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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1121/11612/AShakesbyFN180822.1.mp3
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Title
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Shakesby, Norman
Francis Norman Shakesby
F N Shakesby
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Francis Shakesby (b.1924, 2207370 Royal Air Force). He worked on H2S and Gee as a member of ground personnel with 582 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-22
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Shakesby, FN
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IP: This is Ian Price and I’m interviewing Norman Shakesby today, the 22nd of August 2018, for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at [beep], Kendal. Also present is Pam Barker, a good friend of Norman’s. Norman, thanks ever so much for agreeing to talk to me today, it’s- I’m really looking forward to it. It is 10:37 in the morning, and we’ll start the interview now. I think, just to start off, can you- You were born on the 17th of May 1924, but you- Can you tell me where you were born and where you went to school?
NS: Barton-upon-Humber[?] if you know where it is? Where my life was dominated from the first [unclear] four years by the New Holland Pier where you went over on the river- On the train river Humber to Hull. Great excitement, when they built the- It’s a beautiful bridge but it’s taken all the excitement out of it. Don’t you want to- What was it next?
IP: Where did you go to school?
NS: Oh yes, well I attended my infant school for about one year and then we moved to Lincoln, and I went to the Lincoln St Giles junior school, took the, took the [unclear] scholarship and attended The City School of Lincoln.
IP: Ok, and were you an only child or did you have brothers and sisters?
NS: No, I have a sister who is younger, four years, and a brother who is older by four years.
IP: Ok, and what did you- I presume your mother sort of looked after you children and looked after the house, and what did your father do?
NS: Well, he came out of the army, I can- Yes, his grandfather had a- And I've got to explain how he came to have it. His family- Grandfather, was- And his Grandfather’s brother, ran a drapery shop in Hull and they sold mainly to the, to the seamen and they had a strike and they went bust, so they lost their- All the money. So, my father decided, he would follow his father, who was- Worked as a traveller for [unclear] Hopper, Hopper’s Bicycles. I’ve got them- I’ve got a catalogue about them, and he followed on, his father had retired, and he did all the Midlands and learnt how to drive by sitting at his side for miles and miles in the school holidays and, so that he- And then when he- The foreigners took over, and he lost his job. Well, it narrowed his area so much, he couldn’t have made, you know, he couldn’t make ends meet. So, he went into the brewery trading, he- When we got a- We got a pub. We got this public house in Lincoln, well just outside Lincoln, and then he got a pub right in the middle of Lincoln, and if you go now- This is an interesting thing, if you now go to Lincoln and walk down the high street, and you get to Barclay’s bank and you stop and look above where they usually look, you’ve got to look up in the air and at the top of that building it says Black Swan, and the one on the left window was my, my brother’s wind- Bedroom and his father and his mother, my mother on the other, and then when the war broke out they say it’s why he was gone, he was on the reserve list, and he was called in at Dunkirk and I still to this day remember him telling- Coming in, he said, ‘I’ve got to go, I just had the phone call and they said pin cushion or some ridiculous thing, that means that invasion is imminent and I've got to go and report immediately’, and they sent him up to Durham, to, to take on the role of keeping all the civilians in an orderly fashion if they’re evacuating.
IP: Ah right, so his, his reserve service was as a result of him having served during the First World War.
NS: Yes, yeah.
IP: So, what did he do during the First World War then?
NS: He was in the- First of all in the Hull friends which, you know, and then he, he was in the front- In line for about, oh about six months and they came down the line and said, ‘Would anybody like to volunteer going to the air?’, you know, he thought that’s a better thing than being on the Western Front. So, he said, ‘Yeah, ok’, and he came home and then he sort of spent a few months over here training to be an observer, which is at the front of the aircraft [unclear] on the- The pilot is behind him, and behind the pilot is the engine, and behind the engine is a propeller, propels hence, propeller and that was his- And then he was shot down and that ended it all.
IP: He flew FE2b’s I think didn’t he, yeah-
NS: Yes.
IP: So, so he was shot down about 1916, 1917 we think?
NS: Yes, the year before and then in 1918 armistice. Yes, he was- He did- Yes, I think it was just over a year. But it, it ruined his- He couldn’t bare to be in a shut door, room, you know, it does something to him. But one or two of his stories were interesting, how they had a- This is irrelevant, they had- One of the lads was very feminine and they got to work and back then they’d make all sorts of things with experts in the prisoner of war camp, and they would fit him out as an officer in the German army, and the block house had a partition in the middle of wood, and the German’s were one side, English the other side, and they took a panel out when the Germans changed at lunch time and put it back, and then they waited for the opportunity, they got him out as an officer, a German officer, ‘Yes it’s today, go quick’, out with the panel, and they’d also got this fella dressed up as a woman and the other one was a German officer. The two of them scrambled out, straight out through the main door towards the main gates, and they got to the gates and saluted, got a salute from the gate and they walked off, hundred yard or so down the road and he was watching them go, he thought there was- The pair of shoes that he’d got on, they would- ‘Halt’, caught him [chuckles]. It was an amazing story, so close, so close to getting-
IP: And, and his experience in World War Two then, did he stay in Durham? Did he- Was that- He was, he was just in the UK I presume?
NS: My mother was dying slowly with TB, so he put in for- Once he’d been there a week, they sent him home because he was forty-something, a lot of his- And he was very quiet and concerned, a lot of his oppos or friends, you know, the level- They’d done the same thing, signed in, they went to Middle East [emphasis] and forty-five or so. Well, he came out and he was, you know, discharged, so went back to the pub.
IP: Ah right. So, we’ll, we’ll step back a bit then to just before the war, you were- You would’ve started, what I might call grammar school, I know it wasn’t called a grammar school but this- Did you say it was the-
NS: City School.
IP: City School in Lincoln. So, you would’ve started there about 1935 I suppose, something like that, would that be right? Born in 1924, started when you were eleven?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ish, roughly.
NS: I’m trying to work it out.
IP: It doesn’t matter precisely. So you were, you were at City School when the war broke out?
NS: What happened, and it’s rather relevant in a way to what went later, Lincoln had a system whereby you can take your scholarship a year early, the bright lads, and then you could- When you got in- I got maths, so I started at ten, not eleven or what [unclear] and then as you get to the first year and second year, they pick out the top ones, who go straight through without ever a middle one. So, you did- Taking the-
IP: School certificate, was it? Yeah.
NS: A year before you should, and that mean- Can I tell you why it was awkward? Because, when the war broke out, I was nearly getting- We lost all our teachers, we ended- I was taking like languages, we ended with two teachers who- And they were both called up because they were interpreters, you see, and because of that it- We reached a position where everything was collapsing at Dunkirk, absolutely pandemonium, and we, we were told there was nothing terribly- Headmaster said, ‘I don’t think the universities are going to be functioning because everything, you know, and everything’, he said, ‘You better get something, get a job and now’. So, the two of us, there were only two doing languages, the- And I never knew what happened to the other physics people, whether they were kept on, but we were more or less, ‘You better go’, and so we both decided to go into a bank. So, at sixteen, I was whipped off to Alford because Barclays worked on the basis that you couldn’t work in your hometown, you might know that you earned too much and have a living, you know. Whereas my friend went into NatWest, and they let him stay home. I had to go into digs, so at sixteen I [unclear], she’s a lovely lady looked- There were two juniors, and she took us in both, [unclear] till I was called up. So that- And I was away from home, my brother had got- Qualified as a pharmacist and been called up, but it was, you know, plenty of sergeants and things, you only got a good payment. When I was called up, it was [chuckles]- Hadn’t got anything, there were no, no, you know, exams or an A to show for it, but I’ve-
IP: So, how did, how did you find working for Barclays then? Did you enjoy that?
NS: I did actually, yes, and I had to get there and it was the Tuesday of Dunkirk and that was the last to be- Took them out of the sea then, and there was no trans- Very little transport, I got a bus within three miles of Alford, sun and sun, you know, lovely day with a big suitcase tramping along and a fella came along in a milk float [chuckle]. He said, ‘Where are you going?’, I said, ‘I’m going to Alford’, he said, ‘Hop on’ [chuckles]. So, the horse went trotting along and I sat at the side of him. We got there and there was this very forbidding win- A big white door and it said Barclays, so I went round, I pushed a big spring and it went behind be bang [emphasis], you know. This little tubby fella came up behind the counter, he said, ‘Good Morning, can I help you?’ and I said, ‘I’m the new junior’, ‘Where the hell have you been? Dunkirk?’ [laughs]. I can remember that as clear [chuckles].
IP: Good stuff. So, so you were- Must’ve been at Barclays for a couple of years I guess then before?
NS: Oh yes.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And, I took ten of the- Six of the ten bankers' exams and in the last year at, what was I? Sixteen, seventeen by that time, seventeen yes. The- We’d lost our chief clerk, we’d lost the other junior, only in one junior and [unclear] curious one- We had ladies, two ladies and it was years later, she was, I’ve forgotten- She lived in a big house in the village and invited me one night to tea. She was about three year, four years older than me, invited me to a dinner and we played [unclear] tennis, and met her years later. I was listening to the radio in bed, and they said, ‘This is’- And I cannot remember her name, and ‘We’ll tell you how she came to be in Africa’, and she was the [unclear] right-hand woman, and it was because she had to be kicked out because they were saying she was, you know, telling him not what- What not to do, when he shouldn’t’ve been doing, and I thought, I’ll write a letter to the BBC and tell her I'm here, you know, to see her. He put it off, I then went to look for her and she had died. Anyway, that covered me the earlier times.
IP: Yeah, so you mentioned you were called up to the RAF, you didn’t volunteer, it was- You just got you papers?
NS: Yes, but while I was in the air force- While I was in the bank, I joined the ATC for Alford and I was a flight sergeant. I mean, that’s my flight sergeant’s uniform, and so, when I joined the air force, I made sure I got into the air force by doing ATC. They took people who were outstanding, took them into the radar and radio station, that’s how I got into it and they said- Curiously enough at any one time in the- [unclear] would you want to hear what, how, where, when?
IP: Yeah, well we’ll get onto that ‘cause I'm- The first thing that struck me about it was, I mean it sounds like you were quite well educated and that sort of stuff, so I was wondering why you didn’t end up as an officer? Do you know how that-
NS: Yeah, because a technician- I mean I was a- Totally without any knowledge of- Because the first thing they did do, we did six months in Leeds college of Technoloy to do all the radio and stuff, and then they took the top two to go into radar, and the top two, me being one of them, we went down to London, we were digs in the, what do you call? The prom place.
PB: [Whispers] Royal Albert Hall.
NS: The?
PB: Royal Albert Hall.
IP: Royal-
NS: Can’t hear [chuckles]
IP: Royal Albert Hall.
NS: Oh yes, Albert, just round the corner from Albert Hall is Albert Court and it’s a very posh- They said the [unclear] or somebody [unclear] had had it, so they covered everything with plywood and we were in there, and we prayed[?] the outside, which was at the time the front of one of the- The London, you know, university, and we- Say we went into 3 Squadron because we had a fellow army officer who’d come to make [unclear] in London and you had to say, ‘A Squadron, B, C Squadron’, and turn, where? ‘Left turn’, down Vickery and Grand Exhibition Road, what’s by all retired [unclear], how it is there, and you wheeled left at the V&A and there were laboratories with the V&A, and I came out as the top two in that, with the- Having done Gee and we didn’t- We’d done a bit of H2S at that point, and we did- How long was it there? About six months.
IP: So, you just- Sorry to nip back again. So, you were called up to the RAF in November- Was it December ‘42, wasn’t it? That’s right, and did you go straight to Leeds from there, or did you do basic training first, you did sort of square bashing?
NS: We went in- Yes, we went into [unclear]
IP: Into where sorry?
NS: We went in the west coast area there was an RAF training camp there.
IP: Ok, alright.
NS: So, we did that, and then we went up to Redcar
IP: Oh yeah, yeah.
NS: And a little aside that, years later I was teaching in Redcar new college and I was standing- Having a dinner at the [unclear] hotel and the last time I'd been there, I'd been standing out while the officers tell you to [unclear] [chuckles]. Anyway-
IP: How did you find- How did you find the basic training and stuff? The square bashing and all that sort of stuff?
NS: Oh rubbish. We got off very lightly because we were ATC cadets.
IP: So, you knew how to do drill, and you knew how to make-
NS: You were taught how to- In half an hour we had to- You know, what it- To arms, ‘Shoulder, arms’-
IP: Rifle drill, yeah.
NS: And they said, ‘Right’- One of the other corporals, ‘You’re gonna do it with the flag tonight’. Pull the flag down and that sort of thing, back to the hotel [chuckles] well it’s like Dad’s Army, we’re actually in fits, even he was laughing [unclear] [laughs].
IP: So, you did- So, you did that sort of basic training and then from there, from Redcar I guess, you went to Leeds to do your mechanic training. But, do you know how they selected you to be a, a mechanic? I mean, presumably you could’ve gone off to any training?
NS: Yes-
IP: Cooks, bottlewashers-
NS: Well, the only thing I knew, is they said, ‘You were a bank clerk, we found them very, you know, very good at this bank clerks’, I don’t know why-
IP: Maths and stuff maybe, I guess, I don’t know.
NS: I couldn’t say why it changed to-
IP: Ok, alright, alright. So, to Leeds, down to the Albert Hall, London. Do you remember how long you were in Leeds doing your-
NS: Yeah, six months.
IP: Six months, and that, that was- Sorry, just to- Sorry. So, that was- Was that radar mechanic training, or was it-
NS: No.
IP: It was just mechanical training?
NS: Yeah.
IP: And then they streamed you to radar, the top two as you say. So you were the top two of that, you then went to your radar mechanic training in London and you were the top two of that course.
NS: I was-
IP: Yeah.
NS: And I can tell you why I was never a corporal as well, which I should’ve been.
IP: Oh, we’ll come back to that maybe. But- So, right, so-
NS: [Unclear] say this about that-
IP: Yeah.
NS: The- We’d been [unclear] and- Oh I’ll tell you. In [unclear], we had a theatre with two rollers chairs- Stairs either side and you go up this one and you shove the needle in you and then take the needle our, or take the fridge out and the needle in and you walked across the stage and they’d put the next one on tight up to the other one [chuckles], and I had a fellow who’s six foot three in front of me and he started going like that [laughs] and jumped out of the [unclear].
IP: Went down like a sack of spuds, yeah.
NS: Right, so that’s the only reason that I was in the bank clerk, I suppose I’d got the fact that I'd done some extra work at the bank with- Banking, you know, banking law, nothing to do with it, but, we’re all- And the thing that struck me it was being push here, push there and we were in digs in Redcar and I'll never forget the porridge it was burnt every morning [chuckles] and- But we then ended in nice digs in Leeds, lovely widow and she looked after the two of us and we’d all [unclear] what’d be known [unclear] and we walked in the first morning, we sat in anticipation and this [unclear] walked in and said, ‘Good morning gentlemen, take a seat’ [laughs]. Gentleman [emphasis] [laughs] oh, what a change, yes.
IP: So, just trying to get this back where we are now. So, we’ve gone- Done your basic training, did you go to Redcar before you went to Leeds then, or after?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ok, so it was Redcar first, then Leeds and then you went down to London, The Albert Hall, and did your radar mechanic training there, came in the top two of your course there and then- So what- And how did you- I mean, did you enjoy- Did you enjoy it, was it, was it- How did you find that phase of being down in London and the training down there and what have you?
NS: In all the wave forms and things that we learnt, it’s fascinating [emphasis] and I really did enjoy that, yeah.
IP: Had you- So when you’d been growing up, I mean, had you, had you done any sort of electrical, electronics or electrical stuff-
NS: No, nothing.
IP: - sort of crystal radios or any of that sort of stuff?
NS: No, well they had a whiskers, you know the old, [unclear] whiskers [chuckles] those little- Yes, and- But, nothing further than that. I’d no, I'd no mechanical background.
IP: Oh right.
NS: No.
IP: Yeah.
NS: But it- They’d got a good volunteer [unclear] and I mean, they picked somebody who they- I did, I did very well.
IP: It sounds that way. So, what happened then after you left? Did you say you were about six months, you think in London?
NS: Yeah.
IP: So now we must be into 1943, I guess, something like that, or maybe, or maybe later than that I don’t know, do you remember?
NS: No, not- It wasn’t as long as that I don’t think.
IP: Ok.
NS: And then it was posted to Gransden Lodge.
IP: Right.
NS: Canadians.
IP: Yes.
NS: That was lovely.
IP: Yeah, 405 Squadron. So- And you were posted onto the squadron? You weren’t stationed personally?
NS: No, no.
IP: You were on the squadron-
NS: There were two of us, two Englishmen among the- All the rest were Canadian radar mechanics, because we hadn’t got them at that time
IP: Ah, right.
NS: I assumed that we were still training them, you know, but- And then, I wish I'd taken the names because there was just a gang, you know [laughs]. In fact, when I went to- I’ll tell you in a minute if you want to know why I moved to-
IP: Little Staughton?
NS: Yes, Little Staughton. What was I leading up to there? Oh yes, I'm in Little Staughton and Christmas I cycled over because it’s was only about eight miles and I had my Christmas with the whole gang in Gransden Lodge.
IP: Ah, ok. So, right- Just, just going back. So, I get the impression you were happy to be a radar mechanic, I mean you said you enjoyed it, you said you found it fascinating. So, and I supposed compared to some things you could’ve ended up doing, it was great.
NS: It was a, a marvellous piece of equipment.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And you’ll see I've got a [unclear] on the inside, and when I came out, I was then mending people’s televisions, but you see then you went all this funny business and that, nothing like mine, you see, [unclear] red tube and things.
IP: And so, you joined the squadron, 405 Squadron, it was- Well, your section, the radar mechanic section, how big- How many people were there in the section then? Do you remember, roughly?
NS: Um-
IP: I mean, are we talking ten? Fifteen?
NS: Well there was about the same as on that photograph which is at Little Staughton, it’ll be about fourteen in this I suppose
IP: Ok, alright, so- But, two of you were Brits and the other, the other twelve were Canadian, and how do you, how did you find them? Were they friendly? Were they a friendly lot?
NS: Oh yes, they would- Yes, marvellous [chuckles] and they used to, you know, mock limeys and that sort of thing, but they were great fellas. The [unclear] particularly a man called Moon Mullin, and he had shock of hair like an Indian and he was a real rover. They couldn’t touch them you see, because as soon as you got one step from the safe it said ‘Private [emphasis], no entry’.
IP: Ah yes, yes, so behind closed doors sort of thing, yeah, yeah.
NS: Yeah, we did no mucking about, flying drill or anything like that, we just looked after our own [unclear] you know, along that and that was [unclear].
IP: Ah, and did you feel that you were part of 405 Squadron? Were-
NS: Yes, I was very sorry to leave it and it wasn’t to my- Actually, I can tell you later, it wasn’t to my- It’s tied up with the corporal, it wasn’t my- It wasn’t to my best and it was all because the radar officer found out- When I went there, I went there as an AC1 and within two, three weeks he’d made me a LAC because I was so good, and they then wanted to form a new squadron at Great Staughton, or Little Staughton [unclear] and they’d taken the half from one English one and half from the other English one, but they needed the officer and they took the officer who was English, with the Canadian and he had- He said then, he said, ‘We want one more’, so he came to me and he said, ‘I’m going to move to- And I’m taking you with me’. I thought, well I'm gonna be alright here, he’d look after me. Did he hell [emphasis]. I got there, and of course, what happened was that after a few weeks it came to the idea of this new squadron getting there, getting there informa- Getting their [unclear] better, you know, going up to corporals, and they were- And I thought, well, the two- They’d already got theirs, two from one half and the other two, so no [unclear], and that was it, and nobody said anything, and I thought oh that’s a bit [unclear] and it dawned on me why. This half, ‘Oh we want this man’, this half, ‘We want this man’, and ‘I want this fella’, no way mate, you haven’t got any supporters there, and then didn’t have- That was my first time that I wasn’t made a corporal [chuckles] which I should’ve been because I was in- You know, he took me with him because he thought I was good [emphasis].
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
NS: But, anyway I didn’t want the job, because at the [unclear] I start off by doing DI’s every morning in the cold-
IP: Daily inspections? Yes.
NS: [Unclear] and then I got into the- When I got to Great Staughton, I was put on the bench doing- We didn’t do Magnetron, I didn’t- Never got- Didn’t know how it worked but that was obviously a big secret. But I did the H2S and the Gee, putting the faults right on them. I always remember, I loved that, it’s like a detective model. You go through all the, the [chuckles]-
IP: The diagnosis?
NS: Yes, the- You’d got a big, a big book of all the info- The brown [unclear] that goes to that, and that- And you used an oscilloscope because you got a wave form, that’s [unclear] wave forms for television, they go quickly down and then slowly, quickly down because you’re putting it into the devalves[?] and you’re making it move, the dots, so you get that- It’s- It makes it move round on the screen and when I got to the other- Great Staughton they said, ‘Well you know quite a lot about H2S so we’ll do it on the Benson[?]’ and I was doing it one morning and I couldn’t find this damn fault and I thought, oh it’s lunchtime so I got on my bicycle, because you all had bikes then, and I'm cycling and I think, oh I didn’t try that one, I'll have to go, ‘Norman put your hat on’ [shouts] [laughs]. I’m trying to [unclear] a bloody war on, and you’re telling, put my hat on [chuckles].
IP: Have to get your priorities right.
NS: [Laughs]
IP: Hats are everything.
NS: [Unclear] a bit.
IP: Right, so just, just going back to- Was it 405 Squadron- Were they already on the pathfinder force when you joined them then?
NS: Oh yes.
IP: So- And was, was that one reason- Because you were top of your course were you particularly selected for the pathfinder force do you think? Or, or did it not quite work that way, or don’t you know?
NS: Well, I mean the thing was you went to Gransden Lodge and it was pathfinders and I don’t know whether I was chosen- I don’t know where the others went, you know, [unclear].
IP: Yeah, yeah, ok, yeah. Did you, did you understand at the time what the pathfinders were all about? Did you understand how the, how the bomber offensive was working kind of thing?
NS: Yeah, oh yes.
IP: So you, so you were- I mean this is, this is the whole thing that interests me of this whole- Being part of the squadron and understanding what was going on ‘cause as an LAC you might reasonably not know exactly what they were doing and what was required. Somebody turns up with a broken H2S-
NS: LAC is the highest technical thing you can get to.
IP: Right.
NS: So you’re bound to know, you know.
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you were well treated on, on the squadron?
NS: Oh yes, yeah.
IP: What did you, did you have any thoughts at the time about what the bomber crews were doing? About what they were going off to do, did you think about it at all?
NS: Oh yes.
IP: And what were your thoughts?
NS: Very, very traumatic, you know, and we used to see them off at that time it was like metrology[?] mare[?], eighteen aircraft one behind the other, and I'll tell you the story what I did- Happened to me on that line [chuckles] if you’re interested?
IP: Yeah, go on then?
NS: And- But- And we- At the front of it, it had the caravan with a dome and the red light and green light and they’re there in case a fault starts before they get off, so you can see them off, and then you see them back, and that was it.
IP: Yeah, so you used to watch them come in?
NS: And that’s three you’ve got.
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you get to know the crews quite- Or
NS: No.
IP: I mean-
NS: Not a click.
IP: You didn’t meet the navigators or anything like that who are dealing with the equipment?
NS: Well, I did because I was put in charge of what was like a big toy. It was a huge tank- Well a tank, ten foot by ten foot, full of water with a little scanner and underwater you can have it at a pay low frequency, so it’s a mock-up of the H2S in- Underwater, and you had the controls at the side and they had to- Before they got their little badge, extra pay, they had to pass the test I gave them to get to Berlin underwater [chuckles] which is fascinating
IP: Yeah.
NS: I always thought it would do lovely for the kids, pathetic, this little thing buzzing under water, and had this arose because you asked me something-
IP: ‘Cause I was asking you how well, how well you got to know the navigators and that-
NS: So I did get to know some of them and one particular one, they were in- This was at- I didn’t do it at Great Staughton, I did it at Gransden Lodge and one I’d got friendly with and he- And his brother was also in aircrew, so there was another there and we all went out for a drink at times, and to put it short, we saw them right through to the end.
NS: Yeah.
IP: And we counted it [unclear].
NS: Yeah, no that’s ok, that’s I- I understand. So, you said you- That you went to see the Lancasters off and that sort of stuff, and that must’ve been eighteen I think you said on the squadron, that must’ve been quite- I mean it must’ve been really impressive seeing eighteen, eighteen Lancaster-
NS: Yes, they stopped it very quickly because one night [unclear] all 8 Group into [unclear] he was there from senior, saw them all there and went down the line, so they stopped it very fast.
IP: A German intru-
NS: Bomber.
IP: Oh bomber, or an intruder- Well, doesn’t matter really, does it but-
NS: Yes, it was a foreign air, aircraft. So now they used to wait to be pulled off the outlined positions, one at a time. But it used- It was quite a, you know, quite an occasion. Everybody was there, all the ground crew were seeing them off and it was quite a- Quite emotional.
IP: And did you have to deal with anything with the aircraft at that stage then, or?
NS: We would’ve done if there’d been an error because they’d run all aircrafts, all their instruments are put in through it as while they were waiting and if there were- No I didn’t- Never had one- That was my servicing during the day [chuckles].
IP: So you have to- So if there was a problem with the H2S or, or, well Gee, you had to jump on board the aircraft and try and do a quick, a quick fix?
NS: Oh, we had more that, we had to jump on anyway because the Germans had got the Gee and it’s a very accurate piece of information in this, in this country it was at one end of the runway to the other, and we didn’t want this happening so they decided we’ll delay the actual frequency until the last minute. So, it was- We had about ten boxes all with a different set-up and each one had another ten, so there was a hundred choice and that was only put in twenty minutes before take-off, and job of radar mechanic was to put them in the back of the van, get the [unclear] WAAF to drive at the end, starting and went jump in the first one, up to the eye[?], over the back, [unclear] room, ‘'scuse me’, get to the next [imitates vehicle]. Eighteen, one after the other and you’ve got seventy-two machineries in front of you, propellers [imitates propeller] noise and this particular- Next one, next one I got to, seventeen, eighteen, eighteen [imitates vehicle] right up to the front and the wireless op was there with his headset round his neck and I'm just screwing it up and hear- And on his, on his- In the earphones, ‘Are you ready for take-off [unclear]’ [imitates aircraft engine] and we were swinging onto the, ‘Me, me’ [chuckles]. So, ‘We’ve got a foreigner, stop, stop’. So, I had to say, ‘I’ll just finish this’, ‘Ok, cheers’. Go down into the mid-upper, ‘'scuse me, could you open the [unclear] door?’. ‘Cause I couldn’t open it from the inside, never had done that, I could open it from the outside. He’d have to get out- I delayed them ten minutes while I [chuckles] I don’t know whose fault it was. I mean I was going at a noble pace standard every time before, I think they were a bit ready that, bit-
IP: A bit keen to go?
NS: Yeah.
IP: So you nearly got a free ticket to Hamburg or Cologne or Berlin or wherever?
NS: On 405 Squadron they had brothers and such and occasionally they used to take the brother with them, very illegal.
IP: I know, I know that passengers used to go occasionally, and there’s some really sad stories of course about bombers being shot down with passengers on board who shouldn’t, who shouldn’t have been there really.
NS: They could shoot them.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Because Hitler’s spies.
IP: Mhmm.
NS: That’s why I-
IP: So you, so you didn’t- You never went on a, on a trip? Would you have liked to?
NS: No.
IP: No.
NS: I’m not a- I couldn’t have stood it. I used to think, how do those lads do it day after day? And I came to the conclusion the only thing that kept them going was the comradery between the crew. You can’t tell anybody now, so you keep going but- I know it's a bad day today but this could be a bright, summers afternoon and they climb in that bloody aircraft and go out and come back two having gun- Not coming back and then you got to go again two days later and it goes on and on for forty of them.
IP: Yeah, yeah.
NS: Which is amazing.
IP: Yeah, absolutely incredible, yeah, I take my hat off to them.
NS: I used to say to people, just before you start criticising them, just put yourself in their position
IP: Yeah.
NS: In the army, you have [unclear] bloody army and a fired battle and people getting blown to bits and then you pulled help and you have a rest. Those lads go every morning knowing they’re going, by the afternoon they’ll be off, maybe two days rest or what, you know, and I, you know, I admire them to the fullest.
IP: Mhmm, yeah, couldn’t agree more. Right, so we’ll- That’s, that’s- I think you’ve provided some really interesting information there. You moved onto 582 Squadron at RAF Little Staughton which is near Great Staughton I know that much. Was that- But you were working the bay then weren’t you, so you had less interaction with the aircraft and the crews I suppose but you were still doing the diagnostic stuff. Was, was that much of a change then, being on 582 after 405? Did you- I mean, it sounds like you missed 405 because you said went back for their Christmas dinner?
NS: Yes, yes.
IP: But, but was it a big change going to 582 or?
NS: Well, yes, I didn’t want to go but it [unclear] you know, orders is orders and he was gonna take me with him.
IP: That’s right.
NS: But of course, I- If I'd have stayed in 405, I’d have been a corporal. It was very sad that he was trying to do something good and it didn’t work that way, well I could’ve- And an interesting thing, I mean to prove it, we had to be on duty, one every night, one- And I was in this- I was in there and I walked into the office, looked around and there was a waste paper basket and pulled it out, it’s torn up and said ‘LAC Shakesby corporal’. So it’d got to the point actually putting it forward and they’d killed it
IP: Mhmm.
NS: And I went right through until [chuckles]- I can tell you that- I won’t tell you, but I can have so many- Every time- I had four other times when I just didn’t- Just missed it, and the last time was when I was being demobbed. The officer on- At Waddington, when I went to sign and get it signed off, he said, ‘You know, you’ve got an awfully good record here Shakesby’, he said, ‘You know, you should’ve been made a corporal’, I said, ‘Well, it’s just the way’, he said, ‘I’ll- Going to put it- I’ll put it in for you, I’m going on leave for three weeks’, and I was demobbed by the time he got back [chuckles], so it’s- Such is the world.
IP: Yeah.
NS: But it would’ve been nice because my wife, my wife would’ve got more money and I’d have got a bit more kudos.
IP: So you were married by then?
NS: Yes.
IP: When did you get married then?
NS: Pardon?
IP: When did you get married?
NS: 1946.
IP: Oh, I see, oh ok, so this was- Right, not during the war then, it was after the war that you got married. Ok, alright well-
NS: Yes, it was actually almost VE Day, V- No, no- Let me go-
IP: How did you meet your wife?
NS: I was- She was a girl in the digs we’re in in Leeds.
IP: Ah, ok. Right, so you kept in the touch all the time as you were moving round the air force and then- Oh ok, then you got married, wow. Yeah, ok.
NS: Too early, but [chuckles]-
IP: You did what you do don’t you?
NS: I got [unclear] I've got two boys.
IP: So, that kind of ties into my next- What was going to be my next question actually, which was how- What did you do for social life when you’re on the squadrons then? What, what social life did you have?
NS: Mainly in- The British Legion had a bar on the, on the drome and they had a special bitter and we used to end up there playing dominos and what not and every time, every few weeks or when- You had a day off and there was a bus to Cambridge and I well remember having been drinking the night before and getting on the bus the next morning and I was trying to keep upright [chuckles].
IP: Bit worse for wear?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ah yes, nothing changes. So, so it was- And, so you’re going to Cambridge with your mates and that sort of stuff and- So you’re going to Cambridge with your mates and what have you?
NS: Well, normally I usually was on my own, you were the only one off from there-
IP: Ah yes, yes of course, yeah, yeah, ok, and did you get any leave? What did you do- I suppose you’d have gone to see your girlfriend or whatever-
NS: Yes, we usually had weekends towards the end of- Later time until the, as I say, the bomb dropped in Japan and they- We all- Had to be sent back and they didn’t know what to do with us, so they sent us to the Middle East as- With the radio mines, and then because I got- I’m now jumping very quickly-
IP: Well, I was just gonna say. So, you, you did your time on 582 Squadron, I think- Yeah, we’ll cut that sort of stuff. So, you did your time on 582 Squadron and then were you on 582- So VE Day happened, were you still on 582 then?
NS: Yes, yeah.
IP: You got married around about that time as it happened, did you get- Where did you go- Did you go back to Leeds to get married or?
NS: Yeah.
IP: Ok, was she a Leeds girl then I take it?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ah right, ok, and- So, VE Day came, you were still kept in the air force ‘cause obviously they couldn’t demob everyone immediately and the Japanese war was still going on anyway, and then they dropped the bomb- So- But you weren’t up to then- ‘Cause I know numbers of the bomber command squadrons were, were ready to go to the Far East and some of them were converted to transport squadrons as well-
NS: Yeah, we, we were ready to go, we got the clearing and we were starting to, to convert onto Lincolns.
IP: As, as a transport squadron or as a bomber?
NS: Yeah.
IP: Ok, as a transport squadron.
NS: Well I thought- We thought as a bomber.
IP: Oh I see, ok, yeah, yeah. So- Right- Ah that’s interesting. So, so you’re waiting for that but then as you say, the bomb- The atom bomb was dropped-
NS: Fortunately, fortunately, weren’t looking forward to that bit [unclear]
IP: Yes- What- I suppose, just going back to VE Day, can you remember the- I mean this is just one of those general things if you were around at the time. Can you remember when the news came through that the war had ended?
NS: Yes, I think I- It was a morning I remember on the radio, and there was [laughs] great hilarity from everybody on the [unclear] as we can well imagine.
IP: Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say what was your reaction? What did you think about it?
NS: Oh, we wanted to go, it was an adventure [unclear]
IP: Yeah.
NS: [Unclear] we’d been- I’d been in the air force a length of time by then.
IP: Yeah. So, you were ready to go home?
NS: I was.
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So- But as it turned out then, 582 was pointed out to go out to the Far East and- I mean from your reaction it sounds like you didn’t want to do that but-
NS: We were dispersed all over and we were sent out to the Middle East, and I was spent with- Two of us, two- Where a ground [unclear] team was operating for the Middle East and we had eight Nissen huts on this barren- Well it’s- I think there’s a photograph of it actually, and we, we went on AS[?] and then did a bit of overhauling then, and we got all the messages on the [unclear] screen in [unclear] morse code and I’d been there- And we used to go from there to Castel Benito, fifteen- Well you’ve seen them haven’t you, fifteen hairpin bends to get down to the flat plane and then the- It’s still an airport for Tripoli and they had two tents for us and we’d arrive this, you know, fairly dirty [unclear] and the white things on the [unclear] and you’d say, ‘AMES’, ‘Oh, that bloody lot’ [chuckles], air ministry experimenting, and they had two, two tents for us and we fed there and we stayed the day and then we went back, and then a day went with nobody and then the next one went and back, and we were doing this about [unclear]- About three months, it said, ‘Shut down, these are your orders, close [unclear] shut it off’. So, [unclear] won’t shut it off, we just carried on going down, nobody did a thing. We had two months where nobody did anything but play monopoly and go [laughs]- We had a- And there was a little village, we went through it to get to the set, there was one photograph showing the Nissen huts and they had little tin cans, the [unclear] smoke and they used to stop us and swap cigarettes for eggs, so we’d get eggs and then go, come back [unclear], and in that village there were two Italians, one was the electrician, he had an engine that he’d start by doing this [imitates engine] and they had electric lights but it went off at ten o’clock because that was the orders, and the other one was a bar and we used to go down to the bar, nobody else went except us and there’d be all liqueurs on, we used to drink our way down them [chuckles] and they had a little girl and she taught me to say [sings a tune]- Can’t I’ve forgotten the words now.
IP: The Italian national anthem it sounds like, was that the one? I don’t know but- So- Right- Because I was thinking you must’ve been desperate to get home but it sounds like you were having quite a good time in the Middle East really.
NS: Well, it wasn’t- Mixed feeling, I mean ok, I could’ve done without it. Then they sent us back to Cairo and they said to put us on then this, this- Well, dismantling these radar, because the- We’d only been the few, the rest were still doing that. So- And we had our tents in a little enclosure and guards at the gate, so and then we’d get garries[?] to go into the treble 1MU, that’s the- That’s the- What we did, called it, and I got there on my own, having flown and I thought well [unclear] I'll go on parade. ‘Airmen, get your hair cut, get that shined up’, and I thought bloody hell mate I haven’t been- And all the lads round me were eighteen and I was twenty-two, you know, and I knew the ropes a bit, ‘Oh righto, sir’, and I found out then that the guards at the gate were from some foreign, foreign empire, maybe- I’ve forgotten which one it was then, but they went off duty at ten to seven and the British got in- On at seven o’clock, gap of ten minutes, so I used to go out at five to [chuckles] because by that time [unclear] I had a severe stomach dysentery, or not as bad as that but when I came out the fella said, ‘You feeling better?’, I said, ‘Yes’, ‘cause he was being in the hospital. ‘Have your bowels moved today?’, ‘Yes’, ‘How many times?’, ‘Twenty-four’ [chuckles] and the toilets were the other end, you know [chuckles] that’s your fault from doing- Getting it. So, he said, ‘Would you like to do a misemployed?’, he said ‘You won't get any pay and you’re still on tread with 1MU, but there’s a hotel, Regina, which looks after all the posts in the Middle East, they have three offices in descending ranks, wing commander all this, and several women who [unclear] and I have to decide, the person is going is a corporal and he’s being demobbed, would you like to take his job?’. I said, ‘Yeah, that sounds ok’. So, I used to walk out every morning- This is why I got [unclear] going out early before the- And arrive at the hotel, and it was quite pleasant [unclear] the three offices used to have a bit of a [unclear] and then I'd watch the girls and, and- So when we- All the correspondence came through me, and this [unclear] oh, airmen with whatever they called it release over, under, sixty, home. Oh, I'm fifty-eight. The wing commander came in he said, ‘I see you’ve read that Shakesby’, I said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Well, we’re going to make you a corporal and we’ll keep you’, and I thought, like hell you will [chuckles]. So, ‘Yes, thank you sir’. This is the next time I didn’t get it.
IP: Yeah, yeah.
NS: So I got on the bicycle and I biked out to treble 1MU, it was about four miles and went to the dis office and knocked [knocks], ‘Yes’, ‘Hello corporal, you’ll be wanting to see me soon’, ‘Why? What’, I said, ‘Well this, you know, people, I'm due for the re-pat’, ‘Oh god, we don’t know, it’s not’, I said, ‘I know it’s true because I've seen the-’. I said, ‘But, just remember I belong to this unit, not that hotel, I'm fifty-eight’, ‘No’ he said ‘I’ve got- Ok’.
IP: When you say you’re 58, what, what do you mean?
NS: That’s a number.
IP: What, as in your service number, or-?
NS: Just a number relating to your- Time you’ve been in.
IP: Right, gotcha, ok, yep.
NS: Well and the- Fifty-eight was- And it was up to sixty, you see. So, he said, ‘We’ll look after you’. So, I went back and several weeks went by, [unclear] to get moving, got to organise transport and everything to get the fifty to home, and then it came through, LAC Shakesby report back to M- 71 MU and [chuckles]- I still remember that face of that officer, ‘Oh’, he said ‘I see you are’, I said ‘Yes sir’ [chuckles].
IP: On the way.
NS; He said, ‘Pity we were going to make you a corporal’, I said, ‘Yeah, well I know which I prefer’ [chuckles]
IP: And that was you- So you were demobbed once you got back to the UK then?
NS: No.
IP: Oh.
NS: No. I had then- How long was it before I was demobbed. That was a different thing from being demobbed, it was just they were using it for this particular group who’d been sent overseas knowing nothing what else to do with them. You know, I can’t remember-
IP: So when you went back to the UK, where did you go to then?
NS: Waddington.
IP: Right.
NS: And I lived in the Black Swan, every night, I was there when I went to get my signatures [unclear] office and said, ‘Are you arriving or leaving?’, I said, ‘I’m leaving sir’, ‘I don’t remember seeing you’, so you know. Of course, the radar officer knew because I'd said to him- My parents lived down the road, he said, ‘I’ll get the sleeping out pass for-But I'm going on a- I’ve got to come back, I'll be back several weeks’, and of course it was just over weeks, I just went home and came back again. I thought that if I'd been in [unclear] too long.
IP: Knew how to keep your head down.
NS: I mean [unclear] looked around they were all bogs, you know, and- And he said to me, he said- And he was looking at that, he said, ‘This is an excellent report’, he said, ‘Why are you still not a corporal’, I said, ‘Well, there’s a story’ [chuckles].
IP: Yeah, ok. So- But Waddington was your last base?
NS: Yes.
IP: And then you were demobbed?
NS: Yes.
IP: Was that a good day?
NS: Yes [chuckles] the only thing was that, it had been all this snow and ice, which took me off my bicycle every morning and evening. They sent me to the west coast to be demobbed and there wasn’t a snow flake over here, they hadn’t had any snow, and by the time I got back we were flooded out, we couldn’t get into the village, the snow melted all this stuff and, and that was-
IP: And where, where did you go? Once you were demobbed, where did you go then? What, what happened? Where did you go to live and what did you do for work?
NS: This is when I went to the west coast to be signed off and-
IP: Yep, yeah, and given your suit-
NS: And then went back and they said ‘Cheerio’ on-
IP: But, where did you go? Did you go back to Lincoln? ‘Cause your wife presumably was still up- Was she still in Leeds at the time?
NS: No, she was living in Hykeham, where my parents were.
IP: Ok, right.
NS: So, yes I just walked out and I'd got my civvies over in the west coast, sent back on the rail pass, said- Went to see the radar office who said, ‘Well thank you, cheers’, pity about that, pity you were on gone leave, I might’ve been a corporal but never mind.
IP: And what did, what did you do work wise then? Once you left the RAF, what happened about that?
NS: My father was, being the pub, was great friends with a fellow who was one of the officers in the Russen Hornsby, they build- Built electric motors for the mines, and he said I could get a- And I had a- I applied then for the- I went to see my headmaster and he said, ‘Well, would you like to take up teaching?’, I said, ‘Yes’, he said, ‘Well there’s an emergency scheme for anybody who wants to, you’ve got the right- You’ve got matriculation’, he said, ‘But one thing, they’ll offer you twelve months’, he said, ‘Don’t- Go for the full time one which is still being used by everybody normally because it then, I think the others might be down paraded a bit by not being the full course’, and he said, ‘Apply to Leeds’. So, I applied to Leeds and I had to wait a year, and I was then working in this chaser in the, what you call them, [unclear]- Anyway they built these, this-
IP: Mhmm.
NS: And my job was to go around the stem[?] all and they had a- They had a foundry[?], they had a machine shop and they had, what’s the others? Anyway, there were three different processes and they used to get stuck with the bits at one of them, these can’t go ahead until that goes, so my job was to go and hurry it up you see.
IP: Trouble-shooter?
NS: Yes and just before I left, I found out where they kept all their information for each of the [unclear] each one of them in a Kardex system and if you looked at this Kardex system it shows what the- The number of the machine and where it was. Well, when the oddbod, boss at my office went to the weekly- Say, ‘Why aren’t we getting on with this?’, and they’d say, ‘Well, we can’t get, can’t get the thing out of the machine shop’, ‘Oh well’. So, I thought I’ll check this, so I went- Nobody stopped me and I pulled out, where is it? Oh, it’s in, it’s in the [unclear] oh, boilers, the boiler shop. So, I went back to my boss, I said, ‘That one, it’s in the boiler shop’, So he went [chuckles] to the next meeting, ‘It’s in the boiler shop’, ‘What, how did you find that out?’, and I thought this is a ridiculous English industry, they told [unclear] from where they want- Don’t want to be caught napping, that they deliberately don’t let people know what they should know.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Anyway, I thought I'm leaving after a fortnight, so I got a bad name, I can tell you, ‘Don’t do that mate, don’t tell them where we are, let them find out’, I said, ‘I have found out’, he said, ‘Well you’re out of orders, you can’t go in that place, it’s not your’- [Chuckles]
IP: So-
NS: Is this irrelevant? I don’t know-
IP: No, no, no it’s- No, it’s not at all. But you went to Leeds from there to do, to do teacher training?
NS: Yes.
IP: Whereabouts in Leeds were you doing that then?
NS: Brickett and-
IP: On Briggate?
NS: Yeah- No, not Briggate. It’s the-
PB: Beckett..
NS: Beckett.
IP: Oh, Becket college.
NS: Yes.
IP: Ah right, which is now- Which became Leeds polytechnic and is now-
NS: Well, it was polytechnic [unclear] when we were there-
IP: University of Leeds or Metropolitan or something, yeah.
NS: And the- I was there, the second [unclear] and they just had one more, there were three intakes of the men- And the girls were the- From school and so here was the men's dormitory and there was the girl's dormitory with the various names and there’s as [unclear] used to say, ‘There are two-hundred men chasing two-hundred women across the quad’ [chuckles] ‘cause we were behind them on the rotation and they were eighteen and we were almost twenty-six. It’s a bit- I mean I, I was [unclear] with my wife, I was true to her and, and because we’d got a baby by that time anyway.
IP: Oh right, ok.
NS: And- But the others had a whale of a time, the single men.
IP: Yeah, yeah, and was your wife back in Hykeham still-
NS: Leeds.
IP: In- Oh, she, she went with you to Leeds?
NS: Yes.
IP: Yeah, so what- How long did the teacher training last then?
NS: Two years.
IP: Ok and what were you, what were you going to teach?
NS: Well, it was all- They were all primary.
IP: Ah right, yeah, ok.
NS: And I'd got matriculation and, on the way back one day when we were going back to our own houses, there was a- One of the other fellows he said, ‘I’ve just appealed to London University for a degree’. Well, I didn’t want to do- I mean I'd been doing it ten years and [unclear] a reunion [unclear] and that’s- I was trying to [unclear]- Yes, we had a reunion and I'll put in for the training he said. Oh, so I wrote to the London University of course I wanted- I remembered that fellow on the Leeds, where we- In our training, ‘Good Morning Gentlemen’, I thought that’s fair fee for me, I want to be further education me, and- So I wrote to the London and they said, ‘Well you’ve got a matriculation so you get interview’, and of course there was no financial aid, I had to pay the lot and I had to do it at home. So, I did a- With a [unclear] two children and my wife, sorry I'm going to be working all night and I did it nearly every night for five years.
IP: To do a degree course from home? Distanced learning.
NS: Yes.
IP: I didn’t know they did that in those days
NS: It was- Well it’s- It’s called private and I've got the list of all- And there is a whole lot of people who were doing it at home.
IP: Oh right, ok.
NS: Then.
IP: Oh, what was your degree course in then?
NS: Mine was- I was in second- I was in economics
IP: Oh right, goodness, ok. So, and you were at that- You were teaching at that stage I presume?
NS: Yes-
IP: Which-
NS: In a small village which was- It was the only one left in Bedfordshire which went from five to fifteen and I used to take the juniors and all of the group for music. I got on quite well. I could play the piano roughly and I had to play for the hymns, and I had to take the- All the ones for music and, and I quite enjoyed it because I got them first of all in the juniors with- The music man came to see me he said, ‘You’re doing very well here’, he said, ‘Would you like to have a set of percussions, [unclear] for the juniors?’, said, ‘Yes’. So, we got tambourines and all sorts of things and a record player and they used to- And it- I taught them [chuckles] I taught them on tables because they used to say, ‘You’re the violins, you’re the flutes’, and I put the radio on and say, ‘Right [hums a tune] one, two, four, two, four, three, four’, and if it was a wet Sunday, a wet half-time, you know-
IP: Yeah.
NS: Playground. They’d say, ‘We’ll stay in, can we do the music?’ and they loved it.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And they learnt their tables by god.
IP: Which village in Bedfordshire was it, can you remember?
NS: Yes. Riseley.
IP: Oh, ok.
NS: It’s just off the main road.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Down, Bedford.
IP: Right.
NS: And it’s one of the best years in my life, but for my wife as well. That village was fantastic[emphasis]. We had a drama group, I'm into drama, we had [unclear] drama group with no end- We used to win trophies and we had the vicar who was- He used to say, ‘Oh Mr Shakesby, [unclear] bring Mr Shakesby a cup of tea’, and he could do everything [unclear] of comedy and the other fellow was a- He’d been Bedford, Bedford, what do you call it? Anyway, Bedford Modern. I don’t know whether you know, it’s a public school?
IP: I’ve heard of it.
NS: Yeah, and he- And his father was a big farmer but he’d been robbed by [unclear] and went- During the war, somebody had done him down and they were down in quite poor circumstances. They lived in a little cottage and when my wife and I went for tea they had a little girl who had look of [unclear] said- And her coat of arms, she was an Irish professional tennis player and Godfrey, he was mad about drama and he and I- Because he used to get the artistic side and I was the [unclear]- I’ll, I'll produce this one, and used to go to London, when the, what’s it [unclear] all the musicals, and he’d come back with the music and put different words to them, quite illegal, and we had a very good pianist and we used to do these and, and I've got all the photographs of them [chuckles] and he used to say, ‘Hello [emphasis] Norman’, and the people who had- The- In Bedford there was a factory which made chalks for the schools.
IP: Ok.
NS: And they used to come- They were also from Bedford Modern in their schooldays, and they used to come to the village and Godfrey was there and he’d say, ‘Hello [emphasis]’ [laughs]. Anyway, that’s not RAF [chuckles].
IP: No, no, that’s alright, but going back to the RAF, did you find it hard to adjust after the war? After you left the RAF then, or did you just slip into being a civilian again no trouble?
NS: I found it very easy.
IP: Very easy?
NS: Very easy.
IP: Yeah, you just put it all behind you and cracked on sort of thing? Oh ok. But what were your thoughts at the time about- ‘Cause obviously, by then Bomber Command people had turned their backs on what had gone on during the war pretty much, did you have any thoughts at the time about that? Or, or were you not concerned greatly?
NS: Sorry about?
IP: About how, how the world- Or how the country was starting to look on the bomber offensive and that sort of stuff and trying to forget all about that stuff.
NS: I wasn’t very happy, you know, and when it got worse and worse, when they had this old thing built and somebody knocked it down and, you know, in one of the parks and I thought, oh this- You know, but you can’t do anything can you? So- But I always had a great admiration for those lads and I pushed it whenever I could and say, ‘Hey, just a minute you saying that, just think this, they go on, you know, this eight, ten-mile- Ten hour and then they come back and have a cup of tea and go to bed and then they’ve got to go again in two days' time’. My friend, I met him up at Great Staughton, we’d been on- He was the other one of the two, and he came and he was on, on Mosquitos with what you call it, the Oboe and that was much easier. They used to be setting off at eleven at night, ours would’ve been in the air by eight, by then [chuckles] and they were back home and, [unclear] by night fighters, so if you want to go on ops, go on-
IP: Mosquiots.
NS: He was a little fellow and, and the radar, the Oboe was in the front and it was a thing like the front of a car, the lid lifted up and then he went- And one day he was in there, in the seat and somebody came along and pushed it and shut it up and the thing took off [chuckles]. I met him after and he was- He said, ‘I didn’t want that again’. He said, ‘Somebody came and shoved it, next thing I knew we were rumbling down the runway’, and the pilot came back because he felt there was a big weight on the front, something wrong with his aircraft, he wasn’t going on ops he was doing, you know, what are they called? When they do this-
IP: Yeah, just a, an engine test or whatever it-
NS: [Unclear] and lifted up the-
IP: Was he in the nose of the aircraft then?
NS: Sorry?
IP: He was stuck in the nose of the aircraft?
NS: Yes, yeah, you know, just room for a little fella in there, he was [unclear] like this and he’s sort of leaning over there and this [chuckles]-
IP: Good grief.
NS: Another funny story.
IP: Yeah, yeah ‘cause there are two VC’s won at 582 Squadron during the time you were there, but I don’t know if you would’ve- If you would’ve known about that, there was a South African captain won a, won a Victoria Cross and a chap flying in a Mosquito won one as well but- But that doesn’t ring any bells? I don’t know whether that news would’ve percolated down or not. ok. So, so you- Did you spend your whole working life as a teacher then? Was that how you- That was your career as it were?
NS: Yes, I got my degree, I got a job in a- Well I got a job in Bedford College because there was a job offering for business to them, accounts, accounting, which is my- One of my- And it was night- They had a night team there and a night school with- That with the adults and that [unclear]. The only thing was, the nasty part [unclear] was that I had to hand the [unclear], you know, apprentices and the plumbers on, what you call, general studies.
IP: Oh yeah, yeah.
NS: Absolutely back breaking, ‘Well what are we doing this here for ey mate?’ [chuckles] and I stuck it for a year and I couldn’t do it any more than that so- But I got into it, I got into FE, that’s my thing.
IP: Right.
NS: And so I went to Redcar, which was a new college and-
IP: And what did you teach there, at Redcar?
NS: Business studies, what I've just said.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And, commerce and all that side.
IP: Yes, yes.
NS: And I had a fantastic principal Joe Dunning and the- Is this irrelevant? [Chuckles]
IP: It’s all relevant.
NS: He- The- Redcar had been opened for one year for the engineers, business side and the general degree and A-level, O-levels were starting that time and there was five of us for the whole of the, that side and I remember sitting at the five with the head of the department [unclear] are we going to get anybody? ‘Cause we’d seen nobody yet, you know. When I left four years later, there were thirty-two [unclear] staff, from five and Joe [unclear]- I won’t go into that but that’s my sadness about missing- I found out only just recently that Joe Dunning had been here before he died.
IP: In- What, in Natland? Or in-
NS: Yes.
IP: Good heavens above.
NS: And I'd been in the same place, I desperately would’ve met him.
PB: And seen him.
IP: Yeah of course.
NS: ‘Cause I went to see him at one time, we went up Glasgow, ‘cause we went to Glasgow and I went onto the iPad and a glowing report of him in [unclear] he sorted all their technical colleges out and they’d given him this award and that award and he’d died in, well 2010 wasn't it? Or 5.
PB: Yeah, while we were here, yeah.
NS: And, it said- And his wife had retired to Penrith and there was an overlap of three, three-
PB: Years we were here.
NS: [Unclear] years, when we were both alive and he was- And he died by the time I got there. So- What some six weeks ago, I said I'd go and see the wife.
PB: Yeah we did, we met his wife.
NS: Delighted.
IP: Yes, yes, I bet, yeah.
NS: Of course, I got a programme because in my- I was only there for two years and that was because I fell out with a man in- Anyway, doesn’t matter. But- What, what he did, he’d seen one of my productions at Saltburn, so he’d been down to London and it was the Union of the Australia, New Zealand were having a technical week and then he went down to London, came back with- Full of [unclear] with Galileo and he said, ‘That’s what we’ll do with this, Galileo, and you are Galileo’. I’ve got the programme [chuckles] I’ve got it out there, and so I took part as Galileo and it was nice because after I'd seen his wife, his widow, she said [unclear] money, she said, ‘She remembers you in the, in the, that play’, I thought if you saw it, you should be ‘cause it’s a magnificent performance [chuckles].
IP: Did you, just- I think we’ll round it off- Oh blimey we’ve been going for a long time actually. Did you, did you keep in touch with any squadron members? I mean 405, they’re all Canadians so they would’ve gone off back to Canada I suppose, wouldn’t they, so you didn’t keep in touch with anyone after the war?
NS: No, no, no.
IP: Ok.
NS: No I lost touch with them all.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Once we came over from oversea because I kept meeting new, new bobs of people. I mean when we got to Tripoli with a ground [unclear] chain, that when we left there, we went to different places and then never met them again.
IP: Sure, ok.
NS: So I haven’t got a- Nobody.
IP: Well, we’ve been going for nearly an hour and a half-
NS: I know.
IP: -Norman, so I think, I think to save your strength we’ll call it- I’d just like to say, it’s fascinating listening to you, I mean I'm sure we could talk for hours more, but, but I think we’ll call a stop there, it’s been great. Thank you ever so much, I do appreciate it.
NS: Well, I’ve enjoyed it, it’s nice to talk about yourself.
IP: Exactly, exactly.
NS: You see, it’s the drama, dramatic in me [chuckles].
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 Norman Shakesby
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Price
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
2018-08-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AShakesbyFN180822, PShakesbyFN1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:20:01 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Norman Shakesby was a radar mechanic on 405 and 582 Squadrons. Born in 1924, he was studying languages at The City School in Lincoln at the outbreak of the Second World War. His language teachers were quickly called up to act as interpreters, so on the advice of the headmaster, Norman left school and found employment as a junior bank clerk. He became a member of the Air Training Corps when it was formed, which paved the way for him to enlist in the RAF in November 1942. Having completed his basic training, Norman attended the Leeds College of Technology studying radio, from where he was selected to specialise in radar. Further training followed and he became proficient on both H2S and Gee radar. Posted onto 405 Canadian Squadron, Norman maintained the equipment on the aircraft. This also involved boarding aircraft before take-off to set the selected frequency for that operation. Care had to be taken with impatient crews, to ensure he wasn’t a reluctant passenger on operations. He had the greatest respect for the aircrew and witnessed the euphoria of them completing operations before going through the same emotions again a few days later. In 1944, a posting to 582 Squadron gave Norman a change, servicing equipment in a bay carrying out more detailed rectification. Following the ending of the war, a posting to the Middle East saw him complete his military service before returning to RAF Waddington and demobilisation. After meeting his old headmaster, he followed a career in teaching, initially employed as a primary school teacher at Riseley, Bedfordshire, before completing his degree and becoming involved in further education.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Tilly Foster
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Libya
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Libya--Tripoli
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
405 Squadron
582 Squadron
Gee
ground personnel
H2S
radar
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Little Staughton
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/922/11166/ALedgerHS170302.2.mp3
e55581e72b24b9522917434b57347ccf
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
Ledger, Hilda
Hilda Sheriff Ledger
H S Ledger
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Hilda Ledger (1921). She worked at Metro-Vickers factory in Manchester.
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
2017-03-02
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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Ledger, HS
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IP: This is Ian Price and I am interviewing Hilda Ledger today the 2nd of March 2015 for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at [buzz] Thank you Hilda for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present is Stuart Ledger, Hilda’s son and Tracy Ovington who is one of the care workers in the home here. It is 10.25. Hilda, as I say thanks ever so much for, for agreeing to talk to us. It’s great really, and to get a different view on what was going on with the bombers. First of all could you just tell me something about your early life? Where you were born, where you lived, what you did? That sort of thing. Before the war this is.
HL: Before the war. Well, I lived in Birtley and I worked in a big house called Leafield House, looking after two little girls. And that was my job before the war. Nothing very special. But then during the war we had to register and they sent us to Manchester to work.
IP: So, this is interesting to me. So, you, you were, were you required to register?
HL: Yes. Everybody was. Of a certain age.
IP: Ok. And, and then how did you find out that you were going to Manchester then?
HL: Well, it was through the post I suppose.
IP: And did they just tell you to — so you just got told to go to Manchester and presumably to a, to a particular factory?
HL: Well, not a factory exactly. We went. A family met us. We had to meet at a certain hall and a family met us and took us to their home. And we went from there to the different places where we had to work.
IP: Ok. So, alright so you went, and did you go straight then to Metro-Vic?
HL: To Metro-Vic?
IP: To the factory.
HL: Yes.
IP: Ok. So, and what did you, what did you do? What was your task as a, in the factory?
HL: Nothing very much. We just did, made Lancaster bombers.
IP: But, but which were you working on a particular part?
HL: Well, everybody worked on different parts. Each person had a part to work. Nobody worked on one particular, a whole one place. Everybody worked in just little bits of the factory.
IP: And can you remember which bit you worked in then?
HL: I cannot really.
IP: Ok. Alright. Ok. So, and the other thing that interests me was were there a lot of women there working in the factory? And how were you treated by the people who were already there?
HL: Alright.
IP: So the men, the men that worked there treated you as equals did they?
HL: Yes.
IP: Ok. Could you describe a typical day then when you were working at Metro-Vic? How, from getting up in the morning to when you got home.
HL: [coughs] excuse me.
IP: It’s alright.
HL: No. Just got up. We caught the bus. We were in lodgings you see with the family and we caught the bus and went to wherever we had to go to work. And that was it ‘til the end of the day and then you went home. Well to the lodgings.
IP: And were, what was the day like when you were actually in the factory?
HL: Well, it was alright because I’d never been in a factory before. It was alright.
IP: Can you describe the work to me? How hard it was and what sort of work you did.
HL: It wasn’t hard work at all. It was just checking different things on a piece of paper. That’s all.
IP: Ok. And excuse me I’m just going to have to —
[recording paused]
IP: So, so you used, used checklists.
HL: Yes.
IP: Was that, was that to check what other people had done? To make sure that they’d done the work properly.
HL: Well, it was sort of everybody did the same type of work. Everybody did the same work so that was it.
IP: And, and what sort of machinery did you use?
HL: Oh, I cannot tell you that. It was just a machine.
IP: Can you tell me what the machines did?
HL: No. They just, well I didn’t think it was a machine. I thought it was just, I don’t know what. I was ignorant really. I just know that I had to go to work there and I went and signed on in the morning and signed off at night. And went to the lodgings at night.
IP: Can you remember how long the days were and how many days you worked a week?
HL: We worked about five days a week. And they were long days. We started work about 8 o’clock in the morning and finished about five in the evening.
IP: And what sort of thing did you do when you weren’t at work then? What did you do socially?
HL: Well, whatever there was going at the time. There was one or two of us together that’s all. We used to go to the pictures or to the theatre or whatever was going on.
IP: Can you describe how life was in Manchester compared to how it was at home during the war? When it was during the war.
HL: It was a little bit hectic to compared to home because home was very quiet. But Manchester was a bit more lively.
IP: So you enjoyed it there.
HL: Yes.
IP: It was an adventure was it? Good. Now, what, so what, what did you think about your role? Was it, were you — well, just tell me what you thought about what you were doing there.
HL: Well, I don’t think, I just knew I was there because they sent me there. I didn’t have any choice. Nobody had any choice. You just registered and you were sent to where you had to go.
IP: And how did you feel about that then?
HL: Well [coughs] excuse me.
IP: That’s alright.
HL: Well, at the beginning I was a bit upset because I’d never left home before, and I had to leave home to go.
IP: And then, and then how did you feel after that?
HL: Oh, I was quite happy then because we went, we were like hens in this queue. We stood and this a lady came and chose so many of us and we went to her house to live. So it was alright then.
IP: And you made good friends.
HL: Yes.
IP: Good. Good. When, when did you actually finish working there then?
HL: Oh, I cannot remember.
IP: But were you there for the whole war?
HL: Oh, not the whole war. No.
IP: So, so what happened, what happened when you finished working at Metro-Vic?
HL: I just went home and started work o themself.
IP: Working as a nanny.
HL: Ahum.
IP: Ok. Alright. So how did you feel about that then when, when it was all over and you had to go home?
HL: I was glad because I’d never lived away from home before.
IP: And what did you feel about your contribution to the war? Can you, did you think about that? Can you describe —
HL: I didn’t think anything. I just know I was sent there and that was it. I wasn’t thinking about whether I was doing good or bad or what.
IP: Ok. Because the, I mean the bomber effort was a, was a huge effort, you’ll know. Going and bombing Germany. And I imagined you’d be proud of what you were doing. That you were contributing to that but did you? Did you feel that at all?
HL: Not really. I didn’t feel anything.
IP: Ok.
HL: It was just a job and that was it and I got paid for it.
IP: Ok. Now, I also understand that you went out to India to marry your husband who was with the, went out with the Durham Light Infantry you said didn’t you. And he was an intelligence officer.
Other: Yeah.
IP: Just tell me, just tell me about this experience of going out to India if you could.
HL: Oh. It was an experience. Although George was there so he met me when I got there and we had a nice bungalow and everything was alright.
IP: How did you get out there?
HL: How did I get there?
IP: To India.
HL: I don’t know how we went in them days. I cannot remember.
IP: Did you sail in a ship?
HL: Yes. I sailed in a ship. I remember. But I cannot remember very much about that part. Just I know he was there and met me when I got there. And he was there all the time I was there.
IP: There can’t be many people to have gone, got married in India. I think that’s fantastic. So, how long did you spend out in India then?
HL: Oh, not very long.
IP: Not long enough I suppose.
HL: Hmmn.
IP: Ok. And then, and then you had to come back home.
HL: Came back home because his work was home, you see.
IP: How did you find it? How did you find getting time off from work to go out to get married because you must have from leaving Manchester to getting back must have been a fairly long time I guess.
HL: To what?
IP: How did you find, was it easy for you to get that amount of time off from the factory?
HL: I don’t know what — I cannot remember.
IP: Ok. That’s alright. That’s ok.
HL: I just did what I was told.
IP: Sure. Ok. So then can you tell me a bit about your life after the war then? What, what you did and what your life was like?
HL: Yes. It was just back to normal.
IP: But then when the war ended and George came home what, what [pause ] how was life after that? Can you tell me a bit about that life?
HL: Well, he just went to work. Got his job back and went back to work and that was it.
IP: And what did you do then?
HL: Well, I was just at home. I didn’t work.
IP: Ok. And where you living?
HL: With my mother at Manchester.
IP: Right. In Birtley? Was it in Birtley?
Other: Yes.
IP: Yes. Ok. Ok. So you lived with your, did you live with your mother when you were married then first of all?
HL: Yes.
IP: Ok. But eventually, presumably you moved into your own house.
HL: I suppose so. I can’t remember that far back.
IP: Right. Ok.
Other: Dad was medically discharged from the army, mum. That’s why he came back. And he spent a lot of time in hospital when he came back.
HL: He what?
Other: My Dad wouldn’t have got straight to his old job when he came back because he was medically discharged.
IP: So, so when George came back from the Army and went into hospital what happened to you at that stage? Were you still working in Manchester? Or did you come?
HL: Oh I was still working in Manchester but I was just in lodgings. That’s all.
IP: Ok. Alright.
Other: You weren’t, mam. You were home.
HL: Hmmn?
Other: you were in Birtley.
IP: So, I imagine it was a big change from working in Manchester to to coming back and living at home again.
HL: Yes.
IP: Can you tell me about how big that change was? How you felt about it.
HL: Well, I liked it because in that time you see I had started going with my husband again and then we married.
IP: Ok. Alright.
HL: Was in, getting married and come back home.
IP: Can you remember what it was like then when you got off the ship and saw George?
HL: Oh yes. Why, everybody would remember that.
IP: And how? So can you tell? Can you describe it to me?
HL: Well, we both cried. We were so pleased to see each other.
IP: And then where did you get married? Where did you go to get married?
HL: Where?
IP: Where did you get married? Where did you go?
HL: I can’t remember now. Where was it?
Other: [unclear] I think.
[recording paused]
IP: So, Hilda before the war then can you tell me much about when you were at school?
HL: Yes. Just went to the ordinary council school. It was in Birtley.
IP: How old were you when you finished there?
HL: Must have been about fourteen I think. People finished at that age and started work.
IP: And where did you go to work?
HL: Some factory or other. I cannot remember.
IP: Ok.
Other: Were you not working at Dainty Diners at Chester.
HL: Dainty Diners.
Other: The toffee factory.
HL: Horners.
Other: Horners, yeah.
IP: So you worked in a toffee factory.
HL: Yeah.
IP: Ok. And at some stage you became a nanny.
HL: Yes.
IP: To the two children.
HL: Yes.
IP: What was, what was that like?
HL: It was a nice big house and it was near where I lived at home. And I used to look after these two little girls.
Other: And you used to go across the Lake District with them, didn’t you?
HL: You what?
Other: You used to go across the Lake District with them.
HL: I couldn’t hear. Yes. Yeah. They had a cottage at the Lake District and we used to go there for the summer.
IP: Very nice. So was it hard to leave? When you went to Manchester then was it hard to leave that family behind for you? Was that, was that difficult?
HL: Well it was because they were my family then. I’d known them more, as much as I’d known my own family.
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 Hilda Ledger
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Price
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-02
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
ALedgerHS170302
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:17:48 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Before the war, Hilda Ledger lived in Berkley and worked in a big house. During the war, she registered to work, as required for her age, and was sent to Metrovic, a Lancaster bomber factory in Manchester. She describes working nine-hour shifts, five days a week, and using a checklist to ensure everyone was completing their work. Although she enjoyed living in Manchester, she was glad to return home. Ledger travelled to India to marry her husband, an intelligence officer, where they lived for a short time before returning and living in Manchester.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
India
England--Manchester
England--Lancashire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Adalberto Di Corato
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
home front
Lancaster
love and romance
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/842/10836/PGrantH1801.2.jpg
c34a6fdd0ec018f41b111bbe85b6786f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/842/10836/AGrantHB180427.1.mp3
03eb7dd5f3e2eb596a3e54fc74f3a961
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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Grant, Harry Basil
H B Grant
Description
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An oral history interview with Harry Basil Grant (b. 1923, 1738600 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 115 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-04-27
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Grant, HB
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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IP: This is Ian Price and I’m interviewing Harry Grant today the 27th of April 2018 for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at [Buzz] Ulverston. Harry, thanks ever so much for agreeing to talk to me today. It’s a great pleasure. And it is currently 10.20 in the morning. Harry, just to start off with then can you tell me a little bit about your childhood? Where you were born?
HG: I was born at Lydd. L Y D D in Kent before the war, 1923. and I stopped there until I joined the Air Force. Nothing, it was just an ordinary working class background and it was quite a, quite a nice part to live. It was free of any industry. It was mainly fishing and agriculture and I stopped there until I joined the Air Force in Nottingham where my sister was living and I was at Nottingham because her husband had been killed at Dunkirk who was missing from that episode. And I was more or less a companion to her for a short while. Then I joined at the Combined Recruiting Centre in Nottingham.
IP: Ok, so just going back to your childhood a bit then. So, it was a sort of a rural area you lived in was it? Or —
HG: It was. Yes.
IP: Yeah. Sort of —
HG: It was rural.
IP: Yeah.
HG: My father worked for the WD as they called it and he was a repairer of gunnery targets and all kinds. In fact, they became quite sophisticated targets in the end. Aeroplanes and whatnot and tanks that were driven along a miniature railway line. So the old man was working at that and he worked there for years. He was also a follow on of the First World War as a lot were in that time but it was just an ordinary background. A working class background. And that’s all I can say about it. It was I, and in fact I, I’ve been down there many many times since the war and it’s very seldom I come across anybody I recognise through living up in [unclear], and that. And anyway I worked for a solicitor as a, as an office boy.
IP: Well, let’s come back to that in a moment. So, just, just going back to your upbringing and stuff what, did your mother work or was she, she was at home?
HG: No. It was in the days when women were in the home.
IP: And did you, you’ve mentioned one sister already.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Who you go and, you go and stop with later.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Did you have any other brothers and sisters?
HG: Yes. I had one brother who worked for the main brewers in Kent. A firm called Style and Winch. They owned most of the pubs. And I had another two sisters, and they were all I think good looking, intelligent women.
IP: So altogether two boys and three girls then.
HG: Three girls.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Two boys.
IP: Ok.
HG: Yeah. And so we had a very, well it was a, there was no money. No. Not, not, we lived very very poorly in a way even though the old man was, my father was working for the WD all those years in the days when unemployment, he was still working. But the pay was very poor, very poor. And in fact, since then I lived like a lord.
IP: And what can you tell me about your school days then?
HG: School days. Yeah. It was, I was up to I suppose the School Certificate standard when I left.
IP: So, was that fifteen years old.
HG: Yes. I’d be a bit older than that.
IP: Right.
HG: Probably about sixteen or seventeen and it was quite good so, and when I, things different subjects that I found difficult I found that it wasn’t my lack of knowledge it was just that these, the teachers weren’t geared to teaching the things like algebra and what not which I never could understand. But, but afterwards yes it was quite, quite a good thorough education but low class in comparison to my boys and todays.
IP: Sure. Did you enjoy school?
HG: Oh yes. I was good at it.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Yeah. I was probably one of the, one of the creeps [laughs] I suppose.
IP: Which, which schools did you go to? Can you remember the names of them? The Primary School, and was it Grammar School you went to or —
HG: Well, it was. Yes.
IP: Yeah.
HG: It was Southlands which now doesn’t exist. In fact, one of our, one of my cousins, he was a chief tech in the end and he stopped. He was at Southlands School. It was a good one that. They were very keen on nature and I won’t tell you a story of being sent out to get grass, and the grass was not what my father would call quality. And I won’t tell you what [laughs] what came of that that day.
IP: You can. You can.
HG: It was, yeah it was quite a good. A sound mediocre education but sufficient for me to have had senior jobs since.
IP: So —
HG: I was the senior supervisor at Glaxo.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. Ok. So, you left. So you were educated up to ‘til about sixteen seventeen.
HG: Sixteen. Seventeen.
IP: School certificate.
HG: Yeah.
IP: And then what happened after that when you left school?
HG: I worked for a solicitor for a short while until I went up to Nottingham to be a companion to one of my sisters.
IP: Right. So, just so I’ve got this clear, so was the plan for you to become a solicitor when you joined the firm? Or were you hoping to take articles or whatever it was called?
HG: Yes. Because the solicitor, they had a [pause] what do they call the —
IP: Like an apprenticeship was it?
HG: Yeah. But yeah, but it was after I left there I continued studying and it was by post.
IP: Yes. Distance learning sort of —
HG: Yeah.
IP: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
HG: And I came to a stop when I was, I remember getting a paper, the law of tort. And I never did found out about the law of tort because by then I was in the RAF and there was more interests going on. There was nights out and all kinds of things.
IP: So, you were, so it would have been Dunkirk was 1940.
HG: Yeah.
IP: So, and was it straight after Dunkirk?
HG: It wasn’t long.
IP: In fact, let’s step back. What, what can you remember about the outbreak of war and what your thoughts were because you would have been about what?
HG: The outbreak of war. As I said we lived on the edge of a military camp and the majority of the civilian employees were people from the first war and there was a one legged man who was in the ordnance stores and he said to me, ‘If war breaks out come down and tell me.’ Well, as I was coming down I saw a woman running down crying, and she was a German married to a civilian employee of the ordnance workshops. And I went down and I said to this bloke, ‘War is declared.’ And as I came back it was open spaces round, round between where we lived and the camp and there was, I think it was the South Stafford Regiment. They were all, got their guns ready. There was no aeroplanes about.
IP: No.
HG: But anyway it was supposed to be because the siren had sounded and, and of course that night we, we were all agog with excitement as a child thinking that Germans were going to appear. And of course nothing happened.
IP: Yeah. The phoney war. Yeah.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And I can remember a neighbour of ours dressed in anti-gas suit and a rattle and I thought hell it must be serious this. But, but anyway I went to Nottingham soon after that and I joined the RAF and that was it.
IP: So let’s talk about, so your brother in law was in the Army. He must have been a regular soldier.
HG: He was.
IP: Do you know what, what he did in the Army?
HG: He, yes, he was a driver with the 8th Battalion of the Tank Regiment. I can remember him well because in the, in the camp at that time was a tank regiment. The 3rd Battalion. In fact, two of my sisters married regulars from that regiment. I can remember it well and —
IP: And, and this chap your, the sister who lived in Nottingham. The chap did, he was missing at Dunkirk I presume he was eventually declared dead was he?
HG: He was declared dead.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Yes. And we found where he was buried and it was rather queer because I have a nephew who was in the Thames Valley Police, and he was, he was a great one at finding out about like this, and he said that they went to see the grave of this man. My sister who was their mother I think remarried a man from the Tank Corps. Kept in the family. It may sound a bit queer that but yes she and yeah and they, they found out where his grave was and they, it was queer that and I was probably the last bloke to see him alive.
IP: Really? Yeah.
HG: Because the —
IP: From your family. Yes. Yeah.
HG: Yeah. Because it was a tremendous [pause] East Kent is bad for snow and it was, in 1940 snow was very bad.
IP: That’s right. Yeah.
HG: And I was travelling to a place called Ashford. If you know where that is?
IP: I do. Yes.
HG: And he got, he was going to Aldershot and he got out. I got out and he got out, and that was the last and he was then killed. But yeah, that was me in the school and the war years.
IP: Yes. So you were, I presume or you can tell whether I’m right so because your sister was on her own.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Did she have children by then or —
HG: No.
IP: Right. Ok. So, she was on her own so it was felt that you should go and as you say support her.
HG: She was, they thought that as I was like single.
IP: Yeah.
HG: That I would be a companion. And I can always remember the journey there was a terrible journey because the main stations in London were badly damaged and we had to go right around London. I went with my mother. There were two of us and my mother came back and I stopped. In fact, I never went back again. And oh, it took us hours to get to, to Nottingham. We had to change somewhere in the Midlands and, well it was all excitement as far as I was concerned. And we got to Nottingham and of course we had to, we got a taxi and I can always remember there was another woman there. Could she share the taxi with us? Yes, that would be alright and we went along, went so far somewhere in Nottingham and the house that she went to was empty. But of course I was a kid. That would be a crisis for that woman and we went on. But I was there about twelve months.
IP: Ok. So that, so obviously that was after the Blitz had started.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Because you said London was damaged.
HG: Yes.
IP: So, we’re talking probably late 1940 about —
HG: Yes, it was.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Yeah.
IP: So you were there then. So, you were there. What did you do? Did you find work in Nottingham? Or —
HG: Yes. I got a job with the, with the Post Office and I found that quite interesting and but of course it was only temporary work and I wouldn’t have liked to have been in the Post Office but yeah.
IP: And was Nottingham bombed? I can’t remember if Nottingham was bombed very much.
HG: It was bombed.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And we all went down to see the damage in the middle of Nottingham. Yeah. Oh yes. It’s queer. It was a funny existence because my training as it was, was never completed in the solicitor’s, as a solicitor.
IP: Yeah.
HG: But I think I would have been probably good at that. You’re going to listen to, in fact I’ve talked about it in this room and I have some friends who live at Swarthmoor. I said, I said, ‘I could have been your family solicitor.’ Whether I ever would have ever managed it I don’t know, but I’d remember the law of tort. I’d never heard of that have you?
IP: I have heard of it but I don’t really know what it is. Yeah.
HG: It was correspondence. Correspondence. I was in the RAF then.
IP: Yeah.
HG: The law of tort.
IP: So you kept your, this sort of distance learning studying to be a solicitor —
HG: Oh yes.
IP: Going for some years really didn’t you?
HG: Yes. I did it for, I must have done about two years and of course I used to write Wills. Write them. Not, not full, not the intricate parts of them, and I can always remember I had flaxen hair because my wife used to think it was piebald and we used to go out to a farmer. And the farmer, and they were rich farms in Kent he was going to pass us to his son but by then they’d been in mortal bloody what’s the name and he got chopped out. And I wrote that Will. I can remember it to this day. So many acres and freehold and yeah.
IP: So he wrote his son out of his Will then.
HG: Well, yeah and I can remember when we were going back one day and then I had my doubts about the quality of, of solicitors. I was a bag carrier at that stage and we used to go to this farm and I used to get banished to the kitchen and I didn’t mind that because there was a nice girl there. And he said to me, ‘How, how much are we going to charge this old bugger, Leo?’ And I thought I can’t believe I’m - I thought it would be scientific, but he didn’t make it, he used, I went out to that farm as a bag carrier oh two or three times and each time the Will was changed. He was going to have the farm. He wasn’t going to have it. He was.
IP: And the solicitor based the bill.
HG: Yeah.
IP: On how much the person was worth rather than.
HG: Oh yes.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Yeah. Yeah. Well, they were, they were mates, you see. They probably belonged to the same —
IP: Yeah. So going back to Nottingham then you were, so you were there for about twelve months you reckoned.
HG: Yes.
IP: So around about the end of 1941 I suppose.
HG: It was.
IP: And you —
HG: I joined.
IP: Did you volunteer?
HG: Yes.
IP: Or were you conscripted?
HG: No. I, I volunteered and —
IP: So, you got your choice of Service. Why did, why did you decide? Well, why did you decide to volunteer first of all?
HG: Well, because I didn’t want to be a soldier. And I can always remember the bloke said, ‘You don’t want to go with that nancy bloody crowd.’ He said, ‘Look at these smart uniforms.’ There was blokes there in Guardsman’s uniform and I thought no. But yeah. I thought, yeah I’d like to be a wireless operator in the RAF. Never thinking that wireless was a technical bloody subject and it took me all my time to pass out. Oh yeah.
IP: So you, right so you chose the RAF.
HG: Yeah.
IP: What, what [pause] did you have something, I mean was that right at the first stage you thought, ‘I want to be a wireless operator,’ or did, what did your, what was your —
HG: I joined as, I applied as a wireless op.
IP: Ok.
HG: And I think practically all the lads I was with that day were the same because we drifted the usual way. Blackpool and Padgate which was a [pause] that was a Receiving Centre, I think. Padgate.
IP: But why? I’m intrigued as to why you would pick out wireless operator specifically that you wanted to do. Was it, were you used to fiddling with radios or did you, you know —
HG: Yes, I was and I used to have a, I was given an old radio before the war and I used to get some queer sounds off that because it was a straight set. It wasn’t like the Superhet that we had, and I thought yeah I would like to have a do at that never thinking that it would be bloody hard work. Because some of those they had the best of instructors you know from the tech schools and I can always remember one chap. He didn’t want to belong, and we was the classroom at Yatesbury which now doesn’t exist. It was a big, big camp there. There was four wings and I can remember Syd, ‘Oh, you have dropped the proverbial testicle Mr Oliver,’ and so he was flung off. And I saw him after the war. He went as a driver, and he was happier that way. But —
IP: So, I’m trying to get this in. Just, just sorry excuse me for going back but just to try and pull out the details as it were.
HG: Yeah.
IP: So you applied for your wireless operation in the Air Force did you know that that meant you would fly? Was that —
HG: Oh no. It was ground.
IP: Right.
HG: Ground wireless op.
IP: Ok. Yeah. Yeah.
HG: I didn’t remuster to air crew until I’d been in the RAF probably two years.
IP: Ah ok, right. So let’s, let’s sort of pick that out of it then. So, so you applied. What did your, what did your parents, what did, well what did your family think? Your sister. Your parents. About you joining up with the Air Force.
HG: I never, I never discussed it with them. And they never, well of course during the war everybody was in something, and I don’t think my mother was all that pleased you know because she could remember the first war and that made, it sounds a bit what’s the name, but it was fluid in those days. And I can remember going down from Nottingham and I said more or less I had joined the Air Force but I never, there was never any other discussion.
IP: Ok.
HG: But it all seems so long ago.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. So, from [pause] you said it was the Combined Recruiting Centre at Nottingham so obviously it was all, it was presumably all three Services then that recruited there. So from there you, I presume you went home, packed your bags and at some stage you got called forward to —
HG: I was in —
IP: For basic training.
HG: Yes, there is, yes I went to, back to my sister’s and I said, ‘I won’t be here long.’ In fact, I was wait, I waited about two months until you got that buff envelope. And I can remember all the lads that I was with that day because they thought I was a Londoner. I was still a foreigner in that part which hurts at times, and we always, we all went and one followed the other because you were like a load of sheep at that stage because you were going in to the unknown and, but at the end of the training at Yatesbury I was, oh we had like square bashing at Blackpool.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Up and down the Prom, and —
IP: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
HG: And the police everywhere. Military police. There was a lot of Poles then. Polish airmen there. But anyway and the, when we, we were assembled ready for the off when we were going posted from Yatesbury. They said, ‘Anybody wanted to go aircrew?’ Well, it was the time that air gunners were dying. Well, it used to be, “I want to be a w/op ag and fly all over Germany and get shot up to buggery.” That was the song. But you never thought that you’d would be involved in it and I never did. I never, it never bothered me ever but —
IP: So basic training at Blackpool then.
HG: Yeah.
IP: What, can you remember much about your basic training? What did you think to it?
HG: Well, it was very, very strict. Very strict. And I seemed to be —
IP: After a Kentish boys upbringing I suppose and —
HG: Yes. And I seemed to have seven left feet you know when, and I can always remember the bloke was called Shortess, Shortess and he had a voice like a bellow. And everybody seemed to do everything wrong. And they had all out of date DP rifles and we used to march up and down there. Yeah.
IP: How long was it? How long was basic training? Can you remember?
HG: Oh, about three months.
IP: Oh, was it that long?
HG: Yeah.
IP: Wow. Ok.
HG: Well, it was the beginning of ’42. That’s right.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And it was, it was the middle of ’42 before I got down to Yatesbury. And of course Yatesbury is in Wiltshire, and I did manage to get, I got a weekend and the whole unit was displaced over the full length of England and nobody turned up on time and I, and I was still on Lydd Station, miles to go and my mother said, ‘Oh, you will be alright won’t you?’ I said, ‘Oh yes.’ Knowing full well that I had no chance. And we got to Chippenham and they had bloody dogs running around rounding us up and we had to, we had to march that distance from Chippenham to Yatesbury. Oh, bloody hell. Dear oh dear.
IP: How far is that? I don’t know how far that must be.
HG: It’s a damned long way. It seemed further.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Because we’d been travelling all night.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And the, and the travelling. There were blokes in the rack and [pause] I don’t think it’s stuck has it?
IP: No. No. It’s alright.
HG: But I remember that more or less said, ‘Anybody for aircrew?’ There was always somebody because they got extra clothing, lovely shoes and whatnot.
IP: More money.
HG: Yeah. Yeah.
IP: So, so Yatesbury was, so you were an AC I guess. An aircraftsman.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Can you remember? In those days.
HG: Yeah.
IP: So Yatesbury was sort, sort of trade training to be a —
HG: That’s right.
IP: A ground wireless operator.
HG: Yes.
IP: Yeah. Ok.
HG: Yeah. There was four wings there. One was the Admiralty, Wrens and the other three were, number one wing was aircrew and the other two were just ground staff.
IP: Ok.
HG: Because when the, oh because that’s right, yeah. Anyway, I got sent to Hendon. Lovely. I first flew from Hendon. That was lovely. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
IP: So that was how long? Can you remember how long the trade training was at Yatesbury? That would be —
HG: Six months altogether.
IP: Yeah.
HG: But there would be yeah about six months. It was a bloody —
IP: So we’re almost at the end of 1942 then.
HG: Yeah.
IP: I suppose. And were you, were you posted to Hendon from there?
HG: Yes.
IP: Right. So that’s where you were stationed doing your wireless operating.
HG: Yeah.
IP: And Hendon was a fighter station.
HG: It was. It was lovely because we used to do early morning DIs on the aircraft. Pull the trolley acc, get a penny, put it across the terminals, so it had the [pause] and so you had on, get up into the aircraft and put it air to ground. Oh yes. I used to thoroughly enjoy that. And we went. Oh, that was first the first time I flew because you could go on air tests providing they had the name in the [pause] what was the book? Authorisation book.
IP: That’s right.
HG: And there was a bloke, there was a corporal who came with me our first time and he went to the parachute store. I said, ‘Why do you want there?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’m not going up in that bloody thing.’ He said, ‘I’ve been servicing the engines of that.’
IP: What was it you were flying? What did you fly in the first time? Do you remember?
HG: Now, what did Coastal Command fly then?
IP: Hudson? Hudson. Ok.
HG: They were lovely.
IP: Yeah. Two engines, I think.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And a lot of them were flown by KLM pilots. I remember one day he cut one engine and throttled back on the other and [unclear] [laughs] but, oh yes I used to enjoy that.
IP: So, did you fly much then when you were at Hendon? Did you get the opportunity to fly a lot?
HG: On air tests, yeah. In fact, they had a variety of aircraft. It was a transit drome was there.
IP: Yeah.
HG: In fact, I think it was [pause] yes because I used to see them come. I used to see them waiting, holding parachutes waiting for, just like a civvy what’s the name? It was lovely, and of course being in London I could nip home.
IP: Yeah.
HG: But that came to a final stop because I remustered to air crew and somebody said, ‘What do you want to get yourself killed for?’ I said, ‘Oh no, that’s all right.’ I enjoyed it and, but then it was a long time then before I got to a squadron.
IP: Yeah. So how long were you at Hendon? Can you remember?
HG: Twelve months.
IP: Ok. Yeah. Yeah. So about, so now we’re at the end of 1943ish.
HG: Yeah.
IP: And that was, it was at that stage you volunteered to go to aircrew.
HG: Yeah.
IP: So what, what made you decide after, after all that?
HG: Well, I used to see all these blokes because they were [pause] because I came across a lot of the aircrew, and I thought I can do the bloody job as good as them, and there was a warrant officer in charge of the ground wireless ops and he’d been in France at the beginning of war and he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘The old Jerry wants bloody stamping on.’ He said, ‘They were right bastards to the civilians.’ And I said, ‘Well —’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You might enjoy it.’ And it didn’t take long to get on the first, the first place I went to was —
IP: Walney Island. No.
HG: No. Not Walney Island. It was Madley. Madley.
IP: Ok.
HG: I don’t know what it was afterwards but, and there was a lad with me. There was always a bloke who was unwilling and I, and I followed him. He said, he said, ‘You don’t want to go with that lot,’ he says. You want to muff the exams.’ I couldn’t do that because I remember the day that we finished training at, at Madley, and they said, ‘The following are qualified — ’ And I thought that was great because they came to, I came to Barrow then which then is why I’m here. Because my wife, well my wife has never been in this place but it followed on.
IP: She was a Cumbrian lass.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Ok. So —
HG: I know I was saying —
IP: We’ll come back to your wife, but so you volunteered. What was the process for volunteering for aircrew? Can you remember when you were at [pause] at Hendon, sorry. Did they come around looking for volunteers or did you have to step forward and say?
HG: No. I just said. ‘I wouldn’t mind being on aircrew.’ That was all.
IP: Yeah. And a bit of paperwork and you were on your way to Madley.
HG: I had nothing to do.
IP: Yeah. Right.
HG: It was all done for me.
IP: Ok.
HG: All I got was a posting at Madley.
IP: And so Madley was kind of initial aircrew training or something like that was it? Or —
HG: No. It was Number 4 Radio School, and it was lovely. It was at the, we had Proctors. Do you remember those? And they used to come around like a taxi rank, and when you go up to them [pause] I can always remember arguing about a mark I got. A low mark because you took off, you picked up a ground station that was sending it’s call sign back to, you transmitted to it and landed. Tell the pilot because there was only two of you. And I remember he was a New Zealander and I got a very low mark and I thought bloody hell I should have had a hundred percent for that. I remember arguing the bloody toss to this bloke. I said that’s, ‘You’ve got a down on me.’ I don’t think he’d ever seen me before in his life and, yeah. I can always remember waiting in the briefing room I think and there was a WAAF there as there was always and she had a gold watch and she’d taken it off and one of the blokes had [unclear] and he wouldn’t own up to it. So we were all in it and I thought oh hell. But he did in the end but he, I can remember how embarrassed he looked.
IP: What happened to him? Can you remember?
HG: Nothing, he was lucky.
IP: Yeah.
HG: He was lucky. It was just accepted that he was stupid. But yeah I used to like that.
IP: So, you were, so Madley, so you did your, I suppose that was your conversion from being a ground wireless operator to being an airborne.
HG: Yes.
IP: Wireless operator.
HG: That’s right because —
IP: And then, then what happened after that?
HG: We did gunnery there and then we did Wellingtons but that’s all in my logbook.
IP: So what, tell me about gunnery training then.
HG: About what?
IP: Gunnery training.
HG: Oh [laughs] yeah. Gunnery. Say you, well usually three gunners and they were Ansons and the turret was in the back. The rear. And as you lowered your guns so your seat would go up and you get halfway out and sometimes the bloody thing wouldn’t operate and the seat would lock you in and you’d get tied up with your Mae West.
IP: So you’d get caught up in the, in the turret.
HG: In the turret. Yeah. And, but you do say a thousand rounds and the, if you were say number one gunner the tips of your bullets might be painted red. So the drogue would have that number. Then when they discarded the drogue they’d have it there on a long table. But I never got above average even though there used to be beam and, or quarter cross under when it got [pause] and sometimes I’d get the turret, the drogue right in front of me and I’d never get, never get [pause] they wouldn’t, they’d purposely mark you low to keep you going because it’s only, I had a look at it afterwards. Reasonable or something and the, but of course the gunnery included the hydraulics which I never did understand.
IP: So the sort of technical operation of the guns. The gun turret itself.
HG: The gun turret.
IP: That sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
HG: The, the vane oil motor, and I can remember we were sitting chewing over the different things. I said, ‘Well, if I was a school master I would, the backward action of the breach block — ’ and I swatted on that and that was the bloody question I got asked and they thought I was a wizard. The backward action of the [pause] oh yeah. I can’t do it now but its queer.
IP: So you were firing at drogues being towed by aircraft.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Did you do any that, was there any ground based training or anything like that?
HG: Oh yes. They had some turrets mounted on the sea shore operated by a little two stroke engines and they used to, used to do a bit of firing. And I can always remember sometimes the make of the bullet it used to explode when it got outside the, you know the flash thing.
IP: Yeah. Yeah.
HG: That was round.
IP: Yeah.
HG: I remember a bullet and [unclear] —
[doorbell – recording paused]
IP: Right. Sorry about that. You were saying about the bullet that exploded.
HG: Yeah. Just it was queer that that happened umpteen times. I never, well I never fired a gun in a Lancaster. I never, never had an occasion to go near a turret. I just kept to the radio.
IP: Sure.
HG: But it was funny you know they, they had, can you remember the old 1082 and 1083? Well, that was the old fashioned, the pre-war transmitter and receiver. Well, when the new ones came in everything was beautiful. The transmitter click, click. But yeah I, I can remember at the Trade Test Board there was one. Is that —
[phone ringing – recording paused]
IP: Right. So, we’re still at Walney Island then. Did you do any clay pigeon shooting there? Do you remember that?
HG: No. But I had, they did do clay pigeon shooting there and because there was a little, a little airman not much taller than her and he was always, he could never do anything right because you always got one didn’t you? And so they put a, he was an expert at clay pigeon shooting. I can always remember that. Yeah.
IP: Yeah. They used to use it to teach leads and all that sort of stuff didn’t they?
HG: She was a nurse. Canadian army.
IP: Oh, the lady who just —
HG: Yeah.
IP: Who just visited. Yeah.
HG: Yeah. She’s my friend. That’s all.
IP: Yeah.
HG: But she usually rings me three times a day. In the morning to see I’m awake and then in the afternoon at teatime, and when I go to bed at night. And I go to bed at it’s usually about ten past nine.
[recording paused]
IP: Right. So, so Walney Island was gunnery training and then can you remember where you went after that?
HG: Yatesbury. Oh, sorry. Wait a minute.
IP: You’ve been to Yatesbury. Yeah. It would have been —
HG: We went to Desborough.
IP: Right. Was that, was that the Operational Training Unit? Is that the OTU? Is that what they called it?
HG: I think that was the OTU.
IP: Yeah. Desborough. Desborough rings a bell but I can’t, whereabouts is that?
HG: That’s near Northampton.
IP: Ok. Ok. So, tell me about that. What happened at Desborough? At the OTU.
HG: OTU. We were on Wellingtons there. That was alright. And you’d do cross country and, and then —
IP: So, that was OTU was all about learning to be —
HG: Yeah.
IP: To live in a bomber basically I suppose.
HG: That’s it. Yeah.
IP: Ok. And they used the Wellingtons as a training aircraft.
HG: They did.
IP: So were you crewed up with your crew by now?
HG: No.
IP: Right.
HG: We weren’t crewed up until we got to Lanc Finishing School.
IP: Ok. So, let’s, let’s concentrate on the OTU at the moment. So, so tell me a bit about that. What you can remember of the OTU?
HG: Well, it was all cross countries, circuits and bumps. And yeah, that was all. And we did some quite long cross countries and I think we was there [pause] No, I mustn’t forget the timescale. We was there about six, six months.
IP: Yeah. So we’re probably in, are we in to 1944 by now then do you think?
HG: No. Must have been, must have been [pause] that’s right because we left the Gunnery School at the beginning of ’44. That’s right. That would have been ’44.
IP: Ok. So you were, so this was about learning as I say to work in a bomber base of course.
HG: Oh yes.
IP: Did you enjoy it?
HG: Yeah.
IP: You liked flying.
HG: Yes. I didn’t mind it at all. After a bit it’s a bit, you get a bit blasé don’t you? You think oh bloody hell I’m not on that lot again.
IP: And were you a sergeant? Were you made NCO by, by then?
HG: Yes. Yes.
IP: Ok. So you were living in the sergeant’s mess.
HG: Yes.
IP: All that sort of stuff.
HG: Yes. That was quite good was that.
IP: Getting paid a bit more.
HG: Yeah. Not a lot.
IP: Ok.
HG: I think it was about seven shillings a day. Meagre. And but when we got to Lanc Finishing School they had all the bods there you know milling around and a bloke came up to me and his name was [Van Weele] He was a Dutchman and he was saying what a, what a good pilot he was and I said, ‘Alright, I’ll come along with you.’ And then we got, we got shifted again. I got with the man I stopped with for the rest of the tour. A bloke called Dowling. I don’t suppose you ever came across him. He was an expert at helicopters. He wrote a book called the first hundred. Well, it wouldn’t be the first hundred would it? The first years of helicopters in the RAF, and —
IP: So this was, so let’s just again step back a bit. So we’ve done, we’ve got the OTU on Wellingtons.
HG: Yeah.
IP: You did that at sort of at Desborough that was wasn’t it?
HG: Yes.
IP: And then from there you went to Heavy Conversion Unit. What you called Lanc Finishing School, I guess.
HG: No. That was right. There was one in between. Stirlings.
IP: Ah.
HG: Because we had those tremendous losses with them.
IP: Yeah.
HG: They were hellish things. Huge. But of course as a radio operator you only had the radio to look after.
IP: So, what were you doing on the Stirlings? Obviously it was part of the training. These were training aircraft that you were on.
HG: Yeah. They were training.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And they were all bloody clapped out. They were all clapped out. And there was, there was one. I can always remember one aircraft. The pilot had been a fitter so he knew about engine handling and I can always remember him writing a letter home when he was pissed, and he said. ‘Do you think they’ll think that’s original.?’ And oh dear. The things you did. But it was nice. I liked that.
IP: So, that was, when were you flying Stirlings? Can you remember? Or flying in Stirlings I should say. That wasn’t Desborough but —
HG: Well, it’ll be in my logbook.
IP: Yeah.
HG: It would be —
IP: It doesn’t matter particularly but I’m just, just intrigued.
HG: It would be in 1944.
IP: Ok. Can you remember where? Where you were based?
HG: This is a bit —
IP: Don’t worry. No. That’s fine. So you were on, I’m slight, we’ll have a look at your logbook after. I’m slightly intrigued as to what this this Stirling [unclear]
HG: It’s all in there.
IP: Yeah. From Stirlings then you went to, was it Heavy Conversion Unit? Was the Stirling the Heavy Conversion Unit?
HG: Yes.
IP: Right. Ok. So then, then once you’d done that you went on to —
HG: We went to Lanc —
IP: Lancaster Finishing School which was probably operational conversion unit or something like that I guess.
HG: Well, it was called Lanc Finishing School.
IP: Oh, was it really? Ok.
HG: And you did a few GH homings with the radar.
IP: Yeah.
HG: But they had a scanner on the roof so everything was inverted and they pulled the curtains across the cockpit, and I said, and we were at Feltwell with a grass aerodrome and I, and I got the blips. I said, ‘We’re right above the aerodrome.’ They said, ‘Oh, there’s no sign of any aerodrome here.’ And I got up and pulled the curtains. I used to enjoy that. I got one and, [pause] one and six a day extra for operating the radar. Which was —
IP: Yeah, old seven shillings.
HG: Oh yeah.
IP: Whatever it was. Yeah. That’s another twenty percent or so isn’t it? So, yeah.
HG: Then I went to Lanc Finishing. Then we went to the squadron.
IP: Right. Let’s talk about Lanc Finishing School then. So this is where you crewed up.
HG: Yeah.
IP: You mentioned about the Dutch pilot that was —
HG: Oh, Van [Weele].
IP: Yes.
HG: Van [Weele].
IP: And then but you, but you ended up crewed up with a different pilot in the [unclear]
HG: Yes.
IP: So this was, this was this whole thing that they started where they basically threw you all in to a hangar or a hall or whatever.
HG: Yeah.
IP: And you wandered around.
HG: That’s right.
IP: And made your own crew. How? How did that work? What did you think to that?
HG: Well, not much because like as I say I’d picked on one bloke. Yeah. That would be alright and then you’d be drifting around and you’d find you’d, you’d got another pilot. It was hit and miss but it was effective because well I’ve got photographs of the crew I was with. There were three Canadians.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. So there was, so you formed a crew. Now, I understand that the flight engineer came along later.
HG: He did.
IP: Yes. So you got all of the crew bar one including gunners and navigator, bombardier. All that, all that stuff.
HG: Yeah. Everybody.
IP: Ok.
HG: Except the engineer.
IP: Right. And was that [pause] was that towards the end of that time, can you remember? Or —
HG: No.
IP: Just before you shipped off to —
HG: Yeah. Just before we went to a squadron.
IP: Yeah.
HG: I think we picked up the engineer.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. Ok. So, you formed your crew. We’ve, we’ve, I think we’ve, there’s nothing else to say is there about your time at Lanc Finishing School? Can you remember much about that? What did you think to the Lancaster first of all? What was your, what were your first impressions when you [pause] Can you remember?
HG: Yes. I thought they were tinny. I think they, you know I thought they were nice but after I think like, what was the other big —
IP: Stirling.
HG: Yeah. Stirling.
IP: And Wellingtons you flew.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Well, they were nice were the Wellington. Yeah. We used to have to pull the props though around on the, to use the engine and [pause] oh yeah.
IP: Quite small inside the Lancaster as well isn’t it? It’s quite constricted. Not much space.
HG: In a Lancaster?
IP: Yeah.
HG: No. There isn’t a lot of space and, but as a wireless op I had a heater right beside me. You could tell that. But they were easy to fly was a Lancaster because many times I’d got at the wheel and, because you should swap over and —
IP: So you all got the chance to see what the other person did kind of thing.
HG: Oh yes. Yeah.
IP: Yeah.
HG: I could.
IP: Was that official? Was that formal as part of the training or was it just something you did as a crew?
HG: Completely unofficial.
IP: Right.
HG: I don’t think that they’d frown on that. They, they had a WAAF, a WAAF sergeant who was flying a Lancaster and she’d got into the, from what I understood she’d gone into the seat, the pilot’s seat and she knocked the flaps over so it flipped on its back, and they took a lot of, took a lot of, I understand. I never was in that position.
IP: It’s funny the stuff that went on. I read a little while ago about a WAAF of some, I can’t remember what rank she was but actually went on a mission. I think she was the wife of one of the crew or something like that. She went on an mission over Germany.
HG: Oh.
IP: Obviously unofficially.
HG: Yeah.
IP: And I mean that, I was aware that people did go as, as, I won’t say hangers on but as observers shall we say on missions.
HG: Yeah.
IP: But I was staggered that somebody took, took a WAAF with them because you think God if they’d, if they’d had problems then.
HG: Yeah. I don’t know but you see when you went to briefing all the crews were together and you don’t go out. No. I don’t, I don’t know how they would manage that. I don’t know.
IP: Ok. So Lancaster Finishing School and then off to —
HG: Squadron.
IP: 115 Squadron. Did you call it one, one five, or one fifteen, or —
HG: Well, I always say one one five.
IP: Yeah.
HG: My navigator who died just a year ago.
IP: Ok.
HG: He used to say a hundred and fifteen but, yeah.
IP: Tell me about your crew. What can you remember about the guys you flew with in those days? What were they like?
HG: Well, the two gunners were Canadians. I never, we never had much to do with them. I was more to do with the navigator because he was really sick coming air sick one day and so I took over the plot. Bloody hell. I can always remember going back. In the compartment, the navigator’s compartment in a Lancaster you had, you had at least two compasses. The gyro compass which you always had to switch on when you got in and the only thing that saved me was I said, I said to the gunners, ‘Have a look to see if you can find, see a pond. A lake. A big lake,’ because I looked on the charts and on that heading. And they did so. We got that and so we worked from there and we got nearer to the English coast and I got a QDM. A magnetic bearing that took us right to the ‘drome. And I left the trailing aerial out. Bloody hell.
IP: So he was, the navigator was pretty debilitated then with the, with the air sickness.
HG: He, he was. Well, he did come back. He did. Yes. He was always really airsick because there was one exercise they called fighter affiliation.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And I don’t know whether you ever saw the pilot then. He used to have his feet up on the and he used to be pulling back and I can remember getting in to one Wellington after it had been on fighter affiliation and the bloke had been sick all over the bloody place.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Oh, Christ. Yeah. We did that. Fighter affil.
IP: So, right. So that was your navigator. Any other crew members you can remember particularly?
HG: Well, you never had much to do with the engineer but we had, we had a port engine blown out and —
IP: Was that from flak or —
HG: Yeah.
IP: Yeah.
HG: It was a direct hit.
IP: Oh right.
HG: And, well that was bad was that. In fact, I’ve got a full account.
IP: Where? Can you remember where you were? What city you were bombing for that one? Do you remember much about it?
HG: No. I can’t.
IP: You just remember the port engine blowing up.
HG: I can probably get it easy enough when I look at the obituary of the navigator because I wanted to, I wanted, I suggested going into [pause] what was that Dutch? There was a prang ‘drome on the continent for badly damaged air, like Woodbridge, Carnaby, and there were three prang ‘dromes but there was one on the continent. Not far from [pause] it was near, it was in Holland. I wanted to divert there but there was enough petrol to get us back to England. But when we had a look I was surprised because I’ve got the [pause] I’ll show it to you. And I looked at the aircraft and they repaired it because we borrowed an aircraft that morning. You know I used to — what aircraft did you fly on?
IP: I wasn’t. I was on air defence radar sites. I was a fighter controller.
HG: Oh yeah. I don’t know anything about that. I’ve got [pause] I won’t be a sec.
[recording paused]
IP: Right. So, so were you still a sergeant then? Can you remember? By the time you got to 115 squadron.
HG: Yes.
IP: Right. So and what about the rest of the crew? Were they all senior NCOs as well or were there any officers amongst them?
HG: No. The pilot was a flying officer. And who else did we have? And the bomb aimer was the same. He was a Canadian. And what used to annoy the pilot was he had about three times of the salary.
IP: Oh, the Canadian did.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
HG: Oh yes. I used to [laughs] but Dowling he was a public schoolboy.
IP: He was the pilot wasn’t he? Dowling.
HG: Yes.
IP: Yes. Yeah.
HG: And of course consequently he used to look down on us and we used to pull his bloody leg and [laughs] because there was, there was no such thing as rank. Not rigid, not there. Yeah. I’m sorry if I’ve —
IP: No. No. Not at all. And then I mean because I know you finished the war as a warrant officer.
HG: Yeah.
IP: So let’s, let’s leap ahead. We’ll come back to the missions and flying with 115 Squadron but I’m interested to know how you got promoted to, you know or why I suppose might be a rude way of putting it but —
HG: With a wireless operator you had to do five ops and pass a class one exam, it wasn’t very technical.
IP: And that was to get to flight sergeant.
HG: To get, yeah to get the crown.
IP: Oh, yes. Yes, ok. Yeah. Yeah. And then how did you get to warrant officer after that? Can you remember?
HG: Just by service.
IP: So it was all on, it was, yeah so it was on service rather than being on time. It was on, on a certain number of missions or whatever it happened to be.
HG: Well, missions weren’t included in it except as a, to get your crown you had to do I think five. But then not many did manage to do five.
IP: No. That’s right, sadly.
HG: I’ve got some. I put in for a commission at one stage. I couldn’t have done it and I’ve got all the details. I was looking at them yesterday and I wrote and it had all the places that I went that you would know in Germany but, yeah.
IP: So, what, what can you remember then about when you were on 115 Squadron then. I mean can you remember any particular missions? Obviously, there was the one where you lost the port engine.
HG: Oh yeah.
IP: Were there, are there any others that stand out in your mind particularly?
HG: Yes. We had a runaway prop and so I called section J. 6 and J was the east coast three, three stations where they could plot you without permission. They never said anything. I thought it was, it were queer. A runaway prop. I’d never come across that before.
IP: This is where it just it revs higher and higher and —
HG: It sounded bloody awful. I think practically the whole east coast must have heard us [laughs] and but when we got hit, we got hit on the [pause] well there were bits and pieces everywhere and the amount of petrol coming into the fuselage, tremendous.
IP: When was that? When the port engine got hit or was that —
HG: Yeah.
IP: Is this another time you’re talking about?
HG: Yeah. It was tremendous was that.
IP: That must have been quite frightening with fuel.
HG: Well, I was never frightened because you had so many jobs to do. Emergency jobs like different systems to switch off and —
IP: Oh ok. So when, once the, once you had the engine had been hit and the fuel’s in the aircraft then you go, you’re going through your checklists. As you say shutting systems down that sort of thing.
HG: That’s right. Yeah.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And what I could remember reminded me of a bacon slicer. You know, when there’s, when they, when they’re chopping and a noise like a bomb, and that was the engine and its dying what’s the names?
IP: In the death throes. Yeah.
HG: Yeah.
IP: So, so as you say so once you had an incident like that there was so much to do it took your mind off it.
HG: Oh yes.
IP: What about generally? Would you say you were frightened? Or did you, did it —
HG: Not in the slightest, because don’t forget the clock was in four parts. Quarter of an hour and quarter past where you listened out to either your Group or V39 which was the call sign of Bomber Command. V39. And sometimes you’d get a frequency of fighters operating. And what you would do then you’d turn your, you’d tune your transmitter up, clamp the key down so it was operating this noise on, on the fighter, on the Jerry fighter frequency.
IP: Oh, the night fighter frequency.
HG: Yeah.
IP: Yeah. To try and jam their —
HG: But I remember the number of aircraft they had. Say five hundred. And the number of people, near misses because in that thing it was mainly missed, you know when they crashed into one another.
IP: Air to air collisions, yeah. Yeah.
HG: There was a, we had a second tour crew and they were all squadron leaders. They were all bags of braids and I can remember looking out when they got a hit and I saw a body come out of the broken fuselage.
IP: Right.
HG: But it, it never, it never really affected me at all.
IP: What about the rest of your crew? Were they, do you remember if anyone had any particular problems or —
HG: No.
IP: Because the LMF procedure was pretty awful wasn’t it? I mean if guys that couldn’t cope and had to stop.
HG: Oh yeah.
IP: Stop flying.
HG: Oh that.
IP: Do you know anyone that had to, was taken off flying?
HG: Yes. I did. There was trouble because they got demoted and the trouble with LMF. But I forget half the things, you know.
IP: It’s alright. It’s alright.
HG: I can remember one when they were going on, they were advancing on the continent and they got stuck did the Army so of course they called [laughs] called on the RAF and they just, we was at briefing, full squadron and everybody out except two crews. That was, we were the senior crew then and we went out without fighter escort and it was cold, it was foggy.
IP: This was a daytime. This was a daylight mission I presume.
HG: Daylight.
IP: Yeah. Yeah.
HG: And I thought well so what. But I used to have two or three rabbit’s feet and a bent screwdriver which I’ve still got because I used to use it for all kinds of [pause] People used to have, I used to be the errand boy because don’t forget the wireless op was the only one that was in communication outside of the aircraft, and when you got a high icing index you got St Elmo’s Fire and I can remember all the aerials coming down. But the pilot had no idea of the limitations of radio. He thought he could lean out the door [laughs] And I was trying to think of that [pause] that band leader.
IP: Glen Miller.
HG: Who?
IP: Glen Miller.
HG: Glen Miller. Well, he got, he must have got into the jettison area because we got a recall and I said, because I passed it immediately to the pilot, ‘We’ve got a recall.’ And he said, ‘Find out from that bloke flying alongside what he’s got.’ And I had an Aldis lamp and it came back, “You’ve got cow shit on your bomb doors.” [laughs] And I can’t remember what his comment was. I said that’s the only thing. But everybody was flying low because we were flying back to base.
IP: So you were, so this is the night that Glen Miller was killed you were all, you were all recalled were you because their aircraft had gone missing? Was that it?
HG: It was in the daytime.
IP: Right.
HG: And he flew from some London aerodrome that the Americans had because they annex anything don’t they?
IP: Yeah.
HG: And they couldn’t have been informed but they must have known the jettison areas because there was one south of Beachy Head and there was one just off the east coast.
IP: Ok.
HG: Because we, we came back one night. We thought we had petrol leak and based on my observations they said, ‘Right. If you say that’s — ’ I thought bloody hell I’ll be shot if, but when they got back the engineering officer who was in a white boiler suit, he said, ‘I can’t see anything wrong with this.’ But we were losing petrol.
IP: Yeah.
HG: But I got the blame for it.
IP: Because it was your, your suggestion that you should turn back then.
HG: Yes.
IP: Yeah. Yeah.
HG: I said, well what happened was directly we got airborne that night our mid-upper gunner said he was getting a cold draft up his backside because he was immediately below the flare chutes.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And so as I was because you crawled along and I thought bloody petrol here. I said, ‘We’ve got a petrol leak.’ And they were tapping the gauges. ‘Well, there’s nothing showing here.’ Well, I kept, and I forget, we were going somewhere east. They said, ‘Oh no. It’s alright.’ I said, ‘I don’t care what you say. We’re losing petrol.’ So, we turned around and we got somewhere in the English Channel where we got a challenge from a ship. You know, they used to, when you got, when you got convoys they had warblers.
IP: Ok.
HG: Yeah, their transmitters had a warbler on.
IP: Ok.
HG: And so you knew that you was approaching either a warship or [pause] and we went that night and we got challenged off Dover, and it was surprising what a beam and of course I was the one to read it because it was in Morse and you know you probably think I’m telling you a load of bullshit but it was a funny life.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Yeah. Flight.
IP: But you all survived it ok.
HG: We all survived it and nobody seemed to [pause] nothing, nothing. Nobody even when we got hit but I’ve got the obituary because that was given to me. The obituary of the navigator because his son after he died came here and gave it to me.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And, but he was quite a clever little bloke and [pause] but he used to get airsick a lot.
IP: Yeah.
HG: So I used to be stand-in navigator. I didn’t mind if it was long distance because I could use the transmitter and I don’t suppose you came across that much did you? The different things we used to use like QDMs and —
IP: No. And I think a lot of it has changed now anyway.
HG: It must have done.
IP: Yeah. Yeah.
HG: Well, that would be old hat.
IP: Now it’s all GPS and that I’m sure. But it was INAS, and inertia navigation systems and stuff like that when I first joined that they were using but —
HG: Oh yeah.
IP: But no, it’s moved on quite a bit I think. No star shooting or anything like that.
HG: No what?
IP: No, no star shooting. You know doing the, I can’t remember the name of the thing but taking measurements off the stars and what have you. They don’t do that.
HG: Oh.
IP: The navy was still doing that.
HG: Yes.
IP: I spent time on a ship.
HG: Mind you that astro nav.
IP: Yeah.
HG: As they called it very few people could master that. In fact, I’ve got a logbook that I use for amusing the kids. That was on astro nav. I don’t know where I got it from but I got it.
IP: So, were you, let’s let’s sort of get in order because we’ve been going quite a while now. Were you involved in the Dresden raids or anything like that?
HG: No.
IP: You weren’t.
HG: I’d finished.
IP: Oh, because you finished in March didn’t you? Was that the end of your tour? Did you do a full tour?
HG: I did more.
IP: Oh.
HG: We did thirty. We did about nine more than that.
IP: How did that happen? Was that —
HG: Because the pilot thought you’d only be dodging around. Footling around as they used to say.
IP: We’ll just carry on.
HG: The first.
IP: What did you think to that? Was that a crew decision or was that what the pilot said? ‘This is what we are going to do chaps.’
HG: That’s right. No. He’d decide.
IP: Oh ok.
HG: And of course you were used to one bloke steering and —
IP: What did you think of that then? Doing more than your, more than your thirty mission tour.
HG: Well, I wasn’t really. I wasn’t really keen on it because we were doing a lot of French runs which were highly lethal. And of course when I used to be walking down to the briefing room at night I used to look at the clouds and if there was bags of cunim you knew that you was doing a lot of dodging. In fact, coming back from Kiel we went, there was a big cruiser there that night and coming back from Kiel the pilot said, ‘It is now midnight.’ And somebody in the crew said, ‘Well, what do you expect me to do? Ring a bell or something?’ But he was well educated in comparison to us because we thought our education was adequate to get a living. That’s why I got that better job at Glaxo.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Because I’d, I’d studied chemistry a bit.
IP: Sure.
HG: Not that I remember a lot.
IP: So you did, you did thirty nine mission then and you finished in March ’45 I think I’m right in saying.
HG: Yeah.
IP: What happened to you after that? What —
HG: Oh, I went on indefinite leave.
IP: Oh.
HG: I had about three or four months just nothing. And then you had —
IP: Did you go home then or where did you go? Do you remember?
HG: I came here to my wife.
IP: Ah yes. Yes. Ok.
HG: You see. And then, that’s right. And I put in to go, I thought I’d have a little do at codes. What did they call the bloke who did the codes?
IP: The bloke who did the codes?
HG: Yeah.
IP: Turing.
HG: Eh?
IP: Turing? The guy who invented, who worked at Bletchley Heath, Bletchley Park, sorry.
HG: No. I went to Bletchley Park. I worked at Bletchley Park for three months.
IP: Oh ok.
HG: I went, I got —
IP: That was after the war though was it? Or —
HG: Yes.
IP: Yeah.
HG: That’s right. Yes, I was. I’ll tell you small things happen into big things don’t they? And I went for a pint one day into the Royal Oak, a famous name. And then my home. And who shall I see leaning over the bloody what’s the name was a fellow wireless op from 115. I said, ‘Here, what, what are you doing?’ He said, ‘I want to know what you’re doing.’ I said, ‘I’m on demob leave.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got a job with the Southern Railway as a wireless operator on the ferries.’ He said, ‘I’ll give you an address. You can remember this address,’ he said, ‘But don’t tell anybody,’ I don’t know why he said that, ‘Who gave it to you. Major Bellringer, Box 25, Ruislip, Middlesex.’ So I wrote. Told them I was out of work and sob story and I got a, I got an interview at the wireless headquarters of the Post Office in London. And I thought I knew London a bit but I got on the wrong bus so when I got to the place there was some petty bloody clerk. I said, ‘I’m a bit late I’m afraid.’ And he said, ‘Indeed.’ He said, ‘Follow me.’ And I followed his footsteps and there was, this room was full of aspiring candidates. All for GCHQ. And I got a job with them and I went to Bletchley Park and was there for oh several months. It was lovely. But all the boffins and blokes who did all the [pause] they’d gone.
IP: Was this after the war had finished?
HG: Oh yes.
IP: This was, this was listening to Russian stuff presumably and stuff like that. You may not be able to talk about it and that’s fine if, if that’s the case but —
HG: Well, I was, we was doing mainly commercial [ITATs], [ITATs] are government. If you got an [ITATs] coming there was bags of [ITATs] slipping up. Oh, and they learned us to type there. It was the government. It was the government communications.
IP: Yeah.
HG: That’s why I was there. I was one of the —
IP: So, sorry I just want to wrap the war up really. You finished ops in March and you were put, put on, on extended leave.
HG: Extended leave.
IP: Until —
HG: Yeah. Until I went on this codes and cipher course. You’ve got to be good at crosswords for that. I hadn’t a bloody clue and so I came back. I finished and I went on to [pause] I did nothing.
IP: So, were you demobbed by now?
HG: No.
IP: Or were you still in the Air Force? Yeah.
HG: I still had another few months to do.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And I forget what I did then. Nothing very much because you was occupying a rank that you weren’t trained for. Oh, it was bloody awful.
IP: Yeah.
HG: And I used to sit in the mess there.
IP: Which? Where were you? Which mess was this then?
HG: That was Ossington near Newark.
IP: Ok. So you just, you were just hanging around kicking your heels then.
HG: I just kicked my heels until I got demobbed.
IP: Ok.
HG: And then as I say, and then it all sprung up again when I went to the Royal Oak and I wrote to this bloke. I never did see Major Bellringer. I think that was just a fictitious name and it was rather, it was a nice job to do but the pay was piss poor. But I was married and I, you had to pick a radio station, listening station near where you lived so I picked Cupar in Fife. It had a big mast in the middle and it used to be, there used to be a bloke there with a peak cap. He used to look at it. He didn’t have a bloody clue what was going in and I never went. I was there for two or three months. Oh, and the wife. I couldn’t afford to stop at a hotel because we were putting up at a hotel and so they employed the wife as a clerk.
IP: Right.
HG: And, and by then Glaxo wanted chemists. I thought I did school chemistry. A little did I remember but I did, and I got a job there. And I never looked back because I was senior. I’ll show you the advert. I took the advert off the board that advertised my job but I still, I was senior supervisor, and of course they still pay me that as pension. And so I’m alright.
IP: So you [pause] I said we’d talk about your wife you met your wife when you were at Walney Island.
HG: Yes.
IP: Doing gunnery school. Was she, I can’t remember was she in the WAAF?
HG: No. She was —
IP: Local civilian.
HG: She worked. She worked in the shipyard.
IP: Ah, ok.
HG: She worked in the turbine blade and apparently all the rough women worked there. I used to pull her leg about it and yeah, and where have we got to?
IP: Talk about your wife. When you met her.
HG: Yeah. I met her.
IP: When you were at Walney Island.
HG: Yeah. I met her. We were, oh it must have been Christmas time because we went out that night three of us. One was killed afterwards and we went to a pub and then we walked into Barrow and I met the wife and she, things she remembered about me was that I was a terrible dancer. I said, ‘Well, I was as good as Fred Astaire,’ [laughs] But —
IP: So , and so you obviously kept in touch as you moved around. When did you get married then?
HG: Well, that was ’44. We got married in March ’45.
IP: Ok, right. So just, just as you finished flying really.
HG: Yes.
IP: Yeah. Yeah.
HG: Oh yes.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Because she used to say when she used to listened to the news and one aircraft was missing she thought oh he’s got the bloody chop. But I managed to — yeah.
IP: What did you think, now we’ve talked about this beforehand a wee bit about when obviously the Dresden, well Dresden happened while you were still flying actually. It was about, it was about January February time I think.
HG: That was still while the war was on.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. So, and you weren’t involved in that but —
HG: No.
IP: But that was part of the build up to this. Everyone got a bit, a bit I can’t think of the word.
HG: Anti.
IP: Yes. For want of a better way of putting it anti the bomber offensive really at the end of the war.
HG: That’s right.
IP: Very easy to do with hindsight I suppose but —
HG: Yeah.
IP: But, and there was, there was a certain amount of stigma attached to the whole thing. What were your feelings on that at the time as this sort of started coming out? Where everyone was sort of you know talking about Bomber Command in whispered tones I suppose really and regretting the whole thing.
HG: It never, it never bothered me. Never bothered me because well when we went to Kiel which was the last one I knew there was a, they told, they used to tell you roughly what they knew was around and there was a big cruiser there and I biked up there. I forget what I was at. I biked up to Kiel and it had been concreted in to the, it had was turned upside down. I’ve got the, I’ve got the written notes about it.
IP: So it was hit. Was that the target then? This cruiser.
HG: No, the —
IP: Or was that just —
HG: I think the target must have been —
IP: The docks or whatever.
HG: The docks.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Because everything was put out of commission.
IP: Yeah.
HG: Everything was awful. It was. They talk about potholes in the road. Bloody hell, it ‘d nearly break you neck.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. So, no. You just, you just it didn’t touch you. All the stigma that was —
HG: Not a bit.
IP: No.
HG: No. Well, I never knew.
IP: And if people asked you what you did in the war you’d tell them quite happily you were on bombers and that kind of stuff or —
HG: Yeah, but nobody would, nobody asked me.
IP: Right.
HG: Nobody has asked me.
IP: Because everyone was in the war I suppose. It wasn’t something you tended to —
HG: Well, they were practically all civilians around here.
IP: Yeah. Yeah.
HG: And next door he was a Matlow and I used to think, well he’s got Alzheimer’s now and I used to think you’ve got a bad memory. I thought mine was bad enough. And then I found out that he wasn’t born until 1942. So he never saw anything of the [pause] and a man next to him was, he said, ‘I made your bullets that you used to fire.’ And the rest were just civilians.
IP: Yeah. Youngsters.
HG: So, there is nobody around here. Oh, the woman next door when we, we had a job mainly because I had no money or at least had what was the norm, and we couldn’t afford to buy a house. And I got friendly with a man who’d been in the 8th Army and he used to tell me how marvellous it was and he said, ‘Here,’ he said, ‘There’s a house going and it was an old ramshackle place, and we had great fun in it. It was, and the woman next door her family had moved out and we moved in, but she’d, she’s never mentioned it and I never have. Yeah.
IP: Yeah. Yeah.
HG: But of the, of the Services I think I would have been best in the Air Force. I don’t think [pause] Well, my neighbour —
IP: So, you’ve no regrets then.
HG: No, oh no.
IP: Do you look back on it? You seem to look back on it quite fondly. Is it, is it, was it a good time, part of your life, do you think that — ?
HG: Well, it was in a lot of ways because yes I, I think the RAF was good. I think their methods and because it used to be very strict when you were training. I remember falling out with, of all people the NCO in charge of the guard room.
IP: You don’t want to do that.
HG: I did. I got marched up in front of the groupie and, and but we started talking about flying and I forgot what we were in for but he said, ‘He had to report you because there were a lot of airmen around,’ which I understood.
IP: What had you done? Can you remember?
HG: I forget. I think we were on a lorry and we was going up to the communal site. It was something, something of nothing. But I used to talk to him in the mess afterwards [laughs] Yeah.
IP: Any bad memories?
[doorbell ringing – recording paused]
IP: So, any bad memories from your time there? Can you remember?
HG: No. I thought the RAF were very fair. I thought they were good. I thought they had the best of, they had the best of the bunch. Not only of aircrew but of the main.
IP: Do you think your time during the war, I mean obviously it sets you on a path doesn’t it in life but do you think it helped you in your, your future life? If you, if you try and compare it to what might have happened if if you’d stayed in Kent. Obviously you might have ended up as a solicitor if you’d have stayed in Kent and the war hadn’t happened.
HG: Yeah.
IP: So you ended up going in a different direction but did it, did the, your time in the RAF help you do you think in some ways or —
HG: Well, I think they were business like. The RAF. They had a job to do and they always did it, either way. There was no, when I hear of the way the Army used to flog around and what not I think we were very good. I think of all the services they were the best.
IP: Perfect. As a former member of the Air Force I think we’ll leave it there. We’ll finish on that high note. That high praise indeed for Her Majesty’s Royal Air Force. Thanks Harry. That’s been great. It’s been, it has been a long time. I apologise for that but there were just so many great stories.
HG: I’m sorry if I wasn’t very positive on some things.
IP: No. Not at all. No. No. It’s been great.
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 Harry Basil Grant
Creator
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Ian Price
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
2018-04-27
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGrantHB180427, PGrantHB1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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01:32:24 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
Harry Grant grew up in Kent but when his sister was widowed after her husband died at Dunkirk he went to Nottingham to be company for her in her grief. While there he took a job in the Post Office. When he was of age he volunteered for the RAF and began training as a wireless operator. On one operation he saw a body fall from an aeroplane when it was attacked. The pilot signed them up to take on further operations after their tour was complete which slightly troubled Reg because each one was a possible death sentence with or without the rabbit’s feet he took along for luck. While on demob leave a colleague gave him the contact details for work which turned out to be with GCHQ at Bletchley Park.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Herefordshire
England--Nottingham
England--Wiltshire
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Milton Keynes
England--Nottinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
115 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
RAF Madley
RAF Yatesbury
Stirling
superstition
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/724/10724/ABraithwaiteH180421.2.mp3
99ff8fbde7913303fc6f5a0202e1905d
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
Braithwaite, Harry
H Braithwaite
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sergeant Harry Braithwaite (1923 - 2021, 1826609 Royal Air Force). He flew a tour of operations as a flight engineer with 78 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-04-21
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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Braithwaite, H
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IP: And then we’ll go. This is Ian Price and I’m interviewing Harry Braithwaite today, the 21st of April 2018 for the International Bomber Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at [buzz] Keswick. Thank you very much, Harry for agreeing to talk to me today. It’s a great pleasure to meet you. Also present is Mike Fairclough who is Harry’s grandson and it is five past one on the 21st of April. So, if you’re happy Harry we’ll start off. Just, just tell me about, if you can where you were born, when you were born and a little bit about your childhood if you wouldn’t mind.
HB: Well, I was born in Portinscale. My father had the garage which is now the Chalet, the big cafe place and then I went to Crosthwaite School. I got a scholarship from there and went to Keswick School and from there —
IP: Don’t worry about that right now. Let’s just go back to, so your father ran a garage.
HB: Yeah.
IP: So, repairing cars and that sort of stuff.
HB: Yes.
IP: Ok. So did you help at the garage? Did you work for him a bit?
HB: Well, I learned to drive by, there was [pause] it could only get six cars into this garage. They would only fit one way and I had to be able to do that and, I was never on the road mind you. But, and then when I went eventually, when I went on a driving course a good bit later I tried to make mistakes and of course the instructor said, ‘Well, ok. You get out and let somebody else in the driver’s seat.’ And so he took us back to where he’d picked us up at eventually and he said, ‘You stop where you are.’ So, he took me home with him. He said, ‘Right. There’s a taxi outside there. You can drive that.’ So I finished up taxi driving in Blackpool.
IP: Ok. So you learned to get out of first gear I suppose. I suppose that would be all you would be doing for your father, wasn’t it? Just a quick manoeuvre of the car sort of thing.
HB: Yeah. Automatic step later.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. And did you, did you get to, were you tinkering with, with engines and stuff like that when you were young? Did, were you particularly mechanically minded or anything like that?
HB: Oh yes. I did. I was kind of used to it and when I, when I finished flying as I say when they said what did I want to do and I said, ‘Well, I’ll go driving.’ And of course when I got into the driving seat this, there was three of us in the vehicle together and I was the last one in a seat and I tried to make mistakes and of course he said [pause] ‘Pull up.’ So I stopped with a jerk, as I thought I would like, you know and he said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘How did you get here?’ I said, ‘Well, how do you mean how did I get here?’ he said, ‘Well, I think there’s a car out there that belongs to you.’ He said, ‘How long have you been driving?’ And I said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t like to say. I couldn’t tell you.’ He said, ‘Well, have you had a licence?’ I said, ‘No.’
IP: When was this? Was this after the war?
HB: No.
IP: Oh. It was before the war.
HB: Just.
IP: Oh right.
HB: And he said, ‘Well, how come?’ So, I had to tell him like, you know that I’d been, I’d been able to move these cars in and out of the garage no bother. And of course they would only go in one way so that I could drive them out easy and what have you, to get six in. And, and he said, ‘Ah, alright,’ he said, ‘Well, what did you like driving best?’ I said, ‘Well, I used to like driving the hearse best.’ He said, ‘What?’ he said, ‘You drove a hearse?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘It was great. You could see out grand.’ [laughs] But I said, ‘It was a bit, it learned me how to reverse.’ He said, ‘How come?’ I said, ‘Well, the only way we could get it in and out easy was to reverse it in.’ He said, ‘Oh. I think I’ll pass you without any bother.’
IP: Good stuff. Right. Ok. That’s very, that’s good. So you went to Crosthwaite School you said.
HB: Yeah.
IP: And then, then you went to another school after that?
HB: Keswick School.
IP: You got a scholarship for Keswick. Keswick was quite a good school.
HB: Yeah.
IP: In its day, I think wasn’t it?
HB: Yeah.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. So you obviously did quite well in your exams and stuff.
HB: Yes.
IP: Ok. And what, what can you remember anything particular about school? Did you enjoy it? Or —
HB: [laughs] Well, in a way I enjoyed school, yes. But the thing I enjoyed most was not very pleasant actually at first, but it was quite a thing to be playing rugby, and we played down in the school field. And then cross the bridge and then down and into the school grounds, and across one patch of grass and get to the showers that way. And of course what was quite a common occurrence like was you’d usually got quite a bit of mud on your shoes and you would take it off and throw it and of course I happened to get it, get some right in my eyes. Caught me right on, on the bridge of my nose and in both eyes, and somebody had to limp me into what was the boarding house at Keswick School, and the matron there had to bathe my eyes and what have you and oh, it was great. The attention I got like, you know. But the big thing was that the sports master got to know and then the headmaster got to know, and of course it was then, it was one of the rules that from then on that no mud was to be thrown like [laughs] So I was a bit of hero in one way but not in others.
IP: Yeah. So, so you must have started at Keswick School, it would be about 1934 I guess. Something like that. Would that sound around about right?
HB: Yeah.
IP: When you were elevenish, I suppose.
HB: Yeah.
IP: And how many years did you spend there? Did you, did you go through to because I think in those days you could leave school at fifteen couldn’t you? Did you?
HB: I was, I was seventeen when I left there.
IP: Right. Ok. So that would have taken us to around about 1940.
HB: Yeah.
IP: The war had already started.
HB: Yeah.
IP: What, what’s your memories of the war starting and stuff like that? What did you think about that?
HB: Well, the first thing was the, I suppose the evacuees, and then my father had the, what is it? It’s the chalet now, which was the garage and then the army took a petrol pump off him, and one thing and another so that eventually like when I was, when I joined up the, I’d been on speaking terms with the officers and all sorts like. But then I changed my tune a little bit then.
IP: I suppose so. Yes. Yeah. You were collared by the first, well not the first names in those days.
HB: But I did realise like, you know.
IP: Yeah.
HB: That, who they were should I say?
IP: Yeah.
HB: Not what they were but who they were.
IP: So and what were you good at school then? What was your, did you have any particular subjects you excelled at?
HB: Oh well. I was quite good at maths actually.
IP: You enjoyed it.
HB: Yeah. Maths and history.
IP: And did you have any brothers and sisters or —
HB: No.
IP: Were you [pause] It was just you. And what, what was your mother doing? Did she, was she a —
HB: She was a cook.
IP: Oh, a cook. Was she? What, in somebody’s house? Or —
HB: Yes.
IP: Oh, right.
HB: Had been. Yeah.
IP: Oh right.
HB: My father was a driver. My mother was a cook. My aunt next door she was a cook, and my uncle was a painter, next door. And we, we shared a wash house out in the, in the yard at the back and a toilet in the back at first. And then we went all modern of course and put the bathroom. Did away with one bedroom and put the bathroom in there, and toilet and everything like, you know. They did the same next door, and so we were sort of one up on the neighbours as it were then.
IP: All mod cons. Right. So, so we got to 1940. You left Keswick Grammar School. And then what happened to you?
HB: Well, I went in to the Air Force anyway.
IP: Did you, so you went straight from school did you into the Air Force or did you, did you work before?
HB: Well, I’d just been at home, yes. But actually my best friend he was [pause] he was an apprentice with my father at the garage, and between them I got used to a bit of everything. And then of course when I went to Keswick School well that was, it was a big help actually because I was sort of in front of some of them. Not on the education side but on the living side.
IP: Ok. So, yeah —
HB: If you know what I mean.
IP: Yeah. So a bit more confident and that sort of thing.
HB: Yeah.
IP: And used to —
HB: It didn’t worry me.
IP: Sure.
HB: That I’d other people around me. I was sort of quite happy.
IP: Yeah. No, I understand that. And did you volunteer for the Air Force? Did you volunteer to join up or what? Did you get your papers? Were you conscripted?
HB: I volunteered.
IP: You volunteered. So that’s —
HB: I was [pause] my mother was in a, quite a state but she realised actually that I had lost one of my best mates and she understood. I know that, you see there wasn’t many, there wasn’t many children, many boys anyway in the village at the time and he was a bit older than me, but again we got along great. And luckily he had a, his father had a [pause] he worked as a gardener at one of the big houses and they had, he had they had a boat on the lake, and we used to get into that and you know go out on the lake and what have you. So that when I went in to the Forces I was, I was used to meeting other people which was a big help.
IP: Yeah. Yeah.
HB: Sometimes, you know some of the lads that went in they were, they were lost altogether.
IP: Yeah. No, I can understand that. Yeah. I can understand your mother being upset as well because I suppose she would have been, she’d remember the First World War very well.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Did your father serve in the First World War?
HB: Yes.
IP: And were your mother and father together then or did they meet after the war? Do you know?
HB: Oh, they’d met before.
IP: Yeah. So she, so she’d be worrying about your dad
HB: Yeah.
IP: And all that sort of stuff that was going on.
HB: Yeah.
IP: So, yeah. Yeah and I know it’s a big problem for, well for any mother to have her son go off to war sort of thing.
HB: Yeah.
IP: So you volunteered because you volunteered you could choose which Service you went in to.
HB: Yeah.
IP: So why did you choose the RAF?
HB: Well, mainly, it was mainly because the [pause] as I say I’d lost this friend of mine, and I definitely felt that I was going to be doing something myself because of, rather than wait and be called up and put into something. Maybe [pause] my father he’d been in the Great War, and he’d been driving in that as well. My grandfather, Boer War, and I somehow thought that I was wanting to do something —
IP: So it, so there was a tradition in the family.
HB: Something different.
IP: And you felt you should —
HB: Yeah.
IP: Do your bit kind of thing, I suppose.
HB: That’s right. Yeah.
IP: Is the thing isn’t it, really. But what I, what I’m trying to get at is so why. I’m always intrigued as to, I know why I joined the Air Force but why did you go for the Air Force and not the Army? I know it sounds like you were quite in to technical things and you said you liked maths and that sort of stuff.
HB: Yeah.
IP: And you’re obviously quite well educated as well. That’s the other thing.
HB: Yeah.
IP: But there’s still, there’s still engineering trades in the Army and stuff like that but I was just interested to know why you, why you chose the Air Force. Was it the colour of the uniform?
HB: No. No, it was, I think it was partly that I was doing something as against being one of a crowd.
IP: Yeah.
HB: I know —
IP: I think I understand. If you join the Army you see yourself as part of a platoon.
HB: A group.
IP: And you’ve just been told to run forward towards the enemy.
HB: Yeah. Whereas if you were flying. I didn’t realise exactly how things were developing in any case but then as I say I wanted to fly and that was it.
IP: Yeah.
HB: And but then of course it came on and eventually four engine bombers and —
IP: Did you want to be a pilot when you first, was that, was it that sort of an aim when you joined the Air Force? Or what did you have in mind when you joined up? Can you remember?
HB: Well, no. I think, I think it was just I wanted to fly. But then during training, at least initial training should I say I realised that there was something different to, to just flying and so I changed my tune. And as I say, and then first when I first went in to that area in the Air Force you were sort of asked what you’d been doing, or what you hoped to do or whatever, and then when they realised that I knew a bit about engines anyway that, ‘Alright. A flight engineer’s your, your job.’
IP: Yeah. I suspected that that was the case. I was just, I was just trying to kind of work around to it and see, and see, see how they did it?
HB: Yeah.
IP: Because I think you used to do some tests as well didn’t you? That sort of thing.
HB: Oh yes.
IP: To see what you were and weren’t good at.
HB: Yeah.
IP: But yeah, I think with maths and engines in your background you could see where it was going.
HB: Yeah.
IP: So let’s step back a bit when you first joined the Air Force. So where did you go and do your initial training? Square bashing and all that sort of stuff? Can you remember?
HB: [laughs] [coughs] Dear me. Do you know I can’t remember.
IP: No. Ok. That’s alright. It doesn’t matter particularly I was just, I was just interested. Can you remember much about it? Can you? I don’t how long it took and I don’t suppose you can remember but —
HB: It was —
IP: What are your memories?
HB: It seemed to be a long time somehow or other before we got anywhere. What with the square bashing and what have you, you see because the the big thing was that at that time the Army had taken the Derwentwater Hotel over and where the houses are now there were huts on there and they —
IP: Excuse me.
HB: They, they took a petrol pump off my father’s garage and of course I, I could drive anyway, you know. At least I wasn’t allowed to drive outside but I could always reverse cars into the garage and what have you, so that it was quite something.
IP: We were talking about, about your basic training.
HB: Yeah.
IP: And it went far, it seemed to go on too long. Longer than it should have done.
HB: It was quite, it was quite easy to go to do the basic driving and it was quite comical really because this, they took, I think they used to take three of us out in a car, in a vehicle for a start. And I wanted to drive and the other two just sit and then drive for so long, and then change over you see and —
IP: Did you, so did you learn to drive when you joined the Air Force or you did your proper —
HB: Well —
IP: Your proper driving test when you joined the Air Force.
HB: When it came to my turn to drive I was the last one of the three you see, and I tried to make mistakes and I did manage to make it jump first go off like you know and this instructor said, ‘Right,’ he said. He said, ‘Just get stopped,’ he said. He said, ‘Now, start again.’ I said, ‘I’ll try.’ He said, ‘I don’t think you need try,’ he said. I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Well, just get and drive.’ So I drove around a bit and I did what I was told, you see and what he said. And he said, ‘Right. Ok. Change over.’ And eventually we got back to base and he said, ‘Just hang on a minute.’ So the other two went, went in and he said, ‘How long have you been driving?’ I said, ‘I can’t tell you now.’ He said, I said, ‘Why? He said, well, he said, ‘I’ll come around and pick you up at 6 o’clock.’ ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Well, you can come to, come to our house.’ I said, ‘Very good of you.’ He said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a taxi sitting at home’ he said, ‘It’s doing nothing,’ he said, ‘You might as well be driving that.’ So I finished up driving his taxi around Blackpool.
IP: Very good. Very good. But this while you were in the Air Force was it?
HB: Yeah.
IP: Oh right.
HB: Just when I joined up.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. So you did, so you did your training at Blackpool then presumably.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Or near Blackpool.
HB: Aye.
IP: And was that your initial training before you went on.
HB: Yeah.
IP: So you did your initial training. Square bashing and —
HB: That’s right. Yeah.
IP: Cleaning your barrack blocks and all that nonsense.
HB: Yeah.
IP: And then where did you go after that because you must have gone to do flight engineer training I suppose it would be, wouldn’t it?
HB: Yeah. Aye.
IP: Can you remember where that was?
HB: St Athan.
IP: Right. Ok. What do you remember about that?
HB: Not a lot but again the, they started by, when it came to the engineering side of it they started to tell you what each part was, sort of thing of an engine and, and this instructor said, ‘What’s this part?’ So I said, me like an idiot like, you know, I just spoke right out and I said. Told him exactly what it was you see. ‘Aye. Thank you very much.’ So, he said [laughs] he never asked me any more questions, and the class was over sort of thing and he said, ‘Just a minute,’ he said, ‘What do you know about these engines and things? I said, ‘Well, I don’t know much about aircraft engines,’ I said, ‘But an engine is an engine isn’t it?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Well, my father had a garage.’ He said, ‘Right. You’ll, you can do a lot of good for me.’ So he said, ‘What are you doing tonight?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, Well, I’ll come for you.’ So he came around at 6 o’clock, took me home. He said, ‘Right. There’s a taxi out there. It’s yours.’ [laughs] So I learned my way around Blackpool. Very much so.
IP: Yeah. Yeah, yeah I suppose so.
HB: I only did booked jobs like, you know.
IP: Moonlighting they called it.
HB: Worked from his home like, you know.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. So when you were at St Athan doing your, did you go straight to that flight engineer training at St Athan? Yes?
HB: Yeah. Did a little bit of basic.
IP: Square bashing.
HB: Basic square bashing like that and all that.
IP: Oh right. Ok. And —
HB: But that was, that was mostly for sort of use of arms as well. Not being frightened of guns and what have you.
IP: Range firing and stuff like that.
HB: Yeah. Engines sort of, well of course it all came naturally to me but with a lot of people it didn’t of course.
IP: Did they have air cadets at Keswick Grammar School?
HB: Yeah. You were able to [pause] what shall I say occasionally they would have an engine doctored and you had to sort of find the —
IP: Ah yes. Yeah. Identify what the problem was.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Yes.
HB: It was mostly carburation and air intakes and different things like that was —
IP: I’ll tell you something and this, it shouldn’t be on the recording because it’s incidental at Cranwell where they teach engineering officers for the Air Force now they still do similar things but obviously it’s with jet engines and things like that.
HB: Yeah.
IP: But they still do the same thing where they roll out an engine with a problem and they have to diagnose what the problem is and that sort of stuff.
HB: Aye.
IP: But anyway that’s beside the point. I thought you’d be interested to hear that. Things don’t move on that much. So, so flight engineer training. What happened after that then? Because at some stage you must have been selected for Halifaxes I guess.
HB: Well, you either, well the engine’s different you see. So you went into one group or the other. That was the main. The next sort of stage.
IP: Did it bother you to go in to Halifaxes? Did you mind one way or the other or, because the Lancaster was the shiny new aircraft wasn’t it really?
HB: Yeah. No, the Halifax was the as far as I was concerned it was [pause] it was, well in a sense I think there was more to do. It was the, I think it was the oldest one of the two, and they hadn’t got the, of course the fuel was the biggest trouble and with the Halifax the tanks were not as many, but a larger capacity. With the Lancs there was more of them but less capacity. But to keep an even flight on the Halifax you had to keep changing the fuel quite a lot, and actually when we were on operations I spent most of my time back in the rest bay where the engines cocks were than I did in the actual seat where I was supposed to be. Instead of getting up and going back you know, because it was all timed to minutes really and of course he, it was the engineer that set the actual speed of the fuel like, where the fuel was used to the four engines and so on. And all the engine cocks were back in the rest bay so that’s where the engineer spent most of the time. It wasn’t very often they were were in the, in the proper seat.
IP: Can you remember, so as you were doing your flight engineer training you got, you got speared off to Lancasters or Halifaxes or Stirlings as well, I suppose. The different types really.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Whatever they were. And obviously at some stage you would have gone on your first flight in a, in any sort of aircraft. Can you remember that particularly?
HB: The first time would be a Dakota, I think. And that was just the first flight and you were sitting, sitting there with your parachute harness on, but sitting in the seat and it was just sort of a take-off and landing. And then afterwards the first flight in the proper plane that you’d been training with you sort of knew how things worked.
IP: But you flew with an instructor, I guess.
HB: Yeah.
IP: The first few times.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Another engineer. To make sure you did everything right.
HB: Yeah.
IP: So that would be, would that be on an OTU then. You went on to a Halifax OTU. Is that right?
HB: Yeah.
IP: Yeah. Can you remember where that was?
HB: I can’t now.
IP: It’ll be in, it’ll be your logbook. We’ll have a look later. It’s fine. That’s fine. Don’t worry about it right now, Harry. We’ll have a look a little bit later on. I’m just being nosy. That’s all. Right. So, so OTU and then from there I mean can you, can you remember much about the OTU and the training that you did then?
HB: No.
IP: Ok. So then what happened after the OTU?
HB: I went to a squadron.
IP: And that was straight to 78 Squadron.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Down in RAF. Is it pronounced Brighton or —
HB: Breighton. Breighton.
IP: Breighton. What did you think to that?
HB: Well, as far as I was concerned I was very happy there. And of course that was, I was very happy there [pause] but I was never very happy about the fact that I was flying with a Canadian crew, and every one of them got commissions but I didn’t.
IP: Why was that then? It wasn’t that all the Canadians were commissioned was it? Was there some —
HB: It was just the way that the Air Force worked. And the flight engineer was the odd one out all the time. There was all sorts of countries had flight engineers but it wasn’t very often that there was a Canadian one. Of course, I was always all right with my crew because whenever we landed at any other aerodrome which we did fairly often I always wore somebody else’s jacket. I was never left on my own.
IP: So they took you in to the officer’s mess then.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Oh good. That’s good. I’m glad to hear that. I was going to say it sounds like you had a good relationship with the crew.
HB: Well, you had to have. Put it that way. They were, my crew, they were all very annoyed when they got, all got commissions and I didn’t.
IP: Ah, so they got commissioned after you’d all met up. Because I’ve heard the story about how crews were formed.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Can you, can you remember how that happened? Can you tell me about that? What happened to you? How did you join up with your, with the rest of your crew?
HB: Oh, well the engineers. We were all trained at St Athan and we [pause] there was those that passed the exams and what have you they all got their badges and what have you, and they and then they it was usually the pilot and the navigator that came from the different squadrons and they sort of picked out the one that they —
IP: The story I heard was —
HB: They wanted.
IP: All the different aircrew branches they were all put in to a big hall and you wandered around and you found yourself a crew. Does that, does that sound right? So you’d find —
HB: Well, something like that. It varied.
IP: You’d find a group of guys who were looking for a flight engineer. It may not have happened everywhere. It may have been slightly different, but I’ve heard of somebody sort of saying, ‘We need a navigator, you’re a navigator, come and join us,’ kind of thing.
HB: Yeah.
IP: And then slowly, and it was a way of kind of forming the team initially. But I just wondered if you’d got any memories of that. That was all.
HB: Yeah. Well, they usually had the, the flight engineer was usually the last one because some of the crew had been flying together and then they picked the gunners up and then the flight engineer was usually the last one. Like the navigator, the pilot, that had all flown a certain amount together or done training together of one kind and another.
IP: So you formed as a crew on the OTU I guess then.
HB: Yes. Yeah.
IP: Is that right? And then as a crew you got posted to 78 Squadron.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Ah yes. Ok. Right. I understand.
HB: But it was quite a, quite a thing like really, you know. As I say I thought I was, I was quite lucky in the fact that all my, the crew were Canadians but so many of them had been, you know had all sorts in the crews. We were all doing the same job granted, but and then of course as far as I was concerned it always, it didn’t annoy me the fact that all the crew were given commissions and I wasn’t because they, if they went anywhere I always went with them and I wore somebody else’s jacket. But the big thing was I didn’t have to pay.
IP: Yeah. Right. Ok. So, we’re on 78 Squadron which is in 4 Group. I know that much. And I’ve got your list of your missions as well. Can, can you remember any? Do you remember your first mission? Do you know, do you remember how that was for you? I can tell you where. It doesn’t matter where. It doesn’t matter where it was. I’m just wondering if you can remember your first mission and how you felt about it.
HB: Well, the first mission was just as a passenger actually. You went, it didn’t matter what you were in the crew. The first one you went as an extra. And of course with the flight engineer his job, his main job was the fuel, and of course with this one there doing it actually in flight was a different thing to doing it in the, in a hangar. And that was that like, you know. They showed you how to do it and then let you do it and gave you as much information as he could. And of course the big information that they always gave you was, ‘And take your ruddy parachute with you.’ [laughs] Because, then you realise that you were sitting in one position which happened to be in, the flight engineer’s position in the Halifax was in the rest bay more or less because that was where all the engine cocks were. The fuel cocks like. And that’s where you spent most of your time, but whenever you got up you had to take your parachute with you.
IP: Because your, your seat must have been just behind the, was it behind the pilot? Or alongside the pilot? As the flight engineer.
HB: Behind the pilot.
IP: Right.
HB: In the rest bay actually.
IP: That’s where your seat was.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Oh, ok. I thought you had a seat somewhere else.
HB: Oh, I had a seat. Yeah.
IP: Then the fuel cocks were in the rest bay.
HB: Yeah. Aye. I had a seat in behind the pilot.
IP: So you had to drag your parachute backwards and forwards.
HB: Yeah.
IP: That can’t have been easy because they’re not, they’re not big planes. You know, when you go inside these things they’re tiny really.
HB: Aye.
IP: People don’t realise. So you always took, did you always take your parachute with you?
HB: Yeah.
IP: Good for you.
HB: Aye. Despite of you leaving that.
IP: So this, this first mission, do you remember much else about it? Was, I mean there must have been flak and stuff like that. What were your thoughts when —? I personally, I would imagine it would be a real shock. You’ve done all this training and you’ve done some flying but over the UK and that sort of stuff.
HB: Yeah.
IP: And then to actually fly over Germany or wherever you went for the first time can you remember how you felt about that?
HB: Well, nervous as against frightened.
IP: Ok.
HB: Nervous. Not of the actual flight, but slightly nervous as to what you were going to do, or what you had to do. In the [pause] and it being your first flight, whether you would remember what you’ve been taught, and do what you’d been taught or what. And even though we had been up in a plane but never on an actual mission it was a bit nerve wracking and you hoped that you didn’t do something silly and wrong, you know. After what you’d been taught. Not knowing exactly what was going to happen. I mean of course you’d been taught all sorts of different things like of safety and what to do with this and what to do with that but it had never actually happened.
IP: It’s a lot to think about isn’t it? A lot to try and —
HB: Once you, once you got the first one over then that was, that was it like, you know. You carried on.
IP: So do you remember any specific missions for any particular reasons or do they all sort of merge one into another? Have you got any particular memories of things that happened on any specific missions or anything like that?
HB: Well, in a way no. There was nothing much. I say that because I was the lucky one in the crew, being a flight engineer and my job was mainly looking after the fuel. And in a Halifax the fuel cocks were all in the rest bay and you had to keep a log of how much it was. Where. You know, the timing. And so I was kept busy in a way. Not doing something, but rather than what the gunners were and that. The gunners were the worst because they were just sitting somewhere and all that they were doing were looking out. They had the guns in front of them and that was it.
IP: Just trying to stay warm.
HB: Yeah. They just used to go where they were taken whereas well everybody else was sort of static except the flight engineer. He was lucky. He was, because when the pilots and that used to get out of the plane oh dear. It was terrible.
IP: And I suppose for the flight engineer it was, it was all internal wasn’t it? You were looking inside the aircraft kind of thing.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Whereas the other guys, a lot of them, the navigator certainly, the bombardier, the gunners well everyone else really were looking outside and seeing what was going on around you.
HB: Yeah.
IP: So, to a degree were you, were you sort of blissfully unaware of, I mean obviously if anything happened to your own aircraft? But you wouldn’t see other aircraft going down. That sort of stuff.
HB: No.
IP: You’d hear the chat on the intercom I suppose, but, but do you think to some degree therefore you were less concerned with what was going on around.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Up in the sky sort of thing.
HB: I had a [pause] it was you. You and the crew in an aircraft. You had a job to do and that was it. And in a way some of the others were looking after you, because the pilot was knowing where he was going really, the navigator was telling him where to go, the wireless operator was listening for his instructions and so on. The flight engineer, he was the only one that had anything to do in a way.
IP: Yeah. And, and but a vitally important. You know, that’s the thing isn’t it? It was so important as you say to get the fuel balance right and that sort of stuff.
HB: Oh yeah. Yeah. But I was able to move about.
IP: Yeah.
HB: Which was, which was quite a help really. Oh, some of the gunners and that when that they got out, when they got back to base oh they used to moan and groan something awful ‘til they got, could get their legs and arms really moving. It was. Of course I know they were, they’d tons of clothing on but that that didn’t help in a sense like, you know. They couldn’t have done without it, but it as I say I was fortunate being an engineer and being able to move about to a certain degree.
IP: Was it frightening? Did you, did you feel, I know you said on your first mission you were nervous, the when you went as a passenger you were nervous more than scared sort of thing.
HB: Yeah.
IP: But did you, did you find it scary at all doing the, doing the missions generally?
HB: No. Not really. No. No. You [pause] I suppose when it was, it was more scary at the time when you got back, and you were describing seeing something else being hit and going down thinking well it might have been you, you know. It was very close to me and so on, and of course it was always a case of well who was it? You know, when you got back. Who hasn’t turned up yet and so on.
IP: Did you have friends amongst the other crews? I guess you knew the other flight engineers fairly well and that sort of stuff but what did your friends, did you really it just tended to be the crew that you knocked around with?
HB: Well, you tended to go as a crew. I did anyway because all the rest were Canadians anyway except me so, and then eventually they all got commissions except me which I didn’t care much about. We didn’t get away with it because we still went out as a crew and I always had somebody’s else’s jacket with something on.
IP: This was even down the local pub and stuff like that. You’d go with an officer’s jacket on.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Good stuff.
HB: I don’t know. We [pause] you were all together and that was it. I know [pause] well, the crew had all been together for a little while before the flight engineer joined them and they said right away, ‘We know you’re an Englishman,’ they said, ‘But you’re a Canadian where ever we go.’ They said, ‘We’re going out. We’ll go out together, and we’ll all be Canadians.’ He said, ‘I don’t know what rank you might have but that doesn’t matter.’ So that was it like, you know.
IP: Good.
HB: And of course they knew. The higher ups knew that that happened.
IP: Oh yes. Yes. Yeah.
HB: They wouldn’t have had it any other way anyway.
IP: I was just about to say exactly the same thing. I mean you had to.
HB: Yeah.
IP: You had to work together as a team so closely that.
HB: It was one thing that they always, oh it was a big thing in the Air Force actually was the fact that air gunners and flight engineers, they were all trained separately but they joined a crew. And a lot of the air gunners they got commissions. Not them all. But the flight engineers never did. They did maybe later after they’d flown a little while. I’m not saying they didn’t get them but it was very discriminating actually. Of course it didn’t bother me because it didn’t matter what I did. I always went with them. What they did either. And if they decided they would go to a film show or they would go to a dance or just go sightseeing whatever I always wore somebody’s jacket.
IP: And when you weren’t on, when you weren’t flying ops the social life was pretty good then was it? At Breighton.
HB: Yeah.
IP: It’s quite out of the way isn’t it, I mean.
HB: Very. Breighton in Yorkshire. Yeah.
IP: Where would you go? Do you remember?
HB: Oh, York. We used to go to York quite a lot, or Leeds but as I say I never went as a sergeant. They wouldn’t let me. Yeah.
IP: Ok, so you flew. It was a full tour wasn’t it? You did thirty. Thirty ops.
HB: Yeah.
IP: With 78 Squadron. 78 Squadron had lost a hundred and twenty five aircraft during its time at Breighton which I think is quite, even by Bomber Command standards is pretty high. So Halifaxes —
HB: Yeah.
IP: I know the losses were higher than on Lancasters. Did that, did that affect people on the squadron generally do you remember? How was morale?
HB: Well, all the, there was always a little bit of argument as to which was the best aircraft of course. Each one stuck up for his own. And I liked the Halifax better for the simple reason that there was, there was more room to move about in it. With a Lancaster you didn’t. It was cramped a bit. But as a flight engineer the engine cocks on the Halifax were all in the rest bay and of course you were regularly changing them so that it took you a little while to get used to the idea that you had to keep moving about. And I used to spend quite a bit of time in the rest bay where the engine cocks were anyway, and then have a walk up and go and stand behind the pilot and navigator. Take the mid-upper gunner’s seat and let him have a wander around. You know, just to, well to move your legs a bit.
IP: What did you think about what you were doing? I know, you know I’m sure you were aware there was a lot of controversy after the war about the bomber offensive. I don’t I hasten to add. I don’t have a problem with it at all but did you think about what you were doing when you were doing it? Dropping bombs on towns and cities and stuff. Did that cause you any problems?
HB: Well, no not really because the main problems were always, now how accurate are we going to be because you see most of the, most of the targets were quite big and establishments and what have you but there was also a certain amount of local inhabitants somewhere close by. Now, is the information going to be correct? Is the wind and everything, you know going to be in apple pie order as it were because you were reading off a chart which was supposedly accurate, but you just wondered how accurate it really was. And with knowing what damage some of the Germans were causing in this country at times it was a bit, you wondered a little bit if you were correct or not if you know what I mean. But then you had to put that at the back of your mind eventually and say, ‘Well, I hope I’m right,’ and that’s —
IP: It’s a job to be done and you do it to the best of your ability kind of thing.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. Ok.
HB: Or somebody else is right and you know everything is as ordered but anyway —
IP: And what was, what were your thoughts then? I mean after the war it came out I know the figures like Dresden is always, is always the raid that people always roll out as an example and the numbers have been massively exaggerated over the years anyway that were killed there. But what were your thoughts about that then when you know these fire storms that were brewed up and that sort of thing did you have particular views or do you, or is it not something you don’t tend to think about really?
HB: Well, no. Not exactly. No. I was very pleased to get back to normal.
IP: Just pleased to get the war over with.
HB: Should I say?
IP: Yeah.
HB: And I kept thinking well I, I’m pleased I’m now back home and out of the hurly burly of modern living as it were, and that’s the way it’s been ever since.
IP: So when you were demobbed you came back to Portinscale from, from the Air Force then. You just came home.
HB: Yeah.
IP: I guess your mum and dad were pleased to see you.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Yeah. Did you get much leave while you were on, while you were in the Air Force? Did you get much leave at all or well obviously you got leave but did you actually come home or —
HB: Yeah, I did manage to get home but I also [pause] actually I wrote home once and, and I said that I was having this leave and I was going to Edinburgh [pause] and I said,” I hope that you don’t misjudge things but —" I said, “I hope that you realise that it’s my chance to see something different and that I’ll actually miss not coming home. But that isn’t the point. At this moment in time I think everybody’s in a bit of quandary as to how things are going to work out.” And anyway I got word back and they said. “You please yourself love. We’re very pleased for you that you, that you feel that way. That you want to see as much as you can while you’ve the opportunity whereas you might not have that opportunity.” So as I have had. But that’s not the point is it? I might not have had. It’s —
IP: It must have been a real, I was just thinking when you left the Air Force to come back to, I mean Cumbria’s lovely.
HB: Yeah.
IP: It would have been Cumberland then wouldn’t it but it must have been a shock coming from flying over Germany, being shot at and losing friends and this that and the other to coming back to Portinscale, on the edge of Keswick.
HB: Yeah.
IP: To a really quiet part of the country.
HB: Yeah, well —
IP: How did, how did you adjust after the war? Was that easy or —
HB: Well —
IP: Not so easy.
HB: Well, for about a couple of days it was very difficult, and then I began to realise that some people were missing. Other people had, the elderly people had passed on, and so on. And in a way I was quite fortunate in the fact that my father had been in the First World War and he had a similar experience when he came back as well, and he realised what was happening. And between us we got sort of pulled back in to shape as it were.
IP: Sorted you out a bit. Yeah. Yeah.
HB: And of course then you got around and you started doing things that you expected to be doing, and things you had done before and then occasionally [pause] you had to be very careful when somebody was missing, you know. And then you had to discreetly try and find out what had happened to somebody. And then you realised eventually that there was a name put up somewhere and that’s the way things went.
IP: And what did you, presumably you got a job. What did you end up doing after the war?
HB: Well, that was no problem for me of course with my father having the garage where the Chalet is now. It was no problem.
IP: So you worked, you worked for your dad in the garage.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. Ok. And did you do that all your working life then? Did you take the business over from him? Or —
HB: Yeah.
IP: Oh, ok.
HB: Again, I was very fortunate. I can always remember the first day it happened but the telephone went one, one morning and I answered it and the, this voice said, ‘This is Lord Rochdale speaking,’ I thought, oh my God. I said, ‘Oh yes.’ I said, ‘What can I do for you?’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s what you can do for me.’ I said, ‘What? What do you want?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got, I’ve got to go down to London.’ I said, ‘Oh yes.’ I said, ‘What do you want me for then?’ He said, ‘Well, I want you to go with me. Take me there.’ I said, ‘To London?’ he said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘That’s a long way.’ He said, ‘Yeah. I know it is. But —' he said, ‘We can manage alright.’ So, I said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘Right, well. Right ok.’ He said, ‘Right, tomorrow morning I’ll pick you up.’ It was about 7 o’clock in the morning or something. He said, ‘Alright?’ So I said, ‘How long will I be away for?’ He said, ‘I don’t know yet. About three or four days probably. Maybe longer.’ I said, ‘Oh, right.’ So, anyway I got myself ready the next morning and a case packed, and he comes along, picks me up, and we set off. And he said, he said, ‘Do you know your way?’ I said, ‘Well, more or less like,’ you know. He said, ‘Oh, it’s alright to go quite simple.’ So we’d gone a little way along and he said, ‘Right. If you take over now,’ So, I took over and we were going down the A1 like, you know, no bother and he said, ‘Are you ok to manage?’ I thought, right like, you know, I said, ‘Well, I’ve learned to drive. They taught me in the Air Force.’ He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Oh yeah.’ he said, ‘But I know different to that,’ he said, ‘You taught them to drive not them teach you.’ He said, ‘You’ve driven before.’ So ever after that I was all over England with him. A heck of a time I had.
IP: Driving Lord Rochdale.
HB: Yeah.
IP: Very good.
HB: He was a great.
IP: Yeah.
HB: Great fella.
IP: And you got married I presume because you obviously, obviously had children, had a child, at least one child.
HB: Yeah.
IP: So when did you get married?
HB: Oh no. He was, he was a great fella to work for like and to do for, and the last words he ever said when he got out of the car to whoever, where ever we went, ‘Look after the driver.’ It was the last words he ever said to me like when he got out. He didn’t speak to me. He spoke to whoever it was. And of course he was going to give some talk somewhere or some, open something and do. All sorts of things he did. And it was a case of me getting out of the way.
IP: Oh right. So but you kept, you kept running the garage in between times, sort of thing. Between these.
HB: With my father.
IP: With your dad. Did you keep in touch with any of the folks that you were in the Air Force with? Or did you ever see them again. Obviously they went back to Canada so —
HB: Yeah. They all went back to Canada.
IP: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. I was the only one. The last one’s passed on now like, but the wireless operator was the last one.
IP: So you obviously kept in touch with them somehow.
HB: Yeah.
IP: By letters or whatever.
HB: Yeah.
IP: And that sort of thing. And you didn’t go back. Did you go to reunions or anything like that after the war?
HB: Yeah. I did do. I’ve been. I think I went twice.
IP: Yeah. Yeah. Ok.
HB: But it was really nobody, there was really nobody there that I knew.
IP: Yeah. Well, if all your crew were Canadian they’re not likely to come across from Canada for a reunion.
HB: Aye. Well, they wouldn’t but again there wasn’t a lot of the flight engineers like, you know were. They’d either passed on or living away or whatever. Living too far away should I say.
IP: Yeah.
HB: Are you ok for a quick break or — ?
IP: Yeah. Well, actually yeah. I think what we’ll do is we’ll 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 Harry Braithwaite
Creator
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Ian Price
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-04-21
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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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ABraithwaiteH180421
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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01:34:29 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--Yorkshire
Wales--Glamorgan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Braithwaite was born in Portinscale and went to Keswick School. Harry’s close friend was killed in action and this spurred him on to volunteer. His father owned a garage and Harry would help him. This gave him some mechanical knowledge and after joining the RAF and after basic training he did his flight engineer training at RAF St Athan. He was posted to 78 Squadron at RAF Breighton flying in Halifaxes, and his Canadian crew treated him as one of their own. He completed a full tour of thirty operations.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
78 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
C-47
crewing up
demobilisation
flight engineer
Halifax
military service conditions
perception of bombing war
RAF Breighton
RAF St Athan
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/563/8831/AEdwardsAE161024.1.mp3
6f8f321cbb73cb59b14fc9ac1cbe74a6
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
Edwards, Allan Ernest
A E Edwards
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Edwards, AE
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. Collection concerns Warrant Officer Ernest Allan Edwards (b. 1924, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 514, 7 and 582 Squadrons. Collection contains an oral history interview, biography, list of 42 operations and photographs of aircraft and people.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ernest Allan Edwards and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-24
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.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IP: This is Ian Price and I’m interviewing Allan Edwards today, the twenty-fourth of October 2016, for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive.
AE: 2016.
IP: Correct, yes, that’s this year.
AE: Er –
IP: We are, we are at Allan’s home in East Boldon, Tyne and Wear. Thank you, Allan for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present is Judith Higerty, Allan’s daughter. It is ten past eleven.
AE: Mhm.
IP: Allan, as I say, thank you for allowing me to come and talk to you. Just to start off, could you tell me what you recall about your life growing up and where you grew up, and what you did before the war really?
AE: As far as I can remember, I was born in Southwick in Sunderland, and then I worked at chartered accountants, Davidson and Gurrey for a while, and then worked at Vaux’s in nineteen, before I went into the Air Force. And then I went in the Air Force in [pause] December 1942, and er, I went to Blackpool to do eight weeks physical training, and then round about February or March 1943, went to Davidson and Gurrey, just for a while, and then went to Vaux’s April 1940, first of April 1940, as a clerk, and then in December or November, Decem, November, December 1942 went in the Air Force.
IP: Okay, so where did you go to school then, before, this is before you joined the Air Force obviously. I guess it would be the 1930s, something like that. Where were you at school?
AE: [Laughs]
IP: Do you recall?
AE: Erm [pause], I think it was at the local school which is in Sea Road –
IP: Local to here, or to – local to here, okay.
AE: Sea Road [unclear]. I went in there and then I went to [pause] the mid-school in Southwick, in Southwick. But I can’t remember much about it, I can’t, it’s way back.
IP: Okay, no that’s fine, and can you tell me a little about your parents? What, do you remember what your parents, or what your father did for work? Was he, was he in the First World War, do you remember as well?
AE: He was in the First World War, yeah, yeah, and I think he was an ironmonger, an ironmonger and he used to have a shop in [unclear] Avenue. That’s as far as I can remember.
IP: Okay, so what caused you then to join the Royal Air Force? What, why did join the Royal Air Force and what made you go into Bomber Command?
AE: Well, before I went in the Air Force, I was in the ATC, ATC, and I always used to fly model aeroplanes, so it was just a case of being able to fly in Air Force aircraft, and that’s why I went in the ATC, and then from there I went in the Air Force, in December 1942.
IP: And what made you go into Bomber Command, ‘cause the bomber boys were volunteers as I understand it, is that correct?
AE: I’ve no idea [laughs].
IP: Oh okay.
AE: I don’t know, I don’t, I can’t remember now. But, as a matter of fact, I just went as a flight engineer in Bomber Command, but why I went into it, I’ve no idea.
IP: Okay.
AE: Can’t remember now.
IP: Alright, not to worry. So, you talked a little bit about your training, the physical training at Blackpool. Can you tell me anymore about the training that you got before you became operational?
AE: Erm [pause], I can’t bloody remember about it now, but I know I was in Blackpool for a few months, and did physical training, and, but I can’t remember much about it.
IP: Okay.
AE: I cannot, no, no.
IP: And then after Blackpool, where did you go from there?
AE: Erm, I’m trying to think [long pause]. I can’t bloody remember [laughs].
IP: Okay, but you mentioned to me about, something about St Athan. Were you at St Athan at some stage?
AE: Oh, St Athan. That’s right, in Blackpool, I went down to St Athan, ah yeah. I must have gone there at the beginning of 1943, and I was there for about eight months altogether, and doing the training on the flight engineer’s training, and physical training as well until about October 1943, and then I went to, I think Davidson and Gurrey, no I beg your pardon, no, no, no, no. In October 1943 must have gone to [pause], I just cannot remember.
IP: Did you go to a conversion unit to learn to fly the Lancaster, was that, was that what happened next? Or to fly in the Lancaster I should say.
AE: Possibly. It’ll be in my 1943, 1944 diaries.
IP: Okay.
AE: But otherwise, I just can’t bloody remember.
IP: Okay. Can you remember arriving on your first squadron?
AE: On my first squadron?
IP: Yes, the first squadron you were posted to, to fly operations. Can you remember that?
AE: In Waterbeach.
IP: Can you tell me much about that?
AE: That was in January 1944. I can’t remember much about it, but I know that, the first trip I did was Brunswick, Brunswick, but I can’t remember much about it. I was the flight engineer then, but I honestly cannot remember then. Brunswick and then next week I did Magdeburg, Berlin, Augsburg, Stuttgart, all at Waterbeach, Waterbeach, and then I went to [pause], then I went to, is it Pathfinder, to Little Staughton.
IP: Mm.
AE: Round about March nineteen, April 1944, yeah, yeah. And then from then when I did all my flying, as a Pathfinder, in the Lancasters, until I finished the tour in September 1944, way back.
IP: What happened in September 1944 then, where did you go after that?
AE: I think in September ‘44 I had shingles, shingles, and I went into hospital for a, three weeks, then I had a fortnight’s leave, then I came back and did a bit more, did a bit more time at Waterbeach, no Little Staughton, Little Staughton, Little Staughton, and eventually I went on to Milfield in Wooler, or near Wooler, at the beginning of 1945, beginning of 1945. That right?
JH: Yes, that’s right.
AE: You’ve got a bloody good memory, have I told you before?
JH: A little bit yeah.
AE: Ey?
JH: A little bit, yes.
AE: [Laughs.]
IP: So, can you tell me what happened at Milfield then? What was going on there? What were you doing at Milfield?
AE: I think I went there as [pause] some sort of, erm – I know, I know for three weeks I worked in the ordering department, and then I got fed up, and I went as a drone operator in the Martinets and I flew in the Martinets from [pause] March 1945, until end of 1945, as a drone operator [laughs].
IP: And then what did you do after that? What was the next job, can you remember?
AE: And then I went up to Llanbedr in, that’s in North Wales, and I flew in, what do they call them, Vengeances, Vengeances, and then I got brassed off, I think I was married then, and I just became an airfield controller, until the end of 1946, then I was demobbed, and –
IP: Okay.
AE: And started work again at Vaux’s in 1947.
IP: Okay, so going back to your time on the squadrons, can you sort of describe a typical mission to me? What, what went on in the preparation and the mission itself? Can you remember that sort of thing?
AE: Not much, I can’t remember much [pause]. No, that’s all, on a mission to the, to Germany?
IP: Yes, yes.
AE: Haven’t got a clue.
IP: Okay.
AE: I can’t remember now [laughs].
IP: You’d be told, as I understand it, you would be told in the morning where you were, where the mission was going to be –
AE: Erm –
IP: Towards, so if it was Stuttgart for example, or Brunswick or something like that?
AE: In the morning we were told that, we were told to attend a meeting in the afternoon, and where, and we were told then where the target was, and who would do the bombing, and then in the evening, we would takeoff and do the actual flying, but you’re bringing back a few memories.
IP: Good memories or bad memories?
AE: Oh, oh good memories [laughs].
IP: Okay, would you like to tell me about some of them?
AE: Haven’t got a clue.
IP: Okay.
AE: No, no. No, I can’t remember much about them.
IP: Can you tell me how you found it yourself when you were flying over the cities? Because obviously, there were searchlights and flak and all that sort of stuff, and how, how did that, how did you deal with that as a person, how did you cope?
AE: I think at the time, I was quite frightened, and I certainly couldn’t do it now, because when you’re older, you’re terrified all the bloody time. But any, flying over Germany and what have you, through the flak and what, and the searchlights, you just accept it, accept it, and fly onwards, and do your job as good, as much as possible.
IP: Were the people that went on to Pathfinders hand, were they picked particularly? ‘Cause in my mind, that was, the Pathfinder Force was a particular responsibility, so I don’t know if they take – were they, did they take the best crews from the main force to go onto the Pathfinders, or was it just a normal posting?
AE: I think it was a normal posting, I think so.
IP: Hmm –
AE: [Laughs].
IP: Okay.
AE: I don’t think we were very, very good at, when we were at, it’s Waterbeach, just normal.
IP: Okay.
AE: So, we were sent to Little Staughton as Pathfinders, just because we were, we did five trips. That’s it, we were experienced.
IP: So had you only done five trips at Waterbeach then, before you went to –
AE: Five trips at Waterbeach
IP: Yeah, yeah.
AE: Uh-huh.
IP: Oh goodness.
AE: Er, and then [laughs] went to Little Staughton and did the rest of my tour.
IP: What sort of training did you have to be on the Pathfinders then? Was there additional training?
AE: There was additional training [pause], I think we just used to fly in the Lancasters, and do additional training on target indicating, Pathfinders, just to indicate the target as far as I can remember, but you’re going back a few years, and I just cannot bloody remember [laughs].
IP: That’s right. Is there, is there any particular mission that stands out in your mind? I mean, I know you went to Berlin which would be a, something you wouldn’t forget perhaps, but is there a particular mission that stands out in your mind because something particular happened that might be of interest?
AE: I think the [pause], the mission on, it was in July 1944 when we went to Verrières, Verrières, which I think is just east of Paris, and I think we got clobbered on the way there, and the plane was holed and I think the engines were running roughly, but we went onto the target, dropped the bombs and came back, and that was Verrières in July 1944, and that was the worst aerial bombardment, aerial which we’d had.
IP: So, because you flew towards the end of the war, the bomber force was also flying daylight missions as opposed to night missions. Did you fly daylight missions, and how did you, how different did you find that, to flying at night?
AE: We used to fly daylight missions just to France. That was when the flying bombs were coming over from France to South England, and we used to fly the bomb, we used to attack the bomb, the flying bombsites [laughs]. That was in 1944, and as I say, I used to fly 1944 until September 1944, used to do the daylight missions just on the flying, on the coast of France, and then as far as, I think we went to Paris, Verrières, aye, but didn’t do many night flights [pause] later in the, aye. Although I think I went to Szczecin, Szczecin –
IP: Oh yeah?
AE: Took about nine hours, but that was in August 1944, wasn’t it?
JH: Was that your longest flight?
AE: Szczecin, yeah.
JH: Was that your longest flight?
AE: I think so, took about nine hours. Nine hours and a bit [laughs].
IP: Did you find it stressful?
AE: In those days yes. I wouldn’t be able to do it now, be terrified now [laughs], but I did find it stressful, yes, that’s why I got the shingles at the end of my tour in September and October 1944.
IP: And how did you cope with the stress then, how, as a crew, did you socialise together and that sort of thing or, just to let your hair down a bit as we’d say?
AE: Used to accept it, accept it, yeah. I think most of the crews were quite frightened when they were flying, but they used to, no, act normally afterwards, mhm, yeah.
IP: So, before we move on, I was just wondering, I don’t want to go away from the war too early, you might want to I don’t know but, is there anything, anything else that you can remember about your wartime experience that you think is worth telling us about?
AE: I cannot honestly remember [laughs].
IP: You mentioned – did you get married during the war? You mentioned that you thought you were married –
AE: Oh, God –
IP: Some stage. Where did you meet your wife?
AE: I think she was a WAAF. Is that so?
JH: I don’t know.
AE: Erm, but that was the first time I was married, oh god. I think I met her in 1945, at the end of 1945 when I was at Milfield, and that only lasted about four years [laughs]. Be quiet.
IP: Okay.
AE: Shut up [laughs].
IP: So, you were demobbed in 1946. What, just tell us how your life has gone in general terms since then. You went back to work at Vaux Brewery I understand in –
AE: Vaux Brewery, yes.
IP: In 1947.
AE: Uh-huh.
IP: And then what have you done since then?
AE: Er, at Vaux, I worked Vaux Brewery until, oh [pause] can’t remember, then I went to the British Oxygen Company in Chester-Le-Street for a while, and I started working at Cycle, Cycle.
IP: What do they do?
AE: Erm, they used to supply, Cycle. I can’t remember now. Used to supply lots and lots of goods to local shops, and I think I worked there for about twenty-five years, and that was my last occupation, Cycle.
IP: When –
AE: And I became a clerk and I studied, did a bit of studying and became a chartered secretary as well. Mhm. That was, oh [sigh], way back, 1955, ‘56. Chartered secretary [laughs]. I honestly can’t remember much about it now.
IP: That’s alright, don’t worry about it.
AE: [Laughs].
IP: Now, when the war ended, one of the things that happened was Bomber Command was, people were – I think the best way of describing it was embarrassed by what had happened with the bomber offensive. How did you, how do you find people treated you if they knew you’d been in Bomber Command? Was, did you find, did you have any difficulties?
AE: In Bomber Command – at the end of the war I was at Milfield, and I think at the end of the war everyone was granted about a week’s leave, and I came home and that’s it.
IP: But how were you treated by – when you left the Air Force, how were you treated by people, how did you find people back home? How did they, how did they –
AE: No –
IP: Treat you?
AE: Just the same as when I first went there. Just the same.
IP: What did you think to the way Bomber Command was treated after the war? Do you have a view on that at all?
AE: Way Bomber Command was treated after the war? Just accept it, accept it, but otherwise [sighs], I don’t know.
IP: Okay.
AE: [Laughs].
IP: Okay. Erm, right, so what, were Martinets training aircraft then?
AE: The Martinets were two seaters, they were a development of the Masters, the Miles Master, but the Martinets were designed to tow targets, tow targets, Martinets.
IP: So, what were you towing targets for, was it –
AE: For the benefit of –
IP: Air-to-air firing or –
AE: For the benefit of [pause], of trainee pilots in Typhoons and Tempests, and used to fly over the Holy Island and the Farne Islands, and they used to fire at the, the drogues which were flying, I forget, twelve-hundred feet away from the Martinets, and they used to fly at the drogue, the drogue [laughs].
IP: Did that get at all exciting? Were they good shots or was it a bit dicey at times?
AE: I think they used to attack the drogues all the time, all the time. Mind you, they used to miss them, but when the drogues were dropped at Milfield, the number of holes were counted, and also there were different colours as well. One was blue and red, and then there was naughtered down, and that’s it.
IP: Okay, when you – one thing I was thinking about, when you left the Air Force, how easy did it, you find it to adjust? I mean it’s quite, being in Bomber Command particularly, it’s quite an intensive way to live your life, and then to go back to pretty much your old job –
AE: Vaux’s.
IP: At Vaux’s Brewery, how, how was that adjustment, can you remember?
AE: Quite easy [laughs]. Quite easy, that’s way back in 1940.
IP: So, you just took your uniform off one day and put your suit on another day and carried on?
AE: I think I’ve still got the uniform here.
IP: Wow.
AE: I’ve still got the medals as well, aye, yeah. Although, have you got the uniform?
JH: I think Michael’s got it.
AE: Michael’s got it, ah yeah. But I’ve still got the medals in the box there. Ah [sighs] way back.
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 Allan Ernest Edwards
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Price
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
2016-10-24
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AEdwardsAE161024
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
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
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:30:01 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Allan joined the Royal Air Force in December 1942 as a flight engineer, having been a member of the Air Training Corps before the war. From Blackpool, he went to RAF St Athan for flight engineer training. His first squadron was at RAF Waterbeach, where he went on operations to Brunswick, Magdeburg, Berlin, Augsburg and Stuttgart. Allan then went to RAF Little Staughton to fly as a Pathfinder in Lancasters. He describes a tricky mission to Versailles in France. RAF Milfield followed in early 1945 where Alan was a drogue operator in Martinets. He then flew in Vengeances at RAF Llandbedr, subsequently becoming an airfield controller until he was demobbed.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Northumberland
Wales
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Stuttgart
France
France--Versailles
Germany
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Vivienne Tincombe
207 Squadron
aircrew
coping mechanism
flight engineer
Martinet
Pathfinders
RAF Little Staughton
RAF St Athan
RAF Waterbeach
training