Interview with John Martin
John Martin was born in June 1922 and lived in London. He always wanted the opportunity to fly and so at the age of 19 volunteered to join the Royal Air Force as an armourer. He was not accepted as he was in a reserved occupation. Eventually he reapplied as aircrew and was accepted as a wireless operator. He describes his signals training at RAF Yatesbury, involving flying in Dominies and Proctors. June 1943 saw him undertake advanced flying training with 14 Operational Training Unit at RAF Cottesmore and then RAF Husbands Bosworth flying Wellingtons. He completed conversion to Lancaster bombers before being posted to 166 Squadron. January 1944 saw him flying an operation to Berlin, where his aircraft was shot down. He describes how he had to get out of the burning aircraft before parachuting in to a field where he was captured. Initially he was taken to Dulag Luft near Frankfurt, where he was interrogated and believed to be a spy as he had no identification tags with him. Eventually imprisoned in a prisoner of war camp in North Prussia. As the Russian forces advanced, John was moved to another camp in Poland, and then again to one north of Hanover. Here the prisoners heard about the D-Day landings in June 1944.
Allied troops arrived and repatriation to the United Kingdom was carried out by C-47 aircraft. On arrival in England, he and other returning men were taken to RAF Cosford where they were given baths, clean beds and new uniforms. Rehabilitation courses were provided, and John served at RAF Cranwell until he was demobbed.
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2018-12-02
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01:42:47 audio recording
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AMartinEJ181202
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Interview with John Tipton
John Tipton grew up in Tenby and studied law at University College London. He volunteered for the RAF and trained as a navigator. He was posted to 40 Squadron where he began operational flying before the squadron were posted to Malta. After his tour of operations he began instructing at an Operational Training Unit but was keen to return to operational flying and joined 109 Squadron Pathfinders. He completed another seventy operations with 109 bringing his tally of operations to one hundred and four. He would have continued with operations but was told he had done enough. He became an Oboe controller in Holland. He had a distinguished post war career including at SHAPE HQ where he was a head of air intelligence.
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2017-06-10
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01:14:59 audio recording
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ATiptonJ170610
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