform. Now, we got to know them and as school children they used to give us their buttons and badges and it was a collection that children had, tin boxes, and because they took the buttons off the uniform and hat badge— badges as they went into full khaki, and we used to be given these buttons and we used to do swaps. Another thing we did swaps with there were little cards that were, I don’t know, the boys seemed to get hold of these cards with pictures of German aircraft on and you used to do spotting because we lived under the flight path to London, you realise, so that was the first of the Army. Then they went and throughout the war it continued, one lot after another, one lot after another. The whole village became a complete barracks. Even in my own little road, off of Lindfield Common, it was a small road going in, backing onto fields and a wood. Houses there had just been built in 1939. In fact, ours was the last in the road. There were other houses further on that were still under — being built. The Army took them over and moved in. So, from our garden and our house the next house, which nobody had occupied, became full of Army. So — and our little lane which came out onto Lindfield Common and it didn’t go further than the woods, if you like, used to have a chap on guard. And of course no lights and it was, ‘Who goes there?’ Even the bungalow next, next to us on the other side became a sick bay, so we intermingled with the Army all round us and they were so jolly and as a child, um, they made you feel happy. You were happy to, to talk to them. They were full of life and only young chaps, you know. As a child it was really pleasant to — I would say, for a child almost, it was pretty exciting because we didn’t understand at that age. Now, my dad being a First World War — in the trenches, served right through his medical of course but he did, he did know a lot about war [slight laugh] and, um, he decided that he’d dig, he dug a trench in the back garden. He was a gardener. We had a lovely garden originally but he decided he would dig, dig a trench and he dug it T-shape, went down steps, on the top corrugated iron and he grew a garden on top. And he reckoned — well I don’t know — and the idea was if we were invaded we were going to go underground. I think he was going to take on his own war, quite honestly, because he had a, he had a shot gun and a tin hat. So then, then actually the, um, the aircraft started coming over, the bombing raids, I mean sirens, whatever, but it would always start in the evening, like as it went dark, and he’d go out in the back garden with his tin hat on [laugh]. “Dad’s Army” this was and, um, we could see for a long way because everything was black out, there wasn’t any lights at all, but he would see this flashing in the, in the distance and he’d come back and he’d say, ‘They’re coming in over Dover now.’ So, there’d be that, this way, so it was, ‘You’d better go down in the dugout.’ Well, I think I only went down twice and my sisters — I’m from five, five sisters and they wouldn’t go down. But my dad wanted us all down there. I think we only went down twice. It was horrific, you know. There was beetles and all sorts down there [laugh]. So, that died a death but he kept that dugout and he actually dug another one out, down in the orchard, but nobody ever went down there [laugh] and he would, he would be standing out in the garden talking to the next door neighbour. It was rather like “Dad’s Army”, you know. ‘Oh, I know where they are now. They’re coming this way,’ you know, but of course you’d hear this drone and drone and drone and going over and over and over. There must have been — well, I can’t imagine how many aircraft for such a long time. And they’d be heading for London, you see. They wouldn’t be shot at. There was nothing to shoot, nothing to fire at them with at that time, very early in the war, and I don’t think anything went on over there but then they’d go off and, um, all I know, all I can remember is, you would then see — because I suppose in Sussex, you see, you would see the lights of London. We would see London ablaze in, in the sky lit up. Then, of course, I can remember that — I mean, this went on quite a long time during the war didn’t it? So, I grew up with this going on and I would say when they were coming back there were one or two that were — the engines, you could hear something wrong with the engine. Or, even if they came in land from Dover and came in and they got damaged and they wanted to turn, turn round and go back they would jettison their bombs and, if I can remember, there would be a like a stick of three. I can remember this and, um, there would be quite a few dumped around in the fields and things. Nobody seemed to get hit because we were rural, you know. But there was quite one funny incident I would like to say. Someone had to be evacuated from, from Newhaven and lived at the end of our road and next to that was the fields and also a brook and a boggy water. Lindfield’s low-lying so it’s a lot of water there and I used to go with the a girl who lived there to school and when I went along to her one morning she — and we’d had a bombing raid the night before — she said, ‘Oh, my dad’s ever so cross,’ she said. ‘A bomb dropped in the big and all our tomato plants are buried under water and there’s all mud up the side of the house.’ So, um, I can always remember that one, um, and then, I suppose following that we got what was called the “doodlebugs”. Now, they were something different. They were a bit scary because they came over during the day. As kids, as I would say, I don’t think I was ever really scared during the war. It was a great adventure but, um, as the years went on and I got a little bit older I got a little bit more understanding about it. But, um, yes the, that was an incident when — in, we lived in a chalet bungalow, if you like, so there were two bedrooms upstairs and one down, and the stairs wound around from the hall, and there was a cupboard under the stairs. Now, I was put to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs because that seemed to be, apparently, the safest place and —
DM: Were you the youngest?
EW: Yes. I was very much the baby of, of older, older parents and, er, the only child in the house, if you like. My eldest sister had been married before I was born and, er, the second sister worked at, as a nurse at East Grinstead Hospital. She actually came home with the chaps, as you know, and my third sister worked, um, for the GPO, which she would have been a tele— telephone operator in charge of the local telephone exchange because they were telephone exchanges in local houses with three positons and everybody knowing everybody else. And she also had a little nursing training, as did most of my family because of my father’s medical background, and she was called for ambulance duty when she was available, but she didn’t actually go away to war. Now the fourth, fourth sister was at the begin— at the beginning of the war she would have been twenty, or nineteen or twenty, and she was conscripted, and you had a choice. You could put down whether you wanted to go in which service but it didn’t count at all really and she went into munitions, and at twenty-one she went away and she went to Staffordshire in one of — a very large secret destination there, where they made shells and bombs, and it was huge apparently. She ended up — that’s where the girls that came home were called, called, canaries. Their skin went yellow. She was put on making detonators and she was there all during the war. She, as I say, she was a bomb girl really. So she was away and me, being the baby, my memories are only of my childhood and the village and what went on and they were my growing up years. So, um, the continuation there is the flying bombs and, um, they made such a horrible noise. They, they were like a very loud motorbike sound, and I never really, I didn’t ever ever look up to see any of these things because either my mum and I would be under the table because it would be during the day, because it would be a big Victorian table that would have saved something, I don’t know, or me under the stairs. As I say, these things came over regularly and they just, they just cut out and then you would count so many [background noise]. I don’t know what was bombed round there, not many I think. Fields were well bombed I think. I do remember at my school [clears throat] we had air raid shelters that we had to go to, so at the time I was at senior school at the time of the flying bombs, so I can remember having to go in these long brick buildings and I can remember the story of the fact — now this is something different. It’s about the Polish Air Force ch— fellas. They came over to England and they set up their own and there was a racecourse at Plumpton, a small racecourse near us in Sussex, at Plumpton, and that turned into an airdrome and apparently these Polish fighters used to go up and try and shoot these things or whatever, I can’t remember. But the saying was when we were in the shelter — whether it was true or not I don’t know — but I always remember the saying after a week [clears throat] or few days there was a doodlebug that was heading to land on our school and it was said one of these Polish airmen wing-tipped it. Now whether that’s true or not I don’t know but we were all told that story and, as I say, we didn’t get to meet the Polish airmen but they were there [emphasis] during the war and that’s the only recollection I have of hearing about that happening, but I really can’t prove that it was true. So, really and truly, um, I suppose by — I’d stayed on until I was sixteen, which was quite unusual because you left at fourteen. But my father had decided to go back into the Services though he was too old. He volunteered. He said as a medical man he could do something, especially after seeing the chaps being brought back from East Grinstead and my cousin, being a Bomber pilot and ki— killed, my dad decided he’d got to do something, so he went back in. He joined the RAF and he was, he used to say he was on the blood wagon or something. He was on the air, airdromes and picking up — so he, he went off into the war and by, by 1946, 1946 when the war ended, I’d had been, I had been trained as a dancer and I was going to go on the stage but it never really took off. But I fell in love with the Serv— the ladies in the Services so I joined, I joined the WRENs, but it was a bit of a cheek because that was after the war, you see, but uniforms had become important to me and, as I say, I had experienced, I suppose I experienced the innocentness of childhood to start with. The reality during my growing up years what war was all about, the sadness of losing family and by the time I’d got to the age of eighteen I wanted to take part in it but it was all over. But, you know, really I haven’t much else to say. If there is anything you —
DM: You say your dad went off to join the Air Force and was obviously posted away?
EW: He volunteered, yes.
DM: Do, do you know where he went?
EW: Yes, I do. He — I know that he was at Skegness. I — because he didn’t go abroad, you see — I know that he was at Eastbourne at some time. I would have records of where he was but he actually, um, went straight back into his medical profession, if you like, and worked on the airfields. But he was in his fifties, you see, he was his mid-fifties, according to pop.
DM: What did he do between the wars?
EW: Ah, right. Now, my father came out. He’d been a regular before the ’14-‘18 war. He joined up in 1912. He’d got, he come right through his injuries. We heard the stories. Well, he’d been gassed and when he came out the only thing he was proficient at was his nursing and there was a very large mental hospital in Haywards Heath, and he went there, but his health wasn’t too good. He had, um, a problem, a chest problem and he was advised to go work on the land. So, he then retrained, because he’d had a quite a good education. He knew what he was doing. So he trained in, um, landscape gardening and he went the whole hog and he used to design and do the big houses and the gardens but had to work outside, you see. But when he came to join the RAF in the war he was A1. But I think they were desperate [laugh]. I’m sorry because he’d always coughed in the morning and coughed, what have you, but he was trained and he had that knowledge of the medical side and I think that was needed and that’s what he went for, you see, and that’s how he became RAF and very proud of it and very proud of what he did. He was a very Royalist, er, very much for his country. That was, that’s my father, you know. He was, his time in the Services was very important to him and, um, that’s what he did.
DM: Do you remember anything about the Battle of Britain? Did that register?
EW: Oh, yes. It went on over our head, didn’t it? Definitely. This nephew of mine from London, came down from London, he used to come and stay regularly, you know, to give them a break. They came from Hounslow and he was just a little bit younger than me, three of four years younger than me, but I had to look after him, and I think, as I’ve said, we had a big common area in Lindfield, green, and it was the end of the road, and I used to take him play on the common, but very, very often there would be a dog fight going on over the top. Do you know, we never — I had to look after him. It was perfectly safe in those days for children to play out. [clears throat] We would lie down on the grass and we’d watch a dog fight in — and we’d hear the machine guns and everything. Never, ever thought bullets might come down and land on us, you know, but we got very excited about these dog fights, because that’s what they were called, and we’d see them darting in and out and chasing one another other. But yes, the Battle of Britain when on over our heads. But I would say that the only memory I, I have with John is watching the fighting and machine-gunning. I hate to say, you know, we did see one shot down and we did see a parachute come out and, I mean, I just, I think, you know, everybody in those days if he was German you were happy. But, I mean, that’s wicked really but it didn’t really register to us as children the seriousness of the situation. It was a child’s brain thinking, you know, another one.
DM: Do you know — was Lindfield sort of — did you know when D-Day was coming up? Was there a lot of activity can you remember?
EW: Indeed, indeed because it — more and more and more Army came there. Now, I understand there was one landing before but it was — it didn’t happen. Now, when I say it didn’t happen, it was unsuccessful. Now, we had, um, at that time before Detail [?] we were completely Canadian [emphasis] forces. It was the Third Division of infantry, the first ones that went over, and they occupied most of that area of Sussex, the villages. It was just chock a block with the Canadians and I can remember one night a whole lot went and my sister, of course, was in the village, older sister, and she knew one or two and they didn’t come back. So that one I don’t know much about that but there was one —
DM: That would have been the Dieppe raid.
EW: Exactly, exactly. Because, obviously my older, older sister got to know one or two and I think she had a friend from, probably came from Ottawa or somewhere like that, but he never came back. And then, then of course it built up again. Very interesting, the Canadians. They were very — well it was all Canadians. It was the Third Division. I know that. It was on the side of their vans. I mean that they were the ones that went over from our village and all the villages around and the whole of Sussex I think, you know. The amazing thing was a tiny village with a high street, and the village common, and a beautiful pond with swans on got turned into a barracks, and the unbelievable thing is they used to bring the Bren gun ca— carriers, which were little tanks, and Army lorries down the village high street and wash them in the pond. And if they weren’t doing that they were they were doing Army drill up and down the, the roads, you know. What a difference for a country village. What things I’ve seen in my life. What amazing memories I have. And I mean, obviously, most of the village girls are now living in Canada, moved to Canada. I think they all went back there [laugh]. I think, I think the village girls of that age disappeared to Canada. Strangely enough I, I actually went to Canada in recent years, when, well, I would say about ten, fifteen years ago and I went to a very remote place near Winnipeg on holiday with a friend and there was, um, an elderly chap there and we started talking about the war and he said, ‘I was in Sussex during the war.’ So, I said, ‘Oh, where were you?’ And he said, ‘Well, you would never hear of it. It was a tiny little village called Lindfield.’ And she said, ‘Yeah and I, I married him.’ What a coincidence. Now I said, ‘Well, that’s where I come from.’ So, a great big country like Canada I suddenly bump into somebody who was in the village at a time I was a child. Well, dear, oh dear.
DM: Did you know much about what your sister did at East Grinstead?
EW: Well, she was, was only — she had trained in the Red Cross originally and she became what was called a VAD? She, she was just a nurse, if you like, but no doubt very caring and quite serious in her work. She couldn’t — she had to — she was billeted near the hospital. She stayed in East Grinstead but she could come home on her days off and that’s the story of her bringing home, um, patients who had to spend a very long time and I can tell you, I must, that must have been, it must have been about twelve I think, when I came in from school, and it may have been twelve or thirteen, it was quite a shock because the chaps were able to wear their, their RAF uniform, you now, but they had a red tie. But, I walked in and my mother was always afternoon tea, you know, and my sister would be there and I, I saw this, I saw this chap and he had no hands, he had no eyes, he only had two holes for his nose, his ears had gone and he was being fed by my sister and yet they could work, walk perfectly, because the understanding was that they landed those aircraft with the flames at them. They wanted to land them. That’s what —the stories I’ve heard but it was quite a shock for a child in a way. It’s something I would never forget. And, of course, my father was there at the time. So, I mean, the chaps could walk and full of life and quite lively, these RAF chaps, and, um, my dad would go to the bus stop. They’d have to go back on the 30 bus, you know, from Lindfield [laugh] and he would take my sister up to the bus stop and my sister would take them back again. I think I met two but my sister got to know an awful lot of the guinea pigs because they were quite a lively lot, you know. Even though they were going through hell they were a lively lot and we admired their, their courage and fortitude but, do you know, that’s a memory I have of her bringing home this one or two, twice I think she did it. But, um, it’s amazing how they got around, you know, and how they coped with all this. And I suppose little stories about her nursing and how caring they were and how long they had to go through the treatment to rebuild their faces. It was mostly their faces and there again, you know, its memories. She got their books written and signed and photographs of when the, um, Queen Elizabeth (it would be the Queen Mother) came to the hospital. I’ve got lovely photographs of that. And, um, as I say, everybody seemed to care for everybody else at that time. Everybody seemed to work together. There was no fear for a child of people, you know. It was — we all looked, looked out for one another. It was a wonderful comradeship. Mum, public and everyone I suppose really. They were really warm memories but it, you know, it must have been really scary for people a bit older or families but we all coped. But I would say a pretty exciting time for a young child growing up, in a strange way. A terrific experience.
DM: Oh, yes. Do you know much about your cousin’s story, the one that was killed in Bomber Command?
EW: Oh yes, yes —
DM: What was his name?
EW: His name was Kenneth Sherlock. And he was a pilot off— he had just got his qualifications. He, it was my mother’s sister. It was a cousin, cousin Kenneth. They lived in Haywards Heath. He, um, he was the same age as my next sister up. So he — she was twenty and he would have been twenty at the beginning of the war so he was twenty-one and he went into the RAF. He, strangely enough, he — well he was quite lively at that age and there were lots of parties which I was too young to go to and — but I do remember one time when he was at Pocklington, 102 Squadron? Yep, and he came home with his bunch, about six or eight of them I think, and he brought them home to Haywards Heath. I think they went off to some party and I met the other pilot officer and it was quite amazing at the time because he was, he was Ceylon or Sri Lanka, and I’d never met anyone from there before because I think they was one Canadian I think, there was, there was the one from Sri Lanka, and I just thought they were amazing chaps. But I didn’t see much of him because obviously my sisters were closer to him and then, um, he’d just got his wings. Is that what it’s called when he was — and it was announced in the local paper and in the next press cutting he was missing and, of course, nobody knew really what had happened to the aircraft. It was — this is the saddest thing I would think for me is that my — he was the only son and my aunt could never accept, never ever thought that, you know — but she died quite young after that but she never ever thought he was killed. There’s lots of little stories about that which I really don’t want to go into but she couldn’t accept that he’d died. And, um, nobody really knew but strangely enough, that was — I forget — in recent years I’ve been in touch with 102 Squadron and the son of the pilot from Sri Lanka came to see me. He’s just died recently and his daughter keeps in touch but, of course, he’s got his own website, hasn’t he? You know, 102 Squadron. So I’m actually a member of that group through my cousin and, of course, they have given me papers with the details of what happened to the aircraft. I have — I know myself now what happened and he came down in the sea and I think they were all killed outright possibly. But that’s a different story, which 10, is it 102? 102 Squadron there at Pocklington. They’ve got lots of details on all those aircraft. So, that’s that one.
DM: What did your mother do during the war? Did she do anything or did she just keep, keep you all in order and look after everybody?
EW: Well, I think I’ve said that my mother and father were much older. I was a very much younger addition. So, my mother was a bit older than my dad actually too. So she was a Victorian. She was born in 1884? 1884. I think he was born in about 1885 or 6. I can’t — anyway she was a business lady, strangely, before her time. She ran her own business and she was a high class dress maker with apprentices and what have you and we were — I was brought up by my older sisters and aunts and the girls that worked in the workrooms I suppose, you know. She was, she was a, a lady ahead of her times because in those days women just got married and had children but she was a businesswoman. And it was a great help because of my father’s health, that he was able just to work when he could work, but she’d already got into this work before but she was, she was of a different era which was quite unusual for a woman to stand on her own and [emphasis] have children at the same time. Because she just had children and children and we all got on and were OK.
DM: How long were you in the WRENs for after the war?
EW: Four years. Great.
DM: And where were you based?
EW: Ah. Well, I was — first and foremost I joined up, as everybody does at, at Burghfield in, near Reading. That was training school. I then had, I’d already trained before to be a telephone operator so I went into communications. I was sent from Burghfield to HMS Scotia in — it was the, um, Navy Signal School near Warrington and I did — trained all over again there. After that I was sent to Chatham and I worked on, in Chatham Dockyard on the dockyard gate. That was the — Chatham then was the barracks, you know, it was the Naval barracks. From there I was sent to, um, the north of Scotland to — I was then like I was Fleet Air Arm. I went into Fleet Air Arm. It was an airfield, it was Naval Air Station, Royal Naval Air Station Fieldfare, on the banks of the Cromarty in Ross-shire, as far north perhaps as you can go. I think before that it had been a small air—airfield at place called Wick in the north of Scotland but that had closed own. We were, we were still in Invergordon, on the Cromarty, so — but yes, I was there for a year, but while I was there they decided to close the base down and move all the aircraft down to Lossiemouth and, um, we used to hitchhike down to Inverness on the carriers carrying the planes. I’m only very small. I’m only five foot. I used to be able to get up on this aileron [?] and he used to have to go somewhere where there was a bank so you could jump out. On the way we would perhaps get off at, at, near Inverness for the day, or something. You did a lot, we did a lot of hitchhiking then. It was fine. But Fieldfare closed down and I understand that after that Lossiemouth became RAF as well but it was, you know, both. It was interchange. So, from there I went to HMS Gannet in, um, outside Derry. Again it was, um, it was a Naval Air Station. It was right on the banks of Lough Foyle, pretty wet. They couldn’t have a heavy aircraft to land there because it would go through the runway because it was on a bog. But the actual runway was laid out as if it was a, an aircraft carrier and the pilots and people that came, the different groups — had to practice landing and taking off, and landing and taking off and I can’t tell you how many ended in Lough Foyle or [emphasis] just across from Lough Foyle on the other side was, um, was the Irish Republic and if, for instance, they missed and they ended there they had to have to get perm— permission from Dublin to bring them back again. I can remember that because I was on the communications. Oh, it was quite funny. Lots of stories there. Lots of stories. It was the — oh, I can’t think. There were these mountains on the other side, in the Irish Republic, the name will come to me, and the saying was when you can see the hills of Donegal it’s raining and when you can’t see them it’s going to rain. It was always wet there, always wet. I think there was an RAF place that had closed down called Killane [?]. I can remember the name of that. So yes, there are very many memories of there because it was — I loved Ireland and Irish people but the weather is something else, so wet, and I remember we had a girl in the Met Office and they, they had arranged to pick an aircraft up at Hatfield? Hatfield. A jet was going to be picked up and she asked permission if she could go over because she came from there to meet her, and she went over and she was coming back with the pilots, but the aircraft crashed at Shannon and they were all killed, and she was just nineteen years old. So there’s lots of little stories. Liz Paxton [?] I can remember. And then I finished up at demobulation [?], demobbed at, um, Portsmouth. Needless to say I met my husband in the Navy so I married a sailor. [slight laugh]
DM: So you enjoyed your time in the WRENs obviously?
EW: I pretty well enjoy myself anyway. I’m that sort of person. But I make the most out of life. There’s always two sides of life. It, it’s what you make of it and how you can cope with it and, um, I try to look on the bright side and find all the beauty and the happiness but I know the other’s there, you know. It’s how you get through life isn’t it?
DM: It is. It is.
EW: Probably how I’ve got to be as old as I am, ninety [laugh]. There you go.
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Interview with Elizabeth Wickstead
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2018-06-21
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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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Pending review
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00:48:32 audio recording
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eng
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Great Britain
England--Sussex
England--East Grinstead
Description
An account of the resource
Elizabeth Wickstead was born in Brighton, in 1928, and moved between villages in the Sussex area. Elizabeth remembers the announcement of the war in September 1939, and remembers the arrival of evacuees from London and the schools being separate from those that lived locally and the evacuees. Elizabeth’s father was a World War One soldier, and remembers the arrival of the first soldiers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, who her father tried to invite round for tea. Remembers collecting buttons and badges given by the soldiers and trading them with other children in the village. Elizabeth recollects the village almost becoming a barracks, with the various estates being occupied with a military presence. She recalls being under the flightpath to London. Her father dug a trench I the backgarden, so if Britain was invaded, they would retreat underground. Recalls the blackouts and experiences of aircraft flying ahead, that would often jettison remaining bombs on the flight back. One of Elizabeth’s sisters was sent to work in a munitions factory in Staffordshire. Elizabeth also recalls the experiences of the doodlebug’s (V1 rockets). Her father volunteered to join the RAF in a medical background working at RAF stations, he served in World War One and between the war worked in landscape gardening, having to be outside, due to his injuries from the war. After the war Elizabeth joined the WRENS. During the Battle of Britain, Elizabeth and her relatives used to watch the dogfights. Her sister served in the red cross and often bought wounded servicemen home. Elizabeth talks about her cousin who was a pilot, who was killed whilst serving in bomber command. Elizabeth stays in touch with the squadron her cousin served in and corresponded with somebody from Sri Lanka who was related to anther airman who served with her cousin. She talks about her mother being ahead of her times, she owned a high-class dressmaking service. Elizabeth finishes the interview talking about her four years’ service in the WRENS.
Contributor
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Paul Baguley
Benjamin Turner
102 Squadron
childhood in wartime
Guinea Pig Club
killed in action
RAF Pocklington
V-1
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1095/11554/PRichardsSJ1701.1.jpg
423cd47d71ee02b49191494a23839591
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1095/11554/ARichardsSJ170322.2.mp3
ea476708802e3c90dea11098a537f344
Dublin Core
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Title
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Richards, Sidney James
S J Richards
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sergeant Sidney Richards (b.1920, 13846882 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 49 Squadron and became a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-22
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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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Richards, SJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: Okay Sidney. Can you tell me just a little bit about where you were born and about growing up before you joined the RAF?
SJR: Ah yeah. I was born at Greenwich, Harley Cottages and eh war came and I was working in the arsenal. I could have stayed in there but em decided to join the air force and I joined and I was accepted em to train as the air crew and carried on from there.
DM: Can you remember where you trained?
SJR: Pardon?
DM: Where did you train? Can you remember?
SJR: I trained at, oh wait a minute? [pause] In the Midlands. Near Nottingham it was. Yeah. In the Midlands.
DM: And you trained as a Wireless Operator Air Gunner. Is that right?
SJR: Eh?
DM: A Wireless Operator Air Gunner. Is that right?
SJR: Yeah. Wireless Operator Air Gunner. Yeah. I was accepted as that. You had an interview if you wanted to be aircrew to see if you were suitable [coughs] and they said okay and I had the interview and all the rest of it and they said ‘We’ll accept you in aircrew’. [pause] Of course it was a voluntary thing, aircrew. [coughs] So em the retraining from then on, aircrew.
Other: You were gonna join the em the Navy weren’t you? But changed your mind at the last minute.
SJR: Yeah. Changed my mind. Was gonna go in the Navy and then the Air Force and then I changed me mind and decided to have a go in the Air Force as aircrew. You know.
DM: Can you remember why you changed your mind?
SJR: Pardon?
DM: Can you remember why you changed your mind?
SJR: Well, I fancied aircrew. You know.
DM: You wanted to be a fly boy?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: So after you trained, do you remember anything about crewing up? Can you remember how that went? How you found your crew?
SJR: Oh yes. Em. Well you all mucked in together and generally had a chat with each other and Bob Petty was my skipper he was the pilot and eh we got together that way talking to each other and so on. And em then we became a crew. And it was a good crew I was in and eh Bob Petty he’s gone back to South Africa or he’s gone to South Africa. Otherwise I expect we’d have kept in touch but eh I don’t have the training. So eh.
Other: Who else was in your crew?
SJR: Pardon?
Other: Who else was in your crew?
SJR: Oh, there was the navigator of course. [mumbles]
Other: Who was the navigator?
SJR: Eh. The navigator? Oh, John Tulloch. Yeah he was the navigator.
Other: And you were particularly friends with him, weren’t you?
SJR: Yeah. Oh John Tulloch. Yeah.
DM: Was he Scottish by any chance? [chuckles]
SJR: [chuckles] Oh John. Yeah.
DM: Thought he might be.
SJR: We got on well together. He lives in London so we used to meet up at times in London, you know? Him and his wife. And eh have a meal and so on, so oh yes, as I say he went off to South Africa.
DM: So you were based in, was it Fiskerton you were based?
SJR: Fiskerton. Yes.
DM: Fiskerton yeah. What was it like there? What was life like on the base?
SJR: Oh just normal you know. We used to go into the village have a drink. You know. Eh just normal sort of country life. The locals had to put up with us [chuckles] so eh. That’s about it. We used to go into Lincoln for a night out or anything. Of course the Midlands was full of aircrew like me. And eh the airforce weren’t bothered as long as you were there for ops. You could do what you liked virtually, but as long as you were there they’d say ‘Ops on tonight’ as long as you were there. But otherwise it was a pretty easy life. Nobody interfered with you or anything so eh, we had an easy time of it when we weren’t on ops. [chuckles]
Other: Was there one time you were cycling home from a pub one night and someone tried to stop you? Wasn’t there a policeman stood in front in the road?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: What happened there?
SJR: Eh I forget now.
Other: You and a couple of others were cycling back.
SJR: Yeah. [hesitates]
Other: And didn’t the policeman suddenly jump out in the road to stop you for some reason?
SJR: Yeah. I can’t remember.
Other: Can’t remember.
SJR: Yeah. Yeah.
Other: He tried to stop you and you just cycled round him.
SJR: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right.
Other: [laughs] and waved goodbye.
SJR: Yeah and rushed out and we just, as though we were gonna pull up and stand there and everything, so we just shot away [laugher] [coughs]. Well that’s what life was like in the Midlands with aircrew and everything. Nothing to lose, you know. Here today, gone tomorrow type of attitude. But eh it was alright otherwise, as long as you were there for flying they weren’t bothered what you got up to really.
DM: Can you remember anything about your first operation? Your first flight?
SJR: Eh. First one [hesitates]
DM: How did you feel? Were you sort of nervous before you flew or?
SJR: Oh you were apprehensive, you know. It was over the Ruhr. A lot of raids were over the Ruhr. That’s where everything was there. And eh you just got on with it, you know. And eh landed back again, had a nice meal and went to bed. So they didn’t interfere with you much in those days, the aircrew, you know. As long as you were there for your job that was it but eh you could come and go in those days as much as you liked really. As long as they said you were on tonight as long as you were there. So it was an easy life really.
DM: Do you remember, cos you said you flied over the Ruhr. Do you remember much about the flak? Was it bad over there?
SJR: Oh well, flak yeah. Eh plenty of flak going in and eh you dropped your bombs and you go up another two thousand feet when you got rid of them and so it was quite a nice peaceful flight home cos you were too high for the em they used to, flak used to go off lower and over the Ruhr coming up to the Ruhr you got plenty of it. Occasionally you’d see a plane go down but eh well I did twenty like that and eh had a good crew, a good pilot, Bob Petty, and eh that was it. As long as you were there for any trips you know, aircrew, they didn’t bother too much what you got up to [laughs].
DM: Did you have any encounters with enemy aircraft?
SJR: Any what?
DM: Encounters with enemy aircraft? Did you ever get sort of shot at by other, by German aircraft?
SJR: Shot at?
DM: By Germans. Aircraft.
SJR: Oh yes, yes.
DM: By the Luftwaffe.
SJR: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but eh well we got shot one time and the rear gunner and the bomb aimer were both killed with this fighter attack. But eh the rest of us were a bit higher so the bomb aimer was there and the rear gunner was on the same level so he came in and let fly and took out these two lads. So eh we brought them back, you know, we got back and eh two lads dead. But it was all the way you lived those days, you know. So eh all sorts of unexpected things could happen [chuckles].
Other: What was it like when you took off? Your Squadron took off?
SJR: Yeah. Oh eh just taxied round got the go to go and eh off we went.
Other: Did, were they all seeing you off. All the ground crew?
SJR: Oh yeah, yeah. We had quite a little group wave us off. WAAFS and eh specially nice to see the WAAFS out there. [chuckles] And eh it was always a bit of a night. They’d line up at the end of the runway and give you a wave as you went off. So eh.
Other: What was your relationship like with the WAAFS? Did they have much to do with you?
SJR: Oh, not a lot. Only in the mess you know.
Other: Yeah.
SJR: Eh that’s em
Other: But they didn’t get over friendly, did they? You told me.
SJR: Oh no, no. Aircrew no.
Other: Why was that?
SJR: Here today and gone tomorrow. Type of thing you know.
Other: Yeah. So they didn’t want to get involved?
SJR: Yeah, well they would have a late date or something and the bloke would get shot down or something. So they weren’t that with aircrew.
Other: Yeah.
SJR: Too unreliable. [chuckles]
Other: Yeah.
DM: So when you lost your two crew members, you obviously had to have two new ones or did you just get sort of different people every time after that?
SJR: Oh no. Crews were fixed all the time. Yeah. Oh yeah. Cos you knew each other and you could rely on each other so you didn’t have, you generally had the same aircrew. Cos you knew who they were and they knew who you were. So eh you didn’t want to go on another crew.
DM: And were all your crew NCO’s or was anyone an officer?
SJR: Were what?
DM: Were all your crew NCO’s or was anyone an officer?
SJR: Oh no. NCO’s and officers you know. Our eh, our pilot was an officer.
DM: But you mixed in off the base I guess, when you went out?
SJR: Oh yes, of course, yeah. Blimey, yeah. Well you’re all in the same bracket so that’s you know. So there was no, ‘I’m an officer and you’re a NCO’ or anything [chuckles]. No.
DM: Now you said you flew twenty missions?
SJR: Yeah.
DM: What happened on the twentieth mission?
SJR: I got shot down.
DM: Was that the one when you got shot down?
SJR: Yeah, yeah.
DM: Tell me about that.
SJR: Eh?
DM: Tell me about that. What happened?
SJR: Eh, well we got hit by flak and a fighter, a fighter, got us.
Other: What happened when you took off? Did you, you had a problem with one of the engines didn’t you?
SJR: Oh, yeah, yeah. We actually got to the target a bit late. So of course they were already
Other: But did, did, Bob Petty, he radioed back to everyone to say that we’ve got an oil leak? Didn’t he?
SJR: Yeah, yeah.
Other: And what did he say?
SJR: Eh, told us to carry on I suppose.
Other: Well, did, did, but he asked you if you wanted to carry on or not. Didn’t he?
SJR: Yeah, yeah, and we, yeah that’s right. Yeah. He said do you want to carry on and we thought well we’ve got all ready crewed up, you know? Ready and so on so we said ‘Yeah, let’s go’. So we got over the target that bit later than the first wave. So eh we should really have turned back. We shouldn’t really have gone, but em once you get all ready you go. So eh, that was it.
DM: So you got hit by the, by this aircraft and so then I assume that the pilot gave the order to bail out? Did he? Is that what happened?
SJR: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. No, he didn’t need to tell us about that [chuckles]. We bailed out and hoped for the best.
Other: What did you do when you were hit? Did you go back and check to see if the gunner was okay?
SJR: Well, no, not really, I mean.
Other: You were the second to last one out, weren’t you? There was only Bob Petty came out after you?
SJR: Yeah, yeah. No, no. It’s every man to get out and that was it.
Other: Right.
SJR: You all looked after yourself. So you didn’t go round asking [chuckles]
Other: No.
SJR: Or anything, so when you got the word to bail out that’s what you did.
Other: So three or four others got out in front of you, didn’t they?
SJR: Yeah. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Other: And the plane was getting low.
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And you were trying to get through the escape hatch. Didn’t you?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: Didn’t you get stuck?
SJR: Yeah, yeah. Stuck a bit, yeah.
Other: And then what happened?
SJR: Oh I got clear, dropped out. But we were sort of losing height all the time. So eh.
Other: And, did, you got searchlights put on you. Didn’t you?
SJR: Oh yeah, yeah. Searchlights. So I was lucky they didn’t eh [chuckles].
Other: And you tried, you moved the parachute [unclear]
SJR: Yeah, I tried to get out the beam but couldn’t get out.
Other: They were shooting at you weren’t they?
SJR: I think that’s what they were. That’s what I was afraid of. [laughter] But as far as I know. Otherwise they would have hit us, you know, dangling down like that. Yeah. And of course when you’re not sure where you’re gonna land when you, when you hit the ground. You know?
Other: Where did you land?
SJR: Oh, I can’t remember now.
DM: Is it
Other: Sorry. You landed in someone’s back garden. In a tree, didn’t you?
SJR: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
Other: And the house owner?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: He came out didn’t he?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: With a pistol?
SJR: Pardon?
Other: He came out and pointed a pistol at you didn’t he?
SJR: Yeah. That’s right, yeah.
Other: And how did you feel?
SJR: Eh.
Other: Cos he was shaking. He was shaking, wasn’t he and you got worried.
SJR: Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh well. All part of life those days [chuckles].
DM: So who, who, after you landed in this German chap’s garden? He came with a pistol. It sounds though he was more worried about it than you were. So did he arrest you or did the police or the army come?
SJR: Oh. What? When I was
DM: When you landed in his garden.
SJR: When I landed [mumbles] Oh, I can’t think now. [pause] It must be the airforce.
Other: The police?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah.The police.
Other: Wasn’t it the police who came and arrested you?
SJR: Yeah. The police, yeah, yeah.
Other: They rounded you up with the others?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: So did all of your crew get out safely? Or?
SJR: Em. Let me think, now. [pauses] It’s all a long time ago.
DM: Oh, yes. I know, yeah.
Other: The other, the crew members who got out before you ended up in Berlin centre, didn’t, the centre of Berlin, didn’t they?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And you heard nothing more from them.
SJR: No. Well it’s some that did land there were lynched. So eh
DM: So it could’ve happened to your
SJR: Yeah. So.
Other: And you, you and the pilot, because you were the last out, you landed in the suburbs, didn’t you?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah. Out of Berlin, yeah. So we were a bit of a curiosity rather in the suburbs [laughs] [mumbles] rather than landing in Berlin.
Other: What did they call you? [pause] They called you something, didn’t they?
SJR: [unclear] they called us. Or something like that, I don’t know.
DM: That’s right, yeah. So, you and Bob were reunited when you were taken prisoner? You were sort of gathered up together were you?
SJR: Eh. No, I don’t, no we weren’t eh. I forget that we were split up I think.
Other: You were put in a
SJR: Eh?
Other: You were put in a, in a police station, weren’t you?
SJR: In a what?
Other: In a police station?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: With others? With people who were sheltering from the air raid?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah.
Other: And what happened? You had some cigarettes on you didn’t you?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And what did you do?
SJR: [pause] Oh, I forget now.
Other: You offered, you offered some cigarettes.
SJR: Oh, that’s it, yeah.
Other: You gave cigarettes didn’t you?
SJR: Yeah, yeah. They were gratefully accepted too. [chuckles] All this a long time ago.
Other: And then what happened? The soldiers came along didn’t they?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And they marched you out.
SJR: Yeah.
Other: Across a field, didn’t they?
SJR: Yeah, that’s right. I thought I was gonna be shot. [pause]
Other: What happened? Did he, he kicked you, didn’t he?
SJR: Eh?
Other: One of the soldiers kicked you?
SJR: Kicked me?
Other: Yeah.
SJR: Yeah. Yeah.
Other: And what did you do?
SJR: Eh?
Other: And what did you do?
SJR: Kick him back? [chuckles] No. [laughs] Didn’t do anything. [laughs]
Other: Didn’t you push him? Push him away?
SJR: Yeah. Pushed. Yeah, yeah. Pushed him. All this was all, you know, all, everything happening at once type of thing. All a jumble.
DM: Can you remember if they interrogated you? Did they sort of
SJR: Eh?
DM: Did they interrogate you? Did they try and get you to tell ‘em all your secrets?
SJR: Oh yes, yes. Oh, they interrogated you. Yeah. But eh you know they used to take you in and put you in solitary and then take you in for interrogation. But eh they used to advise us before we went not to try and be clever. Just to say nothing. Not try and put them off or anything. You know. Just to eh don’t tell ‘em anything. Oh yeah.
Other: What did you say? What did you tell them?
SJR: Nicht verstase [sic] [chuckles]. Don’t understand.
DM: They didn’t, they didn’t question you in English? Or did they?
SJR: Oh yes.
DM: They did?
SJR: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Other: What were your conditions? Cos they kept you in a cell, didn’t they?
SJR: Yeah, yeah. In a cell.
Other: And what was it like in this cell?
SJR: Oh, dead boring. It was just a cell, you know.
Other: With a light on all the time?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: What was it? Was it hot or cold?
SJR: Oh, just normal. So eh [pause]
Other: And they pulled you out all the time. Didn’t they? They kept pulling you out.
SJR: Yeah.
Other: When you were asleep.
SJR: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Take you in for interrogation. Before we were shot down they used to say ‘Don’t try and be clever in interrogation’, you know. Just say, you know, nothing. But don’t try and be clever to put ‘em off or anything. Cos they’ll soon eh catch you out.
DM: So eventually, you obviously ended up in a P.O.W. camp?
SJR: Eh?
DM: You ended up in a P.O.W. camp?
SJR: Yes. Prisoner of war.
Other: How did you get there?
SJR: Eh, train.
Other: And what was it? You had a, did you have a nice comfortable seat?
SJR: Oh, yeah.
Other: You did?
SJR: No, no. And I can’t remember
DM: Was it a cattle truck or something you went in, or was it a proper carriage?
SJR: Eh?
DM: Did you go in a cattle truck or something, or were you actually in a carriage with six.
SJR: Oh, in a carriage. No, no. They didn’t put us in a cattle truck. [chuckles]
Other: When they marched you there, they had the, they marched you down the middle of the road, didn’t they?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And all the locals would come out.
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And what were they doing?
SJR: Oh, just having a look.
Other: Weren’t they kicking you and punching you?
SJR: Oh no.
Other: No?
SJR: No. No.
Other: I thought they kept you in the middle of the road?
SJR: Oh yeah.
Other: Away from everyone.
SJR: Yeah. Oh yeah. But no there was, they just came out and had a look.
Other: Right [pause]
SJR: So many things happened in those days, it’s a job to recall it all. You know?
DM: What time of year was it when you got shot down? Can you remember?
SJR: Em, May.
DM: Right.
Other: No, it wasn’t.
DM: No?
SJR: Eh? When was it?
Other: It was coming up to Christmas, wasn’t it?
SJR: Was it? Oh.
Other: And you were upset because you had been feeding a turkey?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: You told me.
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And that was one of your thoughts. You thought, ‘I’m gonna miss Christmas and I’ve been fattening this turkey, and I’m gonna miss it.’
SJR: Yeah, yeah.
Other: Wasn’t it?
SJR: Yeah. It was just before Christmas.
Other: Yeah.
DM: So I imagine it was pretty cold and bleak at the P.O.W camp, was it?
SJR: Oh yes, yeah. They didn’t look after you too well, you know. Didn’t make it too comfortable [chuckles]. But eh it was just a prisoner of war camp. I could’ve gone either German or Russian. But those days Russians were a bit unknown quality. You didn’t quite know what they were like, so I thought, well, we’ve got an agreement with Germany about P.O.W’s so eh I went with the Germans, and not with the Russians. Because they held some back, bargaining and all this business for years later. But eh, oh well. That’s what war’s like [chuckles]. Nobody wins huh.
DM: Did you make any friends in the camp? Anyone in particular?
SJR: Oh, in the prison camp?
DM: Yeah.
SJR: Oh, I suppose yes. One particular bloke I was friendly with. He cleared off to South Africa when we got back. And eh, oh you get to know some blokes and eh you chat about your civilian life, or where you lived and this sort of thing. So eh anything to pass the time.
Other: There were some Russians in your camp, weren’t there?
SJR: Yeah. [pause]
Other: Weren’t, they were starving, weren’t they?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. They didn’t feed, overfeed them.
Other: What did they do?
SJR: Eh [pause]
Other: Because you were starving, weren’t you?
SJR: Pardon?
Other: You were starving. And you had big pots of food put outside and you, you in your hut,
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And everyone in your hut [unclear] that. Didn’t they?
SJR: Yeah, yeah.
Other: But what happened when you put the empty pot outside? [pause] Didn’t the Russians come round?
SJR: Yeah, yeah.
Other: And try and find
SJR: Yeah, yeah.
Other: All the scrapings.
SJR: Well, they didn’t look after them at all. The Russians. All this a long time ago.
DM: Do you remember the Red Cross parcels?
SJR: Red Cross parcels? Oh, yeah. A godsend they were. Oh yeah, yeah. Blimey, they were. When parcels came in and you could barter with parcels, you know. Oh, they were an absolute godsend.
DM: Did you barter between yourselves, or did you barter with the guards?
SJR: Em, well between ourselves really if [pause]
DM: What sort of things do you remember being in the parcels that you enjoyed the most?
SJR: In the food parcels?
DM: Yeah.
SJR: Well I enjoyed all of it [chuckles]. I suppose, porridge, porridge oats and things like that, that were easy to prepare.
Other: You have a funny story about your Christmas dinner in the prisoner of war camp. Don’t you?
SJR: What was that?
Other: You, you put, you boiled up a huge pot of water and you put your tins of food in it.
SJR: Oh yeah.
Other: And what happened?
SJR: They burst didn’t they? Yeah.
Other: The labels?
SJR: Eh?
Other: The labels.
SJR: Yeah, yeah. That’s right, yeah. Yeah, the labels. All, yeah I remember now, the labels all came off so we [laughter]. So you’d written the name on the label [laughter] so at the finish we had all these tins, no labels and everything, so they just tossed them round and if you were lucky you got something good [laughter]
DM: Like a lucky dip!
SJR: Yeah. Otherwise that was it. Yeah, yeah.
Other: Otherwise you got a tin of brussel sprouts! [laughter]
SJR: Yeah, yeah but I mean daft things. It was stupid, wasn’t it? Putting them in there. Of course the labels are gonna come off. [laughter] Oh dear, oh dear.
DM: Do you remember, while you were in the camp, do you remember anybody making any escape attempts?
SJR: Making eh?
DM: Escape attempts from your camp?
SJR: Yeah. Oh yeah, You could get out of the camp all right but you couldn’t get out of Germany. So it was a bit of a waste of time. If you could’ve gotten out of Germany, but eh [slight pause] several tried it but just weren’t, you know, something to do, but they eh they all came back. They caught them you know. So there was, you couldn’t really get out.
Other: And what happened to the rest of you in the camp? [pause] Did the Germans wanted to dissuade you from trying to escape?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: So what did they do?
SJR: What was it now? [pause] Oh can’t
Other: They would keep you standing, wouldn’t they? On parade out there?
SJR: Oh yeah, yeah.
Other: For hours and hours.
SJR: Yeah, keep you yeah. That’s right, yeah. Keep you hanging about out there. So some blokes were collapsing, you know. [pause] All general fun [chuckles].
Other: There were some Americans in your camp, wasn’t there?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And what were they saying to you?
SJR: Oh, something about it wasn’t like that in America.
Other: Didn’t, didn’t, weren’t they saying ‘Last week I was in ‘
SJR: Times
Other: Times Square.
SJR: Yeah. Yeah.
Other: And they’d been arrested? Captured and they hadn’t fired a shot?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah. Straight in and straight out. Yeah. And hadn’t done anything.
Other: And what happened to one of them who wouldn’t wash?
SJR: Oh, they washed him.
Other: How did they do that?
SJR: Oh, stripped him off. Hosepipe on him.
Other: With a broom?
SJR: Yeah. He wouldn’t wash and keep himself clean in the camp, you know? You’ve all gotta look after yourselves and he wouldn’t do it, so they said ‘All right we’ll do it for you.’ Had him out, stripped him off, put the hosepipe on ‘im and got the brooms [chuckles] and eh, well you couldn’t ‘ave somebody like that walking about not washing or kind of thing or anything. So eh nobody else tried it after that, I don’t think. [laughter] Well some of these Americans were pretty primitive, you know. I mean, fancy a bloke not wanting to bath or wash, you know. It’s a bit primitive, isn’t it? So eh that was the only way they did it and eh [chuckles] so we didn’t get any more. Yeah.
Other: Was there one of your fellow prisoner there? Didn’t he try to take some food?
SJR: Take what?
Other: Pinch some food?
SJR: Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yes. They gave him a hammerin’, beat him up.
Other: Did, they didn’t hand him over to the Germans?
SJR: Oh no. No.They wouldn’t do that. They dealt with him themselves and eh they got him in a ring and beat him. So nobody else tried it. [chuckles] Well you dealt with it yourselves, you didn’t want to get the Germans involved.
Other: No.
SJR: Somebody pinching food and so on. So eh it was dealt with by the prisoners. They dealt with him and taught him a lesson.
DM: Did you get letters from home? Did they get some letters through to you?
SJR: Eh, yes, yeah. Yeah, you could write home and eh far as I can remember. [pause]
Other: Was there another incident? You were playing football, one day, and the ball went over the inner, the inner fence?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: So there was an inner fence and an outer fence?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And the ball went in, into this gap?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And what happened there?
SJR: Eh [pause]
Other: There was a sentry, a German sentry saw ‘im going to get the ball didn’t he?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah.
Other: And what did he do?
SJR: I forget now what [mumbles] [pauses]
Other: He shot him.
SJR: Eh?
Other: He shot him didn’t he? He shot him. He killed him.
SJR: Yeah. Oh that’s right. Yeah, yeah. There was a bit of an uproar in the camp, you know. But that was it. He was in a forbidden area, so he just eh shot him. So he wouldn’t get into trouble.
DM: Did you stay in the same camp all the time, or did they move you somewhere else later on?
SJR: No, no. Was in camps most of the time. And em [pause] course when the Russians came everything sort of burst open, you know.
DM: So the Russians liberated the camp? It was the Russians who got there first?
SJR: Yeah. The Russians, yeah. Oh dear. The camp poured out. [chuckles] Oh dear.
Other: What did the Russians say to you?
SJR: Oh, I can’t
Other: Didn’t they advise you to stay put for a while?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah I think that was it, yeah.
Other: But you and your mate Jock?
SJR: Oh we decided to walk back. Yeah, yeah. That’s right, yeah. And they told us to stay there, but we decided to walk from there to the other side of Poland and get back to our lines, you know. So that’s what we did.
Other: Didn’t the Russian prisoners get hold of one of the Gestapo?
SJR: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Other: And what happened to him?
SJR: Oh well [mumbles] All sorts happened to them. Oh it was all very grim.
DM: When you left the camp, you and Jock, and you were walking back to try and get to our lines, how did you survive? Did you take food with you or did you get food from people on the way?
SJR: Whatever we could get on the way back. Yeah.
Other 2: [quiet voice] Is there something about a chicken? [louder] Did you try to kill a chicken once?
SJR: Pardon?
Other 2: Didn’t you try to kill a chicken? On your way back, you told us?
SJR: Oh yeah. Tried to kill a chicken, yes. Quite right. Tried to kill a, [chuckles]. I said ‘I’ll have a go at it,’ and got this chicken the way my father used to do it, dead easy, you know, and I [unclear] this bloody chicken and eh [chuckles] Oh dear, oh dear.
Other 2: And did you manage to kill it in the end?
SJR: Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh dear. My father used to do ‘em just like that, you know. [mumbles] I said I’ll do it [laughter]
Other: When you were walking back the Germans kept coming out to you, didn’t they? German civilians?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And, and surrendering, weren’t they?
SJR: Oh yes, yeah and all that sort of thing. As if we were going to do anything.
Other: Why were they doing that?
SJR: Well, they thought we might eh get our own back on them or something. [chuckles]
Other: No. No. The, the
SJR: Eh?
Other: The Germans, the civilians wanted to give themselves up to you, didn’t they?
SJR: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. To the English or Americans, the Americans. Yeah. They wanted to be our prisoners and not Russian.
Other: Why was that?
SJR: Eh, well Germany and Russia didn’t get on so they’d rather be prisoners with us than with the Russians in those days. [pause]
Other: And then one night, didn’t you, you and Jock, you found a house?
SJR: Eh?
Other: You found a house? You thought you could go in there and perhaps sleep. Spend the night sleeping in the house?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And there was a woman there with two daughters, wasn’t there?
SJR: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Other: And what did she say?
SJR: Eh, ‘Oh, I’m sorry about this. There’s three of you and only two girls,’ or something.
Other: And what did you say?
SJR: Oh. [chuckles] We weren’t interested.
Other: Yeah. And why was that?
SJR: Cos we were too exhausted and hungry [laughter].
Other: Yeah. And running alive with lice you told me.
SJR: Yeah and so
Other: And you weighed about six and a half stone.
SJR: Yeah, that’s right, cos they weighed me when I [unclear].
Other: You weren’t capable of doing anything.
SJR: Eh?
Other: You weren’t capable of doing anything.
SJR: Oh. Oh no.
Other: And then what happened in the morning? You were sitting in the kitchen?
SJR: Oh, I don’t know about that.
Other: Didn’t the door burst open? The door burst open, didn’t it?
SJR: Yeah, yeah.
Other: And who, who was there?
SJR: Oh I can’t remember.
Other: Some Russians, weren’t they?
SJR: Oh Russians, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Russians.
Other: And they said to you, ‘Are you British.’ And what happened?
SJR: Oh, I can’t remember now.
Other: Didn’t they, they just closed the door and went away?
SJR: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was a long time ago all this.
Other: You probably saved, just your presence there, saved the women?
SJR: Oh yeah. We certainly did. Yeah. Yeah. Oh everything was so wide open, you know.
Other 2: What was that? Can you remember those? Where you go those from?
SJR: [pause] Oh yeah. Yeah.
Other: What is it?
SJR: German eh, German, it’s German money, isn’t it?
Other: Yeah.
SJR: [pause] Yeah. [pause]
Other 2: You can’t remember where you got it from?
SJR: No.
Other 2: Oh.
SJR: Took it off somebody else I expect [laughs]. No I can’t remember.
Other 2: Yeah.
SJR: Oh, I brought this back did I?
Other 2: Yeah. Those were the things we found and we found this as well.
SJR: [pause] Oh my [pause] Yeah.
DM: So, what’s that, Sid?
SJR: Oh, they’re identification.
DM: From the camp or from the airforce?
SJR: Oh, from the camp.
DM: Yeah.
SJR: If anything happened to you, all they’d do was break off, break it across. That would stay fixed round your neck and they’d hand that in as another one dead. So that’s why it’s
DM: So, it’s perforated in the middle and they broke it in half?
SJR: Yeah, that’s it. They’d break it, put one with you and one to record it.
Other 2: We found all sorts of things.
SJR: [unclear]
Other 2: We found that. [pause]
SJR: Oh, what’s this? Where’s me glasses? [pause] One, two, eight, four, six, double two. That’s me.
DM: So what is that?
SJR: Eh. Eh.
DM: So what is it, Sid? What is it?
SJR: Eh. Let’s have a look?
DM: Oh right. Permission to be absent from duty. [laughter]
SJR: Eh?
DM: Permission to be absent from duty [laughter]
SJR: Oh! [laughter]
Other 2: Where were you off to?
SJR: Eh?
Other 2: Did you go anywhere nice?
SJR: [laughter]
DM: Did you have a girlfriend when you were?
SJR: No. No.
Other 2: Why not?
SJR: Well, moving around a bit and so on. So, and of course, the girls weren’t keen on us. Oh, yes. Royal Air Force.
Other: Didn’t a member of your crew get married?
SJR: Eh, yeah.
Other: And what did you say to ‘im?
SJR: Eh?
Other: And what did you say to ‘im?
SJR: Oh, I can’t remember now.
Other: Didn’t you say ‘Don’t get married.’ To wait until the war had finished.?
SJR: Oh yeah. Yeah. He got married during the war.
Other: Yeah.
SJR: Yeah. That’s it. Yeah. Yeah.
Other: And you said?
SJR: Yeah. We said to wait until the end of the war. But eh he came in and said he’d got married and that was it.
Other 2: Who was that? [pause]
SJR: Oh, dunno. [pause] George Lancaster, probably a Flight Engineer. George Lumsden. Hello George. [chuckles]
Other 2: Was he on your plane when you got hit?
SJR: Eh?
Other: Was he on your plane when you got hit?
SJR: Oh, I expect so.
Other: Can’t remember what happened to him?
SJR: No. Flight Engineer.
Other 2: And what about him? [pause]
SJR: Eddie Smith, rear gunner.
DM: Was he the rear gunner who got killed?
SJR: Eh, yeah. Eddie Smith. That was him.
Other: Didn’t, didn’t, every time you took off, didn’t he have a little phrase? Didn’t he say something?
SJR: Eh, something about the tail up, or something.
Other: And then on your last trip out there he didn’t say it did he?
SJR: No.
Other 2: Oh lord!
SJR: Poor devil got killed. Old Eddie. Nice lad. Rear Gunner. Killed, yeah. Second, third December, yeah. Yeah, yeah, just before Christmas.
Other: He said, he usually said, ‘Here we go lads,’.
SJR: Yeah, that’s it.
Other: As you came
SJR: When the tyre went up. He was a rear gunner.
Other: Yeah.
SJR: So when the tyres went up and he said, ‘Here we go.’
Other: And then this particular, your last flight
SJR: Yeah.
Other: For some reason he didn’t say it.
SJR: No, he didn’t say anything. Yeah. Weird really. A lot of peculiar things happened. Poor old Eddie. Yes, second, third December. Oh dear, yeah. Yeah, we brought him back and the bomb aimer. We had two dead that night. [pause]
Other 2: We found those as well. I don’t know who that handsome chap is? [laughter]
SJR: Oh dear, yeah. [pause] Yeah.
Other 2: What happened with them? Was that when, did the Germans take those pictures?
SJR: Yeah.
Other 2: Could you remember that?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah.
Other: Who are they?
Other 2: It’s Dad.
Other: It’s you.
DM: It’s you. Your Kriege pictures.
SJR: Yeah. It must have been.
Other 2: Cos you look different there. Was that when you’d just got captured or? You look all clean. Had you just been captured then?
SJR: Yeah. Must have been.
Other 2: And it’s got your RAF number on, hasn’t it?
SJR: Yeah.
Other 2: But then this one has got a different number. What’s that number on there?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah. These were found and with the Germans had them.
Other 2: Oh right.
DM: So you found those after the camp had been liberated, did you?
SJR: Yeah. Oh yes. Yes.
Other: You don’t look so happy there.
SJR: No. [laughter] No. Been shot down and beard and everything. Yeah. Identification yeah, sort of thing. Oh dear. Oh dear. Those were the days. [laughter] Royal Air Force. [pause]
DM: So you, you and Jock headed off through the German countryside, tried to kill a chicken, em and when did you make contact? Did you make contact with the Americans or with the British?
SJR: Em, Americans.
DM: What happened then, when you, when you
SJR: Oh they were okay. Yeah. Looked after us and eh all the rest of it you know. Got us back, you know. They were okay.
DM: How did you get back to Britain? To England?
SJR: How’d I get back?
DM: To England?
SJR: Oh, flew back, I expect. I can’t remember. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Flew back.
DM: Did you ever think of staying in the Air Force after the war, or couldn’t you wait to leave?
SJR: Eh. I did have thoughts about staying. I was a Warrant Officer. So I had a rank and so on and it was a toss up, you know. In some ways after, I wish I’d have stayed in. Cos I had a rank and all the rest of it.
DM: So, before you went in the Air Force, you were working in the Arsenal you said?
SJR: Yeah.
DM: So what, what job did you take on when you came out of the Air Force?
SJR: Eh, I, in a drawing office. In the central office.
DM: What sort of, what did the company make? What were you drawing? What?
SJR: Copying and that sort of. I can’t remember exactly.
Other 2: That was in the Arsenal, wasn’t it?
SJR: Yeah. In the Arsenal.
DM: So you went back into the Arsenal after?
SJR: Yeah. Yeah. I went back, back in the Arsenal. And eh so I could have stayed in the Air Force, in fact. I was, in fact, I wished later I had carried on in the Air Force. But eh, you get the idea of getting back into civilian life again. And eh [pause]
Other: What did they do to get you, what did the authorities, what did the Government do to get you back into civilian life?
SJR: Oh, they put us on our er, our sort of leave of course, you know, to get us, you know, introduced back into civvy life again.
Other: They took you to some places, didn’t they?
SJR: Yeah, oh yeah. Took us around. Oh we were, we were well looked after when we got back from Germany. Yeah, looked after us quite well. Oh dear, so many things happened those days that eh it’s hard to recall it all. [pause]
Other: And what happened when you, cos you left the, the Arsenal after that, didn’t you?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And what did you do then? [pause] Insurance?
SJR: Yeah. Insurance. Yeah, yeah.
Other: Became an insurance agent.
SJR: Yeah. Oh yes, that’s yeah.
Other: And you did, did that throughout your working life, didn’t you?
SJR: What?
Other: Insurance?
SJR: Yeah, yeah. Oh these are the old badges [laughs]. Signaller. Oh dear, oh dear. Warrant Officer. Good rank, Warrant Officer. Nobody interfered with you. You do more than some of these young officers. So they didn’t like interfering with you. [chuckles] Cos you do a bloomin’ sight more than they did. Oh, that’s a dart medal I won.
Other 2: Where did you win that?
SJR: Eh?
Other 2: Where did you win that?
SJR: I think that was in Germany. Yeah [chuckles]
Other: So you had like competitions and things in the camp?
SJR: Eh, yeah.
Other 2: Did you play sport as well?
SJR: Eh, yeah. Oh dear. Different life altogether.
Other 2: It is. [pause] We found that picture of you and two friends. You haven’t put names on the back.
SJR: Oh yeah.
Other 2: Do you know who they are? [pause] They haven’t got anything on the back. Eh? [pause]
SJR: No, no. [pause]
DM: Have you ever been back? To Germany?
SJR: Eh, no I don’t think so. Well I can’t remember. No, I haven’t. No.
DM: What about to Fiskerton? Have you been back there?
SJR: Where?
DM: Fiskerton? Where you were based. Did you, did you, have you visited back the airfield?
SJR: Yeah. Oh, I’ve been back there. Yeah.
DM: Good memories?
SJR: Eh?
DM: Did you have good memories:
SJR: Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. As long as you were there, I was aircrew, so as long as you were there for flying, you virtually did as you liked, you know. So as long as you were there when there was something on, there was ops on, you had to be there. But the rest of the time they weren’t too bothered, you know.
Other: We went to Fiskerton, didn’t we? A couple of years ago.
SJR: What?
Other: We went to Fiskerton.
SJR: Yeah.
Other: A couple of years ago.
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And there’s a memorial there, isn’t there?
SJR: Yeah.
Other: And you looked out and you saw the ground where the air drums were.
SJR: Yeah. Yeah. Fiskerton. Yeah. Midlands.
Other 2: I bet you went in the pub.
SJR: Eh, yeah. I had [unclear] in the pub there.
DM: That’s you, isn’t it? On your return visit.
Other: That’s you at the memorial. [pause]
SJR: That’s me?
Other 2: It is. [laughter]
Other 2: I took the picture.
DM: It is. And your favourite son. [laughter]
SJR: Oh, yeah. These are [mumbles] RAF Fiskerton on the occasion of [unclear] ninety-six. Oh good God. [laughter] [pause] German P.O.W. photographs of Sydney Richards. Ah.
DM: That’s em.
SJR: Oh that’s em look at that yeah [mumbles]
Other 2: So young.
SJR: Yeah. Look at that there. [laughter] God. [laughter] Yes, a smart lad. [chuckles]
Other 2: [unclear]
SJR: [mumbles] That was a long flight.
Other: Yeah.
DM: How did you feel about bombing the Germans?
SJR: Eh, well didn’t have any feelings really. We were at war and they sent us to mostly were military, you know. We weren’t bombing civilians populations. No, the military, the Rhine, Rhine Valley all along there. All factories. When we were bombing them. But we weren’t actually out to bomb, we had a couple of trips to Berlin, I suppose, which was just to let them know. But eh otherwise it was all just military targets, factories and so on. So anything to disrupt them. So eh.
Other: And it’s war, isn’t it?
SJR: Yeah. That’s it. Yeah. Put their factories out of action. So eh and the rest of the time we were out in Lincoln, living it up. [laughter]
Other: Living it up. Yes.
SJR: Oh dear. Well they did need a [unclear] at all, you know.
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 Sidney James Richards
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
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
2017-03-22
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
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Sound
Identifier
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ARichardsSJ170322, PRichardsSJ1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:05:14 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Sydney James Richards was born in Greenwich, London and was working in a drawing office in the Arsenal before joining the Royal Air Force. He was originally intending to join the Navy but changed his mind as he decided he preferred aircrew. He did his training near Nottingham as a Wireless Operator Rear Gunner and was stationed at RAF Fiskerton. He became a Warrant Officer and flew twenty operations before having to bail out over the suburbs of Berlin on his twentieth. He was captured with the pilot of his crew, Bob Petty, and became a Prisoner of War. Two of his crew were killed on an earlier operation when their aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire whilst flying over the Ruhr. He was liberated by the Russians and he walked out of the camp with his friend and they walked until the found Americans who helped them get back to England. When he left the Royal Air Force he went back to his previous employment and subsequently became an Insurance agent which he continued to do for the rest of his working life.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
South Africa
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
49 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
prisoner of war
RAF Fiskerton
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1025/11397/PMcRaeER1701.1.jpg
bc5cdf159772fd5d82d487edf87ec3fd
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1025/11397/AMcRaeER170727.2.mp3
57e32064458b4e67513260cbc3930485
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
McRae, Edward Robert
E R McRae
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Edward McRae (1926 - 2019, 3031774 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 50 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
2017-07-27
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
McRae, ER
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Ted McRae and the interview is taking place at Mr McRae’s home in Warlingham in Surrey on the 27th of July 2017. Ok. Ted, perhaps you could start off by sort of telling me when and where you were born and a bit about your growing up.
TM: Well, I was born in Croydon. 1926.
Other: ‘5.
TM: Grew up mainly in Croydon and then when I was ten we moved to Caterham and I’ve been in this area ever since.
DM: Did you go to school in Croydon or Caterham?
TM: Part of my school in Croydon. Up until I was ten. Then I finished all my schooling in Caterham. At the Central School there. Oh, there was always, well since the war started my ambition was to go in to the Air Force of course.
DM: Did you have any work before you went into the Air Force?
TM: Oh yes. Yes. I was working for an aircraft firm actually as a storeman.
DM: Which firm?
TM: Surrey Flying Services actually I started out with. I stayed with them for quite a long time actually until I actually joined up. On and off. But —
DM: How old were you when you joined up?
TM: Seventeen and a half. Well, I got called up because although I volunteered I wasn’t accepted then. They had the choice. They could please themselves. So they said when they wanted you. And you didn’t go in and train as anything in particular. You went in as aircrew and they sorted you out depending on what they wanted at the time. So, you know, you went in and you did the training and that was it.
DM: So this would have been what? Around the end of 1942, I suppose.
TM: No. It was later on than that because I wasn’t old enough to go in until, forty — I think I joined up in ’44. Yeah. I think it was January. About January the 3rd ’44.
DM: Right.
TM: When I went into the service. But I was on their books a couple of years before that. It was just when I was old enough. And started, where did I go first? Well, of course joined up at the Aircrew Centre in London and then [pause] yeah, one of those places. The first place was Bridgnorth.
DM: In Shropshire.
TM: Yeah. And then we, up on the coast of Yorkshire and had other training. I can’t remember the names of places these days. From there we came back down in to the Lincolnshire area where [pause] Lincoln. Oh no. The Oxfordshire area, because we stayed down there for a while and then mainly most of my training was done in the Lincolnshire area anyway.
DM: So, you ended up as a gunner.
TM: As a gunner. Yes. Even then you didn’t know what you were going to be [laughs] You went in for the training. You trained as aircrew and whatever they wanted that was what you were going in as.
DM: Do you remember much about crewing up? What happened when you found your crew?
TM: Oh yeah. Well, that part of the training came from Abingdon. The, I finished the [pause] other gunners. Yeah, it’s wrong. No. Get crewed up. It just happened. The chap who was turned out to be the rear gunner. He, he happened to be standing there when I walked past, ‘Do you want to join our crew?’ And his name was Phillip. He only lived over at Banstead actually and yes, that was the start of it. The next thing I found myself with four new Zealanders [laughs] And later on a Nottinghamshire engineer. And that was our crew. And we stayed that way until, until they were all killed in a crash and I survived.
DM: So, do you have any particular memories of any operations before that one?
TM: Not really. They were tied. All sort of tied, running one into the other really. I mean we was on the first thousand bomber. Not. No. The first, when they’d started bombing targets that had never been touched during the war and the first one was Dresden. I was on that one. And of course they wanted to know all your, all your bombs. How many bombs you dropped and what size they were and all the rest of it when you come back. But of course you didn’t, you didn’t always get in on these briefings. They didn’t have a lot to hear [laughs]
DM: So, were you the rear gunner?
TM: No. I was the mid-upper gunner actually.
DM: Right.
TM: But we used to swap over on various occasions. On operations we stuck to sit in our own. You know, our own turret. But on the ones later like when we was bringing back ex-prisoners of war we swapped over. As happened on this particular day. I rode, yes I rode in the mid-upper turret the first part of the journey back because I had ex-prisoners in there and I don’t think my other gunner would know anything about that job because he was [pause] and to be quite honest we were ordered to take a revolver and ammunition with strict orders that if there was any problems on there to shoot the person. Because you were doing something that hadn’t been tried before. Which was taking twenty six ex-prisoners as passengers in a Lancaster. Well, there’s very little room in a Lancaster when you get inside. And strict orders that if there was any panicking shoot first and that’s it. Not that I would have done because I never even put the bullets in the gun. They stayed in my pocket. But, you know, but that was ordered because of the thing. And the rear gunner and myself, well he decided he would fly in the rear turret going out because we’d got people in there. Passengers, sort of thing. But when we were coming back part of the way I would be, I could fly in this mid-upper turret. But when we picked up this other lot of repatriates he was going back in, he was going back in the tail turret. [laughs] Yeah. That was that sort of thing going on all the time.
DM: When you were on operations —
TM: Yeah.
DM: Before the time when —
TM: Yeah.
DM: The time the plane was shot down. What, what was life like on the base between operations? What did you get up to?
TM: Oh. Didn’t have time to get up to a lot because when there was flying on that was it. That was the top thing. And as soon as operations and all that sort of thing stopped. You did the operation. So that took up all the time. And more than likely the time you came back there was a new bombing list up for the next day. So you didn’t get a chance to do anything else. You were preparing for that one. Otherwise, you know they would say well as soon as they knew there was nothing on you could stand down but you couldn’t go anywhere.
DM: You had to stay on the base or around about.
TM: Stay on the base. They’d tell when you could go. It was clear because stand down didn’t mean you were free. You always had to be on stand-by. And that happened for three months at a stretch.
DM: And this was at Scunthorpe? Was it?
Other: Skellingthorpe.
TM: At Skellingthorpe. Yeah.
DM: Skellingthorpe. Sorry. Skellingthorpe. Yes. So if we turn now to the fatal day. Literally.
TM: Yes.
DM: The fatal day. What, what operation was it? Where were you going?
TM: We went out to France. Picked up twenty six ex-prisoners of war. Fitted them in the, in the aircraft. That’s something I hadn’t ever worked out when you had space what, a bigger square than this table, I suppose. Where you had to get all these people in and yourself.
DM: So that’s about, I suppose this table is about sort of what? Six foot by two foot something like that.
TM: Yes. Six. Yeah.
DM: Three foot. Something like that.
TM: Well, it was only just that area beneath the turret of the Lancaster actually.
DM: So you were like sardines.
TM: Yeah. And under strict orders that all the mid-uppers had to go and draw a revolver and ammunition and carry it along with them with strict orders that if there was any panicking to shoot. So whether that would have happened or not I don’t know. Not in my aircraft because I never took the [laughs] the bullets stayed in my pocket all the time. But that, that was it. That was how you flew and —
DM: So you went and you picked these twenty six people up and got them in the aircraft.
TM: Yeah. Got them in. Flew them back to this country and dropped them off at a station I forget. I couldn’t tell you what the station was. And unloaded them. And then we used to have, had to head back to our own base and it was on that trip that we crashed. I don’t know what happened I must admit actually because that morning we had been up. Well, we’d been a duty crew all night so it meant we didn’t get into bed until about 11 o’clock, twelve, close on 12 o’clock at night. We was called again at 3 o’clock in the morning because we were due to be the crew to get everything ready for the people coming back who were flying that night. But at the last minute that got cancelled. Get ready to fly because there was another raid coming up and we were due. They’d decided we were going to take off at 7 o’clock in the morning which didn’t happen. We didn’t actually take off ‘til about 10 o’clock in the morning and we flew out to France. Did what business we had to do and come, come back and it was by that time we went out there picked these prisoners up, brought them up and dropped them off at another station. Then we was flying back to our own base when something went wrong and we just crashed.
DM: So, did, did anybody say anything? Did the pilot say anything? Do you remember?
TM: He didn’t have much chance to say anything.
DM: No.
TM: He was, he was heavily banking around to avoid something at the time and the wingtips touched the ground. That’s all I can put it down to. And the aircraft cartwheeled. Broke. Because of course I was flying in the rear turret again having swapped with the rear gunner. And the turret was blown straight off and I was straight down on to the ground like that.
DM: So you were the only survivor.
TM: No. He survived as well actually but he finished up with a badly broken leg which kept —
DM: The pilot was this?
TM: No. No.
DM: The other gunner.
TM: The other gunner.
DM: The other gunner.
TM: And he wasn’t in the turret. He got thrown out. He was out of the turret and of course when the aircraft cartwheeled he got thrown out then and he spent twelve months in hospital and he got a broken leg though but it wouldn’t heal or something.
DM: What were your injuries?
TM: Very few. I was in hospital for a week and then I was out.
DM: So, sort of cuts and bruises.
TM: Just cuts and bruises and that. Yeah. And of course by then I had no crew. So that was it. We were starting out again.
DM: So you flew again after that.
TM: Only a couple of times then. Yes. Because then they were just making all the aircrews redundant. They didn’t know what to do with them all because the war had ended during that time and I was redundant.
DM: When you were flying on operations did you ever have any contact with enemy fighters?
TM: No. We’d, a couple of times we saw them in the distance sort of thing but, I say in the distance, below us or just above but we never had any contact with them.
DM: So you got safely through all that.
TM: We sort of had seen them.
DM: Yes.
TM: And I think they probably realised that they’d been seen. Although it was at night you still get a bit of moonlight on the turrets and you could see a movement. Movement. So —
DM: So, when you, you went into hospital, you were in hospital for a week. You came out. You were sort of then I suppose a sort of a spare bod as they say.
TM: Yeah.
DM: And you did a couple of flights with other people which, were they, I assume were they repatriation flights as well?
TM: They were repatriation flights. Yes. Yeah.
DM: Yeah. So what happened when you were demobbed? I mean were you just sort of sitting around waiting for ages or did it happen quite quickly?
TM: Oh. No. No. Posted and given ground jobs ‘til the demob came up.
DM: Did you ever think about staying in?
TM: Yeah, but not when [pause] we was forced to come out really because they had so many blokes they didn’t know what to do with them. They didn’t want us in there.
DM: So demob time comes around. Did you keep in touch with the rear gunner as he was, I suppose? His official position afterwards.
TM: I did. Yes. Well, because he was, he spent the best part of the next twelve months in hospital actually. In Halton mainly. And although I wasn’t there my mother and father used to go over and visit him and they met his mother over there, you know and they became quite friendly but [pause] I always got the impression that George thought that he was a bit above everybody else.
DM: Right.
TM: And didn’t want to be seen with us sort of thing. So he never. I tried to keep in touch with him but he didn’t. Didn’t want to know. No.
DM: And was he the chap who was from Banstead?
TM: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. So not far away.
TM: Not far away. No. And as I say his mother and my mother wrote to each other quite often and met several times afterwards but no. Not George.
DM: Not you and him.
TM: No.
DM: No. Did you go back into the aircraft industry after the war?
TM: For a, for a while but I was working, you know working on the aircraft firms doing bits. But I was a storeman actually because I was, I was a trained storeman. Whether I wanted it or not.
DM: That was your — that was it.
TM: Yeah.
DM: That was what you were destined to be.
TM: Yeah. Because when I was grounded, like a lot of others they trained us to run stores as well. Actually, in civil life I had been running aircraft stores anyway. I suppose that’s what put in their mind to, you know he can go in there and yes I did a complete course on that and I spent the remaining time in the Air Force. In stores.
DM: Typecast. Do you have any brothers and sisters?
TM: Yes. Three of each.
DM: Right. So a big, big family.
TM: Yes.
DM: And did any, what did they do in the war? Your brothers and sisters.
TM: Oh, all three brothers were in different regiments.
DM: So they were in the army.
TM: Yeah.
DM: And they all survived.
TM: Oh yes. Yeah. My sisters were [pause] and they, two of them were working. The other one was married. So that was that.
DM: So, everybody came through.
TM: Yeah.
DM: What do you, looking back how do you sort of view the time that you were in the Air Force in the Second World War? I mean obviously you went in. You said you wanted to go in the Air Force. You knew that.
TM: Oh yes.
DM: Once the war broke out.
TM: Yeah.
DM: You knew that was what you wanted to volunteer to do.
TM: Oh yes.
DM: Did it live up to your expectations? Whatever they might have been.
TM: By and large, yes. Yes. Because I was in the air, I joined the Air Training Corps as soon as that started. So I had quite a background for the Air Force anyway. And yeah, that kept me in there actually.
DM: Did you have dreams of being a pilot like a lot of people? Or did you not care.
TM: That was my intention to going in the Air Force. To be a pilot. But when you go in there you went in as aircrew. You had no choice. Whatever they were short of at the time that’s what you was trained as.
DM: Looking back on what you did in the war and what happened in the war how do you feel about how Bomber Command had been treated in the years since? People who fought in the bomber war.
TM: Well, as far as I’m concerned most of them have tried hard to forget it. Didn’t exist.
DM: Did you ever belong to any Associations or anything like that afterwards or did you just cut the ties?
TM: No. No. Well, there weren’t any really. I mean I was passed out for the Air Training Corps. Too old for that. And there was no, nothing really else to do. Not around this area.
DM: Now going, if we go back you said when you crewed up there were, was it four new Zealanders?
TM: Yeah.
DM: And then there were three from England. One from Banstead, one from Caterham, one from Croydon, one from Nottingham.
TM: Yes.
DM: You all mixed in. All rubbed along together ok.
TM: Oh yeah. We got along well. There was no problems there.
DM: I suppose you’ve not, you didn’t have any contact with their families or anything after the crash.
TM: The only one who’s family I had anything to do with really was the engineer, Dennis. He, he came from Nottingham. But he was the, the member of the crew because he wasn’t with us for very long. But we did meet his wife. He was only just married before he came. He got called up actually. But — no.
DM: So you had, did you have you had another engineer before him, did you?
TM: No. No. That was the only engineer we had.
DM: Was added. Yeah.
TM: Yeah, because we was trained and been flying together. Then we got an engineer. Because we’d been on Whitleys and well, mainly our training was on Whitleys. I suppose we were about the last crews training on them.
DM: When you went in you were a single lad. Were you still single when you came out?
TM: Yeah. Yes. I didn’t get married until well after that. A long time after I came out of the Air Force.
DM: So there wasn’t anybody worrying about back home other than your mum and dad.
TM: Only my mum and dad. Yes.
DM: And your brothers and sisters.
TM: I suppose. They had enough worries. There were three other brothers in the services at the time.
DM: Did your mum have any thoughts on your joining the Air Force? Did she ever say anything one thing or another?
TM: No. No. No. She never made any complaint. She never said anything about it.
DM: So after you’d finished sort of flying basically. While you were waiting to come out you ended up in India.
TM: Yeah.
DM: How did that come about? Why were you sent out there?
TM: Well, it’s just a fact that all, all these redundant aircrews that they had. They had to find places for them. They couldn’t be demobbed. They had men out in places like India and Burma and all that that needed to come home because they hadn’t been out, home for four or five years. So we were all loaded on boats and sent out there. That’s all. And we took over the places as stores. They trained us all as stores. Well, mainly as store keepers. Did a few other jobs I think. But I mean that’s all they’d done.
DM: And where in India were you? Whereabouts?
TM: On the far side of it [laughs] Chittagong.
DM: Were you there for very long?
TM: I suppose about eighteen months. Might have been two years. I don’t know. It was after, the war was well over because I was still in England when the war finished. And all this training and all the rest of it that all took place after that. So I suppose well it was towards the end of that year because I didn’t spend it, in the country to spend Christmas at home but it was about November I think when we was on the boat going out there.
DM: Did you come back by boat or did they fly you back?
TM: No. Come back by boat as well. I was never lucky enough to fly back there. Fly either way.
DM: Join the Air Force and see the sea basically.
TM: Yeah.
DM: What did you think of India?
TM: Had its good points. We were living a bit in the wilds really. Because as I say I was the other side. Beyond Calcutta actually. At the top of Burma where we were stationed. It took a week to travel home from there on the train.
DM: So tough and hot I assume was it? Hot.
TM: Oh yes.
DM: Very hot.
TM: Definitely and the trains because their trains were the Indian trains. They weren’t the European ones that they had out there. And all wooden seats. All wooden slatted seats and you slept on them as well.
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 Edward Robert McRae
Creator
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David Meanwell
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
2017-07-27
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AMcRaeER170727, PMcRaeER1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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00:26:23 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Ted McRae volunteered for aircrew and trained as a gunner. He was usually in the mid-upper turret but would sometimes swap places with the rear gunner. On one trip repatriating ex-prisoners of war his aircraft crashed. He and the other gunner were the only survivors. He then flew as a 'spare bod'. He completed his career in the RAF at Chittagong in India.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Bangladesh
Great Britain
Bangladesh--Chittagong
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
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1944
50 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
crash
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
RAF Skellingthorpe
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1017/11306/AThompsonPJ181122.2.mp3
834e0550a7742e0ac812eae3e9300d18
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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Thompson, Frederick Denzil James
F D J Thompson
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Peter Thompson (b. 1933) about his uncle, Flight Lieutenant Frederick Denzil James Thompson DFC. Fred Thompson flew operations with Hamish Mahaddie. Collection also includes a photograph, correspondence and newspaper cuttings. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Peter Thompson and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Frederick Denzil James Thompson is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/227942/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
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
2018-07-07
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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Thompson, FDJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewee is David Meanwell, the sorry, the interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Peter Thompson who is going to be talking mainly about his uncle, Fred Thompson, who was in Bomber Command. The interview is taking place at Mr Thompson’s home, in Croydon today, the 22nd of November 2018. Right Peter, perhaps if you could start off just say a bit of introduction about yourself, and then what you, perhaps start off with your personal recollections of Fred and then get on to his career.
PT: Right. That’s right. My name is Peter John Thompson and I am talking really about my uncle, Frederick, or uncle Fred. His full name is [cuckoo clock] Frederick cuckoo [laughter] – sorry about the cuckoo clock! -his full name is Frederick Denzel James Thompson and Fred and, he’s the second son of Walter Henry Thompson. My grandfather was Winston Churchill’s bodyguard throughout the whole of the war, and there were five children, basically. My father was the first one, Harold, Fred was second and Harvey was third, and then there were two sisters, Grace and Cathleen, much younger. Now, I, at the beginning of the war, 1939, I was six years old, but I can remember quite clearly Uncle Fred. Uncle Fred was in the Metropolitan Police, he was CID, Special Branch. And he had really a reserved occupation, and he worked in the East End of London, in the dock area, looking for aliens and spies etc. So he had quite an important job there. Now, my memory of uncle Fred, was when I was about three, Fred would have been about seventeen, he had a cage in the garden, with budgies in it. He used to take me into the cage with him and with all these budgies around, and he was very quiet, serious chap. And anyway, he’s, he was a really nice chap, very reliable. Grandad was a Victorian type of man, very severe, very good at his job as a bodyguard I might say, and quite brave, but very severe, and my dad used to say that he used to be frightened of him, so that gives you the set up. When the, in 1936, Fred decided that he would join the Met and he didn’t want to know, anybody to know that he was the son of Walter, his father, so he made his own way there. Now the thing is that Fred was a very reliable chap. When the war came, my dad joined up or he volunteered, and a little while later, when the war, about 1941 ’42, grandad, who had quite a deep [emphasis] relationship with Churchill, was talking to him about his sons and Churchill said to him, well I’d like to meet them. So my dad said well Harvey was out in South Africa at the time, but Fred came along, and this is a, a defining moment for Fred. When my dad and Fred met Churchill, my dad was in uniform, in a RAF uniform, but Fred was in civvies, and Churchill turned upon Fred and said ‘Why haven’t you signed up? Why aren’t you doing your bit? All the other lads in the front line.’ And this really hurt Fred. My dad said he was really upset and he immediately went and volunteered for aircrew. That was quite an important point for Fred. Anyway, he was trained as an Observer, or navigator and he joined the Pathfinder Group at Oakington, and he was on, flying Short Stirlings. The pilot was Wing Commander Mahaddie, and this chap was very well known, and it’s something unusual about the group: because the whole crew maintained right the way through, they did forty missions, the whole crew just stayed together, very unusual and most of the men were married, with families. Now Fred, he got two DFCs. They, of the forty missions he did, a lot of them were right, er, into far into, deep in Germany, obviously went Cologne, Berlin, but he also flew a lot down to Italy, and they gave this crew some of the most difficult jobs to do. Now the Pathfinders was a very, they, I think they were selected very carefully. The Pathfinder Group was that the aircraft went out first, alone [emphasis] on its own, and it flew somewhere like half an hour, to an hour in front of the main bomber group coming behind and their job obviously was to drop incendiaries and to light up if you like, the target. But they were alone, they didn’t have any cover. So there was a famous, no not, take the word away, one of the times when he got his second DFC, they had, they were, they had a mission to Cologne and on the way back the aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The cockpit window was completely smashed, the radio equipment was completely smashed and the radio operator was badly injured. The ailerons on the aircraft were severed and the aircraft basically fell out the sky, and it was going down. Mahaddie, the pilot, managed to get the thing on to a, out of this dive, and the flight sergeant, or flight engineer, he actually crawled in to the aircraft fuselage and repair the ailerons. Now the navigation equipment had completely gone, it’s, of course the Pathfinders would be flying at night, and the flight engineer, having got the aircraft working and they lost a couple of engines as well, he attended to the badly injured radio operator, and Fred navigated the aircraft by navigating with the stars. That’s how he did it. And they, the thing is, they got back to Oakington on time and they got there. And so, the evidence is, of a photograph of the crew outside their aircraft and you can see the holes right across the fuselage where all the German canons’ bullets had gone through. And these men were awarded their DFCs, or equivalent ‘cause the lower ranks didn’t get DFCs, so he was awarded his second, his second DFC. So. After the mission to Cologne all the crew were awarded their medals and they were going to go to the palace to meet the King and get their awards, but before they could go, two weeks later a special mission came up to Stuttgart. They, they volunteered, because, for many of them had, were past their operational times, and they all volunteered, but there were two exceptions. The pilot Mahaddie, Group Captain, Wing Commander Mahaddie for some reason couldn’t fly so they had a replacement pilot, and of course the radio operator had been injured was replaced, so they did have two new crew members. [Cough] So anyway they took off this mission. On the way over France, the German radio, radar group picked up the aircraft and they radioed to the German night fighter group and their, this particular German pilot took off. Now the RAF didn’t know a particular thing, that the Germans had discovered some of the secret equipment on the aircraft, on the bombers. The bomber, the aircraft had this equipment called H2S, which was really a ground radar and it was really what we have now, mapping out the underneath, so they could, they could actually fly higher to the target and the bomb aimer could see where the target was whereas previously they would have to be visual. But the only thing is when you put H2S on, it gives out frequencies which is used to get the display up, and the Germans had found a way of locking on to the H2S so they knew that, where the aircraft was to some extent by the signal coming from the H2S. What the Germans also had put in was a special gun in the nose of the aircraft, and the, in front of the pilot and it pointed up, and they had, the Germans had nicknamed it Jazzmusik, jazzmusiker, and what the Germans, night fighter pilots did, they used to fly underneath the bomber and gradually come up underneath. Of course nobody in the aircraft, the air gunner wouldn’t see it, and it’s night time, nobody would, there was nothing to detect anything underneath and they used to fly right underneath and fire straight into the bomb area, bomb area. The aircraft caught fire and it started to come down in flames. The strange thing was, that it was coming down in this little tiny village way out in the French countryside, and the village has high hills round it, and on the top of the hill was the actual radar unit that had picked up the aircraft. The aircraft came in, and I’ve got witness statements here written by people that saw it at the time, it was aflame, and the people at the radar unit fled because they thought the aircraft was going to hit their radar unit and them, but in fact it came down just over. And in this village they had a swamp area, it’s a lake, swampy and they used to use it for people, used to come to fishing. The aircraft exploded and broke up in two parts. The tail end landed one part of the village, with the air gunner still in it. The aircraft hit the water and it exploded and obviously all the crew were killed. Can I stop there for a. Many of the villagers saw this aircraft coming down all on fire, at night. The aircraft nearly missed, only just missed the actual radar unit, German radar unit, that was stationed at, on the top of the hill. Now this unit was the one that detected the aircraft earlier on. It missed the radar unit, the huts, by a few hundred feet or so, and it crashed into a swamp. Now this swamp was a man-made area, loads of reeds and things like that and it was used by people to do fishing. The aircraft literally broke up into bits: a mangled mess of just of metal and four of the member of the crew bodies were floating on the lake. The German Army came and secured the area and wouldn’t allow any of the villagers to come nearby, but the French resistance was very strong in the area, and at night, three chaps went out with shepherds’ hooks and went in to the lake and hooked the bodies out. One of the bodies was Fred’s. They said that they were, the bodies were very, very badly mangled. The Germans’ commander, I think did a, a very unusual thing, I think. He then stated that these men should have a proper military funeral. They wouldn’t allow any of the villagers to come, but they selected some young men to carry the bodies up to this little tiny cemetery. And they dug one grave and they put the four bodies in there. A few days later another body came up and this chap was buried, and then many weeks later the pilot’s body surfaced, and he was buried. So there were three graves really, and that’s the situation. They just put little wooden crosses up with the peoples’ names on. At that time, my grandfather had heard via the Red Cross grapevine that Fred had been killed, and he sent my father a telegram, which I have, saying that Fred had been killed. Now Fred’s wife, who was in the WRNS, then had the job a few weeks’ later of going up to Buckingham Palace to receive her husband’s DFC, his second one, a Bar. When I seen this young girl, in her WRN uniform and she was only about twenty, going up to receive this award, this medal, it must have been heart-breaking. An interesting thing, occurred here, because my grandfather had a very close relationship - it’s an unusual relationship - with Churchill. Churchill valued him tremendously. They had lots of scrapes and he valued grandad because he was very good as a bodyguard, very professional. It’s not the same as you have today. He was the traditional bodyguard where he had a trilby hat a long black coat, and he always had his hand in his right hand pocket with his gun there and all the photographs during the war, wherever they went, you always saw grandad about four paces behind Churchill and he was always, pictures of him looking left right all the time. And he had been Churchill’s bodyguard before the war, when Churchill was in government positions, and they built up this unusual relationship of, of trusting each other. But when grandad heard the news about Fred’s death, he went in to Churchill and he had words with him, and he blamed Churchill for the way he had treated Fred at that meeting years ago, where Fred was so cut to the wick and he gave his job up as a Special Branch detective, to join the RAF. And he said to Churchill, ‘I blame you for my son’s death.’ That’s a funny thing to say to Churchill. Strange thing is, that Churchill said, ‘I accept that.’ And he said Churchill was very, very upset: I’ll face death. Anyway, that day seven men died. The interesting thing when you look at the records, there were eleven other aircraft that night on those, who were all shot down. So for me it’s all about Fred, but that night there were at least eleven, I think it’s eleven [emphasis] aircraft, so if you think about seven men in each aircraft, that was seventy seven men either prisoners of war or killed, all lost their life on that one night. And when you look at Bomber Command, the death rate was very, very high and most [emphasis] of them didn’t do very many missions before they died. So Fred’s group were very unusual having forty missions before they got killed. Anyway, after the war the Commonwealth Graves Commission came into being and they went to this little village and the village is Minacour les menis les halous and it’s a little tiny place, so tiny, only a few hundred people. They went to the village cemetery, which we’ve, I’ve visited; it’s so small, it’s about a hundred yards square and they said these men must have proper graves, and with proper memorials. Then all the bodies were exhumed and each man was put into their own grave. A few years ago my son, sorry my daughter and my son-in-law very kindly said they would take us out to this little village, and they took us out. It’s so quiet, the cemetery’s just on a hill and you go in there, and I stood in front of Fred’s grave, and I just thought, ‘what a mess! What an utter mess this, all these men killed.’ Anyway, the interesting thing is, that there’s a group of people that really wanted to know all about the men that died in Bomber Command, and they did some very interesting work and they found out who the German pilot was, somehow. [Cough] A few years ago, about 2009, my daughter and my son-in-law, Tim, and Sally, asked me would I, we like to go and visit the cemetery where Fred is buried, and we did. They took us out there. And this little tiny village, with just oh, a few houses, and while we were there we – nobody was around - we parked outside, wondering what to do, outside a little farmhouse. A dog started to bark, and a young lad came out, who was about sixteen. Now my French is almost non-existent, and this young lad, his English was also non-existent, so I got out a photograph out of Fred, of young Fred and the site where the crash occurred. This young lad pointed and said, basically wait and he came back, got on his bicycle, and beckoned to us to follow, and we followed for a good half mile, and then he, we got to this area which was swampy, he goes up to a garden gate, big iron gate and unlocks it, it appears his family have owned this area of the swamp for years, went in and we walked around in, on the swamp: it’s almost the same as it was and I just could picture the devastation of this aircraft which was just a mangled mess, looking at the, the lake, looking at the water and realising that all those years ago Fred was floating with his other mates on there, completely dead. It was quite a strange feeling. And then the young lad beckons, and says follow me and we go back to the village and he points up this hill and we realise that is where the cemetery was, and the cemetery really is tiny and we went up, found the graves. My son-in-law had made a special plaque, with Fred’s details on it, and my, he had put my email address at the bottom. A few weeks later I had an email from a group of people who were researching the aircraft and all his, all his crew. I found this very interesting because they came up with some information that they sent me, of the German pilot that had shot the aircraft down. And this was again, a young, German pilot, his name was Hans Karl Kemp, Kamp. He was one of their top fighter pilots and the information we’ve got here he had shot down at least twenty one aircraft and found out that later, a couple of years later he was shot down again, not again, he’s shot down over Germany and was killed himself. They also show, got a picture of the Messerschmitt, Bf110 and you can see clearly [emphasis] this jazzmusiker gun, there, pointing up, and this photograph is actually showing the pilot, Oberleutnant Hans Karl Kamp, and the information down here identifies him as the pilot that shot down Fred’s aircraft, it’s down here from the German records. It’s got all of them here, and Hans Karl Kamp and you can check them all the way down, so that was quite interesting really. But my impression now as an older man, looking at it, and I thought: all these men German and English, just are called up and they do their duty for their country so there was no real difference between Hans Karl Kamp and Fred Denzel James Thompson, except that they must have left a lot of hurt. Kamp’s wife eventually married a, an American airman and then went to America. It’s odd that she marries the enemy. And that’s that. So that is my investigation and journey with my uncle Fred.
DM: Thank you very much Peter. 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 Peter Thompson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
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
2018-11-22
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.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AThompsonPJ181122
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:32:00 audio recording
Language
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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
Second generation
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France
France--Minaucourt-le-Mesnil-lès-Hurlus
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Thompson is the nephew of Fred Denzel James Thompson. Fred’s father was Churchill’s bodyguard. In 1936 Fred joined the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department and, following a meeting with Winston Churchill, volunteered as a navigator, despite being in a reserved occupation.
Fred joined the Pathfinder Group at RAF Oakington, flying Stirlings. The crew were together for over 40 missions. Fred received two Distinguished Flying Crosses (DFC). The second one was awarded following an operation to Cologne when the aircraft was badly hit and Fred successfully guided the aircraft back using celestial navigation.
Before receiving the award at Buckingham Palace, Fred volunteered for a special mission to Stuttgart alongside two new crew members. Unfortunately, their aircraft was struck from below and exploded near the village of Minaucourt-le-Mesnil-lès-Hurlus. The bodies were rescued by the French Resistance but given a military funeral by the German commander. Fred’s father blamed Churchill who apologised, regretting Fred’s death. The Commonwealth Graves Commission organised proper graves and memorials for the aircrew. Peter later visited the cemetery and subsequently found out information about the German pilot who later also lost his life.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Sally Coulter
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1936
1943-03-12
aircrew
bale out
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Distinguished Flying Cross
final resting place
killed in action
Me 110
navigator
Pathfinders
RAF Oakington
Resistance
shot down
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1014/11303/ACopeM181127.1.mp3
43f82e2e44903fe131beaa3977ee6b33
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
Cullum, James
James Frederick William Cullum
J F W Cullum
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Mick Cope (b.1935). His adoptive brother James Frederick William Cullum flew with 156 and 460 Squadrons as an air gunner.
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
2018-11-27
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
Cullum, JFW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Mick Cope. The interview is taking place at Mr Cope’s home in Dorking in Surrey and the date today is the 27 November 2018. Okay, perhaps you could tell me a little bit of background about yourself and the person you’re going to be talking about.
MC: Right. Well I’m the adopted brother of James, known as Sonny. He was a part of the crew of one of 460 Squadron, Royal Air Force, which was an Australian outfit at the time and the only Australian in the crew was the captain, all the rest were English people. Sonny was a WOP, wireless operator gunner, air gunner, mid upper. I know all this because at times when he came home he’d bring home different parts of his uniform, his headset, all this business which to me at that time was heaven on earth.
DM: What was the age difference between you?
MC: The age difference I suppose was somewhere in the region about, I was what, five, two, fifteen, I suppose there must have been about between ten to fifteen years age difference. And of course he would bring, he would come home for the forty eight or whatever it was, forty eight hour pass, whatever it was he got, and he’d come home and we’d have the time of our lives as much as I can remember. I mean this is going back now to the good old days of 1943 when I was seven, so the age gap there is seven, fifteen, seven to about I suppose what, must been eight, eight year gap, but that didn’t come into it. I, I saw him as my brother when he came home. He brought home a couple of times John Hughendean, who was the captain, pilot, and Australian, and all I can remember him was a tall guy, he must have been about six foot six, and he was, he was a lovely man. And he came with him and we had those few days. I had the time of my life because I could go out when he went back off leave and I could go home and I could relay to the rest of the lads of my age now of what he was, what he’d been doing or what he told us what he’d been doing, and I was cock of the roost because my brother had been flying up there. And then, of course, when the news come through, stop. [Whisper] When the news came through, all, all hell was let loose and from that day on until, oh what, I was twenty three, twenty three when I got married, twenty three, until I was twenty, about twenty five, it was never mentioned. It was a [paper shuffle] a blank page. That’s it. Can’t help that. Yeah, it was never spoken about, the reasons, to me at that time I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t have been thinking what mum and dad were thinking. Mum really took it deeper than dad did, obviously, and it was never spoken of, not until of all things, it was, we went away on holiday, now where did we go? Yeah. We went, we went to Spain on holiday and we met up over meals and whatnot, and we met up with a gang of youngsters who happened to be German. God bless ‘em, and they were great, they were beautiful kids. I mean we were in our what, late twenties at this time, late twenties, and they were teenagers and we, I got talking to one girl one evening and just saying you know, where do you come from? ‘Oh I come from Germany.’ I said, ‘yeah, I gathered that,’ but I said whereabouts?’ Because also at that time I’d done my National Service and I was posted to Germany and I did my National Service in the air force in Germany and I loved the place and I’m just interested and I said, ‘where do you come from?’ ‘Oh’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t know where I come from, I come from Wuppertal.’ The red flag went. I said, ‘Wuppertal?’ ‘Oh yeah,’ she said, ‘oh,’ she said ‘It’s a beautiful place.’ I said, ‘oh!’ She said, ‘do you know it?’ I said ‘No, I know of it.’ I said, I’ve heard different places like Berlin, Dusseldorf and places like that,’ I said, ‘and I’ve heard of Wuppertal,’ and I never said no more and it wasn’t till we come home and till mum was saying how was the holiday, oh fine, lovely. Sheila, my wife talking, ‘yes,’ she said ‘we met up with some German people.’ And I thought then, oh please. Anyway mum never said anything so I said, ‘no,’ I said, ‘they’re lovely, a couple of lovely girls that we were speaking to,’ but I said, ‘you know they, they were telling us where they come from, they come from Wuppertal.’ And with that mother just turned round and said: ‘that was Sonny’s breaking point.’ Now she’d never spoken, what you were talking about just now, she’d never spoken about it, that long gap. So I thought oh, all right, now’s your chance. I thought no, no I won’t. So yeah, I turned round I said lovely girls saying about you know, what it was like there and they got, that she was proud that they got I think one of the only trams that are hung above the street level and she was pleased as punch to think that there’s not another place like it in the world and I gradually, I was able, I don’t know how, but I was able to twist a little bit and found out that he’d done so many trips beforehand, like the rest of the lads did, but something about the Wuppertal raid must have really hit home to him for some reason, because it really hit him hard, and he wrote one letter home and mother showed me, and I can’t find it now, but you’d think he was talking about his brothers, who he was dropping bombs on. I can’t get the equation right.
DM: No.
MC: But that was the only time that she really spoke about it, in all those years and after that, at different times certain things happened, like as I say I was in the RAF and different things happened and I could talk freely, I could talk freely, freely because I could talk about them German people, and those German people I met were gorgeous, some of them were better than ours. So, and then that got me, got me thinking well I don’t know, I don’t know a lot. I’m going to see if I can find out a bit more and I started fishing, as you do, and got different little bits and pieces and then -
DM: Would this have been before the internet, so you were having to sort of do all the legwork and everything?
MC: Oh yes, this was before the internet. I didn’t know where, where the hell to go and I tried the Air Ministry and all I got from the Air Ministry was that we cannot tell you because it’s the thirty year period or whatever it was at that time, and you know, we can’t divulge because you are not -
DM: Next of kin I suppose.
MC: Next of kin and all this business and I, it got to the stage where I thought I just don’t want to do it any more. So I left it. But then, as you can see, there’s three Lancasters over there, there’s another one behind you there, which is my prize at the moment, and there’s another one behind me there. So you can see I haven’t lost, I haven’t lost touch. And of course then this boy came into business, this one, he came into business. [tapping] And then of course I’m not au fait with it but the wife’s getting on better than me, so we sit down at different times and we go through it, try to go through it, and different pieces like I found out that the whole crew, their whole names, Bullimore, Dickens, Walker, Sycamore, Archibald, names that I never knew. I knew Hughendine and I knew he was Australian, and then, then I thought oh, can I get anywhere, and I was fiddling about with it one day and I’m still trying to find it to this day and it must be now what, oh, at least a year, I happened to flick through and hit on a briefing of, or not brief, a debriefing of a Luftwaffe pilot who did the damage, and shot down, or him and his partner, shot down [cough] my brother and I think it was Nettlejohn was another guy they shot down. Now I can’t find it. I think I’ve sent it off to one of my cousins who, [cough] strangely enough we had a bereavement in the family and I met up with a cousin who I’d never seen for [whistle] god knows how many years, and his boy, who’s a big grown up lad now, I mean, doing his own business and whatnot, and I got talking to him he is doing a family history. And he said, ‘god,’ he said, ‘just right timing ‘cause,’ he said, ‘have you got any bits and pieces of your family? Because it was Uncle Jim wasn’t it, was my dad’s brother was Uncle Jim, your dad.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Oh, cool, that’s good.’ I said, ‘Look, I’ll tell you what I’m doing it exactly the same as you, but I’m do the, or trying to do Sonny’s records.’ ‘God.’ ‘Tell you what I’ll do, I’ve done some,’ I said, ‘I’ll sling ‘em through to you and if you get anything you can throw ‘em back to me.’ Well I did, I sent him the log book here. I sat down with the wife and we did a copy on the ipad of his log book, and sent it through to him. Oh, he was over the moon, blah, blah, blah. So it’s now come back now and it’s coming back now and it’s coming back to now. But since going to, my daughter bless her: ‘I’m taking you up to Lincoln, Lincolnshire.’ ‘What for?’ It didn’t, didn’t go in. I’m too old to pick things up quick. ‘I thought what we’d do is, we’d have a weekend away. I’ve booked a Travelodge up at Lincoln,’ and things began to twig, oh yeah, and ‘I thought what we’d do is go to this place, it’s called Canwick,’ and I said, ‘yeah,’ ‘and it’s near the new museum.’ And I thought you little, little so-and-so, but she said also if we’re going to do that, it’s all in the same area, we could do East Kirkby.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘yeah,’ I said, ‘Just Jane, East Kirkby, cor, yeah. And Coningsby’s not far up the road and you could go, perhaps you could go there, and the Battle of Britain Flight.’ Well this was all my, all my easter eggs come at one go. So I said, ‘Well, you sure about this?’ Cause I said, ‘you know, you’re taking a lot on. I don’t think you’re going to be able to do it all ‘cause Coningsby’s closed I think it is, on the weekends, I think it’s closed.’ Anyway, ‘well,’ she said ‘we can always knock one out if we can’t do it.’ She said, ‘Do you want to go to the museum and East Kirkby?’ So I said, ‘well yeah, yeah, course I do.’ Which we did, and then of course we did East Kirkby first, and then from East Kirkby we went back to the hotel, and then the next day, I mean we went back to this hotel, and got to the hotel, booked in and all, did all that, went and had a meal and whatnot, had a walk and they got up in the morning and they went off out while they were waiting for us to get ready. And when she come back, she said ‘you’re not going to believe this dad.’ So I said, ‘what?’ ‘Well,’ she said, ’we’re going to the museum, the new Bomber Command place.’ I said, ‘yeah, that’s all right.’ Well she said, ‘you’ve only got to walk,’ I said, ‘what are you talking about?’ I said, ‘It’s not in walking distance!’ She said ‘It is!’ she said, because ‘if you look here,’ and she walked me I suppose a matter of fifty yards, and she went, ‘that’s where we’re going aren’t we?’ And where the place was, where we were staying, to the new museum, Bomber Command Museum, was a matter of about a couple of hundred yards walking. So we did those two, and she said all being well, she said if you want to go back up and go to Coningsby we’ll do that at a later date. So I’ve now got to the stage where I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m an old man, I ain’t got much longer. I’m eighty three, I’ve got all this paraphernalia here. They’re not going to want it, ‘yes we’ll take it dad,’ hmm, okay they’ll take it but they’ll put it in the cupboard, bless ‘em, and they’re gonna stay there, aren’t they, what are they going to do with it. So anyway this is where this lady at the Bomber Command Museum, that I was talking about, she took us on the tour, and like an idiot I didn’t get her name, but she was a lovely lady and she took us round and we were laughing and joking and talking and I just happened to say that I’d got his log book, ‘Oh you haven’t, have you?’ I said ‘yeah,’ ‘Oh!’, and then off the cuff I said well if its any good to you, you can have it.’ And I think she thought the same, all her eggs had come in one basket. I said, ‘well there,’ I said ‘you can have ‘em. I’m getting to the stage now where they come out at different times,’ I said, ‘my memory’s all around the place.’ ‘Oh would you, would you really?’ I said yeah. So that brings us I think to a closure,
DM: What did you –
MC: In as much as this business now if it goes to you. If it’s any use to you, I will hand it over to you. Don’t want to sign anything if you don’t need it, because it’s there.
DM: Okay.
MC: if you look and you think yes we’ll have that, we won’t have that, you do that, I won’t be offended.
DM: Okay. I’ll have a look in a minute. What did you find out about the circumstances that your brother died in? You said that you found out who shot him down.
MC: Not a lot. This business with the Luftwaffe guy, I mean he, he went into quite a detail, because it wasn’t only, he only, not only shot one person down, I mean [cough] he got quite a few to his record. Good luck to him. So he put in this article, and I mean if it’s any good to you I can get it and send it on to you because it was quite interesting, and as I say I can’t for the life of me find it, which is the idiotic things we do, [blows nose] so -
DM: So looking, looking at your, at this bit here, actual paper here, it’s saying they were flying to Turin on the night of 12th 13th July 1943 and it failed to return to base and I see they are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial so clearly they were never found. They’re not buried anywhere that you know of.
MC: That’s right. No, because that is on there, that goes on a bit further there. And also it says that it was, this guy, this German guy says it’s there -
DM: So out in the Bay of Biscay basically.
MC: So, we’re talking you’ll never find.
DM: No, that’s right.
MC: So all they’ve done is, this come off the internet, and all they’ve done is they’ve given a proposed route where he could have come off on anywhere, from the UK there and I take it he went that way to it.
DM: Yeah, I would think so. So it looks as though, if he was lost in the Bay of Biscay, they had completed their mission and were on their return trip.
MC: They were on their way back which would have taken them now over Annecy and out that way and supposedly somewhere round there is where that, those lads lay.
DM: Yeah. It says here he was twenty years old when he died.
MC: That bit there, and there, which you would read, sorry to take that away form you when you’re reading it.
DM: It’s fine.
MC: But then also – what oh.
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 Mike Cope
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
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
2018-11-27
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
ACopeM181127
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:26:04 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
Civilian
Second generation
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Germany--Wuppertal
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Description
An account of the resource
Mike is the adopted brother of James (known as Sonny) who was in the Royal Air Force with 460 Squadron. The crew were all English apart from the Australian pilot. James was a wireless operator/mid-upper air gunner. Mike was seven in 1943 when his brother’s aircraft was shot down over the Bay of Biscay on the night of 12/13 July 1943. No bodies were recovered. James was twenty years of age. Mike’s daughter recently took her father to RAF East Kirby and the IBCC where he donated the logbook belonging to James.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Anne-Marie Watson
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-07-12
1943-07-13
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
460 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
childhood in wartime
shot down
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/927/11170/PLiddlePAF1601.1.jpg
4b309d0d7a9d3d42699d17e49a761c54
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/927/11170/ALiddlePAF161130.2.mp3
a89943f2bf3dee6d245760aa6f62153d
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
Liddle, Peter
Peter Anderson Forgie Liddle
P A F Liddle
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Peter Liddle (b. 1921, 1556756, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 406 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
2016-11-30
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
Liddle, PAF
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Peter Liddle. The interview is taking place at Mr Liddle’s home in Badshot Lea in Surrey on the 30th of November 2016. Ok. Peter, if you start of with just a bit about growing — where you were born and growing up.
PL: Yeah.
DM: Before you joined up.
PL: Right. I was born in Falkirk in 1921. In Falkirk. A twin. A twin brother, Alfred. And in 1939 when the war started a mobilization order came out saying that all male person, all male persons between nineteen and [pause] sixty I think it was had to report to to the local Exchange in Falkirk. That date duly arrived. At nineteen my twin brother and I went and joined up. And three options — army, navy or air force. My twin brother and I being ex-members of the ATC at that time volunteered. Volunteered for aircrew duties. After the usual medical examination I was called up in [pause] 1940 and report to Aircrew Receiving Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground. From there kitted out and posted up to Initial Training at St Andrews. And from there I did a graded — posted to a Group Grading School. Flying School in Perth and soloed on Tiger Moths after eight hours instruction. From there eventually posted to Canada [noise of letter box ] Oh post. And to join the Empire Air Training Scheme. And after training in Canada — Ontario, Calgary, several other stations met my twin brother. He was, he was doing pilot training as well. And we came back to the UK in 1943. That’s it. Joined the Operation, Operational Training Unit, OTU at Lichfield. And posted to Blyton on twin engine Wellingtons having been crewed up at a centre in Lichfield. Three members of the crew were [pause] four members of the crew were Australian. Mid-upper gunner, wireless op, pilot and navigator. After operational training posted to a Conversion Unit at Blyton in Lincolnshire. Near Gainsborough. Converted from twin to four engine aircraft there via a Halifax first and eventually posted to a squadron at Binbrook. We picked up a flight engineer there because the four engined aircraft required an extra crew member and they weren’t trained in Australia.
DM: And you were flying as the bomb aimer. Is that right?
PL: Pardon?
DM: You were the bomb aimer.
PL: Flying as a bomb aimer.
DM: Yeah.
PL: After I joined the squadron, 460 in November ’43 and after one or two exercises, fighter affiliation, air to air firing and fighter affiliation our first raid was scheduled for the 19th of November. The big city. Berlin. It was the start of the Berlin bombing campaign and I went on the 19th, 21st and 23rd of November. We reached the target alright and dropped our bombs. No problem at all. We were engaged over the target by a Focke Wulf 190 but we managed to evade that attack. But my hydraulic hoses on the turret burst for some reason and I was covered in oil. Hydraulic oil. We, we turned then for the return trip back. There may have been a change of wind and and I think at the time we were blown south of the markers, route markers, on the way back and we finished up over the Ruhr. Happy Valley as it was called then. We were immediately coned by the radar controlled blue searchlight. Impossible corkscrewing, evasive action. We couldn’t get out of it and in no time the port engine was on fire and the captain told the [pause] control the hydraulics. The captain told the mid-upper and the rear gunner to vacate their turrets. The shelling got worse. We were flying about twenty, twenty two thousand feet at the time and no amount of evasive action we could get out of the radar controlled searchlights. The plane was on fire then. Diving down. And the captain said, ‘’Crew. Prepare to abort. Abandon aircraft.’ And I did the, as I was trained to do released the forward hatch so as we could bale out from there. I sat on the edge of the hatch. Oh I jettisoned the hatch cover down. Sat on the edge. Whipped off my intercom and oxygen mask helmet in case they snagged on the parachute cords and somersaulted forward out of, out of the plane with a terrific deceleration. I thought at first I may have got caught in the tail but no. I was safe. Dropped the rip cord away. I could watch on the way down the plane diving away on fire and at least three members of the crew were coned in the searchlights on the way down. I didn’t know where I was going to land because coming down at night you couldn’t tell the difference between the, the, what was water, what was buildings or what was forest. And luckily I came down in a patch next to the forest. I landed quite heavily but survived that. Followed my training instructions. Burying the parachute which was, which I did under the, next to a cattle truck. Truck. Cattle truck. Where the ground was soft. I then buried my flying kit except the battle dress. Checked on my escape kit. Buried all my badges etcetera and went into the woods and settled down there. I could hear the all clear go on the, on the sirens. Next morning. Early. It was still dark. Dawn. The first person I saw was a Wehrmacht soldier cycling home. Probably off duty. He had his can on the handlebars of his bike. Later on in the day I checked on my escape kit. I checked out where I was. I could tell I was in Germany because the navigator said, ‘I think we’re east of the Rhine,’ And I confirmed that by seeing the German notices on their electricity pylons — “Verboten." During the day I tried to get my bearings but I came across a group. A group of Hitler Jugend parading in the nearby roads. I managed to get between — in Germany on most roads there’s drainage on both sides of the road. I went down into one of those connecting culverts and I must have been seen by somebody but they came and asked me for my identification. They knew at once that I was an aircrew member. They took me to the local police station then and told me my pilot had been killed. Killed by flak in his parachute. They didn’t say who else had been killed at the time because they hadn’t found the two gunners who were still trapped in the aircraft. The other three members of my crew — they didn’t say anything about that. And I didn’t, I didn’t meet up with them until I eventually got, got to Dulag Luft via an experience. I was being escorted by a Luftwaffe officer and we had to stop enroute in Cologne. And unfortunately there was an air raid on at Cologne then and of course we had to go into the air raid shelters under the station. And that was bit dodgy because all the lights went out at one time and I was down there on my own. Aircrew. Just been on a raid to Berlin. The all clear went without any mishap down in the shelter and when we came above near the cathedral I could see the damage done to the, done to the, one of the spires. We eventually reached Dulag Luft and I was there until about the 8th I think. Oh [pause] I just forget. We eventually went by train. Cattle truck. It took about three days, two days to get across Germany to Nuremberg which is just north of Dresden. And I think I arrived, we arrived [pause] we arrived the 28th of November. Registered with the Red Cross then and given a number. Once you had that number there you were under the jurisdiction of the Red Cross. Anything could have happened between Dulag Luft and prison camp. Every time there was an air raid on then the trains were shunted into the siding. I was there too. We were duly photographed and that identity card, I’ll tell you about that later on, we acquired after the liberation by the Russians from the, from the German headquarters. That’s it. And fingerprints. All the information. That’s my air force number 1556756. That’s cleaned up, shaved, in the prison camp. A little — and the number.
DM: 203 263602.
PL: 263602.
DM: How did you feel when you arrived at the prison camp?
PL: Pardon?
DM: What were your thoughts when you got to the camp? What did you think of it?
PL: Well, on the camp it was at night because it was no — we had no idea where we were really until we went through the gates. Well, we were in prison camp then. The next day we were deloused. Hair all shaved off by the Russian prisoners. They were operating the machines. Like a horse trimmer. Deloused. And allocated a camp. While I was in the camp I was apprenticed. Trained at, being apprentice trained at the time. I managed to get a drawing board and information from the Red Cross through their education scheme. And during, in ’44 when, when there was a typhus, typhus epidemic in the camp we were, we were confined to our barracks. Barracks. Now, if you look at that there there’s the RAF compound consisting of four huts. Two hundred men in each side. A wood built hut there. Centre ablutions. And another two hundred odd. So there was four hundred in each. Aircrew. Locked up. The gate, the gate into the camp was there. Right. Well, we were moved from there out to hut sixteen. I think.
DM: That was originally the French and Dutch compound.
PL: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
PL: They wanted that for, for a different nationality. So, we were there ‘til the 23rd of November. Out on parade. Appell as they called it. No guards there to take the count. They’d left the camp the night before. And the next thing we saw the Russian cavalry coming up that road from Neuburxdorf. They came up there. Cossacks. Run to the front gate which was there and gone up straight down the main roadway. Back out again and off. That was it. So we were left in the charge of the senior British officer then for him to negotiate with the Russians. Now, the Russians held us in that, in the camp apart from allowing us to go out for foraging to get food. And the army were quite good at that. They brought back fresh meat and food. Chickens. And of course it didn’t do us any good because we couldn’t eat fresh meat. We’d been, we had been without parcels for about — well we were down to one parcel between twenty. So we were short of food. Eventually the Russians said, ‘Well, we’ll march you down to Riesa,’ which is a town quite near the camp. Near Dresden, ‘And we will billet, we’re going to billet you there until we come to some agreement with the Americans.’ They might have been holding ex-POWs as bargaining power with the Americans. A Canadian chap and I we decided we weren’t going to Riesa and we made our own way and stayed for a couple of nights with a German family enroute to the River Elbe. We stayed with this German family and after being in a prisoner of war camp for two years they gave us a bed for two nights with a white, the first time I’d ever seen a duvet. That was the German nightwear you know. And during, during the time there we were visited once or twice with the, with the Russian soldiers looking for female members of their family. We said goodbye to them but with regret because they wanted us living with them as a protection. We eventually got to the Elbe. And on a tributary of the Elbe at a place called Oschatz near Torgau. That’s where the Americans were based. We crossed the river there on a pipe bridge to the other side and the Germans were waiting there. Russian trucks were waiting there to take us to our camp at Halle. They’d captured an airfield in Halle. And from there they fed us and of course I listened to Churchill’s big speech on the, on the radio. And they flew us to Brussels. And then from Brussels to Cosford. At Cosford in [pause] near Wolverhampton. We were debriefed there. Medicals. Kitted out and sent home on leave. I duly arrived home at — mother didn’t know my whereabouts at all and she just said, ‘Come away,’ and that was it. Back home in Falkirk.
DM: You were going to say how you got hold of your identity card. Your prison identity card.
PL: I’ll tell you about that. After the, two or three days after the Russians when the camp had settled down we, one or two of us went up to the commander. Commander [unclear] Got into the filing cabinets. Found out where our papers were and we all — that’s when I got my, got the original. And that’s a copy of it. The original. It was all information of —that’s where I lived in Falkirk. Next of kin, identity and air force number. Shot down. They’ve got it down as Essen on the 23rd of the 11th ’43. That’s a photograph of that with the identity. And that’s the negative. When I got back I corresponded with a Mike Garbett. He was author of Lancaster 1, 2 and 3. He he got in touch with me to relate to him an experience. So I set all that down and sent it. Sent it off to him. So that’s really an account of what happened. That’s it. And he acknowledged, he acknowledged it. As I say when I was in the camp that’s the, that’s the original plan of the camp I drew when we were in quarantine. And I’ve based the, I shan’t get that out because it’s getting a bit fragile now.
DM: I can imagine.
PL: This is a small print of the — print of the camp.
[pause]
DM: Did anybody escape from the camp while you were there?
PL: Well, we had an Escape Committee but they weren’t very happy about escaping. The only means we had of escaping were the army. There was, the army POWs who were sent out on commando, work parties. And they devised a scheme where an army man would change places with an RAF man. Right. And when they went out in the working party the RAF man devised a way of escaping. It wasn’t very successful. Always came back into the camp. Two weeks in solitary. Punishment. But the way, the way I drew this at the time paced out all the perimeter lighting. About fifty yards between each column. That gave me the scale of the camp. And as I say when we were there last in April for five days we got a copy of [pause] a copy of this.
DM: This is when you went back to the camp.
PL: Back on a visit.
DM: Yeah.
PL: On a display. On a display board. P Liddle. Because after the war, after the release [pause] there’s a book on there. The visit. If you’d like to have a look at that.
DM: So you went back to the Stalag.
PL: Yeah.
DM: In April 2015.
PL: Went back on a Monday.
DM: Right. How many of you went? Can you remember?
PL: Well —
DM: Actual. Actual POWs. Obviously you had family and friends.
PL: I think I was the only one then.
DM: Really.
PL: Yeah. Guest of honour.
DM: Yeah. I bet.
PL: If you like. That’s my son and grandson. They were, they were, when we [pause] that’s one of the organisers. [unclear] Berlin. To the Imperial War Graves.
DM: Yeah. Cemetery.
PL: [unclear]
DM: Yes.
PL: Have you been there?
DM: No. I haven’t. No.
PL: That’s the Olympiad 1936. That’s inside the [pause] Soviet War Memorial in Berlin.
DM: How did the Russians treat, how did the Russians treat you when you were with the Russians?
PL: The Russians?
DM: Yeah.
PL: You mean the Germans?
DM: No. The Russians. When you, when the Russians liberated the camp.
PL: Oh. They were off.
DM: They didn’t sort of bother with you.
PL: No.
DM: At all.
PL: In fact the Russians prisoners of war as soon as the Russians, the Cossacks arrived they were off. Just knocked the fences down and went off.
DM: Went off.
PL: Where they went?
DM: No.
PL: No idea.
DM: And the Germans. How did they treat you while you were there? Were they fair do you think?
PL: They were fair because we didn’t have to go in working parties. That’s the main gate. Stalag IV-B. There’s a party going out now. A working party. But being senior NCOs we didn’t have to do work.
DM: Were you a warrant officer by then?
PL: No. I was a warrant officer when I got back [laughs] Six months Colditz. That was two of the members. Well, that’s a Memorial in the camp. No. In Neuburxdorf. It was built by the French POWs. Well France.
DM: So, what, how many nationalities were there in your camp? Obviously Australians, Canadians and British and New Zealanders.
PL: And there were Serbians and later on there was a Romanian. They were German allies at the time but they capitulated in ’44 and they brought all the officers in to the camp as POWs. And during the time they were there I acquired through the, through a middle man, a dealer if you like, a Polish Jew. Aye. His name was Novokowski. I remember to this day. He came to me one day and says, ‘I’ve got a pair of binoculars. Romanian officer’s binoculars.’ He said, ‘And I could get you a luger as well if you want. If you want it.’ he says, ‘I want three hundred. Three hundred cigarettes.’ Of course cigarettes were legal tender.
DM: Yeah.
PL: And I was quite fortunate in getting a regular supply from the squadron. So I’d still got them. I’ve got the, I had these binoculars buried in my bunk somewhere. Under the floorboards at the time. Took a brick out and put it under the floor. And I was able to keep the rest of the lads [pause] what was happening with the American Air Force raids. It was very helpful that. My son, my grandson, we laid a wreath at the, at the Memorial. Now, only those who have been imprisoned should talk to us about freedom. That’s the trans, my grandson translated that. That was left on. And that there, that little obelisk, holding up your original drawing. After the war, after the release of the camp the Russians converted the, refurbished the camp as a camp for dissidents for, ‘til 1949.
DM: Right.
PL: They electrified and boarded up all of the fences so as they couldn’t contact the outside world. We had a piper in the party. And that’s me actually sitting on the foundation.
DM: Of the hut.
PL: Of the hut.
DM: Of your hut. What happened to your twin brother? Did he survive the war?
PL: He, he finished up flying with the Second Tactical Air Force at Lubeck on rocket firing Typhoons. He survived the war. He died two years ago.
DM: Right. Was he a pilot or a navigator?
PL: He was a pilot.
DM: A pilot. Yeah.
PL: He was a pilot. He got right through the war without a scratch. That’s a display board in the camp. There was a section there where my plan was stuck up.
DM: So I assume — was the camp in old East Germany or was it in West Germany?
PL: It was in old east Germany.
DM: It was. Yeah. So you obviously wouldn’t have been able to visit it until after.
PL: Aye. Yeah.
DM: Right.
PL: And after, after the, where you crossed the River Elbe. That’s it.
DM: So how did you get across the river?
PL: I went across a pipe bridge. Bridges were down. Torgau and Oschatz. [pause] My —
DM: Can you remember when you were demobbed?
PL: Well, after my two weeks leave, repatriation leave, I could have. I could have come straight out of the air force. Ex-POW. But I opted for an extra six months to get back into civilian life after. After the two years I wanted to get myself acclimatised. So I was posted down to De Havillands and they gave me a job in a drawing office then to get used to. And after six months I came out and had an interview for a job with United Steel Companies in Sheffield. And my intended wife lived in Sheffield. She was an ex-wireless op. She corresponded with me while I was in Germany but her letters always came back with holes in them, you know. She told me too much about [laughs] And my, we were [pause] that’s a, a Dutchman did a panoramic view over there as a painting and made it available. You can see the similarity as the — to my drawing. What else have I got to show you? [pause – pages turning] Now, when the camp was being used as a camp for dissidents about seven thousand were buried in a mass grave. Never heard of again. No names. And this is a Memorial that the families erected.
[pause]
DM: Did you, was it four of your crew that survived?
PL: Pardon?
DM: Was it four of your crew that survived the —
PL: Four.
DM: Yeah.
PL: Aye. Well —
DM: Did you meet up with any of them?
[pause]
PL: I’ll tell you about them.
DM: Right.
PL: But I’ll just put these away. Years ago.
DM: So the —
PL: Ten years ago I got a letter from Australia.
DM: Right.
PL: It was from the nephew of the pilot. His mother was the pilot’s sister and she had handed all the information to her son who was flying with Quantas Airways at the time. And during one of his trips to Luxembourg they decided to do a bit of research and find the [unclear] I was going to show you that. I’ve got his letters. I’ve got his letters somewhere.
DM: You didn’t meet any of the crew while you were a prisoner.
PL: Pardon?
DM: You didn’t meet up with any of your —
PL: Oh yes.
DM: You did.
PL: They actually landed in our, the same camp.
DM: So all four of you were in the same camp.
PL: Yeah.
DM: Right.
PL: Well, used to [unclear] anyway this Grant, the pilot from Australia he researched the, found where the actual crash site was.
DM: Right.
PL: Mollen. He sent me this. That’s Mollen [pause] that’s — he researched all this and the crash was at Bahnhof. That’s a German station at Mollen.
DM: A station. Yeah.
PL: And at [pause] He spoke to a woman in there. She was sixteen when the plane came down. She remembers it when she was a girl. And in 2006 my son and I he was, he was a Porsche enthusiast at the time. He was driving a 911 and he bought a car. A Boxster S. He said, ‘We’ll take it to Germany, Peter and visit the — ' I had the information from the pilot.
DM: The crash site.
PL: He said we’ll go and visit that. And so we went there. Actually went to the site but the woman that lived there she was on holiday so we didn’t see her. But then from there we went to Reichswald. To the Imperial War Graves are. [pause] The pilot, the two gunners. That’s there and the pilot is there. Three men. Three of them they were re-interred at Reichswald near Arnhem.
DM: Right.
PL: So we went to visit that. The Australian pilot, Grant Worthington, he told us about where the graves were and he was really surprised. His one remark was about it was, about it was no signs of graffiti at all. It was designed by a British architect. Very moving really. There’s the Boxster I went in outside the station house. That’s where the plane came down. Near the Bahnhof. That’s the station house.
DM: Right.
PL: There’s the railway and it was near. It was on that road. The crash site and he’s put a plaque on there somewhere. We didn’t see it but we — no time you know. But these are different. That’s, that’s the obelisk at the camp there.
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 Peter Liddle
Creator
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David Meanwell
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
2016-11-30
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ALiddlePAF161130, PLiddlePAF1601
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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00:48:52 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Liddle was living in Falkirk when he and his twin brother both volunteered for the RAF. Peter became a bomb aimer and was posted to 460 Squadron at RAF Binbrook. He was shot down and as he was descending by parachute he could see his burning aircraft and at least three other parachutes coned by searchlights. Peter became a prisoner of war at Stalag 4B.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Oberursel
Ontario
Scotland--Falkirk
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-11
460 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
Dulag Luft
final resting place
Fw 190
memorial
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Binbrook
RAF Lichfield
searchlight
shot down
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/920/11165/PLawrenceJ1701.2.jpg
8f465cc3d7c812b00cee04912bd3f2d6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/920/11165/ALawrenceJ170510.1.mp3
e51fceacb81837afefd0f45e304345bb
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
Lawrence, Lawrie
Jack Lawrence
J Lawrence
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Jack 'Lawrie' Lawrence (b.1919, 533877 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator air gunner with 61 and 83 Squadrons. He was shot down and became a prisoner of 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
2017-05-10
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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Lawrence, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Lawrie Lawrence. The interview is taking place at Mr Lawrence’s home in Sevenoaks in Kent on the 10th of May 2017. So, Lawrie if you could perhaps tell me a little bit about where and where you were born and your early life.
LL: Well, I was born in this little town, Ossett. I just did the normal schooling. Grammar School. Worked for a year and then joined the Air Force.
DM: What did you do when you worked for the first time around?
LL: Oh well, I did a little, an electrician. And when I was seventeen and a quarter that August, joined. I could join the RAF.
DM: And why did you want to join the RAF?
LL: I wanted to fly. When I joined they said, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘A pilot.’ He said, ‘Well, do you want to make a career of the Air Force?’ I said, ‘Yes, of course. He said, ‘Well, don’t be a pilot. Go to Cranwell. Be a wireless operator or something.’ Which I did.
DM: And that was ok with you was it? You —
LL: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: You weren’t too disappointed?
LL: No. Well, I was a bit disappointed but he said there was no career. A pilot was four years on, six years off. That was it. So I had no choice actually.
DM: So how long was the training at Cranwell? Can you remember?
LL: A year.
DM: And then what happened?
LL: Then I was posted to Hemswell. They had old biplanes. Just getting rid of them, and we got Ansons which were just coming into service. It was just like flying in a flying club. Weekends we’d give displays everywhere. It was very nice indeed.
DM: How many crew in an Anson?
LL: Well, we flew with three but you could fly with two. But that was it. It was like being in a flying club. I used to go up, take one out on weekends. Go out and see friends. It was, it was very nice. But then we got Blenheims and that was the start of the trouble. We filled the graveyard at Hemswell Cemetery. Crashing. Crashing. Crashing. I’ve got photographs somewhere. This is a book. My daughter made me write it.
DM: Is that your memoir basically.
LL: Yes. What I could remember. They were not bad to fly in but they were very dangerous because they were the first Blenheims produced. That was about it.
DM: So this was a Mark 1 Blenheim obviously.
LL: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: Yes. Were you based at Hemswell the whole time with, with —
LL: I was at Hemswell. Yes. We got the Blenheims. We didn’t have them very long and we got the Hampdens of course. And I was suddenly posted from Hemswell to Waddington. I went to the, formed the what we called the little high speed flight at Waddington. We went and collected a new Blenheim and we were briefed to fly to Africa. And we were detailed for September the 4th.
DM: What year was this?
LL: ’39.
DM: Right.
LL: But of course the war broke out on September the 3rd so we suddenly flew back to Hemswell and we were operational. And we took off and made our first flight in February.
DM: Can you remember how you felt when war was declared? You know. What? Was it an exciting time? A frightening time?
LL: Just a normal time quite truthfully. Until February because we didn’t do, we didn’t go into, we never made a bombing flight until February.
DM: So, what were you doing between September and February?
LL: Just training.
DM: And that was still at Hemswell.
LL: Yes. Yes.
DM: Ok. So, if we go forward to February 1940 then.
LL: Right.
DM: What was your first sortie? You first mission.
LL: Oh. I can’t, can’t remember.
DM: It was a bombing mission.
LL: Oh yes. It was a bombing mission. And I’d been with this crew for three years. We had no trouble bombing aerodromes and things like that. We didn’t see, didn’t see much action. But getting, getting there at night was a bit of a trouble [laughs] Frightening the place.
DM: So how many of you in the crew?
LL: Four. And we never saw anybody from take-off to landing. We were all separated. Yeah.
DM: And how many missions did you fly on that first?
LL: Pardon?
DM: How many missions did you fly on your first?
LL: I flew thirty seven. I should have stopped at thirty but something happened. I went on to thirty seven. By which time we were, the crew had been together all that time and we were doing quite well finding targets, dropping our bombs. One morning we thought we’d got to Blackpool but it was the tower in Paris.
Other: Arc de Triomphe. .
LL: Pardon?
Other: Arc de Triomphe.
LL: Yeah. Arc de Triomphe.
DM: Yeah.
LL: Yeah. We were flying around it before — we thought we were in Blackpool. Things like that happened.
DM: Right. Yeah. That was, that would have been a bit worrying wouldn’t it? So when you came to the end of those thirty seven.
LL: My tour. Yes.
DM: Yeah. That tour. Yes. You obviously had some leave.
LL: I went to Upper Heyford as an instructor.
DM: Right. Ok. And instructing on wireless or gunning or — ?
LL: On everything to do with flying. Yeah.
DM: What did you think of that?
LL: A bit fed up actually. A bit dangerous too because sometimes you met a pilot who had never flown one before. And so after three months I volunteered to go back on flying and I was sent to Scampton. 83 Squadron. And I went with my pilot and we had to form C Flight. We ‘d got brand new crews coming in. We had to train them. It was a pretty dangerous sort of job.
DM: So that was just as dangerous as the job before.
LL: It was [laughs] Yes.
DM: But you had the same pilot as you had the first time around.
LL: I had the same pilot. We, we started, we formed the flight. C Flight. 83. And on our sixth flight we were attacked by a Messerschmitt. Messerschmitt. We never saw him. He opened fire and the port wing was completely on fire. The engine was hanging down and I was on the floor of the cockpit. A bullet had taken off my left part of my ear.
DM: But it didn’t take your ear off obviously.
LL: It didn’t. No. But it deafened it. Yeah.
DM: Was that the first time in all your missions you’d been attacked by another aircraft?
LL: No. We were attacked by a Dutch fighter before Holland came into the war.
DM: That was more of a warning was it?
LL: Fired back at him and he just waved to us and went off. Yeah. And we had [pause] we landed all over the place. We’d done, we’d done six.
DM: So this was your forty third trip.
LL: I’m trying to remember. Yes. Before I left [pause] before I left Hemswell I had a bad attack of pleurisy.
DM: Oh right.
LL: They took me off a flight and as I went to [pause] my crew flew. And then they gave me another crew but when I, when I was sick for a fortnight my crew was shot down. And the chap who took my place lost his left arm on his first trip.
DM: Did your crew survive?
LL: The pilot. The pilot was, yeah but on my second tour when we were shot down the pilot was killed.
DM: What about your old crew when the chap who replaced you lost his arm? So he obviously survived.
LL: They were prisoners of war.
DM: They were all prisoners of war.
LL: Yeah.
DM: Right.
LL: Yeah.
LL: So, ok so if we come forward now again to when you were shot down.
DM: Yeah.
LL: You were attacked by a Messerschmitt.
DM: Yes.
LL: The plane was badly damaged.
DM: [unclear]
LL: You were on the floor with your ear piece missing.
DM: Yeah.
LL: What happened next?
DM: Well, I shouted. There was nobody answering me so I just assumed everybody had baled out except, you know. So I baled out. I got out at about thirteen thousand feet so I was alright.
Other: And the rest of them?
LL: Pardon? Well, I didn’t, I didn’t, I never saw them again.
DM: Right. So, at that moment you didn’t know whether they’d survived or whether they hadn’t. Obviously later on you found out.
LL: Not at that moment. I didn’t know. I knew they’d gone.
DM: Yes.
LL: But I didn’t know what had, what had happened to them.
DM: Right. Ok.
LL: I landed in a field in Holland and I was in a hell of a mess. My right ankle was [pause] wasn’t broken but it was —
DM: That was from the parachute landing was it?
LL: Yes. Yeah. Parachute landing. So I went to the nearest house, knocked at the door and a chap came and [noise] so I told him who I was and he invited me in. And I don’t know what happened but I was busy stuffing all my gear into their fire and the Germans arrived. I don’t know where. They’d come from the guardroom, they said which was about fifty yards away.
DM: Oh right. So, you were in a, were you in, actually in a camp?
LL: Yes. But I was on the borders of it. Yeah.
DM: And what sort of a camp was it?
LL: I don’t know.
DM: A labour camp I suppose, was it?
LL: I have no idea.
DM: Right. So they arrived and arrested you obviously.
LL: They arrested me. Yes. They were charming.
DM: Really.
LL: Absolutely charming. Yes. And they took me to their guardroom and I met a young man there who had been to college in England.
DM: A German.
LL: A German. He gave me a tin of Woodbines. I’ll never forget that. I was talking to him. Suddenly the door flung open. In come the Luftwaffe. They started to knock me around. They took me in a car. They took me to their headquarters and I was just in solitary.
DM: So, how, were you sort of put in solitary confinement?
LL: Yes. Yes. And then I was interrogated by, I call him a gentleman. He said he was the Red Cross representative and he seemed to know more about my squadron then I did. I kept my mouth shut and I stayed there for about a week.
DM: Before you, before you were captured had you had training back in England about what the interrogation process would be?
LL: Nothing.
DM: Nothing at all.
LL: Nothing. It was going but I’d never had one. No. No.
DM: So you didn’t know what to expect.
LL: I didn’t. Absolutely not. I didn’t. I was quite raw. Yeah. And [pause] that’s right, then they sent me to Dulag Luft by train.
DM: Where? Do you know whereabouts? Is that in Germany or what?
LL: Germany.
DM: Yeah.
LL: Yeah. It was the camp where all, all prisoners went through.
DM: Right.
LL: [unclear] When I got to Dulag Luft I thought I was going to be interviewed by an officer and they showed me into this room and the officer was this bloke who told me he was the Red Cross representative.
DM: Same man.
LL: So I wasn’t very good mannered and I was given a fortnights solitary confinement [laughs]
DM: And were you in Dulag Luft for very long?
LL: I was there about a month I think.
DM: What was life like there? Was —apart from the solitary confinement of course.
LL: Well, it was up and down. For instance when I came through, or rather when I left Holland they sent me to Amsterdam. I beg your pardon. I’d forgotten that. I went to Amsterdam. I was in a prison there and this young Rhodesian chap came and he was in Stalag 3 and we were quite friendly. A nice chap. He said he’d baled out of a Manchester. And when we got to, he travelled to Dulag Luft. When we got to Dulag Luft there was another crew of a Manchester there and they told him after he’d baled out the pilot changed his mind and just flew back. So, he was a different person altogether then. And when I was in the Amsterdam prison in solitary I met a chap called Peter Thomas. And we could talk through the wire. I’ll never forget. He said he would never escape. He’d just passed his intermediate solicitor and when he was going, when he was in the camp he was going to study and when he got back to England he could become and full time solicitor. Then he was going to get into parliament. And he said, ‘I’ve got to get a very safe seat. And when I’m in parliament the Prime Minister will [unclear] for me. And I met him again long, long after the war and it had all come true. He was walking down the street with Neville Heath and he was the deputy. He was Deputy Prime Minister and became Foreign Secretary for a while. Peter Thomas.
DM: Amazing.
LL: He was an amazing chap. Yeah. I just saw him then but he’d made his mind up. This was ’41. August ’41. Yeah. He was an interesting chap. Yeah.
DM: So, Amsterdam. You were there for a little while.
LL: About a month I think, you see, yes.
DM: And was that an Air Force camp or was it a —
LL: It was. It was an Air Force. They called it an interview camp. Everybody was interviewed by a representative supposedly of the Red Cross. Things like that. Who knew more about what was happening than he did. And we were all very raw. Who did I meet? I met one or two well-known people. Bader.
DM: Oh, he was in there.
LL: He was there. Just went through. Yeah. And then we were separated one morning and said we were going to the, to an Air Force camp and as I was a senior and I was a flight sergeant, everybody else were sergeants we were put on a train and we went to a place. Stalag 357. It was an Army camp and we got moved into a room full of Air Force who had been naughty boys at a camp in Barth. Stalag Luft 1. And we were not treated very well.
DM: But you weren’t naughty boys.
LL: Pardon?
DM: You hadn’t been naughty boys there had you?
LL: No. But they had you see.
DM: Yeah.
LL: And they was held there.
DM: And you were treated the same as they were.
LL: Yes. Yes. And I met one chap coming down and he was interested in escaping. So we talked about it and talked about it. Anyway, we decided we’d change identities with a private soldier. And we were very lucky. A gang of New Zealanders had just arrived from Crete and they were in a hell of a mess. They just wanted to sit down. So I found a man who wanted to change identities. And a football match was arranged. A fight broke out and while that was, while the Germans were dealing with that I was changing my beautiful blue into his flea ridden khaki and I went back to the Army compound. He went back to the Air Force compound. And Jock, he also changed over. He became Army. So there were two of us.
DM: And why did you decide you wanted to be in that barracks.
LL: Because if you were a private soldier you could volunteer to go out to work. And if you get a working party of less than fifteen you only had one guard. Which made escaping pretty simple, I must admit.
DM: Right.
LL: Yeah.
DM: So obviously nobody gave you away. None of, none of the people in the camp.
LL: The only thing that happened was I’d been there about a month and they got me out one morning and sent me down to the hospital. I didn’t know what was going on and daren’t say anything. Anyway, a doctor came in and said, ‘Shave.’ ‘Oh, thank you sir.’ So I shaved my beard off. And he gave me, he shouted a load at me. He said, ‘Shave down there.’ They were going to circumcise me. This bloke had gone sick in Crete. His papers had just caught up with him. They were posted. I’d had it done many many years ago. Anyway, the Germans wouldn’t believe their papers were incorrect. Never would. So it took a bit of talking out of.
DM: But you managed to talk them out of it.
LL: I managed it. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
DM: So did you go out on a few working parties before you tried to escape?
LL: Well, I started. We started looking around for a working party and then we came into our first difficulty. We were with the Army now and the people in charge of all this stuff had been caught in Dunkirk, the early part of the war. And they were living like kings. They had their own beds and everything. They were in the same hut as all the food was stored. So if they were hungry they just went and helped themselves. And when they heard we were there to try to escape which would cause trouble they were non-cooperative. I’ll come to this a bit later on. Saved my life this, but they were uncooperative. We just found one sergeant. He’d been caught early and he fixed us up with a working party. And off we went [unclear]
[recording paused]
DM: You went on a working party. You went out on a working party.
LL: We went on this working party at the house.
DM: Can you remember what you went to do? What the work was?
LL: Oh, my God [laughs] I’m trying. I’m sorry about this.
DM: Oh, don’t worry. Don’t worry.
LL: Oh yes. Yes. This was a working party in a small village. A very small village. And they had been formed of privates caught in the beginning of the war and they were having a hell of a time. A good time. And one bloke who was there couldn’t read and couldn’t write. That was the type they were. And on a Saturday two of them were allowed to go to the local and have a beer. I was astounded at all this. And I was working on a quarry. I had to push for these things. Anyway, we decided we’d get away and one night, in those days you all slept together and your clothes were in a room with bars.
DM: So they locked your clothes away.
LL: Yeah. So we get [Maximal?] managed to hide them. Anyway, we were, we sawed through the window in the afternoon, half way through, steel things. And that night our one guard was asleep you see. We tried, I tried to get through the bars and all the wall came down [laughs] Anyway, we got away and we were walking more or less due east. We, we were heading for Yugoslavia and we, on the map we had a lake marked out where the Sunderlands were flying. Landing arms for Tito. And we wanted to get there by Czechoslovakia. Anyway, we walked as the crow flies. If we came to a river we swam it. If we came to a bridge we had to go underneath it and we never saw a soul. We used to start walking at 10 o’clock. Finish at five. Find a place to hide for the day. And then go on the next day.
DM: What did you do for food?
LL: We carried it. We carried quite a bit of food with us that we’d found in this working party. And one day we were going along and because we’d left the train and everything so we reckoned we were very near [unclear] and the border in to Czechoslovakia. And we were resting during the day as usual and a chap came up and smiled at me. So I smiled back and he went away. And we had a little natter the two of us. We said, ‘Has he gone for help? Has he gone to tell the Germans? Is he not going to bother doing anything?’ So we decided we would wait and see. And we were wrong. We were surrounded by Germans. They thought we were Russian parachutists. Anyway, the policeman they brought with them, he was, he was a nice gentleman. He said he’d lock us up but before he took us to his police station he took me around the back and shook hands with me. He was [pause] And then went to the police station and then we were interviewed by the Gestapo for the next, oh ten days. Knocked around a bit of course and then they decided we were what we said we were. Two private soldiers. And we were sent back to the camp. And on the way we were on a train, we had a the guard and we got off the train and there was a man sat there with his luggage and he said, ‘Hey, you blokes, come and carry my luggage.’ He spoke English. We said, ‘Oh, get lost.’ Anyway. when we got to the camp he was the war officer. I finished up with a month solitary [laughs] So I did solitary and then went back into the camp again.
DM: And you were still a New Zealand private.
LL: Yes. Oh yes.
DM: As far as the Germans were concerned.
LL: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then after we put our names down for a working party again and they said, ‘You’re not worth it. It’s not worth it.’ Anyway, one night this sergeant came to see us. He said, ‘I’ve got two vacancies in a party made up by fourteen privates.’ But they were all commandoes. They’d been caught on the raid to St Nazaire so, you know, they were wonderful to be with.
DM: Yes.
LL: People of the same mind. And we were posted. We were sent to Görlitz. It was an Elementary Flying School. So of course we told them who we were and everything. And the idea was we would try and steal an aircraft because they were all over the place. But we found out that they always stored their aircraft with empty tanks. Now, in the Air Force you always left your aircraft with full tanks. They stored them empty. So it was a no go. And we worked there for two or three months I think it was.
DM: What sort of work was that?
LL: Oh, anything they could find. My job was every day I had to get these two oxon, we named them Spit and Cough and then had to collect a German guard and we’d to go down to the nearest town, collect the rations, drive them back. That was my day’s work. I was very lucky. And one of them, one of the chaps there was an ex-cook from Savoy. So we really, we did live well. We’d no [unclear] We did very well there. And then we decided we would escape. So one night —
DM: Was this just the two of you again or —
LL: No. Two commandoes were coming with us. So, one night we got out, a simple sort of through, you know barbed wire and everything. And we were told that we were on top of a mountain and there were three ranges so the idea was to walk down and up and rest the next day. But when we got to the first range we could see eleven more [laughs] So we were doing that. Walking. What happened to us then? [pause] During, during the day we covered ourselves up with foliage. At night —
DM: Had you taken food with you again?
LL: Oh yes. The Savoy.
DM: He’d made meals for you?
LL: Because I was driving the rations back. So harmless I could slip a few into this thing or hide it in the cart or give the rest to the Germans.
DM: What direction were you heading this time?
LL: Czechoslovakia.
DM: Right.
LL: Yeah.
[recording paused]
LL: We came to the River Oder where we had a shave and a clean up and swam across it.
DM: What were you, what were you wearing? Because obviously you weren’t in a uniform.
LL: Oh, these khaki shorts and —
DM: So you were sort of —
LL: That’s all I had. Yeah.
DM: Right.
LL: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: Which is I suppose one of the reasons you had to travel by night.
LL: Pardon?
DM: That’s one of the reasons you had to travel by night.
LL: Yes. Yes.
DM: Yes.
[pause]
LL: Caught near [unclear] on the border.
DM: How did that come about this time?
LL: It was the local gendarmerie caught us again. And then we were, we were taken to a place called Ollmuth and was delivered into the hands of the Gestapo.
DM: Again.
LL: Again. Yeah. And then after a few days we went back to the thing.
DM: So, I mean you said the first time when you were being interviewed by the Gestapo —
LL: Yeah.
DM: They knocked you around a bit. Was it the same the second time? Similar techniques or —
LL: Similar techniques. Just the same more or less. Yes.
DM: They didn’t think you were paratroopers this time. Or did they?
LL: Pardon?
DM: Did they think you were, you were paratroopers again or did they think you were just escaped prisoners?
LL: Just escaped privates.
DM: Yes.
LL: And I was a New Zealander with a Yorkshire accent.
DM: Which I suppose they didn’t know.
LL: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
LL: Yeah. I missed quite a lot out quite truthfully.
DM: Well, you can go back.
[pause]
LL: Far more detail in there than I can remember [pause] When we were, when we were taken, being taken back to Landsdorf on the train. We got off the train and they took two of us to a house. They took us downstairs, put us in a cellar, there was no bed. Nothing. And we were there and we had one meal a day. And then on the Sunday they called me out. Took me to the bottom of the garden and said, ‘Stand there.’ That was 8 o’clock. At 9 o’clock six Army, six Army arrived with rifles and this bloke said I’d been looked at, investigated and I was going to be shot. This was 10 o’clock. And at 12 o’clock —
Other: Morning or night?
LL: Pardon?
Other: Morning or night? Morning or night?
LL: Morning.
Other: Morning.
LL: And at 12 o’clock I was stood there. The Army was stood there. A Luftwaffe officer arrived and said, ‘Come with me.’ Took me, and they took me back to the cellar. And I never knew why I wasn’t shot until three weeks —
DM: Three weeks ago.
LL: Yeah. There was a programme on TV. It was called shot soldiers or something. It appears that Hitler had, after the Great Escape from the thing he said anybody who escaped and was shot was to be, anybody that escaped and caught was to be shot. And the Gestapo was to carry out the shooting. Anyway, the Gestapo refused to do the shooting and that’s why I wasn’t shot.
DM: Right. So the fact that the Luftwaffe officer, it wasn’t because they’d discovered you were an airman.
LL: Pardon? No. that was —
DM: That was just coincidence.
LL: Just coincidence. He had an idea I think. And it appears that according to the dates that Hitler made this order, the Gestapo refused on the Saturday and I was on this to be shot on the Sunday. And they took me back to the cellar. Threw me in the cellar and that was it. He said, he said I’d been court martialled.
DM: In your absence obviously.
LL: In my absence. Yeah. And that was it.
DM: So, eventually they took you from that house back on the train, did they?
LL: Back on the train. And when I got on the train it was a truck and it had a barbed wire roof. So they put my hands through the barbed wire and handcuffed me. I travelled like that for twelve hours. Yeah. By which time I couldn’t care less they’d knocked me about so much. Anyway, I got back to Landsdorf. Yeah.
DM: So, you’ve escaped twice.
LL: Yes.
DM: Been caught twice.
LL: Yes.
DM: And you’re still a private in the New Zealand —
LL: I was still a private. And, oh then I was, that’s right they found out I was Air Force. I never found out who, how but they said who I was. I was, by this time I was so fed up. I’d been knocked about. I’d been, and I went into solitary confinement and Bader was in the next cell. So I had a natter with him and he tried to change identities.
DM: With you?
LL: No. With a private —
DM: With a private.
LL: Gave the game away. He was a big mouth. A good flyer and everything but one to stay very clear of. And they stuck me in Stalag Luft 3. And I was in the bed by the next door, hut rather and I was a bit brassed off. You know. So I started studying economics and then out of the blue one day they said, ‘You’re going on the train tomorrow to Hedwigenkoog.’ Which was, which was north. And I went to Hedwigenkoog . And this instructor came too so he formed a school. And I studied. Anyway, when I got back, it’s in the book. One day he says, ‘The Germans allowed me to take the exams from Oxford University. But the Germans will be there. You know. Make sure you don’t talk to anybody,’ because there was about eight of us. And we took, we took the exam. I took eight papers and after I’d been home for six months I had a letter from Oxford University to say I’d got honours in six. Yeah. Anyway, we stayed at this Hedwigenkoog, and suddenly we heard the guns. The Russian guns. So the Germans got us out quickly and marched off the road. And we were in a column and there was a column in front of us of people who had been prisoners a year more than me. And there was, and so Spitfires arrived and shot up the column with the oldest in and killed about a hundred. Yeah. We were only about a hundred yards behind. Very lucky. Anyway, we decided that we’d, we’d had enough so one night we deserted the column.
DM: And when you say we, who was —
LL: Two of us.
DM: Right.
LL: Two of us. And we walked on. That’s right. We kept going and we got to the German lines and up ahead we heard a bit of a battle going on. And it was a small village and there was a tank. A battle between Canadian tanks and German tanks. So then we waited for that to finish and then we walked down and met the Canadians and told them who we were. They said, ‘Well, look what are you going to do now?’ I said, ‘We’re going to walk to the Rhine and get across.’ They said, ‘Look, there’s a brand new Mercedes in that garage. Go get it and we’ll fill it full of petrol.’ So we got this new Merc out of this garage. The owner was shaking his fist at us. And they filled it full of petrol and we got to the Rhine but we couldn’t go across. There was only traffic in one direction. So we swapped it for a camera and walked across. I got to the nearest aerodrome and got a lift back and landed at a little place called Wing. And we were jolly and the WAAF were there to kiss you and everything. And then I was asked to go to the Endsleigh Hotel in London. I said, ‘Well, what’s, what’s wrong?’ ‘Oh, we want to interview you.’ Anyhow, I got to the Endsleigh Hotel. Nothing happened for about a week. And suddenly one morning I was taken to this office of a genera and he was asking me all about when I was a private. You know, a private soldier and what I did and everything. And he started picking. Picking holes. So, I said, ‘Look, you know your blokes were the least, you know the biggest worry in Germany were your blokes. They were having such a good time there wasn’t one of them fit to go. None of them would help us. Only the people caught in Dunkirk I think.’ Anyway, one bloke turned out to be warrant officer Sheriff. And he’d just been given the OBE. So my temper really let go. And it appears I was seeing this general, they were thinking of giving me medal. I don’t know what. Conspicuous Gallantry medal. Something like, like that. But the general told me to get out. [unclear]
DM: So do you think someone had given bad reports about you? Somebody —
LL: No. The general. I shouted my head off.
DM: Right.
LL: I was a fool. I was there. I was so [pause] this bloke was building the Army up to me and I’d had no help from the Army whatsoever. In fact just the opposite apart from one sergeant. And I told the general. He wouldn’t believe me. I lost my temper because I’d just been home for a short time. I wasn’t really myself. And he said, ‘Get out.’ So I got out. Never heard any more.
DM: So where did you go? Went back to —
LL: I went home and then a posting came through. I forget where it was.
DM: Had you found out by then what had happened —
LL: Pardon?
DM: Had you found out by then what had happened to the rest of your crew?
LL: Yes. I got the address of my pilot. He was buried in —
DM: Oh right. So you —
LL: Yeah.
DM: You had a letter that told you —
LL: Only the pilot. The other two I never, never —
DM: But the other two survived did they?
LL: I presume so.
DM: You didn’t run across them before or after.
LL: No. No. I never saw them again because I was in this Army camp for and attached to it for two years. So, I don’t know where they got to. But I’ve been to my pilot’s grave.
DM: And where’s that?
LL: There you are.
DM: What does it say? [pause] Holland. Jonkerbos War Cemetery in Nijmegen.
LL: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: So you have visited him.
LL: Yes. Yes. I have. Yeah.
DM: So where were you posted after you came home?
LL: Oh.
[pause]
LL: Oh, I was posted to a place called Bromley.
DM: Right.
LL: Which was a, one of these plotting stations. Plotting. It was a big house which had been taken over and it was a plotter and I was, I was duty officer for eight hours.
DM: Were you still a flight sergeant?
LL: I was warrant officer.
DM: A warrant officer.
LL: A warrant officer. Yeah. And I was there some time. I think from down there I went down to [pause] I can’t remember now [rustling papers] From Oxford you see. That’s the post I actually got [unclear] in.
DM: Was examined at Stalag Luft 6. 357.
LL: Yeah.
DM: Under the Authority of the University. Amazing.
LL: That came through, is it March ’64.
DM: It took a while.
LL: Yeah. I was a prisoner. Seven stone seven when I came home. That was me after three weeks, after three months at home.
DM: Fattened up.
LL: Yeah. I went to Biggin Hill, and then North Weald, and then Padgate. And then I was posted to Vienna.
DM: So what date are we?
LL: Pardon?
DM: What date are we now? What year are we in that you went to Vienna? Still 1945?
LL: Yes. And then in Vienna I collapsed. Oh, I got married and we went and I was posted to headquarters in Vienna and I collapsed one day. My lungs were bleeding so they flew me back to Wroughton Hospital. And then they decided I had six months rest. Then they decided that my right shoulder, there was a little, the [scab] was too bad. They had to cut it out. So I went up to, I went to another I can’t remember what hospital it was but it was a civilian hospital. Bader was in next door.
DM: You kept coming across him.
LL: Yeah [laughs] Cheshire, the bloke who had the homes.
DM: Oh, Cheshire.
LL: Cheshire. He was in the next. They treated it like a college but they, it was a wonderful place to be to be quite truthfully. One morning the doctor came around and he was a well-known surgeon of course that specialised in lungs. And he was telling me my budgie’s died, ‘I bet he died from bloody TB.’ And do you know he did a post mortem on my budgie and it was a heart attack. And he was, he was the biggest surgeon in England just about. Oh, and then I was posted to Hendon. At Hendon, I was commissioned now, I was posted to Cyprus. Headquarters Cyprus. And I retired from there.
DM: And what —
LL: As a squadron leader.
DM: And what year did you leave the Air Force?
LL: [unclear] yes.
Other: Oh, a bit later.
DM: So about 1964.
Other: What year did the, what year did Turkey get invaded?
LL: Pardon?
Other: ’71. So —
LL: What year were you born?
Other: ’55.
LL: It was after ’55 then.
Other: Yeah. Yeah. Because I was, you were in Wroughton when I was born.
LL: Yeah.
Other: And then you went to Germany. You are in Wildenrath in Germany. Dusseldorf.
LL: Dusseldorf. Yes.
Other: Then we were in, you were at the Ministry of Defence. We lived in —
LL: Pardon?
Other: Then you were at the Ministry of Defence at [unclear] Aerodrome.
LL: Yes. That’s where I met Peter Thompson. The navigator. That’s right.
Other: Then Hendon.
LL: Then from there I was posted to Cyprus.
Other: From Hendon to Cyprus. Yes. Yeah.
LL: Out there.
Other: Yeah.
LL: Yeah. And I did a tour as squadron leader in charge of all flights in the Near East. Nice posting.
Other: ’67 I think he might have —
LL: Pardon?
Other: Sixty — I think it’s ’64 you must have come out.
DM: So, if I take you back to —
Other: No. It’s later than that. Because I came back to, well you came out of the RAF. I went to Churston and I was —
LL: I came out in ’59.
Other: Yeah. No. No. It was later than ’59.
DM: ’69 probably. ’69.
Other: ’69.
LL: Yeah.
Other: Yeah.
DM: So, take you back to 1945.
LL: Yeah.
DM: Why did you decide to stay in the Air Force?
LL: Well, I was, I was a career. I always —
DM: Oh yes. of course you, yes because you joined as a career person when you were seventeen years old. Of course. Yes. Yes.
LL: Yeah. That’s why I became —
DM: So that was always the plan.
LL: That’s why I didn’t go on the pilot’s course, I thought.
DM: Yeah.
LL: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
LL: Yeah.
DM: Earlier on when we were speaking before we started recording you said that when you, before you joined the Air Force you played Rugby League.
LL: Yeah.
DM: Did you carry on playing rugby through your Air Force career?
LL: Yes. Yes. I played for Cranwell. Yeah. Cranwell Command.
DM: That was Rugby Union.
LL: Rugby Union. Oh, of course.
DM: What position did you play?
LL: Centre.
Other: Eddie Waring was your manager at one time.
LL: That was Dewsbury.
Other: Oh that’s —
LL: That was Rugby League.
DM: That was when you were young man. Yeah.
LL: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
LL: Yeah. And I wasn’t happy in Cyprus. I didn’t feel as though I was getting anywhere. And I wrote to somebody. Anyway, they put me in touch with Barclays Bank and when, when they realised I’d got six honours from Oxford they offered me an immediate job as a first cashier. They said, ‘Where do you want to go?’ And I was mad on sailing because in Cyprus you worked in the mornings and sailed in the afternoon and I was mad on sailing. So I said, ‘I want to go to the seaside.’ So they gave me a choice of three. Anyway, that morning we had to, we were testing our Comet and we flew over Torquay and Paignton and the other one was up on the north coast. Anyway, there was three. But where did we go?
Other: Brixham.
LL: Brixham. Brixham seemed the best to I put in for Brixham. Came down to Brixham and that, moved in to a house and I did ten years.
DM: Always in Brixham.
LL: Pardon?
DM: Always in Brixham.
LL: In Brixham. Yeah. Oh, yes. I was in charge of the bank and that was it. Six years. Until we’d had enough and one day my wife and I were talking and she said, ‘Why don’t we go abroad?’ Anyway, we finished up I retired. We came to Spain and we saw a house half built on the, we arrived on the Sunday, saw the house on the Monday, bought it on the Wednesday [laughs] And in a pub we met a chap who did furnishings and we gave him a cheque. Just gave him a cheque in a pub. Five hundred pounds. And that was June. And we came in September and it was finished, furnished and we were there for ten years. No. Twenty five years.
DM: Whereabouts in Spain was it?
LL: [unclear] which is five or six miles from Malaga. And nothing went wrong with us the whole time. We trusted them, they trusted us and we had a marvellous time until my wife died of heart trouble. And then talked me into coming back out. I was five years by myself but that wasn’t very nice.
DM: In Spain.
LL: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
LL: Sold it with no trouble. Came back. And that’s it.
DM: Have you kept in touch with the RAF?
LL: Only through the POW. And I got friendly with Charles Clarke, a bloke called Anderson. But there’s not many of us left now. The next reunion is in September I think at Henlow. I shan’t bother. It’s too far to mess around.
Other: We got invited to —
LL: Pardon?
Other: We went to Number 10 though, didn’t we?
LL: Oh, that was that was, yeah. Got especially picked for that. But for the old POW they go to Henlow every year now. They want to stay the weekends. Go in the mess. Too much trouble.
DM: If I can take you right back.
LL: Yes.
DM: To when you were a young.
LL: Please.
DM: Whippersnapper.
LL: Yeah.
DM: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
LL: Sister. Yeah.
DM: And did your dad fight in the First World War do you know?
LL: No.
DM: Serve in the First World War?
LL: No.
DM: He didn’t.
LL: No
DM: So he was the wrong age I guess.
LL: Yes.
DM: So he was one of the lucky ones really.
LL: Yeah. Just worked in a mill.
DM: Yeah.
LL: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: What became of your sister?
Other: Your sister was older wasn’t she?
LL: She was a few years older than me. Yeah. When did she die?
Other: She died. Oh, quite a few years ago. She got dementia. Yeah. Very badly.
LL: Yeah.
Other: And was in a home for quite a long time.
LL: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: So, looking back. Do you think, this is probably an unfair question what part of the Air Force was your, was your happiest time?
LL: Oh. Bomber Command before the war. Marvellous.
DM: The flying club era, so to speak. Yeah.
LL: Wonderful. Yeah. Yes. It was wonderful. We were happy all the time but there was no bullshit or anything like that. And it was, it was grand. Yes.
Other: So you used to test the planes then, didn’t you?
LL: Pardon?
Other: You used to test the planes.
LL: Yes. Yes. On my, when I was shot down I was already on my sixth trip and when we formed C Flight, 83 our job was to meet new crews straight from training and take a navigator and a rear gunner, take them up with us for their first trip. So every time I went with my pilot the other two crew were on their first trip. Every time. It was a bit of —
DM: Yeah.
LL: You know. Because we usually, we had so many crashes. We crashed on, the navigator was lost half the time. And after [unclear] one day we crashed on Blackpool Racecourse. We crashed on Shoreham front. We had two bad landings where we wrote the aircraft off. Ran out of petrol. That was the six.
DM: So none of them were pilot error. They were all navigational error and things like that.
LL: Navigation.
DM: Yeah.
LL: Yeah. I used to try and home on places but there were so many other aircraft homing, you know and because as I say when that [unclear] and the tower came up the navigator said, ‘Oh, Blackpool.’
DM: But it was the Eiffel Tower. Yeah.
LL: Yeah. Which I’d flown around in 1938. Below the thing. The celebration of the Bastille.
Other: You flew, you flew through the arch didn’t you?
LL: Pardon?
Other: You flew through the arch.
LL: Oh, that first time. Yeah.
Other: Yeah.
LL: We went around below the tower. Yeah. The three of us.
DM: So to be clear when you were shot down which was on your second tour but the —
LL: Yes.
DM: That Was with a raw crew as well? Was it?
LL: Yeah.
DM: Just you and the pilot —
LL: That’s right.
DM: Were the only two experienced members of the crew.
LL: That’s right.
DM: You were the only experienced member of the crew who survived
LL: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Six trips. We did six trips and each time we had to take a brand new navigator, a brand new air gunner and keep telling them all the way how to climb around, keep looking around out there. It wasn’t very nice but it was a job to be done and we did it. Yeah.
DM: But you must have wondered, why you?
LL: Because we formed the flight, you see.
DM: Yeah.
LL: And with the crew Danny and I, Danny Wilcox, his, his best man when he was married was [pause] I’ve forgotten his name. The bloke who lost his arm in the air force.
Other: There will be a few of those, dad.
LL: Pardon?
Other: There will be a few of those.
LL: Yeah. He was very well known. I can’t remember his name now. But we were together. That was it. Yeah. Because we were all [unclear] captains you see, six months if that.
DM: Did you meet your wife during the war?
LL: No.
DM: After.
LL: No. When I was at Padgate. I’d just, I’d just been commissioned. I was posted to Padgate as officer in charge of closing it for recruits going through Padgate. Which was [unclear] yes. Yes. I left the Air Force ’69. March ’69. That’s the letter from them saying goodbye to me.
DM: So you were in the Air Force for thirty three years.
LL: Thirty seven.
DM: Thirty seven years.
LL: Til ’69. Yeah.
[recording paused]
LL: I always remember when I went, came from Amsterdam to Dulag Luft they were marching me through Amsterdam and a lady came and gave me a medal. The Germans knocked the hell out of her. Yeah. [unclear] concentration camp. Ollmuth Civil Prison. Görlitz. Nixdorf punishment camp. Sagan. [unclear] A bloke called Grimshaw who spoke perfect German and he got out and he fixed something up in the dams, I think. Anyway, the Gestapo got him. Shot him.
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 Lawrie Lawrence
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
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
2017-05-10
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
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Sound
Identifier
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ALawrenceJ170510, PLawrenceJ1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:01:26 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Jack ‘Lawrie’ Lawrence planned on making a career in the RAF and joined in 1938. He enjoyed those early days when it felt like he belonged to a flying club. This was interrupted by the start of war and operational flying. He flew in Blenheims and notes they ‘filled the graveyard’ because of the accident rate with the aircraft. He volunteered for a second tour after a spell as an instructor. He was shot down and became a prisoner of war. He swapped identity with a New Zealand soldier so he would be able to volunteer for working parties which would give him the opportunity to escape. He made two attempts but was caught and delivered into the hands of the gestapo. On his last recapture he was held in a cellar before being called out into a garden where he was told he would be executed. He was unexpectedly reprieved and returned to prison. During the Long March he made his last escape and met with Canadians. He and his friends drove a Mercedes to a bridge and they then swapped the car for a camera and continued their journey on foot until they reached freedom.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Oberursel
Netherlands--Amsterdam
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1945
83 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
Dulag Luft
escaping
Hampden
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Cranwell
RAF Hemswell
shot down
Stalag 8B
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/903/11143/PJonesMH1602.2.jpg
b65d6b3db33bc69f70b5a6155995f155
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/903/11143/AJonesMH160422.1.mp3
d49d041dc66e4b40ec69f26d7b270c99
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
Jones, Mervyn
Mervyn Henry Jones
M H Jones
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Mervyn Jones (1600670, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 106 and 218 Squadrons.
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
2016-04-22
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
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Jones, MH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Mervyn Jones. The interview is taking place at Mr Jones’ home in Farnham in Surrey on Friday the 22nd of April 2016. Ok. Mr Jones if we could start off with you saying a bit about your early life.
MJ: I was born in Abercynon. A small mining village at the junction of the Aberdare and Merthyr valleys. My father was a miner. Like most miners in those days there was very little money available and we were quite poor but we lived and enjoyed ourselves. My father wasn’t very keen on seeing his children being brought up in a mining village. First of all he went to Burnham on Sea or Highbridge to work on the farm there but decided that farming was not going to be very much better than mining from his children’s point of view. So he was given a lift whilst he was aiming to go to Poplar where he was told there was a lot of work. He got as far as Uxbridge and when he asked for directions to Poplar he was, he was then asked, ‘What are you going up there for?’ He said, ‘Work.’ And the individual he was talking to said, ‘Well, don’t go there. Go to Slough.’ So, he said, ‘Never heard of the place. Where is it?’ So, they told him and he and the friend he was with they went to Slough and spent the, spent the night on a, sleeping on a bale of straw in the cattle market only to be woken up at about 5 o’clock in the morning by all the cattle coming in. That was in about August. Dad got work and he managed to get a house to rent. And the rest of the family that’s my mother, my brother and two sisters travelled up in December 1935 and we lived, lived in Slough and around for quite a number of years after that. In 1939 I became employed by a firm of solicitors in Slough as the office boy. Duties were not too onerous but I was given various books to study with a view to making a career in the law.
[recording pause]
MJ: One little backdrop. In 1937 having read various newspapers about football teams I decided that I would go to the Arsenal ground and see a football match. I told my parents I was staying on this particular Saturday with a school friend when in point of fact I travelled up to Paddington and then on to Highbury. Saw a wonderful football match and I’ve been an Arsenal supporter ever since. That was in 1937 [pause] Come 1941 I volunteered, or went to join the air force realizing that I was in fact twelve months too young. So I told them my birth was 24th of January 1924 instead of 1925. And fortunately for me no, nobody really queried it. And I was duly signed in and in April 1942 I was told to report to Padgate. The [pause] my father had signed all the forms for me to join. He believed that I wouldn’t pass the medical but whether they were rather lax or not I don’t know but —
DM: Why did he think that?
MJ: Well, all the, all the Jones’ family suffer with ear trouble and although in those days it wasn’t too bad I still had trouble from time to time. I think it stemmed from when I, when I was a very small child every time I was teething I got ear infections. And it’s effectively the same thing throughout the whole of my life. If I get a cold I get an ear infection. Sometimes in both which is rather embarrassing. The — I reported to Padgate where I was kitted out and so on and then we went on to Blackpool. The radio school there. And having completed that course went on to Yatesbury where I was very pleased to pass out as top of the course which surprised me and surprised the family as well. We went from there to Peterborough and a little satellite drome called Sibson. We were supposed to be there to do repairs, or repairs to the radios in the Harvards that were used for training but for the whole time that we were there we didn’t see a radio. Didn’t see anything at all. All we did was guard duty and run of the mill stuff. But we went back to Yatesbury and finished off the course where again I managed to be top of the course. From Yatesbury we went to Stormy Down in South Wales for a gunnery course where lo and behold I came top of that course as well. I won’t tell you the whole secret of it but a lot, a lot of people were pulling my leg about the fact that the warrant officer in charge of both radio school and then the gunnery school was a personal friend of the family [laughs] So, I rather suspect that my successes were partly, must be partly down to him. I didn’t think I was that brilliant. I thought I wasn’t a bad wireless operator. We went from there to various sites. Cark and Cartmel for flying in Ansons. And then on to Market Harborough where we were flying in Wellingtons. Mark 1 with Pegasus engines. Totally underpowered clapped out old things that from time to time ploughed into the ground and killed all the crew. Whether we were lucky or not I don’t know. I think I must have been because we had no problems at all. We, we crewed up there with a pilot, Ginger Durrant. A navigator called Jones who unfortunately got us lost on a couple of occasions and got shifted out of the [pause] shifted out of our crew. And myself. We then, we finished training there and were sent to Swinderby to convert on to Stirlings which I was never enamoured with. But having done the conversion course we were then sent to Syerston to convert on to Lancs. Which we duly did. And then got posted to Scampton for about three weeks. And from Scampton we went to Metheringham. We went there at the end of February 1944. We got there and two days later it snowed and it stayed snowy. No flying for about two weeks. Then we did the usual familiarisation before we were ready to go on ops. It wasn’t until the 20th of March that we, we did our first trip which was to Frankfurt. And we had bombed and we were flying straight and level to take photographs and we were suddenly coned in searchlights which was quite an alarming experience. One minute it’s pitch black. The next minute you’re absolutely flooded with light. Anyway, the skipper put the aircraft in a very steep dive and threw it all over the sky and after a while and it’s difficult to judge how long it took, it might only have been a few minutes. It might have been a few seconds. But anyway we were suddenly in the dark again. And the thing that fascinated us was there was no anti-aircraft fire. There had been all the time that we were travelling but whilst we were in the searchlights there was nothing. And we came to the conclusion that searchlights were holding us so that night fighters could come up and attack. But anyway they didn’t and we got away with it. We got back on course. Came home with no problems at all. The second op was a major disaster. We were briefed to go to Berlin and it was the last of the raids of the [pause] I think they called it the war against Berlin but whatever it was it was the last of the main force flights to that city. Well, we took off and we got part way, about half way across the North Sea and the skipper doing the usual checking with everybody. Making sure they were ok. Called up the [pause] mid-upper gunner and got no reply. So the usual thing, if anybody wants anything done they call the wireless operator. So they called me, ‘Go and see what’s wrong with Wally.’ So, I went down there and shone a torch in to see what had happened. Wally was well away. He was flaked out and his oxygen tube was flapping in the breeze. How long he’d been like that we had no idea. Presumably from take-off. But anyway we dropped down to about eight thousand feet and kept going. And the engineer and I tried to get him out of the turret. At first we lifted him up with his bottom, unhooked the seat and with that we couldn’t hold him, the weight of him, he slipped down and was totally wedged. Feet in the front. His head over the guns. And his bottom sticking out of the turret. And it took us an hour to get him out. We strapped him in the rest bed, plugged him in to oxygen and the intercom. And by then we were well over the Baltic so we climbed up to operational height and turned to go due, almost due south to Berlin. This was the raid where the Air Ministry was forecasting the winds of sixty miles an hour. And our navigator said, ‘It’s more than that. It’s more like ninety.’ And in fact that’s what it was. So when we turned to go to Berlin we shot down from the Baltic to Berlin in no time at all. Realising that we were going at a fair, fair old lick he decided that when we, when we got to the target if it was marked we would, we would drop our bombs on the first run so we didn’t have to go around into wind which would reduce the ground speed considerably and making us a sitting duck for night fighters. Anyway, we went through Berlin and we dropped the bombs, got back on course to go home. No problems at all other than Wally. Anyway, we got, we got fairly close to England and got a message we were diverted to Wing in North Bucks so changed course and then the engineer, his nickname was Podge, he said we’d got trouble with the hydraulics. So, when we got over England we, I was given the task of pumping down the undercarriage to make sure we could land in reasonable fashion. I did that and Podge indicated to all of us that we, we would be able to land on wheels but we would have only a limited amount of flap and possibly no brakes at all. So anyway we, we got permission to land at Wing. We came in and landed and we landed on the almost on the perimeter track to try to make sure we had enough runway to be able to stop. But we didn’t. We just went off the end of the runway and pranged the thing. And when we got out we were told by the ground crew that, at Wing, the aircraft was a write off. Which turned out to be not quite true. It was very badly damaged but it was eventually brought back to Metheringham and they took about two and a half, three months to repair it. So we were taken back the following day by another crew, interviewed and so on and that’s the last we heard of it. But the one thing that we had discussed on the way back we would not say anything at all in debriefing or any, anywhere or anytime afterwards about what happened to Wally. Because if we did he would undoubtably be grounded and we didn’t fancy going through the rigmarole of having another replacement as we’d had a replacement navigator with Jones having been thrown out. We had a rather large individual given to us as our new navigator. A fellow called Jim Pittaway who was quite a bulky fellow and naturally he was called Slim. I use these nicknames because when we were flying we used those nicknames. We never called each other pilot or skipper or wireless operator or gunner or whatever. It was always nicknames. The, the bomb aimer was Buck. His name was Buchanan. The pilot was Ginger. The engineer was Podge. The navigator was Slim. I was Taff. The mid-upper gunner was Wally. And lo and behold the rear gunner was Keith [laughs] because nobody could think of a suitable nickname for him. Anyway, we, we had two little dodge it flights for the first experience. The remarkable thing was that apart from a few flak holes in the rest of our ops we had no problems at all. It was uncanny really that we did another thirty three ops and we had no difficulties of any description. It was quite remarkable. When I say that there were two occasions when we had to abort for an engine trouble but you know, that that happens to everybody. The — can we, for a moment?
[recording paused]
MJ: We did thirty five ops because quite, quite a few of them were at one stage described as a third of an op. Mainly the occasions when we went to France instead of Germany. After, after our fourth trip, the fourth one in fact was that infamous Nuremberg raid, after our fourth trip we were given Able as our aircraft. And we did twenty eight out of our thirty five in that aircraft which is, was a squadron record for that particular aircraft which completed a hundred and eleven ops [pause] The painting up here was given to me last year as the sole surviving member of our crew in recognition of our twenty eight ops in that one aircraft. The nearest to us — I think there were two or perhaps three that did eleven but that was the gap. Eleven to twenty eight. It was quite a record.
DM: Did you keep in touch with the crew after the war?
MJ: I did with the pilot. With Ginger but not the others. I initially made contact with them but it just faded away. So I thought oh well perhaps they’ve got their own lives to live. They didn’t, perhaps they don’t want to live in the past. But it was only Ginger that I kept in touch with and it was fortunate that he was in touch with the rest of the crew and passed on information about them from time to time.
DM: When you were on ops what were the off, what was the off duty periods like? Did you all associate together as a crew or — ?
MJ: Yeah.
DM: Were you all NCOs or —
MJ: Until, until we got to the squadron we were all NCOs. And then Ginger was commissioned. But the rest of stayed as sergeants, flight sergeants and ultimately warrant officers. A lot of our raids as I said were over France. And we operated twice on D-Day. First time was about 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. And then we went back again 11, 12, 1 o’clock for a second op. And then after that it was communications and occasionally German reinforcements. You know, tank squadrons. That sort of thing. They also did a lot of communications. Railway junction sand bridges and so on. There were also a couple of doodlebug depots. One in particular that we went to twice in forty eight hours was a place called Saint Leu-d’Esserent which was a storage place for these doodlebugs. We operated that particular night with 617. We went in at, the base that we had was 617 at Woodhall Spa, 83 and 97 Pathfinder Squadrons at Coningsby and 106 at Metheringham. That was base. We flew several times with 617 but that Saint Leu-d’Esserent was a bit of a shocker really. The storage was actually built into the side of a mountain and we were briefed to bomb the approach roads and railways. 617 in the first raid had other duties. I don’t know exactly what. But certainly on the second one they had these earthquake bombs and dropped these on top of the, not on the, right at the top but up the mountain and blew the whole thing to pieces. It was, I gather never repaired after that. The trouble was from our point of view that on the first raid there were two aircraft lost. On the second raid there were five. Which was the second time that the squadron lost five aircraft. The other occasion was [pause] I can’t remember the name of the place we went to but it was the night that 106 Squadron got its first or perhaps I might say the second Victoria Cross. I say second because Gibson was the officer commanding when 106 was at Syerston. And from there of course he went on to the Dambusters and that’s when he got the VC. We finished our ops in July.
DM: ’44.
MJ: ’44. The last raid was a bit of a nightmare from the weather point of view. We flew from Lincoln down to the middle of France to Givors. And for most of the journey we were in a thunder storm and lightning flashing everywhere and so we had to switch all the electronics off. We didn’t want them blowing up and starting a fire. We were about a quarter of an hour short of Givors when the clouds stopped. Beautiful evening. We duly bombed, turned around, came back and flew all the way back in the same thunderstorm. Very uncomfortable journey. Well, I then finished. Well, we all finished our tour. Ginger, because he’d done the second dickie trip had done thirty six. The rest of us with the exception of Slim, the navigator who missed one op because he had tonsillitis, he did thirty four. The rest of us did thirty five. I was then posted back to Market Harborough instructing. Something which frankly I hated. You get in the aircraft with a trainee wireless operator and he was told to operate. If he had any trouble come to me. Well, I must have been lucky or very unlucky depending on which way you look at it. I was never asked to do anything. So all I did was sit on my parachute on the floor opposite the wireless operator and toured around the country in these clapped out old Wellingtons. Didn’t like it at all. And I made several attempts to persuade the CO to send me back to a squadron but he wouldn’t have it. Anyway, at the end of, end of six months I was posted. Sent to 218 Squadron in Chedburgh in 3 Group which, the squadron had only fairly recently converted on to Lancasters. That prior to that they were still flying in Stirlings. Anyway, we, I did three more ops and the war ended. So I was a little frustrated because I thought there was a good chance of being able to complete a second tour. Anyway, that was that. The end of thirty — thirty eight ops. We then had the Manna ops. Flying and dropping food in Holland. I did four of those. Then I did seven Exodus trips bringing back British mainly prisoners of war. Flying them from Juvisy to Hurn, outside Bournemouth. And then back to Chedburgh. And then I did one ferrying a Lancaster to Abu Sueir which is near Port Said in Egypt. The idea was the aircraft were then being sent out to the Far East. We only did one. It was, it was a glorified holiday. We were stationed then [pause] I had a pilot called Lofting, a navigator called Andrews and an engineer who was called Conant. He proudly announced that his father who lived at Cottesmore where there was a ‘drome anyway, his, his father was the MP for Rutland. But he, he — no I won’t go on that. We’d, we were stationed at [pause] I’ve forgotten the name of the aerodrome now. Near Newquay anyway. Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. We were stationed at Dunkeswell near Honiton and we flew from there to St Mawgan which is near Newquay. From St Mawgan we were briefed to fly to Abu Sueir. Stopping first at Tripoli. Unfortunately on the very short journey from Dunkeswell to St Mawgan the port inner packed up and the radio failed. So there we were at this VIP station where all anybody flying across the Atlantic especially the big wigs landed there and were treated with food that was by our standards out of this world. And we were given the same food, the same treatment as the VIPs. I could have stayed there for the rest of the war actually. It was rather nice. Anyway, we, they brought in a new engine. Fitted that. And repaired the wireless. Or so they thought. We took off heading for Tripoli. Got half way across the Med and the engines started playing up again and the wireless packed up. So we decided the nearest ‘drome was an American one at Tunis so we logged in there. Contacted Tripoli. Told them what had happened. And we, we spent about a week in Tunis doing all the things that we couldn’t do back home. Again living with American breakfast and Tunisian food for lunch and dinner. Went to the cinema a couple of times. On the first occasion Conant lit up a cigarette and you could see the smoke going up as the beam of the film was on the screen. Then all of a sudden we were [laughs] I think there must have been about four people, these ushers or usherettes or whatever they were shining torches at us and old Conant put his cigarette out rather smartly [laughs]. Smoking was banned in cinemas out there. Anyway, we eventually got as far as Tripoli just in time for Christmas. We had a very hilarious time there. And then we flew on to Abu Sueir. Left the aircraft and travelled into Cairo by train. A very slow journey but quite comfortable. And they must have thought we were thirsty people because every five minutes they were coming around with kettles full of tea. Very weak tea. Tons of milk in it. What sort of milk I wouldn’t know but I suspect it was goat. Anyway, we went, we went to Cairo and spent New Year’s there and flew back in a Dakota on New Year’s Day. From Cairo to Luqa in Malta. No. To El Adem in the desert, Luqa on Malta, Nice and then home. And we took off at 4 o’clock in the afternoon of the 1st and arrived at Hurn about mid-day on the 2nd. A boring journey. There was nothing to do. There were no magazines to read. It was just a case of shut your eyes and let things go by. Anyway, we got back and we were told we were to take another aircraft out there. And we did familiarisation on, but two lots of circuits and bumps and that was the last of my flying in the air force. And I got sent to various stations after that. No flying. Ended up in the demob office getting everybody ready to go home except me [laughs] which was a bit frustrating at times. But anyway in August of 1946 [pause] That’s right. August ’46 I was demobbed. Sent down to Wembley, kitted out with a suit and a hat and shoes and what have you and went home. And I was officially given leave as everybody was. I made contact with a firm that I used to work for and yes they would take me back as a junior clerk at the princely sum of three guineas a week which was a bit of a come down considering that I was getting about seven pounds a week in the air force. All my friends who had been in the army or the navy they were all demobbed at the same time and they all, I think all except one worked in Mars on the Slough Trading Estate. And they, they were earning far far more than I was. That didn’t worry me. I was looking to the future and I kept on studying. Unfortunately, I was told after a while that I should pack it up. I had two illnesses that were causing or had caused a lot of problems. One of them I had what the doctor described as the finest dose of shingles that he’d seen in all his career. So I decided that’s it. You’re not going to qualify as a solicitor. You’ll be for the rest of your days, as I was at that moment a solicitor’s managing clerk. Now described as a legal executive. And I held that job until I retired in 1989. I came back as I say in ’46 and in ’47 I met a young lady that in 1948 I married and she’s sitting over there. We will be celebrating our sixty eighth wedding anniversary on the 17th of July this year. We had one daughter. You might have seen when you came in. One grandson sitting there. And I’ve one great grandson who is coming up to two.
DM: When you, when you look back on your days in the air force what’s the sort of abiding memory? You know. Is it one of pleasure or fear or what?
[pause]
MJ: I enjoyed my time in the air force except for that period when I was instructing. Or supposed to be instructing. From the point of view of entertainment, pleasure and so on particularly when we were at Metheringham it was a case of into Lincoln, have a couple of beers, go to the cinema. Things like that. I always made, I made a promise to my father that I would, I would keep him informed as to how I was getting on with various ops. And rather a primitive idea every time we did, I did an op, I wrote and said I’d been in to Lincoln to see a film. And I named the film thinking that, you know if the censors people opened it and read the letter that they might think it was genuine. It wasn’t. Anyway, I [pause] I did this the whole time and he kept the letters. And it wasn’t until oh many many years afterwards [pause] the 1980s I think it was my brother was doing some decorating, came across the letters, decided he didn’t want them and threw them out. And I was a bit annoyed actually because some of them were quite interesting letters from the point of view of what we were doing but without disclosing any trade secrets. Anyway, it was something that happened and you know I was annoyed with him at first but oh well that’s it. We, we, as a crew we kept to ourselves very very much. I can’t remember where it was. I think it was at Swinderby. A couple of crews were assembled and they were given a talk by a flight lieutenant who had done two tours. It was a general talk about life on, on the squadron. One of the things that he said that stuck in the minds of all of us was, ‘Don’t become too friendly with other crews because if you do and they get shot down you will feel a lot of embarrassment, a lot of sympathy. It could upset you quite considerably that these friends of yours had just disappeared.’ So we talked about it afterwards and decided well we’d keep ourselves to ourselves. I mean we didn’t snub anybody but when we went anywhere it was not as a whole crew. It was sort of, ‘I’m going in to Lincoln tonight, Wally. Interested?’ ‘Yeah. Ok.’ And off we’d go. And the same with the others. They would do that. It didn’t happen quite the same way when I was at 218 Squadron. That was quite different. I enjoyed it there but there wasn’t the friendship with the crew. Partly I think because they had been shot down. The pilot was killed. The wireless op, his parachute was damaged so he jumped out holding on to the navigator. But as soon as the parachute opened [pause] the navigator and the parachute went up and I’m afraid the wireless op went down and he got killed. And I was there replacing him. The pilot we had, also a replacement, back on his second tour. And the navigator. He didn’t want to fly anymore. But he was just given a ground job and that was that.
DM: Did you have any superstitions? Any routines? Anything you had to do before you flew? Or —
MJ: No. The only thing that we did we had a doll which was given to Keith by his girlfriend. And it was then handed to me so that I could on every trip strap it up to the pole that was by the side of my radio. Tied it up the top. And it did thirty five ops and then when we parted I gave the doll back to to Keith so he could return it to his girlfriend. I met a WAAF as everybody did at some stage or other. Chatting with her she produced a little green sort of leatherette dog. Only a tiny little thing, ‘Take it on ops with you.’ So we took it on ops for the second one which I described to you. To Berlin. And that’s the only op the dog did [laughs] We, I I don’t think, oh I can’t speak very well for the others but I don’t think I was ever scared. When we, when we were coned in searchlights I was worried then. I remember not panicking but thinking, ‘God, we must get out of this otherwise we’ll get the chop.’ You know. And there was nothing any of us could do except rely on Ginger which we always said he was a very good pilot and by God the way he threw that Lanc about that night was unbelievable. I thought he was going to loop the loop at one stage. He was a very very good pilot.
DM: You mentioned the ear problem. Did that ever give you problems when you were flying? You obviously didn’t miss any ops because of it but —
MJ: What I had trouble with in flying was sinus. I wasn’t going to report sick. No way. If I couldn’t hear I couldn’t hear. That was it. You know. But seriously I didn’t like the idea of reporting sick. Missing ops and then becoming a spare bod. Flying with any Dick, Tom and Harry that was short of a wireless op. I didn’t fancy that at all. We had two little incidents where we more or less did the wrong thing. Buchanan went into the kitchen at the mess one night and leaned back, put his hand down on the red hot stove and on his left hand, which was fortunate he had an enormous blister on the palm of his hand. He just took a, stuck a bandage around it, wore a glove and kept on flying. And on one op, having ground tested everything we got out of the aircraft and waited for the signal to rev up and go. And I was getting out of the, getting out of the Lanc after doing what was necessary, caught my foot on the stepladder that we used to come out of the — get in and out of the Lanc. I just fell flat on my face from the top step down and I ripped my hand, the right hand. It was badly swollen but I wasn’t going to go sick. No way. But other than that and Slim having a couple of days in hospital when he had tonsillitis or flu or something apart from that nobody had any problems at all. Going back to [pause] the second trip to Berlin, in all the time that we were together after that nobody ever mentioned Wally’s oxygen. There’s no record of it anywhere. We just didn’t. Didn’t want to change despite his silly mistake of not connecting it up properly. You know. You get to know people and you trust them. And we did trust Wally. Even after that incident. He, he was quite a good gunner. But they never had to fly like Keith. Never had to fire his guns in anger. In all the trips that we did we never fired guns.
DM: Did you have any thoughts after the war about the way Bomber Command were viewed in the aftermath? You know. This sort of almost disconnect with with what had happened.
MJ: No. I thought about it and I thought we were doing the right thing. The Germans had bombed every capital in Europe. Quite indiscriminate bombing. They came over to this country and bombed London and Coventry and Portsmouth and so on. Quite indiscriminate. They started it and we finished it and it, that was it. Now people say they very much regret the fact that they dropped these bombs and killed civilians. But I haven’t heard any German saying he’s sorry for having killed people in London. I look at it on the basis it was an all out war. If we didn’t win then we would be finished as a country. We would. Life, if you were allowed to live it would have been hell. It was something we just had to do and did it. I never regretted it at all. The one thing that does upset me is every time they talk about Bomber Command they talk about the last big raid. And it’s quite silly really because what happened was the same as happened in Hamburg when they bombed that. Nobody could forecast that there was going to be sudden strong winds fanning flames and so on. The same thing happened in — I don’t remember the name of the town [pause]. Right at the end of the war. [pause] I’m being told over there.
Other: [unclear]
MJ: Hmmn?
Other 2: I should know and I can’t remember.
Other: Dresden.
Other 2: Dresden.
MJ: Dresden. Yeah. I read a number of books in recent years about Dresden. Some were very anti the Bomber Command for having bombed it and more or less destroyed it. But there was one that I read, I can’t remember the name of the author but it gave a very very good account of why Dresden should have been bombed. At that stage even if there was no reason to have bombed it before Dresden was the railway junction at the southern part of the Eastern Front. And millions of German soldiers, armaments, tanks you name it all passed through Dresden to get to the southern Eastern Front. There were no very big factories in Dresden but there were hundreds of small factories. Some operating in garages and sheds and things like that. All producing items which were then transported to main depot and fitted as part of radar and so on and so forth. So from that point of view there was, as the book quite firmly came down to the fact that Dresden should have been bombed before. And it was, there was a request from the Russians to to bomb that town in order A — to stop the manufacture of armaments. Radar bits and so on. And B to stop the German army sending troops through that depot. I I [pause] I don’t think it was the wrong thing. In fact it was necessary in my opinion. That. I’ve never regretted dropping bombs on Germany for the simple reason it’s not just tit for tat because we dropped a damned sight more bombs on them then they did on us. And with a regime like the Nazis they just had to do that to get rid of them. You know. I had no regrets at all. I may be a bit exceptional in that. I don’t know. But it annoys me when people who have been on ops suddenly say that they’re terribly sorry for what they did. I don’t think they should say that. I don’t think they should even think it. It was something that just had to be done.
[recording paused]
MJ: A little earlier I was talking about not being too friendly with other crews. Other personnel. We generally kept to that. Not snubbing anybody or or so on but we didn’t become friendly. When I joined up I was sent to Oxford for medical examination and [pause] I was standing next to a young chap who told me he’d come from Portsmouth. And everywhere I went he went. And we started talking. When I was told to report to Padgate I was walking through the gates and who should be standing or walking next to me but this fellow. A chappie called Bill Sizer. And he told me that his, his father and his uncle were colour sergeants in the Marines and they didn’t take kindly to the fact that he’d joined the air force. Well, Bill and I did all our training together right up to and including Market Harborough at OTU. And then he and his crew were sent straight to Syerston to convert on to Lancasters whilst as I said before we went to Swinderby to convert on to Stirlings and then on to Lancs. So that he was a month or so in front of us. He was posted to Waddington first and then they moved to Fiskerton with 49 Squadron I think it was. Yes. 49. And in June of ’44 I was outside our billet writing a letter home and Ginger came along and said he’d got some bad news. That Dickinson and his crew, Dickinson was the pilot, Dickinson and his crew which included Bill Sizer had been shot down and were still missing. Or treated as missing and eventually they found out that in fact that they were all killed in the south of France. When he told me that initially my first thought was that lieutenant is going to be proved right because I was very upset. He was the only person that I really became friendly with in the whole time apart from the crew that I became friendly with during the whole time that I was in the air force. I think it shook everybody in our crew because strangely enough all, all the members trained together. The two pilots trained out in America. The two bomb aimers, both Canadians, they trained together in, in Canada. Engineers trained together. The wireless ops trained together. The two gunners trained together. And the only difference was the navigators. Jones had trained at the same time as Dickinson’s navigator but not Slim. But that upset me more than anything and I realised then that this flight lieutenant was absolutely right. We talked about it for, you know, one night in the billet. Ginger said something like, ‘Forget it. But don’t forget them.’ And left it at that. And we did. We didn’t mention it at all after that. You know, it was a sad situation but it happens to everybody.
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Title
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Interview with Mervyn Jones
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-04-22
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AJonesMH160422
PJonesMH1601
PJonesMH1602
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Pending review
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01:11:36 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
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Mervyn Jones is a miners son from Wales. His father wanted a different life to that of a miner for his son and the family moved away to Slough where was plenty of work. Mervyn had always had trouble with his ears and so his father assumed he wouldn’t pass his medical although he signed all the forms giving his permission for Mervyn to enlist. In fact Mervyn lied about his age to enlist and was indeed successful in his application. A WAAF gave him a little green leatherette dog to take on ops. On this particular op the mid-upper gunner passed out through lack of oxygen, the predicted winds were wrong and so they had to rearrange their flight plan and on return they lost hydraulic power. It was the last time the dog went on ops. The crew were advised about not getting too involved with other crews and the reason for this became obvious when one crew they were all friendly with were killed in action.
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
France
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
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1944-02
106 Squadron
218 Squadron
617 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing of the Creil/St Leu d’Esserent V-1 storage areas (4/5 July 1944)
Lancaster
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Metheringham
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Swinderby
RAF Yatesbury
searchlight
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/887/11126/AHughesJ171123.2.mp3
33dfe3a2b506d35007a636f6c426d4e4
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Title
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Hughes, Janet
J Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Janet Hughes (b. 1958) about her father Reginald Charles Wilson (b. 1923). He served in Bomber Command.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-23
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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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Hughes, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Janet Hughes. The interview is taking place at Mrs Hughes’ home in Farnham in Surrey on the 23rd of November 2017, and is the second interview with Mrs Hughes. If we could perhaps pick up from where we left off, where they’re now continuing to fly as spare bods without a settled crew?
JH: Okay. Well, a month elapsed, I don’t know quite why that was for operational reasons since the previous flight, and dad’s next operation as a spare was mine laying, which I think was fairly uneventful, that was on the 11th of November 1943, which coincidentally is seventy-three years before his death. The next one was a trip to Mannheim and Ludwigshafen; this was one of the diversionary raids which were organised to- As a decoy to deflect the German attention from the main target which was Berlin. So, they did it hoping that the, the fighters would think that was the main raid and therefore the less- Berlin would be less heavily defended. The next one, on the 22nd of November was a very big one, very famous raid, it was the second of the battles collectively known as the Battle of Berlin. It was the third heaviest of the entire war, and also the most successful, because there was considerable damage to industry and munitions factories, in particular. An interesting point of that raid from my point of view, as Reg’s daughter, is that the Kaiser Wilhelm church in the centre of Berlin was badly damaged. Now the Kaiser Wilhem Gedächtniskirche was a, a two-towered cathedral-like church in the centre of Berlin with many precious artefacts and, and paintings, and it was almost completely destroyed, and it was big landmark and still is a big landmark, was one of the iconic landmarks of Berlin that you think of when you think of Berlin. After the war the decision was made to keep the ruins as a reminder of the destruction of war, and the, and the, and the heartache that it causes and a brand new cathedral was erected by its side, not in any way trying to replicate the original church ‘cause it’s very modern and I think the tower is- Well certainly I think the main church is hexagonal and it’s very sort of geometrical- Looks like a hat box, and it’s entirely glazed with glass which I believe was a gift from Chatres in France as a sort of peace thing, and it’s very, predominantly blue, and when you sit in the modern church you kind of have a sense- Almost a sensation of being underwater. It’s very beautiful, I mean it’s very stark in many ways ‘cause it’s very modern but it’s also very beautiful, and like Coventry Cathedral it sits aside the, the, the original church. One little point of interest here is that in 2005, when we were back on a, on a research visit to Berlin about which, more later, I asked my father what he wanted to see, you know, what he wanted to visit in Berlin ‘cause we’d- I was teaching at the time and it was half term, we didn’t have very long. So, I said, ‘Look, you know, we’ve got a couple of days, what are your priorities?’ and straight away he identified that church as a priority which surprised me ‘cause he wasn’t in any sense a religious man, and when I- I kind of said to him, well, you know, ‘Why do you want to see that, do you want to see the outside or do you want to go inside?’, ‘No, I want to go inside,’ and when we got there, I’d seen it before ‘cause I’ve been to Berlin many, many times and dad just sat there for- with my mum, for quite a long time just, you know, staring into space seemingly, and the significance of it wasn’t lost on me because it was a church which theoretically, he could’ve bombed personally, because he was on that raid and I think he was making his peace. He never said so, but I think that’s what was going on. Anyway, dad’s plane on the mission of the 22nd of November,that particular bombing raid, dad’s plane was unscathed but it did have a near miss on the way back to Pocklington in Yorkshire, when two other planes that were very close to dad’s plane, collided on their attempt to land, and with the loss of all lives of both crews. So, you know, you could, you could return from a hair-raising trip like that and then get killed over, over the Yorkshire countryside on your way home, that was, that was the lottery of Bomber Command. So, three days later dad did another trip to Frankfurt, on the 25th, which I don’t think was a particularly eventful trip, but then they were called again [emphasis], the following night and pepped up with caffeine and pink gins on the 26th of November. That was another diversionary raid, because the main bomber thrust was going to Berlin. So that’s the 22nd, the 25th, and the 26th, so what kind of physical and mental state they must’ve been after three raids in four nights I cannot imagine. Dad was due to do another flight as a spare and I think this must’ve been shortly afterwards although the date isn’t specified in his, in his notes, and that one was aborted because the plane on which he was flying as a spare taxied into mud, and was unable to take off, and dad was quite relieved about that because I think he, he just didn’t have any confidence in, in the crews that he was flying with as a spare. That turned out to be the last mission that he flew with as a spare because not long afterwards they crewed up again. December ‘43 was quite a quiet month, that’s because there was a full moon, now earlier in the war when there was a full moon, they all used to think, ‘Oh good,’ you know, ‘We’ve got good visibility,’ and it was even known as a bomber’s moon. But as the German defences improved, they learnt that it was not a clever idea to fly when there was a full moon because not only could they see very much more easily, but they could also be seen, and there were quite a lot of occasions when they entire bomber stream was, was identified early on by the, the flak and the night fighters with catastrophic results, so, you know, they basically learnt not to, not to fly on those nights. Also, during December there was a period of poor weather, of other kinds that, that made flying not a good idea. So, they’d gone sort of quite a long time before they were crewed up. Now, the final crew, and this is important because this was, this was my dad’s, you know- This is the crew that I’m still in touch with, or at least I’m in touch with the second generation, because my late father was the last member of this crew alive, and he died a year ago. So, the full crew was- The pilot was Flight Officer George Griffiths DFM, he was on his second tour so he was a very experienced pilot. There was a second dickie pilot, with them. Now, second dickie pilots were those who’d completed their training but who flew as spares in the sense that they were observers, and I think they had to do two of these before they were allowed to, to command their own crew. So, the second dickie pilot, who as the eighth member of what would normally be a seven-man crew, was Sergeant Kenneth Stanbridge. Then there was the flight engineer, Sergeant John Bremner who had done previous ops, the wireless operator, Eric Church, who was a flight sergeant, he had done previous ops, and the mid-upper gunner, Flight Sergeant Charles Dupueis, who was a Canadian. It says in dad’s notes that he was a French Canadian but I’ve, in- Since I’ve published the book, I’ve been in touch through Facebook with relatives and it turns out that he, he wasn’t a French speaker at all, and that also perhaps accounts for the misspelling of the surname, because it’s not the conventional spelling of Dupueis, and I think if there was French blood it was obviously several generations back because he wasn’t a French speaker. Dad found it surprising that now these five people had, had been teamed up for that night’s operations, and theoretically for future operations with the exception of Stanbridge, with the original crew, or the remains of the original crew that is, Johnny Bushell the rear gunner, Laurie Underwood the bomb aimer, and my father the, the navigator, you, you would’ve expected that a new crew would’ve been given time to gel and would’ve been sent on some training flights, or some reconnaissance flights or something before they were sent off on an important mission. But that was not to be, and on the 29th of December, which again was the third anniversary to the night of the bombing raid on the city of London which provided my father’s inspiration to join the RAF in the first place, that’s the famous raid with the, iconic picture of St Paul‘s with everything around it in ruins, and this was exactly three years to the night from that raid and my dad was bombing Berlin, you know, getting them, getting. them back if you like. Although, he was not a vindictive man, it’s somewhat of an irony that three years later he was bombing Berlin. So, it was the eighth raid on Berlin by the RAF, it was the fifth heaviest, seven-hundred-and-twelve aircraft took part, two-thousand-three-hundred-and-twelve tonnes of incendiaries and high explosives were dropped in twenty minutes. From dad’s point of view, it was uneventful, from the point of view of not being shot at. He remembers seeing the Zuiderzee on the radar screen, using H2S on the way out. Bad weather had restricted the German night fighters to sixty-six, but due to two spoof raids by RAF Mosquitos the night fighters reached Berlin too late to be effective and this, this contributed to the success of the raid, in terms of the damage that it caused. They dropped their bombs from seventeen-and-a-half-thousand feet, on the target indicators but they couldn’t see whether or not they’d caused any damage. Sometimes you get these photographs where you can actually see the, the fires. That was due to the fact that there was ten-tenths cloud cover. The overall losses that night were only two-point-eight percent, which is lower than many of the other Berlin raids, but 102 Squadron, dad’s squadron, yet again managed to beat the average with two aircraft missing, and on one of the aircraft that was shot down, one of the crew members was named Harold Par, and he was on his first op, and he later became a POW in the same camp as my father, Stalag 4B and he was in the same hut as my father, and about- Let me think, this would be about twenty years later, he was living in Chigwell in Essex, and his son was in the same class at Buckhurst Hill Boys Grammar School as my brother. So, my brother and Howard, who was Harold’s son became good friends and when, their fathers met, so that’s my father and, and Howard’s father, they realised that they’d been in the same POW hut, and in the same squadron, and on the same raid. So that’s, that's a pretty good set of coincidences, such is life. So, we move into 1944, and January ‘44 began as another month of inactivity, bad weather, another full moon, and the combination of these two events meant that there was a reluctance to send Halifax Mk 2’s to Berlin because they were being recognised by then as increasingly vulnerable, and in many squadrons they were already being replaced by the Mk 3’s which were less vulnerable. However, another maximum effort to attack Berlin was required, so dad’s second operation with the full crew including the second dickie pilot, Stanbridge, was scheduled for the 20th of January 1944. This was six days before my father’s twenty-first birthday, so he’s twenty. So, dad was responsible as one of the four navigators operating HS2, sorry H2S, get it confused with the railway H2S equipment in 4 Group. 4 Group comprised fifteen squadrons, totalling between two-hundred-and-fifty and three-hundred aircraft. Dad had to radio interview- intervals his calculated wind velocities back to Group, to 4 Group, and they would average the readings from the four navigators and rebroadcast them to the whole of 4 Group to, enable them to concentrate the bomber stream. Dad was also due to do his own blind bombing that night. Now blind bombing means, when they weren’t bombing on Pathfinder markers using H2S, to identify the homing point, for a timed run. Now they only gave this to navigators with a good track record obviously because most of the others would, would follow the Pathfinder markers. So, dad was effectively a Pathfinder. The bombing raid was to be the ninth raid on Berlin, and the fourth heaviest. Seven-hundred-and-sixty-nine aircraft took part, two-thousand-four-hundred tonnes of incendiary and high explosive bombs were dropped in twenty minutes. It was considered to have been successful, although less concentrated than planned, and perhaps less successful than the one in December, which I mentioned earlier. Due to bad weather again over Germany the night fighters were limited to nighty-eight but they were experienced crews, and they were equipped with something called Schräge Musik which is- It means jazz, jazz music. That was code for upward-firing cannon, radar interception and critically H2S homing devices, and I think at this stage, they weren’t- They didn’t realise that the night fighters could home in on the H2S. It was a kind of cat and mouse scenario with the technology because each side would produce something new and then the other side would find a way to disable it, and so if you happened to be in the period where they just learnt how to intercept your new piece of technology and you didn’t know, it would make you very vulnerable. The night fighters, which were all twin engined were operating a new technique called tame boar. This meant they were directed by ground control into the bomber stream at intervals and over the target, and after this they were on their own really, they could fly freelance and use their own equipment to seek out bombers, fly beneath them out of sight of the gunners and fire cannon shells into the petrol laden wings, completely invisible. Additionally, on this night thin cloud covering Berlin with tops at about twelve-thousand feet was illuminated from below by many searchlights, so it’s, you know- It meant that they were effectively backlit, and the night fighters flying above the bomber stream could, could locate them, silhouetted against the bright backcloth, like back projection. So despite the limitations of night fighters, it was a highly successful night for them. They claimed thirty-three victories, nine of them over Berlin, out of the thirty-five bombers lost that night. So presumably the other two were flak but it meant that the night fighters had a fiesta, and in fact, there is some footage on YouTube from a, a German propaganda film bit like Pathé news which features the pilot responsible for the demise of five aircraft that night, and I’ll come back to him later. So, preparations; dad’s plane LW 337 Halifax Mk 2 Series IA took off at sixteen-thirty-hours GMT, in, in the- The plane was, as I’ve just said LW 337 was nicknamed Old Flo by the ground crew, something to do with the red- With the, with the numbers that were painted on the side, and they were soon flying above the ten tenths cloud. So first they used Gee, radar, and then H2S to map read. They flew uninterrupted on a northerly route into Germany turning south east sixty miles from Berlin. Berlin is a large city and there were too many stray reflections on the H2S screen to be able to identify the target position. Dad was instructed personally at the navigators briefing in Pocklington to identify a turning point. Taking a precise bearing, and distance on his screen of a small town doesn’t name it about ten miles north of Berlin and that was the commencement of a timed bombing run to the target which was Hitler’s chancery, and they flew in straight and level at eighteen-thousand feet, maintaining a pre-calculated track and groundspeed at the time set by stopwatches, and they dropped their bombs at twenty-hundred hours, GMT. Unfortunately, this procedure made them a sitting target for the night fighters because they’d hardly closed their bomb doors when they were hit by one of these aircraft. We had- They had trailed behind, this is the night fighters, this particular one had trailed behind and below dad’s plane waiting for the bombs to be released, obviously they didn’t want to be shooting at you before then ‘cause they might get in the way of the bombs, and then they fired the cannon shells upwards into the starboard wing, where there were more than a thousand gallons of petrol still aboard. A lot of petrol obviously needed for the return trip, so two-thousand gallons to start with, and if you got them over the target, half of that was still in the tanks, and it was only seconds before the whole wing caught fire. Dad can remember Griff, the pilot George Griffiths shouting, ‘Graviners engineer.’ The graviners were switches used to activate the fire extinguishers for the engines, but it was to no avail and the blaze was so fierce that Griff realised that the aircraft was stricken, that there was nothing he could do, and so he immediately called, ‘Parachute, parachute, bale out’. Now dad was already wearing his parachute I think in an earlier interview I explained that after a near miss he used to put it on over the target and pull up his navigation seat to facilitate quick access to the escape hatch and so, he lifted the escape hatch door and dropped it diagonally through the hatch itself, but it caught in the slip stream and jammed half in and half out. With dad’s efforts combined with those of the wireless operator Eric Church and Laurie Underwood, the bomb aimer, they did manage to kick the door clean. So, he- Dad sat on the edge of the escape hatch and dropped through immediately, followed closely by Laurie. This was truly a leap of faith, a leap into the dark with fingers and toes crossed. They had no idea what would happen next. They were surrounded by flak, searchlights, well-illuminated, very vulnerable. The wireless operator had no time to follow them, although he’d helped to kick out the escape hatch, he perished with the plane. Dad believes that after Laurie dropped out the blazing aircraft went out of control and into a spiral dive. So, dad and Laurie baled out at seventeen-thousand feet. Dad spun over a few times and then pulled the ripcord. The canopy opened, and when the harness tightens around his crotch this is in his own notes he said it brought him to his senses in double quick time. Sure all the men amongst you can understand why that might be. Below him and to his left he could see another parachute and to this day he doesn’t know whether it was Laurie’s or not but, obviously we know that Laurie survived, and Dad and Laurie didn’t actually see each other again until Laurie’s wedding after the war, in June 1945. So, dad was floating on a layer of light cloud, or over, over a layer of light cloud I should say, and he could see the glow of the fires beneath it with heavy flak, tracer shells, hose piping around in the sky, and he floated down for ten to fifteen minutes, which is incredible when you think of being that vulnerable for a whole ten to fifteen minutes, it’s quite unthinkable. He said he didn’t feel cold, doesn’t remember feeling cold, although at the altitude when he, where he baled out it would’ve been about minus thirty-four Celsius. There was a sixty mile-an-hour northerly wind prevailing, and this was, you know, 20th of January so, pretty damn cold. But because of the wind he drifted away from the centre of the city which, which might well of saved his life, because he was out of the hot spot so to speak. His, his sensations were of silence. The deafening noise from the aircraft’s engine which was present all the time during the night, during the flight, had gone, and once he’d blown away from the target, there was, the sound of the flak had died away too, so there’s this uncanny silence, and blackness as he descended through the cloud, and as he got near the ground, he thought he was gonna land in marshes because in the light that was available it looked like marshland. So, he thought he was gonna need his Mae West life jacket. So, as he, as he got closer it- He realised that what he could see beneath him wasn’t actually marshland but a canopy of trees in a small wood, that turned out to be a southern suburb of Berlin. So, he crashed through the trees, fell the last fifteen feet and his injuries amounted to a grazed face and a sprained ankle. Remarkable that these were the only injuries he sustained. So, in fewer than twenty minutes his life had gone through a dramatic change. He survived by a hair's breadth, a mix of emotions, elated at being alive but then what of his crew? He had no idea whether any of them had survived. He thought about his family, and how they would suffer when they were informed by telegram the next morning that he was missing. A few hours beforehand he’d been eating egg and bacon only available before operational flights in the mess at Pocklington with his aircrew colleagues all around him, laughing and joking. The friendly town of York, twelve miles away, and imminent home leave to get his officer's kit. Well, that wasn’t going to happen now. He was in hostile Germany, in south eastern suburbs, he wondered what would happen if he were caught by civilians, having just bombed their city. Nobody here would care whether he lived or died. It was the depths of winter, he was in enemy territory six-hundred miles from home, and on him he had some French francs they weren’t going to be much use, a handkerchief with a map of France printed on it equally useless, and a magnetic trouser button with a white spot on it, which when cut off the flies and balanced on a pencil point would point north, so that’s his compass, high tech. Oh, and a tin of Horlicks tablets, which was all he had to sustain him while he evaded capture and made his way back to England. He was still in his flight sergeants' uniform, in spite of having been commissioned on the 1st of December, nearly two months previously, and he was five days away from his twenty-first birthday. So, he walked because he had nothing, there’s nothing else he could do, and about eight hours later he disturbed a dog while trying to hide in a barn, and at this point he was captured by the civilian police. What had happened to the crew? Well, we now know that Laurie had blacked out during part of his parachute drop, but landed uninjured and he was captured by the military. Also, something that dad didn’t know till later only four of the crew of eight came through the ordeal. So, the two survivors that we, we suspected were dad and Laurie, the one who followed him out through the escape hatch. The other two survivors had an even more miraculous escape because Griff, the pilot, and Johnny really, just, just benefitted from extraordinary good luck. Because after Laurie and dad had baled out, the aircraft had gone into a spiral dive and Griff, the pilot, was thrown forward onto the controls and he was held in his seat by the, the g-force of the spiral dive and he saw the altimeter this is in his own notes which I also have, he saw the altimeter unwind past seven-thousand feet, and basically wondered how long before the end came, and at that point he lost consciousness, trapped in, in the cockpit. Dad believes that the petrol tanks exploded, ‘cause there’s no other explanation, there was no escape hatch, and Griff was blown out and he had his parachute on, at some point he must’ve put that on, and he regained consciousness just in time to pull the rip cord, a couple of hundred feet from the ground, and he knows this because his parachute was still swinging like a pendulum when he landed. What normally happens is it swings like a pendulum and then eventually reaches equilibrium and then you go down straight, but he was still swinging, so, you know, it must’ve been a matter of minutes, maybe seconds since it opened, and he thumped down among debris from the aircraft on waste ground, in Berlin, quite a long way from dad ‘cause, you know, they didn’t obviously get out at the same time and the aircraft continued to travel. He was uninjured but in shock, he wrapped himself up in the parachute and went to sleep under a bush, and he was discovered the next morning by a party of civilians, led by a soldier. Now Johnny the rear gunner, he was thrown over his guns during the spiral dive and also lost consciousness and he came to in the air. So, he must’ve been blown out as well. In similar circumstances to Griff, he opened his parachute near the ground but he landed close to a searchlight battery and so he was captured immediately, so there was no delay as there was with dad and the other two. He had a bad cut over his right eye and a bruised face but otherwise was alright, and one thing that dad always stressed was that the four crew who were killed were those who were, were new to them. He believes that the bond that he and- Certainly that he and Laurie and Johnny had had, had somehow kept them safe. The wireless operator- So of the four who perished, the wireless operator and the co-pilot were eventually buried in the British war cemetery in Charlottenburg in, in Berlin, having previously been buried just, you know, where, where there was a space. So, one was buried in, I think in Spandau and the other one was taken to a civilian graveyard about fifty miles east, ‘cause basically they just had to put them where they had spaces, and then later they were, they were exhumed and buried in the war cemetery. An interesting point is that when Griff, the pilot, was asked by the German military, ‘Tell us the name of your wireless operator, so that we can bury him with a name’. So, you know, I expect, Griff must’ve thought well, you know, ‘should I give them this information?’ But otherwise, he would’ve been buried, you know, in an unmarked grave, and because of Griff he, his name was on his grave. Now the flight engineer, and the mid-upper gunner were neither found, nor identified, and having no known graves, they were remembered only on the war memorial at Runnymede. Another point, the mid upper gunner the, the Canadian, Dupueis he’d avoided an assignment to Berlin on his thirteenth operation because he’d been, he’d been drafted to a comparatively safe mission instead and so, the one to Berlin turned out to be his fourteenth operation but it turned out to be just as unlucky as thirteen. He carried a lucky rabbit's foot with him, but it didn’t help him. Another thing, the, the flight- The wireless operator, Eric Church, had taken some milk from the sergeants mess for his own use, and my father had seen this, and had criticised him, saying you know, that’s not for civilians, that’s for us. What dad didn’t know at the time was that he, he had taken the milk for his young wife who was living near Pocklington and who was expecting a baby, and, my dad was destined to meet that baby later on in 2008. He lives just outside Southampton and I am in fairly regular contact with him, so that's a nice little story. After the war, dad realised that not only was the 20th of January 1944 a big night for him, but it was recorded by both sides as one of unprecedented activity. Fifty years later, through the help of a German archivist, they discovered that the plane had been shot down by an ace night fighter Pilot Hauptmann Leopold Fellerer, in a twin-engine Messerschmitt Bf 110 G-4. He had forty-one victories to his credit, over the war, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross, and that night had shot down five aircraft including dad’s. He became gruppenkommandeur of the night fighter group and later became a high-ranking officer in the Austrian air force, and ironically was killed in a Cessna flying accident in 1968. In 2005 the German archivist had provided dad with a map of Berlin showing approximately where the aircraft had crashed, which was about seven miles southeast of Hitler‘s chancery, at [unclear] and this confirms that they were on target that night as the crash point was on our track less than two minutes flying distance from the time when they’d released their bombs. So if you do all the maths you can see that they must’ve been bang on the target at eight o’ clock. So, there’s an extract here from the 102 operational record which is held on the microfilm at the public records office in Kew so it says, ‘Weather: foggy, clearing later. Visibility: moderate to good. Wind: southerly, 20 to 25 mph’. Sixteen aircraft were detailed to attack Berlin on what proved to be probably the most disastrous operation embarked upon by 102 Squadron. It’s- Who suffered the loss of five crews, Griffis DFM, that’s dad’s crew Dean, Render, Wilding, Compton. Two other aircraft were lost in Britain, so one had to abandon the aircraft because they ran out of petrol and another one crashed near Norwich, and the bomb- The air bomber died of his injuries. So, seven of the sixteen aircraft from that squadron were lost that night. That’s nearly fifty-percent, and five crews were lost, and this exceptional night of misfortune was never repeated, within that squadron anyway. So that was the end of dad’s time in Bomber Command, so after reforming as a full crew, they’d only done two operations, and that for dad made ten in all. But in spite of that they’ll go down in the annals of 102 Squadron as having been shot down on the night when the squadron suffered the loss of seven out of sixteen operation aircraft, or forty-four-percent of the planes that flew that night, and that’s a loss which is greater than any other operation in the squadron’s history in both World Wars. Dad also appended that 102 Squadron was not a lucky squadron. After that disastrous night another four aircraft were lost the following night to Magdeburg, so that was 21st of January, and shortly after this as the losses continued, they were stood down. Too late for dad, but they were stood down from operations over Germany. So, they did, you know, perhaps mine laying and, and trips to France, but they took them off the really perilous missions, and then the Halifax Mk 2’s were withdrawn, and they were replaced by the Mk 3’s, which were equal to the Lancasters of that time in their operational efficiency. But for dad’s crew the new aircraft arrived too late, otherwise they might’ve had a better chance of survival and they might’ve been able to complete at least one tour of thirty ops, and they might’ve been able to avoid ending up in captivity for the rest of the war. In the Second World War, 102 Squadron suffered the highest losses in the whole of Group 4 of bomber command, that’s fifteen squadrons and the third highest losses in the whole of bomber command, that’s ninety-three squadrons. [Beep] So, dad said that he’d disturbed a dog and the dog drew attention to dad and a farm worker, who was waking up- It was early morning, I don’t know exactly what time but this, this farm- He was a kind of overseer and he was going round and knocking on doors of all the agricultural workers to wake them up, and he handed dad over to a couple of policemen, one of whom had a revolver and the other one had a pair of handcuffs, but they indicated to dad that, you know, they wouldn’t use any kind of restraint or violence as long as he behaved himself. So, they walked him to the police station where my dad remembers being exhibited like a trophy to the policeman’s wife. He was searched and they took all his possessions away. Interestingly, they asked him if he was Jewish. My dad could’ve been Jewish if you look at the photograph in the book, you can see that he had very dark hair and quite a prominent nose although that was because he got hit by a cricket ball when he was twelve, but, you know, they wouldn’t know that, and it makes you wonder why they wanted to know because even if he had been Jewish, as a British POW, you know, they weren’t- There was a German Jew actually in my father’s POW camp, who was incarcerated there rather than in a concentration camp because he was a British POW and therefore under the protection of the Geneva convention. Anyway, another person who interviewed him was a very attractive young woman who had perfect English and appeared with, you know, very long legs and very long hair and dad said that, you know, she definitely improved his morale. Then he- They returned, I think, his cigarettes and he offered one to the policeman and they smoked them together. I don’t- They were clearly trying to get information at this point, but they weren’t- They were very correct. I don’t, I don’t think- They might’ve been a bit smug but, but, but he certainly wasn’t ill-treated by the police, he was fortunate to have been apprehended by authority rather than civilians because it’s well known that people who were initially found by civilians, if the civilians weren’t being monitored by anybody else, they sometimes, you know, applied their own sanctions and put pitchforks through people and so on, and that apparently increased towards the end of the war. But everybody knew that you were better off being apprehended by authorities particularly, well, military rather than gestapo. Then he was given a sandwich, which was wrapped in a newspaper with a very prominent piece of propaganda on it about the American [unclear] as they called them, and he said, you know, to his dying day he didn’t know whether that was a coincidence or whether it was deliberate. It gave him something to think about. Then he was taken by car to Werneuchen which was the night fighter station and, on this journey he, he was driven through the, the less damaged parts of Berlin. Again, I think that was deliberate to show him, you know, you haven’t actually inflicted any damage on our city. The route was very carefully chosen. From there he was in a guard house cell and he was, interviewed by a guard, who had been a bomber pilot over London, or so he claimed, and had you know participated in some of the Blitz raids, and my dad apparently quipped to him, ‘Now we are quits’. These people all had pretty good English and I’m sure he understood. He remembers a meal of macaroni pudding being given to him at this point, which was the first decent meal he’d had since he was shot down several days previously, and he said it was like a feast, never have macaroni- Tasted so good. From Werneuchen he was taken by underground to Spandau, and he said this was a very frightening experience because there were several captives and I think only one guard or two guards, certainly not enough to protect them if the civilians got nasty, and this was a very, very frightening experience because, you know, he thought he was gonna get lynched at any minute and they were all spitting and gesticulating and, you know, dad said he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t of wanted to be without the protections of the guards. In Spandau they were kept in a bunker to protect them from the bombs, their own bombs. There are- There were still no sign of his crew at this point but there were lots of others and obviously they shared stories, but at any moment they didn’t know whether they were being watched or listened to, so I don’t suppose the conversations were very natural. The food was very poor, in the bunker. Then there was another incident where they took all his possessions off him and a guard offered him one of his own cigarettes. From there they went by train to Dulag Luft at Frankfurt-am-Meim. This is where they were kept in solitary confinement in cells with a straw palias and the notorious electric heater, which was not just for their comfort but also for their discomfort because the temperature was intermittently turned up to, I think one-hundred-and-twenty degrees Celsius dad said, in order to try and make them crack. Here he met the notorious ‘Red Cross representative’ in inverted commas who asked them for lots of personal information over and over again, weren’t aggressive, but dad would’ve been warned about these people, they weren’t really anything to do with the Red Cross and he persisted in only giving his name, rank and number. So, there he is in the cell with a cigarette, which he couldn’t light because he didn’t have any matches, and he said he remembers picking a piece of straw up out of the palias and sticking it in the fire to see if he could make it light enough to light the cigarette, but it didn’t work. The interrogators showed him pictures of things like H2S and asked him what it was for and he said, ‘I don’t know,’ and they seemed to know an awful lot about the RAF and they knew which squadrons people had come from. Dad later realised that they were able to identify- They were able to work this out from the numbers painted on the sides of the planes which they could then link with squadrons. So, you know, they, they made it seem that they knew more about you then they actually did, but it was all done, well partly to demoralise you and partly to make you think, ‘Well they know that much, it won’t hurt if I tell them some more’. On my father’s twenty-first birthday, he asked- He told them it was his twenty-first birthday and he asked them if he could have a shave, and they duly provided him with a towel and hot water, and soap and a razor, and so on, which was a nice gesture, but not really what one hopes for their twenty-first birthday present. One of the interrogators told him that 102 Squadron were ‘one of our best customers,’ which dad just thought was bravado but when he got- Later when he was looking at the statistics, he found that they were right. His astro watch was never returned to him, it was formally confiscated and he, he had a receipt for it, which we still have, you know, and he did joke when we were in Berlin that he was going to go to the authorities and say ‘Right well here’s the receipt, can I have it back?’. Some of the other possessions, not the watch, were returned to him at this point, but not the rest of the cigarettes, and not his photographs. But, at this point he did meet up with Johnny, Johnny Bushell, his rear gunner, and he was overjoyed. They had no news of any of the others but they knew that at least two of them had survived. At the Dulag transit camp they were presented with a cardboard suitcase, by the Red Cross which contained basic items of underwear, toiletries and so on, and funnily enough a pair of pyjamas. At some point there was a cartoon with a- I think this was probably somebody in the prison camp, who, who did a cartoon of a guy coming down, you know, in a parachute having been shot down carrying a suitcase containing a pair of pyjamas as if, you know, they’d jumped out of the plane with them. In the transit camp the food was good, because it was provided by the Red Cross, and at this point dad was also able to send a postcard home to his parents, which we still have, saying that he was safe and they, that they mustn’t worry. Obviously wasn’t able to tell them where he was, and in any case, he was still in transit, he didn’t know where he was gonna go. So, from this, this transit camp, they were transported to, the prison camp that Johnny and my father were allocated to, which was Stalag 4B. This was in a series of cattle trucks, very similar to the ones that the Jews were moved to the concentration camps, that were marked forty men and eight horses, or something like that, in French. They were obviously rolling stock that had been commandeered and been taken from France because the signage was all in French, and that was a terrible journey taking a couple of days with only a bucket to pee in, in the corner. They couldn’t sit or lie down because they were rammed in so that they had to stand up. Every now and then the train would stop and they would all have to get off and defecate next to the line. The only slight relief that they had during that time was that they were able to eat some [emphasis] of the contents of the Red Cross parcels, but only that which didn’t require a can opener. Now, dad’s theory at this point was that he missed Griff and Laurie at the transit camp because they’d either arrived earlier or later, probably earlier, than Johnny and, and my father, and because they were both commissioned officers and could prove it, they went to a different camp anyway, they went to Stalag Luft 3, the scene of the great escape in Sagan which is in modern day Poland, but dad because he couldn’t prove his rank, and that was a critical point, that he couldn't prove that he had just been commissioned because he went with Johnny to Stalag 4B which was not an RAF camp specifically, and there my father remained for a year, until his commission came through at which point he left Johnny behind. Which I think cut him up quite a lot because they were muckers together, which meant they would share their rations and cooked for each other, but dad said at that point that Johnny was a very sociable type, unlike my dad actually who’s quite reserved and that dad felt sure that he would team up with some other people. Dad then went on to- Initially to a camp in Eichstätt in Bavaria which obviously was a long way away, and then towards the end of the war when everything started to fragment there was, there were a series of movements, all of which is described in great detail in my father's own words in our book, which is entitled “Into the Dark: A Bomber Command Story of Combat, Survival, Discovery and Remembrance.” It’s published- It was published in 2015 by Fighting High, and the authors are Janet Hughes née Wilson, myself, and Reginald Wilson, who was still alive at time of publication. [Beep]
DM: Do you have any idea how his time in Bomber Command, being shot down and later becoming a captive effected your father in later life?
JH: Well yes, I, I- My grandmother always said that he’d never been the same after the war, and yet I know other people who went through similar experiences to my father who, who, who had a more positive and optimistic view of life. So I think some of it was down to his personality. I think he as a child was a very shy little boy, he was very meticulous, he wasn’t very adventurous, he was very studious. You know, perhaps a bit reluctant to join in, that kind of thing, and a combination of that and the horrific experiences that he went through kind of shaped him forever. I, I keep meaning to ask my aunt, who’s still alive, she’s ninety-eight now, if she’s got any recollection of, you know, her impression of how he changed when he did come back, in 1945. During the prisoner of war as a- days, as I’ve said it was a, it was a, it was a Stalag, well the first year anyway it was a Stalag, they didn’t have enough to eat, they were very cold, they were quite bored a lot of the time although they did have an opportunity to study, and, you know, they, they put on musicals and that sort of thing. They weren’t badly treated really, they were just very, very hungry and cold and a lot of them succumbed to- As the place got more and more overcrowded, a lot of them succumbed to, you know, typhus and typhoid and, and TB and things like that, so certainly the people that were prisoners of war for a long time dad really only had a year in that very bad camp suffered more, more than he did. But- And then the, the second camp that he was in was, was, was much more comfortable but I think really the worst thing was the complete lack of privacy, that’s probably the worst thing of all, you know, never being able to be on your own, to do your own thing, being permanently surrounded by other people, and obviously you needed them for moral support but there must have been times when you just wanted to get away, you know, imagine going to the toilet with, with forty other people. Not even, you know, the most basic human, human functions being witnessed by thirty-nine other people. It must have been awful, and, and he was very private, always very private, you know, my parents never walked around without their clothes on, you know, like I sometimes do or, you know, they always locked the door of the bathroom and that kind of thing, and, and they were very kind of- Well that, that might’ve been a generational thing I don’t, I don’t know but I think when my dad did get home he cherished, you know, the ability to, to, to have privacy when you wanted it. When I was a child in the 1960’s his mental wounds were still too raw to allow him to talk to me about his experiences. He occasionally still had horrific nightmares which I remember really clearly. They caused him to sit bolt upright and scream, and I had an adjacent bedroom and I would wake up, it would be loud enough to disturb us even in a well-built house, you know, with brick walls not like in these days, the partition walls and I can remember, you know, going round and knocking on the bedroom door and saying, ‘Mummy what's happening,’ and she’d say, ‘Oh it’s alright, daddy’s had a bad dream, go back to sleep he’s alright now,’ and I must’ve thought, you know, that daddies had nightmares, that’s what daddies did in bed. I didn’t know any better, and I suppose I must’ve thought that it happened to all my friends’ fathers as well, I didn’t realise that dad was different, in that respect, but also, he was a bit older than a lot of my friends’ fathers because he was thirty-one when he married my mother, having been dumped by the woman who he was going out with before he got shot down, and he was thirty-two when my brother was born and thirty-five when I was born, so he was quite a lot older, probably ten years older than some of my friends’ fathers. So, by the 1970’s, I was at grammar school and I was studying German. He never had any objection to me studying German, I had a choice between German and Latin, my parents let me choose what I wanted to do. I don’t ever remember him questioning my desire to learn German or thinking it was a strange thing. He, he wasn’t anti-German, he never had been, he was anti-Nazi and he always made a distinction between those two things. He had a lot of respect for the Germans actually, because they were generally very law abiding and because dad was law abiding, he liked their formality in the fact that, you know, they always did things by the book. I think that kind of had a resonance with him really. In the sixth form, when I was studying German A-Level I also, as part of the course had to study modern history, as it related to Germany since the war and, and during the division of Germany ‘cause of course at that time the wall was still up and Germany was two countries, and you know, my father who had all these amazing stories to tell, couldn’t or wouldn’t share them with me and I don’t know whether that was because he couldn’t or because he didn’t want to or just because he was so busy because he had a, he had a very prestigious career. He was eventually a management consultant with Unilever and he travelled all over the world and, you know, he worked hard and he commuted into London and to be honest he wasn’t there all that much and when he was, he wanted us out of the way, you know, so that he could spend time with my mother and he travelled a lot, you know, he was sometimes away for weeks on end. So, I just thought, ‘Oh well what a shame,’ you know, he didn’t want to look at my photographs of Berlin taken in the late seventies when the wall was still up and I went there as a student. I thought he never would talk about it but I was wrong, fortunately, and it all happened on the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. Well actually a bit before that in, in the run up to January 1994, you know, dad realised it was a big event, he’d kept in touch with the other three survivors, they sort of, you know, occasionally met up and exchanged Christmas cards and things, and they decided that for that fiftieth anniversary they would all meet up. So, they all met up three of them had wives, Johnny had never married, and they met in a hotel in Peterborough because it was central for all of them to kind of, you know, reminisce and toast the fifty years of life that they’d had unexpectedly afterwards and, you know, share artefacts. The pilot by this time had started to do a bit of initial research into where the plane had come down, but he died not all that long afterwards, about four years afterwards, and he hadn’t completed this research, and, you know, the whole thing- The whole of the country was suddenly talking about the war. In the summer of 1994 there was a lot of TV coverage of the anniversary of D-Day and by then dad was, what was he then? Seventy, seventy-one, and he was developing a growing sense of time passing and the compelling need to share his story with others and he started to talk and write about his experiences. He’d always wanted to find out where his plane had crashed and having inherited some of- copies of things that the pilot had discovered, he went to the RAF museum, he went to the public records office at Kew. He slowly gathered bits together but it was, it was a bit of a patchwork, it was a, it was a jigsaw with quite a lot of pieces missing. So, in July 2005- So that was another ten years later, I think he’d written his, his memoirs by then and, well partly written his memoirs, and put it on a floppy disk so that we all had copies. He, he suddenly started using the internet an awful lot, you know, for a man of his age he was, he was quite competent with computers and, he discovered Google Earth, and this meant that he was able to compare this map that he’d got with the, with the approximate crash site marked on it, something that the pilot had given him. He tried to compare the two and I was over there in the summer and he said, ‘Look at this,’ you know, ‘We might be able to find out where my plane crashed,’ and I told him he was bonkers but humoured him, and he decided he wanted to pursue it and I didn’t see that it could do any harm, so I agreed to help him, when I wasn’t teaching ‘cause I was busy teaching full time. He contacted a German museum curator and an archivist, and the curator put him in touch with a journalist, and the journalist together with the archivist sort of launched a campaign in a local newspaper on his behalf, and appealed for witnesses to the, to the crash. They knew approximately where the plane had come down, they knew the night, they knew the time of the raid, and they asked for witnesses, and, you know, a lot of people replied who didn’t really have all that much to say, or it was interesting but not directly relevant. But there were sixty responses and these lead to an incredible discovery which nobody could have anticipated at all. Just incredible. So, Ralph Dresser[?] was the investigative journalist and he collated these sixty responses and some turned out to be eye-witnesses, one in particular had actually seen the wreckage of my further- my father’s plane. He’d been a schoolboy, he was now a retired dentist, and he remembered going through the wood on the morning after the crash, and seeing this plane which was being guarded, what, you know, until they could take it away ‘cause of where it had crashed, it wasn’t an easy thing to move ‘cause it had all woodland all around it. So they gave- The journalist organised a reception for us at the townhall in Köpenick on- In October, it was half term, October 2005, and- The atmosphere was amazing because, because, you know, here are all these people that had been bombing each other and they were all sitting round the table and telling anecdotes and the atmosphere was, was wonderful it was a, it was a atmosphere of, entirely of friendship and reconciliation, and towards the end of this reception this guy came forward and he had kept a diary as a schoolboy and in the diary was a record of, you know, his thoughts when they were in their cellar during the raid, during which my father's plane was shot down, and, you know, finding the plane the next day and there was a little sketch showing the plane and where all the bodies were, and it just seemed too much of a coincidence not, not to be connected but obviously we had no proof at that point, that it was dad’s plane. So, we went back in May 2006, again we had to wait until I could, you know, dedicate some time to it, school holidays. We didn’t want to do it during the winter, obviously. So we went back in May 2006, and we finally identified- Visited the site, identified by the main eye-witnesses as the crash site, and with the help of local historians, who’d all climbed on the band wagon, and a metal detector, one of them was a research, you know, a researcher into historic aircraft and had done a lot of these excavations and he had a metal detector, and we unearthed fragments of metal which had been buried underneath the leaf mould, and, you know, lots of bits of hinges and pipes and tools and, you know, it got more and more exciting until we eventually got to one fragment which had a reference number on it, which is a bit like the vin number on a car, and the researcher took it away and linked it to a particular series of Halifax bombers that were made in the English electric factory at Preston and it narrowed it down to a series of about fifty planes, and then we cross referenced that list with the list of losses for that night and we ended up with two planes, and then later dad established that the other plane had crashed on the other side of Berlin. So, we, we knew, you know, ninety-nine percent sure that it was dad's plane and he was so excited. I can remember him in the bathroom with the fragments of metal that we'd found and a nail brush and a tube of shower gel, you know, cleaning them up and he thought- He, he was just like a little boy at Christmas. But the story didn’t end there you know, I thought ‘Oh great, we’ve got some closure,’ you know, ‘Dad’s visited the crash site, he’s met these people, perhaps he’ll, perhaps he’ll have peace now’. But, the journalist carried on nibbling away and he told the Berlin police and sort of wound them up a bit and said ‘Oh,’ you know, ‘Maybe there’s some unexploded ammunition there,’ you know, ‘You really ought to go and have another look in case there’s anything that could be hazardous’. So they waited till November 2006 and went back with metal detector again, they found further fragments of the plane, various tools, part of a parachute harness with the instructions turned to unlock on it, and then near the parachute harness, they found human remains, and I can remember having, you know, being given this news by the German journalist on the phone and then having to sit by the phone and plan how I was going to tell my father because I knew it would open another can of worms and part of me didn’t want to do that. Anyway, so having ascertained that the human remains were probably linked to the plane crash. They handed them over to the British authorities. This took a while because Berlin police had to satisfy themselves that it wasn’t a crime scene. So, the British authorities had them for quite a long time, they went at one point to Canada because one of the people that had been missing and didn’t have a marked grave was a Canadian, and dad got frustrated because things weren’t moving fast enough and he was getting older. So he wrote a speculative letter to a newspaper in Newcastle because he knew that the other chap, whose remains had been- never been found, who was buried in an unmarked grave or probably not buried at all, he’d come from Newcastle so my father had tried to find out, you know, if any of the family were still in the area, and he had traced, through this speculative letter to the Newcastle Chronicle, a lady called Marjorie Akon [?] who was the sister of his missing flight engineer, John Bremner. Efforts to close-to trace close relatives of the other missing crew member in Canada had proved more difficult, although I did actually make contact with them after the book was published through Facebook and I am now in, in touch with a distant relative of the Canadian, and I sent her a book so that she wasn’t, you know, so that everybody's now got copies of the book. So in April 2008 so this was two, not, no- one-and-a-half years, eighteen months after the bones had actually been found mitochondrial DNA testing finally established a definitive link between the remains found at the crash site and Marjorie Akon[?]. So after sixty-odd years of not knowing what had happened to her brother, she was told definitively that these were remains of her brother, and she was eighty-eight, so for sixty-four years she’d not known what had happened to her younger brother, and the result was a full ceremonial, military funeral in Berlin on the 16th of October 2008 with the Queen‘s Colour Squadron officiating. The surviving crew members and their closest relatives were invited, most of them attended, I think only Laurie Underwood wasn't represented. Huge efforts were made by the MOD to trace the families of the two crew members who were already buried in Berlin, so that was Eric Church and Stanbridge. Stanbridge’s daughter actually came over from Australia and she had never visited her father’s grave before, and the- Eric Church’s son, Michael was discovered literally a few days, that he was finally traced- Literally a few days before the funeral and he had to actually take someone else's place on the flight in order to get him there on time, and again he, he’d never known what had happened to, to his father, not definitively. So, it was hugely emotional. So, six of the crew of eight were represented by their own family members and the Canadian was represented by somebody from the Canadian embassy, so that was seven out of eight. Only Laurie Underwood sadly wasn’t represented ‘cause he was too frail to travel, and none of his children or grandchildren were there, but I - Again I’m still in touch with them on Facebook. The most important mourners at that funeral were- Well the most important one, was undoubtedly Marjorie Akon[?], John Bremner’s sister, she was finally able to say goodbye to her beloved brother and in an interview with the BBC, or it might’ve been ITN, anyway I’ve got the footage, she expressed the deep gratitude that she’d at last been able to do this, to, to say goodbye because she’d not wanted to spend the remainder of her days believing that John had never been accounted for, and she actually died herself three months later at eight-nine, just, just after her eighty-ninth birthday. Because of my father’s efforts she didn’t have to go to her grave without knowing the outcome, because John was buried with great dignity and ceremony, so she died almost exactly sixty-five years to the day after her brother, also in January, and although she was sadly missed by her family they were unanimous in saying that she’d experienced a great sense of closure and relief at the end of her life having been able to say that last goodbye, she actually said- I can’t remember the exact words but she said something like she’d been spared long enough, to see her brother laid to rest. But I think what is important to stress is that none of this could’ve been achieved without the internet, the internet was absolutely pivotal to all of this research. We could never have made any of these links without the internet, so the internet, you know, we couldn’t’ve done in, ten years- If the bones had been discovered ten years earlier, they would’ve, they would've just buried them in an unmarked grave, you know, just ten years. The technology had all, all come on stream, we- Everything was available on, you know- In time for the internet and the DNA profiling and before she died because once we’d lost Marjorie Akon[?]- I think that her daughter could've also given a DNA sample because the, the mitochondrial DNA goes down the maternal line and she in turn has got daughter- No has she got daughters? Yes, yes, she’s got two daughters, so probably we could’ve used the, we could’ve used the next generation but it was much nicer for it to be a sibling. So, the internet was pivotal. The MOD were obviously pivotal, we couldn’t’ve done it without them. We couldn't've done it without the Germans because the- Our German friends, I’m still in touch, you know, almost daily with the journalist. The museum curator, who himself had been a prisoner of the Stasi during the cold war. So, he was an interesting man. Historians, eye-witnesses, it was a group effort and the ability to communicate via the internet had even enabled us to trace the Austrian grandson of the ace fighter pilot who shot my father’s plane down, and incredibly he visited us in August 2007 and we all drank champagne in my parents' garden in Essex. This was before- After we’d found the bones but before we knew who- Exactly who, whose they were, and although my father wasn’t a religious man, he did once say that somebody else had a hand in, in the discovery because it was too much to be a coincidence. In the opening- In the preface to the book I’ve, I’ve quoted Byron and said, ‘Truth is stranger than fiction,’ because if you’d made it up, you know, if somebody had made it up as a, as a plot of a book, people would’ve dismissed it and said that it was too perfect that all the things linking up, you know, it was too good to be true, and that made me think of the Byron quote. So, contacts that we made during the course of the research led us to friendships, new friendships in the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia and I’m in touch with the second generation of the entire crew, including the second dickie pilot. It reminds us of the horror of war, but also shows us how coincidences like this can lead to deep and lasting friendships between former enemies, and the crew and their families have achieved a sense of closure. So, I'd like to dedicate this interview to the crew of LW 337. Their survival rate exactly mirrors the chances of any airman in Bomber Command, because only half of them came back [voice breaks with emotion]. The average age of those who died in action was- Well here it says twenty-one, I’ve read twenty-two somewhere else, so I don’t know which is right. So, the crew were; the pilot George Griffiths, POW, died in 1998, navigator Reg Wilson, POW, died in 2016 on the 11th November ironically, the rear gunner Johnny Bushell, who was a POW and who died in 2013, the bomb aimer Laurie Underwood, taken POW also died in 2013, the wireless operator Eric Church, killed in action, identified and buried in Berlin shortly after the war, the second dickie pilot Kenneth Stanbridge, also killed in action and identified and buried in the German- the Charlottenburg war cemetery in 1947 I think it was after the war, when they were moved, then the flight engineer John Bremner who was killed in action whose remains were not found until 2006, and who was buried in 2008 in the same row as the two others in the Berlin war cemetery, and last but not least the mid-upper gunner Charles Dupueis, the Canadian who was killed in action and whose remains, as far as well know, were never found and so he remains to this day commemorated on the Runnymede memorial. Although it’s possible that he is in the Berlin war cemetery but in an unmarked grave, that’s, that’s entirely possible ‘cause there are some unmarked graves in the same area and they did tend to, to bury the- whole crews together if they could or part crews together, and of course now the four who died in action will all be commemorated on the ribbon of- On the stones at the IBCC, and we have funded stones in the ribbon of remembrance for those who did survive but have now all passed on. So that’s George, Reg, John and Laurie, whose, whose stones we have yet to, to see because they're being laid as I speak.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Janet Hughes. Two
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-23
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AHughesJ171123
Format
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01:28:18 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
After flying as a spare, Reginald Wilson (Hughes’ father) formed a new crew and completed their first operation to Berlin on the 29th December 1943. During their second operation to Berlin on the 20th of January 1944, the aircraft was shot down. Upon baling out, Wilson was captured and became a prisoner of war at Stalag 4B. Despite Wilson’s initial reluctance to open up about his wartime experience, Hughes describes the process of researching and publishing a book together. She recounts their discoveries including the fate of his crew (George Griffiths, Kenneth Stanbridge, Erich Church, Johnny Bushell, Laurie Underwood, Charles Dupueis) and the excavation of the crash site which resulted in the burial of John Bremner in 2008.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Oberursel
Poland--Tychowo
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Carolyn Emery
102 Squadron
4 Group
aircrew
bale out
Dulag Luft
final resting place
H2S
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Me 110
memorial
navigator
prisoner of war
RAF Pocklington
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 4
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/887/11125/AHughesJ171102.1.mp3
f3de320ee01bc0b2759aeccd5626621c
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
Hughes, Janet
J Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Janet Hughes (b. 1958) about her father Reginald Charles Wilson (b. 1923). He served in Bomber Command.
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
2017-11-23
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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Hughes, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Janet Hughes. The interview is taking place at Mrs Hughes home in Farnham, Surrey, on the 2nd of November 2017. So, Jan could you say your father's name and then say a bit about his early life and growing up?
JH: Yeah sure. My father- My late father’s name is, was Reginald Charles Wilson. He was born in 1923, on the 20th of- 26th of January, 1923 in, Hackney in East London. He was the third of five children, and when he was about ten the family moved to Ilford, or the outskirts of Ilford in Essex, where he lived until going off to war basically, in, in 1940.
DM: Right, do you know why he joined the RAF as opposed to anything else?
JH: Yes, I, I have a very clear recollection of what he said there. Basically, when war broke out he had only just left his grammar school, and probably I think he left prematurely because of the war, and he did a couple of admin jobs. First with the railways I think and then with Unilever, and he experienced first-hand the seventy-eight consecutive nights of the Blitz, when East London was particularly badly affected and when they missed the docks, you know, the bombs and the incendiary devices would quite often fall on the roads surrounding where my father lived. So it was, it was something that he- It was a daily thing, and one day when he went into Blackfriars to, his job, it was the 30th of December 1940, the night after the notorious second great fire of London, as it has become known, when the city of London was bombed very heavily, and the firefighting operation was limited by the low level of water in the Thames. It’s said that the Luftwaffe had known this and chosen that night to do the bombing because they knew that the low level of the Thames would hamper the attempts to quench the flames, and London- The City of London was extremely badly affected, and there’s an iconic photograph of St Paul‘s standing defiant amidst the surrounding devastation, saying ‘You’re not going to get me’, and when my father referred to this photograph, which he often did, he said that’s- That photograph it captures exactly what he saw, that the surrounding area was still smouldering but St Paul‘s was still rising, you know, like the phoenix out of the ashes, and he said at that moment he, he decided that he had got to do something, that he had got to fight back, and he, you know, like lots of young men at the time had a dream of being a Spitfire pilot, and indulging in dogfights and basically shooting them down before they got as far as London. So that was his plan, and you know, he knew that eventually, when he got to the age of eighteen, he would be called up anyway, and I think he decided that by joining the RAF volunteer reserve he would be more likely to end up doing something that he wanted to do rather than something that he’d been forced to do.
DM: Okay, so, he joined the RAF, the reserve, he got called up, what happened about his training?
JH: Right, well the training was quite long and convoluted. It’s described very well in his own diary, and, and in the book which I co-wrote with him in recent years. The early part of the training was sort of square bashing and general fitness for the armed forces, and he subsequently went to the United States on a troop ship for the early part of his training. So, it says in his notes here that he joined the RAF volunteer reserve in August 1941, by which time he would’ve been eighteen and a half. I’m not quite sure why there was a delay, perhaps you know, took that long to do the paperwork. He joined the aircrew, and they- The first part of the training was in, at St John‘s Wood in North London, and then in Torquay in Devon, and that was the basics of- The bit in Devon he learnt meteorology, air navigation, aircraft recognition, wireless telegraphy, and then the usual square bashing and clay pigeon shooting, and then he was promoted from AC2 to LAC, and this is the critical bit I think, he was posted to Marshalls airfield in Cambridge for a flying test, and this was in a Tiger Moth [chuckles], and after about eight hours he convinced them that he had the necessary skills to join the Arnold training scheme in the USA. So then, he joined the troop ship Montcalm, at Gourock on the Clyde, and this took them to Halifax in Canada. He commented that it was quite funny that he went to Halifax for the first part of his training ‘cause he ended up flying a Halifax, and, the crossing was quite eventful, bad weather because, you know, January seas and the ships weren’t very stabilised in those days, and half a dozen other- They weren’t torpedoed or anything, but half a dozen other ships that were in the same area were sunk, and at that time, about sixty ships a week were being destroyed by the German U-Boats in the North Atlantic. So, when he got to Halifax, they- Which was a sort of mustering area I think, they went to the USA and they travelled in uniform, and this is significant, they were the first aircrew trainees to be travelling in uniform, because America had only just become an ally, following the bombing- The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour on the 7th of December 1941, so basically that brought the Americans into the war, and that kind of was a game changer in terms of the way everything was organised. So then, they went to Albany in Georgia, a place called Turner Field, and that was an acclimatisation month. During that month dad celebrated his nineteenth birthday. Turner Field was run on the lines of the American army, so it was an American army air corps training centre, so they wore their [emphasis] uniforms, American air corps clothing, and they were treated like cadets. So that meant drilling and physical training, calisthenics at six o’ clock in the morning, apparently, they were given literature that told them how to behave and how they were expected- You know behaviour and etiquette, how they were expected to conduct themselves, and the bit that I think dad found the most memorable was marching behind a brass band, which was playing American air corps music, this was on the way to all meals and also before retreats, which was the lowering of the American flag in the evening. Now these young men had come from Britain, where rations had been in place for quite a long time, and when- America was the promised land, you know, they were waited on hand and foot by, and these are my father’s own words, ‘coloured waiters’, and that was something again that was quite strange to British people because, this was, this was the south of America, and at that time coloured people were not considered equal to whites and there was a kind of apartheid, like in, later in South Africa, they had to sit at the backs of busses and, in different parts of the cinema and they were generally treated as second class citizens, so this business of having them, you know, at their beck and call was something I think, quite a lot of the British people found quite difficult, because they just weren’t used to- Although, Britain was more racist then than it is now, they, you know, you still treated everybody with, with dignity. So, I think he found that, you know, quite, quite a shock, and also you know, in Britain they had to queue up for their meals, get all their meals on one plate, take your own cutlery in your gas mask case, and wash it up afterwards in a tank of greasy water, so to be waited on hand and foot, you know, and be served amazing food, was, was, was quite nice given what they’d been used to, you know, up to a month beforehand. So, after this month of acclimatisation, he went to Lakeland, Florida. This was a civilian flying school, which presumably had been commandeered because they needed the capacity, and it was for primary flying training, and that, this was a great experience. Dad went solo in a Stearman biplane, and before that the instructor had had to buzz off a herd of cows from the landing field by diving at them, and here dad completed forty hours of solo flying, including acrobatics, stalls, spins, loops and so on, and underneath them were the lakes and orange groves of Florida in beautiful sunshine, so what a change from Britain, and, they had a lot of hospitality with local American families and lots of contact with their daughters, so I think really this, this felt like a very long way from war. There’s some lovely pictures of dad during that period, you know, carefree existence, and then, at the end, the end of the course they had a few days leave and so, you know, not wanting to waste this amazing opportunity, dad and a colleague hitched off to West Palm Beach, and they booked into a hotel but while they were there they were invited to stay with an American lady called Mrs Hubbard, who turned out to be the daughter of Rockefeller, and she had an English woman staying with her who had a son in the RAF, and so they were spoilt by these two ladies who were trying to sort of do for them what they wish they could do for this lady’s son. And they were looked after for the next couple of days as if they were long lost sons, the house had an amazing swimming pool with an Italian style garden and an arcaded drinks bar, and they were, they were - I think they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. He- During this time dad met and was photographed with one of the few surviving Fleet Air Arm pilots, who had- Was one of the people who, the previous year had torpedoed the Bismarck, and enabled the British fleet to sink, sink it, and he was touring America as a hero, and he had also been invited to, to this lady's home, so they, they met him, and somewhere in dad's album there’s a picture of these, him with this chap, and my dad looks very diminutive in that although he was quite a tall man, ‘cause the other guy was much taller. So anyway, after this period they went to another- No, this, this was an American army air corps flying school, so not a civilian one this time, and that was in Georgia, again, for intermediate training, so he’d done the basics, this was the immediate training, and he started a course of flying on a basic trainer which would have been a more sophisticated plane than the Stearman biplane, but this is where dad’s fortunes changed because- And he was quite bitter about this, actually in later life, ‘cause he said after a lon- A number of flying lessons he was unable to convince the instructor that he was safe to go solo, so that was the end of his pilot training, and he, he, he did say that in his opinion had he been trained in an RAF flying school in the States, he might have passed. Anyway, he was disheartened at the time but he tried to make the best of it. One of his friends had been killed in Georgia on a, on a simple training exercise, so you know, it might’ve given him a stay of execution, and he said at least if he eventually died in combat, which he didn’t, it would be for a just cause. So then, by this time we’re in June 1942, so he’s been in the RAF for nearly a year, so he took the train back to Canada and this time it was to the Royal Canadian Air Force camp at Trenton, in Ontario. He did some interviews and took an exam, and was remustered to navigator, and the transfer gave him a chance to see some more of Canada. He visited Lake Ontario, Toronto, and Niagara Falls, so lots of travelling that a man of his age would not of had the opportunity to do had he not joined the RAF and left civilian life behind him. So, there’s - Then in his notes there’s quite a lot of very colourful description of, of the geography of various parts of Canada. So, then he was posted to the Winnipeg air navigation school, by which time it was August ‘42. The school's services were run by civilians but the teaching of the subjects was carried out by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Winnipeg’s in the grain growing area of Mani- Manitoba, which is flat as a pancake, so the relevance of this for flight training is that when you're flying at a few thousand feet you’ve got an unrestricted view as far as the horizon, and you can pick, everything out very easily because there’s no hills, or, or forests or anything to obscure your view, and the towns were marked by grain elevators and water towers that have the town’s name printed on the sides, so you couldn’t get lost. And they were spaced along the railway line so, you know, it’s like having a Google map underneath you. And these, these water towers were visible from any cross-country route so you just couldn’t get lost, because even at night there was no back- blackout in Canada ‘cause they had no need for it. So, they were there for three months, half of the time in classrooms and half on air exercises. There they flew Anson aircrafts, with civilian pilots. These were great big cumbersome things that had to be manually wound up, the wheels had to be wound up on take-off on a winch, and down again on landing. But one thing that marked him, during this period was the crash of a light aircraft only a few yards away, and the raging fire that ensued which made it impossible to rescue the pilot. So, he actually saw somebody fry, even at that stage, and the nights were very cold. They used to practise astro-sextant shots, one of the applications of a navigator, at night-time, but the leisure time was- As in America, eating Christmas-like turkey dinners every Sunday, and going to dances, socialising, probably a bit of womanising as well although he hasn’t been too explicit about that. He got his navigator’s wing on the 20th of November 1942, and at that point he was promoted to the rank of flight sergeant, just a few marks, a few short marks, again something he was a bit bitter about, off getting a commission. Although, that happened later as I will say later on, and then they travelled by train to Monckton in Halifax, stopping on the way in Montreal, and they returned to England on the Queen Elizabeth. Fantastic experience. It had been converted into a troop ship, so they had two meals a day on board, seventeen bunks to a state cabin, they travelled without escort and it took them only four days to cross the North Atlantic which was amazing, given the technology of the time, and they were on home- At home on leave for Christmas, and basically, by this time he had done, he’d been in the RAF for just under eighteen months, and was now back in the UK.
DM: So once your dad got back to Britain what, what happened next with his training?
JH: Right, well this was the beginning of 1943. So dad would’ve been just coming up for twenty that month, and there was- At that point there was a glut of trained aircrew coming back from the North American and Commonwealth training schools, so lots of them were held in holding centres in Harrogate and Bournemouth to await postings, and to fill the time, dad and a few others were transferred to a regiment training course, an RAF regiment training course at Whitley Bay, near Newcastle, and that was the February 1943 when it was pretty damn cold up there. So, it wasn’t until 19- April ‘43, so that’s three months later that they took up flying again. So I suspect they were a bit rusty by this time, and a party of them was posted to the RAF navigation school at Jurby, which is on the Isle of Man, still flying Ansons, and during this time my dad brushed up on his navigation skills because he hadn’t flown for five months, and this was achieved by means of day and night cross-country exercises around the Irish Sea, the East Coast of Northern Ireland, and the West Coast of Britain, and the weather was quite cold. He remembers using the toast rack railway on his days off, which ran from Jurby to Douglas, and he remembers all the hotels along the sea front which were wired off because they accommodated many of the so-called aliens, who’d been interned there for the duration of the war, in case they engaged in espionage I suppose. Anyway, so when this course was finished, he got some more leave, and then he went to the RAF Operational Training Unit at Kinloss, in Scotland, on the Moray Firth. So it’s sort of late spring early summer by this time, and he was now set for crewing up in Bomber Command and getting nearer and nearer to operational flying. This I think was a, was a, was a very, satisfying period. He said he arrived at Kinloss in the first week in June and the weather was fantastic, and stayed like that for the whole six weeks that they were there, (early summer in Scotland is often lovely), and for part of the time, they were housed in a mansion like property, where- Just for sleeping, and they were each given a bike to get to and from the airfield. So, they were cycling through the beautiful countryside with the lovely weather and the birds singing in the hedgerows, and he said the war, the war seemed very far away at that point, they couldn’t actually believe what they were training for because it all seemed so remote from what they were experiencing. Kinloss had Whitley bombers, these had been withdrawn from operational flying in ‘42 and they were known colloquially as flying coffins because they were very sluggish, in responding to the flying controls, that’s a major defect, as they were to discover when flying in formation over Elgin, to celebrate a special occasion. He doesn’t say what it was but I suspect it was someone's twenty-first. So after a few days they were crewed up, now, in his notes he hasn't actually said how this achieved, but somebody else told me that they just put them all together and let them pick their own, their own teams because I think it was thought that if they, effectively chose their own crew members they would, they would, they would gel better, as a crew. They would have more in common, and they would, they would be more likely to work well as a team if they, if they hadn’t been imposed on each other so they were basically told, you know, find you, find your - I don’t whether the pilot went round and said ‘right I need a navigator and a bomb aimer,’ and so on, I’m not quite sure, but this- And I’ve heard this from more than one source, that they, that, that somebody decided, very sensibly actually, that that was a better psychology then just teaming them up arbitrarily. So dad’s crew at this point was Flying Officer Vivian, S. R. Vivian, known as Viv, he was the pilot, my father himself, Flight Sergeant R. C. Wilson, as he was then, navigator, known as Reg, Flight Officer L. A. Underwood, that’s Laurie, whose the bomb aimer, Sergeant Ross who was the wireless operator and air gunner, he had two, two roles, ‘cause different planes had different requirements in terms of crew, some of, some of the roles were- In some other aircraft I think the bomb aimer and the navigator was combined. Anyway, Sergeant Ross was a wireless operator/ air gunner, known as Bill, and Sergeant John Bushell, Johnny, the rear gunner. So, for six weeks, they flew day and night, in this crew, just five people, carrying out exercises such as cross-country and formation flying, air firing, fighter affiliation and bombing practice, and they had to do some ground work. At this point dad was introduced to something called the distant reading compass, this was located near the tail of the aircraft away from magnetic influences, which otherwise would have corrupted it. It was a gyro-controlled compass, it was very stable and it could be adjusted by the navigator for the earth's magnetic variation, to give true north readings, and this thing had electric repeaters for the pilot, the navigator and the bomb aimer, so they could actually access the readings from the front of the plane, although the actual gadget was at the back. He can remember flying at night, trying to practise astronavigation, and this was difficult because they sky was barely dark. You’ve got to remember this was around the time of the summer solstice, mid-summer, in the north of Scotland and at ten thousand feet the sun’s glow was present on the horizon for most of the night so it never got completely dark, but the Grampians and the Highlands below looked gaunt and forbidding in what was basically a kind of twilight, I suppose. So, as was the case with many crews by the end of the training, the crew had become great friends, they’d spent time together at Findhorn Bay, on the Moray Firth, and on some afternoons, in the pub in Forres town on some Saturdays, and he recalled that he- They’d spent one entire weekend confined to the mess. They’d been confined there by the CO because they’d landed in error at RAF Lossiemouth which was an adjacent airfield, instead of Kinloss, and they drank a lot of beer, not surprisingly. They left Kinloss for some leave, but they never saw Viv, the pilot again because he had been borrowed to, to fly with another crew, this happened quite a lot, and he was killed three weeks later, tragically just a few days after he’d got married, while, whilst on leave, and again a lot of people did that, got married perhaps prematurely because they thought they might, you know, might not get another opportunity. So, this was before they even reached RAF Rufforth in north- In Yorkshire, which was the conversion unit for Halifax heavy bombers. So they got to Rufforth in the middle of August, discovered that Viv had been reported missing, on the 10th of August, whilst flying as a second pilot, second dickie pilot, which they had to do to gain operational experience before they could take their own crew out on operation. Anyway, so Viv had disappeared on the 10th of August while flying as a second dickie on a raid to Nuremburg, and dad subsequently found out that his pilots' aircraft had crashed near Ramsen Bolanden in Germany, and six were killed including Viv, and two became POW’s. So, Viv, dad’s pilot actually never got to head up his own crew and that left the rest of them a headless crew. So they then had to wait the appointment of another pilot, and this is when, you know, the party was over at this point, they’d had all these wonderful experiences in Canada and the USA, and Scotland, lots of travelling, lots of leisure time, lots of laughs, but at this point it became- It began to look, look very serious, it became a lottery. There’s no way they could tell from day to day, even in the conversion unit, before operations started whether they would live or die, because during their short stay at Rufforth, sixty air crew were killed due to mechanical failure of aircraft or accidents, and dad recalls an incident of the collision of two aircraft in mid-air, and another aircraft crashing when its propeller fell off into the fuselage, and another one came down at night on a practice bombing raid. So after a few days they got a new pilot, so flylan- Flight Lieutenant P. G. A. Harvey was appointed, and Sergeant A. McCarrol as the mid-upper gunner, they hadn’t had a mid-upper gunner before by the look of it. So, Sergeant McCarrol had been a drummer previously in murricks[?]- morris wennix [?] dance band and was well known on BBC radio in the pre-war period. The flight engineer was Sergeant J. McCardle, and that completed the crew for the Halifax bomber, which normally had seven members unless they had a second dickie pilot on board, in which case there would be eight of them. Now, the new pilot, Flight Lieutenant Harvey was a very experienced pilot, he’d survived two operational tours but these had been in the Middle East in 1941 and on Wellingtons, and they couldn’t really understand why this man would want to take on another tour. But anyway, he did, maybe he was after a, an award of some kind, but anyway he’d volunteered, but, dad points out that flying on operations deep inside Germany in ‘43 was a different dimension, it was a different ball game, and this is because cities in Germany were heavily defended by ack-ack, and night fighters armed with cannon, and equip with radar homing devices were everywhere. So, this was very different to flying in the Middle East in 1941, where a lot of the missions, although in a warzone weren’t actually bombing missions, they might’ve been deliveries and, you know, service flights. Now because Harvey was a seasoned pilot, they decided that they could fast track the process. So the minimum time was taken to crew up, to get familiar with the Halifax and to take on the new disciplines, which they needed in the Halifax, of a flight engineer and a mid-upper gunner, and dad had to learn how to use Gee, that’s spelt G-double-E. This was a radar device, for measuring pulses from two transmitting stations, and these were displayed on a cathode-ray tube which you then plotted on a special gridded map, and this gave pin point accuracy of the ground position, and this was a new gadget as far as dad was concerned. So, they had air exercises for bombing, air firing, fighter affiliation, and the latter exercise, so that’s fighter affiliation, was one to remember. This was the 2nd of September ‘43, they flew at ten thousand feet and a fighter would attack, that’s in inverted commas because it’s a mock up, obviously, training exercise, from behind and the two gunners would then co-operate with the pilot so that he could take evasive action. So, they would depart from the plotted route to dive or, or, or change course suddenly in order to get out of the way. Now in taking evasive action, Flight Lieutenant Harvey, managed to turn the aircraft on its back, and it was seve- several thousand feet later before he succeeded in righting the aircraft. Dad, the navigator had spun round in the nose of the plane, there were broken rivets rattling round everywhere, and the chemical Elsan toilet at the back of the aircraft had emptied its contents all over the rear of the plane. Not pleasant experience, and they were all shaken up by this, especially because, you know, Flight Harvey- Flight Lieutenant Harvey already had nearly four hundred operational flying hours to his credit and they didn’t expect him to lose control, they thought he knew what he was doing. But the good thing that came out of it was that John, the rear gunner, Johnny, Johnny Bushell, he decided from then that he wouldn’t- Then on that he would store his parachute in his gun turret [emphasis], rather than in the fuselage which was required by regulations. So, a maverick, and this action would later save his life, and dad decided as well that he would try and minimise the risk to himself, so he, he kind of devised this routine to cover baling out. So, point one, this is like bullet points, point one, helmet off, and the reason for this was you could break your neck if you had the helmet still attached to the oxygen supply and the intercom, so the first thing he did was take it off. Parachute on, for the obvious reason that it’s not a good idea to jump out without it, and then, this is one special to dad, handle on the left hand-side. Dad was left-handed, and aircraft was sometimes due- killed due to an unopened parachute with the d-ring, the handle, on the ‘wrong’ that’s inverted commas side. So, if you were right-handed, obviously the right side would be the right-hand side, and for dad it was gonna be the left-hand side. So dad had also decided that, as he had a minute or so to spare while over the target, he would fold back his seat, lift up the navigation table clear of the escape hatch and be ready to bale out immediately, if necessary because this was the point at which they were obviously at their most vulnerable over the target, and because the navigator’s job was very cerebral and was, he was constantly occupied throughout the whole flight, unlike some of the other crew members, this was his only opportunity really, to take a break. So he basically got ready to bale out on every single operational flight, just in case, and he said that he believed that these plans, together with the action taken by Johnny the rear gunner, gave them and Laurie, or gave dad and Laurie, the bomb aimer, additional vital seconds when the three of them were to save their lives nearly five months later. So Laurie and dad were saved by dad having folded up the, the table, and Johnny by having his parachute more accessible than it would otherwise have been. So, a week or so after this, this last training flight, they were posted to 102 Squadron in Pocklington to commence their operational service, so quite a long haul from joining at the beginning, quite a long process. So, Pocklington, is twelve miles south-east of York, it has eight-hundred foot hills, three and a half miles north-east of the aircraft- airfield. So while dad was there, two Halifax bombers complete with bomb loads, crashed into the hills after take-off, so the result of that was that they didn’t use that particular runway afterwards, because of the, the, the risk of running into the mountains. Pocklington was a wartime airfield, some of the others had been in use before the war, and the ones that were basically, got ready just for the wartime, only had temporary accommodation so they were all billeted in Nissen huts. These had semi-circular corrugated iron roofs, roofs and walls and concrete ends, not very comfortable, dispersed in fields, near the aircraft- Sorry, in fields near the, near the airfield, and they were pretty dreary, inhospitable places. The heating was only a central coal burning stove, so whenever they weren’t on duty they went for refuge and relaxation in the relative comfort of the sergeant's mess, or the pubs. Or famous places like Betty’s Bar, in York, or the dance halls like The De Grey Rooms in York. Pocklington had three affiliated airfields, Elvington, where there’s now an air museum complete with a, model of a Halifax which has been made from parts of Halifax bombers welded together, because none of the Halifax bombers were saved after the war, unlike the Lancasters, something else he was- Dad was quite miffed about. So anyway, there was Elvington, Full Sutton and Melbourne, and they were all sort of in a group, and they were commanded by Air Commodore Gus Walker, who was the youngest air commodore in the RAF at the time, only thirty-one years old. He’d lost his right arm when a Lancaster had exploded on the ground at Syerston, the airfield which he’d commanded in 1942. So mid-September, Pocklington, 1943. Flight Lieutenant Harvey, was promoted to acting squadron leader in charge of A flights, so this meant that his crew would not fly as frequently on operations as other, other crews. That was a mixed blessing, because it meant a tour of thirty operations would take longer if they were under his command. So, over the next two weeks they completed a number of cross-country exercises, mostly for dad’s benefit to practise his navigation skills with the new equipment. So he learnt how to use Gee at Rufforth, but in the meantime the Germans had learnt how to jam Gee. So as the aircraft approached the coastline of continental Europe, the radar pulses were obliterated. So the navigator then had a race against time to obtain as much data as he could before they crossed the Dutch, or Danish coast, and at Pocklington they had a, what was then, state of the art, new piece of radar equipment called H2S, height to surface. It was located in the aircraft itself and it sent out pulses to the ground, around the aircraft for ranges of fifteen to twenty miles, and the reflections that were received back were shown as bright specks on a cathode-ray tube, and the density of the reflections depended on whether the aircraft was flying over sea, land, hills, rivers, cities or lakes. So from this, a rough typographical map of the ground was, was translated, the quality of the picture varied but it was much better than what they’d had previously, and the map, was displayed on the cathode-ray screen. The best results were produced between land and sea, but if the navigator factored in his, his awareness of the ground position he could recognise coastlines, large rivers, lakes, sizeable towns, and other prominent features, both on the way to and back from the target. So he could use this information to plot the bearing and distance from these landmarks, and he could recalculate wind velocities, required tracks, ground speeds, and the ti- Critically the time that it would take to reach the target. So, with the help of H2S some more experienced navigators would have the ability to blind bomb, which- Blind bombing meant that you could reach your target without the need to use the markers dropped by the Pathfinders, and the Pathfinders incidentally also used the H2S equipment. H2S couldn’t be jammed, but the night fighters could home in on the H2S frequency if it was on continuously, and unfortunately this is something they didn’t know at the time, and some aircraft were shot down because of it and probably that accounts for the, the demise of dad’s aircraft later on. Another new piece of equipment was the air plot indicator, and this was available to the navigator by this time. That linked the gyrocompass and the airspeed indicator, gave a continuous read out of the air position in latitude and longitude, used for navigators, a navigation device but, you couldn’t rely on it entirely. So basically, the navigator had to use a combination of all the things that were available to him, and you know, his common sense and sometimes just basic geometry, when everything else failed. They had a handheld Ican that’s I-C-A-N computer, computer used in the original sense of the word there, something that calculated. It was a manually operating vectoring device, so they used that to plot a course, geometry really, calculate airspeed, make good their desired track and ground speed, and then they added that information into the main chart, and they also had radio bearings that were taken by the wireless operator and astro-sight shots[?], and they were converted into position lines by the use of almanacs, so basically, using the stars. But neither of the, these methods were practical when off- operating over enemy territory, because operational aircraft were growing faster, and the need to take evasion action at any moment because of flak or night fighters would mean that you, you didn’t have time to use these devices. And when no navigational aids were available, for some reason or some technical mishap, and map reading over cloud or at night, especially at high altitude, they’d have to resort to something called dead reckoning, and that required accurate plotting of air position, the use of wind velocities which had been supplied by the MET office officer, at the briefing before they left, and sometimes these were updated on route by radio, or the use of those calculated by the navigator en route. So they need to be modified all the time for changes to the forecast weather, to take account of wind velocity changes and any alterations in altitude, which might be caused for reasons that couldn’t be predicted. So, how did they prepare for a bombing mission? Well, it, it was a lengthy procedure, it occupied a good part of the day prior to the night's operation. So, the first thing that would happen would be mid-morning, ‘ops on’ would be announced, if there was to be a raid that night. So the ground crew would be busy checking each aircraft radar, guns, engines, filling the wing tanks with over two-thousand gallons of fuel. Armourers would load the guns with ammunition, and bring up and mount a mix of high explosive and incendiary bombs ‘cause there were two types in the bay, in the bomb bays for that night's target. So these bombs were stored in a remote part of the airfield for safety obviously, behind blast walls, and they had to be fused for the target and towed along on long low trolleys you see that a lot in the old films, and towed by tractor to the des- The aircraft dispersal points, and although the target wasn’t disclosed at this point, because of the strict security rules, you know, walls have ears and all of that, ground crews would have a good idea from the amount of fuel loaded and the type of bomb load where the target would be. So more fuel meant further east, further north, further away. So about the same time as the ground crew were doing all these things, the aircrew would be briefed, so I will try- I can’t remember where it was, I think it, I think it might have been at, at Elvington we, we went to a re-enactment of one of these briefings and dad said it was very good, so I’ve actually experienced this as well because, you know, you have the sort of flip chart with a map on it and then, you know, they lift up the blanket and you see Berlin and everybody gasps and, you know, Dad said it was, it was just like that. Although it is actually done quite well in some of the films as well. So, there’d be a leader for each discipline, so the pilots would have a speaker, the navigators, the bomb aimers and so on, and the navigators would be the busiest, they’d be issued with flight plans, meteorological information. They’d be the first to know the target, because they’d have to plot the route on their chart and smaller topographical maps, and then they would highlight towns, lakes, rivers so that they, you know, could, could recognise them when they were flying over them, familiarise themselves with the territory. Initial courses and airspeeds would be calculated from the wind velocities supplied, and these would be modified as more information was gained from Gee and H2S during the flight. So, the navigators- It was essential that they kept, were kept to their prescribed altitudes, tracks and timetables. This was to maintain the concentration of the bomber stream, in order to keep to their time slot over the target, which was no more than three minutes long so, it was really important that people, you know, did exactly what, what they’d been told to do and didn’t deviate from it. So, the aircrew would then go to the mess, have their operational meal of eggs and bacon, which was a treat because civilians were lucky to get one egg a month, they’d fill their thermos flask with coffee, draw their flying rations of chocolate and orange juice to sustain them, during the long night, and they’d also have available caffeine tablets to keep them alert. Then they’d get the briefing, so everybody due to be on operational duty that night, about a hundred-and-fifty personnel, were assembled in front of a large war map of Europe showing the route and the target. If it was to be the big city, Berlin, a gasp would go round the hut. This was considered to be the most dangerous target of all. The briefing was carried out by the squadron commander, the intelligence officer, the MET officer, and any other specialist whose views were pertinent to that night's raid, so that could depend on what the target was and what the purpose was. So the briefing would cover the size of the bombing force, the objective, of any diversionary raids taking place, ‘cause sometimes they’d have a decoy to put the Germans off the scent, the weather expected en route, and when returning to base, the forecast wind changes, the extent of cloud cover en route and over the target, and icing risks at various altitudes and obviously that would depend on the time of year as well, how the Pathfinders would be marking the route and the target, and any hot spots, danger spots for flak and night fighters, and then all personnel, especially navigators were asked to synchronise their watches to the second, to GMT. Then they would draw their parachutes and their Mae Wests, their life jackets, they left any personal items in a bag to be picked up if and when they returned, and departed by truck to the dispersal points and there they had time to smoke a cigarette outside, not frowned upon in those days, and then to check their equipment thoroughly before they took off. The air gunners would check their guns over the North Sea, and there’s a, there’s a nice little line drawing somewhere of the, the crew all having a pee against the side of the aircraft which was partly ‘cause it was more difficult to have a pee once you were inside the aircraft, but also, I think it was a kind of macho good luck, you know, boys' game. There’s a great little line drawing of it somewhere, I can’t remember where I saw it. Sometimes they’d get to this point and they’d have to wait for clearance of fog, the MET officer would’ve guaranteed that it would clear otherwise they wouldn’t have gone through the whole process, but sometimes it didn’t, and if it didn’t the whole operation would have to be aborted, and I think that must’ve been one of the most frustration things because they’ve all- The adrenaline’s flowing and then you’ve got to come down and you haven’t actually got anything to show for it. So, assuming it wasn’t aborted, at last it was time to take off, the crews were directed by the airfield controller to the runway. Many of the ground crew would then wave them off into the darkness, I think they felt a sense of ownership of, whatever plane they’d been working on, so they’re very much part of the team although they weren’t in front line. Then for the people in the air commenced the long ordeal, five to eight hours of freezing cold, heavy vibration, incessant roar of the four Rolls Royce Merlin engines in the case of the Halifax, in an unpressurised aircraft until they returned, hopefully unscathed, in the early hours of the following morning. When they got back they were debriefed, they were given hot coffee, a tot of rum by the padre, and again, this, you see this in some of the better films, and the- They had to be debriefed by an intelligence officer, who took notes about the bombing run, any details of flak and night fighters, information that could all be used to improve safety on subsequent flights, and then they had egg, bacon breakfast and trekked back to the huts, crawled into bed and tried to get some sleep and wait for the next one. Okay, so, they- Their first operation was a mine laying trip, called- Also known as gardening and planting vegetables, that’s the kind of code for it. This, that, that, this was supposed to be an easy, an easy option ‘cause it was not as dangerous obviously as bombing raid over a major city. So this was the 2nd of October 1943, and they- When they got about half way across the North Sea, towards Denmark, the flight- The, the pilot, Harvey, asked Laurie, the bomb aimer to take over the controls while he went to the toilet, and Laurie had never, he would’ve had some training to assist the pilot but not in flying the plane, and Laurie had never sat in the pilot seat of a Halifax before, and there he was on his first ever mission at the controls while the pilot went to the toilet. So, as they, as they approached the enemy coast, Laurie, the bomb aimer is at the controls never having- I don’t even know if he could drive a car, and Harvey had this urgent call of nature, and- Anyway, so, you, at this point there were no events, dad said if they’d actually thought about the magnitude of what was going on, you know, they’d of all jumped out, but anyway, when they passed over the cloa-, the coast there was a loud bang, which lifted up the aircraft, and at this point the Gee and the H2S went out of action, so they got to Denmark without these navigational aids, and they opened the bomb doors and they made their, their dropping run at eight thousand feet, tried to release the mines but they wouldn’t drop. So they tried to liberate them manually, but they couldn’t get them out, and Harvey the pilot, at this point decided to return to base with the mines on board, and he tried to close the bomb doors but they wouldn’t shut, so it was obvious that their hydraulic system had been damaged, as well as the radar equipment probably by flak. So they went down to two thousand feet to get under the cloud base, and got caught up in some nasty electric storms. But without technical navigational aids, dad had to pick out land fall as soon as possible, it was down to dead reckoning, and this was his first flight [chuckles], operational flight. So they didn’t need oxygen at this height, so dad decided he’d got to the loo as well. So he went to visit the Elsan at the rear of the aircraft, and he took a torch and he groped his way to the back, and he was just stepping over the main spar when he noticed a gaping hole beneath him, and had he completed the step he would’ve fallen two thousand feet into the North Sea without a parachute. So at this point he decided to wee through the hole, rather than complete the journey to the Elsan, and he returned to the nose to confirm to Harvey that there was no doubt that they had been hit by flak. So he had a drink of coffee to restore his nerves, but the damage was quite considerable. So, when the flaps and the wheels were lowered for landing, the bomb doors, flaps and wheels could not be raised again, which meant that if they were to overshoot the runway on landing, they would crash with two mines still on board. So they knew, you know, that, that, they were in great danger, and so they crossed Flamborough head on the north, North Yorkshire coast, and dad’s dead reckoning brought them back on course and they landed safely. But on landing one of the mines fell out onto the runway, and at the dispersal point the ground staff were amazed that in these circumstances they’d survived without a scratch. They thought the aircraft would be scrapped because the damage was very considerable, there was a lot of shrapnel holes and so on, but it was repaired and it went off to be used in other missions, and eventually was shot down with the loss of all crew, but that’s not dad’s crew, that was, this was another crew. So the upshot of this was that dad- After the war dad read flight- The pilot’s statement on that, this mission and he found it to be totally inaccurate, there’s no mention of the flak damage, or having to bring the mines back, although it is in the Pocklington station records, and dad believed that Harvey wanted to have an unblemished tour of operations on his record, you know, so dad, dad was very much a man of honesty and everything was meticulous and he was- That’s why he made such a good navigator, but he lived his whole life like that and he didn’t like- It disturbed him to think that other people could, could bend the rules for their own purposes which is what this amounted to. Having had a near miss, the mid-upper gunner reported sick before the next operation, never flew again, and sadly was labelled LMF, lack of moral fibre, reduced to AC2 and posted to Elvington for general duties. So, he said that because the losses were so high at the time this was at the peak really of the dangerous period, one crew hardly got to know each other before- One crew hardly ever got to know another crew at the base before one of the two crews went missing, you know, you’d notice, you get back to the base there’d be a number of empty beds and you’d learn that they’d not come back, and you wouldn’t ever necessarily know what had happened to them. Every mission to Germany, especially to Berlin was like going over the top, in the First World War, according to Dad, that risky. A success- A succession of these raids could bring on exhaustion, nerves, to anybody however strong they were mentally, and the threat of being branded LMF was made to avoid the eventuality where aircrew would just refuse collectively to, to fly. He said only 0.4% of all aircrew were branded LMF but it’s surprising actually, and he, he thought it was a huge injustice when you considered there were many civilians of military age in reserved occupations, who’d never have been exposed to such risks. Anyway, after this, first operation, the squadron navigation officer decided to check my dad’s log and chart, and he found both completely accurate, commended dad on the results, which he knew had been made under testing conditions and subsequently informed dad that he was recommending him for a commission, so it looked like he was going to get his commission after the war. So it made up for having missed it before by a few marks. So, the next operation was supposed to be to Frankfurt but the pilot decided to turn back, less than a hundred miles from target. It, it was frustrating for everybody else, being so near the target, because the raid turned out to be the first serious blow to Frankfurt and, later the flight engineer went sick and did not fly again. The next flight was to Hannover, this one preceded without mishap, and then they thought, okay things are looking up, we’ll- Looks like we’re gonna be successful crew, but then they didn’t fly on any more operations in October, remember that the position of Harvey as a, as a, as a- His promoted position meant that they didn’t fly perhaps as frequently as other crews, and they, in fact they never flew again with him, because he, although officially he did remain the A flight commander until the end of November. So dad got his commission, Gus Walker confirmed that dad was being recommended for it and he was interviewed for it, and during that meeting my father learnt that the pilot Harvey was being withdrawn from operational flying because he’d had enough. But he did get his DFC, and that was described as long overdue for his tours in the Middle East, but dad had a different view. So, now they’ve lost their second pilot and they’re a headless crew again, so during that period they all flew as spares. Dad hated this. Flying as a spare meant you replaced a crew member in another crew who as sick or otherwise unable to fly. It was very demoralising because you didn’t have any of the team spirit and trust in each other that you had when you were flying with a regular crew. You were just a floating part, you had little or no faith in the crew that you were joining for that night and they probably didn’t have any faith in you either, ‘cause they didn’t know you, and it was bad for morale of everybody. So, Laurie, the bomb aimer, John the rear gunner, and Dad, the original three, flew as spares for the next five or so operations and the wireless operator had disappeared. So-
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Janet Hughes, One
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-02
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AHughesJ171102
Format
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01:06:41 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Janet Hughes’ father, Reginald Charles Wilson, volunteered for the RAF in August 1941. In January 1942, he was posted to America under the Arnold training scheme and was later remustered to train as a navigator in Canada. After forming a crew at RAF Kinloss in 1943, the pilot was killed in action, so they located another pilot while converting to Halifaxes at RAF Rufforth before joining 102 Squadron. Hughes describes Wilson’s use of Gee and H2S, and how anti-aircraft fire damaged his navigational instruments during his first operation, forcing them to land with mines on board.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Moray Firth
United States
Georgia--Albany
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
102 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
briefing
Gee
H2S
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
mine laying
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Kinloss
RAF Pocklington
RAF Rufforth
sanitation
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/837/10827/PGoldbyJL1701.1.jpg
a45bc6d8a3e3b396aa60a0e197184a52
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/837/10827/AGoldbyJL171025.2.mp3
eeb8f152cb68ea23e18042b8b5151712
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
Goldby, John Louis
J L Goldby
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Goldby (1922 - 2020, 1387511, 139407 Royal Air Force). He was shot down and became a prisoner of war in December 1944.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Goldby and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
2017-10-25
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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Goldby, JL
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is John Goldby. The interview is taking place at Mr Goldby’s home in Keston in the county of Kent on the 25th of October 2017. Ok, John. Well, if you’d like to perhaps kick off. Tell us a bit about where you were born and about growing up.
JG: Yes. I was born in Bexley, Kent in 1922. The next thing, the following year the family moved to Sidcup and my home until I joined up was in Sidcup. I went to what was then called the Sidcup County School before that was then turned into a grammar school and I went, started there in 1931 and I stayed there until the end of the summer 1939. From there on I, until I joined up I worked for a private bank, Brown Shipley and Company in the City of London. And I worked for them until I joined up in May 19 — 1941.
DM: What, when you, what prompted you to join the air force as opposed to going into another service?
JG: Well, my reason for the air force was I had a friend who was at the school who was about a year older than I was and as soon as he could join anything he joined the air force and became a Spitfire pilot. I thought that’s just the thing. One, one great advantage is if something happens to you when you’re at ten twenty thousand feet up there’s a chance of something might come to your rescue in those twenty thousand feet. Whereas if you are shot on the battlefield that’s where you’ll lie. And if you fall in the water in certain circumstances in the Navy that’s where you’ll end because the water is very cold. I stayed with the bank until such time as I, as I was actually called up because until I was eighteen I wasn’t allowed to go. But when the time came in 1941 I joined and I was, had been recorded as being fit for either pilot or navigator training. Because at that time it was the beginning of the expansion of Bomber Command to the four engine aircraft which meant there were now there was a bomb aimer and a navigator and as it happened the extra body and above that was a flight engineer.
DM: Where? When you say you signed up and then you were called up?
JG: Yes.
DM: To go and train. I assume that was the next thing.
JG: That’s right.
DM: Where did that happen? Where did you go for that?
JG: They were, the receiving wing as it was called was in Babbacombe in, in Devon and I went down there on the 31st of May 1941. After a couple of months or so then started ground, with air crew ground training. Morse code and all that sort of thing. Aircraft recognition. The sort of basic things which would then enable me to go on to flying training. In fact, some of my ground training was up here at Kenley which was a fighter aircraft airfield and was involved in the Battle of Britain or had been by the time I got there. And that was a number, there were quite a lot of these actual operational stations which housed training. Ground training for aircrew. Eventually, having done ground training I was then allocated a position in Air Observer School for training, as they were called then air observers. And the one, and then they were allocated on the basis of alphabetical order. And there were five of us in on the list whose initial was G. And the five of us who’d been looking forward to going to either South Africa or Canada or somewhere exotic like that found ourselves going to the Isle of Man. And I thought what a jolly place to be for the cold winter because that’s where I started training in October 1941 and I stayed there until May 1942. And then it was to Operational Training Unit. And in those days Operational Training Unit, the individual aircrew got together and formed a crew. It was virtually sort of go and find someone who you liked, feel you would like to fly with. It wasn’t mandatory as far as I know who you were allocated or I was and then people were added of course. A pilot who was in army uniform and in fact he had opted to change to aircrew which of course you could do if you wanted to go aircrew. And that’s another thing with the police. The police were allowed to leave and join up for aircrew duties. And so we had, we had a lot of police in our intake if you like who’d done all sorts of jobs in the police. And I flew, we used to fly in pairs on navigational training. And the extraordinary thing really for navigational training we were flying Blenheims which were actually operational aircraft. And it was the fastest aircraft I think I flew in the whole war. That’s — and I flew with a chap who had been a policeman in Glasgow. Actually, he was a mobile policeman. Anyway, the bombing training was from Hampdens, both of those aircraft were of course twin-engine. And then, and air gunnery we flew in, again in Blenheims firing at a drogue. And the training there lasted from the October ’41 to May ’42 and then back to this country. And then in the June on we went to [pause] can we stop it for a moment?
[recording paused]
JG: Still training. An Operational Training Unit which was at Stanton Harcourt which was a subsidiary to, or satellite to RAF Abingdon. When having or while we were there my pilot went on the first thousand bomber raid in, in May ’42 as a sort of, as a second pilot. Then in June, on the 25th of June ’42 we flew as a crew to Cologne in a Whitley. That was on the three days before my twentieth birthday which was the 25th of June 1942. We flew on the 25th. Did I say 25th? The 28th of June is my birthday.
DM: Right.
JG: Did I make a mistake there?
DM: That’s ok. So your birthday’s the 28th of June.
JG: 28th
DM: You flew on the 25th.
JG: The 25th
DM: A few days before. Yeah.
JG: Having finished there at OTU we then went to RAF St Eval. And the policy at that time was that crews that were now finished OTU, certainly from 4 Group went down to do a number, or several months’ worth of flying in Whitleys in, on an anti-submarine role. An anti-submarine role.
DM: So, St Eval is in Cornwall. Is that right?
JG: Cornwall.
DM: Yeah.
JG: That’s right. We, we used to fly ten hour sorties from there and when we came back the next day we were absolutely clear. We didn’t do anything that day. In fact we couldn’t probably hear anything that day but because the conditions of course in the Whitley are pretty cramped. But we had to do the ten hours and the following day was a free day. The next day we were briefed on what the flight was to be the following day. And that was the pattern. And you had a free day, briefing and then the next day you flew. I did, as far as I can recall — one of the problems I have is that my, I never retrieved my logbook following becoming a POW when all my stuff was taken and distributed. So, one way or another I didn’t ever get my book back and I’ll say a bit more about that later. Anyway, after that, after our period down there in Cornwall we came back up to Yorkshire to the, to a Conversion Unit on the four engine aircraft. And that was when I joined or after that period in a, in the Marston Moor was the Conversion Unit in Yorkshire. And we flew then with, now with the extra crew the [pause] I suppose we spent about a month there and then as a crew we went to RAF Linton on Ouse and joined 78 Squadron which was at that time commanded by Wing Commander Tait, T A I T. Known as Willie Tait and who ended his career, I suppose it would have been when he took on the final sortie against the Tirpitz. He, I don’t know — there was a programme on last night. Was of the 617 Squadron and the, and the nine aircraft that flew on this final sortie and demolished the Tirpitz, it was about the fourth or fifth time they’d done it. Had not had a big enough bomb which of course had to be designed by Barnes Wallis who was the author, if you like, of the bomb, the bouncing bomb. Anyway, Willie Tait was a bit of a frightening man. He was not popular because he was so blooming strict and didn’t fraternise really with other aircrew. And it was particularly noticeable because Linton on Ouse was shared between 78 Squadron with Willie Tait and 76 Squadron with Leonard Cheshire and they were so different it’s hardly true. So, we arrived there in October and we started operations. Starting with what we used to call, or was called gardening. That’s mine laying. Which counted for only one operation. People disappeared on those things so how they could justify going down for, on a half an op, I don’t know. And I stayed there with 78 Squadron until March ’43. That was, that was’ 42. ’43, I had gone down at the end of February ’43. I was commissioned and I went down to London to get kitted out. I came back and I developed a raging throat infection. It turned out to be an abscess and I was put into hospital and I never re-joined 78. I then went on sort of sick leave and eventually I had the tonsils out at the time of my 21st birthday before then going on to the sort of thing that one did at the end of a tour of operations which was as an instructor. And that’s when I went in that year down to Moreton in Marsh flying Wellingtons. I stayed there [pause] I’m getting a bit. Will you turn it off a bit?
[recording paused]
JG: My time at Moreton in Marsh lasted until the spring of 1944. Following that I completed a bombing leader course at the Armaments School at RAF Manby in January 1944. At the end of that I then went to RAF Riccall. This was another of the Conversion Units. Yeah. And from there, after doing the bombing leader course I went from the — to this. To Riccall. RAF Riccall which was the conversion [pause] I’d better have it off.
[recording paused]
JG: Riccall. RAF Riccall, on a refresher course before joining a Squadron. And that’s where I was on D-day. So, by the time I reached 640 Squadron it was the end of June 1944 and that’s where I went to take up the post of bombing leader.
DM: When you went — so you were on your new base.
JG: Yes.
DM: You were now a bombing leader. Did you have a crew?
JG: No.
DM: Or were you a sort of a spare bod?
JG: That’s right.
DM: As they said.
JG: That’s right. Yes. Well, I’ve got in my notes down here. In that position I was supposed to stay. Fly no more than two operations a month which was not very much. And I was the one who selected when I would go and with whom. Sensibly and logically really the ones I went on I was actually taking the place of somebody in the crew who was not able to go on that particular flight. Illness or whatever reason. And I was flying, we were coming up to Christmas and I am sure that I had by that time I had done, I’d flown twelve operations and the one that I was going on was to be my thirteenth actually of my second tour. I decided that I was going to have to do at least one anyway in December. So I selected one on the 6th of December because that was where the usual permanent bomb aimer was ill. So, I took his place. So I was flying with that crew for the first time ever. The only one of them, of the crew, commissioned was the pilot. I knew him because we were both commissioned. But the rest of the crew non-commissioned I hadn’t met before even. And of course I made the great mistake that I’d picked the wrong one. It was, shouldn’t have been a particularly dangerous one but anyway over Germany and this is now where there’s a bit of a gap in what happened because I see I’m actually have been recorded as being shot down. I always doubted that because the manner in which we crashed. There was, we weren’t attacked by anything. And what I believe and I’m hoping I will get one day confirmation of this, we collided with a German night fighter. And the reason I say that is because in the report that I got back from the Air Ministry things apparently a night fighter was lost that night in that area and reported a collision. And the circumstances of the accident lead one I think to conclude that it’s certainly much more likely to have been a collision because from going from the pilot completely under control to immediately losing control and I conclude, and most people think it’s much more likely I think that we collided with this thing and it took our tail off because in no time at all we were in a spin. And as we spun down it was impossible to get out of the aircraft because the, what do you call it force?
DM: The G Force.
JG: G. Yes. Really. You couldn’t lift a hand to get out. And then they, there was this crashing sound which I believed was we were hitting the ground. I thought well this is it but in fact within seconds I suppose it would be only I found myself outside in the fresh air on a dark December night. I had my parachute pack on because I’d already put that on as soon as there was an emergency and I opened that up and then descended by parachute. And there was not a sound or a sign of anything which was connected with the accident. So the aircraft had gone down. I was now floating down. Way behind it I suppose. And I don’t believe that was as a result of an actual physical attack. But being shot down it certainly wasn’t. The evidence points to that I think. I’ve tried to find out more about that. With a bit of luck my elder son who is coming down at the beginning of December is going to review records to see if he can find out any more about it. Or if there is any way one can get through Germany. I don’t suppose there’s anything anyway. They won’t have kept much of that sort of record. But we’ll see. But I’ve always had an open mind about this. So, how I came down I don’t know. But I came down in a flooded field. I didn’t realise at the time but I looked down and saw this expanse of water. I couldn’t make it out because we were nowhere near the sea or any large expanse of water. And I came down. I thought I had broken my right leg. I was holding my leg in both hands, both arms because of the pain and the trousers torn. Blood all over the place. And I went in left leg first and sprained my leg because it turned out to be a flooded field which was not very helpful. Fell over and got soaking wet. I spent a bit of time in some bushes trying to find out what was wrong with me if I could and then sort of get myself composed enough to move on. Eventually I did. I moved on in the direction of some houses. I knew by compass the heading of course. I had no idea where I was on the ground. How far I’d fallen before I opened the parachute. Anything like that. So, I eventually got into a farmyard and into an open cart and I examined my body to see what was wrong and also to get rid of my wet things which were very wet. The only trouble was I was going to have to sort of wring them out and put them back on again. Which I did. And while I was in the cart, presumably members of the farm came out, calling out, ‘Is there anybody there?’ Or what I assumed was what they were after. Of course, I kept quiet and they would go away and enable me then to start my escape. Eventually I got out of the farm. I realised I had just flesh wounds on my right leg. It was nothing really serious but my hands were cut, my face was cut. Anyway, off I went in the early hours of the next morning. The 7th. I was walking down a country lane actually with not a sound or sign of anybody when I was stopped by a guard, an armed guard who I believe to have come from the local Luftwaffe station. Anyway, by now I was a prisoner of course and from then on I spent a bit of time there while they organised my — oh no. What am I talking about? No. I was put into a hospital. It was a civil hospital run by nuns. And the four of us who had survived this accident which was me, the flight engineer, the wireless operator and the navigator we, we were not too far dispersed on the ground when we landed. So that they got us together and then planned, I presume what they were going to do with us. And fortunately for me the flight engineer and I were put into hospital where we were very well treated. The flight engineer was very badly injured. He’d broken all sorts of his body and the extraordinary thing is with him we were in this room together, we talked together all the time because there was no one else to talk to and he had not realised what had happened to him. Where he was. He could not remember anything following taxiing out to take off the night before. The 6th. And he never did as far as I know. But he was in a very bad way and he was still in hospital when I left which was somewhere towards the mid to I haven’t got the actual date of this. January. One day a guard appeared at my door and I was told to dress and follow him in about, at least six inches of snow outside and as this was going to be my first walk following the parachute descent I wasn’t too happy about it. But fortunately he had a bicycle and I was allowed to push it in the manner of the zimmer really while he walked beside me. We went to the local Luftwaffe station and then a few days later two guards arrived and started me on my way down to the Frankfurt. The Dulag Luft Interrogation Centre where I was, everyone was when you arrived there you go in to solitary and they liked to make it as unpleasant for you as they can. The bed was just two or three struts across the frame. A blanket and a pillow and that was basically it. If you wanted to use the lavatory you had to operate a little lever on the inside of the thing, of the room which indicated to the guard outside that you wanted to go. Whereupon they either came or they didn’t which was a bit, could be difficult. So you really had to plan in advance. And then of course once you were in there, you got to the loo as soon as you got there and if you wanted to sit down they shouted, ‘Come out.’ And made it, everything was made unpleasant. The food we had for breakfast we would have coffee, and [pause] I think that’s about it. But there would have been the bit of black bread anyway with nothing much on it. If anything. At lunchtime it would be a watery soup. And then an evening meal was the black coffee again and with bread and a bit of something on it. The heating, the room was heated by a radiator which was, made the room, when it was on it was unbearably hot. During the night they would turn it off so you would awaken frozen stiff. And that was where you stayed until they let, said they’d had enough of you in interrogation. There was nothing much really I could have told and everything that they had, they’d had members of my crew already through there so I was having to be careful about what I said. They said, ‘You were a flight lieutenant bomb aimer. You must have been the bombing leader.’ Which they knew quite a lot about but which I denied but whether they believed me I don’t know. But eventually I was on my way and the, we were after, yeah there was a spell while they gathered a number of people to make it worth shipping them off to a POW camp I suppose. But then we would go from there by train to the POW camp. We had no idea where it was going to be but we were led to believe it was somewhere in East Germany. And we then, we discovered eventually what our destination was and that we were going by train via Berlin. Which we were not looking forward to. But we were in ordinary carriages of compartments with ten in each. We took it in turns to sleep on the carriage rack. Luggage rack. Otherwise you couldn’t stretch out at all. After several days and I’m not quite sure how long actually but we arrived at Stalag Luft 1, and it’s address is Barth. B A R T H. In fact — will you turn it off again?
[recording paused]
DM: Ok.
JG: I’ll go from where we left Dulag Luft following interrogation at about 1 pm on Saturday 13th and arrived at Wetzlar at 6am on the Sunday. Where that is I don’t know but the distance between the two camps was a little over forty miles. Here we stayed until the following Saturday living twenty four men to a room and eating three times a day in the mess hall. It was at this camp we had Red Cross clothing issued. Two — what they were I don’t know, two packets of American cigarettes and a subsequent issue of ten a day while we were there. Most important was the shower. My first decent wash in Germany. On Saturday January the 20th 1945 of course we’re talking about here a party of eighty of us left for Stalag Luft 1 situated at Barth on the Baltic coast. The journey was expected to last anything from four to seven days and we were there and we were provided with a half a Red Cross parcel per men together with a ration of a fifth of a loaf of bread per day. We travelled in a carriage. Ten men to a compartment and the coach was hooked on to those engines and shunted back and forth in the manner of a freight car. We never actually left the carriage throughout the journey. We ate very well but sleep was difficult and we were relieved to hear that we were making good time. On route we passed through Berlin where we had to wait several hours for the next and last connection. It was a sigh, with a sigh of relief that we left the capital and continued on our way. On Monday evening at 4.50 or 4.30 we arrived at Barth. We spent the night in the railway carriage and on Tuesday morning marched to the camp some three miles north. On arrival we had a shower and our clothing was deloused. Later we were issued with mugs but also knife, fork and spoon and palliases and pillows. Once again we slept in rooms built to hold twenty men. The beds they arranged in three tiers. That evening we had a very welcome bowl of hot barley soup. And our first night’s sleep since we left Wetzlar. And that’s that. The rest of it is really conditions in the camp.
DM: Were you reasonably well treated in the camp?
JG: Oh yes. Yeah. They had sort of given up on us really I think. The only thing is one didn’t mess about. If you didn’t, if you came outside your hut after curfew you could be shot. They wouldn’t worry about it. And while we were there I think at least one person was outside when he shouldn’t have been and was shot.
DM: Did you get news of how the war was going? Was there a sort of —
JG: Oh yes.
DM: A bush telegraph or —
JG: Yes. Yes. Well, there were some parts of the camp had radios of course. Secret radios. I don’t think we were ever issued anything by the authorities but we knew exactly what was going on. And eventually we got the news that we — of course Hitler was declared dead at the end of April. And the camp commandant on our side, he was the senior allied officer was a chap, an American fighter pilot and he he came on the communications system and said that the Germans were going to evacuate the camp. And he had said to them, ‘What will you do if we refuse to come?’ And they said, ‘We’ll leave you behind.’ And of course we knew that the Russians were getting very very close and the Germans were of course terrified of these murderous people who they, ahead of the regular organised army came up and just did what they liked. And their behaviour was dreadful. And the population was pretty well scared stiff of them. At the beginning of May, I’ve not, I haven’t got the date of it I think. Or have I? [pause] Yes.
[pause]
JG: Yes. We were following Hitler’s death. Then things were collapsed on the German side quite considerably. But before that, in the March we had, we had the RAF prisoners had a briefing in which we were told that plans were afoot for us to break out of camp. The whole of the camp would break out. The RAF would act as armed guard to the main body of prisoners going back west who would have been American. And as we were going, ‘How do we break out of this place then?’ ‘Arms will be dropped to you,’ we were told. This was the sort of rubbish that came from Whitehall. You know, that sort of thing. Absolute, well as I say complete rubbish. And we came out of the briefing and we were flabbergasted. And I was, walked out with a pilot from 4 Group who had been the pilot of a Halifax which was involved in a head on collision over Cologne. I can’t imagine anything much worse than that. Having a aircraft — and he was the only survivor. But the fun, or interesting thing it was the first occasion he was wearing a seat parachute. Up until then the pilots only had the ordinary pack which clipped on. Whereas, they had, at the end of the war, a bit late, at the end of the war they were issued with a seat pack so that if something happened and the aircraft came adrift [pause] Is it on? Then they would get away with it and it was the first occasion he’d worn it. And of course this was the first occasion he really needed it. You know. He said, well he thought it was rubbish and we were a bit taken aback and alarmed. Because if people were going to the extent of dropping arms to us they obviously wanted us to use them and we, having got that stage in our lives having survived we didn’t want to stick out our necks much longer. Particularly now. It’s obviously at the end of the war. Hitler is now dead and things are going to move quite fast. Anyway, we, we sat waiting for news of our evacuation and it was, nothing seemed to be happening until a group captain from our own side got through to the lines in Lubeck to allied headquarters to find out what was going on. Only to find of course nothing was going on. But as a result of that arrangements were made for the US Air Force, 8th Air Force, the B17s to come and pick us up and take us home. Adjoined, quite close to the camp was a Luftwaffe base which by now of course the Russians moving in it was now part of Russia as far as they were concerned. And no way were they going to allow any aircraft, allied aircraft in there until Eisenhower got behind it when he heard that we were not. He wasn’t going to have for a start any idea that we should break out and march west. It was the last thing he wanted. He’d got enough people rushing around the place. And he didn’t sort of want gash POWs. And so we were to stay where we were. And as a result of that RAF chap getting through to our lines and getting some action how much longer we would have been there goodness knows. And then [pause] now, I’ve got here at the end of the war, our time in the camp with the Germans. Now, having gone that Monday the 30th of April 1945 the Germans have been demolishing detector installations and equipment in the flak school which on this airfield. By the evening most of the items have left the camp and it looks as though we shall be left here in the care of the senior administrative office. Many heavy explosions in the flak school and on the aerodrome around. There was no count on today, parade tonight but the Jerry major appeared to be tired. At 9pm the somebody [pause] Well, anyway, 9pm we were told that from 8am tomorrow, that’s the 1st we would no longer be POWs as the commandant was officially handing over. We had an extra biscuit, butter and marmalade to celebrate. Tuesday the 1st of May — today the guard posts are occupied by Americans wearing MP armbands. That’s Military Police of course instead of the usual old goons which was our name for the German guards. A white flag flies over the camp. The rumours are thick and fast and everyone is wondering when we shall get away. The Russians are supposed to be pretty close. The latest is that they are two kilometres south of Barth. The bürgermeister of Barth is said to have shot himself. At 1pm we heard the BBC news and now at 14.20 we are listening to, “Variety Band Box.” Tonight at 22.15 approximately a Russian lieutenant and either a civilian or Russian soldier arrived. Cheers echoed throughout the compound. We’d been awaiting this for some time. Good Old Joe. The main Russian body captured Stralsund, which is on the coast, tonight, today. Listened to the BBC news. Public House time it to be extended on VE Day. I hope we’re home for it. At 22.30 it was announced that Hitler is dead. I hope it was one of Berlin, was in one of Berlin’s sewers. Perhaps these will capitulate now. Lights on until midnight by order of Colonel Zemke. He was the allied commander I was talking about. Special cup of hot milk at 23.15. More Russians expected tomorrow. Water shortage. On the Wednesday the 2nd the Russians said we were to march out and be packed in preparation to leave at 6pm. One Red Cross parcel issued to each man for the journey. We ate several meals in quick succession to get rid of our [pause] this is the one [pause] yes. We had to get rid of [pause] Red Cross parcel stocks. Share out the ones that we had left. Then we were told to be ready to march in the morning and a little later we heard that the march was not definite. Most of us left camp in the evening to have a look around. Some even got into Barth. Rumours are flying out, hope it’s true, British and Russians are supposed to have linked up in the north. Chaos reigned all day. Poor water situation. German armies in Italy and Austria surrendered to Alexander. Monty’s boys in Lubeck. Russian. Russians in Rostock. Berlin has fallen. Hamburg declared an open city. I’ve been told the airfield is becoming clear of mines. We may be flown out. Hope it’s true and that the kites —
[pause]
JG: I heard earlier today that we’re in contact with London, Washington and Moscow to see what they intended to do. Or for us to do. A colossal [pause] comparatively speaking, announced all day. The water situation a bit better. From midnight tonight we use Russian time. An hour in advance of our present time. Friday the 4th — airfield expected to be clear by 2pm. All Germans in northwest Germany, Holland, Denmark, Heligoland were ordered by Admiral Doenitz to surrender unconditionally. This is to take effect from 08.00 tomorrow Saturday the 5th of May 1945. Saturday the 5th of May — a Russian general inspected our barracks in the morning. In the afternoon Marshall Rokossovsky to some [pause] oh no, came to report with Colonel Zemke. A very tough looking bunch. One of the generals made a speech to some of us in Russian. An American colonel arrived by jeep from our lines and made final arrangements for our evacuation. Wish they would get a move on. Listened to a radio recording of the signing of the unconditional surrender by the German staff. The commentary was by Monty. The 6th. Sunday the 6th — still waiting. The colonel repeated his former broadcast saying things were being done for our evacuation. Monday the 7th — a lieutenant colonel of the 6th airborne Division came to Wismar today to reassure us and we needed some reassuring too that we could expect to be flown out within the next few days. He could not say which day it would be but would definitely be only a matter of a few days. Question — how long or short is a few days? Apparently, we shall be flown back to England. Good deal. Other POWs are still being flown back by Lancs. [pause] Daks and Commandos are being used. Twenty five in a Dak, forty in a Commando. Most POWs have to be helped into aircraft. They were given a shock here. We shall run like stink when the kites come. I’ve heard that tomorrow is VE day and the following day a holiday. I’m bloody annoyed that we’re not going to, we’re going to miss the celebrations and so is everyone else. Saturday, Sunday the 6th of May — saw a Russian concert this afternoon and it was very good. No one or very few understood a word but what the hell. Monday the 7th of May — at the moment, 21.50 Russian time someone, I think it’s Alfredo Campoli, is playing a composition on the violin which I heard once at one of the St John’s socials. St John’s being the Parish church in Sidcup where I come from. It has just been announced that the BBC have broadcast a message to the effect that Stalag Luft 1, Barth, Pomerania has been liberated and the next of kin are being informed. Goebbels, his wife and daughters took poison apparently. War ends after five years and eight months. Unconditional surrender made at 2.41 French time today to Field Marshall Montgomery. Location Reims. Or Reims. Tuesday the 8th of May — I’ve just heard the prime minister’s speech declaring that the European war is at an end. The ceasefire officially takes place at 00.01 tomorrow. Wednesday, May 9th but fighting, except for some of the Resistance in Czechoslovakia ceased on Thursday morning. It is VE day and this morning I spent some time sun bathing on the peninsula north of the camp. I hope soon to be doing the same in England very soon. Listened to the King’s Speech. I guess the family were listening too. Do they know where I am? I wonder. And did they hear the announcement on the radio last night to the effect that we had been liberated by the Red Army. Lancs landed in Germany for the first time and flew back with four thousand five hundred POWs. Come on boys. Let’s get out of here. Wednesday the 9th of May— sunbathing again today. Allied parade this morning. A Russian officer made a speech to us. Same old story. Be patient for a few more days. Plenty of rumours floating around [pause] At 08.00 hours on BBC radio all men at Stalag Luft 1, Barth, near Stralsund, Pomerania, Germany are to remain in the camp and not make for the allied lines. Well, I don’t know whether anyone did. Thursday, the 10th of May — on KP again today. You know, that’s cleaning up the camp. Ten thousand more POWs flown out by five hundred BC aircraft and we’re still here. Colonel Zemke made an appalling speech again tonight. He’s going to get out all souvenirs. The rumour is that all British personnel are going to be taken by transport to Wismar and flown home from there. Also, that we should have been there yesterday. Group Captain Weir is said to have gone to try and get us out. He may have split with Colonel Zemke. I hope so as Zemke hasn’t a bloody clue. Listened to ITMA. Last time I heard it was on Wednesday the 6th December. I was changing in my room for the op and could hear it on someone else’s radio. That was of course the day on which I went down in Germany. Friday the 11th — sunbathed again today. There’s a meeting of the wheels, you know they were the top men, tonight. Final arrangements for our evacuation are said to be the subject of discussion. Group Captain Weir seems to have been arranging with the Russian commander of the area, Colonel General Batov for aircraft to land here to take us out. Colonel Zemke has just announced that aircraft expected here tomorrow or on Sunday. Russian passports are being signed up in preparation. It really looks as if we are going to move soon. Squadron Leader Evans had to fill in forms of interrogation which he signed. This gives us clearance, a clearance chit to be presented on arrival in England which should hasten our departure from the Receiving Centre. A cabinet order said that all POWs are to be with their families within twenty four hours of arriving in England. Length of leave is uncertain. Nearly eighty thousand POWs have been returned to England so far. There can’t be many more. Eisenhower has just repeated his, ‘stay put’ message. The 12th, Saturday the 12th — Group Captain Green on parade this morning said evacuation was to begin this afternoon. Sick quarters are first on the list. Then come the British personnel in the following order and its by blocks eight, nine, ten, eleven etcetera. So we were in a good position. What’s the betting I click for a cleaning job which would mean a delayed departure. At 2pm the first US aircraft arrived at Barth aerodrome. Two Daks for hospital cases and the rest Fortresses. Joe here is in charge, that’s me, in charge of operation [unclear] so I shan’t get away until tomorrow. The rest of the boys in the room buzzed at 3pm. Six lads and I stayed from 3pm until 9pm cleaning up. What a bloody awful job. Managed to get a shower at the end of it. Packed for the morning, nearly losing my fags as the Yanks still in the compound were on the prowl and almost swiped them. Saturday the 13th of May — paraded at 6.30am and after roll call we marched out to the airfield. At 7.30am the first Forts arrived. We were then split into groups of twenty five and as each Fort came around the perimeter track we embarked. That was Sunday the 13th. We were airborne at 8.30am and flew fairly low direct to England having a very good look at Bremen and Hamburg enroute. As we were using Russian time we had to put our watches back one hour to correspond with double British summertime. PBST. We landed at Ford in Sussex at 11.30. This completed the trip I set out on on December the 6th last. It took a bloody long time for my liking. Too long. I have recalled the following dream I had some time during my incarceration. Obviously, it was prompted by my fear that my family didn’t know my fate in the dream. I returned home to reassure the family that I was safe, in reasonable shape and in a POW camp. Having told the family this I prepared to leave, much to their puzzlement. ‘Why,’ they asked, ‘Did you, now home do you propose to leave?’ ‘Because I’m still a POW and my place is in that German POW camp,’ [laughs] I replied. And that took me to the end of the war.
DM: So, that was the diary you kept.
JG: Yes.
DM: When you were in the camp. Yes.
JG: That’s right. And that I didn’t much do much until the last days. Little point really.
DM: So, you obviously then had leave after you got home.
JG: That’s right.
DM: Repatriation leave.
JG: Yes.
DM: When did you actually leave the air force the first time?
[pause]
JG: I don’t [pause] I’m not sure that I’ve got it.
DM: It doesn’t matter precisely.
JG: Yes. It was —
DM: It was in 1945 was it?
JG: Yes.
DM: That you left.
JG: That’s right. Yes. What happened was that after the end of leave, which was extensive I did an air traffic controller course and I ended my days in the RAF as an air traffic controller at Henlow in Bedfordshire. And it must have been September I think. I’m trying to think when I got it [pause] Righto. Thank you.
DM: When you left the air force —
JG: Yes.
DM: What did you do in Civvy Street?
JG: I had a number of jobs. The last one was an, with an insurance company called Friends Provident. They’re still around. Quite a minor one I think. But I had, the first job I had was [pause] air freight. It was a company that dealt with arranging air freight in and out of the country. We were based in Victoria. It was a fiercely boring thing. And —
Other: You didn’t go back to Brown Shipley did you?
JG: No. I often wonder what would have happened had I because Brown Shipley’s still around.
DM: What prompted you to join up again in 1949?
JG: The fact that I was bored stiff and really and I was by now living in what we used to call digs in Reading and coming home to Sidcup at the weekends. And I didn’t really enjoy it much. And so it was when this announcement was made I thought, ‘Oh I can’t do worse than this.’ And if I’m going to go back on my terms because what I want now I want to settle down. If possible to get a house. I want to make some solid progress and get employment which I can guarantee until normal retirement age because I’ve not got much in the way of money. Certainly the RAF would provide the income that I was looking for and if I can get in with my flight lieutenant rank. And also, I actually had the nerve to talk about a permanent commission. And to my amazement that’s what happened. And I’ll never know whether the chap who was by now Air Marshall Sir John Whitley who had been the station commander at, at St Eval in 1942 when I was there and whom I was interviewed by him on the way to getting a commission and I wrote and reminded him of that. Whether it had any affect I just don’t know. I’d like to think it did and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he hadn’t sort of put a recommendation in on my behalf. Anyway, that’s in I went. And 31st of May 1949 and I — my first Squadron. I went having done a number of courses to 1949. Refresher navigation courses. I then went to a course where I went as a navigator to a pilot whose name was Wing Commander Oxley and this was a organised — I’m not sure what exactly it was called but it was at [pause] now —
[pause]
JG: I have to turn this off again. I’m very sorry.
[recording paused]
JG: Obviously then, this refresher training thing I was posted.
[pause – doorbell rings]
JG: To RAF Swinderby at an Advanced Flying School and where we flew Wellingtons and I flew with the pilot Wing Commander Oxley between September and November. In late December of ’49 I was posted to Number 236 Operational Conversion Unit at RAF Kinloss, Scotland flying Lancasters. Until April the 5th of April when I was posted to 38 Squadron Luqa, Malta flying Lancasters on maritime operations.
[pause]
JG: Apart from maritime operations which included various Naval and air force. Naval and air operations, training operations and also on air sea rescue duties.
[pause]
JG: At the beginning of 1953 where I was then posted to Number 1 Maritime Reconnaissance School. And that was at St Mawgan in Cornwall. And during my time there I found myself recruited to take part in the Queen’s coronation and I, for the spell which included the coronation I went up to Henlow. And we were trained in basically marching long distances. And I took part in the actual Review on the 2nd of June 1953. And then subsequently in the July I took part in the Queen’s RAF Review of the — at [pause] well I think it was the RAF Review. The Queen’s Review of the RAF took place at Odiham in Hampshire. And that was [pause] I haven’t got the actual date. Later in 1954 I was posted to headquarters, 64 Group Home Command at Rufforth, York as PA to the AOC. Non-flying apart from accompanying the air commodore and visits. From ’56, September ’56 to the 23rd of January I attended a Bomber Command Bombing School, Lindholme. Navigation training for the V force. In summer that year I was posted instead to Air Ministry, London Air Intelligence Branch. And in October 1960 I was posted as assistant air attaché, British Embassy, Paris. I retired from the RAF in May 1962 and in September I joined Shellmex and BP Limited soon to become separate companies. I stayed with Shell until retiring in June 1982. And that’s really leaves me coming out.
DM: The, near the beginning you were saying that because you were a POW.
JG: Yes.
DM: You didn’t have your hands on your logbook.
JG: That’s right.
DM: And you didn’t get it back. And that was one of the ones that was ultimately destroyed I assume.
JG: Yes. As far as I know if you want to record it.
DM: It’s going. Yeah.
JG: When I came back I made enquiries and I discovered that in October or November 1960 [pause] Either ’59 or ’60. When did I go? [pause] Yes. It would be October 1960. A decree had gone out earlier that year, no in that month, it was certainly while I was in Paris the Air Ministry issued a decree to say that the, there were a lot of logbooks unclaimed and unless you claimed the thing by whatever date it was, I don’t know, they would be destroyed. And so by the time I came back and I didn’t know that, I didn’t get that news while I was in Paris and I can’t, and I’m surprised they didn’t think to tell people all over the place. Or else I just missed it. But anyway the fact is then any enquiries I made just drew a blank. So, there’s no point really. It isn’t, doesn’t exist anywhere unless someone thought oh I’ll have this. But why they would do that I don’t know.
DM: No.
JG: I can’t imagine it’s of any interest to anybody but me. But it’s been a nuisance really because [pause] well just all I’ve got, I’ve got it here but the as soon as I rejoined of course I got another logbook and that’s the one I’ve got. But it doesn’t help looking back at things that happened during the war.
DM: No.
JG: The only one of interest that, it was an event which occurred while I was on 78 Squadron at Linton on Ouse and it’s documented actually in Bomber Command records. It — we took off from Linton on the 11th of December 1942 heading for Italy. So, we were virtually a flying petrol tank with one or two little bombs. Anyway, we took off and immediately one of the engines caught fire and the situation was such that we had to get out of it. Out of the aircraft. Fortunately, Linton is not all that distance from the North Sea, although it is the other side of Yorkshire. And so what we proposed to do, the initial plan was to drop our bombs in the sea or where they could be safely dropped and come back and land. But the situation was getting rapidly out of hand and so it was a question of dropping the bombs first thing and then, if possible to have a crash landing somewhere. However, and as I was a bomb aimer down in the front I had to get rid of the hatch so that we were going to drop out of it. That’s the way we were going to go. But I soon had to tell the pilot, ‘We’re going to be far too low to bale out.’ So, he said, ‘Well, I’ll see if I can crash land somewhere.’ But by this time it was getting worse than that. He said, ‘I don’t know. I think I can reach the sea.’ And that’s what we did. We ditched in the North Sea. Just a few miles out, three miles out from Filey and we all got away with it. There was no, had we stayed much longer of course we could very well have burned up. But we did, we got down in the water and we got picked up. Interestingly enough we were picked up by fishermen who had just landed in Filey and had looked back to see this aircraft going into the sea and turned their boats around and came out to pick us up. And, but some of those poor chaps got some stick because what they should have done because some of them were lifeboatmen they should, they should have gone, and gone out with the lifeboat. So they weren’t very popular when the lifeboat did come out and found out some of their men were actually there having done the job for them virtually. Because we didn’t need any help other than something to take us back to land. Now, I was recently, a few years ago now I was contacted by someone by the name of Paul Bright who had written or was writing actually, he hadn’t finished it — a book called, “Aircraft Activity Over the East Riding of Yorkshire,” which included not only RAF but Luftwaffe things. How he got it I don’t know. Anyway, he had got the records of 78 Squadron and this ditching thing and he [pause] he got in touch with me via the chap who wrote 640 Squadron history and as a result of that I was, gave this chap Paul Bright all the information and he’s included it in his book. There’s the thing, “On a Wing and a Prayer,” about what happened from my time in 78. And I’ve been in touch with him. We’ve been, both T and I have met a number of times when we’ve gone up that way and also because the — we’ve been going up there to the Memorial of 640 and at the same time met Paul Bright. But I don’t know what’s happened. A book which I’ve got a copy of I think. A member of the family must have it but it’s, it’s a most extraordinary detailed book of what happened in the air over the East Riding during the war. And including what’s happened to various air crew including German air crew.
[pause]
JG: And I’m in touch with him every time something significant comes up. Like today for example. I told him about the organisation that was going ahead on behalf of Bomber Command in that area. And I don’t know whether he has been in touch but of all the information I’ve had of course is via Carol and her visits up there.
DM: Ok.
JG: Right.
DM: In September 1944 whilst engaged on an attack on a synthetic oil plant the aircraft in which Flight Lieutenant Goldby was flying was severely damaged by heavy anti-aircraft fire. One engine was hit and rendered useless. Three petrol tanks were holed and a shell fragment entering the bomb aimer’s compartment damaged his equipment. Despite intense physical discomfort and shock Flight Lieutenant Goldby continued calmly to direct his captain onto the target. This determination and skill resulted in a successful attack. This officer has participated in many operations over enemy territory and among his targets have been such heavily defended areas as Essen and Duisberg. He is now engaged on his second tour of operations and in his capacity as bombing leader has been a source of inspiration to his section and has materially contributed to the high standard of efficiency attained. And therefore, the DFC was awarded.
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Interview with John Louis Goldby
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-10-25
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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.
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AGoldbyJL171025, PGoldbyJL1701
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Pending revision of OH transcription
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01:30:05 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
John Goldby was born in Kent but the family moved to London the year after. He was inspired to join the RAF when a schoolfriend joined and became a Spitfire pilot. John believes that it was a mid-air collision with a night fighter that led to his crash. He became a Prisoner of War at Stalag Luft 1. He kept a detailed diary of events leading to his eventual liberation and return to the UK. After demob he was soon bored with Civvy Street and returned to the RAF. He had an interesting post-war career including time as air attaché to the British Embassy in Paris.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Barth
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
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1941-05
1942-05
1944
1945-01-20
1945-04-30
1945-05-05
640 Squadron
78 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
bomb aimer
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Distinguished Flying Cross
ditching
Dulag Luft
Halifax
Hampden
Lancaster
mid-air collision
observer
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Riccall
RAF St Eval
RAF Stanton Harcourt
Stalag Luft 1
training
Wellington
Whitley
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f02b7da4e2822a666278417321f431bc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/832/10823/AGardnerHS171101.2.mp3
260ed726b523710ad64342a7d84b1015
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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Gardner, Harold Stanley
H S Gardner
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Harold Gardner (1923 - 2022, 1801381, 2606144 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 106 and 189 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-01
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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Gardner, HS
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Hal Gardner. The interview is taking place at Mr Gardner’s home in Saltdean, Sussex on the 1st of May 2017. Hal, could you say a bit about where you were born and your early life?
[recording paused]
DM: I’ll just make a correction to the date we are recording. It’s the 1st of November 2017. Thank you. Ok Hal, so if you could talk a bit about your, where you were born and growing up.
HG: I was born in Brighton. I’m a Brightonian and my father got a house after we’d had a flat initially because my mother, we, I had a sister of course a bit younger than myself and we started living in Brighton at Bevendean. Initially I went to school at St John’s School in Brighton until I was about eleven and then I sat the Eleven Plus Examination. Didn’t quite make the Grammar School but I had to sit again and I was an in between person and they put me in to the Brighton Intermediate School close to St Peter’s Church. That was my starting back to school. A very good school. I learned quite a lot. Good masters, good school and I progressed up to about fourteen when suddenly when I was on holiday, my father was in the Brighton and Hove General Worthing Gas Company in those days said he wanted to get me in to the Gas Company. And I had a few tears. I said, but I was fourteen then I wanted to be in the bank. He said, ‘Well, I think this is going to be what I think for you.’ And he, what he basically, sent me right from Hampshire on a coach on my own to sit this examination in Brighton and which I passed with a lot of other guys and I think there was about twenty at the time. And I was taken as an apprentice on Brighton and Hove And Worthing Gas Company in 1937. I wasn’t happy in the circumstances because I didn’t want to be in the Gas Company. But however, I got on with it and we were taught the trade, suppliers of gas, of how to make pipes fitted. How to make metres fitted. All the things you would know and I progressed from them up ‘til when I was about seventeen going with a skilled fitter to learn the trade. At seventeen I was called suddenly for no reason. I still do not know the reason. I was called by the, Ray Hanson, technical manager and he said, in his office, he said, ‘Gardner,’ he says, ‘We’re going to put you in the showroom.’ Now if you think that was around about 1940 just about the war time I couldn’t understand why they picked me because there was about fifteen all doing the same trade. Why they wanted me to go in the showroom. Never answered that unless they thought perhaps I was smarter I don’t know. Anyway, I was put in this showroom at Church Street which is still there these days although it’s a café now. And I went there first and when I got there I was quite surprised because apart from me in the showroom there were other more senior men and that was for selling gas cookers, selling gas fires. It was a totally different thing than I ever thought about. Anyway, I progressed quite well in there and I liked it. And suddenly of course about that year 1940 which was, that was in, we had the Battle of Britain then if I remember and what happened then was the government abandoned the Air Defence Cadet Corps and brought in the Air Training Corps that year I think. So I knew I was getting that I was seventeen that I probably would want to be called up because I was in Brighton and could see all the Spitfires. And that was with a lot of other guys. We just wanted, we thought this is something we could do. Fly a Spitfire. And so I had two, a couple of months I think in the Air Cadets and then I volunteered for training in the Royal Air Force. Now, to fly in the Royal Air Force in those days you had to volunteer. You could not be called up. So, I mean we were all or the ones that also went along we were all excited. What we were all thinking, so many of the lads of my age then thought yeah, a Spitfire. I mean it’s still a wonderful aircraft. And so we, we, you know we were accepted on the Air Force as air crew on a PNB scheme which is a pilot, navigator, bomb aimer scheme and I think it was, let me see I was eighteen. I think about 1941 I was called up and went to St John’s Wood in London with a lot of other Air Cadets and there we had basic training. One of the first thing I noticed too was in their uniform, in their glengarry hats we had a white flash which denoted that we were aircrew and had volunteered. So, of course it gave us a bit of an uplift of that and we thought we were the cats whiskers you know. Anyway, so I went then and got basic training in London. Sent to ITW, Initial Training Wing in Newquay and learned all the basics of navigation. A bit about flying. A bit about all aspects of the Air Force and as we were going to be aircrew the ones that were going to be pilots or wanted to be pilots were sent to Sywell in Nottingham after we’d passed the exams in Newquay. And we all did about one trip I think in a Tiger Moth and from that very trip they then sent me back to Manchester. Heaton Park where there was hundreds of air crew. All of us waiting to be posted somewhere for flying. Either in Canada or in South Africa. Those were the two main things. I was given the chance and went to Canada. And we were sent to Glasgow and got on a ship there. That was Queen Elizabeth Two. No. When is, that can’t be the Queen Elizabeth. I think the Queen Mary. It was the biggest ship in those times and there was about six of us in the cabin. We thought we were great then because going across to Canada in that escorted by Spitfires I mean we were quite happy. And then we got to Canada just about Christmas. On December the 19th 1942 that would be. December ’42. We got to Canada but we started actually in Canada in to the New Year of ’43 so really started operating as a Cadet about, I think it was January ’43 in a place called Bowden near Calgary. I spent about three months there flying like with the other chaps. I could take off and land with a, with an instructor with me but I just couldn’t get the feel of the aircraft. I mean if you learned to drive you know and you’re on the ground and you want to stop, you want to do something and change you would stop but of course when you’re flying you’ve got to think of exactly what you were doing. It wasn’t me and I had to check with the chief flying instructor who said, ‘Look —’ He said, ‘Well, you’re not doing too bad.’ So I said, ‘What options have I got?’ He said, ‘Well, you got either navigator or bombardier.’ So I said, ‘I think I’ll take a navigator.’ Now, having said this I was still green. I really didn’t know what the syllabus was until I was posted to an Air Observer’s School in Edmonton, Canada. A very nice place run by the Canadians and met another, a lot of Englishmen and we were on a course for flying. Hadn’t been in there long when I fell, we were playing basketball and I fell and broke a wrist and that put me back and I couldn’t get back to that same course. So they put me on to a course of Australians and New Zealanders. I couldn’t have done better. They were a great bunch. I like the Australians and New Zealanders. Anyway, I I worked on that particular course with them until we’d done enough training and enough ground work and enough flying and then we had the exams and I did quite well. I had about eight, I’ve got my logbook, I did eighty percent on ground work and seventy three percent on flying. Now, why I say that is because when all those courses went, were finalised two got commissions in each course. As a parallel course with ours the Australians and the New Zealanders there was a Canadian course and everything, everybody got seventy percent and they got, they got commissioned. And I was upset in a way because I didn’t get it purely because on my course there were two Australian officers who were ground staff and had transferred to flying and their, their marks were below us. Below mine. However, because of the way the situation was I didn’t get one. We already got two commissioned so I was disappointed. Anyway, forget that. I got on with the job and it was a difficult job. One I’d never, I mean I didn’t have the schooling perhaps than a lot of others. I wasn’t Grammar School and I wasn’t university but I worked hard and it was, it was a wonderful position. It was demanding, interesting. And of course, I come back. I graduated as you can see me there. Directly I got to this country I was posted to Dumfries to fly Anson aircraft as a navigator in this country and get used to some of the weather conditions we would, I would expect in flying in this country. I had a week there and then after that I was posted to I think it was initial, I think it was an OTU, no. Not an OTU. Let me see. I can’t quite remember what that was. Anyway, it was a group where we met all other categories. We met pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, air gunners, wireless operators and we were all put in a big hangar style of place and we had to choose our own crews. Now, we were all amazed and I understand it went through for a long time this way. You know, we’re sitting around. We’re all looking and thinking how do we do this as pilots? And people went from one to the other. ‘Have you got a pilot?’ ‘Have you got a navigator?’ ‘Have you got a bomb aimer?’ Have you got this? Anyway, an Australian, strangely enough came to me. Not the one that I’d been training with and he said, ‘Would you, have you got a pilot?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Would you like to come with me?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ Quite happy because I’ve also got, I’ve also got an Australian wireless operator.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s great.’ Anyway, we picked up, we picked up a Scottish bombardier and we picked up a Welsh rear gunner and another man and we became a crew and that’s how it was done. The whole situation, all these dozens of aircrew got their categories, got their brevies etcetera and we had to make our own and it worked marvellous. Very few of the core, the crews that formulated themselves because I’ve spoken to obviously veterans over the years since and nearly everybody was satisfied. Occasionally an odd one had to be changed though for whatever reason. I don’t know. So there we were. We got through and we were then a crew. We were then posted to an Operational Training Unit and I think that was Bruntingthorpe in Leicester as a crew. And there we picked up, we started flying together on Wellingtons which is, which is a twin engine aircraft which was quite famous in those days. A Wellington was a very good aircraft. They were well constructed. We were quite happy and we were sent off from there. I’ve got them in the book how many, any flights we had flying around England in the dark. And let’s be certain of that. England was in the dark. Oh, you saw a few lights here and there but nothing like when you get up in an airport these days when you can’t see the airport for lights and when you get up there you can see the next place you’re going to almost. So that was up to me being a navigator. And of course, the other crew go through their motions and what they had to do. Those early days of course it was really a navigator and pilot had to work very closely. Anyway, after a certain number of trips our pilot was checked and we went on then to a four engine aircraft which was a Stirling because we had to then pick up an engineer. They gave us an engineer. We didn’t pick him ourselves. And he came to us as our skipper had to learn more about the four-engine aircraft and we all did our, I mean I as navigator and the rest of the crew went with him and we did so many hours then until he was proficient and the, and the engineer was proficient. And we were then sent on to what was called then an LFS. A Lanc Finishing School. And I think, I’m trying to think where that was. Lanc Finishing School. It’s probably in my diary. We can look at that later on. And there it was all to do with the pilot learning the Lancaster which of course we had heard about and of course, and as we know from now and we did after a while it was the best aircraft going at the time. But it was just one of those, it was another aircraft and we, we all did our turn in that and whatever we were doing as navigator. The others of course although they appeared to be solitary there was so much for them to do in their jobs when they, when we were on operations. It was a crew effort. So that, we ended Lanc Finishing School and then the first thing we, then when we were all ready we were posted to 106 Squadron, Metheringham. And that’s when I started my operations.
DM: So, can you remember roughly when that was?
HG: Yes.
DM: What year at least?
HG: Shall I get my logbook out?
[recording paused]
HG: 106.
DM: Right so —
HG: At Metheringham.
DM: So you arrived at Metheringham, February ’45.
HG: ’45, yeah.
DM: On 106 Squadron.
HG: That’s it. Yes.
DM: Ok. And what happened then?
HG: Well, it was a question of they were going through all of the things they needed to do before they sent you on operation. What we basically did was, initially was a radar cross country for me specifically I think, as navigator. And then we had formation flying in March. Then we had practice bombing in March. And then we had our first operation on the 5th of March ’45 to Bohlem. B O H L E M. Bohlem Oil Refinery in Germany. On the 6th of March, the next day, ’45 we went to Sassnitz, in the Baltic to attack shipping. On the 7th of March ’45 we were in Harburg. We went to Harburg which was south of Hamburg and that was for an oil refinery. And all those were night trips. All of them were night trips to start with.
DM: Do you have any memories of the first trip? Any impressions of how it felt and what your feelings were?
HG: Well, I think I was, let me start with the Bohlem. I had a problem when we started flying. I’d better go back to [pause] let’s start before we start flying. What happened in all squadrons there was, you were called to a briefing room probably about mid-day when all the crews were assembled in the briefing room. And then you got on the platform there would be a big board and there would be a map and there would be a curtain across it you see. And then the CO or whoever was going to give the briefing, and also the Met officer and the navigator, senior navigation officer would come on and then they’d pull the sheet apart and there would be the lines going to, the tracks going to the places we were going to bomb and either the experienced men would say, ‘Oh, that’s not bad.’ Or, ‘God,’ you know. This sort of action you know. And being new we just had to sit and watch. Now, in those briefing things on 106 Squadron if you’re going from one place to another and altering courses to get to this place in Germany or wherever we’re going it needed the tracks. The tracks between one place or another before you, there was a track here and a track there. Alteration course. Normally in, we understood that the navigator would have to draw it all out and work it all out. However, that’s, that particular squadron the senior officer, navigation officer did all the plot, all the plotting, the initial ones of where we were supposed to go and we all had the same. From my memory we all had the same navigation log to start with. So in other words we always, if we’d have all done it individually we’d have had similar answers but to me it was so obvious that if we got one person who was doing it and that was the senior man we all started on the basis line. So anyway, so we got our logs all ready and they started talking about the Met that was going this, that and the other and what possibly we might meet with. Certain parts of Germany with ack ack or fighters and all the other information that one would get. And then after that we would go back and have breakfast or whatever you would like to call it. Tea. We had something to eat. And then that would start in the afternoon about two and after we’d had something to eat we’d get out to the, and of course it would be dark. As you know it was dark because it was, it was February and March. We would then be taken out by, we’d get our parachute harness, our parachute. We’d take them with us and of course with the navigator he had a green bag and all our stuff was in the green bag. That’s the stuff we had to work the navigation out on. And we’d be taken out to the aircraft, wherever, in the dark and of course everything was dark and we would wait by the aircraft for a certain time and the pilot would say, ‘Let’s get in there.’ We’d get in and everybody would start. I think it was the port engine, directly we got in the port engine because that’s the other equipment in the aircraft especially for the navigator. You would start checking. Now that, we would then have a special time for getting or going ready for going around the runway. Getting around the rest of the aerodrome to the runway we were going to take off with and we’d all be waiting anything up to about fifteen aircraft all loaded with high explosives and other bombs etcetera with us. And we’d get around and I think we were probably something like about six or seven in front of us and what was happening on the runway that’s in use, the one we’re going on there would be a caravan and an officer. A lit up caravan and an officer there to let each aircraft go. He’d flash his green light. So we should go off one at a time. Now if I say we’d go off I’d better explain that when you got ready to take off what would happen is the engineer would open up the throttles against the brakes of the, the pilot would have his foot on the brakes and on the steering columns and then the, when he was given the ok the engineer would push, push the, all the throttles open and the pilot would take command then with, with his [pause] with his [pause] —
DM: Control.
HG: Controls.
DM: The steering wheel. Control.
HG: Controls. Yes.
DM: Yes.
HG: Anyway, what then? Then the navigator helps. We did our laps. We helped the pilot. What I used to do was to read the, on my where I was sitting I had an air speed indicator and I could read the airspeed off for him so he didn’t. He got all his attention on taking off and I’d read the airspeed going from say about sixty, sixty five, seventy, eighty, eighty five and ninety, ninety five and Roy my pilot said, he didn’t say, by the way I was called Stan in the Air Force. I’ll tell you that in a moment and he’d say, ‘Stan, it’s ok now.’ And we’d take off around about a hundred. A hundred miles per hour on the, on the air speed indicator. Now, you take off in the dark and from that time onwards you virtually don’t see anybody. You’re working on your, on your chart and also your log. Everything you’ve got down. You start off with, everybody starts on the same course but of course slightly different times because of taking off. And you’d climb to a certain premeditated height which probably from memory is around about eighteen thousand feet. We didn’t, we didn’t fly any lower than that from memory. I think we had been up to nearly twenty thousand. About eighteen thousand from my memory seems to be the operations that we did anyway. And then you would go through and of course what happens then each navigator is responsible apart from the initial stuff that we all had to start with. You then, you’re hitting winds and things and of course the aircraft gets off the course a bit. And what you, the navigator is doing all the time is checking. Checking the course by, what we had was a Gee box to get fixes. Now, I’ll explain the Gee box. Basically, it was, as far as I remember it was probably it was a round green, a green [pause]
DM: Screen.
HG: Screen. A green screen with two datum lines in white going across this and on the top, I think it was two on the top, or one at the top was a station, two at the bottom, they were British stations broadcasting. No, no figures on that. Nothing. Just the screen. As you know of course I mean we hadn’t seen screens before and there was no televisions or anything and they’re the sort of screens we get now but there were screens and these two datum lines and points were where the British stations were broadcasting. They would send their signals. Now, to get a fix on that quite from memory first of all you had to use a switch and then those, those things would vanish and then you would get two blips, I think from memory on, on the lines away from each other. You’d use another switch. Got the blips together like that. Push the switch and that gave you a fix. Still no numbers. Nothing on it. Just the figures. The movements of these little things on the screen. Then to get the fix you pushed another switch and you’d go on then to another datum point. We had a line going like that and then one there, one there, one there and another big one there, one there and the same on the bottom. But on part of that there would be another small thing marked and that small thing told the navigator because you knew what all those figures were going through there because otherwise the Germans would know them. If they put them through they’d have broadcast the job. So we had to know what these figures were. Well, once we got to the end of this scene we had about four figures and we had then to go to, not the plotting chart but another chart that was all over England and the continent with lines going all like that way and all around this way and that way. And you had to find the figures you’d worked out on this screen on that particular map which gave you then a latitude and longitude which you then transferred on to your plotting chart which gave you a fix. And that fix was relative to the track you were supposed to be making this certain, this try. And you might be lucky and right on it but generally speaking it was a little off that and you checked again five or ten minutes later. You had to keep on checking, working these things out all the time to see that what you’re, that what you’re getting by radio is matching what you’ve already drawn in. And occasionally of course winds change and you’d find suddenly while these fixes you’re given are more or less parallel with your track suddenly you see one go out and you know full well then you’ve got to change your wind. Anyway, so you saw that and then you went back on and got to go back all through to get another fix to see where that is. And from that fix you then had to work out the new wind. A wind direction. And I’m not quite certain now [laughs] I used, we had a Dalton computer and from memory we drew things on this plastic thing and, and moved the slide around. Things like that. I can’t really remember exactly how I did that but anyway we got, we then got another check on that, on that wind and on the course we were, on the course we were flying. We had to alter then to make good that original line which was the track. We had to alter course to that once we worked something else out and we’d give that to the pilot. I can’t remember saying, ‘Navigator to pilot,’ which was always the thing we should do. I think, I think we called each other Christian names basically. You know, it was Roy. I mean we were perfectly happy with that. And so we flew then and very rarely did we see, occasionally you saw if someone went down in flames. You might have have seen something but and you would note it in your log but we didn’t see much I must admit. I don’t think we had initially any air attacks. However, we did go out and get through a lot of flak. There was a lot of flak and when that happened all I could remember was that it used to come up, it used to come up slow and then when going past the aircraft you just can’t believe it. It’s gone like that. And so all the time you’re getting nearer to the target and you may have had, apart from the first track you were doing and keeping log on, your course on that. Then you would get another movement to alter course to get towards the target. Perhaps a short one or another short one just to get into the target. So there was quite a lot of alterations of courses which the navigator has to deal with with the pilot. And so the navigator is busy all the time which I was grateful. I must admit I’d never done navigation before and it was, it was difficult. It was. But it was interesting, it was because when you work these things out and they, and most of them that you worked out were pretty reasonably accurate you realise you’d done a good job. And all the trips I had with the, with my crew touch wood we didn’t get lost and it was all in the dark and we come back that way. When we reached the target my state of operations of course things had changed in the way the some of the bombings were taken. We had what was called a master bomber. Bomb aimer, and he would be a very good crew and he’d be flying lower than us and he’d have to direct the aircraft coming in on to certain flares that may be dropping from other aircraft. ‘Bomb on the green flares,’ or something like that. Or other factors came into that which he’d give instructions to the pilot as to what they should do and what they shouldn’t do. And then sometimes at the end he may have, may say to you, ‘Main stream finish. Stop bombing and return home.’ Or something like this and then you, you’d find all your tracks going and the tracks coming back weren’t the same. You had to go a different way so you couldn’t, well I wouldn’t say you couldn’t, you couldn’t cheat anyway with navigation. You’ve got to do each one as you come. And then you get back after an operation and there again we were lucky, of course. One or two didn’t come back but when we got back to the aerodrome, also when you think that we’re it’s an aerodrome in a field in Lincolnshire and all these others coming back. We get back and find if we were, if we were perhaps about on time we’d give instructions to the pilot. You get the instructions to land. On the other hand if we were perhaps a bit late and perhaps you were a new crew we’d be given instruction from the, the control tower. I think our aircraft was M for Mabel. Mabel. I think we had some other name for it. Anyway, you would fly Angels 9 and so we had to keep up at nine thousand feet going around in circle to there and we were given a number until our number was called so we would go in and land. That’s how they got rid of so many aircraft coming. They couldn’t all come in at one time. And that was the end of an operation and from then onwards obviously we were picked up in the aerodrome and taken to debriefing with intelligence officers. And I can always remember that because we’d get a drink of coffee or whatever it was and cigarettes. Well, of course all the boys go. I didn’t smoke. Someone else. I took them for somebody else. No. I never smoked. I didn’t like smoking. I never did. That was great. And so that was the end of one operation. So we’ll have a breather?
DM: So up ‘til now I think I’m right in saying your operations had been at night but you then started to do some daylight raids. What was the first one of those?
HG: Well, the first one I’ve got in there is the Essen raid which was an extremely big raid. We did, we didn’t really know that until we got there because I’ve got it here marked one thousand. But as we’ve seen from the, there was, there was actually one thousand and seventy nine aircraft which was the biggest one, a thousand bomber raids in the war. But the point was that there had been thousand bomber raids way back in ’62. This was the biggest one.
DM: ’42. Back in ’42.
HG: ’42. Yes. What did I say?
DM: ’62.
HG: Yeah. ’42. There had been thousand but then they weren’t using necessarily bomber squadrons. They were using OTUs, Operational Training Units to make them up. When Bomber Harris decided he’d have a thousand bomber raid he had to, had to scrape the aircraft from all over the country. But these other, this last one of course there were seven hundred and fifty Lancasters, two ninety three Halifaxes and thirty six Mosquitoes of all bomber groups. This was the largest number of aircraft sent to a target so far in the war. Three Lancasters were lost. We lost three on that raid. I remember in particular I think one of our squadron got, he didn’t get shot down, I think that’s when I saw one from there, the gunner, the rear gunner a big cookie which was a tremendous big explosive bomb dropped from above and knocked off. I think knocked off the tail of one of the other squadrons. That’s how one of them was lost that way. It was not, it wasn’t shot down by the Germans. But it does say there was three gone. I don’t know what the other reasons were. Four thousand six hundred and sixty one tonnes of bombs were dropped. The accurate, was accurate and this [grey blue] virtually paralysed Essen until the American troops entered the city sometime later. Essen’s recording system produced no proper reports but eight hundred and ninety seven people were said to have been killed which is not too happy for them but there we are. That was war. I know. So that was the biggest daylight and we did have a daylight again close to that to Dortmund the next day. That was another daylight but I’ve got nothing, I can’t remember anything about that one except it's in the log. Five hours thirty. And then we did go to the, 27th of March, getting to the end of March went to Farge marshalling yards. I can’t remember much. I can’t remember that one at all. So that then I think [pause – pages turning] and then we did have one very last night flight again. Nearly nine hours. Eight forty five and we went to Pilsen in Czechoslovakia. And I did see a note here we were diverted Harwell. I think that one when we came back we got diverted when we come back to England because I remember we were coming back in daylight in the end and I remember standing up and had a look back and all the, all the Lancs were coming all at different [laughs] behind us. Anyway, as far as I can remember then and then we left. Of course, we left, we left Coningsby, well thinking about it we left via [pause] we left Metheringham shortly afterwards.
DM: Were you told why you were leaving?
HG: No.
DM: You were told to go.
HG: And that’s what staggers me. All I can think of quite simply only since not then. Since other things have cropped up through life that at that particular time we did know about there was going to be a Tiger Squadron because they were going to attack Japan and I understand 106 was the squadron I found out afterwards was one squadron they wanted to go to Japan. Now, having said that because we had two Australians and I can’t remember whether they said anything. They may have said well they didn’t want, they didn’t want to go. At least to volunteer. This was going to be volunteer stuff and I think they wanted to get back to Australia and I can only think that was the one reason for to just send us off at the very end to just do one raid with a squadron we knew nothing about. I digress quickly here because only last week a public relations lady that deals with us veterans said an Australian wanted to phone me because I was on 189 Squadron and he wanted to know something about the squadron. And I said, ‘Well, yes. I was on it for one month and I can’t remember. I can only just remember that raid.’ And I mean we were there almost, and I mean one month was nothing. I couldn’t remember much about that.
DM: So you were sent to Bardney, changed a squadron, did one raid.
HG: Oh, yeah one thing, yes. I did one. When we were coming from Bardney I still remember my Australian pilot, he’d been commissioned. He was, he was a flying officer now and I remember him he going on all the courses and he had all our reports with him and he said I’d been recommended for a commission then. So I knew full well really that I should have had it. Personally it was only one of these things, unfortunate things, not because I didn’t deserve it because that’s how the system worked. There was two officers already in the course and they wouldn’t give any more. That’s how, you know that’s, so that was, I wasn’t very happy. And someone else, I saw another chap who was on the course originally said and I met him another somewhere along the line flying somewhere because of course between these sort of bombing raids of course we used to do trips. I’d take a squadron leader to somewhere. To another, you know nothing with my crew. He wanted a navigator and I’d do that for him and take him somewhere where he wanted. And so it’s all sorts of other things you know. Different things happened.
DM: Earlier on you said that you were called Stan.
HG: Yeah.
DM: When you were in the air. Why was that?
HG: Well, I go back to what we talked when I said I didn’t like my name Harold [laughs] I didn’t like it then and so I told the crew, you know, ‘I’m Stan.’ And so that’s how I, that’s right ‘til the end of the war. And so that was that. I don’t know what my mum thought about. I don’t think she worried very much. My father was in the First World War. He got in in 1914 and he got away with that but he died quite young. He had a, he wasn’t, he got shot in his finger I think but he other troubles. He died when he was about fifty nine I think. I’m sorry about that because I’d have liked him to have seen that I got through because he was still alive when I got back and I always remember he never asked me anything much [laughs] I don’t know why. At least I can’t remember if they asked me anything. I wasn’t such a jawbag then. I didn’t say so very much. Anyway, I just remember I came home to my mother and my sister and that was it, you know.
DM: So the war ended.
HG: Yes.
DM: You didn’t go to Japan because —
HG: No.
DM: I don’t think anybody did in the end.
HG: No. They didn’t. No. That was all gone.
DM: You didn’t go to India or anything like that.
HG: No. I didn’t.
DM: No.
HG: No. I —
DM: Did you make any, what did you do in the immediate aftermath of the war before you were demobbed? Can you remember?
HG: I don’t think there was anything in here. Wait a minute.
DM: Pause that a minute.
[recording paused]
DM: As a navigator on a Lancaster you were in your cubicle so you hadn’t got a view of what was going on outside. That’s, that’s right, isn’t it?
That’s right. You wouldn’t call it a cubicle. I’ll show you in a moment.
DM: Yeah.
On the wall I’ve got in the hall.
DM: Right. But anyway you couldn’t see —
HG: No. I couldn’t.
DM: What was going on.
HG: I was, I was, I was facing that way to the port engine with, well I’ve got my legs to here.
DM: Right. So looking out over the left hand side basically.
HG: Yeah. Well, my face was that way because all the stuff was in front of me. I’ll show you. I’ll show it to you in the hall. Yeah. Carry on.
DM: So did you ever get to sort of pop up in to the astrodome or or have a look out through the cockpit and see what was going on?
HG: I didn’t go up on the astrodome. I did go into the cockpit occasionally just to have a look around and got back quick. I think it was, I think it was over Essen when I looked out there because I looked down and we were bombing Essen through cloud. We had what they called Oboe which was I think the markers, I don’t know what, I think it was called Oboe and we had to bomb through cloud. All I could see down in Essen and I can always remember that. Looked down and it well it would have been eighteen thousand twenty thousand feet. Whatever. And it was just one, one mass of smoke. Couldn’t see Essen. I don’t know whether it was covered in anyway tremendous mile of well obviously it was you know we were, bombed in there. It was, that’s all I remember. Other times when we were flying friendly stuff and we had to go for another aerodrome to drop something or take somebody I can often remember going up the front with the pilot you know. We could set them on course and give them the course and know exactly what that was. Well obviously, I could know what we were going to do given the first course and go back and check on the next course if I wanted to stay up there with him and have a look around. We [laughs] I can always remember too the bomb aimer going up to the front there, having an argument, and he was Scottish with Roy. They saw a plane. They was just flying in England and he saw it and they were arguing whether it was above us or below us. Little things like that, you know. Crew stuff like that. And also we come back from, we were flying over England once going from east to west and I registered three hundred miles an hour which was, a Lanc did about a hundred fifty. We did. And in those days three hundred miles an hour was like a, almost like a Spitfire. But it was quite good. I remember that. And also we came back from coming back in the dark somewhere again on an ordinary trip and we had to do in Lancasters it was all part of the training for the pilot and his crew and everything else. You had to do certain things. Fly here. Fly there. And coming back I remembered we lost an engine over England. We lost an engine. We would come back on three engines but really nothing, no problem there because a Lanc could fly on one or two I think. They were quite good. And you see I have to look, I look back because I’ve met so many veterans and I know the sort of number of ops they’ve done and I know full well John Nichol who was after the war an officer used to fly I forget what they [pause] Tornadoes, something like that. When we bombed Iraq, you know. Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein and he called, he called the people who bombed before ’44, that was when D-Day occurred those that bombed after that were, what did he call them now? Tail End Charlies. Now, that was the term, terminology the, I think the fighters used that. The chap that used to have with fighters going into, more or less going into action they’d have a chap flying all into the back of them like this. Connected you know. And he was a Tail End Charlie to just protect their back to see what was coming along. There are so many, so many things you know that that happened and you hear of all sorts of things. And I know full well that that, I mean we came, I mean in that it took me all that time to get on operations and for the rest of the crew and it all really started because of failing as a pilot. I wasted half a dozen months in Canada. Well, not to say wasted like. Canada was a nice place. I wasted six months there trying to be a pilot and never did and so if I’d have got gone straight to a navigator I would much on squadron fire quicker and I might not be here. There’s an, there’s an awful luck I feel about it. Even so, even that’s one at Essen. We still lose. Apparently, I’ve got something even from the times I was flying from from roughly from January whatever it is up to when we ever finished flying we still lost, Bomber Command still lost about seven hundred aircraft. All of the other squadrons and so many other squadrons we were still, still lost a lot of guys. So we, you know, I think all of us at my stage of the game think we are really lucky but the other guys, some of the ones I’ve been we met. I mean they all know full well, I know full well first of all they were good pilots or crews, they were good crews. The training we had was good. There’s no doubt about it. The training we had was good. I mean to teach me navigation which I only went to an ordinary school wasn’t easy but it had to be the fact you wanted to do it. You had to do. And so to that end Bomber Command and ever since then you know I’ve been with veterans who have done a lot more and there’s no question there’s any difference between because I didn’t do as much. It’s not my fault. I had a longer time. No. It would have been more difficult. Put it that way.
DM: So before you came out you did some non-flying things.
HG: Yes.
DM: I think. What did you do?
HG: Well, there were basically, they were filling in time I think. Well, waiting for the Australians to go home and we look at them. Let me see. 18 Squadron, Bardney. That’s the funny thing. Twice I’ve got that for Fulbeck. Each one after the, after the last bombing raid in the war at night time. Six and a half hours. It wasn’t very far to Norway. Fighter affiliation. High level bombing. We used to do high level bombing. There was a place in, somewhere near the east coast where we used to take the aircraft, all of us and used to do practice bombs. And I always remember too one of those practice bombs we, our bomb aimer of course he, and by the way let’s get back. I’ve never mentioned the bomb aimer because he’d got his own particular job. However, in that squadron they did, we did have the bomb aimer sit with the navigator at times because the screen I told you originally because of those things up above the Germans used to put more and more of them. So he’d sit with me and make certain what was happening. If there was any others. And of course, we had also, I haven’t mentioned that, perhaps I should have done its come to me now and I’ll show you on the passage in a minute. Other side there was another screen. We had, underneath the aircraft we’d got a bulge and that was I forget the equipment there but that was giving us a picture in my, where I was operating from showed the contours of the land. In other words when you, if you went over Brighton you’d see the sea line and that sort going around to over to Dover and that sort of thing. It gave a picture and we could, I can’t remember how we did that we could get a fix off that to get a put on our charts. I can’t quite remember exactly that one. That’s another thing you know. And of course, the high level bombing. Well, that’s this. They’re filling up time here. Look at this. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven or eight there and I mean they sent the Australians home. Map reading. I’d done a lot of map reading. I mean we’d been doing high level bombing. Bassingham. That was another one. Only one hour forty. Just trips to waste time I think. Air to sea firing which we, oh yes. I can remember that. And we went over the North Sea and of course all this has to be combined with other, other squadrons who were close by and but of course you were given times of course for this and I always remember air to sea firing. Well, I don’t think my gunners ever had to fire in anger from memory. But when we were in this air to sea firing they were allowed to go. We had to attack something in the North Sea that was floating. I can’t remember. They all had, the rear gunner had a go and the mid-upper had to have a go. It was almost laughable because we killed ourselves laughing because the pilots, from memory I think even he said he offered them, I think even in those days five pound or something and no one missed them laughs] Formation flying. Yeah. Well, one hour five minutes on the 7th of April. January, February, March, April, May. Now, I’ve got something I might just mention about —
DM: So, before you left the Royal Air Force —
HG: Yes.
DM: I think you were sent to Cardington.
HG: That’s right. Yes.
DM: What did you do there?
HG: Well, I was put in charge of, apparently a lot of recruits were put there. Aircrew recruits and all wanted of course to fly and I had roughly about I think twenty or thirty in one, one block of the place there at Cardington and I had to look after them. Its strange there because one of the young men his, he was there and I think my wife knew him strangely enough but he was only just trying to join the Air Force and it was a lost cause really. I don’t think he, because I, well I did know about him. The next time I saw him he was playing for Brighton Football Club. And so I was just, it was what was it really? It was just something for me to do. And that’s like when we, I said my gunner and my bomb aimer went to, I think East Africa to learn to drive. They were giving us all odd jobs. I can’t possibly because they, they couldn’t get all of us demobbed there were so many of us. I mean Army, Navy, Air Force and I think they just pushed us around a bit until they had a chance to, to get us on to some place and get a demob suit and send us off. I wish there was a stalling arrangement by the government because of the number they wanted to get rid of. So, so it was, it was quite simple and I mean I could travel home from there and I quite enjoyed doing a job like that. I think I’d probably got a few raspberries from some of the younger ones. It was just a time waster really. I did, I mean I know it was Air Force and I was, obviously I wanted to get out of it now. I didn’t want to because these young chaps wanted to fly of course. What happened to them I don’t know. It was just a question again of something to pass. Being warrant officer, you know to look after them. See if they behaved themselves, I suppose.
DM: And when did you actually leave the Air Force? What date?
HG: Well —
DM: Effectively. So —
HG: That I don’t know. I would say it was, wait a minute [pause] I would say it was, yeah effectively discharged on the 25th of November 1946.
DM: Right.
HG: That would be it. The other one is, is when I got enlisted in the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1949 or whatever it was.
DM: What did you do after you left the Air Force?
HG: Well, I went straight back to my business. British, no it wasn’t British Gas. It was still Brighton, no. let me see. Let me try and think. I think it was —
DM: I think it was ’48 when it was nationalised.
HG: Yeah. So it would still be at Brighton And Hove General Gas Company and I went back and from memory I went back straight into the showroom. They put me straight back in the showroom. I’m just trying, I’m still trying to remember that. I can’t believe anything else other than show. I certainly, I can’t remember anything else other than the showroom. Yes. Yeah. I’m sure I went straight back into the showroom trying to get used to the equipment and all the things that happened even though I was only a few years away. See how the gas cooking and fires etcetera had progressed and, and shortly after that and I don’t know how many months it was the Gas Company advertised they wanted representatives to go in to meet people. To go around to premises to get gas. And I got out of the showroom then and I applied for that and I got as a representative. At the same time funnily enough there was several others, another two Air Force chaps I think both were ground staff chaps went the same, did the same thing and we became representatives from British Gas and were given an area to introduce gas to people and see builders. See what we could do with them. And I started that and I went on for a long long time as an ordinary representative which I enjoyed. In those early days of course we had to come, I had to come out as far as this place. It wasn’t as built up. Saltdean wasn’t as built up as it is now and in fact myself and one of the senior officers in British Gas, an older man than me we managed, there wasn’t much gas in this area and we managed to get there was supply right over the side and we had to get it right down the middle of Saltdean and once we started that and I was doing a lot with customers, builders to selling gas because what was happening in the world or in Britain was everything was going to be electric. They wanted all everything was going to be electric. They didn’t win. The gas took over and then we had oil coming in which we had to fight them to get and they had these old boilers to start with and we then we managed to get over the oil business because people had this oil in tanks in their gardens and that became problems and they were dirty things and and we were on the up. Gas was on the up. On the up. What was I saying then? It was, it was getting a hold. The representatives and all of us were, we weren’t all aircrew. One or two were and others were one or two Army and that sort of thing and we were doing our best to sell. We did a good job and we got a hold on and the gas built up from them days when we started that and then I used to come out here. And we used to have to go by bus in those days. We had to get by bus all smartly dressed. Smart dress. And if you wanted to get back in the office you had to find a phone box you see and walk to it [laughs] and put your four pence in. But then it was becoming good then. I become a senior in that department and then afterwards I wanted to get on better so I transferred to our commercial department which gave me instead of domestic houses I was dealing with places like hotels and police stations and all the big commercial buildings etcetera and also for restaurants and cafés. All the stuff where we were getting more money in of course. And I had that for some time and of course by that time we were given cars, or at least we bought cars and they’d paid us money for them. And then I wanted to get on further than that. I saw what I was doing as a commercial representative and then I applied with all the other commercial reps, some were Air Force, some were whatever they were. All were similar ages and we all wanted this job. I wanted to be, I wanted to be a management and I applied for management and I become an assistant manager. I always remember the, I had an appointment in London and there was several other guys there. I didn’t know them other than they were Londoners and we had to have an interview and one chap came out. He wanted me to talk about whatever they wanted me to talk about. I can’t remember that. And I said, and he said, ‘I’m giving up.’ I thought, giving up? I’m not giving up. So I went in to this when I had my interview. I can’t remember what it was but I had to talk about something and, and it also reminded me because when I got my commission as a PO, pilot officer and I think that was when after the war I had to address a lot of other officers and I had to stand on the front and talk about something or other. So so I suppose that’s when my talking started. In the business of gas and I did alright. I got the, I was an assistant, assistant industrial commercial sales manager and I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that right to the end and I retired in this place.
DM: Looking back did you enjoy your days in Bomber Command?
HG: Yes. Now, I sometimes mention that often with people I enjoy the navigator. I said, no that’s the wrong thing. Let’s be honest I was bloody frightened at times. I mean, no. Let’s put it this way I liked it because I was involved. I was doing something. I could, I could not have been a gunner but I couldn’t have sat there in my young days just sitting there and it was difficult for them. Especially for nine hours you’re sitting there watching the dark all the time. Very difficult. I had to work. Great. I liked and I still like working. I still, I’m now in my age now that, well I do a lot of work. I do have help but I still, touch wood I can still walk. I press myself. I think I’ve done that right all the time. I’m not wanting to be, I don’t think I’ve ever been lazy. Put it this way. And so to that end I’ve been lucky but yeah navigator, well any aircrew there was a worry you know. The times when everybody was silent because they were worrying about this and that and I mean I was silent because it was my, me doing of course navigating and touch wood I did all right. I was assessed afterwards as average. Now that’s great because one has to think that all there were some great aircrew. I know that some of the flights they were great and some of the navigators were great but of course the pilots were even so and they were extremely good, extremely good individuals of course. I couldn’t match with them. But there were so many of us were average and did average things except and went a lot on bombs and of course lost a lot of lives and all of us it was dangerous. But when you were doing that you hear things but you’ve got you’ve got a mind on what you’re doing here. So it was great to be involved and working. Now, you know it wasn’t enjoyable but it was worthwhile.
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 Harold Stanley Gardner
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
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
2017-11-01
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
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Sound
Identifier
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AGardnerHS171101, PGardnerHS1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:03:36 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harold Gardner was a navigator on 106 Squadron based at RAF Metheringham during the final months of World War 2. Known throughout his RAF career as Stan, he was born in Brighton. In 1937 when 14-years-old, his father arranged employment for him with the Brighton Gas Company. Enthralled watching Spitfires flying over the South Coast, Stan volunteered for pilot, navigator, bomb aimer training in 1941 with the RAF. After initial training he was deployed to Canada for pilot training. Although advancing on the course to take-off and landing solo, Stan was uncomfortable in the pilot role and he requested a move to navigator training. After graduating, he returned to the UK and following progression though Operational Training Unit and Lancaster Finishing School, Stan was posted to 106 Squadron in February 1945, with his first operation on the 5th March. He provides a detailed account of the procedure's navigators followed to ensure the aircraft remained on course, including constantly plotting their position and corrections from varying winds. Following the end of hostilities, Stan found himself posted to RAF Cardington in charge of aircrew recruits before being demobilised in 1946, when he returned to his career in the gas industry.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-12-19
1945-03-05
1945-03-07
1945-03-27
1946-11-25
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Alberta--Calgary
England--Bedfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Brighton
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
106 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
demobilisation
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
military service conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Cardington
RAF Metheringham
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/806/10787/ADowardLA171026.2.mp3
158fdd349ac6ae339dce19c3e81889de
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
Doward, Len
Len Alfred Doward
L A Doward
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Len Doward (1920 - 2022, 182242 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 625 and 550 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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
2017-11-20
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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Doward, LA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Len Doward. The interview is taking home, at Mr Doward’s home at South Nutfield in Surrey on the 26th of October 2017. Ok. Well, Len if you could perhaps say a little bit about where and when you were born and how you came to end up in the forces.
LD: Yes. I was born in London, along Westminster Bridge Road. Not far from Westminster Bridge. And we went from there when I was quite young to Sutton, off Sutton Common Road, Woodstock Rise. And from there I went, in 1938 when Chamberlain came back waving a piece of paper saying. ‘Peace in our time.’ It was just before he returned from Munich. I went over and I joined the Territorial Army in the Drill Hall that was on Stonecot Hill in Sutton. And that was the 31st, it was the 325 Company Royal Engineers, the 31st Battalion, Royal Engineers and the CO was Colonel Jones who was the PPS of the Prime Minister at that time. So, Jonesie was our boss. And we were mobilised on the, I think the 15th of August 1939. So, we went from there. We had to go to the Drill Hall. And then we were taken in buses down to what they called our Battle Stations which were outside Horsham, Broadbridge Heath. And when we got there, there was some squaddies already there in the course of erecting big tents. They were like marquees. And we were, the different companies that were there, they were given a number of marquees. And also the squaddies, they were handed linen covers and then we were told to go over to a corner of the field where there was a great stack of bales of hay and we had to fill these linen baskets with the hay. That was our bed and that was what we slept on. And then we were there [pause] I’m forgetting ‘til when [pause] Oh, I volunteered for the RAF, flying duties because we had a notice in Company Orders that came around that the Air Force, they were seeking volunteers for aircrew duties, so I put my name down. And I had a cousin at that time. He was in the Royal Engineers and he was a member of the bomb disposal squad. And he was older than me, but I’d applied for Johnny, that was my cousin to claim me. That I could go and join him in the bomb disposal squadron which was still the Royal Engineers. But anyway, as luck would have it the transfer came through into the Air Force. But before I got the ok I had to go up to what was known as arcy tarcy which was ACRC. Air Crew Reception Centre. Known fondly as arcy tarcy which was in a large block of flats. St Johns Wood. And we had to go, for our meals we had to go in our different flights over to London Zoo, in the London Zoo Restaurant for our meals. That was breakfast, lunch and tea. So that is what we had to do and you had to march over there and you would go as a flight. Also to go over there to have your jabs and so on, and medicals. Well, it just so happened that a number of us had transferred from the Army but we also had in the flight, we also had complete newcomers in to the services. They were as green as grass and — alright?
Other: Withheld.
LD: Ok. And what happened was that these youngsters who never experienced any form of service life they were that green as grass that when we were due to go and have our jabs, inoculations and some brought up to date well coming from the army most people had had all their jabs. We had a notification in our pay books. So, all we had to do was just flash our pay books and it was showing there the jabs that we’d had. Well, the youngsters straight out of Civvy Street [pause] the people who transferred and we were rotten devils at that time. We would tip each other the wink and we would say how terrible it was with these jabs, and it was surprising the number of people that died from them. They would have the jab and they would collapse and that was it [laughs] And there was one fellow, ginger haired character and he looked as green as grass and he was. And we were discussing this with another fellow from the army and we said. ‘Yeah. No, that was terrible to think that you’re having your jobs that are going to keep you alive and instead of that it killed you.’ And this poor ginger haired fellow he just collapsed [laughs] Yeah, but it was all good experience. I went from there, from arcy tarcy up to Scarborough, and Scarborough, that was [pause] I’ve got a photograph. The CO there was a Squadron Leader [Ailing?] in the middle. And this, he was the training wing warrant officer. He was a clever devil. He was a regular air force man and he was a warrant officer first class. And I’ve forgotten, I’ve got the blighter’s name down here somewhere. We got all their names and Nodder Locke, he was, we called him Nodder because he had this problem with his collar and he would do this from time to time. So, he was called Nodder. So, Nodder, he was Surrey County Cricket Club groundsman. and where is he now? Oh, here we are. Thorn. That was his name. Thorn. He was a London police constable and he was awarded a George Medal for rescuing a number of people from a bomb demolished building. And he got his GM. That’s Thorn. And also, I’ve got there’s some other blighter on here as well. Quite a well-known character. I’m old, I forget. But that was our CO. Squadron Leader [Elwin?] And that’s the warrant officer. And what was his name now? I’ve forgotten his blooming name. [pause] Anyway, he was a regular Air Force man and he was a clever devil. He was claiming four marriage allowances. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. But they eventually caught up with him. Long after I’d left there. And he was demoted down to an AC plonk and he was put in the slammer. I don’t know for how long but he served time in the Clink and he came out, down to an AC plonk because he was a regular serving fellow. So, that was that. And got quite a number of people on here who one way and another they became quite well known. And one of them. Scottie Cochrane. His name was Alex really but we called him Scottie and Scottie, he was the company secretary of the brewers Ind Coope and Allsopp, yes. So he had a fair wack of booze frequently delivered. Yeah. So, we were alright there. And it’s rather strange because I, I got an email. I was checking my emails this morning and there was one that had been put out by a great friend of mine. We were on the same squadron and his name is Jack Ball. Well, Jack Ball he’s got it on the internet, email. He’s got down a history of the experience from being green as grass until you got up and found yourself as a skipper on an aircraft. And he’d got it set out absolutely superbly, and he’s got in the language that the man in the street could understand. But very good. That was Jack Ball. But one way and another all these characters —
DM: So, that was, was that September 1941?
LD: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. That was Scarborough.
LD: September ‘41. Yeah. And that was the initial, 11 Initial Training Wing up in Scarborough. That hasn’t got Scarborough on there but that’s where it was.
DM: Yeah.
LD: And these are the signature of the people up in there. So that’s that.
DM: Put that over here so it’s safe.
LD: Ok. Thanks.
DM: So, where did you go from Scarborough? Where was the next training?
LD: Where did I go from Scarborough? I went from Scarborough to Hixon. Hixon. That was an Elementary Flying School. But at Scarborough you had to do all the ground lectures and you had to pass the exams following the lectures on the different subjects. You would have navigation, meteorology, a number of other subjects. Oh, Morse code. And they had semaphore to a degree but they didn’t go up into that very much because the instructors didn’t know what they were teaching [laughs] So, that was it. But that was Scarborough. Then from there went to Hixon. Oh, here we are. Arcy tarcy, Scarborough. Oh no. I went to Brough. Not Hixon. I went to Brough. That was elementary flying. And from Brough I went to Heaton Park in Manchester which was kicking off point before we were shipped out to Canada for flying training. Then I went from, went out to Canada. To Moncton. Then from there I went to elementary flying in a [unclear] Then I went to service flying in Swift Current but I didn’t like Swift Current because they were on multi-engine. Twin engine. It was a Service Flying School but the aircraft they had there, they were Airspeed Oxfords. Twin-engined. But I wanted to go on to fighters so I got a transfer from there into Swift Current which was a Service Flying Training School for singles. And I went from there to Calgary. Calgary back to Moncton on the way home. Then HM troop ship Andes. But it’s all down there, yeah.
DM: What did you think of Canada?
LD: Sorry?
DM: What did you think of Canada? Did you —
LD: Canada?
DM: Yeah.
LD: It was very good. The people there they were very very kind. They really were. And they couldn’t do enough for you. And we came, because we packed up training on the Friday evening but from the Friday evening you would be invited to spend a weekend. Different families. Canadian families. And they would come and collect you, take you to their homes and deliver you back on Sunday evening. And they were very very nice. Very very kind. They really were kind people. And that was that. Then I went from there, Swift Current up to Calgary. Yeah. Then I went up to, got back England. Up to Harrogate. And then from there to give us something to do they sent us up to Whitley Bay on what they called an RAF Regiment Course. So, although you were in the Air Force to fly they sent you up there to understand what the RAF Regiment did on the ground. And you had to take part in some of their manoeuvres. So, that was that. And it was that cold up in Whitley Bay that you received — you had, it was a coke stove in the middle of what you would term a sitting room or a lounge. And it would be in the middle of the room with a stack going up through the roof. And you were given a ration of coke but wintertime you soon got through that. So, what we did, because it had a garden at the back of the house where we were billeted it had a wooden fence. So we started burning the fence [laughs] And we worked our way along one side. And as luck would have it before anyone came around to check out we were shipped out. So [laughs] So, that was an experience that was. But that was up in, that was in up in Harrogate, I think.
DM: When you were going —
LD: That was at Whitley Bay.
DM: Whitley Bay, yeah. When you were going to Canada and came back from Canada were you seasick? Did you have a good passage, or —
LD: No. We were on the ship. HMS Andes. And where was I? I can’t remember. I went out to Canada on the troop ship Letitia. And I came back from Canada on the troopship, the Andes. And these two ships, they were both cruise liners in peacetime. And conditions weren’t the same on those because they’d converted them in to troop ships. And under the decks where they’d had cabins and so on for paying passengers they’d all been ripped out and you had a clear deck space for the whole of the deck. And you were allocated a hammock. And the hammocks they were so close together that they couldn’t even move with the movement of the ship. They were solid and as the ship moved you all went with the ship like this. Yeah. So that was, and that was going out on the Letitia and coming back on the Andes. And from there I went up to Harrogate which was called Number 7 Pilot’s Recruiting Centre. And from there I went on the RAF Regiment course at Whitley Bay. That lasted what? Five weeks. Then I went to the, what they called GR School which although you were a pilot, qualified pilot you had to go on the GR course which was Ground Recognition course. You had to go on that to learn the duties of the other crew members, and you also had to become conversant there with your Morse code. So, do you know Morse code?
DM: Not really, no.
LD: Oh.
DM: Only three dots and three dashes.
LD: [laughs] Well [pause] if someone says to you nine dits and a da you know they’re being rude.
DM: Fair enough.
LD: Because nine dits, it goes, it starts off with nine dits in Morse code is a dit a dit three dits.
DM: Right.
LD: Now, I’ll tell you the second letter and you can judge for yourself the last two. So, the first one is S. Dit de dit. The second one is four dit dit dit dit which is H. Now I’ll leave your imagination to the other two [laughs]
DM: I think I’ve got it, think I’ve got it. So, by this time from what you say you knew you weren’t going to be a fighter pilot, did you?
LD: Yes. And I trained on what they called Harvards, they were. They were used as fighters but then they became defunct as operational and they put them in to what they called Service School. That was Fighter Training School. And I was training on fighters. On the Harvard. Now, on the Harvard, oh that’s, I don’t know whether that bloke’s on that list. He could be somewhere. [pause] Oh, he’s probably on there somewhere. But he’s a tall guy and what happened was that the Harvard was a twin seater training aircraft although it had been used in fighter service but they put it down to training. What they called, not elementary but service flying, and the Harvard it was quite a good aircraft. You could do all kinds of things in it but when you were training you went to Service School. You thought that you were the king’s pin. You were mustered. And although you would be booked out for certain things [pause] I wonder if I’ve got it in here.
[pause]
LD: Ah. Here we are. The [unclear] Tiger. Tiger. Tiger. Tiger. Harvards. Here we are. That was at Swift Current. And you had to go and understand before they turned you loose. You had to understand and you had to certify that you were fully aware and understood the different aspects relating to the aircraft you were flying. So, although you signed this it was a means whereby if you ballsed up any of these actions you would be held responsible. And particularly if you killed yourself [laughs] They would say it was his own fault. So you wouldn’t, or your survivors wouldn’t get a pension. So, that was that. But I’ve got it down here. Yeah, here it is. Harvards. Started here [pause] And also you had to do link training. And I think the link training is at the back of the book.
DM: So, link training if I’m right was a bit like a flight simulator. An early form of flight simulator.
LD: Yeah. I’m babbling on.
DM: No. You carry on. That’s fine. But that’s what a link trainer was. It wasn’t, you weren’t in an actual plane, you were on the ground.
LD: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
LD: So, these are the different things that — there you are, link trainer as well. You had to be proficient in the link trainer and you were certified by the link trainer instructor as to whether you were competent in his various exercises. And see, I’ve got it down here. Link, link trainer. And you had to do different things such as if you were flying an aircraft but you would be completely enclosed and you would have to do it on instruments. And through the earphones they would tell you to fly a certain course and you had, it was just the same as in a cockpit. You had to fly a certain course. They would tell you, ‘Right. You’ve reached a certain point. Now, you’ve got to find your way back and land at your home base.’ And this is where it comes out and you had to do different things which was timing on the beam. You had to time yourself on the beam and if you did that when you had to turn, turn off the beam on to certain heading, fighter heading. Then do a specific turn at a given rate. You could do rate ones up to four, four or six turns. Well, rate one was a nice gentle turn. Four or six would be as if you were bloody Top Gun [laughs] And that’s it. And this is what you had to do. You would be under the hood and you would be given directions what to do and you had to do this. And then we’ve got here you had to do homing, timing. Then they would give you an unknown course to fly. You didn’t know. And you had to go so far and then you had to judge from the sounds you were getting through as to what you would do next. And it was quite interesting that because you then had to find out how you were going to get back. Although you weren’t in the air to get back to base but you still had to go through the motions. And I’ve got it here, you see. Then you had to form what was known as figures of eight and you had to allow as if you were up in the air for drift and so on. And that was all down here. So, that was that. That was the link. And then I’ve got the list of my crew here. [laughs] I’ve got the list of when they passed on.
DM: Really?
LD: Yeah, Flash, we called him Flash Gall because he was the navigator and he would masticate his food a minimum of sixty chomps. And he would chomp. And you would sit down there with a pre-flight meal before we went off on ops and we called him Flash as a result. And Flash would sit there and you’d say. ‘Bloody hell, hurry up.’ And you would be the last on the crew bus to get out. Yeah. That was Flash. And he snuffed it on the 9th of December ’44. And Doug Jackman, the narrow gutted fellow. He — which one was he? [pause] Oh, here we are [pause] That was my, that’s my wireless operator, that was his job in Civvy Street.
DM: Senior investigations engineer.
LD: Yeah.
DM: With the Zinc Corporation.
LD: Yeah.
DM: Southern Power Corporation. That was in Australia. Broken Hill.
LD: Yeah.
DM: New South Wales.
LD: Yeah. He was quite a big noise in that company. And also I’ve got, that’s a Halifax. I’ve flown those. And this is us.
DM: That’s the crew. So, when —
LD: And —
DM: When — can you —
LD: You had to, you had to recognise ships as well. So that if you saw a ship when you were coming back from a trip, North Sea or Channel, whatever, from the recognition you’d either try and bomb them out of the water or just report back what you’d seen. So they would know they were friendly. But that’s the crew. And George Buckman. He was a senior engineer for Esso Petroleum in Southern Australia. And he was responsible for the whole of South Australia for Esso. He was the young one, Stan, seventeen. Roy had his own business. He was an electrician. This narrow gutted so and so [laughs] he, he just couldn’t adhere to being regimented. We were all sensibly shod but not Douglas, no. He had to be different.
DM: Wearing his wellies.
LD: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
LD: In his welligogs.
DM: And you say he used to take all his brass buttons off.
LD: Eh?
DM: You said he took all his brass buttons off.
LD: Yeah.
DM: And put black buttons on. Did he get caught? Did he get put on a charge for that or —
LD: Well, he was, he finished as a headmaster of a school. And his wife Kate, she was a headmistress. So they were both in the teaching profession. But that’s those two and its surprising really.
DM: When — where did you all crew up?
LD: Sorry?
DM: Where did you, where were you when you all crewed up? Where were you?
LD: What, our base?
DM: Yes.
LD: We were based up in [pause] Wireless op — that’s his place. That’s the navigator [pause] And I stayed in the Reserve until ’59. On the last aircraft I flew was [pause] I was given the opportunity, not that I was booked out as the pilot but I was like a second-Joe with a fellow. This was 1954. And he allowed me to fly the Meteor. Yeah. For a short space. That was interesting. And I did an hour at that. Yeah.
DM: So, going back. Going back to you’d finished your training.
LD: Yeah.
DM: You crewed up.
LD: Yeah.
DM: With all your crew that we’ve just been talking about.
LD: Yeah.
DM: Were you in Halifaxes then? Did you go on ops in Halifaxes?
LD: Yes. There we are. Halifax. Flew Halifax at what they called a Conversion Unit. So, we did this [pause] this was in August ’44. We converted to four engines. And I got on very well with my instructor from two to four. He was an Australian and because I had Australians in my crew, two, we got along like a house on fire. He was an Australian. And I had two. So, that was quite good. And his name was Pickles. And that was on the Halifax. That’s when we did a Conversion Unit on to Halifaxes, and before that I flew Wellingtons. And it was then when I went to OTU [pause] Where the hell would that be? Oh, I know. I was at Haverford West, and that was where I received my intro to the Wellingtons. And that was down Haverford West. That’s the west coast of Wales. And we had a runway that we took off over Cardigan Bay. And one of the commanders there, his name was named Donati. Flight Lieutenant Donati. And he’d been in the Middle East on what they called a Met flight. Meteorological flight. He’d been doing flights up to certain heights and recording the weather and so on. Well, Donati, he brought back from the Middle East he brought back with him which was [unclear] a dingo dog. A little dog. And this little dog, he used to go out on the rampage looking for bitches and he would disappear for a couple of days. And in what we called the crew room where you were waiting to be signed out and so on and you took an aeroplane. He had, in the corner he had a cushion where he could come and sleep. And if he’d been out on the rampage for a couple of days he’d come back and he’d sleep for about a day and a half in the corner, this dingo. Yeah. And Donati. He was as bad as the dog. And Donati used to go, used to go in to Cardiff. And I remember one occasion I got a telephone call from Donati. He was in Cardiff and he said, because he was a flight commander and I was just a member of the flight. So, he telephoned, he said, ‘Book yourself out an aircraft,’ he said, ‘And come and pick me up at Cardiff.’ Anyway, I booked myself out. So, I got a navigator and I said, ‘Right. We’re going to Cardiff.’ So, we went to Cardiff. Landed. Went to the crew room there and there was Donati. He looked absolutely, if you don’t mind the term, absolutely shagged out. It was unbelievable. And there was the dog fast asleep as well. So, that was Donati. But he was a nice fellow was Donati. And I went from Haverford West to [pause] I’ve got it all in here. At the back. It’s incredible. And I went from there. I finished, I finished a tour, a Bomber Command tour and because I fell out with my CO, because at one time in Bomber Command when they first started doing what they called daylights they equated three daylight trips because it was just across the Channel and back again. You had to do three daylights to count for one night. Well, because it got so bad with the fighter dominating the coast, the ME 110 and also the ack-ack they quickly changed that to one on one. So, that was, that was when I was down in [pause] oh I’ve forgotten. Somewhere.
[pause]
LD: Whitley Bay. Little Rissington, Rissington, Haverford West, Haverford West. Then did conversion to Wellingtons. Wellington. Then did another conversion to Halifaxes. Then I did another conversion to Lancasters. And then did a conversion to [pause] Oxfords. Twin engine, and it was there, yeah I flew Tiger Moths, Harvards, Anson. I flew Oxfords with a Cheetah engine. Wellingtons. Different class Wellingtons — 3, 10, 12, 13 and 14. Halifax with a Michelin engine, Lancaster. Argus, now, the Argus. That was when I was out. And for my cheek with my CO I fell out with him because I told him that he was chicken and he chose short trips. I said, ‘It’s about time you bloody well did a long night trip instead of these short ones.’ Anyway, he had his own back because when I finished I found myself on the banana boat out to India. He got his own back. But the bugger is still alive and we keep in contact. He lives up Harrogate way. And he lost his wife of a considerable number of years. Bobby his wife’s name. They’d been married, oh thirty odd years but she passed away about four or five years ago and he’s since remarried. But that was — then I did Argus. Went out to, I did a communication squadron out at Alipore, which is the outside of Calcutta. And there had to fly, first of all because they didn’t have pukka aerodromes and airstrips the engineers they would dig out a strip in the jungle and you were give a map reference. So, you had a map and you had [pause] what the hell? A Dalton. A Dalton. It was a Dalton [pause] it was a computer. And from that you could work out from the atlas points you’d been given, you could work out with your computer, you could work out the course you had to fly. But more importantly not necessarily a course but the track that you had to find because the course is what you will fly on the compass but the track is what you had to cover over the ground. So you had to make certain that you were tracking over the ground. Going in the right direction despite the fact you were probably, your nose was an entirely different direction. So you had to do that and you would be given a map reference. And you had to find this by yourself in an Argus because you had no navigator. You were given a map, a compass, and you were given a map reference point and you were told, ‘Right. You’ve got to be there at a certain time,’ because the Army brass of course they were going through, the 14th Army, through the jungle and they were holding conferences as the 14th advanced. And they would pick an atlas point that you had to be there at a certain time so they could conduct this conference before they in turn upped and moved on. So, you had to be there before they moved on. And that was interesting because you in turn would, on occasion you would take senior brass to either conduct a conference or be part and parcel. And that was quite interesting because I flew some interesting people on some of these trips. And one of them was [pause] I forget where. Yeah. I used to go up to [pause] I flew a Brigadier Haynes on one occasion. We had to go up to Sylhet which was at the foot of the Himalayas and take him up there to a conference. And we had a colonel who was going up there at the same time. Mellor. And I had Air Commodore Hardman who eventually became Marshal of the Royal Air Force. Hardman. And I flew him up to Sylhet which again was at the base of the Himalayas. And Brigadier Weston, I took him a couple of times. And a Colonel Dutfield, and that was going up. That was up, going up into Burma. And they were, they were interesting trips because one of the people I took was a Mrs Metcalfe, and I had to take her up to Alipore which was an airstrip outside Calcutta. I had to take her there. And Mrs Metcalfe, she was the senior nursing officer out in India. Australian lady. And she was that down to earth she was unimaginable really. She really was, talk about a spade a spade. But I had some very interesting people. I met quite a lot of them. Plus the fact that in Calcutta you had what was known as the Grand Hotel where you could go there. And if you were taking someone, if they were going to a conference and it would last more than twenty four hours you would book into the Grand Hotel. And you would have to meet the expenses but what you did you claimed your expenses when you got back. And that was a very very swish hotel the Grand. It really was swish. Where they had these very tall Sikh soldiers all dressed in white. Bandoliers and so on. They were the guards with the Sikh plumes. They were the guards at the entrances and so on and they had one on each landing. And they also had a lady guarding each landing. A member of the Indian Army guarding each landing with a table and she had a register of who they should allow on the landings. And you had to be in that book or you weren’t allowed on the landing. But that was all very interesting. Plus the fact that they had what was known as a Senior Officer’s Club there and you had to be squadron leader and above. That meant that you’d attained your majority in the army. Anyway, I was a flight lieutenant so I hadn’t attained my majority — squadron leader. But I was very fortunate because I was invited as a guest to enjoy the facilities of the Officer Club and it was a beautiful. You wouldn’t have thought there was a war on. Absolutely spotless. You could go like that. Not a speck of dust. Absolutely fantastic. And all the servants they were all dressed in their pukka garb with their white long breeches, their hats. They were absolutely immaculate really. And that was an experience in itself. But needless to say I went on one occasion, Bob Hart, he was a Northern Rhodesian fellow and he’d done a tour of operations over here as I had done and he in turn, we were very much alike. Very [pause] we seemed, we didn’t think twice about what we said. Yeah. And Bob, he was the same. Bob, he was the senior engineering officer, Northern Rhodesian mines. He was a very very tall guy. About six foot four. And they had East African troops out there in Calcutta and on more than one occasion walking along the pavement in Calcutta and they had a battalion of black East African soldiers out there. They were all black. And if two of them were on the same pavement as you and they were coming towards you he would yell out in their tongue, ‘Get off the bloody pavement in the gutter.’ And they would all jump on the side and get in the gutter. Yeah. But that was, and his name was Robert Kitson Hart. RK Hart. Yeah. He was a character he was. And I remember one occasion we’d been out. We’d been out drinking to a club and we were going back to our digs at the Grand and they had what they called garreys. In other words it was like a Hansom cab. Some had two horses. Some had four. Anyway, we rented, hired a garrey, a Hansom cab and Robert Kitson, he said to the garrey wallah, the driver, ‘Grand hotel.’ Well, dependent upon the time you were in the garrey so you paid accordingly for the time you hired it. Well, this garrey wallah, he was going so slow it was surprising that the horse didn’t fall over. Anyway, Robert Kitson said to him, [unclear] which means hurry up. Anyway, he got the horse getting to not exactly a gallop but a reasonable trot. That wasn’t good enough for Robert Kitson. So, Rob was sitting with me in the back. He got up and he got hold of the garrey wallah, threw him off. Climbed up into the seat and he shouted out to the garrey. ‘Run you bastard. Run.’ He whipped the garrey, the horse into quite a bit of a gallop and he was shouting out to the garrey wallah, ‘Run. Run you bastard, run.’ And he took us to the Grand. Drove all the way to the Grand. And when we got there and he said to the garrey wallah, ‘I drove. You get no tip. I drove. I did the driving.’ So, yeah. Yeah. Six foot four. Robert Kitson. I’ve been so lucky in life. I’ve really been so lucky. Talk about lucky.
DM: So, you decided to stay in the Air Force after the war.
LD: Sorry?
DM: Did you stay in after the war? You didn’t come out and go back in. You stayed in the Air Force.
LD: No. I stayed on for what they called VR training. And I went to various aerodromes. Pukka aerodrome squadrons on. I went to a number. I’ve got them in the book. And I did my fifteen days annual training with them in different types of aircraft. But in my last, last year, I think in my sixth or seventh year VR training I opted to do that over there in Redhill because in Redhill they had a Wing Commander Scott. He was the head of the Training Unit there. Now, Wing Commander Scott only got the job because he married into the family. His wife, their family, they owned the aerodrome. So, he got the job running the aerodrome. Well, anyway Scott, he employed what they called civilian instructors. They hadn’t been in the Air Force but all they’d done, they’d just, they had instructed in civilian life. Well, there were two that he had civilian instructors and what they did they would take you up and they would give you different exercises to do. Come down and sign you out and so on and that was it. But when the weather was what we called clamped, in other words you couldn’t fly what they would do they would get you to do, Scott would get you to do different ground exercises. One of them happened to be swinging the compass. Well, with swinging a compass what you had to do you had to get what they called a DR, Dead Reckoning compass. You had to get a dead reckoning reading so that you got due north. And then you went through the various compass points to ensure that the compasses, they had little lead rods through them and you would adjust the rod to get the thing reading correctly. Anyway, it was what they called clampers. So, Scott said, ‘Right. You’ll have to swing compasses.’ Anyway, he said, ‘Right. Two aircraft out there.’ So there was a pal of mine, he was on the VR but he lived on the same road as me. John [unclear] Well, John he had some highfalutin job in the city. I forget what it was now. But John and I, we used to travel up together and we were given the two aircraft to swing. Anyway, Scott said, ‘Right. The two aircraft. One each. Swing the compass.’ Well, he outranked me. He was a wing commander so I had to do as he said. As I was told. Anyway, I got out there and there were two civilians and they said, ‘Right. You swing that compass,’ and they said to John, ‘You swing that compass in the other aeroplane.’ Yes, please. I don’t know if you want to use the room at all.
DM: No.
LD: Alright.
[recording paused]
DM: Right. So swinging the compass.
LD: I went out there and there were two civilians there, ‘Right. You swing that aircraft. You swing that.’ So, I said, ‘Hold on.’ So, I went back to Scott who was in the flight office. I said, ‘Tell me, sir,’ because he was my superior, ‘Tell me, sir. Is it right that a commissioned officer in the RAF VR, is he supposed to take orders from a civilian?’ ‘Good lord, no. Of course not.’ I said, ‘Well then, tell those two to swing the aircraft themselves.’ [laughs] So, that was it. Got away with it. Yeah. But they tried it. But having said all of that I’ve been so fortunate in life. I’ve really been so fortunate.
DM: What job did you do in Civvy Street?
LD: Banking. Yeah. And again, I was very very fortunate. I got a job. I got a job in 431 Oxford Street. It was when I first became aware of girls. Because in 431 Oxford Street I was there as the junior. Well, the junior, you were the dogsbody. You ran all the errands. And you took what they called returns. In other words cheques that came back to your customer unpaid. What we called bounced cheques. You had to deliver them back to the customer and you got their signature for the return, indicated that it had been returned and in turn their account was debited because of the return. Well, I went there to 431 Oxford Street. And as luck would have it at that time Mr Gordon Selfridge who used to call, what they used to call it walking the floor and he would walk every floor in Selfridges every morning starting at 9 o’clock spot on. And he would walk around with two after him and he would make various comments. And the earthlings, they had to make a note of what he was on about. But it was that time that he used to get the lift girls and they had lifts and they had a lever in the side of the cabin that they would pull for up or down. And these girls, they had skirts just above the knees which was quite something in those days. Quite above the knees. And they were all exquisitely turned out because they had to go through the beauty parlour before they were allowed anywhere near a lift. So, they had to get in early, beauty parlour, all the make-up and so on. Everything neat and clean. Tidy. Wear kid gloves before they were allowed near a lift. And then they would all stand at the entrance to the lifts and Mr Gordon, he would go around looking at each one, particularly at their knees. ‘Ok.’ ‘Yes, ok,’ and he would go around with his retinue looking at all the lifts before they got in and operated the lifts. So, it was there that I really became aware of girls. And I really appreciated the manner in which Mr Gordon hired the girls. That was an experience in itself. And over there, being a junior at 431 I would take the returns. In other words, the return cheques that had bounced. I would take them back to what Selfridges had, it was called an accounting office, it was like a cashier’s office. And in there the head cashier he was a very staid gentleman. Always wore grey single breasted suits with a waistcoat and with a halberd across here with the bar on there, strapped across his waist. And he always had the pocket watch in his pocket. And you’d go up there and before you handed them over he would always look at his watch, which was a gold Hunter and he would put it back in his pocket again. And he would make a note as to the time you turned up with them in case you skived off somewhere. But he was a very meticulous gentleman and he always wore stiff white bow collars with a bow tie. Always. And he was absolutely immaculate. Shoes as well. And he was a tall guy, very tall. But I learned a lot from going over there at 431. I really did. And from there at 431 it was a ritual. We used to close at, I think it was half past twelve on a Saturday. Half past twelve everything would be what we called bagged up. Go downstairs in to the strong room. All the money would be on the trolley to go to the strong room and and then you had to take all the ledgers down which would be on a separate trolley. Well, being the dogsbody junior that was your problem. You had to get all the ledgers down in the book room. Then after that you would lock up and you would have to hand the keys to the book room to the chief clerk whose name was Goodrich. Same as the tyres. I’ve never forgotten it. And his name was Henry, and he lived at Haywards Heath and he used to travel up each day. But Henry, he was a nice fellow and I remember that 15th of August 1939, he called me up to his desk which was, he had a raised bench type desk on a platform so he could overlook the whole of the office including the cashiers. And he called me up there and I thought, ‘Oh hell, what’s wrong?’ Anyway, I got there and he said, he was very nice, he said, ‘I’m very sorry to tell you but you’ve been mobilised and you’ve got to report to your Drill Hall as soon as you can. So, you can leave now, get home, explain to your parents what you have got to do and get to the Drill Hall as soon as you can.’ I went home. My dad was home. And I’ve never put all my webbing together then. Being what they called, I was a sapper then in the REs and I never put my webbing together. And I said to my dad, ‘I’ve got to put my webbing together because I’ve got to go and report,’ I said, ‘Could you help me?’ He said, ‘No, it’s no good me giving you a hand,’ he said, ‘The only way to learn is to do it yourself.’ So, that was how I learned how to put the webbing together. Over to the Drill Hall and I had to go upstairs. Cliff Ford was up on the balcony with his red sash on. So, he said, oh he said, ‘You’d better go in to the office.’ He was a lieutenant. And he was a member of a stockbroking firm.
Other: There we are. There we are. One for you. One for you.
LD: Thank you dear. I think his name was, I think it was Hammond.
Other: Do you think, I mean is he alright? Because he seems to be going on, not so much about —
LD: I’m dribbling on. I was quite keen on swimming then. I used to go with my friend Ken Shepherd up to the swimming pool up at North Cheam, and I heard that someone told me there was a swimming pool at the Drill Hall. So, I said to Cliff Ford at the Drill Hall [pause] I asked him, ‘Is it true you’ve got a swimming pool here? If so I wouldn’t mind signing on so I could use the pool.’ Which meant that I could save, I think it was sixpence to go in the pool up at North Cheam.
DM: Right.
LD: So, he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You’d be surprised what we’ve got here. Go and have a word with the officer and he’ll explain to you what we’ve got.’ Anyway, I went upstairs. Went in. Saw the officer. And I said, ‘I understand you’ve got a lot of sport facilities here including a swimming pool.’ He didn’t say, ‘No we haven’t.’ He said, ‘Oh, you’d be surprised at what sports facilities we’ve got here.’ He said, ‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy it if you would like to come along and join us.’ So, I said, ‘Well, that sounds interesting.’ He said, ‘Well, that’s right, ‘he said, ‘If you’re interested would you like to sign along here?’ [laughs] Sheep to the slaughter. Signed. So, he said, ‘Right. That’s it. And he called, they didn’t call them sergeants in those days they were sarnts, ‘Sarnt major’
DM: Another lamb to the slaughter.
LD: In came Cliff Ford. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Take the sacrificial, he signed on.’ So, that was it. That’s how I came to sign, to volunteer. Yeah.
DM: When you —
LD: Yeah.
DM: On ops in Bomber Command.
LD: Yeah.
DM: Did you have any hairy moments?
LD: What, in bombers?
DM: Yeah.
LD: Yeah. A number. We were, we were attacked on a number of occasions but I think I put it down on the first but it got so that you were used to seeing things. You didn’t bother. And the navigator would it put it the nav, in his nav log. Attacked or whatever. We had a number of near misses. There was one poor blighter, he was flying alongside us and there we went out in what they called a gaggle. And a gaggle meant that you flew out, not in any type of formation but you flew out as a mob. And what happened was that — have you got someone picking you up?
[recording paused]
DM: In a moment. You were saying the navigator, the navigator would make a note in his log that you’d been attacked and that it happened quite a lot.
LD: Right. Where was I?
DM: You were talking about when you were, when you were attacked. By fighters, I assume. From time to time.
LD: Oh yes. JU88.
DM: You said something about when you all went out in a gaggle.
LD: A JU88. And then we were going out in a gaggle on one trip and the fellow alongside me because we were scattered all over different altitudes one fellow above him released a bomb, went through his wing and that was it. Yeah. So, although you thought that the dangerous aspect of it all was on the bombing run it could be quite a bit hairy if you had some idiot above you. But I’ve been very, very lucky. I worked my way. I told you I was shipped out for not keeping my tongue between my teeth.
DM: Yes.
LD: Shipped out to Calcutta. And from there because I wanted to know what was going on what they called the TO, Transport Officer who was stationed in the Grand I bothered him to know where I was going. ‘Where the hell am I going? What am I doing here?’ Well, that’s another story but to cut that short, I finished. I found myself out in Calcutta. From Calcutta I went to [pause] Calcutta. I went to Burma. And Burma, again I was very lucky because this time I was on, I mentioned the communication flight where you took brass and high ranking officers down to conferences. And it was there, and it’s been in the news recently, one place in Burma which they called Myanmar.
DM: Myanmar or something. Yeah.
LD: Which is a place called Cox’s Bazaar. Well, I’ve been there. And Cox’s Bazaar was the first place that I landed in Burma which had been evacuated by the Japanese. And we were following, following the Japanese down that coast and we went into Cox’s Bazaar. And you had to be careful because they were laying booby traps. In addition to which, due to the humidity there, the temperature a lot of the furniture was made of bamboo canes. But because they were fraught with the humidity you could look at a table and chair which would be like that and you would touch it and it would collapse due to humidity. And the, what the hell did they call it? [pause] They turned into [pause] I’ve forgotten the blasted name. But anyway furniture was like that. You would touch it if the Japs had been there and it would collapse. Also, you had to be bloody careful that you didn’t touch something that the Japs had left behind that had been booby trapped. And it was there that we worked our way down. I was still on the communication flight and we got down to Mingaladon which was the landing strip for Rangoon. And it was there that we were called to attend the surrender of the Japanese, the general, Japanese general of that area. We were called by Mountbatten to attend and watch the surrender of the Japanese general to Mountbatten himself on the Mingaladon airstrip. Well, we had to attend there and Mountbatten, well he was an absolute s o d. He really was. And he made the 14th Army members who were attending they’d sweated their guts out through the jungle these squaddies and he made them, they only had one set of khaki, he made them scrub their khaki. And they were issued with white blanco to do their webbing. They were issued by Mountbatten this stuff and they were told that they had to launder their kit. Be absolutely spot on. Khaki green and all their webbing including spats had to be white. And they had to parade absolutely spot on to be in attendance when this Japanese general surrendered. And I was there at the time when the Japanese surrendered his samurai sword to Mountbatten and Mountbatten accepted his surrender. The Japanese general, he bowed out all the way, virtually on knees which was a terrible humiliation for him. And later that day because he was so humiliated he committed hara-kiri. And that was Mountbatten. But the surprising thing is before all this happened my father was a Royal Marine. And during WW1 my dad was on Lord Mountbatten’s staff. But at that time, because he was known as [pause] it’s the German name for Mountbatten anyway. He was known as, he was Chief of the Naval staff, despite being a German because Victoria had German descendants. But he was chief of the Naval staff and he had to resign, and my dad was in his office as Royal Marine. And my dad said that it was the first time that dad had seen a man cry. And he said it was at the time that Earl Mountbatten, as he was then he wrote his resignation letter. Signed it. And he said, dad said, ‘The man was in tears when he handed me the letter.’ And he always addressed dad as John. And dad said, ‘He said to me, ‘John, you know who you’ve got to deliver this to.’ And my dad had to deliver it to what was then, despite Mountbatten resigning as First Lord dad knew who he had to take it to his successor. And dad did that. But he said the first time he’d seen a man cry. So, that was the Mountbattens. But having said all that, dad, being a Marine and being on Mountbatten’s staff, dad was billeted with him as his batman. As a batman living in Mountbatten’s quarters at Number One London. That, that’s the accommodation at Marble Arch and it’s still known as Number One London. And dad was billeted at Number One London [laughs] Yeah.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Len Doward
Creator
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-10-26
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ADowardLA171026
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Pending OH summary
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01:30:21 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Len Doward was in the army when he saw an advertisement for aircrew so he volunteered. He trained as a pilot. On one operation he saw a Lancaster alongside hit by bombs from a Lancaster above. After his operational tour Len was posted to India and then Burma where he witnessed the Japanese surrender at Mingaladon airfield.
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Burma
Canada
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--London
Temporal Coverage
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1941-09
550 Squadron
625 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bomb struck
bombing
Halifax
Harvard
Lancaster
pilot
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/803/10784/PdiPlacitoLH1701.2.jpg
89587cbda0f20671b0c4ea1b85001701
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/803/10784/AdiPlacitoLH170309.1.mp3
f963356b26e31e9b1124f33db60eea09
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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di Placito, Lawrence Henry
L H di Placito
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Lawrence 'Lawrie' di Placito (1922, 1646268 Royal Air Force). He served in Air Sea Rescue.
collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-09
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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diPlacito, LH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: Today is the 9th of March 2017, this is a second interview with Laurie Placito in his home in Surrey and the interviewer is David Meanwell. Over to you Laurie.
LP: [Whisper, paper shuffling] That’s ‘44. It was July ‘43 while are on patrol in the channel, we were roughly four and a half to five miles off the coast, we sighted six airmen in a dinghy. There were no injuries, the airman were taken aboard and taken back to Newhaven harbour. Also in ’43, Ealing Studios arrived to make a film for the air sea rescue. It was called ‘For Those in Peril’. The leading actor was a David Farrar. It was quite interesting really because, they were filming out at sea, different scenes and then back in the harbour they would have airmen performing diving, off Newhaven Bridge and some off the boats. We had a number of these actors obviously dressed as RAF officers and men and it was a job to tell who was the real officer from one of our own, from all the film stars! Now, we go back to ‘44, 1944 is the next one I can remember. We were on patrol off Beachy Head, we picked up floating nets and life jackets but no personnel, we then received a message from a Walrus that could not take off due to bad weather, so we rescued the pilot and took the Walrus in tow to Newhaven harbour. [papers shuffling] This was just a few weeks after D-Day. [Whispers] Now D-Day itself, June the 6th, was actually a quiet day for us, we had no incidents to report on our sector apart from retrieving a quantity of flotsam. But it was constant patrolling, hour after hour, coming into harbour only to refuel. Of course the harbour was absolutely crammed with various landing craft. There was a flotilla of American vessels next to us. Now the American ships were dry with no alcohol allowed on board. This enabled us to do some serious bartering as we were able to buy beer when available from local pubs and of also from our own rum ration.
DM: Can you remember what you used to barter for? What did you get in exchange for the beer?
LP: The Americans had quite better rations and things we never had. Tinned butter, cream and such luxuries which weren’t available to the RAF. So we had a bartering which enabled us to feed a lot better.
[Other]|: [Cough]
LP: Now I’ll see about D-Day. In September ‘44 the airborne landings at Arnhem took place. We had orders to sail to Felixstowe on the east coast to cover these landings. But despite extensive patrols we found no survivors, only a great deal of debris. After a week or so we returned to Newhaven. It was on the outward journey, to Felixstowe, when we stopped off at Dover, only to be caught in a terrific shelling from German cross channel guns. Needless to say our skipper curtailed our visit and quickly flipped our, slipped our moorings and hastily set sail. June ‘44 was also the month that the V1 rockets or doodlebugs as they were known, began to rain on England. They were a fearsome weapon with a buzzing sound and flames coming from, from them. When they first appeared we tried to shoot them down, but flying at 350 miles an hour and we tossing about on the ocean we had no success. After a time we were told not to try and shoot them down, but to leave, to leave this to the inland defences such as AA batteries, anti-aircraft guns, balloons and fighter planes. I think one of the reasons for this was that they did not want the bombs to crash on the coastal towns. On more than one occasion I saw brave fighter pilots try to fly alongside the bomb and tilt the wing underneath it causing it to crash. ’45. These [papers shuffling] [not audible]. One of the last pickups that I can remember was rather a sad incident. This was in January ’45. We were on patrol 10 miles off of Beachy Head. We were contacted by spotter aircraft and followed them which took us to a dinghy which contained two American airmen, apparently dead. Artificial respiration was carried out until the bodies were handed over to the Naval authorities. When Germany surrendered in May 1945 things quietened down, quite considerably. Patrols were still kept up, but with no sense of urgency. And no longer could you see the fleets of bombers with their brave pilots and crew filling the skies on their way to Germany. And then just after when Japan surrendered in August ‘45, things really altered in the base with demobbing beginning to start and posting to other units and remustering to other trades, officers were also coming and going but nothing seemed to be settled. That was a bad time that was. Unlike the army where all the regiments were posted en block the marine craft section were individually posted thus having to leave out shipmates, old shipmates behind and starting afresh under completely different conditions. Before the Japanese surrender it was being planned to send boats and crews [emphasis] to the Far east. Thankfully this never happened. Our crew on HSL190 was an efficient and happy crew. With the skipper Flying Officer Craig, a most friendly person, who called all the personnel by their christian names; saluting was down to a minimum, once when he came aboard in the morning and when he left after we had tied up. Regards saluting, when we sailed past the Naval Headquarters every time we came in and out of harbour, one half of our crew would stand to attention at the bow, the other half at the stern. This was called saluting the quarterdeck. One happy incident I can [emphasis] recall was when in harbour we were tied up alongside two other HSLs. To get out it meant untying the bow lines and with the aid of a boat hooks and manpower, pushed our boat, our boat, through the opening, for some reason the skipper decided to help with this operation, when there was an almighty splash and he, being a rather large man, he fell overboard. At first his cap was visible to be seen. This caused howls of laughter. The crash net had to be lowered down before he was pulled aboard. One wag asked him if this was counted as a rescue, but being a thorough sportsman he laughed as loud as anybody. In quiet moments at sea he would allow the crew to put out fishing lines. He was a lovely man. One easy way to catch fish was when the Naval minesweepers detonated a mine. Dozens of stunned fish would be floating on the surface, but it was not a sporting way to catch fish. Now Newhaven was an easy-going station with no hard discipline. Airmen could come and go in and out of the base with no checks or guardroom. The shore-based airmen such as carpenters, armourers, electricians etc, had a very easy time. By mid-morning they could be found in the local church canteen while the NAAFI canteen van was a regular visitor. As long as the boat crews were operating efficiently the commanding officer, Squadron Leader Don G Syme, was quite happy. In contrast the boat crews had long hours aboard with no set duty times. Their time at sea depended on any incidents according, occurring, I’m sorry, any incidents occurring and only then after receiving permission from the Naval authorities could they return to harbour. Boat crews were given a rum ration after four or five hours at sea, or at any time with the CO’s permission. For those who did not drink it provided a means of bartering for chocolates or cigarettes. Hot cocoa was provided ad lib, and main meals also cooked on board if unable to return to base. Bunks and sleeping bags were provided for long hours spent at sea. Boat crews were issued with extra clothing, such as woollen jerseys, duffle coat, sea boots, plimsolls which had to be worn on board in good weather, and waterproof macs. [Shuffle of paper] Newhaven harbour was also home to a naval squadron of steam gunboats which were heavily armed and with torpedo tubes. They occupied the port quay with the RAF on the starboard side. The naval squadron was commanded by Sir Peter Scott, he was the son of Scott of the Antarctic. Sir Peter was a fearless commander and he would search fearlessly for German e-boats or any, any enemy craft. In contrast to his naval career, post-war he became kfamous for his studies of nature and wildlife paintings. There were no WAAFs, which is Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, women at Newhaven. I can only remember one WAAF officer coming there as an adjutant. I think she only lasted a few weeks, she could not put up with the strong language of the CO, who was a good and fair CO. I believe after the war he became harbour master at Grimsby. One incident I remember plainly, was when an ammunition barge full of high explosives, broke its tow lines and crashed against the cliffs outside the harbour, causing a terrific explosion, blowing out all the windows and the roof off the ablution block. Luckily no one was injured. One the, another pickup which I forgot to mention occurred in September ’44. While on patrol we received a message that a Walrus had picked up six survivors and was picking up a seventh in a position about one mile off the French coast. We sighted the Walrus in position where we could see the church one mile distant. We closed to the Walrus and transferred all the survivors who were uninjured but suffering from shock and immersion. We then soon got on our way, arriving back at Newhaven safely. All airmen were housed in nissen huts alongside the quay. In earlier days a few were billeted with local families but as D-Day drew near every airman had to sleep in the base. This meant taking out all the single beds and replacing them with double bunks, one above the other. This was unfortunate for the person on the lower bunk as sometimes you would have a foot placed somewhere on your anatomy from the airman climbing on the bunk above. The officers had their own nissen huts further along the quay which also housed our mess deck. I myself was billeted with a local family for a time. Was a very kindly landlady whose husband was away doing war work, a Mrs Cook. She had twin daughters, Betty and Gwen, son Michael all school age, and a grandma. The family spent most nights in an air raid shelter in the garden while I on my off duty nights had my own comfortable bedroom. It came as a bit of a shock when I had to return to base to sleep in a twin bunk. To the end of my narrative, and thanking the lord for my good fortune and bringing me safely through the war. We were never attacked by enemy aircraft, our biggest danger, or I’m sorry, we were never attacked by enemy aircraft or e-boats. Our biggest danger was enemy minefields or floating mines with which we had several close brushes. As I’ve said before we were a happy and efficient crew, enjoying sing-songs on board with our fitter marine, Vic Fiddler playing his accordion or board games in the foc’stle. The only time we were fired on was by our own gun battery on the Newhaven Cliffs, when two warning shells landed in the sea nearby. It was because we were flying the wrong recognition flag of the day. Needless to say it was soon changed. Remembering my old crew, we had Bert Underwood, our first class coxswain and a first class man, also we had Norman Rogerson who was our first class wireless operator; he was never seen without his headset. A lot depended on Norman who was solely responsible for all the morse code messages. Not once did Norman miss or delay a crash call. This was no mean feat when you realise he had to separate our own callsign, which was seagull 7 6, from all the other traffic which was being transmitted. Boat crews usually consisted of eight or nine men, depending on somebody being off sick with no replacement. We had one officer, usually he was a flying officer, we had a first class coxswain, a second class coxswain, we had a wireless operator, a medical orderly, the first engineer and a second engineer and a couple of gunners. Let me -
DM: Did you keep in touch with any of your crew mates after the war?
LP: Yes, after the war we had several reunions held at Newhaven where all crews and shore-based men met for a dinner in a local pub. And also I kept in touch with a great friend of mine who was the station cook, Corporal Sid Sole, he was a good friend, and we used to meet up together and, also with Harry Worts who was the local funeral director. And then occasionally I would motor down to Newhaven, to meet up with Bert Underwood, our former coxswain, who was a local, who lived locally, and also to meet Mrs Cook and her family who were so good to me during the war years.
DM: Was that the lady you stayed with?
LP: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
LP: Another good friend I met up with was a former wireless operator on the Newhaven base, the name of Pete Sisson. Pete Sisson married a local girl and I kept in touch with him, he lives somewhere on the east coast, I can’t quite recall where, but Pete and I used to meet up at Newhaven because on Armistice Day at Newhaven, a launch would take ex-members of the, of the base out to sea to lay a wreath. As I said before we didn’t have any casualties when I was at Newhaven, but sadly two or three HSLs were sunk at the Dieppe raid with several casualties and prisoners. This was before my time there. I am now passed ninety-five years so forgive me if I have bored you with my war memories. I may have missed one or two incidents but not the thrill of speeding across the channel at thirty five plus knots with the bow planing above the waves, the roar of three five hundred horse power Napier Sea Lion engines and the RAF ensign flapping against the mast.
DM: Would it be fair to say, Laurie, you enjoyed your war?
LP: Yes, yeah, I enjoyed the camaraderie of the men and that, yeah. You got bored sometimes you know, with the long patrols and that, as I say you wouldn’t go out say at nine in the morning and come home five at night: it didn’t work like that. If you hadn’t been called out, I think we used to be on seven, six o’clock in the morning we’d be on base. One base was fourteen miles due south of Beachy Head, and then a couple accordingly back up towards the channel. Not eastward because that was the Dover area. But we used to, the Point of Beachy Head was our sort of main point, and up back up to Littlehampton. Yes, it was, when you had bad weather you know, you huddled up trying to get out of the wind and that, but you had to be, had to be on board you couldn’t just all hide down in the wheelhouse out of the rain, or the weather, you had to, well you had to be sighted you see to see everything was going on.
DM: Did you ever suffer from seasickness?
LP: No, no I didn’t, which was lucky, I was very lucky, I never suffered from sea sickness. We had an assistant engineer: Jack, Hayes, Jack Hayes. He was older than, I was only twenty one, something like that, twenty one, twenty two. Now Jack, he, every time he went to sea, he was seasick, and when I, not just sea sick, absolutely laid out. And he’d go pale as anything, and he was retching and retching and this went on for weeks, I said Jack, you can’t put up with this, I said you’ve got to ask for a transfer I said, you’re going to kill yourself, and he, I’ll keep trying, and eventually [emphasis] he got quite a lot better, but he did suffer for his first times. Oh, terribly. It’s a terrible thing sea sickness, you don’t, you don’t think much of it, but when you keep retching and retching, you’ve got nothing left inside of you, but that was the only one on our boat, was well, you couldn’t afford to be seasick see[laugh]. Yeah, if you were sick you’d have to report the um, we didn’t have a doctor on board, on our base, wasn’t big enough, we had to go to the naval doctors across the other harbour. And then, they’d treat you, but it was usually medicine and duties like, take this and back to work, I was lucky really, I used to suffer quite a lot of nose bleeds. I don’t know, I don’t know ’cause I was boxing at the time, but I suffered with nose bleeds, and several times I had go to the MO, and he’d would stuff cotton wool up your nose, all he could do. After the war I still suffered with that, but I used to have to, had it cauterised, they put electric needles up your nose, in those days they didn’t though. No, all in all the camaraderie was good, and there was no discipline you know didn’t salute every five minutes like you would be on an RAF station. I mean you’d walk up the quay and you might see a strange officer and salute, but normally they just nod like, ‘cause, you, everybody knew everybody, the crews, the boat crews. Yes. It got crowded as I say, on D-Day you never got to sleep in, you had one above the other like, you know, you can imagine coming in a bit worse for weather sometimes, was a lot of shouting going on like, you know. The shore based airmen had a good time there though, I mean they’d have a so called morning parade, that was a bit of a shambles because half the fellas would be on the boats or off duty or whatever sort of thing. You know. It was such a handy place to be, Newhaven, because when you got a 48 hour pass, you could, I could slip up to here with no bother at all, the stations was on the side of the harbour, you just get on there, change at East Grinstead, I, not East Grinstead, yeah, was it East Grinstead, no not East Grinstead, you had to change just outside London to get down here. Many a time, and also we’d go into Brighton on the bus, get the bus if you were off duty at night, you’d get the bus go to Brighton and if you overstayed your time there, you’d miss the last bus, so that meant you had to sleep either if you could find a NAAFI or one of these put-you-up places, or sleep in the bus shelter which I did on more than one occasions. You’d get the first bus out, I think it used to leave, it used to get back into Newhaven before six o’clock and once or twice I’d come bouncing off the bus stop which was only at the top of the quay, and they’d already started the engines, you could hear the engines banging, just in time, but I had my best blue on then you had to change like, you know, you couldn’t cut it too fine because you mustn’t, it was a cardinal sin to have er, miss the boat, if it the boat went out without you, you’d be in trouble. Yeah, it was, but as I say it was an easy going base. The old CO he was a gruff, you know, hard-spoken man like, he’d swear at anybody, but he was fair, and he was, he was a good CO like, you know, as I say he made sure we had sheets to sleep in which was unheard of, in RAF stations you’d just had your bare blankets. The food was pretty good considering, wasn’t a great variety, but basically it was fair. The only thing I couldn’t eat breakfast it, bubble and squeak they’d gives you for breakfast, and that was about half past five in the morning, you go to sea on that [laugh] no, I couldn’t put up with that. [Tapping] When I was billeted with Mrs Cook she would make me up a tin, whatever she could find, she’d get an allowance obviously, she was being paid for it, and she’d make up a big round biscuit tin with sandwiches, sausage rolls she’d make and things like that. She was a lovely lady, quite, she, she was quite good. But as I say they used to sleep in the bloomin’ air raid shelter at night, the bombing raids and that, terrible that, two, three kids, three school, school kids, yeah.
DM: Did you have to, when you were waiting for your demob did you have to do any other jobs?
LP: When?
DM: When you were waiting to be demobbed, did you have to do anything else, any other jobs?
LP: No, I become the station driver, I think I told you.
DM: Oh yeah, I remember.
LP: Yes.
DM: Yeah, you did.
LP: Yes, goes to show a good job the station driver was.
DM: Yes.
LP: I used to take, that’s a thing I should have said, it was to keep the men occupied, as I said it was all comings and goings, groups of them used to go and work on local farms, help the farmers like, you know, which kept them busy and it was doing a good job, it got them out the way but you didn’t know who was who, as I say, officers as well were going, you know and of course everybody there was all waiting to be demobbed, all anxious to get demobbed. Yeah, no all in all it was an experience I wouldn’t have missed it, you know, I wouldn’t have missed it.
DM: You never thought of staying in?
LP: No I didn’t, no I didn’t, I wanted to get out, I wanted to get out actually, I did. I missed me fam, missed me old mother like, you know, and the family. But then there again I was lucky because as I said before the pay was well, pathetic compared today, like, you couldn’t compare it. But my sister, she used to send me regular ten shillings at a time, which was more than I earned in a week like, she used to send me ten shillings, and me brother used to send me, and if I got home, I would get some more money like, you know. I didn’t go short of money. You couldn’t go mad and spend you, ad lib like, you know. But I wasn’t a drinker, I used to go in the pubs because there was nowhere else to go, but I’d just buy my own round or, if you was with your mates like, you would pay your round and that was it. And I didn’t smoke which was another save. We had a mess deck: it was, course it was right alongside the walls, the harbour wall, it was mess, it was nissen huts, but the mess deck was an old rope, course it was, being a fishing village, it was an old rope store, you had to go up a big flight of stairs and up there was the cookhouse. And occasionally you would get these, they were nice people, different groups, singers or musicians, come and give you a concert, which was a nice break like, you know. But you met all sorts of men, all different, you know [laugh] yeah, you met all sorts of, all sorts. I didn’t, I suppose looking back at it I don’t suppose there was two fellers that I didn’t like really, the rest I got on with. Our crew were, well we were close on the crew like, but there was only two particular I never did get on with. Yeah, I often think of, think of them old days. [Chuckle] When you’re young it’s different isn’t it, you don’t look, if you, as I say it was a bit dicey going out minefielding, you didn’t know where, and the fact when you, when you were ploughing there along whichever speed you was going, the bow, if that’s the sea, the, the bow of the boat would be like that, the water coming underneath. If you were in the wheelhouse you couldn’t see anything, and you were going, you’d see a mine in the water but it had to be close before you could spot it. As I say once or twice we got very close to ‘em, yeah. We set one off one day, it could have been one them acoustic mines, it’d go off with heavy movement, without hitting it. And we were, we were, good job we were going a fair speed and suddenly there was this almighty explosion at the back of us like, but of course we’d gone. But we had to go in to, where did we used to go, down the, down near Portsmouth somewhere, Mount, was it Mountbatten? To have the, I think we’d damaged the props, change the props like, you know. Another time I [emphasis] was, I was at the wheel then, I hit a, oh great big log I suppose, or a timber, come off one of the ships, a big timber, and that caused the boat to jump like and we had to take that back, as I say back down to Portsmouth wherever it was, to have a repair done down there. You couldn’t help it, ‘cause you just couldn’t see it like. One, only one occasion did, I thought we were going to be attacked by air, we were just patrolling like, you know, and this aircraft, German he come diving out the sky and he swoops right low over us, and I suppose he thought it’s not worth stopping, ‘cause he was, not far off the coast like, you know, he went on, but he scared us for a minute, ‘cause we had orders not to shoot unless you were shot at. As I say, when the doodlebugs started to come over, specially at night, all you could see was the flames burning, flames coming out, but you had no chance of hitting them like, you know, I mean you’d see your tracer bullets go, but he’s doing, they used to do three fifty to four hundred mile an hour them things and you never hit one of them. But that’s true what I see about that pilot: he’d fly along and he’d tip his wing just underneath the wing of the, course any movement on the, they were set, set to go straight, it was only when the engine cut out they were timed, that they would dive, you know, crash. Oh yeah. I came home, I didn’t, it could only have been only a forty eight hour pass and I’m coming over, got out the train at London, and going over Waterloo bridge was a terrific air raid, bombs were coming, the anti-aircraft fire going all that, and I’m running across, you had to carry your tin hat with you with a bit of luck, but it wouldn’t have made, save you, would it? Anyway, I got as far as Waterloo and I got the train, it stopped somewhere, Walton I think, five or six mile out of Chertsey. No more, no more trains, bombs and that on the line, so I had to thumb a lift, and of course that time of night, it was pitch black and that, you know, but a bit of luck a milk lorry came by and he stopped. And he said where you going? I said I’m going to Ch, he said I’m going to Atherstone, which is walkable distance between Chertsey and Atherstone, you know, ten minute walk, so anyway he dropped me off at Atherstone. Then, the nearer I got to my home, you had to turn a corner, turn a corner and come straight up, I lived there, there was piles of glass, and the nearer I got to my home got bigger, the piles of glass, and it dropped this doodlebug, right opposite our house. It blew all the windows out and cracked all the plasters and that and of course I was terrified for me old mum like, you know, but me eldest brother was a foreman in a, what do they call the vessel goes under water and on the road?
DM: Oh, amphibian.
LP: Yeah,
DM: Yeah.
LP: And he was a foreman in the works there ‘cause he was, although he, he wouldn’t have been, I don’t know he’d have been about thirty five, thirty six I think, thirty six was the limit wasn’t it, for call up, something like that. Anyway he, he made my mother a great big steel table, oblong table, thick steel on steel legs with a wire mesh front and he put a bed in there for her, so she’d sleep there, which was, safe. As I say I come down, all the glass was cracked and all that, frightening that was. But there, people worse off than that though weren’t they, come home and nothing left, just, hard living, people don’t realise today Dave, what war time people.
DM: It’s true.
LP: Then you had to queue up for your food, coupons and that.
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 Lawrence Henry di Placito. Two
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-09
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AdiPlacitoLH170309, PdiPlacitoLH1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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00:43:56 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Description
An account of the resource
Lawrence di Placito served as a second-class coxswain on the RAF Air Sea Rescue launches during the Second World War. Henry gives further details of his experiences in rescues, both successful and those with a tragic ending. He also tells of Ealing Studios arriving at the base to record the film ‘For Those in Peril. He also recalls witnessing RAF aircraft chasing V-1s and using their wings to tip the flying bombs off course.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
air sea rescue
ditching
entertainment
ground personnel
home front
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
V-1
V-weapon
Walrus
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/803/10783/PdiPlacitoLH1701.2.jpg
89587cbda0f20671b0c4ea1b85001701
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/803/10783/AdiPlacitoLH170209.1.mp3
bb9d0b5a910e57882406f39298fe61e0
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
di Placito, Lawrence Henry
L H di Placito
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Lawrence 'Lawrie' di Placito (1922, 1646268 Royal Air Force). He served in Air Sea Rescue.
collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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
2017-03-09
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.
Identifier
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diPlacito, LH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewee is Dav, the interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Laurie Placito. The interview is taking place at Mr Placito’s home in Line in Surrey on the 9th February 2017. Okay, Laurie so if we could start with you, your parents, where you were born and where you grew up.
LP: Yes, I was born in Chertsey, Surrey 21st 1st 1922. [Ringing sounds] with six boys, three girls and two children already pre-deceased at the age of three and four. I was educated at the Stepgate school, council school, until the age of eleven, where I passed the scholarship for the grammar school, which was Stroves Grammar School, Egham. And from there I left Egham, Stroves in 1936. I took up employment at the post office as a sorting clerk and telegraphist, at the wages of twelve shillings and sixpence per week, of which one shilling and three pence was stopped for unemployment benefit. War came, before the war came in 1939, I joined the sixth battalion of the Surrey Territorial Regiment, with the headquarters in Chertsey, Drillhall Road, Chertsey, which consisted then of two or three times a week marching up and down the roads, drilling and such like. This brought us up to the summer of 1939, before the war had started. I was called in to the office to say that I wouldn’t being going to the summer camp with the rest of the lads, because of my Italian parentage, I therefore, I was sort of thrown out of the Territorial Army. Now this clashed with my position at the Post Office because I was, at the Post Office I signed the Official Secrets Acts; the Postmaster told me, he said they can’t really do that he said, but things what they were, so I just had to accept it. Now in, war started September the 3rd 1939. I saw all my old friends go off before into the summer camp. They had about three weeks summer camp training. At the end of the training war broke out and these lads were shipped out to various places, with the barest of minimum of training, not firing a rifle in, in, anger or shooting, just all theory really. I therefore then, I left the post office and I was employed at a boatyard, building naval vessels in, on the Thames in Chertsey, where I was friendly, very friendly with another young lad. Now we’d talked about this air sea rescue business what we’d heard about, so we both decided to join. We went to Acton town hall to join the RAF Air Sea Rescue. We were called into separate rooms, but before this I didn’t have much knowledge of sea going, but David, my friend, he knew all about the sea and the points of the compass and such like and he genned me up on questions. So eventually we were called into two separate rooms. I was questioned concerning my knowledge of the sea but I explained I didn’t know much but anyway at the end of the day, I was accepted. You know, David came out of his room said how did you get on? He said they won’t accept me he said, because I am a trainee boat builder and I was only a labourer really, so that put paid to that friendship [laugh]. Going back previously to this, to early ’39, I was only seventeen, I went to Surbiton town hall near Kingston, was a recruiting office and I applied to join the Royal Scots Greys Cavalry Regiment, because I was so full of horses. Now the recruiting sergeant told me, he said for one thing you’re too young, you’re not seventeen and a half, he and another reason he said, forget about the horses he said you’ll never see a horse on active service. Well that, this was all previous to me joining up at the town hall. So, I waited quite some time for my application to come through before I was called up, and from there I received me travel warrant, to travel to Cardington in Bedford. Now Cardington was a pre-war airship station, and the airship mast was still in place where the, all the different airships used to moor. At Cardington I was issued with kit, which consisted of uniform, boots, shirts, etc. It was a bit of a hit and miss affair because you lined up in front of a counter and a fellow looked at you and said I think you’re about a size and threw you a coat or jacket hoping it would fit. Anyway, that soon sorted out. We was only there a very short time to draw kit, from there I was posted to Great Yarmouth, RAF Great Yarmouth to do basic military training. Now this consisted of marching up and down the, the roads, rifle drill, shooting, bayonet, with the bayonet with the dummy, you had to charge at the dummy with the bayonet. Now what that meant for me being an air sea rescuer [chuckle] I never, would never know., This was a very, quite basic training, but it consisted of assault courses, as I say, rifle shooting, the Sten gun what had just come into operation, using the Sten gun. Sitting in an enclosed room without your gas mask, when a gas was turned on you had to find your way, to get your gas mask on before the gas got too much for you, which obviously you had somebody standing by. We were there for about two, Great Yarmouth, we were there Great Yarmouth for about two, two months, marching up and down the roads. One particular thing I always remember was our drill corporal was a Yorkshireman, a Corporal Harrison. And on every march you had to sing On Ilkley Moor Bar Tat, I knew every word of Ilkley Moor Bar Tat. Anyway that came to an end and we travelled well at once to go to Tayport, on the Scottish Coast. Now Tayport, well obviously it was a port, but it was also home to RAF Leuchars It was an Australian squadron at Leuchars, mostly Australian squadron, but we were there just doing menial work ‘cause it wasn’t a training station for air sea rescue it was just a pit stop, so my day was employed either helping in the hangars, or we had a very zealous CO with his garden. That garden had to be kept up, it was pristine, there was even stones had to be painted white, all round the garden. What’s more, he had a dog, and this dog was obviously come and dig up where you had to. This lasted for a few weeks and for the first two or three weeks I was stationed, rather I was in barracks with the Aussie squadron, And all day long every time someone would come in it would play – what’s that Australian song?
[Other]: Waltzing Matilda.
LP: Yes, Waltzing Matilda, that would be on all day every day, Waltzing Matilda. Well eventually I came out of that, back into the English section of the RAF and from there, oh I had this thing of joining to be a flight, a flying airman, so I went into the office where you remuster, that’s where you changed your trade. Now I spoke to the recruiting I suppose he was an officer, I’m sure. I explained what I wanted to do. He said ‘Whatever for?’ Well I said I think I was just getting a bit fed up of waiting around for this air sea rescue. So I applied to be a wireless operator air gunner. His reply was ‘I’ll give you a bit of advice boy’, he said ‘Only birds and fools fly.’ Now I thought that wasn’t a very nice thing, because he’s sitting in an office all day long, with those poor fliers night after night out flying, doing a terrible job. Well, anyway, within the space of another couple of weeks I was posted and I didn’t hear any more of that application. So from Great Yarmouth I went up to Tayport, that’s how I got to Tayport. As I say I was at Tayport for a bit, killing time actually. And then we got posted to RAF Corsewall, Corsewall Point, that’s on the other side of Scotland. That’s at the head of Loch Ryan at the head which led down to Stranraer, the waters at Stranraer. Now here we commenced our training, our air sea rescue training proper. It was a very, very, what shall I say very complex because it covered so many subjects., We had to study for instance buoys, buoys how they was attached to lines underwater to a mooring called a mooring trot, how to scull a boat, a small rowing boat with one oar, navigation, morse code and semaphore flags. The morse code was, was [chuckle] was a bit of a laughable situation because you’d be paired off and you had to send, one would be sending, one would be receiving morse code course there was many rude messages sent from one airman to another! Also aircraft recognition you would be thrown cards and you, you had to say straight away, English bomber, English fighter, German bomber, German fighter such like, and also from school work you were given a books and pens and you had to write notes and notes down of rules of the sea, the meaning of flags and such like. And then there was the practical training where we were taken down to the waters edge to the port and it would be put on different vessels and you would practice how to work a boat. These were called sea plane tenders, there was a, an old hulk moored, moored out at sea and you had to come alongside. The coxswain would shout out ‘come along port side to or starboard side to,’ and you had to turn your boat round to starboard of course there was lots of times there was lots of crashes [chuckle] ‘cause not many boys were able to control boats like that. As I say it was very thorough, thorough training. It, although it was an uncomfortable billet. The billets were nissen huts scattered about in the woods. And for the washing facilities were very basic, you had wash tubs, but for the toilets consisted of, of a row each side just with sacking in between each person so you could have a conversation with the follow sitting opposite on the other side of you, and I’m saying when I said it was basic, it was basic. At the end of the, at the end of the, at the end of the huts, nissen huts there was a big container of a blue liquid. [Turns away] What’s that liquid, erm,
[Other]: I can’t remember.
LP: Perm, permanganate of potash,
[Other]: Yes.
LP: Every man had to gargle with it, permanganate, and if you didn’t and you went sick with a sore throat you were in trouble, you were on charge, as I say it was very basic the conditions. The nissen huts were equipped with a paraffin stove in the middle of the hut. Now you were issued with a ration of paraffin and that had to last you so much, so many days, or day or whatever it was. If you used it up that was your fault, but you’ve got to remember we’d be out at sea, or on the boats rather, you’d be wet and cold, so that paraffin did always last. Now another situation was you had to do guard duties, now the guard duties consisted of dotted around this camp, in the woods, sentry huts, well, just stands really, just a metal stand, you would do I think it was either two hours on or four hours off, or vice versa. This was after you’d done your days’ work at the training. Now, one of, one of the duties of the guard, night guard, was called a rover patrol, he would as the word say, he would wander round the camp just looking at different places keeping an eye. I’d have an old Lee Enfield rifle, First World War issue, with five rounds of ammunition. Now if you come across a German I don’t know what would happen [chuckle]. One amusing, well I don’t think it was amusing really, on my amble round the roving patrol I came across a big bowser, a big tanker, which I thought contained paraffin, I thought well this is lovely [laugh]. Now, I searched around to find a container, luckily I found this container, put it under the bowser, turned the bowser on but instead of paraffin it was all effluent, effluent that came out [laugh]. So I was in a bit of a state, the rest of the, that was cleaning me uniform. Food, I suppose for RAF food wasn’t bad you just had to line up and you were served by a WAAF, RA WAAF girls. But you held out, you had a mess tin, knife, fork and spoon and tin mug. You’d hold your mess tin in front of the WAAF and she would dish whatever was up – plonk. Well, the food wasn’t all that great, but another incident, rather amusing. The officer would come round. A shout would go up ‘Orderly Officer, any complaints?’ But the Orderly Officer would come round accompanied by an NCO, ‘Anybody any complaints?’ Well, one brave soul shouted out ‘Yes sir, I’ve got a caterpillar on my plate.’ The officer walked over, this is true, he walked over to the boy, he said ‘There sir, it’s a caterpillar.’ ‘Hmmm,’ he said, ‘just push it off’ he said, ‘with your spoon.’ ‘Well, I wasn’t going to eat it sir.’ So that was another happy episode. Previous to this I forgot to mention, when I was at Great Yarmouth there was one particular airman, late in the afternoon he would go up to the NCO in charge, say a few words to him and off he would go, well we had to continue till the end of the day. So I said to this boy, after a couple of visits I saw him. I said what do you say? What gets you to come home so early? ‘Well, I’m in the boxing club.’ So I was always interested in boxing as a youngster so I said ‘Can I join?’ he said we’d be only too glad to have you. So I joined the boxing club there which was an asset really, I boxed and a couple of times at Great Yarmouth amongst the RAF. Well also, now also, back up to Tayport, not Tayport Corsewall Point, Corsewall, there was a boxing section there. And the fellow in charge was a guy who was an athlete, a pre-war was a runner, he wasn’t a boxer, a runner oh can’t remember his name. We used to have running, training before going on duty so I joined the boxing club there. Now, I did very well there really, because I’m not praising myself, but every Sunday we had what’s called a uniform parade. We had two uniforms, there was the best blue. Now on this best blue parade, everybody was lined up on a Sunday morning had a full inspection, the flag would be hoisted, the CO of the whole section would come round and inspect each man, so he gets to me, the Orderly Officer who was with him taps me on the shoulder and says you stay there you and I thought ‘Now what’ve I done?’. And so when the parade was dismissed and everyone went, the CO and officers came up and congratulated me ‘cause I’d boxed the night before apparently and I won my two bouts. I always remember one because it was an officer and I anyway that was the end of that but also stationed there was, I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of him, a Steve Donahue, now he was a champion jockey of England, Steve Donahue, like our Lester Piggott today. Well his son was Pat Donahue, now Pat Donahue was an officer, first of all he was just a NCO but the second time I visited he was an officer and he was a very good boxer. Pat, Pat Donahue, a very good boxer and I was very friendly with Pat although it didn’t do him any favours but was just the fact that we became good friends what with him being an officer and me being NCO, just a private. What more can I say about that? Oh, another amusing incident, on a Sunday as I say, you had the day off. They used to run the transport buses into Stranraer, which was quite a bus ride away and there were no such thing as seats and you was just clinging on, hanging on as best you could. I was hanging on at the back of the bus, and the fellow next to me, he said ‘Where do you come from?’ I said ‘Oh, you probably wouldn’t know, a place called Chertsey, in Surrey,’ and he laughed, he said he lived at Everstone. Now he turned out, he was Worts w-o-r-t-s funeral directors and Harry Wort was a funeral director, well there again there was another strange quirk because when we finally moved from Corsewall Point to various stations Harry moved off and I didn’t see Harry again till he arrived a year later when he turned up at Newhaven, he’d spent what they called the white man’s grave, the Gold Coast in Africa. Well, I don’t know quite how long we were at Corsewall Point because, it was a very long, as I say, it was, covered a lot of work, classroom work, practical work, seamanship and such like but eventually I passed out from the giddy heights of AC2 to aircraftsman first class with a rise in pay. [Laugh] I’ve got my figures actually what rise in pay. Shall I get those figures now? Well, my rise in pay, my pay in 1942 that was three shillings per day. And out of that three shillings, I made an allotment to my mother of one shilling and sixpence per day, so that was ten shillings and sixpence per week. And this was for twenty four hours a day service. [chuckle] But then in March 43 I was a AC1, I was getting four and ninepence per day and I was still one shilling and sixpence to my mother. August the 1st 1943 I was receiving five shillings and threepence and still making the allowance of one and sixpence to me mother and I think it was not until 44 that I was getting six shillings per day [papers shuffling]. But I had, had a very good family. My sister used to regularly send me money, so really I wasn’t too bad. I did not smoke, when I say I used to drink, it was, you couldn’t afford to drink a lot anyway. Now [pause, shuffling of papers] Can I go back to my days at Great Yarmouth?
DM: Oh yes, yes.
[Other]: [ Cough]
LP: Yes, during my days at Great Yarmouth, the raw recruit, you obviously jumped to any order that you were given. Now, the second day I was there, the corporal in charge tapped me on the shoulder ‘Haircut Hughes!’’ I said, ‘Corporal,’ I said, ‘I had a haircut yesterday.’ He said ‘You’ll have another one today.’ So everybody tapped on the shoulder had to have a haircut. Now after you had your hair cut, you had to give the barber a sixpence, so he must have done very well out of – him and cohorts. And also at Yarmouth I think it must have been a big college because it was a big open room with showers, no shower enclosures, just open showers. You had to have a shower today – another sixpence. So that was quite a lump out of my, those must have made good living the barber and the shower man. And also I must, [shuffle of papers] injection time. Now it would be a column of men you had to bare one shirt sleeve, go past a so called medical orderly for an injection. There was no just holding your arm, just walk by one big stab. No change the needle. Next one up, another big stab. And I see grown men what I don’t know if it was fright or nerves just collapse on the ground.
DM: Can you remember when you started actually active service? When you’d finished your training. 43 or 42
LP: It was the beginning of 43. January 43, yeah. Now, I’ll come to that now. I was posted from Coreswell Point, Scotland to Gosport, Portsmouth. I was only there a very short time and this consisted of we were based on Stokes Bay, part of Portsmouth Waters, Southampton Waters, it was a testing ground for torpedoes. At the end of a long runway, a seaway, was an old hulk, bored, the aircraft would come down, drop the torpedo obviously aiming for the hull. And our job was to patrol up and down retrieve the torpedoes and so forth. Well that lasted only could have only been there only a few weeks. From there I got a posting to Newhaven. Now Newhaven was a very busy station. And it was there that the actual air sea rescue began. I was, I was told to find a billet in the town, Newhaven town, because the actual nissen huts were full and the, a certain number of airmen were billeted with families in houses. Well I was stationed with billeted with a Mrs Cook, her husband was away on war work, she had two children and an old grandmother, but she did look after me. She used to obviously get a ration allowance for food. As I say, from there I was taken straight on to high speed launch 190. Now it took quite a bit of get used to because you were mucking in with old hands really and I was a newcomer, but I got quite capable. My first job was a gunner. The gunner at this time there was a stand outside each a stand either side of the wheelhouse with a Vickers drum fed machine gun. Now my job was to hang on to that machine gun. Don’t forget the boat is not just cruising up and down its moving. But, as I say it was, it was a drum-fed machine gun but these didn’t last very long as it wasn’t so long after the guns were taken off of that and then we had a for’ard gun, revolving turret with twin browning machine guns, that was my next job I was a Browning machine gunner front turret. The turrets, the armament on the boat as I say they disbanded these two shields machine guns. There was a front turret, a rear turret, and then they decided to put a twenty millimetre Oerliken canon right at the stern of the boat. Well that did slow us down a little bit, the cannon. For there I was the gunner, that was my job, I had to be in the gun turret, and it was only after that I took my second class coxwain’s course, I was called in one day, the CO said I think you should take a coxwain’s course. From there I had been at Newhaven, I don’t know, five six months, I was sent up to back up to Corsewell Point for another bout of training as a coxswain. Well I passed that out, that meant a, that meant a rise in pay and also a jump in rank from leading aircraftsman to corporal. By this time I was quite, what shall I say, well quite at home on the boat: I knew what to do and what not to do. And my job was to be in the wheelhouse. There was a first class coxswain, the skipper and the second class coxswain in the wheelhouse. And you took it in turns to coxswain the boat.
DM: How many of you were there on the boat?
LP: Well on the boat, the boat consisted of the skipper, obviously an officer, a flight sergeant first class coxswain, a second class coxswain, a wireless operator, a medical orderly, two engineers, and two more gunners. Roughly, sometimes you’d have eight of you, sometimes there’d be ten of you. Now, the day consisted of hours and hours of searching, we had, the first boat that was always called the first boat, on first degree, that was usually, the rendezvous thirty miles south of Beachy Head, that was the usual one for the first boat, you’d be on station if you were the first boat you’d be on station, at six o’clock you’d be on station if not near that you’d be on your rendezvous. Now when you were on your rendezvous, patrol up and down just waiting orders really, it could be a long, long long day. But suddenly you’d get a crash call now this was taken by the wireless operator and ours was a very good one named Norman and a good wireless operator too. If he didn’t have his helmet on, Norman he would have it by his side. Now he could pick up our particular call we were a seagull, seagull something, I forget my number but we were seagull something. As soon as Norman heard that, he’d get the signal and that came from the Navy. Now although we were RAF Coastal Command, we were directly under the command of the Navy when it come to positioning. So you would take the course of that call and go up and down, up and down and what you would do call a square search, you would do a certain distance, a mile, one way, turn starboard right then back again so you were doing a search square all the way to where it had been reported – a crash. And you would report search and search and whatever you did your search. Now sometimes you’d be there all day log and do nothing but another time you’d be flying here there and everywhere. On one particular, one particular search, I’ve got it written down here somewhere, we had a crash call I was a gunner at the time and I was still in the front turret. This was in my early days. We were patrolling along and suddenly this spitfire came overhead. I didn’t know it was a spitfire at the time, fired his machine guns in front of us. At first thought I thought it would be a German, he turned round, turned round again and then I could see it was a spitfire, and he took us right up to this pilot sitting in his dinghy, which was a good save, we saved him. Now on that journey, the turret and I’m not exaggerating or making it up, a mine floated past and I could have stretched out and touched it. But there’s nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t the first mine I’d see, they was quite frequent. Quite often you would see a mine broken free of its moorings floating. Now we used to have to report the Navy and the navy would send out a vessel and destroy it. But that was very handy when they would explode the mine you’d get buckets and buckets of dead fish, or stunned fish and it was just a case of scooping the fish up. Although when I was in a private billet I used to have, the landlady used to supply my rations, but the rest of the crew, or those who weren’t in private, they would draw rations for the day and we would have what they call a galley which consisted of a methylated spirit stove and you would do your cooking, but the fact that I wasn’t part of it didn’t make any difference really, you was just part of mucked in together. Clothing, clothing we were well-equipped. We had duffle coats which no other RAF had, proper rain coats, rain macs, we had sea boots, jack boots, just slippers for ordinary time on the boat when you were in harbour and also our CO he was Squadron Leader John D. Syme, a very, what shall I say, a man’s man. His main concern was the welfare of the boats crews. Now all of the boats crew and the probably the base crews as well, we had sheets to sleep in, not just a blanket because the ordinary issue was blankets, two blankets, but John D. always made sure we had sheets, clean sheets. On board, when you slept on board if you were on duty at night, then you would sleep in a sleeping bag, and you had fold down bunks.
DM: Would you be at sea?
LP: I’m sorry?
DM: Would you be at sea when you were sleeping?
LP: Yes. You would, there was no regulation you would be at sea eight hours, ten hours and then come home. It didn’t work like that. You went out until you were called. You just couldn’t say well it’s time to come home, you just did as you were called. As I say, I’ve got a record of it here where you’d be out. You’d do a crash call and that would take a day and then you’d still have to go out. So the hours was long. Also, another thing, it was, it was the only base in the whole of the RAF Air Sea Rescue that received a rum ration, going back to the old days. Once you’d been at sea so many hours, you were entitled to the skipper’s, to the skipper’s, to the skipper’s thoughts it was time for a rum and everybody had a rum ration. And if you stayed out longer and longer you still had another rum ration. But that was entirely up to the skipper.
DM: Did you ever get attacked? Did you ever get attacked?
LP: No. We were always told you must never open fire on anything unless you were attacked first. We lost a couple of boats on the, what they call it, the early landing, where it was a failure?
DM: What was that Dieppe?
LP: Dieppe, yes. We did lose a couple of boats, I wasn’t at Newhaven at the time, but we did lose a couple of boats there. Two or three got killed. When DD come here around we had armour plating put on top of the wheelhouse. And on the part of the fore deck was armour plated and you had a big five white star painted on the fore deck for aircraft recognition as an allied sign. Now I’ve got somewhere I picked up Germans, shall I tell you about?
DM: Yes, that would be very interesting.
LP: Right.
[Other]: Doc here ten past one in the morning.
LP: Yeah, ten past one in the morning, crash call to position 360 degrees Hove two and a half miles, search the area till hours when message received to return to harbour. After seen in dinghy airmen picked up German wireless operator from a JU88. We searched the area for the remainder without result. Returned to Newhaven, and prisoner handed over to Naval authorities at 0705 hours.
[Other]: No further incident 1400 hours.
LP: Then 1400 hours we searched till quarter to five, 1745 hours. Now going back to that German,
DM: Yes.
LP: Now going back to that German. This was early hours of the morning and we picked him up with a searchlight. Previous to that there’d been an air raid over Newhaven, the district. The funny part of it was. We kind of felt it was we picked, he’s sitting in the dinghy, he’s got a very pistol in his hand. We said ‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’ friend, no answer, he didn’t answer. And it took several minutes to realise he wasn’t British or Allies, he was a German. Part about it was on this particular journey the engineer was a Belgian. His name was Albert, They called him Albert. Now Albert wasn’t a regular on the boat, it was a one-off. Now Albert, was forced to leave Belgium in the German invasion. Albert hated [musical sound]
DM: Yes.
LP: Albert hated Germans he realised it was a German he was for throwing him back in! Well, it took a bit of persuading, but another interesting thing was, I kept his very pistol, the Nazi very pistol and had a whistle attached, and part of his parachute we divided up, silk parachute. I had quite a nice piece of silk parachute which I gave my sister for her baby girl at the time wasn’t it. It made her christening gown. I think the skipper had his boots, I think the skipper had his boots. Anyway we took him back to harbour. Oh, we clothed him, we had dry clothing, gave him dry clothing, we took him back to harbour and then it was quite a way from the water’s level to the harbour wall – which was up a steep. Somebody had the bright idea of blindfolding him. Well he put the blindfold on and he was absolutely shivering. He thought we were going to shoot him. Anyway we got him up on board and got him to naval and it was a couple of weeks later that a complaint came through that somebody had taken his fur lined sea boots, flying boots and I kept that very pistol and the whistle for not, four, five, years back.
[Other]: Four, five years.
LP: Years, then I gave it to somewhere in Newhaven.
[Other]: Museum.
LP: Newhaven.
[Other]: Museum.
LP: Yes, museum at Newhaven. Anyway to pick somebody up early hours of the morning just with a searchlight, he was lucky, wasn’t he?
DM: He was.
LP: Another. Which one’s this one?
[Other]: The Walrus, where you rescued the men from the Walrus.
LP: Not the one off the French coast was it?
[Other]: Don’t think so, no.
LP: This is another. This made the headlines in the paper this rescue. [shuffling of paper] That’s the original but,
DM: That one: ‘Six RAF men saved in the battle of the Seine’?
[Other]: That one.
DM: Six men saved from the wreck of a Wellington bomber, so that was you, you rescued those men?
LP: Well, it’s strange really, I won’t go into all the details of how we got there.
DM: Well you can do.
LP: Can I?
DM: Yeah.
LP: Well, shall I read off that?
[Other]: Hmmm
LP: If I read it off that, I can’t read it. [Pause] There’s a lot to read isn’t it.
[Other] You dropped the lifeboat.
DM: Which bit are we talking about? So they obviously came down over the other side of the Channel, the French side of the channel.
LP: The mouth of the Seine.
DM: Right. So why were you, were you sent there or were you already there?
LP: No, no we were on patrol in the channel when we got a call, so we had to break off from where we were to go there. Now, two RAF launches took place.
DM: When was this, do you know? Oh yes, July 17th 1943.
LP: Yes. Two launches were sent there. Now I was on 190 and after you see all the air, fighting going on we found that airmen, six airmen, were in an airborne lifeboat, it was one of the first that had ever been dropped. They climbed out of their dinghy into this airborne lifeboat. Now I think the other boat was 177, 190 177. 190, we reached the crew first. Now our coxswain, the first class coxswain, Bert Underwood, a very good coxswain, in his anxiety, he came along a little bit too fast for the crew. We threw ‘em a heaving line, we were going a little bit fast for them to hold onto the line, consequently we passed. 177 behind us, they picked the crew up. Strange part was, they picked the crew up, turned round and gone straight back to Newhaven. Now we were left out there, off the French coast [laugh] with this lifeboat. First of all, orders came ‘Sink the lifeboat, return to base’. So on board we had a tool chest consisting of axe and various tools these were passed along. At the last moment a message came up again, ‘Return to Newhaven with lifeboat.’ So that meant towing, so consequently, we had to put the tow line on the lifeboat and tow it back to Newhaven which took ages, ages. I don’t know what time we got back, I never know what time we got back, but that was a good rescue that.
DM: Did you rescue any other bomber crews during?
LP: Yes, yes. That another one? Routine patrol in the channel, a fine day, round about mid-day skipper said it’s about time we had something to eat, so we were preparing something to eat, when looking up at the sky, we saw a US American fighter bomber a P38 I think it was, a twin-fuselage. That disappeared and then we saw a parachute gently floating out. We followed him, where the parachute was going to land, and it turned out that when he had pulled his cockpit cover he’d dislocated his arm. He was floating in the water, unable to save himself. We were alongside in minutes. One or two of the crew jumped overboard, held him up while we got alongside him, and picked him up and took him back to base. I’ve got a letter from his CO, this letter is dated 29th of March 1944. Dear Sir, The excellent work of the members in your command when they rescued First Lieutenant T.G. Giles, United States Army, from the waters of the English Channel on the 16th March 1944 cannot be allowed to pass without an expression of appreciation. It is my very great pleasure to send you this letter of commendation for bringing about an operation with such happy and favourable results in the case of an officer of my command. Lt. Giles was forced to bail out of his plane while returning from an operational mission over occupied enemy territory. In so doing he sustained severe injuries. His condition was such that he was practically helpless when he reached the water. He was not able to find his dinghy and he would not have been able to get into it if he had and he was not even able to inflate his Mae West. It is fortunate indeed that launch 190 commanded by Craig as was brought alongside without delay. This pilot could not have survived any length of time in the sea on his own. The prompt and sure action of the ASR personnel in this instance merits the highest praise. The courageous action of the men who when over the side to render assistance is most noteworthy. I am fully aware that this rescue is not an isolated incident, but one of a number of superb accomplishments on your parts that have saved many ditched airmen, both British and American, under catastrophic circumstances, but one cannot disregard that if it were not for the immediate aid given so skilfully and successfully, and I am sure that Lieutenant Charles would not be alive today. The sentiment of the whole of this organisation when I express that thanks of a job well down. The crew of the HS190 was the Skipper, Flying Officer Craig, Flight Sergeant, first coxswain, Sergeant Placito, second coxswain, leading aircraftsman Fiddler fitter, LAC Hayes Leading aircraftsman Leading Aircraftsman Hyde crew. That was a good rescue that one.
[Other]: It was.
LP: There’s so many more [chuckle].
[Other]: Still there’s a sad one.
LP: How about or bore you too much, if you left me that, well there’s not much attached to that one, not so far off the French coast there were German floating stations which consisted of a bed, provisions for downed airmen. And on a couple of occasions we came across these stations but fortunately or unfortunately there were no airmen alive in it. We just inspected them, took note of what was there and left.
DM: Do you have any stories around D-Day? What happened on D-Day with your group?
LP: Well on D-Day it was quiet actually, our D-Day was very quiet. Our boats weren’t considered deep sea going; they were built for speed. Pictures of them where they came out. I’ve got no big thing about D-Day. We went out early, picked up odd, odd bits of floating material rafts and such like but no actual rescues. D-Day was a quiet day considering the other days you would be there all day and all night.
DM: You were talking earlier about a rescue involving a walrus.
LP: Yes,
DM: Okay so this is where you picked up a civilian body.
LP: 0710 routine patrol over Beachy Head. Crash call to position search direct by Beachy Head Beachy Head Station, that would be the station at Beachy Head.
DM: Coastguard, or maybe coastguard?
LP: Coastguard, that’s the word. We carried out in company with a Walrus and sir sea rescue aircraft at 1445 received another call to position. On position at 15:15 hours quantity of wreckage found at 1600 hours we sighted a body of a civilian
[Other]: Civilian.
LP: Position 5 degrees off Newhaven seven miles delivered body to police. Returned to patrol until 2115 hours. [shuffle papers] Yes, we picked that poor boy up, that civilian bather. What wasn’t nice, the skipper wasn’t pleased to take him on board, no he thought about either sinking the body or, but he was told, yes, that was sad that.
DM: Take you on now to the end of the war. What happened when hostilities ceased?
LP: Yes, just let me et me thoughts. Yeah, I finished the war off as a transport driver actually.
DM: How did that happen?
LP: The Japanese war finished in
[Other]: August.
LP: August. Okay then yeah. When peace, okay then, when peace was signed with Germany in May, it meant that there was no longer essential for so many routine patrols to take place owing to the fact that it was just friendly aircraft. When peace was signed completely with Japanese surrender, the station the RAF station I don’t know what to try and say.
DM: You were still at Newhaven?
LP: Yes, still at Newhaven. I know what, the end of the German surrender the Japanese war was still in. It was decided to send boat to the Far East. The boats that were chosen to go were copper plated hull that is the hill was plated with copper plate to stop borings from sea insects. 190 although I wasn’t aboard at this time, 190 got as far as Gibraltar when it was halted and that the operation to go to the Far East was aborted, was no longer necessary, The reason I was no longer on board at this time I failed a medical exam and you had to be A1 to be a boats crew. So I was taken off HSL 190 and given a shore job. I was lucky enough to be made a transport driver. We had a Bedford vehicle used to run messages to Thorley Island and into Brighton. This was a very good job because it was so easy going. The reason I got the job was an old friend of mine who was on 190 was a transport driver his job was to drive the warrant officer his name was Stevens a nice gentlemanly man, Steves, Stevenson, he was to take him where he wanted to do to go. Bill Stoneman used to frighten the life out of him wherever he drove. He wasn’t a driver he relied on somebody else to drive or whether Bill did di deliberately or not I don’t know but he fell out of favour with the WO I was called into the office by a friend of mine, Don Stovey, who was a clerk and said that Warrant Officer Stevenson wanted a new driver, a different driver would I take the job. Of course I jumped at it. So from there on I was the station driver. The strange part about it was, I was the only one knew where the vehicle was kept. It was kept in a side street in Newhaven in the town. So consequently we used it on many occasions at night for our trips into Brighton, [chuckle] but I think this soon came to an end when I think it was spotted by another, a Marines, not a Marines, a motorcraft, I beg your pardon a motorised section of the RAF in Newhaven at the time and I think it was one of their vehicles that was mistaken for us and anyway from then on the vehicle had to be kept outside the officers mess on the harbour. Yeah.
DM: So you finished your time in the RAF as a driver.
LP: I finished sa a driver, yeah.
DM: Can you remember when you were demobbed?
LP: I’m sorry?
DM: Can you remember when you were demobbed?
LP: I got demobbed in 1946 I don’t know, middle of 46, something like that, I was demobbed, yeah.
DM: Did you go back to the post office or
LP: No I didn’t I no, I didn’t I just worked for me brother-in-law driving and one thing an another. But it was such a funny thing feeling you know being under orders twenty four hours a day. I forgot to say, that when it got near D-day time, all the civilian billets were closed and where we used to have single beds in the, in the nissen huts they were all double bunked so, to get all, so all the boys were on call. Yeah, it was a good job driving because quite often they, the officer would go into Brighton to pick up papers and also the rations were picked up in Brighton at the, one of the big hotels I think it was the Metropole or the Grand Hotel which was run by RAF, yes, it was the Australians had taken over. Which was the hotel that was bombed? Was that the Metropole?
DM: That was the Metropole.
LP: Was it? Yeah.
[Other]: I think it was.
LP: Yeah, I think it was the Metropole yeah, well the Australians were living there they had taken it over, and that was also then, I used to have to go in for a clothing exchange because what usually happened, well it always happened, if you had something worn, your clothing were worn and you thought need a change we had a storeman at Newhaven, Tiny Wellman, he was a big fella, they called him Tiny Wellman, he was the storeman, and it was up to him if you wanted a new pullover or a new shirt or whatever, it was up to him whether you got it or not. Which was, you know he either liked you or didn’t like you. But after that, all the clothes were kept at Brighton and it was my job, I could take clothing in and exchange it, so consequently I did a good, had a good job changing clothes for the boys that wanted, you know new shoes, whatsoever. But you used to get up to all sorts of tricks to earn a shilling, because one particular, in the Metropole, the Australians had taken over, and there was one room with dozens of pairs of shoes, they would throw the shoes in, me and a friend of mine I used to take with me, we would sort out shoes, take ‘em in to the clothing exchange, get a new pair of shoes for pair of old ones. The things you did. [Chuckle] I tell you one other happy episode too. When the war ended, horse racing started, and Brighton was, I think it was the first race course in the south of England to open. Now, there was no signalling affairs, there was no way when the horses. I don’t know if you understand horse racing but when they go down to the start, there was no way that they knew where the horses were at the start or when the start, starting gate opened or not. So they came to Newhaven to look for a signaller or signallers. One of my best friends was a signaller so he said you come, he said you can do the transport, so I used to take the transport, it lasted for about three or four days. We would take two men down to the start of the racecourse, and two men at the finish with Aldis lamps because there was no speakers as such, and they would signal when the horses were ready to go off, to start, they would signal to us they’re off and then obviously we knew if they’d won or lost so we had a good few days, three or four days with that. But going back to that American we saved he piled cigarettes, whatever, in a day or two the CO sent down. I didn’t smoke, it didn’t matter to me, but one of the do-gooders there tried to put the block on it, to say you know you didn’t do it for, for cigarettes. Obviously we didn’t do it for that but that was his kindness to do it wasn’t it. I would have liked to have met that American some time.
DM: Yeah, I suppose all the people you rescued you don’t really know what became of them after they walked off your boat, that was it, they were gone.
LP: Yeah. We used to have something about the size of that polished wood and every rescue you’d put on you’d put a roundel on, you know, RAF roundel, you’d stick one of those on and we had that on the.
DM: Did you used to put a swastika on when you rescued a German? [Laugh]
LP: No, we didn’t put a swastika on, no. We had two Germans, two particular Germans. One German, I had only been there a short time. He was in the water or in a dinghy. We picked him up and he had the sense enough when he’d baled out he’d wrenched his leg and his leg I don’t know, was half off or half on the sense enough to have tourniquets round his thighs. We saved him. There you are, years and years ago.
DM: Yes, 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 Henry di Placito. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
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
2017-02-09
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
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Sound
Identifier
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AdiPlacitoLH170209, PdiPlacitoLH1701
Format
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01:27:39 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
United States Army Air Force
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
British Army
Royal Navy
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Description
An account of the resource
Lawrence di Placito served as a second-class coxswain on the RAF Air Sea Rescue launches during the Second World War. He was born in Chertsey and attended Egham grammar school where he was a member of the cadet force. Upon leaving school in 1936 he was employed with the Post Office as a clerk/telephonist. Early in 1939 he joined the 6th Battalion East Surrey (Territorial Army). Lawrence went through military training, but he was told he would not be allowed to remain in the unit because of his Italian parents.
At the outbreak of war, he left the Post Office and was employed building naval vessels at a boat yard on the Thames in Chertsey. It was here that he first heard about RAF Air Sea Rescue, which he successfully enrolled into. Following training at various establishments he was posted to Newhaven on High Speed Launch 190 as a gunner.
Lawrence describes rescue operations: a Spitfire leading them to an airman in a dinghy; a Wellington aircrew rescued close to Le Havre on 17 July 1943; a German wireless operator who baled out from a downed Ju 88 and his parachute being divided amongst the crew, and finally rescuing the United States serviceman T G Giles who baled out of a P-38.
Occasionally they would come across mines that had broken free. These would be guarded until the Navy arrived and detonated them. This would result in the surface being covered in stunned fish which the crew would be able to scoop up.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Chertsey
England--Great Yarmouth
England--Newhaven
England--Bedfordshire
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
France
France--Le Havre
England--Norfolk
England--Surrey
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-07-17
1944-03-16
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
air sea rescue
animal
bale out
ground personnel
Ju 88
military living conditions
military service conditions
Nissen hut
P-38
RAF Cardington
RAF Great Yarmouth
shot down
Spitfire
sport
Walrus
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/797/10779/PDeanJEH1701.2.jpg
bceede6a4853b1983c889df55bddcadc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/797/10779/ADeanJEH170913.1.mp3
6f47adb3b5809113563fa431fe9e92f6
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
Dean, John Eric Hatherly
J E H Dean
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Dean DFC (1922, 173978 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 77 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
2017-09-13
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. 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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Dean, JEH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is John Dean. The interview is taking place in Mr Dean’s home in Westerham in Kent on the 13th of September 2017. Ok, John if you could perhaps tell me where and when you were born and a bit about your early life.
JD: Yeah. Well, I was born at Edmonton in North London in 1922 which means that I’m ninety four. Ninety five next birthday. And I grew up mainly in London but my family moved out when I was about twelve and we went to, to live in Middlesex. And I remember on the morning of the 15th of August 1940 standing outside the house where I lived with my parents and watching a German aircraft which I think was an FW190 being pursued by a Spitfire. This was in, coming from North London and the FW190 had smoke coming out of its engines and obviously the Spitfire had [coughs] had shot it down. It was pursuing it until it crashed. And from that moment on I decided I wanted to be a Spitfire pilot. And as I was just over eighteen I was able to go to the RAF recruiting office in London and I joined up. I joined up on the 1st of November 1940 when I was eighteen years and four days, four days, five days old. So that was my introduction to the Air Force. Unfortunately, I didn’t achieve my ambition of becoming a Spitfire pilot because although I did elementary and basic flying training on, on Tiger Moths and later on Harvards I met my Waterloo on Harvards because I developed this annoying habit of landing the aircraft about thirty feet above the runway. So [laughs] they took me off Harvards and sent me to a navigation school in, in Canada in fact which was quite interesting and I did my training there and came back, and I was, ultimately found myself in Bomber Command with 77 Squadron.
DM: When, when you went to Canada you went by ship I assume.
JD: Yes. Sure.
DM: Was that sort of eventful or was it an easy, an easy trip?
JD: Well, only eventful to the extent that it was very uncomfortable because we went out in a very small Dutch vessel called the Volendam. And it was only about, I don’t know twenty five thousand tonnes or so. A very small ship and there were masses of us crowded in this small ship. And for most it took fourteen days to cross the Atlantic, and most of the time we were in a violent storm and the number of people who were sick on each other. I can remember it, you know with some horror really. But on the way back we came back on the Queen Mary which was then a troop ship and that did the trip in three and a half days so that wasn’t too bad. Yes.
DM: Whereabouts in Canada did you train?
JD: Well, we went eventually, initially to a place called Saskatchewan. Swift Current in Saskatchewan and we went by train from Halifax and that took, as far as I can recall it took about four days to get to, to Swift Current which was then a tiny hamlet but today I gather its quite a rather large township. And there I did some flying training on, on Harvards, and as I say my training came to an end and I then went back. Was transferred to a place called Chatham in New Brunswick to do my navigation training.
DM: So you came back to the UK. Trained as a navigator. So, I suppose the next thing, was it crewing up that happened next?
JD: Yeah. We went to [pause] it was either 1652 or 1658 Heavy Conversion Unit at, it was either Marston Moor or Lisset. I can’t remember precisely and there I got crewed up with an Australian pilot called [Gallant Lee] and he had already acquired all the other crew members and it was, it was the flight engineer who approached me asking me if I was looking for crew. So I said yes and that’s how, you know I met my crew. And as soon as that happened of course we were posted off to, to 77 Squadron and we did half our tour with Bill [Gallant Lee] at Elvington.
DM: What type of aircraft were you flying?
JD: Halifaxes. We started off in the early Halifaxes with inline engines. The Merlins. And of course they were very much underpowered. Anyway, we did half the tour with Bill [Gallant Lee] the Australian and then he was grounded with sinus trouble. So, we were then transferred back to I think it was 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit which was then Marston Moor to find another pilot which we did. And he was a South African. A flight lieutenant called Smiler Welch. And he was called Smiler because he was never seen to smile. Typical RAF humour, you know. So we got back to the squadron with Smiler Welch, and he immediately became a flight commander which meant that we didn’t operate very often. Perhaps once every two or three weeks rather than every other night. So it meant that we took about six months to complete our tour. So all in all we were on the squadron for a year to complete a tour. Which was much longer than most people of course. Anyway, we, we were successful in completing our tour of thirty three ops which included six mine laying trips, which as you probably know was each mine laying trip was counted as a half. And then that took us up to July or, yeah July or August 1944 and at the end of my tour I was transferred back to Marston Moor as an instructor. And that lasted for about six months until about December 1944, or January of forty, no. It must have been a bit later because we were posted. Oh, incidentally yes I acquired a new crew at Marston Moor and at the end of the six months training we were posted to India. And we were all packed up ready to go when the war ended fortunately. So we didn’t go to India. So I stayed on. I forgot to mention at the end of my training my crew and I were transferred to Transport Command and we stayed on in Transport Command until I left the RAF in 1947.
DM: So we go back to I suppose really you could say that your operation, your thirty flights or more because you did some mine laying flights was sort of split into two halves with two different pilots.
JD: Yeah.
DM: As you said the chap who had the problem with his sinuses and then the South African. Were they both similar in their outlook or —
JD: Completely different.
DM: Right.
JD: Yeah. Bill [Gallant Lee], he took a violent dislike to me when we met [laughs] He used to refer to me as, ‘That bloody pommie,’ you know [laughs] And anyway eventually we settled our differences and got on extremely well. And I liked Bill. He was a very straight talking Australian as most, most Australians are and he died, oh it must be about ten or fifteen years ago and I was very sorry to hear that. Yeah. Completely different to Welch. He was a very, what’s the word I’m looking for? He never said very much and —
DM: Taciturn, I suppose.
JD: Gave the impression he was terribly unhappy with life generally, you know. And whereas my flight engineer, unfortunately he died two years ago he kept in touch very closely with Bill [Gallant Lee] in Australia and actually visited him. With Smiler Welch he, at the end of the war he disappeared from our orbit and we never heard from him again. And I don’t know whether he’s still alive or not. I did try to find out some years ago by writing to somebody in South Africa. There’s an organisation which is connected to the RAF but they had never heard of him. Anyway, so that was Welch. A completely different cup of tea.
DM: Have you any particular memories from operations? Any close calls? Any sort of particular horrors, or —
JD: During our tour?
DM: Yes.
JD: Well, yes I mean it is extraordinary. I’ve always, I still think this, I thought it for some time. I think it’s extraordinary how in the midst of such horror going on with aircraft being shot down and being, catching fire and so on we virtually sailed through our thirty three ops with hardly a scratch. I did think there were a number of people who experienced the same thing, but there were one or two incidents where we came very close to meeting our doom as it were. One was a case where we were bombed by another aircraft and this was on a daylight raid. Not a daylight raid. A night raid to a place called Lens which was a big, big marshalling yard in France and it was so important that the Pathfinders had lit up the place with their flares so when we got there it was just like daylight and there were about three hundred and fifty aircraft converging on this place, Lens. And as we were doing our bombing run the flight engineer, Derek who was standing up next to the pilot and on the Halifax there was an astrodome immediately above where the engineer worked. He looked up and he said, he said, ‘There’s an aircraft right above us.’ And then there was a pause of a few seconds and he said, ‘There’s a bomb coming down.’ And a few seconds later it hit the aircraft and came in to the Halifax. Well, we were a bit, well to say a bit scary was probably an understatement but we just waited for this damned thing to explode but it didn’t. And then after about a minute or so the pilot said to the engineer, ‘Derek, go back and see what it is.’ And he undid his, his intercom and went back and then a few seconds later he came back on and said, he said, ‘I’ve got the bomb. It’s a twelve pound oil bomb.’ And by that time the, the aircraft that that had dropped it had moved off but Derek knew sufficiently enough, enough about aircraft to identify it as being a Stirling. And then there was a debate in the aircraft I remember. Half the crew wanted to take the damned thing back, the bomb. And the other half wanted to get rid of it.
DM: Which half were you with?
JD: What?
DM: Which side were you on?
JD: I wanted to keep it actually [laughs] and then the pilot intervened and said, ‘Enough of this bloody nonsense. Get rid of it.’ And so Derek got rid of it. So that was a very close call because I gather that there were untold instances of aircraft being bombed but nobody lived to tell the story. But we were probably very lucky. And then we had one or two encounters with, with night fighters which was a bit scary and on one occasion we were very severely hit by an anti-aircraft shell which completely disabled all our electrics. It didn’t interfere with the flying ability of the aircraft strangely enough. The engines kept working. But it meant that when we got back to UK we had no means of communicating with the ground and at the same time we, I was operating a navigational aid called Gee. You’ve probably heard of it. And that didn’t work, and it was still very dark when we got back to the UK and none of us had a bloody clue as to what, where we were. So we were stooging around UK looking for somewhere to land and then we saw this runway lit up and so we just went, went in and landed and of course we were unable to tell the people who we were so they started firing at us with, [laughs] well, I suppose it must have been some sort of cannon or something. Fortunately, they were very bad shots. Anyway, we landed and we couldn’t open the hatch to get out because this anti-aircraft shell had damaged the door so they had to, the people, the people on the ground had to go off and get a long piece of wood and smash the door in. So, and then we found out that we’d landed at a, what was it called? [pause] What was the name of the training unit before an HCU?
DM: Oh.
JD: It’s something like an Initial Training Unit or something.
DM: Yes. Yes.
JD: Anyway, it was, it was Silverstone which later became, you know the motor racing place, and they were training crews for Bomber Command using Wellingtons. So that, you know what was a nice ending to the story too. Again, what could have been quite a nasty ending because we were lucky to find an aircraft. I think we had about ten minutes petrol left when we landed. Yeah. So one or two quite narrow escapes, but from which we, we emerged successfully as it were.
DM: Was that the only time you got lost or did you have other — ?
JD: No [laughs] To my everlasting and undying shame we got completely lost on my first operation which was to Mannheim. And Mannheim is, let me see, it is, it is northwest of Berlin and it is situated between Berlin and the north coast of Germany. Up near [pause] I can’t, it’s, it’s sort of in the Lubeck, Lubeck area, where the coast is. And the route planners took us up north of, of the northern coast over the North Sea so that to give the impression to the Germans we were heading for Berlin, and then about fifty miles short of Lubeck we had to turn a sharp right and approach Mannheim from the north. Well, somehow and I don’t know how it was I turned right about twenty miles west of Lubeck instead of fifty. No. The other way around. Sorry. We turned right which is what we should have done so that it took us down to the west of Mannheim, and I remember the flight engineer saying after we’d flown, after we’d turned right for about an hour or so the flight engineer saying, he said, ‘It’s very strange,’ he said, There’s a big, big fire on our, on our port side.’ He said, ‘I wonder what that is.’ So I had a look at my chart and then I realised I’d made a gigantic error. So I said to, it was still Bill [Gallant Lee] then, I said, ‘Bill, I’m dreadfully sorry. I’ve made a complete cockup,’ I said, ‘We’ve turned too early.’ And I said, ‘Mannheim is on our left.’ And he said, ‘Ok.’ So he turned the aircraft to the left and we, instead of approaching Mannheim from the north we were on the west side of Mannheim and we were meeting aircraft coming out of Mannheim having dropped their bombs. So, again it was rather a perilous thing to do but we did it. We went back and dropped our bombs on Mannheim and managed to get through. So when I can, you know I think it was an example of the guardian angels looking after us really. But when I got back we had to, I had to discuss, you know the trip with the squadron navigation officer which was the usual thing and he looked at me and he said, ‘John, you are bloody lucky aren’t you to be here?’ And he was right actually. But that was the only time I got lost I think.
DM: When you were training navigators after your, you know, when you went to the HCU to be trainer was that mainly ground based or was there a lot of flying?
JD: On the contrary, no. We, most of the time we spent in the air. This was at Chatham, in New Brunswick. Most of the time we were flying Ansons and you know, the training at Brunswick I do recall was very exhaustive, and we were trained by Canadian instructors and they were very, very good and passionate about the job they were doing, you know. And we spent, I can’t remember exactly I’d have to refer to my logbook, but we spent a great number of flying hours in Ansons training and one of the things we did was to take, we did quite a lot of training on aerial photography. And somewhere in the house here I’ve got quite a lot of photos of, taken from Ansons. A very slow, sort of noisy aircraft but very interesting.
DM: When you were a trainer so, because you did some training between your tours I think, didn’t you?
JD: Yeah. Well, I was with [pause] I did my, yeah I was an instructor at I think it was 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit and of course there we flew again. I think it was Wellingtons. I can’t remember. But my job was to, again mainly in the air. I did very little instructing on the ground. I used to go up with trainee navigators as part of their training to observe what they were doing and to correct them if I thought they were doing anything wrong. So I did quite a lot flying there.
DM: Where were you based when you were doing that?
JD: I think that was Marston Moor. I should have got my logbook with me but I think that that would tell me. But I think it was Marston Moor. Quite near York. A celebrated historical place, of course.
DM: Indeed.
JD: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. So, I assume that included night exercises as well as daytime flying.
JD: Sorry, the —
DM: Night exercises as well as daytime when you were assessing the navigators.
JD: Oh yes. Sure.
DM: Was that, did you feel safe? Or —
JD: Well, yes because [pause] did I feel safe? Well, I suppose I did [laughs] Yes. I mean we were using, we were using Gee and whereas Gee was jammed over, over Europe, in Britain it wasn’t of course and it was an excellent navigation aid that I recall. So we were never lost at all. So I felt you know completely confident that we’d get back all right.
DM: So then you were supposedly going to go to India but as you say that didn’t happen because the war ended. And then, but you were in Transport Command.
JD: Yes. We were. After the war we were transferred from Elvington in Yorkshire to a place called Stradishall in, in Suffolk and that was about twenty five miles south of Bury St Edmunds. And Stradishall Aerodrome was a peacetime RAF base so that all the buildings were pre-war RAF buildings, including the officers mess because by that time I’d been commissioned. And whereas previously in, at Elvington we had to bunk down in in Nissen huts at Stradishall we had posh buildings and rooms to ourselves you know. So that was quite a step up in the social world as it were. Yeah. And the aerodrome of course was right next to Stradishall village. A tiny village. About two or three hundred people and it was there, of course I met my wife and got married.
DM: So, she was a local girl was she?
JD: Yeah. She was the wife of the local vicar so, and I met her in a pub dare it be said. Yeah. So, that was Stradishall and we operated out of Stradishall flying a variety of aircraft including the York which was the model, the civilian version of the Lancaster. And the York was the first aircraft where we were allowed to smoke. In Halifaxes and I understand Lancasters and certainly Wellingtons it was absolutely taboo to smoke in aircraft. Unlike the Americans where they used to issue out cigars if you wanted them I gather. But in the York I don’t know why but we were allowed to smoke. Most of us did smoke then of course so that we did. But we used [pause] yes. Smoke. Sorry, Yorks and Stirlings, and the Stirlings were found to be not very stable aircraft, and there were a number of crashes both her in the UK and also enroute. And the route to India took us via Libya. That was the first stop. I remember that it took us ten hours from our base in Stradishall to get to the first bit. The first landing stage in Libya. So we were pretty worn out then, and then after we’d spent a night there and then the next stage was Cairo West which as the name indicates is west of Cairo and that only took about, about eight hours. Seven or eight hours. And then we went from Cairo West to Habbaniya or Habbaniya I’m not quite sure which is the right pronunciation, in Iraq which was an RAF base. A peacetime base. And we landed there for refuelling and then after a few hours we took off, and then we went through to Karachi which was the end of my journey. Although on one occasion we went down to Madras so the whole of that trip was of course very interesting. And I remember on one occasion we were going in to Habbaniya or Habbaniya in Iraq and there was some natives on the ground who started, who had rifles and they started firing at us. So the pilot said to ground control, he said, ‘What the hell’s happening?’ And the controller said, ‘Well, go around and disappear for a minute because we’ve got a little tribal war going on.’ And apparently in that area one tribe used to fight with another sort of every other Wednesday, you know, and that sort of thing. And when we appeared we were another choice target and fortunately they were very bad shots. Anyway, that was quite exciting.
DM: What sort of things were you carrying?
JD: Well, mainly war material but it was all boxed up so we didn’t, we didn’t know what it contained. We assumed it was things like guns and other stuff which, which couldn’t be left in India. And occasionally half a dozen people but not very many because the aircraft wasn’t really converted to carry passengers. It was mainly boxes and we never knew quite was in them. It could have been bombs I suppose but they never told us. Also we were able to, I remember on one occasion we were allowed to bring, I think it was one item which we brought locally in Karachi and most of the, most of my crew bought carpets so there were quite a large proportion of the air craft was taken up with carpets. Anyway, we got those through. Yes. Happy days.
DM: Did you used to fly things out to India or was it an empty aircraft?
JD: Sorry? No. As far as I recall we flew out empty. I can’t remember [pause] Yeah. I don’t think we took anything out. It was, we were just meant to bring things back. Quite why they used aircraft to do this I never found out because it would have been a damned sight cheaper to use, you know ships. I suspect that those boxes contained, you know what we would refer to as secret material of some kind but they never told us. Never told me anyway. I suppose the pilot knew. And in those days of course when you’re young you tend to accept things without question don’t you?
DM: That’s true.
JD: Which we did.
DM: So you were doing that for about two years.
JD: Yeah. Again, I’d have to refer to my logbook. Yeah. Actually, I’ve got the chronological times a bit wrong. I was transferred from Elvington, the squadron to Marston Moor as an instructor in July 1944 and that went on until December 19 — 1944. January. And then in January 1945 I’d forgotten to mention I was transferred from Marston Moor to [pause] to Stradishall. That’s right. I’m sorry. I think I said that I went from Elvington to Stradishall. That’s not the case. I went from Marston Moor to Stradishall where we were formed up as 51 Squadron and it was 51 Squadron who did all the flying to India. So, I hope you can make —
DM: Yeah.
JD: Sense of all that. And so we flew from India from, from [unclear] flew to India from Stradishall from about January 1945 to July ‘47. Just over two years.
DM: Did you volunteer for that or did you not have any choice?
JD: We were just told, you know.
DM: Right.
JD: There was no question of —
DM: Yeah. Yeah.
JD: Yeah. Well, they had to. I mean, now that it is all over of course one realises that Bomber Command HQ had to find somewhere to put all its aircrew, surviving aircrew you know so that they could become gainfully employed. And I suppose Transport Command was the obvious choice really. I mean I don’t know how many other members of 77 Squadron ended up in Transport Command. All that I know is that we were told to go there. We went.
DM: Could you have stayed on longer if you’d wanted to?
JD: Yes. I could and in fact that was my intention. I wanted to stay on in the RAF but my wife, well we got married fairly, fairly soon after we met really. Oh yes. It was at Stradishall on 51 Squadron after I’d got married there that we, I was posted, we were posted to India. And when I said, told my wife about this she said, ‘Do you really want to go?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And she said, ‘Well, I don’t want you to go either. What about coming out of the RAF?’ So, that was why I left really.
DM: Right. What did you do when you came out?
JD: Well, I spent some time trying to find out what I wanted to do and eventually came up with the, with the answer that I wanted to be a surveyor. And at that time the Royal Institution of Charted Surveyors which I wanted to become a member of had arranged training courses at various places and I applied for one and I got a training place. And this was at [pause] somewhere near Reading I think it was. I can’t remember. And that training lasted for about six months to give us a basic, a basic idea what a surveyor did and then the rest of the time in order to qualify I got a job at Ipswich where my wife was living and did home study to qualify. And that took me about three years and then eventually I sat their exams and did qualify and I became an Associate Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. But I then did, having qualified it sounds strange to say this but I found it very difficult to get a job, a paid job and this was because so many people had decided to travel this route because of this, the availability of this training. And the only job I could find was in Manchester and I went home and told my wife. She said, ‘I’m not going to Manchester.’ I said, ‘Well, what will we do?’ She said, ‘Well, we must find something else to do.’ And then I spoke to a colleague of mine who’d, he wasn’t . He didn’t train as a surveyor. He’d done something else. And he said, ‘Why don’t you write to — ’ he said, ‘I do know that they need surveyors abroad. Why don’t you write to the Colonial Office and ask them if they’ve got any vacancies?’ Which I did, and they wrote back. Well, I went up for an interview and they wrote back six weeks later and said, “Dear Mr Dean, we can offer you, thank you for coming for an interview. We can offer you a post in Hong Kong.” And I really wanted to go but my wife wasn’t very keen so I wrote back and said, “Well, thank you very much. Do you have anything a bit sort of a bit nearer? Say, like Africa?’ And they wrote back strangely enough and said yes and they offered me another job in Northern Rhodesia. So that’s where I went and I spent fifteen years there. Not as a surveyor. I went out, they said to me that the only job available at the time was as an administrator. So I went out as a, what was called a district officer and spent, you know fifteen years there. And that was quite good fun. Africa of course was, well I don’t know about today of course. It’s a bit, it’s a bit sort of full of guns and dictators but in our time of course it was very peaceful and the conditions of work were very good. We used to do a tour of three years and get six months leave and that sort of thing. Ostensibly, the six months leave was because of the unhealthy living conditions but where we were in Northern Rhodesia we found it extremely healthy but fortunately the authorities hadn’t caught up with that.
[telephone ringing – interview paused]
DM: So you came back, I suppose. Back to the UK.
JD: Yeah. Came back to the UK and I got a job as a, with a national training organisation where eventually I became a personnel manager and that, that lasted until about fifteen years when the training organisation I was with closed down. And so for the second. Oh yes. I was with, I was in Northern Rhodesia until it became independent. It became Zambia and I stayed on. It became, Northern Rhodesia became independent in October 1964 and I stayed on for a couple of years until, until ’64. Yeah. Until ‘66 ’67. And then I decided that it was time to retire and come back because there really wasn’t much future in Zambia for white civil servants quite naturally. So I came back and I managed to find a job as I say with this training organisation where I became personnel manager and that lasted for fifteen years until the organisation closed down. And then I became, I was very lucky because I was out of work for about two or three months which I found extremely boring. Then I don’t know quite how it happened but I managed to find a job as, as bursar to a school in Kent and that lasted until well past retiring age. So, again I was very lucky.
DM: Did you keep in touch with people from the Air Force?
JD: Yes. Well, I kept in touch with, I’d already said the pilot, by that time of course Bill [Gallant Lee] our first pilot had died and Smiler Welch, the second guy, pilot had just disappeared. But I kept in close touch with Derek Compton, my flight engineer and we used to meet up occasionally. He lived down in Dorset at Christchurch and he died about two years ago. I also met up with my wireless operator who lived in Liverpool and I did a trip up there to meet him. I got along with him extremely well. And I also met, I also met the rear gunner. Butch Sutton. He was called Butch because he was the son of a butcher you know. RAF term. The bomb aimer I didn’t keep in touch with because he lived in Scotland and the rear gunner [Kitch May] sorry, the mid-upper gunner [Kitch May] lived in Cornwall. But I used to, we used to correspond [Kitch May] and so for a few years anyway I kept in touch with most of the crew but towards the end it was because they, you know how it is you stop writing and stuff like that. But with Derek Compton my flight engineer I stayed with him several times and unfortunately the poor chap died about two years ago. So yes I did keep in touch and also 77 Squadron formed a Squadron Association which I joined and we formed, when I say we members in the south of England formed a sub-branch because the main meeting was up in Yorkshire I believe. Anyway, there were about a dozen or so of us in the south who formed this sub-branch and we used to meet every May at [pause] I’m afraid my memory isn’t very good these days, a town down [pause] I can’t remember where it is. The town begins with M but it doesn’t matter the name of the place. We used to meet at the White Horse in this town starting with M and there were about a dozen or so of us and we used to meet sometimes with our wives or girlfriends, whatever and chat and have lunch you know. And I used to meet Derek Compton my engineer there. He was there on every occasion. And I used to pick up another navigator from 77 Squadron who was badly shot up over [pause] again my memory lets me down. It’s a big, a big port in France. In Brittany. Beginning with B I think it is.
DM: [unclear]
JD: Can you remember it? You can’t. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. But the poor chap got badly shot up and virtually lost an eye so he was grounded and he lived at [pause] oh dear. Again, my memory for places. He lived at [pause] well about thirty miles from here towards Guildford. Near Guildford. He lived near Guildford and I used to get there and because, because of his eye he couldn’t drive and he, he had a very nice Mercedes car. And when we first met he said to me, ‘Will you drive me to the reunion?’ I said, ‘Of course I will,’ I said, ‘But there’s one condition.’ He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘You let me drive your Mercedes.’ And he said yes. So once a year I got the opportunity of driving this magnificent car down to wherever it was. And the poor chap he developed dementia and eventually was admitted to a home. You know, a nursing home and died there about three years ago. But he and I, we knew each other from, from the squadron and we got on extremely well. And he, he ended up as a director of operations with British Airways so he had done very well. But I remember one of his drawbacks was on the way down, driving in this car of his he kept on saying to me, ‘Now, do you know where you are, Dean?’ you know [laughs] And I used to tell him, I used to say, ‘For God’s sake, shut up otherwise we shall get lost.’ But we had a good relationship and I’m sorry, I was very sorry he died, you know. Yeah. Those were most of the people who went, who attended these, these May meetings. Of course, it got to a point where it was difficult for them to drive or get to to the meetings. So we abandoned it or it was abandoned about two years ago. And it was started I remember that the whole this, this sub-branch was started by a man called Varley, who was another navigator who I knew and he unfortunately he died to. So I’m beginning to think I’m about the only one left from 77 Squadron. There must be others. Talking about the survivors I was interested to find out quite recently how many Bomber Command aircrew are left alive today. And I’ve always thought it was about between three and four thousand and I tried to get in touch with the Bomber Command Association of which I used to be a member but I gather that’s been completely disbanded now because there are so few members. And then on the internet, I use the internet quite, quite a lot on Facebook I came across this Bomber Command history forum and in the forum was somebody there call Dee mentioned the IBCC. You probably know about this lady, Dee.
DM: I’ve heard.
JD: You know about her. Well, she in fact put me in touch with the IBCC or reminded me because I’d been in touch before and I posted this question on Facebook and she came back and said she’d spoken to somebody at IBCC and they thought it was just over two thousand. But nobody really knows because no records have been kept have they?
DM: No. No.
JD: So, it’s all guesswork really but I think two or three, between two or three thousand is right. I mean immediately after the war there was something like a hundred and twenty thousand left. But the war, that’s what we are talking about? Getting on for seventy years ago now, aren’t we? So, there can’t be many left.
DM: No. Do, do —
JD: Yeah.
DM: Do you remember your time with Bomber Command with fondness or —
JD: With —?
DM: With fondness or —
JD: Yes. Well, it’s, no I don’t know about fondness. Yeah. I mean let’s be, let’s be honest it was a pretty scary time. Although as an individual I never felt that I was, I was going to get killed. I always thought that I was going to survive and I think this may have been due to the fact that when one is young, I was twenty or so you never think anything is going to happen to you. Well, obviously I was always optimistic. But I must confess that before each trip when we were sitting outside the aircraft waiting to get in and start the engines and they’d always happen for about a half an hour it then suddenly dawned on you what you are doing, you know. And then I do remember getting a bit apprehensive then. But once in the aircraft as the navigator I was busy from, you know the first, from the first minute as it were until the end of the trip. And that meant that one I was occupied and didn’t have time to think about you know being attacked. And it now, you know it’s occurred to me since that the other members of the crew sitting there staring out into the darkness they must have been petrified I should think most of the time but they obviously never mentioned it. Yes. I mean, I think probably a navigator in Bomber Command probably had the best job really because he was occupied as I say all the time and mark you one thing I missed was, was looking out of the aircraft and seeing what was happening all around us. Although, I did go up and I’d see. I used to get permission from the pilot to go up and stand by him when we were going in to the bombing run watching things happen and I think I wasn’t frightened at all. I was absolutely fascinated with what was going on, you know. And then of course you could see other aircraft all around you all being lit up and so on. So, yes it was something that one would never see again. Oh yes. I recall we did one trip early on in our tour. I think it was our second or third operation to Milan and that was quite an interesting trip because first of all it took almost nine and a half hours which was a hell of a long time. Secondly, the route took us over the Alps and we were flying on a bright moonlight night and it lit up the Alps dramatically and we were about I suppose the Alps go up to about fourteen or fifteen thousand feet and we were at sixteen so there wasn’t much between us you know because sixteen was about the maximum height, I think for a Halifax. Perhaps seventeen after a bit of a struggle. Anyway, we had a dramatic view. Fantastic view of the Alps both going and coming and then after we crossed the Alps we could see Milan in the distance because Milan is quite near the Alps, lit up and we could see searchlights waving. And then the nearer we got the searchlights stopped and when we got there we could also see anti-aircraft bursts in the sky and when we got there they completely stopped. So there were no searchlights and no anti-aircraft fire when we got there and I gather this was quite common that the Italians manning these things on the ground decided they’d leave, you know if we were there [laughs] Which was nice for us. So that was quite, I think we were meant to bomb some factories near, near the main railway station in Milan. And I gather according to the Bomber Command Diaries, you know that big fat book that the raid was very successful and we hit the factories. But that was quite an interesting trip. But on one I think on that same trip [pause] it was the same trip the pilot of a Stirling aircraft won the VC that night and it came, I’ve got a story upstairs about him. His name was Aaron, I think it was Aaron Smith. I’m not sure. But on the way, on the way down just before they got to Milan they were fired at by another Stirling aircraft and to this day nobody knows quite why the other Stirling aircraft did this because nobody owned up to it but it was presumed that the other Stirling aircraft just missed, he identified the other, you know the Stirling wrongly and took it to be an enemy aircraft. Anyway, he fired at this guy’s aircraft and he got badly badly injured and could no longer fly the aircraft. So the crew took him back and laid him down in the back of the aircraft and I think it was the [pause] I can’t remember whether it was either the flight engineer or the navigator took — no. It was the flight engineer. That’s right. He took over flying the aircraft because he had some instruction and they decided to abandon the bombing. So they released the bombs and they fell somewhere else. And then they decided that it would be dangerous to try and go back over the Alps to the UK and they decided to head for Sicily which was about I don’t know, I suppose and hundred and fifty miles south of where they thought they were. And then, oh yes the other thing was that the damage included putting out the radio. So they had no communication with the ground so they couldn’t find out where to land in Sicily. But eventually the wireless operator he managed to get some communication going with an aerodrome called Bone in North Africa. In Libya. And it was the only Allied air base in Libya at the time. Anyway, I don’t know how the wireless operator did it but he managed to speak to Bone and Bone said, ‘You must abandon the idea of trying to land in Sicily because there’s an invasion taking place and there’s a lot of fighting and we can’t advise you where to land.’ He said, they said, ‘You must try and head for Bone,’ and so they altered course and did that and eventually got there and this guy Aaron somebody, the pilot, he decided to get back in to the pilot’s seat to fly the aircraft and eventually he landed this aircraft despite the fact he was badly injured and he died nine hours later. And he got a VC for that. So that was quite an unfortunate dramatic ending for him. For the crew.
DM: Did you ever visit subsequently any of the cities that you bombed?
JD: Did I ever —?
DM: Visit any of the cities that you bombed?
JD: Only Berlin. Yeah. I went to Berlin about five years or six years ago and of course the area which was bombed of course have you been to Berlin?
DM: No.
JD: No. The area that was bombed has been rebuilt but it’s instead of, it’s been rebuilt with mainly glass buildings. Very modern. So you get no, you get no sense of an area that was completely obliterated and it’s a, you know an interesting city but I think that they built they rebuilt most of it in glass or so. A mistake really because in other parts of Europe where cities have been rebuilt they’ve rebuilt particularly in France they’ve rebuilt them in the style they were originally. An example of that was Caen where Caen was effectively demolished by Montgomery in order to get his troops on the move as it were. At great cost to civilians living there. But after the war they rebuilt Caen as it was and to go there you’d never think a bomb had been dropped anywhere near. But that didn’t happen in Berlin unfortunately. There we are. Yeah. I can’t remember. No. I’ve not been to, oh yes I’ve been to Milan. Ah yes. Of course, I’ve been to Milan. Great place Milan. And we actually went to the, yes we flew to Milan. We were going to go to a place called Genoa in Italy. Or Genoa. I don’t know how you pronounce it. Genoa. And we flew to Milan and got on a train at Milan. So we actually went to Milan Station but there was obviously no evidence of the bombing so, but I’m impressed with Italian railways. Very cheap and very fast. Unlike the UK of course. So yes but I mean no in terms of visiting immediately after the war and this took place from Elvington we were instructed to do what were they called?
DM: Oh, are these the Cook’s Tours?
JD: Sorry.
DM: Cook’s Tours.
JD: That’s it.
DM: Yes.
JD: And we did two of these. We took, we took a number of people. I didn’t know who they were, I presumed they were VIPs of some kind over, we flew over the Ruhr and we flew over Essen and Mannheim and one or two other places very low. About we couldn’t have been more than about two or three hundred feet perhaps. No. A thousand. I don’t know. I can’t remember. But low enough to see the damage very effectively. So we did that and yeah, I think we were all taken aback by the immense amount of the damage which we’d caused and subsequently I didn’t realise then but in later years I realised that Bomber Command it did what it had to do and it was probably very necessary that we did what we had to do but what we had to do was quite barbaric. But I think that, I think we, I don’t think there was ever a question of whether we should have done it. I think we should have done it. What should have happened was for war to be avoided, I think. I’ve become very anti-war. I think a lot of people who took part in the war have. But yeah, I mean, I think I mean in London of course people suffered to a certain extent.
DM: Yeah. When you said that you grew up in Edmonton and Middlesex.
JD: Sorry?
DM: You said you grew up in sort of Edmonton and Middlesex.
JD: Yeah. I was out of London when the bombing took place but —
DM: Were your family still there or —
JD: No. No. None of my family live there now. No.
DM: Were they there during the war though?
JD: Oh, indeed. Sure. Yeah.
DM: So they all came through the bombing of London.
JD: They survived you know.
DM: Yeah.
JD: Because they weren’t in, they weren’t in central London. They were out in the suburbs. Wood Green which is a suburb and I don’t think, I don’t think any bombs were dropped there at all. No. It’s [pause] yes the I suppose you know since the war there’s been an enormous amount of literature hasn’t there and books written about Bomber Command. And I think that [pause] Well, I think that what we did played an enormous part in, in the defeat of Nazi Germany. I mean had that Bomber Command not done what it did then presumably all the German troops that were used for anti-aircraft purposes and I gather it totalled something like two million presumably those troops could have been released to fight elsewhere. Presumably against, on the Eastern Front against Russian and that might have made all the difference really. I don’t know. So, although I think what we did was, was not very nice I think it was completely and utterly necessary to get rid of this terrible scourge in Europe. And at the time of course when I was on the squadron I hadn’t really read very much about what was going on Germany. I don’t think many people had at that, at that stage because there wasn’t much news coming out of Germany in the nineteen, the late 1930s and early 40s. And as a young man I wasn’t as interested then as I am now in what happened in the past. So we were largely unaware of what was happening in Europe. But I remember having a feeling, you know then on the squadron that what we were doing was necessary. That we had to defeat these so and sos in Germany without really knowing about them. About all the horrors that were going on. But with that I don’t know we never spoke. Something we never discussed. I never remember discussing this with any of my colleagues. I think we were too busy thinking about other things like, you know going out to the pub or whatever or something like that you know.
DM: Yes.
JD: Very good.
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 John Eric Hatherly Dean
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-13
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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
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Sound
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ADeanJEH170913, PDeanJEH1701
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Pending review
Format
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01:03:02 audio recording
Language
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eng
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
North Africa
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Mannheim
England--Yorkshire
Italy--Milan
Saskatchewan--Swift Current
Saskatchewan
Description
An account of the resource
John Dean’s childhood memory of watching a Spitfire and a German aircraft having a dogfight in the sky above him spurred him to want to become a Spitfire pilot. He didn’t achieve his aim of becoming a Spitfire pilot and instead became a navigator. On one operation the Flight Engineer noticed the Lancaster immediately above them and then saw the bomb fall from it and in to their own aircraft from where the crew argued what to do with it. On his first operation he realised to his horror that he had turned the aircraft too early and they were far off target but they managed to rectify their mistake and complete the operation.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1940-08-15
1944-12
1945-01
1652 HCU
51 Squadron
77 Squadron
aircrew
bomb struck
bombing
Fw 190
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
navigator
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Stradishall
Spitfire
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/683/10087/ABaileyCE180424.1.mp3
835fb4b97ccbfe82c8edefd50e0e08d9
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
Bailey, Cyril Edwin
C E Bailey
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Cyril Bailey DFM (b. 1925, 1893433 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 625 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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
2018-04-21
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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Bailey, CE Collection
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Cyril Bailey. The interview is taking place at Mr Bailey’s home in Surbiton, Surrey on the 24th of April 2018. So, Cyril perhaps you could start us off by just saying a bit about where and when you were born and your early life growing up.
CB: Yeah. Well, as far as I know I was born in Minster-in-Thanet in Kent but I can’t remember that place. It’s only when I got to the schooldays that I remember Preston where we had the, a blackberry farm where my father was working, working on. We then moved to Birchington where my father had took over management. Management and work of a farm there. That was quite a good time. I was there until I left school. Basic education of course. Just the three Rs and that’s it.
DM: So, you were born in 1925, I think.
CB: Yeah.
DM: How old were you when you left school?
CB: Fourteen. I was fourteen years old then.
DM: So, just at the beginning of the war.
CB: Yes. Yes. It was, yeah. It would be there. Yeah. Would be round the same year. So, I had to wait for a few years before I could join up.
DM: What did you do when you left school?
CB: Well, when I left school the first thing I did was to go into a private Preparatory School as a [pause] What’s the title of it now? Basically, it’s any job that was around the kitchens et cetera. The cleaning, serving up school meals and all sorts of things. That went on to, that was in, that was in Westgate about three miles away from Birchington. But then the war came on and they evacuated up to North Wales. Of course, that left me without a job. So, in the meantime, I started looking around and then I had a telegram one day. Would I like to rejoin them up in Wales? Well, I had no job so I said, ‘Yes, please.’ So that was the Myra and Dorian Williams. They run that school. Dorian Williams was later a [unclear] and horse shows. You’ve probably heard of him, and his wife was the honourable Myra Williams. Anyway, she sorted all the travel warrants et cetera for me to go up there, and so I travelled up. Well, I was fourteen, wasn’t I? She picked me up at Oswestry, and of course it was midwinter then, and I always remember that one because there was all snow and ice and when she came to the premises where the school was being run, we slipped on the ice and went into a ditch. Of course, it was in the mountains. Country roads. Nothing, anywhere at all. No telephones or lighting or whatever. So, she said, ‘Well, I’ve got to go back. Walk back to see if I can get somebody at one of the garages way back.’ I said, ‘Shall I come with you?’ You know. I was only fourteen. She said, ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘If you’d like to sit in the car and just wait for me. Just look after the car.’ Well, anyway, after about a half an hour or so she turned up with a bloke in a breakdown lorry, and they pulled her out of the ditch. No damage done. It was only just skidding, and we carried on our way. That was to a place called Llangedwyn in, in North Wales. It was a massive great big, I did have a picture of that somewhere, a great big country mansion sort of a place, and I quite enjoyed my time there because I was in charge of looking after all the boilers. The two massive, great big six foot boilers there. One was for the hot water and the other one was for the heating. I looked after those and did all the odd jobs around the place chopping up wood for the firewood, getting the coal in et cetera. Anyway, that went on for about a couple of years and I thought, well I don’t know it’s time I went home and so I packed it in. So, I just said, gave my notice in and got on my bike and cycled home.
DM: Cycled.
CB: Cycled. Three hundred miles, I think. Nearly.
DM: That took a while.
CB: It did. Yeah. That took me about two and a half days. The first day I got as far as Coventry, and that, I didn’t realise at the time but that was after they’d had that big bombing raid. But the part of the country where I come in that was still standing. Anyway, I saw somebody in the street there. That was about six or seven o’clock in the evening, I said, ‘Do you know anywhere I could put up for the night?’ I’d made no arrangements at all, you see. He said, ‘Oh yes. I’ll contact my sister. She’ll take you in.’ And their names were Mr and Mrs Devey of 62 Vernon Street. Coventry. I always remember that. Anyway, I had my week‘s rations on my case which was strapped on the back of the bike. It was only an ordinary Roadster bike. You know normal, a Hercules Roadster, and I had nearly all that week’s rations at breakfast the following morning funnily enough which she did. Anyway, so it was about nine o’clock again when I started off on the bike and heading for London. So that took me, I wanted to get through London so I just carried on cycling and finished up, I think it was about three or four o’clock in the morning the following day so had been cycling since nine o’clock right through, through the night in to, finished up at Chatham or somewhere. I forget the name of the station now but they’d got the fire going in the station waiting room there so I thought well that’s lovely, I just parked myself in front of it and dozed off. It had been quite a long day. And I was rudely awakened by all the early morning workers and so that means out. So, I had to get on my bike again. That was about five or six o’clock in the morning, I’m sure. And, so I carried on till I got then to my home which is in in Birchington, and of course I was black as the ace of spades all over with dirt, travelling. No washing or anything like that and my mum said, she said, ‘Oh, you’d better get in the bath and clean yourself up.’ So I went in there and promptly went to sleep in it because my mum got a bit worried. She was banging on the door. Anyway, I come to again and that’s all. I finished on that one. Anyway, then of course, that meant I’d got to find a job down there so that was, and eventually I ended up as a mechanic in a local garage. Jenner’s Garage. And that was, went on until I got papers to go to join up. And of course, during the time I was working at the garage I joined up the ATC as well, at Margate. So, this is where my bike come in handy because cycling to and fro Margate about three and a half miles or so.
DM: What did you pick the ATC?
CB: Well, I don’t know. It was quite silly actually, because when I was working up in North Wales, I went to the nearest place was Oswestry which was about ten miles away. So, I used to cycle there once a week to just go to the pictures, and have a look around the shops, and in a shop, I saw, was looking at some books there. It’s got, “Teach Yourself” — and part of the rest of it was obliterated, you know with other stock in the way. So, I went in the shop. ‘I’d like that book you’ve got in the window.’ He said, ‘Are you sure you want that one?’ I said, ‘Yeah. Yeah. “Teach Yourself.”’ He said ‘Okay.’ It was, “Teach Yourself to Fly,” it was [laughs]
DM: So that was fate.
CB: That sort of triggered the interest in flying, I suppose. But anyway —
DM: So, you used to go to the ATC at Margate —
CB: Oh yes. Yes. I got in to the ATC there and I did quite well on that one. Of course, the time came to join up so I said, ‘Well, I’d like to go as a mechanic in the Air Force.’ And they said, ‘Right. If you, we don’t want any more mechanics at the moment.’ He said, ‘There’s a flight engineer’s job going now.’ And so, ‘Well what’s that? Just the next stage of mechanic?’ ‘More or less.’ I said, ‘Well, does it entail a little bit of flying after doing repairs?’ ‘Something like that.’ That was it. That was my interview. So, I joined up and from then on, we went, well when I finally joined up, I think it was St John‘s Wood where we first got all our clothing and kit et cetera. Then the next move was going up to near Newcastle. I forget. Oh, from then we moved in to St Athans.
DM: So that was after Whitley Bay.
CB: That was after Whitley Bay and, but, oh just going back a bit the, Whitley Bay, the best thing I remember about that all the square bashing we did. It was mid-winter on the prom and that was all snow, ice and everything else and you used to get frozen like mad there.
DM: What year are we in now?
CB: Oh, that would be still in ‘43.
DM: Right.
CB: And once, when we’d been square bashing and things like that I got back to the billets which was private houses taken over by the Air Force, and we had a kitchen range in there. I thought I’d put my shoes in there to dry them out a bit and I forgot about them until I suddenly got thinking about getting them out and there was one of them had scorch marks all over the sole of it as if they’d been worn out. Worn down. So fortunately, when I went to get them replaced I gave that excuse and, that I’d rubbed it down with a bit of emery or something and I got a fresh pair of shoes. Anyway, from there we went on to St Athans. Oh yes. There was another chap which, when did I [unclear] yeah. Jack. Jack Forrest. We, we, when we first joined up, first joined up we met up and we went through all of this St John’s Wood, Whitley Bay and St Athans together. So, we got quite friendly on there and that was the engineering course. Flight engineering course which was I believe about two or three years condensed down to about six months. We both got through that okay, and then we got posted out. Well, Jack didn’t get posted to the same place as me and so I didn’t see more of him. And then we went to, after we finished with St Athans went in to Lindholme Conversion Unit. That’s in Yorkshire. Followed on to Hemswell. The number 1 Lanc Finishing School. And this during the time was on the, other than Lindholme or Hemswell that Dave, I met up with Dave, and we started to do some flying in the old Halifaxes. That would have been Lindholme and he gave me about, because they had a dual control there, he gave me about twenty minutes tuition on how to steer a plane straight and level. Apparently, that was what we were supposed to be able to do if anything happened so we could bring it back. And then, from then after Lanc Finishing School we moved to Kelstern, 625 Squadron and there we had quite a few [pause] went through about twenty eight ops, operations during that time.
DM: When did you first crew up with all the rest of the crew? When did you first all get together as a team?
[pause]
CB: Can we stop there?
[recording paused]
DM: So when, when did you first meet the pilot and become part of his team?
CB: Oh, oh that was in June of ’44, when we went to, the engineers et cetera had to go into a hangar or something, some sort.
DM: A big building.
CB: Yeah. A big building. And everybody was milling around, sort of saying and introducing each other and then David, he come over to me and he said, ‘Did you fancy coming with me and my crew?’ So, I said, ‘Yes, I think that would be alright.’ And that’s how we carried on.
DM: They were all Australian.
CB: And they were an all-Australian crew. Yeah.
DM: How did you feel about that?
CB: And, well I thought it was quite good. I thought it was quite good there and, do you want me to read that? And so of course Dave, David was very pleased to welcome the flight engineer and introduced me to the rest of the crew. And one of the first things they said, I think it was one of the gunners, he said, ‘Oh,’ he said ‘An English rose amongst blue orchids,’ they joked. Of course, I replied, ‘Don’t you mean colonial thorns?’ And then our bonds solidified. Then we went on from there.
DM: Do you remember much about your first op?
CB: No. But whilst we were still in training, before we actually joined up in to 625 —
DM: Right.
CB: Whilst we were —
DM: Where we were training as a crew.
CB: We trained as a crew and they said, oh again very short of aircraft there so we used the training aircraft. The old Halifax, I think. And we went over to [pause] I forget the name of it even now. A place over in Holland somewhere.
DM: And you were a decoy.
CB: And we were just a decoy. We did have one fighter come, come towards us but Dave started doing the old corkscrew then, and he put his, he could see we were prepared for him and so he buzzed off fortunately because we didn’t even have an upper gun turret on there neither. It didn’t. Anyway, we managed to get back all right and of course things after that as I said, we got into 625 Squadron and my first op was to Beukenhorst Wassenaar. That’s a rocket storage place there. But as far as I remember that was reasonably quiet. Just a few bits of flak, but that was about all. And that was in the September of ’44.
DM: Could you say a bit about what your typical duties were as a flight engineer on a flight? What you had to do.
CB: Yes. Well, general it was to give obviously assistance to Dave, the pilot. The main thing was looking after the petrol tanks making sure that we were using the fuel off correctly and keeping tabs on how much we were using to calculate the quantities depending on the engine revs, boost, all the time. So, every time there was a change of speed or height which entailed changing the revs et cetera, the engine, we had to recalculate and see how much we’d done up ‘til then and make note of it all and so we’d got a continuous count of how much was used over what periods of time. So, you always keep control of that. And of course, Jack of all trades. Anything else that goes wrong we’d have to try to and sort it out. I know once we had, a bomb aimer he wanted to go back to the loo at the backend, so he was, he slowly got past me and got as far as the wireless operator and he collapsed. Of course, they called out for me to sort it out and apparently when he’d gone, he hadn’t taken his emergency bottle of oxygen with him and of course he passed out. So —
DM: So, you had to sort him out.
CB: So, I managed to get a, link him up again to the system and after about ten minutes he sort of came around, but he wasn’t the same for the rest of the trip. Yeah. That was a bit unusual that one.
DM: Did you ever have any bombs hang up that you had to deal with?
CB: We did once, and that was when I was when I had a Canadian crew. But that was —
DM: So, you were sort of filling in or —
CB: Yeah, and that was because for the first twenty operations I was with David.
DM: Right.
CB: Until we went, got as far as Dortmund. That was November 29th 1944, and we, we got hit. Well, by flak which blew out our windscreens, and plus it also injured both Dave and myself. Dave got his hand, right hand had got a, a splinter of flak gone in to that and severed the tendons then. He was squirting out blood all over the show because at the time I was laying on my tummy on the floor pushing out Window. Which was anti, anti, what’s the name stuff.
DM: The bits of metal.
CB: Yeah. Metal.
DM: To confuse the radar.
CB: Yeah. That’s right. To confuse the radar. So, of course —
DM: What were your injuries?
CB: Oh, this is on Lancs. Those were a Merlin.
DM: Yeah. But what, what, but you said you were injured as well.
CB: Oh yes, sorry, my injury, yeah. Yeah. I got a bit of flak in my chest. Fortunately, that was not, not very serious. It didn’t hurt me at all so, and made a mess of my clothes of course, but I was able to look after Dave and I knew I had to be quick the way he was squirting out blood there, because it came right across the cabin and so I held his hand tight. Held his wrist tight with one hand as tight as I could, and it slowed it down quite considerably. And whilst I was there, I was able to get the First Aid out for him. Anyway, and then I managed to get to a padded bandage on, on to his hand, and put a tourniquet on his arm to help, help stop it and that appeared to be alright. Whether he was, of course then you were still continuing on and I see David had a bit of flak in, stuck inside his helmet. I thought, well I won’t touch that. He doesn’t seem to be worried about it. But another one in his shoulder. So, I just pinched that. Made him flinch a bit but he was still, still going on all right.
DM: So, he was still sort of flying the plane to the best of his ability.
CB: He still, he was, yeah. But of course, one handed.
DM: Yes.
CB: Because this one, it was useless. He lost his, lost his hand completely there so everything that he would have normally done, the old, the engine and trimming and and everything else like that. We, we went on quite well on that way. I did ask him if he wanted me to take over at all and he said, ‘Oh no. No. No.’ And yeah, I don’t know when we got back to this country because I still had to do to look after the engines and all the calculations for the fuel. That’s how I made sure we’d got enough to go where we wanted to go. Anyway, we decided to try and make it all the way, and then when he, when he come to our own place at Kelstern, when he called up control and said he had an injured man on board but he didn’t say who and of course between us we got the plane down, but I had to do the trimming under his instructions because I mean his, he could feel what the plane was doing obviously with the left hand okay, but we made a perfect landing that time. So, of course, the blood wagon was waiting for us when we get back to dispersal, and they took him off straight to, straight to the hospital there. He’d, he’d also got another one. A bit of flak in his leg which I didn’t know about. So, he might have lost a bit of blood from that.
DM: Did you have to go to hospital?
CB: Yes. And at anyway, so they, they took him off and of course when, when you got to the debriefing room and of course I hadn’t finished the last, what? About the last twenty minutes half hour of calculations on the fuel, and of course the engineer’s controlling officer there he said, ‘Why didn’t you do that?’ I said, ‘Well, because I was wounded.’ He said, ‘Oh, did you? Where?’ I had to tell him then, and of course he called the medics over and the next thing I know I was hopped off to the infirmary. And that, that was funny because it was mid-winter as I say. Bitterly cold and when we got to the infirmary there, I had to wait outside for about an hour in the, in the cold ambulance because they had to make negotiations to take us in there. Anyway, but that, there was another, another crew member from one of the other planes. He was going there as well because he’d been wounded on his, on his flight, and anyway, we got in there and they did us quite well there. They did an operation on there and dug, dug a hole out because if it had gone in there and travelled right across, and, and they’d sort that one out and after that it was quite nice because we finished in the hospital there and on to sick leave. That was unfortunately the last time I saw my crew.
DM: Did you ever think when you were, after you were hit by the flak did it ever enter your head that you might not have got back or were you too busy?
CB: Well, I was more concerned with just keeping going. It didn’t enter that, only in as much I was quite worried wondering whether Dave could be alright but he was perfectly okay. Well, perfectly all right. He was doing it. That’s it. But I think he, when we come in to land or were coming in to land I did turn the oxygen up to, to the maximum there and I think that did help revive him quite considerably. He thanked me for doing it before we even left our seats.
DM: I assume if the flak had blown away the windscreen it must have been pretty cold as well.
CB: Well, funnily enough no. It was a little bit draughty but I think it’s the way that the contours of the aircraft was made that it just skimmed over the nose and not directly on to the windscreen right there because I thought that should be causing quite a blast through there but it didn’t. It was still comfortable with all the clobber on which we had and that was it.
DM: And you got a medal for that, I think.
CB: Yes, well Dave got the DFC immediately for it and he recommended me for the DFM and that came through at a later date about that one. Yes. So that was the first twenty operations which we had. They were —
DM: Did, did the whole crew split up or did any, did you stay with any of them?
CB: Well, during the, during the, after the, this and this turn at Dortmund there Dave couldn’t go back because he was in hospital and the crew were asked to, if they could stay together. But unfortunately, they, they got split up and I think the mid-upper gunner, yeah. That’s right. Mid-upper gunner. He stayed on the station. I didn’t know that but the others went off to another ‘drome, you know. Somewhere else.
DM: Where did you end up?
CB: Well, what do you mean?
DM: When you came back from your sick leave where did you have to go?
CB: Oh, well I, I went back to Kelstern. Yes. I was quite a while there but this was where I picked up another crew there. I thought they were Canadians but since then I’ve found out that the pilot was an Englishman [laughs] And I don’t know where I got the Canadians from because oh probably because I had to go as a spare the first trip back. And that was not until [pause] oh that was on the, in March. March ’45.
DM: Right.
CB: So, we had quite a, quite a long time.
DM: So that would have been your twenty first op then.
CB: Yes, that would have been my twenty first op then. That was with a Flight Lieutenant Jardine and to, to an aircraft factory. But that was a good long trip. The first one back and it’s nine hours fifty minutes and so that was a bit wearying one. And the second one after that was with this Flight Lieutenant Russell that was with, and his crew I went with until I actually finished my operations. But to have the nine hours fifty minutes on that first one. A night one as well. Then the following day I got the new crew and we went to Kassel. Kassel. That was seven hours forty minutes that night one. So, two long, very long trips as a starters but didn’t, but they didn’t go down too well but still. Then they were, my third one after that one we were back to Dortmund. And when we were going, you know on the way to go to briefing walking together as a crew there and I said to the skipper, I said, ‘I know where we are going.’ He said, ‘How do you know that?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t really know but I think we’re going to go to Dortmund.’ And of course, we got in there and the screens opened up and Dortmund it was.
DM: Just like a premonition.
CB: Yeah. I just knew it was going to be that. Anyway, we went through there. I had a little, oh we’ve got to go back there again and I didn’t know. Well, we did go, and it was quite a good raid that time. I thought well I got my own back now. But I did notice that when we was again going over there he kept well into the middle of the formations we were all in, you know as a gaggle formation and that’s like three in the front and the rest of you strewn behind. And I thought well that’s, that’s quite good of him to do that and it made me feel a bit more comfortable but —
DM: It must have been quite nerve wracking.
CB: It was a bit, yeah. But as things went down, well it, back to somewhere near a comfortable to, to accept.
DM: Yeah.
CB: But then of course the, after that one I went to Bremen. It was the railway the bridge. That was my worst one that was. We had been [pause] yeah, we had just, just finished the bombing run and the doors were still open and of course we get hit by flak again. But that time it got the, most of it was down in the bomb bay and because it cut all the hydraulic oil pipe and we lost all our hydraulic oil and that was, I thought it was on fire but it was just the fact that it was all spraying out the back. And of course, the port inner, I think it was the port inner, yeah that started smoking as well. So, we got a bit of smoke in to the cabin there which I thought well what’s going to happen now. But anyway, I feathered the port inner and that stopped that one going so it hadn’t actually got to flaming which was fortunate and the, all the hydraulic oil was spraying out the back. That looked like smoke actually. The way it was going. And so of course, that meant that the bomb doors were still, still open. Then the flaps went down at ten degrees and [pause] yeah that went down ten degrees and the air pressure went down because I don’t know why that was. Something to do with in the engine part and so the engines went back in to M gear which was a low gear. So, I was getting a bit of a state and you know and then there was about three of us straggling behind. We were all about a mile apart from each other and I saw this [pause] ME 262. He came up behind the last one and of course he went down on to him as he went up in flames. And as he come up he went up to the next one. He went up in flames. And of course, we started to look to see if there were any parachutes. I didn’t see any parachutes but apparently there was two out of those two planes somewhere but then as he came up and they went down then he came to us but of course the skipper, he went into a corkscrew, you know as fast as he could because the engines had gone down, the bomb doors still open, the flaps down a bit. And he missed [laughs] I remember seeing, seeing tracers, you know going underneath us, that’s where it was in the engineer’s side we’d gone to starboard so that was wide open. We just looked. Looked straight into the face of the pilot as he was peering out of his what’s the names. Tracers et cetera. But fortunately, he missed. By that time the skipper had called up for help and this Mustang, he come over and started chasing him off and because the, with the twin jet there he just burst out in a puff of smoke and had gone.
DM: Yeah.
CB: And of course, the Mustang couldn’t keep up with him although they were pretty good but anyway then he stayed with us for a little while, see that we were still going okay and then he buzzed off on further duties again. Anyway, then we got down, come to get back and the skipper said to, said about lowering the undercarriage. I said, ‘Are you able to?’ Oh, no. No, the skipper called up the control and said we’d, we’d lost all our hydraulic oil so we’d got no, no undercarriage. So, I had to intervene and say, ‘Hold on. We haven’t tried the emergency air yet.’ And because this was, I suppose they must have heard all that on ground control. But anyway, so I said, ‘Well, let’s, let’s try it to see if it’s going to work.’ So he turned on the emergency air and of course it did work. Fortunately, it did go down but ever such a long time well, compared to hydraulic and then compressed air and it finally locked. The undercarriage locked on and so we came in and landed quite safely but that was quite a —
DM: Traumatic trip I would think.
CB: Very traumatic. Yeah.
DM: No one was hurt.
CB: No one was hurt this time, no. No. It was quite, quite good that one. But then of course we had, from then on we had maybe four more. Four more trips and then that was the lot.
DM: I suppose after the, the trip where you were in combat I suppose you’d say with the 262 you didn’t get any time off or anything. You were straight off on the next op a few days later.
CB: Oh, yes. Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
CB: On the 23rd of the March for the Bremen. And the 25th of the 3rd and it was Hanover. The city Blitz. So didn’t waste much time there.
DM: So when, what date was your last op? If you can remember.
CB: My last night, last one was on the 14th of April. 14th of April but that was to Potsdam. It was after the Nazi headquarters apparently. So, no it was quite, quite exciting I suppose if you call it one way.
DM: So, when you came back from that last raid did you go on leave then?
CB: Yeah [pause] No. Not, not straightaway I don’t think. No. Because, no it was the, although there was where we had to sort ourselves out for another job so we [unclear] Yeah. We were sent off to Catterick. Or as I called it a misdirecting centre [laughs] and anyway —
DM: That was training, was it?
CB: Retraining for ground trade because they said, ‘What job? What do you want to do now?’ I said, ‘Well, being as I worked in a garage I’d sooner get a driving job.’ So, I went off to Catterick for that. Oh no. Went off to Weeton from Catterick.
DM: What rank were you by this time?
CB: Sergeant.
DM: Right. You didn’t get any huge promotions or anything.
CB: No. No. I didn’t have that. And we went up to Weeton, to the Driving School there and passed that okay. And Blackpool was the Personnel Dispersal Centre or something like that. Yeah. Well, that’s where we, after that we had, had to go to this other place, well West Kirby, or both of them actually until we could be sorted where we were going to go and they said, ‘Where do you want to go?’ So, and so they gave me a couple of choices. So the choices of, for me I thought well, Manston was near my home down, down near Birchington and you never get your first choice so I thought choose one up in Scotland and then Manston as the second. And this is where the funny part is because when I got the papers saying where I was, where I was going to go it wasn’t either of those. It was out to India [laughs] Yes. So, I had to get on board ship and get posted out to India as a driver. And we went to Bombay as it was known then first off and ever so, receiving place in, in Bombay and we had to go to the stations where we were to go for the rest of our time, or nearly and that was over near Calcutta on the opposite side of India. It took about three days on the, on the lines there and the, I always remember those trains there because they were, the seats were like park bench seats. They were slats and we had to sleep on those or on the floor. Fortunately, I’d picked up a sleeping bag from somebody coming back home when we was at Bombay and so I used that which was handy. Anyways, it was about three days going across there and it was mostly a single track railway with a double section now and again where they had to meet, meeting somebody coming the other way and you changed, changed lines and he went on the other side. And there we were obviously we were waiting there because we managed to get some tea made by using the steam from the engine. Making cups of tea. But it wasn’t very nice but still it was wet and warm. And then I went up to Calcutta. Well, that was only for one day and then then until we put the proper station which was Baigachi. It’s about thirty mile outside Calcutta and I had quite a, quite a good time there because I was, as a driver you were doing all sorts of things. You know, there was sometimes I was on daily routine stuff and then I was on the crash tender and the Army ambulance, you know. Wherever they wanted a driver you went on.
DM: How long were you in India for? Can you remember?
CB: Oh, that was [pause] the 4th of November ’45 but I stayed there. I started there and come back home again [pause] 31st of the 12th. Oh, yeah, 31st of the 12th ’46. ’45.
DM: Right. So, a couple of months.
CB: Yeah. A couple of months. Yeah.
DM: And then when you came back was that when you were you demobbed?
CB: Yes. We come back to Kirkham, 101 PDC and that’s where we got demobbed.
DM: Did anyone ask you if you wanted to stay in the RAF?
CB: Yes. They did. Yeah. And I forget what my answer was there. I don’t think it was very positive at the time.
DM: Right. You wanted to get out. You’d had enough.
CB: Get out. Yeah. I’d had enough it. Yeah. It’s fair enough once you finished flying and everything was all so settled down you think, oh, thank goodness for that. It, you know, it felt quite, I suppose quite shattered you know. But then of course you get to look forward to demob then. But it was during that time that they asked, told us we’d got to hand in as well as all our clothes et cetera and, because we got an issue of suits and hats and things like that and we had to hand in our log book so, and that’s where I, I finished up there. I finished up the Air Force.
DM: So, you went home to Birchington.
CB: So, went back to Birchington and picked up in the garage where I was on there. I stayed. Stopped for about, about two weeks I think it was before I went back to them and asked them, ‘Can I have my job back?’ And the answer was that, ‘Yeah. I suppose we’ve got to, haven’t we?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ [laughs] So that was as far as the garage work was concerned. I stayed on the, there until I got cheeky to one of the governors there. The old, old chap that was there, owned the garage. Mr Jenner. He’d got three sons. They were running it and one of them was, I always remember because he was, he was the driver one. He used to drive you to keep you going and he said something to me which was a bit sarcastic and he finished up by saying so and so and so and so, ‘Old boy.’ I said, ‘Alright, I’ll show you old boy.’ That was it. Cards [laughs]
DM: When did you, did you always stay in touch with the pilot or any of the other crew or was that later on?
CB: Yes. We kept in touch with, with Dave and he was —
DM: Did he fly again do you know? After.
CB: No. He never flew again. No. His hand was so damaged he could never do anything in ops. I believe he did do a couple of flights before he went but it was nothing to do with flying in anger at all. It was just he wanted to keep his hand in a bit but — [pause] So he used to be a pianist. A schoolmaster and a pianist as well but he never played the piano again after that. He couldn’t, you see.
DM: No.
CB: It put his hand right out of action. Yeah. So, anyway —
DM: So, he went. Did he go home to Australia?
CB: Yeah. He went back to Australia and of course he had to [pause] I think it was a hospital ship he had to go back in. Anyway, he picked up where he left off but he still had troubles afterwards, you know because it had really knocked him out a bit. He also, whilst he was invalided in this country before he went back he, he’d got, I think it was pleurisy whilst he was in hospital. He was in Rauceby Hospital. And that, and then whilst we was, oh whilst we were on, on sick leave, yes, that’s right. Whilst we were on sick leave because that was about three months wasn’t it that we were off sick leave? He did come down to my family’s home in Birchington and so, so he got quite attached to, he stayed with us for a couple of nights and I’ve been in touch with them more or less ever since.
DM: Did you ever visit him in Australia?
CB: I thought of going to Australia but as far as, that just wouldn’t happen because the money in those days was very, very poor. I mean when I used to work in the garage I used to take home five pound a week. That was with Saturday overtime as well. So that, most of that went on food and lodging and, I don’t know.
DM: After you got your cards did you stay in the garage trade or did you change tack?
CB: No. No. No. When, when I got the cards I went on to, I picked up another job working in an ice cream factory [laughs] That was interesting but we used to make the ice cream and I used to be, as a driver I used to deliver it as well. Went to all the shops. We were doing, quite a nice business that was. Yeah. So —
DM: When did you move up to Surbiton area?
CB: Oh, that, that was after I’d been messed around with little odd jobs like that of course [pause] Oh, whilst, whilst I was still at the garage we, I used to go into Margate with about two or three of us ex-service and just to have a drink and pass around Margate et cetera, and that’s where we met up with a couple of girls there. And they were, we were we always used to leave it ‘til we missed the last bus home which was about a three and a half miles walk and we were just starting to come back to Birchington and met these two girls and they said, ‘We can’t find our hotel.’ So I said, ‘Well, what’s the name of it? Where is it?’ I says, it was on the way to where we were going so, ‘We’ll take you there.’ And that’s it. Anyway, the outcome of that was I kept in touch with one of them, was Dorothy and after about eighteen months I think it was we got married but she was living in Surbiton and this is how I came up this way. When the jobs were getting a bit dodgy Dot’s father, Dorothy’s father, he said, he said, ‘Do you want, do you fancy working up with me?’ And that was with the Metropolitan Water Board in Surbiton. And I said, I asked all about it and so the first thing we knew was that, ‘Oh, yes. Well, yes I can but what’s the wages?’ ‘Oh, it would be starting at ten pound a week.’ I thought ten pound? Double what I was getting and so I said yes. So, we come up to Surbiton and I was with the Metropolitan Water Board working in the engineering side and that was for about a year or something like that I think and it was getting a bit boring on there although it was interesting work because we used to do the engineering side. Then I went on to looking after the boilers on there because they were steam turbines on there and they used to have the massive great big boilers. It was the pumping station for most of the west of London, you know. Surbiton, Kingston, Putney, Honor Oak, Battersea. You know, all those surrounding in that section of, of what’s the name? And, and then of course when I finished with the, oh I thought it was about time I had a change after I’d been on there for a while. After I went on to an inspection course as an inspector of water fittings et cetera up in Battersea. And that was, that was about a three mile ride again every day on the bike. Yes. And then from then on I was really doing quite well on that because in the end was, you know I was always checking around people’s leaks, looking after tap washers and things like that and anything new, used to look after that. Make sure they’d done all the fittings correctly and up to British Standard specs et cetera. And then I thought well what’s the next move now because this was getting a bit stale again. And so I thought well, the next move on that would have been if you wanted to go any further stages going upwards you’d have to wait for an inspection side, supervising et cetera. You had to wait ‘til somebody either dies or retires. That wasn’t very good as far as I was concerned so I went in to, took a radio engineer’s course. You know, what do they call it when you do it by post?
DM: Telegrams?
CB: What?
DM: Telegrams? Right?
Other: Correspondence.
CB: Correspondence course.
DM: Correspondence. I see what you mean. You did a correspondence course on radio engineering. Yes.
CB: A correspondence course. Radio engineers. And on the strength of that I got a job with EMI. Electrical Musical Industries. And that was to do with Ministry of Defence work doing all the sensing heads for all these different missiles. Skyflash, Seawolf and you’ve probably heard of some of those and we were working on that. I lasted about twenty six, I think, years altogether.
DM: So, that one kept your interest up. That one did.
CB: That kept my interest on that one. It was, it was quite good because it was all good work and always up to the highest standards. I was overlooked most of the time by Minister of Defence officials to see that work was done up to the standard wanted and it was quite interesting. I finished up being in charge of one, one section there until, until I retired. But I did have a heart attack about two years before that and so that sort of put me off song a bit and oh yes because that was when I had the heart attack I had to have a kick start on that one.
DM: Right.
CB: And so anyway, I did go on for a bit longer and then of course retired.
DM: So, looking back on your days in the RAF do you have fond memories of it now or —
CB: Well, I know that I’ve never never forgotten a lot of it. Most of it was what, what happened during, whilst we were at Kelstern but the sort of, that stuck in your mind. I remember things about that that, well just don’t go. I still remember it quite a lot in the details of what goes on there. Yeah. That plane which when Dave and I both got wounded and the windscreen blown out. That plane never flew again neither so it must have been well and truly peppered because it never did fly again. So —
[pause]
CB: 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 Cyril Edwin Bailey
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-04-24
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
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Sound
Identifier
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ABaileyCE180424
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:05:31 audio recording
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Language
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eng
Description
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Cyril Bailey was working in a garage before he volunteered for the RAF. He considered that he would like to be a mechanic but was told there were no vacancies and he was encouraged to become a flight engineer. He joined 625 Squadron at RAF Kelstern and became the only English member of an all-Australian crew. On an operation to Dortmund he and the pilot were both injured by shrapnel. The pilot’s hand was so badly injured he was no longer able to play the piano which had been one of his jobs as a pre-war teacher. On another occasion the bomb aimer made his way past Cyril and collapsed. Cyril applied oxygen and revived him. While on an operation three other aircraft were in view when they were attacked by an ME 262 who shot down the other aircraft and was just closing in on Cyril’s aircraft when the pilot executed a corkscrew manoeuvre and they were able to escape. While with another crew Cyril was walking to briefing with his pilot and said he expected the operation that night would be Dortmund. This proved to be the case. The pilot made sure to fly within the gaggle because this was like a premonition. After his tour of operations Cyril was posted to India as a driver.
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
India
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Dortmund
Wales--Glamorgan
Netherlands
Netherlands--Wassenaar
England--Yorkshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944-11-29
1945
625 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Distinguished Flying Medal
flight engineer
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Me 262
military service conditions
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kelstern
RAF Lindholme
RAF St Athan
superstition
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/632/8902/PRichardsonF1626.1.jpg
edbc9910d8670345e32dbd2d7c165993
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/632/8902/ARichardsonF160608.1.mp3
82512c612198a756aa05e521ec205c81
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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Richardson, Frederic James
F J Richardson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Richardson, FJ
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Frederic Richardson ( - 2020, 1234575, 146433 Royal Air Force), his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 207 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frederic Richardson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Fred Richardson. The interview is taking place at Mr. Richardson’s home in Woodham Surrey on the 8th June 2016. Fred if you could tell me a little bit about your, where you were born and growing up and your family?
FR: Born in a place called Glusburn in West Yorkshire, situation is about a hundred yards from the Horsforth, Horsfield Mills, woollen mills. Er my father was a poultry farm manager and I spent the first two or three weeks of my life in the in Clitheroe whilst he was getting rid of the particular farm that we were on. We then came back to Glusburn and he was and we and he was running one in a place called Eastburn which is halfway between Skipton and Keighley. We then moved to Sutton-in-Craven which is next door to Eastburn and eventually to Keltus Avenue in Cross Hills and that’s when things started to improve a bit. And it was from there that I started my movements towards the war time. There were three young pals, one Geoffrey was eight days older than I was, Alvin was a year older, his father was the local dentist who happened to be friendly with the local postmaster, who also incidentally was a lieutenant colonel in the 6th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, and that way Alvin became a territorial. Geoffrey and I decided that we wanted to join the Fleet Air Arm and we got the invitation to go down I think to Gosport but I can’t be sure where. We had the interview and we both were unsuccessful, me because I hadn’t played for the school first fifteen at rugby, and Geoffrey because he was a civil servant, so we decided then and there soon as we get back home we’re going to sign up for the RAF, and that’s exactly what we did. Two weeks later we got our calling up papers and told to report to Cardington and at Cardington they said, ‘What do you want to do?’ So we said, ‘we wanted aircrew, one pilot and one navigator.’ ‘You can’t do that’ they said. So we said, ‘Right, we’ll both go as pilots’, and that’s how the thing started. So this is now March ’41 and the first stop is down to Bournemouth, and funnily enough whilst we were there I happened to meet a young lady, which by circumstances I had no control over, I actually married her four years later. [laughs] So from Cardington, Bournemouth, we then moved on again eventually finished up at the Aircrew Receiving Centre in Monkton. At which point there was a split, Geoffrey was taken off to go and start flying Tiger Moths at Brough, near Hull, and I was left and eventually I got moved up the rest of the country as far as Gourock[?], and then put on board this ship the “Louis Pasteur” taken across to Canada. And we’d been in Canada about two weeks and each morning there would be a roll call and eventually I got in one and and we were told, ‘You’re going down to Texas’, No. 1 BFTN, British Flying Training School, Texas, and that’s where we went, took three days to get down there by train. And er we arrived on the Sunday morning, [unclear] by now we have to wear civilian clothes as well, and so we didn’t have, went to the training course there flying the Stearman biplane, then the Vul Vultee Valiant was a single engine, and the Harvard of course was a single engine one. When all that was done, okay that’s fine you’re now a sergeant and you’re a pilot, I got various signatures that said I could temper dash with discretion, that seemed to be the thing to do. And then, ‘Where do you want to go when you get back to England?’ He said, ‘It’s either Harrogate or Bournemouth.’ I said ‘I want to go to Harrogate don’t I?’ so where did they go Bournemouth. So I thought at least I know somebody in Bournemouth, and I managed to find that she was still there and that’s where it that started. Anyway the first thing after we’d left Bournemouth was going to the Airspeed Oxford Base at Long Newnton near Tetbury, and then once we’d cleared that one we were then transferred to 29 OTU North Luffenham. At which point I get a navigator, and a wireless operator, and one gunner, and the wireless op and the gunner were both Canadians, and he the wireless op was a flying officer and here I’m and here am I a sergeant. [laughs] Anyway that was the way it went and when that finished we were then moved out to Wigsley which was the Conversion Unit for going onto squadrons and we were flying Manchesters and Lancasters there and that’s when I picked up a flight engineer, and a bomb aimer, and another gunner, the gunner being Wallace McIntosh at that point. And eventually I suppose it must have been January we actually transferred from there straight to Langar and stayed there. Oh sorry I should go back and say that during the time that we were at OTU we went and did a leaflet raid over Paris and eventually they allowed me to treat that as my first operation. So I then went and did twenty-nine ops at Langar, all of which are recorded in the, in the book, two of which finished up in Blida in North Africa because it was too far to get back and the first time and the second time fog bound and we couldn’t get back so we went on to there. And virtually that’s, that’s the operation side finished so.
DM: When you and your best friend, I assume he was, wanted to go into the Fleet Air Arm originally.
FR: Yeah.
DM: What made you want the Fleet Air Arm in particular obviously flying was part of it.
FR: Yeah.
DM: But why the Navy rather than the Air Force can you remember?
FR: No, no I can’t remember the reason why I just I suppose.
DM: How old were you then?
FR: Eighteen I suppose just.
DM: So you hadn’t been called up obviously?
FR: No.
DM: The idea was to get in ahead to do something you wanted to do?
FR: Yes. I think I suppose even by the time that we actually signed with the RAF we were still underage so that’s, that’s got that far. But then I suppose once I’d finished the tour we’d I’ll oh yes I’ll tell you one little bit that’s part of all that lot. I was apparently, I was, Bomber Command issued the edict that all captains of aircraft had to be commissioned, so as a sergeant I had to apply, I didn’t want to but I had to apply for it, and my parent company group captain said, ‘Well he’s he’s all right but not really suitable for an officer.’ So I didn’t get anywhere until I got a telegram saying would I go to the AOC’s place in Grantham to meet the Right Honourable Sir R. A. Cochrane, Ralph Cochrane. And he said, ‘How many trips have you done?’ I think at that time I’d done about nineteen, said, ‘Any aiming point photographs?’ I said, ‘No’. ‘Target area?’ ‘Yes, got one target area one. ‘Mmm’, he said, ‘You’ve managed so far, I think the group captain’s a bloody fool you’ve got the commission’. And that was it so that’s got rid of that bit. [laughs] So then having finished we went I went on two or three different stations flying the Wellingtons, Gamston was the only one I can remember for sure. And then we got transferred to Wymeswold, and at Wymeswold they had a Lancaster repair factory on one side of the thing so we could see what was going, going on with all that like, and er we also had a subsidiary place at Castle Donnington, which of course now is the East Midlands Airport. And we’d been flying night, day and night, from either place until they eventually decided that Wymeswold was no longer a Bomber Command OTU it was to be a Transport Command OTU, at which point we got the Dakotas in and so I flew them for a while. Eventually I suppose it got to the point that was war had more or less finished and that’s when I found out that I’d been sent this Class B Release which meant I had a job to go back to which was better than most of them. I think I was actually offered to stay in the RAF or to join what became BOAC, and the stories they said for that one was if as captain if you make a bad landing you get immediately demoted so I thought it’s not worth trying. So I took the B Release went back to the Rustlers Iron Company in Keighley, Yorkshire. And I suppose we’d been there a couple of years by which time I, I was able to produce a family [laughs] and that’s that was when Andrew was born 1950. And we moved from where we were in Keighley to a house in Bingley, and I was then working for one firm in Bradford called Wool Textile Supplies and a bit later on I worked for Metal Box in Shipley, but I couldn’t get on with them because I wasn’t an internal auditor and any promotions you had to be an internal auditor, so in the end I said, ‘Fiddlesticks’. And my wife wanted to go back to London where she’d been born so we did eventually, 1954 I think it was when we moved down, then I joined a firm called The Dominium Rubber Company which I found out shortly was part of the US Rubber Company Group. I’d been there about eighteen months when the company secretary left and I was promoted to company secretary for that particular lot, and I’d been there another year and they said, ‘We want you to go and run the factory up in Dumfries’. So date wise I mean I’m not entirely sure when, let’s see if it says on here, no I haven’t got any dates down. I must have been up there ooh, trying to think, ‘cos Andrew was going to school in Dumfries, but he was going to a Catholic school and his mother didn’t like that so I got him transferred to the Ashville College in Harrogate, which meant he’d got to go over there and we were still left where we were. And then I got transferred to Edinburgh, chief accountant up in Edinburgh, and that lasted until eventually I suppose ’67, yes that’s right ‘cos you’d be you were still at university by then. So we came back down here and I didn’t have a job to go to. Although in fact I had there was supposed to be something going on because he’d, the accountant, the head office man up in Edinburgh decided that he wanted to set up an accounting room team in London, for the whole of the US Rubber Company outfit, and he was called back to the States and his replacement instead of coming to London went to straight to Edinburgh, so I’m now working for a bloke in Edinburgh, so I thought this is ridiculous, so I moved again. And that’s got with a firm called Allcorn Rupp[?], something with Allcorn[?] after it, down at Rochester in Kent, and eventually I suppose about 1972 or so decided that wasn’t going to go out either, so of course I think when I got there they were supposed to be liquidated, so I had to liquidate the thing before anything else. So at home twiddling my thumbs and luckily I found one or two places I could go and apply for a job and eventually I went down to Basingstoke to a firm down there and saw a lot of things and it looked as though I was not too badly off and as the bloke was going out of the office I said to him, ‘Excuse me, you still got Formica?’ So he said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Well Dan Mercede [?] worked for you in Formica.’ ‘Yes’ he said. Well, I said, ‘Dan Mercede[?] was the auditor in charge when I was chief accountant in Edinburgh.’ Two days later I got the job, so now I’m part of the De La Rue Company which I stayed until I retired, officially retired in 1987. At which point I said, ‘Have you got something I can do?’ And they said ‘Yes you can run our two charity shops.’ Which meant I could go sort of a ten till four job rather than anything else, until the end of two years there, the new boss of the unit said, ‘I don’t want any more retired employees working for me.’ So cheerio, and that’s when I finished doing anything really, since then I’ve been as part of the set up of the U3A in this area, and also joined a little firm known as DAIRS [spells it out] Disability Advice and Information for Runnymead, stayed with them for a while and then I think I decided to give it up altogether, and that’s the end of it.
DM: When so looking sort of taking the whole together you were demobbed, you went back to work, did you have any contact with people you had been in the Air Force with after that for some time?
FR: No, no we forgot when we all packed in to pass notes round, some of the crews did, but for some reason I didn’t, I suppose mainly because I didn’t have a full seven crew at the end of the day that I’d been with the whole time there were only four of us who started and finished.
DM: So did you, when did you start exploring that part of your history so to speak, was it after you retired?
FR: Mmm, I don’t quite know, I don’t quite recall how it started, but anyway the the local editor somebody decided to form an association of the RAF at Langar, and I suppose we got some way of finding out, anyway. We started going and it’s during that time that I got contacted by Wallace to say that he wanted to write this book so I had to get in touch with Mel Rothe [?] who was doing the writing for him and send all the information that I could so that he was able to write the book as it is.
DM: So that was done for the airmen was it?
FR: Yes, yes. That was I suppose the end of it, fair enough.
DM: Did you, or do you belong to the Squadron Association or Bomber Command Association, did you join any groups?
FR: Only the, this this one one association which is finished now anyway. No I didn’t belong to any other group.
DM: Take you back to when you went to America?
FR: Mmm.
DM: Did you say it was the “Louis Pasteur” was the vessel?
FR: Yes it was French.
DM: Was it a frightening crossing, or were you sick? [laughs]
FR: No, (a) to the second bit no, er not altogether because luckily we had a battleship and two destroyers accompanied us they were going to Bermuda so they, it’s only the very last day that we had to flout[?] on our own across the water, and I suppose even then there was bloody U-boats can still be out here, anyway we got through it all right.
DM: Did you come back by ship as well when you finished training?
FR: Yes, oh yes, “Duke of York” I think, I think the “Duke of York”, I’m not entirely sure on that one.
DM: You made that okay as well obviously as you wouldn’t be here now.
FR: Yes.
DM: So you first time you flew a plane was Texas was it?
FR: Mmm, yes.
DM: How was it, can you remember that first flight?
FR: No problem, somehow I felt at home in them I think. My, there was a fella sitting in front of me showing me what to do but after that I sat in the front and he sat behind so he could tell me what to do.
DM: I know you said when you went to America you had to wear civvies so this was before Pearl Harbour was it?
FR: Yes, Pearl Harbour was actually happened whilst we were there, we suddenly woke up one morning to hear the story but that particular night when it happened we’d gone to stay with the link trainer instructor, he’d got a large bed and all three of us were in the bed, suddenly he said, ‘Bloody hell’. And that was it. So things got a bit chaotic after that day I don’t think the Americans knew quite what to do.
DM: But were there any changes where you were, I mean did they suddenly bring in Americans to be trained and things like that or was?
FR: No. I think the whole time that I was instructing back here I saw one American, Canadians, New Zealanders, South Africans, anything, but we only had one American. They must have trained them over there.
DM: When you were in Texas you obviously had leave I assume while you were there from time to time?
FR: Not very often really. Certainly not enough to go.
DM: You didn’t go travelling?
FR: We did, I think we, we went down to um the south, Galveston I know, must have been Houston before that, Houston between in Texas, I think so.
DM: Yeah, I think, my geography’s not that good about Texas but I think so.
FR: I’m sure we went there because we, I think we went with this link trainer instructor took us down there the three of us, we went to the cathedral for the Christmas mass, and then we went down to Galveston to see if we could see any British ships down there and that was about it. Used to play ten pin bowling out there, No. 1 BFTS’ Team was doing very well was beating the locals, I never got onto the team so I don’t really know. That’s about it I think.
DM: Do you remember your first flight in a Lancaster, well I suppose a Manchester before a Lancaster?
FR: Well the Manchester was only local training stuff. It was a bit bigger than the Wellington but I wasn’t that entirely impressed with it, at least I was less impressed with it once I got into the Lancaster to do these few trips round, ‘cos I found the Manchester was very heavy to manoeuvre the controls, the Lanc was a lot easier than that, and then as I say, I’m not quite sure how we actually got from there to Langar [coughs], I don’t know whether we flew or we didn’t, I might have done. I don’t see how we could have done ‘cos we’d have had to use a Wigsley plane to do it, no they must have put us some way there, how we got there, don’t ask me. [coughs] I know we arrived there and that was it. Because I’d lost, I’d lost my navigator by then, he er, he took us there, we did a thing on the Wellingtons over the North Sea and we were supposed to come back I think South of the Humber but for some reason we didn’t we came right down the Humber and suddenly at a thousand feet I could see all these barrage balloons, so [unclear] stick and climbed and got round them, so I thought if that’s the only way he can do I don’t want him, it’s the only time I’ve actually sacked anybody I think.
DM: So how did that work, did you just say to the CO I don’t want him anymore?
FR: Yes, yes, I explained why and yes so the bloke that I actually got when I got to Langar was somebody who’d done about five trips already. And that’s the way it seemed to go so I finished with seven crew only four of whom had been there from the start, but that’s life. Others were John Stevens he had seven and he still had seven when he finished and he’s the only one who came back to the association with all seven. I think John McIntosh was he’d got he finished with his seven, his flight engineer flew with me once so you had to do that when you were without and they didn’t have a flight so you grabbed anybody you could lay your hands on. [coughs] That’s life.
DM: So as the captain of a plane what was your approach were you sort of a stickler for discipline or?
FR: Er not too much discipline, but I told them, ‘You do what you’re supposed to do and that’s it.’ And that’s the way they accepted it, and that’s the way we went through the whole lot, nobody, nobody quibbled, just got on with it which is the way it should be.
DM: Of the sorties that you did over enemy territory.
FR: Mmm.
DM: Are there any that particularly stick in your mind as for for you know any particular reason really it could be a good reason or a bad reason?
FR: I think there were probably two which I would class as bad reasons, we were attacked twice by fighters, Wallace claimed one of them anyway and scouted the others away. [coughs] I suppose the one that eventually decided I wanted to enjoy these two to Blida ‘cos it was somewhere else, the first one we’d been to Friedrichshafen and from there it was a long way and going across the Med at about five hundred feet It’s not the best thing to do but we did it. Second time we went was to bomb a power station just outside Milan, there were only seven of us in the raid and we were each given an allocated height to go in to go round [coughs] the end of which one bloke unfortunately caught it. The rest of us we managed to get out of it, but whether we did any damage I wouldn’t know, sometimes you can’t tell we’d seen the bombs go down but that’s about it. So that’s the only, the only two things that I think I liked about that lot. [laughs]
DM: What about when you were off duty what was the social life like?
FR: I suppose I wasn’t used to it and I didn’t do it, honestly can’t remember what I did when we weren’t.
DM: You weren’t a great drinker or?
FR: No, I have an odd one now and again but not to any great extent, and I think that’s probably when I started smoking a bit more than anything. But I don’t, I don’t remember going to the local pub at all, just wasn’t wasn’t in my bringing up and I didn’t see any point in it so ‘cos if I get too tight I wouldn’t know what I’m doing you know, give it up.
DM: Do you have any, or did you after the war, did you have any feelings about how people who’d been in Bomber Command were perceived or treated ‘cos as you know there was a lot of controversy you know about what had happened and then how people were treated after the war, or did you just get back into civvy street and get on with it?
FR: More or less that, I suppose the only time there when Dilys and I went and did a tour sort of around touring Europe [coughs], and we saw Dresden and that was enough.
DM: So was Dresden still hadn’t been rebuilt when you were there?
FR: No.
DM: Right.
FR: No I don’t, I don’t think I was too worried about Bomber Command being bellyached ‘cos some of the things they had done were good, and some of the things that they had to do were not good, that’s it, it wasn’t, you didn’t blame them you blamed the hierarchy.
DM: What about more recently you know there was obviously there’s been some controversy over, controversy might be too strong a word, but over not being a campaign medal for Bomber Command for example but you got the clasp?
FR: I don’t, I didn’t one of those things, I didn’t think it was necessary, we’d had the, we’d had the Aircrew Europe thing, we’d had the Defence Medal, we had another two or three like that, and I’d got the big gong so so what, you know I wasn’t ‘cos did Fighter Command get anything I don’t think so.
DM: I think well the Battle of Britain they got something didn’t they?
FR: Yes, well I mean again that’s something special, I I don’t mind.
DM: Did any of your missions go to Berlin?
FR: Oh yes, two or three times, in fact I don’t know where, where, we went more than, more than once we went to a fair number of places. I suppose the Ruhr Valley was our main target and so was, so was the flak, but touchwood we were we weren’t struck, had this searchlight shot out one night that was it.
DM: So one of your gunners shot the searchlight?
FR: Yes. No we, we got caught by it and we had hell of a job getting out of, we did eventually but I don’t think we did any firing on that particular raid [coughs], no I think that’s about it.
DM: When you went on raids were you sort of nervous, [clock chiming in background], apprehensive or was it you just got on with it?
FR: You just got on with it, I don’t, I don’t think there was there wasn’t any particular place that we were going to that scared me to hell, no. I don’t think even doing it did that I was aware that were others about but nobody came near enough to cause a problem for when you think there must have been a thousand planes flying about at one time just somewhere within the vicinity a bit scary. [laughs]
DM: Yes probably not to think too much about it. Do you know what happened to your friend that you joined up with?
FR: Yes, well he, well he, he wasn’t able to finish the Tiger Moths, and so he was sent to Canada and he did his training in Canada, qualified there and then stayed there as an instructor and spent his entire time in Canada, married a Canadian girl. Actually we’d, he, he brought her back, I met her two or three times, her father was either the mayor or some high ranking bloke in the council and he died out there as well, and I’ve got it a copy of his gravestone it’s in the files.
DM: After you met the lady who became your wife?
FR: Yes Dilys.
DM: Dilys, when you had leave did you go to see Dilys or did you go home?
FR: I think, I didn’t, it was whilst I was instructing after we were from Wymeswold, I was able to put the bicycle on the train and go down to Oxford from there changing at Leicester anyway the trains went then. I would see her then, but it took a while before we got serious enough to actually do it, and somewhere or another I’ve got a cigar case [laughs] that says when we did it, it’s it’s in the service somewhere. No she had decided that she didn’t want to (a) to marry me whilst I was still libel to be shot she didn’t want to be a widow, and when it came to the time to do it, she said, ‘wait until you’re the same age as me and then we do it.’ ‘Cos she didn’t want to look as though she’d been picking up young ones, and I was only, I had only to wait a few months for that, ridiculous isn’t it, so I was still married in my uniform it looked better.
DM: When you said about the medals was it the DFC that you got?
FR: Yeah.
DM: Where, did you go to the Palace for that?
FR: No funnily enough we were at home in this house in Riddlesden, near Keighley, and the postman came and put a packet through the window in the kitchen, when we opened it up that was the DFC that’s how I got it.
DM: So there was no ceremony at all?
FR: No ceremony at all. [blowing nose] I think the note, there was a letter with it that said the King was sorry but he had too many to do, words to that effect anyway. [coughs] I can’t think of anything else that would be of any real use.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Frederic James Richardson
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-08
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Sound
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ARichardsonF160608, PRichardsonF1626
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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.
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00:47:44 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
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Fred signed up for the Royal Air Force as a pilot at Cardington. After Bournemouth, he went to the Aircraft Receiving Centre in London and subsequently to Canada. He trained at the No. 1 British Flying Training School in Texas on Stearmans, Vultee Valiants and Harvards.
Fred was sent back to Bournemouth, then the Airspeed Oxford base at RAF Long Newnton. He was transferred to 29 Operational Training Unit (OTU) at North Luffenham before going to a conversion unit at RAF Wigsley, flying Manchesters and Lancasters. Fred contrasts the two aircraft. He moved to RAF Langar and carried out a total of 30 operations including one leaflet drop over Paris. Fred then went to two or three different stations flying Wellingtons. He transferred to RAF Wymeswold, which became a Transport Command Unit OTU rather than a Bomber Command OTU. Fred then flew C-47s before the war finished. He left the RAF and worked in in a number of different locations. Fred was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
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Great Britain
France
France--Paris
29 OTU
aircrew
C-47
Distinguished Flying Cross
Lancaster
Manchester
Operational Training Unit
pilot
propaganda
RAF Langar
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Wigsley
RAF Wymeswold
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/573/8842/AGardR160601.2.mp3
fcd7778bea89ec158665387315505ae0
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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Gard, Ronald
Ronald Leslie Gard
R L Gard
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Gard, R
Description
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Six items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Ronald Gard (-2022, 1852481 Royal Air Force), his log book, correspondence reporting him missing and membership of the caterpillar club. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 463 Squadron and was shot down on an operation to Leipzig.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ronald Gard and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Ron Gard. The interview is taking place at Mr Gard’s home in Liphook, Hampshire on the 1st of June 2016. Ok, well if we start off perhaps you could tell me a little bit about your childhood and growing up and how you came to join the RAF.
RG: Well, I was, I was born in Petersfield and in 1940 I joined the Air Training Corps in Petersfield and when I was seventeen I thought, well I’ll take my chance and go down to Portsmouth to see if I could join the RAF and they sent me home because I was too young but eventually they did send for me and I went to Portsmouth. I passed the medicals down there and then as I was going for air crew they said I would have to spend two days at Oxford through for the air crew at a station base. So I went there and I passed all the exams and the medical and they said that I would be suitable to be an air gunner so when I was eighteen and a half I was sent for and I reported to Lords Cricket Ground which was the reception place there and after a couple of weeks I went to Bridlington which was the place they sent you to for teaching you the Morse code and all that sort of thing and then I posted then to 7 AGS which was the gunnery school at Stormy Down in South Wales where I passed out as a sergeant air gunner. From there I went to Silverstone where I crewed up with four Australians and myself and another RAF gunner. Unfortunately, on one of the trips one night the Wellington I was in crash landed and the pilot was blamed for the crash and he was sent back to Australia and then we waited a couple of weeks and we were told to report to the flight office and there was a flying officer, RAF type, pilot who came down to sort of interview us to see if we were suitable to go with him. Actually we finished up we were very lucky because he was a pilot, a pre-war pilot. So anyway he was the flying officer then and he was our, from then on he was our pilot. From there we went to Syerston which was, no, we went to Winthorpe sorry which was on Stirlings to change over from Wellingtons to four engine bombers and we trained on Stirlings and then we went from there to Syerston where we had a few hours on a Lancaster and from there on the next move was to Waddington where we were very lucky to get to Waddington because it was a peacetime ‘drome and still going now and we, there we joined 463 squadron. We had three Australians in our squadron, in our crew. The navigator, the bomb aimer and the wireless operator, they were Australians and the rest of us were English. RAF. And there we’d done our operations. Unfortunately my skipper was deputy flight commander so we, we didn’t, we had, our tour was stretched out a bit because he wasn’t allowed to fly when he was doing flight commanding. Anyway, on our seventeenth trip we were going to Rositz which was the night after the Dresden raid and Rositz was just up the road from Dresden. We got over Leipzig and we got caught in searchlights and we got shot down by flak. I baled out of the rear turret. Then I landed in a field there and I walked all night on my own. There was nobody else about and the next morning I travelled, walked out of some woods where I’d slept during the night to see where I was and I walked straight into the arms of two farmers and one of them had a shotgun. The one with the shotgun knocked me to the ground and I think he was going to, thought he was going to shoot me but the other chap with him pushed the gun out of the way and then they took him, took me to the farmhouse to, and then there were some German, well soldiers I presume they were, they came along and they handcuffed me and took me to this barracks and I stayed there overnight and the next morning an officer, it’s funny really ‘cause an officer and his girlfriend came along, picked me up and took me to Leipzig station and we got in a carriage there and we went to wherever we went to and they took me along to this other camp there and that’s where I met my navigator and my mid upper gunner. From there we got on a train to Frankfurt on Main which was the interrogation place. I spent seven days in there in solitary confinement and then we, then they took us by train again. We were in box wagons and while we were going to Nuremberg we got shot up by American fighters [laughs]. So anyway we, when we got to Nuremberg were put in this compound there and of course I was with my navigator and mid upper gunner there and there was a crowd more and a couple of weeks went by and who should come in to the next compound was my pilot and the wireless operator. They’d escaped for about a fortnight but I think they, in the end they had to give themselves up because they had no food or nothing. Anyway, we were in Nuremberg for about six weeks or more and then we were on a forced march from there down to a place called Moosburg which was down near Munich which was, it took sixteen days to get there by just walking all the time and then we was in, when we were in Moosburg we were there for a couple of weeks and we were liberated by the Americans. The, which was under General Patton. Of course there was all manners of people there. There was Russians and all the, it was just a holding camp you know. Anyway, you’ve got to give the Americans their due they, they, after about a week we got into little sections of about twelve and we were taken then by transport to another aerodrome, small aerodrome. From there we sat there for about a week until our turn because Dakotas was coming in picking up people and taking them, I was taken then to Rheims in France. We got to, once we got to Rheims we were put in to, Lancasters were there and we got in and sat in the fuselages of Lancasters, this Lancaster and we were flown to Thorney Island on the Sussex coast and that was on my 20th birthday. From there we, we were given refreshments and that and then we were put on a, taken into Chichester and put on a train and taken to Cosford where we had all medicals and kitted out and whatever have you and from there we was allowed to send a telegram home to say where we were. That was the first indication that my parents had that I was alive. They didn’t, they knew nothing until then and after about a few days we passed the medicals and got kitted out we were sent home and I was home then for about two months.
DM: What, what made you join the RAF as opposed to going in to the army or the navy?
RG: Well because -
DM: I mean obviously you were in the air cadets but why, why -
RG: Because I was in the Air Training Corps.
DM: Yeah.
RG: I thought that was the next move on you see.
DM: Why did you join the Air Training Corps? Was it - ?
RG: Well, it was, it was the thing that all my friends were joining. They’d just started up in Petersfield and so I decided I would join the Air Training Corps and there was a crowd of us you know.
DM: Yeah. And did you have brothers and sisters?
RG: Yes. Well I got, I had brothers then.
DM: Older? Younger?
RG: No. I was the eldest in my family.
DM: So did your brothers join up then during the war?
RG: Well I had one brother, my twin brother joined the RAF. He was a transport driver. My twin brother that was and then I had three other brothers that got called up for National Service. Two went into the RAF and they were twins as well. And another one went in the army. I don’t know why he went in the army but he did but anyway that was it. There was five of us. I suppose it was called up after but the other three were after the war, you know.
DM: So what did the twins, the other twins do in the RAF after the war?
RG: One was a dog handler and one was just an ordinary AC I think. You know, just general duties.
DM: They didn’t stay on after -
RG: No. No.
DM: The National Service.
RG: No. And anyway, after I, afterwards I was called, I had to go up to Catterick, I think it was, to be assessed. What air crew was there you know and I was trained as, in stores and then I went from stores, I got posted down to Barnham in Suffolk and I was on a bomb dump place there. I was in the office there on stores and then just after that I was promoted to warrant officer and unfortunately they decided that all air crew with rank of warrant officers and flight sergeant would be reduced to the rank of sergeant so I was reduced then to the rank of sergeant and from there I was posted to RAF delegation in Brussels so I went out to Brussels for about three or four months and then I swapped postings with somebody. I went to Farnborough and when I was Farnborough I was there for about four months and then I got demobbed and I come out there and I joined the civil service and I worked for the Ministry of Defence, the army, for forty two years and then I retired at sixty three and I got the Imperial Service Medal for that.
DM: Go back to when you joined the RAF and you were training to be a gunner. How did the crewing up process work for you? How did you all come together?
RG: Well that was when we got to Silverstone. We got to Silverstone and of course when we, when I arrived at Silverstone there was all these bods there and of course there was lots of chaps in dark blue uniforms and I thought, who the heck are they, you know and of course I found out they were Australians and then we all, on the second day we all got in to this big hangar there and then the pilots went around and picked people out to crew up with you see. And this Australian flight sergeant came up to me. He said, ‘How would you like to be one of my gunners?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. Suits me.’ And that was it and of course when I, when we sort of got together there was a pilot and a navigator and a bomb aimer and we didn’t have a, we didn’t a flight engineer then. We didn’t pick the flight engineer up until a lot lot later you know so there was only six of us really in the crew to start with.
DM: Did you, I assume, did you not pick the flight engineer up until after you changed pilots?
RG: Yes, that’s right.
DM: Yeah.
RG: Yes.
DM: When you’d gone on from the Wellingtons.
RG: Yes. Yes, we went on, I think it was, I think it was when we got onto Stirlings I think. We didn’t, he didn’t come, we didn’t pick the flight engineer up until then.
DM: So the exception of the pilot when you were on Stirlings and afterwards he was obviously an officer.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Were you sergeants, the rest of you?
RG: Yes. I was sergeant. Till I got on the squadron I was a sergeant and then you automatically got promoted after twelve months but I was lucky ‘cause I got promoted after nine months. But so I was flight sergeant then and then a year on from there I got promoted to warrant officer but as I say I think they did the dirty on us a bit because why they did it I don’t know because we still got the same pay as a warrant officer but, but they, it was, I mean I couldn’t believe it because I was a warrant officer, it looked ridiculous because I was a warrant officer and then all of a sudden I was a sergeant. Back down to sergeant again.
DM: Strange. When you were on the squadron, you did seventeen operations I think I’m right in saying.
RG: I was shot down on my seventeenth yeah.
DM: Yeah but as you say it took longer because your pilot was a flight commander so -
RG: Yeah. That’s right. He was a deputy flight commander so -
DM: Yeah. What were your feelings sort of when you went on operations? Were you sort of nervous or frightened or -
RG: Well I wouldn’t say I was frightened you know because you had so much going on you know that you didn’t intend to be, I was never frightened. I don’t think I was ever frightened but because you were always sort of busy you know. Busy doing nothing as you might say you know because you were always searching around you know looking for, and then course when you, when you got over the target you was always thinking let’s get out of here quick you know sort of business you know.
DM: Did you get to fire your guns in anger?
RG: No. Never once. No. No I never fired, no I never fired my guns at all. I suppose when you come to think of it it’s the people, the lucky ones that got away. You know you get all these people who, who I mean I was only just, well I might interrupt and say I’ve just read a book on Group Captain Cheshire. He did a hundred operations. Well he must have been a very lucky man to do that number of operations.
DM: Particularly some of the operations he did.
RG: Well that’s right.
DM: Yes.
RG: Because I mean a lot of the chaps of course obviously they finished their tour, you know and as you went on you sort of felt a bit more safer you know, you know and when you I say I was on my seventeenth and that was it.
DM: Did you have any dicey moments before that?
RG: Yes. We got hit a couple of times by flak but as far as fighters was concerned we didn’t see, I didn’t get involved in any of them but no we were hit once or twice you know at different targets and we got over. Not enough to fetch us down but this one really caught us you know. It hit two of the engines out for a start you know and of course I was very lucky because the rear gunner had what they called a dead man’s handle so you could wind the turret around but otherwise I was very lucky because at that time they were issuing rear gunners with pilots type chutes so I was sitting on the chute but before that they were, they were stacked outside the turret. Well if mine had been outside the turret I wouldn’t be alive today because the flames was right up to my turret so I had to wind the turret around, open the doors and go out the back. That’s the only way I could get out but my bomb aimer and flight engineer were both killed and they’re buried in Berlin.
DM: Do you know if they baled out or were they still –?
RG: Well from what I gathered afterwards I think they were caught up with the machine. I think they probably baled out too quick and their parachutes got caught. One, I think one of them must have had a terrible death because his parachute was caught up in the plane and when the plane was, I think our wireless operator, he was, he contacted with the Germans that live around that way somewhere along the line because he wrote a book about it and he said that one of them was attached to the plane. His parachute was still intermingled with the, with the propellers.
DM: And you, did you, were you still in contact with the pilot when you baled out? Were you given the order to bail out or did you just decide it was the time to go.
RG: Well I couldn’t hear anything. I mean they said the pilot said bail out, you know but of course the intercom was all gone and being as I was at the back I saw the mid upper gunner come down and he went out the side door and I just rotated the turret with the dead man’s handle, opened the doors and went out the back that way. That was the only way I could get out.
DM: Do you remember much about the journey down?
RG: No. Not at all. No. No.
DM: They say most people don’t remember pulling the rip cord. I don’t know if -
RG: No. No. You don’t.
DM: I don’t know why.
RG: No you just go out I mean it’s the thing that I felt that I was always saying what happens if I have to bail out anytime, you know and you think oh you sort of dreaded that but when the time comes it’s a case of survival isn’t it?
DM: The lesser of two evils I suppose.
RG: Yeah that’ right
DM: If the plane’s on fire.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
RG: And I suppose at night you see when it’s dark you can’t see anything.
DM: No.
RG: And all of a sudden you’re down, you know.
DM: Did you have a reasonably good landing? You didn’t injure yourself.
RG: Yeah. I didn’t get hurt or anything. No.
DM: And you still had both your boots.
RG: Yeah [laughs] Yes. Yes. Yes, I kept them for a long time. It’s funny really because the boots that we had you know and the soles were, were the rubber soles and they were stamped inside Petersfield, Hants and that’s where I came from and there was a factory in Petersfield who made all these rubber soles and things like that and the bottom of my boot was stamped inside Petersfield, Hants. Down the bottom.
DM: So you were shot down. The two farmers -
RG: Yeah.
DM: Captured you basically -
RG: Yeah. They did. Yeah.
DM: The army came and got you and took you off. Eventually you went to the interrogation centre.
RG: Yeah.
DM: What happened at the interrogation centre?
RG: Well again you got interrogated by these Germans. I was quite surprised and I think that anybody who was a prisoner would probably tell you exactly the same that when they got to this place at Frankfurt on Main I was, we were in little cells on our own and one day, about the second day I was there they took me into this office with this German officer was there to interrogate me and on this, 463 RAAF Waddington. ‘I expect you know group captain…’ so and so, ‘Don’t you?’ And, ‘He’s got a nickname hasn’t he?’ And this was it. ‘I’m sorry about the two of your crew that was killed.’ I mean he knew more about the squadron than I did after being on the squadron for about five months you know. They had it all there you know. I mean the Geneva Convention says you just tell them your number, rank and name, that’s all you know and that was it. He was telling me more than I knew you know, there was so much on the squadron and group captain so and so was in charge at Waddington. And he just, I was, you know I stood there I could see all this 463 squadron, Waddington. He opened it up, telling me all about all these, commanding officer and all that you know.
DM: Did you ever feel threatened?
RG: No. No. Never felt threatened at all. No. No. I don’t know whether it was because well the war was almost coming to an end. I can never understand really why, why they moved all these people out of these, out of the camps like they did, you know. I mean they just told us we were going and that was it. Why they did it I just don’t know because they could just all left us there and let the incoming troops take us over you know but they, they as I say we was, I mean they did this all over Germany apparently. I mean this place at Moosburg was full of different people you know. There was Americans and there was Russians and there was English people there and goodness knows what. All nationalities so they all, and of course it happened all up the north as well you know all these chaps was in different camps.
DM: When you were moving about sort of like from the farm to the police station and so on and then eventually to the prison camp did you ever encounter any civilians and was there any hostility?
RG: No. Well, we, we, well I say no because when we first got taken to the place where I met my navigator and the mid upper gunner there was another three other chaps there. I think one was Canadian, two were RAF and the six of us then and we had three guards. Three old chaps there. And we got on this train and we got to a place called Erfurt which was halfway between Leipzig and there and of course the RAF had just bombed the place as we, and of course we had to get out the train. The funny part about it was we got out the train we was holding the rifles and helping these chaps out you see. Course they were our safeguard really. We went to the station and they got us up into a corner and of course all these civilians were there and they thought we’d just, we’d just been captured and bombed and after bombing the place and of course they tried to attack us but the guards were there and kept them away and they marched us out of there and we went and stopped at the school about two miles up the road for the night to get us away from the people there. But as I say we were, we were, then we got on the train to go from Frankfurt to Nuremberg we were strafed by the Americans and we were in these box wagons and fortunately, I mean we were sort of, the thickness of the wood was alright because you could hear the bullets rattling across the roof of course they shot up the train. The engine as well. That didn’t do us a lot of good.
DM: What was the camp like at Nuremberg when you got there because being towards the end of the war, was it -
RG: Yeah
DM: Was it -
RG: It was pretty quiet you know. There was no animosity at all amongst us then. I mean we had nothing to do really. Just sit about all day long, you know.
DM: What was the food situation?
RG: Pretty sparse. If we hadn’t had the Red Cross parcels which we did have you know I think we would have been in pretty bad straights then because we got Red Cross parcels through from, and they came through and I think we had one loaf of bread during the day which was divided between seven of us and then we had Red Cross parcels which was probably one between two or three you know. Very difficult sometimes to share it out but otherwise it was pretty sparse you know.
DM: Now when you were marched from the camp how many days were you on the road?
RG: Sixteen days.
DM: And this was winter.
RG: Well, no well it was -
DM: April.
RG: April time yeah. Yeah.
DM: So not too bad weatherwise.
RG: No it wasn’t too bad. No. But I mean we just slept where we could, you see, I mean. If you got into a barn you were lucky you know. Sleep the night, then off again the next morning off you went again. Course it was stretched out for a hell of a long, I mean I lost, lost the, my navigator and that, and my bomb aimer, sorry my mid-upper gunner. We, they sort of went, you know, and you just fell in anywhere you could and just sort of walked along you know. We were glad when we got to Moosburg but then that was, we were in old tents and that there until we got liberated by the Americans. Of course then the Americans went mad because General Patton came in [laughs]. He was like a tin god to them but I mean I must say that with the Americans they got themselves organised because they had their bakeries and all that came along and baking bread and all that sort of thing and when we, when we came out of the camp there there was American lorries as far as you could see. The whole field was full of American lorries and we got, as we say we were in groups and so we was put in these individual lorries and taken off. Some went one way and some went another and then we had the Dakotas come along to take us to Rheims as I said before.
DM: So, on the march was it hard?
RG: Well it was in comparison, it was comparison that we never had much food you know. We sort of struggled along and they did give us a bit to eat you know like a soup kitchen or something like that there or a slice of bread but as I say it was, it was pretty hard going.
DM: I suppose it was probably –
RG: Course being, I was comparatively young so I didn’t, you know like -
DM: More resilient. Yes.
RG: I could keep going you know.
DM: Yeah. So you came back. As you said you came back to Britain. And what did you, when you were attached in Brussels what was that? What did you have to do there?
RG: Well to tell you truth I don’t really know what I was doing there [laughs] I mean it was funny really because I was, I was there at Barnham there and they said, I was there and they said there’s a signal come through and I was, I was a warrant officer at the time. I was doing and I went to the signals, and they said this airman must go on immediate leave. Posting to follow. So I went across to the officers’ mess. There was only about three officers there and I saw the OC and I said, ‘There’s an urgent signal.’ ‘Who’s it for?’ I said, ‘Me.’ He said, ‘Oh don’t worry about that,’ he said, ‘I’ll get that cancelled,’ but anyway he couldn’t so they sent me on leave for a month and when I came back my posting was cancelled so I’d been home for a month and then the posting was cancelled and eventually when I got made, brought down to sergeant the posting came up again and I was at the RAF, it was a posh name the RAF Delegation Brussels but actually it was RAF chaps there handing over to the Belgian Air Force and just getting them started up again you know but I was just there doing stores and that there. As a matter of fact the last job, the job I did have there was with an old warrant officer and he was fitting out some married quarters for the officers there. All the stuff that was going in so I was giving him a hand with that and then he came up to me in the mess one night and said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You live near Farnborough don’t you?’ So I said, ‘What Farnborough the [RAE?],’ so he said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘There was a chap posted there and he doesn’t want to go.’ Well I said, ‘Well give it to me then and I’ll take it.’ So I came, they got me a posting there fitted up so I went down, they sent transport for me, took me down to the Gare du Nord in Brussels. I got on this train and what I didn’t realise, it was, it was an officer’s train and the chap came along, he said, ‘Breakfast is served, sir’ you know and there was me with three stripes sat there and there were all these officers there so I, and I got down I got down to, where did get to? Calais, on the train and of course I was all on my own so I just got off with my kit and that and I said to one of the policemen there and I said, ‘How do I get to Dover?’ He said, ‘Well there’s a boat there.’ So I walked on to the boat and that was it and it was, I’ll always remember it was a Friday. I thought well I’m not going to Farnborough today. I’ll wait till the weekend. I’ll go Monday morning so I caught the train, I came down to Petersfield where I lived and stayed the weekend there and on the Monday morning I caught the train back up to Guildford, I think it was and then I went from there to Farnborough and reported in there and the chap said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You should have been here on Friday.’ So I said to him, ‘Have you ever tried getting across from Calais to Dover on a Friday?’ I said, ‘I didn’t get there till last night and come straight here.’ Of course he didn’t know any different so that was it. But again I just stayed there until I got demobbed and that was in the July I think. That was about, well it was the winter of ’47 which was a terrible winter then and that you know but that’s when I got demobbed.
DM: You didn’t think of staying in?
RG: Well I say again with aircrew you sort of had two trades. I mean as an air gunner I was finished flying so then they gave you, sent on a course for stores and I was AC, or something, stores so if I’d have stopped in I would have had to lose my aircrew rank and start again.
DM: So you ended up in the Ministry of Defence.
RG: Yeah. I worked for the Ministry of Defence in Liphook here because there was a big army depot here.
DM: Right.
RG: And that’s where I went to work. In there.
DM: But as a civilian obviously.
RG: Yeah. Oh yeah.
DM: So, when did you marry?
RG: 1948.
DM: Children?
RG: No. We got no children. No. No. But I, my wife worked for the, for the Ministry of Defence as well and so when my wife she took early retirement. So at fifty eight and I was sixty two, sixty three so I thought I’d take early retirement as well so I took it just afterwards. So I’ve been retired since I was sixty three.
DM: When you were at Waddington what was the social, sort of life like? You, as obviously, as a crew I imagine you were associated with each other.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Did the pilot associate with you as well off duty?
RG: Oh yes. Oh yes, most well I don’t say most nights but if we weren’t on flying he had a car and we used to go down the local pub. Everybody mixed in you know. I mean even sometimes you’d go down the pub and there was your ground crew was there as well you know. There was always drinks on us sort of business you know. But you know, the, everybody, always spoke well of their ground crew you know ‘cause after all you relied on them. I mean I was reading an article there once where the chap was writing in the paper and said, ‘Oh it was always them and us.’ Well it was never them and us you know.
DM: Were the ground crew a mixture of British and Australian or were they all British?
RG: No they were a mixture, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There were Australian engineers and that there. Fitters. Whatever have you.
DM: What did you think of the Australians?
RG: I got on all right with them, you know. As a matter of fact in 1982 my wife and I went to Australia for six weeks and stayed there with my wireless operator and he died just last year. But they invited us over there ‘cause they, it was funny really ‘cause I was here one Saturday afternoon, we’d been out in in the garden there, just sitting there and having a snack, you know and the front door bell went and I went the front door, the front door and this chap was stood there and I thought well I know his face but I just couldn’t place who he was and he said, ‘Hello Ron. I’ve come twelve thousand miles to see you.’ I said, ‘Oh Dudley Hanniford.’ He said, ‘Yes.’ That was my wireless operator and him and his wife they had come over for a big reunion. It was about, I suppose it was about fifty Australians or more came over to Waddington and stayed up there for a week in Lincoln and of course I knew nothing about it then but afterwards I think that was in, well it was the thirtieth anniversary or something in 1975 so they decided they would all get together and fly over to Waddington and they stayed all around the area and the next time would have been about 1990 I think it was. 1995. And I was then a member of the Association which I didn’t know anything about and my wife and I we went up to Lincoln and stayed there for a week at Waddington doing all manner of things around you know in the station and we went out around. We had, we had an invitation to the Lord Mayor’s do up in Lincoln. He invited all these people there to Lincoln, to a party up there and we had a couple of invitations to the officer’s mess. They weren’t very happy about the Australians coming over [laughs] I think they were a bit of a gung-ho lot you know. I mean I remember once I had because at the end of every month you had to take your log book in to the squadron leader, the OC, to sign it to verify it, sign it, you know. And I went there one day and the squadron leader was sitting at his desk you know, and I went in and saluted, you know and he said, ‘God don’t frighten me to death,’ he said. He said, he said because they never, they never used to salute anybody then. I mean they might do it once in a day but they never, didn’t salute every time you met an officer there ‘cause they were all crewed in together, you know but they was a good crowd.
DM: And you’re still a member of the Association.
RG: Yes. I’m still member of the Association. Yeah. But I haven’t been up to Waddington for the last couple of years you know but I get a newsletter every, about twice a year from the Association. What goes on.
DM: And are you the sole surviving member of your crew now?
RG: I must be yeah.
DM: Yeah.
RG: Yes, because my pilot and rear gunner and mid upper gunner I know have passed away and last year, two of the crew were killed so that only left five of us and the wireless operator which I used to share a room with in Waddington in the sergeants mess and he passed away last year. His son in law rung me up and told me about it you know but we spent six weeks out there with them.
DM: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command was, I won’t say treated but perhaps perceived and dealt with after the war? Do you have any feelings about that?
RG: Terrible.
DM: Yeah.
RG: I mean –
DM: Did you think that at the time?
RG: Yes because they sort of, I mean today you read about all these chaps coming out the army and the services and they think the world owes them a living but nobody thought that about us. You know, I mean as I say I was a warrant officer one day and then I was reduced to the rank of sergeant. Of course when I come home people thought, ‘I wonder what he’s done,’ you know. And it was so stupid because they still paid us, I still got paid as a warrant officer. The funny part about it was I had a, I had a warrant officer’s uniform and an overcoat and when I was posted to Brussels I was walking around there with a warrant officer’s overcoat with three stripes on and I was in Brussels one Saturday afternoon and one of the military, the RAF police came up to me and said, ‘Excuse me sergeant,’ he said, ‘But do you realise you are walking around with a warrant officer’s overcoat on?’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ So he said, ‘Why is that?’ So I told him. Thought no more about it. ‘Ok’, he said, ‘Can I have your number, rank and name.’ ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Where are you stationed?’ I said, ‘I’m at the RAF delegation.’ ‘Alright. Fair enough.’ Well fortunately it had come out on orders that although you were reduced down to sergeant you could still wear the overcoat but you had to put three stripes on it. So fair enough. So this, this friend of mine, he was in charge of the orderly room so I said to him, ‘Can you dig out that DCI that come out about wearing the overcoat,’ you see. He said, ‘Why?’ So I told him. He said, ‘Alright. I’ll look it up Monday morning.’ So anyway, funnily enough first thing on Monday morning I was sent for by the commanding officer out there and he said, ‘I believe you were pulled up sergeant,’ he said, ‘Well Saturday afternoon in Brussels for wearing a warrant officer’s overcoat.’ I said, ‘Yes. That’s right sir.’ I said, ‘I’m quite entitled to it,’ I said because they didn’t say we could hand that in and get a new overcoat so he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Can you prove that?’ So we sent for the sergeant in the orderly room and of course he didn’t know that I’d already spoken to him and he came out with this, showed it to him. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Oh you’re entitled to wear it then.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ So he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Get rid of that bloody overcoat,’ he said, ‘And go and draw a new one from the stores.’ So I went and I said, ‘Have you got a spare overcoat?’ He had an overcoat that fit me so I had two overcoats then. Of course when I come home I had two overcoats. I still kept the other one but, and I think as for this Bomber Command clasp they’ve given us I think it’s a disgrace. You’ve seen it have you? You know I, when they said they were give the Bomber Command a medal and then I received this little bit of tin with Bomber Command on it I thought, useless.
DM: Yeah, obviously now there’s the memorial and there’s the new Bomber Command Centre but I think a lot of people think it’s too late in a way. It’s better that, you know it’s good that it’s happening now but it should have happened thirty years ago.
RG: Oh yeah.
DM: Or even longer.
RG: Yeah. Even now you see it’s, it’s all done by charity really. You know. Donations to keep it going and that and to build it in the first place. I mean they had these people who had plenty of money and built it. I mean, it’s a wonderful memorial. It’s a lovely place but again it’s just too late.
DM: Another veteran said to me, I don’t know if you think this is true that there is only one thing wrong with the memorial. When you look at it they’re too old.
RG: They’re too old.
DM: The people in the statues are too old.
RG: Yes.
DM: They look like thirty five.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Forty year olds.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: You know and you were all very young men.
RG: Well the average age was about twenty two. Something like that. I mean as I said you had chaps flying Lancasters who couldn’t even drive a car, you know. I mean most of them, I mean, as I said the wing commander, our Wing Commander Forbes. I think he was only twenty six and he was a wing commander and he got, he got killed on his second, last trip of his second tour.
DM: Do you remember how old your pilot was? How old was he?
RG: My pilot was thirty two.
DM: Right.
RG: My mid-upper gunner -
DM: An old man then really.
RG: He was yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DM: And the mid upper gunner you were going to say.
RG: He was thirty two as well. Yeah. I was the youngest one in the crew but I mean most of these Australians they were say twenty, twenty two something like that because they’d come over like and done all their training and that so they were getting on, I’m not saying getting on a bit but the average age was only about twenty two, twenty three something like that. If you took it right through you know.
[machine paused]
DM: Catch up sort of thing.
RG: Up, up till 1943 before D-Day rather up to D-Day the aircrew blokes got the Aircrew Europe star you see. After D-Day we got the France and Germany which everybody got. You know, all the troops. Anybody who’d spent twenty four hours in France got the France and Germany medal and that’s all they gave us. So, but what they should have done really in my opinion they should have extended the Aircrew Europe right through the war. If they’d have given us the Aircrew Europe, after all, we went, I know, I know we were probably going over France, bits of France which had already taken you know and we were not likely to get shot down there but I mean we went to, I mean I went to, some trips took ten hours.
DM: And you did get shot down.
RG: Yeah. Got shot down.
DM: At the end of the day.
RG: You see.
DM: Yeah.
RG: I mean Leipzig is a fair old way across there you know and that but I mean they should have extended the Aircrew Europe and given it to everybody who was on operations but they didn’t. They gave, all they got was a France and Germany. I didn’t even get the defence medal. I mean a lot of these air crew blokes got the defence medal. I don’t know why but they did but I didn’t qualify for it but I mean, I think with the Aircrew Europe they should have ext, the Bomber Command Association should have put their foot down and said, ‘Well look, we want that extended.’ I mean when they brought the ’39/ ’45 medal out that was only ’39/ ’43 to start with and they extended that to 1945 so why couldn’t they have done that with the Aircrew Europe instead of giving us a little bit of tin with the Bomber Command. When I went to Coningsby to the, when the Canadian came over we had we had a chance there for the, if you wanted it for the commanding officer at Coningsby to present you with your clasp and a lot of the chaps did it. They just came up and said, they gave a bit of a spiel what they did and goodness knows what and the commanding officer handed, I suppose what they had to do was to send their clasp in their box up to there and then you didn’t probably get the same one back anyway but the commanding officer you know they gave a spiel out about what you did and then the commanding officer handed it over but I wouldn’t do that because I didn’t agree with the clasp and I think that Churchill let us down badly ‘cause he wouldn’t admit that he had anything to do with the Dresden raid and that was the top and bottom of it all I think.
DM: Dropped it like a hot potato didn’t he?
RG: I mean these people turn around and say oh what a terrible thing this was and what a terrible thing that was. As far as I was concerned we were just doing a job, you know. You didn’t think about all the people that were getting killed down below. Never thought about that at all. You were just thinking about yourself really but I mean when it came to, when you say, ‘Well yeah but what about Coventry? What about Plymouth? What about Southampton and what about London?’ All these people who say these things now I mean it’s like the president going to Hiroshima now and saying you know he didn’t say sorry, but he shouldn’t have to say sorry. What these people didn’t realise that unless you were there or were about at that time the fact was that we would have lost thousands of troops if we had tried to invade Japan. I mean they had the opportunity to give in but they didn’t. It was typical of the Japanese but they, I mean the way I look at it is this if they hadn’t dropped the atom bomb over there we should have lost thousands of people trying to invade there. And they say oh you killed thousands of people and all this sort of business. Well that’s wartime I’m afraid isn’t it?
DM: It is.
RG: Last year, about this time a chap rang me up ‘cause I had a bit of write up in the local paper because it was my ninetieth birthday and that you know and somebody got to hear about it and this chap rang me up and he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You were in Bomber Command.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘How would you like to go up to Cosford for the day for a reunion?’ You see. I said, ‘Cosford.’ I said, ‘Well how do I get to Cosford then?’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about how you’re going to get there.’ He said, ‘Just say if you can go or not.’ I said, ‘Oh yes, I’ll go.’ ‘Well I’ll give you, let you know what happens.’ So about a few days went by and he rang up and he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’ve laid on some transport to take you to Blackbushe Aerodrome and from there there will be a plane to fly you up to Cosford.’ So I went up in a Cessna. So anyway there was quite a crowd of us there and the funny part about it was well there’s only about four people sit in a Cessna. There was only the pilot and three others. So I went with three other chaps and the pilot came out and said, ‘We’re ready to go now,’ So there was quite a crowd there and all these Cessnas out there. They were all privately owned. So we go around there and we get in the plane and he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Can’t start at the moment.’ He said, ‘We’ve got a job to start it. It won’t start.’ So anyway, it was quite funny because there’s the pilot, and another chap came out, apparently he’s the chief instructor at Blackbushe whatever he was there. He said, ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said, ‘Because I’ve been flying this plane all the week,’ he said, ‘and nothing, it’s been going alright.’ He said, ‘Perhaps the battery’s flat.’ You couldn’t, you’d never believe this. They couldn’t find the bloody battery. They didn’t know where the battery was. So me and these other two blokes were sitting there. I thought ‘cause it was quite a struggle to get up into a blooming Cessna so he said, ‘Oh well.’ So they took the bonnet off the front. No it ain’t under there. I thought oh a good job this isn’t wartime. So they put the bonnet back on. They found out it was in the back. ‘Oh we’ll have, we’ll have to charge it up. So will you get out again and go and sit back in the old canteen there,’ he said, ‘And we’ll give you a call.’ And so of course all these other planes were taking off to Cosford and we were just sitting there. So eventually the pilot came through after about an hour and he said, ‘Oh we can go now.’ I said, ‘Alright,’ so everybody climbs back and gets back in to the Cessna again. Chap comes along with a battery, looked like a twelve bolt car battery. I thought they’d already put it in the plane, you know. Oh no he come along with it. Anyway, he got the plane started up and off we took and flew to Cosford. I think we were about the last ones to arrive there you know ‘cause all packed out there. So anyway and of course then when it was time to come home the pilot said, ‘I think we’d better..’ and of course when we got to Cosford you had to wait until there was a van to take you out to the planes, you see. They wouldn’t let you walk out but they were only just up the road, they wouldn’t let you walk, they took you so were one of the last ones to take off. I think it was about two Cessnas left. Anyway so that was their day at Cosford. And this other bloke said, ‘We’ll see in 2016 but I think this year they said there’s something about it was at Scampton but I’ve heard nothing this year. Perhaps it’s too far down for me to go up there.
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 Ronald Gard
Creator
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David Meanwell
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
2016-06-01
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGardR160601
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Pending OH summary
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
Format
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00:52:13 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Ronald Gard flew operations as a rear gunner with 463 Squadron and was shot down on an operation to Leipzig.
Spatial Coverage
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Belgium
France
Great Britain
Belgium--Brussels
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Bridgend
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1943
1944
1945
463 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
crash
crewing up
Dulag Luft
Lancaster
memorial
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF Silverstone
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Winthorpe
Red Cross
shot down
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/544/8785/AHookerFJ160525.2.mp3
03e38dd3495780227f67637e5adb86f4
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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Hooker, Fred
Fred J Hooker
F J Hooker
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hooker, FJ
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. Two oral history interviews with Sergeant Fred Hooker (b. 1924, 1850487 Royal Air Force) and his scrapbook containing photographs and documents. He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 102 Squadron and became a prisoner of war on 12 September 1944.
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
2016-05-25
2017-08-26
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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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Fred Hooker. The interview is taking place at Mr Hooker’s home in -
FH: Church Crookham.
DM: And the date today is the twenty -
FH: 25th
DM: Fifth of May 2016. Ok Fred. Well if you could perhaps start off by telling me a little bit about your childhood, growing up and your family.
FH: I was born in a little hamlet called Dipley under the control of Hartley Wintney Rural District Council in 1924 which makes me ninety two now and I’m one of nine children born to my parents Minnie and William Hooker. I’m the last one living now. The rest have all passed on. My elder brother was a prisoner in Japan when Hong, captured when Hong Kong fell in 1941. Unfortunately, he died on the same day as I was released from the German prisoner of war camp. I done all my schooling in Hartley Wintney walking about three and a half mile each day to school. I only had a secondary education and joined the Boy Scouts at the age of eleven and then in 1941 when the Air Training Corps was first formed we heard, a friend of mine and myself heard of a squadron being formed in Basingstoke which we made, we found out where the squadron was meeting and we visited each week to their meetings until the flight of the same squadron four four, 444 squadron was developed in Hartley Wintney.
FH: So, when, when were, when were you old enough to be called up? I mean did you get called up or did you volunteer first?
DM: Yeah. I was just coming to that one.
FH: Right.
DM: In 1941 I made an application to the air ministry to volunteer for air crew duties in which I went to Oxford for an assessment test which unfortunately I failed on the first attempt but the following December, 1942 I once again applied and was successful in passing out and was put on the waiting list to be called up to train as a wireless operator/air gunner. In March 1943 I received my calling up papers and I had to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London along with a load of other chaps the same day and there we were, had our usual injections, issued with our full RAF uniform which I was very proud to, to receive and from there I was in London about a fortnight and then posted to Shropshire. A place called Bridgnorth where I done my ITW training which consisted of a lot of square bashing as we called it and school classroom work. From there we were sent on leave and had instructions while on leave to report to Yatesbury in Wiltshire for the wireless training which was all new to me although I had done Morse, a certain amount of Morse sending and receiving while in the Air Training Corps. Unfortunately, when we got on to technical side of the wireless I’m afraid I come unstuck and I had to leave the course and then sent to Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey, re-mustered and became, was put on the list to train as a straight air gunner. Once again I had to go through the, an ITW which was at Bridlington and we done all our square bashing and PT exercises along the front on the promenade which was rather draughty being that it was in the January February time. Having passed out there we were sent on leave once again and on the 28th of December 1943 I left home and travelled overnight to [Carn?] in, sorry it wasn’t [Carn?]. It was Stormy Down in South Wales. Number 7 AGS. Air Gunner School. From there, very disappointingly we’d done nothing for three days until the 1st of January when we was all called on parade and was instructed that we would be training as straight gunners. I was in a section of chaps who was posted to the satellite station at Rhoose which is now Cardiff Airport. Greatly changed these days. There we was in, put in classes of about ten or twelve chaps. My instructor was a Sergeant Walmsley who I, we had a photograph taken of the group in our little classroom. When we finally passed out as air gunners which was somewhere about April the same year, 1944.
[Recording paused]
I passed out as a sergeant air gunner in April if I remember right and from there we were sent on leave not knowing what initial training wing we were going to which turned out to be Moreton in the Marsh, Gloucestershire where we met up, or where I met up with some old pals I had been training with right throughout the, my service life and while waiting on Reading Station to travel to Moreton in the Marsh I spoke with a warrant officer who was going to the same station and apparently he was a pilot who had been flying high service ranking officer’s about the country and wanted a change and fly something much larger. So when we were at Moreton in the Marsh we were instructed to mix amongst all the other lads that had arrived there at the same time. Navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators, pilots and Phil, this chap from Devonshire, the warrant officer, we palled up together straight away and I introduced Leslie, a lad I’d been with since leaving Sheerness to go, to start my training as a straight air gunner and introduced him to Phillip who eventually introduced us to a bomb aimer by the name of Yon Davies from Wales and Jock Munroe from Aberdeen who was a navigator. We had a nice long chat together and decided that we would form a crew together but we was minus a wireless operator which on the following day we had to parade again and while we was in the assembly hall Phillip notified the officer in charge that we, he was short of a wireless operator who then introduced us to Dougie, a chap from Yorkshire who was looking for a crew and we all shook hands and we were then classed as a crew which was the only all British crew on the course at the time. The remainders had New Zealand, Australian and South African pilots. From there we done a lot of landing, circuits and bumps. That’s the word. Circuits and bumps. Giving the pilot a chance to get used to the twin engine aircraft which was a Wellington and we done quite a lot of cross country running while we was there to keep fit and of course cross country flying where we done our, the gunners done their firing, air to air firing over the Irish Sea. We, we then moved on, having passed out as a crew from the Moreton in the Marsh we were posted to a place called Dishforth in Yorkshire near the city of Ripon. There we converted to four engine Halifax bombers which was rather exciting in a way because there was the first time I had my own turret. During our training at Stormy Down Les and myself used to take it in turns firing from the tail turret as there was only the one turret on the Wellington air craft. The turret was a Boulton Paul manufactured and being in the mid-upper I could see all the way around which was a marvellous experience for the first few times seeing that I could look in all directions, scanning the skies for other aircraft that were sent up for training purposes to help us identify various aircraft which was, we’d done a lot of of course at Stormy Down but it increased as we got into Moreton in the Marsh where we crewed. From there we finally passed out but not before we lost our wireless operator. Unfortunately, Dougie got into trouble while visiting Harrogate one night and we, before we left we contacted or we was introduced to a Canadian wireless operator/air gunner and we all agreed that we’d welcome him in to the crew which we did but in the conversation that took place while we was being introduced he told us that he’d operated on Marauders from Blackbushe Airport and I looked, I said nothing and after a while he enquired where we’d all come from so when he got around to me asking where I lived I asked him if he knew much about the area that he’d been stationed at at Blackpool er Blackbushe Airport and he mentioned that he’d used to go to the village of Hartley Wintney and drink in the Lamb Hotel and the Swan Hotel which made me smile and from then on he realised that I knew something about Hartley Wintney.
[Recording paused]
Our new member. His name, we called him Pacqi, Pacqie Pacquette but he was known as Pacqi. I can’t pronounce his proper name but not to worry. He turned out a good pal of all of us and he was very good at his job. And at times we, during training we changed positions and done each other’s jobs just for a few short while, time. Sometimes you’d, I’d go in the bomb aimer’s position just to get used to using the sight just in case of an accident while we was on operations and at one stage I actually took the controls of the Halifax which was a dual aircraft at the time and of course the skipper was there in readiness in case of rather sharp dives or anything but we, as a crew we melled together and it was quite a, good companions. Les, the gunner that I trained with right throughout and myself were, became very good pals and one weekend when we had a weekend pass we travelled down to Hartley Wintney together and Les met my parents and the family that was home at the time and we had quite a nice weekend together there but finally of course we was posted, had a posting come through for South Africa after we passed out as a full crew on conversion unit which was a Canadian unit at Dishforth. We were in, actually in line at the headquarters to get our passes to go to South, leave in Africa and we heard the voice on the tannoy to say that Pilot Officer Groves’ crew and two others that were there. I can’t remember the pilot’s names, to report back to the flight office as leave had been cancelled. Very disappointingly we walked back to the flight office and we were informed that we, that our posting had been changed and we were going to 102 squadron at a place called Pocklington, twelve miles from York, that same day. We would be replacing three crews that had experience that were being posted to South Africa where we were originally going to be posted to. Well, no leave so off we went. We got everything packed ready to go and the three crews were instructed to be ready to leave the squadron at 2 o’clock, if I remember right, on that same afternoon which was the 18th of August 1944 and on our journey by coach to Pocklington we arrived along the road, I can’t tell you the actual number of the road but as we were about to turn into the ‘drome we saw a Halifax bomber that had crashed in the field right opposite the ‘drome and we learned later that it had failed to take off but they were lucky nothing exploded and the bombs were still in the aircraft as we landed on, arrived at the aerodrome which wasn’t a very good sight for us. We weren’t very pleased about it. But I did fail to say that when we got to the, when we first got to the squadron my pilot, Warrant Officer Groves was, got his commission, was then Pilot Officer Groves who, for the first time had to go to his quarters and the, us NCOs to our quarters and the first time we’d been parted from that angle but everything turned out right and we settled into out billets taking over the beds of a crew that had failed to return the previous day.
[Recording paused]
DM: Ok.
FH: On the, as I said we arrived at the squadron on the 18th of August. Unfortunately our stay wasn’t too long but we’d done a few flights from there. I think we started on the 16th of August, just local flights landing and taking off and we done, was called, or we noticed our name on standing orders on the 3rd of September to go on our first bombing operation which turned out to be an airfield in Holland named Venlo. Venlo Airfield. Of course everything was new to us with regards the information we gained from the camp commander, the bomber, bomb aimer officer, navigation officer, the gunnery officer giving us instructions where the different gun emplacements were on our route but fortunately for us they were few and far between and our flight was quite straightforward although there was just a few puffs of flak exploding as we got near to the airfield but the bombing went straight and good. The pilot, not the pilot, the bomb aimer I should say, took photographs of the bombs exploding and on our return journey our wireless operator called up to get permission to land and we were diverted to an aerodrome in the Midlands, just close to Cambridge if I remember right. The name I’m afraid I forgot there, the actual aerodrome but it turned out to be an American ‘drome and when we arrived there the weather was as bad as it was at Pocklington but after three attempts the pilot said, ‘Well I must go in this time,’ he says, ‘We’re very short of fuel,’ and the Americans switched on the ground lights to give us assistance but unfortunately the weather was so bad we only got glimpses of the flare path and as the pilot went in so we realised there was a hangar coming towards us. I was sitting in the top turret and I could see this hangar coming towards us but fortunately the engines were cut and the aircraft came to a standstill rather abruptly but lucky enough everybody was safe and wasn’t hurt in anyway but once we got out of the aircraft and taken to the debriefing room of the American forces that were stationed there we were swore at by the Americans for making such a bad landing but it turned out they hadn’t given us any warning of the ground wind and as Phil went in so he was blown off the runway on to the grass and the Americans weren’t very happy and neither were we actually. Anyhow, we had a debrief, a short debriefing and then shown to our billets and from there we were taken to the dining room. We were all starving hungry by this time. Unfortunately for myself I didn’t enjoy the meal so much as the others. It was a whole partridge and vegetables. Having been instructed not to fly with dentures by the medical officer at 102 squadron I’d taken my dentures out and which gummed me and of course where the other lads were gnawing the bones I had a job to gnaw them. I cut some of the meat off and was able to eat that but with regards gnawing the bones which I could see my pals really enjoying I was absent from that part. But our stay there was, lasted a week which we were rather surprised about but one of the reasons why we weren’t allowed to land at Pocklington there was a hill, I understand, about eight hundred feet high, where we had to fly in over to make our approach and it just wasn’t safe to do so and apparently the weather was bad for a whole week there. We finally got back and again we had a severe debriefing, wanting to know exactly everything that happened from the time we took off ‘til we landed. We mentioned at the time during the debriefing of witnessing an American aircraft while we was at the American unit being flown by an officer, a Lightning aircraft, a twin boom one and he was doing a shoot up of the ‘drome as he’d finished his tour of duties apparently and was going to be posted home the following day but unfortunately he went too low, hit some cables and shot up in the air, ejected his seat and out he come but the plane crashed and we understand that he would have been promoted to a major on his return and would have to pay for the aircraft. How true that was we don’t know but knowing the Americans we took it along with us like you know. Anyhow, the following day, the, that was the 10th of September we returned to Pocklington. On the 11th of September our names were again on the list to go on the bombing trip that was scheduled to take place the following evening. When we arrived at the briefing rooms we sat down waiting for the senior officers to arrive and of course with one movement everybody stood up as the CO come in and we were told of our target and shown it on the map which had been covered by a sheet until the officers arrived, turned about, turned out to be Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr and there was a load of, ‘Ahh’ because a number of the lads apparently had been there before and were very lucky to return. Anyhow, we each had our listen to the briefing and then we had our own section officer, like with Leslie and myself we had the chief gunnery officer of the squadron talking and warning us to be on lookout from the time we took off until we returned to the aerodrome as a lot of fighters used to return following the aircraft back to the stations especially if there was one crippled and as it goes in to land so they would attack and fly off again. Well the experience I had on that 11th of, on the 12th I should say, no, I beg your pardon, on the 11th of September was one I shall never never forget. We was miles away from the target and we could see this smoke in the, in the distance and as we got closer so the shells were bursting all around us and of course we was in formation going in to the target and it was just, the sky was full of black specks where the shells were exploding. The way I often explain it to people the sight was, visualising the modern day fireworks that’s, explodes with coloured lights and flares imagine that as being shells exploding all around you and that’s exactly how it was and while we was on the bombing run, the actual bombing run in the Pathfinders were telling, or giving instructions what to bomb. The red targets or the red flares and then a voice came over. ‘Number two take over. Number two take over. I’m going in. I’m going in.’ And everything went silent on the wireless and at the same time there’s planes at the side of us exploding, mass of flames. Oh it was horrible. We eventually got on course to come home which was a very pleasing one and the journey home was reasonable. We got rid of the flak and on our landing we taxied around to where our parking area was. The ground staff was there waiting for us and as we climbed out the aircraft they greeted us and we, as a crew, wandered around the aircraft and was amazed at the amount of holes we had in our fuselage. We, we wondered how lucky we’d been and as we got, looked up under the nose of the aircraft right where Taffy had been laying, his legs spread out, there was a hole in the bottom of the, where he’d been laying right up through the top and had gone right through between his two legs and out the top and he fell to the ground, Taffy did, and hands together and we all did the same and it was very quiet for a few minutes. We was all in prayer I assumed and we continued with looking around the aircraft with the ground staff and saying how lucky we’d been to return. And -
[Recording paused]
DM: Ok.
FH: We finally arrived at the tail of the aircraft and the transport was waiting for us to take us back for debriefing which, as a crew as we arrived we received our little tot of rum which went down really well. Apparently it’s a thing that happened each time a crew came back from a bombing raid, was given a tot of rum and debriefed which lasted quite a while and we explained to them as a, as a crew that we’d inspected our aircraft and it had quite a few holes and that in it and thought we were very lucky to arrive back on English soil. Anyhow, after that we had a nice evening meal and went to bed. I think we slept but it was a while before we went off if I remember right. Now, the next morning arrived and had our breakfast, had a look at the standing orders and there we were again down for the next bombing raid, which was our third. Two within two days and we all prayed, hoped and prayed that we wouldn’t be going back to the Ruhr which it turned out our target was a town called Munster in Germany and we were due to bomb the marshalling yards and if my memory is correct there was two hundred aircraft every half hour on the target, on numerous targets as well throughout Germany that day. Well our flight over Germany, the North Sea and Germany was quite usual with aircraft either side of us and we flew on and got close to the target when we got a few shells exploding quite close but, all these raids incidentally were done in daylight which I hadn’t mentioned before. So we could see what was happening in the skies to other aircraft but this particular day we didn’t see any damage to any aircraft. This was the 12th of September when all of a sudden I realised I was sitting in mid-air. There was no Perspex around me and I could just see my guns hanging over the tail turret and the ammunition across the, from the turret across to the tail of the aircraft. I guess I shook my head. I don’t know. And I realised that I was sitting in fresh air and had no guns to fire if I had to so I decided best to go up to, along with the pilot and sit with him which I got out of the aircraft seeing a big hole on the port side of the aircraft and the whole plane was full of flames and I saw one chap diving through the hole in the front so I picked up my ‘chute which was burning all across one corner of it. So by this time I guess I was losing oxygen and didn’t realise what I was doing and I can remember throwing it back on the floor, just standing there wondering what to do. With that, my saviour, Charlie the engineer, flight engineer saw me. He came running back, pulled me forward, picked up my ‘chute, I remember seeing his arm going across the ‘chute like this. He clipped it on and pushed me out but as I was going out I could see the pilot, white, his face was absolutely white and he was holding the stick back into his stomach trying to keep the plane on course I guess but that was the last I saw of him. As I went down in the parachute I don’t remember pulling the cord and I guess it was because the parachute was blown, blown to bits, or blown, the small auxiliary ‘chute was blown out and pulled out the main ‘chute which I think I went down rather quickly. I can’t honestly say how long it took me to come down but it didn’t appear to be in the air long but I do remember seeing a Spitfire circling around us who had been escorting, we had the Spitfire escort that day and that was the first I’d seen of them in actual fact but it must have come down within three hundred feet of the ground, flipped his wings and flew off again and I guess he was, he’d been circling to see how many parachutes had jumped out. I also witnessed this aircraft which I assume was ours make a belly landing in just one mass of flames. Make a belly, belly landing on the ground as though he was, he was just making a normal landing but it was just one mass of flames. With that I hit the ground and witnessed that there was a whole load of civilians and troops emerging on the area where I was about to land which turned out to be a field of sugar beet and away from buildings it was but there was a load of civilians but seeing a couple of soldiers I had no chance of escape I merely put up my hands and just stood there. With, with that they came and stripped off my parachute harness and was searched. Can you -
[Recording paused]
These Germans brushed their arms all over me. Made sure I didn’t have a pistol or anything with me and indicated that I had to pick up my parachute and being the size it was it was rather a armful to carry and I indicated to walk across the field and these two chaps was following me. Well we come to a barbed wire fence so one of the Germans put his foot on the barbed wire and held it down, indicated for me to crawl under and believe me that was quite a task with the silk parachute all rolled up and trying to get through which actually brought a smile to my face for just a moment. Being an English gentleman as I thought I stopped the other side to give them a chance to get through but that was the last time I stopped until I had to climb aboard a coach out on the road because one of the guards put his jackboot right where it hurts and believe me that did hurt and it lasted for several days. I just kept walking. Put into this coach which was parked alongside the side of the road and there I had a strip search, naked, everything, put on and then I was told to dress or indicated to put my clothes back on but of course my flying suit and all that kind of thing was pushed to the back of the coach somewhere. I didn’t see that again. It was only a few minutes before I saw Charlie, the one that had pushed me out the aircraft coming towards us and he was come in to the coach and we went, went -
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
Yeah Charlie went to get on the coach we went to shake hands with each other but that didn’t last and we didn’t really shake hands because my guard, one of my guards hit me across the wrist with his, with the butt of his rifle and Charlie just looked at me. He had scratches on his face which were bleeding a bit. Nothing too severe and he had the same treatment as I did. A strip search and we weren’t allowed to talk to each other. He sat in the middle of the bus and we was about to move off when Taffy turned up, the bomb aimer, with his two, couple of guards. We didn’t shake hands knowing that we’d get another hit across the wrist and he was searched and put in the back of the bus and we were then driven to some army quarters which we assumed was a local barracks. There we were put into a big dining hall or assembly hall and facing a door. Charlie was on the left hand side of Taffy, Taffy in the middle and I was on his right and we stood there for a number of minutes. We couldn’t talk because being warned that microphones or things might have ears, and they’d listen to what we were saying. All of a sudden the door opened and a big tall German officer stood in the doorway. Taffy started falling, falling forwards and we grabbed him, both of us so that he wouldn’t fall and the voice said, ‘It’s alright Taffy,’ and he raised his hand. He said, ‘It’s alright Taffy. The war for you is over.’ And nobody said anything and Taffy was by this time standing upright again and the chap disappeared and we never saw him again. We were eventually marched out from the building all along the canal bank or at least it was a towpath. I assumed it was the canal or a river and to our left the houses were all burning and people shouting and screaming. We were being hit with pitchforks and broom handles all across the backs and the two guards were trying to protect us from them which they did and we were very grateful actually to them for that and we finally got to these, some more barracks. We assumed they were barracks and -
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
FH: Yeah. We eventually arrived in some army barracks and were put in to a cell, the three of us together and there was only one bench along one wall which we sat on looking at each other and not saying anything, the fear of perhaps a microphone being placed and we just sat there. We eventually had a cup of very black coffee brought in to us and the following morning, oh we spent the night sitting on this bench trying to sleep but I don’t think we got much. Anyhow, the following morning we were brought in a slice of black bread which was horrible but later on we got used to eating it and it wasn’t bad but the first bite was ugh we didn’t like it at all.
DM: I have to just ask did you have your teeth with you? Did you have your -?
FH: No.
DM: You didn’t. No.
FH: No. No teeth and during that day or later in the day we had another cup of coffee brought in and one of the guards, the chap that came in spoke English and we had a conversation and he said, ‘We, we shouldn’t be fighting each other. We should be fighting the Russians together.’ Anyhow, we didn’t see any more of him and the following day, the following morning we were, we started our journey to Dulag Luft which is the main interrogation centre for air crew. It was quite a long train journey. I can’t remember the exact days it took us but it was, as we got on the way one guard that Taffy was sitting with went to sleep and the other one soon nodded off and Charlie was close to the guard, saying nothing to anybody just fiddled about and took the revolver or Luger out from the holster of the German’s strap he had around his waist, looked at the Luger and there was no bullets in it. A little relief but nothing, no words were spoken and we, I don’t know to this day what made Charlie do it or why. He, nothing was ever said about it afterwards. Anyhow, we arrived at Dulag Luft and that was the first time that we’d been separated and we were actually on our own. How close we were to each other in the cells I don’t know but it was a very strange feeling being alone in a foreign country not knowing anybody or be able to speak to anybody. After a while a Yankee voice was, I heard as though he was coming from the next building, next room and he said he had a gangrene foot and was calling the Germans all names but I didn’t answer because it could have been a stooge you know. We’d been warned so many times about these things that took place but anyhow finally after, I don’t know, I think I was in Dulag Luft about a fortnight but most of the time spent on my own in this cell being tortured as I put it because right next door was the loos and if one wanted to use them they had to drop an arm, pull a little cord and the arm would drop down outside and warn the guards that was up and down the passageway that they, they were needed. Now arriving in the loo the tap was dripping and I went to get a drink and wash my hands, sent away. You weren’t allowed to wash your hands after using the toilets or have a drink and believe me that was real torture that tap dripping day and night, day and night. It was horrible. Anyhow, eventually I was called out and taken outside of the building along what I call a, it was a pathway along the edge of a parade ground and then they took me down, down some stairs and in this room which was quite a large one underground and it had doors all the way along which I assumed was individual cells and I had to stand in the doorway of one of these that was open and in front of me there was a clock and two German officers come through, stood in front of me, one with a Luger and the other started asking questions and asking where, what happened on the squadron before I left and about the briefing and how many aircraft was taking off. All that kind of thing. I didn’t answer. Just my rank and name which annoyed them and they kept pressing this lever on the Luger, the chap did, which I assumed was the safety, safety lever and I was three quarters of an hour I was standing there thinking, ‘Well, why don’t you pull it?’ At the same time thinking in my own mind nobody knows whether you’re alive or dead. So what. And I remember that even now I can see, see myself in that room. But eventually they said, ‘You’re too young to die now Sergeant Hooker. Go back to your cell.’ And it was quite a relief actually to walk back in to a cell and be on my own. Funny thing to say and think no doubt but that’s what it was. Anyhow, the following morning the door opened and I was marched out again. This time to an office a few doors along. ‘Oh good morning Sergeant Hooker. Have a cigarette.’ ‘No thank you.’ ‘Take a seat.’ ‘No thank you. I’ll stand.’ ‘Please yourself.’ We had been warned that this kind of thing again took place and he started asking questions again eventually ringing a bell and another chap came in with a book and he started flicking through the pages of this book and in the end he’d flicked through the pages and named every place I’d been to from the squadron backwards to when I joined up. Even naming Dipley as the place I was born which I was absolutely flabbergasted with and I thought well none of my crew knew I was born in Dipley. They knew I’d lived in Hartley Wintney but didn’t actually know I was born in the hamlet of Dipley so I thought well they can’t have spoken and told the Germans. Anyhow, he said, ‘You see sergeant we know all about you so what’s the point in killing you? You’d better go back to your cell and we’ll send you with others to a main prison camp.’ Can you for a minute.
[Recording paused]
FH: Yeah. We was, I was sent back to my cell a little relieved. Still not knowing how long I was going to be in this cell on my own. Was brought in some food. Another slice of this dark bread and coffee. The following morning the door opened, ‘Come out. You’re moving.’ And as I walked down the passageway so I could see the rest of my crew and several other chaps.
DM: When you say the rest of your crew -
FH: Well when I, yeah -
DM: How many survived? How many?
FH: I say and the rest of my crew that survived the aircraft. Unfortunately my pilot and my very good friend Leslie, the tail gunner didn’t survive the aircraft when it crashed but it was a pleasure to see then the rest of the crew and these two strangers who seemed to be on their own. They palled up together and stood together and Charlie and myself spoke with them. One was a flight engineer and the other one was a sergeant and we was all put on a train to go to a camp called Bankau in Poland which at the time we didn’t realise was in Poland. We was told we was going to Luft 7 and, which took several days train journey with no food but Charlie and myself spoke with Frank Meade the engineer and the tail gunner Tommy Beech and we stayed pals right throughout our prison life actually and when we finally arrived at Bankau we were walked from the station to the camp and there was this barbed wire fence right the way around. We could see, it seemed to be for miles but inside all we could see at first was a load of garden sheds. Rows and rows of them. And after being photographed and I think we had a couple of photographs taken which was, turned out to be for identity cards we were informed afterwards and then waiting outside for I’d say about a half hour we were eventually allowed into these, amongst these huts which held about six or eight people and no, no windows in the huts if I remember right but we was, had to sleep on the floor in these huts or sheds as we called them, garden sheds but fortunately Charlie and myself managed to stay together and Frank and Tommy they were in the same shed which, we didn’t get much sleep at night because first one wanted to use the loo which was the old drop of the arm again. Sometimes the guards would take notice of it and sometimes they’d make you wait and anyhow eventually a number of weeks after we were put in to proper billets as we called them. They were huts similar to the English military huts with, divided in to rooms and each room catered for eight, eight chaps. We lost touch, Charlie and I lost touch with our bomb aimer, navigator and wireless operator in this time and, but Frank and Tommy stayed with us and we had two tiered bunks so Charlie and I was on one bunk and the rest of them, there was a New Zealand pilot, two Canadians. What was the other one? Two Canadians, a New Zealand pilot, I forget who the, what the other one was and the four of us but anyway we, we got on very very well together and after a day or so we decided to, that whatever rations we got from the Germans we’d put, would pool into one bowl ‘cause we each had a, been given a small bowl and a knife and fork, or fork and spoon I think it was so that we could eat our soup which was rather a mixture. Sometimes it would be what we called whispering grass. It looked like grass been boiled up. Another time it was cheese which tasted of fish and as you bit it it was like chewing gum as you pulled it out your mouth to break it along with a slice of their dark bread but anyway we decided share it and the Red Cross parcels which we had very few of but sometimes we had a whole parcel for oneself which was very rare. Normally one parcel between four and it was all pooled and shared out evenly and we made quite decent little meals from the tins of meat and mashed potato but had we had our own parcel we felt that we’d open a tin of meat, everybody would open a tin of meat and just eat that whereas if we shared it we’d have a slice or two of meat, a bit of potato or dried egg mixed up. We thought it would work out better, the rations. Which in our opinion it did and we was quite pleased and we, the eight of us got on very well together. The times, day time there was a mass of people marching or walking all the way around the perimeter track for exercise. It was quite a sight. Some in clothing that had been issued, I forgot to say that we went to a transit camp first before going on to the main camp where we were, had a good shower and a good meal and issue of a Red Cross case which contained clothes. Fresh new underwear, pullovers, socks etcetera cigarettes and we shared this food all together when we was in Bankau but the, pardon me. During the daytime we used to walk all the way around the perimeter track for exercise and perhaps meet up with strangers and have a chat and because we were free to speak there although there were guards patrolling around the inside of the camp but you kept your eye open you could talk freely and it was during this time that we discovered from Charlie, no, not Charlie, from Taffy our bomb aimer how he knew this chap that stood in the doorway and spoke and apparently in 1938 he was working with, in a factory in South Wales with Taffy and they got on well together apparently and not knowing that he was a German, in early part of ‘39 he left to take up a job in Cambridge which they thought nothing more about you know. One moved on in their life. He had no idea he was a German until he saw him standing in that doorway which you know absolutely shocked him and he couldn’t explain any more about it, you know. But that was one big shock to all three of us actually that day. Walking around as I say for entertainment and exercise was something we done each day besides perhaps playing a game of cards which we did manage to get hold of a packet of cards, playing cards, when we was in the room but failing that life was quite boring until in the early part of, well until the Christmas time, I suppose, 1944 being our first Christmas in the camp we all thought of Christmas at home, Christmas puddings etcetera so we decided to have our own Christmas pudding which what we done we saved the crusts off the bread each day for several days so we just ate the bread. We saved the stones from the prunes that was in the Red Cross parcels. We cracked them open and cut up the kernels, we cut up the dried fruit that was in the parcel as well and the prunes, a few prunes, mixed it with the dried milk powder and margarine. A little bit of cheese was put in to it and margarine and it was all mixed up together and we had a what we called a blower stove which was made up out of empty tins and another tin with a little bit of fuel in which, wood shavings or whatever we could find and we turned the handle and turned a fan, make a fan, blow the flames and we cooked this concoction up for quite a while and it turned out to be very solid so when it was emptied out the tin it was just a solid lump of mixture but the taste was beautiful. We each had a couple of slices, each of the eight of us and we had a cream which we made out of the klim, klim milk, dried milk, mixed it all up and it was delicious and we celebrated our first Christmas away from home as you might say, with this pudding. It was delicious. It really was.
[Recording paused]
FH: After that of course or during that time we could hear gunfire in the distance which we assumed was the Russians advancing on the German line because we, there was a radio in the camp unbeknown to Germans of course and we were kept up to date with what was going on with the war and a chap used to come around and everybody was on guard, you know, different schemes each day to, so the Germans didn’t know anything about it you know and little messages were read out to groups of people of what was happening in the war but eventually we were informed that we were being moved out from the camp so the Russians wouldn’t, wouldn’t kills us and the Germans would look after us, with a smile from everybody. But the first time we was ordered out on parade I think it was, I’m not sure if it was the 17th or 18th of January but we stood on the parade from 3 o’clock in the morning for several hours in the snow and blizzard just with the, we had two blankets which we had in the hut which were wrapped around us trying to keep us warm and we had our little Red Cross cases with a little bit of food in that we’d shared out when we knew we were on the move and the clothing we, we had on, you know. A couple of pullovers and a couple of pairs of socks and that kind of thing. But anyhow on the 19th of January we were called out again early in the morning and I think it was about 8 o’clock, I’m not too sure, we were started out on this forced march. The Germans not even knowing where they were taking us. Just told to march in a certain direction. Then of course the march didn’t last long. It was just an amble of walking both by the German guards and ourselves and we was put in to an old brickyard to have a rest later in the day and we managed to find somewhere to sleep, the four of us, that’s Charlie, myself, Frank and Tommy and we covered ourselves with the blankets to keep warm. 8 o’clock in the evening we were ordered to get up, go on a night march which wasn’t very pleasing and we sort of hung about in the brickyard and most of the chaps had gone by this time out on the road and something made one of us move some pallets that were stacked up. We don’t know why. Nobody said anything but we all crept in behind these pallets and pulled them back in position thinking we wouldn’t be found but unfortunately a sniffer dog with a guard just saw the pallets move, apparently. We learned this afterwards and so the guard pulled them out and out we had to go. Fortunately the dog was kept away from us and we were just ordered out whereas he could have shot us there and then but at that time the hundred and, what was there, twelve hundred chaps that had left the previous camp were out, all lined up and we were marched to the front of the queue or almost to the front of the queue where the leaders of the Germans and the leaders of the camp were all standing ready to move off which was, turned out to be a very terrible night for us. We marched and marched and the snow seemed to get deeper and deeper. Eventually we were actually up to our waist in snow trying to get through it and of course the marching had ceased by that time, we, it was just an amble and people was passing and others were trying to get in, you know in to the walkway that the leaders were making. Had a photograph been taken I would have loved to have had one of it but no and during the night we were informed through the, and seemed to go right through the whole column of men that if we didn’t get over the river Oder by 8 o’clock in the morning we’d be left to the mercy of the Russians and how this came about I don’t know but we, we got the message and by this time loads of people were in front of us and we, all of a sudden the four of us woke up sitting on our cases. Nobody else in sight. What happened I don’t know but we must have sat down for a rest and everybody else had passed by and of course by this time the snow was flat as a pancake where twelve hundred people had gone over it, you know and who came around first or who moved first I don’t know. I don’t think either of us did but we eventually I remember all four of us standing there. I can see them now or see us now there. Standing. Looking. And we just took over, we, while we was in the brickyard we’d broken up a ladder and made a little sledge several, which several other chaps had a part of and put our cases on and we was pulling it along which helped us as we all linked arms, the four of us walking along you might say like kids linking arms and we had this sledge pulling our four cases on. Anyway, eventually, how many hours after I don’t know but eventually we caught up with the tail end of the -
Dublin Core
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Interview with Fred Hooker. One
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-05-25
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Sound
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AHookerFJ160525
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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.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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02:18:06 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
South Africa
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Oberursel
Poland
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1945-01-19
Description
An account of the resource
The interview begins with some details of Fred’s life before being called up for service, including that his brother became a prisoner of the Japanese captured Hong Kong. Fred joined the Boy Scouts aged 11 years, and then the Air Training Corp when it was formed in 1941.
He volunteered as aircrew, in 1941 but failed the assessment test on his first attempt. He passed on his second try and went to Bridgenorth for his Initial Wing Training. After progressing through Yatesbury, Sheerness, and Bridlington he was posted to No. 7 Air Gunnery School and was successful at becoming an air gunner.
After ‘crewing up’, and further training which took them to various bases in the UK, they took part in operations to bomb Holland, were diverted to an American Airbase in extremely bad weather, bombed the Ruhr valley, and on 11 September 1944 they were hit by flak.
Fred goes on to describe having to bale out of his aircraft. He was picked up by the Germans and made to board a coach together with his flight engineer and bomb aimer. Fred was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Poland and describes life there together with the value of Red Cross food and clothing parcels. A hidden radio kept the prisoners current with the progress of the war.
The Germans moved the POWs out of the camp before the Russians could advance too close and they were marched through heavy snow and sometimes at night. Fred’s small group of friends tried to escape but were caught and made to continue the march.
Contributor
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Claire Campbell
102 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
animal
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
briefing
crewing up
debriefing
Dulag Luft
faith
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
perimeter track
prisoner of war
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Dishforth
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Pocklington
RAF Stormy Down
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
Wellington
-
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f58b4328900a069c100a861075be870a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/485/8369/ABurchettHF160222.2.mp3
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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
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Burchett, Horace
Horace Frank Burchett
H F Burchett
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Burchett, HF
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Horace Burchett (1809758 Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Horace Burchett and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell, the interviewee is Horace Burchett. The interview is taking place at Mr Burchett’s home at Turnbridge Wells, Kent on Monday the 22nd of February 2016. Ok Mr Burchett, off we go.
HB. I joined the RAF as a PNB, Pilot, Navigator and Bomb Aimer but was remustered as Flight Engineer possibly because my navigation wasn’t good enough [laugh] and was then, went to Number 4 SOTT, RAF St Athan for Engineering training, and having passed out there on the 2nd of August 1944, I went, was sent to an eh, further training, Heavy Conversion Training [unclear]. Then went from there to 1654 Conversion Unit which was at Wigsley in Nottinghamshire, and from there we were crewed up, and I was crewed up with an Australian Squadron, and the Pilot then was Flight Sergeant Belford, and they were an Australian Crew with the exception of myself, the Engineer and the Mid Upper Gunner. After the passing out at Wigsley, we then went to Number 5 LFS, Lancaster Finishing School, and the Pilot was then promoted to Pilot Officer Belford and we did training there as a crew, complete crew. We did flying time there, we actually only did about five hours flying time there on Lancasters before we joined 463 Squadron at Waddington and we did some more flight, some more training at Waddington and our first Operation was on the 30th of October 1944, it was then Flying Officer Belford, the first Operation was at Warten [unclear], which was a three hour operation, and then we carried on doing, doing a normal sequence of operations such as Dusseldorf, Dortmund Emms, Hamburg, Harburg and Dusseldorf. Never did Berlin and em, Earthen, Gardenia, which was a long one into, almost into Poland. Pollicks, which was another long trip and on one of those we, we were diverted and returned to Skellingthorpe which was quite often happening then through fog conversion, eh problems being diverted. One of the places we were quite often diverted was at em, Ford in em, on the South Coast and eh, there were also fog dispersal domes where we were, one was at Woodbridge [looking through papers].
DM. Whatever you want to tell me. Going back a bit, what made you join, join the RAF, why, why did you choose the RAF?
HB. Well my cousin who was in the RAF, and I was in the ATC, so the natural thing was to go to the RAF. Which it wasn’t, it wasn’t easy to get in the RAF actually at the time. I know they wanted a lot but you, you had to be of a certain standard to get into the RAF. And eh, we did quite a bit of training still, even though we was on a Squadron, there was quite a lot of training taking place and all I can say is, we did a tour, it was a tour of twenty nine operations, it was a screened tour. They considered we’d had enough after we were shot down at Bohlen, and we also had quite a number of conflicts with night fighters. So as I say, it was considered we’d had enough, give us a rest and it was at that time it was coming up to the Japanese eh, bombing and we may well, may all well have been sent as a crew, but the crew was split up and the Tiger Force was formed. I was only, I was sent to the Far East eh, to India and Singapore which was as a back up crew for the Tiger Force but never anything happened, the War finished. And then I had quite a good life in, a few years in India and Singapore living on the land [laugh].
DM. So when you were flying your twenty nine missions, was there anything that you particularly remember, anything that sticks in your mind over anything else or?
HB. Well eh, Bohlen, we were shot at once and some of them were ten hour trips, it was quite kind of operation. It was quite a way to travel in a noisy Lancaster and of course, another one was the fighters there was [unclear], we got chased around by fighters quite a bit. They were getting quite efficient at getting into the bomber stream.
DM. So I guess you must of lost quite a few people from the Squadron in your time?
HB. Oh, yes, yes, yes I mean for a Squadron, it was not uncommon for one or sometimes four aircraft not to return.
DM. But you always made it back?
HB. But we always made it back, yeah, fortunately [laugh.] It was a struggle sometimes, nearly every time the aircraft sustained some damage, very minor.
DM. So did you ever have to use your Flight Engineer skills particularly to get the plane back, or ?
HB. Well yes, such as feathering the engines and eh, changing over the fuel tanks a bit rapidly to flying on three engines and such. That was some of engineers duties was changing the fuel tanks and eh, and logging all the fuels so that we, you knew how much fuel you got in each tank.
DM. How, can you remember how you used to feel, you know, before, before you went off on a mission?
HB. Apprehensive but there was always so much to do, a lot of people would say, you know “on an operation, were you scared?” Well yes, everybody was scared, but the thing was that you had so much to do, you didn’t have time to worry about that, always something going on.
DM. When you, you mentioned about when you were crewed up, how did that happen, how did that come about?
HB. We were, you say, we were all in a room, several of us in a room together and we just looked around, talked to different people and they would say “oh, ah, you want a crew, come with us and we’re looking for an engineer” and it is alleged that the navigator said to the pilot, when he looked around when we first went into the room, looked around and said “oh, they are all bloody Brits” [laugh] they were engineers, the engineers were all Brits.
DM. Oh right, so all the engineers were all Brits, they didn’t train any Australians?
HB. Em. No,not to my knowledge anyway.
DM. And all your training was in England?
HB. In England, yeah.
DM. But not everybody on the Flight I assume
HB. Oh no, a lot of them were trained in Canada.
DM. Because engineers, I think, were only trained in England, you never got to go?
HB. No we never got to go.
DM. When you joined up, were you hoping to be a pilot originally, was that the plan?
HB. Well yes everybody wanted to be a pilot, to tell you the truth, I mean everybody wanted to be a pilot and everybody wanted to be a Spitfire Pilot [laugh] you know, one interviewee [unclear], he was interviewed for a documentary and he said, “of course, I was sent over here from Canada having got my wings, well they said to me, what are you going to fly? And I said oh, Spitfires he said and they offered me Lancasters and Lancasters and Lancasters”.
DM. So you also said, that when, when so obviously you, you got picked for Bomber Command, you didn’t pick Bomber Command, you were told you were going in Bomber Command.
HB. Yeah, yeah.
DM. But when you couldn’t be a pilot, the next choice was a navigator?
HB. Navigator, yes, yes. And of course the number of engineers eh, perhaps with a bit of pilot skills were eh, engineers, flight engineers.
DM. Did anybody ever get seriously wounded in your plane?
HB. The two gunners did get wounded, one in the eye and one of them in the body. In fact em, the wireless operator was giving him morphine for the pain because we carried morphine bottles.
DM. So apart from the aftermath of those things, did you keep the same crew right the way through?
HB. The same crew all the way through, yeah.
DM. So you must have been pretty close?
HB. Yeah, yes to the last few ops after the Bohlen incident, we did have other gunners, other people trained as gunners, but the rest of crew remained the same, wireless operator, navigator, pilot, flight engineer, bomb aimer were all the same.
DM. So what happened in the Bohlen incident.
HB. Well we were, got hit in the wing, wreckage in one wing, starboard wing before we got to the target to jettison the bombs. Tried to get back home but it meant juggling with fuel and such because with three engines and one engine out and we managed to eventually, with good navigation from the navigator to get to Juvincourt in France, which is near Rheims. Rheims is a front line area then and the navigator, what a marvellous job he did with a lot of the instruments out, and he managed to get us to Juvincourt.
DM. Was it on that mission that the gunners were injured?
HB. Yes, yes.
DM. Was that a night fighter or flak or ?
HB. Flak, em.
DM. So you landed at Juvincourt, how did you get home?
HB. Brought home by another aircraft, the aircraft was written off. We had just about enough fuel to land there and that was it.
DM. So a few years earlier and you would have been a prisoner of war.
HB. Yeah, yeah.
DM. Before you, how old were you before you actually went into the Air Force?
HB. At the time I was seventeen.
DM. Right, so did you come straight from College or had you been working?
HB. No, I had about a year working.
DM. What were you doing?
HB. I was working at Rockfield Mottson in Turnbridge Wells, it was a munitions factory at the time.
DM. Right, so you didn’t actually, well would that be an engineering background, was that why they picked you as an engineer.
HB. Engineer, yes.
DM. Because of your background there and after the war, when you were out in the Far East, what were you actually doing?
HB. Nothing really, I was with an RAF Regiment Squadron doing nothing [laugh] and that was it.
DM. Did you do any flying?
HB. No didn’t do any flying out there at all.
DM. So your log books empty for that time out there.
HB. That’s right, yeah. I didn’t even fly home, I flew out there and I didn’t fly home, came home on a boat.
DM. And so you came back in forty?
HB. Forty seven.
DM. Forty seven, and that’s when you were demobbed, you didn’t, didn’t have the choice to stay in?
HB. Could have stayed in, only one thing with staying in, you almost always lost all your rank.
DM. One thing you said, the pilot, he was promoted to pilot officer, then he was promoted to flying officer, were the rest of you all sergeants?
HB. Yes.
DM. So obviously he was in a different Mess to you, but I guess you still mixed.
HB. We all mixed, yeah,
DM. Down the pub?
HB. Down the pub, yeah, the Horse and Jockey.
DM. Horse and Jockey, and that’s Waddington I presume?
HB. That’s Waddington.
DM. Were you, were you, when you, when you came out you would have been how old when you came out of the Air Force, about twenty one, twenty two?
HB. Twenty One yeah. Yeah.
DM. Did you go back to work, obviously didn’t go back to work in a munitions factory, so I don’t suppose it was working the munitions factory then?
HB. I went to work in a car factory, motor engineers.
DM. And where was that.
HB. That was in Tunbridge Wells.
DM. And had you met your wife during the war?
HB. Prior to the war, before the war, well, just the beginning of the war
DM. So I suppose when you had your leave, you came back to Turnbridge Wells.
HB. Yeah, Yeah.
DM. Going back, if you think about the Bohlen Incident and work you had to do then running the fuel [unclear], do you think the training was fit for purpose, did that help you with what you had to do or?
HB. Yes, the training and discipline was a great help, because you got the discipline of doing the right thing and you knowing what the other people were going to do. Being together for a long while and being trained together, you knew what the other members of the crew were virtually going to do.
DM. So a real team.
HB. Emm, emm.
DM. And was the pilot, he was the boss, obviously, he was the captain. Being Australian I imagine he wasn’t too bossy, or was he?
HB. No, no [laugh] no, no. Generally on the aircraft, the pilot was the boss, the skipper, there were occasions when they weren’t but very few.
DM. Do you remember on any of your flights, did you have any extra bods flying with you?
HB. Once and that was actually on the Bohlem, he was a trainee pilot.
DM. So that was his baptism of fire.
HB. That was what they did eh, a new crew member, captain of the new crew did an operation with an experienced crew before he took his own crew over.
DM. It didn’t put him off.
HB. It didn’t, no I don’t think so
DM. When you came out at the end of the war, how difficult was it to sort of transition back into normal working life, working in a car factory.
HB. It wasn’t very difficult really, it wasn’t very difficult. I got all the people I knew and I was offered, offered a job, I didn’t have to go looking for a job.
DM. Did you miss it?
HB. What the service life? Yes, yes.
DM. I suppose it was difficult, certainly initially, to keep in touch because everyone else apart from the one upper gunner had gone back to Australia.
HB. Yes, yeah we didn’t get in touch with each other until quite a long while afterwards. And then I heard on the radio one morning eh, I forget what his name was, one of the producers there, said that Harold Brookes, Coventry was looking for members of 467, 463 Australian Squadrons. Would they contact him if they were interested and that was the start of the reunions in England.
DM. Do you remember what year that was?
HB. Oh no [Laugh].
DM. Sorry, about twenty years later, something like that in the sixties, something like that?
HB. Yeah.
DM. And so they would come over here sometimes I suppose?
HB. Yes, some of them have been over.
DM. And you have been over there?
HB. And I have been over there.
DM. How many times have you been over there?
HB. I have been over twice.
DM. The gunner who wasn’t Australian, where was he from?
HB. Essex.
DM. Essex right, Essex boy and did you keep in touch with him?
HB. Yes I kept in touch with him for a while, but we didn’t really keep in touch a lot with him, he sort of drifted off.
DM. You mentioned when we were talking before, that one of the raids you were on was Dresden which became controversial.
HB: Notorious.
DM. How do you feel or how did you feel perhaps before now about how Bomber Command were treated after the war? The regard, or lack of regard.
HB. It was lack of regard, I probably should not mention too much about him, but Bomber Harris was given a real raw deal. The others were getting all the attention but Bomber Harris was pushed aside, he went to South Africa I think.
DM.Because it was politically incorrect ….
HB. Yes, Churchill authorised and wanted these Bombing Raids to be done. After it was all finished, he didn’t want to know anything about it.
DM. How did that make you feel.
HB. Well, we were wasting our time [laugh].
DM. And you went to the dedication of the Memorial at Green Park, so that must have been good, that was better.
HB. Yes, yes, oh yes, people were beginning to appreciate it.
DM. At that time I suppose, better late than never, better late than never. At that time and I think you were saying you went to the dedication of the new Spire up in Lincoln, I’ve not seen that, what did you think of it?
HB. Well it is a marvellous thing, it is not finished by a long way, but what there is been done. And we did find my cousins name on the plaque at the Spire.
DM. So your crew how many of them are still alive apart from yourself, obviously?
HB. One.
DM. And which one is that?
HB. That’s the tail gunner.
DM. Was he the one that was shot in the eye, or got flak in the eye?
HB. Yes.
DM. Do you keep in touch with him.
HB. Keep in touch with him, he is the one I keep in touch with.
DM. I know the answer to this but it would be nice for you to say a bit about family life after the war, what you know about children and things like that. What, what you life’s been like since the war. When did you get married?
HB. Nineteen forty seven.
DM. And what about children?
HB. Two children, they are getting on now, one of them has actually retired, the other is in her fifties, I have a son and a daughter.
DM. After the, after the war, so you came back and you were working in the car place, what other jobs, did you stay there for the whole of your career or did you do other things as well?
HB. No, jobs, the last job I did was working for award and mobility services, which was with people who deal with mobility aids and I was working specifically on overhead hoists and exteriors.
DM. Do you think the time you spent in the Air Force changed you as a person?
HB. I think so, a lot of us, we virtually lost our youth. We went from leaving college as a man and that was it. Overnight almost from a young boy to a man.
DM. And afterwards, do you think it stood you in good stead, made you better able to cope with things?
HB. Oh yes, it was a good thing actually, taught a lot in the RAF. It is an excellent School of Technical Training and learnt a lot there, a lot about aircraft that I didn’t know before.
DM. You have had a hankering to carry on flying?
HB. Well yes I would like to carry on flying, actually I had a hankering to carry on flying civilly but then it was so expensive, couldn’t afford it. One thing which was really a good education was the fact that I was crewed with an Australian crew, it was really fantastic to be with the Aussies, they were fine old chaps. Their people talk about what rough and ready Australians are. They were, it was a real experience and education to be with them, of course, and to be with them after the war. I have visited them, a ready found family and being in a Lancaster as a flight engineer next door to the pilot, is almost like a brother. You work together, you go to work together, you knew what the other one was going to do. As I said before, the discipline and the training, it brought you all together. It was a fantastic thing, really a fantastic period in life. To have been in the same, Bomber Command crew, no doubt Coastal Command crews are the same, but the Bomber Command crew was a fan, fan, fantastic experience.
DM. Went through a lot of adversity together, so you must have been very close.
HB. Yeah.
DM. So you, you didn’t choose an Australian Squadron, you were told you…
HB. No I didn’t choose it, I was crewed up and when we crewed up, it was the Australians that said, ‘right, we got a pilot and navigator, what we need is an engineer [unclear] and it happened.
DM. Do you know, I mean obviously you only flew with Australians, but have you ever, do you know how it made a difference from all British or all Canadian crews or whatever?
HB. I think all the crews generally, you know comradeship and working together [cough], excuse me, you know the Bomber crew was something. Well it was different, different from any other organisation, put it that way.
DM.Unique.
HB. Emm yes, yes. Something special there.
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-02-22
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Sound
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ABurchettHF160222, ABurchettHF1602
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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
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Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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00:27:17 audio recording
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Vivienne Tincombe
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Interview with Horace Burchett
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Horace Burchett joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 17 and rose to the rank of Flight Engineer, serving in an all Austrailian Squadron at 1654 Conversion Unit in Wiglsely in Northamptonshire.
Posted to 463 Squadron at Waddington, still with the same crew, flying his first operation on the 30th October 1944.
Horace flew 29 missions, including targets such as Dusseldoft, Dortmund Emms, Hamburg, Harburg and Dresden.
He tells of his experiences over Bohlen and the damage that was inflicted on his Lancaster, and the casualities within his own crew.
Horace married in 1947 and had 2 children After coming out of the Royal Air Force at the age of 21, he then went to work in a car factory at Tunbridge Wells, and after several changes of jobs, finally left work after working with a Mobility Services company, working on overhead hosts and exteriors.
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
1654 HCU
463 Squadron
aircrew
crewing up
fear
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster Finishing School
memorial
military ethos
RAF St Athan
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/478/8360/PBrookM1702.1.jpg
2a32cca0ab606686d2c94b2637f9bf3f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/478/8360/ABrookM170109.1.mp3
00850afc35764d56bc92548f6dbdcad0
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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Brook, Maurice
Dr Maurice Brook
M Brook
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Brook, M
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Maurice Brook (1640523 Royal Air Force), his memoir and a squadron photograph. He flew operations as a navigator with 625 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Maurice Brook and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The Interviewer is David Meanwell, the Interviewee is Mr Maurice Brook and interview is taking place at Mr Brooks’ home in Dorking, Surrey, and today is Monday the 9th of January 2017. If you could start off perhaps by saying a bit about where you were born, grew up and educated, and a bit about your family perhaps.
MB. If you want to be strictly accurate, I suppose it is Doctor Brook, but that’s -
DM. I beg your pardon.
MB. Well I grew up in Yorkshire, went to school in Rothwell, er Rothwell Grammar School and er, to use Rob Wiltons phrase, the day, the day war broke out I was still at school, and I remember our neighbour saying to my mother, ‘well at least your boys too young to be affected’, and how wrong she proved to be because that was 1939, the first year of the war, we were soon into 1940. We had an Air Training Corps formed at school, there was no summer holiday. School stayed open, the boys were spending time with the headmaster at his house learning to shoot, with a view to providing defence as it were. But um, and then we started getting rifles from America on the lease lend I suppose, and we were emptying rifles that were all in grease and degreasing them and making them work. That was a sort of school boy activity for the summer. Er, the eh, then of course we had Dunkirk, and we had wounded, we had a hospital nearby and so wounded soldiers were there, and they used to bring them over to school in the afternoons and the girls used to give them tea and so on. It was a mixed school by the way. And then um, the RAF started a bursary scheme. I got to be a sergeant in the Air Training Corps by then and the scheme was, you could apply for a bursary when you were seventeen, and I managed to persuade my father to sign the forms to sign up for this, and I managed to win a bursary to Christ College Cambridge. Went there when I was under eighteen actually, the condition was that er, you attended the university course for a year. It was a war time year which was of course not the full twelve months, because there was no vacations and you had to be a member of the University Air Squadron, and in effect we did initial flying training during the University Air Squadron period. So I was there and er, we had the Commanding Officer of the Cambridge University Air Squadron was the headmaster of the Lease School at Cambridge, so he had sort of two hats. I suppose we were being taught to be gentlemen or something. Quite amusingly, after the war when I got my, some of my RAF records, I found what the Commanding Officer of the Air Squadron had said about me when I moved on, and er, he said I was rough diamond but I responded well to training [laugh] and I suppose what he meant was, I got quite a strong Yorkshire accent and that sort of, and that menial was not on. Anyway, from the University Air Squadron, I went to the RAF proper and we were moved to Canada for the next stage of training, went to London, Ontario, in the winter, really cold weather and the airfield, the pilots were all civilian pilots. The Instructors were Royal Canadian Air Force instructors, the er, pilots were amazingly good, they would just do what they were told even though it was wrong, even to the extent of running danger. Sometimes people would overfly the Great Lakes because they got the navigation wrong and the pilots would do it and not turn a hair, and of course would have to land in America and come back. Er, I was very impressed actually by the training, it was very thorough, and er, um, in subsequent years the fact that we had a good training in astronavigation, which seemed to be useless at the time, proved to be very valuable as you learn. The er, eventually we graduated, navigators, and I was commissioned in the Royal Canadian Air Force, then had a months leave when I could explore the United States. Back to England, landing at Liverpool and being met by a military band and in both directions, both going out and coming back, we went on big liners like the Aquitania and the Andes, not in convoy but just singly, just zig zagging at high speed across the ocean and er, we had to do drill on board. You know, a cannon, a loose so that you could do some fighting back if a U-boat surfaced, but we made it both ways successfully. Er, Liverpool to Harrogate which was the aircrew reception centre, where most of the hotels had been taken over by aircrew, and I had a temporary job in the post office for a time sorting out missing mail. I can’t remember how long I was, I wasn’t there very long, then up to the advanced flying training unit in Millholme in Cumberland. Because of course, in Canada, although you were taught the rudiments of navigation, there were no black outs, so you could look out and see the illuminated towns. Although you might misinterpret what you were seeing, at least you, you could see towns, but in Millholme and so on, you were working in black out conditions, and also there was the Isle of Man and the Lake District with high mountains which put people on their metal, and ‘cause more than once aircraft crashed into them through not having enough height. That was the initial experience of black out flying and er, in the daytime it was really wonderful, the experience of climbing up through the clouds into the sunshine was one of the exhilarating moments, er, in a young mans life. What I was, what I was only nineteen then and er, where did we go from Millholme, Millholme to operational training units in Husbands Bosworth and there we were brought together, all different aircrew. The first day after we all got settled in, you were in a big mess hall and you just left together and the instructions were to sort yourselves out into crews. There was no sort of detailed selection process and that. I was one of those people that liked to watch what was happening rather than take the initiative, but it wasn’t very long before a rather dapper looking young man, well not young man, he was a middle aged man actually came. He was a commissioned bomb aimer, and said ‘had I got any crew yet?’ and I said ‘no’, he said well he’d tied up with a pilot and would I join them as a navigator? All right, you look all right. And then I met the pilot, Peter, and he seemed all right. He was a young man like me, very young actually, and er, what else did we have in the crew, oh a wireless operator and two gunners. The gunners were survivors of a previous crash and all the rest of the crew had been killed except them and of course it wasn’t uncommon, the, the accident rate in training was quite high. So having formed a crew, we were put onto Wellingtons for quite a long period of training on Wellingtons. And we, and we had the first of the electronic equipment I had as a navigator, a thing called Gee, where you had blip, blips on a screen and transmission stations in the Country sending out signals and you were given special maps, and where the lines intersected you should be able to plot your position exactly. If you were in this country you could, but as you moved further away from Britain of course, the lines, angles became more and more distorted and then the Germans began to jam it so it became very difficult. We completed our operational training reasonably well but we weren’t happy with the pilot, Peter, who was, he was, how can I put it? He was over anxious, he was over stressed, he wasn’t in charge of himself let alone a crew and an example, at take off, we were all wearing oxygen masks but you didn’t have oxygen on at ground level, but he would leave his mask dangling and the microphone was in the oxygen mask and he didn’t switch it off. So when we took off down the runway, the noise of the engines was amplified through his loud speaker and everybody had this noise. And of course, if there had been an emergency, none of us could have communicated. And er, we kept telling him about this and he kept saying he would put it right and he never did. But we got to the last flight of the training and we were given a long detour. During the flying, during the operational training, by the way, we kept having various routes which took us near the Dutch coast or German coast, so you got in touch with searchlights and anti-aircraft guns, but you weren’t carrying any bombs. Erm, only occasionally did anybody get shot down but it gave you a, just a taste of what might be to come. On this last flight it was an absolutely filthy night, it really was dreadful and when we took off from Husbands Bosworth and we had a long route around part of the British Isles, and then we were going North, crossing the Isle of Anglesey and I thought I must be getting something wrong because we seemed to be stationary over the Isle of Anglesey for ages and ages, we weren’t moving. And I kept getting the position from Gee and we were hardly moving but we had a head wind of something like a hundred miles and hour, erm, then we got a call to divert because the weather had obviously closed in at Husbands Bosworth. We diverted to an airfield near Bristol and I worked out the course and got us back to the airfield and Peter the pilot was clearly very stressed by all this, erm, and er, we got to the airfield and he wanted us to bale out, he didn’t think it was safe to land [laugh], that caused some consternation, I couldn’t see why we needed to bale out. Fortunately we had sitting with us, an instructor who had been there from the beginning, hadn’t said a word the whole flight, and at that point he said ‘I’ll take over’. So he took over and landed perfectly well and then the next day we flew back to Husbands Bosworth. We were sent on leave for ten days and when we came back from leave, I talked to Jim, the bomb aimer, who was a commissioned officer and I said, ‘I wasn’t happy about Peter as a pilot’. He said no he wasn’t, and then the two gunners came and they were really twitchy having, you know, already had one crash and they said they couldn’t, they couldn’t fly with Peter. Erm, and the wireless operator who had been a ground operator in er Africa, so he wasn’t immature, he was in his late twenties, he said the same thing and they more or less said, ‘well you are the officers, you have to do something about it’. And er, we went to see the adjutant, somewhat apprehensive because refusing to fly, even although we were volunteers, was quite a serious matter, you were, you know, lack of moral fibre. We weren’t lacking any moral fibre, but we didn’t feel that we had much of a future with Peter, and fortunately when we talked to the adjutant, he said ‘that’s alright, I had a report from the instructor and we think Peter should be held back for some more instruction, and so he will go to the conversion unit and there will be a pilot waiting for you there’. So off we went to Sturgate, which was four engined conversion unit, Halifaxes, where we picked up a flight engineer who was also a pilot, and we were introduced to Dave Lennox, Flight Lieutenant Lennox. Scotsman, such a contrast, he was, he’d been one of the first er, call ups of the [unclear] pre-war conscription and he had gone into a Scottish Regiment. Served in a Scottish Regiment, been in France, been in Dunkirk, risen to the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major very rapidly, and then when he had got back to England, he wanted to remuster as aircrew, and in those days, if you were in a reserved occupation or in any of the other forces, if you wanted to volunteer for aircrew, you had to be released. So he was released and he had gone and trained as a pilot and then he had been kept in er, Canada as an instructor for some time. So he got a lot of flying experience by the time he came to us, and he was, he was so level headed and sort of refreshing. As we did our conversion unit training and very early on, we had reason to be thankful we got him as a pilot because we took off and er, just as we left the ground, he said ‘we’ve burst a tyre’. [Interrupted by telephone call]. We had just left the ground with the burst tyre. We completed the exercise, which I think was a bombing exercise off the Lincolnshire coast, and then came back to land and of course, the problem was landing with a burst tyre was very dangerous. So Dave quite calmly said, ‘take up your crash positions and I am going to come down with the burst tyre on the grass and the other wheel on the runway and we might tip over, but with luck we should make it’. And he did, we made a perfect landing and we came to a halt, no problem. So that reinforced our confidence in Dave. We completed the full er, conversion, these were Halifaxes by the way, which were rather like airliners inside. They were so spacious with the black and white tiled lino on the floor, amazing. Er, we had also more ground instruction, we had dinghy drill, we were taken to the local baths. You had to get up on the top diving board with a pair of dark glasses on and the dinghy was in the pool upside down and you had to jump off the top of the thing and make you way around in the pool and find this dinghy, turn it over, climb into it and then blow your whistle to attract the other crew. Which was valuable training I suppose, but very unpleasant, and various other things like that. Then at some stage, a very curious thing happened, we were taken, some of us, me included, were sent to Hereford, to RAF Regiment place at Hereford. Aircrew Officers Numbr 1, yes, Number One Aircrew Officers School, and we were given a sort of infantry training, er assault course stuff and er, creeping up on enemies and slitting their throats without them making a noise. Being taken out into the Welsh hills and made to jump off the back of moving lorries and find your way back to base. The point of it all was, you know, it wasn’t good for morale, we were told, ‘oh, well, this was so that we could help to defend airfields against invdaders’, you know, we would take charge of the troops but the danger of that had passed, subsequently this became the SAS, so that is what it was all about, they were just trying it out. Anyway er, fortunately, I, I, I got put into hospital [laugh] and became paralyzed with fibrositis through exposure, and I was in hospital for two weeks having physiotherapy and radiotherapy. The only disadvantage of that was the local vicar used to come visiting, and he wouldn’t be persuaded that I was suffering from exposure through something stupid the Air Force had done, you know. I suppose he thought I had come down in the sea or something. Anyway, we got over all that, go back join the team and were posted to 625 Squadron at Kelstern. Er, now when we moved house some years ago, my log book was stolen and for that reason I don’t have an accurate record of what happened, and false memory can be quite intense and yet be false, you know, after seventy years interval, You realise things are not quite what you thought they were. I went to the records office at Kew and looked at the squadron records. Most of them were undecipherable, I just couldn’t make head nor tail of them, so then I employed a couple of er, military experts who were spending a lot of time there, and asked them if they could research the records. They had some difficulty but they did get quite a bit and I could have sworn that we joined the squadron in late ’45, late ’44 rather, certainly before Christmas, but the records show we didn’t, it was early 1945, so that was just one example. They got details of most of the operations which had taken place and I recognised some, not others. There are some that I could have sworn we’d done like Stettin and Frieberg, but again that could be false memory, it’s very curious. The very first operation you would think you’d remember, I don’t remember a thing about it and so it must have gone very smoothly. The second one I certainly do, and that was Nuremburg. Now in 1944 there was a disastrous raid on Nuremburg, March 1944, in which nearly a hundred aircraft were lost, and at one stage they were being shot down at a rate of one a minute, and very few aircraft ever reached Nuremburg. On this occasion we got to the target erm, and [unclear] I was in a little cabin, I didn’t see much unless I got up to look out, but the gunners and the bomber aimer commented that there seemed to be fires lit on the route. So the Germans must have known the route and certainly there was quite a lot of opposition. Anyway, when we got back, we reported this and the briefing officer said ‘oh no, they weren’t fires, those were aircraft burning on the ground’. And in fact that raid, nearly a year after the disastrous one in ’44, had over eight per cent loss, erm ,which was a very sobering introduction for us, for our operational career, made us look at things differently. Erm, well, life on an operational squadron was sleep, briefing, flying again and then intervals of leave inbetween. The way it tended to work was, there would be a tannoy message in the morning that operational aircrew were to remain on base, which meant you might be on operations that night, and then in the Officers Mess, there is a little blackboard called “battleorder”, and it would have the names of the captains and navigators of the aircraft that were likely to be wanted that day, and then if there was a, a raid on, you would be called for briefing about four or five o’clock. Go to the briefing room and er, all sit together, and the station commander and squadron commanders came in and er, there would be a curtain over the wall. The curtain would be pulled aside and the target and the route to the target would be marked, and there would be an intake of breath according to where the target was. Each of the operators would give a, meteorological officers would tell you about the weather, the bomb aimer would give instructions to the bomb aimers, the navigation leader would tell us the things to watch out for and of course, you never went straight to a target, it was always varying turning points, and getting the timing right at the turning points was absolutely vital. Because if you are in the Bomber Stream, and you are thirty seconds late on your turn, when you’ve turned you might be outside the stream and you can be picked off. Er, after the briefing, the rest of the crews used to go out to the aircraft. The navigators would remain behind copying the details of the turning points and the codes for the erm, beacons on the ground. In this country there would be beacons and sometimes the Underground would be going to be have flashing beacons, which weren’t reliable, but if you knew and you knew a code, they might be useful to you. Then we picked up our stuff and were taken out to the plane, by which time the engines had started, and you taxied out onto the runway one after the other and took off and then you would climb and probably have half an hour or more to kill, and you would tootal up and down England or go look at your home area or something like that and usually we collected around Reading, that was a very common meeting point and then the stream would begin to assemble over Reading and then go out very often, go out to Beachy Head, would be our next turning point, then you cross across to the Enemy coast. Er, from that point on, I would navigating and I would give the pilot er, the compass course which he would follow. We had in the aircraft, and it was Lancasters by then, an air position indicator, which showed the exact position you were in the air, or at least in the exact position you would be on the ground, if in the air, there was no wind [laugh]. But of course, the vital part about navigation is to work out the wind and the extent to which it moved you and we also had an erm, a thing called Gee for operators, which was a mobile transmitter which sent beams down to the ground and then they rebounded and er, you got a picture on the screen, an illuminated screen, reflecting objects on the ground like lakes, towns, small hamlets erm, on a very good set, railway lines. Actually, a photographic interpretation officer on the squadron showed me how to spot the railway lines. I didn’t believe you could do it but she said you could and showed me how to do it and we had special maps, which were coloured to match what you would see on the screen. We also had the Gee but it was heavily jammed and it was very difficult to be precise, so I had to rely most of the time on the radar things and when we came up to turning points, I would give the captain a new course but count down to the turning point, so we got it, you know, absolutely precise to the second, and we managed to stay in the stream most of the time. When you were in the dark in the Bomber Stream, the crew used to be happy if the plane felt as though it was running over tarmac, you know, because that meant you were in the slipstream of the aircraft in front and the first time we realised how close we were, was when we did our first daylight raid. I mean, very often in the dark, the wireless operator used to have a trailing aerial, a long copper aerial, but it was frequently cut off by the propellers of an aircraft behind us, er, and then, as we approached target, it would usually be marked by Pathfinders, the bomb aimer would take over and er, he would then, there would be those tense moments as you approach the target when he was totally in charge. He was flying, supposed to fly a steady, left, left, right, right and steady and that seemed to go on interminably. There was searchlights around and you were hoping they’d miss you, and then you felt the bombs go, ‘cause the plane would jump and after the bombs gone, it was still steady for another thirty seconds or so while they took photographs. Then I would have given the captain the course away from the target, he could turn and get on the way. Now of course, it didn’t always go as smoothly as that, there was searchlights and anti-aircraft. If you got caught in searchlights, then they used to do a manoeuvre, steep dive and corkscrew, and your guts used to come up into your mouth and then pull out of it again, or if the gunners thought they had spotted a night fighter, they again would call out corkscrew left or right, according to which way they thought you should go, the same thing would happen, we managed that all right. On one occasion, we had a major from an anti-aircraft unit in this country who was flying with us, ‘cause he was supposed to be studying the German anti-aircraft defences, and he was beside me but with his head out of the astrodome, watching. And it so happens we got caught in searchlights, and the Germans had a system in some areas where they had a blue searchlight, which was presumably radar operated and if the blue searchlight got you, then five or six others came on immediately, you were absolutely coned and that happened to us, and Dave again did a steep dive, he got us out of it, back again and then wee tackled the target and there was quite heavy ant-aircraft fire. Anyway when we got back, this major [laughs], major had gone very quiet [laugh], he said he didn’t know how we could do that night after night. I think he got the information he wanted. I don’t know precisely how many trips we did because these records even when the experts were confusing. We didn’t, we didn’t do a tour but I seem to remember us being pleased, we done half a tour, so er, er, and there is records show something approaching that number anyway.
DM. How many would that have been?
MB. The full tour would have been thirty, half the tour would have been fifteen. One memorable, well there were several memorable ones, but one was Kiel. We were detailed to lay mines in Kiel harbour and so we flew with the main force which was attacking some other place, Bremen or Hamburg I don’t know which, and then we broke away to Kiel, and I had to navigate to a land mark in Kiel harbour so the bomb aimer could take over at that point, and then he had to fly a straight and steady course for a certain time and then drop the mines. And of course a lone plane in Kiel harbour, with all the ships there, was just a sitting target, searchlights and anti-aircraft, everything being shot at us. Erm, but we did, we dropped the mines and we got away from Kiel, but soon afterwards one of the engines had obviously been hit and had to be feathered as they say, it stopped working and soon after that, another engine went. That meant I had no electricity for the radar operations, the problem was, you know, well how do we get back home [laugh] navigation wise? And er, it was at that point I was thankful for the astronavigation training in Canada. Er, it was a cloudy night but I got in the astrodome and looked and occasionally you could see stars, and I always took a sextant with me, so I got my sextant out and I could identify, eventually identify what I was pretty sure was the pole star. And the wireless operator, his cabin, his bit was next door to me, I got him to do the precise timing on the watch and I took the shots on the pole star and then I always carried books of tables, and you could look up in the tables and an angle and a time, and it would tell you roughly, well tell you precisely what latitude you should be at. That gave us at least a latitude and I reckoned if you keep North, keep North of Heligoland, which was heavily defended and er, keep on the right latitude, hit England eventually. So we proceeded that way, as far as the rest of crew were concerned everything was ok, I didn’t tell them I got problems. Erm, and er, we were slowly descending so I was also trying to work out by dead reckoning, applying the last wind that I knew was reliable, points where we might come down in the sea, so that the wireless operator could send the message if need be. Anyway we proceeded and eventually we hit the East Anglian coast and the bomb aimer recognised where we were, and we tootaled off and landed successfully back at base, relief all round. And then another occasion I remember, we had a long flight into Romania I think it was, no, Czechoslovakia, a place called Plowen, and oil refiners in Plowen, and er, we must have been running short of fuel coming back. We got back, we just got to the end of the runway and the engines stopped, we were completely out of fuel [laugh], so that was another lucky escape. Er, on the whole we did all right, the er, two memorable ones when we were put onto daylight raids, a couple of when, of when we had a big fighter escort. That was quite impressive, American and RAF fighters in the daylight alongside erm, and er, I think Hamburg. The fighters left us after we had gone some distance but nevertheless it was nice to see them there. But there was heavy anti-aircraft fire and er, the gunners said something about the next plane had been hit and I got up in the astrodome and looked, and there was a Lancaster at the side of us and it was just flying normally, and erm, black smoke came out of one of the engines and then it slowly tilted on its side, and you could see flames developing and nobody came out of it. And then it started slowly descending and after a while, you saw the three people came out but they were on fire, and I didn’t see the parachutes open, so that was a bit of a shake up and went back to navigating [sad laugh]. Sunday morning, I think Hamburg, not Hamburg, Hanover, and I remember as we approached the target thinking, well, Sunday morning, well they will be going to church or coming back from church, at least they will get plenty of warning and they can get into shelters. And we left Hanover after bombing it, with a big cloud and black smoke going up in the sky. Ah, so you did think about the people as well. Then we had a curious, not curious in a way, but an unusual one in daylight, to a place called Nordhausen, which has come back to haunt me actually. It was in Eastern Germany and we were given the job of attacking the barracks, when we got there, it was ten tenths cloud. Not quite ten tenths cloud but as we approached the target erm, this cloud came over and the bomb aimer couldn’t see to drop the bombs. So we went round again and I could see on my Gee, my H2S screen, the radar screen, I could see the ground and I could see the barracks, and I had a bomb release on my cabin, so I took over at that point and guided Dave and made a few calculations about wind and so on, and then dropped the bombs on what I thought would be the right spot visually on the radar screen. And afterwards photographic reconnaissance showed that the barracks had been hit and destroyed, or heavily destroyed. Erm, some years afterwards, there was a letter in the Bomber Command Magazine from a film producer in Germany, saying that he would like to make contact with any aircrew who had taken part in this raid, so I made contact. And eventually he came to the house and did a recording, and he was making a film called “The Last Survivors”, and er, the story of Nordhausen was that it was an ordinary medieval town, untouched by war [telephone rings], medieval town in Germany, untouched by war, not particularly Nazified. And you remember after the raids on Peenemunde, when the rocket sights were destroyed, well within six weeks, I think the Nazis had moved rocket production into caves outside Nordhausen, and they were using slave labour and they were producing eventually, very quickly producing eighty V2 rockets a day, apparently with this labour force which was worked to death and of course, London was being threatened at that time. We were not told at briefing about any rocket production in Nordhausen, and I notice the record, the Bomber Command records about Nordhausen say it was raided because it had become, it was, they were moving ministries from Berlin to Nordhausen, but rockets certainly were being produced. When the film producer from Germany came and did an interview with me, and I found out he was a Nordhausen resident, or his family was, and he was making a film called “The Last Survivors”, and he said they had been producing these rockets with slave labour after Peenemunde for some time, and the day after the raid, production stopped. But it probably stopped because the workers were demolished and they were housed in the barracks which I had been responsible for bombing, and apparently there had been eighteen hundred of them killed. Er, I expressed some concern about this, and he said, ‘You shouldn’t, the Nazis had killed far more than that already’. That’s this war. Since then, he has produced, German television produced a film called “Hitler’s Rocket Factory” and that went out last year, and the interview that he did with me and some other aircrew is in that film. Curiously there’s a twist in the film, the film as produced in Germany says that when the raid took place, rocket production had ceased because of the damage to the communications that had been taking place, so was there a gloss that the Germans had put on it or was the chap who did the film who came from Nordhausen accurate, you know, er, and the Nordhausen film is in German. I think it ought to be in the Bomber Command records at er, Lincoln, I didn’t tell them about it and it could be copied. Do you know any German? That was Nordhausen erm, and then er, I can’t remember, oh of course, yes, as we got towards the end of the war, the Germans, the Dutch people were starving and they, they er, the Germans were approached and asked if they would allow Army lorries that were in the British zone to go through with food, and they refused. So then it was decided that an air drop would be attempted, and the Germans again were told, ‘We are going to do an air drop with Lancasters’, and would they give them safe passage, and they refused to give them safe passage, and so we were told at briefing. But when the Royal Army Service Corps came and the bomb bays of the Lancasters were filled with food supplies [laugh], and then we were given a briefing where we were to drop the food, and we were told that the Germans had refused safe passage, but we were not to take any offensive action unless we were fired on. And then er, the food had to be dropped at very low level, and we were told, I am sure we were told [emphasis] at briefing, fifty feet. The official records of the Operation Manna as it was called, says the food was dropped at four hundred feet but I have seen other people who say that it was fifty feet. And I distinctly remember as we flew along very low, looking up out of the astrodome and seeing the church spire, so it was fifty feet. But er, the people were out in the streets, we were so low you could identify anyone in the streets, the children were out waving, it was very touching, and we used to get chocolate as an aircrew ration and we made little parachutes with handkerchiefs and the rear gunner used to throw them out of the back and the kids used to pick them up. We flew over some German machine gun posts and we could see them swinging their guns round but they didn’t fire and then on the airfield, I think it was the racecourse initially at Gouda, we dropped and the underground people were waiting on the, and they then ran across and picked up the supplies and took them away. Then er, we came away, very low of course, and there was one of these sea frets developing so it was misty and er, we were climbing away but there was a huge flash in front of us. When we got back to base we reported this, we were told that the aircraft in front of us had flown into the sea. Presumably they didn’t, hadn’t got a good horizon or the altimeter was faulty, and then I did a, I think I did a second food drop er, with an Australian crew whose navigator was ill, and I volunteered to go with them. Similar experience except that they were, they seemed to delight in flying even lower [laugh] all the way there and all the way back, they were quite frightening. That was Operation Manna, since then I met Dutch people when we had been on holiday who were children at the time and they are so grateful. And we there was a commemoration of the operation at Lincoln two years ago and the Dutch had planted a lot of bulbs in commemoration of it and we were there. Any surviving aircrew were there and there were some ladies there from Holland came round, insisted on kissing us all. One of them was a little girl at the time you know, she said, ‘you saved my life’. Her uncle had already died of starvation, she was a little girl and she was close to it so we did something useful. And then of course the war had come to an end and er, we had a trip to Brussels airport to pick up released prisoners, our prisoners who had been released from prisoner of war camps and we packed them in the back of a Lancaster and had to give them a lecture, you know, ‘don’t move, mustn’t move because you upset the trim of the aircraft, you could crash’, and er, we were all right, we came back to, I think it was Dunsfeld, and unloaded. But obviously one aircraft, the people had moved and it crashed, and all the prisoners and crew were killed. I mean so dreadful at the end of the war, yeah, so [pause]. [unclear]. When the war ended the RAF were very good at introducing education and training courses and er, I eventually was put in charge of the work at Scampton. We were running all kinds of educational courses using people in the force who had been, you know, teachers and things like that, and we were running dress making classes for the WAAF and we could get aircraft, you know, parachute silk from stores and there were quite a few wedding dresses were being made [laugh] there. We had workshops, carpentry workshops using some of the old tables, people were making themselves coffee tables and so keeping people occupied and that was quite fun. We had an education centre which eventually I was in charge of, taking daily newspapers and of course, the ‘forty five election was coming up, and er, I was called into the Station Commanders Office, the group captain, who was very concerned because we got the Daily Mirror in the education centre [laugh]. So I really had to point out to him that it was a perfectly legitimate newspaper, you know, it wouldn’t look good, it wasn’t the Daily Worker it was a respectable newspaper and it was valued by the troops. So I got away with that one [laugh] so he left me alone I think, um, yes.
DM. Did you fly any more after that?
MB. The squadron was on stand by for Tiger Force, which would mean going to Japan, or going to the Far East, but of course the Japanese war brought that to an end, so I didn’t fly any more after we brought the prisoners back. I was doing this education job really, running er, quite a big unit actually. Then I was offered promotion to er, squadron leader if I would do it for the group, but that would mean signing on for staying longer and I had no particular interest in doing that. I wanted to get out and get on with my own education which had been disturbed severely. But er, it was interesting.
DM. When were you demobbed?
MB. Mm?
DM. When were you demobbed?
MB. 1947, yes, we got married in ’46 and I was still in the Air Force then, I was kept. Because they had a points system and of course, if you were very young, which I was erm, in a sense, it counted against you. So I got out in ’47 and I was er, I went to, I got a place at Nottingham University in October, started in October ’47. So I came out in early ’47 I think and I had a temporary teaching job in Nottingham er, for several months before I went to university.
DM. What did you read at university?
MB. I did biological sciences and er, there was the food and agricultural organisation, [unclear] and so on, and that was the area that interested me. I had been doing engineering at Cambridge, I didn’t want to go back and do that and I er, so I did biological sciences which was quite worthwhile actually. Eventually got a job with the Boots company, which is in Nottingham, doing agricultural and horticultural research for some years. Then I joined Beecham group down South when we were about to move, we got a family by then, and spent the rest of my career with the Beecham group. Eventually became Director of Research of the consumer products group. It’s surprising how many times the little things you learn en route were put to use. Er, certainly, I think the RAF and the RAF training taught me that you can train people to do jobs with which they are totally unfamiliar, if you organise the training properly. Brilliant er, the training that was organised in wartime, yes.
DM. Did you maintain any contact with the crew?
MB. No, we had little contact but not much after the war, we all went our separate ways, we’d enough, er, yes, no real contact, and Dave the pilot, he eventually went to Glasgow University, and in fact he did study engineering and er, the bomb aimer, who was the oldest in the crew, he was in his thirties, he had work, he had been with Unilever before the war. He went back to Unilever and then we lost touch with one another. Er, I have never been one for “old boys” units really and that was the phase of life, it was over, you have got to get on with the next phase and I got married in ’46, my wife had been in the Army, Signals, and then we had children. We got other things to occupy our time with, it took all our time and energy catching up on a career and on life and so on.
DM. Have you found as you have retired that your thoughts have gone back more to those days?
MB. In, well in two ways, you hear a lot about post traumatic stress and I went, I have been to a number of lectures with a psychiatrist because we have a mentally handicapped son. So I got involved on that side of it and got fairly heavily involved with the Royal College of Psychiatrists and so on and I remember going to one lecture, and the psychiatrist who was talking about post traumatic stress, and he put on the black board all the symptoms and the treatments you should adopt. So I said to him, ‘well, you have got one or two symptoms there which I have every day, but I don’t think they interfere with my life. I suggest it is biological adaptation that enables you to cope’. you know, things like flash backs and so on that you are not looking for, and they just come. And er, he was flummoxed he, he didn’t quite know how to deal with it, I hope he has thought about it since. But it’s true and I have talked to other ex-aircrew who have said the same thing. Then my children, not so much but certainly my grandchildren began agitating, you know? We, both of us, both my wife and I, ‘what did you do during the war? You never talk about it. We like to know, we ought to know, we ought to know what you were doing when you were our age’. So eventually, under pressure from my brother-in-law as well, I did write a sort of retrospective for them. So they all know what I wrote five years ago anyway, my thoughts at the time and recollections and experiences, which in fact, I think they found useful er, [pause] but otherwise until they started, tried to establish the Bomber Command Centre at Lincoln, because I had always regretted there wasn’t a proper recognition in the work of Bomber Command. I mean, after Dresden and so on er, and politicians had become a dirty word and they didn’t use it, didn’t refer to it. Churchill talked about Fighter Command saving the country, and Bomber Command bringing victory was forgotten about, but we got the memorial in Green Park, we did go to the opening of that. That is more of what I call a State Memorial, but it’s suitable, it’s appropriate and it is visited a lot. But the one at Lincoln is more important, Tony Wright, who was, his name the [unclear] representative in Lincoln, anyway he was the one who had the idea, because there was so many airfields in Lincoln, and it was responded to very vigorously by most aircrew who helped to raise funds for it, and I think it is the ideal memorial. Because there is the memorial spire which is the wing span of a Lancaster, but more important around it are the metal columns, on which are engraved the names of all the aircrew who didn’t come back, over fifty thousand of them, which does make people appreciate the extent and the sacrifice. And then the memorial garden with soil in it from each of the airfields, and most important of all, the educational centre with the sort of thing you are doing and er, other records will be valuable for the future. Particularly as it is going to include input from German sources, which is what’s required. Yeah.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Dr Maurice Brook Interview
Creator
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David Meanwell
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
2017-01-09
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABrookM170109, PBrookM1702
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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
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Description
An account of the resource
Maurice grew up Rothwell in Yorkshire, joining the Air Training Corp, and going into the Royal Air Force after spending time with Cambridge University Air Squadron at the age of 18. He completed his pilot training in Canada before going to the Advance Flying Training unit in RAF Millom, Cumberland. Maurice then tells of meeting up with his crew in RAF Husbands Bosworth, of several incidents with his Pilot and his training on Handley Page Halifaxes. He was then posted to RAF Sturgate, flying in Halifaxes and collecting a new pilot, who managed to land the aircraft after a tyre burst. Maurice was then posted to 625 Squadron at RAF Kelstern, flying Lancasters, and he tells of some of his operations and his memories of the losses of other aircraft. He tells of an operation to Nordhausen where they were to bomb a V2 rocket site, and his encounter with a German film maker who was making a documentary about the attack called “The Last Survivors”. Maurice completed 15 operations including a mine laying operation to Kiel Harbour and the oil refineries at Plowen, and he tells how he used his astronavigation training after power had gone to his radar. He also took part in Operation Manna, dropping food supplies to the people of Holland. After the war, Maurice went to University to do Biological Studies and then he got a job with Boots company in Nottingham doing Agricultural and Horticultural research before joining the Beecham Group, where he help the position of Director of Research of the Consumer Products Group.
Format
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01:03:20 audio recording
625 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
coping mechanism
crewing up
Gee
H2S
Halifax
memorial
military service conditions
mine laying
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Kelstern
RAF Millom
RAF Scampton
RAF Sturgate
searchlight
training
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/467/8350/ABantingP160315.2.mp3
b7b96bfe67cf2c1ebbc167ca5bd83878
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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Banting, Peter
P Banting
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Banting, P
Description
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Three items. An oral history interview with Peter Banting (b. 1923, 1399810 Royal Air Force) his log book and a a piece of material containing signatures.
He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 75 and 7 Squadrons.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-15
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. 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.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Peter Banting. The interview is taking place at Mr Banting’s home in East Molesey on the 14th, 15th of March 2016.
DM : Ok if we start off with when you were born and where you were brought up.
PB : Well I was born in 1923 and I was brought up in Brixton. I was born in Brixton too.
DM : Right ok, and tell me, tell me a little about what lead you to join the Air Force and when you actually joined up.
PB : Well I was a founder member of the Cadet Corps and that was started, I believe, in about 1940, I believe, and I was one of the first to join it in Brixton. It was number 50F ATC and I remember it well going there and many people, many people of my age were there as well, and ‘Will I get in?’ I said.’ Will I get in?’ And they did accept me and that’s how it all started.
DM : Did you actually do any flying in the ATC?
PB : No, no, no, but there was one really wonderful experience we had. We attended Biggin Hill Aerodrome, that would be 1941, and okay the Battle of Britain was over but they were doing, they were going over to France low level, very, very dangerous and that’s when I had my first trip actually. I was very fortunate to go up in a Blenheim. They, they allowed us to go up in a Blenheim. It was wonderful. Yes, and we saw, there was a Spitfire squadron, and we saw it coming in and land. Marvellous, marvellous experience. We were there for two weeks.
DM : Ok -
PB : Hmm.
DM : So then you joined up? When did you actually join up?
PB : July 1942.
DM : Right.
PB : Yes.
DM : And what was the-?
PB : No, Sorry, actually, I joined up in December 41 and I wasn’t called up until July 42.
DM : Right
PB : Yes. St John’s Wood. We all went to St John’s Wood.
DM : Right. Did you have a sort of ambition when you joined up what you thought you’d like to do?
PB : Erm, I just wanted to fly with the RAF. I, it was day-to-day. You know? One took one day as it came and that was it, and enjoyed it and from that day on, I had a wonderful experience. I love the RAF [laugh] still do. [laugh] and I’m a member of the RAF Club at that.
DM : So, when you were actually called up, which was, you said, July-
PB : Yes, yes.
DM : What actually happened then?
PB : Well, we went to St John’s Wood, where the cricket field was, and were stationed there and after that we went to Ludlow, I remember. We camped at Ludlow it was summer and we were all in tents and that decided where we would go for ITW (Initial Training Wing), and there was a corporal in our tent, and he asked me where I wanted to go. And I said ‘I’d like to go to Cambridge.’ He said ‘Right and I did.’ [laugh] And he fixed it and I went to Cambridge and had a lovely time in Cambridge, wonderful, with the Initial Training Wing. I think we were about three months there, yeah three months. And after that, after the three months initial training where you had certain exams, you were taught to dismantle a Browning gun and put it all altogether again, Morse code, navigation, and elementary stuff you know that sort of thing and after that we were sent to an Elementary Flying Training School for selection as to whether you’d be a pilot, navigator or a bomb aimer and that’s when, that was in Oxford. I got there in December, erm that would have been December 1942 and we were tested, we had I suppose I don’t know how many hours, I suppose, about thirty hours on Tiger Moths and I was tested and very fortunately I made a perfect circuit and bump and I was selected to be a pilot. I didn’t know that for a long time we were sent to Manchester, the training centre in Manchester and that decided - and we were all lined up one day and we all carefully listened to what he was going to say, he said and he called out all these names and my name came out, ‘Banting. Pilot.’ I was delighted [laugh] of course. And then I think there were after Manchester we were sent to up to Scotland and there when we got to Scotland by train, we saw outside in the sea the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and I mean, there was a cheer when we saw it. We saw this ship and thought ‘My God. Is this going to take us to Canada? And it did.’ And it was a four-and a-half hour trip, a four-and-a-half day trip and all the way through we were a bit concerned ‘cause some in ’43 that’s when the U-boats really, were really active, but - we the ship zig-zagged all the way through and I suppose a normal journey would have taken three days and we took four-and-a-half days and we landed at Halifax and from Halifax after a few days I was sent out to, erm, to DeWinten Flying School. And then I got chicken pox and I had, I think it was, two weeks leave in Vancouver. What a trip that was. They made such a fuss of us. Absolutely wonderful. And came back and I got scarlet fever and I couldn’t fly a bloody thing. I was absolutely hopeless. So unfortunately, or fortunately I think, it probably saved my life, but fortunately I was regraded to be bomb aimer and I went on a bomb aimers course. And sent to Lethbridge for the bombing course. And what year would that have been? I’m trying to think now, that would be, er, ’43 March ’43. That would be the summer of ’43 so until that took most of the summer. And from then, having completed that course went to Edmonton in Canada for navigation course and bomb aiming course and the rest of it. So I finished in December 1943 in Canada. Came back and to Monkton, which is the centre for air crew to be despatched back to Britain. And we were told under no circumstances, we had two weeks leave, under no circumstances will you be allowed to go past the barrier to get to America. Don’t try it. Well that was a challenge [laugh] and I knew you had to have it was called a short H form, and I got this short H form and I filled in everything with everyone’s agreement that we should go and a great friend of mine Pat Russell was with me and I had armed with this form we went to the barrier and there was an American there. And he said ‘Right. I’ll just phone your base and see if it’s ok.’ Left me on my own and when back to the phone completely out of sight and I thought God this is it we’re going to be despatched back. That was a nice try. He came back and said ‘Ok, you’re ok.’ In other words he was trying, to see, to see if we’d escaped. So we got on the train and we had a most wonderful time in New York where we were entertained by a family and stayed with them and that was an experience to be in New York in 1944 it was then. Wonderful. And that was an experience in itself, and we came back, when we came back to Monkton, we, erm, we went, went to the port and there was a ship waiting and it was The Andes. It was called The Andes. Nothing like the QE, nothing at all [laugh]. I mean it really was. It was a hell ship. We were in hammocks and they were crowded into a tiny area and that took a bit longer. That took six days ‘cause it was slower and we got back to Liverpool I think it was. Came back to a centre. Now after this it gets a bit blurred and my memory fades on this but, erm, I remember we went to somewhere up north near Northumbria near there for the centre. Came back and I might refer to my logbook now It might give a little indication of what happened after that [turning of pages] Lethbridge AFU [turning of pages] [whistling] Sorry to keep you waiting. But it’s -
DM : No no.
PB : It’s all here somewhere. Oh yes, I remember now we went to Harrogate. We went to Harrogate as a centre which decided where we’d crew up. And we were all there together, pilots, navigators, bomb-aimers and I was crewed up with somebody called Rothwell. My pilot an Australian, and a very tall man. A blonde man, and he, I found out later he was three years younger than me. Now had I known then he should have treated me with greater respect , he was three years younger than me. He didn’t at all. Anyways he was a great chap and you know I still see him. He’s in America. [pause]
DM : And off we go,
PB : And I still see him. He comes over regularly. He’s a great chap and he brought his son once and I remember when his son was there, we went to a little pub, and had a look in the river. A very lovely day and it brought it all back and I remember describing one of the episodes to, to his son and he was very pleased with that. Anyway the other members of the crew, if I remember, we had Paddy Key at rear gunner. He was a Northern Ireland guy. Erm, John Turner mid upper gunner, erm Wellard was the wireless operator. Bob Wellard he was much older than us and he was called Pop ‘cause he was twenty-eight. And a nice guy, twenty-eight, well he was twenty-eight then, so if he was twenty-eight then, five years older than me. So I’m ninety-two he’d be- he’d be over a hundred so I doubt very much if he is still with us. Navigator he got scarlet fever and he only did five ops with us and he disappeared from the scene. I can’t remember his name. And, of course, Jack Pond was the engineer and Ken Rothwell was our skipper. And that was the crew. [coughs] So we crewed up and I think we went very shortly after that to Operational Training Units on Ansons. The only thing about Ansons that I detested I had to wind down the undercarriage, you know. That was a rotten job. And that was, I don’t know how long, probably about two months there at Operational Training and then we went to Chedburgh for the heavy conversion unit from Ansons to heavies. They were Stirlings. And I don’t, can’t remember how long we were there but to cut a long story short we ended up at 75 New Zealand Squadron, Mepal, that would be December 1944. But our first ops weren’t until January 1945 and I going out of my log book really ‘cause that picks it up [turning of pages] 75 New Zealand Squadron [turning of pages]. Here we go. My first operation was on the 22nd of January 1945 and the skipper was the commander. His name was Wing Commander Baygent [?]. He was a New Zealander. Now I discovered later I didn’t realise this, this is quite amazing. I looked at this guy and I’m like oh god he’s a very old guy, well-experienced and I’m ok. I learnt later he was the same age as me. We had a Wing Commander Baygent Commanding Officer of the 75 New Zealand Squadron and he was twenty-one. I was absolutely amazed at that. I didn’t discover that until much later. But that first operation, I mean when I went up and I saw a wall of flak in front of me at the target, the target was Duisburg on the Rhine. And when I saw this wall of flak I thought ‘My God. How the bloody hell we going to get out of that?’ And it was really quite, you know, that wasn’t a nice experience. But he was a good pilot but there’s one thing that he did do, that was very naughty actually. We got over, I dropped the bombs on the target and then he put the aircraft down in nosedive to get out of the flak. Now you’re not supposed to that, you’re supposed to fly straight and level. So when you’re over the target you take a photograph of where the bombs had gone. Now according to the records, when it was later, all my bombs dropped in the river because he the angle of the aircraft, you see, was such that it photographed what was behind and not in front so I never really forgave him for that but he got us out of it anyway. That’s the main thing. So that was my first op 22nd of January. Next one was on the 28th and we did them quite regularly, 28th, 29th and going all the way though about two or three a week. Now I’ve all the ones listed here, which we won’t do. On the 28th of January went to Cologne. All our targets were military targets. We didn’t carpet bomb and I’m very glad to say that. And all our targets because of the landings and the military operations going on behind the Rhine and it was decided that we’d bomb things like railway junctions mainly railway junctions, most of our targets were railway junctions and very rarely factories or anything like that. So that’s what we did mainly. Now 28th of January Cologne. Then 29th of January Krefeld and I notice it took to get there five, five-and-a-half hours to get there and back from Krefeld. [Turning of pages] I won’t list them all, but included are Monchengladbach, Wiesbaden, Dortmund, and then very sadly I notice on the 16th of February 1945 the New Zealand squadron, my best mate Pilkington was shot down and I got a note here when it happened. It was on the 16th of February on a trip to Dortmund. Now after that Wessel, we went to Wesel, now Wesel was very much in the papers at the time because that it was a key centre for troops to, apparently it was a centre for troops to rest before they went back to the front. Wessel, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Kamen, Karmen, Wanne Eickel and then I, please forgive lack of German accent, my German accent is appalling, I don’t know any German at all. Not like my grandson. Salzbergen, Dessau, Gelsenkirchen, Essen. Now Essen I got a note here, this is, this is fascinating. This was an amazing, what an experience that was. It was biggest daylight raid in the history of the RAF. I don’t know how many, it doesn’t say how many aircraft. I did note that. It was the 11th of March 1945 and what an amazing sight that was. Over the clouds, bright, bright sun of course, and to see these aircraft. It did seem, I don’t know how many there were but it seemed like a million to me. It was absolutely incredible. You know tail to tail and wing to wing. That was an amazing experience. And unfortunately during that we saw quite a few of them shot down when we got over Germany ‘cause it was daylight. [Turning of pages] Now after that the skipper came and had a little talk to us. He said : ‘Now look you’re doing quite well, how do you feel about going over to Pathfinders?’ So we had a little chat and I said ’That’s great, you know. Let’s go to Pathfinders.’ So we were then sent to Pathfinder Night Training Unit at Warboys.
[Door bell].
PB : We were at the Pathfinders Unit Warboys from the 17th of March ’45 until the 31st of March when we were posted the 7 Squadron at Oakington. Now coming back to Pathfinding Night Training, the skipper there was Group Captain Mahaddie D.S.O., D.F.C, A.F.C, S.C.F.C., and etc etc etc. Now we really got very friendly with him after the war with 7 Squadron with the Pathfinder Association and at one of the, that’s a bit out of sequence but never mind, he did give us the book and inscribe it. I’ll read out the inscription. He said: Signed for Peter Banting and the child bride Hazel [cough] with my warmest regards the Pathfinder battle cry – Press on Regardless. Hamish, RAF Wyton. That was written on the 15th of August 1992. So that was that. So coming back to reality, we were posted to 7 Squadron and our first operation there was on the 2nd of April to Nordhausen, and Pathfinders are so different. If I can briefly describe our operations on Pathfinders. We went in, the first Pathfinders went in and dropped illuminating flares over the target, there was a general illumination, then there was back-up where they dropped coloured flares on the target so that was really pinpointed. The master bomber up above was usually in a Mosquito and he was directing incoming aircraft onto the target. So the first ones that came in dropped it accurately on the target, now if it drifted away backers up drifted different coloured flares onto the target. So there’s a new target which was seen by the master bomber up above and he redirected the aircraft onto the correct coloured target. That’s how it worked, but the thing is with Pathfinders was we dropped. We dropped these illuminating flares and you know whatever but we have to go round again and drop the bombs. So every trip that we did was counted two ops really and that’s why after thirty ops, normally everyone got a D.F.C. or a D.F.M. and who did that on Pathfinders. Now coming to what we actually did again, it’s coming near to the end of the war isn’t it? North of Hamburg, I won’t describe them all, Hamburg, Kiel now, we did go to Kiel. Now the interesting thing about Kiel. At Kiel there was a German battleship. It was a cross between a cruiser and a battleship called the Deutschland. Now I am convinced that I sunk it like everybody else who on that trip but it was sunk at that trip and I’m sure I did it you never know do you? So, that was Kiel and we went to Kiel again on the 13th of April but by then the battleship was sunk so we weren’t so worried about that. We were told when we went to Potsdam that Hitler was probably there, that was on the 14th of April and we were told that he was likely to be there, so we dropped our bombs very accurately on where he was. Bremen, and then on 24th of April that was it. I was awarded the Pathfinder badge on the 26th of May 1945 after the war. But the most memorable trips to me were after the war. The Dutch were starving in May 1945 and it was decided that they would receive an airdrop of food. And on the 4th of May 1945 we went to Rotterdam and dropped food for them, and that was quite amazing and it was an enormous target area and they had in white stone around the target area. Thank you, after that we went to Lubeck and Juvencourt, landed in Germany picked up prisoners of war and brought them back. That was quite amazing. That was a wonderful experience, and when I was at Lubeck I raided the German store brought back a perfect German uniform and a helmet. Now I, later I very carefully packed this German uniform away in a brown bag and put it in the loft to keep it safe, and then a couple of months later I thougt: I’ll have a look at it, and a shower of moths came out, totally ruined. That was that, so unfortunately no more German uniform and I gave the German helmet away, but I’ve still got an armband somewhere or other, a German armband. [Turning of pages] And so that was really the end of my flying experiences during the war. We, then of course, after the war, after the European war that is, we were training as the Tiger Force to go out to India to fight the Japanese. We were trained at low level bombing but nevertheless August came and the end of the war. That was it. But I was in the RAF until discharged, and really I wasn’t really doing very much after that. I was very fortunate to be maintained on to 7 Squadron and funny enough 7 Squadron as a whole after the war went back to Mepal where 75 New Zealand, 75 New Zealand, Squadron was. So I had a few girlfriends there and met up with them again too [laugh]. So that’s really the war experience, my total war experiences.
DM : So we came to the end of the war came to, August Victory in Japan, did ever think about staying in the Air Force? Did you ever consider that?
PB : Well, funnily enough at the end of the war I ended up as a Warrant Officer, I had an interview with the Commanding Officer. He said ‘Look, maybe you’d like a commission but it’d mean signing on for a couple of years. Would you like to do that?’ I thought it over and said ; ‘No, but very, very I’m glad you’ve done that I was very honoured, but I do feel that I’ve got to get back to what I want to do which is architecture and being an architect and that was that. And that’s what I did, an architect after six years training. And I met my wife, my wife of long years standing lived next door to me in Brixton and we got engaged, but I said to her: ‘Look, do you mind? You’ve got a long wait.’ She didn’t mind. So it was a long course, it was, how long was it? It was seven-year course really, well really, five years really on studying and part of it was when I was working, and we got married in 1951. Yes, but the other part of all this after the war was ‘The Pathfinder Association’. I was on a train going into London once when I saw a guy opposite me had a Pathfinder tie, very distinctive blue with, we used to call it, a shite hawk, a yellow eagle on his tie. And I said: ‘Are you a Pathfinder?’ And he said: ‘Yes.’ I said: ‘So was I.’ He said: ‘What squadron?’ So I told him. He said : ‘Well come and see us.’ And he was the secretary of the Pathfinders Association Jimmy Hughes, and we became great buddies and we used to go out regularly and I used to go up to the RAF Club at- I wasn’t a member then, and my wife came with me to the RAF club and we became great buddies, and his wife also was also heavily involved.
DM : So when you, when you when became a member of 7 Squadron Pathfinders-
PB : Yes, Yes.
DM : What, what did the missions entail for you? Was there something specific you did on each mission? Was it all a mish-mash?
PB : Oh no, it was all very carefully controlled. Each member of the team had his own particular job but coming to my job. Erm I had to, when I went through France I was responsible for the radar navigation. At that time had a very, very, very excellent radar system which consisted of H2S which was a circular screen which showed exactly where we were on a map and Gee where we were accurately pinpointed. But when we got to the target we were all briefed on what we had to do, and it varied enormously, we were either marking targets either, er, either giving (sorry) yes, we either had to mark targets or illuminate the targets. Each crew was given their specific job at the time, you either had to mark the targets back up with flares, illuminate the target and we were all given a different job at a different time. We all had our own specific job at that particular time and it varied. Each trip we had, we had different things to do. Either illumination or marking targets or backing up flares. It was always different. It was always specific, but every time once we’d down it, we have to back round again and drop the bombs. And that, that was a bit painful, but nevertheless we did it. And, of course, the flak was really concentrated on those specific areas we were at. That’s briefly what we did. It was a wonderful crew. Bob Wellard what he used to do, always used to do was put on AFM, all the way, all the way through, over France, even over Germany sometimes – The American Forces Network. And there was always the same disc jockey pushing out the same old things, you know, the same old things we always used to listen to. I [unclear] Glenn Miller, of course, and that, that was a good experience. We liked that. But coming back to what we actually did, mid-upper gunner was wonderful really, he, we saw Focke-Wulf coming at us once, and I can’t remember where the target was at that time but the Focke-Wulf came at us and made a burst and disappeared from view. We don’t know if he was frightened or lost his way, I don’t know. And that was pretty awful but the worst experience I think we ever had was, I don’t know the target, but the Germans had a radar system. It was a big blue light that illuminated a very great area and picked up most aircraft. We were on our own and this blue light picked us up, once it picked us up all the searchlights in bloody Germany came in on us, and once they came in on you, they no matter where you flew another battery of searchlights picked you up. So we had these searchlights, we must have been, I think, I think it must have at least ten minutes. We had these detailed searchlights on us and the, I could hardly see I was blinded by them. And we came back that night like a bloody colander. And the rear-gunner at the back, I don’t know how he survived, ‘cause the tail plane was virtually shot to pieces. I think that was the worse thing we ever had. But Ken Rothwell what a pilot. He, what we called, corkscrewed and when you corkscrew a Lancaster, and we had a full bomb load at the time, that made it worse. You go down to the left, to the port, and then you turn-around and climb up to the starboard, to the right, up again to the port and then you climb up again to the port and then down and he evaded them. I don’t know how he did it, but he evaded them.
DM : Were all the crew N.C.O.’s? Or were..
PB : Actually the skipper he got a commission.
DM : Right.
PB : Yes.
DM : Did that change the dynamics at all.
PB : Not at all. No, he was a buddy. I mean, I think it was quite wrong in a way. The Americans didn’t see it that way, who nearly all got commissions. But we were all as one, you know really. It didn’t matter what rank you were. He was the pilot, you were the bomb aimer and there was a navigator there. The rest were N.C.O.’s, yes, yes.
DM : Did you, when you, see, from what you said earlier on, you kept the same crew apart from the navigator, who got scarlet fever?
PB : Yes. Yes that’s right.
DM : But other than that the same crew all the way through.
PB : All the way through.
DM : 75 Squadron and 7 Squadron.
PB : Yes, yes.
DM : So did you use to socialise off base as well as on base?
PB : Oh yes.
DM : Did you go to the pub?
PB : Oh, we went to the pub. Oh yes, we all went to the pub together. We had a great time. It was a lovely war. It was wonderful really when I think of those guys on the ground who were, you know, there battling away constantly in danger. We were in danger some of the time. The rest of the time we had a good life, came back to our bunks, and you know, and well fed when we came back. We had an aircrews’ breakfast which er, which consisted of bacon and eggs, and a tot of brandy. That was great, yeah.
DM : Will you, when you, I don’t know if you can remember particularly, but were there perhaps any missions early on when you were filled with trepidation?
PB : Oh, yes. Well there were trips when you lost an engine and came back on three engines. We had a hang-up once, we came back and the skipper said : ‘Don’t drop it on land, go over, drop in the Channel.’ And fortunately, it went off. It landed in the Channel. And I went back to the [unclear] officer and said : ‘There’s something wrong with that bomb release system.’ And he said : ‘Well, I will check it out.’ And he checked it out, and came back and said : ‘No. It’s perfect. There’s nothing wrong with it.’ Went on leave and the aircraft blew up in mid-air. The whole crew were killed. So, so that was terrible. So there was something wrong with it, but never found out what caused it.
DM : Did you ever have problems with fog when you came back?
PB : No. No. No, we always came back, luckily, when the weather forecast was excellent. We usually came back at night, of course. We were told though that the Germans at night were waiting above when we landed to see if they could knock out any Lancasters when we landed. We didn’t see any though.
DM : I was going to ask if you any trouble with intruders, but you never saw any?
PB : No.
DM : Or knew of anything?
PB : No. None at all. No. I think they were all busy fighting Russia. [laugh] Anyway we didn’t see that.
DM : So was it ’46 that you actually came out of the air force? When was that?
PB : September ’46.
DM : ’46. That’s when you resumed your training?
PB : Well, I started my training.
DM : Started your training.
PB : I wanted to be and I was going to be, and I started my training, as an, as an architect. I went to the Brixton School of Building, which was just around the corner funnily enough - So I had to walk there.
DM : So was that something you’d wanted to do before you joined the air force?
PB : No, not really. No, no. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Before I joined the air-force I very fortunate I got a job at the Ministry of Aircraft Production on Millbank. I must have been, I was seventeen. Yes, I was seventeen. And I joined the air force then when I was the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Wonderful job, counting the aircraft as they came out of the factory, literally. And I had access to all these figures, and they had accurate estimates of what should be produced and the factory ones that were produced. And I could see how many Hurricanes, Halifaxes, Spitfires, not Lancasters, were produced every, every week. And I was in the direct, in the fort, the very direction of aircraft production, which was the first floor of Millbank. I often go back, but it’s all changed now. They’ve taken it all away. It’s all gone They’ve gutted it and done again. They’ve really, really started the whole thing all over again.
DM : So, I imagine from what you’re saying it was while you were in the air force you, sort of, firmed up the idea that you would like to train to be an architect.
PB : I think, I think oh yes, yes.
DM : Any particular reason for that?
PB : Well I like to say I knocked them all down so I’m building them all back up again, but it wasn’t that at all. [laugh]. No, it wasn’t that. I just felt that I could draw and I felt I’d like to do it. And luckily I found the right niche.
PB : So after the war, you get a career, you get a wife and then a family, I imagine. Did you keep in touch with the crew or any other colleagues from the air force.
PB : Only Ken. And I’ll tell you how this happened. I knew Ken was an Australian. So I phoned up the Australian Pathfinder Association, and they said: ‘Oh Ken, yes we know who he is. Yes, he’s living in America now.’ So I said: ‘Whereabouts?’ He said: ‘New England.’ So I phoned up every Rothwell there was in New England and I got all sorts of funny replies. Mostly American. And then one day I said: ‘This is a voice from the past. You probably don’t know me.’ He said: ‘Hello Peter.’ He knew my voice. Huh. That’s how it started. And we’re friends now, we still see him. He came over, he used to come over here regularly to march at the Cenotaph. I still march every year at the Cenotaph. And he used to come over, but he’s my age, of course, and he finds it difficult to get around, like I do. So he doesn’t do that anymore. Great family. Got to know them. He’s been in this room.
DM : What career path did he follow?
PB : He was, he was the head of a college, in, I don’t know exactly what. But he was the head of a college in New England. He went into teaching. He met his wife in Sweden when he went on holiday once, I believe. And she’s American. Hmm, yeah.
DM : So, after the, after the war was there a period in your life when, obviously you would never forget what had happened in the air force and your time in Bomber Command, but did you, sort of, move away from it, and then perhaps come back to it and then join associations later?
PB : I put it right out of my mind. It was another world. Disappeared. And right up until fairly recently been totally out of my mind, except when Ken comes over. That brings it back a bit. But, no, it’s another world. Every life has its cycles and that was a cycle that disappeared. And this is my own particular cycle now, it’s been like that since the end of the war. No, I don’t think of it. I very rarely think of it. It’s another world. Another person. In fact, I often think of that person who did those things as my own son you know, and you know, nothing to do with me. Strange, but no another episode totally forgotten, and this brings it all back.
DM : Hmm.
PB : And I get a bit emotional about it now I’m afraid but that’s the way it was. Hmm.
DM : Did you go to the dedication of the memorial in London?
PB : Yes, we did. We did do that. My wife and I went to the dedication. And because I was, was signing books. I, because, was signing books for an organisation that was raising money for the maintenance of it. Because I was signing books I was invited with my wife. And when we were there, suddenly it was quite silent and suddenly there was, some of us heard a noise and we looked around and it was a Lancaster coming over. It was only those who looked around that were aircrew that recognised that sound. This Lancaster came over and dropped all these poppies. Wonderful.
DM : So, you didn’t know that was going to happen?
PB : No, no, no. It was out of the blue. Yeah great experience. Yeah, I like the memorial very much, but I find one fault with the sculptures. They all look about thirty-five or forty. We weren’t that age. All of us were kids. Twenty-one.
DM : Yeah, I think -
PB : Twenty-two.
DM: - like when you see your representation in the films. Most of the actors are far too old.
PB : Yeah. It’s a lovely memorial. I think, ‘Thank God it’s there,’ but the figures there I didn’t recognise.
DM : Do you have any opinions on how Bomber Command were treated after the war? As opposed to other people who had fought in it on other fronts and other-
PB : We were disappointed because we were in the same dangers as any other members of the forces, and we did feel a little bit let down that we weren’t recognised. And I think it was political football in a way, and I think it was all to do with the bombing of areas which were civilian occupied and I doubt it ever involved in that, anyway. Nevertheless it was a bit of let-down, yeah I felt that.
DM : So perhaps, whilst there’s recognition now, it’s very late because a lot of the people who survived the war are no longer with us.
PB : Yes, it is. Yes. The wonderful people who did make a great thing of thing of this, I’m very glad they did. I’m very grateful to them. But much later, of course, it was recognised and we were awarded a clasp and I was very honoured to be invited to Number 10 Downing Street by the Prime Minister with many others to receive the clasp. And that was an amazing experience. Going up the staircase with all the former Prime Ministers going up to the top floor and the Prime Minster. Gave a wonderful speech and he, he summarised the losses which was roughly a hundred-and-fifty thousand took part and fifty thousand died, fifty-five thousand died, and he knew all these facts and he knew all the statistics. And after the little presentation he came up to us and gave us the clasp. We didn’t go up to him, he came up to us. That was magnificent and then we were ushered into another room where there were tables set out and there were about five to each table, and there was a vacant seat at each table. I sat down at one with my wife, and shortly after he came and sat next to me and I was delighted with chatting away. And I said to him: ‘When the coach came in they searched for bombs and underneath the coach, you know, it’s very flat and there could have been bombs there so they searched for them.’ And I said to him later at the table, I said: ‘They looked for bombs under here. You need have bothered as we’re used to having bombs underneath us.’ And he thought that was quite funny. And had lovely meal there and that was wonderful. That was tremendous. That was a long living experience with me. Yeah. Yes my wife has been stalwart with me since my training days in the RAF, she lived next door to me, and I had wonderful letters and we kept this correspondence, she was only a child then you see. She was only twelve. When I was seventeen she was five years younger than me, and I’d always thought of her as a child and then much later she grew up and I grew up a bit more and we did get married in 1951 and very happily too. She’s till upstairs [laugh]. And very happily married. We’ve had three children. Unfortunately my son died, he went to America and he got a job in America and he was an accountant with Airbus, and he contracted cancer, unfortunately. But the other two girls are doing well, one of them is an architect like myself and the other is a very senior, very senior officer in the National Health Service. Yes.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Peter Banting
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-15
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00:43:28 audio recording
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ABantingP160315
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Pending review
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Type
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Sound
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Banting grew up in London and was a member of the Air Training Corps before he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. After training he flew operations with 75 Squadron from RAF Mepal and 7 Squadron RAF Oakington. After the war he trained to be an architect.
Contributor
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Gemma Clapton
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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
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
7 Squadron
75 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bombing
crewing up
fear
Gee
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Master Bomber
memorial
Mosquito
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Mepal
RAF Oakington
target indicator
Tiger force
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/240/3385/PCoxJ1606.1.jpg
1bcdedc530fd2f872407ddab9e936c8e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/240/3385/ACoxJ160321.1.mp3
06100ff099a07721ae8e49ba1bd5acd8
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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Cox, John
John Cox
J Cox
Description
An account of the resource
Seven Items. Includes an oral history interview with John Cox (133397 Royal Air Force), his logbooks and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 626 Squadron before becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Cox and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-14
2016-03-21
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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Cox, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell the interviewee is John Cox .The interview is taking place at Mr Cox’ home at Old Oxted in Surrey on the 21st of March 2016. Right could you perhaps tell us a little bit about your, like where you were born and your up bringing.
JC. Yes I was born in a town called Bourne actually, in Lincolnshire, that was spelt Bourne on the 15th of November 1922 and I was brought up there, I had two brothers one younger, one older than me we all went to the local grammar school and eventually each of us went into the services my elder brother went into the Army, he became a captain in the Army and was posted to India for a good time in of the war. My younger brother was, didn’t join up because of his, he wasn’t old enough until shortly before the war finished. As far as I was concerned I was always anxious to get into the Air Force and I looked forward to it with some relish. My, we all went to the local grammar school, we all enjoyed sports, I particularly enjoyed cricket. I used to cycle to Nottingham, to Trent Bridge some forty miles away to see a game of cricket when I was about fifteen. So, and I used to play cricket locally, then I decided that, well it was decided for me after I left school that I had to earn a living and I considered myself fortunate to be, to receive an entry into the Midland Bank. Now in those days it was not customary for anyone in the Bank to be allowed to work in the town in which they were born. So I was sent in fact about some sixty miles away to at the age of sixteen to a town in Norfolk it was called Wymondham, it was spelt Wymondham but locally pronounced ‘Windham’ and I went there into a small branch of the bank and I enjoyed a very, a very nice period there, I was only there for about four months I suppose before war was declared and I clearly remember the Sunday morning when we listened to the broadcast to say that we were at war with Germany. Whilst I was there in Wymondham I again played a lot of cricket for the local teams, I was staying in a nice boarding house together with some of the younger people who required accommodation like I did. I was entirely happy, it was only when war was declared I of course that I had to look at things rather more seriously. I wasn’t old enough to go into the Forces at that stage I was only sixteen but nevertheless it was looming in the distance that I was eventually got to join up and I was looking forward to joining the Air Force.
DM. So what was the route you followed into the Air Force, how, how did you come to join the Air Force?
JC. Well before the war I was interested in gliding as well as other things. I did a bit of gliding which gave me which gave me a lot of encouragement that I might be accepted in aircrew I didn’t know whether it was or not. But after that and when my time came to be called up I had an initial interview at Cardington I think near Bedford that is where they used to keep the R101 I do believe, the airship in the hangars there or outside the hangars and there we had a medical examination and a very brief interview with three Air Force officers who asked very simple questions which any idiot could have answered and I was accepted in as potential aircrew. Sent back home again and then eventually I got the call to report down to London where, which was the general reception area for aircrew and I found myself living in some very expensive flats in St John‘s Wood, all the furniture and important articles had been removed from the flats and we were just sleeping on the floor of the flats. Incidentally I found myself in a troop of thirty chaps, I was the only Englishman, all the rest were from the West Indies and they had just come over to England for the first time and very anxious to see London and with the result that we didn’t see much of them for quite a time because they were absent without leave. However eventually they came to heel and we went through the usual motions of being marched round the streets of that part of London by the corporal in little troops of about twenty or so and he would stop us at some little tea shop where he got his free tea and we had to pay thrupence for a cup of tea. And then we had our medical examination in the Lord‘s Cricket Ground in the Long Room at Lord‘s, which was absolute sacrilege for a for a cricketer but nevertheless we had our examinations, medical exams there and then we proceeded to be issued with our uniforms. I remember the big boots we were issued which took a little bit of breaking in. We used to have our lunch each day, be marched to the zoo and we had our lunch in the zoo, the animals were still there, we could hear the sounds of all the various animals as we were having our lunch. From there we I was transferred to an Initial Training Wing at Cambridge to Pembroke College. We had the College had been placed at the disposal of the Forces during the war. I remember it was very cold indeed we used to have to wash outside in the mornings in a sort of a little tub, the living was a bit sparse but nevertheless it was very interesting we then began to enter into our studies, aircraft recognition and everything applying to flying. We used to spend a lot of time at Cambridge being marched from one university to another where we had the privilege of receiving our studies in some of the well known universities. And we, the idea was at the end of our initial training there we should be sent to an Air Force Station where we would commence our flying. The course in Cambridge covered learning the morse code and many matters concerning RAF law et cetera, et cetera. Anyway I found myself being sent up to Scotland to an aerodrome called Scone which is near Perth. This was in the middle of winter. It was in January and when we got there we were suppose to do some initial flying to see if we were going to be airsick and that sort of thing otherwise we would have been thrown out. However when we got there it began to snow, we were only going to be there for three weeks but in three weeks we got one hours flying, because each day it snowed, or each night it snowed and each day we were spent clearing the snow off the runways. However the three weeks went by reasonably quickly and I found myself flying I think a couple of hours in a Tiger Moth. They satisfied themselves that I wasn’t subject to airsickness and so I was then delegated or instructed to go to America. We went over to the Clyde and boarded a relatively small American ship I think it was called the USS Neville it was a small one. We went in convoy then over to the State everybody was seasick without a shadow of doubt but we had a, went over in convoy and we didn’t have any, meet any trouble from the enemy at all. But when we got to New York that was that was a very pleasant environment in which to find oneself. Well the Americans had only just, that week I think it was just come into the war, Pearl Harbour had just occurred and they were forced into the war. They were then, as Americans are, very “gung ho” and everything was everything was sort of orientated to ensure that the troops were being prepared for war. Great celebrations, well not celebrations but incidents of patriotism in Times Square, New York where there were banners all over saying ‘let‘s go USA’ that sort of thing, it was all, they hadn’t experienced any war themselves at that moment. They were extremely kind to us, extremely generous, they enabled us to and provided us with tickets to go to any function almost, free of charge in New York whilst we were there. Personally I went to, I chose to go one night to a boxing match between Joe Louis and man called Abe Simmons at Madison Square Gardens. That was just one of the things I went to, but after a few days there they then arranged for us to board into trains to go to the Southern states of America, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana et cetera.
DM. So after you left New York where did you end up.
JC. Well we then went by train to the Southern states, I was very much looking forward to getting, starting to fly because I remembered in about 1935 when I was about thirteen years old I went to Sir Alan Cobham’s Air Circus which was, which came to my local town in Lincolnshire and I was absolutely thrilled to go and also very anxious to fly in the future. So anyway we got down to Tosca Alabama initially on the train. There we were well received by the local population, they hadn’t experienced any war at all down there or in America at all at that stage and they couldn’t have been kinder to us they really gave us a warm welcome and in Tosca, Louis or Alabama. I was attached to the local aerodrome where we started our primary training, we were flying Steersman aircraft. I remember I had an instructor called Mister Allan who was a very good pilot, not an awfully nice man but a very good pilot. I think before he started working for the US Air Force he had been a crop sprayer flying, flying low level and he was a very good pilot indeed. Well I managed to survive the six weeks course there in Alabama having gone solo after a few hours and I think when we done sixty hours we moved on to Turner Field in Georgia where we were then flying a rather heavier type of single engined aircraft. We did sixty hours or so there. After that we went to our Finishing School at Ellington Field in Houston in Texas. There we were flying twin engined aircraft, the Cessna 89 and some much more sophisticated aircraft after about sixty hours there we qualified to receive our wings. I was one of the fortunate ones who was invited to remain there as an instructor of the American Air Force. The Americans of course had a war forced upon them unexpectedly after Pearl Harbour and they hadn’t got enough instructors to cope with the large influx of pupil pilots of their own. So a few of us were asked if we would remain as instructors for the American pilots.
DM. How did you feel about that, were you pleased to stay or were you keen sort of to get into the fray back in Europe?
JC. Well no, I was desperately anxious to get home quite honestly. But I got messages from my home saying please take this opportunity to be an instructor in America because they realised the dangers were less over there than they were back home.
DM. You were out of harm‘s way.
JC. Yes I was out of harm’s way. In any event it was a, it was a very pleasant experience we had a course, courses lasted about six weeks and each of us had six pupils and they, I think I did about four or five courses there until the end of the year. It was a very interesting assignment and we knew we were eventually going to come back into the general fray of things in England but we did enjoy it over there.
DM. How did the young Americans I assume they were mainly young take to an equally young Englishman teaching them how to fly an aeroplane?
JC. They looked upon us with great respect strangely enough. I think it was because we had come from England where the war had been going on for some time and somehow they thought they they.
DM. You were the experts.
JC. Yeah they thought we knew all about it, in fact we didn’t we had only just trained ourselves but I suppose we had been selected because perhaps we had done reasonably well in out training and we were commissioned and generally speaking we, we did enjoy it. I, we had lots of privileges there too, for instance we were enabled if we wished to have an aircraft each weekend and we could go anywhere within a thousand miles as long as we were back by Monday morning and that was fine. We could take anybody with us if they were in uniform and so each weekend, not every weekend but many weekends we did make use of this great advantage. I remember one weekend I flew from Houston in Texas to the Grand Canyon in Arizona and, and back again. There was one restriction which was placed upon us that was that we were not supposed to fly more than a thousand miles away from base. Well the Grand Canyon was in fact one thousand two hundred and ninety miles away. So what I had to do was to fly to an aerodrome called Winslow, Arizona and land there and that was about three hundred miles short of the Grand Canyon. I had to refuel there, fly into the Grand Canyon, we flew around I took a Sergeant with me who was my Flight Sergeant on the aircraft, on the ground staff and we flew in the Grand Canyon and then flew back to Winslow, Arizona to refuel. So in fact I hadn’t exceeded the thousand mile limit [laughs] but had cheated a little bit and it was a very pleasant experience.
DM. Did you have to do your own navigation for that?
JC, Oh yes, there was just the two of us in a twin engined aircraft and they were lovely aircraft Cessna’s very much heavier aircraft than our Airspeed Oxfords and over here over in England, a fine aircraft. Anyway but that was a privilege, that sort of privilege made life very congenial over there and I exercised it quite a lot. We used to go to New Orleans and Kansas City and Memphis Tennessee, each weekend if we wished, we didn’t do it every weekend, but if we wished we could make use of that facility.
DM. So you were flying around the United States visiting places like New Orleans and having quite a good time. Eventually all good things come to an end and you had to come back to England. So what, what was the journey like, how did that go?
JC. Well, the journey back from America was interesting; we actually came back on the Queen Mary. Now the Queen Mary at that time was plying backwards and forwards to New York, without, without any support, without any military support or naval support because it was so fast in relation to the other ships. And so when we came back there were only about twenty of us I think on the Queen Mary from the RAF. All the rest were German, were American Soldiers and there were sixteen thousand on board. It annoyed us immensely because they all thought it was an American ship as it was so large, the biggest in the world at the time they thought it must be American. It took a lot of convincing them it was in fact an English ship. My colleagues and I in the Air Force were invited or requested via the ships’ crew by the Captain to go onto the flying bridge I think they call it in the fore end of the ship and spreads right across the whole ship and we had to keep our eyes scanned for enemy shipping or anything which needed reporting to the Captain. We had eight on the bridge at the same time each of us had in front of him a disc which had a segment marked out for us and we had to survey that particular segment looking out for enemy activity. Another, occasionally we had the extreme edge of this bridge to do our observations from and that was right over the sea, it was over the sides of the ships. The object, the objective of having those observation points was that we could look back along the side of the ship to see if there were any portholes being opened or flashing of enemies or flashing of lights to the enemy. Of course we didn’t, all the port holes were in fact locked and so it would be a problem for anybody to make any signals to anybody, but that was the object of that particular exercise. It kept us busy, we used to, used to do it about one night in three on the way back but it, I think it took us about twelve days to get back which was a long time for the Queen Mary then, it was going across in about three and half days in normal conditions, but we came back via the Azores which for security reasons apparently we did came, did a long circuit that way, that way home. That’s why we took so long, but it was an eventful journey. The reason it was restricted to sixteen thousand on board was that they could only serve thirty two thousand meals a day. So we all had two meals a day but they were very good meals.
DM. What was the accommodation like?
JC. The accommodation, we were, we were housed in the cabins and they were probably about ten in each two man cabin. We had bunks there to sleep in and they were stacked up the walls of the cabins we had about three or four cabins, three or four bunks on each wall of the cabin, so we were very crowded. Nevertheless the food was, although we only got two meals a day they were absolutely marvellous meals for war time conditions.
DM. What port did you come back to?
JC. We came, we came back into Gourock I think in Scotland and then we would ship down to somewhere near Liverpool overnight and then we came, I think we were allowed some time to go home. We had a bit of leave, that was, that was before we started on any serious flying in England again.
DM.So at this time you have been trained, you have been a trainer, you have come back to Britain. You have obviously not been allocated a squadron or anything yet.
JC. No, no we hadn’t. We were allocated to our squadrons we had all done about a thousand hours of flying already. So we didn’t need a lot of flying training I would suggest but we had to obviously had to get used to the Wellington and the Halifax and then onto Lancasters. We went to different aerodromes for that purpose. We had a reception centre at Scarborough in Yorkshire where and, and we were billeted in hotels there till such time as we we were allocated to our next station for training. First of all, then a Wellington a rather heavy aircraft, I didn’t care much for them, but that was the first English aircraft that I flew really. I had flown Airspeed Oxfords and lighter aircraft but that was the first heavy one that I had flown. Then we went onto Halifax’s at another station and then further on, finally Lancasters. From that of course we were allocated a squadron and that is the begetting of another story.
DM. How did the crewing up for the Lancaster come about.
JC. Well the crewing was a bit haphazard in my mind. We were just let loose with the aircrew, potential aircrew and they said well ‘just sort yourselves out’, you know, ’pick somebody you like the look of and, and if you want him he’s yours.’ So It really was a hit and miss affair fortunately I picked a very good crew, they were all friends of friends they were all very capable at their jobs. They weren’t truculent or boastful or cocky they were just very good crew members. We didn’t have a lot of jollity while we were flying in fact we had none at all. I used to make sure that there wasn’t a lot of idle chatter over the intercom ‘cause that was a bit disturbing and I, I stopped any of that, but we, we always worked well together. When we were on the ground we would go out together, possibly into Lincoln to whoop it up a bit. I’d got a motor cycle I remember that was a great help to me, I could get into Lincoln in about twenty minutes time. One night I was coming home after having probably a spot of liquid refreshment and I hit the railway gates which were closed [laugh] and went right over the railway gates much to the. The signalman came out and admonished me, I told him ‘he hadn’t got his light on the gates’ and he said ‘of course you haven’t got it on because you have knocked it off.’ I threatened to report him to the authorities he said ‘you can do what you like’ [laughs] I didn’t get very far with him. Anyway in Lincoln itself the squadron there was 626 Squadron I joined at Wickenby eight miles outside Lincoln we also had the 12 Squadron on the same aerodrome and but by and large we kept to our own squadrons for community reasons, friendships but it was a well run aerodrome.
DM. When did you receive your commission because I assume -
JC. I got my commission in America.
DM. You did? While you were training?
JC. Well, at the end of training, yes, those who became instructors also were commissioned at the same time. So I had my commission and I was a Flight Lieutenant when I was flying from the squadron in Wickenby.
DM. Were all your crew British or?
JC. They were, there was a Scotsman but they were British as you say. But on the night that we were, we were shot down my rear gunner who was a Scot was injured on his motor cycle, he had been into Lincoln and he was coming home he he had a crash and he was injured so on that particular night of our, of our operations, when, when it was a bit fatal for us, I had another gunner allocated to me and he was a Belgian. I had never met him before but as far as I was concerned, he was a good gunner and but otherwise they were all English. Eh I’m sure they were all English, yes.
DM. So can you remember anything about your first mission what your thoughts were, how you felt.
JC. Well, I didn’t have any apprehensions at all in, in flying certainly early on my own crew were well trained by then we done a lot of practice flying together we were, we were a good happy combined unit. No I didn’t have any apprehensions about it, no.
DM. Now you were based at Wickenby and you came from Bourne so you were sort of a local lad to all intents and purposes but did that mean you were able to see more of your family than perhaps your colleagues at all?
JC. In fact it didn’t because we had, we had to remain on the station whenever there was a possibility of any flying and we didn’t know what the weather conditions were going to be so they couldn’t give us leave and the tour of operations would normally be relatively short. Either you got shot down or you finished your thirty tours, thirty operations and it wasn’t going to be spread over a long period. No it was nice to have my family close at hand but I don’t think I ever visited them whilst I was operating.
DM. So where were some of the places you flew over?
JC. You mean.
DM. Where were your missions to?
JC. Well my first mission was to Karlstad [?] and that was in December of that year. And then I went to Essen and to Ludwigshafen to Ulla and Bonne and quite a few more that was in about two or three weeks we covered those few. Subsequently I went to Gelsenkirchen, Nuremberg, Munich, Ludwigshafen, Wiesbaden, Kleve, [sound of papers rustling] Dresden, Chemnitz, Dortmund, Duisburg, Flashier, Dessau, Kassel, Essen, Dortmund and finally shot down over Nuremberg.
DM. Before that fatal, so to speak twenty-first mission when you were shot down had you had encounters with enemy aircraft or bad, bad experiences with flak?
JC. Yeah, yes on each occasion usually there was some, some enemy action which was, was a bit disturbing, on occasions we had a clear run. But places like Nuremberg and Munich and Chemnitz, was a long distances to go and Dresden was a long way to go. Off course there was a lot of criticism about our bombing of Dresden. We didn’t know before we went we were going to cause so much damage. It was of course because Dresden was built mainly of wood and burned rather readily. It was a great shame about that but it did help the Russians to get into East Germany and quite a lot sooner than they would otherwise have done. Because the Dresden railway yards were being used by the Germans to bring their troops up and the Russians were complaining that we weren’t doing much to help them. They had come back from Moscow driven the Germans back from the doors of Moscow almost to the borders of Germany again, but their lines of communication were so long it was causing them problems. Just as it had caused the Germans problems when they got were attacked Moscow. They got to the gates of Moscow virtually but the weather and the long lines of communication caused them to be defeated there.
DM. The criticism about Dresden, I have always assumed it was after the war. Was there any criticism at the time, do you remember, I suppose people didn’t know what had happened then?
JC. There was no criticism in the British press I don’t think, in fact it was hailed as a great success probably. When I was shot down which was not too long after my trip to Dresden it was shouted at me by the Germans, ‘Dresden, Dresden, Dresden’ and it had obviously hit home very hard there. And it was a, it was a very unfortunate affair that so many were killed. But at least it did help to shorten the war because within about a month or so the Germans, the Russians were in Berlin.
DM. So turning now to that mission to Nuremberg when you were shot down what, what led to your demise?
JC. Well, Nuremberg, we’d been before we thought we knew the way there, we did know the way there quite well. We had, we got caught in searchlights which was a frightening experience. The master searchlight got us at twenty thousand feet earlier on then all the other searchlights coned in on us and it was at twenty thousand feet the inside of the aircraft was lit up as though it was daylight. One felt very vulnerable because there was nothing you could do to get out of the searchlights. If you weaved about the master searchlight seemed to follow you then all the other searchlights coned in on you and for a few minutes it was, that was quite a frightening experience. But the last mission to Nuremberg when we were shot down, we were attacked by a Junkers 88 and we were about, we were on the bombing run in, we were the bomb aimer, the bomb aimer was at his gun sights giving instructions to the pilot who was me to change direction very slightly here and there as we went in and it was at that time that we were attacked by this Junkers 88, yeah.
DM. So can you tell us a bit about the night when you were attacked by the Junkers 88 and shot down?
JC. Yes indeed we had completed about two thirds, two thirds of our tour and we were therefore quite experienced we had been to Nuremberg on the 2nd of January 1945 and we had moments of excitement but were not unduly concerned about the second trip. My regular rear gunner had a motor car, motor cycle accident the day before and he was replaced by a Belgium that we hadn’t met before but he had been well recommended to us. The notes I made at the pre flight briefing show that we were to bomb in three waves, commencing at three minute intervals and our aircraft was to fly the second wave from 21:33 hours to 21:36 hours we were at twenty thousand feet and our bombs, we were dropping our bombs on a heading of 084 degrees. Mosc, Mosquito Pathfinders with illuminating flares would be available at 21:26 and then they would follow up with red and green flares. If the target was vis, if the target was visual then red target indicators would be backed up with green target indicators. The aircraft would be staggered between eighteen and twenty thousand feet and the bomb load was one four thousand pound bomb and six thousand four hundred pounds of incendiaries. The, we witnessed considerable night fighter activity on the way there particularly south of Stuttgart where we had seen one or two aircraft going down and they were shot down by heavy flak. We were not concerned with night fighters and we successfully took evasive action when the rear gunner reported the Junkers 88 on our tail but it was out of range. The searchlights were plentiful as we approached Nuremberg but not too troublesome except to the extent that it made our silhouettes more easily seen. At 21:24 hours we were just short of the target and contemplating our bombing run although our bomb bays were not yet open. Without any warning we were attacked from underneath and set on fire in the centre section flames and choking smoke funnel, funnelling forward to the cockpit. I had no intercom response from the crew. Almost immediately I, the Lanc went out of control and into a steep dive and I am convinced some part of it must have fallen off or a control linkage severed. Having regard to the nature of our bomb load I still cannot understand why we did not explode as it appeared to me that the incendiaries were on fire. Immediately I gave instructions to bale out, not knowing if my order was received but mid upper gunner and wireless operator were presumably either injured or prevented by the fire from escaping. The bomb aimer and rear gunner were captured on landing about thirty miles from the crash site. The flight engineer did not survive and I can only assume that after he jumped he was caught up by some sort, part of the aircraft which was in a very steep dive. The parachute of the navigator failed to open and he was buried in the neighbouring village of Burgoberbach. For my part I must have been no more than a few hundred feet up when I baled out. I saw the Lanc explode on the ground just below me and within seconds I landed about three hundred yards from the burning aircraft. A compound fracture of the right leg resulted in a series of bone graft operations in various RAF hospitals for the next, for the next three years and I was eventually invalided out of the Air Force at the end of 1948. The exceptionally large losses that night I think could be attributed to the fact that the German night fighters were able to penetrate the bomber stream at an early stage and on a clear night. From Stuttgart onwards we were very vulnerable. Nuremburg was always a hot target.
DM. Ok so you you you parachuted, you managed to escape the aircraft, you baled out, you landed near to the aircraft, it was obviously night. What what happened after that once you were on the ground. Did you hide, you were injured clearly so you weren’t very mobile.
JC. It wasn’t a question of hiding, it was a question of, I fell in a pine forest and the trees were very close together. Looking at it from as you parachuted down it looked like a pin cushion that you were going to fall into which I did fall into it and my leg, I could see that as I parachuting down my right leg was bleeding and that and my boots had come off both, both boots had come off and it was my fault because I hadn’t got the straps tied sufficiently tightly around them. So that was a mistake on my part but I, when I landed and crashed through the trees, there was no way which I could avoid crashing through the trees. I was there with a, with a shell wound in my leg, no boots on at all, my feet were absolutely bare and I was lying at the bottom of a pine tree in the middle of the forest. I thought my chances of escape from there were pretty limited. After that I didn’t know, I couldn’t do anything for myself, I couldn’t my leg was busted, broken completely with a shell wound and I was, I thought that was going to be my end because there was no way I could attract attention of anyone being in the middle of a forest. It was the next morning probably about six o clock or six thirty in the morning when it was just daylight I could see just through the trees the silhouette of an old lady who was gathering firewood. The Germans were very short of any sort of fuel and she was obviously thinking about her fires at home and gathering firewood. Well I, I hailed her through the trees and she didn’t see me initially because the trees were so closely together but then she did see me and she scuttled off. Well I thought at least somebody knows I am here. Then I was waiting then, I could only wait to see what happened. There was no way I could move with my leg as it was, no shoes, there was no way of escaping and I just had to trust to the Lord for my future. Well after about an hour I saw a soldier coming through the trees towards me. He was a very well dressed soldier and he was part of the, we were to call it the Home Guard in our country but had a much, much more military style about him and he had two guns in his belt but he came, he didn’t take the guns out of his belt or anything like that, he saw that I was helpless lying at the bottom of this tree and he looked at me and then indicated that he would come back. Well he went away and I didn’t know how long it was but an hour or two later he came back again and this time hauled me to the side of the forest that we were in and he had a hay cart there. Well, and he helped me onto this hay cart and started trotting away back towards the village. On the way back he, he also picked up the body of my navigator who was dead and I notice that the navigator had no parachute and I can only assume that he had not attached properly his parachute when he clipped it on, leaving the aircraft. I saw him leave the aircraft and I thought he’d got the parachute with him then but obviously somehow or other he he lost it on the way out. So I am afraid he was dead and they put him on the side, on the straw in this hay cart that I was on alongside me and trotted into the neighbouring village of Burgoberbach.
DM. Where did you go from there, what happened after that?
JC. Well after I got there of course they were very hostile, the local inhabitants and they continued to shout the name of Dresden to me quite frequently. I couldn’t do anything by way of response except look a little bit contrite and they took my, the body of my navigator off the hay cart and decided that the local hospital where they took me wasn’t appropriate for my particular wound which was quite serious, they couldn’t deal with me and so they transferred me to a pony and trap, put me on this trap and the same soldier who had picked me up out of the forest drove me about probably four or five miles to a German hospital and left me there. There is no doubt about it they were pretty hostile towards me and I wasn’t in a position to do much arguing with them.
DM. Was the hospital you ended up in, was it a military hospital or a civil hospital?
JC. It was a German, it was a military hospital, it was housed entirely with German soldiers and a place called Troisdorf and they, they received me there and they took me into the operating theatre, they looked at the leg and they put a plaster cast, plaster cast on it and they left a hole in the side of the plaster cast where the shell had gone in so they could treat that. In fact it, it was a good idea but it didn’t really work because of the leg didn’t improve. They weren’t antagonistic towards me in the hospital they were I thought reasonably, not friendly that would be stretching it too much, but they tolerated me and put me in a ward of soldiers. There were forty in the ward the beds were so closely packed, they were all injured German soldiers except me. There was a gap between each bed of no more than six, eighteen inches just enough so the doctor could come round between each bed but they were very, very, very closely parked the beds in the hospital. They I wasn’t treated badly, they didn’t give me a very warm reception. The soldiers in the ward strangely enough were not antagonistic. They were in the same boat as I was, they were all injured and I received a daily visit from the doctor, he couldn’t do anything because they probably got more important things to do. I was there for some weeks in the hospital hoping that one day the Americans would come along and release me.
DM. Did you receive any information as to what was going on in the war, did you manage to glean anything when you were there?
JC. The only, no, I had a, I was concerned that nobody knew where I was and furthermore the Red Cross weren’t aware of where I was so I couldn’t be reported as a prisoner of war. I was concerned my parents back home would assume that I had been killed because the Red Cross were normally pretty good within twenty four hours or so indicating that either members alive or he wasn’t. And there was no way in which I could ask the Germans to do anything for me in that regard no I felt very lonely and I was more concerned about my parents at home must be believing I had been killed and I wasn’t able to communicate with them and that happened, that applied for quite some weeks afterwards, so I was very sorry about that.
DM. Did, did you get a chance to write a letter before, before you left to your parents or you never had a chance to communicate with them?
JC. Oh there was no way at all, there was no question of writing letters it was a question of surviving really and this was on my mind the whole time that my parents would believe that I was dead because normally when one was shot down they went to a prisoner of war camp. The Red Cross would immediately take action to ensure the parents was advised that the son was still alive at least and in a prisoner of war camp. And of course the food in a prisoner of war camp would have been better than we were getting in the hospital. Our meals were very very sparse, mind all the German soldiers were getting the same food as I was. But we used to live on sort of a very watery soup if I remember and I lost quite a bit of weight there, yeah.
DM. When did you come to leave the hospital what happened?
JC. Well, I think it must have been about six weeks or so that I was there before the Germans, before the Americans came in.
DM. So was the hospital evacuated or ?
JC. Well they were on the brink of it and there was a lot of disturbance and I wasn’t quite clear what was going to happen. Certainly there was a lot of activity at the local railway station and I suspected that they, the patients were going to be evacuated, but on the other hand there wasn’t much sense in evacuating the only way they could go was further into Germany and into that part of Germany and the Americans were going to follow them anyway, so there wasn’t much point in it. So in the end I waited until I could hear the guns coming of the Americans I could hear them in the distance a couple of days before they actually arrived. They were approaching at about fifteen miles a day and when they got to the hospital they were, they had a man come, I managed to contact them. The hospital wasn’t evacuated and the Americans were not delighted to see me, I was just a nuisance to them. I got my leg in a full length plaster, they didn’t know what to do with me, but the only thing they could do was take me along with them. And I went along [laugh] with General Paton [laugh] and his officers for quite some days but I was going in the wrong direction, they were approaching at about fifteen miles a day into Germany and I was going the wrong way with them, but my main concern was still that I couldn’t get a message to my parents. I couldn’t ask couldn’t ask the Germans to do anything, they weren’t interested and General Paton was too busy with his troops and not of, not of an inclined nature to be helpful. It was interesting to see how they were progressing, they would do about fifteen miles a day and they would go through three of four villages during that time and there was no resistance of any substance at all for them they were just rumbling through. They would ring up the next village and say ‘we want to see the white sheets coming out of the windows by way of surrender otherwise we will come in shooting’. In no time at all you could see the white, look at the next village, and the sheets were coming out of the bedroom windows and they had pretty well a free run. But they had bypassed so many Germans on the way through and this is why they couldn’t do anything with me, they couldn’t send me back by ambulance. So many Germans had been by passed and there was still a great danger, well nuisance anyway, but General Paton was only anxious to, plough on through, through that part of Germany and he had no, virtually no opposition at all. We went, they always used to choose the best building in the village that they were going to stop in that night and kick anybody out if they were, if they were residing there and make that the Officers Mess. Every now and again they would pick up a village halls one night we stayed in a school the village school and I was interested to walk round the school. I thought whilst I was there I might as well walk round the classrooms and I was, it was very interesting to see that their style of education was obviously very much similar to ours. On one occasion I saw that there was a map on the wall and it was the south coast of England and the north coast of Europe there the English Channel between them, but I notice they called that the German Channel. I thought this was a bit off side, [laugh] I thought it was the English Channel but no it was the German Channel, never mind.
DM. How did you eventually come to leave General Paton’s army.
JC. Well eventually they began to get the Germans cleared behind them so that it made it, it made it possible to bring ambulances forward and eventually I, I was put in an ambulance together with about six of their own soldiers that were injured and brought back. I was about a fortnight day by day moving backwards from one medical station to another, Russian, American medical stations to another and I saw some. The Americans were treating the German injured as well as their own. I remember on one occasion there was a nurse giving a blood drip to an American to a German soldier and he was, he was in agony, crying out and she slapped him across the face and she said ‘shut up will you’ she said, ‘you should be grateful to get good American blood’ [laugh]. Anyway eventually I, I got back by ambulance to Rheims, “did I tell you this?”
DM. “No you didn’t.”
JC. Went there, Rheims where there was a very big American camp and these chaps were being sent back to England to go on to America the war was over as far, they weren’t, they were just American soldiers, they were surplus to requirements then in France and I was the only Englishman in this camp there must have been a thousand American troops there. Very basic. They were living in tents in the middle of Rheims and from there they were flying them back to England, the Americans were flying their own troops back to England and I, I eventually came back with them. On one occasion I looked along the line and I saw outside one tent a table, it was a big tent a table was displaying lots of little parcels on it. There was a master sergeant there sitting by this table and these, the soldiers were lined up receiving one of these little parcels and I so said to one of them ‘what are they queuing for?’ and he said ‘they are queuing to get their Purple Hearts.’ So I said ‘oh yes so I will try and get a Purple Heart’. I was the only Englishman in the camp it was all various Americans. So [laughs] I went, I got in the queue they were lined up and signing and taking their Purple Heart away and I, when I got there the master sergeant looked me up and down and said ‘what outfit are you in?’ you see and I said I was in the Royal Air Force and he said ‘well I shall have to see the colonel about you’ “I said, ‘don’t bother’ [laughs] and passed on. I didn’t get my Purple Heart.
DM. So did you fly home from Rheims?
JC. Yes they, I was the only Englishman on the flight it was especially for the Americans really they all, the pilot asked me to go and sit with him in the cockpit so that I could see the White Cliffs of Dover as we came over. We landed at an aerodrome in the south of England its name just escapes me, but I was there for a fortnight and it was only there that I could arrange for a phone call to made to my parents to say I have landed in England and that was a happy release for me. Then I went from there to Cosford near Wolverhampton which was the general reception area of all RAF prisoners of war as they came back. Whether they were injured or whether they didn’t, they went there. The prisoners of war went to Cosford where they had an absolutely marvellous organisation. These chaps came back like I did with ragged clothes, and that sort of thing, and they were fitted out with new uniforms. If they got brevets to put on their uniforms they were put on, and if, they were fitted up with new boots, fully fitted up and after a medical examination they were sent off home, to their homes which they were anxious to get to of course but as far as I was concerned I went and there was no way they could get me home immediately but I was there for about a fortnight being looked, having my leg looked after, put in another splint and then they did allow me to go home. There were some very good natured people about at that time who were prepared to drive these ex prisoners of war from Cosford Hospital to their homes where ever their homes may be. I was in Lincolnshire, my home was in Lincolnshire a long way from the hospital but some kind chap drove me all the way there all the way home. And he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t stay, with my parents to have a chat with or anything, he said ‘I must now turn round and go back’ and he went all the way back to Wolverhampton very nice of him. But I suppose that in those days there was rationing of petrol but these people who were prepared to do this, the transfer to patients back home to their homes obviously got a special allowance of petrol to do that. Yes, that was pretty much the end of my story.
DM. You didn’t stay on in the Air Force after the war?
JC. I stayed on for three and a half years not because I wanted to but because my leg, was needed treatment and, I was in hospital, Cosford Hospital for two years with various operations on my leg. I had bone grafts and that sort of things the first ones wouldn’t, wouldn’t heal l so I had new ones and it was a very long winded job. And then they sent me or allowed me to go to an RAF Regiment camp near my home in Lincolnshire where I was assistant administrating officer or something like that not having to do any work but it was a place to put me whilst my leg was continuing to heal. Anyway it was three and a half years before I actually left the Air Force. Meanwhile they paid me all the time which was good of them, in the Officers Mess.
DM. Did you go back into banking?
JC. Yes I went back into banking, first of all I went to the Lincoln branch of the bank. I couldn’t accept any pay from them because I was getting Air Force pay, so I was working for nothing but as far as I was concerned I was getting back into my line of business. From then on I, I took up various appointments in the bank I went to Northamptonshire, I went to Birmingham, I went to Coventry and different branches each time receiving a bit of an uplift in by way of promotion, eventually I, I, I managed a big branch in Birmingham and then I went to London and I was reluctant to go back to London because I was so happy in Birmingham. We lived in a nice house and got well settled but I had to go back to London. When I got there I objected in a mild manner, I know I agreed to the move, but they said be patient and within six months they had made me Manager of the largest branch in the bank in Threadneedle Street which was a surprise to me and obviously they had moved me around with this in mind from Birmingham. But I was there for about five years and then was eventually made a General Manager of the bank from which I retired.
DM. Did you keep in touch with colleagues from the war?
JC. No, well my Canadian bomb aimer he, he went back to Canada, I lost touch with him. The remainder, of course I lost four of the crew for one reason and another and the Belgian he went back he went straight back to Belgium he didn’t come back to England before going home, I don’t blame him either he went straight back home. So I,I didn’t have any more contact. I did have a lot of contact with the Germans afterwards at various reunions and entirely different.
DM. That’s the Germans that shot you down basically?
JC. Oh yes, I met them, they turned out to be quite nice chaps really, yes there we are. They visited me in England, came over and had a holiday then they went on to Ireland to extend the holiday a little bit and I took them round the RAF Museum. They wanted to look inside the Lancaster but they wouldn’t open, they wouldn’t allow them to open the door.
DM. That was mean.
JC. [laugh] So that is more or less the end of my story.
DM. Do have any thoughts, opinions about how Bomber Command were treated after the war. About the public reaction or lack of recognition?
JC. It didn’t unduly concern me but I, I agree that they did justify rather more publicity than they got publicity of a favourable nature, but that’s the way it is they weren’t, I don’t think people understood for a long time just the percentage of losses which were really incurred it seemed to be about one in two that were likely to not survive. No I didn’t get worked up about it, it was one of those things. Now of course some attention is being paid to that remission, yeah.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ACoxJ160321
PCoxJ1606
Title
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Interview with John Cox
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:08:49 audio recording
Creator
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David Meanwell
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-21
Description
An account of the resource
John Cox grew up in Lincolnshire and worked in banking before he joined the Royal Air Force. After training as a pilot in the United States, he served as an instructor for almost three years. He flew 20 operations as a pilot with 626 Squadron,from RAF Wickenby, before his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war. He was repatriated from a German military hospital by American forces and returned to England. Spending two years in hospital at RAF Cosford, he received treatment and bone grafts to his leg. After the war he returned to banking.
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
United States
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
Alabama
Georgia
Texas
France
France--Reims
Germany--Troisdorf
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Hugh Donnelly
Carolyn Emery
626 Squadron
Absent Without Leave
African heritage
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
final resting place
Halifax
Ju 88
Lancaster
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Cosford
RAF Wickenby
Red Cross
searchlight
shot down
training
Wellington