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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1083/11541/APriceSTG151001.1.mp3
1421d71d473b33c64ebc651fe2bbf2aa
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Title
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Price, Sam
Samuel Thomas Gwynne Price
S T G Price
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Sam Price (b. 1925, 1819421 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 195 and 35 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-01
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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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Price, STG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: Recording on the 1st of October 2015 at the home of Gwyn Price in Colerne in Wiltshire and Ian Locker conducting the interview. Right, Gwyn tell us a little bit about your early life and how you joined, how you became involved in Bomber Command.
SGP: Yeah. I was born in 1925 so we’re talking about some seventy odd years ago when I did my first operation. So, although the mind is reasonably clear and I’ve had a look at things we really have to go back and give you the background. My rural background. Farming community. No — no electricity, no gas, no water, no sewage. Everything done on the range. But plenty of food and not an unhappy life. A very happy life in fact and I feel that with my later experiences that you make the most of what you’ve got and it was an ideal start because there was a determination to keep one foot going in front of the other if nothing more. I was always interested in flying and my main aim was to become a pilot in the Royal Air Force. I enjoyed the —
IL: What sort of age was that Gwyn? Sorry.
SGP: Well, when I was about fifteen — Grammar School ATC. I joined the Grammar School ATC and actually did all my proficiency exams. Did better at that than my academic subjects and became a flight sergeant which was a bit unusual to get that high. So I was then committed to join the Royal Air Force. And when I became seventeen and a quarter I, without anybody knowing I shot off to Birmingham for interviews and hoping to be a pilot. But the situation then was such, this is ’43, there were a lot of pilots being turned out and so I was offered a flight engineer. Which, in retrospect was a very good place to be because I eventually ended up on Lancasters and sat in the right hand seat and did a lot of flying and all the rest of it but — so there I was accepted as a flight engineer in 1943. Because of my age I was deferred until I was eighteen and a quarter which was the 7th of January 1944. And then my world, you have to — from a rural background, never really been out of the county very much, very quiet and laid back and shot into London for all my pre-RAF equipping and inoculations and films on sexual behaviour. People fainting all over the place [laughs] And some people fainting with the sign of a needle. And we suffered all through that and then went off to Newquay to start our initial training which was a three months course initiating us into the history and the aims of the Royal Air Force and the background. Plus all the navigation, engineering and all sundry things. Plus physical exercise. Lots of, beautiful down in Newquay. Very, got very fit. Sitting on the side of the cliff there breaking down Bren guns and things like that. And eventually came out. By this time I think we were beginning to feel a little bit like servicemen. And so then I went off to St Athan for my engineer training. Flight engineer training which was a six months course. And this was extremely complicated in you, you went from talking about engines from the autocycle right the way through to Rolls Royce, Merlin, V12s plus all the, the other equipment. Electrical engine, hydraulics. Oxygen. All the other systems in the aircraft and I eventually decided I wanted to be in a Lancaster because the Lancaster engineer sits by the side of the pilot and I felt then I would have a good chance to get some flying in. So, I passed out in October, practically on my birthday, nineteen year old birthday in 1944. And then shot off to do a little bit of Anson training. About ten hours. A little pilot training on the Anson before I then joined up and went to the Heavy Conversion Unit, Lancaster Heavy Conversion Unit to start my training as, on the job as it were, as a flight engineer. I then only did, let me, I should go back and say that passing from a cadet to a sergeant flight engineer my pay went up from three shillings a day to twelve shillings a day which was a ginormous jump. I’d always been a saving man and I sent a shilling a day, sorry. Yeah, a shilling a week home and saved that so I had a car at the end of the war. But there you go. So, we’re on our way. Flight engineer training. I did twenty four hours training as a flight engineer and then I was then considered fit to join a crew. And this was very, for a poor old engineer you had the boys coming in with their crews already formed, flying Wellingtons, pre-Lancasters, where seven crew were required. And the engineers sat like wall flowers on the side waiting for a crew to say, ‘He looks a decent sort of chap.’ ‘He looks like he might be sensible,’ or whatever. And I didn’t get picked for a while. I think I was probably too good looking actually [laughs] They didn’t want, they didn’t want any, they wanted a dour, down to earth engineer who would sort things out. Eventually this big Aussie, God he was big. Bob Newbiggin. Big Aussie. About six foot five and huge. He was the surf swimmer for Australia. He was in the “Guinness Book of Records” eight consecutive years. He was surf champion of Australia. A lovely chap. And he looked at me and the rear gunner was a bit older than the rest. A bit, he had a bit more savvy. He said, ‘Well I think he looks alright.’ [laughs] And I said, ‘Well, you look alright.’ So, so this Bob Newbiggin’s crew was formed. And then off we went and we did only thirty three hours training as a crew before we started our operations. We were declared fit for operational service which, when you think about it was not very much. After serving the Royal Air Force and flying about, nearly five thousand hours afterwards I realise how green we were at the time and, but how we managed despite that to cope with the difficult situations.
IL: So, had Bob Newbiggin and the rest of the crew been flying together for a while or were they — ?
SGP: They had, they’d only been on Wellingtons and formed a crew. They’d only probably done about fifty hours together.
IL: Right.
SGP: As a crew. So that formation but they had in fact had that advanced experience that I hadn’t had so I had to fit in with these other chaps you know.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: And I’d better say a little bit about myself. I used to read my bible every day which was a bit, the lads used to say, ‘Are you coming?’ I’d say, ‘No. I’ve got my scripture reading to do today.’ [laughs] And I didn’t drink very much at the time. I was a good boy. That changed a bit later on but, so anyway we all got on very well and then, in fact we were posted to 195 Squadron at Wratting Common in Suffolk.
IL: Right.
SGP: A beautiful area but of course we were at the — 1944, the winter was severe. We had snow on the ground and there was icing everywhere and it was really, really difficult. And we were living in Nissen huts. Metal huts. Yeah. You know N number, about twenty in a room. Two whacking great stoves burning coke and coal. Absolutely red hot. Talk about health and safety. It just hadn’t come in to being in 1944. They would have gone mad then. The thing would have never got off the ground. Anyway, we were comfortable enough in our way you know. And we were then waiting for our first operation. So, on the 14th of December we were and I’ll go through the operational briefing which was very important. So we’d all go down to the briefing room. Already equipped. And sometimes you’d be selected for a flight and sometimes you wouldn’t. And you would have the CO and all the navigation, signaller, engineer leaders, gunner leaders, all there briefing on any particular trip on any facets that might affect the individual crew members. And a big curtain. A curtain was drawn. Secrecy was tight until then. The curtain was drawn and then you were given a target for the night. Well, it was so vague actually I haven’t even got the name of the target. First target. But because we got half way across, got airborne, fully laden, half way across the North Sea and it was aborted so we had to drop our bombs in the sea and return saying, ‘Oh.’ Oh. Amazing that we were feeling miserable that we hadn’t gone and completed our first operation. Which gives you an idea of the calibre of the people and their attitude to the war.
IL: Absolutely.
SGP: We would, we then and now I have no regrets about what I did. And I think when you think about the way the Germans indiscriminately bombed our cities. You had your V bombs. You had your doodlebugs. There was no way that they could be targeted specifically at military targets. It was just pattern bombing. So we never felt any regret about this. Either then or now. And so we were a bit miserable on that occasion. A little bit post the briefing. You then, you had to go. The navigator would plot out his route. Because every, every aircraft was planned to operate individually which was very important. And then the signaller and myself and everybody else would be all briefed in the briefing room. And then the old truck used to come round, pick us up and drop us off at the dispersal point. And this particular one was a daylight flight and my role after all the crew went in the aircraft up the rickety old ladder that we had into the aircraft I would have to go around and check everything. Check all the things were tight. No, no cowlings aren’t loose or anything of that sort. No leaks. All the de-icing paste on the leading edge of the wings and the props was all done. So that we were all ready. And then I do say this and it’ll cause a laugh. You had, always had a last pee on the tail wheel before you went in, for good luck. So I did that and away we went. And then the crew did all the starting up procedures and everything else and pre-flight checks which were very thorough and then eventually taxi-ing out with all the other aircraft and you’d get your green light from the caravan at the end of the runway and away you’d go. And when you think about it we were probably laden with about two thousand seven hundred and fourteen gallons of fuel plus about twenty thousand pound of bombs, four thousand pound plus two fifties and that sort of thing. And so sometimes you were scratching a bit when you were getting off but then away you went and then you were individually working your way to the target. Now, in daylight it wasn’t too bad because you obviously could see people most of the time if the weather was fine and you could obviously avoid them. We did have a system to confuse the enemy radar where we’d drop what we called Window and they were long metal strips in packages. We’d throw, put them through the chute and they would spread all over the air below.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: And confuse the radar. But the only trouble with that is that in daylight you could see these piles in front of you and they would tend to get in the, in the oil cooling radiators and overheat the engines. So you’d do the up and down, up and down until the crew said, ‘No. No more.’ [laughs] you know, ‘No more. We can’t have any more of this.’ Anyway, that was a little bit of an aside. So, at night and I’ll go through at night because —
IL: So, because, because presumably most of, most of your operations were night time because obviously Bomber Command was doing the night time.
SGP: Exactly.
IL: And the Americans were doing the daytime.
SGP: Exactly.
IL: Weren’t they?
SGP: Yeah.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: We did a lot of daylight over France supporting the army on the second front and all that sort of thing. So we did quite a lot of daylight ones as well but the majority of them were night.
IL: So were you fighter escorted during the daytime?
SGP: No.
IL: You were on your own.
SGP: Only the, only the Americans had escorts. They had N number of guns, God knows how many fighter escorts and they carried very little, very little in the way of bomb load.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: But Flying Fortresses [laughs]
IL: Yeah.
SGP: There was a song about that but I won’t go into it.
IL: Is it a rude one? [laughs]
SGP: Carrying a teeny weeny bomb. Anyway, the night trips, you can imagine you would take off in a stream, one after the other and then you’d all be heading your own way. Planning your own trip. And so, what happened then if you were in heavy cloud, you’re getting iced up, ice was flying off the propellers on to the fuselage, cracking on the fuselage, and St Elmo’s Fire flashing around. All these sort of things were new to us and I was always concerned about temperatures of engines and things like that. But then you, the thing you have to remember is we didn’t have any naked lights in the aircraft. All the, all the instruments, flying instruments were just luminous dials and with the background a little bit of radium light. And they, I I used a little torch with a pinpoint light from it to do all my logs for the fuel consumptions and all the rest of it. And the navigator was in a blacked out little cabin there behind with his light on the desk. So there was absolutely no light in the aircraft. Absolutely black. So there was no light in the other aircraft either. So you wouldn’t see them. The only thing you would see are the exhaust flames and suddenly you would see exhaust flames and you wouldn’t be too far away then. And some of them were very close. And if they were navigating to get there on time some were probably a little bit ahead so it would be crossing the main stream to be back on time. This sort of thing. So, it was pretty hazardous and if the cloud, you were being iced up and the turbulence was bad and all that sort of thing it was pretty — that’s one of the biggest things was to look out. Just keep the eyes peeled. So, so that gives you a little bit of background of what it was like at night. And I might as well get on now to the difference because at night you’d be flying along in darkness and suddenly the target area would be as light as day. Lit up by fires, by all the flares put down by the Pathfinders and everything that was going on. And you could see all the other aircraft flying around, all the bombs coming down and you’d unfortunately see some aircraft being hit at the time and going down. That sort of thing. And all the stuff coming up as well. I shall never ever forget what it was like ever because it was so surreal. You, you’d go from total blackness into this light and you’d think everybody, you could see everybody you know and it was very unreal, but [pause] So we got our next flight. Let me have a [pause] was, was on the 24th . We did a flight to Bonn and this was heavily defended and we were well tasked, you know, to experience what I’ve just told you about. Both the night flying and the difficulties and also the light over the target area.
IL: So, Bonn was your first night flight?
SGP: Yes. Yeah. And I’ve gone over the [pause] we completed that trip without any trouble and then went on to —
IL: You say it was heavily defended so, you know. Do you mean sort of flak, or —?
SGP: Oh yes.
IL: Fighters? Or —
SGP: Oh yeah. Flak. I didn’t, we didn’t personally see any fighters.
IL: Right.
SGP: Except on one which I’ll tell you later.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: Because that was a bit close. But I suppose we had two major problems. One was a little bit later on over Kiel. No. Can I just have that for a minute —
IL: Oh yes. Please do. Please do.
SGP: Yeah.
[pause]
IL: Do you want me to pause for a second.
SGP: Yeah. Pause.
[recording paused]
SGP: We completed five further operations in six days. And the last one to a place called Vohwinkel. And we were, came back to base. The cloud was thick down to base so we were diverted to East Moor in Yorkshire. And I just want you to picture N number of aircraft all being diverted to East Moor. All stacked at five hundred foot intervals up to over twenty thousand feet. All desperately trying to get in and land and the weather wasn’t very good there either. So, we found ourselves in these orbits. Carrying on orbit, orbit, orbit until you were gradually coming down five hundred feet at a time and eventually you were the one five hundred, just five hundred feet and you were then in to land. And they got us down very well. But I thought about it. We’re in this cloud, continuously in cloud all the time but just going on instruments flying around in the orbit and if anybody had had an altimeter wrong or something like that only five hundred foot is the difference between the heights. But anyway, we landed ok and the next thing wasn’t so good. East Moor had only been given a short notice of us arriving. So, we’d had quite a long trip of about six hours. A bit tired out and a bit wound up with the, being diverted and having the towering let down procedure thing. And we arrived in our little huts and all they’d done, God bless them was to put piles of blankets on each bed. With no heat or anything. So [laughs] so we had to make the most of it. And that was the calibre of people we had those days. I should really go back to the beginning because I missed it out at the start. We came from a generation where we had great respect for the history of the country and our, what we’d done throughout the world. And that was still there then in the 44’s. We were very much in respect of the monarchy and the parliamentary democracy that we had and to the extent that even if you were at home we used to stand up when the national anthem was played. So, coming from that background it was a place in history that we accepted and we took it on for the, for everybody really. Because it was in defence of our country which we loved, you know. So, going back that gives you a little bit of a feeling for how we felt at the time. But after the, after the Vohwinkel one we completed eleven operations and then we were selected for the Pathfinder force. Well, we all thought, we were asked if we would be happy to go and we said, Bob said, the pilot said he’d be happy so we all decided we’d be happy to go to the Pathfinders. And then [pause] the, we, we went on our first flight which was a trip to Duisburg. As a Pathfinder. Now, the Pathfinder situation was that you had to go down to about eight thousand. That sort of height. Master bombers sometimes went lower than that and he circled continuously so their problem, they had a bigger problem than us. But we would go down and at least circle the target twice at something like eight thousand feet. So, what you had was, you had things coming up and you also had rather lethal things coming down from all our, the main force going through in their hundreds, sort of thing. Dropping bombs. In fact, our last squadron we had one tail turret taken off by a four thousand pound bomb. Clean straight off but the aircraft got back to base but the poor old gunner didn’t, obviously. So, and we circled around a couple of times and buffeted around. Anyway, we got our flares away because you’d, what you did was you identified the target where the flares were and then re-centred them on the, on the coloured lights that were down on the ground. And we did that a couple of times and we tore off home. A little bit wondering whether we’d done the right thing by going on the Pathfinders side [laughs]
IL: So how many, for a raid how many Pathfinders? Just the one or —
SGP: Oh no.
IL: For each squadron.
SGP: No. You had quite a lot.
IL: Right.
SGP: You had a master bomber.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: Who would be there, technically going there and identifying the target and putting down the, the first indicators and then the main force would drop on those indicators. And then you had what they call visual centre’ers who’d come along and replenish the flares so that the rest of the force coming through would have a target to aim for. If it was, the weather was bad and you couldn’t identify the target you had a visual, a marker chap who would have his H2S equipment to identify it through the cloud and then put what they called Wanganui flares. And they would be suspended in the air and you would drop on those.
IL: Right.
SGP: Which was, subsequently these sort of things were done more by the Mosquito because they had Gee and the navigational equipment that was more accurate. And they would be up at, say twenty eight thousand feet. Above everything really. And they would drop their markers accurately on, it was worked out on Gee and they would drop their markers. And that was very accurate. They, they did a lot of that towards the end of the war. But, so, so we, we completed that and the next thing is after five more operations we were over Kiel and we dropped our bombs and immediately we were locked on by three, coned by three searchlights. And we were totally blinded. Couldn’t see a thing. Absolutely unbelievable. Well, Bob then, he went like a maniac and we, we went down and out and around and whoa, and we ended up, we got away from them and we ended up over Kiel harbour and it was amazing. It was almost like heavenly sent as it were in that we went from chaos in one minute, light and chaos and then immediately to peace and tranquillity. And we were only, we were down to five thousand feet by this time and we felt a bit vulnerable sitting there on our own, you know, with no — so I wasn’t too keen on saving any fuel that night so it was full bore and away. But we got away with it and that was up to Bob. He did, he did a marvellous job and I was standing up at the front looking to see what was going on. And that was, so that was that. That was probably our most frightening experience. And then, almost our last flight we were on, enroute to Bayreuth and we suddenly had a Junkers 88, head on, come over the top and nearly took our canopy off. It was so obvious it was a Junkers when it was overhead. And the noise and he was gone and what I said in my little book was we didn’t know whether he had run out of ammo, was short of fuel, was tired and realised the war was nearly over, and thought we’d give them a fright but we won’t damage our aircraft. So we got away with that. I mean he could have taken off our canopy off.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: Without any trouble at all, you know. And we were a bit apprehensive about that. Whether he was going to come back or not but he never did so we went ahead and completed the target.
IL: Gosh.
SGP: Then on the 24th of April the CO asked for volunteers for a flight engineer on a crew where they had lost their engineer. And it was to drop medical supplies to prisoners of war in a place called New Wittenberg. And I said I’d go. So the crew said, ‘Don’t go Gwyn. You know what happens when you have an odd bod in the aeroplane. Nine times out of ten you get clobbered.’ And anyway, I was a bit pig-headed I suppose and I said, ‘Ok I’ll go.’ We were in fact told, the war wasn’t over then, we were told that there was a, the Germans wouldn’t in fact attack us on the way. Well it turned out there was three aircraft involved and I was in one of them. And we went across Germany. Lovely night. Clear blue sky. Not blue skies, moonlit sky at about five thousand feet. Quietly going across, found the target, dropped all our supplies on the target and then came back without any problem at all. In fact, I did a lot of the flying that night actually but, which was a good experience. And then that was it really. That was my last trip of the war. And —
IL: So you were still a flight engineer at that point?
SGP: I was still a flight engineer. I was at, I became a [pause] I got accelerated promotion. In fact, I would have been, I was on the list for a commission and then the war ended and that was the end of that. But I was a warrant officer at the, at the end of the war. And so that was the end. I should like to say that I’ve always said that the lads who went ahead of us were flying in inferior aircraft. Not good navigational equipment. Not able to get the heights and that that we got and operated under extreme difficulties compared with us. We had a really good aeroplane. Good navigational equipments and carrying a good load of bomb. But the point I’m trying to make is that even on the last day of the war we lost a crew. And he was a very well decorated man. He was in headquarters and he came down to the squadron, booked himself out to do a trip and he picked up all his men. They were all in the eighty, ninety operations and he, they decided they would have this last op but they got shot down and all died.
IL: Gosh.
SGP: Right at the end of the war. And I mean, you know so there was no safe operations.
IL: No. Absolutely.
SGP: And so that was it. That was my, my sort of war if you like. And after that I’ll go into the post —
IL: Oh no. I —
SGP: War era.
IL: Just, you’ve obviously you know, as a crew you became, I understand that, you know crews became very close. Tell me about the rest of the crew.
SGP: Yeah. I think we were, we were all very quiet. Nothing —
IL: Even the Australian?
SGP: Yeah. Yeah. Bob. Yeah. Well you did have a little bit where you had Bob was an officer and we were other ranks. The navigator was an officer and the bomb aimer was an officer. And the rest of us were other ranks. So there wasn’t the same sort of get together.
IL: Right.
SGP: Although we did get together. We had fine times but we were all very quiet crew and we operated together as a crew very well. Really well. Without making a fuss about it, you know.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: Just getting on. Getting on with the job. And I think that’s the point I’d always make. People ask me were you ever frightened? And do you know I was only frightened if I had a fuel calculation wrong or the oxygen was queer or the hydraulics or something or this and that. You were so involved with the operation, your own operation that nothing else mattered really. You had to, I suppose that was the responsibility of both the crew and to the operation itself that you felt like that which seemed to put everything else to one side. I can’t say that ever, even when we were crashing all over the sky over Kiel with the searchlight on us I didn’t, I didn’t feel any fear then. I think, was it because we were too green to be, to have fear? Because everything was new and was to some degree was quite exciting actually. I don’t know. A lot of people go, go and say they were frightened actually but I will, I will say one thing. As a crew you have all you boys up the front and your two gunners down the back. One mid-upper gunner and one tail gunner. Now, we always felt sorry for the tail gunner. He was out on his own. His, he was away from the centre of gravity of the aeroplane and the centre of pressure and whatever. So everything we did with the aeroplane it would be accentuated back there. I don’t know how he managed to draw beads when you were doing a corkscrew on an aircraft coming in is anyone’s business. And what he did on the night that we were flying all over the sky trying to get out the searchlights I don’t know but he quite got on with it. But we always felt that the rear gunner was a bit special because, one he’d be stuck in the tiniest little cockpit. A little area. Doors behind him. And that was it. He was in there. And he’d have an electrically heated suit. Sometimes he was burning on one side and freezing on the other. Icicles. Condensation. Unbelievable. I mean we did a couple of eight hour trips to the eastern front and he’d be sitting there for, well it would be longer than the eight, the actual flight times were eight hours. By the time you got in and got all your checks done and everything else you were talking about another eight and a half hours or more. Which is a heck of a long time to be sitting in that, those conditions. And so we always felt a little bit sorry for him. By and large we were, we had a reasonably heated environment in the cockpit and from the ground up at night we were always on oxygen. Daylight we went on about ten thousand. But it was reasonably comfortable and we had a nice bottle with a chromium plate with a little lid on the top where we could have a pee if we wanted. And I’ll tell you a funny thing.
IL: For eight hours you need it.
SGP: I’ll tell you a funny thing. Bob, our skipper was desperate for a pee about halfway across one trip. So I said, ‘Ok Bob. I’ll hand you the bottle.’ And if you can imagine, apart from having long johns on, flying suits on, parachute harness on, seat harness on, trying to organise yourself to cope with that. And he tried desperately. In the end, as I said in my little book I think he must have tied it in a knot but he never said anything about it afterwards [laughs] So, no. We, we I think we were always good friends. And I mean I still call the, Frank, the signaller, but he’s not well at all now. He’s older. He’s about ninety three now.
IL: Gosh.
SGP: And he’s just been taken into hospital. He had a fall. And he’s the only one I know who’s alive. And I was looking at the goodwill tour which I’ll talk about later on because they were things that happened later on. I was looking in the book and there was a little note there from a P Farmer and she was the wife of our, our Farmer in the back cockpit. And she’d seen the name Jack Stratten, who was a Newfoundlander, bomb aimer, who flew with us.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: And she’d seen his name mentioned. She was writing to this chap to see if he was the chap who flew with Bob Newbiggin and Eddie Farmer the, her husband, who had unfortunately died. And she was trying to get, I only looked, I only found that last night and I’ve been trying to pick up the threads ever since and Frank’s the only one that I’ve been able to contact. So that’s sad you know. Because we did [pause] but I suppose in a way we took it in our stride. I I took the whole thing in my stride and I had a longer term ambition to stay in the Air Force. The rest, none of the rest of the crew stayed and they all went back to civilian life. So, I had plans to be a pilot and so my next, I’ll go through, have a little break. I’ll go through my next period of service.
IL: Yeah. That would be —
SGP: After we’ve had a little break. It’s getting a bit hot in here.
IL: Yeah. It is actually. Might have to open the door for a second. Just, just suspending the recording.
[recording paused]
SGP: Rather than talk about military matters and flying and all the hazards associated with that you want to know a little bit about my personal background. And I’d like to put on tape my wife and I and our association for over sixty five years of married life recently. And it started off when she was evacuated from Liverpool to Herefordshire and was evacuated to my little village of Eardisland. It’s a lovely little chocolate box village of Eardisland. Very quiet. Nothing ever happens. And so she came down and then I eventually went off to start my service with the Air Force. And eight years later I was home on leave. I was actually taking part in the tug of war match for the local village and Muriel and her friend came down. And the, one of the neighbours who knew her said, ‘You know that’s Gwyn Price?’ She said, ‘Oh no. It can’t be him. He looks too young.’ [laughs] Which was always a problem I’ve had actually [laughs] And anyway what happened was we just chatted a little bit together and then there was an outing laid on by the village for a bus to go to a local village to a dance. And I didn’t know this but I turned up in my bow tie and everything else at the bus stop and immediately walked in behind Mu as I call her and sat down by her side. And from that moment on we never left each other, you know. The moment was done and the die was cast. And what I found out later was a friend of mine had actually bought the ticket to take Muriel. And I don’t know but I didn’t feel too bad about that actually [laughs] And after two years and I was on my way to, we courted for about two years and then I was on my way to Singapore and I said, ‘Well, we must get married.’ And the Air Force didn’t recognise you were married until you were twenty five. So, I actually bucked the rules and married just before I was twenty five. And so we were married and that’s the, that’s the start of our married life. And I’ll go to our association. From then on she became an Air Force wife. And we would never be anywhere without our wives because we spend so much time away from home. And I’ll go through all the times I’ve been away. And months on time. And they’re there running the home, looking after the kids, organising everything, looking after finances. Everything. And without a good wife it wouldn’t last which proved its point. So that’s my little bit of fill in. Social life in the middle of my Air Force history. Can I go on now to the —
IL: Oh yes. Please do.
SGP: The next point really is I’d completed twenty eight operations with, eleven with the main force and sixteen with the Pathfinders and then on the 24th of April, before the end of the war — no. Sorry. I beg your pardon. Not the 24th of April. On the 30th of April, before the war was peacefully declared we were geared to drop supplies to the Dutch people who had been starving under the Germans. They were really, they were eating rats and tulip bulbs and everything else and they were really, really in a bad way. Well, hundreds of RAF aircraft, Lancasters were filled up with food. Not any parachutes or anything like that. Just filled in the bomb bays filled with food. And we were, planned to do this and on the 30th of April we carried out an operation out at, in Holland. And I shall never forget this because we came in low from the sea at about a hundred feet and lo and behold there was a little hillock on the coastline and we couldn’t believe it. There were Dutch people there waving flags. Kids and everything else. Waving. And we could see the German soldiers standing there with their rifles down below. And you know, they obviously knew it was over then but we came in and dropped our supplies and then, that was known as Operation Manna. The Manna from Heaven. And ever since then there’s been this association with the Dutch people and the people who operated on Operation Manna and I’ve been there and feted by the Dutch people. I’m talking about fifty years later. And people, old people would come up, put their arms around you and cry. It was so dramatic that they were in desperate straits. The other important thing is and I think this is a reflection on our teaching in the schools. The youngsters were all taught this and were involved in carrying on this knowledge and this history, historical period. And I found that interesting because I find that even my own children are lacking in knowledge of World War Two and what was happening and who was doing what and where. And there’s a general feeling that the British Empire never did any good. And I really do feel strongly about that because I just ask one question. Can you name me one colonial power that was, one colonial nation that’s better off since the colonists went? Is this racist?
IL: No. No.
SGP: I don’t think it is because I’m, I’m rebutting what kids feel and what they generally feel today. What did we give to India? We gave the railways, we gave them a diplomatic service and we gave them the English language. Now, where would the Indian nation be without the English language? I don’t think they’d be as far ahead as they are. I know that they have got their social problems. They’ve got their peaks and lows in terms of riches and poorness but I do, I do have a bee in my bonnet about what we did. And I’ll say a bit more about that when we go to the Congo when I was with the United Nations in the Congo war. So we, we did our drop and Operation Manna was something that’s lived on in the memory of the Dutch people and it also was for us, was very emotional. We’d been dropping bombs on the Germans. Then suddenly we saw how the Dutch people ignored the sentries and were standing out there waving their flags and I thought, and the kids and everything. I thought it was very emotional for us. We felt really very emotional about it and very pleased to be able to help them. And talking about the food supplies because we were all free dropped on the ground. And they talk about the margarine and the sugar and all the rest of the stuff that came down. Scrape it off the grass or whatever. They were so appreciative and that’s stuck on. I mean, we’re talking now, they’re still, in fact doing it you see. Appreciating it and thanking us for it. But so that was Operation Manna and then we had all these hundreds of bombers. Lancaster bombers and we were totally employed then on bringing back our POWs from all over the place. From Belgium, Italy. We had Bari in the south. We had Naples. Pomigliano was the airport there at Naples. And we were in and out. Hundreds of aircraft on the undertaking and we could only carry twenty or so people and they were all sitting on the, on the metal floor in the cockpit. But I probably shouldn’t say this but we used to take Italian prisoners of war out and then bring our own boys back. And I won’t say what the treatment, how the treatment differed between the two because I’d probably be had up.
IL: Oh you wouldn’t. So how did it? How did it differ?
SGP: Well we gave our boys blankets and comforters and we also stayed at a reasonable height where they wouldn’t suffer from an oxygen lack or anything like that [laugh] We were naughty then but of course we were, we were getting over the war actually. It had been a trying period. And the other thing we did apart from all this, carrying all the troops around that was great because we felt we were humanly doing something very important. And we’d get our boys up in to the cockpit and if they were coming back and to see the white cliffs of Dover after four or five years of prisoner of war camp was too much. They all broke down without exception and it was very [pause] but they were so happy as well and had to work it out that way but so that was that and so, that was that. Then we amalgamated with 156 Squadron and primarily to represent Bomber Command in all the celebrations that one does after a war. The Victory Day fly past over London. The VJ day flypast. The Battle of Britain flypast. So we had twelve Lancaster aircraft in white and doing formation flying over these cities. And then we were, we were then ready to go to the good will tour of America. And so we took off from Graveley which was our base in Huntingdon, near Huntingdon and shot off via St Mawgan to the Azores, Newfoundland and then all around America. From right down from, from New York to Colorado to California to Texas. Washington. Giving exhibition.
IL: So was this with the same crew? With the same crew that you’d had?
SGP: We only had the amalgamation of the 156 and 35 didn’t come without its pain because obviously some people, they only wanted half of each squadron.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: And we lost everyone except myself and my rear gunner. And the navigator came with us as well. So there was three of us on our crew. And we had another pilot who, in fact was then a Flight Lieutenant Harris who was an ex-master bomber pilot.
IL: Right.
SGP: A very good pilot. And so we joined up with him and flew all around the States. And had a very good time. They feted us but I don’t know whether I should put this in but we found, this is talking about 1946 we are talking about how parochial they are. They read their local papers but their international knowledge and even knowledge of World War Two was unbelievably bleak and barren if you like and they were, you know, they were, amazed to see people, other people who had actually been involved in the war other than the Americans. And this was something that we weren’t very comfortable about because I mean we always get the state where the Americans win the war but they, they’re load of bombs dropped was much less than we dropped. And they also — are you were getting near to the end of your tape?
IL: No.
SGP: Ok.
IL: I’m just checking.
SGP: Yeah. We all get blamed for targets that shouldn’t have been bombed. You know what I’m talking about.
IL: Absolutely.
SGP: But the Americans also had a daylight bombing of that, of there as well. I can’t think of the name at the moment. I can’t remember. I’ve gone a bit queer. But so that was one thing about the American tour that I was a bit, we were a bit shaken by really because I mean we were so involved with the war the whole people, the whole nation had been subjected to all this bombing and everything else and the terror attacks and what have you. The Americans didn’t have any of that.
IL: No.
SGP: They didn’t have any of it. All they got was their films and their propaganda, you know. Then of course on the lease lend they made sure the British empire wouldn’t last forever.
IL: Absolutely.
SGP: And this went on but I mean that’s a side issue which maybe is my view rather than anything else so.
IL: Just one, just on the war so how do you personally feel about this lack of recognition that you’ve had? Not you personally but, you know —
SGP: No. No.
IL: That Bomber Command has had.
SGP: I should, I will stick my neck out and be quite positive about this in that we only have one man to blame for that and he’s the honoured man Winston Churchill. Winston gave Arthur Harris, Bomber Harris, our great bomber commander the authority to break the will of the German people and Arthur Harris went out and we helped to do that. At the end of the war Churchill didn’t want to know. It was bad publicity to have this hanging around his neck. So, Bomber Command and including Bomber Harris and our Pathfinder chief, none of them were awarded at all. They weren’t given proper recognition and we felt very bad about that because they were, they were good commanders and we thought the world of them. And I think politically it wasn’t, it wasn’t to his liking you know to pursue that glorification if you like, in brackets again, of the war effort by the, by ourselves. That I think has pursued us down the years until we had the Memorial in Green Park which is —have you been there?
IL: I haven’t but I —
SGP: It’s a marvellous Memorial. It’s late but it’ll stand the test of time. It’s wonderful. The architecture. The setting. Everything about it. And I went to a political party meeting recently and I suppose I told the MP there. I said, I had a little bit of a go at him on this because it was not only Winston Churchill but every other prime minister since then. They ignored it. And he said, ‘But we did give you money.’ I said, ‘But nothing like enough to cover the cost.’ It was all done by voluntary subscription. And so I don’t even pinch any glory from that side of it, you know. It’s a political argument. I think it was lost and I do feel strongly about that and I think all my friends do as well.
IL: Absolutely.
SGP: Who served at that time. But better late than never and another one is coming up in Lincoln.
IL: Yes. Well tomorrow.
SGP: Which will be good. Yeah. I was hoping to be there actually but you coming in the [laughs] No. It wasn’t that actually. It was a little bit longer. The journey was a problem in itself and it’s a day, it would have probably have taken two days or something. But I’m sorry I’ve not been there, you know. But so that’s what I felt about that. So then I left the squadron and I did a flight engineer’s instructors course. I did a little bit of flying as a screened engineer and then went on and flew about fifty hours on the Lincoln which is the bigger version of the Lancaster. And then the phone call came, ‘You’ve been selected to go for tests for a navigator or pilot.’ And so I went down there and went through about a week of pretty strict physical and mental tests. And then we were all brought out on the parade ground and we were also, I was hoping I wouldn’t be a navigator. I couldn’t stand that. Anyway, I was picked as a pilot. I was selected as a pilot so my day was made and my aim was achieved. I still had to qualify. Go through all the tests and pilot training etcetera but from that moment on I was happy and I started my pilot training and —
IL: Did you, so did you train on the Lincoln?
SGP: No. No. No.
IL: Right.
SGP: We started, oh gosh I started on the only aircraft I think that has ever been, that I would really call an aeroplane. That’s the Tiger Moth. Because it was such fun. And I mean we used to sit up there with our heads out in the winter with the scarves around and the goggles on hanging from your straps in the freezing air. Cutting your engine. Then doing vertical dives to start the engine again. All that sort of thing. It was a fun aeroplane. The only thing was it wasn’t like the Stampe aeroplane which is like a Tiger Moth which the French have.
IL: Yes.
SGP: And that had an automatic [pause] Oh God. [pause] Carburettor. Carburettor sorry, which would allow it to turn upside down and still fly. Keep the engine going where the Tiger Moth would cut out straight away. If you were upside down too long it would just cut out. But no that was a fun aeroplane. So we, we started on that and did quite a number of hours on the Tiger Moth and then we went on to the Harvard. And the Harvard was a wonderful aeroplane too. A wonderful trainee aeroplane and eventually with all the hard work we had nine months of solid training and then you’re going through everything from meteorology to navigation to everything, you know and plus all the tests and everything else. Plus all the flying. It’s quite a, quite a tough, a tough course. Anyway, I eventually passed out and they decided that I would be more a transport man. So I was, I started training on the Wellington which was the old wartime aeroplane with geodetic construction and all the rest of it. And I had a very interesting training on that because I think probably the only person who ever had two airspeed indicators fail. One at night and one in the day. So I had no airspeed at all. I was just flying along on the seat of my pants, you know. And they came up and said, ‘Do you want somebody to come and, come and side by you?’ I said, ‘No. No. I can feel the aeroplane. I can fly.’ Fly the inside. So I landed both happily. I got an above average assessment at the end of the course for that. So, after that I started on the Dakota which was going to be my operational aeroplane and that was a wonderful aeroplane and I eventually passed out on that and went off to Malaya. And of course there was a war on in Malaya. In the emergency, 1950 ‘53. And the, Singapore still hadn’t recovered fully from the Japanese invasion. Changi Jail. We were based at Changi Airfield which was near Changi Jail. And the place was pretty dire, you know. And we were supporting the army in the jungle of Malaya and flying a lot from Kuala Lumpur and Penang. And I mean, health and safety. Oh gosh. I can’t think about it now but we used to do all sorts of things. The army, because I know they’re cutting their way through the jungle and eventually getting tired and wanting to form a little camp with a dropping zone. DZ.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: And they would pick them in the most awful places. Sometimes at the end of a valley. We could hardly turn around. I mean we had a wing tip to get around. And I was on one trip and it was on the side of a hill. I was coming in from the valley side, concentrating on the DZ and at the last minute the trees were coming towards me on the top of the hill. So I had everything open, a little bit of flap and I just went over the top. That was the sort of situation we found. In fact, that situation was probably more dangerous than anything I’d ever had during the war. And the other stupid things we used to do we had a big base at Ipoh which is North Malaya. And we would fly from Kuala Lumpur. It was always cloud covered at Ipoh so you couldn’t get down in to drop your supplies for the troops on the ground for distribution. And so what we would do, believe it or not, we’d fly, and at north of Malaya there was a little valley opening and a railway line used to work its way through the mountain up to Ipoh. And we’d go up through there, windscreen wiper on, raining, coming down and you’d wind yourself up, hardly any room for the aircraft to go up and eventually come out at Ipoh at the end underneath the cloud. Drop your supply and then you climb out to sea and you’d be ok. But little things like that, that I mean it wouldn’t happen today I don’t think. Even on operational circumstances it wouldn’t be on. But we had lots of flying out there. We used to travel from Ceylon as it then was or Sri Lanka now. And I had a two months — married my wife in the August, she came out by troop ship on the, on the, in the January. Seasick all the way because we got these boats as reparation from the Germans. They were all designed for river boating [laughs] so they had very little keel on and the sick, unbelievable sickness. Anyway, she came out. She was sick all the way and within a week I was off to Ceylon for two months. That was the beginning of our Service married life. And this was life in the Service. So, I was on air sea rescue out there and then we would go out the other way through, right through Indo-China as it then was. Through Saigon, [unclear] up to Hong Kong. And Hong Kong then was a small [pause] Kai Tak, the airport, the RAF airport there was small. You may know it or not know it.
IL: I do know it.
SGP: And you had Lion Rock up here.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: And we’d come in over, along the valley on the south west side and over Kowloon and then you’d do a [pfhtt] straight down, chop everything and land and then the sea was at the other end. And then the Hong Kong Island on the other side. So that was interesting. So that, we were on San Miguels then. the San Mig which was very popular and very, very nice. So I experienced there — weather. I’ve taken off in pouring rain from Hong Kong island, from Kai Tak not from Hong Kong Island.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: From Kai Tak. Pouring rain. Could hardly see the end of the runway. Windshield wipers going like this. Targeting a non-directional beacon on the top of Hong Kong Island in cloud and just climbing like mad hoping that, the indicator going mad and you were trying to keep up and hoping that nothing failed otherwise you’d be straight in Hong Kong Harbour. And it was sort of things like that that made life interesting. So we would then go on to, up to Okinawa and then off to Iwakuni in Japan. And we were up there in the 50s which wasn’t that long after the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs. And we were landing at Iwakuni which was quite close to them. So we had a good sight of the devastation that was there. Of the land and the houses and everything else. So that was, made us aware of how powerful — ok Japan houses, Japanese houses were not that resistant to that sort of treatment but it was all vaporised really and it was very, made one aware. We had our group captain [pause] not Townsend [pause] Who was our man? Famous man. A hundred operations.
IL: Not Leonard Cheshire.
SGP: Cheshire. Yeah. Leonard Cheshire. Leonard Cheshire was on one of those flights.
IL: Gosh.
SGP: And they’d made him, he’d done over a hundred ops and got a VC. And he was then seriously worried by using that type of bomb. But there you go. It’s frightening. But so on one trip coming out of Okinawa I’d just got airborne and my port engine seized and it’s from sea to sea at either end. So I had to do, I did a quick dink around and came back in on a reciprocal. Landed. So that was one of the interesting things that we had. And the other route we used to go to the north would be through Labuan in Borneo and then up through Manila. And we were then on Valettas. I transferred to Valettas because the Dakota went out and I did about four hundred on Dakotas out there and about eight hundred then on Valettas. But the Valetta was a different animal. They had the Hercules engines, Bristol engine, and as soon as you get in very cold air the oil cooler would, all the oil would get thick and it wouldn’t run through the engine. So you had to do the opposite. You had to slow down, put revs up and fly at the slowest. And I was going up there just north of Borneo over the sea, engines coring. We call it coring. When you get overheating and you do the opposite to what you would normally do and eventually you get the temperature back down and away you go. So that was one little flying incident. So after that tour I was then made a command flight safety officer at Upavon.
IL: Right.
SGP: I was the trial and command flight safety officer. So I had two and a half years there which was good fun. And I went to [pause] where did I go after that? [pause] No, I’d bet, can I, can I rescind that?
IL: Oh yes.
SGP: Can I rescind that?
IL: Yeah.
SGP: Well can we —
IL: Please do.
SGP: Restart. I jumped ahead of myself on the last. On the command flight safety officer. My next, in fact, in September ’53 I was put forward for an instructor’s course at the Central Flying School at Little Rissington. And then passed through that course flying Harvards and Provosts and was then posted to Ternhill in Shropshire as a flying instructor on the Provost aircraft. I qualified on the Meteor jet and completed the instruction at Ternhill, posted to fly Hastings aircraft at Colerne. This required a lot of time away from home and one of the main trips and the most memorable trip that I did was to, in July of ’58 I flew out to Kiritimati Island. Or Atoll. In the middle of the Pacific. Commonly known as Christmas Island — for transport support for the hydrogen operation, Grapple Zulu which was carried out at the Atoll then from a Victor aircraft. I’d like, just like to say to get out to Christmas Island it took us ninety hours flying in the Hastings. Eighteen days. And so we then arrived from, finally from sort of Brisbane to Fiji to Kanton Island and then up to Christmas Island and then if you get the idea of the space from Fiji was about five hours flying. Six hours. Then up to Honolulu, Hawaii was another six hours. So it’s a long, you can imagine. It’s a little spot. Coral Atoll, in the middle of the ocean. Obviously an ideal place for an atomic explosion. Or a hydrogen explosion that was then. Anyway, on the day of the explosion we were all on the tarmac with our backs to the blast, in flying suits and covered up. And the aim was that it would be dropped from a Victor aircraft and exploded about ten thousand feet. And then when we did anticipate, because they had old buildings and that on the island to see the reaction of the, of different constructions to the atomic bomb. The experience then was something I’ll never forget. We were on the ground. Sitting on the ground with our back to the explosion and hands over the eyes, eyes tightly shut. And yet the light from the explosion was obvious to us even in that situation and then the blast of air coming through was tremendous. And the power happening about thirty miles away was unbelievable. And I’ll never forget it. And then of course when it was safe to do so we turned around and looked at the mushroom cloud which was going, going up at that time. You could see the immense power in the, in the cloud. And the thing which I think there was a bit of naivety about the effect of radiation. But we had two Canberra aircraft with sniffer things on the, on the wings and one of them was in the cloud for about fifteen minutes. Another one flew through it which was less time. And in reflection, on reflection I don’t know what happened to the pilot or what effect it had on him or the other pilot. But of course a lot of people have suffered and there’s been a big fight about the effect of, the effect on one’s skin and cancer from, from the explosion. I’ve only had about fifteen lumps taken off so far and only one was cancerous [laughs] but then that involved five years in Malaya, Christmas Island for months, Ceylon for months, Congo for months and so my, my skin’s been exposed to a lot of sunshine which is not a good thing now. I’ve even got problems coming up. I’ve just had a few taken off my face actually.
IL: So, were you given, was there any radiation protection? Or was it just flying suits?
SGP: Nothing at all.
IL: Nothing.
SGP: Nothing at all. I’ll tell you an interesting story and this is about a doctor. I, I knew this doctor because he was at Farnborough and they’re all a bit mental there anyway because that’s why they’re there. They’re prepared to try anything. I know, I know he had, one of his tests was air sickness. He wanted to test it out. So he would get his mate with a flying machine with an aerobatic ace and he’d have a couple of eggs and, just before the flight, and he’d sit there with his stopwatch and his bag seeing how long it would take him before he was sick. But that was one of his, that was one of his little things he used to get up to. And then they, they he managed to contrive to have a railway track and they had a thing on wheels that had a rocket behind it and these rockets were actually dud ones. And they didn’t know what they were going to do with them. Whether they would go off or fizzle or disintegrate or whatever. I mean it just shows the way they — to see the acceleration. The effect of acceleration on the human body. And that was one. Well, I think he topped it in Christmas Island because he had some special glasses with, that were flicking at a fraction of a second. Timed for when the bomb went off. Looking at it to see what effect it would have on his eyes. And I was standing by to fly him up to Hawaii to a medical, you know, to get treatment. But in the event it wasn’t too bad so obviously he wasn’t exposed for very long. But I mean, his name was Whiteside, a super chap and there were three things I could say. He wasn’t on his own. I mean he was just I think a bit mad actually but he was still prepared for the interest of science to sort of expose himself to such terrible risk. So that was it at Christmas island. We used to fly around there. The frigate bird was obviously getting, we were flying all over the place. We used to be clobbered on take-off. They were a bit of a pain really. And then we had crabs who used to come and, on the island to lay their eggs and things or whatever and thousands used to come and you’d just drive over them because they were just too many. They were everywhere. And it was a very small island, Atoll, you see. And anyway that was an experience that, you know stands out in the memory. And of course, going up to Honolulu. It was very nice up there. Waikiki beach was very nice [laughs] and the food was nice and we’d go around to all the pineapple places. So we used to have a break up there. But then we, I had about three months out there and then we were back and I had one more job which was of interest and I flew the body of the Columbian ambassador from England to New York. And I think it’s probably the worst flight I ever had in my life. I took off at Colerne here on the short runway which was very rarely used, in a blinding storm. Got to Northolt and let down there totally down on the ground, pouring with rain, landed and thought I was going to run off the end because I was aquaplaning down the runway. Stopped there. Took off the next day for Iceland. Reykjavik. And with the body on board of course by this time. He wasn’t worried. No, I shouldn’t say that. However, we landed in Iceland. The weather to Goose Bay in Greenland was diabolical so they said, ‘You can’t go yet.’ So we were in and out of the aeroplane. Eventually got off. Landed in Goose Bay. By the time we refuelled the oil had gone solid and we had to go into the, into the hangar to warm the lot up and eventually got the engines turned over and got airborne. And by this time there were people in New York waiting for us to be there, you see. Waiting for time scale with the reception party and everything else. And then lo and behold we had one hundred knot headwinds going down the east coast of, the west coast of Canada and America and arrived in New York at 2 o’clock in the morning. Terribly late and where the guard of honour took off the ambassador and then we managed to get some sleep after that. The next day we had an engine failure and couldn’t, had to have it fixed before we could turn back. And we had just the same sort of weather all the way back. It was one of those trips you remember very clearly.
IL: Absolutely.
SGP: So that was primarily one to think about. Then I did do an attachment to Accra in Ghana as OC Accra. We had one Hastings aircraft there supporting the Ghanaian troops under the United Nations banner. In the Congo. Operating in the Congo. And I went into what was then Leopoldville which is now Kinshasa and I was amazed. You know right in the middle of, I wouldn’t say the jungle that would be —
IL: Yeah.
SGP: Implying whatever, that Africa’s a jungle which it isn’t. But you go to Leopoldville, it was a city. A beautiful city. Wide boulevards with trees. Just like a continental city. And a lovely university on top of the hill. A small aircraft that did DDT spraying every day so it didn’t get any mosquitoes. Beautiful. And what happened was the Belgians said — at midnight tonight you can have the Congo. It’s all yours.
IL: Yeah.
SGP: And they moved out lock, stock and, well not lock stock and barrel. They moved out to a man at that time. Left all their houses. We saw villas. Beautiful villas. I mean ok you could make an argument about they were living well but villas with all the tables laid and everything else. They just walked out. And their big mistake was they’d not really promoted anybody above artisan class. So there was nobody really in that sort of echelon to take over power of the country. But then, as so often happens and it’s the one thing I feel about the colonial reign was that because we were able to organise and run a country with very different ethnic people involved we tended to put a ring around. We got it everywhere. You can talk where you like. You can go to Kenya, you can go in to Iraq or anywhere like that where colonials put a ring around. In the Congo you had the people up in Luluabourg in the north who were totally opposed the south. And as soon as the Belgians went they wanted to take over the north. And since then of course the country has really gone down. It’s the richest mineral wealth country in the world and yet it’s in a terrible state. Roads and everything else. There’s been so much corruption and money taken out. It’s, it really is very sad but I mean I experienced that as part of the United Nations and I think, well perhaps it wasn’t perfect for everybody in the Congo when the Belgians were there but at least there was the rule of law as it were. And I believe the people respected it, you know. I mean a lot of people in India didn’t want the Raj to go because the place was organised and run but, and the same happened in Kenya. I mean Mugabe, he drives me up the wall that fellow because there was so many, so many things that, they’ve killed more people than we ever killed there. Opposing tribal, tribal situation. Anyway, I don’t want to go, that was my one little trip to the Congo. And then I did a flight to Gibraltar and that was the end of my flying at Colerne and you know, down the road here, on the Hastings. And my next trip believe it or not was to Singapore again. I came home and said to my wife, ‘We’re going to Singapore,’ and she nearly had a fit. She said, ‘I’m not going back to Singapore.’ She didn’t like the heat.
IL: No.
SGP: And the humidity. Although we had some extremely good times there. Had lots of very good friends. The kids said, ‘Oh great. Going back to Singapore.’ Well, the one, the first child, Debbie was born in Singapore on the first tour. So anyway, we went back out as I went as OC, the transport operations in Seletar. And of course, the upshot of that was that I got myself involved with the Borneo campaign and I went out with the commander out there. And in fact, I was the assistant to General Walker who was the army commander. And we arrived, we’d had a [pause] not a Valetta [pause] oh the big plane. Oh God, my mind’s going. Anyway, we all arrived in Brunei. The first night our accommodation was on a boat on the side of the river there. In the harbour. Not very comfortable. But eventually we set ourselves up as a headquarters in Brunei. And for a habitation, I shouldn’t say this really, but we went into a girl’s private school. Into their accommodation. You won’t believe this. We got in. We found the beds were lice ridden. All around the beds, we all went around with all sorts of things like lighters and things like that to kill all these bugs off. We eventually got ourselves reasonably comfortable there but we did have one chap who came over to visit us and we kept one bed specially for people we didn’t like and then a good skinful of Tiger Beer. Not a very happy lad in the morning. Anyway, that’s by the by. Now, we eventually moved down to Sarawak. To Kuching. Sarawak. And I was OC of the transport so I was, I was tasking all the transport aircraft. There were Pioneers and Valettas and Beverleys. Beverleys the aircraft. It was the Beverley that flew into [Lap?] and took the airport to start off with.
IL: Right.
SGP: That was the beginning of the war and they just got in and the troops got out and sorted it out before anybody else could do any damage to the airport. But so I was tasking the aircraft, mainly twin and single Pioneers and helicopters. And I had an interesting request from an army commander. They used to go up and down the Rajang River with twin outboard motors belting out the longboats you know. Up there. And he got a chief up there that he was wanting to get onside. And so he asked for a helicopter to go out and take the chief for a ride. And I said negative. I’ve got too many operational tasks for that. So he came blazing back down as fast as he could on the Raja, on the River Rajang in this outboard motors and had a go with this commander. The commander said, ‘Not a chance mate. You’ve had it.’ So that was that but the other thing was you get involved with the natives, the local people when you go up and so we all went down to a longhouse up on the sticks with a big hole in the floor for any business that one wanted to do. And you’d sit all around talking to the people. And out would come, the rice wine would come around in the cup. Well I’m not ultra fussy but I’m a little bit fussy [laughs] You come and you see the flies floating on the top and the globules of rice. Things look horrible and you have to take a drink otherwise it’s very unpopular. It’s like eating the sheep’s eyeballs in Arabia or wherever which I couldn’t, I wouldn’t cope with that either [laughs] And but we, we had that was in the interesting aside. They were head-hunters. They were in their loincloths. Very, very good chaps actually. We had no trouble with them. And so that was technically the end of my, my time out in in the Far East on the second tour. Because then we came back home. Then I came back to be command flight safety officer at Upavon. And that was a very interesting time because one had to look at the safety operation of the aeroplanes. And the war was over. And there was a greater pressure, if you like on operating, operating aircraft within safety measures. I mean we’d operated out of Colerne, for instance for years. Fully laden and everything else. Never had a problem. Then they produced Operation Data Manual which required that if you had an engine failure on take-off you’d never be able to cope at Colerne. So they were, Hastings were banned from Colerne although we’d been operating for years just because this Operation Data Manual. And we had the Argosy aircraft come out and the power on that was terrible. When you put the Operation Data Manual you could hardly carry a mouse. And the Beverley wasn’t a lot better so that was one of the things I had to watch was the safety. And we produced a magazine every month which obviously was a bit of a pain because you could never get enough people to put in contributions, you know. So you were always having to scratch at the last minute to complete your [laughs] your book. So, so where are we gone now then? We’re up to —
IL: You were in Upavon.
SGP: We’re up at Upavon. After that I was selected to go to the Ministry of Technology to do a project manager for simulators.
IL: Oh right.
SGP: And I got in the back end of the Belfast liaising with the companies concerned. And also the VC10. And I had a complete management on the navigation and the signals simulator. And I was kept on, in fact for five years to finish that. And that turned out to be a very good training aid for the RAF and they were very pleased with it. So, so that was that really. And after that I, I decided I wasn’t sure about what I was going to do but I felt that the mahogany bomber wasn’t quite me and I did my last tour as a personnel officer at Andover with Transport Command and finished. Retired from the Air Force in [unclear ] after doing thirty one years in the Air Force.
IL: Gosh.
SGP: Which I think was, I enjoyed every minute because the big, apart from the operational flying side of it the sport side was attractive to me and I used to play rugger regularly and cricket. And we used to play badminton, squash and all the games, tennis but rugby was my game. I played on the Padang at Singapore. In the, in the heat but I went out as a young flank forward on the open side usually so I was tearing around a bit. And the Tiger beer didn’t do any good. I came back as a front row forward and they didn’t like that very much.
IL: No. It’s —
SGP: I remember playing the police force and I eventually got my arm was hanging like that. My one leg had gone and I thought, ‘I think you’re getting a bit old for this lad [laughs]
IL: Absolutely.
SGP: So we, we packed it up but, and also from the flying in the Lancaster which I didn’t mention, if you can imagine health and safety again I had a seat which dropped down from the side of the aircraft. It had to be moveable. The bomb aimer had to get through. Our escape hatch was just down below us. We had to dive down and a way to go. And so it had to be moveable so it used to fold up just a single seat. A little bit of foam on it and then you had a belt behind you. Yeah. You put a bar up. Put a bar up in front of you to put your feet on and that was your seat [laughs] And I never really thought much about it actually but if we came to a sudden stop I’d be probably, I’d be probably in the next parish [laughs]
IL: Right.
SGP: So there was no, there was no security there. But after that I had a lot of back trouble for a long time. and the RAF at that time had one cure for back trouble. That was lie on your back. PID I think it was called. Something about rest and something.
IL: That’s the current, that’s the current feeling. That’s not the current feeling is to keep going but it was for a long time.
SGP: Three weeks I was on this bed in Cosford in the RAF hospital there. Getting more and more uncomfortable. Not being able to do anything. You know. Back end wise as it were. And eventually they let me up to go to the toilet which was a great relief. But I came out a lot [pause] much worse than I went in, in fact. So uncomfortable and of course on nothing in the way of a mattress. It was just hard. And they wouldn’t let you turn over. You would lie on your back permanently for three weeks. That was hell. And I thought well I can continue, I had continuous manipulation on the back at Nocton Hall and places which used to be another hospital when I was up there. And eventually when I came down here to Colerne I went to Headley Court. Headley Court cured me because the first thing we did I was going there with the sciatic nerve trapped and dragging my leg along. The first thing you do, it was a lovely summer and you get down on, you’d be playing cards and you’d have a penalty — push-ups. So you’d be lying on your tummy on the floor. You’d either have to push up or lift your legs up and they continuously did that. Strengthening the back. Tuning up the back dorsal muscles. Whatever. And also heated pool. And we just had inner tubes. Quite a deep pool. You couldn’t stand up in it and you would have to hang from those. And you didn’t dare move. Just total relaxation. And that plus it’s a lovely place, Headley Court. I don’t know whether you know it. It used to be a house.
IL: I do know it. My brother in law is a physio. Well, was a physio, in the army and he was head of rehab there for a while.
SGP: Was he? Marvellous. Wonderful place. I saw people coming in who were smashed up. Really literally smashed up and they walked away. And it was continuous help and aid and wonderful. I’ve never had a problem with it since. You know, it did the job and manipulation didn’t. I’d have the manipulation, go home and I’d lean across and it would pop again. But, but having said that I now have mobility problems so, but the Service are looking after me well in that respect.
IL: Good.
SGP: Yes. It’s been a fascinating life and, and by and large the family have enjoyed it. It’s given us, I’m talking now about a country lad, farming stock. Rural background with they say two h’s Hertford and Hereford hardly anything ever happens. And Hereford is one of them. Hardly anything ever happens. So, it’s quite a remote place and I’ve moved on I suppose from that into where we are today and we’ve lived a very good life and a very comfortable life actually. And I, I thank the Air Force for that. The only regrets I have is as you say the boys who died, fifty five thousand of us didn’t get recognition earlier and I think that’s very sad. And it’s sad that it should be a political gesture that caused that to happen, you know.
IL: Absolutely.
SGP: Yeah. But so here we are. We’re back to square one and how do you think it’s gone?
[recording paused]
SGP: A little reflection. I really intended to start this talk on the basis that I didn’t ask to be a part of this reporting system. And I was asked to do it. And I didn’t consider my service, my number of operations, my general service as any more remarkable than anyone else’s and the fact I was doing a job that I enjoyed was, was fine and I, I wouldn’t like to think that I’ve been courting publicity in putting my history down on record [laughs] Ok.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Sam Price
Creator
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Ian Locker
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-01
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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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APriceSTG151001
Conforms To
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Pending review
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01:38:25 audio recording
Language
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Gwyn Price was living a rural lifestyle until he volunteered for the RAF. His dream was to train as an RAF pilot but since there was a surplus of pilots he chose to train instead as a flight engineer. On operations Gwyn observed the surreal feeling of one moment being in pitch darkness and the next being in the bright light over the target. On one operation they were coned by searchlights but managed to get clear by the skill and quick reaction of the pilot. On another occasion, their aircraft had a near miss with a Ju 88. When Gwyn left the squadron he became an engineer instructor but later retrained as a pilot; he went on to fly in the Far East and the Congo. He flew a large number of different aircraft including Hasting, Provost, Valetta, C-47 Meteor and Harvard.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Christmas Island
Hawaii
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Surrey
Hawaii--Honolulu
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
195 Squadron
35 Squadron
aircrew
bomb struck
bombing
C-47
crewing up
faith
flight engineer
Gee
Goodwill tour of the United States (1946)
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lincoln
memorial
military living conditions
military service conditions
Nissen hut
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Colerne
RAF Graveley
RAF Wratting Common
searchlight
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/877/11117/PHolmanR1801.1.jpg
e5c390037a7d41f413ac541343dfec5e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/877/11117/AHolmanR180420.2.mp3
5659b7dca378571930fa25c36b22621e
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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Holman, Robert
R Holman
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. An oral history interview with Aircraftman Robert Holman (1925 3020209, Royal Air Force) official documents, a service history and photographs. After training as an engine fitter he served on HQ 5 Group servicing section as a mobile engineer carrying out major servicing at large number of 5 Group bomber stations. In 1945 he transferred to the Fleet Air Arm before demobilisation in 1946.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Robert Holman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-02-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Holman, R
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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IL: Robert, tell us a little bit about your early life and how you came to be in the RAF.
RH: Well, well, I joined the Air Training Corps and we used to go to Pocklington for weekends and I saw one that crashed and blocked the road at Pocklington with the wings across the road, blocking the road, and the fuselage in the gutter. And eh we had flights in the eh and we had weeks camps at Pocklington under canvas opposite the aerodrome and eh I, I really got attached, the, the main thing and the prize was the RAF uniform. It was a collar and tie, a smart uniform, and we stood out from the rest of the servicemen and the pride me father had on his face when I went on the weekend leave from after three weeks at Arbroath they gave us a seventy two hour pass before we went back for six weeks of field training after square bashing three weeks and eh the admiration with the uniform because the rest of the people just had ordinary khaki uniforms, no collars and ties. So we stood out from the rest of ‘em and then from, from eh Arbroath I went down into Lincolnshire a place called Skendleby.
IL: Right.
RH: It was a UTFLE.
IL: What does that stand for?
RH: Under Training.
IL: Oh I see. [laughter] Okay. Okay. So, but just take a step, just to take a step back. You were born and brought up in Leeds.
RH: Yes.
IL: At Seacroft.
RH: Yes.
IL: Okay and you also em but you, and you left school at fourteen.
RH: Left school at fourteen.
IL: And what, what did you do after you left school?
RH: I went to work in the boot and shoe industry, putting shoe uppers which was a craftsman’s job.
IL: Right.
RH: You know, even at, even at that job I had to wear a tie, so, ‘cause it was a different department making [unclear] fitting but the clicking department was the craftsman’s.
IL: So who, who were you working for? Was it just a - ?
RH: S [?] J Parsons
IL: Was that a shoe manufacturers in Leeds?
RH: Five hundred people worked there.
IL: Oh right. Okay.
RH: Men and women and they made shoes for all the different shoe companies.
IL: Aah! Okay. Okay. But you, you joined as a, you, you, you became an engineer. But that’s what you were doing in the ATC wasn’t it? How did you decide, who, who decided or did someone decide for you that you were going to do engineering rather than flight crew or, you know, learning to fly? ‘Cause a lot of the boys obviously who did ATC were just there because they wanted to fly.
??: You were very good with engines weren’t you Robert? [background chatter]
RH: [mumbles] I was very mechanical and I still remember my six month course such as eh induction, compression, power, exhausts, the four strokes of the internal combustion engine and eh the first job that I did was at East Kirkby when I passed out as a flight mechanic after six months was adjusting the contact breaker points on a magneto which was twelve thou’ plus or minus one, with a feeler gauge and I often used to stand at the side of the flight path and watch the Lancasters take off with admiration of the beautiful aircraft. It was all operated by just a little, a couple of brass studs, eh it was a magneto that were firing the spark across to lift them off with bomb loads on and everything.
IL: You must have felt very proud watching them take off when you, when you know, when you knew that –
RH: It was a real sense of achievement.
IL: Yeah.
RH: It was a real sense of achievement and admiration and you put your, your thumb up to the crew and they put their thumb up back and you wished them well with a little prayer, secretly.
IL: Absolutely, absolutely.
RH: And eh, you know, that was, that was a [unclear] but as I say, the very point of the conversations the ground technicians, the cookhouse people, the first aid people, none of them were ever mentioned in any books to do with the RAF and they were all aircrew, aircrew, aircrew. And I’ve nothing but admiration for the aircrew but without the ground staff working all night long in snow, rain, all of us, [emphasis] you didn’t do eight hour shifts. You were on the airfield sometimes at 7 o’clock in the morning and you were still there at 4 o’clock next morning.
IL: Right. So there wasn’t a sort of, you know, did you do, was it like, were you there, were you working seven days a week or did you have days of, or?
RH: The, we had the power plant bays, you had to do strip and build four engines.
IL: Right.
RH: So we used to work till 10 o’clock at night time and instead of taking ten days to do ‘em, we did ‘em in nine days, so we got a day off.
IL: Right. [chuckles] Okay. So that, so, it was, you spent roughly a couple of days with each engine?
RH: Yes.
IL: And so, did the engines, when you say stripping them and rebuilding them?
RH: New, new eh exhaust studs, new piston rings, new eh new valves and everything.
Il: So is it a bit like em an MOT?
[mumbling in background]
IL: So that you, each aircraft, each engine..
RH: All the aircraft had what they call a DI, daily inspection, where you look for obvious faults.
IL: Yeah.
RH: Where you took the [unclear] up and had a look for obvious leaks or anything and eh then they had minors after so many hours, then they had majors after many more hours and so that’s the how it worked.
IL: So how many, how –
RH: When you’d done a job, the first shock I got after leaving Cosford was when the sergeant said “Jump in and give the aircrew a bit of confidence in your work.” [laughter] And so I went up in Lancasters for fifty minutes at a time. From East Kirkby and places like that.
IL: So you, so you, you were flying in them just to give them –
RH: Confidence in the work. [laughter]
IL: That’s pretty good, isn’t it? [emphasis]
RH: That, that was the, we went up at Syerston and we’d worked on this aircraft it had crash landed and eh nose had gone into the, off the runway, into the grass at the side. We put new engines in and he says “Jump in and give the aircrew a bit of confidence.” And the only time we got chutes, Scotch bloke and meself, we went and got chutes and as it were flying, the wings were trembling, all the rivets had been shot to pieces. And as it jumped out he undid his chute, he pulled the ripcord [laughter] he couldn’t get out fast enough. And that were the only time [coughing] we used eh the chutes.
IL: Yeah.
??: Tell him that funny story about when you were measuring the, with the feeler gauges, and that other person came and said “I’ll take over.”
RH: No, that were after VE day, I got a call at East Kirkby and I was doing me LAC course, I was a first class, and I’d been working on, in the background, a spanner, I had to make a spanner as part of me LAC test and I’d made me spanner and I went into the office to see the sergeant and a phone call came through to go for injections for overseas, and the next thing I was at RAF Locking, Weston-Super-Mare being transferred into the Fleet Air Arm as we were still at war with Japan.
IL: Right.
RH: And so I wound up in the Fleet Air Arm for nearly a year and I went to work in a place, it may well have been Shropshire, HMS Gotwit it was called and there were Oxford aircraft, and I were working on them and so, it was common practice to jump in those like having a cup of tea. Then the war was coming to an end so you took advantage of having a few flights.
IL: Absolutely.
RH: But, what Dennis is talking about is, I was running this Oxford up where you had to build it up to one hundred and twenty pounds per square inch on the clock for the break pressure, to build the break pressure up. And this NCO came in and says, “What you doing? Get out.” And I got out the seat and he shot the throttles forward and jumped over the chocks and he went across the perimeter track into two other aircraft and got three aircraft off.
IL: Oooh! [emphasis] So I bet he was popular?
RH: Well, he eh, on the eh, eh, column, it was the RT button that was fastened with black tape, so he undid the black tape and put it behind the break and somebody else got the blame for it.
IL: Ooh. That’s very naughty isn’t it? Em, just coming back to your Bomber Command, you were, you were posted to Lincolnshire, but we’ve, you weren’t just based in one air, one, one, one air, one air, you weren’t just based in one air base? You, you travelled around quite a bit.
RH: I was based at Headquarters 5 Group. When they wanted any help at any of the airfields, we were in a Bedford van with a WAAF driver, being taken to Fiskerton, Wigsley, Syerston, Waddington, Scampton. The Dambusters went from Scampton.
IL: Oh absolutely.
RH: I went from Scampton to Lincoln Military to get me appendix out.
IL: Really? So you had, so you had your appendix out during the war as well?
RH: Yes, at Lincoln Military and from Lincoln Military they sent me to a place called Southwell, South’all.
IL: Oh yes, near Nottingham.
RH: And it was a stately home. Eh and eh they eh [rustling noise in background]
IL: Aah! [emphasis] Okay. So you, so you got three weeks off for your appendix?
RH: Yes.
IL: That’s a, that’s not bad is it really?
RH: Well, I, [background chuckle] I was taken to Lincoln Military, then we got three weeks convalescence at Southwell.
IL: Yeah.
RH: And the Women’s’ Institute at Nottingham used to lay parties on in Nottingham with a tea and a show, very kind, you know.
IL: Yeah.
RH: And eh, going back to kindness, the people in Lincolnshire, we used to go out from different camps, two or three of us, one of the chaps used to be a religious person and he used to say how he’d seen the light, and we went back to the farmhouses for a good meal [laughter] and the tables were laid out with lovely food and, you know, eh beautiful stuff, and he, as I say, we were sat in the background while he were going on about seeing the light and we were invited back for a nice meal.
??: Tell him about –
IL: ‘Cause it must have been, well it must have been nice to sort of be in a farming county, ‘cause presumably it improved what you were actually getting to eat.
RH: Well, yeah, we used to go out on push bikes, two of us, a chap on there were called Bob Twigg, and we eh used to go out miles away from camp on push bikes and knock on door and ask if they had got any eggs for us to take home when we went home, and he used to tell a story about his wife just having a baby, in a bad way, and so they used to feel sorry for him and they used to give us eggs.
IL: Was he married?
RH: Eh?
IL: Was he married?
RH: He was married. [laughter]
IL: Well, that’s all right then [laughter]
RH: We were rationed to an egg a week at home.
IL: Yeah.
RH: The civilians were rationed to an egg a week. And eh, that were that, and eh, you know, we used to do different things like that.
IL: So were you rationed to, as a, as a, in the RAF? ‘Cause one of the things that obviously, you know, we’ve heard from eh some of the aircrew over the years, is that the one thing that they always seemed to get whatever time of day was bacon and eggs.
RH: That’s right.
IL: So were you, were you allowed to have the, were you, were you, did you share the bacon and eggs?
RH: No, no but we, we eh as a unit I had a pass, 5 Group Servicing Section, and I could go into the cookhouse any time of the night and get a meal.
IL: Right.
RH: ‘Cause I were working up to ten or eleven or twelve o’clock at night and I could go and get a meal in cookhouse with me pass.
IL: Right. So what, when you were working, how, how long, what sort of, you were working very long hours sometimes. Was that, sort of, you worked until the job was done or –
RH: We were waiting for the aircraft.
IL: Right. Okay.
RH: We were waiting for the aircraft. In me diary it’s recorded that I worked on F for Freddie sort of thing waiting for the aircraft.
IL: Okay. So you, so when they’d arrived back they’d go into the hangar, then you’d,
RH: Yeah.
IL: you’d. Were you always work on one air, so, obviously most of the, the [telephone ringing in background] well [background talking]
RH: We didn’t know what we were gonna be working on, we just went into the flight office and they said, you know “Go out and do so and so, so and so.” You got the cowlings off and [unclear] it all, and drained the oil and whatever wanted doing and whatever other things in the diary here. [mumbles]
IL: So how often did, how often did you, you know you mentioned about minor services and major services, so how often would a plane, how, how many hours did a plane, an engine have to do before it had to go in for service?
RH: I think it was something, they had DI every day that you checked for obvious things.
IL: Yeah. But if there was nothing wrong with, if there was nothing wrong on inspection?
RH: Twenty nineth of Monday, January 1945 ‘Worked till 9 o’clock gave it studs and bearer bolts and gun turret pump drained.’
IL: Right. So it wasn’t just the engines you worked on as well, sort of you know, gun turret pump as well, so you worked on the eh –
RH: It was all part of the accessories to the engine.
IL: Right. So you worked on, you worked on anything mechanical within the air, within the aircraft?
RH: Nothing worked without – every other trade the RT people and everybody else had to wait till the engines were running.
IL: Right.
RH: You know, the gun turrets and everything operated from the engines.
IL: So when you were working on – say doing a major service, how many of you would be working on that, on that particular plane?
RH: There would be probably about eight or ten of us.
IL: Right. Okay.
RH: Two each of us you know, starboard or port, starboard aft, port aft. [?] You know what I mean.
IL: Yeah. And so how, how long would an aircraft be out of commission while you were working on it, say doing a major, a major service?
RH: Probably em two or three days.
IL: Right. Okay. ‘Cause you were saying that you had four – is it four at a time, you had four, four at a time?
RH: That was in the power plant bay. We used to bring four engines in that had been taken out of aircraft.
IL: Right.
RH: So you’d strip ‘em of the exhaust manifold, cylinder head, and all the other scraper rings and piston rings and replace ‘em all, and do that with four of ‘em.
IL: Right. And that – you were given ten days to do four? Is that right?
RH: That’s right.
IL: But you managed to usually do it in nine, so you got a day off?
RH: We used to work till ten o’clock or probably longer so we could get that day off.
IL: So what did you do for leisure? What was your, what was your –
??: I’m going to have to go Robert. Are you okay?
RH: Yes. Yeah. Okay Dennis.
??: I’m just going for some shopping. But I just wanted to be about when –
RH: Yes. Big thank you for your efforts.
??: Don’t forget to tell him some of your funny stories.
IL: Oh aye. We’ll get round to those.
??: The firecracker one. [laughter]
IL: It’s lovely to meet you Dennis. Take care.
??: Take care.
RH: Thanks for coming Dennis.
??: When I see Archie – What’s your surname?
IL: Ian Locker. I say, he, he won’t know me.
??: No.
IL: So, we’re back on again.
RH: So we used to hitchhike up from Newark to Leeds you know, to Seacroft crossroads and one funny decision, we were on the bridge at Doncaster, thumbing a lift and this car pulled up and an officer, army officer got out and me and this Bob Twigg, and another flight mechanic, jumped in and it was a staff car. He hadn’t stopped to let us in, he’d stopped to let this senior officer out and it were a sergeant driving so he must have been a senior rank. He had red epaulettes on his uniform and so we got almost to the crossroads in a staff car.
IL: Very nice. [emphasis] [laughs]
RH: Another time we had a lift and we were on like a, like a wagon with dead sheep in. You know, we’d still got the [unclear] on and we were stood on back of the cab of the driver, standing on dead sheep.
IL: So was that, so did you, you came back to Leeds even just for a day? Sometimes?
RH: Oh yes. Quite often.
IL: Right.
RH: Yeah. You used to hitchhike up.
IL: Did you have a lady friend in Leeds?
RH: No, not for – that’s another thing, one of the lads who came from Swansea, Fred, Frank Selwood, he married a NAAFI girl from the East Kirkby NAAFI. He came to live in Seacroft, ‘cause she lived in Seacroft.
IL: Right.
RH: So he met his wife and as I say, that he was a Taffy, but he came to live at Seacroft.
IL: Right.
RH: And he used to come round every Sunday for tea.
IL: [laughter] What, to your Mum and Dad’s, or is this, were you coming home to parents or?
RH: Well, yeah, obviously you know, the family were all still going on. I was only a boy, I weren’t married, you know. There were plenty of girlfriends every – it was just eh one girl up in Dundee who came to Arbroath, gave me her address and we were pen pals for all, all war. Never met her again, and after the war she got married, and then I sent her a wedding present. But she were – I used to get a letter about every month from her. We just met casually up in Arbroath.
IL: Yeah. So that was lovely isn’t it?
RH: Yeah.
IL: So just coming – sorry, em so in terms of aircraft, were you just mainly working on Lancasters or were you working on all sorts of aircraft?
RH: Well, as I say, that, that last we were working on Oxfords.
IL: What was – I don’t think I know the Oxford. Was it a bomber or a fighter bomber or?
RH: It was a trainee eh plane.
IL: Oh right.
RH: And that was the Welsh boy.
IL: Ah. [emphasis] [pause] So is that you?
RH: That’s me.
IL: Are you on the left or the right?
RH: I’m the tall one.
IL: You’re the tall one. [emphasis] Ah. [pause]
RH: I eh, the eh Oxfords were the eh – what was an aircraft, when pilots had been overseas, without instrument flying, they came back and they learnt instrument flying on the Oxford with instructors.
IL: Right.
RH: And so they were taught to eh I’ve got a picture of an Oxford somewhere. Anyhow the eh [pause] I’ll show you one before you go.
IL: Oh, that’s alright. No. I’d love to take a picture actually. I’ve never heard of, I’ve never heard of the Oxfords. So it was a two seater training, you know, two seater training em?
RH: It was generally used as a trainer.
IL: Right. [long pause] [background rustling] So was it very different in the Fleet Air Arm from the RAF?
RH: It was entirely different.
IL: Right.
RH: ‘Cause it, the RAF are tradesmen. You didn’t do general duties when you had a trade.
IL: Right.
RH: Whereas in the Fleet Air Arm you were put into a port or starboard watch, so you could be on night flying all night tonight and tomorrow night you could be on airfield guard.
IL: Right. Okay.
RH: Every man that manned the ship in the eh Navy, in the eh RAF, as I say, they had HGDs and what have you. You know, you know what I mean, aircraft hands.
IL: Yeah.
RH: General duties. They used to do eh the eh –
IL: Ah right. [pause] So it’s a two-engined, at least two seater. I’ll take a picture of this if I may before I go, ‘cause, as I say, I’ll be interested to see that. So –
RH: I was working on them in the Fleet Air Arm, you see. As I say, it were called HMS Godwit, but it was a shore base, outside Ollerton in Shropshire.
IL: Did you ever have to go, did you go to sea at all?
RH: No.
IL: Right. So how long were you in the Fleet Air Arm?
RH: About eleven month.
IL: Right.
RH: ‘Cause as I say we were still at war with Japan and everybody thought end of war was VE day. But we still, you know everybody celebrates VE day and never think about VJ day.
IL: I bet you did ‘cause [chuckles] it allowed you to get out in the end.
RH: Well, you eh obviously thought when VE day came along you were on your way home.
IL: Yeah.
RH: Instead of that, a phone call, on your way down to Locking for a [unclear] conversion course into the Fleet Air Arm. Fleet Air Arm aircraft working on the airfield.
IL: So was that, so your conversion course was mainly technical rather than, you know, an introduction to a different sort of marching or?
RH: Like I say, they had Fireflies which were the equivalent to the Spitfire, and the Barracuda and stuff like that that were on the airfield that we used to run up and work on. And obviously conversion, lashing the hammock and one thing and another, you know?
IL: So did you have to sleep in a hammock?
RH: I didn’t sleep in one but you were issued with one.
IL: Right.
RH: It was part of your kit, you know? You had a toolbox and everything, you know?
IL: Which did you prefer?
RH: Well, the RAF, eh was by far the best service. Eh, I’ll tell you a funny story. One of the NCOs, they used to fly from this camp eh on flights and if anybody were going on leave, they would drop ‘em off at some airport that were near where they were going on leave and this NCO sent me to his mess to pick a case up and eh on push bike I’d got this case on handlebars, the case, and the Commander of the shore base yelled over at me, ‘Hey, you! Don’t you salute officers?’ So I says, ‘The RAF, you don’t salute officers on push bikes.’ So he said, ‘You are in the Senior Service now and you salute officers at all times.’ But if he’d have told me to open the case I’d have still been in glasshouse because the NCO was on the mess committee and there were pounds of bacon inside and mutton and everything else [laughter] and he put it down on the station while he went for a wee or something and when he went to go for his case it had gone. [emphasis] So he said to the porter ‘Have you seen a case?’ ‘It’s in lost luggage.’ And when he went to the lost luggage they said to him, ‘What was in it?’ He had to declare his bacon and butter and sugar and all that and he were brought back under arrest.
IL: Oh dear. [emphasis]
RH: And so if that commander had told me to open that case, he wouldn’t acknowledge that it was his case it would’ve been my case.
IL: It sounds like there was a lot of em [chuckles] it sort of eh, it sounds a little bit like, there was, not a rivalry, but the aircrew didn’t particularly acknowledge the ground crew and that –
RH: No, no. The aircrew, which I have every, every respect for, but don’t misunderstand me, I have nothing but admiration for the aircrew and they were only lads like what we were and the conversation used to be some of ‘em had never kissed a girl before they got killed at nineteen and there were conversations like that. But the thing is that even tradesmen like meself, other people, in the cookhouse and the M.O. section, you know, and staff they were a division between you.
IL: Yeah. Did you, did you socialise with em, you know, aircrew? Were you part of the same mess and - ?
RH: No. No. No. They had their own eh toilets. All ranks had different toilets. Sergeants had different toilets. Officers had different toilets. NCOs different toilets.
IL: Right. So in many ways you’ve probably as air, as ground crew, were you aware of the sort of losses that Bomber Command was taking in terms of men?
RH: Because like the Station CO used to announce like Berlin had been taken and Free French had got Paris over the tannoy system. So you were aware what were going on.
IL: Sorry, I was meaning more were you aware of you know the sort of the losses in aircrew that Bomber Command was em suffering at the time, you know. Were you, say aircraft losses, when aircraft were replaced did you have to service them before they were allowed back on to the bases to replace the ones that were lost?
RH: It were drilled into you. Don’t worry about the aircraft, just worry about the crew. The aircraft can be replaced, the crew can’t be replaced. And so you worked with that safety in your head all the time.
IL: Yeah. But did you ever sort of, you know, did you ever see em get to know people and then they just weren’t around or -?
RH: Well, well, what your trying to get to I think is like East Kirkby a chap comes along with the hosepipe and swills his rear turret out.
IL: Right. Okay.
RH: And you don’t get involved. You obviously have a word with him and he’s divorced from you and he’s divorced from his job. You understand what I mean don’t you?
IL: Absolutely.
RH: You don’t eh the Fleet Air Arm place where I went to, I was told I’d been to replace a flight mechanic, air mechanic, in the Fleet Air Arm, air mechanic, flight mechanic in the RAF had had his head chopped off marshalling an Oxford in.
IL: Oh gosh.
RH: And they painted the – if you look at the propellors, the air screws, on the tips there’s about four inches of indigo paint that the circumference is round. You can see the circle and all around the airfield there used to be posters with a head on ground what prop. He was marshalling, you see, you were marshalling people in in the dark with torches in mud and all the time you were running backwards your wellingtons were coming off at your heels.
IL: So, you, you had to marshal the aircraft back in, as well? Yourself?
RH: Oh yeah, yeah. It was all part of the job.
IL: Right. Was that just in the Fleet Air Arm or was that in the RAF? In both?
RH: Well, in the RAF it was procedure we went round the perimeter track to the end of the runway and it was a set out pattern, there were no need to marshal them. The Aldis lamp on the flight control tower used to signal them off with the Aldis lamp.
IL: Right. [chuckles] Okay. So did you ever feel that you were gonna fall over and sort of em come to a sticky end?
RH: Well, you just had to get on with it.
IL: Yeah.
RH: A funny thing I was on, as I say, you used to get duty every other night. I was on airfield guard at the gates at this camp, with the big iron gates there and I’m stood there and I could here a noise at back of me and I’ve got me rifle three o three Lee Enfield and five rounds were in me pocket rather than in rifle and I’m hearing this noise and hair on back of me neck were standing up and one thing and another and I were there thinking it might be a German sergeant coming to get an aircraft, you know, ‘cause you used to hear different stories about crash crews that brought – even British pilots brought a German aircraft back and that but the thing is – but when daylight come it was a cow in the next field [unclear] at the edge. [laughter]
IL: It’s a good job you didn’t shoot it.
RH: Yeah, but you know –
IL: Oh yeah. Absolutely.
RH: But you couldn’t see what were going on like, you know. And it were a hairy thing, there were two of you on guard and one’s going round on push bike into hangars to see if everything were alright and other would stand on gate and you’d switch over and with the engines cooling off it used to make a noise and it used to be quite hairy to go into an ‘angar with the engines cooling down.
IL: So how often were you doing it? How often did you have to do guard duty?
RH: Well, they just used to line you up in the Fleet Air Arm and say, ‘You six, on patrol.’ So they had a [unclear] run [unclear] for the people on the camp and you had to go, make sure you got on the bus without any fighting. [laughter] and while, you know, and they used to allocate like six were on patrol they issued you with putties [?] and webbing and you’d get down there and get all pictures taken [unclear] and then when it got to half past nine you went to bus stop to make sure that everything were alright. But then another time you’d be ‘You six, plate group.’ So you’d be in cookhouse washing plates.
IL: It sounds like a very, you had a very varied military service. Did you enjoy it?
RH: Eh, yeah, you can’t say that you didn’t enjoy it because it was an experience. But nothing mattered – all war is futile. All this that’s going on now, a hundred thousand pound rockets being fired and one thing and – it’s so futile that you’ve got a Health Service that’s short of money and their using one hundred thousand pound a missile. It’s crackers.
IL: Yes. Do you think it’s your war, your wartime experience that’s made you – how did you feel at the time? Did you feel that this was something that had to be done? Did you feel something that you supported? Was this – ?
RH: [mumbles] The thing was, you were indoctrinated that if the Germans come, they’d rape your mothers and your sisters and your [mumbles]. But up at Arbroath you’d be lined up and they’d indoctrinate you that if the Germans ever come, but it never happened because a friend of my wife’s lived in Jersey. She were in the occupation and they didn’t go into their houses and rape a woman. But it was how, it was put into you, you know? Kill or be killed when you charged forward with rifle and bayonet to [unclear] throat. Yeah. Up at Arbroath, I mean, you did five weeks on an assault course throwing hand grenades, firing rifles, firing sten guns, scaling the cliff at Arbroath. I climbed that cliff at Arbroath.
IL: Gosh.
RH: They put, the story was that at Dunkirk the RAF had to be carried off the beaches so they introduced this eight weeks course. And that’s how I came to be on the basic training course.
IL: Right.
RH: So.
IL: You remember, you remember an awful lot about your basic training. So what was the [coughs]
RH: I’ll tell you –
IL: What was the worst thing about it and what was the best thing about your service?
RH: Well you just accepted everything eh to – my brother was seven years older than I and he was in London Scottish Regiment, company sergeant major, got mentioned in dispatches, in Middle East and one thing and another, and he was like an icon. I couldn’t be the younger brother who showed weakness. So I was – you were a man. You weren’t innocent anymore. You were eighteen, you were a man.
IL: Yeah.
RH: And that’s how you accepted it. You soon lost your innocence – went to Arbroath baths, were one of the things, they marched you into baths. I was in twenty three intake, twenty two intake were in there before you and they were all there in the nude swimming about and swinging on ropes and everybody were [laughter] like this and the next week everybody else were swinging on ropes.
IL: Yeah.
RH: In the nude. You know, you just fell in line with everything. You didn’t refuse the food that were put in front of you, you went for a second if you could get away with it. Even if it might look like pig swill [laughter].
IL: What did you do then after the war?
RH: I went, I went back to the boot and shoe industry, but I left that to go into shoe retailing and I wound up being a manager of eh wi’ Timpsons shoe company. Do you know Timpsons?
IL: Yeah. Yeah, I know Timpsons.
RH: And I opened the shop in Clover Street, York and managed that for seven years, in York. I was quite a successful retail manager, you know.
IL: Right. And em [clears throat] do you get, have you been involved with things like the associations for the em you know, the RAF and Bomber Command and - ?
RH: After the war they had the eh Air Training Corps Old Boys Comrades and one thing and another. But it all tapered away as I got married and had families and one thing and another. Just disappeared. I used to see one or two of the people that were on photograph. One of ‘em became an undertaker supplier, you know. He had a job with this supplies embalming fluid and coffins and that, that he used to get from Whitby and that, you know, talking to ‘im. But eh you eh that’s the chap who used to go with me for eggs.
IL: Oh right.
RH: Yeah.
IL: [chuckles] Sounds like a, sounds like a good business. Em, was he, em sorry, em I’ve forgotten what I was going to say. Em [pause] You were saying about funny stories with firecrackers.
RH: Oh, at Skendleby it was a very strict camp. When you went out of camp they gave you a number besides your service number last three, two o nine, they gave you like fifty seven and before you could get in, the guardroom was inside, you’d have to shout, ‘Two o nine, fifty seven’ and barbed wire were six foot high all the way around camp and the outcome of it was, it was eh one of these radar, with the tower that was one hundred and five feet high with a [unclear] and eh, there was an American technician captain and somebody decided that we’d go out, ten of us, with this captain and if we could get into camp, just get into the camp [emphasis] we’d conquered it. So we eh, we went to the pictures at Alford. We went to a place called Ulceby. I don’t know whether you know Ulceby?
IL: Mm.
RH: Eh, the WAAF were there for the camp. Eh we went in there dancing while one o’clock in the morning with the WAAFs. And on the first day we didn’t do anything but mope around and on second day we had forty eight hours to get back into camp and we left it till about an hour beforehand, and I had a pair of these eh leather gloves with the steel strips across and I climbed up the barbed wire that were six foot high and fell over the other side but we had what we called firecrackers and you had a strip of ignition tape around your arm and what you did, it was like a giant firework, and you struck the firecracker on it and it acted like a, an ‘and grenade and it didn’t explode like an ‘and – it exploded – anyhow the CO’s bedroom, the window was open, and I run fast after we were in there [chuckles]. I, I bet he jumped through [unclear] [chuckles] [laughter]
IL: So were you in trouble for that?
RH: No, no, nobody knew who did it.
IL: Oh.
RH: But next few days we were there putting barbed wire rolls on top of rolls, you know.
IL: Absolutely. Absolutely.
RH: So. I’ll tell you another. I went to Alford for the first time by meself and I went to this café and I saw on menu, Welsh rarebit and I thought ‘Oh that’ll be good. I’ll have a nice hot dinner,’ and it were cheese on toast when I got it. But the innocent boy of eighteen years [laughter] thought he were going to get a hot dinner. And in Alford they used to allow us to go in and get a bath in the brewery because there were only cold water. You used to get the water for the camp at Skendleby from Willoughby. There were a well at Willoughby. We had a petrol pump that used to get the water, suck the water up, and put it into the galvanised containers over the showers. So there were no hot water. So that’s –
IL: So you used to get a bath in the brewery?
RH: Yeah.
IL: So how did the brewery have hot water?
RH: Steam.
IL: Oh right. From?
RH: From the vats.
IL: Oh right. [emphasis] It must have smelt nice? [laughter]
RH: But you know what I mean, you know what I mean? Don’t you? There were a lot of kind things that –
IL: Oh absolutely. Absolutely.
RH: Nothing but kindness shown towards us. You know what I mean, don’t you?
IL: Mm. So did you [clears throat] did you identify with – you obviously, you know, have been involved, and have been invited to, you know, the things with the Bomber Command Centre. Do you identify yourself as a boy, as somebody who was part of Bomber Command? Is that, is it something that which you’re proud of? Is it something that you, you know, it’s just part of your life, or?
RH: I, I’m proud that they’ve started this. I said it to Peter in a letter, that I was glad that somebody’s done something in appreciation. It doesn’t just go into oblivion because of what happened. Nobody knows what happened. And also people what I’ve spoken to, younger people about fifty and sixty say, ‘Oh we couldn’t have done that. We couldn’t have done that.’ And have no concept of what you did. It’s only by these things what’s happening now that they’ve got a concept of it.
IL: Mm.
RH: And they see the Bomber, eh, Dambusters, eh on the television and they see Guy Gibson and all that sort of thing eh and they see it portrayed as though it was some form of Brylcreem boy picture or something like that and they don’t realise that that fifty seven thousand went, you know,
IL: Oh absolutely
RH: when they were only boys, you know what I mean don’t you?
IL: Oh absolutely.
RH: And it, the worst crime that ever happened, they never recognised Bomber, Bomber Command as a medal, insofar as they were only copper or nickel and they didn’t cost fivepence a piece in old money and it wouldn’t have cost them anything and I often wonder ‘Did the German aircrew and ground staff get a medal?’
IL: Eh, yeah em, I can’t answer that I have to say.
RH: It’s that something that I’ve always wondered, I’m not, they were only doing a job like we were doing.
IL: Yep.
RH: And at the end of the war they were always concern about Dresden and one thing and another but nobody mentioned Coventry and Hull and different places, and London, and different places. We could all have been killed. But at the end of the war they put a statue up to Bomber Harris and somebody painted it in red. Blood on his hands. I don’t know whether you know.
IL: Yeah. I, I, well I’ve seen pictures of it. I’ve seen pictures of it being defaced.
RH: Yeah. Well, but I think reading between the lines, he went out to live in South Africa or somewhere like that.
IL: Yes, well he was born in – He was Zimbabwean.
RH: Yes, but he went back there in more or less disgrace, with blood on his hands.
IL: Yeah.
RH: And he were only carrying out orders at the end. Every bloomin’ raid that they went on –
IL: Did, did you say that he came to a party?
RH: No, he didn’t come to the party.
IL: Right.
RH: He sent a message, that told of appreciation of the work, the hard work that 5 Group Servicing Section had done that they’d throw a party for us. And that’s the only time we were all collectively together. But that was an appreciation, for the party. But it was signed by Bomber Command.
IL: Oh right. Okay. But you were personally thanked by the Wing Commander?
RH: 5 Group Chief Engineering Officer. It’s there.
IL: Oh absolutely. I’ve seen, I’ve seen, I’ve seen it.
RH: I can’t write that now in green ink [?] [chuckles] It were relevant at the time when we did it.
IL: Of course. Of course. Well it’s a huge thing, isn’t it really? You know, particularly in that, I think it’s important to have recognition.
RH: You see eh, I’ll just [mumbles].
IL: What are you looking for?
RH: I’m looking –
IL: Oh for your glasses [chuckles]
RH: My glasses. [background rustling]
IL: Aah! [pause] I’ll take, I’ll take pictures of these if that’s okay?
RH: Yes, certainly.
IL: Which we can em, which we can use.
RH: Yeah. Do you know what this is? ‘East Kirkby Monday eighth of the first forty five heavy snow. Nineteenth of the first it was very cold. Twenty second of the first polishing [?] in the snow.’ Nobody knows about those things.
IL: Oh no. You worked incredibly hard.
RH: There were nowhere to hide in Lincolnshire.
IL: No. It’s a very em, it’s a bit barren. Oh and is that you? [emphasis]
RH: Yeah. There were nowhere to hide from the wind. It were all flat land.
IL: Oh absolutely. It blows straight across.
RH: And that’s my training –
IL: And that’s your, that’s your training?
RH: Yeah.
IL: And so where are you?
RH: In the centre somewhere. Can you see?
IL: Aah. They all look terribly serious. Is there anything else you’d want to tell me?
RH: Only that the eh, as I say, the different aircraft, there were Stirlings, everybody talks about the Lancaster, but at Wigsley they had Stirlings.
IL: Right.
RH: You know, we worked on them.
IL: Were they, but was the Lancaster your favourite aircraft to work on? Did you get to, you know, know your engines? Did you get to sort of be able to know that the engine was right by the sound of it?
RH: It, it were music.
IL: Yeah.
RH: You can talk about operas and symphonies and anything but if you stood at the side of the perimeter track waiting for it to take off at the end of the runway then when you see it sweep up into the sky with the engines running, it were magical. I’m not being effeminate or anything like that, but just so admiration of that piece of machinery and with a bomb load on being lifted off the runway and taking off into the air, what a feat of engineering.
IL: Oh, absolutely fantastic. Right, I am going to stop 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 Robert Holman
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Locker
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
2018-04-20
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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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AHolmanR180420, PHolmanR1801
Format
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00:50:18 audio recording
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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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Description
An account of the resource
Robert Holman was born and brought up in Leeds. He joined the Air Training Corps, enjoying camps at RAF Pocklington. On leaving school at fourteen he went to work in the shoe industry. He then joined the Royal Air Force as an engineer on ground crew. After working on an aircraft the crew would occasionally take Robert up to give them confidence that he had done a good job. He was finally posted to Lincolnshire with Bomber Command. He recalled that there would be eight or ten engineers working on a major service, which could take two or three days. He worked on Lancasters, Oxfords and Stirlings; the latter being for training purposes.
After the war Robert went back into the shoe industry as a retailer and finally opened a shop for Timpsons. He became a member of the Air Training Corps Old Boys Comrades.
Robert enjoyed his time in the services and remembered incidents, including when he was on guard duty at the gates; having three weeks off after having his appendix out whilst working at RAF Scampton, and getting a lift in the back of a wagon conveying dead sheep.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Tricia Marshall
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
5 Group
ground crew
ground personnel
Lancaster
military service conditions
Oxford
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Pocklington
RAF Scampton
RAF Syerston
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1086/11544/ARaceR160204.2.mp3
54299c4c9b145c587092bdeea028a995
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
Race, Raymond
Raymond Gordon Race
R G Race
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Raymond Race (288870 Royal Air Force).
He served as a corporal in a communication Squadron at RAF Hendon. His eldest brother Sergeant George Albert Race flew operations as an air gunner in 103 Squadron at RAF Elsham Wolds and 156 Squadron Pathfinders at RAF Warbouys; he was killed in action 30/31 January 1944. His other brother flew as a gunner with Coastal 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
2016-02-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Race, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: It’s the fourth of February 2016. I’m interviewing Mr. Raymond Race. We are mainly talking about his older brother who was in Bomber Command and we are doing this at his home in Sutton in Hull. So, if you, just tell us about your early life, Raymond, yours and your brother’s early life.
RR: Right, yes. Well, so first of all, I told you, we’re a Wakefield family, my, it’s really, it’s the story of the industrial revolution [unclear] to put it that way because my family originated in Helmsley, they were all agricultural workers and gradually over the years they moved down from Helmsley to North Yorkshire, to West Yorkshire, Buckley and into Wakefield and they all worked in the textile industry so my father who was a [unclear] man in a woollen mill I think it was, no, I know it was, three uncles, four aunts and my mother all worked in the same mill, so we all lived basically within a half mile radius of the village so that’s the background to the family all we have is my father, as I showed you, was actually in the RFA, which is the Royal Field Artillery and we’re a family of six children [unclear] who is the brother, the eldest brother who was with Bomber Command as I say it was the oldest brother, my next to oldest brother actually he is still alive, was an air gunner with Coastal Command and I ended up just after the war, and basically I think it was the first of January ’46 I was conscripted as it were and I was on ground staff with, after the initial training with the what was then known as the metropolitan communications squadron in Hendon, which was, as the name implied, it was just a communication squadron flying the Proctors and aircraft like that for the some of the headquarters staff it was used to fly about during the business. Now I was a corporal in the squadron office, so that’s basically the background of the family, apart from the fact that my youngest brother when he was called up, he was a traitor, he went into the RAMC [laughs]
IL: What made three brothers all join the RAF?
RR: Don’t know.
IL: There was no, you didn’t have any
RR: No, nobody, I don’t know why [unclear] joined, he was my oldest brother, he was a [unclear] actually and initially when he joined for the first, he joined in May 1940 and he, it was in 19 and he was on maintenance work at various establishments, ground maintenance work not aircraft maintenance and he remustered as a, to become an air gunner in, I think it was, oh yes, it was December 1942 and then from that point of course he went through the training the acceptance [unclear], what do they call it, the aircraft, the, I think they call it the, anyway it was the process by they were accepted to become flying officers as it were and then they were trained at, he was trained obviously as an air gunner and then they moved on to training with the squadrons and he ended up with 103 Squadron which was in Elsham Wolds in, I think that was July 1943 was that, so that’s [unclear] I think there was another one somewhere
IL: So that’s a picture of his crew from Elsham Wolds, so when, how
RR: That’s the [unclear] the crew there, yeah.
IL: Yeah. So, how old was he when he first joined up?
RR: He was born in 1921 and he joined up in May ’40, so
IL: So he’d be nineteen.
RR: He’d be nineteen. I think initially it would be, I think he’d had gone exempt from service because he was in a building trade for some reason but eventually he just said, I am going to join up and did so, that’s the crew [unclear] was that, that’s in fact is quite unusual because if you read the back 103 squadron Peenemunde.
IL: Right.
RR: Now that is one of the famous air raids of the war. Peenemunde, it was the German rocket research establishment on the Baltic coast and the RAF raided the place, it was delayed the production of rockets actually, was after that raid they moved the establishment, the research establishment somewhere in Austria after the raid which just delayed the production of V1s and V2s otherwise we [unclear] enough to win war in the end. On that raid there is one of the various books on it and the air gunner, one of the air gunners shot down, actually shot down a Messerschmitt.
IL: On your brother’s plane?
RR: On my brother’s plane, yes [laughs]
IL: Gosh! Gosh! And so, is this, did your brother talk about it, did your brother talk about anything?
RR: Never.
IL: Ok. So this is stuff you found out subsequently
RR: Yes, yes. From various books. There’s a bit written about the war and the aircrew and thing
IL: Did you ever meet any other people in his crew?
RR: Never. No. He was very reluctant to talk about it at all because by the time after many years he just disappeared no one didn’t, no one actually was gone. I in fact, if you go a little bit further from that point about that was August 1943 I think it was somewhere about October ’43 the crew as a whole were transferred to the Pathfinder group
IL: Right.
RR: And that’s was when they moved over to RAF Warboys in that group, in number 8 Group it was at Bomber Command and strangely enough when the attack was made on Peenemunde the squadron they moved to 156 Squadron was in fact one of the leading squadrons [laughs] and so, as I say, the moved, they did several, from what I can gather, they did several flights from there until the 30th of January 1944, when they were shot down coming back from a raid over Berlin.
IL: Right.
RR: So he is in fact buried in a village called Vollenhove which
IL: Is it presumably in Holland?
RR: Holland, yes. The aircraft landed in what was then part of a polder, which is where the Dutch,
IL: Yeah.
RR: Yeah. And although they were in the nearest village, which is the village, as I say, Vollenhove
IL: Right.
RR: But the new village, where they actually crashed became, of course became land after the war by the Dutch and they created a village and the village is there in fact created a memorial to the, I think there was another aircraft had crashed nearby and they called it Marknesse and that’s a memorial the Dutch village themselves, the villagers themselves created that memorial to those two aircraft so they payed for those two aircraft.
IL: So, this is presumably a Commonwealth war grave that he’s now buried now.
RR: It is in fact.
IL: Was he reburied or was that a?
RR: [unclear] Commonwealth war graves commission.
IL: So what effect did that have on you and your family?
RR: My mother was distraught of course, she, was her eldest son, and she was even more distraught when, where is he? That was him, when my cousin eldest brother Donald, when he joined up and he followed a similar pattern because he, when he joined the air force he was in the RAF regiment which was [unclear] airfield and then again he volunteered to become an air gunner but he went to Coastal Command as an air gunner and he flew Liberators, is an American aircraft, so, but he did all, most of his training in, I think it was the Bahamas actually [laughs]
IL: Nice if you can get it.
RR: Apart from the fact that he had to go by ship from here to Canada and travel from Canada down through [unclear] and America to the Bahamas by train [laughs]
IL: That would be, that would be the difficult bit, wouldn’t it? [unclear] on the ship.
RR: Oh, there he is.
IL: So was your other brother, was your other brother actually in the RAF when your eldest brother died?
RR: No.
IL: Right. But it didn’t put him off?
RR: No. He was just about becoming of that age to join up but I think it was just having a bit of impetus [unclear] to join up, not to deter him, now that’s him, I think [unclear]
IL: Yes.
RR: [unclear]
IL: So your elder brother, how many missions did he fly?
RR: As far as I know he, when he flew from Elsham Wolds when he joined that aircraft which is a W registration number it was, I think he did with that crew, with that particular squadron, I think flew, ten I think it was, and then they were transferred to Warboys and the Pathfinder group. From what I can gather, from the information I was able to get I think he did about eight with that before they were shot down.
IL: Right.
RR: Yeah. Strangely enough there is a record that the aircraft, that of course they didn’t take the aircraft with them, they just, as a crew, the aircraft was still flying of course from Elsham Wolds as far as I can gather that particular aircraft was shot down in December 1943.
IL: Gosh! Ok.
RR: I forgot the number. There is a specific number on that, they are all numbered of course these aircraft, [unclear] interesting, sad actually [unclear] when they were shot down on the night of the 31st of January, in fact two of the crew survived and parachuted down.
IL: Right.
RR: And they were not immediately captured actually I believe, they were taken by the Dutch underground but eventually they were captured after about, I think about two months, they were captured and put into a, I think it was Stalag Luft something they called,
IL: Yeah.
RR: A prison camp it was, yeah, and they, one of them was, [unclear] somewhere, I can’t remember his name, Coin, that was it, Pat Coin, he was the radio operator, he in fact went to live in Canada. And there was another one, I forget his name now, I put it somewhere, but anyway the other one was a navigator who was not part of the regular crew because someone had been ill and he survived and he lived in Blackpool that gentleman.
IL: Right. So did you or your family ever see and meet these people?
RR: No. I wrote, I was in correspondence with the, Coin, Pat Coin his name was quite a long time actually and in fact he send some of the information through from the bits and pieces [unclear] and
IL: So did he, was he able to say how they were shot down?
RR: No, but there is a, a narrative in one of the books about these particular raids. Now apparently they were damaged over Berlin and as they were coming back, they were shot down by a German fighter.
IL: Right.
RR: As I say, two of them actually managed to parachute out but the rest of the crew were killed. Actually there is some, oh no, that’s, no, no, that’s another one, that’s another one of the same crew, that is in fact the church where they’re buried, local church [laughs].
IL: Gosh!
RR: [unclear] Oh, that’s the, that’s what I was looking for. That is our crew, but that is the war grave for an aircraft apparently they were shot down in 1942 is that one which is not, I don’t know where they came from, but that’s ours [unclear] the five.
IL: So was he buried immediately?
RR: As far as I know, yes.
IL: Yes. And then obviously [unclear] yeah.
RR: And then, they came in later.
IL: Have you ever managed to visit?
RR: Yes.
IL: Good.
RR: My parents, I believe again it was a bit easy as this but I believe they were taken on an escorted visit just after the war to see the graves, when they Commonwealth graves actually on the transfer and my wife and I went to, oh, I forget now [laughs], must be twenty years ago now, we actually went to on one of the weekends from [unclear] with a ferry and we went by train up Rotterdam to a place called Zwolle it was and which was the nearest rail end and then by bus from there to look at the grave, yeah.
IL: I can imagine that was quite emotional.
RR: Yeah. My mother and my older sister in fact they went, they were able to go to the opening ceremony for that memorial that the Dutch village had created for them. Do you need anything else? [unclear] Those are up there actually.
IL: Oh, those are his medals. Oh, the family. Your brother’s and your father’s.
RR: That’s, all much yes, those my father’s, yeah, and that’s his Lapel badge, ubique is the name of that logo [unclear] these days which is [unclear], that’s the Bomber Command clasp [unclear].
IL: Yeah. Is that the one that was only released fairly recently, yes.
RR: A couple of years ago, yeah.
IL: Yeah. How did that make you feel, that it took so long?
RR: Very annoyed, I think lots of people were very annoyed about it, yes, all down to Churchill of course, I shouldn’t have said that [laughs]
IL: You can say what, honestly, you can say what you like, Raymond [laughs].
RR: Oh dear [laughs].
IL: Yes, it was a sort of expediency, wasn’t it?
RR: It was political.
IL: Absolutely.
RR: Very political [unclear]
IL: So how long were you in the RAF for?
RR: I was in for two years and three months.
IL: Right.
RR: Cause I, [clears throat] another one of these quirks, I was still there [unclear] the wartime regulations
IL: Right.
RR: First of January ’46. Because after that of course we had, now what do they call it? National service but that didn’t start until the first of January, I think it was the first of January ’47. So they did exactly two years after that but I was a bit longer because the old wartime regulations [unclear]
IL: Oh, careful!
RR: [unclear] Oh there, that’s where [unclear] I think, oh yes, I am, that’s initial training [laughs], that’s me.
IL: Right. So what was your actual role?
RR: My particular role?
IL: Yeah.
RR: I was in the squadron office.
IL: Right.
RR: The corporal in the squadron, I’m dealing with the [unclear] of the squadron.
IL: So what did you do as a later career?
RR: Well I just carried on for what I had done before, I was, started up, you probably know, you remember the public assistance? I can’t think that far back [laughs]. 1939.
IL: No, not quite, not quite.
RR: Well, you know, you’ve heard of [unclear], you’ve heard of workhouses and things like that?
IL: Yeah.
RR: Well, under the old public assistance system, because the local authorities dealt with care of the elderly, the decrepit, provided hospitals and all sorts of things but then of course when the, I think it was the Beveridge report was made
IL: Yes. Well, I don’t remember it but I was, I am aware of it [laughs]
RR: I worked through it you see [laughs]
IL: Yeah, of course.
RR: And then of course the things split up, there was the national health service and there was the welfare service and the national assistance service which put a lot of the services started providing the residential accommodation and things like that and the welfare of the elderly, the national assistance provided cash, help and you did all national health service [unclear] and after five reorganisations I finally retired in [laughs] the 60s, no, I worked in the initially with the [unclear] county council as a duly authorised officer, do you know what that is?
IL: No.
RR: Well, sorry. [laughs]
IL: It’s alright, it’s lovely to hear you explain.
RR: Yes, well, [unclear] act I think was in 1989, 1890 I think it was, and the mental health act of 1930, I think it was, to commit a person to a lunatic asylum as it used to be called, on a public basis there had to be two medical opinions, one a GP and one a specialist. But the person who actually did the admin part of getting them there was a duly authorised officer of the local authority, that was me.
IL: Alright.
RR: You could also, under the mental health act, the duly authorised officer on the advice of a GP could arrange for the admission on a temporary basis I think it was for three days to a mental institution so in that sense I was the visitor [unclear] as it were.
IL: Gosh!
RR: And then eventually I moved from the West Riding I was an assistant divisional officer there to become the deputy director of welfare services in Holme city.
IL: Right.
RR: And then after another four, was it four? Four reorganisations, I eventually retired as an assistant director for [unclear] county council [laughs]
IL: Gosh! So, is there anything else you would like to tell me about Bomber Command, Raymond? We will take some, if it’s ok with you, I will take some photographs of [unclear] the fresh you got.
RR: [unclear] oh, it’s Marknesse [unclear] those are still there, oh, that’s the, those are the war graves there and the memorial there, that in fact is the memorial window in Warboys parish church.
IL: Alright.
RR: To the squadron. We light the way, is the 15, 456 Squadron motto.
IL: It’s lovely.
RR: Yeah. But there’s all sort of bits and pieces. I mean, there are, of course, well, you probably know that, various records in, I think there is certainly one in role of honour in Ely cathedral because that must be, I think people around the Cambridge area who were killed. [unclear] The 103 Squadron, I think their motto was, let me get [unclear], the official badge of 103 squadron was black swan.
IL: Right.
RR: Now, let me see if I got the pronunciation right. Noli mi tangere. Which I understand is ancient French and it means touch me not [laughs]. I know if you’ve seen that.
IL: I don’t think I have.
RR: [unclear] Canadian [unclear]
IL: Gosh! [unclear]
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 Raymond Race
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Locker
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
2016-02-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARaceR160204
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:29:12 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Description
An account of the resource
Raymond Race was born in a family working in the textile industry and joined the RAF in 1943, serving on the metropolitan communications squadron. Tells about his family’s military service: his father joined the Royal Field Artillery; his eldest brother who served on 103 Squadron in Bomber Command, flew an operation on Peenemunde and got shot down over Holland; another brother served as an air gunner in Coastal Command. Describes his elder brother’s military service and his burial place and the memorial built in Holland on the crash site. Tells of his life after the war, working as a civil servant.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Peenemünde
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1942
1943
1944-01-30
103 Squadron
156 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
final resting place
killed in action
memorial
Pathfinders
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Warboys
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/306/3463/AMooreR160727.1.mp3
6916342becb8f2ec899823178f5b9e73
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
Moore, Raymond
R Moore
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Raymond Moore (1609170 and 179383 Royal Air Force).
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
2016-07-27
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
Moore, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: Ian Locker. I’m interviewing Ray Moore at his home in Sowerby, Thirsk. Right, so Ray, um, tell us a little bit about your early life.
RM: Early life — where, where from?
IL: From you, you, you were born in Sussex?
RM: Yes.
IL: Tell us a little bit about your family and how, how you came to join the RAF.
RM: Well, I’ll only repeat what I said.
IL: Absolutely.
RM: Exactly what — again, I wasn’t thrilled by the war. I remember it very distinctly because my father and two brothers — my two brothers were in the — they called it the —
Sarah: Home Guard? No?
RM: Well, my father got — had been recalled for the covers [?] in other words, he’d done about fourteen years’ service in India and then he went to, he was posted to Gallipoli. He was wounded in 1915 and came back to England and he was in hospital, hospital in Esher, in Esher. That’s in Surrey and that’s where he me my mother but that was just at the beginning. And then he went in the Territorials. They joined in 1938 so they were the first up and the last picture, the last thing I remember of them, I was — they were all at home this particular day, and the last thing I remember I went into the dining room and they were all stood with their arms around one other. It was very moving, was that. And, um, then — so that passed and you didn’t — there was no reality to it even then. And then on the Sunday morning at 11 o’clock on — when Chamberlain said — it still didn’t ring a bell. I still wasn’t — it, it didn’t mean anything. I remember that Sunday morning and hearing Chamberlain and my mother was sat weeping, as they did in them days I suppose, I don’t know, but she was, I remember she was, she was crying and I thought, ‘Well, it’s a war.’ You know and, and honestly at that age, and I was fifteen, at that age you didn’t, you didn’t say, ‘Oh, there’s a war.’ It’s Hitler. It’s Germany. It’s Nazi Germany and I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that we were at war but my father and brothers had already gone but it didn’t ring a bell until about, let’s see that’s 1940. I’m trying to think of the dates. In 1941 there were three of them gone and in 1941 my, er, brother that was older than me — no. A sister that was older than me, Joan, she decided to join the WAAFS. Because at some period of time, you know, women had to sign on as well and she was eligible. She was about twenty-two, twenty-three and so she was the next one to go and to me it was, ‘Ta-ta Joan.’ You know, that was — and then life set again. You started to — some of the things that happened. Because we never had a daily paper because I think the Daily Herald was on the go in those days and so, um, and being a mixed family of, of politics — my father was a conservative and my brothers when they came out, two of them had turned and flying the red flag. That was hilarious was that after the war. But — and so, er, and then it went on and then a brother went and I sort of looked round and instead of eleven of us sat down at that, in that, you know — and it was a fairly big dining room Sarah, wasn’t it? And the dining table, instead of there on a Sunday it was suddenly, suddenly empty and that was when it struck me that something was wrong and that was the time when I really thought about joining up but the age was eighteen and I was damn sure I wasn’t going in the Army or the Navy and I, I’d made up my mind. But as I say there was something by the Government that if you had — you know, there were a lot of big families but if you had so many in that were in the Services you, you were exempt and I should have been exempt. And that rattled my mother more than anything and so that was, you know, I joined up like and that’s when it started. All of it started. I have to admit I was leaving home and the Army didn’t appeal to me in as much as that I’d lost brothers and sisters and my father were all in the services. Because we had a good family life.
Sarah: None of them were killed.
RM: Never lost one of them, no.
IL: Remarkable isn’t it. So had you left school?
RM: Oh, I’d left school.
IL: So did you leave school at fifteen or —
RM: Fourteen.
IL: Right. So, so were you working on the family farm? Or —
RM: No, no, no. I did that, er, I did —
Sarah: What was your first job?
RM: First job, riding a bicycle, pushing — I worked for a butcher, just delivering, just an ordinary menial job. And that was the first, yeah, that was the first year and going to work then nine to five. [cough] I’m trying to think how old I was as well. And about a year or it might have been —
IL: I’m going to move that a little bit nearer to you.
RM: Sorry.
IL: No, it’s OK. [unclear]
RM: It might have been, um, [unclear] I think with there being, when the war was on, 1939, and there was, er, Joan was at home and Frank and so there were those at home so really I hadn’t much care, no idea. I was a good scholar as well. I was a good scholar, even if I say myself.
Sarah: And that’s where your engineering background —
RM: It was. It was really because, um, when I was in, when I joined up, and I was mixing with engines and airframes and things it seemed to — it was something that I wanted to do, wasn’t it? And to come top of the class at the end of thirty-six weeks I thought it was pretty good going. Anyway, er, fifteen and I got to know one or two. I, in that respect I was a bit of a loner, in respect of mixing and things like that and not bothering to look for the future, and I say I couldn’t have cared less and my father was in the Army so he couldn’t boot my backside and tell me to get a job. There, was there and then I went to a Jim Feasts [?]. I even remember his name and they were a greengrocers and all I was doing there was delivering green groceries, groceries and whatever you’re talking about. No, it was greengrocery wasn’t it? That was Jim Feast and that was awful but I suppose I was mixing with different people and Worthing’s a very snobbish place, you know.
IL: I’ve been.
RM: Pardon?
IL: I’ve been.
RM: Oh, you know Worthing.
IL: Not well.
RM: I finished there. I shouldn’t be — and then I worked for Jim Feast until, well, I think he told me to beggar off and, um, they were menial things, weren’t they? And then across The Broadway there was, they called them Fletchers [sound of aircraft]. Now that can go down. They called them Fletchers, the butcher, and so I was riding around then. And I became very friendly with a chap and he was the same as I was. We were the same age and doing the same jobs, riding around and delivering errands, and he said to me one day, he said — and it was time to come up when we were coming up to seventeen and then around that area and he said, ‘By the way.’ He said, ‘I’m going to join, I’m going to join the Navy.’ He said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t join the Navy if you paid me.’ I said, I said, ‘I don’t want to go.’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m going to join the Navy.’ And just up here they call it Teville Road. He said, ‘Up here are the Naval Cadets.’ But it’s ridiculous isn’t it? Because when he said Naval Cadets I thought to myself, ‘What do you do?’ He said, ‘Well, we learn the Morse code and with your arms and hands.’ And I thought — ‘And march and do things like that.’ And bearing in mind there was also a junior Air Cadets but I didn’t even think about the Air Cadets because — and then he was telling me, he said, ‘Why don’t you come up?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to join the Navy.’ He said, ‘Oh, come on.’ He said, ‘It will just be a bit of fun.’ So, I said, ‘Oh, right.’ So, I went up this particular time and went into this hall and I saw these, er, do you know what I mean? There was all these things to learn the Morse code, with di, di, di, da, dat. And I looked at them and I thought — because a friend of mine had joined the air crew and he’d gone as a wireless op and I thought, ‘That’s not a bad thing. There’s a place here I can learn the Morse code and be one in front.’ So, he said — anyway, I thought it would be interesting, sat down and they had about six in a line. I sat down and I got interested, listening to it, and I thought, ‘This will do.’ But this mate of mine, he kept saying, ‘Join.’ He wanted me to join the Naval Cadets and I didn’t want to join and that was when really that I made up my mind. That was about the time that I’d gone down to the recruiting office to join the, to join the Air Force and that was really at the beginning where I made up my mind that I wanted to be air crew and that, that was the last job I think, driving around. They called him Fletcher, that butcher, and that’s, that’s all I did but I think if my dad had been home he would have pushed me because, as I say, I was fairly good, I was fairly good at school. I was. I can wrap anything up, you know, and it seems a shame really. You know, I don’t I mean that I was wasted or anything like that but I know that had I’d gone on I would have gone on to Worthing High School but nothing appealed to me. There was a war on and honestly, that’s the honest truth, there was nothing appealed to me. Nothing at all appealed to me in — accept when it came for the service time to join the Services. That’s all it was.
IL: OK. So when you joined you were seventeen but there was problems because you had to have your mother’s permission I understand.
RM: That’s right.
IL: So, what happened?
RM: What happened?
IL: Yeah. What happened?
RM: Well, I did tell you.
Sarah: But you’re being recorded now dad.
RM: Oh, I see. Oh, well. Well, we didn’t fall out of course not. You can look at that. That’s my family. Oh well, we had a few words of course but nothing, there was nothing dramatic. There was nothing dramatic about it because my mother was a loving woman wasn’t she? I mean, it was her family, her life, but to — but I don’t think even to this day, looking back, that she ever thought that, um, it would come to me signing up. I don’t think she ever thought that I would join up until I left and I got on the train from West Worthing to Victoria. I mean, to be out of, to get out, to go out of Worthing was when I played football. I used to play schoolboy international, um, yeah, I played schoolboy international. We lost —
Sarah: Where did you do your final?
RM: West Ham. No, we didn’t play. We got knocked out, Sarah. West Ham beat us in the semis at — where? What’s the name of their ground?
IL: Upton Park.
RM: Yes. That’s it and it was an absolute sensation because to play schoolboy international was actually a very good thing because when you ran on the pitch and there was six thousand boys there and we ran on the pitch at Upton Park and these boys — you get six thousand boys, six thousand boys there and I can understand — it was absolutely wonderful. Anyway I was thirteen at the time. But going on to where, talking about my mother, it was, it was very disturbing but on, not from my point of view because I knew what I was going to do. It was something. It was something. There was a blooming war on but the papers and you could hear them give the news out. It, it didn’t strike me as being anything. All I wanted to do then was be in the Air Force and to fly. That was my only ambition was to fly and I failed the first time. What did they call it? I failed. I put in for a pilot and I failed as a pilot. I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t just good enough. That was all there was to it. I know that looking back. I think if I’d genned up on it a bit more and waited maybe a couple of months.
Sarah: How did they sort out who was going to be a flight engineer and who was going to be a wireless operator?
RM: By what I had to do. By what you had to do. And you talk about square pegs and round holes, Sarah, and that was what you had to do. I went up to, ah, North London. It’s where they, where the Lord’s Cricket Ground is, somewhere up there, and you go before the — oh, I forgot to tell you that. That’s what happened when I was called up, before I was called up rather, that’s what happened, and you sit down. You go into this classroom and that as well, I had a medical, of course. I mustn’t miss that out, of course you did, and you sat down and it was sort of noughts and crosses, you know. I can’t remember a lot, but you sat down and with a — now I’ve got to just try and think. Anyway I failed as a pilot and so the next best thing —
IL: But at this time you were still only seventeen? This was —
RM: Pardon?
IL: This was between signing up and being called up you had this, like, kind of selection.
RM: That’s right, exactly. I’d forgotten, yeah, of course I did. And as far as I think now I was just put down as air crew. I can’t seem to think that I was classified then because as an air gunner — I knew I wasn’t going to be an air gunner because the air gunners were in and out. They had a six month course. They were up in — they had a very short course, did an air gunner, a rear gunner and a mid-upper gunner. They had a very short — you know, it was awful really. They just learned how to shoot and they put them in, put them in a bomber. And honestly, it was as simple as that.
IL: You also, you also had this thing with your mother, um, she had to sign something, I understand?
RM: Oh yes, yes. She did, oh yeah. Well, I got this paper from — I went down to the recruiting office — and I thought — there again, I knew nothing about it. And I thought you could just sign on the line and they took you but when they came to the ages bit, um, it struck me as not being right, but you, you could not get into the Services. You could get in [emphasis] into the Services, before you were eighteen, but not flying. You could not get into air crew unless you signed up. That’s what it was with me anyway. And to get her to — she just said, ‘You’re not going.’ And that was it. And in practice she’d made her mind up that I wasn’t going to join the aircrew. But my mother then at that time I don’t really think that she knew what air crew was. Honestly I do. I believe that. She didn’t know what air crew was in that respect.
IL: So, how did you get round your mum not signing?
RM: Um, oh, oh well, I waited for a bit, oh yeah, when she wouldn’t sign it. I mean, she was my mother and what could I do? I can’t, even in those days, I mean, well, in those days you had to do what your mother and father said, as far as I was concerned anyway, and she was, um, she was up in arms. I knew she held it — she sort of realised that I’d made my mind up. That’s, that’s what it was all about. And I wanted to, I wanted to join and I she — I can’t tell you what the paper was. It was a sheet of paper with — that you had to sign and I, I forged her signature. Yeah, I did. I practiced writing Clare Moore and, um, I don’t think to this day that she knew what I’d done except when my papers came. I mean, I don’t think she was aware that, I don’t think she was aware because I didn’t turn round to her and say I’d done it. I wouldn’t have done that. Well, I wouldn’t Sarah. And, er, as I say I took it back to that, down Chapel Road, that recruiting office there and just handed it in and, ‘We’ll let you know.’ Sort of thing.
IL: So, what happened when you eventually got called up and had to leave?
RM: And had to leave?
IL: Had, had to leave home. What did your mum do?
RM: Oh, well, that — well, my sister Dorothy, we were good friends, as brother and sister, and she still does to this day. She thinks I’m marvellous. You know, that sort of, her brother, and, um, well, I packed a little suitcase and all I packed in was probably a razor and whatever, you know, things you need, I suppose. I know at that time my mother was very reluctant to pack anything in. You didn’t need anything. You just had, I just had this little case and I guess she packed in soap, a flannel and things like that. That’s all there was, you know. Said, ‘Cheerio.’ And she said, ‘You can beggar off home.’ I remember that. And then when I got to the bottom of the road I looked back. Waving. And I got on a train and went to Victoria, Victoria across to — no, the RTO met us at, um, at Victoria Station. You went into the, what they called, the RTO, that’s the Railroad Transport Offices, the RTO, and I went in there and told them, like, and they took us by coach then to Cardington. And from Cardington — was there two days. That was awful really at Cardington because there were thou— there seemed hundreds, hundreds of airmen milling around in civvies, you know, and it was a funny carry on and it really surprised me, in as much as, over the Tannoy (they had a Tannoy) and it was like a homing thing and it called out on, on the microphone, ‘Is there a,’ and I’ll never forget this, ‘Is there a Raymond Moore here?’ And amongst all the hubbub, you know, I didn’t take a lot of notice and I hadn’t met anybody but I heard it again and again and I thought, ‘That’s me.’ Anyway, er, I found out where it was coming from and what it was — I can’t explain to you how they found out — but what it was somebody more knowledgeable than me and up to date and what it was you could go to and find, there was a list of some sort you, you could go and find and look down this list, like, anybody from Worthing? With their names on it and my name was on it and what — and they called in — oh, I can’t think of it. No good, can’t think, and what happened was, he called in. He was calling, ‘Raymond Moore.’ And I found him and found him and of course he came up and he said, ‘Oh, good. Thank God. There’s somebody here from Worthing.’ And he was a horror. I never liked him because, well, because it weren’t so much — I’d met him through the football and he came from a school called Sussex Road and I came from St Andrews and so there was a bit of competition of the boys from St Andrews and the boys from Sussex Road and I never liked him. And he said, oh, he said, ‘Oh, what school?’ I said, ‘I was at St Andrews.’ And, you know, St Andrews was a bit of a snobbish school. Well, it was a bit of a snobbish school, it was honestly. St Andrews it was. We thought we were a cut above Sussex Road and it was true and, um, but I didn’t want to be with him somehow and I sort of edged away from him and I never met him again. He was posted somewhere else you see. I was posted to Skegness to do — I was there about eight weeks — square bashing and that was good. There again, it was something new wasn’t it, you know? Marching up and down. I even remember the corporal’s name, Corporal Passant, P A S S A N T, Corporal Passant. And we were billeted in houses on the seafront. It was marvellous, weren’t it? Home from home. And he was a very nice corporal, marched us up and down then and I then — we was just thrilled. We didn’t — there was no rifle drill or anything like that. We just had to learn. Well, I knew how to march but he was a professional and he taught us how to march properly. I’ll tell you this instance. I don’t know whether it matters, whether it goes on there or not, but it’s an incident and it struck me because, being brought up Church of England and fairly religious, church parade on a Sunday morning. There was a great big, seemed to me dozens of us, and each one was a platoon with thirty two men in and so this corporal then, as it come down the line, and you had to stand to attention but he’d call out then, ‘Fall out all Roman, fall out all Roman Catholics and Jews and other denominations.’ [slight laugh] Honestly, that’s the gospel truth, as true as I sit here. So I’m stood there and I thought — and of course, all those that were Roman Catholics and Jews and other denominations (what the other denomination was would be Methodist I suppose or something like that) and I’m stood there like and one or two — I saw one or two — falling out and I thought, ‘What’s goes on here?’ I thought there was only one religion, or two at the most. That would be Roman Catholics and Church of England.’ And that’s the honest truth. That’s how, that’s how I was educated, although that the school I went to, St Andrews, they called it a higher — there’s a name for it.
Sarah: Church School? Or a —
RM: Yes, they called it — and it was high church. It was between Roman Catholic and Jews [?]. It was in between but that didn’t make any difference to religion but you know what puzzled me? Every Sunday morning that corporal used to say — and it was a common thing and it caught on. Suddenly all the Church of England suddenly became Roman Catholics or Jews, whatever. It was a peculiar carry on and that is the truth.
Sarah: So they could fall out.
IL: Yes. So, they didn’t have to go to church parade?
RM: Yeah and they just wandered off and that, that is true that, and from — of course when I finished at square bashing I was sent to Cosford and that was eighteen months’ course on engines and that was hard. That was really hard. That was a hard course because when you’re — it’s like, taking maths. If you take maths at school it’s hard if you don’t concentrate and, taking the course on Merlin engines and Hercules engines, it struck me as being — seeing a massive engine there — and you had to learn the theory of it. I knew nothing. I didn’t even know what it looked like and to be thrown into something like that it was hard and I had to work hard if I wanted to — I did. I worked very hard, very, very hard.
IL: So, was that classroom and practical based?
RM: Yes, it was. It’s true. The practice, I was absolutely useless. Even now, right throughout my married life, and I was married for sixty-six years, and I’m telling you, I couldn’t knock a nail in without hitting my thumb. Now, it’s a standing joke in the family. Sarah knows. Don’t you Sarah?
Sarah: My mum was very good at decorating.
RM: The girls decorated and the lads. I could never ever learn anything in the house. It didn’t matter. Now, I don’t, I think it wasn’t, I think I lacked the knowledge of even knocking a nail in. I could never and of course my wife was the opposite. She was marvellous, you know. She had to be.
IL: I have a similar arrangement. [slight laugh]
Sarah: Very capable, was my mum.
RM: Yes, she was. And then from Cosford, I did eighteen weeks there and was posted to Halton, which was, it was the — from going from a lower form of AC1, AC2, LAC you went up then a bit higher because at Halton you had to finish off what you did at Cosford, you know, you know what I mean? It was a bit higher class if you got through and Halton’s in Buckinghamshire and Halton was the sound, it was the grounding for the regular Air Force. RAF Halton it was and that was nice there. We got marched about to a band there. They had their own band. Marched up for our dinners, from classrooms, marched back down again. It was quite good actually.
IL: How long were you there for?
RM: How long? So that was eighteen weeks, so four and a half months. How long was I? Oh, sixteen weeks.
IL: Right.
RM: Sixteen weeks at Halton, yeah, and that was another grind. It was, because, as I say it was a bit, it was harder.
IL: And did you get any leisure time in these places?
RM: No. It was just — well, only if you put in — well, just as an example was, we were billeted in huts and the — it was quite good really. It kept you on your toes. I was never lazy in doing them things but there was about — how many would there be? About fourteen beds in the hut and every Friday night it was bull [?] night and you had to dust your, all around your bed, and I seemed to get a lot of fluff round my bed [slight laugh] you know and then you had to polish the floor and that [emphasis] was the main thing. And you had to polish the floor because you got marks and the sergeant, the flight sergeant, would come round and he’d come round and look and if your, if your hut was good you got a mark of, I don’t know how they worked it, nine out of ten or something, and so after a couple of months your hut — and you worked hard and polished and all the bull you put in to it, and if you came top of the class you could put in for a weekend pass but they weren’t daft were they? You imagine thirty-six hours. Forty-eight hours from Friday until 23.00 hours on the Sunday night and they called that forty-eight hours. In the meantime — and you had to pay your own fare. So, I was living in Worthing and to get to Wolverhampton you had to do an awful lot. It was awfully quick because when my dad used to come home on leave and my mother would say, in a letter, she’d say your father will be coming on leave on such and such a day and he was billeted not far away up at Balcombe Tunnel [?] and, um, he was — so, I got information then so the idea was then if our hut was up on the list and a lot of them, bearing in mind, they lived farther away than that and so you couldn’t afford it. You couldn’t afford it. Your, your pay, you got three shillings a day or something like that, and so if you wanted to go on a weekend you had to save up to get your train fare. And so I would then write a letter and it was a dodge with me because when I wrote a letter to, to which you just had to write a note, ‘Dear Sir.’ Your commanding officer, ‘Dear Sir, I may request, can I request a pass because my father is coming home?’ It was a, it was a squid [?] wasn’t it? And put it in and to put a letter into the orderly room, ‘Dear Sir.’ I, I used to have it off pat saying that I was, um, how did I put it? Dear, Sir, Dear Sir. Oh, it was, it was a mushy letter and I always used to put in as my father is coming home on leave, and that was it, and because if you had a relative like that, you know what I mean? And so, any, any leave that I got that was the letter that I used to put in to the commanding officer, ‘Dear Sir, please may I put forward an application for a forty-eight hour pass to see my father who’s home on leave.’ And I used to put he’s a sergeant major in the eighth battalion of the Royal Fusiliers or something and I it went off pat, of course you did, and I got a forty-eight hour pass and it was the only time I screwed them [laugh] well, I did, you know. It was that little bit that — it was good was that.
IL: It’s not bad to get some time off.
RM: And then — but after I finished a Halton, that course there, I went down to St Athan and that was my final course and of course that was, that was a hard one there because for six weeks or eight weeks you had to write down the theory. It got down to the theory part of flying, the theory of flight, your engine power, and you didn’t even know what you were going to fly actually in them days. And there was another interesting thing that is worth putting down that I, I came top, or we’ll say I came nearly top. I know I was, I know, but at that time of course I was going to be a flight engineer and that was all there was to it. I was going to fly and that meant to finish it off I was going to be good and I intended, that was what I intended. Anyway, we were waiting, I’d got my tapes and braiding [?] that was good sewed it on and it came through then, we were in the billets one night and a corporal it was, the corporal came round and he said, he read four names out and my name was among them and where, where I was at St Athan, um, he said, he read four names out and he said, ‘Now then.’ He said, ‘This is optional.’ Have you ever heard of a Sunderland Flying Boat? No? Have you?
IL: I have, yes.
RM: Well, you know, well — and four of us were picked out then and this was a bit of excitement and they took us down to the, er, Solent on the Southampton waters to give us a trip in a Sunderland Flying Boat to see whether we liked it or not. And, oh boy that, you know, and to fly for the first time. But they were massive. To me they were massive. To be inside one of these things and they carried a crew of thirteen, you know. And, anyway they ferried us out to this Sunderland and, um, we climbed aboard and all the time, you know, I was very nearly messing myself because of the size of it and going up the ladder to get inside it and it was sort of going — it was a lovely gentle — on the Solent, you know, and I thought, ‘There’s something wrong. I don’t know what I’m doing here.’ And I could have refused. It was just something that being in the first four that it was a little present for those that were doing it and, er, I admit, I must admit I didn’t want to go then. And anyway we get inside and it was massive. I’ll never forget it. I mean, where they cooked they had a stove and everything and where they cooked it was as wide as this was. It was massive inside it. I was lost. I remember sitting there. We didn’t have a harness. They didn’t give us a harness. I was just sitting there and I was looking round. And they started the engines up. They were Hercules, no, no, Pegasus, they were Pegasus 16s and, er, then they started up and we were rolling forward and, do you know? I’m not kidding you, bump, bump, bump, and, and I couldn’t see out. All I could see, like, the pilot was up here but the, the feeling of going on, on the water in this blooming great flying boat. And, er anyway there were four of us there and none of us were very — I think all of us looking a bit green. Anyway, we took off and we just circled Southampton and Portsmouth, down there, and we come into land. Well, coming into land was the same as taking off virtually that was but, of course, if you got used to it like everything else — and we landed, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. Anyway when we went, they took us back to, um, we got back to St Athan and well, straight away, like, and we had to sort of say in front of those that were in charge of us down there, they had to say then, ‘Did you like it?’ And I said, I remember saying like, I said, ‘Is that what we’ve got to fly on?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to fly.’ Because honestly the take-off and landing on a Sunderland, honestly you could not understand, and when you look at Southampton, you know, when you look at the, look at the water. It all looks lovely and calm, you know, and you think — but by Jove I’ll tell you it did frighten me. Anyway, we got back and then we got back we were posted and posted then up to Yorkshire. That’s the first I saw of it. Posted to Eastmoor and there we landed at York and we got a truck there and there was thirteen of us. Thirteen flight engineers. And that was the hard bit. Do you know, out of those thirteen there was only about four of us finished. That was, that was hard.
IL: So, did you get to know those people?
RM: Well, when we went to the squadron we — well, Eastmoor was where they put all the crews in a hangar and there was a pilot, and he’d have his navigator, and the pilot would walk round and if you liked, er, like, if, if you liked a fella or you saw him and he saw [unclear] the pilot would go up to them and he’d say, ‘Have you got a crew?’ And this is gospel truth. They were — and some of the Canadians of course they knew one another from school, coming from Canada and things, so they weren’t so bad and I — and of course, when I was, went there it was awful. Well, those billets up there, the blankets were wet. We broke a table up to light the fire. It, it was about midnight when we got there from York and we spilt up and there was about six of us into this hut. It was awful. There, there was no fire. The blankets were wet. Anyway, um, it was awful to move in there. Well, in the daytime, as I say, we went into this big hangar where we were crewed up. And I remember I was sat there and I thought, ‘Nobody wants me.’ And it’s true. I was sat on a table. I was just sat there swinging my legs like. I was looking round, and I thought, I was hoping somebody would come up to me and say, ‘Have you got a crew?’ Or something. Anyway, I sat there and I saw them keep disappearing and I felt very lonely and I thought ‘Nobody wants me.’ Anyway, this, this pilot officer comes up to me and he tapped me on the shoulder and he said, ‘Have you got a crew?’ And I thought — I could have embraced him. I said, ‘No, I haven’t.’ He said, ‘Would you like to join my crew?’ I said, ‘Yes, I would.’ Well, he said, ‘I’m Pilot Officer Bryson.’ And he said, ‘Come with me and I’ll introduce you.’ And he introduced me. And I was the last one in the crew and he said, ‘This is Peter Lewinsky, navigator, Alex Trench was the bomb aimer (he was the Yank that did that book), Peter Lewinsky, er, Alex Trench was the bomb aimer, er, Reg Galloway was the wireless operator. Mid-upper gunner was Ralph Revlin [?] and the rear gunner was Harold Bowles.’ And that was how I was introduced to them.
IL: And so were they all, were they all, were they all British or —
RM: No, they were Canadian.
IL: They were all Canadian? Were you the only non-Canadian?
RM: Yes.
IL: Right.
RM: Yeah, they, they sort of — well, I was the youngest in the crew. The rest were twenty-one. The navigator was twenty-five and the wireless op was twenty-five. They were two of the eldest. The rest of them were twenty-one and I was just nineteen but they, they were marvellous really. They very nearly fostered me, you know. It was true. It was. Well, it was marvellous really accept I wasn’t their friend. When we were coming back they all smoked and so, when we were coming back and when I —
Sarah: Do you mean when you were setting out, when you were doing a, a return flight when you dropped bombs? When you say when you were coming back —
RM: Oh, we were coming back from — yeah, well that’s another story. They — what is was I was in charge of the oxygen and I didn’t smoke at the time (I did on occasion) and the skipper didn’t smoke but all the rest of them, it was like being in a factory. When we were flying, when we were — funnily enough they used to shout out. The rear gunner used to shout out and we’d be at eleven thousand feet and I used to take — and so I’d turn the oxygen off at ten thousand feet, you see, but I was in charge. But we’d be coming down, coming back, that was the worst bit because those that smoked needed a fag. That’s all there was so all they needed was a cig and so, we’d be at eleven thousand feet and then it started, the rear gunner, ‘Ray, Ray. How about turning the oxygen off.’ And we’d be at eleven thousand feet and it was the law but a flying law that you didn’t turn the oxygen off until you were down to ten thousand feet. That was the oxygen height, about twelve thousand feet, ten thousand feet, and so I used to turn to the skipper and I used to tap him because he would hear on, you see, and I used to tap him on the shoulder and he just used to sit there and he used to do just this and so I never answered them because, well, it was silly and then you would hear another one and the wireless operator, he was real — he was like a father, and he used to say, a bit subtler, ’Ray.’ [sound of aircraft] You know, and we’d be down then, coming down then, ‘Ray, Raymond, Raymond.’ And more sympathetic, ‘Turn the oxygen off Ray, Raymond. Turn the oxygen off.’ And so I used, used to turn to the skipper and I used tap him on the shoulder, and he was a bugger was old Bryson, the skipper. He was really stuck to it. At ten thousand feet turn the oxygen off, like, and they can — and it was like a furnace in there, you know, the cigarette smoke. They all smoked.
Sarah: Did they not swear at you occasionally?
RM: Oh, oh yeah. Yeah, it come to being not being pleasant, you know, ‘Turn that — turn that oxygen off. Turn.’ And, er, yeah, it was good fun.
IL: So, once you were crewed up you went to Linton?
RM: Yes.
IL: OK. So was this — so what was Linton?
RM: Linton was the — there were two squadrons at Linton: 408 and 426. That’s about it. There was sixteen to a squadron there so there was about thirty, thirty-two, thirty-two bombers all to take off and land.
Sarah: And you used to stay at Beningbrough didn’t you?
RM: Ah, well we were, we were billeted. We weren’t billeted at Linton. We were billeted at Beningham.
Sarah: Beningham.
IL: Oh, Beningham Hall. Very posh.
RM: Ah, well —
Sarah: We went there a couple of years ago didn’t we? Had a re-visit.
RM: Yes. Sarah took me there. There it is, look. That was when we were — yeah, there were six of us there. That was when we were old. 1987.
Sarah: It was a reunion.
RM: And it was a reunion, yes. They came all the way from Canada. 1987 that was. Oh yeah, they came over two or three times didn’t they, Sarah?
IL: So, when you, so you when you moved, when you first went to — so what, what year was it and what, when did you first start operations?
RM: Linton, we were at Linton in the November ‘43. I did my first trip on — to Berlin. That was a Berlin and I did my first trip to Berlin with Flight Lieutenant Brice. I flew spare. One of the — his engineer — on the 28th of January. That was my first trip to Berlin. That was one of the most unpleasant I had because they all the crew were new, weren’t they? And his engineer, he’d gone, you know, LMF. You know what I’m saying?
IL: Yep.
RM: And his engineer was Australian and poor chap he’d gone. He’d done seven trips and he just, he just packed it in, like, and so me, being clever, I had more flying hours in than any other flight engineer, being clever and the CO, Squadron — no, er, Jacobs at that time, said, Wing Commander Jacobs and said (you didn’t have a choice), ‘You’re flying tonight with Flight Lieutenant Brice.’ And that was my first trip.
IL: So, between November and January what were you actually — was this sort of — you were training as a crew?
RM: Yes. Oh, yes. We did a lot of flying. Well, we only flew if weather was on. I mean, between November and December that year, um, we didn’t do a lot of flying. It wasn’t until after Christmas, into January, that we concentrated on flying. Flying — I don’t mean operational because well, we weren’t, just weren’t on the list to operate and then that was January the 28th. That was my first Berlin with a new crew. That was not very pleasant because I was new to the crew. Mind, he give me a good recommendation. He told my skipper that I was a very good flight engineer and that, that meant a lot to me, er, and so, and then a couple of days later, couple of nights later, all the crew went. That was their — it was my second but their first. It was the 30th of January and we all flew as a crew. That was our first and that was another Berlin, another biggie, the big city, and from then on, you know, every other night, whenever they decided to fly us operationally, you know.
IL: So, so how many, how many operations? Was it a tour of thirty or —
RM: Thirty-one. I did thirty one because I put in that — I should have been screened at thirty but the rest of the crew had to do an extra one so I flew, I, I said I would fly the last one. That was to Cannes I think it was. That was —
IL: Did you have any, um, did you have any, um, interesting experiences or narrow escapes when you were over Germany on, on operations?
RM: Did we ever?
IL: Did you have any, um, narrow escapes? Did you have any, anything you’d like to tell us?
RM: Oh, I’d have to look in there because when you — like the first op I did with Flight Lieutenant Brice. We were both strangers to one another but every movement in that cockpit he relied on me. I’m not bragging. Every movement that that pilot had to do to that plane he had to do it through me, operationally, whatever it was. I don’t mean flying. To do appertaining to the air force, aircraft but flying, when we were flying, and you’re cruising along and you have to be prepared, especially when you fly, you get over the coast and you’re flying to France, flying over France. And the first Berlin that we did, I could never understand it because when you went into briefing there was a map that big, and then the CO used to come in, and there was a curtain and he used to pull the curtain, and you knew by the tone of the crew — there’d be all the crews in the briefing room — and you could hear them, ‘Oh, God. Another, another big city.’ You know. And of course, I was still a sprog wasn’t I? Going in with the crew, this new crew, and so when the curtain was drawn back all you heard was the moans, you know, ‘Oh, God. The big city.’ And I was sat there. I remember sitting there with the crew that I was with and they’d had seven operations between them so I was just a sprog but and so — but I knew my job. That’s what I was going to say. I knew my job as a flight engineer. I knew that I knew my job. That’s what I’m trying to say. I did know so that when we were, when we first started up and things like that I knew how to start everything up, I knew what tanks to be on before take-off, I knew what flaps to put down, the undercarriage and everything like that before we took off and, and so all he did was fly. But don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that with any belittling sense because they were, they were magnificent machines and they needed good men to fly. That’s what I’m saying and they did and that’s how the crew, that’s how, that’s how you, that’s where the camaraderie came from, no doubt about that. And so when we, we taxied round the perimeter and then we were ready for take-off and you had to do pre-flight preparations before he opened the throttle and the take-off the same. He never said a word, didn’t the pilot, because I did everything for him in that respect accept he flew it. He was, he was the man. He flew it and he was a blooming good pilot as well.
Sarah: Were you excited on your first trip?
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: Were you excited on your first trip?
RM: Yes, I was [cough]. Well, there’s not much you can do, you know. We took off and at a thousand feet the pilot would say to the navigator, ‘Can you give me a course?’ That was just first course out and the first course — and what puzzled me was, what I was going to say was, what puzzled me was, looking at the map, I thought, ‘That’s funny. We’re going to Germany. We should be going to Germany.’ And Berlin is, Berlin was down there and I thought, ‘That’s funny. We’re going up here.’ And we flew over Norway and Den— and, and Sweden. That was how we went, up there, went up there like that and across there, and I thought, ‘What the hell are we flying up there? Why can’t we fly straight to Berlin and back again.’ But you’d blooming soon find out why they did it because you avoided all these little — I can show them to you on there, like, um, Bremen, one or two hot spots just, just inside there, all the big German ports there, and they were hot. They could shoot you down like a, you know, if — so the idea was to take us across to Norway and Sweden and you went, we went across like that and we turned, we took a turn to starboard. So, I suppose we’d be flying east, 2.40 or something like that, and then come down to Berlin, come down like that, and bomb Berlin and then another. All the routes are in there, you know, going to and from the target, and — but that first trip, the first excitement I got really that was excitement because you were looking out for fighters weren’t you and things like that. You were, and the fire over Berlin that fascinated you, there’s no doubt about it. You couldn’t, you weren’t supposed to look, you see. All the aircrew, once you got used to it you weren’t, you weren’t, you weren’t forced to, you couldn’t help, you saw this massive area that was alight and you couldn’t — in my blister (there was a blister in the Lanc) and I used to — I was looking down like that and my skipper give me a punch on the shoulder. He said, ‘You don’t really want to be looking down there.’ He said, ‘You ought to be looking up there for fighters.’ And just, just, the fire in the front of us, it could have been — I could never estimate up there how near we were and all of a sudden there was a massive explosion and a Lancaster or Halifax I think, I don’t know what it was, had been blown up in front of us. Now that brought me to realise that I was we were in the middle of the war, you know what I mean? There was nothing on the way and all of a sudden before the target this, this aircraft blew up and I knew, I realised then, you know, that that was war and we lost thirty-five aircraft that night. And so we lost four on the way so when you got back to briefing, um, that was the hardest part, when you got back to briefing. I’m not saying so much on that trip. And then there was a big board up and it said ‘late’ er, whoever it was, name Frank or any, any one of them down there, ‘late’, ‘arrival’, ‘depart’, ‘arrival’ and, and the time to put down and if you knew who your mate, we’d call him, was flying with you you looked for his pilot. His pilot’s name would be on the board, missing, and so you’d wait. If, if one of them, they called him Rodman [?] and he was — Harry Gilbert was his flight engineer and he should never have been flying because this is what happens and when he used, he used to come up to me because we were good friends. And I’d been through a course with him and I’m not saying I wasn’t frightened, it was ridiculous, but when I met him and he come in and his skipper was Flight Lieutenant Rodman and he used to come up to me and he used to say, ‘How are you Ray?’ And he’d light a fag and he was like this and I thought to myself — and he did, he got the chop, after he done about ten, but he was like this and, ‘How are you Ray?’ You know, ‘You alright?’ And I said, ‘For Christ’s sake Harry, give up.’ And I, I used to do, ‘For Christ’s sake.’ I said, ‘I did have a rough trip but I’m here and so are you.’ And it was the only way you could talk to Harry. He should never have flown, never have flown. Every time he come back and he used to make for me in the briefing room and, I mean it wasn’t as I was brave or anything, but I knew him and he was like this. He come from — he was a Lancashire lad, old Harry Gilbert but he was like this, lighting a fag.
IL: So what’s your definition of a rough trip?
RM: A rough trip?
IL: Yeah. A rough trip. What would have happened on a rough trip?
RM: Right. It was called “The Tale of Strong Winds”. I can go right through that with you because it was the worst trip I ever, it was [emphasis] the worst trip that was. I can talk to you right from there until we came back. Berlin, it was the last one, 24th of March 1944, and the take-off time would be in there. It might have been 4 o’clock in the afternoon. [sound of aircraft] Yeah, it would have been about 4 o’clock. It was March so, yeah, so we go to briefing [sound of aircraft] and, as I say, look at the map and hear the groans, big city again, and it’s a long way. It was an eight hour trip there and back and that’s a long time.
Sarah: Eight hours there?
RM: No, eight hours. Oh, no Sarah. There and back. And we took off, and Met, Met hadn’t said anything about anything. It was just an ordinary. We took off and on that route up there, we went over, going over the North Sea, and it was fine but we had a tail wind going over the North Sea and we did nothing. At that time of the year you did often get what they call a, a southern wind. It was like a south wind and the, the way we were taking off on that runway, we had nearly a tail wind. It was north and south runway as we called it and we took off. It was all fine. Settled down. What I noticed was we were going over Norway and Sweden again but that meant to say it was fairly — and we had a nice tail wind and our ground speed was about hundred and fifty which was pretty fast when you’re on climbing power and it was pretty fast was that and I thought, ‘That’s funny.’ And the skipper said to me, he said, ‘Jesus. We’ve got a tail wind.’ Well, the wireless operator had what they called an aerial and you let out an aerial and it gave us the wind. [background noise] It was like a wind sock and it told you the wind and he, he come back and he said, ‘That’s funny.’ He said, ‘The wind was about fifty or sixty.’ Which was a bit above average. When we got up to the top and turned to Norway, turned over to Norway — I mean, they were all, all these clever fellas in the crew, were talking about winds. You know, I wasn’t a bit interested to be honest. All I was only interested in was the aircraft we were flying [loud background noise] and so, you know, the winds increased, the wireless operator called, ‘The winds increased up to eighty.’ And, oh Jeez, you know, I heard them go round, the pilot, it was [emphasis] fast at eighty miles an hour and as we turned round and, and come down to Berlin I heard the navigator shout in that funny language, ‘Jesus Christ.’ The winds had blown on a what they called a reciprocal so that when we’d reached there and all of a sudden — you can see them on the maps — and the wind had blown literally where we were right up in the north there and turned down to Berlin and the wind had blown us, so instead of — and we had a tail wind. We had a tail wind to take-off and a tail wind going down to the target, Berlin. Our, our ground speed was something like three hundred and odd miles an hour. That was what our ground speed was and that, believe you me — and we had that tail wind up our backside — and what had happened was it blew us past Berlin, about fifty miles. We’d no control. And winds, as I heard some of them bragging about winds being a hundred and fifty miles an hour, and I, I think ours was, we recorded about a hundred and twenty-five, hundred and thirty and it blew us straight past Berlin. So, you can imagine, nearly all the bomber force being blown past Berlin and we had to turn round then, in the face of all these aircraft coming down, and we had to turn round then to go back and bomb Berlin. In other words, it, it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what happened and so when we turned round — and we lost seventy-five that night — and so when we turned round and, and air ground speed had dropped down to forty. That’s how heavy the wind was and it was horrendous really, because when you come to think, you turned round and you had a head wind and it was like standing still, and the pilot kept saying to me — now as an engineer I did know that much, that we were flying [ringing sound] we were flying at engine speeds of climbing speeds and, and flying into a wind, so I knew then — and our maximum power, we could only put maximum power on at about twenty-eight fifty revs plus eight and a quarter pounds of boost so we could only put that power on. I knew that and he kept saying to me, ‘We want more power.’ And it’s a wonder he didn’t strike me and I wouldn’t do it because at that power you could only do it for five minutes otherwise you’d have burnt, you’d have burnt — you know what I’m saying and it was elementary that. But — and air ground speed had been reduced to about forty miles an hour but that wasn’t the point doing that job. Can you imagine half the bomber force coming up and half of it coming down? I mean the aircraft, you could see them. You didn’t know what to do. It was horrendous, it really was, and you just stood there, and poor old Brice, the skipper, he just had to fly straight and level unless you saw something coming towards you. To turn round — well, we would have been blown down and so, and us flying back up and we bombed Berlin. Right, we bombed Berlin and glad to get away and we turned — the navigator gave us a course and it would be, well, I’ll make a figure. I think it was about 090, which was west, flying west, and was fine. We turned round and came back. Now, briefing, they said keep away from Roscos, Roscop —
Sarah: Rostock.
RM: Rostock, Rostock and Bremen, which were — we knew you had to miss them on the way out so you had to miss them on the way down. But with all the excitement that had gone on, and it wasn’t the navigator’s fault because all the wind up there, and we got a bit blown a bit off course. But we were cruising along nicely and all of a sudden bang! And they had then, they were clever you know, were Jerry, they knew we were bombing and they had their defences [clears throat] and it was, what they called a ‘blue searchlight’, and it was a master searchlight, and it hit us like that and what had happened was we had drifted to Rostock and Bremen and that nasty bit of an area down in that quarter there, and that searchlight, he cooked us and he hit us, and it was a blue, it was a blue, and within five minutes, maybe less than that, and there was about twenty searchlights coned us like that. Now, it, it was one of those experiences where you couldn’t see, you couldn’t see nothing, you just had to — he was there and all of a sudden he, he started to what we called ‘corkscrew’ and he shoved it, shoved the nose down, of course as he did it, he didn’t tell anybody he was doing it. He was the pilot and he stuck the nose down and, of course, gravity and as he stuck the nose down like that we went down about five thousand feet in a flash and he stuck the nose down. He screwed it round and stuck the nose down. I went straight up. I went straight up and the, and the bombardier, like, in front he was laid down. He was laid on his back and he was laid down and the language because he wondered what was up because he was in mid-air and that was the first time and navigator was cursing. He was on, he had one of those wheelie seats, he could move around in that little bit of space and, of course, he had his knees underneath the, his desk and his papers, er, as I say, as I went up and all of his nav papers and bits of his machinery was, was flying up in the air. The wireless operator was the only one of us who had any sense. Of course, poor rear gun— gunners, you know, were really thrown about because you can imagine what it was like to be thrown about like that and not knowing where you were and, and the audio was over the intercom, bad language and what was happening? And where are we? And that went on. I mean, for a pilot, and we, we both weighed the same. He weighed nine and a half stone and so did I so you imagine he was skinny, he wasn’t very big. Did you ever meet him Sarah?
Sarah: No. I didn’t.
RM: He wasn’t very big. He was about nine stone and he was five seven and a half in height so there was nothing and that was a big aircraft to throw about, something like twenty-two tonnes, even though it was tear [?] weight and, and anyway that was on the way down. On the way back that was when you felt G. Come back up from five thousand feet, pulling up, and he shouted out to me and I was all scattered brained and he shouted out to me, ‘Ray, Ray, Ray. Give us a hand.’ And so I went and got hold of the stick with him and we were like this and put me feet against that to pull. There was two of us pulling, pulled it out, but that wasn’t it. The searchlights were still on us. They would not let go and we were like that and then down the other side. I bet we were like that. He was flying up and down and trying to get loose from them, lose, lose them, and they were there. But they were there, that master searchlight, and it was an awful experience. It was a dreadful, dreadful experience and, anyway, just in the distance our, our rear gunner called out — they’d, what they done was, as we’d been flying and corkscrewing all over they copped onto another Lancaster and you could see it in the distance, this Lancaster. But they, they’d turned, they’d got hold of him. We just managed to get out of that because what happened after that was fighters. As soon as they, as soon as they — what used to happen was they would suddenly stop and so you were in complete darkness and that’s when the fighter boys used to come in. I think it says there we were attacked by fighters and anyway that wasn’t the end of the story. We were just levelled out and, and he grabbed hold of me, did the pilot, and he got hold of my intercom and he pulled out my intercom and he plugged my intercom into his intercom and he said, and he, he stood up and he said, you know, ‘Get into my seat.’ And, er, he sort of half dragged me, plugged it in. Well, as I passed him, as we were passing the seats, I saw him and he looked, even in the light that there was there, the sweat was literally pouring out of him. I never realised and never thinking like what he’d done and he’d been doing this for about twenty minutes, and that’s a lot in a Lancaster, going up and down and trying to — and, and so there I am, I’m sat in the cockpit. Well, bloody Lancaster, halfway across Germany and I’m sat there and the navigator said, ‘Alter course.’ And I just leaned forward and set the compass [cough] the old — and just set it and just set a bit of rudder, that was all, just to turn it on to whatever it was (I’ve forgotten) and flew it and not a sound, nobody spoke, nobody said anything and poor old Brice, he’d literally had it. And there I am, all quiet there, flying along there. Nothing to flying an aircraft, you know, it’s like driving a car up the M1. You just have to just sit there and hope that there’s no fighters and then it occurred to me I thought, ‘Christ what happens if, if we get attacked? What am I going to do? How am I going to corkscrew out of this?’ And Brice was just stood at the side of me and he kept patting me on the shoulder [slight laugh] and I thought, ‘There’s no good patting me on the shoulder if anything happens brother.’ Anyway, we was flying along. We must have been flying for about half an hour and nothing happened and that is — you, you couldn’t believe really, honestly, after all those experiences that I should be allowed to fly and I flew halfway across Germany. We weren’t far off the French coast and that’s how far I — I didn’t fly the thing. It just flew on its own. All I did was steering it. That’s the honest truth but nobody spoke and the only thing that upset me was nobody else in the crew knew what had happened, that I flew that aircraft. I thought he would have mentioned it, that when we sat down at briefing, ‘My flight engineer did this.’ And he never said, he never told none of those crew and from that day to this that I flew that aircraft back except when we were— well, they didn’t know and when we were coming up you know and the navigator, I think it was the navigator at that time, he tapped me on the shoulder and I got out. But I’d flown but that was the worst experience, one of the worst, and we hadn’t see anything really but —
IL: And that was your last —
RM: No, no.
IL: Sorry, I thought you said it was your last, sorry.
RM: No, no, no, no, no, that was Berlin. That was 24th of March and they called that the “Night of the Winds”. We lost seventy-five that night.
IL: My goodness.
Sarah: On, on a little lighter note do I, do I remember something about bomb doors not opening?
RM: No, I can’t — not bomb doors.
Sarah: No?
RM: No. Oh, we were attacked by night fighters, we got hit by flak, attacked by night fighters. That was the things that happened.
Sarah: Did you not have to come back once because you couldn’t drop some bombs? On a lighter note.
RM: Oh, right. This trip was Dortmund. Dortmund – Emms Canal they called it.
Sarah: There. We got it there.
RM: Dortmund, Dortmund Emms Canal. Right, and that was another, that was a hot spot, Dortmund but, um, experience, yes. We got into B-Baker and I started, I started the engines up, routine, er, before we left, before we left — what do you call it? Well, before we left where they were parked, like, we got in. The idea was to start the engines up, rev them up a bit, and I started the, the starboard engine up, one of them, and I just checked them, what they called a mag drop because, er, luckily it had two mag and what you had to do was run them up to a fifteen hundred and switch one of these mag drops. If you got a mag drop over three or four hundred revs there’s something wrong, you got a — anyway, I was testing them and called, I said to the skipper, I said, ‘It’s not right.’ I said, ‘This starboard inner. There’s too big a mag drop.’ And he said, ‘Oh.’ I said, ‘I’ll open it up again.’ Anyway, I reckoned to open it up to clear anything and give it a good boost, like, and, and no, it didn’t work. So, we stopped the engines, called up control, starboard inner US. Fine, we thought. Every— everybody in the crew thought we’re going to have a night off. Come over from control, um, ‘Bryson, Flight Lieutenant, Flying Officer Bryson there’ll be transport. They’re going to take, they’ll take you to C-Charlie.’ Oh, so we’ll have to go after all. Transport comes along. And imagine having to getting in and out of a Lancaster, across the old spar there and it was hard work. You’d have to take off all your, your, um, parachute like and your harness and things like that. So the transport comes, broom, broom, across to C-Charlie and it was cold and it didn’t feel like your aircraft and straight away there’s a bit of, ‘Who did this aircraft belong to?’ ‘Oh. It belongs to —.’ ‘Oh Christ, its cold.’ And you heard them moaning like and as to what each department they got into, they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s a dirty place.’ You know, the gunners were saying. And anyway we get in, starts the engines up, everything’s fine and navigator — and this is navigation equipment I’m going to tell you and it was called GEE and H2S. Anyway, he’s fiddling about and there’s Bryson and I up front giving it some boost to clear the oil and do all this sort of thing before take-off. We hadn’t left dispersal and navigator calls up, ‘Jesus Christ,’ he says. He said, ‘The GEE’s not working and H2S.’ So we sat there waiting. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Oh.’ We knew then we were going to have a night off. That was the second aircraft. Not on your Nelly. So, they send somebody over and well, to repair anything like that — they were fantastic machines, you know, you’re able to navigate a lot easier, let’s put it that way, with these machines, like, they were operating. Called up control. We thought for sure we were going to have a night off, um, ‘Flying Officer Bryson within C-Charlie. We’re sending out transport that’s going take you to Z-Zebra.’ So, you can imagine us, like, us and that belonged to Flight Lieutenant Franklin. So, transport comes along. What date was that Sarah? Dortmund?
Sarah: Dortmund? 22nd of Feb ’44.
RM: Feb? February?
Sarah: Oh, It says at the side, ‘abort, ice’.
RM: Right, so, we then had to be carted, miserable, returned to miserable then, the crew, ‘Jesus. What the — what are we doing? We should be in York by now.’ Gets into Z-Zebra, same procedure, and we knew the skipper of this aircraft. He wasn’t flying that night. Get into it. This is the third time and tempers were really flaring because, because they were all taking off. Didn’t wait for us, and so they were all taking off, and so I was following to see if we could get in and Bryson, my skipper, and me we never had a wrong word. I did everything he said. All he had to do was fly. And I mean, that’s the way we were. You had to work like that. And anyway, everything was fine and we starts off, and by that time we had to get a move on. It was half an hour since the rest of them had gone and that was bad. That was bad. That was really bad because you wanted to be with the main group, you see. You get over Germany and there’s one of you, you’ve had it. You’ve had it. There’s no doubt about that. [sound of aircraft] Anyway, we took off and we had to get a move on. There was a front, what they called a ‘front’, moving over the North Sea and I was giving him all the power that we could and we weren’t climbing, we were climbing about a hundred and sixty, I suppose, hundred and seventy or something, and the old Hercules engines there, they powered us up there. We were climbing and this front. We got a, what was it? A QDM or QFE saying this front was in and we had to climb above it because it was, excuse me, we was up at ten thousand feet and we had to climb above it. It was forty miles into the North Sea and he knew, did the skipper that I wasn’t going to push it anymore, because there’s always something at the other end of it, in my opinion. That’s how I worked it out. If we’d had pushed it we would have gone up to maximum power and it wouldn’t have done the engines any good. And we were trying to climb and all of a sudden I looked out and there was ice on the main plane like this and you could hear it, the props, straining again the plane, you know, and I looked out and I thought, ‘Oh dear.’ I really thought that we’d had it because we were struggling to move and I, I think our air speed, our air speed [emphasis] had been reduced to hundred and thirty, hundred and forty, and stalling was about ninety, ninety-five, something like that, and — but we plodded on and he called up did Bryson and he said, ‘Well, what are we going to do fellas? Are we going to turn back or are we going to press on, press on regardless?’ And all of a sudden as he said that the old Lanc give, gave a lurch because the ice on the, on the main plane, I’m not kidding, it was about six inches. It was that thick and we could never — we were struggling and all of a sudden it gave a lurch and he had the common sense did Bryson (well, he was a good pilot) and he, he all of a sudden, he stuffed the nose down and give it some starboard twists and we were going straight down. And all, then all of a sudden, as we got down a bit normal, like we were going down, and our air speed is about three hundred and fifty I think going down, but we were at ten thousand feet, eleven thousand feet, and, as I say, stuck the nose down and we just had to hope and all of a sudden as we hit warmer air, warm, warmer air, it flew off and it was a marvellous sight to see, because it flew off the plane did the ice and rubbish, you know, and also you couldn’t see because all the windows had, had, er, snowed-up. We couldn’t see out, couldn’t see where we going, and — but fortunately I had a little bit of knowledge and I remembered that in all those — never had to experience it — and there was a little what they called an alca— what did it contain? That fluid that we used to, they put in engines to stop them — coolant.
IL: Anti-freeze?
RM: Pardon?
IL: Anti-freeze.
RM: Anti-freeze.
IL: Ethylene glycol.
RM: And I was fiddling down as we were going down and I was fiddling down, around. It was down near his bloody rudder, and I remember I said, ‘Get your leg out of the way.’ Because it wasn’t a pump like that and what had happened was if you released the spring it pumped as it came up, not as you went down, and all of a sudden it cleared. The windows went just like that and it cleared but it didn’t make any difference. We were going down and then it started and then of course the weight. We had — it will tell you in there how much, how many bombs we, what we had and we’d have about fourteen thousand pounds of bombs on going straight down. I think we had a cookie that night. It will tell you there somewhere Sarah. Dortmund. Look down the left hand side.
Sarah: Yeah. I’ve got Dortmund there.
RM: And look across. No.
Sarah: I’m not sure. You know where to look. I don’t, dad.
RM: Well, here look. Where’s Dortmund?
Sarah: There.
RM: Right.
Sarah: There.
RM: Right, here look. What number is it? Seventeen.
Sarah: Yeah. Oh, there. Sorry, I’m with you.
RM: Eleven one hundred pounders and five five hundreds. And that’s a lot of bombs.
IL: A big load, yeah.
RM: That’s a lot of bombs. We could carry fifteen one thousand pounders, eight thousand pounders, twelve, twenty-two. Anyway, he says, as we were going down, he called out to the — he said to the bomb aimer, he said, ‘I’m opening the bomb doors.’ Talking to the bomb aimer, he said, ‘Trench. Drop the, drop the bombs.’ Now, protocol. You weren’t allowed to drop your bombs less than forty miles out to sea in the North Sea. Now that was law [emphasis]. That was what they told you to do and you had to be forty miles. Well, can you imagine? We’re out in the North Sea and I remember he called up and he said to the navigator, ‘Where are we nav?’ Or something like that and the navigator says, ‘How the bloody hell do I know if we’re forty miles out to sea.’ Because we’d gone through all this procedure and he called out to the bomb aimer, ‘Trench, I’m opening the bomb doors.’ And when he — well, that’s what I must have said to you Sarah about the bomb doors and he, he selected the bomb doors to be opened and they, with all the frost and they jammed and we were still going down you see and, and he kept pumping up and he said to me, ‘What do I do Ray?’ I said, ‘I haven’t a clue. I have nothing to do with the bomb doors.’ And he’s here, this side like, and all of a sudden they opened and we were going down and that was a nasty [emphasis] experience because you didn’t know what was going to happen. You were hoping then, and a wing and a prayer, and all of a sudden the bomb doors opened. You felt them jar because of the drag and all of a sudden we slowed down a bit, down to — I don’t know and old Trench called out, ‘Bombs gone.’ And we dropped all those [slight laugh] dropped all those bombs into the North Sea and that was a great relief. And so, back to base. When we got back to base, instead of taking us back to briefing, there was no debriefing, and instead the CO told us that he had to see the CO did the skipper so we drove round in this, er, in the wagon. We were inside the wagon and he stopped outside flight control, where the skipper was, where the CO was, and you wouldn’t believe it but our skipper got a rocket because we, we’d, um —
Sarah: You returned safely but you’d not done —
IL: Jettisoned.
Sarah: You’d not done your job.
RM: What did we call it? You wrote it out.
IL: Aborted.
Sarah: Aborted.
RM: Aborted, yes, and we’d aborted, and he got a right rocket did our skipper. He should have done this. He should have done that. And we couldn’t fly. You were literally came to a standstill. I mean, I was up there with him and it was impossible. You know, I really thought we’d had it. When I looked out and saw I really did. I thought — and you know he give it up as a bad job because you, he couldn’t do anything. There was no control. We were just flying forward, like, as slow as we could possibly could and fancy, and so out of spite, and if you look in there, out of spite the following night they sent us to Stuttgart and that, that was another eight hours and we always said he’d taken it out on us, the skipper, because we’d gone, we’d aborted, and that was an awful experience. There’d be, there’d be another one. There were lots of things that happened. I dare say, apart from three or four, you know, do you want me to go on talking? Because I could tell you of an experience, it wouldn’t take long, but of an experience more spiritual.
IL: Please.
RM: It’s interesting but it’s something, this, I’d done twenty-eight trips and that was coming to the end of it, this tour, and I’d done twenty-eight, and we were all a happy crew except this particular morning. I was always the first up in Beningbrough Hall. I was always the first up. There was only one wash basin, out of all those men there, wasn’t there Sarah? There was, well, there may have been more like but there was one on our floor and I was always first up. I was one of those who was embarrassed because I only shaved about twice a week [laugh] I did and so I was always first there and washed and this particular morning, and this is true, this particular morning I woke up and I laid there and it was always half past seven and I laid there and laid there and old Bowles, the rear gunner, he always followed me and he came over and he’d been to the ablutions, ablutions and he come and stood by the bed and he said, ‘Come on Ray.’ He said, ‘What’s up?’ And I looked up at him and said, ‘Oh, I’m alright.’ He said, ‘Well, what’s up?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ And he said, ‘Oh.’ In between times, the while crew was billeted in this one room (they’d lock us in) Beningbrough Hall. And he said, ‘What’s up?’ Anyway, by the time I’d I just closed my eyes and all I wanted to do was — I can’t tell you what it was like. It was awful. I felt awful and I thought, ‘This is it. We’re going to get the chop.’ That’s all that went through my mind. It was — I was so desperate. I thought, ‘We’re, we’re going, we’re going to get the chop.’ And it was 8 o’clock when I got up and I thought — and these buses used to come, you see, and take us to Linton for breakfast to the sergeants’ mess and they came at regular intervals and I remember and I thought, ‘Oh, I feel awful.’ I felt dreadful and I knew that night if we were flying at some time we were going to get the chop. I had that feeling and it was an awful feeling. Anyway they’d all gone and I caught a bus, caught the bus and ended up — and, er, but I couldn’t, I still couldn’t do anything. I didn’t even go to breakfast and I went down to the hangar where the engineers were and I couldn’t, I didn’t seem to want to do anything. All I wanted to do — and I thought, ‘Shall I tell the crew?’ This is true, Ian, it’s true what I’m telling you. I didn’t know whether to tell the crew that not to fly that night. I hadn’t — I wanted to tell them that this was going to be our last trip. That was the feeling I had in me and, oh it must have been getting on, and I thought, ‘I’ll have to get something to eat.’ And I went down to the mess and I had my breakfast and then, from then, I had a walk. I walked, I started to walk to flights and on the way down we passed their chapel (we had a chapel at Linton) and we were going — I’ve got to stop [pause] I had a job. I’ll stop.
Sarah: You want to stop?
RM: Well, it’s a story, so I’ll have to carry on and tell you what happened. I’ll have to carry on.
IL: It’s up to you. I don’t want to make you —
RM: No, no, no. It’s alright. I’ll get over it.
IL: I don’t want to upset you.
RM: No, I’ll get over it. I promise you. I went into church and I said the Lord’s Prayer. It came out and I thought I’d feel better. That’s what I’d done it for, hadn’t I? And I thought I’d feel better and I went back to the, the crewing room, and it was all better then. It did seem better but at the back of my mind there was still this thing and, anyway, the skipper came round and he said, ‘We’re flying tonight.’ And he said, ‘I’ll pick you up Ray.’ As he did every time. He said, ‘I’ll pick you up Ray.’ And he came round with the jeep and, of course, that was what we did every morn— every morning before a flight and we went out to the aircraft and it seemed alright. You know, you run it, I did the checks, you went round and checked everything, and run the engines up, and it was in the back of my mind and it seemed to — it was there and I still I couldn’t tell you why but it was there and, um, anyway — but I still wanted to tell the crew that it was going to be our last one. I had it. Anyway, er, and we got out to flights and we get into the aircraft, and pilot always went first and I followed him, and I was going up the ladder and our old Bowles, he bumped me up the backside going up the ladder. He said, ‘Come on Ray.’ And as I got to the steps my knees gave way and they were trembling, they was literally shaking, and I thought, ‘I’m mad. Why don’t I tell them I’m not going?’ And I thought that, that was there on the twenty-ninth, Sarah. Look on twenty-nine. You’ll see. It was a duff target. I don’t think we lost any of them.
Sarah: Was it Criel?
RM: That’s it. Criel. And, er, he bumped me up the backside. He said, ‘Come on Ray. What’s up?’ And with that I thought, ‘That’s it. Got to go. Got to go now. I’m inside and it’s everything.’ And as, as we were walking up, even the last minute, I was touching things, the old dinghy, the dinghy handle, and I looking round and I knew I’d done it before in the morning and, anyway, we gets off like but all the time I couldn’t — it was there whatever I did, you know. I set the petrol pumps and turned on the right tanks to be on and I had to do something to be — and I remember getting my log, my log, my log card and sort of wanting to do something. Anyway, we took off and everything but I was waiting all the time. I was waiting, waiting for something to happen and anyway we flew out. It was Criel and it was, it was nothing. So we flew out there and I don’t, I don’t think — we didn’t see a fighter, there was hardly any ak-ak fire, I don’t think there was hardly — there was nothing. We turned round and come back and do you know all the time we were coming back I had it in my mind, landing, when we were landing I was waiting [pause] waiting. We landed. Nothing happened and it were really interesting, looking back, it was the best trip I’ve ever been on. I wouldn’t have got back and I thought that I’d been, and what I’m trying to say is had I not been to church, do you understand that?
IL: I do.
RM: Had I not been to church or what would have happened? Was the good Lord on, on our side? But, believe it or not, I would sooner have gone on a trip and been shot at than gone through that experience again. You can’t understand. I couldn’t describe to anybody really and that was on my 29th trip and that was — and I never mentioned it to anybody but I do remember coming out of briefing, um, old, our Bowles, the rear gunner, he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, ‘We done it Ray.’ I don’t think — I think it was about the thirtieth wasn’t it Sarah, Criel?
Sarah: It was your twenty-ninth.
RM: That, that’s what I say, it was the twenty-ninth.
Sarah: How did you feel for your thirtieth then?
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: How did you feel going for your thirtieth?
RM: Nothing.
Sarah: No?
RM: It had gone Sarah. No, no. I was happy as Larry. No, that didn’t even occur to me. All, all of it suddenly when old Bowles came out of the briefing and old Bowles he put his arm on my shoulder and said, ‘You know Ray we done it.’ But what he meant was we were so near to completing and, I mean, one trip there and it says losses and we didn’t lose an aircraft. I mean, it was probably an easy target but that, but that particular time it was awful. It was awful. I had this feeling. But the other thing, of course, you had to have faith. You had to have faith in the rest of your crew and they were a wonderful crew, they really were, and you had to have faith in what they did and, and it was being selfish, thinking of myself, thinking it was me I was worried about and not thinking about them, except I wanted to tell them, and didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go. And that was awful. I would have been LMF. No I wouldn’t. They wouldn’t chance me going. They would screen me. But it was awful you know, I can’t — so I say, I’d rather go to Berlin any time than go through that experience again. It was dreadful and, I mean, you can think what you like about it.
Sarah: How old were you then?
RM: Twenty, nineteen, nineteen.
Sarah: Nineteen. Wow.
RM: Yeah, I was nineteen Sarah, yeah.
Sarah: I think you had every right to have a wobble in your knees. [slight laugh]
IL: Absolutely. So, you finished your, you finished your thirty, thirty-one in your case, and then you — did you keep in touch with your crew after that?
RM: No. That was another thing, um, because something happened when I was at Lindholme. Here, I’ll tell you who I flew — I flew with Pat Moore, you know, the astronomer.
IL: Oh, right.
RM: Yeah. I was billeted with him.
IL: And where was that?
RM: At Lindholme.
IL: Right.
RM: I’ll have to tell you this. This is, this is the brighter side. I was posted to Lindholme. This was from Transport Command.
IL: Right.
RM: And, er, this is a little bit in between. Patrick Moore, tell ‘em, Patrick Moore posted to, er, Lindholme and we formed — what it was I was at it again. We formed a squadron, 716 Squadron, and we were to fly to Manila to bomb Japan. I never heard such rubbish, rubbish. That was what it was but of course Ray Moore put his name down in the orderly room, oh, I’ll volunteer. Yes, I’ll volunteer. Where’s Milan? Where’s —
Sarah: Manila.
RM: Manila. I didn’t even know where it was. My geography wasn’t that bad but I didn’t know where Manila was. It’s true. So we get posted there and the—
Sarah: A bit south of Worthing?
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: A bit south of Worthing.
RM: yeah. So the jeep drops me off and there was houses at Lindholme and all the pilot officers and flying officers were upstairs and all the flight lieutenants were downstairs. That was snobbery wasn’t it? Honestly, truthfully. That’s how it was. Anyway, I get my kit bag and walking up the stairs, and they were big houses, and the front room, there was two of us in the front room upstairs and two in the back room. Anyway, ‘The one on the left is yours.’ Right, and the door was part open, and I walked in, and there was this chap sat on his bed, and I walked in and I turned round and I said, ‘Oh, hello.’ I was feeling good I suppose and I said, ‘Oh, hello.’ And he, he stood up and he said, um, ‘Flying Officer Patrick Moore.’ And I looked at him and said, ‘Flying Officer Raymond Moore.’ And do you know and he had a quizzical look, you know, his eyebrows.
IL: He was famous for those.
RM: Pardon?
IL: He was famous for those.
RM: Yes, that’s it? Well, he gave me this look and he said, and he thought I was pulling, pulling his leg. I know that when I looked at him and I said, ‘Oh, hello.’ Especially when I said, ‘Flying Officer Raymond Moore.’ And I went and slung my kit bag on my bed. And he stood up and he said, ‘Are you from, areyou Irish?’ I said, ‘No I’m not.’ I thought, ‘I’ve got a queer one here.’ You know. I said, ‘No. My parents came from Norwich, Norfolk.’ ‘Oh. Oh, righto.’ And we came very good friends and we visited him down at the Farthings down at —
Sarah: Billericay.
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: Was it Billericay?
RM: No, no. Down on the south coast, um, down on the south coast, Sarah. That lovely big house. Oh yeah, we visited him and he was, he was quite an eccentric, you know, but —
IL: He did have a bit of a reputation.
RM: He did and, um, he did, but we got on fine, famous, we did really. We went and visited him and he was always angry at me because when he started to talk about astronomy — and all I knew was there was a lot of stars up there, and there was the sun and the moon, and I wasn’t a bit interested. He taught me how to use the, um, what did they call it? Sextant. He taught me how to use that on the road that was, at Lindholme. Hehe showed me how to — and afterwards he was absolutely disgusted because after he’d shown me how to use it and I wasn’t a bit interested and he said to me after he, he’d worked out his shot he called it, after he worked out the shot, I was about a hundred miles off target, and he didn’t like it one bit. And that’s a letter, look, he wrote to me after we’d got, after I’d — I wasn’t really a bit interested in. We had family and family life, that’s all, that’s all I wanted was family life so anything in between. And we finished, we retired at sixty, June 28th it was, and he says, ‘Great to hear from you.’ Now, this is all those years after, this was 1987, but, um, we used to play, Bet and myself and another girl called Joan Walters (she was our bridesmaid) and we used to play a foursome at badminton, and he was a keen sportsman, and we got on well together, and I could have kicked his backside because we were stood outside Flying Control after the war was over and he said to me, well we were talking, and he said — but I still had a year’s service to do and after I finished flying — I packed in flying. I did that for moral reasons. That was another thing. I said, ‘I don’t know I’m going to do.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you what you should do Raymond.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you go in Flying Control?’ He said, ‘It would suit you down to the ground.’ I said, ‘Flying Control?’ I said, ‘No. I don’t want to be [clears throat] associated with aircraft Pat.’ He said, ‘Well what about as— what about —.’ What do they call weather, you know?
IL: Metrologist.
RM: Metrology. He said, ‘Why don’t you take up metrology?’ I said, ‘I never thought much about it.’ I said, ‘No.’ And I took admin and I became an adjutant, for Christ’s sake, after all that. Worst thing I ever did. They were what I call — I’ll repeat it on there — I called them, ‘Hooray Henrys.’ Because that’s what they were, ground crew, what I considered they were. It was an armaments depot and I’ve never had such twelve miserable months in all my life in the service, with all the fact that I’d been aircrew, I was a — they treated me like dirt. They never even thought — and I’m not — it’s the honest truth. I know where they put me, right at the bottom of the list, and I could have fought them. I know I could in the mess, in the officers’ mess. I could have had many a row with them when they talked about air crew and how they — they snubbed me. I was the only member of the air crew there, you see, and I was the assistant adjutant and I couldn’t have cared less. I lost a lot of interest but, er, but I always said that old Pat Moore, although he was trying to do — and I should have done what he did. I should have gone in Flying Control or, er, he says, ‘It’s great to hear from you.’ You can read it.
IL: I’d love to.
RM: Yes. He did. Yes.
IL: Just, just because I’m conscious of that we actually and I don’t want to tire you out but I would like to hear what, what you were telling me earlier about when you went to Dalton and you had sort of an interesting time leaving Dalton. [slight laugh]
RM: Oh that. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, first and foremost, what I must tell you is, when I was sent there as an instructor, I mean, I remember there with old Scot. He finished a tour. Squadron Leader was his skipper, Hailes [?] I think it was, and but we were, we were like buddy buddies you know all the time we were flying and, you know, what are they called? Those two comedians. They’ve both died. The other one —
Sarah: Morecambe and Wise.
RM: No, the other, one was fat and the other a little chubby fella. They died.
Sarah: Oh Oliver Hardy and —
RM: No, no.
Sarah: No?
RM: No. It’s goodnight to him and it’s goodnight to him.
IL: Oh, the two Ronnies.
RM: Two Ronnies.
IL: Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbet.
RM: Well, Ronnie, the shortest one and he looked, he was his twin brother and he was, he was, um, well, Scottie to me. I called him Scottie, but he was very short and when he wore his cap, when he wore his cap he was only about five foot six and he was, he didn’t look right, you know, somehow. He was thin and didn’t look right and [clears throat] we both got posted to Dalton as instructors. Well, you know, it was a joke, I mean for me to be an instructor and when I went into this hut it was about twenty-eight foot long it was. I remember it distinctly and there were two engines in there and they’d been cut in half and all the component parts had been painted different colours. And anyway when I looked in through the door old scot, old scot, he took the air frames and I took the engines. So he was in another part of the building. But we were sent there to be in charge. They’d been opened up as a depot, you know, for training purposes to teach pilots. The airframe and engine of a Lancaster, that was what it was and we’d both been sent there to be in charge to open it up as a training centre, you know, and I’ll never forget I walked inside the door there and I saw this Lanc there, and this Lanc, you can imagine the size of it. It’s a massive thing like this, and all of its components, like red — I can’t tell you, the different colours they painted it, and all you had to do really, apart from the instructing part, which was a major part, you know, what happened to this and what happened to that but I was good. I knew every part of the engine, er, originally but when it came to standing up there and there was a blackboard at the back there and I thought, ‘This is not for me. This is not for me.’ And I hadn’t a clue and what it meant was that I was saying this, that and the other, blackboard, a bit of this, a bit of that. There were six of them, six pilots. Anyway, I got to know them and I told them exactly I was useless as an instructor. I was useless because — and I couldn’t really have cared less. I’d finished flying. I’d done my bit. Anyway Scottie got on fine. He was a crawler, like. He wanted to be in charge and I couldn’t have cared less. He could have run it for me. They could have promoted him. They did do but — and so that’s how it was and so what happened was there was a bit of friction between us. He wanted to, he wanted to be in charge and if he’d have said to me, you know, if he’d have shook his fists and said to me, ‘I’m going to be in charge.’ I would have said to him, ‘Help yourself.’ Anyway, it started off with me instructing, um, and I wasn’t very good. I wasn’t very good at conveying anything. I knew everything that was there, every part of the engine and what it did but when it came to what I — the theory and what happened — so, of a morning, this was my idea, found out that this little café in Topcliffe, you see, which is — you know where Topcliffe is?
IL: I do.
RM: Right, and up one of the sideways there, where it says no entry coming down, and on the right hand side there in them days there was a little old bicycle shop. And they were a lovely couple. They were elderly and we got to know of it and we all had bikes. Everybody had a bike there and every morning I got to find out and just across, as you went through the gates, just across there, there was a NAAFI wagon, er, for a wad and a cup of tea as they called it, a wad and a cup of tea, and it was just across there and all you had to do was walk across there and it used to be there half past nine every morning but I thought, ‘A cup of tea and a wad.’ It was alright but it didn’t seem — it wasn’t up my street. I was a bit more adventurous. We found out this little café in Topcliffe, you see, so the idea was — there was just four of us (there was a couple of them who didn’t go) — and the idea was to get through the gate and I knew them couple on the gate, those red caps, you know, and they in them days — I wasn’t an official man. I was one of them and so I got to know these. There were two of them and [clears throat] go through the gate, pedal to Topcliffe. True, they used to have it very nearly ready for us, a lovely cup or mug of sweet tea and gobble your old spam sandwich. They were beautiful those spam because that spam used to come from America and it was the best spam I’ve ever tasted. So, anyway, then bike back again and Scottie didn’t like this. It wasn’t to his liking because I should have been instructing, you see, and when it struck 10 o’clock I should have been back there. Well, we only, we had half an hour to get there and half an hour back again. It didn’t seem far to me but we used to be late going or late coming back. It never used to bother me. This particular morning, gets the old bike ready, going out, and all of a sudden Scottie appears and he stood in front of this bike. He, he’s just stood in front of me with, with my bike in and grabbed me and, ‘Morning Scott. Morning Scottie, how are you?’ He said, ‘Mr Moore, Mr Moore.’ He said, ‘I’m forbidding you to go.’ He was only a pilot officer same as me but he was trying to throw rank, and he said, ‘Mr Moore.’ He said, ‘I forbid you to go.’ I looked and said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I forbid you to go.’ He knew that we were going you see. He said, ‘It isn’t right.’ He said, ‘You’re not. It’s not right.’ He said, ‘You shouldn’t be going out.’ All this stuff and I said, ‘Get out of the way Scottie.’ He said, ‘I forbid you to go.’ So, and all I did was, I had the handle bars, and I was like this with the handle bars, I said, ‘Get out of the way.’ And he was stood there and what happened was he, he sort of, the bike wheel as it was, and he sort of stumbled on his back-side. I wasn’t even bothered. I just said, ‘Come on fellers. We’ll go back to Topcliffe.’ And I get back. I still, well, that’s how it was. Went back in to the instructing part of it and all of a sudden over the Tannoy, ‘Will Flying officer, would pilot officer Moore report to the orderly office at 12 o’clock.’ I thought, ‘What the hell do they want me for?’ And anyway I didn’t bother. I went on like. At 12 o’clock I wandered over to the orderly room just up the road inside the camp and I went in and there were two, two MPs there, red caps ‘Hello.’ I thought what’s up. Anyway, they stood to one side and, er, I never thought any more about it. I went inside and in fact the squadron leader, I knew him, not as a friend but I knew him as, you know, sort of, not so much this but, um, squadron leader and in the mess and anyway when I went inside like he had a stern looking face on and he had all my folders in front of him with all, all my bumph. ‘Now then.’ He said, ‘You’re in real trouble.’ I said, ‘Why? What have I done?’ He said, ‘You struck a fellow officer.’ I said, ‘I didn’t strike anybody.’ He said, ‘Oh, yes you did.’ He said, ‘You were seen by two members of the military police.’ I said, ‘I didn’t strike him.’ I said, ‘I pushed him.’ I said, ‘I pushed him.’ I said, ‘That’s all I did and said ‘Get out of the way.’’ He said, ‘What? What was it all about?’ [cough] ‘What was it all about?’ I said. ‘You must know, Sir, that bicycles were disappearing of a morning and biking up to Topcliffe.’ I said — he said, ‘Well, you must have known you were in the wrong. You were breaking out of camp.’ I thought, ‘Oh dear.’ And I thought what? The first thing that went through my mind was, what would my dad say if I’m, um, if I’m —
Sarah: Discharged.
RM: Discharged. Well, what it meant was I wouldn’t be discharged. They would have stripped me —
Sarah: Well, yeah.
RM: And put me on — anyway he said, ‘What did you think you were doing?’ He said, ‘Look at your record.’ I said, ‘Honestly.’ I said. He said, ‘I believe you.’ You see on record he said you did strike a fellow officer I said, ‘Sire, there’s no, there’s nothing?’ He said, ‘I’m sorry.’ So, I said, ‘What’s the score?’ He said like, ‘I wanted him to go down to see the MO.’ And I thought, you know, ‘What have I done? What have I done?’ All I did was a friendly get out of the way, you know. If I’d — I couldn’t have hit him. He was about two inches shorter. He was only a little chap and a breath of wind like me, he was — and anyway, he said, ‘I want you to go down to the MO.’ And a very friendly chap, a Flight Lewie [?] and I went down to see him and he said, ‘I’ve just had a phone call from the squadron leader CO.’ And he said, he said, ‘What it is, you’re being posted to Brackla.’ I said, ‘Brackla.’ He said, ‘It’s a joke.’ He said, ‘It’s, they call it the ‘demented air crew’ of Brackla.’ And he said, ‘That is where you’re going.’ He said, ‘I’m going to put you on venal barbital.’ And he said, ‘You have to take these. Here’s a packet.’ And I don’t know if it was in a bottle or what it was and he said, ‘I want you to take one of these in the morning.’ And I thought — I couldn’t believe it. I might have been a bit screwy if you know what I mean, finishing ops. I’m not saying I wasn’t — I’m not saying I was perfect or anything like that. I, I was a bit erratic. I do remember that. I remember getting drunk at the Jim Crack in York, you know, and that was after we’d I finished flying, and where I went — years ago Sarah.
Sarah: Betty’s?
RM: It was something Arms.
Sarah: Oh, I don’t know.
RM: And I remember getting drunk there like but —
Sarah: I know you used to go to Betty’s when —
RM: Oh, Betty’s Bar in York. Oh, well. Betty’s dive. Oh, yeah. A few times back —
Sarah: My, how things have changed.
IL: Yeah.
RM: Where what?
IL: I said ‘My. How things have changed.’ It’s not Betty’s dive any more is it?
RM: Oh, no.
Sarah: No. You pay twenty pounds for afternoon tea.
IL: It’s very up market, Betty’s.
RM: When you went downstairs there you couldn’t see above the smoke. But, um, yes.
Sarah: That’s where you scratched your name.
RM: [cough] The — oh, down inside there. If ever you go inside you want to go downstairs and as you just look round the corner there’s mirrors there and all of — my name’s on there.
IL: Oh, I’ll look.
RM: Scratched, scratched with a diamond ring and there there’s book there with all the names that’s on the glass, on the mirrors.
IL: Oh right.
RM: Yeah. And if you want to and actually if you wanted to see it and you, you’re met at the top of the stairs where they queue for their tea and cakes. If you met up the top of the stairs and you met any one of those girls they would take you down there and they — and you say, ‘Excuse me. I don’t want anything to eat. I just want to look at the glass and the mirrors.’ There’s hundreds of them down there and then there’s a little book. There used to be a little book. Yeah, my name’s on there. The whole crew’s on there, yeah.
IL: Fantastic. So —
RM: Anyway, going back to Brackla, demented air crew, and he said — and it, and was a joke but I thought, ‘Oh to hell with it. I’ve finished flying. They can do what they like with me.’ And it didn’t bother me. It honestly didn’t bother me. I didn’t say — I wasn’t belligerent or anything and I accepted it and he said — our billet’s were further down — he said, ‘Be outside your billet.’ And, yeah, in the morning he said — now I could have gone — there was a station at Dalton and he said — this jeep. That was the beauty of it, wasn’t it? ‘This jeep and it will take you to York, like, and from York you change for Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Inverness, Inverness.’ And look at that, look what I did then. I stayed at that big hotel at Inverness. It’s a beautiful hotel, you know, attached to the station and that’s where I spent the night there. It was marvellous and after the war [cough] there was a cheap trip going up to inverness by train and I took my wife there. And I said to Bet, I said, I said, er, ‘We’ll go to Inverness.’ It was a two day or three day trip to Inverness and it was a cheap one or whatever. [background noise] And — oh, it’s her phone and I think she’ll get fed up with it — and I said, ‘We’ll go back up there Bet and it’ll be an experience. We’ll go up all the way up by train and we’ll stay at this hotel.’ Anyway, fair enough, we get up there, carrying our suitcase, I went up to the desk all — I was feeling on top of the world to treat my wife, to go back to recovery, to this spot. [cough] I went up to the desk and I said, ‘I’d like to book a double room for two, three nights.’ Whatever, and she said, ‘Oh right.’ And I said, ‘How much is it?’ She said, ‘It’s a hundred pound a night.’ This was in 1960, 1975. [clears throat] I’d retired but it was one of those retirement things, wasn’t it? You know, to treat my wife and I said, ‘How much?’ She said, ‘A hundred pound a night.’ I said, ‘I was here in 1944.’ I thought I was going to flannel her, you know, try to get a bit out of it, like, try to get it a bit cheaper, and I said, ‘Excuse me.’ I said, ‘Is there? Haven’t you got any?’ I said, ‘I’ve seen brochures. My wife—.’ She said, ‘It’s a hundred pounds a night.’ I can’t mimic, and she said, she says, ‘It’s a hundred pounds a night.’ I said, ‘So, a hundred pound a night.’ So, I said, ‘From Monday to Wednesday.’ She said, ‘It’s a hundred pound a night.’ I said, ‘Forget it.’ I didn’t know what I was saying because we’d, we’d gone up there by train. It was a cheap train ride up there. So we went outside the hotel and, of course, in them days, like, [unclear] there was always a policeman — did you know that? — at a railway station, nine times out of ten. Are you alright Sarah?
Sarah: Yes. I’m fine dad. Yeah.
RM: Have you got to go?
Sarah: No. It’s alright. Don’t worry.
So went outside and there’s this policeman there. He says, ‘Are you alright?’ Nice and friendly. He says, ‘Are you alright?’ I said, ‘No.’ I explained to him what happened. ‘We’ve come up here.’ He said, ‘Oh, [unclear].’ I said, ‘We can’t afford it.’ I guess we could have if we’d pushed it, don’t you?
Sarah: I think you could have, father.
RM: And, er, anyway I went outside and your mum was outside and I said, ‘It’s a hundred.’ She said, ‘We aren’t staying here.’ So, this policeman, he said, ‘Oh, don’t worry.’ And there was a taxi rank outside and this he said, like, ‘Fred, here.’ So this chap come over and he said, ‘I’ve two wanderers here.’ He said, ‘Can you find them digs for the night?’ ‘Oh, aye.’ He said, ‘Get in the car.’ He drove, we went straight round to this, this lady, bed and breakfast. We went in and it was marvellous. Three night’s bed and breakfast. I, I don’t know how much it was but it was marvellous and we had a lovely three days up there and I didn’t have to spend a hundred pound a night. It was a colossal amount. But it is a beautiful hotel, it is honestly, it is a beautiful hotel.
IL: I don’t know if it’s still there actually.
RM: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I know somebody that — yes it is. And so that was it. That was the hotel I was posted to and I thought it’s be nice to go back. And the following morning there was a jeep. What the devil did they call it that place? It was Brackla. Anyway he knew where to go. It was an RAF jeep and we drove across country and it’s all, all cross country, you know, from Inverness to the other side. I wish I could remember the name. It, it’s fairly popular but, um, that was on the coast and then gets sent to this demented aircrew. It was a joke. I wasn’t, I was no more demented — I might have been, I might have been scratching the door, as I say, I might have been [unclear].
Sarah: Who wouldn’t have been?
RM: I might have been — I was under a psychiatrist when I come out. Pardon?
Sarah: Who wouldn’t have been after that?
RM: What?
Sarah: Scratching the door. I said, ‘Who wouldn’t have been?’
RM: Oh, yes Sarah. Yeah, I realise that.
IL: And all the time and you were there for six months and just sort of —
RM: Oh no, no, no. After I’d seen what was going on and I saw the sergeants’ mess —
IL: Oh, I see. Sorry. I was getting a bit confused, sorry.
Sarah: [unclear] six months.
RM: I tend to go from one thing to another. No, no. I should have gone there for six months. It was a rest camp for demented aircrew. It was very popular. Nobody thought anything about it.
IL: How long were you there for?
RM: No more than two months.
IL: A couple for months.
RM: It might have been — do you what Sarah?
Sarah: You asked to leave didn’t you?
RM: Oh yeah, yeah. I saw the, as I say, I laid in bed and watched the sergeant’s mess burn, watched it burn. Well, I couldn’t understand. I laid in bed and saw these flames and I took no notice until the following day. They burnt it down to the ground. It was burnt to the ground. They were wooden you see.
IL: And all the time you were there you were taking the venal barbital, so did you have to have medical clearance to leave or did you —
RM: Now you’re asking me a question. I would say [clears throat] don’t forget when I went — when you got posted to another station I would say that my medical records would have followed me. That’s what I, I — I shall be honest, I cannot put it to mind. I don’t think, I think I stopped taking them when I got to Ireland. I think I thought what do I — I’m sure I did, I don’t want to take these things any more. I didn’t feel like taking them. That was, that was probably what I thought, you know, but I couldn’t help thinking about them. It was —
IL: Because it would have been an interesting, you know, as a doctor, um, you would think you wouldn’t want people flying who were taking them. But if there was no, if there was no, you know, medical, you know — I think people thought they weren’t particularly — I think people thought they were fairly innocuous drugs in those days, barbiturates.
RM: No. When I came out and we came back to you, we came back to Yo—, we came back to York, came back to Thirsk, came back to live at my mother in laws. Now then —
Sarah: Were you married to my mum then?
RM: Where?
Sarah: When you were in Scotland?
RM: Yeah. Oh no, not during the war.
Sarah: I didn’t think so.
RM: Oh, no, no, no.
Sarah: Then you went to Ireland.
RM: I went to Ireland on Transport Command via — oh gosh, I hated it.
Sarah: But then what, where did you go from Ireland?
RM: I went back on Bomber Command. I told him — well, I won’t tell you about that. That was really truly self-inflicted. Something happened. I went without leave. I buggered off with old Darkie Thorne, my very dear friend, and we went down to Belfast and stayed at the — it wasn’t very — this friend of mine, he got shot down and he walked back, and I met him in Ireland. We were like brothers. We were, and he was a beggar, and he come back and I remember him. And he saw me and we ran to one another. Oh, he said, ‘We’ll have a good time.’ And of course, it was Darkie Thorne and me and it was on the squadron. He said, ‘Look at this.’ And in those days, of course, you got paid in cash and he’d been a prisoner. He had been a prisoner of war and he’d been shot down but he’d was rescued by a French family and he, what we called, walked back. He’d got the caterpillar and it was what we called — he’d walked back. And we met him in Northern Ireland and he said [laugh], and, ‘Look.’ He said, ‘We’re going to spend this.’ I mean he’d been gone about six months and when come back like he’d been to get paid and they didn’t have a bank. You took your money as you were paid and he said, ‘Look. We’re going to have some fun. We’re going to have some fun with this in Belfast.’ And we were, it was about ten miles from Belfast, isn’t it? That international airport?
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It will be.
RM: Yeah, and, er, I thought, ‘Well, I daren’t get into any more trouble.’ I’d been de-commissioned once. I’d lost six months seniority with, you know, getting into a bit of trouble like and I said, I thought, ‘I’d better slow down here.’ Anyway, we were snowbound over there. It snowed from — I was over there in the October I suppose and it snowed and snowed and snowed. We didn’t do a lot of flying and so we were grounded. And when you were grounded you were at school. You went to school. And, anyway, it was one of those times when you got — you couldn’t get bored on the squadron but being there with all this snow and this time he come at me and said, ‘Do you fancy a trip down to Dublin?’ And I said, ‘We can’t Darkie. We can’t. We’ll be interned.’ And, he said, ‘I’ll fix it all up.’ He was a wide boy. He was a Cockney [laugh] and his mum and dad and his sister had been killed in an air raid in London so he was one of those. He, he didn’t just hate the Germans, he detested them. He would have shot every one of them if he could have done and that was his attitude. But he was, he was a Cockney, he says, ‘Would you like to go down to Dublin?’ I said, ‘We can’t Darkie.’ I said, ‘We can’t. We’ll be interned.’ He said, ‘Leave it with me.’ He said, ‘I’ve been looking around.’ He said, ‘There’s a second hand shop in Belfast and we’ll get some civvy suits and we’ll have a rag round and I’ll get, I’ll get two passports.’ And he was going on and I said, ‘Forget it.’ I said, ‘I haven’t got a very good name Darkie.’ And he said, ‘Well you’re alright. You’ve got a commission.’ And poor old Darkie hadn’t even got his flight sergeant. He was still a sergeant he said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll fix it up.’ And I wasn’t really keen to go to Dublin because the Irish are a different people and there was a lot of, as you know as I do, the IRA were still floating around at that time. [clears throat] Anyway, time went by [clears throat] he said, ‘I’ve got your suit.’ I said, ‘You’re joking.’ He said, ‘No. I’ve got your suit.’ He says, ‘A nice brown suit.’ [laugh] He said, ‘I’ve got your suit.’ He said, ‘A nice brown suit.’ I said, ‘What about passports?’ ‘I got them.’ He said, ‘Yes. There’s a place in Belfast where I’ve gone.’ I said, ‘You must be joking.’ ‘No.’ He said, ‘Money and I’ve plenty of it.’ And he has I’m not kidding you. He had a roll. And he said, ‘You don’t pay for a thing so don’t question it.’ [unclear] and the snow in them days, it seemed to stay. We seemed to get snow over there from October right through to February and we did. Very rarely we take off and so you seemed to be in the same spot. Anyway, went to Belfast, got on a train, about halfway down — I don’t know how far we were — and the gendarmes got on, whatever you called them, checked out passports. Have you been to Dublin, Sarah?
Sarah: I have.
RM: Have you? You know the big bridge there then and, and the hotel Ma— it has a Canadian name, Ma—
IL: Montreal?
RM: [unclear] So we go, go and stays at this hotel, books in at this hotel. Well, for four days I can hardly remember, honestly, and I’m not a, I was never an alcoholic, but we drank Guinness chasers. That was Guinness and whisky. And we were drunk from — the only thing we thought about was an evening meal and that’s the honest true. We’d have breakfast. Anyway, it comes to about four days and I says, ‘We’ll have to be back.’ The weather seemed to be lifting and I said, ‘We’ll have to be back Darkie.’ ‘No, no, no, no.’ He said, ‘We’re all right.’ And I gave in and said, ‘Just one more night then.’ He said, ‘Yeah. It will be alright. Went back to camp, walks into the camp, first thing, ‘Flying Officer Moore report to the orderly room. I thought, ‘Oh Jesus.’ I said, ‘This is it, Darkie.’ He said, ‘Oh, tell them to — off.’ But I was commissioned and I respected that commission. Don’t get me wrong, I did, I respected it and, anyway, I went down to the orderly room. I thought they were going to put me in irons, honestly. Went before the CO. There again, the old documents come out and he says, ‘I don’t understand it. I’ve been looking at your documents.’ And he said, ‘How do you feel?’ And I thought ‘Christ. I’m not going back to — no way am I ever going back to — no way am I going back to that camp.’ I said, ‘I feel fine.’ And he said, ‘What are you doing?’ And what had happened was, my crew had crewed up and flown to Karachi with Transport Command and he said, ‘Well, your crew went without you. We had to find another flight engineer, didn’t we?’ And I said, ‘Oh.’ You know, I expected it. No good saying I didn’t and he said, ‘I don’t really know.’ He said, ‘But you see we don’t want fellas like you in Transport Command.’ He said, ‘We don’t want officers like you in Transport Command.’ And all of a sudden I thought, ‘Bugger yer.’ And I turned round to him and I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. I don’t want to be in Transport Command.’ And he stood back and I said, ‘I don’t want to be in Transport Command.’ And he got hold of my papers and hit the desk and he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to go back to Bomber Command.’ He said, ‘Idiot.’ I said, ‘I want to go back.’ I said, ‘That’s where the camaraderie is.’ And he said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘Be outside your billet at eight.’ Again, you know, he said, ‘Be outside your billet.’ And he said, ‘There’ll be a jeep to take you to Belfast.’ He said, ‘You’ll get on a train.’ He said, ‘You’ll get on a train.’ He said, ‘You’re posted to Lindholme.’ So that’s when I got back to Lindholme to Bomber Command.
IL: So, did you fly any more operations from Lindholme?
RM: Not from Lindholme. We were non-operational. Well, we weren’t non-operational because we were flying and we — they flew the backsides off us. I told your mum. She was always playing hell because my wife was a WAAF on the same station and I was courting her, you know, and fortunately I caught her, didn’t it? And what happened was the — as I say I put my name down, 617, 67, 76 Squadron and that was where I went back. And I said to him, I said, ‘I don’t want to be with Transport Command.’ And he stood back, you know, one of those stiff upper lip chaps and he said, ‘Be outside your billet at 8 or 9 o’clock.’ And said, ‘They’ll take you to Belfast Station and you’re posted to Lindholme. Idiot.’ And I just walked out. I didn’t even turn round and salute him. I thought, ‘Beggar yer.’ But it was another experience wasn’t it, you know?
IL: Oh, absolutely.
RM: Yeah, it was. Another court martial. Dear, oh dear, but —
IL: Were you actually court martialled for that?
RM: Pardon?
IL: Were you court martialled for that?
RM: Oh, no, no, no.
IL: No?
RM: Oh, no, no, no. That’s was how, really and truthfully, I’ll be honest with you, I know I got away with it because I’d done thirty-one trips. I was a hero and they knew it. I’d done my bit, hadn’t I? That was it in a nutshell, I can tell you that now. That was why when he turned to me and, you know, he said that, and I knew he meant it, but at that time I thought, ‘Why should I lick his backside and pretend?’ It was no good pretending. I hated Transport Command. I hated it while I was there and for him to turn round to me and tell me he didn’t want my type. He didn’t want my type in Transport Command and I was as good as any of them. In fact, I was better than them because I’d come from Bomber Command.
IL: Absolutely, absolutely. I’m going to switch this off now, Ray.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AMooreR160727
Title
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Interview with Raymond Moore
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:49:26 audio recording
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Pending review
Creator
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Ian Locker
Date
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2016-07-27
Description
An account of the resource
Raymond Moore flew 31 operations as a flight engineer with 408 Squadron. He describes initial training at Skegness and then further training at Cosford, Halton and St Athan. He describes the crewing-up procedure at Eastmoor and describes the accommodation at various RAF stations including Linton, where he was billeted at Beningbrough Hall, and at Lindholme. He also gives vivid accounts of difficult trips, including high winds on a Berlin operation on the 24th of March 1944 and being coned by searchlights in the Rostock and Bremen areas and being thrown about as the pilot did a corkscrew manoeuvre.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Rostock
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
408 Squadron
426 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
faith
fear
flight engineer
lack of moral fibre
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Brackla
RAF Cosford
RAF East Moor
RAF Halton
RAF Lindholme
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF St Athan
recruitment
searchlight
sport
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1194/11767/AWhiteKWJ170807.1.mp3
27ebcbfd617915ef32874b6005938d36
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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White, Kenneth
Kenneth William John White
K W J White
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sergeant Ken White (b. 1925, 1852517 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 214 flying B-17s.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-07
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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White, KWJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: Ian locker interviewing Mr Kenneth White at his home in Hayling Island. It’s the 7th of August and it’s about 2.15. So, Ken, how did you get involved with Bomber Command?
KW: Well, it’s a bit of a tale actually. I enlisted in the RAF on the — I’ve got the date here actually. [unclear] [pause — pages turning] On the 8th of March 1943 when I was seventeen and a half. I was accepted for training as a navigator, bomb aimer or pilot and was then put on deferred service because the training programmes at that time were quite full. I was informed about a year later that because of the delay I could no longer be considered for those classifications but I could either remain in the RAF and take another trade or I could transfer to the Navy or Army or I could go to work down the mines. I didn’t choose the mines [laughs] I stayed and I elected to stay in the RAF and I was called up for service on the 27th of May ’44. So, I was over a year waiting really and then took more aptitude tests and was selected for training as an air gunner. I went through the training programme and it was ground. Well, I enlisted at RAF Scarborough. The Aircrew Receiving Centre at that time. And then went to RAF Bridgnorth which was the ground gunner training side of it. And from there to RAF Dalcross where [pause — pages turning] which was, I must have joined about the 20th of October ’44 according to this. And I passed out as an air gunner on the 12th of January ’44.
IL: Right.
KW: And was then promoted to sergeant. At the completion of the course I had leave and then we went, we had to go on, I think it was about six weeks, a senior NCOs course at Whitley Bay. From there we were due to go on leave before going to OTU. Operational Training Unit. As we were parading for our leave passes a few of us were called out and told that we weren’t going on leave. We were going to join a station at RAF Oulton.
IL: Right.
KW: I didn’t know for what. We knew we were going as gunners but we didn’t know for what purpose or what RAF Oulton was. And we arrived there —
IL: Can we just take a step back? What did — you say you were at Gunnery School.
KW: Yeah.
IL: What did that actually involve?
KW: Air Gunnery School.
IL: Air Gunnery School. Sorry.
KW: Yeah. That was the first. RAF Bridgnorth was gunnery courses on land, equipping yourself with —
IL: But using, using the same sort of things that you would be using.
KW: Using 303 —
IL: Yeah.
KW: Brownings. And the Air Gunnery School was the same. We used 303 but were flying with them as well.
IL: Right.
KW: As well as doing in the hangars and still ground, you know. Training there.
IL: How did they — when you’re flying how did they simulate, you know being attacked by aircraft? Or was there no —
KW: Well, at that point —
IL: Was there just —
KW: There was a single-engine plane drawing a drogue.
IL: Right.
KW: And you opened fire at the drogue.
IL: Ok.
KW: Really. That’s what it was like there. And if you, if you managed to get a shot near the end of the drogue it broke it all to pieces so you got a good score.
IL: Right. Ok.
KW: So, I twigged that [laughs] And came out with above average there.
IL: Right.
KW: I think that’s probably why I was dragged away from leave but —
IL: Ok. Ok.
KW: Anyway, I believe we went to [pause] 169 Flight at Oulton. RAF Oulton. That was for joining the crews. Would have joined us there with the six from — I’ve got all the names somewhere, who had been to OTU. To operational training, you know. And four of us who had never been to OTU. That was myself, the starboard waist gunner, the flight engineer and a special operator as we called him who’d come straight from university actually.
IL: Right.
KW: And we didn’t know at the time but he could speak Russian fluently.
IL: Oh right.
KW: And we were crewed up as ten. And on the flight we then had to become accustomed to .5 Browning.
IL: Right.
KW: Weapons which were completely different in, in ways that you handled them and the way the rounds were kept before firing. The Browning, the round was away from the breech. The 303 Browning. With the .5 the Browning was already in the breech.
IL: Right.
KW: And by the heat, if it had been firing could explode and fire another shot.
IL: Right.
KW: I’ll tell you about that later on.
IL: Yeah.
KW: And then.
IL: So, had you, when you went there had you, had you ever seen the sort of B-17s or —
KW: No.
IL: Had you had, you’d never had any —
KW: No. The first —
IL: Because these were American built planes.
KW: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They were American.
IL: So, were they modified in any way to sort of — for the RAF? Or were they just —
KW: Yes. The belly turret. The Americans flew with a turret underneath as well which was taken off of ours. And we didn’t carry bombs. We carried special equipment. One part of which was a tall cylinder like thing which wouldn’t fit in to the —
IL: Right.
KW: Bomb bays of Lancasters or Halifaxes. But it would stand upright in, in a Fortress and a Liberator bomb bay. So, that’s, that was part of the reasons for —
IL: Right.
KW: Having that particular aircraft.
IL: Right. Ok.
KW: We [pause — pages turning] I’ve got the date. The week. At the beginning of April we passed from the training into the squadron. 214 Squadron itself. Until the first two flights I had there were [pause] on the 18th of April and the 19th of April. One was a night fighter affiliation and the second was —
IL: So, what, sorry what does that mean, Ken? Night fighter affiliation.
KW: Exercise with a night fighter attack.
IL: Oh. So, ok —
KW: Yeah.
IL: So, it was an exercise rather than an actual mission.
KW: It was an exercise. Yeah. It wasn’t a mission.
IL: Right.
KW: I had to get used to the —
IL: Yeah.
KW: The other things and we had longer flights to become accustomed to — and an air test. And in fact I did my first operation on the 19th of April when looking at this I had forty seven and a half hours day flying experience and nineteen hours and forty minutes night flying experience when I went on my first op.
IL: And this was a night, night op.
KW: It was a night op. Yes. They were all nights ops.
IL: Right. Ok.
KW: While we were experienced as a crew the first one we had Murray Peden, you may have heard of, he wrote a couple of books. He’s Canadian.
IL: Right.
KW: But he was a, carried as an extra pilot. They took an experienced pilot to keep an eye on what Ken Kennett, our pilot was doing.
IL: Right.
KW: But that was the only time. Then from the other two I was on my own.
IL: Right.
KW: But we, as well as being air gunners in, in the waist we were responsible when told by the navigator or the special operator as to dropping Window. Window, you’re well aware of I expect.
IL: Yeah.
KW: But a lot of people don’t realise there were different types and had to be dropped at different heights and at different speeds of the dropping. And we had, we had to obey what, what instructions we were given and [pause]
IL: Because presumably when you’re bombing you’re probably at your most vulnerable and so —
KW: Well, no.
IL: That would be the time when you would need to be.
KW: We didn’t bomb. We didn’t carry any bombs.
IL: Oh sorry. Ok. So, what were you actually —
KW: It was actually the first electronic —
Other: Countermeasures.
Other 2: Countermeasures. Yeah.
IL: Oh right.
KW: Yeah
IL: Ok.
Other: They would call it chaff these days.
IL: Right.
KW: Yeah. There’s a book which has recently come out. That’s a good point that is.
IL: So it was sort of like a jamming. Some sort of thing to jam.
KW: Well, we had two, two sections. We dropped, we, we used the Window to jam radar as well but also to give the effect that a heavy raid was going to take place on a certain area. And therefore their fighters were then away from the main stream.
IL: Yeah.
KW: Who were attacking somewhere else. So, that was what we called diversions.
IL: Yeah.
KW: We were diverting the enemy. And the special operator was able to tune in to the German Fighter Control and on occasions break into it and put them off.
IL: Right.
KW: As well, on other occasions jamming. And the bomb aimer — we had no bombs as I said.
IL: Yeah.
KW: But he had equipment as well which followed the same thing.
IL: Right.
KW: So, and I did three ops altogether. That — the last one being the last one of the European war.
IL: So, what was that? What was the last operation of the European war?
KW: Well, it was in the Kiel area.
IL: Right.
KW: We were Window dropping then, in summary. I’ve got it here [pause — pages turning] The three. The three operations that I did. In red. That’s the first one. The second one. They were mainly all in that area because they were back up in Schleswig. The Germans were back up in that area.
IL: Right.
KW: At that time in the war.
IL: So, what, the people who were bombing were they actually they were bombing ground troops presumably or were they bombing —
KW: Well, they were bombing Kiel at night.
IL: Kiel, yeah.
KW: Yeah. And we were protecting them on that occasion and, as much as we could but in the, we lost nothing. I’ve got — I don’t know whether this is of any interest to you or not [pause — pages turning] That’s from the operation record book of the squadron at that time.
IL: So, on those, on your obviously three missions over Germany, how operational were the sort of, you know both fighters and defences?
KW: Well, that’s a hard question. I —
[pause]
KW: I’ve wrote that article.
IL: Oh right.
KW: With respect of Alan Mercer, the navigator, when he die. But he was, he was the ninth to pass away which left only myself still alive now. If you read through that you’ve got the history there.
IL: Right. But, as I say, did they, were there, you know was there still a lot of sort of anti-aircraft fire and was there still a lot of — were there still — you know?
KW: Yeah. Yeah, there were still fighters.
IL: There were still fighters.
KW: If you read that you’ll see we saw what we thought were rocket type things but in fact it was confirmed later that they were jet fighters.
IL: Right.
KW: German jet fighters.
IL: Right. Gosh.
KW: But we lost no —
IL: Because —
KW: No aircraft — well, it shows on, we lost no aircraft from our squadron. But on that very last raid 262, which was in the same group I think they were Halifaxes. They were in the same area and they lost two aircraft. The second was a tragedy really because the first apparently, I’ve read since was hit and out of control and crashed into another of the same squadron.
IL: Gosh.
KW: And they were both lost. They were both lost.
IL: How did — how did it feel? Because presumably coming up to that point I think — I don’t know I don’t know but I would imagine most people felt the war was coming to an end.
KW: Coming to a close. Coming to an end. Yeah.
IL: And to — did you, did you, were you just sort of this is what I’m going to do? This is what I’m doing. Or did you feel somehow well is this not a little bit of, you know putting people into a you know difficult position when they, you know, when it’s, when things are almost, things are almost over?
KW: No. You just felt it was your duty.
IL: Yeah.
KW: You joined to do that particular job. You volunteered for it and you just got on and did what the job was.
IL: Ok. Ok. So —
KW: You didn’t realise, we didn’t realise all that was happening. Especially with the special operator. He was very secretive. Even to the crew. The rest of the crew. But he was a nice chap, but he was the first to pass away after the war. He got killed. He took a flight. He went on to air traffic control. Was out in Poona and grabbed a chance of a free flight and the aircraft went in to the ground and he was killed.
IL: Gosh.
KW: And as I say, he’d had no, no life.
IL: So, was he — presumably your special operator was, he, he was presumably RAF?
KW: Yes.
IL: He wasn’t sort of —
KW: No. No he wasn’t —
IL: Military intelligence or —
KW: No. That’s, that’s our crew that I flew with.
IL: Oh right.
KW: That’s Ken. There was only one who had any previous operational service and that was Steve, the wireless, the actual wireless, normal wireless operator.
IL: Yeah.
KW: Who had flown on either a Hudson or Ventura squadron in the Middle East. He’d done a tour out there. He was the oldest. Oldest of us. Then a warrant officer. He remained in the RAF after.
IL: So what did you do after? You know, once you finished. Once you’d done your couple of operations. You know, your three operations and you said that—
KW: Well, we remained on the squadron. Flying. Still flying on pre-arranged things. We also took ground crew to flights over Germany and France to show what had been happening with the damage and all that sort of thing.
IL: Right.
KW: And, well, and still practiced gunnery.
IL: Yeah.
KW: And still fighter affiliation because we didn’t, we didn’t know at that stage what the next move would be.
IL: Right.
KW: You know. The, the war in the Far East was still going on and we could have well been posted. But then they disbanded the squadron and we were all torn —
IL: Because obviously.
KW: Seriously.
IL: With you being, you know your squadron being designated Malayan Squadron presumably you’d have thought that you’d be highly likely to get sent out.
KW: Well, I think that’s, there were a number of squadrons that had designations of some sort. I think that’s because they’d been funded in the first instance.
IL: Right. Oh right. Ok. Yeah, I’ve spoken to people who were in — I think one of the Lincolnshire squadrons was a Kenya Squadron and they’ve — so when did you, so when did, when did you, when did you — when was the squadron disbanded?
KW: I think that might be in [pause] where’s the one that [unclear] [pause] I turn these out for 100 Group. Something like that. What did I do with that? [pause] You’ve got two books there.
IL: I’ve got, I’ve got your Spring 2010 and Winter 2014. Shall I just put this off for a second?
[recording paused]
IL: So, we’re still talking about when the squadron was disbanded, Ken.
KW: Yes. Yeah. That was mid ’45.
IL: Right.
KW: New Zealand crew members returned home and the remaining crew were posted as I said earlier on to various other duties and trades, you know.
IL: Yeah.
KW: I was a clerk for a bit. I was selected as a clerk. I passed the course as an LAC but I still remained a sergeant and I was posted out to India.
IL: Right.
KW: And — at air headquarters. I was promoted to corporal in that trade and then to acting sergeant paid in that trade before I returned home but I still was a sergeant all the while because of my aircrew rank.
IL: So, how long did you stay in the RAF after?
KW: I —
Other: You put it down again.
KW: I had a letter somewhere. Oh. It’s in the logbook.
Other: Yeah. I think so. I didn’t see it in the book.
KW: I’m getting a little bit. Well, I’ve still got a few marbles but I think some of them have out of time.
IL: Some of them rolled away. I think we all, I think we’re all a bit like that sometimes.
[pause]
KW: I had a little letter.
Other 2: Yeah. You had an envelope.
KW: An envelope. Yeah. It’s in there. The date I —
Other 2: You put the letter back in the envelope. I saw you doing it.
KW: Now, where did I put it then?
IL: So, was it 1945 or was it much later?
KW: No. No. It was 1947.
IL: Oh right. Ok. So you were in India for a couple of years.
KW: A couple of years. Well, almost two years. Yeah.
IL: Right. [pause] So, how did you find India? Was this sort of — was it the time of —
KW: Terrible place. Well, it was just —
IL: Unease and partition coming up.
KW: It was just coming up to partition. It wasn’t too bad when we first got there but [pause] What did I do with that? [pause] It gives the exact date on that letter. That’s why.
IL: Don’t, don’t worry, Ken. So what did you do after? After you came out of the RAF what did you do in your later life?
KW: I — well, before I joined the RAF I left school at fourteen. I became an apprentice grocer at the International Tea Company. You won’t remember that I suppose.
IL: Not quite.
KW: And I did a three year apprenticeship.
Other: Carry on.
KW: The first year it was ten shillings a week. Second year fifteen shillings a week. And the third year a pound a week. And then I became assistant and got an increase. Then I went in the RAF. I came back and I remained. I came back to them for a while as an apprentice and started studying grocers [unclear] and then, oh thank you — and then, and then I changed to the Home Colonial Stores.
IL: Right.
KW: Where I was called a first hand which now they would term as an assistant manager.
IL: Right.
KW: Because the manager was the way I ran the shop. And you wouldn’t believe this but every week on a Saturday we took stock of the whole, you had in the store and you worked out the cost to make sure that you hadn’t lost any money. Each shop did that.
IL: Gosh.
KW: So, Saturday you didn’t get off very early in the evening. But —
IL: So, was that, was that back in Oulton? Or was that back in —
KW: That was back in Oulton.
IL: Right.
KW: And then I joined the Hampshire Constabulary as a policeman. After, in fact I was posted back to Oulton on, after my training at the Police Training School because while I was away my wife had managed to get a little cottage. Two up two down across the yard from [laughs] and share a washhouse. That was our home. And then in, that was in ’49 I joined the police. Then I was posted to Christchurch which was then in Hampshire and I did — I was there until February ’52. And during that time I was a bit lucky with — there was a very good detective constable there who and I had a few lucky arrests and things like that. He took me under his wing and I came back then to Fareham as a detective constable after less than three years’ service which was unheard of in those days.
IL: Right.
KW: But we were at Fareham. Then from Fareham I was posted to Havant. And [unclear] used to move every two years and they provided a house for you. For Havant. And I remained there until 1957. And Havant, then Leigh Park was I don’t know if you know about, you don’t know the area.
IL: I don’t know the area. I’m sorry.
KW: Terrific estate. Built for Portsmouth people really.
IL: Right.
Other: It was, when it was built it was the biggest council estate in Europe.
KW: Yeah.
IL: Oh gosh.
KW: And that was being built up and I was a DC covering Havant, Hayling Island, Emsworth, Purbrook and Waterlooville. That one DC then and I I then got an aid. Dick Barton.
Other: Good name.
IL: He was a good man. A good man. He was. He wouldn’t take his exams for a long long time. Mainly because he, he didn’t, he’d found the bungalow over here because his wife had [pause] what was it she had?
Other 2: I think I’ve got [pause] I don’t know.
Other: She was disabled wasn’t she?
KW: She was disabled.
IL: Right. Ok.
KW: So, they, they were able to rent a bungalow for her so he didn’t, but he did eventually take his sergeant’s exam and he later became a sergeant. We were friends until, well his wife passed away and then he could visit. We came down here and he would visit Pam and myself every week for a meal.
IL: Oh lovely.
KW: So, and he was a good man. Anyway, where had I got to.
Other: You were in Havant. You were a DC in Havant.
KW: A DC. And then I was promoted to detective sergeant. They made a detective sergeant at Havant with six constables. They had two of us were running it at that stage. But all hours. All hours. I enjoyed them but and then I went over to Winchester in ’57 as a detective sergeant. And I passed my inspector’s exams and in 1960 I was the first one actually attached from Hampshire to New Scotland Yard and on a branch they set up with half Metropolitan and half from mainly the Home Counties. But ours was not a true Home County but I was the first for them.
IL: Fantastic.
KW: And I was supposed to have been there for two years as a detective inspector but in fact they kept me there for four years. During that time we lived at Aldershot, didn’t we? And I travelled up. Well, I took my our own car which caused some problems with some of the metropolitan officers because they provided me with a, that was when the Yard was on the Embankment there.
IL: Yeah.
KW: With a parking place for my car as they did with all the other county officers who were attached. And of course that left the police with nowhere [laughs] to park. But no it was it was good, good unit.
IL: Yeah.
KW: It was a good unit and worked hard. And then I came back to Gosport. That was ’64. I was detective inspector there. And during that time I took a team across to Jersey to assist with a murder out there.
IL: Gosh.
KW: And then in, it was ’64 or ’67 the amalgamation of Portsmouth, Southampton and Hampshire took place and I was promoted to detective chief inspector and posted to Aldershot where I remained until ’69. Then I was promoted detective chief superintendent, detective superintendent sorry. Not chief. Covering the whole of the north of Hampshire. It was divided by three and one, one headquarters and then — when have I got to? ’69 an that was the north, then but ’71 I came in to headquarters as a deputy head of CID in the county.
IL: Gosh.
KW: And I eventually retired December 1974. And I started in January immediately with the MOD as an investigating officer there.
IL: Yeah.
KW: And, well, during which time when I was at headquarters as detective superintendent in the job I took then. We had quite a, we were talking about MI5.
IL: Yeah.
KW: With them because I had special branch in the county and we had good liaison with them. With MI5. Also, once or twice a year they threw a party up there where drink flowed freely.
IL: Yes. It was a good party.
KW: Anyway, and then I got a promotion. I went then to Grade 1 and was then attached to the RAF security.
IL: Right. It came full circle almost.
KW: Yeah.
Other: Yeah.
KW: And then I was responsible for the south of the county to the other.
Other: South of the country.
KW: South of the country. From North Wales across to Essex.
IL: Right.
KW: And so, and I was rather amazed after having been a sergeant in the RAF but the first function I was invited to with Pam was, I went to the mess. They said accommodation in the mess. I got there and I found that the accommodation I had was a wing commander’s [laughs] because my grade —
IL: Yes.
KW: In the civil service was equivalent to a wing commander’s. So we took a rapid rise from sergeant to —
IL: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know.
KW: At the time. There we are. Eventually I did ten years at that and things were getting a bit much for me because of my heart really. And so, that’s when I had the triple bypass.
IL: Fantastic. So you had, so you had two very successful careers. Well, three actually. As a grocer as well.
KW: Yeah [laughs] So, but, better than all that I had three good sons. There’s two of them here now.
IL: I’ll just flick this off again.
[recording paused]
IL: So, restarting.
KW: Right. Do you want the names of them all?
IL: No. But I think it’s quite interesting, you know how you kept in touch and kept contact after the war.
KW: Kept in touch. As I say we weren’t all that long together but we became a family. And I have, we kept in touch after the war and a couple of the New Zealanders, we had three New Zealanders in the crew and two of them came over with their wives and with their families. And even the great grandchildren of one of the New Zealanders had been. And there was one picture in one of those books. I’ve got some somewhere where we had, while they were over here we had meetings with all of us who were still about. And, you know it’s wonderful. And when I lost her, Pam it was family flowers only and the New Zealanders ignored it. They sent a wreath, ‘”From your New Zealand family.”
IL: That is wonderful.
KW: But we became very very close. You know.
IL: When did you first, when did you first start? Or did you just continue to always meet up? Or was there a sort of time when you had your first reunion? Or —
KW: Well, the 100 Group, those of us who were alive or still in England which was with mainly Smithy, Alan Mercer and myself we, we joined the 100 Group Association and we three went up to the Memorial they, they put up at Oulton.
IL: Right.
KW: That was erected there for all that had flown from Oulton. It’s still there. They meet every night, every year.
IL: Right.
KW: Pam and I and Alan and Smithy have been up various time but the New Zealanders they’ve never been over when as I say unfortunately through the years they’ve gradually all —
IL: Right.
KW: Passed away.
IL: But was this, as I say did you, did you meet as a group and join the Association immediately after the war?
KW: No.
IL: Or was this much much later? So, when was the Association formed? Just roughly. It doesn’t have to be an exact day. Was this the 60s or earlier? Or —
KW: Yeah. Later that that I think.
IL: Oh right. Ok.
KW: ’94 I think the Memorial stone was put up.
IL: Right.
KW: And —
IL: So, was that, was that the first time you got together after the war?
KW: No. No. No. We’d been together.
IL: Or were you continuing to sort of see each other on a fairly regular basis.
KW: Yeah. Yeah. As soon as someone from abroad, from New Zealand they were the ones that came. As soon as we knew we got in touch with the other and those who were available.
IL: Yeah.
KW: We’d meet up with them. We’d arrange where we’d meet. You know, the New Zealanders stayed here during their visit and so we were able to get together somewhere and that sort of carried on from there. And Christmas exchanges and things like that a couple of times a year.
Other: Was the squadron quite, quite typical — or your aircraft quite typical of most others with the number of Commonwealth airmen?
KW: Well, yeah, they were, it was fairly well mixed because —
Other: You had three New Zealanders.
KW: Well, in our crew.
Other: Yeah.
KW: Some of the others are Canadians.
Other: Yeah.
KW: And Australians. Altogether.
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
KW: The Australians. Some of them lost their pay as soon as they got it [laughs]
IL: Yeah. The crew. You said that there was six of them and you guys joined. Were the six a transfer as a crew or had they been —
KW: No. They transferred in. They’d done their operational training.
IL: Right.
KW: As a crew.
IL: Right.
KW: But —
IL: So, had they done their operational training on B-17s or had they done their operational training on Lancasters?
KW: I’m not sure exactly.
IL: Oh, ok. Ok.
KW: Alan went on. The navigator. When we were redundant he was transferred to another squadron. A Stirling squadron taking stuff over to Germany and Holland. You know we were dropping supplies at that point.
IL: Oh yes. Operation Manna which was —
KW: But I had nothing — no part of that.
IL: Because it’s interesting that you know we hear stories of people who you know, twenty pilots, twenty flight engineers, twenty gunners, sorry twenty, you know mid-gunners, twenty rear gunners just put in and they’d go around. And, you know they’d choose who they want and it sort of smacked to me a little bit of, you know being the kid nobody wanted in the football team. You know, it was a sort of, it sounded like a pretty horrendous sort of thing to have to go through.
KW: I think you do find your place in it really I suppose. But with our crew it certainly worked out anyway. Well Freddie, the main one. The other waist gunner he’d been the same with me at Dalcross and then the Senior NCO School afterwards and we were two that were called out so. But his son is still in touch with me. And —
Other: Didn’t Freddie blame poor health, back problems on rough landings?
KW: Well, rough landing. Yeah. Yeah.
IL: Well, I can imagine. I can imagine. How did.
KW: I mentioned early on about the difference between the —
IL: Oh yes.
KW: The 303 and the .5. Well, Curly, that’s Herlihy, Herlihy was his name but he was also often also known as Curly and Duke. His name was Maddox. Curly was the mid-upper gunner who had a turret. Curly had, you know Duke was the rear gunner who sat on virtually a motorcycle saddle with a gun position. Of course ours, there were no turrets in the waist. They were just gunner positions. And Curly one day after a firing exercise did what he shouldn’t have done. Swung the gun around and it was pointed at the rear and fired. Fired a round which went through about a foot above Duke’s head. So, they weren’t very friendly for a little while [laughs] Luckily it did no damage.
IL: Did anything happen to him?
KW: Pardon?
IL: Did anything happen? Or any formal action or anything.
KW: No. No. It was just —
Other: Nobody said anything.
KW: Just, it was just the repair was —
IL: Goodness me.
KW: But, and then on another occasion we had a fire, or there was a report of a fire in the bomb bay where this electrical equipment was. But all it was was that one of the junctions had caught fire and managed to carry on, out. But on that occasion because it was just an air test. Two of them hadn’t taken their parachutes with them.
IL: Right.
KW: So, they were a little bit anxious.
IL: I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised.
KW: Yes, well we used to go out as a group regardless of rank and that, and certainly the special observer never, never joined in that sort of thing. The special operator. And on one occasion we were coming back from the village and some of us had station bikes and some didn’t. And I had Alan Mercer, the navigator on my crossbar. And we came out and Curly again took a wide range and there was a couple of WAAFs coming back the opposite way and of course one collided with me and Alan went and Alan in fact had a small fracture of the skull. All I had was water on the knee. The WAAF had a cut across her head, and I got, appeared before the CO for causing injury to a warrant officer and a WAAF. But they took no action.
IL: I can imagine. I can imagine. Just put that down again.
[recording paused]
KW: Well, it was nothing to do with me but we got picked up by a searchlight and we knew we had to get out of it quickly. The skipper decided he was going to corkscrew a Fortress. It was a corkscrew procedure, but God did it shake you all up. But we managed to get out of the lights anyway because at that time they had some lights which automatically fixed on you and would remain on you. Sort of radar controlled I suppose. We missed it so we then resumed our flight.
IL: Right.
KW: It was a little bit, and that was the only time the navigator had ever been sick in the air. He made a mess over his mask but luckily he had a spare.
IL: But this was, this was what I was saying a little bit earlier you know that I, you know, obviously this is your, you know this is what you trained for but it‘s sort of it’s interesting isn’t it that you know that Germany was, it was only, it was a matter of few days you almost you know.
KW: Yeah. Yeah.
IL: Probably. Was VE day something like the 11th of May. 7th or 8th of May.
KW: 8th yeah.
IL: Six days before and you know a country that is almost on its knees. Obviously we didn’t know at the time but with hindsight you know we’re still as you say seeing jet fighters. Were still operating a coherent air defence.
KW: Yes.
IL: You know. It doesn’t, I think that’s the fascinating thing about the fact that so late on.
KW: Yeah.
IL: You know they were still such a coherent organisation.
KW: Yeah.
IL: I think that’s the fascinating, you know a particular fascination —
KW: Yeah.
IL: Of talking to yourself. That, you know you were a part, they were a very — I don’t know, certainly Peter was, Peter Jones was very keen to sort of get some information about the, you know the later part of the war. I think this is the fascination as I say that the Germans were still able to put up a coherent air defence.
KW: Yeah. Yeah.
IL: At a time when you expect them to be on their knees and it would be a walkover almost.
KW: Yeah.
Other 2: Yeah.
Other: But the, the jet was Messerschmitt 262s weren’t they? I think they were twin, twin-engine jets. I think we were just about starting on the Meteor, weren’t we? Which I think was a single engine jet at the time. So, they were well advanced with the jet aircraft.
KW: Yeah.
Other: The Germans.
KW: Yeah. Well, I think the whole idea was if they could was to get across to Denmark.
IL: Right.
KW: That’s where they were pulling for. To sort of resume the battle from there. But I don’t know. But the other thing that I am a little disappointed in the RAF that I only did three ops. I know that. Nothing compared with some but I haven’t got the aircrew medal. The clasp.
IL: Right.
Other: Bomber. Bomber Command clasp.
KW: Bomber Command clasp. Yeah. Because they say, the person who drew up the plans for it said it should be worn on the ’39 ’45 Star and you had to do sixty days on the squadron to get that, and one operation. But although I’ve done three I didn’t do sixty days so they —well Ken and I’ve written all over the place and Ken wrote to the local MP and things like that but they said no. That was the ruling.
IL: Right.
KW: I’ve got the France and Germany for it but why couldn’t that be —
IL: Absolutely.
KW: Fitted on that and they just ignore that and so there we are.
IL: It’s just one example of a lot of the sort of inequities of the — you know. It’s a personal one but obviously Bomber Command itself had you know. —
KW: Well —
IL: Didn’t get, didn’t get it’s recognition.
KW: No. No. No.
IL: Did you or your friends have any particular feelings about that?
KW: Well, not only myself and my friends but numbers of others have certainly had.
IL: Absolutely.
KW: But it wasn’t recognised. There we are.
Other: Well, when you look at the death rates.
KW: Yeah.
Other: You know. The casualty rates were huge, weren’t they?
KW: Yeah.
KW: They certainly were.
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 Kenneth White
Creator
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Ian Locker
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AWhiteKWJ170807
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:54:43 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
Kenneth White trained as an air gunner. He was not sent to an Operational Training Unit but was sent straight to a squadron at RAF Oulton. He flew in B-17s with a special operator on board. On one occasion during an air test there was a fire on board which led to particular tension because two members of the crew who had not taken their parachutes with them. After the war Kenneth joined the police and rose through the ranks in CID. After retirement from the police he joined RAF security.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-03-08
1944-05-27
169 Squadron
214 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
B-17
bombing
memorial
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Oulton
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/464/8346/AAngusK160608.2.mp3
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Title
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Angus, Kenneth
K Angus
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Angus, K
Description
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One oral history interview with Kenneth Angus.
Date
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2016-06-08
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Transcription
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IL. It’s the 8th of June roughly ten past two in the afternoon I’m Ian Locker and I am interviewing Kenneth Angus in his home in Elloughton near Hull. We are going to talk mainly about Ken’s Brother.John Henry who was in Bomber Command and was sadly killed at the age of twenty.
IL. Ken tell us a little bit about your early life and your Brothers early life.
KA.Well I was either eleven or twelve when the war started, my Brother was in in the volunteer, the RAF Volunteer Reserve and so was my Father. My Father was in the Air Force as well cause he was in. I never knew what he did to be quite honest I never saw him for five years all the time the war was on. He was at Cranwell actually, what he did I have no idea. He actually was in the First World War and he was wounded and came back, went back again. He was wounded again and he came back, actually came to Hull came to Withernsea actually and married my Mother. That was, when he came out of the Army there were no jobs, so he joined the Air Force and he was in, he is a very very close man. He wouldn’t tell about his experiences. A lot of this I didn’t know I only found out from my Sister. Anyway the both of them, my Brother and my Father were in the Volunteer Reserve, just before, well 1939 soon as War was declared Harry went into [Interupted by IL]
IL. So how did your Brother get involved with the Volunteer Reserve.
KA. I have no idea.
IL. I see.
KA. Actually my Father, I think it was extra money to be quite honest with you, It’s like the Territorial’s, you join. I used to know people in the Territorial’s and they just joined for the extra cash. As far as I know but my Father was such a close person.He never discussed his home life, as I say at the beginning of the war, well I’ll show you a photo in a minute, he was a Sergeant. Yeah em a Sergeant or something, he had three stripes anyway, I only ever saw him once, when I was stationed, when I joined the Army I went to Babington in Dorset and from there I went to Farnborough, just outside Farnborough. We had tanks stationed at the you know Farnborough Airport, De Havillands actually. He was coming there for something to do with the Air Force he said I’ll meet you there we will have some lunch and that’s it, the only time I ever saw him in five years. Eh we weren’t really close, my eldest Brother Harry was more close to the kids, you see there was six of us we were err you know a huge family. I remember, I do remember him actually because when he was killed I was evacuated. When my Mother told me at that time it didn’t register it em registers now but it didn’t register at that time. My Mother was devastated obviously, when em he went in.I don’t know a great deal about it, as soon as the war started I was off. I went to place near Helmsley and stayed there about two years I think it was and eh. I was away when he was killed, my Mother wrote to me and told me it didn’t register at all really and that was it. Anyway my Father he did his full time he did the war, full time he was there and em, we were em. It’s such a long time ago its very difficult to remember. When I was evacuated I went on a farm it was beaut. It was really good I was with two old, and old couple and they were brilliant they were the Salt of the Earth. Didn’t smoke, didn’t have electricity, we used to read by candle light, no hot water and yet we lived off the fat of the land you might say because he was a Farmer. I used to help him em I used to do everything virtually and drive a tractor and all sorts of things. I stayed there, would be about a couple of years. In the meantime my Mother was, my Mother stayed in Hull and then we were bombed, we got an incendiary bomb through the back porch, well through the house. It came through the roof, set fire to the house and my Mother had to move.
IL. So where about were you living in Hull at this time?
KA.In Jallen Street off Holderness Road. And eh I remember as I say lots of it’s very hazy. I was looking after myself actually I’ve always looked after myself, always been independent right from day one and I think that all the family has actually. Anyway, we, I went there and when my Mother, my Mother went to Wombwell, she had a friend, he was on the Council. He found her a house in Wombwell, it was just outside Wombwell. Eh she went there‘cause I was on the Farm you see. Anyway after about a couple of years my Mother said, she came back to Hull again so I came, I left the Farm and I went back to Hull with her and I stayed there. We were in the thick of the, you see I don’t remember a real lot. I do remember one thing and it’s vivid. They dropped a stick of Bombs down Holderness Road and I tell you exactly where they dropped them because I went out the next day to see the holes in the ground. They were bloody awful a huge hole, they dropped one, you won’t know it. There was a cinema called Savoy on Holderness Road they dropped one just on the main road there. They dropped one further down the er em, the main road, I forget what they call it. They dropped one there, there was a Bank on the corner, they dropped one there. They dropped one on the corner of Vies Park and three big holes, I’ve never seen holes like it to be quite honest.
IL.So where were you when these bombs were falling?
KA. We were in a shelter.[laugh].
IL. Where did you shelter in Hull, was it in your garden ?
KA. You know I can’t remember, I just can’t remember. We had a shelter in the garden in Jallen Street. We were moved around, my Mother moved around two or three times. She went from Jallen Street to eh a house, oh, somewhere near Nornabelle Street which is further up the road. Quite honestly a lot of this is very hazy it was seventy years ago. Anyway there are certain things stick in my mind once when they dropped the bombs, I was cured. You know they didn’t frighten me. I wasn’t really as far as I know I just went, I went to have a look at the holes. Of course all I saw was pipes and gas pipes and water pipes and sewage mains oh. As I say another time, another, I remember a Heinkel came over, I watched it come over it was so low I could see the Pilot, we were waving to him actually [laugh] with two fingers. He came over and I could actually see him flying the plane. He came over ever so low and behind him was a Spitfire and he chased him and they shot him down. The Pilot we heard, the Pilot waited until he got out of the built up area and he shot him down, I don’t know what happened after that. But em those are the two memories in my.
IL. Did anybody, I suppose there were civilian casualties, did anybody you know get hurt or killed?
KA. No funnily enough there might have been but I wasn’t family orientated in those days. To be quite honest it was like living a dream, I was on my own, I was evacuated on my own, I looked after myself. My Mother used to write to me occasionally, I never saw my Father. My Mother used to write whenever she could but you see having said that, there was my younger Brother and my younger Sister they were evacuated as well and to be quite honest I don’t really know where they went. I know now but I didn’t then. Because it was just like living a dream, it happened a long time ago and em. Anyway we em, what happened eh what actually, I can remember coming back to Jallen Street when they did the repairs and we moved back in.
IL. Was that during the War?
KA.Yeah, this was during the War 1943/44 and em, I left school actually when I was at Helmsley I was at Wombwell School,I was fourteen then I left school then. I remember the day I left school I went to work in an office a Colliery Office, Mitchell Main Colliery and I worked there, I was an Office Boy. Funnily enough I got on with the Agent who was the Managing Director,he was the Big White Chief. He took a shine to me funnily enough. He was a real, he was a pig actually to everybody else. You went down the Mine and they used to say Thornhills coming cause he used to have on his hat, instead of having just an ordinary lantern he used to have a beam so that when they were down the mine they could see when he was coming. Thornhills on his way, but you know, funnily enough he took a shine to me for some reason, I don’t know why. I had to go and get his sandwiches and take his briefcase to his car. I once took his bloody keys, he had a Jaguar, I once took his keys, I took his briefcase to his car, locked the car put the keys in my pocket, went home. Of course, he couldn’t get home, anyway I thought “what do I do”” I found the keys and thought “what do I do?” I could lie and tell him I left them on his desk or I could tell the truth. Anyway I thought “he knows,I know he knows.” Because what I did before he came in I put his keys on his desk you see. He said “where were my keys last night?” I said “in my pocket” He said “it’s a good job you said that because if you had said anything else you would have been through that door” “Now then” he said what’s you punishment?” I said, well I was only a lad, I was only fourteen, fourteen and a half something like that, I said “down to you” He had a big board he used to do his drawings on. He said “bend over that bench” Whack. He said “there you are forget it now” Later on he said “Would you like to go to Night School? I will pay your fees and your books, I will pay for everything and you take shorthand typing and book keeping” so I said “ok”and I went and I went to night school and I took this on.After that we left, I just left and I can’t remember leaving. Certain incidents that live in your mind, we had Mitchell Main, Dalfield Main, Dalfield Main was a subsidiary of Mitchell Main and the Manager at Dalfield Main, I don’t know. I knew him but I didn’t know anything about him. Anyway Thornhill said to me this day “I want you to take this letter to Mr what ever his name was and hand it to him personally, don’t give it to anyone else, give it to him personally.” So I thought “right” so I goes down, knocks on his door, his wife comes to the door, I say is “Mr so and so in?” “Oh he is still in bed” So I say “I’ve got to give him this letter personally” so she says “you had better come in then” So I handed it to him, it was his notice, it were unbelievable.
IL. Industrial relations would be.
KA. It were funny, I didn’t understand what was going on. But funnily he was squat thick set, he was a terror. People were frightened of him, really frightened of him and I wasn’t, I was in awe of him probably, but he didn’t frighten me. And em, he had a streak, I don’t know what it was, there was nothing funny about him ere m but he was. Anyway in the end my Mother came back to Hull and I followed her and I came back to Hull you see. This was during the war, they dropped the, when I was at home they dropped the bombs. That was my, but its six, it’s seventy years ago which is a long time to remember, but things do stick in your mind.
IL. Yes and I suppose its, I don’t know, most people don’t have much danger in their lives.
KA. To be quite honest I never thought of danger, it never bothered me. When I was on the farm there was a couple called Joe Wood and his wife was a reclusive. She wouldn’t answer the door to anyone, she wouldn’t go to the door. She was the kindest person you ever met and yet she wouldn’t talk to people, she used to, she used to call me Kenniff, Kenniff, but she was kindness itself. Both of them were but they were very insular people you know, never went into the village. I used to I, so I joined the choir, I was in the choir there actually and things like that.
IL. In Helmsley?
KA. Yes it was in Oswaldkirk, its next to Ampleforth, we used to go to Ampleforth School, not Ample, not College because when people say where were you educated, I say Ampleforth [laugh] which is, one was the village school, one was the top ranking, it were Roman Catholic College, yeah. We used to go there because we used to get an invite to go beagling from the College. We used to take the dogs out and go after hares and things like that. Oh no, it was a life, a secular life, I looked after myself I bought my own clothes, I did everything, I made. I used to catch rabbits, I’d sell them at the Market, Helmsley Market em, I used to make, I used to sell them, two for a shilling and probably about three or four pairs of rabbits and sell them. I used to buy Wellingtons, trousers things like that. You know I never saw any of my family at all, I was on my own and I have always been like that. I’ve been like that ever since, you get like that don’t you yeah, but it seems you know. Now my Father, the whole Family, my Brothers died, my eldest Sisters dead and my Brother above me died last year. He was in the Air Force he was in Bomber Command as well and there is em me. No then there is my younger Brother he died he was in the Military Police the Red Caps and there is only me left. My Sister who was the youngest Joan, there is only the two of us left out of six of us, you know. It’s sad really, I’ve had a charmed life actually [laugh] when you think about it, you know it’s em. But eh, but we, you see my Father, he never spoke about his childhood, he never spoke about his Mother and Father, he was brought up by his eh, eh, Grandma. His Grandma married three times. His Grandma married an alcoholic, he also married someone with a lot of money and somebody else I don’t know but he never spoke about it. We didn’t know eh, my Grandma Waddington she was filthy rich I’d say, she left a fortune. She left it to my sist my Father’s step Sister. Her Husband was the, the Daughter was the offshoot of the one she married. My Father got, we got a thousand pound when she died and my Grandma got thirty two thousand, eh aunty Nellie got thirty two thousand. You equate that seventy years ago it was about half a million quid, most probably more than that then. But, em I know we got, we got a thousand and I’ll never, we sat round the table and it came in white five pound notes, we got cash, white five pound notes in a rolls,with plastic bands on and we passed it round [laugh]. That’s when we bought Jallen Street, my Father bought Jallen Street, that was five hundred quid, the house was five hundred quid. Nice house as well, beautiful house. Eh you know my Fathers dead now and my Mothers dead. But em he was very em, very secular, he he he wouldn’t speak, he never spoke about his army career. He never told us what he did in the Air Force em. He never said anything you know, the only information I have is from the youngest Sister,‘cause Joan is the youngest. She was the Darling of the Family and my Father sort of doted on her a little bit more. I used to get my back side kicked [laugh] but he was, funnily enough towards the end of his life he did change. He changed eh, when I first, when my first Wife eh, we were married when I was twenty two and my first wife died when I was forty and eh I met Beryl and we have been married now forty odd years. But eh, Beryl and my Father got on like a house on fire. I think my Father was a little bit eh, a little bit upper class more than my Mother. My Mother was Hessle Road you might say and my Father was eh eh, he had a Class about him funny how he had a class about him eh, and you talk to him and he got on with Beryl very well, Beryl said he was an unreal chap. I remember him when he was a bloody old tyrant, you know. But this is it he had six kids, whither, I don’t know whither I don’t know if it was the marriage, if he was happy, I don’t think he was that happy to be quite honest. Eh my Mother went her own way and my Father went his own way and I just have a feeling em, that my Grandma Waddington was em em, she had two cars actually, the days nobody had cars and she had two. Two Rovers, and she used to come and visit us, not very often, we used, when she was good she used to, you know fox furs and all every thing else and flaunting, when she went out we used to stand there, she used to give us half a crown. I suppose it was alright in these days, no I eh eh you as I say my Father, he never. I’ve a feeling my Father I don’t know, was he illegitimate, there was something he never spoke about at all until his last, till he was about seventy, seventy five. Then he opened up to my Sister, yeah my younger Sister and she knows more about him than I do. The information I have I got it only from Joan. It’s funny. Anyway.
IL.A different generation.
KA. That’s our war you might say.
IL. Ok what about your Brother Harry then?
KA. Well Harry as I say he was called up straight away, in fact I’ve got the details here, I’ve got the photographs. We didn’t have photographs, we didn’t have cameras we weren’t allowed cameras in those days and em yes, John Henry Angus aged twenty, he was at RAF Waddington, he died 17th of the ninth, 1940 his service number was 751690 he was in 44 Squadron, em eh. He got three war medals, he got Aircrew Europe, War Medal and 1945. He was only in as I say he died in 1940, 1939 the war started in, he would only have been in the Service a year when he trained and was flying. He was shot down over Burcht just outside Antwerp and think he was bombing barges actually. They were building barges to invade in these days, the Operation Sea Lion. I think it was something like that, and they were building barges at Antwerp and I think that is what he was bombing. That is what I have heard, he was in a Hampden, MK1 Hampden a KM MK1 Hampden series number P2121. I got all this off the Internet. But that’s em, so basically he was only in the Air Force and he trained and he was Aircrew.
IT. What did he do, what was he in the aeroplane?
KA. He was eh, no then, I think he was a WOPAG, Wireless Operator Air Gunner. I’m not sure about that, I struggle with a Master Signaller. That was the Brother [garbled] he was in the war as well. When we were in Wombwell he went down the mines actually. He didn’t get, he didn’t get an option as soon as he was sixteen he went down the mines and he went down the mines for two years.Then when he came out the mines, when we came back to Hull. He couldn’t go down the mines then, he joined the Air Force and he was in the Air Force all his life he, he, started off, he was in Bomber Command and what I can gather he was bombing Germany. When the war finished he was on the Berlin Airlift, humping coal. He was flying coal backwards and forwards. He then went in, well when Bomber Command finished he went into Transport Command and then as I say he was on the Berlin Airlift. He has had a chequered career, fantastic career. He went to Australia when they set the Atom Bomb off he took the animals, took some of the monkeys out there when they exploded the Atom Bomb. He was in India when they petitioned Pakistan. He was flying people backwards and forwards, he was there for three years I think. Then he went to Cyprus, he was in Cyprus flying all over the place. Then he went to Benson where the Queens Flight was and he was on the Queens Flight he was eh, Master Signaller a [garbled] he was telling me they have offered me a Commission and I have worked it out I get more money being a Master Signaller than I do being a Flight Lieutenant. So he said I don’t want it I will stay as I am and he stayed as a Master Signaller right through his career. He actually, Oh then he went to Leuchars in Scotland he was on Helicopters. He was at Driffield on Thor Missiles when the Missile Base was there. What else did he do, oh he’s been to Sweden he’s been to America he’s been all over. Then when he came out of, when he retired, I mean this is going back, he was in the Air Force thirty odd years. When he retired he joined Dan Air, he went to Dan Air and Dan Air was taken over by British Airways. So when he was, when he, when he retired when he finished completely he got a pension from British Airways. He was stationed, actually it was, it was never, again. It just shows you how sick our family is, he had six children or five or six or five I think, I’ve never seen any of them because they were all born abroad. Two was born in Cyprus one was born in India I think it was. [garbled] peculiar life, well not a peculiar life, he was stationed at, well he was stationed at Abingdon and em, he stayed there. Well he was in the Air Force right until he retired out the Air Force and then he joined Dan Air.
IL. Was he in Abingdon during the War or was this subsequent to the War?
KA. No I don’t know where he was when he was actually bombing I don’t know. We weren’t really in contact with each other then. I know he was at Benson because when I came back to Hull, I went on to, I started driving, transport. I started of my career in transport I used to go there I used to go to Benson stay the night and I used to do London, I used to go to London backwards and forwards. So I used to go to Benson, stay there the night, go onto London and come back. Eh as I say, this is, this is when the Atom Bomb was exploded because he said, he said come on we will have a walk around the airfield and there were Viking’s of the Queens Flight, Valetta’s and Viking’s and he showed me one, went in one. There were steel cages in there and he said “what do you think those are for?” I said “I have no idea, prisoners, is it for carting prisoners” He said “no he said, I can’t tell you now because we are sworn to secrecy but you will read about it” and sure enough he took a load of monkeys out in this cage. So these are the things I remember you know and where else was he? Ah he was in Cyprus for three years and its em, Akrotiri I think it was em, where else? He was in the North West Frontier, he was in India for three years, he was at Karachi I think it was and em. It was, they were flying, cause in those days see, I didn’t understand what they were doing in India. I didn’t know that they were petitioning and the Muslims were going North and the Hindus were going south but he said there were a lot of people killed. He said there was a massacre, he said we were flying officials out. I remember he was on the front page of em, one of the big newspapers, new magazine, Tattler or something like that, showed him throwing rice out to the Indians, Hindus. He said, they used the front page and he said, that’s me, well you could see it was him. He said “I got a bollocking for that” I said “why” he said “because I didn’t have a belt on, I should have been strapped in and I was just slinging these bags out” [laugh]. He has had a terrific career, he was on the Berlin Air Lift I said “ what were you doing there” he said “ we were humping coal and we had three minutes to land, unload and take off again. If you missed the slot you had to go round with a full load. You couldn’t, if for some reason you were late or something you had to take his load back, fly round and then come back again” He said, because there were God knows how many aircraft, well they brought everything into Berlin. He was on coal actually I said “did you hump coal then?” he said “No”
IL. Well he had his previous training didn’t he?
KA. Then he was in, they had a little sideline going that was it, they used to take coffee into Berlin then used to go somewhere just outside Berlin and buy ornaments, glassware take the glassware back. Take the coffee there, do a bit of training. He was on Dakota’s actually at that time he was on a Dakota. He said, he said funny thing is the one he was on he said “ we only had to whistle and the floor boards jumped”[laugh] No he has, yes he is very unassuming you know. No he has had a terrific life.
IL. So do you know anything about his Second World War Service, did he complete a tour or ?
KA. I don’t know all I can say I know when he was bombing Berlin he said “we used to take off, circle round gain height, join a Squadron” and then he said “we used to fly over, when we got over the Channel when we got into France you could actually see the glow of Berlin burning” he said “when you were flying over, as soon as you got over Berlin you plane just Woof! The air currents, the hot air current coming up used to lift your plane up” he said “we used to drop the bloody bombs and scarper” He never really eh never, never bragged about anything I mean. I said “did you ever fly any of the Royal Family?” he said “well we used to fly” he never flew the Queen,he never flew the Duke of Edinburgh. He said “we used to fly a lot of officials, next to you know, next to the Queen. They used to use the Queens Flight for all sorts of things actually. I said “did you ever fly the Queen” he said “no, no” em but he never really said anything, he said em. you know only through away questions you might say. But em you know. He said “when we were in India, these bloody Afghans, we used to fly over Afghanistan the Afghans then had these pop guns, these blunder buses. We used to fly in low, you know go in to the North” and he said “they’d be there with these guns firing at us they didn’t have a cat in hells chance of hitting us” but you know he is. That was Cyril but he died last year, his wife had died quite a few years ago, she was a real nice girl but she died of Cancer, all these things.
IL Just coming back to Harry then, have you been over to,did?
KA. No
IL. Do you have a grave in Antwerp?
KA. I have a photograph of it.
IL We’ll take some photographs.
KA. I keep saying I’ll go, we’ve been, since we’ve been married and that we’ve been everywhere and its Antwerp is one place I’ve never been. I keep saying you know we ought to go we ought to go. I’ve been to the Somme, the World War Battlefields, I’ve been to Normandy as well, Dun, you know where they invaded in the last war, the last war yeah. No it’s a place, I keep say, you know. It’s too late now to be quite honest. He’s buried with the other, there were five crew,they are all buried together apparently. I’ve got a photograph of the grave my Mother was. I am really doing this for my Mother, I hope you feel that maybe I was a bit outside looking in. I was in business, you know what business is like you are working eight, seven days a week twenty four hours a day virtually, you know. Bit em, sometimes we did all right I mean eh, funny I had a good job. I worked for George Halton at one time and em I was there five years. I knew Dick Halton, the Managing Director in fact it is his son in law who got me the job there. I was friendly with Frank Briar, he was the. Well it was actually Frank’s wife Sister, Dicks, I don’t know, there is some relation anyway. He was a real nice guy he’s dead now In fact his son now is in [unreadable] his son has taken the business over and eh, do you, do you know?
IL. I know that some of the Children were at school with my kids, my kids were at Highmers and I know the name and I would have met them at certain.
KA. This would have been the generation before them.
IL Absolutely as I say the next generation would be at school with my kids.
KA. Dicks son was only a boy when I was working for Halton’s. There were three of them Dick, George and Peter. Peter and Dick were the main stay of Halton’s. George was too much and you very rarely saw him. Dick I knew very well actually in fact he said to me when I told him I was leaving and going on me own he said “if it doesn’t go right, come back but I hope it does” Well it, the trouble is when you start on your own you can’t fail, you just can’t fail you’ve got to put the hours to do this you’ve got to do that.
IL Yeah.
KA.I don’t know, we did all right. I’ve been retired now for twenty four years now. As I say we had the Garage at Anlaby, one of the Garages in Anlaby it’s a tyre place now its opposite, used to be Jacksons and then it went into a Supermarket.
IL Yes I know exactly where it is.
KA. We took it over, it was called Someleys actually, Gordon and Roy Someley, eh they owned the old. His Father was a Blacksmiths there in Anlaby in the days of Blacksmiths and eh, Roy sold out and Mogel bought it and I took it over. It was state of the art, when it was built it was state of the art. I’ve got photographs of it. We had state of the art pumps and all sorts. I mean now they are old fashioned but in these days they were really, really something you know. No I was there about thirty odd years I think. I had another garage, I had two down Sutton Road as well. One is still there funnily enough, one of them, you know where the new, the bridge, you remember the old bridge?
IL. I don’t, I don’t know that part of Hull that well.
KA. Well it used to be a real narrow, narrow iron bridge, if two cars went across you couldn’t get across. Anyway they have taken it away and put a huge bridge there. Right on the corner there is a big roundabout there now, right on the corner there is a garage there now, well I had that one as well. But no I mean things have changed a lot [laugh] But as I say Harry I don’t know, it was actually a friend of mine that told me about this and eh, she’s got two cousins that are flyers as well and they got the, she gave me the information. In fact she gave me the information, this is em. Because I didn’t know anything about it and its em eh. No this was just the two people I had to get in touch with, Peter Jones and Helen Durham.
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Title
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Interview with Kenneth Angus
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Ian Locker
Date
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2016-06-08
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00:42:24 audio recording
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AAngusK160608
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Pending review
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Type
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Sound
Description
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Kenneth Angus lived in Hull, and was 12 when war was declared. He discusses life on a farm after being evacuated, the bombing of Hull and his brother Harry Angus, who was killed flying as a wireless operator / air gunner with 44 Squadron from RAF Waddington.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Hugh Donnelly
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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
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Hull
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1943
1945
44 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
Hampden
He 111
home front
incendiary device
killed in action
RAF Cranwell
RAF Waddington
Spitfire
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/979/11390/AMarshallKW160208.2.mp3
b4c875c317b085602882d78793863efa
Dublin Core
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Title
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Marshall, Ken
Kenneth Wilfred Marshall
K W Marshall
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ken Marshall (3041150, Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 103 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
2016-02-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Marshall, KW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: It’s the 8th of, 8th of February 2016. Ian Locker. And I’m interviewing Ken Marshall in his home in Hornsea. So, Ken tell us about your early life and how you developed a love of flying.
KM: In 1937 I was already at the grammar school and I went with one of the thousand —
IL: So whereabouts were you born Ken?
KM: Barton on Humber.
IL: You were born in Barton.
KM: My grandfather was the vicar of Barton on Humber.
IL: Right.
KM: Reverend HGC North-Cox. And I also knew the man that started the Samaritans. Chad Varah. Reverend. I knew him as a boy. And I kept in touch with him all my life because I was connected with aspects of family law and about suicides etcetera. In 1937 I went to what they called the Empire Air Display at Hemswell. And it’s very important in my thinking because the planes there were called Hampdens and Heyfords and Blenheims. The interesting thing about the Heyfords and the Hampdens they had an under gun turret. They could look downwards. And the Lancaster never, afterwards never had one. But pre-war they designed the planes to have a gunner looking downwards. Which could have saved a great lots of lives if they’d had one connected to the Lancaster. So that was the Empire Air Display and of course by 1938 across the river at Hull, at Brough they were making aeroplanes and fantastic numbers of trainer planes, were being trained as pilots there. So I saw a lot of aircraft. Then there was a special plane or two came to Barton with a man called Sir Alan Cobham. He was a famous flyer pre-war and when they would hire a field bring their planes and people could, could fly to — have flips for the first time. And I didn’t go. I asked my father but never mind. But that was that.
IL: It’s recording. It’s recording, Ken. Don’t worry.
KM: I went to grammar school and the grammar school headmaster was an ex-wartime stretcher bearer. Great. Great man was this headmaster. We loved him. Oh by the way in 1938 at the grammar school we all turned out because the Germans, the Nazis got permission to fly the Hindenburg up the River Humber. And we all turned out to watch this huge cigar thing fly across the river. Come across England. Of course it was the Hindenburg and of course it was a disastrous end for it because it caught fire when it was there in America. But we all saw that. That was 1938.
IL: Gosh.
KM: A year before the job started in that sense. But then September the 3rd was, was in 1939 the war started and, and we were all amongst filling sandbags and digging trenches and hearing air raid sirens.
IL: So how old were you when the war started?
KM: Pardon?
IL: How old were you when the war started?
KM: Well. I was born 1926.
IL: Right.
KM: So, that gives you some indication. And my brother was a naval officer and he went right through the war. He was torpedoed mid-Atlantic and saved by a Canadian Corvette. He was a Marconi man. Chief radio officer. Always going from ship to ship. Interesting that my brother was away. I always wanted to fly Catalinas if I got trained on those because my brother would be below on the sea and I could look after him from up in the air. That was the feeling. That was the feeling. But anyway the headmaster one morning he said that there was a concern called the Air Training Corps started. And I would be fourteen or fifteen at the time. And dad and I went down to Cobb Hall and there was a man there with his wings. Looked about three feet across them. He was the manager, RAF VR, of Eastwood Cement Works in South Ferriby. But he was the CO and it was there that I got my first introduction to any flying at all. In the Air Training Corps apart from doing all these studies to get to university and the war time, all that sort of thing nevertheless we had trips to, to camps. Air Training Corps camps. There was, Digby was one in Lincolnshire. Kirton Lindsey was another one. And an organised one that took us up to Elsham. I flew in a Wellington bomber there. And I’ve never forgotten the pilot. He was called Sergeant Spooner. He was an Australian. He did twelve trips. A marvellous chap. He really was. That was the first time I’d ever left the ground in anything at all. And his name, he was lost and his name is recorded in the Memorial Book in the RAF 103 Squadron, Elsham. Whatever. In that sense. So the grammar school was another thing that introduced me. A great day when I — I never got a scholarship. I was paid for. Four guineas a term to go and followed my brother. And anyway I joined the Air Training Corps and I passed all the, very quickly passed all the proficiency badges and was chosen to go down to Lincoln to stay with a family on a Friday night and a Saturday night and where we assembled gliders on, on Lincoln Common. And I was being taught to fly gliders at the age of sixteen, seventeen. Interesting isn’t it? How exciting it was.
IL: So how did they get the —
KM: I went down by bus.
IL: Were they, were they towed gliders then?
KM: No. No.
IL: They weren’t winched.
KM: They had a balloon winch.
IL: Right.
KM: They had been altered so they could do ground slides and then six feet up and so forth.
IL: Ok.
KM: Until finally if you were, they cast off. But it was only a short, short flight. That was all. But to be doing that. It was exciting as a boy wasn’t it?
IL: Absolutely.
KM: It wasn’t the, and for — so there we are. So that was my introduction to flying in one way or another. Going to ATC and I would frequently go on my bicycle up to Elsham. I’d pass the guardroom. They waved me in. I’d go to the crew room and say, ‘Sir, are you flying today? Is there anybody?’ And I frequently flew in Lancasters thereafter. And I must tell you about one of the trips. We were out on the North Sea at about ten thousand feet coming in. It wasn’t operational. Air test. And I said to the gunner, the rear gunner, ‘May I sit in the rear?’ And he said yes. Which I did. And then suddenly somebody said, ‘Ah there’s Treetops Bathing Pool down there. That’s where we do our dinghy drill,’ If they got ditched in the sea. And the skipper put it into a nose dive and that, that Lancaster shook from side to side as we went down. I was going down backwards of course. And I never forgot that. But two weeks later I was at a local dance, this is before I went away. I saw this rear gunner and he recognised me. I was in Air Training Corps uniform still. Not having yet gone to the University Air Squadron. And he was, he was a sergeant once but he didn’t have any sergeant’s stripes but he had his air brevet and he used to tell me he was stood down with flu and he didn’t fly because they didn’t and he lost his crew that night. And he refused to fly with anybody else. So he was on the ground and he was kept where he was. And I don’t want to talk any more about that. He was kept there. They took his sergeant’s stripes but they couldn’t take his air brevet from him but he didn’t I think he said he’d done ten or twelve trips. Whatever. And as I say it’s not easy. You see, I can’t [pause] First flight in a Wellington bomber, yes. What’s the next one? The Air Training Corps. What? What? Can you switch it on and off?
IL: Oh yes.
KM: [unclear]
[recording paused]
KM: In a similar way I went to Kirmington and rode in there. And I managed to get a flight in an Airspeed Oxford which I was later to learn to fly on. Stop.
[recording paused]
KM: Start it again.
IL: Ok.
KM: At Elsham there was, there was originally a Halifax flight there. And I once saw a Halifax coming in on fire on one of my trips. Wheels up. And the fire tender was alongside it by the time it skidded to a stop. Covered it with foam and they all got out. But it’s a dodgy job even to see that.
IL: Oh absolutely.
[recording paused]
KM: I was junior champ.
IL: Two seconds. Go on. Sorry Ken.
KM: I was junior champ and then later I was [victor] of Durham twice as senior in the sports. I was always in to everything active like that. But at the grammar school a group captain came down from Elsham called Constantine. And I received books because I’d matriculated to go to Cambridge University at the age of sixteen and eight months. And I’m very proud of that because of what kids don’t do today. But, but it was that qualification that I chose to use to go to Durham because I already had two friends. One older than I in my own class who eventually became a wing commander. Wing commander John Cannon flying jets and things later on in life. But, but and later in life Constantine became an air vice marshal and I have pictures of him with what was to be another university man later in my life of course from Manchester University. So, so at seventeen and a quarter I volunteered to be RAF VR. Three days at Doncaster doing all the exams and etcetera. And so that was the idea. And then eventually came a letter telling me, as I say I was still doing these gliders at weekends but eventually I got the call to arms. I called it that because that was, ‘”Dear sir,” from the Air Ministry. “Report to Durham University Air Squadron. Your obedient servant, sir.” Its rather a laugh really when you —
IL: So —
KM: That was 1943.
IL: Did they — were you, was — did you actually get paid at university then?
KM: No.
IL: Or was it —
KM: No.
IL: It was just —
KM: Pocket money came from my parents.
IL: Right. It wasn’t, it wasn’t like the sort of scholarships that you get now at university.
KM: Are you still —? Oh. Yeah. No. And I’ll talk about that. Whilst I was at, on a half term out of the university I was invited to go to Goxhill which was the United States Air Force to fly in a Lightning but, a two seater but it was unserviceable. So they said, ‘There’s a new pilot here. Could you, could you navigate him. Map read him to Burtonwood in Lancashire.’ Or Cheshire. I said, ‘Certainly.’ So I did the trip in the front of a Boston bomber with a pilot and the crew chief. Just the three of us. And I was eighteen and a half then. When I look at boys today of eighteen and a half and what we were doing or could do or willing to do in those days. So, so University Air Squadron was marvellous. Marvellous. I lived in the castle. I was at University College. My two friends who were lifelong friends. One was from Spain. He’d come from Spain. His mother was Spanish and he went to Barnard Castle Public School, public school and then came and Durham, and then came on to the university. That’s where I met him. And his roommate was George Malcolm Brown who eventually was classified to be a navigator and trained as a navigator in Canada and who later in life became the vice chancellor back at Durham. In the time I recall I lost them both. But marvellous to think of those friends. I kept them all my life. And when I got my, a degree and would go back to university in ’75 to ’78 and got my law degree Johnnie came all the way from Scotland. I’ve got photographs of us all together, staying at Durham with the vice chancellor. Fantastic story isn’t it? The things that have gone on. But it was a wonderful time. There was sixty of us from all, all backgrounds and throughout the country and half were arts and half were science. I did science, physics and maths and got in to BSc. I got my first recommendation for a commission at the end of the course and which would have then taken me I don’t doubt into Cranwell because I was offered it. But the first, the next move was into the Royal Air Force proper. And that was down at, down at Torquay.
IL: So in the, in the University Air Squadron did you actually fly? Or was — were you still doing navigating?
KM: No. No. No. We took, the whole ITW they called it when it wasn’t at the university. It was all the same subject. The armaments, the signals, some flying we did we did because we had, we wore battle dress and we were being taught to fly Airspeed Oxfords.
IL: Right.
KM: Those twin engine jobs. So we did some flying as well. And my pilot was a Sikh. A flight lieutenant. Very unusual. I’ve got photographs of him with his Sikh whatever on. He used to get in the plane first because you never saw him without his [ pause ] and the reverse thing when he landed. I would have to get out first and by the time he reappeared then he would have his whatever. But there were people from all over. And we used to go down to the swimming baths at 7 o’clock in the morning for an hour. Everybody had to learn to swim and there were only two out the sixty that couldn’t which gave an indication of the sort of young fellows we were that we all made big efforts in all because the numbers of swimming pools there were in the country were very — but we were all very active in that sense.
[recording paused]
IL: Go on again.
KM: We left Durham and we all had to report down at Torquay. The Germans got to know we were there because the Torquay people had never had a bomb. Americans had been there in the hotels before. And destroyed the hotel next to where we were. Fortunately there was nobody in it. But the Germans certainly knew. They were trying to kill aircrew. There’s no question about it because that’s where everybody went at that particular time. Of our ilk anyway.
[recording paused]
KM: Torquay was an ACRC. Air Crew Reception Centre. We did three months there. Discipline. Marching backwards and forwards. Learning other subjects. Getting medical tests as well to see we hadn’t been naughty with girls and things like that which [laughs] we never knew anything about them anyway. And we were, so three months there discip and learning air ministry, learning the air force law. Air force law. What’s it called? Anyway there were two books that we had to get to know about air force law. So, well if you’re going to be an officer and you had to hand out law and a time for misdemeanours whatever they might be they were still all part of it. From there I went to Bridgnorth and that was just another holding place. And from Bridgnorth we went to, some of us were distributed to RAF stations to pass the time. I went up to Full Sutton. I was there in that bad winter at the beginning of ’45 and it was a Halifax station. And I do recall loading. I worked in the bomb dump preparing five hundred pound bombs and putting them on trolleys. And the armourers, they, they armed them. But I do recall that one, one particular day it was nothing but incendiaries and the incendiaries went, went to Dresden. And I don’t give a damn about that because they weren’t making cuckoo clocks. They were making bits for Heinkels and Messerschmitts. So no matter what the historians try and say, oh we should never have done this but against the background of what the Nazis were doing that we learned later they got their whatever we called it. But I remember because one of the containers broke open and Peter Greenwood who I remained with, he was at Oxford and I was with him then. He remembered an armourer knocking one a brick. They were only about eighteen inches long. We just stood in the snow. Eighteen inches of snow on that particular time. But that was RAF Full Sutton. Interestingly, my doctor friend had a plane in Full Sutton in September of 2015. I went flying with him there at Full Sutton. After all those years. At Full Sutton. There’s a, there’s a prison there now with the most heinous criminals left in there. But to go back after all those years and start flying again. But I’d flown at other places in between. But anyway, on return away from Full Sutton went to flying school which was up at Carlisle. On Tiger Moths. And I, and I went solo at eight and a half hours in Tiger Moths. The instructor said I’d done two perfect circuits and he said, ‘Righto. She’s yours. Just go.’ And you had, you had to do well. I wanted to do. But there was a very good initiation thing going on there. When we arrived in our billets that first night there were some guys being tossed in blankets. And that was an initiation. Get on the blanket and three times because they’d soloed that day. But what I didn’t know at the time there was one of, one of our chaps. He went at six hours. I was to find out that the instructors there both commissioned and non-commissioned they were like bookies. They were acting like bookies with horses. The odds on horses. And they were having bets on us as to who could go first. They were risking our necks to make money out of us. We didn’t know that actually happened. We did learn that. It was fourteen hours whether you went solo or not. It didn’t make any difference if you, if you graduated out of there to be further trained that was where it happened. And that was at Carlisle. Kingstown Carlisle. But then where I actually did my flying was from a place in Scotland called Patrick, Kirkpatrick Fleming. It’s just over the border from Gretna Green. I always remember this place. And when I landed the first thing I did, I didn’t kiss the instructor I kissed the ground of Scotland naturally.
[recording paused]
KM: We were in and out of this place called Heaton Park at Manchester and I loved being at Manchester because it was always between being sent somewhere or other. You were always on your way. And it was at Heaton Park that I and Johnnie and several of us were offered a place at Cranwell. But we decided no we’ll hang on and go abroad. We didn’t. I don’t, we weren’t thinking about getting the chop but we thought if we can fit it in and go travelling so we will. That was the thoughts of boys of, us at nineteen.
IL: It doesn’t seem unreasonable.
KM: But the next posting was to RAF Driffield. We were there for a month. We’d do any job at all. And then one morning called up on seven of us and they called upon several of us and we found ourselves carrying seven coffins. Canadians. All under twenty two. Little brass plates. They’d returned with a bomb on board and they’d been told to fly the plane out to the North Sea and let it go and bale out. But they decided as a little family because that’s how they chose themselves when they assembled a crew in hangars, they decided to land. And as soon as they touched down at Driffield that was it. It’s a terrible thought. And we took them down and put them in railway trucks and I don’t know where they went then. But it was, it was a thought at the time. We didn’t really express it but we did later. Were we reinforcements or were we replacements? But they were a long way from home those lads. But that was the point. The thing about Driffield. And another thing about this we went down into Driffield one night and the only whatever they called the pub but nearby was the town hall. There was a dance going on there. And it was announced during this dance, night time of course that there was going to be some ballroom exhibition dancing. And everybody kept to the walls and this couple came on. Him in coat tails and the girl, woman in a dancing dress and the music struck up and immediately ha’pennies and pennies started flying through the air to shove them off. Life was too short. We didn’t want to know about ballroom dancing. And so that was an illustration of how the minds — the mindset of people. Let’s see where I’ve got to. Solo at eight and a half hours. I’ve done that. Because that was — so what’s happening next? One month at Driffield look. I’ve got them in chronological order. But anyway, we [pause] we can talk about this now. Ok?
IL: Ok.
KM: Switched on?
IL: It is.
KM: The next thing was back to Heaton Park. And we were getting kitted out by — for all our own flying clothing. We were given a whistle to put on by the neck. That was in case you were shot down. You could communicate with one another. And I remember we were on a, on a draft in that sense and somebody blew a whistle and the sergeant discip and he said, ‘I’ll take, I’ll take a number of you off draft.’ And we, and four hundred, four hundred whistles blew back at him. That was the sort of spirit there was. But this was following the fact that, that VE day had come up. And we didn’t know what was going to happen but we were, we were tipped, we never knew where we were going to go. So we were put on a train, found ourselves up on the Clyde to board a ship called the Aquitania which was a sister ship of the Titanic. I never want to see that Titanic film ever because we went across dodging U-boats even then then. Even though it was war — [pause] But I was home during this period. Just before that my eldest brother was back on the convoys and I celebrated VE day with my brother, with Bert Cowton who’d been at Durham with me and he’d come back with his wings from Canada err from America and his brother who was a flight lieutenant bomb aimer who had been on the Peenemunde raid. The Peenemunde raid was where they went after the rockets and these flying bombs and that sort of — but there were two brothers with two brothers celebrating and I never knew much about that night. I do remember that we were going to the local dance after I’d climbed out through a window in the pub and going to this place and they wouldn’t let us in because it was a floor upstairs and they shouted through the door, ‘There’s too many people in here.’ And I remember the two elder brothers saying, ‘We won the bloody war for you lot. Let us in.’ And I don’t remember anything after that except waking up on the carpet just down the street at my parent’s home with a bucket beside me and a woman who I didn’t know holding a cup of coffee handy for me. Yeah.
IL: Great.
KM: Yeah.
[recording paused]
IL: Back on again.
KM: So I went across dodging. The ship was changing course every twenty minutes. We slept on the outer deck and I was going down the main staircase and I saw three ladies in uniform. And I didn’t know the uniform so I said, ‘Are you, are you ladies British?’ One said, ‘Yes, we are. And you’re from Barton on Humber.’ I couldn’t believe it. Somebody from Barton on Humber in the middle of the Atlantic. She said, ‘I’m a stewardess.’ She said, ‘I’m a career girl with Cunard.’ She said, ‘I want you to come to my cabin now every afternoon at 4 o’clock.’ So, I told the lads, the other lads she was a Miss. And I said, ‘Look, gee, I’ve got a woman on board.’ So I used to go along there for cakes and tea etcetera and she was forty two. I didn’t tell these lads, my own colleagues that she was forty two. But there was nothing like that. But it was just a joke. Yeah, ‘I’ve got a woman on board.’ But and I remember on board was the royal family, the Dutch royal family. Princess Julianna and all their children. What was happening they were going to America because she used to take me walking. Not the princess. Up on the decks and introduce me to certain people. You know. Everybody was always pleased to shake hands. Whatever.
[recording paused]
IL: Ok.
KM: So we arrived in New York in a fog. We ran aground on Staten Island. Or Coney Island rather. I was later to visit that with my brother and did a parachute jump in a restrained parachute. But eventually the fog cleared. We went up river and alongside of us came all these, these boats. The fire, the fire boats with all their hoses going. And boats with bands on playing the American music. And American girls because there were a lot of wounded coming. Coming back on the Aquitania. And we were met there by a lot of volunteers on the dock side. We were given chocolates and goodness knows what else. And, and then went to a camp called Camp Kilmer. Camp Kilmer held thirty, it could accommodate thirty thousand. It was the main exit point for the, for the army people coming over into Europe. And we were given a weeks’, weeks’ leave. Go and please yourselves in New York. And that was when I went to meet my brother’s wife. She was American. And, and because it was very exciting to be in New York and we were invited to all sort of places on Park Avenue and Park Lane. Millionaire’s places. All these invitations and free tickets to go in to theatres and cinemas. And I remember going to one place called the Diamond Club. We were told not to take our hats off if we wanted anything. And this is where some, two American officers came in and recognised us as British and said, ‘You guys don’t have to pay for anything. We’ve got loads of dough. We’re going to treat you.’ So I never forgot that in the sense of the generosity of all the Americans. It was there all the time. The way they looked after the service people and whatever. And there’s a bit of a story to come about that later. But eventually now we were put on a train. On a steam train. An enormous locomotive. We were put in Pullman coaches that turned into beds at night. With little electric fans on them. And we were three days going down to, we didn’t know where we were going but we were told it was Florida and we were turned out at a place called Clewiston. Well, as we arrived there the guys that were already down there they came low flying over the aircraft err over the train to let us know. Zoom, zoom, zoom. You know, it excited us. So then we started training there and in the huts there with a swimming pool. There were invitations to go down in to Miami and stay with whatever. They organised that. But the planes in there were Boeings PT-17 days trainers. Radial engine job. Much more advanced then the Tiger Moth. And the other plane was the AT6. Well, of course the planes were flying day and night. It was happening all the time. There was a dread. We used to practice on a Saturday morning. There was no flying Saturday morning. It was practice Wings Parade. It was the practice Wings Parade presentation. But that was putting up the RAF flag on the yardarm of the station and then everybody paraded and we were wet through. Absolutely wet through. The heat and the moisture there. Brand new uniform always for that. And then, then the weekend was ours free. And I used to go, take a boat onto Lake Okeechobee. The place was full of crocodiles and snakes and of course we saw the Seminole Indians there. These are the indigenous people who lived in the Florida swamps and things. They hunted. They hunted with bows and arrows. And if you were caught low flying over there and came back with an arrow in your aeroplane you were dismissed. That’s well understood isn’t it? So, and so the days went by but eventually of course the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima. We always said that saved our lives and we know it saved a lot of other lives as well. And, and the next thing within a week we were on the, we were on the train back up to New York and then sent across back to, to England.
IL: So, in America were your, were your instructors RAF instructors or were they American instructors?
KM: No. There was a minimum staff of, who lived the life of Riley we believe. Mainly off camp. Well, it’s an obvious thing for them but the instructors were civilians. They were all civilians.
IL: Oh right. So they were American civilians.
KM: They were American civilians.
IL: Ok.
KM: And mine was number 5 British Flying Training School. So BFTS. There were six altogether. The original scheme was called the Arnold Scheme but then it was really when, when that was before the Americans came into the war because the guys went over to America as civilians with America being neutral.
IL: Yeah. Yeah.
KM: But when, when the Americans came in after Pearl Harbour they formed this and they had, they had six places. Six places. They were always separating us. Whenever there was a move in the training we were split up because they didn’t want us to form any emotional contact between us. And Johnnie, who was from the, who was Spanish, I met him at Durham he went to Miami in Oklahoma state. You know.
IL: Right.
KM: He did his training there. But there were six of them. Arizona was another one. But there were six. So that explains that about the instructors.
IL: Right. So there were just, so but, and was it just RAF people who were being trained there?
KM: Yeah. Yeah. Just RAF. They weren’t training American ones. No. There were thousands of guys that were trained. When we were in Florida nobody knew the war was going to finish like it was and there was rumours that we would go on to other types of American aircraft out there and then finally go out to the Pacific. But I’m glad it never happened. It’s an obvious one, isn’t it? But on returning to England there was loads of operational people. They didn’t want people. But some of, some of our guys they were connected with military families and wanted to make a career. And I remember one of them was called Neame. He was at Durham. I knew him at Durham. And his father was a general. His father was the only general ever to be captured by the Germans in North Africa. So he went on. He would go to Cranwell then because of being a military aspect. I remember Neame in particular. And later in life, many years afterwards, twenty or thirty years afterwards there was some pictures of Mount Everest in the Daily Express. And he’d been out in India with his Spitfire and he’d flown over Mount Everest and just to prove it because you weren’t supposed to do it. Just a story. And it was a question of waiting to be demobbed and I I decided that when I went that I would make a life in Civilian Street which I did of course. But in between times I got shunted from one station to another and the last one which I was at and I worked in headquarters at RAF Binbrook. They had 9. Four squadrons there 9, 12, 101 and that very famous 617 Squadron. But I didn’t do any flying there. They had Lincoln bombers and it was from there I was demobbed.
[recording paused]
KM: Ok. One, one of the things that I was in charge of I had two German prisoners of war. One was, one was fifty two. All he could think of was getting back to Germany and being a farm labourer. The other one was sixteen and every morning when he reported to me at 9 o’clock in the morning he saluted me in the proper sense of de da de da but he spoke American. He’d been captured when he was fifteen, taken to America and picked up the Americanisms. But every morning he shook his fist at them, ‘We’ll be back. We’re going to be back.’ There was a hundred army guys on RAF Binbrook in that sense. But working in the headquarters I would eventually be in charge of air publications and diagrams and all the stationery and all the forms. A lot of forms. And it was all to do with the squadrons and that. The engines. All aspects. But of course there was a lot of information that would come through which was connected with intelligence. Material that was being distributed into the squadrons to let them know this and that. And eventually I I was to read quite a lot of stuff that I never, never repeated. Of course, you never did. But from an intelligence point of view you just saw stuff but it didn’t mean anything. It was all gone. You weren’t going to keep it or photograph it. We weren’t, we were never allowed to have cameras in any case. So that’s that.
[recording paused]
IL: We’re back on.
KM: In post war then 5 BFTS used to have reunions and I would go away to those. And it was always to take over a hotel so that, at a weekend a Friday, Saturday and Sunday so that all the men that were there were nothing but RAF pilots of once upon a time. There was no people that hadn’t gone there. They were excited to go and there was a book where all the courses were numbered. We were on the very last course out of, the very last course to take was because, as I say the war had finished in Europe but nevertheless we were sent. They always said they’d spent a lot of money on us. And that was because we were University Air Squadron people. Actually I think they got us cheap. But in that sense. And there was a directory with the names of people in that were known of. And the last one that was printed was in 2005. It’s been disbanded since along the way. But then, but my name and there’s only nine of us on that one that were still around and known about. That doesn’t mean to say everybody did get killed. Whatever happened. And Peter Greenwood is one of those who was at Oxford where he used to know this Welsh chap who eventually became Richard Burton. And he said, ‘Richard Burton,’ he said, ‘He only did three things.’ He said, ‘He drank, read poetry,’ because he was doing arts, ‘And he chased skirts.’ Girls. And eventually of course he went to Canada to train as a navigator did this Welsh chap. But later in life he changed his name to Richard Burton and he married Elizabeth Taylor and became very famous. And if ever I got the opportunity to see him in uniform in a film he’d always taken the part of an officer because he was always dressed an officer and he’d been trained as an officer and it was just natural to see him as Richard Burton. But, and I met him once or twice at Heaton Park because he was always retained there to play, play rugby. But that’s Richard Burton. Whatever. But Peter Greenwood, we’ve kept in touch all these years. And we talk to, normally every week, every week we talk for half an hour or an hour. We’re always reminiscing. We’ve always got things to talk about. He lives in Halifax. And of course we have met occasionally as well. So, it’s marvellous in fact to have such a friend. And his birthday is on the 2nd of February. Mine is on the 1st which is very recent. According to this it’s now the 8th of February. And I always pull his leg and say we’re the senior man.
[recording paused]
KM: We were really, it was snowed in. It was a terrible wet winter.
IL: Was this at Full Sutton?
KM: Full Sutton. Up there near York. East of York. And we were told the whole place was frozen up. There was no running water except at the camp cookhouse. And we enjoyed going in there to keep warm occasionally. But the WAAFs, they were putting on more cream and powder because they weren’t allowed to wash either. We were told not to, not to melt ice or snow because they said you could get possibly meningitis through this. So I remember going into York and going to the public baths there. I’d never heard of public baths at that point in time. But, but the Nissen huts were very cold. They were cold. Nobody complained but one has to imagine twenty beds in there. And one night one of the chaps started coughing and sneezing and nineteen other voices said, ‘Die, you bugger’ [laughs]
[recording paused]
KM: And then at lunchtime we were only too pleased to have food, I remember we could buy newspapers. Well, some of us would buy The Express. The Express Record and The Express crossword but some of the guys they used to buy The Times. And they could do them in half an hour. That was the sort of standard. That was the standard of education and culturalisation that we’d all been through. At that time they were chosen to do this particular job and be selected to go into University Air Squadrons. Yeah.
[recording paused]
IL: So after the war.
KM: Well, father was in horticulture and agriculture and for a short time I helped him but eventually I decided that I didn’t want to be connected with the land in that sense at all. I always felt academic. And so I applied to go back to university and I was accepted. And what’s interesting about this as I say I got in to BSc when I was there and, but I’d actually left. Left and I’d achieved all I wanted and went to help my father in his business in whatever before going on to the, to the university. I was still not quite at the age of, to go in. I’d been accepted of course and got, seventeen I’ve mentioned that. And then when I, when I applied I was accepted straight away I’ve still got the letters. Professor Wager and the master. Lieutenant Colonel MacFarland Greave was the master of University College at the time. And they said, ‘Yeah, start in October.’ Now this is addressed to me in the air force by which time I was a corporal. And isn’t it bloody marvellous? To be, to take the rank of corporal. Anyway, and when I applied for the grant because people got grants. My other two pals had. Johnnie who became a doctor later and Malcolm who became vice chancellor they’d stayed on. They’d stayed on at school and left, left grammar school to go straight to Durham. I hadn’t done. And I still have the letter. I still have the letter to say I didn’t qualify because it said my education had not been interrupted by the war. Well, that, that just about killed me. To say I couldn’t get a grant. And I asked my father. I said they want me and when I think about them I would be there with Malcolm doing exactly what I wanted because I wanted to do geology. And I said, to think I had done all of that. I qualified to go to Cambridge. They said my education hadn’t been interrupted by the war and I couldn’t have a grant. And I tried through my MP to try to get this alteration changed and I still retain that letter to me and I’ll show the interviewer that to show the, to prove that point. So I didn’t go back there. So what I decided to do was to join the [pause] I saw the most successful local man I knew. He was in all sorts of businesses. And he said other than three daughters if he’d had a son he would have put him in the petroleum world. The oil world. We’re going back quite a long time now. So he said, ‘I suggest that.’ He said, ‘There’s a company starting up called Petrofina. They’re a Belgian company because,’ he said, ‘I’m taking all my money out of coal and other things and,’ he said, ‘I’m putting it into oil.’ He said, he left it up to me to get in touch with Petrofina. I rang Petrofina in London. I said, ‘I’d like to come and work for you. Join you. You’re starting up,’ because at that time there were no brands. There was no brands of Shell, Esso, Mobil gas — any of them. It was still all pooled petrol. The government was still running the job etcetera. So I, and they said, ‘When can you come to see us?’ I said, ‘Well. Tomorrow.’ So the next day I was down in London and within an hour they said, ‘Right. You can be with us. Six months’ probation. You’ll be up north. And your place will be at a place called Gunness. That’s the regional office that’s been chosen. And you join them up there.’ Which I did. Bought a brand new car to travel from Barton on Humber to travel the twenty miles to work every day. And within, I did my six month probation and I was to be in marketing etcetera and learning all about transport. All aspects of at that level. And by the time I was thirty four I was a senior staff manager in the company and even today, even today — I left them. I stayed with them until my daughter was going of age to go to university. She went to a place in Leeds for a start. She was doing a pre, a pre-university thing and then she went and did three years down at Cheltenham. And she got a degree in fashion design and art. And that’s what my Sue did. I used to go and see her programmes of the materials that she made on the catwalks in London. Doing all of this. Susan was eventually to marry. Her father in law was a wing commander and a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain. A sergeant. But any way that’s by the way and then went to live in a Cayman Islands. But when my Sue decided to go I thought I’ll go back to university. So I asked the company could I take a three year sabbatical? They agreed. They said, ‘Good idea. Do a law degree and it’ll help us as well.’ But when I’d done the law degree and it was the easiest thing I ever did, at Hull and in fact I did two degrees at once. I did, I did anthropology and law. I did two and I got a 2:2 in both. And, and that’s what, and my daughter and I passed out at the same time. Her elsewhere of course and whatever. So I didn’t go back there. I got in touch with the Law Society and what with my experience of life I said could I, could I practice as a consultant in family law because that’s what I wanted to particularly major in. And they said yes, carry on which is what I’ve always done ever since. And today they’re even they’re still paying me at Petrofina because I was a superannuated person. I made them a great deal of money. I made them millions. I built up a chain of service stations. Buying land and choosing managers and tenants for them. Oh yes I was right there. I was right there with them and so they’re still paying me.
[recording paused]
IL: I can turn it back on.
KM: It was whilst I must pay tribute to all the men that I ever met in the Royal Air Force. Whether they were ground staff or aircrew. And all, all the guys my colleague with which I flew and I was so proud to be with them. So I I I can pay great tribute to them. But I do wish to mention about my two friends. Johnnie Boyd who came from Spain and Barnard Castle and then came on and eventually became a doctor in psychology. A marvellous man out there. Starting something out there for them. And in particular Malcolm Brown who came from Redcar Grammar. I met him at Durham and eventually he became the number one geologist really of this country. And he was knighted so that his full title was Professor Sir George Malcolm Brown. Right from being, knowing him at eighteen and he was employed well not employed but when, when Buzz Aldrin and Armstrong were going to go to the moon NASA was [pause] had Malcolm to lecture them on what they were to look for in moon rocks. And he was the only one, considering that Malcolm went from being eighteen and knowing him he was the one, the only scientist, British scientist given moondust or moon rocks. And of course he distributed them amongst other places to examine. But he found amongst his own materials a mineral that was not known on earth. And it could have been called Brownite because that was after his name but he didn’t. He called it Tranquilite because that was where these guys landed. And they called it Tranquilite. That’s how modest he was. But, but to look him up on the computers and look him up to see all about him there’s pages and pages and pages. He’s a fellow of everything throughout the world. Marvellous to have known him. And he was such a modest man. Always was. They said he was a bit diffident but I understand that because I knew him. We used to go drinking in The Three Tuns at Durham. My goodness on a Saturday night it was the only time after dinner at night that we ever got out really. Well, we used, and it had seven bars down there in The Three Tuns and we went through all seven having a half or whatever it was. And the dance hall at the end of it by which time I was useless for anything. But that was Malcolm who became Professor Sir George Malcolm Brown.
IL: And he became Chancellor of Durham University.
KM: Chancellor of Durham University.
IL: Vice Chancellor sorry.
KM: Yeah. Vice Chancellor.
IL: Vice Chancellor of Durham. That’s fantastic.
KM: And another thing, may I have this?
IL: It’s still going.
KM: One of the things that we did at Durham. They were full days. Completely full days. We thoroughly enjoyed it. The guy that used to take us for parades and was a DLI man. Durham Light Infantry. A warrant officer. We never forgot Gray. And he prepared us for these rough guys that we, the [unclear] guys eventually down at Torquay. But one of the things that would happen we were allocated that when the air raid sirens went I was one of those that went to do fire watching on the cathedral in the dark. I mean the buzzers gone and no matter what time of day it was up there in the north transept amongst the pigeons trying to save my country’s cathedrals. So we did all sorts of things apart from that. The day, and the night before we left Durham, this is very interesting, Durham, Durham Council invited us to the little town hall in the centre of Durham which is like a museum in itself because the Durham Light Infantry in its army days went back years and years. With all sorts of uniforms. And they gave us a party. They invited all the local belles, all the belles, all the belles of Durham to be there. It was, it was like, it was like a party. A going away party for us to join the air force. You know. Seeing us off to war literally. We felt like it. But never mind. I could talk. I love Durham and I’ve often been back there. And more recently I went with my, a girl friend and we stayed in the castle. It was all arranged and I slept in the Bishop’s Suite which, which in fact was an old fashioned, fashioned four poster and it was that four poster where, it was an original one where all the judges of England used to sleep in that one because they went there for safety when they were visiting the assizes. But then later after I was at top table at Durham with all the other students and whatever. I went top table with all the profs and that and then later I went into the senior common room where after in the ordinary way when we were there I used to dash in there to play classical records for half an hour. If you could get there first you could have their own choice.
[recording paused]
KM: When I, when I was married and went to Scarborough on holiday being married it was then that I discovered that north of Bridlington there was a plane there flying people for passenger. Little trips around the lighthouse at Flamborough. So I went and I took my wife Phyllis and we went flying. And I remember I took over as well. I remember the pilot. He’d escaped from the Nazis. He was a Norwegian and he’d trained as a navy pilot but here he was staying in England. I never forgot him. When my Sue fourteen years later, fourteen years later I decided that my Susan should fly for the very first time. I drove down to Skegness and, and the office said, it was opposite Butlins and they said, ‘There are three Auster planes out there. Just pick the one you want and one of the pilots will come out to you.’ And when he came it was the same man from fourteen years previous. What a fantastic coincidence because, I said, ‘I know you.’ He said, ‘Where do you know me from?’ I said, ‘I flew with you at Speeton, north of Bridlington.’ He said, ‘I was only there a week.’ It’s absolutely fantastic. Fourteen years between the two. And once again we flew and I was up front and I flew that Auster as well. But from a flying point of view when I went to the university they had in that first week a new intake. People joining all sorts of societies. Whatever they called it. And I found there was a stall there that they were connected with a gliding club at Pocklington on the way to York. So I joined that immediately and eventually was taken because that enabled me to fly again and I’ve been, and I’ve been a member of that gliding club and I still am. From 1975 to now. But whilst I was there at weekends I would take six in the car. With no safety belts I could cram two in the front and two in the back. So I did help out with these kids. I was like a dad to some of them. But along the way we had a flying club at, on, on Humberside and, but they had to close it down because Bristows, the helicopter people they wanted the property. But that was a very interesting time flying Cessnas and goodness knows what there as a member of a private flying club there. I also used to fly with a man called Croskill and pre-war he’d trained as a pilot. Got his wings in 1935. His father was a wing commander. When the war started he was made a captain in the army. An army captain. And he, and he joined the secret service. And what he did was fly Lysanders into France during the, to take people to the Resistance backwards and forwards. But afterwards Roy and I became, that’s how I came to know him. I often used to fly with him because he was a chief flying instructor at Paull which gave me an opportunity once again when I was at the university. This is how I met him. And again at Humberside. So I’ve always had a big connection with, with Humberside. There was also at Humberside an ex-Wellington bomber pilot who I came to know and he passed on but I’d done, over the years I just paid to take a plane up. Always with one of their people because I’d not passed out on some of those planes. But that, but what that has led to is that I was invited on to be, I was collected by taxi from Hornsea to to spend the day when the Canadian Lancaster came. It had flown into Coningsby from Canada. That’s an RAF station. But on this day it was coming into Kirmington. Or Humberside Airport. And I met the crew. I didn’t fly in it but I had lunch with the crew and it was just marvellous to climb back inside that Lancaster. And of recent times I’ve had sent to me a CVD, it’s a record.
IL: Yeah.
KM: That can be put on a piece of equipment and I only received it and I’m on it. It’s showing various things from the start in Canada and then back in Humberside and elsewhere. And Coningsby. And it’s just marvellous. And it lasts eighty minutes and I’ve only seen it this last fortnight. It was sent to me. And very kind of them. I think it was sent because of my birthday. Whatever. By the way on the 18th at Humberside there was a girl, a lady from the Royal Mint and she was interviewing other veterans down there to what they would like to see on the back of a new 50p coin. And eventually I was sent one from the Mint. That came from wherever it came. Wales I think. And it shows on the reverse side what looked like what represents German aeroplanes coming. Spitfires on the ground waiting and the backs of three fighter pilots dashing off. And that’s a, that’s a memorial of the seventy fifth, seventy fifth anniversary of the Battle of Britain. When I was invited once again to go to Humberside on the 13th of August in 2015. The year following the Canadian one to meet up with the pilots and sit in on the briefing. I just felt like nineteen and twenty and twenty one again. It was so wonderful and marvellous. And I’ve got quite a number of momentoes from that. So and that, then on my birthday recently I had two cards from there. One from the lady, the personal assistant who I only saw twice. On the first occasion, second occasion when she sent me a card with love and kisses on the bottom. But the other one, was another card was “From all your friends at Humberside International Airport.” And I met, and I met on both occasions they called him Richard. Richard Lake. He’s the boss down there of Eastern Airways and he saw me on every occasion etcetera and he owns two Spitfires and they’re worth a couple of million quid. Very interesting. I do know a few people in the flying world. As far as flying’s concerned and before the terrorist position came in whenever I flew abroad I’d always hand the letter in which would have to be handed to the captain. And they would always send for me to sit up at the front with them because of them being, they could be RAF themselves as well.
IL: Yeah.
KM: And on one occasion, here’s an interesting thing I went to Rome and on a, on a flip flight just to transfer an aircraft I can make another trip to Sardinia, which was my destination. I was going there on business and I sat up there with the Italian pilots. What’s interesting about that I speak Italian so I was able to talk. It was marvellous really. To be able to get up to the front of aircraft. That was out of, out of Heathrow. A letter went in there and I sat at the rear. An American sat next to me. Got flying. And at the appointed time on the threshold the chief steward came and said, ‘You’re wanted on the flight deck, sir’ and so I went up the front, and the American and I was up there for four hours. At that time there were two pilots, a flight engineer and I sat behind and did all the take off with them and they said they would send for me when they were going to do, land in Seattle. But before that I got back this American had been drinking. He said, ‘That was a rotten take off.’ I said, ‘I’ve got news for you. I’m going to do the landing.’ Because I knew I was going to be, I was going to be up the front. And it came to that point in time we’d flown over Greenland and Northern Canada and the captain came on, ‘Everybody fasten their safety belts,’ and at the same moment in time as I say I was at the rear the chief steward, the man came and said, ‘There’s an emergency, sir. You’re wanted on the flight deck.’ I couldn’t believe this. So I went up the front, ‘Where the hell’s he going?’ Everybody fastened all their seatbelts. To find out they were running short of fuel. At that time they were only buying enough fuel with a margin but they’d met a, met this S shaped sign shaped current of air and what — it has a name. At such a speed that it reduced the speed over the ground so they were using more fuel than necessary. So they decided to land in Calgary. And so that’s what happened. And I went through all the methods of what they were doing up the front and finally landed. And I remember this big circle and as we came in on the threshold the second said to the captain who was an ex-squadron leader, originally from the air force, he said, ‘I bet there’s a change of wind direction on the threshold.’ He said, ‘I’m ready for it.’ And at two hundred feet the plane crabbed because the change in wind direction. And he just, he just moved it over to the port side and we were down. And that was after what? Five or six hours flying. They’re right on the ball these guys. But when I wanted to continue to Seattle they had a new crew in but, because the hours had been taken up. So, but the new crew they were youngish. They didn’t want to know me. So I went back to this American and he still believes I did the bloody landing.
[recording paused]
IL: Interview with Ken Marshall. Just a little bit of extra.
KM: Talk now?
IL: Yeah.
KM: Yeah. Before I went away from home there was a Canadian pilot called Screwball Beurling who learned to fly in Canada when he was very young and the Canadian Air Force wouldn’t have him. So he came to England on a convoy. Got trained. Sent back to Canada to train as a pilot. Returned to England and became a Spitfire pilot. And he was my hero. I have a photograph of him. But later in life I was flying Alitalia to Rome and there was a woman next to me. She was a lady jeweless and when we were circling over Rome she said did I know Screwball Beurling? I said, ‘Screwball Beurling,’ I said, ‘He was my hero.’ ‘Not bloody likely with me,’ she said, ‘He killed my husband.’ I said, ‘How do you mean?’ Well, she said, ‘Well down there at Rome,’ she said, ‘He was, he was flying planes to Israel and he crashed on the take off.’ And I couldn’t believe it. That up there at fifteen thousand feet she should bring up this name of a person that I’d known about. But in actual fact it was always said that his plane was sabotaged. This was after the war of course. But quite an interesting little story.
IL: Absolutely.
KM: But he was the highest scoring. He wouldn’t obey orders back in England so they sent him to Malta to fly and he was in the fiercest battles in Malta and he shot down almost more planes than anybody else. But that was Screwball Beurling and he was my hero.
IL: Absolutely.
KM: Flying over and she said did I know and I said, ‘Yes, he’s my —'
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 Ken Marshall
Creator
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Ian Locker
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-02-08
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMarshallKW160208
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Pending OH summary
Format
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00:57:42 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
Ken Marshall, grew up in Barton on Humber and enrolled with the ATC before joining the University Air Squadron at Durham University. On one occasion he saw an aircraft on fire at RAF Elsham Wolds and although the crew was rescued it was a reminder of the risks involved in operational flying. He completed his flying training at 5 BFTS in Florida.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
United States
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Florida
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1943
5 BFTS
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing up
British Flying Training School Program
crash
Halifax
memorial
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Torquay
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/249/3397/AEldenEA161205.1.mp3
237f3926f5d95e16bc374ac46e339e78
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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Elden, Emmanuel Alexis
Emmanuel Alexis Elden
Emmanuel A Elden
Emmanuel Elden
E A Elden
E Elden
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Emmanuel Alexis Elden. He served as an air traffic controller.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-12-05
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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Elden, EA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
L: Ian Locker. I’m at [redacted] Norwood. I’m interviewing Alex Elden on the 5th of December. Alex. How, tell me a little bit about your early life. I understand you were born in Jamaica.
[pause]
IL: Ok. And when did you come to England?
EAE: In the RAF.
IL: Ok.
EAE: 1944.
IL: Right. And why? Do you know, why did you leave Jamaica?
EAE: [cough] Why did I leave Jamaica?
IL: Or why did you? Did you, did you come because you wanted to fight for the, for the old country?
EAE: Well, it was the thing to do at the time.
IL: Right. Ok. And why did you? Why the RAF? What attracted you to it?
EAE: It was, it was the best organisation I knew. That’s why I joined it.
IL: Ok. So did you join it in Jamaica, then come over to England or did you come to England and then join the RAF?
EAE: Joined in Jamaica.
IL: Ok. So how did you come across?
EAE: Well, they took us from there and brought us here.
IL: Right. So did you come via ship?
EAE: Yeah.
IL: You didn’t have any run-ins with U-boats or —
EAE: No. No.
IL: Ok. So what happened when you got to England?
EAE: Nothing.
IL: But where did you, where did you get sent to for your, as — when you joined the RAF what happened? Where did you go?
EAE: We came to Hunmanby Moor.
IL: Right.
EAE: Which is Yorkshire.
IL: Right.
EAE: That’s where we came to. And then it all started from there.
IL: Right. So what did they do at Hunmanby Moor? Was that your basic training?
EAE: Hmmn?
IL: So what did basic training involve?
EAE: Just was the ordinary basic training involved for the Englishmen.
IL: But, but what exactly did you have to do? Was it lots of marching and — ?
EAE: Yeah. We did march. And a lot of field training. Because it was a case of having a fit. A fit make up if anything happened.
IL: Yeah. And how long were you there for?
EAE: Hmmn?
IL: How long were you there for? At Hunmanby Moor?
EAE: How long?
IL: Yeah.
EAE: We was, we was in the army, in the air force and that’s where we did the training before you passed out.
IL: Right. So how long did it take you to do the training before, to pass out?
EAE: Well, a couple of weeks.
IL: Right. So it wasn’t a lot of training.
EAE: No. But you had to do that. It’s called the basic training. That was a couple of weeks. And we moved on and it was improved training.
IL: So was that the point you decided that you were going to do air traffic control? Or were you told that you were going to do air traffic control?
EAE: No. I selected air traffic control because it appealed to me.
IL: Right. And so where did you move to after Hunmanby Moor then?
EAE: Oh. It was with the RAF.
JE: Was it Filey?
EAE: Filey. Yeah. That’s it.
IL: Oh right. So stayed in Yorkshire.
JE: Yeah.
IL: Ok. And was that where they taught you to be an air traffic controller?
EAE: No. The point is that I liked the tag. I selected that because it appealed to me.
IL: Right.
EAE: As every man, every boy would. An aircraft flying up there and what have you. That’s how it appealed to me. Just something that is my own appeal.
IL: But you hadn’t had any involvement with any aeroplanes in Jamaica.
EAE: No.
IL: No.
EAE: No.
IL: So —
EAE: The planes in Jamaica were Pan American aircraft.
IL: Right.
EAE: Yeah. They were transport. Taking people backward and forward. Yeah.
IL: Right.
EAE: And, well, it was something that would appeal to a boy.
IL: Absolutely. So after, so when you went to Filey what sort of training did you do in Filey?
EAE: Basic training because now we are talking about uniform. The army.
IL: Yeah.
EAE: You see. Basic training. That’s what we did. And got acquainted with the rifle. [laughs] Because we might have to defend. Therefore —
IL: Yeah.
EAE: We learned that too.
IL: So how long were you in Filey for?
EAE: I don’t know.
IL: I bet the seaside in Yorkshire wasn’t as nice as the seaside in Jamaica.
EAE: No. I don’t know how long we were there for.
JE: You came in November.
EAE: Eh?
JE: You came in November didn’t you?
EAE: Yes.
JE: To England. You came in November. Remember?
IL: That must have been a real culture shock.
JE: Freezing.
IL: Absolutely. And certainly Yorkshire. I live in Yorkshire .
EAE: Yeah.
IL: So it’s, I know how cold it is. I live in east Yorkshire so Filey is just up the coast. So I know Filey very well.
EAE: Hunmanby Moor.
IL: I think that’s near Filey isn’t it? It’s actually quite close to the coast. How, so how did they train you to be an air traffic controller?
EAE: How did they train me?
IL: Yeah. How did you become. You know, you obviously said, ‘I’ve selected. I want to be an air traffic controller.’ They must have given you some training at that.
EAE: Yes. They gave me training but I didn’t know that was what I was getting it for.
IL: Oh right. So how did, how long did it take to train you as an air traffic controller?
EAE: Now, that’s something else now because I mean it depends. The training takes up different factions.
IL: Yeah.
EAE: Yeah. So you can’t say how long because you don’t know what you, you don’t know when you become an air traffic controller. You only have the name but you don’t know if [emphasis].
IL: Oh I see. Right. So did, can you remember when you became an operational air traffic controller?
EAE: Almost immediately. Almost immediately as I finished the training.
IL: Right.
EAE: And that training lasted four weeks.
IL: So where did, where did they send you as an air traffic controller? What —
EAE: Yatesbury.
IL: Yatesbury. Where’s that?
EAE: In Wiltshire.
IL: Oh right. Ok. So how did it work? What were you? As an air traffic controller did you, did you have to look after an area or was it just an airfield or a number of airfields or — how did it work?
EAE: It’s hard to say. As an air traffic controller the first you know about the force that you are in.
IL: Yeah.
EAE: Which is the RAF.
IL: Yeah.
EAE: You know about that force. And it starts from there. Build up. I mean it’s not a little force. It’s a big force.
IL: Huge.
EAE: Yeah. And there are people connected with flying which I wasn’t. I wasn’t a flier but everything to do with flying I had to know. That’s, that’s what it was all about.
IL: So when you were at Yatesbury working as an air traffic controller how did, how did, it’s difficult. What was the process by which you managed to control aeroplanes?
EAE: Yatesbury is an airfield.
IL: Right.
EAE: An aeroplane flies from an airfield.
IL: Yeah.
EAE: And that’s where our connection with the RAF is.
IL: Right. But in terms of how you control the aircraft is it you just nowadays obviously there’s, you know very, very sophisticated radar that can tell you where all these planes are in an area. And they can tell you how high they are, how fast they’re going. Whatever. How did you manage that?
EAE: The air traffic controller.
IL: Yeah.
EAE: The RAF have their training places.
IL: Right.
EAE: And immediately as we joined up with the RAF we were sent to one of the training places.
IL: And was Yatesbury your training place?
EAE: Pardon?
IL: Was Yatesbury your training place?
EAE: Yes.
IL: Right. Ok.
EAE: And from there on well it was like the elementary stage of air traffic control. Yatesbury.
IL: Right.
EAE: Elementary stage. Also the advanced stage but it started from the elementary stage. Improved to the advanced stage.
IL: How did you, even when you were doing your, you know when you were doing your elementary stage and the advanced stage how did you work out where aircraft were?
EAE: How did I work out what?
IL: How did you work out where the aircraft were? Did they, is it just, did they just talk to you by radio or did you have radar or did you —
EAE: I have all that connections. And advanced stages you go along. Yeah. The ordinary elementary stage when you start.
IL: How would you [pause] so did, as an air traffic controller were you telling planes to sort of fly at certain altitudes or at certain speeds?
EAE: It involved. It involved everything. Involved flying. Safety.
IL: Yeah.
EAE: And so on.
IL: How did you plot where these things were?
EAE: How did you what?
IL: You know, when you, you — if you’ve got more than one aeroplane you need to know where they are. Did you have like a map or little sticks or —
EAE: We had radar.
IL: Right.
EAE: Radar is like you having telephones. Right.
IL: Ok.
EAE: And you speak through the telephones.
IL: Ok.
EAE: Radar is an operator who sees everything miles away.
IL: Right.
EAE: Through the connection.
IL: Ok. So you did have, so you were, it was very, it was similar to modern air traffic control that you were using. You had a radar that covered a certain area.
EAE: It was. It was a modern concern.
IL: Yeah.
EAE: I mean, it was no foolishness.
IL: No. No. Absolutely. So it was quite sophisticated. The radar. Because certainly early in the war, you know when —
EAE: It was the thing that saved this country and the world. Radar.
IL: Absolutely.
EAE: Very important.
IL: Well certainly I know, you know obviously early during the Battle of Britain you know radar was relatively unsophisticated. They could say if there was a large formation of aircraft. They couldn’t exactly say how many but they could work out where it was going. So, but by the time in 1944 when you were in the RAF radar was such that you could pinpoint all the planes in your little area that you were controlling.
EAE: 1944 radar had gone well advanced.
IL: Right. Ok
EAE: Well advanced.1944.
IL: Did you ever have to deal with planes that were in difficulty?
EAE: Pardon?
IL: Obviously, during the, during the war, you know some of the planes that might be returning might have been attacked. Might have been damaged. Might not have been able to talk to you because radios and things might be damaged. Did you ever have to deal with any, you know planes in serious difficulties?
EAE: They came back here to be repaired or dealt with for operation.
IL: Right. But as an air traffic controller were you having to try and guide sometimes very damaged planes down to you know maybe not coming into the base that they were supposed to go to but the base that you were you know that you were helping to control.
EAE: Well, there was air traffic control and mechanical repairs and everything goes on. It was one big coverage. Each have their own department.
IL: So where did, so just come back to you working as an air traffic controller. Was that at Yatesbury or did you go somewhere else afterwards?
EAE: No. Air traffic controller is to do with the aircraft and the airfield.
IL: Right. So you were just looking after one airfield when you were doing air traffic control.
EAE: One airfield. One department.
IL: Right. You weren’t involved in a sort of you know covering a sector. You know Wiltshire was similar to Lincolnshire wasn’t it. There were a lot of bases in Wiltshire.
EAE: Look at it when they say RAF. Royal Air Force. Various departments.
IL: Ok.
EAE: It’s not just RAF and everything is grouped like that. No.
IL: So it wasn’t, there wasn’t a big each airfield would have its own air traffic control set up. It wasn’t a sort of big national centre.
EAE: It was national. Each airfield would have the same control.
IL: Right. Ok. And they’d overlap and cover the whole, the whole of the area. Ok. Ok. So I suppose it’s a little bit like Heathrow and Gatwick coming separate. So did you enjoy your time in the RAF?
EAE: Did I enjoy?
IL: Your time in the RAF.
EAE: You call it enjoy. You call it enjoy. Yeah. But it wasn’t like a dance.
IL: No.
EAE: It was reality.
IL: What did you do for social life?
EAE: Hmmn?
IL: When you were in the RAF what did you do for social life? How did you enjoy yourself when you were off?
EAE: I was just off duty.
IL: Yes.
EAE: And you go to your clubs and what have you. And when you’re on duty signed on. Come back.
IL: Right. So what sort of clubs did you go to?
EAE: Pardon?
IL: What sort of clubs? What did you enjoy doing?
EAE: What any young person enjoyed doing. They don’t want to go to church do they? No.
IL: Not many.
EAE: Good.
IL: Ok.
EAE: They’re looking for the young girls. Young boys. Enjoy themselves. They can’t see the danger. They can’t see the danger. They’ll join anything. Join anything. Take anything given without looking for the danger. Young girls, young boys don’t know nothing about danger.
IL: How, so how, what, so what how when did you leave the RAF?
EAE: When did I leave it? Long after.
JE: [unclear]
EAE: Long after.
IL: They call it demobbed don’t they?
EAE: Hmmn?
IL: They call it, you were demobbed. Demobilised at some point.
EAE: Yes. Yes
JE: 1950.
IL: So you stayed in the RAF for five years?
JE: He signed on after for more years.
IL: Oh. You signed, you carried on in the RAF. So what did you do? Were you still an air traffic controller?
JE: [unclear]
IL: Right. Ok. And where was, where did you work after the war then with the RAF?
EAE: England.
IL: Right.
EAE: Is a place that have branches all over England.
JE: Did he say?
IL: So did you move around?
EAE: No. No. I never move around as much as people would think.
JE: I think he’s forgotten now.
EAE: Pardon?
JE: You was a sergeant wasn’t you?
EAE: That’s right.
JE: Yeah.
EAE: But what I’m saying is you wasn’t moving around like that.
IL: No.
JE: No.
IL: No.
EAE: Yes. You see. I was at Yatesbury. I was at Compton Bassett.
JE: Ok.
EAE: But what I’m saying is, is one place at a time.
IL: Oh yes. But was Compton Bassett after the war or before or during the war?
EAE: During and after. Compton.
IL: Oh. You stayed. You stayed there. Ok. So you stayed there for about five years.
EAE: Five years. No.
JE: He was discharged in 1950. You signed on for three more years and you said you were going to go to, they wanted to send you abroad didn’t they? Where did they want to send you? But you were married by then.
EAE: Yes.
JE: Singapore.
EAE: Yes.
JE: He was married before you see.
EAE: Right.
JE: Yes. I’m second wife.
IL: You nearly went. So why did you not go to Singapore?
JE: Because he didn’t want to leave his wife.
IL: Oh I see. She wasn’t allowed to come with you.
JE: She was English.
IL: There are reasons.
JE: I don’t think she —
IL: That were not explained at the time and will not be explained after.
EAE: Yes. I was talking to Jayne earlier and she was saying you didn’t have a particularly kind experience at times and that you weren’t, didn’t feel completely welcomed into, into England.
EAE: Yeah. A lot of things that happened then that you don’t want opened up again.
IL: Ok. Ok.
JE: Ok.
IL: We won’t talk, we won’t talk about that.
EAE: Well I don’t know about you won’t talk.
IL: Oh no. If you wanted to talk I would be delighted to hear you. But I don’t want to sort of I don’t want to stir things up and upset you if that’s not what you’d, you’d like to talk about. But if you wanted to talk about it we’d be delighted because not only is your history part of the RAF but your history is part of the Caribbean. You know, Caribbean people coming to England. And it’s a very important part of history.
EAE: Yes.
IL: And it’s very important. I think it’s very important that young people learn the lessons and listen to, you know what, what.
EAE: What happened to the old ones.
IL: What racist. Well what racism —
EAE: Yeah.
IL: Sort of, you know the personal cost. So as I say if you want to talk about it I would love to listen but I don’t want to sort of ask you questions if they’re going to upset you.
EAE: Let’s talk about happy things.
IL: Good. So what, so after you left the RAF what did you do?
[pause]
EAE: What did I do?
IL: Yes.
EAE: Air traffic control.
JE: After that.
IL: After that. But after you left the RAF in 1950.
JE: You went on a course.
IL: What did you do?
JE: Do you remember? You went on a course. Do you remember?
EAE: Yes. I —
JE: Scientific glass blowing. Do you remember that?
EAE: Yeah.
IL: Gosh.
JE: Yeah. And you became the foreman didn’t you? Do you remember? Can you remember that back, far back?
IL: And then you ran a taxi, taxi training school.
JE: Yeah.
IL: And taught a lot of people The Knowledge. And I gather you were the second afro Caribbean man to get The Knowledge.
EAE: In civil life I’ll always be a taxi driver.
JE: Yeah.
IL: So did you ever get any famous people in your taxi?
EAE: A lot.
JE: Doris Day.
EAE: A lot.
IL: Right.
JE: Yeah.
IL: Is there anything else you’d like to tell me? Is there anything else you think, you think about. What did, do you have any views on how the people in Bomber Command were treated after the war?
EAE: You just don’t know who was treated how. You know. They got demobbed. They went to this section, that section. You can’t keep up with them. You’d have to view them themselves for them to tell you what’s happened.
IL: Ok. Did you, did you make friends in the RAF?
EAE: You would do that.
IL: Yeah.
EAE: Wouldn’t you?
IL: Of course. Did you, did you, did you keep in touch with them after the war?
JE: Yeah.
EAE: You do. Yeah.
JE: Do you, do you remember all your friends at the West Indian Ex-Servicemen. We used to go there. Do you remember? A lot of them there were in the air force and the army weren’t they? Mr Webb. Do you remember Mr Webb. Phil Potts was a great friend of yours wasn’t he? A lot of them have passed.
IL: Yeah. Absolutely.
JE: Use your tissue babe. In your pocket. Use your tissue. The other one. The other pocket. That’s good.
IL: Shall we just stop for a —
JE: Sorry.
[recording paused]
JE: Trying to jog his memory.
IL: So Jayne you were saying that Alex used to like to come down to London when he was on leave.
JE: Yeah. He used to like to go to the dances. I think all of them did. Most of the young Caribbean would come down to do. You know. They were all eighteen nineteen twenty. They were all young men. And I think, he did tell me that there used to be trouble like when they used to ask the English girls to dance because their ladies weren’t here. Their Caribbean ladies were all in the West Indies. So they ask a girl to dance and the other gents, the white population would object. And sometimes fights used to break out. He told me that himself. Because his first wife he met in the, he met in the Lyceum. Didn’t you Alex? You met Joan in the Lyceum. She lived in Carshalton and when they got married he went to live in her mum and dad’s house. They loved him.
IL: Yeah.
JE: They loved him. I’ve met the family. They loved him. His mother in law, Liz thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. Although he was, although he was black, you know them days were different. She loved Alex because she said he came to fight and help Britain.
IL: Well, of course.
JE: You know. The father wasn’t too happy. But Alex used to play cricket as well, you know, for Carshalton and that and his father in law used to go and watch him and people would say, ‘That guy plays good cricket.’ He might be the only black he goes yeah that’s my father in law er, ‘That’s my son in law.’ So they were very proud of him.
IL: Yeah.
JE: He was a very gentle man. You know. Good quality person. He had a very good education in Jamaica. From a middle class family. His father was Cuban and his mother was Jamaican. So he come from a very good family background and he was a very educated gentleman. I think that’s why he must have passed an exam to get in air traffic control. They didn’t just give it to him.
IL: No. No.
JE: So, they saw that he was bright. He was very, well he is an educated man. It’s just that you know his illness now has robbed him of a lot of it. But he’s still Alex underneath. Yeah. A good man.
IL: What did you do at cricket? Did you play cricket in the RAF?
JE: Yeah.
IL: Were you a batsman or a bowler or both? Oh you were a spin bowler.
EAE: All rounder.
IL: All rounder. Sorry.
JE: Yeah.
IL: Sorry. I thought you were showing me how you spun the ball. I was going to say because if you were a spinner you could probably get a place in the England team at the moment.
EAE: I wouldn’t want it.
IL: No. You wouldn’t. You’d want to play for the West Indies.
JE: Yeah. Viv Richards and all that. We used to watch that didn’t we? On TV.
IL: Absolutely.
JE: Yeah. I think he’s getting a bit tired now.
IL: Yeah. I think we, we’ll stop the interview just there.
JE: Yeah.
IL: And Alex and I will just talk.
JE: Yeah.
IL: And if there’s anything else we need to say.
JE: 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/.
Identifier
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AEldenEA161205
Title
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Interview with Emmanuel Alexis Elden
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
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:30:54 audio recording
Creator
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Ian Locker
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-05
Description
An account of the resource
Emmanuel Alexis Elden grew up in Jamaica. He joined the Royal Air Force and trained at RAF Hunmanby Moor. He served as an air traffic controller and when he was not on duty he used to enjoy travelling to dances in London. He stayed in the RAF until 1950 when he became a taxi driver in London.
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Jamaica
Great Britain
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
African heritage
ground personnel
radar
RAF Hunmanby Moor
RAF Yatesbury
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/143/1366/AHawkinsDH151001.1.mp3
8b754798beb1912e8757ed38a3b0d408
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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Hawkins, Des
Des Hawkins
Desmond Hawkins
D H Hawkins
D Hawkins
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Desmond Howard Hawkins DFC (158602 Royal Air Force), one photograph, a diagram and notes about his service. Des Hawkins volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1941. He trained as a navigator in Canada and flew 47 operations in Lancasters with 44, 625 and 630 Squadrons from RAF Waddington, RAF Dunholme Lodge, RAF East Kirkby and RAF Kirmington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Des Hawkins and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hawkins, DH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: So we’re now talking. So this is — it’s Ian Locker conducting an interview with Des Hawkins at his home in Melksham. It’s the first of October 2015 and the time is about 3 o’clock. So Des, tell us a little bit about your early life and how you came to be in Bomber Command during the war.
DH: Well, it’s fairly simple. At my age at a rather special grammar school I was attending at Bradford-on-Avon, known as Fitzmaurice Grammar School, and we were very well-educated, supremely [emphasis] well-educated but, above all, we were naturally patriotic in those days, and when war came along I thought, ‘Right, the schoolboy’s aim is always to drive an engine locomotive.’ It had to be changed to, ‘ I want to fly?’. So I volunteered and eventually, in 1941, called to interview where we had very intensive medical examinations, and problems to solve, and be interviewed. I wasn’t particularly helpful when it came to the interviewing board. I didn’t think much of them and I don’t think they thought much of me actually but the fact is when they asked me why I wanted to join the Royal Air Force I said, ‘Well, that’s simple. I want to fly, obviously,’ and adding the word “obviously” put a bit of criticism into the questionaire and they suitably looked down a bit. [Background noise] Is it off?
IL: It’s switched on. It’s just you have quite a slightly quiet voice so I’m getting the recording level a bit higher.
DH: Oh, I see.
IL: But that’s fine.
DH: Well, the next question they asked me was, ‘ Have you any relations in the Royal Air Force?’ And I said, ‘Oh yes. Wing Commander A L Grice NC.’ Now that stunned them a bit because NC, as you know, is an army decoration basically and he had been a captain in the Great War, and had wing commander status in the last war, simply because he was a very positive research man. He had all the skills to conduct the sort of matters that needed to be put forward during wartime and at that point they all smiled, got up, came round the table and shook me by hand. They said it would normally be eighteen months you’ll be called up in — you were given a little badge, RAFER, and told to go back to civvy life but you’re sworn in, sworn in the Air Force, but you’re in civvies and they said, ‘Because you have someone in the RAF already, instead of waiting eighteen months you will wait only three months’, and that was the way it turned out. Thereupon, I was posted overseas, to Canada, down to the United States under the Arnold Scheme, the illegal [emphasis] scheme where we weren’t allowed to wear uniforms but they provided the RAF with flying training. But we had to wear lounge suits to settle the matters created by the Neutrality Acts but we were kicked out there. It wasn’t a very successful scheme. Even if you didn’t have your blankets, your sheets, at the corners of exactly forty-five degrees you were washed out. You got de-merits and when you had enough de-merits, like coming in under the fence at night like we did, you were washed out of the course. That happened to me and I went back to Canada where I decided that I’d no longer wait for a pilot’s course. I would be a navigator. I had all the satisfactory education necessary and that’s the way it transpired. Back to England and then they lost us at Bournemouth for about three months. They had to dump us somewhere, where we bathed and filled The Norfolk Hotel nightly, and had a whale of a time. And then they eventually caught up and I went to OTU at North Luffenham in Stamford, Stamford near Oakham, up that way, to be trained on operational training, rather different from just flying. Flying at night, in total blackness of course. Absolutely opposite to what it was like on the other side of the pond, and after that we then — we crewed up then. We selected each other for members of a particular crew. We then went to a conversion course from Wellingtons to Lancasters.
IL: So had you ever flown on that, Wellingtons, when —?
DH: Oh yes but not until we got to OTU. You had to learn to fly them there and do the night training there.
IL: So you learnt as a crew?
DH: Oh yes, absolutely. That was the idea, to weld together a fluid, effortless, satisfactory working group.
IL: Right.
DH: Then we had an intermediate stage before we flew the Lancs, we were flying Manchesters, because the layout of the Manchester, althought only two engines, was the same as in the Lancaster. It was easier for pilots. Then we were posted to number 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron which was the first squadron ever to have Lancasters off the production line. Althought that was some while before I joined them.
IL: Gosh.
DL: There afterwards, after a tour of operations, I went as anb instructor to OTU Chipping Warden in Oxfordshire. It was nearly as dangerous to be an instructor on the OTU as it was flying on operations [laugh]. At least that’s the view I formed. Ultimately, of course, time went by, the second front happened. I wasn’t involved with bombing operations then. I went back after [emphasis] the second front was opened to 625 Squadron and completed sixteen trips, not quite allowing me to complete a second tour, of twenty this time instead of thirty, simply because the war ended. And I can only say that’s a broad statement, chronology of events that happened.
IL: So your first, your first tour, you did thirty operations?
DH: Yes, that was the requirement.
IL: OK, tell me a little bit about — tell me a little bit about what happened on a tour of operations. Tell me about the places you visited. Tell me about the first tour.
DH: Well, that list I’ve given you has got it. Not that one. One of the others. Didn’t I give it to you? Didn’t I give you —
IL: It’s here.
DH: Oh yes, yes, the others. Now there are a number of people around who would say, ‘Forty-six? I’ve done ninety.’ But of course they couldn’t have done it unless they were in at the start of the war. Well, they didn’t contribute very much because very often, because they couldn’t find the targets on the continent so easily and, of course, many of the support second front trips were very small, maybe an hour and a half ,and some people have counted those as whole operations. You can knock up a fair number like that but if you look at my [emphasis] list you will see here that, whilst the first are all the Ruhr, measuring five or six hours each time, but when it got down to a bit later in that, when the winter came along, these hours were going up, 7.30, 7.55, ‘cause they were long trips, right, and then you can see here three Berlins. The shortest was 5.50. There was special reasons for that, the weather was thoroughly dud . None of the defences couldn’t get off the ground so we went the shortest way rather than the long way round. But here you see, on this second tour, these places: Misburg [?], Zeitz, Pölitz, Chemnitz.
IL: All much more East Germany.
DH: Yes. 8.25 hours. And there is one on here, we were at the very maximum, 10.55, a low level operational on a transformer station in Italy but because the night hours were insufficient to come back over enemy territory, too dangerous, we went on to land in North Africa, deliberately, it was planned that way, and then when we could get back (although the weather was bad for a week or so) we bombed Leghorn on the way back and taking off from where we were, in North Africa, Blida. And then again, so these all were fairly long trips.
IL: Absolutely.
DH: It’s not like a fighter pilot, going up for a maximum of half an hour and landing because he was either out of petrol, munitions or both. We couldn’t. The moment we entered over the continent the Germans were after us all the way out to the target and all the way back. It was a very, very, harassing situation altogether and very, very wearing, to such an extent that, when I first went to 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron they said, ‘You won’t be on operations for a couple of days. Get used to flying around the countryside, Lincoln countryside, see where we are.’ And we did that but at night, of course, there were empty beds, increasingly every night, and I suddenly realised there was absolutely no future in this at all. I wasn’t going to live more that two or three trips. That was my opinion and hence, postwar, when I came to write that book, that’s where the title “No Future” comes from.
IL: Absolutley. So, how did —? Just sort of describe that sort of —? How you came to terms with that sort of —? How does someone come to terms with ‒?
DH: Danger?
IL: With fatalism, you know —?
DH: You get used to it. It comes under a well-known phrase in the RAF, “getting flak-happy”. If you get a lot thrown up at you and you get through it to start with, and you always get through, so you acheive some kind of strange kind of optimism and the view that, ‘Whoever’s going to get shot down it won’t be me, it will be the other chap’.
IL: Right.
DH: Fatalism, yes, but rather a strange kind of optimism as well.
IL: And did you ever feel frightened? Did you ever — you know?
DH: Yes, yes. This North African trip we bombed Reggio there satisfactorily but we passed over an unknown defended area on the Italian coast, going across to Sardinia [?] across the Mediterranean, and they chewed us up a bit and on that occasion the pilot was throwing the airplane around like nobody’s business and all my navigational instruments slid off the table onto the floor, and the one moment that they slid onto the floor and I bent down to pick them up there was a horrid grafting bang right beside me or behind me, and shocked to find there was a great big hole in the fuselage. My own instrument board in front of me was smashed. If I had been in normal posture, sitting up at my table, it’d have taken my head off at the neck so that was the reason to be shocked. But having got over it I realised I’d got a guardian angel somewhere and forever after that I seized to worry about anything.
IL: Amazing. So how — how did you — you know? Obviously you mentioned earlier when you were chatting about that people couldn’t, you know, navigators, aimers, people couldn’t find targets and things in the early days of the war. What was different for when you were there? What were the improvements?
DH: 1943 when I went on the squadron they had already experienced Mark 1 GEE, a system of fixing your position on the ground by radar.
IL: Right.
DH: It was very unreliable and you often had to kick it to get it to work even but by the time I got on the squadron we got Mark 2 GEE which was much more reliable and useful. It helped us fix our position before we got to the enemy coast so we could recalculate as navigators the real [emphasis] wind velocity —
IL: Yeah.
DH: — and speed, and we were then able to adjust the forecast winds accordingly from there onwards, to give us more of a chance to get further into Germany accurately. And then, of course, later that year there was a new thing came along called H2S which gave you a plan of the ground. Rays were transmitted from the dome at the rear of the Lancaster under the — just under, near the mid-upper turret there’s a bulge. It transmitted from there, hit the ground, sent back pulses which would put a blip on your screen or a number of towns, must a blip. No names on them of course but in conjunction with dead reckoning navigation we were mostly able to decide which town that would be. In the Ruhr there were so many towns. That was where the problem was. You couldn’t tell which was which, right, because it was like one big industrial blob. But it did have its drawbacks. We went down to obstensibly to go to Pilsen, in Czechoslokavia, and we bombed and there was tremendous fires, a marvellous thing, suitable for the occasion, so to speak, but it turned out not to be Pilsen at all. It was this place here. Where the devil is it? Oh, I can’t find it. Pölitz.
IL: Oh, Pölitiz. Yeah.
DH: Pölitz. It seemed we’d done a wonderful job, nobody knew it was there, or at least all the armaments and that that were there. We did a good trick but we never found Pilsen. Why? Because it was the topography of woodland and hills and that masked the fact that Pilsen was there. So nothing’s perfect.
IL: No, absolutely.
DH: But it helped.
IL: Yeah.
DH: Considerably.
IL: So how, in terms of — when you were briefed on targets, what were you — what were the targets, you know? We’ll talk again about Dresden, you know, aftermath and things like that but were you always —? Did you think you were targeting always — it was, sort of, you were always targeting industrial complexes? Or was there ever a realisation that this was —
DH: They were mostly, as far as I know, industrial complexes and the fact that a lot of people got killed at the same time was unfortunate because they lived near their working space. So if their factory got blown up so does some of the people that lived around that area. It’s inevitable in war. You can’t do much else about that.
IL: OK, tell me a bit about some of the people who were part of your crew.
DH: Well, Burness is the star. A New Zealander who was a first [emphasis] class pilot. Considering the amount, small [emphasis] amount, of training you had before you had before you got onto operations, he was a first class pilot but he couldn’t accept anything that wasn’t acceptable. He was a shrewd, shrewd fellow but also quite a hard one. He once — we were doing some air-firing off Skegness on one occasion, practising, and he swept in over the coast and went right over a group of naval cadets on the forecourt and they all had to fall down, as they claimed they’d had been knocked down. We were pretty well at nought feet. Now he did that and when we got back there’d already been a complaint. Now they’d picked up the squadron letters but they hadn’t picked up the aircraft [emphasis] letter but the Squadron Leader Shorthouse, who was the flight commander then, said, ‘Bernie,’ he said, ‘That was you. The Navy is complaining,’ and he said, ‘Well, what’s the matter?’ He said, ‘They were forced to fall to save their lives, to fall to the ground to escape this aircraft coming in fast and furious over the top of them.’ He said, ‘Damn bad discipline, that!’ [Laugh] But he couldn’t be broke. He fell out with the group captain and he wouldn’t be told. He was strong, a first class pilot, but he knew that he had to defer to me. On one occasion we went down to one of these long trips, seven or eight hours, the weather was dirt, and it was the time when they broadcast from home, Meteology broadcast, revised winds, as they calculated them, but I said to him one day, I said, ‘They broadcast winds saying we’ve got to use seventy-five miles an hour.’ I said, ‘That’s rubbish. They’re a hundred and fifty miles. I know I got a proper fix.’ He said, ‘Well, what are you asking me for? You’re the bloody navigator!’ So I ignored the broadcast winds and went round. We found the target. There wasn’t much activity but it was the target. And we came back, hardly any aircraft anywhere. Usually you used to get a slip-stream, from an aircraft in front of you, absolutely nothing. We were an hour back before the next aircraft in Bomber Command simply because we hadn’t gone all over Germany, right, by false wind forecasts? And the group captain said to Bernie, he said, ‘You haven’t been to the target Burness.’ Because bear in mind they didn’t like each other. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘Come on chaps,’ he said, ‘ We’re going to get something to eat and go to bed.’ So we did. There was a hell-of-a shemozzle the next day because they hadn’t got any intelligence report from us. Right? So was the aircraft missing? Where’s the intelligence report? So it had to be explained and when asked by the commander at base, Scampton it was, ‘Why didn’t you go to briefing? Why didn’t you deliver an intelligence report?’ Bernie said, ‘Well, we hadn’t been to the target according to what the group captain, Sir, so no intelligence report was possible.’ That caused a storm. The offending officer was court-martialled as a result of it because we were able — . They back-tracked all my plots, couldn’t find anything wrong with it. They checked the engine consumption to see if we’d flogged the engines to get home quickly, nothing wrong with that. But above all things, the absolute wonder if the moment, we’d got an aiming point photograph of the target, which was taken automatically when the bombs went down and it wasn’t a good night but there wasn’t too much fire and flame, which very often obscured what could otherwise be a decent photograph, right, so we were totally exonerated, absolutley and completely, and the officer concerned was treated as he should have been treated. I believe he was court-martialled and sent to the middle east, taken down to wing commander but that’s a little bit private that bit , but I don’t care, I’m passed caring now anyway. But these were the sort of things that had to be contended with on some occasions. I never suffered like some did, any harsh reaction after I stopped operations, and when I went back to civvy life and worked for a good many years until I retired, only then did it come and smack me right in the face, all of a sudden I got all sorts of think-back feelings, I forget what the word is, looking back.
IL: Post traumatic stress.
DH: Post traumatic stress and that was terrible. And I thought, ‘Well the only thing I can do is put it down on paper,’ and that’s when I wrote that book after I retired from my civil job after the war.
IL: So what did you do as a job after the war?
DH: I was at Lloyds of London.
IL: Oh right.
DH: Yeah and er, but that didn’t solve the problem in itself because I started getting calls from the BBC to talk on radio, because we lived in Cornwall then. I’d retired and then they started asking me to do after dinner speeches. That didn’t relieve it, not a bit. Until the book was published, properly, it got around, all of a sudden it died away. I haven’t had anything since, just like that. Something spurred it, I don’t know quite what it was. Such are the frailties of human nature, one way or another.
IL: So what sort of things were happening to you just at the time when, you know —?
DH: Well, what sort of things why I might have been affected? Well, it’s quite something when you see an aircraft shot down in flames on your starboard beam or on —, you see one explode in the air right in front of you, all that kind of thing, you saw it so often and you began to think, ‘I’m going to get that one of these days.’ But we didn’t.
IL: So were there any other interesting people on your crew?
DH: Er, they all had their own facets, most notable I think is probably the popsies they chased in their off duty hours.
IL: This is the sort of thing we need to talk about.
DH: Yeah, but they were, of course, integrated thoroughly. They knew what to do and did it well and we didn’t — we weren’t completely ousted [?]. We did shoot down two or three night fighters which was quite something because you rarely saw a night fighter in total darkness, he saw you first . He could see your exhaust fumes from four engines. That told the Germans it was an English bomber so he could come up underneath and fire up. You couldn’t see underneath, right, so you just had to keep out of the way and that kind of thing.
IL: So would you have seen night fighters on most of the night missions?
DH: Yes, yeah.
IL: Gosh. Mm.
DH: Not in its full shape.
IL: No.
DH: But it was there, you knew it was there, and later in the war they did develop a radar thing operated by the radar operator, though I can’t think of it now, which showed if you were being trailed by an airplane, put it like that. But probably the most interesting thing about it all to me was how I got my commission.
IL: Yes, please tell me about it.
DH: Is that worth listening to?
IL: Yes, of course.
DH: Well, in those days, when you qualified in your particular trade, say navigator or pilot, you were made a sergeant, only a sergeant, and we took our sergeant’s rank to squadrons, and eventually to flight sergeant, but by then a number of the crews, straight from training, without experience, were coming in as commissioned ranks. They started commissioning by er, during, after training. We missed all that and it kind of rose up one night at a briefing, 44 Squadron, when Wing Commander Nettleton VC was briefing us for an operation and, like he always said, he drew attention by to the most senior crew by way of saying, ‘Look, if they’ve survived, why shouldn’t you?’ Right, now when they said “Flight Sergeant Burness” there was a lot of the new bods who looked up in a bit of astonishment, ‘Flight Sergeant Burness will lead the squadron tonight.’ It didn’t mean anything because you went indepentently. But sitting at the table, as it happened, were one or two of the big-wigs from Scampton, seeing how we were conducting our briefing, I suppose, or rather our management was. There were one or two covert chaps down the table when he said this. The next morning we were called to — yeah, the wing commander’s office. He said, ‘Do you want a commission?’ ‘Do you want a commission?’ We’d never thought about it really. He said, ‘Right.’ We did sort of hesitate for a moment because we thought well it won’t make much difference to the pay, though the mess bills would be bigger. He said, ‘Right, get into Lincoln. It’s been arranged with the tailors. You’re back in the mess, the officer’s mess, by tonight. You should be clothed properly in your new uniforms.’ And I think I —. The pilot didn’t achieve that because it had to go through the New Zealand Air Force pattern. So I had to attend at the mess that night and I wasn’t very happy about it, of course, but there it happened. And it made it easier for me when I went as an instructer, you know, it was a bit more listening went on, and it showed that whilst the operational features were first class, they were well planned, the administration wasn’t so good. Now why should they forget about those people, or were they hoping they’d all get wiped out before they needed to commission them, right?
IL: I suppose that’s true of a lot of them. Didn’t they? We talked about earlier about the lack of recognition that Bomber Command had. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on — put your thoughts on tape.
DH: I’ve already said some, haven’t I? But that wasn’t on tape.
IL: But that wasn’t on tape.
DH: Well, it was my view we had Winston Churchill, as good a commander as he was during wartime, he was responsible for not giving Bomber Command the proper credit for its acheivements because he hoped to be the first peace-time Prime Minister, and he didn’t want to go looking for that position thought of as a warmonger or anything like that. Political, it was. So Arthur Harris, head of Bomber Command, got blamed for hitting the wrong targets, like Dresden, for example. Well, of course, it was never his decision. It had to come from the top. He, Arthur Harris, wasn’t allowed to bomb who he felt he should do. He had a pattern [?] from the Air Council and the Prime Minister. So we all thought in my area, although he’d been a good war commander, he let us down at the end because it should have been recognised that Bomber Command did, as it was expected to do, pretty well win the war because our troops and the American troops, being conscripts, were not up to the standard of the German army. They didn’t have much chance of getting on to the French [unclear] unless they were helped very very considerably indeed, and of course they were by Bomber Command, because we bombed all his supplies, so he couldn’t bring his troops up to — force us back into the sea as would in [unclear] have happened and he says, ‘my few.’ I’m firm about that. I’ve thought about it a lot and so, of course, he didn’t get his seat, as the Prime Minister. I would think all Bomber Command voted against him. Right, now then, what else was there to add to that do you think?
IL: Whatever. You were talking about Dresden as a target. That it wasn’t the innocent target that has been portrayed.
DH: No, it wasn’t.
IL: And you also mentioned, you know, your experiences of arguing with people on the radio. These are all useful things.
DH: Er, yes. Well, Dresden, of course, wasn’t the classic [emphasis] city that people like to think of it, as solely classic, and it’s a shame to break the buildings downs, but it housed the centre of the German Eastern command for fighting the Russians, and also had started making precision instruments that had been knocked out of the Ruhr by Bommber Command, and they built them down in Desden where it was thought it might be safe and also at Yalta, as I remember, this President Roosevelt, Josef Stalin and Churchill agreed to help the Russians and that was put in place by the Royal Air Force under the command of Winston Churchill, to bomb Dresden. So there isn’t much argument about this. That’s what happened but no one likes to think they couldn’t be stopped, like some of the people came on the radio after the war saying, ‘The war was nearly over. Why did we have to smash Dresden?’ Well, of course, it wasn’t known at that time that the war was nearly over. It collapsed rather sooner than expected and, in any case, her view, of this particular woman I’m thinking of, wouldn’t have been respected by those who lived in London with V2s falling all around them and smashing them to bits. So it was well justified and I think that’s about as much as I’d like to say about that, right?
IL: OK, but you’ve had some recognition recently.
DH: Oh, you mean the clasp. Well, yes, I was publicly presented with that by Air Vice Marshall Pat O’Reilly, retired, in the King’s Arms Hotel, Melksham. I didn’t really want to attend but the RAF Association thought I wasn’t doing the proper thing by opting out so I went along and, well, it was a social occasion which happened with a severe background to it, of course. It was a late [emphasis] recognition of Bomber Command without achieving much in the way of expense and that was, had a lot to do with it.
IL: Have you been to the new Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park?
DH: No. I’ve thought of it. I’ve been a very busy man actually. I haven’t really had time to do much. You’ve caught me at a time now when I’m tolerably free. I could go up tomorrow I suppose.
IL: You say you’ve been a busy man. What sort of things have you done after the war then Des, as well as obviously working?
DH: Well, a lot of book work. I did do some work for a City of London organisation after the war, by post. I done it for a fair few years. I’ve given it up now. It was taking up too much of my time and —. But in general mobility is not as good as it used to be though I get about alright. But I’m now more thinking where am I going to get a good meal next and which pub shall I go to?
IL: Sounds good to me.
DH: Yeah, well I find, and it’s not so silly as it sounds, but I go and I join a group of us oldies. We indulge in intelligent conversation over lunch and, in my humble view, that’s the only thing that’s really left for very elderly people. You can’t do much except use your brains, be friendly with people, discuss perhaps the situation in the world today, try and fight it’s battles without much success because the younger ones aren’t listening, right, or can’t listen, one or the other. And so we enjoy our food while putting the world to rights, in theory.
IL: What —? Tell us a little bit about how you socialised during the war. What sort of — what was the social life like between operations?
DH: At the bar. Briefly, that’s about it. Occasionally we would wallop off into Lincoln but you always did the same thing there. You went into The Snake Pit as they called The Saracen’s Head in Lincoln. It was known as The Snake Pit ‘cause it was thought there were more German spies in there than anywhere else in the country and so you could only have a drink. You didn’t drink too much generally but you did rather absorb a bit of it. It wasn’t bad. You didn’t do much except for one thing, one good thing, we used to get week’s leave every six weeks, phenominal, until it started getting down to three weeks because so many people in front of you had not come back from ops, you moved up the rosta. So we were getting a lot of leave by way of easing the situation.
IL: How did you cope with not — the people, how did you cope with people not returning? People that you — or were these people you didn’t know or you were just socialising with your crew or was this something that you just accepted?
DH: You accept it very quickly because you knew it’s inevitable, that this sort of thing will happen. The losses in — the worst part of the war in Bomber Command was ’43, ’44, as you know, were pretty fantastic. Of over 75,000 employed, 56,000 were fatal, er, casualties, and that doesn’t augur for a particularly friendly future. So you just have to accept it. ‘There’s a war on,’ was an old expression we used to use. It can be used in many circumstances, ‘There’s a war on.’
IL: Right, can you stop for a second?
DH: At the end of the war as the war ceased all our aeroplanes were grounded so there was nothing to do, utter boredom, ONUE [?] by the bucketful and one got fed up with getting up in the morning, breakfasting, walking down to the flights to see if there was anything, walking back because there was nothing, day after day. There was only one way to handle this, to get released. But of course, if you were relatively young, you were the later ones to be released. They asked, it was a combination of age and service, actually, carried out and so I, like most others, got released as soon as I could, went into Civvy Street, got going, but even in the City of London, the pay was pretty poor, and it was not as much as I needed. I’d been earning more in the services and so I rejoined the RAFVR, I resigned my emergency commsission and took on a reconstituted commission but I had to go in at a lower rank. So, instead of flight lieutenant, as I was, it was flying officer. But that was reinstituted, your original substantive rank, was reinstituted about a year later. And I did four years flying around at weekends, on Anson aircraft, of all things, and for a fortnight during the summer months, for which you duly got a day’s pay plus flying pay, which was substantial, which helped me with my reintroduction to civil life. And then at the end of that four years I felt I’d truly had enough and resigned again, finally, but before that I was granted, because I’d done all of that, I was granted my substantive rank of flight lieutenant for life. End of story.
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 Desmond Hawkins
Format
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00:46:44 audio recording
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
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Ian Locker
Date
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2015-10-01
Identifier
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AHawkinsDH151001
Description
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Desmond Hawkins volunteered for the Royal Air Force and became a navigator. After training on Wellingtons and Manchesters, he flew Lancasters for 44 Squadron and completed a tour of operations. He was commissioned as flight lieutenant and after the tour was posted to an Operational Training Unit at RAF Chipping Warden as an instructor. He then completed a further sixteen operations with 625 Squadron. He talks about the development of radar. He also mentions some of the operations to the Ruhr, Berlin, Italy and Czechoslovakia as well as a particularly long flight that led to landing in Blida, North Africa. Then carrying out a bombing operation from there on Leghorn, where his aircraft was attacked and damaged. After the war he went to work in the City of London but rejoined the Royal Air Force for four years. He wrote a book called 'No Future'.
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Christine Kavanagh
Language
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eng
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Sound
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Great Britain
Italy
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
Germany--Berlin
Italy--Livorno
North Africa
Slovakia
Czech Republic
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1943
44 Squadron
625 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
coping mechanism
Gee
grief
H2S
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
Manchester
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
radar
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/736/10736/AChandlerCH170802.2.mp3
e37953e1bdd41376e24b421652cdfeba
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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Chandler, Cecil Harry
C H Chandler
Chick Chandler
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Cecil Chandler (1923 - 2020, 1608265 Royal Air Force) and three letters. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 15 and 622 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Cecil Chandler and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-02
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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Chandler, CH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: Recording on the 2nd of August 2017. Ian Locker interviewing Mr Cecil who prefers to be called Chick, Chandler. Chick, so just tell us, tell us a little bit about your early life and how you came to be in Bomber Command.
CC: Right. Well, I was born in Alton. I was in a reserved occupation when the war started. I was a sort of an apprentice to a one man band engineer. But when the war started of course he branched out and became, he employed thirty people on war work. So, I was automatically in a Reserved Occupation. Now, I I didn’t like it so on my nineteenth birthday I volunteered to join aircrew. I was in the ATC. I reached the rank of flight sergeant in the ATC. I went to Reading for what they call, interviewed to find out what I was suitable for in the air force. And thirty of us there were all good flight engineers. No pilots. No navigators. All good flight engineers. So I became a flight engineer. This was in July. And I was told my engineer’s course would last for two years. I was called up December the 28th 1942 and I found my course lasted for just six months. I certainly wasn’t anywhere near prepared for flying in operations when I started operations. My training was inadequate. I spent quite a lot of time in hospital. I got injured playing football. I did all my training on Stirlings and flew in Lancasters so I wasn’t really up to it if you know what I mean. Now then [pause] what, what I’ve done I’ve got here which I wrote some time ago this is just to show how green I was. I wrote this two years ago and it’s called “Fifty Shades of Green.” On my very first leave after gaining my brevet and tapes I was proudly marching, even swaggering down the road leading to my mother’s house when a snotty nosed little kid came running up, and when he got quite close he stopped and said, ‘Oh no. It’s not a real airman. It’s only old Pop Chandler.’ Needless to say I was completely deflated. But it is said that words of wisdom are spoken by babies and sucklings and snotty nosed kids. As the following events unfolded it would seem that young Sooty Wright, the chimney sweep’s son was not far from the truth with what he had said. To start at the beginning crews were formed by putting say sixteen pilots, sixteen navigators, sixteen of every trade into a hangar. Told to sort themselves out. So, so eighty individuals came in and sixteen crews came out. And these crews went to an Operational Training Unit for about six or seven weeks where they — a crew of five flying in Wellington aircraft. When they completed this training they went to a Heavy Con Unit where they picked up another gunner and a flight engineer. No democratic choice for engineers. We were allocated a crew. I was most disappointed to be given a mere sergeant as a pilot. Being very naïve I thought a squadron leader would be a better pilot than a sergeant. However, Sergeant Brooks proved to be an outstanding pilot. The next thing might be entitled — well, no I think should have started, “Met the Airmen.” I met the crew under, under a Stirling aircraft. A Stirling aircraft. We’d stand under the aircraft with the props going and not be decapitated. I looked up and I thought — Oh my God is this mine? So, anyway we got into the aircraft and the crew had done say six weeks training maybe. I had to have a screen with me because I’d not done any flying at all. After one and a half hours the screen got out of the aircraft and I was on my own for the very first time. And downwind the pilot said, ‘I can’t get the undercarriage down.’ A chance for me to shine I thought. So I raced back to, to the offending equipment and found to my horror it wasn’t a Mark 3 undercarriage as I had been trained on. It was a Mark 1 and I had no idea how to get that down whatsoever. So, we stooged around for an hour while somebody from the ground told me what to do. Which buttons to press. Which knobs to pull. And eventually because the Stirling was electrically operated I had to wind the wheels down by hand so that nine hundred turns for each wheel. Anyway, after a while I ground both the wheels down. The little indicator reading 000. Green light on. So, I said to the skipper, ‘You can land now.’ And for some reason unknown to me, I don’t know why to this day I gave the wheel one more turn for luck and actually heard the locks clunk in. Fifteen seconds later we landed safely. Thank God. The next thing was on operations. We finished our training. Went on operations.
IL: So, how long, how long did you get your — how long was your training on the, on, actually with your crew before you actually went on to operations then?
CC: Three weeks.
IL: Right.
CC: About three weeks.
IL: And was that, was that three weeks of flying or was that just three weeks on the ground.
CC: And ground school as well. Ground school and flying. I I did a total I think — I did my total flying time was something like two hundred and eighty hours. That’s including operations. Now, today of course they talk about thousands of hours aren’t they? But anyway, that’s beside the point. Anyway, we started out. We started. We went to Mildenhall and we did a couple of mine laying trips which was standard procedure. And then we were sent to Mannheim in a Stirling. And unfortunately, half way to Mannheim I had to report that the starboard outer engine was overheating and the oil pressure was dropping. We had to drop our bombs and return to base. The pilot wasn’t at all happy. He said, ‘No. We can’t do that. We’ll be accused of LMF.’ And after quite an argument the bomb aimer stepped in who was the daddy of the crew and he said, ‘Look, you’ve got a list of what the engineer says.’ We would have been twenty minutes late and down to eight thousand feet had we carried on. So that — anyway we got back. Engineer warrant officer climbed up and confirmed my suspicion. Big oil leak, and we did the right thing to feather and come home. So, my standing with the crew was very low. You can imagine. The next trip was to Berlin in a Stirling. Now, here the navigator made a mistake. He got tired early. We arrived early over the target looking for somewhere to bomb and the rear gunner said, ‘The TIs,’ Target Indicators, ‘Are dropping behind us.’ So we had to do an orbit at thirty thousand feet over Berlin against the flow of traffic with bombs raining down all around us and then we, anyway we survived that but my prestige with the crew immediately rose because they realised then what I had known all along. It was going to be bloody dangerous. Anyway, that was our last trip in a Stirling. And then we changed to [pause] we changed to Lancasters. And our very first trip on a Lancaster was to Berlin. I’ve got a list of it somewhere. Oh, here we are. Yes. It was Berlin. Berlin again. Stuttgart. Schweinfurt. Stuttgart. Stuttgart. Frankfurt. Berlin. Essen. Nuremberg, where they lost ninety five aeroplanes. We were attacked by a fighter. [Lyon?] And Cologne. At Dusseldorf, our seventeenth op, we got hit with a shell and a fighter at the same time. And basically we had two crew members killed there and then, two injured, port inner on fire, H2S on fire. No hydraulics at all so, we didn’t have any undercarriage, no flaps, no gun turrets. Nothing working at all. And we decided to try and get back to England if we could but we’d ditch if we, if we couldn’t make it. And we were at seven thousand feet and we were losing height very quickly. And meanwhile I had to carry out checks on crew damage, crew injuries and aircraft damage. So I went in the bomb aimer’s compartment and the sight that met me — I was actually physically sick. It was such a mess. He’d been absolutely torn to pieces by this, this shrapnel that hit the aircraft. I went back to the pilot. He was, he was alright. I went back to the navigators. We had two navigators on board. One for the H2S, one for navigating. The navigation leader who was H2S operator, he appeared to be in some sort of shock. Our navigator was working normally. Went back to where the w/op should have been. But the w/op’s job during the bombing run was to go to the flare chute at the rear of the aircraft and check that the photoflash had gone. So I passed the mid-upper gunner. He’d got out of his turret. His boots, his flying boots were on fire by the way and he’d extinguished the fire in the H2S. But he couldn’t tell us because he was not on the intercom so we didn’t know it was on fire even. I got back to the rear turret where the wireless operator was checking the flash had gone and he obviously was going to be dead. He had a hole in his chest the size of a saucepan sort of thing, and his legs. Well, he was obviously going to die. So I had to report that we had one member dead. One probably dead. No hydraulics at all. And I carried an outside check on the aircraft to make sure there was no fuel leaks. And while I was checking outside of course I found where the dinghy should have been there was a great big hole that had been shot away so we had no dinghy. So we couldn’t bale out. We couldn’t ditch. And we were losing height rapidly and we, we staggered back and at one time we were at just two hundred feet above the sea. But because we were using so much fuel we gradually gained height to five hundred feet and we crossed the coast at five hundred feet and did a belly landing at Woodbridge. Now, three of us survived completely intact. Four. Four including the flight lieutenant navigator. The following night the pilot, myself, the rear gunner and the flight lieutenant were off on another raid and this time went to Karlsruhe. The crew made up of the wing commander in charge of the squadron. He was, he was a bomb aimer by trade so he came as our bomb aimer. And two, two volunteer gunners took up the other two positions of wireless op and gunner. And we were actually coned for twenty minutes. So we were twenty minutes out on the target. Of course we were spending all this time being coned. We were attacked twice in that time by a fighter. On one occasion, I didn’t see the aircraft I saw the tracer shells whizzing by. And the other one, he shot over the top of us. But anyway, we got back from that. And after that we went to a place called Cap Griz Nez which was softening up the French for D-Day. And then the crew broke up because an experienced pilot had taken a sprog crew and they’d been lost. So we had a crew without a pilot and the pilot with only half a crew. So the pilot took over the crew and left myself and the rear gunner spares. We went to another squadron. And there’s one thing I didn’t mention there that —
IL: So, that was still based at Mildenhall.
CC: Oh yeah. Yeah. In fact —
IL: There was more than one squadron flying out of there.
CC: Yeah. Two squadrons. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Two squadrons. And I then went to another, another, another crew. So, I did one trip to Trappes and then the next thing was D-Day. I went to D-Day on the, I’ve got the 6th here. It was actually on the 5th we took off but we did bomb in daylight. And that was very successful. It was a very successful trip. Apparently the guns at Ousterheim didn’t fire a single round. It was very highly successful and we got a signal from the beaches saying we had done a grand job and they hadn’t fired a single round. Went back the same day to a place called Liseaux and that was communications. Then we carried on then and I got to my twenty seventh op. Went to a place called a Wizernes and it was a storage depot for V-2s. We bombed successfully. Came back at eight thousand feet. And on the way back another Lancaster formated us just slightly behind. Slightly below. At about five hundred yards away on the starboard side so I could see him very clearly. I was told, ‘Keep an eye on him because we don’t know what he’s up to.’ We had no idea. But he formated on us. Anyway, after eight or nine minutes it suddenly blew up. Boof, just blew up like that. And what I didn’t know and nobody seemed to know at the time was the Germans had cannons that fired upwards called Schrage Musik. Have you heard of Schrage Musik?
IL: Well, I’ve read about it.
CC: Yeah. Well, these things they slipped behind the aircraft, do that — and at fifty feet fire just two shells. Explosive incendiary into, into inboard or outboard, inboard fuel tanks and of course the aircraft blew up. And I didn’t know. All there was was Lancaster one minute. ME110 the next. Now of course he attacked us of conventionally then and luckily we shot him down. And seconds later a JU88 attacked us and luckily we shot him down. So, in nine minutes we shot down two enemy aircraft. At the time I wasn’t too convinced we’d shot them down because I can’t see what’s going on behind but it so happened that in that thing there another mid-upper gunner saw the action taking place and asked his skipper could he go and join in? The skipper said, ‘Not bloody likely.’ And so they came back and reported what they’d seen at the same briefing we were at. So, it sort of confirmed my, I was very doubtful and now I was convinced of course. So, that, that’s basically — One thing I didn’t mention to you that when we were attacked by this at, at Dusseldorf it was rather funny. I’ll just read you what I’ve written down actually because it’s quite interesting I’m sure. [laughs]
[pause]
Yes. Skip this, it says that the bombs were actually dropping from the aircraft with a tremendous explosion. Here I should explain at this instance I experienced a very strange sensation. For a very brief period of time everything seemed to happen in ultra-slow motion. I felt myself not sat on my back. I felt myself falling. And as I was falling I saw sparks going above the cockpit the wrong way. I thought if that’s the engine on fire the sparks — and this is ultra-seconds. Hit the ground and it was then I realised the sparks were in fact tracer shells being fired from a fighter. I didn’t know. And they appeared to be doing that because we were doing that.
IL: Yes.
CC: You know. Anyway, when I was laid flat on my back my nose pointing to the front of the aircraft, my head to the front there, my feet to the tail I couldn’t move. I didn’t know why I didn’t move but of course it was G wasn’t it? Yeah. I didn’t know. I didn’t know about G. I didn’t know about adrenalin. The reason everything was in slow-mo was adrenalin of course. Adrenalin pumps. Everything was in slow motion and I couldn’t move because I was pinned up with G. Anyway, we were going along like that to fourteen, from twenty two to fourteen thousand feet. The pilot pulled out at fourteen thousand feet. He said, ‘Bale out.’ But before we could bale out we went down from fourteen to seven thousand feet and he pulled out again and someone said, ‘I can’t bale out. My parachute’s burned.’ In fact, three parachutes had been burned. We didn’t know that at the time. And that’s when we we staggered back to England and we finally crash landed. I’ll say another, another thing that quite unaccountable but I saw in my mind’s eye, you know. You know what I’m talking about? Something you see in your mind’s eye. I saw very clearly a telegram boy walking up our garden path whistling very cheerily. Handing my mother a telegram saying I’d been killed. And she thanked him. She was very calm and thanked him for taking the trouble of delivering the message. So, in the middle of my rest period, six month rest period, you probably know about the six month rest period. I I was sent to an aircrew school as a ground instructor. I’d been there about three months.
IL: Where was that? Sorry.
CC: Do you know I can’t remember.
IL: Oh, I see. Ok.
CC: I can not. I’ve tried all I can and I can’t remember. But silly isn’t it? Anyway, it was a bleak period of time and I think I wanted to forget quite frankly. But basically a very young officer told me to clean his car. And I told him in no uncertain terms what he’d do with his car. Unfortunately, the following day the flight lieutenant who was our squadron leader, who was in charge of, our engineering leader was killed in a flying accident and this man became my temporary immediate boss. And he took it out on me. He sent me off to escort a prisoner. Three days away. Handcuffed through London with the arms out, all the rest of it. I came back and he said to me, ‘I’ve got good news for you,’ he said, ‘You’re going back on ops.’ I said, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. I’m not.’ Anyway, I slipped up very badly here. All I should have done was gone to the CO and said, ‘Look, I’ve not volunteered for this. He’s volunteered me.’ But I allowed myself to be moved to a Heavy Conversion Unit where I met the new crew I was to fly with. Squadron leader. All volunteer second tour and the first thing I said to the squadron leader was, ‘I’m flying with you now but I’m not flying on ops because I’ve got three months rest period due to me.’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re no good to me.’ And he detailed another chap to take my place. He got airborne and five minutes later they crashed five hundred yards from me. And they were all killed except one in a big explosion. And so then they said I was LMF. I’ll read, I’ll read what it says — it says, “How I, how I became branded LMF.” On completion of my tour I was posted to a Number 3 Group aircrew school as a ground instructor. Unfortunately, I can’t recall the station. I do recall after a few weeks the unit moved to a different air force. Again, I can’t recall the station. The time can be worked out fairly accurately. About three months after I finished my tour. 10th of July 1944. One day a very junior officer ordered me to clean his car. I responded by telling him in most lurid terms what he could do with his car. Here I digress. With a little more experience of the Royal Air Force procedures I should have taken objected in front of him and cleaned his car and then put in a redress of grievance. Unfortunately, the following day the engineer leader was killed and this junior officer took over and became my boss. He immediately began giving me menial tasks. I’m sure in an attempt to provoke me to some indiscretion. After a week or so he sent me somewhere [unclear] to escort a prisoner who had committed some sort of crime. On return I found that he had volunteered me to do a second tour. Here my lack of nous was apparent. My action should have been to request to see the CO. The whole story would have been resolved immediately. I ought not to have left the station. As it was I was sent to a Heavy Conversion Unit where I met the new crew. Met under a Lancaster standing in dispersal. My first action was to inform the pilot I was not a volunteer. I would fly with them on training but not on ops. I was still entitled to three months rest. He was very understanding but said — what did he say? [pause]
Other: You’re no use to me.
CC: I was no interest. There was no, I was no use to him and he took a fellow to take my place. The crew took off [unclear] and at about five hundred feet feathered the port outer engine. Dived into the ground five hundred from me. Waited for a bus to take me to dispersal. The rear gunner was the sole survivor and very badly burned. From that moment I was branded LMF. And that’s how I became branded LMF.
IL: So, who branded you LMF?
CC: It was there.
IL: It was the air force?
CC: Well, whoever it was. I don’t know. Because I, because I wasn’t killed that day they said I was LMF. But luckily, you see I was sent to Minster on the Isle of Sheppey. That’s away from any aircrew at all. And then I was sent to a place called Keresley Grange to be stripped. You know, in front of everybody. Stripped. So, I sat before a board the day before this was going to take place and the squadron leader said, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ I said, ‘I’ve been telling you that for the last ten weeks.’ He said, ‘Well, that’s fine,’ he said, ‘But you realise that in two weeks’ time your three months are up. What’s, what’s your intention then?’ So, I said, ‘Well, look since I’ve had such a bad three months I think I should have a three months extension.’ This seemed to cause some controversy. Anyway, he sent the other two flight lieutenants out and left me and him together and he said, ‘Flight sergeant. You have failed an aircrew medical.’ ‘But sir, I —’ ‘Flight sergeant, are you listening? You have failed an aircrew medical. March out.’ And that’s how I became an air traffic controller.
IL: Right. So did you immediately go to air traffic control?
CC: Yeah. I was given a choice. They said because I was a Group A tradesman theoretically I could become an engine fitter or an air traffic controller. But I’d seen what these poor engine fitters had been through in the winter nights changing an engine. Bitterly cold. I thought no. I’ll opt for a nice little caravan with a WAAF on my knee sort of thing, you know [laughs] And it was good. That was the best move I ever made in my whole life. It was. I took to it like a duck to water. I left the air force for a very short time and went back to my old job which I didn’t like. So I re-joined the air force. This time as a sergeant air traffic controller and I stayed for well over thirty years doing a job I loved.
IL: How did it work with air traffic control?
CC: Well, when I became an air traffic controller it was a duty pilot on the end of the runway in a black and white painted caravan. And all the equipment you had was a red and green Aldis lamp and a verey pistol. And that’s all you had. And gradually it worked out so that you could listen to people on the radio. Then it got to the stage where you could actually talk on the radio to people. So, you could actually talk to people. And then of course it progressed on to radar. Well, I didn’t like radar at first. I didn’t. You can’t talk to a blip on the screen but you can in fact. It worked very well. And after initial sort of misgivings I became quite a competent air traffic controller. I was renowned for my talk down skills actually. And so I became basically a talk down controller in the air force and I got quite a high reputation for the way I handled things. I can tell you another story about that but that’s nothing to do with flying.
IL: No. Please do.
CC: Well —
IL: Please do.
CC: Towards the end of my, my service career I was a duty air traffic controller on what they called QRA. Quick Reaction Alert. You’ve heard of that of course. No? Well, Quick Reaction Alert. At the end of the runway at Brüggen there were two aircraft armed with nuclear weapons and they had two minutes to take off. So you had to have an air traffic controller on duty 24/7. And your job was to, you know if the balloon went up get these people airborne to go and bomb out the Russians. But just, and all the stations had these two aircraft of course. There weren’t just two aircraft but there were two what they called Quick Reaction Alert. But I was a Quick Reaction Alert controller. On a Sunday I’m laying in bed in my pyjamas reading the News of the World. And my job was to answer the telephone. I daren’t leave the telephone. If I went to the loo, ‘I’m going to the loo.’ ‘I’m back from the loo.’ That sort of thing, you see. Anyway, the front doorbell rang and standing at the front door was a very young airman, I thought. And he said, ‘I’m Squadron Leader Gleed. Can I come in?’ I said, ‘Where’s you’re 1250?’ Your identification. Your 1250 identity card? [pause] You haven’t got it.’ I said, ‘Corporal, I didn’t come up on a banana boat. Piss off.’ Unfortunately, he was my new boss. And he never forgave me. He gunned for me for two years. And one of the things he did because I was, I was, you know I was quite an experienced controller. I’d been over thirty one years. I knew the job backwards. So, I was a controller upstairs in what they called local van. And a controller downstairs on PR. I could do both. And this particular day I was upstairs with a trainee flight sergeant. And the trainee flight sergeant, I had to pass out whether he was good enough to be on his own or not. Basically, after a couple of hours I said, ‘Yes. This man’s very competent. I’m handing him the watch.’ So, I handed him the watch. Signed off. Waited to go home. My boss phoned up. ‘Come downstairs to the radio room now.’ So, I went down to the radio room and it was absolute chaos. There was a — and he said, he sat me in the chair, ‘Get him in.’ Now, ‘him’ was a Phantom and the Phantom had a BLC malfunction. Now that meant that he couldn’t, he couldn’t slow down. He had a, he had a flying speed all the time which was very fast in a phantom. And he had to take the approach hook wire, and but of course I broke all the rules. The first thing I said was, ‘Turn left ten degrees. Begin descent, read back QFE,’ and that was, you know you’re not supposed to do that but quite a sharp turn on final approach. Anyway, he came in weaving and diving and ducking. I finally got him lined up at one and a half miles and he successfully took the hook wire which was the, what the rotary arrester, rotary hydraulic arrester gear rag. Hook wire I called them. He took the hook wire. My boss said, ‘Come downstairs,’ and he started telling me off about the way I’d handled this which I shouldn’t have been doing of course. He could have done it and the two other controllers. They both should have done it. But he got me downstairs to do it, you see. He started telling me off. Now, in the middle of all this the phone bell rang and he said, ‘It’s for you.’ [unclear] Chandler.’ ‘He said, ‘Mr Chandler, did you just talk down aircraft —’ so and so and so and so? ‘Yes.’ ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, ‘You saved our lives.’ Pilot and navigator. ‘Will you start again sir?’ And my boss said, ‘I don’t care. It wasn’t perfect.’ However, the following, the following morning the squadron assigned aeroplane came in, full dress uniform with sword to thank me personally in front of my boss. And my boss looked bootfaced and sullen. I thought, up yours mate [laughs] So, that was one of the many things he had at me. It was another instance was the Phantoms were just leaving Brüggen and the new aircraft were coming. I think they were Jaguars. I’m not sure but I think they were Jaguars. The first Jaguar that came, came in and asked for a PAR. So, you know, ‘Steady. Ok, runway 26, maintain heading. Read back QFE.’ ‘Read back QFE 1009.’ ‘Wrong. 1016. Acknowledge.’ ‘Acknowledged. 1016.’ But he never changed. So he’s two hundred and, two hundred and ten feet lower than he thought he was. So he hit the ground with a tremendous bang. You can imagine. And he complained that I’d given him the wrong QFE. My boss got to warrant officer so I was taken off control room immediately. The next morning a Board of Enquiry was convened. At the board, at the Board of Enquiry was the station commander, a wing commander flying, my boss the squadron leader, the bloke flying the aeroplane. He had a legal representative to represent him. I had myself. And a couple of other flight lieutenants and the tapes were played back. Well, the minute the tape was played back it was obvious I was one hundred percent right. It could have come straight from the training manual. You know.
IL: Yeah.
CC: It really was so perfect. So, obviously there was only one possible finding they could possibly have. I wasn’t guilty of anything at all. But before the board could announce their findings my boss said, ‘A perfectly understandable mistake. The pilot had been very busy all day and was probably very tired.’ So, I thought well thanks very much mate, you know. That’s very kind of you. Anyway, it didn’t wash. The pilot was wrong and I was right and that was the end of the story. So anyway , I haven’t read any of that yet have I? [laughs] Oh yeah —
IL: Can we just come back to just explore a couple of things? You said that you were in the ATC. Was that from school?
CC: No. I think the ATC started when [pause] I think it was about 1960 err 1936 I think. Anyway, I joined when it started in Alton. I was a sort of a founder member at Alton.
IL: Right.
CC: Whenever that was. And of course being a founding member I became a flight sergeant fairly quickly. We had a Warrant Officer Eades, he was a very very brainy bloke. Flight sergeant [unclear] who was also particularly brainy and I made up the other flight sergeant. And there was me. I was, I was adequate. But as I say and I had a certificate from the ATC saying I was suitable for pilot/navigator/bomb aimer training. PNB. They didn’t want PNBs. They wanted engineers. I was an engineer. From the time I, the time I signed up I was an engineer. Not a very good engineer but I was an engineer. I I think I don’t know, anything I’ve forgotten to tell you? Oh, did I tell you about — yes, I told you about the Schrage Musik didn’t I?
IL: You did.
CC: Yeah.
IL: And seeing the, seeing, seeing the Lancaster explode.
CC: Yeah. That was, that was — but you see I didn’t know what it was. Well, if the Air Force knew they weren’t going to tell us. They didn’t tell us. But I believe later on in the war, later on the war I think they fixed Halifaxes. Instead of having a H2S bulge underneath they fitted a twin machine gun, .5 millimetre to tackle this. Because I knew about that. He didn’t shoot at anybody but he, that’s what his job was. He was laying on the floor looking down for aircraft coming underneath. So, I told you that. I’ve told you that. What I didn’t mention to you by the way, when I said we shot aircraft down when the aircraft, when we were attacked by the first ME110 the rear gunner only had one gun fire in his turret. And the mid-upper gunner had daylight tracer loaded in one so he couldn’t fire until he’d disconnected the daylight tracing. I don’t know how it came back to that. We did actually definitely shoot down two aeroplanes in the space of nine minutes and all in all I survived eleven fighter attacks in total which it was maybe not a record but it comes pretty close I tell you.
IL: Absolutely, because —
CC: Yeah. Yeah.
IL: I think most of the people who I’ve spoken to on, you know out of their, out of thirty operations most people will say they saw maybe two, possibly three fighters. Just saw. You know. Not necessarily attacked. You know. They obviously ,they talk about, you know sort of anti-aircraft fire as well.
CC: Yeah. Yeah.
IL: But it certainly, you know, you don’t seem to — you seem to have been very lucky in an unlucky sense. If you see what I mean.
CC: I, no, I was very lucky. I think, you know to survive eleven is quite something. I think we were actually hit three times. The first time we were hit was the Nuremberg raid when we had the petrol tank holes but no casualties. And the second time we were hit was at Dusseldorf where we had two people killed. But that was more flak then fighter but the fighter did attack us and set the engine on fire. And then we had two dos at Karlsruhe. You see. And then on that other thing we had they attacked us seven times altogether. But as I say on the third occasion we shot one or the fourth, so a total of eleven which is, well as I say pretty good.
IL: Yeah. Can, can I and you don’t have to answer this but one of the things that you mentioned obviously, you know having two of your colleagues killed in a, in the plane and you’re the one who finds them. How did, how did that make you feel? What were your — what sort of —
CC: Well, I was physically sick at the time when I saw the bomb aimer. I actually vomited. It was such a mess, you know. I’d never seen a dead body in my life. To see that. That was something.
IL: Did you get any, as you know I’m a retired doctor. I’ve dealt with trauma, you know. Did you have any first aid medical training?
CC: Oh yeah. Yeah. We had morphine and things like that on board. Yeah. They’d have pumped morphine in to the, in to the wireless operator. I don’t, I don’t know. I didn’t do that because as I say basically we had a couple of spare crew. The navigating leader he couldn’t, H2S was on fire so he was on dosing, dosing out medication and throwing stuff overboard. But then he had nothing else to do anyway had he? I mean he couldn’t, he couldn’t use H2S. It was on fire.
IL: How did you give the morphine? Was it sort of just —
CC: I guess —
IL: Intramuscular?
CC: As far as I know a needle. I don’t —
IL: It was a needle into a muscle.
CC: I didn’t do it myself.
IL: But as I say did anybody train you?
CC: No. I wasn’t trained on that at all. No.
IL: Oh.
CC: No.
IL: And —
CC: My training was most inadequate I tell you. It really was.
IL: Did you have any — did it, how did you feel when you, you know you get back? You know, because certainly [pause] the, and correct me if I’m wrong but the feeling that when you talk to most people is that the crew became almost like a family.
CC: Yeah.
IL: You socialised together.
CC: Yeah.
IL: You, you know, you fly together. You risk your lives together. And losing two of those, two of those crew members in an incredibly, you know, in a [pause] you said you flew the next day.
CC: Yeah. Yeah.
IL: Was there any consideration given or any —
CC: No. No. I I I think one of the things that made me very cross was when we got back we did this crash landing. I thought I might get a word of consolation and a cup of hot cocoa with some rum in it. And they give me a report to fill in. You know, ‘Fill that in.’ Well, I’m afraid that I didn’t put anything very kind there at all. I was very upset about it, you know. I I put “We’re bloody lucky to be here.” And that’s, that’s what I put. But, you see, I mean I had, had they said, ‘Oh that was tough. Have a cup of coffee and would you mind filling this in?’ But, ‘Fill that in.’ Oh. That hurts. I’ve got something here I want to read to you if I can. Let me just see.
[pause]
CC: I can’t find it.
[pause]
CC: Here we are. It says, “In spite of all this I can remember very little of the actual trip. Certainly, we were heavily coned by enemy searchlights at between three and four thousand feet but for some quite unaccountable reasons were not engaged. Again for no reason actually I cannot recall being unduly alarmed. Possibly as that by now I’d resigned myself to my fate or because I was so aware of the critical fuel situation that I had pushed all other problems to one side. I wasn’t actually frightened coming back. I don’t know why but I wasn’t.
IL: No.
CC: I should have been. I was frightened all the while going out and coming back every time but when we were in that position I was suddenly very calm. I I don’t know why. I don’t know why. But as I say possibly I resigned myself to my fate. More likely because I was so busy making sure that the — I’d got the fuel right. Because it was very critical. If we had so much as coughed we’d have been down in the sea. So I had to make sure that the fuel was absolutely — checking and checking and checking and checking. And re-checking and re-checking. You know. It was a full time job basically. I think shortly after we started I said — the navigator asked how much time we had in the air. Well, we all worked out what the time was but I thought how much time do you want? And he gave me a time. I thought well that’s, I reckon we’ve got about twenty minutes to spare. So I said, ‘We’ve got about ten minutes to spare and possibly a little more.’ And that was if everything worked perfectly. But we didn’t run out so it must have been more or less right anyway. But you know I didn’t like to commit myself too [laughs] I think —
IL: Did, did you have [pause] did you have any problems either as I say, you know at the time or later on? Having, you know did you ever have any flashbacks or any —
CC: Not really. No. No. No. I didn’t really. No. We, we didn’t even talk about it until 1987. And that was when — I, I should have mentioned it. What — I cheated a little bit when I was flying. I learned from experience that the Lancaster took off on the ground and went to twenty two thou, twenty two thousand feet it was almost inevitable you used the same amount of fuel. You know, that was common sense.
IL: Yeah.
CC: After, after three or four ops it was exactly the same as the last time. And when you got to your level you flew slightly less revs and boost, slightly less fuel but you knew from experience what it would be. So what I did twenty minutes before the target and twenty minutes after the target I took, I’d already done that but that was already filled in so that I could then just look at the fuel gauges.
IL: Yeah.
CC: Look at the gauges now and again. Spend my time looking out to see what was happening. And that’s when I saw, but the gunners obviously missed it, this JU88. He was about nine hundred yards boring in on us and I screamed, ‘Corkscrew starboard go.’ And as we did that he fired and his cannon shells instead of hitting the fuselage sliced through the port wing. That’s when we had the fuel tank damaged. But had I not been doing that we’d have definitely been shot down. But as I say I wasn’t doing my log. I’d done that forty minutes in advance anyway because from, from experience I knew what it would be. It’s the same every time. Unless you got coned or something like that. Then of course you had to make adjustments. But it was every time the same you see. You climbed to twenty two thousand feet. You were flying level for so long. You start descending you use less fuel. It worked every time so I thought I, well I won’t spend time working that out. I’ll work it out beforehand. I cheated a bit but it worked.
IL: So, what, obviously flight, flight engineer’s duties — what exactly were they?
CC: Basically, you controlled the fuel. And you had a toolbox. What on earth for I don’t know. In the toolbox there was a piece of hooked wire which you could undo a little panel on the floor of the aircraft and release the bomb manually by tugging on this thing. But I never had occasion to do that. If you had a hold up, a hang-up you could actually release, the engineer’s job was to release the hang-up with this piece of hooked wire. But what the other tools were for I don’t know. I had no idea. I had pliers and hammers and — no. Never had to use them.
IL: And you only ever had to release the undercarriage, the wheels once.
CC: Yeah.
IL: That was on your first. First ever —
CC: Yeah. The first ever trip. Yeah. The first time I was airborne basically on my own the wheels stuck up. Now, of course I got instruction from the ground what to do and I found I’d got an engineer’s logbook after the war actually. I’ve still got it. But what they told me was all wrong. What should have happened was I should never — the navigator and the wireless op should have done a wheel each and I should have made sure they both went down together. Because if you’ve got one wheel up and one wheel down that was absolutely fatal isn’t it?
IL: Yeah.
CC: If that one had gone down and this one hadn’t we would have been — well we were bound to have tipped over when we landed. Bound to. But I didn’t know that would happen. I got that one down and that one as well. But if that one had stuck. But you couldn’t wind up again of course. You can’t wind it. You can’t wind it up.
IL: So, did Stirlings not normally have a flight engineer?
CC: Oh yeah.
IL: Oh, sorry. Sorry. Because you were saying about the crew.
CC: The crew of five flew in Wellingtons.
IL: Oh right.
CC: So, they —
IL: The Wellingtons didn’t have a flight engineer.
CC: No. They didn’t have a mid-upper gunner and didn’t have a flight engineer. So the crew of five did their training at Operational Training Unit. Went to Heavy Conversion Unit. Picked up another gunner who had done some flying obviously. Training flying. And the flight engineer. Well, I’d never flown in my life. It was a completely new experience for me. Not, not a very happy one but still [laughs]
IL: Did you — I’ve, I’ve spoken to some flight engineers who’d done some pilot training.
CC: Yeah.
IL: Did some flight training and you know would have potentially been the person to take over.
CC: Yes. I know. I knew several that did that. Yes.
IL: If the plane had.
CC: Yeah.
IL: You know if the pilot had been, you know like when you were —
CC: In actual fact, on one occasion —
IL: One of the others were killed.
CC: On one occasion I was able to sit in the pilot’s seat but I was not a pilot and it was quite obvious after three minutes I got out there I had no idea how to fly an aeroplane. No idea. Of course, some of them of course had done partial pilot training hadn’t they?
IL: Yeah. Yeah.
CC: And they’d failed. Failed the course and then been generally became bomb aimers. Generally. But they could also became flight engineers.
IL: Right. Ok. So, in your crew had anything happened to the pilot who would have flown the plane? There wasn’t anybody.
CC: Nobody. Mind you the bomb aimer had, had failed the pilot’s course so he was probably the man to fly it because he had, you know he’d been on a course. Failed the pilot’s course so became a bomb aimer. So he must have had some idea how to fly. I had no idea at all.
IL: Yeah.
CC: I was, I was so green. I really was green. I shouldn’t have been allowed in the air quite frankly but that’s what it is.
IL: But this is, you know one of the things that, you know one of the things that obviously and particularly your, you know some of your later experiences as well is this, was there a disconnect do you think from between the people who were managing? You know, the sort of higher officers and the people who were flying because you know you were saying that you know when you came back from having lost friends and you’d had this, you know incredibly, you know — you’d just survived and of course the first thing is, ‘Fill in this form.’
CC: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
IL: Did you, did you, you know the person who was asking you to do that was someone who had been, who had flown or was that somebody who is —
CC: No. I don’t. I don’t think. I don’t think so. No. I don’t think so. I don’t think any — I think that was their job and that’s what they did. Asked you to fill that form in. I I was, well I was quite shocked really. I thought well they’re going to say have a cup. What I fancied was a cup of cocoa with some rum in it. That’s what you normally got. You see. That was after. But I was quite rude about it. I said, ‘We’re bloody lucky to be here,’ and that, that was it.
IL: So, but you presumably landed at a different base. You didn’t go — get back to Mildenhall.
CC: We crashed at —
IL: Crashed.
CC: Crash landed at Woodbridge. Woodbridge was their specialist for people like us. it was three runways wide and two runways long.
IL: Right.
CC: So, when you —
IL: And so, where is Woodbridge?
CC: On the, on the Suffolk coast. Right on the coast.
IL: Right.
CC: Yeah. Oh yes. I should have —
IL: Mildenhall is in Suffolk isn’t it?
CC: Sorry? Yeah.
IL: Mildenhall is in Suffolk? It is.
CC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. But as I say these, when we came in there was a red, white and a green landing light. So it was three runways wide and we should have landed in the red one of course because we didn’t have any wheels but we, we came across in at an angle. We sort of came in at an angle and drifted across all three runways in the end. But I probably should have mentioned that on the Lancaster there was a pneumatic system which should lower the undercarriage if you had no hydraulics. And we had no hydraulics. So my job was to lower the undercarriage pneumatically. Couldn’t test it of course because any minute we were going to fall out of the sky. So we waited until we were actually over the runway and I pulled the toggle. It should have let the wheels down and they didn’t come down. And there again I had this terrible slow motion feeling. Sheer terror basically. A feeling of the ground rushing up towards me and when we hit the ground the blister on the side of the Lancaster I actually saw that break off. You know, normally you wouldn’t see it would you?
IL: No.
CC: Because you were [pause] I did. It was the adrenalin. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what caused this terrible slo-mo. Everything was happening in slow motion. As we hit the ground I saw this thing break away and I just hung on to the pilot’s seat. And I was still hung on there when we finished. When we finished. Straight through the escape hatch at the top. The first one out. I trod on the navigator’s fingers on the way out [laughs]
IL: How [pause] sorry I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.
Other: I was just looking up Woodbridge. It’s, yeah it’s, “Emergency constructed in the southeast as one of three airfields set up to accept distressed aircraft returning from raids over Germany and was therefore fitted with extra long heavy duty runways. The other two being RAF Manston in Kent and RAF Carnaby.”
CC: Coningsby.
IL: Coningsby. Coningsby in Lincolnshire.
Other: Carnaby.
CC: Yeah.
Other: In Yorkshire.
IL: Oh Carnaby.
Other: Carnaby in Yorkshire.
IL: Carnaby in Yorkshire.
CC: Carnaby. Yeah.
Other: These airfields —
CC: Yeah. Yeah, as I say —
IL: That’s near Bridlington.
CC: It’s, it was quite an experience I can tell you coming and seeing the ground rushing up. Thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be catapulted through the windscreen. I’ve come all this way and I’m going through the bloody windscreen,’ but I didn’t. I think the reason we had a fairly good landing was that the bomb doors were stuck open. Of course, we couldn’t close them. We had no hydraulics and I think they took the initial shock if you like. The initial impact was probably taken by the bomb wearing away. You know, just, I don’t know. But that was my theory.
IL: Were these tarmacked runways or were they grass runways?
CC: I think —
Other: It was —
CC: Oh no, no. No grass.
IL: No.
CC: You never took off on grass. I think in the Stirling at one time because the north south runway was always very short we actually started to take off on the grass because, to give us the extra sixty yards or whatever it was. But normally no. It had to be —
IL: No.
CC: It had to be tarmac.
IL: It’s just most people of my generation most of our thoughts about this, they come from films.
CC: Yeah.
IL: You know, and the Battle of Britain.
CC: Yeah.
IL: They flew off from the grass runways and the thing about the [pause] certainly the Lancaster and you know Bomber Command type films you always imagine there was a co-pilot because they’re was always two aren’t there?
CC: There — there used to be co-pilots but of course they didn’t have enough pilots to go around, did they?
IL: No. No. But as I say the — you know the films.
CC: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
IL: Film vision.
CC: Yes.
IL: The film vision from the Dam Busters.
CC: Yeah.
IL: Is that —
CC: A co-pilot.
IL: You know, that there are two and they chat to each other.
CC: Yeah.
IL: And they’re all terribly, terribly stiff upper lip and, you know.
CC: Yeah. That isn’t so. In fact, in, in the Lancaster of course you just had the control column and the left hand seat. Now, the other seat was a bucket seat where you clip on or let down. I never ever used that. I never ever used the bucket seat. I stood all the way there and all the way back. I didn’t want — if I had get out I wanted to get quick. Same as the parachute. Now, I don’t know if you know but when we were hit with the shell I didn’t know but I was told to put my parachute on and it, it felt slack. I thought I know it’s not slack because it’s always tight. What I didn’t know was I had no back to the parachute. It had been shot away. I didn’t know that. That’s a fact. Yeah. I didn’t. I didn’t. No one knew until we landed.
IL: Yeah.
CC: I didn’t. There was no back to my parachute. But I thought, I know it’s not slack because it was always tight. It was just these nerves. I’m going to jump. And had I jumped of course we’d have parted company. But I was lucky wasn’t I?
IL: You were amazing.
CC: I was lucky. I don’t think anybody, yes I think there were two people luckier than me. I think one person had baled out at twenty thousand feet without a parachute and survived. Do you remember reading about that?
IL: I don’t.
CC: Apparently, he’d baled out at twenty thousand with no parachute. He jumped. And he landed through a pine forest. He went — the pines broke his fall and landed in about forty foot of snow. He was badly, badly cut up of course but he survived and — oh the other one was the flight engineer who climbed out on the wing to put a, to put a fire out. Did you read about that? Apparently this, this engineer fool had been, you know — so he got a fire extinguisher. He climbed out on the wing with his big [unclear] parachute and of course he got blown off and they assumed he was killed. But he survived and he got a VC.
IL: Goodness me.
CC: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, can you, can you, I mean can you imagine me climbing out on the wing of a hundred and eighty miles an hour, whatever it is, with a, with a fire extinguisher to put a fire out? I mean it’s just a waste of time isn’t it?
IL: Nowadays —
CC: Very brave.
IL: Nowadays he wouldn’t get a VC. He’d get — what do you call it? The Darwin Award. You know, this thing for if you die doing something stupid [laughs]
CC: Yeah [laughs] Well, yeah. That, that I think they were both, I think the fella who baled out without a parachute from twenty thousand feet and survived — I think he must be the luckiest. He died fairly recently actually. You know, I get the Telegraph and in the obituaries.
IL: Yeah.
CC: Well, four or five years ago now but I remember reading that he actually jumped without a parachute and survived. He went through this, through the pine forest. Luckily he hit the part where the leaves, where the branch broke his fall and landed in about forty feet of snow. But there were not many luckier than me I can assure you.
IL: Oh, absolutely not.
CC: Not many.
IL: You said that you had your first, was it your first reunion?
CC: Yeah.
IL: And kept getting back together.
CC: 1987.
IL: So who facilitated that? Was that sort of —
CC: The pilot. Now, the pilot was interviewed through the book sales or something. He was interviewed anyway and he put a notice in “Air Mail” or something like that for me to contact him. Well, I never saw it but Bill who worked at the hospital here had a patient. He was a nurse. He had a patient and he said, ‘Is your name Chandler?’ I’ve got a brother who’s in the air force. Well, you see, he might be interested in that. Anyway, it was my pilot trying to contact me. And I contacted him in 1987 and by then the book had been published. The book by [Maxwell John?] the bombers and the men who flew with 15. All about the pilots of course but I was mentioned in it. And as a result of being mentioned somebody else then an American contacted me actually.
[pause]
CC: The book’s amazing, that, that book there. See the front cover. The Lancs across the ball. It’s there look.
IL: So, is this, is this yours?
CC: Yeah. Yeah.
IL: Gosh.
CC: The, the bloke who, the bloke that, Colonel Mark Wells, it’s — I’ve marked where in there. That’s the letter he sent me about LMF. And that’s the letter he sent me and at page 202 and its only a, you know fifty or sixty lines but it’s very interesting. Read it if you want to. Just —
IL: Yeah. Absolutely.
CC: There’s the page 202. You’ve got 202 there, have you?
IL: I have 203-202.
CC: Yeah. 202 you want. Where does it start? Let me see.
IL: Well, what I’ll do is I’ll take a photograph.
CC: Well, that’s fine.
IL: I’ll take a photograph of this page so that we can read —
CC: No, that’s, it starts there look. And that’s the letter he sent me. But if you want to take a photograph by all means.
IL: Absolutely, because I think that’s, it’s fascinating.
CC: But in actual fact although that photograph, that photograph also appeared on — what was it? The big book. The big book on the bottom. The big book on the bottom there.
Other: Is it “Courage and Air Warfare.”
CC: Yeah.
IL: This one here?
CC: No. No. No. No. No. “We Wage War One Night.” Where’s that? Oh, it’s there. “We Wage War One Night.” [pause] I’m in, I’m in all these books by the way. Mentioned in them all.
[pause]
CC: Now, the original. The original. The original book of that also had that picture on the front cover.
IL: Oh right.
CC: But when we tried to get hold of it, do you remember, Sally?
Other: Yeah. The first edition —
CC: Sally will explain it.
Other: It was, had that picture on the front cover but we, we’ve always, a friend saw it. You know, the new editions have got the more modern cover.
IL: Yeah.
Other: And so we, a friend contacted us and said that he’d seen one of the first editions on Ebay so we ordered two copies and when they turned up they were actually — it was the new covers. They were. It was just an archived picture they’d used for their —
IL: Such a shame.
CC: I was disappointed.
Other: Yeah.
CC: Because, you know it would be nice to have two. Two photographs.
IL: Absolutely.
Other: Yeah.
CC: I was disappointed with that but there you are. You can’t win them all can you?
IL: No. So who was your second pilot?
CC: A bloke called Flight Lieutenant Hargraves. He got a DFC. The navigator got a DFC. The rear gunner got a DFM. And the new, and the old crew the pilot got a DFC. The navigator got a DFM. The rear got a DFM. And the squadron leader, the flight lieutenant navigator who was a [unclear] he got a DFC. So about seven people got DFCs and two killed. But I was alright jack.
IL: Yeah. But you know I think you were part of the same crew. It just doesn’t sort of, doesn’t seem fair somehow.
CC: It’s strange isn’t it? I think they were allocated a number of medals and issued. And you were, if your face fitted you got a medal basically. The thing that annoyed me very much indeed but I flew with Oliver Brooks and Oliver Brooks became quite a famous pilot because of his exploits in the book there. And a Flight Lieutenant Amies took a new crew and got killed so, Oliver Brooks took all of the crew that he’d left behind. Now, nothing happened to them at all other than they lost a pilot. And they all got a medal. Everyone got, because they were Oliver Brooks’ crew. Not because of what they did but because Oliver Brooks finished his tour. I mean they all got a medal. Every last man got a medal. Nothing happened to them at all. Silly isn’t it?
IL: Absolutely. And just one final question. How did you feel after the end of the war with, you know with the essentially, I think [pause] you know, almost being forgotten?
CC: Well, yeah, I [pause] I didn’t, I expected more than I got. I say I left. I left the Air Force as an air traffic controller and I went back to my old job which was [unclear] a factory job basically. And so I I I joined up again and you know I never felt untowards, particularly sad about it or particularly aggrieved. Life was life and I carried on and it gradually got better and better and better if you know what I mean. I think initially of course I should have mentioned it. When I was born we were a typical working class family in Alton. We lived in a terraced row of cottages, row of houses with no water and an outside toilet. The water was from a standpipe outside. And we did have a loo in the garden with flush water. But that, that I think before I left school, before I started school I think we got water in the house but, and we got gas in the house but not upstairs. Only downstairs. Went to bed with a candle still. And and it goes under. Because you know you couldn’t go out in the middle of the night. You had — luckily my mother went to sales and she bought a commode. She had, and very few people had commodes in those days but she’d been to an auction sale and bought a commode. Now, this all changed of course in 1939, April because my father died then so my mother was left a widow with three kids. Well, not kids. Three children. Now, one of them was married. That’s your grandfather of course. And Bill was called up in the, he was in the Terriers. He was called up on his twentieth birthday to the Hampshire Regiment. And me. And I started flying on ops. So she didn’t have a good war did she?
IL: Not at all.
CC: I didn’t realise at the time just how bad it was for her but you imagine every day expecting a telegram as I, as I envisaged happening when I was having this sort of flashback or whatever you call it.
Other: I’ve often thought that. I’ve often thought it’s not like nowadays. They couldn’t send a text and say, “Hi mum. I’m fine.”
IL: Absolutely.
Other: You know. It was, I must admit as a mother myself I think there must — your three boys. Your three boys have gone.
IL: Yeah.
Other: You would think law of statistics you’re going to think I’m going to lose at least one of them.
IL: And your, but your brother survived.
CC: One of them got badly wounded but yes. The oldest brother he, he was an engineer and a flight, not a flight, a Royal Engineer. He went to Burma and my brother. Other. He went to Burma. Bill. But he got badly wounded in a [unclear] machine gun in his shoulder. But the silly bugger wouldn’t claim the pension. You know. I don’t know. I said, ‘Don’t tell them you can manage. Tell them you can’t manage’. But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t claim a pension. He should have done. But there you are. We’re all built differently aren’t we?
IL: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m just going to stop this now and I’m going to have a think about is there anything —
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 Cecil Harry Chandler
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Locker
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-02
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AChandlerCH170802
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:03:15 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
Cecil ‘Chick’ Chandler trained as a flight engineer and was posted to 622 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall. On his first flight as the flight engineer the undercarriage failed. He was horrified to find that it was the different mark than he had been trained on and he had to have the assistance of the ground engineer to solve the problem. On another occasion while operational they came under attack and he had to check on the status of the rest of the crew. The sight of the bomb aimer’s shattered body made him physically sick and he also had to report that the wireless operator was fatally wounded. They had no hydraulics and also the dinghy had also been shot away and so they had no choice but to crash land at the emergency airfield at RAF Woodbridge. While on operational posting he was put forward for a second operation against his will. His new crew took off without him and crashed in front of his eyes with the loss of all crew but the badly burned gunner. He was sent to the Air Crew Disposal Unit at Keresley Grange and where he eventually was downgraded medically. The wireless operator / air gunner mentioned in this interview was Robert Edward Barnes (1385975, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve). Information kindly provided by John Holland.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944-07-10
15 Squadron
622 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
control caravan
crash
fear
flight engineer
forced landing
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
killed in action
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Me 110
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Woodbridge
sanitation
service vehicle
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1143/11699/ASterryBS-PearsonC180725.1.mp3
7d819e973c0d686b5885d326242cf20c
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
Sterry, Bernard and Pearson, Cecilia
Bernard Sydney Sterry
B S Sterry
Cecilia Pearson
C Pearson
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Bernard Sterry and Cecilia Pearson. They remember the bombing of Hull.
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
2018-07-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Sterry, BS-Pearson, C
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: Uh Ian locker uh interviewing Bernard Sterry and Cecilia Pearson at Cecilia’s home in Walkington near Beverley, East Yorkshire. Bernard, I understand you're starting. Tell us about your early life then with your father in Hull.
BS: Well, we lived next door to a school, so I went to that school, but we moved from there when I was about seven, I think eight
IL: [unclear]
BS. We moved a bit further out of town uh, up Beverley Road and we got some bombs there and we had to move out of that
IL: Right. Some bombs!
BS: Yeah
IL: When, so when was that?
BS: Oh, when the war started, yeah
IL: Right. So how old were you when the war started?
BS: Ten
CP: Ten
IL: Right
BS: So uh, we uh, we moved to Adderbury Grove after we got bombed out of uh Epworth street and we stayed there until that, well I stayed there until I got married and you probably did and uh
CP: Well other then being evacuated
BS: Right yes, was evacuated. War, I heard the war being declared on the radio or wireless as it was then on the Sunday the third of September. On the fourth of September the three of us, because we had another sister, they went to an aunt of my mothers, who brought her up and I went to a cousin of my mothers in a place called Winterton, over in Lincolnshire
IL: Right okay
BS: You probably it
IL: Yes, I do
BS: Yeah and I went round about four different places before I finally got settled with a family at Roxby which is about another couple of miles further out, nearer to Scunthorpe. I went to school there for a little while until what, when I was 11 I think and I went to Winterton School and uh when I was 14 uh, my mother saw the headmaster and convinced him that I had to stay on another year because she was in the ambulance service and she was working 24 hours a day and then 24 hours off and then so she [unclear] couldn't do with me at home, she couldn't look after me so I was there until uh the august in 1944, that would be, I think yes and then I came home and I got a job as an apprentice electrician so I stayed there
BS: Who’s that lot?
CP: You!
BS: Me?
IL: Found a newspaper cutting of Bernard being commonly fed at Winterton School
BS: That’ll be me there with the glasses on, on that side
IL: So you were away, so you were evacuated from Hull for the whole war?
CP: Yeah
BS: No, until
CP: No, [unclear]
BS: September ‘44
IL: Right
BS: When I came home, I was 15 to that time and I came home and got a job as an apprentice electrician
IL: Right. So, did you see any, did, could you look across the water and see any of the bombing of Hull?
BS: Oh yeah, it was light up like a Christmas tree and you see the bombers in the searchlights as they're coming over there's a bit of a direct line it was known [unclear] about eighteen, twenty miles I think but we, I used to stand outside watching. You could see the searchlights pick up on the aircraft and [mimics anti-aircraft fire] you could hear the guns going but uh I don't know, what else
IL: No. Was Scunthorpe bombed?
BS: Oh, they managed to, they managed to get a [unclear] down near Lysaght Steel Works and they killed a donkey in a field and that was it
IL: Right
BS: So, they should know where Scunthorpe was because they built the steel works [unclear]
IL: Right [laughs]. So what about you Cecilia, where you?
CP: I was born in Blundell Street, the same as Bernard next door to the school and Epworth Street, Adderbury Grove but I, I can remember that night that we were all outside because dad had picked me up when the war was announced we were outside in Epworth Street, weren't we? Yeah
IL: Right
CP: And then from there I was six, just six and then I went to Winterton as Bernard said and I was moved about nine times in about six years
IL: So were you moved around members of the family or were these
CP: No
IL: Was this, just strangers?
CP: Yes, strangers. The first one was mum's aunt and then we moved to various strangers in Winterton, various places and then Stella and I were split up [unclear], wouldn’t she?
BS: She [unclear]
CP: And I went to Elsham there and I was there a couple of years I think and then from Elsham I went to Horkstow and was at school in Saxby,
IL: Right
CP: Yes, Saxby, but we could see Hull burning from the school windows. Uhm when dad got killed, the lady I was living with in Horkstow, uhm I was outside, and she just came outside and said your father's been killed and walked back in
BS: She was a bit cold, wasn't she?
CP: [unclear]
IL: So, how old were you then, how old were you then?
CP: When dad got killed, I was ten
IL: Right
CP: But I lived [unclear] in there at Winterton and there's a gentleman there and had a big store, didn't he? Mr Wilfred
BS: Yes
CP: Had the store and they, they were [unclear], he even walked from Winterton to Horkstow to bring me a present at Christmas. He was a bachelor wasn't he [unclear], he had a housekeeper
BS: He had two sisters, I believe
CP: Yeah, housekeeper and then I was 12, wasn’t I, when I came home
BS: Could be
CP: Yeah. I didn't go to dad's funeral I wasn't allowed to go said I was too young
BS: Well I was at home
CP: You got the telegram, didn't you?
BS: When I found the telegram on the uh floor when they opened the front door, telegram was on the floor I picked it up and that’s it, I was the first to know. I took it up to mother uh, she was at an ambulance station and she promptly fainted and then we went and told my dad's mum and father and they were absolutely shocked we would imagine that uh my grandfather didn't last too long after that it seemed to go downhill really shockingly because I don't think he was in too much health to start with so that was it more or less
CP: I can remember dad coming home on leave 48 hour passes and being home and they dropped a bomb in Melbot Grove digging this crater because dad, we were in the shelter and dad went out to help didn't he?
IL: So how, did you, did you keep it, did how did you keep in touch or did you see each other when you were
CP: He used to come to see me
BS: Yeah, I was going on a bike and go to see her
IL: Right. So when did you see your mom?
CP: Occasionally
BS: Very infrequently
IL. Right
CP: Occasionally, I think maybe three times
IL: During the entire time you were evacuated?
CP: Yeah
BS: Your father and I came across [unclear] at one time to see us
CP: Yes I was in the playing field and we were all lined up ready to come in and I saw dad and I ran out, I ran to him and he said oh go back, go back you'll get into trouble and the teacher said no, no that's fine and then it went home, you know, went off
IL: So, when he came home on leave, did you usually see him?
BS: Sometimes
CP: I think he was going about three to three or four times that's all then, so we've seen them about four times
IL: So, did he come to see you or did you come back to home?
CP: We came to Hull
IL: Right
CP: Came on the ferry
BS: Well I was at home on Easter, er when his last visit, when he came home on leave, it was in the Easter of 1944 and that was the last time I spoke
IL: So obviously we're mainly talking about from the bomber command perspective your father, what did your father do before the war?
BS: Well, he served his time as a cooper
IL: Right!
BS: With the parent company
CP: Johnsons
BS: And when he was 21 he got the push [unclear] apprentices [unclear]
IL: Yeah
BS: And [coughs] excuse me, he went uh with the Hull cooperation transport as a conductor and he was on trams for a little while and then uh, he got transferred onto buses
IL. Alright
CP: He [unclear]
BS: He was a bus conductor until the war broke out when he volunteered [unclear]
IL. When did he volunteer?
CP: 1940
BS: Would be yeah
IL: Thanks
CP: 1940
IL: And did he have any, so did he volunteer straight away for the RAF or was he?
BS: Well he wanted the RAF
CP: Yeah, yeah
IL: Alright
CP: Went straight into
BS: Did he have any uhm, did he have any connection to the RAF?
CP: No
IL: Right
CP: No, whatsoever his brother wouldn't go in, would he? He was, his brother was a conscientious objector, wasn’t he?
IL: Right
CP: He wanted to know everything about it and dad wasn't prepared to tell him
BS: Dad was killed on uh just after a training exercise had been on and they were landing at their own airfield and a German aircraft followed them in and shot them down as they were landing. The way I understood it, they bounced off a couple of aircraft and banged into a hangar and that was it.
IL: Right. So what was he flying in when he was?
BS: Stirling
CP: Stirling
BS: Stirling bomber
CP: He didn’t like then, did he? He hated them
BS: He was a flight engineer
IL: Right. So what sort of things was he doing, sorry, let's, if we just take a step back then. So, when he joined the RAF what, can you tell us what you know about his service in the RAF?
BS: Well, he did his square bashing at Blackpool
IL: Right
BS: And they were actually stationed at some of the hotels in Blackpool obviously because of shortages at camps, I suppose who had been so busy and when he finished that he went off to St Athans
IL: Right
BS: To train as a uh engine uh fitter
IL: Right
BS: And it was it's quite a long course actually and then he was on ground crew for a while and he volunteered for the aircrew
CP: But his commander didn't want him to fly, did he?
BS: No
CP: He wanted him to stay ground staff
IL: Who, sorry, who didn't?
CP: His commander
IL: Right
CP: He wanted to stay ground staff but he wouldn’t, he wanted, maybe because he was quite a bit older than the others they were like in the 20s weren't they?
IL: Well, I was going to say how old was your father?
CP: Dad was 37 when he was killed
IL: Right. So he was, so that
CP: Like 32
IL: So he'd be about 32 when he when he joined, when he joined up
CP: So the others were just boys weren't they?
IL: Right
BS: They used to call him puff
CP: Yeah
BS: The aircrew
CP: So he was, he wanted to keep up with him I suppose didn't he? Wanted to do his bit not because he was older
IL: So, as ground crew, do you know where he where he was stationed when he was ground crew?
BS: Don't really remember
IL: Right. You don't have any, no, you don't know particularly what aircraft he was working, he worked so?
BS: No, not as an engine fitter, no
CP: No, either
IL: Right. So when did he when did he volunteer for aircrew?
BS: I don’t know, he was ground crew for a while.
CP: 1941
BS: ’44, no, it would be late ’43 when he volunteered I rarely 40 but he volunteered for aircrew because he was still on the training when he got killed
IL: Right, okay, so he was, so he was training to be a flight engineer
BS: Yes
IL: Right
CP: But the last fortnight that he was alive, they'd been flying day and night
BS: OH yeah
CP: And they were tired out and sick and fed up a bit, he'd written to his mother
IL: Right
CP: That he was
IL: But these,
CP: So [unclear] tired
IL: These were just training, he was just training missions
CP: Yeah [unclear] fighter, cause he came out of the sky and shot them down
BS: As far as we know, he was on training, but training flights often uh used to cover what they called gardening, dropping mines off the coast, Dutch coast
CP: But they've been getting ready for D-day, haven't they? I think that's why they've been flying day and night
BS: Well that was a week after
CP: Yeah
BS: It was exactly a week before, it was on a wet Sunday 1944 when he was killed Sunday no, Sunday night, Monday morning, half past two on the Monday morning, when he was killed
CP: 31st, was it 29th or 30th?
BS: 29th
CP: 29th
BS: And he, uh you interrupted my train of thought there
CP: Sorry?
BS: You interrupted my train of thought
IL: You were talking, you were talking about some of these training flights being mine laying
BS: That's right yeah, they did. It wasn't officially [unclear] but that's what they did, it's part of the training but actually they were a bit of a dodgy [unclear] laying mines because the Germans would often be waiting for they but they certainly followed him but I
CP: He had orders to land, didn’t he? He just had orders to land
BS: [unclear] I went to the Lancaster at, what they call it? East Kirkby
IL: Right
BS: You know it, yeah. I went there on my 65th birthday I think it was not, maybe not, maybe later uh it was a treat for me from the family apparently and I went into that Lancaster when we went out about when it came back and I, there was a German uh fellow on the aircraft he'd come across and he was there like and he was talking to me and I told him what had happened and he said, oh, he said I’ll find out about that. So he wrote to me and told me exactly what had happened and there was two of them on the aircraft, it was a twin-engine aircraft and they gave me the names and ranks
IL: Right
CP: What, the one that shot him down?
BS: They were shot down by a Mosquito. Apparently, it was the only aircraft over England that day
IL: Right. So they would, so the aircraft that shot your father down was also, was then late it was was shot down by mosquitoes that night
BS: It was shot into North Sea, yeah
IL: Gosh!
BS: So there was two of them on that, that they got killed as well
CP: Was it blue two planes that had been hammered into? Dumped right into the hangar [unclear]?
BS: They hit two aircraft and bounced into the hangar
CP: Yeah
BS: And they wasn’t actually going [unclear]
CP: No, certainly he was shot down, he bounced in and took two others with him
BS: They hit the hangar
IL: So, did you ever have any contact with any of the other people from, where was he stationed when he was killed, sorry?
CP: Bury St Edmunds
BS: No, he wasn't. When he was killed, he was at Spring, Spring Cottage I think it was, it was a satellite ground for uh Stradishall
IL: Right
BS: Which is now HMP prison
IL: Right
BS: But uh that's where he was when he was killed
IL: Okay. Did you ever have any contact with any, you know, station commander or?
CP: No
BS: There was a, an officer came from the camp uh to refuel them
IL: Right
BS: But uh that was the only contact we had
IL: So, presumably his funeral was in Hull?
BS: Oh yeah he's in Chanterlands Avenue.
IL: Right
CP: Your mum got five pounds to order it, didn't she?
BS: Sorry?
CP: Mum got five pounds to order his funeral from the [unclear], to bring him home
BS: Uhm they paid for the, all commissions paid for the stone and they maintain it because I wanted to print the names on to make it stand out and I was told by uh Gary, the funeral undertaker that uh I couldn't do it, I wouldn't be allowed
CP: I know, bless you, to [unclear] proper dues
BS: So, I didn’t do it, but they do clean them up now and again
CP: I cleaned it up last time I went
BS: And they recut the letters on it names you don't know that but that's infrequently. I don’t know, what else I can tell you about it? You’ll have to tell me what you want to know.
IL: Well, whatever, it's your story you know uhm, anything you, if you want any details you want to tell me about your dad or about his service, um?
BS: Well we don't know much about that really except that he did serve time at St Athan as I said training as what we call it? Not as a flight engineer, he was on ground staff and he was a mechanic but uh, he was classed as a fitter, that was it, a fitter 2e that's what he was and it was an LAC there by that time and he only became a sergeant when he went to the, into aircrew
CP: On that last letter I think it said, from the last letter I think it was 1943.
IL: Did he?
CP: That last letter was five months before he got killed
IL: Did he talk about what he was doing when he came home more?
BS: No, not really, no
CP: He did to his parents I think but not
IL: Right
CP: Not in front of me he didn’t. Don’t know if he said anything to you
BS: No, what I think we were a bit too young really
CP: Yeah. Those kids were kids then, weren’t they? You know what I mean
BS: And you were reminded fairly frequently
CP: Pardon?
BS: You were reminded fairly frequently that you were kids
CP: Should be seen and not heard
BS: Something like that, yes
CP: [unclear] should be seen and not heard, pity the [unclear] now [laughs]. And I belong then corporation [unclear], didn't he when before the war
BS: Yeah before the war
CP: Yeah
BS: Yeah, he got a few prizes for that
CP: You said it'd come out of the [unclear] in the recession wouldn't he, in the 30s
BS: Yeah
CP: And he went into corporation
BS: He, he was taken out of the paint industry when he served his time at 21. Nearly all apprentices, whatever trade you were, when you reached 21, out through the door
CP: And he got married then
BS: Well the father would, his father wouldn't allow him to get married before then
CP: No
BS: Because our eldest sister, Stella, she was born before that
CP: Yeah, about eight months before they got married, wasn’t she?
BS: Yeah
IL: Right
BS: He wouldn't allow him to get back until he was 21 which was the norm in those days, oh well
IL: What happened to your mum then after the war?
CP: My mum was in the ambulance service during the war
IL: Right
CP: She joined that and um wouldn't she? Driving ambulances and then she was at various jobs, didn't she?
BS: Yeah
CP: And then in 1955 she remarried
IL: Right
BS: Yeah, he was chief engineer on a trawler
CP: Yeah and then he died didn't he? And then she was a widow after that until she died what 80, 88 [unclear] wasn’t she?
BS: No idea
IL: Right is there anything else you feel you need to, you'd like to tell me about?
CP: Well, we'll remember afterwards then [laughs]
BS: I saw a bomber taking off from Elsham, cause where I was, we were below the Lincolnshire Wolds and Elsham was on the top and you could see him taking off. He'd be flying north to take off and it got not far off the runway apparently when it blew up, so it left to be cold and stopped the other aircraft flying off from the red. So I understood from someone I was talking to some years after that there was everybody on the camp, including the group captain uh commander, he was out there with a shovel and anybody else who couldn't [unclear] filling it in and within just over half an hour or so they've been flying again, taking up on it and carrying on
CP: Mother got a machine gun in the corner of Beverley Road didn't she?
IL: Sorry?
CP: Mother and my friend got machine guns at the corner of Beverley Road
BS: No, they didn't
CP: Well that's what I was told
BS: Well you had more than I did right um
IL. Right. From a German plane?
CP: Yeah, [unclear] at the corner of Beverley Road and King Edward Street
BS: I saw
IL: When was that?
CP: I don't know what year it was, but I remember her saying that they had to get into a shop doorway to get out of the way
IL: It was that when they were on duties ambulance?
CP: No, no they were walking in Hull
IL: Right
CP: They were off-duty
BS: Well, I saw the last German aircraft over Hull and it shot up a cinema, two cinemas on Holderness Road, people were leaving, cause all the lights were on as they went out through the doors and they machine gunned them on the way out. I want them coming down the red himself because I was walking down King Edward Street that was nearly opposite Thornton valleys when it went over and I can see all the markers quite clearly on it and quite low down
IL: So when was that?
BS: That would be 1945, early 45.
IL: So it's fairly early
BS: Yeah
IL: Right okay
BS: That would be one of the last raids. I understood it was the last one
IL: I think it's the last actually, yes because I, I know that and I’m not 100 percent sure but I, I think that those were the last civilian deaths in the UK from enemy aircraft action
BS: Yeah
IL: The cinema queueing, the cinema [unclear] in Hull so if you saw that that's actually, that's really interesting
BS: Well, I saw it go over, I heard it
IL: So, is it a single engine or was it a two-engine fighter or?
Bs: No, it wasn't a fighter, it was a bomber I think
IL: All right
BS: But, uh or a fighter bomber, uh I heard the machine gunning so I was walking along, along King Edward Street that would be when they were [unclear] and the people leaving the cinema
IL: Right
BS: And that, I was on the side where he came across me sort of thing so he wouldn't see me because I was in the dark, uh couldn't see me on that side running a bit of moonlight probably I don't remember that much but uh
CP: People coming out with cinema they'd be littered
BS: But I was, I was in the dark it was all dark down there never had any streetlights of course in those days
IL: Just one just, maybe one last thing, uhm did you ever have, did you, were you ever conscious after the war of the sort of the lack of recognition of Bomber Command?
BS: Not really, not until
CP: [unclear], no,
BS: Not until
CP: [unclear]
BS: Some years ago, [unclear] years ago [unclear] aware of it
CP: Cause it’s always been Spitfires, hasn’t it? Never Bomber Command, they [unclear]
IL: There was no, there was no, there was no, there was no sort of, you've never had occasion where you've maybe been talking about your father or his wartime service and people have been oh well you know Bomber Command and they were all, they didn't do a very good job, well they did a great job but you know that they were sort of, murdered lots of German civilians and
CP: I did meet a Luftwaffe pilot on holiday
IL: Right
BS: You did what?
CP: Met a Luftwaffe pilot on holiday
BS: Oh, do you?
CP: Yeah cause I was with these Germans, because for some reason people mistake me for German when you're on holiday, for some reason I don't know why um
IL: Is it because you keep taking the taking the sun lounges? [laughs]
CP: Maybe, yeah, could be
BS: You'll have to excuse for a moment
IL. No problem at all
CP: Was in this cafeteria at night time with these people and he came in and then you know we enjoyed the evening when, when he, when it was time to go he got up and kissed me and they all roared with laughing cause they never, they said, they never ever thought they'd see him kiss an Englander [laughs]
IL: Right. I’m going to I’m going to stop this now if we, if we'll just chat.
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 Bernard Sterry and Cecilia Pearson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Locker
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
2018-07-25
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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ASterryBS-PearsonC180725
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:31:19 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Hull
Wales--Glamorgan
England--Yorkshire
Description
An account of the resource
Bernard Sterry and Cecilia Pearson, both born in Hull, talk about their lives as evacuees during the war. Bernard, who was 10 years old when war broke out, was evacuated from Hull to North Lincolnshire until September 1944, when he came back home at the age of 15 and got a job as an apprentice electrician. Cecilia was six when war was declared. She was also evacuated to North Lincolnshire, to Winterton and other places; she remembers the day her father was killed. Bernard and Cecilia both remember seeing Hull burning from the distance. Bernard tells of his dad, a bus conductor, who volunteered for the RAF in 1940; after doing his initial training at Blackpool, he was sent to RAF St Athan to become an engine fitter; he was then shot down by a German aircraft after a training exercise on a Stirling. Bernard later found out that the aircraft that had shot down his father, was in turn shot down shortly afterwards by a Mosquito over the North Sea. Among the various episodes, Bernard witnessed in early 1945, the bombing of a cinema in Hull and the people killed were the last civilian casualties of World War Two in Britain to be caused by enemy aircraft.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1945
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
fitter engine
ground crew
ground personnel
home front
killed in action
RAF St Athan
shelter
shot down
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1078/11536/APocklingtonAC171115.1.mp3
e7a0ce808c14a23b8955fb5033e305bc
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
Pocklington, Arthur
Arthur Clive Pocklington
A C Pocklington
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Arthur Pocklington (b. 1923, 1589794 Royal Air Force). He served as a radar mechanic at RAF Dunholme Lodge.
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
2017-11-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Pocklington, AC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: Ok. Ian locker. This is the 15th of November 2017. I’m at the home of Clive Pocklington and we’re going to start our interview now. Clive, you were born in, you were born in Hull so tell me a little bit about how you came to, you know your early life and how you came to join the RAF.
AP: Yes. I was born in Hull in 1923. And I was always mad on aircraft as most lads were in those days but my first association wasn’t with the Air Force. My family had always been associated with the Navy. And so I was, I think I was persuaded to apply for the Navy and the Recruiting Centre was in Jamieson Street in the centre of Hull. I would be seventeen or eighteen and I went there and they found that I had a heart problem.
IL: Right.
AP: I’d gone on my bike to that place. About four miles away from home. And surprising how I got on my bike after they’d rejected me. ‘You’ve got this heart problem. We can’t have you.’ I went home. It was about four mile. Went in and who was waiting there but my GP. They’d contacted my GP. Imagine that happening these days. And he, I remember he got me on the settee, took out his stethoscope. No. Nothing. Found no problem whatever. He was an enlightened GP because in those days if you had a sore throat they whipped out your tonsils in no time on the kitchen table. I had always had a sore throat but he would not take my tonsils out. I gargled with alum. Anyway, he went off and that was that. After that what happened? Oh, I was called up for the Home Guard.
IL: Right.
AP: And that was locally. I don’t remember much about the Home Guard. It was nothing like the TV programme believe me. All I remember was going on the rifle range which I rather enjoyed because I was a pretty good shot. And then —
IL: So what were you, so — sorry.
AP: Yes.
IL: Just come back a little bit.
AP: Yeah.
IL: To school days.
AP: Yeah.
IL: So you were at school here.
AP: Oh yes. I was at school. I was at Malet Lambert which was a school in East Hull. And when war broke out in September ’39 I was only fifteen. The school closed. Temporarily but we didn’t know that. But it closed. If you lived in the catchment area you were evacuated to Whitby if you wanted to go. But I lived just outside and so I wasn’t. And so that was my last association with school. I left school when I was late fifteen.
IL: Right.
AP: Never went again. But I did alright.
IL: Ok. So, what, so did you, so were you working at the time? Before you —
AP: I did, yes. My father was in the Water Department and he got me a job in the Hull Corporation Water Department for a few months. I didn’t like that very much and I went into BOCM. That’s British Oil and Cake Mill. In the laboratory.
IL: Right.
AP: You know, doing odd jobs and things. And I was there until I went in the RAF. Anyway, I was in the Home Guard and then I applied to go in the RAF. I went, the Recruitment Centre was in Doncaster. And it was a weekend. We went on the Saturday and we were due to come home on the Sunday.
IL: So, how old were you by that time then? Were you seventeen or eighteen?
AP: Eighteen I’d be.
IL: Right.
AP: I think. Yes. Eighteen. Had the interview. I’ll always remember we went before the board. Very intimidating it was. There were about six, to me high ranking officers. And the one, the chairman I presume he was, he looked at me and he said, ‘What’s seventeen thirty fourths of sixpence?’ I always remember that question. And I knew straight away. ‘That’s thruppence.’
IL: Absolutely. It took a while to think.
AP: Well, I don’t know how I did it but, because I was trembling I think. Anyway, I got in. Yes. Ok. We’ll accept you as a wireless operator air gunner. We had to stay overnight to be, for something happening. Oh, for medicals the next day. Overnight was, we had, we were in this huge hall of about eighty recruits with the beds about five inches away from each other. And there was one candlelight bulb in the, in the top here. And I always remember about two in the morning this poor fella was wandering. I think he’d been to the loo. Well, he must have been. And he couldn’t find his bed. This would be about two in the morning. He was still wandering around at half past three so I hope he still isn’t looking for it [laughs] Looking for his bed. Anyway, to cut a long story short we had a medical the next day and the same thing happened again. ‘You’ve got an enlarged heart. You can’t go aircrew. But if you like you can go on, you know a ground job.’ So, it wasn’t radar in those. It was a radio.
IL: Right.
AP: A radio course. So I accepted that. So I think probably looking back somebody was looking after me. I mean all they had was the stethoscope in those days and obviously it didn’t work too well [laughs]
IL: Yeah.
AP: And so I went on the ground. Ground staff. And went to Bradford, Bradford Technical College. Not far from home so used to come home quite regularly.
IL: So you were called. You were called up straight away. You went straight on.
AP: Yes. Yes. It wasn’t very long. I think they were pretty desperate for radio people. Based in Mannville Terrace in Bradford. I remember the trams going up the hill at night. Rattling away. And we were there about, well a few months and then we had this test. The examination at the end.
IL: So, how did, how did that work then? In terms of were you, you were in the RAF so you were in uniform. Were you based on, were you based at a, did you have a base or were you in digs or —
AP: No. We were in, we slept, we were in empty houses right in the centre of Bradford. There were about six of us in this house. The, we had the mess in the old church hall I believe and the RAF offices were in a little bungalow at the side. We used to do fire watching in there. And I remember I was pretty good in those days with my hands. We used to do. And there were some slips for weekend passes and I got one or two of those [laughs] and I made a very good lino cut of the station stamp. I shouldn’t be saying this but probably —
IL: No. They can’t get you. They can’t get you now.
AP: I would have been a very good prisoner of war because I could make very good stamps and came home a few weekends with that. Anyway, eventually we had the test and I came out fairly high so the top ones were sent on radar and the others were on ordinary radio.
IL: Right. So how did the training — how did, was it classroom based or was it actually —
AP: Yes. It was.
IL: Practical?
AP: Yes. Both.
IL: Right.
AP: Practical and theory. And it was in the technical, in the Technical College at Bradford. Yeah.
IL: Yeah. And they were all RAF people teaching you. They weren’t sort of civilians.
AP: I don’t know whether, no. I think it would have been civilian.
IL: Right.
AP: The teaching. Yes. He was quite good. White I remember his name was. Flight — oh yes RAF he would be. Flight Lieutenant White.
IL: Right.
AP: Came home once and, for the weekend, by train. And we were going home on the Saturday or would it have been the Saturday night? I don’t know. We got as far as Leeds in the train and Bradford is about six miles away from Leeds. And we couldn’t get to Bradford so we decided we would have to find somewhere to kip down for the night. And we found an empty carriage and slept in there. And about half past three in the morning the train was moving. It was the early morning milk train to Skipton. So luckily it stopped not far away from Leeds and we got off and eventually got back and got to Bradford and nothing came of that. Anyway, we passed, passed out fairly high on the radio and was posted to South Kensington, London.
IL: Right.
AP: We lived in luxury flats. I always remember marble bathrooms. It was, they’re still there. I did go in to see this place not long ago.
IL: Right.
AP: Near, near Hyde Park. We used to do PE in Hyde Park. And we used to eat in the, would it be the Victoria and Albert? I think so. I remember there were Ming vases all the way around the —
IL: Yeah. It’s south, well it’s South Kensington, isn’t it?
AP: Yeah. Oh, it was south Kensington all right.
IL: Museum Road in South Kensington is is the V&A and the —
AP: Yeah.
IL: Science museum.
AP: There were no raids while I was there because the Blitz, the earlier Blitzes had finished and the V-2s and 1s hadn’t started. So I don’t remember any raids at all when I was in London. We, I was there for about, oh and I missed out Padgate of course. Before, before I went to Bradford I went to the initial place at Padgate. But, you know, for square bashing.
IL: Oh, basic training.
AP: Yeah. Basic training. We were supposed to be there for ten weeks or eight weeks. Anyway, they cut it down to about five because they were desperate to get the skilled people really. So that should have come before. London I enjoyed very much. Had the test and passed out and was sent to Scampton.
IL: Oh right. How long were you in London? How long? How long? And how many people were there? And what were you, what were you actually doing in London?
AP: We were having lectures and practical work on, on the radar.
IL: Right.
AP: Gee sets, which was [unclear] and H2S hadn’t come into being then, I think. I’ll tell you about those later. And that, we just —
IL: Ok. And how long were you there? But how long did that take you?
AP: Oh. Three months.
IL: Right.
AP: Yes. Three months I think. And then we were, I was posted. Well, I didn’t know where I was going but I ended up in Scampton, and 44 and 619 Squadron. And for the next eighteen months, two years it was simply we used to go out every morning. We all had about five planes to service. Two of us would go together. One would go into the plane to test it. The other one would wait outside with a little van in case anything wanted replacing. Test the Gee and IFF. All those. There was the Gee set, chief one, Monica which was a rear facing radar which would give the bomb, the rear gunner a beeping sound. The faster, the closer the beeps the nearer the fighter was. Well, that didn’t last long because like all radar if it’s transmitting it could be homed in to.
IL: Right.
AP: Like Gee wasn’t. Gee was excellent. It was, gave them the position. It was only a receiver. It didn’t transmit at all.
IL: Right.
AP: So it was quite safe.
IL: Yeah.
AP: H2S which came in very soon was also a bit dicey in my opinion because it sent out, it gave a plan of the ground below.
IL: Right.
AP: But it transmitted and could be homed into.
IL: Yeah.
AP: I used to, occasionally in the morning when we were servicing the navigators would come along just to check things. And I would say, how would I say it? ‘I shouldn’t put this on unless you really need it.’
IL: Yeah.
AP: In my opinion it would have been better to do away with the H2S and use the Gee or there were other ones which we didn’t have and to have a rear facing gun. A gun underneath.
IL: Yeah.
AP: Because they used to come up underneath.
IL: Yeah.
AP: And there was no way of firing down on to them. Anyway, that wasn’t my, nothing to do with me. I just serviced it. We used to — H2S was also very heavy. It had about eight boxes along the side of the left hand side of the fuselage. It had a scanner underneath and it weighed quite a bit and the bomb load had to be reduced because of the equipment they were carrying.
IL: Yeah.
AP: I remember them bombing up. It didn’t bother me at all but I have heard of accidents happening. There were usually about three trolleys. One had a Cookie on. Like a big dustbin, you know. And then some five hundred pounders and then usually some incendiaries depending on how far they were going to go. Lisset, in Yorkshire I gather one did blow up and while they were bombing up. So it could happen. But being eighteen you never bothered about things like that. I used to go up in the morning occasionally. I wasn’t too happy about that though because the first time I went up they used to go on fighter affiliation. They would meet a Spitfire or a Hurricane. Well, the first time I went I didn’t know much. It was the first time I’d flown and we met up with this Spitfire and he did, he did a corkscrew.
IL: Yeah.
AP: Well, you became weightless [laughs] believe me. And I was airsick. Well, I remember staggering down to the elsan which was at the rear of the fuselage just in front of the rear gunner’s turret. And I was doing what I had to do in there and I remember the rear gunner turning around at that time and looked at me and I can still see the look of disgust on his face [laughs] And anyway he didn’t say anything but I don’t think he lived very long. I think, I think that plane was lost that night actually.
IL: Oh gosh.
AP: Anyway, I used to go up occasionally after that but I wasn’t sick any more. I think I knew what to expect.
IL: Do you think this, do you think this was a, an initiation for the, for the new boys coming in?
AP: I think, well, I don’t know. No. I don’t think anything to do with that. I mean, there was no — I mean when you think about these days you have to be strapped in and do that. But we just, there was nowhere to sit even. Well, there was for aircrew but I mean for anybody, anybody else, technicians going up you just sat where you had to and —
IL: Yeah.
AP: Yeah.
IL: So the airborne radar was mainly to give, the H2S was about more accurate bombing. It wasn’t sort of for self-protection really.
AP: Well I don’t, yes it used to work particularly well over coastline.
IL: Yeah.
AP: The reflections from the sea and the coast were totally different. But I mean as I say I think the Gee, Gee gave them a pretty accurate, but it could be jammed of course.
IL: Yeah.
AP: Which, yeah. And then there was IFF which was just a little, it wasn’t very big at all which gave out when they came back whether they were friendly or enemy, you know.
IL: Right.
AP: Identification. Friend or foe. And it had the little, I remember once it had a little explosive device in, in case they came down. It would destroy the crystal —
IL: Yeah.
AP: Which gave them their frequency. And to test it to see if the electric was, we used to undo the, unscrew the plug and put it into your meter and somebody would press the button to see if it was working. Well, once I don’t know if it was me, don’t think it was, didn’t take the plug out in time before the button was pressed. So the thing exploded and destroyed it. But I don’t remember any repercussions on that [laughs] These things happen. Oh, yes. For what I was, when I was going back to London I also, oh I shouldn’t come out with all these admissions. I had a bit of a scam on the, I used to, I wanted to get back to Hull to see my girlfriend. We were in London three months and I came home pretty regularly. I think I only bought one ticket [laughs] because the tickets in those days would last three months. You bought, you know your return ticket. So by various means I didn’t have it stamped [laughs] But I don’t feel guilty about that.
IL: Of course not. Absolutely not.
AP: Anyway, we left. Where am I up to? Oh, up to Scampton. And that was it really.
IL: So when, when were you at Scampton then?
AP: When I was at Scampton. Well, late ’43.
IL: Right.
AP: Yes. Oh, the winters in Lincolnshire believe me.
IL: So that would be just after the Dambusters wouldn’t it?
AP: Yes. It would.
IL: Late ’43.
AP: Yes. Yes. It would be. I remember we, well there would be about — oh, radar. The particular, for some reason majority were Canadians.
IL: Right.
AP: I don’t know why. So would be how many in a Nissen hut? Thirty? Twenty five? Something like that and about two thirds would probably be Canadians. We had one little stove in the centre and winters in Lincolnshire were cold in those days. I think we were issued with two blankets. No sheets. Hadn’t. I didn’t have a sheet for years. And with these two blankets you could arrange to have, well first of all you put your trousers down to get a crease in them. Slept on those. And with two blankets by some you could get five layers beneath and about six on top by surreptitious folding if you know what I mean. And then you put your greatcoat on the top. And it was alright. You’d be, just about cope. I don’t remember ever changing the blankets but they must have done [laughs]
IL: Once in a while. Yes.
AP: Well, yes it certainly was. And I was in Strubby and [pause] no, sorry. Strubby. Dunholme Lodge. And then I went to Strubby. 44 Squadron moved somewhere else and I went with 619. Just don’t know. Where am I up to? [laughs]
IL: You’re just moving to Strubby. But when you, how, so what was a sort of typical? You know you said in the mornings you would, you know pair up and go off.
AP: Yes. Mornings we would pair up and go around and service the kites. And probably about four or five each. Afternoons you’d be in the radar section repairing sets.
IL: Right.
AP: So it was because the all the kites. Oh, they’d all be all ok’d for flying you see and the afternoon was spent repairing things. Evenings in the NAAFI. Fish and chips. No. Egg and chips. No fish. We used to go around to the farms in Lincolnshire and the farmers were very good at selling you eggs which were worth their weight in gold in those days. Yes. So that was it really. We never, we didn’t get to know the aircrew very much because the fitters and the riggers they had their own aircraft.
IL: Right.
AP: And they got to know their aircrew very well and, but we didn’t. We were on different aircraft all the time really so I didn’t get to know any aircrew personally.
IL: Right.
AP: The fitters and the riggers, I don’t know whether it was true. They said when they, when they were coming back from a raid and they were circling around ready to land they would know by the sound which was their aircraft. They were all on, all identical engines. Merlins.
IL: Yeah.
AP: But they were so involved with their plane they would know, ‘That’s ours. It’s coming in now.’
IL: Right.
AP: Whether that’s true or not I’m not sure.
IL: So did you, were you aware of things like losses? And, you know, how did that sort of —
AP: Well —
IL: You know, what was the mood like in the station?
AP: To tell you the honest I don’t think we were. Because within a day if there were two or three — every night every time they went out, well every, most nights there would be one, two or three missing.
IL: Yeah.
AP: You didn’t know whether they’d been shot down or whether they’d been killed or escaped. But within, well a day that plane was replaced.
IL: Right.
AP: So there was usually a full, you know, eighteen planes there all the time.
IL: Right.
AP: Even though three were missing that night. They’d come. New ones would be there.
IL: Right. Were they sort of flown in or were they —
AP: They were flown in. Yes. Yes.
IL: Right.
AP: Yes. I don’t know. The ATA would do that presumably. Perhaps Amy Johnson. You never know.
IL: Absolutely. Well, not 1943 sadly.
AP: Amy Johnson. She was, she was an ATA pilot.
IL: She was.
AP: Yeah.
IL: But I think she was lost in 1941.
AP: Oh.
IL: That’s why I was saying.
AP: Oh, over the Thames wasn’t she?
IL: Yeah. I think that was.
AP: Yeah. Yeah.
IL: I think it was ‘41 that Amy Johnson was lost.
AP: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Oh, it was. You’re right. Yes.
IL: So, ’43, not ’43 sadly.
AP: Yeah.
IL: So that’s something I’ve found quite fascinating really. You know. That you would have thought that in terms of targeting aircraft it would have been the centres of production or the centres of storage would have been a very, you know it would have been very productive for, you know German bombing. Rather than —
AP: Yeah. Well, yes I suppose so but I think there was the, they were spread out.
IL: Right.
AP: They used to manufacture bits here and bits there and then send them to be assembled I suppose. There didn’t seem to be any shortage of planes.
IL: No.
AP: No. They were, they were replaced very quickly.
IL: So, what about social life? You know, you said, you know you spent your evenings in the NAAFI. Did you, did you become close to your, you know the other people you were with and —
AP: Yes.
IL: Did you, you know —
AP: Oh yes. I did. Yes. Yes.
IL: Presumably visits to the pubs or —
AP: I wasn’t a drinker in those days.
IL: Right.
AP: No. It was mostly, mostly NAAFIs and various canteens. No. I I didn’t drink ‘til I was well in my 30s.
IL: Right.
AP: Made up for it a bit now [laughs] Yes. And that was it really. And then the, the war. Oh, I didn’t see any action really. We weren’t involved in any raids. Quite, I had a good war really.
IL: Right. You weren’t, there were no raids on any of the bases you were at.
AP: None whatever.
IL: Right.
AP: No. No. I in the later in the war I did see V-1s. A couple over Lincolnshire. They didn’t have the range. They wouldn’t be land launched. They did fit them to planes and —
IL: Right.
AP: Release them and I remember I was cycling across somewhere or other and I saw this V-1 pass right over. That would be somewhere near Lincoln.
IL: Right.
AP: So where it went to I’ve no idea. I’ve seen V-2s. Not V-2s but the trails for when the Germans were sending out the V-2s later in the war. You know, the rockets.
IL: Yeah.
AP: From the, from the low countries even in Lincolnshire you could see the vertical vapour trails.
IL: Gosh.
AP: About eight, ten, seven, six all at the same time going vertically up. Presumably landing in the London area.
IL: Right.
AP: Yeah. Yes. That was quite fascinating really. And then of course the war, the European war finished and we were put on embarkation leave to go to Okinawa.
IL: Right.
AP: On Tiger Force it was called. And, but very shortly afterwards of course the bomb was dropped. The Japanese capitulated and that was cancelled. So we were put on embarkation leave to go to India.
IL: Right.
AP: I didn’t want to go to India but of course I had to. I’m pleased I did because I loved it when I got there. We went on the [pause] Oh, I went to Blackpool for [pause] waiting for the ships, you know.
IL: Right.
AP: The transport to go. We were in Blackpool about three weeks. A funny thing happened. Before we went, on the way to Blackpool we had to go through Sheffield to get to Blackpool. And it was August, I think. September. And we had to walk from one railway station to the other one to get to Blackpool and there were about six of us walking along. And it was a very very hot day so we took our forage caps off. And luckily or unluckily enough there was a car passing with two MPs in. they got out and came across to us. Took our names, numbers and everything else and where we were going and off they went. Well, the next day we were in Blackpool and we had an assembly in the Tower Ballroom. This huge hall it seemed to be. And they called out our names. There’d be about five hundred people. Air Force people. Well, you ought to have heard the noise. Off we went to the front and we were given a rollicking there. And we’d got, we were told we had to come back the next morning and clean the ballroom floor with a toothbrush. So, we spent about two hours the next morning messing around. They didn’t know what to do with us in other words. But I always remember that. And the time came we had to go. We went to Liverpool to get on the, went on the Samaria. The boat. And went three week journey. It takes three weeks now it takes what? Twelve hours? Which was fascinating. I mean, I’d never been abroad before. Went through Biscay. Calm as a millpond. Saw Gibraltar. The first place I’d seen abroad. Through the Med. Through the Suez. Bitter Lake. Flying fish. I wonder if there still are flying fish. And got to Bombay. Oh, on the boat we slept on a hammock. We had a mess deck it was called. About twenty chaps and a hammock. Morning came. You packed up your hammock and one of you had to go and bring back the food. You slept there and ate there and everything else. Crowded. Commissioned types, they had about two thirds of the ship. Non-commissioned had about one. I remember going where I shouldn’t have gone once and looked into this lounge. First class lounge. There they were all sitting in settees and lounges. And there was a fellow on the piano and he was singing, ‘Willow, did willow, did Willow,’[laughs] I thought well of course class distinction in those days.
IL: Absolutely.
AP: Absolutely awful. But anyway. And we used to, through the Red Sea it was pretty hot and once we, well occasionally we’d go on the deck and sleep on deck. But you had to be very careful to be up by about half past four because they, they swilled the decks down at half past four. And these sailors, they liked nothing better than swilling you out with those. So we did get caught out there more than once. Got to Bombay. Went to the transit camp. Worli it was called. And within five days I was smitten. I think if you go to, if you went to India in those days it wasn’t just the food. I think the air would kill you as well. And I was in hospital for a fortnight with, you know. I don’t know what. Diarrhoea.
IL: Yeah.
AP: And all the rest of it. I remember the drugs we had to take. Sulfonamide would it be? Something.
IL: Yes. Sulfonamide.
AP: And it came in a long strip about two yards long. Taking those. But I slept in sheets which was quite good. Recovered from that. And I was in India fifteen months after that and I never had another, anything else at all. But being delayed in Bombay for a fortnight I lost all the, my mates I’d made on the boats.
IL: Yeah.
AP: I was completely alone. I’ve never been so miserable in my life. Anyway, I got the train eventually when I’d recovered and went up to Kanpur which is a Maintenance Unit.
IL: Right.
AP: RAF Kanpur. In the United Provinces I think it is. Not far from Delhi.
IL: Right.
AP: And we were, worked in the electroplating shop because there was no radar. Radar had finished then. The electroplating shop. They still used to electroplate bearings for engines which were no longer needed or anything else. We didn’t do any use.
IL: Yes.
AP: Walked about. But we used to get, well the camp they used to go into Lucknow or Kanpur and buy cheap tea sets. Metal tea sets. You know. Electric. Cheap electroplated and they would bring them to us and we would electric plate them again. RAF silver. About a quarter of an inch thick we’d put on.
IL: Yeah.
AP: I remember the silver came in great plates. They’d come and they’d say, ‘Would you mind doing this for us?’ So we used to electroplate their teapots and various things. We used to play badminton outside in the, in the heat. Nobody told you the sun was dangerous. I enjoyed that. We had a swimming pool there which was great. And on the whole — oh, and we went up to, I’ve been to the hills. We went three times because the heat in, in oh dear me the heat in the pre-monsoon was a hundred and twenty. You just didn’t go out. You, you stayed under the punkah. The fan. You closed the shutters and you just stayed there. And you got prickly heat. My friend the other year, it was a hot summer here. She went to the doctor with a bit of a rash and he said, ‘Oh, you’ve got prickly heat.’ Well, she hadn’t got prickly heat because if you get prickly you know about it. Your pores all go septic and everything. It’s not nice at all. But we went up to the hills three times. I’ve been to Darjeeling, Ranikhet and Nainital. The most interesting one was the, when we went up to, well Darjeeling on the little railway which goes, you know. Very good. But it was just pre the end of 194 — let me get this right. Six. It was just pre-Independence. And we, to get to Darjeeling we had to leave Kanpur go to Calcutta overnight on the train. The air conditioning was a huge block of ice in the middle of the compartment which was about two feet cubed when you set off and by the time you got to Calcutta it shrunk to about [unclear] cube size [laughs] We changed trains and went up to Darjeeling. Had a holiday there. But when we came back through Calcutta to go back to the base all troops going through Calcutta had to stay. It didn’t matter whether you were Navy, Air Force or whatever. You were, stay there because there were riots going on in Calcutta. And they were riots. Believe me. Every night we used to go out on the on the lorries to patrol the streets. You’d walk around the block and when you came, in a circle sort of thing and there would be bodies stabbed in the streets. In the gutters. We had a Lee, I had a Lee Enfield rifle. First World War vintage and I always remember I was standing at this street corner and this Indian came up to me. He looked about a hundred but he was probably forty and a big long beard. He said, ‘You have not got bullets for that gun.’ I said, I said, ‘I have.’ But we hadn’t [laughs] I wouldn’t have shot them anyway because I really liked the Indian people. They were great. And that was my, well they weren’t, they weren’t antagonistic to us. It was the Muslims and the Hindus of course in those days. They were at each other’s throats. And it really was. There were millions slaughtered in that time.
IL: Oh absolutely. So were you, were you demobbed in India? Or did you —
AP: No. No.
IL: Brought back from.
AP: I came back in 194 — left in the late 1946. I came back on the Corfu ship and we weren’t in hammocks this time. We had little bunks. But going through the Biscay it must have been the biggest storm they’d had in years. I remember the waves looked to me tremendous but I wasn’t sick at all. But I think ninety nine percent couldn’t even keep down water. Anyway, eventually got back to Southampton and went to [pause] where was it? Somewhere near London. An old Air Force base. And it was the, 1947 was the coldest winter that’s ever been. So coming from the heat of India even in the winter to that was pretty rough. It really was cold. In fact where I live now when I was demobbed Bilton is a village three miles out of Hull. It was cut off for three days. The snow was so deep there was nothing got through at all. The snow was six foot deep. And I was demobbed, Finningley I think, somewhere there I think. I think it was Finningley which is now Robin Hood Airport.
IL: Yeah. Absolutely. Doncaster.
AP: Yeah.
IL: Yeah.
AP: And, and that was the end of my, my war. Which —
IL: So, so how long did it take from coming back from India to be demobbed? Were you still, or did you come straight up to Finningley or —
AP: It was just a matter of weeks.
IL: Right.
AP: Yes. Yeah.
IL: It must have been a frustrating, was it a frustrating time? You know.
AP: How?
IL: Because although obviously you enjoyed India. You know, I think I would find it, I think personally I would find it frustrating that you know, you’d signed up for the duration of the war and then there was almost like another.
AP: Well. Yes.
IL: Eighteen months, two years after.
AP: Yes. But I suppose it was understandable really because having thousands, thousands being put on the employment market there would have been — what would they have done?
IL: True. True.
AP: They had, they had to do it sort of slowly I think.
IL: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. We had a demob number depending on your length of service and your age. And I think mine was 48 and every time this list would come out who were going to be demobbed? You looked to see if you were on it [laughs] And eventually it came up.
IL: Right.
AP: And you went and got your demob suit and all the rest of it and that was it. And then I went back to me, oh I had a, to the BOCM. On the laboratory side. And then I applied for teacher training.
IL: Right.
AP: And in those days there was a one year teacher’s course which was quite short. And I was accepted for that. Went to Lancaster Training College for a year. Although it was only a year we used to work pretty long hours. There were no holidays. We started early in the morning. You finished about ten at night. I can’t say it did much good for me really because teaching is by experience and observing a good teacher.
IL: Yeah.
AP: Rather than being told all about Plato and all the rest of it. It didn’t work that much, but I didn’t like it very much but anyway I passed out and I came to Hull and I taught in Hull for thirty three years.
IL: So what did you teach?
AP: I was a primary school teacher.
IL: Right.
AP: Everything [laughs] Yes. Everything. I started at a place in Hull called Stoneferry which was a really lovely school. I had a little garden at the back. We used to have little plots for the, had three kids on one plot. I was there for ten years. And then I got in those days what was called a graded post and I moved to Thanet School which is not far from where I live now. And I, I had a craft post there because I was pretty good with my hands. And then after twenty years I applied for deputy and I got the deputy of Craven Street School. Well, Williamson Street School. And that closed and we moved to Craven Street School. So I finished my career as deputy head of Craven Street School.
IL: Gosh.
AP: And I left school at fifteen.
IL: That’s pretty, pretty good isn’t it?
AP: I still think you can teach yourself more by yourself than listening to people.
IL: Absolutely. Absolutely.
AP: And that, that’s really my, my story. I’m sorry if its —
IL: No. It’s been fascinating. It’s been fascinating. I’m just going to stop and then we’ll have a little
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 Arthur Pocklington
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Locker
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
2017-11-15
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. 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
APocklingtonAC171115
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:44:25 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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
India
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
India--Darjeeling
India--Kanpur (District)
India--Kolkata
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur Pocklington grew up in Hull and was hoping to join the RAF as aircrew but failed the medical. He trained as a mechanic servicing the radar equipment on the aircraft. He served at RAF Scampton, RAF Dunholme Lodge and RAF Strubby before being posted overseas. He finished his service at RAF Kanpur, India.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946
44 Squadron
619 Squadron
civil defence
demobilisation
Gee
ground personnel
H2S
Home Guard
radar
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Scampton
RAF Strubby
training